Certified Copy (2010, Copie conforme)

2 people explore the treasures of Tuscany on a lazy Sunday afternoon.  They are at first strangers, but the things they say to each other leave us questioning the nature of their relationship.  I didn’t have to make up my mind as to Juliette Binoche and William Shimell’s relationship.  It is obvious to me what is happening in Certified Copy, but whether or not we believe Binoche and Shimell are married is not the focus of the film. The film works as a puzzle.   It remains mysterious and objective, asking us to consider where the true worth of human experience exists: in a happy past or a less romantic present.

Shimell, an English opera singer, plays James Miller, an art expert who has written a book called Certified Copy, about the worth and unique authenticity of art forgeries.  He argues that a reproduction is just as valuable as the original, partly because the original is itself a copy of a real event.  Binoche plays an unnamed woman, a fan with a teenage son who waits impatiently while James is giving a lecture.  Her son teases her, insinuating his mom has a crush on the author.  And, she seems to.  Binoche leaves her number with his Italian translator and she and James meet on a Sunday.  He signs multiple copies of his book for her, one made out to her sister, Marie, who with her simple love for her husband is in sympathy with James’ philosophy of art forgeries: it is not the work itself that has value; it is our appreciation of it that gives it its value.

Their dialogue is imprecise and mawkish when James first meets her.  Binoche is self-conscious and excited to be in the author’s presence.  They take a drive.  “I can’t believe you’re sitting in my car.”  This shot is amazing.  For several minutes, Binoche and Shimell are in a two-shot, photographed from outside the car, and the reflection of the buildings on both sides of the street obscure, in flashes, both actors.  Their dialogue is innocuous but the scene is riveting.  We’re really seeing two images; a visual clue to the idea of the film.  There are overlaid images in many moments in Certified Copy.  Director Abbas Kiarostami’s directorial approach at first seems breezy and loose, but in Shimell’s and Binoche’s first scene together as they wander about her shop, precise choreography between the two leaves Shimell alone among many art forgeries, and Binoche reflected in a small mirror in the background.  They face each other even when they are separated in the filmed frame.  A similar image happens later, when Shimell stands alone near a motorbike and in the side mirror Binoche is reflected off screen.  I can’t say I’m familiar with Kiarostami’s work; I don’t know if his double images are unique to this film or important in his overall body of work but they support the material, which is not so much about doubles but the multiple interpretations of what two people say.

We are like the tourists on Binoche and Shimell’s vacation.  We hear what they say and yet lack the greater context of their lives to truly understand.  The advantage we as an audience have is that unlike these tourists who exist as extras in the film, we get to follow these two people and hear the whole of what they say.  It is still not a fault of the picture that we are not given a blunt truth.  The film is a puzzle which cannot be solved, and when I saw the film for the first time I was so overjoyed to be actively participating in the story.  Depending on how I viewed the material, the story would change and satisfy me.  It also is very mysterious and good at dropping clues through dialogue and facial expression.  The flipside is that when we solve this puzzle, the second time around Certified Copy isn’t as absorbing.  We can view the early scenes and notice the subtle clues that support our theories.  I, for example, found great meaning in a quick line of dialogue by Binoche’s son which suggests much of the complicated dynamic between these three people.  To be honest the line is so quickly delivered and I don’t speak French and I missed it the first time.  But if films are meant to be viewed more than once then the lasting impact of Certified Copy will not live up to its reputation.  If I had written this right after I saw the film once, I would have talked only positively about it.  I didn’t know what to say then other than, ‘see it and interpret it for yourselves,’ and I hoped that I could elaborate on my own opinions about the movie itself with a second viewing.  Truth is I found it difficult to get into it in the same way.  Like a mystery film I kept examining the film for evidence and found the situation betrays itself.

I still admire it a great deal.  The digital photography is sublime, and Binoche is terrific.  I think many years down the line historians will make her out to be the greatest performer to ever appear in front of the camera.  It may sound like hyperbole but I really believe it.  The things this woman can do with her face are amazing.  She would have been fabulous in silent movies.  She’s also great at delivering lines, and without giving away my interpretation of the film the great material is the quarrels that this couple shares.   This is a terrific script.  It balances three different languages—English, French, and Italian—which Binoche can speak perfectly.  There is a great exchange between Binoche and the proprietress of a small café.  The proprietress assumes James is her husband, and the woman gives Binoche a reasonable speech about what husbands, even bad ones, give their wives.

I feel I must say a bit about how I saw the picture.  I sensed a great deal of hostility in Binoche’s voice early on towards James.  This is when I began to suspect things aren’t as they appear.  At first I was made uncomfortable by her forward, angry speech.  It is not at all how people behave to strangers and I felt embarrassed for her.  But James seems a willing listener.  Neither backs down on their beliefs and yet they never once put an end to their union.  I think something more is going on, something more complex than are they strangers or are they married, but a saving grace of the picture is its ambiguity.  It also makes it more of a puzzle, and it distracts somewhat from the generally brilliant experience it is to watch Binoche’s and Shimell’s performances.

Certified Copy (2010)

(a.k.a. Copie conforme)

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Writer: Abbas Kiarostami

Stars: Juliette Binoche and William Shimell

France

In French, English and Italian

Runtime: 106 minutes

Certified Copy is currently available On Demand from Comcast and other service providers.  It should be released on DVD by IFC in the near future.

