Village of the Damned, The (1960)

With intelligence, articulation, a lot of faith in the viewer’s suspension of disbelief and with great regard for our enjoyment, Hollywood at one time made terrific horror films.  Monster pictures in the 30s, suspenseful noirs in the 40s, and science fiction in the 50s; the industry has a great tradition that has given way to mindless violence and gore.  What is easiest and above all cheapest now passes for entertainment.  The Village of the Damned is the kind of film that Hollywood has forgotten.

For five hours, the quaint English community of Midwich inexplicably falls asleep.  Months later, the Midwich women all give birth to normal looking blonde children with striking eyes.  They develop much faster than normal children, and their stare causes strange reactions from adults.  George Sanders plays Gordon Zellaby, father of one of these children.  He is one of the first to link the blackout to the great amount of pregnancies, some of them apparently unexplainable, and Gordon develops a great scientific interest in these children.  They seem to be able to read people’s thoughts and have a great instinct for survival.  Before long, they alienate the townsfolk, and when the efforts of their survival result in death, the town is desperate to take action but powerless of affect it.

What struck me immediately was the mood the film creates.  Due credit to director Wolf Rilla: without a note of music, we see the people of Midwich collapse.  The fluid camera acts as our guide, and what is created is a sad visual poem.  Then the clock strikes, and continues to strike throughout the main titles. 

There is such a sense of dread and uncertainty as to the nature of these children, probably because the material is so closely related to real life.  Women could probably give a fairer viewpoint, but the idea of being impregnated with another thing’s child is very creepy.  It speaks to issues like rape or in vitro fertilization.  In fact the two issues are combined.  Is it possible to love this foreign child inside of you?  I would very much like to hear some responses to this scenario.  I don’t have one; it’s not that I can’t sympathize with being pregnant.  I just don’t know how I would react if there was the possibility that the life growing inside of me wasn’t my own.  Maybe no one can.  We’ve heard of mistakes with in vitro where the wrong sperm is inserted.  I find it odd that the film can look ahead and consider topical contemporary issues.  But that, in a more general sense, is the function of science fiction.  It isn’t spaceships shooting at each other.  The genre is a parallel of everyday life.

The writing is in a superb Hollywood tradition.  Tight story construction never allows the material to sag.  The dialogue is at a high level of intelligence, and the characters pause and consider their options.  No one is eager to make the wrong choice, and this thoughtfulness is refreshing in a sci-fi horror flick.  This is not to say that the film is heavy and depressing.  It’s very enjoyable.  It is suspenseful and campy and really has an unsettling effect.  The one fantastic element is introduced into an environment similar to our own.  Scientists and military officials gather to hear all possibilities of the phenomenon.  The film never makes it exactly clear what has happened or who or what these children are.  One scientist suggests evolution; Sanders’ character believes it is the transference of energy, possibly from outer space.  Any explanation would be ludicrous but the characters know that; they know there is no accounting for the sleeping state the village found itself in.  The film realizes that the unknown is scariest.

To contrast horror of the past and present, in the film the children manipulate a man into shooting himself in the face with a shotgun.  We’ve, for some abnormal reason, seen many shotguns to the face in movies.  In a modern film, the impact of the scene would rely on seeing the buckshot disintegrate the man’s face.  Such a visual can only repulse, and any talentless hack can nauseate an audience.  In The Village of the Damned the mood of the film heightens the tension; cross-cutting between the bystanders’ horrified faces and the threatening eyes of the children, with the objective shots of the man with the shotgun guiding the narrative.  He slowly places the gun under his chin, and we see his finger find the trigger.  It is pulled.  We see only the cold faces of the children, and then the human reaction.  It brings a true feeling of sadness and loss that further contributes to the atmosphere of the film.

George Sanders is one of the great character actors.  He is probably best remembered for his Oscar winning role in All About Eve, but lovers of classic films will recognize him in everything from Hitchcock’s Rebecca to Hangover Square.  I found reviewing his credits on the Internet Movie Database immensely enjoyable.  He’s like an old friend to us movie buffs, always willing to give his best and steal the show.  His role in Rebecca is immortal proof of that.  Here he is the lead.  I’m often impressed with so called supporting actors who land a leading role.  Their personality can carry a film, but, as is the case with The Village of the Damned, so much of what was special from a Sanders performance is missing.  He has to play the straight man guiding us through the picture, and his asides and wit are rushed here if they are present at all.  I have nothing to complain about though.  I love looking at George Sanders on the screen but he has had meatier roles in other films.  This speaks more to the way films used to be written than to Sander’s talents.  Leading roles today take on too much baggage, probably in proportion to the salary of the star.  The more money they get the longer they stay on screen—‘let’s get our money’s worth’ is most likely the idea.  Writers could before create wonderful parts to anchor the leads, and this allowed actors to create a niche to showcase their work.

The one complaint I have is a trend popular in many low-budget film and TV work of the era.  When a character is thinking something and the tension of the scene depends on this thought, and even though the audience has been told what the character has to remember, instead of relying on the visual of the actor struggling, a voiceover is tacked on to remind us.  I find this distracts from the drama.  We’re intelligent enough to recall the character’s thought from the previous scene.  In the film’s defense, if this is the only problem I could find then the film is a terrific success.

And so it is.  Every now and then (mostly now) I crave a great little horror film.  We have so few that actually work.  The Village of the Damned is a refreshingly taut and fun film.  Great science fiction, rivaling The Twilight Zone, and terrific storytelling create an aura of inescapable fear for a small town with everything to lose.

Village of the Damned, The (1960)

Director: Wolf Rilla

Writer: Stirling Silliphant

Stars: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley and Martin Stephens

UK / USA

In English

Runtime: 77 minutes

The Village of the Damned is available on a double feature DVD.  Visit Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Village-Damned-Children-George-Sanders/dp/B00027JYMG

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054443/

Folle embellie (2004, Wonderful Spell, The)

Most of us never consider the concept of freedom, but many, in the strangest of circumstances, have never been allowed to reach it.  Folle embellie applies the concept of freedom to the beginnings of the Nazi invasion of France in WWII.  It begins at an insane asylum as the first bombs drop.  The gate is opened and a few inmates wander out and join the world.  But the film creates an unintended paradox: by letting loose those who need serious help, are they really gaining freedom?

A family escapes from the asylum: Fernand, Alida, and their son Julien.  Julien is here by circumstance; his parents are patients, and he was born during their treatment.  The mother, Alida, suffers from anxiety, and she landed in an institution because she once wound up alone with a stranger and tried to kill him.  She is already “cured” and has only been staying on to keep Julien close to his father.  The way the family is introduced and how we first experience them is elusive and engaging.  We don’t know they’re related.  Fernand and Alida share a tense moment early on, but for a moment I thought Fernand was a doctor.  Julien seems like a hired hand caring for the horses.  When the three escape, Alida and Julien together, Fernand on his own, we don’t yet know their dynamic.  Only when, later on, they address each other as ‘mom’ or ‘husband’ do we understand.  Fernand is the sort who typically belongs in an asylum.  Possessing delusions of grandeur, he at times imagines he is head of a kingdom, as when he lifts a fallen tree and walks among the treetops, at other times the patriarch of a holy family, and at other times still he acts as a true leader of this wild group who wanders the French country side.  Jean-Pierre Léaud plays Fernand and though his performance comes off too strong at first, he is allowed some real moments of lucidity and depth.  He is also very funny, as when be banishes the uncouth Hélèna from their band.  The outcome of his authority isn’t so funny.  Hélèna hangs herself.

The director advocates freedom for all.  So do I.  Dominique Cabrera once had a summer job at an asylum where she heard of this story and argues that the film is a magical utopia for its characters.  While they do find physical freedom, the paradox seems to be that these people, each to a different extent, are trapped by their illness.  Can freedom be achieved for those who are mentally ill?  Perhaps I’m thinking more into this because of the WWII setting and the Nazis had a strict policy against the insane, but these characters cannot escape the fate of their condition.

Alida is a perfect example.  A fascinating character, she appears perfectly sane.  We at first don’t realize she has mental problems.  When she spends the night with the boater who is not her husband we see her panic, but this panic can be attributed to the situation.  Later the group of escapees finds refuge as farmhands.  Praised for her delicious panettone, Alida is asked at dinner to sing an Italian song.  Her anxiety sets in: instead of singing, she sabotages their efforts by admitting to her new employer that they have escaped from an asylum, and she insists they are not dangerous.  They are all let go.  By admitting the truth when the idea was not even hinted at by the employer, I make the case that Alida may not be capable of enjoying her freedom.  This is not a fault of the film.  There are great intellectual discussions to be had regarding Folle embellie.  After the fact the film is very engaging.

