Revelator_'s Reviews

Le dernier milliardaire (1934)

8/10

26 April 2023

A true film maudit! Rene Clair's comedy was a catastrophic bomb in Europe: neither the left nor right were amused, and Clair didn't make another film in France until 1947. Today the French show more appreciation and have released "Le dernier milliardaire" on an excellent all-region Blu-Ray with English subtitles.

The film is a worthy addition to that precious group of 1930s Ruritanian dictator comedies: "Cracked Nuts," "Million Dollar Legs," and of course "Duck Soup." Many have claimed Clair was influenced by the latter but the release dates of LDM and DS were only seven months apart, and Clair said his primary influence was "Million Dollar Legs."

Nevertheless, LDM and Duck Soup share the common premise of a wealthy outsider taking over the government of a mismanaged Ruritania with zany consequences. But the still-relevant message of LDM is that you can't rely on the super-rich to save your the country, especially when they've been invited by the feckless monarchy.

Clair's approach to this premise is different from the comedic shotgun assault of the Marx Brothers: this gives the film its fascination and has wrong-footed many reviewers. His comedic approach is light and works through layering: Clair is a master of the slowly amplified recurring gag, as seen in the film's use of newsreels, neckties, and the national anthem of Casinario. The comedic highlights are the barter scenes and the Dadaist customs imposed by the unhinged dictator.

But if the feel and pace of the film differs greatly from the Marx Brothers, it shares a thematic goal: giving the raspberry to all forms of dignity and pomp, whether aristocratic or plutocratic.

Clair faulted LDS for not having any sympathetic characters, but those aren't required in an absurdist farce. The sympathetic young lovers are relegated to the sidelines and the ending gives the characters exactly what they deserve. If only "Le dernier milliardaire" got the same from posterity.

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They Came to Cordura (1959)

7/10

They Came to the Point

31 December 2021

Glendon Swarthout's brutal, excellent novel receives a handsome, intelligent, and staid Hollywood adaptation---toned down and with a happier ending and less savage sense of irony. Robert Rossen isn't able to keep the film moving. His direction is heavy and without pace, almost formal---a mistake in a story where desperate people are pushed so hard they crack up. The screenplay is relatively faithful to the book but smooths off the rough edges, as expected in an early 60s Hollywood feature. What results is a digest of the book, with themes turned into talking points conveyed through on-the-nose dialogue, especially in the new material at the end.

As usual in his later roles Gary Cooper conveys pained dignity, but he's too old and difficult to accept as a coward. A 40-something Jimmy Stewart, with his reserves of neurosis, or Henry Fonda, whose rectitude could shade into unbending mania, would have been better choices. Rita Hayworth is perfect as the middle-aged woman of ill-repute, while Van Heflin is impressively scummy but not physically imposing enough as Sgt. Chawk. Tab Hunter convinces as a careerist Lieutenant but can't convey seediness. The other soldiers are one note and less vivid than in the book, which is more worth your time.

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Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930)

8/10

A Delightful and Obscure Early Musical

8 August 2020

I want to thank Richard Barrios for praising this little gem in his definitive book "A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film." Otherwise I'd never have known about "Sweet Kitty Bellairs." Even if I had I might not have bothered. A 1930 screen operetta based on a 1903 play set in 18th century England--doesn't sound very enticing, does it? But "Sweet Kitty Bellairs" is genuinely sweet: an exquisitely stylized confection made by people well aware of the material's absurdity and delighted by its artificiality. Far from being a stuffy, sexless period piece, this is a saucy and buoyant pre-code escapade, free of cloying sentiment and reveling in the absurdities of powdered-wig codes of honor and sexual propriety.

It's short and sweet too. Director Alfred E. Green keeps the story galloping for 63 minutes (with tracking shots of highwaymen singing on horseback). Considering the date, this is fluid and lively film-making, not at all stagy. The witty songs move the story along and don't try to be showstoppers. The lead actors (Claudia Dell, Walter Pidgeon, and baritone Perry Askam) sparkle with irony, but Ernest Torrence walks away with the film. Playing a cloddish jealous husband, he's delighted by the role's buffoonery, sputtering into falsetto at the ends of his lines. And as a former member of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, he knows how to sing! Alas, by the time "Sweet Kitty Bellairs" was released the public had been so glutted with bad musicals that it neglected the good ones. Hence the obscurity of this Bonbon of a movie.

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New Moon (1930)

6/10

Not full moon, but still bright

21 December 2018

Yes, it's an early musical based on an operetta and inherently ridiculous, silly, and overblown. Those are its best qualities too. As Oscar Wilde said, nothing succeeds like excess.

Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore don't go together, except when they sing. The combined force of their voices on "Wanting You" and "Lover Come Back to Me" is a sonic wonder to behold. Moore's acting is not bad, but she has a haughty standoffish quality toward the camera. Tibbett is more relaxed and retains the buoyant swashbuckling brio--and shattering baritone--that made him unique as an opera singer/film star. The supporting cast is a worldly set of sly dogs: Adolphe Menjou, Roland Young, and Gus Shy.

Director Jack Conway and cinematographer Oliver T. Marsh sneak in bits of camera movement more sophisticated than expected, but the editor seems to fall asleep on occasion. The picture throws in some vigorous battle scenes at the end; they're marred by undercranking.

New Moon is a pre-code film, with some eyebrow raising lines and innuendos in its first third. Most jaw-dropping is Tibbett's savage performance of "What Is Your Price Madam"--at an engagement party!

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The Rogue Song (1930)

7/10

You can't go wrong with that voice.