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020773/

Birds, The (1963)

The Birds begins like a sitcom, or at least like a low-rent TV project from the 60s.  We’re introduced to the pretty girl, Melanie Daniels, played by Hitchcock’s final cool blonde Tippi Hedren, as she is kept waiting for a pair of birds from a bird shop.  A handsome, mysterious man who knows all about her plays a prank, sort of payback for Melanie’s infamous practical jokes.  The man is Mitch, a lawyer, and Melanie is a playgirl with a rich newspaper tycoon father.  She buys a pair of love birds for Mitch’s sister, Cathy, and secretly brings them to Mitch’s family home in Bodega Bay, California.  Their playful banter is disrupted by a swooping seagull who takes a peck out of Melanie.  We meet Mitch’s mother, Lydia, who would disapprove of any woman Mitch brings home.  Just ask the town’s schoolteacher, Annie.  When Mitch’s father died, he broke off their relationship, and she moved to Bodega Bay just to remain close.  That was four years ago, and she and Lydia are now friends.  It seems Lydia hates the idea of being abandoned.  Melanie and Annie become accidental friends when Melanie lies to Mitch, insisting she was coming to Bodega Bay to visit her old college chum.  Annie’s name she got from the general store.

Ordinarily in a Hitchcock film, this material would be the real story, and indeed it is in The Birds.  The bird attacks are merely the MacGuffin, but there is a superficial quality to this film.  The characters are thinly sketched and merely archetypes.  Mitch is the strong handsome lead, Melanie is Hitchcock’s heroine, the character through which the story will unfold; Lydia is a dominating Hitchcockian mother, selfish, violent even, and Cathy is the innocence that was intended to really jab at the audience once the horror starts.  Annie is the only human being in the cast.  We can understand her pain.  She sticks close to the man she loves because that is all she can have.  This character is similar to Norman Bates and Marion Crane from Psycho.  The others are quite frankly boring, and the performers can’t save them.

A weakness of the picture is usually something that saves Hitchcock’s subversive characters: the actors.  Here the two leads are a letdown.  Tippi Hedren is fun to watch.  She’s beautiful but not typically so.  There’s an odd quality to her.  Her voice is high-pitched, raspy, and awkward, and as a movie personality she does well.  She’s very curious, though.  Sometimes she delivers her lines well, other times, more often than not, she is unconvincing.  I can’t really fault Rod Taylor as Mitch.  I just wasn’t interested in him.  Hitchcock should have chosen Rock Hudson, someone who looked younger, more boyish and possessed more charisma.  Mitch and Melanie’s relationship was not organic.  It felt forced.  I wonder why disasters are always aphrodisiacs in the movies.  There’s an embarrassing scene on the sand where we learn something of Melanie’s back story.  We find out her playgirl days have made her a mature woman, that the lifestyle ruins reputations and she is devoting herself to good causes now.  We also learn of her deadbeat mother, and partly due to Hedren’s delivery but mostly to the script, the sentiment is false and truly laughable.  It’s predicable, and Hitchcock is too good to be predicable but there you have it.

The supporting performers are fine.  Jessica Tandy chews the screen in subtle ways as the mother.  Of course Suzanne Pleshette is fantastic.  She brings a rare quality to a Hitchcock role: grittiness.  Annie is a real woman: attractive but not glamorous, frank, honest, and a little bit depressed.  I personally found Veronica Cartwright very effective for her generation.  I guess I must say this because when I saw the film with an audience, everyone was laughing at the portrayal of all the kids.  It’s just too old-fashioned for modern viewers.  I may be being a bit grumpy but why then were these people in the theater?  They know the film is old—grow up!

Actually I was very upset when I left the theater.  There was too much laughter during the screening.  An old couple sitting next to me said that the great thing about seeing a film like The Birds with an audience was hearing the nervous laughter during the tension-filled scenes.  I did not contradict them but they were out of touch.  No one respects the movies anymore.  I saw the film at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA, the Boston area’s most well known independent theater.  Their programming is often banal, showing the more ordinary independent stuff.  I’ve noticed that the audiences typical of Coolidge are kind of would-be movie snobs, the sort who prefers to drop various names and titles during discussions but who have no true understanding or appreciation for the cinema.  There was a lot of laughter during the area premiere screening of the complete Metropolis and there was laughter at The Birds.  Moments like the attack at the birthday party.  There’s a shot of a little girl face down on the grass as a seagull pecks at her head.  I didn’t find the image funny.  There was one moment where the film shut the audience up.  It’s probably the most well-known shot in the film, where Lydia wanders into her friend’s house and finds him dead with his eyes plucked out.  You could feel the audience was disturbed.  It was a thick atmosphere, but people still found things to laugh at.  Perhaps the idea of birds run amuck just isn’t believable.  I grant you that while walking down the streets of Boston it is ridiculous to imagine that the common pigeon will start attacking.  But this is the movies—this is a Hitchcock movie!  Suspend your disbelief otherwise stay home.

The moment I expected laughter (and was actually dreading because I found the constant laughs inappropriate) was met with silence.  It’s the semi famous moment when Melanie watches as a trail of spilled gasoline catches fire.  Hitchcock chose a strange series of parallel action, where the shot of the encroaching fire is disrupted by freeze-frame images of Hedren with her mouth agape.  The problem with it is that her shots are held too long and the people behind her move at normal speed.  The silence from the audience is probably due to the very palpable scene Hitchcock had staged.  It is one of many of the film’s later moments that are filled with tension and dread.

