A few films for December.

Pinocchio (2022), directed by Guillermo del Toro. This version of Pinocchio takes place in the years between the two Great Wars. Fascists lurk about, as a wicked carnival makes its way through Italy thrilling audiences with its magical puppetry. The basics of Collodi’s story are here, although del Toro may signal any changes when he names Geppetto’s first son Carlo. Carlo dies, the victim of an errant bomb in the first war. What follows is a dark take on the familiar story. Anyway, this is an impressive outing by del Toro. He delivers a film that gives nods to the likes of James Whale, Edmund Goulding, Walt Disney, Lewis Carroll, and Tex Avery. The off-kilter antics of the wooden boy are echoed in the rough workmanship that went into the shaping of him (he only has one ear, for example). The song and dance routines are a parody of Michigan J. Frog.  The animation is stunningly good. I suspect many of you will have watched this film; I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

 

The Duke (2020), directed by Roger Michell. Remember those Ealing Studio romps, The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955) and Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). The Duke is a throwback to those Ealing comedies, and is an enjoyable romp that focuses on an unlikely art thief, Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent) and his family. In 1961, Bunton was charged with the theft of Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. The film focuses on the eccentric Bunton, his various crusades for social justice and the welfare of humankind, and his hard-working wife (she works as a charwoman), Dorothy (Helen Mirren). The plot involves the theft of the Goya painting, the actions that precede the theft, and the trial that ensues. Perhaps a bit more treacly than those earlier Ealing comedies, The Duke nonetheless works because of the fine performances of the lead actors and the quite fine script. “Feel good” is perhaps often tossed out as a way of dismissing a film, but in this case, the term is spot on. The film manages to deliver a clever story with likeable characters and a championing of the common person who sets out to speak truth to those in power. 

The Green Knight (2021), directed by David Lowery. Based on the 14^th century poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the film sends a rather immature young Gawain (Dev Patel) on a journey to the Green Chapel where he is to receive a blow from the Green Knight, whose head Gawain removed at the outset of the film in a “Christmas game.” On the journey, Gawain proves less than heroic, chivalrous, or honorable. He encounters a talking fox, giants, brigands, and a lord and lady who take him in, seduce him, and send him on his way. He also has a sash that is supposed to keep him safe. He eventually arrives at his destination where the Green Knight, looking like a large Groot, prepares to swipe off Gawain’s head. All of this happens slowly over 130 minutes of film time. The cinematography is suitably dark and mysterious, and the various locations – moors, rocky landscapes, forests, castles – are both grounded in reality and otherworldly. Mark Kermode in the Guardian calls the film “sumptuously elusive,” and this pretty much sums it up. What we have is a riff on the original story that throws in visual allusions to things as disparate as Blade Runner 2049 and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Some of what we see is arresting, and yet the action moves slowly to try the patience. I suspect this 21^st century take on the chivalric romance has something to do with notions of masculinity, although just what the message might be eludes my grasp.

Remember the Night (1940), directed by Mitchell Leisen. This script for this film is by the great Preston Sturges, and he said of the finished film that it "had quite a lot of schmaltz, a good dose of schmerz, and just enough schmutz to make it box office." This is a feel-good Christmas movie with Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. Stanwyck plays Lee Leander, a thief/shop lifter who finds herself caught stealing a bracelet just before Christmas. The District Attorney, John Sargent (MacMurray), has the trial delayed in order to assure that he can get a conviction. He learns that Lee has no money and no family and so he takes her with him to Indiana for Christmas. The idea is to drop Lee with her mother, and then for John to proceed to his mother’s for Christmas and New Year’s. Of course, things go awry, Lee ends up staying with Sargent’s family, romance springs up, and everything is so nice. The supporting cast is, as in Sturges’s other films, superb. It includes Beulah Bondi and John’s mother, Sterling Holloway as the farm helper Willie, Elizabeth Patterson as Aunt Emma, and Fred Toones as Rufus. John and his family are just about the most friendly and agreeable people in cinema, making for a delightful and, dare I say, heart-warming filmic experience. There is some silliness here, but it makes for much fun.

Spirited (2022), directed by Sean Anders. Clayton Dillard, in Slant, opines: “To say that the film grows tedious quickly would suggest that it wasn’t already trite from frame one.” Dillard’s review might deter readers from watching this latest reiteration of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, but I hope not. The film is a buoyant throwback to Hollywood in the heyday of musicals. Sure, as Dillard says neither Will Ferrell nor Ryan Reynolds will win Grammys for their singing, but their singing is part of the fun. The film is chocked full of references literary, musical, filmic, and just plain hokey. For example, things begin with a reference to Vancouver – wink, wink. The dance sequences are high energy. The playful use of the Scrooge story is clever. The acting earnest. The two principal characters, the Ghost of Christmas Present (Ferrell) and the cynical PR guy Clint Briggs (Reynolds), are attractive. The inclusion of a variety of body shapes is noteworthy, and also praiseworthy. Okay, we have Benjamin Lee in The Guardian offering this: the film is” an atonal grab bag of inharmonious notes (an uneasy third act suicide proves to be the flattest). When stretched to a two-hour-plus runtime (with more musical bits during the credits), we leave feeling bloated, a 10-course Christmas meal we wish we’d never started.” May I say that the grammar error here might warn us away from such an opinion? The film is high-spirited and fun. Roll with it.

 A couple of noirish films as November comes to a close.

