352 - Anatomy of Murder, United States, 1959. Dir. Otto Preminger.

Monday, December 18, 2017

352 - Anatomy of  Murder, United States, 1959.  Dir. Otto Preminger.

Army Lieutenant Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara) has just killed innkeeper and outdoorsman Barney Quill in a jealous rage over Quill's alleged raping of Manion's wife Laura (Lee Remick).  She told him what happened.  He took his gun, went to the Thunder Bay Inn, and opened fire on Quill, hitting him five times in succession.

Attorney Paul Biegler (James Stewart) lays out the four options one might have to defend a murder.

"Number 1.  It wasn't murder.  It was suicide or accidental.
Number 2.  You didn't do it.
Number 3.  You were legally justified.  Like protecting your home or self-defense.
Number 4.  The killing was excusable."

Then Biegler informs Manion that he does not fit into any of the first three possibilities.  It was murder.  He did do it.  He was not legally justified: he did not defend his home or himself.  In fact,  Biegler says, "You're guilty of murder, premeditated and with vengeance."

On top of that, Manion has a history of jealousy and may have hit his own wife in the past for perceived dalliances.  He is a soldier.  He knows how to kill.  He lives under tremendous stress.  He has a volatile temper.

Both Frederick and Laura were married before.  They left their former spouses for each other.  She gets bored easily.  She wants her man to excite her.  She enjoys attention.  She goes out often, whether he is with her or not.

Parts of the film take on the territory of The Accused (1988).  That film may have shut the lid on the subject, but here the Prosecution tries to make the case, through implication, that Laura might have lied about being raped.  Perhaps it was consensual.  Perhaps she lured Barney Quill.  After all, look how she dresses.  Look how she behaves around men.  Was she "deliberately voluptuous and enticing"?  Manion made his wife swear on a rosary that it was not consensual.  Does he mistrust her that much?  She comes on to their own attorney, Biegler, in front of us.  She goes out dancing with men just two days after the alleged rape and while her husband sits in jail.  What is the jury to make of all that?

Other parts of the film take on the territory of A Time to Kill (1996).  What if we grant that she was raped and that it was not her fault, no matter her reputation or behavior?  That is not what is on trial here.  Her husband openly murdered a man.  Is premeditated murder ever excusable?  If one is angry and enraged over a rape or murder and retaliates in kind, can a jury let him off?

Mathematically, the deck is stacked so heavily against the defense, it appears impossible to overcome.

Too add to that, Biegler is a ten-year former District Attorney.  He has never defended a case; only prosecuted them.  His associate is a drunk, Parnell Emmett McCarthy (Arthur O'Connell).  He has no money or resources.  He cannot even pay his secretary.  The wife of the defendant is not helping him.  The town is on the side of the deceased.  The Prosecution is composed of well-heeled, high-powered attorneys from Lansing.  They can eat him for lunch.  How will he pull this off?

Biegler knows this from the beginning and throughout.  At one point in the trial he states, "I'm making a lot of noise and Quill's racking up all the points."

The film takes place in the Upper Peninsula.  When was the last time you saw a movie set in the Upper Peninsula?

The setting gives the film an all-American feel.  Lansing is the big city.  Outsiders come from Canada or the Lower Peninsula.  The local city is Iron City.  (Do they mean Marquette?  Not Marquette University, which is in Milwaukee, but Marquette, Michigan, which is called Iron City.)  The local resort is Thunder Bay.

Biegler's hobbies include boating, fishing, and listening to jazz music.  His purchase of an outboard motor is one of the reasons he cannot pay his secretary.

The M'Naghten Rule is used as a test for insanity.  It states that a defendant may claim insanity if at the time of the alleged crime he did not "know the nature and quality of what he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong."

Manion openly fails the M'Naghten Rule.  He testifies on the witness stand that he did know what he was doing and that he did know right from wrong.

Is there any hope for this case at all?

What is "dissociative reaction"?  What is "irresistible impulse"?  Is there any precedent?  What happened in the People versus Durfee, 1886?

And who is Mary Pilant?

And what was her true relationship with Barney Quill?

And what exactly was found at the bottom

Of the laundry chute?

351 - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, United States, 1964. Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Sunday, December 17, 2017

351 - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, United States, 1964.  Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Keep your fingers away from that button.  It might just be a hydrogen bomb.

Kaboom!

We have just seen Sterling Hayden in two films.  The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and The Killing (1956).

http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/12/337-asphalt-jungle-united-states-1950.html

http://realbillbillions.blogspot.com/2017/12/347-killing-united-states-1956-dir.html

Now we see him in his third role as General Jack D. Ripper.

We have not seen Peter Sellers yet at all.

Now we see him in his first, second, and third roles as Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley, and Dr. Strangelove himself.

One each in the three locations of the film.

The office.

The bomber.

The War Room.

In each of these three locations, things happen that might make you shake your head.

How can people be so ridiculous? you may ask.

To which Kubrick might answer, "That is the question."

350 - Spartacus, United States, 1960. Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Saturday, December 16, 2017

350 - Spartacus, United States, 1960.  Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Get up, Spartacus, you Thracian dog!

Those are the first words we hear spoken to Spartacus, played by Kirk Douglas.  He is a slave.  Rome is in her final days.  Declining and falling.  Corrupt.  Unable to bear under the weight of its own debts.  Kingdoms rise and fall in cycles.  Successive generations cannot sustain forever what their forbears built.  And in this case, too many people want freedom.  And they intend to get it.

Spartacus is purchased by Batiatus, played by Peter Ustinov.  He takes him to his school.  He trains him to be a gladiator.  To fight to the death in pairs.  For the pleasure of spectators.  His trainer is Marcellus.  He used to be a slave.  He used to be a gladiator.  He was one of the rare fortunate ones who fought and worked his way to his own freedom.

Batiatus shows favor to Spartacus.  He gives him a woman.  Varinia, played by Jean Simmons.  The owners watch through a grate in their floor, hoping to see Spartacus in action with Varinia in the cell beneath them.  Varinia begins to undress.  But Spartacus turns her down.  He has her dress again.

Spartacus has one lifelong mission.  Actors call it their super-objective.  It is what he wants most in life.  He wants to be known as a man.  He is not an animal.   He is a man.  She is not an animal.  She is a woman.  He will not take her.  He will treat her with the same respect he would have if he and she had been free.

Batiatus is disappointed.

Crassus visits.  Crassus is played by Laurence Olivier.  Are you beginning to see the heavyweight cast in this epic film?  Crassus wants Varinia.  He buys her.  He wants to see some sport.  He buys a couple of gladiator fights.  The first takes place.  One man wins.  The other is killed.  Now for the second one.

Spartacus has his first fight.  With an African named Draba, played by Woody Strobe.  Draba gets a long-spear trident.  Spartacus gets a Thracian sword.  It is short.  It requires great skill to fight with a short sword against a long trident.  Spartacus fights valiantly.  Draba wins the fight.  He pins Spartacus by the neck with his trident.  Time to thrust him through.  Draba does not thrust.  He spares Spartacus.  He heaves his spear at the daius.  He climbs the wall to attack Crassus.  A guard spears Draba in the back.  Crassus cuts Draba in the neck.  Draba dies.  Spartacus is spared again.

But something is going on inside him.  Something is rumbling.

When Batiatus carries Varinia to Crassus, they pass by the men in their cage.  Spartacus sees her.  She looks at him.  They love each other.  But he has lost her.  Marcellus sees and mocks Spartacus.  Marcellus has gone too far.

Spartacus shoves Marcellus' head in the soup vat.  He holds him under.  He kills him.  Immediately, the men join him.  They revolt.  They overpower the guards.  They break down the fences.  They use the fences as weapons.  They kill all the guards.  They all go free.  The men spread out across the land.