The trouble watching it is that the film is not terribly interesting.  While I was never bored, I kept waiting for the ending as these characters stumbled onto each new situation.  This is a road movie without wheels.  They first take the aid of a man with a boat, then they stumble onto an empty house.  In these scenes the group seems to have found happiness.  But then they have to leave and they go somewhere else.  I can’t claim the film fails dramatically.  Episodic films usually don’t appeal to me.  I find it hard to focus when a film constantly asks me to shift scenarios, even when we’re following the same characters.  On the flip side, many of my favorite films develop in short bursts, little stories like separate chapters in a book.  Something about the storytelling in Folle embellie did not tie together for me.  I was never really interested in what was going to happen next, though the photography is stunning and the performances so enjoyable that I stayed with it until the end.

Morgan Marinne as the son was by far the most impressive actor.  Perhaps his character was the most interesting.  I should accuse myself of dismissing everyone else because their characters were, to me, simply crazy and therefore there was nothing beyond the surface to look at, so this is another point in favor of the film.  Julien, the son, was fascinating, partly because Marinne is an intense young actor, but also because we know his father and mother and I kept wondering how he felt being their son.  Is he embarrassed?  Is he filled with fear of becoming like them?  Does he feel obligated to them because of their issues?  Does he resent them?  The film addresses all these questions, and in a way the center of the story falls on him and for that I was grateful.  But not even he can truly embrace freedom.  When his mother sabotages their future job security, when once Julien declared to his father that he will leave them and live for himself, Julien now follows his family out of the farm and into the unknown.

Perhaps Cabrera was consciously aware of the paradox she had created with this film.  Like the idea of freedom in Kieślowski’s Blue, freedom is presented in Folle embellie in a very curious way, least of all setting the film during France’s entry into WWII.  A lot depends on the ideas of the individuals watching the film.  Though it is nice to imagine that everybody can be free, I believe these characters are ill-equipped to handle it.  And while the structure of the film is intentionally aimless, I found myself mostly uninterested as the material unfolded.

Folle embellie (2004)

(a.k.a. Wonderful Spell, The)

Director: Dominique Cabrera

Writers: Dominique Cabrera, Antoine Montperrin

Stars: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Miou-Miou and Morgan Marinne

France

In French

Runtime: 110 minutes

The French DVD is OOP, but used copies can be found on Amazon (France):

http://www.amazon.fr/Folle-embellie-Miou-Miou/dp/B0007MYPEI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301347318&sr=1-1

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329088/

Country Teacher, The (2008, Venkovský ucitel)

The biggest problem with The Country Teacher is that it lives in the world of movies.  Not very intelligent movies.  It takes a very serious subject, sexual confusion and the sly abuse of power, and doesn’t follow through, preferring instead to tie up all loose ends and tack on a happy ending.  It’s hard to judge a movie like this as a movie because the situations and dialogue belonging to its characters is quite simply unbelievable.

A prep school Teacher from Prague comes to an idyllic community to find work.  His new employer is weary and gives him 6 months teaching natural science to middle schoolers.  The Teacher befriends a widowed Mother and her teenage son but what nobody knows is that the Teacher is gay.  He has chosen this community to hide out his sexuality, and all it takes for everything to change is a visit from his ex-boyfriend.  This man runs off with the son’s girlfriend, and the Teacher takes this opportunity to befriend the lonely, troubled teen.  In the process he falls in love.  At the same time the Mother falls in love with the Teacher, and one night after a party the Teacher molests the boy.

The first thing to note is that the Mother is very forgiving of the man who touched her son.  I’ll buy that.  They were friends and she is attracted to him, depressed because for some unknown reason he won’t reciprocate her advances.  It’s also an unexpected story twist.  We’d expect the Mother to fight for her son, but she takes the tact of, maybe not trying to understand, but of living with the situation and forgiving it.  But the film does not allow her to consider her son’s rape.  She’s angry when she’s told and cries alone, but in her very next scene she tries to save the life of the Teacher who has attempted suicide.  Henceforth she is nurturing towards this man.  Doesn’t she realize that this man touched her son’s penis while he slept peacefully at his home?  I find this hard to swallow, but if the film had shown her struggle or even painted a portrait of her as a careless mother then it would make more sense.  She’d simply prefer the friendship of any man to that of her son, but not only do we see that she loves her son, she is a stable person… except for the scene where she is an alcoholic.  But she bounces out of that quickly.

The finale is equally insipid.  When the son returns home with a broken leg, having left because his Mother was still so caring of the Teacher, she begs her son to forgive his attacker, and in the highly symbolic ending of bringing new life into the world the three come together as an odd kind of family.  I’m thinking as I’m watching, ‘Isn’t anyone going to ever remember the incident?  If ever the Teacher pats the son’s shoulder, isn’t the kid going to remember the feel of the Teacher’s hand over his penis?’  Doesn’t anyone realize how creepy this is?  It’s a ridiculous situation and one that really is made light of with a carefree ending.

One thing the film does in its favor is treat the Teacher as a human being.  At first we don’t know he’s gay.  He’s a loner, uncomfortable among his new-found friends during a night of drinking.  His ex comes because he misses him, and it is here we learn the truth.  What at first seems like someone afraid of what his sexuality will do to his quaint happiness in this isolated, traditional community becomes something more sinister.  The Teacher, we learn, is trying to denounce sexual practice by ignoring desire.  To most rational people this seems foolish, but the film is about a confused, helpless man, and The Country Teacher never takes a negative stance against him.  Even after he assaults the boy, the film plays fair, asking us indirectly to consider the secrecy and uncertainty that has led this man to do something immoral.  As he teaches and befriends the boy, he sees an opportunity for happiness.  Not a lasting happiness, but he sees someone who he loves who needs a man in his life to love him back.  The problem is the Teacher can’t distinguish between love, the relationship between two friends, and love, the attraction between two likeminded people.  The actions the Mother character takes makes this stuff ridiculous.  If the material were less idealistic this could have been a terrific film.  Most filmmakers wouldn’t dare tackle this subject matter.  But to let the Teacher off the hook and have everyone so open-minded and unselfish is simply not plausible.

I should give the film more credit.  It’s actually well made, but the problem the movie has in the psychology of its character is just too big to ignore.  Visually this is quite beautiful.  Director Bohdan Sláma doesn’t know how to make an uninteresting shot.  In the first 20 minutes where nothing overly exciting happens the director’s camera keeps things lively.  He knows when to hold shots and when and how to move through his characters’ spaces.  The lead performance by Pavel Liska as the Teacher is very restrained.  He longs for everything at a distance, never being direct or sometimes even suppressing his wants and needs, even in matters practical and social.  The other performers are just fine, including Tereza Vorísková as the son’s girlfriend.  Though only a brief supporting role she is stunningly beautiful and a terrific young actress.  Hopefully she can become an international star because I want to see more of her.  What we have with The Country Teacher is a well made, mediocre film with some real talent on display.

Another fault in storytelling: when the Mother forgives him and he decides to return to teaching, the Teacher returns to his colleagues and needs to ask, “Is it a problem that I am homosexual?” leading to momentary awkward glances among the other teachers.  That is until they realize homosexuality is the norm and welcome him.  It’s kind of embarrassing to see a scene like this.  Only in the movies would situations like these work themselves out without any help from living beings.  Again it just undermines the seriousness of manipulation and adolescent abuse.  The scary part is that there are probably thousands of situations like this the world over so the film does a great disservice to its audience.

But forget about that.  Defiant against his old ways, the Teacher is now determined to make his life right.  He will no longer run, and as long as he is open and accepting of himself the world will be too.  Good luck.

