Lately I have been tending to avoid films that I have recommended previously. If you want detail about any films in August that I don't include here please leave a comment or send an e-mail
Two master stylists on Aug. 4: Erich Von Stroheim's silent film The Wedding March (1928) and Josef Von Sternberg's first talkie Thunderbolt (1929).
August 10 has two intelligent King Vidor films, H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941) from a John Galsworthy novel and Comrade X, strongly influenced by Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939). On March 13 is Vidor's Citadel (1938).
On August 12 is Henry King's State Fair (1933) with a wry and folksy Will Rogers, at that time a big star.
Also on August 12 are two moving films by the romantic Frank Borzage, Lucky Star (1929) and Street Angel (1928)
Two extraordinary melodramas on August 14: Vincente Minnelli's dreamlike Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) and Nicholas Ray's period gangster film Party Girl (1958). Both films are beautiful examples of the use of the widescreen and color.
August 15 has John Ford's exquisite How Green Was My Valley (1941)
August16 includes one of the few films Jean Renoir made in America, Swamp Water (1941).
On August 17 there is Phil Karlson's corrosive film about political corruption The Phenix City Story (1955) and two excellent war films: Anthony Mann's Men in War (1952) and Samuel Fuller's The Steel Helmet (1951).
On the 22nd is John Ford's elegant war film about victory and defeat They Were Expendable (1945)
On the 23rd are two films by New Wave director Jean-luc Godard: Contempt (1963) and Masculin-Feminin (1966)
The 28th has Mitch Leisen's Easy Living (1937), with a screenplay by Preston Sturges.
On the 29th are two elegant love stories, Leo McCarey's Love Affair (1939) and Max Ophuls's Earrings of Madame De.. (1939), especially for those, such as myself, who love tracking shots and long takes.
The 31st has Minnelli's intense Some Came Running, with an impressive score by Elmer Bernstein.
Friday, July 29, 2016
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Lady on the Train (movie,1945) and Girl on a Train (book, 2015)
We're back to our usual alternatives: do we want suspense or surprise?
Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut (Simon and Schuster, 1967)
People freely use Hitchcock's name without any understanding of the difference between suspense and surprise. Paula Hawkins's book The Girl on the Train (Riverhead Books, 2014) and Charles David's film Lady on the Train (Universal, 1945) both traffic in surprise more than suspense, deliberately misleading and manipulating the reader or the viewer. Of course there is a long tradition of this in the B movie and detective fiction, a tradition I don't much care for.
Lady on the Train was one of Deanna Durbin's last films before she retired (at the age of 27) and moved to France with David, who directed the film. The film is intelligently directed and photographed --by Woody Bredell -- much like a film noir, most of it taking place at night in dimly lit hotel rooms and nightclubs. Durbin was trying for more grown-up roles after years of playing the-girl-next-door and was rather successful at it in this film and the previous year's Christmas Holiday, directed by film noir specialist Robert Siodmak and photographed by Bredell. Universal claimed that audiences did not buy Durbin in this kind of role, even though the movies had a fair amount of singing. Perhaps it did not help that both these films were downbeat about Christmas, with murder scenes taking place in front of Christmas trees, though in Lady on the Train Durbin sings a lovely version or "Silent Night" over the phone to her father. Durbin continued to complain, justifiably, about bad material and bad directors but Universal was deaf to her complaints.
Paula Hawkins book falls into that dubious genre of Gone Girl (see my entry from 5/6/14) with an unreliable narrator (because she was usually inebriated) and plenty of information withheld from the reader. Even though there are three different narrators --Megan, Rachel, Anna -- men are often designated by simple pronouns, the better to keep their identity hidden until the (slightly) surprise ending.
Both Hawkins and David use the train motif well: both have women spying something happening out a train window that initiates their actions. Deanna Durbin, however, does not go to the police but rather to the author of the mystery she is reading on the train, to solve the murder. Rachel, in The Girl on the Train, goes to the police and immediately becomes a suspect.
Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut (Simon and Schuster, 1967)
People freely use Hitchcock's name without any understanding of the difference between suspense and surprise. Paula Hawkins's book The Girl on the Train (Riverhead Books, 2014) and Charles David's film Lady on the Train (Universal, 1945) both traffic in surprise more than suspense, deliberately misleading and manipulating the reader or the viewer. Of course there is a long tradition of this in the B movie and detective fiction, a tradition I don't much care for.
