Joseph H. Lewis, Margaret, and what to watch when you have a cold − Reviews #245

Fillums.



Margaret: extended version (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011) − One of the best films of the decade so far: a breathtaking, one-of-a-kind character study about a high-school student (Anna Paquin) wrestling harrowingly with life's vicissitudes after causing a fatal accident.

Kenneth Lonergan's belated follow-up to You Can Count on Me, eventually released after a six-year legal battle, is novelistic in its elliptical, conversational, almost aggressively uncommercial approach, with long takes, chapters and characters whose relevance isn't always immediately obvious, and stately, slo-mo interludes of pedestrian traffic soundtracked only by orchestral music, which not only place the narrative vividly in New York, and hint at the frailty of all human lives, but also seem to underline that this is just one story among millions.

It's profound, rounded, literate, poetic and intimate, full of completely surprising and real characters and developments, and climaxing with a scene of remarkable catharsis in lieu of any easy answers.

It's difficult to pick out favourite characters or incidents, given that Lonergan's own cut of the film runs more than three hours and forms such a compelling whole, from high school debates about American imperialism to J. Smith-Cameron and Jean Reno discussing adult relationships, a sex scene featuring Kieran Culkin as an effortlessly ironic slacker, unrequited love, Matthew Broderick teaching poetry, the vagaries of road safety laws, Matt Damon exuding decency, the idea that (to quote Joseph Conrad) we live as we dream − alone − and two of the best rows on film: Paquin's raw encounter with unrepentant-as-fuck bus driver Mark Ruffalo at his apartment, and a discussion in which she ill-advisedly calls older confidant Jeannie Berlin "strident". Every line, every beat is there for a purpose, and the overall effect is overwhelming: I can't recall many films that possess such an abundance of wisdom or confusion or rage.

Paquin has long been one of the most interesting actors around, notably acting Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel off the screen at nine years old, but nothing prepared me for how good she is here: how committed and nuanced and lacking in vanity, carrying the weight of the film on her shoulders and never needing to be liked. It's an extraordinary performance at the centre of an extraordinary picture.

I'm seeing Lonergan's third film, Manchester by the Sea, at the London Film Festival next Sunday. (4)

***



My Name Is Julia Ross (Joseph H. Lewis, 1945) − A sensational low-budget shocker from B-movie maestro Joseph H. Lewis, who regarded this as the beginning of his career, 10 years in. Nina Foch is the title character, who applies for a job as a secretary and gets rather more than she bargained for, but I'll say nothing else of the plot − it's best to go in blind. Lewis serves up 64 minutes of mystery, mayhem and nerve-shredding tension, circumventing the shortcomings of his script and cast through restless invention, and elevating a cracking but trashy premise to high art. That climax has to be seen to be believed. (3.5)

***



CINEMA: Café Society (Woody Allen, 2016) − Woody's latest follows his familiar formula to a tee, as naïve nebbish Jesse Eisenberg moves to Hollywood in the 1930s to get a job with his uncle, super-agent Phil Stein (Steve Carell), and falls in love with secretary Kristen Stewart, who's already seeing someone else. From then on, it's affairs, one-liners and hyperbolic exasperation, as well as some excellent character development once the story moves to New York and skips forward some years at the halfway point. When Allen breaks midway to do something ambitious and different, it's usually a sign that he's motoring, as in his melancholy masterpiece, The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Café Society has attracted some raves, a poster quote from my favourite current reviewer, Robbie Collin, declaring that it "fizzes like vintage Woody Allen". For me it doesn't: it starts poorly and wrings nothing of value from its '30s Hollywood setting, simply naming stars in lieu of satirising, paying homage, or trading on Golden Age gold dust. But then it does begin to cast a spell, helped by nice work from Eisenberg, Blake Lively and particularly Stewart − who's beguiling − saves most of its better jokes for the second half, and socks you in the solar plexus with an extremely beautiful ending that's as powerful as any Allen dreamt up in his '80s heyday.

The part that most excited me − a guided tour of '30s Hollywood −fizzes merely like cava from Aldi, but as with his 2014 film, Magic in the Moonlight, it simply takes a while for the octogenarian Allen to warm up; once he does, he can still deliver, as his disastrous decade of chronic misfires recedes further into the past. (2.5)

See also: Allen's previous film, Irrational Man, pissed me off so much that I wrote a small book about it. I'd kind of forgotten it existed, and am now cross again that it does.

***



Primal Fear (Gregory Hoblit, 1996) − A shlocky, overlong courtroom thriller with a decidedly outdated understanding of mental illness, which gets an almighty shot in the arm from Edward Norton, who's absolutely dynamic in his debut (and breakthrough) role as a damaged, apparently ineffectual kid who might have just hacked a priest to death. His scenes with Richard Gere may be the most one-sided acting tussle since Bette Davis was paired with George Brent. (2)

***



Basic Instinct 2 (Michael Caton-Jones, 2006) − This antiseptic sequel to one of the '90s most notorious (and enjoyable) movies is silly, inappropriately British and about as sexy as buying Anusol at Boots, with a melty-looking Sharon Stone spouting risible innuendo as she ties increasingly brutish psychoanalyst David Morrissey around her melty finger. The did-she-or-didn't-she intrigue is gone, the one-liners are as sharp as a spoon and her first victim is Stan Collymore (yes really), but damn it if this isn't actually rather good fun. Morrissey and an inexplicably Welsh David Thewlis, looking like Mr Weasley, take it far more seriously than it deserves, the plot is half-decent, ending up just where you want it to, and watching Stone is bizarrely fascinating, if not always rewarding. Exactly what I was in the mood for as a heavy cold reached its zenith. (2)

***



Miss Congeniality (Donald Petrie, 2000) − A thin, laboured comedy that ticks every chick flick box but just about scrapes through on the strength of Bullock's likeability and talent. Caine does what he can with a poorly-written part as her perfectionist mentor. (2)

***

Thanks for reading.

Rick's 100 favourite movies: Part 3

This is the third of four posts about my favourite movies, taking in everything from Elia Kazan's apologia for informing to Pixar's finest film, via martial arts, pastries and Lillian Gish with a big gun.

Part 1 (100-76) is here, and part 2 (75-51) can be found here.

50. Stage Door (Gregory La Cava, 1937)

A crackling feminist masterpiece that passes the Bechdel Test 90 times a minute, as a flawless ensemble cast trades blistering, bitchy, pitch-black wisecracks while hanging out in a theatrical boarding house for women. It's also the tearjerker to end them all, though it only seems to be me who feels that way. Full review.

49. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
Sex and death in Texas, as dissolution sweeps an ailing town and its picture house gets ready to close. Ben Johnson gives one of my favourite performances, as that old, sad voice of reason, Sam the Lion, delivering a waterside monologue that's perhaps the best three minutes of the New Hollywood.

48. The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)
One of the great late silents, with Vidor interrogating the American Dream like the big leftie he was. Completely heartbreaking.

47. The Dreamlife of Angels (Erich Zonka, 1998)

Profound, poignant film about the friendship that develops – and then unravels – between two young women who meet at a factory in Lille. Ila (Élodie Bouchez) is friendly, compassionate and happy to ask for help; self-centred Maria (Natacha Régnier) throws her pride and practicality to the wind as she embarks on a self-destructive affair with an utter shit. A wise, insightful and immersive study of human relationships, and the nature of friendship, with exceptional performances from the two leads – especially the big-eyed, expressive Bouchez.

46. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
Unforgiven is Clint Eastwood's masterpiece: a towering dismantling of Western mythos, extraordinary in every way. I wrote one of my best pieces on it.

45. Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
"I want... to die." *sob*

44. On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)

With Les 400 Coups (see the final part of the list!) and Star Wars, this was the movie that got me into movies, and inspired a Marlon Brando obsession that's never really gone away. I must have seen it 30 times. It's also fascinating – though troubling – from a historical perspective, as writer Budd Schulberg and director Elia Kazan's apologia for naming names to HUAC. I still know the entire taxicab scene off by heart. Try me.

43. Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1962)
Melville par excellence, with Belmondo at his best and a killer twist.

42. Blessed Event (Roy Del Ruth, 1932)
Arguably the greatest comedy film of all time, with “that kid from advertising” Alvin Roberts (Lee Tracy) commandeering his newspaper’s society section, and turning it into the filthiest gossip column in America. Tracy is my favourite male actor and was once one of the biggest stars in the world, until the Production Code outlawed his brand of comedy and he compounded matters by allegedly urinating on the Mexican Army, with the result that he was unceremoniously fired by the biggest film studio in the world. I've reviewed the film here, and written about Tracy here.

41. Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955)

Bergman does sex comedy - and the result is a deep, delicate, just about perfect movie, like the best of Lubitsch and Ophüls mixed with Partie de campagne. And while it's influenced everyone from New York-based Jewish songwriter Stephen Sondheim to New York-based Jewish filmmaker Woody Allen, the original remains by far the best. A lawyer, his young wife, his mistress, her lover, her lover's wife, the mistress's mother, the lawyer's son and a couple of horny servants flirt, argue and try to cop off with each other (except the mum), the whole group ultimately coming together for a sunlit weekend in the country. Beautifully written, acted and photographed, it's equal parts sentiment, melancholia, absurdism, witty badinage, and timeless, mind-expanding philosophy on the nature of love, lust and language, full of surprises, clever bon mots and rich characterisation. There's even a bit where someone falls in a puddle.

40. Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen, 1984)

Danny Rose: What'd you do, you divorced him, or got a separation, or what?
Tina Vitale: Nah, some guy shot him in the eyes.
Danny Rose: Really? He's blind?
Tina Vitale: Dead.
Danny Rose: Dead. Of course, 'cause the bullets go right through.

I don't think this is Woody's greatest film, but it's the one I return to most often: a sweet, funny, utterly charming tall tale - with hidden emotional heft - about a loveable Broadway talent agent (Woody Allen) trying to escort his best client's mistress (Mia Farrow) to a crucial show, and unwittingly incurring the wrath of the mafia. What seems at first glance a slight, minor movie holds untold pleasures, from Allen's script - stuffed with gems - to Gordon Willis's mesmerising monochrome cinematography, and an unforgettable, uncharacteristic performance from an unrecognisable Farrow, as the forceful, temperamental Tina Vitale, her late husband a juice man for the mob. "He made juice for the mob?" asks a baffled Allen.

39. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)

Crouching Tiger is one of the great films of last decade, often claustrophobic in scale, but epic in its treatment of human emotion, and chock-full of magic, magnificence and good old-fashioned fucking mayhem. It looks beautiful, it sounds beautiful - hell, it is beautiful - and where it's going, we don't needs roads, or even floors. Much more on it here.

38. The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Éric Rohmer, 1963)
A mesmerising, intoxicating Rohmer short that's as close to a personal manifesto as you'll ever see on screen. His enduring preoccupation was where eroticism touches romance, and his view of both was heady, wise, ironic. After the false start that was the director's abysmal debut feature, the tedious, neorealist Signe du Lion, this story of a law student (Barbet Schroeder) flirting with a counter girl at a Parisian bakery (Claudine Soubrier) as he waits for his true love (Michèle Girardon) to walk past is extraordinarily affecting, honest and insightful: grubbily conspiratorial as we're asked to see everything from his jaundiced viewpoint (it's a 'moral tale' in so much as it's about personal morality), a little eerie as it ponders fate and chance, and gloriously sensual when they duck into an alleyway to talk and he starts stroking her neck. The first of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales, and – at 23 minutes – the best film I've seen this year.

37. Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1959)

An astonishing movie that I only heard of for the first time in May; it sounded amazing, so I got a ticket to a BFI screening. It's the Orpheus myth transplanted to the Rio Carnival, with womanising guitarist Breno Mello falling in love with pure, troubled Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn). They dance, have sex, and save one another, but his feisty ex-girlfriend and Eurydice's psychotic, death-faced stalker hint at the unlikeliness of a happy ending. It's a feast for the eyes and ears, with impossibly vibrant Eastman Color cinematography showcasing Rio and its carnival (those yellows!), invigorating dance and intoxicating bossa nova music, while the story moves effortlessly from utterly joyous to blackly terrifying and then abstractly spiritual. Perhaps it runs out of steam towards the very end, but for the most part it captures Rio with a startling immediacy: its characters pulsating with passion, natural charm and an unapologetic, everyday eroticism. The story - adapted from a Brazilian play - struck me as one of those high-concept ideas that might extract a certain truth from its material by dropping it into Rio. In actuality, it's difficult to believe when watching Black Orpheus that it would or could make sense anywhere else, such is the film's complete conviction, and the virtuosic skill that Camus displays in meshing these diverse elements together, while capturing the penury, charm and beauty of the setting, and inspiring a host of pitch perfect performances. It's extraordinary.

36. The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928)
One of the high watermarks of silent cinema: a stunningly atmospheric drama ignited by a tour-de-force performance from the incomparable Lillian Gish, who plays a tormented, tortured waif driven to madness as she’s buffeted by a desert wind and by unfettered male sexual aggression. More here.

35. Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996)
My favourite performance of all time, courtesy of the incomparable Emily Watson. I also find von Trier the most interesting director working today.

34. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik, 2010)

Debra Granik's feminist masterwork is the key film of the decade so far: an unorthodox, spine-tingling thriller, a humanist fable, and a staggering study of a good person under almost intolerable pressure. In her breakout role, Jennifer Lawrence is Ree Dolly, a strong, selfless, smart-mouthed 17-year-old living with her vacant mother and two young siblings in Missouri's Ozark Mountains. Once it ran with bootleg moonshine, now this here's Meth Country, and if her crystal-cooking father doesn't turn up for his court hearing, they're going to lose the house, the woods and the whole family unit. So Ree sets out in search of him, facing threats, silence and regular beatings from pinch-faced people who share a lot of the same blood that runs in her veins, and down her face. Full review here.

33. All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
From the astute, literate voiceover and classic freeze-frame that launches the story, via stinging one-liners, sublime reaction faces and a litany of unimprovable set-pieces, to one of the most memorable, satisfying (and scary) endings in the history of movies, All About Eve is a landmark of Hollywood’s Golden Age: an unassailable classic with the kind of dialogue that a moviegoer dreams about. More here.

32. The Snowman (Dianne Jackson and Jimmy T. Murakami, 1982)
What Christmas Eves were invented for (as well as venerating the baby Jesus), and the first film I ever loved.

31. The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)
The twist. That twist. This mercurial masterpiece of ‘90s cinema has now been reduced to just one thing. Not that its twist isn’t magnificent, but it’s certainly not the film’s raison d’etre, or its reason to be celebrated. It doesn’t explain why the film continues to enrapture, enthral and grow in emotional resonance as the years pass and the viewings rack up. And, unlike most twists, it doesn’t come at the end, but at the halfway point, meaning that if you’ve avoided seeing the film because you think you know how it ends – you really don’t. Full review.

30. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)

My favourite musical, starring my favourite musical star, Fred Astaire. The immortal 'Cheek to Cheek' is unquestionably the highlight, but this slice of ineffable, irrepressible escapism is stuffed with great jokes, timeless Irving Berlin songs and irreproachable dancing.

29. Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
Garbo Laughs! And Ernst Lubitsch reminds everyone once again that he's the best director of romantic comedies in the history of movies.

28. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
One of the great films, a beguiling, bewitching, sometimes bewildering collision of Gothic horror and fairytale, a haunting, hypnotic vision of pure evil, of goodness, of redemption, of innocence lost and perhaps regained, of greed and guilt, loss, delusion, sexual obsession and puritanical perversion. It has some weak acting, wild lurches in tone and even a little Schufftan silliness, and yet also many of the most striking, magical sequences of its era, climaxing with a half-hour confrontation between good and evil that is amongst the most indelibly artistic and impossibly moving passages of pure cinema ever put onto celluloid. And just when you think it can’t get any better, silent screen icon Lillian Gish turns up, armed with the only truly worthy role of her sound career. Full write-up here.

27. Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings, 1942)

Incredible short from propagandist (and anarchist, and surrealist) Humphrey Jennings, one of my favourite filmmakers. Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and Diary for Timothy are his most well-known films, and this one contains my favourite shot in his ouevre (it's the bloke exhaling smoke through his nose while watching Flanagan and Allen), though most of his work from 1939 onwards is great, especially Spare Time and The Silent Village.

26. Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, 2009)
This is the review I wrote for the paper when it came out: "PIXAR'S latest - and greatest - is a very special piece of work, a deliriously enjoyable yarn that packs a considerable emotional wallop. It begins, gloriously, with a scrupulously detailed faux '30s newsreel, as a Lindbergh-esque aviator − Charles Muntz − returns triumphant from exploring the Venezuelan wilds only to fall from grace amidst accusations of fakery. Watching, transfixed, is Carl Fredricksen, a bespectacled, toothy wannabe adventurer. Returning home from the theatre, he stumbles across a fellow Muntz afficionado, the talkative Ellie, and a friendship blossoms. Through an exquisite, intensely moving wordless montage ('Married Life'), we see Carl and Ellie's life together, as they fall in love, marry and grow old, their dream of exploring South America dashed time and again - the savings jar smashed and raided to cover house repairs and hospital bills. Ending with Ellie's passing, this four minute sequence is a bold, breathtakingly brilliant bit of moviemaking that evokes It's a Wonderful Life and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with that exalted predecessor. Having lost his wife, and set to relinquish his home and independence, retired balloon salesman Carl (voiced by Edward Asner) does the only thing he can, affixing 20,000 balloons to his house in a bid to fly it to Paradise Falls - the lost world of Muntz's famous mission. Accidentally along for the ride is Russell, a young Wilderness Explorer who's desperate to secure his "assisting the elderly" badge and has been hunting for a snipe under the porch. From then on in, all bets are off, as the film's boundless imagination and anarchic sensibility conjure up a world of neurotic talking dogs, androgynous, chocolate-gobbling birds and paranoid adventurers, whilst never forgetting that we care what happens to its damaged, appealing central duo. Hysterically funny and emotionally resonant, Up hums with invention from first frame to last and, in having the guts to tackle big subjects with honesty, subtlety and intelligence, emerges as one of the finest films of recent years."

***



Thanks for reading.

Lillian Gish, Henry V, and Woody Allen in 2015 - Reviews #223

A few reviews. Next time: a journey through the back catalogue of Francois Truffaut.

FILMS



*MINOR SPOILERS*
Irrational Man (Woody Allen, 2015) - In 1989, Woody Allen created one of his greatest movies, Crimes and Misdemeanours: a bleak, gently blistering drama in which Martin Landau kills his mistress then tries to deal with the guilt of it all. Since then, Allen has made three serious crime movies and, to a greater or lesser degree, they are all terrible. This latest one is perhaps the least terrible of the three (the others are the tone-deaf Match Point and the brain dead Cassandra’s Dream), but it still falls down an elevator shaft after 50 minutes.

Joaquin Phoenix is a brooding cliché of a philosophy professor – dark, sexy, dangerous – who attracts the attention of both an unhappily married lecturer (Parker Posey) and a guileless student (Emma Stone) while toying with the idea of murder. At first you can forgive the film its flaws: lazy exposition, laughable lines and erratic performances (often helpless in the face of the dialogue), because the story is surprisingly involving and watchable, but after a while even that starts to go wrong, and there’s nothing left to cling to.

The movie’s conformity is a problem for me: it purports to wrestle with serious philosophical quandaries (albeit like a low-rent Rope), then goes for the easiest possible way out. And it conforms in its characterisation too. Phoenix’s professor disastrously calls to mind Half Nelson, a film against which almost everything looks unoriginal and somewhat pathetic. In that movie, Gosling’s crack-addicted teacher tries to impress his sister-in-law with his magnetic brand of nihilism and she literally laughs in his face. Here, no-one laughs in Phoenix’s face, they just want to boff him.

In the one interesting choice Allen makes, he has Joaquin’s penis misfiring early on, but when he gets the chance to build on this later, he falls short of pushing the character as far as it will go – they both do – and the results are just unbelievably frustrating. Watch the end of Peter Medak’s The Ruling Class for an example of how you kick your film into another gear, with a seductive, beguiling paragon of evil.

As I have said at least once before, I prefer the ever-underrated In My Father’s Den to the widely-praised You Can Count on Me because the muscular, avenging angel of an anti-hero gets kicked down some stairs and called a prick when he tries to do the right thing, rather than winning out in some pyrrhic but vital way. I prefer Half Nelson to Irrational Man for about 800 reasons, but it starts with Phoenix’s drab if extremely charismatic caricature, and the hypnotic effect his character has on everyone, with his hilariously stupid malt-swigging.

He is also the only actor I’ve ever scene who has scenes stolen from him by his own tummy, Phoenix’s funny little pot belly arriving in the room shortly before him, with a kind of scene-stealing grace that Peter Lorre might have admired. Stone, meanwhile, does her best, and has a handful of truly, unexpectedly impressive moments (considering she’s in a film that simply doesn’t work), but more often than not she is – well – powerless to act, her line readings sounding like something from a 1930s B-movie actress. Or a porn star.

Another problem with the film (and there are many) is Allen’s superficial understanding of philosophy, which both undermines the serious message he is attempting to impart and, more prosaically, means that his brilliant professor is often just spouting rubbish, or paraphrased platitudes. Allen has read the chapter headings in his textbook, it seems, but gone no further epitomised by the frankly embarrassing scene in which Phoenix says the class will consider “Sartre’s classic line, ‘Hell is other people’”, which is as much Sartre as we get. Woody also has no idea how to build a crime narrative, as evidenced by the sequence in which Stone explains that everyone a murder victim knew “couldn’t have done it” – an equivocal shorthand that is frankly insultingly stupid.

I suppose he is 80 now.

At this stage in his career, Allen is desperately in need of a script editor who can tell him: a) You don’t know how teenage girls speak; b) You can’t write working class characters in a contemporary setting; c) You’ve forgotten how to subtly interweave exposition; d) Your plotting is built on contrivance and coincidence, not anything that resembles real life.

In the excellent 2012 documentary detailing his life and work, Allen fascinatingly reveals how he decides which film to do next, emptying a drawer onto his bed and then searching through scraps of paper on which are written one-line summaries of possible projects. He used to dress and augment these frameworks, until the incidental joys were as great as the story they adorned. Now – with the exception of Midnight in Paris and perhaps Blue Jasmine – that isn’t really true: from photography to performance to dialogue to sound, it all feels perfunctory: we simply travel from A to B, his hand revealed well in advance, the minor pleasures few and far between, if they are there at all.

As far as bad dialogue goes; well, it simply doesn’t get any worse than this:
Phoenix: “I’m just… too far gone.”
Stone: “I’m going to be late for my piano lesson.”

And then there are the Allenisms that pepper his work: stock phrases that emerge from the mouth of so many of his characters, no matter how different they are supposed to be. Will he ever again make a film in which someone doesn't say, "This is cra-zy."

The film isn’t funny, either. Not in the way that the first hour of Magic in the Moonlight isn’t funny: this one isn’t even supposed to be. In Crimes and Misdemeanours, among his greatest masterstrokes was to run a hysterically funny narrative in parallel to the main affair, with Allen’s self-righteous documentary maker outfoxed by his insufferable rival (Alan Alda), his character receiving a devastating final sting that threw him and Landau together, and cast the central story into a different light. Here, everything is in the same tone – visual, verbal and philosophical – with no wit or nuance to leaven the po-faced, self-serious quasi-moralising.

These problems are epitomised by a potentially interesting scene near the close, which somehow manages to be taut and tense but also completely embarrassing, with apparently improvised dialogue that has to be heard to be believed, and an action pay-off that’s like a Byker Grove outtake. It’s a fitting climax to an unredeeming, tacky and obvious third act that just about explains itself but is as uninteresting as Allen has ever been. Except for Cassandra’s Dream<, which is the caveat that keeps on giving, and the worst film that Allen will ever make.

In Allen’s hands, it seems that fatalism – predicated on chance – has none of the danger, cynical humour or dark poetry of noir, it’s merely predictable coincidence, playing out in bright colours and dull words. (2)

***



The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström, 1926) - A year before their towering masterwork, The Wind, director Victor Sjöström, writer Frances Marion, and stars Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson made another film – The Scarlet Letter – a flavourful, somewhat fanciful adaptation of the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel. Miss Gish is ideally cast (though perhaps wearing a bit too much make-up, historical accuracy fans) as Hester Prynne, whose illegitimate child outrages Puritan, 18th century New England, visiting tragedy upon her restrictive community. Hanson is her troubled lover, the outwardly respectable Rev Arthur Dimmesdale.

MGM’s films from this period never quite seem to match – say – Fox’s in terms of their scale or authentic set design, and the plotting sometimes comes off as forced or convenient, but Sjostrom's imaginative staging leads to a succession of visually striking passages (he was a great director of shadows and of feet) and the acting grabs your attention and holds it, with Gish’s inventive, intuitive gesturing creating a Hester who’s flirtatious, resolute and also feels intensely, every thought transmitted by the actress’s peerless evocation of the inner life.

Her innocent seduction of Hanson is the sort of scene she so rarely got to play - not that you'd know it from her effortless, uncompromised sensuality - while the sequence in which she reveals the scarlet letter, if plumb in the centre of her comfort zone, is a masterpiece of subtle expression and heart-wracking poignancy. (3.5)

A thousand thanks to Owen for getting hold of this one for me. I’ve been after it for years.

***



Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1944) - Olivier’s near-mythic adaptation of Henry V is a film of dazzling, bravura moments, but not altogether a great film. Beginning with a brilliant gimmick – a framing device that presents the action before an audience at The Globe in 1600 – it then abandons the conceit at exactly the right time, with a staggering fade that takes us from London to the sky above the ocean, where a swelling British fleet is moving stealthily, hazily towards France. Once they get there, though, we face a world that lurches weirdly from fantastical castles to earthily realistic battlefields, as the narrative mixes Henry’s rousing speeches and introspective ruminations with some of the broadest, most unbearable comedy imaginable (at one point a Welshman wears a leek on his head while ending every sentence with the words, “Look you”), culminating in a wooing scene that seems to go on for ever.

Despite those shortcomings, there are scenes as rich in beauty and emotion as just about anything British cinema produced in the ‘40s, thanks in no small part to the sumptuous Technicolor photography and Olivier’s astounding performance, which – despite the occasional recourse to simply yelling – is full of tenderness, steel and imperious regality, while exhibiting his unique gift for Shakespearean delivery: his understanding so rich, his interpretation so clear, that the dialogue could just as well be in modern slang, were it not for its power, its consequence and its ability to stir anyone with a pulse, an English birth certificate and, ideally, a sword. He also has one hell of a way with a battle sequence: the long take of advancing French cavalry moving from a trot to a murderous gallop is just an astonishingly exciting piece of action cinema.

Olivier adapted two further Shakespeare plays as director and star – Hamlet and Richard III – and while both are better than this celebrated first effort, Henry V still has moments that simply take the breath away. (3)

***



All Through the Night (Vincent Sherman, 1941) - This is the other film in which insular isolationist Humphrey Bogart has a change of heart to battle despicable Nazi Conrad Veidt. But unlike in Casablanca, he’s a gangster who gets in over his head while searching for the killers of his favourite cheesecake supplier.
This weirdly pitched yarn is a curious mixture of heavy-handed propaganda, mannered dialogue and variable suspense: a melange of Hitchcock, Damon Runyon and what we now recognise as ‘WWII Warners’, as the studio warms to the cinematic possibilities of the conflict. It starts oddly and ends badly, but what’s in between is often good fun, with a frankly astonishing cast doing what it can with a peculiar script that promises much but delivers relatively little.

Though he’s given rather too many visual gags for a performer whose talents lay elsewhere, Frank McHugh’s line deliveries are – of course – an utter joy, while Peter Lorre is perfect as the mirthfully malevolent gunman, Pepi, the diminutive, sleepy-eyed legend having turned this type of playful, cigarette-led scene-stealing into nothing short of an artform. (2.5)

***

BOOKS



The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1965) – This story of a Scottish schoolteacher engaging her charges in twisted adult games is slim, spare and economical, warped, waspish and filled with malevolent, brilliant throwaway jokes, its nastiness masking a poignancy and perception that linger, along with the bitter taste of betrayal. When Spark’s Sandy talks about the virtue of economy, as a way to live and to create art, she may as well be commenting on the book in which she finds herself. (4)



Orson Welles: One Man Band by Simon Callow (2015) – The third volume of Callow’s biography is another stunning achievement: fast-paced, fascinating and immensely readable, the author expertly juggling disparate sources to not only document and explains Welles’s triumphs and disasters, but also to discern the truth behind his endless self-mythologising, coming as close as anyone has to explaining who Welles was, and why he was like that.

Dealing with Welles's life between his estrangement from Hollywood in 1947 and the release of his intensely personal Chimes at Midnight in 1964, it’s often sad, occasionally punch-the-air inspiring and - for the most part - wonderfully written, with Callow a fond but wise and moral adjudicator with a rare insight into the art of acting. And for that, we can forgive him some excessive use of Latin, an occasional recycling of his pet theories and the suggestion that classic ensemble dramas include “Casablanca and Four Weddings and a Funeral".

Sometimes I did wish we could linger longer on the majesties of those things that work - Othello, Touch of Evil, et al - before moving onto the next backstage debacle, but by any standards it's an exceptional work, and for fans it's pretty much essential.

I'm not sure I will ever get over not seeing Welles's stage play of Moby Dick. (3.5)

***

Thanks for reading.

Hitchcock, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Jim Jarmusch losing the plot - Reviews #186

Advice to the Lovelorn - stay awhile amidst its ancient charms. This reviews update features not only the above, but also: six Woody Allen films, a rather lovely romantic comedy from the soft focus mid-'90s, and Danny Kaye overacting hysterically, as per usual.



CINEMA: The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014) - Wes Anderson says in this week's Time Out that he tries to do something completely new with every film, and yet within 10 seconds everyone can tell it's one of his.

You can see that here, as he explores a new setting, a pastel-coloured hotel in the Lubitschean '30s, and new themes - nostalgia, civilisation and the lot of the writer - but in that inimitable style, full of droll, deadpan acting, steady, stately shots, and nods to filmmakers past, including an extended homage to Hitchcock.

The story, told as a flashback within a flashback, focuses on Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes) - the fey, perfumed concierge of the titular establishment - his friendship with an earnest young lobby boy who's moving from Zero to hero (Tony Revolori), and their improbable escapades upon the death of a wealthy dowager and hotel regular (Tilda Swinton).

Across five chapters packed to bursting with daft details and familiar faces, emerges one of Anderson's very best films, at first glance his most broad and accessible, but with a latent cumulative impact derived not just from its late proliferation of beautiful sentimental scenes, but also its portrait of a vanishing world and a man born out of time, as thuggish fascists begin to maraud across Europe, destroying what remains of his way of life.

Some of the supporting players are underused, others simply aren't very good and Anderson has a habit of dragging out even his best running gags, but this is still a classic to rank alongside Tenenbaums, Rushmore and the rest (basically just not Fantastic Mr Fox), with two beautiful central performances - as well as fine ones from F. Murray Abraham and Tom Wilkinson - numerous comic high spots and a bewitching evocation of a mythical world not glimpsed on screen since the mighty Lubitsch passed on. (4)

***

WOODFEST '14 - Continuing adventures through the back catalogue of Woody Allen:



"You can't learn to be real. It's like learning to be a midget, it's not a thing you can learn."
The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen, 1985) - Purple Rose is Woody's masterpiece about movies and the lure of fantasy, with downtrodden Depression-era housewife Mia Farrow romanced by a movie character (Jeff Daniels) who walks off the screen and into her life.

It's ingeniously conceived and beautifully executed, with a rich period flavour - enhanced by Gordon Willis's photography - Farrow's best performance, and a script that expertly examines the appeal, value and attendant danger of escapist cinema.

There's room for a fun, well-designed film-within-a-film too, along with some killer gags about actorly pretension, a stunning supporting performance from the incomparable Dianne Wiest, and a magnificent dual role for Daniels. Allen wrote the first half of the movie years earlier and then got stuck, consigning it to a desk drawer. Then one day inspiration struck: what if the actor playing the rogue character also pitched up in New Jersey...?

The result is one of his enduring achievements, from the ironic opening juxtaposition, through ugly threats of domestic violence and tuneful musical interludes, to the mother of all bittersweet endings. (4)



Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen, 1992) - One of the best films ever made about marriage, as Woody and Mia Farrow witness the break-up of their best friends (Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis), and begin to see that dissatisfaction reflected in their own relationship.

When people say that Allen's more recent dramas have been a pale imitation of his best work, this may well be the "best work" they have in mind: a bristling, brilliant examination of adulthood, romance and the conflicting emotions held within the heart of every human being.

Though filmed in a somewhat peculiar manner - as a mockumentary complete with handheld photography, jump cuts and talking head inserts - it remains a simply staggering achievement, building exponentially in power and resonance as it progresses, its bleakness and cynicism balanced masterfully by shards of sentiment and Woody-ish wisdom on the subjects of love, lust and loneliness.

The performances are uniformly superb, with strong early credits for Liam Neeson and Juliette Lewis (who basically provides what Allen seems to imagine Scarlett Johansson brings to his films), while the writing simply showcases one of cinema's true greats at the absolute peak of his powers, every scene serving some definite purpose - whether insightful, blackly comic or deeply poignant. The moment where Farrow murmurs, "We both know it's over" is one of the biggest emotional wallops I've ever known in a film.

It isn't always an easy watch, but it is an extraordinarily worthwhile one, tackling an almost impossible theme in a remarkably intelligent, astute and complete manner, without recourse to cliché or easy answers.

Hurray, I managed to write the whole review without mentioning Soon Yi-Previn. Oh damn it. (4)



Everyone Says I Love You (Woody Allen, 1996) - Allen's musical is an almost complete delight, with a bright, attractive cast vocalising versions of old standards in New York, Paris and Rome, while dealing with the usual Woody staples of love and death.

There are several superb comic scenes, as Allen seduces Julia Roberts with the help of some inside knowledge, as well as a few of the director's funniest innovations (Lukas Haas' Young Republican, Tim Roth's intense convict), and the novelty of these typical Woody creations bursting into song is simply a joy. (Their dancing is, erm, 'charming'.)

Though there's a little too much mugging in the big numbers - an irritating excess you'd more commonly find on stage than on film - and Julia Roberts is completely tone deaf, the whole cast is in good form, and the rest of the principals (sans Drew Barrymore, who was dubbed) are in great voice, their lack of polish adding to the appeal.

Alan Alda is tuneful while retaining his nasal delivery, Allen sings in a pleasant, almost inaudible tenor, and Edward Norton croons his numbers with no shortage of style. I remember reading in Empire when the film came out that he had been asked to tone down the cheese, because he sounded like Perry Como.

Some people may find the story hard to care about: there isn't much of it, and though Allen has a completely unfair reputation for only dealing with privileged characters, the central family here is unusually affluent. But I've seen the film a bunch of times, and it's always a pleasure to return to, full of brilliant jokes, beautiful songs and some breathtaking imagery, like Goldie Hawn gaining the power of flight on the banks of the Seine. (3.5)



Celebrity (Woody Allen, 1998) - If Stardust Memories is Woody Allen's version of Fellini's 8 1/2, and Radio Days his Amarcord, then Celebrity is his La Dolce Vita: a freeform treatise on religion, society and, yes, celebrity, as a journalist (Kenneth Branagh) travels the city, mixing with models, movie stars and moral dissolutes, as his ex-wife (Judy Davis) undergoes an improbable transformation.

Sadly, it isn't anywhere near as good as Fellini's landmark drama. In fact, at the time of release it was Allen's worst film since the early '70s, and by some considerable margin, with little to say, almost no laughs - merely a gallery of grotesques - and a terrible Branagh performance, with the star just delivering a weird, intensely embarrassing facsimile of Allen. In fact, every time the film alights on some promising idea - at the reunion, on the boat or by the kiosk - either the director or more commonly his star contrives to foul it up.

Sven Nyqvist's monochrome cinematography is nice, Davis is good as Branagh's damaged, furious ex-wife, and the closing shot is unexpectedly inspired, but this is nevertheless the first serious sign of Allen's serious decline. His next film, Sweet and Lowdown, was a stunning return to form, after which the wheels properly fell off. (2)



Sweet and Lowdown (Woody Allen, 1999) - Allen's last great film is a tuneful, funny and terribly poignant drama-mockumentary about Emmet Ray (Sean Penn), the second best guitarist of the 1930s, and his relationship with a sweet, mute young woman by the name of Hattie (Samantha Morton).

It begins as a collection of tall tales, rich in period flavour, brings a pleasant, amusing romance into the picture, then shifts gear for the climax, leading to one of the most stunning, heartbreaking denouements in movie history, as Penn drops the cartoonish detachment and gets you right in the tear-ducts.

Allen seems on top of his game, and in full command of his gifts, revisiting the sight gags of his youth, homaging the lobster revival from Annie Hall - as Emmet is unable to replicate the idyllic time spent with Hattie - and referencing the central theme of Deconstructing Harry: that of a great artist who is rubbish at life. But he floundered for a decade after this one, as if he'd poured everything he had into one last great film and simply had nothing left.

For a director who spent the noughties trying vainly to think of something to say, the sheer depth and diversity of themes here is mind-boggling. The main one is the idea of suffering being intrinsic to artistic transcendence, but Allen is also interested in self-obsession, self-destruction and the treatment of the innocent in a selfish, emotionally violent world.

Though Uma Thurman is mediocre at best in an important supporting role, the running jokes are ace, the script and period presentation first-rate, and Morton beyond sensational as the guileless, be-hatted Hattie, her face like an open book. (4)



Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011) - Allen's best film since his last great one - 1999's Sweet and Lowdown - is a clear-sighted takedown of nostalgic delusion with some wonderful moments.

Owen Wilson is Gil Pender, a Hollywood hack turned aspiring novelist who pitches up in Paris with his "pre-tty sexy" fiancée (Rachel McAdams), but finds that the city fails to live up to his illusions, until he takes a midnight taxi to the past, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds and Salvador Dali.

I'm not convinced that the film fully exploits the possibilities of that premise - at times we're merely in box-ticking, name-that-vintage-celeb territory - while McAdams, her parents and her smug admirer (a bearded Michael Sheen) are too hateful to convince or be in any way tolerable.

And yet the film has a certain something that Woody was conspicuously missing across a decade of misfires: a skill, a confidence, a comfort in its easy humour and breezy fantasy, helped by Wilson's amusing, naturalistic performance and a gallery of well-cast supporting actors embodying the great and good of the Jazz Age City of Light.

Then, as you wonder how he's going to tie it up satisfactorily, out comes one of those brilliant, ironic, unmistakably Allen-ish ideas, in which he holds everything up to the light, and the scales fall from his characters' eyes.

Midnight in Paris isn't a classic to rank alongside The Purple Rose of Cairo, but those last 20 minutes are the sign of a true artist becoming reacquainted with his fearsome talent, and the ending is one of his greatest - no small feat when you consider the competition. (3.5)

See also: My original review of Midnight in Paris and an earlier review of Sweet and Lowdown can be read via those links just there.

***

Alfred Hitchcock double-bill:


You know the hotel where Finch and Massey do a sex? This is how it looks today - I made a detour on my way home from work the other day.

Frenzy (Alfred Hitchcock, 1972) - One of Hitchcock's nastiest films - and that's saying something - but also one of his best, with the director back on home soil for the first time since 1950, and revelling in the seediness of both location and story.

As in his 1926 triumph, The Lodger, the story concerns a frenzied psychopath (terrifyingly haired Barry Foster) who's murdering women in London, and the innocent chap (Jon Finch) accused of the crimes.

Written by Sleuth's Anthony Shaffer, it's an almost unrelentingly mean-spirited ride, with one of the most repulsive scenes in cinema history, among the most toxic rape jokes, and a subplot about dodgy faux-European cuisine that made this vegetarian utterly nauseous.

But it's also a textbook thriller, with solid performances - including an excellent supporting performance from Anna Massey, who starred in the not dissimilar Peeping Tom - a very effective musical score, and an air of near-constant menace manufactured by a master of suspense.

The set pieces are extremely memorable: that shocking, revolting scene in Barbara Lee Hunt's office, the horrifying, off-screen sequel capped with a shot worthy of Ophüls, the outrageously devised potato truck sequence, and a neat ending culminating in a deliciously dry closing line.

But this isn't just a film of great set pieces, like the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, it's a first-rate film throughout, the odd dated element and some occasional woodenness in the supporting cast ultimately irrelevant in the face of such sheer malevolent mastery. (3.5)



Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock, 1966) - An underrated, entertaining Hitchcock film, with Paul Newman as a defecting scientist with a secret and Julie Andrews as a most improbable Hitch Girl. It has lapses in logic and takes a dip in the last quarter with that long, nonsensical bus sequence and a mawkish bit about an old woman who needs a sponsor to go the US, but it's full of enjoyable - if hardly top-tier - suspense sequences, handled with the director's usual flair, imagination and dry wit. (3)

***



Sabrina (Sydney Pollack, 1995) - This expanded remake of Billy Wilder's Sabrina, from the director of Tootsie, is perhaps a little bit better, but has most of the same qualities and flaws.

The plot once more concerns a waif-like chauffeur's daughter (Julia Ormond), who harbours a mammoth crush on the boss's playboy son (Greg Kinnear). When she comes back from abroad transformed into a hottie, he falls for her, but his powerful family decides to put a stop to it, with the other, business-minded son (a grey-faced Harrison Ford) setting about seducing her.

Wilder's film is agreeably tender and features one of Audrey Hepburn's best - and loveliest - performances, but it's let down by weird pacing and miscast male leads, including a vapid William Holden and an incredibly uncomfortable looking Humphrey Bogart (in a role written for Cary Grant).

This remake is tonally awkward, dramatically inconsistent and fails to make you care for either Kinnear's caddish layabout or Ford's manipulative moneyman, but it's also variously funny, romantic (especially on the subject of unrequited love) and appealingly far-reaching and incisive in its themes and observations, particularly in the scene where Ormond writes a final letter home from Paris.

Ormond's career as a leading lady was short-lived, partly because Smilla's Sense of Snow tanked so explosively, and partly because she found something more rewarding to do with her time and talents: campaigning about AIDS and people trafficking. Here, during her brief dalliance with stardom, she's absolutely charming, creating a believable, attractive character without the merest trace of Hepburn. Shakespearean actor/all-round journeyman John Wood is also rather good as her proud, protective father.

This isn't in the same class as something like Tootsie, with Pollack leaning on music too heavily, shooting in that weird, soft-focus way so popular in the mid-'90s, and wrestling with a story that simply sags too often, but it's a pleasant, poignant watch: sweet and soppy, with a very nice performance at its heart. (3)

***



Smart Money (Alfred E. Green, 1931) - They dominated the landscape of 1930s cinema, and were both signed to Warner Bros, but incredibly Edward G. Robinson and Jimmy Cagney made just one movie together - this one.

The simplest explanation I can think of is that the studio needed just one big star in any one film and, after Cagney's breakthrough in The Public Enemy several months later, there were no vehicles that required two such names - especially when they occupied such similar ground.

There's also the possibility, of course, that the amazingly energetic Cagney could make absolutely anyone look sluggish, particularly someone with Robinson's acting style, and the studios weren't in the business of letting their stars look silly.

Here, though, Robinson takes the lead, and the whole film is played at his pace, with Cagney fun as his sparky sidekick. Not that Caggers doesn't trip him up a few times, responding to a potentially scene-stealing little gesture by Robinson by nuzzling a fist homoerotically into his kisser.

Despite a lack of depth and a few dull gambling scenes, it's well above par for an early talkie, with some fun supporting parts (including Noel Francis shining among innumerable blonde actresses, who all look confusingly similar), a few ambitious shots and a gratifyingly unpredictable story, up to and including the pay-off.

Its key draw, though, remains the chance to see two legends bouncing lines and repartee off one another for the first and only time. (3)

***



The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (Anatole Litcak, 1938) - This is an enjoyable Edward G. Robinson vehicle with a bit of everything, as his studious criminologist perpetrates a series of robberies to investigate the physical effects of crime. His efforts attract the attention of a foxy fence (Claire Trevor), while evoking the ire of the tough guy now forced to play second fiddle (Humphrey Bogart).

Robinson is in peak comic form, playing a role a little different to anything he'd tried before - Clitterhouse's unshakable assurance borne not of brute force but intellectual superiority - while Litvak's handling is sporadically stylish, and the script, co-written by John Huston, is a touch classier than usual for one of Warner's crime comedies, as it blends mild humour, fair suspense and admirable erudition.

The film takes a sharp left turn with 20 minutes left, only to make the most of its change of direction, leading to a stagy but satisfying wrap-up. Sadly that's not the end of proceedings, as the strict rules of the Hays Code necessitate a dreadful, tacked-on five-minute ending complete with Irving Bacon as an irascible jury foreman.

For all that, it's good fun for old movie buffs, particularly those who harbour a fondness for the wide, effortlessly commanding Robinson. Or want to see character comic supreme Allen Jenkins pretending to lose his voice.

Haha, 'Clitterhouse'. (2.5)

***



Hollywood Hotel (Busby Berkeley, 1937) - Beyond the extravagant sets, Johnny Mercer's clever lyrics and a typically cool supporting performance from Glenda Farrell, there isn't a great deal to love about this Warner musical, directed by cult favourite Busby Berkeley.

The story sees sax player Dick Powell arriving in Hollywood hoping to make it big, but tangling unfortunately with an egomaniacal star (Lola Lane), and winding up providing vocal tracks for hammy Alan Mowbray to mime to.

Though it borrows from the Jean Harlow comedy Bombshell (perhaps MGM let them crib away if they'd big up Metro star Clark Gable in the opening shot proper) and prefigures Singin' in the Rain, it has none of those movies' bite or intelligence, while Lane is poor in a role that Harlow or Carole Lombard would have smacked out of the country, seeming to hold back at important moments, as if bereft of the confidence to give it the necessary oomph.

There are also no visually ambitious numbers after the endearingly daft opener, Hooray for Hollywood, a song which has notably transcended the film that birthed it. Compensation comes only from Mercer's witty words, laced with '30s pop culture references, and even those disappear for long stretches as we watch all-white jazz bands tootling away, and get bogged down in weak slapstick, dated verbiage and obtrusive plotting, too much of it featuring poisonous gossip columnist Louella Parsons.

It isn't really a bad film, and it gets a proper shot of acerbically sexy cool whenever Farrell shows up to wink or crack wise, but it's just too unfocused and flabby, rarely playing to the stars or director's strengths. (2)

***


Vera-Ellen and friend, kindly advertising this blog.

Wonder Man (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1945) - Humour's a very subjective thing, and so if you like Danny Kaye, you'll almost certainly like this. I don't much, so I didn't really.

The redheaded comic plays the dual role of nightclub entertainer Buzzy and the bookish twin brother Edwin he haunts after being knocked off by a mob henchman (Allen Jenkins). Vera-Ellen, meanwhile, is Buzzy's girl, Virginia Mayo is Edwin's, and Steve Cochran is the gangster who ordered the hit on Buzzy in order to shut his mouth, and now wants Edwin dead too.

There was clearly no expense spared with this one, which features lush Technicolor photography and Oscar-winning special effects that mostly hold up well today (the one exception is a bizarrely huge Buzzy drunkenly wandering through a nightclub like a camp ginger Godzilla).

But the film just doesn't quite work for me. I found the minority of the comedy that grew out of the characterisation funny - like the sequence with the sailor, and Edwin's police interview - but the manic slapstick overbearing, the non-sequiturs tiresome, and the mugging to camera just embarrassing, with the opera finale particularly painful.

Having said that, Kaye does do a good job of crafting two distinct and convincing personas, knows his way around wordy dialogue, and belts out his comic numbers very tunefully, suggesting that he certainly had talent, but he didn't always know what to do with it beyond cartoonish attention-seeking.

In the end, my favourite things about the film didn't have much to do with Kaye or the central story at all, being Jenkins' hitman - wearing a hearing aid in order to look "distingué" - and that stunningly gifted dancer, Vera-Ellen. It's always a joy to see her, and she's awesome here making her debut, especially in the spectacular specialty number, So in Love, arguably the best thing she ever did. (2)

***



The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009) - What the hell happened to Jarmusch? This infuriating, excruciating, existential spy movie has five minutes of good stuff, five minutes of pretentious monologuing and 100 minutes of Isaac De Bankholé glaring, walking around and putting away his suit jacket. I like to think that the opening scene is Bankholé trying to work out how to use a Dyson Airblade hand dryer. (1)

***

Thanks for reading. The next update will include a heap of things I neglected to tell you about, including The LEGO Movie, a Busby Berkeley spectacular, and Jarmusch's latest - The Limits of Control is the only film that can make that look like a return to form.

Laughton, the Lanes, and Woody does Lang - Reviews #185

The latest reviews update, in which I watch a couple of good things and then nearly drown in dreck.



The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle, 1939) - "Everybody thought he was a genius," Rex Harrison once said of Charles Laughton. "I didn't. I thought he was more of a show-off, really."

This spellbinding film, from Hollywood's greatest year, is the most forceful rebuke to Sexy Rexy's silly, green-eyed contention you're ever likely to find, offering considerable evidence as to why Harrison found himself in a minority of one.

The mighty Laughton is Victor Hugo's tragic hero, Quasimodo, the deaf, childlike bell-ringer of Notre Dame Cathedral, whose passions are awakened by the arrival of the beautiful gypsy girl, Esmeralda (Maureen O'Hara), in Paris to seek clemency for her people from the King. His head isn't the only one that's turned, though, as she unwittingly attracts the attention of three other men: a poet (Edmond O'Brien), a soldier (Alan Marshal) and a sexually repressed clergyman who believes she's been sent to drag him to Hell (Cedric Hardwicke, in delicious form). Cue potential tragedy, and enter Quasimodo.

Filmed on an enormous, astonishingly detailed set, Dieterle's film evokes an almost unparalleled atmosphere, presenting 15th-century Paris as a place of social oppression, fervent spirituality and crippling superstition, its streets teeming with life, violence and hatred, the whole city at a turning point in its history. At the centre of this maelstrom, as the printing press spreads dissent and the ruling class spread discord, is a true innocent, brought to stunning life by Laughton in a remarkably restrained, nuanced and enduringly affecting performance. He's sparingly used until the film's final third, but it's his presence that dominates throughout, as he wins our pity, our sympathy and then our affection, while essentially allowed to act with just half his face, the remainder covered in remarkable prosthetics.

There are stunning passages studded throughout the film, like the Fools' Day parade and the trial of Esmeralda (which ends with the indelible line: "... together with your accomplice, the goat"), but towering above all is the unforgettable "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" set-piece, which remains simply one of the greatest, most spine-tingling sequences ever put on film. And who else but Laughton could have pulled it off? Probably not Rex Harrison. (3.5)

This review was written for MovieMail.

***



WOODFEST '14: Shadows and Fog (Woody Allen, 1991) - Woody Allen's homage to Expressionism - particularly Kafka and Fritz Lang's M - never quite gels, but it's unusual and amusing all the same.

Allen is in full Bob Hope mode as a nervous nebbish sent out by his vigilante mob to trap a strangler in the shadow-shrouded nocturnal streets. Unfortunately no-one's shared the actual plan with him, and so he just wanders around, incorporating a gallery of grotesques and lost souls, including a circus sword swallower (Mia Farrow) who dreams of a family but has ended up at a whorehouse.

Blending ruminations on mortality and a strange subplot about anti-semitism in a Third Reich-like state with absurdism and Woodyish one-liners could conceivably have worked, but here the elements just sort of sit alongside one another, rather than congealing into a satisfying whole.

It looks fantastic, though, with Carlo DiPalma's cinematography ladling on plenty of the eponymous elements, and while there are some scenes that don't work - largely those featuring the killer - there are also some great ones, in which Farrow explores her desires or Allen tries to comprehend the spiralling situation. Watching him weasel up to his boss, try to satisfy warring vigilante factions and childishly gloat at the murderer via a magic mirror is an absolute delight.

The film also has one of the director's most peculiar and eclectic ensembles, with the excellent Farrow sharing a love triangle with Malkovich and Madonna, while Jodie Foster and Lily Tomlin play prostitutes, John Cusack is one of their clients, a young John C. Reilly turns up as a cop, and Donald Pleasance appears as a very creepy doctor.

After a devastating purple patch between 1984 and '89, Allen dipped a little on Alice and this one, before roaring back with Husbands and Wives, as his life and reputation fell to pieces. (3)

***



"You can be such a -"
"What?"
"Pretty cool human being when you're not being a first class, Grade A bitch."
The Faculty (Robert Rodriguez, 1998) - Pod people take over an archetypal American high school in this typically sharp comedy-horror from the pen of Kevin Williamson.

That smart set-up allows for some astute commentary on the potential benefits of blank-minded assimilation, as well as Williamson's usual amusing inventions - it seems aliens can be killed by chucking drugs at them - and superior dialogue, laced with post-modern genre references, a few overt, a few not.

It isn't as consistently great as it might be, with some dodgy CGI, wish-fulfilment for geeks and nonsensical plotting, but there's lots to enjoy, with a steady stream of shocks and surprises, and a cracking cast.

Bebe Neuwirth is particularly fun as the headteacher, and there are turns from budding stars Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett, supported by a gallery of familiar faces (Robert Patrick, Famke Janssen, Salma Hayek, Piper Laurie and Jon Stewart) playing the faculty. There's also Harry Knowles, which I suppose is one way of ensuring your film gets a good write-up.

Perhaps ironically, given Williamson's considerable flair, my favourite scene is entirely wordless, an apparent homage to The Birds in which our band of misfits stride out of the school building in slow-motion, observed by a mass of gormless alien fizzogs. Rodriguez has proved a wildly unreliable filmmaker, but he handles this one quite nicely, and that sequence is both obscenely exciting and hysterically hip. (3)

See also: I wrote about Rodriguez's Mexico Trilogy here.

***


This is the best pitch ever for a film.

Varsity Show (William Keighley, 1937) - A pleasant but completely nondescript "campus musical" - back from when that was a thing - right up until a big, bold Busby Berkeley finale.

Dick Powell plays a failing Broadway producer petitioned by (apparently overage) students at his old college to come in and save their annual show from clueless, meddling headmaster Walter Catlett. Powell turns up with grouchy Ted Healy in tow, is mistaken for a fresher by a dominatrix - sorry, sophomore - who insists he call her "ma'am" and be spanked on the bottom, then proceeds to get off with her, which is frankly inappropriate. She's played by Rosemary Lane, incidentally, who along with her better-known (and more talented) sister Priscilla was making her debut here.

The script, cast and numbers are bland as can be, until Buzz intervenes in typically bombastic fashion. First John Bubbles does a flamboyant tap routine in front of some giant sheet music, then it's twirling batons galore and synchronised hoofing, before Berkeley takes to flinging pigskins at 3D flags of various US colleges, each one created by a hundred or so dancers, as the soundtrack hollers their anthems. Not his best by a long shot, but middling Berkeley is still something to behold.

Apparently some 40 minutes of the film were snipped by Warner for its re-release, and no longer exist. On the strength of what remains, we didn't lose another Ambersons, though a couple of numbers in the trailer look better than most of those that remain. (2)

***



Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990) - This has been a recruitment video on behalf of the prostitution industry. (2)

***



Kindergarten Cop (Ivan Reitman, 1990) - Oh early-1990s, you guys crack me up. And with this high-concept action-comedy you must have created about the highest and most lowbrow concept ever: Arnie, playgroup, let's go!

Beyond the premise, it's just screenwriting by numbers, with every development signposted in advance, and every tick-box checked, from mawkish motivation to the requisite action climax. And in the foreground are a bunch of kids who can't act, but in the presence of Arnie "doing comedy" look like a RADA reunion. Then there are those parts, erm, "borrowed" from crime classics White Heat and The Narrow Margin, and what seems like five solid minutes of a car repeatedly pulling over so someone can be sick.

The best you can say for the film is that Penelope Ann Miller is quite good as the love interest, it has undisputably the greatest title card of all time, and there's a sign outside a shop saying "Owl drugs", which I hope is what it sells, rather than its name.

I'd always remembered this as being fun. But it's not fun. How could a film called Kindergarten Cop not be fun? (1.5)

***

... and an early contender for this year's This Film Is the Worst award:



Enchanted April (Harry Beaumont, 1935) - Yikes. I'm not a very cynical person, but this artificial, unconvincing drama is a bit twee, even for me. It's also quite outrageously uninteresting. "I don't know why San Salvatore makes me so drowsy," ponders one of the characters. Me neither, but the feeling's mutual. I could sense myself growing increasingly jaundiced, grumpy and ever so sleepy under the film's malignly benign influence.

Ann Harding and Katharine Alexander are the unhappy American housewives given a new lease of life by their stay at an Italian villa. The script is profoundly irritating - mixing weak comedy, self-pitying drama and inexplicable subplots - and the film completely fails to evoke Italy through a mixture of second-unit footage and back projection.

Harding was a really good actress, but she's unbearably bright-eyed and unfunny here, aside from in the climactic scene. She and screen husband Frank Morgan fared much better in the excellent 1933 film. When Ladies Meet. In support, Reginald Owen tackles the material with all the subtlety of a knee to the face, as we head towards one of the worst endings I've ever seen.

Apparently the 1991 version is rather wonderful. I'll have to watch it, after I've destroyed all copies of this one. (1)

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Thanks for reading.