Country Teacher, The (2008)

(a.k.a. Venkovský ucitel)

Director: Bohdan Sláma

Writer: Bohdan Sláma

Stars: Pavel Liska, Zuzana Bydzovska and Ladislav Sedivy

Czech Republic

In Czech

Runtime: 115 minutes

To purchase The Country Teacher on DVD from Film Movement, visit Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Country-Teacher-Pavel-Liska/dp/B001TLZ2ZW/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1301271209&sr=1-1

To subscribe to Film Movement's DVD-of-the-month club, check out their official site:

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IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1284526/

Disengagement (2007)

The problems of a nation are paralleled in one family.  Ana and Uli are step-siblings, reunited by the death of their father in France.  Ana has been raised as a Westerner by the New York born father, and Uli was adopted shortly after the father divorced his mother.  Uli was raised on the Gaza Strip.  In France, the siblings enjoy each other’s company.  We learn that, apparently, the father was not a very loving man.  He did not want Uli’s mother to move to Israel and had since lived his life apart from Uli.  Ana has no ties to her Jewish heritage.  Ana is a frivolous, flirtatious woman with no ties to anything, except an erotic, intense interest in her half-brother.  The death of their father reveals a secret long forgotten: Ana had a child at a Kibbutz many years ago and unbeknownst to all the father has spent a lot of time with the girl in Israel.  In order for Dana to receive her grandfather’s inheritance Ana must bring it to her herself.

For those unfamiliar with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Disengagement might be confusing.  I myself have only a superficial understanding of the conflict, but as I understand it after WWII when the allies were dividing up all of Nazi Germany’s conquered lands, it was seen fit to give the land of Israel to the Jewish people.  “A land without a people for a people without land” was the mission statement; only the Palestinians had been living in the Holy Land for centuries and were forced out in a global effort to atone for the misdeeds against all Jews in WWII.  It was an immoral decision, politics and religion aside, since millions of people who had committed no crimes were forced into an area at the edge of the country, and since then lives have been lost and hatred spews on the Gaza Strip.

One does not need an opinion as to which side is right.  In fact, neither and both are.  What Disengagement makes clear in scene after scene is that there are only losers in this conflict. 

When Ana arrives in Israel she is forbidden to enter the same Jeep as her brother.  This is the first in a small series of events that forces her to shed her thin skin.  Juliette Binoche, only the greatest living actress, plays Ana in a curious way.  The beginning scenes in France are too long.  Part of why they feel this way is that Binoche is almost unbearable to watch.  Her voice is so odd, shrill and high-pitched.  It’s clear her accent is more American that her normal speaking voice, but I think she and director Amos Gitaï made a very bad decision.  I said Ana is a frivolous woman but that is an understatement.  When we first meet her she is annoying, and Binoche is giving a bad performance.  I was shocked since she has been perfect in all the movies I’ve seen.  What Gitaï does is create a contrast, showing Ana before her introduction to the problems of the Middle East and after, having been involved in disengagement, the process of removing a group of people from their homes.  This contrast, however, is very short sighted.  Just because Ana is a Westerner doesn’t necessarily make her carefree and vapid.  Many Americans don’t have a clue as to the problems of Israel, but in all fairness the problems are too many to follow and people have lives and concerns of their own to deal with.  This character is more archetypal.  That doesn’t excuse the material.  It would have benefited from a more leveled depiction of a human being unfamiliar with these problems.

While I was disappointed in the first half hour of the film, once Ana and Uli, played by Liron Levo, arrive in Israel the film becomes terrific.  It is a political drama.  Not a thriller; director Gitaï carefully crafts an even playing field where every human being, Israeli and Palestinian, are decent, loving people.  Uli, we learn, is an officer for the Palestinian army, and Gaza is going through disengagement—all the Israelis are to be removed from their land.  No one can claim to hate the other side, and this is the stupidity Gitaï revels in pointing out.  The people respect each other.  The Palestinians soldiers are given sever orders to not injure the Israelis.  The Rabbi offers his love to Uli just before the gates are torn open and the soldiers perform their duties.  Stuck in the middle is Dana, Ana’s forgotten daughter.  An Israeli, everything she has in life, her garden, her students, will all be taken away from her.  Dana’s reunion with her mother is brilliantly staged.  Ana circles around the school playground.  She knows which teacher is her daughter, and Dana recognizes Ana from the photographs her grandfather showed her.  Dana touches her mother’s face and they hug.  Few words are shared, but because this situation is so understandable, the tears from both actresses are very well felt.

Unavoidable in any anti-war film is the view of the soldiers.  In a visual medium they suffer the most because we see them perform their duties even when, in the case of Disengagement, they hate what they have to do.  I wish there was a way to fix this problem.  There is a way, by depicting the ridiculous discussions of the politicians or rebels that decide the orders, but in an intimate film like this these scenes would distract from the material.  It’s a shame because Uli is a loveable person.  Liron Levo is a revelation here.  He is one of the few male actors alive that embodies humility and strength on the screen.  The finale reunites step brother and sister, just after Dana is lost in a van carrying out the Israeli civilians.  When once their friendship was so strong Ana detests the man in uniform before her.  He reassures her they will find Dana, but all Ana can scream is, “Leave me alone.”

One of the most heartbreaking images appears on the edges of the frame.  When a reading of the Torah is disrupted by Uli and the Palestinian soldiers, a Jewish worshiper, as he is being removed, hugs tightly the soldier forcing him out.  I was so struck by this image, so brilliantly on the fringes of the film, and it has so much meaning.

Disengagement (2007)

Director: Amos Gitaï

Writers: Amos Gitaï, Marie-Jose Sanselme

Stars: Juliette Binoche, Liron Levo and Jeanne Moreau

Israel / France

In Hebrew, English, French, Italian and Arabic

Runtime: 113 minutes

To purchase Disengagement visit Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Disengagement-liron-Levo/dp/B00455JE58/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1301206042&sr=1-1

IMDB link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0871512/

Fall of the House of Usher, The (1928, Chute de la maison Usher, La)

Both times I’ve seen The Fall of the House of Usher, once on DVD and recently at Harvard University, a strange phenomenon overtook me: I grew sleepy.  I’m not being cheeky.  I defy any serious film buff to not find the film mesmerizing.  Both times in fact the story and the images held me spellbound but the same sleepiness came.  I’m trying to understand because I refuse to believe I find the film boring.

Its beginning takes a cue from Dracula.  A visitor arrives at a backwards country and asks directions to a damned place, The House of Usher.  This stranger is Allan, an old friend of Roderick Usher’s, summoned by him to bring some cheer into a dire situation.  Roderick’s beloved wife Madeline is dying.  Roderick is feverish with the fear of her death and the desire to capture the life of his wife in a portrait.  Allan arrives and witnesses an otherworldly bond.  Madeline less seems to live than to live for Roderick.  He captures on the canvas a creature whose vivid qualities borrow the life blood of the real woman.  This is her malady.  That the man she loves cannot save himself from ruining her is their tragedy.

These images are sublime.  A permanent fog has overtaken the film; every shot is in a haze, the way we like to imagine our dreams look.  The film is perfect in this regard.  The painting of Madeline is rarely seen head-on in close up.  We see it at a distance, surrounded, as much of the film is, with black darkness.  The wood frame is at an angle, and within it sits the portrait of Madeline.  She blinks.  She is quite simply alive.  Shots of curtains blowing in a corridor, books falling from a cupboard, clichéd images with 80 years advantage, have here a spontaneous and lamentable quality, the sadness of The House of Usher with its imprisoned spirits is expressed with imagery fit to haunt.  A unique image is that of the dead Madeline, laid to rest in her wedding gown, with her veil so long that it escapes from the coffin.  As the coffin is taken by boat to the Usher family crypt the veil trails behind in the water, as if death alone was not enough to tame their passions.

I forget that the film is a product of surrealism.  Perhaps in our need to categorize the past we have, by association with director Jean Epstein, marked it as surrealist but it is much more accessible.  These images are haunting and beautiful and can be followed from scene to scene.  There isn’t any trick editing to link psycho-sexual symbolism with repression, for example, or Catholicism.  Maybe I don’t have a grasp of surrealist cinema, but I’ve seen Un chien andalou over a half dozen times and it’s enough to make me feel like an expert.  It’s all subjectively empty.  The Fall of the House of Usher feels more like, if one prefers categories, a cross between expressionism and poetic realist cinema.  There is logic to the story development with passionate human characters.  None of it would I deem surrealistic.  It’s macabre but infused with poignancy and meaning, and the look is gloomy and baroque.

