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thebarriepattison
Reviews
The Empress (1917)
Historical interest in this silent melo.
Filmed after Alice Guy's Solax period, this one must be regarded as accomplished for its day but remains a creaky formula melodrama.
Beginning a notable career (the silent Get Rich QUICK WALLINGFORD, ALEXANDER HAMILTON and the Louis Hayward MAN in the IRON MASK) Doris Kenyon comes on here as an artist's model posing for painter Wm. Morse in his studio with the pair of pet monkeys. When his painting of her sells at the briskly edited auction, they go off for a holiday together at a hotel where the manager has a side line taking compromising glass plate snaps of guests. His shot is the pair of them sitting in the open on a bench, which gives you some idea of the film's notion of raunchy. Morse proves grabby so Doris moves on, marrying rich businessman (and co-author) Holbrook Blinn who asks her mother's consent. The couple have a child.
Meanwhile Morse has paired with the hotelier's daughter Donelson, who he plied with liquor. She takes a dim view of Kenyon posing for his new painting in Imperial robes, after he comes for his model again. The girl is barely prevented from slashing the canvas. Meanwhile the hotel manager is getting blackmail cheques from Doris, using the photo and his register. Revolvers are produced from drawers.
The film's best elements are a none too lively depiction of the lives of the well to do and young Kenyon's appealing performance - until we get into the throat clutchings of the final section. The minorities appear in subservient roles - an ineffectual Japanese House Boy, black musicians in the lengthy indoor carnival parade sequence.
The indoors lighting is pretty brutal but the editing does move closer and back again for dramatic effect and the camera follow the action, panning and tilting, with a few iris effects. The film makes effective use of inset close ups, including a "thinks" shot of the pavement below or a crowing cock to visualise sound. Devices like showing Donelson watching the compromising activity by shooting her through the glass textured door make their point. As with contemporary Raoul Walsh, camera technique is sometimes smoother than the Griffith films but the subject matter is inferior.
The Cinémathèque Français reconstruction on their Henri site is quite good and appears near complete but it is not tinted and the captions are missing. The plot is not hard to follow but the crosses printed in, at the points where titles should be inserted, are distracting. There are a couple of brief patches of decomposition.
12 Strong (2018)
Once more into the breach
The easiest way to approach TWELVE STRONG is to note Jerry Bruckheimer's name on the credits and sit back and think "It's only a movie, Ingrid." It doesn't appear to have had a TOP GUN impact on the public or their perception of the Afghanistan war. The more I watched it, the more familiar it became. I found that I've been here before feeling disturbing.
Valiant but ridiculously out numbered white guys sort out vicious Arab oppressors with a bit of help from the locals. That's the WW1 Dunsterforce, which Rudyard Kipling drew on for his "Stalky & Company" stories, or Lawrence of Arabia served up as Alec Guiness in Terence Rattigan's "Ross" or Peter O'Toole in the David Lean movie. Taking Mazar-i-Sharif from the undefended flank is particularly close. Does history repeat itself or is this a narrative that the ever diligent military message machine finds particularly convenient? The real outcome of the Afghanistan campaign is a bad match.
This one starts off with the parallel of ruthless Taliban Commander Arshia Mandavi executing a hapless village woman, in the presence of the girl whose forbidden education she has continued beyond the age of eight, and the Twin Towers attack. Though he has completed his tour, right thinking Captain Chris Hemsworth abandons one of those nice, leafy homes and families, that admirable characters in U. S. TV drama seem to occupy, and has himself re-allocated to his Green Beret Team, after his battle hardened N. C. O. Michael Shannon has a word with hard ass Col. William Fichtner. The Brass say they've got six weeks to save the Northern Alliance but Captain Hemsworth has studied Russian campaign intelligence and knows that the winter will make the operation impossible after three. He flies out with his racially diverse crew (the unit photo on the end is notably more ethnically uniform).
