by ·Comments Off on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, Robert Zemeckis)

Having worked in animation for a decade, I still don’t know how they did some of the stuff in this movie. Pretty fantastic. Katy was impressed by Christopher Lloyd’s sinister plot: to buy and shut down the bus company, then destroy Toontown to make room for a freeway, then profit off gas stations and convenience stores. Neither of us understood much of that on initial release, but it’s not important – you just need to realize that Lloyd has an Evil Plan.

A guy named Stubby (also Nicely-Nicely in Guys and Dolls) plays Marvin Acme, benevolent ruler of Toontown who is killed after getting caught playing pattycake with Roger’s wife. Detective Bob Hoskins is off-and-on dating Joanna Cassidy (of Blade Runner). He’s a former toon lover turned into a bitter drunk by the death of his brother (caused by Lloyd, which neatly ties everything together). Also great: Donald vs. Daffy piano duel, Droopy as an elevator man, Baby Herman and the talking cab.

by ·Comments Off on Max Ophüls double-feature

Madame de… (1952)

A talky rich-person drama with lots of fainting – not usually my thing. Of course it’s sumptuously shot, and I got caught up in the drama by the end.

The earrings of Madame:

Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux, costars of Mayerling seventeen years earlier, are an upper-class married couple (she also played a married cheater in La Ronde, and I know Boyer from Stavisky twenty years later and Liliom twenty years earlier). He’s a general and a count, and she’s a socialite, secretly running up debts, so she sells a pair of diamond earrings, a gift from her husband.

Boyer in bed:

After she claims to have lost her earrings there’s a blow-up about possible theft at the theater, so the jeweler (Jean Debucourt of The Eagle Has Two Heads) contacts the general, tells him the story, and Boyer buys them back, gives them as a parting gift to his affair Lola. She immediately gambles them away and they’re bought by Baron Vittorio De Sica (the year after he shot Umberto D, six years before Il Generale della Rovere), who sees Madame Darrieux then stalks her at every party until she falls in love with him.

He eventually gives her the earrings, and she claims to have found the lost earrings – a sign to her husband of her extramarital affair, and a reminder of his. Feelings are hurt, honor is challenged, a duel is arranged – she gives away the earrings to a church before fainting to death as her husband shoots Baron Vittorio off-camera.

Ophuls’s second-to-last film, after Le Plaisir. Written by Louise de Vilmorin, who would adapt other writers’ stories into screenplays on The Immortal Story on Malle’s The Lovers.

M. Haskell:

[Madame de…], beginning in the lilting superficiality of a frivolous woman looking to pawn her jewels and ending in death and the ironic sanctification of those jewels, is Ophuls at his bleakest and most beautiful. The very opulence and swirl of the world from which Madame de is ostracizing herself — the opera, the gowns, the balls, the jewels, the servants — will be stripped away as love burns through the outer layers of life. A woman is rescued from shallowness and inauthenticity, but at what a price!

The Reckless Moment (1949)

The last of his quartet of Hollywood films (nobody ever talks about the Douglas Fairbanks period drama The Exile). Ophuls’ attempts at style and elegance are mostly lost here, trampled by the silly thriller plot of this cheapie noir.

Best part is Joan Bennett (star of four Fritz Lang films in the 40’s) who goes to ever-lower depths to protect her foolish young daughter who’s been going out with a sleazeball (Shepperd Strudwick, who’d once starred as Edgar Allen Poe). Joan drives from her idyllic small lake town into the big scary city to tell the guy to piss off, but he comes by the house that night, falling to his death onto an anchor after the girl whacks him on the head with a flashlight. Great, wordless scene follows as Joan discovers the body the next morning then dumps it in the lake.

So the cops have found the body and suddenly irish-accented James Mason (returning from Ophuls’s Caught six months earlier) shows up to blackmail Joan over the dead guy. She tries to raise the cash, but with her husband out of town can’t manage it. Fortunately, unbelievably, Mason falls for her and tries to protect her from his partner who still wants the money (Mason is a terrible blackmailer). They nearly kill each other and Mason stages a car crash to get Joan off the hook.

Mason in the shadows:

Since it’s a 1940’s movie the family has a black housekeeper, Cybil, who once says an entire line fully on-camera that got erased by the music score. Wonder what it was. Joan’s daughter mostly pouts in her room while Joan’s insufferably hollywood-youth-talkin’ son putters with his jalopy.

Based on a story for Ladies Home Journal, naturally. Remade with Tilda Swinton in 2001.

by ·Comments Off on Chocolat (1988, Claire Denis)

A young white woman named France (Mereille Perrier of Boy Meets Girl) hitching rides through Cameroon flashes back to when she was young and Isaach de Bankole used to feed her ants. Her dad (Francois Cluzet of Chabrol’s L’Enfer) was a colonialist governor and Protee (Bankole) their house servant.

