SCREENING LOG -12/13-12/19, 2004

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With Christmas on the way, I cinematically celebrated the reason for the season with five Christian-themed films.

The Flowers of St. Francis - This is probably my last Fixing recommendation, for one of the oddest, most mysterious, ridiculous and sublime films about religion I've seen. Francis of Assisi leads his monks to a field next to a village. They set up shop after a series of misunderstandings with the locals. Some of their members cause a lot of havoc with the locals -- one keeps giving away his frock, causing him to keep asking other monks to lend him theirs. Another tries to cure his fellow monk's ailment by cutting off the leg of a pig, totally oblivious to the fact that the pig's owner might not approve of it. And then things get really bad. There's enough ridiculousness on the part of the monks to qualify for a Bunuel screenplay -- but unlike Bunuel, Rossellini never mocks any of them. They do stupid things but their earnestness in doing them is too compelling to dismiss or deride entirely, and it opens up some difficult questions about the impossibility of practicing Christian ideals in everyday life. That Rossellini does this without preaching or underlining his points makes them all the more compelling -- by this point in his career Rossellini has abandoned a sense of tight structure in his stories, and allows things to happen almost incidentally -- this sense of form (or lack thereof) goes quite nicely with the rather chaotic and stumbling progress towards grace practiced by the monks. And then somehow the miraculous happens, almost in spite of itself. The ending is a genuine heartbreaker.

De Mille does Ten Commandments better than Kieslowski - this is what I concluded after watching the final two episodes of K's DEKALOG and both versions of DeMille's TEN COMMANDMENTS. I just can't really muster any genuine enthusiasm for DEKALOG -- they seem to work for me better as short stories with dry O. Henry-like twists than as cinema. Maybe it's the Facets video I watched, but the color schemes of each episode are a consistently uninspiring pale blue, despite KK using a different cinematographer for each one. Episode 9 was about an adulterous man who becomes impotent, who then suggests his wife take a lover and then becomes paranoid and jealous. Episode 10 was about two brothers who inherit their father's priceless stamp collection, but only after carelessly dispersing it do they realize its value and then try greedily to get it all back. These are no doubt intelligent films about human frailty, but they fail to surprise me; I admire them more than I love them.

Meanwhile, the four hour 1956 version of TEN COMMANDMENTS practically bleeds with color. It's interesting how contradictory DeMille is, using gaudy spectacle as a way to lure the viewer into his overt moralistic message, letting the viewer have his cake and eat it in order to swallow the spinach stuffed inside. Whether you want to call DeMille a hypocrite or a genius, he sure knows how to put on a show -- the stately 4 pace may bore most viewers today, but the compositions are visually rich enough to want to linger on them like the eternal Word itself. Yvonne DeCarlo (who gives the most fun and knowing performance in the movie) is well worth lingering on as well.

Less visually sumptuous but more interesting from a narrative standpoint is the original 1923 version, which spends only the first half hour on the story of Moses and the Exodus, and the remaining two hours on a contemporary morality play involving two brothers, one a God-abiding carpenter, the other a reckless atheist architect (who seems to be a rebuttal to Ayn Rand's protagonist in THE FOUNTAINHEAD). It's no surprise who wins out in the end, too bad their mother had to die in the process (a victim of a faultily designed church crafted by the Godless architect).

Howard Hughes beats Scorsese in this weeks' auteur sweepstakes - I watched THE AVIATOR last night and though it good but not great. For me it's like two movies. The first half celebrates the industrious, brassy Hollywood of the 30s, even employing a two-strip Technicolor color scheme to give the scenes memorable visuals. The second half is 40s wartime paranoia as Hughes cracks up and the movie loses its verve. What's puzzling is that this material would seem right up Scorsese's alley -- Hughes the paranoid social misfit is not too far away from Travis Bickle or Jake LaMotta -- could it be the chaotic script that's at fault, in how it tries too hard to relate historical factual background at the expense of cultivating a three-dimensional character? Scorsese is unable to find a visual style that effectively convinces us that we're truly inside Hughes' world -- lots of Felliniesque spectacle and Hawksian banter only diverts us temporarily of the hollowness at the center where a human being should reside, instead of a generic Great Man Falls Down narrative. But those diversions (elaborate party scenes, exhilarating aerial sequences, a nighttime flight with Hughes and a wonderful Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn) are still quite captivating.

But none of this quite compares with three films from the crazy rich guy himself. Hell's Angels, Hughes' first directorial effort, is a masterpiece. I say this despite the dismissive casual remarks I've read about Hughes' films in some reviews of THE AVIATOR, likening Hughes to Jerry Bruckheimer. I don't know if Bruckheimer has any of the obsessions that come blaring through Hughes' film -- namely, the thrill of aviation and women, roughly in that order. 75 years later this film still has arguably the best real-life aerial combat footage ever made, with some truly harrowing scenes (the crew of a German zeppelin abandon their ship in order to make it go higher to avoid capture -- one by one they step off the airship and plummet to oblivion). Jean Harlow makes a dazzling debut, all shiny hair and teeth, a walking talking promise of wild sex. This is very much the film of a young man who's totally fascinated with the thrills to be had in the world, the dangers of flying and fornicating, and he visualizes his desires most memorably.

The Outlaw is less accomplished and riper for camp appreciation, what with Jane Russell's breasts being the center of the film's meaning. Billy the Kid wanders into town and steals Doc Holliday's girl, though Holliday seems more preoccupied with his horse, which Billy also covets. A truly weird Western, with line readings so clumsy they form their own unique style, and where there are no real good guys or bad guys but just a bunch of people who want stuff.

Jet Pilot was shot in 1950 by Josef von Sternberg, and was intended by producer Howard Hughes as an anti-communist entertainment featuring exclusive action footage of state-of-the art U.S. fighter jets. Sternberg and Hughes did not get along, which delayed production, while Hughes got the hots for leading lady Janet Leigh, which delayed production so that Hughes could bide his time in bedding her. Sternberg was fired and seven years later the film got its release, with the state of the art jets now old and outdated (but looking no better or worse today than the footage in TOP GUN) -- the film flopped. But today it can be appreciated as Sternberg's valiant attempt to sabotage the right-wing propaganda of the movie with some subversive digs at American machoness, as embodied by John Wayne in the lead. Ironcially, Wayne's performance is enhanced by not being limited to being a propagandistic prop -- and Sternberg is able to direct him in a campy but complex update of DISHONORED, as Wayne and Leigh negotiate their patriotic allegiances to their country with their sexual allegiances to each other. Leigh would seem atrociously miscast as a Soviet spy, but her fiesty, independent-minded performance makes her character work. One would think that her appearance in a tight-fitting turtleneck had enough atomic energy to melt Cold War tensions forever.

Additional comments on other films can be found below:

A Star is Born (1954, George Cukor) second viewing http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047522

It's a bit overlong, but that's also part of what makes it work -- you get to occupy the spaces with James Mason and share in his sense of utter alienation and self-loathing, and Judy Garland as the helpless, unwitting enabler. Cukor films the spaces of Hollywood (theaters and houses alike) like giant, decorous mausoleums that threaten to entomb people in their own success. Garland's "look at me" style of acting has rarely been put to better use, as it both relieves and feeds Mason's jealousy and disgust with the entertainment world. yes (#9 for 1954 between ON THE WATERFRONT and AAR PAAR) The Flowers of St. Francis (1950, Roberto Rossellini) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042477 YES (#3 for 1950 between THIS LIFE OF MINE and LOS OLVIDADOS)

Primer (2004, Shane Carruth) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384

Reportedly made for an unbelievable $6500, Carruth's Sundance Grand Prize-winning debut is a dazzling work of sci-fi paranoia that explores the dark side of do-it-yourself entrepreneurship. Two white collar buddies (who spend the whole movie hilariously in white shirts and ties, even when hanging out at home, as if it were their own uniform) create a time machine literally in their garage. The dialogue is a nonstop banter of engineering and physics jargon that takes on its own musical quality a la HIS GIRL FRIDAY, as if these characters know what the other person is going to say before they even say it -- attetsing to the intensity of their collaborative relationship. Things go by so fast and furious in this film that one might feel lost by the end -- as the space-time continuum breaks down through repeated trips in the machine, so does the coherence of the story. But by that time who cares, an original cinematic voice has been discovered. yes (#7 for IMDb 2004 releases between ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and NOTRE MUSIQUE) (#16 for new films seen in 2004 between ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE)

Way Down East (1920, D.W. Griffith) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0011841

More milking of Lilian Gish's virginal white innocence for melodramatic effect, this time she's a poor country girl who gets scandalized when a rich city man seduces her and leaves her pregnant and stranded. But the ending, with Gish clinging to ice drifting towards a waterfall, is one of Griffith's finest moments -- a nailbiter that also happens to be breathtakingly beautiful. yes (#6 for 1920 between THE PARSON'S WIDOW and THE SCARECROW)

Stella Maris (1918, Marshall Neilan) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0009652

Mary Pickford offers a dazzling dual role as a rich sheltered invalid and a poor orphan who takes care of her, both of whom are enamored with the same man. Not surprisingly, the rich girl wins out. The ending is morally bogus and pretty much sunk my enthusiasm for the film, despite Pickford's stellar performance(s). mixed

Hellboy (2004, Guillermo del Toro) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167190

Someone tell me why I find this so much more entertaining than LORD OF THE RINGS or SPIDER-MAN? Perhaps because it has a more charismatic lead character than either, takes itself less seriously than either, and has a lot more fun with itself. yes (#18 for IMDb 2004 releases between OLDBOY and BAADAAASSSSSS!)

The Ten Commandments (1956, Cecil B. DeMille) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049833

yes (#9 for 1956 between WRITTEN ON THE WIND and THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT)

The Ten Commandments (1923, Cecil B. DeMille) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014532

yes (#6 for 1923 between THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and RETURN A LA RAISON)

The Outlaw (1943, Howard Hughes) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036241

yes (#10 for 1943 between THE LEOPARD MAN and OSSESSIONE)

Hell's Angels (1930, Howard Hughes) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020960

YES (#6 for 1930 between THE BLUE ANGEL and ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT)

Jet Pilot (1957, Josef von Sternberg) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050562

YES (#10 for 1957 between WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? and IL GRIDO)

Dekalog IX: Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbors Wife (1988, Krzystof Kieslowski) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094991

yes

Dekalog IX: Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbors Goods (1988, Krzystof Kieslowski) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094983

yes

Overall rating for THE DEKALOG: yes (#8 for 1989 between TIME OF THE GYPSIES and DRUGSTORE COWBOY)

The Aviator (2004, Martin Scorsese) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751

yes

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