The Birds was ahead of its time in one way: it is the first of the modern-day disaster pictures.  In fact, I found parallels with two very popular and effective ones: Night of the Living Dead and Jurassic Park.  Spielberg’s movie is reminiscent because, like The Birds, it has innovative special effects and is terrifying about Earth-bound creatures attacking humans (granted dinosaurs are long extinct), but both also lack seriously developed characters, leaving the only points of interest with the attacking animals.  Night of the Living Dead is a more apt companion film, and it is easy to see that George Romero took the structure of Hitchcock’s picture and many of the ideas as well.  In both films there are languorous openings that suggest a different kind of story will be told instead of the one we’re given.  Both feature characters terrified by the danger outside their home, boarding up the place, and then turning on each other once the terror becomes unbearable.  They both also succeed as brilliantly claustrophobic and downright depressing exercises, though Romero’s film is much more shocking and sophisticated.  Though it was made only 5 years later, Night was made in a different time in American film.  The Birds begins carefree, with hope and promise for its characters but all joy is robbed by birds.

Where Hitchcock succeeds is also where he fails.  The Birds was a film Hitchcock almost never made.  After Psycho, another accidental project, Hitchcock was developing Marnie as a return vehicle for Grace Kelly.  The Birds was made instead because Kelly regretfully turned down Marnie, and with Psycho’s unbridled success the director turned out another devastating horror film.  It feels to me that Hitchcock gave up with The Birds.  He was cashing in on the audience’s expectation of his moniker but he failed to find the key to his success: a tight script and convincing characters.  The Birds never feels like a work of cinema.  It feels like a cynical exercise, even though it is technically well made and possesses some great cinematic moments from The Master.

The film is innovative too in its sound design.  It is very effective, and apparently much of the credit goes to composer Bernard Herrmann.  Herrmann is the greatest, most important composer of the 20^th Century, but The Birds exists without a note of music.  The composer, Hitchcock’s creative partner for nearly a decade, convinced the director that the film would work better with only the sounds of birds.  In comes a machine called the Mixtur Trautonium.  Along with the Theremin, it was one of the early electronic musical instruments, and this machine, a precursor to the synthesizer, created the shrieks for the birds.  I noted, however, that we seldom hear actual birds in the attacking scenes.  I recognized cats and chimpanzees, but in the chaos these were believable sounds.  In fact, the sounds probably caused much of the chaos.  Hitchcock must have been appreciative as Herrmann received onscreen credit as “Sound Consultant”, but this may be equally due to their friendship.  Another nice bit of sound is during the final scene, the massive shot of the exterior of the house littered with waiting birds.  There is the sound of wind, of pressure, something almost subliminal that suggests unease.  This reminded me of the great electronic score for Tarkovsky’s Solaris.  There was a problem, though, and it might have been unique to the print I saw, but the bird attack scenes were way too loud.  The dialogue and other scenes were at a normal volume, but the frightening scenes could have been turned down.

I do regret that Herrmann did not write music for the film.  I think it would have helped cement the film, made it tenser and its characters seem less simple.  The example to go by is Hitchcock’s own Torn Curtain.  Herrmann wrote a score but Hitchcock rejected it.  The film with its current score is good but like The Birds weakly sketched.  Herrmann’s score would have shaded in the characters, and I feel he could have only helped the film.  His and Hitchcock’s collaboration is legendary, and together they created the best American films of the 50s and 60s.  One artist fed off another, and their work is probably the definitive example of a director / composer relationship.  If nothing else, Herrmann’s score for The Birds would give us one more Herrmann score.

I’ve never been impressed with The Birds.  When I first saw it in high school I felt cheated by the ending.  Now I accept it and even think it’s the only way the film can end, but as a film it does not succeed.  The Birds showed Hitchcock failing by clinging to a formula that made him very wealthy in 1960.  While there are great moments of terror, the characters in The Birds are not compelling enough to carry us through scene to scene.  Because it is Hitchcock we stay, but you take away the birds and there is no film left.

Birds, The (1963)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writer: Evan Hunter

Stars: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette

USA

In English

Runtime: 119 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/

My Man Godfrey (1936)

It’s very easy to tell when a film was made in 1930’s Hollywood.  Stylistically the lighting is very flat, the camera movement is limited, mainly photographed in long or medium shots to give the feeling of a play, and the characters are dressed in the latest fashions, so sheik for their time that today they stand out.  Also these films, less so as the decade went on, contain searing social commentary.  This is an adequate distillation of My Man Godfrey, a beloved screwball comedy more in the tradition of drama, though the characters are oddballs and the women speak at a mile a minute.

Godfrey is a “forgotten man”, one of the homeless living in New York Dump 32.  One night a group of society people come to him asking for his help for their scavenger hunt.  You see, the two women need a forgotten man to come back to a posh hotel for them to win the game.  As Irene Bullock, played by Carole Lombard, notes, one does not win a prize but merely the honor of winning.  Godfrey ruthlessly turns down Irene’s sister Cornelia, someone whose very name describes her witchy snobbery, but he helps out the friendlier and perhaps more naive Irene.  He wins her the game and she feels so indebted to him that she gives him the job of the Bullock family’s new butler.

The high jinks or at least the narrative takes off from here, but My Man Godfrey is seldom laugh-out-loud funny.  Most of the comedy comes from how out of touch the Bullock women are, and there are some genuine laughs.  But the film feels more like a depression-era fable, about a spoilt heir (spoiler—Godfrey) giving up wealth to communicate with the downtrodden, finding with those who struggle a kinship and honesty.  It is easy to see why when looking, say, at Irene’s mother Angelica; she keeps a protégé called Carlo who is nothing more than a freeloader, accepting insults from Mr. Bullock as long as he does not have to work for money.  In fact the very word causes him pain.  Angelica, or Mrs. Bullock, is a daffy, clueless woman who does not take into consideration how much money their family wastes, or that her husband constantly tries to mention his business troubles.  This talk upsets poor Carlo.

