http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:43:09 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/16/214309.php Michael GerardiI saw a French musical the other day, and enjoyed it immensely. I will now gouge my own eyes out.OK, so I'm not that despondent over my seeming lack of masculinity--I already play the flute and own a pair of running tights, so it's not as though I'm on ground I haven't been on before. But it's certainly true that The Umbrellas of Chambourg (Jacque Demy, France, 1964) isn't going to be making an appearance on the film lists of the "boycott France" crowd anytime soon (more on that later, maybe--both on the the list AND Emerson's snarky comments). However, there's a chance that even the hardest of hearts could be softened by Demy's masterpiece of song and color, which manages to be both a delightful tribute to, and a richly ironic critique of, the great film musicals of the studio era in Hollywood.It might not even be fair to call Cherbourg a "musical" at all--it's more like a film opera. All of the dialogue is sung, unlike most musicals where song is interspersed between normal dialogue. The "lyrics" do a good job of chiming in with the film's musical soundtrack, and the overall effect is worth the relatively few clunkers in the score. The music itself, on the other hand, is sensational through and through. Michel Legrand's score seems to hit the perfect mood every time, giddily moving from a modern big-band sound, to a hard bop groove reminiscent of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, to a "cool" sound that harkens to Davis' "Kind of Blue" days, to the sweeping ballad feel of the love songs of the studio era. Just when you think it can't possibly delight you any more, it finds a way to make you smile again, until the final fade out comes and you want to listen, just listen, to it all over again.I don't feel a need to defend Demy's decision to eliminate all normal dialogue in any formal way. If you enjoy musicals, then singing everything is simply a logical extension of what one enjoys them for--singing gives the actors so much more emotional depth, and things just sound better when they're sung, so why not? If musicals don't do it for you (my brother always thought musicals would be good movies, if they would just cut out the singing and get to the point), then nothing a musical fan could possibly say to you would sway you in their direction. I even think the singing is a bit tedious at times, and if I think that, a person who isn't a musical fan will really want to gouge their eyes out at the nearest opportunity.Cherbourg's musical delight is accompanied by a world awash in vibrant colors and beautiful places. The bright colors of the umbrella shop seem to explode out of the dreary store fronts of Cherbourg, as do the many gorgeous interiors we are allowed to peek into. Color also reflects mood--the deep red of the dance halls and brothels, the confused and lonely patches of lime green and pink outside of Guy's apartment that Demy cuts to in the lovers' confusion, and the vibrant orange we see as Guy's life takes a turn for the better later in the film are just a few examples. Night and day are also effective metaphors, as Genviéve and Guy only manage to meet each other outside the light of Genviéve's disapproving mother (an idea that's reinforced later when Genviéve walks the same paths she took with Guy, this time with a different man). I also liked how the wardrobes of these star-crossed lovers seemed to match when they went out together--the match usually wasn't blatant, but it still managed to highlight's the couple's devotion to one another without being silly or obvious. The sum effect is a film that rarely hits a wrong note or clashing hue that pulls us in even when it seems like so little is happening.Like many musicals (West Side Story, Singin' In The Rain), Cherbourg is about two star-crossed lovers--Genviéve (Catherine Deneuve), a young lady who works in her mother's umbrella shop in the small French town of Cherbourg, and Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), an auto mechanic who has fallen in love with her. While Genviéve's mother (Anne Vernon) disapproves of the decidedly blue collar Guy, Genviéve persists in the relationship, sneaking out with him to go see Carmen (there are some very funny in-jokes in the early scenes about how one of the mechanics hates opera, but loves the movies) and to enjoy the night together. Heartbreak comes when Guy is called for a mandatory 2-year tour of duty with the military and the happy little dreams of this young couple are dashed.What happens in the rest of the film is not necessarily shocking, if you take a moment to think about it, but it is unexpected in light of what musicals should do. We don't get heroic self-sacrifice like in West Side Story, or a happy reunion like in Singin' In The Rain, but something much more truthful--human weakness, sin, grief, betrayal, resignation, and the slow numbing of pain that only comes with time. Guy and Genviéve try to stay faithful to one another, but the pain of separation is too great, the external pressures they face too sharp, and, inevitably, other people enter their lives. Genviéve finds the jewelry dealer Roland Cassard, a gracious man who knows a jewel of real price when he sees one, unlike the salesmen he serves. Guy falls in love with Madeline, the nurse who cared for his mother while he was away at war. Cherbourg is saved from being stock chick-flick material by it's refusal to dip into clichéd romantic gestures, and it's thoroughly balanced portrayal of human nature--these are real people, not templates.While writing the film, Demy and Legrand marked "hankies" on the score, places where they knew the audience would respond most intensely, and they certainly saved their best hanky for last. There is a long-overdue reunion between Guy and Genviéve in the final scene of their film, and their magnanimity and grace gives the film a bittersweet finish without being preachy, mean, or false. And that is something which few films, musical or otherwise, can say for themselves. Video42371@blogcritics.org Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:43:09 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/12/28/070001.php Michael Gerardi(Charles Chaplin, USA, 1947)It is easy to love genius in full bloom. It is harder to love genius when it occasionally goes dormant, trying to find its way again.I began watching Monsieur Verdoux on a very lazy Sunday, before the resumption of classes after Thanksgiving break. My first reaction was shock--how could Chaplin be this far off the mark? Much of the dialogue was heavy-handed and dull; the characterization, idiotic; the French ambiance, never convincing; and the pacing, interminably dull. I can recall laughing once, possibly twice, but certainly not enough. I was so thoroughly bored that I stopped halfway through the movie to go do something else, dreading the prospect of watching the rest of the film. I spent a good deal of time preparing