Criterion Confessions

Jacques Demy’s take on the big American musical, 1967’s The Young Girls of Rochefort, is pure joy. From the first frame to the last, it’s packed with smiles and passion and a giddy sense of its own fun.

Set in a seaside town on a carnival weekend, The Young Girls of Rochefort puts aside the operatic stylings of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg [review] in favor of something more akin to Stanley Donen, director of Singin' in the Rain and Funny Face [review]. In case there was any doubt, Demy even imports Gene Kelly, Donen’s former partner and one of the most accomplished hoofers in Hollywood, to participate in this ambitious lark. Real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac play Delphine and Solange, twins with big dreams. Delphine is a dancer, Solange a composer, and the two get by teaching the children of Rochefort their craft. The pair are planning to move to Paris, however, as soon as the celebrations are over. Solange already has a line on a possible job. The man who runs the local music store, Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli, Belle de jour [review]), has promised to arrange for an introduction to Andy Miller (Kelly), a famous American pianist whom Monsieur Dame went to school with.

Little does Dame know that Miller is in town, and the foreigner has already run into Solange without realizing it. Andy and Solange are instantly struck by Cupid’s arrow, only to be separated, unsure if they’ll ever meet again. Just about everyone in The Young Girls of Rochefort has a romantic double out there waiting for him or her to find. Dame imagines that Solange is his, but only because he doesn’t realize that the lover who jilted him a decade before, and whom he still pines for today, is her mother. Dame thinks Yvonne (Danielle Darrieux, Mayerling [review], The Earrings of Madame De.... [review]) is in Mexico and has no idea she is running a café nearby.

As for Delphine, she must extract herself from the affections of a skeezy gallery owner (Jacques Riberolles). By coincidence, he has a painting hanging in his salon that looks exactly like Delphine. It’s by a soldier (Jacques Perrin, Z [review]) whom she has never met, it’s his image of his romantic ideal. He goes to Yvonne’s for french fries, but he’s never met her daughters; the gallery owner refuses to introduce Delphine to the painter, precisely because he knows how it will end up. (The painter himself is a kind of symbol: a romantic dreamer whose visions are mostly in abstract, solidifying for this one portrait to capture something real. Demy works in much the same way, using dreamy and knowingly false backdrops to create something profoundly emotional.)

Meanwhile, a pair of carnies (George Charkiris and Grover Dale) appeal to the sisters to perform the sideshow for their traveling motorcycle dealership (yeah, I don’t know either) because their exotic dancers have skipped off with some sailors. And then there is also a little bit of business about...a sadistic killer who hacked up an old chorus dancer named Lola?!

If it sounds like a lot of plot, that’s because it is. But Demy choreographs all of these relationships with the same precision as he does the big dance numbers. In terms of story, The Young Girls of Rochefort is about how love is fated, and so it relies on coincidence and chance opportunities. Turn one corner, meet the man of your dreams; turn the other, miss him forever. For much of the movie, many of the characters go without ever meeting one another, and they are both deaf and blind to the stray mentions or cursory sights that would actually bring them to the one they seek. One character sees the painting of Delphine’s doppelganger but then can’t remember where he saw her face when he meets her for real; Dame hears Andy playing Solange’s music, but he can’t quite place the melody. Only the bad guy who would have Delphine for his own makes the right connection. It seems blind optimism causes literal blindness.

Not that we’re ever all that worried that true love won’t find anyone in the end. Even so, it’s pretty amazing watching Demy arrange the players for the final scenes, contriving for paths to cross and throwing in a few more near misses just to keep us guessing a little. The carnies and their jive have given us a little bit of that old “we’re going to put on a show!” hucksterism, and now that the sisters have had a taste of success, it’s time for their dreams to come true. Demy even outfits Deneuve and Dorléac in spangly red dresses reminiscent of Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe’s showgirl outfits in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Michel Legrand also pulls out his biggest show stopper for the scene. The other numbers are catchy but more notable for the composer’s swirling rhythms and melodic filigrees; in this one, he goes big.

Amusingly, it’s one of the less complicated performances in terms of dancing. Deneuve and Dorléac are confined to a small space, and though they work it with panache, their moves are geared more to the stage than the screen. Demy’s most complicated dance material is reserved for the street scenes, where tourists and shoppers move in unison around the different characters, serving as the chorus to their romantic travails. It’s all quite impressive. Demy isn’t messing around. And neither is Gene Kelly. His level of talent and expertise is evident every time he joins in the fun. His every tiny gesture is graceful, and Andy’s ubiquitous grin seems less a character choice and more the performer being tickled by being part of this grand foreign production. (It must have seemed simultaneously ambitious and naïve to the cinema veteran.) The best dance sequence in the entire film is another twofer, when Andy and Solange are reunited. The dancers are transfixed on one another, making love with each step; Françoise Dorléac is quite literally swept off her feet.

The Young Girls of Rochefort has some of the same candy-coated pastels as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, particularly in the colorful dresses worn by Deneuve and Dorléac, and in the matching outfits you can spot on the various couples sashaying up and down the sidewalks. Demy has kept his art department intact for both films. Jacqueline Moreau is in charge of costumes, and Bernard Evein is the production designer. They are as essential to the Jacques Demy magic as the man himself. Likewise, Jean Rabier returns for his third time as Demy’s cinematographer. Though, Rochefort is a long way away from the Bay of Angels [review].

The sum total of all of these people working together is a substantially breezy entertainment that, despite basically coming at the end of the era of classic movie musicals, recalls the best of them. This is really Demy at his peak, the bliss of The Young Girls of Rochefort making a nice complement to the melancholy of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It’s these two movies that have cemented his legacy, and the ones that most often get revisited. All it takes is that initial spin of Rochefort to understand why: it’s impossible not to feel better after having watched it.

By the way, I reviewed The Young Girls of Rochefort once before in my write-up of a Catherine Deneuve festival for the Portland Mercury. You can read that here. While you're at it, I looked at five of the actress' lesser films that were released as a DVD set back in 2008.

This disc was provided by Criterion for purpose of review.

This is my second write-up of Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited. You can read my older review here. What is below isn't actually a legit review, or even a finished piece. These are my rough notes for an introduction I made last night before a screening of the movie, complete with "Hotel Chevalier," as part of the NW Film Center's "Wes's World: Wes Anderson and his Influences" festival. It features some old ideas cribbed from my previous write-up, and some new ones based on my re-watching the film. The piece is still a bit ragged, as it was just meant to act as a guide for while I talked, so there are likely some typos; each time you encounter one, imagine me saying...

The Darjeeling Limited has become the default Wes Anderson movie that no one cares about. You bring it up, everyone’s got an opinion about it.

To me, it’s one of the more interesting and challenging of his movies. It’s a eulogy for the Anderson movies that came before it, ending one phase of his career and setting the stage for the next.

As Marc Mohan said last week introducing The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou [review], the filmography of Wes Anderson is almost like one giant film, the way Susan Sontag described the 1960s work of Jean-Luc Godard. It’s all connected, and if not literally one volume to the next, it’s at least a shared universe. Thus, there are treads and characters that connect: to all of his other movies. You have Max Fischer, Richie Tenenbaum, maybe a little Eli Cash.

You have Steve Zissou, being left behind, almost like a phantom. To my way of thinking, the bit part Bill Murray plays here is actually their father, whose passing has prompted the journey the three brothers at the center of the movie are taking.

In essence, the father figure is dead. It’s time to move on in search of the next thing. This makes for one of the more emotionally raw of Anderson’s films. It wears its heart on its sleeve.

Which means it gets personal in ways Anderson movies haven’t before. There are three writers behind this: Wes Anderson, his filmmaking compatriot Roman Coppola, and actor Jason Schwartzman, who is also Roman’s cousin. Each writer has created an avatar for himself in the three brothers in the movie, and infused their mannerisms and fetishes with coded symbolism.

In fact, the whole movie, like much of Anderson’s work, has kind of a secret code that you have to break. The filmmaker is often accused of being precious, but every detail matters. He is precious in that he is like a little kid trying to build what he sees in his imagination, and he cares deeply about getting it right.

Owen Wilson plays Francis, the eldest, and he serves as a stand-in for Wes Anderson. Francis is the beleaguered ringleader, unappreciated and beaten-up--which was probably how Wes felt following the tepid reception to The Life Aquatic. Like his creator, Francis also wants to get it right. He wants to contain the chaos, but finds he can’t. You can’t manufacture a spiritual journey. He tells his brothers to “say yes to everything,” but then hands them an itinerary.

Jason Schwartzman plays Jack, and in doing so represents himself: the arty romantic looking to stake a claim.

I’m glad they are including the prologue of “Hotel Chevalier” because Darjeeling is really incomplete without it. Particularly in regards to Jack. He is essentially Max Fischer looking to be grow up and be taken seriously, stuck in a fugue at a time where the fictions he has created have become too real and have overtaken him.

Look around his hotel room, you’ll see he has essentially built himself a replica of his childhood bedroom, a la Edward Appleby, the dead romantic figure in Rushmore. [review] There are toy cars, art pieces, and objects that are important to him. He’s locked away, indulging in books and movies.

He’s watching Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 on the TV. In that film, William Holden’s character is like the Max Fischer of the POW camps: he has the whole place wired. He built a racetrack and runs mice on them. He has a telescope for looking at the women in the neighbor camp. He is both separate and apart.

You also might spot a Nancy Mitford book on his bed. It’s a twofer

, one of my favorites, the combined The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. Mitford is a bit like F. Scott Fitzgerald as a woman, known for beautiful prose and writing thinly veiled fictions about her and her sisters; Jack does the same about him and his brothers. No matter how much he claims it’s all made up.

Things go wonky for Jack in his exile when that his estranged lover--played by Natalie Portman--shows up unannounced and invades his space. Bad for him, lucky for us, in that it’s easily the sexiest a Wes Anderson movie has ever gotten. But Natalie Portman also utters the first of many portents in Darjeeling: “Don’t you think it’s time you go home?” He can’t escape his past any more than he can escape her.

“Hotel Chevalier” ends with a song by Peter Sarstedt, “Where Do You Go To My Lovely,” which is the most Wes Anderson of songs. It’s all references--Marlene Dietrich, the Rolling Stones--using these superficial details to get into a lover’s head. There’s something so self-conscious about it, it’s hard not to think Anderson is toying with us. “Where Do You Go To” becomes Jack’s love theme.

Finally, we have the most complex character to decode: Roman Coppola, as represented by Adrien Brody. Peter is also trying to establish himself as his own man, and his real-life parallel maybe has the most to overcome in that regard. Roman Coppola is a film director himself, he made a movie called CQ many years back--about, surprise, a young filmmaker trying to avoid turning into a hack. His resume also includes a lot of second unit work for his famous father: Francis Ford Coppola.

Francis Coppola one of the more influential titans of the 1970s. He was surely an influence on Wes Anderson. The Conversation, the Godfather films [review], Apocalypse Now.

Keep that in mind when you observe Adrien Brody in Darjeeling: he is the one who keeps stealing his dead father’s clothes for himself. He wears the old man’s glasses, so as a metaphor is looking through his eyes, despite it being a different prescription than his own. As the offspring of a famous man, it’s hard to establish your own vision.

This carries over into the theme of fathers. I think it’s Peter, Brody’s character, who gives the best evidence that Bill Murray is their dead dad. Watch how he looks at the Bill Murray in that first scene, both when he passes him, and once he’s on the train.

Peter is also dealing with his own issues: he could the next Royal Tenenbaum or Steve Zissou. His wife is pregnant, and he is running away. Sadly, later, he’ll be the one who fails in saving another child. Not a good omen.

The fact that Wes Anderson is trading some of his daddy issues to focus on mommy issues is kind of fascinating. Anjelica Huston as the mother in both Tenenbaums [review] and Zissou was still invested in what the men were doing, she’s the one who takes care of things, even reluctantly. Not this time. For the first time in Anderson, the mother has abandoned her post. (Not counting the late Mrs. Fischer.) Maybe in that sense the German women on the train are supposed to make us think of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. [review] She can’t help but get out of there, and you can’t blame her. She’s had enough.

Extending the Coppola comparison, for a second, and sticking with fathers and mothers: there is a journey here akin to Apocalypse Now. In looking for their mom, the boys are seeking the rogue who has gone native.

There is also Hearts of Darkness, the documentary about the making of that film, where we see it was Roman Coppola’s mother, Eleanor, who kept the movie--and his father--on track when Francis Ford’s mad boyish adventure went off the tracks.

Also in Apocalypse Now, there is the threat of a tiger attack, which we have repeated here. Francis Ford Coppola himself was referencing William Blake: “Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night; / What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

This maybe wasn’t intentional on Anderson’s, but if you were here for Shawn Levy’s introduction to Rushmore, these things extend back whether it’s planned or not. Shawn quoted Borges stating that artists create their own precedents, even if by osmosis or coincidence. And one of the major reasons for this series is to make these connections, we want to see how the themes all lock together.

I was struck watching this last night, actually, that the train porter serves as a kind of father figure, immediately usurping Owen Wilson’s authority the moment they step on his train. If we want to go a little silly, then that means Jack/Jason Schwartzman sleeping with the porter’s girlfriend has some Oedipal overtones. Not to mention Natalie Portman and Anjelica Huston have matching haircuts.

But that may be going to far. It’s still worth considering, thought, that Owen Wilson’s Francis might want to take over for his dad, but what we end up seeing is that he’s just like his mother. All his habits are from her. I like the line he says, “Did I raise us...kind of?” She won’t validate him, he’s hoping his brothers will.

Moving on from that...

The other important film connection to make here is to India. India provides Wes Anderson an opportunity. Where I think Darjeeling provides a bridge between the two phases of Anderson’s career is he steps outside of his own uncanny valley in away he hasn’t before. It’s his first time away from an entirely curated world.