I will again admit to a bias against comedies.  I simply prefer dramas, but the screwball genre is interesting.  My textbook example is His Girl Friday, which is one of my favorite films.  That film is wall to wall laughs, and it gave me the impression that screwball comedies are farce and quick gags.  An online search regarding the genre informed me that it really is indefinable.  I like “Sex comedy without the sex”, as defined by critic Andrew Sarris.  The few screwball comedies I remember involve courtship, usually the woman directly vying for the love of the handsome, befuddled man.  They are innocent fun steeped in the moral traditions of another era.  In fact, at one point My Man Godfrey played more like an early 1900s piece than a more modern and less moralistic 1930s.  The 1930s of course were a very controversial time for American film, with censorship becoming a reality by 1934.  That the film is less comedic is not a fault of the picture.  As far as it goes in screwball territory it succeeds, but the film is about the carelessness of the idle rich.

William Powell’s Godfrey seems most out of place in a screwball comedy.  I think it is his character that blurs the lines of genre.  He is world-weary and so sure of himself.  He minds the social hierarchy and is careful to remain distant but compliant with the at-odds Bullock sisters.  Irene loves him and Cornelia is after revenge for his initial snub.  Godfrey, as he says to an old friend, was not equipped to handle struggle in life.  His rich upbringing left him child-like.  The adult world disillusioned him.  The film feels at times something like a Frank Capra film, or Make Way for Tomorrow, with its biting sociopolitical observations.  I have to say Godfrey’s character distracted me a bit.  Not only is he never meant to be funny, his character seems above the film, as if he merely watches the Bullocks and judges them.  This is in fact what Godfrey does, but as such he belongs in another film.  Cary Grant never played a screwball character like this.  He was often the male lead and he was always as sharp and odd as the women he was up against—Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russle and Irene Dunne.  The fault is not Carole Lombard who is very good here; nor is it actor William Powell, but Godfrey’s.

There is nothing wrong with the film.  I suppose I liked it.  It held my attention totally from the fascinating opening titles sequence, but I must admit I was underwhelmed.  The story was not exactly predictable but the scenarios and resolution were not surprising.  That didn’t bother me, though.  What saves the film is the talent.  Carole Lombard does some of her finer work here, maybe because her character is more interesting than some of her other roles.  Irene is a girl who knows what she wants and can’t accept or understand why her feelings can’t be met by others, in this case Godfrey.  She is so good that I think a great compliment to her is that I recognized where Lucille Ball got her comic persona.  Alice Brady plays Mrs. Bullock and steals the show.

Perhaps I need to devour more screwball comedies in order to appreciate My Man Godfrey more.  I haven’t seen enough even for my own liking.  I don’t know if it’s necessary because I did have a reaction to the picture, a lukewarm one, but because the film exists in a time and genre that makes it an historical piece of work—a definitive 1930s screwball comedy—a wider understanding of the niche genre might broaden its appeal.

My Man Godfrey (1936)

Director: Gregory La Cava

Writers: Eric Hatch and Morrie Ryskind
Original novel by Eric Hatch

Stars: William Powell, Carole Lombard and Alice Brady

USA

In English

Runtime: 94 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028010/

 

My Man Godfrey is available for free viewing at The Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/MyManGodfrey1936

Woman Under the Influence, A (1974)

I didn’t know what to say after watching A Woman Under the Influence.  I was stunned, silent.  There were times when I simply couldn’t look at the screen.  Watching its characters was intrusive and so painfully embarrassing that I felt safer with my hand shielding my eyes.

The film begins with a housewife, Mabel, sending her three kids away for the night with her mom.  She has planned an evening together alone with her husband, but Nick calls and cannot make it.  He works for the city and a water mane has burst.  Mabel is upset, passionately so, and checks into a bar and brings home a stranger.  Nick insists to his co-workers that Mabel is not crazy, and because we’ve only just begun to witness their life together we side with Nick.  But it becomes very clear that something is wrong with Mabel, and John Cassavetes’ brilliant film depicts a series of episodes or moments in their life together that are beyond realistic and probably the only honest and horrifying scenes of mental illness ever shot.

We all leave the house and leave the secrets inside.  The outdoors provides a temporary escape, and it is possible that those who suffer such fates are very enthusiastic in their public selves to overcompensate for the pain at home.  This is Nick.  The first time the screen became unbearable was during the long breakfast / dinner scene where he brings his coworkers home, possibly to prove to Mabel that he did work and ease the tension of her mind.  Mabel has just woken up from her night with the strange man, and after a dazy introduction with Nick’s coworker friends, Mabel and they make a huge spaghetti meal.  This is one of the best scenes I think I’ve ever seen in an American movie.  I can only compare it to the extended Christmas family meal from Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander.  This early morning dinner scene continues as if we were a spectator at the table.  Cassavetes’ direction is relentless; we get intimate in the harmonious moments, like when the unstable Mabel asks each of the coworkers their name.  She and Nick share some very odd personal glances.  It is obvious that something is going to go wrong.  When he lashes out at her for insisting a little too much to dance with one of them, the dense, terse mood was so recognizable from real life that I had to force myself to turn back to the screen.  It’s a moment where film ceases to be a series of flat images on a screen and where it becomes the present reality.

Gena Rowlands gives one of the best performances I have ever seen.  I won’t be able to express myself the way I want because I am still trying to comprehend it, but I was dumbfounded by her focus and concentration.  I won’t describe it further.  Such things need to be experienced individually, and if I oversell it the performance can’t possibly live up to my promise.  The expectation would be too great.  But I could not believe what I was seeing.  I will say that Ellen Burstyn winning for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore falls in line with the gross negligence the Motion Picture Academy is historically famous for.  Peter Falk is great too, and his performance is quite dangerous.  I truly didn’t like his character, but I understood him.

