The Wages of Fear is Henri-Georges Clouzot's masterpiece, and probably the most suspenseful film ever made. Not only is it a sustained two and a half hours of nail-biting, but also a great examination of poverty, courage, American exploitation of Latin America, desperation, and the lengths that people will go to just to survive. Plus it's got humor, great characters, and most importantly, is entertaining as all hell. It's a damn-near perfect film.
The story concern four guys desperate to earn some cash, with the lead being Yves Montand as Mario. They are hired by an American oil company to deliver two trucks of nitroglycerin to an oil well that burst into flames. They have to drive extremely carefully because the canisters can explode if they are jostled too roughly. Oh, and the path to the oil well is rocky, with twisted mountainous roads, rotting bridges, dips in the road, and other disasters in their path. Mario's partner, a fellow Frenchman named Jo who was an arrogant toughguy who pounded his chest and stuck guns in people's stomachs, turns out to be a pants-shitting coward who makes Mario's trip all the more difficult. Two hours of tension ensue.
What I love about this movie is that the first half hour is devoted to fleshing out the environment that these characters live in, their personalities, and how everyone treats each other. Mario's a bit of an asshole but also likable, and everyone's abrasive personality stems from the desperation of their environment. There's no jobs, no money, and no hope of escape. These characters are truly stuck in place and can't get out, so it makes sense that they would jump at the chance to sign up for a job that is, in effect, a suicide mission. In fact, the danger of the job doesn't even seem to register for the characters until they are in the trucks and driving. When they get hired, they are all smiles and good cheer, thinking ahead to the money they'll be getting at the end, without seriously considering that they will probably die on the journey.
There are a lot of great scenes of the trip, with the most famous being the tobacco in Jo's cigarette being blown away when one of the trucks explodes. I think one of the scenes I liked the best was the one immediately following, when Mario and Jo come across a dip in the road where the explosion took place. They need to get across, but it's rapidly filling up will oil. Jo goes in to guide Mario along, but in the process he is unable to move out of the way fast enough and gets his leg crushed by the truck. Mario clearly likes Jo, but his frustration with Jo's cowardice combined with the need to finish the job combine to make this scene tragic and understandable at the same time. When he's driving the truck to the destination with a dying Jo cradled in his arms you feel that he does care for him and is heartbroken by his death, a death that he is responsible for. It's a punch to the gut, but you don't blame Mario for what he did.
The ending is, for me, the only real false note in this film. On one hand, I get the irony: Mario spent so much time having to drive carefully that now he's able to be a bit more reckless, and this leads to his demise because he had the illusion of his own control over his truck. However, even with this being my second viewing, I still thought, "that was stupid." I'm not sure how else Clouzot could have ended this movie, but this felt kind of obvious and I personally didn't like it. It's not that I loved Mario so much that I felt it was an unnecessary move to kill him, it just felt cheap to me, and it certainly wasn't helped by the cheesiness of his girlfriend Linda fainting at the same time.
Regardless of the ending, The Wages of Fear is one of the best suspense films ever made, and one of the most entertaining films in the Criterion Collection. By now you know that I rank my enjoyment of a film above all else, so for now this film is going into the top ten. Surprisingly, I can't put it over Andrei Rublev because once I finished watching this movie, I was good. I can probably wait another year or so before watching it again, but I'm still wanting to put aside three hours to rewatch Andrei. Meanwhile, I do think this was a more entertaining film for me than High and Low, so #9 seems to be a fair spot.
The List
Next time: I get some much-needed comedy when I go on a journey with Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits.
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Friday, October 16, 2015
35. Les Diaboliques: The greatest non-Hitchcock Hitchcock film
Henri-Georges Clouzot's film Les Diaboliques is the best film Hitchcock never made. Not that Hitchcock didn't try; the film is based on the book She Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, and apparently Clouzot beat Hitchcock for the film rights by mere hours. It certainly feels like a Hitchcock film, with the only things missing being two Hollywood stars as the leads, a Bernard Herrmann score, dry British wit and a dose a fetishism.
The film is about a murder plot between the wife and mistress of an asshole headmaster. He's drugged and drowned in a bathtub, with his body brought back to the school and dumped in the swimming pool. Part of their plot it to make it look like he drowned in the pool, so they ask the groundskeeper to drain it. Lo and behold, the pool's drained and there's no body to be found. Bit by bit evidence pops up that the headmaster is still alive, the women are terrified, a nosy detective gets involved, the film film ends with a fun twist that's only slightly ruined by the "law and justice prevails" angle at the end.
The story's fun, but the reason for watching is to see how Clouzot ties the viewer in knots, with a standout scene being the headmaster confronting his wife just before drinking his drugged-up liquor. The scene keeps playing with the viewer even though we know the outcome of this scene, even if we've never seen the film before. You know he's going to drink the liquor, but the way the scene goes back and forth, continually bringing the bottle into the frame, then the liquor being poured into the bottle, then the wife's change of heart knocking the glass away...it's magnificent. When the asshole finally chugs it down and asks for more it's entirely believable. The scene of the headmaster drowning feels cathartic after seeing him smack his wife around, and the bathtub scene later in the film is a brilliant shitting-in-your-pants climax. I normally spoil the shit out of the movies I review here, but if you've never seen this film I really don't want to ruin it.
