Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse [1933)

This might be the one great key of the 20th century.

The skeleton key, so to speak.

We have one of the great directors of all time (Fritz Lang) laying out the operational details of criminal conspiracies.

But perhaps even more, we have the fine line between genius and madness which Hitler was beginning to toe.

It is important to note that Hitler was synonymous with the Nazi party.

He was their God, so to speak.

And yet it seems to me that Hitler was not particularly bright.

A fiery orator? No doubt.

But not really a criminal mastermind.

No. There were others.

Things were just getting going in 1933.

We…

become enthralled by intellect.

As our minds are stimulated, we sometimes lose track of any ethical grounding.

Which is to say, intellectuals are the most dangerous.

I would like to fancy myself an intellectual, but I will let the Order decide that.

Yes, dear friends…there is no other way to put it.

Fritz Lang, the prophet, is clearly delineating a criminal Order which would come to rule the world in the 20th century.

His message is far-reaching.

The methods outlined in Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse are perhaps most applicable today.

The 21st century (which began on 9/11/01).

Terror for the sake of terror.

Hidden-hand machinations.

The man behind the curtain.

It is no small detail.

Every detail drives Otto Wernicke to the brink of madness.

He is the portly J. Edgar of this affair.

In Wernicke’s case, his opposition are mad geniuses.

Literally mad.

Goethes of crime.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge sums up the problem.

Knowledge is inextricable from high-level criminal insanity.

Dr. Mabuse has studied too much.

And so he spools out reams of handwritten blather.

He reexamines language.

Hinting at post-structuralism.

Language, year 0.

Whirls and whorls and squiggles.

And slowly the comatose “brains” of the operation finds himself a new body.

Each one well-paid. And each compartmentalized in their knowledge.

We must come back to Max Weber for this one.

A couple of times the word. simuliert.

The prospect.

That he could be faking it.

Madness. To avoid the punishment he deserved.

But it seems rather that the psychiatrists have been infinitely engrossed in the case histories of their patients. [Which is to say in their patients themselves.]

The psychiatrists have the secrets of the 20th century.

And the science rolls on.

On the one hand, we have Ewen Cameron of Project MKUltra.

On the other we have Dr. Steve Pieczenik.

And it is at this point which we need to discuss the counterintelligence apparatus of the Order: 2-B.

It’s not Abteilung. Something different. Less significant. But tasked with the dirty work. The cleanup.

Mord. Murder. Nipping the stragglers. There’s no leaving the Order.

And so is it any wonder that Goebbels (or Garbage, as Charlie Chaplin rechristened him) had Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse banned in Germany?

Why?

Because it gave away all the secrets.

The secrets of control. Each level glued together by terror.

And the controlled chaos. The buildup of addictions. The incredibly farsighted chess game of our conspirators.

The reign of crime. A lusty pronunciation.

Vs. a homicide detective wont to sing strains of Die Walküre here and there.

Germany split in two.

Soon enough.

And something as simple as a love letter.

When one least expects it.

Few films deserve the label masterpiece quite like this one.

-PD

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Vampyr [1932)

I come to you from the darkest place.

Where all hope has been extinguished.

A maze of study and revelation.

Barely a word here spoken.

Do not give me your attention.

I am not the first person.

You wander in this dream.

He comes to know the horror.

Her and her alone.

Climb climb climb from the mist of history.

Give up your secrets to the light.

Vampyr, Kryptos, Tutankhamun.

IQLUSION. 1Q84.

gravity’s rainbow. CERN.

In a Glass Darkly. Published in Ireland. 1872.

Sheridan Le Fanu. Dublin.

Does Langley know about this?

Always candles. Always lighting candles.

NYPVTT. Berlin.

Nicolas de Gunzberg as Julian West as Allan Gray. Got it?

MZFPK. We’re losing time quickly.

At an even pace.

Speeding towards the hour.

As slowly as we’ve ever been.

William H. Webster. The only person to have ever headed both the CIA and the FBI.

Courtempierre. Loiret.

Ah! The review…

As if waking from a dream.

Or falling back into a nightmare.

Placing one foot in front of the other.

Rena Mandel could have come straight from Nosferatu.

Like Greta Schröder. 1922. 1932.