15 November 2018

The Rogue Song is best described as a lost film, but its complete soundtrack has survived, along with enough short clips and stills for someone to have posted a "reconstruction" on YouTube. Having watched this, I can post a tentative "review."

Let's get the (many) negatives out of the way first. This is an early musical, so you'll need to adjust to the slow pacing, awkward transitions, clumsy acting, and lethargic direction (courtesy of Lionel Barrymore, more suited to ham acting than directing). And it's an operetta, not the most popular or well-loved musical form around nowadays. Nor are the songs first rate.

But none of this matters too much, because the heart and soul of The Rogue Song is Lawrence Tibbett, who joyfully breathes fire into the film. Despite the limitations of early film sound equipment, Tibbett's voice remains one of the most powerful to ever boom from the screen. He's in magnificent form and clearly having a ball (he loved making the film and showed a personal print to friends for decades). His zest informs his acting too--forget all those stuffy, stick-up-the-ass opera stars who infected so many other early musicals, this guy is larger-than-life in the best way. Tibbett's shattering baritone throbs with a vitality that rescues the otherwise humdrum score, turning "The White Dove," "When I'm Looking at You," and the title song from limp operetta fodder into passionate statements of intent.

The Rogue Song has a couple of other attractions too. As adapted for the screen, the plot has some pre-code kinkiness--there's murder committed by the good guys, a horny countess, and a sensational scene of the hero flogged shirtless while singing away like a madman. There's also Laurel and Hardy, popping in between major scenes to add brief comic relief. Their material is hardly top-notch, but they add tonal balance to an otherwise heavy film.

The Rogue Song has many of the usual faults of early musicals, but they fall away at the sound of Lawrence Tibbett's voice.

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Huckleberry Finn (1920)

7/10

The first--and perhaps best--adaptation of Twain's classic

15 October 2018

The first film adaptation of Huckleberry Finn remains one of the best, despite the ravages of time and a major script problem. Filmed only a decade after Mark Twain's death, this film is free from the slickness of later Hollywood adaptations and has a truly convincing young lead instead of a cutesy child actor. As Huck, Lewis Sargent is completely convincing: he's a ragged, likable mutt that Twain would have approved of (as he does in the film!). He makes Mickey Rooney look like a well-groomed phony. George Reed plays a mature, sometimes sedate Jim, but he's undeserved by the script and missing footage (including his escape). Huck and Jim's friendship doesn't comes across as deeply as it should, despite the excellence of the actors, and that is a major flaw.

William Desmond Taylor is better known for his unsolved murder than his films, but he was a skilled director with a fluid, advanced style. This film's pacing and style were advanced for 1920 and hold up well today. The settings and art direction have rustic, old-time authenticity: the filmmakers emulated Edward W. Kemble's illustrations and shot the outdoors scenes in the Sacramento River Delta (where later Finns where shot as well, since it was closer to Los Angeles than the Mississippi River and looked just as good). Since the film only survived in an incomplete print held by the Danish Film Archive, the intertitles had to be translated and recreated by the George Eastman Museum, which used text direct from Twain.

There has yet to be a great film made from this classic novel, but Taylor's production features the best Huck and is the closest to Twain's own time, which makes it worth seeing more than most later films of Huckleberry Finn.

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The Hound of the Baskervilles (1929)

7/10

"Supernatural dogs do not leave footprints."

5 June 2018

This is the best directed version of the Hound of the Baskervilles, but to be honest no great directors have tackled the story. "Der Hund von Baskerville" also has the honor of being the last silent Holmes film. The format didn't really suit the Holmes stories, which heavily rely on dialogue and exposition. To avoid excessive intertitles, the films had to simplify the material and stress action over cerebration.

In that respect, this "Hound" is no different (the walking stick deduction scene is naturally absent), but it uniquely goes whole hog for a German gothic/expressionist proto-noir style. Baskerville Hall becomes an old dark house like the ones in "The Bat" or "The Cat and the Canary," with shadows galore, eyes peeping out of statues, trap doors, and hidden rooms sealed off at the push of the button. And since this is a late silent, we're treated to voluptuous camera movement and eccentrically creative camera angles.

Carlyle Blackwell, an American matinee idol back in 1914, was imported to play Sherlock Holmes, introduced as "the genial detective." Fortunately Blackwell's confident performance is not entirely genial, though he does accentuate the smug, amused side of Holmes's character. Russian George Seroff plays a puppyish, plump, mustache-less Watson. The character was often a non-entity in silent Holmes films, but here he plays a major role, albeit an often comical ones (his gullibility prompts a light smack upside the head from Holmes). Stapleton is played by Fritz Rasp, that great gonzo gargoyle of German cinema.

For decades "Der Hund" was thought lost, until a print turned up Poland. Sadly the film is missing several expository scenes in reels two and three, which covered Watson's investigations of suspects at Baskerville Hall. These are compensated for by illustrated titles, but their absence leaves the whodunit mystery shortened and the overall story lopsided.

"Der Hund" is a mostly faithful adaptation of Doyle, and even shares strategies with later versions. Like the 1968 BBC production with Peter Cushing, it starts with the suspects gathered at Baskerville Hall. As in the Hammer version, Holmes gets trapped in an underground passage. And Laura Lyons has the same fate in the 1982 TV film starring Ian Richardson.

Low budgets are the bane of many "Hound" adaptations, but not this one. Baskerville Hall is opulently furnished and the outside moor, though created in a disused hangar, is a convincing wasteland of scraggly scrub. The hound is played by a mottled Great Dane, usually shown in extreme close-up, an unusual tactic to make it look more imposing. The other settings are modern-a motorcar pulls up to Baker Street and Holmes wears a leather trench coat alongside his deerstalker.