We left the city in Steve Zissou, sure, but Zissou still lived in an imaginary landscape, one that he could control, it was his Life Aquatic.

In Darjeeling, while the characters still bear a stylistic connection to the Anderson aesthetic, they have been moved into a world that is beyond their control, where they don’t fit. While cinematically, it’s the India that the director saw in early Merchant-Ivory movies and Satyajit Ray, it still resembles something other than Anderson’s common landscape. The Darjeeling Limited both as narrative and as process is an adventure of displacement.

As I mentioned, Francis is trying to manufacture and manicure the spiritual experience, but it’s way to controlled for a legitimate epiphany. To the point that to have a real experience, the boys have to be thrown off the train and see life as it’s really being lived, away from the conveniences of privileged travel. It makes me think a little of Lost In Translation, [review] and Scarlett Johansson leaving the hotel where she’s been hiding and viewing Japanese life as an observant witness. (A film, of course, made by Roman Coppola’s extremely talented little sister.)

These guys are presented with a real awakening moment out at the river and in the remote village, but of course, they kind of miss it. Anderson makes the connection for them, he goes from one funeral back to another, letting us see the events prior to burying their father, but these guys are dense. They immediately fall back into their old tricks once they return to the city, and have no choice but to go back out again and finish what they started.

After this, we would see Anderson retreat back into his own environment, and even take it to new extremes. Moonrise Kingdom [review] and to a greater extent Grand Budapest Hotel [review] has moved him even further from reality. There is a kind of magical realism, a cinematic illusion a la Georges Méliès, that has taken over his material. It’s actually hinted at in this movie with the very obviously fake tiger. There’s a part of him that wants the illusion to appear as illusion

I don’t know if the poor reaction to Darjeeling inspired it, but there is almost a sense that Anderson decided to take his ball and go home. If we didn’t want him stepping out into a recognizable world, then he wasn’t going to. He would create his own. I imagine him sitting in his studio listening to the Beach Boys’ “In My Room” and dreaming up this new fantasy life, untethered and unrestricted. It’s what’s made his latest films so fresh, but what also makes The Darjeeling Limited so effective. As they say, you have to leave before you can come back.

Though all of his musicals had fairy tale elements to them, Jacques Demy waited until 1970 to embrace the genre in full, adapting Charles Perrault's Donkey Skin for a big-screen, live-action version of a Disney cartoon.

Catherine Deneuve once again stars, playing both the Queen and the Princess, a smart device given the film's darker plot developments. As Donkey Skin begins, the Queen passes away, her illness the price to be paid for the good fortune that has otherwise befallen the kingdom. The land is rich, thanks to a magical donkey that poops money and jewels; however, the royal family has no male heir, and the Queen makes her King (Jean Marais, Orpheus [review]) promise he will only remarry if his new wife is both a princess and as beautiful as she. This, of course, proves impossible as no one is as beautiful as Catherine Deneuve except...well, Catherine Deneuve. Seeing no other alternative and suddenly smitten by the child he previously ignored, the King becomes determined to marry his daughter.

Suspecting that this is not kosher, the Princess goes to her fairy godmother (Delphine Seyrig, Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles [review]) seeking advice. When the fairy's first challenges to test the King's devotion fail, she has to get drastic. She suggests her goddaughter request the skin of the magic donkey, assuming killing the golden ass will be too much to ask. This too fails, and so as a last resort, the fairy has the Princess hide away as a scullery made in a nearby village. She wears the donkey's hide, head and all, as a cape, and never washes, a trick to keep suspicious noses away.

On paper, this set-up is grotesque, something Demy is well aware of. Unlike most modern retellings of fable and folklore, the French filmmaker doesn't scrub the narrative of its more difficult elements. His script mines the original for its most transgressive taboos. Not just incest, but vanity and prejudice, as well. How people treat the girl they call Donkey Skin exposes their own petty bigotry. As is the nature of Cinderella stories, the beautiful Princess can be hiding in the dankest of corners.

It's the person who can see past the superficial that is rewarded with love and treasure. The Red Prince (Jacques Perrin, the artist in The Young Girls of Rochefort [review]) from the next kingdom over sees past the enchantment and falls in love with Donkey Skin. The second half of Donkey Skin is devoted to his manipulating his parents into letting him marry the disguised monarch.

Stylistically, Donkey Skin is fascinating. Demy establishes a kind of shabby chic. As befitting the late 1960s, he is adopting an old form for new aesthetics. The opulent fashions behind castle walls seem gaudy and inauthentic next to the grungy reality of medieval life. One has an almost sensory reaction to the dirtier aspects of serf living even while being enchanted by the gorgeous magic of the glamorous fairy. Seyrig is an excellent choice to play a mystical seductress. Her fairy godmother has her own selfish motives to keep the King from finding his bliss. It's suggested there is some dalliance in their past that left her betrayed. The Princess is like a child of divorce caught between two bitter parents. The Lilac Fairy also provides Demy with his most potent symbol for the skewed point-of-view of his aged allegory: as the years pile up and overtake the fairy, so do her powers fade. Just as most of us lose our imagination the longer we grow in the tooth.

The surreal set designs in Donkey Skin, including the use of actual human beings as furniture and props, recall the exquisite art direction in Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast [review[. This is probably not a coincidence. Nor is the fact that Demy's King was Cocteau's Beast. Both auteurs challenge our grown-up notions of magic and illusion. We see the magicians at work, we hear that the Lilac Fairy is losing her fairy dust the older she gets, but our desire to believe and be swept away wins out. Unlike Cocteau, Demy indulges in a few anachronisms, the most notable of which is the appearance of the helicopter in Donkey Skin's finale. Is it possible a young Alex Cox was sitting in a theater all those year's ago taking notes, or is the end of Walker[review] just one of those things...?

Jacques Demy mostly works with a new team here, though he does reunite with Michel Legrand, who wrote the music and the songs. Donkey Skin comes off as both a natural transition from what came before and also the realization of a dream. It's the kind of movie Jacques Demy had to make. A sincere fairy tale that serves double-duty as a commentary on the same.

This disc was provided by Criterion for purpose of review.

Yet another film in the long list of titles I learned about through Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on “At the Movies,” though one I had not seen up until now. I would have been a senior in high school or a freshman in college when Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! would have been released, and it would have likely been a little too perverse for me, farther off the beaten track than I was ready to go. I was still only dabbling in foreign films, had not seen a Pedro Almodovar picture, and was a bit skeeved out by the clip they showed of the toy scuba diver swimming between a woman’s legs. That’s, of course, the most infamous scene in Tie Me Up!, the one that tested the MPAA system and helped lead the way to the NC-17 classification.

Now that I’ve seen the film, that’s one of the least disturbing elements. At least in that little bit, Marina (Victoria Abril) is enjoying herself and having fun under her own volition. In fact, it’s the last moment of freedom, really, before a man of another kind will invade her life.

Marina is an actress who has just completed filming a movie. It’s a good time for her. Prior to this, she struggled with heroin addiction and starred in adult films. It’s these past issues that will give her friends and family cause to worry when she disappears, but also indicates the darker aspects of her personality. It was likely on one of her drug-fueled benders when she first met Ricki (Antonio Banderas) a year prior, himself on one of his many escapes from a mental institution. The 23-year-old is out again, but this time legally, having been cleared for regular life. His first order of business is to find Marina, follow her home, and trap her there, kidnapping her and holding her hostage long enough for her to see what kind of a guy he really is and fall in love with him.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is a strange movie. Its subject matter is dark and serious, but its execution is practically frivolous. I suppose the best indication of what kind of genre Almodovar is attempting is signaled by the on-set scenes for when Marina is making her own film within the film. Almodovar is having a metafictional lark here, poking fun at himself and his reputation as a director who favors women, but he’s also calling attention to the odd, uncategorizable nature of Tie Me Up!. The film Marina is starring in is “a spin-off of the horror genre,” and so it is with Tie Me Up!. It is a sexualized Misery, with maybe Ricki channeling a little bit of Humphrey Bogart from The Desperate Hours. The fact that Marina escapes her would-be lover (and also killer) in the fake film by strangling him with a phone cord is a bit of misdirection. It’s Marina who will be tied up with a cord, and eventually she won’t be looking for revenge. Ricki’s plan works. Stockholm syndrome sets in, and Marina ends up loving her captor.

It’s hard to imagine Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! being made today. Or at least being released via any mainstream channels. There’s plenty of gross stuff ending up going straight to disc, but most studios would balk at a film that opens with its hero being released from a mental hospital, stalking a woman, and then becoming her lover with no consequence. Almodovar approaches the scenario with a macabre glee, teasing us with the trappings of a Hitchcockian psychological thriller but then going deep to really get down into the muck of it all. His trademark Technicolor fetish lends Tie Me Up! a bizarre surreality, almost as if Marina and Ricki are in an otherworldly wonderland where his sick fantasies lose their dangerous edge. In a similar fashion, the music by Ennio Morricone toggles between sinister Bernard Hermann-esque themes and more grandiose Hollywood swells. Are we watching a beautiful romance or Norman Bates being let lose to pursue his vision of Madeleine Elster?

The young Banderas is pretty incredible here, cat-like in his predatory movements, but then strangely sweet. He hints at the broken little boy that still lurks somewhere underneath all this grown-up desire. He also has a smoldering sexuality, the quality that had Madonna chasing after him in Truth Or Dare, which would have been shot around the same time. He’s handsome and charming but also just downright weird. In a way, his brokenness fills in the fissures of Marina’s own fractured personality. She exudes sexuality right from her first scene, when she decides to forgo wearing underwear because the lines will show; as a performer, Abril is absolutely comfortable in her own skin, and so she manages to show Marina as someone completely attuned to her own pleasure. As her anger dissipates--aided a little by her lapse back into drugs, it should probably be noted--we can see how she would come to crave the intensity of Ricki’s affection. Almodovar keeps her wrestling with her feelings right up until the end. She can’t make up her mind whether to go along with Ricki or to break out.

And as a viewer, you won’t always be clear on her intentions, either. Even up to the last shot, where for a second it appears Almodovar might borrow from The Graduate [review] and end on an ambiguous expression, I was ready to believe she had realized she had made the wrong decision. The momentary jitters help salvage a final sequence that is maybe a little convenient a turn of events, the director unable to resist giving in to his more melodramatic urges and tacking on a quick resolution.

Yet, it may also just be the act of a prankster. There are a lot of playful gags littered throughout the movie. Banderas outside the sweet shop window with the “O” in the sign over his face and looking like a diver’s mask, the S&M-like garb of the villain in the horror movie, Marina captured between Ricki’s spread legs when he’s standing on his head just before he turns her whole existence upside down--Almodovar’s subversion of conventional sexual imagery is key to subverting our own expectations of what makes a healthy relationship. Holding hands is replaced by handcuffed wrists, and a kidnapper might fix your plumbing (and not just metaphorically). If we were entirely comfortable with it, the trickster would be deprived of his fun. It suggests Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! maybe owes as much to John Waters as to Alfred Hitchcock. We should never stop laughing any more than we should stop guessing.

This is Criterion's first foray into Almodovar's filmography, and hopefully it won't be the last. With a crisp, colorful high-definition transfer and a well chosen selection of extras, including new interviews with the cast and crew, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is an excellent presentation, bringing the singular Spanish director into the fold of a singular company.

This disc was provided by Criterion for purpose of review.

For the final selection in The Essential Jacques Demy, we don’t exactly go back to the start, but at least back to the high point of the director’s career.

1982’s Une chambre en ville is a distant cousin of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg [review], taking that film’s musical stylings and applying them to a more realistic aesthetic, complete with political underpinnings. Set in 1955, this operatic motion picture stars Richard Berry as Francois, a metalworker on strike with his union brothers. Une chambre en ville opens with a clash between the workers and the police, switching from a black-and-white newsreel style to color as the first blows are thrown. Francois escapes unharmed, but his life is put in jeopardy regardless. With no money to pay the rent, he risks eviction from “the baroness,” Margot (Danielle Darrieux), who lets him a room in her apartment.

Margot doesn’t care for politics, she has problems of her own. Her daughter Edith (Dominique Sanda, The Conformist) is in a loveless marriage to an impotent man (Michel Piccoli) whom we will also find out has a violent temper. Granted, Edith taunts him, leaving the house wearing a fur coat and nothing else and selling herself on the streets. Edith is stubborn and flighty. She consults a fortune teller before making any decisions, and it’s through the tarot that Edith is informed that she’s destined to fall in love with a metalworker.

Unsurprisingly, this puts her on a collision course with Francois, who falls for her completely. It’s an added complication he doesn’t need. He is already in a relationship with sweet Violette (Fabienne Guyon, Life is a Bed of Roses [review]), who is trying to find the right time to tell him she’s pregnant.

Une chambre en ville takes place over the course of two days, though two days intensely lived. Love is lost and gained, as are jobs. And lives. Demy’s scenario has the same exaggerated romanticism as his more famous breakthrough, but he has traded Cherbourg’s candy-colored set decoration for the drabness of real life. Margot’s apartment may be dressed in red, and Violette’s frock may also be a lovely pink, but the dominant color here is the brown of Edith’s hair and her fur coat. The streets where Francois and his comrades fight and bleed are grimy and dark. Une chambre en ville combines cinematic conceits with more down-to-earth concerns.

It works fairly well, even if it’s not as invigorating or swoon-worthy as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Une chambre en ville lacks much of what made that movie remarkable. Dominique Sanda is fine, but she’s no Catherine Deneuve. Likewise, composer Michel Colombier (The Model Couple [review]) is no Michel Legrand. The music in Une chambre en ville is absent of the sweeping melodies of Legrand’s score, and it’s also missing a memorable theme. I’m not too sure how I feel about more modern electric instruments creeping in, either.