The acting across the board is great, with Simone Signoret playing a great, cold blonde femme fatale. Vera Clouzot (the director's wife) does a great job playing the mousy, terrified wife of the headmaster, and her final scene is both heartbreaking a bit funny, at the same time. It reminded me of Marion Cotillard's final scene in The Dark Knight Rises. Finally, Paul Meurisse's turn as the dickhead headmaster (dickheadmaster?) is delicious, and really want this mother fucker to meet the worst possible end. I mean, he's feeding the kids at his school spoiled fish, for Christ's sake.
I've seen this film three times now and I still love it. It has a French bitchiness to it that I find delightful, and the fact that Clouzot doesn't go overboard with horror tropes makes this a subtler, vastly better film than what you typically get in the genre. It a bit hard to rank this one because as much as I like it I have to admit that there's a coldness to it, similar to what I get in Hitchcock's films. The emotional remove is a big deal for me, and I know that Clouzot can have both suspense and emotion working together (at least, that's what I remember from when I saw The Wages of Fear). It's a brilliant entry in the horror genre, easily one of the best, but because I didn't feel an attachment to any of the characters I feel like I have to rank this one lower than I expect most people would. I think #15, between Walkabout and The Killer is a fair ranking.
I mentioned yesterday that the size of the list was starting to get a tad out of control. Therefore I've created a separate blog to house just the list itself. Good thing Blogger lets me create as many of these fucking things as I want. Here it is:
The Master List
Next time: The Clouzot double feature ends with The Wages of Fear, which came out the year before this film did. Why the fuck does the Criterion Collection keep doing this? Assholes.
The film is about a murder plot between the wife and mistress of an asshole headmaster. He's drugged and drowned in a bathtub, with his body brought back to the school and dumped in the swimming pool. Part of their plot it to make it look like he drowned in the pool, so they ask the groundskeeper to drain it. Lo and behold, the pool's drained and there's no body to be found. Bit by bit evidence pops up that the headmaster is still alive, the women are terrified, a nosy detective gets involved, the film film ends with a fun twist that's only slightly ruined by the "law and justice prevails" angle at the end.
The story's fun, but the reason for watching is to see how Clouzot ties the viewer in knots, with a standout scene being the headmaster confronting his wife just before drinking his drugged-up liquor. The scene keeps playing with the viewer even though we know the outcome of this scene, even if we've never seen the film before. You know he's going to drink the liquor, but the way the scene goes back and forth, continually bringing the bottle into the frame, then the liquor being poured into the bottle, then the wife's change of heart knocking the glass away...it's magnificent. When the asshole finally chugs it down and asks for more it's entirely believable. The scene of the headmaster drowning feels cathartic after seeing him smack his wife around, and the bathtub scene later in the film is a brilliant shitting-in-your-pants climax. I normally spoil the shit out of the movies I review here, but if you've never seen this film I really don't want to ruin it.
The acting across the board is great, with Simone Signoret playing a great, cold blonde femme fatale. Vera Clouzot (the director's wife) does a great job playing the mousy, terrified wife of the headmaster, and her final scene is both heartbreaking a bit funny, at the same time. It reminded me of Marion Cotillard's final scene in The Dark Knight Rises. Finally, Paul Meurisse's turn as the dickhead headmaster (dickheadmaster?) is delicious, and really want this mother fucker to meet the worst possible end. I mean, he's feeding the kids at his school spoiled fish, for Christ's sake.
I've seen this film three times now and I still love it. It has a French bitchiness to it that I find delightful, and the fact that Clouzot doesn't go overboard with horror tropes makes this a subtler, vastly better film than what you typically get in the genre. It a bit hard to rank this one because as much as I like it I have to admit that there's a coldness to it, similar to what I get in Hitchcock's films. The emotional remove is a big deal for me, and I know that Clouzot can have both suspense and emotion working together (at least, that's what I remember from when I saw The Wages of Fear). It's a brilliant entry in the horror genre, easily one of the best, but because I didn't feel an attachment to any of the characters I feel like I have to rank this one lower than I expect most people would. I think #15, between Walkabout and The Killer is a fair ranking.
I mentioned yesterday that the size of the list was starting to get a tad out of control. Therefore I've created a separate blog to house just the list itself. Good thing Blogger lets me create as many of these fucking things as I want. Here it is:
The Master List
Next time: The Clouzot double feature ends with The Wages of Fear, which came out the year before this film did. Why the fuck does the Criterion Collection keep doing this? Assholes.
Thursday, October 15, 2015
34. Andrei Rublev: It's not as boring as you'd think!
Andrei Rublev is one of the films that I was the most excited about revisiting. I watched it years ago, before seeing Solaris and Stalker and becoming a fan of director Andrei Tarkovsky's style, and I distinctly remember finding it to be boring as shit. I can take slow-moving sci fi, but on the first go it's typically pretty hard for me to dig a slow-moving historical. Thankfully, now that I like his style, this viewing was much easier going, and I ended this three-hour odyssey looking forward to watching it again. That's a special kind of film.
The film is split into eight chapters, and if I can be completely honest here, chapters 1-5 are still somewhat rough going for me. I can dig the art, and I like the slow build of Andrei's character here, but a lot of it feels like set up for the disaster around the corner with the raid. Much of the early story didn't feel all that clear to me, and I kept forgetting who Andrei was for awhile. It isn't until Andrei goes into the forest and sees the nude dancing pagans that I was finally able to follow his personal/spiritual journey. Maybe the nudity was able to help me concentrate. Whatever it was, from that point I was back in the story and ready to dive into the second half of the film.