Once they get there, it is of course that same narrative - guys on horses vs. Machine guns, tanks and rocket launchers. Of course they can call on their air superiority. The film works in some nice incidental touches, probably lifted from the original Doug Stanton book. The Norther Alliance ally Navid Negahban taunts his Taliban opposite number on the walkie-talkie. The friendlies send a teenage boy with a carbine to look after the radio operator.
Then we get to pay dirt, with the good guys joining the charge into battle, blazing away from the saddle with light machine guns, facing bad hats waiting furtively behind rocks and walls and loading the rocket launchers that are inflicting non fatal injuries on our heroes. I couldn't spot the animatronic horses. Scandinavian commercials director Nicolai Fuglsig is right on top of his game on his first film. Battle action panoramas are cheer worthy, mixing travellings and drone shots, with blasts throwing still writhing bodies in the air.
We end with the heroic U. S. officer with the Australian accent burying a fragment of the Twin Towers in Afghan soil. I'm sure the draft-age boys who are the film's primary target are stirred. I wonder what the actual soldiers think of it. So, if it's is a suspect representation of history, this one can't be faulted as propaganda.
However there is a third criterion. Despite all the admirable performance talent and great image making, dramatic form is lacking. Once again the action set pieces and thoughtful interludes ("this is Afghanistan. There are no right choices. You will be liberators if you leave and enemies if you stay") could be re-arranged in most any order and be as coherent. 12 STRONG reaches us late night on Ethnic TV without anyone seemingly paying much attention. It ends up being a venture mainly of interest to thesis writers on about perceptions of the Twenty First Century, an audience for which the makers have no sympathy. I can't really feel sorry about that.
Vent debout (1923)
Agreeable vintage drama in the Jack London/ Joseph Conrad tradition
This is one those pleasant surprises you get working through film history - an item that doesn't look all that promising but proves to be genuinely entertaining, outside of any historical significance.
By 1923, director René Leprince had his Pathé association with Fernand Zecca behind him and was a commercially established solo film maker. VENT DEBOUT featured then major French star Léon Mathot (a 1918 Count of monte Christo) in a substantial production. Derived from a popular novel, it hits its stride in the Conrad - Jack London scenes of sailing off the Breton Coast.
The opening is not all that promising with fifties-ish Mathot in obvious lip rouge, as a playboy yachtsman protected from the stress of earning a living by the family fortune. However letters tell him that the suicide of his father, after the failure of an island minerals speculation organised by his creditors, left him ruined. Among sealed cupboards he meets the bankers and learns that all that is left to him is three patches of barren island rocks, after he turns over the inheritance from his mother to cover debts.
A bearded friend of his father is sympathetic and arranges a position for Mathot on a fishing boat. This proves to be a grubby hell ship, where he finds an unshaven crew member bullying the ship's boy. After encounters that include a dangerous rope cutting, Leon, now cosmetics free, pulls a pistol and takes charge. "Desormais, je suis le maître ici!" Our hero and the boy become friends and on shore, their kit bags off-loaded on a rope, he visits the kid's aged mum in her simple home. However during the ship's visit to Le rocher d'Util the boy is killed. Mathot has to deliver his sea bag to the mother.
A month's break in Paris has him back in his tuxedo in front of a wobbling Moulin Rouge backcloth. "When honest people work we're sleeping." However with a shoe protruding from his pocket and bottles on the floor, Leon receives a visit from young Madeleine Renault, making her movie debut and registering as charming and natural, acting in a style that shows up the artificiality of the others. Soon we get her playing with a hat box full of kittens just to make the point.
A chip of malachite, retrieved on a visit to the rock inheritance, arouses the greed of the bankers. They conspire to buy back the leases.
The on-shore material is an unremarkable financial maneuvering melodrama but the ship scenes get attention - the rubbish-filled crew quarters and the deck and rigging with their maritime apparatus, shots filmed through the ropes as they leave and enter ports, along with some library footage of tuna fishing, go with the depiction of Mathot dominating the mean crew, who have already killed one man, and earning their respect. This and the performance by Renaud mean the film is still surprisingly involving.
Director Leprince's technique was basic. The below decks material never convinces us we are at sea and there are a few awkward edits but he manages the odd flourish, like Renaud's reflection in the window glass. His pacing and coverage are sufficient to hold attention and let the material assert. I'm curious about the team's other work.
An excellent newly restored copy on the Cinematheque Francaise's Henri web site shows some deterioration but remains watchable. The captions there are in French.
Complètement cramé (2023)
Disappointing Euro comedy.
Gilles Legardinier's Complètement cramé / Well Done! / Mr. Blake at Your Service is a problem. It's a polished big budget A feature with name stars.. It should be an event but the film totally lacks conviction.
Listening to the opening commentary you suddenly realise that that's being delivered in assured French by John Malkovich, quite eclipsing Erich Von Stroheim, Jean Seaberg and the other Hollywood names who set up their tents there down the years. He plays a British (!) businessman of the year, not turning up to collect his award. John instead treasures the memory of the chateau where he proposed to his one true love and the mother of his grown daughter. He jets off to return for a visitor stay he has booked there. However things are not well in the so picturesque French countryside. Widowed chatelaine Fanny Ardent is not making a go of it and pins her hopes on striking it big on mail-in lottery coupons. Housekeeper Émilie Dequenne is taking guest bookings and advertising for staff to deal with them. Confusion lands John anonymous in the spot of English butler.
Everyone has problems. Final demands litter Fanny's desk. Emilie is hiding from a failed liaison with a Michelin Star chef and talking to her cat. Maid Eugénie Anselin is sleeping in the stables rather than tell her family the awful truth. Chess playing gardener Philippe Bas, who takes a shot at John when he thinks he's a burglar, pines for Émilie and has a curious relationship with the estate's hedgehogs.
It's actually quite touching when they all sit down together to one of Émilie's epicure meals, that we never get a good look at. We realise that John's interventions have improved all their lives. I still can't help making an adverse comparison with the much funnier The Devil and Miss Jones, where their incognito rich guy Charles Coburn screws up all his attempts to help.
The revelation comes at the end, when they run up a Xmas tree on the lawn and we realise that what we are watching is a ritzy version of one of those feel good pieces that TV engulfs us with over
the holiday season each year. By March it's shortcomings are too obvious. The fact that the whole thing has been re-voiced in studio interior-sound French, though they all lip synch. Impeccably, undermines any remaining ambitions.
Zane Grey Theatre: The Lonely Gun (1959)
A foot note to the De Toth Westerns
Andre De Toth's handling on the pre-title shoot out with Harris' last line delivered face in the dirt, his director's groupings & composition come with assured playing by outlaw on the run Sullivan and sheriff Paul Birch, to give this one a more imposing texture than most fifties series westerns but compressing the action into the mandated 25 minutes is a challenge that defeats writer Carr (Too Late Blues, Hell is For Heroes) His odd cowboy movie line rings - Birch's "The town pays me for my killing." However Sullivan's key monologue about talking to his side arm defeats him and bad to the bone western woman Donahue is also out matched, coming on as the only scrubbed-up character. Young pre M*A*S*h Rogers is unrecognisable.
Too Many Winners (1947)
Presentable series cop movie.
Just what the 1947 regular movie-goer would have expected as a first half. Director William Beaudine's experienced hand and a simulation of production value (a few extras to walk from one shot to the next in set decorated studio interiors and a location excursion into the bungalow suburbs) make this a presentable example but don't disguise the poverty row quality). It's the last of PRC's Michael Shaynes with Hugh Beaumont, who is too jaunty to be a pulp fiction P. I. A couple of low rent hoods keep on beating him up and throw him into the Public Dump and, when he finally gets around to toughing it out with them, comic cop Ralph Dunn has to take down the last man standing. Trudy Marshall manages forties glamorous but shows no flare for the excessive comic relief with duck calls and arguments about his assignments getting in the way of their holiday. Meanwhile, intrepid reporter Charles Mitchell hovers ineffectually.