Even so, there is a vibrancy to Une chambre en ville that is still quite impressive, despite it being a later period effort from the filmmaker. For those wondering why the boxed set skips more than 10 years between movies, the documentary accompanying this disc sheds some light on the topic. Released in 1995, five years after Demy’s death, The World of Jacques Demy is a loving tribute put together by his wife, Agnes Varda (who, of course, is an accomplished filmmaker in her own right). A loose biographical portrait cobbled together with film clips, archival interviews, and new conversations with friends and admirers, The World of Jacques Demy offers insight into the man’s unique passions, revealing his origins as a child of war and an early film buff. Varda covers all the hits, but also a few of the misses. There are some intriguing glimpses of lesser-known Demy movies, including his mid-60s American picture, Model Shop, a sequel to Lola [review] and originally intended as Harrison Ford’s film debut. (Varda includes his screen tests, as well as tracking the actor down to talk about what almost was.) There is also a manga adaptation called Lady Oscar and a rock ’n’ roll musical that earned Demy little traction between Donkey Skin [review] and Une chambre en ville. The only notable release I had heard of from his latter period was the Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve comedy A Slightly Pregnant Man. Perhaps we could get an Eclipse boxed set of the lesser Jacques Demy? Because, honestly, I’m intrigued enough to track some of these down.

The World of Jacques Demy actually makes for a nice capper to The Essential Jacques Demy. Though Varda promises a discreet glimpse at her lover, the affection is evident. She views her husband with the same romantic sparkle that made all the movies here so vital. He was a man who lived his fantasy, and then did his best to share it with us.

Jacques Demy, 1931-1990

This disc was provided by Criterion for purpose of review.

“They’ll hang you for sure.”

It wasn’t that long ago that I first watched and reviewed Vengeance is Mine, so I’ll direct you back to the original piece for a more in-depth look at the film, which has just been re-released on Blu-ray.

I don’t have any new great insights to add to my original thoughts. Funny enough, I kind of watched Shohei Imamura’s 1979 true-crime movie this time around as a more straightforward piece than I had back in 2013. It struck me as less of a puzzler and more of a blueprint for other epic-length bad-guy-on-the-run biopics like the two-part Mesrine movie [review 1, review 2]. Even down to how the narrative sort of drags the longer we spend with the fugitive in exile.

My main attention was drawn to Ken Ogata, and the evolution of his sociopathic murderer, Iwao Enokizu. His portrayal of Enokizu before his first killing strikes me as comparable to Robert De Niro’s work for Martin Scorsese. Post-War Iwao is impetuous and forceful, like De Niro in Mean Streets but with a real mean streak himself. After his first stint in prison, he is more like Max Cady in Cape Fear, [review] precise in his anger, and toying with the people around him. His New York Yankees cap and dark Hawaiian-style shirt even have a Scorsese flavor. His posture is slack, his limbs loose, his tone of voice hides a carefree laugh under his threats--this is a guy who believes people should just fall in line to whatever whim strikes him.

Such braggadocio disappears once Enokizu has gone on the lam, however, he becomes a more focused and deadly presence, tightening up in both word and presentation (clenched shoulders, suit and tie). There are still shades of American gangsters in his character--one can’t help but think of Dillinger when Enokizu sees himself in a movie theater newsreel; you almost expect him to get pinched with his gal (Mayumi Ogawa) when they exit--but watching the performance over the near two-and-a-half-hour running time is basically watching a bad dude calcify in his evilness. Enokizu is hardening. He may pick up lovers and even stage robberies, but he’s never having fun. This man is no Clyde Barrow, he’s too uptight. Enokizu is closer to Ted Bundy. Handsome and charismatic, but also calculated and cold, he seethes with a sense of entitlement. His biggest problem seems to be that he deserves something but not being sure what it is.

It’s a remarkable performance from Ogata, assured in its subtleties, and complete from start to vision.

Outside of the surreal final scene, Vengeance is Mine can be viewed as a rather straightforward criminal procedural, with a bravura sense of self not dissimilar to the best of American cinema in the 1970s. It’s the coda and some of the sidebar interpersonal material, particularly the relationship of the killer’s father and wife (Rentaro Mikuni and Mitsuko Baisho), that adds a slightly different flavor. But then, dear ol’ dad is a Catholic and expects divine retribution, so we’re not even too far from Scorsese there, are we?

In terms of the new release, the Blu-ray of Vengeance is Mine is certainly an upgrade, updating the previous transfer for current technology (1080p, MPEG-4 AVC encoded, lossless mono soundtrack). Colors are vibrant and detail is fantastic, allowing the viewer to study all corners of the frame. The production team also allows for a subtle grain that re-creates the authentic look of 1970s film stock.

For the audio commentary fans out, Criterion has also added a commentary track by critic Tony Rayns that was not included on the 2007 DVD edition. The other extras, including the booklet with an extensive chat with Imamura, remain, as well.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review. The stills shown are taken from the standard-definition DVD release and not the Blu-ray under discussion.

“Love is a stream. It’s continuous. It does not stop.”

And sometimes it bears human wreckage on its currents.

In 1984’s Love Streams, his final film as writer and director, John Cassavates stars as Robert, a novelist of some fame. An aging party boy, Robert keeps many women around at one time. As the drunken lout explains to his estranged pre-teen son on a disastrous overnight trip, a man has trouble sleeping alone. These are liaisons without connection, however, because Robert isn’t very good at reaching out. At the times he does during the movie, he tends to bungle it or stop short. If his stream isn’t dammed up, then it just flows according to his own selfish purpose.

Elsewhere, Sarah is in the middle of a divorce and about to lose custody of her child. Sarah is played by Cassavetes’ real-life wife, Gena Rowlands, a regular in his films, the director’s go-to for the kind of fractured, unstable women that populate most of his screenplays. Sarah has had mental health problems, though one may surmise her biggest problem is maybe she feels too much. She has a habit of dragging her daughter (Diahnne Abbott) around to see sick people because she believes their cheery nature lifts the spirits of the ailing. The girl has had enough and wants to go live with her father (Seymour Cassel). This switcheroo casts Sarah adrift. A bit of a boozer herself, she takes some terrible advice to go to Europe and in search of sex. It’s when she comes back that she will seek out Robert and their true association will be revealed.

Up until this point, Love Streams is effectively operating as two movies. There is Robert and his girls and his domestic travails, and there is Sarah and her court battles and her wanderings. Amazingly, when they finally do come together, they basically cross and split. Sarah lands at Robert’s house, Robert takes his son to Vegas. Even then, Robert plays their relationship closer to the vest, to the point that current culture would likely label it a spoiler. There’s no real ta-dah moment, however, the magician does not lift the sheet and show us his lovely assistant; rather, the information just kind of trickles out when Love Streams finally settles down.

Robert and Sarah are brother and sister, the product of whatever warped environment would produce two such opposite beings. The man who can’t love and the woman who loves too much. Alone in the world, the two settle down in Robert’s house and try to re-connect. He attempts to be a rock for her, she strives to bring affection into his life. Her solution is to fill his house with animals, making Robert into a emotionally bereft Noah. The film’s final scenes see him running around in a ludicrous hat bringing the goat and miniature horse and fowl in out of the rain.

I would argue that this back portion of Love Steams is really its most substantial. It’s when the two characters are forced to grapple with their problems. Robert in particular embraces responsibility and tries to give his sister some stability. She is more resistant than he is. I’m not sure what to make of the fact that she spends the film’s last half hour sleeping it off while Cassavetes indulges in two ill-advised dream sequences/hallucinations. For a filmmaker revered for his realism to resort to working out these issues through fantasy seems like a cop-out. How is a musical number more effective than a tête-à-tête between his two main characters? I get that Cassavetes is revealing an irony, that Sarah is beyond reason and, despite being the one who loves, beyond repair, but this struck me as too disconnected itself.

Such is Cassavetes’ jagged storytelling style, however. His films are often hard to fathom and even hard to take, as those who have struggled with the differing versions of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie or even Opening Night can attest. His narratives are rarely clean, and his expression as ragged as the fashions he outfits his actors in. Hence the choppy nature of Love Streams’ opening scenes, or the disconcerting shifts over time and even reality. In the filmmaker’s defense, he is striving to craft a cinematic voice that relies more on real life than it does motion picture history; I’d just argue he tries a little too hard here. There is almost a feeling of desperation to how it all comes together. Perhaps it’s because Cassavetes had been told he had less than a year to live just before starting it, maybe he needed a little more time to cook but feared he didn’t have it.

Love Streams is based on a play written by Ted Allan that Cassavetes had performed in several years prior. Here the two collaborators apparently attempted to bust the play apart and root around in its inner workings. This could account for some of the jumble. They are sifting through the parts rather than putting them back together. Love Streams works more as a performance piece than it does a story.

And what performances they are. The aging Cassavetes is a growling, wounded predator here, his weathered, leonine face at times contorting into a maniacal grimace, even as his sad, soulful eyes reveal a deep hurt. He doesn’t so much interact with his fellow cast as he does move around them, the creator and his creation melding, both orchestrating their own private world. It makes sense, then, that the bits that Robert can’t control are the most interesting. The material with his son (Jakob Shaw) has a palpable rawness that should chafe against old scars of viewers who are also children of divorce. And, of course, there are also the scenes with Robert and Sarah. One can sense the very real love between them, right from their first scene together, when Robert literally leaps into the taxicab to hug his sister. It’s the husband overjoyed to be working with his wife.

The pair draw much out of each other when they are interacting one on one. Their conversations feel unrehearsed, something beyond improvised, mimicking actual speech, delivered in the moment. Rowlands’ real bravura scenes, however, are when Sarah is on her own, manipulating the world to her needs, be it bullying train station attendants into helping her or seducing the man working at the bowling alley. That’s actually the best sequence in Love Streams, the time when the audience is compelled to react as part of the production. When the man behind the counter asks Sarah how she is doing, and she starts to unload, don’t be surprised if you find yourself thinking, “Oh, god, now you’ve done it...here she goes...”

It’s the unvarnished power of moments like that one that makes Love Streams so fascinating, even if it’s ultimately unsatisfying. I felt challenged throughout the movie. Not just in that I was trying to figure it all out, but in that I was trying to stay with it, not to jettison from the experience, not to give up on these people who are alone and floundering. I suppose that is John Cassavetes’ greatest gift, the way he shows us that even if love and, by extension, life is constantly flowing, the true triumph is to not just let it carry us where it may, but in pushing against the current, to strive to be active in it and not passively drift. That was how he built his career, after all. He lived and died celebrating the different.

“Do you suppose Stanley Kubrick ever gets depressed?”

As a child of the 1980s--or more accurately, an adolescent of the 1980s, which is when pop culture really opened up for me--the 1970s was always this strange brown smear lingering somewhere over my shoulder. To this day, I am not particularly drawn to most of the music or the fashion, or even the comic books really, so if it weren't for David Bowie, punk, and the mavericks of American filmmaking, I'd pretty much skip over the decade completely.

So I am somewhat in awe of Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, released in 1979, and encompassing everything that was weird and wild about 1970s indulgence and theatricality. The elevator pitch for All That Jazz was something like The Death of Bob Fosse: The Musical, but it could just as easily have been The Death of the 1970s. This is where all the excess and the partying and the ugliness caught up with a generation.

Roy Scheider stars in All That Jazz as Joe Gideon, a stand-in for the writer/director/choreographer. Fosse has put together a thinly veiled fiction of his own life, of a period when he was burning the candle at every end he could conceive of, editing his film Lenny and preparing Chicago for the stage. The lack of sleep and the sex and the drugs eventually became too much, leading to a heart attack. All That Jazz is Bob Fosse staring down his own mortality, crafting his own memorial, and staging the damned thing as one last anything-goes hurrah.

And so it is in the film that we see Gideon's life as a frenzied parade of days, spurred on by amphetamines and cigarettes, jumping from the editing suite to the rehearsal room, balancing his ex-wife and main star, his daughter, his mistress, and whatever lady maybe struck his fancy that day. Like a dancer rehearsing, the repetition of these bad habits is basically Gideon practicing the methods of his own downfall. We watch the morning routine again and again--shower, pills, eye drops--the montage growing tighter as Gideon's body deteriorates, the eternal perfectionist honing the choreography until it’s time to do it for real.

So for its first half or so, All That Jazz is an episodic narrative of a driven man. We see Joe the Dictator, and Joe the Scourge, but also Joe the Father and Joe the Artist. Fosse's ego allows for a true warts-and-all portrayal. He is no more interested in painting himself as merely a fiery demon than he is in shying away from his own faults. Gideon can be just as genuinely sensitive as he is selfish. He’s also confused, as evinced by his ongoing internal dialogue with the heavenly Angelique (Jessica Lange), a manifestation of whatever conscience or moral compass or self-doubt he may have.

It's fairly straightforward in terms of story, though punctuated with one big song-and-dance number, a few more minor toe tappers, and regular callbacks to the faux Lenny Bruce monologue. Fosse can also be playful, unspooling a comedic montage here and there, including one in the hospital after Gideon's heart attack. It's this health scare that sets up the second-half of the movie, which essentially evolves into one massive hallucination, the drugged-up, knocked-out Joe putting on a musical that combs though his past faults and sins before taking center stage himself for a farewell rock extravaganza, complete with dancers dressed as the circulatory system, KISS-wannabes, and Ben Vereen. It's a coked-out take on the Everly Brothers, every bit as tacky as changing "Bye Bye Love" to "Bye Bye Life" sounds.

It's also pretty great. It's an audacious finish to a film that is audacious through and through. All That Jazz is a passionate, energetic, unvarnished portrayal of the creative process. It is one protracted impulse, a true cinematic bucket list by a filmmaker who had pushed his life to the edge and then dragged all of his baggage back and dumped it out for everyone to see. The other big dance number, "Airotica," is both a challenge and a statement of intent, pushing the envelope of what is allowed and then having Joe Gideon stand there and point at it and say, "See this? You can't do this!"