The film is adapted from one of Edgar Allen Poe’s most famous works.  The story differs in that Madeline and Roderick are husband and wife.  In Poe’s version they’re siblings.  I have a feeling that, as a surrealist work, a film about an erotic obsession between siblings would have been terrific material.  I don’t think censorship held the film back either as it was French and surrealistic and overall an underground film—that is, a movie made outside the established industry that most would not have been expected to see.  This change is most unusual considering the contribution of director Luis Buñuel.  He acted as Assistant Director to Jean Epstein, and his first film, the aforementioned Un chien andalou used all sorts of weird sexual fetishes in its imagery, and in one of his last films we meet an aunt and nephew who ran away together to become lovers.  This whole thing is all the more fascinating because apparently Buñuel quit Usher after an argument with Epstein for changing Poe’s text.  Epstein was right for what I think he was trying to do, a traditional “ghost” story.  The sexual dynamic between brother and sister would add a cache of ugliness to the story where in Epstein’s film the experience is beautiful and all consuming.  This is an erotic and euphoric love story.  That both man and woman are trapped by a mutual obsession, each unwilling to derail the danger so obvious to the man, is absolutely heartbreaking.

Why is it then that the film makes me sleepy?  The most widely circulated print of Usher is from the Raymond Rohauer Collection.  It is the source of the All Day Entertainment DVD available in America.  I think the issue is this: the print runs at a curious frame rate.  With silent films one can never be certain of the speed at which the film should run, and I know the images of Usher are slower than they should be but I firmly believe the film needs to look this way.  To see these images run just that much faster will destroy the poetry of the film.  Everything is slow and methodical, and looking at the screen is hypnotizing.  The frame rate may be the reason the film has a somnific quality; it may also be that the experience of watching the film is like stepping into a warm bath.  It’s soothing and inviting, but dangerous if it overwhelms you.

I think the medium of silent films was limited.  Storytelling relied on symbolism that was easy to show.  The lack of subtly prevented it from being art, in my opinion.  But when silent films do work, they have a documentary-like quality.  Let me explain: these are artifacts of the past.  Some films, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Nosferatu, and Epstein’s Usher—all period films—feel as if we’ve been given access into the world of photographs of the past.  The characters live and move and cannot speak.  There is a curious quality to these experiences that sound film can never achieve.  Nor can silent films be made today.  They would be gimmicks.

It is this reason why The Fall of the House of Usher works so well.  The characters are living beings trapped in moving images, and their world is separate from our own.  In theirs, the laws of nature can be bent if their passions will it.  That they cannot cry out, their expression exists in the torment in their eyes, makes the material more profound.

Fall of the House of Usher, The (1928)

(a.k.a. Chute de la maison Usher, La)

Director: Jean Epstein

Writer: Edgar Allen Poe (short story), Luis Buñuel (adaptation)

Stars: Jean Debucort, Marguerite Gance and Charles Lamy

France

Silent with French intertitles (English translation spoken on soundtrack)

Runtime: 66 minutes

To purchase The Fall of the House of Usher on DVD, I recommend going to All Day Entertainment's website.  I ordered my copy there for only $5.00 and had an easy shopping experience:

http://www.alldayentertainment.com/dvd_usher.html

(though the price listed is $24.99, when you add it to cart it becomes its sale price, $5)

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018770/

Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Dancer in the Dark is not a good time at the movies.  It’s what Hitchcock might have called a sink to sink picture where, after a hard day of cleaning dishes, a housewife goes to the cinema and sees a character cleaning dishes at the sink.  Except Dancer in the Dark takes part of its inspiration from Hollywood musicals, so the narrative is kind of soapy but overall grim, a hopeless tale of a blind young immigrant mother raising money for an operation that will spare her son from losing his sight.  Director Lars von Trier has a knack for presenting mean-spirited downers that show elements of life we’d like to ignore.  So while imperfect, Dancer in the Dark is as moving a film as they come, but the experience is not cathartic.

Having seen it twice and with the time necessary to process the experience, the one thing I remember most is the performance by Björk.  I’ve seldom seen a searing, open-nerved performance that can match it.  Selma is a good natured and nervous mom, always willing to encourage her friends and pay compliments, and work overtime at several jobs.  The year is 1964 and she and her son have come from Czechoslovakia because of what America promises, promises made in Hollywood musicals, a dream factory of promises that materialize only if you happen to live in the movies.  But a dream can be so desired that what we know of reality, all that we can accept, can be pushed aside for seconds of bliss, the bliss of the dance floor, the bliss of a song.  Selma escapes during moments of adversity, like when overtime at work becomes monotonous or when her sight is fading.  Björk is something to behold—a singer by training, seldom appearing in front of a camera, she manages to do what few other actresses can.  Perhaps because she had the courage to look the part.  She’s not thin, not blonde, her breasts are not on display and her hair and makeup look natural, and in the visual medium that counts more than rehearsal time.  It's more than looks.  Icelandic by birth, she is convincing as a Czech immigrant.  Her tears, panic, every emotion is epitomized.  She conveys the world weariness appropriate having lived in a Soviet state.

Then there is the singing.  Dancer in the Dark is a musical.  Selma’s daydreams take the form of colorful musical numbers.  Björk’s voice is haunting.  She sounds unlike any singer I can name, and her vocal chords seem to be tied to an ancient Icelandic tradition, an extreme folksy sound accenting her already natural folksy voice.  She hits notes and holds them and she is impossible to ignore.

If this film is her cinematic legacy, then so be it.  The singer has said she will never make another movie.  I suspect the pressures from von Trier, known for his volatile and demanding nature, may have had something to do with it, but perhaps Björk is best to quit while she is ahead.  There is not a negative thing I can say; she delivers one of the most impressive performances in cinema history.  It may not be a comprehensive critique but I am simply at a loss.  If she indeed never makes another movie then she will not be overexposed.  She is Selma and Selma is her.  The same can be said of Renee Falconetti in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, and this is a very great comparison to make but Björk has earned it.  She is quite simply riveting.

The one thing that gets in the way of the material is the musical numbers.  Björk, as I said, has a terrific voice and the songs in the film resonate.  If these numbers were only sung the film might be closer to perfect but because Selma loves musicals, the numbers are all choreographed and staged in an embarrassingly clumsy fashion.  I don’t know how von Trier could have accepted the final product.  An anachronisms: the film is set in 64.  Musicals at the time were very sophisticated and all took a page from Fred Astaire: dance in long shot.  This way we can see the complexity of the body in motion, the skill of the choreographer.  The Dogma 95 style that von Trier co-founded betrays the integrity of golden age musicals: oddly placed camera angles, quick cuts, extreme close-ups and cutaways work against von Trier’s intentions.  A great embarrassment is the first musical number, “Cvalda”.  Every problem I’ve mentioned is on lingering display, compounded by the fact that neither Björk nor Catherine Deneuve can dance.  I understand the limited budget von Trier must have had, but at least rehearse with the lead actors prior to assembling the crew.  Another problem the musical numbers have is color.  I know this from personal experience trying to recreate Technicolor with digital film.  Your first instinct is to saturate in post production.  But Technicolor was a chemical process that had only a limited color range, so the trick to getting great color was with careful costuming and set design / decoration.  Whatever colors you want in the final film need to be present on the set.  Boosting saturation will only intensify ugly colors and make the image grainy, and that is just what happens in Dancer in the Dark.

This is not a problem that ruins the film.  Most of the dancing exists in one or two numbers and most of the songs simply have Björk singing, still however with the color problem.  Another anachronism: the dance numbers are choreographed in a modern style.  Hollywood musicals were more closely related to traditional dance techniques.  There is a formal rigor severely lacking.  Vincent Paterson is created with choreography and he should be embarrassed.  His work does not come off well.

One thing I can relate from when I saw this in a theater: some people were crying.  The tears began with the first violent scene in the picture (I am being vague here because there are some horrifying story twists better to be discovered for yourselves, but you’ll know it when you see it).  The tears were constant till the end.  I understood how these people felt.  The film is so heavy and depressing partly because Selma is such a giving person and so cruelly taken advantage of.  You ache for this character, or at least I did, because when the stuff starts flying the audience and she knows she’s doomed.  It is kind of cathartic in a way because we witness a woman accepting her fate and happy to sacrifice for her son.  The credit goes to Lars von Trier for developing such an inescapable story and for telling it with such sensitive grandiosity.  In the finale, when Deneuve’s character runs up the stairs to Selma (again, being vague) we know that she never would have been allowed to do that or stay as long as she does, but in the tradition of Hollywood storytelling implausibility because the norm.  It’s more satisfying that way.