The Tartar raid is one of those majestic scenes that you kind of just watch with slack-jawed awe. The camera swoops around as horses storm into town, setting homes on fire and slaughtering civilians. When they break into the church and start their search for gold it shifts into a torture scene that doesn't show a lot, but it hard to take given the context. This entire chapter is brilliant from beginning to end, and ranks as one of the best things Tarkovsky's ever done. This is shortly followed by the second best thing he's ever done: the Bell chapter. This sections deals with a bellmaker's son constructing a gigantic bell that apparently only he knows how to make. Sounds dull, but when you watch it it's fucking amazing. Andrei shows up less in this section and most of it concerns the son, but it's such a powerful section with a great ending that it kind of envelops you in it.
The film ends with some color shots of Andrei's paintings, then goes back to black and white for a shot of some horses kicking it by a river. To give you an idea of Tarkovsky's pacing, this scene goes on for 10 minutes. That's 10 minutes of dialog-free camera pans over old paintings. If you can hang with that, then this movie's for you. Surprisingly, this time around, I loved it. I mean, I just spent three hours hanging out with this guy and seeing all the shit he dealt with in his life. I felt like he earned several minutes of contemplation over his work.
My favorite Tarkovsky film is still Stalker, but this one's a masterpiece and required viewing. I can't stress enough how engrossing this film becomes as you stick with it, and once again, I want to rewatch it sometime soon. That's an impressive feat for a long, slow historical film about a painter. This one's a top ten film right now, and I'm having a bitch of a time figuring out where to put it. My inclination for right now is to sandwich it between High and Low and Shock Corridor. It's a better film than Shock Corridor, but I love High and Low so much that I'm struggling to put this above it. You know what? Fuck it. I'm going to place this at #8, between Grand Illusion and High and Low. I didn't feel like immediately rewatching High and Low the last time I saw it, so Andrei Rublev has the edge here.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. Andrei Rublev (1966)
9. High and Low (1963)
10. Shock Corridor (1963)
11. Hard Boiled (1992)
12. Sid and Nancy (1986)
13. The 400 Blows (1959)
14. Walkabout (1971)
15. The Killer (1989)
16. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
17. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
18. Dead Ringers (1988)
19. Great Expectations (1946)
20. The Naked Kiss (1964)
21. A Night to Remember (1958)
22. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
23. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
24. The Long Good Friday (1980)
25. Blood For Dracula (1974)
26. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
27. Amarcord (1973)
28. Oliver Twist (1948)
29. Nanook of the North (1922)
30. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
31. Summertime (1955)
32. Alphaville (1965)
I'm noticing that, at 32 entries, constantly posting the list is starting to get unwieldy. I'm not sure how to remedy this. I should probably keep the list saved on another site and just keep updating it there instead of including it with every single post. Hopefully I'll have something figured out by next week.
Next time: I start yet another double feature! This time it's Henri-Georges Clouzot, and I start with his classic horror film Les Diaboliques.
The film is split into eight chapters, and if I can be completely honest here, chapters 1-5 are still somewhat rough going for me. I can dig the art, and I like the slow build of Andrei's character here, but a lot of it feels like set up for the disaster around the corner with the raid. Much of the early story didn't feel all that clear to me, and I kept forgetting who Andrei was for awhile. It isn't until Andrei goes into the forest and sees the nude dancing pagans that I was finally able to follow his personal/spiritual journey. Maybe the nudity was able to help me concentrate. Whatever it was, from that point I was back in the story and ready to dive into the second half of the film.
The Tartar raid is one of those majestic scenes that you kind of just watch with slack-jawed awe. The camera swoops around as horses storm into town, setting homes on fire and slaughtering civilians. When they break into the church and start their search for gold it shifts into a torture scene that doesn't show a lot, but it hard to take given the context. This entire chapter is brilliant from beginning to end, and ranks as one of the best things Tarkovsky's ever done. This is shortly followed by the second best thing he's ever done: the Bell chapter. This sections deals with a bellmaker's son constructing a gigantic bell that apparently only he knows how to make. Sounds dull, but when you watch it it's fucking amazing. Andrei shows up less in this section and most of it concerns the son, but it's such a powerful section with a great ending that it kind of envelops you in it.
The film ends with some color shots of Andrei's paintings, then goes back to black and white for a shot of some horses kicking it by a river. To give you an idea of Tarkovsky's pacing, this scene goes on for 10 minutes. That's 10 minutes of dialog-free camera pans over old paintings. If you can hang with that, then this movie's for you. Surprisingly, this time around, I loved it. I mean, I just spent three hours hanging out with this guy and seeing all the shit he dealt with in his life. I felt like he earned several minutes of contemplation over his work.