Not flapper like Frances Dade. Blonde on blonde. Helen Chandler.

UFA wanted Dracula to come out first.

A strange tactic.

And then utter failure.

But Sybille Schmitz has that Nazi jawline. Like Leni Riefenstahl.

Spoonsful of tea for a dying man.

Candles peer in through the glass.

And the camera stares upwards…at the swaying trees.

It is like Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.

To be opened after my death.

Sealed in wax thrice.

Submission is the only slow number.

Mid-tempo. A revelation. Talisman.

A crooked doctor. And you’re giving blood.

They’re putting you on statins.

The drug companies will pay. And general practitioners will have impunity whoring for big pharma.

A view to a kill.

Berlin. Surrounded by East Germany.

Mengenlehreuhr. Yale.

Ooga booga.

Buried alive in the blues.

Come spend a life in Texas.

With no one.

Come be abandoned in Texas.

Not even on the island.

Information warfare.

He is getting his message out desperately.

Franz Liszt as Marguerite Chopin.

No comment from Gounod.

Walpurgisnacht.

Nerval translated 1828.

Gretchen. Margaret. Marguerite.

Ettersberg. Buchenwald.

We see why Godard became suspicious.

Because all but the Dutch declined Resnais’ solicitation for holocaust footage.

Inside the camps.

During the war.

By the most technologically-advanced civilization in terms of film production.

Obsessive-compulsive documenters of expenditures.

The problem with the gas chambers.

Sybille Schmitz looks like a raving lunatic.

The ecstasy of Stockholm syndrome. A bank. Those doe eyes and bearded hippie among the safe-deposit boxes.

The Goethe Oak at Buchenwald. THE Goethe Oak? George Washington slept here.

The Goethe Oak bombed by the Allies.

Now a concrete stump thanks to the DDR.

Goethe Eiche.

Janus-faced Germany. Januskopfes Deutschland. Sounds like a load of rubbish to me.

Schiller’s beech tree didn’t bite the dust till 2007.

Death by flour.

I’ll say it again: Wikipedia’s masterpiece. “List of unusual deaths”.

-PD

4 Comments

Nuit et brouillard [1955)

A propaganda film by the very talented Alain Resnais.

I wonder, for instance, if Olga Wormser’s script can be tied to David Wurmser’s script?

Wormser and her husband Henri Michel were “historical advisors” for Nuit et brouillard.

“…elle a été conseillère historique”…a historical counselor.

Like Philip Zelikow, perhaps?

Or like Edward Bernays. The father of “public relations”…author of the 1928 book Propaganda.

But I have totally skipped over dear Mr. Wurmser. Nay, Dr. Wurmser. Mr. Dr. We’ll get to Ms. Dr. soon enough.

David Wurmser would seem related in spirit to Olga Wormser.

One of the principal authors of A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.

Such language…”the Realm”.

Only neoconservatives would dream up the projection of Israeli terror on neighboring countries (and Palestine) in terms fit for The Legend of Zelda.

But let’s not forget Ms. Dr. David’s wife, Meyrav Wurmser.

Also a Ph.D., she’s a doozy.

Why take this tack?

Me.

Because I know too much of Godard.

I know that the greatest film of all time (Histoire(s) du cinema) takes as its focus “the camps”, but also takes issue with history as it has been handed down.

And so let us turn to CODOH.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, CODOH is a “hate group” or some such term.

More terrifying is that, if the SPLC is to be believed, nearly everything is a hate group.

So thanks for nothing, you punks!

(See, now I’m marked too. It’s as easy as that.)

We must remember the yellow stars that the Jews were made to wear during deportation to the camps.

Resnais makes this all very clear.

But Resnais makes a disingenuous oopsy (in the spirit of faux documentarian Robert Flaherty): real color footage of the camps (circa 1955…sappy, but at least with no pretense) is intercut with footage which, in context, seems to be from inside the camps during the war.

Resnais can be slightly forgiven…because (supposedly) no such footage exists.

And so he cobbles together replacement footage.

It would, by necessity, largely be from after the liberation of the camps.

Some is perhaps prewar. Deportation.

Some appears “Hollywood” (i.e. the dramatized becomes real because real footage in this regard is absent).

