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Mr. Majestyk [1974)

Charles Bronson was perhaps the best portrayer of the tough guy in cinema history.  This film, released the year before his excellent turn in Hard Times, was one of two Bronson flicks from ’74 (the other being the seminal Death Wish).  Director Richard Fleischer had previously helmed such films as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Fantastic Voyage, Dr. Doolittle, and Tora! Tora! Tora!  His film Soylent Green was released the year before Mr. Majestyk.

Our film takes place in rural Colorado where Bronson is a watermelon farmer.  We see Charles flex his tough guy skills early when he deftly disarms an aggressor and uses the butt of the shotgun to inflict (one would imagine) extreme pain to said punk’s groin region.  Tough without a gun…  Raymond Chandler immortalized Humphrey Bogart with those words and they are equally applicable here.  This is what many love about America.  Once upon a time the United States stood for righteous force–defensive force.  In this first fight of the film Bronson shoots no one.  He teaches a lesson.  Don’t play with me or you might get hurt.  It is admirable and lovable.

Even before this episode, we see Bronson stand up for the rights of migrant laborers at a gas station.  Bronson is the man in black (though he be clad in denim).  This is the truly-just justice about which Johnny Cash sang.

But all is not well in Edna, Colorado.  I can’t seem to locate such a town in modern day CO, but there is in fact an Edna Mine in Summit County.  The county seat, Breckenridge, is about 80 miles from Denver so this may be in fact the region ostensibly depicted in the film.

The police in Edna haul Bronson in for assaulting the man who accosted him with a shotgun.  One wonders whether perhaps the assailant (named Kopas) was a blood relative of the law enforcer in question.  The whole thing was over a labor dispute.  Kopas was trying to angle in on the labor market by coercing Bronson to hire a team of inexperienced watermelon pickers.  Bronson preferred to go with the experienced migrants he’d already hired.

As Bronson is languishing in jail, his ripe watermelon crop is going untended.  This is his livelihood at stake.  One sees a parallel to the character Charles played in Hard Times…a regular guy (both, incidentally, sporting newsboy caps).  We even see our workingman with his stock ’70s stache in this movie.

In the course of his incarceration, he becomes acquainted with a rather unsavory fellow named Renda.  Renda is a hitman.  As the prisoners are being transferred (somewhere) Renda’s organized crime buddies attempt to bust him out by hijacking the police caravan.  In the ensuing melee, Bronson and Renda make off in the prison bus.  Renda had been the only handcuffed prisoner (no doubt owing to a murder charge).

I won’t give away too much of the plot.  [N.B. The film was actually shot in Fremont and Otero counties.]

Perhaps it’s not the best movie ever made, but it further convinces me of Bronson’s talent.  Fleischer would go on to direct Conan the Destroyer (1984) starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

One final thought…  Bronson eventually blasts a few guys with hunting rifles, but not until the situation is inevitable.  I admire the message of restraint.  Charles’ character is not out to kick anyone’s ass…he just wants to do his job:  honest work.  He doesn’t go looking for trouble, but when trouble comes after him he is prepared.  Here’s to Charles Bronson:  a great actor and a tough cookie!

 

-PD

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4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile [2007)

This is “the big one” of the Romanian New Wave.  Winner of the Palme d’Or, it was director Cristian Mungiu’s second feature film.  The overriding perspective is radically and beautifully feminist (I say that as a man not well-versed in feminist literature or theory).  Over the course of 113 minutes we see the lengths to which friends go for one another.  In this case, the generosity is mostly one-way.

Anamaria Marinca gives one of the finest performances in cinematic history as Otilia.  It is a much pithier version of Dorotheea Petre’s role in The Way I Spent the End of the World.  What these two actresses bring to the screen is a representation of the female in diametric opposition to the typical young American woman.  These characters are not stylish, nor selfish.  They are not shallow.  Their lives are hard and I can relate to that.  These actresses make me fall in love with their characters.

Marinca embodies her role to a degree which is beyond extraordinary.  Mungiu’s direction is fantastic, but Marinca makes the whole thing possible through her onscreen dedication.  This is certainly one of the finest films ever made and it thankfully sheds light not only on the little-known Romanian film industry, but also on the harrowing tribulations of being female.

This is a pinnacle of synergy…where acting perfection and directorial excellence come together.  I simply cannot do this film justice…no matter how many words I throw at the page.

-PD

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The Farmer’s Wife [1928)

This is a painful cinematic experience.  It takes a certain amount of masochism for all but the most rabid of Hitchcock fans to sit through this 129-minute snoozer.  But old Alfred was the auteur of auteurs and he manages to make even this vapid storyline come to life…occasionally.

