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Other Dashiell Writings:
Flicks - March
Why Change Your Wife?
Quai des Orfèvres
Chloé in the Afternoon
Hearts of Darkness
Journey Into Fear (1943)
Flicks
- January
The Great Moment (1944)
Love Affair (1939)
Destiny (1921)
Spring in a Small Town
Born to Kill (1947)
Che
Spare
Change?
A Film Snob's Favorites of '08
Flicks - October
The Mirror (1975)
Ministry of Fear
The Eagle (1925)
The Cow (1969)
Performance (1970)
A
Christmas Tale
Sicklied
O'er
Synecdoche, New York
Love
is Not Enough
A Girl Cut in Two
Flicks
- July
My Own Private Idaho
Let's Get Lost (1988)
Inauguration of
the Pleasure Dome
Vidas Secas
The Body Snatcher (1945)
Tricky
Business
Tell No One
Frozen River (2008)
Homeward
Bound
Brick Lane (2007)
My Winnipeg
Flicks
- April 2008
Applause (1929)
Daughters of the Dust
The Nun (1966)
When a Woman
Ascends the Stairs
Alibi (1929)
Blood
Brothers
Shotgun Stories
My Brother is an Only Child
Paranoid
Park
Flicks - December 2007
Robinson Crusoe (1954)
Blind Husbands
Trust (1990)
Ulysses' Gaze
The Parson's Widow
Forsaken
The Orphanage
4 Months, 3 Weeks,
and 2 Days
Knee-Deep
in
the Big Maudit
A Film Snob's
Favorites of '07
Blood
for Oil
There Will Be Blood
Flicks
- September 2007
The Childhood
of Maxim Gorky
Great Expectations (1946)
I Married a Witch
Seven Men From Now
Visages D'Enfant
Wild
Man
Into the Wild
Eastern
Promises
No
End in Sight
The
Mind is
a Terrible Thing
Inland Empire
Flicks
- June 2007
The War Game (1965)
Big Deal on Madonna Street
The General Died at Dawn
Yolanda and the Thief
Anthology of Surreal Cinema
Nowhere
to Run
Black Book (2006)
Mafioso
Flicks - Mar 2007
Julius Caesar (1953)
Man on the Tracks
Miss Julie (1951)
Twelve O'Clock High
Dishonored (1931)
The
Big Picture
Zodiac (2007)
Armies
of Night
Army of Shadows
The Lives of Others
Flicks - December 2006
The Blue Bird (1918)
Raw Deal (1948)
Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Crane World
Tumbleweeds (1925)
Apocalypso
Dreams
A Film Snob's
Favorites of '06
Men
& Children
Children of Men
Cave of the Yellow Dog
Flicks
October 2006
Quentin Durward (1955)
Méliès the Magician
Wisconsin Death Trip
Early Summer
Le Beau Serge
Lucid
Dreaming
The Science of Sleep
Old Joy
Mutual
Appreciation
plus: This Film Is
Not Yet Rated
Flicks
- August 2006
"G" Men
College (1927)
Sunday Daughters
Thérèse (1986)
Two Seconds
Magic
Tricks
Room (2005)
The Illusionist (2006)
Flicks-
June 2006
The Seventh Seal
Criss Cross (1949)
Now, Voyager (1942)
White Nights (1957)
Platform (2000)
A
Scanner Darkly
Darkness
on the
Edge of Town
Twelve and Holding
Lemming
Flicks
- April 2006
Under the Sun of Satan
Life is Sweet (1990)
Noah's Ark (1928)
The Miracle Woman
Let's Go With Pancho Villa
Sophie
Scholl: the Final Days
The
President's Last Bang
Darwin's
Nightmare
Flicks
- February 2006
Stray Dog (1949)
A Generation
Regeneration (1915)
Viva Villa! (1934)
Hearts and Minds (1974)
Why
We Fight
Since
Otar Left...