My favorite Tarkovsky film is still Stalker, but this one's a masterpiece and required viewing. I can't stress enough how engrossing this film becomes as you stick with it, and once again, I want to rewatch it sometime soon. That's an impressive feat for a long, slow historical film about a painter. This one's a top ten film right now, and I'm having a bitch of a time figuring out where to put it. My inclination for right now is to sandwich it between High and Low and Shock Corridor. It's a better film than Shock Corridor, but I love High and Low so much that I'm struggling to put this above it. You know what? Fuck it. I'm going to place this at #8, between Grand Illusion and High and Low. I didn't feel like immediately rewatching High and Low the last time I saw it, so Andrei Rublev has the edge here.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. Andrei Rublev (1966)
9. High and Low (1963)
10. Shock Corridor (1963)
11. Hard Boiled (1992)
12. Sid and Nancy (1986)
13. The 400 Blows (1959)
14. Walkabout (1971)
15. The Killer (1989)
16. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
17. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
18. Dead Ringers (1988)
19. Great Expectations (1946)
20. The Naked Kiss (1964)
21. A Night to Remember (1958)
22. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
23. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
24. The Long Good Friday (1980)
25. Blood For Dracula (1974)
26. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
27. Amarcord (1973)
28. Oliver Twist (1948)
29. Nanook of the North (1922)
30. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
31. Summertime (1955)
32. Alphaville (1965)
I'm noticing that, at 32 entries, constantly posting the list is starting to get unwieldy. I'm not sure how to remedy this. I should probably keep the list saved on another site and just keep updating it there instead of including it with every single post. Hopefully I'll have something figured out by next week.
Next time: I start yet another double feature! This time it's Henri-Georges Clouzot, and I start with his classic horror film Les Diaboliques.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
33. Nanook of the North vs Oliver Twist (not really)
In the course of my life I've probably seen Nanook of the North five or six times. The first time was because I'd heard about how important this film was and, like Un Chien Andalou and Birth of a Nation, there are a handful of films that are required viewing if you're serious about film as an art. Those three films have also popped up every time I've taken a film course, and I know that two of my viewings of Nanook were due to taking a class on documentaries twice. Nanook is a film where it's impossible to overstate its importance, since it invented the feature-length documentary genre (I'm sure there were some before this, but Nanook was a sensation). It's also intriguing because, even though it's a documentary, it's jam-packed with bullshit.
I really like this film, but as I've gotten older I've come to see this more as a regular film instead of as a living document of the Eskimo lifestyle. It's got slapstick gags in it (like Nanook's family coming out of a small canoe one after another, his fight with the walrus) and goofy shit where Nanook is clearly playing to the camera (chewing on a record when he already knew damn well what a record was). There are impossible interior shots of an igloo where you can even see where half of it was removed to get light in, based on some sharp shadows. But really, I'm not one of those nitpickers who's going to dislike a documentary because it isn't entirely true. I watch films for entertainment, and on that point, Nanook is delightful.
Nanook himself is a very charismatic figure, and you're rooting for him throughout the film, even as he's sliding a knife through some walrus blubber. He's got a great smile, and his children ranks as some of the most adorable you'll see, especially in a scene where Nanook is busting his ass trying to make an igloo while his kids slide down a hill. While some of his adventures aren't "real" in a documentary sense, nearly all of them are entertaining. For the perverts out there, this film also operates under the "exotic breasts are allowed" rule, which is surprising given the 1922 release date. Director Robert Flaherty takes advantage of the landscape and gets some amazing shots, and you really feel the frozen atmosphere in this movie.
Even after several viewings, I still like this movie quite a bit, and it still breaks my heart knowing that Nanook died shortly after filming wrapped. He comes across as this larger than life figure who can tame the elements and survive even under the worst conditions, so his death really does knock you down after the high of this movie. I've heard several stories about the making of this film, including that Flaherty was apparently screwing one of Nanook's daughters and had a kid with her. I can't verify this, but apparently his wife knew about it and was OK with it. That's not relevant to what I thought of this movie, but hey, it's pretty interesting.
Ranking documentaries is a bit tough for me, since it's kind of light pitting A Brief History of Time against The Sound and the Fury. If I strip away the "reality" aspect of this and rank it as an entertaining piece of filmmaking, I think I'd put it just below Oliver Twist and right above Salo. That seems like an impossibly low ranking for such an important film, but as I've stated, importance doesn't factor into my personal enjoyment of a movie, and while I do find Nanook to be a charming film, I just don't see it as more of an enjoyable experience than most of the other Criterion films I've seen so far. Is Blood For Dracula "better" than Nanook? No, clearly not, but given the choice, I'd watch Dracula over Nanook again in a heartbeat.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. High and Low (1963)
9. Shock Corridor (1963)
10. Hard Boiled (1992)
11. Sid and Nancy (1986)
12. The 400 Blows (1959)
13. Walkabout (1971)
14. The Killer (1989)
15. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
16. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
17. Dead Ringers (1988)
18. Great Expectations (1946)
19. The Naked Kiss (1964)
20. A Night to Remember (1958)
21. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
22. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
23. The Long Good Friday (1980)
24. Blood For Dracula (1974)
25. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
26. Amarcord (1973)
27. Oliver Twist (1948)
28. Nanook of the North (1922)
29. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
30. Summertime (1955)
31. Alphaville (1965)
Next time: I spent three delightful hours watching Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev.
I really like this film, but as I've gotten older I've come to see this more as a regular film instead of as a living document of the Eskimo lifestyle. It's got slapstick gags in it (like Nanook's family coming out of a small canoe one after another, his fight with the walrus) and goofy shit where Nanook is clearly playing to the camera (chewing on a record when he already knew damn well what a record was). There are impossible interior shots of an igloo where you can even see where half of it was removed to get light in, based on some sharp shadows. But really, I'm not one of those nitpickers who's going to dislike a documentary because it isn't entirely true. I watch films for entertainment, and on that point, Nanook is delightful.
