Three films a day

To the one and a half of my old friends wondering about the silence, I am still alive. Real life just caught up with me. Or rather, if you look at this as a simple energy situation, I’ve not had the energy to watch or write about movies in the last week or so. (Though I caught a film in the theatre Friday night, and I am trying to convince myself to go see Milla at the end of the week.) I do have four films I need to write up, though, and hopefully (for my own sake) I’ll get these all out in due time.

Here’s the first.

#37, 2/18 – Huozhe (1994) (dvd)

I usually don’t go in for epics, but I like Zhang Yimou (even if I was only lukewarn about his recent adventures, Hero and House of Flying Daggers) so I thought I’d give this one a chance. And I thought it was a loveably human portrait of a family making its way in mid-twentieth century China. Even though I saw a number of moments I would consider subtly critical of life since the end of the Chinese Civil War, I wonder if Zhang had to curtail some of his ideas as a form of self-censorship. But I wonder that with filmmakers the world over. (Yes, especially Hollywood filmmakers.)

Actually, I’m not being entirely straightforward here. I don’t wonder about Zhang’s choices at all. I know. Years ago I read a statement by Zhang himself which said every Chinese director has an internal censor. I watched this film knowing that he kept himself in check. How could he not? It’s a self-preservation thing, obviously. But my point is that I think the instinct lives in most filmmakers the world over. Even when state-sponsored violence isn’t an issue, some guy can put eight bullets in you. Those who aren’t concerned for their lives are concerned about their livelihoods. I can’t say I blame anyone who self-censors what they do publicly (I’ve done it. I do it. And I will continue to do it), I just find it fascinating.

It’s a regular issue with me, I guess. I wrote the first paragraph the day after I saw the movie, and just last night I was talking to my local movie buddy and wondering why filmmakers don’t try tackling their own nation’s historical sore points head on. (Sure, the answers are fairly obvious and understandable. I still wondered.) To steal and perhaps misapply a tiny bit from Munich’s script, it’s not like most of the power-wielding groups in the world got there by being nice. They’ve each done rotten things: exploited, murdered, and dehumanized, and each in their own special way. There’s plenty to examine which simply never gets touched. (Observe the lack of examples about what I consider to be the misdeeds of my own country’s powerful. There’s some self-censorship for you.)

This slight and probably unsatisfying tangent of mine is not meant as a criticism of Zhang or his exquisite film. If anything, it’s just me noticing how those who have far more freedom to express themselves than Zhang did in 1994 (and he knew this movie would meet with the disapproval of Chinese censors) limit their expression, too. Perhaps for different reasons, but they still do it.

#36, 2/17 – Spy Game (2001) (nqpdd)

There are, I know, several movies out there which I’ve seen and then forgotten I’ve seen. Sometimes it takes stumbling across the movie on cable and then going “Oh, right. And then Anthony Hopkins does the thing with the thing…” for me to realize it. I have a decent memory, but, yeah, sometimes I just forget that I’ve seen a movie. Weird, huh?

Oh, but sometimes the opposite happens and there are movies I swore I saw and yet actually didn’t. Spy Game is one of those. Well, in my defense, I did see about 5 minutes of it on cable one night in 2003. I caught the sniper scene near the beginning, and it left an impression. A big one. But I resolved to watch the movie from the beginning, since, well, Tony Scott movie or no, I figured that was the best way to watch it. Anyway, I managed to convince myself I’d seen the whole thing. Totally hadn’t. When it dawned on me that this was the case—I stumbled upon the movie’s Wikipedia entry a couple weeks ago, got about two sentences into the synopsis and realized that I’d never seen it — I decided I should. Yeah, despite Brad Pitt.

It’s typical Tony Scott, with typical music, and typical plot twists, and really it’s all very typical. But it has Charlotte Rampling for a few minutes. And Catherine McCormack (who I consider one of the most tragically underseen actors of this day and age—and this is despite my absolute hatred of Dangerous Beauty). And I like Robert Redford, no matter what my dad may say about him. (Or is it Paul Newman he doesn’t like? No, it’s gotta be Redford.) It’s not life-changing, but it’s Tony Scott, so I knew that going in. And I’d watched a Fred Astaire musical just before—do you think I was actually looking for life-changing?