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The Sign of Four (1987 TV Movie)

8/10

Could this be the best Sherlock Holmes film?

27 February 2018

This version of "The Sign of Four" is the closest anyone has come to transferring the spirit and letter of Doyle's stories to film. And it stars what might be the best Holmes and Watson to ever appear onscreen, Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. "The Sign of Four" is a very close adaptation of Conan Doyle's novel, but that would count for nothing if it wasn't stylishly directed, sumptuously produced, and perfectly acted.

It was also made at the right time, when the Granada Sherlock Holmes TV series had proven a success and received the go-ahead and financial backing to expand its format. "The Sign of Four" was filmed in 35mm with a lavish (for TV) budget and presents a convincing vision of Holmes's world, from the cluttered Victorian furnishings to a steam launch chase down the Thames. Jeremy Brett was at the peak of his powers, before manic depression and heart failure permanently wrecked his health. His mercurial Holmes lives only for detection--without a case he's twitchy and irritable; on the trail he suave and scintillating. Hardwicke's Watson is grizzled paragon of common sense and decency. The other players (Jenny Seagrove, John Thaw, Ronald Lacey) are a perfectly cast assortment of eccentrics.

Director Peter Hammond is over-fond of compositions involving mirrors, but he keeps the eye (and the actors) occupied. At its best the film is a catalogue of quintessential Sherlockiana: London fog, hidden treasure, the Baker Street Irregulars, and Holmes's outlandish disguises, violin playing, and elaborate deductions. The plot is classically Holmesian, involving Imperial misdeeds coming home to haunt their perpetrators. Some have criticized the film for the lengthy flashback near the end, but this is the emotional heart of the film, the why-done-it that comes after the criminal's apprehension and gives a tragic coloring to his crimes. It gives the literal Sign of Four an ethical resonance.

Like all of the Granada Holmes productions, "The Sign of Four" has been remastered and released on Blu-Ray. It looks great but whoever handled the color correction eliminated the day-for-night effects so many scenes are brighter then they should be.

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The Michigan Kid (1928)

8/10

A Terrific Piece of Meat-and-Potatoes Entertainment

31 August 2017

Along with the notorious "Behind the Door" (1919), "The Michigan Kid" shows director Irvin Willat at his best. And how good was that? Good enough to make one realize that this overlooked director, who specialized in thrillers and action, has yet to receive his due.

Conrad Nagel plays the titular Kid, a gambler running a saloon in Alaska who dreams of being with his childhood sweetheart (Renée Adorée) but must contend with an old rival. Adorée is lovely as usual. Nagel was usually blander than tapioca, but here he embraces the raffish, enigmatic side of the Kid.

William K. Everson (who literally wrote the book on silent cinema) called "The Michigan Kid" "a good, rugged, virile melodrama...done with style." You couldn't ask for a better summation. Being a late silent, its camera-work is a delight, with voluptuous tracking shots and daring POV angles. Willat's hard-boiled directorial style works through precise, suggestive concision.

The otherwise adequate gray-market DVD retains the arresting blue tones and pink tinting of the intense forest-fire climax, a bravura sequence that combines superb in-camera mattes with very fine miniatures. The results are so convincing I was astonished to learn it was entirely filmed in the studio. "The Michigan Kid" is not a profound film or masterpiece--it's a terrific piece of meat-and-potatoes entertainment, a genre assignment blessedly better than it needed to be.

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North of 36 (1924)

7/10

Visually Impressive, Finely Directed, Dramatically Impaired

31 January 2017

"North of 36" tells the story of 600 hundred mile cattle drive through Indian territory from Texas to Kansas. It is by no means a "primitive B Western," as one misguided reviewer calls it. Contrary to his assertion, the problem with this handsome and still impressive film is the script, not the direction.

Like many films based on plot-heavy novels, North of 36 feels like a short digest of long book, with a one-thing-after-another plot stuffed into an 85 minute running time. As the New York Times reviewer noted, the film is low on suspense and surprises. The romance feels rushed and there's very little chemistry between rodent-faced Jack Holt (low on charisma) and Lois Wilson, whose character inherits her father's ranch and leads the cattle drive but doesn't have much agency and is given little to do, aside from pining away for hero. The only actor who comes across is Ernest Torrence, playing an ornery but goodhearted old cowhand who sports a massive salt and pepper beard and steals the show. Noah Beery, who plays the carpetbagging villain, meets a fate that might remind some viewers of a film from the same director, the jaw-dropping "Behind the Door."

Director Irvin Willat said his main task "was to get a good picture out of a poor script. They didn't allow me enough money, and nobody else works that way, so that was another problem." Willat succeeded: this is an ultimately good film that does not look cheap. The staged cattle drive looks as impressive as a real thing, with 4,500 Longhorn cattle (Brahman Bulls, imported from India) swarming the screen. When they ford the Red River, Willat mounts the camera within a floating covered wagon: the shot demonstrates the strength of his camera-eye.

His film is a pleasure to watch, thanks to rich lighting and compositions that showcase the prairies. The reviewer who faults it for not having camera movement fails to realize that (a) there are several traveling shots and (b) Hollywood didn't go ape for moving cameras until "The Last Laugh," which was imported after the making of this film. Willat could afford to go easy on the technique--he was an expert editor who cut his teeth working for Thomas Ince, and the cutting in "North of 36" is economical, precise, and wouldn't seem alien to any modern film-goer.

Despite its flaws, "North of 36" exemplifies many pleasures of silent-era filmmaking, when cameras were mobile, studios were less regimented, and directors went to epic lengths to film epic events.