myself for the possibility that I might have to bad mouth one of my favorite directors, and prayed for the outside hope that the last half of the film would be better.I'm not sure exactly what happened between the time I stopped watching the movie the first time, and the resumption of the film a few days later. Maybe going back to class made me slightly more in tune with Chaplin's desperate outlook on the world; maybe I needed more distance from Chaplin to appreciate exactly what he was doing; or, maybe, the second half of the film is demonstrably better than the first. All I know is that I saw something completely different when I resumed. The parody was more nuanced, the writing got better and better with each passing scene, the jokes started to fall together. And the final scenes? Pure Chaplin--a sublimely understated concoction of humor and sorrow, as good as anything in City Lights, Modern Times, or The Gold Rush, with a haunting reminder in the final shot that the differences between the old Chaplin and the new Chaplin are not as deep as one might have thought. So after one viewing, I was left with a film that was awful in its first 40 minutes, and an incredible in its last 80. What to do? As the old maxim says, "If at first you don't succeed, screen, screen again!" (Well, something like that...). The second time around, I sat through the film from title credits to the final fadeout. Predictably, I suppose, the two opinions balanced out--the first part seemed much better, and the second part had some flaws to pick out.It turns out that Monsieur Verdoux is like an old friend telling you something about himself that completely shocks you. At first, it's exasperating, difficult to accept--we feel it might change things so radically that we can't be friends with that person in the same way any more. Yet often, if we're wise enough to step back from it and think, we find that it doesn't change things so much, and maybe helps us appreciate that person even more. A genius is harder to love when he's not doing what we love him for, but perhaps we never really understand the things we love him for until he tries to express them in a different way. Verdoux certainly ranks among Chaplin's greatest accomplishments, not merely because it is a good film in itself, but because it makes the experience of his other films so much more rich.Verdoux revolves around one Henri Verdoux (Chaplin), a French bank clerk who loses his job in the run-up to Hitler's ascent to power and finds a lucrative new trade--marrying rich widows, getting his hands on their assets, and murdering them to collect the change. It's not exactly the most original idea for a movie--Hitchcock's Shadow of A Doubt has a similar character (the "Merry Widow Murderer" played by Joe Cotten), and the idea for this film was actually proposed by Orson Welles, who wanted to direct Chaplin in the lead role but ended up selling the idea to Chaplin instead. What is different is that the film takes a comic approach to being a bluebeard, turning the central "villain" into a sympathetic figure with martyr-like qualities. Chaplin's Verdoux is certainly as charming, organized, pleasant, and suave as a mass murderer can possibly be, a man who's never lacking a bon mot or a clever excuse in a difficult situation. When he's not murdering people, he's really a very gentle soul, a vegetarian who gardens in his spare time and dotes on his invalid wife and their only child.Verdoux is as much a clown act as any of Chaplin's films, although the distinction is far less apparent in this instance. The Tramp was clearly a clown, so it was easy to take what he did with a grain of salt. Verdoux was by far the most realistic character Chaplin had ever portrayed up to this point in his career. One telling example--this was the first time Chaplin had ever grown a real mustache for a screen role, discarding the distinctive black paint that had been his trademark. Yet this doesn't change the essential fact that Verdoux, and indeed the film as a whole, does not reside within the confines of realism. If we expect his comic behavior to be like that of mainstream comic actors--Steve Martin or Will Ferrell, for example--we are missing the thrust of his performance.This also makes the film's failing in terms of its set design and ambiance more excusable. The film never feels comfortable with its Frenchness, and all the performances--especially Chaplin's--are decidedly more English or American than can be accepted. If you miss the point of the film, as I did at first, this is infuriating, because we expect realistic comedies to get the realism right (imagine a Woody Allen movie made in Omaha). If you get it, it's just a nuisance. I think Chaplin would have done better to transplant the story to London or New York, where this wouldn't have been as much of an issue, or by doing what he did in City Lights and Modern Times and simply not say where he was precisely.The first part of the film is chaotic, with Verdoux closing out accounts faster than he can open new ones so as to keep up with his brokers in Paris. There's no time to glorify things--Chaplin's confident enough in his direction that he can show us an incinerator working in the backyard or a sunrise, and know that what Verdoux has done is understood. Then it's back to the churning of the train, the shrill scream of the violins, and the next scene, before we have time to reflect on it. Chaplin's pacing and editing help keep the morbidity of things down, reminding us that this is a comedy in the end. Verdoux is well-received everywhere he goes (with one notable exception), despite being an admittedly funny-looking man--even the girl in the flower shop can't hold back her smile as Verdoux orders thousands of francs worth of buds to send to a potential revenue stream (a hat tip to City Lights, no doubt). Yet Verdoux isn't a terribly sympathetic character at this point, in spite of the invalid wife and the vegetarianism--he's too polished, too exact, too ruthless. We watch him shamelessly probe the mind of his best friend, a pharmacist, to devise a better method of poisoning his victims, even proposing his experiment to murder a homeless waif in front of them without the slightest embarrassment.The movie begins to shift gear with the introduction of a classic Chaplin motif: a beautiful young girl who's down on her luck. As the Tramp does in both City Lights and Modern Times, Verdoux takes a young girl who appears to be down on her luck underneath his wing, only this time, the intent is sinister--an experiment to test his new poison. Yet things don't go as planned, and, as in the other two films, the Tramp discovers in this girl a kindred spirit. Verdoux also takes on a more sympathetic pale--he may be a murderer, but we begin to see he is no more hypocritical than any of us.This meeting marks the end of Verdoux's worry free days of bluebearding. A policeman comes in to arrest him, and only good fortune saves Verdoux from being locked up. No matter how hard he tries, he can't seem to get rid of