Nanook himself is a very charismatic figure, and you're rooting for him throughout the film, even as he's sliding a knife through some walrus blubber. He's got a great smile, and his children ranks as some of the most adorable you'll see, especially in a scene where Nanook is busting his ass trying to make an igloo while his kids slide down a hill. While some of his adventures aren't "real" in a documentary sense, nearly all of them are entertaining. For the perverts out there, this film also operates under the "exotic breasts are allowed" rule, which is surprising given the 1922 release date. Director Robert Flaherty takes advantage of the landscape and gets some amazing shots, and you really feel the frozen atmosphere in this movie.
Even after several viewings, I still like this movie quite a bit, and it still breaks my heart knowing that Nanook died shortly after filming wrapped. He comes across as this larger than life figure who can tame the elements and survive even under the worst conditions, so his death really does knock you down after the high of this movie. I've heard several stories about the making of this film, including that Flaherty was apparently screwing one of Nanook's daughters and had a kid with her. I can't verify this, but apparently his wife knew about it and was OK with it. That's not relevant to what I thought of this movie, but hey, it's pretty interesting.
Ranking documentaries is a bit tough for me, since it's kind of light pitting A Brief History of Time against The Sound and the Fury. If I strip away the "reality" aspect of this and rank it as an entertaining piece of filmmaking, I think I'd put it just below Oliver Twist and right above Salo. That seems like an impossibly low ranking for such an important film, but as I've stated, importance doesn't factor into my personal enjoyment of a movie, and while I do find Nanook to be a charming film, I just don't see it as more of an enjoyable experience than most of the other Criterion films I've seen so far. Is Blood For Dracula "better" than Nanook? No, clearly not, but given the choice, I'd watch Dracula over Nanook again in a heartbeat.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. High and Low (1963)
9. Shock Corridor (1963)
10. Hard Boiled (1992)
11. Sid and Nancy (1986)
12. The 400 Blows (1959)
13. Walkabout (1971)
14. The Killer (1989)
15. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
16. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
17. Dead Ringers (1988)
18. Great Expectations (1946)
19. The Naked Kiss (1964)
20. A Night to Remember (1958)
21. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
22. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
23. The Long Good Friday (1980)
24. Blood For Dracula (1974)
25. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
26. Amarcord (1973)
27. Oliver Twist (1948)
28. Nanook of the North (1922)
29. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
30. Summertime (1955)
31. Alphaville (1965)
Next time: I spent three delightful hours watching Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
32. Oliver Twist: More of the same
Oliver Twist is David Lean's follow up to his successful adaptation of Great Expectations. A lot of the same cast and crew work on both films, so there's a nice consistency between the two. However, and this is a problem when viewing the Criterion Collection in order, when you watch these films back to back, you really feel the similarities and Oliver Twist kind of suffers for it. I think that, had there been a gap of several movies between the two, I may have viewed this movie in a fresher light. But immediately following Great Expectations? I'm just about done with orphans.
It doesn't help that the title character is dull in the extreme. John Howard Davies is just a blank canvas to bounce the other characters off of, with his only highlight being a scene early on where he beats the shit out of someone who's talking smack about his dead mother. Aside from that, he's just this adorable looking boy who goes from one location to another while various scumbags are plotting all around him. Alec Guinness is at his Shylock best as Fagin, looking disturbing as hell while teaching the street urchins how to properly pick pockets. Francis Sullivan is back, this time as a mean fat dude who likes beating the kids in his orphanage, and while he has some good scenes, he's not as fun as he was in Great Expectations.
Really, most of the praise I had for Great Expectations could easily be transferred over here. Lean's direction is brilliant, the film looks gorgeous, the cast is excellent overall, and it works both as a film and as an adaptation of a classic novel. My main problem seems to be orphan fatigue and also that I just don't find this story as compelling as Great Expectations. It's alright, but I'm already sick of the super mega happy orphan ending that Dickens uses. Also, how happy am I supposed to be for Oliver when he's barely in the movie during the second half? We're mostly privy to scheming assholes and murder, and while it's good stuff, it's also hard to maintain an interest in the lead. That's what I was feeling anyhow. I want to come back to this one later, but right now I don't want to see another Dickens adaptation for awhile.
It seems obvious that I'm going to rank this lower than Great Expectations, but I don't want to put this one too low because I honestly feel that external factors are weighing in on how I viewed this movie. I really want to give it another shot at some point because I don't know how much of my reaction was based on seeing it so soon after the previous film. It could just be that this particular story didn't connect with me all that much. Give me something like Ragged Dick over this, or a story where the orphan plays a larger role in the direction of his life outside of just running away from an abusive home. Fuck it. For now, I'm putting this at #27, just below Amarcord. I feel like I have similar issues with both of these films, but I liked Amarcord a bit more. Maybe it's just the tobacconist.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. High and Low (1963)
9. Shock Corridor (1963)
10. Hard Boiled (1992)
11. Sid and Nancy (1986)
12. The 400 Blows (1959)
13. Walkabout (1971)
14. The Killer (1989)
15. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
16. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
17. Dead Ringers (1988)
18. Great Expectations (1946)
19. The Naked Kiss (1964)
20. A Night to Remember (1958)
21. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
22. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
23. The Long Good Friday (1980)
24. Blood For Dracula (1974)
25. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
26. Amarcord (1973)
27. Oliver Twist (1948)
28. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
29. Summertime (1955)
30. Alphaville (1965)
Next time: I go up and kick it with Nanook of the North for probably the fifth or sixth time in my life.
