Monthly Archives: June 2014

The Man with the Golden Gun [1974)

Third nipple.  It had to be said.  Nay, not even the great Roger Moore could get away with a strictly biological description.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way…  Indeed, Scaramanga was the most interesting and well-rounded villain yet in this series (by far).  This is Guy Hamilton’s directorial masterpiece.  Any who look down upon action/adventure movies are missing the fun of life.  C’est la vie.  It is an honor to write about a living legend–a true auteur.  I salute you Monsieur Hamilton!

Sure…there are some funny bits.  Coal and oil would soon run out?  Well, 40 years have gone by and we are still burning away.  But let us not dwell upon a minor hitch.  This film is so enjoyable to watch!

The location shoots are immaculate.  Macau, Hong Kong, Thailand…  I must admit I got a bit wistful hearing traditional Thai music (something I was lucky enough to study at university).  Hamilton pushes all the right buttons (rather the opposite of Miss Goodnight’s errant derriere).

I would dare say this is the best Bond film up to this point in the “canon”…without question!

It is not a matter of Connery vs. Moore, but rather of Hamilton vs. cinema.  There were great moments earlier in the series, but this really is the whole package.  It’s a shame Connery and Hamilton didn’t get the opportunity to hit on all cylinders as Moore and Hamilton did with this vehicle.

Bond takes one for the team early on by swallowing a piece of forensic evidence:  a golden bullet which had become the erstwhile navel ornament of a belly-dancer in Beirut.  Not long after we are introduced to an indispensable character:  Nick Nack.  Yes, that’s right…Tatoo from Fantasy Island, but officially the late Hervé Villechaize.  The MI6 base aboard the wreckage of the RMS Queen Elizabeth was a brilliant touch.  Special notice should go to Joie Vejjajiva and Qiu Yuen who are masterfully cute and pugnacious as Hip’s nieces.

There is certainly a hesitant feminism which asserts itself from time to time.  It is rather awkward in such a chauvinistic series, but welcome nonetheless.

Maud Adams is wonderful (if I may say so) particularly when she is playing dead (or, as the film would have it, actually dead).  I am speaking of course about the Thai boxing match scene.  It must have been no small feat to look so icy-cold in such a heated environment.  The whole mise-en-scène is so delicately artful that there is no doubt what we are seeing is thoroughly cinematic (meant in the most superlative sense).

Britt Ekland is wonderful as the bumbling white-hot Bond girl Mary Goodnight.  No wonder she and Peter Sellers had been married.  She’s a right bird!

Guy Hamilton must have really taken to Clifton James as the latter unbelievably reprises his role as Louisiana Sherriff J.W. Pepper.  This really does make the film essential viewing for Cajuns the world-round.  The AMC chase with Moore and “deputy” Pepper is exhilarating and hilarious.  This really shows the European influence of Hamilton, though one might think him Italian rather than French.  Nonetheless, the mélange of emotions warrants mention as particularly “other” from the Anglo-American milieu in which we seem to be racing around.

But there is no missing the recurring reference to The Lady from Shanghai in the funhouse mirrors which bookend this wonderful movie.  Nick Nack, likewise, presages Mini-Me of the Austin Powers franchise.

One final thought…  There is a troublesome moment when Bond pushes a Thai boy into a canal.  For a moment, reality erupts within the spectacle (to more-or-less quote another famous Guy:  Debord).  It reminds us that espionage is not all fun and games.  People get hurt.  People are used.  There are many means to an end.  But I credit the series and even this film with upholding a certain stereotype of the British which I think has some truth to it…in a couple of words:  tact and manners.  Bond doesn’t really hurt the boy, though it is rather cruel seeing as how the boy had just helped him out of a “jam” only to have Bond, moreover, immediately renege on a 20,000 baht reward.  But even Scaramanga seems to appreciate the “sporting” nature of British fairness…offering Bond a chance.  True…Bond kicks a martial arts opponent in the face during the preordained moment for bowing to the sensei of the dojo, but Bond was outnumbered 20 to 1 (or thereabouts).  The final test comes when Nick Nack ends up in a suitcase courtesy of 007.  We assume from Ekland’s response that Bond has thrown the little person overboard, but we see at the end that the devilish manservant ended up in a wicker cage hoisted up the junk’s rigging.  I admire this delicacy.  Keep Bond and carry on!

 

-PD

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Vertigo [1958)

Lovesick.  To know love is to know vertigo.  The great French composer Olivier Messiaen described love as a dizzy feeling (I paraphrase).   To quote the great Bob Dylan from his best album (1997’s Time Out of Mind), “I’m sick of love.”

When I first saw Vertigo I didn’t particularly like it.  I was a neophyte cineaste and I suppose it went over my head.  Indeed, the film did not really click for me until I saw a 70mm restored print as part of the Paramount Theater’s summer film series in Austin, Texas some years back.  I finally began to appreciate the cinematography of Robert Burks…the way the city of San Francisco comes to life in front of the lens he shared with Hitchcock.  As a rather naïve film lover I had once seen Life Is Beautiful several times in the theater upon its release and there was something in the mise-en-scène which gave me a wonderful, cozy, rich feeling…an ambiance which I drank in with each successive viewing.  It is this aspect of film (mood) which really makes Vertigo go.

Bernard Herrmann’s music was never more important to a Hitchcock film than to the one at hand.  The whole production almost becomes a music video during Scottie’s initial trailing of Madeleine.  There is not a word of dialogue from the flower shop to the cemetery to the art museum.  I will not regale you with scholarly milliseconds, but I’m willing to guess that approximately five whole minutes go by completely buoyed by the photography of Burks and the music of Herrmann (all, of course, framed by the voyeuristic passage in our story…and all, likewise, under the watchful eye-of-eyes:  Hitch).

Suffice it to say that I now recognize this to be one of Hitchcock’s best films (if not the best) and therefore one of the best films ever made by any director.  Alfred Hitchcock seems to me as the Beethoven of cinema, but he might just as well be the Bach.  Of other analogies he might be considered our Rembrandt…and almost certainly our Shakespeare.

And so it is that the main protagonist in Vertigo is mood.  What mood?  Which?  Not just any, is it?  It is the mood of Tristan und Isolde…Wagner…that painful longing for love.  Bernard Herrmann borrowed nicely from old Richard in the rich, autumnal, self-consuming harmonies.  Other times, by the sea for instance, we are brought into the sphere of La mer by Debussy.  Whether at Fort Point or floating down endless San Francisco automobile inclines, the weightlessness is also reminiscent of the same composer’s Pelléas et Mélisande.  Herrmann even seems to reference Ravel in the pensive motif which seems like Carlotta’s Iberian clock (ticking to bolero snaps of the second hand).

Yes, Vertigo is a film which will send critics into an orgiastic dither from now till the end of time (I suppose).  My contribution is simple.  Watch it.  Then watch it again.  And then watch it yet again.  There are secrets in this tapestry.  It is pure mystery.

-PD

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Trail of the Pink Panther [1982)

Ugh.  Ay carambas!  Yikes.  This film is torture.  I will not claim to have made it all the way through, but I held on as long as I could.

This really is just a travesty all around.  It starts well enough.  Harvey Korman is an admirable Auguste Balls.  “Maybe they did have enough outtake footage to patch together a film,” I thought.  I kept as alert as possible, trying to find the inevitable and unenviable “break point.”  It comes after Sellers exits the elevator:  the last laugh.

It is a jaw-dropping stroke of hubris…Sellers doing soft-shoe on the spilled rice and then the exact same set piece with the keys in the door and the ripped trousers.  It’s all downhill from there.  It turns into a “greatest hits” playback of scenes from the previous films with stupefying ennui courtesy of interviewing those who had known Clouseau.

I must say, however:  I made it further into this debacle than I thought I would.  At least the “pup-out” lighter scene was priceless (truly the last laugh).  Perhaps I will return to this revolting pastiche once my stomach has calmed down…in a couple of weeks.

 

-PD

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Live and Let Die [1973)

Dr. Quinn:  Bond Girl.  It’s true.  And it’s also true that when I was a kid Roger Moore was James Bond for me.  Connery seemed like a hairy-chested old fart.  No doubt it was all of the Bond reruns and Bond-a-thons I was exposed to which seemed to, without fail, feature mostly the “newer” Bond films which starred Moore.

This film marks Moore’s debut and it is quite a good one.  From the opening credits we know we are in for a quality time as the voice of Macca and the deft production of George Martin bring us into the film proper.

Guy Hamilton turns in another fine film here.  True, this film is rife with Blaxploitation clichés, but it transcends the era nonetheless.

I’m not sure why there are crocodiles in a Louisiana bayou, but perhaps my four years in a Cajun band didn’t thoroughly verse me in the ways of south Louisiana.  Bond makes one of his most daring escapes yet in the series when he uses the creatures (there’s at least one gator) as stepping stones in a nimble-footed exit from certain death.

The series indeed adds a new dimension of local color to its history thanks to priceless performances by such as Clifton James.  Of all the henchmen, Earl Jolly Brown is strangely the most frightening (but character Tee Hee Johnson is a close second).

Perhaps I fell asleep mentally, but the crocodile farm is said to be on the fictional island of San Monique.  I will assume it is my error (though we have seen continuity mistakes in past Bond films).

All in all, this was a fortuitous start to a brilliant career for the second true Bond.  And I will never look at Jane Seymour the same way again 🙂

 

-PD

 

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I Love You, Alice B. Toklas [1968)

I must hand it to Drew Barrymore.  She fought the law and she won.  It is nothing short of a minor coup (?) that she persisted in having this film shown as part of TCM’s Essentials programming (against, perhaps, the “better” judgment of Robert Osborne).  I’ve had this film in VHS form sans case awaiting the perfect moment to watch it.  That moment came tonight thanks to guest programmer Drew.

I should mention that I rather like Robert Osborne.  His love for film is unquestioned.  He has that twinkle in his eye…even when speaking about the most apocryphal “classics.”  It was truly a moment in my life when I first heard the word Cahiers pronounced…and the speaker was none other than Mr. Osborne.

On to the film at hand.  This really is a strange movie.  Mostly because it is not strange.  Peter Sellers plays what might best be described as Zeppo Marx for the entirety of the film.  I must, however, give it to director Hy Averback for having crafted a film which nicely calls into question the values people place on rather vacuous objects and principles.  At least the very last scene (Sellers hastily strolling down the street) finally achieves a sublime effect which was labored over for 94 minutes before being realized.  Sadly, this film has all the trappings of The Party (truly Sellers’ best performance) with almost none of the brilliance.  It is acutely agonizing to watch Sellers play the straight man.

 

-PD

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Key Largo [1948)

By 1948, John Huston had honed his craft.  This may not be as highly-esteemed a movie as The Maltese Falcon, but it has several dimensions more depth.  The whole thing is a situation (meant in the philosophical sense). It reminds me most of Hitchcock’s minor masterpiece Lifeboat.  There is also a bit of Rope in this film which never leaves the Hotel Largo once all the major players are inside (save for the end which, like Lifeboat, takes us into the wine-dark sea).

There is something of Frank Capra in the touching scene where Bogie relates the death of the hotel patron’s son in the recently-ended war (a bit like Meet John Doe in the whole tone of it).  Perhaps, however, a more accurate comparison is to the heart-wrenching tenor of Anatole Litvak’s Out of the Fog.  It is interesting how Huston sets up Bogart’s character to be a hero, but surprises await.

Edward G. Robinson’s emergence from the bathtub is such an iconic film moment…smoking that cigar, a glass of brandy (perhaps) on the tub’s edge…a man worried about nothing…slipping into his silk bathrobe.  Robinson is fantastic as the cruel Johnny Rocco…most of all because Robinson’s depiction has such depth.  This is, after all, a man who we will shortly see is afraid of storms (to his credit, it is a proper hurricane).

This whole film is (for most of the movie) a very strange role for Bogart.  It is as if he were being thrust back into the days when he had to play second fiddle to actors like Robinson.  The beautiful Lauren Bacall loses faith in Bogart’s character as he not only seems to cower, but also contradicts the idealism of her father-in-law (the father of her dead husband…a genuine war hero).

It is no wonder Claire Trevor won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her work in this film.  When her alcoholic character is baited into singing a song from her long-gone heyday we are again gifted a one-of-a-kind film moment:  a pathetic has-been warbling out of pitch and just wanting a couple fingers of scotch.  It is, strangely enough, this point at which Bogart regains his cajones and pours the drink which Robinson would withhold on account of her shabby performance.  Bacall regains her faith and apologizes to Bogie.

