Reviews

This is one of the last of the Italian sword-and-sandal reels and like "Ercole sfida Sansone" it's one of those points where the genre crosses over into turkeyland. The fighting looks cheesy (check out the scene where the rebels, some of them dressed as women, wigs and all, get into a fistfight with the Roman soldiers - both the impact sounds and the movements are miles off any real fighting), much of the script seems more like Robin Hood than antiquity and it's all on a disjointed comic-book level.

The acting is generally dire. Fun at times because it's so utter carelessly done, but nowhere near real excitement. If you're looking for adventurous men fighting a tyrant, try "Flash Gordon" instead.

Arriving at the dreary Busarewsky Hotel (the name, to Swedes, sounds both vaguely Central European and like a pun on 'busar', "goons") the young waiter Giliap soon finds himself in a maze of silent rules, gossip, violence and budding, pathetic revolt. But who can he trust? The film appears to be both absurd and over-the-top serious, and watching it you'll find yourself asking just where is it dead serious and where does satire or (self-)parody start? The slow tempo and long, brooding silences before sometimes outrageously weighted lines, the gloomy lighting and the sudden hysterical swings of the people in the film - all of this was certainly intended, but the purpose of the film is by no means clear, so the viewer has to decide for himself just what enemy Giliap is fighting or what he is searching.

If you've seen "Songs from the Second Floor" you'll recognize some of the style - the long, slow shots, the blunt, searching or unresponsive dialog lines, the dreary, somehow naked and unprotected facial expressions. This is the antithesis of "Beverly Hills 90210", but a very rewarding and sometimes weirdly funny movie experience.

This twisted cop mystery follows the efforts of the overworked Paris police to solve first, a murder in a couchette car, the dead body discovered only after all the other passengers left, and then the strange necking of many of the others before the cops can get to talk to them. There is great acting here from Signoret, Montand and others, and very amusing supporting parts (the seasoned crook and talker Bob will have you cracking up) but the film doesn't really hang together tight as a police mystery. I agree with an earlier reviewer that it spells trouble for you as a viewer that the passengers, whom we glimpse in half-darkness on the train, remain nameless for too long, and when they are identified by the police, the names are not steadily linked to faces.

It's confusing too that some of the characters suddenly muse into flashback kicking off from lines spoken to them on the train. This deepens them as characters but doesn't make the story concise. And at the police station, things are suddenly tossed in by phone calls in a way that looks haphazard. The root cause, I think, is that the film followed the book too closely, while Costa-Gavras knows how to create arresting, vivid scenes, he hasn't learnt at this point how to reimagine a storyline from writing so that it works on the screen, and so the movie seems a bit unfocused. When the final cause of the murders starts to crop up, it looks for too long like a joke element brought in for atmosphere.

It's not a bad movie at all; the photography is great, the final car chase is a winner (how often do you see a car chase in 1960s Paris?) and the acting is very good. Don't expect a murder story, though, with the tightness and relentless, upheld suspense of "Strangers On A Train" or even some episodes of "Columbo" or "Kojak".

Thanks to the internet and cable TV, the flow of porn and erotic movies is more pulsating and accessible than ever. While there's been attempts sometimes to profile "erotic movies" as a quality product, done out of a wish to express the joy of sex, the staples of the trade are still commercialized and the content often very raw. Alexa Wolf's documentary, made for Swedish public TV in 2000 but relevant far outside Sweden, attempts to show up the exploitative sex flick business, by often disgusting clips from hardcore porno movies and interviews with actresses, models, producers and others in the trade. She makes some sweeping claims about porno movies just growing out of general male domination of society, but it also fleshes out the link between how women are portrayed in the media and in porn, and the suppressed fear or timidity many girls feel in ordinary life.

Many of the clips speak for themselves in their brutality, and the interviews are telling, not least by what is not said. Predictacly, she chose the worst she could find, and predictably, defenders of libertarianism claimed that 'you gotta take the girls' word for it when they say, they're doing this stuff because they like it and make easy money" ', and also branded Ms Wolf as a lesbian fanatic. Critics even alleged that Ms Wolf should have asked the producers and models of the porno reels for permission to use extracts from their works.

The film compares interestingly with Lukas Moodysson's "Lilja 4-ever" which is more cogent artistically but explores much the same ground. Both films also make the point that this is an international phenomenon.

The couple at the center of Mai Zetterling's film are taken from a turbulent phase of Swedish literature, and Agnes von Krusenstjerna (1894-1940) and David Sprengel (1881-1941) made no secret of their need to upset the educated bourgeoisie/upper-class culture of their times and initiate scandal, while they continued to live, in some sense, a highly middle-class life in Stockholm. Ms von Krusenstjerna was one of the first writers in Sweden to explore the female experience of sexuality, of growing up a girl and of feeling disoriented in a world that was changing (she had been 20 when WWI broke out and rang the death-knell of the old order, though this wasn't obvious at once). but so far seemed shut-in to a woman; in particular.perhaps, to a lady grown up in the old nobility. The Krusenstjernas had been colonels and civil servants for centuries but were not a particularly flashy or wealthy family, it was the kind of clan where people will cling ever harder to old traditions in an uncertain new world.

