June 2010: 15 Mini Reviews
June 11, 2010
The last fifteen films I've seen.
Akensen Chitai ('56): Kenji Mizoguchi was already sick when he made this studio assignment about five prostitutes in the declining era of the brothel, textbook Mizoguchi territory, and it would be his last film, but there's nothing to suggest a man creating for the last time, it's as vibrant, emotional, and hard hitting as his masterworks twenty and thirty years earlier. Mizoguchi doesn't seem to be as angry as he was in his "Sisters of Gion" days, but the film does tackle issues directly related to the politics of the day, mainly, what are these women to do if prostitution is outlawed, where will they live, work, how will they pay off their mounting debts, and wasn't it men who drove them to this lifestyle in the first place? Criterion shuffled this off to it's Eclipse series, with no extras, but it deserves a more studied look, and if you can watch it, the Masters of Cinema version has a commentary by Tony Rayns, who really knows his Mizoguchi.
Kes ('69): Early Ken Loach film has all of the textbook lower class realism that would come to distinguish his later films, but there's something special about this look at poverty, school, and growing up in tough conditions that makes it still one of his best remembered works. Local amateur David Bradley gives one of the most realistic of all child performances as 11-year-old Billy, a trouble-maker who can't win at home, school, or in a bureaucratic small-town society, but when he finds an orphaned falcon, he reads a book and trains it to be his pet. Most remember the scenes with the falcon, simply because they brighten up the bleakness of Billy's (and conversely, the film's) world, but Loach isn't wholly interested in a boy and his bird, he's interested in the way the boy tries to mentally escape his surroundings, which include an aloof mother, a sadistic older brother, being bullied at school, and misunderstood by most of his surrounding adults, and sadly, even the best of hobbies can't cut it in such a depressed economy.
The Adventures of Robin Hood ('38): Glorious swashbuckling cheese from Warner Brothers and their Hungarian craftsman Michael Curtiz, who blends all of the Robin Hood fables into one ball of colorful mayhem, with a hammy Errol Flynn presiding over the rebellion with a rakish charm that only Errol Flynn could get away with. Excellent supporting work from classic baddie Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, the Technicolor radiance of Olivia de Havilland, Eugene Pallette, and Una O'Connor, and if ever there was a score that deserved it's Oscar more for setting a film's cheery, adventurous mood, it's Erich Wolfgang Korngold's trumpets aplenty orchestrations, which nicely complement the cheeky acting and adventure. An American classic.
The Naked Spur ('53): The closest Anthony Mann and James Stewart ever got to the brutalizing psychological spareness of Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott, with Stewart as a spurned and haunted bounty hunter chasing down killer Robert Ryan for a hefty reward. But it's not that easy when Stewart takes on two wandering partners, brash soldier Ralph Meeker, and grizzled prospector Millard Mitchell (in a classic Walter Brennan-esque performance), who demand a full split, and there's the matter of the feisty woman Ryan is running with, a young Janet Leigh. Mann's use of landscape, in this case, the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, comes to suggest the mounting anxiety and desperation in the Stewart character, as his greed and need for revenge begin to cloud his judgment (nothing a slowly budding romance with Leigh can't cure), and the western ethos of what exactly a life is worth, indeed, what a redeemed soul is worth, takes on a dark, urgent precedence.
Union Pacific ('39): John Ford did it first with "The Iron Horse", but Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling, adventurous take on the building of the first trans-continental rail road is every bit as exciting and funny. The actual building of the track takes second stage to the fates of three employees; Joel McCrea as the Union Pacific hired gun, Robert Preston as his war buddy working with a crooked bank man to stall the proceedings, and Barbara Stanwyck as the mail woman caught in between for their loyalty and love. The love triangle may be contrived, but the three stars are believable (even Stanwyck in an on-and-off Irish accent) and charming, and DeMille keeps the 140 minutes moving with exciting action set pieces (including two train wrecks and a honey of an Indian attack) and masterful direction. Solid film all around from the greatest movie year of all time.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ('00): Ang Lee's tribute to the wuxia genre is an all-star extravaganza that goes beyond mere tribute into the lofty heights of literal reinvention, and it remains the best of the countless offspring it inspired. When famous swordsman Chow Yun Fat decides to give up his sword for a more transcendental life, a new warrior comes on the scene to steal his sword; this new warrior, played by breakout star Zhang Ziyi, is the disciple of Chow's sworn enemy, and the crux of the plot sees Chow trying to turn the talented newcomer to his side, with the help of unrequited flame Michelle Yeoh. The dueling love plots (including a second with Ziyi and handsome desert warrior Chen Chang) blend nicely with all of the meticulous fighting scenes, which is probably the main reason this was such a big hit in the west; it catered to action fans, foreign film fans, and most importantly, to women looking to find some romance between all of the flying and sword clashing, and especially in Chow and Yeoh's aching, longing relationship, they get something impossibly romantic, and a touch of tragic as well.