Protee and mom:

When dad attends to local and distant affairs, France and mom (Giulia Boschi) and Protee stay home showing each other displays of power and hidden attraction. A nearby missionary is having a difficult time because lions have killed all his farm animals. The house chef pretends to consult his cookbook, but can’t read.

Young France:

Finally a Big Event: a plane crash-lands nearby and the pilot and passengers stay with the family while getting parts and repairs. Their stay causes all sorts of racial tension. A self-important coffee-grower has a weird relationship with his black housekeeper. One of the white passengers works on the plane with the black locals, eventually starts sleeping and bathing outside, getting on Protee’s nerves. Some of the passengers are more blatantly, vocally racist than the family is used to. Protee is kicked out of the house, plays a weird trick on the little girl where they both end up with their palms burned.

Older France:

Senses of Cinema: “a semi-autobiographical film that functions as a political allegory examining gender, age and colonial relationships.”

Raised by missionaries into a white colonialist culture, removed from his cultural and racial heritage and emasculated by the domestic duties he performs, Protee is a liminal figure trapped between two cultures. This is clearly signified by the arrival of Luc (Jean-Claude Adelin), a young lapsed priest who lives, eats and showers outside like the native servants. Luc threatens Protee, upsets the fragile equanimity, and induces Aimee’s betrayal of Protee and in turn Protee’s betrayal of France. This moment of betrayal explains the transformation in France’s gaze from the innocence and intensity of a child to the cynical wary gaze of an adult remembering and re-examining a complicated past.

by ·Comments Off on Forest for the Trees (2003, Maren Ade)

Not all mumblecore comedies of young-adult awkwardness come from the States, apparently. This one is from German filmmaker Ade, one of Cinema Scope’s 50 Under 50.

Melanie moves to a new town where she knows nobody, starting work as a teacher, breaking up with her boyfriend (who helps her move). She is enthusiastic to the point of desperation – gives all her neighbors gifts to introduce herself. She dodges a fellow teacher who wants to hang out with her, manages to make friends with a woman named Tina across the courtyard instead. But Tina has friends, throws parties, is in a relationship, deals with personal problems, and doesn’t want to hang out with Melanie 100% of the time – so Melanie becomes more and more desperate and stalkerish.

Adult life isn’t going too well. She even goes to a petting zoo and gets pushed around by little horses. Nothing intensely interesting happens until the final scene, where Melanie goes for a drive alone listening to Grandaddy and decides to crawl into the backseat and stare out the side window while the car is still going.

Pretty good little indie movie – I don’t get all the excitement, but I’ll take Cinema Scope’s word for it and watch her next movie. She’s also recently worked on Ulrich Kohler and Miguel Gomes movies I wanted to see. M. Peranson in Cinema Scope says this was her “DV student-film debut” and mentions that Melanie’s accent is a source of humor for native Germans.

by ·Comments Off on The Barkleys of Broadway (1949, Charles Walters)

A fluke Fred & Ginger movie ten years after their other collaborations. They’re a married song-and-dance act, best friends with their songwriter Oscar Levant (I liked him more than I did in The Band Wagon – he gets a good solo piano number here). Ginger’s husband is critical of her performance but smooth-talking stage director Jacques Francois says she’s wonderful and should do dramatic work. So Fred carries on with understudy Gale Robbins while his wife acts with the french guy, but Fred sneaks into rehearsals and secretly gives her acting tips. She finds out, they get back together.

Too much breaking-up and acting serious, not enough dance numbers

This Scottish routine was horrible:

The best scene is Fred solo as an enchanted-shoe salesman:

by ·Comments Off on 8 1/2 (1963, Federico Fellini)

I remembered the atmosphere of this movie but not the story or characters, so watched it again – turns out it’s 98% atmosphere. What story? What characters? Even Marcello Mastroianni’s Guido is a weak and confused lead. Instead it’s an impressionistic glimpse into Fellini’s life and work, a film about filmmaking, or about itself. I’m not saying anything that everyone doesn’t already know, but I had to be reminded – there’s not really a story of Guido casting and shooting some big picture, just fragments: agents and critics and hangers-on as the director deals with his fame, personal life and artistic indecision.

Opens with a wordless dream sequence – film director Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) floats away from an oppressive traffic jam, flies over the ocean but is roped and pulled down by business partners.

Guido is “taking the cure” at a vacation retreat, prescribed holy water, keeps running into people he knows in a sort of choreographed dance of acquaintances. Soon he’s on his film set, arguing with a writer (Daurmier?) who criticizes the script, placating coworkers and avoiding making decisions. Soon I lose all ability to describe plot or characters as it spirals inevitably into the spinning whirl of an ending.