#35, 2/17 – The Band Wagon (1953) (dvd)

I like Fred Astaire’s endearingly goofy on-screen persona. And when I respond well to actors, be it Gena Rowlands or Philip Seymour Hoffman (Phil!), that’s what I’m reacting to. I’m no judge of acting talent. I’m not able to say with any degree of certainty that any particular performance was good or bad. I just react to what they radiate. So, you know, maybe Tom Cruise and Gwyneth Paltrow are great actors. I don’t know. I just don’t like the energy they put on the screen.

Anyway, back to Astaire. I like him. Were I to list out my twenty-five favorite actors of all time (I won’t), he’d almost certainly be on the list. I can watch Daddy Long Legs (the movie he made right after this one) again and again and again because of his, let me repeat myself, endearingly goofy on-screen personality. Yay Fred. It was also good to see Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant seeming an awful lot like I imagine writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green might have been, publicly. And I rented it, actually, for Cyd Charisse since, get this, I’d never seen her in a starring role and I felt the need to correct that. So I did.

It’s hardly my favorite musical—and by no means my favorite from Comden and Green—but it’s fun and cute, and that’s good enough. Plus, I loved hearing Fabray sing “Louisiana Hayride”, even if it made absolutely no sense for it to be in the movie. None. But, hey… that’s entertainment!

#34, 2/17 РQuai des Orf̬vres (1947) (dvd)

I guess Henri-Georges Clouzot enjoyed mysteries and suspenses wrapped around domestic struggles. Like Les Diaboliques (and I believe L’Enfer, though I’ve only seen Chabrol’s remake), Quai des Orfèvres features a man who is, to put it gently, an unbalanced husband. In this case, the husband publicly threatens a man who ends up dead a short while later—where I come from we call threatening to kill someone in front of witnesses “a mistake in judgement”, and this is why. Matters are complicated just a tad by the fact that the jealous husband did, in fact, intend to kill the murdered man that very night. But did he actually do it? (The film reveals the answer to that question immediately.) An investigation ensues, and the truth comes out on Christmas. Joy to the world and all that.

Say, why aren’t there more Clouzot movies on DVD? The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques are two of my favorite pre-New Wave French movies, along with things I’ve seen more recently like Casque d’Or and Bob Le Flambeur—oh, and Rififi. I know there are also a lot of films from Becker and Melville which aren’t on DVD, but I think Clouzot’s specialty seems to have been suspense, and it seems he’d have an appeal to DVD renters looking for something new and interesting. I suppose it’s possible that they’ve transfered his best films over already. That’d be a bit of a shame.

Oh my god. They’re remaking Rififi for 2007? With Pacino? Oh god no. No, no, no, no, no.

#33, 2/12 – My Favorite Wife (1940) (dvd)

I like my comedies simple. I don’t need outrageous gags, or really much of anything besides solid delivery of decent writing and, well, personality.

You won’t get much more personality than Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. No, this isn’t just me talking here. I know you think that’s what’s going on, but I’ve proven it. Mathematically. Just like Cher can’t be in one of the greatest movies ever made (another thing I proved mathematically), it is rather unlikely for you to find a pairing with more personality than Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. Unless, of course, Myrna Loy is half of the pair. Yeah, I love The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer. How did you know?

Oh, I got sidetracked. Where was I? Oh, right. I do a lot of things with math. Come over and I’ll show you the fully operational perpetual motion machine of the first kind I put together in my garage last weekend. Well, that’s more insurgent physics than math, yeah? Dig me, I’m the Ryan Adams of physics.

And I very much enjoyed the movie, though I don’t consider it a veritable bundle of goodness like The Awful Truth. Of course, in one movie you have Asta and in the other movie you don’t. See? Asta makes a difference. I’ll work out the proof for that in the morning.