The Messenger ('09): Pitch perfect acting and a difficult, wordy screenplay distinguish this war themed indy from last year, about the ways in which war and tragedy affect human communication. After suffering a devastating injury in Iraq, soldier Ben Foster is commissioned back home to finish the remainder of his duty as a Casualty Notification officer, paired with a stern, cynical, broken older soldier (Woody Harrelson in an Oscar nominated turn) who follows the rules of the job to a fault, leaving him a bitter shell. It's easy to see the path Foster is going to take if he follows the older man in his attitude, but the screenplay is smarter than to present the character with only one option, and faced with unbearable grief every day, the men find a kind of sacrificial friendship through their unique position, and the film becomes less about the physical act of reporting death to next of kin, than about how the war brings it's psychological baggage back home, to everyone, and how that comes to dictate the rules of normal relationships. Excellent debut from first time director Oren Moverman, with thematic shades of everything from "Coming Home" to "The Best Years of Our Lives".
Stagecoach ('39): A disparate group of travelers, each one representing a different rank in the societal hierarchy, enjoy a bumpy ride on the stagecoach to Lordsburg, as Geronimo and his band of warriors cast an ever-present shadow over the difficult journey. Director John Ford’s first western in over a decade, and usually noted as being the first western to truly cross over to mass audience and critical appeal alike, the film is notable for introducing two of Ford’s great longtime collaborations; the stunning backdrop of Monument Valley, with beautiful cloud dappled skies that open up the claustrophobic interiors, and John Wayne, whose loving close-up 20 minutes into the film introduces an instant superstar, after years of toil on Poverty Row. Dudley Nichols’ script highlights the hypocrisy and tension amongst the nine stagecoach passengers (including Thomas Mitchell as the drunken doctor, and the lovely Claire Trevor as the outcast, kindhearted prostitute who catches Duke's eye), Yakima Canutt’s mesmerizing stunt work brings thrills to the much copied Indian attack, and Bert Glennon’s masterful cinematography brings out the best in Ford’s carefully lit interiors, whose unusually low ceilings were an influence on Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane”. Welles was said to have watched “Stagecoach” some 40 times while making his opus, believing John Ford to be Hollywood's best director; he was right, and what inspired the best film of the ‘40’s is arguably the best studio film of the ‘30’s, and to that point, John Ford’s unquestioned masterpiece. Criterion's new Blu-ray is appropriately stuffed with new, highly intelligent and information packed, bonus features, and the transfer is beautiful.
Bucking Broadway ('17): Also part of Criterion's list of extras is "Bucking Broadway", an early Ford silent miraculously pulled out of the endangered species list earlier last decade, restored to a shimmering 54 minutes of yellowy amber entertainment. Made for Universal in the early days when westerns were churned out in weeks (sometimes days), and when former apprentice Ford teamed with star Harry Carey for a series of entertaining (though now mostly lost) three to five reelers with lots of horses, well framed landscapes, fist fights, romance, and comedy, many touchstones that would mark his later sound films. Here Carey is a simple Wyoming ranch hand who falls in love with the boss' daughter, she agrees to marry him but in a moment of naive rashness, she sweeps away with an Eastern horse trader, and crushed, Carey vows to take the high road and light out for the west. But that isn't romantic, and in the end we get a big, funny fight between Carey and his ranchers and some drunken revelers at a high brow New York garden party, where the girl is worried, unhappy, and willing to be swept off her feet by her former cowboy fiancé.
Kapo ('59): Unrelentingly realistic Holocaust film, one of the first, about a young Jewish girl who survives sure extinction by adapting to her situation with shrewd tactics, selling herself to the SS guards for favors, and betraying her ethics to secure a spot as a camp guard. Young Susan Strasberg, borne from the first family of method acting, lets us empathize with the character through her big, searching eyes, but politically acute director Gillo Pontecorvo is more interested in the reality of the concentration camp life, and that brutal realism doesn't mesh well when the girl falls for a Russian prisoner in the film's final act. Still, this is a brave, groundbreaking film, Strasberg is always mesmerizing, and one sees the fruits of Pontecorvo's aesthetic, which would bear "The Battle of Algiers" a few years later.