Exposed (1947), directed by George Blair. This small picture from Republic has a female detective, Belinda Prentice (Adele Mara) in the Marlowe mould. It also has some snappy dialogue: “He’s as stiff as a laundered collar.” “He’s a tough egg.” Send him over and I’ll scramble him.” And so on. It also has one of the most frantic vicious fights I have seen on film from the early days; this one involves the baddie Chicago (Bob Steele aka “Battling Bob”) and Belinda’s helper Iggy Broty (William Haade). Aside from these notable features, the film is a standard mystery. To be honest, the plot left me a wee bit bewildered, but the film was amiable nonetheless. There are plenty of suspects for the murder of businessman William Bentry (Russell Hicks): the butler (of course), the daughter, the son, the lawyer, the family doctor, the ex-business partner, and the gangster. The police detective, Inspector Prentice (Robert Armstrong), just happens to be the private eye’s father. She, of course, proves to be much better at sleuthing than he is.

 

The Girl in the Black Stockings (1957), directed by Howard W. Koch. If you like whodunnits, then this low budget murder mystery just might keep your attention. A bunch of troubled and troubling people gather at a Utah lodge, and one evening as guests dance, two young lovers discover the body of a murdered woman. Who among all the guests is the killer? And will he or she kill again? Yes, is the answer to the second question. Sheriff Jess Holmes (!), played by John Dehner, arrives to sort things out, but not before three more people turn up dead, including Harriet Ames (Mamie Van Doren). For some reason Mamie Van Doren appears prominently in promotions for this film. Other familiar faces in the cast include Lex Barker, Anne Bancroft, Stuart Whitman, Dan Blocker, and Marie Windsor. Ron Randell plays Edmund Parry, owner of the lodge who is a paraplegic. Mr. Parry’s confinement to a wheelchair is the result of a psychosomatic condition. Some years ago, Parry’s lover left him. His embitterment was so acute that he lost the use of his arms and legs. He is now a misogynist of the first order. Of course, he is a suspect. All of this is quite fun, if somewhat tepid. The camera work is efficient and has a noirish edge. The characters are quirky. And finally, the solving of the mystery proves to be, I think, unexpected. 

 On Dangerous Ground (1951), directed by Nicholas Ray. Another noir for November, On Dangerous Ground begins on the gritty city streets at night. We meet jaded cop Jim Garrison (Robert Ryan) who is lonely, worn out, and psychologically damaged by the “garbage” he has to deal with in his job. He is prone to violence and to cool him off his superior sends him on a trip north to help a country sheriff solve a murder. The film, then, has two parts, one dark and city-bound and the other light and snow-bound in the country. Light and dark permeate the film in ironic ways. The woman (Ida Lupino) whom Jim meets in a lonely farm house lives in the dark; she is blind. The farmer (Ward Bond) whom Jim meets is as prone to violence as Jim is. In other words, the film focuses on Jim and his coming to terms with his demons when he meets these two people in an isolated landscape. The plot is incidental; the characters are central. Ryan’s cop is a typically flawed and paranoid noir hero, but he is also a familiar Ray character, a rebel without a cause, a man in a lonely place, a Johnny without his guitar; he is in an odd place. He has been living by night. His victory is bitter and his blood is hot. He blunders into the blind woman’s house and knocks things asunder. By the end, he has attempted to put things back together, but whether he has been successful is doubtful. This is, after all, a noir. 

They Live by Night (1948), directed by Nicholas Ray. This film was later remade by Robert Altman (Thieves Like Us). Ray’s version of the story is his first feature film, and it stars Farley Granger as Bowie Bowers and Cathy O’Donnell as Keechie Mobley, two young people star-crossed, and on the lam as the film moves along. The opening shot from a helicopter, followed by a few other helicopter shots in the film, give the sense of a large world that these two youngsters will not be able to navigate. Their fate is sealed, as it were. Ray was fascinated by young people caught in a world of betrayal and crime and misunderstanding. His most celebrated look at such a world is, of course, Rebel Without a Cause. Here, in They Live By Night, we have Rebel Without a Cause mixed with Gun Crazy or Bonnie and Clyde. Keechie and Bowie are not like the protagonists in those two films, but they are in a similar world. Ray’s penchant for images that are, for lack of a better word, symbolic is evident in Chickamaw (Howard da Silva), the one-eyed Cyclopean figure, in various shots through grill work or bars, in close-ups intended to reflect innocence or its opposite. Scenes at the garage with Bowie at work on changing a tire are suitably touched with grit and grease. Bowie is both sweetly innocent and yet clearly fallen into an underworld he does not try hard enough to repudiate. For the most part, this noir eschews those dark and damp city streets, choosing the open road, the country cabin, and out of the way places for its action. Still, they live by night because they cannot risk travelling by daylight when someone might recognize young Bowie. As it turns out, someone does recognize young Bowie anyway, and someone else who has ties to the gang of thieves Bowie has become part of proves to be a snitch. As for us, the viewers, we just hang on for the ride.