Her mentor/husband/co-writer Sprengel spiced up her books with sometimes weirdly unbalanced homosexual and politically satiric episodes (in their lifetime, the books went out as written solely by Agnes, though some people in literary circles probably suspected that Sprengel had a hand in the pot). Her publishers abruptly dropped her as her books became more outspoken and Sprengel's contribution became more pronounced; they were printed in a semi-legal way by another publisher (who also shirked some of the author's royalty money) and the result was first no reviews at all, then a succès de scandale and a feverishly raging debate about the limits of freedom of print. To many Swedish women writers and artists (in particular), Agnes has reached iconic status. Mai Zetterling evidently read her early on and had filmed the very books that provoked the main offense in "Älskande par" in the sixties; they went down well in the "sexual revolution" climate but also for good acting. Through much of the seventies, she was absent from Swedish cinema and no doubt she felt estranged by the starkly political or popular agenda of many movie makers; "Amorosa" was a powerful comeback, even if not a box-office winner.

The film begins in Venice where Agnes is at a critical juncture; she feels she has come to a final showdown with her parents and relatives and has to fight for her right to write freely. At home, the debate about the books is raging, she receives letters from Nazis mock-inviting her to porno clubs, but wants to dare the public, and her family, even further. Her mental balance gives way, and in a splendid sequence she is taken away to an asylum, straitjacketed in a gondola in the dusky light. The film unfolds in a series of flashbacks from this point, and I won't give any spoilers to a non-Swedish audience.

Mai Zetterling was not out to make a completely realistic movie, just like her protagonist's books are not always tightly realistic. Some of the lines spoken do sound theatrical, but we shouldn't expect people living in an age when it could be seen as offensive for a woman to wear trousers, not to mention going to a gym or being nosy towards men - and this is just eighty years ago! - to talk in the skipping, devil-may-care way we do today.

There was no doubt lots of slang around, but it wouldn't have been accessible to an audience today, so Zetterling has plainly stylized the talk a little. The photography is magnificent throughout the film, with a baroque tinge, placing Agnes and David in deep perspectives, churches, palaces and mansions: you may be reminded of Jane Campion's "The Portrait Of A Lady". It's a joy to watch Stina Ekblad in this part, one of her first starring roles: she brings out Agnes' vulnerability, thoughtfulness and stubborn courage as she pushes into unknown territory. Her movements are in constant interplay with the surroundings, her voice moves from the dulcet and girlish to slashing hatred and despair (a polarity we glimpsed already in her role as Ismael in Bergman's "Fanny and Alexander"). This is not just a film for literary buffs or feminists, it's engaging and understandable quite apart from what you may know about its main characters.

Following up a successful first movie can be a difficult struggle; Kaurismäki deflected it after "Crime And Punishment" by quickly doing this one, completely different and very funny. We're treated to a number of Finnish derelicts and lower-class guys in a poor suburb of Helsinki, as they decide to mount an expedition to reach the Mayfair of the city (just get there, that is). You'll immediately notice that they talk of this as if there lay a strange and superhuman challenge in just reaching the place. As their trials begin, we realize that maybe Helsinki _is_ a really dangerous city.

The film is full of scenes of weird comedy and pinpoint satire, and as an extra accent every one of the men is called Frank, except one. The film really rocks, and you'll keep wondering what happens next.

I saw this documentary investigation on TV recently, and it seems obvious it raises some questions about the Cold War era and about the kind of pressures that may apply in a courtroom. We'll probably never know just how far Julius Rosenberg, in particular, was involved in the top ranks of Soviet espionage on the U.S., or why he took what he must have known were grave personal risks to himself and his family. The accusation at the time that he'd "sold the secret of the atomic bomb to the Russians" was certainly an exaggeration; other people like Klaus Fuchs and British physicists seem to have handed over much more, and anyone interested in the era and the Soviet infiltration of the Manhattan project should read Allen Weinstein's "The Haunted Wood" - a pioneer work on Soviet espionage in America in the 40s and early 50s, written together with an ex-KGB veteran, and a book that makes real use of the Russian intelligence archives. One point he makes is that the NKVD (the KGB of the time) espionage activity in the U.S. seems to have declined sharply in the late 40s, and it had become really hard to find new agents (Mr Rosenberg may have been recruited as early as around 1940).

Anyway, Meeropol's film takes no unequivocal stance on her grandparents' innocence. Her father believed in it for a long time, but he points out that the Venona telegrams (released in '95) seem to put this in doubt. On the other hand, the question of just why the atomic bombs were used on Japan is still debated among historians. The clips of Nixon ("if you set out to shoot rats, make sure you shoot'em straight!") and McCarthy make a powerful, if a bit predictable, picture of the paranoia. I just read a review in the ultra-right Frontpage magazine which poured venom on this film, labeling it a clever and cold propaganda work, meant to exonerate the Rosenbergs. This is bullshit; the movie is much more about the human cost of this sort of heavily publicized show trials, and about how even the nearest relatives drew off (not *one* of the next-of-kin would pick up the Rosenberg boys after the trial and execution). In one poignantly funny scene, Ms Meeropol's father recalls how he realized the role of David Greenglass in giving away his parents - he still had to pay a heavy price - and says: "I wanted to go to whatever little place where he lived now, sneak up behind him and purr "Ex-con!" He'd say, No, wait a minute, just don't talk that loud - and I'd raise my voice to a shattering "EX-CON!!" "

Of course, a while later, Ivy Meeropol tells him (and us) how she felt exactly the same when she read about the case in school.

The Rosenbergs were just two of the many people who were credited with low motives and acts of treason in these years, but because they seem so everyday (in a positive sense) the fragments of their story get all the more poignant.