All That Jazz is two hours of "you can't do this." Fosse proves himself both fearless and ferocious, and he coaxes Roy Scheider into the same place. Together they pull off the high-wire act they prepare the audience for right from the movie's introduction. Together, the performers take a chance, and it pays off. Sure, some of it's corny and the art direction is dated, but as I said, All That Jazz is closing the door on a timeframe. Or more appropriately, zipping up its body bag. It's as potent a finishing statement for the decade as Robert De Niro telling Sugar Ray "You never knocked me down" in Raging Bull [review]. There was no going back from this, not with Star Wars and the newly invented blockbuster breathing down everyone's necks, but what Fosse achieved and proved was that the true dreamers didn't have to go into orbit to create their own kind of outer space.

This short review comes from my old column for OniPress.com, hence the link to the excellent Capote in Kansas. It was part of a larger piece that also looked at a bunch of Val Lewton-produced movies. It was posted in conjunction with Halloween 2005.

My first choice is one that should be interesting to Oni readers who tried this summer’s Capote in Kansas, because Truman Capote did some of the work on the screenplay. Released in 1961, The Innocents is Jack Clayton’s adaptation of the Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw. Keeping 19th-century England as its setting, The Innocents stars Deborah Kerr as Miss Giddens, a woman who has just started a career as a governess. Her first assignment is to take care of the orphaned siblings, Flora (Pamela Franklin) and Miles (Martin Stephens), on their uncle’s country estate. Before long, Miss Giddens realizes there is something strange about these children. They share odd secrets, enjoy a morbid sense of humor, and often wander the house unattended late at night. She also starts seeing apparitions -- the images of the groundskeeper and the preceding governess, who died as a result of an illicit tryst -- and Miss Giddens believes their malicious spirits are what have been compelling the children to act so strangely. As a result, the governess gets entangled in the age-old horror movie conundrum: is she going mad or is what she believes really happening?

The Innocents is heavy on gothic atmosphere. It uses the empty corridors and cold statues of the palatial mansion to cast a dark shadow over every event. Clayton establishes the creepiness from the first moment, with Flora singing the eerie melody that will become a motif in the film over a black screen before the 20th Century Fox logo even comes on. Everything starts in darkness. Once the logo has passed, it gives way to an amazing title sequence: Deborah Kerr’s clasped hands and her praying for the souls of the children. Kerr is wonderful throughout, playing her role with a heightened sense of dread and the anxiety of always being one step behind the action. Clayton makes the film even more tense by having everyone else in the house react to her with near indifference. They don’t disbelieve her, but they don’t actively support her, either. The audience always feels they know more than they are letting on. It all leads to a final confrontation with Miles that plays out in strange -- and dare I say, haunting -- ways. I shivered as the final title came onscreen.

It’s kind of funny that I first saw James Ivory’s 1987 adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Maurice back in my college days, because rewatching the movie some 20 years later, I realize that Maurice somewhat illustrates what was my father’s worst nightmare at the time. In the early 1900s, young Maurice (James Wilby) went to Oxford where he was exposed to radical ways of thinking that made him doubt his religion while also opening up his understanding about his own sexuality, leading to clandestine dalliances with one of his school chums (Hugh Grant) and basically allowing Maurice to embrace his dormant homosexuality.

It’s like all the liberal education bogeymen that haunt conservatives have crawled out from under the dormitory beds.

Of course, to blame Oxford for transforming Maurice is to miss the truth of Forster’s story. At one point, when arguing with his mother about his changing opinions, Maurice defends himself by basically saying, “This is who I am. I am not my father, I am me. I was made this way.” Though dear ol’ mum has no idea that her child is queer, the coded language of the exchange could not be more clear, or more potent. Despite the progress made in the century since Forster published his then-controversial book (homosexual acts were illegal in England, as illustrated by the arrest of another of Maurice’s classmates), or even since Ivory’s film was released, well ahead of the indie revolution of the 1990s that helped give queer cinema a new platform, opponents of gay marriage and the regular appearance on our Facebook timelines of stories about kids coming out to intolerant parents have sadly allowed Maurice to remain contemporaneously relevant and not just a document of a certain period of history.

But then, good stories never lose their punch, and Ivory and co-writer Kit Hesketh-Harvey find the essential emotion in Forster’s tale of a naïve, upper-middle class student having his eyes and heart opened to the world. Maurice is both sensitive and insightful, finding the universality of coming-of-age coming-out stories and detailing how internal shame and external prejudice affect the individuals who suffer from them. Maurice and Clive (Grant) find friendship and then love in college, but family demands and social persecution push them apart. While Clive gives in and gets married, Maurice struggles to maintain his secret life, while also carrying the torch for his first romance. Eventually, he finds affection with one of Clive’s groundskeepers, Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves), but that also has its own complications.

One thing that is both timeless and universal in Maurice’s difficult early adulthood, and one that most adolescents can relate to be they straight or gay or whatever, is feeling like an outsider. Maurice’s most palpable and familiar trait is the air of the different. Be it religion, class, or social mores, Maurice is always on the outside. Because he doesn’t fit in what might be considered the most elemental of manly roles, he ends up finding comfort in little else. Unable to accept himself, he rejects religion, education, and the more humiliating aspects of societal expectation. Not apologizing to his headmaster for sneaking off with his lover allows Maurice a rebellion only he understands. He’d rather draw an invisible line and be tossed from school than reject what he’s found. Naturally, this position is hard to maintain, but one that Maurice must find the strength to carry on with, because the more he gives in to expectation and tries to get along, the more he struggles and the less happy he becomes. Things flip when he exploits another for his desire, indulging with the servant Scudder...though there is some question of who is exploiting whom. Forster has quite keenly observed that the oppressed can easily become the oppressor, and they can also be taken advantage of for the same.

Maurice also illustrates how certain hokum has always held sway and may never go away. Ben Kingsley shows up for a couple of scenes playing a hypnotist Maurice hires to divest him of his forbidden desires. This has about as much success as religious groups who think that homosexuality is something that can be cured through rehabilitation and prayer. Attempts to repress one’s true feelings tend to only give added strength to their triggers.

Such a delicate story requires a delicate touch, and Ivory is well suited for it. I’ve noted in the past that part of the Merchant Ivory appeal is a near absence of style, and Maurice shows the team at their most Masterpiece Theatre-like. There is little to distinguish this film from any variety of BBC literary dramas, except maybe the sexy love scenes between Grant and Wilby and Wilby and Graves. It’s certainly not the kind of thing one expects to see in a TV miniseries based on Austen or Dickens. There’s something normalizing, however, by approaching these couplings with the same even keel as Ivory and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme approach everything else. Theirs is nearly invisible cinema. There are no sweeping pans or emphatic zooms to underline emotion. Rather, Ivory allows for character and setting to maintain the spotlight. A meeting in the woods, or ducking from a rainstorm--these are tropes from romance novels, but also just the stuff of life and circumstance. When it comes to describing the films of Merchant Ivory, “plain” is not pejorative. Much in the same way an author might use clear language to make sure there is no confusion amongst his readership, Ivory leaves the flourishes to happen within the scene, even as he encourages his performers to adopt a like-minded restraint. Seeing a young Hugh Grant be dashing without mugging for the camera is a good reminder of why we all actually liked seeing him in movies once upon a time.

While this poise and reserve means James Ivory is considered by some to be the most quintessentially British of directors, the truth is that he’s an American who actually grew up and went to college in Oregon, from whence I currently hail. This connection is what prompted me to give Maurice a spin, as on Friday, October 10, Ivory will be appearing at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland to present Maurice as part of the Mid Century Oregon Genius series.

It’s a rare appearance, and to go along with this screening, Ivory has also chosen to air his rarely seen 1977 film Autobiography of a Princess, starring James Mason and available on Criterion’s OOP Heat and Dust DVD. The filmmaker selected Princess as complement to Oregon-native James Blue’s The Olive Trees of Justice showing later the same day and followed by a panel discussion focusing on Blue’s filmography.

For details on all of these showings, visit the Hollywood Theatre website.

Serge Bourguignon's Sundays and Cybèle, a 1962 drama that went on to win the Best Foreign Language Oscar the following year, is a unique movie. The only other film it brings to mind is René Clément's Forbidden Games, the tale of two young children living in hiding during World War II, only Sundays and Cybèle is set in peacetime and one of the children has been swapped out for an adult. Regardless, Clement’s remarkable film is excellent company to be in.

Hardy Krüger stars in Sundays and Cybèle as Pierre, a traumatized soldier who has returned from combat with no recollection of who he is and a vague feeling he did something terrible to earn this affliction (we know more than he does, having seen some of what went down in a stylized, dream-like flashback). Pierre lives in a remote French town with Madeleine (Nicole Courcel), a nurse who fell in love with him while he was in the hospital. She gives him a place to stay and tries to encourage his recovery, letting him spend his days in convalescence. He kills some time working for a local artist (Daniel Ivernel), wanders around looking for clues to his identity and trying not to be waylaid by his chronic vertigo.

Things change when Pierre meets Francoise (Patricia Gozzi) and her father at the train station one night while he’s waiting for Madeleine. The girl is being dropped off at a nunnery, and when Pierre finds out the father has no intention of returning to visit her, he decides to look after Francoise himself. The girl is allowed to leave the school every Sunday, and so she and the older men start meeting each week. Francoise’s mother is dead, so without this man posing as her dad, she'd have no one. She swears her love to Pierre and promises to marry him when she is eighteen. The one thing she won’t do, however, is tell him her real name. It’s a secret. The nuns have started calling her by a French name because they don’t like her birth name, which is Greek and has connotations that are not Christian. They rightly understand that names are power.

The subject of an adult and a child finding kinship in itself is not controversial (consider, for instance, Claude Berri’s The Two of Us [review]), but Sundays and Cybèle walks a provocative line. It makes no bones about the closeness of the twelve-year-old girl and her troubled thirty-year-old companion. While the two never cross the line into anything sexual, there is a physical affection between them. They are essentially playacting. They are two orphans playing house. How their friendship is interpreted depends on how they are observed. The act of watching is what Bourguignon is inviting us to partake in, and he crafts Sundays and Cybèle's visual language to emphasize this.

Pierre often appears encircled or framed by objects that draw our eye in his direction and isolate him simultaneously. At other times, he is observed from extreme vantage points, looking up or down. In one intriguing shot, we spy him from the side mirror of a passing vehicle. These images have the dual effect of encouraging us to consider a different way of viewing things, but also of containing him, as if bringing focus to his scattered thoughts. The shapes are often circular, reflecting Pierre's vertigo, but they are also an important clue to Pierre's past, repeating patterns buried in his subconscious. These things are indicative of the future, as well, the act of seeing through the circle intended to remind us of the crystal ball Francoise mentions belonging to her grandmother. When Pierre sees an actual fortuneteller mid-way through Sundays and Cybèle, she has little to say. Yet, he so believes in her powers, Pierre steals a magical dagger from her, believing it will provide access to another world.

Bourguignon offers up various conflicting visions of Pierre. The man who doesn’t even know himself contains multitudes. In one scene, he is like St. Francis of Assisi, innocent and kind, with birds perched on his shoulder and head. Of course, it's also ironic that Pierre is standing in a giant cage that he has built around himself, and that he will soon step out of, leaving the birds behind. Later, Madeleine will realize her own predicament, that she has also built an emotional trap with herself at the center, while walking around the studio where that and other cages have been kept. In her moment of epiphany, she is flanked by one such cage, as well as its shadow, the image blurring behind her, appearing like double vision. Like the two different Pierres.

Because for as benign and childlike as he can be, Pierre can also appear monstrous. In some of the nature scenes--trees and water both frighten him, the stuff of dark fairy tales--I am reminded of Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein's Monster

. Pierre is almost too brutish, too unaware, the girl must teach him how to behave, her purity standing in relief to his--though her own innocence is balanced by the mature trappings she adopts as self-preservation. The scenes are strikingly familiar. They throw things in the water, she plays dead and let's him carry her, etc. Consider this in direct contrast to the man on the horse that Francoise imagines as a kind of romantic hero, capable of the chivalry she'd push Pierre toward, but that we fear he is not equipped for. Even when he takes the sorcerer's dagger at the carnival, when he walks away with it concealed under his jacket, Bourguignon places a knight's armor in the background, in our eyeline if not Pierre’s. The knight doesn't readily have a sword, but if he did, its size and sharpness would surely put Pierre's illicit dagger to shame.

Carrying on with this idea, Francoise abhors brutishness. She despises Pierre for hitting another child when he's jealous, and she is also frightened to see him in a drunken brawl, itself spurred on by his reacting with an open hand to a kiss from his ersatz girlfriend. The warrior frozen in the moment of his greatest shame and defeat can only react with force.

Both Krüger and Gozzi are exceptional performers. The tricky thing about their roles is that the are basically swapped. Krüger is playing, for lack of a better description, a kind of dimwitted manchild, a beast who needs taming; on the other hand, Gozzi is a kid who has had to grow up too fast. Hers is the more delicate balancing act, because she must also maintain a certain naïveté. Francoise is still manipulative and selfish, the way a child would be, even as she invents adult scenarios for the two of them. The young actress actually looks like a middle-school version of Juliette Binoche, and frankly, shares some of the talent, as well. Her ability to be so emotionally open is incredible, while Krüger ends up being equally impressive for his restraint. The actor makes Pierre's hurt and confusion visible without pushing toward Of Mice And Men territory. His difficulties seem genuine, and not an impression.