Lady on the Train was one of Deanna Durbin's last films before she retired (at the age of 27) and moved to France with David, who directed the film. The film is intelligently directed and photographed --by Woody Bredell -- much like a film noir, most of it taking place at night in dimly lit hotel rooms and nightclubs. Durbin was trying for more grown-up roles after years of playing the-girl-next-door and was rather successful at it in this film and the previous year's Christmas Holiday, directed by film noir specialist Robert Siodmak and photographed by Bredell. Universal claimed that audiences did not buy Durbin in this kind of role, even though the movies had a fair amount of singing. Perhaps it did not help that both these films were downbeat about Christmas, with murder scenes taking place in front of Christmas trees, though in Lady on the Train Durbin sings a lovely version or "Silent Night" over the phone to her father. Durbin continued to complain, justifiably, about bad material and bad directors but Universal was deaf to her complaints.
Paula Hawkins book falls into that dubious genre of Gone Girl (see my entry from 5/6/14) with an unreliable narrator (because she was usually inebriated) and plenty of information withheld from the reader. Even though there are three different narrators --Megan, Rachel, Anna -- men are often designated by simple pronouns, the better to keep their identity hidden until the (slightly) surprise ending.
Both Hawkins and David use the train motif well: both have women spying something happening out a train window that initiates their actions. Deanna Durbin, however, does not go to the police but rather to the author of the mystery she is reading on the train, to solve the murder. Rachel, in The Girl on the Train, goes to the police and immediately becomes a suspect.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Dick Bellamy and Rober Mapplethorpe
Judith E. Stein's book Eye of the Sixties: Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Modern Art (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2016) and the recent film Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures on HBO, directed by Randy Barbato and Ferton Bailey, raise many questions that are worth discussing, though impossible to answer definitively: what is art, how is it made and discovered, what is the role of the dealer, and so on.
I knew Dick Bellamy as a tennis partner, not as an art dealer, though I had studied art history and worked at Artforum magazine. He was a skillful player and had a sweet temperament, i.e., he didn't mind winning but mainly just loved to play. He was especially adept at putting spin on the ball and working with a partner in doubles. According to Stein's book he was "risible, inexperienced and at times self-destructive." He was an unusual art dealer in that he sometimes would turn down a buyer as not suitable to own a particular artist's work. He was always short of money and was most successful when he ran The Green Gallery from 1960 to 1965 with the support of Robert Scull. There he showed minimalism, pop art and conceptual art when those movements barely had names. Artists included Warhol, Oldenburg, Rosenquist and Donald Judd. To what extent he "discovered" these artists is difficult to say, i.e., perhaps some of them would have become known anyway, just as many of the artists he showed are now forgotten, for many different reasons. Because he was essentially not good at business he gravitated at the end to living near and representing sculptor Mark di Suvero. According to Stein, Bellamy was an alcoholic, a distant father, an unfaithful lover. He died in 1998 at the age of 70.
Robert Mapplethorpe was a controversial photographer who specialized in homoerotic photographs. I saw the Sandy Daley film Robert Having His Nipple Pierced at MoMA in 1971, with a soundtrack provided live by Patti Smith, with whom he lived for several years. Mapplethorpe was influenced by religious imagery (he was brought up as a Roman Catholic in Queens) in his search for what he called "truth" (which did not stop him from re-touching photographs), with a particular interest in black men (who reminded him of classical bronzes) and their penises. For most of his artistic career Mapplethorpe was not represented by a gallery; not only were his photographs sometimes shocking (though not always; he also photographed flowers, though in distinctive ways) photography was not yet accepted as an art form. Mapplethorpe's social life was completely blended with his professional life and he died with AIDS in 1989, at the age of 42.