It doesn't help that the title character is dull in the extreme. John Howard Davies is just a blank canvas to bounce the other characters off of, with his only highlight being a scene early on where he beats the shit out of someone who's talking smack about his dead mother. Aside from that, he's just this adorable looking boy who goes from one location to another while various scumbags are plotting all around him. Alec Guinness is at his Shylock best as Fagin, looking disturbing as hell while teaching the street urchins how to properly pick pockets. Francis Sullivan is back, this time as a mean fat dude who likes beating the kids in his orphanage, and while he has some good scenes, he's not as fun as he was in Great Expectations.
Really, most of the praise I had for Great Expectations could easily be transferred over here. Lean's direction is brilliant, the film looks gorgeous, the cast is excellent overall, and it works both as a film and as an adaptation of a classic novel. My main problem seems to be orphan fatigue and also that I just don't find this story as compelling as Great Expectations. It's alright, but I'm already sick of the super mega happy orphan ending that Dickens uses. Also, how happy am I supposed to be for Oliver when he's barely in the movie during the second half? We're mostly privy to scheming assholes and murder, and while it's good stuff, it's also hard to maintain an interest in the lead. That's what I was feeling anyhow. I want to come back to this one later, but right now I don't want to see another Dickens adaptation for awhile.
It seems obvious that I'm going to rank this lower than Great Expectations, but I don't want to put this one too low because I honestly feel that external factors are weighing in on how I viewed this movie. I really want to give it another shot at some point because I don't know how much of my reaction was based on seeing it so soon after the previous film. It could just be that this particular story didn't connect with me all that much. Give me something like Ragged Dick over this, or a story where the orphan plays a larger role in the direction of his life outside of just running away from an abusive home. Fuck it. For now, I'm putting this at #27, just below Amarcord. I feel like I have similar issues with both of these films, but I liked Amarcord a bit more. Maybe it's just the tobacconist.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. High and Low (1963)
9. Shock Corridor (1963)
10. Hard Boiled (1992)
11. Sid and Nancy (1986)
12. The 400 Blows (1959)
13. Walkabout (1971)
14. The Killer (1989)
15. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
16. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
17. Dead Ringers (1988)
18. Great Expectations (1946)
19. The Naked Kiss (1964)
20. A Night to Remember (1958)
21. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
22. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
23. The Long Good Friday (1980)
24. Blood For Dracula (1974)
25. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
26. Amarcord (1973)
27. Oliver Twist (1948)
28. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
29. Summertime (1955)
30. Alphaville (1965)
Next time: I go up and kick it with Nanook of the North for probably the fifth or sixth time in my life.
Monday, October 12, 2015
31. Great Expectations: Everything you could hope for!
Adaptations of classic literature are always iffy for me because a lot of the time it feels like a ton of plot is being crammed into a short runtime. At just under two hours Great Expectations is able to get enough of the story in to be one of the best Charles Dickens ever made, and director David Lean is enough of a master of the craft to make this great cinema. This is the second time that I've seen this film, and while it's not one that I was looking forward to viewing, I enjoyed it immensely the second time around because it's gorgeous, touching, and funny as hell.
The film is split almost evenly between Pip as a boy and Pip as a man. John Mills is fine as adult Pip, but I preferred Anthony Wager's scared expression and insecurity when dealing with Miss Havisham (the brilliant Martita Hunt) and Estella (an early performance by Jean Simmons). These early scenes are table setting, but being introduced to the dilapidated world of Miss Havisham deserves all the time that gets lavished on it, and really could have used some more. Her house feels like something out of a Universal horror film, covered with spider webs, rats and rotting curtains. Havisham herself is bitter and is downright gleeful when telling Estella that she can break his heart, but what I love is that she is never personally mean to Pip. She treats him sweetly, all the while vicariously taking revenge on all men by having Estella behave like a snarling cunt to him.
Simmons' performance as young Estella one-note but works. Valerie Hobson does much better as adult Estella, with a deadened cruelty that doesn't take joy in torturing Pip; she just does this because that's all she knows how to do. Alec Guinness has a fun role as Pip's roommate Herbert Pocket, but the heart of this film is in the escaped convict Abel Magwitch (Finlay Currie), who is both terrifying and lovable at the same time. I also liked Francis Sullivan as the lawyer Mr. Jaggers, but that's mainly because gruff fat dudes with deep voices are a personal favorite cinematic character for me. Nearly everyone in the cast is superb, with nary a fall note in any of the performances. Sure, Mills plays Pip as something of a saint, but fuck it, you still like the guy and keep rooting for him.
I love some of Lean's choices here, and this is one of my favorite films of his. A surprising moment is a terrified Pip running through a farmer and hearing angry accusations from a bunch of cows. The film hits all the right notes, with Havisham being portrayed as the tragic figure she really is and the romance between Pip and Estella actually working in the end. It moves at a brisk pace and doesn't feel either like a two hour film nor an adaption of a classic novel. It's just a damn fine movie.
