May 2007: 20 Mini Reviews
May 24, 2007
The last twenty films I’ve seen.
Feet First (’30): Harold Lloyd’s second sound film is pretty stiff by most standards, with the great comedian playing his usual hapless boy trying to prove himself to the girl he loves (this time pretending to be a leather tycoon when he’s really a meager shoe salesman), but it’s not a total disaster like many of the silent film stars and their initial foray into sound. The conclusion on the side of an L.A. building is old hat for Lloyd; he did it much better, and more famously, five years earlier in “Safety Last!”.
Passport to Pimlico (’49): Residents in a small part of London discover their true French heritage and declare themselves independent of England, as well as England’s post war rations and restrictions. Another charming Ealing comedy, this one with more than a fair share of government satire thrown into the mix of improbable situations and likable characters, courtesy of Ealing’s famed screenwriter T.E.B. Clarke.
Thirst (’49): Strange and disjointed early Ingmar Bergman work concerning various stories of love affairs. Bergman wasn’t fully formed yet, but his fascination with relationships was evident even in his earliest, less celebrated films.
Overlord (’75): Stuart Cooper and cinematographer John Alcott blend real stock footage of D-Day, and the preparations leading up to the invasion, with the fictional story of a young man (Brian Stirner) contemplating his imminent death, in this rediscovered gem courtesy of The Criterion Collection. One of the most terrifying, and shattering examinations of man and war ever assembled, a precursor to everything from “Apocalypse Now” to “Saving Private Ryan”.
The Titfield Thunderbolt (’53): The little man fights for his right, against the government, to run the legendary town single-engine train in this charming color film from Ealing Studio. Of course they win in the end (what would an Ealing film be without the triumph of the proletariat?), but not without many bumps, and laughs, along the way.
Bill Budd (’62): Herman Melville’s maritime short novel of good and evil aboard an English warship is adapted by director Peter Ustinov (who plays the ship’s captain) as a morality play on the human condition, and what constitutes right and wrong during a time of war. Terence Stamp is Billy Budd, the young seaman who everybody can’t help but like, except Robert Ryan as sadistic master at arms Claggart, whose jealousy and hatred for the boy fuels the film’s second half and eventual philosophically frustrating ending. Robert Krasker’s (“The Third Man”) black and white wide-screen cinematography is especially effective, even in the cramped Captain’s quarters where the key court-martial scene takes place.
Grandma’s Boy (’22): Harold Lloyd’s first feature length film, and the one he always noted to be a personal favorite. Harold yet again plays a meek boy who can’t find the courage he needs to join the town posse and capture a menacing tramp, until his beloved Grandmother tells him a whopper about his heroic Grandfather during the Civil War, summoning in the boy the courage to take on the tramp, and win Mildred Davis in the process. This was the beginning of a winning formula that would propel Lloyd through the ‘20’s to stardom and impossible riches.
High and Dizzy (’20): Poor doctor Harold Lloyd falls for a patient suffering from sleepwalking, but winning over her father is hard to do after a drinking binge with a fellow doctor leads to high wire shenanigans on the ledge of the office building. A funny and sweet short film, with a typically predictable, but no less charming happy ending between Lloyd and his future wife, Mildred Davis.
A Run for Your Money (’49): Lesser known Ealing comedy with Alec Guinness as a frustrated newspaper man trying to shepherd two Welsh mining brothers through London to collect a prize, a task that proves mighty difficult for various reasons. Guinness is actually a bit player here, the film is more about the two brothers (Donald Houston, Meredith Edwards) and how they get sidetracked from their prize, but naturally the best scenes in the film are the few involving his futile attempts to corral the brothers, which includes stops at a local pub, a soccer game, a pawn shop, and the finale at a talent contest.
Into the Perilous Night: PTU (’03): In a plot loosely based on Kurosawa’s “Stray Dog”, a special forces cop loses his standard issue gun and spends all night trying to recover it, using the underworld and the Police Tactical Unit for help. Hong Kong action master Johnny To directs with his usual cool attention to detail, both in action filmmaking and deeper than usual characterizations.
Now or Never (’21): Delightful short Harold Lloyd comedy finds our favorite bespectacled hero caring for his girlfriend’s ward aboard a train ride back home. Some funny sight gags, including a familiar sleep-car sequence, as well as Harold and a tramp stowing away on the train, below the cabin, before the action with the child ensues.
To Joy (’50): Slightly melodramatic Bergman marriage drama about two orchestra players, one an insecure violin soloist, the other his pregnant new bride, that draws on the director’s love of the symphony, especially Mozart (hence the use of the 9th for the title), to beautify the campier aspects of the script. Bergman’s marriage dramas would get increasingly darker, and more sophisticated, from here on out.