One thing I did not appreciate in the film is the obvious but slight attacks on America.  Von Trier is known for his severe opinions about our country but I took offense to scenes linking a murder with a middleclass family’s home and the American flag.  Arrogant Americans verbally attack Selma because of her communist country roots, and overall the film paints a less than savory image of average American life.  Any country has faults because people are not perfect.  Perhaps America cannot always (or perhaps seldom does) live up to its ideals but this is, all things considered, a great country and for von Trier to attack it without ever stepping foot in it is bothersome.  So too are the numerous Scandinavian actors faking American accents.  The artifice of von Trier’s film shows most with these actors.  The question I ask though is that if an American filmmaker made the same script would I signal out the anti-Americanism?  Probably not.  Because all that von Trier criticizes is at times accurate, an American filmmaker would be let off the hook, but for those who love this country it is still disturbing to watch.

But von Trier is known for his controversy.  Antichrist is proof of that.  What von Trier has that few living filmmakers have is nerve.  This man is an artist with vision, and that he can offend people is to him a great asset.  Dancer in the Dark is a film that many will not like and some will appreciate.  Its mood will appeal only to a few, like me, who can rightly claim to love depressing films.  It is powerful with a terrific lead performance by Björk and a lot of balls.

Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Director: Lars von Trier

Writer: Lars von Trier

Stars: Björk, Catherine Deneuve and David Morse

Denmark

In English

Runtime: 141 minutes

Purchase Dancer in the Dark on DVD at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Dancer-Dark-New-Line-Platinum/dp/B00003CXKS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300937607&sr=8-1

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168629/

Bambi (1942)

My honest reaction to Bambi?  I was bored.  Perhaps a film of its reputation is bound to fail.  After all, it is remembered as a very powerful, emotional experience, but I was completely unmoved by the entire film.  Its most famous scene, which I need not mention, lacks poignancy because the story gives us absolutely no moments of true love and affection between Bambi and his Mother.  Their relationship is more symbolic in nature.  These are archetypes for human families in the 1940s.  Trouble is Bambi ends up learning more about everything from all the other animals in the forest.  The only useful bit of information his Mother tells him is to beware of the meadow.  Practical advice obviously but all his Mother has taught him is how to be afraid.

And that is perhaps the problem with the film in general: the parent-child relationship is so stoic and repressed that I think the film might actually scare young kids today for a new unintended set of reasons.  It is a document of the times in which it was made.  Bambi’s Father, The Great Prince of the Forest, is silent and physically distant.  He watches from afar, unemotional, robotic, as Bambi’s Mother is left to raise him.  When the Mother dies, the Father takes over and still lacks humility.  To further my point, Bambi II was not a sequel but rather an “in-between” film detailing how the Father raised Bambi, as if the studio realized this vital moment in the understanding of the story needed to be addressed, even if 60 years later.  Thumper the baby rabbit who befriends the young Bambi stops in mid sentence when his mother threatens him with reminders of things his father has said.  I’m all for discipline, but scaring your children into submission is really a way to compensate for lazy parenting.  This alien way of raising children belongs to another generation, for better or worse, and because the film preserves this tradition in its fibers Bambi lacks humanity.

The characters are more like caricatures.  They feel as if they had been designed to be cute, right down to the voice acting.  While it’s refreshing to be able to identify children’s’ voices while watching characters who are themselves children, the performances aren’t very good.  Thumper is annoying.  The supporting cast isn’t impressive.  In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs you could really lose yourself in all the miscellaneous forest creatures scurrying at the bottom of the frame.  They had personalities.  The only character with a pleasing personality is the young Bambi who accompanies us through the first part of the picture.  I cared about him despite the hokey way he is brought into this world.  It comes down to the writing.  The novel of Bambi could have been terrific material for a feature length animated film.  The approach here, the Disnification of the material, doesn’t work.  I am not a hip, anti-Disney kid rebelling against the wholesomeness of Disney’s great past.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is one of the best films of the 1930’s, and certainly contains the best animation I have ever seen.  Pinocchio is an even better film; a darker film that I believe is too intense for wee little ones.  Bambi is just not a very good film, and compared to other films in the Disney canon it really suffers.

There is one cute moment in the entire film: when Bambi learns to talk.  He tries to say, “Bird” but it sounds more like, “Bir.”  Thumper instructs him to say, “Bir-da, bir-da!”  With a great deal of effort, Bambi shouts, “Birda”—the only moment of humanity and growth in the entire picture.

Part of the reason this scene works so well is the animation.  The animals in the forest, especially Bambi, look as if they have bones and blood under their fur.  As their appendages move, the lines of their muscles move accordingly and are consistent frame to frame.  That’s the thing—the fluidity of the animation.  It is quite spectacular.  Today’s hand-drawn (or 2-D as regrettably most hand drawn stuff is now done on computers) animation would not put up the budget to capture these small but vital details.  But what is a Disney film without landmark animation?  Bambi is classic Disney in this regard.  The forest fire in the end and the rain that brings a new season really show off some elemental powers from the animators.  The film is beautiful to look at but boy is that all it is.

I think it’s time for modern movie buffs to reexamine the classics or at least for people to actually watch these films and develop their personal opinions.  I think The Godfather is up for reevaluation, and so is Walt Disney’s beloved 5^th feature.  I found no pleasure in it and felt a great deal of repression and even hostility in its dated depictions of family life.  The question has always been at what age parents should show Bambi to their children.  I think the question should be whether Bambi is important viewing for modern families.

Bambi (1942)

Director: David Hand

Writer: Felix Salten (Story)

Stars: Hardie Albright, Stan Alexander and Bobette Audrey

USA

In English

Runtime: 70 minutes

Bambi is available on Disney Blu-ray and DVD combo pack at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004AKCMES/ref=s9_simh_gw_p74_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=104HN8VGMJ8Z3E2FTD8D&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034492/

Kaboom (2010)

I am surprised at my reaction to the sci-fi comedy Kaboom.  The genre, the style, the personalities, the drugs, the frivolous sexual exploits; typically a film like this would leave me angry for wasting 80 minutes of my life but I’ve seen it twice now and it is fun.  Odd-ball nuts but a lot of fun.  It’s almost a waste to get into the plot.  It’s not brilliantly structured and part of me believes it’s a satirical piece of filmmaking. It’s too good to only be poorly written.

Smith is an 18 year old college freshman attracted to his hot straight roommate named Thor.  Smith’s best friend is Stella, and on the side Smith has terrific sex with a quirky girl named London.  All innocent fun… except for a reoccurring dream Smith has in which all the people he loves in life plus two girls he doesn’t even know invite him down a white corridor and through a door.  In life he meets one of the unknown girls and witnesses her death... but he was high at the time and doesn’t know what is real.  As his dream intensifies we arbitrarily gain new pieces of info in an effort to develop a nuclear holocaust plot that has deep roots in Smith’s past.  This is independent filmmaking at its most creative.  It crosses many genres and uses cheeky special effects simply to entertain its audience.  There’s nothing more to it.  This genre-hopping, eye-bugging exercise works exceptionally well because it focuses more on its characters’ sexual and carefree routines rather than the overarching story.  The filmmakers knew that character is where the fun is.

Kaboom is shot in vibrant color, so refreshingly stylish, and the human stereotypes are gleefully on display.  Smith is a cute twink who rebels against sexual labels.  He is “undeclared”, but his fashion sense is part emo and part young gay sheik so we know which team he plays for.  Thor, the straight guy, is a bronzed surfer who spouts out “dude” more than a bad 90s stereotype.  Satires are written with a high level of intelligence and know not to insult the stereotypes but really to expose them as falsehoods.  Case in point—Smith becomes the hero in an off-beat action flick where at best in standard Hollywood fare he would be the brunt of jokes.  Then there’s Stella, Smith’s pal, played by Haley Bennett.  I want to mention her by name because she is terrific.  Fresh, original, like no other movie lesbian I’ve seen in a teen comedy.  She has a quick delivery and an insightful pessimistic outlook with some great, funny dialogue.  The whole cast is good but Bennett is exceptional.  It’s the Thor’s of the film, the cool kids in high school who really can’t fit in outside their comfort zone, who get the ridicule.  Thor and his best friend Rex are portrayed as sexually unsophisticated misfits among the hip, multi-sexual experimentation.  This too may be a stereotype but they are redeemed because the film exists in a world where sexuality isn’t a weapon.  Thor is very friendly with Smith and is comfortable enough with him to try to perform auto fellatio in his presence.  I know how it sounds, but you have to see the movie.

