Manderlay (2005)

Manderlay is a difficult film to understand - what is it trying to say, and more appropriately how do I interpret it?  The thing is I don’t know.  I can describe my impressions as I was watching the film, but because the film has such a unique premise, here’s a bit about it:

Grace, Lars von Trier’s lead character from Dogville, stumbles onto the Manderlay plantation.  Here, in 1933, slavery still exists.  Grace is shocked.  With the help of her father’s gangsters, she frees the slaves.  The Madame of the estate, played by the great Lauren Bacall, dies, and Wilhelm, the eldest slave, does not know what the slaves will do with their new freedom.  Grace decides to stay on at Manderlay and teach the former slaves self-worth and atone for the sins of white Americans.

Von Trier’s premises are always fascinating, if not a bit extreme and slanted.

At first von Trier seems kind of silly or at least simple minded.  Grace is a do-gooder liberal socialite, the slaves dimwitted and ready to follow orders.  The film, or at least Grace and the proudest of the freed slaves, Timothy, hammers home the fact that America had slavery, and that white Americans are to be held responsible.  While this is undeniably true, it seems that von Trier forgot that slavery originated in Europe.  It was the Europeans who took men and women from Africa and enslaved them.  And before that the Egyptians enslaved the Jews.  Slavery is not an American invention.

So at the start of the film I felt it lacked weight.  It seemed untidy and outrageously simple, perhaps because after Nicole Kidman’s brilliant performance as Grace in Dogville, it was difficult to adjust to Bryce Dallas Howard’s interpretation of the character.  But as Grace settles into her role as god of Manderlay and we get to discover the personalities of the former slaves, the film starts to pick up.

Grace, believing some order needs to motivate the bewildered slaves, introduces them to the idea of democracy, the system of America that, as Americans, they should already be well aware of.  She creates a system of voting where each person on the plantation can cast one vote.  That sounds like America, and for me the film became less about slavery and more a microcosm of American life using this extreme premise to prove its points.  The slaves collectively vote on who owns the rake, literally on what time of day it is, and when it is appropriate for people to laugh, late at night being most inconsiderate of others who sleep.  The film became interesting when it was asking serious questions: is democracy feasible?  I don’t think so.  America may be the longest surviving democracy, as a nation we’ve managed it better than other entities before us, but we are not a democracy.  We are a republic, where the majority of the vote passes.  People—some people—do not have individual freedoms.  Well, yes we do, but in our country certain people have less rights or different rights than the majority.  In a democracy this would not be an issue, but because individual rights are voted on by the majority these rights are subject.

This is not a political rant, but von Trier, an outsider, someone who has confessed his mistrust of the American government and American’s perceived (sometimes undeniable) prejudice against minorities is asking serious questions we in this country don’t often ask.  We prefer to see isolated cases or the big picture, saying that slowly things are getting better and we turn a blind eye to the difficult realities of those who have to fight for their freedom.  America is not at war with itself; there should be no causalities.  No one should not suffer in a democracy.

Von Trier should know better, though, that every nation has similar problems.  Perhaps it is America’s ideals that set us apart.  If we aspire to be better, no forgiveness is allotted to our failures, failures we have in abundance as the director points out in a horrifying and oddly beautiful photographic montage of American racism using actual photos.

A film might have the right side of an argument, or argue its misguided case well, but propaganda means nothing if the material is not engaging.  So how effective is Manderlay as a film?

One thing that puzzled me is Grace, her motivations and her ultimate failure (failure in ways that are unpredictable so I hope this sentence wasn’t too much of a spoiler).  As a liberal, I can’t help but be offended when generally liberal ideas are scrutinized, but I have to say in the context of the film the scrutiny is accurate.  Grace is simplistically idealistic and really doesn’t know how the world functions.  She puts too much faith in the concept of freedom and never asks if she should.  I won’t say anymore regarding the ending but I will ask the question: are black people offended by it?  If I were black I think it would raise my eyebrow.  Regardless, I found it fascinating, offensive, but still fascinating.

Manderlay is not 100% successful, but von Trier’s films are always rough around the edges.  The film succeeds in its own convictions.  The acting is exceptional, the casting, too.  Danny Glover has his best role in recent years.  I forgot just how powerful and commanding an actor he is.  He is very impressive, and seeing him together with Lauren Bacall was strange and wonderful.  Bacall is a legend, obviously, and such a claim does a disservice to just how powerful she is, but here her role is very small.  She appeared in Dogville as a different character but in both of her films with Lars von Trier she has not been given anything significant to do.  But her cache is enough.

Bryce Dallas Howard is not Nicole Kidman.  Kidman gave her best performance as Grace in Dogville; she was natural and frail and eager.  Howard’s performance feels like a period piece.  She seems out of it.  She’s trying too hard.  Her delivery is stagy and unconvincing, but as the film went on I accepted her.  She does, like all of von Trier’s leading ladies, some very brave things on screen.  Unlike, Björk or Kidman however, Howard’s raw presence isn’t too impressive.  She’s not bad but not on the level of a Lars von Trier film.  And I’d hate to blame an actor for the unevenness of a film but when the material is this outrageous, the right performance can cement the outrageous in a grounded world.  It doesn’t so much happen in Manderlay.

