by Dean | Oct 10, 2017 | General, Movies
In the West, the lives of most little girls are hardly devoid of privileges and delights. In China of the 1930s, however, little girls were rigidly undervalued and sold by their impoverished parents (or keepers) to ensure all-around survival.
“Doggie” (Zhou Ron-Ying), the child in the Chinese picture The King of Masks (1996), has keepers, not parents. An elderly street performer, Wang (Zhu Xu), is fooled into thinking she is a young boy and buys her, only to be shocked and dismayed when it transpires she is a girl. It is only a boy who can inherit Wang’s silk mask entertainment trade after he dies. Not without pity, the old man allows “Doggie” to work for him, but a string of awful misfortunes makes it, for a while, impossible for him to support her.
Many a theme receives attention in Wu Tianming‘s rich film: childhood destitution, the ubiquity of injustice, the seeming need (when it is a need) for accepting fate, pariahism. For all its dramatics, King is no masterpiece of drama—it needs a sturdier plot—but it is interesting and beautifully chaste. It ends on sentimental note but it is also an affecting film.
(In Mandarin with English subtitles)
by Dean | Oct 8, 2017 | General
Guys and Dolls (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Brando sings! Yes, and he spoils the song “Luck Be a Lady” in the 1955 movie adaptation of Guys and Dolls. He is miscast as a crooning illicit gambler, whereas Frank Sinatra clearly is not. It’s a pleasurable role he is in, with Vivian Blaine, as his inamorata, holding her own. Musically, that is, Betty Boop voice and all.
Songsmith Frank Loesser did himself proud, although I truly do not know whether “If I Were a Bell” is a good ditty or not. This is because Jean Simmons—an embarrassment—loses the melody by shouting rather than singing the song. It’s a disastrous performance, and the entire sequence with her and Brando in Havana is unamusingly poor. Over and above, the musical’s book (adapted by Joseph Mankiewicz) lacks any real charm, any cakes-and-ale sparkle and bounce. Music, singing and dancing manage to entertain, though.
by Dean | Oct 5, 2017 | General
Cover of Notre Musique
I want nothing to do with Jean-Luc Godard‘s Notre Musique (2004), which I had to see on DVD since it was never shown in a Tulsa theatre. No wonder. It has no entertainment value despite a few moments of striking insight, and its middle section is interminable. Without being otherworldly, its three sections correspond to the Hell, the Purgatory and the Paradise in Dante’s Divine Comedy, but it makes its points through exposition, not drama. So it’s talky—a talky elegy for a war-afflicted world.
Godard himself appears in the film, posing as the indubitable Intellectual Of Cinema. After lecturing at a literary conference in Sarajevo, during “Purgatory,” someone in the audience asks him whether little digital cameras will ultimately “save” cinema. Frowning like Laurence Olivier, Godard sits and never answers; and, yes, even though it’s a stupid question, the scene is smugly patronizing.
Now, the politics. A Jewish girl, Olga (Nade Dieu), martyrs herself in protest against Israel’s aggression toward the Palestinians. Godard has a right to his views about Israel, but he’s far more seduced by leftist tunnel vision about the country than by a cautious appreciation for history and present complexity. When he made this film, did he not care a whit about Ehud Barak’s concessions to the Palestinians in 2000? Was he aware of them? He makes a comment in the movie about non-revolutionaries: “Humane people don’t start revolutions. They build libraries.” “And cemeteries,” another man chimes in. (Oh, dear.) Of course Godard has forgotten that in these cemeteries there are plenty of Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian terrorists. Twenty-six of them died in 2002 at a Passover celebration in Netanya.
Notre Musique is the worst kind of art film: offbeat but also a myopic bore.
by Dean | Oct 3, 2017 | General, Movies
A terrific film noir produced in China, So Close to Paradise was made in the late Nineties, banned for three years by the Red government, and—hooray!—subsequently released in the U.S. It didn’t make me think of Forties and Fifties Hollywood, though, but rather of the lofty Euro film of Antonioni and lesser artists, what with its angst, its silence and its careful visuals. The “music” of the picture are the sounds of a tugboat, heavy rain, high heels on pavement and—well, sober tones. Lamentably, serious cutting was done by the Chinese studio, but filmmaker Wang Xiaoshunai‘s talent still shines through. The thin plot is quite digestible, and actress Wang Tong is lovely as she credibly plays a worldly nightclub singer.
A character called Gao Ping (Guo Tao), a man of greed and lust, is one of the film’s three losers. The other two are Gao’s young pal Dongzai and Wang’s nightclub singer, Ruan Hong. After his partner-in-crime makes off with Gao’s stolen money, Gao tracks down Ruan because she knows where the jerk can be found. In fact he has to abduct her, and he rapes her. Amazingly, the two become a couple (don’t tell the feminists). Thereafter there is trouble. Angst. Also, however, the plot loses its hold on us (it did on me). Only the technical sophistication begins to matter, but so be it. I still had a good time with So Close to Paradise.
by Dean | Oct 1, 2017 | General
The Bride Wore Black (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Francois Truffaut admired the films of Hitchcock, but his thriller The Bride Wore Black (1968) is certainly more Truffaut than Hitchcock, which is wise. However, this is the only good thing about the movie—an utterly lousy one. It is much, much sillier than Truffaut’s The Woman Next Door, which nevertheless manages to satisfy. Bride only manages to make us chuckle in disbelief, and somehow makes even Jeanne Moreau look (histrionically) bad.