There is much debate from other people in the town over the appropriateness of the relationship between the man and the girl--though not all of it serious. Bourguignon creates quite a bit of comedy out of how the other townspeople observe them on their own Sundays out. Some, such as the couple who refer to Pierre as a "satyr," are rather nonchalant about the creep factor; others not so much. This will ultimately be the downfall of their union. If a magic spell is being cast, it can only last so long. Indeed, the film ends at Christmas, and shortly after Francoise has revealed her true name (spoiler: it's in the title). She writes it down on a piece of paper and puts it in a box and gives it to Pierre as a present--another act of magic. To know a spirit's true name is to possess that spirit, something you should keep in mind when you get to the final scene. (That I won't spoil.)

These differing points of view are meant to challenge our own perceptions of this relationship. That's the daring thing of Sundays and Cybèle, that Bourguignon would dare to confront what is "normal" and suggest that maybe the more disgusting implications of the pairing only exists because the common folks project those possibilities onto it. Because, really, aren't these just two people who need one another? Their bonding method is unsettling in its way, but no moreso than the sad fact that it's a shame that the world has only given us more reasons to be suspicious in the years since Sundays and Cybèle was first released. The movie’s central difficulties aren't easy to dismiss, but then, neither are all the other possibilities the script raises. Nor can one ignore the honesty of the emotions on display, which is what makes Sundays and Cybèle so genuinely intriguing.

For technical specs and special features, see the full article at DVDTalk.com.

There are many scenes in La dolce vita that get referenced over and over, including its bizarre ending and Anita Ekberg’s famous dance in the fountain. But there is none more indicative of the impact of Federico Fellini’s 1960 motion picture than its opening sequence: a helicopter flying a statue of Jesus high above Rome. Up in the whirlybird sits Marcello, as played by Marcello Mastroianni, a reporter who peddles gossip, a prince of the Italian nightlife. As bikini-clad women look up past the towering Christ, Marcello waves down at them and asks one for her phone number. Our hero has arrived.

Grappling with La dolce vita for analysis is a daunting task. Fellini’s film has a large reputation, but you’ll find that when watching La dolce vita, the reputation is inadequate. The movie itself is larger still. It encompasses so much, yet does so with such clear storytelling and verve, one barely knows where to begin. Slicing off a piece to investigate feels trivial; La dolce vita is an uncarvable whole. It embraces and critiques modernity, celebrity culture, the nouveau riche, religion, business, art, ambition, and ennui. It is more vital more than half a century later than most films released today and set in the here and now. In fact, watching it in 2014 and considering how much Fellini’s Rome resembles a more sophisticated version of our own culture of decadence and scandal, it’s hard not to feel like we are all a bunch of rubes. The Italians did it so much better, and so long ago, and wearing much better clothes.

The plot of La dolce vita follows Marcello over several days as he navigates endless parties, difficult romances, and even tries to get a little work done. As we’ll learn, Marcello is somewhat of a gossipmonger, at once proud of it and defensive of the work, while secretly mourning the abandonment of his own literary pretensions. Folks remember him as a serious young writer, he prefers not to remember much at all. When Marcello describes another character, he may as well be describing himself. “Maybe he was just afraid,” he says, before clarifying, “Maybe he was afraid of himself, of us all.”

That the man being discussed is the perpetrator of a murder/suicide where he killed two small children before turning the gun on himself should tell you how deep and dark this fear goes. As Marcello had said earlier of his city, it’s a “peaceful jungle,” but it’s a jungle all the same. Wild and fun...until it’s not.

Which isn’t to say La dolce vita is a dour affair. Even when the drunken fatigue sets in, it’s still buoyant and flashy. And, of course, before that, we are along for the ride, partaking of the spectacle right along with the charming rogue who serves as our guide. The first half of the movie is almost entirely on an upswing. Marcello canoodles with the wealthy heiress Maddalena (Anouk Aimée, Lola [review]), he frolics with the Swedish actress who is turning everyone’s head (Ekberg), and he wends his way through nightclubs as if he owns the joints. Like Ray Liotta in GoodFellas, doors open for him. His only real trouble seems to be the tumultuous relationship with his fiancée Emma (Yvonne Furneaux, Repulsion [review]). Emma is a manipulative drunk, and Marcello’s philandering drives her to attempt suicide as a way of getting his attention. Yet, for as contemptible as that is, Emma is indicative of the sickness that is in the air. She is the consequence of this lifestyle of no commitment. Marcello envisions setting down as a kind of deathtrap, and so he keeps the woman he is to marry at arm’s length, in much the same way he holds off his own talent. The Roman partiers are like swifts, the birds whose legs are too weak for them to land and ever take flight again. They must stay up high or come down for good.

Fellini constructs La dolce vita almost like one would a musical. There are certain anecdotes he shares, and then he connects them with song-and-dance numbers. These all take place at the nightclub, and include clowns--one of the director’s passions (see his film I Clowns [review])--who offer a bit of commentary through their routines. Marcello sees himself reflected in the sad buffoon. He and his friends are like the comedic performer’s balloons, airy and insubstantial, following a pied piper to goodness knows where.

I mentioned above that we can see our current culture reflected in La dolce vita. This is true be it in the grisly violence (in addition to the murder/suicide, there are references to domestic abuse) or the press’ obsession with the same. The scenes with Paparazzo (Walter Santesso) are so familiar, the legions of photographers that hound celebrities and public figures have taken their name from the character. If there is any one character that we might be, however, whose shoes we might understand walking in, it’s Marcello’s father (Annibale Ninchi). He doesn’t live in Rome, and on a rare visit, he goes out with his son, partakes of his life, and finds it’s too much for him. Like us, he is the casual observer who can only become engorged on the experience rather than be a part of it.

The contrast between Marcello and his father ties in with other generational divides that Fellini shows us. Not long after, Marcello is at a party in a castle (which he goes to with future Velvet Underground-singer Nico, who is playing herself) that has historical significance far beyond the way the man who is set to inherit it treats the estate. His mother and his father both chastise him, unable to understand how the younger Italians can be throwing away history with such ease. It’s also the site of La dolce vita’s most tender and saddest scene, when Marcello confesses his true feelings to Maddalena, only to lose her in the moment even more than he realizes, an unseen cuckold ridiculing his raw emotion.

By that point, though, Marcello’s defenses are down, and his own nausea (as Sartre might call it) has begun to settle in. His father’s excess was contagious, and after tat particular outing, the fun slowly drains from Marcello’s life. Each successive soiree grows more somber, ending in the bad party to end all bad parties, Marcello engaging in a sad cabaret of his own to try to reignite the musical element and keep the festivities going.* It’s a lurid display, and mean-spirited, and mostly directed at his own disgust with himself. He can no longer deny the bitter irony of Maddalena’s words back when things between them were good: “It’s not so bad. So few of us unhappy people remain.” It’s the truth in opposite. It is that bad, and everyone is unhappy.

Which is why Marcello finds himself where he is at the end, staring at the bizarre sea creature that has been drug up on the beach, his friends unable to appreciate this monstrosity with the appropriate shock or grandeur. It’s a kind of call back to earlier, when the revelers were listening to a friend’s recordings of nature, and nonchalantly declaring, “Birds. That’s exactly how they sound.” They are so deep in their own false constructs, they no longer have any connection to the natural world except as something abstract that can be trapped and held in some way. As the movie closes, Marcello sits between the aquatic behemoth and a little girl who previously told him of her own modest ambition. He is caught between something unidentifiable and grotesque and something pure and hopeful, and Marcello can’t recognize either. So he just carries on with what he’s doing.

Ever the master illusionist, Fellini presents all this as if it were a spontaneous happening, without any structure, as unpredictable as the behavior would appear. This is false, of course, that’s part of the trick. The mirrors and the wires must remain invisible. As a piece of Italian cinema, it’s an expansion of possibilities, a fully widescreen endeavor. There is a joke in the movie when someone asks Anita Ekberg if Italian Neorealism is dead. Her translator doesn’t bother to translate the question, he just quickly tells her to say it’s alive. Fellini is, of course, being cheeky, because La dolce vita is moving beyond Neorealism into something more like hyperrealism, a style more appropriate to the changing times. Fitting, then, that Otello Martelli, who also shot such Neorealist classics as Paisan [review] and Stromboli [review], should be behind the camera for this one, allowing Fellini to keep one foot in tradition while remodeling cinema for the future.

If you’ve been waiting to visit La dolce vita again, or have yet to partake at all, there is no better time than now. After years of inadequate DVDs, Criterion brings us a full restoration, shown in splendid high-definition, struck from a 4K master. The picture is marvelous, with a pristine surface image and just the right amount of grain to maintain the cinematic feel. There are also a ton of extras celebrating La dolce vita, including a tour through one man’s collection of ephemera relating to the movie and interviews both new and old.

* Does anyone else think of the scene in Mad Men where they are riding the lawn tractor at the office party when Marcello mounts the drunk farm girl?

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review. The stills shown are taken from the standard-definition DVD release and not the Blu-ray under discussion.

Cobbled together with excerpts from my review of The Premiere Frank Capra Collection:

"Of or evocative of the movies of Frank Capra, often promoting the positive social effects of individual acts of courage." - the definition of "Capraesque," as stated by the American Heritage Dictionary

"[Frank Capra] made you pay for those happy endings." - Jimmy Stewart

I find that most -esques are misunderstood and misused as time wears on, so I was surprised to do a quick Google search on "Capraesque" and find the above definition at the top of the list. I would say that, based on some of the director's most successful and beloved, it's a relatively accurate summation of what makes a Frank Capra movie tick. Usually, when I see the tag bandied about, the intention is to suggest that a movie is overly optimistic, that it shows a particularly cheery view of life where someone triumphs and learns a moral message. This particular shading is based primarily on It's A Wonderful Life [review], and it has some basis in truth. It's just not the whole enchilada.

You impressions might be different, though, if you stick with Capra films from his pre-WWII period. It's a Wonderful Life was released in 1946, but all of its important components were starting to be designed as early as 1932, when the director helmed American Madness, part of a string of movies at Columbia Pictures that would embody the true definition of Capraesque.

The more nuanced explanation of what that descriptive entails is as follows: in a Frank Capra movie, there is a clear distinction between the little man and the big man. Any big man who crosses over to try to lend a helping hand to the little man will often be scorned as crazy. Usually, the enemies of such social upheaval are the powers that be in business, the moneymakers who have no concern for the well-being of the common populace, not so long as their coffers are still being lined. When the hero goes up against these paragons of business, it's not just an economic battle, but one of common sense vs. a world gone mad. When the do-gooder is on the brink of absolute ruin, he discovers that his efforts have touched more people than he could ever have dreamed, and his friends and those who have clasped their needy mitts in his helping hand rally to rescue him from destruction.

That is probably the true message of a Capraesque movie, from American Madness onward. No man is poor that has friends. Many of the famous Capra characters say as much. In American Madness, Walter Huston's banker argues for extending loans to those in need because they are decent people who will help the greater good in return, and the message is locked right in the title of You Can't Take It With You. But perhaps Gary Cooper sums it up best as the eponymous Mr. Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. As he looks over the New York skyline, lost deep in the romance of the city and Jean Arthur, he wonders what a great world it might be if folks everywhere just remembered to like each other. In Capra's way of things, the mob is its own worst enemy as well as the greatest agent of change. It's all a matter of choice. It could just as easily go bad, and it's up to an individual dreamer to be the catalyst for it going right.

That's actually where most modern storytellers who tilt at the windmill of Capraesque go wrong. They mistake Capra's belief in the power of the individual for a simplistic worldview. Frank Capra didn't trade in blind optimism. His characters don't stupidly grin through the rumbling as the walls tumble around them. Because in Capra's movies, the walls do indeed tumble, and the threat of failure is a real and heavy one. His heroes are often struck down as low as they can possibly go. Huston contemplates suicide, Mr. Deeds would rather be declared insane than deal any further with a savage, heartbreaking existence. To put them up against any less would be false bravado. We can only tell who you can count on by how they fare life when it's hit the absolute bottom.

And then there's It Happened One Night, released in 1934.

The movie responsible for Bugs Bunny! Friz Freleng has noted on several occasions that the fast-talking manner of the rascally rabbit is based on Clark Gable's performance in this picture, right down to how he eats a carrot. This is a fitting development, as It Happened One Night is often cited as setting the standard of screwball comedy.

Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, an heiress who has eloped with a rich aviator. When her father (Walter Connolly, Twentieth Century) vehemently disapproves, she runs away, starting an interstate search stretching from Miami to New York. On her bus ride, she meets Peter Warne (Gable), a tough-as-nails, take-no-crap reporter who begins the picture quitting his job during a drunken phone call. Realizing who Ellie is and seeing she has no idea how to function in the real world away from daddy's money, he attaches himself to her and promises to get her to her husband if he can write the exclusive story. Their many high-speed arguments are delightful, and the pair handle the razor sharp dialogue with aplomb. They also get the emotion right, and filmmakers and actors are still trying to replicate the way Peter and Ellie go from hating everything about each other to being absolutely in love.

In It Happened One Night, the social element isn't nearly as prevalent. The ills of Depression-era America do show up, particularly when the couple donates the last of their money to a starving mother and child on the bus, but this is more of a private revolution. Ellie is going to have to learn to be a real person, to care about what happens around her, something even her father will push her towards. He'd rather see her follow her heart than hook up with some oily flyboy. Capra and Riskin play it smart, avoiding one-dimensional characters. Peter believes in the common good, but he's also not above being self-serving, and though Ellie is out of touch, she has a heart. Being able to capture multiple dimensions is why Capra and Riskin's work together still endures.

Included in this edition is the 1997's Frank Capra's American Dream. Ron Howard narrates this feature-length documentary about the filmmaker made for the American Movie Classics cable channel. It features a host of critics, colleagues, and contemporary actors and directors discussing their love of Capra's movies. The roster of directors alone is impressive: Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Oliver Stone, Arthur Hiller, John Milius, Amy Heckerling, and many more.