Even though this film is a classic (a “chestnut”, so to speak), I take issue with the entire thing.

It is not a good film.

The film is neither less vague nor less misleading than my review.

I am vague only because I cannot tell you the exact Hollywood movie.

I cannot tell you exactly what Chris Marker did as an assistant director (though he be naturally drawn to still images [of which several figure prominently within]).

But I can tell you about a very strange and potentially important article on CODOH (that would be, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust).

It is by a “Franco-British…holocaust denier” named Robert Faurisson (as if that is his profession).

“Hi, my name is Robert. Oh, what do I do for a living? Well, a little of this and a little of that. My real bread and butter is in my capacity as a professional holocaust denier, but I also make some dough on the side as an Egyptologist.”

Main point…being “Franco-” (French), his work would be banned in his home country. Yes, denying the Holocaust (which is not at all what he does) is a crime in France. Also in Switzerland too, I think. Surely in Germany, yes?

[N.B. Holocaust denial is illegal in 14 of the 28 EU member countries…plus Switzerland…and, of course, Israel. What a disgusting misuse of police power.]

Why criminalize a thought or opinion?

Because “denying” something as horrible as the Holocaust is somehow evil. However, in today’s legalistic nightmare world, “denial” IS (among other things) a river in Africa.

Denial could be anything.

Five million Jews died instead of six million? Holocaust denier!

Seven million Jews died? Ok, we’ll give you a pass…because you have the right spirit. But remember: 6 million. Six, ok? Six!

And so Faurisson, a very articulate man, tipped many sacred cows in 1980 with his piece “The ‘Problem of the Gas Chambers'” (published in the Journal of Historical Review).

It might be said that Faurisson was the James Tracy of his time. For me, James Tracy is an American hero.

Faurisson, born in England, was an important part of French society and academia until a witch hunt occasioned by the repugnant Gayssot Act (Loi Gayssot).

Faurisson has his doctorate from the Sorbonne. He taught there and in Lyon for 21 years at the collegiate level. But the French are all anti-Semites, right? Dreyfus? Zola? Dream on!

Well, my friends…I’m afraid the “problem with the gas chambers” is also the problem with Resnais’ Nuit et brouillard.

You can judge for yourself here:

http://codoh.com/library/document/868/

Really, that’s what is at issue here. Read and study and judge for yourself.

The Holocaust was an immensely sad event.

But we must know it in detail.

My ignorance is inexcusable.

And, likewise, any misleading, cynical use of ANYONE’S death (from the Holocaust to 9/11) is the worst sin of all: knowingly cashing in…perhaps even for geopolitical chips.

Question what you’ve always known.

Learn everything again for the first time.

Be free to speak.

Exercise thought.

Be humble, but don’t grovel.

Do your best.

One of the few things I can be proud of in America today…Gayssot thoughtcrime is not quite here.

But Sandy Hook is censored by Amazon.com, Inc. (Nobody Died at Sandy Hook).

9/11 coverage was/is a joke in the USA (Public Enemy was right).

And with kudos to Mike Adams of Natural News for noticing, Amazon still sells Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

For the five Ph.D.s and one J.D./Ph.D. who contributed to Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, I salute you!

Allors…d’accord.

-PD

Deutschland im Jahre Null [1948)

The first thing film critics have to get right is the title.

Let me explain a bit.

On my site, I always list a film in its original language (to the best of my ability).

In my opinion, that is the best way of honoring the film.

So far, I have encountered the mild idiosyncrasies of Romanian, Serbo-Croat, Czech, and Polish in addition to the mind-blowing intricacy of Farsi and Japanese.

But with Deutschland im Jahre Null we are seeing a German-language film by an Italian director…sort of.

Italy has a very peculiar tradition concerning voiceovers and direct (or, conversely, indirect) sound. It is an oddity which caught the attention of Godard in his role as film historian.

I cannot give you as erudite an explanation as my hero Jean-Luc, but suffice it to say that foreign (non-Italian) films in Italy have traditionally been overdubbed into Italian. So, in other words, no subtitles.

This is distinct from an American viewer watching a Fellini film. The “American” version (whether on DVD or as a film print in a theater) will be in Italian with subtitles in English. This goes for almost all foreign-language (non-English) films marketed in the United States.