#32, 2/11 – Nightmare Alley (1947) (dvd)

In the first scene of Nightmare Alley, while talking about (arguably) the most degrading sideshow at the carnival he was working at, Stanton Carlisle (Tyrone Power) says “I don’t understand how anybody can get so low.” In response,Zeena Krumbein (Joan Blondell) simply says “It can happen”, betraying a certain level of experience on the matter; we learn as the film goes on that someone in Zeena’s life is almost “that low”, and she feels responsible. But it’s Stanton’s story, and we watch him climb from the carnival to become an acclaimed mentalist in Chicago (it was fun to hear my neighborhood, Rogers Park, get mentioned). Along the way there’s plenty of ambition and betrayal with a notion of predetermination sprinkled in.

I loved each of the three actresses in this one. I knew of Blondell, though mostly as a tv guest star of the 60s and 70s—I’d certainly never seen her in anything from before 1950. According to IMDB, I’d seen Coleen Gray before in the infamous throw-mama-down-the-stairs film, Kiss of Death, but for some reason I found her more memorable this time around. (Shush. It was not the skimpy carnival getup). I’d never heard of Helen Walker before I saw this, though, and I think she was the most wonderful thing about this film. Sadly, it seems her career trajectory was cut short by injuries she received in a 1946 car accident. (In an odd coincidence, just the night before I watched this, I’d been talking with one of my friends about Monty Clift’s accident during the filming of Raintree County.)

I enjoyed it quite a bit. It seems my noir renaissance period is going to bear some fruit.

#31, 2/10 – School of Flesh (1998) (dvd)

Have I actually disliked an Isabelle Huppert movie? I don’t know. Oh. Well, Ma Mère. But that means it took one hundred solid minutes of nihilism to beat me.

School of Flesh—though not nearly as repulsive as Ma Mère—actually came quite close to falling on my bad side, too. Very close. But somehow I connected with it in the last half hour and there was some (but not much) rejoicing.

#30, 2/9 – Sex Madness (1938) (pdd) (Internet Archive details)

I have no words.

#29, 2/8 – Funny Games (1997) (dvd)

Funny Games is, to me, the most wonderful critique of the thriller I can imagine.

It starts with a family driving to their summer home, a peaceful moment which Haneke revisted (and overturned in much the same way) with Time of the Wolf. Our protagonists are Anna, her husband Georg, their young son Schorschi, and a German Sheperd named, I think, Rolfie (but I can’t remember). They seem really nice and they’re obviously looking forward to their time out by the lake. Yes, by the lake. (Cue Cape Fear music.)

It’s not an enjoyable vacation, unfortunately. A couple of young men, Peter and Paul (or Beavis and Butthead, or Tom and Jerry), invade our protagonists’ home and terrorize them with a gruesome, unsettling glee. Games are played, but they’re not so much funny as they are degrading and violent. And then, because unsettling really was the name of the game here, the invaders break the fourth wall. Now, I might just be forgetting some obvious examples, but I can’t think of a time before where I’ve seen the antagonists happily addressing the audience (and winking at the camera) like depraved Ferris Buellers.

And, make no mistake, the invaders are the antagonists. Even they know it, as shown when one of them turns to the camera and says “What do you think? Do you think they’ve a chance of [living through this experience]? You are on their side aren’t you? So who will you bet with?”. Of course we’re on their side.

But who would you bet with?

If this were a Hollywood thriller, the answer would be obvious. Always bet on black. Er, I mean always go with the protagonists. After all, in Hollywood pictures the small prop (like, oh, a pen) or an overlooked talent or a moment of initiative would turn the tide. Funny Games gives its protagonists any number of possible outs. But do any of them work out?

What happens to a thriller after Haneke’s played his funny games with the rules?

There’s more. Like how the movie is disturbingly violent without showing much violence. And how the one scene which actually followed basic thriller rules is retracted with a standard remote control. Somewhere Clark Kent is slapping his forehead and saying “Damn! That whole spinning the earth backwards thing was so unnecessary!”. (Meanwhile I know a few TiVo owners who would view that scene with a certain “if only” wistfulness.)

#28, 2/7 – Two Women (1960) (dvd)

Hmmm. Apparently “La Ciociara”, the Italian title for this movie, translates to, roughly, “the peasant woman”. (I’ve seen others refer to it as “the woman from Ciociara”, but I’ve yet to see a definitive reference to where in Italy “Ciociara” might be). The wordier French title, on the other hand, is “Paysanne aux pieds nus” which, if my fuzzy memory of high school French hasn’t let me down entirely, means “The rural woman with bare feet.” Or something like that. And somehow in English we just get an extra woman in the title. And neither of them are necessarily peasants. (Nor do we know anything about their footwear situation.) See how that works? It’s a choose-a-title adventure, I guess. And of the three, I prefer the English title, believe it or not.