plus: Ballets Russes
Flicks
- December 2005
Dames (1934)
Bay of Angels
No Fear, No Die
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
The Citadel (1938)
Signs
and Wonders
A Film Snob's Favorites of '05
The
Passenger (1975)
The
Squid and the Whale
plus Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque
Flicks
- October 2005
The More the Merrier (1943)
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Die Nibelungen (1924)
Salvatore Giuliano
The Cameraman (1928)
Capote
Good
Night, and Good Luck
plus Tony Takitani
Flicks
- August 2005
Slacker
Salt of the Earth (1954)
7 Plus Seven
Alias "La Gringa"
Poor Cow
A
History of Violence
(2005)
Winter
Soldier
End
Times
Last Days (2005)
Crash (2004)
Flicks
- July 2005
Purple Noon
Drums Along the Mohawk
The Band Wagon
Red Sorghum
The Marquise of O. (1976)
Howl's
Moving Castle
The
Holy Girl
Flicks
- June 2005
The Hours and Times
María Candelaria
The Last Picture Show
A Woman Rebels
Stromboli
Exile
and Exhiliration
Head-On
Mad Hot Ballroom
Kings
and Queen
Flicks-May
2005
Paragraph 175
Casque d'Or
Storm Over Asia (1928)
The Swimmer (1968)
Green Fields (1937)
Pirates
& Parrots
Enron: The Smartest Guys
in the Room
The Wild Parrots
of Telegraph Hill
Flicks-April
2005
Late Chrysanthemums
Footlight Parade
Imitation of Life (1934)
Spirit of My Mother
They Call It Sin
And
a Child Shall Lead Them
Turtles Can Fly
Oldboy
Flicks
- March 2005
The Fire Within (1963)
A Brief Vacation
Merry-Go-Round (1923)
Torch Singer
I Am Cuba
Moolaadé
Flicks
- February 2005
Five Star Final
Camera Buff
Gervaise
Underworld (1929)
Bachelor Mother (1939)
The
Flicks Archives
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STATE OF THE UNION
(Frank Capra, 1948).
Spencer Tracy plays Grant Matthews, an independent-minded industrialist
who is talked into running for President by his mistress, a newspaper
publisher played by Angela ansbury, along with her party bigwig friend
(Adolphe Menjou). Matthews’ estranged wife Mary (Katharine Hepburn)
agrees to present a united front to the public in order to help Grant
out, but he soon finds himself compromising his principles in order
to win.
The film was adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Howard
Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The script has a refreshingly jaundiced
view of politics that gives the story a certain zip. Some things never
change—the maneuvering of politicians to appeal to certain demographics,
and the disregard for the public good in favor of a strictly competitive
view of governance was apparently just as prevalent in 1948 as it
is today. But although the picture is intelligent most of the time,
and the chemistry between Tracy and Hepburn is good, there are problems
that prevent the film from being a complete success.
First of all, we’re supposed to accept that Tracy would cheat
on Hepburn with Angela Lansbury. Now, Lansbury in some ways does the
best acting in the film—she was less than half Tracy’s
age, but makes you think she’s older, while conveying her character’s
fierce ambition. But it’s simply impossible to believe that
anyone would prefer her to Katharine Hepburn, especially since Hepburn’s
character as written doesn’t provide any evidence of why her
husband would have strayed from the marriage.
In the movie’s last third, the screeenplay gets bogged down
in the moral and political points it’s trying to make, and some
heavy-handed speechmaking driving the message home with the subtletly
of a sledge hammer. We know that Hepburn will act as Tracy’s
conscience, and that he will eventually realize his error and make
amends. The way this actually works out, however, is pure wish-fulfillment
in the “Capra corn” mode, although I suppose it might
have seemed courageous and satisfying to audiences at the time. The
script strays from the play at the end, the wit dries up, and we’re
left with a fantasy cruelly at odds with the reality of postwar American
politics.
State of the Union, then, is a mixed bag, but there are a
few pleasures along the way, and a mixed bag that includes Tracy and
Hepburn can’t be a total loss. It was the only time they worked
with Capra, and that’s too bad because, whatever faults the
film may have, he handles the two stars’ scenes together well.
SUCH IS LIFE (Arturo Ripstein, 2000).
Julia (Arcelia Ramírez) lives in a run-down apartment complex
in Mexico City where she helps other poor women with folk medicine
cures and an occasional illegal abortion. As the film opens, she is
going mad with grief, and gradually we learn why: Nicolás (Luis
Felipe Tovar), a boxer and the father of her two children, has fallen
out of love with her and is planning to marry the youngdaughter of
the complex’s landlord, nicknamed “Pig” (Ernesto
Yáñez), a fat tyrant who wanders through the barrio
in his bathrobe and plans to have Julia evicted as a consequence of
the marriage.
The screenplay is by Ripstein’s wife and longtime collaborator
Paz Alicia Garciadiego. The theme is the tragically unjust and insupportable
position of women in society, limited by notions of sexuality and
motherhood that deny them any agency or self-worth. Julia is discarded
like an old object, and even her children can be taken away from her.
Although “Pig” expresses remorse about evicting her without
a good reason, he won’t change his decision. When she seeks
solace from her godmother (Patricia Reyes Spindola) a kind of witch
or “bruja” figure, the old women only expresses her undying
hatred of all men, as if the only alternative to female powerlessness
was self-consuming rage.
Ripstein creates a mood of relentless despair and claustrophobia.
But rather than use a style of social realism, he employs theatrical
and surrealistic elements to convey Julia’s inner torment. The
television in her room acts as a chorus to the action, with darkly
humorous dramatic episodes and musical interludes that seem to directly
comment on her story while expressing her grief and anger. This device
is effective in adding a nightmarish touch to the film.
Ramírez is asked to carry the film on her shoulders, with impassioned
soliloquies and compelling scenes of emotional disintegration. She’s
very good, but her character’s motives are problematic and not
sufficiently illuminated, which is the film’s main flaw. As
it turns out, there’s a parallel with a tale from mythology
that only becomes evident towards the end of this bleak and uncompromising
film. Ripstein shot it in digital video, and the remarkable set combined
with the brown and yellow color scheme lend the film a distinctive
air. This is strong stuff, a bit uneven, but powerful and gripping
in its focus on confinement and oppression.
SÁTÁNTANGÓ (Béla Tarr, 1994).
The first thing to come up in any discussion of Sátántangó
is its length: “Seven and a half hours!” one might say.
“How can you watch that?” It’s a reasonable question.
In its theatrical showings, it had two intermissions, which could
only have slightly alleviated the audience’s inevitable exhaustion.
After the DVD viewing, in which I took four breaks instead of two,
I still ended up with a crick in my neck. So the real question, the
implied one, deserves an answer: why so long?
A group of impoverished villagers live in an abandoned farm collective
in Hungary. A few of them are hoarding the village’s cattle
funds so as to run away and make a new life. But then news arrives
that a man everyone thought was dead—the mysterious ex-villager
Irimiás (Mihály Vig)—is returning, and for some
reason he is much feared. The arrival of Irimias, who has agreed to
become a police informer, coincides with a local tragedy that allows
him to manipulate the inhabitants for his own ends.
This core story, which touches on many themes, especially the underlying
selfishness of all authoritarian systems, communist or otherwise,
is a loose frame in which diverse episodes and portraits are contained.
The village is a place where people are stuck in an aimless existence,
feebly striving for one thing or another, but unable to shake off
the torpor that keeps them bound. Tarr employs huge chunks of real
time in each episode to create an effect that would be impossible
in a shorter film: time seems to stand still as we contemplate the
eerie spectacle of life without purpose.
The picture opens with a long shot of the farm, with cattle slowly
walking across the muddy landscape, the camera just as slowly panning
across the scene. This is one of Tarr’s key methods throughout,
and it eventually induces a rapt, almost hypnotic state in the viewer
eventually. Another is the long stationary take with people moving
within the frame. A tour de force in this regard is a drunken dance
in the local tavern, first observed by a little girl through a window
in an earlier episode, and then depicted full length later on. The
scene goes on an on, the people keep dancing and dancing, and getting
more drunk, and eventually your mind goes to a different level. Over
and over again, Tarr succeeds in breaking through the habit of viewing
action through customary dramatic time, stretching each scene until
we experience both time and space without the interference of expectation.
It is then that the action will pierce the mind with a power grimly
comic, satiric, frightening, or tragic.
One early episode concerns a fat, decrepit doctor (Peter Berling)
who seems to live on nothing but alcohol, spending all of his time
sitting at a desk in front of a window taking notes on the behavior
of his neighbors. When he runs out of booze he is forced to make an
epic journey through the pouring rain to get another bottle. Another
sequence that burns into your mind concerns a disturbed and neglected
little girl who is cheated by her older brother and ends up wandering
through the forest for a day and a night with a dead cat in her arms.
It becomes clear after a while that the film is moving forward and
backward in time with a kind of stutter-step. The black-and-white
photography (Gábor Medvigy) is perfectly attuned to the bleak
atmosphere. Some of the film’s visual effects are just mind-blowing:
a scene with Irimias and his henchmen walking into town is hallucinatory
in power: we see them from the rear trudging ever onward in the wind,
while piles of trash blow towards and past them through the air.
The length of Sátántangó, one might
conclude, is the one essential factor in its style. It can’t
be reasonably compared to any other film experience. One’s mind
stops chattering, analyzing, or anticipating after a while, and seems
to meld with the film’s atmosphere. I imagine that even the
audience’s exhaustion is part of the intended experience—by
the time the villagers have agreed to follow Irimias on a dubious
journey, we may feel ourselves a member of the worn-out, helpless
band of wanderers.
RIO BRAVO (Howard Hawks, 1959).