Anabella (Martha Raye), who also has the nasty habit of throwing her money at any swindler who comes her way--not good when you're killing for money. Anabella then delivers the critical blow to Verdoux by showing up at his wedding to another balance sheet addition, forcing him to scram and get out of bluebearding. Even the flower girl begins to wonder what's up. One of Verdoux's weaknesses it's that many of these comedy sequences don't play quite as well as they once did. The zeal and flair of earlier films had passed Chaplin by, but several sequences, especially those with Raye, remain effective and memorable.After the wedding, we plunge headlong into the "sentimental" side of Verdoux. The stock market crashes, and Hitler rises to power. Verdoux is destroyed financially, and as a result his wife and children die. He gives up his work and now wanders the streets, a broken man. A reprieve from his suffering comes in the form of the girl he almost killed earlier, a tribute to a similar scenario in City Lights (although in Lights, it turns into one of the most powerful sequences in all of cinema, silent or talking, and we never quite reach those heights here). Verdoux, once the lofty idealist who gave hope to the girl, now plays the role of the world-weary older man--without a family, he has no need to do anything, much less murder. They, at least, are in "a better place"--he is doomed to face the cruel world and its wrath. Confronted with this emptiness, he allows himself to be captured by the police, determined to make his death honorable, a protest to the world that cast him aside.The final scenes should be left to the viewer. I will only point out how brilliantly they summarize Chaplin's moral philosophy. It may be true that, at the time, Verdoux was specifically directed at America's military buildup. But the film as a whole is not a deviation from the core moral themes of Chaplin's earlier a work. Verdoux takes the injustice meted out to the Tramp in previous films--the gnawing poverty of The Gold Rush, the two-timing millionaire of City Lights, society's indifference to suffering in Modern Times--and extends them onto a universal plane. Chaplin pits a small-time mass murderer versus the makers of the Holocaust, the gulags, and Hiroshima, and asks why the world condemns one and praises another. "One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow," Verdoux quips to a reporter in his cell. We can't just laugh this challenge off--we may not be mass murderers, but the disconnect between choices and consequences haunts us every day. Verdoux understands that our search for justice is flawed so long as we are on this earth--that some will do evil and succeed, and others will do evil and die.In the "Chaplin Today" documentary that comes with the "Chaplin Collection" DVD for Verdoux, French filmmaker Claude Chabrol contends that the film is deeply atheistic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Chaplin may not be for organized religion, as he is rather dismissive of a priest that visits him before he dies. But he realizes that there is "a better place," and that if there are problems with this world, our quarrel is not with God, but with man. For those puzzled by the cruelty of the world, Chaplin points away from earthly existence, with its false promises of "destiny," and toward a Heavenly Kingdom, where perfect Justice reigns. Video41522@blogcritics.org Wed, 28 Dec 2005 07:00:01 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/12/13/073537.php Michael GerardiI watched Vertigo for the first time on one of those long travel days a Californian attending Notre Dame must endure. I was only dreaming of being a film geek at this point, and even though I enjoyed the film, I didn't see how it was that different from other films in the Hitchcock oeuvre, like Shadow of a Doubt and North By Northwest. But with the passing of time, I began to understand why Vertigo was such a big deal, why it's considered by many to be the pinnacle of Hitchcock's cinema, why it reached second place in Sight and Sound's 2002 international critics poll, and why it may be ready to topple the consensus "greatest film of all time," Citizen Kane, by the time the poll is taken again in 2012. However, my changing attitude couldn't be explained solely by a deepening appreciation for Hitchcock's craftsmanship. The real change came sometime between the second and third screenings, when I realized that Vertigo was beginning to haunt me. The film spoke to me in ways that were hard to countenance, though I had a hard time articulating what I had seen in it. I felt overwhelmed by images I had once dismissed as being merely beautiful. No description of the film can replace the film itself, and if you hate having movies spoiled I'd advise you to see it before reading this article; but nearly a year after seeing it for the first time, I'm finally able to describe why this film was such a deeply personal experience for Hitchcock as a director, for me as a viewer, and, hopefully, for generations of movie fans like me.Vertigo centers around two character types that had deep artistic significance for Hitchcock. Jimmy Stewart is cast as John "Scotty" Ferguson, a police detective who is forced to retire after developing a case of acrophobia during an on-the-job accident. Like many of Hitchcock's heroes, he is a man of distinction--well-educated with a good professional reputation and "independent means" on which to subsist--thrown into a situation that even he is too small to overcome by himself. He is not so much every man as he is every man's inner self; Stewart's emotional openness provides a window into parts of our soul we may not be able to acknowledge ourselves. He stars opposite Kim Novak, cast as Madeline Elster. Madeline is not merely a "Hitchcock blonde," but the "Hitchcock blonde." Along with being more photogenic, blondes had innate meaning for Hitchcock; they were icy, ethereal, and inscrutable to the workaday world. Hitchcock went to extremes to emphasize these traits in Madeline--she is a glaring, peroxide blonde, and she often wears a gray suit that clashes with her hair color to stress her alien nature. She is at once alluring and frightening, and we can all share a little bit in Scotty's apparent fascination with her.Scotty's old college chum Gavin Elster hires Scotty to track Madeline because of Gavin's suspicion that his wife is possessed by the spirit of a distant relative. Gavin arranges for Scotty to see her at a restaurant in San Francisco (the entire movie is set in the acrophobic-unfriendly confines of the Bay Area), and the obsession begins. Madeline wears a black formal gown with a brilliant green scarf to dinner. The color may seem like an arbitrary detail, but it isn't--color choices are immensely important throughout all of Hitchcock's color films, and green is the color of obsession and infatuation in Hitchcock's palette, with connotations of envy and sickness. The restaurant has brilliant red wallpaper, which hints not only at Scotty's passion but also the