Samuel Sweetland

might just be

the most inept

womanizer

in the history

of cinema.

The good farmer

would really be

out of luck

in today’s world.

His heavy-handed,

condescending ways

didn’t even fly

in 1928!  Yet,

there is the

good, sweet Lillian Hall-Davis

who sees something

in her boss.

Hall-Davis,

who plays the

housekeeper Minta,

is charming throughout

this sleeper

(and I mean sleeper).

Mercifully,

the comic relief

of Gordon Harker

makes the whole thing

bearable.

Harker plays

the handyman

Churdles Ash.

With his bent,

crushed hat

perched perilously

atop his head,

Harker is the tired,

nihilistic voice

of humor

throughout

(like a slapstick Louis-Ferdinand Céline).

Of particular note is the burgeoning style of Hitchcock and his archetypal use of images.  The two cocker spaniels at the beginning of the film are a cute example of a director truly using pictures to tell a story.  Likewise notable is the relative scarcity of intertitles.

Truly, one must have the intestinal fortitude of a François Truffaut to wade through this unending, Chaucerian version of motion pictures.  Not recommended unless you typically watch a silent film every. single. day.  Murnau and Dreyer were light years beyond this kind of film making.

-PD

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Bullet to the Head [2012)

I’m in this one.  Just had to get that out of the way up front. 

For some reason I didn’t expect this film to be particularly great, but it is surprisingly awesome.  Credit director Walter Hill with coaxing an excellent performance out of the singularly talented Sylvester Stallone. 

My biggest beef with this flick is the editing.  It seems someone in the corporate hierarchy wanted the whole thing to resemble CSI:  Miami.  Not exactly my notion of cinema.  I suppose it was an effort to relate to audiences who live for their favorite TV shows.  Television mise-en-scène these days is generally deplorable…revolting…you get the picture. 

Aside from that one concession, this is a thoroughly enjoyable film.  Sure, Sung Kang is pretty stiff here and there in the delivery of his lines, but his character is generally an automaton anyway (until his redeeming moment near film’s end). 

Sarah Shahi is fantastic as Stallone’s daughter.  Stallone is excellent and droll throughout…like Charles Bronson or Humphrey Bogart.  His performance really is an astounding feat for someone his age. 

In closing, don’t expect a nouvelle vague masterpiece here.  You will be sorely disappointed.  But if you watch this with an open mind you might just end up agreeing with me that Walter Hill (like Guy Hamilton) is an overlooked auteur. 

-PD

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Hard Times [1975)

Pauline Kael may have written about this film, but ultimately Susan Sontag’s recognition of Godard’s Vivre sa vie is more important to my philosophy of film criticism.  I mention Kael because she certainly championed director Walter Hill and for that I commend her.  I am even inclined to gravitate towards Andrew Sarris instead of Kael (though both seem mostly inconsequential to my understanding of cinema).  I eye aye. 

Let this suffice to lay the groundwork for what is auteur Walt Hill’s first film.  I have a soft spot in my heart for Mr. Hill because I was fortunate enough to once work with him.  He shook my hand and looked at me with a grandfatherly gaze of transference (or so it seemed).  Never had I been surrounded by Panavision cameras and the whole thing really made an impression on me, but the biggest impression was made by Hill’s kindness.

So I am unequivocally biased as concerns his oeuvre.  That said, this film isn’t perfect.  The script girl missed a big anachronism right off the bat:  an electric diesel locomotive.  Oops.  Set in the Great Depression, there are plenty of steam trains in this period piece, but the first train engine we see hadn’t yet been invented.  I credit my father with the keen eye (and rely on his expertise as a lifetime railroad man).

Also bad is James Coburn.  I LOVE James Coburn, but he is not particularly good in this flick.  I will mention The Carey Treatment till my dying breath as an example of his depth as an actor (especially when juxtaposed with his equally brilliant portrayal of Derek Flint).  Not sure what the problem was.  Perhaps he played the character in question just as Hill wanted, but it is really not a great use of his talents. 

Now for the good news.  Charles Bronson is magnificent in what is really an astounding picture for a first-time director.  Furthermore, we see the New Orleans which Hill would return to in Bullet to the Head (2012).  The two films even share a finale:  a face-off in a cavernous warehouse. 

Hill’s direction of the taciturn Bronson makes the whole thing a terse masterpiece.  As befits its concision of expression, I shall stop here.  Bravo Mr. Hill!