Ossos ('97): Artistic and sleek breakout film from Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa, following a few depressingly poor slum dwellers through the immediate aftermath of the delivery of an unwanted baby. Costa's style is deliberately slow, with little movement, dialogue, lighting, characterization, or plot, like a cinema verite documentary composed of static shots and only slightly altered versions of the actors' true selves (whose own slum was demolished a few years later partly because of the celebrity of this film). This is for serious fans of directors like Liang, Bresson, and Hsien only, and for them Criterion rewards their patience with interviews with Costa and collaborators.
Comanche Station ('60): Brilliant final Ranown western staring Randolph Scott and directed by Budd Boetticher, this time with Scott's lonely wanderer rescuing Nancy Gates from the Comanche, but finding an equal foe in Claude Akins, who is looking to cash in on some reward money. Akins, as the somewhat sympathetic villain, has a key monologue that mirrors, almost exactly, Lee Marvin's from "Seven Men From Now", also written by Burt Kennedy, and in lesser hands it would feel like the wheels falling off a lucrative franchise, and maybe it was, but Boetticher handles the familiar material with his usual carefully planned use of rocky landscape and precision editing to turn a nominal cowboys and Indians and bounty hunters yarn into a game of psychological and physical warfare.
M ('31): Peter Lorre is only on screen in this Fritz Lang early sound masterpiece for less than 30 minutes, but his performance, as a tormented child murderer who is hunted and tried by a gang of underworld criminals, is so riveting and complex that he all but steals the show. But that is impossible with Lang and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner working full steam to create a visual equivalent to the social jail Lorre feels closing in around him, with high angles, mirrors, reflections, and virtual bars (wood slags, hedges, curtains) suggesting this man's imminent physical and moral collapse. Not only does Lang create a fluid mise-en-scene that, possibly for the first time, feels unbound by cumbersome audio equipment, but one that brilliantly utilizes sound for all its effect, capturing the murderer's haunting whistle as the ultimate red herring in his ultimate downfall. This is one of a handful of early 30's sound films that belongs on any list of the greatest films of all time, and Criterion's recent Blu-ray pays it tribute with a glorious roster of extras, including an old interview with the master himself, a commentary track, a rare inclusion of the simultaneously made English language version, and a short film by Claude Chabrol.
Red Cliff ('08): In early third Century China, Prime Minister Cao Cao faces off against Southern rebel Zhou Yu and his outnumbered band of dedicated followers beneath the Red Cliffs of the Yangtze river, in a battle that would become legendary and set the stage for China's Three Kingdoms. Taking on this assignment for a Chinese audience who knows the story in and out is enough of a task, but nobody ever showed John Woo an action script he couldn't handle, and his result, the most expensive (and profitable) film in Chinese history, is a nearly five-hour extravaganza of battle maneuvers, pyrotechnics, and larger than life characterizations; arguably the biggest war film since 'Return of the King', and certainly comparable to "Avatar" in sweep and scope. Superstars Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro (the lovesick cops of "Chungking Express" 15 years ago) are on hand as the masterminds behind the rebellion, and outnumbered 8:1 they have some difficult job at hand (though a turn of the winds late in the game makes for a huge advantage in the naval battle), and Fengyi Zhang and Chen Chang are appropriately stoic as rival leaders whose ruling and philosophy styles ultimately set the stage for the war. With his decades of experience helming modern action films, Woo is capable of staging exciting set pieces, but this set to such a massive scale that even the considerably large cast of extras are all enhanced with computer graphics, but they blend nearly seamlessly with the live action, and the result is a sweeping war film that satisfies the Chinese legend, but never confuses for a western audience; a total winner.
I Am Waiting ('57): Sun Tribe superstar Yojiro Ishihara, in the prime of his early career, stars in this Nikkatsu noir as an ex-boxer turned restaurant owner who takes in a damsel in distress (usual on-screen flame Mie Kitahara) on the run from her gangster employer, but the thugs and the girl aren't his only problems, like, where is his missing brother whose supposed to be in Brazil raising a farm? Koreyoshi Kurahara, a longtime assistant making his first feature, paints these characters, and their quick flashbacks, and their self loathing and regrets, in harsh light that almost suggests a Hollywood 40's noir, but seems more akin to pseudo noir like "The Asphalt Jungle", also fraught with complex characters and underground criminality, and Ishihara makes a dashing, pent up anti-hero. Criterion's Eclipse series has no features, but the included essay by historian Chuck Stephens is loaded with info.