The documentary traces Capra's life from a young Italian immigrant growing up in California to his early days as a director, the films he made for Columbia, his service in WWII making films for the Army, the post-war success, and his twilight years. Where Frank Capra's American Dream succeeds tremendously is in rooting out the various events that influenced the director's world view, how an incredibly complex person came to make movies about such complex ideals. In many ways, his heroes were cast in his own image: a man who fought on despite self-doubt and personal failure, who wasn't sure he believed in what he was fighting for but had to see it all the way through. It's a fitting capper for the Premiere Frank Capra Collection, bringing the definition of "Capraesque" all the way to the front as not just an genre aesthetic, but one man's personal storytelling philosophy.

For me, I think what is most compelling about Michelangelo Antonioni’s challenging 1960 drama L’Avventura is how it so effectively upends the mystery genre to serve the director’s own thematic purpose.

More than fifty years before Gone Girl, Antonioni crafted an oblique narrative about a young woman bored to death with her future husband and the state of love in general who in some manner orchestrates her own disappearance. Anna (Lea Massari) is a rich man’s daughter, engaged to Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), and yet disconnected from her own privileged existence. She tells her father she has no intention of marrying the man, but then makes her friend Claudia (Monica Vitti) wait outside while she has an afternoon quickie with him. The three of them then join other friends on an overnight boat trip to remote waters. While swimming, Anna lies about seeing a shark, presumably to see how everyone will react. She only confides this secret to Claudia. Thus, the other girl is understandably suspicious when Anna goes missing later that day. The travelers have docked at a desolate island. There is no one else on it with them, only an empty shack, and no other way off. Yet, when it’s time to go, Anna has disappeared without a trace. Someone thought maybe they heard another boat, but there is no real proof.

And so L’Avventura becomes a manhunt--at least, after a fashion. The police come to investigate, accusations are thrown, with the fiancé being the first suspect. Sandro and Claudia lead the charge--though separately whenever possible, Claudia does not trust him--and they remain the most dedicated, following whatever leads come up, pursuing a trail that may not be there. It’s along this search that they also derail their own efforts. Sandro kisses Claudia, she rebukes him...and yet, she is drawn to him. Eventually, their attraction takes over. The investigation becomes a romantic getaway. By the time the pair rejoin their other friends--who, bored and unaffected, have carried on with their perpetual holiday--they are behaving as a married couple, alternately bickering and being affectionate. Claudia hates herself just a little; Sandro, as ever, is nonplussed.

But ain’t that just like a man? At least in the way Antonioni depicts Italian society. The men are driven by lust, emerging in the streets as one predatory pack whenever a woman is left to walk unescorted. It happens first with the young American of questionable morals (Dorothy De Poliolo)--who herself claims to be lost and could be seen as a double for Anna--and then when Claudia decides to wait outside when Sandro goes into a shop where Anna had possibly been seen. It’s a reversal of the earlier scene, when Antonioni and cameraman Aldo Scavarda artfully framed Claudia through the crack in the curtains in the room where Sandro and Anna are having their tryst, the audience peering out at the girl peering in, as if perhaps she desires to be up there with them. She is isolated in both scenes, but in the later instance, she becomes the object of sexual craving rather than rebuked. And its Sandro who is now outside observing, witnessing the threat from inside a doorway. Of course, it’s significant that this is immediately after the two of them have made love; the wild animals sense the change.

It’s a split that runs through all the couples in L’Avventura. Anna is not the only one who finds the male/female relationship wanting. (It’s telling that she is reading both F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, a novel about adultery and the disappointment of marriage, alongside the Bible when she disappears; it’s one of God’s few appearances in the movie, faith is as absent as true love.) The wealthy older woman Patrizia (Esmeralda Ruspoli) tells her would-be paramour Raimondo (Lelio Luttazzi) that she was not made for love, and she rebuffs and belittles his advances. He, in turn, proves he can’t handle delicate things, dropping the antique crockery found on the island, a symbol of a lost civilization that the bored socialites argue over. Who owns it? How would you use it? Even knowing where it comes from makes you the object of ridicule. Why be smart or concerned about things long since dead?

Maybe this is why the woman who is made fun of for allegedly wanting to take the pot and put flowers in it is the one to truly transgress. Giulia (Dominique Blanchar) at first seems like the sweetest of the crew, but when Claudia rejoins her friends, she finds Giulia carrying on with a young painter. She is defiant about it, challenging others to judge her, even rubbing it in her husband’s face. The sweet has been made to run sour. There are no happy endings in love stories, only prison sentences. Which is why Anna gets out before she is locked in. Ironically, by doing so, she dooms her best friend to that same fate. Claudia and Sandro are bound together more by their shared concern over Anna’s vanishing then they are any true affection. The final images of L’Avventura show them unable to separate, subject to their roles (he the philanderer, she the long-suffering devotee), and filled with despair. By all evidence, there is nothing else out there for them because nothing is all that modern man truly has.

It’s been several years since I last saw L’Avventura. I wrote about it the last time, too, in connection with a showing of The Big Sleep to promote my comic book You Have Killed Me. It’s funny how much more obtuse the movie becomes with distance. (Perhaps I am remembering L’eclisse more?) Watching it again, I was struck by how much of a standard mystery the movie really is. Except for the missing woman, there are no strange goings on, no tricky editing or confounding digressions. Sandro and Claudia follow a pretty strict path, going from one clue to the next, the narrative adopting somewhat of an episodic structure. This makes it no less intriguing, though; on the contrary, the simplicity only heightens the tension, leaving wider spaces for the viewer to ruminate on Antonioni’s existential commentary, which he doles out sparingly. Each incident is almost like a prompt, a short philosophical riddle for the monastic cinephile to meditate on.

Monica Vitti proves a marvelous vessel for delivering these messages. She appears innocent and empathetic, truly curious and caring, defying her glamorous image, more like the blonde girl next door to Lea Massari’s more calculating woman of the world. It fits noir conventions, they are analogues to Rhonda Fleming and Jane Greer in Out Of The Past, though they are sadly stuck without a reliable Robert Mitchum. Gabriele Ferzetti makes for interesting casting. He appears too old for both of them and physically unremarkable. Not exactly handsome, you wouldn’t notice him without a spotlight. Not the way you would Marcello Mastroianni or Alain Delon, the stars of Antonioni’s next two movies, which form a thematic trilogy (and which I will be revisiting next).

This might be over rationalizing, but it’s possible that my seeing L’Avventura more clearly has as much to do with the new restoration as it does time. The 4K digital upgrade used for this new Blu-ray presents the film in a way that far surpasses any prior release (my screengrabs, for the record, are from Criterion’s 2001 DVD). The clarity with which one can now view the black-and-white landscapes of Antonioni’s movie is quite something. The desolation felt when stranded out at sea, or how small Vitti and Ferzetti appear in the final moments, is illustrated not just by the widescreen framing, but also the depth of detail that is now evident in high definition. That ocean goes on for miles, and the cliffs and balconies give way to a bottomless view. By contrast, the interiors are confining, whether the hull of a boat or a hotel room. Antonioni’s sad figures are at once trapped by their surroundings and humbled by just how insignificant they appear within them.

As an audience, we are left to feel the same way. I can’t imagine the added effect of seeing it in a theater, of the images writ large. The vastness of Antonioni’s vision would blanket the auditorium. L’Avventura is a haunting motion picture, teasing out answerless riddles while making us feel all the more lost for the fact that the lack of any solution is somehow a fault of who we are.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review. The stills shown are taken from the standard-definition DVD release and not the Blu-ray under discussion.

Interesting fact: Blake Edwards’ Victor/Victoria and Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie, both comedies where actors cross-dress in order get a job, were released in 1982. I couldn’t say what was in the air around that time that two of the biggest hits of that year would involve performers of one sex--namely, Julie Andrews and Dustin Hoffman--pretending to be another sex, but it kind of blows my mind that I had contact with both films in their theatrical runs when I was a wee lad of ten years old. I’m not sure I saw all of Victor Victoria in that outing or just peeked in, later to pick up more of it on cable, but watching it again not that long ago during a visit with my family, I was kind of surprised at how frank the film was about homosexuality. My parents must not have really known what they were taking me to.

And now I am equally shocked by how smart and subversive Tootsie is. I know I saw the entire movie back then, but I also know now that I didn’t understand it. In my head, it was a dumb comedy, one that probably didn’t age well, because it was popular, wasn’t it? Could a crowdpleaser from over thirty years ago really stand up to the scrutiny of today? If nothing else, the politics should be all wrong.

Except that they aren’t, and Tootsie has aged incredibly well. In point of fact, it’s still incredibly funny, laugh-out-loud so. And there is nothing to cringe about while watching it because it lacks any meanness. It’s very human and very matter-of-fact and its characters are largely free of judgment. The comedy doesn’t happen just because Dustin Hoffman is wearing a dress, but rather because of the things that happen to him while he’s wearing a dress and the way it challenges his perceptions and what it exposes about everyone.

Written by Larry Gelbart (Oh, God!) and Murray Shisgal (Luv), Tootsie is essentially a rom-com that also has bits of showbiz satire and a social commentary but without hitting too hard on either. It stars Hoffman as Michael Dorsey, a pigheaded actor who, when told he’s too difficult to get work, decides to prove he can get along by dressing up as a woman and getting a part on a soap opera. I really like how the movie treats that decision. If you were to watch Tootsie without any foreknowledge of its premise, what a surprise you’d be in for! There is no telegraphing the scheme, no announcement that Michael is going to create a female alter ego. Instead, Michael is arguing with his agent (played brilliantly by Sydney Pollack), declares that he’ll prove the man wrong, and the next cut is to Dorothy Michaels walking down the street, fully transformed. No time is spent trying on wigs or getting the make-up right, we are told Michael has a proficiency for stagecraft right up front, during the opening credits. Whatever inspires the change, he hits the ground running.

And Dorothy gets the role, in large part because she stands up for herself, an essential component to the character she is intended to play. Earlier Michael tried to coach his friend Sandy (Terri Garr, who is amazing) for the audition, and she flubs it by being too easy to crumble. Michael has no such problem. Or should I say Dorothy. In fact, once she is on the show, Dorothy becomes a bit of a phenomenon. Her fellow castmates, including the soap’s lead actress Julie (Jessica Lange) and a bit player April (Geena Davis), like her because she doesn’t take any crap from their pig of a director (Dabney Coleman); the audience likes her because her feminist ad libs give them a character they can root for.

Though Tootsie’s comedic tone never quite escalates to the level of farce, its plot bears elements of the genre. Naturally, the deeper Dorothy/Michael gets into the charade, the more complicated it becomes. He has to keep up with the ruse, because getting found out would topple a lot of dominoes, not the least of which is that he’s become good friends with Julie in his Dorothy guise while also deeply falling in love with her. The only person to know what he’s doing besides his agent is his roommate, Jeff, played with typical aplomb by Bill Murray, who serves as a sardonic Jiminy Cricket throughout. Murray’s zingers are sharp and funny, as is Tootsie as a whole. It’s a witty movie, smartly written, timeless instead of timely. Some of the jokes are clever and sneaky, some are broad and altogether hilarious. The biggest laugh in the movie is one of its most obvious, a single line delivered by veteran actor George Gaynes (Punky Brewster) when he learns the truth about the woman he has been wooing. “Does Jeff know...?” I don’t know why it’s not a more famous moment, as it’s akin to the “I’ll have what she’s having” line in When Harry Met Sally...; my guess is it’s too specific.

Which is ironic for a movie that feels so universal. But then, that’s Tootsie.

There’s a fascinating incongruity in that this movie is very much of the 1980s and yet also well enough ahead of its time that you’d easily be forgiven for thinking that it came from some other era. While the technique can be groanworthy--that drippy montage out at the farm, for instance, or Dave Grusin’s score, which is so bad I found myself wishing it was somehow a sly subtextual joke--the portrayal of Dorothy avoids the “Ick! It’s a dude!” clichés one might expect while also making it so she is never the object of ridicule. Sure, there are jokes about Dorothy having to cover a mustache, but that gag is more about practicality and is a comedic red herring, a possible way to expose the truth, rather than anything degrading toward a man identifying as a woman.

Credit due to Hoffman, who likely can identify with Michael Dorsey’s commitment to method and craft, and so can play Dorothy Michaels with the same seriousness. It’s a marvelous performance, heartfelt and honest, and yet also...well, it seems wrong to say it’s not entirely convincing, because I am not sure it’s supposed to be. While it’s pretty much impossible to forget that it’s Dustin Hoffman under the wig and eye shadow, we’re not expected to. Pollack smartly lets context do the heavy lifting in terms of convincing us that Michael could be Dorothy without us ever forgetting that he’s also Michael. The other characters in Tootsie believe that Dorothy is a woman, and they treat her as such, and so we buy into the illusion. And because Dorothy has this dissociative confidence, this belief in herself, the folks around her actually treat her better than they would other women. Which is also part of the point.

Remember above when I said Tootsie was both timely and timeless? There’s something very casual about how the film portrays gender politics, and whether they meant to or were even aware of it, the filmmakers somehow collapse a lot of issues into what is essentially a very human portrayal, achieving a kind of “oneness” rather than a “one-or-the-otherness.” There is a surprising progressiveness in the fact that it’s not Michael’s masculinity that gives Dorothy added courage or strength, but something about Dorothy that makes Michael better. As a woman, he becomes free of his own hang-ups, and it changes his perception. His own battles as a self-involved male actor come into focus, and he somehow channels those frustrations so that he is now reacting as an actress coming up against all kinds of obstacles he never realized existed. In this, Michael manages the best possible trait a performer can have: empathy. He sees what women have to deal with constantly, and he pushes back. Absent of the go-along-to-get-along attitude that results from habitual oppression, he is able to react as any common sense person would and call bullshit everywhere it appears. In other words, he’s not better at being strong because he’s a man, but because it’s the first time he’s having to deal with things that women deal with every day and that he’s otherwise been blind to.