Nick and Mabel’s relationship made sense to me, even though I hated that they are a couple.  They seem to do so much wrong and yet I don’t think they could make it alone.  Nick certainly couldn’t.  He’s the kind of mutt that clings to out of loyalty, regardless of the damage he causes.  Damage not just to Mabel but to their kids and to himself.  He seems equally unstable.  His temper is short, his force brash and violent.  His insecurities and ignorance can help no one.  Mabel has a clear illness, though I’m not sure how much of her illness stems from a chemical imbalance or is caused by the people around her.  I will admit I know nothing about true mental illness, but her parents, her father especially in one frightening later scene, her mother-in-law, herself and her family can never work harmoniously.  Everyone seems to know the right thing to do and everyone has a unique way of setting things right, but no one listens.  Mabel, who cannot focus like the average person, is treated like a patient in need but everybody else gets away with doing her in.  Worst is Nick, who may have a reason for his condition.  His reason is Mabel’s lack of stability, but he should be man enough to relinquish some control.  When he tries to help he sometimes hurts, but there are moments where these two seem to function together: the breakfast scene, or the night when Mabel returns from an extended stay in the hospital.  His direct temper, his lack of coddling her, seems to set her right for short bursts, and though the film ends with them tiding up, actually and metaphorically, they are still going to have the same problems.

John Cassavetes really needs to be commended for his screenplay.  Though his work feels very improvisational, actors Falk and Rowlands both agree that Cassavetes was a writer first.  He writes genuine scenes.  He writes long scenes, and he lets them develop through natural dialogue and then refuses to let go once the ugliness begins.  Most filmmakers would not show things so clearly because the effect it has on an audience isn’t pretty.  This isn’t a fun movie to sit through.  It was excruciating.  But it’s also brilliant, and while I was severely depressed watching it, A Woman Under the Influence was simply too good to shut off.  I remember four or five really long scenes, the dinner scene mentioned before, a spontaneous party Mabel throws her kids which is disastrous, a visit from Mabel’s doctor, Nick taking his children to the beach once their mom has been committed, and finally her return home, which is long and hopeless.  An average film would have some kind of big statement.  Either Mabel’s treatment would have cured her or she would take her own life.  Sometimes life is most terrifying when things simply don’t change.  People sometimes are beyond help, and a developed society cannot put an end to Mabel’s life.  She has to live with it.

These are my initial impressions after one viewing.  It is the first John Cassavetes film I’ve seen, and I’m eager to see more.  I would also like to revisit my thoughts with greater distance.  I feel I have not yet been lifted from the experience and my words are failing me.

One thing I do know is that I don’t want to see this movie ever again.  This is a knee-jerk reaction because as I write this I know this is a film I will study forever.  But the experience is so overwhelming that I don’t think that anytime soon I could handle it again.  It is a force.  It’s not a motion picture.  This is a living creature.  It’s not bound by anything.

Woman Under the Influence, A (1974)

Director: John Cassavetes

Writer: John Cassavetes

Stars: Gena Rowland, Peter Falk and Fred Draper

USA

In English

Runtime: 155 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072417/

Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The (1964, Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les)

I have been watching a lot of musicals in recent weeks, a lot which star Catherine Deneuve.  I always saw the genre as being artificial, sappy, and always happy, but I’m discovering many musicals are quite sad.  The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is sad in a sappy way that is uniquely cinematic.  Descriptions of the film tell of its beautiful qualities and these same qualities from its leading lady, but Deneuve is seldom happy in Cherbourg.

Deneuve plays Geneviève.  Her widowed mother runs a poor umbrella shop, but Geneviève is too happy with her handsome beau, Guy.  They cannot wait to marry but Geneviève’s mom sees no future for the young couple.  Guy is drafted and he and Geneviève make love, and naturally she is with child while he is off fighting the French war against Algeria.  Geneviève is melancholic with Guy’s departure and her loving but selfish mother doesn’t make her ordeal easier by encouraging Geneviève’s relationship with a handsome young jewelry salesman named Roland Cassard.  Though the child is not his he wishes still to marry Geneviève.  With the passing time and the infrequent letters from her true love, Geneviève decides to marry the rich Roland lest all chances of her happiness vanish.

I must admit my recent viewing of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was my first.  I had not seen it before seeing Christophe Honoré’s Love Songs.  I was completely unaware of how much Honoré was influenced by Cherbourg, so much so that I can only deduce that the film was a major film for the New Wave in 1964.  Jacques Demy, the film’s gifted director, was a breed of New Wave filmmaker unrelated to Cahiers du cinéma, the movie review magazine that is remembered as the birthplace of the popular New Wave directors.  Demey, with wife Agnès Varda and the great Alain Resnais, was part of a revolutionary contingency of New Wave filmmakers known as The Left Bank.  Their films were more radical than The Right Bank, or Cahiers crowd, and often less successful.  Possibly because of Cherbourg’s popular success the film has been separated from the memory of the Nouvelle vague.  It’s a trivial concern because the film is so wonderful, but it is still interesting.

