Let's begin March with a few moors, mostly by Robert Siodmak.

The Killing (1956), directed by Stanley Kubrik. This late noir and early Kubrik is a doozy. Sharp contrast lighting, strange angles, dislocations in time, voice over, dark rooms and corridors, a fatal woman, grill work and bars and other premonitions of disaster, a nearly perfect plan, and a great performance from Elisha Cook, Jr. make this a noir to remember. The ending is especially memorable in its lassitude, its last weary sigh that says, "what the hell, the world is a dark place and it is no use trying to turn on the lights." The film's title might refer to the "killing" the main character makes at the racetrack or it might refer to the mayhem that takes place in the apartment where the crooks meet after the robbery. Then again, it may refer to the whole kit and caboodle.

 

The Suspect (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak. This early noir set in 1902 England has Charles Laughton as unassuming Kind Mr. Philip Marshall, a clerk in a tobacco store whose wife is a harridan of the highest pitch. By accident, Philip meets Mary (Ella Raines), and the two become close friends. As unlikely as it seems, the beautiful Mary falls in love with the sensitive Philip. Philip asks for a divorce from his wife, but she refuses. What’s a poor tobacconist to do? Mrs. Marshall (Rosalind Ivan) tumbles down the stairs at home and dies. Philip is now free to mary Mary, and he does so. Life is good. Then inebriate neighbour and layabout Mr. Simmons (Henry Daniell) becomes a thorn when he sets out to blackmail Philip. Philip has to dispose of Mr. Simmons. Meanwhile, Inspector Huxley (Stanley Ridges) of Scotland Yard is on the case, Columbo-style. For Philip and Mary, Canada beckons. Will they make it? Siodmak handles the night time scenes in London well with murky shadows and brooding fog. He also uses interiors well, the stairway, the sofa, the cane wrack. I failed to mention that Philip is kind to children and animals. He is not a murdering type. Nevertheless, he finds himself tangled up in shadow and fog.

 

Robert Siodmak is a director of several top-notch noirs: e.g. The Killers (1946), The Dark Mirror (1946), The Spiral Staircase (1946), The File on Thelma Jordan (1949). He also made Son of Dracula (1943), one of the later Universal horror flicks. As this last one might indicate, Siodmak has a flare for expressionistic cinema. He also discovered certain actors including Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, who both turn up in Criss Cross (1947), albeit Curtis's turn is fleeting. Criss Cross is a noir as dark as they come. Lancaster is the sad sack who has fallen for a dame, played by Yvonne de Carlo, who is sure to lead him into a maze of ugliness and disappointment. The oily villain is played by a smooth Dan Duryea. Anyway, as often in noir, family provides a backdrop to the action and family indicates the humanity of the main character. Against the pressures of family, the hero must assert his masculinity, even if this means pursuing his manly ways to oblivion. All this is gritty to the point of cynical. As so often in American cinema and literature, we have love and death leading a man to his less than welcome destiny! And, of course, a heist gone wrong is pivotal.

Cry of the City (1948), directed by noir stalwart Robert Siodmak. The man on the run here is not an innocent. Far from it. Martin Rome (Richard Conte) is an icy cold killer willing to put his family in jeopardy to stay ahead of the cops. At the beginning of the film, Rome is in the hospital with several bullet wounds. Throughout the film he sports a limp to let us know that he is not well and also to let us know he is crippled as a human being. His adversary, Lt. Vittorio Candella (Victor Mature), also comes up wounded later in the film. This is a wounded city, as the film’s title indicates. In these wet dark city streets, things go sour. In this place, people are bent: lawyers, nurses, kids, dames. Rome comes from a Catholic Italian family, and images of the Church are evident throughout. The Church, however, cannot serve to better the lives of these people. As usual with Siodmak, we have darkness drawing down and the beast slouches toward that place of hope, tainting everything on its way. Hope Emerson as the Swedish masseuse, Rose Given, gives an impressive performance as a tough moll. Also making an appearance are Shelley Winters and Debra Paget. This is, perhaps, not as impressive as other Siodmak noirs, but it is worth seeing.

Deported (1950), directed by Robert Siodmak. Vic Smith (Jeff Chandler) is a gangster deported from America to Italy. He has left $500,000, theft money, behind. Of course, a bad guy follows Vic to Italy to claim half, or all, of the stolen money. Of course, Vic meets a swell woman, the widow Countess Christine di Lorenzi (Marta Toren), and falls in love. Of course, we have a good fellow cop pursuing Vic. Of course, we have a friend of Vic’s who proves to be more interested in money than friendship. Of course, we have chases and dark shenanigans and a few dark streets with ominous shadows. This is predictable. The Italian setting is okay, but it shouts out – the setting makes this film different from other noir films of the time. However, it does not. The romance between Vic, an uneducated guy from the streets, and the Countess, a wealthy widow trying to help the poor who do not have enough food, works well enough. Perhaps the opening sequence where we see a gaggle of young boys scrambling to fetch money tossed from the just-docked ship explains things. In this world, one has to scramble, dive, and dart to survive. Not Siodmak’s best, but worth seeing.

 

Kiss of Death (1947), directed by Henry Hathaway. No auteur, but a workmanlike director, Hathaway did films in all the genres. He took the work the studios gave him. In this, he reminds me of Michael Curtiz, although he did not make films that stand with Curtiz's best. He did, however, make a few noirs, Kiss of Death being one of them. Kiss of Death remains a staple of noir mostly for Richard Widmark's portrayal of Tommy Udo, the psychopath. This is Widmark's first film, and he goes all out in his grinning, cackling portrayal of Tommy. He also pushes an elderly lady in a wheelchair down a long set of stairs. This is the scene most viewers remember. Aside from this shocking moment, the film is fairly tame. It tells the story of Nick Bianco (Victor Mature), a crook who decides to squeal to the Assistant DA in exchange for a parole after a jewel heist gone wrong. The plot turns on his testifying against Tommy in Tommy's murder trial. The jury acquits Tommy, and he goes free with a grudge against Nick. Nick's family, his two young daughters and their step mother, are now in danger. The film generates some suspense in the scenes after dark in Nick's home as he and his family wait for Tommy to show up with revenge on his mind. Things go along until finally Nick confronts Tommy or Tommy confronts Nick. Well, they confront each other. Bang bang. Shots ring out on those dark damp city streets. The end.