-PD

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Our Man Flint [1966)

Derek Flint, the superspy with four girlfriends who picks up a fifth during the course of this film, has the most interesting bed in film history.  In many ways, he’s infinitely more interesting than James Bond.  Of course it’s all a joke, right?  Well, sort of.  It’s not actually that much more far-fetched than the Bond series.  In fact, we simply have a superspy whose life makes explicit everything inferred by the exciting Mr. Bond.  To be sure, there is not much inferred in the Bond series (save sexual inferences).

Director Daniel Mann had helmed BUtterfield 8 in 1960 which starred Elizabeth Taylor.  His filmography otherwise is not really a stunning list to read, but his direction here is fine indeed.  He gets a lot of help from his lead star James Coburn.  In 1960 Coburn was one of The Magnificent Seven.  Coburn was a very capable actor (as evinced in the little-known Blake Edwards film The Carey Treatment).

But yes, this is a spy spoof in the strictest sense.  Instead of S.P.E.C.T.R.E., we get Z.O.W.I.E. (or, actually, for the bad guys, Galaxy).  Funny that an organization wielding power through controlling worldwide weather should make its first assassination attempt on our hero by using a harp (or is it a HAARP?).

The whole bouillabaisse section is infinitely hilarious.  Like a monk through extreme concentration, Flint also places himself in suspended animation twice during the film.  The second time he does so to play dead (quite successfully) which allows for his escape once his watch tickles him back to consciousness.  Flint knows every trick in the book…from Shaolin to spetsnaz.

Gila Golan is excellent as (you guessed it) Gila.

The presidential ringtone (3 x 5) is a catchy, kitsch motif throughout the whole production.  The music in general (by Jerry Goldsmith) is excellent.

If you like James Bond films, you probably have a sense of humor.  If you can stomach the scattershot Casino Royale (1967), this will seem like the greatest film ever made.  It really is a joyful little classic.

 

-PD

 

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The Life and Death of Peter Sellers [2004)

The kid stays in the picture.  Underestimated.  Geoffrey Rush does justice to cinema’s greatest anti-hero:  bumbling, fumbling Peter Sellers.  This is the capstone to Sellers-study.  Listen to his four EMI albums.  Search in vain for those early British films.  Perhaps you will find them.  It’s really no fun to order everything from Amazon.  Takes the whole sociological aspect out of it.  Go into the marketplace with your agoraphobia and see how the lesser-known films are scant on the shelves.  Even the shelves are scant.  Soon I will download Peter Sellers’ personality directly to my brain.

As this film makes clear, Sellers had no personality of his own.  Perhaps.

Charlize Theron makes as convincing a Britt Ekland as Rush does a Sellers.  Very.  Emily Watson is superb as Peter’s first wife Anne.  John Lithgow gives the best performance I’ve ever seen him do as director Blake Edwards.  Miriam Margolyes is striking as Sellers’ mother Peg.  Peter Vaughn does a tremendous job as Sellers’ father.

There are so many truly touching scenes in this biopic.  Tears of a clown.

Sonia Aquino was perfectly cast as Sophia Loren and she gives off just the right lust factor to make us feel what Peter must have been feeling.  He was insane.  He was never cut out for fame.  He was ill-prepared.  Like Andy Kaufman.

Perhaps the most pithy scene is when Sellers settles for shagging Sopia’s stand-in.  We pity him.  We despise him.  We laugh.  We cry.

The kid stayed in the picture.  Fat, homely Peter of The Goon Show.  He bared his teeth and sunk them into the arm of show business.  He bit the hand that fed.  He paid a heavy price for fame.  It is like the Leonard Cohen song “Came So Far for Beauty”…my favorite song ever written.  It is the story of all movie stars.  Godard was infinitely deft to include this song in Histoire(s) du cinéma.

Stanley Tucci hits just the right notes in portraying Stanley Kubrick.  But the real auteur here is Stephen Hopkins.  He made one of the best, most touching, genius films I have ever seen.  Emotion pours from every splice; every joint of montage.  May he be given many more projects as worthy of his talent as this.

One last note.  Geoffrey Rush does his best acting ever in this film.  Lithgow was right when he said that.  We will be forever indebted to the depths which Rush plumbed to show a true Hollywood story worth telling.

 

-PD

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Action in the North Atlantic [1943)

Where to start…  This is a time capsule from another world and, most of all, a damn good film.  It might be argued that this picture proves a certain fallibility of the French auteur theory, but only insofar as director Lloyd Bacon never having been canonized like, for instance, Howard Hawks.  Sure…this is a propaganda film, but it’s hard to argue with gentle optimism.  We were even allies with Russia (Soviet Union) back then!