I’ve seen an even five of Fellini’s 7 1/2 previous films. Cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo shot about half the Italian movies I’ve heard of – this was his first for Fellini, having just worked on L’Eclisse.

Guido

Claudia Cardinale of The Leopard the same year, supposed to be starring in Guido’s film, seems good-natured about the whole thing.

wife Luisa (Anouk Aimée, shortly after Lola) with mistress Carla (Sandra Milo of Juliet of the Spirits)

His buddy Mario Pisu with new mistress Barbara Steele

Magician Ian Dallas, who according to IMDB inspired the song Layla. He and his apparently psychic partner pull magic words from Guido’s psyche cueing a flashback schene wherein young Guido is told that these words could make a portrait come to life… a “motion picture,” if you will.

Saraghina, wild woman of Guido’s youth

Guido and Carla

A. Sesonske:

8 1/2 is a film about making a film, and the film that is being made is 8 1/2. Notice how everything Guido says about the film he is making turns out to be true of 8 1/2, even the sailor doing a soft-shoe dance; how all the screen tests are for roles in the film we are seeing; how some camera movements create an ambiguity between Guido, the director in the film, and Fellini, the director of the film, thus taking self-reference one step beyond the work to its maker.

Fellini: A Director’s Notebook (1969)

“I composed a poem on the ruins of your film.”

This masquerades as a documentary on Fellini’s working methods, but is really a self-conscious fake-doc made by Fellini himself. Suspension of disbelief lasted about 30 seconds – you can’t convince anyone you’re making a documentary, interviewing random people on the street, when all the voices are badly dubbed.

In 1966-ish the director was to film Mastorna, “perhaps the most famous unmade film in Italian cinema.” Its half-built sets sit unused on huge lots, so Fellini shoots them here, haunted by poets, then roams Rome at night. All the places he goes are full of people who seem like… well, like characters in Fellini films.

Giulietta Masina introduces the “man with the sack” sequence from Nights of Cabiria, which at this point had never been seen, claiming it’s based on a true story. Some Satyricon, then we get a frenetic sepia-toned ancient-Rome silent short watched by a screaming audience (including a raptly attentive young Fellini).

Recreating Fellini’s childhood cinema:

A cab ride with a clairvoyant, and a subway ride with a professor. This last one is great because he tries to talk about lost societies beneath Rome but Fellini keeps interrupting, asking him to speak into the camera – then their train accidentally travels through time, proving the professor’s point.

We visit Mastroianni, who gives us a fake screen test, then off to an early morning slaughterhouse to summon the feeling of ancient sacrifices, where the workers keep transforming into ancient Romans. Then a stream of non-actors come to Fellini’s office to submit themselves for film roles.

That’s F.F. at left:

Criterion: “Producer Peter Goldfarb … had suggested the project as a way for Fellini to deal with his inability to make the film The Voyage of G. Mastorna. As Tullio Kezich and others have pointed out, 8 1/2 is strikingly prophetic of this development in Fellini’s career.”

by ·Comments Off on Three Movies I Only Sorta Watched

Lady for a Day (1933, Frank Capra)

I missed the first third-to-half of this, but we’re gonna count it anyway. Clunky comedy with a weeper ending starring a bunch of white people who all look the same.

Young Louise wants to marry some fancy European, but has to impress his dad (Walter Connolly of the much livelier Twentieth Century) with her family. Louise’s mom (May Robson) is actually a lowly apple seller. But May is the good-luck charm of powerful New York gangster Warren William (Julius Caesar to Colbert’s Cleopatra), so along with his buddy Guy Kibbee (righteous reporter in Power of the Press), they fake being high society long enough to get the girl married. By the end, reporters are kidnapped and the mayor and governor are enlisted in the scam. America! Nominated for four oscars but something called Cavalcade won.

Just Like Heaven (2005, Mark Waters)

Maybe I was in a weird mood, but this was an enjoyable movie – well written with decent acting, even if its ultimately a girly soulmate drama with ghosts and people in comas, winning the contest of who would be the first movie to cast Jon Heder in his first post-Napoleon Dynamite comic-relief sidekick role, from the writers of What Planet Are You From and Pay It Forward. Couldn’t possibly be any good. But it kinda was.