 Winter silents, and von Sternberg

The Bells (1926), directed by James Young. The print of this late silent film available on TUBI is exquisite. It is worth seeing just for the clarity of the images. It is also an opportunity to see both Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff. Barrymore plays innkeeper, Mathias, who is kindly and ambitious. He wants to be the burgomaster of his Alsatian village. As he goes about courting local citizens, his wife worries about finances, as well she should. Mathias is deeply in debt to local businessman, Jerome Frantz (Gustav von Seyffertitz), who threatens to foreclose unless Mathias pays his debt or gives his daughter to Jerome in marriage. This daughter, Annette (Lola Todd), is in love with the young gendarme Christian (Eddie Philips), and Mathias does not wish to interfere with her desire to marry Eddie. Oh what a web we weave. As things roll along, a travelling carnival comes to the village, a carnival that includes the impressive feats of the Mesmerist (Boris Karloff). The Mesmerist has a small, but central role in this photoplay, and Karloff gives him menacing stares, and sneering looks, and sinister touches. He also gives him a definite whiff of Dr. Caligari. Yes, Murnau’s film clearly influences the look of this film both in Karloff’s performance and in the fantastic “Dream of Conscience” sequence. Now to the point: a Polish Jew arrives at Mathias’s inn wearing a money belt filled with gold coins. This is too much for Mathias to pass up and he goes out into the snowy night and kills the Polish fellow with an axe. What follows is Mathias’s fear of exposure. Conscience rules and we have scenes reminiscent of Macbeth’s encounter with Banquo’s ghost. What to conclude? This is an efficiently made little thriller worth seeing for just how beautiful silent films can look. Oh, and it has Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff.

 

Underworld (1927), directed by Joseph von Sternberg. One of the first, if not the first, gangster films, Underworld tells the story of Bull Weed (George Bancroft), a criminal who befriends a down and under alcoholic, Rolls Royce (Clive Brook). Royce is grateful for Bull’s sympathy and help, but finds himself attracted to Bull’s squeeze, Feathers (Evelyn Brent). The plot is thin – Bull saves Rolls from Mulligan (who owns a flower shop and is another ugly gangster), Rolls fall for Feathers, Bull is arrested for murdering Mulligan, Feathers and Rolls decide to go away together, but not before they help Bull escape from prison, the escape takes place, Bull sees that Rolls and Feathers are loyal and that they have fallen in love, Bull saves the day while the two young lovers escape, the end. We know that Bull is, beneath his blustering, a sweetheart because of the manner in which he treats the kitten outside his apartment. The moment with the milk bottle is nice, but mostly we admire not the action, but the look of things. What stands out are the lighting and the camera work and the sets (the bizarre and baroque ballroom scene and the final sequence inside the apartment). This slightness of plot and richness of mise en scene and lighting will characterize von Sternberg’s films through the 1930s, the seven he will make with Marlene Dietrich. In Underworld we have many images that will resurface many times over the next eighty years and more. Here is how Geoffrey O’Brien puts it: “Presumably, a major part of its appeal was the profusion of then-novel images, pouring out at a rapid tempo von Sternberg was never to surpass, that would become part of the common vocabulary of the gangster genre: a bank window exploding, squad cars moving frantically through dark city streets, loose women parading themselves in underworld lairs, the outlaw hero contemplating a neon sign that proclaims “The City Is Yours,” a gangster shot dead in his flower shop, his desperate killer besieged by police in an apartment, the windows shattering from barrages of gunfire as the room fills with smoke” (The Criterion Collection, 2010). The acting may be exaggerated and the story overly melodramatic, but von Sternberg never fails to deliver images of power and beauty.

 

Docks of New York (1928), directed by Josef von Sternberg. This early von Sternberg film has all the marks of his cinematic vision: busy mise en scene, delicate lighting, fallen women, careful use of shadows, life in the raw, and a touch of sentiment. Here Mae Roberts (Betty Compson) is clearly a precursor of Marlene Dietrich in von Sternberg’s later films. Early in the film, she attempts suicide by jumping into the water at the docks. Gruff stoker, Bill Roberts (George Bancroft), jumps in to save her, and herein begins the story of two misfits who find love. They find love all right, but not before trials and tribulations, including the death of Andy (Mitchell Lewis) whose long-suffering wife, Lou (Baclanova) shoots him in a terrific scene that we observe from outside the room in which the shooting takes place. Lou shoots Andy because he has given her air too many times. In other words, he is a philanderer. Von Sternberg gives us the life of stokers, dock workers, and saloon girls with a cleverly moving camera and a careful eye. What triumphs in this film is the gutsy life of Mae. The focus may be on virile Bill with his sweaty and muscular body, but he finds that he, like the viewers, is taken with the beauty and strength of Mae.

 

I have many favourite films, but not many can top the seven features Josef von Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich beginning with The Blue Angel (1930) and ending with The Devil is a Woman (1935). In between we have Morocco, Dishonoured, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, and The Scarlet Empress. The Scarlet Empress is the penultimate film in the series and the one we watched again last evening. It is without doubt a "relentless excursion into style." It is the most opulent of the von Sternberg/Dietrich films. The story of Catherine the Great of Russia as she transforms from the innocent young Prussian girl, Sophie, into the powerful leader of Russia who arranges for the assassination of her "royal half-wit" husband is replete with a decadent array of sights and sounds - grotesque gargoyles, suffocating candles, oppressive clothing, massive doors that take several people to open and close, clanging bells (one of which has a human clapper), icons galore, a feast presided over by a skeleton, and so on. The effect sends a message mixed in its meaning. Does Catherine assume greatness or does she simply take the mantle of madness from her sorry husband?

 

Anatahan (1953/1958), directed by Josef von Sternberg. I can’t help but think that Guy Maddin watched this film closely. It has a staginess informed by documentary that results in a curio. It also has Josef von Sternberg as writer, photographer, director, and voice over. The narrative speculates on the seven years a group of Japanese soldiers spend on a fairly deserted pacific island from 1944 to 1951. The Japanese dialogue is not subtitled, and for a chronicling of the action, we have von Sternberg’s voice over narration throughout the film. This voice purports to be one of the sailors, but which one is never made clear. Shot in black and white, the film harks back to the lush mi-en-scene and the lighting of the director’s early films with Marlene Dietrich. I wondered whether this was von Sternberg’s comment on those early films with their interest in community disorder, power and its abuse, male desire, the human capacity for barbarism, and the indifference of nature. Think The Blue Angel crossed with The Lord of the Flies. As we would expect, the set designs are intricate and accentuate the complications of human interaction. The actors remain at some distance, partly because we do not know for certain what they say. But their motives are clear as we follow them from their first arrival on the island, to their discovery of a man and a woman who are also stranded there, to their descent into jealousy and desire for control. This is quite an amazing final film from one of cinema’s most curious figures.

Why Worry? (1923), directed by Fred Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. In this one, Harold Lloyd plays Harold Van Pelham, a hypochondriac young man who travels with his nurse and valet to a fictional island off the coast of Chile called Paradiso. There he finds an American cad, James Blake, who is inciting local rebels to overthrow the government. The usual American way. He also finds a friend in a character named Colosso (John Aasen). Colosso is a colossus. John Aasen, the actor, was 7 feet 2 inches tall, according to medical records after his death. He has also been variously tagged at 8 feet 11 inches and 8 feet 9 inches. Anyway, he is tall, very tall. His size makes for some of the film's most striking (as it were) visual humour. We have much running about, much hurling of bodies, much mistaken identity, and much taking of pills. One of the funnier set pieces involves Harold trying to pull Colosso's sore tooth. Of course, Harold overcomes his hypochondria and of course he finds that he loves his nurse who of course reciprocates. Lloyd's films have a sweetness of their own. He may not be as intensely inventive as Keaton or Chaplin, but he is sweeter. And his films allow him to grow through his experiences.

Speedy (1928), directed by Ted Wilde who was nominated for an Oscar for the movie - best director of a comedy. Speedy is Harold Lloyd's last silent film, and it is amusing, if not hilarious. Harold is a young man who finds it difficult to keep a job. He tries driving a taxi and working as a soda jerk. Neither job lasts long. Meanwhile, the father of Harold's girl friend is having troubles with a large corporation that wants to oust the old man's horse-drawn trolley and replace it with a new fangled electric trolley. The set piece in this film is Harold's coming to the rescue by driving Pop's horse-drawn trolley in crazy fashion through the streets of New York in order to keep Pop in business. After much in the way of thrills, accidents, and racing about Harold wins the day. The film also has a sequence at Coney Island in which montage makes for some fun.

 

Movie Crazy (1932), directed by Clyde Bruckman. Harold Hall (Harold Lloyd) is a small town fellow from Kansas who hopes to make it in the film industry. He travels to Hollywood and hangs around film studios and film crews on location making a nuisance of himself and meeting a young star whom he fails to recognize when she is acting the part of a Mexican beauty. Much hijinks in the manner of the silent cinema, although this is a talkie. This film is worth it for the long set piece at the end when Harold finds himself in the midst of a series of shenanigans on a pirate ship where he fights the ship's captain all the while being watched by the Mexican beauty. This fight is hilarious. 

Last evening we watched three Harold Lloyd films, this one, plus Get Out and Get Under (1920), directed by Hal Roach, and For Heaven's Sake (1926), directed by Sam Taylor. Get Out and Get Under is about a young man and his car. It has a scene in which, the car having stopped running, Harold sees a fellow on the sidewalk stop and inject himself with something (presumably cocaine). After the injection, the fellow perks up and Harold walks over to him and steals the syringe. He then injects his car, and lo and behold the car starts and begins to bounce. This scene reminded us of The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916). This film was made not long after Harold lost half his right hand in an onset accident. For Heaven's Sake has a long sequence during which Harold tries to herd a group of inebriated denizens of the bowery to the Mission where Harold is to get married. This sequence has the requisite run-ins with the police, with vehicles of various kinds, including a double decker bus.

 Just a few films for February, beginning with a few from Wes Anderson.

The French Dispatch (2021), directed by Wes Anderson. Here we have Wes Anderson in spades, in colour, in black and white, mostly in live action, and in animation. The screen is a cornucopia of delights, too much for one viewing. I was reminded of Anderson’s earlier work, Jacques Tati, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Renoir, Curtis Hanson, Esteban Sapir, and others. The film offers a triptych of short stories held together by a frame in the offices of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper/magazine (The New Yorker in disguise?). The stories purport to be features by three of the magazines top writers, art critic/historian J. K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton), reporter in the field Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand), and food writer Roebuck Wright (Jefferey Wright). The stories follow the weird career of artist and mental patient Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), student activist Zeffirelli (Timothee Chalamet), and police chef Nescaffier (Stephen Park). The three stories all take place in a small French city, Ennui-sur-Blasé, and they begin with a talk-about-town with bicycle-riding Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) who gives us something of a tour of the environs of this French city including pickpocket alley, the arcade, and Le Sans Blague Café (sans blague =  no kidding or this is no joke, meaning in this case, we have nothing but a joke). This is clever, sly, witty, convoluted, and much fun. As I say above, the film requires more than one viewing. Even the subtitles, when required, are unusually clever.

 

Asteroid City (2023), directed by Wes Anderson. I suspect many of you have seen this film, and I will keep my comments brief. Near the beginning and the end of this film we see a (I think this should be the definite article) Roadrunner moving about, and many of us may wonder when the Coyote will turn up. Like all Anderson’s films, this one is chock full of cultural references. Here the references are to 1950s with cowboy clothing, box-like buildings, starchy clothing, down home music, the a-bomb, ufos, guns, diners, aloof parents, etc. A running (or at least moving) gag throughout is a speeding getaway car chased by a police car and motorcycle, guns a-blazing. Of course, the military is on hand, especially after an alien ship arrives to take a look at the object that lends its name to the small desert community. Much in evidence is the modern world’s penchant for consuming things, from land to food to gadgets of various kinds. The story, such as it is, comes framed by a Playhouse 90-style television production that combines the theatre with television – both of which are delivered on film to us. The television narrator is played with suitable gravitas by Bryan Cranston, and the playwright is a Sam Shepard-like fellow named Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). The rest of the cast is chock full of familiar faces, and everyone delivers performances that are best dubbed drole. As we would expect in an Anderson film, the world we see is artificial, the artificiality accentuating the point about America that Anderson conveys. If all the world’s a stage, then what we have is a country following a script, a script that has resulted in a certain level of comfort, laced with violence and the threat of annihilation.

 

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023) and The Swan (2023), directed by Wes Anderson. These two short films based on stories by Roald Dahl are typical of Anderson; they exhibit artificial two-dimensional sets, self-conscious acting, and a control that results in symmetrical compositions and witty moments. And, of course, we have the usual Anderson palette. If anything, we have too much of this distinctive style. Okay the material is intriguing enough, the story of Henry Sugar the rich guy who loves to gamble and acquires X-ray vision (his ability is never called X-ray vision, but this is what it amounts to) by following the strict regime of an Indian yogi (Ben Kingsley) begins with Roald Dahl (Ralph Fiennes) reading to us in his writing room. Thereafter we have narrators – Dahl, Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch), Dr. Chatterjee (Dev Patel) – telling us the story from both inside the narrative and outside the narrative. As for the story, it has its amusing aspects and perhaps offers a lesson in tempering greed and helping others less fortunate. The Swan is a brief 17 minutes and tells the story of Peter (both Asa Jennings as the young Peter and Rupert Friend as the adult Peter) who is bullied mercilessly by other boys when he is young. These same boys kill a beautiful swan and remove its wings in order to attach them to Peter. Yes it is fantastical. This film too has Anderson’s signature touches, with the same layered diegesis as Henry Sugar. It also tosses in a bit of animation for good measure. I ought not say “tosses in” because nothing in an Anderson film is “tossed.” Everything is carefully arranged, even obsessively and meticulously arranged.

Big Bug (2022), directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Imagine Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel set in the future some 50 or 100 years from now. Or The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. That’s Big Bug, a futuristic look at a group of people who find themselves unable to leave the suburban house in which they either live or have come to visit. The film does gesture to a wider world in its snippets of the outside world in which advertisements are an ongoing thing in suburban streets, and computers seem to run things and humiliate human beings, and a borg-like entity dominates and controls human action. In other words, what might at first blush look like a utopia turns out to be a dystopia. I guess this ought to be obvious in the first scene in which we have two robots walking their humans who move along on all fours and act like dogs. The house in which the action takes place has a variety of technological devices and artificial intelligences seemingly controlled by one of these called “Einstein.” The set designs are colourful and jazzy in a sort of Jestons’s way or maybe Scooby-doo way. The camera work is fluid and inventive. The film tackles a number of themes including authoritarianism, artificial intelligence, the human desire for constant stimulation and pleasure, but it does so in a quirky and even goofy manner. We have one passing nod to the earlier Jeunet film, Delicatessen, and this should remind us just how deeply suspicious Jeunet is of human desire. The echoes of Bunuel let us know that Jeunet carries this suspicion with humour. All in all, this is a mixed pleasure.

Sand Storm (2016), directed by Elite Zexer. The film begins with 18-year-old Layla (Lamis Ammar) at the wheel of the family car and her father Suliman (Hitham Omari) in the passenger’s seat. Suliman is teaching his daughter how to drive, and they are on the way back from Layla’s school. Her cell phone rings and she checks it because her school grades have been posted. She has not done as well as her father expected she would do. In any case, before arriving at their desert Bedouin village, they change places because Layla cannot be seen driving. Driving is not something women do in this community. This opening scene contains most of what we will experience going forward: the clash of modernity with tradition, the psychological tension between family members, the gender inequality, and the enclosed feeling of enforced patriarchy. Layla and her father arrive home just before Suliman’s marriage to his second wife. His first wife, Jalila (Ruba Blal) is busy preparing a place for the new bride, including moving a new bed into her husband's place. She is not too happy about the situation. From here we have a film that examines the family dynamic. Jalila and Suliman have four children, Layla being the oldest. One of the other three serves as something of a focaliser, as she goes about spying on her elders. This character (I am not sure of her name) just may offer a hope that the younger generation might break free of the power dynamic that sees women as chattel rather than as independent persons. Layla finds herself caught between tradition and modernity, and her future is what drives the plot. This film is a slow burn. The sand storm of the title never materializes, although a storm rages inside most of the characters we meet.

 Before January has passed, here are a few more films.

The Green Cockatoo (1937), directed by William Cameron Menzies. “I cannot give advice, I am a philosopher.” So says, the bearded fellow who meets Eileen (Rene Ray) on the night train from Salford to London, and so begins Eileen’s night adventure. As soon as she disembarks, she meets Dave Connor (Robert Newton) who has been stabbed by heavies who are after him for cheating them at the dog races. Eileen soon finds herself wanted for Dave’s murder. On the run, she finds Dave’s brother Jim (John Mills), a hoofer who works at the nightclub called The Green Cockatoo. Both Eileen and Jim find themselves pursued by the thugs, led by a guy named Terrell (Charles Oliver), and we have night scenes worthy of Hollywood noir. With director Menzies we can be sure of some stylish cinematography. The story is not particularly novel, but Grahame Greene’s script does have its captivating moments. The fellow on the train, for example, and also the inebriated taxi driver who wants to take Eileen to Bristol. These two characters are throwaways, appearing briefly but not having anything to do with the plot. In short, this is a gamely mounted little thriller in the noir mould.

 

Beggars in Ermine (1934), directed by Phil Rosen. This is an ambitious little Monogram picture that centres on manipulation of the stock market in Depression-era America. Steel Mill owner, John ‘Flint’ Dawson (Lionel Atwell), suffers an injury in his factory; he loses both legs in what is supposed to look like an accident, but is really an attempt on his life orchestrated by his rival, Jim Marley (Jamieson Thomas). In the aftermath, Dawson loses his mill and ends up begging for money on the streets, accompanied by a new friend, the blind beggar Marchant (Henry B. Walthall). Dawson is a socialist, although the word is never used. He had worked his way up in the steel industry and as an owner he continued to have his lunch with the workers. Now, as a beggar, he sets out to organize other beggars in his city and across the country until he eventually has an organization rich and prosperous. All the beggars who joined this collective are now financially secure. Meanwhile, Marley has run off with Dawson’s wife, killed her, and returned to bilk the workers of his own mill. The film has much footage of the steel mill and its workings. It also gives us Lionel Atwell as a truly good man. His goodness is evident in the guard dog who protects his property once he has regained his wealth. This dog may look imposing, but he or she is friendly and eager to please. The film may be a tad melodramatic, but its look at corrupt managers of industry whose greed is out of control seems apt for our own times.

 

Prisoner of Japan (1942), directed by Arthur Ripley and Edgar G. Ulmer. Not the most impressive of Ulmer’s pictures, Prisoner of Japan is clearly meant to rally the American public to the war effort. On a small Pacific island, the Japanese have taken over and set up a special communications network to find U.S. ships in the region, find them and then blow them up. On this island lives an American astronomer, David Bowman (Alan Baxter) who is a self-pitying drunk. He is also under the control of the Japanese, headed by the evil Matsuru (Ernst Deutsch, a Czech born actor). Then we have the young woman who lands on the island hoping to find a way back to the U.S. This is Toni Chase (Gertrude Michael). Toni and David end up spoiling the Japanese plans to bomb a U.S. convoy. The two of them go down with the ship, as it were, noble heroes saving American lives. Unlike a film such as Casablanca, this one does not rise above its rallying cry to the audience to support the war effort.

 

Stolen Face (1952), directed by Terence Fisher. This is an American (Lippert) and British (Hammer) co-production. It is a precursor of Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). It is also far-fetched. Brilliant plastic surgeon Dr. Philip Ritter (Paul Henreid) agrees to restore the scarred face of career criminal and prison inmate waiting for parole Lily Conover (Mary Mackenzie). Before the surgery, Dr. Phil goes on a week’s holiday during which he meets American concert pianist Alice Brent (Lizabeth Scott), falls in love, asks her to marry him, is turned down, and returns home morose and pining for the lost Alice. Going back to work, Dr. Phil goes about restoring prisoner Lily’s face, and lo and behold when the bandages come off, Lily looks just like Alice. The good doctor marries her and proceeds to try and transform her into his lost Alice, rendering her a blond who wears clothes like Alice’s. He even tries to give Lily culture, taking her to the opera where she is bored. She soon returns to her felonious ways and also brings her rowdy friends to the Dr.’s flat. Poor Dr. Phil only gets more frustrated when Alice returns to let him know she is back and ready for a long-term relationship. What’s a fellow to do? A train ride ensues during which – well, you will have to watch and see for yourself. The film has its charms, not least the luminous Lizabeth Scott, an actor who brings interest to a number of films in the noir genre. This film has something of a noir sensibility crossed with the mad doctor horror genre. For all its nuttiness, it does hold one’s interest.

The Inner Circle (1946), directed by Philip Ford. Here is a short zippy mystery with the detective Johnny Strange (Warren Douglas) out to clear his name of a murder rap. The murdered man is a gossip columnist, a fellow named Fitch, and Johnny gets caught up in the case after he hires a new secretary, Geraldine Travis (Adele Mara), who is a woman with a secret. This little mystery moves along quickly with snappy dialogue and a cast of familiar faces playing a variety of characters, all of whom may be the real murderer. Everything comes to a conclusion when Johnny assembles the crowd in a radio studio and has the people act out their parts in what has previously transpired. This is quite a satisfying programmer. Familiar faces include: William Frawley, Ricardo Cortez, Dorothy Adams, Will Wright, and a young Robert Wilke.