I knew Dick Bellamy as a tennis partner, not as an art dealer, though I had studied art history and worked at Artforum magazine. He was a skillful player and had a sweet temperament, i.e., he didn't mind winning but mainly just loved to play. He was especially adept at putting spin on the ball and working with a partner in doubles. According to Stein's book he was "risible, inexperienced and at times self-destructive." He was an unusual art dealer in that he sometimes would turn down a buyer as not suitable to own a particular artist's work. He was always short of money and was most successful when he ran The Green Gallery from 1960 to 1965 with the support of Robert Scull. There he showed minimalism, pop art and conceptual art when those movements barely had names. Artists included Warhol, Oldenburg, Rosenquist and Donald Judd. To what extent he "discovered" these artists is difficult to say, i.e., perhaps some of them would have become known anyway, just as many of the artists he showed are now forgotten, for many different reasons. Because he was essentially not good at business he gravitated at the end to living near and representing sculptor Mark di Suvero. According to Stein, Bellamy was an alcoholic, a distant father, an unfaithful lover. He died in 1998 at the age of 70.
Robert Mapplethorpe was a controversial photographer who specialized in homoerotic photographs. I saw the Sandy Daley film Robert Having His Nipple Pierced at MoMA in 1971, with a soundtrack provided live by Patti Smith, with whom he lived for several years. Mapplethorpe was influenced by religious imagery (he was brought up as a Roman Catholic in Queens) in his search for what he called "truth" (which did not stop him from re-touching photographs), with a particular interest in black men (who reminded him of classical bronzes) and their penises. For most of his artistic career Mapplethorpe was not represented by a gallery; not only were his photographs sometimes shocking (though not always; he also photographed flowers, though in distinctive ways) photography was not yet accepted as an art form. Mapplethorpe's social life was completely blended with his professional life and he died with AIDS in 1989, at the age of 42.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Samuel Fuller's Merrill's Marauders (1961)
I'd been in the infantry, I knew combat was chaos and pandemonium.
-- Samuel Fuller, A Third Face (Knopf, 2002)
For Fuller organization and loyalty are the only means for survival in war/life.
-- Phil Hardy, Samuel Fuller (Praeger, 1970).
It's fascinating to compare Fuller's Merrill's Marauders with Raoul Walsh's Objective Burma (1945). In both members of the infantry are loyal to their general in the hell of the Burmese jungle, trying to cut off the Japanese from making it to India to join with the Germans. Both films capture the horrors of war and the dedication of the troops. Because the Walsh film was made during the war it goes out of its way to emphasize the barbarity of the Japanese, while for Fuller the battle is more a simple problem of logistics and psychology. Some scenes are quite similar, especially the dropping of the food supplies that the troops can't touch because the parachutes have attracted the enemy.
Fuller was somewhat reluctant to make Merrill's Marauders because it was from a book he didn't write, but thought it might enable him to make his most cherished project, The Big Red One, about his own role in WW II (he finally made it on a shoestring in 1980). He had one star, Jeff Chandler, and otherwise had to use Warner Brothers TV actors. This did at least have the effect of a young and energetic group of soldiers, loyal to Merrill, who was able time after time to motivate them to get up and put one foot in front of the other. Fuller, like many directors, had gotten more pessimistic as he had gotten older (he was 49 when he made Merrill's Marauders) and I don't think it's a coincidence that War in Vietnam was marginally under way when the film was made; Fuller always had an interest in Asia (he made two films about the Korean War, The Steel Helmet in 1950 and Fixed Bayonets in 1951) and felt that Americans had made little attempt to understand that continent.
Fuller's war films are non-sentimental -- no references to sweethearts or family at home -- and all about getting the job done. His battle scenes are beautifully composed geometric images of violence and confusion, in this case within a widescreen and technicolor image.
-- Samuel Fuller, A Third Face (Knopf, 2002)
For Fuller organization and loyalty are the only means for survival in war/life.
-- Phil Hardy, Samuel Fuller (Praeger, 1970).
It's fascinating to compare Fuller's Merrill's Marauders with Raoul Walsh's Objective Burma (1945). In both members of the infantry are loyal to their general in the hell of the Burmese jungle, trying to cut off the Japanese from making it to India to join with the Germans. Both films capture the horrors of war and the dedication of the troops. Because the Walsh film was made during the war it goes out of its way to emphasize the barbarity of the Japanese, while for Fuller the battle is more a simple problem of logistics and psychology. Some scenes are quite similar, especially the dropping of the food supplies that the troops can't touch because the parachutes have attracted the enemy.
Fuller was somewhat reluctant to make Merrill's Marauders because it was from a book he didn't write, but thought it might enable him to make his most cherished project, The Big Red One, about his own role in WW II (he finally made it on a shoestring in 1980). He had one star, Jeff Chandler, and otherwise had to use Warner Brothers TV actors. This did at least have the effect of a young and energetic group of soldiers, loyal to Merrill, who was able time after time to motivate them to get up and put one foot in front of the other. Fuller, like many directors, had gotten more pessimistic as he had gotten older (he was 49 when he made Merrill's Marauders) and I don't think it's a coincidence that War in Vietnam was marginally under way when the film was made; Fuller always had an interest in Asia (he made two films about the Korean War, The Steel Helmet in 1950 and Fixed Bayonets in 1951) and felt that Americans had made little attempt to understand that continent.
Fuller's war films are non-sentimental -- no references to sweethearts or family at home -- and all about getting the job done. His battle scenes are beautifully composed geometric images of violence and confusion, in this case within a widescreen and technicolor image.
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch
Among the many baroque splendours the Western has produced, The Wild Bunch stands out as one of the most extreme.
--Phil Hardy, The Western (William Morrow, 1983)
Sam Peckinpah directed a number of lovely films -- especially Ride the High Country (1962), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), Junior Bonner (1972) -- but is remembered mostly for his penchant for violence. The Wild Bunch had an intense response when it came out in 1969 because, for me and many others, it was a metaphor for the War in Vietnam. I had been dodging my draft board for most of that year and was able to stay out of the army until the lottery in 1969 (which reminded one of the famous lottery in Shirley Jackson's story of the same name), when my number was 350. The draft board called me for a physical that year anyway and I had to journey to Brooklyn for it because war protesters had bombed the selective service office on Whitehall Street. The violence in The Wild Bunch was the most explicit ever seen in a Western, with scenes at the beginning and end showing blood spurting in slow motion, capturing the horror of violent death.
Unlike some of Peckinpah's lesser-known films, however, The Wild Bunch does not completely transcend its time:
There are too many zooms, telephoto shots and slow motion scenes. This is a problem for many films of this period, of course, and there are moments of great beauty shot by cinematographer Lucien Ballard, but overall there is too much technique overshadowing the story
There are no roles for women, with the dubious exception of Mexican whores. No one on any side (the bandits, the railroad bounty hunters, the Mexican rebels and regulars) has much regard for women.
The Wild Bunch itself includes some terrific actors -- William Holden, Ben Johnson, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien -- who don't seem comfortable in the West, either as a group or individually, with the slight exception of Johnson. Robert Ryan is effective, however, as the world-weary leader of the ragtag group --"egg-sucking chicken thieves" -- chasing the bunch.
Peckinpah made a Western for its time as time for the Western was running out, now that motorcars were appearing in A Westerns (they had always been in the more contemporary B Westerns) and the frontier had basically closed (The Wild Bunch takes place in 1912). It effectively captures a pessimistic time, when it looked like Vietnam would never end.
--Phil Hardy, The Western (William Morrow, 1983)
Sam Peckinpah directed a number of lovely films -- especially Ride the High Country (1962), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), Junior Bonner (1972) -- but is remembered mostly for his penchant for violence. The Wild Bunch had an intense response when it came out in 1969 because, for me and many others, it was a metaphor for the War in Vietnam. I had been dodging my draft board for most of that year and was able to stay out of the army until the lottery in 1969 (which reminded one of the famous lottery in Shirley Jackson's story of the same name), when my number was 350. The draft board called me for a physical that year anyway and I had to journey to Brooklyn for it because war protesters had bombed the selective service office on Whitehall Street. The violence in The Wild Bunch was the most explicit ever seen in a Western, with scenes at the beginning and end showing blood spurting in slow motion, capturing the horror of violent death.
Unlike some of Peckinpah's lesser-known films, however, The Wild Bunch does not completely transcend its time:
There are too many zooms, telephoto shots and slow motion scenes. This is a problem for many films of this period, of course, and there are moments of great beauty shot by cinematographer Lucien Ballard, but overall there is too much technique overshadowing the story
There are no roles for women, with the dubious exception of Mexican whores. No one on any side (the bandits, the railroad bounty hunters, the Mexican rebels and regulars) has much regard for women.
The Wild Bunch itself includes some terrific actors -- William Holden, Ben Johnson, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien -- who don't seem comfortable in the West, either as a group or individually, with the slight exception of Johnson. Robert Ryan is effective, however, as the world-weary leader of the ragtag group --"egg-sucking chicken thieves" -- chasing the bunch.
Peckinpah made a Western for its time as time for the Western was running out, now that motorcars were appearing in A Westerns (they had always been in the more contemporary B Westerns) and the frontier had basically closed (The Wild Bunch takes place in 1912). It effectively captures a pessimistic time, when it looked like Vietnam would never end.
Thursday, July 14, 2016
Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday
Hamer shows people trapped in situations where their family and community and daily life have already had passion (and the word is meant to have wide connotations) drained out of them.
--Charles Barr, Ealing Studios (The Overlook Press, 1980)
There are many ways of looking at Hamer's rich and complex British film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) from its ironic title (Sunday is the one day that the East Enders of the film have off from work, if they have any day) to its role in director Robert Hamer's career (I wrote about Hamer's Scapegoat on May 20, 2014) to its importance to Ealing Studios, where it was made at a point when Ealing was making mostly comedies. It is considered to be something of a precursor to John Osborne and other kitchen-sink realists of the 50's but was also seen by film historian William K. Everson as a British noir, closely related to America films of the post-war period. It is a significant role for skillful actress Googie Withers, who is superb as a working-class housewife hiding her former lover when he escapes from prison, and the film is beautifully photographed by Douglas Slocombe
Withers plays Rose, who lives with her much older husband and two stepdaughters. The stepdaughters have to share a bed in the cramped flat and baths have to be taken in the cramped kitchen, where there is barely room to eat around the small table. When Rose's lover Tom escapes from prison and sneaks into Rose's flat the only food she can offer --since things are still being rationed -- is "bread and marge." Hamer and Slocombe effectively portray not only the claustrophobia of the family flat, but also of the crowded streets and grimy pubs, filled with spivs and scammers of all sorts. There are multiple sub-plots, as Rose's stepdaughters try to find men who will rescue them from the East End and the petty criminals try to outwit the police. Rose makes love to Tom who then escapes when a reporter knocks at the door. Tom steals a car, then a bicycle and ends up in a trainyard where he is captured. Rose is overcome by guilt and tries to gas herself but is rescued by her understanding husband. Like James Joyce's Ulysses, which takes place on June16, 1904, It Always Rains on Sunday takes place on one day: March 23, 1947 (though one needs to notice the calendars in the films to be aware of the date)
--Charles Barr, Ealing Studios (The Overlook Press, 1980)
There are many ways of looking at Hamer's rich and complex British film It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) from its ironic title (Sunday is the one day that the East Enders of the film have off from work, if they have any day) to its role in director Robert Hamer's career (I wrote about Hamer's Scapegoat on May 20, 2014) to its importance to Ealing Studios, where it was made at a point when Ealing was making mostly comedies. It is considered to be something of a precursor to John Osborne and other kitchen-sink realists of the 50's but was also seen by film historian William K. Everson as a British noir, closely related to America films of the post-war period. It is a significant role for skillful actress Googie Withers, who is superb as a working-class housewife hiding her former lover when he escapes from prison, and the film is beautifully photographed by Douglas Slocombe
Withers plays Rose, who lives with her much older husband and two stepdaughters. The stepdaughters have to share a bed in the cramped flat and baths have to be taken in the cramped kitchen, where there is barely room to eat around the small table. When Rose's lover Tom escapes from prison and sneaks into Rose's flat the only food she can offer --since things are still being rationed -- is "bread and marge." Hamer and Slocombe effectively portray not only the claustrophobia of the family flat, but also of the crowded streets and grimy pubs, filled with spivs and scammers of all sorts. There are multiple sub-plots, as Rose's stepdaughters try to find men who will rescue them from the East End and the petty criminals try to outwit the police. Rose makes love to Tom who then escapes when a reporter knocks at the door. Tom steals a car, then a bicycle and ends up in a trainyard where he is captured. Rose is overcome by guilt and tries to gas herself but is rescued by her understanding husband. Like James Joyce's Ulysses, which takes place on June16, 1904, It Always Rains on Sunday takes place on one day: March 23, 1947 (though one needs to notice the calendars in the films to be aware of the date)
Saturday, July 9, 2016
Josef Von Sternberg's The Docks of New York 1928
At all times, Sternberg's cinema of illusion and delusion has transcended the personality of even his most glittering star the better to reflect his own vision.
--Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema (Dutton, 1968)
For total absorption in style, remorseless interest in sexual existence, subtle conviction of hopelessness and amorality, Sternberg now stands clear as one of the greatest directors and the first poet of underground cinema.
--David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film (William Morrow and Company, 1976)
Docks of New York was one of the finest achievements of a period when fine achievements were commonplace. Its impact has gained strength with the passage of time. It is one of the enduring masterpieces of American cinema, a triumphant vindication for a man whose behavior suggested to so many that of an artistic charlatan.
--Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By ((Knopf, 1968)
The Docks of New York is a beautiful film, not only physically beautiful (especially for those of us who think black-and-white is lovelier than color) but in its unusually hopeful view that even the lowest in society can find someone to love and be loved by. Bill is a stoker in a ship, already in a kind of hell, and rescues Mae from suicide when she tries to drown herself. They impulsively get married in a dive bar and in the morning there is a subjective shot of Mae's tears as she threads a needle to mend Bill's coat, thinking that Bill will be leaving her, just as Bill's boss Andy left her friend Lou and only returned after three years.
Sternberg's style could be called oneiric horror vacui; every shot of this dreamlike film is filled with mist, smoke, netting and fog, an environment that seems to enclose and constrict everyone. The denizens of the smoky Sandbar seem like denizens of hell from a Bosch painting, as they are often shown in mirrors and drunkenly mock the marriage ceremony. Bill heads back to his ship and then changes his mind, realizing that he and Mae might just possibly save themselves from the fate of Lou and Andy.
Not all of us have been lucky enough to see silent films in nitrate prints and projected at the proper speed (only MoMA has a dispensation from the fire department to show nitrate prints), but Criterion has done an excellent job of restoring Sternberg's silent films and making them available on DVD. For those who still think silent films are nothing but herky-jerky and laughable and can't get to MoMA to see them in all their exquisite perfection the Criterion disks are acceptable. And if one finds the musical accompaniment more of a negative than a positive one can watch the films in silence (though originally they were never exhibited that way).
--Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema (Dutton, 1968)
For total absorption in style, remorseless interest in sexual existence, subtle conviction of hopelessness and amorality, Sternberg now stands clear as one of the greatest directors and the first poet of underground cinema.
--David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film (William Morrow and Company, 1976)
Docks of New York was one of the finest achievements of a period when fine achievements were commonplace. Its impact has gained strength with the passage of time. It is one of the enduring masterpieces of American cinema, a triumphant vindication for a man whose behavior suggested to so many that of an artistic charlatan.
--Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By ((Knopf, 1968)
The Docks of New York is a beautiful film, not only physically beautiful (especially for those of us who think black-and-white is lovelier than color) but in its unusually hopeful view that even the lowest in society can find someone to love and be loved by. Bill is a stoker in a ship, already in a kind of hell, and rescues Mae from suicide when she tries to drown herself. They impulsively get married in a dive bar and in the morning there is a subjective shot of Mae's tears as she threads a needle to mend Bill's coat, thinking that Bill will be leaving her, just as Bill's boss Andy left her friend Lou and only returned after three years.
Sternberg's style could be called oneiric horror vacui; every shot of this dreamlike film is filled with mist, smoke, netting and fog, an environment that seems to enclose and constrict everyone. The denizens of the smoky Sandbar seem like denizens of hell from a Bosch painting, as they are often shown in mirrors and drunkenly mock the marriage ceremony. Bill heads back to his ship and then changes his mind, realizing that he and Mae might just possibly save themselves from the fate of Lou and Andy.
Not all of us have been lucky enough to see silent films in nitrate prints and projected at the proper speed (only MoMA has a dispensation from the fire department to show nitrate prints), but Criterion has done an excellent job of restoring Sternberg's silent films and making them available on DVD. For those who still think silent films are nothing but herky-jerky and laughable and can't get to MoMA to see them in all their exquisite perfection the Criterion disks are acceptable. And if one finds the musical accompaniment more of a negative than a positive one can watch the films in silence (though originally they were never exhibited that way).
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Andre de Toth's The Bounty Hunter, 1954
Andre de Toth's most interesting films reveal an understanding of the instability and outright treachery of human relationships.
--Andrew Sarris
de Toth made beautiful, compact genre films, especially crime films and Westerns. He made four films with Randolph Scott, who was something of a leading man in the 30's before drifting into rather indifferent Westerns in the forties and elegiac Westerns with directors de Toth and Budd Boetticher in the fifties, ending his career with Sam Peckinpah's marvelous Ride the High Country in 1962, where Scott's character sums up his career as a minimalist and complex actor.
In The Bounty Hunter Scott plays a bitter man who saw his father killed in a robbery and has dedicated himself to a career hunting down criminals and bringing them in, often dead, for the money. He is hired by the Pinkertons to track down three murderers that the agency has been unable to find and follows some subtle clues to a small and isolated town; no one knows what the killers look like but Scott is astute enough to know that if he stays long enough in the town the killers will get nervous enough to reveal themselves. The town doctor knows who one of them is but won't reveal it because he and his daughter have been threatened. Scott falls for the daughter while a dance hall girl falls for him.
The opening of the film, where Scott rides alone in a rocky landscape, looks very much like the Boetticher films; but the rest of the film takes place in the small town where everyone is trying to outmaneuver each other. de Toth's tense direction transcends the cheap Warnercolor (one of many versions of Eastmancolor, the inexpensive alternative to Technicolor) and the original gimmick of 3D (guns firing directly at the audience, etc.), though the film was only released flat.
--Andrew Sarris
de Toth made beautiful, compact genre films, especially crime films and Westerns. He made four films with Randolph Scott, who was something of a leading man in the 30's before drifting into rather indifferent Westerns in the forties and elegiac Westerns with directors de Toth and Budd Boetticher in the fifties, ending his career with Sam Peckinpah's marvelous Ride the High Country in 1962, where Scott's character sums up his career as a minimalist and complex actor.
In The Bounty Hunter Scott plays a bitter man who saw his father killed in a robbery and has dedicated himself to a career hunting down criminals and bringing them in, often dead, for the money. He is hired by the Pinkertons to track down three murderers that the agency has been unable to find and follows some subtle clues to a small and isolated town; no one knows what the killers look like but Scott is astute enough to know that if he stays long enough in the town the killers will get nervous enough to reveal themselves. The town doctor knows who one of them is but won't reveal it because he and his daughter have been threatened. Scott falls for the daughter while a dance hall girl falls for him.
The opening of the film, where Scott rides alone in a rocky landscape, looks very much like the Boetticher films; but the rest of the film takes place in the small town where everyone is trying to outmaneuver each other. de Toth's tense direction transcends the cheap Warnercolor (one of many versions of Eastmancolor, the inexpensive alternative to Technicolor) and the original gimmick of 3D (guns firing directly at the audience, etc.), though the film was only released flat.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
The Other Side of Silence by Philip Kerr
They were risky creatures, women, but that's what life was for -- to take risks.
--Philip Kerr, The Other Side of Silence (G.P. Putnam, 2016)
The spy novel has fallen on hard times since the fall of the Soviet Union and while some, such as John le Carre,, look for new villains others, such as Alan Furst, are writing historical spy novels, with an emphasis on WW II. Kerr started out with The Berlin Noir Trilogy, with police official Bernie Gunther in Nazi Germany, and then has followed Bernie after the war. The Other Side of Silence takes place mostly in Nice in 1956, with a few flashbacks to WWII and its aftermath. Bernie is working as a hotel concierge and falls for a femme fatale, who of course betrays him. I've always had something of a weakness for real people in novels and W. Somerset Maugham, who was living in Nice in 1956, plays an important role in Kerr's novel. It adds considerably to one's enjoyment of Kerr's book if one has read Maugham's novels and the excellent recent biography by Selina Hastings, with its detailed discussion about Maugham's role as a spy. In Kerr's book there's also a great deal about British spies --Maclean, Philby, Burgess -- and the attempts of the East German Stasi and British intelligence to outwit each other.
The Other Side of Silence should have been better, however. Gunther cracks wise too often and though his narration starts off with "yesterday I tried to kill myself" the air of melancholy soon dissipates in the excessively convoluted plot, including flashbacks to Nazi Germany and the death of Gunther's lover and their unborn child in the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945. Kerr is steeped in knowledge of the periods and countries he writes about but the characters are not as vividly alive as I would like; perhaps they spend too much time playing bridge.
--Philip Kerr, The Other Side of Silence (G.P. Putnam, 2016)
The spy novel has fallen on hard times since the fall of the Soviet Union and while some, such as John le Carre,, look for new villains others, such as Alan Furst, are writing historical spy novels, with an emphasis on WW II. Kerr started out with The Berlin Noir Trilogy, with police official Bernie Gunther in Nazi Germany, and then has followed Bernie after the war. The Other Side of Silence takes place mostly in Nice in 1956, with a few flashbacks to WWII and its aftermath. Bernie is working as a hotel concierge and falls for a femme fatale, who of course betrays him. I've always had something of a weakness for real people in novels and W. Somerset Maugham, who was living in Nice in 1956, plays an important role in Kerr's novel. It adds considerably to one's enjoyment of Kerr's book if one has read Maugham's novels and the excellent recent biography by Selina Hastings, with its detailed discussion about Maugham's role as a spy. In Kerr's book there's also a great deal about British spies --Maclean, Philby, Burgess -- and the attempts of the East German Stasi and British intelligence to outwit each other.
The Other Side of Silence should have been better, however. Gunther cracks wise too often and though his narration starts off with "yesterday I tried to kill myself" the air of melancholy soon dissipates in the excessively convoluted plot, including flashbacks to Nazi Germany and the death of Gunther's lover and their unborn child in the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945. Kerr is steeped in knowledge of the periods and countries he writes about but the characters are not as vividly alive as I would like; perhaps they spend too much time playing bridge.
Friday, July 1, 2016
Yankee Stadium June 30 2016
Speaking of enjoying the beauty of the game (baseball, that is) I did just that yesterday (see my previous post). I attended the Yankee/Rangers game with my wife and son, who both appreciate baseball for its abstract beauty and have little interest in who the players are; we were sitting in the grandstand (the highest level) down the left-field line and enjoyed the view of the green grass, the blue sky and the white baseball as left-fielder Brett Gardner moved toward fly balls that seemed to float in the sun. The game was a good pitcher's duel, with each team having only a single run (albeit on solo home runs) until the ninth inning, when Chase Headley walked, moved to second on Didi Gregorious's sacrifice bunt, to third on a fielder's choice and scored the winning run on a passed ball (more and more I cannot quote Casey Stengel on Choo-Choo Coleman --"fastest catcher I ever saw going after passed balls" -- without having to explain what a passed ball is), a winning run scored without a hit.
Every time baseball tries to shorten games something happens to lengthen them; this year it's the challenges to an umpire's decision, which can take several minutes to check. When Susan asked me why the game we were watching took so long (three hours and twelve minutes) considering how low-scoring it was, I explained that there were no challenges but not only was Yankee pitcher Michael Pineda rather slow to the plate but the Yankee pitchers had sixteen strikeouts, which of course made for longer Texas at-bats. Susan, Gideon, and I tend to prefer going to see The Staten Island Yankees and the Brooklyn Cyclones where, as Susan correctly pointed out, one is much closer to the game and more likely to be involved in it. Of course the cost is considerably lower, too, even if one wanted to sit close to the game in Yankee Stadium and even if one could afford it, most of those seats were sold long ago. I do wish that more Yankee, Mets, Cyclones and Staten Island Yankees games were during the day during the week: not only would it be more convenient for those of us with young children, but also games can end very late and at night and week-end games one too often has to deal with drunken louts.
Every time baseball tries to shorten games something happens to lengthen them; this year it's the challenges to an umpire's decision, which can take several minutes to check. When Susan asked me why the game we were watching took so long (three hours and twelve minutes) considering how low-scoring it was, I explained that there were no challenges but not only was Yankee pitcher Michael Pineda rather slow to the plate but the Yankee pitchers had sixteen strikeouts, which of course made for longer Texas at-bats. Susan, Gideon, and I tend to prefer going to see The Staten Island Yankees and the Brooklyn Cyclones where, as Susan correctly pointed out, one is much closer to the game and more likely to be involved in it. Of course the cost is considerably lower, too, even if one wanted to sit close to the game in Yankee Stadium and even if one could afford it, most of those seats were sold long ago. I do wish that more Yankee, Mets, Cyclones and Staten Island Yankees games were during the day during the week: not only would it be more convenient for those of us with young children, but also games can end very late and at night and week-end games one too often has to deal with drunken louts.
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