The great thing is that Sydney Pollack and his writing team (which also included several uncredited script doctors, including the legendary Elaine May) avoid the cardinal sin of allowing Michael to have his cake and eat it, too. They overturn the standard for this kind of romantic comedy--or any where the male goes undercover and is privy to the woman’s secret desires--so that when Michael tries to act on the things that he learns as Dorothy, it blows up in his face. Or, more accurately, it’s thrown back at him. Julie may have laid out the perfect pick-up lines to win her heart, but when put into practice, Michael ends up doused in champagne. He can’t benefit from his deceit. (And, honestly, how did you not know that, dude? In practice, the non-line becomes just another line!) In other instances, he’s desexualized. “My mother used to do that to me sometimes,” Julie says to him when Dorothy pets her hair in bed. And one senses that, underneath, Michael is not turned on, he’s legitimately expressing comfort and love. He’s forced to behave toward another human being without taking his own desires into account.

Hell, they even take it one step further: when thrust into the “traditional” feminine roll, like babysitting Julie’s kid, he’s terrible at it. You can put on the uniform, but you have to walk the walk, it’s not just about your undergarments.

It’s not just Michael, though; Tootsie is full of empathy through and through. Dorothy defends battered women in a brief scene on the soap. Julie’s lifestyle as a single mom with a career is never called into question. When the idea of being a gay man or a woman is introduced, no one denounces it. Julie says she’s not able to return another woman’s affection because she’s not together enough to experience broader emotions, and when Michael is asked if he’s gay, he responds, “In what way?” rather than outright refusing. Even Julie’s father (Charles Durning), who falls for Dorothy and then has to deal with finding out he proposed marriage to a fella, is shown as a quaint old man who tries to see equality for what it is even if he has certain fundamental beliefs that can be seen as antiquated. They aren’t harmful even if they are somewhat wrong. He means well, and he’s trying, and frankly, isn’t that sometimes enough?

It’s that empathy, I think, that allows Tootsie to pull off what otherwise might be a hokey ending. Without giving too much away, the key to Michael making amends is not really explaining Dorothy away, but accepting that she was a part of him. She wasn’t an invention, but an extension. Amusingly, Hoffman gets two credits at the end. He is Michael and he is Dorothy, and both are important enough to get their own byline--even if it is slightly counter to the message that they are inseparable halves.

Which in itself feels rather simplistic now, but we can’t watch such things and judge by modern standards. To do so would be to miss how ahead of the curve Tootsie was and fail to acknowledge that, when it comes to smuggling such a lesson into the mainstream, simplicity is the best disguise. Hell, that’s right there in the movie, too. Michael could be more elaborate or more vain in creating Dorothy, but instead he basically hides in plain sight. When it comes down to it, Tootsie is so triumphant in that it never really seems to try. All of the above are just natural components of a supremely entertaining movie. The politics are something we put on it as opposed to something Tootsie foists upon us. Like Dorothy, it just is what it is, and that’s also what Pollack and Co. are encouraging the rest of us to be.

For technical specs and special features, see the full article at DVDTalk.com.

“I’m trying to reach toward a picture that’s totally emotional--not narrative or intellectual--where an audience walks out and they can’t say anything about it except what they feel.”

Robert Altman’s description of his intentions with 3 Women doesn’t really decode the entire thing, but it does give a key to opening up whatever secret book holds the answers. Because 3 Women, which Altman wrote and produced under his own Lion’s Gate banner as well as directed, is not a story that works on paper, it’s not a script with a traditional plot. Its act breaks are more like psychotic breaks, in that the movie transforms twice, shifting when its main characters face trauma, swapping their roles, and yet never stopping to explain. Altman is clear in his nod here to Luis Bunuel, naming a pushy boss Mrs. Bunweill as tribute, and interestingly enough, holds much in common with the movie the Spanish filmmaker released that same year. 1977 brought us both 3 Women and That Obscure Object of Desire. In Bunuel’s film, the lead actress changes mid-way through the picture, a confounding narrative conceit that demands the audience take a leap of faith that it all means something. Altman plays a few parlor tricks of his own. Both these men were driving down Mulholland Dr. a couple of decades before David Lynch.

The story here begins normally enough. A young woman named Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) is starting work at a nursing home, and she is assigned Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) to train her. The two couldn’t be more different. Millie is tall and composed; Pinky is small and shy. Millie talks constantly, yet no one ever seems to listen; Pinky is always watching, yet others often don’t see her. Millie pretends to be the sophisticate; Pinky is a child. Millie likes dressing in yellow; Pinky is nicknamed Pinky for a reason.

Pinky is also somewhat of a mimic. An emotional and physical chameleon. She is drawn to Millie and soon begins copying her. She borrows a phrase here, a detail there. When Millie needs a new roommate, Pinky seizes on the opportunity. What better way to observe her new obsession than in her natural habitat? It’s like Single White Female for the art house, but without the murderous intent.

Things are up-and-down for the new roomies. Millie notices things being slightly off about the younger woman. Likewise, the landlord’s wife and proprietress of the saloon where Millie drinks, the similarly named Willie (Janice Rule), appears suspicious of the new girl. I suppose in this pyramid, Willie is the crone, and indeed, she and her elaborate paintings have a kind of bewitching effect on Pinky, drawing her in the way the moon draws the tide. The spying girl often observes Willie through water, or in relation to water, like in a fish tank or at the bottom of an empty pool, and every time, Willie can sense the staring almost immediately.

Altman makes great use of the murals that Willie paints (though in reality they were created by artist Bodhi Wind). She does small abstract work that can be hung on walls, though those she tends to riddle with bullet holes, which only calls further attention to their humble size. Her masterpieces, on the other hand, are large and impressive, covering walls or the floors of swimming pools. She depicts mythic creatures, alien and surreal, masculine and violent. In one, which also ends up being the final image of the movie, her bizarre creatures rant and rave at an object in the heavens, suggesting they are as primal as the apes at the start of 2001 [review]. One can presume she is painting the world she sees around her--the saloon is populated by men riding dirt bikes and shooting pistols--but maybe she also feels that desperate pull herself.

Everythng changes midway through 3 Women. In a surprising twist--though not really a spoilery one, it would be sort of impossible to spoil a movie this unconcerned with conventional narrative--after Millie turns on her, Pinky tries to drown herself. Feeling guilty, Millie stands by her while she is in a coma, only to find the girl who wakes up in that hospital bed is radically changed. Pinky is now the assertive one, and Millie can only do her best not to be completely subsumed, to have her entire identity swallowed. It takes another tragedy, this time involving Willie’s baby, to shake things up again. (Digression: It might be interesting to compare how Altman allows the birth to affect the lives of the main characters in a movie about women vs. how the birth scene at the end of his male mid-life crisis picture Dr. T and the Women [review] affects Richard Gere. Is there something to be said for why it is magical and liberating for the man and not for the ladies?)

I briefly considered tracking my feelings throughout my viewing of 3 Women, but that seemed to kind of miss the point of the experiment by intellectualizing it too much. It would also pull me away from the screen and make me focus on the paper, and 3 Women requires undivided attention. That said, in the first half of the movie, there is definitely a feeling of desire and hope, but that translates to pity, as well--which is an audience reaction, not a function of the storytelling. Neither Pinky nor especially Millie are that self-aware. Later, I felt in sync with Millie, as Pinky’s attempted suicide and the fall-out thereafter inspires anxiety in both the viewer and the actress. Duvall is a fascinating onscreen presence. She almost doesn’t seem like that good of an actress. Her delivery can be flat, and she can appear ill at ease. Her gawkiness can be hypnotic, in much the same way her Margaret Keane-like features make her beautiful. I am always hyper aware she is Shelley Duvall, whether she’s playing the scared wife in The Shining or Olive Oyl in Popeye. Yet I find myself enjoying watching her all the same.

It’s a demeanor that is ideally suited for a movie as intentionally dreamy as 3 Women. Shelley Duvall is practically surreal unto herself. This makes it all the more smart to cast Sissy Spacek opposite her. Spacek is naturally more grounded. As Pinky, she maintains the girl-next-door vibe she had in Badlands [review] and Carrie, and yet is utterly convincing when she becomes the more confident and mean of the two roommates. One could posit she’s putting the little-girl-lost routine to bed for good. Performance-wise, she is as natural on screen as Duvall is awkward. I would almost try to argue that all of 3 Women is Millie’s dream, given how menacing a figure her counterpart becomes, but the changes occur in Pinky’s vision. She observes, she sees the rifts, and she dives into them.

Altman approaches all this with a measured gaze. He doesn’t push the odd happenings too hard, he doesn’t go all wonky or psychedelic. Pinky’s early “visions” are more practical. The first superimposition of waves over the image, for instance, uses water that is actually in the scene. It’s only near the end that Altman steps away from this, indulging in one short yet meaningful dream sequence, a kind of quick run through the greatest hits of everything we’ve seen so far. He’s practically working at odds with his own skewed motives here. 3 Women deals with strange events, but Altman makes most of it seem as real as possible. Even the obvious symbols, like the pair of twins that work with Millie and Pinky, are really just twins who work with Millie and Pinky. Though, they do allow for some leading dialogue. “Do you think they know which one they are?” Pinky asks. “Maybe they switch back and forth.”

This earthiness and lack of show makes it easier to go along with the more obtuse occurrences, just as Gerald Busby’s distant and ominous music provides a throughline in the sometimes rambling narrative. Altman is far from indulgent, he’s giving the audience as much as required to keep them invested and on track. It’s only in the final scenes, when the lever on the cinematic slot machine is pulled one last time and the titular trio of women slides into its final roles, that some might end up truly confounded. I’ve seen the movie twice now and I’m still not sure if it’s a jackpot of “Ah-ha!” or otherwise some combination of “what’s that?” and “why this?”

I like it anyway. I am fascinated and enraptured, hypnotized by its vibrant colors the way Pinky is hypnotized by Willie’s paintings, every time I watch it. And I don’t worry about what is happening or what it’s trying to say. Which would mean Altman is successful in creating an all-in experience, one that entices and teases and provokes even if it never explains.

Note: 3 Women will be playing the NW Film Center on Sunday, January 18, as part of a Robert Altman weekend.

The interesting thing about boxed sets sometimes is, if you’re not familiar with a particular filmmaker, they offer a crash course in his or her themes and style. You can build a foundation, either creating a starting point for further exploration (example: other Eclipse bundles like Early Bergman [review] or The First Films of Samuel Fuller [review]) or provide a broad overview, leaving you to fill in the gaps later (The Essential Jacques Demy [review 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]).

With Japanese director Keisuke Kinoshita, my only prior experience had been with Twenty-Four Eyes [review], his 1954 film about a small-town schoolteacher. It was an assured drama lacking in histrionics, focusing instead on the common and, arguably, the banal--though, the “everyday” might be a more accurate term, as the small things are given equal weight to the stuff of bigger film narratives. One can immediately see the roots for that kind of storytelling in Kinoshita’s initial films, collected here under the banner Kinoshita and World War II. Indeed, the five films in this, the forty-first Eclipse collection, were made during and just after the war, and reflect Japanese life as it was being lived at the time.

The lead feature is 1943’s Port of Flowers, a seemingly light-hearted movie about two inept con men descending on an island town in hope of bilking the residents out of their hard-earned money. Shuzo (Eitaro Ozawa, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs [review]) and Tomekichi (Ken Uehara, Mr. Thank You [review]) mistakenly try to pull the same ruse. Having discovered that, at one time, an industrialist tried to build a shipyard in this village, only to have the Great Depression wash his dreams away, both men arrive within hours of each other claiming to be the son no one knew the industrialist had. Rather than blow the scheme, the two crooks pretend to be brothers, finding that the love the village had for their alleged father is so great, they are more than willing to believe anything.

They are also more than willing to drop every yen they have to help make the shipyard a reality, and before the con artists realize, they have more cash than they know what to do with. These small-time operators are not prepared for a big score, and fear that they’ll only mess it up. Add to that the charms of village life, and particularly the island women, and they start to have second thoughts about disappearing with the bounty.

Up until this point, Port of Flowers is fairly innocuous, offering only a slight social critique, particularly in relation to a young woman who had left the island in search of a more cosmopolitan existence, only to be sent back under questionable circumstances. There is also a division made between her brother (Chishu Ryu, Equinox Flower, Late Autumn, etc. [reviews]) and the other villagers, as he was able to go to Tokyo and attend college (an accomplishment the con men can’t even claim). Education is poised against traditional values. In its early stages, I assumed Port of Flowers was heading toward State and Main territory: the self-important city folk would find themselves taken advantage of by the country bumpkins.

That all changes on December 7, 1941. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the expansion of the war, a nationalistic surge takes over the town, and the con men find themselves swept up in it. If they can build a ship for real, the country could use it, and they can serve in their own small way.

It’s fascinating to see a story about Japanese patriots during the conflict, particularly as the war was still going while Kinoshita was making his film. Had Port of Flowers been made even a couple of years later, the drama would have a different tenor. As they say, the victors get to write history, and so most Japanese stories that followed show the regret and misgivings that were deemed appropriate in peacetime. Think of how some American pundits reacted to Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises [review] last year because its main character never questioned how the planes he was building would be used, and then imagine Port of Flowers being released today. Doesn’t it make sense that the Japanese citizenry would want their country to thrive and prosper and ultimately win? It’s no different than what Clint Eastwood was trying to do by leaving the politics out of American Sniper [review], and look how that turned out.

The thing is, there are no politics presented here, no anti-American or European rhetoric, just average folks seeing the direction their nation was heading and trying to do their part. Kinoshita avoids making the movie propaganda in this way, as opposed to say the straight-up rallying in something like Powell and Pressburger’s 49th Parallel [review]. While Kinoshita did have to get the approval of the government censorship board before making Port of Flowers, it doesn’t feel like he was being swayed to deliver a particular message.