The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935), directed by Archie Mayo. This is a Perry Mason mystery with Warren Williams starring as the brilliant lawyer. In this one, he and his assistant Della Street (Genevieve Tobin) drink and banter like Nick and Nora Charles. Mason also manages to solve the murder of Frank Patton (Craig Reynolds), a con man who cheats beauty contest winners out of their money. The action is played for laughs; Allen Jenkins turns up as Spudsy, Mason’s factotum, to give the comic turn even more prominence. There is no court room scene in the film. As for the mystery, it works well enough. We have suspects, the two women who are cheated out of their prize money, the doctor who is in love with one of these women, and then one other character who lurks in the background of the mystery. The cast, with familiar faces such as Porter Hall, Barton MacClane, Olin Howland, Mary Treen, and Patricia Ellis, are likeable and earnest. The Lucky Legs of the title refers to a contest in which women are judged on the beauty of their legs, and the film is wise enough to note how unpleasant such a contest is.

 January is here, and so too are a few films beginning with Johnnie To but not ending there.

At one time Frances and I watched many many martial arts films, but we had not watched one for quite a while until recently when we viewed Johnnie To's The Bare-Footed Kid (1993). This is a remake of the Shaw Brothers' Disciples of Shaolin (1975), and it is okay. The film has a familiar blend of humour and tragedy. The ending is, perhaps, not what we might enjoy at this time. But both Maggie Cheung and Lung Ti are attractive actors, and the shoes are interesting. Strangely, the final sequence reminded me of the final sequence in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. The choreography is rather overwhelmed by the camera work and editing, and the wire work appears sparingly but cleverly. All in all, the eighty minutes with this photoplay are eighty minutes we spent not disagreeably.

 

Running Out of Time (1999), directed by Johnnie To. The prolific Johnnie To delivers a smart American-style heist film starring the forever young Andy Lau as Cheung, a mysterious cat burglar who has just two weeks to live. During those two weeks, Cheung carries out a cat and mouse game with the police, especially Inspector Ho Sheung-Sang (Ching Wan Lau), and gangsters who are trying to acquire a special piece of jewellery. The film turns on the clever tricks of Cheung as he leads his various adversaries on wild goose chases. Cheung is elusive and good with disguises. He is meticulous in his planning. As the action rolls along Cheung and Inspector Sheung-Sang find themselves becoming buddies. The film is agreeable, although do not expect much above the ordinary here. Characters are, perhaps, somewhat underdeveloped, but we know enough about them to keep us watching. Chief Inspector Wong Kai-fat (Shiu Hung Hui) provides the comic relief. The film begins with Cheung standing on the edge of a high-rise building, and the image sets us up for a story in which characters are on the edge, as it were, in vertiginous and precarious situations. Now for Running out of Time 2.

 

Running Out of Time 2 (2001), directed by Johnnie To and Wing-Cheong Law. This sequel is predictable, but pleasant enough. Ekin Cheng, as the Thief, takes over from Andy Lau in the role of Inspector Ho’s adversary. The Thief is not only a thief, he is also a magician, making for a few spectacular escapes from the law. Lam Suet is comic relief, along with the intrepid Assistant Commissioner Wong Kai-fat (Shiu Hung Hui), returning from the first film. Lam Suet plays a hapless policeman named Ken, who cannot win a game of coin toss to save his life. 372 times a coin tossed by the Thief turns up tails, and 372 times Ken calls heads. This film also boasts a night time sequence in the rain in which Ho chases the Thief, the two of them on bicycles. This is perhaps the best sequence in the film, and it demonstrates the connection between the two men. As sequels go, this one is not bad, although it does not have the tension of the first Running Out of Time. Once again, characters and relationships are underdeveloped, especially the relationship between Ho and Insurance Officer Teresa (Kelly Lin). Taking a cue, perhaps, from the first Die Hard movie, this film ends with a nod to Christmas. I might add that the Thief’s motives in what goes on remain rather foggy.

First Love (2019), directed by the redoubtable Takashi Miike. Takashi Miike has directed well over 100 films, this one being his 103rd, and many of them are audacious and radical: Sukiyaki Western Django (2007), Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (2006), Izo (2004), Ichi the Killer (2001), and the delirious Audition (1999), for example. First Love is fun, but hardly radical. It tells the story of young love blossoming between a young boxer who thinks he has a brain tumour and a young prostitute strung out on cocaine, both of whom find themselves embroiled in a war between the cops, the yakuza, and the triad. Through all this we have beheadings, a shotgun wielding one-armed godfather, a harpy of a woman who wields anything she can get her hands on and clobbers just about anything nearby, two who square off with samurai swords, beatings, knife fighting, shooting, and general mayhem followed with a car escaping from a warehouse in animated splendour. I almost forgot to mention the hallucination: a man wearing only glasses and white underwear shorts who appears with some regularity throughout. While this is humorous and engaging, it is not really new.

Shadow (2018), directed by Zhang Yimou. As with Yimou's Hero and House of Flying Daggers, Shadow dazzles with its cinematography. Shot mostly in monochrome, with flesh colour and blood colour resonating in all this monochrome, the film takes on a shadowy cast. And then there is the rain, lots of rain, rain every time a character steps outside. The rain defeats any fire wanton enough to try and gain purchase. The Shadow stands alone, gaining substance in the battle that extends beyond three rounds. The characters in this film are perhaps less compelling than those in Hero and House of Flying Daggers, but the umbrellas are like nothing you have seen before. I know, we have The Flying Guillotine movies, and those guillotines have some similarity with the umbrellas here, but they are so much more serving as weapons, shields, boats, and plain umbrellas. The umbrella dances are reminiscent of what goes on in Kung Fu Hustle, but again, this film strikes its own chord.

Cliff Walkers (2021), directed by Zhang Yimou. Watching this film, I was reminded of Zhang’s film Hero (2002), not because the films are particularly similar in story and setting and character, but because both films take a party line. Both films celebrate the resilience of the people and the strength of the nation. Cliff Walkers deals with the Japanese invasion in the early 1930s, and follows the efforts of four Chinese spies to infiltrate the enemy forces and rescue an important person. We found the plot convoluted and difficult to follow in detail, although the broad outline was clear enough. Often, we see a street scene in winter with a collection of many wires criss-crossing above the street, and these wires are a nice indication of the intricacy of the action. The Japanese are unpleasant executioners, seemingly oblivious to human life as they spew alcohol on those they are about to execute with nary a hesitation and hardly even a look as they shoot their victims. They also torture people in ugly ways. The four spies are heroic and self-sacrificing. They are also stylish in their fedoras and furs. The film opens with the four landing in the snowy countryside, and we have impressive shots of snow and cold. As we expect from Zhang, everything looks artistic and carefully choreographed. I’m not sure, but this film may have more style than substance.