I don’t want to spoil the ending.  [Now ain’t I nice?]  This is a must-see film and it only further adds to the Bogart legend which has been built upon his performances in more well-known films.  Sail on Bogie!

 

-PD

 

 

 

 

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The Maltese Falcon [1941)

Bogart is our “three day stubble” hero–our five-o’clock shadow warrior.  “Tough without a gun,” said Raymond Chandler.  Indeed, Bogart as Sam Spade herein disarms a couple of gun-wielding punks through his ingenuity alone.  Quick movements.  Think fast.

In a tough profession one must roll with the punches.  Bogie’s partner is murdered?  Life must go on.  Extra space on the signage?  Put my full name:  Samuel Spade.

Yes, Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) is indispensable.  John Huston turns in an astounding film for a first-time director.  But the whole enterprise is carried by Humphrey.

There is a reason why Huston was slighted by the French New Wave and Bogart was not.  Huston was not at all a bad director.  It was just that the discrepancy became clear when the brilliant Bogart was placed at the disposal of Howard Hawks or Nicholas Ray.  One needs only watch another juggernaut debut (Breathless by Godard) to see the esteem which Bogie accrued with the French film culture which would give intellectual validity to American films previously considered mere pulp entertainment.

 

-PD

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North by Northwest [1959)

A film critic’s most daunting task is tackling that which has been pored over for decades.  What can be left to write about a film such as this?  This is no doubt one of the most famous movies ever made.  What has accounted for its “staying power?”

There is, of course, the well-tailored Cary Grant in his grey suit and tie (grey tie) thinking thin while suavely moving between Madison Ave. and points west.  There is the deliciously-evil James Mason whose one-liners ring with Shakespearean gravity in their chilly enunciation.  Even Martin Landau…with his iconic, effeminately-sinister visage makes a lasting mark upon the viewer’s brain.  And then there is Eva Marie Saint:  her glowing locks like Garbo in Technicolor.  These are great characters, but there is something more.

Situations.  What would Sartre and Debord make of this dissection?  This critical tangent?  The crop duster scene.  Surrealism.  Beckett, but back to Finnegans Wake.  Somehow screenwriter Ernest Lehman tapped into the non sequitur nature of Joyce’s masterpiece (akin to Hawks’ approach in The Big Sleep [by way of Raymond Chandler]).  It is one of the greatest situations in cinema.  There are few scenes more iconic than Cary Grant in full stride trying futilely to outrun an approaching plane.

The overarching situation involves the C.I.A.  Leo Carroll is fantastic in the short-but-powerful role of The Professor.  We sense a Donald Rumsfeld sort of character.  Polite.  Gentlemanly.  But certainly a man of the cloth in the dark arts.  It is perhaps fitting that we end up atop Mount Rushmore…that gargantuan creation of Gutzon Borglum (himself a mysterious if not shadowy personage).

But all of these methods merely attempt to approach what can be summed up only as essential cinematic viewing.  In Hitchcock here we find an apex of craftsmanship and imagination.  Not even the masterful performance of Grant can usurp the controlling role of our auteur.  It is a slippery slope.  Had the film failed to deliver; failed to age well, it would have been Hitchcock’s fault.  Somehow this greatest of all directors managed to make all the elements work together in a dramatic harmony of color.  Cinema is the closest we come to a truly synesthetic art.  When films start to differentiate themselves by their smells and the ways they literally touch us, we will have tasted the future.  For now, pinnacles such as North by Northwest have yet to be surpassed.

 

-PD

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The Revenge of the Pink Panther [1978)

It all starts to blur together.  After the masterful return to form in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, this film fails to distinguish itself from the series.  There are some amazing moments.  True.  But perhaps it would have behooved the creators to have set the entire film in Hong Kong rather than merely the last portion.

The saving grace of the Bond series from Eon Productions is that, though formulaic, one can differentiate one film from another (more or less) by the location shooting.  The original Pink Panther movie boded well for just such expectations by having Clouseau go off to Cortina d’Ampezzo for a postcard background.  When one thinks of Bond, we can picture Jamaica (Dr. No), Turkey (From Russia With Love), Japan (You Only Live Twice) and Switzerland (particularly On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but also Goldfinger) to name just a few.  Such differentiation was sorely lacking in this parallel string of sequels.

