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Hanna [2011)

This is quite possibly the best film I’ve ever seen.  Once or twice every generation an actress comes along who is well beyond all the rest.  That actress, for this generation, is Saoirse Ronan.  I would not have come by this film were it not for her turn in The Grand Budapest Hotel.  That film is likewise one of the best I’ve ever seen.  This one is better.  Why?  Because Miss Ronan is allowed to show a much wider array of her skills.

I had previously thought Wes Anderson a modest director until his most recent aforementioned film.  The Grand Budapest Hotel is his first great, timeless piece of cinema.  The key (though it may go unnoticed by many) is Saoirse.  The name Joe Wright meant nothing to me prior to tonight.  I must congratulate him on a near-perfect movie.

Yes, this is a movie.  And a film.  There is a difference.  Movies are entertainment.  Films are cinema.  Guy Hamilton proved in The Man with the Golden Gun that a movie could also be a film.

Mr. Wright’s film benefits from an anti-fascist plot which would do the opponents of Operation Gladio and other black ops proud.  I count myself among their number.

Hanna is a genetically-modified human…a prototype super-soldier.  Cate Blanchett plays her role so wonderfully (like James Mason in NXNW) that we wonder if there is a heart beating at all under there.  Ms. Blanchett portrays the CIA officer who helmed the genetic research which spawned Hanna.  To call her icy would be an understatement.  She registers at absolute zero.

The beauty of this story is when its’ arc arrives at the golden mean:  the moment Hanna first hears music.  To be precise, it is the moment when she equates music with the encyclopedic definition she learned as a quasi “wild child” in the Finnish arctic.  Funny how a comparison can be made to François Truffaut and the director in question is not Anderson (whose style most resembles the sentimentality of Truffaut), but Wright.  The link is L’Enfant sauvage from 1970.  Anderson, for his part, found the golden mean in The Grand Budapest Hotel by way of Saoirse Ronan as well.  That moment is the magical kaleidoscopic close-up of her angelic face aboard a merry-go-round.

Both Hanna and The Grand Budapest Hotel straddle a line which would have made Hitchcock proud.  In the latter, Mendl’s pastries are all the sweeter for scenes such as the one in which Jeff Goldblum loses four of his fingers.  In the former, the PG-13 rating is pushed to the max with gruesome deaths (such as Knepfler’s topsy-turvy demise à la Saint Sebastian…particularly as depicted by Odilon Redon), yet there is an innocence and panache to the whole affair.  Credit Wright with knowing how to offset the sheer terror of the premise with essential throwaway aspects such as the camper-van family (who, by the way, do a lovely rendition of Bowie’s “Kooks” from Hunky Dory).  The whole juxtaposition is positively Beethovenian.  And none of it would have been possible without the Leitmotiv and soul of this film:  Saoirse Ronan.  She did not, as it turns out, miss MY heart.  The Academy just missed its best actress.  I have a feeling her coup de grâce is yet to come.

 

-PD

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The Spy Who Loved Me [1977)

I hate to be a downer, but this one just doesn’t cut it.  It is as bad as You Only Live Twice.  It even shares the same essential plot as that clunker.  The common theme between these two films is the director:  Lewis Gilbert.  The sad conclusion is that Gilbert did not have the auteurist touch of Guy Hamilton or Terence Young.

At least there’s the ski jump (with Union Jack parachute).  At least Jaws (Richard Kiel) is magnificently creepy.  At least there is Barbara Bach (though her acting doesn’t register as highly as her physique).  Curd Jürgens is a snoozer villain.  Don Knotts might have been scarier.

Perhaps the best part of the movie is the song.  It is genuinely great!  “Nobody Does It Better” was written by Marvin Hamlisch and sung by Carly Simon.  Sadly, it’s all down hill from the opening credits.

 

-PD

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Rear Window [1954)

Before there was Facebook, there was Rear Window.  It was (and remains) Alfred Hitchcock’s most perfect film.  In it we find “the gaze”…that phenomenon of lovers transposed to the art of memory, which is to say, cinema.

The telephoto lens of our protagonist is fitted to a camera, but he snaps no pictures during the entirety of our film.  Nor does he film what he sees onto reels to later exploit the phi phenomenon. His gaze leads directly to his mind…and the events he witnesses are recorded into his memory.

Rear Window is really a film about film–self-referential cinema.  It is no wonder that Jean-Luc Godard chose to feature images of Jimmy Stewart with the long lens in his magnum opus Histoire(s) du cinéma.  Rear Window is pure cinema.

The further significance is that Stewart’s character L.B. Jeffries embodies the conscience of Hollywood.  Indeed, in this case we are the ones watching the watcher (to paraphrase Juvenal).  But the essential detail is that Jeffries is making a movie in his head…and we are watching him make it.  It is documentary.  He is a news photographer who is laid up in a wheelchair during a summer heat wave because he had gotten a little too cavalier on assignment from his magazine.  But the true artist never stops working.

We enter the realm of Flaherty and the murky waters of fiction vs. reality–staged spectacle vs. actualités.  This is a film about the pure process of motion pictures.  The saving grace (other than the breathtaking Grace Kelly) is that the story is as airtight as an alibi.  Rear Window is endlessly watchable because of this marriage between the abstract (which may, in many cases, be “felt” only intuitively) and the spectacular. 

Before Facebook, there were rear windows.  After Facebook, there will remain Rear Window.

 

-PD

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Being There [1979)

The battery is dying.  I may not be able to finish.  I liked watching this movie.  Very much.  Peter was never better.  When I was a boy I didn’t understand.  I understand.  A movie is like a garden.  The light comes and goes.  The sun hides.  There are clouds.  I like to watch the light.

I miss Peter.  He did a very good job acting in this movie.  I like movies.

Shirley was beautiful.  I don’t think she looked old.  She looked very beautiful.

Maybe it is best to talk only about this movie.  I liked the static.  The screen looked like Christmas Eve.  Eve.  Eve was beautiful.  Peter was funny.  I think it is his best performance.  I hope they will not close up the movie theater when he is gone.  If I remember him, then he is not gone.

You tell that honky…ass whole, I won’t take…from no Western Union manager…or I’ll cut his ass.

If you see Raphael, please tell him.

I like to watch movies.  Yes.

 

-PD

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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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