by Dean | Jun 4, 2017 | General
The dreamlike pre-Christian “civilization” of Federico Fellini‘s Satyricon (1970) is employed to reveal history as damned, as lost Sodom, indeed with persons both white and black united in their hedonism and in sexual nihilism. Yes, nihilism: this is what this particular sphere yields. But too much goes on, and with little profundity, in this bizarre, overlong picture. I appreciate Fellini’s decision to show us both hedonists and sufferers (such as those on a slave ship) in this ancient . . . place, and certain sets and other visuals are striking. Satyricon, even so, has no reason to exist. It’s a time waster.
I’ll say this, though: the director-writer exhibits a more acceptable half-male, half-female freak, who’s supposed to be a demigod, in this film than in the rotten Juliet of the Spirits. Interesting, too, is that homosexual behavior here is part of why there is a sentiment of sexual nihilism.
by Dean | Jun 1, 2017 | General
The protag in Pedro Almodovar‘s Julieta (2016), the beautiful Julieta (played as a young woman by Adriana Ugarte) meets and engages in sex with a bearded man called Xoan while traveling on a train. The sex scene is one of the proofs that this movie has in it more than a touch of art despite being a soundly commercial concoction.
Based on three stories by Alice Munro, it’s a pretty decent film about trauma and separation. Julieta is made pregnant by Xoan, so she later finds and marries him, with the first trauma not far ahead. Julieta can be soapy but Almodovar, in adapting his script and competently directing Ugarte, displays misery as vivid as the color red in the film.
As for the subject of separation, the film captures the awful state of a mother whose child (a daughter) chooses to back out of the mother’s life, made worse by Mom’s taking the blame for the backing-out.
The director’s bad-boy tackiness is absent in Julieta; instead, there is a Munro-like concentration on the human condition. Mr. A shows some genuine tenderness, and he refuses to judge his characters. A serious if brightly colored middlebrow artwork is what we have here, and actors Carmen Suarez, as the middle-aged Julieta, and Rossy de Palma, as a soul frumpish and melancholy, know what they’re doing.
(In Spanish with English subtitles)
by Dean | May 28, 2017 | General
Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The film, Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), is an adapted work for sure: it is based on the English translation of a play. And it’s made pleasant by director Ernst Lubitsch, surefooted and keeping the charm flowing, and actors Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper and David Niven.
Curiously, it deals with a married couple devoid of, well, relations—of any kind. They aren’t even kissing. This is because, not long after marrying him, Nicole (Colbert) wishes to divorce millionaire Michael (Cooper) and get from him a lot of prenup money. Wow, you say. She must be depraved. Er, no. Not quite. Watch the flick to the end. One thing which is certain is that the plot action is not obvious.
Both enjoyable, Colbert and Cooper do everything they can to flesh out their characters, but they’re a bit hamstrung because no real psychology exists here. Still, it’s diverting—for a long time, a happy-go-unlucky movie, which keeps it interesting.
by Dean | May 25, 2017 | General
Catch-22 (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I dislike Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, which never should have been made into a movie. It was, though, by Mike Nichols and half-talented scenarist Buck Henry.
About Nichols, Stanley Kauffmann was correct: “at whatever level, he was born to direct,” and the material in The Graduate and Carnal Knowledge was worthy of him. But the misguided, sophomoric stuff in the Catch-22 screenplay is not. (Not that Nichols’s direction is mistake-free; note the use of the 2001 music by Richard Strauss.)
Really, the Heller novel has little sophistication—not none, but little. What sophistication, what thoughtfulness, is there, however, hasn’t been passed on to the film, because I don’t believe Henry knew how to do it. Spare me Heller’s Snowden episode, but in the movie it’s no good at all. Neither are the caricatures from Orson Welles, Bob Newhart, and Buck Henry himself, and the comedy is sometimes too raffish. A fantasy scene with full frontal female nudity is blatant and unnecessary. I’m glad Catch-22 did not begin a veritable decline in Nichols’s oeuvre.
by Dean | May 22, 2017 | General
The Heartbreak Kid is a 1973 picture directed by Elaine May and written by Neil Simon.
In it, a Jewish newlywed, Lenny (Charles Grodin), sees just how vulgar and tiresome his wife Lila (Jeannie Berlin) is, and he regrets marrying her. But during his honeymoon he himself turns into a deceitful fool-for-love—“in love” not with Lila but with the lovely goy Kelly (Cybill Shepherd), whom he meets on the beach. Kelly’s father (Eddie Albert) is understandably appalled by the guy, and he instinctively hates him. The movie’s ending is not exactly sanguine, and not exactly explicable.
Marriage here, except for that between the Eddie Albert character and his wife, is a joke—turned into one by the people involved. But too much fuzziness brings on some implausible content, such as the virginal Kelly’s cool-woman teasing of Lenny, a married man. . . What’s it all about, Miss May? You have more reason to be proud of your daughter’s, Miss Berlin’s, fine acting than of the film.
by Dean | May 19, 2017 | General
Bathing Beauty (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Without its music, Bathing Beauty (1944) would have nothing. Red Skelton is deeply unsatisfactory, even repelling, as the leading man in the film, and has no business being the love interest for Esther Williams.
Williams, of course, is the star who swims, who does what people surely regard as “water dancing.” An expert dancer, female, who is also beautiful is not very common. An expert swimmer, Williams is beautiful; but, in truth, swimming is not dancing. To me, Williams’s doings are of limited interest (plus her acting is mediocre). Only the synchronized swimming in BB has any aesthetic merit.
The music can be entertaining. Much of it comes from Harry James, some of it from Xavier Cugat, and its many Latin sounds seem to promise an appearance by Carmen Miranda. (But no.) It’s pretty sapid pop, decently sung, in what is a multifarious movie musical. Not one of director George Sidney’s best, though: consider that Skelton is around a lot of women and a few men, but never seems to maintain a true connection with any of them.
by Dean | May 15, 2017 | General
The Eel (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Eel (1997), a Japanese film by Shohei Imamura, adapted from a story, centers on two sinners trying to find peace. One is a man, Yamashita (Koji Yakusho), the other a woman, Keiki (Misa Shimizu). Keiki, who attempts suicide over a romantic attachment to a married man, comes to love Yamashita, but he keeps his emotional distance from her. Possibly this is because Yamashita was habitually unforgiving of his wife until, after discovering her adultery one day, he murdered her. Now an ex-con, he is coming to grips with his clear iniquity.
Pretty Keiki is a pleasant, conventional young woman, and before the murder Yamashita was a quite conventional man, and thereby the film indicates how, sometimes, conventional people are motivated to dreadful extremes.
The ex-con, as it turns out, is now rather odd. He has made a beloved pet of an eel, and there is symbolic weight here. For one thing, the male eel is a creature of certain sacrifice, and Yamashita proves to be this too. This is done for Keiki’s sake: the two sinners looking for peace finally have chaos thrust upon them, and only a particular gesture will eliminate it. It begins to seem as though there will be no peace for Yamashita and Keiki, but we would have to consider ourselves presumptuous for believing such a thing.
Its finish hopeful, The Eel is an impressive picture.
by Dean | May 9, 2017 | General
Cover of The Good Fairy
Ferenc Molnar probably wrote a delightful play when he wrote The Good Fairy, since it was turned into a delightful 1935 movie by William Wyler. With cool subtlety Margaret Sullavan (once married to Wyler) enacts a friendly, callow girl raised in an orphanage and encouraged there to practice good deeds. She does one, willy-nilly, for a professional man (Herbert Marshall), a lawyer whose integrity is sadly losing him money. But to accomplish this, Sullavan’s “good fairy” has to lie to a love-hungry CEO (Frank Morgan), who is generous enough to bestow wealth on the man he believes to be Sullavan’s husband—the lawyer.
Both men are needy in their own way, albeit Sullavan, or Luisa Ginglebuscher (her character’s name), can help only one of them. The CEO is privileged regardless, and it impresses that the film does something many modern-age people would disdain. It looks through a positive lens at “men of privilege.” Yes, the lawyer is poor but, as an educated man, he could gain privilege—and wealth—at any time. And he does.
A true artist, Preston Sturges, wrote the screenplay for Fairy, and even though it isn’t one of his “personal” works, no doubt he understood what Molnar was doing.
by Dean | May 7, 2017 | General
A film by the Coen Brothers, A Serious Man (2009) begins with a prologue, set many decades ago, in which a Jewish peasant woman believes the man her husband has been speaking with is a ghost. After he comes to the couple’s home, the woman coldly stabs him, expecting the man to be unharmed; but he isn’t. Seemingly he starts bleeding from the wound, inducing the husband to assert that now the couple are “ruined.” Are they? Is the man not a ghost? Has terrible fortune descended?
Then the movie jumps ahead to the mid-Sixties and concentrates on Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), another Jewish man, a physics teacher living in a prosperous America. But he starts living unhappily. Pains and burdens are mounting, and just as serious questions were raised by the prologue, they are raised by the footage of Larry’s experiences. What is the cosmic purpose for his suffering? Is he not morally good enough to be happy? Problems arise for Larry’s family too, though they’re not as intense as those for Larry. The entire family, like other characters in the film, are markedly Jewish, for the Jews, the Coens impart, are people with problems. Are there multiple ghosts who have cursed them?
A Serious Man jeers at people and has no trust in Life or Fate. Regrettably, it is a trifle too cheeky and mocking to be wholly appealing; but it’s a funny and involving tragic farce all the same. Its cast is sophisticated, with a Stuhlbarg who’s very good at befuddlement and, well, everything else.
by Dean | May 3, 2017 | General
Chinatown (1974 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In The Maltese Falcon, Bogart’s Sam Spade is blunt and mildly neurotic but also self-confident. In Chinatown (1974), an homage to Falcon, private investigator Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is ordinary, straightforward, coarse but also respectful, and rather fragile in a way Spade is not.
Roman Polanski directed Chinatown as he should have: conventionally and magisterially. He received from Faye Dunaway one of her best, most sophisticated performances.
I have already written about the film’s “grim and ugly” ending—i.e., an ending that follows the dark doings in film noir to what may be considered a different plane: the horrors of reality. These are horrors sexual, psychological, existential. Anyone would recoil from what is done to women in the movie—patently, today’s feminists would—yet it isn’t a misogynistic work. It is a harshly radical pop picture about death, which befalls here both women and men.