Like Love Songs (or I should say Love Songs taking inspiration from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) the film is divided into three acts, each act a unique section in its characters’ lives.  The first part, The Departure, shows us how much Guy and Geneviève are in love, and how time is always against those in love, not just in the face of upcoming events but in its concept to quantify the minutes, hours, seconds that go by and are gone forever.  Love can never be enough, and in one way Cherbourg is a film for young people.  The film screams of youth and beauty and promise, of children becoming adults in the face of difficulty.  In another way, the film is for such adults, those who know that the promise of young love is irrational and misleading.  Geneviève’s mom knows that if her daughter marries Guy their future will be difficult.  Geneviève knows they would live modestly but if they love they will be happy.  Young lovers never consider bills.  Love doesn’t pay in reality.  The film’s second part, The Absence, focuses solely on Geneviève as she deals with her pregnancy, hopeful when receiving Guy’s letters, panicked when not.  Roland is a handsome guy, nice too and infatuated with Geneviève.  I would go so far as call him a pushover.  Geneviève makes some serious decisions in the face of the facts.

One at first thinks of her actions as cold and of betraying her and Guy’s love, but the French have always had such keen insight into human behavior and ritual.  At least their films have, and if The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was a real 50s Hollywood musical, Geneviève would have defied her mother and ignored Roland, but an unwed young girl expecting with the father countries away has few options for the future.

The final part, Guy’s return, is the saddest section in the film, perhaps because it hits a nerve in modern times.  After serving his country, Guy comes home to find his love gone, married to another man raising his own child.  There is no place for him in an ever changing Cherbourg, and he wallows in drinking and cheep women, his vital time passing him by.  With our country at war for the last 10 years, it is painful to watch a veteran so short-changed in very honest ways.  Nino Castelunuovo, the actor who plays Guy, is just terrific.  Handsome, Italian, sensitive and charismatic, he really makes the last act of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg work.  I expected to be wooed by Catherine Deneuve, but Castelunuovo was a pleasant surprise.  That he clings to his invalid aunt’s young nurse in the face of his own loneliness is the ultimate tragedy.  Though the film’s final shot suggests true happiness in his new life, I got the sense that Madeleine, the nurse and his new wife, will never be loved the way she loves Guy.  She is his consolation prize, pretty as she is, but Guy will always be inevitably comparing her to Geneviève.  Their relationship can stand for many.  I feel sorry for their son, who when he grows up might learn the truth, that his parents’ love isn’t what society says marriage should be.  I understand it’s only a movie but good movies make you forget.

I wasn’t impressed by the music.  Though composer Michel Legrand’s music is beautiful, I didn’t care that every line of dialogue is sung.  It feels too much like operetta.  I wasn’t bothered or turned off by it but I will say that for the first 10 minutes I did consciously notice it.  There also isn’t a “great” song to be remembered afterwards like in a traditional musical structure.  There is one bittersweet melody that becomes Guy’s and Geneviève’s love tune that is worth humming, but the continuous song, separated mostly by the act breaks, seldom with the changing scene, isn’t what I’m used to with musicals.  But don’t let that dissuade you.

All the beautiful comments made throughout the years regarding The Umbrellas of Cherbourg are warranted, but I wish its memory recalled the bittersweet quality this film has.  A musical’s ability to capture the trials of life, sad and true, is an event to behold.

Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The (1964)

(a.k.a. Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les)

Director: Jacques Demy

Writer: Jacques Demy

Music: Michel Legrand

Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo and Anne Vernon

France

In French

Runtime: 91 minutes

The best DVD edition of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is the UK 2-disc set, which features a feature-length documentary by Demy's wife, Agnes Varda.  Purchase at Amazon (UK):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Umbrellas-Cherbourg-Special-DVD/dp/B000AMSSCK/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1304558757&sr=1-1

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058450/

Various Amazon links, including multiple DVDs, a VHS, the documentary The World of Jacques Demy, and Legrand's soundtrack:

      

Seventh Seal, The (1957, Sjunde inseglet, Det)

The Seventh Seal belongs to a small group of films that so honestly depicts what life must have been like in The Middle Ages.  I’ve read arguments suggesting that the costumes are not authentic, but such details cannot dismantle the atmosphere created by a lack of ornamental detail.  The Seventh Seal strips down all facets of artifice to create a very palpable existence.

It is set during the Black Death; Knight Antonius Block and his squire Jons have returned from 10 years of violence in the Crusades only to be met with more violence at home.  Death comes to claim Antonius on the beach, one of cinema’s most recognized images.  Antonius challenges Death to a game of chess, and during their game which takes place in segments, the Knight gets to live—for reasons that are his own; Death is not privy to them.

Jof and Mia and their toddler son are actors from a small troupe lead by the rascal Raval.  Raval escapes the torturous life of an actor by running away with the blacksmith’s wife.  Jof and Mia remain innocent and naïve during this cruel time; as they perform for an unappreciative audience, the dispassion turns to humiliation as Jof is heckled.  A band of flagellants disrupts their performance in one of the film’s most chilling scenes.  Men and women who believe the end is near parade themselves, some carrying crosses, others abusing themselves to appease God.  These are the equivalents to modern day people on the streets with posters warning the end is near, except the modern thinkers are too weak for pain and rely only on spectacle.

The Seventh Seal was the first Ingmar Bergman film I had seen, and it was one of my first foreign language films.  It embarrasses me to admit but the film put me to sleep.  To be fair I had only 4 hours sleep and had to sit through a CPR class at 8am, and began the film around 9 at night.  I wasn’t accustomed to the pace of a Bergman film, which is different even from other foreign films.  For reasons I’m still not sure of, I pursued other Bergman works, and discovered the austere brilliance of the director’s work with Sven Nykvist, films made in the 1960s and 70s.  I closed myself off from the director’s early work until about 2 years later when I decided to watch every one of Bergman’s films in chronological order.  I was delighted to discover that many of this early films are brilliant, some masterpieces.  Dreams is a particular favorite, looking ahead to films like Cries and Whispers, at least in its construction.  It was during my second viewing via Criterion’s perfectly restored Blu-ray that I first appreciated The Seventh Seal.  Perhaps the film made more sense in context to the director’s output thus far, but I think I was mature enough as a film buff to discover the great pleasures the film offers.

