Frederic Wiseman's The National Gallery. Another in the series of Wiseman's documentaries. As usual there is no narration and individuals are not identified, in this film about the London museum. This is sometimes irritating and frustrating, but it emphasizes the importance of the institution itself and, at least in my case, produces more involvement in the film, as it becomes more important what is being done than who is doing it. As often with Wiseman there is something of an emphasis on all the workers who do everything from polishing the floors to building the structures for special exhibitions. Works are shown, artists such as Poussin and Caravaggio are discussed at great length in talks in the galleries and there is something of a wandering feel to the film, as Wiseman is interested in some artists more than others: Turner, for instance, is shown to greater advantage than in Mike Leigh's recent film. There are fascinating views of what goes on outside the galleries, including classes for how the blind can "see" a painting, life-drawing and restoration. Restoration continues to be a controversial endeavor and currently all restorations are done on top of a coat of varnish so all the restorations can be removed if they later turn out to be in error.
Rouben Mamoulian's Summer Holiday (1949). This is a charming musical version of O'Neill's Ah Wilderness (a pleasant, non-musical version was made in 1935 by Clarence Brown) with the songs and dance done in context rather than on stage, though Mamoulian was mainly a stage director. It takes place in 1906, when the automobile was just starting to disrupt life in pastoral towns. The cast does its own singing of the Harry Warren and Ralph Blane songs; Walter Huston acquits himself remarkably well. Mickey Rooney effectively captures the adolescent at high school graduation: still part of the family but ready to rebel. For an American film there are unusually intelligent discussions of Swinburne and Carlyle. The cinematography, with its warm greens and browns, was by Charles Schoenbaum.
Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza (1974) and Joseph Losey's The Romantic Englishwoman (1975) are two okay films from the overrated 70's, when many directors had more freedom than they knew how to handle and became more dependent on screenwriters. The Yakuza was written by Paul and Leonard Schrader and should have been directed by Paul, who understood the tension between Japan and America better than Pollack (Schrader directed Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters in 1985 and published a book on Ozu, Bresson and Dreyer in 1972). Robert Mitchum wanders through the film showing little rapport with Japanese star Ken Takakura and little knowledge of Japan, though his character had spent time there after the war. Pollack handles the action scenes effectively, though reportedly he cut much of the footage showing details of Japanese life and the rituals of the Yakuza. The screenplay of The Romantic Englishwoman, by Tom Stoppard, is opaque without the layered complexity of the scripts Harold Pinter did for Losey. And there is too much use of the zoom lens, overused in the 70's. Losey went to Europe after being blacklisted in America, though before he left he made some excellent films about the corruption of America, especially The Prowler (1951).
Raoul Walsh's Desperate Journey (1942), made just after America entered the war, is similar to Walsh's Objective Burma (1945); both show a difficult slog through enemy lines. But the 1942 film is brash and optimistic in the way that Objective Burma is not. In Desperate Journey the Americans are caught behind German lines and have to use ingenuity to make their way through Germany to get back to England. Errol Flynn makes one of his tight-lipped, effective performances for Walsh (compare the complex characters he plays in Walsh's films to those he plays in movies by other directors), making difficult decisions that help the war effort but leave several of his colleagues dead. Walsh, as almost always, does a superb job with the action sequences in a film that is almost continuous movement, mostly at night and shot beautifully, in complex contrasts, by cinematographer Bert Glennon, who did a number of films for John Ford.
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