Why? Well, young Rosetta may only be twelve-years-old, but I think she deserves to be mentioned in the title along with her mother. And calling her a woman is fair enough. Yeah, OK, twelve is not “woman” by our social standards, but circumstance plays a large part in just how “old” someone is. You know what I’m saying: She’s a kid but she’s not a kid. And “The barefoot peasant woman with a daughter who is not a girl, not yet a woman” is a bit too clumsy a title. They never would have given Sophia the Oscar if the title was so damned hard to say.

Anyway, it’s a heartbreaking film. It reminded me, quite a lot, of Ugetsu, actually. Well, without the ghosts or tragic greed. Just the human cruelty in the midst of a war part. And that’s enough, really.

I have to note, briefly, that this is the shoddiest-looking DVD transfer I have ever seen. I felt like I was watching the movie on broadcast tv in the 70s. Very clear broadcast tv, but still.

#27, 2/6 – Samurai Spy (1965) (dvd)

Ask me if I actually completely followed the plot.

Wow. You ask good questions. Nope, I didn’t. And thanks for asking.

Let me tell you what I did get. Essentially, there’s a cold war going on in feudal Japan, with an uneasy peace between the leaders in Edo and their rivals in Osaka. With this as a backdrop, one of the chief spies from Edo is trying to defect to Osaka, and most are certain a fresh war is on the way. Our protagonist is allied with a clan which, while sympathetic to Osaka, tries to maintain its neutrality. But our hero unwittingly finds himself in the middle of this defection plot, and much adventure ensues. (Also, George Clooney plays a disillusioned CIA operative who is… oh, wait.) That much I got. There’s more, though. I think.

It’s not my favorite film from Shinoda but its political angle is interesting, even if a couple of times I went “Who? No, really. Who?!”. Even certain character names confused me, especially since the two major women in the film were named Okiwa and Omiya. I’m bad with names. Very bad. Introducing me, via subtitles, to two five-letter names starting with “O” and ending with “a” is like asking me to remember pi to the 148th digit. I’m lost after the 3.14, man. (Just a few days after this, I would see Funny Games, where two characters kept calling themselves different names: Tom, Jerry, Peter, Paul, Beavis, Butthead. You get it. I got it. But I couldn’t tell you which was which. All I know is there was the dark-haired one and there was the light-haired one.)

Now, back to whole following the plot thing. Honestly, it wasn’t entirely necessary to do so. This movie could certainly be enjoyed on a number of levels, and I had my fun with it. There’s always fun to be had with espionage and warring factions and intrigue and false accusations and all that. But at the end, when the last twist came and went, I said “Gosh. Um… I needed a scorecard.”

And to Criterion’s credit, they have profiles of the major characters on the DVD. I just wish they’d hypertexted the movie so I could refer back to things and untangle the spaghetti in my mind.

#26, 2/4 – Night and the City (1950) (dvd)

(I seem to be going through a period where I’m wanting to see a lot of older movies. This is good. I needed a change of pace.)

Last year, I think after I finally saw Laura, I wondered if my film noir fascination was over. Apparently not.

In fact, Night and the City is probably one of my three or four favorites from the period. I liked it so much I watched it again the next night with the commentary on, just so I could learn more about it. And, well, there were a lot of interesting things revealed (as is usually the case with commentary on a Criterion disk).

I’d say more, but to talk about my favorite elements would involve a lot of stuff about not just this movie but four or five other noir films I would compare and contrast it with. I don’t have the time to write all that just now. Too bad. I had this whole idea about sad endings, Sodom and Gomorrah, and metaphorical prison breaks. It probably wouldn’t have made too much sense, though.

