Directors: 

Andrzej Wajda, Raoul Walsh, Andy Warhol, John Waters, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Peter Weir, Orson Welles, William Wellman, Wim Wenders, James Whale, Billy Wilder, Michael Winterbottom, Frederick Wiseman, Wong Kar-wai, John Woo, William Wyler

 

 

Wachowski, Andy and Lana

 

CLOUD ATLAS                                                       C-                    67

USA  (172 mi)  2012  ‘Scope  co-director:  Tom Tykwer Official site

 

This is Hollywood moviemaking at its excessive worst, which unfortunately the movie moguls think is the absolute pinnacle of box office entertainment, throwing $100 million dollars into big stars and an entire galaxy of computer graphic designers, where it takes over a minute during the end credits just to list them all, using a popular novel by David Mitchell as the source material, where in their eyes, this is a financial gold mine, a big budget item turned into a colossal action adventure movie modeled on so many other previous successes, like LORD OF THE RINGS (2001–03), AMISTAD (1997), ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975), AMADEUS (1984), or Blade Runner (1982), among others.  In the eyes of high-priced Hollywood executives, this is considered a popcorn movie sure to spark interest in the adulated viewers.  But the problem is the lack of coherent direction, actually using 3 different directors, brother and sister Andy and Lana Wachowski along with German director Tom Tykwer, as the story is told so piecemeal and haphazardly, continually stringing along a series of separate stories, moving back and forth in time, using actors in multiple roles throughout the constantly changing narratives, all supposedly coming together at the end in some kind of thematic whole, but it just doesn’t work.  And the problem exists at the outset, as each individual storyline is constantly interrupted, like a serial installment, moving backwards or forwards in time for yet another developing storyline, which is also abruptly interrupted, where so much of the time is filled with listening to an inner narrative reveal the different plotlines, hardly a scintillating concept, where the audience loses any real connection to any of the storylines or characters before they ever have a chance to gain interest.  By the finale, when similarities are supposed to impressively come together, it’s too late, as the audience no longer cares.  Few, if any of the characters throughout actually sustain any interest, where Tom Hanks is supposed to be the overall lead character but he’s completely miscast, as he’s never seen in character but instead as the ever likable Tom Hanks, and in the end turns into Uncle Remus.  Perhaps the one star of the show is Halle Berry, who actually delivers one of her better performances in her entire career, but so much of it is lost, as are all the performances, in the mumbo jumbo of the mangled storylines.

 

Unfortunately, not all the storylines hold sufficient interest, such as the mid 19th century voyage across the Pacific, where the entire segment continually plays to stereotype and could easily have been jettisoned in this near 3-hour monstrosity.  Similarly, equally uninspiring is another AMADEUS storyline that features a world renowned composer too ill to continue working until a young upstart with a mysterious past walks into his life and rekindles his musical inspiration.  Do we really care, as there’s nothing remotely original about either segment?  That leaves four other interweaving stories, where even one of those is questionable, but becomes significant due to Berry’s strong performance as an investigative reporter risking her life to get a secret report exposing a behind-the-scenes power play of corporate greed and theft, where big oil is intending to create an apocalyptic disaster to rid the earth of the remaining oil reserves in order to join forces with current owners to buy up monopoly shares in the nuclear power business.  Typically, the way this plays out, Berry is a lone do gooder who is targeted, much like Karen Silkwood in SILKWOOD (1983), a paranoid thriller with real life implications.  Honestly, the film could do without these 3 segments, which leaves 3 remaining segments and 3 directors, where one each might have been a more inspired idea.  However, since they so closely resemble, both in tone and atmospheric style, previous Hollywood blockbusters, this appears to be no accident.  One resembles ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, as an irate elderly brother plots revenge against his brother that desperately comes to him in a time of financial trouble and instead finds himself locked into a mental asylum run by a sadistic nurse (Hugo Weaving in drag) with no way out, where a comic escape sequence by an elderly foursome is inspired by CHICKEN RUN (2000) or THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963).  While this segment does have hilarious moments, starring the befuddled Jim Broadbent, it doesn’t hold a candle to the remaining two segments in terms of dramatic reach. 

 

The final two sequences are sci-fi futuristic, though one feels almost prehistoric and could just as easily be the mythical set of Xena:  Warrior Princess (1995 – 2001).  Both are the most spectacularly designed, one a futuristic world of robots and slaves, set in Neo Seoul, Korea in 2144, where Doona Bae lives her life as a corporate slave, treated and behaving exactly like a robot, where every other model looks and behaves exactly as she does, all programmed to serve customers in a futuristic fast food franchise.  In order to guarantee compliance, each wears a metal collar around their necks that with the push of a button will instantly kill them.  By accident, she observes one of the models risk their life for a chance at freedom, but fails, instilling the idea in her head.  Next, out of nowhere, she’s whisked away into a futuristic urban landscape by a freedom fighter of epic proportions, turning this into a mix of STAR WARS (1977) and Blade Runner.  The sequence connecting the future to the past is actually set in a post apocalyptical 24th century, a segment where the Hawaiian tribal language can feel restricting, where people are farmers and goat herders simply living off the land with primitive instruments while marauding raiders with horses and swords often plunder their villages and kill their people, where Tom Hanks witnesses some of the killings first hand while he was hiding and cowering in fear, engulfed in guilt afterwards, where he is visited by Halle Berry as a visitor from the future looking to unlock a key to her past.  Together, after initial mistrust, they forge a new understanding, one with Star Trek (1966 – 69) universal ramifications.  With often dreadful make up and costume changes, the idea that these characters are somehow connected over time, as advertised, just never comes together in any coherent fashion, as it might require character development, something altogether missing here with the possible exception of the continually misused Hanks and the resplendent Berry.  Spanning some 500 years, the film blends drama, mystery, sci-fi, action sequences, and enduring love stories as a means to suggest humanity is driven by an overriding need for freedom, inspiration, and love, suggesting these powers exist both before we are born and continue well after we are gone, where characters struggle and fight throughout the generations to rediscover these elements of their humanity, and that the world is somehow shaped by whatever acts and decisions we make.  All that’s missing is a rousing rendition of Michael Jackson breaking out into “We Are the World” Michael Jackson - We Are the World (6:20).

  

Exclaim! [Scott A. Gray]

Cracking David Mitchell's dense tome about how actions ripple through time to shape and affect souls for the screen must have been a daunting task, but the Wachowskis (The Matrix) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) do a masterful job of translating the ambitious text into a widely relatable epic.

Abandoning the novel's unique structure was a necessary conceit to the responsibility of engaging the fickle attention of a mass audience. For the most part, it works tremendously well, with the three directors adeptly juggling six interconnected plots taking place in different time periods and places around the globe.

A mid-19th century notary documents a perilous voyage across the Pacific; in 1931, a destitute young musician writes to his lover about his experiences as an amanuensis for a famed composer in Belgium; a reporter investigates a corporate conspiracy in '70s California; a present-day book publisher dodges Irish gangsters; a rebellious clone is interviewed before her execution in a dystopian future Korea; and a guilt-ridden tribesman in Hawaii wrestles with his inner darkness when confronted with a seed of hope presented by an outsider from a crumbled civilization.

These diverse stories are deftly connected by cyclical themes of oppression and resistance, love and sacrifice, courage and control. Existing in the visual medium of cinema forces the explicit interpretation of the evolutionary path each soul takes - it's one of a number of ways this adaptation spares the audience some intellectual strain - but it also gives the creative team room to expand upon gender themes and immerse the highly recognizable cast in a surprising number of roles.

The chameleon nature of the first-rate (though still sometimes distracting) practical effects encourages the actors to equally burry themselves in the colourful array of characters. Giving the performances some showiness reinforces the rather overt subtext that stories are embellished and distorted in the telling. That's how myths and legends are propagated, and that's how an elegant story packed with profound sentiments gets lured into a Hollywood ending.

It's a thematic compromise designed to mollify populist sensibilities, but a relatively minor one in the face of the broad-minded ideals championed and sheer exuberance of the film's cinematic craftsmanship.

The ensemble cast is uniformly strong (especially Tom Hanks and Jim Broadbent, but even Halle Berry rises to the occasion), the distinct art direction and special effects for each era are brilliantly executed, as are the required massive leaps in tone and style. And the music, that all-important Cloud Atlas Sextet hits all the right notes of emotional resonance, even if it's not as impossibly iconic as it wants to be, much like the film itself.

Alibi.com [Devin D. O'Leary]

“Unfilmable” is an adjective that has been attached to countless well-regarded literary works. It’s meant to convey a novel with a topic so epic or eccentric that translating it to screen would be nothing less than a minor miracle. That hasn’t entirely dissuaded filmmakers. Dune, A Confederacy of Dunces, Naked Lunch, The Life of Pi, Ulysses, Crash, Tristram Shandy, Gravity’s Rainbow, Neuromancer, Catch-22, The Lord of the Rings, Watchmen, The Catcher in the Rye—some of these have actually been produced. Some were even made well. Others, not so much. A few are still in the pipeline. And several will remain tantalizing, forever-unsolvable puzzles for the movie biz.

Among the books often labeled unfilmable is David Mitchell’s 2004 sci-fi hexaptych Cloud Atlas. Somebody finally decided to wrestle that tiger, though, and the results are structurally (if not always emotionally) miraculous—a $100 million genre-hopping art house blockbuster in search of a sympathetic audience. To achieve this Herculean labor took no less than the writing-directing superpowers of the Matrix-making Wachowski siblings (formerly known as the Wachowski brothers) and German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (best known for 1998’s Run Lola Run).

Kudos are definitely in order for even attempting the complex nesting doll of a narrative that is Cloud Atlas. In the first 15 minutes of the film, audience members are introduced to six different narratives in six divergent time periods. With a little patience and a modicum of attention, it’s relatively easy to sort out the tangled fragments. Chronologically speaking, we’ve got segments in 1850, 1936, 1973, 2012, 2177 and sometime way in the far-flung future. Tykwer handles the historical portions, while the Wachowskis (unsurprisingly) deal with the more action-oriented, space-age segments.

Once you’ve got the story sections organized in your head, you’ll come to realize that each exists as a (possibly fictional) segment in the following narrative. We start in the late 19th century with a young San Francisco man traveling to the South Seas to seek his fortune, ostensibly in the slave trade. That story carries over as a published journal read by a penniless English musician who finds work as an amanuensis (fancy word for “secretary”) to a famous composer.

The musician’s letters to his lover back home in London pop up in the next segment about a female reporter investigating malfeasance at a nuclear power plant outside ’70s-era San Francisco. In 2012, the reporter’s story becomes a mystery novel manuscript read by a harried book publisher who flees a thuggish client and ends up a prisoner at a nursing home. By the time we roll around to 2177, the book publisher’s tale has become a melodramatic movie viewed by a genetically engineered slave contemplating rebellion in the dystopian world of Neo-Seoul. Temporally if not structurally, the story closes out in the postapocalyptic Pacific where an island-dwelling villager (who happens to worship a goddess with the same name as our rebellious Korean slave) encounters a woman trying to access the long-lost technology of Earth’s ancient ancestors.

The impressive cast includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Hugh Grant and Keith David. Each one plays multiple characters across multiple timelines. Over the course of the film—and with varying success—the actors switch ages, races and even genders. (I’m guessing Lana—née Larry—Wachowski had a hand in this last sleight of hand.) Some viewers may choose to be offended by what occasionally amounts to high-tech blackface. But that’s an argument for another day. While there is a certain gimmickiness to the film’s cheeky game of spot-the-actor, it gives the stories an essential visual cohesion.

Overall, the stories hint at a universal unity, reflected heavily in the revolutionary words of our Korean slave girl, Sonmi-451. Her philosophy states that we are all attached to one another, past and present. Hence, our actions, both good and bad, reverberate throughout space and time. As sci-fi philosophies go, it’s more elegant (if less concise) than “Be excellent to one another!” from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

If Cloud Atlas’ morality sounds suspiciously like karma to you, that’s probably correct. After all, our characters do seem to be playing out similar themes and stories (with very similar faces) over and over again. Are we meant to view these people as direct reincarnations of one another? Or is the web here more complex than that? On the surface, Cloud Atlas resembles Darren Aronofsky’s long-gestating vanity project The Fountain. That film too had a single cast enacting stories over multiple timelines. Cloud Atlas has a better sense of humor and feels less like a chatty discourse on destiny.

Despite coming from three different directors, our six plot strands weave together with expert precision, like instruments in a symphony. Occasionally, when the piece is really working, they dovetail beautifully, reaching a simultaneous crescendo of action. My only wish is that the payoff had been larger. The film’s major philosophical points (slavery is bad, do good things and good things will happen to you) aren’t what you’d call radical. And for a story with such a complex, borderline experimental setup, the plot strands all end right where you’d expect them to. I worry that average cineplex patrons will find the film too long and complex, while more adventurous viewers won’t be as stimulated as they’d hoped. Sad that the filmmakers could nail Mitchell’s massive narrative, yet fail to deliver the earth-shattering emotional coda it deserves.

The Hollywood Reporter [Jordan Mintzer]

Not quite soaring into the heavens, but not exactly crash-landing either, Cloud Atlas is an impressively mounted, emotionally stilted adaptation of British author David Mitchell’s bestselling novel. Written and directed by the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer, this hugely ambitious, genre-jumping, century-hopping epic is parts Babel and Tree of Life, parts Blade Runner, Amistad and Amadeus, with added doses of gore, CGI, New Age kitsch, and more prosthetics than a veterans hospital in wartime. One of the priciest independent films ever made (on a purported budget of $100 million), Atlas will rely on its chameleon cast to scale a 3-hour running time and reach the box office heights needed for this massive international co-production.

Mitchel’s 500-plus page book garnered several literary prizes and a huge following after it was first published in 2004, but many would have said that the novel’s unique structure–where multiple stories in different time periods are told chronologically from past to future and then back again—was impossible to adapt to the big screen.

The Wachowskis (with Lana receiving her first screen credit here) and Tykwer (Run Lola Run, The International) figured out they could streamline the narrative by cross-cutting between the different epochs and casting the same actors in a multitude of roles. Although this helps to make the whole pill easier to swallow, it also makes it harder to invest in each narrative, while seeing the actors transformed from old to young, black to white, and occasionally gender-bended from male to female, tends to dilute the overall dramatic tension.

A brief prologue features an old man, Zachry (Tom Hanks), telling a story around a campfire, and from hereon in the film reveals how each plotline is in fact a tale told—or read or seen in a movie—by the next one (this is also a process used in the book). 

They are, in ascending order: an 1849 Pacific sea voyage where a crooked doctor (Hanks), a novice sailor (Jim Sturgess) and an escaped slave (David Gyasi) cross paths; a saga of dualing composers (Jim Broadbent, Ben Wishaw) set in 1936 Cambridge; a San Francisco-set 70s thriller about a rogue journalist (Halle Berry) taking on a nuclear power chief (Hugh Grant); a 2012-set comedy about a down-on-his-luck London book editor (Broadbent); a sci-fi love story about an indentured wage slave (Doona Bae) and the rebel (Sturgess) who rescues her, set in “Neo Seoul” in 2144; and a 24th century-set tale of tribal warfare, where Zachry teams up with a visiting explorer (Berre) in search of a groundbreaking, planet-shaking discovery.

Despite their myriad differences, the half-dozen plot strands are coherently tied together via sharp editing by Alexander Berner (Resident Evil), who focuses on each separate story early on, and then mixes them up in several crescendo-building montages where movement and imagery are matched together across time. As if such links weren’t explicit enough, the characters all share a common birthmark, and have a tendency to repeat the same feel-good proverbs (ex. “By each crime, and every kindness, we build our future”) at various intervals.

Yet while the directorial trio does their best to ensure that things flow together smoothly enough and that their underlying message—basically, no matter what the epoch, we are all of the same soul and must fight for freedom—is heard extremely loud and incredibly clear, there are so many characters and plots tossed about that no one storyline feels altogether satisfying. As history repeats itself and the same master vs. slave scenario keeps reappearing, everything gets homogenized into a blandish whole, the impact of each story softened by the constant need to connect the dots.

Of all the pieces of the puzzle, the ones that feel the most effective are the 70s investigative drama, which has shades of Alan Pakula and Fincher’s Zodiac, and the futuristic thriller, where the Wachowskis show they can still come up with some nifty set-pieces, even if the production design (by Uli Hanisch and Hugh Bateup) and costumes (by Kym Barrett and Pierre-Yves Gayraud) feel closer to the artsy stylings of Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 than to the leather Lollapalooza that is The Matrix trilogy.

Perhaps such choices go hand in hand with a movie that yearns to be both arthouse and blockbuster, yet can’t seem to make up its mind. Thus, the decision to utilize the same actors helps to visually link up the plots, but is so conspicuous that it distracts from the drama. It’s hard to take Berry seriously when she’s been anatomically morphed into a Victorian housewife (she’s much better as the crusading reporter), or to swallow Hanks as a futuristic Polynesian tribesmen with a face tattoo and a funny way of talking (he says things like “Tell me the true true.”)

Broadbent’s experience in spectacles like Moulin Rouge! and Topsy-Turvy makes him better equipped for such shape-shifting, and his present day scenario is both the silliest and in some ways, the most touching. But it’s Hugo Weaving who seems to have more fun than anyone, especially when he plays a nasty retirement home supervisor reminiscent of Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and does so by getting into full-out drag. It’s an effect that’s amusingly disarming—not to mention evocative of Lana Wachowski’s recent backstory—in a film that aims for the clouds but is often weighed down by its own lofty intentions.

Cloud Atlas, starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, reviewed.  Dana Stevens from Slate, October 25, 2012

 

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Wadleigh, Michael

 

WOODSTOCK

USA  (184 mi)  1970                  Director’s Cut:  (225 mi)

 

Jason Bailey

God, do I love this movie. Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock is a gloriously living, breathing film, a pulsating document of one of the most remarkable moments in all of pop culture. It is, I believe, the greatest concert film ever made. It may very well be the greatest documentary ever made, as well—and even if it isn’t, I don’t know that there’s ever been a doc that is so much pure fun to watch.

Warner’s new 40th anniversary Blu-ray box is, I’m willing to bet, as good as this on-the-fly documentary is ever going to look and sound—and make no mistake, it sounds amazing. The lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is immersive and alive; in the music scenes, you really feel like you’re a part of that audience, while the track makes wonderful use of the directional capabilities during the documentary sections. In his original review, Roger Ebert noted “It gives us maybe 60 percent music and 40 per cent on the people who were there, and that is a good ratio, I think,” and I concur. The music is remarkable—spirited, fiery, energetic. But the documentary footage is downright compelling; we meet so many interesting people, and observe so many extraordinary moments.

Woodstock was edited, from 120 miles of raw footage (they shot most of the weekend, and sometimes had over a dozen cameras going), by a team headed up by a young Martin Scorsese and his future editor, the great Thelma Schoonmaker. The result, in either its original three-hour form or the newer, three-and-three-quarter hours “director’s cut”, is one of the most brilliantly edited films ever seen; they cut to the rhythms of the music, with a variety of visuals and a proximity to the players that is stunning, and the exhilarating split-screen editing may have become a cliché in the years past, but it is so effectively done here, it gobsmacks you. I’ve never been the fan of The Who that I’m probably supposed to be, but the way they cut “See Me Feel Me/Listen To You” makes you into one.

So much of the music is extraordinary, in fact; Canned Heat’s one-shot performance of “A Change is Gonna Come” is electrifying, while Crosby Stills & Nash’s “Judy Blue Eyes” suite is simply luminous. My favorite stretch of the film puts two show-stoppers back to back: the bongo pyrotechnics of Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice” and the joyous funk of Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Want To Take You Higher.” And I can’t imagine what I could say about Hendrix’s set that hasn’t been said better, elsewhere, counteless times over.

One weekend in the summer of 1969, the summer we put a man on the moon, 400,000 people came together as one, and there were no fights and no crime and no bullshit. There was a lot of sex, and a lot of drugs. But everyone kept their cool, and everyone was on the same page. You don’t have to imagine how badly something like this would go these days—just look at what happened at Woodstock 1999. Good heavens.

Scopophilia:Movies of the 60's, 70's, 80's [Richard Winters]

During August 15 – 18, 1969 Max Yasgur loaned out his 600 acre farm, which was near the town of Bethal, New York to some concert promoters for an epic 32-act rock extravaganza that has become the cornerstone for the counterculture movement and a major moment in Rock’N’Roll history. Although originally expected to attract only 50, 000 it ended up being more than 400,000 and this movie captures the mood, festivities, and music right up close.

Unlike most documentaries this film doesn’t just turn on the camera and then proceed to let things happen at a sometimes slow and boring pace. Instead it relies on a great use of editing done at the time by an unknown Martin Scorsese, which helps give the film a very polished and dramatic narrative. The dual screen setting allows the viewer to see two things at once and you are given a full view of the occasion as you watch not only the beginning as they construct the stage, but also the massive clean-up of all the debris left afterwards.

The music acts are captured perfectly as director Michael Wadleigh’s use of the camera nicely compliments the energy on stage with a variety of angles and quick cuts. In some ways you feel more connected with the music by watching it here than having been there in person as you are made to feel like you are right next to the performer as they are playing. One of the best moments is Richie Haven’s opening act where you see the broken strings on his guitar, the sweet glistening off his nose and saturating his back as well as a close-up of his mouth where he appears to have no teeth on his upper jaw. Janis Joplin who was known to have an incredible onstage energy is also memorable and is part of the added 45-minutes of the director’s cut. Country Joe Mcdonald is also memorable with his now famous ‘fuck cheer’ and ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag’, which comes complete with lyrics on the screen and a little bouncing ball.

The film also features different elements than what you would find in most other concert movies including one segment that looks at the cleaning of the many port-o-potties as well as a long drawn out rain storm in which many of the concert goers’ end up sliding through the mud. There is another segment looking at the skinny dippers as well as all the naked children in attendance.

There are some good interviews spliced in although I wished there had been a few more. Some of the more interesting ones include those with the townspeople who despite reports to the contrary where actually excited about the event and supported ‘the kids’at least the ones seen here. I also liked hearing from the attendees as they lined up to take turns at calling their parents on pay phones. The only interview that I didn’t care for was of a young man who used the phrase ‘you know’ so numerously that it really got on my nerves.

The movie is quite long with the director’s cut being almost 4 hours in length and not all of the music acts shown including some of the better ones. However, the film is still quite electrifying and doesn’t end up seeming as long as it is. It is also so amazingly vivid that it gives you the feeling like you were there and something that only happened yesterday instead of forty-five years ago.

Angeliki Coconi's Unsung Films  also seen here:  Unsung Films [Angeliki Coconi]

When Max Yasgur, the farm owner who provided Michael Lang and his crew with the necessary space for the legendary music festival to take place, stood in front of roughly 500,000 people and bravely addressed them, he pretty much expressed everything that Woodstock was about, and everything that the film made during those three days, still stands for: “This is the largest group of people ever assembled in one place, and I think you people have proven something to the world: that a half a million kids can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music. And I God bless you for it!”

A documentary on the Woodstock Festival that took place in August 1969 at Bethel, New York, Woodstock is directed by Michael Wadleigh and was released in March 1970. Edited by a group of filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, the documentary is by far the most entertaining and well-made concert movie ever made. A huge commercial and critical success, Woodstock received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and two nominations for Best Sound and Best Editing. Selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, as a movie “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”, Woodstock gave body and history to what was until then just a state of mind.

Offering a close look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in August 1969, the documentary takes its audience from the early preparation stage to the last cleanup after it has all ended. It includes interviews of the concertgoers, the producers of the festival, and the people working behind everything, as well as an intimate look at every musical act and unexpected incidents, like the arrival of National Guard helicopters, bringing food, clothes and medical assistance for what was declared a disaster area. Aka an impromptu city of 500,000 people. Aka a weekend of music, peace and love. — Woodstock’s sub-description highly depends on the individual’s perspective.

A film about not just the music, but also the place, the time and the people, Woodstock gets up close and personal with everything. Michael Wadleigh’s camera allows everyone watching to get lost between Jimi Hendrix’s fingers, to be electrified by Joe Cocker’s voice and Pete Townsend’s guitar, as much as it allows everyone to taste what the Hog Farm is serving, check out what commodities the Port-O-San toilet facilities include, swim in the lake, slide in the mud, and, more than anything, experience how good three days with no violence, no fighting, no politics and no fear can really be. So basically unless you were there, this film is the closest you will ever get to Woodstock. And it’s pretty close.

The film doesn’t follow the actual timeline of the music festival, however, it keeps the opening and closing act the same as in real life, with Richie Havens kick-starting the three days of music, and Jimi Hendrix ending them. Apart from the two, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Canned Heat, Joan Baez, The Who, Sha-Na-Na, Joe Cocker, Country Joe and the Fish, Arlo Guthrie, Ten Years After, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, and Janis Joplin offer outstanding performances, and Michael Wadleigh’s crew does an amazing job recording them. If I have to find something negative about this flawless piece of work, the only thing I could ever come up with — and this is after I recently watched the editor’s cut, or else I would have never even known — is the fact that the Creedence Clearwater Revival performance was omitted during the final editing of the film. A bit of a shame, since John Fogerty’s act was exceptional and definitely worth a place in the film.

Woodstock is three and a half hours long, but it never allows you to look anywhere else. And even when your hippy, rebellious self starts getting a little tired, or when your rock ‘n’ roll nature desperately wants Joan Baez to say that “Amen” and walk off stage, you are still kept hooked. Because the order in which everything has been put into the film is perfect. The second the documentary feels like it’s risking losing a bit of its viewer’s focus, it does something big and brings him back in. To the extent that you keep thinking “after this I’ll get some cookies from the cupboard”, but the cookie never comes in the end. And just as you finally think it’s time, and you half get up to get yourself a snack, Country Joe McDonald puts you back in your place: “Listen people, I don’t know how you expect to ever stop the war if you can’t sing any better than that… There’s about 300,000 of you fuckers out there… I want you to start singing.”

Without forcing his material, Michael Wadleigh is a part of everything that is happening around him, and his movie succeeds in staying objective, presenting the musicians, the festival attendants, the festival’s producer and his crew, Bethel’s residents, and the people working to keep everyone in Woodstock fed and safe. However, at the same time, the film is not at all neutral. Although clearly on the kids’ side, Woodstock still manages to not get in the way between the viewer and the view. The best documentary ever made in America, a beautiful, colourful, moving, and, ultimately flawless movie from every perspective, Woodstock is a constant reminder of the fact that we have it in us to be great…

The Way It Was | Movie Review | Chicago Reader  August 11, 1984

 

The House Next Door [Jason Bellamy & Ed Howard]  a conversation about the film

 

Edward Copeland on FIlm

 

Woodstock Nation - The Atlantic  James Parker, September 2009

 

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Woodstock - John Kenneth Muir's Reflections ... 

 

“Woodstock”  Bill Wyman from Salon, October 26, 2000

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]

 

Reviewing Ebert's 'Greatest Films': Woodstock (1970)  Jaime Lopez from ScreenCrave

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | DVD review: Woodstock (1970)  September 2002, Region 2

 

Film @ The Digital Fix - Woodstock: Three Days Of Peace & Music   Raphael Pour-Hashimi, Region 2

 

DVD Savant Review: Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music 40th ...  Glenn Erickson, 40th Anniversary Director’s Cut

 

DVD Talk [Phil Bacharach]  40th Anniversary Director’s Cut

 

Home Theater Info DVD Review  Douglas MacLean, 40th Anniversary Director’s Cut 

 

Film Intuition: 40th Anniv. Dir's Cut DVD Review [Jen Johans]  40th Anniversary Director’s Cut 

 

DVD Verdict- 40th Anniversary Edition [Victor Valdivia]  40th Anniversary Director’s Cut

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]  40th Anniversary Director’s Cut

 

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music - The Director's Cut Michael ...  Michael Edwards from Exclaim, 40th Anniversary Director’s Cut

 

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music Blu-ray: Ultimate Collector's ...  Kenneth Brown from Blu-Ray.com, 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

 

Big Picture Big Sound - Blu-ray Review [Chris Chiarella]  Blu-Ray 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

 

Blu-ray Reviews - Woodstock & Revolutionary Road - The Digital Bits  Matt Rowe, Blu-Ray 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

 

Woodstock: Director's Cut - Ultimate Collector's Edition Review  Lex Walker from Just Press Play, Blu-Ray 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

 

Home Theater Info DVD [Douglas MacLean]  Blu-Ray 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

 

High-Def Digest [Jeff Shannon]  Blu-Ray 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

 

Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music Blu-ray: 40th Anniversary ...  Kenneth Brown from Blu-Ray.com, 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition Revisited

 

DVDizzy.com - 40th Anniversary Revisited 2014 Blu-ray  Luke Bonanno, Blu-Ray 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition Revisited

 

Big Picture Big Sound - Blu-ray [Rachel Cericola]  Blu-Ray 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition Revisited

 

DVD Verdict - 40th Anniversary Revisited (Blu-ray) [Clark Douglas]  Blu-Ray 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition Revisited

 

Sonic Cinema [Brian Skutle]

 

Two Guys in the Dark [Ken Burke]

 

The Man Who Wrote Too Much [Lee Teasdale]

 

Daily Film Dose [Alan Bacchus]

 

The Spinning Image [Graeme Clark]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

'Woodstock' (1970) | 40 Greatest Rock Documentaries | Rolling Stone  listed at #9

 

TV Guide

 

Review: 'Woodstock' - Variety

 

Time Out

 

examiner.com [Christopher Granger]

 

DVD Review "Woodstock: Ultimate Collector's Edition"  Jen Chaney from The Washington Post

 

Review: Woodstock ... 3 Days of Peace & Music - Screens - The Austin ...  Eli Kooris from The Austin Chronicle

 

DVD Review: Release 'revisits' Woodstock's 40th anniversary - LA Times  Andy Klein, August 15, 2014

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]  May 3, 1970

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]  March 26, 1995

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]  May 22, 2005

 

New York Times

 

Woodstock (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Wagner, Andrew
 
STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING                    A-                    93

USA  (111 mi)  2007

 

A surprisingly good movie, small and intimate, under-budgeted, shot in just 18 days, allowing the actors plenty of freedom of expression, exploring the rarely seen New York City literary world through a few of its contributors, an aging novelist Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella), and a young grad student Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose) who chooses him as the subject of her Master’s thesis, hoping her interest may resuscitate his career, as he’s been deemed old school, no longer in fashion, his books long out of print.  Schiller hasn’t published in ten years, but he’s been dutifully working on his 5th novel, where he shuts himself off in his room and sits at his typewriter free from any outside interruptions.  Heather is a whirlwind of interest that disrupts the very core of his being, a graduate from Brown University who is bubbling over at the opportunity to work with him.  Their personalities couldn’t be more opposite, as he’s quiet, precise, subdued, and pretty much closed off from the outside world, while Heather is drop dead gorgeous, smart, aggressive, and a bit manipulative, though she covers it with incredible personal appeal, yet she’s so beguiling that it would be near impossible for any man to resist.  Schiller resists with every fiber in his body, suspecting she will only detract from his work, which is all he cares about.  Having never recovered from the impact of his wife’s death years ago, also recently recovered from a heart attack, he suspects he needs to manage his time and energy wisely.  She becomes the temptress in his life, openly seducing him in an attempt to get him to open up about his personal life, hoping this will be a window into his work.  But his life is extremely guarded, and while he acknowledges all writers use autobiographical material, he suspects that is not the secret to understanding his own work. 

 

Schiller has a grown daughter who is nearing 40, the always energized Ariel (Lili Taylor), a former dancer who now utilizes her talents as a fitness instructor, who is something of a disappointment to her father, as he’s always felt her life was adrift.  But she looks in on him regularly, makes him warm soup, and loves him dearly, so she’s suspicious of Heather, his newly discovered friend, who after an initial rejection has been making herself comfortable in his apartment.  There’s at least a 40-year age difference between them, but Heather is an ambitious go getter, a girl who lets nothing stand in her way, least of all him.   Ariel on the other hand, is pursuing the idea of having a baby, with or without a man, believing it’s now or never to start a family.  After falling away from one possible boyfriend, she pursues one of the lost loves of her life, Casey (Adrian Lester), and black radical writer who’s interested in restarting a leftist political magazine, but who’s adamant about no more children in his life.  Her breakup with him years ago was extremely painful, where she lost a child, so her father can’t bear the two seeing each other again, even if it offers her a temporary happiness. 

 

If all of this is starting to sound like a novel, it is – based on the novel by Brian Morton, adapted by the director and Fred Parnes, so the film exquisitely explores the deeper sides of the relationships, where Langella and Ambrose couldn’t be more fascinating, each in quite different ways, yet their onscreen chemistry is unmistakable, as is the unbridled bundle of joy that Lili Taylor represents, as her relationship with Lester provides insight into her father in ways Heather could never suspect.  It’s a strange film that lures us into this literary world with surprising sensitivity and taste, offering intelligence as a means to guide us through, where Heather gets into a spirited debate about Schiller with a Village Voice-like magazine editor, Jessica Hecht, pulling Schiller himself into the argument at one point, but he despises advertisement driven literary works, claiming they lack seriousness and depth.  This is a brilliant comment on our times, as we compartmentalize everything we do to such an extent that reading novels is no longer a serious part of our lives anymore, replaced by speed-reading through magazines and journals and newspapers, rapidly exploring the Internet, but rarely taking on profound literature.  The difference in character between Heather and Schiller could easily be defined by this single fact, as Schiller is devoted to the old style typewriter approach to writing while Heather on her laptop is looking for a quick sum up of his career that may generate a sales boost for his largely forgotten works, thinking this financial breakthrough is a way of defining his worth. 

 

Heather’s intentions couldn’t be more admirable, and she offers genuine affection, but the difference in perspective coming from their life experiences is startling.  The film spends plenty of time unraveling bits and pieces of Schiller’s past, while Heather’s life remains a complete mystery.  And therein lies the real problem with the film, amazingly enough with the writing.  The acting all around is simply superb, the look and pacing of the film is near perfect, the musical score tastefully restrained, but the writing in the end disappoints, especially the way the story treats Heather, who is a burst of light and a luminous force throughout the film.  Take her away and its scary how dark and empty the film feels without her.  Perhaps that’s the point, as we’re finally into Schiller’s real world that is filled with all the empty spaces that surround a blank page, but it’s dramatically absent the core feeling that makes this such a tender and brilliantly observed film.  In the end, it’s like watching a Broadway show in the dark, with people going through the motions, but we can barely make them out.    

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

A pretty, bright graduate student, Heather (Lauren Ambrose, from "Six Feet Under"), with an impossibly silky curtain of red hair, decides to do her thesis on a brilliant, but out of print author, Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella). They meet for a series of interviews, and they grow closer, she attracted to his genius and stature, and he to her beauty and intelligence. (Their fling his handled delicately and tastefully.) Written by Andrew Wagner (The Talent Given Us) and Fred Parnes, based on Brian Morton's novel, the film begins a little too much like a Woody Allen film, talky and overwritten, but it soon finds its groove. Langella has received much praise for his performance as the stiff, guarded, restrained author, and though I agree that Langella is a magnetic performer, I'm not sure he completely pulled this off; it's difficult to convey stiffness without giving a stiff performance. Regardless, Ambrose is the one who makes the relationship work; her connection and reaction to him finds the holes in the character and patches them (it reminded me of Tom Cruise's ignored performance, enhancing Dustin Hoffman's award-winning one, in Rain Man). But the real reason the film works is the subplot: Leonard's daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor), nearing forty, wishes to have a child. She re-connects with her true love, Casey (Adrian Lester), who absolutely refuses. Their stalemate is often more interesting than the main plot, and it provides an interesting counter-balance between couples. It asks: what do we want from this other person? The answer may not be here, but there's still plenty for smart audiences to savor.

Screen International   Brent Simon

A superb performance by Frank Langella anchors the exceedingly literate, engrossing Starting Out In The Evening, a richly drawn and for the most part artfully understated portrait of an aged novelist struggling with the flickering flame of creativity's muse. Mainstream breakout potential is highly unlikely given the film's serene rhythms and preference for debate over action, but distributor Roadside Attractions should reap solid arthouse returns courtesy of reliable critical praise and dependable word-of-mouth.

While not making a marked difference in terms of box office, certainly Langella's recent Tony Award-winning turn in Frost/Nixon, and just-wrapped reprisal in Ron Howard's forthcoming film adaptation, could have a positive impact on profile and awards consideration. Though positioned later in the calendar, Starting Out in the Evening could, like Ryan Gosling's Half Nelson last year, attract exactly the right sort of attention courtesy of the nuance of its lead performance.

Leonard Schiller (Langella) is a once-famous New York writer now given to small, pedestrian rituals — the standard analogue man in an increasingly digital world. His books long out-of-print, Leonard doesn't take a freelance gig writing advertising copy because he deems it an objectionable compromise; he instead pecks away at a novel he's been working on for more than a decade, and enjoys get-togethers with his adult daughter Ariel (Taylor).

Despite having suffered a heart attack the previous year, Leonard still doesn't have much use for self-reflection until Heather Wolfe (Ambrose), an ambitious grad student defined by an obscure hunger for self-definition, enters his life. Leonard's early novels had an electrifying impact on Heather, and she now wants to use her thesis project to spur a rediscovery of his work.

At once shaken and emboldened by their challenging interview sessions, Leonard's staid, respectful tolerance for Heather slowly melts into consideration. An indefinable and precarious intimacy develops between them, but the stars in Heather's eyes dim when she slowly comes to the conclusion that Leonard is too closed-off from certain unacknowledged traumas of his past to ever again write a truly great book. This cooling coincides, meanwhile, with an unexpected turn in Ariel's life when she rekindles a relationship with ex-boyfriend Casey (Lester), a matter that greatly worries Leonard given their differing priorities (she wants kids, Casey avowedly doesn't) in life.

Langella is well known for his stage portrayals of larger-than-life characters — including Dracula and Sherlock Holmes, among others — but his perfectly modulated performance here is one of managed disappointment. Leonard is an emotionally imploded man, able, in his great intellect, to parse and justify his self-interested behaviors. In his stillness and the consistency of his proper actions (both in movement and diction), Langella captures the character's regret in evocative fashion before the story even spells out the particulars.

Adapted by Fred Parnes and director Wagner from Brian Morton's novel of the same name, Starting Out In The Evening is characterized by a great and involving sense of character detail. The movie grapples in an intellectually honest fashion with notions of aging, responsibility and reinvention, and how they intersect with creative fire. Through it all, Wagner (2005 Sundance entry The Talent Given Us) trades in an unfussy style that keeps the focus firmly on his characters.

The one knock on Starting Out In The Evening is that it has such a strong sense of Leonard that Heather is a bit recklessly sketched. While intelligently written — she's certainly no bubbled-headed ditz — the manner in which she, and the movie, eventually address the inevitable elephant in the room, the potential of romantic connection, rings false. Heather's occasional lack of awareness at how others perceive her actions also seems implausible, and after a while, her pluck becomes a bit irksome.

Technical standards are fairly polished and of a piece with the material, if understandably strictly defined, given bankroller InDigEnt's typical production parameters of small budgets, 18-day shoots and available locations. Production designer Carol Strober elicits a warm, believably lived-in feel for academician Leonard's nest, and Adam Gorgoni's discreet score never conjures up explicit emotional signposts.

The Village Voice [Ella Taylor]

In Starting Out in the Evening, a new film by Andrew Wagner, a pneumatic graduate student spreads honey over the face of the elderly New York novelist she's trying to seduce. Later, the two will lie down on his bed with their hands by their sides, and later still, he will slap her face, lightly but definitively. If you've seen Wagner's sly family comedy The Talent Given Us, you'll know that he's very skilled at goofy moments like this. But in Starting Out, the snapshots are uncharacteristic and sparely used, punctuating the quieter but more telling gestures in this novelistic film. Faithful in style and spirit to the award-winning novel by Brian Morton, which Wagner adapted with Fred Parnes, this wise, observant, and exquisitely tacit chamber piece complicates every May-December, academic-novel cliché in the book.

A mutually dependent relationship unfolds between Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella), an old-school writer of the Bellow-Roth-Howe generation of realists, and Heather (Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose), the eager-beaver Brown University grad who worms her way into Leonard's life and tries to persuade him that her forthcoming master's thesis on his work will put a new shine on the old man's dusty reputation.

When Heather, a thief in more ways than one, bursts in on Leonard's cramped, poorly lit Manhattan apartment with her long red hair and chipmunk cheeks, the long-widowed writer is putting the finishing touches to a manuscript 10 years in the making that no hip publisher will even look at. Langella is superb, at once held-in and intensely physical in his rendition of this proudly anachronistic man, a shell imprisoned in his impressive bulk and formal suit, with only the slightly hunted look in his otherwise blank eyes revealing a fear that his day may be done.

Starting Out in the Evening is about people who are just ticking over, not just Leonard but his devoted, equally becalmed daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor), whom he loves but distractedly holds at arm's length. A former dancer and Pilates instructor whose biological clock keeps murmuring "pushing 40," Ariel is girlish and eager to please in the awkward way of women who have fallen behind in the business of finding an adult identity to grow into. (She tiptoes in and out of her dad's apartment bearing soup.) Her lack of self-definition also makes her both a victim and an exploiter of poorly chosen men, notably a similarly under-evolved former boyfriend (Adrian Lester) whose re-entry into Ariel's life earns the reflexive disapproval of her father, even as he succumbs to the blandishments of a woman less than half his age.

Like Heather, Wagner went to Brown, and his grasp of the clash between old and new academe is witty and quietly assured. But if there's little question about whose side he and Morton are on, neither world gets off lightly, or without sympathy. Callow, ambitious, and raring to connect the dots between what she thinks she knows about Leonard's life and his art (the movie takes a discreet swipe at dirt-driven magazine writing in the form of a canny Village Voice editor nicely underplayed by Jessica Hecht), Heather is a parasite. But she's a useful one, for Leonard, with his fastidious—and, did he but know it, terrified—withdrawal from the world, is the embodiment of snooty ivory-tower detachment. Heather may not know as much as she thinks about Leonard's life, but she galvanizes him, albeit with a high cost to them both.

If Starting Out is a movie about how little we know and how much we presume, it is also about transformation, about heartbreak and halting renewal. There's no vulgar equivalence between Leonard and Heather, and when it comes down to it, Starting Out in the Evening comes down squarely on the side of the old-fashioned literary life. Yet if Leonard may be kept going (and kept out of print) by "the madness of art," he can't proceed without the painful recognition that, as he ruefully puts it, his characters haven't been doing anything interesting. He's always known that the unexamined life is not worth living. Heather may be an intellectual and emotional thief, but she has forcefully awakened Leonard to the fact that the unlived life may not be worth examining.

Salon.com [Stephanie Zacharek]

Every reader knows that the delicate emotional textures of a good book are the hardest things to re-create on film. Some filmmakers seem to know it, too: In adapting Brian Morton's sturdily exquisite 1998 novel, "Starting Out in the Evening," Andrew Wagner (who directed the 2004 feature "The Talent Given Us") may not get every nuance of the book exactly right. But it's rare to see a movie adaptation in which a filmmaker has taken so much care in translating the odd little qualities that make a particular novel special, to preserve the complex and fragile threads of feeling between characters that are often much easier to grasp on the page. "Starting Out in the Evening" is a small picture -- it was shot on location in New York City, in high-definition video, in 18 days -- but it's from a filmmaker who's used his brains to make up for any monetary resources he might have lacked. The picture feels both intimate and immediate, a model for what smart young filmmakers can do with good material.

Frank Langella plays Leonard Schiller, a novelist in his 70s who has achieved moderate acclaim during the course of his career but whose books have drifted out of print. He's been working on his fifth novel for 10 years -- and this is real, old-fashioned work we're talking about, not coffee-shop laptop noodling. Leonard dresses for work, in jacket and tie, and sits down at the typewriter in his study for a specified number of hours each day. He's the kind of old-style writer, in the mold of Saul Bellow and (in his dedication to toil, at least) Norman Mailer, that was already becoming a dying breed when Morton's novel was published. Today -- particularly after the death of Mailer -- these men are even scarcer on the landscape, which gives the story a sharper edge of poignancy.

Leonard's life is changed when an ambitious 20-something graduate student named Heather (Lauren Ambrose) approaches him: She wants his work to be the subject of her thesis. (One of the loveliest qualities of the story is the way it asserts that a life can be changed even when a person has reached his 70s.) Heather wants his approval and his participation (and possibly more), and she's convinced her research will spark a rediscovery of his work. Leonard demurs, but he finds the attentions of this attractive, intelligent young woman difficult to resist. Leonard's daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor), a former dancer who's nearing 40 and longing for a child -- she's on the brink of renewing a relationship with an old flame, played by the wonderful Adrian Lester, who doesn't share her desire for children -- is puzzled by the unusual bond that has begun to form between Heather and her father, but she resists passing judgment on it. Still, her own relationship with Leonard has always been complicated and a little prickly: Her mother, Leonard's wife, has been dead for some 20 years. Although Leonard clearly loves his daughter, over the years he's poured more emotional energy into his work than he has into his relationship with her, for reasons that are purely human: Words are so much easier to manage than people are.

Wagner -- who wrote the screenplay with Fred Parnes -- sees that this is a story with no villains, although the threat of emotional treachery is always vibrating in the margins. His actors are all beautifully in tune with the material and with one another. Ambrose gives a very fine and terrifying performance: Even though there's an inviting roundness about her, her dark, glittery eyes suggest a calculating hardness. When Leonard takes her to a party filled with literary stars, she immediately dashes from his side to make a beeline for a powerful editor (played by Jessica Hecht), boldly ingratiating herself in a clear bid to get some work out of the woman. Even so, as Ambrose plays her, Heather isn't wholly unsympathetic -- she doesn't know how to control what she's started, simply because it's uncontrollable. She's a young person who has allowed herself to be guided by impulse and ambition rather than compassion.

Taylor also gives a wonderful performance here: Her Ariel has a breathless, open-hearted quality that makes you want to protect her, but she's not a sap -- the mistakes she makes are the normal ones any of us might make in figuring out what we want out of life and how to get it. She also carries the movie's most beautiful and most wrenching moment, one that I suspect will resonate with any adult who has ever lost, or faced the possible loss of, a parent.

Langella carries the weight of Leonard's mistakes, achievements and missed opportunities on his tweedy shoulders. This is a lovely, fine-grained performance, the sort of role an aging actor is lucky to get, but also one that demands a great deal of surefootedness and sensitivity. Early in the picture he stares at his new young friend with wide, unblinking eyes, as if she were a creature from Greek mythology sent to the here-and-now to confound and test him. Later, as he warms toward her, his cautious openness is heartwrenching. For years now, white male writers -- the old-style kind, like Leonard -- have been out of fashion. These are the kinds of guys we're never supposed to identify with, as punishment for the fact that their view of the world was once treated as supreme. "Starting Out in the Evening" suggests, among other things, that once these writers have disappeared, we'll have lost more than we know. Someday their books will be in style again. Until then, there's no law against feeling something for them. Understanding the human heart is an equal-opportunity affair, and old -- or even dead -- white guys have often done it as well as anybody else.

Complicated Characters [STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING ...  Jonathan Rosenbaum from the Chicago Reader, December 13, 2007

 

PopMatters [Cynthia Fuchs]

 

Movie Shark Deblore [debbie lynn elias]

 

indieWire.com [Anthony Kaufman]

 

James Berardinelli's ReelViews

 

Variety.com [Scott Foundas]

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

 

CompuServe [Harvey Karten]

 

Film-Forward.com  Yana Litovsky

 

Filmcritic.com Movie Reviews  Blake French

 

Cinema Signals (Jules Brenner)

 

Newsweek (David Ansen)

 

New York Magazine (David Edelstein)

 

Cinemattraction.com [Charley McLean]

 

Lessons of Darkness [Nick Schager]

 

Between Productions [Robert Cashill]

 

Film Journal International (Doris Toumarkine)

 

Slant Magazine [Jason Clark]   one of the more misguided reviews out there

 

Los Angeles Times [Kenneth Turan]

 

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  A.O. Scott

 

Waititi, Taika

 

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE                    B                     88

New Zealand  (101 mi)  2016  ‘Scope                Official site

 

The first New Zealand film to gross more than $1 million dollars on its opening weekend at the New Zealand box office, this is pure family entertainment, channeling the quirky, character-driven escapades of Wes Anderson, specifically 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #3 Moonrise Kingdom, creating a heartwarming story about a lost child, who’s only lost to the people seen in the story, as he’s center stage throughout the film where the audience knows where he is at all times.  Thriving on the outgoing, multi-faceted personality of a charming, overweight 13-year old child actor Julian Dennison playing a displaced Maori kid named Ricky Baker, described as “a real bad egg,” a comical misfit who’s been kicked around the block a few times, moving from group homes and foster families, but eventually running away or getting kicked out of every single placement after committing a series of seemingly neverending offenses so that now there’s no one left who wants him anymore except Aunty Bella (Rima Te Wiata), a rugged farmwife living out in the sticks with her cantankerous husband Hec (Sam Neill), both as wildly eccentric as Ricky himself.  The satiric tone of the film is set when the police arrive to a home in the middle of nowhere delivering this wayward kid to their door, where Paula (Rachel House), the child welfare services representative, hands him off to his new family like he’s damaged goods, claiming this is his last and final chance, as the welfare system itself is sick and tired of him, believing he might be better off in jail, but as he’s still a kid, they’re obligated to at least try to offer him some semblance of a better life.  After reading him the riot act, followed by a hilarious list of all his petty offenses, each one comically visualized, they depart, almost certain they’ll be back in a week to recollect him once again.  Ricky receives plenty of hugs and encouraging words from Aunty Bella welcoming him to the family while Uncle Hec and his dog Zag ignore him completely, hanging out in the barn instead hoping they never run into each other, as he’s obviously not too keen on the idea.  Nonetheless Bella stuffs him full of pancakes and pies and sausages and just about anything else he can eat as a sign of endearment, but this doesn’t stop him from making a break for it in the middle of the night, wandering into the vast unknown where Bella finds him in the morning not 200 yards from the house offering him some breakfast.

 

Told with amusing chapter headings, what’s apparent from the outstanding opening aerial shot whizzing just over the tops of the verdant mountains and vast extended wilderness of New Zealand is the natural beauty of the landscape, something put to good use in this film, as this is a home on such distant outskirts from civilization that there isn’t a single neighbor to be seen anywhere, where they’re really out on their own.  Perhaps the finest expression of the warmth and zaniness of his new home is the birthday song sung by Bella, Ricky baker birthday song full from the hunt for the wilderpeople YouTube (59 seconds), exhibiting lunacy and mad delight all at once, where Ricky is entranced while Hec can hardly believe his ears.  His birthday gift is a giant pit bull mix dog that he immediately names Tupac, so it comes as a huge surprise that shortly afterwards Bella dies unexpectedly, completely altering the balance of the universe for Ricky, as child services announces they’ll be out shortly to collect him, but not before the funeral services are held in a near empty church with the director serving as the minister, offering some puzzling and strangely ambiguous metaphors for the next stage in their lives which doesn’t really help them at all, but perhaps confuses things instead.  Weary of having to return to another institution, Ricky fakes his own death and runs away into the bush with his dog, accompanied by the jazzy music of Nina Simone, NINA SIMONE - Sinnerman (1965) [Video Clip] - YouTube (5:27), discovered shortly afterwards by Uncle Hec and his dog, combining forces while learning to survive in the wilderness, something Hec knows all too well, as its second nature to him.  Strangely, this is an inverse of WALKABOUT (1971), where here it’s the knowledge of a grizzly old white guy leading an urbanized young Maori child through the bush, where Ricky thinks it’s totally gangster to be avoiding the law, but he’s more of a pain in the ass to Hec than even he can imagine.  Nonetheless, in his own goofy way, he retains his comical sensibility throughout while Hec remains grumpy, dour, and ever stoic, barely able to tolerate a youngster that has no interest in listening or learning from him.  The two couldn’t be less alike, which becomes even more apparent when Hec stumbles on a rock and sprains an ankle, probably needing weeks to recover.  Channeling John Rambo in FIRST BLOOD (1982), Ricky goes into full survivor mode, Hunt for the Wilderpeople Movie CLIP - Hunting for Food (2016) - Sam Neill, Julian Dennison YouTube (55 seconds), mostly failing miserably in his efforts while Hec is a natural born wilderness man.

 

While Ricky goes missing, rumors abound with social advocates suggesting the grieving uncle has kidnapped the kid and gone mad in the wild, Hunt for the Wilderpeople Movie CLIP - Famous (2016) - Sam Neill, Rhys Darby Comedy HD YouTube (53 seconds), where a search party is dispatched that more closely resembles an exaggerated SWAT team, complete with riot gear, automatic weapons and bullet-proof attire, where Paula is leading the charge, megaphone in hand barking out instructions, where she has to be reminded that she’s not even a cop.  This does not deter her from appearing in front of TV cameras and announcing that “No child is left behind,” as if he’s been left and abandoned in a war zone.  The nation remains riveted to this developing manhunt, where Hec is being labelled a pervert with lascivious motives, becoming public enemy number one while behind the scenes, unbeknownst to anyone, he’s really more of the savior and guiding light.  The contrast between the two separate worlds is well drawn, where the intimacy in the wilderness, despite their initial suspicions and reservations, is actually a developing friendship, as Hec is actually saving Ricky from the forces of doom that intend to ruin his life, developing an “us against them” mentality, beautifully rendered in one of the most eloquent sequences in the film, a winter scene in the thick of the forest where they continually hide from the pursuing soldiers set to the music of Leonard Cohen, “The Song of the Partisan,” La Résistance/the partisan-Leonard Cohen - YouTube (3:34).  This is exquisite filmmaking, reminiscent of the barren harshness in the Scandinavian film King of Devil's Island (Kongen av Bastøy) (2010) featuring a similar prison break in the snow, adding a surprising degree of complexity and depth to what is ostensibly a children’s story.  While much of this turns out to be a chase film, continually pursued by the authorities, where arch rivals Ricky and Paula come close enough at one point separated by a ravine to exchange trash talk:    

 

Ricky Baker: I’ll never stop running! 

Paula: Yeah, and I'll never stop chasing you – I’m relentless, I’m like the Terminator. 

Ricky Baker: I’m more like the Terminator than you! 

Paula: I said it first, you’re more like Sarah Connor, and in the first movie too, before she could do chinups.

 

Adapted by the director from Barry Crump’s short comic novel Wild Pork And Watercress (1986), this zany mood is sustained throughout the film, mixing in strange social references and a collection of oddball characters to this already mismatched couple, becoming a coming-of-age, buddy movie where braving the elements becomes a battle of self-sufficiency, growing up and learning to trust oneself, where fantasy and humor are interspersed with expressive language and moments of tenderness, all part of the learning experience Ricky so reluctantly embarked upon in the first place.  Despite the obstacles, and the director throws plenty at them, the outlaw pair on the run cunningly displays a healthy degree of wit and charm, including a brief diversion into a Maori family that accepts Ricky without question, as he’s become a folk hero as a slippery fugitive on the lam with his photos plastered all over TV, seen taking selfies eventually posted on the Internet, where the missing kid becomes something of a rock star.  This has all the makings of a delightful children’s movie that’s just clever enough to be suitable for adults as well. 

 

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE  Ken Rudolph

At the start of this comic fable, Ricky is a rowdy sub-teener, a ward of the state who has failed in previous foster homes. Sulking, he's brought to a new home by a tyrannical social worker. His new foster mom Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and her lay-about husband Hector (a crusty Sam Neill), are so nurturing that Ricky starts to come around when Bella suddenly dies and Ricky and Hector are forced by circumstances to head into the New Zealand bush to avoid Ricky's being sent off to a borstal institution. That is the set-up for a totally unlikely story of two weirdly mismatched fugitives evading capture in the wilds. There is genuine humor in the script, and the director has a real feel for the characters and the setting (Ricky was played by roly-poly young actor Julian Dennison who delivers a classic smart-aleck performance of wit beyond his age.) But ultimately as much as I enjoyed the journey, I had trouble believing in any of the story.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople :: Movies :: Reviews :: Paste  Kenji Fujishima

Bella’s (Rima Te Wiata) first encounter with Ricky (Julian Dennison), the new foster child she’s agreed to take on, doesn’t inspire confidence, especially with her clumsy jokes at the expense of his weight. In turn, with child-services representative Paula (Rachel House) painting Ricky as an unruly wild child, one dreads the prospect of seeing the kid walk all over this possibly in-over-her-head mother. Not too long afterward, though—the morning after Ricky unsuccessfully tries to run away from his new home—Bella proves to be much smarter than she initially seemed: Instead of castigating him, she wears him down with kindness, beckoning him to at least come back home for breakfast before he tries to run away again. By the same token, Ricky ends up less of a tough cookie than he—with his fondness for gangsta rap and all that implies—initially tried to project, quickly showing his warmer, truer colors.

An adaptation of Barry Crump’s novel Wild Pork and Watercress, Taika Waititi’s new Hunt for the Wilderpeople thrives on upending such preconceived notions. Once Ricky and Hector, or Hec (Sam Neill)—the latter an older bushman Bella cares for before she suddenly dies—go on the run in the wilds of New Zealand after child protective services seeks to return Ricky to a care home following Bella’s passing, Paula reveals herself as more of a fanatical zealot than she let on in that first scene (“no child left behind” is her frequent motto, which she utters in the film with seemingly unthinking reflexivity). Considering TK (Troy Kingi)—the father of Kahu (Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne), the young Maori girl Ricky meets as he tries to get help for a sick sheriff he and Hec encounter in a cabin—one initially expects him to capture Ricky himself. Instead, he’s star-struck meeting Ricky (newly anointed folk hero for being a widely sought-after fugitive) and proceeds to take selfies with him.

As for the film itself, though Waititi includes aspects that play like genre parody—a montage scored to Leonard Cohen’s interpretation of the “Song of the French Partisan” unexpectedly recalling McCabe & Mrs. Miller; a Mad Max-like chase climax; Lukasz Buda, Samuel Scott and Conrad Wedde’s 1980s-style synthesizer-laden score—Hunt for the Wilderpeople is ultimately disarming in its innocent sincerity.

Innocence in this case, however, doesn’t equal lack of wisdom. The central relationship between Ricky and Hec is a collision course between wide-eyed naïveté and bitter experience, both gradually drawing strength from each other in different ways. This is especially the case with Ricky, who is so enamored with gangsta rap that he names the dog Bella gets him “Tupac” and generally reacts with awe whenever Hec does something he considers badass. Even though Ricky eventually understands the limits of the on-the-lam lifestyle he romanticizes, Hec loosens up on his curmudgeonly ways the more he learns about Ricky—especially the younger lad’s difficult upbringing. In many ways, Ricky’s desire to settle down resembles his own.

To some extent, Waititi shows more sympathy for Ricky’s innocence, which is reflected in the film’s grand-adventure style. Cinematographer Lachlan Milne’s sweeping, colorful panoramas and a chapter-based narrative structure gives Hunt for the Wilderpeople the feel of a storybook fable, but thanks to the warm-hearted dynamic between Ricky and Hec, even the film’s most whimsical moments carry a sense of real underlying pain: Both of these characters are outsiders ultimately looking for a home to call their own. Their adventure across the bush doubles, then, as a metaphorical journey toward normalcy in their deeply abnormal lives. By the end, though both characters have found a measure of that normalcy for themselves, there’s a strong sense their real home is out in the open of the New Zealand bush, in each other’s company, armed with a renewed sense of openness to life’s possibilities.

Deep Focus: Hunt for the Wilderpeople - Film Comment  Michael Sragow, June 23, 2016

Familiarity breeds affection between an out-of-control 13-year-old Maori boy and a crusty old white bush hand—and between the movie and the audience—in Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a rambunctious, beguiling comedy adventure about fugitives on the run in the New Zealand wilderness. Julian Dennison as Ricky Baker, the roly-poly problem child from foster care, and Sam Neill as Hec Faulkner, the illiterate loner with tip-top survival skills, generate a rare prickly warmth. As their director deftly navigates every step on the dramatic spectrum from farce to tragedy, Dennison and Neill cannily convey the mutual appreciation of characters who don’t how to please or even understand each other.

Waititi, as director and writer (he adapted Barry Crump’s novel Wild Pork and Watercress), maintains his story’s zip by keeping his two leads off-balance. In an offhand manner typical of their haywire relationship, Hec tells Ricky that the farm dog’s name is Zag—and the boy suggests that Hec get another dog and call it Zig. Then Ricky gets his own dog for his birthday and dubs it “Tupac.” Ricky has acquired a hip-hop vocabulary, some pop psychology, and even more pop culture while ricocheting from one foster home to the next, picking up demerits from Child Welfare for the petty thievery and vandalism he’s committed along the way. Hec is a Kiwi version of the strong silent type, clinging to an ideal of stoicism and self-sufficiency.

Early on, Hec’s wife Bella (the remarkably robust Rima Te Wiata) pierces Ricky’s hard shell with her compassion, practicality, and gusto. He loves that she provides his bed with a hot-water bottle. She lets him “run away” every night, knowing he will get as far as some steep hills nearby and be back for breakfast. Bella dominates the film’s first 20 minutes, whether she’s demonstrating how she outfitted her old sewing/guest room with toy animals and books for Ricky (the amusing mix of titles range from Animal Farm to Errol Flynn’s My Wicked, Wicked Ways) or flaunting her bloody knife as she slaughters a wild pig. All that time, Hec keeps his distance. In an unlettered man’s flash of native wit, he wonders whether Ricky is going to be a useful farm hand or merely remain “ornamental.”

When an unexpected calamity causes Child Welfare to declare that they will take Ricky back into custody (which to him means one place: “juvie”), the boy goes on the lam for nearly the rest of the movie. But Hec doesn’t abandon him. He finds Ricky and prepares to lead him out of the bush. Then they argue over whether “reading is stupid” (as Hec says) or Hec is stupid (as Ricky strongly implies). Their discussion grows so heated that Hec stops watching his step and breaks his ankle. It’s the perfect pivot for the movie, and not just because it yokes the two heroes together: it underlines the movie’s belief in literacy as the start of personal liberation and renewal. Hec mocks Ricky’s habit of concocting haikus to express emotions. (At one point, Ricky uses the au courant word “processing” to describe how he absorbs difficult experiences.) But Hec is moved when Ricky includes his name in the boy’s funky stabs at poetry. The title of the film is based on one of Ricky’s wordplays: After reading that migrating wildebeests travel a thousand miles, he reckons that he and Hec are “wilderpeople.” Near the end, we first guess how much Hec has changed when we see and hear him sounding out the words in a well-worn science fiction paperback.

Waititi’s triumph as a writer-director is to make Hec’s path to that moment play as a sprightly picaresque. The movie boasts a wry cast of supporting characters, such as the Child Welfare officer Paula (the formidable Paula House), who stalks Ricky like a comic version of Inspector Javert. She takes as her motto “No child left behind,” though no one can figure out what it means in that context. Waititi himself is hilarious as an inept minister who considers it inspirational to describe his flock as “sheep trapped in a maze designed by wolves.” With authority figures like these, why wouldn’t someone like Hec mistrust language?

As Hec and Ricky follow a route that’s almost as forbidding as The Revenant’s, they meet up with rugged and antic individuals. Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne is charming as a girl who chatters more than Ricky and sings as sweetly as a bellbird, and Rhys Darby is brilliant as “Psycho Sam,” who has lived by himself in the bush for 15 years. Darby imbues Sam with the addled, ragtag charm of mad, marooned Ben Gunn in Treasure Island. He’s wiry and electric, continually reenergizing himself with his obsessions, whether he’s adorning Hec’s and Ricky’s heads (and his own) with tin colanders to keep their brains free from infiltration or depicting the Earth outside the bush as a globe full of “form-fillers.” With good reason, Hec worries about Ricky’s detachment from reality: the boy segues effortlessly from gangsta fantasy to the illusion that he and Hec are glorious Western outlaws. Psycho Sam provides an indelible picture of what lunacy actually looks like.

What We Do in the Shadows (14), Waititi’s biggest previous hit (he co-wrote and co-directed it with Jemaine Clement, and also played a dandified vampire), won over international audiences with its verité-style lampoon of post-Dracula culture from Nosferatu to Twilight. This Mad magazine-type romp was truly “humor in a jugular vein,” mixing a slice of undead life with a parody of the perils of house-sharing. Waititi nuanced the comedy, but the visual attack of that film was simply mockumentary spiked with special effects. Waititi exploited the visual humor of fly-on-the-wall cameramen capturing antiheroes flying through the air and drinking gushers of blood.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople, though, is vastly more sophisticated. We know we’re in good hands from the opening moments, when the New Zealand greenery undulates across the screen while an otherworldly choral chant fills the soundtrack. Even Child Welfare’s Paula seems to tap her pen in counterpoint to the music. The whole movie has an eccentric rhythm because this director is confident enough to let scenes sit and breathe before accelerating his narrative with peppy deadpan montages. In one charged sequence, timed to Leonard Cohen’s “Song of the French Partisan,” Waititi unfolds the action in the cinematic equivalent of a mural. Via some optical and/or digital wizardry, the camera doesn’t stop moving from left to right as we see Hec, Ricky, and Tupac disappear into the snowy forest while bounty hunters, cops, and guardsmen trail them and Paula huffs and scowls eloquently, at different times and without a cut. It’s startling when the paths of heavily armed lawmen and Paula intersect. It’s as if time and space have merged kinetically.

Waititi mostly directs like an orchestra conductor, merging all the audiovisual elements for a smashing effect. But he displays an unerring sensitivity when Ricky stumbles on a heartbreaking discovery at the farm; the camera never moves closer than a medium shot as Ricky listens to Hec’s howl of grief.

Waititi’s handling of his actors is beyond reproach. Neill sustains a gruff timbre throughout, and the only hint we get of his James Mason-like gentleness comes near the end, when Ricky demands to call Hec uncle, and Hec thoughtfully repeats, “Uncle.” Dennison takes Ricky’s aggressiveness to the edge of irritation. Their moment of rapprochement is just right: Ricky claps Hec into a hug, and Hec abashedly pats him on the shoulder. By then, Hec has crowned the movie with his own first haiku: “Me and this fat kid / we ran, we ate and read books / and it was the best.”

Hunt for Wilderpeople Review - Den of Geek  David Crow

 

Review: Hunt For The Wilderpeople is a charming coming-of ... - HitFix  Drew McWeeny

 

Sundance Review: Taika Waititi's 'Hunt For The Wilderpeople' Starring ...  Sam Fragoso from The Playlist

 

The Verge [Chris Plante]

 

SBS Movies [Rochelle Siemienowicz]

 

Aisle Seat [Mike McGranaghan]

 

The Film Stage [Jordan Raup]

 

Film Review: Hunt for the Wilderpeople | Film Journal International  Michael Sauter

 

Cinema365 [Carlos deVillalvilla]

 

Screen Daily [Tim Grierson]

 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Chuck Bowen

 

Movie Review: Hunt for the Wilderpeople | The Young Folks  Allyson Johnson

 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople Review: Taika Waititi at Sundance - Film  Angie Han from Slash Film

 

'Hunt for the Wilderpeople' at Tribeca - Village Voice  Nick Schager

 

We Got This Covered [Matt Donato]

 

The House Next Door [Elise Nakhnikian]

 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople   Mike D’Angelo

 

Film Review: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (NZ, 2016) | The Iris  Joseph Doumit

 

Twitch Film [Ryland Aldrich]  also seen here  ScreenAnarchy [Ryland Aldrich]

 

Flickfeast [Kevin Matthews]

 

Culture Fix [Andrew McArthur]


Review: Hunt for the Wilderpeople - Movies - Monsters and Critics  Ron Wilkinson

 

Screen Comment [Nate Hood]

 

Way Too Indie [Dustin Jansick]

 

Georgia Straight [Ken Eisner]

 

Eye for Film [Amber Wilkinson]

 

PopOptiq [Lane Scarberry]

 

The Forbidden Room [Scott Clark]

 

Film-Forward.com [Paul Weissman]

 

The Hollywood Reporter [by Boyd van Hoeij]

 

Variety [by Dennis Harvey]

 

The Guardian [Nigel M Smith]

 

Irish Film Critic [James McDonald]

 

Review: Hunt for the Wilderpeople - The Adelaide Review  DM Bradley

 

Toronto Film Scene [Katie O'Connor]

 

Examiner.com [Travis Hopson]  also seen here:  Punch Drunk Critics [Travis Hopson]

 

Metro US [Matt Prigge]

 

Silly gives way to outlandish in the comic adventure 'Hunt for the ...  Ann Hornaday from The Washington Post

 

Movie review: 'Hunt for the Wilderpeople' is the one New Zealand comedy to rule them all  Rob Thomas from The Capitol Times

 

'Hunt For The Wilderpeople' movie review by Kenneth Turan - LA Times  Kenneth Turan

 

Rogerebert.com [Sheila O'Malley]

 

Roger Ebert [Nick Allen]

 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople - The New York Times  Manohla Dargis

 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
Wajda, Andrzej

 

Andrzej Wajda - Full Resource Library of Films and ... - Culture.pl  extensive biography from Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland

 

Andrzej Wajda, Towering Auteur of Polish Cinema, Dies at 90   Michael T. Kaufman from The New York Times, October 11, 2016

 

Cinema: Past and Present | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist    A speech given by Andrzej Wajda at a conference on his work at the University of Lodz in 2001, from Louis Proyect, June 23, 2017

 

MAN OF MARBLE

Poland  (165 mi)  1977

 

Time Out

A jaundiced regard for documentary practice pervades Wajda's slice of Polish history, which takes the form of an inquiry conducted by a young, aggressive film-school graduate into the fate, after reward, repudiation and rehabilitation, of a '50s Stakhanovite shock-worker, a record-breaking bricklayer. Film-as-evidence (monochrome flashbacks represent propagandist archive footage) is stripped of its authority just as inexorably as the investigative process meets an impasse at the point where preconceptions and actuality intersect. Wajda builds his own 'detection' story with complete assurance, though it's often difficult to decide whether his visual style is a parody of TV's (an ageing cameraman bemoans the constant use of hand-held shots and the wide-angle lens) or an accommodation of it.

Chicago Reader (Dave Kehr)

Andrzej Wajda appropriates the structure of Citizen Kane to mount as frank an attack on Stalinist ethics as possible in an Eastern European film in 1976. The mechanics of socialist mythology are explored as an ambitious filmmaker (Krystyna Janda, manic and bizarre) delves into the fate of a worker-hero who fell from official favor. Immortalized in a marble statue, he survives as an archetype while melting away as an individual. Wajda makes fine use of the investigative format in telling his story, but many of the incidental points are unclear, and the ending, pruned by the Polish censors, is totally unsatisfying. Late Wajda is a matter of plot, statement, and little else; his characters are merely functional, his camera style uninteresting. But the material here is compelling, for all its lack of resolution, and the film sustains interest throughout its 165-minute running time.

DVD Talk (Don Houston)

It wasn't long ago that film critics and consumers alike were scoffing at Vanguard Cinema for a lack of quality in terms of content and technical matters. The company took such criticism to heart and worked to improve both aspects at once. Since that time, they gained access to a number of excellent foreign films, most notably the back catalog for Andrzej Wadja, the Polish directing genius, and have planned their release over time. The latest such release is Man Of Marble (Cztowiek Z Marmuru). Here's what the boxcover said:

"Not only is Andrzej Wajda's award winning MAN OF MARBLE one of the most important films in the history of Polish cinema, it is one of the most compelling attacks on government corruption ever made. It is a Citizen Kane - styled story where Wajda introduces us to a young woman in Krakow who is making her thesis film. She is looking behind the scenes at the life of a 1950s bricklayer, Birkut, who was briefly elevated to the status of a communist hero. She wants to know how his heroism was created and what became of him. She gets a hold of censored footage and interviews with the man's friends and ex-wife, and the filmmaker who made him a hero. A portrait of Birkut emerges as a man who believed in the socialist ideals, the workers revolution, and in building housing for all. The young filmmakers hard-driving style and the content of the film however unnerve her supervisor, who thinks it's content is getting too close to a political nerve. The film project is killed with the excuse she is over budget but the young filmmaker pushes forward against all odds to finish her film."

The story saw the exploits of the young student director as she led an investigative approach to what the truth behind the bricklaying hero was. Did the man really exist or was he a fiction character of the massive propaganda campaign? As she dug ever deeper, she discovered that Birkut was in fact an ideal man who truly cared for his fellow worker; the basis for making communism/socialism work as espoused by philosophers throughout the years. She found that he embodied the principles needed but was left wholly unprepared to deal with the realities of any system that relies on people and he soon was turned from hero to criminal by those who wanted to use him as a visual aid without his opinion or help. In short, the system that sought to use him as a dumb, malleable worker for their own benefit, quickly tired when he used his position to advocate his fellow workers, at which time he was taken out of the picture after being discredited.

I think Wajda, himself a victim of the political leanings of corrupt governments over the years, hit this one square on the head. Much like his films on Capitalism and War, the famed director presents a compelling cautionary tale that shows how revisionist history works as well as how the powers that be will distort any truths in order to accomplish their goals. Lest you think the movie is solely about the two political systems so properly skewered here, keep in mind that the themes of corruption and misuse of government resources to bury inconvenient people are particularly fitting in these times, regardless of your political leanings. For all it's strengths in direction, acting and writing, I think this one is well worth a rating of Highly Recommended, even without the advertised extras and the minor print flaws. Check it out.

History is replete with examples of regimes that sought to control the media and use it to discredit their opponents for their own gain. In this day of the Internet, even private groups seek to do the same thing, albeit with less degree of certainty, and movies such as this one remind us to be careful how we build, and ultimately destroy, our heroes. I look forward to more releases by Vanguard, particularly if they continue to obtain such gems as this one, but I'd really appreciate it if the company would spend more time restoring the prints before transferring them to DVD. In all though, it was well done and looked better than the small trailer I saw on videotape several years back (even the subtitles are much better on this one).

Man Of Marble. Man Of Iron   Polish Film and Politics, by Lisa DiCarpio from Jump Cut, July 1982

 

Heroines of Polish Cinema - Kinema : : A Journal for Film and ...   Ewa Mazierska from Kinema

 

Man of Marble  Acquarello from Strictly Film School

 

FILM - 'MAN OF IRON' - The New York Times  Vincent Canby

 

MAN OF IRON

Poland  (153 mi)  1981  ‘Scope

 

Channel 4 Film

With his magnificent war trilogy - A Generation, Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds - Wajda helped establish Polish cinema as a vibrant force. But as his fellow directors moved abroad and times changed, he gradually found that monumental political works, such as this one in support of the Solidarity movement and its equally ambitious predecessor Man of Marble, failed to engage international audiences. He wrote in despair that Eastern European films seemed 'of little or no interest to people in the West'. Twenty years on, this story of a journalist (Opania) who has to cover the crucial 1980 shipyard strike in Gdansk from the official viewpoint seems even more remote and less relevant. Even so, when it was still topical it was awarded Best Film at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival.

Time Out

 

Wajda's remarkable sequel to Man of Marble welds newsreel footage of the Solidarity strike to fiction in a strong investigative drama. A disillusioned, vodka-sodden radio producer is bundled off to Gdansk in a black limousine. His mission: to smear one of the main activists - who also happens to be the son of the hapless 'Marble' worker-hero. But, tempered by bitter experience of the failed reforms of '68 and '70, these new men of iron are more durable than their fathers, not as easily smashed. Media cynicism, censorship and corruption are again dominant themes, this time anchored through the TV coverage of the strike, though the conclusion hints with guarded optimism at a possible rapprochement between workers and intelligentsia. An urgent, nervy narrative conveys all the exhilaration and bewilderment of finding oneself on the very crestline of crucial historical change; and for the viewer, all the retrospective melancholy of knowing that euphoria shattered by subsequent events.

 

Man Of Marble. Man Of Iron   Polish Film and Politics, by Lisa DiCarpio from Jump Cut, July 1982               

 

Heroines of Polish Cinema - Kinema : : A Journal for Film and ...   Ewa Mazierska from Kinema

 

KATYN                                                                      C                     75                                           

Poland (118 mi)  2007   ‘Scope

 

Despite the historical relevance of this film that attempts to set the record straight in telling the story of a Russian massacre of some 12,000 to 20,000 Polish officers, intellectuals, professionals, and soldiers in the Katyn forest located 12 miles west of Smolensk, Russia in 1940, later blamed by the Soviets on the Nazi’s several years later in a brazen (and at the time successful) attempt to alter the historical record and maintain Allied sympathies with Russia in the West, and despite the importance of unearthing the truth about war crimes, as there were two other similar burial sites in Mednoye and Piatykhatky admitted to by Russian Premiere Mikhail Gorbachov in 1990 totalling nearly 26,000 Poles killed, perhaps a fictionalized war drama is not the way to go about telling a story of this significance, even by a heralded Polish filmmaker who’s own father was murdered there.  Unfortunately, the grim tone of this film bears the Spielberg stamp of moral overreach, an honest, good-hearted but humanly flawed attempt that melodramatically overempahisizes the director’s own point of view, which is to make sure audiences will know what to think when they leave the theater.  In my view, this is conventional filmmaking at its mediocre worst, as the characters are never fleshed out but are drawn in stereotypical depictions, all emphatically meant to portray a specific type, an honorable Polish army officer in captivity, his loving and long suffering wife and child, good intentioned family and friends who are caught in the middle of not knowing what’s going on, corrupted Polish officers that survived only to be used by the Russians to help convey the “truth” of the Russian myth imposed on the Polish people, idealistic professors and intellectuals who were duped by the Nazi’s and later executed, bold, heroic Polish women who years later would rather die than admit to the Russian lie, next generation students after the war who for decades were not allowed to mention Katyn, subject to signed confessions admitting guilt or imprisonment, and of course, a shadowy Russian presence that only comes to light in a starkly realized final sequence of the massacre itself, where a bullet to the back of the head was Stalin’s method of choice, one after another falling into mass graves.  

           

I can’t speak for others, but the most effective cinema recollections of Holocaust atrocities, battle sequences since WW II, war crimes footage, or even seeing the Japanese bury Chinese citizens alive with bulldozers in the Nanking Massacre of 1937, has been through documentary footage that makes an indelible imprint in one’s memory banks that is not skewed by opinion or point of view, that simply shows what happens – here it is, look for yourself, perhaps something similar to the Rodney King footage.  Accordingly, within this film, like Hamlet’s play within the play, are two stunning newsreel depictions of Katyn, one by the Nazi’s in 1943 blaming the Russians (accurate) and the other by the Russians in 1945 blaming the Nazi’s (bogus).  Similarly, the director makes excellent use of the Polish officer’s diary that meticulously records being transported from camp to camp as he is being moved to the Katyn forest and then is strangely silent.  But this film leaves itself open to so many other subjective criteria, such as the annoying portrayal of the long suffering wife (Maja Ostaszewska, a stand-in for the director’s mother) righteously behaving as if she’s part of a privileged elite class, who always looks and dresses like a well dressed, lipstick-and-hair-always-in-place, movie actress, where the same could be said for almost any other character in the film, none of whom are particularly compelling or memorable.  Adapted from Andrzej Mularczyk's book Post Mortem – The Katyn Story, based on the letters and diaries of actual people, few of whom survive, perhaps the strongest and most powerful record left by this film is the singular brilliance of its composer, Krzysztof Penderecki, whose work “The Awakening of Jacob” has been previously chosen by the likes of Kubrick and Lynch, but is perhaps best suited here in his homeland where his music, especially the way it is used in the finale, adds a stunning elegiac reverance. 

 

KATYN (d. Andrzej Wajda;  Poland) *** 1/2  Ken Rudolph 

Wajda is, and has been for decades, an important master filmmaker; and this film proves that his skills are still vibrant.  It's the epic story of an early WWII massacre of captive Polish officers by the Soviets, who tried to change the perception of history after the war by promulgating a big lie that it was the Germans who committed this atrocity.  Much of this history came as a revelation to me; and occasionally I had trouble understanding the ins-and-outs of post-war Polish politics.  But that didn't stop me from respecting the sheer importance of this film and the tremendous artfulness of Wadja's achievement. 

Moviepie.com review

First up was famed Polish director Andrzej Wajda's Oscar-nominated film Katyn (4/8), a movie of great importance with a super-powerful climax that otherwise came across as muddled, disjointed, and rather uninvolving. Spanning from 1939 until after the war when the Soviets occupy Poland, several folks are followed, including a Polish general, an officer, a pilot, and the families/sisters/children that are left behind. None of the characters are explored with very much depth, and it doesn't help that some are children at the start of the film and are adults at the end. It is unfortunate the that film was only so-so, as it is obviously portraying a huge incident to the Poles, where 12,000 officers, scientists, intellectuals, and artists were massacred in the forest of Katyn by Soviets, who then turned the "official" blame on the Nazis when the war ended, literally rewriting history. The last 10 or 20 minutes are shocking and unbearable, showing the victims' fate, but everything leading up to it was unfortunately not too gripping.

User comments  from imdb (Page 2) Author: denis888 from Russian Federation

The very fact that this new film has already been prohibited in my native country, Russia, says miles about the real value of this grand masterpiece of Mr. Andrzej Wajda. Katyn is a very serious, deep, highly emotional, grave and dark movie. The topic of mass massacres of Polish officers by Soviet NKVD forces is still very painful in both states. In Russia, the fact was officially acknowledged only several years ago, but times have changed and we see the total return to Soviet propaganda. Here, the film is blackened with libel of "Pre-paid anti-Russian propaganda" and "senile silly work of once great Wajda". Not so! I loved every second of this breathtaking saga of several families whose men were killed in cold blood in April 1940 in the woods of Katyn. Poland is shown torn apart by the Nazi and the Soviets. Both sides are cruel and merciless, people are murdered and sent to death camps. But still, even in the midst of this craziness, there are people, valiant and brave. Major Popov, played by great Russian actor Sergey Garmash, saves the family of one officer, and we can feel that he will pay by his own life too. Nobody is happy in this film. All heroes are either killed or arrested, or commit suicide or are broken. Heavy heart, tears, pain... This great film Must be shown in Russia...

Stalin's Killing Field  Benjamin B. Fischer from the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, April 14, 2007 (excerpt)

The Katyn Forest massacre was a criminal act of historic proportions and enduring political implications. When Nazi occupation forces in April 1943 announced the discovery of several mass graves, propaganda minister Josef Goebbels hoped that international revulsion over the Soviet atrocity would drive a wedge into the Big Three coalition and buy Germany a breathing space, if not a victory, in its war against Russia. (A headline in the May 1943 Newsweek read: "Poles vs. Reds: Allied Unity Put to Test Over Officer Dead.") But Goebbels miscalculated. Despite overwhelming evidence of Soviet responsibility, Moscow blamed the Germans, and for the rest of the war Washington and London officially accepted the Soviet countercharge. When the Polish government-in-exile in London demanded an international inquiry, Stalin used this as a pretext to break relations. The Western allies objected but eventually acquiesced. Soon thereafter, the Soviet dictator assembled a group of Polish Communists that returned to Poland with the Red Army in 1944 and formed the nucleus of the postwar government. Stalin's experience with the Katyn affair may have convinced him that the West, grateful for the Red Army's contribution to the Allied military effort, would find it hard to confront him over Poland after the war…

Meanwhile, the Soviets obliterated references to Katyn on maps and in official reference works. Then, in 1969, Moscow did something strange that many believe was further calculated to confuse the issue further: it chose a small village named Khatyn as the cite for Belorussia's national war memorial. There was no apparent reason for the selection. Khatyn was one of 9,200 Belorussian villages the Germans had destroyed and one of more than a hundred where they had killed civilians in retaliation for partisan attacks. In Latin transliteration, however, Katyn and Khatyn look and sound alike, though they are spelled and pronounced quite differently in Russian and Belorussian. When President Nixon visited the USSR in July 1974, he toured the Khatyn memorial at his hosts' insistence. Sensing that the Soviets were exploiting the visit for propaganda purposes, The New York Times headlined its coverage of the tour: "Nixon Sees Khatyn, a Soviet Memorial, Not Katyn Forest." (The Times probably got it right. During the Vietnam war, the Soviets frequently took visiting US peace activists to Khatyn.)

The Economist

A CRIME and a lie are the twin strands in the shameful tragedy of Katyn: the massacre of 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviet secret police, and the cover-up that followed. Now Andrzej Wajda, Poland's leading film maker, has made his last film (he is 81) about what he calls the “unhealed wound” in his country's history.

Mr Wajda's own father, Jakub, was murdered at Katyn, as were family members of many of the production team. Those killings come in a gruelling, 15-minute final sequence. First, the film shows in sombre and claustrophobic detail the Polish POWs' travels to Golgotha; the occupation authorities' vengeance on their families, and flashes forward to the attempts by the country's post-war rulers to disguise and deface the historical record.

The film has been nominated for best foreign-language film at this year's Oscars. Those watching it should not expect to come away happily humming the dramatic theme music by Krzysztof Penderecki. “Katyn” is based on the letters and diaries of real-life victims—unearthed when the Nazis first came across the mass graves in 1943. The last entry records the Polish officers' arrival at the killing fields. “A thorough search. They didn't find my wedding ring. They took my belt, my penknife and my watch. It showed 0630 Polish time. What will happen to us?”

Expert cinematography, compelling acting, and a story that leaves the viewer both sorrowful and angry, are a strong combination. But they may not be quite enough to convince the judges. “Katyn” is filmed from an uncompromisingly Polish point of view. Some outsiders may find it confusing. One of the most powerful scenes, for example, is the mass arrest of the professors of Cracow University by the Germans. Those who already know about the upheaval that followed the German invasion of 1939 will see the point: the Soviets and the Nazis were accomplices. Others may puzzle.

The moral dilemmas of post-war Polish collaborators are better portrayed than those of the wartime occupiers. If honouring the dead means doom for your family—or for you—is it better to keep silent? Poles faced that choice again and again after 1945, as their new rulers used Katyn as a litmus test of loyalty. But barring one Red Army officer, impeccably played by a Ukrainian actor, Sergei Garmash, who saves his neighbours (an officer's widow and child) from deportation, the foreigners are so villainous as to be little more than sinister mannequins.

Melodrama is perhaps one fault of the film; an oddly sanitised picture of daily life is another. Teeth, complexions and clothes all evoke the prosperous Poland of today more than the squalor and hunger of 1945. Material deprivation brings out the worst and the best in people. But it needs to be shown to make the measure convincing.

Astonishingly, some in Russia are now reviving the lie that the murderers at Katyn were not by the NKVD, but the Nazis. That was maintained during the communist era, but only by punishing savagely those who tried to tell the truth. Last year, as Mr Wajda's film opened in Poland, a commentary in a Russian government newspaper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, dismissed the evidence of Soviet involvement in Katyn as “unreliable”. An Oscar would be a good answer to that.

DVD Times [Michael Brooke]

 

New York Review of Books  Anne Applebaum

 

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young] Berlin Film Festival 2008

 

Monsters and Critics  Ron Wilkinson

 

User comments  from imdb Author: Tomasz Lychowski from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

 

User comments  from imdb Author: Marcin Kukuczka from Cieszyn, Poland

 

Screen International review  Lee Marshall in Berlin

 

Prost Amerika  Mati Bishop

 

The Age review  Jake Wilson

 

The Hollywood Reporter review  Kirk Honeycutt

 

Variety.com [Leslie Felperin]

 

Taipei Times [Ian Bartholomew] (English)

 

Katyn massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Official site of the Memorial of Katyn

 

Polish deaths at Soviet hands – website about Katyn forest massacre

 

The Katyn Massacre: An Assesment of its Significance as a Public and Historical Issue in the USA and GB, 1940-1993  Masters Thesis by Louis Robert Coatney, December 1993

 

The Lies of Katyn   Jamie Glazov from FrontPage magazine, August 8, 2000

 

Stalin's Killing Field  Benjamin B. Fischer from the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, April 14, 2007

 

Wajeman, Elie
 
ELIYAH

France  (90 mi)  2012

Aliyah  Fionnuala Halligan at Cannes from Screendaily

As the title, and superficially the script, might suggest, Aliyah is about a young Jewish man’s “ascent” to Israel. The fact that he is dealing drugs across Paris to fund the journey and listening to Hebrew language tapes while weighing up wraps of cocaine may give Aliyah a frisson of the forbidden - but Elie Wajeman’s debut is mostly about one man’s fight to escape the shadow of his brother and carve out a new version of himself. That this might occur in Israel is almost a secondary consideration.

Sincere and engaging, Aliyah fields a fresh and attractive cast with the director Cedric Kahn taking a lead role. The central relationship between Alex (Pio Marmai) and his overpowering brother Isaac (Kahn) is beautifully conceived and executed, a Cain and Abel push-and-pull that’s satisfyingly subtle and oblique. But there’s a lack of narrative tension that pulls Aliyah up short. The question of whether Alex will ever make it to Israel never feels urgent enough, although Aliyah does make it clear that if and when he gets there, it will be a Promised Land of all varieties of Jews, for better or worse - some running to something, others running away.

Wajeman has made a debut that calls to mind the world of Mia Hansen-Love, adopting a natural approach that takes on specific and yet highly universal themes. Some of the film is opaque: it hints at past events and makes reference to the brothers’ dead mother and unfeeling father, but it never offers an explanation. Yet other sections are over-emphasised and verge on the ponderous.

Ultimately, Alex has a tendency to take a casual attitude to his own fate which the film finds hard to overcome. Part of a close-knit extended Jewish family, Alex and his cousins are relaxed about their faith. Yet one has just returned from military service in Israel and is about to start a restaurant in Tel Aviv. Spontaneously, hash-dealer Alex says he wants to be part of it. The money he makes selling drugs goes on keeping Isaac out of scrapes, but now he ups the ante to scooting cocaine across the French capital to fund his investment in the restaurant and journey to an Israel he’s only once visited as a child and can’t even remember. “Maybe the country’s as screwed-up as I am,” he says - one of Aliyah’s more attention-seeking lines.

Nothing and nobody seems to be in any real peril in this chatty film. You always get the feeling that just as easily as Alex said he was in, he could be out again. He strikes up a sweet relationship with goy Jeanne (Haenel) but it’s clearly not going anywhere, and he has bittersweet feelings about his ex, Esther (Sarah Picard). As the brothers, Marmai and Kahn are convincing, with director-writer Kahn delivering just the right amount of edge to make Isaac a persuasively realistic bully.

With solid production values and some persuasive flourishes from cinematographer Chizallet, Aliyah opens and closes to Schonberg but remains mostly silent in between, apart from Sixto Rodriguez’ Sugar Man, an odd but effective selection.

Aliyah: Cannes Review  Jordan Mintzer at Cannes from The Hollywood Review

 
Walker, Lucy
 
WASTE LAND                                                         B+                   90

Brazil  Great Britain  (99 mi)  2010  co-directors:  Karen Haley and João Jardim

 

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror


And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body
with her mind

 

Suzanne, (Third verse), Leonard Cohen, 1966

 

WASTE LAND is another film that asks the question just what is art?  But in this case, the person asking is already an established commercial artist, Vik Muniz, a Brazilian-born visual artist living in New York, claiming his works are the highest selling art coming out of Brazil.  What’s unique about his methods is incorporating natural, everyday items onto the canvas, such as thread, wire, string, paper, peanut butter and jelly, or sugar, where his theory is that if your vantage point is up close, it looks like a jumbled mess, becoming beautiful from a distance, where it becomes something unimaginable.  He describes his hometown of Sao Paolo in the same manner, as the impoverished streets can be harsh and cruel, but if seen from a great distance, such as the aerial view from an incoming airplane or seen from a high vista, it has a breathtaking beauty.  Initially he gets the idea to visit the Jardim Gramacho dump, which is the world’s largest landfill, a vast stretch of undeveloped land that accepts 70 % of Rio de Janeiro’s garbage, adding all of the neighboring suburbs.  Until you get up close, you have no idea just how immense this is, as it is a community in itself due to the steady stream of some three thousand workers, known as catadores, many of whom live in a shanty village onsite, who pick through the garbage for reusable, recycled products which they can sell, eking out a barest minimum of a living.  Muniz brings his camera and introduces himself to dozens of the workers, starting at first by taking their picture and then narrowing his focus to a half a dozen subjects that interest him.   

 

First and foremost is Tiaõ, an ambitious young man who aspires to build a coalition of workers to help improve their living conditions while also becoming the point man leading demonstrations against the mayor and the city for dragging their feet and refusing to implement a citywide recycling program, as promised.  Suelem is an attractive 18-year old with a strikingly good looking face, but she has two children living with her sister away from the dump that she misses, so she periodically leaves the dump shantytown to visit them in a different dilapidated shack nearby that looks just the same, except they’re wired for a TV.  Isis is another attractive young woman with man problems, while Magna (truly the most interesting to me) is more mature, with a world weary expression on her face, as if she’s somehow capable of surviving some of the worst battles, while Irmã is the eldest and the woman who’s probably worked there the longest.  All live on the premises and are slowly brought into Vik’s world, as he has a large studio nearby where he takes the photographs, enlarges them to huge, places them on the ground, and then embellishes them with products found in the landfill, a tedious process that includes the involvement of the catadores themselves, who get a personalized taste of the high end art world, all startled by how it looks from a proper distance.  What’s interesting is the discussion about what happens next, as Vik’s wife comes to visit and she’s quite demonstrative about how taking responsibility for their lives is beyond any concept of art, as they’re being introduced unto a brand new world with no instructions on how to navigate their way through, claiming they are all fragile and vulnerable.  But Vik is not interested in negativity and in no short order rejects his wife’s ideas completely, claiming even if just for a moment if they could live outside the landfill for a few precious weeks and see how the rest of the world operates, that in itself would be a life altering experience equivalent to the transforming power of art. 

 

Next thing you know, Tiaõ is whisked off to London where his photograph will be the first one auctioned in a high end art exhibit, right next to works of Andy Warhol.  This is where the unique power of the film becomes evident, as this is truly a transforming experience, as never in his wildest dreams did Tiaõ ever imagine himself in this position, as the photograph sold for $50,000.  When the rest of the crew gets all dressed up walking out of their shanty huts, it’s like they’re going to a wedding, but instead it’s to the opening night of Vik’s gallery opening in Rio de Janeiro featuring photographs of them, where they are the living subjects of the art hanging on the walls.  Clearly they are moved by the power of the moment, which goes beyond proud or surprised, or even humbled.  They are in shock at the sheer audacity of the idea itself, how something they could never conceive was being valued and appreciated by others.  Their emotional lives are simply shattered and overwhelmed by it all, where the exhibit itself is like a personal gift and tribute to them.  While it’s evident Vik identifies with them all, something that probably took him by surprise, as he could easily have slid into this same kind of demoralizing poverty as a young kid.  Still, the story about the artworks themselves is nothing new, as art is constantly used to taking on new faces and reaching out into unthinkable horizons.  What’s clearly unique, surprising even the artist himself, is the notion of living art, something like living theater, where the subjects themselves interact with the artist and the audience in unanticipated ways, where there’s a personal investment in each one, initially thought of only in dollars and cents, but it ends up being the collaborative shared emotional life altering transformation the artist and filmmaker were searching for all along.   

 

Waste Land Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London  Dave Calhoun

British doc maker Lucy Walker (‘Blindsight’, ‘Devil’s Playground’) profiles the successful Brazilian, New York-based artist Vik Muniz as he executes a project which touches on issues relating to his own modest background and the responsibility of anyone offering a temporary leg-up to those with limited opportunities. Walker joins Muniz as he travels to Rio de Janeiro’s immense Jardim Gramacho rubbish dump to photograph workers and transform those photos into giant portraits composed entirely from rubbish. Muniz then auctions the work to fund community programmes in the area. Walker clearly – and justly – admires Muniz but also just about honours our worries about these workers being given a brief glimpse of a very different life.

Review: Waste Land - Reviews - Boston Phoenix  Gerald Peary

 

Vik Muniz, a well-regarded Brazilian artist living in New York, is a socially conscious individual, and his photography-based œuvre celebrates the forgotten poor of Central and South America, with much of the profits being returned to the impoverished subjects of his artistry. For this documentary, filmmaker Lucy Walker accompanied Muniz on his most ambitious undertaking: a photographic tribute to the thousands who pick through the mountainous trash at Rio de Janeiro’s central landfill, digging in the rubble for recycling. Walker combines stirring studies of many of the Jardim Gramacho workers with a documenting of Muniz’s project — large-scale, dignified portraits framed by rephotographed, recyclable garbage. So here’s the question: are the indigent better off for this transformational experience, or does it just make returning to their grueling, stinking job that much more bitter? One worker’s answer: “I’m a person now — before, I was a little mule.”

 

The Village Voice [Eric Hynes]  also seen here:  Where Art and Life Intersect, Waste Land 

A fascinating look at the complex intersections of art and charity, reality and perception, Waste Land follows celebrated New York artist Vik Muniz back to his native Brazil, where he’ll work with outer Rio garbage-pickers on an ambitious art project. Ostensibly called to “give back” to the impoverished region from whence he came—after the magnanimous collaboration, the plan is to auction off the art as a fundraiser—Muniz finds that the individual lives he encounters are far more complex than the morbid hordes he’d expected. These “catadores” aren’t faceless bottom-feeders but proud laborers who’ve chosen the dirty job of hand-recycling over drug-trafficking and prostitution. Fast becoming one of today’s most adventurous and empathetic documentarians, director Lucy Walker (Countdown to Zero, Blindsight) wisely keeps the film several paces removed from Muniz, whether to capture footage that falls beyond the artist’s scope or to subtly critique both the art- and filmmaking processes. From a studio in New York, Muniz and Walker plot a story, and then at the massive landfill, we see how they select characters to represent it. It’s to their credit that the story adapts to these fiercely human characters, and that Muniz honestly contemplates his irresolvable quandary of intervention. The resultant art and film are uncommonly moving, but Walker keeps an eye on the messy pile of life that looms beyond the frame.

Phil on Film [Philip Concannon]

Jardim Gramacho is the biggest landfill in the world, taking in 70% of Rio de Janeiro's rubbish every day, and Lucy Walker's brilliant Waste Land shines a light on the people who make a living sifting through that trash for recyclable materials. Brazilian artist Vik Muniz had the idea of visiting this location and helping the pickers create self-portraits using the materials they have retrieved from the mountains of garbage they wade through every day, and Waste Land follows this project from its conception through to its extraordinary climax. The film is driven by the great characters and human stories that it finds in Jardim Gramacho: Tiaõ, the charismatic young man determined to form an association to support the pickers along with his colleague Zumbi; Isis, a woman who dreams of finding love and who has suffered a terrible tragedy; Valter, the enthusiastic veteran who is constantly offering words of wisdom, such as "99 is not 100." In sharing their stories and ambitions, Walker really makes us care about these individuals, and there is a tremendous sense of excitement in seeing their hard work pay off when Muniz begins taking their portraits to exhibitions around the world, raising much-needed funds and showing them a world they never imagined they'd see. Vik and his team do pause for thought at one point, wondering if it is wise to give them this glimpse of another life before sending them back to the dump, but in the picture's exhilarating finale we see how they have been inspired by their experiences to make a positive change in their situations. Walker does a wonderful job of balancing the overall arc of the film with the human stories within it, and the second half of the film moved me to tears on numerous occasions.

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

Located outside Rio de Janeiro, Jardim Gramacho is the world’s largest landfill, collecting an astonishing 70 percent of the city’s garbage, and a full 100 percent from the surrounding suburbs. It isn’t just a dump, it’s a village populated by “pickers” who rummage through the piles for recyclable materials and take their earnings back to families in neighboring shantytowns. Seen from above, the pickers look uncannily like ants on a mound, congregating en masse whenever a dump truck unloads another pile, and scurrying in and out with bags full of bottles and plastic they can turn around for money. On the surface, however, there’s a surprisingly sophisticated, and evolving culture at work, with scrappy laborers trying and succeeding to convert trash into (extremely modest) treasure, and even organizing to their collective benefit.   

The compelling documentary Waste Land follows an ideal tour guide through Jardim Gramacho: Vik Muniz, a successful Brazilian artist known for incorporating trash and other unconventional materials into his work. (Muniz has recreated Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa twice, once with peanut butter and again with jelly, and did a series of portraits called “Sugar Children,” made from sugar taken from a plantation that employed the very young.) Muniz’s idea was to photograph pickers from Jardim Gramacho, sell the images at auction, and pump the proceeds back into the community. Lucy Walker’s documentary gives voice to the six subjects of Muniz’s photos, who range from the optimistic leader of a 3,000-person picker-representing organization to a cook who salvages unspoiled meat to feed her fellow workers.

Though narrower in scope and lacking the first-person angle, Waste Land resembles Agnès Varda’s great 2000 documentary The Gleaners & I, particularly in its awe of tough, creative, hard-working people who live on the margins. The dump itself is a marvel to behold, and Moby’s eerie score adds a cinematic ambience that helps relieve some of the stock documentary elements, like the way Muniz’s adventures are sometimes framed like a reality-TV show. It also does Muniz one better by humanizing photographs that are often too aestheticized and unresponsive to how his subjects actually live and work. Waste Land travels to an island populated by society’s discards, and finds a piece of salvation.

Cineaste  Karen Backstein

In the 1960s and ’70s, revolutionary Third World film had as its aim nothing less than the transformation of society through cinema. By removing the blinders put on audiences by Hollywood’s commercial fare, and championing both an “imperfect” cinema and the active spectator, filmmakers hoped to generate real political consciousness among the masses. But can an artist of any kind really change the world through his work?

Internationally successful Brazilian-born painter Vik Muniz believed that he could make a huge difference. So he left his adopted home in New York to return to Rio—but not to the city’s renowned beaches, tourist sites, or even the gun-packed hillside favelas that have become standard fare in so many recent Brazilian films. Instead, he focused on the ironically named Jardim (garden) Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, and on the people who scavenge in this mind-bogglingly vast mountain of garbage. Muniz was determined to do nothing less than transform their lives through art.

Waste Land—or Lixo Extraordinario (Extraordinary Garbage) in Portuguese—documents Muniz’s work among the catadores, those who dig through the trash to gather all the recyclables, which they in turn sell to large companies eager to get the materials but not to do the labor. Directed by Lucy Walker, with codirectors Karen Harley and Joao Jardim, the film follows Muniz as he chooses several “pickers” to join him in creating a huge painted and collaged canvas, incorporating items scavenged from the trash. He then, additionally, paints portraits of these subjects, often in poses and scenes rich in cultural allusions, such as Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat.

Obviously, one factor that distinguishes Waste Land is the landfill itself, a site so astoundingly enormous that it becomes an object of visual and intellectual fascination. Set on the outskirts of the city, Jardim Gramacho receives 7,000 tons of garbage each day, and serves as the central repository for Rio’s trash. A disturbing fun-house mirror on nature’s own landscape, this manmade dump yields dunes and peaks, and, like an actual garden it “grows,” nourished not by sunshine and water but by the never-ending influx of detritus. Also, like a garden, it feeds those who cultivate its dirt. Not only does it provide the scavengers with cash to buy food and other necessities, but in it they also uncover practical treasures, including furniture, books, clothing, and more.

 In Waste Land, Jardim Gramacho is presented as the inevitable consequence of our throwaway consumer culture and a concrete representation of the chasm between the extreme poor and even the moderately wealthy, who casually, thoughtlessly toss away mounds of still-usable goods on a regular basis. Seen from an ecological point of view, Gramacho is a microcosm of our planet, increasingly buried under too much human waste for anyone to handle.

But the “garden” is a paradox, too. Waste Land makes it clear that this eyesore—which by rights should not even exist—is actually crucial to thousands of people with no other means of survival. Its planned closing in 2012, noted in the film, means that all the catadores must be trained to do other work or they will have no way of making a living. And Waste Land makes us care deeply for these humans, for as expansive as Jardim Gramacho is, the people dwarf it. Like the documentaries of Eduardo Coutinho, this film employs “talking-head” interviews to good effect. The intelligence, articulateness, humor, and political savvy of most of the catadores—especially Tiao Santos, an activist who serves as a quasiunion leader—smash any preconceptions we might have about people forced to wade through garbage in order to live. Through their efforts, Gramacho has one of the highest recycling rates anywhere in the world, and the pickers’ work is now officially recognized and government services provided. If Muniz’s own art helps the world see the catadores in a new light, the film enables the world to hear their voices, too often unheard.

Vik Muniz, too, is a fascinating subject, constantly questioning himself and wondering what will happen to his subjects when his project finally concludes. (His friends and family worry on camera about this, too.) Because of Muniz’s introspection, the film actually brings up and debates many of the same questions that viewers might have. When the catadores attend the opening of Muniz’s exhibit, and enter to the applause of the upper-class gallery attendees, it’s hard not to think of Cinderella and what will happen when the clock strikes midnight.

Muniz’s larger-than-life depictions could—in the most hopeful interpretation of his project—turn a mostly “invisible” class of people visible once again

REVIEW: Waste Land Tracks an Artist Who Turns Trash -- and ...  Michelle Orange from Movieline

 

Cinematical [Christopher Campbell]  Doc Talk: How Involved Should Doc Filmmakers Be with Their Subjects?

Slant Magazine [Joseph Jon Lanthier]

alibi.com [Devin D. O'Leary]

Filmcritic.com  Chris Barsanti

PopMatters [Cynthia Fuchs]

Ferdy on Films [Marilyn Ferdinand]

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]  Where to Look Among the Garbage and the Flowers

Talking Pictures [Howard Schumann]

filmsoundoff [Alex Roberts]

Eternal Sunshine Of The Logical Mind [Bob Turnbull]

Film-Forward.com [Nora Lee Mandel]

The House Next Door [Arthur Ryel-Lindsey]

Waste Land | Review | Screen  Tim Grierson from Screendaily

Cinespect [Ryan Wells]

Compuserve [Harvey Karten]

Image Good Letters: The IMAGE Blog Trash Transformed  Jeffrey Overstreet from Image

Monsters and Critics [Ron Wilkinson]

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

The Hollywood Reporter [John DeFore]

 

Waste Land: One man's trash is another man's … art? - The Globe ...  Stephen Cole from The Globe and the Mail

 

Waste Land movie review -- Waste Land showtimes - The Boston Globe  Wesley Morris

 

Finding beauty among trash and its sifters - Philly.com  Steven Rea from The Philadelphia Inquirer

 

Waste Land - Page 1 - Movies - Minneapolis - City Pages  Eric Hynes from the St. Paul Pioneer Press

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Walter Addiego]

 

Oscar nominations: Weighty matters in documentary and foreign categories  Reed Johnson from The LA Times, January 26, 2011

 

Documented, but is it real?  Reed Johnson from The LA Times, February 6, 2011

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Stephen Holden, October 28, 2010

 

Where Art Meets Trash and Transforms Life   Carol Kino from The New York Times, October 21, 2010, also seen here:  The Photographer Vik Muniz in 'Waste Land' - NYTimes.com

 

VIK MUNIZ

 

WASTE LAND : Vik Muniz  brief bio

 

WASTE LAND : Vik Muniz  PBS Independent Lens

 

Vik Muniz - Museum of Contemporary Photography

 

Vik Muniz on artnet

 

Vik Muniz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO

USA  (90 mi)  2010

 

Countdown to Zero Uses Fear and Optimism in Discussing The Bomb  Vadim Rizov from The Village Voice

The title of Lucy Walker's pro-nuclear-disarmament tract Countdown to Zero has two meanings: a paranoiac's ticking off down the last moments until the bomb goes off, and an exhortation to work for the cause until zero missiles and weapons remain. Synthesizing fear and optimism like that requires Walker to be incredibly ambitious in scope, and she offers up a history of the bomb and treaty talks, scientific explanations, a primer on how to smuggle uranium, and much, much more. Trying to touch, however briefly, on everything related to The Bomb means that, inevitably, much of it gets short shrift: SALT I and II are barely mentioned, but the Reykjavík Summit's failure is inexplicably highlighted. Walker runs the same old archival test footage we've seen before and interviews the big names—Mikhail Gorbachev and Valerie Plame Wilson both make appearances—to reiterate her already-obvious p.o.v. She's also prone to very literal-minded exposition; to show that a tennis-ball-size bomb could level a city, she just throws a tennis ball up against a black screen and has it rotate ominously. This is another well-intentioned but preaching-to-the-choir doc, and boring as well. Never trust a movie that ends with a moveon.org link.

Countdown to Zero; The Housemaid; A Screaming Man; Outrage  Peter Bradshaw at Cannes from The Guardian, May 17, 2010, also seen here:  Peter Bradshaw

The most traumatic experience at Cannes so far was the horror film to end all horror films, during which I experienced a 90-minute anxiety attack. British documentary-maker Lucy Walker presented us with her Countdown to Zero, for which the tagline should be: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Fear the Bomb. Her film is about the ubiquity of nuclear weapons and the simply terrifying amount of weapons-grade material that is sloshing about, unaccounted for, after the breakup of the Soviet Union – material that terrorists would love to get their hands on.

Nukes are a subject that we have long made a semi-conscious decision to ignore. Walker powerfully revives the subject, touching on how we could have a nuclear detonation from terrorists or the Dr Strangelove scenario – a "legitimate" attack by accident. Walker has interviewed former intelligence and military personnel and statesmen, including Gorbachev and Tony Blair. There are some extraordinary facts, the most stunning of which is that we came far closer to nuclear war in 1995 than we did during the Cuban missile crisis. That year, a Norwegian scientific research rocket was mistaken for a US attack by the Soviets, and generals marched into president Boris Yeltsin's office with the strike codes: protocol demanded a retaliatory attack, but Yeltsin simply refused to believe it and the crisis passed. Walker's film implies that it was a good thing the generals happened to find Yeltsin sober, but it might have been that a few drinks had put him in a generous, forgiving mood. Either way, history owes Yeltsin a greater debt than any of us realised.

The Hollywood Reporter review  John DeFore at Sundance, January 31, 2010

PARK CITY -- A doomsday doc suggesting that climate change and eco-degradation aren't going to matter much if we blow up the planet first, "Countdown to Zero" reminds viewers of old fears most people have put on a back burner. Convincingly argued and extremely polished, it has theatrical potential for auds whose reservoir of worry about humanity's future hasn't already run dry.

Taking cues from a famous JFK speech, the doc studies three ways -- accident, miscalculation, or madness -- in which nuclear weapons might be detonated. Director Lucy Walker (also bringing the lighter-hearted "Waste Land" to Sundance this year) makes the odds look pretty bad on all three fronts, especially when a scientist points out that, even in terms of unlikely scenarios, "low-probability events happen all the time."

Some possibilities seem anything but low-probability, though: Walker's account of the insecurity of nuclear materials in Russia is absolutely chilling, with so many low-level numbskulls gaining access to highly enriched uranium (HEU) it's a marvel that some intelligent villain hasn't yet gathered enough to use.

Experts like Valerie Plame and Princeton nuclear scientists discuss the plans that unfriendly powers have to build, buy or steal a bomb, and Walker efficiently gets viewers up to speed on the current state of the global arsenal. (There are around 23,000 operational weapons on the planet.) She points out the near-worthlessness of much-vaunted
radiation detectors at shipping docs, which give false-positive readings for everything from CRTs to kitty litter and could easily be bypassed by a few grapefruit-sized chunks of HEU.

With its constant stream of images of the world's great cities -- with "five-mile" circles showing the area of maximum devastation -- the film never lets us forget the specifics of a hypothetical nuclear detonation. Walker only goes overboard near the end, where she uses footage of happy Times Square visitors to needlessly emphasize the
innocent lives a bomb would destroy.

Ending on a de rigueur positive note, Walker reveals that the film's title refers not only to the doomsday clock but to the push to dismantle every nuke in the world. It's going to take more than texting a protest to the number given in the film's closing titles, but "Countdown" makes the cause seem as urgent as ever.

