Brandon’s movie memory

“No more plundering until further notice”

I wish I knew how this movie’s title was pronounced, because every time I think of it, Fred Schneider sings “here comes a narwhal!” in my head. It’s gonna be “narr-WHAA” until some Frenchman tells me otherwise. One site translates it as “Nor’wester.”

Morag’s brother is killed, she seeks revenge on pirate queen Giulia, infiltrates the castle with help of traitorous Erika. Gradually all of Giulia’s associates are killed off, then G & M stab each other to death, the end.

Giulia (left) and Morag having stabbed each other to death:

So on that level, I “understand” the movie… but I wouldn’t say I understand the movie. At least at the end of Duelle, when Marie banishes Frederique and Pauline (or whatever their names were) I had a sense that the story Meant Something. But comprehension aside, the playfulness and spontaneity and magic were enough to make it a pretty great movie. Plus there’s that something that Rivette does that makes his scenes fascinating to me and makes me want to watch all his films… whatever that thing is, this movie had plenty of it.

Morag and Erika have meetings in which they sit or walk robotically and recite lines in English from the play The Revengers Tragedy. So maybe reading that would help somewhat. Then again, D. Ehrenstein says “Analysis begins to run into a series of dead ends. The texts utilized as central sources of quotation… Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy in Noroit — are merely pre-texts, having nothing to “say” about the films that enclose them, posed in the narrative as subjects for further research.”

As in Duelle, whenever there’s music in a scene the musicians are part of that scene, even when they realistically would’ve left the room. Maybe right before the shot begins Giulia has threatened their lives and told them to play, no matter what. They seem to be watching the action, but not enthusiastically.

There are long, long times with no spoken dialogue. Lighting is can be dim indoors, mostly looks natural. It was Rivette’s first film shot by William Lubtchansky, who would shoot most of the rest of his career films (not Wuthering Heights). He is husband to Nicole L., who has edited everything since 1969 (incl. Out 1).

The magic is toned way down from Duelle. Morag seems to have no powers, is just a kickass fighter (the very few times she fights, or moves quickly, or changes expression). Giulia can electrocute people with her jewelry, and causes one of the treasure-greedy male fighters to explode towards the end. There is a play-with-the-play performance where the girls happily re-enact their murder of the blonde woman whose name I didn’t catch, because it wouldn’t be Rivette without some kind of meta-performance aspect. There are gas lamps and castles and swordfights and magic, all very period, but then there is lots of cool, modern (clearly 70’s) clothing and guns and motorboats.

The men of the castle:

Our lead, Morag with the murdered brother who seeks revenge, is Geraldine Chaplin, then of Cría cuervos, The Three Musketeers and Nashville, later of Love on the Ground, a couple by Resnais, and Talk To Her.

Giulia, leader of the pirates, is Bernadette Lafont, Sarah in Out 1, also in Le Beau Serge, A Gorgeous Bird Like Me, The Mother and the Whore and Geneologies of a Crime.

The traitorous Erika is Kika Markham of Truffaut’s Two English Girls and Dennis Potter’s Blade on the Feather.

Morag contemplates stabbing Giulia early on:

There’s a long piece of writing on Noroit by Mary Wiles called Sounding Out The Operatic, but of course I can’t find it.

Rivette: “When I was filming Noroît, I was persuaded that we were making a huge commercial success, that it was an adventure film that would have great appeal … When the film didn’t come out, when it was considered un-showable … I was surprised. I don’t consider myself … unfortunately, I’m not very lucid when it comes to the potential success of my projects.”

Ehrenstein points out interesting things about Noroît and Duelle: the conflicting acting approaches (Chaplin is stylized, Lafont is flip and cool), the strong position of women in the narrative, and that the setting of the castle by the sea “suggests the possibility of an atmosphere the mise en scene never seems directly to create.”

J. Reichert: “As with all good revenge dramas (this one inspired by bloody Jacobean plays), the mass of killings begin to far outweigh the initial wrong done and the angel of vengeance experiences moments of doubts and sympathy for her marks—there’s betrayal as well. Rivette shorthands these narratively rich moments, suggesting them in a glance, a line, a change of Chaplin’s face, so that he can maintain focus on the ballet-like movement of his players through space, where stowing recently acquired treasure takes on the aspect of slow-motion acrobatics. The drama climaxes in a clifftop masquerade ball/murder spree/dance performance shot across what looks like infrared, B&W, and color, that combines violence and poetry into a mix that’s literally unlike anything I’ve seen.”

cover shot:

A giddy Morag laughs in the face of the dying blonde woman:

Erika (?) performs for the crew:

Death comes too soon for Giulia:

dance party:

N.P. Thompson: “the most numbingly inert movie musical ever made”.

Watched it twice in a week, the second time with good sound.

Barber is imprisoned and wife-snatched by judge, returns years later (with young sailor) for revenge, kills blackmailing rival barber, finds then loses interest in own daughter, starts meat pie business with neighbor, mistreats and tries to kill young assistant, kills judge, neighbor, and (accidentally) own wife, is killed by assistant while young sailor rides off with barber’s daughter.

Loving the songs, especially “not while I’m around,” “pretty women,” “I’ll steal you joanna,” and “these are my friends”. The actors all do wonderfully, and the ol’ Burton goth murk is back with a vengeance. Katy disliked the horror aspects and wished that any character besides the two kids in love was a likeable protagonist, someone she could root for, and not a horrible corrupt monster. I thought the two kids were plenty enough brightness in the black, black. I wouldn’t call it numbingly inert, but for a musical it doesn’t exactly pop off the screen. Maybe Thompson will dig the 3-D re-release.