Spartacus is now a free man.  A fugitive.  But free.  He could flee the country.  But he sets up base as the head of a rebel army.  He has his life mission.  He wants all slaves to go free.  He will fight for their freedom.

Back at the Senate Gracchus gets involved, played by Charles Laughton.  And Julius Caesar, played by John Gavin.  The young Antonius appears, played by Tony Curtis.  And Crixus, played by John Ireland.  (We saw him in both My Darling Clementine (1946) and Red River (1948).)  We told you this was a heavyweight cast.

The Senate will send armies to fight Spartacus' army and he will beat them.  Gracchus and Crassus will engage in their own intrigue.  Julius Caesar will eventually split them and begin to appear as the man to watch.

There is a conversation about oysters and pearls.  Crassus explains to Antonius that he likes them both.  We understand.

Through all of the changes that take place in the Senate, in the armies, and in the fortunes of all the parties, Spartacus stays true to his mission.  That he be free.  That all men be free.

He will find Varinia again, and she will help him.

But some fights just might cost you your life.

And Spartacus just might find himself hanging on a cross along the Apian Way.

Maybe she can see him one more time.

This is your son.  He's free, Spartacus.  Free. . . . He'll remember you, because I'll tell him.  I'll tell him who his father was and what he dreamed of.  My love.  My life.

349 - Barry Lyndon, United Kingdom/United States, 1975. Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Friday, December 15, 2017

349 - Barry Lyndon, United Kingdom/United States, 1975.  Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Every frame a Hogarth.  Every frame a Gainsborough.  Every frame a Constable.

Stanley Kubrick called the camera department and asked for BNC cameras, Hollywood camera-maker Mitchell's model of rear projection cameras.  No problem.  Nobody uses them anymore.  We now use front projection cameras.  He started buying them.  They started sending them to him.

Then someone in the know found out.  What!  You are selling those cameras to Stanley Kubrick?  They are the finest cameras ever invented.  The parts inside are irreplaceable.  The works are the best built camera works.  You could not replicate them if you tried.

Apparently, Stanley Kubrick knew what he was doing.

Then he went to NASA and asked for their widest lenses, the ones used for the moon landing.  He obtained a Zeiss with an f /0.7, a stop that most photographers have never seen before.  Something that could never fit on a movie camera either.

He asked his inventor to invent a way to mount the large NASA lenses onto the outdated BNC rear projection cameras.  The inventor said it was not possible.  Kubrick asked him to do it anyway.  He found a way to do it.

Kubrick could now film entire scenes indoors in candlelight.

Read that again.

Kubrick could now film entire scenes indoors in candlelight.

That is a stunning statement.

It is problem enough that the light is too dim for a film camera to record.  But add to that that the candles keep changing in height as they burn.  And that they produce so much smoke and debris.  And that they suck the oxygen out of the room.

Kubrick filmed his exteriors in natural light, even allowing the light to change in the middle of the scene, as the clouds passed in front of and away from the sun.

Sometimes he zoomed where others would dolly.

When a DP wants the camera to move through space, he often places the camera on a camera dolly, sometimes on tires, sometimes on a track.  The lens can maintain a set aperture, focal length, and f-stop, or the AC can adjust it proportionally as it moves.  If you want to move towards the subject, you push in.  If you want to move away from the subject, you pull out.  This maintains a smooth and steady movement where the subject adjusts proportionally with the movement.

When you zoom, however, by moving forward and back in the lens rather than with the camera, it produces a type of distortion of the image.  Filmmakers can use this to their advantage.  Alfred Hitchcock developed a technique of zooming forward while dollying back that created a psychologically disturbing effect on the viewer.

Stanley Kubrick in this movie zooms plenty.

One could go on.  The technical mastery on display in this film is a film school of its own.  This three-hour, twenty-three minute historical drama, aside from making for a compelling story, is a textbook on the use and power of camera and lighting, both natural and artificial.