Andrew O'Hehir Valerie Plame on Naomi Watts and nuclear doom, from Salon, May 17. 2010

 

Mary Corliss  at Cannes from Time magazine, May 18, 2010

 

CompuServe (Harvey S. Karten) review

 

David Bourgeois  at Cannes from Movieline magazine, May 16, 2010

 

User reviews  from imdb Author: (leooel2) from United States

 

Cannes 2010. Lucy Walker's "Countdown to Zero"  David Hudson at Cannes from The Auteurs, May 20, 2010

Christopher Goodwin  The Blond's Bombshell, interview with Lucy Walker from The London Times, May 16, 2010

Owen Gleiberman  at Cannes from Entertainment Weekly, May 16, 2010

 

Variety (John Anderson) review

 

Walker, Michael
 
PRICE CHECK                                                        B                     84

USA  (92 mi)  2012

 

First and foremost in this movie, even better than the movie itself is the music by Dean and Britta and their former band, Luna, which by itself is worth the price of admission, where their still relatively unknown exposure could use a jump start from this small indie film.  Links to available YouTube music videos of songs used in the film will be listed after the review.  This is a wildly uneven but comically satiric, capitalistic take on the American Dream gone wrong film, as personified by Pete Cozy (Eric Mabius), a normal and typically easy going guy, living from paycheck to paycheck in the New York suburbs of Long Island, not particularly happy in his job, but he knows and likes the people, even if none of them are really his friends.  Working in the marketing division for a string of supermarket chains, this was never his career choice, rather the kind of job he settled for in order to pay the bills, as his real joy is spending time with his lovely wife Sarah (Annie Parisse) and infant son.  When his longtime boss retires, someone from corporate headquarters is being brought in with a reputation for being a “real ball-buster.” The new boss’s arrival is, of course, preceded by a moment of brilliance from Amy Schumer as Lila, seen as she walks into the building in the morning when she deadpans “I feel like shit, being human sucks. I hope someone brought donuts.”  This defines the prevailing blasé office attitude where casual nonchalance takes precedent over actual work.  Of course, who’s brought in to shake things up and get these slackers in line?  Susan Felders, rising corporate star, played by none other than Parker Posey, introduced here:  Price Check Movie (Parker Posey & Eric Mabius) - YouTube (1:35).  Posey is energy in a bottle, given a starring role written for her by the writer/director, where she channels the spoiled and manic nature of her previous role in The House of Yes (1997), where she is literally so narcissistic that she always has to have her way, steamrolling over others to make sure she gets it.  Her ruthlessly ambitious personality is both lovably adoring, the way Posey plays it, yet also slightly terrifying, like she’s an unleashed monster in the room.  

 

Posey’s high strung character represents the boss from Hell, the Type-A personality that has you immediately sending out resumé’s for another job, but then she pats you on the back, calls you by your first name, and starts throwing out impossible sales projections that need to be met by next week, accompanied by the shouting of hurrah, clapping her hands, yelling let’s get to work, and deep down, you know she really means it.  Immediately you know your life is not the same anymore, as it’s owned by the company you work for.  But Pete doesn’t see it that way initially, as he’s a decent and earnest guy, responsible and hard-working, feeling it’s time to step up to the plate and try some of these new ideas, though doubling his salary and making him a company Vice-President doesn’t hurt in buying his allegiance.  Sarah’s a little upset that he’s bringing work home with him, that he never has time for his family anymore, but she’s fine with it as she’s finally able to pay off the credit card debt.  Hell, she’s even got her eye on a new Volvo to replace that stinker in the driveway.  Posey always works best with a straight guy, and Pete couldn’t be more straight and narrow, where she has him eating out of the palm of her hand, supporting her every move, reduced to being a corporate lackey, yet actually excited about implementing these newfangled business ideas.  Susan needs a guy like Pete to do all the work, as we never see her do any of it, instead she’s the sleight-of-hand, deviously motivating “bullshit” overseer that expects everyone else to pull their weight, and hers as well.  She, of course, takes home the corporate paycheck, while everyone else earns the satisfaction of a job well done, and maybe, in good times, a small Christmas bonus. 

 

In the 40’s and 50’s, Posey would be played by Judy Holliday, where her unbridled enthusiasm would liven up stale business practices, and she’d catch the ear of a corporate mogul who’d find her ideas refreshing and exactly what was needed to prevent the company from being driven to corruption and ruin by the predictable financial experts who were little more than yes men.  Half a century later, the company plays with sharks in the water who bully and terrify the workers into becoming yes men, where in reality it’s a cutthroat business where only the strong survive and any misstep only gives them grounds to cut you loose.  The meat of the narrative hardly feels like a comedy, and the way Susan manipulates Pete, the financial numbers, and her entire corporate world is an artificially dizzying process that is oftentimes uncomfortable to watch, as it’s saturated in greed and self-centeredness.  Susan not only controls Pete’s working life, but she takes over his personal life as well, as he’s forced to spend every waking minute with her.  Again, his wife Sarah suspects something’s up, but she’s willing to overlook it because of all the money rolling in.  What’s truly unique is the use of the Dean and Britta music playing quietly underneath, where Susan and Pete actually catch them in a live act, which is nothing short of brilliant, but Susan’s only there to be seen with a hip crowd, where she still wants to be the center of attention, barely even conscious that a musical group is onstage, as it’s all about her.  Like a Faustian bargain, straight arrow Pete actually falls for this, as he envisions seeing himself up the corporate ladder somewhere on easy street.  And it all could have happened, only it doesn’t, as instead of his trusted business ally, Susan in real life is a heartless backstabber, cutting him loose without a second thought, undermining his own ambition with a little of her own, where nowadays it’s considered sound business practice to eliminate the competition.  The capitalistic ruthlessness of the film is a bit frightening, dressed up in what appears to be light comedy, even the so-called happy ending where Pete lands on his feet, but it’s a savagely downbeat and dark tone. 

 

Musical Soundtrack

“Someone Else” The Working Title                Someone Else - The Working Title  (3:31)

“Black Postcards” Luna                                  Luna - Black Postcards (Tell Me Do You Miss Me ...  (9:54)

“When There is No Crowd” White Fence      White Fence - When There is No Crowd  (5:37)

“Eyes In My Smoke” Dean and Britta                       Dean & Britta : Eyes in My Smoke (4:35)

Malibu Love Nest” Luna                              Dean and Britta Malibu Love Nest  (4:31)

“We Dress Ourselves” Princess Katie and Racer Steve         Princess Katie & Racer Steve We Dress Ourselves Rock Songs Music For Kids  (3:11)

“Harvest Moon” Pepper Rabbit                      Pepper Rabbit, 'Harvest Moon' @ Bootleg Theater, 1.19.10 (4:06)

“Mermaid Eyes” Luna                                                Luna - Mermaid Eyes (3:33)

“After the Moment” Craft Spells                   Craft Spells - After The Moment  (4:01)

“Radio” My Hero                                           My Hero Official "Radio" Music Video (3:28)

“Well Well Well Well” The Satin Peaches      The Satin Peaches - Well Well Well Well  (3:33)

 “I Found It Not So” Dean and Britta                        Dean & Bretta - I Found it Not So  (5:30)

“Show You Mine” Alyx                                 Alyx - Show You Mine  (2:50)

“Ramona” Craft Spells                                               Craft Spells - Ramona  (3:16)

“Night Nurse” Dean and Britta                                  nightnurse - dean wareham britta phillips (3:54)

“Knives From Bavaria” Dean and Britta        KNIVES FROM BAVARIA  (2:55), also here:  Dean and Britta "Knives from Bavaria" Live @ The Warhol in Pittsburgh JANE HOLZER  (4:43) 

“Ticking is The Bomb” Luna

“Big Toe” Xray Eyeballs                                Xray Eyeballs - Big Toe (2:58)

“We Are the Dinosaurs” Laurie Berkner        The Laurie Berkner Band - We Are The Dinosaurs (2:28)

“All I Ask” Theodore                                     Theodore-All I ask (4:43)

 “All Things Merry” Britta Phillips

“The Day Summer Fell” The Sand Pebbles    Sand Pebbles The Day Summer Fell (4:05)

 

PRICE CHECK  Facets Multi Media

 

Pete Cozy (Eric Mabius, Ugly Betty), is a good guy who used to be cool and once had his dream job in the music industry, but now finds himself working in the pricing department of a failing supermarket chain. He has a home in the suburbs which he shares with his loving wife and young son. His position allows him to spend quality time with his family, and they are quite happy, despite the fact that they are living beyond their means. However, everything changes when Pete gets a new boss, the high powered, fast talking Susan Felders (Parker Posey, House of Yes, Best in Show). She is an alpha female, and with her enthusiasm and unconventional ideas, Pete finds himself on the executive track, a new role which both surprises and excites him. As his salary increases, he is busier than ever, and work becomes so demanding that it starts to adversely affect his life at home. Pete begins to wonder if this new career is changing him in ways that he can no longer control, in this smart and honest dramedy about the high price of a middle-class life. The question becomes: What are we willing to do for the life we think we deserve.

 

Village Voice  Chris Packham

 

At what point do the responsibilities of marriage and family supersede those of personal actualization and dream fulfillment? A lot of people would say "at the moment of conception," while others might suggest that kids are just along for the ride, anyway. Go ahead and found that puppet theater or artisanal ukulele atelier you've always dreamed of, and just pack the kids to junior college at 18. Director Michael Walker's Price Check presents a miniature Faust story in which Peter (Ugly Betty's Eric Mabius), a husband and new father, grinds away precious hours of unrecoverable life in the fluorescent-lit head office of a failing chain of supermarkets. The company sends in Susan (Parker Posey), a tornadic new vice president with a terrifyingly unstable personality and epic professional ambitions. Recognizing Peter's intelligence and stability, she immediately bullies him into naming the office's worst performers (whom she fires) before doubling Peter's salary and enlisting his help to ram a difficult new business model past the board. She barges into his personal life, befriending his wife and inviting herself to parties at his child's school and to his house on the holidays. During a business trip to Los Angeles, she seduces Peter with an insane but persuasive invitation to impregnate her. Is his halved and compartmentalized life a fair price to pay for his rise in prospects and income? Mabius is understated and sympathetic as a guy who makes some dickish choices, and Susan, played by anyone else, might be a completely unrelatable force of nature. Although Posey renders Susan's instability and dominance with gusto, the character's vulnerability and pain are manifest.

 

National Public Radio [Scott Tobias]  also seen here:  NPR 

When Parker Posey was crowned "queen of the indies" in the mid-to-late '90s, the title referred to her Sundance-dominating ubiquity. But it could just as well have applied to the Parker Posey type — powerful and wonderfully imperious, with a habit of cutting her underlings down to size.

That's the Posey who turns up in Michael Walker's tense comedy Price Check, where she plays a relentless corporate climber who shakes up a sleepy regional office. She inspires. She terrorizes. Whatever it takes to get the job done.

Posey dominates Price Check, mostly for the better: Whatever observations Walker's film makes about the perils of ambition or women in the workplace register entirely through her. She's simply funnier and more interesting than anyone else, and Walker has written her a complex character whose immediate wants are clearer than her long-term ones.

She's the conqueror of the boardroom, bold and visionary and castigating when she needs to be, but there's a subtle note of uncertainty that seeps through the cracks. Professional triumph for her seems certain, but what will it mean in the end? Just a few more units sold?

The story is told from the considerably blander vantage of Pete Cozy (Ugly Betty veteran Eric Mabius), an utterly defeated middle manager at the Long Island headquarters of a failing supermarket chain. His office resembles the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, minus the quirk of Steve Carell and company — a motley collection of clock-punchers, each just a coffee cup away from falling asleep at their desks. And Pete is no exception: With his wife (Annie Parisse) at home raising their son, he's reasonably content to slouch through his 9-to-5 shift and devote himself to his family.

When Susan Felders (Posey) turns up to replace the long-standing supervisor of the pricing department, she instantly recognizes Pete's potential and offers to double his salary for a sharp increase in responsibility. While the money allows Pete and his wife to pay off their debtors and seriously consider a second child, it comes at the cost of nights and weekends and other predictable consequences. For a passive guy like Pete, being put in an intimate working relationship with a voracious go-getter like Susan is a recipe for disaster.

Pete's moral journey — from stand-up married guy willing to shelve his dreams for family to glad-handing slickster who loses his way — has been taken many times before, and Walker doesn't miss many cliches in getting to his destination. But the character does serve as an effective audience surrogate, a regular guy who gets swept up in the maelstrom of Susan's all-consuming passions.

Posey, again, is the real heart of Price Check, an ambiguous figure who introduces chaos into the Long Island branch, but who animates it too, rallying the troops behind a pricing strategy with all the zeal of Patton at the Battle of the Bulge.

Beyond writing a plum role for Posey, who makes it impossible to fathom anyone else in the part, Walker throws himself into the details of the supermarket pricing game — which may sound like the dullest endeavor in cinema history, but which ultimately has the effect of increasing the tension. The promise of an 8-to-10-percent increase in sales over three months becomes the carrot at the end of the stick, and it helps Walker convey the excitement that can ripple through an office when they're on the chase. It's what happens when they finally get the prize that unsettles the characters in Price Check.

Because after all, it's just a carrot.

Sound On Sight  Lane Scarberry

 

Slant Magazine  R. Kent Osenlund

 

The Playlist [Gabe Toro]

 

Twitch [Chase Whale]

 

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

Film School Rejects [Kate Erbland]

 

Paste Magazine [Christine N. Ziemba]

 

Hollywood Reporter  Justin Lowe

 

TV Guide [Mark Deming]

 

Variety [John Anderson]

 

Los Angeles Times  Barry Goldstein

 

Chicago Tribune  Nina Metz

 

New York Times [Stephen Holden]

 

Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips

 
Walker, Stephen
 
YOUNG @ HEART                                                 B                     88

aka:  Young at Heart

Great Britain  (107 mi)  2007

 

Does watching a singing group that averages 81 years of age sound appealing?  What if they choose rock n roll songs, or even more absurd, a few punk songs to perform?  One could easily find fault with this film, as outside of an amusing premise which is revealed in the film trailers, what more is there to stick around for?  There’s no real groundbreaking cinematic material here, nothing particularly novel in the director’s style of filming a documentary where the camera is nearly incidental, and the subject matter dreadfully sounds like the sort of thing especially designed for The Price is Right game show contestants.  Send them on a trip to Hawaii and let them all have a good time entertaining the hotel crowd.  The initial absurd factor kicks in immediately as a 92 year old war widow with a thick British accent opens with the Ramones “Do I Stay or Do I Go?” where the words are so distinctive, it’s as if Alfred Hitchcock himself was doing the pronunciating.  And behind her, the men and women in the chorus are jumping up and down as if they are performing a Peter Brook free-form version of Marat Sade, all to the thundering 2 chord garage rock beat of the Ramones that starts pounding in the back of our heads.  If it wasn’t real, it would be ridiculous.  But the funny thing is that it gets real as we are slowly introduced to the members of this Massachusetts singing group which has a 25 year history of performing in Europe where they are actually better known abroad than here in their own country.  The British director heard about them at the Rotterdam Film Festival and initially contacted them for a British TV show, expanded to a feature length documentary.  Suddenly, in this context, where the oldest is age 92 and the youngest 72, the lyrics take on a different meaning.  “Do I Stay or Do I Go?” is not a lover’s question, but a life or death question. 

 

Led for 25 years by a strict taskmaster, the 50 something Bob Cilman, who is described by one member as “Tough as nails.  He breathes rust,” they are practicing some brand new material for a local performance, among which includes some Talking Heads songs, also a couple that are really tripping them up, “Yes I Can,” a song that was a hit with the Pointer Sisters which features the repetitive use of the word “can” 71 times in the song, and Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia,” which has them all shaking their heads and holding their ears.  Cut to a few face shots where members are asked to name their favorite music, which inevitably turns out to be classical, with opera hitting the top of their list.  From my perspective, listening to Sonic Youth’s version with this group was a real leap of faith, as one wondered if perhaps this wasn’t beyond their reach.  Then we learn a little health background about a few members of the group, a few who have been pronounced dead but survived, several who have overcome what was believed to be terminal illnesses, one who survived 5 bouts of chemotherapy, but somehow they survived.  Every man and woman in the group attributes it to their participation in this group, which forces them to focus beyond themselves but to a larger goal.  What they have in this performance group is one large support network where they all reach out and care about one another. 

 

Inevitably, members succumb.  In the entire history of the group, over 100 members have died.  Suddenly, what was a silly movie about octogenarian rock singers turns into a poignant study about impending death.  When one of the members dies, which was reported to the group off camera where the audio was still rolling as they sat in a yellow school bus, his death was honored an hour later in a performance at a local correctional facility of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.”  When they finally perform to a sold out house in their home town, the same situation happens again, where one of the guys who was sharing the lines to the Talking Heads song “Life in Wartime,” the guy who just nailed it in the rehearsals, died shortly before the concert.  In tribute, Fred Knittle, a barrel of a man connected to an oxygen tank for the rest of his life, who was introduced in the film singing “Ghost Riders in the Sky” at his kitchen table, sings an eerily haunting and supremely touching version of Coldplay’s “Fix You,” easily the seminal moment of the film, as it’s quiet enough that you can hear the pumping rhythm of his oxygen machine.  Death doesn’t come much closer than this, particularly in a live performance.  Knittle’s acutely apt rendition is perhaps the singlemost outstanding cinema sequence I’ve seen all year, as the raw authenticity emanating from that moment is simply unforgettable.  We hear another woman sing an astonishingly beautiful rendition of Sinead O’Conner’s “Nothing Compares to U.”  And yes, the group brings the house down singing a wild version of “Schizophrenia.”  Apparently the group used to tour singing show tunes and old cowboy ballads, songs from their era, until onstage one night one woman in the group inexplicably broke into the Manfred Mann song “Doo Wah Diddy” and the audience went crazy.  The rest is history.     

 

There are a few previously produced rock videos made by the group for the TV show which admittedly don’t have the same spontaneous impact as their live footage, but it does include a hilarious rendition of the Ramones “I Wanna be Sedated,” a group travel video where they’re actually lost on the side of the road in the Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere,” or a cheesy Saturday Night Fever spoof of “Staying Alive” shot with background singers and dancers in a bowling alley.  But one of the more memorable moments in the film was one man’s utter inability to get the 7 word lyrics right in the James Brown song “I Feel Good,” where even in rehearsals, he was never able to sing “I feel nice, like sugar and spice.” But the song brought the house down anyway, kids were jumping in the aisles, as it’s the idea of rockers on parade having fun that simply makes people feel good.  Cilman does an excellent job choosing material for the group, as the lyrics truly resonate beyond the stage into the audience.   

 

While the film is somewhat amateurish, brilliant production values alone do not make a great film, but this film does find its audience by simply showcasing a marvelous group of people who live with the close proximity of death every day, where the mortality in the film is so real, yet throughout it all the group maintains their composure and lives the remaining years of their lives with a great deal of dignity by having a rollicking good time at rehearsals or on the road with a group of their peers, where they all commiserate and work through their losses through music and song, but also still find a wonderful joy in being alive and still feeling appreciated.  The emotion in this film may feel a bit raw and raggedly unrehearsed, but since it took 8 decades developing, at this point it’s hard-earned and genuine, and in a youth dominated culture where it’s all about teenage angst and maintaining your youthful appearance, this is a film that makes the rest of us sit up, take notice, and appreciate the elderly.

 

a partial list off songs:

 

Bob Dylan -  Forever Young

Ramones – I Wanna Be Sedated

Talking Heads – Life in Wartime

Talking Heads – Road to Nowhere

James Brown – I Feel Good

Fix You – Coldplay 

Sinead O’Conner – Nothing Compares to U

Sonic Youth – Schizophrenia

David Bowie – Golden Years

Bee Gee’s – Staying Alive

Clash – Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Yes I Can – Pointer Sisters

Jimi Hendrix – Purple Haze

 

User reviews from imdb Author: penncare from Philadelphia, PA

I just saw this movie at the Philadelphia Film Festival. This was an excellent feel good movie. I highly recommend it. It's the type of movie (documentary really) that more Hollywood Studios should make. In the Q&A afterwards, the director commented on how hard it was to get musical releases for the various songs. When you see the movie, you will understand why because the songs were sung by many famous performers and the producers got all of the releases but one, U2's One. During the scene in which one of the characters is in the hospital the scene was supposed to show the character singing One in a past performance interlaced with the current event. Alas, since U2 didn't agree to release the rights, it will never be shown. The director commented that so many people on the production staff would stop in the editing room just to see it. Once you see the movie, you will understand why I say, U2 sucks!

Village Voice   Scott Foundas

From the washed-out images to the twee voice-over (courtesy of director Stephen Walker), this British television documentary about the titular Massachusetts-based senior-citizens' chorus so slavishly embodies the creakiest clichés of British television documentaries that you begin to wonder if it's not all a big put-on—if Christopher Guest didn't direct the damn thing under a pseudonym. Fortunately, Walker's subjects—nearly all in their eighties and nineties, with a greatest-hits collection of medical ailments and a set list that runs the gamut from the Beatles to Sonic Youth—more than carry the day. Set over the six weeks leading up to the chorus's latest concert, Young @ Heart adopts the will-they-pull-it-all-together-by-showtime formula of so many backstage docs, with the caveat that, for these performers, neither time nor Father Time is on their side. The film's appeal is at once sentimental and perverse: It's not every day that you get to see a 92-year-old woman soloing on "Should I Stay or Should I Go," or a deeply affecting rendition of Coldplay's "Fix You" performed by an octogenarian with congestive heart failure. Not surprisingly, a feature remake is already in the works.

The Onion A.V. Club [Nathan Rabin]

Don Argott's 2005 crowd-pleaser Rock School illustrated how tough, unsentimental documentary filmmaking can undercut the sentimentality of even the most oppressively adorable subject. School explored the career of Rock School proprietor Paul Green, a mercurial, foul-mouthed teacher whose life goal entails bringing the rock to adorable tots and sulky teens. Young@Heart explores a similarly crowd-pleasing story from somewhere at the opposite end of the age spectrum—it tells the story of Bob Cilman, an iconoclastic teacher brave or foolish enough to teach a chorus of senior citizens songs from artists like The Clash. But any hope that Walker will steer clear of sap vanishes when he guilelessly gushes early on that documenting the choir was like picking up dozens of new grandparents. Walker undoubtedly means well, and his affection for his subjects is palpable. But the "Aren't these geezers adorable?" approach ends up diminishing his subjects rather than honoring them.

Walker's film follows the "Young At Heart" chorus as it tries to learn tricky new songs by Sonic Youth, Allen Toussaint, and others for a climactic performance. The singing seniors turn out to be a gregarious lot delighted to have an appreciative audience for their corny jokes and rambling tales. The film's first half is human-interest-story peppy, but as one chorus member after another stares down his imminent mortality, the film grows darker and more heart-wrenching.

Cilman looks to be almost as intriguing a subject as Green, but Walker unwisely maintains a respectful distance from him and avoids asking tough questions, like whether teaching confused seniors a Sonic Youth song is broadening their horizons, or imposing his own arty taste on folks who'd rather sing the Irving Berlin songbook. Walker similarly stumbles in including homemade Young At Heart "music videos" that come off as cheesy and condescending instead of cheeky and irreverent. Which is a shame, because there's a wealth of great material here, especially a shattering performance of Coldplay's "Fix You" by a soulful mountain of a man named Fred Knittle. In this transcendent, goosebump-inducing moment, the facile gimmick of senior citizens performing the music of their grandchildren's generation disappears, giving way to something truer and more profound: a great singer connecting on a primal level with the heart of a terrific song. It's a wonderful sequence that deserves to be in a deeper, better film.

Chicago Tribune (Jessica Reaves)

Anyone who’s ever faced a birthday with a sense of impending doom, or stared bleakly in the mirror at a causeway of emerging wrinkles, knows we could all stand to be reminded, now and again, that there are benefits to growing old, even beyond the obvious (it’s a whole lot better than the alternative). Thankfully, just such a reminder has arrived in the form of “Young @ Heart,” an exuberant, affectionate documentary by first-time filmmakers Stephen Walker and Sally George.

“Young @ Heart” follows the eponymous chorus (average age 80) as they prepare a new repertoire of songs for a springtime tour, putting their signature spin on the classics. Classics like The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” “Life During Wartime” by the Talking Heads and, naturally, that old chestnut, “Schizophrenia” by Sonic Youth. You can’t truly appreciate the absurdity of certain lyrics (Allen Toussaint’s “Yes We Can Can,” for example) until you’ve heard them read painstakingly aloud by an octogenarian with a magnifying glass.

Led by chorus director Bob Cilman—a wry, passionate candidate for Ultimate Mensch of the Universe—the troupe is populated by a range of characters, many who seem straight from central casting. Irene, a 92-year-old coquette, carpools to practice with sweet Joe, who’s survived multiple rounds of chemotherapy and memorizes lyrics after just one reading, and the irascible Lenny, a World War II pilot drives like a 16-year-old but can’t quite remember the words to “Purple Haze.”

While their vigor and enthusiasm makes it easy to temporarily forget, or at least ignore, the realities of the chorus’ collective age, there are inevitable, harsh reminders. Two members died during the filming process, and another came awfully close (but survived to deliver a truly astonishing rendition of Coldplay’s “Fix You”). Director Stephen Walker does a remarkable job of respecting his subjects’ grief even as their experiences inform and enhance the film’s emotional canvas. Movie death, even in documentaries, can feel like a cheap shot. Here, the emotion, like everything else about the project, feels categorically genuine.

After persuading the initially reluctant chorus to let a film crew trail them for months on end, Walker and George shot “Young @ Heart” with a nonexistent budget, and it shows: Production values are shaky at best, punctuated by awkward camera angles and amateurish lighting. Given the profoundly joyous end result, dwelling on such technicalities feels petty, if not downright mean-spirited.

There may be people who won’t fall in love with this movie, people who aren’t captivated by its motley cast of characters. I just hope I never meet any of them.

Reel.com [Jason Morgan]  also seen here:  Filmcritic.com 

When we were kids, all we wanted to do was grow up to stay up late and eat ice cream whenever we wanted. We don't know when adulthood hits. One day we wake up and have a job and responsibilities. Suddenly, aging terrifies us, as if our lives our end at 50. And then there's Young at Heart, a chorus with members ranging from 72 to 92-plus years old belting out rock classics from The Clash to Talking Heads.

From frame one, we giggle, as 92 year-old Eileen Hall screaming The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" with a grandmotherly British accent. But we aren't laughing at her. We laugh because we're surprised. Surprised by the grit and fire in the voices. Surprised by the vitality of rock and roll. Surprised because old age has never been so alive. The documentary follows the geriatric rockers as they prepare for a new tour. And director Stephen Walker lucks out because there's nothing he could have done other than point his camera and shoot to make the film any stronger than it is. As a documentary, it's raw, unpolished footage. But for its lack of tact, it allows the strength of the chorus' personalities to come alive onscreen.

Every moment of laughter and tears is created by the choir (not the filmmaker), from Lenny Fontaine driving with the reckless abandon of a teenager with Eileen and Joe laughing in tow to Fred Knittle channeling Johnny Cash when singing a duet-turned-solo after the chorus loses a member. Walker goes beyond the rehearsal hall as the members of the chorus allow us to become a part of their daily lives. Along with the humor and hope, there's a shadow always looming. While the spirit of the chorus members is always willing, the rest of them doesn't always cooperate. Given the benevolent candor of the members, when one dies, it's not a character in a film that passes, but a person that let us follow him around to enjoy what he enjoys and experience what he goes through. You know that at the end, they aren't going to bound back onto the stage for the final curtain call.

To keep the pace brisk and the mood light, Walker inserts Young at Heart music videos into the story. The scenes of the chorus wheeling and dancing around a nursing home to The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" help offset the sadness of watching Fred practice his song at home alone, without his duet partner. But the smiles and laughs are bigger than the tears. Though we are surprised by their youthful vitality, the chorus also strengthens the old adage that with age comes wisdom. While the chorus is obviously affected by the loss of members, they have a perception of death that is far more inspiring than fearful.

The spirit of rock and roll is embedded in the singers, but that's not what we connect with. We connect with their passion and honesty -- two emotions that are rarely found in life, let alone cinema. Where popular documentaries present a reality filtered through a filmmaker, Young at Heart allows reality to play out as it happens. The movie could show audiences that documentaries don't have to be stuffy, politically-driven creations, but rather can be touching stories of everyday people that are potentially more moving and enjoyable than any Hollywood blockbuster, if only audiences would step outside themselves and take a chance.

Movie Shark Deblore [debbie lynn elias]

For me, anything having to do with screening a film, reviewing it, consulting with filmmakers or even doing my own production work, is a labor of love. But today, with YOUNG @ HEART, writing this review goes even beyond that. I had the privilege of screening YOUNG @ HEART when it premiered last year at the Los Angeles Film Festival. From the opening frame, I knew this was something special. Many of you may have read my raves last year. as I screened it, not once, not twice but three times. And obviously the LAFF audience had the same love affair going with this documentary film as I, for it walked away with an LAFF Audience Award and garnered standing ovations and cheers at each screening and the closing night ceremonies. This film and its subjects, speak to your heart and as you will see for yourselves, comes from the heart and is filled with heart. My respect and admiration for the members of the Young @ Heart chorus is unparalleled but for that which I have for their choral director, Bob Cilman, and the film’s writer/director, Stephen Walker, whom I am privileged to know.

Many of us have long been consumed with a fear of aging....and to a large degree, rightfully so. For years, the mantra was “don’t trust anyone over 30", then 40 and 50 became feared and dreaded, “wrinkle” became a watchword and a curse, and by the time one got to be 60 or 70, they were put out to pasture. And let’s not even think about what happens when you are 80 or 90 or even 100+. For me, age was never something I thought about and thanks to blessings of grandparents who were vital and active well into their 90's (and beyond) and a father who in his 70's still works more than full-time in broadcast television, activity means longevity and vitality. But that’s not how it is for many who are beyond their golden years and left to their own devices or, put out to pasture. And luckily, for the good folks of Northampton, Massachusetts, they’ve got a friend in Bob Cilman.

Back in 1982, Cilman, a passionate musician and artist, became involved with the Northampton Senior Center and created Young @ Heart, non-profit arts organization and chorus comprised of seniors ranging from 70 to 90+. Drawing on the 30,000 citizens in the area, since 1982 over 100 individuals have been members of the chorus. Thanks to Cilman’s devotion and dedication, seniors that may have floundered or faded are rejuvenated and excited about life and living. They have purpose; they are needed; they are respected and appreciated. And did I say talented!! But what makes this particular chorus of seniors so special? Well, how often do you hear a 90 year old woman sing James Brown’s “I Feel Good” or Allen Toussaint’s “Yes We Can Can” with 78 repetitive “cans”? And what about a senior’s interpretation of the Sonic Youth hit, “Schizophrenia” or a poignant “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” This is the essence of Young @ Heart and it is a brief month long chapter taken from the lives of its members that is the foundation of the film YOUNG @ HEART. And while only a mere chapter, the film speaks volumes.

A 25 year work in progress, the chorus has gained international notariety, touring Europe and appearing before packed theaters and thunderous applause. It was to one such show that documentarian Stephen Walker was “drug” by his wife to see “a group of old people singing rock ‘n roll music...embarrassing karaoke type stuff.” (Of course when you see the film or hear the chorus, you quickly realize , it’s not karaoke at all, but Bob Cilman’s exquisite reinterpretation of those songs.) As Walker describes it, “The audience was completely packed and it was every age group. All ages. More young than older. A lot of people in their 20's and 30's. It was a low key opening. They came on carrying walkers; an older man stood by the upright piano and sang a Cole Porter style number. I wasn’t even sure the show had started. Then suddenly the lights dimmed, the entire chorus stood up and they started singing the Talking Heads song, ‘Road to Nowhere’ and I was blown away. And then very quickly Eileen Hall, the 93 year old, comes up to the microphone and does what she does in the film and sings The Clash. And it’s a shock value. But instantly it became the obvious. ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ was not a song about relationships when it’s sung by a 93 year old. It’s a song about life and death.” It was in that moment that Walker knew what he had to do. He had to bring Young @ Heart to the big screen - and now - to the world. “We were revved up. We were thinking, actually nobody does a film about old age and export all those taboos and talk about sex and sickness and death and all those things and do it through music, music that people can identify with, struck us as being a really fresh and original thing to do.”

Getting Bob Cilman to agree to Walker’s concept was another matter. Protective of the chorus, it took some six months before he came around to Walker’s way of thinking, although Cilman’s main thrust was and remains that the music is interesting whereas Walker concentrates on several of the chorus members and deems people to be the interest and focus. Cilman was also concerned about the sound and deferring to his knowledge and expertise, Walker recorded in 24 track “really making it sound good so the chorus would sound good.” And so, Stephen Walker and crew crossed the Pond and spent two months shooting the chorus at practice, performance and play, combining interviews with the more outgoing and celebrated members like Eileen Hall, Dora Morrow, Stanley Goldman, Joe Benoit, Fred Knittle, Bob Salvini and Steve Martin, with the groups patented musical stylings amidst life, love and sadly, death. This group has the most individual and collective indominable spirit. Energetic, determined, zealous, inspirational and uplifting, you will embrace each member with your heart as you watch and listen to their stories. Personally, talking with Dora, Stan and Steve was an experience I will cherish throughout my life.

What Cilman and the group are doing with these songs is extraordinary. They give totally new meaning to songs well familiar to most of us. When Lenny Fontaine sings about “Purple Haze”, it’s no longer about drugs, it’s about dementia. When they sing “I Want to be Sedated”, it becomes the ultimate punk song as the chorus sing sit angrily in an “old people’s home” and the meaning now becomes how people can get treated in those places.

Shot with two cameras around Northampton, the imagery is poignant and never more so than when the group performs at a local prison. Stan Goodman, a former teacher who taught English in prisons, was ecstatic at the opportunity to perform for the inmates. And although the rest of the chorus had some reservations, through Walker’s lens we are privy to emotion not rarely captured on camera. “I remember still, looking through the viewfinder and just thinking, my God. This is extraordinary. This happens very rarely. This is where documentary just becomes incredible because the complexity of emotions on those men’s [inmates] faces is just remarkable. Everywhere I looked I saw the same stuff.”

The prison performance piece one of the most powerful in the film was a challenge. According to Walker, “We were very careful about where to cut. I remember my editor Chris King saying, ‘There’s not going to be a dry eye in the house when this goes out.’ The truth is, it’s been like that in every single screening we’ve witnessed. I’ve watched people’s faces. They are entranced by what’s happening on the screen and there are tears pouring down their faces. It’s a privilege to be in a situation like that.”

Editing, key to the success of this project, in and of itself was a challenge or as Walker puts it - “hell.” First go round for Walker and editor, Chris King, was 14 weeks which provided the LAFF and BBC version (complete with commercial cuts). When Fox Searchlight acquired the movie at LAFF, Walker went back into the cutting room and spent another 6 weeks in cutting room, tightening it, losing some commentary. “We did a lot of work at the beginning of the film making it much more cinematic. We had a lot of commercial breaks in there originally so we had to close that. It took a lot of work. Most of all, we changed the sound. We went into the dubbing theater and we had the same guy in sound design who designed “The Golden Compass.” And we redesigned the sound completely in 5.1 surround. So now, it’s this huge sound. Now it’s all around you. We went right back to the beginning and it took weeks to do that because I wanted people to feel like they were right in it. I want them to feel like it’s a rock concert because music is such a big part of this film. All in all, 20 weeks for editing. I’ve made 23 films. This was toughest editing experience of my life.” Yet, Walker and King make it all very seamless. You get the sense that everyone is everywhere from beginning to end. There is a cohesive togetherness and solidarity among the chorus. Each song is carefully tracked so you know where you are with each song. “You have to keep in mind to remind the audience of where you are with that song and that happens with each one of the songs.” Walker equated editing this film to a massive jigsaw puzzle spread out all over the table.

And for those wondering about Academy consideration, take note. There is enough difference between this version and that shown on then BCC to qualify YOUNG @ HEART for submission for Oscar consideration, not to mention, grab Oscar gold as Best Documentary in 2009. Different in look and texture, it is filled with even more joy and emotion, but retains the integrity, spirit and heart of not only Stephen Walker’s vision, but that of Bob Cilman and the essence of the chorus.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll stand up and cheer. You’ll leave the theater with a song in your heart and a spring in your step. But more than anything, you will always be young at heart once you see YOUNG @ HEART. This is the single most powerful and personal moviegoing experience you will ever have.

PopMatters [Cynthia Fuchs]

 

REVIEW | Old Joy: Stephen Walker's “Young @ Heart” | IndieWire   Nick Pinkerton from Reverse Shot, April 6, 2008

 

James Berardinelli's ReelViews

 

Newsweek (David Ansen)

 

Cinemattraction.com [Robert Levin]

 

eFilmCritic.com (Jason Whyte)

 

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski)

 

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice   Mark Bell

 

FilmJerk.com Review [Brian Orndorf]  also seen here:  OhmyNews [Brian Orndorf]  and here:  DVD Talk

 

Slant Magazine [Nick Schager]

 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer   Andy Speltzer

 

Austin Chronicle [Steve Davis]

 

Los Angeles Times [Kenneth Turan]

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Stephen Holden

 
Wallach, Eli – actor

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Western Special: Eli Wallach - The Gun ...  John Exshaw from Sight and Sound, January 2006

Western special The latest in our Actors series celebrates a veteran performer who often played the heavy against starrier names. His signature role is one of the great Western rogues: Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Stepping out of the elevator I find a short corridor with two identical doors at either end. I look left and right; neither is numbered. I continue to look one way then the other, like an idiot at a street crossing. A line spoken by Eli Wallach in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly flashes through my mind: "There are two kinds of spurs, my friend. Those that come in by the door, those that come in by the window." Not very helpful: there aren't any windows and I'm not wearing spurs... This deranged line of thought is interrupted when the door on the left opens to reveal Wallach himself - Broadway legend, Hollywood character star and Brooklyn's greatest gift to the Western. We shake hands and he welcomes me in, grinning as if at some shared joke.

This is not our first meeting. In May, at New York's National Arts Club, I had watched as Wallach, together with his wife of 57 years and frequent co-star Anne Jackson, performed readings of two early one-act plays by Tennessee Williams. In the second - Me, Vashya! (1937) - Wallach played Vashya Shontine, a European arms manufacturer who has been selling munitions to both sides in an ongoing war. Though Me, Vashya! turned out to be poor-man's Chekhov, it was nonetheless vintage Wallach. Cunning, wheedling, threatening, bombastic and vicious by turn, the actor was in his element, his sly, peasant's eyes darting about, his right hand clenched, index finger jabbing upwards in a gesture that immediately recalled his gallery of great movie villains: Silva Vacarro, the oily seducer in Baby Doll (1956); Calvera, the rapacious bandit in The Magnificent Seven (1960); and, most memorably, Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez ("known as the Rat") in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Afterwards he signed copies of his newly published autobiography The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage for an orderly queue of theatre aficionados, each of whom seemed eager to share a special memory of his distinguished Broadway career.

This afternoon, in his spacious Riverside Drive apartment on New York's Upper West Side, he begins by reminiscing about the time he spent in London in 1954 when The Teahouse of the August Moon transferred from Broadway to Her Majesty's Theatre, with RADA students Alan Bates, Albert Finney and Peter O'Toole earning £1 a night as stagehands. Wallach is smaller than I'd expected, maybe 5'6", and looks fit and compact in a blue shirt and dark slacks, a slightly jerky gait the only evidence of two hip replacements. His white hair is cropped short and his close-cut moustache and goatee give him the air of a well-preserved Spanish don, an appropriate look for an actor whose best-known roles have been Mexican bandits or sinister Italians (think of the doddering but deadly Mafia boss Don Altobello in 1990's The Godfather Part III), despite his real-life Polish-Jewish background. Or perhaps because of it? The Union Street area of Brooklyn where he grew up was predominantly Italian and he can remember as a child being terrified by a bloodthirsty puppet show, the pupi siciliani that would later influence Sergio Leone's development of the picaresque Tuco.

Wallach worked as a Broadway actor for a decade before making his movie debut in Elia Kazan's Baby Doll (1956), a film constructed from two one-act plays by Tennessee Williams. (The playwright has figured prominently in Wallach's life: it was during a production of This Property Is Condemned in 1946 that he met Jackson; in 1951 he won a Tony Award for his role in The Rose Tattoo; and he and Jackson continue to stage their show Tennessee Williams Remembered.) Baby Doll, with its hothouse plot of two older men fighting for the attentions of Carroll Baker's titular nymphet, brought Wallach his only major film-acting award in a career encompassing some 50 feature films. "After Baby Doll I won the British Academy Award for the best entrée into film," he says. "In America it was condemned by the Church, and Time magazine said it was probably the most pornographic movie ever made, filled with Priapian details that would make even Boccaccio blush. But the British film industry recognised the performance."

A good actor steals

Wallach's striking debut came courtesy of 'the Method', an acting technique distilled from the psychology-based teaching of Konstantin Stanislavsky which encourages actors to use "emotional memory" to bring their personal experiences to a role. In 1947 Wallach and Jackson had become charter members of the Actors Studio, the famed rehearsal group co-founded by Kazan which embraced the Method with missionary zeal. Among their fellow members were Marlon Brando, Karl Malden and Patricia Neal, with later disciples including Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Montgomery Clift, Jack Palance and Rod Steiger. Wallach himself remains closely identified with both the Actors Studio (which he describes as "a gym for actors to work out in") and the Method, which makes his opening remarks on the subject surprising.

"There is no 'the Method'," he growls, index finger thrusting upwards. "Everyone says, 'the Method' - it's like mumbo-jumbo. Each teacher or director develops their own method." Having already encountered Stanislavsky's theories during his studies at the Neighborhood Playhouse and with Lee Strasberg (who would become artistic director of the Actors Studio in 1949), Wallach soon realised that Kazan and his colleagues were putting their own spin on what 'the Method' should be. "I wasn't convinced that this Method knew the answer to it all. A good actor steals. I take from what's given, the rules of the game, and I sift it through my machine. I take what I need and what I think I can use."

I ask if the technique, combined with his family background, were of help when he made Romance of a Horse Thief (1971), the only film I can think of in which he plays a Polish-Jewish character. "No," he says after a pause. "I played a horse thief. I didn't think in terms of playing a Pole." He then goes on to describe The Wall (1982), about "the uprising of the Poles in Warsaw, which we shot near Krakow, near Auschwitz. There I had the experience of thinking what would have happened. My father's and mother's families were wiped out. It's a part of history that you think could never have happened, and yet it's repeatedly done. To quote Yip Harburg, who wrote Finian's Rainbow: 'We learn this after every war/That life is not worth dying for.'"

Wallach has frequently been cast as a spokesman for the Method, on one occasion participating in a 'Method versus Classical Acting' debate in London organised by Kenneth Tynan in which Wallach and Kim Stanley were pitted against Rex Harrison, Wendy Hiller and Robert Morley. "We were insufferable," he recalls. "We had found the key to great acting and we were a pain in the ass." After the debate a furious Rex Harrison rounded on Tynan, accusing him of trying to destroy the British acting system, while Wallach was taken aside by Harrison's wife Kay Kendall, who said: "Eli, don't mind Rex. We English are so square we have to smuggle our tits past customs." Wallach throws up his hands, still delighted by the memory. "What a sentence! What a thought!"

The most famous proponent of the Method was, of course, Marlon Brando, for whom Wallach acted as both rent collector - when Jackson sublet her apartment to him - and sparring partner at the Actors Studio. He was also to encourage Marilyn Monroe to attend the Studio and she soon became a family friend and occasional babysitter. Wallach first met her during the New York run of The Teahouse of the August Moon, when she visited his dressing-room and asked, "How do you do a whole play?" She was subsequently his co-star in John Huston's troubled production of The Misfits (1961) alongside Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. The film was an adaptation by Monroe's then-husband Arthur Miller of one of his own short stories, but by the time of filming in 1960 the marriage was in crisis. As Wallach recalls, "What was happening in that movie was the undercurrent of what was happening in real life. Her marriage was dissolving. She felt that the cameras were like X-ray machines, and they'd go right through her eyes into her brain so they'd know what she was thinking. It made it terribly difficult."

Monroe's problems increased as filming progressed: her reliance on sedatives resulted in her forgetting her lines, turning up late on set and causing production to be halted. The arrival of Montgomery Clift, himself reliant on painkillers and suffering from depression after being disfigured in a car crash in 1957, briefly lifted Monroe's spirits - she described Clift to Wallach as "the only person I know who's in worse shape than me" - but the effect was shortlived. Wallach, who was committed to begin a play in New York and had become friendly with the beleaguered Miller, got increasingly irritated and by the time production ended (at a cost of $4 million, making it the most expensive black-and-white film since the silent era) he and Monroe were no longer speaking.

Sweaty and in character

He has happier memories of working with Clark Gable, whose character in The Misfits competes with Wallach's Guido for the affections of Monroe's Roslyn. "The first day I worked with Clark he had sent his assistant to come and talk to me, to read the scene we were going to do. Evidently he'd heard about this Method, and these strange blackhaired guys from Brooklyn who were doing it. So on the first day of shooting I'm in my truck, he leans over the window, and John Huston says 'Action!' And Clark is looking at me, thinking 'Who the hell is this guy with his Method?' And I'm looking at him, thinking 'This is the King of the Movies! I hope he doesn't know I haven't seen Gone with the Wind.' Both of us are mesmerised, like animals checking one another out. And Huston said, 'Cut! What's the matter? I said action!' Then, 'Props, bring on the drinks.' We each had a shot of Jack Daniels and then we went into the scene and for the rest of the movie we bonded."

New York actors are not usually noted for their contributions to the Western. James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart provoked universal mirth when asked to saddle up for The Oklahoma Kid (1939) and Bogart compounded the error with a distinctly embarrassed turn as a Mexican heavy in Virginia City the following year. Certainly most stage actors of Wallach's calibre would have rejected out of hand the role of a Mexican bandit who appears mainly in the first and final scenes of a big-budget Hollywood Western, and indeed that was Wallach's initial reaction on reading the part of Calvera, the flamboyant predator he played with such relish in John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven. Yet Wallach could see that the role was short on screen time but long on impact; throughout the film, the audience keeps wondering, 'When's he coming back?'

Wallach had certain advantages over Cagney and Bogart when it came to riding the range. A photograph of him aged eight shows him seated on a pony pretending to be William S. Hart or Tom Mix, the leading cowboys of the silent era. After completing high school in 1932 he was dispatched to the University of Texas at Austin, where he learned to chew tobacco and ride polo ponies and wrote Western sketches when he worked as a summer-camp counsellor. Once cast, he proceeded to bring the Method to bear on the role: what, he wondered, would a bandido jefe do with his ill-gotten gains? Conspicuous consumption seemed the likely answer, and so Calvera was fitted out with silk shirts, gold teeth and a silver saddle. Every morning of the shoot Wallach led his gang of 35 muchachos on long rides through the Mexican countryside, arriving on set sweaty and in character to menace the hapless peóns with lines like, "If God did not want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep." His only regret is that he didn't hear Elmer Bernstein's score before playing Calvera: "Otherwise I would have ridden my horse with more authority."

A great clown

A one-armed gunslinger bursts through a door and begins to gloat over a grime-streaked figure in a bath. Four bullets erupt from the bubbly water. Tuco Ramirez stands up, covered in suds, and dispatches the gunslinger with a final shot. Wagging his pistol reprovingly, he says: "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk!"

It's a line Eli Wallach has had to say only twice - once on set in 1966 and once in the dubbing studio a year later - but he's had it quoted back to him a thousand times by fans of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Wallach had assumed it was his performance as Calvera that had caught the attention of director Sergio Leone; in fact it was a moment in Henry Hathaway's 1963 film How the West Was Won. As Charley Gant, Wallach mimes the shooting of George Peppard and his two children before exiting cackling. Leone recalled: "People said to me, 'Keep away from him - he comes from the Actors Studio,' but I knew he would be a great clown."

In a Hollywood Western Tuco would have been a villain of the darkest hue, his list of transgressions enough to make even Calvera blanch, but in Leone's vision and Wallach's playing there's something heroic and moving in his raging against "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". Leone encouraged Wallach to develop the role: Tuco's frantic crossing of himself was an exaggerated version of a gesture Wallach had seen among Italians back in Union Street, while the lines - "You are the son of a thousand fathers, all bastards like you! And your mother it is better not to talk of her!" - were often adlibbed. Wallach particularly enjoyed the scene where Tuco bursts into a store and begins to assemble a gun to his own specifications: "Leone said, 'Well, go in and put the gun together,' and I didn't know how. But he left the camera on and let me toy with it and imagine what it would be like." When it came to the bathroom scene, Wallach recalls, "I said to Leone, 'I'm in the bathtub, in the nude, and this man is going to shoot me and I shoot him. Isn't the water going to get in the gun?' He says, 'Eli, it's only a movie. Shoot him.'"

At one point in the film Tuco says to Clint Eastwood's character Joe, "Blondie, you realise we might be risking our lives?" And indeed Wallach remains grateful to Eastwood for warning him, "Don't be daring. Don't be brave with stunts." For instance, it was at Eastwood's insistence that he and Wallach moved to a position of greater safety during the set-piece dynamiting of Langstone Bridge; after it was blown up they realised that their initial position, chosen by Leone, was deluged with falling rocks and debris.

Wallach seems both surprised and pleased by Tuco's lasting impact: "Even today I sometimes park in a garage where every time I approach the owner whistles the music from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and then offers me a special price. I don't get residuals for Italian movies, but this man who runs that garage gives me a break!"

Unlike Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Charles Bronson, who all became major stars as a result of their collaboration with Leone, Wallach peaked as a film actor with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. When I ask him if he regrets that Tuco didn't lead to bigger things, he replies: "No, I never thought of it in those terms. I used to go into agents' offices and they'd have pictures of these handsome movie men and I knew I'd never be up there. I'm a journeyman actor. I didn't think about stardom." So Wallach returned to the stage and television, occasionally enlivening otherwise dire Hollywood films with sharply etched character studies.

As the end of our two-hour session approaches, the 90-year-old actor seems as full of energy as he was at the beginning. Looking back on his long career, he says: "See how lucky I am? As a little boy I used to see these movies where the villain would always heat the sword and he was going to puncture the hero. And here I am in Cambodia [for Lord Jim, 1964], in Angkor Wat, heating a sword and I'm going to puncture Peter O'Toole. I mean, how can you have a better life?"

"A Master of His Craft: Eli Wallach" an interview by Paul M. Riordan from Images

Walsh, J.T. – actor

 

J.T. Walsh Obituary  Jim Emerson from cinepad

 
Walsh, Raoul

 

Underground Films"A Bit of Male Truth" - Commentary Magazine   Manny Farber, November 1, 1957

 

Raoul Walsh • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Tad Gallagher from Senses of Cinema, July 19, 2002

 
THE THIEF OF BAGDAD

USA  (155 mi)  1924

 

Time Out review

 

Fairbanks' Arabian Nights spectacle presents American silent cinema at its most flamboyant. The collection of sets were said to extend over six-and-a-half acres; the designs, partly by William Cameron Menzies, are a dizzy conglomeration of Manhattan chic, Art Deco, and rampant Chinoiserie, guaranteed to amaze the eyes. Fairbanks leaps and grins through them all, the personification of American 'pep'. Korda's version of 1940 has the quirks and the luscious colour, but this one has the electric energy.

 

Decent Films Guide (Steven D. Greydanus) review [A]

Rivalled only by the awesome Babylonian segments of D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Douglas Fairbanks’ lavish, extravagant The Thief of Bagdad ranks as the very pinnacle of silent-era spectacle. Yet The Thief of Bagdad’s blend of Arabian Nights magic, storybook romance, mythopoeic fantasy travelogue, and sense of wonder and fun is incalculably more entertaining and joyous than even the best moments of Griffith’s muddled melodrama.

Taking as its theme the edifying precept "Happiness must be earned," The Thief of Bagdad introduces Fairbanks as a carefree Middle Eastern street thief (a role that allows the forty-year-old actor to flaunt his acrobatic physique in only baggy breeches and a turban).

Though at first the thief is a cheerful infidel who believes only in taking what he wants, the path to redemption begins when he falls in love with the caliph’s royal daughter (Julanne Johnston). Initially impersonating a prince to win her hand, the thief winds up scourged and humbled, ultimately seeking the advice of the "holy man" he earlier mocked, who advises him that if he loves a princess, he must "become a prince."

The ensuing pilgrimage takes the thief on a fantastic storybook odyssey ranging from the depths of the sea, haunted by sirens and giant spiders, to the world above the clouds, where he finds the abode of the winged horse and the citadel of the moon. The magic of this mythic journey outstrips anything in the highly regarded, possibly overrated 1940 remake.

Fairbanks’s flamboyant acting style is at its most overwrought here, but his charisma and exuberant physicality carry the day (one critic even suggests that his "daringly, beautifully florid performance is grounded less in dramatics than in dance" [TV Guide]).

With its unprecedented special effects and imaginative sets, The Thief of Bagdad is perhaps the first great achievement of cinematic epic mythopoeia, and the forerunner to the likes of The Lord of the Rings.

Reel Bad Arabs:  How Hollywood Vilifies a People, by Jack G. Shaheen, book review by Christian Blauvelt from Jump Cut, Spring 2008

 

moviediva

 

David M. Arnold retrospective

 

DVD Talk (John Sinnott) dvd review [5/5]

 

DVD Times  Anthony Nield

 

Walsh: The Thief of Bagdad (1924)  Billy Stevenson from A Film Canon

 

Camera Journal [Paul Sutton]

 

2 Things @ Once

 

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review

 

Images (Gary Johnson) capsule review  reviewing 10-video Douglas Fairbanks:  King of Hollywood

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]  Kino’s 5-disc The Douglas Fairbanks Collection

 

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [5/5]

 
THE BIG TRAIL

USA  (125 mi)  1930      uncredited co-director:  Louis R. Loeffler

 

Time Out review

Walsh's epic Western has gone down in cinema history as the film that made bit-part actor Marion Morrison into leading man John Wayne (though it needed Ford's Stagecoach to revive his career a decade later). Originally made simultaneously in normal 35mm and a short-lived 70mm process called 'Grandeur', it has recently been restored to its spectacular wide-screen glory. The saga of a wagon trail, the film is more striking now for its wide shots - vast landscapes, wagons being hauled up impossibly steep cliffs - than for the knockabout humour of the character scenes.

The Onion A.V. Club dvd review  Keith Phipps

Though the plot of the 1930 Western The Big Trail is one steady march from the banks of the Mississippi to Oregon territory, it's otherwise a film of false starts. Director Raoul Walsh, who enjoyed considerable success in the silent era, and experienced a second golden age from the late '30s on, thanks to films like They Drive By Night and White Heat, employed 70mm film and a then-new widescreen process called "Fox Grandeur," an early form of what would later be known as Cinemascope. As his star, he plucked from relative obscurity a baby-faced, wavy-haired young actor named John Wayne. Trouble was, with the onset of the Depression, few theaters had the technology to show the film as it was meant to be seen. The Big Trail flopped, and Wayne labored on in B-Westerns until Stagecoach made him a star in 1939.

Did audiences miss much? Yes and no. Like a lot of early talkies, The Big Trail struggles to incorporate dialogue gracefully, even breaking up the action with old-fashioned title cards that are more expressive than the exchanges between characters. And even with all the new technology, the story must have looked tired. While traveling cross-country, Wayne seeks revenge on a pair of buddy-killing nogoodniks (Charles Stevens and the much-less-handsome-than-his-son Tyrone Power Sr.) while romancing the spirited Marguerite Churchill. Between the action scenes, El Brendel provides ostensible comic relief as a slow-witted Swede.

Fortunately, film is a visual medium, and Walsh provides one breathtaking vista after another as the scenery shifts from river to desert to mountains. Beyond and above the drama of Wayne's quest for vengeance is the drama of a graceful, committed man moving against landscapes whose magnitude and danger are matched only by their beauty. As a movie, it's only so-so, but as a dramatic travelogue of the American West, it's a treasure.

Key features: Time critic Richard Schickel provides a typically insightful commentary track. A second disc supplies a 35mm version of the film.

User comments  from imdb Author: Ron Oliver (revilorest@juno.com) from Forest Ranch, CA

A heroic young trail scout leads a large party of pioneers along THE BIG TRAIL to the West, with Indian attacks, natural disasters & romantic complications all part of the adventure.

As sweeping & magnificent as its story, Raoul Walsh's THE BIG TRAIL is a wonderful film, as entertaining as it was more than seven decades ago. With very good acting and excellent production values, it lives up to its reputation as the talkies' first epic Western.

John Wayne, pulled from obscurity for his first important movie role, looks impossibly young, but he immediately impresses with the natural charm & masculine authority he brings to the hero's role; he quietly dominates the film with the attributes which would someday make him a huge star. Marguerite Churchill is fetching as a lovely Southern belle who slowly warms to the Duke's attentions. Dialect comic El Brendel is great fun as a Swedish immigrant beset with mule & mother-in-law woes; his appearance in a scene signals laughs for the viewer.

Looking & sounding like a human grizzly bear, Tyrone Power Sr., vast & repulsive, makes a wonderful villain. Slick cardsharp Ian Keith is a sophisticated bad guy. (His famous physical similarity to John Gilbert is very apparent here.) Silent movie character actor Tully Marshall is impressive as a wily old mountain man who helps guide the wagon train. Corpulent Russ Powell, as a friendly fur trapper, puts his vocal talent for making nonsense noises to good use. Sharp-eyed movie mavens will spot Ward Bond as one of the Missouri settlers.

What will surprise many modern viewers is that THE BIG TRAIL was filmed in an early wide screen process, called Grandeur. More than living up to its name, the picture looks marvelous, with Walsh showing a mastery of the new technology. He fills the screen, every portion of it, with action. Notice during the crowd scenes, how everyone is busy doing real work, which adds so much to the verisimilitude of these sequences. Walsh deserves great credit for being one of the first directors to use wide screen. In addition, the film is blessedly free of the rear projection photography which blights so many older films. It should also be stressed that it is only natural that the soundtrack sounds a little primitive; talkies were still in their cradle. That Walsh was able to use a microphone at all, with most of the scenes shot out of doors, is more kudos for him.

THE BIG TRAIL was not a box office success. In 1930, William Haines' comedies were the big money makers and the public was looking for fare other than intelligent Westerns. Most of the cast slipped into obscurity, including Wayne. It would not be until 1939, when John Ford rescued him in STAGECOACH, that John Wayne's legend would begin in earnest. And despite its grand & sweeping vistas, it would be another 25 years before wide screen caught on with Hollywood, largely as an answer to the economic threat from television.

The Big Trail, by Raoul Walsh, reviewed by Fred Camper, a movie ...

 

mardecortesbaja.com :: THE BIG TRAIL  July 22, 2008

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jeff Rosado) dvd review

 

Film Freak Central dvd review  Travis Mackenzie Hoover

 

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review

 

DVDTalk -- John Wayne Fox Westerns Coll. [Paul Mavis]

 

DVD Verdict (Barrie Maxwell) dvd review

 

The Digital Bits capsule dvd review [Special Edition]  Barrie Maxwell

 

CineScene.com (Chris Dashiell) review

 

Needcoffee.com - DVD Review  Dindrane

 

Frank's Movie Log

 

Daily Film Dose [Alan Bacchus]

 

KQEK.com 2-disc DVD Review [Mark R. Hasan]

 

San Francisco Chronicle (Walter Addiego) dvd review [1/4]

 

The New York Times (Mordaunt Hall) review

 

WILD GIRL                                                               B+                   91

USA  (78 mi)  1932

 

This is actually a remake of several earlier Silent film versions, all based on the 1898 Bret Harte novella Salomy Jane’s Kiss, from William Nigh and Lucius Henderson’s SALOMY JANE (1914) starring Beatriz Michelena, and George Melford’s SALOMY JANE (1923) starring Jacquelyn Logan, to this early 1932 Pre-Code Raoul Walsh version starring Joan Bennett, where all three versions are adapted from Paul Armstrong’s 1907 four-act stage version called Salomy Jane.  Set out West after the Civil War during the mid 19th century, it takes place entirely in the redwood forests of California’s Sequoia National Park, a supremely beautiful location that only adds a unique element to this film.  Walsh grew up in New York City as childhood friends with John Barrymore, becoming an actor for the stage and screen before being hired by D.W. Griffith, working as his assistant director while also playing John Wilkes Booth in Griffith’s racially controversial but also highly influential epic film THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), the first film to ever be shown in the White House under Woodrow Wilson.  Walsh lost an eye in a car accident while making the film IN OLD ARIZONA (1928), where actor Warner Baxter went on to win the Best Supporting actor in the part Walsh intended to play, effectively ending Walsh’s acting career, but he wore an eye patch for the rest of his life while still directing well over 100 feature-length films.  Walsh discovered Marion Morrison, an unknown prop boy at the time working on THE BIG TRAIL (1930), turning him into the star of his film while also changing his name to John Wayne, after Revolutionary War General Mad Anthony Wayne, who happened to be the subject of a book the director was reading.  Walsh became known as one of the most competent craftsmen during the heyday of the studio system, specializing in adventure stories, a director who knew how to utilize outdoor locations and drive the action through pace, composition, and editing sequences, becoming a classical Hollywood filmmaker. 

 

This early talking film shows how effortlessly Walsh made the transition from Silent to talking pictures, using the opening credit sequence with photograph album photos introducing the cast, but the characters come to life on camera humorously introducing some little tidbit about their character, “I'm Salomy Jane, and I like trees better than men, because trees are straight,” a clever and charmingly amusing aural and visual cue that not only introduces sound, but enhances the audience’s appreciation for the cast even before the movie begins.  Another clever device is an optical page-turning effect, where each transitional dissolve into the next scene is a rarely used technique reinforcing the storybook aspect of the movie.  And the opening of this film is a true delight, somewhat dated with a black Mammy character, but there’s never the least inference of bias or mistreatment, as she becomes the mother figure, best friend, and playmate of Salomy Jane, Joan Bennett as a feisty young frontier woman who is something of a tomboy in perfect harmony with the natural world around her, at home among the trees, the creatures in the woods, and playing with little children.  When she sees the stagecoach arriving, she waves to the driver before running home through the woods, grabbing Louise Beavers as Mammy, where the two have to fend off a half a dozen or more live bears en route, which is a dazzlingly filmed sequence as they are all in the same frame together, no computer graphics, making this a most impressive opening.  Eugene Pallette as stagecoach driver Yuba Bill is another revelation, as he’s a hearty old soul who loves to tell stories, something of a Shakespearean Falstaff character with his rotund girth, his gift for gab, his embellishments of stories making him the true hero, and of course, his ultimate cowardliness.  Again, when making the transition to talking pictures, it helps to have such a natural born raconteur and scene stealer who is as thoroughly entertaining as Pallette, who eventually became too physically large for screen roles, building a secondary career just doing voice effects.  His best scene here is when he describes a conversation between horses, using hysterical voice inflections to describe the different animal’s sound as well as their intentions.  If that’s not inventive enough, Bennett, alone in her element, even goes skinny-dipping in the river showing her bare backside where of course she’s discovered by someone she knows only as Man, continually calling him that until the final frame of the film, turning out to be Billy, aka the Stranger (Charles Farrell), who in the opening credit sequence indicates he fought with Robert E. Lee.  

 

A stranger in the midst is enough to arouse people’s suspicions, as it matches the unusual occurrence of the stage getting robbed, so the sheriff rounds up a group of men folk to hang by a tree whoever the culprit is before the night is done.  That’s quick and efficient justice in this outland Western frontier.  And if that’s not enough trouble, Jane is constantly pursued by an assemblage of men competing for her affections, including card shark Jack Marbury (Ralph Bellamy), the man in black always seen curling his waxed moustache, or a contemptible swine Rufe Waters (Irving Pichel) who believes he has an early claim on her, or an overly pious man running for Mayor who secretly molests women, Phineas Baldwin (Morgan Wallace), none of whom really catch her interest.  But when she hears the handsome Stranger tracked down Baldwin and shoots him on the spot, settling an old score, apparently from Kentucky, where the two are seen running over rooftops, she develops a sudden attraction for the man.  So the sheriff adds another noose for his double lynching of a stage robber (the poorest man in town) and a murderer (a stranger), which sends Jane into a swooning depression, only to later find a renewed sense of optimism.  Walsh evidently witnessed an actual lynching as a child, adding some degree of authenticity to this sequence, beautifully shot with quick edits and offscreen sound, with the shadow of the hanged man all that’s seen on the ground, a chillingly effective moment in what is otherwise a rather humorous tale, told with a tongue-in-cheek style from the outset, using plenty of exaggeration and understatement mixed together, almost as if the audience is being told a bedtime story, as in subsequent tellings other aspects might be emphasized.  It’s all blended together with a deft hand and a unique mystique, where the simplest of stories is the least of our interest, but the embellishment of the redwoods, the calm and collected Stranger, a man with few words, the joyous energy of Jane, who is the picture of innocence, yet strong-willed and independent enough to stand up to any man, and the mystifyingly beautiful natural setting is an authentic natural treasure.  The enchanting tone gives this an upbeat feel throughout, even when real human issues are addressed like starving, poverty, vengeance as justice, or crime and punishment are ultimately addressed, giving this a mythical feel of living in Divine Eden, a perfect, picturesque world, where early signs of civilization are the purest forms of human expression, where sin is seen as violating the laws of nature, not God or the laws of man, making this something of a Pantheist western.

 

The Golden Age of American Talkies: 1932 | Peter Bogdanovich

 

Raoul Walsh’s other release this year was Wild Girl, which I saw in 1966 and commented: “Beautifully photographed and robustly directed adventure set in the West, centering around a backwoods girl, delightfully played by Joan Bennett, and her dealings with several men: a good-hearted gambler, a hypocritical, lecherous politician, a two-faced rancher, and a young stranger who fought with [Gen. Robert E.] Lee and has come to kill the politician because he wronged his sister. The location shooting much improves the film, and Walsh’s unpretentious handling, speedy pace and sense of humor---as shown in the amusing stage-driver Eugene Pallette scenes---keeps things going even when the script bogs down in plots and sub-plots.”

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List  Julian Anton

If Raoul Walsh's 1932 film WILD GIRL had any kind of a reputation, its title would probably have pigeonholed it as just another steamy Pre-Code film, perhaps something like BABY FACE only set in the woods. Fair enough: WILD GIRL does have plenty of Pre-Code sensuality; but it really has more in common with Disney's Silly Symphony cartoons (complete with storybook-style optical effects, skinny-dipping youths, and friendly woodland creatures) and its truehearted contemporary B-westerns. It's also an extraordinarily textured, funny, and sensitive look at a dysfunctional (as in: Eugene Pallette is in charge) Civil War Outpost in California. Shifting effortlessly between comedy and melodrama, and often blending the two with a two-fisted unpretentiousness few directors are capable of, Walsh's swift pacing is in full force and a joy to watch on screen. If WILD GIRL isn't the best thing you'll see all year, you'll have been hard-pressed to find something better. (80 min, Restored 35mm Print)

Wild Girl : The New Yorker  Richard Brody

 

This turbulent and tangled Western, from 1932, directed by Raoul Walsh—and filmed on location in Sequoia National Park—portrays a rustic post-Civil War outpost in California in all its sordid, violent, yet romantic energy. Salomy Jane (Joan Bennett), a barefoot backwoods maiden, innocently arouses the lust of the neighboring town’s local grandee (Morgan Wallace), whose predatory past catches up with him in the person of a Virginia stranger (Charles Farrell), a Confederate veteran who comes to town to avenge his sister. Meanwhile, Salomy is being courted by a pair of rivals—a high-hatted, smooth-talking saloon gambler (Ralph Bellamy) and a crude, jealous rancher (Irving Pichel)—and protected by Yuba Bill (Eugene Pallette), the jolly and fast-witted coachman. But the deck is shuffled anew when she and the stranger cross paths. The richly textured populist panorama, with its long-simmering feuds, casual gunplay, corrupt local politics, and the shoddy justice of vigilante mobs, blends the comic hyperbole of long-ago tall tales with the intense melodramatic spectacle of life and death in the daily balance. Walsh’s rowdy round of adventures is, above all, anchored by love and centered on the home, in all its varieties; the action pivots on passels of children in need of tending. With Minna Gombell, as a sharp-tongued madam; Sarah Padden, as a layabout’s long-suffering wife; and Louise Beavers, as Mammy Lou, who doesn’t live separately and isn’t treated equally.

 

Raoul Walsh's Wild Girl blazes into Evanston on ... - Chicago Reader  Ben Sachs

 

On Friday at 7 PM, Block Cinema at Northwestern University will screen Wild Girl, a recently restored comic western directed by Raoul Walsh. Released in 1932, the film comes from a fascinating period of Hollywood cinema—the years following the introduction of sound and prior to the implementation of the Hays Code, the system of self-censorship that would govern mainstream movies for another three decades. It also comes from a prolific time in Walsh's career, a three-year period wherein he signed eight feature films and did uncredited reshoots for a few others. As evidenced by two of his 1933 efforts Sailor's Luck and The Bowery (both of which screened in Chicago in the past few years), these years saw the director at his most carefree and vulgar. Luck and Bowery come on like a loudmouthed stranger buying a round for everyone in the bar; they're brash, unsubtle, and eager to please. And based on the half-hour I saw on Monday (before an unexpected fire drill ended the press screening early), Wild Girl seems just as high-spirited as those two films, if not necessarily as coarse.

The film tells follows a rough-and-tumble young woman (Joan Bennett) from the northern California backwoods who gets involved with a runaway convict (Charles Farrell) and some local gamblers (among them a top-hat-wearing mustache twirler played by Ralph Bellamy) in the mid-1800s. Light on plot, Wild Girl is nonetheless rich in behavior—courtesy of Bennett, Bellamy, and the great Eugene Pallette as a stagecoach driver who likes to imitate horses—and the Sequoia National Park locations where the movie was shot. It's the sort of lively pre-Code entertainment that may look better now than it did at the time of its release, since it conveys an uninhibited bawdiness that wouldn't last for much longer in Hollywood films.

In her biography Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director, Marilyn Ann Moss writes that the director didn't think very highly of Wild Girl—or much of his early-30s output, for that matter. Walsh started the decade with The Big Trail, an epic western shot in a process called Grandeur, a predecessor to the 70-millimeter format. It was one of his most ambitious and self-consciously artful films, though it turned out to be a commercial flop that nearly brought Fox to bankruptcy. (A major contribution to this failure, Moss writes, was that only two theaters in the U.S. were equipped to present The Big Trail in the Grandeur format; for most viewers, the lavish photography existed only in theory.) He rebounded by directing several fast and cheap projects in hopes of bringing some money back to the studio. Walsh considered these impersonal jobs, yet it's hard to watch them today without sensing his brusque, big-talking persona behind the camera.

It was around this time, Moss notes, that Walsh began to rely on a practice that he'd maintain for the remainder of his career. "[A]fter he put in place a particular camera setup, he walked away instead of looking in the camera . . . But he had good reason: he preferred to hear how a scene sounded; he already knew it by heart." The approach might account for the unique tone of Walsh's entertainments, which feel laid-back in their overall pacing and abuzz in their moment-to-moment characterization.

Raoul Walsh • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Tad Gallagher from Senses of Cinema, July 19, 2002

 

Raoul Walsh - Senses of Cinema  Print the Legend – Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood’s Legendary Director, by Marilyn Ann Moss, December 2011

"To Save And Project" and Raoul Walsh's "Wild Girl" (1932)  Glenn Kenny from Some Came Running

Self-Styled Siren: To Save and Project: MOMA Screens Wild Girl ...

 

Movies in the City: To Save and Project 10: Day One (Oct. 11)  Casey

 

User reviews  from imdb Author: wmorrow59 from Westchester County, NY

 

User reviews  from imdb Author: boblipton from New York City

 

Overview for Raoul Walsh - Turner Classic Movies  biography by Shawn Dwyer

 

Wild Girl  Block Films

 

MoMA | Wild Girl

 

When skinny-dipping didn't violate the Code 1/2  Michael Phillips from The Chicago Tribune

 

Wild Girl (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
ST. LOUIS BLUES

USA  (92 mi)  1939

 

User comments  from imdb Author: HarlowMGM from United States

This is an amusing but lightweight comedy/musical vehicle for Dorothy Lamour in the early years of her stardom. Dottie plays a Broadway star who is forever cast in South Seas melodramas (hmmm) who decides to run away and live in seclusion in a small river town. Familiar plot of course but the movie has a major director, Raoul Walsh, a lovely star and a good supporting cast although noted character actor Lloyd Nolan is not charismatic enough to be Lamour's leading man. The movie includes several good songs including "I Go For That", one of Lamour's biggest hits. The legendary title song (a turn of the century hit) is regrettably on used as background music. This movie was retitled "Best of the Blues" for television to avoid confusion with the 1958 movie "St. Louis Blues".

Variety review

 

The New York Times (Frank S. Nugent) review

 

ROARING TWENTIES
USA  (106 mi)  1939

 

The Roaring Twenties   Eric Henderson from Slant magazine

 

An epochal rise-and-fall epic of the gangster cycle, Raoul Walsh's skittering, impetuous The Roaring Twenties (bookending the glorious ascent of James Cagney's bootlegger with a cold reception for soldiers returning from overseas following WWI on one side and the '29 Crash on the other) hits the ground running, but a couple lengths further back on the track than one would expect. Mark Hellinger's story begins not with the green-eyed and spry neophyte chump tripsying his way into the stage door of a hotbox revue, but with the same kid stumbling his way into a blown-out crater in Europe during the War. Maybe it's because Cagney's role as the rushed Eddie Bartlett (a principled soldier who blossoms into a hoodlum with a conscience) comes at a peculiar point in his career as a uniquely physical being (long past the point where his violent temper could be written off as arrested adolescence, a vulnerability seemingly entrenched in the two deep, Guy Pearce-like gashes that bisect his jaw), this lengthy prologue sets the stage for a gangster micro-epic that wobbles intriguingly on the moral imperative of the gangster ethic.

When Bartlett stumbles downward (with only the faintest shading of metaphor) into the foxhole at the beginning of the film, he collapses onto George Hally (Humphrey Bogart, before his miscreant meatiness was forever tenderized down at Rick's Café) and Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn). Very quickly, the two are established as extreme ends on the naughty-nice continuum, respectively, which is all more or less according to the Walsh action film blueprint; he may glamorize his thugs, but they are rarely glorified without compunction. And though The Manny Farber wrote in an article extolling the work of Walsh that the director "goes to sleep when he handles Decency, the wooden lawyer who works for the DA's office." The DA, Bartlett's lawyer and former foxhole companion Hart, admittedly does walk the same tightrope between corruption and godliness. (Cagney's two love interests follow similar patterns, only Gladys George's blowsy performance as Panama Smith clearly reveals Walsh's sympathy for the spice of "naughty" girls.) Farber's convincingly weak stomach for the film's lilies of virtue can't quite digest that most of the film's wonky charm come courtesy of Cagney's schizoid impulses, never quite settling on which moral imperatives to hold onto and which to disregard (a paradox that finds its best example when the rising ganglord Cagney is approached by three previously-jailed men looking for "work," and only accepts the two that fess up to their guilt, dismissing the one who maintains that he was framed).

Walsh's swift camerawork is almost an extension of Cagney's swift gait. Both seem to be landing each step on the front side of their feet, and the effect is that the camera is anticipating the catharsis between nitroglycerine crime partners Bartlett and Hally to tip the scales of moral alignment back to zero. In the same way, Walsh's punchy interludes in which a radio announcer and cross-fading montages four images deep detail the sociological background of the era (approximating the zingers between page turns in a pulp novel) almost seem to ludicrously trivialize the same economic plight that was played for sympathy in Hellinger's opening credits scroll: "The characters are composites of people I knew, and the situations are those that actually occurred." Climaxing with a tableau that is as iconic as it is melodramatic, The Roaring Twenties revels in a relativism that keeps its momentum fresh and elusive.

 
THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT
USA  (100 mi)  1940

 

They Drive by Night   Nick Schager from Slant magazine

 

It's not clear who's to blame for the schizophrenic structure of Raoul Walsh's They Drive by Night, but there's no denying that this overlooked 1940 gem is essentially two films in one. The first half is a socially conscious depression-era film in which down-on-their-luck truckers attempt to make an honest living despite their exploitative bosses. George Raft turns in a solid (if typically one-note) performance as Joe Fabrini, an upbeat big-rig driver who dreams of becoming his own boss, and Humphrey Bogart—still a year away from High Sierra and leading-man status—as Joe's sleepy sidekick brother Paul. Walsh gives detailed attention to the particulars of the trucking industry, and his tender, empathetic portrayal of the indignities these working-class stiffs must endure makes the film's opening feel somewhat similar to a jazzed-up, wisecracking version of John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath. The brothers, fed up with their employer's refusal to pay wages, strike out on their own, but—typical of film noir-–their decision to improve their lot in life results in tragedy: a near-fatal accident destroys their truck and leaves Paul with only one arm. Yet just as things look insurmountably bleak, in steps gregarious shipping magnate Ed Carlson, who likes Joe's moxie and gives him a cushy white-collar job running his firm's trucking operations. Unbeknownst to Joe, however, he's been hired at the urging of Carlson's gold-digging wife (Ida Lupino), a sexual predator who's desperate to have Joe as a lover no matter the price. Mrs. Carlson attempts to woo Joe, who strives to stay true to his friend and his tough-talking waitress paramour Cassie (Ann Sheridan), and here the film becomes a flipside The Postman Always Rings Twice in which the plebeian man refuses to entertain the boss's sexy wife. This jarring shift in focus unfortunately relegates Bogart to the backburner, but the film continues to work thanks to Lupino's Mrs. Carlson, whose rapturous sensuality and conniving insanity turn everyone else on screen into a mere afterthought. Driven mad by the memory of killing her husband (which she accomplishes via a plan involving her newfangled electric garage door), Lupino breaks down while testifying in the climactic courtroom scene, and the performance's brazen lunacy—Lupino's eyes glazed and makeup askew, incoherent, mumbled words tumbling out of her mouth—is a testament to overacting virtuosity. They Drive by Night never coalesces into a coherent whole, but as far as sturdy '40s Hollywood melodramas go, it's a pretty sweet two-for-one movie deal.

 
WHITE HEAT                                                           B                     88
USA  (113 mi)  1949

 

They think they got Cody Jarrett…they haven’t got Cody Jarrett.

—Cody Jarrett (James Cagney), just before his inevitable demise                

 

By the late 1940’s, James Cagney was sick of making gangster movies like THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931), ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938), and THE ROARING TWENTIES (1939), films that made him a star, but also typecast him as a tough guy, where he begged Warner Brothers to offer him more variety in his roles, the most successful of which was, of course, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942), where his range as a song and dance man and American composer was utterly remarkable.  But his career floundered after that, making only four films between 1943 and 1948, so by 1949 he had a new contract at Warners and a commitment to make yet another gangster movie, but this time he hadn’t played a gangster in over a decade and he was 50 years old.  With that in mind, they created an iconic role in WHITE HEAT that will forever be associated with him, Cody Jarrett, an outlaw every bit as ruthless as the characters he portrayed earlier, but also energetic and humorous, perhaps a bit savvier, though he’s more of a savage brute here, a seriously disturbed criminal, a deranged psychopath with a mother complex and debilitating fits from migraine headaches, the predecessor to Hitchcock’s Norman Bates in PSYCHO (1960).  While poverty was the driving force behind criminal behavior during the Depression of the 1930’s, with gangleader Cody Jarrett it’s a massive ego and a feeling of invincibility.  He’s indifferent to the needs of anybody else except himself and his mother, Ma Jarrett, Margaret Wycherly, who played Gary Cooper’s saintly mother in SERGEANT YORK (1941), the only person Cody can rely upon and trust.  Loosely based on the life of Ma Barker and her boys, another outlaw gang that gripped the American public during the 30’s, Ma is hard as nails, but overly protective of her boy, basically running the gang during Cody’s absences, handling the money and giving out orders.  

 

WHITE HEAT is designed to be the last of the gangster pictures, the end of an era when career criminals could generate any public sympathy, where instead they are seen as disturbed, antisocial sociopaths living on the fringe of society, where policework was becoming more in vogue with the public, showing signs of more modern and sophisticated methods that were highly popular with the public, especially with the advent of the television series Dragnet (1951 – 59).  While the late 40’s is the height of film noir, this film is often mis-categorized as noir due to the blatant criminality on display.  Despite the eccentric psychological implications, which are never explored, and the over-the-top performance from Cagney, this is really just a formula gangster picture, where Cody Jarrett is an apocalyptic character already out of step with the times, the last of his era.  Cagney indicated he never told Margaret Wycherly how he intended to play his migraine fits, where even in the film the audience is not sure whether to laugh or cower in fear, as his onscreen behavior was just so unexpected to 1949 audiences.  A childhood friend of John Barrymore in New York City, director Raoul Walsh was probably the most competent craftsman under contract with Warner Brothers, a director who knew how to utilize outdoor locations and drive the action with an unrelentingly fast pace through editing sequences, an example of classical Hollywood filmmaking, including the musical scoring by Max Steiner that never stands out, but matches the mood onscreen.  Even the impressive opening train robbery sequence is a skilled example of setting up the tension by matching the speed of the arriving car (carrying outlaws) with the approaching train (carrying money), where the outlaws, especially Jarrett, are trigger happy, leaving no witnesses.    

 

The film spends an inordinate amount of time and effort attempting to highlight modern police methods, especially radio tracking technology, not so interesting today as it slows down the pace and removes some of the built-up tension.  Admittedly, some of the side characters never rise above type, including Virginia Mayo as Jarrett’s well dressed but perpetually complaining wife Verna, or Steve Cochrane as Big Ed, the slick haired man supposedly making a bid to take over the gang, or Edmond O’Brien, an undercover cop named Vic Pardo who becomes chummy with fellow inmate Cody Jarrett while in the slammer, trying to get him to reveal information to help build a case against him.  Next to Cagney, O’Brien is really bland and boring, of questionable moral character himself, though there are tense moments when his true police identity might be discovered, but the prison sequences really drag after Jarrett cunningly turns himself in for a lesser crime with the knowledge he’d be out in a year or so.  While there are a few moments, such as an attempt on his life and a memorable prison visit from Ma, who’s intense stubbornness seems to run in the family, it’s her later demise (happening offscreen, discovered by Jarrett through a line of convicts whispering what happened into the ear of the convict sitting next to them at dinner) that leads to a major scene of Cagney having a manic fit on the floor of the prison, taking out half a dozen guards in the process, leading to a departure from the originally planned jailbreak.  Once Jarrett is out, he has to set matters straight, especially with Big Ed and a guy that nearly kills him in prison, an inmate Cody makes sure comes along during the breakout.  As the equilibrium among criminals is being restored, the police obtain the upper hand through Pardo’s ability to tip off the cops and then place a homemade electronic honing device on the truck being used in their next big heist.  What makes this film iconic is the legendary finale, expressed with a kind of psychotic glee rarely seen elsewhere, as Cagney simply operates on another level as everyone else.  When the cops surprise his gang with numbers and chase him up the steps of a fuel refinery storage tank, hopelessly surrounded and wounded but not out of it, it’s his refusal to go out quietly that we all remember.  With flames shooting up all around him before the self-inflicted final blast that has atomic age written all over it, Cagney shouts out to the ghost of his dead mother, “Made it, Ma. Top of the world!”—a fitting epitaph for Cody Jarrett. 

 

This film may suffer from star power, much like John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS (1956), where the audience tends to over-identify with Cagney, despite his murderous, psychopathic tendencies, as they do with John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards, a known Indian hater, where it seems hard to believe that when the film was made, Warner Brothers, who produced both films, felt audiences would identify with Edmond O’Brien’s Vic Pardo, thinking he was the hero of the film.  But Pardo’s character is too morally conflicted, as the mere concept of a jailhouse spy is not anyone’s idea of a hero.  Pardo was treated well by Jarrett, and was privy to a more human side of him, as Jarrett actually opened up to him, which makes his double cross all the more demoralizing, especially his escape, where the police actually use excessive force, never even attempting to bring in any of the outlaws alive.  Instead they were all killed, the entire gang, except one fellow inmate who surrenders near the end.  This may be a case of writers and studios thinking so highly of themselves that they actually believe they know better than the public, but audiences loved Cagney and Wayne, where they have become American icons with a longstanding public adulation, where despite their association with violence in pictures, they are beloved family idols where kids at an early age actually look up to them as role models.  This is not to suggest either Cody Jarrett or Ethan Edwards are role models, but kids, especially at an early age, are conflicted over this issue, as onscreen they appear to be the heroes.  They’re the strongest characters onscreen and they always carry the action.  So for kids, if there’s any movie character to emulate, it’s the Cagney or Wayne figure.  Their hateful or murderous tendencies are secondary to the power of their performances, where even for adults, it’s hard not to be impressed by the sheer manic energy of Cagney’s Jarrett as he eats a chicken drumstick in one hand while shooting the rat who finked on him in prison with the other.  He’s as entertaining as they come, and his sheer willpower dominates the picture, which is what endears him to audiences even as they know he’s a loathsome psychotic killer who probably deserves the electric chair. 

 

Adrian Martin from 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE:

 

“Do you know what to do?” barks Cody (James Cagney) at his sidekick at the start of a daring train robbery; when the guy starts replying, Cody cuts him off:  “Just do it, stop gabbing!” This headlong, action-only attitude sums up the drive of Raoul Walsh’s films, which (as Peter Lloyd once remarked) “take the pulse of an individual energy” and embed it within a “demented trajectory out of which is born the construction of rhythm.” Few films are as taut, sustained, and economical in their telling as White Heat.  

 

Walsh is a relentlessly linear, forward-moving director whose work harkens back to silent cinema—as in that exciting car-meets-train opener. But he also explores the intriguing, complicated possibilities of 20th century psychology. On the job, Cody kills ruthlessly. Once holed up like a caged animal with his gang—as he will later be imprisoned—his psychopathology begins to emerge: indifference to others’ suffering, fixation on a tough mom, and searing migraines that send him beserk.

 

Cody, as immortalized in Cagney’s powerhouse performance, embodies the ultimate contradiction that brings down movie gangsters: fantastic egotism and dreams of invincibility (“Look, Ma, top of the world!”) undermined by all-too-human dependencies and vulnerabilities. 

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]  The Warner Gangster’s Collection

 

After four versions of a single story, White Heat serves as a "10 years later" epilogue. The '30s gangster pictures were stylish and set-bound, with snappy visual storytelling derived from silent-movie grammar. White Heat is more in the vein of film noir and documentary realism, as it takes to the streets of Los Angeles and the outlying California farms. The darkly funny banter remains, continuing the tradition that bridges Little Caesar and The Sopranos, but though Cagney still personifies underworld cool, with a gun in one hand and a chicken leg in the other, he's also become a little pathetic. The man on the rise has become a man out of time, his ambition accompanied by blinding headaches and a Freudian mother fixation. If the Warner Gangsters Collection traces America's perception of its place in the world, from Prohibition to the end of World War II, then White Heat completes the thought with a nuclear-era exclamation point, as Cagney shouts, "Made it, ma! Top of the world!" before the refinery he's standing on explodes into a mushroom cloud.

 

FilmsNoir.Net [Tony D'Ambra]

From the daring and brutally violent train robbery that opens the film, this gangster flick has a relentless trajectory that ends only with the incendiary finale-de-resistance. Director, Raoul Walsh, and cinematographer, Sid Hickox, have produced one of the tautest and most electric thrillers ever to emanate from Hollywood, which together with the nuanced screenplay, has the spectator strapped into an emotional strait-jacket that is released only in the final explosive frames.

Jimmy Cagney as the criminal psychotic Cody Jarrett dominates the screen in a bravura performance that is as dynamic as it is intense. Broderick Crawford as the undercover cop Fallon, is no match for Cagney, and appears flat and almost irrelevant. Cody’s razor-sharp intelligence, and unflinching decisiveness and brutality propel the action – Fallon and the other cops can only follow in his wake. Virginia Mayo is well-cast as Cody’s slatternly wife, and is as cheap and conniving as any gangster’s mole before or since. Only Ma Jarrett matches her in evil guile.

The film-making team conspires to hold you not only in awe of Cody but also to perversely empathize with him. Strange to say he is the only genuine character in the motley crew organised for the final disastrous heist. Even Fallon comes off looking lifeless and less than honorable. The mise-en-scene is calculated to subvert your moral compass. Cody is decisive and acts without hesitation or qualm, while Fallon’s actions are reactive and ponderous. When Fallon tries to sneak out of the gang’s hide-out on the eve of the heist to alert his superiors, he is way-laid and has to concoct a story about wanting to hook-up with his ‘wife’ for the night, as Cody talks intimately and almost poetically to him of his grief for his dead mother, and how he was just ‘talking’ to her when wandering in the brush outside.

In the final shoot-out Cody is pinned atop a gas storage silo at an LA refinery, while Fallon from a safe distance takes pot-shots at him with a sniper’s rifle. Cody won’t go down, and only when he wildly shoots his pistol into the silo is his fate finally sealed. Fallon looks far less heroic…

Slant Magazine [Eric Henderson]

Marlon Brando gets a lot of credit for revolutionizing screen acting with his performance as Stanley Kowalski in "actors' director" Elia Kazan's 1951 A Streetcar Named Desire. After five AFI specials, one could reasonably argue that his reputation as the lynchpin between the era of Nelson Eddy and the era of Edward Norton has been etched in stone. And so it's sort of ironic to consider the possibility that James Cagney's last truly iconic performance in the post-gangster era pastiche White Heat (directed by Raoul Walsh, not exactly the type of director whose reputation was built on a fastidious fixation on the Actors' Studio ethic) predates the stripped-down implosiveness of Brando's display of pectoral scratches and flubbed inflection by two full years.

Cagney (whose years were finally and discernibly catching up with him, and seemingly all gathering within his much more melonlike head) plays the unhinged Cody Jarrett, a mid-level criminal mastermind who's a big enough threat to have a fat FBI record, but small and fallible enough to still depend on the psychological (and suggestively sexual) support of his devoted mother. As Walsh's film opens, Jarrett is executing a train heist with a small clan of almost-inept henchmen, all of whom seem capable of sullenly reminding Jarrett of the size of their cut and inadvertently taunting his slouching sense of masculinity. Their slovenly indifference to anything but the payoff results in a sloppy heist that only goes downhill from the moment one poor stooge gets his face exfoliated by a busted steam engine. One of the mugs mentions Jarrett's name while he's holding two crusty train conductors at gunpoint, and just as soon as one of the two geezers shoots his mouth off about the slip, a two-bit holdup becomes a bloody, homicidal crime spree, forcing the clan to hole up in a remote cabin with no fire in the fireplace (the smoke will attract attention) and no shortage of sparks between Jarrett's floozy wife Verna (Virginia Mayo) and his flinty-featured Ma. At one point, Jarrett collapses in agony on the floor (he has chronic headaches that, one character later explains, were his only means of attracting his mother's attention as a kid) and is hoisted upon Ma's lap for a sinister neck massage.

Walsh's characterization of Ma as a filial lamprey, driving her son batty with the uncontrollable power of her love and her surreptitiously emasculating prods for Jarrett to make it to the "top of the world" may provide actress Margaret Wycherly with a spitfire role (check out the smug expression on her face as she evades three cop cars on her way home from buying her son strawberries), but it's also nothing more than dime novel psychological hooey, and a far too hasty peek into Jarrett's twisted mental state. The Oedipal overtones of the relationship don't pay off until Jarrett goes behind bars (surrendering to the police for a minor heist that would also conveniently provide him an alibi for the botched train robbery) and unwittingly befriends an undercover cop planted as a mole to spy on Jarrett in the hopes that he'll make some verbal slip-up that will implicate him in the murders he's committed.

Once again, the most denigrated angle of a Walsh picture is the perception of his ostensible disinterest in the motivation of his "good" characters, and Edmond O'Brien's portrayal of the undercover inmate "Vic Pardo" is no exception. Without bothering to quote Manny Farber again, I'll merely counter that O'Brien plays as crucial a role to the film's success as a cornerstone of Cagney iconography as Cagney's own bravura tantrums in the mess hall upon learning of his mother's death. To accept the film's stabs at Freudianism, take note of the transference of custodial duties between Ma and Pardo in the scene in which Jarrett collapses in the middle of the jailhouse assembly line. Pardo drags Jarrett behind a set of shelves and pulls the writhing mass of shaved nerve-endings up to his lap, urgently massaging the back of his neck in a shot that immediately recalls the earlier moment of familial lust when Ma invites Jarrett onto her lap. It's over nearly as soon as it started (I can only presume that in those days the Production Code set a strict limit to the number of seconds two males' bare skin could be in direct contact), but the psychological shift informs the crux of the final betrayal, when Jarrett learns of Pardo's true identity and nearly dissolves into bitter crying jag. White Heat's ultimate message: love's a bitch…even crypto-incestuous love.

White Heat - Film (Movie) Plot and Review ... - Film Reference  Ed Lowry from Film Reference

 

White Heat - TCM.com  Rob Nixon

 

White Heat (1949) - Articles - TCM.com  Rob Nixon

 

No Ripcord [Gary Collins]

 

Film Court  Lawrence Russell

 

eFilmCritic Reviews  Doug Bentin 

 

Edward Copeland on Film [Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.]

 

The Greatest Films - comprehensive analysis of classic US film  Tim Dirks

 

Prisonmovies.net [Eric Penumbra]

 

Electric Sheep Magazine [James B Evans]

 

The Films of Raoul Walsh [Michael E. Grost]  also seen here:  White Heat

 

DVD Journal  Mark Bourne

 

DVD Town [John J. Puccio]

 

American Cinematographer  DVD review by Jim Hemphill

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com  Jon Danziger

 

DVD Verdict  Steve Evans

 

DVD Talk  Matthew Millheiser

 

DVD MovieGuide  Colin Jacobson

 

DVD Savant  Glenn Erickson, the Warner Gangster Collection

 

DVD Verdict - TCM Greatest Gangster Films: James Cagney [James A. Stewart]

 

Big House Film  Roger Westcombe

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

TCM's MovieMorlocks.com  Not for Nothin’, by Richard Harland Smith

 

George Chabot's DVD Review

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

The Spinning Image  Graeme Clark)

 

Goatdog's Movies [Michael W. Phillips, Jr.]

 

Movie Vault [Vadim Rizov]

 

Brian Koller  also seen here:  Brian Koller, filmsgraded.com

 

A Film Canon [Billy Stevenson]

 

Past Picks Online [Jimmy Gillman]

 

That Cow  Andrew Bradford

 

Edwin Jahiel

 

Classic Film Guide

 

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide

 

Variety

 

Time Out

 

The New York Times  Bosley Crowther

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 
Walter, John
 
HOW TO DRAW A BUNNY                       B+                   90
USA  (90 mi)  2002
 
An interesting portrait of a fascinating but elusive artist that few have heard about, Ray Johnson, a prolific collage creator who kept to himself to such a degree that no one, not even another lover who lived with him for decades, really knew him.  Yet from the late 40’s to the mid 70’s, he was part of the New York bohemian art scene, exchanging letter correspondence through art, as well as developing a performance art style.  Johnson refused to go to gallery openings, or show his work in public formats, choosing instead to express himself in a more personal manner among friends or acquaintances, so he never developed the reputation or fame of his contemporaries.  A discussion of the artistic complexities of his work was absent in this film, but through multiple interviews of people who allegedly knew him and who shared artistic correspondence relationships with him, the film humorously puts into place a fascinating and humanizing portrait by connecting the dots of the man who is sometimes called “the most famous unknown artist.”  When visiting the Andy Warhol factory, seeing the Marilyn Monroe portraits stacked together, one of his companions shot a bullet through her eyes.  These works were later corrected or “fixed,” yet they now have a greater economic value than the original unaltered works.  Even in death, an alleged suicide at age 67, many think this was the ultimate in performance art, as he left clues, not answers afterwards.  Jazz legend Max Roach contributes some of the always-provocative music, which adds a raw flavor to the mix. 

 

THEATER OF WAR                                   B+                   90

USA  (95 mi)  2008 

 

“We all live off the war, whether or not we acknowledge it. She’s just more dirty and in the trenches. But we all live off the war.”

 —Meryl Streep on Mother Courage

 

This is a sprawling, multi-faceted documentary on the making of a free 2006 Shakespeare in the Park Public Theater production of Bertolt Brecht’s play MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN in Central Park, with a new translation of the play by Angels in America playwright Tony Kushner and with Meryl Streep in the role of Mother Courage.  Streep has always been hesitant in allowing herself to be seen in early production stages of any work, for it’s easy to find fault while clumsily searching for the right character, claiming:  “Process looks like bad acting. Process is not anything you should let anybody see.”  But here the cameras are rolling during the first read through, shown after a brief flurry where we see her onstage in full drunken despair.  While it’s hard to doubt Streep’s commitment and prowess, her real-life persona of being such a sweet and good hearted person, especially as seen in Robert Altman’s last film PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (2006), is at odds with the play, where she has to get lowdown and dirty, where she tells us early on, “I’m the voice of dead people.  I’m the interpreter of lost songs.”  There are surprisingly few sequences from the play itself, most of them short and still evolving, which might seem disappointing, yet this film is full of discussion about Brecht and his family, including a surviving daughter recollecting stories as well as Carl Weber, an assistant director of Brecht’s own 1949 Berliner Ensemble production of the play in Germany starring his wife Helene Weigel.  Kushner offers his own views on Brecht, recalling much of his poetry, as does director George C. Wolfe, while writer Jay Cantor places the work in a scholarly Marxist perspective, claiming Brecht discovered Marx late in his career when the only apparent hope for this war ravaged writer was discovering there were strength in numbers, as otherwise, from his disturbing view, mankind was doomed.  

 

The beauty of this film is the continual search for the meaning in Brecht’s life and works, using archival home movie footage that presents a portrait of a lost childhood, as his parents were forced to flee Germany after the burning of the Reichstag in 1933 when Hitler declared martial law and then continually remained on the move to avoid the Nazi’s, from Denmark to Stockholm (where he wrote Mother Courage) to Finland to Zurich to Moscow to Vladivostok, eventually coming to the United States where he was subject to the questioning of the post-war House Un-American Activities Committee so intent on weeding out communists from every nook and cranny of the country, in this case Hollywood artists.  Brecht’s testimony is given an amusing spin as the consensus was he was giving a performance, accentuating his supposed inability to speak English well, thereby lying through his teeth while reveling in the senseless futility of even being asked such useless questions, the committee knowing nothing whatsoever about the circumstances people were forced to endure in Europe in order to survive the war.  Brecht left America for Europe the day after his testimony, setting a pattern later followed by Roman Polanski who was similarly hounded by an overzealous press.  In between bittersweet, profoundly moving songs (newly scored by Jeanine Tesori), Streep can be seen on black and white video interviews offering her own compelling views on the play and why she chose the role, which requires an extraordinary grasp of dialogue, as she’s onstage for the entire 3 and a half hour production, while people around her drop like flies, including the loss of all of her children, the price one pays for war.  Briefly seen as an outcry to America’s occupation in Iraq, where a play is not likely to end a war, but as perhaps the greatest anti-war play ever written, a new production does have resonance placing war in a different perspective, offering the audience a sense of connection to the multitude of deaths that have come before, from the thousands and millions of people of all faiths, countries, and continents, who throughout time have anguished in despair over senseless losses they could not understand.     

 

More important, however, is the discussion by some of Brecht’s more ardent admirers, namely theater people, from the directors to the costume room to the props department to the actors themselves, we hear people speak of their roles in this upcoming production while also getting a knowledgeable discussion on the relevancy of Brecht and his works, thought of as the ultimate outsider, writing nearly all of his plays in German while exiled outside his country, knowing his style was a radical departure, but never knowing if his plays would ever be presented before a German audience in his lifetime, never knowing the impact of what he created, while continually remaining an enigma wherever he went.  Mother Courage is the ultimate nightmare on the horrible impact of war, where one never knows just how small and desperate people can feel until they are removed from any semblance of the world they once knew, or the people they once loved, where events seem to spin out of control, as if by accident where people can only sit on the sidelines and watch helplessly, seeing “Injustice everywhere, and no rebellion.”  Brecht captures loss like no other, where in his plays, characters break out into song, capturing intimate, personal, and demoralizing moments that defy human comprehension, a moral abyss where God is no longer answerable or applicable, where all that’s left in your rotten decrepit life is to be alone, engulfed in a deafening silence.      

 

New York Magazine (David Edelstein) review

Von Stauffenberg expressed his political outrage by attempting to blow up Adolf Hitler at a war summit; George C. Wolfe, Tony Kushner, and Meryl Streep express theirs by exhuming Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, adding a few anti-Bush jabs, and putting it on in Central Park. John Walter’s documentary Theater of War alternates rehearsal footage with (cleaned-up) stories of the life and times of old Bertolt. As a onetime dramaturg and Brechtian, I enjoyed the chin-wags and the glimpses of Streep in rehearsal—especially her quivering admission that she can’t bear the thought of anyone seeing her process. The movie throws in a cogent Marxist primer and reminders of all the collateral damage (economic and physical) generated by our war machine. All I missed was a hint that East Germany in the fifties didn’t bestow its bounties on all such lusty, provocative thinkers.

Chicago Reader    Andrea Gronvall

A longtime admirer of Bertolt Brecht, documentary maker John Walter goes behind the scenes at the Public Theater's 2006 staging of Mother Courage and Her Children in Central Park. Meryl Streep, who starred in the production, and Tony Kushner, who supplied a new translation, discuss the play's importance and their creative processes, yet Walter (How to Draw a Bunny) reaches past these marquee names to other engaging experts: Carl Weber, a Stanford University professor who was once Brecht's assistant; novelist Jay Cantor; and Public Theater creative director Oskar Eustis. Rare home movies show Brecht and his happy family in Germany before they fled in 1933, and the end of his American sojourn is marked by archival footage of the playwright, a committed Marxist, testifying to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. Engrossing and timely, this crackles with ideas about art, politics, religion, and the terrible costs of war. In English and subtitled German. 96 min.

Chicago Tribune   Michael Phillips

Three years ago a heavyweight collection of theater artists, including Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, playwright Tony Kushner and director George C.Wolfe, entered the ring with Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children." Documentary filmmaker John Walter enjoyed unusual access to the preparation and rehearsal of the 2006 New York Public Theater revival. The result is fascinating: part fly-on-the-wall, part symposium on both Brecht and those who were weaned on his eternal, granitelike truths regarding the war machine.

At the time of the production, which was staged at the outdoor Central Park Delacorte Theater, America's Iraq invasion and George W. Bush's second term had a lot of Americans going slowly mad. "Injustice everywhere, and no rebellion"—that's a line from a Brecht poem quoted by Kushner. With a little help from collaborator Margarete Steffin, the German Brecht wrote "Mother Courage" in late 1939, during his Swedish exile. While the 2006 New York revival ultimately received mixed notices, it's hard not to imagine a single "Mother Courage" (outside one of its 1940s stagings, notably the one starring Brecht's wife, Helene Weigel) that wouldn't challenge and divide any audience.

The film sets up subtle connections between Brecht and Kushner, both blessed with great success at a relatively young age. Similarly, commentary on Marxian theory regarding the value and meaning of work from scholar Jay Cantor is intercut with interviews with production associates, including the prop master. Looking splendid in Walter's black-and-white interview sequences, Streep speaks eloquently of her craft. She did the play, she says, because she needed an outlet for the rage she felt every time she saw another Iraq War widow on the TV news, wailing and asking the heavens: Why?

He conquered the World Trade Center - Salon.com  Andrew O’Hehir from Salon, April 28m 2008 (excerpt)

Moving from one famous playwright, and one political extreme, to another, we come to one of Tribeca's central niches: the kind of New York-centric film that's likely to play almost nowhere else, or at least that will only play to audiences who wish to bask in reflected light from the glow of New York self-approbation. That's a harsh light in which to appraise the Sunday-night premiere of "Theater of War," John Walter's graceful and often fascinating documentary about Bertolt Brecht and his influential 1939 antiwar play "Mother Courage and Her Children," which was produced by the Public Theater in 2006 in a new translation by Tony Kushner. But Brecht would appreciate the irony here, in fact: The problem with Walter's film is not Walter's film itself, but rather the fact that it will hardly be seen by anyone likely to disagree with its views about Brecht, about the importance of radical art, about the continuing validity of Marxist modes of analysis, and so on.

Actually, there's a great deal to be said about Brecht's life and work that isn't in "Theater of War," which perhaps, again, is not precisely the filmmaker's fault. How and why did Brecht's plays, so carefully constructed to combine popular forms and avant-garde techniques, become the exclusive province of the left-wing intelligentsia? Is his influence on the film world purely a question of a bagful of facile formal tricks or something more profound? (It strikes me, for instance, that Brecht's desire to divorce the audience from the action and compel rational reflection, rather than draw the audience into the story and compel catharsis, marks an unresolved division in the history of dramatic art that still troubles us today.) Given Brecht's courageous artistic defiance of Nazism and McCarthyism, how do we understand his accommodation with the postwar regime in East Germany?

Still, OK, let's be fair. For those interested in the continuing relevance of theater in a society dominated by momentary electronic impulses, in the responsibility of artists in wartime and in the greatest anti-capitalist, anti-government, antiwar and anti-romantic playwright of the 20th century, Walter's cool, capable, stimulating exploration is a must. The scenes of star Meryl Streep, director George C. Wolfe and Kushner rehearsing "Mother Courage" are tremendous, as are Walter's wry, Brechtian digressions into the backstage work of the costumers and prop-makers. None of which stops me from suspecting that if Brecht were alive today he'd be working in reality TV or producing viral video.

User comments  from imdb Author: RudolphBing from United States

I saw this on Sat., May 3, 2008, at the AMC VII as a part of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. I attended the screening because I had seen the Public Theatre's production of Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children," and because I continue to want to understand how Meryl Streep constructs her characters and how she performs. I am also ignorant of the significance of Bertold Brecht, and needed to get a fuller picture of his life and work.

So, with that rather severe academic assignment to myself, off I went on a dreary chilly late morning to see this movie.

The movie is strong, strong, good, good. It is a lesson in politics; a summary of the life of Brecht; and a wonderful behind-the-scenes look at a staged production of the play "Mother Courage and Her Children." The significance of the two world wars on Brecht's life is clearly the basis of the Play "Mother Courage," but the opportunity to understand why Meryl Streep (lead in the play), George Woolf (director), Oscar Eustis (director of the Public Theatre), and Tony Kushner (playwright and translator of the play) wanted - needed - to bring the play to the stage refreshed my memory of the cycle of horrors of war and abuse of authority that our present office holders are responsible for. The play is anti-war, even espousing a communistic view of the world, understandable for its time and for Brecht's experiences; but the play produced in 2006, in the midst of a new war is a scream for an end to war.

Best interviews are with an aging man who worked with Brecht in Germany. His experience in an allied prison camp in the UK during the war, and his experiences working with Brecht on the first production of "Mother Courage" in Berlin in 1949, help to bring the 59 years closer to our times.

The movie is standard in many ways containing interviews, images, historic footage, and moments at relevant locations, but is an excellent introduction to the huge tragedy of war and to the relevance of art in civic life.

SEE THEATRE ON THE STAGE! it is alive, as Dr. Frankenstein would say.

PS. Seeing Meryl Streep sweating it out on stage two summers ago in Central Park, and especially watching her one on one against Austin Pendleton as the priest, was marvelous. To think Streep did the show for - what - 4 weeks running - is amazing.

Mother Courage and Her Children - Review - Theater - New York Times   Ben Brantley from The New York Times, August 22, 2006

If you ever wanted to watch one willowy human being lift a 12-ton play onto her shoulders and hold it there for hours, even as her muscles buckle and breath comes short, join the line of hopefuls waiting at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park for cancellations to see Meryl Streep burning energy like a supernova in the title role of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children.”

This production in search of a tone, which runs through Sept. 3, is not great, to put it kindly. Nor is Ms. Streep’s performance, dazzling though it is, on a par with her best work.

Yet with “Mother Courage,” which opened last night in a Public Theater production directed by George C. Wolfe, the ever-surprising Ms. Streep has achieved what, to my knowledge, is a first in her virtuosic career. Ms. Streep is that rare chameleon movie star who never just plays variations on her own personality. You don’t leave “Sophie’s Choice” or the current “Devil Wears Prada” confusing the haunted concentration camp survivor or icy fashion editor onscreen with the actress who portrays them.

But embodying a tireless entrepreneur of the Thirty Years War — determined to survive with her business and family intact, whatever the cost — Ms. Streep so blurs the lines between Meryl and Mother that for once it is hard to distinguish the dancer from the dance.

For what Ms. Streep does onstage is pretty much what Mother Courage does on the battlefield: thinking fast on her feet, moving with the quick diversionary gestures of a boxer in the ring, pulling out every art and craft at her considerable command to keep alive an enterprise — in this case, a notoriously difficult play that goes on for more than three hours — that otherwise might collapse altogether.

Ms. Streep rattles through her character’s business transactions and homespun philosophy on practical morality and economics with the souped-up patter of a Catskills stand-up artist who fears her act will go dry if she ever slows down. Mr. Wolfe’s interpretation, cued by the jocular and uneven new translation by Tony Kushner, emphasizes the gallows vaudeville of a play that has an all-too-reverberant relevance in these days of war.

Picking up on this barbed make-’em-laugh spirit, Ms. Streep’s line readings recall comics as far-flung as Lucille Ball, Sophie Tucker, Henny Youngman and — in the “heh-heh-heh” chuckles with which she fills nervous pauses — Beavis and Butthead. Heck, there are times when she appears to be channeling all the Marx Brothers at once. She even adopts, to bizarrely appropriate effect, Groucho’s bent-kneed catch-me-if-you-can walk. As for how she looks in her military cap and boots, think of Marlene Dietrich, playing down the glamour to entertain the troops.

For a connective tissue of credibility, the actress throws in vintage Streep-isms, including the folksy verbal and physical punctuations of the repeated, affirmative “yep” and frequent nose-wipings. And when the script approaches tragic terrain — when Mother Courage’s children bite the dust — Ms. Streep provides a master class in the art of electrified stillness.

Do these elements cohere into a fully integrated and affecting portrait? No. The performance becomes a seamless, astonishing whole only when Ms. Streep sings the Brechtian songs that have been newly (and effectively) scored by Jeanine Tesori.

But when a smitten army chaplain (Austin Pendleton) observes, “Often I sit back and watch you, amazed,” he is speaking for the entire audience at the Delacorte. By rights, “Mother Courage” should open for Ms. Streep the same future in advertising endorsements that awaits grand-slam sports champions. I, for one, would love to know what vitamins she takes and how to get them.

As for the rest of the production, well, you can see what the brilliant Mr. Wolfe is going for and speculate on what he might have achieved with more time. “Mother Courage,” written in 1938 and 1939 and first performed in 1941, is one of those great plays that almost never play great — at least, not in English.

The necessary combination of detachment and engagement is as hard as anything in modern theater to get right. (The National Theater’s current production in London of Brecht’s “Life of Galileo,” directed by Howard Davies and starring Simon Russell Beale, comes close.)

Mixing ingredients from the music hall, the lecture hall, the beer hall and the melodrama, Brecht’s epic theater is by design disjunctive. The design elements here — especially Riccardo Hernández’s battered wooden framework of a set and Paul Gallo’s focus-shifting lighting — establish the right come-hither, pull-away tone.

But there has to be an equal consistency of style among the cast members (who here include no less a star than Kevin Kline in a supporting role) — the feeling that they are all working toward the same end, O comrades of the arts, as they step in and out of the action, shifting among dialogue, monologue, songs and authorial annotation.

Such solidarity of spirit isn’t much in evidence at the Delacorte. Even the performers playing Mother Courage’s three grown children — Frederick Weller, Geoffrey Arend and Alexandria Wailes — appear to have emerged from different acting schools. Some of the cast members, especially those playing military figures, seem to have been inspired by the cartoonish warmongers of the film “Dr. Strangelove.” Others, like Mr. Pendleton, go for an “I’m like you” naturalism, pitched complicitly at the audience.