 

Knock on Any Door (1949), directed by Nicholas Ray. This is a noir film with both a difference and a purpose. The difference is that this film lacks much in the way of damp dirty and dark city streets with stark lighting, although it does have plenty of scenes in Skid Row, New York, and it does not have a femme fatale, and it does not have the usual gaggle of gangsters and detectives. What it does have is two main characters, one a successful lawyer (Humphrey Bogart) and the other one of Ray’s troubled youth from his gallery of young men who find themselves in big trouble (John Derek in his first role). The purpose is to direct our attention to the effects of poverty and a failed justice system. This is essentially a court room drama in which the story is filled out in extensive flashbacks. To provide the film’s message concerning delinquency and injustice with punch, Ray delivers a story that is relentlessly downbeat. Perhaps the courtroom confrontation between “pretty boy” Nick Romano (Derek) on trial for murder and scar-faced prosecutor  Kerman (played by George Macready) is too obvious or even devious, and perhaps the depiction of life on the streets is not quite as gritty as it might be, but the film nevertheless delivers its message effectively, especially after the verdict when Bogart delivers his final words to the court and to the viewer. Oh, and young Nick’s credo is: “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.”

 

A Woman’s Secret (1949), directed by Nicholas Ray. This film is often categorized as a film noir, but it has more in common with the cheap mystery films made at the time by small studios such as PRC and Monogram. It has a not-quite murder mystery, a Miss Marple-like woman detective, a likeable detective (not hapless, as in so many of the cheapie mysteries), and a plot that spills things wily-nilly, taking us from New York to Paris to a luxury liner, locations we do not often associate with noir. If this is noir, it is noir light. The narrative has its interest in its use of flashbacks, flashbacks that include more than one telling of the near fatal incident. For me, what makes this film interesting is the pairing of two quite different women – Maureen O’Hara and Gloria Grahame. This plays out, or so it seems to me, as a precursor of the female struggle Ray reprises, with quite a different result, in his later film, Johnny Guitar. In both films, two women strive against each other; they are opposites often shown wearing clothing that is either dark or light. Although these women are adversaries, there is a tension between them that suggests their attraction for each other. In A Women’s Secret, the Maureen O’Hara character goes so far as to say that the Gloria Grahame character is living her (O’Hara’s) life. They meet when Grahame falls on some steps, and O’Hara picks her up and brings her to life, as it were. The backdrop to all this is performance. Both women are singers (shades of Gilda here). In a nice touch, O’Hara loses her voice to a strange kind of laryngitis and Grahame has her voice dubbed (no, the audience is not supposed to know this, but it is a nice touch anyway). The performances are good, and despite the tepid noir touches, the film manages to hold our attention. And it does have Gloria Grahame.

 

Born to be Bad (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray. Here is another Ray film on the edge of noir. It is also a sly presentation of Randolph Hearst (Zacharay Scott’s character is very wealthy, has a pencil-thin moustache, likes to fly, and pursues a young woman played by Joan Fontaine). And again, Ray gives us two women, opposites who compete for the same things. Those same things here are money, position, and men. Joan Fontaine’s Christabel is more accurately a Geraldine, if you get my drift. Her adversary, Donna (Joan Leslie), is the innocent here. Donna is intelligent, an editor for a big publishing house, but of course she does not see the duplicity at work in Cristabel’s manipulations. As for Christabel, she is a drop-out from business school who wants the wealthy man, and she also wants the dashing young novelist, Nick (Robert Ryan). She wants the two of them, and she wants them at the same time. Both the wealthy guy, Curtis (Zachary Scott), and Nick are taken in by the cunningly winsome Christabel. Well, this is not precisely the case; Nick sees through Christabel’s character, but he doesn’t care that she is a manipulator and a cheat. The same might be said of Gobby, the gay painter who is a hanger on in high society. Gobby likes Christabel because she is interesting as a study. Meanwhile we have a rich uncle and an ailing aunt for Christabel to either court or ignore depending on what she might need at the time. All this is, perhaps, more the stuff of melodrama than noir. I am not sure why this film finds itself included on lists of noir films. This may have something to do with the tangled web that always ensnares people in the noir world. Endings in film noir, even when they are ostensibly happy, leave us with a sour taste.

 Some Anthony Mann noir for November.

Railroaded! (1947), directed by Anthony Mann. John Ireland plays the heavy who perfumes his bullets. Hugh Beaumont plays the detective who smells a rat. These two and not the hapless fellow who finds himself railroaded for a crime he did not commit are front and centre in this classy noir that has a touch of the procedural about it. We have some scenes in which the police forensic fellow explains his findings, including a perfumed bullet taken from one of the early victims of Ireland’s hoodlum. This is vintage noir with the dark shadows, the brutal violence, the death of innocents and innocence, the city streets, dark rooms, night clubs, and duplicitous characters. This film features a fight between two women that is more vicious than the one in Destry Rides Again. Most of the characters are cast in shades of grey. Not so John Ireland whose bad guy is as ruthless and self-serving as they come. He smirks from his hiding place as he watches the women fight, tracing their movements with his pistol. He disposes of men and women without compunction. He even seems to enjoy getting rid of people. His moll runs a beauty salon; she is also a bookie who runs a gambling joint in the room back of the salon. This film has aggressive males and dangerous females, and a young man who is helpless to extricate himself from the frame-up in which he finds himself entrapped.

 

T-Men (1947), directed by Anthony Man, cinematographer John Alton. This is a semi-documentary noir with an annoying voice -over that guides us through the Treasury Department’s various areas of interest. The plot concerns a counterfeit ring operating in Detroit and Los Angeles, and two undercover agents who infiltrate the ring. About half way through things pick up and we have familiar noir touches such as brutal slayings and beatings, the dark city night locations, and the interest in gangland’s big bosses. One especially gruesome scene has one of the undercover agents watching his partner get killed in cold blood. What sets this film apart from run-of-the-mill noirs is its cinematography. John Alton made two more noirs with Anthony Mann, and he also shot one of my favourite noirs, The Big Combo (1955). He won an Oscar for An American in Paris (1951). Here he gives us great shots inside steam baths (one of the major characters dies in a steam bath), and camera angles that twist our vision. Made on a miniscule budget, T-Men makes us squirm in that second half.