The Producers (’68): Let’s ask this question; is there a funnier scene in the history of cinema, or perhaps one more spectacularly, innocently offensive, as the “Springtime for Hitler” musical number in this all time great Mel Brooks classic? I beg you not to laugh, and notice the countless uses since, at the audience reaction shot, complete with stunned silence and gaping jaws, that Brooks drops in the middle of his wildly hilarious number, just before the banner of Adolph descends, and the Busby Berkley-esque over-head shot of the marching swastika caps the riotous act. 38 years later, Sasha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” would do essentially the same for Jewish satire, but nobody beats Mel Brooks.
Old Joy (’06): A marvelously meditative trek-into-the-woods drama, about two old friends – one a successful teacher about to be a first time father, the other a failing hippy type with self esteem issues – who spend two days alone together in the woods of Oregon, reminiscing about the past, knowing their immediate futures will probably never cross again. As lovely a film about nature and the differing paths of friends (a companion piece, if you will, to the equally as philosophical “Sideways”) you’ll ever see.
Smiles of a Summer Night (’55): The international film going community started to take notice of budding auteur Ingmar Bergman when this sprightly and melancholy sex farce, the director’s last pure comedy, won an award at Cannes, doing for the Swedish master what “Rashomon” and “La Strada” did for Kurosawa and Fellini, respectively. True fame wouldn’t come though until “The Seventh Seal” two years later, but the seeds were planted for Bergman’s incredible run with this stunning film, which tracks eight characters in various love affairs, in varying degrees of happiness and jealousy, and features perhaps the director’s most carefully constructed plot. By the end, in just under two hours, you know these characters intimately, and feel, thankfully, that they all end up in the right place, something the increasingly cynical director would break from with his heavy dramas to come.
The Maggie (’54): Director Alexander Mackendrick has done better, and funnier work for Ealing Studios, but this film about a rag-tag crew aboard a beaten down puffer ship, improbably hauling the riches of an American industrialist, has a tremendous heart, and is one of the studio’s sweetest films. The warmth comes from the softening of the American capitalist, played by Paul Douglas, as he learns through his trip aboard the clunker, that it’s people, not money, that is important in the world, a lesson that most of the great Ealing films of the period expound with tremendous success. Not as funny as “The Man in the White Suit”, or as technically impressive as “The Ladykillers”, but this Mackendrick film is certainly essential viewing in any study of the famed English studio.
The Seventh Seal (’57): One of the most famous films ever made, Ingmar Bergman’s existential period piece finds various wandering souls, including Max Von Sydow in a race to find the meaning of God while playing a game of chess with Death, pondering fate during the Black Death. Gunnar Fischer belongs alongside Greg Toland, James Wong Howe, and Kazuo Miyagawa in the cinematographer’s hall of fame for his stunning use of black and white here (and in Bergman’s following masterwork, “Wild Strawberries”), framing that famous final scene, as Death leads his procession atop a distant hill, with the eye of a great painter using landscape to great dramatic effect. A one of a kind film, which justly made Bergman world-renowned.
Thieves Like Us (’74): Made during perhaps his greatest period, director Robert Altman’s low key crime drama, about three prison escapees who rob banks to survive, and to fuel their growing egos, re-imagines the Great Depression and it’s hoodlums as home spun melancholia, with the sounds of the ever present radio programs of the day commenting, and seemingly mocking, the characters the way Hank Williams songs would do a year later in “Nashville”. Maybe not as famous as some of Altman’s greater films of the period, but unique just the same, with a message (not unlike “Bonnie and Clyde”, which the film can be compared) that glorifying crime will get you nowhere in life, save for the prison work yard, or the grave.
Vengeance is Mine (’79): The line between violence, egotism, and sex are blurred ever thin in this brilliant, important film from Japan’s Shohei Imamura, one of the giants of Japanese cinema. Ken Ogata plays Enokizu, a frustrated, homicidal maniac whose crimes are seen in a series of complicated flashbacks, highlighting his three months long murderous rampage against the backdrop of his fractured family history, and his obsessions with various women. The glamorization of murder and sex has hardly been less appealing than in Imamura’s hands, a testament to his somewhat nihilistic vision that humans, by nature, are ugly creatures, committing vile acts, and sins unto each other on a daily basis.
Army of Shadows (’69): Sturdy and frightening piece of personal filmmaking from Jean-Pierre Melville, the great existentialist whose films “Le Samourai”, “Le Cercle rouge” and “Bob le Flambeur” brought calculating philosophy to what were rather nominal action film premises. In this masterpiece, rediscovered last year and released in America for the first time (now with a brilliant, extras-packed DVD version from Criterion), Melville brings his past in the underground resistance to the screen in a semi-autobiographical story about a handful of freedom fighters (including Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret) either fleeing Nazi persecution, or having to eliminate traders within their own ranks. Melville’s vision, a monochromatic pastiche of underground hideouts and near death escapes, is perhaps the most fascinating fiction film ever made about the resistance, and the famous opening sequence – a long take of a Nazi march past the Arc de Triomphe – is spellbinding and horrific just the same.
by Adam Suraf