As the libidinous army cook, Mr. Kline, who has appeared memorably with Ms. Streep before, seems to be performing by rote, as if he were still waiting for an inspired approach to tap him on the shoulder. And Jenifer Lewis, as the wily camp follower Yvette, often plays her role as if she were doing a broad-stroke Madea movie comedy (she has appeared in one). But Ms. Lewis also provides one of the high points that reclaim your attention just when the Thirty Years War starts to seem like the Hundred Years War. Her interpretation of Yvette’s bitter song of remembered love is a stunningly calibrated blend of smoothness and harshness, of filigree irony and primal emotion, that suggests what Brecht was trying to achieve. (Ms. Tesori, the composer of Mr. Kushner’s “Caroline, or Change,” demonstrates admirable skill and confidence as a musical mix master, and the show’s band is first-rate.)

To an even greater degree, Ms. Streep finds her best Brechtian self in song. “The Song of the Great Capitulation,” which Mother Courage sings at the end of the first act, is one of the most artful and intense musical performances to be found on a New York stage, as Ms. Streep flutters, fights and wallows her way through her character’s philosophy of life.

Desperation, cynicism, passion that should have died long ago but still flickers against the odds: all this is implied in every gesture, every note. For one luminous moment, you understand what this play is meant to be. By the way, with every song she sings, Ms. Streep suggests that, in addition to endorsing vitamins, she could become a queen of the Broadway musical, should she ever choose.

Reverse Shot (Chris Wisniewski) review

 

It's a seafood-couscous Christmas! - Salon.com  Andrew O’Hehir, December 24, 2008

 

Critic's Notebook [Robert Levin]

 

The Onion A.V. Club (Noel Murray) review

 

Slant Magazine review  Eric Henderson

 

Movies into Film.com (N.P. Thompson) review

 

Meryl Streep Stands Out as Musical Theater Great in Theater of War  James C. Taylor from The Village Voice

 

Theater of War  Facets Multi Media 

 

NewCity Chicago     Ray Pride

 

Variety (Ronnie Scheib) review

 

Time Out New York (David Fear) review [3/6]

 

Boston Globe review [3/4]  Wesley Morris

 

San Francisco Chronicle (Walter Addiego) review

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2.5/4]

 

The New York Times (Manohla Dargis) review

 

Director Interview (Filmmaker)  December 24, 2008

 

Director Interview (IFC)  Interview by Steven Saito, January 2009

 

Variety news [2006-08-15]  Liz Smith

 

Theater Review: Meryl Streep Leads Mother Courage and Her Children ...   Playgoer from BlogCritics magazine, August 25, 2006

 

Steve On Broadway (SOB): Mother Courage And Her Children (The SOB ...     August 28, 2006

 

Reichstag fire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

 

The Rise of Hitler - Feb. 27, 1933 The Reichstag Burns

 

The Burning of the Reichstag   Shoah Education

 

New book by Bahar and Kugel based on Gestapo archives from Moscow  The Reichstag Fire - How History is Created, (864 pages), book review by Wilhelm Klein from the World Socialist Web Site

 

Documentary about Reichstag fire and Marinus van der Lubbe  90 minute film, WATER AND FIRE (1998) may be viewed online

 

Helene Weigel | Jewish Women's Archive 

 

Mother Courage and Her Children - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

 

Mother Courage  Wikipedia

 

Mother Courage and Her Children Study Guide by Bertolt Brecht ... 

 

Past Productions: Mother Courage   Gideon Lester on the evolution of the play from The American Repertory Theater

 

Theatre at UBC: Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht ...   historical notes from The University of British Columbia

 

ArtScope.net: Mother Courage and Her Children  historical notes by Sandra Marie Lee from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater

 

Bertolt Brecht - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

 

Bertolt Brecht     biography

 

Bertolt Brecht   biography

 

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)   biography

 

HSC Online   biography and extensive analysis of his works

 

Biography of Bertolt Brecht | List of Works, Study Guides & Essays ...  

 

Brecht   study guide

 

Essay on  Brecht and Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo from Symposium, by someoneisatthedoor

 

FBI Files  on Bertolt Brecht while in the United States, 369 pages

 

Poem of Brecht on the street in Portland  General, Your Tank is a Powerful Vehicle, by Bertolt Brecht, stenciled onto the street pavement

 

Bertolt Brecht's Photo & Gravesite

 

Berliner Ensemble - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

 

IBS: Berliner Ensemble   history of the Berlin Ensemble

 

Berliner Ensemble - MSN Encarta  

 

THEATRE / Auf Wiedersehen Brecht?: The Berliner Ensemble has ...   Aaron Hicklin from The Independent, January 14, 1993

 

Brecht’s War Primer - 21st Century Socialism   Simon Korner from 21st Century Socialism, August 14, 2006

 

YouTube - Mother courage- meryl streep    (4:43)

 

Walters, Charles
 
SUMMER STOCK

USA  (108 mi)  1950

 

Chicago Reader  Dave Kehr

Light-headed MGM musical, with Gene Kelly as a bankrupt Broadway producer-director who brings his cast and crew to Judy Garland's farm to rehearse (1950, 109 min.). The director, Charles Walters, is a man of modest but real virtues who was generally overlooked, unfairly but understandably, in favor of Donen and Minnelli. His clean, straightforward style has its apotheosis in Garland's finale, "Get Happy." With Marjorie Main, Eddie Bracken, and Phil Silvers.

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]  also reviewing IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER

The movie musical's greatest era lasted from roughly 1944 to 1958, and by the end, the genre's top directors, stars, and choreographers had figured out how to use the form to create ethereal poetry one moment and off-the-cuff social commentary the next. The five-disc box set Classic Musicals From The Dream Factory contains one of those late-period masterpieces, It's Always Fair Weather, co-directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, and starring Kelly as one of three World War II buddies who meet up again a decade after the war, only to find they have nothing in common. The song-score by Betty Comden and Adolph Green contains only one really memorable number—"Baby, You Knock Me Out," sung by Cyd Charisse with a chorus of pug-ugly boxers—but It's Always Fair Weather is an excellent showcase for dancing, marked by innovative, impressionistic routines that have Kelly tapping in roller skates, then with a trashcan lid attached to one foot, then in the middle panel of a three-way split-screen. Throughout, the movie maintains a mood of sorrowful post-war disappointment, as the men who opened the movie dancing together spend the rest of the film dancing alone.

The bulk of the Dream Factory set is taken up by lesser musical biographies: 1946's Till The Clouds Roll By and Ziegfeld Follies, and 1950's Three Little Words. Each has its highlights, but none is as consistent as It's Always Fair Weather or 1950's Summer Stock, which stars Judy Garland as a bachelorette farmer who lets Gene Kelly's theater troupe rehearse in her barn. Director Charles Walters keeps Summer Stock's singing and dancing grounded in real spaces, unlike the revue-style films of the '30s and '40s, where theater stages seemed to stretch to infinity. Here, Walters and company make magic on small, bare stages: Kelly with just a squeaky board and a piece of newspaper, and Kelly and Garland inside a tight circle of square-dancers. Summer Stock has its dry spots, but its highs rival the best of the MGM golden age, especially in the show-stopping finale "Get Happy!", where a stocky, sensual Garland single-leggedly kicks the musical into maturity.

digitallyOBSESSED.com (David Krauss)

 

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson)

 

MediaScreen.com   Nick Zegarac

 

Crazy for Cinema  Lisa Skrzyniarz

 

Musicals: Mass Art as Folk Art   Jane Feuer from Jump Cut

 

DVD Times  Eamonn McCusker reviews Classical Musicals from the Dream Factory

 

DVD Verdict [Bryan Pope]  reviews Classical Musicals from the Dream Factory

 

The New York Times (Bosley Crowther)

 

Wang Bing

 

Man with no name - Wang Bing - NMNM

Born in 1967, Wang Bing is one of the foremost contemporary documentary filmmakers. His films are about important moments in Chinese history, focusing special attention on the small and great stories of those who personally suffer the tragic consequences of specific historic events. He began his career as a photographer at the Department of Photography of the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts (1992) and at the Department of Cinematography at the Beijing Film Academy (1995). He made his debut as a film director in 2001 with the documentary Tie Xi Qu (West of the Tracks), a project conceived at an epic scale, which tells the story of the most ancient of Chinese industrial districts, Shenyang: the final version is a trilogy that lasts a total of 9 hours, transformed into the fascinating saga of a people and a nation. In 2007 he made He Fengming (Fengming, a Chinese Memoir), a documentary in which the director conducts a series of interviews with an elderly Chinese woman who reminisces about the critical moments in her life, and the short film Baoli Gongchang (Brutality Factory), an episode in the anthology film State of the World. His next project was another documentary of significant length, Yuan You (Crude Oil, 208) about a group of workers at an oil field in the Gobi Desert. In 2009 he filmed the documentary Tong Dao (Coal Money), presented at the Cinéma du Réel in Paris. In 2010 he participated in the Venice Film Festival with his film Le fossé (The Ditch), which was screened In Competition as the surprise film. It tells the true story of thousands of Chinese citizens who were accused of opposition to the regime in the late 1950’s, and were deported to the camp of Jiabiangou, in western China, and is based on the eyewitness accounts of people who lived through this experience. He returned in 2012 to win the Orizzonti Award with San zi mei (Three Sisters) about three sisters who live alone in a small mountain village in the Yunnan area.

The Epic and The Everyday – The Films of Wang Bing - Harvard Film ...  also seen here:  Harvard Film Archive

Wang Bing is a leading figure of the exciting and unprecedented documentary movement that has been gathering vital momentum within the Chinese cinema over the last decade. Wang’s epic documentaries West of the Tracks, Fengming: A Chinese Memoir and Crude Oil define the brave political outspokenness, tenacity and artistic sophistication that continues to inspire a new and ambitious generation of young Chinese filmmakers. From the vast, nine-hour panorama of a dying factory town meticulously crafted by West of the Tracks to Fengming’s transformation of the Cultural Revolution into a gripping first person narration and Crude Oil’s real time portrait of the grueling fourteen hour working day of oil workers, Wang’s formally daring films offer profound meditations on history and the paradox of the industrial ruin and human suffering caused by the inexorable “progress” of modern China. A different, more dedicated, mode of spectatorship is required and infinitely rewarded by the awesome scale and sheer length of Wang’s features, which treat time as almost a sculptural element, using their intense duration to give a solidity and presence to the crumbling factories, shantytowns and lonely rooms that they explore and cohabit. Forging a rare intimacy with the workers, widows and chronically unemployed whose voices and struggles are made poignantly real within his films, Wang takes the observational ideal championed by cinema verité to a radical and important new level. Using no-frills digital video equipment, Wang creates intensely cinematic films that draw a raw, tragic beauty and power from the world of slow time defined by decaying industrial infrastructure and landscapes imploded by the steady exploitation of their resources. In his latest, shorter documentaries, Happy Valley and Coal Money, Wang has embraced a more essayistic mode of inquiry that condenses the hierarchy of labor and regulated capitalism into stubborn and fascinating riddles. Wang’s contribution to the omnibus film State of the World marks his first foray into fiction filmmaking and points towards his greatly anticipated narrative feature, The Ditch (2010).

Wang Bing - Cinema Scope  Chris Fujiwara

If there is a science-fiction element in Wang Bing’s work, an attempt to imagine unimaginable (though real) conditions for human life, there is also a war-movie element, a working-over of the terrain, together with the becoming-mineral of humanity that recalls the hard-bitten, antiheroic sagas of Samuel Fuller, Anthony Mann, and Miklós Janscó. But even more than Janscó, Wang steps back from what he depicts. For Wang, there is always the need to locate human figures in space and to allow the audience to locate itself in relation to that space. This double process requires time, and it might be said that the subject of Wang’s films is mainly this, how space becomes a screen of time, and how the paths of people through the space—across, toward, in, out, or simply dwelling within (as in 2007’s sublime Fengming, a Chinese Memoir)—write duration.

The recovery of history that is central to Wang’s project is also an investigation into the deposits left by time. The Ditch (2010) is a pocket of time that is abandoned, desolate, horribly pitiful, and that has intentionally been left unfinished: a route of history that the Chinese government has designated as a route to nowhere, and that the film undertakes to recover. When history changes course, what happens to those who are stuck on a previously determined route whose destination lies somewhere off to the side of what is decreed to be, henceforth, history? The same question is asked in West of the Tracks (2003). The answer to the question is the form of the film itself: the framing of the image, Wang’s reluctance to dictate when enough is enough, and his insistence on the letting-be of details that may or may not be immediately expressive, but whose potential value lies in their belonging to a hidden reality rather than to an order of mise en scène.

We can give this reality a name: labour. Everything in Wang’s films is labour: a woman narrating her own biography; a man cleaning, paring, and cutting a vegetable or assembling some bedding (Man with No Name, 2010); the derisory struggles of the condemned men with the land in The Ditch; the industrial labour to which Wang devotes so much artistic energy and care in West of the Tracks and Coal Money (2009). If Wang’s cinema is dedicated to uncovering the past of labour, it is also a search, in the middle of an era when labour is being disavowed, disgraced, and denied, for the possible futures of labour.

The 100 best Mainland Chinese films: contributors - Books & Film ...  Time Out Shanghai, April 1, 2014

 

Wang Bing's 'Til Madness Do Us Part: An Apprenticeship in Seeing  Joseph Mai from Lola Journal, December 2015

 

Wang Bing Films Souls: On Ta'ang and Other Recent ... - Cinema Scope  Shelly Kraicer, 2016

 

Interviews | Ghost Stories: Wang Bing's Startling New Cinema ...  Rober Koehler interview from Cinema Scope, 2007

 

Art & Culture Maven: TIFF Interview with Director Wang Bing ...  Anya Wassenberg interview, September 16, 2010

 

Wang Bing: Filming a Land in Flux. New Left Review 82, July-August ...  New Left Review interview July/August 2013

 

WANG BING – Father & Sons - PRIVATE magazine  Véronique Poczobut on a photographic art gallery, May 9, 2014

 

Galerie Paris-Beijing presents Wang Bing's latest documentary “Father ...  Sue Wang from Cafa Art Info, September 19, 2014

 

History of documentary [Matteo Boscarol]  review of Jung Sung-il’s documentary on Wang Bang, Night and Fog in Zona, November 23, 2015

 

Cinema: Film Brut - Magazine - Art in America  Travis Jeppesen from Art in America, November 1, 2016

 

MUBI [Daniel Kasman]  interview with the director, September 23, 2013

 

MICHAEL GUARNERI / «I am just a simple individual who films what ...  Michael Guarneri interview from La Furiaumana, April 9, 2014

 

Wang Bing: The Mystery of a Fact Clearly Described | Interview | The ...  Alan Bett interview from The Skinny, June 26, 2014

 

Wang Bing's Observations | DOK.REVUE  Videotaped Master Class by Wang Bing and moderator Marek Hovorka at the Jihlava Festival, October 26, 2014 (1:53:20)

 

WEST OF THE TRACKS (Tiexi qu)

China  Netherlands  (551 mi, divided into 3 parts, “Rust” (240 Minutes), “Remnants” (176 Minutes), and “Rails (135 Minutes) 2003

 

The Decade in Review | Bérénice Reynaud - Cinema Scope

One of the most important filmic events of the decade was Wang Bing’s monumental West of the Tracks, which changed the way we look at documentary, social reality, and Chinese cinema. From December 1999 to the spring of 2001, Wang and his sound engineer Lin Xudong stayed at their own expense in the Ti Xie industrial district in Shenyang (Liaoning Province) to document the slow death of an industrial complex that had been a temple of China’s triumphant advance toward industrialization. As the factories are closing and the workers laid off, Rainbow Row, a working-class neighbourhood, is being slated for demolition and its residents forcibly displaced. To complete the film, Wang had to break free of his promising career as an award-winning television documentarian, learn how to spend time within a given architectural and social space, and eventually find his way to the international production/exhibition/ distribution circuit. West of the Tracks received completion funds from the Hubert Bals Foundation, was shown by about every significant film festival, and was even blown up to 35mm and released theatrically by the French distributor MK2.

Going beyond the tropes of the Sixth Generation, West of the Tracks nevertheless defines the apex of a trend that developed in the post-Tiananmen ‘90s: independent art films produced in China which received praise abroad but were shown neither theatrically nor on television in their home country. However, due to the proliferation of illegal DVDs and the use of the internet, West of the Tracks has had an immense influence upon Chinese filmmakers. Wang Bing helped redefine the use of small, portable digital cameras in an epic context, especially through his reinvention of the tracking shot: simply walking about while carrying his camera. An intimate extension of the body of the filmmaker, the camera keeps him offscreen, but tantalizingly close to the frame. At the same time, Jia Zhangke, the second most influential Chinese indie filmmaker, was writing essays to champion DV as a way of liberating Chinese cinema—at the time, digital works were not subject to the three-tier censoring system of the Film Bureau (the situation is currently in flux)—and started producing the work of young filmmakers.

West of the Tracks takes its time, for the message it delivers is grave: not only is the “orthodox” socialist mode of development, based on heavy industry, obsolete, but the new groups in power are actively betraying those who built socialism in the first place. Building “New China” has been replaced by the politics of chaiqian (demolish and move), and young filmmakers followed suit to document the ruins which emerged in its wake. Wang Bing’s post-socialist heroes are the workers who keep going to a derelict factory where there is no money to pay them, or the residents of Rainbow Row stoically clinging to their dwellings after water and electricity have been shut off. Jia’s protagonists are kids pursuing their Unknown Pleasures (2002) while factories in their small town are closing; displaced workers who help demolish the soon-to-be-flooded cities of the Three Gorges area in Still Life and Dong (2006); and airplane engine builders who witness the crumbling of their dreams in 24 City (2008).

Even in fiction, filmmakers show real ruins, which in turn echo the dislocation of post-socialist lives. Shooting out of Sichuan, Ying Liang and Peng Shan go deeper and deeper in exploring the interaction between real estate/corporate greed and the destruction of the social and ecological environment in Taking Father Home (2005), The Other Half (2006), and Good Cats (2008). Emily Tang goes from a melancholy meditation on empty university dorms after Tiananmen Square in Conjugation (2001) to a sharp mise en scène of the uprooting of young women in Perfect Life (2008). And it’s no accident that the beacon of a new queer culture, Cui Zi’en, would spend months documenting the efforts of a school for migrant children to survive on a construction site in We are the… of Communism (2007). From the cinematic representation of ruins, new groups of filmmakers are emerging—beyond the numerous documentaries chronicling the effects of chaiqian on specific neighbourhoods, women and gay filmmakers as well are asserting their voices, not only helping to salvage scrap from the rubble but opening new perspectives as they do so.

Bérénice Reynaud teaches at the California Institute of the Arts, where she is also co-curator for the Film/Video Series at REDCAT.

IFFR 2010 extra: Wang Bing's WEST OF THE TRACKS (Tie Xi Qu ...  Matthew Lee from Screen Anarchy

 

How do you write about something like this? (Other than 'at length'.) Wang Bing's West of the Tracks is unquestionably a masterpiece, yet it's one that - understandably - few people will ever see. It's the kind of staggering achievement completely beyond marks out of ten, yet at the same time this is a nine hour, three part documentary (yes, that's nine hours) about the decline of Chinese state-run heavy industry. Those currently running for the exits are certainly missing out, but one could argue both ways about how much.

 

So, to clarify; in 1999 Wang Bing, not long graduated from Beijing's Film Academy, arrived at the Tie Xi industrial district of Shenyang with little more than a tiny DV camera he didn't even own. Tie Xi (the name literally means 'west of the tracks') was at the time China's oldest and largest industrial centre, built by the Japanese in World War II, nationalised come the end of the war and subsequently taken over by the newly-founded Communist party.

 

Once Tie Xi was a beacon of socialist progress, but by the end of the millennium the machinery was falling apart (having gone without any significant upgrades for decades) and the administration was haemorrhaging funds day in, day out. Over the next three years, Wang Bing watched the district implode; factories going bankrupt, workers laid off, buildings torn down and the population relocated.

 

It took him a further two years to edit the footage he'd shot (more than three hundred hours of it) into three distinct parts; these cover the workers themselves, their homes and families, and the aftermath once the district was left little more than a ghost town. The finished documentary was aired on the festival circuit to widespread acclaim, but little subsequent exposure other than a limited DVD release in France, various one-off screenings in the US and Europe and the Rotterdam International Film Festival's (IFFR) DVD release (they partly funded and were first to champion the film) under their Tiger Releases label, which remains the only available edition with English subtitles.

 

1: RUST

 

Rust is the first part of the trilogy, where Wang Bing follows the metalworkers at the Tie Xi smelting plants, trailing them through their daily routines, their break times and their off hours. Right from the lengthy opening shots, with the camera mounted on the front of the goods train that runs through the district, the overarching sense of things winding down is established - the place is largely empty, too quiet and blanketed in snow.

 

Once inside, the factories are a ruin of rusted metal, peeling paintwork and obsolete technology clinging to life. Down on the floor, smoke, steam and loose particulates from the machinery billow across the camera, while the workers' breakrooms resemble every dank, crumbling portrait of the death of socialism ever put to film.

 

Wang captures every moment, from the mundane to the industrious. The workers laugh, argue, complain bitterly about their future prospects, spar drunkenly with each other or simply ramble about nothing much. They take little if any notice of Wang filming, beyond an occasional 'are you getting this?'. When one of the factory bosses lays out the scale of Tie Xi's debts, another moves to shut him up. 'No, it's okay. He's a friend', the first insists.

 

The director rarely speaks, and only off-camera. Snow, dirt and condensation settle on the lens. There's neither voiceover nor any music beyond the diegetic, and only brief explanation of who someone is or where we are. On that note, we see only wherever Wang Bing happened to be - with one camera there's no multiple simultaneous perspectives and little overt sense of a narrative beyond general chronological progression.

 

But then part of the genius of all three sections of the film is how, despite being about as objective as it is possible for a documentary to be, they can still prove frequently riveting. Even allowing for the temptation to romanticise such an alien existence the workers come across for the most part as genial, admirable and not a little humbling. Their worldview comprises a blend of wry fatalism, cynical bitterness and stoic camaraderie; what else can they do? Where else can they go? Tie Xi may be collapsing around them, but it's a job. It's their home.

 

One man sets out how well the factory ought to be running, all things being equal; another describes how the state let he and scores of other workers fail themselves (many of them theoretically qualified yet practically speaking, barely literate), but there's no malice in any of this, just weary black humour. Even when the owner turns up in person to announce fresh redundancies, someone jokes about seeing his chauffeur waiting with the engine running - 'I don't blame him' is the general consensus.

 

Wang also turns out to have an eye for the found image - presumably those three hundred hours contained a good deal of dross, but the final running time frequently proves visually stunning for all its technical limitations. Shot with a tiny handheld camera it may be, but much of West of the Tracks is honestly astonishing, the kind of imagery most filmmakers would happily kill for.

 

Wandering almost everywhere, before, during and after the collapse, the director captures some extraordinary moments; slow pans across the skyline; tracking shots from the goods trains; the factories, first crumbling hulks busy with motion, then later abandoned; demolition crews pulling the wreckage to pieces, and a worker picking through the deserted buildings for anything he can carry away.

 

2: REMNANTS

 

Remnants drags these death throes out to a stupefying degree (the trilogy grows notably darker as it moves on). The second instalment follows the population of Rainbow Road, one of the many housing estates dotted across Tie Xi. The workers' children are equally aware of what the future holds - Wang follows groups of young people as their parents come home jobless, followed by notices going up the estate is about to be demolished and all residents have to leave.

 

Watching the kids engage in perfectly ordinary teenage horseplay even as they acknowledge their world is on the verge of ending is heartbreaking enough but to subsequently see this happen goes beyond that. Again, there is little conventional structure here and neither overt melodrama nor consistent sense of closure. Wang never once imposes himself on events - sometimes he sees residents go, sometimes people he's followed for months simply disappear from the narrative without warning, with even their friends left wondering what happened.

 

Their houses are tiny, multiple generations crammed into a single room, and word swiftly goes out the prospective new homes are smaller still. Several die-hard squatters band together to try and coerce the government into offering a better deal. Wang stays with them as utilities are cut and winter descends yet again, watching while people huddle together for warmth, cooking by candlelight, reduced to melting snow for extra water.

 

3: RAILS

 

And yet Rails, the final part of the trilogy, is harder still thematically and emotionally. The shortest instalment (Rust totals four hours, Remnants three, Rails two) it follows the same goods train from which Wang took the very first long shots in the film. Even after Tie Xi has been left mostly wasteland the train is still running. The director trails the small, tightly-knit crew from some time near the end (they discuss the ongoing demolition seen in Remnants), riding in the cabin as they pass long, monotonous journeys round and round the district with amiable wisecracks and endless card games.

 

Two of the scavengers who now roam the district travel with the train; the wiry, one-eyed Old Du and his teenage son. Like the workers in Rust and Remnants walking off with their own tools, the crew are quite blasé about the two men claiming what little they can risk pilfering from the supply sheds. They may talk down to the old man at times, yet they're not shy about praising his dedication - 'Him and his son are the only people who know how to get things done around here any more', one of the crew remarks.

 

Old Du proves voluble enough once Wang focuses on him, happy to explain what led him to Tie Xi - he turns out to be one of the 'sent down generation' banished to work camps in the country at the tail-end of the 1960s, hopping between menial jobs before working security for the railroad ('All the police know me... otherwise I'd be arrested. I've got connections', he claims). He's clearly smart and resourceful for all his meagre existence, but a scavenger's guile can only accomplish so much. Hard-working or not, Old Du and his son are still squatters carrying off government property, and Rails' inevitable climax is utterly gruelling stuff, not least after spending so much time in the old man's company.

 

There's no agenda here, at least no more than standing witness implies. West of the Tracks doesn't outright condemn either capitalism or communism, it just notes - calmly, impassively - that progress carries a terrible cost for all those left behind, a haunting pragmatism that evokes fifth and sixth generation filmmakers' approaches to dramatising social upheaval and the plight of minorities or the dispossessed.

 

Is nine hours really necessary? The film could be cut, but Wang Bing's patient editing is a marvel - nothing stands out as superfluous and again, the individual sequences are phenomenal. There is a definite sense of working through a unified whole and a narrative arc, despite the slow, meandering progression and the way the film goes against conventional pacing in many respects. The problems come more from the sheer length of the thing - nine hours is far more than the vast majority of people (prospective viewers or not) could ever reasonably be expected to give up in one go.

 

Yet West of the Tracks is a masterpiece regardless. It's slow going, but it grips, in its own way; few if any features, narrative or documentary, have managed to immerse the viewer so completely in a vanished place and time, to say nothing of giving such an enterprise devastating contemporary relevance. Perhaps you know the things it's trying to say - again, Wang Bing's messages are fairly simple - but unless you've followed in the director's footsteps you haven't seen them presented like this, delivered with such jaw-dropping craft and devotion the film goes completely beyond any idea of grades, success or failure.

 

Any distributor would be taking a staggering risk picking it up, yet arguably the film would be best suited to a wider release on home video. While it is fantastically self-contained considering its length, it still works taken an hour or so at a time, almost as if it were shot for television. Bear in mind Wang Bing is obviously aware of the demands he's making on his audience; his most recent documentary The Journey of Crude Oil runs a colossal fourteen hours (he has two films that qualify for entry on Wikipedia's list of longest films ever released) and when screened at festivals it ran more as an art installation than an actual cinema viewing, with patrons free to wander in and out at will.

 

For anyone with the slightest interest in sitting through West of the Tracks who gets the chance it simply has to be seen. Of course it doesn't compel the viewer's attention for nine hours straight - that's arguably not physically possible. Does it elicit boredom? Very likely, if someone watches too much of it in one go, but that doesn't imply the film is boring. Given patience and commitment it is both every bit as captivating and as aesthetically outstanding as any top-tier blockbuster. Few people will ever see this, as it stands, yet more people definitely deserve to.

 

THE DVD

 

For those able to get their hands on it (the boxed set does not appear to be widely avilable online [unless someone can qualify that for me?]), the Tiger Releases DVD is about as good a presentation as the film could hope for. It seems to be taken from the same master as the French release - amusingly, the commercial DVD censors the frequent male nudity where the original festival screener left it intact - though there is one sequence of a crowd of workers silently watching a pornographic movie which remains untouched.

 

Still, given the limitations of the source footage (and the level of compression necessary even with four DVDs) the picture (in 4:3) is still clear, crisp enough and very watchable. Sound is adequate, though nothing happens to test anyone's speakers. Removable English subtitles are clear, concise and perfectly readable (Dutch is also available), though they appear to be taken from the festival screener, meaning they seem to be glossing over some amount of the dialogue.

 

The IFFR release also carries the interview with Wang Bing from the French DVD, confusingly included on the first disc (along with part 1 of Rails). This is a nineteen-minute clip which still has the original French title cards - plus Wang Bing speaks directly to camera for the whole clip, but a French narrator translates over the top of him. The interview also comes with English or Dutch subtitles, though while these are still perfectly well presented and readable they are unfortunately written rather poorly in several places.

 

At the time of writing Wang Bing is supposedly planning his first foray into feature film-making, Hometown, after an earlier experiment filming a narrative short (Brutality Factory) for the 2007 anthology The State of the World. His place in cinema history is practically assured as it is; given his keen artistic sensibilities and talent for dramatic, unconventional storytelling, should he try his hand at regular film-making it promises to be quite an event.

 

Unspoken Cinema: Tie Xi Qu: West Of The Tracks  Srikanth Srinivasan (Just Another Film Buff), July 30, 2010

 

Unspoken Cinema: Tiexi Qu - Chinese Indie Doc (1)  Ouwang Feng, July 30, 2007

 

West of the Tracks — salvaging the rubble of utopia  Jie Li from Jump Cut, Spring 2008, also seen here:  "West of the Tracks" by Jie Li - Jump Cut

 

This was China: Wang Bing's West of the Tracks | Sight & Sound | BFI  Adam Nayman, April 1, 2014

 

Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks film review | The Seventh Art

 

ChinaFile  China Through An Independent Lens, Six Experts Recommend Their Favorite Chinese Documentary Films, by La Frances Hui, May 1, 2012

 

DVD Review: West of the Tracks (Tie Xi Qu) | Blogcritics  Kenneth George Godwin, also seen here:  Rough Cut

 

TSPDT 2013: Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks « Martin Teller's Movie ...  Martin Teller

 

Wang Bing: cinematic bard of the Chinese working-class and peasantry  Louis Proyect, May 10, 2013

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Michael Pattison]

 

We Do All Things Cinematic [Re Naldo]

 

Time Enough at Last: The Long History of the Long Film | 4:3  Jake Moody, July 14, 2014

 

Chinese Reality #15: Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks « dGenerate Films

 

YIDFF: Publications: DocBox: #23  Behind the Scenes: Documentaries in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, by Maggie Lee

 

NOTABLE AND RECOMMENDED CHINESE INDEPENDENT ...  Facts and Details

 

DER Documentary: West of the Tracks

 

Landscape Suicide: Distance(s) #4, or: Industry  film images

 

The Best of the “Noughties” – Offscreen  Peter Rist, listed as #3 of 2003

 

Cahiers du Cinema: Top Ten Lists 1951-2009 - Caltech  listed as #2 in 2004

 

Review: 'Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks' - Variety  Scott Foundas

 

New York Times  Jeannette Catsoulis

 

Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks - WOW.com

 

FENGMING: A CHINESE MEMOIR (He Fengming)

China  Hong Kong  France  (186 mi)  2007

 

The Village Voice [Scott Foundas]

The old woman, He Fengming, treks through the snow, enters her apartment, sits down in a leather armchair, and proceeds to tell us her story. As a student in the late 1940s, caught up in the fervor of Mao's revolution, she abandoned her plans to study English at Lanzhou University and took a job at a provincial daily newspaper. But after Fengming's journalist husband published several texts critical of Party bureaucracy, the couple was pegged as subversive "rightists," separated from their young children (and each other), and sent off to separate re-education camps, thereby beginning a decades-long journey toward hoped-for "rehabilitation." Speaking in what is essentially one breathless monologue, interrupted only by a phone call, a bathroom break, and a few elegant fades to black, Fengming recounts those years as if they were still unfolding right before her eyes (which they may well be)—a devastating odyssey of false accusations, starvation, and youthful idealism shattered by experience. In his masterful, nine-hour documentary, West of the Tracks (which surfaced at Anthology last year), director Wang Bing used a rural freight railway as a conduit into China's uneasy transition from a planned to a market economy. In this equally remarkable follow-up, he finds in a single room, and in He Fengming's harrowed eyes, another uncanny metaphor for individual lives undone by the dreams of nations.

Fengming: A Chinese Memoir - The New Yorker  Richard Brody

This heartbreaking, scathing documentary, directed by Wang Bing, is composed mainly of a nearly three-hour-long interview with an elderly woman, He Fengming, who recounts the persecutions that she and her family endured during China’s Anti-Rightist Movement of 1957 and then, again, during the Cultural Revolution. Sitting in her home in waning light, she is filmed in fixed-focus shots (the first one runs an hour and keeps running even when she gets up to go to the bathroom). She and her first husband, Wang Jingchao, were journalists and devoted socialists, who were nonetheless subjected to fearsome “struggle sessions,” publicly denounced and humiliated, separated from their young sons, and sent to labor camps—from which Wang Jingchao did not emerge alive. Fengming describes horrific privations as well as lifesaving acts of kindness, painfully recalls her family’s devastation, and tells how she put her life back together again and again. The film has a moral authority similar to that of the Holocaust documentary “Shoah,” to which it ingeniously alludes. The long first shot, the only one set outdoors, follows Fengming as she walks—silently—home. In China, which (unlike Germany) is still ruled by the same party that committed the crimes being recounted, the truth, Wang Bing suggests, can still not be spoken in public; his film brilliantly, bravely brings that silence to light. In Mandarin.

Ed Halter on Wang Bing's Fengming: A Chinese Memoir - artforum.com ...

WANG BING HAS a predilection for the documentary as an epic form. His film Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2003) spends over nine hours with laborers at a declining mining concern in northeastern China, and his latest project, Crude Oil (2008), a visit inside the everyday grind of workers on an Inner Mongolian oil field, clocks in at a daunting fourteen hours. These video monuments, which he has presented both theatrically and as installations, speak to the colossal scale required to envision even a fragment of China’s millennia-deep history, its imperial geography, or its billion-plus people.

At a mere 184 minutes, Wang’s Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (2007) is brief in comparison but nonetheless communicates its own sweeping saga—though it records just a few hours in the life of one elderly woman in her cramped apartment. The film begins with its subject, He Fengming, shuffling across icy pavement to her modest flat, as Wang’s camera hovers patiently behind her. Once settled inside, He narrates a harrowing testimony spanning five decades, from her idealistic youth as an eager Communist Party journalist to the drawn-out hell of starvation in labor camps, where she spent years being “rehabilitated” after she and her husband were spuriously denounced for right-wing tendencies, accused in Maoist “struggle sessions” of fronting a “little black clique” of counterrevolutionaries that never existed. During the first hour of her account, the sun slowly sets outside, gradually bathing the interior of her home in darkness.

He’s body barely moves as she recounts her tale within a static fixed frame, but her storytelling proves gripping; Fengming stands alongside first-person precedents like Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason (1967) and Errol Morris’s The Fog of War (2004) in its ability to wrest powerful effects from the deceptively simple setup of a lone raconteur. Filled with paranoia, thought-policing, and opportunistic struggles for power, the world that He describes could have been lifted from Orwell or Kafka, burning with a tragic romance at its center. In the face of forced collectivity, the love between He and her husband, she says, “was all the more precious because it belonged only to us.” The same consequence applies to He’s life story, which she has evidently honed over the years into a finely wrought autobiography, retaining memories a new China would rather forget.

Interviews | Ghost Stories: Wang Bing's Startling New Cinema ...  Rober Koehler interview from Cinema Scope, 2007

As the winter night begins to swallow up what little light remains in the sky, an old woman trudges up a pathway toward a block of flats. The camera follows her at a respectful distance, acknowledging her importance but never wanting to be so close that it encroaches in on her space. Soon, the woman is in her flat, settling into her favourite living-room chair, with her guest—the camera—watching her from across her coffee table. She begins to speak…

After this deceptive opening movement, Wang Bing’s second film, Fengming: A Chinese Memoir, proceeds to unfold as a cinematic oral history that tells of the full horrors of the worst of Maoist China. He Fengming, former university student and fulltime journalist, relates her personal account of the 1948 revolution’s powerful tide, and how heady excitement gave way to spasms of recriminations and paranoia that led to mass denunciations, show trails, persecutions, and deportations to labour camps where politics was irrelevant: “Survival,” in her words, “was all that mattered.”

Partly because of the large gestural movements of his camera in his monumental Tiexi District: West of the Tracks (2003)—is there a more sublime debut in recent history?—and partly because he steadfastly refuses to allow his attention to wander anywhere else in the flat except directly upon Fengming while she speaks for over 170 of the 184-minute film, Wang delivers a shock to anyone who assumed they had a bead on his art after just one film. Given that West of the Tracks, all nine-hours-plus, was so all-encompassing in its recording of the eradication of the Tie Xi Qu industrial sector of Shenyang in northeast China, and seemed such a definitive statement as documentary art in extremis and on the physical reality of China’s economic reforms, it seemed to define Wang’s cinema.

The intensely ascetic form of Fengming demands disciplined viewing and listening, which seemed in sync with its single, unassuming Cannes appearance. By the time Denys Arcand had ignominiously fled the Palais on closing night, there could be no denying that Wang had not only made one of the few Cannes films that mattered, but that this, combined with his stunning short, Brutality Factory (as part of the Gulbenkian Foundation-supported The State of the World), made Wang the best-of-show director at Cannes.

Rather than appearing as detached and independent projects made under two entirely distinct sets of circumstances (which is what they are), Fengming and Brutality Factory tell the same fundamental saga from differing vantage points. Fengming’s story, which she wrote in the early ‘90s as a published memoir titled My Life in 1957, is told from the standpoint of an intellectual who had fully embraced the revolutionary ideal, but whose husband, fellow journalist Wang Jing-chao, perhaps took the fervour of Mao’s pitch to reform the country’s stifling bureaucracy too much to heart. Wang’s three essays, published in the Gansu Daily where the couple worked, rubbed certain cadres the wrong way and earned him the label of a “rightist.” In one of several waves of actual and pseudo-reform that reached a fever pitch with the Cultural Revolution, the anti-rightist movement eventually persecuted and imprisoned nearly 553,000 Chinese—including Fengming, who was put on a humiliating show trial and sent to a brutal labour camp merely for being Wang’s wife.

Fengming describes her suicidal urges (she even swallowed a bunch of sleeping pills, but to no effect) as well as her dogged efforts to stay alive in the camps. The attempts to collect or steal small batches of raw cottonseed and flour to fill her empty stomach become the stuff of extraordinary suspense, just as a chilling passage as she’s trying to stay alive in a cave and thinking of the spirits of those who hadn’t survived in the camps suggests that what’s actually playing out in Fengming is something of a ghost story.

The same awareness of spectres hovers over Brutality Factory, which begins with vistas of massive hulks of old factories quite similar to those in West of the Tracks, and then peers inside one of the forbidding complexes to reveal a so-called “struggle session”: Revolutionary guards torturing a woman to give up information on her husband. Because he’s imagining a story he had been told—much in the way that Fengming sits across from him in her living room and talks—Wang departs from his stance as a non-fiction filmmaker and stages the grisly, deeply inhuman incident. It conjures up the dead—both those inducing death and those victimized—while hinting at the sort of dramas that may be in Wang’s future.

Coincidentally, Wang had originally wanted to capture the essence of Chinese intellectuals in a dramatic feature, but instead found his ideal form of expression in Fengming, whose account—which easily ranks in power alongside those of other survivors of the worst terrors of the 20th century like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Primo Levi—speaks for the living and dead of a period of China that may gradually recede with time, but continues to haunt the mind.

CINEMA SCOPE: What compelled you to contact He Fengming and how did you meet her?

WANG BING: Being that I’m a member of the younger generation and may not be aware of the thoughts and feelings of older people, I wanted to try to find the best way of addressing a number of issues that concerned me. At the same time, I wanted to tackle some issues as well as solve a few questions I had about what path I wanted to take for my next creative project. Basically, when I made West of the Tracks, I followed my instincts and didn’t set out an approach to the technical side of the filmmaking ahead of time. I hadn’t looked for any rational filmmaking strategy. When I finished West of the Tracks, I felt as if one period of my life was over and a new period was starting, and I started thinking about how I could take a more structured approach for what I wanted to work on next, which was the life of the older generation. So I wanted, in a very conscientious and targeted way, to contact intellectuals of this generation. This was during 2004 to 2006, when I did my research.

SCOPE: When you say that filming West of the Tracks was more intuitive, and that you wanted to change direction, does that mean that you wanted to have a clear and direct approach with the intellectuals you decided to film? Or did you arrive at this manner in which you filmed Fengming during the time that you got to know her?

WANG: Before I started filming Fengming, I spent a good deal of time getting to know her, so we became pretty close. I’d often pay her visits, take her to dinner, talk about her life and about others who she knew. At first, I had no specific plan to make this particular film. Then an opportunity presented itself when the Kunsten Art Festival in Brussels contacted me and asked me to contribute. I couldn’t think of what I could really do, and then the idea gradually started forming that I could make a film with He Fengming. At first in October 2005 I planned a 50-minute film of her talking. The actual filming started in January 2006. After I finished filming, I realized that I couldn’t squeeze it into 50 minutes. In the end, I expanded it two hours and ten minutes. After we showed it in Kunsten in May 2006, I found that the narrative wasn’t quite complete, so I went back to Beijing to round out the story, which meant filming an additional hour. We finally finished this phase by September 2006.

SCOPE: It’s interesting that the conversation took place during two periods, because the impression when watching the film is that it’s one continuous session of her talking, almost non-stop, with the sun setting, the lights in her living room turn on, and then it’s on into the next day. It’s as if she never stops. Did you want to create this impression? And where is the placement of the two-hours-plus section, and the subsequently filmed hour-long section?

WANG: Obviously, I thought a lot about how to portray the narrative process. I observed her and visited her a lot during this process. At the same time, I was asking myself how I could show her as she lives today, alone in that house, and conveying this atmosphere on screen. I thought about various approaches before I adopted the technique I chose. In fact, the whole process stretches not just over one day, but three. The first shot following her into her apartment takes place during the evening of the first day.

SCOPE: That’s what I call the West of the Tracks shot.

WANG: Yes, I can see that! Then most of the story is told over the expanse of the second day, from the morning into the evening. Her story goes right on through to 1978 and the end of the Cultural Revolution when she’s rehabilitated. The third day is when she talks about 1991, when she looks to find her husband’s grave, and then ends in the evening.

SCOPE: When she talks on the phone to another survivor.

WANG: Yes. So there are basically three sections. Her story from 1949 to 1978 is a complete self-contained segment without break. The second segment is in 1991. There’s also a break in history, so we decided to break it up this way, and film it the next day. And then the final segment is when she’s walking through her flat and takes the phone call. I wanted to include this little piece to show her life now, and use more traditionally cinematic means to convey that.

SCOPE: Did that phone call just happen in the moment, and is it typical that she gets phone calls from survivors?

WANG: The call just happened to come in when I was there. In fact, He Fengming has had a lot of contact with people who had the same experiences. It wasn’t contrived at all. She’s mentioning actual names, phone numbers, and addresses. Of course, I excised the phone numbers and addresses from the soundtrack! The call is quite accurate, and does reflect the kind of contact she has with the outside world. It kind of wakes you up—you realize that this is her real life. The ring itself hits our ears like a bolt out of the blue. We’re deep inside the waves of history and stories of life and death, and then this happens.

SCOPE: A surprising effect of watching Fengming through your fixed, distant camera is the eerie, unsettling mood that gradually settles over everything. Did you find that this came purely out of the circumstances of being with her in that space?

WANG: The choice of cinematic technique was in order to produce a direct feeling of her actual existence in this flat. She’s an old lady, with slow movements and with a body that’s physically twisted, even deformed. There are certain effects that give this impression. For example, her home looks very small and dark. Effectively, it suggests a lonely life, and she’s very happy to have someone visiting her. I wanted to capture her life now right alongside her thoughts of her past; in that sense, she’s actually living in the past to a real degree. I got the feeling that her home is like a tomb, buried in the ground. That comes from the lack of light; what little of it comes from different levels. Her living in this tomb space is a bit like a ghost sitting down or moving about. With her movements and the changes in light, I was trying to give this impression and atmosphere.

SCOPE: Because the shots are so long, the eye begins to wander about the frame and the space inside the frame, and lands upon objects in clear sight. There’s a bag with a few oranges on a sofa, stuff like that, and the perspective is as if the viewer is her guest seated in a chair across her coffee table. It seems amazingly useful to capture these everyday objects in the frame, while noting that they’re there purely by happenstance. Were these details kind of wonderful to see, like a still life?

WANG: Well, I’m concerned that I don’t impose a message, as I don’t want to visually force anything on viewers. In other words, I want to make it as loose and open as possible, and to create the circumstances to maximize the possibilities of the audience directly experiencing and following her story, and eliminating any possible obstacles, especially those that could be created by the filming itself. That was my main concern. I wanted to use fairly wide angles, to have the field open to let the audience freely roam and observe details at their own leisure. So they feel at home and get closer to her. There should be nothing standing in the way, least of all the director as a screen between the subject and the audience.

SCOPE: You’ve said that as a member of the younger generation, you wanted to learn about the stories of the older generation, your parents’ generation that lived through the era of Mao and the Cultural Revolution, and the aftermath. You also note that this experience and history has been lost on the new generation. This seems a central reason for making the film. Is the younger generation forgetting their history?

WANG: The education that my generation received didn’t reflect reality. Suddenly, as we entered our 30s—I’m turning 40 in November—we began to realize this discrepancy between what we’ve been taught and the truth. We’re realizing we’ve been living in unreality, that the world we’ve been living in hasn’t been true. The history taught in the classroom was so disconnected from actual history. So this was one motivation. The other was that today in China people are generally reluctant to look back. If you don’t look back on your history, it seems to me that you can’t observe clearly which way you should be headed in the future. People only think forward, what they want tomorrow. Yesterday is irrelevant and today’s quickly going to become irrelevant. If this kind of thinking persists, it’s very troublesome. That kind of life seems suspended in empty space, detached in a kind of illusion, without any grounding. This creates an uneasy feeling, a psychological discomfort in me that’s hard to describe.

SCOPE: Is this concern for reality behind the basis for your making non-fiction cinema? You have yet to make narrative films—although there are interesting hints of this is in Brutality Factory.

WANG: I haven’t made fiction films because the conditions haven’t been right for me. The second reason is that in China, social changes have come so fast and been so massive, that the opportunities for documentaries are considerable. In documentary, you have to operate extremely quickly and record what’s immediately in front of you. Comparatively, making a feature is a slow, sluggish process. Before taking the step to make dramatic features, I think it’s better to look closely at reality, and in order to do this, I have to take a close look at myself, and how I’m experiencing reality. I’m hoping by going through this period of filmmaking, my takes on reality will be all the more powerful when I decide to make dramatic features.

SCOPE: It does seem, as well, that He Fengming’s story and how she relates it to you and the audience is a political act and a brave one. Even though her memoirs have been published, there seems to be something even more political about her story being put on film. Were you thinking about how this film is for the record and will ideally be shown worldwide.

WANG: As a filmmaker, I didn’t think I was making a political gesture. My main concern was to show how this woman has lived her life and lived through all these calamities, and how she’s living today. As far as the political impact is concerned, it’s outside my scope. If it does have a political impact, whatever that may be, it’s because of the political situation itself. It would be totally due to the politics at the time, and not because of my work as a director and Fengming telling her story.

SCOPE: What I was thinking is that her story is now being heard around the world, and will have a more international audience. I’m also thinking of the impact of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.

WANG: I honestly can’t consider that. It depends entirely on who sees it and how they experience it, view it, and then discuss it. It then takes on a life of its own.

SCOPE: While watching the film, I pictured you sitting or standing beside the camera, and how you were feeling about listening to Fengming talking, and what your emotions might have been as she tells this story where tragedy is piled upon tragedy. It’s almost too painful to listen to. This is something that’s exceptionally rare for the viewer to consider: What is the director thinking right now? It’s a remarkable kind of space that the film allows for.

WANG: It’s so hard to answer that, I’m actually a little embarrassed. My feelings were very complex. First, I had a feeling of real unease and malaise hearing her story. And second, I felt a mounting determination to get this film made and show it to as many people as possible. The third strand is a feeling of thinking about one’s own life in (Chinese) society. What makes this more complex for me is that these three sets of feelings are intertwined, and difficult to separate.

SCOPE: Do you plan to make any other accounts of survivors, or is Fengming’s story enough? Will your next film be as different from this one as West of the Tracks was?

WANG: Filmmaking to me is a process of making a film, and then taking a break to think about what to do next. At the moment, I’m taking that break and can’t say what I’ll do next. I would like to make a film about my own family, my life in my early childhood in northwest China in the village where I grew up. Show my thoughts and feelings about that, and also about my mother’s life today. So it would be autobiographical.

SCOPE: Thinking of what you had to say about how Fengming began to seem like a ghost in a tomb, your director’s note for Brutality Factory remarks on the presence of ghosts in the torture chambers of the “struggle sessions” that you staged.

WANG: I can’t really say how other people prefer to see it. After Pedro Costa asked me to contribute to The State of the World, I had such a short time to make Brutality Factory that I couldn’t think about it very much. In fact, I made it in a few days. You could say that others spent more time thinking and talking about it than I did making it!

SCOPE: It’s the first time that you’ve directed actors. Were you getting a glimpse of what it was like to make a dramatic narrative film, even as you were blending certain visual aspects of West of the Tracks?

WANG: The choice of that location, I have to say, was because we didn’t have very much money. I figured the ruins of a factory would be easily within the budget.

SCOPE: Although it’s also a historically true location, related to the site of tortures.

WANG: Those events did happen many times in many places, in factories, in institutions, in offices, even schools. I know that from stories that have been passed down and told. I never witnessed or experienced it, but absorbed the stories passed through the grapevine. So, it seemed best to dramatize one of those stories that I found interesting.

SCOPE: Something that both Fengming and Brutality Factory share in common is that they offer two examples of telling stories about the horrors of the period from the late ‘50s into the ‘70s, and its systematic persecution and torture.

WANG: In neither case, I feel, were these films made fully under my control. There was a lot of happenstance in how each film came together. We didn’t know until the last minute that we were going to Cannes, so a final cut of Fengming had to be done in about ten days. A lot of unexpected factors went into each project, which makes anything that links them almost purely accidental. Every film is a hard and painful process, and very tiring and difficult. And even when it’s finished, I never really feel, “This is great, I’m happy and satisfied.” With West of the Tracks, I never felt great satisfaction when I was done. The hard truth is that for me it’s very hard to actually get a feeling of relief and satisfaction from completing a film.

Thanks to interpreter Robin Setton and producer Lihong Kang.

Fengming: A Chinese Memoir - Reviews - Reverse Shot  Andrew Chan, December 3, 2008

 

Tativille: New Film: Fengming: A Chinese Memoir Michael J. Anderson from Tativille

 

China's Gulag - The New Yorker  Richard Brody, September 9, 2010

 

Fengming: A Chinese Memoir | Indiewire  Robbie Freeling

 

Fengming: A Chinese Memoir | Village Voice  J. Hoberman

 

He Fengming: A Chinese Memoir » IsolaCinema.org

 

Fengming, a Chinese Memoir | IFFR  Rotterdam Festival

 

FENGMING A Chinese Memoir - Yamagata International Documentary ...

 

Fengming: A Chinese Memoir | Variety  Robert Koehler

 

Fengming: A Chinese Memoir | in New York - Time Out

 

Fengming, a Chinese Memoir - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

A JOURNAL OF CRUDE OIL (Caiyou riji)

China  Netherlands  (840 mi)  2008

 

User Reviews  from imdb Author: TravelerThruKalpas from somewhere, March 2, 2012

Not least because of rarely scheduled appearances, there is good reason why Wang Bing's Crude Oil has generated extremely little writing on it, online or elsewhere. It almost goes without saying that much commentary offered about it will be revelatory of the different kinds of mental strategies employed to overcome the total experience of it, rather than recording one's surrender to it. Its 14 hour length alone unequivocally demands no less than that, and explicitly signals Wang's intention for the project as documentary installation art — strictly encountered in a gallery or dedicated space — rather than via conventional film, video or digital monitor presentations, which fail to transcend limitations of the passive consumer experience. Outside the safety of those largely capitalist-designated parameters, his presentation is devised to provide a devastatingly intimate entrée into the conditions of human working life (here, at a remote oil rig in China's Gobi Desert), while implicitly asking: what does it mean to watch images not designed for hedonic consumption?

My experience of Crude Oil took place at the Brooklyn media space Light Industry, during a 2009 limited five-day run. It was a rather overwhelming encounter with Wang's work to say the least, seeing separate presentations of his (then) newest work Coal Money, and his panoramic 9-hour masterpiece, West of the Tracks. My three successive daily visits had a life-changing impact akin to being on a retreat; the factory loft was a temporary space, and with a small heating unit among the few chairs, benches and floor mats that didn't do much to dispel a November chill, it was far from producing a passive experience. Having missed the first two hours, remaining for the rest was ordeal enough in itself (even split over two days and 6-hour sessions), demanding determination and confidence in Wang's enterprise, mostly made possible by his ethical sensibility.

To describe the overall impact, even separating out these extra conditions, is difficult because Wang's approach is so simple and yet uncompromising in itself. The individual shots are massive in length, important for establishing one as visitor (not just viewer), and his camera angles are largely from real or potential perspectives of his subjects, who remain unselfconscious throughout, hence effectively negating any sense of voyeurism. The recording sound was intentionally set at a naturalistic level, and scenes where the workers spend time indoors in the bare recreational living room register effectively. But when we're moved outside to the rig platform itself, with the relentlessly active workers, the deafening maelstrom of machinery sound engulfs one, and for an indefinite amount of time.

A key scene indicative of Wang's simple yet powerful sound design: two workers share a smoke break well away from the rig, trying to relax in the sun and the immense desert surrounding them. When we follow alongside as they return to work, the faint sounds of the machinery gradually grow louder until we begin to tighten up, thinking we've assessed the limit and preparing to hunker down for the duration of the shot, but the sonic assault continues, becoming truly devastating. As one begins to numb in order to accommodate, even trying to take refuge in movement by walking around the gallery to avoid becoming pinned down by the roar, the realization of Wang's intentions becomes more piercing — and one probably elusive to those who think a more conventional access (e.g., a bootleg DVD trip modulated with remote control) can provide the same result, while fast-forwarding beyond the meaning which can only come through a direct head-on engagement with Wang's setup.

The challenges which were implicit in one's original intention to bear witness become activated from moment to moment in multi-fold; many realizations arise, and not merely of one's discomfort as potentially one of many Western subjects who endlessly consume vast amounts of oil and commodities, at a great distance from their source. Wang confronts us existentially, forcing us to relinquish our comfort zones as the prerequisite for a further inquiry into reality of work, how our political views are incomplete and even suspect if they do not encompass a direct witness of what work itself actually means to us — what is its true cost, not just economically for those who benefit the most from the labors of others, but the emotional, psychological and the extreme physical cost for those whose labor is exploited. This is the direct head-on view of what such exploitation looks like — moment by grueling or boring moment (even the workers' down-time doesn't exactly feel like relief) — in the course of one day, a day like many other endless days for them. The longue durée of this exposure, in which our witness becomes alternately more embarrassing, more frustrating, more numbing, more claustrophobic, the longer we submit to it — ultimately provides us with an unparalleled ethical reckoning well beyond our normally posited limits of engagement or resistance.

Questions around how much mediation occurs in the filmmaking process itself eventually disappear, as one becomes simultaneously swallowed up by time, as well as a product of it, and through actual witness even its accomplice. Wang has commented on the difficulty of capturing or attaining "truth" in his art — although in this work, perhaps he may have realized that "truth" becomes transparent to context, to what is taking place… simultaneously on-screen and off, within our experience… in the encounter arising between the meaning-potentials discerned and our willingness to make ourselves available for their discovery to change our life.

With Crude Oil, Wang Bing has not turned out something anyone could be comfortable with, clearly demonstrating that film buffs need not apply, and reminding that Kafka once said we should only read the books that wound us... What do you see? How do you see?

Jigsaw Lounge / Tribune [Neil Young]

Roughly ten hours into Wang Bing’s 14-hour documentary Crude Oil there’s a single shot that runs 107 minutes– longer than the entirety of Casablanca, Dr Strangelove or Annie Hall. And what does this almost unbroken segment, filmed from a single tripod-fixed camera-position, depict? A bunch of blokes watching films from DVDs on a bedroom telly, during a break between their punishing shifts as Gobi Desert roughnecks. They trade occasional small-talk (“The Sword of Justice – more boring shit”); colleagues come and go; daylight slowly fades; not much happens; illumination is elusive; the drillers’ zonked-out lassitude osmoses its way steadily through the screen and envelops the viewer in a miasma of torpor. Dozens of minutes ebb into the void.

In what our culture regards as a conventional narrative film (like the Oscar-winning Hollywood pictures mentioned above) the inclusion of such an episode would be unthinkable; a gross dereliction of duty on the part of director Wang and particularly his editor Guo Henqi. But there’s the rub! Crude Oil isn’t a conventional film at all. It wasn’t even made with the intention of ever being projected in a cinema; rather it was commissioned as an installation (initial provisional running-time… 70 hours) by Rotterdam Film Festival, where it was unveiled in January 2008 at the city’s former Fotomuseum.

Despite Wang’s steadily-growing international acclaim over the intervening period (he’s routinely ranked among the world’s most important documentary-makers) further exhibitions of this colossal work have been few and far between. And it wasn’t until March 2014 that Crude Oil finally washed up on British shores, when it was included in a selection of Wang’s ‘industrial films’ that formed one key strand of north east England’s sixth biennial AV Festival, this year built around the theme of ‘Extraction’.

For those unfamiliar with Wang’s extreme methods and results, perusing the AV catalogue–which included details of the 840-minute Crude Oil as well as the 534-minute, three-part West of the Tracks in addition to three much shorter works–might cause them to ponder just what was actually being extracted here. Perhaps ‘the Michael’ or even ‘the urine’.

The commitment to watching the entirety of such uncompromisingly ‘durational’ pieces is no mean undertaking, and while AV displayed all the other Wangs in cinematic settings, Crude Oil got special curatorial treatment. Mirroring the 2×7-hour timetable of that first Rotterdam presentation, it was screened from 10am to 5pm, in a draughty upstairs room at the Stephenson Works, behind Newcastle’s central station: first half one day, second half the next (with one or two quirks of the calendar to complicate the sequence a little). A pair of functional sofas was positioned a few yards away from the ‘screen’–actually a blank white wall on a partition temporarily erected to divide the decidedly un-dark, un-cinema-like room.

The choice of location was of course no accident, AV being a festival acutely attuned to the realities and ironies of post-industrial cultural practice. The Stephenson Works is one of the last remnants of the world’s first purpose-built locomotive ‘factories’, opened in 1823 by the pioneering brothers George and Robert Stephenson (with three partners) and birthplace of the legendary ‘Locomotion No 1’ and ‘Rocket’. A former office block and boiler/plate works comprise the premises today, a somewhat unprepossessing building, occupied by small creative firms and located down what’s essentially a glorified back-alley.

For those without GPS the Works aren’t easy to locate, and the maplessness of AV’s catalogue further exacerbates the intrigue. Indeed, by the time I actually tracked down the entrance–the only sign indicating its presence only feet from the door, and almost invisible from the main road–and bounded up the stairs to the projection space, the “movie” had been running for nearly a quarter of an hour. Sweat-prickled and furious, I suddenly felt like Woody Allen in Annie Hall when he refuses to enter the Manhattan cinema showing Bergman’s 114-minute Face To Face because he and his date have missed the opening two minutes (“That’s it! Forget it! I can’t go in…. We’ve blown it already. I can’t go in in the middle. You wanna get coffee for two hours or something..?”)

Common sense prevailed, however, and I settled down for the duration with my supplies (big lump of Cheshire cheese; Mars bar; tuna salad sandwich; ‘flat cake’ bread; two bottles of water; thermos flask of tea) and the tools of my film-critic trade (notebook; pens; customised torch; stopwatch). I say ‘tools’ and ‘trade’ because in my mind what I was doing at the Stephenson Works was labour, of a kind. Never mind the fact that I’m not getting paid by Tribune for this article (the publication has been pro bono since its inception in 1937; what’s good enough for George Orwell is good enough for me).

Locating the entrance to the Stephenson Works had involved a frantic tour of the immediate vicinity, much of which is a vast building-site that will at some point become the Stephenson Quarter–a 10-acre zone which, according to the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, “will include new commercial, hotel, residential and retail facilities”. Wandering to the back of the projection space afforded, through two sets of very old windows, a panoramic view of the construction–a tough environment on these chilly, windy, rainy days in March. Standing at certain positions allowed the viewer (i.e. myself) to see the Newcastle labourers and their Gobi Desert counterparts at a single glance. The film’s many longueurs provided numerous occasions for such improvisations and speculations.

With no voice-over or captions provided, we have to work out what’s going on for ourselves, simply by observation over extended periods of time. We soon learn the drill, in more ways that one, particularly regarding a huge and crucial bit of kit that swings into place, and into view, to screw and unscrew pipes together and which in its daunting, bygone floating massiveness looks like a cross between an outsize toilet-seat and an electric chair. Indeed, it could easily pass for a commode used by the villainous Harkonnen clan in David Lynch’s epic, desertine $40m folly, Dune.

Crude Oil is, in its way, no less ambitious than Lynch’s career-derailer: inevitably intimate in its implicit fly-on-wall camaraderie with the workers, but deliberately, even ostentatiously demanding of its audience to an almost satirical degree of excess. The diametric opposite of Hollywood slickness, Wang’s film was shot on medium-grade digital video using equipment that is, we deduce, of an strictly-functional nature.

The result–suitably ‘raw’ and ‘unrefined’ as it is–runs longer than all six of the Fast and the Furious movies combined. But in cinema size isn’t everything, and it’s important to avoid the trap of overlooking quality while lauding width. As an installation, Crude Oil can indeed transfigure space and time: an interior wall of a building on Tyneside (for example) becomes in effect a portal, allowing us extended peeks into the unvarnished reality of a particular spot in the Gobi Desert, in the first decade of the 21st century. How marvellous it would be to have a whole library of such 14-hour records–of a Burmese farm in the 1867, perhaps, or Guatemalan church in 1937, or a Finnish school in 1954–anthropological, sociological, economic records, more valuable than any written word…

After considerable prevarication I returned to the Stephenson Works the next day for part two, coffee in my flask, two sandwiches, another Mars bar. More longueurs; more sympathetic surveillance of Men At Work (women are very occasionally heard, never seen); more unexpected grace-notes, all the more rejuvenatingly jarring for their brevity and unforced poetry: the very final image [spoiler alert!] is of the moon, seen through clouds, its white orb refracting into liquid streaks, phasing in and out of visibility until the final fade.

A justifiable way of spending two whole ‘working’ days of a life? Perhaps. Fourteen whole hours, gazing at a bloody screen that isn’t even a proper bloody screen?! But there’s a lot to be said for assessing and confronting one’s limits, whether in art, work, or life in general. And so long as I could put my habitual professional practices to the side, I got through it painlessly enough. As the tagline from Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left almost puts it, “to avoid fainting, keep repeating: ‘It’s not a movie! It’s not a movie! It’s not a movie!'”

Caiyou riji [A Journal of Crude Oil] (2008)  Sabzian

 

THE DITCH (Jiabiangou)

Hong Kong  France  Belgium  (112 mi)  2010

 

Cinema, Virginity, and Swans: The Abu Dhabi International Film ...  Robert Keser from Bright Lights Film Journal, October 31, 2010 (excerpt)

The Ditch/Jiabiangou, a powerfully disturbing record of forced labor camps in 1960s China, during the three-year period of dire famine when political activists found themselves accused of right-wing deviation and then condemned to servitude in underground holes in the unimaginably vast and barren Gobi Desert. Long rows of men dig an endless ditch as their only activity, not only a pointless one but thankless as well, the only reward being a spoonful or two of pitifully thin soup, never mind the occasional feasting on a stray rat, not to mention disturbing hints of cannibalism.

Men who collapse and die throughout the workday are pulled out of the way for the wagon that picks up that night’s corpses at dawn. Gathered around a fire, the half-dead prisoners speak in exhausted whispers: “My whole body is still very swollen,” “My situation is desperate.” It’s a no-exit situation, with the question of submission to authority long ago decided, as any plans to escape seem doomed by their debilitated physiques, and the entire country seems on alert to trap them as renegades. Their faces remain shadowy as befits their ghost-like existence, and it’s half an hour before the camera moves in for the first close-up.

Amidst the expanses of reddish sand, as dust flies into shafts of sunlight, one prisoner’s wife unexpectedly arrives in the booming wind and blowing snow, but the men discourage her from searching for her husband (“There are hundreds of graves. You’ll never find him”), but she continues with mounting hysteria that pushes misery to the extreme. Indeed, the director, best known for 1999’s marathon four-hour documentary West of the Tracks, wrests intense, committed performances unhampered by vanity, to match the harrowing depiction of this gulag existence. Is this the most depressing picture made in the fifty-plus years since De Sica’s Umberto D? Perhaps, but the joy is in the art as it’s also a film freighted with humanity and immaculate clarity.

TIFF 2010. Day 8 on Notebook | MUBI  Daniel Kasman, September 17, 2010

Renowned documentarian whose documentaries I have never seen Wang Bing has made a tremendous, compacted, and pressingly physical fictional debut with this digital film.  Set in 1960 in a worker re-education camp in the steppes of the Gobi desert, work in the camp, on the titular ditch, is halted at the onset of the movie as the worker-prisoners are so infirmed and starving they are no longer able to continue construction.  The camera quickly descends into their domiciles, which are essentially dirt pits underneath the level emptiness of the parched landscape above.  We then watch in the meager lamp light at night and in the daylight straining to reach these putrid home these men swathed in crumbled blue uniforms sleep, starve, and die.  It is an utterly wretched film—in effect, not in quality.  Wang has transitioned to fiction most successfully by focusing on the space of the dormitories, the rectangular corridors of dirty blankets covering weary skeletons.  Bedridden or barely shuffling around, the immobility under all that empty space is incredible; the most moving moments are when the men grasp others, pulling themselves closer to hoarsely express final wishes, or tearfully recite a letter home, buried under blankets.  The film impresses immediately the importance of eating to such a degree that a major event in the film is the on-screen revelation of a bowl of noodles, which looks positively lavish and absolutely delicious after following the crawling, stumbling men with their sack-like weight barely holding onto life.  Midway through the matter of fact observance of this suffering the film starts to inject some fiction, some melodrama in the proceedings, starting with a wife who shows up to find her husband dead and the body abandoned in an unidentified grave.  Her singular instance on not leaving and finding him and her continuous wailing at first rings false against the minimalist picture of those straining for life and those fading away, but quickly her explosive emotion takes on a extra-cinematic quality, acting as a kind of witness and release valve for the spectators, venting oceans of angst and frustration in place of the men who are too weak to do it themselves.  Like Michael Mann and David Fincher before him, Wang is shooting a fictional period film in highly contemporaneous-looking digital.  His bare, undramatic camerawork, which creates continuous space between desert and dorms, workspace, livingspace and deathspace by moving between them all in single takes, and then breaking away with awkward but often pointed edits, like the image of the wife collapsed on her husband’s corpse with piles of corpses clothed in fading colors splattered across the background, is so physically grounded that the film retains a profound, ambiguous quality of documentary.  The video-film then becomes both an act of preservation—reconstructing and keeping alive these experiences already fading in memory—and an act of intervention, a reminder to the most basic forms of human suffering, its unforgivingly simple pain and pathos in the unfailingly now appeal of its pitiful, exiled hardships.

The Ditch | Reviews | Screen  Lee Marshall from Screendaily

A grueling ordeal of a film, documentary maker Wang Bing’s first fictional feature tells the story of China’s gulags – primitive reeducation camps in the Gobi desert for those of its citizens branded by the regime as ‘Rightists’ in the late fifties. Unveiled at the last minute as the surprise film in this year’s Venice competition, it’s a stark, powerful but also unremittingly bleak work that plumbs the misery of what man can do to man in the name of an ideology.

Though possessing a savage life force, and images of cruel and harsh desert beauty that stick in the mind long after the lights have gone up, this is a grindingly austere drama that makes serious demands on its audience’s resilience. It seems destined to play only to the toughest arthouse audiences, though it’s also a work whose historical relevance – plus Wang Bing’s growing stature and reputation as a Chinese auteur – should give it a long-tail shelf life after a brief theatrical outing in a handful of cineaste territories.

One of the most impressive, but also chilling, things about the film is the way the Gobi desert setting becomes a harsh mother. The camp prisoners perform senseless manual tasks in the cold, sand-laden wind – like digging the ditch that gives the film its title. They sleep in underground dormitories excavated in the compacted sand, and when they die – as they do in droves – are wrapped in their own bedcovers and buried in graves so shallow that they are exposed by the wind before long, leaving the desert slopes littered with mummy-like corpses.

Based on survivors’ memoirs – some of them gathered in Yang Xianhui’s book Goodbye, Jiabianjou (the name of the camp featured in the film) – The Ditch was shot in secret, bypassing official film-board channels, and has the tang of accuracy. But its dramatic strategy, close to melodrama for all the minimalism of the film’s style, is to start off with a terrible situation and make it worse. As the Chinese famine of 1960 takes hold, already skimpy rations dry up, and prisoners are reduced to crawling across the desert to glean some sustenance from spiky wild plants, or catch gerbils and eat them raw. When one throws up, another eats his vomit; there are even cases of cannibalism. The prisoners’ loss of energy and humanity is charted unflinchingly.

Characters like Xiao Li – one of the few to maintain a semblance of humanity even at the darkest moments – emerge from the grayness. At a certain point one of the wives of a prisoner turns up to search for her husband – and then when she discovers he recently died, begins a desperate search for his body in the desert.

There’s no doubting the director’s indignation at one of history’s great injustices. Some of the most telling moments come in the rare moments when the film is not trying to pile on the misery – like one prisoner’s revelation that he was sent to the camp because during a party meeting he had the temerity to suggest that the formula “dictatorship of the proletariat” should be replaced with “dictatorship of the people”.

Sheng Yun reviews 'One Child' by Mei Fong and 'China's Hidden ...  Little Emperors, Sheng Yun book reviews from The London Review of Books, May 2016

 

CineScope [Jean-Baptiste de Vaulx]  also seen here:  Viewing Diary: The Ditch (2010, Wang Bing) 

 

Gems at the Venice Film Festival - FT.com  Nigel Andrews from The Financial Times, September 10, 2010

 

The Ditch – Wang Bing (2010) – The Art(s) of Slow Cinema Nadin Mai

 

Venice 2010 Review: THE DITCH; the "film sorpresa" that couldn't live ...  Robert Beames from What Culture

 

The Ditch | The House Next Door | Slant Magazine  Guido Pelligrini, June 11, 2014

 

Wang Bing | The Seventh Art  Srikanth Srinivasan (Just Another Film Buff), December 4, 2011

 

What does it mean to take reality seriously? - World Socialist Web Site  David Walsh, October 14, 2010

 

Chinese film on 1960 labor camps cheered in Venice | Reuters  Silvia Aloisi from Reuters

 

Venice and TIFF 2010. Wang Bing's "The Ditch" on Notebook | MUBI  David Hudson

 

Wang Bing: Filming a Land in Flux. New Left Review 82, July-August ...  New Left Review interview July/August 2013

 

The Ditch -- Film Review - Hollywood Reporter   Deborah Young

 

The Ditch | Variety  Dustin Chang

 

The Japan Times [Kaori Shoji]

 

Chinese Documentaries: an Inside Look | Etheriel Musings: A Journey ...  Grace Wang from the Ebert site 

 

The Ditch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Wang Bing (director) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

THREE SISTERS (San zimei)

France  Hong Kong  (153 mi)  2012                   Official Site [United States] 

 

TIFF Day 1: La cinquième saison | I Declare War | The Iceman | Jayne Mansfield’s Car | Looper | More Than Honey | Mushrooming | Paradise: Love | Shanghai | Three Sisters  Shelly Kraicer from Cinema Scope, also seen here:  Three Sisters • New Zealand International Film Festival

Wang Bing confirms his mastery of the documentary form with his new film Three Sisters. A work of sustained observation and exquisite empathy, the film takes us deeply into worlds most of us have barely imagined. In the high mountains of the remote western Yunnan province of China, Wang and his two cameramen discovered a family of three little sisters. The eldest, Yingying, is ten; the middle sister Zhenzhen is six, and the youngest, tiny Fenfen, is four. Their father is away working in a distant city; mother seems out of the picture. So it’s just these three girls who make up a complete functional family. Living in utter poverty (their home is a cave-like dwelling—dark, dirty, littered with root vegetables, shared with their few scrawny domestic animals), they work hard, constantly, in dirt, exhausting themselves with the daily labour of subsistence agriculture. There is a neighbouring grandfather and aunt with whom they sometimes eat. But what we see is close to a pure world of little children forced prematurely into the most difficult kind of premature adulthood. The film’s tone is anything but despairing, and the absolute opposite of condescending. There is a kind of invincible energy, a life force that pushes our three heroines to survive, and Wang captures their world with unimaginable beauty and a compassionate, engaged, committed eye.

Slant Magazine [Chris Cabin]

The eponymous siblings of Three Sisters, Shaanxi-born director Wang Bing's seventh feature, don't lead an enviable life. As their father toils and scrounges in a nearby city, the three girls—Ying, Zhen, and Fen—collect potatoes, haul dung, and tend to various livestock in their small village in China's Yunnan province. Their extended family makes up a notable portion of the village's population as well, but the difference between family and neighbor remains largely indistinguishable in Wang's observational long takes, even as the relations are clearly denoted by titles. The villagers, who sustain a potato plantation and some livestock, share in their collective work's meager rewards, which is often little more than a hot meal and a roof over their heads.

A decade after Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, his towering vision of China in social, economical, and industrial transition, Wang finds the faintest pulse of a genuine socialist economy and community, seemingly light years away from the hyper-modern advancements of the People's Republic that have been documented so invigoratingly by colleague and fellow countryman Jia Zhang-ke. And just as Jia's inimitable, deeply fascinating style, a rousing blend of observational documentary and shrewd narrative inventiveness, mirrors China's complicated state of being, Wang's no-frills style of documentation visually echoes a preadolescent trio's simple yet unforgiving world and its sense of labor as life.

This comes through most clearly in the film's pivotal sequence, in which the sisters' paterfamilias takes six-year-old Zhen and four-year-old Fen away to the city by bus, leaving 10-year-old Ying to tend to their small household under the gaze of her grandfather. As father and daughters make their way up to the bus, Wang's heavy breathing becomes increasingly noticeable as he makes his way up the steep hill to the bus stop. We're consistently aware of his presence, even more so as he serves as his own cinematographer, and the filmmaker spends much of the doc simply following Ying as she goes about her work. The director's brilliant editing gives a steady, inviting pace to Ying's seemingly mundane existence and the banality of her surroundings.

Though this small spot of Yunnan geography seems initially stuck out of time, dubious progress lurks in the mists that often cover the mountainous region. At one point, the village's mayor discusses the inevitability of rising “fees” in the area with his constituents, as nearby areas are being converted and rebuilt in a more modern fashion, even as they live with touch-and-go electricity. It offers a small window of scope, one that's sadly only ruminated on for a few minutes, and suggests that the poverty of the village will only get worse. That Ying's father ultimately returns, unable to make ends meet in the city, underlines the unerring desperation of their station, but also confirms their perseverance and ability to enjoy small things. Their poverty is to blame for Fen's rampant lice infestation and Ying's worrisome cough, to say nothing of the state of their schoolhouse, but the elemental joys become bolder, whether it comes in the form of an apple or a moderate amount of TV time. In essence, Three Sisters serves as a measured epilogue to West of the Tracks, luxuriating in the tremendous hardships and miniscule triumphs of tradition.

Cinema Scope | Fire in Every Shot: Wang Bing's Three Sisters  Thom Andersen from Cinema Scope

“Films have no interest unless one finds something that burns somewhere within the shot.”—Jean-Marie Straub, Cahiers du Cinéma, October 1984, p. 34

Wang Bing’s Three Sisters (2012) tells a simple story. Three sisters, aged four, six, and ten, live like orphans in Yunnan province, in the village of Xiyangtang (elevation: 3,500 feet; population: 80 families). Their mother has abandoned the family. The father, Sun Shunbao, has gone to the city to work. So they fend for themselves, cadging meals from their aunt, who tolerates them so long as they work. The father returns, but only briefly, bringing new shoes but taking the two younger sisters to live with him in the city and leaving the eldest, Yingying, to stay with her grandfather, Sun Xinliang. He tends his sheep, and she is left alone, and lonely. She even turns a sheet of cellophane into a toy. She asks a friend, “Can I come to your house to play?” He responds, “Why?” The grandfather takes her to an autumn feast in a nearby village. Afterward there is a town meeting. The mayor tells the assembled villagers that the government is intent on collecting the health insurance fees they can’t afford to pay. The people also complain about the government’s “rural revival” program: “They’re building these fancy new houses, and meanwhile the villagers can hardly afford to eat.”

Some months later, the father returns again, this time to stay. He was unable to support his family in the city. The family is reunited, except for the mother. In her place, Sun brings a “babysitter” and her daughter Yanyan. The final words belong to Zhenzhen, the six year-old sister: “Kids who have a mommy are the happiest in the world.” Then the final shot: a long tracking shot, without words, follows the babysitter and her daughter as they walk through the snow-pocketed mountains. There is no title at the end to relate the subsequent fortunes of the family.

This is direct cinema, and so there are some gaps in the narrative. The “city” is unnamed, and the father’s struggles there unspecified. The story begins sometime in 2010 and ends sometime in the winter of 2011, but its precise duration is uncertain. The fields are green at the beginning. Is it spring, perhaps? Or summer? How long is Yingying left alone between the father’s two visits? What is the reason for her persistent coughing? What happened to her studies at the village elementary school we see her attend with great enthusiasm for at least one day in November 2010? Did her work in the fields take precedence?

A simple story, but as Straub demands, there is fire in every shot. In many shots, this is true in the most literal sense. All the huts have open fires at the centre for cooking, for heat, and for light. Wang keeps these fires at the bottom margin of the frame just as he places the open doorways that blast a white light into the shots of dark interiors and the unshaded light bulbs that emit an intense yellow light at the top edge or side of the frame. These literal and metaphorical fires must not dominate the frame; otherwise their intensity would be diminished.

But fire also burns in the face of Yingying, the dutiful, stoic eldest daughter who yearns to read and write and study, to discover something unattainable in this tiny, remote village. There is fire even in her dirty, white-hooded jacket with the words “Lovely Diary” on the back, a jacket she never takes off throughout the film. She never demands anything, and she barely speaks, yet she is one of the most compelling, most affecting figures in all of documentary cinema.

It burns in the division between land and sky, which is particularly stark here. The horizons are always placed high in the frame. The earth has been graded into simple terraces, turning it into an almost abstract landscape. Wang further emphasizes these horizontal divisions by making startling cuts between extremely dark interior shots and extremely bright landscape shots, or between day and night. Even the grey skies have a penumbra of blue and violet along the horizon, separating them from the fields below. A hard life, but a big sky.

Straub’s admonition was inspired not only by Cezanne, who famously said of Mt. Sainte-Victoire, “Look at this mountain, once it was fire,” but also by Giotto, the Giotto of the Scrovegni Chapel frescos, which Straub discovered by chance when he was 18. There it is the blue that burns, that penetrates. Wang’s colours are closer to Giotto than to Cezanne: the blues of the sky and the smoke, the golds and reds of the fires in the huts that are like the halos and the crimson robes in the frescos. Like Giotto, Wang finds a clear, almost transparent skin colour, and he sets off the faces of the sisters against the darkness that envelops their hut outside the vicinity of the central fire.

But they are not “Straubian” shots. Wang’s camera is always handheld. (It should be noted that there are two other names in the camera credits, Huang Wenhai and Lei Peifeng; I don’t know the division of labour among them, but I have assumed that Wang directed the camerawork.) The camera height must be low so that he doesn’t look down on the three young girls. When Wang follows them as they walk through the village and the surrounding fields, the camera must be behind them. Consequently we see the vistas before them, but I found myself more engaged by their work, whether it be herding sheep or collecting dung. Sometimes the camera wavers violently as the land becomes particularly uneven; apparently Wang made do without a Steadicam.

But like the Straubs, Wang searches for the “strategic point,” the single position from which all the action of the scene can be recorded. Caroline Champetier, who worked with the Straubs on Class Relations, has aptly expressed what is at stake in this search: “All the work comes in attempting to respect the existing space, as intelligently as possible, to render account of its lines of force; it is important not to falsify the lines.” The difficulty for Wang was discovering this point in the cramped rooms of a small hut. What are the lines of force? They are defined, first of all, by sources of light, the fires, and the doorways, the television set in the aunt’s house. Beyond these, the camera finds slight diagonals that emphasize the same few possessions, bowls, a stool, or a basket. Outside it is a matter of finding the right distance from the people and knowing when to stop to let them move off into the distance. For Wang, the camera must not be too close: the people are always shown full figure. Only when they stop will he sometimes move in for a closer shot, and these shots provide the strongest sense of exhilaration in the film.

I’ve tried to praise some aspects of Three Sisters, but for all that I’ve thought and written about it, I still can’t explain why I have the feeling that I could watch these people forever, although the more I watch the film, the more Yingying breaks my heart.

A Touch of Sin  Arun with a View    

 

Three Sisters Is an Affecting Look at Provincial Chinese Life | Village ...  Aaron Cutler from The Village Voice

 

Sound On Sight [Josh Slater-Williams]

 

Toronto International Film Festival 2012: Three Sisters | The House ...  Jordan Cronk from The House Next Door

 

Flickfeast [Kevin Matthews]

 

Three Sisters – An unrelenting documentary from great Chinese ...  Tony McKibbin from List Films

 

Three Sisters (2012) Movie Review from Eye for Film  Michael Pattison

 

Three Sisters | Film Review | The Skinny

 

How do you tiff that up? - The Academic Hack  Michael Sicinski

 

Drama of modern-day life - World Socialist Web Site  David Walsh

 

Three Sisters (San zi mei): Venice Review - Hollywood Reporter  Neil Young

 

Three Sisters | Variety  Jay Weissberg

 

'Three Sisters,' a Documentary by Wang Bing - The New York Times  Jeannette Catsoulis

 

ALONE (Gudu)

China  Hong Kong  France (89 mi)  2013

 

Wang Bing | Documentary in Japan  March 23, 2016, also seen here:  ALONE (Gudu/孤独), Wang Bing and immanent cinema | Documentary ...

Alone is the shorter version (89′) of Three Sister, a documentary about three little girls living alone in the mountains of the Yunnan province in China, a movie that was entered at the Venice Film Festival in 2013. Both of them are directed by Wang Bing, one of the most prominent filmmakers working today in non-fiction. Here’s the synopsis, taken from the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam where the movie premiered in 2013:

Ten years after Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, which documented China’s transition to a modern industrial society and the growing pains this involves, filmmaker Wang Bing finds three sisters aged four, six and ten living with no parents 10,000 feet above sea level, in a small village in Yunnan province. Their mother has disappeared, while their father works in a nearby city and comes home every now and again to bring them new clothes. Family members and other villagers help keep the three children alive – efforts which, along with the communal vegetable garden, evoke the old days of socialism. This oscillation between modernization on the one hand and older values on the other is reflected by switching from long, patient observation by the camera to sudden accelerations and questions from the filmmaker, who operates the camera himself while recording the silent desperation and deprivations of this fragmented family. The mist that surrounds the village almost daily gives the impression that it has withdrawn from the rest of the world – although this proves an illusion. The surrounding areas are modernizing, the mayor explains, so the cost of living will have to increase here, too. All this escapes the children completely. They are too busy collecting food and delousing one another to notice.

More than a review of the movie, I’m sure you can find them out there in the vastness of the internet, what I’d like to do today is to throw some thoughts on the technical and aesthetic aspects of Wang Bing’s filmmaking, elements that make his movies – specifically Alone and by extension Three Sisters – a cinema of immanence (the definition is of course taken from Deleuze, you can read something about Wang Bing and the French philosopher here, while this review in Italian gave me the idea for this post). 

I think it’s not far fetched to say that it is because we, as viewers, are compelled and fascinated by the visual quality of Wang Bing’s works, that we also feel so engaged and moved by the stories he depicts in his documentaries. Remarkable is for instance the use he does of light, natural when shooting in the big expanses of rural China, and artificial -diegetic – when the filming takes place indoor; it’s something really impressive, but that often goes unnoticed because the subjects filmed and the stories told, socially and politically relevant, capture and consume the viewer attention. Every scene shot inside the shack where the three sisters live feels in fact like a painting, and this happens for a series of technical reasons: use of light, camera position, framing, duration and time of filming. 

Something I’ve noticed when I was watching Night and Fog in Zona, the beautiful documentary on Wang Bing by Jung Sung-il, something very simple but at the same time a sort of revelation on his movie making style, is the way Wang Bing holds his camera (if I’m wrong I hope some readers will correct me). Rarely on his shoulder, and this is true especially when shooting indoor or outdoor while sitting, the camera often rests on his lap, or at least below his head, static and almost devoid of movements, it forges images that are less distant and thus more engaged with, and almost merged, with what he’s shooting. Wang Bing is crafting a cinema of immanence, an immanence made possible by the digital, and this is all the more true when he is filming people and their faces. It’s in these shots and scenes that the sound design gains its importance, the camera is gazing at the sisters from such an extreme proximity that we can literally hear their breathing, swallowing and sniffling, adding an element of almost tactile sonority to the movie. It is through this style and aesthetics that Wang Bing is able to convey the poverty and miserable destiny of the sisters, but at the same time their playfulness and innocence, everything here is depicted against the background of mountains, villages and shacks, deep inside the cold desolation of rural China, landscapes of absolute beauty and absolute indifference. 

Mydylarama  Coco Green

 

‘TIL MADNESS DO US PART (Feng Ai)            A-                    94

Hong Kong  France  Japan  (228 mi)  2013

 

I wasn’t sick until you locked me in here and made me sick.

 

Truly one of the saddest, most bleak experiences one could possibly imagine, as often documentary films may be evaluated based on the unfamiliarity with the territory, where here Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing takes us inside a locked Chinese mental institution in rural Zhaotong, located in China’s southwest Yunnan province, offering no commentary whatsoever, where in this film there’s little need for explanations.  Instead, he allows viewers from all over the world exclusive inside access to one of the world’s most troubling aspects, what to do with a country’s undesirables, where a nation may often be judged on how it treats its lowliest citizens.  Is there such a thing as auteurism in documentary film?  If there is, this kind of grim look at the raw edge of humanity is a rare human endeavor, as few would walk this same path.  What elevates this film is the uncompromising nature of the artist who made it, much like American documentarian Frederick Wiseman, as he continually holds himself to the highest standards, refusing to allow even a hint of artifice, creating a challenging and thoroughly demanding experience, which makes the film all the more relevant.  Admittedly the film is not for everyone, but it’s a beacon of light in the commercial wasteland of slight entertainment films that aren’t really worth a damn.  The degree of difficulty encountered is what sets this film apart, as it starts out with major obstacles to overcome.  Except for one brief sequence, the entire film takes place inside the cramped, claustrophobic confines of a locked institution, where few if any of the inmates would be considered certifiably crazy, but instead they remain locked up due to the difficulty they pose to their families or to the state, where it’s simply easier to remove them from conventional society and place them out of harm’s way.  It’s a frightening prospect, where few if any of these individuals feel they actually belong here, as all feel victimized by a terrible injustice to be involuntarily placed inside a locked facility that resembles a prison compound.  What crime did any of them commit to get there?  There are no lawyers or judges seen arguing their cases, or even therapists or counselors found anywhere on the premises.  For that matter, there are frightfully few doctors.  Instead the inmates are medicated daily by a medical team so that they are not a burden to the staff, where they are drugged to intentionally make them more compliant, spending much of their time sleeping, day and night, where there’s absolutely nothing to look forward to or feel good about, as these are the throwaways of Chinese society.

 

Some 200 men and women are housed in this enclosed facility that resembles a concrete prison block, men and women on separate floors, with open space in the middle, with inmates kept behind giant iron bars staring off into the distance, where the men house the top 3rd floor where there are sometimes 5 and 6 to a room, a chamber pot placed beneath each bed, where they are free to roam aimlessly through all hours of the day and night, circling the narrow grounds over and over again with no real place to go, as they are confined to one floor where they are largely ignored unless they’re found causing a disturbance, at which time they may be temporarily removed from the floor.  While other inmates suggest beatings take place off camera, one man is returned in handcuffs placed behind his back which clearly limits his ability to sleep it off or even go to the bathroom, contending his arms grow numb after awhile, but he is left to stew in his own discomfort well beyond the appeasement point despite his incessant pleas with authorities, signs of a sadistic, old-fashioned practice that remains thoroughly barbaric.  Indifference is the state of mind one constantly confronts, as inmates calling out for doctors are routinely ignored, while those sitting in a common TV room show a similar state of apathy and personal detachment, perhaps the most common affliction on the premises.  Another receives a potent shot that leaves him dazed and zombie-like afterwards, where at one point he remains fixed to the floor, barely able to move, despite constant ribbing from other inmates who tease him on his passivity, claiming he can’t handle the medicine.   What we see are men in soiled clothes, sleeping under heavy comforters in wool caps and heavy jackets, never once seen changing their clothes, where there’s no concept of personal hygiene, no one seen washing their hair or brushing their teeth, where we never once see any evidence of soap.  On the floor there is a common spigot of water for the entire floor to use, where at one point we see a naked man stroll past others to fill his chamber pot with water and splash it over himself, leaving a giant puddle on the floor, which is the closest thing we ever see to a shower. 

 

Mostly we see men huddled under heavy blankets, which is where they spend most of their time, where heads pop up from time to time to see what the commotion is all about, as the presence of a filmmaker on the floor does generate attention, where some in the TV room just stare straight at the camera, where there isn’t an ounce of emotion expressed on their faces, instead they are simply blank, expressionless faces.  The men hardly seem human much of the time, as the length of time spent with these inmates feels like an eternity, where the duration of their endless purgatory is an indicator of how their lives are spent, literally wasting away in this hellhole, where the facility is seen as a way station for ghosts passing in the night with no outlet or release.  The only director comment is the written identification of the name and length of time various inmates have spent in this facility, which are occasionally seen alongside certain individuals, where some have been there for as long as ten or twenty years.  Perhaps the ones that have it the hardest are the newest inmates, as they can’t believe how they ended up here, utterly stupefied by what lies in store for them, where one man stands alone looking out over the empty space whimpering in tears all night long.  One man is heard to confess that most men end up here due to fighting, where the police or a family member may have them permanently sent away.  One never sees any assessment of their sentences, instead they seem to be forgotten souls who are locked up and forgotten about, languishing alone for years or even decades.  One woman is seen regularly visiting her husband, but he’s so outraged that she would do this to him that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with her, remaining belligerent throughout each visit, though clearly he’s aware of his thought process.  The man simply can’t forgive her for what she’s done.  She’s immune to the plight of his dehumanization, claiming he’s better off here, bringing him fresh fruit, then making him share with other hangers on, even some that he obviously despises, but what can he do?  In this facility, each inmate uniformly has no possessions.  When a package arrives from home, others hover around these lucky few like vultures, just waiting for their opportunity to take what they can, where the men are forced to guard and consume nearly everything all at once for fear it will be taken away from them.  There is simply no concept of privacy, instead what’s yours is also mine.

 

What remains off camera are the sexual practices of the men, where one would expect a great deal of forced homosexual sex, especially taking advantage of the weakest and most vulnerable among them.  One can only imagine the extent of this practice, which is likely identical to a prison population, as adult men of all ages are seen on the grounds.  One inmate has a regular conversation with a female inmate on the floor below, where they discuss sex regularly, often initiated by the woman, where he is able to walk down a stairway to a locked entranceway where she is housed, and they can kiss and touch each other through the iron gates, presumably even have sex.  The tip-off that this is happening is he removes the light bulb in that corner, where they can fondle each other under cover of darkness.  Throughout this lengthy film, lights are seen turning on and off in distant corridors, seemingly at random times, where one wonders how much of this is related to similar behavior.  No one ever seems to sleep in the dark, as lights remain on even at night while everyone’s sleeping, though one might expect lights are a necessity for filming, revealing the filth and constant grime, where part of the brutality is the stark ugliness, including the graffiti written on the walls.  Occasionally men cohabitate under the covers, where it appears some are regular partners, which are among the only moments of tenderness or affection seen throughout the film, while at other times men wishing to climb under the covers are soundly rejected.  In a rare inexplicable moment, one man goes home for the New Years holiday, which feels so out of place as inmates are routinely seen talking about family visits, but this feels like wish fulfillment, as no one ever actually leaves.  It’s the only moment where the viewer is spared having to share confined space with the inmates, feeling like a breath of fresh air, but once home with his wife, living in what looks like an open aired, abandoned building, they have absolutely nothing to say to one another.  Instead he’s forced to take long walks, where it’s apparent the camera is expanding the existing space, opening up to a world outside, but one that has little to offer, as his wife nags him that it might be time for him to return to the asylum.  Instead he walks away, obviously with no place to go, but he walks anyway, seen walking down a desolate highway late at night, where even in freedom, his only destination is to lose himself in utter oblivion.  Returning back to the facility afterwards, we briefly follow what appears to be a couple, showing an awkward, unorthodox nature, but also a unique closeness, where even in this dumping grounds, friendships develop.  In scrolling intertitles at the end, we learn that some of the men confined were caught murdering friends or family, yet they co-exist with alcoholics, men brought in by the police, or those with physical or mental impairments, including one who is obviously a mute, yet they are all treated with the same indifference and disdain, as the state doesn’t recognize a difference in their criminal history other than they are all considered undesirables, unfit to mix with society. 

 

A Tale of Two Festivals - Film Comment  Olaf Möller, November/December 2013

Few noticed and commented on the nixing of the Orizzonti section’s documentary wings, or that the documentary competition had been done away with, relegating films like Frederick Wiseman’s At Berkeley, Wang Bing’s ’Til Madness Do Us Part, and Anna Eborn’s docufiction hybrid Pine Ridge to out-of-competition status.

Wang Bing’s ’Til Madness Do Us Part brings us into a world that consists entirely of restrictions: an asylum at an undisclosed location in the People’s Republic of China. Wang focuses on one wing whose inhabitants are forced literally to run in circles, with little else to do except watch TV and cuddle up in bed. Where are they from and why are they there? The end titles suggest that cops, doctors, or simply family members can send just about anyone who behaves unconventionally to this Ninth Circle.

Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Ben Sachs

Only at the end of 'TIL MADNESS DO US PART—Wang Bing's epic, challenging, and frequently astonishing documentary—do the filmmakers properly identify where the action takes place and how many of the subjects wound up there. Before then, they simply immerse the viewer in the sights and sounds of a Chinese mental institution that appears to be decades, if not several generations, behind Western standards. Indeed the institution seems designed to cause madness rather than cure it: violent and catatonic patients roam the corridors unsupervised, human waste is everywhere, and doctors employ brutal methods to force patients to follow orders. Even after several hours of viewing MADNESS, one never acclimates to the settings, despite the fact that repeated shots of iron bars and narrow corridors burn the settings into your memory. "The borders between hospital, asylum and prison are highly permeable in this multi-use warehouse for depositing the poor who are also socially, culturally and politically intolerable," writes Joseph Mai in the online film journal LOLA. He continues: "We have enough information about individual inmates to know that their incarceration is linked to outside forces: to family lives, economic conditions, even to political dynamics... There is no flight from politics, as Wang reminds us that the images are anchored in a world that includes ourselves, no matter where we are from. We know that such places exist; Wang brings us into one. This intimacy is perhaps the biggest emotional hurdle for viewers, for what we see is often disturbing... The camera is stuck in an insomniac state, recording people acting strangely at all times of day and night. This will repel viewers, including many who will ultimately be sympathetic to Wang's work, until they are ready to see as Wang sees them." And how does Wang see them? With an unflinching curiosity that never devolves into pity and a sharply honed sense of irony. MADNESS is rich in gallows humor, as the plight of the patients/inmates is so shocking that at times one can only respond with pained laughter. Wang's manipulation of duration is just as impressive as his control over tone; the "insomniac state" to which Mai refers yields a film that feels weirdly liberated from time. The director-editor moves freely between day and night, creating the sense that time no longer makes sense for his subjects. (The film doesn't feel long so much as endless—you experience it in a sort of temporal free-fall.) In this context, the outbursts of the patients can be rousing to behold; they feel like acts of protest against a world deprived of order.

Wang Bing's "'TIL MADNESS DO US PART" ("FENG AI") (?Year?), a ...

Shot with detailed precision and in unobtrusive HD, ’TIL MADNESS DO US PART documents daily life inside of an isolated mental hospital in the southwest of China.

Home to about a hundred men, the decrepit institute, with its intimidating fences, houses its patients in grime and seclusion. Aged between 20 and 50, these men are detained for various reasons and disorders. Some have killed. Some are simply outsiders, forsaken by the local government for having upturned the rules. Lonely, abandoned by relatives who seldom visit, they look for comfort and warmth; they look for physical affection. They kiss and touch each other’s bodies and often, at night, they look for someone to sleep with; someone to share incoherent dreams of affection on cold winter nights." - Sydney Film Festival 2014 PR

DIRECTOR’S NOTES

In the fall of 2003, I randomly discovered a mental hospital near Beijing. There was nobody outside. It seemed empty. I walked alone inside it.

I began to feel very strange. All the doors and the windows were closed and sealed. The walls were falling apart and all mottled. I was attracted by the strangeness there. Suddenly behind a locked door, I got myself facing a group of men. They were wearing blue and white gown. A nurse came and told me that they were the patients of the hospital. I talked with her. She said many of them have been living there for ten to twenty years. I felt something very strong towards them, which made me want to make a film. But the hospital refused to let me shoot.

In 2009, I went to the hospital again. Some of the patient I had seen had passed away. So I keep thinking that I should make a film about the life of the men inside Chinese Asylum.

n 2012 I went to a new mental hospital and this time they let me get inside with my camera. So I started ‘TIL MADNESS DO US PART.

There is no freedom in this hospital. But when men are locked inside a closed space, with iron wire fence and no freedom, they are capable of creating a new world and freedom between them, without morality or behavior restriction. Under the night-­-light, the bodies are like ghost, looking for their needs of love: physical or sentimental.

This film approaches them at a moment where they are abandoned by their families and society. The repetition of their daily life amplifies the existence of time. And when time stops, life appears."

Wang Bing


Wang Bing Films Souls: On Ta'ang and Other Recent ... - Cinema Scope  Shelly Kraicer, 2016

The violent convulsions in the Middle East and Africa and grotesque asymmetries of wealth and poverty between north and south have put fundamental pressures on wealthier, conservative, defensive societies of Europe and North America. Refugees are everyone’s problem; they represent the fulcrum around which debates on the shape of our evolving societies rage. So it’s for good reason that cinema currently has refugees on its mind. The 2016 Berlinale jury awarded the Golden Bear to Gianfranco Rosi’s refugee crisis documentary Fire at Sea, and the perennially political festival offered several approaches to the subject, including Philip Scheffner’s experimental Havarie and the prize-winning shorts Anchorage Prohibited and A Man Returned.

China, though, has plenty of its own issues—political repression, environmental degradation, distortions of a modern post-capitalist economy—and Chinese directors, like the great independent documentarian Wang Bing, have generally maintained a laser-like focus on internal affairs. But Wang’s cinema, from its spectacular beginning with the epic West of the Tracks (Tiexi Qu, 2003), has always been in some vital way about people needing refuge. Refuge from a terminally decayed post-socialist system crashing down around them in West of the Tracks; refuge from a series of terror-ridden campaigns of violent political repression for Fengming, a Chinese Memoir (He Fengming, 2007); refuge from brutal poverty and family disintegration in Three Sisters (San zimei, 2012); and refuge from both the external world and from madness in the internal exile of a sanatorium cum prison in ’Til Madness Do Us Part (Feng ai, 2013). A brief look at the last two titles can suggest how Wang’s latest film, Ta’ang, prolongs and refines his thematic concerns as well as his stylistic methods.

Three Sisters is about three young girls, living high in the mountains of Yunnan. They have been abandoned by their mother and virtually left to their own devices by their father, who is forced to earn a living away from home. These sisters have no place of “refuge” other than home, but home in this case is a desperately poor, bleakly un-nurturing place, where the girls are left largely to their own devices. Though a neighbouring aunt feeds them, they essentially take care of each other. They live, play, and sleep in dirt. Their home is a cave-like dwelling—dark, dirty, and littered with root vegetables, shared with their few scrawny domestic animals. Under Wang’s compassionate gaze, though, this is no study in cinematic miserablism: the girls (ten-year-old Yingying, six-year-old Zhenzhen, and little four-year-old Fenfen) have fully realized personalities and emotional lives. They play and work at the household tasks necessary for survival.

The most basic refuge, the family, is here broken, incomplete, barely sustaining. Yingying is mother, father, and sister to her two younger siblings. She carries this burden with efficiency and a kind of stoic determination and strength that the situation forces upon her, and that her indomitable character sustains. Their father does return from time to time, to bring some clothes and share a meal before he goes off to work again. Towards the end of the film, his new girlfriend and her child come to join the three sisters. Though an ad hoc newly constituted family group forms, Zhenzhen articulates for us its continuing inadequacy. With sustained observation and exquisite empathy, Wang locates something that is without shape or form, but that is even more real than the mere hardscrabble details of a wearing struggle for existence: he makes visible a kind of invincible energy, a life force that pushes our three heroines to survive.

The inmates of the Yunnan hospital cum prison of ’Til Madness Do Us Part can also be seen as living a kind of broken life in an inverted refuge. The space Wang portrays is a Chinese state mental hospital where the inmates-patients are mentally ill, socially deviant, criminally convicted, or sometimes merely ill-adapted to social life. The Chinese official medical-penal apparatus has isolated them from society by dumping them in this closed system of medical care, incarceration, and punishment. We see a full and complex range of patient behaviours, from compassion to brutality, gentleness to abuse, longing to violent estrangement, both in the relationships among the patients and between them and the hospital officials. Forced from the open, everyday world into a microcosm of surveillance, treatment, and punishment, these prisoners are the negative image of refugees, though their plight captures plenty of a refugee’s terror, subjection, displacement, and confinement.

As usual, Wang offers a visual critique that goes much deeper than a simple microcosm of a larger authoritarian society, and provides nuance and ambiguity as rich and as perplexing as the world itself. He is always interested in minutely detailed observational research into individual behaviours in a group context and discovers how people behave when external circumstances impose severe restrictions on their ability to survive in the ways they are accustomed, or how they can even sometimes thrive in ways that accord with their hopes or dreams. Rather than a depressingly bleak tale of suffering under incarceration and punishment, Wang’s powers of observation and synthesis reveal uncanny, minor epiphanies amidst the general squalor. He finds capacities for happiness and freedom that many of the patients create under their bleak conditions. Over the film’s almost four-hour running time, we learn how various kinds of companionship and association can thrive (and sometimes break down) when wounded souls are thrown together, left to their own devices. These refugee-prisoners, isolated from the outside world, forge relationships which can embrace companionship, partnership, longing, erotic tenderness, imaginative romance, and mutual support. The film’s Chinese title, after all, is Feng ai, Love-Madness.

With his new documentary Ta’ang, which just received its world premiere in the Berlinale Forum, Wang literalizes the subject of refugees and puts their plight at the centre of his film in the persons of Burmese Ta’ang ethnic minority refugees who have crossed to China’s Yunnan province to escape a violent insurgency raging near their homes in Myanmar. As the Burmese Army fight against armed ethnic minority forces, including the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, Ta’ang villagers are either forced from their homes (suspected of supporting the TNLA) or flee the violence by crossing the nearby, seemingly unguarded border with China. This subject is unprecedented for Wang: his previous films have all been located firmly within China, their subjects generally ethnic Han majority Chinese. Here Wang goes, if not international, then at least to the border, joining his fellow independent documentary filmmaker Zhao Liang’s By the Edge of the River (2006) and Crime and Punishment (2007) in filming along China’s margins with the rest of the world.

But Ta’ang is at the same time utterly of a piece with Wang’s previous work, not just because it puts at its centre disempowered people who are victimized by social circumstances beyond their control. More central to this film’s success, and what accounts for its quasi-incantatory power, is Wang’s shooting style. As usual, he stays near his subjects, in generally longish takes that doggedly but respectfully stick with the person under observation, at a medium distance that permits their situation to be framed within an environment rendered in great detail. His camera seems to melt away, as, paradoxically, his subjects become accustomed to his intimately distanced presence. They look at the camera, but they also act as if it’s not there, divulging with absolutely natural authority not only their physical presence but also something like their “souls.”

“Wang Bing films souls” could be a rough approximation of the impossible magic he regularly weaves in these uncannily “realist” documentaries. He accomplishes this thanks to a combination of extraordinary sensitivity to his subjects’ body language and an uncanny ability to choose just the right distance. Not too close, so as not to intrude on and disrupt the aura around their autonomous dignity and existence; not too far, so as to preserve an extraordinary intimacy that allows us to feel as if we’re seeing right through their skins, as if they were made transparent via their bodies and words, revealing the complex emotions, histories, and social relationships that make up the essence of one’s personality. (Maybe that’s the “soul.”) This is accomplished solely through observation, as Wang rarely interviews his subjects on camera: typically they reveal themselves through conversations with others, telephone calls with spouses or relatives on the other side of the Burmese border, or through long nighttime confessional conversations with fellow refugees, villagers, or family members, around dimly flickering fires in their temporary campsites. Even barriers of language (Wang doesn’t speak Burmese or any of the local border dialects) don’t seem to be an obstruction to Wang’s hyper-sensitive observational skills.

Ta’ang is structured as taking place over four days and three nights. The film’s first day takes place at a refugee encampment at Maidihe, Yunnan, about 500 metres from the border with Myanmar. Several Chinese flags in the background announce under whose nominal authority the refugees are situated. This sequence, following several Ta’ang minority refugees, boys, girls, women, and men setting up their rudimentary lean-tos, contains the only direct representation of authority in the film. Wang has chosen to open his film with a shot of what I take to be a camp guard (he’s wearing a military-style camouflage uniform, but is most likely not a PLA soldier) kicking a woman refugee who is sitting on the ground, rudely warning her (presumably for her own good) to move with her children to a safer area, since the wind has blown some tarps off the roof of their shabby tent. Violent confrontations with figures representing state authority are one basic constitutive element of “refugee cinema,” and in fact such images feature in the most memorable representations we’ve seen of Syrian refugees making their way through hostile borders in Europe. But Wang, after this opening shot, never shows us another.

Mainstream refugee documentaries usually give us a second kind of standard scene: friendly authorities who assist the refugees, typically UN or other NGO staff who alleviate their suffering and guide them to places of refuge. None of these appear in Ta’ang. Though there are occasional indirect signs that they might be there (a UNICEF backpack; flashlights and coats seemingly issued from the same source), Wang chooses never to show us officials or volunteers helping the Ta’ang, just as, with the exception of that opening shot, he never shows border guards or soldiers impeding their movements or threatening them. What Wang constructs with these choices is a set of images of self-sufficient communities, drawing on their own meager to non-existent resources to survive, relying on pre-existing relationships of family, clan, village, or sometimes just on basic human sympathy. Where the “standard” European-North American refugee documentary is obsessed with authority, Ta’ang is singularly focused on the refugees themselves. They form a complete system. All the resources they have are internal. There is no “rescue”: they either support each other and save themselves, or they don’t survive.

The first night takes place at this camp. The second day moves to a crowded temporary indoor refuge, in a tea factory in Dayingpan. These refugees are slightly more settled: they are able to work, stripping and bundling sugar cane. We find out later that the young woman worker’s pay is delayed, if it materializes at all. The second night introduces the film’s unforgettable visual motif. At first, small fires illuminate the refugees with a red glow that seems to invite the camera through their skin, into their thoughts and feelings. Then Wang reveals immense fires behind the refugee camps, probably burning sugar cane leaves. We see a young girl illuminated from a small red glowing fire in front, while simultaneously silhouetted by the enormous yellow fire-and-smoke conflagration behind. Light articulates this refugee’s being: impassable flame and destruction behind her, the soft glow of shelter and perhaps a glimmer of flickering hope in front of her.

The third day introduces a trek from camp to town, as an extended family rides a pickup truck that dumps them in a small Chinese town where they temporarily squat, helpless and passive, eyed by curious Chinese passersby, waiting for their next lift to their next destination. The following night is the film’s tour de force, a combination of several sequences, separated by fades to black, of refugees sitting and sleeping around fires, sometimes exhausted from their trek, sometimes sleepless with anxiety or uncertainty, as they unburden themselves of the fears of separation from their husbands and relive the terror of fleeing their homes at the approach of Burmese soldiers. (We usually listen to women talking, and watch their children at play, eating, and rest; Wang’s camera relatively rarely rests long on men in Ta’ang.) Once, in an eloquent close-up, a woman’s hand shelters a candle.

The film’s final section, the fourth day, is an extraordinary “on the road” set piece. This is another larger rhythm within the film, as it moves from opening stasis to tentative forward motion. A group of co-villagers are fleeing up Chinese mountain roads from artillery fire that we can hear on the Myanmar side of the Chinese border. Unlike the refugees in the previous sections, these people seem to have just arrived in China and have no idea where they are going. They are stalled on a steep roadside, their oxen secured by stakes driven into the ground, as they try to figure out where they can spend the night. Finally, a more enterprising group of about a dozen young women and children (and one tirelessly spry older “aunty” who outpaces them on their strenuous uphill climb) head out to a “shelter” they have heard about, which turns out to be a shabby roof supported by poles—better than sleeping in the open, apparently. They set out to sweep the underlying dirt and prepare for the evening, as Wang’s camera moves unusually far back, glimpsing the refugees as small moving specks against a landscape of unwelcoming hills, the echoing sounds of Myanmar army artillery never far away.

Though Wang’s key films all, to some extent, depict variations of people seeking refuge, it’s important to avoid an overly systematized or schematic view of his documentary practice. In a way he’s engaged in something like scientific research, sensitively gathering data that most others would miss, and then applying his acute sense of discrimination and proportion to assemble the data into a meaningfully shaped and organized report on an aspect of “reality.” Of course, the reality effect that documentary art strives to achieve is always, consciously or unconsciously, an ideological construct, a production of certain specific techniques of cinematic manipulation and creation (or re-creation) that take raw observational material and shape it through editing into something that convinces viewers that what they are seeing on screen represents something like direct, unmediated access to the “real.” Wang’s genius lies in his ability to get extremely close to this ideal and to generate a reality effect that seems to elide the boundaries between what is depicted on screen and what exists in the world. He convinces us of this with his acutely judged sense of the proper and revealing distance between camera and subject; his finely calibrated moral sense of when to shoot and when not to; and especially his unparalleled ability to situate subjects visually and aurally in a spatial-temporal field. The meaning that accrues to Wang’s subjects originates precisely in this relationship between person and environment through time. They are who they are, and we see who they are, through the changing matrix of history and geography that Wang evokes with his shots.