 

Raw Deal (1948), directed by Anthony Mann. Once again the cinematographer is John Alton. This noir serves up earth, air, fire, and water. It is elemental. The anti-hero Joe (Dennis O’Keefe) longs for a breath of fresh air. His adversary Rick (Raymond Burr) plays with fire, even tossing a chafing dish of flaming Cherries Jubilee in his girlfriend’s face. The two women, Pat (Claire Trevor) and Ann (Marsha Hunt) enjoy camping in the woods on the damp earth. And then there is water on which a boat waits to take our two fugitives away from all their troubles. Joe begins in prison, breaks out, finds trouble and more trouble. Early in life he had saved some kids from a raging fire. In the end he will save a woman from a raging fire. He saves the woman, but gets burned in the act. This is noir at its most dark and pessimistic. None of the characters, with the possible exception of Ann, is what you might call “good.” They are criminals all. Alton shoots Raymond Burr from floor level to accentuate his bulk. He also keeps the lighting menacing and action takes place mostly at night, even in the countryside. Along for the ride is a creepy John Ireland who is as cold as they come. Like many noirs, this film has a voice over narration, only here the voice is not that of the male lead. The voice we hear is that of Pat (she notes sarcastically that she is a Patsy), Joe’s girlfriend (until Ann begins to tickle his fancy) who has helped him escape from prison and who plans to take that boat with him to South America. She speaks in a quiet monotone that nicely captures the mood of this story of fog and cigarettes and bursts of violence.

 

Border Incident (1949), directed by Anthony Mann. Once again, the cinematographer is John Alton, he of the sharp contrast, darkly lit monochrome. This is a film about the smuggling and exploitation of migrant Mexican farm workers who work in California. Everything about the look of this film spells noir, despite the absence of city streets. This is something of a noir/western cross, with the landscape of westerns and the closed in feel of noir. Perhaps the “canyon of death” serves as metaphor for this story. The canyon of death is a closed in area in the desert with a thick pool of quicksand-like bog that slowly draws disposable workers to their deaths. As they are dragged under, they suffocate. They also conveniently disappear. As these workers, desperate to make a living, are drawn into their life of slavery, they suffocate and many die. The film has Mann’s penchant for brutal violence, one person dying in a field of lettuce as a combine crushes and slices him. The two heroes are a Mexican policeman (Ricardo Montalban) and an American policeman (George Murphy). Both go undercover to discover the person at the head of the smuggling organization. Bad guys include two of Hollywood’s stalwart creeps, Charles MacGraw (he of the distinctive gravel voice) and Jack Lambert. Given recent news of a wall on the Mexican/American border, this film resonates even after 71 years. It is also a fitting segue into the series of westerns Mann will begin the following year with Winchester ’73. This film is also something of a precursor to one of the last as well as one of the finest noirs, Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958).

 

Side Street (1950), directed by Anthony Mann. The film opens with a helicopter shot of the Manhattan skyscrapers and maze-like streets. It ends with more aerial shooting as small cars below chase through the narrow maze of streets. Down below we have unassuming Joe Norson (Farley Granger), part-time mailman whose wife (Cathy O’Donnell) has recently given birth, driving wildly followed by police vehicles. In the car with him is the body of a murdered woman and a thug with a pistol aimed at Joe's head. Shots ring out, tires screech, Joe’s vehicle overturns, and things come to an end. Oh, Joe is okay, don’t fret. But before this thrilling finale, we have a story of young Joe, who lives with his pregnant wife and in-laws, and his moment of weakness when he steals what he thinks is $200 from a shady attorney, but what turns out to be $30,000. Trouble ensues as Joe finds himself on the run and sought by the police for murder. Joseph Ruttenberg’s cinematography is masterful, delivering documentary-like shots of the streets of New York that feel gritty and authentic. The action in the first half of the film takes place in daylight, but as things move along, shots become darker and more expressionistic as Joe sinks farther into the morass of evil. Mann delivers some brutal action before everything plays out. As film noir goes, this one is gripping. Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell had starred in Nicholas Ray’s They Live By Night (1948), and the two of them play young innocents well. In Side Street, Granger is the hapless veteran just trying to make a living for his growing family, and O’Donnell is the sweet trusting young wife anxious to save her marriage. Paul Harvey, as the police detective, provides voice over for the proceedings.

 A Generation (1954), directed by Andrzej Wajda. This is Wajda’s first feature film and the first of his war trilogy. The opening panning shot is worth the price of admission. Here the camera takes us on a tour of the outskirts of Warsaw as we observe the daily life (drudgery?) of the local people. Then it comes to rest on three young men playing with a knife. One of these young men, Stach (Tadeusz Lomnicki), provides a voice-over and also will be the film’s protagonist. This is a coming-of-age story following this young man and also a group of young people who become involved in the Polish resistance during the Second World War. One of the group of youngsters is played by a teenaged Roman Polanski. Anyway, the filming is beautiful, providing an ironic counterpoint to the action that involves young people learning to kill. The camera is fluid as it ranges through neighbourhoods and workshops and homes and streets. The scene with the spiral staircase is powerful. The film has the sensibility of post-war neo-realism. The look of the film reminded me of Hollywood noir films, and the beginning reminded me of Ford’s The Informer. For a first feature, this film is assured and absorbing. 