It's really all too cheerful, lacking menace and noir lighting. Clare Carleton's blonde floozy has potential as a femme fatale but doesn't last long enough to fulfill promise. The plot is pretty much an afterthought to accomodate all the crime B movie stuff. John Hamilton, owner of the Race Track (one stock shot and a sign on the door of the office with Meet activity on the BP screen behind Venetian blinds) wants to hire Beaumont's Mike Shayne to find out about a racket where he's being swindled with fake winning tickets. A bit more detail on this would have helped. Carlton offers information for a four-figure price and trusted associate Grandon Rhodes knew her when. Throw in shifty Ben Welden and nervous family-man inventor Byron Foulger (best performances) to make up the roster of suspects. A weak subplot with punk kid Gary Grey gets passing attention and George Meader's fussy hotel clerk is actually quite funny.
Now that the film has acquired a veneer of nostalgia, the casual way all the formula ingredients are thrown together becomes quite endearing.
Anatomie d'une chute (2023)
Prestige European drama
The new festival films like this and Eighth Mountain show a shift back towards observed reality, which used to be visible in entries from the thirties through fifties, with this film locating in the area of Andre Cayatte - rather than Antonioni and Demy. Also Hulller telling Swann Arlaud that she didn't do it, with them knowing that doesn't matter, is straight from Roxie Hart.
The opening is unfamiliar and puts into play the elements that the film will backtrack on - Huller and the grad student interested in her books vaguely flirtatious, three storey Swiss chalet in the snow, the too loud music and the son who proves to be vision impaired (scotch tape on the doors to tell him where he is) and his guide dog. The pair find the body of the boy's father in a pool of his own blood in the snow, having fallen three levels.
The film develops in multiple related areas - Huller's arrest and trial, the revealed marriage and the Swiss location, particularly with it's convoluted (and labor intensive) legal system. Performances are superior - notably Huller coming into her own after being conspicuous in films like Ich bin dein Mensch and Tony Erdman. Setting is unfamiliar and convincing - defense lawyer old friend and potential lover Arlaud opening the chalet window, to blow out his cigarette smoke while interrogating Huller. Is a nice character touch and gives us a hint about air quality.
Film making is less impressive - the obvious freeze frame on the resting dog, the use of long (presumably zoom) lenses in the courtroom material suggesting it was done multi cam. Delaying hearing husband Samuel Theis, who has been represented by photos, until the computer drive appears late in the piece, is a risk and recalls playing Nills Schneider's letters as speaking direct to the camera in 2017 's Un amour impossible with which this one has some community - twisted family piece from a woman director also using the here wasted Jehnny Beth (Les Olympiades, Paris 13e)
The Anatomy of a Murder is less a did she or didn't she but a parallel examination of the marriage - Huller dragged away from her happy life in London to her husband's native Switzerland, which doesn't bring the financial relief promised, with her managing to publish the books for which she plunders their personal life and him stuck with teaching and home schooling their handicapped son, keeping him away from the book of his own also drawing on their shared experience. The second defense chair has to interject the minimal connection between their work, apparently being the only one to have read it. The courtroom recordings reveal arguments where he reproaches her infidelities - only one. He called it two but it was the same girl twice. This one endorses the Euro pudding multiple language model. Huller nods towards the courtroom translator when she feels she needs to fall back on English (insert long lens closer shot).
In parallel with this is all the unfamiliar legal detail, complete with discussion across the floor with the severe woman judge warning she is giving them only so much latitude and each of the expert witnesses trying to legitimise their own view of events - the husband's shrink, the interview girl, the forensic scientist who we saw dropping dummies from the attic window, scornful of the notion of possibility - like it being possible for her to become president of France.
It's all set up to pivot on eleven year old son Milo Machado Graner not excluded from the graphic court room exchanges, because that is better than getting the material distorted by the press and social media. In place of the usual dramatic disclosure finale, we get his aspirin experiment and the tearful cure of the dog and the boy's monologue about needing to construct certainty if it doesn't exist, which is about as thoughtful as these get.
This is a film which pushes its limits rather than take refuge in documentary or familiar dramatic flourishes. It is intriguing rather than convincing or polished. That and Huller's performance are what make it conspicuous.