But more than that, Wang is a visual and aural poet. Ta’ang is unforgettable for the sounds and images it leaves burned into our memories. The film’s large-scale rhythm is built around dusk and nighttime. Three nights impose themselves on the refugees’ days. Three times the skies darken, and Wang finds the natural light of fires at dusk and then fires in the blackest night. This natural, flickering, red-orange glow shines on the refugees’ faces, revealing and crafting its own unique, magical, and sublime juxtapositions while evoking Georges de la Tour’s single-candle illuminations or performing Caravaggesque astonishments of lightning-like illumination amidst dramatic darkness. A young girl against raging background fires seems fixed in a terrifying space between safety and horror; a circle of mutually supporting villagers trade intimacies bathed in the soft, safe, warm glow of a single fire. It’s hard to avoid seeing self-conscious symbolism in that close-up of a woman’s hand repeatedly shielding a flickering candle from gusts of wind that threaten to blow it out. Wang works with sound, too, in ways that both situate and reassure, fixing the refugees in the unsettling natural world and allowing us to feel intrusions from man-made perils from outside: crickets, dogs, the rustling of wind on one hand, rumbling motorcycles and trucks and artillery bombardment on the other.

In Cinema Scope 54, Thom Andersen wrote that in Three Sisters Wang Bing locates a Straubian “fire in every shot,” a phrase that equally applies to Ta’ang. There is light for these Ta’ang refugees, abandoned by social support systems—families, homes, villages, social groups, tribal allegiances—and thrown to their own devices. The light also comes from within, from the strength that Wang regularly uncovers, buried deep within their humanity, to find life and hope, to move forward, and to insist on survival in the face of the worst objective conditions. This luminous strength also emerges from the connections between them, provisionally forged bonds of social solidarity, from the associations of mutual sympathy and aid, from the physical and emotional sustenance that the three sisters, the inmates of the mental hospital, and the Ta’ang people develop when thrown together in seemingly unendurable conditions that have to be endured. Wang’s cinema unearths the Prometheus in all of us: we give ourselves fire, we give each other fire, and life becomes liveable.

MUBI [Daniel Kasman]  interview with the director, September 23, 2013

Wang Bing's camera nearly becomes a prisoner alongside other Chinese in 'Til Madness Do Us Apart, a documentary with rare access to a mental hospital cum prison dedicated to an incredible spectrum of patients cum prisoners, ranging from those in genuine need of care to those picked up for brawling, committed by family members, or simply unknown miscreants found and locked away. With only two exceptions the nearly four hour film remains trapped along with the male prisoners in the top floor of the building, which has a square patio in its center and as such the single hallway, open to that center but barred, traces a shape around it which the patients—and the camera—wander, as there is nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. This lone, looped hallway opens only to spare, cramped bedrooms, one bathroom, and a single TV room; except for the TV to watch, all the activity the patients have available to them is to shuffle around, talk to one another, or, like Wang's camera, simply watch and follow their fellow man.

In this spare edifice with the color and texture of worn sandpaper the living conditions have a terrifying equalizing effect: nearly all patients/inmates look and act the same, and only truly erratic behavior suggests some might be mentally ill and others not, some very sad and others not, some very upset and others not. Treatment is limited and evaluation is not apparent, the doctors only occasionally hovering around the frame's edge. As such, the film is given to the sustained sense of resignation that permeates the punishing, monotonous limitations of the space (other floors can be seen, including one for women, as well as surrounding buildings outside the windows of the complex) and the passive demeanor of the inhabitants, who only rarely act out and seem to spend most of their time, day and night, trying to sleep. A lone revelation of the lower level feeding floor seems like a godsend, especially as the men are so constantly trying to obtain more and different food from their visitors, whose rare appearances and surprisingly lengthy stays likewise seem like mana from the heavens even to those who just get to spectate awkward or moving reunions. The sole chance for the camera to leave the complex—following a prisoner granted leave to go home to his parents' hovel—shows us an exterior world of options for these men as desolate and bleak in its openness as the hospital-prison is in its claustrophobic, false shelter.

***

I had the chance to sit down with the director at the Toronto International Film Festival and talk to him about his new documentary. Special thanks to Alexandria Fung for her excellent translation.

NOTEBOOK: I was wondering if you could talk about how you found this hospital.

WANG BING: It has been quite a few years in waiting. We've always tried to look for one. Almost no hospitals or institutions would want you to come in and film them, so it has been a long time. It was just a very accidental opportunity that I bumped into the subject matter. I was editing my film Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks that's about a section of Shenyang. I was almost finishing the editing Beijing. I was in a remote area...it was almost like an empty field with three buildings, so I went to check out what they were, and it turned out each building was full of people, and each floor, full of people. It turned out they were institutions. I wrote a script for a fictional feature after being in that institution, because I was allowed to go into it but not allowed to film, which is why I wanted to do a fictional feature. Actually I went to Cannes and was actually saying this was going to be my project. But for various reasons that didn't happen. I went back to that institution in 2009 and a lot of people I had met earlier had passed away; a lot of the people had been institutionalized for 20, 30 years. The actual, physical organization of that institution and the one I ended up filming was different, but the way they lived in each was actually very similar. Then, last year this opportunity came because a friend had talked to someone there and they said they were willing to support our idea, so this hospital is very willing to let us in and do what we want to do.

NOTEBOOK: What was it about the project that appealed to this particular institution?

WANG: The staff there, the doctors there, have a very—in a word—hopelessness, a helplessness in their attitude. It is their job to manage and facilitate the treatment of the patients and they have lots of difficulties doing that. At the same time, they also feel that the patients there, the people who are institutionalized there, have such a difficult life, so the doctors have such feelings both towards their work and the people. By being there, by doing the filming there, by spending time with the doctors and the staff members there, you realize that they are not treating the people badly, they are not bad to these people. But them as individuals, each doctor, each staff member, doesn't have any way to change how that these people are living there.

NOTEBOOK: My impression was—and I don't know if this was due to strictures laid out by the staff, or realities of the space, or your choices—that the doctors have a very minimal presence at the institution, they don't seem to do much.

WANG: I wasn't deliberating avoiding their presence. The doctors are present mostly at meal times—they have three meals a day—and they also have two medication times, and sometimes they'll have visits. But those are the times the doctors actually have a presence.

NOTEBOOK: It seems more like a prison in the sense of the doctors monitoring things than a hospital where they are treating people. There is very little “treatment” and no evaluations shown.

WANG: There's a little bit of that impression, there, but they are treating them. They are trying to treat them by medication. But as we all know, mental illness is very complex and the way treatments are nowadays are still very limited. The complexity of the illness and the rather limited ways to treat it do not make it likely to cure them. So, yes, the institution has a feeling that is sort of a “shelter” of some kind.

NOTEBOOK: I would imagine, since the range in types of patients is rather high and not everyone there has a mental illness, some are just troubled, that instead of treating them radically different as individuals with individual problems, it's easier to treat them all the same.

WANG: Yeah, they do not separate their patients. They do not manage and treat them differently. But I think it's because this particular institution doesn't have the ability to do it.

NOTEBOOK: Nor any available space...

WANG: Space, funding, various things. They have very limited everything.

NOTEBOOK: So are the administration of the hospital hoping the film will serve an activist purpose and draw attention to their own problems?

WANG: Of course there's that.

NOTEBOOK: Was the structure of the film, following around individual characters, an idea you started with, or developed from editing the footage?

WANG: That was a choice made early on during filming.

NOTEBOOK: I got the sense there was no private space in the hospital. Everyone's on view and has access to everyone. Eating, sleeping, going to the bathroom: nothing is private there.

WANG: That's right.

NOTEBOOK: Why was the film limited to the one floor, the top floor, the men's floor, I guess (the others being a women's floor and one other one I couldn't identify).

WANG: Because it's not easy to go to the second floor, the female section, as a male person, the access was difficult.

NOTEBOOK: The limitation was interesting because you could only stay on that top floor, the film never leaves that space, the camera almost feels like a member of the community. A combination of the length of the film, the camera's attitude, and the limitations of the space meant that it doesn't feel like the camera is following people around, but rather is, like everyone else, just watching people.

WANG: Yes, so you feel like you are one of them. You are in there.

NOTEBOOK: Was the camera and crew an invasive presence for the patients?

WANG: There was just two people, me and the photographer. Just the two of us, and sometimes just the one of us filming, so I might be in a different room and he would be filming, and I would tell him what to film. Sometimes it would be me filming and he would be resting somewhere. So that doesn't actually create a lot of presence, because it was so few people.

NOTEBOOK: Did you ever get the sense the patients were performing for the camera, showing off or acting up?

WANG: The first three days, yes. But then afterward there was none of it.

NOTEBOOK: What was your working process like, determining what to shoot? Would you sit in a room for a while waiting for something to happen, or would you wander around looking for things?

WANG: We were basically filming continuously, because of the time. We were on location for 72 days, and of those days we filmed during 60 of them. We had very limited access so once I was there I was filming continuously. Actually, of the 60 days, there were 15 days filmed outside. So actually inside the institution was about 45 days. So during that 45 days we did 250 hours of shooting, so we have that much footage. You can then calculate we filmed about 5 hours each day. We actually spent about 7 or 8 hours each day inside the institution. During that time most of our time was spent filming. In order to get 5+ hours of filming you basically have to be continuously filming during those 7 or 8 hours there. To me, each hour that I'm there is very precious. How I felt was that, okay we might have a very smooth process today, we got everything done, but we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, whether we're going to be allowed to do, so I was really trying to do as much as I could each day.

NOTEBOOK: I feel like the access is so rare, you would want to shoot everything, consume everything—maybe even without planning—and then find a shape for it later.

WANG: If you do that then you really would ruin the film! Because that would be a news report. To do a film you are supposed to portray a character, so you really have to get into the character. So even though the time of it was very limited, it just meant you have to get into the character that much more quickly.

NOTEBOOK: Do you mean the “character” of the film, or the characters, the people, in the film?

WANG: The characters of the people.

NOTEBOOK: I would assume you'd have to be thinking very fast, with such limited access. Did you do preparation work before shooting to get to know the people or did you have to discover their stories as you shot them?

WANG: We actually had to decide and learn for about a week at the beginning. After a week we've pretty much decided which characters we wanted to follow.

NOTEBOOK: Did you always want to include a section that left the hospital?

WANG: Yes. We followed four characters leaving the institution and chose to leave that one in.

NOTEBOOK: The hospital seems a genuine community, people are accepting and supportive of each other. There's not much patient fighting or self-imposed isolation.

WANG: There are some people, because of their mental state, or mental illness, that would not want to socialize, so at the beginning there were people standing alone in the corridor. So there are people like that. But most of them are not like that, most are acting like normal people in a normal Chinese culture, which is very much that they feel like they are in a group and have that group behavior and spirit.

NOTEBOOK: I was shocked at the end by the title card revealing the spectrum of inmates at the hospital, since I had assumed all that we were seeing were mentally unstable people. But that card reveals some are genuinely sick and some are genuinely healthy. In the film itself it's very hard to distinguish between those two kinds of patients.

WANG: Some people there are quite normal.

NOTEBOOK: I was also shocked, throughout, that some families apparently had to financially support this incarceration of family members. That they had to pay something like room and board, or hospital fees. That it wasn't a State supported.

WANG: That depends. If it was the family member who had tried to commit a person, then the family has to pay. But if it's some government institution or some government branch that put this person in there, then the Civil Administrative Bureau of the government would pay for it.

NOTEBOOK: In a line of dialogue from the family of the guy who was released they say something about him coming back after his allotted leave, that the family was having the hospital hold his spot for him, that despite how this hospital looks, access to it might be a luxury for some families.

WANG: There are other mental institutions in the area, and their conditions are similar. In any event, this particular person was not able to go back anyway.

NOTEBOOK: So the conditions we see here aren't unusual or specific to this particular hospital?

WANG: This is a pretty average condition. In China there are two types of hospitals: one is strictly a hospital, so there the focus is on treatment. That is a hospital-hospital. Then there is the other one, which is administrated by the Civil Administrative Bureau. That is also a treatment center, but is also has the ingredients of a shelter.

NOTEBOOK: Is the hospital-hospital also for mental health? Not an asylum but a regular hospital for treatment of mental illness.

WANG: The hospital-hospital, that is administrated by the Administrator of Public Health, are different. There are ones that are strictly mental health hospitals, and there are ones that are general hospitals with a mental health department.

NOTEBOOK: So why are these people in the one administered by the Civil department and not the Public Health department?

WANG: There is an “old system, new system” ingredient in it. The ones run by the Administrative Bureau, those are the older version. Then, later on, when there was more focus on mental illness, then hospitals had more mental illness departments and they would have wards for mental illness patients. So this one is more an older-earlier establishment.

NOTEBOOK: I was curious about the sexual activity portrayed in the film. Because of the lack of privacy there seems to be a level of tenderness and human contact, both heterosexual and homosexual, that verges on sex. I was wondering if that was very present around you.

WANG: Yes, because I'm not trying to avoid that. If it's there, I will shoot it.

NOTEBOOK: Were people were actually able to engage in sexual activity, or if they had to maintain a certain distance due to community scrutiny?

WANG: It's a very different environment there, so what is restricting us now, and what are behavioral norms, no longer apply. The boundaries are not there any more. So in terms of sexuality, that's actually quite normal. People no longer think of it as something to moralize. So they are really more thinking about need. Some people there, there will be two people who will sleep together and they will sleep together each and every night for many years.

NOTEBOOK: Do you see this place more as a prison or as a hospital?

WANG: That I can't say. I do think of it as a hospital. It's not a regular prison, but it is a place that is very restricted. Society still doesn't have a way to appropriately deal with these people.

Wang Bing's 'Til Madness Do Us Part: An Apprenticeship in Seeing  Joseph Mai from Lola Journal, December 2015

 

Nick Pinkerton on Wang Bing’s ’Til Madness Do Us Part  Nick Pinkerton from Artforum

 

'Til Madness Do Us Part | 4:3  Jeremy Elphick

 

TIL MADNESS DO US PART  Steve Erickson from Chronicle of a Passion

 

“TIL MADNESS DO US PART”— Inside an Asylum | Reviews by Amos ...  Amos Lassen

 

Aaron Cutler on the 2013 Indie Festival in Brazil - artforum.com ...  Aaron Cutler from Artforum

 

Slant Magazine [James Lattimer]

 

REVIEW: 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Wang Bing - 2013) [Brisbane ...  Lawrence Barder from Graffitti with Punctuation

 

"The Horror and the Humanity: Wang Bing's 'Til Madness Do Us Part ...  Sarah Ward from Metro magazine

 

J.B. Spins [Joe Bendel]

 

Explore China of the Past and Present In Trailers for Films from King ...  Nick Newman from The Film Stage

 

Wang Bing's ''Til Madness Do Us Part' - Brooklyn Magazine  Benjamin Mercer

 

MIFF 2014: 'Til Madness Do Us Part / Film Reviews / The Essential  Ash Beks

 

Film Review: 'Til Madness Do Us Part | Film Journal International  Eric Monder

 

Wang Bing's 'Til Madness Do Us Part Immerses ... - Village Voice  Michael Atkinson

 

Movie Mezzanine [Jake Cole]

 

Facets : Cinematheque Schedule: 'Til Madness Do Us Part

 

International Film Festival Rotterdam review 2014 - Senses of Cinema  Daniel Fairfax, March 2014

 

CAPTURING UPHEAVAL MoMA's Documentary Fortnight 2014 | The ...  Ela Bittencourt from The Brooklyn Rail

 

''Til Madness Do Us Part' Review: Wang Bing Explores Life in ... - Variety  Justin Chang

 

MIFF 2014 review: 'Til Madness Do Us Part - Sydney Morning Herald  Jake Wilson

 

Review: ''Til Madness Do Us Part' Finds Hell and Humanity - The New ...  Ben Kenigsberg from The New York Times

 

Wang Bing (director) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

FATHERS AND SONS (Fu Yu Zi)

China  France  (97 mi)  2014                             Mubi official site

 

Nonfics [Daniel Walber]

Father and Sons opens with a single, remarkably complex image. It’s evening in a small apartment in Fumin, China. Two boys sit back in bed, the flickering light of an unseen television barely visible on the left side of the frame. The shadow of a man, their father, rises up and dominates the screen. The light is warm, the walls bare. Things remain still a long while, until the parent decides that it’s time to turn off the TV and go to sleep. Like an overture, this first shot contains the kernel of what will grow into a taxing meditation on adolescence in the 21st century.

At least that’s what it seems to be about. Director Wang Bing, famous for his three-part industrial epic West of the Tracks, doesn’t offer much in the way of interpretive help in his newest film. After the evening prelude, Father and Sons consists almost entirely of stationary shots inside this small apartment. Stonemason Cai Shinhua lives there with his two sons, Yongjin and Yonggao, each of whom spends most of his time either passively watching television or actively staring into his smart phone. With the exception of a few brief glimpses out toward the urban landscape of Fumin, Wang points his camera at that same, unchanging bare wall. The room is cramped, with a large dent in the floor and no visible windows. The floor and the shelves are cluttered with various boxes and bags, three well-behaved dogs and the ever-present but always-unseen television.

Wang began shooting on February 2nd, 2014 and was forced to stop on February 6th, when he was threatened by Cai’s boss. It is unclear whether Father and Sons is footage from one day or all of them, but the final cut of the film is edited to resemble a single afternoon and evening. Usually only one of the boys is in the room, silently texting away or playing games, listening to but infrequently watching the TV. Individual shots last for minutes on end, the stationary camera capturing the remarkable stamina of Yongjin and Yonggao to do nothing at all with their time. It is at once intriguing and mundane, taking the common sense fact that teenagers do nothing but look at their phones and forcing an audience to address this issue directly, without even the slightest distraction. The ultimate interactivity of the smart phone has been upended and morphed into an almost completely static experience.

All the while it is somewhat unclear how Wang feels about this himself. As night falls, it begins to resemble satire. Each successive time one of the boys charges his phone becomes a visual joke, commenting on how their only physical movement consists of standing up and walking over to a power outlet. It’s like a remake of Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, except instead of viciously poking fun at the Mexican bourgeoisie, Wang is applying a much duller knife to China’s tech-savvy millennial generation. The observational approach, because of the rigor of this editing, loses the calm feeling we usually associate with that style of filmmaking and becomes more of a formal experiment. If its moments of comedy are taken as such, it’s easy to read as an unfair critique of China’s youngsters, and by extension youth worldwide. Yet that’s never made particularly clear, which is what makes Father and Sons a slightly more interesting project. There is much room for interpretation and contemplation. And, given the structure of the film, plenty of time to think it over.

Shadows of the Opus Magnum: Wang Bing's "Father and Sons" on ...  Michael Guarneri from Mubi Notebook, January 22, 2015

Over the past decade Wang Bing has established himself as one of the most prominent figures in documentary cinema, recording the real lives of ordinary people being the safest, most economical way for an independent filmmaker like him to realize personal film projects in China without the State's approval and financial support. These somewhat difficult conditions of production must always be kept in mind when discussing his output, which also includes two fictional reenactments of actual events—the short film Brutality Factory (2007) and the several-year-in-the-making feature film The Ditch (2010).

Another crucial thing to Wang's work is that his primary interest lies in human emotions, not in political opposition. As he told me in April 2014, he does not consider himself a “political filmmaker” or a “dissident”, because he has no political claims, no political program, no political agenda to put forward. Rejecting two possibly hackneyed labels and keeping a low profile, he strives to show concrete, real-life situations, rather than preaching:

"I am interested in the personal, inner life of the individuals who live in Chinese society. What I try to do is just to look at life and put my personal experience and my past in relation with other people's personal experiences. I look at human everyday life and of course, by doing so, I bring to the screen everyday life issues, some of which are the so called "problems of society". I repeat: personally, I have no political purposes and ambitions. It is true that in my films there are moments in which political affairs are discussed, but this is normal, because in China a lot of things are directly influenced by the Communist Party and politics is everywhere. If I decided to omit the relation between political context and everyday life in my films, then I'd be a "political filmmaker": in fact, in the China of today, the real "political films" are those that carefully avoid mentioning anything political."1

With its 87 minute runtime, Wang's latest documentary Father and Sons (City of Lisbon Award for Best Feature-Length Film at Doclisboa 2014) offers a concise example of the modus operandi sketched above.

At the genesis of Father and Sons there's a meeting between Wang and three fellow-countrymen—stonemason Cai Shunhua and his teenage sons Yongjin and Yonggao—during one of the filmmaker's trips to Yunnan Province, where both Three Sisters (2012) and 'Til Madness Do Us Part (2013) were shot. This is not at all unusual for Wang, since Crude Oil (2008), Man With No Name (2009) and Three Sisters were all born out of fortuitous encounters with workers and peasants that took place while the Beijing-based filmmaker was traveling around the country, working on other film projects.

Lacking a detailed statement from Wang himself, one can only guess what got him interested in the lives of Cai and sons. However, Wang's lonely and troubled childhood as recounted in New Left Review n. 82 (for economic reasons, he spent several years in the countryside with his paternal grandfather, away from his parents and siblings; his father died in the workplace when Wang was 14) allows us to hypothesize that the filmmaker might have felt an emotional connection both to the teenage boys missing a parental figure and to their father doing his best to keep what's left of the family united.

As a matter of fact, broken homes are often to be found in Wang's oeuvre: the third part of his 560-minute debut film Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2003) chronicles the relationship between factotum "Old Du" and his affectionate son, missing a runaway wife and a mother respectively; Three Sisters follows three little girls living alone in a mountain village because their father works far away "in the big city" and their mother abandoned them; 'Til Madness Do Us Part dedicates a great deal of screen time to problematic young men put into a mental hospital by their families.

So, as the daily struggle of the Cai family perhaps resonated with his personal history and emotional issues, Wang set out to employ his usual tactic of spending time with his new acquaintances and filming their lives without interfering, with the aim of collecting hours and hours of footage to be condensed and shaped during the editing phase.

However, as Cai's employer-landlord didn't take kindly to having a camera snooping around his property, the shooting of the film lasted only a few days: “We began filming their life on February 2nd 2014. On the morning of the 6th, we received threats from the boss and had to stop filming.”

What's left, as the above statement by Wang quoted in Doclisboa's program notes suggests, is an aborted film. There simply wasn't enough time for Father and Sons to grow and come into being: possibly not enough time for the three protagonists to overcome the initial awkwardness and shyness one instinctively feels in front of a camera, and most certainly not enough time for Wang to closely observe their everyday routine and record it in minute detail. Hence, there wasn't enough filmed material to work on in the editing phase in order to provide the spectators with a comprehensive cinematic reconstruction of the real life of all three family members.

The result is that, contrary to the "usual" Wang documentary film, we are locked out of the inner world of the protagonists and we are simply left to contemplate a taciturn kid hanging around in his hut, mostly in bed: he watches TV, drinks tea, texts someone with his cellphone, chats with his brother, plays with puppy dogs. In spite of the sense of closure achieved through a well-executed "24 hours in the life of..." montage, the feeling is that we are watching some rushes for a film-to-be.

Nevertheless, there are several glimpses of how far richer and more profound Father and Sons could have been, had Wang and his collaborators been given the chance to keep on filming. For example, the movie opens with an amazing shot of Yongjin and Yonggao lying in one single bed, their father's shadow falling on them from off-camera space—a very simple but tremendously effective introduction to the movie's two main themes: the "ghost father" and the absence of personal space in the hut. Coherently, almost every shot in the movie frames said bed, because, in dramaturgic terms, this piece of furniture is the "center of tension" of the family's life: "[Cai Shunhua] sleeps during the day, when his sons are out. The three of them live in a four-square-meter room. Within this tiny space there are an oven and a bed that is actually smaller than a couch. They all sleep there, there's no personal space nor privacy. During the night, the father leaves the bed to his sons and goes to work."2

At a closer look, everyday objects and domestic appliances also play a paramount role in this Chinese working-class, claustrophobic chamber drama about people avoiding and at the same time missing each other. For instance, the constant buzz of TV and cellphones highlights both the paradoxical lack of communication between human beings living so closely together in a cramped room, and their desire to somehow break such silence and isolation. Another interesting yet unfortunately underdeveloped aspect is the parallelism between the Cai family and three dogs (two puppies and, presumably, their mother) that seek shelter in the already-crowded hut: could it be that the dogs are having a better family life than the human beings?

For reasons mentioned before, Father and Sons is far from matching the dissection of human emotions Wang achieved in his previous  features, and, in the end, the Cai family and its dynamics remain as impenetrable as the silence of the man with no name from Wang’s homonymous 2009 video installation. One proof is that most of the fundamental biographic and contextual information that the Chinese filmmaker usually manages to "deliver" through real-life dialogues and situations had to be squeezed into a title card before the final credits: Cai's being a migrant worker, his reunion with Yongjin and Yonggao in 2010 after years of absence, and so on...

As this time the material conditions of production curbed the creator's ambitions, the hope is that some day Wang will have the chance and the financial resources to come back to this project, resume the shooting and turn actuality footage collected at his own risk into the full story of a hardworking father and his two teenage sons. For now, Father and Sons functions only (but it is certainly no small accomplishment) as a raw filmic document of the miserable living conditions the title-characters have to face, scraping out an existence in the outskirts of Fuming.

Simple Stories: An Interview with Wang Bing — Cineaste Magazine  Aaron Cutler interview, Fall 2015

Two adolescent boys sit on a small bed watching television; they look down from time to time to play on mobile phones while the machine’s white noise continues. Their father’s shadow appears on the wall as he bids them goodbye before leaving for work and tells them goodnight after the day concludes. The boys stay reclining inside the cluttered hut during the hours that pass in between.

The Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing’s most recent feature-length film, Father and Sons (2014), takes place almost entirely inside the cramped, factory-owned living space that has been given to the worker Cai Shunhua for him and his sons Yongjin and Yonggao to inhabit. Wang’s level gaze stays in the room with the boys over the course of a few days, during which very little seems to happen. It watches them as, in the absence of things to do in the industrial area outside their home, they find ways to pass the time indoors.

Father and Sons grew out of Wang’s earlier feature, Three Sisters (2012), in which the two boys appeared in their native Yunnan Province village in southwestern China (shared by the title characters) several months before their father took them to live with him. The film’s patient, attentive manner of presenting people has belonged to Wang’s filmmaking ever since his debut film, the three-part documentary Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2002), a depiction of a dying factory district’s residents’ efforts to keep functioning while their homes and jobs vanish. Throughout his films, Wang has worked in close proximity to the people he records, most of whom come from Chinese society’s lower levels. Wang builds his films by studying how they interact with their surroundings over time.

These observational films employ long, steady shots that encourage viewers to adapt to the rhythms of a person’s daily life. A theme that emerges throughout them is the ongoing effort people make to find freedom within material confines. The rural girls in Three Sisters, for instance, have been essentially abandoned by their parents at story’s outset, forcing the ten-year-old Yingying into the position of having to raise her two younger siblings. The camera unobtrusively follows the girls while Yingying leads them in performing chores such as feeding and tending to farm animals and making fire with which to cook potatoes. As time passes and the seasons change, they also roam across wide fields and ease their loneliness by finding moments to play.

’Til Madness Do Us Part (2013)—which Wang shot in Yunnan Province in between the makings of Three Sisters and Father and Sons—takes place primarily on one floor of an unnamed mental hospital. The film’s viewpoint shifts among several inmates, some of who have been locked up for more than a decade for reasons that remain unclear. Over and over, isolated men appear sprinting around the floor’s narrow corridors until returning to shared quarters. In many cases, the person’s family has abandoned him, and he lacks and longs for tenderness. Mundane activities such as dressing and undressing oneself, lighting a cigarette, and lying beneath a blanket with another inmate come to seem like peoples’ declarations of their own humanity.

Wang was born in 1967 (shortly after the start of the Cultural Revolution) and raised in a rural part of Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. As a teenager, he took over his deceased father’s job in a construction design firm, where he performed various duties while unsuccessfully aspiring to become an architect. He eventually studied photography at the Lu Xun Arts Academy in Shenyang—a large city close to the Tie Xi district that he would eventually film—then cinema at the Beijing Film Academy. He graduated at a time when inexpensive digital filmmaking tools were becoming readily available, and after trying and failing to gain steady work within the Chinese film and television industry, set out on his own as a documentarian. He has since worked prolifically and won a number of international festival prizes; he has also (like many Chinese independent filmmakers) failed to have his films shown commercially in his homeland, and often struggled to finance his projects.  

In chronicling individual, present-day lives, Wang gives a sense of his country’s recent history. The films rarely delve directly into discussions of government policies, with works such as 2007’s Fengming: A Chinese Memoir and 2010’s The Ditch (which recall the fates of victims of the Cultural Revolution through documentary interviewing and fictionalized re-enactments, respectively) proving more exceptions than rules in this regard. Political critiques are instead largely left implicit, and made through Wang’s act of allying himself with people that have been pushed onto his culture’s fringes. The films suggest that China’s transition from Maoism to an assimilation of capitalism has not only failed to improve, but actually worsened the lives of many of its citizens, who survive in spite of it.

The people that Wang records are ones who move him, as evidenced by his willingness to let them guide the films. I interviewed the director at this year’s edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival, where he had come to present Father and Sons. Annelous Stiggelbout translated his answers from Mandarin Chinese into English.—Aaron Cutler

Cineaste: How did you become a filmmaker?

Wang Bing: I have made Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks and many other films, but I have never really thought of myself as a filmmaker. Often in life you don’t know what you should be doing. For me, making films is a way to avoid wasting my time. Nobody needs me to do anything, so I need to do something for myself. My first film premiered thirteen years ago, when I was thirty-five years old and still had many ideals. But actually, there are many things in life that we want to do and that we never get around to doing.

I don’t think that my films have much to do with my background. I had never planned to do this. For about a decade I worked in a construction design studio and was very interested in architecture, but I was never able to acquire the education necessary to be allowed to design the buildings. I applied for several architecture university programs and was never accepted, so I had to do other tasks. In the end, I decided that it would be easier to get into a good school for cinema than one for architecture. I succeeded in entering university and studied first photography, then cinema.

After I graduated, I had a hard time finding work. In China, to procure work in the film industry you need the right contacts, which I didn’t have. I thought that I would make a documentary for myself, without knowing anything about documentary filmmaking—in university I had only been given fiction films to study and hadn’t thought at all about documentaries. (There are very few classes in Chinese films schools that include documentaries in their curriculums.) So I just filmed however I thought would be good. I filmed however I wanted.

The result was West of the Tracks, which I filmed in a district near the arts university that I had attended in the city of Shenyang. What made the biggest impression on me in that area was the snow. In winter it snowed constantly. In that film there is a lot of snow, and throughout my films, I pay attention to the seasons and their passing. The reason for this is that I don’t want the audience just to see a small part of a person’s life, but rather a person along with his or her background. I tend to film people for quite long periods of time. If you show somebody’s life over a long period, then you come to understand him or her better.

Cineaste: How does filming over long periods impact your storytelling?

Wang: I think that the most interesting thing to do in films is not to create a story—in any case, I’m not the kind of director who sets out to create one. I prefer to look at people. If you look at an interesting person for a while, then you will realize that in that person’s life there is a very interesting story. When I meet someone and his or her story really attracts me, then I decide that I would like to make a film about him or her. When I decide that there’s something really beautiful about that person, and that his or her life really touches me, is the moment when I want to film.

In a person’s life, of course, many big things happen, but the moments of tenderness are what most interest me. The relationships that people have with their family members and with friends are the most important things in their lives. Those relationships are what I want to show. Usually I just film, and then I edit, and then I present the results. My films are often very simple and tell very simple stories. If I lay out a plot structure beforehand, then I will have imprisoned the story. I prefer instead to let it develop and grow outside of my control.

Cineaste: How do you approach the people whose stories you tell?

Wang: The approach I take is very simple, really. I go to a place and meet someone. I suddenly feel that that person is interesting, and from there, my crew and I begin to film. I ask technicians to come work with me when they have time and jobs that don’t pay very well, without really considering their levels of experience. (The pay that I can offer them is so low that I can’t really do so.) I tell them how and where to film, and often I hold the camera myself. I use lightweight digital equipment, so the process of filmmaking becomes a lot easier than it would have been in the past. And I tell very simple stories.

I have found in my work that people at all levels of society are basically the same. They’re all very complicated. I keep my distance from them during the period of filming in order not to disturb them emotionally, or to change any of their moods or habits. At the same time, when I film them, I can’t help but get close because there’s something about them that attracts me and that I really like. So there is always a tension. On the one hand, I don’t want to disturb them; on the other hand, I have my own feelings towards them.

I can talk about the girls in Three Sisters, whose mother had left them when they were quite small. Their father had gone out to another town to work and left them on their own to live. By the time that I began making the film, Yingying was the oldest of the girls at age ten and had to take care of her two little sisters, Zhenzhen and Fenfen, who were six and four. Although Yingying was young, she was very mature.

When I came by their house and saw them playing in the courtyard for the first time, I saw something in them that made them seem different from other children. Despite my being a stranger, they invited me into their home. They were cooking potatoes over a fire because that was all that they had to eat. The sight of them cooking made a deep impression on me. This made me want to film them, and so I did.

Their father eventually returned to the village for a short time, and then took the two younger girls back to the town where he was working. Only Yingying was left. At first, she didn’t have anyone to play with, then she eventually found two brothers with whom she got along well, especially the older one. They would go into the mountains, play together, herd sheep, and collect manure to burn. They had a lot of freedom. Their life at that point was very simple and innocent, and even romantic in a rural way. These two boys had also impressed me, but the film we were making focused on the girls, and so there was no time to give much attention to them.  

The boys’ mother had also left when they were young, and their father was working elsewhere. The father later came back and took them with him to live. In December of 2012, I was working in the Yunnan Province in southern China, and I passed by their home in order to see them. I felt very bad for them, because it was a rather hopeless situation. When I came into their house, I saw that they shared a tiny bed that was only slightly larger than the table at which I am sitting right now. Three people had to sleep in that bed, and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how.

That little bed was the thing that made the deepest impression on me. We didn’t have much money or time to work with the family, so I thought that I would make a piece of video art, rather than a proper film. When I decided that I would make Father and Sons I thought, “Well, I’ll film this father and his two sons and their small bed.” That would be enough. Initially, it was intended to be shown only as an installation at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but after it showed there, several film festivals also invited it to play as a film.

Cineaste: How did the making of ’Til Madness Do Us Part coincide with those of Three Sisters and of Father and Sons?

Wang: It actually began in 2002, while I was still editing West of the Tracks. I went to visit a psychiatric hospital in the suburbs of Beijing. When I arrived there, it was very windy and all the doors were open, but I didn’t see any people—just lots of fallen leaves. I walked around until I arrived outside one building, within which I could hear many voices. I entered and looked through a glass door. It was very dark, but I could see skinny people on the other side. I opened the door quietly. The nurse on guard thought that I was a family member of one of the patients, but I said that I was just visiting and asked if I could look around. She saw that I had no bad intentions and let me in.

I talked a bit with the patients, most of whom were very thin and very old. I learned that they had been placed in the hospital in the 1960s and 1970s. Their household registrations had been transferred to the hospital, which meant that they were officially registered as living there and so could not move. They may have been sick, but they still acted like normal people, and they really wanted to make contact and to talk with me. I afterward often went to the hospital, and I asked its directors if I could make a documentary there. They continued to refuse up through 2009, at which point I gave up that plan.

Then, early in 2012, when I was filming Three Sisters in Yunnan, the director of a psychiatric hospital in the area told me that I could film inside his complex. I thought that this was an important opportunity, but we had just shot Three Sisters and I had no budget left. I asked some producers who had previously worked with me if they could find money to finance a new project, and they all said no except for a Japanese producer who gave me twenty thousand American dollars. In January of 2013, I returned to Yunnan to film ’Til Madness Do Us Part.

The hospital staff in Yunnan gave me the freedom to film wherever I wanted, but I didn’t feel very good and had doubts about whether I could do it. If you shoot in a place without knowing anything about it, then your film can easily become very bad. Additionally, we were given only three weeks to film there, and in my opinion that was not enough time. So every day, we worked from seven or eight a.m. until midnight or one a.m. There was no time to relax or to do anything else.

By the end of the first week, it had become clear to me how we should make the film. By the end of the three weeks, though, I still felt like there were some stories that we had not told fully. As our money was almost finished, I had no choice but to return to Beijing. I stayed there for a month, and then eventually returned to the hospital and shot for another week, which allowed me to wrap up the film.

I wanted to emphasize, both in the filming and in the editing, things that I had wondered while spending time with psychiatric patients. How had they gotten their illnesses? What did their illnesses do and mean? How did the people feel? How can you separate a person from his or her illness?

A problem of psychiatric hospitals is that the patients are basically cast out by society and by their families. Nobody really cares about whether they can recover from what they have. Of course, there were some cases in that hospital where you didn’t know if a person was actually ill at all, but had still been locked up. Some people are in there because they have mental illnesses, and some people have something else going on. Most of the men were in there because they had moved from their villages to urban locations in order to work and had had mental collapses as a result of doing so. Most of the women had been diagnosed and interned after having had babies under China’s family planning policy. The patients have very complicated histories and backgrounds, and every day they are just in there, completely separate from the rest of the world.

Cineaste: What do you think about the direction in which Chinese society is heading?

Wang: Throughout China these days, the family unit is less stable than it used to be. Partly for economic reasons, there are many more broken homes now than there were in the past. Many people don’t have complete families or fixed places to call home. Their lives are much more unstable than before and are much more floating now.

It’s very difficult to say in which direction China is developing. It’s not that I don’t want to say. It’s that it’s really, really hard to say. Of course, what I can offer is completely my own opinion. It doesn’t count for more than that. I think that China is changing very little right now, especially in its politics. In places like the former Soviet Union and much of Eastern Europe, for example, many things have changed over the past twenty years, but in China during this same time I think that very little has changed.

The reason why change is happening so slowly, I think, is that the people who want China to change don’t represent the ideas and thoughts of the majority of the population. Most Chinese people don’t know what the future will be, their own or that of China, because they just haven’t developed any opinions about it. Some people at the higher levels of society have done so, such as intellectuals and some businesspeople, but people like those I film—who don’t have much education, who don’t have any money, and who live very poor lives—think differently. So I don’t believe that there will be much change in my country.

Cineaste: Do you have a goal in mind when you begin making your films?

Wang: No. When I see something that really interests me, I simply go and record it. I shot many films at the same time and none of them are finished yet. For example, I met a woman and was filming her. Next to her was sitting another woman who I felt was a really interesting character, and even while I was filming the first woman, I felt the story gradually moving towards the second. Her husband was clearly beating her, but she hadn’t left, even though there was no hope for her family. Through her story, you can see problems facing people at the lowest levels of Chinese society. They’re not secure in their marriages and family lives. They lack direction. They exist only in a state of worry.

I think that stories like hers are good stories to film. In the story of such a real person, you can see something true. I don’t like stories that are overly designed or made up. I think that a story should not be limited in the way that it grows and in how it develops. That is the way I think that movies should be made.

Cineaste: You have made one fiction feature—The Ditch. Do you believe you will return to fiction?

Wang: A big difficulty I face in making fiction films is that I don’t have freedom—no freedom in different aspects, from political to financial. I can’t make fiction films right now and don’t really want to, so I make documentaries to pass the time instead.

FILM DIRECTORS IN CORRESPONDENCE: WANG BING AND JAIME ...  Zhao Yu from Leap magazine

 

Documentary Fortnight at MoMA - The L Magazine  Aaron Cutler, Februry 13, 2015

 

Fu Yu Zi Father and Sons Wang Bing 2014 • China ... - Doclisboa 2014

 

MICHAEL GUARNERI / «I am just a simple individual who films what ...  Michael Guarneri interview from La Furiaumana, April 9, 2014

 

'Father and Sons' ('Fu Yu Zi'): Rotterdam Review - Hollywood Reporter  Clarence Tsui

 

TA’ANG

Hong Kong  France  (147 mi)  2016

 

2016 TIFF Wavelengths Michael Sicinski from The Academic Hack

China’s greatest documentarian is an artist in transition. Although he became known for grand, highly formalist undertakings such as Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, Fenming: A Chinese Memoir, and Crude Oil, Wang’s recent work has shown more and more interest in following some of the broader practices of the Chinese Documentary Movement. It’s not that recent works such as Three Sisters or (especially) ‘Til Madness Do Us Part exhibit any less of the power and stringency of his finest films. But Wang’s earlier taste for ultra-rigor is now tempered with other values. Those recent films adopt Direct Cinema’s penchant for mobility and self-imbrication within uncertain, existential moments. He does not know how any given situation will unfold, but much like Frederick Wiseman or the late Allan King, Wang now has a repertoire of cognitive strategies that he can draw upon based on his intuition of the unfolding emotional, sociological, or political nuances of a given event. 

Ta’ang is very much a transitional work. Here we see Wang adopting what is probably the most observational, least reflexive attitude of his career thus far, and while it generates a higher degree of drama than one finds in, say, Three Sisters, it also raises a few red flags. This 2 ½ -hour project is an in-depth look at the refugee camps along the China / Myanmar border, where the Ta’ang ethnic group have been displaced by the violence of the Myanmar civil war. Whole villages are repeatedly packed up in trucks and moved further and further into China, while the skirmishes and artillery just spills over into Ta’ang territory with no concern for their safety. We spend most of our time with mothers, working to keep society intact, although occasionally a young man will return from an area closer to the front, describing what they’ve seen and recounting the number of family members killed or simply lost. 

The camerawork and overheard discussion makes it clear that Wang is “imbedded” with the Ta’ang, and that as women and children flee, carrying whatever they can while trying to find shelter from raining bombs, they ignore the documentarian in their midst. This is not just formally problematic. I find myself wondering, was Wang carrying anything other than his camera? He’s stronger than the five-year-old girls dragging bags of rice. And, since Wang has already completed another film, we know that this caravan survives. This is hardly the point, of course, but for a filmmaker who has worked so hard to reshape our notions of what nonfiction cinema can do, I find Ta’ang somewhat unconvincing. Their story must be told, but will it spur us to action when it feels so familiar?

'Ta'ang': Berlin Review | Reviews | Screen  David D’Arcy

In Ta’ang, Wang Bing follows families from a population fleeing the war which has been smouldering on the border between Burma and China. In this portrait of despair, Wang finds some radiant humanity in an unseen people. Any film by Wang Bing makes a serious demand on its audience. By the standards of this director, who made Crude Oil (2008), a 14-hour documentary on petroleum extraction, Ta’ang is short, not even three hours. It also has moments of stunning beauty as it sits and walks through the mud of war – rather than the fog — with victims of a brutal conflict. The subject matter – the plight of these refugees -  is as current a topic as anything in the news, which could keep it in festivals for a long time. After that, this documentary will be seen more in museums than in art houses.

The Ta’ang, also known as the Palaung, are a displaced people, fleeing from their own war with the Burmese government. We encounter women in flight with their children, dressed in distinctive greyish skirts and jackets, wearing hats held down with silver bands. They don’t carry much more property than those clothes, although some have mobile phones, and there’s an occasional man with a motorcycle. 

Cinema can’t get more iconic than this, as the Ta’ang, made itinerant by war, create shelter with whatever they can find, which usually means sticks and stones. Wang watches as a group tries to build a frame for a tarpaulin roof with bamboo poles scavenged from what grows along the road. The poles tumble into a pile before any improvised structure can stand. It’s the myth of Sisyphus, in Southeast Asia.

As the sounds of fighting get closer, the Ta’ang are back on the road again, marching from a camp to destinations inside China’s Yunnan province. Sometimes they harvest sugar cane, but they are essentially the walking poor. Wang’s signature contemplative shots make Fred Wiseman’s seem hurried. His extended observations remind us of a perennial truth about war. For combatants and for the refugees that Wang watches, time is experienced with long periods of inactivity and sudden bursts of urgency that force them to move immediately.

It’s an odd paradox here that Wang’s camera, viewing the Ta’ang at tactile range, is remarkably steadfast, capturing moments of mothers talking, children playing, and conversations halting when artillery fire in the distance gets louder. The longer Wang looks at the Ta’ang, the more human this seemingly undifferentiated stream of refugees becomes. And the closer we get to mud, filthy bowls of rice and open streams, the more universal the images are. In the film’s deliberate pace, and in its dignified fatalism, Robert Bresson comes to mind.

Wang shoots one long section around a campfire, as a Ta’ang refugee, Xiaoman, sits on a hill above an active road, preparing to spend the night. While Ta’ang women talk warily with a Chinese man who enters their camp, the camera shifts between Xiaoman and her two hungry children, who listen and watch for signs of the next surprise. The firelight gives the long scene the shades of intrigue, but the children look as innocent as any victims of conflict. Through Wang’s patient eye, improvised cinema with minimal means in the most remote of locations can have the intimacy of a painting by Georges de la Tour. 

Editing by Wang and Adam Kerby gives an improbable narrative pace to the observation of groups of people fated by war to do nothing most of the time. But something is happening as the camera hovers over all sorts of banal activities. The Ta’ang seem to be letting go of their culture – wearing Western dress, planning their next moves on mobile phones, contemplating long absences from home and long treks to safer places.

Like Wang’s other films, Ta’ang is about people enduring circumstances beyond their control. War is the extreme version of that, although we never see the conflict itself. Here Wang gives us collateral damage, family style, one step at a time.   

In 'Ta'ang,' the world reveals itself by firelight - Il manifesto global  Eugenio Renzi

Although it was one of the best films at the Berlin Film Festival this year, Wang Bing’s Ta’ang wasn’t selected for the main competition of the Berlinale, but the “Forum” experimental category — confirming that program’s foresight and taste for great films. The exodus of women and children through mountains and forests amid the sound of crackling gunfire tells the story of our times and the violence of war. It throws us into a faraway reality that peers deeply into each of us, though this experience belongs to people unfamiliar to us.

The Ta’angs are an ethnic group living in the mountain region between China and Myanmar. In February 2015, the civil war forced 100,000 of them to take shelter beyond the border. Wang filmed their odyssey. The plight of refugees proved to be a central theme in Berlin, with Gianfranco Rosi’s Fuocoammare (“Fire at Sea”), a documentary set on Lampedusa, winning the Golden Bear.

Wang’s film picks up dramatically from its first sequence. “Get lost before I kick you!” The man who is about to keep his promise is wearing a military uniform. We are not told his name, and we never learn it. It’s the film’s first shot. He will soon disappear from the scene never to be seen again. But we continue to hear about those of his kind: men, soldiers. The woman suffering his blows, treated like a dog while she tries to feed her three babies, is a Ta’ang. Sitting in the middle of the refugee camp, among the chaos, she stubbornly ignores her oppressor.

One might almost say that, in this very first scene, Wang has found his film. Where exactly? In the rustic elegance of the woman’s clothing? In her stoic resistance? Or in those three children, who remind us of the three protagonists in Three Sisters? All of Wang’s films find their roots in the mastery of structure. Without going through his whole filmography, it’s enough to think of the industrial complex in West of the Tracks, where this cinema was born, and more recently of Fen Ai‘s psychiatric hospital. Wang needs a structure because his cinema longs for a totality.

But what is totality? It’s not a concept. Totality is made out of parts, of concrete pieces coming from real life. It’s not “violence.” It’s not “the refugees.” It’s not a blurry whole. In that wholeness there has to be this woman. And the violence that, as a refugee, she suffers at the hands of a man in uniform, in that place, in front of those kids. Nevertheless this is a specific case, not yet everything. It’s how the film starts its journey.

From here it follows the wanderings of a refugee group — mostly women and children. It sleeps with them in the forest, between the mountains, in a green nowhere filled with the noises of a war always closing in. In these wanderings things are found and lost. People are found. Little by little we learn their names, their family bonds and their problems — some have left behind their mother in running away, some have brought with them their neighbor’s children. But in the very moment we start living among a group, Wang ruthlessly uproots us and takes us to the next. It’s a way to show the spectator the war’s violence, which constantly creates and undoes every bond. And far more than this.

Wang knows no series of examples will ever be a totality. This jumping from one situation to another deserves credit for tiring the viewer’s preconceptions. As soon as the eye gets used to something, a reference point starts blooming and the shadow of a rule starts taking shape, Wang immediately breaks the scheme and moves on.

But then, where is totality? Wang finds it in another image. The image of fire, of the night, of women sitting around the flickering glow sharing a meal, feeding their children, trying to overcome insomnia and cold. Night and fire in particular, by length and structure, hold an exceptional status in the film. Straub used to say that nothing is more difficult than filming a fire. Wang has done here something unprecedented. In the impossibility of understanding what was being said (Ta’ang language is nothing like Chinese) he allowed the fire to guide him. Switching off the camera when it died out. Switching it back on when some bystander would revive it by blowing on the embers.

The fire, as we know, is never the same, the light changes, and with it the way in which those speaking reveal themselves to the others. It takes us from the anecdote to a simpler and more true word. At the end of the night something invisible — that we didn’t know or didn’t want to say but nevertheless was there from the beginning — emerged. By the end of the night everything was said. And Wang was there to film it.

Ta'ang | 4:3  Jeremy Elphick

In the last decade and a half every documentary that Wang Bing has released has acted to challenge the nature of the format he works within; testing the limits – and often, going on to break them – of documentary and its modes of expression. His films have worked within seemingly set narrative boundaries yet they’re targeted at an audience often unwilling to engage with the length of many of his works. There’s always going to be a certain rigidity and inaccessibility to the work of a filmmaker who makes their debut with the nine-hour Tie Xi Qu. With Ta’ang, Wang continues his long trend of covering moral issues; shifting away from specific issues of how labour has been manipulated, spread out, and subsequently neglected throughout China, and continuing his move into various areas of intersection. Just as he intimately covered the desolate and mismanaged health system in ‘Til Madness Do Us Part, he does so in Ta’ang with his focus on the refugee crises stemming from China’s particularly complex geopolitical situation in the last century.

Wang’s film tracks a group of refugees, the titular Ta’ang ethnic group, who want to leave Burma after an armed conflict in Kokang forced migration to China. Opening in a Madihe Refugee Camp, on the border between Kokang and China’s Yunnan province, Wang follows and participates in a portion of the group’s journey away from conflict. Wang trades the claustrophobia of ’Til Madness Do Us Part for an overwhelming sense of space in Ta’ang; as we move from Kokang, through various refugee camps, to the city of Nansen; all without Wang letting a trace of his presence appear on screen.

Wang’s documentaries are easier to face with growing familiarity of his work; languishing in long – often initially tedious – takes; not out of a sense of  indulgence but more one of emotional transparency and honesty. Ta’ang operates within a certain frame of temporality, as an excerpt of time – inextricably tied to the space in which it is shot. Rather than aiming for overwhelming scope as he did with Tie Xi Qu and ‘Til Madness Do Us Part, there’s something that feels remarkably compact and focused for a 150-minute piece. Wang makes his commentary through implications. The director’s trademark impressionistic editing style is at the heart of this, with an aim to let scenes play themselves out. It creates a work where – scene after scene – the temporality of the circumstances depicted, alongside the fleeting nature of what is played out on screen, creates a document that conveys emotion in the most remarkably human sense.

In this focus he has always put intimacy and honesty at the forefront of his work, however, certain scenes in Ta’ang – particularly those of campfire conversations – have a sense of momentum to them that the more harrowing and confronting shots in ‘Til Madness Do Us Part clearly were unable to provide. Wang’s ability to add mystique to mundanity – or perhaps even, to challenge the audiences perception of ‘mundane’ – is remarkable. At one point Bing captures two men smoking out of handmade bamboo sticks in front of the fire. Their conversation – “You smoke really fast!”, “Really?”, “You do three puffs for every one of mine” – feels revelatory and emotional within the carefully established pacing. In the Daiyingpun Tea Factory we see the process of bamboo harvesting, but Wang follows the effects of this labour – in a scene where two women fall asleep on one another in front of the fire after the short exchange: “I’m tired, but there’s no place to sleep” – “I’ve never felt this sick before.”

Throughout Ta’ang, Wang maintains a sense of pace through his cinematography; from a slower meditative shot of a man smoking expressionless and still through his bamboo shoot – framed by exciting people talking in the foreground, to perhaps the most memorable take in the film: Wang riding in the back of a truck with the family of some of the refugees he has been travelling with into the city of Nansen. Throughout, this ability to remain unseen, to maintain this ‘fly-on-the-wall’ technique, is astounding. It’s difficult to speak about Ta’ang without focusing on how much this trademark approach from Wang has been refined. With such a degree of Wang’s work resting on the process of editing hundreds of hours of footage into a relatively short piece, the technical procedures he follows in removing any remote indication of his presence throughout filming demonstrate the discipline that defines the directors highly defined approach to documentary cinema.

The final scene, shot walking through the hills, is filled with a sense of impermanence, with the vaguely hopeful statement “there should be some shelter up ahead” quickly punctuated by shots in the distance.  The intimacy is fully played out; this story, subject and world – initially rigid, slow, and difficult – becomes surprisingly hard to let go of, especially as it concludes with the commentary: “Some of the women and children seen in this film have returned to their homes in Kokang. Fighting in that area continues, bringing new waves of refugees across the border into China.”

With a single title card at the commencement and conclusion of the film, Ta’ang offers itself up as a brief snapshot – and in this, it trades Wang Bing’s more typical sprawling documentaries for a remarkably succinct and fulfilled work. His cinema has always navigated a certain relationship between a humanist, experimental and sociopolitical approach to documentary cinema; as an artist concerned explicitly with intimate portraits of larger moral issues. Like any of his documentaries, Ta’ang is uncompromising. At the same time, the clarity of what Ta’ang wants to be as a film – and the degree to which it achieves this – results in one of Wang’s most memorable and impressive works to date.

Wang Bing: The Mystery of a Fact Clearly Described | Interview | The ...  Alan Bett interview from The Skinny June 26, 2014

In advance of the UK premiere of Wang Bing's latest feature at Edinburgh International Film Festival, the master documentary filmmaker looks through his back catalogue and discusses the relationship between truth and imagery

In a wonderful scene from Doctor Zhivago, Strelnikov (Tom Courtenay) schools Yuri (Omar Sharif) on just how the world has turned. “The private life is dead,” he lectures. “History killed it.” Yet the reverse is so often true to cinema. History is dead and filmmakers hold the bloody knife. Their representations of past realities are only that, a reflection. In documentary this confrontation is even more acute and is one which is being constantly addressed by Wang Bing, a man sitting at the forefront of modern documentary filmmaking.

His 2012 feature Three Sisters (San Zimei) won the Orrizonti Prize at Venice that year, and this year his new film 'Til Madness do us Part  has its UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival. His epic truths of China’s past and present include the harsh reality of street capitalism in Coal Money; intolerable persecution in The Ditch; a shattered soul glued together by strength and dignity in Fengming: A Chinese Memoir. But these truths are distorted as soon as they travel through a lens. The camera is the viewer’s eye and we see only from its point of view. For documentary, then, it’s so important that this eye is unwavering.

“Language is the weakest element in cinema,” says Wang, “But I can’t avoid using verbal ways to tell the story.” Unusual then that his epic Fengming: A Chinese Memoir is basically a three hour monologue, a life laid bare. As a young journalist in the new Chinese Republic, its subject, He Fengming, reveals, “We felt so free, like skies were blue for the first time.” Yet those skies turned bruised and lachrymose as Mao attempted ‘to achieve great order under heaven by creating great chaos under heaven.’ Her story of inhuman humiliation, cruelty, suicide and hardship is rendered face to face, straight to camera – it’s like a disturbing afternoons visit to grandma.

This approach “gives Fengming a very free space at her home so that she can walk in and walk out. She goes to the toilet, she picks up the phone and she does her own thing.” Her comfort and ease closes the gap between the subject and viewer, an eternal problem in cinema. “Every filmmaker uses different ways to solve the problem,” Wang says. “For me I am trying to let characters be freer in the images, so I don’t let the space of images constrain the movement or actions of the characters.” The film opens by tracking behind Fengming as she walks home with shuffling gait. The legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle once said of Maggie Cheung that “if you’re Maggie, the way you walk tells us where you came from.” On an opposite scale of poise and grace, but with obstinate dignity, Fenming also proves this true. This is a hugely prolonged opening shot, not included for aesthetic purpose but simply to allow us to see her walk, as Doyle suggests, to tell us where she came from. 

The accolades for allowing this extended scene should go to digital technology. Philippine cinema’s enfant terrible Khavn De La Cruz said of digital film, “If you want to see how technology has democratized cinema, here is the tip of a massive iceberg.” For Wang it provides freedom. He chose the methods originally for financial reasons. “It’s cheap to make digital films,” he observes, “but it shouldn’t look cheap.” What it does is sever a link between filmmaker and sponsor. Without the need for high level funding there is less danger of the opinions of financial backers seeping on to the screen; truth travels through one less distorting prism. “The condition in China is very different from the situation in Europe because there is no state support for filmmaking and so people have to do this independently by earning money themselves. Digital filmmaking makes it possible.” Digital provides freedom for both the filmmaker and subject. Reality need not be cut to fit budget, it can be captured naturally and in this way truth can be maintained.

As a filmmaker Wang has worked almost exclusively in China but has moved geographically around its borders. When reaching the north-west he decided to tackle history in place of the contemporary. The area of the country west of Beijing borders on the Gobi and it was this arid, inhospitable landscape where outspoken voices were sent in the 50s to be silenced under the guise of re-education. The Ditch is Wang’s harrowing telling of these ectopic bodies, displaced and destined to perish. He filmed this as his first full non-documentary feature, a brave move. There was a certain furore when Jia Zhang-Ke presented his wonderful 2008 feature 24 City, a merging of documentary and scripted scenes telling the story of a collapsing state factory. There was never a claim that this was purely a captured reality but some audience members felt manipulated.

On whether truth and fiction can coexist harmoniously, Wang states, “they don’t supplement each other. They are independent. The real images of documentaries are the real images of people’s lives. Images in fiction, although they might seem authentic, have been fabricated artificially. It’s a kind of interpretive reality that cannot be equal to the reality in documentaries.” Fiction might be viewed as a metaphoric telling, while documentary footage has an almost physical relation to the true happening. It is as if reality has travelled through the lens and been preserved digitally, like a fly in amber. Wang explains: “the attitudes of documentaries come from the attitudes of the characters but also their understanding and identification with the filmmakers. Fiction films are completely up to the attitudes of ourselves, the filmmakers.”  He is a purist, feeling that truth and fiction must be sharply divided. “Every filmmaker has his own principles and character,” he says. “For me, in life you can be playful, but in some circumstances you should not be, not treat it as a game.”

He calls The Ditch “not necessarily a record of history but [of understanding] your life and how life around you has been constituted.” It’s a delicate subject and interesting that this linking of the past with contemporary China has caused no friction with state censorship. Lou Ye was slapped with a five year filmmaking ban after defying authorities and screening his uncut version of Summer Palace in 2006. He shrugs and says that for him it’s quiet, he’s been lucky. He has even tackled the Cultural Revolution directly in his short film The Brutality Factory, part of a 2007 anthology titled The State of the World. It’s depiction of torture is like a punch to the chest. "It could be better," he retorts in typical self-deprecating fashion, before indicating in a similar manner that “once the film is finished there’s not much relationship between [it] and myself. People like images on the screen and not the person who has made the film.” For this world class filmmaker, Orizzonti Best Feature winner and EIFF guest of honour in 2014, the truths he projects are king.

Berlinale 2016 - Features - Reverse Shot  Giovanni Marchini Camia, March 1, 2016


TA'ANG  Steve Erickson from Chronicle of a Passion

 

'Ta'ang' ('De'ang'): Berlin Review - The Hollywood Reporter  Clarence Tsui

 

Berlin 2016: “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” “Fire at Sea,” “Ta'ang ...  Michael Pattison from The Ebert site

 
Wang Chao
 
THE ORPHAN OF ANYANG
China  (84 mi)  2001

 

User reviews imdb Author: Michael Sicinski from United States

This film as a dense, knotty little piece of poetry, clocking in at under 80 minutes with not an inch of fat on it. Wang deftly orchestrates single-take master-shots to keep our viewing at a distance. But, unlike other practitioners of the master-shot school -- filmmakers I admire in their own right, such as Hou Hsiao-hsien and Jia Zhang-ke -- Wang uses the stationary camera and long take to create slightly more obvious black comedy, like an episode of "The Carol Burnett Show" as directed by Samuel Beckett. In particular, Wang's use of the quick fade is excellent. Often, he'll go to blackout just as some funny or shocking occurrence becomes legible. I may be making this sound like "difficult viewing," but really, it struck me as a 6th-Generation Chinese stab at a Jarmusch film, and as such, it's utterly accessible. Here's hoping it gets picked up for U.S. distribution. It might prove to be a minor hit.

East Asian Films at the 26th Toronto ... - Senses of Cinema  Shelly Kraicer from Senses of Cinema, November 20, 2001 (excerpt)

 

Although TIFF 2001 didn't have the array of new Chinese masterpieces that marked TIFF 2000 (In the Mood for Love/Huayang nianhua [Wong Kar-wai, 2000], Platform/Zhantai [Jia Zhangke, 2000], Yi Yi [Edward Yang, 2000]), this year's line-up was not at all disappointing. The standout among new filmmakers was Wang Chao, from Mainland China. His independent, underground first feature The Orphan of Anyang/Anyang de guer (2001) – made without the authorisation of the Film Bureau hence unexhibitable in China – is a major new work. Orphan shows the story of a poor unemployed urban worker (Dagang), a prostitute (Yanli), her baby, and her gangster client (Boss Side). When Yanli offers Dagang a monthly stipend to take care of the baby, she can't predict that the three of them will start to construct a family of their own. This works until Boss Side, urgently in need of an heir, intervenes to reclaim "his" child. Not far from the stylistic world of Jia Zhangke's Plaform and Xiao Wu (1998), the film is shot with a rigorously controlled camera that keeps its distance, in long takes, setting off its subjects against the street noise and urban flow of a mid-sized Chinese city. Wang Chao here creates a key text of Chinese metropolitan cinema that, with exquisite care and not without a certain compassionate humour, pictures its characters trapped in a new disorienting urbanism. But the film suggests a way out, just as it seems that social pressures and structures of authority converge to seal the characters' fates. Yanli experiences an unforgettable vision: a transfiguring and virtually liberating act of self-imagination, a description which, as it happens, nicely describes Orphan of Anyang itself.

 

User reviews imdb Author: Howard Schumann from Vancouver, B.C

Orphan of Anyang, an uncompromising debut film by Wang Chao, conveys a powerful impression of a rotting urban center with its outdoor food stands, dingy industrial buildings, rancid-looking waterways, and people whose lives mirror the grimness of the physical space. Its portrayal of the struggle for survival in Anyang might seem strange to Western eyes accustomed to more glamorous Chinese films but its bleakness only reflects the daily experience of a large percentage of the world's population.

Based on a short story by the director, Orphan of Anyang focuses on the lives of three people, a criminal, a prostitute, and an unemployed industrial worker and how their lives intersect when a baby is abandoned at an outdoor food stand. The film takes up where Platform leaves off, documenting the results of the swift change from collectivization to individual enterprise in the lives of three marginal characters living in Anyang. As the film begins, Yu Dagang (Sun Guilin) has just lost his job as an industrial worker. Strapped for money he must barter with his former co-workers, exchanging meal coupons for cash.

While eating at an outdoor noodle stand, Dagang finds an abandoned baby with a note asking for the baby's care in exchange for 200 yuan each month. Desperate, Dagang takes the child home and awkwardly begins to care for him. He soon discovers that the mother Yanli (Yue Sengli) is a prostitute and the girlfriend of Boss Side, a small-time triad boss always surrounded by a gang of hoodlums. Dagang finally invites Yanli to live with him if she promises to give up her life of prostitution. When Boss Side is diagnosed with leukemia, however, he returns to Yanli's house and attempts to take back his child as his only legacy.

With little dialogue or cinematic embellishments such as background music or stylish cinematography, Wang delivers filmmaking stripped to its bare essentials with only the clatter of urban street sounds left to penetrate the dreariness. Wang uses a fixed camera and long takes as Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Unlike Hou, however, Wang's film lacks rhythm and energy and its extremely slow pace doesn't create tension or help to illuminate the characters. For example, when Yanli and Yu meet at a restaurant, both sit and eat noodles for a good two minutes until someone breaks the awkward silence. Orphan of Anyang is an important glimpse of China rarely seen and its ultra-realism is involving, but I found the film to be strangely distancing and the ambiguous ending left me unsatisfied.

The Orphan of Anyang  Shelly Kraicer from a Chinese Cinema Page

Wang Chao’s first feature, The Orphan of Anyang, is simultaneously deeply satisfying and profoundly unnerving — the unexpected result is a film that approaches the sublime. Like the films of He Jianjun, Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai and Zhang Yuan, all of whom graduated from the Beijing Film Academy after the giants of the fifth generation (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige et al), Orphan focuses on marginal urban characters — criminals, prostitutes, unemployed workers — left behind by China’s rapid urbanization and decollectivization of the 80s and 90s. The film’s rigour, specifically, the way Wang chooses from among a small set of options, and repeats them in a resolutely controlled way, provokes a certain formal pleasure. What is unnerving is Wang’s gambit of folding the most downbeat feeling of urban anomie around a core of ironically distancing humour; his offbeat juxtapositions ask viewers to struggle with the implications of tragedy and comedy in the same scene.

Single and in his 40s, Yu Dagang is a recently unemployed worker who can’t even afford to eat. In a prologue, he listlessly wanders around devastated, postindustrial landscapes; the film’s action begins with his efforts to barter now-useless company ration coupons for cash to buy food. At a noodle stall, he finds an abandoned baby; its mother, Yanli, has left a note promising to pay for the baby’s support. Desperate, Dagang takes it home. Yanli is a prostitute and the desultory girlfriend of Boss Side, a small-time triad boss with a snazzy entourage of sharply dressed goons. After a couple of nearly silent meetings with Yanli at a noodle restaurant, Dagang, originally intending to return the baby, decides not only to keep it, but also to invite Yanli to join this impromptu family. When Boss Side is diagnosed with cancer, he returns to collect the baby, his only heir. A fight with Side leaves Dagang in prison, and Yanli alone with her child. The film ends with her arrest in an anti-prostitution raid: we see her hand the baby to a stranger just before she is arrested, and an epilogue seems to reunite the family, if only in her imagination.

Granted, this doesn’t really sound like the stuff of comedy. But Wang’s method of shooting distances the viewer from the action, lends irony to the characters’ situations and throws the events of the story into unexpected, disorienting contexts. His actors are all nonprofessionals, and, like Bresson, he seems to have coaxed most of them to be as inexpressive as possible. Orphan looks like it was shot using only natural light, completely on location, though this may not have been a choice at all. Without script approval, independent Chinese directors can’t shoot in studios, and as long as they don’t draw undue attention to themselves, they can get away with filming in apartments or on the street: Chinese official surveillance can’t be bothered to notice, much less prohibit, this kind of filmmaking. At most, it will restrict a film’s access to domestic distribution, and can make a director’s subsequent collaboration with state studios and their resources difficult or impossible. [...]

See the full review in the current issue of Cinema Scope: September 2001, issue 8, pp. 19-20

Wang, Patrick

 

IN THE FAMILY                                                       A-                    93

USA  (169 mi)  2011                  Official site

 

Just because laws have limits doesn’t mean our lives do.                   —Paul Hawks (Brian Murray)

 

This is ultimately one of the most emotionally devastating films of the year, yet also one of the most understated, where so much of the dramatic impact is built on the accumulation of small details that bear an autobiographical stamp of authenticity.  While set in Tennessee, it explores the closeness of a small town Southern community without playing on any of the usual stereotypes or prejudices, showing a more generous side of the South that feels more close-knit.  Written, directed, acted and produced by newcomer Patrick Wang, a gay Asian-American who grew up in Texas, the film was initially rejected by as many as 30 major film festivals and distributors, perhaps due to the length, until he was obliged to distribute the film himself in true indie fashion, initially starting in just one theater in Manhattan where it generated excellent reviews before slowly building a wider audience.  Still, this is the kind of film likely seen by only twenty or so people in the audience, where the experience is dramatically moving, presenting the material in a more respectful manner than what we have become accustomed to seeing on television or in movie representations, where there are push button issues that often lead to explosive fireworks in the manner of KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979), a film that doesn’t really hold up over time, but here it’s more intimate, where much of the carefully observed narrative is quietly ushered in with artfully designed silences that carry the full weight of the material, feeling more like a theatrical experience.  This shrewdly written film has a well-designed structure that slowly unleashes its power, much of it told in flashback, where its greatest strength comes from its characters, adding layer upon layer throughout until by the end the audience is fully engaged with everything that’s happening onscreen.  Wang’s acting is key, as he’s such a good-natured and level-headed guy, nothing flashy, not without his own faults, but basically the kind of person who defines the word friend, as he’ll be there unhesitatingly and instinctually, providing the calm during the storm, having the good sense not to overreact or take things out of proportion, which is how this subject matter is usually presented. 

 

What starts out as a fairly uneventful and low-key family drama eventually becomes a starkly intense testimonial on the meaning of life itself, not in any grand philosophical terms, but in everyday language that’s impossible to misunderstand, a riveting confessional with profound impact in all of our lives.  Using a spare and unpretentious film technique, a no nonsense style where no particular thing stands out, initially the focus is on a wired, energetic 6-year old named Chip (Sebastian Banes), a captivating and endlessly curious kid with two Dads (Cody, Trevor St. John, his biological father and his partner Joey, Patrick Wang), who seems perfectly content with this living arrangement, where he’s smart and obviously thriving in his home life.  The routine of their lives is captured in all its simplicity, where the morning cereal ritual becomes so familiar to the audience that we feel like uninvited guests in their kitchen after awhile, where this setting could be just about anywhere, but it just happens to be Martin, Tennessee, where a slight drawl can be detected in the voice inflections.  Only after the audience gets comfortable with the “lack” of drama in their lives does the initial drama begin, where out of nowhere, like a clap of thunder on an otherwise perfectly clear day, a life-changing event occurs offscreen where Cody gets in a terrible auto accident, where in a flash we’re transported into Cristi Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), a bare-bones, near documentary Romanian exposé on the atrocious hospital standards provided to severely ill patients and their families, where Joey is rather unceremoniously left out of the picture as he is not considered immediate family.  While the word gay is never heard, the unforgivable actions speak for themselves and are immediately offset by Joey’s own exemplary behavior, as he does a heartfelt job preparing Chip for what to expect seeing his Dad in intensive care.  Like Joey, we are denied admittance to Cody’s final hours, as he dies shortly afterwards.  With difficulty, Chip and Joey attempt to regain a balance in their lives, both reluctantly and unknowingly becoming the centerpieces of the film.  

 

As Joey is digging through all the paperwork of Cody’s bank accounts and personal statements, he shares what he finds with Cody’s sister Eileen (Kelly McAndrew), who shockingly reports that Cody left everything to his sister in a will written years before he met Joey.  When Eileen reports her intentions of raising Chip, using the will as her legal grounds, declaring her beliefs that these were Cody’s written intentions, Joey’s world literally changes, as everything he has come to know and rely upon are suddenly in jeopardy.  As the emotional bond between Joey and Chip has already been well established, Joey’s fierce insistence not to part with him does not seem unreasonable, so when Eileen literally kidnaps Chip, refusing to return him after a family overnight visit while serving an order of protection to keep Joey away from him, a multitude of harsh thoughts of retribution spring to mind as the audience is challenged to consider what they would do in similar circumstances.  Once more, Joey is locked out of the room, reinforced by his discovery that gay partners have no legal grounds, sending him into an emotional tailspin of despair, seen sitting alone in an empty kitchen.  While he is visited by various friends showing neighborly concern, some of whom bring food or drink or just sit around and commiserate with him, often shown in long takes, his solitary life is joyless and empty.  This void is interrupted by flashbacks of Joey and Cody together, like scenes of when they first met or shared family holidays, including one unforgettable sequence when they first kiss, a near 9-minute uninterrupted shot leading to the moment when Cody impulsively plays Chip Taylor’s song “Little Darts.”  Chip Taylor (Jon Voight’s brother, by the way) plays Cody’s father in the film.  But nothing is quite as haunting as having a friend secretly call him on a speaker phone so he can hear the sounds of Chip playing, where he sits transfixed, unable to utter a word, paralyzed in thought. 

 

Overheard by an elderly client whose old books he is rebinding, Joey is again speechless to discover this retired elderly lawyer (Brian Murray) will take his case, urging him to forget about the restrictions of the law, which can be so divisive, but consider how to reframe the issue in more humane terms, where he may not obtain a legal victory, but he might negotiate a better arrangement with Cody’s sister.  What follows is perhaps the most devastating and beautifully written sequence of the year, a thirty minute deposition scene taking place in real time, a soliloquy of emotional candor, using a generic setting like Conference Room B for such a confessional outpouring, a scene unlike anything else in recent recollection, easily the high point of the film.  Earlier in the film we continually see the back of Joey’s head during key dramatic moments, where it's only during the deposition that he actually faces the camera for the first time, literally exposing himself emotionally, removing the politics and the rancor, but explaining in real and heartfelt terms just what Chip and Cody mean to him, often sounding like what we might hear at a eulogy.  This might seem oddly unnecessary, having to humbly explain our feelings to precisely those people we supposedly love, but humans are fallible and often forget the deeper underlying meaning, where it helps to be reminded from time to time, much like the original practice of going to church, only removing the religious implications while retaining the moral lessons. While all drama needs conflict, this film removes much of the vitriol associated with gay political issues and instead integrates Joey into our collective understanding of what’s essential about any marriage and family. 

 

In the Family  JR Jones from The Reader (capsule), also seen here:  Chip has two daddies—for now

 

Patrick Wang's moving debut feature appropriates the story arc of a courtroom drama, but the law turns out to be less pivotal than such old-fashioned ideas as fairness and decency. Joey (Wang), an interior designer in a small Tennessee town, reels after his lover, Cody (Trevor St. John), is killed in a car accident. His greatest solace is six-year-old Chip, the boy he and Cody were raising together, but Joey discovers to his shock that Cody's will assigns custody of the boy to Cody's sister, Eileen (Kelly McAndrew). A patient and crafty storyteller, Wang establishes Joey's emotional claim to Chip long before we understand that his legal claim is groundless, and the notion that gay partners deserve family rights is developed so quietly and unobtrusively that it seems to be reinforced, rather than undermined, by the movie's staunchly conservative milieu.

 

Village Voice  Andrew Schenker

 

With an incisive understanding of character, believably naturalistic acting, and lengthy scenes that don’t feel stretched out so much as given room to breathe, In the Family proves that smart direction and an innate feeling for one’s material trumps potentially precious subject matter. Writer/director/star Patrick Wang’s film chronicles the efforts of Joey Williams (Wang) to retain custody of the 6-year-old boy he raised as a son after the boy’s father (and Joey’s romantic partner) Cody (Trevor St. John) is killed in a car accident. As homophobia rears its ugly head in ways both subtle and brutal, Joey fights the efforts of Cody’s sister and brother-in-law to take his son away. But rather than turn this into a melodramatic look at gay victimization, Wang keeps his film pitched at the same level as his mild-mannered hero’s demeanor. Using long, fixed takes, the director makes his argument about family values not through overheated dramatics but simply through observation. Whether watching Joey’s son open a beer and offer it to his dad, flashing back to the first kiss between Joey and Cody, or listening to Joey’s stirring testimony at a legal deposition, Wang evinces a keen awareness of the ways in which family members interact, grieve, and open their hearts to one another.

 

Cine-File [Kevin B. Lee]

 

With its epic three hour runtime, its no-name creator displaying Wellesian hubris as writer-producer-director-lead actor in his feature debut, and its chimeric blend of languid art house camera technique with rigorously concise stage caliber dialogue, who knows exactly why Patrick Wang's first feature was passed over by 30 major film festivals before he settled for self-distribution. Do not make the same mistake as the professionals; this is one of the most exciting and thoughtful American indies to emerge in recent years. Wang spins an ambitiously original tale of a gay Asian man in Tennessee who suffers the sudden death of his Caucasian partner, and then must battle the partner's relatives for custody of their son. The ripe-for-melodrama scenario defies expectations at several critical stages, eschewing rote exposition for long take interior scenes that pick up nuances in the spatial relations between characters, continually placing its minority protagonist on the margins of the frame or facing away from the camera, as if he were on the verge of being squeezed from his own story. Wang's signal-jamming performance combines facial inexpressiveness with a boisterous folksy drawl, an affectation ripe to be judged, as it is by those around him. Very few films have simultaneously explored race and sexuality conflicts with such nuance—setting them in motion without succumbing to moralistic conclusions—topped by a lengthy, heartfelt climax that gives a brilliant new twist on the old courtroom battle motif. A shining example of filmmaking for our times: what the new American cinema can and should be.

 

Slant Magazine  Rob Humanick

Writer/director/actor Patrick Wang's background in theater and dramaturgy is on high display in his debut feature, In the Family, an acutely felt, altogether devastating family drama as intimate and affecting as it is sprawling and untamed. Nearly three hours in length, the film is characterized by carefully blocked, deeply focused scenes that unfold naturally, if perhaps uncomfortably, beholden only to life's often overlapping, conflicting, and overwhelming emotions. The premise, concerning adoptive rights in a homophobic society, is unique for button-pushing potential, though Wang's aims here are political only inasmuch as the political intersects with the moral. With no shortage of confidence, In the Family is remarkable for sidestepping bullet-point statements altogether to instead focus on the day-to-day causes and effects of our prejudices and the regulatory systems (social contracts, employment guidelines, family bonds) we frequently submit ourselves to.

Wang plays Joey Williams, lover of Cody Hines (Trevor St. John) and surrogate father to Cody's six-year-old biological son, Chip (Sebastian Brodziak), who's never known a life outside of that with his two fathers. Although they live in conservative Tennessee, they've found mostly seamless acceptance among their hetero familial and work environments, but when Cody dies in a car accident, Joey's status as Chip's second father is called into question, sparked (and backed up in court) by a legal document as old as Chip, in which all of Cody's belongings, as well as Chip, are willed to his sister. From here, things get worse before they get better.

The leisurely yet assured pacing allows the film to make its points through acute reinforcement, delivering a fault-proof human rights debate without once being aggressively or even obviously argumentative. By showcasing its political threads as incidental, it lends them that much more gravitas. In many ways, In the Family is a commentary on hate—that against a foreigner, or a sexual other, or any kind of group—and the ways that hate legitimizes itself and hides inside accepted routines or public policies, but it's also more about love, and understanding, and putting everything aside and talking about "the big stuff" when necessary. Wang's line readings have an assured everydayness, but there's also poetry in his voice, and when he not only asks the big questions, but then proceeds to actually answer some of them, it's so morally invigorating you might just feel the world tremble.

Wang camouflages his emotional punches in the minutiae of daily life, and his uniformly excellent performers suggest a sprawling cast of players in an expansive, obsessively controlled Charlie Kaufman universe—a finely composed ecosystem in constant flux. The film waxes its every moment into a crystalline pocket of time, finding the universal in the microcosmic, and always deepening itself with flabbergasting levels of imbued details. In his exquisitely rigorous commitment to his minimalist, downplayed style, Wang reproduces the chokehold effect of the phone call/hallway sequence of Taxi Driver, and there isn't a moment that lacks that rarely touched level of cinematic intimacy or sense of happened-upon truth. Wang's behemoth creation has already enjoyed a notable impact in its limited theatrical release, which justly speaks to its honesty and universality. The film bears a unique distinctness even as Wang's creative energy parallels some of the same essences as the work of Abbas Kiarostami, John Cassavetes, and Kelly Reichardt, to name just a few major filmmakers who I suspect would appreciate what this unprecedented new talent has achieved.

Chicago Reader  J.R. Jones (long version), also seen here:  A gay dad fights to reclaim his son in Patrick Wang’s In the Family 

 

AfterElton.com [Brian Juergens]

 

Tiny Mix Tapes [Rachel Fortgang]

 

In the Family (2011) - Ferdy on Films  Marilyn Ferdinand

 

Review: 'In The Family' A Sincere, Heartbreaking Indie Drama | The ...  Christopher Bell from The indieWIRE Playlist

 

Windy City Times [Richard Knight, Jr.]

 

IONCINEMA [Nicholas Bell]

 

PopcornReel.com [Omar P.L. Moore]

 

Hammer to Nail [Dave Boyle]

 

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Film-Forward.com [Megan Fariello]

 

Hyphen Magazine [Timothy Tau]

 

Georgia Straight [Ken Eisner]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

IN THE FAMILY  Facets Multi Media

 

Director interview  Godfrey Cheshire from Creative Loafing, May 2012

 

Hollywood Reporter [Frank Scheck]

 

Variety [Richard Kuipers]

 

Time Out New York [Keith Uhlich]

 

TimeOut Chicago  Ben Kenigsberg

 

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Roger Ebert

 

The New York Times [Paul Brunick]  also seen here:  New York Times

 

Wang Quan An

 

TUYA’S MARRIAGE                                               B-                    81

China  (86 mi)  1986

My mother was born in inner Mongolia, not far from the film's location. This is why I've always liked Mongolians, their way of life and their music. When I learned about the extent to which massive industrial expansion is turning the steppe into a desert, and how local administrators are forcing the shepherds to leave their homelands, I decided to make a film that would record their lifestyle before it all disappears forever.     —Wang Quanan

Overly contrived Mongolian melodrama about the life of a harried mother Tuya (Yu Nan) who, like many modernized American women, is stressed out from overwork, who due to her husband’s disability of injuring a leg while attempting to dig a well, is forced to perform all the household duties.  What’s immediately apparent, despite the immense scope of the infinitely expanding mountainous horizon, is the unlikeable whining and shrill tone of the protagonist who spends much of the time bitching at everyone around her, which has a mildly amusing flavor at first, as if it’s a way of setting everyone straight, except that as time goes on, her anger at the world around her feels incompatable, as she acts as if she expects the world owes her something.  While we see multiple shots of the harsh life she is forced to endure, riding endless miles every day on her camel to the nearest water hole which is drying up, and hearding her flock of sheep, one suspects no one else’s life out there is any different.  We hear in conversation that her children attend school but not once do we ever actually see them there, nor is there any reference to explain her means of food or support, or even how she obtained her livestock, where sheep are conveniently offered back and forth to one another as local currency, yet there appears to be ample food and water throughout the film.  So despite talk of impending deprivation, what we see may be the richest woman in the vicinity for all we know.  What’s needed in this film is less a storied melodrama within this obviously unique geographical setting and a more realist, documentary oriented eye.  Though part of the film’s obvious appeal is centered in the local customs and colorful costumes, the unsentimentalized wailing music, also the accentuation of landscapes, featuring a relationship between man, animals and the natural world around them, yet by singling out exclusively one person’s home, a good deal of local flavor and simple rhythms of life aren’t explored, as her relationship to her local community is all but nonexistent.   

 

Tuya not once but twice saves the life of an irreverent young neighbor Shenge, who is friendly enough that he appears to be the favorite of her young son, but we continually hear how selfish and vicious his wife is, stealing his possessions while cavorting with other men.  Despite this supposed dark cloud hanging over his head, he is perhaps the kindest person in the film, befriending her husband and always willing to help out Tuya and her kids, yet he is also portrayed as a poor fool who never realizes his dreams, who always screws up somehow.  When she injures her back trying to help him, which could lead to paralysis if reinjured, she reassesses what she has to do with her life, which is seen in such practical terms that her husband proposes they divorce so that she can remarry simply as a means of support, where her public divorce announcement leads to the immediate arrival of various suitors, as many as 6 in one day.  Much of this ritual is seen with an amusing eye for detail, as from out of nowhere, carloads of suitors arrive, some even asking others for directions, featuring a combination of overly solemn as well as grinning men in dark glasses, all of whom bargain for her marital rights.   Her one demand is that her disabled husband continue to live with her even after marriage, which all find outrageous, so one by one she rejects them all until a rich oil capitalist turns out to be the highest bidder.  Sadly, he also refuses to keep the former husband around either and finds the nicest nursing home in the region and dumps him there – not a pretty picture, perhaps the saddest in the entire film.   

 

Despite her apparent choice, catastrophes occur causing her to continually change her mind and get sidetracked, yet there is always a fortunate solution at hand, much of which feels awkwardly idealized.  We never see the bitter effects of winter survival, for instance, which would have to extend over a long duration, challenging even the heartiest souls, yet here winter is reduced to a single one day occurrence, nor does the filmmaker introduce us to others nearby, offering viewers a chance to see how others survive living in such harsh desolation.  Instead everything is conveniently seen through the filmmaker’s lens of Tuya’s home, Tuya’s land, and Tuya’s journey (which amounts to no more than one day), all of which leads, of course, to Tuya’s marriage, which both opens and closes the film.  Always seen in a more positive light, Tuya is shown to easily rebuff stereotypes of helpless women dependent on men, but instead develops a brash stature of Mongolian Earth Mother on whom everyone else depends, showing her irritation by belittling and constantly complaining about everyone else, as if somehow they will all be shamed into finally acting right.   From what we can tell, that’s not about to happen, so complaining, and consoling one’s aches and sorrows in drink appears to be the customary way of dealing with things in Inner Mongolia—not so much different than the local corner pub.        

 

Time Out London (Geoff Andrew)

Though his film occasionally threatens to lunge into melodrama, Wang Quan’an’s blending of documentary-style realism with generic tropes – striking camerawork,  a pacy narrative, sharp editing, vivid characterisation – lends real impetus to the slight story of a Mongolian shepherdess struggling to support her kids and disabled husband. Reluctantly she agrees to his suggestion that she find a new partner; but she insists any suitor adopt the whole family, hubby included. Tuya’s attempts to achieve this make for an episodic but engrossing story. A refusal to pass judgment and a palpable chemistry between the actors ensure that the film succeeds both as a fable about the pitfalls of rapid modernisiation, and as tough, unsentimental drama.

User reviews from imdb Author: movedout

Wang Quanan's fascinating film "Tuya's Marriage" is a quietly powerful story of female reverence, shot on location against the arresting landscapes of deepest Mongolia, with its immensely graceful protagonist being the prepossessing shepherdess Tuya (Nan Yu), caught between a marital loophole and the tightening grip of subsistence when she's forced to look for a new husband willing to take care of her young children and an invalid ex-husband. Austere and gorgeous, Wang's observations on the encroaching capitalism in a rural land so entrenched in tradition and its collective, scuttles from background to foreground when Tuya explores her options and their economic viability. Wisely eschewing a formal romanticism of the arena, Wang takes us deeper into the all-encompassing humanism of the film, when he chooses a cogitative docu-drama approach to the film, a striking reminder that a film's aesthetics are part of its ethos and message. Triumphing at the 2007 Berlinale with the festival's top prize, Wang delivers a film so complex and rich that it finds its tracts in the human capacity for compassion and sorrow.

User reviews from imdb Author: N.L. from Philly

Unlike the two faux documentaries which people now associate with Mongolian films, TUYA'S MARRIAGE is a well-acted, intricate and layered story about a strong young woman trying to hold her life together. Very like Gong Li in THE STORY OF QIU JU, Yu Nan plays Tuya, a stubborn and beautiful woman faced with an impossible predicament who must find her way through an onslaught of well-meaning (mostly) but ineffectual men to keep her family together. Tuya's affection for and loyalties to her disabled husband Bater are put to the test when she is forced to find a new husband in order to survive. All along the "obvious" choice, Shenge, her foolish but adorable neighbor, keeps trying to be the hero but falling on his face. Tuya must keep saving the men in her life from near disaster: Bater, Shenge (twice), and even her young son. The film becomes the romance/triangle of one woman and two men - much like JULES AND JIM or even FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (co-written by Wei Lu, who also co-wrote TUYA'S MARRIAGE). At the end of the film, her marriage includes both men, but immediately we see that she must continue saving them from themselves - and keeping everything and everybody together.

Slant Magazine [Nick Schager]

An ethnographic melodrama about the pressures facing contemporary Mongolians, Tuya's Marriage concerns the efforts of shepherd Tuya (Yu Nan) to find a new husband after she suffers a serious injury caused by labor strain that could potentially lead to paralysis. Given Tuya's beauty and impressive work ethic, she's soon inundated with suitors, yet the mother-of-two's devotion to her disabled husband, Bater (Bater), with whom she is determined to continue supporting even after finalizing their divorce, makes the process difficult. Chinese director Wang Quanan's film isn't particularly interested in surveying the historic customs and rituals of Inner Mongolians, but it does capture the backbreaking arduousness of their day-to-day life, which for Tuya involves herding her flock of sheep, lugging water 30 kilometers to her home from a half-finished well (the creation of which left Bater lame), and tending to her kids and incapacitated husband, all while contending with a friend named Senge (Senge) who's run ragged by his cheating wife and who not-so-secretly loves Tuya. In some of its characterizations and dilemmas (such as Tuya's attempt to make a go of it with a former classmate who callously ditches Bater at an urban nursing home), Tuya's Marriage can feel a tad overwritten, but in terms of its cultural and emotional portraits, the film's neo-realist authenticity is nonetheless striking. Much of this can be credited to the commanding Yu, whose wind-burned toughness and resoluteness are complemented by a burdensome combination of anger, loneliness, and sorrow. It's also, however, attributable to Wang's honest depiction of the struggles confronting Mongolians, a people who continue to survive thanks to a collective devotion to camaraderie and compassion, yet whose tradition-bound existence—slowly being suffocated into obsolescence by encroaching power lines, cities, and modern mores—is, as Tuya's exhausted marriage-day tears suggest, an increasingly grueling one to maintain.

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir]

From the barren yet beautiful landscape of the Inner Mongolian steppes comes this unlikely, passionate love story, and it's the best movie out this week, no matter how few of you are likely to heed my advice and check it out. Chinese director Wang Quanan's third feature (winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin last year) is a compact near-masterpiece that combines a slow-motion romantic comedy with a docudrama-style portrait of a remote, nomadic culture as it is gradually eroded by the tides of the 21st century.

At first you may fear one of those ethnography-as-fiction Asian films that are long on edifying detail but short on storytelling. Instead, Wang crafts a precise tragicomic circle that begins and ends with the same wedding scene, one whose bride, the lovely but tough-as-nails Mongolian herdswoman Tuya (Yu Nan), has fled in tears. In between those bookended scenes, we learn the complicated back story of Tuya's tears: She has divorced her disabled husband Batoer -- like most of the cast beyond Yu Nan, Batoer is a Mongolian non-actor performing under his own name -- although she still loves him, and has promised to marry the first man who will help her support him.

There's a dry, laconic vein of humor running beneath "Tuya's Marriage," alongside a current of mourning and regret. Shot by German cinematographer Lutz Reitemeier, it offers a series of haunting images that capture without commentary the slow decay of the nomadic lifestyle and the fragile quality of the Chinese state at its outermost edges. It won't precisely leave you rolling on the floor, but I found it a rich and rewarding tale on many levels. Tuya is courted by a number of unlikely suitors, arriving by camel or by tractor or by Mercedes-Benz, most of them understandably reluctant to lose face by keeping their new wife's ex around the house. This genuinely is a romantic comedy, to the extent that Tuya barely seems to notice the plucky, luckless Shenge, a dashing fellow whose own wife has run off with his new truck and a local official. Shenge is smitten with her and eager to please -- and he likes Batoer too (at least at first).

Although totally unknown in the West, Quan is one of the "Sixth Generation" Chinese filmmakers, occupying a slot on the wry-realism scale somewhere between his friend Jia Zhangke (another festival favorite with little Western audiences) and the far better-known Zhang Yimou. "Tuya's Marriage" has been criticized in some quarters because Quan shot the film in Mandarin rather than Mongolian (which the characters would more plausibly speak), but needless to say that detail didn't matter to me. Worth seeing in a theater if you get the chance, and a must for your Netflix list down the line. (Opens April 4 in New York and April 25 in Chicago, with other cities and DVD release to follow.)

Cinemattraction.com [Robert Levin]

The setting of inner Mongolia looms over Tuya’s Marriage, winner of the Golden Bear at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival. It shapes every facet of director Wang Quanan’s latest production and forcefully impacts the lives being depicted. There, a barren desert’s sand dunes stretch to the horizon, and survival remains a constant struggle. Nothing comes easy in such a harsh, sparsely populated environment. One of the great feats of Wang’s film is its evocation of just how starkly time can stop and material concerns melt away when one lives somewhere that demands a constant fear of the natural world and its wrath, in this case demonstrated by monumental sand storms and the overwhelming scarcity of water supplies.

Though the narrative advances slowly, Wang (who co-wrote the screenplay with Lu Wei) generates a real sense of the milieu’s particular rhythms. The film achieves a great deal of its impact by establishing the tumultuous, withdrawn setting and then subsequently depicting the steadfast, unavoidable encroachment of modernity and its destructive forces into the lives of the already overburdened characters. No mere cultural curiosity, the picture also tells a story rife with palpably universal emotions, and it’s anchored by what must be deemed an extraordinary lead performance.

Bookended with images of Tuya (Nan Yu) sobbing in a wedding dress, the film chronicles her struggle to support her crippled older husband Bater (the amateur actor’s real name) and young children by running their desert home. In addition to all the domestic handiwork she regularly journeys to and from the sole distant water source. When she suffers an injury and it becomes apparent that she can no longer keep up with the grueling schedule, Tuya and her husband determine it important that they divorce so that she can find someone to perform the requisite hard labor. Yet, to win her any suitor must acquiesce to her one inexorable condition: agree to house and support Bater as well.

To convey the story’s dramatic effect, Wang relies on long takes and extended moments of silence jarringly punctuated with intense bursts of emotion. There’s not a tremendous amount of dialogue, and the actors (most of whom – other than Yu – are first-timers) deliver what’s there in appropriately hushed, tired tones. Very often the filmmaker is content to let the landscape do the talking, and one shot of Tuya frantically searching for her son amidst a blinding, all-encompassing storm starkly conveys the source of the family’s desperation. Thematically, the screenplay presents a fairly devastating portrait of the physical and psychological costs of emasculation and the challenges of the forced reworking of conventional gender roles within the depicted society. It also evocatively parallels the primal nature of life in the desert with the equally insurmountable difficulties posed by the unforgiving facets of modern, bureaucratically controlled existence.

At the same time, beneath the unhurried exterior and its depictions of Tuya’s deceptively simple day-to-day routine, the movie negotiates a wealth of complex sentiments that constantly evolve in the characters. These brew so resolutely, and can be seen so clearly in the anguished faces at hand, that the periodic outbursts of feeling hold considerable power. In most movies, an extended scene in which an entire family sits and sobs would feel forced and melodramatic. Here, it organically emerges from the repressive constraints, and the profound frustrations, felt by Tuya and Bater. As the former, Nan ensures the success of Tuya’s Marriage by embracing the character’s conflicted nature and taking great pains to present as fully rounded a portrait as possible. She exudes the charisma one usually associates with a movie star. She makes the most restrained and inactive moments – the ones requiring the most patience and steadfast attentiveness – worth the effort.

Film Journal International (Maria Garcia)

 

Lucid Screening  Tram

 

Oggs' Movie Thoughts

 

Asia Pacific Arts [Ada Tseng]

 

BeyondHollywood.com  James Mudge

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk  Amber Wilkinson

 

The Village Voice [Ed Gonzalez]

 

Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips)

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Stephen Holden

 

Wang Tian-lin
 
THE GREATEST CIVIL WAR ON EARTH (Nan bei he)

Hong Kong  (108 mi)  1961

 

The Illuminated Lantern review [4/4]  Peter Nepstad

It's North vs. South, Mandarin vs. Cantonese. The local, Cantonese tailor Leung Sing-po suddenly finds himself in competition with a new tailor who has opened up next door and is a northerner, Liu Enjia. They immediately get off on the wrong foot. Liu entices customers in with slashed prices and higher commissions for the tour guides, crippling Leung's buisness. To make matters worse, the interloper has also rented rooms in the same flat that Leung's family lives in. Both are single fathers, raising a daughter of marriagable age and a grade school child each. The tension between the two tailors escalates until each are scheming the others downfall.

There are also some cross-cultural romances as well, as their daughters meet with boys and fall in love. But of course, each girl pairs off with their opposite, northern with southern, and vice versa. It's enough to drive their fathers mad.

This is a very funny movie. This kind of spiteful production often doesn't work, mainly because the characters are too cruel to each other to be very likable. Here, their conflicts are fairly mild, and played with such good humor that you can't help but laugh. Liu Enjia and Leung Sing-po, both portly gentlemen who always play father roles, steal the show and provide almost all the laughs. A priceless moment involves the two trying to drown each other out by singing Opera -- of course, Liu sings Beijing Opera while Leung sings Cantonese Opera (in a falsetto voice, no less).

The girls are charming as well, especially Christine Pai Lu-ming, falling for the shy but wealthy northerner Kelly Lei Chen. And Kitty Ting Hao plays an airline stewardess falling for a Cantonese salaryman. The younger generation doesn't find the cultural differences to be a big deal, while the older generation can't stop bickering over them.

This movie, written by Stephen Soong, is the first of a trilogy to include THE GREATEST WEDDING ON EARTH and THE GREATEST LOVE AFFAIR ON EARTH, both written by Eileen Chang. All three pit Liu Enjia and Leung Sing-po against each other, North vs. South. I'm not sure if this plot line wouldn't begin to wear thin after three movies, but it held up nicely through one. Quite popular on its first release, THE GREATEST CIVIL WAR ON EARTH should still find a receptive and delighted audience today. Change Northerner vs. Southerner to Beijing vs. Hong Kong, and it seems that nothing much has changed in the intervening years.

Romantic comedies of Cathay-MP&GI in the 1950s and 60s: language, locality, and urban character   Kenny K. K. Ng from Jump Cut, Spring 2007

 
THE GREATEST WEDDING ON EARTH (Nan bei yi jia qin)

Hong Kong  (103 mi)  1962

 

THE GREATEST LOVE AFFAIR ON EARTH (Nan bei xi xiang feng)

Hong Kong  1964

 

Romantic comedies of Cathay-MP&GI in the 1950s and 60s: language, locality, and urban character   Kenny K. K. Ng from Jump Cut, Spring 2007

 
Wang T’ung
 
THE STRAWMAN  (Dao Cao Ren)

Taiwan  (94 mi)  1987

User comments  from imdb Author: gmwhite from Brisbane, Australia

Strawman is a Taiwanese film set during the Second World War. At that time, Taiwan had been a Japanese colony for almost fifty years. Taiwanese men of fighting age had been recruited (or pressed) into the Japanese army, and as the Pacific War went the allies' way, Taiwan also became subject to bombing (albeit not as severely as Japan itself). In 'Strawman', this geopolitical situation is mediated through the lives of two brothers in the countryside, their family, and their village. The 'Strawman' of the title, an ineffective scarecrow, witnesses these changes in village life that the war brings.

- MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD - The two brothers, the main actors of the film, avoided the military draft due to eye problems provoked by their mother with this aim in mind. But even then, the family did not escape tragedy, for their sister become crazy after her husband was killed in action. Surrounded by a brood of children (one of whom is named 'Cowdung'), they attempt to feed themselves and their families, a task not helped by occasional requisitioning by Japanese overlords and collaborators.

During the course of the film, an elder brother returns to the village with his wife and two children. He has been quite successful in business in Japan, and intends to negotiate the sale of the fields he owns to a Japanese firm for use in sugar production. The contrast between these brothers and their families is skillfully shown, particularly as the poor local children are made to wait while for the leftovers from the guests' meal.

In the near vicinity there is also a bridge that is a target for American bombs, which leads to the main story in the second half of the film: what to do with an unexploded bomb? Since scrap metal was becoming a precious commodity for the war effort, the brothers decide to take it to the Japanese for a reward. The journey they make with the bomb, and with a local official in tow, is quite a humorous one, leading to a conclusion which is ultimately satisfying, though also amusing in a bittersweet way. END OF SPOILERS -

To simply call this film 'realistic' would be a little misleading. While reflecting genuine historical situations, it does so in a manner reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' 'magic realism'. The performances of the actors, old and young, greatly contribute to this effect. What better mode to show the effects of a destructive war on a village so directly affected by it, yet so alien to it in spirit, than through a lens that is both compassionate, yet has such an accurate eye for irony and the sheer ridiculous? It is easy to see why this film was acclaimed when released in 1987, and I am eager to watch the two other films in the director Wang Tung's 'Banana Trilogy': Banana Paradise, and The Hill of No Return.

BANANA PARADISE (Xiang jiao tian tang)

Taiwan  (116 mi)  1989

User comments  from imdb Author: gmwhite from Brisbane, Australia

'Banana Paradise' is the second film in the director Wang Tung's 'Taiwan Trilogy'. At two and a half hours, it is much longer than the first, 'Strawman', and also spans a much longer period of time, beginning with the last stages of the war on the mainland, moving to Taiwan through the 50's, then jumping forward to the late 80's for the last half hour.

***Detailed plot description follows***

The main character of the film is a young man called 'Door Latch', who is drafted into the KMT, and works in a theatrical propaganda unit. Following the illusion of Taiwan as being a 'land of milk and honey,' he and his friend Li Desheng eagerly move to Taiwan. However, it is not long before he and his friend are accused of being spies, and are beaten during interrogation (in scenes recalling the so-called 'White Terror'). When they escape, Desheng finds a job working on a banana plantation, in spite of quite humorous mutual incomprehension between himself and the Taiwanese-speaking natives. 'Door Latch' aids a woman (Yuexiang) whose husband is dying of tuberculosis, and she and her baby remain with him after her husband dies. 'Door Latch', in fact, takes on the identity of the husband, who was both older, and had also studied English. The identity papers held him in finding work, though as work translating English documents relating to American-built aircraft. Barely literate, this situation leads to a number of humorous situations, and it is quite surprising that he is able to survive at all.

Later, Door Latch receives a letter from Desheng, and goes to the banana plantation to meet him. Desheng, however, soon loses his mind, raving about their being spies everywhere. Door Latch will spend the rest of the film caring for him. Life goes on, the 'couple' stay together through many difficulties, serious and humorous involving work and neighbours, with Door Latch somehow muddling through his job. The baby grows up and starts school.

The scene then moves forward forty years to 1987. Door Latch (now played by a different actor) has moved up in the company and drinks excessively. Desheng is still there too, still demented and listening constantly to a small radio. Yuexiang's son has now graduated. Importantly, 1987 is year people are allowed to return to visit relatives on the mainland. Yuexiang's son decides to go and look for his grandparents, promising to phone so that his parents can speak with their Door Latch fears that his deception may thus unravel, and Yuexiang also makes an unexpected confession. The film ends with an emotional phone exchange between Door Latch and the father of the man whom Door Latch has replaced. As if speaking with him own father, he accused himself of being unfilial, and receives with tears the news of the death of other relatives.

***Detailed plot description ends***

Best described as a satire, this film combines elements of humour with commentary on the conditions in Taiwan in the late forties and fifties under Chiang Kai-shek's iron hand. It is interesting that both this film and Hou Hsiao Xien's 'City of Sadness', were released in the same year, since both allude to the 'White Terror' of 1947, when the KMT viciously pursued anyone suspected of anti-KMT tendencies. Their paranoia becomes that of the traumatised Desheng.

Other, less overtly political aspects of contemporary society are the language barrier between native Taiwanese and the new arrivals, the life of the native banana growers, and the support received from USA. In the background is also the disappointment of the war veterans in finding in Taiwan less than the paradise they had been led to expect. The moments of overt humour are often 'stand-alone' sections, usually involving Door-Latch muddling his way through a variety of situations, from early romantic adventures to arguments with neighbours or even a pocketful of coins. There are many such moments, which lighten the drama considerably, though not lessening the significance of the film's dramatic aspects. If anything, they round out the characters more, especially that of the never-say-die Door-Latch. There is plenty in the plot for a teary melodrama, but I think the satiric form adopted makes the film less manipulative, and humanises the characters more than would have been the case with a straightforward tear-jerker. The humour also contributes towards an enjoyable viewing experience, which is important for a film almost 150 minutes long.

The actors all acquit themselves well, especially the actor playing the persistently youthful Door-Latch. The direction of Wang Tung is unhurried and unobtrusive, which gives time for the humanity of the characters to infuse. I quite enjoyed this second instalment of the 'Taiwan Trilogy', and am looking forward to the last one, (the even longer) 'Hills of No Return'.

HILL OF NO RETURN (Wu yan de shan qiu)

Taiwan  (165 mi)  1992

 

User comments  from imdb Author: gmwhite from Brisbane, Australia

'Hill of No Return' is the third film in Wang Tung's 'Taiwan Trilogy'. It is a fable, recounted by an old man in the framing story. Set in the late twenties, it has to do with two brothers who leave their job as hired labourers and go to Chiu-Fen, a mining town, to work for the Japanese owners. (Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945).

Most of the action takes place in this mining town. The two brothers, Chu and Wei, find lodging with a widow with several young children. She is working as a prostitute to feed them all. Apart from the work of mining, there is also a brothel, through which seems to pass much gold smuggled out of the mines by the miners rather than handed over. There is a young Japanese lady, 'Fumiko', who works as a servant girl at the brothel, and with whom Wei is smitten. There is also a boy working there (a half-Japanese adopted son of the madam) who likes her, and who spends much of his time peddling pornographic puppets and cards to the miners.

Spread over three hours, various episodes, humorous and tragic take place. In contrast to the other two films in the trilogy, this one is much sadder, which is to be expected, since it is presented as a moral fable. In this tale that essentially revolves around the twin desires for fast money and instant pleasure, there are more 'downs' than 'ups'. The length of the film also allows plenty of time for the characters to emerge as fully rounded and believable people, with the nobility and weaknesses to be expected of human beings.

As with other films of Wang Tung, there is some stunning scenery. The Portuguese were right to call Taiwan 'Ilha Formosa', or 'Beautiful Isle'. The costuming was credibly done, and there was an interesting mix of languages spoken also, which must have been quite a problem historically with Japanese-speaking rulers and Chinese natives. The actors acquitted themselves well, particularly the brother madam and Chu, the elder brother.

In sum, this film brings the 'Taiwan Trilogy' of Wang Tung to a close with a long, but involving, cautionary tale which is of historical and human interest. Of the three films, it is the darkest, but not unbearably pessimistic. Life goes on. Though surrounded by greed and lust, there is still love, and hope. I'd recommend the whole trilogy to anyone interested in Taiwanese film, especially those interested in expanding their boundaries past Hou Hsiao Hsien, Edward Yang and Tsai Ming-liang. The films can be watched in any order, though I'm not sure if they are available with English subtitles (the copies I viewed contained only Chinese subtitles). These works of Wang Tung, of a consistently high quality, certainly deserve a wider audience.

Doc Films  A Time for Freedom:  Taiwanese Filmmakers in Transition, essay by Edo S. Choi and Paola Iovene, Spring (excerpt)

 

Even a brief overview of Taiwan cinema in the second half of the 20th century must take into account its multilingual context. The majority of films produced in Taiwan in the 1950s and early 1960s were in Taiwan's native Southern Min language, and represented locally popular genres such as opera films and romantic comedies. By the 1960s Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party, the sole ruling party since its ousting from the Mainland by Mao Zeodong's Communist Party, was aggressively enforcing the teaching of Mandarin in schools and the use of Mandarin in cinema and other media. Launched by the state-owned Central Motion Pictures Corporation (CMPC), so-called ``healthy realism'' became the dominant genre. Mostly set in rural Taiwan, these films imagined a harmonious agrarian society, a vision which was often well-received by local audiences, but also represented the ideological whitewash of a repressive government.

Pressured by foreign competition, mostly from the Hong Kong industry, CMPC sought to diversify their production, experimenting with costume melodramas, comedies, and musicals. Pai Ching-jui's romantic comedy The Bride and I (1968) well exemplifies this attempt to compete with glitzier foreign products by toning down ideological content. One of the highlights of this important filmmaker's career and a box office hit, this delightfully self-reflexive work calls attention to the constraints that both political and commercial demands imposed on filmmakers at the time, thus combining light comedy and veiled cultural critique.

With the death of Chiang Kai-shek and the diplomatic isolation that followed the 1971 UN decision to recognize the People's Republic of China, the 1970s marked a dim, claustrophobic period in Taiwanese history, where cookie-cutter escapism prevailed, mostly in the form of adaptations of popular romance novels. But by the 1980s, facing ever-increasing competition from Hong Kong and Hollywood, CMPC inaugurated a ``newcomer policy'' aimed at attracting new talent to the local film industry. This institutional support was crucial for the emergence of the New Taiwan Cinema, whose exponents were given carte blanche, as well as the full wealth of the company's subsidies. Economic imperatives had at last superseded political ones, as the Nationalist Party gradually lost its grip on the country's imagination.

 

Wang Tung established himself as a set designer before turning to directing in the early 1980s. Hill of No Return is the third of his ``nativist trilogy,'' which includes Strawman (1987) and Banana Paradise (1989). Telling the story of two poor men who join the gold rush at the time of Japanese colonial rule in the 1920s, the film is a bawdy working class romp, inventively mixing humorous elements into a melodramatic plot. Indeed, Wang's near burlesque use of caricature struck a compelling contrast to the reserved naturalism of most New Taiwan Cinema, and particularly to the increasing mannerism and austerity that Hou and Yang had cultivated in their historical projects.

 

When a mining town endures a gold rush at the height of the Japanese Occupation in the 1920s, two miners seek riches, only to fall in love in the process, one with a shunned widow, the other with a sick prostitute. The third installment in a trilogy of historical comedies dubbed the "Nativist Series" and directed by the important, if relatively obscure Wang Tung, Hill of No Return is a whimsical account of Taiwan's native proletariat, in contrast to Yang and Hou's more sober pictures, which concern the lives of displaced mainlanders and Taiwanese literati.

 
Wang, Wayne

 

Wayne Wang > Overview - AllMovie   bio from Hal Erickson

 

Wayne Wang - Filmbug  bio

 

The early brilliance of Wayne Wang. - By Hua Hsu - Slate Magazine  Hua Hsu from Slate, March 30, 2006

 

Wayne Wang, Bridging Generations and Hemispheres  Dennis Lim from The New York Times, September 12, 2008

 

ARTS, BRIEFLY; Wayne Wang Film to Open Online  Julie Bloom from The New York Times, September 12, 2008

A YouTube Opening for Wayne Wang’s New Film  S. James Snyder from Time magazine, September 17, 2008

"Wayne Wang's 'Princess' paves way on Internet"  G. Allen Johnson from The San Francisco Chronicle, October 18, 2008

 

"Fade to Black With Auteur Wayne Wang"  Elvis Mitchell interview from Asian Week, August 10 – 16, 2000

 

"“Wayne Wang Interview ""  Allan Tong interview from Exclaim, October 2007

Filmmaker Magazine | Director Interviews  Interview by Filmmaker magazine, September 19, 2008

10 Questions for Wayne Wang - TIME   Time magazine, October 23, 2008

 

Wayne Wang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

CHINESE BOX                                                        C+                   77

France  Japan  USA  (99 mi)  1997

 

A little seen film, probably due to its inconsistently muddled direction, set against the historic backdrop of Hong Kong’s 1997 transition from British colonial rule before being handed back over to the Chinese government, this movie is filled with Western perceived dire predictions of gloom and doom, as if the world would collapse and freedoms would be forever wiped away by a repressive Communist regime.  With Jeremy Irons as a British exile who works as a Western journalist in Hong Kong, where he’s in love with the city and doesn’t really know why, seemingly caught up in a romantic notion of nostalgia, his self-absorbed character and cynical personal outlook couldn’t be more morose, filled with a dour tone whose negativity all but ruins this movie, as he narrates the film so his weary point of view is in nearly every shot.  The city itself looks terrific with its vibrant street life filled with hawkers and vendors, the glow of its modern night clubs and bars, and its scenic harbor teeming with activity.  What attracted me to this film were the actresses Gong Li and Maggie Cheung, a highlight to any movie, and both are fabulous.  Li is a former high class call girl now living with a successful Hong Kong entrepreneur, but due to her past, it’s unlikely he could ever marry her, as she would simply not be accepted into high society.  Irons has an eye on her as well, thinking she’s the most beautiful woman in Hong Kong, and proposes that they run away together, but she remains cool to the idea, which sends Irons into a tailspin of despair.  In a parallel story, while walking the streets filming whatever he sees on his camcorder, he discovers Maggie Cheung, whose brash sense of independence catches his eye, as she hawks bootleg videos and canned Hong Kong air before the transition for $5 dollars – a bargain.  But she also has a scar on one side of her face and he asks to interview her, but she’s not interested.  Though later she changes her mind, asking for money, and she videos her own interview, though never unearthing any real secrets about herself.  Her intrigue factor, however, remains high.