Though, if he had to cut some things here or there, that might explain the abruptness of the ending. Without giving too much away, the con men disappear from the island before the ship they caused to be built is launched--and, indeed, on the same day some of the local fishermen are attacked by Allied submarines--without much explanation. We can fill in some of the pieces, but not to any exact detail. It’s almost like a reel, or at least a scene or two, is missing.

But then, if there is anything to quibble over in Port of Flowers, it’s some of Kinoshita’s clumsy edits. Most noticeable are the times he tries to build tension by quick cuts that are so quick, they are practically subliminal. These mostly involve the local policeman, whom Kinoshita wishes to make an object of fear for his bumbling bad guys. Most of the rest of the movie has a much more patient mis-en-scene, more akin to Ozu, and thus it makes these sudden flashes of Hitchcockian style all the more jarring.

That said, the first-time director shows some flashes of ambition that work quite well. The natural setting, including the realistic sets, and the way Kinoshita handles the countryside, including bad weather, shows a confidence learned from his previous years as an apprentice. There is also one very effective sequence where the old woman Okano (Chieko Higashiyama, Tokyo Story [review]) relates memories of time spent with the real shipbuilder. She tells the story while on a carriage, and the scenery outside changes from the island view to a rear projection of a life she imagines for herself and her lost love in far away locales. It’s a pretty obvious technique to modern eyes, but it creates a dreaminess that perfectly evokes the feeling of having spent decades pining for what might have been. The effect is helped by Higashiyama’s careful performance. It’s a rare moment of vulnerability for a character who otherwise keeps her guard up. She is quite good, as are Ozawa and Uehara. The duo are subtly comic, avoiding going too broad, and thus making the poor intentioned thieves sympathetic rather than pitiable.

Nationalism is far less of a subtle topic in Kinoshita’s follow-up. Made the same year as Port of Flowers, The Living Magoroku is a propagandist fable, the kind of thing that might have run as a short subject between the cartoon and the main feature in wartime Hollywood, but here extended to full length.

The gist is this: in a rural community, the Onagi family maintains the same farmland that their ancestors fought on nearly 400 years prior. The Living Magoroku even opens with a flashback to samurai clashing on the meadow before cutting to modern-day warriors training for combat in the wilderness nearby. Superstition has left the family’s field untouched all this time. They believe that to break the ground would be to violate the spirits of the ancestors who fell there. The clan is currently overseen by its widowed matriarch (Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Apart From You [review]), who also believes she lost her husband at a young age, as the family has lost all of their men, for even thinking of violating the curse. Her own son, Yoshihiro (Yasumi Hara), believes he is suffering from lung disease. Outside influence is pushing him to cultivate the land, but he is scared.

Enter an army doctor (Toshio Hosokawa) and an ambitious sergeant (Uehara). Both are visiting the Onagi homestead for a similar reason. The doctor is looking to buy a vintage sword from the family, as he foolishly sold his own and needs to restore the lost heirloom and his good name; the sergeant believes he also has such a sword and wants it appraised. Between the two of them, they will sway mother and son to do the right thing.

The Living Magoroku was written by Kinoshita, as well as directed, and he attempts to stack the narrative, creating an ensemble of characters with similar goals and faults to match the Japanese climate of the period. The Living Magoroku consistently works on two levels, each chafing against the other, its own narrative locked in conflict. Kinoshita seeks a balance between tradition and necessity, superstition and reason, honor and pragmatism. Much like the educated man was seen as the voice of civilization in Port of Flowers, so too does logic and experience hold sway here. Land, armor, and weaponry are all things to be revered, but the battlefield is not as important as the fields where the citizenry lives and eats. Nor is sacrifice made only on the front lines.

This is the ultimate thrust of The Living Magoroku: each person must do his or her part, even if they don’t like it. Again, consider American drives for tin and rubber, or warnings how “loose lips sink ships,” the person next to you in this theater may be a spy. It’s not at all subtle, neither in its message nor even in its drama. (And, at its worst, the acting can either be stiff or corny in equal measures; at its best, unmannered and naturalistic.) Still, Kinoshita strives to find the humanity in it all. The personal cost can be repaid, and the group effort leads to extensive bonds. The sergeant strives to unite two young lovers who are unable to marry due to the argument over the land, and the doctor not only restores his family name, but he extends that family when it’s all said and done.

Though the writing seems heavy at times, the overall structure of The Living Magoroku is slick, with Kinoshita confining the action to a few small places, and also isolating the timeframe to two separate visits from both the army men. He also shows an increased movement through the scenes, including elegant pans from one happening to another, like moving from the ground up to spy through a window, creating an overall feeling of connectedness and realism. This is one world he’s operating in, one community. Likewise the visual connections between past and present, the objects and artifacts echoing back to those brief battlefield moments reminding us just how present history is in the day-to-day.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review. The stills shown are taken from the standard-definition DVD release and not the Blu-ray under discussion.

Casting back in my memory, I think I first heard of Rainer Werner Fassbinder at the same time I first heard of Douglas Sirk, back in the late 1990s or so when Martin Scorsese and others were trying to introduce Sirk back into the conversation. So, even though it would take me longer to actually experience the cinema of Fassbinder (I was drawn in by the stories I heard of Berlin Alexanderplatz [review]) than it would Sirk, whom I sought out immediately, the two would remain inextricably linked. Largely because Fassbinder wanted it to be so.

The German director’s 1972 film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is his tribute to Sirk, an attempt to adopt some of the same themes as the master of melodrama, to tell a story of women and their concerns, and to do so with the same colorful backdrops. While I’d suggest that the final result might be more aptly described as “Norma Desmond by way of Ingmar Bergman,” one can still see the sudsy fingerprints of Sirk all over it. Yet, it’s also more than homage: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is very much its own thing.

Fassbinder’s film is an adaptation of his own play, and the theatricality of the staging and structure of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant would betray that even if the credits did not. (And, again, like the Sirk influence, this is a good thing). The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is essentially a story in four acts, plus an epilogue, set in the same space, Petra’s apartment. Petra (Margit Carstensen, later seen in Fassbinder’s World on a Wire) is a middle-aged fashion designer who has sealed herself off in a claustrophobic world of her own creation. She still works, but mostly from bed, and as we watch, honestly, we only see her longsuffering, silent servant, Marlene (Fassbinder-regular Irm Hermann), actually put brush to paper and design anything.

Within her decadently decorated four walls, Petra receives many guests, including her cousin Sidonie and eventually Sidonie’s friend, Karin. (They are played, respectively, by Katrin Schaake and Hanna Schygulla, also regulars in Fassbinder films; in the way he builds a stock company of female actors, one might also draw comparisons with Pedro Almodovar.) It’s Karin who throws a spanner in the works. Petra is drawn to her, so in Act Two, she lures the younger woman back to her apartment, and in a case of “who’s playing who?” convinces her to stay with her after hearing Karin’s sob story about how tough her current living situation is.

Petra’s interest in Karin is more than charitable, and by Act Three, the fact that they are lovers is quite obvious, even if it’s not explicitly said so out loud. Yet, it’s also already over, the parasitic union having run its course for Karin, who has gotten what she wants. Leading to the final act, wherein Petra is despondent and suicidal on her birthday. Enter her college-aged daughter (Eva Mattes), whom she verbally abuses, and her aristocratic mother (Gisela Fackeldey), who clearly still rules the roost despite Petra’s many successes, and we see the pattern of three generations of broken women and their dysfunctional understandings of love. Petra lays everything bare, possibly making it clear for the first time for some of the more sheltered viewers in the early-’70s audience, and the melodrama reaches a crescendo.

Fassbinder divides all of these scenarios clearly, inserting a fade to black between and also marking the various sections with different songs, including hits by the Platters and the Walker Bros. Between those fades, he prefers long takes with invisible edits. There are cuts, there are angle changes, but they are never obvious. Once the drama has sucked you in, you’d be hard-pressed to notice or recall editor Thea Eymesz’s nips and tucks. Likewise, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who later went on to work with Scorsese and Coppola (not to mention Prince), uses the camera merely as a framing device. He doesn’t push, he doesn’t highlight--rather, his work is in capturing the drama, as well as color and the costuming. Petra as written and as Margit Carstensen plays her, is forceful enough a presence on her own to command the montage without any added help. Well, except for maybe costume designer Maja Lemcke. The woman’s moods are telegraphed by her outfits and wigs. When she is seducing Karin, she is like an exotic queen out of some mythological history, all baubles and distractions; when she is being jilted, she is more covered, and her hair is a hard-lined bob; on either end of the movie, when she is in despair, she wears a plain nightgown and no wig at all. The space between is so long, we forget her most honest face before we are reminded of it again at the end. Without the warpaint and the wardrobe, she is vulnerable. At her most naked, she is the most alone.

For technical specs and special features, see the full article at DVDTalk.com.

Guy Maddin has always been a filmmaker torn between his nostalgia for old cinema and his forward-thinking filmmaking techniques. His appropriation of antiquated styles in movies like Brand Upon the Brain! [review] and The Saddest Music in the World were clever allusions, throwbacks clearly made using current technology with a progressive and irreverent approach to narrative. Something has always driven the Canadian director to reach back and pull the past into the here and now.

In My Winnipeg, his 2007 film, a self-described "docu-fantasia," the past Maddin digs into is his own. As the name might suggest, My Winnipeg is a tribute to the city, his city, his hometown--the Canadian burg that is said to be the geographical center of North America. It is also a tribute to his mother, whom he brings alive via re-enactments of events from his childhood. He considers her influence, and re-examines difficult moments, and, as his narration tells us, even drags her into the experiment, eager to see what she will learn through this trip down memory lane.

Except, of course, he doesn't really, because that's not his actual mom on the screen, but instead an actress named Ann Savage--a fact he cheekily withholds even as he informs us that all the versions we see of him and his brothers and sister as kids are just stand-ins. It's all part of the dreamscape he creates from the get-go, establishing a surreal version of history that he inserts himself into, teasing the audience with the strange lore of the place where he grew up. Horses frozen in an ice storm, Russian hockey players, labor strikes, trees growing in the middle of the street--these are all meant to be a part of the myth and legends of Winnipeg. But how much of it is true? Does it matter?

Of course not. We are told right there in the title. This is Guy Maddin's Winnipeg, his fanciful recreation of the places that informed who he is. There is never any question that he is an unreliable narrator--the movie is framed by his flight from the city, his attempt to get away, but we know he has no intention of leaving, he loves it all--and it's the lies he chooses to tell that inform our true opinion of the man and his origins. These fictions he creates, these myths he makes, they are a tribute to all the things he says they are, but they are also a tribute to his real love: storytelling. The kind of storytelling that goes on in a small community, the kind of fibs a child imagines to make the world around him seem more interesting, and the kind of daydreams that really do break the Guy Maddins of the world out of their humble beginnings and turns them into internationally renowned motion picture directors.

It's fun and intriguing and just generally delightful to watch. My Winnipeg is an autobiography unburdened by reality or truth, and thus far more emotionally honest and revealing than most tracts that try to tell it like it "really is."

For technical specs and special features, see the full article at DVDTalk.com.

Everything and nothing happens in La Ciénaga, the debut feature from Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel (The Headless Woman). Spanning the space of one aimless summer, this avant-garde drama captures the boredom and the heat for one extended family forced together by circumstance as life changes and petty concerns swirl all about.

The narrative kicks off with an accident. At a pool party, middle-aged mother Mecha (Graciela Borges) falls face first, smashing her drinking glass against her chest. Was she drunk? Did she trip? Stories vary. But the lacerations above her breasts seem serious enough that her sister Tali (Mercedes Morán) loads her kids in the car and heads over. Mecha has two teenaged daughter of her own, as well as an adult son, José (Juan Cruz Bordeau), who also makes the trip, leaving his older lover (Silvia Baylé) in Buenos Aires. There is something oedipal suggested by this couple, and in general José is portrayed as a sexual being, with hints of incestuous longing from his siblings and his cousins.

Which is all part of the strange hormonal miasma that hangs around everything. The children--and there are many what with friends that hang around--seem driven by animal impulses. Boys point their rifles at girls in the woods, girls play tricks on unsuspecting boys in the town. One of Mecha’s daughters, Momi (Sofia Bertolotto), is nicknamed “Dirty” because she’ll go days without showering or brushing her hair. There is a casual racism toward the indigenous people, including Isabel (Andrea López), the household maid. Every moment in La Ciénaga feels like it’s the moment before something awful is going to happen.

And yet, outside of the occasionally injury or quick flash of violence, it never really does. The worst thing remains uncommented on, unseen, unresolved. Like the apparition of the Virgin Mary that is a running thread throughout La Ciénaga, any big happening stays invisible, only hinted at. Meaning, like spirituality, is ephemeral. This is Martel’s strange balance, that restlessness of an idle summer, particularly for a tween like Momi or the boy Joaquin (Diego Baenas), who has already lost an eye as a consequence of being allowed to run wild. Everyone is always getting dirty, they are consistently uncomfortable in the heat, and the backyard pool where Mecha hurt herself is so filthy as to be unswimmable. The title La Ciénaga translates as “The Swamp,” and while it most certainly refers to this swimming pool, it’s also a descriptive of the entire state of being Martel’s depicting: this family is stuck in a swamp of history and the expectations that grow there like algae.

Martel shoots all these goings on with a similarly lazed but observant eye. She takes her time with some takes, working around the tangled bodies, squeezing into tight quarters. Natural lighting pervades most of the scenes, as does natural sound. There are lots of marvelous audio touches throughout, like the dual ringing telephones, or the regular barking of unseen dogs. There is a kind of naturalness to the whole affair that befits La Ciénaga’s episodic narrative. As the heat eventually makes some folks cranky, and certain conflicts come to a head, Martel continues to tease our expectations, only to gracefully exit more quietly than she entered.

For technical specs and special features, see the full article at DVDTalk.com.

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