You may watch the film entirely for its evocative beauty.  It is simply and absolutely gorgeous from beginning to end.  You may marvel at how he found so many open landscapes without power lines or other signs of modern development.  Kubrick has created a world, a world like a living novel, a living painting, a museum come to life.

Then there is the story.  A one-man epic based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackery (07/18/1811-12/24/1863).  Thackery is best known for writing the novel Vanity Fair (1848).

The story is told in two acts.

I.     By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon
II.    Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disaster Which Befell Barry Lyndon

Thackery's novel is told in the picaresque tradition, a style that originated in 17th-century Spain, which follows the life of a rogue or rascal from birth to death.  Its most famous example is Cervantes' 1615 novel Don Quixote.  The style flourished in the 18th-century, with novels often named after their protagonists: in France, Voltaire's Candide (1759), and in England, Daniel Dafoe's Moll Flanders (1722), Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749), and Tobias Smollett's The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748).

By Thackery's time it was an established genre, with authors writing within and without the precedented parameters, from Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit (1844) to Anthony Trollope's Phineas Finn (1868) to Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

With the voice-over narrative and episodic titles, the film follows in the vein of the novel.

Redmond Barry knows exactly what he wants, and he wants it very badly.

He wants status.  He wants money.  He wants power.  He wants Nora.

He has enough desire and enough will power to get all those things.  Absolutely nothing will stand in his way.  Nothing.

Except for the forces of fate and his own poor choices.

Barry rises propitiously despite incidents that work against him.

And then he falls.

One could do an analysis on the views of fate versus free will in this film.

Ryan O'Neal plays the role of Redmond Barry/Barry Lyndon, and his work is a revelation.  The film actually came out after Love Story (1970), What's Up Doc? (1972), and Paper Moon (1973), yet O'Neal as Barry seems like a kid just getting started--a testament to his acting in the film.  He reminds you that he was a strong and dedicated actor.

There is a lot to say about Barry Lyndon.  It is a film worth repeated viewings.


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The following words are spoken by the Reverend Runt when Barry Lyndon encounters tragedy.

I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord.  He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.  And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. - John 11:25

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.  Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another - Job 19:25-27

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. - 1 Timothy 6:7

The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord. - Job 1:21

O blessed Lord, the father of mercies and the God of all comforts, we beseech thee, look down in pity and compassion upon this, thy afflicted servant. . . .

348 - Paths of Glory, United States, 1957. Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Thursday, December 13, 2017

348 - Paths of Glory, United States, 1957.  Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. - Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

You can be saved.

Saved?  I'll be saved?

Father Dupree is giving comfort to Private Pierre Arnaud.  He is here to administer Last Rites.  Arnaud is having a hard time being comforted.  He is about to die tomorrow.  Shot by a firing squad.  Made up of his own men.  Because he was court-martialed.  The charge: Cowardice in the Face of the Enemy.  How did Arnaud show cowardice?  He did not.  He has been awarded twice for valor.  Why was he court-martialed?  He was chosen by lot.  At random.

Arnaud is not alone.  Two other men stand charged with him.

Private Maurice Ferol.  Who was chosen because he lacks social skills.

And Corporal Philippe Paris.  Why him?  Because his superior officer, Lieutenant Roget, is covering himself.  Roget, who drinks on the job, took Paris and another man, a scout, out into No Man's Land on a scouting mission.  Roget sent the scout ahead of them alone.  Paris noted that they should stay together, but Roget was visibly afraid.  He did not want to go any further.  In fact, he decided to return before the scout came back.  So he threw a grenade in the general direction and cut and ran, leaving even Paris.  Paris went forward and found the scout's body.  Killed by Roget's grenade.  When Paris returned to the trench, Roget was shocked to see him.  Roget, while drinking, had already started writing his report, which was going to state that both men, the scout and Paris, had died.

Lieutenant Roget's cowardice is stunning.  So is his gall.

When Roget is asked to select a man from his company to send up for court-martial, he selects Paris.  The brave Paris.  To be court-martialed.  With the sentence to be death by firing squad.  Roget is already responsible for the scout's death.  Now he will be responsible for Paris' death.

Paths of Glory appears to be a war film but shifts rather quickly into a political drama set during wartime.

It is the French military.  It is during World War 1.  The American actors are using their own accents so that they do not sound like fake French accents.

Kirk Douglas stands strong as the stolid and moral Colonel Dax.

Ralph Meeker plays the doomed Corporal Paris.

We saw Ralph Meeker back in January in the film Kiss Me Deadly (1955).  He seems older there than he does here.  Yet this film was made two years later.

          028 - Kiss Me Deadly, United States, 1955.  Dir. Robert Aldrich.
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Adolphe Menjou plays General George Broulard, the top general, the one with the power to grant power, the one who can give the promotion which starts the chain in motion.  He lives in a chateau.  He hosts balls.  He believes he is above all of this.

George Macready plays the smarmy General Paul Mireau.  We just saw him as Ballin Mundson, Gilda's husband in Gilda (1946)!  A film he made eleven years before.

         316 - Gilda, United States, 1946.  Dir. Charles Vidor.
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Stanley Kubrick was 28 when he made this film.  Yet he already had a sure sense of who he was as an artist.

The political tension is palpable.

The human abuse of power is real.

Colonel Dax has a heavy weight to bear.

347 - The Killing, United States, 1956. Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

347 - The Killing, United States, 1956.  Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Why does love have to get in the way of a good bank robbery?

Johnny Clay has set up the perfect heist.  The seventh race at the Lansdowne Stakes.  The cash room.  Red Lightning will be in the lead.  He is the favorite.

He has three insiders.  The cashier George Peatty (Elisha Cook at his most pusillanimous).  The bartender Mike O'Reilley (character stalwart Joe Sawyer).  And the police officer Randy Kennan (Ted de Corsia).

He has an investor.  Marvin Unger (Jay C. Flippen).  And he has two outsiders.  Hired men.  Paid a flat fee to do a single job.  The sharpshooter Nicki Arcane (Timorthy Carey).  And the muscle Maurice Oboukhoff (Kola Kwariani).

Each stage of the job is timed to the minute.

Each has a job to do.  Each man does his job.

Nothing will go wrong.

Unless some weak-kneed nitwit opens his big fat mouth.

George Peatty loves his wife.  Or more accurately, he is her desperate puppy dog.  He will do anything to secure her love in return.

Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor) has better things to do than fool with him.  She just wants the money.  She has her own boyfriend on the side.  And as soon as George impetuously confides in her, she takes it straight to her lover boy Val Cannon (Vince Edwards).

So he hatches his own plan.

He will let the gang rob the track.  Then he will show up and rob them.

He may just be in over his head himself.

If only people could use their minds and not their hearts.  Then crimes could be pulled off so much more smoothly.

Stanley Kubrick shows each stage of the heist.  Timed to the minute.  And he goes back in time to pick up each individual's job.  Until it all comes down to the job itself.

So much of it will go exactly as planned.

Until . . .

346 - Killer's Kiss, United States, 1955. Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

346 - Killer's Kiss, United States, 1955.  Dir. Stanley Kubrick.

Kubrick.

Stanley Kubrick is an American director.  He was born in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx.  This film, his second, is filmed in New York City--in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, and in Manhattan, including Pennsylvania Station and Times Square.

It is the story of two lonely, desperate young people who find each other, and lose each other, and try to find each other again.  Of how they get caught up in a network of corruption and violence in their pursuit of the American dream and how they dream of finding redemption by moving to Seattle and starting all over again.

He is a boxer, a welterweight, struggling in the ring.  He considers himself washed-up, a loser.  He plans to go to his uncle and work at his uncle's horse ranch.  She is the daughter of a tragic family, whose mother died in childbirth, whose father slowly wasted away, and whose sister Iris, a talented ballerina, gave up in suicide, and who herself, lacking her sister's grace and talent, has become a taxi-dancer on 49th and Broadway, dancing with men for a dime a dance, "in that depraved place, a human zoo."  Her boss may as well be a pimp the way he treats her.  He is part of some kind of a gang.  Maybe money laundering.  Maybe extortion.  Maybe racketeering.  Whatever it is, he treats her badly.

Killer's Kiss contains elements of American film noir.  There are scenes with high-contrast lighting, deep darks penetrated by shafts of light--such as the flashback within a flashback of the hot spotlight hitting Iris in the black theater as she dances pointe alone on the stage; such as the silhouettes and shadows in the back alley as Vincent's goons trap Davey's manager and, thinking he is Davey, kill him.  There are high and low camera angles--looking down the long steps leading up to the dance hall with reflections on the side walls, looking up from the ground in the dark alley--and other creative uses of the camera--Davey's reflection in the fishbowl, looking through multiple windows, looking back through mirrors.  And there are memorable set pieces--the boxing ring, the walk down Broadway, the back alley, the chase up the fire escape, the rooftops, the freight elevator, and the climactic showdown in the mannequin warehouse.

This movie could not be more American.

And yet if you were to watch it without knowing its source, you may very well think you are watching a film born of the British New Wave.

You may think you are watching Tony Richardson rather than Stanley Kubrick.

You may think you are watching Albert Finney rather than Jamie Smith.

Times Square feels like Piccadilly Circus.  (Partly because Kubrick shows us side views and never focuses on the point where Broadway and 7th Avenue come together at 45th Street.)

Pennsylvania Station feels like Victoria Station.

The streets of Brooklyn, Plymouth and Adams, are paved with cobblestones.

The clothing--high wader pants over white socks, single-breasted jackets, thin ties.  The hairstyles.--his low-quiff pompadour, her swept bangs and slight side-feathering.  The modes of acting--formal, theatrical.  Long moments without an underlying score.  The overdubbed dialogue sounds as if it is coming from outside the room and that sometimes does not match the lips.  The heavy use of Foley effects--clopping of shoes on the pavement, the dropping of the pistol on the floor.  The pistol itself, a Luger P08--which, granted, is German, but as such is noticeably not American.  The grainy film stock.  The modest sets.  The economical style.  All seem to make this film to this American feel not American. As if its director set out to make a British film.

There are moments in the kitchen that feel as if they could have come from Look Back in Anger.  There are moments in the streets that seem as though they could have been from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

Does this style presage Kubrick's eventual move to England?  I do not think so.  I believe he may have been influenced by his budget and prevailing styles in the air at the time.  Perhaps he was ahead of his time.  Perhaps the British New Wave was influenced by him.  This film came out four years before that movement came into its own.

There are hints of his greatness that was to come.

And there are moments that stand out.

But there are also missed opportunities.  The climax in the mannequin warehouse is a fantastic concept.  However, it is lit blandly; it is shot conventionally; it is choreographed uncreatively; and too much is left on the table.  Why does Davey walk past the axe and not see the axe?  Why does he stand and let Vincent see him?  Why does Vincent stand and not react?  Why does Davey walk past a mannequin head and not pick it up and throw it at Vincent's head?  Why does he just stand there and let Vincent throw a torso at him?  Why do we see the warehouse employee working in his shop, look up when he first hears them enter, and then never see him again?  Why does everyone else disappear?  Why are there scores of finely detailed mannequins that end up standing still as backdrop?  Why not use them?  Why not go through the middle of them?  Why not push the camera through them?  Why not use expressionistic lighting?  Why not use more body parts as weapons?  The action does intensify when Vincent has the axe and Davey has the spear hook, and some of their close calls make the heart race, but the actors could have been more fully trained and committed to a more hair-raising fight.  Yes, of course the answer is budget, but come on.  Effort and enthusiasm can overcome monetary limitations.

This is a film worth watching as a student of Kubrick, to learn where he was at this stage of his career, and to learn techniques from him.  It has quite a few strong moments in it.

Just be careful about whom you get mixed up with.

It could be dangerous.