One is humor.  There is never a moment when the film is laugh-out-loud funny, but Squire Jons has many great lines.  At the beginning when he and the Knight meet a man sitting by the side of the road; Jons asks for directions only to discover the man a corpse.  The Knight asks what the man said, and Jof replies, “He was quite eloquent.”  In many ways the film reminds me of Shakespeare.  Bergman was a playwright first and undoubtedly read more of Shakespeare than I care to.  In particular the film, in its parts humor, horror and whimsy, recalls “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”  Gunnar Björnstrand is one of Bergman’s great actors.  He’s the only substantial male lead who was physically handsome.  Björnstrand excelled in comedy, evidenced in a film like A Lesson in Love.  He showed off his awesome dramatic talents for Bergman many times as well, and his Jons is an observant man, the character here most closely related to Bergman I think, the doubter, the scorner of those with false faith, ridiculing the cruelties of man while accepting that, at least for him, God does not exist.  A vital function of the humor (and Jons doesn’t carry it all—the blacksmith and Raval’s duel which takes an unexpected role reversal, and in particular Raval’s dues) is that it punctuates the horror.  The scene of the flagellants or the burning of the witch is horrible to witness.  It’s almost indescribable how potent Bergman assembled his film.

One of the great strengths of the film is it’s openness to interpretation.  Bergman often claimed during his younger years a lack of faith in God.  In his later years, particularly in an interview when promoting Saraband in 2003, he believed that when he died he would be united with his beloved wife Ingrid.  It might be the fear of nothingness that made Bergman cling to religious beliefs, and it is this fear that drives the religious characters in The Seventh Seal.  The Knight stalls Death because he must understand God in tangible terms.  The only figures willing to engage in such conversation are the folks tormenting a young girl, proclaiming her a witch and the cause of the plague.  But they are near sighted.  The girl has been beaten to submission, and believes that she is in communion with the devil.  Antonius asks her about him because he is a connection to God, but staring into the girl’s eyes only reveals her fear of the stake.  The men who torture her are typical zealots, men who have faith in their own Earthly power and not in the God they profess to believe in.

Death is the obvious connection, on a metaphysical level, to God that the Knight can engage.  But Death remains elusive all through their encounters.  He reveals one important piece of information that seems contradictory to expectation but one that suggests there is no God: Death does not know; he has no answers.  This seems to settle things for Antonius, or at least it allows him some peace.  For someone with no religious convictions like myself, the film can be read as a life unfilled by a true God; only mortals spread disease and violence, but also beauty.  Death is not an evil or a mystical force.  The character is a personification of the plague; Death is a character in Bergman’s play.  He has no answers because he has no connection to God.  Death is a function of life.  It is not evil.  It merely removes those whose life has ended.  For those religiously inclined the film will mean something different.  It is about the mysteries of faith.  The bible tells us we on Earth cannot fathom God’s wisdom.  If the film is religious then it plays its viewpoints fair.  A glaring fault of religious epics is its insistence in God and Jesus Christ.  The Seventh Seal is only a document.  Great arguments can be made on both sides (probably greater arguments for God’s existence can be made by others) and yet The Seventh Seal is not an intellectual exercise as Bosley Crowther argued in 1958.  It asks questions and provides only facets of answers through the sheer force of its images.  To claim the film is intellectual ignores the passion and humanity that is always a part of Bergman’s work.  That he asks BIG questions is merely the director communicating with anyone in order to make sense of life as it has been taught to him.

The Seventh Seal is essential viewing for film people.  Any book on cinema history will quote its images.  Two shots from the film’s opening scene have been reproduced hundreds of times.  The Dance with Death is another one.  Ingmar Bergman is one of the medium’s great directors, and this film has been the introduction of many to his unique voice.  The film is humorous and unpleasant, fascinating to watch and a great historical document as a piece of film and of its subject matter.

Seventh Seal, The (1957)

(a.k.a. Sjunde inseglet, Det)

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Writer: Ingmar Bergman

Stars: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bengt Ekerot and Bibi Andersson

Sweden

In Swedish

Runtime: 96 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050976/

Purchase The Seventh Seal on Criterion Blu-ray & DVD via Amazon.  Also linked below is a collection of books on the film and Bergman, including the published screenplay and 2 autobiographies:

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Disney’s 2010 revival of Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton, one of the most unique and self-indulgent stylists in Hollywood today, tells the story of Alice’s return to Wonderland, lured back by all the fantastical characters she met when she was just a girl.  The Mad Hatter, who is kept on the screen for far too long, the White Rabbit, and the Dormouse need Alice because the Red Queen has overthrown her sister the White Queen and has brought a sort of dark ages unto Wonderland.  Why do they need Alice?  Because a Harry Potter-like magic scroll has revealed that on this day, Alice will slay the Jabberwocky and thus overturn the Red Queen’s rule.

I doubt if modern audiences have actually read Lewis Carol’s original books.  I certainly didn’t, not until Burton’s Alice in Wonderland was announced, and I must admit I was excited to see it.  The books have a magic that is unique to literature; it is not Carol’s story or even his beloved characters that makes his two Alice adventures classics.  It is his language, and so putting the rather uninteresting structure of Carol’s books on screen like in the 1933 live action Paramount Pictures adaptation will result in failure.  The Disney animated film from 60 years ago kept to that structure as well, but highly influential character designs and voice acting made that adaptation passable.  It is still one of the weaker Disney’s pics.  But here we have a completely new story, one that owes a lot more to the film adaptations of Lord of the Rings than Carol’s fantasies.

As mentioned, Alice is now a young woman and reluctantly about to be married off.  She discovers the White Rabbit at her engagement party, follows him down the rabbit hole, and repeats many of the same adventures as when she was first there, including changing size to fit through the small door with a key at the base of the rabbit hole.  The climax of the film has Alice donning a suit of armor and she and the good creatures of Wonderland face off LOTR-style against the Red Queen and her army of deadly playing cards.  Such tired material.  Instead of presenting a somewhat experimental film trying to utilize as best as possible the integrity of Carol’s language or at least the book’s spirit, this material is padded down to engage the widest possible audience with familiar material so they leave the theater superficially satisfied.  That really shows just how little major studios think of their audiences.  This film exists solely for the box office, cross-promotions, and of course home video sales and digital downloads.  It is a sad reminder of the times.  So much imagination and money are put into an epic project and no one bothered to create something special to market.

It is unfortunate that Tim Burton directed this film.  The material seemed brilliantly suited to Burton’s tastes.  His films are almost consistently beautiful, from the noir-ish Batman to his expressionistic films exemplified by Edward Scissorhands and Sweeney Todd.  Todd is Burton’s masterpiece.  It is one of the best screen musicals due not only to Burton’s visuals or even to Sondheim’s marvelous melodies, but to Burton’s intimate storytelling.  Into Alice in Wonderland so many characters are stuffed without clear motivations or purpose simply to incorporate all the famous characters from the Disney original.  Things are so unfocused and disorganized that by the time the lame climax arrives, we hardly know why they are fighting, and even less do we care.  But why are the characters from Alice in Wonderland fighting at all?

This is a problem Burton has had with many of his films.  He cannot bring a narrative to a satisfactory conclusion.  His obvious talent, to me, seems more suited to experimental filmmaking.  A film like Tarkovsky’s Mirror would be a perfect example of the kinds of films Burton should be making, and certainly of the kind of non-narrative structure that Alice in Wonderland should have had.  Instead Burton often resolves his films in violence.  In Batman it seems logical, expected even, and the story of Sweeney Todd is bloody to say the least.  But was it necessary for Edward Scissorhands to impale the ex-boyfriend of the girl he loved?  Is it a matter of economy to end the story quickly and give audiences a momentary jolt and sense of resolution?  Or is it a lack of talent?  With Burton, no; the talent is there.  He is a fine director.  He needs to work with his writers to create stories that develop naturally and support the more important material that leads to a climax.

But while I have praised his visual style, Burton’s Wonderland is severely underwhelming.  There are several settings that resemble rather too faithfully the scenery of the Lord of the Rings, especially the exterior of the White Queen’s castle.  The cliffs and waterfalls are so much like those that surround Rivendell that to call it homage is stretching it.  Aside from the lack of originality in the production design, the CG devours the integrity of the movie.  The only effects that look spectacular are the Red Queen, how her head towers over her body, and the White Rabbit, who looks so pure he feels like the only character that escaped unscathed.  The Cheshire Cat looks good too and in fact has many great lines and moments.  But everything looks fake.  There is no texture and that’s what Burton’s films are all about.  There is a large tiger-like fantasy creature that looks to be made of rubber.  The scenery, which was all created digitally, meaning the actors performed almost entirely in green-screen rooms, looks ludicrous.  Anton Furst erected Gotham City for Burton 22 years ago!  Why can’t it be done now?  Of all the things wrong with this film this irks me the most.  Tim Burton is not a director who can rely to CGI and computers to tell his stories.  He creates much better with on-set texture.  Some behind the scenes footage of Burton at work on Sleepy Hollow shows him painting blood on a tree with his own hands.  Who can create in a neon-green room?  There is such a lack of artistry throughout Alice in Wonderland that is really disheartening when thinking of the state of Hollywood movies.

Mia Wasikowska is a splendid Alice.  She is a beautiful young woman and fits brilliantly the look of Burton’s waif-like heroines.  She very well could have the talent to back up her beauty but the story doesn’t let her do much acting.  Still though, I’d like to see her develop into a major young actor.  Of course though, Johnny Depp is the major cast draw.  This is his seventh collaboration with Tim Burton and one of their weakest.  The Mad Hatter is so boring and quite frankly annoying to look at, and I found his obligatory romance with the adult Alice somewhat uncomfortable.  Anne Hathaway is equally annoying, though her excellent white dress is a testament to the tireless talent of costume designer Colleen Atwood.  Helena Bonham Carter is very enduring as the Red Queen; the CG effects make her look quite weird and I enjoyed her performance a lot.  Burton has never had problems with his actors.  This is an area where no one comments on Burton; his characters can be weakly developed but his performers always deliver something, and these in Alice in Wonderland are about as bad as they get and overall it’s pretty good.

I may be being unduly hard on this film, but Burton is a terrific talent, much better than this film gives him.  I want to see him doing better work.  I was so disappointed by this film, especially coming off of Sweeney Todd.  I think Johnny Depp has a quirky quality that attracts mainstream audiences and young, “hip” audience members who too are in the mainstream but pretend they are not.  It is a shame the writers couldn’t have engaged our imaginations further.  There are many untapped elements in Lewis Carol’s stories that could benefit from on-screen exploitation.  But given what was done in this film, it may be better to close the books and wait for Burton to do better work.

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Director: Tim Burton

Writer: Linda Woolverton

Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter

USA

In English

Runtime: 108 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014759/

Purchase Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland from Amazon at the links below (Blu-ray combo, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, & DVD), and check out Danny Elfman's soundtrack and misc books on Burton: