by ·Comments Off on Man’s Castle (1933, Frank Borzage)

Great writing and premise, as poor hungry gal Loretta Young (who I just saw in The Stranger) is pitied by rich guy Spencer Tracy and taken out for a nice meal. Only he’s not rich, just pretending, and they get kicked out and retreat to his shanty town.

She loves the place and wants to settle down there, but Tracy likes to move from town to town, plus they’ve gotta eat to stay alive, so already a few conflicts before throwing in the predatory criminal next door (a banker in The Devil Doll, a burglar here) who wants to rob the factory guarded by their preacher friend Walter Connolly (a millionaire in 5th Ave Girl). Throw in a pitiful/sympathetic drunk (Tobacco Road star Marjorie Rambeau) and a showgirl who unaccountably falls for Tracy (Glenda Farrell of Little Caesar) and a not-so-surprise pregnancy, and you get a lot of plot for 75 minutes. Lovely ending as hard-headed Tracy realizes the girl doesn’t have to prevent him from leaving town if he takes her along. Loretta very wonderful if this had been silent, but miscast in a talkie, delivering homey lines like “he don’t know his own strength, he don’t” with perfect posh diction.

Loretta with Marjorie, whose redemption comes from shooting the thief:

Dave Kehr was a fan: “Few love stories have achieved the emotional intensity of Man’s Castle, and most of the others belonged to Borzage as well. He possessed the most delicate romantic sensibility in the movies, and his films are pervaded by a sublime spiritual quality that no one else has been able to capture.”

Did street pigeons look like this in 1933?

by ·Comments Off on Chinese Roulette (1976, Rainer Fassbinder)

Mom (Petra von Kant) and Dad (Alex Allerson of all the ’76 Fassbinders) are leaving town on separate business trips, leaving their daughter with the mute nurse (Godard’s Married Woman). But all three adults are having secret affairs, and head to the same country house, where they try to play it off and have a good time together since they’re all equally busted. Dad is with hottie Anna Karina, mom is with dad’s employee Bruno, the nanny is with blonde Volker Spengler (fly guy of Satan’s Brew).

This is too many major actors in one place, and the daughter can’t hold her own, also is weirdly dubbed, but she gets to dance on her crutches to Kraftwerk’s “Radioactivity.” Of course the adults end up playing mind games, and the vibes turn very sour during the titular Q&A guessing game, then Mom shoots the Mute Nurse, kind of a bum ending.

honi soit qui mal y pense:

by ·Comments Off on Woman at the End of the World (1938, Jean Epstein)

The woman is Anna (of a couple episodes of Les Vampires), and she runs a bar on an otherwise uninhabited island (how does she restock?) with her young son and shellshocked husband. A ship full of sailors and workers arrive on the island searching for radium, not yet realizing their bosses are either incompetent or scam artists and they’ll find nothing. But while there, they cause as much trouble as possible while trying to get the woman’s attention.

A couple of famous cinematic policemen are in this, and one (Inspector Fichet of Diabolique) pushes the other (Inspector Parot of Eyes Without a Face) off a cliff. Epstein still loves the sea and gets some lovely seaside images, but it’s less an adventure story and more a romantic triangle (or octagon) drama. He does try to liven things up with wipes between scenes – mostly inappropriately, like when he star-wipes out of the murder confession scene.

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Les Berceaux (1931)

Operatic vocal song about cradles and the sea, with Epstein adding lovely visuals of cradles and the sea – the first music video. Dimitri Kirsanoff would use the same approach on the same song a few years later, suspicious.

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Le Tempestaire (1947)

Late Epstein has gone post-sound back to his silent roots. This one’s an ambiguous sea poem, near-silent, with sparse trancelike dialogue (every line spoken at least twice), cocteauian effects (stills, slow-mo, reverse), and some very low horizons (that’s interesting). Girl is afraid since her man went out in the storm, she tries the lighthouse (aka the sound cinema with its pulsing light and newfangled radio) then returns to the reliable old ways (storm whisperer with a crystal ball). More than half of this is shots of the sea, patiently watching as it gets more stormy, then less stormy, without some damn narrator having to tell us what we see.

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Fires of the Sea (1949)

Mostly an informational doc about the importance of lighthouses. We’re introduced to a particular lighthouse through the young new keeper (Robert Pattinson), who gets rattled during a storm but sticks it out.

by ·Comments Off on Head (1968, Bob Rafelson)

A Magical Mystery Tour parody, I think.

A Monkee wonderful-lifes himself off a bridge, then a girl makes out with each Monkee in turn in a single take. A highlight is Mickey puncturing a Western scene by swiping away the fake arrows and walking through the backdrop. Maybe not a highlight but certainly memorable is when the boys get shrunk to dandruff-size then are vacuumed off Vic Morrow’s head.

Pretty meaty role for Timothy Carey. Jack Nicholson pops in for three seconds, and Frank Zappa delivers a motivational speech with a talking cow.

by ·Comments Off on The Merry Widow (1925, Erich von Stroheim)

Comically evil monocled crown prince Roy D’Arcy (The Last Warning) and his more traditionally evil-rich-guy cousin John Gilbert (star of The Big Parade the same year) are both charmed by traveling performer Mae Murray and compete to get her into bed. Gilbert really falls for her, but the royal family says he can’t marry a commoner, so she thinks he hasn’t been serious.

After plans to marry the least-evil of the royals falls apart, she decides to marry the evilest guy around as revenge: the country’s richest man, foot pervert Tully Marshall (unrecognizably grizzled in The Big Trail). This is too much excitement for the pervert, and he has a heart attack on her wedding night, turning Mae into a merry widow.

Baron Rich Guy and his entourage:

Master seducers stock their bed with blindfolded string musicians:

Now that she’s so very rich, the royal family isn’t as dismissive of her. To further torment Gilbert she pretends(?) to be engaged to the crown prince, then everybody dies except lovebirds(?) Mae and Gilbert, so they end up royal and rich together. I didn’t even check what music was on the DVD, just put on my silents mix, which started strong with Ikue Mori and spent half its time on a very long Oren Ambarchi ambient drum groove.

by ·Comments Off on The State I Am In (2000, Christian Petzold)

Would’ve made a good One Battle After Another double-feature. A wanted couple is staying on the move, low on resources and comrades. Their teenage daughter is starting to become a liability, acting impulsively and attracting attention. In increasing order of importance, the daughter just wants: cigarettes, stability, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, trip-hop. A boy she meets tells her about his parents vacant modernist house, so the family moves in and plans one more bank job. Surely if they can pull this one off they’ll be home free.

Dad ended up in the teen trilogy Vampire Sisters. Mom would return as the mom in Miroirs No. 3, and the girl would go on to be stunt-cast in Carlos.

by ·Comments Off on The Lost Weekend (1945, Billy Wilder)

Ray Milland, even younger than in The Big Clock and hardly looking like his X-Ray self – supposedly quit drinking a week ago and is acting outraged that anyone would suspect him of falling off, while he’s busily hiding bottles around the apartment. Looking crazed and desperate from the start, he steals the maid’s money and hits the town, staying at the bar late enough that his brother and wife leave on their planned trip without him. Ray is so happy with his booze – why would anyone deprive him of this?

A half hour in, he starts flashbacking, and even in his happy (but still drunken) past he’s being rude to his girl when they first meet at the opera. Meanwhile, present-day Ray is running low on booze and needs more people to rob or precious objects to pawn. The movie’s not completely miserable, Wilder adds levity, but all addiction stories end up the same way. Of course “The Drinking” by Robbie Fulks came to mind – can’t think of any other country songs about getting drunk but there’s probably one or two. The Miklós Rózsa soundtracks on both of these Wilder movies are good, and they look great at least. Winner of all the oscars except score, which is only forgivable because Rózsa lost to himself for Spellbound. At the first Cannes festival this joined the 11-way tie for best picture, one of which was somehow not Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast.

by ·Comments Off on Five Graves to Cairo (1943, Billy Wilder)

German and British forces and some chaotic individuals are shacked up together in an understaffed desert hotel in Egypt, like a WWII Dragon Inn. The Five Graves are where Rommel’s archaeologist friend buried advance supplies for the nazis to take Cairo. Escaped British soldier masquerading as hotel worker Franchot Tone (Phantom Lady) hopes to use his position to kill Rommel (Erich von Stroheim), but his captured compatriots instruct him to escape with the map details to foil the African campaign. During the escape, our guy steals a gun from a loud Italian general (Fortunio Bonanova, actually Spanish) and kills handsome, talkative Lt. Peter van Eyck (billionaire of 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse). Local girl Anne “Eve” Baxter stays behind and takes the blame, and gets executed. It’s dark, but these are Necessary Wartime Sacrifices (see also: This Land Is Mine). Wilder’s second or third feature (depending who’s counting) is good, with the best Rommel you could ask for.

Eve and hotelier Akim Tamiroff:

A noirish Tone:

by ·Comments Off on Spetters (1980, Paul Verhoeven)

Follow-up to Soldier of Orange features another bunch of young male friends. These guys ride bikes together and have literal dick-measuring contests, and most of them will meet bad ends. Rutger’s getting too old to play a teenager so he’s the local motorbike champion they idolize. Still too plotty and obvious, but the great 4th Man was up next and Paul’s next couple of decades would be very good.

Rien with his girl in the good early days:

The girl on the poster is future 4th Man star Renée Soutendijk, running a food truck with her gay brother. When she sets up at a bike race, all three of the young dudes fall for her, and though she would appear to be out of their league, she sees them as a possible way out of the food truck life, dating each guy at different points.

Do not get caught ripping off a food truck:

Rien starts winning races and getting paid, then crashes on the highway because dudes in cars can’t stop littering, ending up in a wheelchair. Rien considers Jesus but settles on suicide (again on the highway). Mechanic Eef has been earning cash for his trip to America by mugging gay guys at the mall, until they catch and gang-rape him. Hans is not the greatest racer, gets mocked by Rutger on TV, but apparently still earns enough to buy a local bar after it gets trashed by bikers. This seems at least more stable than the food truck, so the girl stays with Hans and her brother moves on. Multiple Blondie songs on the soundtrack is the movie’s real highlight – also a good fake-sex-noises scene early on.

Eef considers a flasher’s offer:

Rutger can’t stop winning: