Tuesday, January 31, 2017
031 - Shadows, 1959, United States. Dir. John Cassavetes.
John Cassavetes was an actor's director.
He created spaces, atmospheres, in which the actors could work, and then allowed them to explore.
He gave them the freedom to develop their characters.
He would improvise together with them and then film what came out of it. Then he would write a script. They would memorize their lines and film it again, while retaining the improvisational freedom they had before. They are now saying written lines but continuing to improvise their emotions and movements.
In the case of Shadows, his first film, he tried it the first way and screened it. The results were poor, so he went back and did it again, the second way. This developed into a technique.
The acting community has a word for this kind of approach. Take the noun workshop and turn it into a verb. To workshop. The actor engages in a process called workshopping. The actors workshop their characters to discover their objectives and relationships. The scene unfolds organically from that.
His wife, Gena Rowlands, called it "the pleasure of discovery."
Cassavetes was a successful actor in Hollywood.
We will see him as an actor in The Killers (1964) and Rosemary's Baby (1968). He also played in films such as The Dirty Dozen (1968) and Two-Minute Warning (1976), among many others.
However, he felt creatively stifled.
The way most movies are made--and it is still this way today--the director sets up the shot according to the lighting and camera angles first. Then he establishes marks that the actor must hit at a given moment. The actor must hit his mark at the given time while making it seem natural and spontaneous.
There is nothing wrong with doing it this way. In fact, it provides greater creative control for the director and precision for the other departments. Great actors hit their marks every day, and they make it seem natural and spontaneous.
However, Cassavetes wanted to explore the possibilities that might arise from reversing the order of priority. Instead of making the actors conform to the positions of the lights and camera, what if he made the lights and camera conform to the positions of the actors?
This meant that he had to create more generic lighting rather than specific lighting. He could not place a catch light in an actress's eyes or a hair light on the outlines of her head. Rather, he had to light the room and then allow the actors to roam about within that space.
This also limited him to using mostly a camera on a tripod in long takes of master shots or else a handheld camera following the actors around.
But it was a way of doing things, and it opened up a new world for actors and filmmakers to follow. The American independent cinema world, and in turn the international independent cinema world, owes a Cassavetes the honor of its gratitude.
In 1956 he was teaching an improvisational acting technique at his school, The Cassavetes-Lane Drama Workshop, and out of that workshop came the film Shadows.
Shadows takes place in New York City during the Beat Generation. It follows three African-American siblings--two brothers and a sister--as they go about their lives. One of the brothers is a jazz singer. The other brother is a jazz trumpeter. The singer, Hugh, is the only dark-skinned member of the family. The other two, Ben and Lelia, are light-skinned enough that strangers do not always know that they are African-American.
This makes a difference in 1959.
The sister dates three different men in the course of the film, two white and one black. One of the white men balks when he discovers that she has a black brother. This is the moment that came out of the improvisation exercise at the workshop.
Shadows fits in the cinema verité tradition. Watching it feels like watching a documentary, or better yet, like watching life happen spontaneously through a hidden camera.
The scenes are mostly ensemble, meaning that multiple people may be talking and moving at the same time, as in real life.
Shadows did not find distribution in the United States, but it got accepted into the Venice Film Festival. And won. It was then brought back to America as an import!
The actors who worked with Cassavetes speak of him in glowing terms. They love him. They talk of him as viewing everyone as a jewel, of being interested in love, and exploring through his filmmaking only love.
In the accompanying documentary, Peter Faulk states, "He was a wild animal, but at the same time the family was central to his universe."
The actress who plays the sister in Shadows, Lelia Goldoni, adds a beautiful story about him.
She says that he told his father he wanted to be an actor.
She asked him, "Did your father fight you about being an actor?" Cassavetes said, No.
His father said, "That's a very noble thing to do. But do you know what kind of responsibility that is? You are going to have to be truthful to each of those character's human natures."
Goldoni concludes, "He listened to his Daddy."
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Monday, January 30, 2017
030 - Sweet Smell of Success, 1957, United States. Dir. Alexander Mackendrick.
Monday, January 30, 2017
030 - Sweet Smell of Success, 1957, United States. Dir. Alexander Mackendrick.
Ah, the sweet smell of success.
Fecal. Squalid. Begrimed.
Those gangsters sure do know how to break people.
Not because you have crossed them. Not because you are competing with them.
But just because you, my sister, are dating someone I do not want you to date.
Or because you, my minion, were supposed to break up my sister's relationship and you did not do it.
How dare you.
I will now destroy you.
Wait.
What did you say?
Gangsters?
These are not gangsters. No, they are not gangsters. He is not a gangster.
He is a writer. A newspaper columnist.
A newspaper columnist?
A newspaper columnist.
The character of J. J. Hunsecker, played by Burt Lancaster, loves his sister, a little too much maybe. So he does not want her to be dating jazz musician Steve Dallas.
Sidney Falco is a press agent. He needs Hunsecker to print items that support Falco's clients and help their careers. So Hunsecker uses this need as leverage to maintain power over Falco.
He demands that Falco break up his sister Susan Hunsecker's relationship to Dallas.
But so far Falco has been unable to do it. In fact, Dallas has now proposed to Susan, and they intend to inform J. J. tomorrow morning at breakfast.
So tonight Falco will run around New York City, from club to club, trying to work things out to save his career.
And he will go without an overcoat to keep from having to tip coat-check girls.
My how times have changed.
He will insinuate himself upon Hunsecker to try to get him to understand Falco's situation.
He will go to another newspaper columnist and try to bribe him with his wife to try to get him to print the items that Hunsecker will not print. That man will call his bluff and tell his own wife the dirt in order to remove the leverage.
He will go to yet a third newspaper columnist to see what that will do.
Falco is desperate.
As the evening progresses, Falco will play everyone to set Dallas up in front of Hunsecker so that Susan herself will leave him. He does a great job of it.
But then Susan will set Falco up so that Hunsecker will think ill of him and crush him.
Everyone depends on each other. Everyone is trying to destroy one another.
The stakes seem so low to us--who is dating whom--but to them the stakes are life and death. It is the politics of high school gossip in the hands of New York social climbers--who aspire to be power brokers.
This is starting to sound like an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story about life in the Jazz Age.
But it is a Clifford Odets screenplay about life in the 1950s.
Some things just seem to come back around.
This film is shot by the great cinematographer James Wong Howe. The lights are light and the darks are dark, and the edges are as sharp as a paper cut.
Howe worked from the 1910s to the 1970s, beating out even Alfred Hitchcock for longevity. He was born in 1899 in Canton (Guangzhou), China, and he grew up in Pasco, Washington. At around 12 he bought a Kodak Brownie camera, and by the time he was 18 he was working for Cecil B. DeMille. He solved the problem of getting blue eyes to register on film, so he became the photographer that all blue-eyed stars would flock to. He would go on to shoot more than 130 movies and win two Oscars. He was the embodiment of the Great American Dream.
Meanwhile, the film was directed by Alexander Mackendrick, whom you know for practically nothing else, except perhaps for The Ladykillers and The Man in the White Suit. In all he directed maybe eight pictures. He is now considered a great director with a sure hand, but Sweet Smell of Success was such a financial disaster that his career faded and he moved into teaching.
What makes this picture sing is the acting and chemistry of Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster. Tony plays the high-strung, fast-talking, nervous-energy, pretty boy for which we already know him, but Burt Lancaster plays against type, restraining all the virile strength of his large athletic body into a bespectacled, buttoned-up time-bomb, slowly ticking and destined to blow.
Odets has given them delicious lines to say, long lines filled with the wit and cunning of a top playwright, which they speak quickly and effortlessly as if seated at the Algonquin.
The film moves at a fast pace and is driven by the look of the city lights and the sound of a hot jazz score.
When you see the name Hunsecker, you may think of the Coen Brothers' 1994 comedy The Hudsucker Proxy. You can look up what influence this film may have had on their film.
This film was produced by Burt Lancaster with Harold Hecht (not Ben) and James Hill, with the unfortunate name Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions. The goal seems to have been to do for newspaper columnist Walter Winchell what Orson Welles did for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and others.
In an age without newspapers, it all now seems so historical to us.
My how times have changed.
030 - Sweet Smell of Success, 1957, United States. Dir. Alexander Mackendrick.
Ah, the sweet smell of success.
Fecal. Squalid. Begrimed.
Those gangsters sure do know how to break people.
Not because you have crossed them. Not because you are competing with them.
But just because you, my sister, are dating someone I do not want you to date.
Or because you, my minion, were supposed to break up my sister's relationship and you did not do it.
How dare you.
I will now destroy you.
Wait.
What did you say?