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The Three Musketeers (1921)

7/10

The Most Faithful Adaptation

18 June 2015

This is undoubtedly the most complete and faithful adaptation of The Three Musketeers ever filmed. It's also a pleasure to watch and succeeds in translating a plot-heavy book into a handsome set of images. Director Henri Diamant-Berger worked with the benefit of a lavish budget and many hours of screen time, since his film was released as a 12-part serial.

The authentically 17th century costumes and the sets are impressive (though the sets are too clean). The script retains almost everything from Dumas's novel but simplifies and abbreviates a few parts (including D'Artagnan's wooing of Milday and her seduction of Felton). It removes suspense by spelling out several events more than Dumas did; it also devotes excessive time to comic relief scenes with M. Bonacieux and Planchet.

Diamant-Berger's direction is assured, though not especially stylish. He has a good eye for outdoor locations (this is definitely not a set-bound film) and action on horseback, but his interior staging is rudimentary. In 1921 silent filmmaking had yet to reach its pinnacle of sophistication and style, as exemplified by Henri Fescourt's dazzling "Monte Cristo" (1929).

Casting is a mixed bag. The Musketeers look like they stepped out of the novel (especially Aimé Simon-Girard's amusing D'Artganan) but the villains are disappointing: Édouard de Max's Cardinal Richelieu is a little too campy (he really likes watching kittens frolic on his desk) while Claude Mérelle's underplayed Milady is more businesswoman than femme fatale. She doesn't project the intensity of the original, just as the movie lacks the intensity of the book.

The only surviving film print has English inter-titles, but these were eliminated from the French DVD, the only one available. But since the film is such a faithful adaptation, you'll understand almost everything if the book is still fresh in your head.

The DVD, supervised by Diamant-Berger's grandson, is controversial. To shorten the film, the inter-titles have been replaced by subtitles and narration. And not only has a symphonic score been added, but also Foley sound effects! Every hoof-beat, every rustle of the trees, and every clack of swords has been dubbed in. The clattering sound certainly keeps you awake (not that the film has many longueurs), and the pace is artificially swifter without inter-titles, but the new subtitles go by too quickly. That said, the film looks terrific--the surviving print must have been in good shape.

The Three Musketeers was one of the most successful films of the 1920s in France, and Diamant-Berger followed it by filming Dumas's sequel "Vignt Ans Apres," now lost. He also filmed a sound remake of the Musketeers in 1932--a documentary among the DVD's special features includes excerpts.

Since an English-language version of the 1921 Musketeers already exists, I hope an enterprising DVD company like Flicker Alley will make it available to American audiences. There have been many good and bad films made from The Three Musketeers, but none more comprehensive than Diamant-Berger's.

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Monte Cristo (1922)

7/10

A Surprisingly Good Adaptation

14 May 2015

I had low expectations of this film, thinking it was a Hollywood bastardization of Dumas's classic, like the corny but enjoyable 1934 version starring Robert Donat. How wrong I was! This is one of the better adaptations of "The Count of Monte Cristo"--not just required viewing for fans of the novel but a good film in its own right.

Let's start with its star. The problem with most actors who play the Count is that they're usually suited to play only one side of him-- the young and naive Edmond Dantes or the suave, revenge-driven Monte Cristo. John Gilbert is the only actor I've seen who excels as both. It helps that he was a young man at the time and plays Edmond with the vigor of genuine youth. He's just as convincing as the older, embittered Monte Cristo, thanks to the intense, smoldering stare that made him a matinée idol. As written by Dumas, the Count might be a swashbuckler but he is also an avenger whose thirst for cold revenge disturbs other characters and even the reader. Gilbert understands this and is perfectly cast.

Dumas's novel is a 1,200 page monster, and even three-hour adaptations have to cut large chunks of it. This version (which draws on several stage adaptations) is less than two hours, yet it manages to preserve the major plot points of the book. This is intelligent distillation is considerably more faithful than the 2002 version. Minor characters have been combined to streamline the story, which gains a surprisingly swift pace. The ending is differs from the original, but the scriptwriters have prepared for it with a melancholy prelude.

I wasn't familiar with the director, Emmett J. Flynn, and feared the movie would be stagy and visually dull. Once again I was wrong. The direction is lively and makes excellent use of superimposition. The lighting and costumes are lavish in the old Hollywood style, and the opulent, airy sets perhaps influenced the 1929 French film of the novel, directed by Henry Fescourt. His three-hour "Monte Cristo" is a greater work than Flynn's, though the most faithful adaptation is a 1979 French TV production starring Jacques Weber. Neither Weber nor Fescourt's versions have English subtitles so my recommendation for those who've read the book is to watch Flynn's film, with Gilbert's excellent performance, and the 1964 BBC TV production starring Alan Badel, which has been released on Region 2 DVD. The 1934 film starring Robert Donat takes too many liberties and the 1998 French TV miniseries suffers from the miscasting of Gérard Depardieu in the central role.

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The Sign of Four (1923)

7/10

A Holmesian Thriller

6 June 2014

Never released in US, The Sign of Four received a belated premiere at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, giving American Sherlockians an introduction to Eille Norwood, whose portrayal of Sherlock Holmes earned raves from no less than Conan Doyle. Based on the evidence of this feature, Norwood definitely belongs in the company of Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Jeremy Brett, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

No one has bettered Conan Doyle's explanation of Norwood's appeal: "He has that rare quality which can only be described as glamour, which compels you to watch an actor eagerly even when he is doing nothing. He has the brooding eye which excites expectation and he has also a quite unrivalled power of disguise." Norwood is indeed a master of stillness and quiet intensity. Though old for the part, his haggard face and severe eyes command attention (along with his moments of wry humor). The film opens and closes on Norwood's face, masking the frame to reveal Holmes staring down the audience.