 

Wang was born in Hong Kong but has been living in the U.S since he was 17, returning briefly to Hong Kong to work in television until the late 70’s when he returned to make films in San Francisco.  His absence is noticeable, as the film has an awkward and decidedly visitor’s feel, not really in tune with the rhythm of the Chinese living there, much of which is separated by the use of English language, where one of the writers is Jean-Claude Carrière, who wrote Buñuel’s BELLE DE JOUR (1967) and THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972), yet there are distinct scenes that are obviously improvised, such as the appearance of Rubén Blades, Panamanian salsa sensation, as Irons’ photo-journalist friend who is down on his luck, also encountering some female difficulty of his own, so Blades moves in temporarily and the two commiserate about their troubles by getting drunk.  Blades does manage to sing a song while Gong Li, in perhaps the sequence of the film, mimics Marlene Dietrich singing “Black Market” while watching Billy Wilder’s A FOREIGN AFFAIR (1948) on television, which is a brilliant cross cultural expression.  Li has difficulty with English and learns her lines phonetically, as she did in Michael Mann’s MIAMI VICE (2006) as well, which made it difficult for her to deal with Irons preferred mode of improvisation, so the two never develop much chemistry together.  Irons causes a horrible scene in public meant to pay back Li for the hurt she was causing him, but the viciousness of his personal attacks reveal an unseemly side to his character.  To make matters worse, just as we’re developing zero sympathy for the guy, he develops such a severe case of leukemia that he has only a few months left to live, which changes his entire outlook, as he can no longer hope for the future, but must accept conditions as they are, an obvious parallel to the British view of the governmental turnover, as it too is coming to an end.  Actually, all the characters become highly symbolic pieces of the puzzle, as Cheung’s free wheeling flexibility is a perfect match for Hong Kong’s economic future, while Li has to forget her past in order to create a new life, very emblematic of the Chinese view.   Despite having free access to Hong Kong during the last 6 months prior to the conversion, the film doesn’t really gel, but the performances of Maggie Cheung and Gong Li at the height of their dramatic appeal are definitely worth seeing, along with the documentary style footage of Hong Kong itself, including the actual ceremonies where it was officially handed back to China after 156 years of British sovereignty.    

 

Time Out review  Tony Rayns

 

Designed to reflect the 'drama' of the hand over of Hong Kong, Wang's semi-improvised movie was partly scuppered by the fact that nothing striking happened when China reclaimed its 'Special Administrative Region' on 1 July 1997. But it's hard to imagine that the film would have worked out better if there'd been riots on the streets, despite the big names (Theroux, Carrière) on the credits. Irons plays a foreign correspondent dying in synch with the British administration, obsessed with both Gong Li (manager of a chic bar/cheap hooker - evidently representing China) and Maggie Cheung (a go-getting hustler - evidently representing the confused spirit of HK). Ludicrously contrived incidents are garnished with desultory dialogue; the underlying prostitution and slaughterhouse metaphors were wrung dry last time Wang tackled the city of his birth, in Life Is Cheap. Maybe Wang has lived too long in California; the average tourist with a camcorder would see the city more clearly than this.

 

Philadelphia City Paper (Sam Adams) review  also:  See Adams' interview with Wayne Wang

 

Set in Hong Kong during the transition from British to Chinese rule, Chinese Box represents a breakthrough for director Wayne Wang. Wang's previous movies have often been stilted and distant, but the lessons he learned from the improvised, shoot-from-the-hip Blue in the Face seem to have stuck; Chinese Box has a fluid grace which belies its quasi-allegorical structure. Jeremy Irons plays a Western journalist who learns he is dying as the turnover approaches, leaving him with little time to resolve his long-standing unrequited love for Gong Li, a bar owner with a disreputable past which prevents her from marrying the man she loves (Michael Hui). Irons takes to the streets, video camera in hand, trying to document the life of a streetwise urchin (Maggie Cheung) with a heartbreak in her past as well. But although he pays her to tell her story, Cheung turns the tables, fabricating her own history, and Irons' attempts to rectify her past mistakes turn out no better than his attempt to resolve his own problems. As its title suggests, Chinese Box is a multilayered, shifting tale of marginal figures and unresolvable doubts in the "great big department store" of Hong Kong.

 

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]

 

Jeremy Irons plays a gaunt, seriously ailing European (again), who, in the waning days of Britain's lease on Hong Kong, is forced to confront his unresolved romantic feelings for a Chinese friend (Gong Li). Irons, however, must also deal with secrets from Li's past, as well as her current relationship with prosperous businessman Michael Hui. If you think Chinese Box sounds like a heavy-handed political allegory, you're right, but that doesn't make it a bad film. The script—by Jean-Claude Carriere (a former collaborator of Luis Buñuel and Louis Malle) and Larry Gross (48 Hours) from a story by Carriere, Paul Theroux, and director Wayne Wang (Chan Is Missing, The Joy Luck Club, Smoke)—is a nice mix of slow-paced, New Wave-inspired, metaphor-rich wandering and more conventional drama. The many documentary-like scenes of Irons wandering the streets of his adopted city with a video camera, attempting to capture the strange mix of colony and mystery he's grown to love, are often fascinating, as is a subplot involving the excellent Maggie Cheung as a badly scarred, intensely guarded, aggressively hucksterish street vendor. Though it's not incredibly engaging—it works better on a symbolic level than a dramatic one—Chinese Box does an excellent job capturing a unique, odd moment in history.

 

Dragan Antulov review [4/10]

 

In today's world filmmakers tend not to deal with important political and economic events as they happen. This is partly because those events usually catch filmmakers by surprise and by the time production starts the events cease to be that relevant. There are very few occasions when events of such nature allow filmmakers to prepare in advance. One of such golden opportunities was British handover of Hongkong to China, which is the subject of CHINESE BOX, 1997 drama directed by Wayne Wang.

 

The film starts in Hong Kong on New Years Eve of 1997. While most people celebrate, some of Hong Kong citizens are so anxious over the upcoming handover to Communists that they express their feelings by public suicide. John (played by Jeremy Irons), business reporter and British expatriate, is troubled by more prosaic things – his unrequited love towards Vivian (played by Gong Li), beautiful Chinese bar hostess and former prostitute. Vivian is supported by Chang (played by Michael Hui), her old but rich lover. As the handover approaches, John spends time wandering through the streets of Hong Kong and meets Jean (played by Maggie Cheung), street vendor with the scarred face and tragic past. While Vivian slowly realises that her boyfriend would never marry a former prostitute, John receives some really bad news - he suffers from rare form of leukaemia and has only months to live. John starts wondering whether he should be able to see the handover and whether he should confess his love to Vivian. Wayne Wang, Hollywood veteran born in Hong Kong, has returned to his home town to make a film about one of the most important events of its history. In SMOKE Wang showed how well he could bring the spirit of certain place on screen and how even seemingly banal characters and situations can provide powerful drama. In case of CHINESE BOX importance of the occasion and director's lack of objectivity proved to be counterproductive for film. The script by Larry Gross and Jean-Claude Carriere meanders between attempts to show what the handover would actually mean for people of Hong Kong, Oriental version of DEATH IN VENICE and cheap melodrama. Wang's talent with actors is of little help, because the main characters are less human beings and more a symbols in political drama - John is vanishing British Empire, Vivian is People's Republic of China while Jean is supposed to symbolise Hong Kong's vitality. This heavy symbolism sucks the drama out of CHINESE BOX and the flat performance by Jeremy Irons doesn't help either. Stunning Chinese diva Gong Li and Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung are more than impressive in their roles, but their efforts can't make this film anything more than merely watchable. The music by Graeme Revell is often irritating and by the time handover happens, the audience would be glad it is all over. CHINESE BOX is good example how combination good talents, good intentions and golden opportunities don't always end in good films.

 

Images (Wena Poon) review

 

Film Journal International (Peter Henné) review

 

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [2.5/4]

 

Film Scouts (Jason Gorber) capsule review

 

Harvey S. Karten review

 

James Bowman review

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Dan Heaton) dvd review

 

DVD Town (Yunda Eddie Feng) dvd review  Signature Series

 

Film Freak Central dvd review [Incls. Life is Cheap...but Toilet Paper is Expensive] [Signature Series]  Walter Chaw

 

DVD Talk (Jason Bovberg) dvd review [1/5]

 

DVD Verdict (Aaron Bossig) dvd review [Signature Series]

 

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review

 

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [3/4]

 

Apollo Movie Guide [Rob MacDonald]

 

Movie Magazine International review  Andrea Chase

 

Entertainment Weekly review [B]  Lisa Schwarzbaum

 

Variety (David Rooney) review

 

The Boston Phoenix review  Tom Meek

 

Austin Chronicle (Russell Smith) review [2.5/5]

 

San Francisco Examiner (G. Allen Johnson) review

 

San Francisco Chronicle (Edward Guthmann) review

 

Los Angeles Times (Kevin Thomas) review

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3/4]

 

The New York Times (Stephen Holden) review

 

ANYWHERE BUT HERE

USA  (114 mi)  1999

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Anywhere But Here (1999)  Charlotte O'Sullivan from Sight and Sound, January 2000

Tired of life in Wisconsin, Adele August decides she and her 14-year-old daughter Ann should move to Los Angeles. There, Adele gets a job but doesn't earn enough for the lifestyle she covets. Ann settles into school but still misses her favourite cousin Benny, and finds her mother's mood swings difficult to cope with. Benny visits. Josh, a handsome dentist, calls for a date and he and Adele sleep together. When he fails to ring again, Adele becomes obsessed with him. Benny is killed in a car accident. After a trip home for the funeral, Adele quits her job and spirals into depression.

Shortly afterwards, Adele sneaks into an audition she has strong-armed Ann into attending, only to see Ann mimicking her. The pair row. Ann contacts her father; he's mistrustful and unenthusiastic. Despite their precarious economic situation, Ann's relationship with a boy at her school begins to flourish. In the meantime, her mother has found a new job and acquired a new suitor. Ann is accepted by a college on the East Coast but doesn't have enough money to go. Adele sells her beloved car, and gives the money to Ann.

Review

In-the-name-of-the-daughter movies form a genre all of their own. From such grimly fiendish noirs as Stella Dallas (1937) and Mildred Pierce (1945) to soupy, semi-comedic dramas like Terms of Endearment and Postcards from the Edge, all have at their centre a maniacally aspirational mother whose attempts to control her daughter create an emotional competition between them. The energy it requires to manage the daughter's economic and sexual well-being invariably endows the mother with a vitality that makes her seem socially vulgar, oversexed, but most important of all, alive. However virtuous or demonic, the daughter is destined to play second fiddle. Smoke director Wayne Wang is clearly familiar with this type of woman's picture (there's a direct reference to Terms of Endearment). Keeping the novel's first-person narration - encouraging us to believe the daughter Ann's version of events is the definitive one - he seems keen to redress the balance in her favour.

This version can be reduced to a simple formula: daughter capable and desirable, mother incompetent, dishonest, superficial, jealous, hysterical and pitiful. A few scenes surprise us - such as the one where Ann's mother Adele admits she can't "cope" with going to the posh Christmas party she had previously angled an invite for. It's like a car alarm being switched off. In the horrible ensuing quiet Susan Sarandon's familiar beat-up eyes and toffee-ice-cream voice appear too vulnerable for her suddenly small body and you long for the protective high volume to be restored. Most of the time you see her being knocked back; here we discover how she behaves when she's welcomed. You don't pity her, but for the first time you understand her. Such glimpses of Adele's hidden life are all-too rare. Like the gruff, paternal traffic cop whom mother and daughter meet on Christmas Day, we're asked instead to chuckle and roll our eyes at Adele's eccentricities. There's nothing seriously wrong with her; she just needs to listen to more of the 'good' men in her life. When at the end of the film the cop tells Adele to do right by her daughter, she does.

Sarandon can't transform this kind of fluff into drama, but it's Natalie Portman you feel really sorry for. There's nothing for her to do here. Ann is your typical American success story - a naturally 'classy' individual who resists her mother's attempts to twist the truth. She also overcomes all obstacles in her path, inspiring admiration wherever she goes. Her one rejection - from her father - can be blamed on her mother. Prickly and suspicious when she rings him, dad is unable to separate the two women in his mind - something the film achieves all too easily. As the tag line says, this is a story about a mother who knows best, and a daughter who knows better.

The trouble with this kind of wish-fulfilment is that it's excluding. The film wants us to love Ann but also to envy her and the two sit together uneasily. It's impossible to take Adele seriously, but that doesn't mean you identify with Ann. In fact, by the time she's being waved off at the airport to her brilliant future ("I love you", "I love you too, sweetie"), you may, like me, be praying for a plane crash.

Adele's sacrificing of her car is the last straw. Ann mentions dreams in which she cuts off her mother's feet. In giving up her car - her mobility - it's as if Adele cuts off her own feet. In Stella Dallas we're allowed to wonder at the world Barbara Stanwyck's daughter has been fed into. This film sheds no such ambiguous light on a privileged East Coast education. Adele's self-sacrifice, in other words, gets the full thumbs-up.

Mildred Pierce and Stella Dallas' camp melodrama can of course be improved upon, but Wang and his particular brand of schmaltz prove unequal to the task. As the credits roll, Ann says of Adele, "When she dies, the world will be flat." In its eagerness to give voice to the overshadowed daughter, the film never allows the mother to live. Flat is precisely the word one would use to describe this.

THE CENTER OF THE WORLD             C                     74
USA  (88 mi)  2001

 

The Center of the World  David Denby from The New Yorker

 

Explicit, eyeglass-fogging sexual games from the director Wayne Wang. A nerdy, rich Silicon Valley computer engineer, Richard (Peter Sarsgaard), pays the beautiful freckle-faced stripper Florence (Molly Parker) to accompany him to Las Vegas for a three-day weekend. She agrees but with many conditions (no kissing on the lips, no penetration, strictly limited business hours). Richard is paying, but he wants feeling and emotion; Florence wants nothing but control. The movie, shot with a handheld digital camera, has a dreamy surface and the aura of a reverie, but there's also a bit of suspense floating in the erotic cloud: will Richard get Florence to respond to him? A friend of Florence's named Jerri (Carla Gugino), who is her opposite in every way—dark, fleshy, needy—threatens to take the movie to a dangerous place, but she storms off, leaving the two inarticulate principals to mop up. Written by Ellen Benjamin Wong, working from a story by Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, Miranda July, and Wang. 

 
BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE                      B+                   90
USA  (106 mi)  2005
 
What an interesting mix here, a Hong Kong-born Chinese man directs a Joan Singleton adaptation of Kate DeMillo’s Newberry award winning children’s book, and creates a surprisingly accurate look at small town life in the American South.
 
A loving, tender portrait of a lonely ten-year old girl ( AnnaSophia Robb) living in a small town in Florida with her Baptist preacher father, Jeff Daniel, always moving from town to town, inexplicably (to her) abandoned by her mother at age 3, so she feels she has no friends at all.  She finds a stray dog making a mess of things while running loose in the local Winn-Dixie supermarket, and decides to make it her own.  Despite her father’s best attempts to impound the dog, she draws a line in the sand at taking away the only friend she has.  Slowly, with the help of the eager, friendly nature of her dog, she meets some of the other lonely hearts in town, a gentle pet store clerk with a prison record, Dave Matthews, who likes to take the animals out of their cages and play them music, a spinster librarian, Eva Marie Saint, who tells stories and offers candy that contains both sweetness and sorrow at the same time, and a wise old backwoods recluse that other kids think is a witch, Cicely Tyson, who is nearly blind and shows her the tree of bottles, where she hung a bottle from a tree every time she did something wrong, so of course, she decides to throw a party and invite all her new friends, including a couple of boys who constantly pick on her, with perhaps predictable results, but the film felt very believable, and most of it was delightful. 
 
Of interest, when Eva and I were sitting in the theater, a mom and her 4 kids were sitting in front of us, and we sat behind them, no one else was in the theater.  After the trailers finished, where Eva was enchanted by the ICE PRINCESS (2005) trailer, just before the actual film started, a trail of kids started to enter the theater single file, all sitting behind us at first, but more kept coming in, and kids would get stuck in the rows with no more room, with adults yelling out for them to be quiet, but they filled every available seat in the entire theater except for the very front row – all kids on an afternoon field trip – and from what I could tell, few were disappointed.  It was amazing that all the kid’s energy, the sound of lips smacking, eating candy and popcorn, some discreet enough to whisper, but most talking outright to the screen, some obviously read the book, as they were shouting out what happened “before” it happened, all this added to the utter enjoyment of this film experience, as while the tone overall can be sad, it also contains elements of magical realism and obviously targets the lives of children, and while sweet, I found it authentic and genuine, not afraid to take on real subjects, like alcoholism, with wonderful themes of forgiveness, grace, tolerance, and hope, filmed in Thibodaux and Napoleonville, Louisiana. 
 
Note - Shortly after this movie came out, the supermarket chain Winn-Dixie filed for bankruptcy and closed most of its stores throughout the country.
 
A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS              B-                    82

USA  (83 mi)  2007

 

A quiet, unsettling film that is defined by emotional distance and detachment, that can be uncomfortable for the viewer due to what feels like an unbridgeable gulf.  Adapted from a collection of short stories by Yiyun Li, a Chinese-American who pits the two cultures against one another in a seemingly disinterested manner, where Henry O plays the Chinese father from Beijing, an old-school communist who maintains a proud and dignified air despite his limited grasp of English, continually jotting down notes in his notepad while he is visiting his daughter in America, Faye Yu, a well-educated and independent minded woman who works in the seemingly impenetrable law library at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.  While Henry O is an aging widower and his daughter recently divorced, it’s nearly impossible to pry any emotional information from his daughter who largely avoids him, refusing to confide in him or engage in any personal discussions, claiming she doesn’t have time, that she’s too busy from her job, yet we see her off to the movies alone at nights enjoying an evening away from him.   

 

A sincere film that perhaps stumbles with its overall simplicity, the film is a cinematic essay of immigrant miscommunication on both ends of the world, where during the day Henry wanders to a nearby park bench where he meets an Iranian woman.  Both speak in their primary language most of the time, wisely unsubtitled, with only occasional English words thrown in, yet they develop feelings of mutual friendship and trust simply because they have no one else who pays attention to them in their lives.  Henry prepares visual feasts for dinner at night, but they eat in total silence as his daughter barely picks at anything and is annoyed when he constantly urges her to eat more.  She remains noncommittal and appears to bear a grudge against him, as if he didn’t play a large enough part of her life growing up.  Her tone is one of hostile passivity, while the inquisitive father gently prods his daughter about one thing or another, which only increases her resentment. 

 

There are a few clever visual cues, such as the opening and closing bookend sequences.  More impressive is the father revealing a personal story about his family history, which remains ambiguous to the audience, as he and his daughter are in different rooms as he speaks, separated by a single wall, where we’re not sure if this split screen image is happening at the same time period, as at one point during his confession she gathers her coat and exits, leaving behind the image of an empty chair.  Mostly there’s an unfilled emptiness that pervades every frame of the film, where the characters, like puppets, are moving parts striving to be human.  Using extended wordless sequences and a propensity for untranslated words, we’re left with a vague impression of what it’s like getting old, feeling disconnected to your past which is long gone and unconnected to your own children, feeling useless and alone.  Henry’s attempts to connect with his daughter are fairly gentle and benign, but she shows little interest, as it turns out he spends more time talking to total strangers who will listen to him rather than to his own family who won’t.   

 

Time Out New York (Joshua Land) review [4/6]

Both culturally specific and achingly universal, Wayne Wang’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers contemplates the ravages of time and distance—physical, emotional and cultural—on a parent-child relationship. Mr. Shi (Henry O), a retired Chinese widower, comes to visit daughter Yilan (Yu) in the U.S. following her recent divorce, only to find that she has no time for him. Left to his own devices during the days, Shi rummages through his daughter’s things, seeking clues to her new self, and strikes up a friendship with a Farsi-speaking neighbor (Ghahremani) who turns out to have family issues of her own.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers plays up the contrast between the old man’s active curiosity and his daughter’s passionless life-on-autopilot, reflected in the spare, impersonal decor of her apartment (which Shi promptly spruces up with a Chinese door hanging). When the inevitable father-daughter showdown arrives, China’s Cultural Revolution emerges as a vanishing point for the characters’ emotional inhibitions, but Wang’s film doubles as a commentary on the emptiness of the West. Far from struggling with the classic immigrant-story dilemma of assimilation, Yilan, at least until her father’s reappearance, seems to have left China behind entirely; in a sense, the spiritual aridity of her life is a sign of how thoroughly Westernized she already is.

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review

After years of maneuvering the Hollywood waters with variable results, San Francisco director Wayne Wang returns to the low-budget Chinese-American subjects that initially brought him success. His new A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is a refreshingly small, delicate picture about a father, Mr. Shi (Henry O), who comes to the United States to visit his grown, divorced daughter Yilan (Faye Yu). From the moment they meet in the airport, their behavior indicates a troubled history. This leads to strained conversations in her home, or silence. (She retreats to the kitchen to cook, and seems taken aback when he joins her.) Mr. Shi takes to cooking all the meals in Yilan's apartment, but she keeps finding bigger excuses for staying away. Meanwhile, Mr. Shi explores his surroundings and befriends an Iranian woman in a local park (they converse in broken English). Shi enjoys many such conversations with several locals -- including one with a hot, blonde bikini girl -- while Yilan seems more closed-off. She only speaks honestly to her lover, a married Russian man, and even then she seems lost and frustrated. Wang presents all this with an Ozu-like intimacy and smallness, focusing on still shots held a medium distance. The point is that, despite all the newly mixed cultures of the world and all the various languages and accents, communication is never a given. But Wang never hammers anything home; he allows his story to unfold rather than forcing it. Wang has directed a second feature, also based on short stories by Yiyun Li, but The Princess of Nebraska will make its debut October 17 on -- of all places -- YouTube. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers opens this week in theaters.

Cinematical (Kim Voynar) review

Meticulously paced and beautifully shot, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers brings us into the life of Mr. Shi (Henry Q) at the moment he walks into a train station in Spokane, Washington, where he is greeted with seeming lack of affection by his adult daugher, Yilan (Faye Yu). Director Wayne Wang, getting back into indie film after making films like Maid in Manhattan and Because of Winn-Dixie, has made a lovely film here about the often complicated relationship between fathers and their adult daughters. The film, adapted by Yiyun Li for the screen from her short story of the same name, has much in it that was written specifically about this dynamic in Chinese families, but most anyone watching the film will find something to relate to in the interactions between Mr. Shi and his daughter.

Mr. Shi has come to Spokane to stay with his Yilan, to help her through the aftermath of a divorce. He is simultaneously overprotective and uncertain, and his presence in her spartan apartment very clearly makes Yilan uncomfortable. He's like a family knick-knack sent by a well-meaning great-aunt -- he's out of place in his daughter's apartment and her life, but because he's her father, she can't just toss him away. He fumbles about, trying to help his daughter in the only way he knows how, by cooking Chinese food for her. Abundantly. (Don't go see this film if you're hungry, you'll be craving the nearest Chinese buffet by the time it's over.)

Is there an adult daughter anywhere who doesn't have some unresolved issues with her father? Yilan, who was closer to her now-deceased mother throughout her childhood, is uncertain how to deal with his intrustion into her life. His close proximity and hovering over her start to bring out deeply held resentments in Yilan, who must decide whether to confront her father with truths she knows but has never spoken about.

The film moves as slowly as Mr. Shi's long days alone in his daughter's apartment while she works and stays out late. Once he's papered over the stove backsplash with newspaper to protect it from wok grease-splatter, played with Yilan's Russian matrioshka nested dolls, and rifled through her bills and bank statements, there's not much left to do besides explore the world outside Yilan's apartment. A trip down to the pool nets meeting a ditzy blond in a teeny bikini; that frightens Mr. Shi enough to keep him far away from the pool after that. At the park he meets Madam, an older Iranian lady who lives with her adult son and his wife.

There's a well-placed thread about communication woven throughout the film: Mr Shi and Madam do not share a common language -- he speaks Chinese, she speaks Farsi, they both speak a very little, very broken, English. Yet they are able to communicate and understand each other more than Mr. Shi and his own daughter. Wang underscores this point by not subtitling the scenes between Mr. Shi and Madam -- you don't need the subtitles to get the gist of what they're saying. When Mr. Shi learns about the Russian man his daughter is seeing, she reveals to him that part of what led her to have an affair with him is that she could talk to him -- really talk -- in English, whereas with her husband, with whom she spoke Chinese, she couldn't communicate. Yilan tells her father that speaking in a different language than your own allows you to become a different person.

The cinematography is as precise and spare as the communication between this father and daughter throughout the film. Cinematographer Patrick Lindenmaier has executed each moment to perfection -- every shot is lined up just so, with careful thought given to little details like the placement of a wall in a scene, a recurrent visual element that serves to underline the deep lack of communication between Mr. Shi and Yilan. The music in the film is just as decisive as the shots -- every note carefully placed to enhance the scene (the score actually reminded me a lot of the score for Tony Takatani, another lovely film that moved along at a pace all its own).

The overall effect of the film is soothing, thoughtful, and deeply introspective. The quiet moments give you plenty of time and headspace to ponder the specifics of great filmmaking that sometimes get lost -- the angle of a shot, the perfect ray of sunlight through a window, the shadow across a face, the timepiece precision of single piano notes marking the passage of time. Fast-paced action flicks keep you on the edge of your seat; Wang seats you in a comfortable chair in the perfect corner and invites you to enjoy the scenery and the carefully wrought story of the two people before you. And it's a lovely ride.

Cinemattraction.com [Maggie Glass]

 

Wayne Wang's “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” - IndieWire  Leo Goldsmith

 

The Onion A.V. Club review  Tasha Robinson

 

Movies into Film.com (N.P. Thompson) review

 

Slant Magazine [Nick Schager]

 

Wayne Wang isn't missing - Salon.com  Andrew O’Hehir, which includes an interview with the director, September 19, 2008

 

Eye for Film (George Williamson) review [3.5/5]

 

The New York Sun (Meghan Keane) review

 

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers  Patrick McGavin at Toronto from Screendaily

 

The Village Voice [Aaron Hillis]

 

Variety.com [Todd McCarthy]

 

Los Angeles Times (Kevin Thomas) review

 

San Francisco Chronicle (Reyhan Harmanci) review

 

Chicago Tribune (Kevin Thomas) review

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3.5/4]

 

The New York Times review  Nathan Lee

 

Hong Kong-born director Wayne Wang's "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" won the best film and best actor awards at San Sebastian   Fest 21, September 30, 2007

 

Wayne Wang honored at Asian film festival  Ruthe Stein from The San Francisco Chronicle, March 15, 2008

 

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Wang Xiaoshuai

 

Wang Xiaoshuai • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Dror Kochan from Senses of Cinema, October 5, 2003

 

Riding Towards the Future: Wang Xiaoshuai's Beijing Bicycle by Elizabeth Wright

 

FROZEN (Jidu hanleng)

China  (99 mi)  1997

 

Frozen  Tony Rayns from Time Out London

Shot in 1994 and reflecting the dark mood in Beijing's 'underground' art circles at that time, this was an independent production - hence illegal in the eyes of the Film Bureau. The subsequent outlawing of unauthorised film-making in China forced the director to hide behind the pseudonym 'Wu Ming' (No Name). A young performance artist decides to trump the nihilism and self-destructive theatrics prevailing among the avant-garde crowd by staging a series of four symbolic deaths for himself, each coinciding with an equinox. He appears to die during the last, frozen to death on midsummer's day. But this 'death' was as much a fake as the others. A wry, semi-detached narration expresses a precise ambivalence about the protagonist and his friends, mocking their pretensions but respecting their helpless feelings of impotence in the China of the 1990s.

Nitrate Online (Capsule)  Eddie Cockrell

Frozen is a passionate cry for artistic freedom from a culture of repression: since July 1, 1996, it has been illegal to make unauthorized independent films in China, and the rushes from this surreptitiously filmed feature (shot in 1994) were smuggled out of the country and assembled by director Wu Ming with support provided by the Hubert Bals fund in Holland. Never heard of Wu Ming? That’s according to plan; it’s a pseudonym meaning “no name” that has been adopted by the established Sixth Generation filmmaker to avoid reprisals (“I have responsibilities,” the director explained to a western critic in 1997). A brooding, handsome performance artist prominent in the avant garde scene of contemporary Beijing, Qi Lei (Jia Hongshen) decides to create four performances over the next year, symbolic suicides to mark the equinoxes. All will be faked save the final “ice burial” on the first day of summer, during which the increasingly depressed Qi Lei intends to die. Reactions vary, from the despondency of his girlfriend Shao Yun (Ma Xiaquing) to the tart disapproval of his sister (Bai Yu) and the opportunism of his wisecracking brother-in-law (Li Geng). Only Qi Leng’s mentor, the art critic Lau Ling (Zhang Yongning) -- Shao Yun’s ex-lover -- seems at peace with the decision. Frozen leavens its message with jagged flashes of social humor, often at the expense of Qui Lei’s colleagues Long Haired Guy (Wei Ye) and Bald Guy (Bai Yefu). Even the title carries a double meaning -- cultural stagnation leads to personal tragedy -- that serves to enhance the deadly serious message of this singular film.

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

Made outside the official Chinese production system, where directors tend to cloak their subversive political ideas in period garments, Frozen delivers its most potent statement simply by virtue of its existence. Though unsanctioned films are strictly forbidden in China, director Wu Ming (a pseudonym that translates "no name") used guerrilla-style shooting tactics to prove that the counterculture spirit behind Tiananmen Square hasn't died out. His/her efforts are successful on that front, if only for revealing a thriving avant-garde scene in contemporary Beijing, but perhaps it's unfair to hope for a more coherent or substantive treatment of the film's provocative subject matter. Based on a true story, Frozen concerns a young artist (Jia Hongshen) who invests his despair in a series of performances that will end with his own suicide. Ignoring the pleas of family and friends, he stages an "Ice Burial" by melting huge chunks of ice against his body until he finally succumbs to hypothermia. Fascinated by death and disillusioned with life, he wants his defiant act of self-sacrifice to draw attention and controversy but, in a final irony, it may turn out to be meaningless. Like the recent Windhorse, a similarly clandestine production about Tibetan oppression, Frozen's admirable political courage tends to undermine its artistic success. A better director might have drawn more from the avant-garde community—though there's one great scene in which Jia's colleagues eat a bar of soap to signify their "revulsion"—or explored the impenetrable, glassy-eyed ennui that seems to grip most of its members. On the other hand, that kind of subtlety and depth is probably a negligible concern for a film that's about going to extremes just to get a point across.

Frozen Dan Lopez from digitallyOBSESSED

 

DVD Verdict  Dean Roddey

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Anita Gates

 
SO CLOSE TO PARADISE                       B                     89
China  (93 mi)  1999

 

So Close to Paradise Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out ...  Tony Rayns

Shot in 1995 but shelved by its producers until it could pass the censors, this was Wang's first 'legal' film after two underground features, The Days and the pseudonymous Frozen. Two country hicks in Wuhan, the notoriously sleazy city on the Yangtze, get tangled up with karaoke bar hostess Ruan (Wang), advertised as being 'from Vietnam' (that is, sexually available), but actually the mistress of a local triad boss. The elder guy, Gao Ping (Guo), becomes her lover while trying to use her to get to a triad thug who has tricked him. Their doomed relationship is seen through the eyes of the other guy Dongzi (Shi), a 'shoulder pole' labourer in the docks, who delivers a typical Wang Xiaoshuai voice-over wryly looking back on these events from some point in the future. An accomplished piece of neo-urban realism with noir inflections, but it doesn't have the resonances of Wang's earlier films.

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

Produced outside the official Chinese production system, Wang Xiaoshuai's last film, 1996's Frozen, was such a subversive statement about government oppression that the director credit reads "Wu Ming," a pseudonym that translates "Nobody." In spite of the censorship controversy that kept it on the shelf for three years, So Close To Paradise comes complete with a credit for Wang, but in this case, the pseudonym seems regrettably apropos. How better to describe a neo-noir so colorless and generic that its cigarette smoke is more expressive than its characters? The censors may be to blame for eviscerating the film, which was reportedly heavily re-edited before the approved version finally premièred for Chinese audiences in 1998. There are faint traces of political unrest in Wang's depiction of late-'80s Shanghai, if only because it houses all the expected noir elements, such as a thriving criminal underworld, shadowy nightspots, amoral heroes, and pervasive corruption. But it's hard to tease out the film's intentions when these same genre tropes are linked to so much empty navel-gazing. Introduced with a deft flip of a cigarette into his mouth, Guo Tao came to Shanghai as a migrant from the countryside, but he's since abandoned his roots and embraced the life of a petty criminal. He lives in a cramped apartment with Shi Yu, a young and mentally underpowered naïf who earns an honest living as a menial dock laborer. When another hoodlum steals a bag of Guo's money, Guo interrogates a Vietnamese cabaret singer (Wang Tong) who knows the perpetrator's whereabouts and eventually kidnaps her when she won't tell him. Literally faster than you can say "Stockholm Syndrome," the two fall in love, but her connections to the criminal underworld doom their relationship. A passive observer to the action, Shi provides the obligatory voiceover narration, but it adds little dimension to the characters and offers few clues about the odd father-son dynamic he shares with Guo. Trapped in a seedy juke joint mouthing karaoke to synth versions of Sade's "No Ordinary Love," the Vietnamese singer is by far the film's most interesting character, a potent exemplar of Wang's grim, deterministic vision. But even she's relegated to the usual femme-fatale paces, defined mostly by red lipstick, heavy backlighting, and seductive curls of smoke. A skeletal noir draped thinly with attitude and style, So Close To Paradise gives the impression that its heart may have been left on the cutting-room floor.

So Close to Paradise  David Walsh from The World Socialist Web Site

 

BeyondHollywood.com  Nix

 

So Close to Paradise | review  Rachel Gordon

 

So Close to Paradise : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video  J. Doyle Wallis

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  A.O. Scott

 
BEIJING BICYCLE
China  Taiwan  France  (113 mi)  2001

 

East Asian Films at the 26th Toronto International ... - Senses of Cinema  Shelly Kraicer from Senses of Cinema, November 20, 2001 (excerpt)

 

Two Chinese films at Toronto suggest that the terms "independent" and "underground", used in connection with Mainland Chinese cinema are beginning to blur in quite interesting and useful ways. Beijing Bicycle/Shiqisui de danche (Wang Xiaoshuai, 2001), for example, marks long-time underground/indie stalwart Wang Xiaoshuai's smooth entry into the mainstream (his previous feature, So Close To Paradise/Biandan guniang [1996/1999] tried to straddle the divide and disappeared into censorship limbo for years, as a result). Beijing Bicycle, a relatively tame tale about the struggles between two Beijing boys, one middle class, the other a poor economic migrant, shows a new polish, a new respectability, even a new caution. What is involved is a renegotiation of the balances previously operative in Wang's (and other sixth generation directors') "unapproved" work, so that personal idiosyncrasy, opacity, and a hard-edged critical realism accompanied by a certain stylistic grittiness have yielded to a greater emphasis on craft, audience comprehension, and understated engagement with social issues. What's more, Wang has crafted a film commodity that Western investors also found to be ready-to-consume: Beijing Bicycle was rewarded with a Sony Pictures Classics distribution deal.

 

Riding Towards the Future: Wang Xiaoshuai's ... - Senses of Cinema  Elizabeth Wright, December 29, 2001

The third instalment of the 2001 ‘Silk Screen’ Collection, Wang Xiaoshuai’s Beijing Bicycle (2001), is an ode to the bicycle that has readily become a symbol of mainland China. Set in contemporary Beijing, the film traces the fortunes and misfortunes of two seventeen-year-old males, one from the city and one from the countryside. It opens with the arrival of Guei (Cui Lin) to the city of Beijing where he has secured himself employment as a courier. As Guei and the recruit of young employees stand in a uniform line, neatly dressed in their homogenous new attire, their assertive superior informs them that once they have earned six hundred yuan (based upon earnings of ten yuan per trip), they will be eligible to own the shiny silver mountain bike that they will use for deliveries. Thus, Guei advances upon the long and arduous road to success and the ownership of the mountain bike. However, just when he earns enough to complete the final payment on his now beloved set of wheels, the bike is stolen. Despite the overwhelming number of bicycles in Beijing, Guei’s determination to reclaim his (almost) prized possession leads him to Jian (Li Bin) who claims he purchased the mountain bike at the flea market. Consequently, the two protagonists are forced to engage in a struggle of strength (brute force carried out by Jian’s gang of friends) and willpower and resolve (as exhibited by Guei) to win the bike, a conflict that must eventually result in compromise.

The juxtaposition of Guei and Jian, and in particular their contrasting relation to the bicycle, highlights their differences in social standing and status. Guei is a humble migrant who has travelled to the city with dreams of gaining stability and a regular income. He finds himself struggling to survive in a foreign and chaotic environment in which traditional architecture and customs collide with an industrious and materialistic outlook. Alternatively, Jian comes from a hard-working and upwardly motivated city family who are concerned with providing Jian and his sister with a good education. Jian attends a co-educational school and joins his friends at video game outlets for after school entertainment. He is not extremely wealthy but as an urban dweller he enjoys an education, which is enough to clearly set him apart from Guei. Significantly, not only do Guei and Jian originate from very different backgrounds but the bicycle represents something very different and very unique to each of them. The mountain bike grants Jian status amongst his peers and impresses his girlfriend, Qin (Zhou Xun). He relishes the popularity, honour and independence that it provides, and is therefore unwilling to relinquish such an object. At the other extreme, Guei’s relation to the bike is one of practical need: he is reliant upon it for his new employment. But et this is not Guei’s only reason for needing the bike. Just as it represents status and pride to Jian, so it does for Guei. It symbolises his participation and success in the city of Beijing and makes him less of an outsider. In addition, ownership of the bike signifies Guei’s possession of a material object and partly meets his avid desire to attain material possessions in the fast-paced metropolis. The bike assists in shaping both Guei and Jian’s identity and is therefore a precious commodity for each.

Wang explores the changing dynamics of contemporary Beijing life through examining the experiences and needs of two young males from very different social backgrounds. In the first part of the film, the viewer witnesses Guei’s acclimatisation to his new environment as the camera documents the various problems he encounters whilst delivering packages and engaging in city life. Beijing is depicted as an urban metropolis, comprising McDonalds restaurants, modern high-rise buildings and traditional Chinese architecture. The streets are chaotic with cars and bicycles vying for position on the road and Guei must negotiate his way through the terrain of everyday activity. Significantly, Wang does not characterise Guei’s naiveté as a product of stupidity or mediocrity. Guei’s silence when he is confronted by new or unknown conduct (such as the bathhouse scene) simply acknowledges his difference and wonderment at the city. Wang’s subtle engagement with social issues via his protagonists illuminates the changing face of Beijing. Unlike his 1993 film, The Days that was blacklisted by the China Film Bureau and his other films such as A Vietnamese Girl (later titled So Close to Paradise, [1995]) that had difficulties passing the censors, Beijing Bicycle provides a more simple and understated exposition of the Chinese urban lifestyle. Nevertheless, Wang adroitly examines the experiences that the modernisation of China has generated for many of its citizens. Jian provides an apt example of a modern Chinese teenager who is trapped in an oscillating space between his submergence within popular culture and his appreciation of consumerism, and his connection to tradition via his family. Jian rejects his father’s values and traditions when he steals the family’s savings to purchase the mountain bike. His father’s enraged reaction is part anger and part disbelief that his son lacks any filial duty or obedience.

A very special component of Beijing Bicycle is Wang’s evocation of Beijing’s lanes and ancient alleys known as hutongs. Many were built during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Traditionally, thousands of lanes, alleys and quadrangles became residential areas for the people living in the capital. In the burgeoning metropolis that is contemporary Beijing, these alleys and laneways occupy approximately one third of the city and still exist as dwellings for many Chinese city residents (despite their ‘disappearing’ status and gradual replacement by high-rise buildings). Beijing Bicycle contains some artful chase scenes throughout these ancient lanes and alleys. And Wang’s penchant for the cobbled lane ways and alleys alludes to the fact that Beijing is both an ancient and modern city. He highlights the degree of this difference within the city, which is partly what makes Beijing such a fascinating destination. The visual crossover between hutongs and modern high-rise architecture throughout the film is also symbolic of the bicycle, which has been forced to address an old versus new dichotomy. Traditionally, the purchase of a new bicycle was an important decision involving the entire family. Jian’s family still retain this belief and consider the bicycle an important family asset. Jian’s rejection of this attitude is indicative of his generation’s growing exposure to materialism and popular culture. However, Wang does not reduce Jian’s motivations simply to the selfishness of the younger generation but attempts to sympathise with Jian via his father’s empty promises of a bike. Inevitably, the bicycle’s status throughout Chinese history means that it takes on new dimensions in the contemporary setting. The inclusion of cars and public transport has assisted in changing the bicycle’s pertinence and glory. It is no longer the only form of transportation available to residents and therefore not the feted possession it once was. Nevertheless, the bicycle is still a crucial mode of transportation within Beijing, even if it is no longer the object to which most individuals aspire to own.

Wang’s exploration of a city divided between modernity and tradition is effective without offering jarring juxtapositions of old versus new. The camera’s smooth transition between different parts (old and new) of Beijing reflects the city’s interchangeable flavour. In the beginning, Guei and Jian appear very different individuals, but their love and desire for the bicycle (and what it represents) ultimately brings them together. Wang does not delve into the personal lives and motivations of the characters but focuses on the effect of their social environment and their place within this sphere. He depicts the new face of Beijing’s youth through Jian and alludes to the disillusion of immigrants from the country, such as Guei, who are strongly influenced by the allure of glamour and material wealth that the city offers. A secondary plot in which Guei and his only city friend observe an attractive young woman from afar, under the impression that she is an extremely wealthy city dweller exemplifies this notion. Later, they find that she was in fact a maid who liked to dress up in her employer’s clothes whilst left alone. Guei and his friend’s misconception of the woman’s social status is an obvious indictment on the beguiling nature of surface images and material possessions. Wang takes every opportunity to highlight the negative aspects of city life and comment on the remoteness of urban dwellers.

Beijing Bicycle marks his transition from a cinema of social realism to a more commercial realm. This less critical approach may not push the same boundaries as his other films, yet Beijing Bicycle still retains a preoccupation with relevant social issues. Wang’s ode to the Beijing bicycle is nostalgic (via his concentration on Beijing’s hutongs) without being overly sentimental. He willingly embraces the future and recognises the problems associated with change and a newly consumer oriented society. Ultimately, Beijing Bicycle proves an enjoyable film that oscillates between social melodrama and popular entertainment. Wang is a thoughtful and resourceful filmmaker that makes ample use of his chosen setting. Furthermore, the thematic concerns that emerge from this environment and the iconic bicycle are successfully intertwined with the protagonist’s personal motivations.

Wang’s Beijing Bicycle, which was winner of the Berlin Film Festival Silver Bears Award, is also a component of producers Peggy Chiao and Hsu Hsaio-ming’s ‘Tales of Three Cities’ series. Consisting of six films set in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the series is designed to offer glimpses into the different urban Chinese social and political environments. Similar in theme to Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (1948), Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Wang’s rendition of the stolen bicycle premise is uncomplicated yet compelling and stirring. Wang effectively aligns the bicycle with certain experiences and stages in Guei and Jian’s life, such as the blossoming love for a girl and the gaining of independence and self-sufficiency. Beijing Bicycle offers a meditation on a contemporary Chinese city but is also an ode to the bicycle that is an integral component of Beijing life. The millions of bicycles that traverse the city today are testament to the significance and longevity of the bicycle. Wang does not offer a prognosis on the future of two wheeling Beijing but depicts the current bicycle climate. Indeed, it appears the bicycle will remain a symbol of Beijing and mainland China for generations to come.

SHANGHAI DREAMS
China  (123 mi)  2005

 

Cannes film festival: Reviews roundup | Film | The Guardian Peter Bradshaw at Cannes from the Guardian, May 18, 2005

Nothing could be more different than Shanghai Dreams by Chinese writer-director Wang Xiaoshuai, who made the genial Beijing Bicycle. This is much more austere: a semi-autobiographical study of the way families were uprooted from their homes in the cities and forcibly relocated to the countryside in the 1960s. After 10 years of desperate unhappiness and homesickness, one man plots to move back, despite the fact that his wife has settled in perfectly well and his daughter has fallen in love with a local boy. Wang's movie upends the usual cliches about the younger generation yearning for the bright lights of the big city and the film has a granite severity and sombre force.

Shanghai Dreams [Qinghong]  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

There's a sequence about one-third of the way through Shanghai Dreams in which 19-year-old Qinghong (Gao Yuanyuan) hears her would-be suitor Honggen (Li Bin) playing harmonica in the distance. This sequence begins with a close-up on Qinghong walking outside her home as we hear the music, and the camera slowly pans out to the street where we see Honggen hanging out with Qinghong's little brother and playing his serenade. It's clear from the design of this brief passage that Wang intends for the audience to mistakenly assume the music is non-diegetic. We're then supposed to be surprised when we see Honggen, its diegetic source. Only there's a problem. Honggen's harmonica playing is only slightly less accomplished than Stevie Wonder's, and his "spontaneous" tune is a professionally composed theme. I've addressed this minor element in Shanghai Dreams at some length because in some ways it exemplifies my problems with Wang's directorial style. There's no question that by any reasonable measure, Shanghai Dreams is a highly accomplished piece of cinema. But there is a stylistic schizophrenia just below its surface. Shanghai Dreams adopts the master-shot approach, although Wang articulates these long shots with more traditional decoupage. His use of landscape, the darkened alleyways between homes, or the use of a single outdoor light source to organize space and architecture within the frame, all serve to lend the film a deeply etched sense of place, and Wang's use of deep focus gives these images a heightened solidity. His deliberate pacing only enhances this effect. But at the same time, Wang seems oddly beholden to classical narrative forms. What starts out as a quiet observational piece eventually swerves into melodrama. There's something unconvincing about the way Wang accomplishes this, and I think it has a lot to do with his handling of incident. Where do the major third-act complications come from? How do they arise? Like the secret factory workers' ball (with Travolta-esque disco dancing to Boney M), these disruptive events seem to be dropped in from some other, less rigorous movie. This leads me to wonder whether Wang is underestimating his audience, or perhaps overestimating the value of making "stuff happen" in films. Beijing Bicycle (the last film of Wang's I saw) sidestepped this problem by reducing action to its most basic. Here, I detect an attempt to go epic, and it ends up hobbling Shanghai Dreams' most accomplished aspects.

 

Shanghai Dreams | Review | Screen  Dan Fainaru in Cannes from Screendaily

Once a rebel now working in the mainstream, Wang Xiaoshuai draws on his own reminiscences as an adolescent for Cannes competition entry Shanghai Dreams.

Wang’s family was relocated from Shanghai to the poor, mountainous province of Guiyang, all part of the Chinese authorities’ decision to install fortified industrial cities near the border with the Soviet Union, just in case the differences of opinion might erupt into more than diplomatic skirmishes.

Wang translates this experience into the coming-of-age story of Qinghong, the daughter of a displaced family, to show how Shanghai’s displaced despaired of returning home after 10 years in the boondocks, where they are in constant confrontation with the locals whom they hold to be inferior.

Though the plot’s personal aspect is only too familiar and easily adaptable to any geographical location, the social context adds a new facet to the filmed history of modern China.

However, the whole package is tied together rather slackly, making it more of a trip down memory lane than a distinct dramatic statement. Festivals may not mind, but distributors should consider some serious tightening of loose ends necessary before it ventures into commercial distribution.

Qinghong (Gao Yuanyuan), though a serious and hard working 19-year-old, is constantly goaded by her tyrannical father (Yan Anlian) to invest every moment of her day into preparing for university. Such an option, he believes, is the only way in which she can prepare for the big city, to which she eventually has to return.

For his part her father still resents how his wife (Tang Yang) persuaded him to leave Shanghai and accept work in a relocated factory for what was meant to be brief respite - but which turned into an indefinite stay.

As a result he never stops terrorising his family, regularly – and unsuccessfully - pestering his superiors for permission to return home, seeking hope in rumours of political change and plotting with friends.

But Qinghong, whether her father likes it or not, is at an age when she can not be indifferent to the low key advances of factory hand (Li Bin), who offers her a pair of shining high heeled red shoes. Nor can she resist the temptation to join her friend Xiao Zhen (Wang Xueyang) for some timid partying, where one of the "cool" guys (Qin Hao) launches into a close dancing parody of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

When Xiao Zhen's affair with the dancer goes too far, and Qinghong's rejection of her suitor is received badly, events spiral out of control and lead towards a rather forced and melodramatic climax.

Wang Xiaoshuai draws several parallels throughout Shanghai Dreams. There is the generational confrontation between daughter and father, contrasted with the exasperation of parents who see hopes of repatriation being constantly thwarted.

On a wider scale there is also the parallel process of disciplinary relaxation in the country itself. Parents gradually lose their iron grip on their children and the government closes its eyes to the temporary insubordination of one family who break the rules in the final sequence.

But the film’s final shot resounds to the crack of a firing squad, executing prisoners. The rules of the game have not changed that much after all.

Told at a leisurely, unhurried pace, Wang's elegy works better as an album of souvenirs, lavishing attention on many of the details he knew personally and that were specific to that period, from morning callisthenics to strict codes of dressing. It all offers a pertinent image of communal life that successfully contrasts with private aspirations.

Once he resorts to the personal stories of Qinghong, her family and her friend, however, the piece loses some of its interest and originality.

Though Gao Yuanyuan, as Qinghong, is blessed with a handsome film presence, her bland performance fails to imply the depth of her crisis. Yan Anlian, as her angry father, and Tang Yang, as her long suffering mother, have a much better grip on their roles, with Wang Xueyang, as the vivacious friend, the most memorable of all.

Shanghai Dreams. By Jason Anderson Cinema Scope, July 16, 2007

The parallels between Jia Zhangke’s The World (2004) and Wang Xiaoshuai’s Cannes Jury Prize-winning Shanghai Dreams are patent, and not only because Wang memorably appeared as a sleazy, karaoke-loving businessman in Jia’s latest. Both movies seem to reflect the loosening of the government restrictions that have hampered Sixth Generation filmmakers—this marks the first time the Film Bureau has given Wang free rein, his previous aboveground features So Close to Paradise (1998) and Beijing Bicycle (2001) having provoked censorship battles—and the adopting of more polished, arguably more conventional approaches by the filmmakers themselves.

Whereas in The World Jia amplified his visual panache and tightened up his narrative skills, Wang leaves behind the mixed-up youngsters of Frozen (1996) and Drifters (2003) in order to make a stately stab at family melodrama. Though not as audacious as Jia’s films, Shanghai Dreams is remarkable not only for its precision and slow-building emotional power, but the way it extends its teenaged characters’ feelings of confusion and hopelessness to the community around them. As is so often the case in a Sixth Generation movie, the kids aren’t all right. Yet their middle-aged parents are no better equipped to handle the crises depicted here.

In the mid-60s, the Chinese government formed a “Third Line of Defense” against potential Soviet incursions by relocating urban factory workers inland. Like Wang’s own family, his film’s central characters were sent from Shanghai to a backwater town in the rural province of Guizhou . Two decades later, the death of Mao and the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping raised these families’ hopes that they could return. In the intervening years, the film’s patriarch, Wu Zemin (played by Yan Anlian in a wrenching performance), has grown embittered and argumentative. Convinced that their stay was always meant to be temporary, he has never allowed his family to consider Guizhou their home.

Naturally, his teenaged daughter, Wu Qinghong (Gao Yuanyuan), is more uncertain about her proper place. Badgered by her father to study hard so that she can go away to university, she feels the pull to create some kind of life for herself there. Even so, she has broken off a relationship with a local boy to appease Wu Zemin. Qinghong’s best friend Xiao Zhen (Wang Xueyang) is more brazen about defying the older generation, wondering, “What’s so great about Shanghai ?” Unbeknownst to her own transplanted parents (who are far less strict than Wu Zemin), she has a romance with Lu Jun (Qin Hao), a would-be tough who favours the era’s provincial-Chinese-badass look: wide-collared shirts, big sunglasses, and plaid bellbottoms. The scene in which the ghetto-fabulous Lu Jun makes like Travolta to Boney M’s “Gotta Go Home” during a clandestine dance party is the cheeriest moment in a movie otherwise dominated by rainy gloom.

Yet Shanghai Dreams is more eventful than Drifters, Wang’s previous feature about young people torn between two places (there, the contemporary story of a man who returns to China after being deported from the US ). One reason for that is Wang is more interested in the fates of the families rather than the individuals. Though much of the first hour is devoted to Qinghong and Xiao Zhen, Wu Zemin eventually emerges as the most fascinating character and the film’s most deeply tragic figure. He begins as a stern taskmaster, but as a potential move to Shanghai coincides with unforeseen tragedy, this persona slips away to reveal his own feelings of fear and desperation. Since he’s worked so hard to protect his daughter, it’s deeply affecting to see him realize that he’s failed her.

This fraught father-daughter dynamic has always been a potent engine for melodrama. No wonder Shanghai Dreams’ final scenes are reminiscent of those moments in Visconti’s movies when neo-realism gives way to bold operatic grandeur (the whiff of Rigoletto is hard to miss). Until then, Wang plays it relatively subtle—his patient, nuanced evocation of the mundanity and sudden revelations that define teenage existence recalls Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (1991). There’s arguably a link to Jia’s Platform (2000), too, but Shanghai Dreams is more boldly emotional than any of Jia’s cooler-tempered films. Though some may castigate Wang for his tearjerking tendencies, he creates a satisfying balance of melodrama and stylistic austerity. With Shanghai Dreams, Wang clearly allowed himself to dream a little bigger. Unlike that of the family he portrays, one modelled after his own, Wang’s fate is far from disastrous.

Shanghai Dreams | Film | The Guardian  Xan Brooks

 

CHONGQING BLUES

China (110 mi)  2010

 

Chongqing Blues (Rizhao Chongqing)  Lee Marshall at Cannes

Not so much a whodunnit as a whathappened, the tenth feature by mainland Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle Shanghai Dreams) traces an absent father’s attempt to discover the circumstances behind the police shooting of a son he abandoned fifteen years previously.

A strong performance by Wang Xueqi as the father provides emotional ballast but fails to make up for the glacial pacing of the drama; and although there are some effective emotional tugs and an evocative use of the film’s dirty industrial city setting, the audience’s investment in the slowbuild structure is never paid back in full.

Wang’s films are virtually invisible in China, and while there is little except its portrayal of disaffected youth to trouble the censors in Chongqing Blues, its resolutely arthouse target means it is unlikely to be an exception. Elsewhere in the world continued festival action is likely after the film’s Cannes competition berth, and theatrically it may just add a territory or two to the pair (France and Greece) notched up by the director’s previous, the high-concept but low-tension leukaemia drama In Love We Trust.

Chongqing is a big, ugly river-port city in Sichuan province. Dop Wu Di’s atmospheric camerawork presents it as a reticent, unromantic place, offering grey skies and walls of dirty concrete (in the city) or rusting metal (in the shipyards) to the inquiring eye.

And reticence, not to say downright hostility, is what weathered ship’s captain Lin Quanhai (Wang Xueqi) encounters at every turn as he tries to find out what happened to his 25-year-old son Lin Bo (Zi Yi), news of whose death reached him six months after the fact, on his return from a long sea voyage.

His former wife Yuying (Li Lingyu) refuses to let him in, but from some old newspapers she throws at him, Quanhai discovers that Bo was shot by police after stabbing two people in a supermarket and taking a woman doctor (Li Feier) hostage.

Bo’s best friend, Xiao Hao (Qin Hao) initially refuses to tell Quanhai anything, but agrees to enlarge and print the only photo the father can find of his dead son - a still from the CCTV camera footage of the supermarket incident. There’s a poignancy here as Quanhai contemplates the blurred and pixellated face of the 25-year-old Bo, who he last saw when he was 10; the not-so-hidden subtext is that the father’s investigation is actually an attempt to build some kind of rapport with a son he never knew, and assuage the demons of guilt.

But although all this is there for the reading in the twitches of Wang Xuegi’s impassive face the director never quite seems confident that we’ve got the message, repeatedly flogging the delicacy out of the pixellated-portrait metaphor.

And although some of the meetings the stubborn father forces on friends and witnesses in the course of his quest are affecting, they also have a plodding inevitability about them: it comes as something of a relief to finally meet the policeman who shot the fatal bullet after ticking off the supermarket guard, the girl who was stabbed, the doctor who was taken hostage and the girlfriend whose dumping of Bo triggered his cry for help.

Emotionally, the film is no less linear, moving from tight-lipped closure to something very close to sentimentality (underlined by sparse string melodies that become more insistent and weepy towards the end) as the father discovers that his lost son was obsessed with him, and the sea.

As a film about fathers and sons, Chongqing Blues has some resonance. The film is also chock-full of images of passage and change: the river that flows down to the sea where two key scenes are set; the rusty cable car that connects port and town; shopping mall escalators, monorails, motorway ramps and bridges: all connect with the constant movement that is Quanhai’s career, and also, until he begins questioning it, his life strategy. But the slight, mushy story, and the overly pretty actors cast in the three main youth roles, are not really up to the task of carrying what would otherwise be a stimulating symbolic load.

Cannes Film Festival 2010: Day Two  Matt Noller from The House Next Door, May 14, 2010

Wargnier, Régis
 
INDOCHINE

France  (159 mi)  1992

 

Time Out review

Before Vietnam, there was Indochina; before the Americans, the French. The languorous first half of Wargnier's epic historical romance is pretty much as you'd expect: plantation-owner Deneuve in impeccably starched jodhpurs, coolies in their place, civilisation transplanted to a hothouse. She begins a passionate affair with a young naval officer (Perez), but he falls in love with her adopted Vietnamese daughter (Linh Dan Pham). When he is sent to a remote outpost on the Gulf of Tonkin, the girl takes after him. And Wargnier follows. Midway through, having involved us so deeply in colonial enterprise, he abruptly cuts our cultural ties and plunges into sweeping revolutionary myth: the lovers go on the run, the girl discovers her people, their struggle, what her role must be. If Bertolucci tried his hand at a mini-series, it would probably look something like this. The allegorical intimations may not be entirely credible, given the piece's lush romanticism; it's rather enervatingly composed; and the pacing could certainly be tighter. But such grand old-fashioned melodrama is almost as exotic as the stunning Vietnamese landscape; it's easy to be seduced by it.

Washington Post (Rita Kempley) review

A lethargic opium dream of colonial Vietnam, "Indochine" looks back on French imperialism with a dramatically deadening spiritual fatigue. But, unlike similarly sprawling British mea culpas, this movie makes no apologies for those who usurp a country's culture. The world-weary protagonists of this historical melodrama don't see themselves as oppressing the Indochinese, but as nurturing them on the cream of European civilization.

This presumptuous if not altogether indefensible notion is spelled out in the tight relationship between Eliane (Catherine Deneuve), a rubber-plantation owner, and Camille (Linh Dan Pham), her adopted Indochinese daughter. An Annam princess educated in French schools, Camille breaks the tie when she and her beloved mother become rivals for the love of a fickle young naval officer, Jean-Baptiste (Vincent Perez).

Thinking she is doing what's best for her daughter, Eliane arranges to have Jean-Baptiste reassigned to the remote and scenic Tonkin Islands. But Eliane has underestimated Camille, who flees the comfort and privilege of Saigon to find the man she loves. During her hazardous journey, Camille discovers a new passion for her homeland and her people. And when finally reunited with Jean-Baptiste, she is well on her way to becoming a revolutionary.

Her transformation from Mademoiselle Butterfly to Communist leader becomes complete when she is torn from her lover and their infant son and thrown into prison for crimes against the state. The trouble is we never see the fragile teenager undergo this surprising metamorphosis. Director Regis Wargnier seems far more interested in what the white folks are doing back on the plantation. As with other potentially enlivening events, we hear about it from the coolly aristocratic Eliane. A form of cinematic colonialism, "Indochine" commits dramatic suicide by Eurocentrism.

Clearly Wargnier, who also co-wrote the script, has a fondness for extended metaphors, preferring intellectual artifice over character development. None of his characters is particularly complex or consistent, but Jean-Baptiste is virtually put out to stud as a sexual cynic turned romance-novel-cover boy overnight. Perhaps it was the MSG that tenderized this beefcake. Deneuve's Eliane is more interesting, but she is, after all, playing France.

Wargnier, who learned his craft at the elbow of Claude Chabrol, does expose the geographic splendors of Southeast Asia as well as the common sense of its people, whose sly observations lend "Indochine" both energy and levity. Madame Tam (Thi Hoe Tranh Huu Trieu), a businesswoman whose son is engaged to Camille, speaks for all of us when she hears of the girl's interest in her mother's paramour. "I'll never understand French people's love stories, they're nothing but folly and suffering." Our beret's off to Madame Tam.

THE LOVER and RETURN TO INDOCHINE  Returning to Indochina, by Sylvie Blum from Jump Cut, May 1997

 

Dragan Antulov retrospective [4/10]

 

Nick's Flick Picks (Nick Davis) review [C]

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Ross Johnson) dvd review

 

DVD Talk (Chuck Arrington) dvd review [2/5]

 

DVD Review e-zine dvd recommendation  Guido Henkel

 

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3.5/4]

 

Frank R.A.J. Maloney review

 

Pedro Sena retrospective [4.5/5]

 

Variety (Lee Lourdeaux) review

 

Austin Chronicle (Pamela Bruce) review [3/5]

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2.5/4]

 

The New York Times (Vincent Canby) review

 

EAST-WEST (Est-Ouest)                                      A-                    93

France  Russia  Ukraine  Bulgaria  Spain  (124 mi)  1999
 

The second half of the 20th century saw unprecedented horror from the Nazi propagated Holocaust during World War II, one of the worst atrocities in history by attempting to eradicate an entire people on racial grounds, systematically singling out only Jewish people to exterminate.  But most historians agree that Josef Stalin likely killed more people than Hitler, where tens of millions were sent to the endless wastes of the Siberian Gulag.  But even Stalin doesn’t hold the distinction of being the most genocidal leader of the 20th century, as that would be Mao Zedong of China, who is thought to be responsible for the deaths of over 40 million people, most attributable to famine, forced labor, starvation, and execution.  Having said that, what’s unique to this film is tackling a subject rarely dealt with in the history books, namely the fate of thousands of Russians who fled the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution, who were lured back in the summer of 1946 by Stalin’s offer of an amnesty where they were supposedly needed in the reconstruction of a nation decimated by war.  Returning émigrés Alexei (Oleg Menchikov), a Russian trained doctor who had been living in France decides to return to help his homeland accompanied by his French wife Marie (Sandrine Bonnaire) and their 7-year old son.  Far from the glorious return to a welcoming country they expected, they were instead greeted by a harsh military force and separated into two lines, death or imprisonment, where most were executed as “imperialist spies.”  Only the professionals, whose skills are needed, are allowed to remain alive, where the Soviets are suspicious of all these new arrivals, treating them with open suspicion and hostility, stripping Marie of her French passport, where their activities are carefully monitored by the KGB and local communist citizens who threaten at any time to turn them in to authorities.  Wargnier, a French screenwriter and filmmaker, Louis Gardel, a French novelist and screenwriter born in Algiers, Sergei Bodrov, a Russian screenwriter and director (who son plays a major role in the film), and Rustam Ibragimbekov, a Russian, Azerbaijani screenwriter and playwright, go to considerable lengths to recreate the realities for ordinary people in the post-war Stalinist system. 

 

Told with a Spielberg, Hollywood epic sweep, France's entry for this year's Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film, you’d think this would fall into the melodramatic, over-the-top category, seemingly modeled on the war-time romance of DR. ZHIVAGO (1965), and while there are a bit too many Russians who also conveniently happen to speak French, the romance is actually submerged into the historical reality, as the film doesn’t overplay the emotions and takes a surprising interest in the individual lives affected and in developing character, where the acting throughout is superb, as is the production design, where the choice of locations can be stunning, contrasting the immense grandiosity of the architecture in the spacious government buildings against the tiny, claustrophobic rooms allotted to citizens.  Shot on location in Kiev, in the Ukraine, and Sofia, Bulgaria, the director captures a real sense of desperation and futility, where the bleakness of this family’s trapped existence is really no different than that of other ordinary citizens, as all suffer during Stalin’s reign.  Transported to Kiev, Alexei is employed as a medical officer in a large textile factory, where everyday existence in the Soviet Union is permeated with the presence of the secret police, in particular the heightened xenophobia that runs rampant from ordinary citizens to the ruling apparatus, where everyone falls under suspicion.  The family is consigned to a small, cramped room in a squalid communal house of drunken unemployed men, where one of the lodgers possesses keys to all the mail boxes and has the task of checking everyone’s letters on a regular basis.  Marie is horrified and immediately vows to find a way back to France, but without a passport, they are trapped behind the Iron Curtain and imprisoned to involuntary servitude, where she is contemptuously treated like a foreign spy, and the only reason they remain alive is Alexei’s considerable medical skills.  When the elderly Russian landlady of the house is caught singing a French song with Marie, she is rounded up by the KGB agents and imprisoned for consorting with a foreign spy, dying shortly afterwards, where her son Sasha (Sergei Bodrov Jr.) is about be thrown out into the streets.  Without a word of discussion, Marie insists they can make room for him, where Sasha becomes like an older brother to their own son, but Alexei is disturbed by the continual lack of privacy at home and how he’s continually hounded at work to prove his Soviet credibility. 

 

The film consistently supports multiple storylines that occasionally interconnect, extended through time, given a near historic reach, where a traveling French theatrical troupe happens to be visiting Kiev and Marie desperately bursts into the dressing room of the star, Catherine Deneuve as Gabrielle Develay, known for her leftist political leanings, and hands her a letter to give to the French Consulate in France, an act Gabrielle can’t ignore.  With the KGB agents literally at her door, this turns into a tricky situation, as it puts Marie’s husband in a vulnerable position, as he can’t afford to offend the Communist regime.  He’s fraught with his own personal travails, as due to his wife’s inattention, he sleeps with the Soviet landlady in the building, immediately kicked out by Marie, so instead he moves in across the hall with his mistress,  When the Communists hear about this, it all sounds so French to them, urging him to divorce his wife and receive a large apartment as compensation.  Sasha figures into his own storyline, as he’s a world class swimmer that falls for Marie, dropped from the swim team due to his lethargy after his grandmother’s death, where Marie revives his training regimen swimming in the Dnieper River, where he rubs his body with lard to protect him from the cold.  Eventually he is welcomed back to the team where his skills may allow him to defect to the West, and perhaps free Marie from France.  The splendid cinematography from Laurent Dailland is impressive, while the soundtrack by Patrick Doyle is equally enthralling at times, powerful and dramatic, feeling much like a rhapsodic Rachmaninov piano concerto, where the intensity rises at times to the level of a thriller.  As the film leaps forward in large blocks of time, their initial hopes are continually thwarted and slowly dissipate, while their weary lives seem to move at a glacier pace, where the bleakness of the Stalinist state retains the upper hand, where it’s in the Russian blood to endure hardships, characterized by long suffering.  Except for a few brief scenes, the film unwinds entirely in the Soviet Union, advancing into an era when Stalin actually increased his nationalist fervor, including his anti-Semitic belligerence by rounding up the remaining Jews and sending them to Gulags, while also renewing show trials, intensifying the purges, pogroms, mass enslavement, and murder.  Yet throughout it all, this is an emotionally compelling story of would-be survivors with differing cultural instincts in play, where Alexei and Marie are two extremely resourceful and complex individuals whose enduring relationship evolves into larger-than-life feelings, where the Soviet Army Choir echoes thunderously throughout the journey.  

 

East-West | review, synopsis, book tickets, showtimes ... - Time Out

In 1946 Russian emigrants flock back to the USSR, answering Stalin's invitation to help rebuild the ravaged motherland. Docking at Odessa, Dr Alexei (Menchikov) and his French wife Marie (Bonnaire) find, however, that many fellow returnees are sent to labour camps. Alexei's professional status wins the couple and their son a room in a Kiev apartment, but as the grimness of their new lives sinks in, the confiscation of their passports makes return to the West an apparent impossibility. Then a chance encounter with a touring French actress (Deneuve) offers a chink of hope. After the colonial gloss of Indochine and Une Femme Française, it's a surprise to find director Wargnier shivering under the grey skies of the former Soviet Union; but with this tale of love and betrayal offset by a dark political backdrop, accompanied by Patrick Doyle's grandiose score, it's evident he's taking Doctor Zhivago as his new model. If you expect a credible historical drama, this falls short, but as an old-fashioned Hollywood wallow it works rather well.

BFI | Sight & Sound | East-West (1999)  Michael Witt from Sight and Sound, December 2000              

The USSR, 1946. Responding to Stalin's attempts to lure back Russian emigrants to their homeland, young doctor Alexeï Golovin, his French wife Marie and their son Sérioja arrive in Odessa from France. Many of their fellow returnees are tortured, executed or deported to forced labour camps. Alexeï is allocated a room in a communal apartment in Kiev and made responsible for the health of the workforce in a local factory. He considers any form of resistance dangerous, while Marie remains fixated on escape. At a performance given by a visiting French theatre troupe, Alexeï is paraded by the authorities as a returnee from the west who has turned into a model Soviet citizen. Marie tells celebrated actress Gabrielle Develay of her unhappiness.

The family drifts apart: Alexeï embarks on an affair and Marie takes a lover, teenager Sacha. Implicated in Sacha's escape to the west, Marie is sent to the Gulag. After Stalin's death six years later, she is released. A further two years on, Alexeï and Gabrielle orchestrate Marie and Sérioja's escape to the west via the French embassy in Bulgaria. Alexeï is sent to a labour camp to work as a doctor. He has to wait until the dawn of the Gorbachev era 30 years later before rejoining his family in France.

Review

Following the only modest success of his 1994 study of an army marriage Une femme française, director Régis Wargnier returns in East-West to the slick wide-angle historical melodrama of his earlier hugely popular Indochine (1991). In East-West he sets himself the daunting task of grappling with four decades of Soviet history and east-west relations through the vehicle of a simple love story. At the heart of the film is the relationship between Oleg Menchikov's Russian doctor Alexeï, who settles in the USSR just after World War II, and his French wife Marie, the superb Sandrine Bonnaire here making a rare but welcome foray into mainstream cinema.

Wargnier is at his most comfortable exploring marital love in its various guises: young passion, physical desire, the onset of antagonism and a mature sense of mutual support and self-sacrifice. The pent-up energy and erotic charge of the human body (in particular, the muscular physique of Sacha, the young swimming champion with whom Marie has an affair) provide a counterpoint to the monotony of the Soviet regime, conveyed by the blue-grey hue that pervades the imagery. Wargnier uses water motifs in a similar way: a constant reminder of loss and separation (Marie and Alexeï arrive in the USSR by boat from France), the swimming scenes at the pool and lake offer visual relief from the drab Kiev backdrop and cumulative sense of claustrophobia and surveillance in the couple's cramped apartment. This symbolic treatment of water and of the human body culminates in the beautifully shot and edited central escape sequence in which Sacha braves the dangerous seas in his bid for freedom.

East-West is pitched unashamedly as a broad-brushstroke historical melodrama. But the historical part of the equation is underdeveloped. Wargnier pays lip service to key dates and introduces a sprinkling of stock figures from Cold War mythology, but these aren't enough to provide any credible sense of the reality of daily life in the USSR in the late 40s. The Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian cast members lend a superficial air of authenticity to the film's unabashedly cartoonish sensibility (Alexeï doesn't work in any old factory; he works in one which produces red flags!). But it doesn't help that Wargnier recycles familiar images of heel-clicking leather-coated KGB baddies shouting "don't let them escape".

Wargnier's attempt to portray this relatively uncharted slice of recent history is, of course, inherently presumptuous; but faced with the task, his film is low on humility. It deploys stylistic grandiosity - as in the irritating recurrent use of unmotivated slow camera tracks - that speaks more of an aimless and distasteful display of manufactured gravitas than of a sensitive approach to historical realities.

ReelViews [James Berardinelli]

It is an established historical fact that, although Adolf Hitler was the most infamous mass-murderer of the 20th century, he may not have been the most prolific. By many accounts, that title belongs to Josef Stalin. The only real differences between the two is that Stalin did not target one particular religious or ethnic group (he was an equal opportunity killer) and his activities were done behind the Iron Curtain, hidden from the eyes of the rest of the world. Yet the more one studies the magnitude of the human rights atrocities committed under Stalin, the more horrified one becomes.

Following the end of World War II, the Soviet Union "welcomed home" anyone who had previously fled their borders. For most who accepted this offer, death or imprisonment awaited. Many of those returning were executed as "imperialist spies." Only the intellectuals, whose skills were needed, were allowed to remain alive, but their activities were carefully monitored and their families were used as collateral to ensure their good behavior. This is the climate of East-West, director Regis Wargnier's dramatic thriller about life in the Soviet Union for a trapped French woman.

Marie (Sandrine Bonnaire) is happily married to Alexei (Oleg Menshikov), a Russian immigrant to France. They have a seven-year old son, Seryozha (Ruben Tupiero). When the USSR announces that it is welcoming back all Russian-born citizens and Alexei wants to go, Marie agrees to accompany him, with the understanding that if things don't work, they'll return to Paris. So the three of them board a ship bound for Odessa. When they arrive, they stumble into a nightmare. Alexei is allowed to live because he's a doctor - a profession whose practitioners the Soviet Union is in desperate need of - but almost everyone else on the boat is killed. Marie, Alexei, and Seryozha are given a small, cramped apartment to live in. But, while Alexei gradually adapts to circumstances, Marie plots ways to escape the East. Her best chance comes through Sacha (Sergei Bodrov Jr.), a young swimmer who falls for her and whose skills may allow him to defect to the West and work to free her from the other side. Meanwhile, a famous French stage actress, Gabrielle Develay (Catherine Deneuve), takes an interest in Marie's situation.

East-West suffers from a bit of a split personality. The first half is devoted to the day-to-day grind of Marie's new existence, showing how, almost against her will, she adapts to a joyless life as Alexei gains a measure of influence at his job. When he has an affair with another woman, she throws him out, but his devotion to her eventually wins her back. This part of the film develops slowly, and is predominantly a straight drama. However, shortly past the midway point, East-West turns into a Cold War thriller, as different parties struggle to get Marie out of the country. The extreme difference in tone between the two halves is not unpleasant, but it makes the film seem less like one continuous story.

Two things are consistently good throughout this film: acting and production design. Filming was done on location in Sofia, Bulgaria and Kiev, and it looks and feels like the '40s and '50s. There's a real sense of the desperation and uncertainty suffered by the common people during Stalin's reign, and the bleakness of the situation is brought out through the choice of locations and the way in which the scenes are shot. The work of the leads, Sandrine Bonnaire (La Ceremonie) and Oleg Menshikov (Burnt By the Sun), is virtually flawless - they essay complex characters with seeming ease, displaying the frailties and strengths that characterize a human portrayal. Catherine Deneuve, who headlined Wargnier's Indochine, plays a small but important part, and Sergei Bodrov Jr. (who previously starred opposite Menshikov in Prisoner of the Mountains) proves to be more than a pretty face on a well-sculpted body.

The score, by veteran composer Patrick Doyle, is both a positive and a negative. The music is extremely powerful and emotive, but there are occasions when it calls attention to itself, in effect overshadowing what's transpiring on-screen. Doyle's work is rarely subdued - he is a frequent collaborator with Kenneth Branagh (having scored all of his films except two) and wrote the music for Indochine - and there is nothing low-key about what he has done for East-West.

In texture, if not in plotting, East-West reminds me of Claude Berri's 1997 feature, Lucie Aubrac. Both are the work of respected directors and feature relatively straightforward narratives set in the recent past (although Berri's movie is based on an historical figure while Wargnier's is not). And, also like Lucie Aubrac, East-West has received lukewarm critical reaction (perhaps because the expectation with films like this is that they're supposed to be slow-moving and thematically rich). However, in terms of presenting the travails of two well-developed characters trapped in a difficult situation, and the way in which their relationship is transformed over a ten-year period, East-West is a strong effort. It tells a solid story that involves us in the plight of its characters.

World Socialist Web Site  Stefan Steinberg

 

PopMatters J. Serpico

 

Families Endure Stalinism While the West Keeps Quiet | Observer  Andrew Sarris

 

JamesBowman.net | Est-Ouest (East-West)

 

dOc DVD Review: East/West (Est/Ouest) (1999) - digitallyOBSESSED!  Jeff Fulmer

 

East West : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video  Jeremy Kleinman

 

DVD Times  Mark Boydell

 

East-West (France-Russia, 1999) . Movie reviews by Dr. Edwin Jahiel.

 

culturevulture.net  Arthur Lazere

 

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

 

kamera.co.uk - film review - East-West (Est-Ouest) - Paul Clarke


David Perry's Xiibaro Reviews: East-West

 

east west - review at videovista.net  Debbie Moon

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

 

Film Threat  Joel Maendel

 

Rambles [Elizabeth Badurina]

 

FilmHead.com  Matt Hefernan

 

eFilmCritic Reviews  iF Magazine

 

BBCi - Films  Michael Thomson

 

Boston Phoenix [Peter Keough]

 

Baltimore City Paper: East-West | Movie Review  Luisa F. Ribeiro

 

Austin Chronicle [Marjorie Baumgarten]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Bob Graham]

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

New York Times  A.O. Scott

 

Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Killed More? - The New York Review of Books  Timothy Snyder, March 10, 2011

 

How many people did Stalin kill? – History of Russia

           
Warhol, Andy

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | The Innovators 1960-1970: The big wig  Mike O'Pray from Sight and Sound, October 1999

When Andy Warhol turned film-maker, he cocked a snook at Hollywood and the avant-garde, changing both forever

In Harmony Korine's recent no-budget, quasi-documentary feature film Gummo there is a memorable head-and-shoulder shot - slowed down and fairly long-held - of 90s chic icon Chloë Sevigny with her breasts black-taped, gazing into the camera. It is pure Warhol. Her narcissism, knowing sexiness and acknowledgement of the camera's gaze are all characteristic of a type of film-making first practised in early 60s New York, film-making of a shocking audacity that attracted the fashionable yet repelled much of the art world.

Pop artist Andy Warhol's films are important because they influenced two kinds of cinema: Hollywood absorbed their gritty street-life realism, their sexual explicitness and on-the-edge performances; the avant-garde reworked his long-take, fixed-camera aesthetic into what came to be known as structural film - an austere, formalist project.

When he started making films in 1963, however, Warhol knew nothing about the mechanics of film. Whatever he had gleaned about the contemporary underground film scene came from his friendship with Gerard Malanga, who introduced him to the veteran film-maker Marie Menken (one of the 'stars' of The Chelsea Girls, 1966) and took him to screenings at Jonas Mekas' Film-makers' Co-op. However, like any American of his generation he was brought up on classic Hollywood, and he was also familiar with gay porn films of the 50s.

At that moment in the early 60s, Warhol was on the crest of a wave as one of the most important artists on the New York scene, famous for his silk-screen paintings of iconic American figures (Marilyn Monroe), consumer objects (Campbell's soup cans) and dramatic images of death (lurid car accidents, the electric chair). He was an uncomfortable ally of fellow pop artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in their overthrowing of the abstract expressionist school of Pollock, De Kooning and co., who had dominated the art world throughout the 50s. Like Rauschenberg and Johns, Warhol was gay, but unlike them he embraced the swish, camp images and attitudes of the gay world, especially when he turned to film. His stance would come to dominate 60s popular culture. Cultivated camp soon became fashionable, notably in the theatricals of rock groups like the Rolling Stones - in many ways Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's use of Stones' singer Mick Jagger in Performance (1970) is a codicil to the Warholian moment.

Alone among major artists of the twentieth century Warhol committed himself seriously to film, so much so that in 1965 he stated that he was giving up painting. Warhol's prolific output, which ran to many hundreds of films, some only discovered after his death, was all produced between 1963 and 1968. These half-dozen years can be loosely divided into three phases. First, from 1963 to late 1964 there was a plethora of slow-projected (16 fps), silent, shortish black-and-white films shot on a Bolex - the favourite lightweight camera of avant-garde and documentary film-makers. The camera was static and the shooting unedited, the film's length determined by the length of the reel. Second, from 1964 Warhol used the Auricon camera with its built-in sound system (perversely, it was first used for the silent epic Empire). This was an intense, fertile period in which the slow-motion aesthetic gave way to a form of modernist 'theatre' aided and abetted by 'scriptwriter-collaborators' Chuck Wein and Ronald Tavel, the latter a dramatist associated with the Theatre of the Ridiculous. It was then that Warhol launched his 'superstars', including Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga, Viva and the drag artist Mario Montez. These films were often around 70 minutes in length, consisting of two single-take reels, each just over 30 minutes long - for instance, Wein's Beauty #2 (1965) or Tavel's Kitchen (1966), both 'starring' Edie Sedgwick. Warhol told Tavel that he didn't want plot, only 'incident'. The high point was probably reached with the commercially and critically successful The Chelsea Girls. The third phase is brief and not so distinctive, but it expresses a wider ambition and a realist clarity of narrative. In many ways it was an attempt to build on the commercial success of The Chelsea Girls under the driving force of the young Paul Morrissey, who disparaged the early 'art' films. The first step in this direction was My Hustler (1965); notable films of the period include Nude Restaurant and Lonesome Cowboys (both 1967). But after Valerie Solanas' bullets ripped into his body on 3 June 1968, Warhol's film involvement was much more at arm's length, though he continued to lend his imprimatur to films directed by Morrissey, such as Flesh (1968), Trash (1970) and Heat (1972).

As a film-maker, Warhol achieved international fame without showing many of his films more than once or twice to small arthouse audiences in New York. Their word-of-mouth reputations sufficed. Sleep and Empire, both made in the early 60s, were more talked about than seen. The regular description of them - a single image shown for hours on end (only really true of Empire) - was enough to evoke awe and disbelief. But these images of extreme passivity (a building, an unconscious man), made with extreme passivity, were unique in Warhol's oeuvre. Most of Warhol's films were of people, often doing very little - or a lot - ineptly. His reputation as an innovator rests in this fascinating combination of a simple shooting style with the 'performances' he elicited.

So what was so new and fresh about these early films? It has been argued that they resemble and were inspired by the early single-reel films of the Lumières and others, but they are quite different. For one thing Warhol's films are genuinely silent, unlike the so-called silent cinema which always had a musical accompaniment. For another their subject matter is not banal. To see Sleep (1963), Eat (1963), Henry Geldzahler (1964) or any of the hundreds of 'screen tests' Warhol shot is to experience something utterly different to anything offered by the early film pioneers. Lastly, in their provocative amateurishness, lack of skill and seeming effortlessness, they were an audacious challenge (and, for many, an insult) to both Hollywood and the avant-garde. Warhol seemed to switch on the camera and walk away. This was film's own Duchampian moment and film has never recovered from it.

The films were also made in a unique context: the Factory, a huge fifth-floor loft (about 100 feet by 40 feet) on East 47th Street. Billy Name had decorated it in silver foil, and opera played incessantly in the background. It became a parody of a Hollywood studio. According to Stephen Koch, Warhol, through Name, Malanga and the brilliant Ondine, gathered "a-heads, street geniuses, poor little rich girls, the very chic, the desperately unknown, hustlers and call boys, prostitutes, museum curators, art dealers, rich collectors". The Factory was classy and glamorous, chic and dangerous, and the door was always open. Drugs, sex and the pale presence of the ultra-hip Warhol provided the nexus for this volatile group, which seemed democratic, but was intensely not so. The sexuality was gay and the drugs were largely amphetamines.

As far as the films themselves were concerned, authorship was an anachronism. The camera was permanently placed ready for action in front of a large couch. Whoever visited the Factory, and was accepted into the circle, could perform on the couch for the 100-foot reel, while Warhol, Malanga, Name or whoever was available operated the camera. As Warhol confessed, film-making was so easy. A selection of these endless rolls of film was put together in 1964, entitled Couch. It showed various people, some famous, some not, doing this or that: hanging out, sleeping, hoovering, eating bananas, sucking cocks, fucking each other, cleaning a motorbike and so on. Silent, slowed down and shot in high-contrast black-and-white chiaroscuro, the work at times had a classic sculptural look - especially the sex scenes. Such narcissism and passivity were utterly new, and created a cinema of fantasies acted out, uncluttered by dialogue, storylines, stars, even - in its dreamlike movement - time itself.

With the Bolex camera using 100-foot rolls of black-and-white film, Warhol also made portraits or what he called 'screen tests' of the New York literati, many of which were not seen until after his death. Almost in a Bazinian fashion, Warhol was interested in the surface of things. Art lies in the there-ness of things. They are fairly orthodox portraits: either head-and-shoulders or tight head shots with a single light, using chiaroscuro effects in the traditional photographic manner. The fame of his subjects - Allen Ginsberg, et al - give them an additional curiosity value. In his more elaborate, Hollywood-mimicking 'scripted' films, Warhol used such strong filmic personalities or physiognomies as Sedgwick, Malanga and Marie Menken. Never banal in the everyday sense of realism, these films are fantasy projections depicting a world both glamorous and dangerous.

Warhol's decision to allow the length of reel itself to be the unifying factor was made in the face of the sophistication of post-Golden Age Hollywood. It was also a gob-smacking stance to take against the American avant-garde film tradition of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger and Jack Smith, who all clung with varying degrees of enthusiasm to editing as a shaping tool. In his bleak, relentless single takes, Warhol became, in an odd way, the ultimate Bazinian in an Eisensteinian montage-based film culture. His work was not simply a development in avant-garde tradition or a marginal snook at the mainstream, but a seismic shift not only of form but of subject matter. Warhol's intense and austere gaze on the supposedly obscene, the sexual and the perverse is now a cornerstone of our visual culture. On the surface he is not as outlandish as other film artists such as Brakhage. His films are not abstract, out of focus, or experimentally disorganised. But they are often very long - a celebration and exploration of boredom, as some have argued.

The later sound camera allowed Warhol to develop a more theatrical style of film-making using the exhibitionists and friends who gathered in the Factory - gays, druggies, transvestites, beautiful men and women, dangerous personalities. The 'superstar' was born: Edie Sedgwick, Mario Montez, Gerard Malanga, Ondine, and later Ingrid Superstar, Viva, Candy Darling - a move, however bizarre, towards Warhol's ambition to make 'real' films. Malanga and others have stated that Warhol always wanted to make such films. On the evidence of the years from 1963 until the Morrissey films, this intention seems ambiguous. To think that a film like Eat - artist Robert Indiana languorously eating a mushroom and playing with a cat for 30 minutes - had anything much to do with Hollywood, you must believe either that Warhol was stupid or that he had some rather obscure game plan. Equally, the two-long-takes film Beauty #2, in which a half-naked Edie Sedgwick is on a bed being encouraged off-screen by Malanga and ex-boyfriend Chuck Wein to indulge in sex with a rather superfluous young man, hardly seems aimed at establishing a Hollywood career - except perhaps for its doomed 'star' with her easy upper-class ways and charismatic screen presence.

Beauty #2 was typical of many of the black-and-white sound films in its focus on sexuality, the ambiguities of 'performance' (people playing themselves) and the disjunction between image and sound. An early sound film was Harlot, shot in December 1964 and 'starring' transvestite Mario Montez in full drag, sprawled on the couch eating a banana with Carol Koshinskie. Behind them stood Malanga and Philip Fagan, Warhol's lover at the time. The sound comprises an off-shot discussion between Tavel and others about female movie stars. Characteristically, it is both a homage to Hollywood and a critique.

It was The Chelsea Girls that reached beyond the small New York scene to a wider international public. Seen by Hollywood directors and moguls, influential European art directors and movie stars, it had an impact rivalled in the same period only by Godard. Comprising 12 single-take reels, The Chelsea Girls was a novelty as a double-screen film, with sound only on one screen so that audiences never knew what was going on soundwise on the other screen. It ran for over three hours. Unlike Empire and Sleep, which were first shown in an installation context with people wandering in and out of the screening space, The Chelsea Girls played in a proper auditorium with big audiences soaking up the antics of Warhol's superstars.

The runaway success of The Chelsea Girls had a discernible effect on Hollywood, resulting in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969), which features a Factory party at which arty pretentiousness and decadence highlight the poverty of the two leads, Jon Voight's Joe Buck and Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo. Schlesinger's movie humanism owes little to Warhol's amoralism. With its sentimentality, facile social conscience and deep cynicism about what Schlesinger saw as the self-indulgent elitism of the Warholian project, Midnight Cowboy can be seen as the establishment signposting the end of the 60s and of the Warholian project.

The art critic Barbara Rose claims that Warhol was "the inventor of the lifestyle of the 60s". He did encapsulate all its idealism, experimentalism, arrogance (even, at times, its silliness) and most of what was understood as cool. Cool is precisely the hijacking of low and marginal culture into the mainstream - borrowing from the black ghettos, from the drug world of the streets, from gay clubs, from S&M dress. Warhol was an artist operating in a tiny elite avant-garde in New York, but only Picasso in the modern period has had such universal recognition.

In the late 60s and 70s, Warhol's innovatory approach to sex, drugs and marginal lifestyles helped turn topics previously repressed by the Hollywood dream machine into commonplace subject matter for movies, formulating a new kind of gritty realism tinged by amoralism. For the avant-garde, meanwhile, Warhol's process and formal concerns were what mattered - in Britain, for instance, in the work of structural film-makers such as Peter Gidal and Malcolm Le Grice, and, more recently, Young British Artists such as Sam Taylor Wood, Douglas Gordon and Gillian Wearing.

The Andy Warhol Foundation

The Andy Warhol Homepage

The Andy Warhol Museum

 

Warholstars   Dedicated to the Warhol Superstars, plus much more

 

Andy Warhol Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Constantine Verevis from Senses of Cinema, December 12, 2002

More Photos »

 

Andy Warhol's Index (Book)  1967

 

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol  Andy Warhol, April 6, 1977

 

FILM; A Pioneering Dialogue Between Actress and Image  J. Hoberman from The New York Times, November 22, 1998

 

The '60s Without Compromise: Warhol's Films  Watching Warhol’s Films, by Thom Anderson from Rouge (2006)

 

FILM; Ciao, Edie: Warhol Girl Gets 15 More Minutes  Christian Moerk from The New York Times, February 19, 2006

 

UbuWeb Sound - Andy Warhol  Accompanying Cronenberg recordings about Warhol from the exhibition Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars Death and Disasters, 1962-1964, commentary by David Cronenberg, Mary-Lou Green, Dennis Hopper, David Moos, James Rosenquist and Amy Taubin, recorded at The Art Gallery of Ontario, May 19. 2006

 

FILM REVIEW; A 4-Hour Portrait of the Artist as a Visionary, a Voyeur and a Brand-Name Star  Stephen Holden reviews Andy Warhol, a Documentary, a 4-hour documentary film by Ric Burns, from The New York Times, September 1, 2006

 

POPism, The Warhol Sixties by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, September 5, 2006

 

David Cronenberg: on Andy Warhol | Film | The Guardian   He created his own universe and became its star, by David Cronenberg from The Guardian, September 11, 2006

 

FILM; For Edie Sedgwick, a Belated 16th Minute   Caryn James from The New York Times, February 4, 2007

 

FILM; The Poor Little Rich Girl in Leopard Skin Who Was Warhol's Muse  Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, March 31, 2007

 

A Film Rushes to the Screen, Then Stumbles  Charles Taylor reviews George Hickenlooper’s FACTORY GIRL from The New York Times, July 8, 2007

 

Art world bristles at legal war over Warhol   Ed Pilkington from The Guardian, July 17, 2007

 

Andy Warhol at the National Gallery of Scotland  13 Gallery Images, July 31, 2007

 

Roll Forever  Amy Taubin interviews Gus van Sant about Warhol’s legacy from Sight and Sound (August 2007)

             

Unblinking Eye, Visual Diary: Warhol’s Films   Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, October 21, 2007

 

Pop art exhibition is a reminder of today's obsession with copyright   Warhol Is Turning in His Grave, by Cory Doctorow from The Guardian, November 13, 2007

 

Warhol's weird world  Ed Pilkington from The Guardian, December 5, 2007

 

Much more than soup cans: welcome to Warhol according to Warhol   Charlotte Higgins from The Guardian, July 26, 2008

 

22 years after his death, Warhol's junk lends insight   365gay, August 19, 2009

 

Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures”  Museum of Modern Art, December 19, 2010March 21, 2011

 

Haber's Art Reviews: "Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures" and "T  December 2010

 

MoMA blog post  Klaus Biesenbach, December 17, 2010

 

Ken Johnson’s New York Times review of Andy Warhol's Films  December 23, 2010, also seen here:  'Andy Warhol - Motion Pictures' at MoMA - Review - NYTimes.co

 

Left Bank Art Blog: Andy Warhol's Silent Film Portraits: a Revie  Charles Kessler from Left Bank Art Blog, January 5, 2011

 

Is kissing an art? - Andy Warhol's 'Kiss' | Intimacy  Demi Morrison from Intimacy, November 14, 2012

 

The Best Way to Celebrate Andy Warhol’s Birthday? Watch His Grave.  J. Bryan Lowder from Slate, August 6, 2013

 

Bizarre Magazine interview  Billy Chainsaw interview with Mary Woronov, August 2004

 

Jonas Mekas: the man who inspired Andy Warhol to make films   Sean O’Hagan interviews Jonas Mekas from The Observer, December 1, 2012 

 

Andy Warhol in UbuWeb Film   Warhol’s Cinema – a Mirror for the Sixties, a 64 minute documentary film seen in its entirety (1989)

 

KISS

USA  (55 mi)  1963

 

Kiss | Chicago Reader

 

One of Andy Warhol's first films, and the first to be screened publicly, this 1963 film collects 18 three-minute kisses, with such Warhol regulars as Baby Jane Holzer, Gerard Malanga, Marisol, Ed Sanders, and Naomi Levine.

 

Dangerous Minds | Andy Warhol's 'Kiss'  Richard Metzger

Andy Warhol’s Kiss is probably the artist’s earliest film work that was screened in public. Harkening back to the time when Hayes Office censors would not allow lips to touch and linger for more than three seconds in Hollywood films, with Kiss, Warhol decided to shoot male/female, female/female and male/male snogs that went on for three minutes. The concept was likely also influenced by a 1929 Greta Garbo film called The Kiss which apparently was screened at Amos Vogel’s influential Cinema 16 experimental film society right around the time that Warhol bought his first Bolex film camera.

The Kiss films were started in 1963 and shown in installments during weekly underground film screenings organized by Jonas Mekas. Eventually a 55-minute long version of Kiss was assembled. Among the participants were Ed Sanders of The Fugs, actor Rufus Collins from the Living Theatre, sculptor Marisol, artist Robert Indiana, as well as several of the outcasts and doomed beauties who would come to comprise the Factory’s “superstars.” The woman who you see kissing several guys, is Naomi Levine, who probably also came up with the concept (many of the kisses were also shot in her apartment). Andy Warhol referred to Levine as “my first female superstar.”

c. August 1963:Andy Warhol shoots Kiss  Andy Warhol Site

Some Warhol scholars date the Kiss films from November/December 1963. However, Warhol probably started shooting them much earlier - around August 1963 and continued to shoot them through the end of 1964, if not beyond. According to Warhol in Popism, they were still doing KISS movies in the summer of 1964 when Gerard Malanga and Mark Lancaster did one - in August 1964. Malanga and Lancaster were not the only male/male couple in Kiss.

Callie Angell:

... there is a Freddy Herko/Johnny Dodd Kiss film, but it's not in the preserved version that MoMA distributes. (There are quite a few Kiss rolls not in that MoMA version, by the way -- they were found in their individual 100-ft. boxes). The first Kiss films (mostly with Naomi Levine) were shot prob. in August of 1963, but the series continued to be shot through at the least the end of 1964.

But there are other male-to-male Kisses in the MoMA version of Kiss, aren't there... Andrew Meyer and John Palmer (on the couch in front of the Jackie paintings), and also Steve Holden and somebody..."

According to Bob Colacello, the idea for KISS - close-ups of couples kissing each other for three minutes each - came from the old Hayes Office regulation forbidding actors in movies from touching lips for more than three seconds.

Warhol also produced a silkscreen called The Kiss, based on a film still from the Hollywood horror classic Dracula (1931) of Bela Lugosi biting the neck of his co-star, Helen Chandler. The silkscreen was done on November 22, 1963.

Amy Taubin, who would later become the film critic for the Village Voice, first saw some of the KISS films in 1963 at the Grammercy Arts Theater on West 27th Street. At this time the KISS series of films was called The Andy Warhol Serial "because it was shown in weekly four minute installments."

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - Cine-File.info  Kian Bergstrom

Warhol moved into filmmaking with a torrent of extraordinary work in 1963, including SLEEP, EAT, HAIRCUT, and BLOW JOB, four movies that perhaps best defined the vulgar conceptions of his early work. The genesis of KISS also dates from this year, though it wasn't completed until the end of 1964, and while it has been somewhat occluded by the others, it is as important and devastating a piece of work, and indeed ranks among the best of Warhol's films of any period. Like many early Warhols, KISS is deceptively easy to describe: twelve static shots, running until the reel in the camera is exhausted, are arranged in succession; each pictures two people who kiss for the duration of their shot. The movie is silent and black-and-white, shot at 24 frames-per-second and projected at 16. Irving Blum, the gallerist who gave Warhol his first one-man show, remembered one of the segments of KISS as the first of Warhol's films he watched, recalling that in its opening moments the audience, overcome by the stasis of the images, momentarily forgot it was a motion picture. And then 'the shocked response of everybody in the audience' when one of the men blinked. In its style, KISS recalls, then, one of the central myths of early cinema: that of the astonished spectator lurching with fright when a projected image ceases its inactivity and springs seemingly to life. But in its structure it is nothing less than a confrontation with another foundational moment in early movie history: the Irwin-Rice Kiss, which famously provoked the artist John Sloan to condemn it as vulgar and disgusting not because of its kissing per se but specifically because Irwin and Rice locked lips in a projected, magnified image, and did so three times in succession. Warhol's KISS takes seriously, with brutal candor and the precision of a zoologist in an anthill, the unblinking stare of the camera eye, harnessing early cinema's myths in a circumvention of the medium's own history, in essence erasing the whole of the talkies and their fantasies of finally removing that aural barrier mediating between us and the theatrical world on screen. Warhol will have none of that. For KISS shows us the human animal as fundamentally unknowable, distant, impervious to our attentions and our investigations. Warhol would go on to make greater works (LUPE), and crueler as well (SCREEN TEST #2), but KISS is that skeleton key that allows us entry to his cinematic aesthetic: conflicted and opaque, sinister and aroused, captivated and deliriously distracted. And like nearly all Warhol films, to view it is to experience a world of bewildering transcendence, of bodies metamorphosed into machines of mysterious purpose and unknown origin, and of such overwhelming eroticism and melancholy that every facet of the human form becomes an object of delight.

Left Bank Art Blog: Andy Warhol's Silent Film Portraits: a Revie  Charles Kessler from Left Bank Art Blog, January 5, 2011

 

Film Review: The Kiss by Andy Warhol | Gather  John McIntyre from The Age of Stupid

 

Haber's Art Reviews: "Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures" and "T  December 2010

 

Is kissing an art? - Andy Warhol's 'Kiss' | Intimacy  Demi Morrison from Intimacy, November 14, 2012

 

Kiss (1963 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

BLOW JOB

USA  (35 mi)  1963

 

Chicago Reader [Jonathan Rosenbaum] (capsule review)

Andy Warhol's 35-minute film from 1963 is a slow-motion sequence of a person's face in close-up as he experiences fellatio. Like all Warhol work from this period, it's well worth seeing.

All Movie Guide [Tom Vick]

Probably the most notorious of Andy Warhol's films, Blow Job has been called, jokingly, the longest reaction shot in the history of cinema. In it, an anonymous young man's face is seen in close-up while he receives fellatio from an unseen partner. The serene voyeurism that runs through Warhols '60s films reaches a kind of apotheosis in Blow Job. Sexuality, which is a distinct subtext in a number of his films, becomes the subject of this one but, in a typically Warholian joke on pornography, all the "action" occurs off-screen.

not coming to a theater near you [Matt Bailey]

The films of Andy Warhol (those that he actually had a hand in making between 1963 and 1968, not those to which he merely lent dollars and a name) are legendary, even beyond the art world in which they originated, and “legendary” is an appropriate term for them. For example, among those who know that Empire lasts about eight hours, few can claim actually to have seen it (or even a part of it). Among those who can drop the phrase “Chelsea girls” with an air of intimate familiarity, few could identify one of the actual girls in Chelsea Girls if she walked up and shook their hand.

Blow Job, no doubt because of its salacious title, is one of Warhol’s most notorious works. This notoriety is based purely on the appeal of its title, however, as the film itself is no more or less sensational than Warhol’s other early films such as Sleep, Kiss, or Eat, all films that deliver exactly what they promise. Blow Job is ostensibly a film of aspiring actor DeVerne Bookwalter receiving fellatio from Willard Maas. Those looking for pornographic thrills will be disappointed to know that the film is framed in a static close-up of Bookwalter’s face; the viewer never sees the titular act.

Like all of the films mentioned above excepting Chelsea Girls, Blow Job exhibits Warhol’s early film aesthetic where the artistic act is simply the switching on and off of the camera. All of Warhol’s early films consist of a chosen act or subject—from the Empire State Building to a person eating a banana—framed and filmed. The act is carried out from its logical beginning to its logical conclusion (or, in the case of Empire, the building is filmed from dusk to late night) and the camera does not move. Within these minimal parameters, the smallest details become epic events. The change of film reels every few minutes results in a rhythmic flow of action and non-action. At the same time, the artistry of Warhol’s early films is that he does not always indulge in what is anticipated. In the case of Blow Job’s thirty-five minutes, we expect that the climactic event of the film to be the same as the climactic event of the act, yet the film goes on for another reel after Bookwalter reaches orgasm. He looks at the camera uncomfortably, adjusts his posture as he leans against a brick wall, and smokes a cigarette. Is Warhol making a statement that the act of a blow job includes afterglow, awkward aftermath, and a cigarette? Is he forcing his subject to acknowledge his own exhibitionism? Is he forcing his audience to acknowledge the humanity of his subject? He could be doing all of these things and more. The ambiguity and unanswered questions are what make Warhol’s films so intriguing and interesting beyond facile reactions to their titles, length, and subject matter. That Blow Job is quite a bit less than an actual blow job, yet infinitely more, is what makes it art.

White gay male identity and Warhol  Margo Miller reviews Roy Grundmann’s book and the film from Jump Cut, Winter 2006

 

Oggs' Movie Thoughts

 

Andy Warhol's Blow Job  Gerald Peary’s review of a book by Roy Grundmann

 
VINYL

USA  (70 mi)  1965

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago   Ben Sachs

Employing one set, a few props, and only two different camera positions in the course of 63 minutes, Andy Warhol's very loose adaptation of A Clockwork Orange is nonetheless a work of intense formal precision; those susceptible to it will find the film a spellbinding experience. Anthony Burgess' novel is reduced to just a handful of scenes: a young thug's sadistic assault on some innocent people, his arrest, and his subsequent torture/S&M seduction by state officials. The rest of the film consists of failed gestures of some sort, such as tripped-up proclamations or actors dancing by themselves. As in his later NUDE RESTAURANT (1967), Warhol creates something like euphoria within an apathetic void. Clockwork may not seem like the most obvious choice for Warhol's sole literary adaption (One of Richard Brautigan's quasi-novels would have seemed more a propos); but on further reflection Warhol's aesthetic mingles quite provocatively with Burgess' parable of free choice amidst social oppression. In spite of the restrictions both formal and ideological, Warhol displays a gifted pictorial sense throughout the film. He arranges his actors like a skilled portraitist (No one ever moves more than a couple feet in any direction), with superstar Edie Sedgwick sitting placidly on the right side of the frame for almost the entire duration. Her feminine beauty stands out like stark, contrasting brushstroke against the surrounding canvas of male homoeroticism. (1965, 70 min, 16mm)

CHELSEA GIRLS                                                   A-                    93

USA  (210 mi)  1966  co-director:  Paul Morrissey

 

If anybody wants to know what those summer days of ‘66 were like in New York for us, all I can say is go see Chelsea Girls. I’ve never seen it without feeling in the pit of my stomach that I was right back there all over again. It may have looked like a horror show … to some outside people, but to us it was more like a comfort – after all, we were a group of people who understood each other’s problems.

—Andy Warhol

 

CHELSEA GIRLS (1966) is the first underground film to be shown in commercial theaters, opening the doors to other underground films, costing only $1500 to make, yet grossing over half a million dollars in just the first two years, though officials ruled against screening the film at Cannes.  It was a hit in New York City, critically acclaimed in Los Angeles and San Francisco, while banned in Chicago and Boston.  Easily Warhol’s most famous film, Newsweek described it as “The Iliad of the Underground,” introducing to the world a myriad of weird and eccentric characters from Warhol’s Factory of stars, lacking any formal narrative, following various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, shown on a split screen, presented side by side from two projectors, an effect also used in his earlier short OUTER AND INNER SPACE (1966), with one starting about 5-minutes before the next screen, moving the audio sound from one side to the other, seemingly at random, while the other plays out in silence.  Directed, co-written (with Ronald Tavel), produced, and filmed by Warhol, the film is presented in 12 unedited reels running about 30-minutes in length, feeling more like a documentary, where it stands today as a remarkable time capsule of the 60’s, featuring original music by the end from the Velvet Underground that sounds like a rare live performance.  Warhol was a remarkably prolific filmmaker, making more than 100 movies, and 472 film portraits, mostly two to four-minute uninterrupted shots that he called Screen Tests of artists, celebrities, guests, friends, or anyone that he thought had “star potential,” usually slowing the film speed considerably when projecting them, ultimately withdrawing all his films from circulation in the early 70’s, only becoming available again after his death in 1987, where many have been restored for viewing status.  He began making films in 1963 only after experiencing success as a painter and sculptor, where one of his earliest is the 5-hour-and-21-minute SLEEP (1963), which is exactly that, originally conceived with an idea of filming a sleeping Brigitte Bardot, but the man filmed was his friend and lover, poet John Giorno.  The original screening was attended by only nine people, with two exiting during the first hour, a minimalist technique he would exaggerate even further with the 8-hour EMPIRE (1964), a single static shot of the Empire State Building from early evening until nearly 3 am the next day.  In these exhaustive works, the audience becomes an extension of the live performance witnessed onscreen.

 

In the beginning of 1966, Warhol began a collaboration with the musical group the Velvet Underground, icons of the music world today, but they were extremely “unpopular” at the time, with a droning electric viola and lyrics that focused on drugs, prostitution, S & M, and other gritty topics that were considered controversial at the time, banned from the airwaves, defined by avant-garde or experimental rock, doing several Screen Tests of German lead singer Nico (Christa Pӓffgen), which along with clips from EMPIRE (1964) and VINYL (1965) would be blown up to play as a backdrop behind the performers, featuring various dancers from the Factory (like Mary Woronov and Gerard Malanga) along with a multi-screen film projection and elaborate light shows known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which eventually became associated with live rock shows of the era, used regularly by rock promoter Bill Graham at the Fillmore East and Fillmore West.  It was during this experimentation with multiple formats that Warhol conceived CHELSEA GIRLS, each segment featuring his underground stable of Factory stars, including Nico (and her children), Pope Ondine (Bob Olivio), Brigid Polk (Brigid Berlin), Ingrid Superstar (Ingrid Von Scheven), International Velvet (Susan Bottomly), Mary Woronov, Ed Hood, Rene Ricard, Patrick Fleming, Angelina “Pepper” Davis, Eric Emerson, poet, photographer and filmmaker Gerard Malanga, experimental filmmaker Marie Menken, and transvestite Mario Montez.  One thing that immediately stands out is Warhol pushing the boundaries of freedom of speech, exhibiting an extreme tolerance of both the drug culture and homosexuality, where both had rarely been expressed so openly before.  What Warhol could express as an underground filmmaker was considerably less commercial, and less censored, like his earlier film BLOW JOB (1963), a single 35-minute shot of the expressions captured on a man’s face as he receives oral sex, opening up an entirely new world not only to the 1960s counterculture, but a new gay audience which was finally being represented onscreen, where gay characters were being depicted as complex human beings.  Growing out of Kerouac and the Beat Generation, some of whose writers were openly gay, like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, whose notorious censorship trials about graphic sexual depictions of homosexual sex eventually liberates the written word, Warhol, along with experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who successfully fought his own obscenity charges, helped define cinema as art rather than pornography.  Warhol was fighting similar battles on the art front, mass producing silkscreens in much the same way corporations mass-produced consumer goods, redefining standards of what was considered art, attracting fringe characters who were adult film performers, drag queens, drug addicts, musicians, or would-be celebrities that helped him create his paintings, starred in his films, or mixed with wealthy socialites, creating their own subculture while contributing to the legendary atmosphere of the times.    

 

CHELSEA GIRLS was one of the last pure art films Warhol made before he got involved producing sexploitation movies like LONESOME COWBOYS (1968), TRASH (1970), and HEAT (1972) directed by Paul Morrissey that made a lot more money playing in commercial theaters.  Even today, snippets of Warhol’s Screen Tests may be seen playing silently in the video galleries of modern art museums, where arguably more people see them in a single day than ever watched them throughout Warhol’s lifetime, even if they’re only glanced at occasionally.  Tedium is part of the Warhol experience, where the camera passively records the banality of existence, filming ordinary human experiences, like trimming one’s hair, washing dishes, talking on the telephone, complaining bitterly about something or somebody, being bored, injecting drugs, talking about oneself, dominating the discussion, interjecting rude comments and insults, telling others to “shut up,” where things grow increasingly hostile after a while, occasionally growing wildly out of control, where the real subject appears to be close-ups, with the camera remaining in a fixed position often zooming in and out, altering the focus, sometimes side to side, yet what we see remains the same throughout each reel, where there’s a good deal of familiarity and repetition that the audience must adjust to, as everything takes place in the claustrophobic confines of small hotel rooms.  Apparently Nico, Brigid Berlin, and International Velvet lived in the Chelsea Hotel, through Brigid claimed she only spent about one night a week in her room, visiting others continuously, where the film does provide an interchangeable feel of moving from room to room, where people come and go, as if transience is part of the overall experience.  The narcissistic fixation on oneself is obvious, as these individuals are obsessed with themselves a half century before the era of selfies, showing little patience or regard for others, as if they’ve lived their entire lives for this one moment to shine.  For some, like Ondine or Mary Woronov, being in front of a camera is the most naturalistic thing in the world, where they’re free to say whatever they want, and both are lucid and intelligible, but aggressively vicious, while Nico, on the other hand, feels as if she’s used to people constantly taking her picture, like a fashion model, where she may have no other life except in front of a camera.  Shot from June to September in 1966, the film is generally improvised, with only one written scene by Ron Tavel, the “Hanoi Hannah” sequence starring Woronov.  When Jonas Mekas asked for a film to screen, Morrisey and Warhol reduced the footage to 12 reels, with the first seven (and reel 11) in black and white, while the other four are in color, growing increasingly hallucinogenic by the end, where they decided to show them on two screens in order to reduce the film time from 6 ½ to 3 ½ hours. 