Gangsters?
These are not gangsters. No, they are not gangsters. He is not a gangster.
He is a writer. A newspaper columnist.
A newspaper columnist?
A newspaper columnist.
The character of J. J. Hunsecker, played by Burt Lancaster, loves his sister, a little too much maybe. So he does not want her to be dating jazz musician Steve Dallas.
Sidney Falco is a press agent. He needs Hunsecker to print items that support Falco's clients and help their careers. So Hunsecker uses this need as leverage to maintain power over Falco.
He demands that Falco break up his sister Susan Hunsecker's relationship to Dallas.
But so far Falco has been unable to do it. In fact, Dallas has now proposed to Susan, and they intend to inform J. J. tomorrow morning at breakfast.
So tonight Falco will run around New York City, from club to club, trying to work things out to save his career.
And he will go without an overcoat to keep from having to tip coat-check girls.
My how times have changed.
He will insinuate himself upon Hunsecker to try to get him to understand Falco's situation.
He will go to another newspaper columnist and try to bribe him with his wife to try to get him to print the items that Hunsecker will not print. That man will call his bluff and tell his own wife the dirt in order to remove the leverage.
He will go to yet a third newspaper columnist to see what that will do.
Falco is desperate.
As the evening progresses, Falco will play everyone to set Dallas up in front of Hunsecker so that Susan herself will leave him. He does a great job of it.
But then Susan will set Falco up so that Hunsecker will think ill of him and crush him.
Everyone depends on each other. Everyone is trying to destroy one another.
The stakes seem so low to us--who is dating whom--but to them the stakes are life and death. It is the politics of high school gossip in the hands of New York social climbers--who aspire to be power brokers.
This is starting to sound like an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story about life in the Jazz Age.
But it is a Clifford Odets screenplay about life in the 1950s.
Some things just seem to come back around.
This film is shot by the great cinematographer James Wong Howe. The lights are light and the darks are dark, and the edges are as sharp as a paper cut.
Howe worked from the 1910s to the 1970s, beating out even Alfred Hitchcock for longevity. He was born in 1899 in Canton (Guangzhou), China, and he grew up in Pasco, Washington. At around 12 he bought a Kodak Brownie camera, and by the time he was 18 he was working for Cecil B. DeMille. He solved the problem of getting blue eyes to register on film, so he became the photographer that all blue-eyed stars would flock to. He would go on to shoot more than 130 movies and win two Oscars. He was the embodiment of the Great American Dream.
Meanwhile, the film was directed by Alexander Mackendrick, whom you know for practically nothing else, except perhaps for The Ladykillers and The Man in the White Suit. In all he directed maybe eight pictures. He is now considered a great director with a sure hand, but Sweet Smell of Success was such a financial disaster that his career faded and he moved into teaching.
What makes this picture sing is the acting and chemistry of Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster. Tony plays the high-strung, fast-talking, nervous-energy, pretty boy for which we already know him, but Burt Lancaster plays against type, restraining all the virile strength of his large athletic body into a bespectacled, buttoned-up time-bomb, slowly ticking and destined to blow.
Odets has given them delicious lines to say, long lines filled with the wit and cunning of a top playwright, which they speak quickly and effortlessly as if seated at the Algonquin.
The film moves at a fast pace and is driven by the look of the city lights and the sound of a hot jazz score.
When you see the name Hunsecker, you may think of the Coen Brothers' 1994 comedy The Hudsucker Proxy. You can look up what influence this film may have had on their film.
This film was produced by Burt Lancaster with Harold Hecht (not Ben) and James Hill, with the unfortunate name Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions. The goal seems to have been to do for newspaper columnist Walter Winchell what Orson Welles did for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and others.
In an age without newspapers, it all now seems so historical to us.
My how times have changed.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
029 - Bigger Than Life, 1956, United States. Dir. Nicholas Ray.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
029 - Bigger Than Life, 1956, United States. Dir. Nicholas Ray.
Filmed in CINEMASCOPE!
Aspect ratio 2:55:1. That means really WIDE. Almost twice as wide as the standard Academy Ratio.
In glorious Color by De Luxe.
These are the specs for BIG PICTURES.
Epics!
The Bridge on the River Kwai. A Farewell to Arms. The Robe. The Egyptian. The Virgin Queen. The Gladiators. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Westerns!
River of No Return. Ride Lonesome. Broken Lance. The Burning Hills. Jubal. The Man from Laramie.
Big Studio Romantic Comedies and Dramas!
Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. Pillow Talk. How to Marry a Millionaire.
Grand Musicals!
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It's Always Fair Weather. Brigadoon. Oklahoma! Silk Stockings. April Love. Carmen Jones. There's No Business Like Show Business.
Action Films and Thrillers!
House of Bamboo. King of the Khyber Rifles. Battle Cry. World Without End. Bad Day at Black Rock.
Intimate Family Dramas About Mental Illness!
Wait.
What?
Intimate family dramas about mental illness. Or more specifically, a small family drama that takes place only inside the schoolroom, the hospital room, and the home, where most of the acting is internal and where the drama focuses on the father's steady decline into psychosis.
You could perform this story as a quiet play on a small stage in a black-box theatre with only 30 seats.
The setting and action are small.
The film is Bigger Than Life.
What a great idea, actually.
Would that more films were made to be presented in such a large format.
After all, this is not television.
This is the movies!
Imagine the emotional impact of a subtle expression in extreme close-up.
Bigger Than Life stars James Mason. You may know him as the bad guy Philip Vandamm, the one who kidnaps Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest, or in a similar kind of role opposite Paul Newman in The Verdict, or as the co-star with Judy Garland in A Star is Born. He also played Captain Nemo in that other CinemaScope picture listed above, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
James Mason is one of those actors whom, once you hear his voice, you want to keep hearing it for a very long time. His voice is made out of maple syrup spiked with bourbon. He does not merely speak. He taps the sap at the sugar shack and drips a slow flow of sweet aromatic maple with a toasted oak aroma, a cereal malt grain, and a brown cinnamon spice.
Thick. Rich. Sweet. And slow.
And what does he say with this rich voice?
He plays schoolteacher Ed Avery, and he begins the film by talking shop, the ordinary daily routine with his colleagues. When he leaves for the day, he goes to his moonlighting job at the cab company. He tells his wife he has a school board meeting. He is ashamed to tell her he works two jobs. He has a spending problem.
The first sign of disease occurs when they have some friends over. He spends time in the kitchen leaning over the refrigerator. He does not feel well. When the evening is over, he complains to his wife that they are dull, all of them, and that they never do anything interesting. Then he falls across the bed.
After being tested at the hospital, he is told that he has a terminal type of inflammation of the arteries and has only months to live. He is prescribed cortisone and suddenly feels great again. He indulges his manic feelings and takes the family out to dinner and on an excessive shopping spree. His own son whispers to his mother that Dad is acting foolishly.
Avery grows dependent on the pills. He begins taking them more frequently than his prescription allows. He reasons that a teacher is a doctor, so he convinces a pharmacist that he is a doctor and begins prescribing more pills for himself.
He grows excessively moodier. He speaks bluntly at the PTA meeting, insulting some of those present and causing them to walk out, while becoming a hero to one parent, who thinks he is the first teacher he has heard to describe things the way they really are.
He begins to push his son, yelling at him, forcing him to practice football during baseball season, and throwing the ball so hard and far that the boy falls and hurts himself in his efforts to catch it, only to be reprimanded all the more.
Avery starts to grow mad, reading the Genesis account of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac as some kind of assignment for himself. He goes so far as to raise a pair of scissors above his son in his son's room before the boy escapes.
The film will end either badly or well.
It is an effort to educate the public on the challenges of mental illness and addiction to prescription drugs. And it is sympathetic. It portrays the family and friends as loving and patient.
Jerry Mathers has a great moment in it. He plays one of the school kids. His character Freddie has painted something that looks angry. Avery asks if it is a thunderstorm. He responds defiantly, "This is a man. He's just mad at his mother!" One year later he was starring on television in Leave It to Beaver.
James Mason wanted very much to make this movie, so when the studios balked he produced it himself. Nicholas Ray directed it, just one year after making Rebel Without a Cause.
029 - Bigger Than Life, 1956, United States. Dir. Nicholas Ray.
Filmed in CINEMASCOPE!
Aspect ratio 2:55:1. That means really WIDE. Almost twice as wide as the standard Academy Ratio.
In glorious Color by De Luxe.
These are the specs for BIG PICTURES.
Epics!
The Bridge on the River Kwai. A Farewell to Arms. The Robe. The Egyptian. The Virgin Queen. The Gladiators. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Westerns!
River of No Return. Ride Lonesome. Broken Lance. The Burning Hills. Jubal. The Man from Laramie.
Big Studio Romantic Comedies and Dramas!
Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. Pillow Talk. How to Marry a Millionaire.
Grand Musicals!
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It's Always Fair Weather. Brigadoon. Oklahoma! Silk Stockings. April Love. Carmen Jones. There's No Business Like Show Business.
Action Films and Thrillers!
House of Bamboo. King of the Khyber Rifles. Battle Cry. World Without End. Bad Day at Black Rock.
Intimate Family Dramas About Mental Illness!
Wait.
What?
Intimate family dramas about mental illness. Or more specifically, a small family drama that takes place only inside the schoolroom, the hospital room, and the home, where most of the acting is internal and where the drama focuses on the father's steady decline into psychosis.
You could perform this story as a quiet play on a small stage in a black-box theatre with only 30 seats.
The setting and action are small.
The film is Bigger Than Life.
What a great idea, actually.
Would that more films were made to be presented in such a large format.
After all, this is not television.
This is the movies!
Imagine the emotional impact of a subtle expression in extreme close-up.
Bigger Than Life stars James Mason. You may know him as the bad guy Philip Vandamm, the one who kidnaps Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest, or in a similar kind of role opposite Paul Newman in The Verdict, or as the co-star with Judy Garland in A Star is Born. He also played Captain Nemo in that other CinemaScope picture listed above, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
James Mason is one of those actors whom, once you hear his voice, you want to keep hearing it for a very long time. His voice is made out of maple syrup spiked with bourbon. He does not merely speak. He taps the sap at the sugar shack and drips a slow flow of sweet aromatic maple with a toasted oak aroma, a cereal malt grain, and a brown cinnamon spice.
Thick. Rich. Sweet. And slow.
And what does he say with this rich voice?
He plays schoolteacher Ed Avery, and he begins the film by talking shop, the ordinary daily routine with his colleagues. When he leaves for the day, he goes to his moonlighting job at the cab company. He tells his wife he has a school board meeting. He is ashamed to tell her he works two jobs. He has a spending problem.
The first sign of disease occurs when they have some friends over. He spends time in the kitchen leaning over the refrigerator. He does not feel well. When the evening is over, he complains to his wife that they are dull, all of them, and that they never do anything interesting. Then he falls across the bed.
After being tested at the hospital, he is told that he has a terminal type of inflammation of the arteries and has only months to live. He is prescribed cortisone and suddenly feels great again. He indulges his manic feelings and takes the family out to dinner and on an excessive shopping spree. His own son whispers to his mother that Dad is acting foolishly.
Avery grows dependent on the pills. He begins taking them more frequently than his prescription allows. He reasons that a teacher is a doctor, so he convinces a pharmacist that he is a doctor and begins prescribing more pills for himself.
He grows excessively moodier. He speaks bluntly at the PTA meeting, insulting some of those present and causing them to walk out, while becoming a hero to one parent, who thinks he is the first teacher he has heard to describe things the way they really are.
He begins to push his son, yelling at him, forcing him to practice football during baseball season, and throwing the ball so hard and far that the boy falls and hurts himself in his efforts to catch it, only to be reprimanded all the more.
Avery starts to grow mad, reading the Genesis account of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac as some kind of assignment for himself. He goes so far as to raise a pair of scissors above his son in his son's room before the boy escapes.
The film will end either badly or well.
It is an effort to educate the public on the challenges of mental illness and addiction to prescription drugs. And it is sympathetic. It portrays the family and friends as loving and patient.
Jerry Mathers has a great moment in it. He plays one of the school kids. His character Freddie has painted something that looks angry. Avery asks if it is a thunderstorm. He responds defiantly, "This is a man. He's just mad at his mother!" One year later he was starring on television in Leave It to Beaver.
James Mason wanted very much to make this movie, so when the studios balked he produced it himself. Nicholas Ray directed it, just one year after making Rebel Without a Cause.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
028 - Kiss Me Deadly, 1955, United States; Dir. Robert Aldrich.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
028 - Kiss Me Deadly, 1955, United States. Dir. Robert Aldrich.
A young woman walks down the middle of the highway in the middle of the night.
She is barefoot and wearing only a trenchcoat.
She appears to be in great distress.
A man speeds down the highway in his speedster in the middle of the night.
He is in a hurry and does not wish to be detained.
The woman stands in front of him.
He sees her in his headlights.
She will not budge.
At the last moment, he must swerve to avoid her.
He stops violently on the side of the road in the brush.
She approaches the car.
He is agitated. He does not wish to pick up a strange woman, even one naked under her trenchcoat. He wishes to be left alone.
But he lets her in. And they drive.
Down the long, dark, two-lane highway in the middle of the night.
The credits begin to scroll. From top to bottom. Reversed. Widening as they come down the screen.
Like white signs painted on the road. Growing larger as they approach.
This is film noir.
Dark. Violent. Hard-boiled. Hard-bitten. Cold.
In 1955 two French film critics (Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton) wrote an essay entitled "Towards a Definition of Film Noir." It is one of the few pieces written about film noir, and calling it film noir, while film noir was still being made. Most commentary came afterwards, looking back. So having anything written about it contemporaneously is important.
In their essay they describe the impact of American films that came to France in the summer of 1946. During World War 2 France did not have access to American films, so when the war was over and they received them, it was like a revelation.
Before the war, they knew American films in the vein of William Wyler, John Ford, and Frank Capra. After the war, they saw "a strange and violent tone, tinged with a unique kind of eroticism." It was as if everything had changed overnight.
The critics list the following films that came to them in a 6-week period:
John Huston's The Maltese Falcon
Otto Preminger's Laura
Edward Dmytryk's Murder My Sweet
Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity
Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window
A few months' later, the following films came to them:
Frank Tuttle's This Gun for Hire
Robert Siodmak's The Killer's
Robert Montgomery's The Lady in the Lake
Charles Vidor's Gilda
Howard Hawk's The Big Sleep
"A new 'series' had emerged in the history of film."
Notice that every film they list is by a different director. The films also represent all the studios.
This new phenomenon was so new, so sudden, and so wide-sweeping, that it caught the world by surprise.
And it is still being talked about.
The film noir period lasted for about twenty years, essentially during the 1940s and 1950s, and then it went away.
Every once in awhile someone will make one again, and it will be referred to as neo noir, but as a movement it is contained in this particular time in history. People are still trying to understand it. And people are still watching these movies.
The films in this canon are some of the most exciting, thrilling, tension-filled movies ever made. They deal with the dark side of human nature, but also with nobility, and they are visually, sometimes breathtakingly, beautiful to behold.
This film, Kiss Me Deadly, was directed by Robert Aldrich. Robert Aldrich is known for films such as The Big Knife (1955), Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Longest Yard (1974), and The Frisco Kid (1979). In 1956, Aldrich was photographed on set holding a copy of a book in his hands entitled Panorama du Film Noir. That early. He was onto something.
The driver of our car is Mike Hammer, the hero of a series of books written by Mickey Spillane.
Spillane worked in a genre of novels we call hard-boiled detective fiction. Others include the characters Philip Marlowe by Raymond Chandler and Sam Spade by Dashiell Hammett,
These men were tough, no-nonsense, men of action. Women wanted them. Men wanted to be them.
They took the law into their own hands. They operated by their own code. Sometimes they were modern-day knights. Sometimes they were as lost as the criminals they were fighting.
As Mike Hammer drives our mysterious woman, played by a young Cloris Leachman, she tells him that they are after her. Who? They. And they are after something. What? Something. Later we will call it the Whatsit.
She tells him, "If I happen to make it alive, forget me. But if I don't make it, remember me."
What does that mean?
Maybe our poet Christina Roessetti can help us. Remember?
She does not make it.
Someone pulls out in front of them and causes them to crash.
He wakes up tied up somewhere and witnesses them torturing her.
He passes out again. They push the car over a cliff with the two of them in it.
He wakes up in the hospital room.
What happened?
Who are they?
What is the Whatsit?
He thinks it must be something big. He cannot leave it alone. He must get involved.
His police lieutenant friend takes away his detective license and his gun permit. He is not allowed to get involved.
Do you think that will stop him?
Mike sticks his nose where it does not belong.
And he gets into trouble.
And he goes throughout our city to do it.
Our city.
El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula.
Los Angeles.
The home of hardboiled detective fiction. The home of crime dramas. The home of the movies. The home of film noir.
If you know the city, then you will have a feast watching this film. It is a practical tour of the town.
Malibu Canyon, Kaiser Hospital, Olive Street, Flower Street, 10401 Wilshire Boulevard, Rampart, Bunker Hill, Doheny, Cahuenga, Angel's Flight (operating!), Figueroa, the Hollywood Athletic Club, Sunset Blvd.
Yes, Sunset Blvd.
Some things just keep coming back.
Again.
And again.
How many girls will he kiss? How many girls will die? How many men will die? Will he himself die?
The plots in these films are often complicated. The characters are often complex. And there are often lots of characters.
They are puzzles to solve. Sometimes they end unsolved.
These are intelligent films for intelligent people. Disguised as B pictures. Cheap thrillers. Pulp fiction.
They tell the truth about the human condition.
Depravity. Evil. Original sin.
There is no one good. No, not one.
And in the end . . .
They entertain.
This one is explosive.
Keep away from the windows.
Someone might blow you a kiss.
028 - Kiss Me Deadly, 1955, United States. Dir. Robert Aldrich.
A young woman walks down the middle of the highway in the middle of the night.
She is barefoot and wearing only a trenchcoat.
She appears to be in great distress.
A man speeds down the highway in his speedster in the middle of the night.
He is in a hurry and does not wish to be detained.
The woman stands in front of him.
He sees her in his headlights.
She will not budge.
At the last moment, he must swerve to avoid her.
He stops violently on the side of the road in the brush.
She approaches the car.
He is agitated. He does not wish to pick up a strange woman, even one naked under her trenchcoat. He wishes to be left alone.
But he lets her in. And they drive.
Down the long, dark, two-lane highway in the middle of the night.
The credits begin to scroll. From top to bottom. Reversed. Widening as they come down the screen.
Like white signs painted on the road. Growing larger as they approach.
This is film noir.
Dark. Violent. Hard-boiled. Hard-bitten. Cold.
In 1955 two French film critics (Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton) wrote an essay entitled "Towards a Definition of Film Noir." It is one of the few pieces written about film noir, and calling it film noir, while film noir was still being made. Most commentary came afterwards, looking back. So having anything written about it contemporaneously is important.
In their essay they describe the impact of American films that came to France in the summer of 1946. During World War 2 France did not have access to American films, so when the war was over and they received them, it was like a revelation.
Before the war, they knew American films in the vein of William Wyler, John Ford, and Frank Capra. After the war, they saw "a strange and violent tone, tinged with a unique kind of eroticism." It was as if everything had changed overnight.
The critics list the following films that came to them in a 6-week period:
John Huston's The Maltese Falcon
Otto Preminger's Laura
Edward Dmytryk's Murder My Sweet
Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity
Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window
A few months' later, the following films came to them:
Frank Tuttle's This Gun for Hire
Robert Siodmak's The Killer's
Robert Montgomery's The Lady in the Lake
Charles Vidor's Gilda
Howard Hawk's The Big Sleep
"A new 'series' had emerged in the history of film."
Notice that every film they list is by a different director. The films also represent all the studios.
This new phenomenon was so new, so sudden, and so wide-sweeping, that it caught the world by surprise.
And it is still being talked about.
The film noir period lasted for about twenty years, essentially during the 1940s and 1950s, and then it went away.
Every once in awhile someone will make one again, and it will be referred to as neo noir, but as a movement it is contained in this particular time in history. People are still trying to understand it. And people are still watching these movies.
The films in this canon are some of the most exciting, thrilling, tension-filled movies ever made. They deal with the dark side of human nature, but also with nobility, and they are visually, sometimes breathtakingly, beautiful to behold.
This film, Kiss Me Deadly, was directed by Robert Aldrich. Robert Aldrich is known for films such as The Big Knife (1955), Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Longest Yard (1974), and The Frisco Kid (1979). In 1956, Aldrich was photographed on set holding a copy of a book in his hands entitled Panorama du Film Noir. That early. He was onto something.
The driver of our car is Mike Hammer, the hero of a series of books written by Mickey Spillane.
Spillane worked in a genre of novels we call hard-boiled detective fiction. Others include the characters Philip Marlowe by Raymond Chandler and Sam Spade by Dashiell Hammett,
These men were tough, no-nonsense, men of action. Women wanted them. Men wanted to be them.
They took the law into their own hands. They operated by their own code. Sometimes they were modern-day knights. Sometimes they were as lost as the criminals they were fighting.
As Mike Hammer drives our mysterious woman, played by a young Cloris Leachman, she tells him that they are after her. Who? They. And they are after something. What? Something. Later we will call it the Whatsit.
She tells him, "If I happen to make it alive, forget me. But if I don't make it, remember me."
What does that mean?
Maybe our poet Christina Roessetti can help us. Remember?
She does not make it.
Someone pulls out in front of them and causes them to crash.
He wakes up tied up somewhere and witnesses them torturing her.
He passes out again. They push the car over a cliff with the two of them in it.
He wakes up in the hospital room.
What happened?
Who are they?
What is the Whatsit?
He thinks it must be something big. He cannot leave it alone. He must get involved.
His police lieutenant friend takes away his detective license and his gun permit. He is not allowed to get involved.
Do you think that will stop him?
Mike sticks his nose where it does not belong.
And he gets into trouble.
And he goes throughout our city to do it.
Our city.
El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula.
Los Angeles.
The home of hardboiled detective fiction. The home of crime dramas. The home of the movies. The home of film noir.
If you know the city, then you will have a feast watching this film. It is a practical tour of the town.
Malibu Canyon, Kaiser Hospital, Olive Street, Flower Street, 10401 Wilshire Boulevard, Rampart, Bunker Hill, Doheny, Cahuenga, Angel's Flight (operating!), Figueroa, the Hollywood Athletic Club, Sunset Blvd.
Yes, Sunset Blvd.
Some things just keep coming back.
Again.
And again.
How many girls will he kiss? How many girls will die? How many men will die? Will he himself die?
The plots in these films are often complicated. The characters are often complex. And there are often lots of characters.
They are puzzles to solve. Sometimes they end unsolved.
These are intelligent films for intelligent people. Disguised as B pictures. Cheap thrillers. Pulp fiction.
They tell the truth about the human condition.
Depravity. Evil. Original sin.
There is no one good. No, not one.
And in the end . . .
They entertain.
This one is explosive.
Keep away from the windows.
Someone might blow you a kiss.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
025 - City Lights, 1931, United States; Dir. Charles Chaplin.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
025 - City Lights, 1931, United States. Dir. Charles Chaplin.
Watching City Lights is pure joy.
The fact that is so funny is the icing on the cake. Beneath that is a movie that is all heart.
All heart.
The Tramp loves with the purest of love.
He loves a girl with devoted affection.
He loves a friend with honest friendship.
He meets a Blind Girl who sells flowers. Through a series of funny circumstances, she thinks he is a millionaire. He does not realize it. He just loves her.
He meets an alcoholic Eccentric Millionaire. Through a series of funny circumstances, he saves his life. The man treats him as best friends when he is drunk but does not remember him when he is sober.
Meanwhile, The Tramp just keeps loving.
And bumbling.
And seeking the means to provide surgery for the Girl's healing.
In 1931, The Tramp was the most recognized character in the world. Today, he continues to rank alongside Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald as being recognized by the majority of people in nearly every country.
Charlie Chaplin made his name on slapstick and pantomime. He was the king of the movies and had complete independence, owning his own studios. Would that change with the advent of sound?
Sound had now been available for three years, and Chaplin had chosen, on purpose, to make another silent movie--or at least a movie in which there is no talking. It had taken him two years and eight months to complete what had been his most difficult and arduous undertaking. On top of all that, the stock market had crashed.
Chaplin was taking a great risk.
When the movie came out it was an international critical and popular triumph, and it was the height of his career. He had done it again. And it was better than ever.
This movie does actually have sound, just not dialogue. It contains a musical score, which Chaplin wrote himself! And it contains sound affects, such as people talking in nonsensical sounds--which a later generation would recognize in the adult speech of Peanuts--and Chaplin hiccupping in whistles after having gotten a whistle stuck in his throat.
The sight gags abound.
City Lights opens with the unveiling of a new statue to progress and prosperity. The city's elite are present. They remove the sheet. The Tramp is asleep atop the statue, where he has presumably spent the night. The city's elders are shocked. In his polite efforts to come down, he gets his pants hooked on the statue's sword, and he stands and sits in positions that are witty in their imagery.
The Tramp meets the Blind Girl as she is selling flowers. He ducks into a car on one side and ducks out on the other. She hears the car door and believes he is the millionaire exiting the limousine. As he helps her find a dropped flower and realizes she is blind, he falls in love with her. He will seek her out and seek to help her for the rest of the movie.
The Tramp saves the life of the drunk Millionaire. As the Millionaire tries to tie a noose around his own neck, he gets it tied around The Tramp's neck, and The Tramp falls into the water. They will both end up in and out of the water before all is resolved.