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013), directed by Stephen Chow and Chi-Kin Kwok. Stephen Chow has imaginative exuberance. We have seen this before in such films as Shaolin Soccer (2001) and Kung Fu Hustle (2004), but in Journey to the West Chow outdoes his past exuberances. This is a lavish CGI-filled romp with creatures and transformations and wild fights. It begins with a twenty-minute scene in which a water demon, a huge fish with long tentacle and short legs, terrorizes a riverside community, even swallowing a baby. Then we have the huge wild boar, and the short feisty Monkey King. The film is pretty much non-stop frenetic action. It is also warm and human. Aspiring Buddhist hero, Xuan Zang (Zhang Wen) avoids earthly temptations, including earthly love. He falls in with Miss Duan (Shu Qi), a more formidable demon hunter. She finds Xuan attractive, but he avoids her. Of course, love will prevail and Xuan’s transcendent love will find itself folded into a love for Miss Duan. Along the journey, we also have Chow’s attraction to common people. He gives us an assortment of village people and unpretentious people just trying to survive in a world fraught with demons. We also have Xuan’s most important possession, a book of 300 Nursery Rhymes. This is an exuberant film executed with affection. (You might find it on Tubi)

 Before the year ends, here are a few more films.

Forced Landing (1941), directed by Gordon Wiles. Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s loved aviation, and this Paramount cheapie is about an American flyer working for the Mosaque government. Mosaque? Apparently, this is a Pacific country in which the locals look like Latinos, including the revolutionary leader Andros Banshek (J. Carrol Naish). The government military leader is Colonel Jan Golas (Nils Asther) who is engaged to Johanna Van Deuren (Eva Gabor in her first film), is not a good fellow. He is out to sabotage work to build a defense system; the work is headed by Johanna’s father. The American flyer, Dan Kendal (Richard Arlen) does, of course, have eyes for Johanna, and the two of them eventually find themselves imprisoned in the jungle by Banshek. They fall in love, and this does not please Col. Golas. The film runs just over 60 minutes, and during this time we have plane crashes, shootings, intrigue, and romance. We also have monkeys. The script has its moments, and the cinematography, courtesy of John Alton, also has its moments. All in all, this is a pleasing programmer, something to while away the time on the indoor bike.

 

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961), directed by Roger Corman. As the cartoon credits, filmed by Monte Hellman no less, indicate, this is a zany horror film. It has a monster made of 150 dollars worth of tennis balls, oil cloth, and steel wool. The script is in league with Little Shop of Horrors. For example, one character notes, “It was dusk. I could tell because the sun was going down.” The speaker here is the film’s narrator, agent XK150 (Robert Towne, here billed as Edward Wain), who has infiltrated gangster Renzo Capetto’s (Antony Carbone) gang in Cuba just after the revolution that has brought Castro to power. The plot has something to do with a large amount of gold smuggled out of Cuba by Capetto, along with a number of Cuban soldiers who hope to use the money to pay for their return to Cuba and the ousting of Castro. Capetto’s gang consists of a number of misfits, a manic-depressive, an animal voice impersonator, and a wicked Moll. The film is a lot of fun, and the monster is a hoot. Do not expect the Creature from the Black Lagoon. But you might delight in a zany odd ball romp. This film along with Little Shop of Horrors and Bucket of Blood form a nifty trifecta. 

 

The Lost Moment (1947), directed by Martin Gabel. This is Gabel’s only outing as a director, and his film is based, ostensibly, on Henry James’s The Aspern Papers. The film is an exercise in the Gothic, something akin to Rebecca. A young American publisher with ambition arrives in Venice where he plans to take up residence with an elderly, well an ancient, woman who was once the lover of a famous nineteenth-century poet, Jeffrey Ashton, whose portrait makes him look amazingly like Percy Bysshe Shelley. The 105-year-old woman is Juliana Borderau (an unrecognizable Agnes Moore), and she is attended by her grand-niece Tina Borderau (Susan Hayward). Tina, as it happens, suffers from lapses during which she takes on the personality of Juliana, and when the young man arrives, assuming the identity of a writer, but really in search of lost love letters sent to Juliana from the poet Ashton, she takes him as her lover Jeffrey when she is having one of her spells. The American, played by Robert Cummings, thinks he will make a sensation, and a lot of money, by publishing the lost love letters. Anyway, the story works out in a large, dark, labyrinthine house by a Venetian canal, a Venetian canal crafted on a Hollywood set. The plot holds little in the way of surprise, but the performers bring intensity to their roles. The make-up for the 105-year-old Juliana reminded me of the make-up work for Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man. The sets for the house are effective. All in all, this is an interesting exercise in the gothic, if a bit wan.

 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), directed by Don Siegal. Remade several times, this film still retains its power. What was once a 1950s McCarthy era film in which the pod people could be taken for soulless communists infiltrating small town America as a base from which to spread throughout the land, now seems prescient in its depiction of a people easily led to accept a world in which freedom and democracy are no longer worth struggling to maintain. It all begins with the farmers who have taken to growing giant seed pods that grow into replicas of human beings, taking over not only their bodies, but also their memories and minds. Siegal’s direction is efficient reminding us of lighting and angles familiar from film noir. Indeed, this is a dark picture, even darker without the prologue and epilogue demanded by the studio to temper the horrific initial ending with the Kevin McCarthy character stumbling among traffic on a highway trying desperately to convince someone to stop and take him seriously. “You’re next,” he shouts right at the camera in what was initially the end of the film. Now we have the frame in which he eventually convinces people at a hospital to believe him. The film is unrelentingly dark as young doctor Miles J. Bannell (McCarthy) arrives home from a conference to find people in his bucolic small town beginning to turn strange. This is a chilling story as we watch friends and family become the same, yet different, until the doctor and his girl, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), find themselves on the run, fleeing what once was a safe haven and is now a den of soulless people out to gather the two of them into their way of life. Just sleep and wake to a new and better and emotionless world.

 

The Gang’s All Here (1941), directed by Jean Yarbrough. This is not the lavish musical from 1943, with Carmen Miranda; no, this is a mall budget film that teams Frankie Darro and Mantan Moreland (they made about nine films together) as two truck drivers that are hired by a trucking company that has experienced a series of accidents with some of these accidents proving fatal. So we have a mixture of comedy and serious mob activity. Mantan Moreland does his thing, and we have familiar racial stereotypes, especially in scenes that have Moreland interacting with Laurence Criner who plays bad fellow Ham Shanks! The script has its moments; for example, we have young Patsy Wallace (Marcia Mae Jones) trying to convince the fellow she fancies, Chick (Jackie Moran), that woman are important helpmates of men. She mentions Napoleon and Josephine, Anthony and Cleopatra, and Alexander the Great and Mrs. Alexander the Great. Moreland also manages some subtlety when he remarks, “When you have been beyond the pale as much as I have…” The film also has Keye Luke in a small but important role. All in all, this film, at 61 minutes, serves to while the time away as I ride the indoor bike!