 

One of the interesting aspects of this particular film is how each experience is slightly different, where projectors may be stuck behind a booth or may be out in the open, changing reels in the same dark room as the viewing audience, where the whirr of the projectors is the initial sound heard before anything appears onscreen and is part of the sound heard throughout.  Initially when released in the 60’s the reel changes were completely random, where the projector could simply pick and choose them in any order, though by now there is an established order and symmetry to the film, yet the actual sequences seen side-by-side are altered by the timing of the reel changes, which are different in each screening, as each reel plays out until it runs into a blank leader and goes dark.  As a result, no two screenings are exactly alike.  Shot in the Chelsea Hotel, the Factory, and various other apartments including the Velvet Underground’s apartment on West 3rd Street in Greenwich Village, the film begins and ends on Nico, initially seen trimming her bangs in her kitchen by staring into a handheld mirror, occasionally interrupted by her 4-year old son Ari while talking idly with friends.   The second reel introduces Pope Ondine, supposedly the “Pope” of Greenwich Village, with Ingrid Superstar as they engage in a contentious discussion about their lifestyles, The Chelsea Girl (1966), Paul Morrissey - Andy Warhol ...  YouTube (3:50), urging her to make a holy confession (while in the same breath acknowledging a deep-seeded hatred for the church), then berating her when it’s not personal enough, going on an extended rant of his own, demanding that she admit to being a lesbian, and when she refuses, screams at her, “I’ve seen you at Page Three and a lot of other dyke joints!”  When Ingrid refuses to be bullied, Ondine denounces her, “You’re a subspecies, my dear.  You’re not even a vegetable!”  The third reel introduces an overconfident Brigid Berlin (aka Brigid Polk), who delights in conducting various drug transactions by phone while lying or sitting in her bed, eventually injecting amphetamines into her system by sticking a needle into her butt through her blue jeans, as if this defiant portrait defines who she is.  The fourth reel introduces two men lying on a bed, an older poet, art critic, and painter Rene Ricard dressed in a bathrobe, and pretty boy Patrick Fleming, his own personal boy toy who is dressed only in white undies.  Two women eventually protrude from the edge of the frame, one of whom ties up Patrick with a belt, but most of this is mere horseplay.  Reels 5 and 6 blend into each other, introducing Mary Woronov as Hanoi Hannah, talking with International Velvet, who is literally caked with mascara, while Brigid is confined to a place underneath a desk.  Occasionally Brigid might scream something, but Hannah simply tells her to “shut up.”  By the next segment, another woman (Pepper Davis) has been added to the room, while Hannah has become more intimidating, unleashing her venom towards each of them, but in camp fashion, as if she is the dominant dyke in a prison cell.  This segment is notable for the tears seen streaming down Pepper’s face, as she is living a visible nightmare.

 

Scripted or not, the prevailing tone throughout is a pronounced sadomasochism, where inflicting obvious hurt and pain is definitely part of the process, while others, perhaps not so willingly, are on the receiving end of vicious verbal attacks, though it’s expressed in the manner of a trashy melodrama, like something you might pick up in a dime store novel with a lurid picture on the cover.  The viewer is implicated in what takes place onscreen, as voyeurism is the prescribed Warhol methodology, where the artist literally takes hold of your brain by forcing what he likes onto the screen, making each individual viewer come to terms with what they see.  Of interest, Woronov was the only actress to learn her lines, not that anybody noticed or seemed to care, as they were too busy establishing their own character in front of the camera.  By reel seven, which feels shortened, we have returned to the “boys in the bed,” though this time drag queen Mario Montez, dressed like she’s costumed for Gone with the Wind, sings several songs.  Neither of them are visibly impressed, though Patrick Fleming takes great pleasure in openly flirting in front of Rene, which only makes him want to possess him even more, like he’s his own personal property.  By reel 8, the film switches to color, as we observe Marie Menken, an avant-garde artist in her own right, dressed in a hat resembling Bella Abzug, playing the character of a Mother berating her son, Gerard Malanga, denouncing him as a “hippie,” while he’s placed in the disadvantageous position of having to defend his marriage to Hanoi Hannah, who sits inertly in the corner dressed in a white shirt and tie.  Mother’s assertive harangue stands in stark contrast to the passive indifference expressed by the other two.  By reel nine, the tone has shifted, becoming more psychedelic, as this is largely a long and rambling soliloquy by Eric Emerson, a trained classical ballet dancer who was supposedly on LSD at the time.  As he grooves on his own body, becoming a literal striptease of the body and soul, one can already hear the spacy refrains of Walking in Space - Hair - YouTube (4:38) from the musical Hair that would be released the following year, while reel 10 is an assembled Factory audience, like a Greek chorus, that bears witness to his earth shift, predominately expressed through lighting effects and changing colors on facial close-ups.  These voiceless characters act as more of a set-up for what follows, as reel eleven is the most devastating of them all. 

 

Returning back to the stark reality of black and white, Pope Ondine, a gay, self-proclaimed high priest in the art of the mindfuck, who sees himself as a kind of savant able to gaze deeply into other people’s souls, gives himself a fix of amphetamine before he takes centerstage.  Desiring a willing subject who will offer a full confession, it turns out to be Ronna Page, a friend of Jonas Mekas and Gerard Malanga, who has the unmitigated gall to call him a phony.  Erupting in anger, Ondine first throws water in her face before slapping her silly in full assault mode, where his misogynist posture is on full display, a dreadfully horrific moment even when viewed half a century later.  There’s nothing contrived or phony about this as she scurries away, vehemently upset even twenty minutes later, still screaming back at him offstage, certainly among the most dramatically uncomfortable scenes in cinema, as he shows no remorse and instead relentlessly attacks this woman voraciously for the duration of the screen time, reduced to having little more to offer the camera than yet another fix.  Without question, Ondine is a dick.  Through his actions, we’re forced to conclude the drug-induced pathway seeking freedom and liberation is also the pathway to prison and one’s own personal hell, where his performance has been compared to Sartre’s No Exit.  Fortunately there’s more.  While Ondine has the final word, as that reel sputters to an end, a live performance of a Velvet Underground jam session plays out in a musical ascension during the final reel, returning back to Nico, who is captured in a wordless portrait through Day-Glo colors and red filters, but can be seen crying, an apt response to what was just viewed on the other screen, though the real context revealed later is that she’s listening to music, perhaps the same revelatory music we’re listening to.  The music and the hallucinogenic light show on Nico’s alluring face brings the film to a close, where the music continues well after the celluloid ends and the room turns to dark.  The final two sequences are electrifying.  Despite the passage of time and an amateur nature of some of the performances, the entire piece maintains a modernistic mindset, like a brilliantly choreographed ballet of mood shifts.   

 

Jonas Mekas from The Village Voice, September 29, 1966, The Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol) Reviews

 

The Chelsea Girls has a classical grandeur about it, something from Victor Hugo. Its grandeur is the grandeur of its subject, the human scope of its subject. And it is a tragic film. The lives that we see in this film are full of desperation, hardness, and terror. It’s there for everybody to see and to think about. Every work of art helps us to understand ourselves by describing to us those aspects of our lives, which we either know little of or fear. It’s there in black on white before our eyes, this collection of desperate creatures, the desperate part of our being, the avant-garde of our being. And one of the amazing things about this film is that the people in it are not really actors; or if they are acting, their acting becomes unimportant. It becomes part of their personalities, and there they are, totally real, with their transformed, intensified selves. The screen acting is expanded by an ambiguity between real and unreal. This is part of Warhol’s filming technique, and very often it is a painful technique. There is the girl who walks from scene to scene crying, real tears, really hurt; a girl, under LSD probably, who isn't even aware, or only half aware, that she is being filmed; the “priest” who gives into a fit of rage (a real rage) and then slaps the girl right and left (a real slap, not the actors slap) when she begins to talk about God-in probably the most dramatic religious sequence ever filmed. Toward the end, the film bursts into color-not the usual color-movie color but a dramatized exalted, screaming red color of terror.

 

Classic Films  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

Several people who are greater Warhol aficionados than I am have argued that CHELSEA GIRLS is a film of diminishing returns.  Seen in light of his other work, and in light of repeat viewings, it becomes a meaner, nastier, uglier film than Warhol fans seem to want.  But as someone who has often found the Factory material rather insular and a bit alienating, I think this one may be a summary work.  CHELSEA GIRLS doesn’t give an inch.  It is long, rambling, self-involved, drug-addled, but it is also so confident in its own fabulousness that it may be the closest thing to a queer equivalent of present-day hip-hop culture.  Its unbridled bitchiness is infectious. Pope Ondine, who steals the show, is not a nice person.

 

Girish

 

When I was a kid, I used to think that Ben-Hur was an epic film. No, this is an epic film. I'd propose that what makes an epic film is not just its length or its large cast of characters but how vast and challenging it can be to fully apprehend on one viewing. The Chelsea Girls is composed of twelve little mini-films (or sequences), each running about a half-hour. At any time, two of these films are projected simultaneously on the screen, with the sound of only one being heard. Each of the individual films comprises one shot with no edits. The Chelsea Girls runs three-and-a-half hours, without intermission. The film opens and closes with Nico and in between is a set of mostly improvised performances by Factory regulars. It’s thrilling, funny, boring, creepy, gross, wicked, laughable, disturbing, sadistic—epic stuff. (More reading on the film here.)

 

The Chelsea Girls | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum

The most celebrated Andy Warhol feature (1966), and for many the best, is made up of a dozen 33-minute reels that are projected two at a time, side by side. The sound varies according to chance and the projectionist, as only one sound track is played at a time. The people shown include such Warhol “superstars” as Nico, Ondine, Gerard Malanga, Marie Menken, Mary Woronov (who later costarred in Eating Raoul), Ingrid Superstar, Brigid Polk, and International Velvet. All apparently residents of Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel, they engage in a number of activities and dialogues for 210 minutes, and the results are often spellbinding; the juxtaposition of two film images at once gives the spectator an unusual amount of freedom in what to concentrate on and what to make of these variously whacked-out performers.

Chelsea Girls - Film and Video Center at UCI  UC Irvine Film and Video center

Warhol’s two-screen, 12-reel extravaganza marks the height of his creative involvement in filmmaking. One of the last films completed before Valerie Solanas shot Warhol in 1967, Chelsea Girls is both a technical triumph and a showcase for Warhol’s Superstars. Starring Mary Woronov, Warhol’s experimental film masterpiece performs a series of anti-aesthetic gestures: each reel unfolds a mini-narrative bounded by the temporal limits of the film reel and challenged by the spatial distractions of double screen projection. The order and arrangement of Chelsea Girls was at first improvised (to an original score by Velvet Underground); a set sequence for the film only developed over the course of screenings. According to Warhol, “Chelsea Girls was the movie that made everyone sit up and notice what we were doing in films (and a lot of times that meant sit up, stand up, and walk out).”

Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Kyle A. Westphal

1966: The dilapidated Chelsea Hotel had just been designated a New York City landmark and newly-elected John Lindsay organized the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting in a bid to stimulate local production. And in a flash of karmic fury that fused and profaned these civic projects, THE CHELSEA GIRLS proved so successful at the Filmmakers' Cinematheque that it moved uptown to the Regency at 72nd and Broadway, respectable digs that forced New York media and the trade press to acknowledge the movie's existence. Mainstream press coverage ranged from pandering praise to venomous hostility. It was a movie almost calculated to alienate self-styled liberals, who had heretofore encountered destitute junkies and hustlers in a prescriptive, consciousness-raising context. (Pace Jacob Riis, Warhol is more interested in How the Other Half Fucks.) Variety called it "an anti-film, or more accurately, a non-film," but breathlessly reported its grosses anyway. THE CHELSEA GIRLS became the biggest cross-over hit in the history of the American avant-garde—the title that sent bewildered theater owners scrambling to install 16mm projectors and presaged a brief vogue for split-screen and multi-projector presentations that would continue with Expo 67, THE BOSTON STRANGLER, WOODSTOCK, et al. During its original Cinematheque engagement, the twelve reels of CHELSEA GIRLS had been shown in a different order at every show, with distorting glass and spontaneous soundtrack adjustments. Andrew Sarris reckoned that "what with the problems of projection the personalities of projectionists, each showing of THE CHELSEA GIRLS may qualify as a distinctly unique happening." When demand spiked and the Filmmakers Coop rushed to fulfill orders, Jonas Mekas codified the structure of the film and gave us THE CHELSEA GIRLS as we know it today. (The original CHELSEA GIRLS projectionist, Bob Cowan, lamented this state of affairs a few years later: "I saw a version at the Elgin Cinema which was pedestrian to say the least. The sound was a garbled mess, the image grey-brown and lifeless. There were maybe three or four old men in the audience. It was all very depressing.... The enjoyment that I got was in projecting it, not in seeing it.") Even in its housebroken form, THE CHELSEA GIRLS is still a wild experience, heavily influenced by the whims and sympathies of the projectionist. Seen today, the whole is probably greater than the sum of its parts, with no single CHELSEA GIRLS reel approaching the perfection of Warhol's masterpieces. MY HUSTLER and CAMP are funnier, KISS, BLOW JOB, and POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL are more rigorously rewarding, and OUTER AND INNER SPACE and LUPE make more exacting use of the dual projection conceit—and yet THE CHELSEA GIRLS still stands as that quintessential work, the one that most fully synthesizes Warhol's soul-scratching sincerity with his live-wire threat to narrative artifice and traditional film grammar. There's no conventional crosscutting, but the sense of simultaneous action is even more bluntly effective in double projection, a sustained threat of collision never realized. The whole thing is staggering and exhausting, like we're forcibly ensconced in some surveillance state hivemind: we eavesdrop on one amphetamine-fueled rant after another, our eyes wandering away to the queer doings next door and back again. As it stretches on, THE CHELSEA GIRLS feels like it could recede out to infinity—until the return of Pope Ondine. There's not even a fourth wall left to break, and yet the Pope barrels through it anyway, summoning a freak energy that Mekas aptly described as a "holy terror." The image fades out, but the music continues—the movie is still going on, invisible, congealed into air. (1966, 204 min, 16mm Double Projection)

Chelsea Girls - Film (Movie) Plot and Review - Publications  Ed Lowry

A bona fide milestone of the American underground film, Chelsea Girls marks the apogee of the film career of pop artist Andy Warhol. Consisting of twelve 35-minute reels, each representing the activities in one room of New York's Chelsea Hotel, the film is projected two reels at a time, side by side, bringing its seven hours of footage to a running time of three hours—as fans have noted, the same length as Gone with the Wind. The comparison is facetious, but apt, for Chelsea Girls not only represents one of the most significant cultural/aesthetic touchstones for the 1960s underground, but also its first "blockbuster," drawing audiences large enough for Variety to begin listing its grosses.

Each of the film's 12 reels consists of a single, unedited shot in which various personalities from the Warhol factory (junkies, rock singers, camp homosexuals, professional poseurs) talk and/or act out sketchy vignettes. The cinema-verité aimlessness of the recorded performances is set in contrast to the strict, though seemingly arbitrary, structure of the film. While the length and continuity of each scene are identical (with actors instructed only to remain within the frame and to occupy the allotted time), the framing and camera movement vary between them, from the perfectly static to the eternally zooming. In a similar spirit of randomness, eight of the reels are in black-and-white, while four are in colour. The dual projection, suggesting the simultaneity of action in two rooms at once, represents Warhol's final renunciation of the cinema of montage, by making cross-cutting superfluous.

Apparently, the decision to show Chelsea Girls two reels at a time was made only after the footage was shot; and Warhol provided no clue as to their order or as to which of the competing soundtracks should receive precedence. Thus, the projectionist took an active part in the creative process; as does the audience, which never fails to detect correspondence and contrasts between the randomly juxtaposed images. More recently, the film's projection has become conventionalized, based on the instructions of its sole distributor Ondine, star of one of the film's "climactic" scenes. The beginning of the first two reels is staggered by about five minutes, with the reel change on the first projector taking place while the second image continues, and vice versa. As currently presented, the order of the reels is structured along a line of increasingly dramatic (though basically non-narrative) scenes, and from black-and-white toward colour. The first of the film's six coupled reels features Velvet Underground cohort Nico meticulously cutting her hair on the left screen, and superstar Ondine on the right. The last two reels mirror the first, with Nico on the right (in colour) and Ondine on the left playing out the film's most emotional scene, wherein the fiction of Ondine as "Pope," taking confessions from various Factory types, flares into a genuine confrontation with one woman, followed first by a refusal to complete the scene and then by a sequence in which Ondine makes use of the camera as confessor. The episodes in between include scenes of Factory regulars Ed Hood, Mario Montez, Ingrid Superstar, and International Velvet lolling on a bed; of Brigid Polk shooting up speed through her jeans; of later exploitation queen Mary Woronov playing Hanoi Hannah, haranguing several women from a revolutionary tract; of avant-garde filmmaker Marie Mencken verbally abusing factory pretty-boy Gerard Malanga; and of young Eric Emerson doing a sort of slow striptase under psychedelic lights as he delivers an LSD-induced rap to the camera.

Seen outside the context of New York 1960s underground chic, Chelsea Girls still seems more than deserving of its reputation, not only as a document of a period, or even as the apotheosis of a certain influential part of the counterculture, but moreso as the epitome of Warhol's democratic notion of stardom for everyone placed in brashly contradictory juxtaposition to a passively mechanical aesthetic structured to the specifications of the culture of mass production and consumption.

Eyewitness to Warhol | The Art Book Review    Merridawn Duckler reviews Eyewitness to Warhol, Essays by Mary Woronov, May 13, 2014

Mary Woronov famously ditched a Cornell art department field trip to become the star of Warhol’s first commercially successful film, and went on to serve as one of his enduring muses. She was—as this title suggests—indeed an eyewitness to Warhol. Still one wonders with Warhol if there was ever any other kind? The actors, artists and personalities a primary medium. Given critical distance, we see this not so much in the gossipy, celebrity-plagued universe of what Arthur Danto calls the “post-historical period” but in how Warhol invented, or conjured, or re-imagined a new kind of relationship between artist and muse. Unlike the mistresses, love-objects, and patrons of, say, the Impressionists, the figures which fed Warhol’s vision were less subject than object—or object as subject. In some ways his predecessor in this was surely Morandi. At the same time this risible hero of reconstructed definitions himself remained psychologically invisible.

So, despite a fairly extensive parade of witness-driven books on Warhol, one welcomes Woronov’s addition. She was foremost an object of the camera, Warhol’s doppelganger, an honest, intelligent and fearless chronicler, who survived the era with her mind intact. In the introduction she writes that she hoped after publishing her fictionalized account of the Factory years, Swimming Underground, that she had, “put that part of my life to sleep.” But some monsters just keep coming back.

This slight volume consists of three essays: “Screen Tests,” “Chelsea Girls,” and “Self Interview.” The first two constitute a kind of film-memoir, relating Woronov’s experiences in front of Warhol’s cameras while the last is a Q&A in which Q=A.  To dispatch with the least useful first, the self-interview isn’t going to replace the selfie as cultural phenomenon anytime soon. Woronov’s witty, perceptive style collapses into solipsism when confronting overly broad categories like feminism, religion, and technology. She’s not a natural aphorist so observations like, “without beauty for gas, we only leap from propane to profane,” don’t do much justice to either her wit or her honesty. These qualities are hallmarks of the preceding essays.

In the first essay, a three page gem, “Screen Tests,” we get a wry blow-by-blow of Woronov’s encounter with both camera lens (which she calls “one of the coldest things in the world”) and the artistic choices behind it. Woronov may attribute youth, boredom, or narcissism to her continuance at the Factory but her writing suggests a keen empathy. She identifies an artist as one who, “tries to pin down what he finds more alluring and allusive….For Andy, it was intimacy.” Only an immersed participant would make such an observation and only a writer with nothing to lose or gain will express it so beautifully.

We learn that the voyeuristic quality of these works was intrinsic: “Of course the person who loved watching these films the most, and who did so over and over, while the rest of us ran to the other end of the factory, was Warhol.” He made films so he could watch them, a busman’s holiday for a voyeur. And Woronov satisfies our inner voyeur with curt, charming and dynamic details.

What exactly Warhol is watching is detailed with more care in “Chelsea Girls,” the most personal essay of the three, in which Woronov traces her on-set experience, weaving in details of Warhol’s working methods. In an extended metaphor on “Queen Hollywood,” she describes her perceptions of the film’s cultural impact and one of its products—herself. For the uninitiated—which describes most of us, since part of the point of mangling definitions is an extruded alienation—to watch Chelsea Girls without this commentary is to witness a badly lit, indifferently scripted, meander-fest; a cat fight between International Velvet and Woronov with frequent stops to fix mascara. On reading Woronov, aesthetic reasoning, both announced and subversive, is brought to the artwork, deepening it, giving it new gravitas. Behind the jokey, dispassionate and cool exterior, Woronov identified real passions and pathologies and those are the true subject of this book.

A Chelsea Girl Still Bewitched by Warhol - latimes  Hunter Drohojowska-Philip, August 11, 2002

The auditorium of the Museum of Contemporary Art was filled to capacity a couple of weeks ago, when Mary Woronov added her two cents to the Andy Warhol retrospective. Woronov, one of the stars of his films, is still a beauty, with dark eyes and planar cheekbones. She doesn't look all that different from when she appeared in "Chelsea Girls" in 1965, although her hair is brown now and streaked with gray.

Woronov narrated a slide show of other Factory regulars and brief clips of her film appearances, and then read from her most recent book, "Eyewitness to Warhol." In two essays and a self-interview, she examines the meaning of the artist's films, which she considers "monumental."

"What Warhol was doing is what any artist does: He tried to pin down the thing he finds most alluring and elusive. For Andy, it was intimacy," she told the audience. " 'Screen Tests' allows you to look for as long as you like into someone's eyes, while they look back at you."

This is Woronov's second book devoted to Warhol; her first, "Swimming Underground," a memoir of her life at the Factory, came out in 1995. This slim, silver-paper-bound volume is a much more objective view. Her publisher is art historian Victoria Dailey, who became intrigued through informal conversations with Woronov. Dailey, whose eponymous company occasionally published books on the arts, found Woronov's accounts of working with Warhol to be refreshingly irreverent: "acerbic, insightful and accurate" are her words.

Although Woronov's first book was autobiographical, in these essays she describes Warhol's filmmaking process and philosophy. Woronov is a survivor, one of the few of the Factory denizens still alive. She offers a unique firsthand account of her experience observing Warhol socially and as one of his actors.

Woronov, 60, lives with her dog, Tina, and cat, Ashley, in what she calls a "witch's cottage" off Beverly Boulevard in Hollywood. She has painted the walls of the tiny house in bright colors, and the upstairs studio floor is lime green. The rooms are hung with dozens of landscape and figure paintings by Woronov, who has never given up making art despite almost failing the subject at school.

Everywhere, however, there is evidence of her most recent occupation: author. Walls are lined with books, and she writes at a big table looking out onto a courtyard.

She may have 72 film credits to her name (her favorite being "Eating Raoul," in which she co-starred as one half of the murderous couple), but since the success of "Swimming Underground," she has turned to writing, mostly concentrating on fiction. "Snake: A Novel," and "Niagara," her most recent book, were both published in Britain by Serpent's Tail.

"Eyewitness to Warhol," however, is more analytical. In describing "Chelsea Girls," she writes, "Warhol movies are not narrative, linear or entertaining.... Andy was not into entertainment, which moves along. He was into voyeurism, which moves in, close, as close as possible, stopping on the subject until it's uncomfortable.... And when you refuse to move on, when you stop for no reason, you open up a void, which imagination is forced to fill."

Woronov's book also details Warhol's working process. For example, when the script ran out before the film was used up, Warhol would tell scriptwriter Ronald Tavel to jump in front of the camera and improvise.

Before a life of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll at the Factory, Woronov lived a largely middle-class existence in the suburbs of Brooklyn, N.Y. Her stepfather was a doctor and she was sent to private school from age 6, which is, she says, "the only reason I am as intelligent as I am."

She was a 20-year-old art student at Cornell University when her class visited Warhol's New York City studio in 1964. Poet Gerard Malanga grabbed her and insisted she take a screen test. As the steel doors of the elevator shut on her classmates' faces, she recalls, "I forgot I ever knew them."

"That was my most famous move, ever," she says of leaving school for full-time Factory life.

Warhol was painfully shy and surrounded himself with an entourage so he wouldn't have to make conversation. Woronov says, "I don't think I talked to Andy but five times." But she was close to other Factory regulars. She traveled with Lou Reed to Los Angeles as a dancer with the multimedia performances of the Velvet Underground's Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows.

It was under the tutelage of Paul Morrissey, who directed Warhol's "Chelsea Girls," that she came to memorize her first lines and seriously pursue acting. The documentary-style, stream-of-consciousness film is, in Woronov's words, the Factory's answer to Hollywood. For hours in the film, she reclines on a Chelsea Hotel bed with two other women, but her scenes are not sexy, she says. She explains the Warholian ethos: "You can't have a movie without a female star, but it was the guys who were sexy." Morrissey decided on the split-screen format of the film, explaining that if the audience was bored with one view, "they can watch the other, they can choose."

Woronov appeared in half a dozen films but also acted with the experimental Theater of the Ridiculous. Then came 1968, when Valerie Solanas shot Warhol. "After that," Woronov says, "it was all different. Andy got rid of all those freaks. It was a new crowd. You'd have to go through four secretaries to see him. It was all uptight and clean. He didn't do movies anymore, so he didn't need us."

Post-Factory, Woronov continued acting in New York (she was praised for her work in "In the Boom Boom Room" at Lincoln Center) and moved, in 1973, to Los Angeles. Starring roles in many of Roger Corman's films followed. She married, moved to the Valley, divorced, and got caught up in the punk scene of the '70s and '80s. "I was like this old woman at the Starwood," she jokes, "but I loved the music." An illness curbed her club activities, however, and it was during her recovery that she began to write.

Initially, she penned a series of short stories to accompany a catalog of her paintings, "Wake for the Angels." Then she delved into her memory for "Swimming Underground," which the London Observer called "obscenely interesting: absurd, lurid, and grandiose," and Reed called "the best book on Warhol."

Woronov admits that the line between fiction and nonfiction might get a little blurred in her books, as befits a product of the Factory where life blended with art. "Snake: A Novel" is about a woman trapped in a bad marriage, and "Niagara" includes a character based on her younger brother.

"I have one story to tell and it's my life," she says.

As for "Eyewitness to Warhol," it came about because "everyone always asks me about Warhol." Her first book she sees as history; this book is her explanation of what was behind it all. "It took me a long time to figure out that he was looking for intimacy," she says.

Woronov continues to act; she had the lead role last year in an independent film by Todd Hughes, "The New Women," which concerns the fate of the last women on Earth. The low-budget movie, shot in black-and-white, excites her. "I love working this way," she says with a laugh. "It reminds me of the old days." The film, which was shown at the Toronto Film Festival, still hasn't been released.

"I am not a brilliant actress but I'm entertaining. This is why I've become a cult queen."

Turning serious, Woronov adds, "The one thing that Andy taught me was workaholism. You just have to keep working. I have a mind that doesn't stop.

"There is always a little further to go."

Prince of Boredom - Warholstars  Prince of Boredom: The Repetitions and Passivities of Andy Warhol, by William S. Wilson, originally published in Art and Artists, March 1968

 

Chelsea Girls  Omar Diop from Rouge, Spring 1969

 

The '60s Without Compromise: Watching Warhol's Films  Thom Andersen from Rouge, 2006

 

Film Walrus Reviews: Review of Chelsea Girls

 

Chelsea Girls (1966) Movie Review from Eye for Film  Chris

 

Movie Love [Andrew Chan]  June 12, 2007

 

Early Exposure: The First Films of Andy Warhol - The Los ...  Jordan Cronk from The LA Review of Books, March 16, 2015

 

Diamonds in the Toilet: Andy Warhol's The Chelsea Girls ...  Gary Morris from Bright Lights Film Journal, August 1, 2002

 

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts - Andy ...

                         

Andy Warhol Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Constantine Verevis, December 2002

 

Marketing and Reception in Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls  9-page academic essay by Laura Conning

 

A Review of Chelsea Girls by Andy Warhol + Video-Puce (in ...  Ron Burnett reviews on pdf files

 

On the Sameness and Difference of 'Warhol & Mapplethorpe ...  Megan Volpert from Pop Matters, October 21, 2015

 

The Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol) Reviews   a collection of reviews     

 

Studies in Cinema [Jeremy Carr]  July 2013

 

The Chelsea Girls - Warholstars  Gary Comenas

 

Dangerous Minds | Andy Warhol's 'Chelsea Girls': Watch the entire 3 ...   Richard Metzger, full length film can be viewed at Dangerous Minds, April 4, 2012

 

Stargazer: Andy Warhol's World and his Films | Jonathan ...  Jonathan Rosenbaum from Film Quarterly, Spring 1974

 

CHELSEA GIRLS by Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey ...  Cinecola

 

Warhol's Cult Classic 'Chelsea Girls' Still Challenges ...  Matthew Harrison Tedford from KQED

 

rec.arts.movies.reviews  Shane R. Burridge

 

Film Monthly.com – Andy Warhol's The Chelsea Girls (1967)  Jenna Joost

 

The Cinematic Threads  Matthew Lotti

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Chelsea Girls Review by Doc Block - MUBI

 

TV Guide

 

The Chelsea Girls | Variety

 

Chelsea Girls, directed by Andy Warhol | Film review  Time Out London

 

Chelsea Girls movie review for The National Gallery of Art's ...  Alexander Blosser from The Examiner

 

Film Review: Andy Warhol's Infamous “Chelsea Girls ...  Bill White from The Seattle Post Globe

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Kenneth Baker]

 

'Chelsea Girls': Idle Self-Absorption  Cathy Curtis from The LA Times, November 12, 1998

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]

 

Movie Review - - Andy Warhol's 'Chelsea Girls' at the ...   The New York Times

 

The Chelsea Girls - Warhol - DVDBeaver.com  Stan Czarnecki

 

Excerpts from Jonas Mekas' Review in Movie Journal

 

Chelsea Girls - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

VINYL
USA  (70 mi)  1965 

 

Classic Films  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

I'd only seen brief clips of VINYL on video before this. Andy's CLOCKWORK ORANGE is one of the most overworked surfaces in cinema, as crammed with incident and layering as the original TOM TOM THE PIPER'S SON. Some people are just sitting there to fill out the frame, one dude is getting tortured with a candle in the background right, and anchoring the right foreground is our detached internal spectator, Edie Sedgwick. She drops her purse, bends over and picks it up. The sum total of her involvement.

 
Warner, Sam – Producer

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | The Innovators 1920-1930: Now You Has Jazz  Laura Mulvey from Sight and Sound, May 1999

In the 20s Hollywood was not interested in the talkies. Then Sam Warner saw the potential for "canned vaudeville", and made it happen.

The brothers Warner as innovators? Jack - no. Harry - yes. But Sam...?

The brothers Warner who became Warner Bros. were four of a large family whose parents, along with many other Eastern European Jews, arrived in the United States in the 1880s. Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack turned separately and collectively to any entrepreneurial activity that came their way until they got into the nickelodeon business. Nowadays Jack, who is identified with Warners in its heyday, is the only brother still commonly remembered. But without Harry and Sam's different but complementary talents the studio would never have reached the big league. They did it by gambling on a new technology: synchronised sound for motion pictures. Here Harry's careful but inspired business management put the company in a position to capitalise on Sam's big idea.

A technological revolution of the kind that swept through the film industry with the arrival of synchronised sound recording is necessarily the product of cultural and economic factors and the culmination of many experiments over an extended period of time. But there are three reasons to celebrate Sam Warner's individual contribution to the advent of talking pictures in Hollywood. First, there should be a place for acknowledging the contingent, almost accidental factors which affect history such as personal obsession or subjective choice, chance elements which may provide the push that sets a historical drama in motion. Second, The Jazz Singer (1927), the best-known Warner sound vehicle, represents a key moment in the history of the US entertainment industry and records the tensions in US popular culture at a transitional moment. And third is the way the personal contribution Sam made to the coming of synch sound was dramatically realised.

Sam was a believer. He threw himself, in the words of a contemporary Warner Bros. technician, "hook, line and sinker" into sound cinema, taking responsibility for producing all the studio's early programmes, culminating in his tireless supervision of the production of The Jazz Singer. Its opening, in Warners' New York theatre, was timed to coincide with the Day of Atonement, which forms the backdrop to the story's narrative climax. Harry and Jack were in New York, expecting Sam and Abe to join them from Los Angeles. But Sam was in hospital after an operation on his chronic sinus condition revealed a serious mastoid infection. He died, aged 42, only hours before his brothers managed to reach the West Coast. It was generally believed that the gruelling task - from June 1925 to October 1927 - of launching Warners' first sound pictures had literally killed him.

But before Sam could inflect the Warner Bros. story Harry had to establish a solid economic base for expansion. In the mid 20s the US economy was booming, with confidence high as the boom had been gathering momentum since the Depression of the 1890s. The film industry had grown up within these conditions, had become 'Hollywood', and had by and large consolidated into an oligopoly of five major studios with vertically integrated control of production, distribution and exhibition, whose products also dominated foreign markets. These studios had no interest in rocking their successful industry by fooling around with new technologies and had turned their backs on the idea of talking pictures. So it was the hungry outsiders - the brothers Warner and William Fox - who were prepared to take chances in the hope of breaking into the closed circle of the 'majors'.

At the beginning of 1925 Warner Bros. had no first-run theatres and no international distribution, both necessities for 'major' profits and status. Harry, who had run the brothers' finances since Sam acquired their first projector to exhibit The Great Train Robbery in 1903, was on the look out for a large amount of outside investment to fund his expansion plans. At the same time Waddill Catchings, an investment banker with Goldman, Sachs, was on the look out for another suitable business to launch into a major national enterprise. (He had already masterminded the growth of Woolworths and Sears Roebuck.) He approved of the way Harry ran Warner Bros. and agreed to raise bank credit to finance a "master plan" of expansion and to join the board of directors. Catchings' Wall Street credibility opened the doors of banks that would never otherwise have considered lending to the film industry. During 1925 Warner Bros. acquired the old Vitagraph Company, including its Brooklyn studio, its distribution structure and ten major theatres. In this phase of the expansion the question of sound never arose, but sound was the basis for what was to become the second phase.

Despite the major studios' complacency, it was inevitable by the mid 20s that sound film would become a reality. On the one hand, by 1924 the basic technology was in place, developed in Bell Labs., the research wing of Western Electric. On the other, the entertainment industry was becoming increasingly dominated by new sound technologies. Radio and the record companies had opened up a mass market for popular music, while dancehalls and vaudeville were booming. After all, this was the jazz age - and the movies were getting left behind, out of synch with the music-suffused atmosphere of the times.

As part of its first expansion plan Warner Bros. acquired a radio station, the first Hollywood studio to do so. KWBC marked the transition to phase two. The station gave Sam, who ran it, the opportunity to develop his interest in electronics. He became personal friends with the Western Electric representative in Los Angeles, Nathan Levinson, who invited him to a demonstration in New York of the results of the company's research and development into sound synchronisation for film. Sam saw immediately that sound could offer the competitive edge that would take Warner Bros. beyond Harry's safe course of expanded vertical integration into all the pitfalls and possibilities of a major financial gamble. His problem would be to convince Harry there was a future in synchronised sound.

The various stories of how Sam tricked Harry into attending a demonstration at Bell Labs. in May 1925 are now part of movie legend. Harry shared the rest of the movie industry's opinion of talking pictures; both his and Sam's accounts of what happened confirm that any idea of "talking" was avoided. Sam persuaded Harry to attend a demonstration of "an instrument that would bring the best music, the best voices and the best instrumentation to the smallest places in the world." The demonstration film included a small band playing jazz. Sam recalls: "He fell harder than I did."

For the Warners synchronised sound did not mean the talkies; it simply meant the addition of song and music to motion pictures. Harry, who with his sister Rose had won dance championships in his youth, is said to have remarked revealingly to Catchings: "If it can talk, then it can sing." This sentiment was certainly in keeping with the live performance/screen crossover spirit of an era when it was customary for exhibitors to put on vaudeville acts as prologues to a main feature. At the same time Broadway was witnessing a series of smash-hit variety shows, and to film their popular song-and-dance numbers would be to extend these live acts into mechanical reproduction and mass distribution. The first intended use of sound cinema, therefore, was for "canned vaudeville".

After Warners' and Western Electric's first agreement in June 1925 Sam devoted himself to the process of learning about sound recording and to making short films as prologues. Warner Bros. and Western Electric formed the Vitaphone Corporation in April 1926, giving Warners the exclusive licence to record and reproduce sound films on Western Electric equipment. Sound technology evolved out of electronics, and one of its key elements was the audion vacuum tube (originally developed by Lee de Forest) for amplifying sound in cinemas. For recording, Western Electric concentrated on the sound-on-disc method.

Western Electric was owned by AT&T, which by the mid 20s was one of the largest companies in the world. Not only had it been able to fund research and development at Bell Labs., but it could buy up patents, fight off challenges from other patent holders and most importantly activate the conversion of theatres to sound, providing skilled technicians and where necessary subsidising exhibitors who could not afford to have their theatres wired. Ultimately it would prove impossible for Warner Bros. to maintain an exclusive licence on the production of Western Electric sound films, but by that time the studio had reached equal status with the big five and moved its sound operations from New York to Hollywood.

Warren, Harold P.

 

MANOS:  THE HANDS OF FATE

USA  (74 mi)  1966

 

Manos: The Hands of Fate | HORRORPEDIA

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) is an American horror film written, directed, produced by, and starring Harold P. Warren. It is widely recognized to be one of the worst films ever made. The film is infamous for its technical deficiencies, especially its significant editing and continuity flaws; its soundtrack and visuals not being synchronized; tedious pacing; abysmal acting; and several scenes that are inexplicable or disconnected from the overall plot, such as a couple making out in a car or The Master’s wives (clad in oversized girdles) breaking out in catfights.

The plot of the film revolves primarily around a vacationing family who lose their way on a road trip. After a long drive in the Texas desert, the family is trapped at a lodge maintained by a polygamous pagan cult, and they attempt to escape as the cult’s members decide what to do with them…

Wikipedia | IMDb

“The 16mm camerawork (some money shots are actually out of focus) in this un-artistic instance makes the entire show look like someone’s static 1960s home movies with footage from a dull Halloween party thrown in. When the ridiculous dialog is spoken, it’s obviously dubbed in, meaning that there was hardly any (if any) real sound during the shooting, cheapening the surreal viewing experience even more. The film has no sense of pacing (it’s incredible how just under 70 minutes can be stretched), the editing includes a number of jump cuts (hence the “home movies” look), with technique and lighting also being the absolute pits.”  DVD Drive-In 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Kathleen Sachs

The sadness that washed over me the first time, many years ago, that I ever saw an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 remains a bitter ache that, like a cut inside your mouth, seems to reopen and refresh itself every time you notice it. Lovely, idiosyncratic, intensely felt, and deeply strange films were unearthed on that show, movies that in their inimitable misunderstandings of classic Hollywood idioms and troubled relationships with narrative were like mysterious blind alleys branching off the tedious main thoroughfares of cinema. Delirious, visionary, and transformative, movies like BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, THE INDUSTRUCTIBLE MAN, THE AMAZING TRANSPARENT MAN, and NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST, movies that I treasure, movies that are among the greatest of their times, were made into mere setups for cruel mockery on the part of comedians whose interest in cinema was apparently limited to finding hilariously wanting anything that didn't look like the anonymous productions of well-paid professionals. In January, 1993, Mystery Science Theater 3000 aired one of its most notorious episodes when the cast set up to piss all over a largely-forgotten horror film from 1966, made by a cast and crew who were almost all complete amateurs and produced by an insurance salesman merely so as to win a bet. It was MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE, directed, produced, written by, and starring Harold P. Warren. Much has been written on MANOS, nearly all of it supporting the proposition that it is not merely bad but amazingly bad, a film admirable and remarkable precisely because it is a contender for the worst film ever made. It is not the worst film ever made. In fact, it is extraordinary, a mesmerizing and precious piece of film history. The bare plot line is easily summarized, though to do so, as with all great cinema, is to miss everything of note in the film. A married couple and their young daughter lose their way and end up at a decrepit old house manned by a disturbed cripple named Torgo. The house is the home of the Master, a priest of some sort, endowed by the god Manos with undisclosed powers that may include mental domination. The Master rules over a cult of scantily-clad and in-fighting women, his brides, and contends with Torgo for sexual access to them. The family finds themselves turned into unwilling battlegrounds for this contest between Torgo and the Master. What matters, though, is not the silly erotic mysticism of the story but the movie's rhythms, its style, its camerawork, which in their outsider brutishness combine to form nothing less than a window into an alternative conception of cinema itself. Where many movies strive for a rough continuity between our experience of the world and the constructed phenomenology of the art world, MANOS jettisons any coherence of character or theme, all but the slightest glimmer of narrative structure, and the rudimentary foundations of cinematic convention. One's experience of time and space, critical philosophy recognizes, is not found within that which we perceive but in fact structures the very act of perception. Ingrained within the very fabric of reason, the intuitions of space and time allow for, shape, and control the kinds of sensations we're capable of having. To watch MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE is to encounter a direct assault upon those representations. It's a project doomed to fail, a doom echoed by the overarching doom that the ever-approaching, never appearing god Manos himself represents in the film. But it's a film that in its failure is nothing less than astonishing. Note: The version of MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE being shown has been lovingly restored by Benjamin Solovey from the original 16mm workprint. It has never looked better, even at the 1966 premiere. If you are only familiar with the film from the washed-out, cropped version circulating in the public domain, you are in for a revelation.

rec.arts.movies.reviews   John Beachem

I'm going to keep this plot summary brief, something I wish Mr. Warren had done with his "film" (I know, "Manos" only runs 74 minutes, but that's not brief enough). Michael (Hal Warren) leads his family on a trip out into the middle of nowhere. After being lost for a great deal of time, they stumble across a lodge run by Torgo (the late John Reynolds), a small man with large knees. Torgo informs the family that he watches the house while the master (Tom Neyman) is away. Michael insists on Torgo allowing his family to stay, despite the fact that Michael's wife, Margaret (the late Diane Mahree), and daughter, Debbie (Stephanie Nielson), aren't too keen on staying. Torgo relents and slowly carries the family's luggage into the house. Meanwhile, the master awakens, and his wives (Jackey Neyman, Sherry Proctor, Robin Redd) vie for his favor by wrestling in the mud.

I'm afraid I'm not an eloquent enough writer to adequately describe the experience that is "Manos, the Hands of Fate". I don't believe I can do justice to this diamond in the rough; this magnificent piece of filmmaking that is - oh forget it, I can't even say it. "Manos, the Hands of Fate" is, arguably, the worst movie of all time. Imagine, if you will, the following: Hal Warren, a fertilizer salesman, bets a friend that he can make a popular horror film on a minimal budget. He hires several actors who have little to no experience or training (he himself has no experience or training), and leads the cast through a script which consists of long spells of nothingness occurring. You're no doubt wondering why I have referred to cast members as "the late"; it's because after the film was finished, and the cast laughed out of the theater at its premier, three (that's right, three) cast members committed suicide. "Manos" (which means hands, by the way) has since become a legendary film; one which can only be watched under one of three circumstances: you're completely drunk, completely insane, or completely asleep.

While looking over the list of actors involved in this project, you'll most likely realize that none of the names sound familiar. That's because each cast member sealed his/her acting fate by appearing in this "movie". Not one actor involved went on to make any other picture. Could appearing in a bad movie really do this to one's career? It's Doubtful. For example, Barry Pepper will no doubt go on to make other films after "Battlefield Earth" (which is not to say "Battlefield Earth" is in the same league as "Manos"). The chief reason none of these actors went on to other films is because none of them could act. Hal Warren was as incompetent in front of the camera as he was behind it; Tom Neyman made Van Damme look like an Oscar winner; and Diane Mahree's part consisted of, well, nothing really. The only two actors worth noting are John Reynolds and Stephanie Nielson. Stephanie Nielson may have been only a child, but she outdid every adult in the film (she's no doubt in a mental institute somewhere after experiencing this movie). John Reynolds, who was sadly one of the three casualties of this war, actually showed some small trace of talent. Do I mean he was good? Not in the slightest. Yet, I think if he'd received some schooling and experience he might have gone on to a small career.

So what does a movie look like when there's no budget? Well, picture "The Blair Witch Project" without the scares (oh wait, there were no scares in "Blair Witch"), the extras, the scenery, or the nice cameras. You see, "Manos, the Hands of Fate" was filmed with such a cheap, ancient camera that the film could only be shot in thirty two second bursts. This means there are fades and/or cuts every thirty two seconds for no reason. The costuming in "Manos" is rather interesting. There are really only three different bits of costuming: the wives' undergarments, which they wear while fighting each other; the master's cloak of hands, which is a large cloak covered in large hands (something involving the god Manos, whom he serves); and Torgo's knees. Torgo's knees, by the way, may look like nothing more than large anomalies stuck to his legs, but they're actually an ingenious invention thought up by John Reynolds. Torgo is actually supposed to be a satyr, and the large knees were supposed to represent goat legs. I'm not quite sure how Reynolds thought this up, and I'm not sure how we were supposed to know they were goat legs, and I'm not even sure why Torgo is supposed to be a Satyr, but there you have it.

There are two more things worth noting in "Manos". One is the dialogue, particularly that of Torgo; the other is the soundtrack. Torgo's dialogue generally consists of repeating the same phrases over and over again. For example, when asked about the master's health, Torgo states: "Dead? No, madam. Not dead the way you know it. He is with us always. Not dead the way you know it. He is with us always." I think Warren wanted to emphasize the fact that he wasn't dead like we know it, but I could be wrong. Torgo also states, in a line vaguely (very vaguely) reminiscent of a classic line from Rosalie Crutchley in "The Haunting": "There is no way out of here. It'll be dark soon. There is no way out of here." It should be noted that the camera used was so ancient and decrepit that it could not record sound. Therefore, all the characters voices were dubbed by four different people: Hal Warren, Hal's wife, and two friends. The soundtrack to "Manos" is certainly one of the high-points. After some strange and out of place lounge music in the film's opening (which consists of a lot of driving) we settle into the Torgo theme, which is made up of six notes played over and over again till you're certain your ears will begin to bleed. If I haven't made this film sound bad enough, and you are unfortunate enough to go and witness it, I do apologize. I'd recommend "Manos, the Hands of Fate" to those who simply adore classic bad movies (because this one ranks amongst the worst) and award it a full one out of five stars.

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the agony booth  Winston O’Boogie

 

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966). Bad Movie. Director ...  Richard Scheib from Moria

 

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Manos: The Hands of Fate [retro review] | Mutant Reviewers

 

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A lengthy review of "Manos, Hands of Fate"

 

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TV Guide

 
Washington, Denzel
 
THE GREAT DEBATERS                                     B                     84

USA  (123 mi)  2007  ‘Scope

 

A Harpo production, which means Oprah’s imprint is all over this one, which adheres to her tenets on the power of education, particularly in minority communities, never straying from that singularly positive message, which feels a bit like the Kerry campaign against Bush, where they were afraid to say anything that strayed from their overtly inoffensive themes.  Unfortunately, despite some excellent performances, this is a formulaic Hollywood movie that may as well be a check list of all the pertinent historical themes, that despite its good intentions offers a misleading and inaccurate historical record, typical of Hollywood to stretch the truth for greater emotional impact, which for a film about excellence in debating skills is simply contrary to its inherent message of truth and is highly unforgivable.  Denzel Washington is Mel Tolson, brilliantly informed by the Harlem Renaissance writers and a highly skilled debator, which he calls a “blood sport,” a real life professor at Wiley College, an all black insititution from a small East Texas town.  His leadership becomes historically legendary, this film would have us believe, when they debate the prestigious and what was at the time all white Harvard University.  An inspiring story – unfortunately it’s not true, as in fact they defeated the University of Southern California, which has never been mistaken for Harvard.  Only in Hollywood do they make these kinds of intentional embellishments.  However, true enough, it was historic simply because whites and blacks had been excluded from competing on the same stage before and Tolson kept an unblemished undefeated record for a period of ten years. 

 

Set during the depression era of the Jim Crow South of 1935, Washington gathers his students for the debate team tryouts, and after an intensive battle of wits, picks four, two regulars and two substitutes, one of which includes the first girl on the team, Jurnee Smollett as Samantha Brooke, a child actress in EVE’S BAYOU (1997), also Denzel Whitaker as James Farmer Jr, the overprotected 14-year old son of the first black man to obtain a Ph.D. from Boston University, now the college dean, Forest Whitaker, while Nate Parker plays the more worldly and emboldened Henry Lowe, a man with a mysterious past that may have included brushes with the law and with a tendency to spend time in juke joints.  The cast is excellent, as would be expected, but the portrayals of people fall more or less along the lines of a good or evil mold, where it becomes impossible not to root for what is portrayed as the good, where it would be inconceivable for them to lose.  A certain amount of righteous indignation is called upon here to sprinkle the young student’s lives with a few historical necessities, such as bearing witness to a lynching and the young son having to watch his proud father stoop and apologize to some dirt poor white pig farmers when they run over a pig that was out in the middle of the road.  These acts of shame and humiliation are centerpieces of the movie and act as motivating lessons not only for the students themselves, but for the rest of us in the audience, as this becomes a Spielberg-like history lesson told in such broad strokes that it has the manipulative feel of moral overreach, as there’s nothing subtle here, simply history revealed through another Hollywood vantage point, embellished to the point where there’s a guaranteed feel good ending.  And sure enough, there was applause in the theater afterwards, a sign that this packaged approach was effective. 

 

There are a few improbables thrown in, a love affair between Brooke and Lowe, which features a scintillatingly lovely scene right out of THE NOTEBOOK (2004), where the two have a moment of solitude in the haunting naturalistic beauty of what resembles a Louisiana bayou, Lowe’s night of recklessness and drunken carousal which has an immediate impact on the effectiveness of the team, which is resolved perfectly by the way, in perhaps the one spontaneous moment of the film, a tremendous slap, Tolson’s character is caught up in circumstances which curtail his influence due to mounting legal troubles, a teacher under suspicion of being a Communist rabble rouser who is charged with attempting to organize the local farmers to join a union, where blacks from miles in every direction come out in mass to protest his arrest, leading to his peaceful release, and a rather convenient plot where these kids always argue the point of view that represents what they (and the audience) actually believe.  Rather than tighten the focus of the story, these are romanticized underdeveloped plot pieces that are conveyed with very little feel for realism and only undermine the central theme that the truth will set you free, especially when the narrative itself is not truthful.  Despite the nearly overlooked fact that a 14-year old is competing at a college level, the performance of Smollett is the story here, young and vibrant, whose cadence rises and falls like a preachers during her debates, but she’s the character that makes the most progress, who advances the cause with the most surgical precision and greatest degree of moral conviction. 

 

The Village Voice [Nick Pinkerton]

First: Just register the laziness of that title. All right. The Inspiring True Story behind Great Debaters is the 1930's championship streak of East Texas's all-black Wiley College debate team, coached by poet and teacher Melvin B. Tolson. This bit of historicity is the excuse for an educational tour of the re-created Jim Crow South, where students learn life lessons amid demonstrative orchestration. Denzel Washington, declaiming Langston Hughes and professorially popping a pipe in and out of his mouth, plays Tolson with typical toothsome preening (Forest Whitaker shows up as fellow Wiley faculty member, to remind the viewer what it's like not to be acted at). Director Denzel is an adequate handler of cinematic gush and platitude, though, and even tries out a few snaky tracking shots and a compositional nod to Manet. That's about as surprising as things get; the film avoids potentially interesting frictions by always letting the team debate (and win) on the "correct" side of every issue—that which aligns with generally accepted modern liberal sympathies. The kids follow their party line all the way to the big game, a ridiculous, fallacy-riddled face-off against Harvard. Nobody gets to root for their teammates from a hospital bed, but I'll bet the idea was at least floated.

Slant Magazine [Nick Schager]

Without unpredictability or the possibility of an unhappy ending, how can a film truly inspire? It's a question that hangs over many uplifting Hollywood dramas, including Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters, a based-on-real-events story with an unimpeachable message—that education begets true strength and courage—and nary a moment that doesn't subscribe to hackneyed conventions designed to coddle rather than stimulate. Washington's second directorial effort is a threadbare affair, his tale about the triumphs achieved by the 1935 debate team from Texas's all-black Wiley College proving barely more than a litany of rote personal and social conflicts and victories. Such cozy familiarity extends not only to screenwriter Robert Eisele's plotting and Washington's respectably nondescript direction but also to the latter's lead performance as professor, debate team coach, and union-organizing rabble-rouser Melvin B. Tolson, a role which, after American Gangster's villainous posturing, lets the star slip back into the comfortable skin of a noble, wise mentor with a gift for bellowing oration. Firebrand Tolson is the Malcolm X to tempered theology professor James Farmer Sr.'s (Forest Whitaker) MLK, a dichotomy that's hardly played up and, consequently, turns out to be far less interesting than the fact that the actor playing Farmer's 14-year-old prodigy son, Jr., has the über-movie-star name of Denzel Whitaker. Tolson teaches his three gifted squad members—rebellious Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), feisty Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), and Jr.—how to use their wits as tools for self-improvement and as weapons for societal change, while they in turn learn about themselves through public speaking, run-ins with pro-Jim Crow racists, and a prickly love triangle that isn't so much resolved as simply dropped. What The Great Debaters imparts, however, is nothing more and nothing less than the common, dispiriting fact that mainstream filmmakers (and their backing studios) firmly believe that moviegoers desire merely the same old tired thing in slightly different clothes. That assumption may very well be correct, but if this type of well intentioned yet calculated, mechanical saga is what passes for cinematic uplift these days, then I'll take a second helping of bleak misanthropy, please.

Screen International   Brent Simon

A strong and similarly emotionally resonant follow-up to his 2002 debut behind the camera, Antwone Fisher, Denzel Washington's second directorial effort is a familiarly structured but extremely effective drama. Lacking pretense and guile, The Great Debaters tells the true story of an African-American college debate team who overcomes racial prejudice to string together an unprecedented number of victories and eventually compete against the all-white, reigning national champion squad at Harvard.

Released in the same holiday frame five years ago, Antwone Fisher grossed over $21 million domestically, but never expanded beyond just over 1,000 theaters. The Great Debaters will already open wider than that on Christmas Day, and should additionally receive a bump in profile from a Best Drama Golden Globe nomination for the film, as well as Washington's simultaneous acting nomination for American Gangster. Having television magnate Oprah Winfrey on board as a producing partner (she touted the film on a recent show) will certainly help the movie's prospects amongst affluent suburban filmgoers, and the movie's setting and subject matter could well penetrate and most deeply resonate with more rural audiences.

Given these indicators, the skill with which it tugs at heartstrings, the possibility of other awards nominations and particularly the movie's mainstream narrative accessibility when compared to other awards contenders like No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, all signs point to a successful holiday run deep into the awards season.

Internationally, African-American themed films have a reputation of being a tougher sell (Antwone Fisher pulled in just over $2 million internationally), and there's no doubt that that will continue to be true here. Playing up Washington's central on-screen role more than the actual story will certainly help, though, as the aforementioned Gangster has been well received and both Déjà Vu and Inside Man were each recently bigger hits abroad than Stateside. Long-term home video prospects for the movie are robust.

Set in the 1930s, The Great Debaters unfolds in rural, small town Texas, against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South. Melvin Tolson (Washington) is a passionate rhetoric instructor at Wiley College, an African-American Methodist school with around 360 students. Competition for his debate team is fierce, and a slot the previous year doesn't guarantee selection for one of the four coveted positions.

After holding spirited tryouts, Tolson selects a squad that includes one returning member and three new faces. The first woman on the debate team, Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), is an aspiring lawyer. Fourteen-year-old James Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker) is the exceedingly well-read and mannered only son of renowned scholar and namesake father James Farmer, Sr. (Forest Whitaker, no relation), the dean of the Wiley faculty. Older, independent-minded Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), meanwhile, is a fiercely intelligent playboy who hasn't previously had to yield to authority or structure.

Tolson schools his students in the finer points of parliamentary-style debate, but also moonlights working to unionize migrant farmers and sharecroppers, both black and white. These actions land him in trouble with local authorities, who are desperate to keep down the working class, and view his actions as socialist agitation. As the Wiley squad racks up victory after victory against other black colleges, local and regional, Tolson begins quietly soliciting invitations for a grander stage, even as various fissures in the team threaten to tear them apart.

Washington's work as a director feels in all the best senses like an extension of the moral persuasiveness he has an actor — the ability to convey gravitas or righteousness in affecting shorthand, but also the rationale that motivates someone who commits bad acts, as in Training Day or American Gangster. Here virtue and uprightness are on the side of Tolson and his pupils, and Washington pushes all the right narrative levers with expert pressure and aplomb.

Writer Robert Eisele, a distinguished television scribe with a long list of award-winning credits, crafts an engaging work with crisp characterizations, and the movie has a nicely parallel real world application of Tolson's principles through his advocacy work for migrant farmhands (secret, at first). The script doesn't shy away from the harsh racial realities of the time period, but neither does it paint all of its characters in solely broad strokes — either virtuous or despicable. A brutally corrupt and likely racist sheriff succumbs to pragmatism, while Nate does things that hurt Samantha.

If there's an easily identifiable problem, it's that the screenplay too often gives the Wiley team the benefit of the more naturally persuasive side of an argument in the debate sequence, a gambit that comes to feel like a bit of a copout.

The solid performances, though — especially from the film's young men — hold one's attention and certainly help mitigate this hitch. While Smollett too often slips into a highly affected drawl, 17-year-old Denzel Whitaker is a highly sympathetic figure, carrying himself with the wry smile of an ever-curious adolescent. Slightly older, meanwhile, Parker (previously seen in Pride) has brooding charisma and a killer matinee smile, but a real emotional range as well. Despite several charged or emotional sequences, he saves natural tears for an interesting scene, and it serves the movie wonderfully.

Washington and the elder Whitaker, meanwhile, each deliver strong supporting turns as authoritarian types bent on instilling discipline, confidence and inspiration in a new generation.

Tech credits are equally dependable, and serving of the story. Reuniting with Washington from Antwone Fisher, cinematographer Philippe Rousselot (The Brave One, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) captures dusty, Depression Era Texas with dusty efficiency courtesy of the film's Louisiana location shoot.

Several traditional spirituals, including opening tune "My Soul is a Witness," receive raucous performance at a tucked-away speakeasy that Henry and Tolson both favor, while James Newton Howard and Peter Golub's score points up the passages of uplift.

“The Great Debaters” - Salon.com  Stephanie Zacharek, December 25, 2007

 

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FENCES                                                                   B+                   90

USA  (138 mi)  2016  ‘Scope                 Official Site

 

Like being hit with a ton of bricks, this film has an awesome power, yet the agonizing truth is the protagonists are stuck in a period of history where the most they could hope for would leave them standing still, as there was no possibility whatsoever of progress being made in black America.   That is the economic reality from which this film was spawned, where few understood this as well as playwright August Wilson, where this is the only one of his plays that he ever wrote a screenplay for before his death in 2005.  First, a word about playwright August Wilson, who is to the black community what Eugene O’Neill may be to the whites, both Pulitzer Prize winners who are known as gifted writers of dialogue, among the greatest ever, where Wilson’s poetic language chronicling the black experience in America is actually described as “music.”  Having never formally studied theater, Wilson credits the blues, specifically Bessie Smith’s rendition of “Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine,” Bessie Smith - Nobody In Town Can Bake A Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine YouTube (3:22) as a defining moment in his life, as it made him recognize the poetry in the everyday language of black America, providing the inspiration and freedom to use that language in his own writing.  Wilson is best known for his unprecedented cycle of 10 plays, known as the Century Cycle, one set for each decade, that chronicle the black experience in the 20th century.  Chicago’s Goodman Theatre was the first theater in the world to produce the entire 10-play cycle, spanning from 1986 to 2007, where two of the productions were world premieres.  All but one take place in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, an economically depressed neighborhood where Wilson was born in 1945 and spent his youth.  Fences was originally a 1983 play, winning the first of two Pulitzer Prizes for the author, the other being The Piano Lesson (1990), which was turned into a made-for-TV movie in 1995, where the play opened on Broadway in 1987 winning Tony Awards for Best Play, Best Actor (James Earl Jones) and Best Featured Actress (Mary Alice), returning in 2010 where it won Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor (Denzel Washington) and Best Actress (Viola Davis).  In a deal with HBO, Denzel Washington is bringing all ten of August Wilson’s plays to the screen, releasing one per year, where he will be the executive producer for them all, though this first venture is with Paramount, with Washington acting, directing, and producing, bringing over most of the Broadway cast and crew already familiar with the work, where five of the six featured characters originally appeared on stage. 

 

Set in a working class district of Pittsburgh in the 1950’s, the timing of the work is appropriate, as most white Americans have nostalgic recollections of the 50’s, including Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, Sputnik and the Space Race, Las Vegas, the Rat Pack, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and the advent of television, including a nostalgic tribute to the decade with the Fonz and Happy Days (1974 – 83), with seven of ten Republicans today fondly preferring America as it was in the 50’s, remembering it as an era of prosperity and good schools, living in the safety of the suburbs where there were no problems to speak of and the American Dream was still alive and well.  Black Americans have an entirely different view, as they remained segregated by a separate and unequal society unable to earn a living wage, as they were unable to live or eat or go to school with whites, attend the same church, or even the same hospitals, requiring separate bathrooms and accommodations, where nearly 100 years after the Civil War, blacks remained legally discriminated against on every front, forced to live in shabbier sections of town where life expectancy was considerably lower while forced to take the jobs whites didn’t want.  It is in the heart of this racial and economic discrepancy that August Wilson sets his story, a conversational chamber drama that showcases the larger-than-life personality of Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington), a 53-year old garbage collector who struggles to financially make ends meet, living pay check by pay check, arriving home with his friend and work partner Bono (Stephen Henderson), both chattering away while pulling from a shared pint of vodka, feeling upbeat and hopeful, as it’s Friday, the end of the week, and more importantly it’s payday.  Troy’s character speaks nearly uninterrupted for the opening twenty minutes of the film, where we quickly learn he dominates his household with an iron fist, where his natural charm is drowned out by his bitterness, enraged that he’s routinely passed over by less qualified whites on his job, remaining haunted by lost dreams, where he was once a promising ballplayer in the Negro Leagues with hopes of playing major league baseball, but his career was derailed by racial prejudice and a prison sentence until time simply passed him by and he was too old to play.  While he still has the braggadocio of an athlete, claiming he was better than today’s black ballplayers and seen a hundred men play ball better than Jackie Robinson, Bono cuts through the myriad of self-delusions with the sarcastic quip, “I know you got some Uncle Remus in your blood.” 

 

Troy’s vacillating moods comprise the rhythm of the film, with various characters jumping in and out of the picture, including his long-suffering wife of eighteen years, Rose (Viola Davis), who chimes in when he’s stretched the truth too far with his embellishments, but the humorous mood turns on a dime to one of righteous anger when his grown son arrives, Lyons (Russell Hornsby), a jazz player who barely scrapes by, asking to borrow money, which is met with unending contempt for his habit of always arriving on payday.  It’s Rose that eventually gives him the money while reminding Troy that college recruiters are arriving for his younger son’s next high school football game, where Cory (Jovan Adepo) might be offered a scholarship.  But Troy dismisses his son’s chances, reminding him that whites won’t let him into their game, so he may as well look elsewhere to earn a living.  His own failed experience taints the view of his son’s existing possibilities, actually undermining his son’s chances once the opportunity arises by refusing to sign the permission slip allowing recruiters into his home, denying his chance to go to college, which only exacerbates the hostility and anger Cory feels towards him, thinking it’s only jealousy because he might be a better athlete than his father was.  These relentless mood shifts of lost hope and broken dreams recur throughout, leading to an intense examination of the harsh realities of their lives, which doesn’t get any better, becoming a deep-seeded, psychological examination of systematic despair, where the fence he intends to build, supposedly to keep others out, is actually a suffocating experience locking them in at the same time, becoming a metaphor for all the obstacles placed in their path, like how to survive on the other side of the fence, as blacks are routinely excluded from white neighborhoods, with racism so ingrained into society, causing blacks to have to learn to play by a different set of unspoken rules that exist only for them.  That is the underlying moral dilemma of the film. 

 

Troy has a mentally damaged younger brother with a metal plate in his head, Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson), whose brain was damaged by shrapnel while serving as a soldier in World War II.  We learn that Troy bought the house he lives in by taking the money that was Gabriel’s compensation for his injury, while Gabriel rents a room somewhere and wanders the streets aimlessly, seemingly rootless and homeless, the kind of person people walk past on the street without giving him a second thought.  Plagued by guilt, bordering on the supernatural, Troy believes he’s gotten such a raw deal in life that he’s actually fought with the Devil just to survive, becoming a ghostly presence bogging him down, eating away at him, where we learn to appreciate what he’s overcome, but at the same time despise the meanness and domineering attitudes that come with it, as the hard-headedness and lack of sympathy that he displays towards others feels punishing, especially when it’s aimed at Rose, who is among the more selfless creatures on earth, yet the two get down into the muck in a knock-down, drag-out fight that is as emotionally wrenching a scene as anything seen all year, with Troy’s hypocrisy exposed, where Rose finally stands up to him and refuses to budge, setting the stage for even darker misfortunes that lie ahead.  In one of the more hauntingly beautiful moments, expressed with unimaginable tenderness, women dressed all in white lay their hands on Rose in an attempt to heal her damaged spirit.  Despite Troy being the center of attention, almost to the point of distraction, a living Sisyphus forever charged with pushing that ball over the mountain, only to have to do it all over again, and then again on into perpetuity, it’s Rose who is the heart and soul of the film, where Viola Davis is a revelation in the role, offering her greatest performance in what is ultimately a fitting tribute to all black women, becoming the maternal symbol of grace that miraculously holds broken families together during the harshest times, defying unimaginable odds, much like they did during slavery times. 

 

The New Yorker: Richard Brody  (capsule review)

Chatting it up from the back of the garbage truck they operate for the city of Pittsburgh, Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) and his best friend, Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson), launch this adaptation of August Wilson’s 1983 play with a free-flowing vibrancy that, unfortunately, doesn’t last long. Under Washington’s earnest but plain direction, scenes of loose-limbed riffing—such as a sharp-humored trio piece in the Maxson back yard for the two men and Rose (Viola Davis), Troy’s steadfast wife—soar above the drama’s conspicuous mechanisms and symbolism. Troy, a frustrated former baseball player from an era before the major leagues were integrated, tries to prevent his son Cory (Jovan Adepo) from seeking a football scholarship to college. Meanwhile, the embittered paterfamilias threatens his marriage by having an affair with a local woman. Much of the action takes place in the stagelike setting of the Maxson home and yard; despite the actors’ precise and passionate performances, Washington neither elevates nor overcomes the artifice, except in his own mighty declamation of Troy’s harrowing life story. With Mykelti Williamson, as Troy’s brother, Gabriel, a grievously wounded veteran; and Russell Hornsby, as Troy’s son Lyons, a musician who’s struggling for success and his father’s love.

Review: Denzel Washington and Viola Davis Honor August Wilson in ...  Aramide A Tinubu from Shadow and Act

As a child, like most children I presume, I did not think of my parents as real people. They acted instead as my comforters and my providers, the people I stretched out my hands towards when I needed something. I was nearly out of the house before I considered what they might have given up; what dreams they may have sacrificed or brushed aside in the 60’s, the ’70s and ‘80s to provide my sister and myself with the best life that they could. For us, they moved through life often joyful but at times enraged; continually propping up a marriage that was long past its expiration date. Though I lived in their story with them, for the first part of my life, I observed as an outsider, labeling them as who they presented themselves to be instead of who they actually were. I, their eldest child, was guilty of not really seeing them in the full scope of their humanity.

With his ten plays in The Pittsburg Cycle, playwright August Wilson mastered, narrated and documented the African-American experience throughout the twentieth century in the United States. From “Gem of the Ocean” to “Radio Golf,” each play set in a different decade revealed new challenges, joys, and nuances of the Black experience. August Wilson forced you to see; to bear witness to Black lives, by presenting full and complete human beings in his narratives. Something I was unable to do with my own parents until my early adulthood.

It has been a long road for the film adaptation of August Wilson’s sixth play in his Pittsburg Cycle, and it seems now that the timing has never been so ideal. Set in the 1950’s, Wilson’s critically acclaimed “Fences” comes sparkling to life on the film screen with Denzel Washington in the director’s chair and starring as patriarch Troy Maxson; a middle-aged garbage collector who, despite living a respectable life, struggles deeply with internal dissatisfaction, defeat, and bitterness. Not to be outdone by Washington’s commanding performance, Viola Davis holds her own, exploding onto the screen as his wife, Rose, a long-suffering but hopeful woman, desperate to keep her family together amid racial turmoil, financial issues and dreams deferred.

Incredibly faithful to the original play which first debuted on Broadway in March of 1987, through Washington’s lens, Troy and Rose’s story gets expanded and stretched out spectacularly as if August himself were walking the audience through the narrative. Both Washington and Davis have mastered (having acted in the play in the 2010 Broadway revival) these characters – the dichotomy of what it means to be Black in America during this particular moment. To be at once joyful and deeply tormented.

“Fences” does not shed its theatrical roots. The film’s locations are limited, and it opens with Troy’s unrelenting monologue for the first forty-five minutes or so of the movie. Troy is larger than life; his near constant ranting against the racial injustices and the wrongs that have been done to him are a thread that continues throughout the film’s narrative. It’s both wearisome and familiar, watching a Black man well past his prime, puff and peacock day in and day out, demanding to be heard. While Rose and Troy’s best friend Bono (Stephen Henderson) have learned to live with the constant posturing, it’s Cory (Jovan Adepo), Rose and Troy’s teenage son who challenges his father. Cory pushes back against the path his father lays out for him, representing a new generation of Black people desperate to move forward despite the restrictions still placed on their lives.

And yet the film adaptation of “Fences” is a nod to Rose more than any other character in Wilson’s celebrated story. Though she’s in the background at first, cooking, or mending, adding in her two cents here and there, every major plot point in the film circles back to Rose. Every single one of Troy’s impulses and life choices ricochets on to her, demanding that she hold all of his burdens along with her own on her shoulders. August Wilson’s female characters are always central to his plays and Viola Davis’ portrayal of this woman whose unconditional love just might not be enough to heal her family is heart wrenching.

“Fences” itself is not just a name of the film, nor does it represent the fence that Troy is perpetually building in his backyard at Rose’s request. Instead, it symbolizes the places that Black people have been closed out of; for Troy, it’s major league baseball; for his son Cory, it’s new and better opportunities; and for Rose, it’s the life she thought she’d built from her sacrifices. It’s also the places we hold dear to our hearts, our safe spaces, ones that we attempt to hold our families in and keep the pain out of. It’s that same sort of barrier of protection that my parents built that prevented me from seeing them for who they truly were until they no longer existed. If you’ve seen “Fences” in any capacity, not much will surprise you about this film. However, the stunning acting and August Wilson’s timeless words will captivate you again and again.

PopMatters [Chris Barsanti]

August Wilson’s Fences tells the tale of a black family in ‘50s Pittsburgh, centering on the clan’s domineering patriarch. It also resonates with a host of grandly American themes, from the bloody swell of history and race to the yawning gaps separating rhetoric and action, dreams and reality. It’s a big play, in other words, and requires considerable energy to bring it to life, on stage or screen. 

This isn’t a simple requirement in the post-star age when there are few if any performers on whom studios are willing to stake an entire project. So, all the better that Denzel Washington takes on Troy, a role for which he won a Tony in 2010. It’s hard to imagine any other movie star of the current era who could even hope to inhabit this character’s furious self-determination without making it seem laughable.

Washington also directs the film, for which most of the 2010 theatrical cast is reunited. Like the play, his movie is set in Troy’s home and backyard, where a baseball hangs by a string from a tree branch and the fence remains unfinished. He keeps this handsomely but not showily photographed production tightly wound, all the better for Wilson’s arguments and soliloquies to build up a good head of steam.

Troy’s story opens as he arrives home from his job as a garbage collector, with his friend Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson). A onetime baseball player who never lost his athlete’s swagger, Troy tells his stories as epics, his delivery both nostalgic and defiant. Troy’s wife Rose (Viola Davis) drifts in and out of the kitchen door, listening and nodding. His older son Lyons (Russell Hornsby) comes by for a loan, it being Troy’s payday. The conversation drifts through baseball and work, as well as a couple of recurring subjects: what’s happening with Troy’s mentally challenged brother Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson), a sweet soul who wanders the streets blaring a trumpet and eagerly awaiting Judgment Day, and the sore topic of Troy’s younger son Cory (Jovan Adepo) wanting to use his high school football career as a path to college. All the while, nobody is working on that damn fence.

Troy’s talking takes a variety of forms, from opinions and jokes to rants and memories. It’s all the work of a born raconteur who knows he has the audience (on screen and off) in the palm of his hand, in part because they’re able to see right off that in addition to his experience as a working man and father, he brings philosophy and self-righteousness. We can also see vulnerability and also a trickster’s flicker in his eyes. By the time Bono cracks, “I know you got some Uncle Remus in your blood,” it’s clear that there is far more going on behind Troy’s braggadocio than he lets on.

After the initial swell of dialogue runs its course and the plot settles into a more staid course, Wilson unveils concentric coils of tension that curl around each other. Troy has a speech for anyone who comes into his line of sight or says a word that hits him cross-ways. Lyons gets off easy, with a light ribbing about being a roustabout musician who only ever comes around when he wants money from his father. But whenever Rose supports Cory’s athletic and educational dreams—Davis’ steady then explosive performance providing a solid counterweight to Washington—Troy unwinds impassioned lectures about how the white world won’t let Cory get anywhere anyway and the sooner he realizes that, the better.

Wilson’s play, and Washington’s muscular version of it, resounds most strongly when it digs into the sources of Troy’s anger. He’s worn down by workaday domestic concerns (his long hours, his inability to finish the fence). But he’s also beleaguered by those two American constants, money and race. Troy is an escapee from a harrowing and impoverished Southern upbringing—a grim soliloquy on his past offers a rare window into his vulnerability—and a survivor of the differently punishing Northern racism that allows him few choices in life.

Troy’s bitterness overflows in recalling his dashed dreams of athletic glory from when he played baseball in the Negro Leagues: “What it ever get me? Ain’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.” Rose tries to console him by saying he simply came along too soon to have a shot at the major leagues. She also tries to convince him that racial attitudes have changed, in ways that could help Cory. All her words, though, are like blunt arrows bouncing off the armor of Troy’s bitterness. He’s seen a hundred men play ball better than Jackie Robinson, he says. “Hell, I know some teams Jackie Robinson couldn’t even make!”

When Cory makes the mistake of asking why his ever-raging father doesn’t “like” him, Troy responds with a hard kernel of truth and cruelty:

“Like” you? I go out of here every morning, bust my butt, putting up with them crackers every day, because I “like” you? You about the biggest fool I ever saw. It’s my job. It’s my responsibility.

Here, Troy is laying down the hard reality of his existence as he’s lived it. Of course, his perspective blinds him to everyone else’s, as Rose explains in an explosive speech that makes clear just how much she has also sacrificed in order to allow this hurricane force of a man to bluster and berate and prowl in search of an antidote for his pain. The tragedy of Fences is two-fold. First, we realize that even a seemingly indomitable figure as Troy can be laid low. And second, we see who and what he will destroy before ever admitting defeat.

Fences Movie Review: Denzel Washington Swings At August Wilson's ...  David Ehrlich from indieWIRE

On stage, “Fences” is an incredible play — a landmark of American art (black or otherwise), August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning portrait of a family in crisis unflinchingly weighs the smallness of human lives against the immensity of those living them. And on screen in Denzel Washington’s adaptation, “Fences” is…an incredible play.

Starring and directed by the actor (who reprises the role he played in the show’s 2010 revival on Broadway, for which he won a Tony), the film is a faithful, ferociously performed adaptation that never finds — or even seeks — a way in which the cinema might compensate for the absent buzz of live theater. In fact, “Fences” is such a respectful tribute to the source material that Wilson retains sole screenplay credit despite the fact that he died 11 years ago. If Washington mines the playwright’s 1987 masterpiece for every scrap of its pathos, he finds precious little of its poetry.

But if “Fences” doesn’t quite knock it out of the park, it’s still a clutch double at a time when black stories are struggling to even get on base. Set in the 1950s and shot on the workaday slopes of Pittsburgh’s Hill District (where nine of the 10 plays in Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle” take place), “Fences” cuts a private narrative from a public neighborhood, tracing the boundaries of race as they stretch between a traumatic past and an uncertain future.

Troy Maxson (Washington) is a garbageman by day and a Greek tragedy by night. Boisterous and hyper-talkative, his job renders him largely invisible to white society, but he’s impossible to miss at home, where his oversized personality fills every inch of the house he shares with Rose (Viola Davis), his stoic wife of 18 years. Every Friday afternoon, he and his affable best friend Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson) grab a bottle of booze and retire to Troy’s backyard. Roughly 90% of the film is confined to that small patch of concrete and humbled grass, as our belligerent protagonist summons dark stories from his past and bequeathes a lifetime of bitterness to his two sons (Jovan Adepo and Russell Hornsby).

Sometimes, the Maxson home is graced with the presence of Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson), the only sibling who Troy still knows. Mentally handicapped during World War II and never without a rusty trumpet slung across his chest, Gabriel is a classic Shakespearian fool, a holy simpleton whose archetype almost always clashes against the verisimilitude of the movies. Here, the character feels out of place, and each of his scenes is a reminder of the liberties that Washington chooses not to take with the material, of the decisions that he defers to the iconoclast whose words he’s shepherding to a wider audience than ever before.

But if you choose to see “Fences” as an act of selfless preservation, as a dispersing agent for a work that was previously only available to privileged theatre-goers, it’s hard to fault. Washington, Henderson, Davis, and Hornsby are each “holy shit” great in their own ways, the four of them deepening the dynamics they forged together during their time on stage.

Troy is likened to “a shadow that follows you everywhere,” and Washington’s immense, lived-in performance makes the man a truly inescapable force of nature. Each of the film’s characters is a storyteller to some degree, but Troy might as well be his own oral historian, rambling on about his past in order to inject some divine grandiosity into a life that has been largely defined by its disappointments. Traumatized by his father, forged by the prison system, and marginalized by the outside world (where he was a black baseball player in the days before Jackie Robinson), Troy is at once both a disposable member of the underclass and a category five hurricane of humanity. His only way of reconciling those two wildly different feelings is to transmute his deficiencies and regrets into the stuff of myth — he might be the picture of the American everyman, but he’s also locked in a duel with Death, itself.

Washington conceives Troy as someone for whom hardness is easier than hope, a black man who can see the new world coming but knows that it isn’t coming for him — it’s coming for his boys. But how do you raise children to have all of your strengths but none of your weaknesses? How do you show them affection without making them more vulnerable to a world that has never welcomed you in it? How do you teach your sons to hold their heads high if you’re going to snap every time they stick their necks out? “Fences” doesn’t let Troy off the hook for not knowing the answers, but it never shies away from acknowledging the difficulty of the questions.

Like so many fathers who are haunted by their fathers, Troy uses money as an emotional currency — his relationships with his kids are purely transactional, he raises them with all the tenderness of a bank teller. One upside to the film’s numbing length and its exasperatingly flimsy sense of time is that it stretches long enough to see Troy’s kids grow around the pain that their dad visits upon them. In “Fences,” coming-of-age isn’t a beautiful metamorphosis, but rather a Biblical act of violence and usurpation, and Washington ensures that Troy always feels ready to sacrifice a son at the altar.

But this is Viola Davis’ show, and she rules it with an iron fist. Watching Rose come into her power is exhilarating, and Davis threads the needle between strength and survival with a remarkably steady hand. The forthcoming awards season will surely reduce her performance to its most intense moments, but Davis doesn’t spend the whole movie covered in the wet spit of her anger (as the film’s trailer might suggest). On the contrary, she’s liberated by not having to act for the people in the back row of a Broadway theatre. Her revised portrayal of Rose is a masterpiece of quiet grace; her restraint conveys the hurt of a thousand small cuts and the dignity required to let them scab over. She’s so good that it’s hard to blame Washington for not wanting to get in her way, for trusting that the close-ups he gives her would be enough of a spectacle to sustain Wilson’s work in a new medium.

They’re not — not quite. Wilson wrote the play to offer audiences a different way of looking at black Americans, but “Fences” doesn’t offer them all that much to see. It isn’t long before a moribund feeling begins to surround the Maxson’s backyard like a sinkhole, like you’ve been standing right there with Rose and Troy for all 18 years of their marriage. An emphasis on shallow focus might disguise the fact that so much of the movie is stuck in the same place, but it blunts the meaning of Wilson’s largely symbolic characters — Washington’s inability or unwillingness to use the camera as more than a recording device does a disservice to a story that’s so concerned with the interplay between daily life and the dreams that we measure it against. Rather than adding to the material, the film just makes you feel like you’re watching “Fences” through a screen.

But if its tempting to question how Washington chose to direct “Fences,” there’s no need to ask why, or “why now?” Even if certain elements of the material haven’t aged particularly well, the work as a whole has never been more relevant.

At a time when a percentage of the population needs to be reminded that black lives matter, “Fences” insists on their magnitude. It urges white viewers to see the scope of black lives elevated into view, and implores black viewers to see “the content of their lives elevated into art.” Wilson adopted the latter phrase as something of a mission statement, and if Washington doesn’t do much to expand on that ethos, his film nevertheless makes it easier for all of us to bear witness.  Grade: B

“Fences” Misses About Adapting Plays for the Screen - The New Yorker  Richard Brody

 

Slant Magazine [Chuck Bowen]

 

World Socialist Web Site [Fred Mazelis]

 

The Steve Pulaski Message Board [Steve Pulaski]  also seen here:  iNFLUX Magazine [Steve Pulaski]

 

Denzel Washington Knocks 'Fences' Out of Park as Director and Actor ...  Anne Thompson from indieWIRE

 

'Fences' Review: Denzel Washington And Viola Davis Are Exceptional  Mike Ryan from Uproxx

 

Fences :: Movies :: Reviews :: fences :: Paste - Paste Magazine  Andy Crump

 

Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, reviewed. - Slate  Dana Stevens

 

Denzel Washington's Fences Gets Stuck Between Stage and ... - Vulture  David Edelstein

 

Denzel Washington Brings August Wilson's Masterwork ... - Village Voice  April Wolfe

 

Letterboxd: Mike D'Angelo

 

Letterboxd: Michael Sicinski

 

Every Movie Has a Lesson [Don Shanahan]

 

The Film Stage [Michael Snydel]

 

High Fidelity Doesn't Help Denzel Washington's Padlocked 'Fences ...  Rodrigo Perez from The Playlist

 

Fences (2016)  Walter Chaw from Film Freak Central

 

Writing: Movies [Chris Knipp]

 

Observer.com [Rex Reed]

 

Denzel Washington's 'Fences' - Brooklyn Magazine  Jesse Hassenger

 

Aisle Seat [Mike McGranaghan]

 

SassyMamaInLA.com [Courtney Howard]

 

Rendy Reviews [Rendy Jones]

 

'Fences': Review | Reviews | Screen  Tim Grierson from Screendaily

 

ReelViews [James Berardinelli]

 

Flavorwire [Jason Bailey]

 

Film Racket [Bill Gibron]

 

Review: Reverent Fences Works So Hard…It Stops Working  Stephanie Zacharek from Time magazine

 

Spectrum Culture [Dominic Griffin]

 

The A.V. Club: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

 

'Fences' Review: Denzel Washington Brings American Classic to the Big Screen  Peter Travers from Rolling Stone

 

Cinemixtape [J. Olson]

 

outlawvern.com [Vern]

 

Letterboxd: Zach Campbell

 

Film Review: 'Fences' Draws More Meaning to the Art of Acting ...  Clayton Davis from Awards Circuit, also seen here:  AwardsCircuit.com [Clayton Davis]

 

Review: 'Fences' is Denzel Washington's Show All the Way  John H. Foote from The Cinemaholic, also seen here:  The Cinemaholic

 

Seongyong's Private Place [Seongyong Cho]

 

We Live Entertainment [Scott Menzel]

 

Film Actually [Shane Slater]

 

queerguru.com (Roger Walker-Dack)

 

Independent Ethos [Hans Morgenstern]

 

DVDTalk.com [Jeff Nelson]

 

DVD Sleuth [Mike Long]

 

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

Blu-ray.com [Martin Liebman]

 

DoBlu.com Blu-ray [Matt Paprocki]

 

Cinema365 [Carlos deVillalvilla]

 

Cinema Romantico [Nick Prigge]

 

Film-Forward [Nora Lee Mandel]

 

Screen Anarchy [Peter Martin]

 

Punch Drunk Critics [Travis Hopson]

 

FilmFracture [James Jay Edwards]

 

Compuserve Film [Harvey Karten]  also seen here:  Fences Movie Review : Shockya.com 

 

I Heard That Movie Was [Justin Morales]

 

FanboyNation.com [Sean Mulvihill]

 

Wherever I Look [Amari Sali]

 

We Live Entertainment [Nick Casaletto]

 

TheWrap [Robert Abele]

 

Georgia Straight [Ken Eisner]

 

n+1: A. S. Hamrah    February 24, 2017

 

11 Things You Should Know About August Wilson - The Greene Space

 

Newsday [Rafer Guzman]

 

8 Out Of Tenfer [A MasterClass]

 

'Fences' Film Adaptation Starring Denzel Washington, Viola Davis    Shadow and Act

 

The first reviews say Denzel Washington's Fences is a major Oscar ...  David Canfield from Slate

 

A Q&A with Fences costars Stephen McKinley Henderson and Jovan Adepo  Leah Pickett interview from The Chicago Reader, December 30, 2016

 

Mykelti Williamson on Fences, Being Directed by Denzel, and What the Movie You Know Him From Says About You  Stacie Wilson Hunt interview from Vulture, December 21, 2016

 

Fences: Viola Davis On How Denzel Washington's Film Changed Her ...  Kate Erbland interview from indieWIRE, November 18, 2016

 

'Fences' Review | Hollywood Reporter   Todd McCarthy

 

Film Review: Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in 'Fences' - Variety  Owen Gleiberman

 

Oscars: Denzel Washington's 'Fences' Has Arrived | Variety  Kristopher Tapley

 

Fences review: Denzel Washington and Viola Davis set to convert ...  Catherine Shoard from The Guardian

 

Fences review – Denzel Washington steps up to the plate | Film | The ...  Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian

 

Why Fences should win the best picture Oscar | Film | The Guardian  Nosheen Iqbal

 

Fences review: Denzel Washington and Viola Davis make for a ...  Tim Robey from The Telegraph

 

Irish Film Critic [Adrina Palmer]

 

Metro: Matt Prigge

 

Denzel Washington can finally breathe easy about 'Fences'  The Washington Post, December 22, 2016

 

Denzel Washington doesn't see his new film 'Fences' as political - The ...   The Washington Post, December 7, 2016

 

The Cleveland Movie Blog [George M. Thomas]

 

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

Los Angeles Times [Kenneth Turan]

 

Oscar Watch: Make way for Denzel Washington's 'Fences' in updated ...  LA Times

 

Black film critics predict end of #OscarsSoWhite, say 2016 is best year ...   LA Times

 

L.A. Biz [Annlee Ellingson]

 

LA Weekly [April Wolfe]

 

San Diego CityBeat: Glenn Heath Jr.    December 20, 2016

 

Fences Movie Review & Film Summary (2016) | Roger Ebert  Odie Henderson

 

RogerEbert.com: Matt Zoller Seitz

 

RogerEbert.com: Dan Callahan

 

Review: Beneath the Bombast, ‘Fences’ Has an Aching Poetry  A. O. Scott from The New York Times, also seen here:  New York Times [A. O. Scott]

 

Race Is an Issue in a Wilson Play and in Its Production - NYTimes.com  The New York Times

 

The Long, Long Road to Building ‘Fences’   James Greenberg from The New York Times, December 27, 2016

 

What August Wilson Means Now   Ben Brantley and Wesley Morris from The New York Times, January 15, 2017

 

Denzel Washington, the Oscars and Race  Cara Buckley from The New York Times, February 15, 2017

 

Fences (film) - Wikipedia

 

August Wilson, Theater's Poet of Black America, Is Dead at 60 - The ...  The New York Times, October 3, 2005

 

August Wilson - Wikipedia

 

August Wilson Website | A website dedicated to the life and works of ...

 

August Wilson - Playwright - Biography.com

 
Waszynski, Michal
 
THE DYBBUK (Der Dibuk)

Poland  (original release 125 mi, existing print 110 mi)  1937

User comments  from imdb Author: Henry Willis from Los Angeles

This movie is, in a loose sense, a ghost story with a familiar theme: malevolent fate works through human passions, destroying our protagonists, who do not realize until too late what lies ahead. A fine melodrama, no matter how creaky the production might be. What makes it even more poignant, however, is the historical context. This world, which was fading already when the story was first written, was wiped out entirely by Hitler's Endlösung shortly after the movie was made. The film functions as a ghost story in more ways than one.

Chicago Reader (Jonathan Rosenbaum) capsule review

 

A Yiddish film directed in Poland in 1937 by Michal Waszynski. Based on S. Ansky's play Between Two Worlds, it takes place in several small, remote eastern European Hasidic towns (or shtetlach) near the end of the 19th century and contains various supernatural and folkloric elements that are roughly analogous to magical realism--though a more precise genre description would be Hasidic grotesque or Hasidic gothic. An interesting document of Yiddish theater and a watershed in Yiddish cinema, with expressionist touches in both the acting and Waszynski's direction. With Abram Morewski, Lili Liliana, Dina Halpern, and Leon Liebgold. In Yiddish with subtitles. 125 min.

 

Time Out review

 

In this Yiddish language version of Ansky's play, the immersion in the traditional culture of the Eastern European 'shtetl' (Jewish village) is complete, and even heightened by the expressionistic style of acting and filming amid fairly realistic sets and costuming. From the initial shots in the synagogue to the marvellous singing and dancing at peak moments of the plot, this supernatural tale of the tragic possession of a bride by the soul of her true loved one is as weird and wonderful as an Isaac Bashevis Singer story. The Jewish absorption in the inexplicable suffering of humanity is made almost unbearably poignant by the knowledge that not only the traditional culture of the Polish Jews, but even the lives of the makers d actors of this film, were to be utterly destroyed over the next few years by an evil beyond even the imagination of a society that could produce irrational, tragic tales as remorseless as The Dybbuk.

 

Mark R. Leeper review [+3 out of -4..+4]

 

Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings (Dave Sindelar) capsule review

 

The New York Times (Frank S. Nugent) review

 
Waters, John

 

John Waters • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Daniel Mudie Cunningham from Senses of Cinema, October 5, 2003

 

John Waters - Salon.com  Daniel Reitz, August 8, 2000

 

Pleasures Worthy of Guilt: A Cinephile's Confession  Dennis Cozzalio from 24LiesASecond, March 21, 2005

 

The John Waters Trash Trilogy - Culture Wars  Sarah Snider, June 19, 2007

 

John Waters Looks Back: 'I Was Worse Than Ed Wood'  Kory Grow from Rolling Stone, September 5, 2014

 

Still Waters  Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson feature and interview from Slate, November 20, 2011

 

Waters, John - and his Dreamlanders in P-Town  interview with Gerald Peary about his recollections of spending summers in Provincetown (1997-98)

 

Filmmaker Magazine | Summer 2000: WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD?  J.T. LeRoy interviews Waters from Filmmaker magazine, Summer 2000

Waters, John  interview with Gerald Peary on his one-man show, “The World of Trash” (May 2002)

Shame on You! A Conversation with "A Dirty Shame"'s John Waters, Selma Blair, and Johnny Knoxville  Blake French interview from AMC, September 23, 2004

John Waters talks (and talks) about his subversive career  Colin Covert interview from Pop Matters, November 8, 2007

The John Waters Interview: Sheila Dixon, Teabagging, and Blowing Up the Three Kings  Mike Riggs interview from Washington City Paper, December 2, 2009

 

FEMALE TROUBLE

USA  (89 mi)  1974

 

Last Week  Darnell Witt from Cine-File, January 21, 2011

FEMALE TROUBLE stands out as the high point of John Waters' '70s cycle, and a pivot point in his artistic trajectory. He had already established his proficiency as a tasteless provocateur, but this is the film where his equally irrepressible tastefulness as a filmmaker (evidenced in his tight screenwriting and potent cultural criticism, which only get sharper as his career continues) becomes obvious. Instead of trying to top the shit-eating gimmicks of PINK FLAMINGOS, here he takes a turn for the operatic, creating a trashy, tragic, hilarious meditation on glamour, crime, filth, and celebrity that invokes several artists from his pantheon—the Kuchar brothers, Douglas Sirk, Andy Warhol—and does justice to each of them. It's also his most fully realized collaboration with Divine, whose unforgettable Dawn Davenport brilliantly transforms from a rebellious teen to a degenerate art star to a blissfully deluded death row inmate over the course of the film's three acts—a narrative arc that feels epic in spite of its modest run time. Divine even breaks out of drag (his most famous talent, but certainly not his only one) for a few scenes, to co-star opposite himself as the man who deflowers Dawn and becomes the deadbeat father to her petulant child. But while FEMALE TROUBLE is unquestionably Divine's movie, Waters' entire cast of Dreamlanders provides amazing support. Chief among them is Edith Massey, as the sordid, sultry, straight-hating Ida, decked out in a strappy vinyl suit that can barely contain her abundant flesh. Massey manages to steal almost every scene she's in and has the honor of delivering the film's best line—an astute observation that could very well stand as the thesis of Waters' entire oeuvre: "The world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring life."

POLYESTER

USA  (86 mi)  1981

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Kian Bergstrom

A disgusting, hilarious, and infinitely inappropriate send-up of consumerism, sexism, teenage eroticism, and the redeeming power of violently killing your enemies, POLYESTER is the great postmodern response to Douglas Sirk's intricately stylized and mannered melodramas.  At the heart of the film is Divine, giving unquestionably her greatest performance as Francine Fishpaw, an addled, overworked, and undersexed housewife, married to a philandering owner of a porno theater and mother to two teenagers, a son who's addicted to angel dust and masturbates to pictures of women's feet and a daughter who's the school tramp and longs for the opportunity to get her own abortion. After her husband leaves her for his nymphomaniac secretary, and her racist, cocaine-addled mother harasses her into a nervous breakdown, Francine descends into a vortex of suicidal alcoholism, desperately calling on her only friend, the elderly and nouveau riche Cuddles Kovinsky, played by the indomitable Edith Massey. But Cuddles is too wrapped up in her own struggle for social acceptance to be of much help—certainly not as much help as the gorgeous hunk of a man who picks Francine up in his brand new corvette as she's rubbernecking at a traffic accident. Will Todd Tomorrow (the beautiful Tab Hunter, incongruous here as a rose in a sewer) sweep her off her feet as easily as he swept her past the decapitated head of that unlucky motorist? Will his arthouse drive-in theatre—serving caviar and champagne at the concession stand and running a Marguerite Duras triple feature!—be the answer to her financial woes and her vehicle of vengeance over her wicked husband? Or will her son's criminal assaults on random women in town and her daughter's imprisonment by evil nuns prove to be Francine's undoing? While Waters riffs on and skewers the larger-than-life passions and maximally motivated plot twists of his inspiration, he never allows this to veer into the realms of either the sterile, anodyne Sirk-under-glass of Todd Haynes or the immanent, revolutionary critique of Fassbinder. In contrast to these half-digested homages, Waters demonstrates his masterful understanding of Sirk's tragic vision precisely by turning that tragedy into farce, by making his film be by far the funniest, archest, and campiest interpretation of that director's work to date. Adopting, and perverting, the lush, expressionistic chromatics of WRITTEN ON THE WIND, Waters makes every shot an eye-sore, every clashing color combination a glimpse of a world gone from fatalistic to anarchic, while the mocking revival of the Wyman/Hudson romances of ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS and MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION shows love to be loathing in disguise at best, and open fraudulence at worst. Nowhere else has Waters been so openly nihilistic, so gleefully willing to shit on everything he holds dear about cinema simply because he does in fact hold it dear, and nowhere else have his talents for transgression and provocation been so successfully and so disturbingly married to a discordant technical excellence. Plus, Bill Murray sings a song written by Debbie Harry on the soundtrack.

HAIRSPRAY                                                            A-                    94

USA  (92 mi)  1988

 

Could you turn that racket down, I’m trying to iron in here.  —Mrs. Edna Turnblad (Divine)

 

What a blast!  A John Waters film for the entire family, one where the energy is generated by the thrill of watching teenage kids love to dance.  Set in 1962, the musical track alone is amazing, as it represents a social milestone, the first time many white kids listened to black music on the radio or TV, like Chubby Checker singing “The Twist,” “Limbo Rock,” or “Pony Time,” Dee Dee Sharp’s “Mashed Potato Time,” or the Five Du-Tones singing “Shake Your Tail Feather,” later made popular in a soul rendition by James and Bobby Purify, or the Flares singing “Foot Stompin’ Parts 1 and 2,” or the Ray Bryant Combo doing a jazzy group number called “The Madison Time.”  This was white kids first exposure to soul music, and it electrified what happened on the dance floor, adding a mixed race cultural dimension that was previously non-existent.  Enter John Waters, early in the film he writes a scene for an oversized white girl, Ricki Lake as Tracy Turnblad, dancing in front of the TV with her girl friend while they’re watching “The Corny Collins Show,” a Dick Clark-style American Bandstand teen dance show that turns its dancers into overnight celebrities, where her even more oversized mother, played to perfection by the always hard working Divine, is heard scolding her daughter for interrupting her ironing by listening to that “Negro music” again.  This sets the tone for the film, as the obvious effect this culture shock has on these kids is they’re happy, having the time of their lives.  What Waters does with this material is reminiscent of 50’s monster movies, where the typical reaction of whites whenever they’re around groups of blacks is to yell “Run for your lives.” 

 

The casting in this film is a revelation, with Sonny Bono and Blondie’s Debbie Harry as the rich, overprotective, flipped out parents of Tracy’s rival Amber, the blond Barbie girl with a fat pocketbook who refuses to socially accept blacks, or fat girls, continually calling Tracy a slut, a roach, a girl with lice in her hair, or other superlatives in order to devalue her existence, especially after Tracy steals her boyfriend.  Divine doubles as the racist owner of the TV station who refuses to allow blacks on the popular after school teen dance show, but instead offers a “Negro day” at the end of the month.  But when it turns out Tracy can really dance, she becomes the newest popular sensation and may even overtake Amber in the running to become Miss Auto Show 1963.  While there is astute social commentary in all this, there are even more infectious dance numbers, where you can’t help watching these kids have fun.  And therein lies the secret to this film’s success, that and the bubbly upbeat attitude of Ricki Lake, who eventually leads a protest movement against the station for refusing to allow blacks on the dance floor.  Along the way, they venture into Ruth Brown’s record shop in the black part of town, or meet Ric Ocasek and Pia Zadora in a reefer madness beat sequence, where Zadora starts spouting verses from Allen Ginsburg’s epic poem Howl as the kids run for the exits.  There’s some mild taunting in the film, even from the teachers, as Tracy gets kicked out of class and sent to detention for “hairdo violations,” just enough to remind the audience that the kids that continually get picked on are really pretty harmless, that they get a bad rep, and in most cases, they’re probably more mature and better adjusted than the more popular cheerleader types who constantly think about nothing but themselves all the time. 

 

Waters himself makes a rare appearance in his own film playing a demented cult deprogrammer who attempts wild negative reinforcement techniques to discourage Tracy’s interest in blacks.  We see a myriad of outrageous hair styles, terms of the times from checkerboard chicks to hair hoppers, where Debbie Harry even plants a bomb inside her 3 foot tall monstrosity, as you never know when a bomb might come in handy during the middle of a race riot.  Corny, tongue in cheek, occasionally hilarious, and always subversive, but best of all, it features some terrific music and dance sequences.  The original film that led Waters to write a successful Broadway musical in 2002, and then follow that up by writing another film in 2007of the Broadway musical version.  All in all it sounds like Waters is still having fun revisiting this material every 5 years or so and offering his consistently observant take on such a socially relevant era, where I’m not sure anything has yet topped Prudence Pingleton’s original visit to the “colored” side of town.  This raw and earthy version stands head and shoulders above the 2007 remake, as there’s simply no one else in the history of movies quite like Divine.    

 

Pauline Kael: A review of the original “Hairspray,” from 1988.  from The New Yorker

In “Hairspray,” the spherical Mrs. Edna Turnblad (played by the male actor Divine) and her baby-blimp daughter, Tracy (Ricki Lake), come out of the Hefty Hideaway wearing mother-and-daughter dresses and walk down the street with their bosoms proudly preceding them. It’s Baltimore, but they’re like floats in the Mardi Gras. Their snazzy new outfits didn’t cost them anything: the proprietor of the shop has just asked Tracy to model for him. She’s the newest celebrity in town: each day, right after high school, she goes to appear on “The Corny Collins Show,” where she and the other hotshot teen-age dancers do novelties like the Pony and the Roach. It’s 1962: Chubby Checker time, “Mashed Potatoes” time; the kids at the hop do the Madison. Tracy’s celebrity status doesn’t help her at school, though: the boy seated behind her can’t see past her wide, newly “feathered” coiffure, and she’s charged with “hairdo violations” and put in a class for slow learners and problem kids. That’s where she gets to learn some new dance steps from Seaweed (Clayton Prince), whose mother, Motormouth Maybell (Ruth Brown), is a rhythm-and-blues disk jockey. When Tracy discovers that black kids aren’t allowed on “The Corny Collins Show,” she becomes a leader in the fight for integration. The writer-director John Waters treats the message movie as a genre to be parodied, just like the teenpic. Combining the two, he comes up with an entertainingly imbecilic musical comedy—a piece of pop dadaism.

Waters doesn’t try to transform the sappy fun of pop into art; he loves it for itself. He’s a twenty-year veteran of the midnight-movie circuit; his affection for bad taste is no sham. And he loves narrative: he has half a dozen plots crisscrossing each other. Poor-girl Tracy has a rich-girl rival—slender, blond Amber (Colleen Fitzpatrick), who has been raised to be popular and a star. The two girls are pitted against each other as the top contenders in the Miss Auto Show 1963 contest. To complicate matters, Amber’s boyfriend, Link (Michael St. Gerard), a ringer for Elvis, is fed up with her and is drawn to Tracy, white lipstick and all. A blond sweetie with two pert braids and bows, shy-girl Penny (Leslie Ann Powers), whose mother (Jo Ann Havrilla) is a pathological racist, falls for handsome black Seaweed. Corny Collins (Shawn Thompson) wants to integrate his show but can’t, because the head of the TV station—WZZT—won’t permit it; this rancid boss is also played by Divine. At times, “Hairspray” suggests a home movie made by a gang of celebrities. The many plots involve Debbie Harry and Sonny Bono as Amber’s parents, who are monomaniacal about her becoming Miss Auto Show; Jerry Stiller as Tracy’s father; Waters himself as a sick psychiatrist; and Ric Ocasek and Pia Zadora as the first of the lank-haired beatniks who are about to displace the ducktail and beehive brigades.

Gaga as all this is, there’s some historical basis for it: Baltimore’s “Buddy Deane Show” actually fell apart over the integration issue. But the movie makes no claim to realism—or to absurdism, either. ‘Waters just weaves in and out of his plots, and the girls and boys fuss over their hair. The girls look tiny and doll-like and rather plaintive under their huge, elaborate hairdos. Bitchy Amber, avid for the world’s good opinion, is presented as a parent-pecked case, and she’s so innocently horrid she’s a delight; Penny is a cartoon dream; and Tracy, who has the cherubic face that’s often seen on fatties, is a cuddlesome matchup with her lewd mama. It’s really Divine’s movie: he watches over Tracy and preens like a mother hen. There’s a what-the-hell quality to his acting and his funhouse-mirror figure which the film needs; it would be too close to a real teenpic without it. When Divine’s Edna Turnblad is on-screen in the sleeveless dresses she’s partial to, the movie has something like the lunacy of a W. C. Fields in drag.

Reel.com DVD review [Rod Armstrong]

Everyone likes Hairspray, but few realize how truly brilliant it is. Besides being hysterically funny and sporting a terrific soundtrack, the film is also subtly subversive. Writer/director John Waters is no stranger to sedition — his early work delightfully throws up a middle finger to the status quo — but his first foray into MPAA-approved territory is slightly different. In telling the story of an early '60s dance show facing integration troubles, the Bard of Baltimore shows how truly ridiculous segregation was. It's difficult to imagine a comedy being made out of such charged material, and this is a large part of Hairspray's magnificence. Coupled with Waters' riotous commentary, this DVD is something no one will want to be without. There's one minor drawback — it's only available as part of a two-disc package, and many of the filmmaker's fans will already have a copy of Pecker, the other half of the set.

Hair-hoppers and Checkerboard Chicks
It's Baltimore, 1962, and all young Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake) wants to do is get on The Corny Collins Show. She may be overweight, but she can dance rings around the competition, which sends snotty regular Amber von Tussle (Colleen Fitzpatrick) into fits of jealousy. When Tracy also manages to win the affections of Amber's boyfriend Link (Michael St. Gerard), it becomes an all-out war for who will win the coveted crown of Miss Auto Show, 1963.

Politics enter the fray when the tangling teens end up on opposite sides of the struggle to integrate Corny Collins. Tracy knows that segregation isn't hip or cool — her best friend Penny (Leslie Ann Powers) is even dating a black guy — but Amber would prefer that the dance show remain all-white. By the end, all is resolved in inimitable Waters style.

Just about everything in Hairspray is perfect, from the evocation of the era to the well-timed comic moments to Divine's brilliant final performance as Tracy's mom, Edna. It's difficult to single out the best scenes, but who could forget the zit-popping sequence, the Hefty Hideaway beauty shop, or Prudence Pingleton's visit to the "colored" side of town?

The dance sequences are similarly inspired, and it's amazing to find out that Waters didn't invent any of them — I was certain that only a mind like his could make up a number called "The Roach." Waters may be losing his touch of late — Cecil B. Demented is a pretty lousy film — but Hairspray is an all-time classic.

Hair Is Politics in Baltimore
The headline above is Waters' first statement on the audio track and it just gets better from there. Because he's a great wit and an interesting director, his commentaries are some of the best around. No wonder New Line is releasing a sequence of DVD collections of his films. (Next up is Polyester with Desperate Living. Female Trouble and Pink Flamingos will follow toward the end of the year.)

Ricki Lake is also featured on the commentary but she is not nearly as entertaining as her cohort, though she does give him full credit for the career she has today. She complains a lot about what she went through on the shoot but doesn't engender much sympathy.

Waters, on the other hand, is an amusing raconteur throughout. He talks about how Ruth Brown, who plays Motormouth Mabel, cried when she saw her costumes, commenting that "this always happens on my films." Regarding Mrs. Pingleton's visit to the other side of town, he suggests that "black people should laugh at white people every day." Near the end, he pays moving tribute to his muse, Divine. Along the way, he finds time to talk about Baltimore, gives good gossip about some of the co-stars, and discusses his personal experiences of the era. His discussion is almost as entertaining as Hairspray itself.

Why a Double-Pack?
Again, the only complaint about this release is that most of Waters' fans will find themselves with another copy of the Pecker DVD (see review of that release here), and Hairspray really should be released separately. Luckily, the price of the set is such that the problem can be overlooked. The print and sound quality are very good, and the film is presented in widescreen format. There's no filmography section (a forgivable oversight), but the theatrical trailer is included.

Turner Classic Movies   Eric Weber

In 1988 director John Waters did something no one would have ever imagined: He made a movie that was rated PG! - Hairspray. For a director like Waters, this might be the most subversive thing he has done in his entire career. Previously known for his underground trash comedies Mondo Trasho (1969), Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974) and Desperate Living (1977), Waters' films were notorious for shocking and delighting their audiences with images of deviants, outrageous sex, sleazy settings, madcap violence and gore and a hefty helping of scatological humor. Too wild, strange and offensive for mainstream audiences, Waters' movies were mainly unveiled at midnight screenings on college campuses or repertory cinemas in major cities.

All of his movies featured an unforgettable ensemble cast of various grotesqueries, led by the multi-talented Divine, a 300-pound female impersonator (whose real name was Harris Glenn Milstead), actress Mink Stole and the inimitable Edith Massey, an overweight 60-something, snaggle-toothed woman with no acting ability whatsoever. When you went to see a John Waters movie, you would think to yourself, "What am I going to see THIS time?" So when Hairspray was released in February 1988, everyone was surprised and quite shocked that the "Sultan of Sleaze", "The Prince of Puke," had created a movie for the whole family!

Set in 1960s Baltimore (the locale of all of Waters' films), Hairspray is about the pleasantly plump Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake), a cheerful, dance-crazed teenager who aspires to be on her favorite local TV show, "The Corny Collins Show", a popular teen dance program. Using her charms and talent, Tracy wins a dance competition and quickly obtains a regular position on her beloved show. However, in the process, Tracy gains a new enemy in fellow co-star, the snobby and spoiled teen queen, Amber Von Tussle (Colleen Fitzpatrick). In addition to fending off Amber's malicious attacks, Tracy uses her local celebrity to rally her fellow Baltimoreans to fight segregation and foil the ignorant and racist attitudes of the TV station owners.

Hairspray was inspired by the short essay, "The Nicest Kids in Town" that Waters' wrote for his 1981 book, Shock Value, in which he professed his love and obsession with all of the dance crazes, behind-the-scenes drama and gossip that he saw on his local Baltimore television's "The Buddy Deane Show" (the real life equivalent of Corny Collins). His movie incorporates everything that he loves about American culture: the popular novelty dances like "The Twist", "The Mashed Potato" and "The Roach"; the idea of celebrity and being famous; people taking their disadvantages and turning them into an advantage. The latter theme is one that Waters introduces in all of his films and supports his statement, "In my movies, the loser will always win. It's the normal people that are the villains." But in case you were thinking Waters had gone mainstream, he still incorporates a few of his trademark gross-out moments in Hairspray for devoted fans of his earlier films.

Among the stars and supporting players of Hairspray - an oddball mix of real life musicians and comedians - are Sonny Bono and Debbie Harry (as the evil, scheming parents of the villainous Amber), R&B singer Ruth Brown, comedian Jerry Stiller (as Tracy's father), actress Mink Stole (a Waters regular), actor Michael St. Gerard (who has the distinction of playing Elvis Presley in four different projects, most notably on the short lived TV series) and cameos by Pia Zadora and Ric Ocasek (lead singer of the 1970s-80s band, The Cars). Finally, no John Waters' film is complete without a performance by Divine, the director's muse from the early days. In Hairspray, Divine takes on an ambitious dual role, not only playing the loving and supportive mother of Tracy (a role miles away from the monstrous and demented female characters he played in Multiple Maniacs and Female Trouble) but also the role of the lecherous and bigoted owner of the TV station. Sadly, Hairspray would be Divine's last major film role as he would die of heart failure a mere month after the premiere of the film. What makes it even more bittersweet is the fact that the film was a tremendous critical and financial success and Divine was, at last, receiving positive reviews and being respected for his skills as an actor and comedian. Without a doubt, Hairspray remains the most accessible of Waters' movies and what many consider to be his most polished, consistently entertaining film.

Hairspray was such a success that it ultimately spawned an equally successful Broadway play in the summer of 2002. As expected, a new film version of Hairspray is currently in production (based on the Broadway musical). The new version will star John Travolta (as Edna Turnblad, the role originated by Divine!), Michelle Pfeiffer (as Velma Von Tussle) and Queen Latifah (as Motormouth Maybelle).