John Wayne plays John Chance, a Texas sheriff who arrests the brother
of a powerful rancher for murder. The rancher plots to break his brother
out, and the sheriff only has his alcoholic deputy (Dean Martin) and
an old crippled jailer (Walter Brennan) to assist him while they wait
for the Marshal to come and pick up the jailed killer. Then a young
gunslinger (Ricky Nelson) comes to town, and a lady gambler (Angie
Dickinson) starts to fall for Chance.
If you judge a western by its action and excitement, Rio Bravo
is overrated. The bang-up ending (in which the use of dynamite seemed
incongruous to me) is not that special, and most of the film’s
scenes are indoors, with people waiting for something to happen. But
in a way, this is what makes the picture interesting.
I could be mistaken, but this seems to be the first truly reflective
western—in the sense that it self-consciously comments on the
western genre itself, and also in the way that it focuses on the development
of character types almost to the exclusion of action. Chance sticks
to his principles despite the odds against him, while he struggles
with his feelings for “Feathers” (Dickinson).”The
Dude” (Martin) must stay off the bottle and redeem his past
failures. The script, by the old hands Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett,
deals with themes that we’ve come to think of as Hawksian: a
band of friends united by duty and a sense of professionalism, the
hero as a man who just does what’s right without a lot of fuss,
male-female relationships as a form of sparring. This time the elements
seem more explicit—the story simply follows the plight of the
heroes in extremis, as they prepare for the inevitable.
The scenes between Wayne and Dickinson (24 years his junior) are both
fun and a bit awkward. Wayne is made to seem a bit abashed or flustered
in the presence of a smart woman who clearly wants him. The sheriff
believes in strict propriety and respect—the girl wants more
than that.
There’s a nice scene in a saloon where some quick thinking by
the Dude saves the day. Walter Brennan plays his usual cranky old
sidekick role—we’re meant to find it really funny but
I find it tiresome. Ricky Nelson is obviously inserted in the film
for the teen audience. He’s mostly contained and a bit wooden,
but he gets to sing with Martin at one point.
I can see why this movie would have a special place in the hearts
of those who love the western genre. It is quite consciously a look
back, a nostalgic western, both for the form itself and for the career
of John Wayne. I have never been a real western lover, so my reaction
was mixed. I found myself wondering what all the fuss was about—this
film certainly doesn’t have the dramatic thrust or the heft
of a great film like Red River. But it’s fine for what it is,
a sunset-tinged love letter to the western movie.
THE LONG GOODBYE
(Robert Altman, 1973).
No one familiar with the novels of Raymond Chandler would ever expect
an adaptation like this: Elliot Gould playing Philip Marlowe in 1970s
Los Angeles. Chandler’s Marlowe was tough and cool, with a very
precise way of talking; Gould’s version is a wisecracking slob
with a fondness for cats and a rambling verbal style. I don’t
doubt that there are Chandler purists who hate this movie, but taken
on its own terms this bit of sly revisionism has its own pleasures
to offer, and the screenplay is by the veteran Leigh Brackett, one
of the writers on Howard Hawks’ version of The Big Sleep.
Marlowe’s friend Terry (Jim Bouton) shows up at his apartment
needing a favor: a ride to Tijuana where he can hide out from some
big trouble. Marlowe, always the loyal friend, does what he’s
asked, and when he returns to LA he is questioned by the police about
Terry’s wife, who has been murdered. Word eventually comes from
Mexico that Terry has committed suicide and confessed to the murder
in a note. Marlowe doesn’t believe it. In the meantime, he’s
hired by Terry’s neighbor Eileen (Nina Van Pallandt) to find
her missing husband, a writer named Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden).
Of course, the two cases end up being connected, but it takes quite
a few twists and turns to get there.
The mystery is serviceable: all the loose ends gets tied up, and it
makes sense. But Altman is really more interested in the interesting
contrast between the old-fashioned figure of the gumshoe and the weird
counterculture environment of SoCal. Thus we have Henry Gibson popping
up as the director of a bizarre sanatorium in which the alcoholic
Wade is being held, and an extended sequence at Wade’s Malibu
house that is a little masterpiece of dry comedy, a sort of film noir
beach party.
Hayden really adds a special half-cocked sensibility to his character,
a poor man’s Hemingway. But Gould is the glue that holds the
film together—mixing fear and bewilderment with a laid-back
devil-may-care attitude, it’s probably his career-high performance.
The film itself is both a satire on Hollywood and its denizens, and
an elegy for the old idea of a code of honor, lost forever in the
LA smog.
©2009 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
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