 

The Treasure of Ruby Hills (1955), directed by Frank McDonald. This is a low-budget western with Zachary Scott as hero, reformed bad guy Ross Haney. Efficiently filmed, and with an amiable cast of familiar faces (e.g. Raymond Hatton, Rick Vallin, Barton McLane, Dick Foran, and Lee Van Cleef), The Treasure of Ruby Hills is quite watchable. The plot is not novel. A fellow rides into town where two rival ranchers vie for control of the valley. He positions himself between the rivals, has an eye for a local woman who is supposed to be marrying the foreman of one of the two rival ranchers. This foreman has plans of his own; he not only has designs on the young woman, Sherry Vernon (Carole Mathews), but also on the land run illegally by the two ranchers. What they do not yet know is that Ross Haney has laid claim to the area’s only water source. Does all this sound familiar? Anyway, proceedings are handled well and things roll along. We even have Splinters from the Roy Rogers movies turning up here as bad guy Jack Voyle (Gordon Jones). The film offers riding, shooting, punching, romancing, and smart talk all in just 71 minutes.

 

Spectre of the Rose (1946), directed by Ben Hecht. This is a one-of-a-kind noir that focuses on ballet dancer and schizophrenic Andre Sanine (Ivan Kirov), who supposedly murdered his first wife while he and she were dancing the ballet, Spectre of the Rose. Bohemian poet, Lionel Gans (Lionel Stander) brings detective McFarlan (Charles “Red” Marshall) to Mme La Syphe’s (Judith Anderson) dance studio to investigate, mostly because Gans fancies the young dancer, Haidi (Viola Essen), who fancies Sanine. Mme La Sylphe knits, reminding us of Mme Defarge. The film is melodramatic, over-acted, and filled with dance. The noir hero is the tormented Sanine. The script, by Hecht, has some good one-liners, e.g. “Press yourself against me so hard that you’re tattooed on to me,” and “love is a seasonal thing among artists.” This is a strange film to come from Republic Studio with its combination noir and art house pretensions. It is perhaps over-heated, a curious entry into the noir catalogue.

 A mix of movies for December.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), directed by Chantal Akerman. Sight and Sound Magazine has, for the past 52 years, selected the greatest film in film history. They do this every two years, and first named Bicycle Thieves (1948) as the greatest. Soon they changed the selection to Citizen Kane (1941), a selection that lasted until 2012 when they chose Vertigo (1958). In 2022, a surprise came when the magazine selected Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles as the greatest film ever made. This film focuses on three days in the life of the eponymous character, played by Delphine Seyrig, as she goes through her daytime routine making meals for her and her son, washing the dishes, making the beds, doing necessary shopping, looking after a neighbour’s infant for a few minutes, entertaining men each day of the week from 5:00 to 5:30, and doing all this with a stoic resolve. We watch her peeling potatoes, making breaded meatloaf, eating, and going about her activities with ritualistic sameness. She does all this in the confined space of her apartment. The camera never moves (or at least I do not recall it moving); it sits there usually at a level Ozu would understand and delivers images of Jeanne framed by walls or objects such as chairs or cupboard doors, or even a milk bottle and coffee container. Outside long streets with shops provide a frame. Her life is contained. She and her son Sylvain (Jan Decorte) spend little time together and the time they do spend together is mostly silent. Indeed, the film contains very little dialogue. As for story, we have the three days in Jeanne’s life during which we begin to see a breakdown in her meticulous routine. She neglects to do up all the buttons of her housecoat, her hair is a bit dishevelled on the second day, she forgets to turn off lights or she forgets to replace the lid of the soup tureen in which she keeps the money she receives from the men she entertains, she overboils the potatoes, she finds her coffee unpalatable, she rises early and arrives at the bank before it opens, and so on. Something is happening in Jeanne’s emotional life, and the ending comes as a brutal surprise. The film is long at 3 hours and 22 minutes, and it may seem longer because screen time can feel longer than real time; take, for example, a scene such as the one in which Jeanne sits at the kitchen table and peels potatoes, or the final shot of the film in which Jeanne simply sits at the dining room table. These shots seem interminable. As I watched the film, I saw echoes of such film makers as Godard, Warhol, and Ozu. Apparently Michael Snow also influenced Akerman. Finally, what does one say about this film? It differs strikingly from the previous films selected by Sight and Sound, all made by men. This film is clearly something different and clearly a film by and about women. Most of the film crew are women. Jeanne’s life is the life of a widow, mother, and housewife. She has no activity outside her closed world as mother and home maker. This is a remarkable film. But is it the best film ever made?

Persona (1966), directed by Ingmar Bergman. The last time I saw this film, I was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, some 59 years ago. The film made a profound impression on me then. Seeing it again after all this time, I wonder just what went through my mind back then. What goes through my mind now are the echoes of films by the likes of Luis Bunuel, Kenneth Anger, and the French New Wave directors, especially Jean Luc Godard. Bergman sets out to alienate the viewer by beginning the film with artifice and a collection of images that clearly announce that what we are seeing is a film. He also teases us with the image of a young boy who, after closing the book he is reading, looks at a large and cloudy image of a woman’s face on a screen in front of him, as he, like a film viewer, like us, sits looking toward the screen and away from us. Is this the expression of an Oedipal emotion or is this just a dream image or is the boy looking at a movie screen? What is real and what is reel, the film seems to ask. The boy reaches out to touch the face. But touch is impossible. Neither he nor us can actually get in touch with the image we see. Once the story, such as it is, gets going, we find ourselves in a world not much clearer than the real/reel confusion at the beginning. Elizabet (Liv Ullman) is an actress who, while playing the part of Elecktra, suddenly decides to cease speaking. She has seen footage on television of a Buddhist monk in Vietnam setting himself on fire, and this act of self-immolation appears to have caused her to go silent, her way of rejecting a world of violence and suffering. Elizabet ends up in hospital where the young nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) is charged with caring for her. The two women go to Elizabet’s country home by the sea where we have images that suggest that either they become as close as lovers or they become estranged or they really are one person. We see the two women at times with a mirror and at times by a window, and the suggestion or question is whether cinema is a mirror or a window, something we see through or something that reflects ourselves. Persona does not clarify; rather it suggests cinema is both. The dialectic between silence and compulsive talk may also take us to cinema’s tug between the visual and the verbal, while at the same time saying something about the virtues of silence and the benefits of verbal expression. Ultimately this film will work if the viewer can delight in a series of almost hallucinatory images that take us inside the workings of film itself.