Back to the film at hand:  it is not at all bad.  It just becomes difficult to tell it apart from the preceding four installments (not including 1968’s Inspector Clouseau which featured Alan Arkin rather than Sellers).  [I suppose Arkin is the Lazenby of this franchise.]

There are some nuggets in this film–some “set pieces” which make it wonderful viewing in spite of its meta-laziness.  When Sellers manages to kill Ed Parker…that’s surely a laugher.  But what follows is even better.  As Clouseau has the floor sawn from beneath him, we once again enter a surreal world of Sellers vs. Kwouk (which Blake Edwards had begun to capture ever more rivetingly in the preceding two films).  Sellers ends up largely covered in blue paint (which also splatters on the walls of the apartment beneath his…a half-finished renovation) and the whole thing begs the question as to whether Sellers and the creators of this film were versed in the history of Yves Klein.  Klein, of course, in addition to “patenting” a particular shade of blue (International Klein Blue) was also a martial arts enthusiast (becoming a master of judo at age 25).  And.  He was, of course, thoroughly French.

Dyan Cannon looked lovely in this film and the scene with Sellers by the fireplace is both charming and hilarious (in a Samuel Beckett sort of way).  Sellers as Godfather Scallini presages the Austin Powers “fat suit” antics of Mike Myers.  Finally, the medal presentation at the end of the film is befitting for the aging Sellers:  a grand exit from the series proper.  [One last trio of antics…the faulty sword, the pigeon on his gendarme casque, and the thorough unraveling of the French president’s necktie.]

Graham Stark is excellent in yet a third separate role (over the course of the series) as Auguste Balls.  Special notice should also be given to André Maranne who was an iconic face and personality throughout the franchise’s run.

Sellers contributed a magnificent archetype to cinema with his storied presentation of the Clouseau character over the course of these many films.  He is, and always will be, (notwithstanding Casino Royale) the anti-Bond.  Farewell sweet soul.

 

-PD

 

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Diamonds Are Forever [1971)

Goodbye Connery.  Barring an unlikely return to the character after the age of 84, this would seem to be the last of the Eon Productions’ series of Bond films to feature the original actor.  I am holding out hope that Connery will team up with fellow octogenarian Jean-Luc Godard and make the 007 picture to end all 007 pictures.  No doubt, it would be a disjointed masterpiece and would deflate the mythical secret agent that Connery grew so tired of playing.  But I’m not holding my breath on the odds.

What we do have is a brilliant movie.  While it’s true that Connery would once more act as Bond in Never Say Never Again, his run in the canon in some ways ends here.  I, for one, think he left on a truly high note.

Jill St. John and Lana Wood are both gorgeous in this film.  Kudos to casting 🙂

Willard Whyte (a thinly-veiled depiction of Howard Hughes) was actually made possible by Mr. Hughes himself.  Howard was friends with producer Albert Broccoli.  Hughes’ pull certainly came in handy for the location-filming in Vegas.

Speaking of pull…Sidney (the socks make the man) Korshak has his imprint on this film in several ways.  I would imagine his assistance in Las Vegas was immeasurable.  He also just so happened to represent St. John.  What luck! 😉

Some viewers might give pause (variously) at the first appearance of Plenty O’Toole (Wood).  She does make quite a splash.

Guy Hamilton did another fine job as director (previously doing Goldfinger in the series).  Seems Hrundi V. Bakshi was “on set” during the oil rig scene.  And though the explosives went off prematurely, there were a couple of cameras rolling. (whew)

How can one object to a film that basically starts with the actual Miss World 1953 being strangled topless with her own bikini?  Yes, it was a “bit part” for Denise Perrier, but pithy.  Pity about the PG version.

Students of architecture will appreciate the Slumber Mortuary with its lozenge-shaped stained-glass window.  Good taste is timeless.

And phooey regarding continuity!  Car on two wheels passenger side entering the alley?  Car on two wheels driver’s side exiting the alley?  That is the mystery of cinema.  Throw in some jump-cuts and you have Breathless. 🙂

 

-PD

 

 

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