Norwood's Holmes is straight from the books, but purists should be warned that this film takes many liberties with Conan Doyle's novella. And that's perfectly understandable--silent film is not the most suitable medium for the Holmes stories, which heavily rely on dialogue and exposition. A faithful silent adaptation of "The Sign of Four" would have drowned in a sea of inter-titles. Maurice Elvey, who adapted and directed the film, instead chose to turn Doyle's whodunit into a thriller. Holmes does less detective work, and much of it is off-screen. The long flashback in the novel is drastically reduced and dealt with early on, along with the solution of the mystery and the culprits.

Major Sholto appears instead of his sons, Jonathan Small and Tonga have much reduced roles, and the film introduces a new villain, Prince Abdullah Khan. He's unsubtly played in brownface and identified as a "Hindoo" by Holmes (who is mistaken--"Abdullah" is an Islamic name, meaning "slave of Allah" in Arabic). Additionally, the Four signers of the title are different characters and lack the camaraderie Doyle gave them. That, along with the extensive use of hamming in brownface (and details like cutting between a monkey and "pygmy" as they doff hats), results in a film that's arguably more racist than its source material from 30 years earlier. An additional defect is under-use of Watson (a common problem in silent Holmes films), played by the stolid and mustache-less Arthur Cullin, though he has a fun scene of wondering "What would Holmes do?"

Once expectations of textual fidelity are put aside, "Sign" can be enjoyed as a nifty thriller, thanks to its brisk pacing and flair. Maurice Elvey's direction is stylish and inventive. Wipes are used to transition to and from flashbacks, and a flash-cut reveals the source of one of Holmes's deductions. When Holmes divulges his conclusions, flashbacks show him superimposed, lending a ghostly effect to the narration of previously unseen events. The film is strong in mood, opening with a shot of a "pearl grey afternoon in Baker Street" (though Watson later enters 114 instead of 221B!), and the use of shadows is splendidly inventive. Elvey also throws in scene of seamy working-class London in a Limehouse bar.

The climax expands Doyle's original chase, adding a damsel in distress and a car-versus-boat race across London and the Thames. It's practically a tour of the city, with landmarks announced through inter-titles ("Putney Bridge," "Hyde Park Corner" etc). The concluding speedboat chase still impresses, with the camera perched close to waterline or on top of the boats as they plow through the waves. You can see why Holmes faces the camera upon hearing the case and says "This is going to be exciting." It still is.

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King Lear (1970)

8/10

One of the Greatest Shakespeare Films

15 May 2014

Shamefully overlooked and unavailable on DVD in the United States (though viewers can order the region 2 disc from Britain), this is one of the best Shakespearean films--no one will ever call it "stagy"! Inspired by Peter Brook's legendary 1962 stage production, this version of Lear is absurdist and Beckettian, unfolding in a cruel universe devoid of meaning. Filmed in stark black-and-white in the most barren regions of Denmark, the setting is almost post-apocalyptic; the barbaric costumes, assembled from masses of fur and leather, make the cast look truly "like monsters of the deep."

Brooks directs and edits in a rough-edged style that will confuse those who mistake innovation for incompetence. Lines are often addressed toward the camera, characters melt in and out of focus during moments of crisis, negative space abounds along with inserts of complete blackness, zooms are timed to the endings of lines, and the finale features brutal shock cuts. These effects are not intended as mere flashiness--they convey the alienation and disorientation at work in Shakespeare's cruelest play. Brook's handling of the storm scene exemplifies this. It's hard to imagine anyone doing a better job--the screen flashes black one minute and is scorched white the next, thunder seems to converse with Lear, whose initially blurry image (thanks to rain streaking down the camera lens) is replaced by low angle shots of him raging at the void of the sky.

The casting is often perfect, with Tom Fleming's rough-edged but jovial Kent; Jack Macgowran's low-key, sharp Fool; Alan Webb's Gloucester, initially fussy before turning into the film's most moving performance; Robert Lloyd's vigorous Edgar; Irene Worth's Goneril, with her lizard smile and she-wolf's eyes; and Patrick Magee's Cornwall, the epitome of banal, soft-spoken evil.

The only disappointment is Paul Scofield's Lear, which like the film itself diminishes during the last third. Scofield is the impressively imposing and monolithic Lear on film (when he says "Unnatural hags!" the cameraman shakes), speaking in a tone somewhere between a grumble and growl. But the voice grows monotonous; his Lear seems stolid. Neither madness not compassion seem to really touch him. Scofield occasionally breaks free in moments of extreme distress, like the storm scene, where he hints how magnificent his voice can be, but not often enough. Brook's emphasis on bleakness limits the range of a play that is meant to be emotionally wrenching. A scene like the wounding of Cornwall is almost comically rushed, as if Brook was embarrassed by a scene involving genuine decency (the old man who aids the wounded Gloucester is cut of course).

As noted, the final third of this adaptation feels rushed, almost like a digest, though Brook ingeniously improves on Shakespeare when handling the comeuppance of Regan and Goneril. Regardless of its flaws, Brook's King Lear perhaps the most daring and experimental film made from one of Shakespeare's plays. Wintry, brutal, and thrilling, its images will stay with you for years to come.

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Bauyr (2013)

8/10

The Little Trooper

7 May 2014

"Bauyr" (Little Brother) fulfills the promise of world cinema--it takes you on a trip to an unfamiliar region, is filmed in a contemplative (but not punishing) manner, and embraces both unforced humor and genuine sadness. It will remind viewers of the neorealist classics of De Sica--it shares the theme of the callous exploitation of innocence--while its final shot echoes "The 400 Blows."