#25, 2/1 – Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) (dvd)

Chan-wook Park seems to have set himself the task of making the revenge picture an even more unsettling experience than usual. And if that’s really his goal, well boy howdy has he succeeded. Even more than his later Oldboy (which, compared to this, was like an MGM musical with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland), Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is grim stuff. Yes, there are some memorably tender moments in there somewhere, but it’s all in service of the grim. And, well, it’s not just grim. It’s downright ghastly and bordering on (and occasionally just falling right into) ugly. Even its humor (and it certainly has some) tends to be dark—I did laugh out loud near the end, though, so… yeah. I’m guessing that Park’s interested in trying to show, albeit in an extreme way, the mental and emotional costs of revenge-seeking. Throw in the whole cycle-of-violence thing (which is sort of the core of this film) and one wonders if the revenge racket is really worth it.

“I know you’re a good guy, so you know the reason why I have to kill you?” one character asks another. And this is typical revenge movie stuff, but quite honestly, the answer—for me, innocent bystander—is “no”. I don’t understand. Not for one second. These characters are locked in an absurd search for justice and restitution and they will get neither. There is no getting it. As Nicole Kidman’s character noted in The Interpreter, “vengeance is a lazy form for grief”. To the credit of Chan-wook Park, there’s not much lazy about Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. It’s about as painful as a film in this genre should be. Makes me wonder if I should give up revenge movies, though.

#24, 1/31 – The Tenth Victim (1965) (dvd)

I’ve been struggling for something to say about this one but I kept stumbling over myself when I made comparisons to reality television and Rollerball and all that. Let me truncate what I was going to say to its bare essence: Weird. Silly. Lovable.

OK, I’m going to try to say something half-sensible anyway. It’s a science fiction film, you see, where violence has been institutionalized. (Hasn’t it been already? Hmm.) Well, OK. Violence has been corralled and institutionalized. Those wishing to indulge in violence are invited to be a part of The Big Hunt, a fun sport where two people are locked in cat-and-mouse matchups which must end in death for one of the participants. If a person survives ten such matches, they’re retired as a “decathlete” and treated as a superstar. (Which leaves me to wonder: What if the decathlete still wants to kill people?) So, instead of wars we get sports. (See? There’s my Rollerball connection. Nevermind that I don’t think wars are ever fought for some basic human desire for violence, let’s just go with the idea, huh?)

That anyone could make this into a convincing comedy is testament to the folks working on this film. And a comedy it is, from the get-go with Ursula Andress finding a very entertaining way to eliminate her ninth opponent. One need only hear the score to feel that glorious mid-60s thing I suppose the Austin Powers movies try to appropriate (I say “suppose” because I’ve never seen an Austin Powers movie).

My favorite portion of the film is a set of recorded announcements which play outside of the Ministry for the Big Hunt’s offices. We get such statements as “Only The Big Hunt can give you a sense of safety”, “One enemy a day will keep the doctor away”, “Why control the births when we can increase the deaths?”, and “Live dangerously, but within the law”.

Only The Big Hunt can give you a sense of safety… dear god, that’s nearly worthy of the White House.

#23, 1/29 – The Awful Truth (1937) (dvd)

While he wasn’t Hollywood’s first canine superstar (I think that distinction belongs to Rin Tin Tin), Asta may be Hollywood’s greatest ever canine actor. It’s not easy holding your own with the likes of Myrna Loy, Cary Grant, and Katherine Hepburn, but Asta had no trouble doing so. How talented was the great Asta? Just before The Awful Truth’s courtroom custody battle (over Asta) we see Asta (well, Mr. Smith is his name in this movie) being removed from the courtoom. For contempt. With most other dogs we would have seen just what they did to get tossed out; it would have been a showpiece. But Asta has such charm and intelligence we need only imagine his antics—and doing so is much funnier than anything we could have seen. Asta was a genius.

And he’s not the only genius in this film because Irene Dunne, Cary Grant (who, like Asta, did not work under his real name), and Ralph Bellamy are all in top form. Most Cary Grant romantic comedies seem to follow a very noticeable template of two witty lovers who split and spend the whole movie finding their way back to each other, but of course the joy of a Cary Grant romantic comedy is in the script. Or perhaps more acurately in the delivery of the script. Watching these actors bring these characters to life is just a trip for me. It’s a silly movie, sure. (Silly, but not zany.) It’s also probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.