Director of so-what teen-horror “Wrong Turn” (and upcoming cary elwes starrer “The Alphabet Killer”) brings a surprisingly great episode to the so-far dismal second season of Masters of Horror. Inventive, not over-long, good performances and great makeup effects.

Dentist MARTIN DONOVAN, who I am so happy to see again, is a very bad husband who lights his wife on fire after a car accident (revealed through flashbacks) then tries to pull her life support so he can carry on with his girlfriend/receptionist Robin Sydney (of gary busey horror “the gingerdead man”, heh).

Some problems come up. The wife’s mother starts a(n underdeveloped) media war against Martin to keep the wife alive. Martin enlists lawyer Corbin Bernsen (not the washed-up catcher from major league [that was tom berenger] but the grumpy old veteran player) to get the wife unplugged. But a bigger problem is that whenever the wife flatlines, her ghost comes after Martin (and sometimes Corbin) and tries to kill him. So Martin has to turn a 180 and try everything to keep his wife alive, even if it means skinning his girlfriend when a donor doesn’t come through in time. Fabulous ending, he misses the clock, she dies, and he resignedly walks into his house where the ghost is waiting.

MoH motifs: naked breasts, skinlessness (those two unfortunately collide), recognizable actors doing silly things, that one dark highway that I see in every episode.

From the non-auteur behind the classic horror hits “Fright Night” and “Child’s Play” and the less classic S. King adaptations “Thinner” and “The Langoliers” (also writer of Psycho 2). This is from the writer of “The Fury”, which makes me a little less excited to see that one.

Holland must not have been allowed to adapt King’s “It”. Here we’ve got a story about grown men being hunted down by a killer klown, with flashbacks of these guys as young kids doing bad things together. Sounds like “It” to me. But this one adds exciting story elements that “It” never had, such as that the young kids once conspired to kill a retarded ice cream man, and that the ice cream man comes back as an evil klown and if the now-grown-men’s KIDS fall under the klown’s spell and eat a special ice cream bar, the men will turn into ice cream and melt and die.

Ridiculous story, reasonably well acted/directed, not a bad thing to half-watch while I’m doing something else, like writing these entries.

“The Law”

Ouedraogo, from Burkina Faso, was a student of Gaston Kabore, director of last week’s Wend Kuuni, and also worked with Ousmane Sembene.

Saga (actor also in Moolaade, Yaaba, Night of Truth) has been away for a couple years, and returns to find that the woman he was promised as a wife is now married to his father. She and Saga are in love and resume their affair, with disastrous results. Saga’s brother is sent to kill him, but allows him to escape, and the illicit lovers go off to Saga’s aunt’s house… but he comes back for his mom’s funeral, exposing himself to the townspeople. The father banishes the brother, who then shoots Saga, oh and the girl’s dad hangs himself for having a part in all this.

Fine story (a darker Ten Canoes?), fine acting, plays at a good pace, not at all as bleak and awful as it sounds from my plot description. Won the Cannes Grand Jury Prize (a step up from the prize Yeelen won three years before), second place to Lynch’s “Wild At Heart” and beating out Godard, Zhang Yimou and Ken Loach.

Little music. A vocalist sings “Tilai… Tilai” a couple times and that’s it. Long shots, but not distractingly long.

“Claire Denis, the director of the autobiographical film Chocolat, set in colonial West Africa, notes that in Tilai every sentence starts with the name of the person who is addressed, in contrast to what she calls the vacuousness of communication among white colonials.”

A lonely mute girl gets raped, robbed, and raped again, all in one night. She stops the second guy though (kills him with an iron, chops him up), grabs his gun and goes on a vengeance spree through the city, killing just any man she can.

All this killing takes its toll on her daily life, and her seamstress friends at work start to notice the change. She sort of goes from righteous victim to homicidal maniac, but then she never quite loses our affection either. A lot more carefully measured and watchable than the grating Driller Killer.

One “victim” actually takes the gun and shoots himself out on a park bench. She doesn’t kill the dog (screen shot below). Eventually puts on the nun suit and goes all Carrie at a halloween party before she’s taken out.

Scott Ashlin says:
“What we get instead is… a film that depicts men in the harshest and most unforgiving light, presenting them as legitimately deserving a substantial proportion of Thana’s wrath. Simply put, Ms. .45 has no patience with mitigating circumstances. In this movie, people, both men and women, are defined entirely by what they do rather than by who they are. It doesn’t matter, or so Ms. .45 contends, whether an exploiter had a rough childhood or a bad day at work or a steady stream of shitty luck with the girls he dated in his formative years. Violence buys violence, end of story.”

Cop Glenn Ford is causing trouble by trying to prove that police-corruption-protected mobster Lagana killed a witness (actually ordered her killed, via lackey Lee Marvin’s lackey). He causes enough trouble that Lagana orders him silenced, but ends up killing Ford’s perfect wife Jocelyn Brando (Marlon’s sister) with a carbomb instead. Whoopsie! Angry Glenn Ford takes it personal and tears down the whole criminal establishment, with the help of Marvin’s girlfriend (who turns on him when he tosses boiling water in her face).

Movie opens with a cop committing suicide beside a letter he wrote to the newspaper exposing the crime-cop corruption coverup. His wife, instead of delivering to the papers, puts the note in a safe deposit box and extorts the gangsters. Lee Marvin’s girl Gloria Grahame (human desire, crossfire, in a lonely place) ends up killing the widow to expose the plot, a cool twist.

Nice, noirish crime thriller. Not the breakout amazing Fritz Lang’s Greatest Achievement that I’d not dared to expect. In fact, after all the movies I’ve seen by Fritz Lang (thirty, more than any other director), I can’t necessarily tell a Fritz Lang film from anyone else’s. That’s where film school would have helped, I guess.

Katy did not watch it.