Yerkin (Almat Galym, giving a beautifully upfront performance) is a young boy living in a distant village of Kazakhstan...by himself. Mom is long gone, dad is "away on a business trip," and his big brother Aidos is studying in the big city. Yerkin fends for himself, making bricks and tending sheep, and though he's an industrious little trooper, he's young enough for the locals to take advantage of him. An impending visit from Aidos gives hope, but it's the little brother who ultimately shows greater maturity and character.

Serik Aprimov's direction gives a vivid sense of place--the evocative steppes sweep into pockets of village greenery, and near-surreal moments arise due to the village's limited resources. Aprimov presents village life with a tone that is folksy but stringent. Despite his age, Yerkin is a pillar of his little community, but the townsfolk are too venal to appreciate his efforts.

I was somewhat conflicted about the end, whose final musical cue felt sentimental. Yet it undeniably gathers the emotions of the preceding 96 minutes to devastating effect. No list of classic films about children will be complete without "Bauyr," a tribute to the resilience and secret loneliness of childhood.

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The Sun Beaten Path (2011)

8/10

A Beautiful, Desolate Tibetan Road Movie

12 March 2012

"The Sun Beaten Path" is set in Tibet, but not the mythical, mountainous, Lama-infested Tibet of legend. This road movie unfolds on the endless highways and tracks snaking through the eerily flat and barren Tibetan steppes, where you can see nothingness stretch away to the Himalayas.

Walking those lonely roads is Nyma (the ethereally handsome Yeshe Lhadruk), a near-silent, weather-battered wanderer who has exiled himself from his rural home for reasons revealed in flashbacks deftly inter-cut with his expiatory travels. He runs into a garrulous old man (Lo Kyi), who does his damnedest to look after the frequently unresponsive Nyma as they wander up and down the highways, all-the-while providing an earthy contrast to our protagonist. By the end, Nyma's self-abnegation is resolved in a beautifully understated pair of images.

"The Sun Beaten Path" requires a contemplative viewer willing to adjust his viewing pace, but its style is free of rote, art-house clichés. Director/writer Sonthar Gyal works some slyly subtle humor from the desolation of the landscape and how small even a big-rig can seem on these roads. In this terrain, all human affairs are seen in perspective. Gyal's command of space not only extends laterally, but also forward into the frame, following characters on their sometimes straightforward, sometimes tortuous outer journeys. This is Gyal's first feature film, and he has a very promising future.

"The Sun Beaten Path" won the Dragons & Tigers award at the 2011 Vancouver International Film Festival and is very much worth your time. It is a rare example of a film that is bleak without being depressing.

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Battle Royale (2000)

An example of Emperor's new clothes for the young and stupid

22 February 2004

Warning: Spoilers

Spoiler Alert Battle Royale is a prime example of how bloated the hype for a movie can get, with breathless morons running around acclaiming the movie as `disturbing' and `brave'. If people claim they were hit deep by this film their personalities must match its level of shallowness. To be fair, a lot of the people claiming `it's the greatest movie ever' or `the best Japanese film ever' (so much for Mizoguchi, Ozu, Ichikawa and Kurosawa) are high schoolers, and as Battle Royale shows, high school students can be simpering dolts.

The supposed ultra-violence of BR is ultimately not far from what one sees in American films, the only difference is that high-school students are doing this to each other, and in contrast to the blunt brutality of Columbine, the violence in Battle Royale is flamboyant and stylized and clever to the point of visual porn. You don't watch the movie in fear that the characters will get killed, you watch in anticipation of how the latest character will buy the farm. Battle Royale is satire for lamebrains. In reality we deal with rebellious teenagers by either medicating them or letting them rot together in prison. People who liken BR to reality TV forget that reality TV is still a million miles from depicting death onscreen, and any program that went so far would be shut down in minutes.People who claim it's a satire about what society is coming to are trying to justify their having gotten off on a transparent fantasia, since BR is really a fantasia of a snuff flick, and not much more. Anyone who tries reading deep meaning into the film is spouting lies.

You know the picture's going to stink when the main protagonists are of young innocent couple-the same old young lovers archetype. Can one really care what happens to a pair of melodramatic clichés? The boy has even sworn to his dead best friend to protect the girl he likes. We're even strong-armed into feeling sorry for the boy because his father committed suicide-a move as shamelessly button-pushing in its desire to dramatically stack the deck as the film's programmatic music.

9th graders may be immature and sappy and romantic, but the film shares their immaturity and sappiness. Claiming that `each character or set of characters was but a device for portraying a fatal flaw of humankind' is a pretentious way of making an exploitation film into an allegory. People who see complexity in the characters think characters who can be described in one sentence (`There is, of course, Kiriyama, the ultimate antagonistic killing machine') count as deep. Listen people, assembling a collection of high school `types' and then asking us to care for them when they're whacked is a fraudulent form of dramatic shorthand. At best the film traffics in cheap, easy ironies (There's the boy who seeks to protect a girl he's never had the courage to talk to in school but ends up getting accidentally killed by her).

One especially hot-air blowing reviewer claims `people.thought this movie was a mere pointless, slasher/splatter movie. What a pity! This movie is all about friendship under attack when placed in survival-of-the-fittest situation, as the movie's tagline clearly hinted, 'Could you kill your best friend?' But in responding to this question BR is ultimately a reassuring, cowardly, pretentious film. People keep bringing up Lord of the Flies in reference to this film without realizing what makes `Lord' a genuine allegory and what makes BR a shallow exploitation film with knobs on is that LotF shows how even the most presumably innocent children can descend to a level of savagery that is truly horrifying because it lurks deep within the natural confines of the human character. The boys in LotF are only stopped from totally turning into psychopathic animals by the chance arrival of adults. BR instead panders in the opposite direction by insisting that nice young bland people can rise above nasty old adults. While LotF proved how fragile even the strongest friendships can truly be, BR insists on affirming that yes, love and friendship conquer all. The nice young couple remain shining examples of goodness and their battle-toughened friend doesn't sell them out after all. The film ends with the oldest cliché in the book--the nice young couple on the run and against the misunderstanding world. Some people actually derive big philosophical messages and satirical insight from such a toothless, manipulative, trashy piece of film. They've fooled themselves into pompousness.

People who claim they have a genuine love for Japanese film because they saw Ringu have been sheep-like in their desire to use BR as a club to beat American movies with, but most Americans can hopefully see past all the pretentious, empty claims that have been made for this sophistic, empty film. Something like Elephant, slick and problematic as it is, ultimately says more about the pressures of high school and youth-violence than overhyped crap like Battle Royale, a wild fantasia of death dressed up in paper-thin robes of satiric comment and emotional heft.

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Thunderball (1965)

Not Connery's Best, But Still Up There

11 January 2003

An elite squad of terrorists siezes two nuclear weapons and threatens to hold the world at ransom, If their demands are not met, they will detonate the bombs, one by one...

It's a provocative concept (Bin Laden and company could only dream of it), and it forms the plot of "Thunderball," the fourth Bond film.

I'm surprised to see the number of negative comments this film has received, when it's plainly one of the best Bond films. Some of these ("It's sooo boring!!") can be dismissed as the bitchy whining of kids whose attention spans have been decimated by one too many hours at the playstation, while others deserve refutation.

Lots of people have brayed--with the regularity of sheep--about how supposedly slow and dull the underwater sequences are. Like lots of received wisdom, this is dubious. If you're watching Thunderball on an ordinary pan-and-scan video, then the underwater sequences probably are stodgy and hard to follow. If you're watching the film on DVD (The ONLY way you should watch it), those aqua-fights become some of the movie's highlights, held together by Peter Hunt's collision-happy, smash-bang editing.

Thunderball is hardly the worst of Connery's Bonds (Anyone who downgrades it in favor of "Diamonds On Forever" is playing a sick joke), but it's a lesser film than the movies preceding it--"From Russia With Love" and "Goldfinger".

The latter film is probably responsible for Thunderball's defects. After the mega-success of Goldfinger, the producers felt obligated to out-do themselves and produce the biggest Bond of all. The film resultingly tips into formula. It promises More Girls! More Gadgets! More Explosions! and More Thrills! and it provides all those--at a price. Thunderball is what happens when you try combining a lean, taut thriller--which is what Ian Fleming's original novel was--with an all out action extravaganza. There indeed are more girls, gadgets, and gats, but they slow down the story.

Additionally, Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins, who wrote the screenplay, needlessly complicated the original storyline of Fleming's novel with unneccesary side-plots (the plastic surgery business), extraneous characters, and flashy but unneeded action.

As a result, much of human element--so very present in Fleming's novel--has been lost amidst the blockbuster trimmings. Domino--the fierce, hotblooded and spunky woman of Fleming's novel--is now cold and distant; Largo--originally conceived as a sort of evil mirror image of Bond--has been miscast and turned into a dull mafia reject; and Bond---well, he's not given very much to do. His gadgets seem to do most of his work for him. He's less witty and has fewer scenes of human interaction with the story's principals.

"Thunderball" must have been an immensely complicated picture to film, and most of it still holds up. Terence Young's direction is stylishly old-fashioned (lots of long shots, few close-ups) yet searingly intense in scenes of violence. He deserves credit for producing an action blockbuster that still has a coherent plotline--which is more than you can say for almost action film made today...including Pierce Brosnan's Bonds. It's just a pity that the screenplay wastes so much time with unneccesary material.

My advice is to find and read Fleming's top-notch novel, and then see this picture. Thunderball is full of pleasurable spectacle, but lower on humanity. This inverse ratio would lead to truly bad films (Diamonds Are Forever, Moonraker, Tomorrow Never Dies), though it was briefly corrected by "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"---the last great Bond film, and the crowning masterpiece of the series.

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Scene of the Crime (1986)

Compelling, complex and worthy.

26 August 2001

I've only seen three of Andre Techine's films ("Rendez-Vous," "Scene of the Crime," and "Wild Reeds") but after watching "Wild Reeds" I knew I'd have to watch everything else he'd ever made, for now I was a life-long fan.

"Scene of the Crime" has many of the virtues of "Wild Reeds,"--a film that will inhabit you for weeks after you've seen it--chief among them Techine's intelligence and sensitive handling of character and flair for melodrama. If Thomas Hardy were alive today, he'd probably be Techine's script-writer.

The film's two concerns are repression and freedom. Thomas--a sullen angry 13 year old--and Lili--his dreamy, distractedly neurotic mother-- undergo several collisions and unions with a young escaped convict and his friends: they are left to pick up the pieces and reconfigure their lives. Both mother and son are bound by a repressions whose roots are in family, community and religion. And each conflict with others binds them like a rope, so that Thomas futilely lashes out in anger while Lili attempts to lose (and in doing so) find herself with an act of impulsive negation. We could trace much of the repression toward the less likable characters--other criminals or family members--but doing so is futile. Techine understands what Renoir meant when said "everyone has his reasons," and so this film isn't about the difficulty of living with other people, but the difficulty of living in this universe.

Techine has often been called a "novelistic" director; meaning he takes you deep inside his characters' thoughts and motivations. This doesn't involve voiceover, just Techine's direction and the melodramatic plots that force their characters into confrontations ordained by the strength of their passions. Melodrama asks the most of its characters; requires them to feel and undergo all they can. It's numerous coincidences, and run-ins can seem like an amplified version of life's randomness and havoc. Techine's approach involves an analytical acceptance of melodrama's approach to narrative; a willing and measured use of its conventions, resulting in narratives that often seem more vivid than reality and paradoxically more truthful and satisfying. The emotions unearthed are more intense than those brought out by reality, but possess the inner truth of reality.

His technique is not flashy, attention-getting or hyper-formalistic: which means it works discreetly and extremely well. There is an ever-present analytical attention to the natural (and un-) surroundings that surround his characters, along with an intense intimacy toward them. He follows very few rules, and mixes quick cutting with measured long takes and a mobile camera. All this allows us to move back and forth and toward and away from his characters, sympathizing with them in close-up one moment, then judging at a detached angle or pan to another character's reaction. It is a wonderfully effective method, and constantly reminds us of each character's motivations (as do the relentless melodramatics.)

Techine's films aren't formally difficult, but if you lose track at one point it's hard to catch up, because his characters will have accumulated even more motivations and reactions by then. The intense sensitivity of his style allows us to accurately register each character's accumulating layer of emotions, which continually enlarge their motivations. To lose track of that accumulative process is probably what happened to Roger Ebert, who wrote the film should have been a gangster drama made in 1939, so that the melodramatic plot would seem more acceptable and Techine's moments of psychological insights wouldn't seem so "out of place." (The film IS primarily flawed in the sketchiness of the convict's lover and the overly-rushed pace of the climactic sequence.)He doesn't consider that the melodrama of the plot is precisely what allows for those moments of psychological insight. And desire for the film to be an old-fashioned crime noir seems inexplicable, when this is obviously a family drama where crime serves to provoke a shake-up and re-evaluation of family relations and the life-directions the characters have chosen. At the end of "Scene of the Crime" we're not sure whether Thomas and Lili have either recovered or damaged forever. And as Lili hauntingly remarks, after a certain point, losing and finding yourself may be the same process.

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ITV Saturday Night Theatre: Long Day's Journey Into Night (1973)

Season 5, Episode 20

A Compelling Adaptation

20 January 2001

This version of O'Neil's play, the supreme tragedy in American drama, is hard to find and not readily available on video. That's a shame, and the film deserves better. It's basically a stage-bound version of the National Theatre production starring Lord Laurence Olivier. It's somewhat hard to get into--the set is ugly and cheap, the mise-en-scene is at first uninspired, and most of the cast can't truly capture American accents. (Only Constance Cummings, who plays the mother, is American.) But the movie improves. The actors improve gradually on their accents, the sets are swathed more in darkness, and the direction betrays traces of sensitivity, and an increasing mobility (not enough) and knowledge of what should and shouldn't be shown to the viewer. (Though the actors seem basically left to fend for themselves, and are awkwardly blocked.) The problem with O'Neil's play is that it demands actors who can stand up to it. The downward spiral of the Tyrones, with its desperate guilt transferrals and the complicated, realistic web of mistakes, regrets and anguish requires skilled actors who can avoid emotional monotony. It can't simply be one accusation and outburst after another. The actors must be able to modulate their reactions and gauge the proper times for added emphasis. Monotony is what resulted in the 1987 version of the play, with Jack Lemmon miscast as the father and Kevin Spacey employing his very limited (and overrated) talents as Jamie. To a lesser extent the actor's playing the sons in this version aren't up to the play either--Ronald Pickup's Edmund can barely master a convincing accent and has a limited supply of tricks, while Dennis Quilley's Jamie holds his head with a very un-american reserve, and never really lets loose. He stands in contrast with the late Jason Robards, who played the definitive Jamie in the 1962 film, which he burnt a hole through. It was large, virile performance, and one sorely needed here. The parents are better-cast. Constance Cummings, who played the vivacious, maddening and ultimately vulnerable efficiency expert in "Battle of the Sexes" to perfection, doesn't quite erase the memory of Katherine Hepburn's spacey, strangely sexy portrayal of Mary Tyrone, but she comes close. She has the right mixture of brittleness and fear. The only real flaw is a certain lack of genuine highs and lows to the performance. Laurence Olivier makes sure to supply quite a large number of these. He begins dodgily, but eventually turns in the best performance of James Tyrone on film. Whereas his old friend Ralph Richardson had given an effectively icy edge to the part, Olivier brings to it his usual bloody-mindedness. (His Hamlet was simultaneously colder and angrier than any other actor's--compare it to Branagh's fey, weak-kneed version. Olivier is forever his superior) His American/Irish accent is too strong on the corny brogue, and along with his usual bodily mannerisms threatens to turn the performance into a caricature. But his face never betrays him--every close-up we get is worthy of treasuring, because few other actors can give so many shades of desolation, depression and hurt pride. He knows how to structure the performance in order to wring out every drop of drama. Sometimes his effects are coarse or misjudged but they point to his greatest strength--the fearlessness, the willingness to cahnce making a fool out of himself. Despite all the flaws in the conception and exceution of the part, he and Cummings are ultimately the greatest reasons to see this movie. Lumet's film has better actors in the other roles, along with finer overall sense of mood and mise en scene, but this production deserves an equal chance from the viewer. Flawed, but essential for anyone who loves the play.

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