Kanal (1957), directed by Andrzej Wajda. This is the second of Wajda’s war trilogy, and it ups the ante considerably. A passing reference to Dante lets us know, had we somehow been oblivious to this, that we have entered the underground in all its filthy ugly violent and punishing horror. The last third of the film takes place in the sewers of Warsaw, and a ragged troop of resistance soldiers try to make their way to the centre of the city. A voice over at the outset of the film, lets us know their fate; nevertheless, no viewer can be prepared for the way this fate plays out. Again we have Wajda’s fluid camera; the film begins with a four minute tracking shot that introduces us to the troop we will follow on their doomed journey to the underworld. Actually, they are in the underworld from the beginning (or is this purgatory?), but they simply go deeper as the action moves along. This is as harrowing an anti-war film as we could ask for. We get to know most of these soldiers and knowing them makes what happens more difficult to accept. The scenes in the sewers must be some of the most powerful in cinema. Perhaps the tone of the film is set early when one member of the troop stops to talk with a wounded girl who lies covered on a stretcher. He asks what her mother said about her joining the resistance. We have a pause. The girl then replies, “She’s dead.” The solider then asks about the young woman’s wound, and she says, "It’s nothing.” At this point, a couple of soldiers lift the stretcher and the woman’s blanket falls away revealing her legs. One leg has been amputated (or blown off) above the knee. 

 

Man of Iron (1981), directed by Andrzej Wajda. Using documentary footage folded into a fictional narrative, this film chronicles the days of the strike at the Gdansk shipyard that spread throughout Poland in 1980. Through the perspective of a reporter, Winkel (Marian Opania), we learn about the life of activist Maciej Tomczyk (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), from his early days as a student to his work with the shipyard union. The film manages to merge historical events with the personal lives of its main characters. Lech Walesa even makes an appearance. What strikes me as important about this film, is its peek at state-controlled media and state-controlled life in general, something uncomfortably close to what could happen in our own time and our own place. The film has an intensity born of anger and a mixture of hope and dread. Unlike Ashes and Diamonds, this film is less interested in cinematic experiment than in historical urgency.

 Some World Cinema.

Downpour (1972), directed by Braham Beyzale. Goodbye Mr. Hekmati. This Iranian film tells the bittersweet story of a young teacher who arrives at a new place and new school. The film opens with his arrival at the place where he will live, and among other belongings he brings books, a lamp, and a mirror. The books make it into his room, but the mirror and the lamp (sorry, but M. H. Abrams comes to mind) are broken before they can enter the new dwelling. Later the books will tumble from their shelves. The signs are not good, and Mr. Hekmati will have a rough time in his new job among new neighbours and new colleagues. He will also meet a young seamstress who catches his fancy. For her part, the young seamstress, Atie, has a suitor, a bullish butcher by the name of Rahim. Rahim and Hekmati become rivals, and there is an amusing sequence in which Hekmati tries to transform from the 99 pound weakling he is into someone who can take on Rahim in a fight. Late in the film, we have a night of drinking end in a funny fight between these two rivals. The film has humour and also sadness. It also has a gaggle of likeable kids who come through when it is most necessary. The kids’ show of affection for Mr. Hekmati is double-edged; it gives Mr. Hekmati his just recognition for single-handedly restoring the school assembly hall and stage, and it also precipitates his transfer away from the school and area. Thus, the film ends with a reversal of its beginning, the cart with Mr. Hekmati’s belongings now departing. Visually, the film has a few striking compositions, and we can see shades of neo-realist films, plus the influence of Kurosawa. 

 

Chess of the Wind (1976), directed by Mohammad Reza Aslani. Image and, after the 1920s, sound are the essence of cinema, and Chess of the Wind is a film of image and sound. It does have a doozie of a plot, but the visual sumptuousness and haunting sound are at the forefront of this examination of decadence. Long lost, the film was rediscovered in 2014 when the director’s son found it in a junk shop in Tehran. What a find. For those in the west, the film plays out as an exercise in the gothic with its action taking place inside a large and luxurious house with its wheelchair-bound matriarch who wields a mean thing-a-ma-bob with deadly force. Or does she? Punctuating the action inside this luxurious house is a repeated shot of local women washing clothes at a fountain in front of the mansion. These women serve as a sort of Greek chorus, commenting on the lives of the rich. The plot gives us a number of people circling the matriarch in hopes of acquiring her wealth. No one is particularly pleasant. The film was banned by the Islamic Republic, and it is easy to see why. This is a devastating critique of a social system that insists on hierarchy, and that functions on greed and corruption and even violence. Its target may be the Pahlevis dynasty in Iran, but the critique covers that which came before as well as that which came after. Most impressive for me is Aslani’s painterly sensibility manifested in the colour and compositions. The actors are also impressive, especially Fahkri Khorvash as the paraplegic Lady Junior. We are lucky to have had this film survive.

Lucia (1968), directed by Humberto Solas. This film is a product of the Cuban Revolution. It has three parts, each part giving us a different Lucia, a woman (or women) who chronicle Cuban history from the late 19^th century. Part one takes place in 1895 during the war of independence. Part 2 takes place in the early 1930s during the regime of Gerardo Machado, and Part 3 is a story from the 1960s. Each Lucia represents a different class: first the upper class, then the middle class, and finally the working class. Each episode offers a glimpse into history and the changing of social and political relationships. The emphasis is on revolution, first against Spain, then against a dictator, and finally against the patriarchy.  Solas’s camera is fluid to the point of being frenetic, and his lighting is hot, very hot. Scenes of battle across fields or brouhaha on the streets are hectic with quick and insistent cutting. The hand-held camera roves about quickly. The film somehow reminds me of Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers (1966) and also Soviet cinema from its early years. Aside from some furious action, Lucia presents faces, the faces of people from all classes up close and personal. This is a film of faces and furious action. It also manages to carry its revolutionary zeal heavily. What we see does not inspire optimism in revolutionary action.

Prisioneros de la Tierra (1939), directed by Mario Soffici. This Argentinian film deals with the exploitation of workers in early twentieth-century Argentina. The mensus (indentured labourers) are taken deep into the wild to work for a company clearing forest and running a mill of some kind. Their lives are controlled by the brutal mill contractor, Kohner, played by Francisco Petrone. The men are brutalized and suffer from disease, malaria and worse. To help deal with the men’s sickness, the contractor takes a doctor, Dr. Else (Raul de Lange), and his daughter with him to the yerba mate plantation. The doctor has a serious alcohol problem. He is also proud of his sturdy walking stick, an object that proves fatally dangerous. The daughter, Chinita (Elisa Galve), finds herself attracted to one of the workers, Esteban Podeley (Angel Magana), while Kohner finds himself attracted to Chinita. You can bet trouble ensues. The plot has some affinity with that in films such as High Sierra (1941) and its remake Colorado Territory (1949). To tell you this is to let you know the film shows the dark side of life. The black and white cinematography in Prisioneros de la Tierra has an expressionistic edge that highlights the jungle drudgery and dread. The film examines capitalism’s unrelenting drive of the downtrodden worker. If the film has a bright spot, this spot is to be found in the one-armed character who is always happy, and who plans to make much money by distilling orange liquor. Unfortunately for him, Dr. Else drinks all the samples of this range liquor. Undeterred, the one-armed fellow insists he is happy. 

 

Sambizanga (1972), directed by Sarah Maldoror. Maldoror worked as an assistant director on Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers, and she brings the political intensity of that film to Sambizanga. This film tells the story of the arrest and incarceration of a construction worker, Domingos (Domingos de Oliviera), and the quest of his wife, Maria (Elisa Andrade) to find him. Maria, with her young son on her back, walks the long journey to Luanda seeking news of her husband. Meanwhile, Domingos is beaten by the Portuguese authorities in their effort to get him to divulge the names of members of the liberation movement. Maria finally reaches the city and tries to get information of the whereabouts of her husband. The authorities prove less than helpful. By the time Maria does locate Domingos, he has been beaten to death inside one of the city jails. The film begins and ends with powerful shots of a raging river. These shots indicate the powerful forces, emotional forces, at work that will not be quelled. As for the narrative, this begins with the apparently contented life of Domingos and Maria and their son, then moves to their separation when Domingos is arrested, and finally moves on to Maria’s doomed quest. This is a powerful film that deals with corrupt colonial authority and indomitable human drive for liberation from oppression. At one point, we have a character tell those around him that the rich need the poor in order to maintain their position of privilege and ease. The rich exploit the poor. It so happens that in Angola the rich are white Portuguese and the poor the Black Africans, but colour is not a necessity for this system of oppression to exist. As I say, this is a powerful film, simple, straight forward, and honest.

 Foreign Correspondent (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This is quite an amazing film, featuring set designs by the inimitable William Cameron Menzies (Things to Come 1936, Invaders from Mars and The Maze, both 1953). The various set pieces are as good as anything in other Hitchcock films: the windmills, especially the gothic interiors, the umbrellas, the crash through the awning, and the fabulous plane crash in mid ocean leaving a few survivors clinging to a broken and detached wing of the plane. These are all memorable, and that sequence after the plane crash on the water is very convincing (it reminded me of Lifeboat). The plot turns on the bad guys’ quest to discover the contents of Article 23 (I think it is 23), an article in a treaty signed between Belgium and another country (I can’t remember what country). Article 23 was never written down; rather, it was memorized by just two people, one of whom the bad guys kidnap and torture to force him to divulge the contents of Article 23. McGuffin. The cast is attractive and fun. Joel McCrea and Larraine Day are the two young people who run into difficulties trying to sort everything out. The main villain is only half villain; he is played by the suave Herbert Marshall. Edmund Gwenne, Robert Benchley, and George Saunders come along for the ride. The script has its touches of humour. I ought to note that the cinematography here is in the more than capable hands of Rudolph Mate. This film is a lot of fun.

Suspicion (1941), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This is the one that got away from Mr. Hitchcock. He did not get his wish to have the ending follow the ending of the book from which the screenplay derives. If you watch the film with the original ending in mind, then Johnny Asquith (Cary Grant) will give you chills. He is a ne’er-do-well playboy who charms the wealthy woman, Lina (Joan Fontaine), marries her, and then sets about to control her considerable wealth. His ultimate goal appears to be to get rid of Lina by giving her poison, arsenic. She is suspicious, and her suspicions in the book are well-founded. Not so in the film. The film’s ending negates all the suspicion and does so rather weakly. Having said this, I take note that this is a Hitchcock film and it does have his trademark touches, the ominous lighting, lush landscapes and interiors, likeable supporting players, the very Hitchcockian glass of milk, the trains and the scenes of perilous driving. Lina focalizes the action. This manipulation of point of view is also a Hitchcock trademark. 

 

Dial M for Murder (1954), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This is Hitchcock’s first of three films with Grace Kelly, and his only film shot in 3D. Like Lifeboat (1944) and Rope (1948), this film takes place mostly on one set, the apartment of Tony (Ray Milland) and Margot (Kelly) Wendice. The confinement to one set gives the action a claustrophobic feel; it is also a sign of the origins of the story in a stage play by Frederick Knott. We have characters and situation familiar to Hitchcock. I think of Hitch’s Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) in Strangers on a Train (1951) when I see Tony Wendice. Both have a suave charm that exudes something sinister. Tony is a tennis player, and hence something of the anti-Guy Haines (Farley Granger), also from Strangers on a Train. Then we have the proposed murder. Here Tony bamboozles, or more specifically blackmails, his old school mate, Charles Swann (Anthony Dawson) into carrying out the dastardly deed. The action turns on objects, as so often in Hitchcock, here a latchkey (or a number of latchkeys), a pair of scissors, a scarf, a letter, and various items that decorate the apartment. So much depends upon characters, and the cast here deliver engaging performances, especially Milland as Tony and John Williams as Chief Inspector Hubbard. As far as Hitchcock films go, this one is, perhaps, not top drawer, but it does have its charms. And one very Hitchcockian moment is when the murderer falls to the floor with scissors in his back and we watch those scissors slide deeply into him as his weight presses down. The dark side of genius indeed.

 

The Trouble with Harry (1955), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The opening credits pan along a line of what look like a child’s drawings of birds and trees and such pastoral images until we stop on a corpse. The illustrations are by an uncredited Saul Steinberg, and they set things up nicely. The film offers pastoral of the macabre. Set in and around Morrisville, Vermont in the autumn, the film boasts gorgeous shots of the countryside with its fall colours. In the beginning, we see a young boy with his plastic ray gun wandering this lovely countryside until he comes upon the body of a man. Thus begins a caper involving this dead body. I’ve lost count of how many times the other characters in the film bury, exhume and rebury this body – poor deceased Harry. Was he murdered? Who murdered him? Such questions hardly matter. What matters is the grisly goings-on carried out with insouciance. Apparently, Hitchcock liked this film, and we can see why. It is wry and gruesome, reminding me of Hitchcock’s mischievous introductions to his television programme. Part of the joke rests in the film’s lack of a set-piece such as a chase on a national monument or suspense of the who-done-it. This is, after all, pastoral, and pastoral delivers a world attractive in its pleasantries. I suspect even the so-called genius artist here is part of the joke. Art really is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case the rather myopic millionaire who offers to buy all the artist’s work. The film is a lark.

 

To Catch a Thief (1955), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This is another innocent-man-out-to prove-his-innocence film from the master. The master, however, dozes through this one. Here the man-on-the-run plot makes way for the romance of two sophisticates, Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, both at their most icy, witty, and attractive selves. Awkward sentence for an awkward film. But Hitchcock serves up some sumptuous location shooting, and a lavish party scene. The characters are decidedly not the hoi polloi. We are among the wealthy set on the Riviera, where a retired jewel thief, John Robie (Grant), finds himself the object of a police hunt because the police assume he is the perpetrator of a series of jewel heists. He must elude the police while proving his innocence, all the time romancing a wealthy heiress, Frances Stevens (Kelly), who first accepts his innocence, then does not, then does, and so on until the two of them finally come together in the most fairy tale of endings. The film is certainly lush, but it is also slight.

 

North by Northwest (1959), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This thriller was fun the first two or three times I saw it. It is still fun. It has, perhaps, more set pieces than any other Hitchcock: the scene in the United Nations building, the chase down the faces on Mount Rushmore, strangers meeting on a train, the drunken drive down the mountain road, the wacky antics during an auction, and pre-eminently the corn field scene. The latter remains a masterclass in building suspense in an environment so clear and open that nothing could disturb the stillness. “That’s funny. That airplane is dusting crops where there ain’t any crops.” Indeed. The plot is typical of Hitchcock’s insistence on the wrong man theme, the innocent caught in a web of intrigue. Here the intrigue has something to do with a man who does not exist, spies, the Cold War, an icy blond, and a suave villain with a trio of henchmen, one of whom, Leonard (Martin Landau), has more than a passing interest in his boss. Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint make an attractive romantic pair. As I say, the film is a lot of fun. It does, however, take a willing suspension of disbelief, especially nowadays, because the back and front projections and sound stages fitted out for various locales (a forest near Mount Rushmore, for example) are so obvious. Note the dining car scene on the train. The train is traveling from New York to Chicago, yet out the window we have a scene passing by (a couple of shots repeated) that looks nothing like upper New York State, at least to my eyes. But I quibble. Roger Thornhill and Eve Kendal on the run make for exciting, witty, and even suspenseful adventure.

 

I Confess (1953), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The exteriors for this film were shot in Quebec City, and we have some lovely reminders of the beauty of this city. Montgomery Clift plays Father Logan, a priest who hears the confession of someone who has committed a murder, and soon after finds himself accused of the same murder. Of course, he cannot betray what he has heard in confession even though this means he must go to trial for murder. The film is something of a dry run for The Wrong Man (1956), and like that film, I Confess is dark and dour. Despite the real killer being exposed at the finale, none of the characters emerges unscathed. The deep black and white with dark streets, shadows and other trimmings of cinema noir accentuate the difficulty the characters face. The one flashback, shot from the point of view of Ruth Grandfort (Anne Baxter), is bright and sunny, contrasting the action in the ‘present’ time. The contrast of light and dark is, perhaps, at the centre of the film, as is the contrast between reason and faith. Hitchcock appears very early in the film, crossing the screen laterally and in extreme distance suggesting a certain distance from the proceedings, a certain absence of humour felt throughout the film.

 

Stage Fright (1950), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Is it Elsie, Phyllis, or Mavis? No, that would be Doris who is not really Doris but rather Eve. Such is the delight of Stage Fright, a film that has one of Hitchcock’s most outrageous tricks. He enjoys manipulating his audience and here he does this with a flashback right at the beginning of the film. He also turns the tables on the man-on-the-run theme that is front and central to so many of his films. And then we have the cast. The performances are superb, especially those of Alastair Sim, Richard Todd, Jane Wyman, Michael Wilding, and Marlene Dietrich. Joyce Grenfell as “Lovely Ducks” has a small but very amusing part. We have many of the Hitchcock touches: the opening curtain that tells us we are entering a play in which all the characters are performing roles, the doll that seems so important at the time, but really is something of a diversion, the fair (put to even more extensive use in the following year’s Strangers on a Train), the family that functions, but barely, the humour, the superimposed shots, and so on. We even have musical numbers, "La Vie en Rose" and "The Laziest Girl in Town," allowing Dietrich to play her sultry best. The film reminds me of Billy Wilder’s Witness For the Prosecution. Saying this is something of a spoiler.

 

Notorious (1946), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This is the one about drinking, about patriotism in the extreme, about government callousness, and about a mother and a father, especially a mother. Oh, it is also a spy thriller, set just after the Second World War and involving uranium (the atomic threat). The film uses rear projection extensively and the technique seems somehow appropriate in a film dealing with subterfuge and sleight of hand (literally in the scene with the key change). We also have many close-ups of bottles, of glasses, of cups and saucers to drive home the ominous aspect of drinking. It can be lethal! The morality of using a young woman's sexuality to obtain information is questionable, and the hero is possibly less likeable than the villain. Leopoldine Konstantin, in her only American film, plays Claude Rains's mother; she is memorable. Hitchcock appears about an hour into the film, drinking a glass of champagne at a party. He exits quickly. This is not my favourite of Hitchcock's films, but it just might be his first fully-formed Hitchcock movie with all his signature elements, a central love story that centres on trust and suspicion, a camera that has a voyeuristic lens, a playful manipulation of objects, framing that limits the characters' actions, and so on.

 

Spellbound (1945), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This is the one with the Salvador Dali designed dreamscape, and this sequence is memorable. Also memorable are the straight razor and the over-sized pistol, typical Hitchcock quirks. I will add the skiing scene which is memorable for its silly amateurish filming. And finally we have the stuff about psychoanalysis that will strike us a dated now. We even have a doctor, Dr. Brulov (Michael Checkhov), who not only mentions Freud, but who looks like Freud. The story involves amnesia, guilt complexes, romance, and an on-the-run couple. The film somehow leaves me flat, but it does have its moments. I confess that John Ballantyne”s (Gregory Peck) tendency to recoil and even faint at the sight of straight lines leaves me unconvinced. But both Peck and Ingrid Bergman as Dr. Constance Peterson are likeable actors, and they manage to capture our sympathy as the couple trying to figure out what makes the Peck character faint and fall every so often. Of course this has something to do with childhood trauma. The film also has a parade of other familiar actors: Wallace Ford, Leo G. Carroll, Rhonda Fleming, John Emery, and Regis Toomey. Toomey has, I think, one line and Wallace Ford does not have many more. This may not be the best of Hitchcock’s films, but it is clearly a work of the master.

 

Shadow of a Doubt (1943), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Small town America, homemade apple pie and ice cream, family dinners, friendly neighbours, pretty houses and gardens, a family of five, and then along comes Uncle Charlie. Shadow of a Doubt may lack the set-pieces we see in famous Hitchcock films such as North by Northwest or Psycho or Foreign Correspondent, but it does have Uncle Charlie. Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) reminds me of another Hitchcock villain, Bruno Antony (Robert Walker) from Strangers on a Train (1951). Both are suave, loquacious, wily, and devious. Both are, perhaps, just a tad loony. Uncle Charlie’s dinner-table diatribe against rich widows is chilling and at the same time hilarious. The plot has Charlie visiting his sister’s family in a tidy town somewhere in California. Uncle Charlie’s niece (Teresa Wright), named Charlie after him, begins to suspect that her uncle is not all he pretends to be, and herein begins the intrigue. The father of the family, Joseph Newton (Henry Travers) is an unsuspecting innocent who likes to spend his time discussing ways to murder people with his neighbour, Herbie Hawkins (Hume Cronyn). These two provide a rather macabre humour, a typically Hitchcockian humour. I often say that Strangers on a Train is my favourite Hitchcock film, largely because of Robert Walker’s Bruno Antony, but I will add that Joseph Cotten’s Uncle Charlie comes in a close second.