However under all this is some truly frightening imagery, namely the black figures with animal heads who stalk Smith.  I had a very powerful reaction to seeing them, perhaps because they triggered a memory I had long forgotten.  At night as a kid, I would play a game with myself.  I would hide under the covers and imagine that there were dozens of people standing on the street outside my window.  I didn’t know who they were or why, but they were there.  Seeing these creatures in Kaboom I was reminded of how scared my game made me, and that fear heightened the impact of these scenes.  I think without this memory the images retain something of their ability to frighten.  Whether it was a direct influence, I think back to Kubrick’s The Shinning.  One of the most unsettling images in the entire film was a shot of a person in an animal costume performing oral sex on an ordinary-dressed man.  Perhaps it is a subconscious fear of bestiality that makes such images potent or perhaps this whole topic says more about me than Kaboom.

It may just be that I am the right audience for this film.  Older people will be less indulgent because the film’s sensibilities are aimed at my generation (maybe even a generation younger).  People who don’t believe in pansexuality might find the whole film absurd.  Which brings me to a contemporary movie trend I saw further exploited in Kaboom.  A lot of films by gay or questioning filmmakers have to detail the Kinsey scale.  Kinsey did his research in the 1940’s and though I’m sure it was accurate, it might be time for his surveys and research to be updated.  Nevertheless, I just find this revival of Kinsey interesting.  Whatever, I liked the movie.  Enough said.

Kaboom (2010)

Director: Gregg Araki

Writer: Gregg Araki

Stars: Haley Bennett, Thomas Dekker, Chris Zylka and Juno Temple

USA

In English

Runtime: 86 minutes

Kaboom will be released on DVD from IFC Films this May.  Pre-order now at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004OBQDCK/ref=s9_simh_gw_p74_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=06M0P0WXCM8SAEHEMJRP&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

If you prefer Blu-ray, visit Amazon (France):

http://www.amazon.fr/Kaboom-Blu-ray-Thomas-Dekkler/dp/B004FK2MRA/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1300685627&sr=1-2

(beware the Blu-ray is Region B locked and French language subtitles are forced by the player!)

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1523483/

Night and Fog (1955, Nuit et brouillard)

No matter how many times you hear the expression this movie will change your life, it is a rare moment when it does.  Night and Fog did for me, not in a truly life-altering way, but it made me recognize the documentary genre as a powerful form of film.  I would watch documentaries (which I have always enjoyed doing) but never bothered with a film’s technique, impact or aesthetic value.  As far as I thought, in order for a movie to move me, the situations, the emotions, all had to be larger than life.  Then I saw Night and Fog.

It’s not a big movie.  Most people have never heard of it, but I saw it at a store and picked it up.  After completing its short running time, I was stunned—numbed is probably more accurate.  My only cinematic journeys into the Holocaust were narrative dramas like Schindler’s List, a movie I’ve never enjoyed because of its sentimental and overtly emotional approach to the subject matter.  I don’t particularly dislike weepy films (if that is indeed the correct term) but the emotions films like Schindler’s List spark go against my feelings about the Holocaust, and the effects of war in general.  The Holocaust is the darkest memory of the 20^th Century, and I don’t look at it with soft, tangible feelings.  It’s depressing to think anyone or group could get away with what the Nazis did.  It doesn’t speak well of mankind.  When I saw Night and Fog, finally—finally—I had seen the Holocaust film that hit the right tone.  The film does not ask us to feel any which way about the Holocaust.  It is matter-of-fact, unsentimental and powerful.

As far as technique, I’d say director Alain Resnais didn’t have to do too much to stir his audience.  The images he shows would be enough to shock and sicken anyone.  Of particular note are the very first image of a dead man, his eyes wide and staring right into camera; the shot of a human foot being burnt with phosphorous; and the various images of dead bodies being bulldozed like broken concrete.  Resnais's approach to the film, his style, accents the atrocities in meaningful, though not intrusive, ways.  The film, you could say, is sort of a flashback.  We open with some color photography of an isolated industrial setting, beautiful in its way.  The camera glides and shots dissolve into other shots.  It is all peaceful and serene.  We are then told through a restrained Narrator that this was the site of a concentration camp.  While the scenery hasn’t changed, our own feelings of such a place turn the shots ugly; much like the nature of a person changes the image of them in our minds.  We then see the past, the Holocaust; black and white stills and archival footage mostly shot by the Nazis for unmade propaganda films.  It’s sort of like the inverse of The Wizard of Oz, except the “fantasy,” the Holocaust footage, is real.  The beauty of the present—the color photography with its dreamlike maneuvering through space, seems to be of another time and place.  What Resnais is saying, the way I interpret it, is that man is a cruel animal capable of committing these acts, and that we should always be conscious of the fact.

I don’t remember if I had this reaction while watching the film on DVD by myself, but when I watched Night and Fog on the big screen with an audience, I couldn’t help myself but I had to shield my eyes from the final shots of the Holocaust footage: a montage of truly horrible images—mountains made of human hair for example.  I could not take it.  I think the reason is this: I felt responsible—not “I” as an individual but as a human being.  Inaction leads to the inevitable.  No other film has affected me in the same way as Night and Fog.  With this film, I realized how effective documentaries can be and it toppled for me this bigoted notion that they pale in comparison to narrative films.  I concede that documentaries have the ability to move audiences in ways dramatic pictures never can, perhaps because fiction hasn’t really happened.  Night and Fog is our history.  It is not just a superb example of modern art, this shit (there is no more appropriate word) actually happened.

I can’t truly say I love this film or even enjoy it.  I can’t understand how someone can enjoy it the same way you can a Hitchcock thriller or even a Bergman chamber drama.  I appreciate the film as a powerful indictment of the Holocaust, an unforgettable and haunting event in world history, and as a work of art.  Whenever I watch it, I’m spellbound by the visuals and the ideas, the beauty and the horror.  Alain Resnais was never coupled into the French New Wave.  Like the great Agnes Varda, he began making films a decade before but he contributed some of the defining New Wave films.  Night and Fog, made in 1955, is a perfect example of what a New Wave picture would mean: a nonconformist, idiosyncratic, adult masterpiece that withstands the test of time in that, as Resnais suggests, its topic is timeless.

Night and Fog (1955)

(a.k.a. Nuit et brouillard)

Director: Alain Resnais

Writer: Jean Cayrol, Chris Marker (Script Editor)

Stars: Michel Bouquet (Narrator)

France

In French

Runtime: 32 minutes

To purchase Night and Fog on DVD from The Criterion Collection, visit Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Fog-Collection-Michel-Bouquet/dp/B000093NQZ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300565425&sr=8-1

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048434/

Phantom (1922)

Silent cinema seems to be remembered only for its iconic horror films, whether it be American films like The Phantom of the Opera, Viktor Sjostrom’s The Phantom Carriage, or the many examples of the contorted world of German expressionism.  F.W. Murnau followed his masterpiece Nosferatu with Phantom, a film that promises all the trappings of expressionism but delivers very little.  Murnau is undoubtedly one of the most important artists in the medium and would indeed push its very limits with The Last Laugh four years later by presenting it as a complete silent film (almost) without inter-titles.

Phantom is melodrama, the void where many silent movies find themselves in.  The blame seems to fall on Thea von Harbou, the prolific screenwriter of many films of the Weimar era.  Her storytelling is primitive with thin motivations and simplistic dialogue that often cuts awkwardly to the point.  Her story concerns a would-be poet who falls in love with a woman he sees for an instant, becomes obsessed by her, and when he cannot have her he finds another girl who looks like her.  As a work of expressionism the film could have been a masterpiece, but scene after scene relies too heavily on dialogue and the image is mostly flat.  Murnau lets loose about ¾ of the way into the film with some fantastic trick shots to dramatize the poet’s inner struggle, but the machinations of the plot bog the film down for Phantom is not only about the obsessive love of the mysterious woman, it concerns the poet’s sister who leaves home to become a loose woman, and about the poet’s poor mother who suffers a long martyrdom at the turmoil of social shame; a financial swindle, and characters that seem to pop in and out to disrupt a scene just to extend the running time.