imminent danger enveloping him. Hitchcock creates Scotty's sense of rapture upon seeing Madeline for the first time with close-up, low-angle, profile shots of Madeline, the rapturous swelling of Bernard Herrman's famous score, and not a word of dialogue--few sequences are as emblematic of Hitch's ideal of "pure cinema:" stories without words.The audience then follows Scotty along as he trails Madeline. Scotty's growing obsession is mostly exposed through visuals--the way Hitchcock only shows Scotty driving down hills and not up them as he "falls" in love, the distinctive green color of Madeline's Jaguar, the bizarre combination of her hair with the grey suit. The two of them don't actually meet until Scotty saves Madeline's life after she attempts suicide in San Francisco Bay and Scotty takes her to his home to rest. A subtle placement of hands as Scotty takes a coffee cup from Madeline speaks volumes about their passion; Hitchcock's choice of clothing color (Scotty changes into a green sweater after saving Madeline, and gives her a red bathrobe to wear while her clothes dry) and a roaring fire in the background suggest the film's dark undercurrents.Eventually, Madeline's insanity leads to her suicide in the bell tower of Mission San Juan Bautista, but not until after Scotty has declared his love for her and his desire to protect her. He enters a deep melancholia, guilt-ridden that he has now presided over the deaths of two people, and devastated that the only girl he's ever loved has gone. After a year in a mental institution, he wanders the streets and panics every time he sees a woman who looks vaguely like Madeline, only to be disappointed. These scenes are still painful for me to watch, poignant reminders of all the times I loved and lost, and I suspect that my response is not unique. Finally, Scotty sees Judy, a Midwestern redhead who bears a strange resemblance to Madeline (appropriately, she's dressed in green). Judy, who is at once frightened by him yet touched by his melancholy, agrees to go to dinner with him.It's at this point that Hitchcock almost totally abandons the murder mystery angle of Vertigo. In one of the greatest plot twists in movie history, Judy reveals to the audience, but not to Scotty, that she was Madeline; that Gavin hired her to act as his wife as a ruse for murdering his real wife; and that the only hitch in the plan was that she had fallen in love with Scotty during the proceedings. Critics like to say that Vertigo is a tale of obsession, but it is important to remember it is also a tale of deception. In an early scene in the apartment of Scotty's friend Midge, a brassiere with "revolutionary uplift" that she is designing figures prominently when Midge is on camera and constitutes a topic of small talk. This isn't idle humor, but a foreshadowing of the film's primary illusion - how Judy deceives Scotty, and how Scotty allows himself to be deceived by Judy in his thirst for love.The film's second part, which shows Scotty molding Judy into his fantasy, is almost unbearable. One must sympathize with Scotty a little bit after all he's been through--like Judy, we take one look at him and gasp, "You've got it bad, don't you?" Yet the indifference with which he treats Judy gives this part of the movie an emotional viciousness that was rare in the studio era--Hitchcock himself called it a "striptease in reverse," a description I find almost too apt. Yet, somehow, Judy manages to absorb Scotty's punishment. Her affection is borne out of the selflessness with which he treated her while she was Madeline, which is more than can be said for Scotty, who, as Hitchcock pointed out, is more or less indulging in necrophilia. She tolerates the abuse, partly out of sympathy for what she's put him through, partly out of love, even though she's revolted by the prospect of revisiting the murder. She goes through with Scotty's transformation, and in one of the seminal moments of Hitchcock's cinema, Judy emerges as Madeline in a misty, green haze (a haze only partially explained by the green light of a sign flooding into the room), her face in a tortuous fight between elation and horror, and the two of them share a long kiss, with Bernard Herrman's arching score kicked into overdrive and the soft rotation of the camera around the two of them, engulfed in deranged passion.I have already given too much of a great movie away, so I will omit the details of Vertigo's finale. Some critics have remarked that it denotes a circular structure, that Scotty is doomed to repeat his mistakes. My opinion is exactly the opposite--I think it signifies release, the end of delusion and obsession, and the triumph of reality. Hitchcock was not a particularly good Catholic, but Vertigo is certainly the most provocative illustration of the principle that "the truth shall make you free" (John 8:28) that I have ever seen. Like all great works of art, Vertigo speaks to us all, challenging us to overcome what is passing and ethereal and discover what is truly human.We all rest on the shoulders of giants. I found reviews by Roger Ebert, Jim Emerson, and Rumsey Taylor to be most illuminating, and I recommend them for further reading. Ed:LM Video40885@blogcritics.org Tue, 13 Dec 2005 07:35:37 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/11/27/222051.php Michael GerardiIn any other movie it's a throw-away scene, something the director only put in to create some space between set-pieces. Guy Haines, the famous tennis player, is walking out to the court to play the match of his life. He must win quickly so he can thwart Bruno, the psychopathic murderer who is trying to frame Guy for the murder of his wife. As Guy walks out on the court, we see a banner above him that reads:And treat those two imposters just the same.The quote is from Rudyard Kipling's famous coming-of-age poem, "If". As a Hitchcock fanboy I can't restrain myself from speculations on what exactly Hitchcock could have meant by this. He certainly knew the poem, and he might have memorized it as a Jesuit schoolboy in England. I think it's a stretch to say he made the movie to fit the poem specifically, and one could argue that the heroes in Hitchcock movies are more or less variations on the themes of manliness espoused in "If." Still, let's guide this look into one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest achievements, Strangers On A Train, by the light of the poem Hitchcock saw fit to sneak into the movie.Strangers central conflict certainly echoes the opening stanza of "If":If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you And make allowance for their doubting too.If Hitchcock addressed the poem to anyone in the movie it would have been Guy (Farley Granger), a man caught in one of Hitchcock's best concieved "wrong man" scenarios. The problems begin when he meets an adoring and somewhat prying tennis fan, Bruno (Robert Walker). We begin to see the real differences between them when Bruno starts talking murder. He knows that Guy is unhappy with his wife, Miriam, and is dating the daughter of a Senator. Out of their general discussion of murder, Bruno proposes a trade--Bruno will kill Miriam, Guy will kill Bruno's curmudgeonly father. Guy, of course, thinks that Bruno is engaging a peculiar sense of dark humor to which he is not totally unsympathetic (he really, really doesn't like Miriam). But Bruno isn't joking.If you can dream--and not make dreams your master, If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim...Bruno is representative of a broad range of Hitchcock villains. Like Abbott in The Man Who Knew Too Much, the murderers in Rope, and Vandamm and Leonard in North By Northwest, Bruno is very subtly effete. Hitchcock, who was often a more creative artist because of the restrictions placed on him by the Production Code, brings this aspect of Bruno's personality out through a careful juxtaposition of images (like Bruno's absurd shoes contrasted with Guy's straight-laced look). Bruno fits in the "psychopaths with a philosophy" mold of Hitchcock villains; to me he most closely resembles the well-liked Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt. Walker balances sophistication and insanity masterfully, and his performance is the acting highlight of the movie.Guy's dilemma has a number of similarities to the problem Father Michael Logan faces in the Hitchcock film that would easily win the contest for "Most Unrealized Potential," I Confess (1953). In that movie, Fr. Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift) is suspected of a crime he didn't commit because the murder relieves a potentially embarrassing personal situation. In Strangers, Guy doesn't want to do anything that would seriously harm Miriam, even though he's mad enough to kill her, first for cheating on him, then for double-crossing him by refusing to accept the divorce. He says as much in a telephone conversation with his girlfriend, Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), even describing to a tee the form of murder Bruno eventually uses on Miriam. As in I Confess, evil somehow finds a way to serve the audience's sense of justice. The unspoken message is that even in real life, even when bad people do bad things, good can and does come out of it. It's clear that Hitchcock's theodicy was strongly influenced by the Catholicism of his youth, even as he moved further away from the Jesuits' "religion of fear" (his words) later in life.But for all the problems the murder does solve, it only ends up creating another catastrophe:If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:Guy may not have comitted the murder, but the mere desire to do so creates suspicion in the minds of everyone around him. For a second, it even seems as if Anne believes he was somehow involved in the murder. This could be called the flipside of Hitchcock's philosophy about evil--the mere consideration of it can be dangerous enough. It is the mess Guy got into in the first place--his foolish marriage and animus towards Miriam--that make him a believable suspect in the murder. One even gets a sense that he is guilty of the crime in a small way. If he hadn't hated Miriam as much as he did, he wouldn't even have laughed at Bruno's schemes, and might not have ended up in his predicament. As in other Hitchcock films (I Confess and Dial M For Murder come to mind), we don't have a victim or a hero with whom our sympathies can completely rest.There's an interesting twist to Strangers that's found in few other Hitchcock films--a character that speaks for Hitchcock himself, played by none other than Hitch's daughter, Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell. Pat is perfectly delightful as Barbara Morton, Anne's little sister. Her geeky yet disarmingly cute speculations on Guy's predicament help summarize one of the more involved Hitchcock plotlines while stoking all of our worst fears and suspicions, and she treats murder with the flair and humor her father was famous for. The part probably doesn't work if it isn't for the casting. A further twist is that Barbara resembles Patricia (coincidence? I think not), the murder victim. The family member name trick was something Hitchcock also exploited in I Confess (the murderer's wife, Alma, who is shot by the murderer after Fr. Logan's trial, shares the name of Hitch's wife--Hitchcock had a thing for abusing people close to him in his movies).Pat's appearances are great moments among great moments in a movie chock-full of intriguing scenarios and stunning visuals--the tennis match with the eyes bouncing back and forth except for Bruno's, the extreme long-range shot of Bruno looking down on Guy like a dark angel from the steps of the Lincoln Monument. The thing that sticks out most for me about Strangers is how textured it is, how much care Hitchcock took every time he set up the frame. Take, for example, Guy and Anne's run-in with Bruno in what appears to be a courthouse or federal building of some type--it's Anne's first time seeing him. It would be easy to shoot this scene lazily. But not Hitchcock. Notice how a column turns into a barrier between Guy and Bruno when Guy confronts him, bifurcating the screen. Notice again how Bruno is parallel with the columns as he watches Guy and Anne walk up--like the columns, his will to do evil is immovable. It's just a chance meeting between two people, but Hitchcock gives it incredible symbolic significance. This ability to make formal signs rise out of realistic situation is certainly part of any reasonable definition of what makes something "Hitchcockian."The film proves to be a race to the finish, and displays the Master of Suspense at his very best--the careful creation of tension, spaced by splashes of humor (light and dark), climaxed by a stunning set piece. It's interesting to speculate whether or not the remake of "Strangers" planned for 2006 (the idea makes me nauseous) will be able to replicate the high drama of Guy and Bruno's final struggle on the carousel. The carousel is a standout scene among many, including the famous and oft-replicated scene at the practice court, where all of the audience's eyes bounce back and forth along with the ball except for Bruno's, and the majestic, haunting long shot of Bruno watching Guy from high up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. At the end of the movie we can all say this about Guy Haines with an air of satisfaction:If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son! Ed:LM Video40076@blogcritics.org Sun, 27 Nov 2005 22:20:51 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/11/18/192230.php Michael GerardiHoly. Crap.How else does one begin describing 2001, Stanley Kubrick's surreal deep space meditation? Comparisons inevitably fall short. It is certainly among the greatest science fiction films of all time, rivaled only perhaps by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, but it so completely transcends the genre's limitations that looking at it as a genre piece seems grossly unfair. It is a stylistic melting pot, alternating between silent, epic, and even avant-garde renderings of its haunting metaphysical vision, and Kubrick not only uses them all well in and of themselves, but finds a way to link them together into a whole that is nothing short of hypnotic. And then, there's the most important question: What the ^*&$ did that black box mean?The box is 2001's central visual motif, linking together the film's four principle parts--"The Dawn of Man," a Darwinian fairy tale about the origins of intelligent man, where the box is first unveiled and leads to the invention of the first tool, a club; the establishment of the main story, with the discovery of another box on the moon; the Jupiter mission, highlighted by a battle between the astronauts and the frightening HAL 9000 (where's technical support when you really need them?); and a surreal dream/time lapse sequence with an experience of travel in space and time that reminded me of the Visualizer in iTunes. It would be incorrect to say that these pieces are tied together by some underlining narrative framework that the "filmeratti" can see but that the rabble can't. Yet the story is unified, if not by anything we can point to, then by a tonal quality. In his review of the film, Roger Ebert emphasizes Kubrick's ability in 2001 to make the audience contemplate what is going. I think this is what makes it so radically different from traditional films. Even in the best films, we are more or less placed in the thick of things, in the time, in the place, and (often) in the person. 2001 does not offer us this satisfaction, but, perhaps, something more, in that we end up contemplating something far more mysterious than we can comprehend. We do not associate with it as much as we reverence it, a commingling of melancholy and awe that might be compared to listening to the proclamation of St. John's Passion on Good Friday. The ferocious speed with which Kubrick yanks what little narrative there is across billions of years and millions of miles, and the distance he creates between audience and protagonists (The thing with the most personality in the entire movie is HAL, and that's not saying much) certainly contribute to this. But, like the Gospels, the primary allure of Kubrick's technique in 2001 is his modesty--he does only what he must, and no more. He manages to keep us transfixed while the action literally moves at the pace of the human breath (as it does in the spacewalking sequences). Kubrick spends what might seem to be inordinately long stretches of time in mere observation of the details of life in space, like docking spaceships and the preparation of gross-looking prefab meals. But the sequences are done so smoothly, and constantly feed us so much new visual material (Kubrick's relentless deep focus shots are well-suited to take in all the intricate details of his futuristic vision, producing many images that will stay with this viewer for a lifetime) that we continue paying attention. When Kubrick breaks form occasionally, the effect is devastating--the famous jump cut from a bone club flying in the air to a spaceship about to dock in a space station, the ferocious multiple cuts into the eye of HAL (a la Hitchcock's The Birds) before HAL disconnects a spacewalking astronaut. Kubrick uses sound in a similar manner. Kubrick usually lets the audience bask in background noise, the whirring of machinery and the drawing of breath. This allows the slightest out-of-place noise--or even its complete removal, in one incredibly effectie sequence--to have an overpowering effect. The harsh, alarm clock-like sound of the life-support system's warning that breaks the mechanical "buzz" of the spaceship, the shattering of a glass that breaks the purest silence, the swelling of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" when the monolith is re-discovered on the moon, are all a testament to this. It's only in retrospect that we appreciate the understated lyricism or Kubrick's cinema, defying the conventions of the epic action and adventure movies it parodies, in a small way.And the box? I'm reminded of something I learned in first-year engineering. When engineers begin discussing a new system, we often approach it as a "black box"--we don't know what will be in the box just yet, but we know what we want to put into it, and we know what we want to get out of it. It becomes the job of the engineer to decipher what's supposed to be in this ideal "box" that solves the problem. I think the monolith in 2001 is something like that, but on the scale of life. Life is a massive template of possibilities and ways to achieve them--a "black box" of frighteningly limitless possibility. In 2001, human innovation becomes not only a way to reach the depths of our mysterious universe and preserve life, but also a way to destroy it. The "Dawn of Man" sequence identifies this double-edged technological sword at the beginning of the picture, perhaps another reason why we the seemingly incongruous scene seems to work. The club, and in fact all of our endeavors are the true "black boxes." The end of the film, and especially the very last shots, which contain the most distinctively surreal (dare I say Kubrickian?) images in 2001, identify this restless search for meaning as common to all time and all men, ancient to modern, young to old. It's a search we're only more driven to continue after 2001's sublime meditation on the mystery of existence.2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, USA, 1968, Superior)ed: JH Video39737@blogcritics.org Fri, 18 Nov 2005 19:22:30 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/10/31/141145.php Michael GerardiEasy Street (Charles Chaplin, USA, 1919, Superior) [short]Tension with the authorities is part of the Tramp's essential character. Buster Keaton once said that the difference between his character and Chaplin's was that Keaton's screen personas were fundamentally honest people, while the Tramp was the kind of character who would pinch something if things got rough. Keaton may have been saying that to give himself some moral superiority (not hard to do because Chaplin's public profile was often under assault--in the twenties thanks to his infamous shotgun wedding during the filming of The Gold Rush, and in the fifties when he was refused reentry into the United States on suspicions that he was a Communist), but it helps to remind viewers that Chaplin is ultimately a man in conflict with the higher-up, not a proper citizen.It's remarkable, then, when Chaplin takes on the role of the other side. No Chaplin film is more ironic in this vein than Easy Street, which shows the Tramp not only leaving behind his life as a bum for a position on the city police force, but succeeding in his job and keeping it until the end of the film. The only other identity reversal of this kind in the Tramp's oeuvre comes in Modern Times, where Chaplin takes a job as a department store security clerk only to be fired after a day on the job, but this latter instance certainly pales in comparison. Easy Street can almost be thought of as a prologue to Chaplin's greater body of work--a very explicit expose of the motifs that would pervade his later work, and the way he would visit those themes.One gets the feeling that Easy Street is a very different sort of Chaplin comedy from the beginning. It shows Charlie the Tramp, looking somewhat downtrodden, plodding into something called the Hope Mission. From the historical context and the look of things it appears to be some type of Christian mission, although nothing explicitly Christian-related, other than the dress of the minister, can be seen. The audience doesn't know what the preacher is saying (in fact, there is not a title card to be found in the film), but The Tramp is clearly moved by what he hears, despite how awkward he feels among the other congregants (he can't hold a prayer book right side up and he's not sure quite what to do about the woman with her baby sitting next to him). He's also attracted to a young lady who works at the mission, played by Edna Purviance, a long-time staple of Chaplin's Mutual Players (many early filmmakers had a group of "regulars" who worked with them in every film--John Ford was the last great director to employ the practice extensively). He's so moved that he returns a stolen collection box back to the minister. Clearly the Tramp has experienced a type of change, but a viewer with any knowledge of the Tramp wants to know whether it's going to stick or not.After the mission scene we move to what might be called the "Easy Street" of the movie, a neighborhood racked by violent hoodlums. Easy Street has a much bleaker look to it than Chaplin's later films, staying within the war zone for the entirety of the film. The Immigrant is the only other Chaplin short where poverty is treated with anything approaching realism--there's no blind millionaire willing to pick us up (City Lights)or daydreams about middle class bliss (Modern Times) as we see in Chaplin's later work. The street violence is admittedly a bit comical, but once the dust is settled one sees the reality of things--crime runs the streets, and The Bully (Eric Campbell, Chaplin's constant nemesis) is the head criminal. Cops attempt to put down the violence to no avail, and a comically constant stream of police officer come back to the station on stretchers.The Tramp passes by the police station and sees a help wanted ad for officers. Now a changed man after his experience in the mission, he decides to sign up. But Chaplin doesn't let us forget that the Tramp is going against type on this one--the first time he tries to walk in, he does a double take after seeing a policeman at the door. He's quickly hired and sent out on the beat (not exactly an extensive training process, but Chaplin never went in too much for realism). Of course, he confronts The Bully, and manages to win round one by electrocuting him with the top of a lamp pole the Bully broke. The Tramp now rules the streets the way the Bully did, causing people to rush in the frame to catch a glance at him and out of it when he makes a move towards them. A similar gag is used earlier with the Bully, but both scenes are twice as funny when Chaplin does it because of the absurd contrast between his tiny physique in extreme long shot and the hordes of people reacting to him. It's one of the more cinematic gags in the film, proof that Chaplin was becoming a more sophisticated film humorist. Most early films were simply a recreation of vaudeville gags in front of a screen, and did not exploit the ability of the camera to shift perspective (plays have only one perspective) and imply things beyond the screen image very well. While Chaplin's camerawork has never been considered anything more than competent, it's clear in Easy Street that he had moved beyond replicating vaudeville.There's an odd interlude between the two big slapstick fight pieces which are the film's high points where Chaplin moves from humor to explicit social commentary. He runs into a woman staling a loaf of bread from a grocer (it's very cleverly set up without title cards, and it took me a time or two to see what was happening). Instead of arresting her on the spot, as he could have done, he goes to the grocer (sleeping), steals still more things from him, and gives them to her. The scene reminded me of a similar one from Modern Times, in which the Tramp sympathizes with the men robbing the department store he was supposed to guard. "We ain't tramps, we're hungry," the robbers said. While one may argue that the Tramp goes too far by stealing from the grocer in this case, the Tramp's actions in this film are a harbinger of his later attacks on the social and economic framework, his sympathy for the little man, his insistence that the economic world must serve mankind and not plunder it. There is also a cute scene in the little orphanage run by the mission lady, showing Chaplin the cop playing with the young wards. It's a slight scene, but perhaps deeply personal for Chaplin, who's home life was less than stable growing up--he never really knew his father, and, despite her affection and great drive to see them through to adulthood, her mother always had difficulties making ends meet.Of course, the bully has to escape the prison, there has to be a huge fight again (guess who wins), and the Tramp has to get the girl. Or does he? This is one of the happier endings in Chaplin short cinema (something he interestingly seemed to save for his more serious films). The mission has moved to where the war zone was, and now it is the New Mission, not the Hope Mission--the victory over the violence on the streets has given these hard streets new life. The final shot is of Chaplin, who saved the streets with his verve and athleticism, and Purviance, who saved the streets with her compassion and constancy, walking arm and arm into service--as it should be. The perfect end to a whirlwind twenty-minute film, and a sign pointing to much bigger things in the future. Video38833@blogcritics.org Mon, 31 Oct 2005 14:11:45 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/10/27/122722.php Michael GerardiIkiru (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1952, S)If the initial reviews for films like Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck, and Niki Caro's North Country are any indication, it appears as if this year's Oscar race will be contested by a slate of left-friendly films with not-so-subtle political themes. I hope to see most, if not all, of these films, to glean whatever artistic value may be in them, but will probably be forced to hold back my gag reflex throughout most of them. Very few of our best modern filmmakers, perhaps with the exception of Mel Gibson, have expressed a conservative philosophy in their work (and to call The Passion a "conservative" film is stretching things).There was a time, however, when directors made great films touching on politics that didn't always take the far-left tact. No film is more appropriate in this vein right now than Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, a classic we'd do well to watch again in these times of massive pork-barrel spending and Alaskan bridges to nowhere. Ikiru centers around Watanabe-san, a lifelong bureaucrat who finds himself stricken with a stomach cancer that will take his life in six months. Despite having been well compensated for his work, he becomes deeply depressed. He tries to drink it off with a personal Themistocles and throw himself into a relationship with a young coworker to make himself happy again, to no avail. Finally, inspired by the girl, he makes the best decision of his entire adult life by deciding to make a lasting contribution in his final months.As with all of Kurosawa's films, Ikiru has the right look to it, from the office where Watanabe-san works (visually busy, with seemingly endless amounts of useless stuff stacked to the ceiling--an outward metaphor for how useless the office is in reality) to the red-light district of this unidentified Japanese city to the haunting yet reassuring shot of a dying Watanabe-san sitting on a swing in the park that was the greatest work of his life. The old African spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" came to mind as I watched Watanabe-san's mannerisms on the swing, and indeed, no film better illustrates how our work, no manner how seemingly menial, can be salvific.I find Ikiru exciting for the same reasons I found Fellini's 8 1/2 frustrating--the outward resolution runs parallel to the inner struggle of the individual, not against it. We only get the solution to Watanabe-san's basic problems once he has come to greater self-awareness, not as a bone from a filmmaker too lazy to come up with anything else. It's also one of the most compelling protests against big-government bureacracy ever waged by a filmmaker, not merely in how it makes fun of the worthlessness of such entities (there is a virtuoso sequence showing a group of poor women literally getting the "run-around" by the local bureaucrats that makes the local DMV seem like an express lane at Piggly-Wiggly), but in how it positions the bureacracy as detrimental to our ability to do good for anyone (a stance, by the way, which the Catholic Church has held for years in the principle of subsidarity, so often ignored by those Catholics claiming to represent the Church's teaching on "social justice"). Kurosawa's message would have been doubly effective in a Japanese context where the anti-conformist streak of the "new" Watanabe-san would have been vigorously fought against (and is fought against in the film), but given the unprecedented growth in government size being pushed by both political parties today, this conservative was happy to be reminded why we fought against such policies in the first place. These elements combine to make Ikiru one of those precious few films that manage to both pull at our heartstrings effectively and pull them in a philosophically meaninful way. ***Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, USA, 2005, R)Broken Flowers is a beautifully filmed existential haiku, a movie that poses as a search for deeper meaning but in fact has nothing interesting to share with us in the end. The trip is fun, but in the end, it really gets us nowhere, leaving us completely unmoved for any of its protagonists.The film analyzes a not-so-usual time in the life of Don Johnston (Bill Murray), an aging Don Juan who "made some money in computers" and now spends his time sitting on his couch and entertaining his neighbor, Winston, an immigrant with a wife and five children who's fascinated by detectives. Don receives an anonymous letter on pink stationery, supposedly from an old flame, claiming she's the mother of a son he fathered nearly twenty years ago. Initially, Don is unmoved, but with a little nudging from expert snoop Winston ("Is your daddy really named Sam Spade?") Don is launched on an expedition to find the mother of his son.Jarmusch wrote this film with the idea that Murray, and only Murray, would play the leading role, and he delivers. Murray's performance is something like what you'd get if Buster Keaton decided to become a couch potato. Maybe I was crazy, but I read funny things into every nuance of Murray's expression, and I often found myself laughing when the rest of the audience wasn't.One may not think of a chatty comedy like Broken Flowers as having examplary camerawork, but it really does. It has an almost Hitchcockian air of "pure cinema" about it and an extraordinary attention to line in his compositions. We often see Don on the other side of a boundary, whether a door or a wall corner, from the other people in the frame, emphasizing his opposition to nearly everyone around him. He's usually caught in groups where he's by default the odd man out, giving us a very palpable visual sense that he is a "stalker in a Taurus." The structure of the narrative is balanced and orderly, with something like an introduction, 5 acts, and a finale, whose approach, body, and denouement all follow a similar path. We often see the same scenes reenacted in different houses, and like Don, we compare and contrast as we attempt to deduce the clues Jarmusch provides in Don't search for his son's mother.But, like the vast majority of haikus, Jarmusch's tone poem is profound-sounding nonsense. There's no motivation behind Don's search for these old flames, nothing about him that makes his decision to leave the couch and see the world anything more than a device to advance the plot forward. We're not given any reason why this middle-aged homebody should give a damn about anything. I suppose we're to guess that it's some romantic regret, but I don't think Don regrets having broken up with any of the women we encounter--it's hard to believe, but sit-in-one-place-all-day Don is perhaps the most well adjusted person in the film next to Winston. A good question to ask is: What would Don do if he ever found his son? We get a hint at the end of the line, but the truth is we don't know, and the whole journey is a waste. Winston cares about this, in fact, much more than Don does, who seems to do things out of either sheer boredom or masochistic bemusement. Don really leaves us with nothing to latch onto in the end. Broken Flowers is like an egg with no yolk--we crack the shell only to find a big hollow void.I think the deepest irony of the film--an irony Jarmusch misses because he places so much emphasis on Don and his "search" for "meaning," or the lack thereof--is how little its Don Juan actually knows about women, while Winston, who seems in awe of Don's romantic history, is much more in tune to femininity. After all, it's Winston who's happily married with five kids, not Don, and isn't that the mark of knowledge about women? Isn't Winston the know-it-all about women? Broken Flowers is a good start to this story, but it's missing any kind of moral or philosophical rigor to complete the picture. Perhaps a Christian worldview would point toward the larger problem in Don's life and help put this aimless narrative into better perspective.Visit Just An Amateur ED/PUB:LM Video38615@blogcritics.org Thu, 27 Oct 2005 12:27:22 EDT