Hairspray trivia: When John Waters appeared on TNT's Monstervision franchise with Joe Bob Briggs in 1999 to discuss Hairspray he made comments about the following topics:

1. Buddy Dean
Waters: Buddy Dean is actually in the movie - the disc jockey. He plays the reporter outside the governor's mansion that first puts the microphone into the car when you see them pull up. That is the real Buddy Dean.
2. The Madison
Waters: I can do the Madison. It's the only dance I ever do anymore and I when I go to these reunions that they have of "The Buddy Dean Show," I will only do the Madison and I usually do it in the front row, so they leave me alone [about] the other dances you know. And these things are kind of weird because you see a line of a hundred 50-year-old women doing the locomotion without irony. It's an odd sight.
3. John Waters' Original Pitch to the Studio
Waters: Basically, I got up and did the dances in front of startled movie executives, and I started doing The Bug, like I had a disease in front of them. But it seemed to work, because it was the only movie I ever made where a lot of 'em wanted to do it all at once. So, basically, that was the main way I'd tell the story, but then I would get up and do each one of the dances in front of them -- not the entire number, but a few steps of it, just to give them a taste of it and they were speechless, actually, from it.
4. Ricki Lake
Waters: [We found her] through a casting woman named Mary Calhoun, and Ricki had been turned down for a job at the Gap a week earlier. She was still in college and she came to us, and as soon as she walked in, I knew it was her. I mean here was a fat girl, and she was definitely fat then, I mean, she's not now - she was then. And she was up there... we use the term chubster...I needed a teenage girl that could dance and that's the thing. Very few people even tried out for the part because most of the big girls were afraid to dance. After Hairspray came out, when I was casting for Crybaby [1990], hundreds of fat girls showed up at the auditions when I wasn't looking for 'em 'cause I was like the pied piper.
5. Divine
Waters: Divine wished he could've played every role. HE wanted to play Ricki Lake's role in the beginning. And I said it's a little hard -- you're like 35, you know, to play a teenager I mean...Divine taught Ricki Lake how to walk in high heels. Not a lot of guys can say THAT, can they? ...you know girls these days they don't know how to wear high heels. They all need a drag queen in their life to give them beauty tips, really. Especially fat girls...Divine's high heels were special metal because they snapped under his weight always. He had to have them specially built out of steel so they weighed so much every time he had to pick up his feet, it was like ten pounds on each shoe.
6. Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"
Waters: I liked "Howl." That was a great poem. I had to call Allen Ginsberg and get his permission for Pia Zadora to read it, and I think the agent was totally thrown by that call. I had to pay him certainly...to read that great poem. But that poem -- when I was 15, (it was a) huge influence on me. And Pia Zadora, of course, is everything I believe in America. She's a great star. "Butterfly" was a great movie. What other movie has Orson Welles and Ed McMahon together at last on the silver screen?
7. John Waters' Cameo in "Hairspray"
Waters: It's the last time I'll ever be in my own movie. I hated it. Having to go into make up right before you're shooting. Then you can't watch the scene except on the video. I'll never do it again.
8. The Roach
Waters: That was definitely a real dance. Where you squirted the roach with a bug repellent and then you squish squash kill that roach. Yeah. It was a big popular song then. [The] Bug was real too. I used to see that on "The Buddy Dean Show." That's when you throw a disease to somebody and they, like, have it all over them, and they throw it to the next person. Yeah, that's a fun one to do.

Lessons of Darkness [Nick Schager]

 

MovieMartyr.com  Jeremy Heilman

 

DVD Verdict  Bill Gibron

 

DVD Review e-zine   Shawn Harwell

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Mark Zimmer)

 

Mike Watson

 

John Nesbit: Movie Review

 

DVD Verdict [Bill Gibron]  reviews the 7-film John Waters Collection

 

Wockner: An interview with Divine  Rex Wockner interviews Divine in 1988

 

Washington Post [Desson Howe]

 

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

 

Full New York Times Review »   Janet Maslin

 
CRY BABY
USA  (85 mi)  1990

 

Cry-Baby  Terrence Rafferty from The New Yorker 

 

This John Waters' movie, set in Baltimore in 1954, is an attempt to repeat the formula of his "Hairspray" (1988), but this is a much less enjoyable picture. Like all Waters movies, it's about a battle between the good, disreputable people and the bad, conventional ones—in this case, a group of juvenile delinquents (called "drapes"), whose leader is a handsome rock and roller known as Cry-Baby (Johnny Depp), versus "the squares," represented by just about everybody else in town. Cry-Baby, a sensitive sort (he lost both his parents to the electric chair), falls in love with a square girl, Allison (Amy Locane), and the film devotes itself to exploring the question, Can their forbidden love survive in a world that just doesn't understand? Unfortunately, almost everything in the movie feels flat and enervated. It's indifferently, mechanically paced; the musical numbers are ineptly staged; and Depp isn't a very exciting presence. Waters seems to be going through the motions: "Cry-Baby" is all attitude, a rote recitation of mildly naughty jokes he's made before. Maybe cute people don't inspire him. The bizarre supporting cast includes Polly Bergen, former porn queen Traci Lords, Kim McGuire (as a spectacularly ugly girl called Hatchet-Face), Susan Tyrrell, Ricki Lake, Iggy Pop, Troy Donahue, Joey Heatherton, Joe Dallesandro, David Nelson, and celebrity ex-con Patty Hearst. 

 

PECKER
USA  (86 mi)  1998
 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Pecker (1998)  Mark Kermode from Sight and Sound, February 1999

In Baltimore, amateur photographer Pecker takes pictures of his friends and family, which he exhibits in the fast-food store where he works. Glamorous female art-dealer Rorey Wheeler stumbles upon Pecker's work, and whisks him off to New York City. After an exhibition in a gallery, Pecker is fêted as a naïve genius while his subjects are sneered at by the metropolis' art cognoscenti.

Back in Baltimore, Pecker's photographs begin to cause trouble. His best friend Matt becomes too well known to be a thief, his girlfriend Shelley receives obscene phone calls and his younger, sugar-obsessed sister Chrissy is visited by a social worker who prescribes Ritalin to calm her down. Meanwhile, his older sister loses her job at the Fudge Palace nightclub because Pecker has photographed its clientele in compromising positions. Its rival the Pelt Room is picketed for showing pubic hair, and Pecker's grandmother Memama loses the ability to talk to her plaster statue of the Virgin Mary.

When a Vogue fashion photographer comes to Baltimore he humiliates Pecker's homeless friends by dressing them in designer clothes. Rejecting Rorey's sexual advances, Pecker turns down an exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York and instead invites the glitterati to come to Baltimore, where they are confronted with pictures of themselves looking ridiculous which Pecker shot in New York. At the ensuing party, the Virgin Mary statue speaks, and the crowd toast "the end of irony".

The greatest irony of John Waters' career is that he has ended up loving and being loved by Baltimore, the town he initially tried so hard to infuriate. From being the most disgusting film-maker in the world, Waters has become something of a local hero, venerated for bringing an element of glitter into an area not known for its star-spangled potential. Nowadays one of the main reasons for visiting Baltimore is to gawp at the place where the trash-maestro first put a camera up someone's fundament and to see where the cast of Pink Flamingos inspired one critic to demand: "Who are these people? Where do they go when the sun comes up? Isn't there a law or something?"

In his fifteenth film, which the writer/director describes as, "my satire of a Woody Allen movie," Waters balances his affection for Baltimore with an equal contempt for New York. For Waters, the Big Apple is full of fraudsters desperate to be different, while Baltimore is packed with genuinely queer folk, a quality which makes Pecker. His crowd is much more likable than their big-city counterparts (making Dave Hardin's soundtrack rendition of 'Baltimore, You're Home to Me' sound oddly free of irony). From Pecker's girlfriend Shelley, Christina Ricci's fiercely independent laundromat mistress, to Pecker's grandmother (played by Jean Schertler) who talks to a statue of the Virgin Mary, and his father who staunchly asserts "pubic hair causes crime", all of Pecker's pals are affectionately drawn, rather than vulgar, caricatures.

Waters loves these people – indeed, their quirks seem drawn from elements of his own personality. While it's easy to read Pecker himself as a thinly veiled portrait of the artist, traces of Waters run deep even in sugar-crazed Little Chrissy, whom Pecker thanks for teaching him "that life is nothing if you're not obsessed." Pecker's sister Tina dishes up a classic string of Watersesque MC patter at the Fudge Palace ("This is Death Row Dave! He's a three-time loser who's been sentenced to the chair... but he's still got a boner!"), while Shelley becomes the auteur's mouthpiece when she realises true beauty can be found even in "the brilliant green of a grass stain, the subtle yellow of a urine-soaked sheet, or the aqua blue of cold water as it dilutes a violent red blood stain."

As usual, Waters' coy sweetness is tempered by an almost bloody-minded need to offend somebody. So we get to see two rats having sex, a man masturbating on a washing machine, a psychotic child snorting peas up a $10 bill, a lecherous phone caller (Waters himself) making pointed use of the word "vagina", and even a sub-soft-porno-style insert of 'beaver bush' which will presumably keep the film out of some family-oriented video stores. But when delectations of this kind are served up against the comb-and-paper innocence of such ear-tickling pop gems as Paul Evans' 'Happy Go Lucky Me' and Leroy Pullins' 'I'm A Nut', it's hard to imagine how anyone could take umbrage.

Cameos are liberally scattered throughout the film. These include a by-now-expected appearance from Patty Hearst as well as Waters' stalwart Mink Stole supplementing walk-ons for artist Cindy Sherman and art critic Greg Gorman, who lend credibility to Waters' broad swipes at the art world. Edward Furlong, Martha Plimpton and little Lauren Hulsey handle their roles with racey aplomb, but the show is stolen by Christina Ricci, a cross between Jane Russell and Norman Bates who continues to be the most exciting and entertaining screen actress working in and out of Hollywood today. Few people could bring such weight to the role of Pecker's "stain-Goddess" girlfriend, but when she tells an irritating customer to, "get out and take your tired wardrobe with you" it's hard not to stand up and cheer. Not quite on a par with Cry-Baby and even less likely to cause a box-office stir than Serial Mom, Pecker remains a refreshing reminder of Waters' spunky talents, and offers continued proof that there really is a very thin line between treasure and trash. 

Waters, John  interview by Gerald Peary

CECIL B. DEMENTED
USA  France  (88 mi)  2000
 
Cecil B. Demented  Anthony Lane from The New Yorker 

 

The new John Waters picture takes its place in the long and semi-honorable tradition of Hollywood self-scorn. The title character is an underground movie director (Stephen Dorff) dedicated to the demolition of standard studio pap. Surrounded by his gang of guerrilla technicians, he kidnaps a lustrous star (Melanie Griffith) and forces her to play the lead in his latest slice of zero-budget decadence. As Cecil and his crew attack multiplexes and movie sets, it's never quite clear where they or Waters are pointing their radical rage: at the process of filmmaking, at the national theatre chains, or at those citizens of a free America who exercise their right to watch baloney. The movie promises to be funny, should be funny, and spends most of the time teetering on the brink of being funny, but it just isn't funny. The trouble is that real events have overtaken the conceit; there are plenty of young indie directors out there who, fired by the success of "The Blair Witch Project" and the Dogme group, have every hope of getting their spicy, home-baked pictures onto the big screen. 

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Cecil B. Demented (2000)  Peter Matthews from Sight and Sound, January 2001

Hollywood star Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith) agrees to attend the premiere of her new film Some Kind of Happiness in Baltimore, Maryland, the movie's location. The gala's venue, the Senate Theatre, is infiltrated by the Sprocket Holes, a cadre of cinematic terrorists led by guerrilla film-maker Cecil B. Demented, otherwise known as Sinclair Stevens (Stephen Dorff), the Senate's manager. The Sprockets kidnap Honey and tell her of their plan to force her to star in a subversive epic called Raving Beauty. Initially scornful, she is soon converted and joins the gang in a series of assaults on mainstream cinema locales: first, they disrupt a showing of Patch Adams: the Director's Cut while Cecil films the mayhem; then they invade an outdoor reception held by the Maryland Film Commission. Make-up artist Rodney (Jack Noseworthy) is killed when police fire on the Sprockets. Pursued by a mob of conservative filmgoers, the outlaws take refuge in a cinema screening a karate marathon and rouse the action fans to protect them.

Back at the hide-out, Cecil tells of his plan to stage a coup d'état at the location where the sequel to Forrest Gump, Gump Again, is being filmed. This time, Honey's co-star Lyle (Adrian Grenier) is gunned down by a technician and angry Teamsters chase the terrorists into a cinema showing the works of ex-porn star Cherish (Alicia Witt). Again, the Sprockets are defended, this time by exploitation fans. Cecil's final location is a drive-in cinema playing a Honey Whitlock triple bill. When the police arrive, more Sprockets are killed, Cecil immolates himself and Honey is escorted into a police van, while adoring fans look on.

Review

Of all the directors who have made names for themselves over the past 30 years, John Waters is possibly the most critic-proof. It would be a stretch to call the perpetrator of such midnight-movie classics as Female Trouble (1974) and Polyester (1981) an artist, but he's undoubtedly some kind of auteur. Even with the modest commercial budgets vouchsafed to him nowadays, Waters has stayed true to his own brand of flaky amateurism: the flat, ugly staging, the frowzy cinematography and the cheesily outré set design one finds in his films supply an authorial signature as patent as Orson Welles' use of deep focus. There's a conscious ironic sensibility in Waters' movies that lifts them out of the barrel-scraping Ed Wood class. His amiable grotesques find a paradoxical grace in their abjection (as in the competition to be the "filthiest person alive" in Pink Flamingos, 1972). Indeed, one could argue an interesting case for Waters' mystical Catholic leanings if that weren't too pompous a way of addressing a film-maker whose charm lies in his utter lack of pretension. Attacking a Waters movie on aesthetic grounds seems as redundant an activity as lamenting the culinary deficiencies of tinned spaghetti. His films are so blissfully aware of their own tackiness that they're just about impossible to resist.

Despite its high quotient of masturbation gags, Cecil B. Demented is as pleasantly anodyne as all Waters' recent productions. Just as Hollywood has cottoned on to the lucrative possibilities of gross-out comedies, Waters has started making pictures you could show to your Aunt Eileen. No doubt the mainstream invasion of his underground turf obliged him to move on, but there was always a touch of Capra about Waters' films. The sick-making coda to Pink Flamingos (Divine cheekily munches on a dog turd) doesn't carry the transgressive force it would in, say, Buñuel - it's more in the nature of a schoolboy dare.

The oddly wholesome quality of Waters' obscenity is probably a function of how he relates to his characters. For Waters never presents a mere freak show à la Todd Solondz; far from laughing up his sleeve at the human dregs he portrays, Waters bows to their lumpen integrity. The shoddiness of his cinema should consequently be recognised for the principled moral gesture it is - even on the level of style, Waters is determined not to pull rank.

If Cecil B. Demented represents a technical advance over its predecessors, that isn't saying much. Waters displays a new penchant for mock-pretty effects (as in the rim lighting of the gala sequence) and proves he can handle action scenes skilfully enough. Otherwise, it's the same dog's breakfast as before, only this time the rough aesthetic bears a quasi-political import. Ever since he took the mickey out of the race-relations message movie in Hairspray, Waters has been developing the semblance of a social conscience: here he attacks our soulless multiplex era, bloated by formulaic high-concept drivel. In a witty conflation of Patty Hearst's escapades with the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Dogme group's drive for cinematic purity, Cecil B. Demented tells how screen diva Honey Whitlock gets brainwashed by a clan of movie-mad terrorists, the Sprocket Holes. Waters' native Baltimore serves as the benchmark of authenticity - its nameless genre fans offer sanctuary to the Sprocket Holes whenever the forces of reaction threaten - and the premise allows for plenty of swipes at corporate Hollywood. But story structure not being Waters' strong card, the film dawdles and repeats itself to the point of exhaustion. And hard as the professional actors try, they lack the spark of genuine dementia Waters formerly elicited from personal 'discoveries' such as Mink Stole (who makes a brief appearance). Stephen Dorff in particular is strangely flat as the eponymous messianic Sprockets leader. But Melanie Griffith throws herself into the part of Honey as if clutching at last straws. What used to be said of Walt Disney seems true of Waters: he gets them on the way up (Johnny Depp in Cry-Baby) and also on the way down.

Filmmaker Magazine | Summer 2000: WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD?  J.T. LeRoy interviews Waters from Filmmaker magazine, Summer 2000

 
A DIRTY SHAME                            B                     86
USA  (89 mi)  2004
 
With its NC-17 rating, some see this as a return to Waters' trashy, confrontational, and vulgar roots, however, this is completely harmless and benign, but weirdly funny nonetheless.  The story beats to death one funny bit; humans grow deliriously horny when accidentally bumped in the head, turning into insatiable sexual freaks that practice sexual exhibitionism all over town, driving the “straight” community wild.  The sexual transformation is shown using racy stock footage from old blue films.  With a kind of 50’s sci-fi mentality to it all, where in that era, people were freaked out by aliens, here they are freaked out by sex.  And the film opens, innocently enough, as if it was set in the 50’s, with rock n roll music and blaring sax solos gyrating behind every sequence.  Tracey Ullman is terrific as the frumpy, sexually-not-interested wife, who instantly goes ga ga for every guy in town.  Some of her lines for luridly suggesting what she wants done to her are priceless, and by themselves, worth the price of admission.  Other Marx Brothers-like entries:  D.C. WOMAN: "But I'm straight!!!"  Lesbian #1: "So is spaghetti before you heat it up!"  "Remember kids, don't buy drugs.... become a pop star and they give them to you for free."  Johnny Knoxville plays a Jim Carrey-like sexual guru, who together with his 12 apostles wants to lead the town into a state of bumped-in-the-head sexual bliss. Chris Isaak plays her ever-so-straight husband, and together with her mom, Big Ethel, they live in a completely sexless world, working together at the corner mini mart, gathering petitions to rid the neighborhood of all this nonsense.  One problem, they have to keep their nympho daughter, wonderfully played by Selma Blair, under lock and key, as she has an uncontrollable urge to dance naked at the town’s biker bar, where one biker in particular, Fat Fuck Frank, is obsessed with her enormously huge, criminally enlarged breasts.  When the two worlds collide, the climax is a muddled mess, the scenes get carried away into total mayhem and excess, but that’s part of the fun.
 
Pop Matters article (link lost)

 

The "message" of A Dirty Shame is a rather obvious one, especially after decades of feminism, the sexual revolution, glbt politicking and AIDS activism: if it's safe, consensual and doesn't hurt anyone (outside of the practice and/or who doesn't consent to it within), what's it to you? It's a message that bears repeating, especially in a United States where federally funded "sex education" has been linked to "abstinence only" programs, and governmental institutions like the FCC directly mandate the standards of "decency" by which we should all conduct our lives.

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Back At The Raunch  J. Hobermann from Sight and Sound, December 2004

John Waters, Baltimore's guerrilla king of kitsch, became almost respectable when the 1990s brought tabloid geek-show bad taste into the mainstream. But if his films then had a too-manicured tidiness, his new A Dirty Shame takes him back to his sleazy, slippery, jagged-edged best.

There are two Americas, whose beliefs have little to do with political affiliation and even less to do with logical consistency: America the libertarian and America the puritanical. Faith in free markets hardly guarantees a favourable attitude towards same-sex marriage; protecting abortion rights does not necessarily extend to preserving a citizen's right to own a personal assault weapon.

Although there's no question as to which America John Waters prefers, both mindsets are travestied in A Dirty Shame. By Waters' lights, the US population can be divided into judgmental, self-righteous, crabby, normalising "neuters" and anarchic, infantile, proudly disgusting, non-conformist "sex addicts" - equally hysterical groups, both prone to cultish fanaticism and each only a bang on the head away from the other.

Not for the squeamish (but not above the saccharine), A Dirty Shame is Waters' attempt to revive the extravagant bad taste which made him first notorious, then celebrated, and finally respectable. These days the onetime bad boy is as much a personality as a film-maker: a talk-show veteran, famous enough to guest star on The Simpsons; the man with the most distinctive moustache in America; jazz-age journalist H.L. Mencken's successor as Baltimore's leading native son. The city declared its first John Waters Day nearly 20 years ago; even a casual visit will yield nearly as many chamber-of-commerce references to the Waters oeuvre as to Baltimore's crab cakes.

At 58 Waters has long since become his own trademark. His image is emblazoned on the print ads for A Dirty Shame; as a recognised authority on aesthetic shock he is called on to endorse such films as Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell ("the most politically incorrect movie I've ever seen in my life"). One hopes he will eventually weigh in on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ - though his response to Gibson's sacred gross-out may well be A Dirty Shame.

Much to Waters' publicly expressed satisfaction, his most recent film was attacked by the Catholic League and the Catholic News Service for "rough, crude, and profane language, full-frontal nudity, sexual imagery, obscene gestures, scatological humour, casual portrayal and description of deviant sexual practices, a glorification of freewheeling sex and some sacrilegious imagery". No review could be better ­- save, perhaps, in the form of a subpoena from US attorney general John Ashcroft.

From his childhood puppet shows onwards Waters has thrived on publicity, outrage and exhibitionism. His 1972 underground blockbuster Pink Flamingos posited that millions of people might, no less than the movie's leading lady, willingly eat dog shit to achieve stardom - and perhaps some do. Waters was a trial buff whose fascination with criminal justice long predates the cable station Court TV, an aficionado of serial killers well before they became fashionable, a gross-out king when Todd Solondz, the Farrelly brothers and the South Park guys (right-wing libertarians) were still farting around in the schoolyard. A quarter of a century before Jerry Springer made daytime-TV history with a violent, voyeuristic, all-American freak show, Waters was plumbing Baltimore's depths to showcase "the filthiest people in the world".

Nor did Waters lack an aesthetic. He was a master synthesiser whose early shoestring productions infused Theater of the Ridiculous drag-queen humour with a regionalist sub-Warhol rawness, the raunchy energy of 1950s rock 'n' roll, 1960s underground comix, lapsed-Catholic blasphemy, a bit of P.T. Barnum, and the first, nameless stirrings of punk. The 16mm self-proclaimed "celluloid atrocities" Mondo Trasho (1969), Multiple Maniacs (1970) and Pink Flamingos, all featuring the 20-stone gender blur Divine, satirised hippie broadmindedness even as they exploited it. One must do one's own thing - even if that includes incest, bestiality, theft or murder.

With the unexpectedly genial Hairspray (1988) Waters travelled from testing the limits of countercultural acceptance to affable endorsement of tolerance - more racial and physical, in this case, than sexual. The movie's 2002 incarnation as a Broadway musical, with Harvey Fierstein in the Divine role, is the ultimate naturalisation of the Ridiculous aesthetic. But that was hardly the end of Waters' assimilation into the American mainstream. The year after Hairspray opened, glamorous Charlize Theron won an Oscar playing truck-stop serial killer Aileen Wournos in Monster - a natural role for Divine.

If the 1970s represented Waters' most incendiary period as a film-maker, then the 1990s were the Waters years. The prophet was no longer wandering in the wilderness; American social reality had turned into one of his films. As the Clinton presidency came to a close, Pecker (1998) asked whether any cultural space remained for Waters after the apotheosis of shock jock Howard Stern and tele-circus ringmaster Jerry Springer and the seemingly permanent tabloid geek show that culminated in the tawdry spectacle of the president's impeachment for accepting a blow-job.

A Warholian joke, the young amateur photographer Pecker personifies the camera's innocent gaze and capacity to spin gold from dross (or worse). It was around this time that Waters reinvented himself as a gallery artist, typically transforming old movies into serial photographs and thus becoming a philosopher of the film culture that did so much to saturate the world with celebrity, sensation and sleaze. Earlier this year the New Museum in New York afforded him a retrospective 'Change of Life', which effectively canonised his taste. Significantly, it was the trio of mid-1960s shorts - Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, Roman Candles and Eat Your Make-up - that garnered most praise.

Both a parody of and tribute to the spirit of the 1960s, Cecil B. DeMented (2000) satirised Waters' own early movies in which bands of social-outcast "life-actors" launched outrageous guerrilla attacks on bourgeois reality. Here a cult of Baltimore-based guerrilla film-makers led by the eponymous tousle-haired punk infiltrates a charity-benefit premiere and kidnaps the guest of honour, an overripe Hollywood diva (Melanie Griffith) who is held captive in a secret movie set and forced to act in DeMented's "outlaw sinema".

DeMented dreams of a movie so rank it will destroy mainstream cinema. Less grandiose than his alter ego, Waters is content to take potshots at the system. The DeMented gang desecrates a biography of David Lean, shoots up a theatre showing the "director's cut" of Patch Adams, battles Teamsters to disrupt the filming of Gump Again and takes refuge in a friendly porn theatre. Indeed, Cecil B. DeMented aestheticises Waters' original assault on taste: "Power to the people - perish bad cinema." Still, the director has not entirely ceded the kulturkampf. More or less abandoning plot and structure, A Dirty Shame is as near as he has come since the horrifying Desperate Living (1977) brought his early period to a close to the sort of movie DeMented might have made.

A non-stop raunchfest with a surreal premise and a provocative agenda, A Dirty Shame begins as a parody of Todd Haynes' Sirk pastiche, albeit one set very, very far from heaven. Waters' magic kingdom is the blue-collar neighbourhood of Harford Road, an obscure district in north-east Baltimore described to me by one local as populated by a combination of old ladies and drug dealers. It is here that a timely concussion transforms the grouchily overworked and sexually repressed grocery clerk Sylvia (Tracey Ullman) into something like a walking libido.

Harford Road is already polarised. In fact, it's a free-fire zone in the culture wars. Sylvia's daughter Caprice (Selma Blair), aka Ursula Udders, is famous in the local biker bars for her "criminally enlarged" - which is to say watermelon-sized - breasts. Blair's liquid-filled latex-and-rubber prosthetic boobs were designed by Tony Gardner, creator of Gwyneth Paltrow's Shallow Hal fat suit, and, an amorous pair of computer-generated rodents aside, these monstrous appendages constitute the movie's major special effect. (Had the mammophilic Russ Meyer, one of Waters' cinematic heroes, lived to see Blair shaking her stuff, he would have died a happy man.) Sylvia's hatchet-faced mother Big Ethel (Suzanne Shepherd, moonlighting from her day job as Tony Soprano's mother-in-law) is the de facto defender of Harford Road propriety: "We're not against anything. We're for the end of tolerance."

Reacting to an onslaught of stray dildos, gay bear families and porn-obsessed mail-carriers, Harford Road's beleaguered puritans decide to embrace their "neuterness". ("I'm viagravitated and I'm not gonna take it any more," one unhappy spouse declares.) Meanwhile the avid and hilariously impulsive Sylvia goes tramping around in leopardskin stretchies recovered from a Salvation Army deposit bin. Throwing out her elbows and knees, wide-eyed and rubber-faced, Ullman is in these scenes very nearly a female Jim Carrey. In one show-stopping sequence this sexual terrorist clears a day-room of confused senior citizens with a hoochified hokey-pokey that climaxes in an act more often seen in a Bangkok strip bar.

As Harford Road assimilates the knowledge that Sylvia "picked up a bottle with her cooter in the old folk's home", Sylvia herself, a newly realised and very horny "cunnilingus bottom", joins the cult led by charismatic garage mechanic Ray-Ray (Johnny Knoxville, star of Waters descendent Jackass). Ray-Ray - comparable in some ways to Cecil B. DeMented and in others to Mel Gibson's Jesus Christ - imagines that the arrival of this new disciple will hasten the "resurrsextion" and "day of carnal rapture". Then another concussion reverses Sylvia's madcap disinhibition...

"I wanted to do a Three Stooges sex comedy," Waters told one interviewer. A Dirty Shame may be more of a Three Stooges manifesto. "Sitting through it is like being in the company of a bunch of eight-year-olds who have just learned a new swear word," A.O. Scott wearily concluded his New York Times review. "At his age, Mr Waters should know better."

Better than what? Or whom? The fundamentalists who have determined the nature of American political debate and bid to turn the end of tolerance into an electoral strategy? As crass as A Dirty Shame may be, it also bids to put that crassness back into religion. The movie is not only shameless in its slapstick but wears its sentiment on its soiled sleeve - compared to the recent work of Waters fan Todd Solondz, it is almost corny in asserting that nothing human is foreign to its maker. It's not exactly material for a Broadway musical (unless some New York producer wants to get a jump on the soon-to-be imported Jerry Springer: The Opera, which similarly features a diapered 'adult baby'). But like Hairspray, A Dirty Shame does have intimations of a social struggle about to reach critical mass.

Underlying much American political discourse is the puritanical desire to exorcise the liberal excesses associated with the 1960s and reinstate those traditional values presumably driven underground. Waters (as his parody of Far from Heaven suggests) refuses to concede any special innocence to the past. Spiced with clips from vintage exploitation films and single-entendre 'party' records like 'The Pussy Cat Song' and 'Tony's Got Hot Nuts', A Dirty Shame has an antique 1950s feel. The movie has struck some as a comic, deliberately retro horror cheapster, a mock Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But mainly, in its sense of an underlying holy war, it parallels another argument for sexual diversity - Bill Condon's earnestly middlebrow Kinsey, with Liam Neeson playing the zoologist turned sex researcher, an only slightly more sedate Ray-Ray.

For some, the pioneering Alfred Kinsey (who, coincidentally, is also the subject of T.C. Boyle's new novel The Inner Circle) was a monster or at least a mad scientist. Operating in the 1940s and early 1950s from a college campus in deepest Indiana, Kinsey overturned America's sense of its sexual self. Condon takes pains to show that this doggedly square, if deeply eccentric crusader rebelled against the hypocrisies of his own puritanical upbringing to found his own cult and become the most dangerous man in America. "It is impossible to estimate the damage this book will do to the [nation's] already deteriorating morals," rival evangelist Billy Graham declared when Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was published in late 1953.

Half a century later, Kinsey remains a puritan bête noire who may be held responsible for everything from jump-starting the sexual revolution and promoting junior-highschool sex-education classes to enabling pornography, gay rights and abortion on demand. Condon's reverential biopic has none of the erotic snap and crackle of Dusan Makavejev's classic celebration of Kinsey's contemporary Wilhelm Reich in W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism (1971). But neither does A Dirty Shame - though it's liable to erupt into outlandish gross-out at any moment. In the delirious climax of dirt-licking, chronic masturbation and food-based foreplay give way to a mix of Roman Catholic and Christian-fundamentalist cosmological fireworks and then a rapturous explosion of cosmic jizm.

Although Kinsey recognised but three sexual abnormalities - "abstinence, celibacy and delayed marriage" - it's possible that even he might have been stumped by the arcane practices Waters claims to have discovered surfing the internet. "Ever heard of sploshin'?" someone asks. How about 'Roman showers' or 'upper-decking'? (Spoiler alert: the first involves the ecstatic application of squishy foodstuffs; the second a vomitatious form of foreplay; the third defecating in a toilet tank.) If sexual activity in A Dirty Shame tends towards the wildly regressive, the movie itself is promiscuous in its means and ridiculous in its tolerance. Predicated on all manner of licking and rubbing, Waters' polymorphously perverse, far-from-phallocratic sexual democracy is not so much hilarious as goofy. Not for nothing does the new sex act Ray-Ray discovers involve banging foreheads.

Comparing Kinsey to A Dirty Shame brings to mind Georges Bataille's critique of the Kinsey project as suspect for its unavoidable detachment: "Any inquiry into the sexual life of subjects under observation is incompatible with scientific objectivity." And yet Kinsey's middle section - with the hero crusading for campus classes in marital preparedness, discovering a new interest in boys and enabling his devoted young assistants to swap wives - is pure Waters. So is the movie's spelled-out moral: "Everybody's sin is nobody's sin." Would that Kinsey and A Dirty Shame had traded directors and titles - especially since the good doctor does eventually confront a sexual creature who cracks the surface of his scientific detachment.

It's worth noting that, despite the absence of any real nudity or simulated sex acts, A Dirty Shame received the scarlet NC-17 rating. Perhaps the movie will test the limits of its audiences' tolerance after all. (Waters' most optimistic gag sends a liberal couple, relocated from nearby Washington DC to partake of Baltimore's diversity, screaming from their newly gentrified Harford Road home.) In its crude vitality, A Dirty Shame makes scarcely more concession to standard expectations than did Waters' first celluloid atrocities: the scattershot film-making oscillates between the fast and the furious, as well as the thin and embarrassing.

A Dirty Shame is far more rousing than arousing - though as a date film it would certainly break the ice. It's real accomplishment is to reduce cultural jihad to a matter of sexual preference (or non-preference). Seen as Waters' contribution to the 2004 American presidential election campaigns, the revelation of this 'dirty secret' makes for his most radical film in 25 years.   

Sex crazed!  Stephanie Zacharek from Salon

 

A Dirty Shame (2004)  Cynthia Fuchs from Pop Matters

 

Shame on You! A Conversation with "A Dirty Shame"'s John Waters, Selma Blair, and Johnny Knoxville  Blake French interview from AMC, September 23, 2004

 

Waters, Mark
 
THE HOUSE OF YES                    B+                   92
USA  (90 mi)  1997
 

A wacky, outrageously acerbic black comedy with Genevieve Bujold as the matriarch over an extraordinarily dysfunctional family, uttering lines like “conversation only leads to trouble,” adapted from Wendy MacLeod’s play We Are Living in a House of Yes, though perhaps loosely based upon Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, as this is basically a Gothic haunted house story, where all the inhabitants are forever tainted by family secrets, not the least of which includes ongoing incestual relations between a twin brother Marty (Josh Hamilton) and his sister Jackie (Parker Posey) playing JFK and Jackie-O, both obsessed with the Kennedy family since their father walked out on the day of JFK's assassination, where their mother reminds us “Jackie was holding Marty's penis when they came out of the womb.  The doctors swore to me it’s in some medical journal somewhere.”  The brilliant Parker Posey shines in her role as the recently de-institutionalized, still mentally unstable sister who becomes completely obsessed as Jackie-O, right down to wearing a string of pearls around her neck, the pink Chanel suit along with the pillbox hat that the First Lady was wearing when JFK was shot and killed in Dallas.  Played by a younger actress (Rachael Leigh Cook) as Jackie at age 14, the film opens with iconic, interchangeable images The House of Yes - Young Jackie-O Tour Videos. - YouTube (4:57) over the opening credits of Jackie-O (in color) showing off her stately home and the real Jacquelyn Kennedy (in Black and White) leading a televised guided tour of the White House A TOUR OF THE WHITE HOUSE WITH MRS. JOHN F. KENNEDY ...  YouTube (10:12), which aired on CBS to enormous TV ratings on February 14, 1962, though here it resembles parody.  The film makes no bones about its air of pretension, becoming a savagely dark, dialogue-laced, screwball comedy where Posey literally steals the show, as the audience can’t take their eyes off her every moment she’s onscreen, as she’s utterly captivating in a delightfully sick and macabre kind of way, perhaps the defining role of her career.

 

The terrific, sarcastically biting dialogue intermixes overdramatic yet stinging remarks with a weird hilarity, maintaining a frenetic pace over the course of 24 hours on a dark and stormy Thanksgiving Day, where a torrent of rain sets the tone for interior, claustrophobic fun and games, especially when the power goes off and the darkness is lit only by candlelight, luminously shot by Michael Stiller.  The characters themselves couldn’t be more memorable, as the acting is outstanding, each playing off the other with surprising skill, where there is more quotable dialogue here than virtually any other film of its era, a movie that plays well to repeated viewings, set in 1983 in an enormously empty Virginian mansion during the Reagan years, a last gasp of aristocracy where the world of privilege is a given, as they know no other way, a place with no rules, where Jackie is defined as a person who can’t take no for an answer, where the film title came from bathroom wall graffiti seen by the director:  “We are living in a house of yes.”  According to her mother, if there’s anything she knows and understands, it’s that “Jackie and Marty belong to each other.”  So when Marty arrives home from college with his fiancée Lesly (Tori Spelling), her presence sends the house into turmoil, as they’ve never had a guest before, wonderfully expressed in a flurry of Marx Brothers style dialogue seen here:  House of Yes - YouTube (1:49).  Other than Marty, the inhabitants, including the ever inquisitive younger brother Anthony (Freddie Prinze Jr.), are all shut-ins who rarely if ever venture to the outside world, preferring the comforts of home, where like Poe’s story, the house itself seems filled with the secret mysteries of its own family history, where nothing normal ever happens, perhaps best expressed by the mother who brazenly tells her children “I look at you people and wonder, how did you ever fit in my womb?” 

 

Posey’s manic edge couldn’t be more brilliantly original, but Bujold is the anchor of the family, where the two get all the best lines, where Bujold’s understatement perfectly contrasts with Posey’s frenetic energy.  The question is whether any of the family’s secrets will be revealed, whether Marty will be allowed to run away with the perfectly ordinary Lesly and lead some semblance of a normal life, or whether the house of horrors will somehow manage to take its toll on the inhabitants.  Jackie is always walking on eggshells, reminiscent of the outrageous and highly exaggerated restraint required in Guy Maddin’s CAREFUL (1992), where people speak in whispers lest they be overcome by a looming avalanche, where anything can potentially trigger her violent tendencies, where the quick and abrupt mood changes are startlingly effective, always matched by the music of Rolfe Kent, beautifully expressed in a scene where Marty and Lesly play chopsticks on the piano together, until Jackie butts in and the brother and sister team play an astoundingly difficult four-hand piano concerto that immediately drives Lesly out of the picture, eventually breaking into free form jazz that opens the door to a few family secrets:  The House of Yes --- Big Reveal --- SPOILERS - YouTube  (3:51).  While the emotions displayed onscreen are surprisingly real, never resorting to the artificiality of camp, this is a film about revealing emotional truths, however twisted they may be, like jealousy, love, shame, obsession, humiliation, disbelief, or possessiveness, where the non-naturalistic manner in which they’re expressed is part of the film’s free-wheeling charm, as this allows Parker’s wonderfully over-the-top performance, “But I’m not crazy now, I’m better.  I watch soap operas, I bake brownies, normalcy is coursing through my veins,” but also lends itself to the unthinkable, such as Marty and Jackie-O lovingly reenacting the Kennedy assassination as foreplay.  This is a surprisingly demented American version of THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939), lured by indulgence and the self-centered spell of the Me Generation, thinking the love you want to believe in is strong enough to lift you outside societal norms, not just above conventionality, but also morality, where in fact anything goes.  To get lost in this delusional rhapsodic flight is like Icarus flying too close to the sun. 

 

Kevin Patterson

THE HOUSE OF YES is a vicious but hilarious black-comic satire of the American upper class, introducing us to a bizarre family whose isolation and obsession with the Kennedys has led to murder and an incestuous brother-sister relationship (the two of them seem to flirt by re-enacting JFK's death, complete with ketchup and macaroni to simulate blood and brains). Their snobbery and detachment is revealed by the appearance of Leslie (Tori Spelling), the fiancée of the elder son in the family, who is ridiculed by the daughter for being from Pennsylvania. All of this is pretty absurd, but the dialogue, adapted by Mark Waters from a play by Wendy MacLeod, is clever enough to disturb the audience and make them laugh at the same time. Make no mistake about it: THE HOUSE OF YES is cold-hearted, mean-spirited, and perverse. But as someone who normally despises all three of those qualities in a film, I found myself curiously entertained by all this.

The Tech (MIT) [Vladimir V. Zelevinsky]

Chekhov once said, "If there is a gun on the wall in act one, in act three it should fire." The technique is employed in The House of Yes, but age has made the rule so commonplace that when we see the gun on the wall, we're so sure of what will happen that we're left hoping they'll just fire the gun and be done with it. And be prepared to feel this way more than once because the The House of Yes is a high-concept black comedy, where the characters are not really characters and everything serves to propel the plot towards the conclusion which is simultaneously obvious and absurd.

This is a pity, because there is some interesting stuff in The House of Yes. The House of Yes is a big and opulent mansion in an unspecified Washington, D.C. suburb. On the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Mr. Pascal, the head of the household, suddenly disappeared, leaving behind his weird family.

Twenty years later, the family had become much weirder. Younger brother Anthony dropped out of a "very prestigious school" for an unknown-to-him reason and spends days doing he-knows-not-what. Older brother Marty desperately attempts to escape from the smothering influence of the family and goes to study in New York. His sister is recently back from the mental hospital and answers to the name Jackie-O. Mrs. Pascal takes care of her daughter, which mostly involves making sure Jackie-O doesn't get her hands on the kitchen knives.

Then Marty comes back home for Thanksgiving, bringing his fiancee Lesly, and all the hell breaks loose.

The movie is adapted from the stage play, and it shows. All the action is confined to the titular house and feels staged, and the dialogue feels scripted. It's left for the actors to make real characters from the sketchy material they are given, and most of them fail. Neither Marty nor Anthony is interesting to watch, and Mrs. Pascal has too little screen time. The less said about Tori Spelling, who plays Lesly, the better. This leaves Jackie-O. Played by Parker Posey (winner of the special recognition award this year at Sundance Film Festival), she is a marvel. Jackie-O is simultaneously beautiful, cool, smart, hard as nails, very fragile, quite glamorous, sexy, totally crazy, and very much sane. She can switch moods in an instant and turn her performance on a dime (which, by the way, can also be said about the marvelous music score).

Every second she is on screen, the movie is a joy to watch. But when she is not, the spark is lost, and there is nothing much left - the subtext about the insulated world of the rich and powerful is not interesting enough by itself, and for an hour and a half long movie, this one feels like a long sit.

The audience is supposed to identify with Lesly: she's an outsider to the family, initially attracted to the privileged world where the word "no" is unheard of, but later repulsed by what lurks beneath the surface. But Spelling's Lesly comes across as an unstable neurotic, perhaps the least normal person on screen, making identification with her impossible. It's Jackie-O who grabs our attention, and maybe that's why she is the one with whom it is easy to identify. So, in the end it is Lesly who escapes the confines of the House of Yes, but in another sense it's Jackie-O who escapes the confines of The House Of Yes.

The House of Yes  Terry Brogan

Based on Wendy MacLeod's surreal and seriously sick play of the same title, writer-director Mark Waters' "The House of Yes" is a comedy that veers into very dark territory while keeping its whipper-snap sharp wit and sense of fun intact.

The film opens with a home video flashback of Jackie-O - the demented woman at the center of the story - showing off her stately home, inter-cut with scenes of a White House tour being given by Jacqueline Kennedy (as she then was). The latter piece of vintage footage chosen, however, plays like some bizarre parody rather than the real thing, and this neatly juxtaposed sequence nicely sets the stage for the coming events which unfold.

In 1983, twenty years after the assassination of JFK, somewhere in Washington DC, the Pascal family, led by the docilely creepy Mrs Pascal (Genevieve Bujold) , live in their fabulous mansion. There's Jackie-O (Parker Posey), the barely sane daughter who's awaiting the return of her fraternal twin Marty (Josh Hamilton) this Thanksgiving night, and Anthony (Freddie Prinze Jr), their unnaturally innocent 19 year old brother who seems perpetually anxious and a little feeble-minded. When Marty unexpectedly arrives with a fiancee, Lesly (Tori Spelling), the entire family is thrown into a funk. Mrs Pascal darkly disapproves of the wholesome, somewhat naïve Lesly on account of Jackie-O's obsessive love for her brother, while Anthony shyly longs after the newcomer and makes hilariously awkward attempts to woo her. Marty himself is conflicted about his feelings for Lesly; having escaped from his family several years earlier, he returns to find himself inextricably drawn to Jackie-O, yet yearning for a life of normalcy and simple contentment with Lesly. As for Jackie-O herself, let's just say there's nothing she wouldn't do to keep her family together…

Obviously, the script is full of non-mainstream elements, but much to the credit of Waters, the film moves along smoothly and manages to engage the audience from the get go. The video format also helps the film tremendously, easing up some of its staginess. Since everything is set within the confines of the house, and the cast of characters is limited to all of five, it is important that the cast gel, and happily, they perform very well together - yes, even Tori Spelling. Although she brings a whole bunch of awful reviews and a decidedly dubious reputation with her, Spelling performs admirably well in this film, holding her own nicely. As Anthony, Freddie Prinze Jr exhibits a much nicer personality here than he did in "I Know What You Did Last Summer" - his performance makes Anthony seem like a slightly more intelligent Keanu Reeves, complete with that nice goofiness that's so "Keanu". Genevieve Bujold is given little to work with, but her off-center line reading makes Mrs Pascal a memorable character in a gallery of psychos. Most of all, Parker Posey and Josh Hamilton rise to the challenge of their roles, expertly navigating the complex nature of the relationship between this pair of twisted twins who share a morbid fascination for sex, violence and death.

In the lean running time of 85 minutes, Mark Waters offers a fascinating picture of a truly dysfunctional family teetering on the edge of collapse, yet somehow staying afloat. The thematic elements of incest, homicide and (potentially) tasteless re-enactments of the JFK assassination are handled so lovingly, and with such aplomb, that everything onscreen crackles with energy and an urgency that is compelling to watch. While it is definitely not for all tastes and inclinations, the audaciously sophisticated "The House of Yes" is also one of the most intelligent films from the increasingly mediocre independent film circuit of recent times.

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

If you imagine The Fall of the House of Usher as interpreted by a filthy-minded Howard Hawks, you'll have a good feeling for the sensibility of The House of Yes. Set in 1983, at the height of the Reagan years, Mark Waters' black farce peeks inside the gloomy mansion of the Pascal family, fading aristocrats clinging to the last tatters of privilege as the world outside them marches on.

Based on Wendy MacLeod's play, The House of Yes covers a frenetic Thanksgiving in the Pascal household, as Marty (Josh Hamilton) arrives home from college with an unexpected guest: his fiancée Lesly (Tori Spelling). The presence of an outsider throws the Pascals into turmoil, particularly Marty's lunatic twin sister, Jackie-O (Parker Posey). Marty's mother, played by Geneviève Bujold, desperately tries to keep the family from blowing apart, but by the end of the movie, the aristocracy has breathed its last.

Mark Waters, interviewed during a recent trip to Philadelphia, said he first saw MacLeod's play (subtitled "A Suburban Jacobean Revenge Drama") in San Francisco in 1990. Although he "didn't know jack-all about making movies" at the time, he called MacLeod's agent the next day, lied about being a film producer,and got himself a copy of the script.

Along with the central character of Jackie-O, it was the play's"non-naturalistic" qualities that most appealed to Waters, which is obvious from the first frame of The House of Yes. The movie plunges the audience into a stylized, fast-talking world where the Pascal family's general insanity is taken for granted."I wanted people to get used to the feeling that the characters in this movie are not going to talk like normal people," said Waters. "Jackie's behavior is so extreme, and I wanted people to know that right away. Eventually, they get to see that there's a little more shading to her character."

When it came to portraying the incestuous relationship between Jackie-O and Marty, Waters was even more determined to be upfront. "This isn't The Crying Game. I didn't want any of that TV movie of the week, incest is a deep, dark secret stuff. When Marty comes in [with Lesly] and Jackie screams, I want the audience to be in on the joke. We're making a satire not only of this story, but of all the seriousness that people lend the incest taboo in general."

The House of Yes has received most attention for Parker Posey's performance in the main role, which won her an acting prize at Sundance earlier this year. Almost without exception, Posey's numerous film roles have been one-note extensions of her ditzy, freewheeling public persona, but in The House of Yesshe shows an emotional range only hinted at in her other movies. The scream Posey lets out when Marty reveals that he's engaged is a shriek that transforms itself into breathless, hysterical laughter. It's a great display of technique, but more importantly, it paints a vivid picture of how close Jackie-O is to going over the edge.

Waters is justifiably proud of Posey's performance. "A lot of the movies that Parker is in, there's no real story or emotion, it's just 'Look how fabulous she is.' And she is fabulous, but with [The House of Yes] she was allowed to pull back and show more quiet emotion. Sometimes I let her take [a scene] way over the top, just so she'd see where she could go, and usually the take after that was the great take. When she had tired herself out being fabulous, she could sit down and actually be in the scene."

Every farce needs one genuinely shocking idea. The House of Yes has "the game" — the device Jackie-O and Marty have invented for consummating their incestuous passion. It goes something like this: Jackie puts on her pink Chanel suit and pillbox hat. Marty sits on the couch and waves to an imaginary crowd,smiling blankly. Jackie pulls out a gun loaded with blanks, fires,and Marty drops as if he's been shot. Then, of course, they screw.

The shots of Josh Hamilton waving in slow motion are the most eerily unsettling thing in The House of Yes, but Waters doesn't seem interested in talking about the cultural significance of Marty and Jackie-O's bizarre ritual, or about the "obvious political metaphor" that connects the absent Pascal patriarch with the murdered JFK. "The movie's not about JFK. It's about obsession with JFK… We don't show the Zapruder film."

Although The House of Yes is effective as a farcical character study, Waters' lack of self-consciousness prevents the movie from working as satire. Worse, it allows the film to replicate the same conventions it's supposed to be skewering. What emerges fromThe House of Yes is the idea that a house without a father degenerates into a permissive, amoral wasteland, and whether or not that idea emerges with a smirk is really beside the point.

Edward Johnson-Ott    which includes brief interviews with the director and Freddie Prinze Jr, (1997), also seen here:  Edward Johnson-Ott 

 

Scott Renshaw

 

Alex Fung

 

Steve Rhodes

 

Brian Takeshita

 

House of Yes  Random Movie Club

 

The House of Yes - Deep Focus  Bryant Frazer, also seen here:  Bryant Frazer

 

James Berardinelli's ReelViews  also seen here:  James Berardinelli

 

Ted Prigge

 

Jamie Peck

 

Dennis Schwartz

 

Mondo Digital

 

Harvey S. Karten

 

Dragan Antulov

 

JamesBowman.net | House of Yes, The

 

Movie Magazine International [Andrea Chase]

 

CNN Interactive  Paul Tatara

 

filmcritic.com enters The House of Yes  James Brundage, also seen here:  James Brundage

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]

 

The House of Yes (1997)  Michael W. Phillips Jr. from Goatdog’s Movies

 

A dysfunctional family exhumes the Kennedys | Dec 4, 1998  Matthew Wiegle review of the play from The Yale Herald

 

Albuquerque Alibi [Devin D. O'Leary]  which includes a very brief interview with the director, November 17, 1997

The House of Yes Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London

 

The House of Yes . The Boston Phoenix . 10-20-97  Peter Keough, also seen here:  The Boston Phoenix   

 

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Edward Guthmann]

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Stephen Holden 

 

Pink Chanel suit of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy - Wikipedia, the ...

 

MEAN GIRLS                                   C                     75
USA  (97 mi)  2004

 

Adapted from Rosalind Wiseman’s girl-world book, “Queen Bees and Wannabes:  Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence,” quite a mouthful, and with a title like that, impossible not to love.   I hate to say this, but I found this pretty average, a series of television set pieces strung together without ever rising above occasional bouts of humor.  Not surprising, however, as the producer is Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels, scripted by SNL regular Tina Fey.  While the performance of lead actress Lindsay Lohan is wonderfully appealing, the story remains stuck inside a world of cliché’s, like having to fight your way out of a paper bag.  The fresh insight of the story features high school cliques, separated in the lunchroom by clearly indicated lines of demarcation, with the Barbie-esque “plastics” being the supposed top of the food chain, possessing the queen bee of mean girls, Rachel McAdams, who looks too good to be true, the one who can put down others while remaining protected by her self-image of beauty and perfection, cultishly followed by less secure, snotty girls who remain queens of their own bubblegum kingdoms, but they are ridiculously presented as gorgeously dressed and manicured airheads, where intelligence is viewed as bad news, so nothing here ever rises above stereotypes.  The voice of sanity in this film is supposedly a depressed, Goth-dressed girl called Janis Ian, who may be a lesbian, which, while attempting to pay homage to the singer, is actually quite insulting, as she remains the helplessly driven butt of most clique jokes and is never allowed to be clever or gay.  Only Lindsay, who stealthily attempts to sabotage this caste system, and the teacher played by Tina Fey are allowed to show signs of intelligence in this film, so of course, to compensate, they seem to possess super-intelligence.  When the mean girls finally get their comeuppance, all it leads to is a school group therapy session, hardly entertaining or inspiring.  It’s not very hard to get real when the world around you is presented as being so incredibly superficial.  While it supposedly takes place in Evanston on the North Shore, and even has a visit to the Old Orchard mall, it was actually filmed in Canada.    

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List  Kyle Cubr

Set just a short drive away in nearby Evanston, the highly quotable MEAN GIRLS is a highly satirical look at the awkward, cliquish, hormone-crazed minefield that is high school. Sixteen year-old, fish out of water Cady Heron (Lindsey Lohan) moves to Illinois after spending the previous twelve years in Africa with her parents who were on a zoological research study. Upon her arrival, she enrolls at North Shore High School and quickly learns that making new friends is nothing like it was halfway across the world. During her first math class taught by the affable but down on her luck Ms. Norbury (Tina Fey), Cady makes friends with social outcasts Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damien (Daniel Franzese) who teach her about navigating the school's social hierarchy. At lunch, Cady is approached by The Plastics to join their group. Consisting of queen bee Regina George (Rachel McAdams), Gretchen Wieners (Lacey Chabert), and Karen Smith (Amanda Seyfried), The Plastics are North Shore's equivalent of teen royalty and have very strict rules on how to dress and act. As Cady becomes friendlier with them, Janis and Damien fear she will become one of them. They decide to have her pretend to join the group as a joke and destroy them from within as revenge for all the victimizing they have caused. As time progresses, Cady slowly goes from pretending to be Plastic to actually becoming Plastic and risks losing her only true friends. As the backstabbing intensifies and secrets are revealed, the whole school is turned upside down. This film is a perfect look at teenage cliques and the damaging effects they can have on everyone, school staff included. A cult classic with a lasting legacy largely thanks to Tina Fey's well-written script, MEAN GIRLS is a painfully accurate representation of how fun and cruel high school can truly be.

Watkins, Peter
 
EDVARD MUNCH – made for TV 
Sweden  Norway  (210 mi)  1973

 

Flashback: Edvard Munch | Montages  Peter Watkins—Notes and Questions: Edvard Munch, John Gianvito from Cinema Scope (original link lost)

One of best pieces of cinema news of the past year most certainly should be the theatrical re-storing and re-issuing of Watkins’ 1973 film Edvard Munch (thanks to the stalwart efforts of Oliver Groom and his Toronto-based distribution company Project X, who will eventually also be releasing it on DVD). Regarded by many as Watkins’ most perfectly realized artistic achievement, Edvard Munch is nothing short of the examination of the soul of one artist by another, and by extension a journey into Watkins’ own spiritual struggle and aspirations. Despite Watkins’ consistent career-long engagement with issues of political and social relevance it is curious how rarely the political dimensions of Munch are taken note of by critics. With his permission, Peter Watkins has allowed me to selectively excerpt some of his thoughts on the creation of the Munch film and its impact on his later work from a recent self-interrogation.

«In my work I have tried to confront the notions of “documentary reality” and “objectivity” by deliberately staging my films as though they are “happening.” And by building into this illusion a number of challenging elements, including ambiguities, which expose the constructed nature and fictional aspect of the films. I believe this tension between so-called “reality” and “fiction” to be an extremely important field for the audiovisual media to explore.»

Peter Watkins article  Steve Erickson from Chronicle of a Passion (link lost)

After years of being ignored, globe-trotting British filmmaker Peter Watkins is experiencing a renaissance. Toronto’s Cinematheque Ontario and New York’s Anthology Film Archives have held retrospectives of his work, and he’s been the subject of major articles in Cinema Scope and Cahiers du Cinema. His six-hour video La Commune (Paris 1871) popped up last year at the Belcourt’s “Nashville Premieres” festival. And now, just as New Yorker Video has issued the first in a series of eight planned Watkins DVDs, the Frist Center is offering a rare screening of his 1974 masterpiece Edvard Munch this Friday.

Watkins started off his career on a high note, paradoxically winning a Best Documentary Oscar for his second film, 1965’s completely fictional The War Game. The radical politics of the ’60s counterculture have always been central to his work—1971’s Punishment Park, just released on DVD, is a sci-fi fantasy in which black activists and hippie pacifists are forced to run a desert gauntlet in the vain promise of freedom—but he held firm to them after they fell out of fashion. Indeed, if there’s a central weakness to his films, it may be their political stridency. And yet, however paranoid a film like Punishment Park seemed a decade ago—even if it was inspired by the Kent State massacre and the FBI’s persecution of the Black Panthers—the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have made it much more sympathetic.

Edvard Munch is one of Watkins’ most accessible films, despite its nearly three-hour length. While far from apolitical, its historical distance makes the ideological discussions seem less shrill. (With a great deal of time devoted to free love and struggles over sexual morality, it seems as much about the 1960s as the 1880s.) Originally filmed for Norwegian television, it carefully lays out its subject’s social context: in the late 19th century, Munch’s hometown of Kristiania (now Oslo) was populated by a rising bourgeoisie whose pleasures depended on a working class—including many children—that toiled for 17-18 hours a day. Munch’s mother and sister died young, and the painter himself was often ill.

Like many Watkins films, Edvard Munch is intensely verbal. At times, it has the feel of docudrama, with nonprofessional actors who bring their own opinions into their characters: they express these political and philosophical views directly to the camera, as if they were being interviewed. But the movie uses image and sound in counterpoint. If there’s something prosaic about this sensibility, it’s countered by lyrical, free-associative editing. At once, the movie is dreamy and drab.

Watkins also shows himself to be a fine art critic, demonstrating at length how Munch made his artistic breakthrough: endlessly reworking a painting of his sister by tearing away at the canvas with pencils. Watkins calls the result, “The Sick Child,” the first Expressionist painting, but he also shows how the Norwegian bourgeoisie and media laughed it off at the time. It’s easy to see Edvard Munch as a self-portrait, since Watkins’ work has often been dismissed, underappreciated and difficult to see. But Munch eventually found his way into the canon. Deservedly, the same may be happening to his biographer.

Only the Cinema: Films I Love #6: Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins ...  Ed Howard from Only the Cinema

 
Webb, Marc
 
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER                                     B+                   92

USA  (96 mi)  2009  ‘Scope

 

“It’s love, it’s not Santa Claus.”  —Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt)

 

It’s inevitable that the success of JUNO (2007), and LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006) before that, have affected the style of recent indie films, especially with the highly personalized soundtracks and the addition of a whimsical narration poking fun of a wretched miserablism that might not otherwise be there at all.   But in this film, the mocking tone is set before the opening credits, as writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber feature a highly incendiary brief statement of purpose that precedes the film which probably gets the biggest laugh in the entire movie.  Along with Greg Mottola’s ADVENTURELAND (2009), these are two of the better written summer romance comedies in awhile, as despite the formulaic artificiality of style which demands keeping a film light and funny, both are smart enough to get at the awkwardness aspect of love relationships without neglecting the importance of equally significant secondary friendships.   Told out of time over the course of 500 days, liberally moving backwards and forwards in order to explore both the in and out phases of unrequited love, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who played the youngest alien on 3rd Rock from the Sun and was brilliant in Gregg Araki’s MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004), and Zooey Deschanel as Tom Hansen (stealing Johnny Depp’s name from 21 Jump Street?) and Summer Finn (hence, the name of the movie), have a year and a half courtship where he’s a hopeless romantic whole-heartedly in love with her but she’s upfront from the beginning about not being fully committed, just wanting to be friends, preferring instead to remain independent.  But the ever-charming Deschanel is the offbeat girl of our dreams, as she’s never fit the Hollywood style of gorgeous, so of course she’s a natural at not playing any ordinary love story, instead she’s got extraordinary camera presence where she feels so damned comfortable with herself, free of any pretense, which is enormously appealing.  Gordon-Levitt on the other hand has to play much of this film with that droopy, hang dog expression on his face filled with disappointment, the one that looks like he has a “kick me” sign taped on his back.  The film is told entirely through his point of view, including the many versions of Deschanel that he envisions, but oddly enough, also a much older sounding, stuffy Masterpiece Theater style narration from Jean-Paul Vignon that has an annoyingly derisive tone that mysteriously offers up the ending at the beginning, much like a murder mystery, leaving that poor soul in love still reeling in disbelief.          

 

Both Deschanel and Gordon-Leavitt work so well together that their on again and off again romance feels perfectly natural, where the editing style of moving back and forth in time seems designed to offset their highs and lows, where it’s easy to put ourselves in their position, as they’re two such likeable characters.  But despite Deschanel’s predilection to play melancholy (see David Gordon Green’s 2003 film ALL THE REAL GIRLS), she’s surprisingly upbeat here and beautifully counters some of the straight-laced tendencies of Gordon-Leavitt, who spends much of the film conservatively wearing a tie.  Supposedly a frustrated architecture student, he’s instead landed a job designing greeting cards, where he’s a whiz coming up with ideas while he’s in the throes of love, but as he grows darker and more introverted from being jilted in love, he feels like damaged goods where cards offer no consolation.   Their time onscreen, however, no matter the mood, always feels authentic, as it’s a wonderful tug of war between dreams and expectations running into the inevitable indifference of reality, where at one point the director ingeniously uses a split screen technique with expectations and reality running simultaneously, where it’s surprising how similar they are up to a point, but also heartbreaking how different they turn out to be.  Earlier the director used a similar split screen technique where both children’s lives evolve through home movies.  In perhaps the most outlandish move, Gordon-Leavitt’s world turns into a jaw-droppingly joyous Bollywood dance fest (choreographed by Michael Rooney) after they finally make love, where he deliriously dances and interacts with everyone on the street, including a Disney animated bluebird and a wink from none other than Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, all set to the music of Hall & Oates “You Make My Dreams Come True.”     

 

Shot in Los Angeles locations by Eric Steelberg, who also shot JUNO, this film would never work without a kickass soundtrack, where music is such a central part of these kid’s lives, initially meeting in an elevator while he’s listening to the Smith’s “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” on his headphones, eventually leading to them both separately singing surprisingly soulful karaoke renditions, as he sings “Here Comes Your Man” by the Pixies while she lights up the screen with the Lee Hazelwood/Nancy Sinatra duet “Sugar Town.”  In between somewhere, there’s a black and white film-within-a-film where Gordon-Leavitt imagines himself stuck inside a French miserablist film with no way out, eventually ending as a Bergman spoof.  Chloe Moretz should be mentioned as Rachel, his younger sister, in something of a tribute to Abigail Breslin’s role as Olive in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, playing a 10-year old girl who’s actually more experienced and mature in matters of love than he is.  After spending the entire film deconstructing the typical Hollywood love story, basically reprogramming the audience’s expectations by refusing to allow the couple to succeed, something only hinted at in the disappearing memory play and disoriented editing structure of Charlie Kaufmann and Michel Gondry’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004), but here does the director lose his nerve and retreat back to a safe and formulaic ending, something that could just as easily have been chosen by an audience poll, as it lacks the refreshing originality of the rest of the film, or does he simply allow fate to run its course and end one relationship and allow another one to begin?  Still the outstanding performances of the two leads never disappoints, keeping the interest level up throughout the entire film, raising the intensity of this curiously witty and constantly amusing film. 

Regina Spektor – “Us”
The Smiths – “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”
Belle & Sebastian – “The Boy With The Arab Strap”
Black Lips – “Bad Kids”
The Smiths – “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want.”
Patrick Swayze – “She’s Like The Wind.”
Jack Penate – “Have I Been a Fool?”
The Doves – “There Goes the Fear”
Hall & Oates – “You Make My Dreams”
Knight Rider Theme
Temper Trap – “Sweet Disposition”
Carla Bruni – “Quelqu’un M’a Dit”
Black Lips – “Veni, Vidi, Vici”
Paper Route – “The Music”
Feist – “Mushaboom”
Regina Spektor – “Hero”
Spoon – “Infinite Pet”
Simon & Garfunkel – “Bookends”
Wolfmother – “Vagabond”
Mumm-Rah – “She’s Got You High”

Karaoke Selections:
Poison “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”
Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood as performed by Zooey Deschanel “Sugar Town
The Pixies “Here Comes Your Man”

[500] DAYS OF SUMMER  Ken Rudolph’s Movie Site

 

This was a superior romantic comedy about an ill-fated love affair between a kooky woman (the luminous Zooey Deschanel whose eyes have never seemed more expressive) and a neurotic office worker guy played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his most adult role yet; and also the role that is going to establish him as an authentic romantic leading man.  The script, acting and directing are outstanding...well observed, funny and original.  If there is any justice this film will find an appreciative audience.

 

(500) Days of Summer   JR Jones from The Reader

 

Summer is a vivacious young woman (Zooey Deschanel), and 500 days is the length of time her colleague at a greeting card company (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) carries the torch for her in this visually witty, flawlessly played romantic comedy. The punning title also takes the form of an onscreen ticker that spins back and forth, allowing screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber to maintain a demandingly achronological narrative and contrast the highs and lows of the hero's infatuation for wild comic effect. The gag fantasy sequences conveying his heightened emotional state are nothing new, but they're executed with such high spirits and impeccable timing that they feel fresh; a spontaneous production number, where strangers on the street fall into line with the dancing hero after his first night of romance, borders on the transcendent. Marc Webb directed. PG-13, 95 min.

 

The New York Observer’s Rex Reed wrote “I haven’t seen college-age angst so beautifully shared since Splendor in the Grass.”  Rex Reed from The New York Observer, July 14, 2009

Fresh and slightly off the beaten track, (500) Days of Summer gives rom-coms about confused yuppies in love a welcome face-lift. The title does not refer to a season of prolonged sunshine. It’s about a year and a half in the life of a bewildered guy irrevocably in love with an unconventional girl named Summer. God save us from hyphenated boys and girls whose parents name them after J. D. Salinger characters, but thanks to two wonderful, offbeat performances by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, this movie has charm to spare. It looks you right in the eye and tells the truth.

Tom is an aspiring architect reduced by the recession to writing greeting cards for weddings and bar mitzvahs. Summer is a new secretary from Michigan. They don’t even meet cute. Just around the mimeograph machine and water cooler. But he falls madly in love despite the fact that they never exchange one word of any interest. Two attractive young people searching for a reason to stay interested in anything beyond their good looks is a hard thing to keep an audience going with, but it is to the everlasting credit of director Marc Webb and writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber that all temptations to cheapen the comic sweetness with the kinds of contrived gimmicks and insulting sight gags that plague movies with Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Jack Black and Seth Rogen are wisely resisted. You find yourself laughing, for a change, at situations that are wry, unpredictable and as real as inhaling.

Tom, dusted with the irresistible charm of Mr. Gordon-Levitt, is an example of romantic optimism in a world of modern cynics with the attention span of Jack Russells. Summer is an intelligent and adventurous catch, much sought after by the other office males, but highly suspicious of serious relationships. As the calendar marks off the days, by the third month they’re still playing it “casual.” Tom is consumed in a giddy fantasy of spending the rest of his life with her, but Summer’s on-again, off-again flirtation adds up to nothing more than a frustrating dalliance without a firm commitment. His dedication to winning the girl of his dreams, and her determination to remain free and independent, undefined by the expectations of the opposite sex, keep the movie on its toes, and the two leading performances keep the viewer glued to the screen to see what happens next. What happens is the fact that things don’t always work out like greeting cards. Dreams are what we pursue until reality sets in.

Ms. Deschanel has eyes like big blue jawbreakers that pull you in defenselessly. In most of her movies, she looks great even when she has nothing to say. That is not the problem in (500) Days of Summer. What she says is as provocative as it is unconventional. As dead and one-dimensional as Mr. Gordon-Levitt was in the awful Brick, he truly blooms here. Cool and preppy as a Ralph Lauren model, he’s never been more alive. He even sings and dances his way through his own musical number, replete with animated Disney bluebirds. His eyes narrow at the sides like a coddled, baby-faced gangster, missing nothing, and his lips are always on the verge of pouring his heart out to anyone who will listen. I haven’t seen college-age angst so beautifully shared since Splendor in the Grass.

The great thing about this jump start on the dog-eared genre of unrequited love, one that doesn’t pan out the way you expect, is its refusal to traffic in clichés. Although the presumption that pretty women and smart, dashing young men can have it all and still want more is a bit naïve in this age of superficial achievement, this film has humor and warmth, thanks to the subtle, restrained and thoroughly engaging chemistry of its two stars, and character development that is good-natured at heart, and never dishonest. Nothing happens the way you have come to expect from Sandra Bullock movies. The film does not have a conventional Valentine’s Day finale, but although the girl exercises a woman’s prerogative and the boy is crushed, the way they adjust to fate, and move on, suggests the best in human decency and reluctant, postponed maturity. What a happy antidote to vile box office garbage like Brüno. It leaves a lump in the throat of idealism interrupted. Coincidence is all there is. Just like real life, no?

Him & She: Shuffling the deck with “(500) Days Of Summer”   Ray Pride from New City

“(500) Days Of Summer” announces its playfulness from its first set of parentheses: this is going to be a knowing, bittersweet, comic examination of one young man’s journey away from misunderstanding women, one romance that might just teach him how to take women out from between them.

Screenwriter Scott Neustadter has written that with one particular woman, he’d found the One, not knowing she was, yes, but she was The One Who Would Wreck His Objectification Of Women, The One He Would Not Only Not Forget But Would Have To Write A Role For Zooey Deschanel About (collaborating with Michael H. Weber). Culinary metaphors in movie reviews are easy to resist, but the tart effervescence of “Summer” is like champagne outdoors in summer, a cool flute of sparkling wine with red ripe raspberries at the bottom. (And the film’s punchline is so perfect it’s wrong, it’s right, it’s ideal.)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Tom, quicksilver with his growing Everyman ordinariness, Everyman handsomeness, an architect by training who’s settled into composing greeting-card homilies. (Isn’t that a neat metaphor for the career of the jobbing screenwriter?) The card shop’s where Tom has the (mis)fortune to pass much of his (500) days around Summer. Yes, of course, Zooey Deschanel, of the not-stoned, not-shellshocked, just huge blue eyes and the endlessly odd comic intonations, plays a girl named Summer. Too cute? She’s an archetype. She oughta be a season: one that comes to end all too quickly, all too suddenly. Webb and the screenwriters litter the movie with all kinds of details like that, from dialogue to decors, from behavior to all kinds of apt musical selections, that are a feather’s gentle breadth away from becoming twee. (The pair’s first meeting comes in an elevator to The Smiths lyric, “And if a double-decker bus crashes into us… to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.” “You like the Smiths?” “Yeahhhh.”)

I hesitate to utter that word in front of director Marc Webb, but I’m trying to describe how he’s avoided that pitfall. “I hate the word ‘twee.’” The word “twee” itself is very twee. “Yeah. And its usage has become really ‘clever.’ Oh yeah, that’s really clever, you used the word ‘twee.’ Williamsburg hipster vegan-bloggers, whatever,” the affable 30-year-old director jokes. “We actually talked about that word on set quite a bit. I mean, listen, we wanted to play with the tools of the genre, a wise little sister, there’s a scene set at a wedding, there are certain set pieces and constructs that are used because we wanted to take this genre and subvert it in some way. In order to do that, you have to pay homage to it, y’know? All those things were part of it. But we didn’t want it to be ironic, you know what I mean? We’re not trying to be cruel or snarky about it. There’s a genuine affection for what this kind of movie can be. We didn’t have a grand design to reinvent the romantic comedy or anything like that. We just wanted to make a movie the way that we thought we would like to see it.”

Bursting with as many moony ideas as a young man’s brain filled with first love, “Summer” runs the danger of getting classed as one more debut by a director who’s made rock videos. “I have. What can I say? Clearly, if you look at the movie, there’s influence there. Listen, I’ll tell you why people are reacting to it. People genuinely—if you go online, [you'll find] the right people are touched by it. When you’re doing a music video, it’s very easy to be seduced by a shot, by the microcosmic level of things. This is gonna look cool, so use this. [But with a feature], you try to make global rules. The color palettes, how we covered the movie. It wasn’t about shots. The cinematographer had a really good rule, he said, ‘I don’t want there to be any shots that I can put on my reel, that you can just pull out. I thought that was a really good rule. We just tried to track the emotional continuity of the movie. It’s clearly a subjective thing, and there are a lot of tools that I learned while doing music videos. I’m really happy I had that experience.”

“Pretty girls with rebel hearts are in high demand,” a character says. “Summer” is anti-objectification; Summer is idealized crazily, but what he takes away is, I’m going to be my own person. “Right. And there’s a consequence to that. Some people go into this movie thinking, oh, [this path will lead to this result].” He pauses, smiles. “Yeah.” Pauses again. “That is part of it.” Big grin.

“(500) Days of Summer” - Salon.com  Stephanie Zacharek, July 17, 2009

 

Pajiba (Dustin Rowles) review

 

not coming to a theater near you review  Victoria Large

 

The Movie Review: '(500) Days of Summer' - The Atlantic  Christopher Orr

 

Moving Pictures magazine [Mike D'Angelo]

 

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3.5/4]

 

Film Freak Central review  Ian Pugh

 

Slant Magazine review [2.5/4]  Sara Schieron

 

Cinematical (Erik Davis) review

 

New York Magazine (David Edelstein) review

 

filmcritic.com (Bill Gibron) review [3.5/5]

 

eFilmCritic.com (William Goss) review [4/5]

 

Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review [B-]

 

Film.com (Laremy Legel) review [A]

 

Eye for Film (Amber Wilkinson) review [3.5/5]

 

Village Voice (Robert Wilonsky) review

 

She's Just Not That Into You: Surprise! (500) Days of Summer is a ...   Christopher Rosen from The New York Observer, July 20, 2009

 

The Screenwriters of (500) Days of Summer Talk Love, The Smiths ...    Reid Pillifant interviews both screenwriters from The New York Observer, July 17, 2009

 

Zooey Deschanel Is… Hooked On A Feeling  Deborah Wilker chats with Zooey Deschanel from Moving Pictures Magazine, Summer 2009

 

Zooey Deschanel on Tackling the Smiths in “(500) Days of Summer”   Shirley Halperin from Rolling Stone magazine

 

'500 Days of Summer' soundtrack 

 

500 Days of Summer Soundtrack Tracklisting | 500DAYS.com 

 

Entertainment Weekly review  Owen Gleiberman

 

Variety (Todd McCarthy) review

 

The Globe and Mail (Liam Lacey) review [2/4]

 

Boston Globe review [3/4]  Ty Burr

 

The Boston Phoenix (Shaula Clark) review

 

San Francisco Chronicle [David Wiegand]

 

Los Angeles Times (Michael Ordoña) review

 

Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips) review

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [4/4]

 

The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review

 

Webb, Robert D.
 
THE CAPE TOWN AFFAIR

South Africa  (100 mi)  1967

 

Time Out review   Geoff Andrew

 

Horrendously unworthy remake of Fuller's classic Pickup on South Street, with the action switched to South Africa. Brolin takes over Richard Widmark's role as the pickpocket stealing a girl's handbag, only to discover in it microfilm which leads them both into espionage and murder.

 

User comments  from imdb Author: Larry McElhiney (mack@netcom.com) from Indianapolis, IN

The best part of this film is the opportunity to visit Cape Town, South Africa during the height of Apartheid. As a low-budget, spy thriller, it is shot in as many unmodified local settings as possible. Street shots are right in the heart of the downtown and there are harbor shots and scenes from within the Police Headquarters. The photos on the wall give away the time frame as well.

Claire Trevor is the only actor credited in some Film Compendia and I wonder if both Brolin and Bisset paid not to be listed!

Brolin plays a hard-boiled petty thief and "Jacky" Bisset plays a runner for the spy ring. Claire Trevor plays Sam, the connecting character to the world of petty crime and espionage.

User comments  from imdb Author: John Seal from Oakland CA

An inconsequential, almost scene-for-scene remake of Sam Fuller's great Pickup On South Street, The Cape Town Affair suffers from weak casting--James Brolin is no Richard Widmark, and Claire Trevor attempts but fails in her Thelma Ritter impersonation. Shot on location in South Africa, the film barely recognises the existence of non-white characters, and when it does--in the person of Muhammad, a sleazy fence--a white South African, Gabriel Bayman, assays the role. Whilst the film maintains the original's Free World vs. Red Peril dichotomy, it's impossible to ignore the political realities of South Africa in 1967. With Nelson Mandela still in the early stages of his time in prison, 'communist' in South Africa was virtually synonymous with 'anti-Apartheid activist'. The prominently featured pictures of Hendrick Verwoerd in almost every shot in the police department confirm that this film was just as intent on being state-sanctioned propaganda as on being a work of art.

User comments  from imdb Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico

On the plus side, there are interesting shots of Capetown and of Table Mountain. Not that many people know what Capetown looked like in 1967. Not that many people know what country Capetown is IN for that matter, outside of social activists, gold speculators, and surfers. No, it's not near Provincetown. Also there are interesting shots of Jacqueline Bisset at her most -- well, let's use the word "appealing." Her looks are unimpeachable. James Brolin, young and handsome in a mannequin-like way, does pretty good impressions of Clark Gable and Ronald Reagan in other venues.

But you have to ask. Why do they take a peerless piece of cynical and brutal trash like "Pickup on South Street" and do it in color with lesser performers and slipshod direction?

Brolin simply can't SMIRK as well as Richard Widmark. And Bisset just looks too elegant, as opposed to the sluttish and overly made-up Jean Peters in the original. Compare the scenes in which the two actresses utter the same lines -- "You're talking like it was HOT, Joey." Bisset sounds as if she's commenting on the pepper pot soup at Bookbinder's Restaurant. With Peters you know exactly what she means. And Claire Trevor, a decent enough actress in her own right, shouldn't be asked to impersonate Thelma Ritter. Nobody on earth can imitate Thelma Ritter.

Fuller's direction in the original was immediate and claustrophobic. His characters brimmed with verisimilitude. The actors here are going through their paces in settings that aren't nearly seedy enough. I'm leaving the politics aside.

Stick with the original by all means.

Cape Town Affair: right-wing noir, South African style   Joseph K. Heumann and Robin L. Murray from Jump Cut, Winter 2005

 

Wider Screenings [Robert Cettl]

 

Channel 4 Film capsule review

 
Webber, Peter

 

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING                         B+                   92

Great Britain  Luxembourg  USA  (95 mi)  2003

 

In successive days, I believe I've witnessed the best two actors working on the screen today, Jude Law, and with this film, Scarlett Johansson, who is simply mesmerizing in this performance, brilliantly photographed by Eduardo Serra.  Yes, we know who she is, and what she is, but do we know anything about her, and do we really care?  This film gets behind the face of one of Vermeer's most famous subjects, setting the film in the mid 17th century when he discovers the hidden beauty of one of his own house servants, almost as if we've entered some form of a Charles Dickens lower class, misery laden world of poverty and filth, where the rich are filthy rich and the poor are dirt poor.  This film's attempts to be historically accurate required the services of an etiquette consultant.  Not only does Johansson brighten the screen with her beauty and inner tenderness, but the entire film is bathed in the most sublime lighting and colors, paying a stunning tribute to the art of the painter himself.  It was impossible to take your eyes off this woman, as she was continually filmed in the most spectacular settings, even the most ordinary moments were breathtaking.  In this world, Johansson quietly walks like an ethereal spirit, transported from another universe, a venerable walking icon, who is subjected to the cleaning and the washing, and the whims of the masters and their petty, ordinary meanness, which is as much a part of this film as the art which transcends the era.    

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)  David Jays from Sight and Sound, February 2004

Delft, 1665. Griet (Scarlett Johansson), whose family has fallen into poverty, is employed as a servant by the Vermeer household. Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth) is an artist, whose perfectionism limits the number of paintings he can produce to support his family. Griet's duties include cleaning his studio and he notices her feel for painting. Vermeer is commissioned to produce a portrait for his patron Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson) and decides to paint Griet wearing one of his wife Catharina's pearl earrings. In addition to her other duties, Griet works through the night to prepare Vermeer's paints.

As the bond between them grows, Catharina (Essie Davis) suspects her husband, while their daughter (Alakina Mann) spitefully attempts to get Griet dismissed. The predatory Van Ruijven assaults Griet, and she is also courted by the butcher boy, Pieter (Cillian Murphy). When Vermeer's wife sees the portrait, she is furious; Griet is dismissed. Vermeer sells the portrait and sends Griet the earrings.

Review

Although the artist Johannes Vermeer has never been held in higher esteem, his personality remains shadowy. His most celebrated paintings capture a moment of suspension, of activity hanging in the balance. Tracy Chevalier's 1999 novel responds to this sense of withheld immediacy by imagining a relationship with a servant girl that might unlock the mysterious atmosphere of the 1665 portrait Girl with a Pearl Earring . Chevalier's success rests on deploying period detail against the slow build of sexual tension, despite unremarkable characterisation and narrative. Peter Webber's debut feature replicates these features, but even if its central relationship is unconvincing, he crafts a compelling film about the work that surrounds art's stilled life.

The movie's view of the past is determinedly unromantic: Delft, the film's rain-slapped setting, is a raw place where pigs' heads are thrown on butchers' trestles and bailiffs hover round bankrupt neighbours. The household too is a place of labour rather than leisure. We see determination in Griet's slender arms, her knuckles scuffed and singed. She sleeps beneath pots in the cellar, alongside the children and a fellow servant. Tensions can't be concealed in this enforced intimacy, and walls and furniture intrude into every shot (echoing Vermeer's own framing devices). In this household of unsmiling moods, Vermeer's indolent wife is puffy with boredom and pregnancy and her eldest daughter is a pint-sized piece of malevolence who spitefully tries to engineer Griet's dismissal.

Griet's duties include cleaning the artist's studio, a charged space announced by a sliver of daylight at the end of a dark corridor. Unlike the rest of the house, it offers space, amplified by the painting's imaginary vistas. It attracts Griet's curiosity - when she stands in front of an easel looking at work in progress, we see her in the clearest light yet. Chevalier introduces Vermeer with a hokey exchange over Griet's colour-coded soup vegetables. The film delays his appearance, establishing the effect of his reclusive temper on the household. But Colin Firth creates a familiar figure of the artist as an unkempt sulk. The actor is brooding, unshaven and, as usual, stingy with his smiles, and Vermeer's attraction to Griet is routinely drawn.

Although the film fudges relationships, it is far more assured at depicting environment and Griet's thoughtful response to it. Scarlett Johansson's marvellous performance builds on the complex innocence of her screen presence ( Ghost World , Lost in Translation ). Her sensibility is established when she instinctively arranges some vegetables into a still life in the opening scene. She alone appreciates Vermeer's paintings, allowing herself a rare smile when he prompts her to look beyond conventional visual descriptions. Against the film's predominantly grey palette, the painter's blue and yellow pigments are thrillingly vivid: Griet holds a piece of gum arabic to the light as if a jewel. The drudgery of her daytime duties is contrasted by rapt work with pestle and mortar, spatula and pipette.

Artistic responsibility is matched by the emotional burden of posing for a portrait upon which the household finances depend. Each stage of the process requires a new intimacy. The painter's thumb smears a tear on her lip, and he finally persuades her to remove her cap, gazing on her auburn ringlets. Immaculate Griet must have her ear pierced for the pearl earring - the sound effect of the piercing and trickle of blood marks the end of innocence.

Griet earlier wonders whether to wash the mucky studio windows and risk losing the precious muffle of dusty light. Webber and DoP Eduardo Serra deftly deploy daylight, candle and shadow, denying our desire to see clearly just as Vermeer refuses to explicate the situations in his paintings. The film's scenarios may be unsurprising, but Webber's solemn evocation of art in a grey world gives his story an apt, unspoken gravity.

Weber, Bruce

 

LET’S GET LOST

USA  (120 mi)  1988                  Official site [United Kingdom]

 

Time Out [Dave Calhoun]

You wonder, early in this enchanting film about Chet Baker, whether Bruce Weber is really going to nail this 57-year-old lost jazz legend who has the lines of a tragic life engraved forever in his face. Is Weber – famous for his fashion photography – going to bury Chet in beautiful images? But slowly, surely this composite portrait of Chet then and now (or in 1987, when Weber shot the film) reveals its own depths. Alongside archive material and new footage of Chet shot in his signature romantic, B&W style, Weber elicits frank reminiscences from his subject and a host of ex-lovers and friends.

He surprises, too, with his frank questioning. ‘Did he disappoint you as a son?’ Weber asks Chet’s mother, his lyrical voice softening the blow. Later he asks Chet: ‘What’s your favourite high?’ All credit to Weber that Chet throws him a straight answer. ‘Speedballs.’ The most moving moment is when Weber asks Chet if he had a good time making the film. You sense in the question that it’s been a tough ride. You sense in the answer that he genuinely enjoyed the company of Weber and the reflection required of making the film.

Long-Absent Chet Baker Portrait Resurfaces  Jim Ridley from the Village Voice, also seen here:  The Village Voice [Jim Ridley]

Call it The Death of the Cool. Shot as the vinyl LP was nearing the off ramp to oblivion, as rap and MTV were shoving jazz even farther to the margins, Let's Get Lost stands as a gorgeous gravestone for the Beat Generation's legacy of beautiful-loser chic. Bruce Weber's transfixing 1988 portfolio of the artist—ravaged jazz trumpeter Chet Baker—as a junkie wraith unmoored in time seems doubly poignant almost 20 years later, when the bloom of its own newness is gone.

Let's Get Lost, which has been MIA for 14 years and has resisted collectible enshrinement on DVD, remains a stunning object of scrutiny in its new Film Forum revival. It's the music doc as film noir, with a vampirish city-of-night gleam that suits the subject and his darkly romantic sound. All these years later, the inky shadows and stabbing high-contrast light of Jeff Preiss's black-and-white camera work still look as if they'd been freshly dredged from the undertow of Baker's long good-bye.

In his 1950s heyday, Baker had epitomized West Coast "cool jazz." As a vocalist, his high-pitched, low-volume crooning was edgily intimate: If Sinatra were said to be singing from the next barstool, Baker sang from the adjacent pillow. It wasn't lost on record execs and magazine editors (and a succession of exasperated women) that he had camera-hugging pretty-boy-pugilist looks—a provocative combination of soft and hard, an admirer tells Weber, in an age that prized jock masculinity.

By the time of filming, smack had turned Baker's dreamboat face to a drawn, hollow-cheeked death mask. Yet there is beauty in the vestigial traces where beauty has been—and the impermanence of beauty is Weber's true subject. Let's Get Lost artfully intercuts brooding studies of the gaunt latter-day Baker, shortly before he fell to his death from an Amsterdam hotel window in 1988, with bits of pop ephemera made priceless by his decline. Here is Baker, fucked-up and frail, propped like a haggard prince between babes in a convertible's backseat; here is Baker, movie-star luscious, young forever in clips from The Steve Allen Show and the Italian B-movie Urlatori alla sbarra. Which is the ghost, and which is the haunted?

The haunted, of course, is Weber, who addresses Baker's ex-wives and girlfriends with the tone of someone bound to them by a secret love. Baker emerges as the ideal Weber has pursued throughout his career: When his other subjects appear in cameos, from Broken Noses boxer Andy Minsker to Chris Isaak, their similarity practically turns them into doppelgängers reveling in the youth that Baker had long since pissed away. But his is a clear-eyed love. Baker, a practiced manipulator, comes across as not only an addict but an addiction: As his torch-singer ex Ruth Young tartly puts it, "It took me about 20 minutes to get hooked." For first-time viewers of Weber's entrancing after-hours mood piece, it won't take nearly that long.

Electric Sheep Magazine  James DC

A prodigiously talented, self-taught jazz trumpeter, Chet Baker began his spectacular, lauded career in the early 1950s and carved out a singular pathway through the history of jazz.

Baker’s melodious, lyrical style was traditional and conservative when compared with the developing experimental Free Jazz scene of the 1950s and 60s, yet despite this he became popular on the bohemian/beatnik jazz circuit, rocketing to fame in his early 20s when the photographer William Claxton produced a series of iconic images of the young James Dean lookalike. Over the years his formidable musical skills made him a legend, but a wild, erratic lifestyle became his downfall, leading to heroin addiction, prison sentences and ultimately his untimely demise, aged 58 – shortly after this film was completed – when he fell out of a high window to his death. Retroactively this gives Let’s Get Lost an ominous, portentous quality.

Bruce Weber’s 1988 documentary portrait has, at its heart, an irreducible mystery: Baker himself, who is an elusive, obscure presence, hardly allowing the filmmaker or the audience into his opaque inner life and thoughts; the fundamental passions, drives and motivations behind his cool, seemingly unruffled exterior. After a meandering, restless tour through the US and Europe, we are left little the wiser as to who the ‘real’ Chet Baker actually is and why he later became drug-dependent, abandoned his family and had such volatile, fractious love affairs. Most of Baker’s persona is elliptically constructed through observations and revelations from family, ex-wives, girlfriends and acolytes, who are probably a more reliable source in their subjective portrayals of him than his own somewhat cagey, stilted exposition, gradually and patiently coaxed out by the director.

Weber’s style alludes to a range of cinematic tropes: from the abstract camera angles and stark black and white chiaroscuro of film noir to the grainy, rough-edged flexibility of cinéma vérité and the French New Wave, redolent of Godard, the Maysles brothers, Cassavetes and Haskell Wexler. The director composes, photographs and edits his film in much the same way his subject performs – there is an unrehearsed, immediate, open-ended feel to the scenes where Baker riffs on how he conned his way out of the army or got his teeth smashed out in a fight. Weber reinforces this fairly unstructured, yet quietly designed and captivating ambience through the subtle use of techniques like audio overlay, as when an interviewee’s voice encroaches onto – but somehow smoothly combines with – footage of Baker softly crooning or eliciting a plaintive, mellifluous melody from his trumpet. This irresolute audio-visual quality perfectly appropriates and is synonymous with the free-flowing, spontaneous nature of jazz, although the inexplicable paucity of film clips of Baker’s wonderful trumpet playing – his raison d’í­Âªtre – is a glaring weakness.

Nevertheless, this slow-burning, nostalgic elegy to an artist’s free-spirited youth and his one eternal love, music, is a timeless capsule of a fleeting, intense and unbridled life, made all the more poignant by the tragic death of its star.

Cult of Personality (LET'S GET LOST) | Jonathan Rosenbaum  July 21, 1989

“Can you carry a tune? Is your time all right? Sing! If your voice has hardly any range, hardly any volume, shaky pitch, no body or bottom, no matter. If it quavers a bit and if you project a certain tarnished, boyish (not exactly adolescent, almost childish) pleading, you’ll make it. A certain kind of girl with strong maternal instincts but no one to mother will love you. You’ll make it. The way you make it may have little to do with music, but that happens all the time anyway.”

This is jazz critic Martin Williams 30 years ago in a Down Beat review of It Could Happen to You: Chet Baker Sings. By this time, the youthful Baker had already established a reputation as a jazz trumpeter of some promise, and later in the same review, Williams concedes that as an improvising musician, he has a “fragile, melodic talent” that is “his own,” even if he “has hardly explored it.” The same strictures might apply to Let’s Get Lost, Bruce Weber’s spellbinding (if simpleminded) black-and-white documentary about the life, times, and last days of Chet Baker. The movie has a number of things going for it, but music plays at best only an incidental role.

Deliberately or not, the film actually acknowledges this. Although we hear a great deal of Chet Baker’s singing and trumpet playing, it’s almost completely relegated to the status of dreamy background music; a talking head invariably takes over after a few bars, and the music — which seldom continues for the length of a whole solo, much less an entire number — is meant to function only as moody accompaniment to the gab in the foreground. (The only scene that contains a complete number shows Baker in close-up, at far from his best, singing “Almost Blue” at a Cannes nightclub in 1987, not long before his death at the age of 58.) We do hear snatches of Baker’s playing from much of his career, but curiously enough — or perhaps not so curiously — these snippets don’t include any of what most jazz aficionados would regard as his most important work, his strikingly innovative recordings with Gerry Mulligan’s pianoless quartet in 1952.

Listening to some of those sides recently, I was newly struck by their Spartan rigor. Without a pianist or guitarist feeding them chords, Mulligan and Baker — modernist in the bone-dry ironies of their solos and contrapuntal duets, yet traditionalist in their melodic sources — sound like the musical equivalent of tightrope walkers without a net. Set off by the gentle growls of Mulligan’s baritone sax, Baker’s trumpet, which was always a much richer instrument than his voice, combines some of the cushiony tone of Miles Davis with a lyricism harking back to Bix Beiderbecke; and if the overall range of invention is fairly narrow (as it always would be), there’s hardly a trace of the little-boy pathos that would later come to dominate his work. For all its deceptive simplicity, it doesn’t work as cocktail music or ambience, which is conceivably the reason Weber hasn’t included even a sample of it on his sound track; for better or for worse, one has to listen to this music straight, without mixers or chasers.

The obsession with Baker that permeates Let’s Get Lost has much more to do with his power as an icon than his talent as a musician. “He was bad — he was trouble and he was beautiful,” declares a female admirer early on in the movie, and this seems to sum up Weber’s infatuation as well. A clean-shaven Adonis who embodied many of the same 50s myths that circulated around James Dean (a comparison that was enhanced by Baker’s taste for fast-moving sports cars), and who still sang with an Elvis-like sneer when he appeared on Steve Allen’s TV show in 1968, Baker became a junkie early on, and the remainder of his life, as depicted by the film, was an endless string of speedballs, busts, relapses, deportations, broken relationships, and related vicissitudes. When Baker won first places in the Down Beat polls during his mid-20s –as trumpet player in 1954 and 1955, and tieing with Nat “King” Cole as best male singer in 1954 — he had arguably passed his peak already, but his image and legend kept him going for at least three more decades.

As jazz journalist Mike Zwerin put it, “The creases on his face multiplied and deepened and his lips turned in over the dentures he had worn since his teeth were knocked out by angry dealers in San Francisco. He began to resemble an old Indian, the last of a tribe that had seen a heap of suffering. He looked like he needed taking care of and he did and there were always people around to do it.”

By the time Weber came to make a movie about Baker, in 1987-88, his face resembled a relief map and his manner was that of a burnt-out hipster on his last go-round. The poignance in the difference between the Adonis and the human wreck that emerged from him is what the movie exalts and circles around in endless morbid fascination; and thanks to the spell exerted by Jeff Preiss’s noirish high-contrast photography and the background purrings of Baker himself, it is very difficult not to share the fascination. But sharing the fascination entails involvement in a romantic cult of personality that cheerfully acknowledges all of Baker’s many shortcomings — his wife-beating, for instance — without letting them interfere with an unbridled adoration of his persona.

As Pauline Kael (among others) has pointed out, the movie is fundamentally about Chet Baker the fetish, the love object, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it comes across as a personal scrapbook. There’s a striking disingenuousness in the way that Weber, offscreen, asks Baker’s mother, “Did he disappoint you as a son?” (“Yes,” she replies, “but let’s not go into that”); he virtually encourages some of Baker’s former wives and lovers to trash one another. Baker’s daughter by his third marriage recounts with visible relish stealing clothes and jewelry when she was 14 from the jazz singer Ruth Young, who supplanted her mother in Baker’s affections; Baker’s first two wives and eldest son declined to be in the film, but his third wife and at least three girlfriends are interviewed at length. Clips from a couple of dinky films that Baker appeared in — Hell’s Horizon (1955) and an unnamed Italian pop item of 1959 — as well as a Hollywood picture, All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), allegedly inspired in part by his life, are offered reverently as supplementary objects for contemplation.

In his lengthy analysis of the appeal of Judy Garland to gay men in his book Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Richard Dyer places particular emphasis on Garland’s “emotional quality,” her vulnerability and suffering, her courage in continuing to perform publicly in spite of her many problems (“marriage, weight, drugs”), the ordinariness of her MGM image, her androgyny, and her expression of camp attitudes. With the exception of weight problems and camp attitudes, the sources of Baker’s appeal as a romantic image are nearly identical — so much so that when I originally saw Let’s Get Lost last fall at the Toronto film festival, I described it to friends as “The Judy Garland Story.”

Since then, Weber’s film has gone on to become an enormous cult success in New York, although I’ve seen little evidence that the cult in question is exclusively or even specifically gay. What this may suggest is the resurfacing of what could be described as a “gay sensibility” in mainstream terms — a phenomenon that is also apparent (albeit somewhat differently) in the undertones of recent hits like Rain Man, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Batman, where most of the significant erotic tensions exist between men rather than between men and women. Perhaps it’s a side-effect of the enormous wave of psychosexual repression brought about by AIDS in the populace as a whole, but it appears that homoeroticism has been assuming a centrality in mainstream culture and is only called into question when it is overtly perceived as “gay.”

Weber’s work as an art and fashion photographer and his previous film Broken Noses, a documentary about little boys in a boxing match, illustrates the same sensibility; the issue isn’t Weber’s sexual orientation or that of his audience, but the notion of what’s fashionable and alluring that informs his work. In some respects, Let’s Get Lost could be regarded as a dumb film about a less than brilliant individual, but this has so little relevance to its unmistakable appeal that I feel like a spoilsport for bringing it up. It’s certainly dumb, for instance, for the film to give us a vest-pocket history of stars appearing at the Cannes Film Festival over the years — a history justified solely by Baker’s appearance at a nightclub during the festival in 1987 (where he incidentally remarks on the noisiness and inattention of his audience). But emotionally and fetishistically speaking, the archival Cannes footage makes perfect sense because it helps to establish Baker as a Cannes star in his own right, right up there with Jean Cocteau and Brigitte Bardot — a star not because of his talent but because of the romantic investment that Weber has in his image, even in its degradation.

The film draws much of its appeal from the colorful gallery of friends, groupies, and diverse hangers-on (including a litter of adorable puppies) accompanying Baker and the film crew on his travels. Jazz trumpeter Jack Sheldon offers a couple of hilarious deadpan monologues about Baker, and Ruth Young — a singer, like Baker, in the Chris Connor/June Christy mode, and judging from the limited evidence a much better one than her former boyfriend — shows an equal amount of liveliness and intelligence; a few of the others have pertinent things to say as well, but most of the commentary is as walleyed and as bubbleheaded as the film itself — full of awe about very little, unless one confuses the idea of Chet Baker with Baker himself.

A decade ago Wim Wenders embarked on a related sort of project, when he and the late Nicholas Ray, who was dying of brain cancer after a comparably disheveled life, made a film about Ray’s last days entitled Lightning Over Water. While Ray was a much more important figure in film than Chet Baker was in jazz, his achievements were many years behind him when this filmic act of witness was undertaken; and even though Wenders’s attitude toward Ray as a spiritual father was every bit as romantic as Weber’s attitude toward Baker, the film didn’t deal with its subject in such a seductive way.

Stark, painful, and upsetting in both of its two released versions (the first of which is currently available on tape), Lightning Over Water was more an act of defiance than a tribute — on Ray’s part as well as Wenders’s — and it raised more questions than it answered, with none of the dreamy conceits that make Let’s Get Lost so appropriately titled. A failure almost by definition, it was nevertheless a serious effort that commanded respect and attention, if not love. Let’s Get Lost exudes as well as commands a great deal of love, but respect and attention are not what it has to offer.

Keyframe [Sean Axmaker]

 

Cinepinion [Henry Stewart]

 

Radiator Heaven: Let's Get Lost  JD Lafrance

 

Creative Loafing [Curt Holman]

 

New York Sun [Steve Dollar]

 

Film-Forward.com [Nora Lee Mandel]

 

DVD Talk [Justin Remer]

 

DVD Talk [Matt Hinrichs]

 

DVD Verdict - Bruce Weber: The Film Collection [Brett Cullum]

 

Beyond The Film Blog: Let's Get Lost  Volkan Kacar

 

Smells Like Screen Spirit [Don Simpson]

 

CineScene.com [Chris Dashiell]

 

StageBuddy.com [Jefferson Grubbs]

 

Movie Magazine International [Monica Sullivan]

 

That Cow [B. Kiefer]

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Keith Dudhnath]

 

MUBI [Adrian Curry]  movie posters

 

Entertainment Weekly [Owen Gleiberman]

 

Film4.com [Ali Catterall]

 

TV Guide [Maitland McDonagh]

 

Director Bruce Weber on filming Chet Baker | Music | The ...  Bruce Weber from The Guardian, May 30, 2008

 

Film reviews: Let's Get Lost and more - Telegraph  Sukhdev Sandhu

 

'Let's Get Lost' captures the allure of Chet Baker - Boston.com  Mark Feeney from The Boston Globe

 

Philadelphia Weekly [Matt Prigge]

 

Washington Post [Hal Hinson]

 

Desson Thomson - Washington Post

 

Let's Get Lost - Roger Ebert

 

Siskel & Ebert  (video)

 

New York Times [Janet Maslin]

 

Let's Get Lost (1988 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Webster, Justin

I WILL BE MURDERED                                         B                     84

Spain  Great Britain  (85 mi)  2013                    Official site             Trailer

A fascinating story pulled from the headlines, where in May 2009, Guatemalan lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano was shot and killed near his home.  What followed was the publication of a YouTube video where Rosenberg stares straight into the camera and states “Sadly, ladies and gentlemen, if you are watching this video, it’s because I’ve been murdered by President Álavaro Colom.” Asesinato Rodrigo Rosenberg 1 (English Subs) YouTube (8:50). 

“Guatemalans, now is the time,” he says from the grave, spurring massive demonstrations and protests calling for the resignation of the president.  As the nation was already mired in violence and corruption, this explanation seemed all too plausible, creating a public outcry and a yearlong investigation into the allegations, headed by Carlos Castresana, the Spanish prosecutor who was appointed head of the investigation into Rosenberg’s death.  Castresana was chosen due to his anti-corruption credentials, as he was the head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CIGIC), an organization launched by the United Nations to combat corruption in Guatemala.  He, perhaps, offers the most concisive explanation in the film, but he is joined by others, including friends, Rosenberg’s son, and other family members.  While the talking heads approach grows overly repetitive, where the sound of voices literally drone on and on, and stylistically the film is not unique and can actually be rather bland, but the eventual impact of the film’s exposé couldn’t be more intriguing, as film unravels slowly, offering little pieces at a time, building a case scenario that includes all the possible suspects, where shootings, kidnappings, and murders were all too common, remnants from the lengthy Guatemalan Civil War that ran from 1960 to 1996.

 

Perhaps what stands out the most was Rosenberg’s angry indignation at the lawlessness and despair that prevailed in Guatemalan society, where killers and common criminals were allowed to operate with impunity, where an estimated 98% of the murders were never solved, so he felt an obligation to do something about it.  In 2007, a joint study by the World Bank and the United Nations ranked Guatemala as the third most murderous country in the world, nearly four times higher than Mexico, even outnumbering the number of civilians killed in the Iraq war.  Harvard educated, Rosenberg was born into privilege, living in an upscale community in Guatemala City reserved for diplomats and the heirs to 19th-century fortunes, but he was estranged from his family where his children were living with his divorced ex-wife in Mexico.  Rosenberg’s claims on the infamous tape blame the President, where an event triggered Rosenberg’s action to record his tape, as a few weeks earlier, a pair of assassins on a motorcycle gunned down one of Rosenberg’s clients in broad daylight, killing 74-year-old ­industrialist ­Khalil Musa and his daughter Marjorie, who was driving her father home from his office.  Both were killed instantly, generating few headlines, but the experience was especially shattering to Rosenberg, as he was having an affair with Marjorie, though she was married at the time.  E-mails and text messages between them were uncovered by the UN investigation, but Rosenberg feared investigating the case on his own would lead to his death, becoming obsessed with solving their murders, linking them to what he believed was a corruption scam reaching to the highest level of government, to the office of President Colom and his wife Sandra, who often appeared on TV handing out food to the poor, where Rosenberg believed millions were being skimmed off the top by corrupt officials.          

 

According to Castresana at his press conference, “Rosenberg felt guilty about the ­assassination of [Marjorie] Musa, and he began a desperate search all over to find Musa’s killers…but he found no proof.”  The film lets his friends and family do much of the talking, expressing their outrage, while also providing the testimony of a series of witnesses who were contacted by Rosenberg in secret meetings, each of whom played only a small part, unaware of how the others were connected.  They all felt they were helping a man utterly devastated by his own personal grief, and Castresana was as astonished as anyone, but after an elaborate investigation of surveillance footage and wiretaps, Rosenberg was killed by assassins while he was out riding his bike, where more security cameras exist in that neighborhood than any other due to the rich residents, so cameras quickly led to the capture of the assassins, where the event was recorded from several angles, jailing the men seen tailing Rosenberg in a car.  After months in jail, they began to talk, helping Castresana unravel the mysteries of his investigation.  The film plays out like an elaborate police procedural with all the missing pieces of the puzzle pieced together, where the conclusions are as confounding as the allegations, as it appears Rosenberg fabricated evidence to carry out his own murder, then tried to pin the blame on the President.  While the investigation did lead to arrests, they’re not who the public originally felt was at fault, as it includes many of Rosenberg’s own associates who were betrayed by their friend, while the accused President held his ground and survived the storms of accusations, actually emerging as a leader who didn’t cave to populist fervor.  The revelations of the investigation ultimately exposed and helped clean up a corrupt government.  According to Simon Granovsky-Larsen, an author who is a leading expert on political violence in Guatemala, “The crimes that happen here are unthinkable in other parts of the world and rival any political thriller.  In the first months, or even years, after a political crime like Rosenberg’s, it is difficult to know what is a crazy conspiracy theory—and then one of those crazy conspiracy theories turns out to be true.  In other parts of the world, this could only be fiction.”

 

I Will be Murdered | Dork Shelf  Phil Brown

Three years ago a Guatemalan lawyer named Rodrigo Rosenberg posted a video on YouTube saying that if you were watching it, he had been murdered by the current president and hoped his death could bring an end to the corruption. Then like clockwork Rosenberg’s body was found shortly after, seemingly having died from a bike accident. Justin Webster’s documentary turns police procedural from there, studying the authorities and Rodriguez’s family’s actions in great detail. The retired cop-turned-hitman (apparently a common Guatemalan career shift) responsible for the murder is quickly arrested thanks to a trail of bread crumbs left by Rosenberg. From there things get a bit strange in a mystery as gripping as any high octane TV procedural, even without David Caruso and/or his sunglasses.

The case is solved, but the answers are even more bizarrely disturbing than the questions. The story was widely reported, so if you already know it there are no new revelations here; however, simply following the detectives as they learn the truth is an undeniably fascinating experience. Even though Webster’s film is primarily comprised of static interviews with the occasional brief reenactment, the director generates incredible levels of teeth-grinding suspense. Hopefully I Will Be Murdered gets a theatrical release after making the film festival rounds because it’s one of the most intriguing murder mysteries to hit screens in quite some time, non-fiction or otherwise. If M Night Shyamalan could write twists this good, his name wouldn’t be a punch line.

Cinemablographer: Hot Docs Review: I Will Be Murdered  Pat Mullen

“Sadly, ladies and gentlemen, if you are watching this video, it’s because I’ve been murdered by President Álavaro Colom,” says a man in a chilling video clip that opens I Will Be Murdered. The man, who was indeed murdered, is Rodrigo Rosenberg, a Guatemalan lawyer whose testimony shook his nation when it appeared on YouTube. Robert’s death sparked a political crisis—how many Presidents are pre-emptively accused of capital murder by a victim?—but the ensuing investigation into his death reveals an even stranger story. I Will Be Murdered is billed as a documentary, but it’s actually a thriller. It’s a gripping whodunit full of unexpected twists and turns.

I Will Be Murdered lets Rosenberg’s friends and family do much of the talking as they relay his odd behaviour before the murder. Two clients of his were assassinated shortly before his own death, and Rosenberg’s peers describe him as taking precautions and secretive measures as he looked over his shoulder and investigated their deaths on his own. The testimonies of Rosenberg’s peers are offset by a well-detailed explanation by Carlos Castresana, the Spanish prosecutor who was appointed head of the investigation into Rosenberg’s death. The case is especially relevant for Castresana, since he was appointed head of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CIGIC), an organization pioneered by the United Nations to combat corruption in Guatemala’s political system. Castresana elaborates on the peculiarities of the case, which had to be dealt with sensitively and carefully given the consequences that a verdict would deliver. The case of Rosenberg’s death is especially peculiar and the presence of his online ghost is just the beginning of the strange and sensational maze on which the prosecutor finds himself.

To say anything further would be to rob I Will Be Murdered of its suspense. Webster delivers an incendiary look at a corrupt system, and a film that’s a labyrinth of murder, romance, suspense, and intrigue to boot. The final reveal of I Will Be Murdered is deeply unsettling and unsuspected, and it’s hard to know how to accept the explanation that Castresana provides. One would hardly believe it in a fictional film. Shock and revulsion could be two easy side effects, but Rosenberg’s friends (and perhaps Rosenberg’s ghost itself) use the last twist to create a portrait of a political martyr. If a system is so corrupt to provoke such radical action, I Will Be Murdered is a tragedy above anything else.

The truth about Guatemala's YouTube murder | World news | The ...  Jonathan Franklin from The Guardian, January 13, 2010

Rodrigo Rosenberg lived alone in an apartment in Guatemala City's trendy Districto 14, a refuge for diplomats and heirs to 19th-century fortunes. Miserable and divorced, the balding 47-year-old lawyer was estranged from his children, who lived in Mexico with his ex-wife. Rosenberg's bodyguard was the closest thing to a roommate, his abandoned bicycle on the terrace the closest thing to exercise.

On 10 May last year, he left his home at 8am. Security cameras would later show him mounting a bicycle and ­riding away, alone, on a two-lane, tree-lined street. The morning traffic was minimal as the assassins moved in. More camera footage shows a souped-up Mazda shadowing Rosenberg. The killing is over in seconds. The Mazda speeds away, and Rosenberg bleeds to death on the street. The Harvard-educated lawyer had been shot three times in the head.

The killing was horribly typical of Guatemala City, rated the third most dangerous city in the world, where an estimated 98% of murders are never solved. According to a 2007 UN report by human rights scholar Philip Alston: "Guatemala is a good place to kill."

But at the end of Rosenberg's funeral the following day, Luis Mendizábal, a close friend, handed out a video to mourners. It was a filmed statement by Rosenberg made just four days earlier. The video, a simple amateur recording, showed Rosenberg behind a desk in a plain blue blazer and tie. But his ­message sent reverberations through the country's political landscape.

"If you are listening to this," said the dead man, "it's because I was murdered by President Alvaro Colom, with the help of [the president's private secretary] Gustavo Alejos and [businessman] Gregorio Valdez."

Rosenberg's video also alleged corruption at the highest levels of BanRural, a government-run co-operative bank. "The last thing I wanted was to deliver this message, knowing that if you're watching it, it's because I'm dead, because this won't make my children any better. But I hope Guatemala will be better. I hope my death helps get the country started down a new path. Guatemalans, the time has come."

Within hours of the funeral, the 17-minute video had been uploaded to a Guatemalan newspaper website and YouTube. Within Guatemala it went viral, and crashed servers. Hundreds of thousands of viewers worldwide watched the chillingly calm lawyer ­predicting his own death, and ­apparently naming his murderer.

As technicians struggled to amp up the available bandwith, politicians surged into action. With corruption endemic in Guatemala, the murder of Rosenberg became a rallying cry for conservative opponents of the progressive Colom administration. Frustration at widespread immunity for criminals boiled over into public demonstrations, where tens of thousands of upper-class, anti-government protesters donned white shirts in a symbolic statement against dirty politics as they clamoured for the president to resign.

Meanwhile supporters of President Colom, who came to power in 2007, immediately called the whole episode a sick rightwing plot to quash the president's call for raising business taxes and providing fairer treatment for the country's Mayan majority. "Nobody could figure out what was happening," said Fernando Barillas, then the president's spokesman and top aide, as he described the Colom administration's reaction to the video. "We were discusing the H1N1 [swine flu] virus and whether this was a national epidemic or not . . . Then you have this recording where someone – before they die – accuses the president of his death? It was like something out of a novel or a movie script."

But among the ruling elite, a consensus was boiling up: the president had organised the hit, so the president must go. Colom's bumbling interview with Patricia Janiot on CNN, and his ­refusal to immediately address the charges, added to the conclusion that the end of his reign was imminent.

For a tense two weeks, Colom's ­tenure was in serious doubt. Protests both for and against filled the plazas of Guatemala city. Had George Bush still been in power in the US, the leftist Colom might well have been dumped, but in a quiet victory for Obama-style diplomacy, a delegation from the US-dominated Organization of American States was sent to Guatemala to provide full US-backing for Colom's administration, which nonetheless was almost washed away by a Twitter and Facebook-led wave of criticism.

In the eight months since the ­killing, amid all the feverish ­speculation ­endemic to Guatemalan life, two ­favoured scenarios emerged: ­Rosenberg was murdered either because he got too close to dirty deals himself, or by rightwing activists in a plot to frame President Colom. The truth, however, which emerged only this week, is even more bizarre and shocking. Rosenberg planned his own suicide, then tried to pin it on the president.

"Nobody else but him is responsible for his own death," Carlos Castresana, leader of the UN's investigation into the killing, told a stunned press conference in Guatemala City on Tuesday. "He planned it all."