Manderlay (2005)

Writer / Director: Lars von Trier

Stars: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankole, Danny Glover, Lauren Bacall

Denmark

In English

139 minutes

IMDb link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342735

Under Capricorn (1949)

Alfred Hitchcock was once called the greatest director of screen melodramas by the British press.  This was during his first period in England, probably in relation to the 6 thrillers that constitute his best British work.  A forgotten and very hard to find film (in retrospectives, at least) made in the US, Under Capricorn, is probably Hitchcock at his melodramatic best.  It is not a suspense picture, though it resembles one.  This might be one reason for the film’s commercial and critical failure.

Under Capricorn isn’t a great film, but it is not boring.  I’ve seen it three times in maybe 5 years, and it’s most effective the less often you see it.  Hitchcock’s best pictures can be viewed over and over again, but Under Capricorn is preposterous and over the top, laden with actors with incorrect accents (the two leads!) and a soap opera plot.  It tells the cruel history of the colony of Australia, once used by the British as a detention camp for criminals.  The society, such as it is, is limited, and many of the colony’s most prosperous citizens were themselves inmates, many often sentenced falsely accused.  Sam Flusky, an Irishman from the time when the UK ruled with violence, is such a citizen, a man who with his first freedom made himself a success.  Into the colony comes Charles Adare, a carefree cousin of The Governor’s.  Charles is warned against keeping an engagement to Flusky’s home, but against reason he visits the haunted mansion and partakes of wine and dinner.  It is here we meet Flusky’s wife, Henrietta.  Their love affair resulted in scandal, and the death of Henrietta’s brother.  Because he did not fire the first shot, Sam got 6 years at the colony.  Henrietta, madly in love, fled to Australia to be near her love.

In the first of the many story conveniences Charles knew Flusky’s wife, Henrietta, back in Ireland; his sister was good friends with her family.  Henrietta is obviously drunk when we first meet her.  She stumbles into dinner barefooted with nightgown.  She solemnly refuses a drink from Charles.  Charles, with permission by Flusky, is determined to cure Henrietta of her malady and make her popular among the socially aware and mistress of her own house, which is currently run by the pushy maid, Milly, who carries a secret passion for the Mister.

Under Capricorn was Hitchcock’s second color film and a project during a quasi-experimental phase in the director’s career.  He was brought to America by producer David O. Selznick.  The two did not get along.  Selznick, a tyrannical producer, allowed the director little freedom, and when the contract expired Hitchcock became his own producer.  His film solo film, Rope, was technically brilliant but nearly put an end to Hitchcock’s newly formed production company, Transatlantic Pictures.  Rope is a film that exists with very few aesthetic cuts.  Hitchcock wanted the feel of a stage play by having 10 minute sections of the film shot in real time, and all but two “cuts” are seamlessly dissolved to create one single-take picture.  Under Capricorn might have been Hitchcock’s realization that his desired technique couldn’t work as cinema, so while he still peruses it in Under Capricorn, the image is livelier with cuts and more visually pleasing camera glides and pans.  The approach suits well the material of Under Capricorn.  When Charles and Flusky speak of Henrietta on the porch, the camera glides effortless up the house, into Henrietta’s room, showing the audience her in drunken turmoil.  The very first extended take, Charles walking into his cousin’s room, has grace and well-meaning, but the limitations of Technicolor technology, namely the heavy weight of the camera, are evident as the camera bounces to the cameramen’s walking motion.

This brings up a point I would like to discuss.  When I saw Under Capricorn at Harvard recently, filmmaker Morgan Fisher introduced the film, speaking beforehand about how 35mm negative can only run for 11 minutes in the camera, and allowing for roll and slate, slightly less.  He noted that if one of the long takes is fouled up 4 minutes in, more than likely the roll of film would need changing because the time allotted for the shot was in direct conflict to the remaining time left on the used reel of film.  It’s an interesting piece of info.  Also, when Hitchcock’s camera moves from one part of the set to another, every area has to be lit perfectly in advance.  Unlike Rope, which took place in one apartment in two different rooms, Under Capricorn moves all about, into previously closed doors, up the sides of buildings and stairs, and that each section of the set needed to be factually constructed and pre-lit is an enormous undertaking for the crew.  Fisher suggested that while watching these films, the audience is made aware of the life behind the camera.  I don’t agree.  Hitchcock was a skilled filmmaker.  Not only did he take risks, he knew how to make them work.  I think the whole of his artifice blends away when he puts the pieces of film together, no matter how long each segment.  Only film people might be aware of how Hitchcock shot this film.  Average viewers unfamiliar with the inner workings of filmmaking won’t be conscious of Hitchcock’s efforts.  I certainly wasn’t.  After studying the man and his work, I am still suckered into to his stories and cannot see the seams.