The Five-Year Engagement (2012, Nicholas Stoller)

Katy watched with Maria and I sat in for most of it. I think lead couple Jason Segal and Emily Blunt are broken up for at least six months of that engagement while Segal sleeps with some young hottie and Blunt plays the young hottie to some older professor. It’s one of those movies featuring young people in struggling careers who seem to have an endless supply of money, though they envy their seemingly-billionaire friends who have circus-like weddings. Blunt is cute, but I mainly looked up to watch the recurring roles for Chris Pratt and Brian Posehn and cameo by Dr. Spaceman. Speaking of Chris Pratt, now that every major Parks & Rec cast member has been appearing in movies for the last two years without quitting the show, I hope Mark Brendanawicz is regretting choosing Water for Elephants over the series.

by ·Comments Off on I Am Curious (1967-68, Vilgot Sjöman)

Ah, the mid-to-late 1960’s, when sex was freer and racism was lessening and students protested things and art was weird and you could have nudity in movies. Sjoman made a long movie (broken up into yellow and blue halves) combining fiction and documentary elements (including much behind-the-scenes footage of the film’s own making) featuring sex and protest and weirdness and nudity, successfully challenging censorship laws.

Vilgot and Lena:

I think Yellow is considered the classic important film and Blue its less-important little sister, but I enjoyed Blue more, maybe because I was used to the movie’s tricks and could pay more attention to the content. In both movies, Lena Nyman roams Sweden, escaping a cheating boyfriend, visits different national institutions, interviews passers-by about current social issues, hangs with friends and worries about her family but never seems comfortable anywhere, finally returns home and tells her cheating boyfriend that she has scabies.

Yellow has more of Vilgot, who is sleeping with Actor Lena (not Character Lena – though presumably neither is the Real Lena). Actor Lena starts dating the actor playing her boyfriend, which pisses off Vilgot, who latches onto a different young female film student at the end. A highlight is Lena’s imaginary discussions with Martin Luther King Jr.

Vilgot:

I was trying to introduce a Utopian idea about nonviolence: Sweden changing its military defense into one of nonviolence… Then I started to embellish that theme, and suddenly discovered that the girl was surrounded with symbols of aggression. She had knives in her closet, and a rifle. This is really a strange adherent of nonviolence!

Vilgot predicts his own death, quite incorrectly:

Blue opens behind-the-scenes with some public reaction to Yellow in the form of hate-mail to the studio. Lena will escape into the fictional film then Vilgot will break in and discuss character motivation. She hitchhikes to a prison, then stays with (and spies on) lesbian friends Sonja and Elin, and hangs with violent Hans and his apologetic girl Bim.

The crew sings a song about prisons:

G. Giddins:

When the crowds actually saw the picture, however, they felt cheated; pubic hair was in short supply, the sex was unerotic, and the running time mostly given over to a droll, Brechtian-Pirandellian, mock-vérité exploration of the chasm between the political and the personal.
…
Within a year or two, suburban theaters routinely programmed nudity-filled potboilers about nurses and stewardesses, soon to be followed by Deep Throat. Never again would audiences have to put up with socially redeeming values in the pursuit of pornography. Yellow triggered the sea-change that resulted, ironically, in the subsequent indifference towards Blue. It altered the American moviegoing experience, pointing the way to a post-code cinema.

Lena, curious:

by ·Comments Off on Beau Travail (1999, Claire Denis)

A simple story with just a few main characters, which Denis lovingly photographs, obscures and abstracts. Unlike many of her others, it’s almost immediately easy to grasp this one’s character relationships, which may account for its higher reputation than her later films, or probably it’s just this one’s timing, exploding her international festival/critical reputation. Not that I mean to be ungenerous to Beau Travail – it’s terrific, and must have one of the best film endings of the 90’s.

Based on Herman Melville’s story Billy Budd. Commandant Michael Subor (The Intruder) leads a French foreign legion camp in Djibouti. Denis Lavant (Lovers on the Bridge) is training a bunch of men. But Lavant feels that he’s losing authority to new guy Gregoire Colin (35 Shots of Rum), so he looks for an opportunity to strike back. That was my interpretation anyway, but looking through comments of other filmed versions of Billy Budd, it seems that his motivation is never quite clear. Either way, he sends Colin on a doomed hike through the desert. Presumed to have killed the recruit (we later see Colin gettin rescued), Lavant is dismissed from the armed forces and set to be court-martialed. And just when you’re wondering why cast the great Denis Lavant as an immobile authority figure, he breaks out into a crazy awesome fantasy-sequence dance.

Doesn’t seem to follow the novel’s plot too closely – in the book, Budd is executed for accidentally killing a superior officer, while here he saves a man and kills nobody. The book was turned into a famous opera, and Denis uses songs from that instead of her usual Tindersticks. Mostly, she turns the story into an abstract dance of bodies in the desert, with emotions felt rather than explained.

J. Rosenbaum:

The fact that [Subor] is named after the hero of Jean-Luc Godard’s Le petit soldat and played by the same actor almost 40 years later adds a suggestive thread… Most of all, Denis, who spent part of her childhood in Djibouti, captures the poetry and atmosphere — and, more subtly, the women — of Africa like few filmmakers before her.