The theme of the double is ever present in expressionism and it occurs here when the poet Lorenz finds a destitute young lady who so closely resembles the woman he really loves.  In order to keep this woman as he wants her, Lorenz, whose poems unbeknownst to him have been rejected for publication, makes a deal with his aunt and promise her the poems’ profits for money upfront.  He splits 60,000 marks with the man who thought up the swindle who also happens to be Lorenz’s sister’s lover.  This character first appears with the aunt in an earlier scene, and without explanation he decides to turn on her.  But never mind about this.  All this comes about one hour into the film, and the first hour begins pleasantly enough with Lorenz going to a literary scholar, and the man’s daughter who is secretly in love with him, and shares with them his poems.  Time is also taken with the sister defying her mother and partying while the mother suffers so.  These scenes are so thick I cannot help but think von Harbou is trying to give some sort of social message, heavy handed just like in all her collaborations with husband Fritz Lang.  When Lorenz’s aunt does some investigating and discovers Lorenz has been missing work and is indeed not being published, she gives her nephew three days to returns the money he’s already spent on his lover.  What’s interesting is that none of these characters are interesting.  We never get to know any of them, and Lorenz’s lover appears in maybe six short scenes and we only know that she has no money.  I think it’s obvious she doesn’t love Lorenz for she tells him if she has to give up everything he’s bought for her she would no longer love him, but that is the problem with the film.

Everything is so blatantly stated in the title cards.  There is no mystery to the plot, only confusion which can often mask itself as such, and the characters are confined to these problems.  The only character I remotely cared about was the literary scholar’s daughter because she is the virginal, sweet-faced waif who pines for Lorenz in the background of his disastrous affairs.  The film begins with she and Lorenz married and she encourages him to write down this story.  Knowing this I was interested in how they would get together but in the end they’re just thrown together in the highly symbolic, overly politically ending with the title card—atonement; we see Lorenz being lead to prison.  Title card—redemption; he has served his sentence and now returns to the outside world.  I wasn’t at all impressed.

The photography stood out for me in moments, but as I already said this is a flat film with no depth and flat lighting.  The simple truths of German expressionism (high contrast, bold shadows) are not on display here.  But Murnau was the most curious of expressionism’s directors.  Nosferatu is the most well-known example of the movement but even still, much of the beginning of that film is taken up with striking naturalistic photography shot on location.  I responded to the same naturalism in Phantom, and indeed recognized, I think, many of the same locations used in Nosferatu.  There’s a fabulous shot when Lorenz begins to realize the dizzying spell he’s caught in where one side of the street begins closing in and chasing him.  We see the shadows of the building tops following Lorenz as he tries to get away.  There’s some other imagery accompanying the same theme that is fun to watch but the conceit is lost in this film.  It lacks style and substance and goes for quick heavy-handed messages.

The film has been beautifully restored by the F.W. Murnau Foundation which has restored many of Germany’s most important silent films.  The original color tints have been added to scenes stemming from the original negative, but a dupe positive was also used in the restoration and these brief scenes remain in black and white.

Phantom (1922)

Director: F.W. Murnau

Writer: Thea von Harbou

Stars: Alfred Abel, Grete Berger, and Lil Dagover

Germany

Silent with German Intertitles

Runtime: 145 minutes

To purchase Phantom on DVD in the US from Flicker Alley, visit Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Heinrich-Witte/dp/B000HC2LOY/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1300563541&sr=1-1

I viewed the Eureka Masters of Cinema double feature DVD found here on Amazon (UK):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Phantom-Finanzen-Grossherzogs-Masters-Cinema/dp/B002MPLR3A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1300563592&sr=8-1

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013496/

Sleeping Beauty, The (2010, Belle endormie, La)

Catherine Breillat is the most provocative filmmaker alive.  Her work inspires shocks of admiration and disdain.  Fat Girl is the film that cemented Breillat’s reputation as a master.  That film dealt directly with the corruption of young girls facing their sexuality.  The Sleeping Beauty sleeps right through these experiences.  It is an adaptation of the famous fairytale that we know in one form or another: a new-born princess is cursed to prick her finger on a spinning wheel and sleep for a very long time.  In Breillat’s film, she will prick her finger at age 6 and sleep for 100 years.

The film unfolds in three sections, the first showing Anastasia at 6 before the prick.  She is in line with Breillat’s heroines: independent; rebelling against the role society has carved for women but incapable of igniting a revolution.  Instead of wearing pretty dresses, Anastasia wishes to be a boy and prefers climbing trees and skinning knees.  In perhaps a more contemporary scenario, she refuses to take part in a beauty pageant.  These scenes feel the most authentic.  Breillat seems to have a natural gift for period films, nothing excessive, but there is just enough dust on the edges of the frame.  The little girl playing Anastasia, the heir to the Russian throne, is bright and charming, inquisitive and beautiful.  She represents womanhood untouched by the deceit and bodily fluids of the adult world.  Yet her rebellion seals her fate; in refusing to be put on display, she pricks her finger—Breillat’s acceptance that women are fated to follow their pre-determined path.

This takes us into the second phase of the film, Anastasia’s slumber, told in an episodic way much like Alice in Wonderland, where Anastasia encounters one unusual situation after another.  It’s an interesting conceit to delve into Sleeping Beauty’s dreams.  I’ve certainly never considered what those fairytale princesses dream up during their inevitable slumber.  The problem is nothing interesting develops in these scenes.  No tension at all.  In her dreams, Anastasia encounters a young boy named Peter.  They have a very pure relationship until Peter is lured away by the Snow Queen, an oddly colored dominatrix in what is perhaps the film’s most embarrassing image.  Anastasia then searches for her friend and encounters a gypsy girl.  There is a real lack of imagination in these dreams.  Breillat takes neither a surrealist approach nor does anything special.  These scenes happen very matter-of-factly, and if one were paying only mild attention to the film (perhaps dozing off) it would be difficult to follow that Anastasia is now asleep.  Perhaps if Breillat had focused in on her material, given Anastasia some quest to accomplish that involved wonder and corrupted innocence, she could have made this structure work.  It’s a terrific idea after all but it is not exploited.  Still, up to now the film is not a total disaster.

The concluding 20 minutes have Anastasia awaken at 16.  The great-grandson of Peter wanders into her bedroom from out of nowhere and proclaims his love, or at least his lust.  How did he know where to find her or that she exists at all?

The 6 year old Anastasia says to her three kind fairies, ‘It would be disappointing that in 100 years you do not wake me up.’  Is this indeed what happened?  Because Peter and the gypsy girl existed in Anastasia’s dreams, how do they exist in reality?  How too is the gypsy girl so young?  Shouldn’t she be dead at roughly 106 years old?  She certainly would not be beautiful, naked, and in bed with the 16 year old Anastasia.  But in this final part we get only the skeleton of a film.  The most interesting material in the story as told by Breillat seems to be left out.  This girl, who has slept through her period of sexual discovery, finally awakens as a woman, with breasts, capable of seducing men and finding pleasure in the modern world, and all she does is rebel against Peter and frolic in bed for the audience’s titillation.  The finale comes abruptly and unsatisfactorily.  Without giving away the ending, it presents the most interesting plot development in the entire film.  I feel that Breillat’s material really began with that ending and the film should have instead followed a fish out of water princess as she confronts the predicament she and Peter have put her in.  And the concluding passages contain enough pseudo-psycho-sexual babble to offend even the most ardent French film lover.

A problem typical of the entire film is the Carabosse character, the Maleficent of Breillat’s version.  Visually stunning, a sinister, a-sexual being, the very first shot of the film has her holding the infant Princess Anastasia in one hand, a pair of scissors in the other.  As the three kind fairies approach the child, Carabosse tells the carefree girls of her wicked spell.  Why exactly does Carabosse hate this family?  We see nothing of her magical powers, and I think Breillat takes for granted that we the audience will know the story and supply our own motivation.  But this “merciless” opening is noticeably awkward because the tragic news of Anastasia’s inevitable demise didn't resonate with me.  When Catherine Breillat made Anatomy of Hell after 3 particularly explicit films, it felt to me that she had grown so full of herself that she could risk delivering excessively more of what she was used to.  It was not the case; Anatomy of Hell was an artistic disaster made with relatively good intentions and it seems the director is again following the same path.  If for her next film she can deliver another surprising piece like The Last Mistress she can take herself in a whole new direction.