The Tramp finds himself in a boxing match, where he uses the referee to block himself from the punches of the real fighter, in a highly choreographed, symmetrical dance of a scene.
The Tramp and the Millionaire attend a party where chairs are pulled out from under people, where he gets thwarted by cigars, eats a streamer as spaghetti, and gets into inadvertent fights over misunderstandings.
Chaplin was willing to do whatever it took to get the shot.
He would spend days on a single moment, weeks on a single scene. It was not indulgent. It was working to a standard. He did it until it was right. And good for us that his judgment was sure.
He used special effects that were ahead of their time, many of which he invented.
He also knew how to edit. He cut a scene from the movie which he had spent a week filming, because it did not fit the story.
When it was finished, he had spent 190 days of filming.
The filmmaking was challenging, but the film looks effortless. It flows steadily and smoothly, and it hits in all the right moments.
City Lights contains one of the greatest lines in the history of film, a line delivered on a card since it was not spoken, a line consisting of a single word.
"You?"
And with that line and the two that follow, a moment is realized that has moved the hearts of generations of people around the world.
Chaplin himself would watch it years later and be amazed, saying that he was not acting in that moment. Something else was going on.
City Lights is a movie of movies. Its emotional impact is why we go to the movies.
It is the definition of movie magic.
025 - City Lights, 1931, United States. Dir. Charles Chaplin.
Watching City Lights is pure joy.
The fact that is so funny is the icing on the cake. Beneath that is a movie that is all heart.
All heart.
The Tramp loves with the purest of love.
He loves a girl with devoted affection.
He loves a friend with honest friendship.
He meets a Blind Girl who sells flowers. Through a series of funny circumstances, she thinks he is a millionaire. He does not realize it. He just loves her.
He meets an alcoholic Eccentric Millionaire. Through a series of funny circumstances, he saves his life. The man treats him as best friends when he is drunk but does not remember him when he is sober.
Meanwhile, The Tramp just keeps loving.
And bumbling.
And seeking the means to provide surgery for the Girl's healing.
In 1931, The Tramp was the most recognized character in the world. Today, he continues to rank alongside Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald as being recognized by the majority of people in nearly every country.
Charlie Chaplin made his name on slapstick and pantomime. He was the king of the movies and had complete independence, owning his own studios. Would that change with the advent of sound?
Sound had now been available for three years, and Chaplin had chosen, on purpose, to make another silent movie--or at least a movie in which there is no talking. It had taken him two years and eight months to complete what had been his most difficult and arduous undertaking. On top of all that, the stock market had crashed.
Chaplin was taking a great risk.
When the movie came out it was an international critical and popular triumph, and it was the height of his career. He had done it again. And it was better than ever.
This movie does actually have sound, just not dialogue. It contains a musical score, which Chaplin wrote himself! And it contains sound affects, such as people talking in nonsensical sounds--which a later generation would recognize in the adult speech of Peanuts--and Chaplin hiccupping in whistles after having gotten a whistle stuck in his throat.
The sight gags abound.
City Lights opens with the unveiling of a new statue to progress and prosperity. The city's elite are present. They remove the sheet. The Tramp is asleep atop the statue, where he has presumably spent the night. The city's elders are shocked. In his polite efforts to come down, he gets his pants hooked on the statue's sword, and he stands and sits in positions that are witty in their imagery.
The Tramp meets the Blind Girl as she is selling flowers. He ducks into a car on one side and ducks out on the other. She hears the car door and believes he is the millionaire exiting the limousine. As he helps her find a dropped flower and realizes she is blind, he falls in love with her. He will seek her out and seek to help her for the rest of the movie.
The Tramp saves the life of the drunk Millionaire. As the Millionaire tries to tie a noose around his own neck, he gets it tied around The Tramp's neck, and The Tramp falls into the water. They will both end up in and out of the water before all is resolved.
The Tramp finds himself in a boxing match, where he uses the referee to block himself from the punches of the real fighter, in a highly choreographed, symmetrical dance of a scene.
The Tramp and the Millionaire attend a party where chairs are pulled out from under people, where he gets thwarted by cigars, eats a streamer as spaghetti, and gets into inadvertent fights over misunderstandings.
Chaplin was willing to do whatever it took to get the shot.
He would spend days on a single moment, weeks on a single scene. It was not indulgent. It was working to a standard. He did it until it was right. And good for us that his judgment was sure.
He used special effects that were ahead of their time, many of which he invented.
He also knew how to edit. He cut a scene from the movie which he had spent a week filming, because it did not fit the story.
When it was finished, he had spent 190 days of filming.
The filmmaking was challenging, but the film looks effortless. It flows steadily and smoothly, and it hits in all the right moments.
City Lights contains one of the greatest lines in the history of film, a line delivered on a card since it was not spoken, a line consisting of a single word.
"You?"
And with that line and the two that follow, a moment is realized that has moved the hearts of generations of people around the world.
Chaplin himself would watch it years later and be amazed, saying that he was not acting in that moment. Something else was going on.
City Lights is a movie of movies. Its emotional impact is why we go to the movies.
It is the definition of movie magic.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
024 - Repulsion, 1965, United Kingdom; Dir. Roman Polanski.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
024 - Repulsion, 1965, United Kingdom. Dir. Roman Polanski.
We are watching a British film made by Polish director, spoken in English.
So why does it feel at times as though we are watching a French film made in the early days of the New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) influenced by Godard or Truffaut?
It was released in 1965. The New Wave came on the scene in 1959 and 1960, when Polanski was acting and making shorts in film school. Perhaps he felt their influence then. By now Truffaut has directed five features, and Godard has directed at least eight. His film Band of Outsiders came out a year earlier, in 1964, and surely its fragrance is still in the air throughout Europe. Their influence on Polanski seems inevitable. It is something we can look up, so at some point let us do so.
At least four elements in Repulsion lead us to think this way. 1) It features scenes of young people walking the streets of the city to a score of jazz music. 2) It stars Catherine Deneuve. 3) It deals frankly with human sexuality and its effects on the psyche. 4) It experiments with technique.
Catherine Deneuve is not an actress who was strictly associated with the Nouvelle Vague, as Anna Karina or Jean Seberg might have been. In fact, she worked more with mainstream filmmakers such as Jacques Demy. But she had just made The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers, a joint film between Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol, and she would later make at least two films for Francois Truffaut: Mississippi Mermaid and The Last Metro (which we have seen). But here, she fits the look and the essence.
She looks young here. When we saw her in The Last Metro, she was around 37--and looked amazing! She made Repulsion at around age 21.
Nevertheless, this is not a Nouvelle Vague movie. It is a British film made by a Polish director.
There are specific shots that give it away. Whenever we see establishing shots or insert shots of buildings or landmarks of the city, they are carefully crafted and well composed. They reveal the style of someone who went to film school and who is more technically proficient and less haphazardly intuitive in his camera placement.
Roman Polanski is one of our great directors. He made Chinatown, one of the finest films ever made, and Rosemary's Baby, one of the great horror films. He has made literary films, such as Macbeth, Tess (from Tess of the d'Urbervilles), and Oliver Twist. He has made thrillers, such as Frantic, The Ninth Gate, and The Ghost Writer. And he made The Pianist, that sweeping, haunting film about surviving the Holocaust, which put Adrien Brody on the map, winning him the Oscar, winning Polanski an Oscar, and winning screenwriter Ronald Harwood an Oscar.
The Pianist won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, BAFTA Awards in England for Best Film and Best Direction, seven Cesars in France, including Best Picture, eight Eagles in Poland, including Best Picture, the Japanese Academy for Best Foreign Film, the Czech Lion for Best Foreign Film, the Sant Jordi Awrd in Spain, the David di Donatello Award in Italy for Best Foreign Film, the European Film Award for Cinematographer, the Golden Globe in Italy, the Goya Award, the Harry Award, and many film society, critic, and festival awards.
The Pianist was personal for Polanski.
He is Jewish. His family lived in Krakow. His parents took him to the cinema before the War, but then the War came, and they were sent to the Krakow Ghetto. Roman was expelled from school at age five and not allowed back in school for six years. His mother was taken to Auschwitz and killed. He watched his father marched away to another camp. His father would survive the war, but it would be years before Roman would see him again. Roman fled the Ghetto, changed his name, and was raised as a Catholic by a Catholic family.
After the War, Polanski attended film school--the same school as Krzysztof Kieslowski, director of the Three Colors movies that we watched last week--and he received accolades for his work there.
Repulsion is his second feature film. His first is Knife in the Water, which we will see later.