I won’t linger on it but Technicolor is stunning.  The print I saw was a BFI restoration and it was beautiful.  Most DVD production companies when working on three-strip Technicolor alter the tone and intensity of the color to make it look contemporary.  Technicolor is supposed to have a subtler palette than we’re used to.  Most of Under Capricorn has a grayish look, partly because of set and costume design, but the palette was softer than I was expecting.  Only The Criterion Collection’s Technicolor releases retain a film-like look among American DVD production houses.  Thankfully, Image Entertainment’s excellent DVD of Under Capricorn does, too.  Until seeing the BFI restoration on screen I was convinced Image used a bad print, but their DVD seems to have used the same restoration.  I noted only two differences: the blue introductory titles cards regarding the restoration are missing on the DVD, and overall the film has a slightly more faded look than the 35mm print, but fans eager to see Hitchcock’s rarest Hollywood film should not hesitate in purchasing Under Capricorn on DVD.

It’s melodrama and it’s rip-roaring.  It’s silly and fun and gothic.  In many ways it reminded me of other sources, most notably the novel Jane Eyre.  Rochester is a cursed man in a castle both shunned by and shunning society.  He is closed off from emotion and depressed at the reality of his situation.  Henrietta represents both Jane, the new servant girl who gives Rochester life after so much darkness, and Rochester’s long-suffering wife.  This parallel, at least in cinematic circles, becomes even more appropriate when considering the various 20^th Century adaptations of the novel, and of the novel Rebecca.  Rebecca was Hitch’s first American film and one of his greatest and best surviving films.  Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of “Rebecca” was scored by Bernard Herrmann, a composer who would make the greatest contributions to 20^th Century music working in film, and specifically with Hitchcock in the 50s and 60s.  Herrmann scored the greatest film adaption of Jane Eyre, starring Orson Welles, and adapted his radio score for Rebecca for that picture.  Under Capricorn is in the gothic tradition, where morality and social obligations counted more than one’s happiness.  Flusky wants his wife cured of her illnesses so that she may be happy, but that she cannot help herself weighs heavily on him.  Milly, the maid, doesn’t help.  This is another throwback to Hitchcock’s Rebecca.  Milly is very much like Mrs. Danvers, obsessed over the person she serves and willing to kill those who threaten her own happiness.

One thing I felt the film did terrifically, or at least as honestly as the Production Code would allow, is show what’s it’s really like for someone dependant on alcohol.  Ingrid Bergman’s Henrietta is a slave to her drinks.  In her early scenes it’s the only thing that brings her happiness.  It’s quite alarming to see alcoholism so seriously depicted on the screen.  The Lost Weekend by Wilder is kind of a joke, but it is like Hitchcock to take a serious subject in a less than serious script and treat it with due seriousness.  It is Hitchcock’s much-overlooked strength to supply his movies with honest character portraits.  Even in melodrama they are relatable.

Joseph Cotton and Ingrid Bergman are terrific actors.  Both had been better in other Hitchcock films but given the limitations of the material they do just fine.  One thing that initially took me out of the picture was their accents.  Both are supposed to be Irish.  Cotton, an American, speaks his lines with his normal New York voice.  Bergman fares even worse because of her thick Swedish accent, and on top of that she attempts an Irish brogue.  It’s kind of amusing at first, but Bergman was great with screen melodrama.  In fact all classic Hollywood actresses could figuratively bleed on screen.  Maybe it was the era.  Bergman could turn her head away in shame or heartbreak as good as anyone.  It sounds like I’m making fun, but Bergman was a dynamic talent, especially with terrific scripts.  She always is convincing in love, but every time she calls her husband’s name in Under Capricorn I kept thinking of another Sam...  The supporting cast is superlative, another Golden Age staple.  Margaret Leighton as the villainous Milly and especially Cecil Parker as the governor are simply fun to watch.  Parker has a way of delivering lines as only an old-fashioned Englishman can.  The least impressive is Michael Wilding as Charles.  The role is boring and he matched it.  It was easy to see why Henrietta was always passionately devoted to Flusky, even if for the majority of the film their relationship remains a mystery.  Supporting the material is the great score by Richard Addinsell.  Not to use the word again but it is in the melodramatic tradition: lush, full orchestra giving it all.  His music is intrusive in some of the quieter moments but he has some terrific themes and more importantly orchestrations.

I recommend Under Capricorn to all eager to see Hitchcock films.  It belongs to a series of non-suspense pictures that really come to define the director’s career.  We expect the Psychos and North by Northwests but films like Lifeboat and Under Capricorn really showcase the stories and characters that Hitchcock was most interested in.  It’s wonderfully over the top.

Under Capricorn (1949)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writers: Hume Cronyn (adaptation), James Birdie (screenplay)

Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotton, Michael Wilding and Margaret Leighton

USA

In English

Runtime: 117 minutes

To purchase Under Capricorn on DVD from Image Entertainment, visit Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Capricorn-Ingrid-Bergman/dp/B000093NSH/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1302731065&sr=1-1

Under Capricorn is available for viewing via online streaming at The Internet Archive:

http://www.archive.org/details/UnderCapricorn

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042004/

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/