But getting back to Deutschland im Jahre Null… It is similar to the Danish director Carl Th. Dreyer directing the French film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc…with one major difference. Dreyer’s film was a silent one (the only French being the intertitles). Rossellini’s Deutschland im Jahre Null is very much in German. We are hearing German actors speak (exclusively) German dialogue.

What is most interesting is the linguistic lineage of this film. In English, this film is known as:

Germany, Year Zero

Which is quite similar to Rossellini’s preceding masterpiece (in linguistic parallel):

Rome, Open City

To be fair, let’s consider the Italian name (the real name) of Rome, Open City: Roma città aperta. Fine. That is the way I recognize the film. The true name is (in my mind) Roma città aperta.

But with Deutschland im Jahre Null we come to a very strange case. If we do not recognize the primacy of its English title (Germany, Year Zero), and I do not, then we are directed by that great arbiter of cultural legitimacy Wikipedia to consider our options exhausted by being cognizant of the Italian title (Germania anno zero).

What is the message of this omission by English Wikipedia? I believe the message is that Germany was (and continues to be) a null. A zero. A conquered culture.

We see a similar thing in the kowtowing stereotype of conquered Japan. And though Japan might be experiencing some moderate-to-light financial troubles in recent years, Germany is by all accounts the economic powerhouse of continental Europe. Why do I bring economics into the discussion? Because wealthy nations are able to assert themselves.

But let us step back a bit. Wikipedia does have some tasty morsels of information concerning this film. If the source can be trusted, this 1948 film was not shown in Germany (the country from whence the language of the film takes its name) until 1952. After its single screening in München (Munich), it was not heard from again within those borders until it ran on German television in 1978.

Wow…26 years. Either this film was grossly misunderstood, or it was understood all too well. From my reading, this is a very pro-German document.

Rossellini was not George Stevens making concentration camp propaganda. Roberto was making art. The sign of art is the admission of possibilities. Art seduces us because it is subtle. Art does not proclaim in blanket statements. Art does not underestimate the intelligence of the viewer.

Roberto Rossellini did something with his “war films trilogy” which seems to have been unprecedented. The desire of neorealism was to film fiction as if it were documentary. This fiction would be, likewise, based on reality.

But why is it, then, that we have very different views of Roberto Rossellini and Robert Flaherty?

I will tell you my guess. Flaherty’s sin was in the framing of his presentation. To wit, he presented his staged documentaries (take the oil industry propaganda piece Louisiana Story for instance) as if they were naturally-occurring, spontaneous documentaries. The sin, then, was his duplicitous relationship with his subjects. He actively made his human subjects into actors.

Rossellini takes a different tack. There is no pretense that Deutschland im Jahre Null is an ACTUAL documentary. It merely has the feel of that medium. Likewise, Rossellini’s use of nonprofessional actors was likely more of a precursor to Robert Bresson than a twist on Flaherty’s bizarre formula (which predated Roberto in both Nanook of the North [1922] and Man of Aran [1934]). No, Rossellini had created something new.

It’s not so much the films of Flaherty to which I object as it is the idea of them. At least one of his concoctions (perhaps thanks to director F.W. Murnau) is very fine indeed: Tabu [1931]. Flaherty and Murnau co-wrote this ostensible documentary. Indeed, with Flaherty we come into contact with inchoate, obscure film genres such as docudrama, docufiction, fictional documentary (ethnofiction), etc. etc. etc.

Most importantly, none of what I have written here has even scratched the surface of Deutschland im Jahre Null. What ever became of the heartrending main child actor Edmund Moeschke? I do not know.

One thing is certain to me: no film before Rossellini’s “war trilogy” (Roma città aperta, Paisà, and Deutschland im Jahre Null) [1945/1946/1948] takes on such politically sensitive and important topics in such a raw way. The closest would be the socialism of Eisenstein or the humanism of Chaplin.

It is, therefore, no wonder at all that Rossellini spawned a million “new waves” the world over.

-PD

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M [1931)

Perhaps we pay too much attention to the story.

We all love a good story.

But the mark of the genius filmmaker may be found in their method of narrative. The art of how they tell their stories.

To be quite honest, I wasn’t thrilled to return to this Fritz Lang masterpiece, but I’m glad I did.

It is very much how I feel about Hitchcock’s Psycho. It is a wonderful film, but it’s not something I want to throw on once a week during the course of kicking back.

M, like Psycho, is a supremely tense film. Nowadays, when we think of Hitchcock, we might reflect on his tastefulness. Think about it (says Jerry Lee). In Hitchcock’s day (a long, productive “day”), things which are now shown with impunity were positively disallowed for a Hollywood filmmaker. Blood and guts…no. Hitchcock was forced to artfully suggest.

The strictures guiding Fritz Lang (29 years earlier) were even more conservative. But even so, M is a genuinely terrifying movie.

Terrifying films are rarely relaxing. They are not meant to be.

But as I had seen this one before, I was able to focus more on the method employed by Lang. The truth is, M is a masterpiece. It really is the treatment of a brute subject (murder) with incredible subtlety.

What is most radical about M is its counterintuitive take on crime.

Within this film, crime is divided into capital and noncapital offenses.

In M, a band of criminals exists which seeks to put a serial killer out of business. It may seem a strange turn of phrase, but this killer is bad for the business of other criminals (mainly thieves and such).

A town in terrorized. The police regularly raid establishments. You must have your “papers” with you at all times.

And so those who survive on crime are so desperate as to adopt (temporarily) the same goal as the police: catch the killer.

It is not giving much away to tell you that Peter Lorre is the killer. This is not a whodunit. It’s a “what’s gonna happen”. That I will leave to your viewing pleasure.

While I am on the subject of Lorre, let me just say that this is one of the finest, weirdest performances in cinema history. The final scene is one of absolutely raw nerves. Lorre is not the cute, vaguely-foreign character he would become in The Maltese Falcon or Casablanca. Lorre is stark-raving mad.

His attacks of psychosis are chilling to observe. But really, it is his final outburst which tops any bit of lunacy I’ve ever seen filmed.

Today there would likely be plenty of actors ready to play such a macabre role, but in 1931 this was a potential death wish.

That Lorre put his soul into it tells us something important about him. First, he was capable of being more than a “sidekick” (as he was in the previously-mentioned Bogart films). Second, he was dedicated to the art of acting. Lorre was not “mailing it in”. Playing such a role can’t be particularly healthy for one’s mental state.

But there’s a further thing. His final monologue is filled with such angst. Let us consider the year: 1931. In the midst of the Great Depression.

But also we must consider the country: Germany. These were the waning years of the Weimar Republic. Three important dates would end this democratic republic: Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor (Jan. 30, 1933), ~~9/11~~ the Reichstag fire (Feb. 27, 1933), and the Enabling Act (Mar. 23, 1933).

The era of M (1931) was the era of Heinrich Brüning’s “deflationary” monetary policy as German Chancellor. I put deflationary in quotation marks because Wikipedia’s current description might better be termed contractionary monetary policy.

As Wikipedia would tell it, Brüning was essentially instating fiscal austerity (that hot-button term of recent times) concomitantly with the aforementioned monetary approach. This was, of course, the failure which paved the way for Adolf Hitler to take control of Germany.

And so we find that the historian Webster Tarpley is right when he refers to certain modern-day policy makers as austerity “ghouls”. Either conservative/fascist leaders across the globe have no grasp of history, or they are looking forward with anticipation to the next Hitler or Mussolini.

It should be noted that Tarpley is coming from a socialist perspective rooted in the Democratic Party of FDR. His opposition, therefore, would likely brand him as liberal/communist and through slippery-slope logic see the policies he espouses as paving the way for the next Stalin or Mao.

And so goes the political circus…ad nauseam.

Returning to film, we must at least consider this situation in Germany. The country was still paying war reparations from WWI (though this was becoming impossible because of the internal economic woes).

What is perhaps most astonishing is how much Peter Lorre’s character prefigures the Hitler caricature which has come down to us from history.

War-based societies have a compulsion to kill. Germany found out the hard way that this is not a healthy default. Sadly, today’s Germany has not checked the most warmongering modern country on Earth (the United States) enough to make any difference.

The United States has, for a long time now, been breathing…seething for a war. The “masters of war” are all wearing suits. Only suits want to go to war. A true warrior does not want war. Only those who will go unscathed actively invite war.

But there is an insanity in suits. A compulsion. Don’t let the suit fool you. A suit is, for us grown-ups, the equivalent of a piece of candy…or an apple…or a balloon for a child. A suit advocating war is saying, “Keep your eyes on my suit. I know best. Trust in me. Look at my impressive degree.”

The suits like places such as Raven Rock Mountain. The suits won’t be on the battlefield. And don’t let the 10% who actually fought in a war fool you: they were in non-combat operations. Their daddies made sure of it.

So keep your eyes open for the M of American cinema. Who is the next fascist to take the stage? Hitler had a Charlie Chaplin moustache. How dangerous could he be? Trump has a ginger comb-over. Surely he’s harmless, right?

-PD

2 Comments

雨月物語 [1953)

[UGETSU (1953)]

We can’t imagine.

A place across the globe.

We think of Japan as Mars.

For humble people like ourselves it is too much to dream.

To visit such a place.

It is not on our trend line. Our linear regression. It would be unprecedented.

But that is not completely true.

We thought we would never see Paris.

And though we only saw it for an hour (!)…we saw it.

Ten years of dreaming for an hour.

That is the moral of Ugetsu by Japan’s finest director Kenji Mizoguchi.

It would be lucky (88) if I’d stopped there.

That is also the moral of Ugetsu by Kenji Mizoguchi.

We seek too much.

The American dream is poisonous.

An ambition above and beyond what is truly valuable.

Family and love.

These close things.

Simple.

May Buddha have mercy on my soul.

You can’t go home again?

Then it is a miracle.

That you saw the light.

A little flicker in a black and white movie.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that it’s going to rain.

When the sky is full of fat, dark clouds.

And the air is moist.

And some faint droplets touch your windshield.

It doesn’t take a genius to know a war is coming.

Those Jews who were smart and fled Germany.

In time.

Before it was too late.

CODOH would beg to differ. On many points.

But we are humble people.

We dig a little hole in the dirt to have our fire in the forest.

Because the troops have overrun the town.

In cinema. In the 1950s. In black and white. In a language we don’t understand.

It is the opposite of spectacle. It is downright boring.

We are made to be bored. At this point. Society has engineered us thusly.

But push on with me as we relive the Tales of Moonlight and Rain (雨月物語) by Ueda Akinari.

1776.

Ghost world.

Spirits…begging you to join.

Leave your life of love.

Fall delirious onto the lawn of paradise.

And all the while your family is back home. Away. Neglected.

Oh, it is hard words.

I am a lucky survivor. From Warsaw. From the war I saw…

The geopolitical forces seethe and push against pockets of give.

Hotspots.

Lands which can be overrun.

A war of inches.

Trenches.

They own a day of the week.

But we thank our lucky stars for a second chance.

I am but a poor, humble servant of humanity.

I am against no one.

On principle.

Waking up.

With no hate.

Greet the new day and shake hands with the merchant.

Caress the cheek of the child of the world.

In a glance.

That is called a smile.

I have no grand plans.

My hands are tired.

May Buddha have mercy on my soul.

-PD

3 Comments

Umberto D. [1952)

Unglamorous stories.

That is what Italy brought us in the post-war years.

And every “new wave” which has followed owes a debt to the masters like De Sica.

Perhaps you know Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves).

Don’t stop there, dear friend.

Because here we have the precursor to Dante Remus Lazarescu.

Sure. There is some humor in Umberto D. A very, very dark humor.

As with Moartea domnului Lăzărescu.

But mostly there is beauty.

Sadness.

Reality.

Cinema.

There is the little dog Flike. Not Flicka, but Flike (rhymes with psych). Or bike.

Flike. Like Céline’s cat Bebert.

And then there is the stunning (STUNNING) acting of Carlo Battisti as Umberto.

There are few performances which can equal it.

Ioan Fiscuteanu did it as Lazarescu.

And that’s about it.

Rarefied air…these two actors.

Let me put it another way. Umberto D. was Ingmar Bergman’s favorite film. Do you know what I mean?

The director of Smultronstället and Sommaren med Monika.

Picked one film. And this was it.

Appropriately, this was Carlo Battisti’s only film role ever.

As the star of Umberto D.

He wasn’t an actor. He was a linguist.

God damn…

It’s just unreal how good this film is!

But we must also give credit to the indispensable Maria-Pia Casilio.

It is through her eyes that we see the ants…formica in Italian.

In English, we think of a hard composite material. Formica. A table top.

But a sort of false cognate brings us back to the archetype which Dalí and Buñuel so evocatively exploited in Un Chien Andalou. That was 1929. A film. The famous eyeball which gets “edited”. And then the ants were back in La persistència de la memòria. A painting. Soft clocks. You know the one. And the only differences between Spanish and Catalan in this case are the diacritical marks.

But she burns paper. To chase the ants. And the stray cat prowls the roof at night soft as a snowflake. And the grated skylight is her canvas to dream stretched out in her bed. And nothing is more morose than a contemplative face at the window looking out on a dingy world.

We sense it did not go easily for Italy. After the war. Because when you choose the wrong side you will be punished.

And though Germany was divided and Berlin was the most surreal example of this (being wholly within East Germany…like a Teutonic Swaziland–a Lesotho leitmotiv), Italy still suffered. We see it in Rossellini. And we see it here.

Neorealism. A update on the operas of Mascagni and Leoncavallo. A continuation of Zola. A nod to Dostoyevsky.

Verismo.

The star is an old man. He is not really a hero. He doesn’t save the world. There aren’t explosions.

But (BUT)

he does something most extraordinary. He survives…for a time. What a miracle!

Ah! The miracle of everyday life. We have survived another year. Another day!

Do you think there will be a war?

[Shame. The shame of having to ask for help. Begging for the first time.]

When your bed is a joke. Newspapers and dust. And there is a goddamned hole in your wall. Perhaps.

A missile. Or The Landlord’s Game (which became Monopoly).

When you are cold with a fever. As an elderly person. All your glamorous days have passed.

And you need your coat just to provide a little more warmth. On top of the blanket. To make it through the night.

As long.

As long as this film survives, humanity has a chance.

Really.

-PD

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Per qualche dollaro in piu [1965)

My oh my. How time does fly.

If you don’t write, you lose your touch.

And anyway, we lose our nerve.

Nerve. This film is all about nerve.

This was the second collaboration between Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood.

This time, another strong element was added: Lee Van Cleef.

The name may not sound familiar, but if you see this film you will never forget this iconic actor.

In truth, this picture is very similar to the first Leone/Eastwood collaboration.

Most of the novelty here can be found in the director having a third variable (Van Cleef) with which to work.

Gian Maria Volonté is back, but he’s not the same villain he was last time. He is and he isn’t.

Same for Eastwood. The same, but different.

Leone, though, had grown as a filmmaker. Maybe not by leaps and bounds, but there are flashes of brilliance which catch the desert sun differently here than in A Fistful of Dollars.

And why do I insist on the Italian title? Because this really is a sophisticated Western.

In other words, it is foreign to the mainstream of English language movies.

Though the genre is American, the craft is distinctly European.

Klaus Kinski has a relatively minor role in this film as a hunchback.

Really, I would advise starting with A Fistful of Dollars and then moving on to this film.

This one is really for those who couldn’t get enough the first time around.

I count myself among those.

In other words, this film does not necessarily “stand alone” very well unless you have the experience of A Fistful of Dollars under your belt.

I should really mention Ennio Morricone. He is, without doubt, one of the greatest film composers to ever live. Witness, for instance, his deft compositional touch as he weaves the film score around the sound of a musical pocket watch which is chiming during a tense standoff. There is a real magic–a synergy between Morricone and Leone.

Though I could dissect this movie as a precursor to the Reaper vs. Predator drones, I’ll leave that for another time. Though I could let the title, For a Few Dollars More, lead me into a diatribe about the Greek debt crisis and the venal German/IMF response, I shall leave that for other political film critics reviewing Spaghetti Westerns this week.

What we have here is a movie. I’m tired. I don’t want a war.

-PD

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paulydeathwish

musician and film critic

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