Repulsion is about a woman who begins repressed and progressively moves in the direction of a mental break.
Carol, from Brussels, lives with her sister Helen in London. Colin is pursuing her, while Michael is dating Helen.
Carol recoils from men. She rebuffs Colin, forgets about their dates, responds to him emptily and with glazed eyes. She cringes when hearing Michael and Helen making love through the apartment walls, and she reacts against his being in her bathroom in the morning.
Carol works at a spa, giving manicures and supporting estheticians. She begins to daydream, starts to miss work, and eventually cuts a woman's finger while daydreaming in a botched manicure.
Helen and Michael will go on a vacation, leaving Carol on her own, which proves not to be good for her.
Carol progressively breaks down.
She experiences hallucinations. She stops going to work. She cuts the cord to the telephone. She irons a shirt with an unplugged iron. She stays in her nightgown anyway.
Colin comes over to find out what is going on.
She . . . does something about it.
The landlord comes over one last time to collect the delinquent rent.
She does nothing.
He tries to take advantage of her.
She does something.
When Michael and Helen return home, they discover an apartment different from the one they left. The neighbors get involved.
Watch the film to find out what happens.
Repulsion is an accomplished film. It feels accurate in its portrayal of a growing psychosis. I would like to know what mental health professionals think about it. Is it as accurate as it seems?
Catherine Deneuve plays against type--at least as we know her so far--not as the confident, beautiful blonde, but, as a pathologically inward person. In The Last Metro we saw her as a strong woman, the wife of a great artist, co-owner of a successful theatre, an established actress, a community leader. In Repulsion we see her as a tormented girl, emotionally repressed, psychologically troubled, locked in a downward spiral. Deneuve is committed to her performance. She exhibits the range of a great actress.
In the final shot of the film, Polanski has cinematographer Gilbert Taylor move the camera in a brilliantly choreographed shot down and around the room across the various objects that have been strewn in the process of the film.
We land on a family photograph. It shows a man, a girl, and a woman. The girl is glaring at the man, staring at him with a look of contempt. We zoom in on her.
The look in her eyes reveals the source of her troubles.
024 - Repulsion, 1965, United Kingdom. Dir. Roman Polanski.
We are watching a British film made by Polish director, spoken in English.
So why does it feel at times as though we are watching a French film made in the early days of the New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) influenced by Godard or Truffaut?
It was released in 1965. The New Wave came on the scene in 1959 and 1960, when Polanski was acting and making shorts in film school. Perhaps he felt their influence then. By now Truffaut has directed five features, and Godard has directed at least eight. His film Band of Outsiders came out a year earlier, in 1964, and surely its fragrance is still in the air throughout Europe. Their influence on Polanski seems inevitable. It is something we can look up, so at some point let us do so.
At least four elements in Repulsion lead us to think this way. 1) It features scenes of young people walking the streets of the city to a score of jazz music. 2) It stars Catherine Deneuve. 3) It deals frankly with human sexuality and its effects on the psyche. 4) It experiments with technique.
Catherine Deneuve is not an actress who was strictly associated with the Nouvelle Vague, as Anna Karina or Jean Seberg might have been. In fact, she worked more with mainstream filmmakers such as Jacques Demy. But she had just made The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers, a joint film between Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol, and she would later make at least two films for Francois Truffaut: Mississippi Mermaid and The Last Metro (which we have seen). But here, she fits the look and the essence.
She looks young here. When we saw her in The Last Metro, she was around 37--and looked amazing! She made Repulsion at around age 21.
Nevertheless, this is not a Nouvelle Vague movie. It is a British film made by a Polish director.
There are specific shots that give it away. Whenever we see establishing shots or insert shots of buildings or landmarks of the city, they are carefully crafted and well composed. They reveal the style of someone who went to film school and who is more technically proficient and less haphazardly intuitive in his camera placement.
Roman Polanski is one of our great directors. He made Chinatown, one of the finest films ever made, and Rosemary's Baby, one of the great horror films. He has made literary films, such as Macbeth, Tess (from Tess of the d'Urbervilles), and Oliver Twist. He has made thrillers, such as Frantic, The Ninth Gate, and The Ghost Writer. And he made The Pianist, that sweeping, haunting film about surviving the Holocaust, which put Adrien Brody on the map, winning him the Oscar, winning Polanski an Oscar, and winning screenwriter Ronald Harwood an Oscar.
The Pianist won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, BAFTA Awards in England for Best Film and Best Direction, seven Cesars in France, including Best Picture, eight Eagles in Poland, including Best Picture, the Japanese Academy for Best Foreign Film, the Czech Lion for Best Foreign Film, the Sant Jordi Awrd in Spain, the David di Donatello Award in Italy for Best Foreign Film, the European Film Award for Cinematographer, the Golden Globe in Italy, the Goya Award, the Harry Award, and many film society, critic, and festival awards.
The Pianist was personal for Polanski.
He is Jewish. His family lived in Krakow. His parents took him to the cinema before the War, but then the War came, and they were sent to the Krakow Ghetto. Roman was expelled from school at age five and not allowed back in school for six years. His mother was taken to Auschwitz and killed. He watched his father marched away to another camp. His father would survive the war, but it would be years before Roman would see him again. Roman fled the Ghetto, changed his name, and was raised as a Catholic by a Catholic family.
After the War, Polanski attended film school--the same school as Krzysztof Kieslowski, director of the Three Colors movies that we watched last week--and he received accolades for his work there.
Repulsion is his second feature film. His first is Knife in the Water, which we will see later.
Repulsion is about a woman who begins repressed and progressively moves in the direction of a mental break.
Carol, from Brussels, lives with her sister Helen in London. Colin is pursuing her, while Michael is dating Helen.
Carol recoils from men. She rebuffs Colin, forgets about their dates, responds to him emptily and with glazed eyes. She cringes when hearing Michael and Helen making love through the apartment walls, and she reacts against his being in her bathroom in the morning.
Carol works at a spa, giving manicures and supporting estheticians. She begins to daydream, starts to miss work, and eventually cuts a woman's finger while daydreaming in a botched manicure.
Helen and Michael will go on a vacation, leaving Carol on her own, which proves not to be good for her.
Carol progressively breaks down.
She experiences hallucinations. She stops going to work. She cuts the cord to the telephone. She irons a shirt with an unplugged iron. She stays in her nightgown anyway.
Colin comes over to find out what is going on.
She . . . does something about it.
The landlord comes over one last time to collect the delinquent rent.
She does nothing.
He tries to take advantage of her.
She does something.
When Michael and Helen return home, they discover an apartment different from the one they left. The neighbors get involved.
Watch the film to find out what happens.
Repulsion is an accomplished film. It feels accurate in its portrayal of a growing psychosis. I would like to know what mental health professionals think about it. Is it as accurate as it seems?
Catherine Deneuve plays against type--at least as we know her so far--not as the confident, beautiful blonde, but, as a pathologically inward person. In The Last Metro we saw her as a strong woman, the wife of a great artist, co-owner of a successful theatre, an established actress, a community leader. In Repulsion we see her as a tormented girl, emotionally repressed, psychologically troubled, locked in a downward spiral. Deneuve is committed to her performance. She exhibits the range of a great actress.
In the final shot of the film, Polanski has cinematographer Gilbert Taylor move the camera in a brilliantly choreographed shot down and around the room across the various objects that have been strewn in the process of the film.
We land on a family photograph. It shows a man, a girl, and a woman. The girl is glaring at the man, staring at him with a look of contempt. We zoom in on her.
The look in her eyes reveals the source of her troubles.
Monday, January 23, 2017
023 - The Red Shoes, 1948, United Kingdom; Dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger.
Monday, January 23, 2017
023 - The Red Shoes, 1948, United Kingdom. Dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger.
The ballet is about to begin.
A restless throng pounds on the balcony door.
"They're going mad, Sir. It's the students."
Someone behind the door shouts, "Down with tyrants!" The doorkeeper says to let them in. They rush up the stairs and out on to the balcony. They look like they are in their 40s, as college students back then did. They are well-dressed for the evening, and they are feisty.
One group has come to see the ballet. Another has come to hear the orchestra. They argue.
The first group shows snobbish favoritism for the lead dancer, Irina Boronskaja. They are incredulous that anyone would come to the ballet without coming specifically for her.
The second group shows patriotic enthusiasm for the composer, Prof. Palmer. He has written the music, Heart of Fire, for tonight's ballet. He is their professor, and they cheer for him.
As the orchestra begins one of the students, Julian Craster, recognizes the music. So do his friends, Ike and Terry, sitting on either side of him. It is his own composition! At first he gives him the benefit of the doubt, but as it continues he realizes that his own professor has stolen and published his work. He gets up and leaves. Terry follows. So does Ike.
This happens.
Lady Neston sits in a theatre box with her niece Victoria Page. She sends a card to Lermontov, in his box, inviting him to an after party. He does not wish to go but is persuaded by Professor Palmer, in the box with him, to attend, as she is a patron of the arts.
After the ballet, Palmer and Lermontov arrive at the party. Lady Neston welcomes them, congratulating Palmer for his composition and showing enthusiasm for Lermontov for his having come. Some men wheel in a piano. Lermontov is bothered. This is a set-up.
Sure enough, Lady Neston explains to him that her niece Vicky will be dancing. He calls it a shock. He asks her, "How would you define ballet?" She begins to answer, "One might call it the poetry of motion. . . . " He interrupts, "One might, but for me it is a great deal more. For me it is a religion. One does not care to see one's religion practiced in an atmosphere like this." He leaves the room.
As the pianist begins playing, Vicky passes through to the other room and approaches the bar, where Lermontov is now ordering a champagne cocktail. She affects an attitude of disdain and also orders a champagne cocktail. He notices her and speaks to her, thinking they will share in their disdain for the party. She has baited him. He tells her that it very nearly was a great deal worse. They were about to witness a horror.
She reveals, "I was that horror."
He is caught. It is too late to apologize but he does anyway. She confronts him and asks why he is not sorry she did not dance. He explains.
"If I accept an invitation to a party, I do not expect to find myself at an audition."
Touché.
But then he asks, "Why do you want to dance?"
She responds, "Why do you want to breathe?"
And with that, she now has his attention.
He says, "Come with me."
Meanwhile, Julian Craster has written a letter to Lermontov introducing himself, explaining that the music of Heart of Fire was his composition. He arrives the next morning at Lermontov's asking for it back. He is embarrassed and does not want Lermontov to read it. Too late. Lermontov has already read it.
Lermontov has him sit at the piano and play. The actor, Julian Goring, is really playing.
Lermontov hires him on the spot to be the new coach for the orchestra. He tells him to destroy the letter and forget about it, stating that "These things mostly happen unintentionally."
Then he observes--
"It is much more disheartening to have to steal than to be stolen from."
That is quite an observation. Read it again. What does it say about talent?
And with that we have set up the film. In the first twenty minutes of a two-and-a-quarter hour story, we have the young dancer and the young composer having met the great impresario and been invited to the next rehearsal.
What we are about to see is a meditation on the price of art.
Martin Scorsese has championed The Red Shoes as one of the great films in cinema history and one of the greatest color films ever made.
Gene Kelly used it to bring ballet into An American in Paris.
It has gone on to influence many artists and filmmakers.
Are you an artist?
Do you want to be one of the great ones?
How badly to you want it?
What price are you willing to pay?
Are there limits?
Are some prices too high?
023 - The Red Shoes, 1948, United Kingdom. Dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger.
The ballet is about to begin.
A restless throng pounds on the balcony door.
"They're going mad, Sir. It's the students."
Someone behind the door shouts, "Down with tyrants!" The doorkeeper says to let them in. They rush up the stairs and out on to the balcony. They look like they are in their 40s, as college students back then did. They are well-dressed for the evening, and they are feisty.
One group has come to see the ballet. Another has come to hear the orchestra. They argue.
The first group shows snobbish favoritism for the lead dancer, Irina Boronskaja. They are incredulous that anyone would come to the ballet without coming specifically for her.
The second group shows patriotic enthusiasm for the composer, Prof. Palmer. He has written the music, Heart of Fire, for tonight's ballet. He is their professor, and they cheer for him.
As the orchestra begins one of the students, Julian Craster, recognizes the music. So do his friends, Ike and Terry, sitting on either side of him. It is his own composition! At first he gives him the benefit of the doubt, but as it continues he realizes that his own professor has stolen and published his work. He gets up and leaves. Terry follows. So does Ike.
This happens.
Lady Neston sits in a theatre box with her niece Victoria Page. She sends a card to Lermontov, in his box, inviting him to an after party. He does not wish to go but is persuaded by Professor Palmer, in the box with him, to attend, as she is a patron of the arts.
After the ballet, Palmer and Lermontov arrive at the party. Lady Neston welcomes them, congratulating Palmer for his composition and showing enthusiasm for Lermontov for his having come. Some men wheel in a piano. Lermontov is bothered. This is a set-up.
Sure enough, Lady Neston explains to him that her niece Vicky will be dancing. He calls it a shock. He asks her, "How would you define ballet?" She begins to answer, "One might call it the poetry of motion. . . . " He interrupts, "One might, but for me it is a great deal more. For me it is a religion. One does not care to see one's religion practiced in an atmosphere like this." He leaves the room.
As the pianist begins playing, Vicky passes through to the other room and approaches the bar, where Lermontov is now ordering a champagne cocktail. She affects an attitude of disdain and also orders a champagne cocktail. He notices her and speaks to her, thinking they will share in their disdain for the party. She has baited him. He tells her that it very nearly was a great deal worse. They were about to witness a horror.
She reveals, "I was that horror."
He is caught. It is too late to apologize but he does anyway. She confronts him and asks why he is not sorry she did not dance. He explains.
"If I accept an invitation to a party, I do not expect to find myself at an audition."
Touché.
But then he asks, "Why do you want to dance?"
She responds, "Why do you want to breathe?"
And with that, she now has his attention.
He says, "Come with me."
Meanwhile, Julian Craster has written a letter to Lermontov introducing himself, explaining that the music of Heart of Fire was his composition. He arrives the next morning at Lermontov's asking for it back. He is embarrassed and does not want Lermontov to read it. Too late. Lermontov has already read it.
Lermontov has him sit at the piano and play. The actor, Julian Goring, is really playing.
Lermontov hires him on the spot to be the new coach for the orchestra. He tells him to destroy the letter and forget about it, stating that "These things mostly happen unintentionally."
Then he observes--
"It is much more disheartening to have to steal than to be stolen from."
That is quite an observation. Read it again. What does it say about talent?
And with that we have set up the film. In the first twenty minutes of a two-and-a-quarter hour story, we have the young dancer and the young composer having met the great impresario and been invited to the next rehearsal.
What we are about to see is a meditation on the price of art.
Martin Scorsese has championed The Red Shoes as one of the great films in cinema history and one of the greatest color films ever made.
Gene Kelly used it to bring ballet into An American in Paris.
It has gone on to influence many artists and filmmakers.
Are you an artist?
Do you want to be one of the great ones?
How badly to you want it?
What price are you willing to pay?
Are there limits?
Are some prices too high?
Sunday, January 22, 2017
022 - Chungking Express, 1994, Hong Kong; Dir. Wong Kar-wai.
Sunday, January 22, 2017
022 - Chungking Express, 1994. Dir. Wong Kar-wai.
Yesterday, with Tokyo Story, we saw a movie where the camera sat on a tripod and never moved.
Today, with Chungking Express, we are watching a movie where the camera is handheld and never stops moving.
Kar-Wai Wong is one of so many directors who began as a writer. He wrote at least fifteen screenplays for other directors before directing himself. Once he began writing and directing, he never looked back. This is his third film to direct.
The title refers to two locations: The Chungking Mansions, which is an indoor mall filled with family-owned shops and restaurants, and The Midnight Express, which is a family-owned lunch counter where much of the action occurs.
The film is broken into two stories, each involving a lovelorn police officer who pines over the loss of a girlfriend.
What do you do after a breakup?
The first police officer is He Qiwu, Badge Number 223. He has had a breakup with a girl named May. They broke up on April Fool's Day, so he considers the break-up a joke. He will go for 30 days waiting and looking for her, and then on his birthday, on May 1, he will try to move on.
He Qiwu cannot move on.
He thinks about May constantly. He has an answering service, and he calls them constantly to see if May has left him a message. He has a pager, and he checks it constantly to see if May has called. He calls May's family. He calls her friends, to check on her and to let them know that he is available if she needs anything.
He Qiwu buys a can of pineapple a day with an expiration date of that day--because May liked pineapple. When he has thirty cans of pineapple, then he will know that it is over. He has to scour convenience stores throughout the area to find a can with such a late date, because the stores keep restocking fresher cans. The clerks wonder about him.
He Qiwu takes up jogging. He believes that if he sweats out the water in his body, he will cry less. When he finds that a woman is running a race, he is incredulous. Why would you run if you are not trying to sweat the tears out of you?
Meanwhile, a woman has been installed in the Chungking Mansions to move a large stash of drugs for a drug lord. She wears a trenchcoat, a blonde wig, and sunglasses, indoors and at night. She speaks English. She is tough.
She hires an inexperienced Indian family to carry the drugs. She tailors clothes for them. It appears to be the first time they have ever worn a suit. She hides drugs in the shoe heels, teddy bear, boom box, and baby bump.
The family betrays her.
They take the money. They take the drugs. They disappear.
She searches the stores and stalls for information. One man says he does not know, so she takes his daughter. She buys the girl ice cream, lots of ice cream, from another store, while calling him and demanding ransom. He caves. He gets his daughter. She tells us, in voice-over--all the characters speak to us in voice-over--that "some men might sacrifice their own kid for money, but he wasn't one of them."
The film begins with He Qiwu on the job, as a police officer. He is chasing a man with a brown paper bag on his head. (We Americans are thinking, "It's the Unknown Comic!") He brushes past the woman in the wig and sunglasses.
He tells us he brushed past her .01 cm away, and that 57 hours later he will fall in love with her.
On his birthday, May has not called. He eats all thirty cans of pineapple. He goes running in the rain. He decides to find someone else.
So he calls old friends. Lulu is asleep. He has awakened her. Sorry.
The next one has been married five years. Oh, you mean we haven't spoken in over five years? She has two children. Sorry.
We went to fourth grade together. You remember? You don't? It doesn't matter.
It is a humorous moment that evokes sympathy.
What have you done when you were desperate and lonely?
You may laugh at his behavior because it is familiar to you, and you ache with his loneliness.
He goes to a bar. The woman with the wig and sunglasses goes to the bar. He tries to pick her up. She rebuffs him.
Watch to see what happens next.
The other story stars the great Asian actor Tony Leung. He plays Badge Number 633. He frequents The Midnight Express, and orders coffee. A girl named Faye works there, cousin to the boss, and she plays The Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'" loudly and non-stop.
The cop is dating a flight attendant. They play games together. They make innuendo involving flight terms. She leaves him.
She puts a letter and his keys in an envelope and leaves it with The Midnight Express, asking them to pass it on to him.
Have you ever had someone return your keys?
It hurts.
It hurts Cop Number 633.
The Cop does not read the letter. He does not collect it. The boss steams open the envelope. He reads the letter. Faye reads the letter. She takes the keys.
This could get complicated.
Watch to see what happens next.
Chungking Express stands out for its style.
People in the background move faster than the main characters, or in slow motion. The camera races down hallways, pans across rooms, looks up and down in rapid pace, and cuts quickly. We look through doorways, windows, around corners. The action may take place in one-third of the screen. The rest may be a wall, or other people, or a blur. Montages abound.
Music is important. A classic jukebox stands prominently in The Chungking Mansions, with CDs rotating in mesmerizing fashion. An old-school boom box sits behind the counter at The Midnight Express. Cop 633 plays CDs in his apartment.
Words are important. Wong's background as a writer is evident. The voice-overs are poetic. The two men are romantic. He Qiwu speaks poetically about expiration dates. Cop 633 talks to physical objects in his apartment. They handle their jobs with professionalism, but their hearts are aching.
When Wong gives interviews, he does not refer to other filmmakers so much as he refers to writers and literature.
Which is not to say that this movie feels like some kind of literary adaptation. It feels like an action movie, like a film of its time, like contemporary independent world cinema. It feels like youth. Indeed, Quentin Tarantino fell in love with it and picked it up for distribution in America.
If you want to check your messages, the password is "Love You for 10,000 Years."
022 - Chungking Express, 1994. Dir. Wong Kar-wai.
Yesterday, with Tokyo Story, we saw a movie where the camera sat on a tripod and never moved.
Today, with Chungking Express, we are watching a movie where the camera is handheld and never stops moving.
Kar-Wai Wong is one of so many directors who began as a writer. He wrote at least fifteen screenplays for other directors before directing himself. Once he began writing and directing, he never looked back. This is his third film to direct.
The title refers to two locations: The Chungking Mansions, which is an indoor mall filled with family-owned shops and restaurants, and The Midnight Express, which is a family-owned lunch counter where much of the action occurs.
The film is broken into two stories, each involving a lovelorn police officer who pines over the loss of a girlfriend.
What do you do after a breakup?
The first police officer is He Qiwu, Badge Number 223. He has had a breakup with a girl named May. They broke up on April Fool's Day, so he considers the break-up a joke. He will go for 30 days waiting and looking for her, and then on his birthday, on May 1, he will try to move on.
He Qiwu cannot move on.
He thinks about May constantly. He has an answering service, and he calls them constantly to see if May has left him a message. He has a pager, and he checks it constantly to see if May has called. He calls May's family. He calls her friends, to check on her and to let them know that he is available if she needs anything.
He Qiwu buys a can of pineapple a day with an expiration date of that day--because May liked pineapple. When he has thirty cans of pineapple, then he will know that it is over. He has to scour convenience stores throughout the area to find a can with such a late date, because the stores keep restocking fresher cans. The clerks wonder about him.
He Qiwu takes up jogging. He believes that if he sweats out the water in his body, he will cry less. When he finds that a woman is running a race, he is incredulous. Why would you run if you are not trying to sweat the tears out of you?
Meanwhile, a woman has been installed in the Chungking Mansions to move a large stash of drugs for a drug lord. She wears a trenchcoat, a blonde wig, and sunglasses, indoors and at night. She speaks English. She is tough.
She hires an inexperienced Indian family to carry the drugs. She tailors clothes for them. It appears to be the first time they have ever worn a suit. She hides drugs in the shoe heels, teddy bear, boom box, and baby bump.
The family betrays her.
They take the money. They take the drugs. They disappear.
She searches the stores and stalls for information. One man says he does not know, so she takes his daughter. She buys the girl ice cream, lots of ice cream, from another store, while calling him and demanding ransom. He caves. He gets his daughter. She tells us, in voice-over--all the characters speak to us in voice-over--that "some men might sacrifice their own kid for money, but he wasn't one of them."
The film begins with He Qiwu on the job, as a police officer. He is chasing a man with a brown paper bag on his head. (We Americans are thinking, "It's the Unknown Comic!") He brushes past the woman in the wig and sunglasses.
He tells us he brushed past her .01 cm away, and that 57 hours later he will fall in love with her.
On his birthday, May has not called. He eats all thirty cans of pineapple. He goes running in the rain. He decides to find someone else.
So he calls old friends. Lulu is asleep. He has awakened her. Sorry.
The next one has been married five years. Oh, you mean we haven't spoken in over five years? She has two children. Sorry.
We went to fourth grade together. You remember? You don't? It doesn't matter.
It is a humorous moment that evokes sympathy.
What have you done when you were desperate and lonely?
You may laugh at his behavior because it is familiar to you, and you ache with his loneliness.
He goes to a bar. The woman with the wig and sunglasses goes to the bar. He tries to pick her up. She rebuffs him.
Watch to see what happens next.
The other story stars the great Asian actor Tony Leung. He plays Badge Number 633. He frequents The Midnight Express, and orders coffee. A girl named Faye works there, cousin to the boss, and she plays The Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'" loudly and non-stop.
The cop is dating a flight attendant. They play games together. They make innuendo involving flight terms. She leaves him.
She puts a letter and his keys in an envelope and leaves it with The Midnight Express, asking them to pass it on to him.
Have you ever had someone return your keys?
It hurts.
It hurts Cop Number 633.
The Cop does not read the letter. He does not collect it. The boss steams open the envelope. He reads the letter. Faye reads the letter. She takes the keys.
This could get complicated.
Watch to see what happens next.
Chungking Express stands out for its style.
People in the background move faster than the main characters, or in slow motion. The camera races down hallways, pans across rooms, looks up and down in rapid pace, and cuts quickly. We look through doorways, windows, around corners. The action may take place in one-third of the screen. The rest may be a wall, or other people, or a blur. Montages abound.
Music is important. A classic jukebox stands prominently in The Chungking Mansions, with CDs rotating in mesmerizing fashion. An old-school boom box sits behind the counter at The Midnight Express. Cop 633 plays CDs in his apartment.
Words are important. Wong's background as a writer is evident. The voice-overs are poetic. The two men are romantic. He Qiwu speaks poetically about expiration dates. Cop 633 talks to physical objects in his apartment. They handle their jobs with professionalism, but their hearts are aching.
When Wong gives interviews, he does not refer to other filmmakers so much as he refers to writers and literature.
Which is not to say that this movie feels like some kind of literary adaptation. It feels like an action movie, like a film of its time, like contemporary independent world cinema. It feels like youth. Indeed, Quentin Tarantino fell in love with it and picked it up for distribution in America.
If you want to check your messages, the password is "Love You for 10,000 Years."
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