I hadn’t seen a Raymond Massey performance in a long while and it was good to remember his excellent acting skills.  Bogart is great the whole way through, but what else would you expect?  Ruth Gordon does a fine job in her small role as Massey’s wife.  Not many female roles here as the majority of the film is at sea during wartime (in the 1940s).  Julie Bishop is likewise lovely as Bogart’s new bride (though we see very little of her too).

The ensemble acting is really remarkable and vivid…particularly aboard the oil tanker at the start of the film.  Dane Clark has a strange role–a sort of “doubting Thomas” who finally sees the light of patriotism.  Truly, this film is not just American propaganda, but also proto United Nations perception management.  But like I said, this was a different age and the whole thing comes off as quite the opposite of heavy-handed.

Alan Hale, Sr. is pretty hilarious the whole way through as O’Hara:  the guy who never shuts up.  To be fair, none of these salty dogs ever shut up.  Only Bogart and Massey retain any sense of distinguished cool.

Of particular note are the action sequences.  What a huge undertaking!  This is truly a movie which gives a glimmer as to the breadth at issue in WWII.  The aerial shots of the maritime convoy are astounding!  Amid all of this bombast I failed to notice Robert Mitchum’s one line appearance, but if Wikipedia claims it’s so then it must be.  Ha!

The specific topic of recruitment (as per propaganda) is for the U.S. Merchant Marine and their Academy.  Like I said, none of it is too terribly offensive to logical thought.  Of particular interest is the dialogue of the German U-boats.  All of it is in German and without subtitles.  We also hear different tongues throughout the film (such as Russian).  No “foreign” character is ever made to speak English.

Speaking of mixed messages…Wikipedia also credits Raoul Walsh and Byron Haskin with directing this film.  Now what the heck is that all about?  No wonder Lloyd got the auteurist shaft!

 

-PD

 

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Histoire)s[ du cinema 2a

Imitation of life.  Is it normal and logical that the film industry be compared to “the industry of death”???  All stories.  One history.  The cinema substitutes for our gaze a world which harmonizes.  All the stories to come.  All the stories that have been.

Raptors of greed.  Godard begins chapter 2a of his greatest work by telling us that the film industry was first sold to the industry of death.  Early on there were plenty of babies being fed and flowers growing, but where were the bursts of machine gun fire?  Likewise, cinematography could have been invented in color.  Color photography existed, but at the beginning of the 20th century it was decided that black and white would be the technique used to reproduce life on the screen.

Morality was still strong says Godard.  But not for long.  Nevertheless, cinematography began with the colors of mourning:  black and white.

Godard dedicates this episodic chapter first of all to Armand J. Cauliez.  There is scant info on this person, but he seems to have been a writer on film (having authored books on Tati and Renoir).  The other dedicatee is Santiago Álvarez (a Cuban filmmaker).

The historian must be precise.  This is his job.  Cinema was the art of the 20th century, but it was really a 19th century art which was “resolved” in the 20th.  From Oscar Wilde to the Academy’s Oscars…

We see a shot from Pasolini’s Salò and another from Tabu by Murnau and Flaherty.  We see Godard himself as an actor in his own film King Lear and a shot of Jerry Lewis from The Nutty Professor.  Godard seems to be trying to tell his story in order to tell the story of cinema.  We are placed in the milieu which gave birth to not only JLG as a filmmaker, but also to Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette and Rohmer.

For the historian of literature starts with Homer and progresses to Cervantes and on to Joyce.  Godard seems to be trying to single out the films which are truly foundational to cinema, but he likewise seems to infer that there are very few.  Few at the beginning?  Few of true worth?  Few that have not been lost?

Truly, Godard gives us the recounting of a passion to create.  Film was his only way of completing himself.  We could steep ourselves in the same books as the master…Goethe, etc.  We can trace the art references…Klimt, etc.  Diderot, Baudelaire, Malraux, Truffaut, Edgar Poe, Faulkner, Edgar Ulmer, Howard Hawks…

What is certain is that Godard values the history of cinema over all other histories, “because it projects itself.”  It is a neat trick which he singles out.

The analogy is Jean-Victor Poncelet…an officer in Napoleon’s army in a prison in Moscow.  Poncelet reconstructed the treatise of geometric findings which he had learned from Monge and Carnot:  the properties of projection of figures.  Published in 1822, the general method of the principle of projection in the demonstration utilized by Desargues to understand the properties of the circle on the mystical cones and put to use by Pascal…  Make sense?  In other words, “your breasts are the only that I love.”  Perhaps.

Back to our French prisoner facing a Russian wall…it is the mechanical application of an idea…for projecting figures on a screen…practically, the cinematic projector.

Godard never stopped learning.  He was always a child with his stamps and maps and his universe has always remained vast.  By lamplight, the world is big.  In memory, small…  In reading and studying we find amazing intricacies and ramifications.  Godard’s is truly a mind on fire.

Consider the film Night of the Hunter.  It was the only film which Charles Laughton directed by himself.  Godard relates to the children who float down the river, “singing lullabies to our infinity.”  Some lullabies are joyous while others are horrors. It may depend on the country.

Again with Klimt…and Fred Astaire in Band Wagon.  Cinema is a woman.  We drown in the eyes of movie stars.  And directors are drunk on space and light.

Is that Cyd Charisse?  Again Klimt…and James Dean.  We want to journey…and fill the boredom with joy.  Enjoy.  The children of Marx and Coca-Cola.  We want to enjoy the boredom of our prisons.  We want to pass on our spirits.  It’s all true says Orson Welles.

Ahh, boredom…  We must remember the cautions of Baudelaire.  And remember Bresson…simplicity.  Yes, the aleatory clouds will always be more mysteriously attractive than the richest city or the largest country.

Chaplin behind a camera.  Laurel and Hardy.  We are those of childish mind.  Painted nails.  The fatal beauty of Snow White.  A little poem by Brecht.  We enter Debord territory when pondering the television.  The origin of the world as updated by Duchamp.  The fatal shell. Orbs of obus.  The boring spectacle of immortal sin.  The image which lies.

An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.  Cinema.  Raise the anchor…this country bores us.

à suivre

-PD

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Atonement [2007)

English films are, on the whole, dreadfully boring.  I almost didn’t make it past the first 20 minutes, but I’m very glad I did.  Joe Wright has the directorial ability to make even this vapid setting come to life…eventually.

My whole reason for watching was to see another Saoirse Ronan film.  She had a very difficult role here…and not, one would imagine, an entirely pleasant one.  Funny how a film can hinge on a single word…that word, for this film, being cunt.

That joke isn’t funny anymore to our protagonist Robbie Turner.  In an episode which bears a striking resemblance to Godard’s “Montparnasse-Levallois” from the anthology film Paris vu par… (itself inspired by a Giraudoux story circa 1910), Robbie sends the wrong letter–an exasperated version which he never meant to see the light of day.  Not only is it sent, it is read by Saoirse’s young character before she passes it on to her older sister Cecilia.

When Saoirse catches Robbie and Cecilia having sex, she is convinced that Robbie is indeed a sex maniac.  Chalk all this up to the sexually repressive remnants of a Victorian age not long past.  The year, after all, is 1935.

I won’t give you a blow by blow, but the young girl’s misinterpretation of events (she takes the act of sex which she walked in on as an attack though it was just a passionate moment) leads her to circumstantially link Robbie to a child’s rape.  The actual rapist gets away unscathed while Robbie takes the blame and spends four years in prison.  His only option arises when WWII starts and he can decide to stay in prison or join the military.

As Robbie chooses the latter, we see some fantastic filmmaking from Wright.  The most haunting is the scene on the beach at Dunkirk where retreating British soldiers have massed.  I have seen few shots as complete in their cinematic poetry as the wrecked beach and army with a Ferris wheel spinning langourously behind them.

Another moment of pure film poetry comes when the grown up Saoirse (played wonderfully by Romola Garai) floats across a hospital ward to the strains of Debussy’s Clair de lune.  Having just watched a French soldier die from a horrible head wound, she is growing up and soon will realize that she had been wrong about Robbie.  She is tipped off to the latter when she visits a movie theater and sees in a newsreel that the actual rapist (owner of a chocolate factory) had strangely married the sexually abused girl (Lola).  Briony (Saoirse’s character, but now played by Garai) deduces the truth in remembering that the chocolatier (Benedict Cumberbatch) had been at the party where the incident occurred.  Whether Briony now sees him clearly in her memory for the first time (being too young to register the shock) or whether she had lied about the guilty party is not at all clear to me.  It could be inferred that she pinned the crime on Robbie out of jealousy because, as we learn more fully, she had been in love with him (though she was just 13).

James McAvoy is wonderful, Keira Knightley divine and Vanessa Redgrave excellent (though her section of the film is clearly derivative of Titanic), but the true credit for a veritable piece of cinema goes to Joe Wright.  It’s not as good as Hanna, but it’s nice to know that his versatility is breathtaking.

 

-PD

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