SCREENING LOG -4/19-4/25, 2004

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Sidewalks of London a/k/a St. Martin's Lane (1938, Tim Whelan)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030746/

yes -- Engaging tribute to the buskers (street entertainers) of London, as played by Charles Laughton who loses his girl (Vivien Leigh, in a stunning pre-Scarlett O'Hara role) when she breaks into legitimate theater with the help of Rex Harrison (playing a part not dissimilar to his Henry Higgins of the same year). Laughton's a bit overdone with the cuddly lowbrow schtick but Leigh is the real sparkplug to this nostalgic jalopy.

Twentynine Palms (2003, Bruno Dumont)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315110/

Dumont is a master of a hypnotic kind of filmmaking which hooks the viewer into a hard, tactile connection with the people and settings onscreen (of his earlier films L'HUMANITE and THE LIFE OF JESUS I've written that he shoots human beings in their environments as if making a Discovery Channel animal doc). Here he puts his considerable talent to a perverse test, by applying his knack for ultra-realism to a rather ridiculous and thin setup: an American man and his European lover roam through the California desert in a Hummer with frequent breaks for explicit (and very loud and strenuous) sex, arguments and make-up sessions. We don't know anything about their background or what they're really doing in the middle of nowhere -- they just drive, talk and f*ck -- and the results are more satisfying to watch in all their sensory detail than to interpret. The ending is horrifying and shocking and yet somewhat pat -- thinking back on it now I feel like it strained for shock value. Despite my misgivings I can't deny that Dumont's talent wasn't absent -- the man really knows how to squeeze the existential juice out of moments and make it all feel more vivid and real than it really ought to be. So, barely a yes.

Look Back in Anger (1958, Tony Richardson)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051879/

no (THIS is the play that started a major national theatre movement? What is it about British culture that embraces a generation of prickish, misogynistic drunken wife-beating louts as Brittania's lost hope? Anti-establishment signficance is one thing, but this is just pissing in the wind)

Nazarin (1958, Luis Bunuel) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051983/

YES -- I had rememberd this Bunuel film, arguably my favorite, as the one with which I had no reservations -- but seeing it again I couldn't help but feel that same kind of sniggering at humanity that I feel in other Bunuel films (a similar qualm that DFC has, I think). But that ambivalence is part of what adds value to Bunuel's slippery yet trenchant view of humanity's failings and the lying "truths" we construct to get us through the insanity and misery we inflict on each other. On the one hand Bunuel seems hellbent on subverting every audience expectation, such that the story risks falling into a rut of terminal contrarian irony. And yet he hides behind a deadpan delivery whose motives remain essentially, frustratingly but powerfully inscrutable. And it does lead to scenes that are filled with a wonder that overpowers any detached ironist's posture: the conflagration of Father Nazario's abode, a mesmerising tower of flames that billows out a testimonial to the destructive life impulses of humankind; the two scenes where people near death are miraculously brought to recovery; the look on Francisco Rabal's face when he receives that pineapple. One observation: Bunuel's depiction of willfully poor and suffering Father Nazario is an illustration of a religious equivalent to the Chaos Theory that prevailed in the '90s -- Father Nazario is like a seemingly harmless butterfly whose best intentions cause hurricanes of human misfortune for himself and others everywhere he goes. Bunuel is a director I do not fully trust nor will I probably ever be able to fully embrace, but that tension is what forces a stronger engagement that's less dependent on assumptions and leads to greater honesty with oneself as a viewer and a thinker. #2 for 1958 between VERTIGO and JALSAGHAR

Separate Tables (1958, Delbert Mann) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052182/

Literally, a dinner theatre movie if there ever was, with the performances occupying front and center, thanks to a dream cast: Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Rita Hayworth, and Wendy Hiller among others. I reacted to each of them differently, though in the same dualistic way: as established screen personas and as the characters they were trying to play, in a sense I think the movie intends as much, to wow us with the star power on display, even if the story and setting itself does not call for this. With Lancaster and Hayworth the roles were merely modified expressions of the actors' established personas -- Lancaster was the intense, violently physical soul, trying paradoxically to play a down on his luck ordinary guy instead of a larger than life hero, resulting in an odd tension of an actor in the midst of slumming... which ironically enough fit the character, who was slumming through life. Similarly, Hayworth more or less reprising her '40s femme fatale persona but in a more toned down, weary realist mode -- she looks plumper but as sexually ripe as ever, more a knowing Mrs. Robinson than a gamine Gilda -- the role is an outcast divorcee in self-imposed exile from America, something that resonated with Hayworth's personal history at the time as she was trying in vain to rekindle her megastardom for the 40s before her disastrous marriage and early retirement. Hiller is busy making the graceful transition to middle aged stiff upper lipped matronly roles, like in MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Niven somehow won a Best Actor Oscar for a scattering of scenes doing the mannered-to-a-fault British Officer bit. With each of these roles the "reality" of these characters is paradoxical -- I could hardly buy into any of these characters as "real" because they were played up by big name actors in big name acting ways that simply blew away the veneer of "reality" that no less an American realist as Delbert "MARTY" Mann was trying to preserve with his long takes and low key mise-en-scene. I think in trying to make this movie the producers were like "Oh, it's a great play, full of substance and great intimate characters, but it needs STAR POWER to make it play in Peoria" -- the result, a bizarre concoction.

And then there's Deborah Kerr, an actress I still can't quite figure out. Here she plays a mousy young spinster domineered by her mother, and does it with such overdone neurotic heaving and stoop shouldered slouching it drove me up the wall. And she does it with a deliberate, actressy graceful gracelessness, whose intentional awkwardness is oddly sensual that it gives her away as an actress and further debilitates our ability to buy into the character, but at the same time is fascinating. We're not watching Sibyl Railton-Bell, we're watching Deborah Kerr make a spectacle of herself, with an arsenal of ugly duckling mannerisms that tease us into waiting and watching to see if the REAL Deborah Kerr, the graceful ice queen, will flow out of her plain grey dress. Naturally she got an Oscar nomination.

So it's not just a matter of "does it work or does it not work?" Even a performance that "does not work" might be fascinating, and have its own pleasures and insights, even if it undermines the ostensible value of the movie. In some times it not only undermines it but overtakes it and becomes the film's primary value, as it does in SEPARATE TABLES. mixed

The Party (1968, Blake Edwards)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063415/

mixed - yes for Edwards' affectionate skewering of '60s bourgeois leisure life, and masterful sequencing of accumulating mishaps (it's like EXTERMINATING ANGEL meets PLAYTIME!), no for Peter Sellers' outdated Indian schtick. Are there any Sellers movies where he manages to wipe the smirk off his face? If he were alive today he'd make for a great GW Bush in that movie in the works about Richard Clarke.

Death in Venice (1971, Luchino Visconti) second viewing

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067445/

I was amazed at how much of this film I remembered correctly from my intial childhood viewing, chiefly in its visuals and moods. The overuse of Mahler's Fifth Symphony is the clearest illustration of this film's awkward but unforgettable mix of high-art sublimity and sentimental cheese, two seemingly opposite halves that make for an awkward yet arresting whole. Dirk Bogarde, who slouches through this movie as if he were buried in a caricature of himself, is the burned-out composer who's become out of touch with spontaneity; recuperating in Venice, he falls into an all-consuming passion over an androgynous 12-year old boy. People can make whatever they will of Visconti's use of homosexuality/pedophilia as a metaphor for the artistic impulse (I haven't read Thomas Mann's novella so I don't know if this was true to the source text) -- though one thing I would dispute is the extent to which Bogarde's infatuation with the boy is sexual. The flashback scenes suffer from ponderously flat discussions on art -- the film achieves rare form in its many long-take scenes with no dialogue, exploring the rich yet decaying world of fin-de-siecle Venice in beautifully jaundiced soft-focus cinematography. Despite its many flaws, it offers one of the great cinematic reflections on mortality, featuring one of the greatest death scenes ever filmed. yes #3 for 1971 between WALKABOUT and PAKEEZAH

Many thanks to howard.schumann for sending me:

A Taste of Honey (1961, Tony Richardson)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055506/

yes - Rita Tushingham is memorable as the ugly/beautiful girl cast off by her wanton mother, has a fling with a black sailor and then shacks up with a gay friend who helps her prep for the baby. A real improvement for Richardson over LOOK BACK IN ANGER, due perhaps more to the material than anything else -- his direction in LOOK BACK was stagey though competent -- here he seems to be incorporating a freer documentary approach that helps to further enliven a script that's already stuffed with incident and significance -- interracial sex, broken homes, homosexuality, it's all crammed in here, and while it may be indicative of the British Kitchen Sink syndrome in this instance I find the social progressive agenda handled with sensitivity and conviction. #7 for 1961 between THE HUSTLER and THIRD SISTER LIU

Many thanks to kerpan for sending me:

Take Care of My Cat (2001, Jeong Jae-Eun)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296658/

YES This took me a while to get into, as the narrative jumps between five girls, all ex-high school classmates trying to make a living while maintaining their friendships; I don't think Jeong successfully juggles all the narratives all the time, but after a while this no longer mattered, and the fragmented flow of the story was even appropriate to the disconnected state of affairs for each of the characters. The characters themselves are sharply drawn but done in an incredibly natural way; Jeong has a rare and enviable gift for creating scenes and images that are original, vivid and true to the post-adolescent experience, and the performances she gets from her ensemble are uniformly outstanding. The more recent Korean films I've seen, the more convinced I am that this is where the action is; and after having seen this film and the two shorts by Jeong that accompanied it, I feel that Jeong's is the freshest voice from Korean cinema I've found to date. #6 for 2001 between WAKING LIFE and Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN

Many thanks to Antonious Block for sending me:

Manji (1964, Yasuzo Masumura)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058326/

yes Kyoko Kishida (who I last saw in an arresting cameo in Ozu's AUTUMN AFTERNOON) is a haunted housewife who falls tragically in love with a young model (Ayako Wakao, the devastating beauty of Ozu's FLOATING WEEDS), leading to a bizarre bi-sexual love quadrangle involving their male partners in this impressively transgressive melodrama by Masumura. The tone of the film is too deadpan to be camp, yet too pseudo-exploitationist to be taken completely seriously (this is the case with many of the oddball films of the '60s New Wave). By the tragic finale I was fascinated more than I was moved, and I admit my fascination was due more to the sordidness of the events than the underlying ideas. All the same Masumura moves things along briskly and the performances are first-rate. #10 for 1964 between SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS and MARY POPPINS

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