I still respect Catherine Breillat as a great auteur.  Even in The Sleeping Beauty there are the themes that dominate her work.  In fact, this film reminds me most of the director’s debut, A Real Young Girl, a surrealistic and gross gender-specific sexual awakening flick.  Unpleasant as parts of that film were, it was still terrific as a fan to find Breillat, like Hitchcock, rummaging over the same ideas in perpetuity.  The Sleeping Beauty just doesn’t offer anything new.  Bluebeard, her previous film, another fantasy adapted from the pages of Charles Perrault, was a terrific little film that tried to reconcile the fairytale with real young girls in a contemporary setting.  What we were seeing of Bluebeard was in fact not the story being told.  It seems Breillat doesn’t have the imagination (or funds—The Sleeping Beauty was a French television film, perhaps leading to the rough quality of the finished work) to pull off an epic fantasy.  How eager I was to see it though.

Sleeping Beauty, The (2010)

(a.k.a. Belle endormie, La)

Director: Catherine Breillat

Writer: Catherine Breillat (screenplay), Charles Perrault (story)

Stars: Clara Besnainou, Julia Artamonov, and Kerian Mayan

France

In French and Russian

Runtime: 82 minutes

The Sleeping Beauty is scheduled to be released theatrically in the US this Spring from Strand Releasing.  A DVD release should follow.

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1721683/

Metropolis: The Morodor Version (1927 / 1984)

The “Moroder” version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, created in 1984, has become something of an affectionate curiosity.  Debates over its existence have apparently raged among film buffs, many of whom find the alterations in this version something akin to blasphemy, though the film has had its champions.  Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars, insisting he simply ignored the soundtrack and focused in on Lang’s overpowering imagery. An online push for its DVD and Blu-ray release, and the ignorance against these voices, has lead one enterprising individual to “recreate” the Moroder version by colorizing the best available material (probably using the 2002 restoration released on DVD by Kino International in the US and Eureka in the UK) and restoring and adding Moroder’s 80s pop soundtrack.

The version I viewed was either a VHS or Laserdisc port to DVD with overblown contrast and surprisingly vibrant sound (probably taken from Laserdisc) which I had to download…illegally.  This was my sixth overall viewing of Metropolis, having seen the 2002 restoration twice, the complete 2010 restoration, the 2002 with audio commentary, and then again the 2010, followed now by the Moroder version.  Giorgio Moroder, a popular producer of pop / rock movie soundtracks, really owns this version.  The music aside, which actually works very well with the film, this 82 minute version excises most of the title cards, opts for subtitles (an interesting decision), alters Lang’s editing far beyond the missing footage did and recreates shots and adds special effects.  Oh yeah, and the film is now in color.  Not really, though that proclamation opens the film.  Moroder uses color tints, popular in Weimar-era German films.  Based on all the definitive restorations of silent Fritz Lang films done by the F.W. Murnau Foundation (which restores the color tints when applicable) none of Lang’s films had tinting because in his lifetime Lang voiced his opinion against them.

The story in the Moroder version is basically the same.  In a futuristic city (dated in only this film version as 2026) the workers live underground and provide power for the rich who live in Joh Frederson’s Metropolis.  Ferder, his privileged son, falls in love with Maria, a champion of workers’ rights, and in his pursuit of her discovers the deplorable conditions the workers face.  So he sets about leveling the balance among the rich and poor.  Meanwhile, the genius inventor Rotwang has invented the Machine Man as a substitute for his dead love, and Joh Frederson makes Rotwang give the robot Maria’s likeness so that she may mislead the workers and cause their destruction.  Often with silent movies symbolism and metaphor count much more than subtly which I guess is harder to obtain with pure images.  The 2002 restoration of Metropolis, which was missing 25 minutes of footage, had title cards explaining the plot development of the missing scenes, and thus the primitive narrative could have before been blamed on the film’s lack of completeness.  A lot of the story is pure pulp, something out of a hackneyed detective novel.  This kind of material seems to always be present in Lang’s silent films, and many put the blame on Thea von Harbou, Lang’s wife and prolific writer in the pre-National Socialist era and later a devoted Nazi.  While von Harbou’s tastes may have been more closely related to the crime story or newspaper novel, this simplicity in storytelling is the narrative tradition of German Expressionism, arguably the most influential movement in film history.  Ceaser, the somnambulist villain in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, is controlled by the title character for purely superficial reasons.  That is to say, everything Caligari had Ceaser do the Doctor could have done himself, only Ceaser’s black leotard figure was more intriguing.  In Nosferatu, the complexity of structure found in Bram Stoker’s Dracula is replaced with more symbolic imagery which could refine in mere seconds a single idea, even if by today’s standards these are dated.  But Lang and von Harbou revel in melodrama, science fiction, machinery, noir, and spy elements, and rip-roaring adventure, and they make Metropolis work.  Balance is achieved in this genre defying epic.

The widely held belief is that the Moroder version is filled with wall to wall 80s rock songs by artists like Bonnie Tyler and Adam Ant.  That is only partly true.  Moroder uses excerpts of these songs to accent his original score which is quite terrific and even aids in the storytelling.  I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to Moroder for being one of the first to attempt to recreate Lang’s original cut of the film and for filling in the missing footage with title cards explaining the important story developments in the missing scenes.  The restoration here is fantastic.  The image quality is just about as good as the 2002 digital restoration, though I cannot say for certain if Moroder’s version was the first to try and preserve this magnificent film.  The color tints annoyed me a little because Lang did not approve them.  Color is a dominating visual factor and highly moving in its own right.  To a certain extent, the tints manipulated the story telling of Metropolis.  But in viewing this version this is something we must come to terms with.  The color tints are unique, and the recreation of the missing sections of film goes so far as rebuilding and photographing an original statue of Hel which Rotwang keeps in his laboratory.

Some of the story is also excised.  The character of 11811 goes unused altogether; there is no mention of his run-ins with the Thin Man who retains only his opening and closing scenes.  Until the 2010 restoration these scenes were all that existed of that performance, but at least the 2002 restoration did mention these episodes in title cards.  But Moroder’s version does tell a complete story, even if Rotwang’s motivations are completely changed.  He becomes even more like Dr. Frankenstein: having created the monster, he can no longer control it.  The Machine Man, disguised as Maria, is no longer following orders, and as a consolation Rotwang chooses to keep the real Maria to himself.  Using this story or Lang and Thea von Harbou’s version provides the same simple storytelling, so this didn’t bother me.

Another addition to the soundtrack is sound effects, used similarly to today’s folly effects; large crowd scenes are given cheers, footsteps and other incidental sounds, and many of the “bangs” or percussive movements have accompanying effects.  This irked me.

I had the privilege of being one of the first New Englanders to see the most complete version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.  The Alloy Orchestra, specializing in silent film scores, did a live performance of an original score first written as an alternate soundtrack to the Moroder version.  I didn’t like The Alloy Orchestra score because they built sound effects into their music.  We are watching a silent movie.  Let the music take over.  Gottfried Huppertz’s original 1927 score, created for the Berlin premiere, is one of the best movie scores ever written.  He did not suggest sounds but provided an emotional and epic soundscape for Lang’s opus.  But upon reflection, one viewing of a silent movie can differ from another.  Different musical scores add their own, and now, months after hearing The Alloy Orchestra score, I miss their music and regret that Kino did not include it in their Blu-ray release of the 2010 restoration.  I can say the same about the Moroder version.  I felt a fondness for this film as I watched it.  Maybe the knowledge of the complete version of the film existing softened my reaction to this film.

There are many Metropolises and each one adds something to the experience, lengthening its reputation for the next generation, and since the 1980s, we have been making our way to the complete version of the film.  If you can, see the Moroder version.  Moroder was not ruining a classic film, simply presenting another version of Fritz Lang’s dizzying dystopia.

Metropolis (1927)

(Metropolis: The Morodor Version (1984) )

Director: Fritz Lang

Writer: Thea von Harbou

Stars: Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, and Gustav Frohlich

Germany

Silent with English subtitles and intertitles

Runtime: 82 minutes

Unfortunately Giorgio Moroder's version of Metropolis has not been released on any digital format.  Used VHS copies might be available via Ebay or Amazon's marketplace.  Online sites may be the best way to view Morodor's version.

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/