by ·Comments Off on Danger: Diabolik (1968, Mario Bava)

Possibly the first Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie I’ve ever watched on its own – though I followed up by immediately rewatching the episode. Somewhere along the way I heard that the movie is actually excellent, and that’s not true; it’s Italian Batman Mabuse 007, but the color really pops on the new blu-ray and I got to listen to Ennio’s “Deep Down” for four hours.

Eva:

Eva (artist’s rendition):

Diabolik was in Barbarella the same year, and those would make a great double-feature: jokey genre movies with high fashion and design. He’s the villain hero, out to steal whatever he pleases, for no reason but that he can, and only Inspector Michael Piccoli and Gov’t Minister Terry-Thomas can stop him. Oh I’m kidding, they can’t stop him at all, in fact Diabolik shows up at their press conference and drops “exhilarating gas” to cause a laugh riot, just to humiliate them.

One of ten-ish movies produced by Dino De Laurentiis that year, Bava between horror movies, enlisting his idiot son Lamberto to assist. Diabolik’s chick is Eva of Ken Russell’s French Dressing. She wants an emerald necklace she saw on TV, so her man goes out to steal it, starting a war with his archrival Valmont (white-haired Adolfo Celi of Thunderball) who runs a ridiculous nightclub. Hundreds more things happen: a cop has a wacom tablet, Diabolik uses emeralds for bullets, falls out a plane and fakes his own death, a woman makes a Robin Hood reference (but to Piccoli, not Terry-Thomas). Diabolik finally Fight-Clubs the country’s tax office buildings, then after the country melts all of their gold into one giant chunk to make it easier harder(?) to steal… he steals it. Technically he’s still alive at the end, encased in gold, but there would be no sequels since there was nothing left to steal.

by ·Comments Off on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1969, Michael Lindsay-Hogg)

Meant to be televised in 1969 but withheld for decades because the Stones were afraid of The Who – and for good reason, the latter’s version of “A Quick One” is the greatest performance in any rock doc I’ve seen lately.

Staged inside a circus tent with acrobats and stuff in between music acts, passing through a wild Lennon/Ono act and culminating in a decently good Stones set.

Of the bands I didn’t already know, Taj Mahal’s amped-up bar band > Jethro Tull’s flutey rock > Marianne Faithfull’s pretty folk.

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.

–
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.

–
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.

–
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.