All that sounds like I'd be ranking this film pretty high, but that's not the case. I enjoyed this movie a lot, but I'm probably not going to watch it again. Also, while Lean is a great director and this is one of my favorite films of his, he falls into that category of directors who I like and respect, but not one who particularly excites me. This film is a masterpiece and deserves all the praise that gets heaped on it, but it's not a film that I personally would go on raving to people about. It's odd, but there you go. Sometimes a brilliant movie that I really like won't get ranked as high as lesser movies that nonetheless stick in my head for years after the fact. #18 seems fair.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. High and Low (1963)
9. Shock Corridor (1963)
10. Hard Boiled (1992)
11. Sid and Nancy (1986)
12. The 400 Blows (1959)
13. Walkabout (1971)
14. The Killer (1989)
15. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
16. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
17. Dead Ringers (1988)
18. Great Expectations (1946)
19. The Naked Kiss (1964)
20. A Night to Remember (1958)
21. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
22. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
23. The Long Good Friday (1980)
24. Blood For Dracula (1974)
25. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
26. Amarcord (1973)
27. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
28. Summertime (1955)
29. Alphaville (1965)
Next time: the Lean/Dickens double feature ends with Oliver Twist. Since much of the same cast and crew returns, I'm expecting more brilliance. Don't let me down, Lean.
The film is split almost evenly between Pip as a boy and Pip as a man. John Mills is fine as adult Pip, but I preferred Anthony Wager's scared expression and insecurity when dealing with Miss Havisham (the brilliant Martita Hunt) and Estella (an early performance by Jean Simmons). These early scenes are table setting, but being introduced to the dilapidated world of Miss Havisham deserves all the time that gets lavished on it, and really could have used some more. Her house feels like something out of a Universal horror film, covered with spider webs, rats and rotting curtains. Havisham herself is bitter and is downright gleeful when telling Estella that she can break his heart, but what I love is that she is never personally mean to Pip. She treats him sweetly, all the while vicariously taking revenge on all men by having Estella behave like a snarling cunt to him.
Simmons' performance as young Estella one-note but works. Valerie Hobson does much better as adult Estella, with a deadened cruelty that doesn't take joy in torturing Pip; she just does this because that's all she knows how to do. Alec Guinness has a fun role as Pip's roommate Herbert Pocket, but the heart of this film is in the escaped convict Abel Magwitch (Finlay Currie), who is both terrifying and lovable at the same time. I also liked Francis Sullivan as the lawyer Mr. Jaggers, but that's mainly because gruff fat dudes with deep voices are a personal favorite cinematic character for me. Nearly everyone in the cast is superb, with nary a fall note in any of the performances. Sure, Mills plays Pip as something of a saint, but fuck it, you still like the guy and keep rooting for him.
I love some of Lean's choices here, and this is one of my favorite films of his. A surprising moment is a terrified Pip running through a farmer and hearing angry accusations from a bunch of cows. The film hits all the right notes, with Havisham being portrayed as the tragic figure she really is and the romance between Pip and Estella actually working in the end. It moves at a brisk pace and doesn't feel either like a two hour film nor an adaption of a classic novel. It's just a damn fine movie.
All that sounds like I'd be ranking this film pretty high, but that's not the case. I enjoyed this movie a lot, but I'm probably not going to watch it again. Also, while Lean is a great director and this is one of my favorite films of his, he falls into that category of directors who I like and respect, but not one who particularly excites me. This film is a masterpiece and deserves all the praise that gets heaped on it, but it's not a film that I personally would go on raving to people about. It's odd, but there you go. Sometimes a brilliant movie that I really like won't get ranked as high as lesser movies that nonetheless stick in my head for years after the fact. #18 seems fair.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. High and Low (1963)
9. Shock Corridor (1963)
10. Hard Boiled (1992)
11. Sid and Nancy (1986)
12. The 400 Blows (1959)
13. Walkabout (1971)
14. The Killer (1989)
15. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
16. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
17. Dead Ringers (1988)
18. Great Expectations (1946)
19. The Naked Kiss (1964)
20. A Night to Remember (1958)
21. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
22. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
23. The Long Good Friday (1980)
24. Blood For Dracula (1974)
25. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
26. Amarcord (1973)
27. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
28. Summertime (1955)
29. Alphaville (1965)
Next time: the Lean/Dickens double feature ends with Oliver Twist. Since much of the same cast and crew returns, I'm expecting more brilliance. Don't let me down, Lean.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
30. M: The beginning and end of Peter Lorre's dramatic career
Fritz Lang's 1931 classic M was his first venture into sound, and the first time the world at large got to see the talents of Peter Lorre. As a child murderer named Hans Beckert, Lorre gives one of the all time great performances, sometimes funny (making "mad man" faces in the mirror), sometimes sad, but always disturbing. Lorre was so brilliant in this film, and so convincing in his role, that it effectively destroyed his budding acting career, with Lorre immediately becoming typecast in horror films or as scummy underworld types.
The plot is straightforward, with child murderer Beckert causing a public uproar and the police cracking down on the "respectable" criminal element and basically any man who speaks to a young girl. The criminals are pissed that Beckert is causing them to be constantly harassed, so they decide to do their own manhunt. Surprisingly, Beckert is discovered an hour into the film, with the remaining 50 minutes spent chasing him down, capturing him, putting him on trial, and the police wondering what the fuck is going on. The trial scene is the only low point for me, as I've never been a big fan of these and this one in particular drags a bit, but it has enough humor and irony in it that I appreciate Lang's effort here. The morality of the criminal underworld is always a fascinating topic, even in scenes that move at a snail's pace.
What I love about early sound films is how great directors experimented with how sound can be used in this medium. Witness Hitchcock using muffled, murmured speech in Blackmail with only the word "knife" being audible. Here, Lang will have shots played out in completely silence, not even with room tone, and then a police whistle will break it and a frantic scene will ensure. Also, Beckert is eventually caught when the blind man who sold him a balloon recognizes his whistling of Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King. There's an enthusiasm about sound that I adore in these films, one that would eventually reach its zenith in Rouben Mamoulian's 1932 musical Love Me Tonight.
Lang's brilliant expressionistic style is still in full force here, with Beckert introduced by his shadow being cast against a wanted poster. The visual flourishes in this film are breathtaking, especially said sequence which ends with a little girl's murder being shown by an empty dinner plate, a rolling ball, and a floating balloon. There's also a lot of surprising humor in here, some of which doesn't land, but some of it playing out beautifully. Then penultimate scene of the criminals putting Beckert on trial, only to slowly raise their hands when the police arrive is fantastic, though Lang wisely chose to end the film on a more somber (but surprisingly preachy) note.
M is one of those films, like The Seventh Seal and Grand Illusion, that every budding cinephile has to see to get into "the club." I love M, but a lot of it has to do with recognizing great art. The procedural aspects are somewhat dull here, and don't have the same kind of drive as similar scenes in Kurosawa's High and Low. And really, High and Low is the film that I keep mentally comparing this film to, as both are much more than what the surface would suggest. M is in contention for my favorite Fritz Lang film, and even though I don't enjoy watching it as I do, say, The Silence of the Lambs, it's a more satisfying experience. Plus I fucking love Peter Lorre, and I think he's a creepier heavy than Hannibal Lector, behaving like a terrified, scurrying rat when caught and operating on pure base urges when approaching his victims.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. High and Low (1963)
9. Shock Corridor (1963)
10. Hard Boiled (1992)
11. Sid and Nancy (1986)
12. The 400 Blows (1959)
13. Walkabout (1971)
14. The Killer (1989)
15. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
16. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
17. Dead Ringers (1988)
18. The Naked Kiss (1964)
19. A Night to Remember (1958)
20. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
21. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
22. The Long Good Friday (1980)
23. Blood For Dracula (1974)
24. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
25. Amarcord (1973)
26. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
27. Summertime (1955)
28. Alphaville (1965)
Next time: Will David Lean live up to my Great Expectations?
You see what I did there?
:(
The plot is straightforward, with child murderer Beckert causing a public uproar and the police cracking down on the "respectable" criminal element and basically any man who speaks to a young girl. The criminals are pissed that Beckert is causing them to be constantly harassed, so they decide to do their own manhunt. Surprisingly, Beckert is discovered an hour into the film, with the remaining 50 minutes spent chasing him down, capturing him, putting him on trial, and the police wondering what the fuck is going on. The trial scene is the only low point for me, as I've never been a big fan of these and this one in particular drags a bit, but it has enough humor and irony in it that I appreciate Lang's effort here. The morality of the criminal underworld is always a fascinating topic, even in scenes that move at a snail's pace.
What I love about early sound films is how great directors experimented with how sound can be used in this medium. Witness Hitchcock using muffled, murmured speech in Blackmail with only the word "knife" being audible. Here, Lang will have shots played out in completely silence, not even with room tone, and then a police whistle will break it and a frantic scene will ensure. Also, Beckert is eventually caught when the blind man who sold him a balloon recognizes his whistling of Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King. There's an enthusiasm about sound that I adore in these films, one that would eventually reach its zenith in Rouben Mamoulian's 1932 musical Love Me Tonight.
Lang's brilliant expressionistic style is still in full force here, with Beckert introduced by his shadow being cast against a wanted poster. The visual flourishes in this film are breathtaking, especially said sequence which ends with a little girl's murder being shown by an empty dinner plate, a rolling ball, and a floating balloon. There's also a lot of surprising humor in here, some of which doesn't land, but some of it playing out beautifully. Then penultimate scene of the criminals putting Beckert on trial, only to slowly raise their hands when the police arrive is fantastic, though Lang wisely chose to end the film on a more somber (but surprisingly preachy) note.
M is one of those films, like The Seventh Seal and Grand Illusion, that every budding cinephile has to see to get into "the club." I love M, but a lot of it has to do with recognizing great art. The procedural aspects are somewhat dull here, and don't have the same kind of drive as similar scenes in Kurosawa's High and Low. And really, High and Low is the film that I keep mentally comparing this film to, as both are much more than what the surface would suggest. M is in contention for my favorite Fritz Lang film, and even though I don't enjoy watching it as I do, say, The Silence of the Lambs, it's a more satisfying experience. Plus I fucking love Peter Lorre, and I think he's a creepier heavy than Hannibal Lector, behaving like a terrified, scurrying rat when caught and operating on pure base urges when approaching his victims.
1. Beauty and the Beast (1946)
2. Robocop (1987)
3. Seven Samurai (1954)
4. The Seventh Seal (1957)
5. M (1931)
6. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7. Grand Illusion (1937)
8. High and Low (1963)
9. Shock Corridor (1963)
10. Hard Boiled (1992)
11. Sid and Nancy (1986)
12. The 400 Blows (1959)
13. Walkabout (1971)
14. The Killer (1989)
15. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
16. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
17. Dead Ringers (1988)
18. The Naked Kiss (1964)
19. A Night to Remember (1958)
20. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
21. The Samurai Trilogy (1954-1956)
22. The Long Good Friday (1980)
23. Blood For Dracula (1974)
24. Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
25. Amarcord (1973)
26. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
27. Summertime (1955)
28. Alphaville (1965)
Next time: Will David Lean live up to my Great Expectations?
You see what I did there?
:(
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