Blitz (2024), directed by Steve McQueen. As we expect from Steve McQueen, this film offers excellent visual recreation of war-torn London in 1940 during the intense bombing known as the blitzkrieg. The story follows the adventures of nine-year-old George (Elliott Heffernan) who is separated from his mother Rita (Saorise Ronan) and grandfather Gerald (Paul Weller). George is a mixed-race child whose father was cruelly deported before George was born. Anyway, the film has something of a picaresque feel to it, taking on perhaps too much to deal with adequately. First there is the blitz itself and the devastation brought on the city and the disruption in the lives of the citizens. Then there is the stuff about the factories and women workers. Then there is George, his family and its background and then his travels as he jumps from the train evacuating him and many other children to the countryside. Then we have the bits that foreground the racism apparent in the city. Then there is the focus on the failure of authorities to adequately prepare for the safety of the citizens, mostly working and middle-class people who demand shelter in the underground. And then we have the bit that echoes Dickens’s Oliver Twist with the Fagin-like Albert (Stephen Graham) with its ghoulish scene in a bombed night club. Perhaps because of the wide brush strokes here, characters remain sketchy. In short, this is an ambitious film that is uneven in its presentation of a time in history that might resonate more than it does. We have the shots of London in rubble that might remind us of places today in the Ukraine, in Gaza, in Beirut, and so on. The end of the film reminds us just how  tragic war is, while at the same time giving us something of a “happy ending.” Tragedy should, I think, overshadow all else.

 

The Chase (1966), directed by Arthur Penn. Not well received when it came out, The Chase nevertheless is a searing indictment of violence in America, racism, and small town shenanigans. It takes place in Texas where most citizens have guns, many have two guns, and they are prepared to use them. The story is a complicated combination of melodrama, social comment, family romance, and frontier mentality festering long after the frontier has gone. Sheriff Calder (Marlon Brando) appears to be in the pocket of local rich man and oil magnate Val Rogers (E. G. Marshall). When local bad boy Bubba Reeves (Robert Redford) escapes from prison with another inmate and that other inmate murders a man for the man’s car, Bubba finds himself on the run, hoping to get to Mexico. Things go wrong as they always do in these films and the local community finds itself in a snit over the actions of Sheriff Calder and the failure of the law to locate and incarcerate young Bubba. Calder receives the requisite beating (Brando often took a beating in films), Bubba receives injustice, and the town receives nothing more than ugliness from its people. The cast is impressive with the likes of Robert Duvall, Edward Fox, Jane Fonda, Martha Hyer, Miriam Hopkins, Angie Dickinson, Janice Rule, and Henry Hull. The party scenes suggest that the adults of this town are no more mature than the teenagers of this town. Both party with abandon and show little or no respect for decency, courtesy, and civility. The film is cluttered, but effective. This is the film Penn made just before he made his most famous film.

All Screwed Up (1974), directed by Lina Wertmuller. Perhaps not always coherent, this film nevertheless captures life in bustling overcrowded Milan. Too much is going on, but then too much goes on in the modern city. We have workers protests, chaotic working conditions, poor people trying to survive, police brutality, political injustice, rape, gender disparity, female cleverness, culture clashes. Ostensibly, the film follows two young lads from the south arriving in Milan and then trying to make a living and find relationships. The two lads are Gigi (Luigi Diberti) and Carletto (Nino Bignamini). The two young men find themselves living in an abandoned apartment building with a commune full of people. The place is organized by a woman. The people who live here will do almost anything for a lire. Take Sante (Renato Rotondo), for example. Sante meets a young woman. The two become a couple, and she has twins, then another five all at once – quintuplets! Before the film ends, she is once again pregnant. Poor Sante will do anything to provide for his family, including trying to be a male prostitute. The film is crowded with events, with people, with sounds, with ongoing chaos. This is a well-meaning film that tries to touch on just about all the ills of modern urban life under capitalism. The characters are likeable enough, if under-developed – there are just too many of them. Scenes in the pizzeria kitchen with the cacophony of goings on typify both the film and modernity.

Ikarie XB 1 (1963), directed by Jindrich Polak. Stanley Kubrik must have seen this Czech film. 2001: A Space Odyssey has echoes of this film in its designs. Anyway, what we have is an account of a 28-day mission to Alpha Centauri (15 years back on earth) a couple of centuries from now. The mission is to search for life forms. What the crew find is an old earth spaceship with the dead bodies of decadent westerners who had used this spaceship as a casino. It is the Cold War, and this floating casino also contains several nuclear bombs. The couple of crewmen who visit the abandoned ship get blown up. Back on Ikarie XB 1 (the name of the spaceship on a mission to discover life forms), some deadly virus or germ emanating from a black star begins to make life on Ikarie XB 1 difficult. After a lengthy sleep, the crew wake and one of them goes rather wild and crazy. Before this happens, we have a vision if life aboard the spaceship. The ship boasts a huge gym where crew members can exercise, a dancehall where the crew can dance away to their hearts’ content, large screens on which they can see and talk to loved ones back on earth, and a dining area that serves up vindaloo for the asking. The sets are minimal and geometric; they remind me of what we see on the Starship Enterprise. All this is impressive and thought-provoking. Oh, and there is also a robot, Patrick, who may remind you of Robbie, the Robot.

Mississippi Burning (1988), directed by Alan Parker. This film was made in 1988 and it focuses on an FBI investigation into three missing Civil Rights activists in Mississippi in 1964. Whether it is 1964, 1988, or 2024 the racial anger, bigotry, and violence remain with us. This film has not aged. Parker gives us the inferno that is race hatred with burning churches, crosses, and homes. The two principal figures are Agents Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman) and Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe), and both are excellent. The rest of the cast, both of known and unknown actors, are also excellent. The locations serve to fill in the living conditions of both Black people and White people at the time of the action. The film combines melodrama, documentary realism, and police procedural in a scathing recreation of actual events. The anger on all sides is palpable. The warping of the judicial system should serve as a warning. The world here may be nominally a democracy, but certain people are denied the vote through various impediments set up by the dominant members of the community. This is a harrowing film that has not lost its power over the years. 

Wonder Boys (2000), directed by Curtis Hanson. People are crazy, times are strange, I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range, I used to care, but – things have changed. People in this film are perhaps crazy, but in a pleasant sort of way. And they have Bob Dylan and a few others singing in the background. This adaptation of Michael Chabon’s novel about a creative-writing professor’s adventures over an auspicious weekend not only won Bob Dylan an Oscar, but it also happens to be quite a joyous look at life’s vicissitudes. What’s not to like about a film that follows an English professor about as he transports his editor, a transvestite, the transvestite’s tuba, the editor’s pharmacopeia in a suitcase, and a dead dog from a party at his university’s Chancellor’s house? Then we have the troubled, but brilliant student, the student who fancies the professor, the actual owner of the professor’s car, the cleaning man, the bag of ganja, the successful novelist, a cast of misfits with success stories and stories of failure. Michael Douglas is the professor, Tobey Maguire is the troubled student, Frances McDormand is the Chancellor, Rip Torn the novelist, Robert Downey, Jr. the editor, Katie Holmes the student who makes eyes at the professor, and Michael Cavadias the transvestite. The location is Pittsburgh where it seems to have snow on the ground and torrents of rain falling from the sky. Rain and snow and Marilyn Monroe’s jacket. This is a film with affection for the human condition. It is also a film in which a person can see the 2000 plus pages of his next novel in manuscript blow away in the wind and feel liberated. Pretty much everything about this film works for me.