Rosenberg's entire script, said ­Castresana, was fiction – a twisted plot hatched by the lawyer to upend Colom's presidency. It was apparently Rosenberg himself who asked distant relatives of his ex-wife for help. "These are very close friends, to whom he says: 'I have a swindler who is threatening me, and I want him dead.' They receive the ­mission and look for someone capable of doing it."

Rosenberg also negotiated the ­specifics of the hit, and even provided the mobile phones used to negotiate the fee, which was set at 300,000 ­Quetzal [£22,000]. Once the execution was ­arranged, Rosenberg had one last detail to sort – he told his driver to fix up his long-abandoned bicycle.

Until April last year, Rosenberg was a low-profile lawyer with a low-profile life. But that world was shattered when a pair of assassins on a red ­motorcycle unleashed a volley of ­bullets at 74-year-old ­industrialist ­Khalil Musa, one of ­Rosenberg's ­clients, as his daughter Marjorie drove him away from his Guatemala City ­office. Musa was hit six times, the ­bullets splintering his body. One passed through him and killed his daughter instantly.

The murders made few headlines, even though they were carried out in broad daylight and Musa was a well-known businessman. But to Rosenberg, the death of Marjorie Musa was devastating. As emails and text ­messages uncovered by the UN ­investigation would determine, ­Marjorie, who was married, and Rosenberg, a divorcee, were having an affair.

The distraught Rosenberg became obsessed with solving the Musa murders – and linking them to what he believed was a corruption scam reaching to the highest level of government; all the way to President Colom and his wife Sandra, who regularly infuriated Guatemala's ruling class by appearing on TV handing out food and healthcare to the poor. The first lady adamantly refused to have her social programmes audited, leading to widespread rumours that millions were being skimmed off by corrupt officials.

As a top corporate lawyer in Guatemala, Rosenberg was well versed in the incestuous relationships that dominate the country's corporate-government relationships. And he had the means to investigate them – friends in government and industry, his own law firm. He began telling close friends that he was now immersed in a Bond-like world where informants passed on secret documents and called him to clandestine, Deep Throat-style meetings. Death threats, he calmly explained, were now commonplace. He even provided his friends with the mobile numbers from which those threats originated.

"Rosenberg felt guilty about the ­assassination of [Marjorie] Musa," said Castresana at the press conference. "He began a desperate search all over to find Musa's killers . . . but he found no proof."

Instead, he began to fabricate evidence and incidents to bolster claims that he had uncovered a massive government corruption scandal. He sent his bodyguard to buy two mobiles – one to make death threats to himelf, the other for the hitmen to broker the assassination of the imaginary "swindler". And then, after making the video, Rosenberg placed several calls to friends, took out his mended bike, and rode to the designated kill zone on 2da Avenue. Then he sat down, waiting for the killers to arrive.

But amid all the careful plotting, Rosenberg made one critical miscalculation. No other square block of Guatemala City has more security cameras than the murder site, on account of all its rich residents. Recording from various angles, these cameras captured the getaway Mazda, which in turn led to the assassins. And after months in jail, they finally began to collaborate, helping Castresana to unravel the truth of this extraordinary crime.

Instead of being toppled by the ­bogus video, Colom now appears to have emerged as a stoic leader who did not cave in to populist sentiment. Whereas Rosenberg, once widely ­regarded as a patriotic hero who died for his nation, leaves a legacy of betrayal that is likely to put some of his associates in prison for decades.

"The crimes that happen here are unthinkable in other parts of the world and rival any political thriller," concludes Simon Granovsky-Larsen, an author who is a leading expert on political violence in Guatemala. "In the first months, or even years, after a political crime like Rosenberg's, it is difficult to know what is a crazy conspiracy theory – and then one of those crazy conspiracy theories turns out to be true. In other parts of the world, this could only be fiction."

Rodrigo Rosenberg's Murder in Guatemala : The New Yorker  David Grann, April 4, 2011

 

Digital Journal [Sarah Gopaul]

 

Exclaim! [Kevin Scott]

 

Pretty Clever Films [Brandy Dean]

 

Toronto Film Scene [Kristal Cooper]

 

Webster, Nicholas

 

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS

USA  (81 mi)  1964

 

Santa conquers the Martians  Idyllopus from Big Sofa

 

Wedge, Chris

 

ROBOTS                                           B-                    81

USA  (90 mi)  2005
 
An entire universe impressively constructed in animated mechanical parts, complete with the conquering world of brand spanking new, fresh-off-the-line robot products, who are attempting to eliminate all spare parts for the older deteriorating models, basically eliminating them from the neighborhood, which leads to robot war.  Sounds like mean stuff, and there’s plenty of fighting sequences, but there’s also an “aw shucks” performance from a young idealist robot hero who dreams of being an inventor, who yearns to find himself in the world of Robot City, an expanse of Disney’s Tomorrowland.  Much of this feels like a visit to Disneyland, as the young hero could just as easily be Woody in TOY STORY, but there’s a terrific finale where all the robots get together on the street and dance to a combination of free form jazz and funk, otherwise called “junk,” which I found deliriously appealing.  Unfortunately, even though the screen was constantly filled with plenty of action and movement, I wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic about the 75 minutes or so that preceded that sequence.

 

Weerasethakul, Apichatpong

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Transnational Poet ... - Senses of Cinema  Brett Farmer on Blissfully Yours, February 7, 2006

 

Tropical Malady • Senses of Cinema   Holger Römers, February 7, 2006

 

Cult Cannes star brings ghostly video art to Liverpool  Jessica Lack from The Guardian, October 8, 2009

 

Unspoken Cinema: LINKS :: Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL  links to articles and interviews, October 26, 2009

 

Phantoms of Liberty: Apichatpong Weerasethakul ... - Senses of Cinema  Phantoms of Liberty: Apichatpong Weerasethakul edited by James Quandt, book report by Vera Brunner-Sung, April 4, 2010

 

Republic of Cinema: A Book on Joe  Zach Campbell book review from Mubi, May 2, 2011

 

James Quandt  Living memory: James Quandt on Apichatpong Weerasethakul, from ArtForum, March 2011

 

Richard Lowell MacDonald  The Face of Auntie Jen from Criticine, May 9, 2012

 

Only light and memory - Criticine :: elevating discourse on southeast ...  Apichatpong Weerasethakul conversation with the participants of the workshop conducted by May Adadol Ingawanij and David Teh at Khon Kaen University in the northeast region of Isaan, where the filmmaker had studied, on August 15, 2010, published at Criticine, May 9, 2012

 

Surreally Yours: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cinematic Journey ...  Kathie Smith from Walker Art, September 22, 2012

 

TSPDT - Apichatpong Weerasethakul

 

interview - Kick The Machine  Memories, Mysteries, an interview with Apichatpong Weerasethakul by Tony Rayns (Bangkok, July 2006)

 

Talking With Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul  Nathan Lee from the Village Voice, April 10, 2007

 

indieWIRE INTERVIEW | “Syndromes and a Century” writer/director ...  Michael Koresky indieWIRE interview April 17, 2007

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Reverse Shot  S. Mickey Lin and Genevieve Yue interview, June 1, 2007

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: interview  Ben Walters interview from Time Out, September 18, 2007

 

Cannes: 'Cemetery of Splendor' Director on His Obsession  Patrick Brzeski interview from The Hollywood Reporter, May 14, 2015

 

Interview: Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Film Comment  Nicolas Rapold interview, June 1, 2015

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul interview • Senses of Cinema  Amir Ganjavie interview, December 10, 2015

 

Apichatpong's Top 10

 

La Cinetek   Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 48 favorite films (2015)

 

BLISSFULLY YOURS (Sud Sanaeha)              B+                   92                                           

Thailand  France  (125 mi)  2002

 
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the Thai-born, Art Insitute of Chicago grad who cites Bruce Baillie and Andy Warhol as influences, among more mainstream narrative directors, also made Mysterious Object at Noon and this year's Tropical Malady, the Jury Prize winner at Cannes.  Blissfully Yours played at Cannes two years ago, winning the Un Certain Regard category after what one of my friends, Jesse, described as "the most hostile screening I've ever attended.  Whereas Tropical Malady seemed much better received, with a mix of some enthralled and some bored, no one seemed to have liked Blissfully Yours.  What I remember most of the film was the incredibly long climactic close-up on the young couples' faces at the end of the film.  I was a little hypnotized by the shot but it elicited laughing and catcalls from the little bit of the audience that hadn't walked out."  With Blissfully Yours, Best of Youth, and Ousmane Sembene's Moolaade this year, the UCR category has had at least three straight fantastic winners, which is pretty impressive.  Some comments about Blissfully Yours, which was screened this week in Chicago, and previously at BAM in New York for two days in June. 
 
I was somewhat mesmerized by this style of film.  Some of the patrons admitted falling asleep, and it is languorously slow and hypnotic, but I found it startlingly different, which for frequent filmgoers, is always exciting.  An inventive and fresh style of film, using non-professional actors and near wordless, raw realism, much of which takes place in painfully slow, elongated sequences of real time, with extraordinary use of sound, abrupt and oddly placed edits, and a near plotless, minimalist, sometimes experimental film style that never offers more than just the subtlest bits of information.  In this film, like a Bruno Dumont film, there is an underlying hint of danger that permeates every frame, but unlike Dumont, there are no violent outbursts, instead there is a schism, or a rupture in reality, which goes largely undetected, but is always simmering just below the surface. 
 
Initially, set in Thailand, a patient with a rare skin disease visits a family doctor, accompanied by his girlfriend and an older friend she's hired to help get him a forged work ID.  He feigns being a mute, as in reality he’s hiding his status as an illegal Burmese resident.  But his girl friend is Thai, a factory worker painting Disney figurines, who feigns an illness with her employer, claiming to have malaria in order to take an afternoon off with her boyfriend.  Oddly, the two women concoct a strange brew of vegetables and lotions and creams along with the medicine for the skin rash, despite the doctor's instructions that the lotion causes it to spread even more.  As they drive out of town into the countryside, a constant tracking shot brilliantly establishes the place, showing the village landscape as it is, with nothing embellished, while also establishing a repetitious sense of time.  At the Burmese border, the silent man suddenly chats away with the border guards, all untranslated.  The first half of the film takes place in the city and contains the majority of the dialogue, much of which reveals a sense of displacement.  
 
In the second half, the countryside road narrows and they go deeper and deeper into a tropical forestation, and the film becomes mostly wordless.  At this point, the opening credits appear with a happy, upbeat, pop Brazilian samba, sounding completely outlandish, like something Nino Rota would have used.  I found this positively hilarious, as this film is anything but happy.  Nothing could have been stranger.  Eventually, they drive as far as their car can get them, having to walk the rest of the way through a dense jungle, where he sheds most of his clothes, constantly irritated by his skin condition.  Here the soundtrack remains constant, the natural sounds of birds and other insects in their natural habitat accompanying these verdant and visually lush images.  Eventually they find a flat ledge overlooking the mountains, where they set up for an afternoon picnic before being invaded by red ants.  Of interest, he narrates inner thoughts, which can also be seen by superimposing white-lined cartoon drawings and diary scribblings directly over the film.  We discover he was sought by the local police, but escaped by hiding in a septic tank, which may explain his flight from Burma, as well as his skin condition.  He finds local berries, which remind him of home, and when they get relaxed and comfortable, starting to show affection, the scene shifts completely to the girl’s friend, the older woman who accompanied them to the doctor.  At first we assume it’s the young couple, but instead it’s the older woman grinding away, having sex in the same tropical forest with someone other than her husband.  Afterwards, they also start to picnic, but we hear the sound of someone stealing their motor scooter, which sends the man, half naked in yellow briefs, running afterwards until he disappears.  A short time later, we hear a shot, accentuating an underlying sense of danger, which continues for the duration of the film.  Next, the woman slowly sneaks through the jungle, eventually finding and wearing one of those SARS masks, a reference to humans being completely out of touch with their natural environment.  The scene shifts back to the younger couple who are now at a pristine riverbank, and they also engage in sexual activity, seen entirely from behind, as it appears she gives him a blowjob.  The older woman inexplicably walks through the jungle directly to this same riverbank.  The younger couple hardly seem surprised, but are in no hurry to leave.  The older woman is more restless, and where she sits, ants are seen invading the food, again establishing a pattern of humans out of balance with nature.  The woman never mentions the shot, or the man she was with, and later pilfers through the younger woman’s purse, but the younger couple continue to spend a lazy afternoon in each other’s arms lost in their own thoughts.  The end credits release the slow, hypnotic, meditative feel of this film in total silence.
 
I loved, by the way, how long it takes the end credits to roll.  Afterwards, while I can't say I was astonished, I wasn't sure where I'd been, exactly.  It was oddly disorienting, and it took a few moments to readjust from reel time to real time.  One peculiar aspect of this film is how it takes on another life of it's own, like a hallucinogenic fungi, and continues to grow in your mind and imagination afterwards.

 

Blissfully Yours  Michael Sicinski from The Academic Hack

A film which hovers between narrative and the pure factual existence of nature.  Funny, sexy, relentlessly compelling to watch, I am still not sure what it’s “about.”  Often it just stands there, like a tree.  My favorite theory is that Joe W. is staging not only bliss, but its incompatibility with our basic representational codes.  Most narrative entails a contest, or a struggle to fill some gaping want.  We see this in the first portion, with Min trying to get a work permit, but also when Orn and her lover get sexual pleasure and the desire for conception all in a muddle.  Min and Roong, meanwhile, have an outdoor tryst virtually free of conflict, and this evolves into an almost intolerable experience of cinematic time.  When we are truly happy, everything seems to stop.

*********************************

 

by the way, a few comments I was able to discover afterwards, from the director's own production company...

 

SYNOPSIS

 

In recent years, there has been a nationwide crackdown on illegal Burmese immigrants in Thailand. This has deeply affected the Burmese community in the country, many of whom had crossed the border to find a better life by seeking employment in the Thai labor market. Some have also developed close relationships with Thai people. This is the political background of Blissfully Yours, the second film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Even though the town in this film seems peaceful on the surface, the boredom, hidden emotional conflicts, and communication differences, produce psychological tensions between the protagonists of the story. The main character is a Burmese refugee whose fate has linked him to the lives of two Thai women in this border town. The film details their mundane activities on a typical lazy afternoon. The characters do not have a meaningful goal in life. Under two flawed political systems, they choose to remain ignorantly blissful. -- © Kick The Machine

 

from Xenia Shin:  http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=12260

 

While I wasn’t won over completely by the film, which seems to pull at the confines of traditional narrative rather than break from them, it's necessary to recognize its considerable strengths in subtle character observation, political allegory, and a new kind of filmic logic. Common criticisms like 'this is a typical art film, pretentious, slow, unengaging, for no discernible reason but to torture the audience' ignore the wealth of thought loaded into each scene. I may have been bored at times, but as Warhol says, why is that a bad thing?

 

from Kent Jones, Film Comment, 7-8/02


Apichatpong is at the forefront of two of contemporary cinema’s most important movements: the collapsing barriers between documentary and fiction (he’s very deft at erasing the distinction between what he’s created and what he’s observed), and between art and porn.


and from Ulrike Kremeier, Artistic director, Plattform / Berlin, Assistant professor, Leipzig University / Institute of Philosophy: 
http://www.iacnet.ne.jp/~sair/artists/2001/joe/article01_e.html


"I am interested in the possibilities of involving both fact and fiction in one film, with each of them intersecting and supporting each other. I was not thinking much about revolutionizing the narrative method, though." This statement about his own work is paradigmatic of the artistic approach of the filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, born in 1970 in Thailand.

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is interested in two different kinds of questions: the first being about the construction of identity, an identity which creates itself at the borderline between fiction and reality and which proceeds from every day situations. He also is interested in the perception and cinemagraphic production of reality, a reality that appears as non-linear, abstract and in fragments. In this context it is not important whether the created pictures are real or acted. Reality is always a little pretend. The reality of the images is (only) the possibility of an event, whereas the specific view on it is always subjective, because it seems to guarantee the supposed veracity. His films are at the intersection of different cultures, genres and disciplines and they simultaneously examine these different intersections.

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Transnational Poet ... - Senses of Cinema  Brett Farmer on Blissfully Yours, February 7, 2006

 
TROPICAL MALADY (Sud Pralad)                     A-                    94
Thailand  France  Italy  Germany  (118 mi)  2004
 

Just for the record, there are no baboons in the jungles of Thailand, or even tigers for that matter, though Bengal tigers, as seen here, do roam into neighboring Burma.  But there are monkeys like the pig-tailed macaques that grunt and whimper and murmur, as well as leopards lurking about.  From what I can tell, baboons, mandrills, and chimpanzees are strictly in Africa, while spider monkeys and tamarins are in South America, orangutans are in Indonesia, and gibbons are in Malaysia.  Be that as it may, this film veers into the tropical jungle with a kind of cinematic, stylistic novelty and delight. 

 

The film opens with a quote from novelist Ton Nakajima:  “All of us are by nature wild beasts... our duty as human beings is to become like trainers who keep their animals in check, and even teach them to perform tasks alien to their bestiality.”  The first half takes place mostly in the city and quite humorously points out oddities or unlikely contradictions, especially a scene in a movie theater that may seem more at home in a Tsai Ming-liang film.  In fact the lead looks very much like his lead, Lee Kang-Sheng, and is named Keng, a handsome soldier who is spending his time with Tong, a near illiterate unemployed farm boy.  Together they flirt with one another, sing to one another, write each other notes, pursue one another and are pursued in return, highlighted by a comical sequence where they are interrupted by the advances of an older woman who leads them through a labyrinth underneath a temple’s ruins before feeding them, joined by her sister, then putting on makeup and taking them to the mall.  One is struck by the hesitation of Keng in the underground ruins, as he is unwilling to go into the hole, backing up and taking the safer, more conventional route, and Tong ultimately rejects Keng’s advances.  There is a black screen for ten seconds, and new credits appear for the second half called something like “Spirit Path,” which is nearly wordless, and shot like a silent film using inner titles, but features virtuoso use of lighting and sound.  This sequence is filmed exclusively in the jungle and told in the form of a local myth or legend.  One might compare this to TURNING GATE, which uses a similar local legend, but tells the story in a completely real setting, or de Heer’s THE TRACKER, which takes us on a strange psychological journey through the Australian outback enhanced by the use of aborigine music and paintings.  But both of those seem much more conventional than this film.  This takes on the aura of a hallucination or dream, spirits are seen, animals speak, humans resemble animals, and much of it is filmed in total darkness with the use of a flashlight.  This spirit world comes alive as a riveting and suspenseful ghost story.  Keng gives himself up to the demon, and is completely at the mercy of this creature, knowing that it will devour him whole.  Overall, I don’t know how much of this film is comprehensible at the end, or what the first half has to do with the second half, or even how much the story matters at all.  Weerasethakul calls this “a memoir of love and darkness.”  Instead, it has a very cutting edge feel, notable for its lack of what might traditionally be considered a perfect look, such as the visual beauty of Angelopoulos, relying on an original, more experimental style, using raw, surface effects accentuating a subliminal and shadowy world that is at the same time magical and very creepy. 

 

Tropical Malady  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

Not as soul-transporting as Blissfully Yours, but then, this one has a harder job to do. The first half is simply flawless filmmaking, with nary a framing or an edit out of place. The ease with which laddish male-bonding evolves into homoeroticism is both pointed and resolutely non-polemical. Joe is examining desire that doesn't quite fit in its cultural context, but somehow doesn't come into conflict with it, either. (This theme haunts the previous film too, but there it stages the lack of conflict as a narrative disruption.) The second component of the diptych is bewildering and elemental, and yet on a formal level, the batting average slips a bit; only four out of every five or so shots feels quite so metaphysically ordained. The disconnect is probably by design, since the shift from the everyday to the mythic or holy is there to signify its own impossibility. Culture's frameworks for animalistic passion are breaking down at this point. How can any film adequately depict this? I can't quite fault Joe for providing only a tentative answer. [NOTE: Shame on the projectionist at the Bader, who left the blue video-projector light on, and screened Malady OVER it. The deep blacks all turned green, and in a way I feel like I still haven't really seen the goddamned thing.] [NOTE 2: Chris Stults independently confirmed that the actual problem during this screening was far more prosaic -- they failed to close the balcony doors, letting the mid-morning sun stream in.]

 

Tropical Malady  Ed Gonzalez from Slant magazine

There's a scene in David O. Russell's intermittingly brilliant I Heart Huckabees where Dustin Hoffman's existential detective likens a bed sheet to the tissue that connects the world around us. In Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's more successfully evokes an existential fiber between sexual desire and cultural mythos in the pastoral jungle outside a Thai village when a young soldier, Keng (Banlop Lomnoi), falls in love with a country boy, Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee). Weerasethakul's metaphysical fascination with ordinary human gestures and the shape of everyday objects colors Keng and Tong's unpretentious, bittersweet courtship. Keng gives Tong a Clash tape but forgets to give him his heart, and when Keng attempts to transplant his love for Tong via a simple gesticulation of his arm, the transfusion of Keng's cosmic-romantic energy is ravishingly felt in the director's enchanted compositions. But if Tropical Malady begins as a simple love story, it turns into something more profound when Keng enters the jungle in pursuit of a creature allegedly responsible for killing Tong's mother's livestock. Because Weerasethakul equates Keng and Tong's suffocating love for one another to a twisted landscape of trees, Tropical Malady could just as easily have been called Unbearably Yours. A glorious mood piece, the film mirrors the yin of Keng's pursuit of Tong throughout the first half of the film to the yang of Keng's spiritual journey through the second half. Though the film's two parts seem as if they could work independently of one another, the first half clearly anticipates the second, or, more precisely, the second half seems to reimagine the more conventional first part as a primitive tribal dance. Both parts seem to tell the same story—only one says it with considerably less words. Keng's love for Tong borders on unrequited: When Keng smells Tong's hand after Tong urinates on the side of the road, he returns the erotic sentiment by aggressively (maybe condescendingly) licking Keng's hand. Earlier, Keng grabs Tong's leg during an incredibly erotic scene in a movie theater, to which an excited Tong responds by trapping Keng's hand between his thighs and grabbing his shoulders with his arm. The twisting arms and legs anticipate the tangle of trees that similarly bind them during the film's second half. Both love story and folk tale, Tropical Malady intersects eros with cultural traditions, heralding the thrill of the chase and asserting that the deepest romances are not sexual but spiritual in nature. Literally.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Tropical Malady (2004) Roger Clarke from Sight and Sound, March 2005

A group of Thai soldiers have found a body and are preparing to transport the corpse from near the jungle. There's a stop for the night at a tiny farm. Soldier Keng (Banlop Lomnoi) meets country boy Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee). There follows a courtship. Tong works in an ice-factory in town and Keng agrees to teach him to drive. They attend a clinic together when Tong's dog falls sick with cancer. At an outdoor singing venue a singer dedicates a song to Keng of the Forest Patrol MO21, and Tong joins her in a duet. Keng also spends time on the farm. The first section ends with the news that a monster from the jungle is killing cattle. After a hungry, sensual moment Tong mysteriously leaves Keng and walks off into the night.

There is an interlude about a Khmer shaman who could turn into a tiger.

The second section of the film is entitled ‘A Spirit's Path'. A soldier is in the forest, frightened. An initial tussle with the demented shaman, naked and tattooed, leaves him bruised and battered. A talking baboon in a tree tells him his destiny is with this man-beast. But after laying a trap and sitting out a night-time vigil, he only manages to shoot a cow and watch its ghost drift away. The film ends with the soldier looking up at a ghostly tiger poised in a tree. A poetic caption is subtitled: "Monster, I give you my spirit, my flesh and my memories."

Review

With this winner of the Prix du Jury in Cannes in 2004 - the first Thai film to be shown in competition - Apichatpong Weerasethakul has proved himself one of the most brilliantly original directors in the world. UK audiences were deprived of his last film, Blissfully Yours (2002) - also award-winning, also bifurcated - whose day-out-in-the-jungle sexual fable might have prepared them for the cocktail of bestial strangeness that is Tropical Malady.

The first section of this movie is delightful, though the mood of upcoming unease is signalled from the very first shot: a chirpy group of Thai soldiers pose for photographs while on patrol. The hand-held camera only slightly swerves down at the last minute to show that they are trophy-posing over a recovered corpse. For most of the rest of this section, however, the camerawork is resolutely static, the soundtrack awash with loud ambient sound, like the background noise of a phone-call from a noisy place to a quiet place. It's no surprise to learn that the tiger-spirit in the second section of the movie has a special fascination with the soldier's walkie-talkie: the film has the spooked air of one long phone-call from the subconscious.

The gay love-story which is the kernel of the first section asks for no special treatment; much of it is filmed like the universal gay love story made everywhere in many countries around the world, though it is perhaps unusually discreet in execution here, without a shred of sexual-politics. That said, Chicago-educated Weerasethakul has a shrewd eye for detail - the sparing use of camp is especially judicious - and the modern way of saying things. In some ways these are stereotypes of Thai gay culture - the entwined hands, the flowery protestations of love, the sentimental songs on stage, the accepting family members - which Weerasethakul is setting up to derail with his later blast of rotting jungle matter, rutting animal desires, transmigrating sex and death. Not even Buddhism survives as this night falls, with its progression of kitschy little monk stories and the ephemeral trash laid at shrines in underground caves, including a toy that plays inappropriate Christmas carols.

The first section in some ways functions as a trap for the unwary, posing as an ordinary piece of indistinctly empowering soap opera, and the brief intermediate section a kind of picturesque fairytale about Khmer shamans. But it is Weerasethakul's intention to go directly and strongly to the world of Joseph Beuys and William Blake, and by the time we get to the second section he is determined to evoke a place that is defiantly other-worldly. The darkness of this jungle is infinite, and Weerasethakul is careful to leave it dark. Sometimes we can barely make out the soldier, shivering with dread, at the centre of the second part of the film until perhaps he moves his flashlight over some gnarled greenery and strangler-figs, or fireflies light up a tree in a chorus of unearthly photo-luminescence. Weerasethakul's passion for the forest floor is also considerable: few have ever attended to its structure in such detail, with its paw-prints, twigs, dead leaves, snail shells, fly-blown turds, leeches and most of all mud. It is only by smearing himself with mud, like Arnie in Predator, that the soldier stands any chance of outwitting his tiger-spirit nemesis.

At times the film brings to mind the famous toy, created for the ruler of Mysore, Tippu Sultan, in the 18th century, where a large orange tiger sits over an incapacitated Englishman who screams as he is devoured. But the characters in this film have a clear choice between killing the tiger and giving themselves up to it and joining it in the world of spirit; in one of the most effective scenes the stalking soldier begins to understand what a baboon-like ape is saying to him from the trees. "The tiger trails you like a shadow/his spirit is starving and lonesome/I see you are his prey and his companion."

This is a work of outstanding originality and power that comes nearer to the condition of the quest and the dream-state than any film in recent years. It requires a relaxed and open mind to watch it, be consumed by it, and enjoy its great and fearful symmetry.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Tropical Malady (2004)  S. F. Said from Sight and Sound, November 2004

When it premiered at Cannes in May 'Tropical Malady' seemed to defy explanation. As the most audacious film in competition, it fully deserved its Jury Prize, even if it was too singular to command the consensus needed for the Palme d'Or.

Though unheralded, it was not unexpected. In 2002 young Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Un Certain Regard prize for his mesmerising fiction feature debut 'Blissfully Yours'. That was a film of two halves, moving from the city to the country and marking the shift by running the credits half way in. 'Tropical Malady' takes this structural unorthodoxy further, offering two distinct yet connected films with a short in between.

It starts out as a sweet, quirky love story. Soldier Keng and country boy Tong drift into a tentative courtship which blossoms into love. Their romance has the flavour of early Jim Jarmusch or Tsai Ming-Liang: beautifully observed, underscored by deadpan humour, yet shot through with strangely numinous moments. As the love affair develops, we're enveloped in an idyllic world saturated with the reds and greens of the Thai countryside or the synthetic pinks and blues of the city. All seems well - until one night Tong walks, inexplicably, into the darkness.

He takes the whole film with him. Everything goes black and for what feels like an eternity there's no image or sound. You think the projector must be broken, until it whirs into life again, and the title 'A Spirit's Path' comes up on screen, together with a stylised picture of a tiger. What follows is a short within the feature, telling the tale of a shape-shifting shaman who gets trapped in the form of an animal.

The feature begins again, picking up the soldier as he searches for his companion in the jungle. But it's a very different film now. The jungle feels like neither city nor country and it's so dark you can hardly see. Then as the soldier goes further in, reality gives way altogether: monkeys start talking; a cow's ghost walks; and finally, with awesome majesty, a tiger looks out from the gloom.

In changing from a charming romance to a shamanic ghost story - and in switching mood to something like 'Apocalypse Now' on Mogadon - 'Tropical Malady' invites much speculation. Faced with such a film, perhaps it's best to let go of the desire for rational explanation, and instead surrender to its remarkable dream logic.

Chuck Stephens from Cinema Scope (link lost)

An ineffably strange, multi-faceted fable about same-sex romance and cross-species communion, Tropical Malady—the new feature from Thailand’s maverick independent auteur, Apichatpong Weerasethakul—is, according to its unfailingly modest writer/director, something on the order of a “simple” sketch. So simple, in fact, that just days before Tropical Malady’s Cannes premiere, the filmmaker was still worrying that what he’d created wasn’t really “a festival kind of film” at all. Why? Because festival films, Apichatpong explained to the Associated Press at the time, “usually have to have some dramatic value.”

Tropical Malady, by comparison, consists merely of two distinct beginnings (each with its own credit sequence), two altogether inconclusive endings, numerous imbedded mini-parables and two-sentence-long ghost-story digressions, assorted fragmentary literary references and occasional sonic bleeps and visual blonks from somewhere deep in inner or outer space—not to mention its recurrent and static-scrambled eruptions of extra-narrative crosstalk with elements and incidents from the director’s own previous work. A simple sketch? Sure. What else would you expect from the guy who used to tell people that his first feature, the exceptionally strange and extraordinarily content-rich Mysterious Object at Noon (2000)—very probably the single most complex filmic experience Siamese cinema has ever produced—was “a film about nothing at all?”

Perhaps what’s needed is a clarification of terms; a sort of language lesson that will start to bridge the gaps. Let’s begin with Tropical Malady’s Thai title: Sud Pralat.

As I currently live in Bangkok, I tend to spend a not inconsiderable amount of time studying (albeit in a completely willy-nilly fashion) the Thai language, and, as it turns out, the term “sud pralat”—which means “strange (or surprising) animal,” and functions equally well as either description or disparagement—is one I had developed a particular fondness for long before I learned that it was to be the title of Apichatpong’s film. Though I can no longer recall when I first heard the phrase—which phonetic proximity compels me to henceforth transliterate as “sat pralat”—I well remember the occasion upon which I knew I would never again forget it. I was sitting with my ex-wife and then two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, watching Lilo & Stitch (2002). My daughter was starry-eyed with delight at the alien’s antics, but my ex-wife found she could only endure so much of Stitch before exclaiming, in her typically exasperated blend of childish glee and bile-speckled contempt, “Sat pralat!”

Commonly used in connection with Thai horror films to describe mutated and shape-shifting cine-beasts of all descriptions—the titular atrocity of something called Dino-Croc, for example, a film which haunted Bangkok cinemas the week Tropical Malady premiered at Cannes—“sat pralat” is a fairly flexible term. Apart from describing “actual” monsters, it can also be used to refer to the beasts ordinary men sometimes make of themselves, and, perhaps more pointedly, to the beasts that others disdainfully perceive some men to be. A wild-eyed westerner, for example, inebriated and unwashed, his tie-dyed threads in some vomit-tinted tangle, sweating and lurching through the Bangkok heat might well be sneered at with such a term by the air-conditioned upper-class Thai occupants of a passing limousine. And yet there remains, beneath such instances of opprobrium, a sense of the marvellous about such creatures as well; their transformability, while exiling them to the far edge of knowability, is also a mark of their liberation from social constraints—a condition that for some might seem the most threatening mutation of all.

Much like Blissfully Yours (2002), the previous Cannes-feted feature by the director everyone knows as “Joe,” Tropical Malady is itself a kind of threatening mutation: an aesthetic provocation aimed not just at his own country’s entrenched commercial film industry but at the whole of world cinema, made by a filmmaker who has managed to figure as both new Thai cinema’s leading light and its perpetual shadow-figure. None of Joe’s films have stood a chance of getting so much as a decent theatrical play-date in Thailand, despite the front page news that Joe’s every international success merits him here in Bangkok. Never mind that Joe pays little heed to the constraints of Thai film censorship, and went so far as to pepper Blissfully Yours with episodes of well-lit sexuality; it’s the art in Joe’s filmmaking that really sticks in his country’s craw—so much so that the Thai DVD release was shorn not only of its sex, but of a scene where two fully clothed adults spend a few minutes picking berries in the woods as well.

There is no explicit sex in Tropical Malady, though in many other ways (locations, languorous pacing, luminous compositions) it resembles its predecessor. Essentially a two-part invention, the new film is neatly separated at its halfway point into paired and palindromic realms of light and darkness, urban and rural, the machine and the garden. Unlike its predecessor, however—where lovers sought refuge from border politics and industrial dis-ease in the quietude of the forest—Tropical Malady puts Eden first, conjuring up a polymorphous paradise of gorgeously grinning faces and newly dawning passions where young lovers come together not just in the dappled sunlight beside a burbling stream, but in the sticky seats of a cheap moviehouses and under the patient gazes of approving parents. Such openness of romantic expression is all the more remarkable given that the film’s lovers are both men: Keng (Banlop Kamnoi), a soldier on leave from jungle patrol in central Thailand, and Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee), an apparently innocent country boy. But what begins as giddy idyll filled with goo-goo eyes and furtive grab-ass soon fades away into something far stranger when, just as the couple’s passion seems ready to erupt, Tong disappears and Keng is ordered back into the darkness of the jungle. Assigned to follow the trail of an as-yet-unseen animal that’s thought by local villagers to be preying on livestock and roaming the woods at night, Keng’s off-duty daydreams soon give way to full-blown nightmares. And as the void left by vanished passion begins to fill up with a pool of brackish panic, the soldier finds himself wondering if the “sat pralat” that he’s tracking might not turn out to have a familiar face.

Evolving from capricious romance into something altogether alien and ever more unnerving, Tropical Malady is clearly—emotionally as well as visually—the darkest film Joe’s yet made, and as such, it’s hardly surprising that the film’s subtitles tend to translate that titular Thai term as “wild beast” or “monster.” But just as the film’s seemingly coherent narrative through-line in no way “explains” the mystical occurrences of its second half—during which Keng is beset by leeches, telepathic monkeys, chimerical cattle, trees that “speak” in electronic buzz-murmurs, and an enormous tiger which just might be the ghost-spirit of his vanished lover—Tropical Malady’s deeply disturbing tone-shift into madness, monsters, and the outer limits of amour fou in no way negates its underlying senses of playfulness, self-reinvention, and liberation. Indeed, like all of Joe’s film, Tropical Malady is a celluloid “sat pralat”: always in a state of becoming, gleefully morphing from documentary to fiction and back again, shifting shape from one genre to another, pretending to end when in fact it’s just beginning, and forever spinning tales that chase each after each other round and round until finally, like the tigers in the now-tragically unfashionable story of little black Sambo, fur and bones dissolve into molten molasses.

But even as Tropical Malady seems to blossom from the rubble of Blissfully Yours— in its opening scene, a troop of forest rangers discover a corpse in a field that most likely belongs to the guy whose motorcycle was stolen in the previous film—it also reaches back to the endless proliferation of narrative strands and salutatory cultural references that constituted the sweeping subject matter of Mysterious Object. One day, dissertations will be written on Tropical Malady’s interpolations of the jungle adventure stories of novelist Noi Inthanon (the Thai Hemingway), it’s naked-in-nature intimations of Rousseau, and the gorgeous faux-Buddhist manuscript illuminations that appear during the film’s final reel. In the meantime, future analysts are forewarned that the film’s reference to a contemporary Thai pop band called Clash has nothing to do with the London Calling crew of yore. Tropical Malady is, after all, the work of an altogether different sort of Joe—a balladeer who values love songs over politics, and who isn’t afraid to turn the volume way down low. “Every drop of my blood sings our song,” Keng whispers to his tiger-lover in the film’s final moments. “A song of happiness. There, do you hear it?”

The tiger remains motionless, listening for a windsong that’s already fading beyond the trees.

Tropical Malady • Senses of Cinema   Holger Römers, February 7, 2006

 

TROPICAL MALADY  Steve Erickson from Chronicle of a Passion

 

Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)  Lights in the Dusk, January 9, 2009

 

The Poetic Gesture and Tropical Malady  Michael J. Anderson from Tativille

 

WORLDLY DESIRES

Thailand  Korea  (42 mi)  2005  co-director:  Pimpaka Towira

 

Worldly Desires  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

This digital featurette, not quite a companion piece to Tropical Malady but certainly related to it, shows Joe operating at the height of his formalist powers. One of the things I've valued about Weerasethakul's work since Mysterious Object at Noon is his commitment to exploring the traditions of avant-garde cinema while taking those idioms into uncharted territory. While some works by Joe have displayed an interest in bending the strategies of Andy Warhol and Bruce Baillie to the needs of Thai folklore and narrative gamesmanship, Worldly Desires takes a more structural approach. However this piece bears little resemblance to structural film as we usually think of it; if there are specific touchstones for Worldly Desires in film history, they would be those "other" structuralists, so wonky and off the beaten track as to thwart easy categorization. Like Morgan Fisher's early film projects, Worldly Desires is a documentation of the filmmaking process. Within a single expansive jungle location, portions of a Thai soap opera are being filmed by day, and a music video is being made by night. We watch at a significant remove, behind the camera and lighting crews. Multiple views display random bits of business on the periphery, like the craft services table or a playback monitor. However, the stringent day / night rhythmic structure breaks down in the end, the night song (about a woman wondering if she'll be as lucky in love as her mom was -- an Electra Complex with a disco beat) eventually bleeding into the daytime shoot. But more significantly, the relatively austere TV production, whose melodramatic dialogue is mostly heard in disconnected snippets, is contrapuntally offset by the swelling musical numbers. They break up the video, with the unexpected jolt of pure pleasure. Although these sequences recall the musical interludes in certain of Tsai Ming-liang's films, they're shot in the mode of early Hou Hsiao-hsien, dancing girls reduced to tiny figures in a wide expanse, itself engulfed within an intractable master-shot. The rigor / comedy handoff recalls aspects of Owen Land's work, but perhaps more importantly, Joe's visual and conceptual approach displays a sensitivity to the unique qualities of the jungle landscape, a willingness to let the "location" become the subject of the piece. Worldly Desires is a landscape film, one that brings that most mythologically burdened aspect of Tropical Malady -- its deep, dark thicket of the soul -- and allows it to grow wild and overtake the image. At any given point, Joe's camera is at variable distances to the soap opera shoot, but as he moves around the scene one always had to peer through the foliage to see where the human action is. This activity is reduced to an epiphenomenon, and a compositionally confusing one at that. Like trying to follow the story in Ken Jacobs' Tom, Tom the Piper's Son, figuring out the specifics of Worldly Desires' documentary aspect is missing the point. If there is a mystery about this jungle location, it exists apart from its human inhabitants, or any human interpretation. At one point a crew member starts to tell another person about the jungle's magic, but this line of discussion goes nowhere. Similarly, the women in the video shoot are ghostly figures in the dark, like a coven of apparitions, but we know full well that they're just paid dancers. With every new edit, Joe provides a striking view on this particular slice of Thailand, never providing a complete picture. But this only adds to the sense of human intervention (the film crews', Joe's, and the spectator's) being inadequate to subsuming this space under narrative or entertainment. The jungle asserts the "mystery" of its own material existence, and Joe allows it to do so, overwhelming any meaning outside of itself.

 

SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY                       A                     96                   

Thailand  Austria  France  (105 mi)  2006    Syndromes Trailer

When I was a child, I lived in hospital environments for twelve years. My parents were doctors who raised us kids in a house provided by the small-town hospital where they worked. My mother often brought me to her office, a dimly lit room overlooking a children's ward. This room was my playground, my station to look at people. Nearby was a pond where patients and relatives fed the fish. From the room's window, you could see people having lunch and sleeping in the corridor, out of the sun. In retrospect, everything seemed to move in slow motion.

Recently I went back to the hospital and found myself lost. Everything had changed and the familiar spaces were gone. As a film-maker, I have been fascinated by the spaces of a small town and its landscape. But I had never really looked at the place where my family lived. Now, with my hometown changing rapidly and becoming more like Bangkok, my memories of the lost spaces seem even more distant. With the waves of globalization affecting the way we live and how we make films, my desire to make a real personal recollection has become more intense.

Syndromes and a Century is a contribution to the New Crowned Hope festival, a project that will explore how we remember, how our sense of happiness can be triggered by seemingly insignificant things. It is an experiment in recreation of my parents' lives before I was born, which also includes the lives of those who have touched me in the present day. It will be an interpretation of distant lives and of architectures that I remain fond of, along with contemporary ones that I have around me. Time is collapsed to mimic a pattern of remembering and to manifest my belief in the idea of reincarnation. We are constantly reborn, amassing our karma, and we learn from our successive lives in order to one day finally experience a true happiness.   

Apichatpong Weerasethakul (written in 2005, before the start of production), Filmmaker’s Note from Kick the Machine, Syndromes and a Century - Kick The Machine  

A major work, the Thai title is translated as LIGHT OF THE CENTURY, which suggests an opposite meaning.  A filmmaker that establishes his own sense of rhythm and pace, which is a languorous expression of the passing of time, this is a wonderfully refreshing film that stakes out its own territory, that lives in its own defined world, loosely based on memories of the director’s parents, lovingly reconfigured into an abstract modern setting, similar perhaps to Hou Hsiao-hsien’s GOOD MEN, GOOD WOMEN, which is simultaneously set in two different historical time frames.  The director candidly exhibits a blend of openness mixed with a touch of spiritual mysticism at the end, expressed through oblique imagery that remains ambiguous and might confound Western analysis.  Weerasethakul captures local flavor through humorous conversations, interesting to the point of absurd observations, and eloquent imagery of green pastoral fields, a house overlooking a river that leads to mountains in the distance, a bridge over a still stream, lush, beautifully landscaped gardens with wooden steps running through, and some rather dazzling images of white hospital corridors, observed from multiple perspectives.  Opening in a rural clinic, a military doctor, Dr. Nohng (Jaruchai Iamaram) is being interviewed by a member of the hospital staff, the gorgeous Dr. Toey (Nantarat Sawaddikul), who gets quite personal in her inquiry, bordering on the comically absurd as the camera veers out the window and settles on a serene pastoral setting.  The film repeats this inquiry in the second half of the film in a completely modern hospital setting, which at times resembles von Trier’s THE KINGDOM, as this hospital appears to have its own peculiar agenda, opening with the bolder mother’s point of view, who is prominently featured, concluding with the father’s, who seems to get peculiarly sucked into the ether of the hospital.  Both of Weerasethakul’s parents were doctors. 
           
The opening section is very active, filled with jokes and humorous details, plenty of lively people, some of whom are a bit bizarre, but each a heartfelt reflection of a family recollection balanced against a very real part of Thai society reflected back.  A shy man waits patiently to be seen before offering Dr. Toey a gift of food, then has to wait again as she wanders off on some sudden expedition never to return.  A Buddhist monk reveals to Dr. Toey that he tortured and killed chickens in his youth, then recounts a vivid dream where the chickens are ganging up against him, perhaps avenging his youthful cruelty.  The same monk then asks for sleeping pills not for his own ailments, but for the maladies of others who are less fortunate. As a comment on the distrust of modern medicine, the doctor and the monk are seen later exchanging remedies for one another’s physical and spiritual ailments.  We see another monk in a dentist’s chair, his first such visit in his life, confessing he might have liked another profession as a deejay, but the dentist is more interesting in singing a Thai country song for him rather than attending to his teeth. 
 
One of the better moments is when out of the blue, Dr. Nohng, hesitatingly at first, springs the question if Dr. Toey would like to get engaged.  He claims he can’t eat or sleep, that all he can do is think about her, laying his head on a table in utter agony and resignation as she tells him the story of a man who grew orchids.  Interrupting the first chance he gets, she reassures him she’s not marrying the man, and calmly continues the story, which is told in flashback.  He lives with his mother in a lavish location with a view for miles overlooking a river.  After some time spent with them both, from inside the house, like a Frank Lloyd Wright interior design offering infinite space to the horizons, literally expanding the interior space of the home with the surrounding hills, we look out through three small square windows to the landscape beyond as music begins to play, eventually finding the singer of a hauntingly beautiful bossa nova-style song accompanied by a lone guitar, which turns out to be the singing dentist on stage before a small crowd.  Later, in a lush garden, he is seen talking to the monk, claiming the monk bears a physical resemblance to his lost brother who died at age 8, explaining he feels a certain responsibility for his death, wondering if he might be his reincarnation and if he could offer his atonement. 
 
The original interview resurfaces again from a different camera angle, but this half of the film is quieter, less jovial, and more abstract, filled with empty spaces.  This completely modern Bangkok hospital has a basement corridor where amputees are seen in rehab trying to walk while welders are at machines designing prosthetic devices in the same room.  In another room, a local TV personality is in a small room with several other doctors, pulling a whisky flask out of a prosthetic leg lying in a pile from the corner.  Another doctor enters the room accompanying a young man who worked in an auto factory and is suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.  The TV doctor attempts a holistic massage with hypnotic suggestions in hopes he might improve, but it proves fruitless, as does the whisky, as the doctor is later seen alone in the room, fast asleep.  Eventually the artificially lit, all-white corridors are eerily empty, as strange industrial sounds, designed by Shimizu Koichi, can be heard.  The camera re-enters the prosthetic room which is filled with a dusty white smoke, as if the room is contaminated.  But as the camera slowly moves around the room, it zeroes in on a strange trunk-like ventilator with a large black circle on the end that literally sucks the white smoke into its black hole for several minutes, air streaming inside, like a river of memories disappearing forever from human consciousness.  After what seems like a final shot, the film continues with a scene reminiscent to the rousing musical finale to Takeshi Kitano’s THE BLIND SWORDSMAN:  ZATOICHI, this film also sends the viewer out with a smile, with a collective music and dance number that is bewilderingly effective.
 
What I found most interesting was how the design of the film was a choreography of unfinished or incomplete relationships, an engagement proposal that was never answered, a lovely story in the beginning about the man with the orchids that was never finished, a relationship with another doctor near the end that had an ending, but no beginning, doctors that never seemed to actually treat their patients, but leave them sitting alone in their offices, a hospital that was a flurry of activity, including groups of runners in colorful attire running through the halls, but where there was very little evidence of actually healing patients, instead the camera becomes consumed with dead end hospital corridors, patients who can’t be cured, and memories that are all but fleeting in our lives.  Interesting as well that the parents are portrayed in differing periods of time, apparently the same age in each, but shown with unusually different perspectives, where in each they are only a small part of what we see, completely integrated into the whole.  

 

Syndromes and a Century  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

[MINOR SPOILERS] The latest from Apichatpong is both stranger and far more normal than his previous films. On the one hand, the film is Joe's extrapolation of the lives of his parents prior to their meeting at the hospital where they both worked. Seemingly using his familiar bifurcated structure, Joe first provides the story from what appears to be his mother's point of view, from a rural hospital setting, and then repeats a few key incidents from the point of view of his father, stationed at a modern urban hospital. But nothing is this simple. At first Joe hints at this "he said / she said" division, which allows him to explore connections and disjunctures between the country and the city, as well as providing the opportunity for the director to try his hand at outright comedy. (Cf. the personality test: "What does DDT stand for?")  Eventually the film drifts away from this structural split, concluding with a series of abstract, almost Kubrickian images of smoke and medical instruments, a kind of meditation on modern medicine as an environment rather than a practice. Finally, aerobics in the public square. Make sense? Whereas Tropical Malady and, to a lesser extent, Blissfully Yours partook of rather clear contrasts between the mythological / sensual and the realistic / intellectual, Syndromes adopts a much more open, fluid form. Moments of character-based weirdness (cf. the prosthetic leg lush) recall the comic surrealism of David Lynch. A late-in-the-film encounter with a young man suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning provides the opportunity for Joe to engage in an oblique disquisition on homosexual desire (not alluded to directly here, but channeled through a fractured discussion of reincarnation trouble, and living a life that is not quite "human" in the accepted senses). Even material that Joe adapted directly from his parents' life stories, such as the monk who wanted to be a DJ and now plays folk guitar, wander into Syndromes and leave a ghostly emotional impression that reverberates throughout the film. There is little in the way of a through-line, and if there is any true way to compare Joe's new style to something out there in the film world, it would have to be a Southeast Asian version of the rigorous fever-dreams of Raul Ruiz. If there is any single theme binding it all together (and I'm not sure there is, or perhaps it's better to say, not everything in the film is reducible to this theme), it is a free-form consideration of the body and its mutable states of desire. Whether it is inchoate homosexuality that lacks its proper explanatory framework, or the modern doctors' attempts at successful prostheses, or just Joe's camera circling statues of Thai medical pioneers, once living and now reduced to inert objects, Syndromes and a Century represents a new phase in Joe's career, a willingness to (momentarily?) suspend gamesmanship in favor of tonal echoes, halting repetitions, and unstructured reverie.

Slant Magazine [Nick Schager]

Early in Syndromes and a Century, a gentleman (Sophon Pukanok) tries to acquire a rare wild orchid from a hospital courtyard by stating that most people—whom, it's implicitly clear, he isn't aligned with—will find it unpleasant because its tangled roots lack "form and order." The same wrongheaded criticism might also be leveled at the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, as the Thai director's films doggedly eschew conventional narrative and aesthetic development in favor of a more free-flowing, non-linear atmosphere of mysterious contemplation, one that his latest employs to mesmerizing effect in ruminating on the dialectic between the past and the present, the traditional and the modern, and the rural and the urban. As with last year's haunting Tropical Malady, Syndromes is a bifurcated affair inspired by the auteur's own life, though whereas his prior effort hummed with an anxious, sweaty, and intimate sense of erotic desire and dread, here Weerasethakul's approach is slightly more reserved and detached, a likely outgrowth of his story—more thematically straightforward than anything in his oeuvre—being loosely based on his mother and father's recollections of premarital events.

With its first half assuming the perspective (and one, might reasonably deduce, the disposition) of his mother and the latter portion that of his father, the film situates itself in a rural 1970s-era hospital and a state-of-the-art contemporary medical facility, respectively, its two narratives boasting variations on similar scenes and images: an interview between mom-surrogate Dr. Toey (Nantarat Sawaddikul) and dad stand-in Dr. Nohng (Jaruchai Iamaram), scenes of exercise classes, and appointments between a dentist (Arkanae Cherkam) and a monk (Sakda Kaewbuadee), the last of which takes place in a terrifyingly white, 2001-ish room. As Weerasethakul also flip-flops these duplicated scenes' left-right spatial composition, the effect is akin to looking into a reflective mirror that somehow crosses the time-space continuum, his side-by-side storylines interconnected in ways obvious, subtle, and strangely vital, as if they were two halves of the same heart—and, as hinted at in conversation, representations of recent history reincarnated anew. Throughout, Weerasethakul's mise-en-scène is, predictably, both empathetic and formally breathtaking, his extended, largely static takes exuding a hyper-attention to human behavior and environmental details (especially the tranquil, insect-buzzing silence of the countryside), and his slow, elegant tracking shots exhibiting a pensive grace.

Yet Syndromes also boasts an unanticipated measure of droll, deadpan humor, whether it be the irony of a monk dreaming of being a modern-rock deejay and his dentist aspiring to be a singer of time-honored rural love songs, or the unexpectedness of a doctor pulling a bottle of liquor out of a prosthetic leg. Nonetheless, it's the film's belief in the act of remembering as essential and ongoing that remains its most enduring and poignant characteristic. Via his elliptical editing and his tales' penchant for drifting, on a whim, into flashbacks or visual asides, the director captures the way in which memories subconsciously operate—how they gently blend into one another with little concern for clear-cut sequential arrangement, and how our reminiscences of certain moments in life are often colored by our lucid, almost-tangible recollections of the specific places in which they occurred (hence his frequent cut-aways to empty rooms, hallways, and fields). And thus in this regard, Syndromes functions not only as a loving tribute to the past, but as Weerasethakul's attempt at experiential preservation—a project naturally in direct opposition to forgetting, hauntingly envisioned as a swirl of smoke inexorably spiraling into the black abyss of a basement's open ceiling tube.

interview - Kick The Machine  Memories, Mysteries, an interview with Apichatpong Weerasethakul by Tony Rayns (Bangkok, July 2006)

The film's English title is rather allusive. 'Syndromes' suggests a concern with human behavior, while 'a Century' suggests a concern with time. Is that how you saw it yourself?

Yes, this is the third film in which I've used the structure to explore dualities, and I think it will be the last. The word 'Syndromes' could apply equally to Blissfully Yours or Tropical Malady : it does refer to human behavior, such as the way we fall in love. I don't intend the word to have negative connotations; if falling in love is a kind of sickness, it's one for which we all show symptoms. 'Century' for me conveys the sense of moving forward. A century is more or less the same as a lifetime. I'm interested in the ways things change over time, and in the ways they don't change. It seems to me that human affairs remain fairly constant.

Blissfully Yours was, for me, a film about cinema and the way I see it. Tropical Malady is more directly personal: it's about me. And this film is about my parents. I feel that I'm achieving some kind of closure with this film, and the word 'Century' somehow chimes with that.

Here the main duality is female/male ...

Yes, the first half is for my mother and the second for my father. The occasional repetitions reflect my belief in reincarnation: people do repeat things. I probably started out with larger dualities in mind - such as day/night, masculine/feminine - but the contrasts aren't so stark in the finished film. It's just my mother and father.

The first half has a more 'period' feel than the second, but you haven't really tried to recreate the environment in which you grew up. You didn't want period detail?

The town where I grew up is Khon Kaen (it's in the north-east of Thailand, near Laos); it's where my father died, and my mother still lives there. I went back there to look for locations, but the landscapes and hospital buildings that I remember simply don't exist any more. So even if I'd wanted to recreate the past, it would not have been possible. We shot the film in various places that evoked my childhood memories, but they're basically contemporary. The first half of the film, centered on my mother, is less contemporary than the second, but that's because places in Thailand do look more old-fashioned when you leave Bangkok.

Memory is the central impulse in your film-making?

It may well be the only impulse! Everything is stored in our memory, and it's in the nature of film to preserve things ... But I've never set out to recreate my memories exactly. The mind doesn't work like a camera. The pleasure for me is not in remembering exactly but in recapturing the feeling of the memory - and in blending that with the present. That's been especially true in this film. In Tropical Malady I was following a full script and trying to get things 'right'. But this film is not really about me, and so (thanks to the generosity of my producers, who never objected) I had the freedom to build it bit by bit, day by day. We shot the first half first, then took a break and rough-cut the footage before shooting the second half. That helped very much to shape the rhythms in the second half, some of the dialogue and so on. We changed a lot in the second half in response to places we found while scouting for locations and little things that happened during the shoot. For example, the room full of prosthetic limbs was something we came across by chance, while scouting many hospitals. And the idea that the woman doctor would hide liquor in one of the prosthetic limbs was spontaneous, too. It came into the film at most a few days before we shot it.

So how many of the incidents and details in the film are based on memories and how many on present-day accidents of discovery?

It's impossible to say exactly. Take the interview scene which opens both halves of the film. The decision to use psychological-test questions in the interview came from the actress we cast: she may work in a toll-booth, but she has a Master's degree in Psychology. The idea emerged in the workshops we did before shooting. But the question about what "DDT" stands for comes directly from something my father told me. It was a question he was asked by a teacher, and the answer in the film is the one he gave.

The behavior of the Buddhist monks reflects exactly what I remember seeing in my father's clinic. Monks are not supposed to do things like play guitar, but such things do happen. I have a childhood memory of seeing monks in my hometown, walking near their temple, and thinking that they didn't look like monks at all. And Sakda told me that when he was a monk, he behaved no differently from the way he did normally. The monk he plays in this film is of course a continuation of his role in Tropical Malady . In my original script, he changed into a tiger at night!

The idea of the singing dentist came from someone I met when I went back to Khon Kaen to receive an award from my old university. One alumnus there was a dentist and he had released an album of songs about dental health. I thought I'd put that in the film, but when the time came to shoot, the guy wasn't available. So I cast someone else as the dentist. Quite a few of the other characters and incidents in the film also came from chance encounters during the research period: finding a beautiful man or woman and deciding to put them in the film.

What were the workshops you mentioned?

For me, making a film is a welcome excuse to get out of Bangkok. In this case, we took the main actors to Hua Hin to get them comfortable with each other. We just talked together and they did some on-camera interviews on video. Nobody except Sakda had ever really acted before, and so Sakda became a kind of acting coach to the others.

What does the tree orchid mean to you?

It's a beautiful parasite, and a symbol of fertility. Its seeds are blown by the wind and it attaches itself to the host it lands on. It's random and mysterious, like the film itself. As I was growing up, my mother had a huge garden of orchids. And she shot home movies of the family, so maybe there's more than one association there for me.

And the sun imagery?

The Thai title means "Light of the Century". The first half of the film is a kind of portrait of the sun, or an account of the way we depend on the sun for our survival. The second half of the film is dominated by artificial light. But the chakra healing in the second half is also all about the sun: it's a way of channeling the sun's power into the body.

Finally, what are the bronze sculptures seen in the second half of the film?

They are important figures in the development of modern Thai medicine. Including the sculptures in the film was a way of paying respect to them. In one sense, the film is a tribute to those who passed on this century to us.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Film of the Month: Syndromes and a Century (2006)  Tony Rayns from Sight and Sound, October 2007

 

Syndromes And A Century  J. Hoberman from the Village Voice, also seen here:  The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]

 

SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY  Steve Erickson from Chronicle of a Passion

 

“Syndromes and a Century” | IndieWire  Michael Koresky from Reverse Shot at indieWIRE, April 14, 2007

 

Not Coming to a Theater Near You [Leo Goldsmith]

 

Syndromes and a Century By Jeff Reichert - Reviews - Reverse Shot  Jeff Reichert, April 1, 2007

 

Syndromes and a Century - Archive - Reverse Shot  Best of the Decade #5, by Genevieve Yue, December 27, 2009

 

Cine Outsider [Slarek]

 

DVD Times [Anthony Nield]

 

Salon.com [Stephanie Zacharek]

 

Oggs' Movie Thoughts

 

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

Ruthlessculture.com [Jonathan McCalmont]

 

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young] Rotterdam Film Festival notes

 

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young] review, after second viewing

 

The House Next Door [Ryland Walker Knight]

 

New York Sun [Nicolas Rapold]

 

PopMatters [Michael Barrett]

 

World Socialist Web Site  Richard Phillips

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

 

CineScene [Howard Schumann]

 

Strictly Film School  Acquarello

 

A Film Canon [Billy Stevenson]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Bright Lights Film Journal [Robert Keser]

 

Last Night With Riviera [Matt Riviera]

 

interview - Kick The Machine  Memories, Mysteries, an interview with Apichatpong Weerasethakul by Tony Rayns (Bangkok, July 2006)

 

Talking With Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul  Nathan Lee from the Village Voice, April 10, 2007

 

indieWIRE INTERVIEW | “Syndromes and a Century” writer/director ...  Michael Koresky indieWIRE interview April 17, 2007

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: interview  Ben Walters interview from Time Out, September 18, 2007

 

Film4 [Anton Bitel]

 

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

 

Austin Chronicle [Josh Rosenblatt]

 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]

 

Read the Full N.Y. Times Review  A.O. Scott

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W Tooze]

 

PROSPERITY FOR 2008

Thailand  (1 mi)  2007

 

Prosperity for 2008  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

Not so much a new work as a video New Year's card, Joe's tiny little one-minute piece is -- whether or not it was so intended -- simply the perfect first film to see for the year. Atune one's senses to the smallest possible nuances -- the basics, light against dark -- and move from there. Chris Stults, who alerted me to its existence in a New Year's greeting, noted quite correctly that untitled recalls the simplicity of Bruce Baillie's All My Life, with its unidirectional movement and subtle musical counterpoint. This may not be a work of art, or even a prelude; perhaps it's not even a sketch or a video notebook scribble. As Wise Kwai implies, it may be more like Joe sending up a trial balloon, since the post-coup Thai government is engaging in greater and greater censorship and online "leaks" may be necessary, vital messages in an electronic bottle. But regardless of the specific context into which Joe has set the film free, it sends up a flare of good hope, or at least a pregnant pause of suspended anxiety, since in this single gorgeous minute, we can forever assure ourselves that it is a launching firework, and not a bomb. [You can watch Prosperity for 2008 here.]

"He Was Born Apichatpong Weerasethakul, But You Can Call Him Joe"   Vadim Rizov on Avant-Garde shorts from The House Next Door

 

Joe, Take Two»   follow up by Vadim Rizov

 

PRIMITIVE INSTALLATION

Thailand  2009

 

Primitive Installation  Animate Projects

The various videos made at Nabua, like my feature films, are impressions of light and memory. There are natural illuminations from the sun and from fire. The lights seep through the doors and windows and burn the rice fields. There are artificial ones like fluorescent tubes and LED lights like dots of recollections. And there are simulated bolts of lightning that destroy the peaceful landscape and unearth the spirits. As in the book A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Primitive is about reincarnation and transformation. It’s a celebration of destructive force in nature and in us that burns in order to be reborn and mutate.

Primitive  Animate Projects

Nabua is a sleepy village within the province of Nakhon Panom in the northeast of Thailand. This small village was one of the places the Thai army occupied from the 60s to the early 80s to curb the communist insurgents. The soldiers erected a base to administer the villagers' daily activities. The locals were psychologically and physically abused on the grounds of withholding information. Women were raped. Some were murdered in their homes.

Consequently, the villagers, mostly farmers, fled into the jungle. Most of them didn't understand the word Communism though they were accused of being communists. In the morning of August 7, 1965, Nabua earned its reputation nationwide when the first gun battle between the farmer communists and the totalitarian government broke out in the rice field. As a result, Nabua was heavily occupied and controlled by the military. The torture intensified. Fear proliferated. More people escaped into the jungle. The night sky was illuminated with military flares. The village was left with mostly women and children.

Ironically, Nabua is situated in Renu Nakhon district, where there is an ancient legend about a widow ghost who abducts any man who enters her empire. She takes them to join her other husbands in an invisible land. Thus in the legend, Renu Nakhon is devoid of men. The district's nickname is 'widow town'.

The story of Nabua undeniably has echoes of the current political turmoil in Thailand. Institutions involved in those events of the past, along with new ones, are the key players in the ongoing chaos. Just as in the past, they manipulate the public psyche instilling it with faith and fear.

The Primitive project is about re-imagining this little terrain of Thailand called Nabua , a place where memories and ideologies are extinct. Primitive will feature the teenage male descendants of the farmer communists. Nabua will be the town of men, freed from the widow ghost's empire. These teens will fabricate memories and build a dreamscape in the field and in the jungle.

Primitive is about reincarnation and transformation. It's a reincarnation of presence (and absence). It's also a reincarnation of cinema as a means of transportation as it was in the time of Melies: the 'motion picture' carries us from our own world. Primitive is a meditation on those voyages in fabulous vehicles that bring about the transformation of people and of light.'

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, September 2008 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Primitive / Haus der Kunst, Munich / Interview   Video interview where the director discusses his project, as we get a glimpse, April 4, 2009  (5:34)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter, and film producer. Weerasethakul’s narratives are based on myths and memories. Several of his films received international prizes such as the jury prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for his feature film Tropical Malady.

Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany presents Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s current project Primitive. Primitive, which the Haus der Kunst co-produced, combines the mediums film and installation: viewers explore the work in their own way and according to their own timing. In this video by Gürsoy Dogtas, Apichatpong Weerasethakul talks about his new project.

For Primitive, the artist travelled to the northeast of Thailand – an area where inhabitants’ lives are dominated by animist beliefs and where the belief of souls migrating between people, plants, animals and ghosts still exists. Primitive is a multi-part project dealing with reincarnation and transformation. One of the villages near the border to Laos is the focus: with its suppressed and forgotten history Nabua reappears symbolically. Much like earlier films by the artist, Primitive shifts between documentation and fiction, and is characterised by quiet settings and great simplicity: the camera moves slowly across a landscape flooded by the phenomenon of a ghostly light, it approaches hills where lights dance, the terrain is gently adjusted and a tree bursts into flames by itself.

Primitive was commissioned by Haus der Kunst, Munich; Fact, Liverpool; Animate Projects, London; and produced by Illuminations Films, London, and Kick The Machine Films, Bangkok.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thai: อภิชาติพงศ์ วีระเศรษฐกุล), was born July 16, 1970 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Cult Cannes star brings ghostly video art to Liverpool  Jessica Lack from The Guardian, October 8, 2009

BFI Gallery  May 14 – July 3, 2010

PHANTOMS OF NABUA

Thailand  (11 mi)  2009

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul discusses his latest exhibition  Reflections by the director, as told to John Arthur Peetz at ArtForum magazine, May 19, 2010, also seen here:  John Arthur Peetz 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is an acclaimed Thai filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer whose films include Mysterious Object at Noon (2000) and Tropical Malady (2004). His latest video installation, Phantoms of Nabua, is on view at the BFI Gallery in London until July 3, and his film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is currently competing for the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Here he discusses both works as well as recent political unrest in Bangkok.

PHANTOMS OF NABUA is a very different undertaking than my film at Cannes. The idea behind my large-scale project Primitive, of which Nabua is just one part, is to explore the memory of Northeast Thailand through one village and its history. Uncle Boonmee, on the other hand, delves into the memory of one man. In the video work, the people of Nabua try to forget––they don’t want to remember the violent abuse and hardship of the communist era. The character in my latest film, however, remembers much from just one lifetime.

Typically, I only work with my own memory; this is apparent in all of my films. But for Primitive, I am branching out. This work examines my memory of the landscape that I grew up with, but since my memory is haphazard, the film is told through the eyes of others. It feels very spontaneous at times. For previous projects I’ve always had a particular subject to spark my memory, but for Nabua, I didn’t have any plan. When we started, we just traveled, explored, recorded, and met with people until we reached this village that has a particularly violent history. From the 1960s through the ’80s, the government occupied this part of Thailand in order to curb communist insurgents. I felt a certain kinship with the teenagers there who are the descendants of the rebel farmers, so I decided to work with them.

There’s a ship that appears in Primitive that is handmade by kids. It is kind of a tool to signify or reflect the idea of a dream, or something that can transport us to another place or time. When we were in the village, the political conflict was quite intense, like it is right now. Part of my idea was to introduce the idea of escape or some kind of dream out of this mess. I made this work during 2008 and 2009, and during that time the “red shirts” were gathering momentum throughout the country and they had started street protests in Bangkok that had already led to the clash last year.

The relationship between pleasure and destruction is very interesting. It’s like light and darkness, or violence and peace. These are ideas that can coexist. Sound can play off the same paradox: It can express both violence and fun. My sound designer found out that the whoosh of the flaming soccer ball we used in Nabua is the same used in Hollywood to create flame noises. So fire can, on the one hand, destroy and burn things, but on the other, when it is being played with, it is a pleasure.

Phantoms of Nabua  Michael Sicinski from The Academic Hack

This short film is a component of Apichatpong's current multi-part project Primitive, the first part of which, A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, world premiered at the Munich Filmmuseum. It appears to remain an open question whether or not Primitive will culminate in a feature, but based on Phantoms, it would certainly be Joe's most abstract feature to date, which is indeed saying something. Of course, he has also made experimental films and videos alongside his career as a feature filmmaker, and Phantoms is a dark, dense, sculpture-and-performance driven work that stands nicely along such short-form Apichatpong marvels as Worldly Desires and My Mother's Garden. Beginning with a shot of a night sky at dusk, jet-black silhouetted trees rustling through the frame, Joe slices the center of the composition with a searing white fluorescent light. From the chosen angle, it looks as if a Dan Flavin sculpture is hovering in a village clearing surrounded by an ambiguous jungle, some kind of Thai version of Marfa, TX awaiting discovery. Soon, however, Phantoms moves from the strictly sculptural realm to the arena of video installation. We soon see that Apichatpong is filming a double projection; a makeshift screen in the distance displays our earlier view, now framed by even greater darkness. The second shot is of a tiny, almost postage-stamp scaled projection image of the previous shot, waving gently in the lower left hand corner of a frame dominated by trees and wind. For his next trick, Joe creates a small-scale rendition of Walter de Maria's Lightning Field, sending almost uniformly perpendicular bolts of electricity (either actual lightning or capacitor charges, I am not sure) down to the village square, illuminating surrounding figures, buildings, and foliage in the uneven flashes. We see what looks like a church spire in the distance, and it becomes apparent that these shock-and-awe sculptural feats are formally indistinguishable from the nighttime illumination of bomb blasts. In actuality, it's just the lightning as seen from the other side of the scrim.

As shadowy human figures begin to take the field, the lightning-strike portion of our program is repeated, this time as a projection in the distance. By now, Joe's overall plan is clear. Any light phenomenon, particularly those which render illumination and destruction visually indistinguishable, will be repeated, once as a direct image, then as an image twice removed. It's difficult for the mind to bracket out Baudrillardian / Virilioesque considerations of the impact of televised warfare, the cognitive dissonance that comes from making its horror and sublimity small and containable. Yet the forces Joe harnesses here are so elemental (indeed, "primitive") that metaphors only dull their laser-sharp materialist edge. This problem, and Phantoms of Nabua as a whole, reaches its tipping-point just after the two-minute mark, when three light sources are convened within the frame simultaneously, at a descending, left-to-right diagonal. In the upper left, the fluorescent hashmark. In the center, the video projection of the lightning charges. And now, entering the frame from the lower right hand corner, the banal / mystic fetish-object that will dominate the remainder of the film. Unseen footballers kick a flaming soccer ball into the field of play. As they dribble it back and forth, and they themselves bulge and recede in the frame, the players take on manifold qualities. They are performance artists first and foremost, acting in tandem with the video screen. They are also keepers of a flame, working to protect it against the all-enveloping darkness. But, as Apichatpong's freer, more mobile cinematography indicates, they are players of a game, ordinary people partaking in everyday pleasures that, by their very lived-in character, come to signify art as community, a sense of belonging, of having all the right moves. Of course, Joe being Joe, an image like this is never purely, unproblematically affirming. When a player gets a good kick in, and the ball becomes airborne, it crosses the night sky with an eerie whoosh, looking and sounding like low-grade ordnance. In precarious times, when the learned gestures of communal masculinity can be turned just as easily toward either sportsmanship or violence, it may be possible to feel too comfortable in your own skin.[Phantoms of Nabua can be viewed here.]

CORRECTION:A Letter to Uncle Boonmee was not in fact commissioned by the Munich Filmmuseum, as I previously wrote. The Primitive project was commissioned by Haus der Kunst (Munich), FACT (Liverpool), and Animate Projects (London). I thank Klaus Volkmer of the Munich Filmmuseum for informing me of my mistake, and apologize for the factual error.

Phantoms of Nabua (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2009)  Lights in the Dusk, October 13, 2009

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Phantoms of Nabua  photo gallery from The Guardian, May 2010

 

Phantoms of Nabua  Animate Projects allows the film to be viewed in its entirety, also seen:  here  (10:56)

 

A LETTER TO UNCLE BOONMEE                    B                     88

Thailand  (18 mi)  2009

 

A world where the past and the present collide, where memories are examined in the abandoned town of Nabua in northeast Thailand, an outpost for soldiers from the 60’s to the 80s’s in order to root out communism.  “Soldiers once occupied this place. They killed and tortured the villagers until everyone fled into the jungle.”  The film attempts to cleanse or purify the village’s past by directly involving the director’s uncle, a man who believes in reincarnation.  As a camera slowly pans through the interior of a house, the narrator reads a letter to Uncle Boonmee, followed by another reading by another narrator of the exact same letter, this time the interior pan includes open windows with tropical images of trees swaying in the wind, a stark contrast between light and dark.  But yet another pan actually leaves the house and gazes outside where a small group of soldiers are digging, and as the camera pans past there’s a smoking object that may be a space ship sitting next to the trees, but the pan continues right on past.  We’re not exactly sure what we saw, but this certainly seems like an image of the future colliding with the past.  One room holds a bed completely covered by mosquito netting, and a soldier lies on the floor in a state of contemplation.  By conjuring up Uncle Boonmee’s past lives, perhaps the spirit of this village, which has a history of such violent brutality, can be transformed.   

 

A Letter to Uncle Boonmee  Animate Projects

A slowly moving camera captures the interiors of various houses in a village. They are all deserted except one house with a group of young soldiers. They are digging the up the ground. It is unclear whether they are exhuming or burying something. The voices of three young men are heard. They repeat, rehearse, memorise a letter to a man named Boonmee. They tell him about a small community called Nabua where the inhabitants have abandoned their homes. The wind blows fiercely through the doors, and the windows, bringing with it a swarm of bugs. As evening approaches, the sky turns dark. The bugs scatter and the men are silent.

A Letter to Uncle Boonmee is part of the multi-platform Primitive project which focuses on a concept of remembrance and extinction set in the northeast of Thailand. Boonmee is the main character of the feature film of the project.

A Letter to Uncle Boonmee  Michael Sicinski from The Academic Hack

In addition to being a magnificent work all its own, A Letter to Uncle Boonmee also has the distinction of playing against the equally great Phantoms of Nabua as half of a mutually redefining diptych. Although Phantoms impressed me greatly on its own (it being the second of the two works, I nevertheless saw it first), it takes on radical new meanings when seen alongside its companion piece. A Letter to Uncle Boonmee finds Apichatpong having first one, and then another speaker read the opening text, which states the filmmaker's intention to make a film in which a monk addresses his Uncle, a man about whom he has but scant memories. In fact, Boonmee's own son (or is it his nephew?) has trouble remembering all that much about the man. What we soon discover is that Boonmee has been subject to numerous reincarnations, and so pinning down his identity will be a very slippery business. What Apichatpong and the film know for sure, however, is that Boonmee has always been in the village of Nabua. Nabua was an occupied town from the 1960s to the early 80s, when military forces considered it a stronghold for Communist farmers. It was a scene of intense brutality and repression, and many of those who were not executed by the government forces had to flee to escape a similar fate. In a stunning act of political avant-gardism, Joe has adapted Thai Buddhist tenets regarding reincarnation as a means for excavating the hidden history of a troubled landscape. As his camera slowly creeps and pans through darkened, abandoned homes, Apichatpong is displaying the remnants of a repressed past, in an assertion of ghostly, vertical time. Frequently, these slow pans will tilt in a slight arc, resulting in multiple depths of field, multiple barriers to vision (broken walls, overgrown foliage, window panes) sliding alongside each other, creating fragmented, differential vision within the landscape, an objective correlative to the problem of history's haunting spirits. What's more, Joe's dominant visual cue throughout Boonmee is the depiction of dark, illegible interiors whose porous walls and broken-out windows allow the bright green of the jungle to puncture the once-domestic space with light and texture. As beautiful as the effect may be, it is also chilling, since it represents the breakdown of human effort's separation from natural encroachment, the dissolution of basic boundaries. (Not for nothing is Joe's new major work, of which the Nabua pieces are a component, called Primitive.) But in addition to Boonmee's visual tropes, the film employs narration, reflexive storytelling, and the power of myth, harnessing Thai popular modes for the sake of a trenchant volley against official amnesia. And, where Boonmee is the more mythic / literary version of this project, I can now see that Phantoms is its sculptural equivalent, drawing on modernist idioms (Beuys's ritual as art; the projection textures of Jacobs / McCall; Flavinesque illumination; Walter de Maria's Lightning Field) to convey the fractured phenomenology of Nabua's occupation, and the trauma is left behind. Primitive is shaping up to be Apichatpong's greatest achievement.

Primitive  Apichatpong  Weerasethakul from Animate Projects

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul Interview  Video interview where the director talks about this short film (11:05)

 

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES              A-                    93

Thailand  Great Britain  France  Germany  Spain  Netherlands  (113 mi)  2010

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a Thai-born, Art Insitute of Chicago grad who cites Bruce Baillie and Andy Warhol as influences, where BLISSFULLY YOURS (2002) played at Cannes winning the Un Certain Regard category that year in what one of my friends described as "the most hostile screening I've ever attended.”  For the film to win the Palme D’Or eight years later is a stunning achievement, but this director has emerged at the top of international art cinema in the past decade, creating a languorously slow and hypnotic film style, using non-professional actors and near wordless sequences which play out in painfully slow, elongated sequences of real time, with extraordinary use of sound, abrupt and oddly placed edits, and a near plotless, minimalist, sometimes experimental film style that never offers more than just the subtlest bits of information. This is pretty much exactly how the director’s films were described a decade ago upon initial viewing and it similarly describes his latest effort.  What’s different is simply what he chooses to focus his attention on.

This is a full-fledged ghost story where ghosts and spirits wander among the living and share kind and benevolent thoughts from their spirit world, as they seem to be summoned by the dire medical condition of Uncle Boonmee who is close to dying from kidney failure, as the film examines the final few days of his life.  Initially his dead wife Huay’s spirit joins him at the dinner table where he’s sitting with his sister-in-law and a Laotian attendant named Tong, which is followed by a bizarre jungle sequence where a black silhouetted creature with red eyes is actually his deceased son who has taken the form of a monkey ghost, now a large sized furry creature wearing a cheap monkey suit that can be found on any movie set, who joins them as well.  Their visit signals a transition into a world between the living and the dead, which the director shares with the audience for the duration of the film.  

 

As they were sitting outdoors, we could hear the sounds of bugs being zapped in those bug catchers which elicit an electrical sound when they are killed by the traps.  Boonmee actually regrets killing these creatures as he’s entering a spiritual realm where under Buddhist teachings the spirit is reincarnated as another creature, where every life is precious.  His sorrow over the killing of these tiny bugs is a significant contrast to what he witnesses later in the film.  Inevitably, the director moves back into the northern Thai jungle, set to a hauntingly quiet sound design by Koichi Shimizu which is abuzz with the chirps of birds and the sounds of bugs in the air, where the cameras advance by creeping slowly through the leafy trees, where large flying monkeys jump from tree to tree at one point, and more red eyes can be seen lurking in the darkened shadows.  What follows is a mythical interlude that reveals the beautiful reflection of a somewhat disfigured face of a princess in the still waters that lie in a pool underneath a waterfall, where she believes a catfish spirit in the water is teasing her, so she enters the water and is sexually ravished by the fish.  In a change of pace, yet perhaps the essential shot of the film, the director shifts to a montage of still shots, showing soldiers dead on the ground, where the discussion centers on the authorities in charge, which seems to defy the spirit of Buddhism, as sending these young kids to their deaths is a stunning contrast to the concern over bugs getting electrocuted.

 

As Boonmee moves further in the jungle they come upon a cave, which is the place of his birth, where they come to rest.  Initially the people approaching the cave can be seen outside in the sunlight while the camera is shooting from someplace deep within the darkened shadows of the cave.  Once the people get inside, they need flashlights to find their way, where the walls themselves have a striking beauty to them, where caves were similarly explored in TROPICAL MALADY (2004), but here they take on a special significance, as Boonmee’s kidneys are drained one final time before they move further, where the walls become illuminated with the stars of the night sky, where the inside and outside world seem merged into one.  As Boonmee apparently dies, his attendant Tong can be seen climbing out of the cave afterwards where he reappears later as a somewhat confused monk who prefers not to spend any more time in the monastery, as it’s too quiet.  The elder monks get computers and TV’s, but the young apprentices are forced to endure the quiet.  Unable to sleep, he visits his family and can’t wait to get some food at the nearby 7/11.  This final television sequence, like a David Lynch rabbit sequence, is haunting in its banality, as one doesn’t expect to see monks wasting their time with such commercial trash as TV or food from the local convenience store, but then, this is a different kind of film, mixing the mystical with the absurd (and who doesn’t do that nowadays?), where after a slowly drawn out transcendental death sequence, we’re back to the crass and spiritless world of materialism and short attention spans.  I didn’t find this film, on initial viewing, as fascinating as his two earlier efforts, both of which I liked better, but this feels like a more relaxed Weerasethakul who is having fun amusing himself and creating this mysterious world filled with dazzling images, and never does get around to explaining who his past lives are, but instead leaves us with a multitude of possibilities. 

 

Filmmaker Magazine [Livia Bloom]

A far subtler other-world beckoned in the Palme d’Or-winning film from this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (seeking American distribution). Its director is Apitchatpong Weersethakul, a Thai filmmaker who was trained in the US and allows himself to be called Joe (by those not-so-fleet-of-tongue). He is beloved by the film community for challenging, magical films like Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), Tropical Malady (2004) and especially Syndromes and a Century (2006). The latter film drew on famly lore—the legend of the director’s parents’ meeting—and depicted this tale with the surprisingly casual intersection of specters from the past with living characters from the film’s present. Silimarly ruled by dream logic rather than conventional cinematic grammar, Uncle Boonmee’s win at Cannes was widely viewed as a happy victory for modesty and artistic integrity in international cinema.

The Guardian at Cannes 2010 (Peter Bradshaw) review [5/5]  May 24, 2010, also seen here:  Cannes film festival 2010: a triumph of politics over art

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Thai movie has a cumbersome title, but it is a gloriously worthy winner of the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes film festival. This is a visionary film in the director's characteristic style: mysterious, dreamlike, gentle, quiet, magical. It has elements that are at first glance absurd, and at second or third glance, too, come to that. But they are beguiling and beautiful as well: the extended, wordless opening sequence in which a water buffalo appears to break free from its rope and roam the plains and forests of north-east Thailand at dusk is superbly filmed.

Boonmee is a middle-aged man, in need of kidney dialysis, who has come to the remote forest to end his days: this is an important place from his childhood, and, he believes, the location for his former existences. His recalling of these past lives is partly, but only partly, a case of previous incarnations being presented in a mystical flashback parallel. There is an extraordinary scene in which an unhappy princess converses and then has ecstatic sex with a catfish. The past lives of the title also refer to those of other people now lost to Boonmee: his dead wife and lost son.

He has come to the forest with Laotian nurse Jaai (Samud Kugasang), his sister-in-law Jen (Jenjira Pongpas), and his young cousin Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee). At the dinner table, they are astonished when the ghost of Boonmee's wife, Huay (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk), appears to them. Huay has come to give modest advice on the manner in which we must surrender to death. But this is not all: the spirit of Boonmee's son Boonsong (Geerasak Kulhong), who disappeared many years ago, presents himself reincarnated as a forest monkey spirit – a hairy, Wookieish creature. Baldly recounted, these events sound ridiculous, and yet it all has something sublime and visionary about it, with a spiritual quality I can't remember seeing in any film recently. Uncle Boonmee offers pleasure and heartbreak in equal measure.

Plume Noire review  Moland Fengkov

 

It is now a compelling truth, a known fact, almost a law: the film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul is one of the most inventive and most beautiful of all. It is for us to provide that little effort to adhere to his unique world, to the melody of visual poetry that emerges imperceptibly from his shots, to his singular modernity. In the vein of his previous works, Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is his most accessible film and his most successfully completed to this day. Drawing on nature's tutelary strengths, he explores the animistic culture of his country through the last journey of a man suffering from kidney failure.

Behind seemingly simple sequences, constructed mostly from static shots, a sensitive poetry lurks, tinged with mysticism. In the cinema of the man nicknamed Jo, sets play a prominent role, with which the characters communicate. We are far from the noisy city, in the throes of civil war. It is far from the clichés of the metropolis, with its aerial expressways, its tourists in search of fun, its huge shopping malls and insomniac clubs. At Jo's, nature takes center stage: catfish make love to disfigured princesses, whose beauty is reflected on the surface of the fleeting water, and the spirits invite themselves to dinner, not to chill the blood but to accompany their loved ones on the eve of their death, even if they appear in the guise of a sort of Chewbacca with black hair and glowing eyes. These same spirits, for which Thais build houses under their own roofs and reminding us that the forces of nature feed Jo's cinema, erect bridges between the living and the afterlife. They invite themselves to the table of the living, as would a member of the family who makes an impromptu visit.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul believes in the transmigration of souls between humans, plants, animals and ghosts. Never ridiculous, falsely naive and simple, the scenes give off an intrinsic beauty that comes from magic. This same magic found on the screen encourages the viewer's imagination. For in this film, none of Boonmee's previous lives are explicitly told. On the contrary, elements of these lives overlap with the story: here a buffalo, there a princess. Many representations exist as in cinema itself: the machine that creates parallel worlds, other lives.

 

Review: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - Film ...  Chuck Stephens from Film Comment, March/April 2011 

Have you heard the fantastic news? The latest Buddho-surrealist jungle story from Thai visionary Apichatpong Weerasethakul has won the Palme d’Or at Cannes! What? You’d heard already? Oh. Well, okay . . . but you probably haven’t heard that it’s filled with loping monkey ghosts with eyes like cigarette embers in a pitch-black cave, have you? Drat! Then lemme tell you about the scene where an extraordinarily homely princess surrenders herself to the whiskered oral affections of a catfish beneath a waterfall… Damn, you’d heard that too?!

The great news is that everybody who cares about cinema has already long been stoked about seeing Uncle Boonmee (with U.S. theatrical audiences just now getting their chance), and well they should be: magical, baffling, mirthful, sublime—it’s everything it’s cracked up to be. So what more can I really tell you that you haven’t already heard, other than to reiterate that 1) yes, you should see this movie immediately, because it’s fantastic, and clearly one of the best films of the year, and that 2) you should then wait a couple of weeks (or until the DVD comes out), and see it again? It is, after all, a film about recurrent visions and round-trip journeys: a movie not just about previous incarnations but about the possibilities of multiple and diverging paths into the future and out of the past; about parallel planes, phantom meanings, ghostly return engagements, interspecies transmogrification, and the double life of each and every Apichatpong movie—where the rarified ultramodern Thai art films of tomorrow and the hoary residues of a thousand cheapo Thai ghost movies of the not-so-distant past always seem to collide in a softly glowing neon chimera of everything cinema might possibly be. 

But let’s go back to “baffling” for a minute, because that’s what all of Apichatpong’s movies are for every viewer their first time through. It wasn’t until my second sitting with Uncle Boonmee, for example, that I realized—for all of its haunted caves and gossamer/ghostly mosquito nettings, its spooked water buffalo, and fade-in, fade-out visions of our hero’s late wife—that we never actually learn anything about Uncle B’s past lives at all. Of Boonmee’s ape-furred, ruby-eyed son Boonsong’s crypto-Seventies Thai Communist lifestyle swinging in the trees with his simian spouse and family—yes, of that we hear. Of Apichatpong’s longterm affection for Kiarostami, so lovingly evoked in the languorous takes where Jen (Jenjira Pongpas) strolls among the low boughs of a tamarind grove, before joining Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) for a taste of honey straight from the bee farmer’s hives—yes, of that we also learn. But of Uncle Boonmee’s past lives? Not a whisper. Dying of kidney failure, Boonmee’s not even certain which karmic path has delivered him to his imminent fate. Was it because he killed too many Communists (disenfranchised Thais not unlike himself, hiding from government persecution in the countryside’s remotest extremes) when he was fighting for his nation? Or because he carelessly stepped on too many ants while walking guilelessly across his own land?

What we do know is that every new film from Apichatpong is a reincarnation of his last, of all of his own previous films, video pieces, and installations, and of the entire past of his nation’s filmmaking. And that just because Uncle Boonmee may not have told us everything we might like to know this time around, we shouldn’t be at all surprised if, just because he’s dead, he’s not up and walking around—or floating through the night sky, or swinging through the jungle branches—in one of Apichatpong’s future lives, future films.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives  Mark Adams at Cannes from Screendaily

The wonderfully titled Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a beautifully entrancing film… simple in story but complex in structure and subtext, and likely to deeply please those who are fans of director-artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Accessibility for those audiences unfamiliar with Weerasethakul’s previous work - such as Syndromes And A Century (2006) and Tropical Malady (2004) – will be limited, but the film must be destined for a healthy festival life and also art-house release for buyers aware of niche markets, or who have handled his films before.

The film is a beautifully assembled affair, with certain scenes staged with painterly composure, and also increasingly moving as the subtle story develops. Plus Apichatpong Weerasethakul is not afraid of adding in moments of surreal humour – often laugh-out-loud moments for that – which helps the pacing of the film.

Uncle Boonmee (Thanapat Salsaymar) is suffering from acute liver failure, and has decided to spend his last days in the Thai countryside, surrounded by his loved ones.

To his surprise, he is visited by the ghost of his dead wife (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk) and also his long lost son, who returns home in a non-human form – that of a man-sized hairy animal with blazing red eyes.

He dwells on his past lives as he contemplates the reasons for his illness, and towards the end of the film treks through the jungle, with his family, to reach a mysterious and beautiful hilltop cave – the birthplace of his first life and where he wants to end his current one.

Weerasethakul never actually makes it clear who or what Uncle Boonmee’s past lives were – they could be the buffalo who escapes from the farm at the start of the film, the catfish which sexually toys with a facially disfigured princess in the centre of the film, or even flies that are swatted by a battery-powered fan – but rather lets the audience’s imagination decide.

The film was shot in the North-East of Thailand, and the lush and visually arresting jungle backdrop is as much a character of the film as the actors in the foreground. In the section devoted to the disfigured princess (Wallapa Mongkolprasert) she is filmed wading into the pool beneath a beautiful waterfall as she talks to a catfish/water-ghost. The sequence is painterly in composition as it takes reference to classic Thai cinema.

Similarly Uncle Boonmee’s final trek through the jungle to a hidden cave is visually arresting as well as being deeply poignant, with amateur actor Thanapat Salsaymar appropriately low-key and modest. His simplicity and honesty works perfectly alongside the more surreal aspects of the film.

Most memorable, though, as the animal ghosts – one of whom is Boonmee’s long lost son – who emerges from the forest. In a charming reference to old-fashioned horror movies, these ghosts are simply actors in cheap gorilla suits, replete with blazing red eyes to distract from the amusingly ordinariness of their costumes. Again this is Weerasethakul having some fun, and offering his audience the chance to laugh out loud.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is an elegantly artistic film that is both visually arresting and engagingly entertaining. Certainly not a film for everyone – but certainly one that will stay with an audience once watched.

The House Next Door [Aaron Cutler]  September 23, 2010

"The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."—William Faulkner

There's a new game in international cinema, one that began at least 15 years ago but that American audiences are only just discovering. Dave Kehr described some of the movement's features in The New York Times this past March: ambiguous-to-incomplete narratives, unknown and/or nonprofessional actors whose real lives inform their performances, a mixture of fictional and documentary material in the screenplays, and action unfolding in studied long shots, which can run for several minutes and in which the chief focus is on how the character interacts with his or her environments, both manmade and natural.

Kehr was writing specifically about the Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, and also mentioned Roy Andersson (Sweden), Lisandro Alonso (Argentina), and Jia Zhang-Ke (China). He could have easily mentioned Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul, currently producing the most exciting work of any of them. It's true that Apichatpong's films can be difficult to get into; when I first saw his 2004 film Tropical Malady, I found myself swooning over the delicately photographed, lyrically motorbike-bound gay love story in the first half and checking my watch, over and over, during the long nighttime hunt for a glowing-eyed tiger in the second. Lacking knowledge of Thai culture or its mythology, I felt, quoting Jonathan Rosenbaum on an earlier Apichatpong film, "a lack of an analytical context in which to place this material."

In time, though, I grew comfortable with my confusion, and not just because I realized that Apichatpong's movies probably stump native Thailanders too. It's because the sounds and images were stunning, so that even when I felt lost I could watch the camera glide past a glowing white statue and be satisfied. My goal became to appreciate the people and objects on screen for themselves, independent of narrative concerns. Ultimately, I found that Apichatpong's movies encourage this shift in thinking—that indeed, a major goal of theirs is to make you see all life forms as beautiful.

Avatar tried to push movies forward with brand new digital effects. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Apichatpong's new film (and a Palme d'Or winner), startles you with effects that go back to cinema's origins, a technique that paradoxically feels more revolutionary than regressive. In the movie's first scene, a family sits at a dinner table, and a dead relative suddenly fades into view. The trick goes back to the French fabulist Méliès, who made movies over 100 years ago. You recognize that you're watching an effect, but the longer the camera stays still, and the longer the family acts calm and tender (offering her a glass of water, asking how she's doing), the more you embrace the ghost as real. Then a man walks into the room, wearing a cheap gorilla suit (see the zipper), and when he says quietly that he's a monkey ghost, you believe him too.

The lead character, a sick, dying old man, takes all this in, remembering his time with these people. Yet the past lives of the title are also literal, and unfold on screen periodically; in the film's most beautiful sequence, Boonmee's wife and he meet as a princess and a talking catfish. The old woman sees her young self reflected in the water and says, "Deep down, I know that reflection is an illusion"; the catfish/Boonmee responds, "I know that you're the same person I loved"; she answers, "That's an illusion too." Yet we accept her state as real for the same reasons we accept the human and monkey ghosts: They're real to Boonmee, and even more importantly, real to Apichatpong.

One of the movies' great powers is to make illusion real. Uncle Boonmee's action unfolds in Nabua, a former anti-communist region, and the cosmic-thinking Boonmee says he's sick because he's killed communists and bugs. Apichatpong has discussed how he sees the process of reincarnation as a metaphor for Thailand's attempts to deal with its past, and how Boonmee differs from others who try to forget by doing nothing but remembering. Certainly a camera, like Boonmee, can hold onto memory, and summon the political past powerfully—not just through documentary footage (á la festival films Nuremberg and The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu), but through entirely new images. At one point, Uncle Boonmee shifts to still frames of monkey ghosts chained by soldiers and led to torture, and we can appreciate these images for themselves while simultaneously considering how more humanoid communist prisoners suffered the same fate in real life.

But Apichatpong's saying more than that movies can save history. He's dealing with the ontology of movies themselves. David Fincher's Zodiac is a cinephilic period piece shot on video, studded with older movie references and allusions, even featuring a scene where characters examine film reels; the total effect is of the present trying to lunge into the past. If Zodiac is the kid, then Uncle Boonmee's the old guard welcoming it, and looking to the future. Apichatpong shot on Super 16, the same film stock as the TV shows he watched growing up, and each of the film's reels plays out in the style of a different filmic tradition: documentary, costume drama, even his own previous movies (he describes his steps in a strong CinemaScope interview).

Each of Apichatpong's first four features—Mysterious Object at Noon (2001), Blissfully Yours ('02), Tropical Malady, and Syndromes and a Century ('06)—were made up of two stories, the second somehow developing and transforming the first. The characters discussed reincarnation openly, and the director helped legitimize it by making it a part of the movie's structure. Uncle Boonmee—the most recent iteration of an installation, film, and video project the filmmaker is creating about his hometown—has a more linear, unified narrative than his earlier features do, perhaps because this time the film itself is multiple reincarnations.

One of its last sequences suggests Boonmee and his wife as a younger couple in a bar. He gets up, and the shot of her sitting, potentially remembering her other selves (is he the person I loved, or an illusion?) becomes a metaphor for the film. Uncle Boonmees vision of the future comes out of the past—both the stories the director's family told him growing up, and the stories he absorbed from cinema. With DVD and the increasing availability of films on the Internet, cinema's past has become a greater part of its future than ever.

Yet even though the movies are alive and well, film itself is turning ghostly. When Apichatpong shows bright purple and blue light shining into a dark room in individual particles, he's giving particular shades and textures that only film stock can achieve. There have been many gorgeous videos (Zodiac is one), so film isn't better or worse than other material, just different, in the same way that Boonmee's catfish form is as valid as his human one—and no matter Boonmee's form, a loving essence remains. It's rare for a movie to simultaneously evoke nostalgia and anticipation. The future that Uncle Boonmee suggests is bright.

Cinema Scope | Spotlight | Ghost in the Machine: Apichatpong ...     Mark Peranson and Kong Rithdee interview from Cinema Scope

CINEMA SCOPE: Let’s begin by contextualizing Uncle Boonmee within the multi-platform Primitive project. The project seemed to be moving you in a more explicitly political direction. Even if in Uncle Boonmee, one can—and I do—argue that the politics is always there in the background, that the communists are always in the jungle, so to speak, on the primary level you’re retreating to deal with themes such as reincarnation and death. Why did the film take this shape?

APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL: I’d never made a film in the northeast before, which is what the Primitive project is all about the on the one hand—the remembrance and the memory of the landscape I grew up with and the films I remember, and also the political landscape. Primitive is more of a memory of the region, Nabua, where I shot the installation films, and about how this area deals with the burden of memory. I travelled, and went to many cities in the region, and ended up in this village where I shot Uncle Boonmee. In Uncle Boonmee I wanted to present another angle on the region to give a more whole portrait.

The idea for the film began when I got a little book from a monk from my hometown, about this guy who could remember his many past lives; he died a while ago and I never got the chance to meet him. I got the book before I made Tropical Malady, and always wanted to make a film from it but I didn’t know how. I really need to have a personal connection to whatever I make, so eventually Boonmee became myself also. I put a lot of references to my own life in, so instead of an adaptation, it became something “inspired by.”

SCOPE: The character of Boonmee clearly echoes your father, who died of kidney failure and underwent dialysis, and you’ve said that certain scenes, such as the dining room and the bedroom scenes, are simulations of your father’s environment as he was dying. But what specifically about Boonmee is you?

APICHATPONG: It’s mostly a memory of when I grew up, and my childhood—not the region itself, but home, home in a more general sense. Mostly old TV in the ‘70s, shot on 16mm, and one-baht comic books that have a different landscape—the landscape of ghosts that coexist very well with the living. I was fascinated by that and tried to put some of that in. More than my other films, Uncle Boonmee is very much about cinema, that’s also why it’s personal. If you care to look, each reel of the film has a different style—acting style, lighting style, or cinematic references—but most of them reflect movies. I think that when you make a film about recollection and death, you have to consider that cinema is also dying—at least this kind of old cinema that nobody makes anymore.

SCOPE: Are you talking about Thai cinema or cinema in general?

APICHATPONG: Thai cinema, yes, but I think Uncle Boonmee will be one of the last films that will be shot on film, as everything is moving to the Red or Sony or whatever, so it’s a tribute, and a lamentation, in a way, for celluloid. The first reel is really like my way of filming: you see the animal in the forest, a long take with the kidney dialysis, and the driving scene. And the second reel is very much like old cinema with stiff acting, no camera movement, and a very classical stage, like Thai TV drama, with monsters and ghosts. The third reel becomes like a documentary, shot in the exteriors on the tamarind farm—and also French, in a way, this kind of relaxing film. The fourth reel, with the princess and the catfish, is a costume drama, a Thai cinema of the past. So even though there is a continuity, the time reference always shifts…The fifth reel is the jungle, but it’s not the same jungle as Tropical Malady because it’s a cinema jungle—a day-for-night drama that we shot with a blue filter, like very old films. You put this old actor into a cinema jungle, and the cave refers to those old adventure novels or comic books. (In the scene with the ghost we also used a mirror, another allusion to the cinema of the past.) And the sixth reel, in the hotel, the time is slowed down, the time has become seemingly documentary. Again it’s like my films, with the long takes, but at the same time in the end when it splits, when you see the doubles of the two characters, Jen and Tong, I wanted to suggest the idea of time disruption, that the movie isn’t dealing with one reality, there are multiple planes…

SCOPE: You mean you don’t know what time it is that you’ve been experiencing all along…

APICHATPONG: Yes, and you don’t know if the reality is in the karaoke bar or in the hotel room. And it suggests other multiple realities that you could be watching, and what you’ve seen before, the reels before could be a dream…So Jen comments that when you die you have a book at the funeral, and where is the book, it’s missing—well, there’s no book, we have a movie! Roong, the girl from Blissfully Yours who shows up in the last reel, says just make something up about this guy. It’s like me, I just make something up!

SCOPE: So six reels are the six reincarnations of cinema in a way?

APICHATPONG: Maybe, yeah. And the girl reunites with the monk and implies that even in one life you have another life, you change your identity…Also, when you look at old cinema the actors never grow old, but in reality they are dead, so cinema is a preservation in spirit of these people who have since passed.

SCOPE: The last reel returns again to your kind of cinema, with the reappearance of characters from Blissfully Yours and Syndromes, perhaps, the kind of cinema that as you say is seen in the first reel, so it closes the circle, and makes it more of a whole than your other films. But to return to politics, a subject which is perhaps inescapable in the current context, people have been trying to interpret Uncle Boonmee politically—what do the monkeys represent, for example. How much is intended to symbolize something, or relate the film to the current situation?

APICHATPONG: If people want to interpret that politically, well, that’s there. That’s one of my intentions. When I see the film I think about my experience over the past two years, and especially the installation—in the original script, for example, there was no photo montage of soldiers from Nabua, but that came in the editing, in post, though that dialogue about the future and people who disappear, that was already there as a voiceover.

SCOPE: Exactly the same voiceover appears in the dual-screen video in the Primitive installation, doesn’t it? When it appeared in Uncle Boonmee suddenly the entirety of the installation flashed before my eyes; it was reborn on the spot. The scene with LED lights in the field worked in somewhat the same way.

APICHATPONG: Yes, exactly. But I’m not lying: this was my real dream. I remember I woke up and wrote about this dream, about going to this future and having this time machine that people can use to see into their past, that their bodies can be a projector. And I put the photo montage in because I wanted to make my voice and Boonmee’s merge. I always say that film is like a diary, and I want to remember this village, and to have some part of the region that I experienced—playing with these kids, making fiction together—in this diary. The conflict that happened in Nabua [that began in 1965 and lasted two decades] echoes and resonates up to the moment, to the problems we’re having now in Thailand. And it also links with the reincarnation and influence of other cinema on me, especially Chris Marker and Antonioni. At first we thought it might be too obvious or too shallow to include the photos, but what the hell, it’s something I love and want to remember.

SCOPE: When you were starting to edit the film I asked you if it was political and you said, “No, not at all…”

APICHATPONG: Maybe the context, the current situation, makes it look this way, but you can link it if you want. Originally half of the script was voiceover, with people talking and commenting on the image—making fun of the image—but then we scrapped that and wanted to introduce more abstraction, maybe to mimic the inner workings of the mind.

SCOPE: All of your films in a way are incomplete, because it seems that you leave plenty of space for viewers to bring their own selves to the film, and also to put the pieces of the film together. Is this structure important to you? This incompleteness? And it’s interesting here because you actually have something that exists apart from the feature that completes it, namely, the Primitive project.

APICHATPONG: Right, right, like another life for the film…I think I agree about leaving it open, but also it’s the same way that much literature leaves things open, and you can say it has a life of its own…I believe that cinema has its own life. So especially when you are editing you have to let the film tell you what to do. You have to be open and not keep things just for the sake of the script, but for the freedom of the audience.

SCOPE: How is the finished film different from the script?

APICHATPONG: Aside from the voiceover, it’s almost the same. We shot more of the princess—scenes where the princess was going to deliver her baby—because I wanted to talk about this idea of the future of hybridization between humans and animals, which I do with the monkey ghost who mates and then he cannot come back to the regular world. So in these scenes the princess is anxious about her baby, whether it will have the scales of the catfish or whether it will be human.

SCOPE:  At the press conference it was surprising for me to hear you refer to Thailand as “a violent country…one that is ruled by mafias.” Are you conscious of the fact that you exist as a kind of national filmmaker? Is this something that you want to be, or is it something that has been thrust upon you?

APICHATPONG: I don’t mind it! For me it’s not a burden, for me…it’s my film, I don’t know what to say. And without Thailand…I live there, the country propels my movie-making, my expression. Even though it’s shitty, it has something…People tell me, it sounds terrible, you cannot talk about certain things, maybe so. But for me Thailand also has many beautiful things. You can also survive in this shitty land in your own way. I think that more and more in Thailand we will see something like Eastern European movies in the ‘60s and ‘70s with a lot of symbolism, not directly attacking the establishment. I’m happy to witness and to be part of that.

SCOPE: And I heard that you don’t care about showing this film in Thailand.

APICHATPONG: This film I don’t.

SCOPE: Why not?

APICHATPONG: I want to show it to people who like my films and can identify with them, but the process of getting a theatre, and advertising a full release, is so tiring…Maybe we’ll show it on one or two screens.

SCOPE: Then there is the monk scene in Uncle Boonmee, and already people from Thailand have been talking about why you included a monk again. In terms of narrative maybe it’s a necessity, but did you do it out of spite, in reaction to the problems you experienced with the authorities regarding Syndromes?

APICHATPONG: I wanted him to present the idea about having more than one identity in the same life. I cannot lie, including it is partly due to the reaction to Syndromes, but it’s also about the reincarnation of the previous character from the film. But you see so much extreme behaviour from the monks. And I just want to say that a monk is a human being. In Thailand people think that a monk or a doctor is another thing entirely, but they aren’t.

SCOPE: When reading the Austrian Filmmuseum book on your work, it struck me that there are very different ways of writing about your films, the Western way versus the more Eastern way, say. What are your thoughts about those articles that interpret your films as part of a European or international art film scene, as opposed to in relation to Thai film?

APICHATPONG: I appreciate that, I really do. I really like it and enjoy the interpretations. My film life really started in Chicago, so you cannot really divide my filmmaking into east or west—there are many references. It helps me and it’s interesting to see, as it confirms the idea that cinema has its own life. I think it’s a success when people have many angles to approach what you do in one work. Of course I’ve read things that don’t make sense, and that’s fascinating too, but I shouldn’t say what they are! Maybe from you? It’s also interesting that when I show my films in Thailand, Thais have a different level of understanding that we cannot translate. So in certain scenes in Thailand people laugh…At the same time some people don’t get what I’m trying to say, both Thais and foreigners. But many people in the West honestly try to understand, and are more open, as there is a deep root of cinema culture, especially here in France. So I am not sure if in Thailand it is more accessible…In Thailand, maybe they are more narrow-minded, and have a fixed idea of what cinema is.

SCOPE: I heard that over the course of researching the film you stopped believing in reincarnation.

APICHATPONG: I haven’t stopped believing, but I would say I have doubts. Researching and making the film, I found many people who claimed that they could remember their past lives, and there is no reason for them to lie. When I went back to my hometown I saw lots of changes. The culture is disappearing and I want to capture that, but at the same time there is something that we cannot change, which is our beliefs, that are rooted in the Cambodian Khmer, which is animist—we believe in the transmigration of the soul, in the circle of life, animal, human, and plant migration, swapping bodies. Thais are like chameleons, we adapt to many things, but the belief in spirits and gods cannot be changed easily. But the more I think about it after making the movie, the more I want proof. When you really tackle it and make a film you ask yourself questions. So that’s why I say reincarnation is possible, but science isn’t at the point where it can be proved.

SCOPE: Wait, can you even prove reincarnation scientifically?

APICHATPONG: Yes. I believe in the future we will be able to. To prove that it’s the working of the mind or it exists in reality, I don’t know. But science will have another step of revolution, you know, and I heard that the next one will be about anti-gravity matter, and after that I think we will know more about the mind…

SCOPE: Maybe you can rephrase it another way—you say reincarnation but maybe you are also talking about parallel universes, like in quantum physics…

APICHATPONG: Right, right…Buddhism and the idea of reincarnation is interesting—because Buddha said he has a past life, but he doesn’t ask us to believe in it ourselves. Usually in science you have an apparatus to measure things, but in the Buddhist way the body is the apparatus, the machine to do that, and it’s up to the individual to measure. And that’s one of the ways to meditate I think. So I think I need to meditate more to get proof, like David Lynch!

SCOPE: In all of your films there are references to Buddhism. But to me your films also have this scientific quality. You like the word “object,” from the first title, Mysterious Object at Noon. In Tropical Malady when the monk is telling the story he uses the word “object.” The gorilla in Uncle Boonmee is not Thai at all, either, it’s a primate, the origin of the species, of mankind. How do you reconcile this with your Buddhism, or how much is your intention in bringing in this scientific element?

APICHATPONG: Maybe science is the wrong word. Maybe it’s the idea of transformation. In the movie, with this six-reel idea of transforming time. Or maybe you can refer to a scientific nature, because science is everywhere and we don’t see it—there are moving particles in this table, nothing is solid.

SCOPE: Both here and in Tropical Malady you’re also dealing with nature, and man’s place in the world, and how we need to reconcile our relationship with nature.

APICHATPONG: Nature for me is an addiction—I like the image, the green, the sound…But it’s a very delicate balance of how not to repeat what you’ve done before, so I try not to use the jungle too much and present it in a different way. The jungle in the film is something foreign, with the heavy sound design, but it used to be our home. Which is why when we go back to the jungle or the cave, it’s like the characters and the audience going back to their roots. That’s why at one point in the cave there’s a shot where you see the drawings on the wall. Some people were there, in the past…you’re going back to origins, when you drew on the walls, and did a shadow play, a primitive form of cinema.

SCOPE: And also, not to be too obvious, Plato’s cave.

APICHATPONG: Yeah, but the more I explain, the more the movie loses its mystery so I think I should stop!

SCOPE: Is there a mystery behind the film that they watch on TV on the farm? And the song at the end? Can you talk about those?

APICHATPONG: It’s called The Last Moment (2008). I’m close to the director, Yuthlert Sippapak, which is the first reason I chose it. I tried to find a movie that I could get free of copyright, honestly. In that film there’s one moment that’s a direct parallel to the action in Uncle Boonmee: the main character can’t sleep so someone tells him to take a sleeping pill. But we ended up using another scene, where the main character escapes to an island because she’s dying, and prefers to die in a beautiful house there. There’s something that I like in that scene. And also to take a soundtrack from one movie and put it on top of my film gives the movie another life. The song [“Acrophobia” by Penguin Villa] is something I cannot explain. I like the beat, but I don’t care about the meaning. It’s some kind of love song where the girl is high up and he asks her to come down…But it’s the mood and the feeling that matters to me.

SCOPE: Can you talk about the film’s sound design?

APICHATPONG: I really pay attention to the details of the sound. I’m some kind of a fanatic. This is my first film to have very heavy dialogue, very dramatic, so I was quite confused how to mix it, how to make the dialogue present like in a conventional film. And we did mix the conventional way and then we screened it…but the last day of the mixing I changed the whole thing, and brought the ambience up. And Rit (Akritchalerm Kayalanamitr), the sound guy, was going crazy, because it changed everything. You know, I have to screen my films to know what’s missing, and what was missing from the film was nature. So we boosted up the ambient sounds. When you talk about reincarnation and the transmigration of souls between animal, plant, and human, you need to have the audience aware of the other lives in this universe, such as insects or birds. It’s not so much changing the sound itself but the levels…and we changed them in every reel.

SCOPE: The sound design really makes you conscious of these other spirits. For example, I thought that in the dinner scenes the mosquitoes were the souls of the dead communists coming back to pester Boonmee.

APICHATPONG: Thank you!

SCOPE: It’s never made clear what Boonmee’s past lives are. Or whether they are past lives or dreams, or even the future…

APICHATPONG: Yeah, he could be anyone. Because the last time we hear him he talks about the dream of the future, other things could be dreams too.

SCOPE: In one way the film is about how death and life are everywhere, coexisting. That’s why I mentioned the cave because there is the shot of this small pool in the cave with small fish swimming—even in this completely dark and desolate place there’s life.

APICHATPONG: Yes, it’s a place where you don’t imagine there is life, but there is.

SCOPE: Do you think about death a lot? Are you conscious of your own mortality?

APICHATPONG: Not really. I think about death in a more conceptual way, about the idea, and reincarnation, but not about mine. You?

SCOPE: I think it’s an issue that you think about the older and older you get. I asked because there’s sickness in your movies everywhere.

APICHATPONG: Maybe it has to do with growing up in a hospital. I like the idea of having a physical sickness and needing to have it cured, because it’s the same idea of having darkness and lightness, or silence and noise at the same time. When you experience a sickness you become aware of life, and of well-being.

SCOPE: You mentioned that you meditate. But are you religious in the sense of going to the temple?

APICHATPONG: No way!

SCOPE: Is it just in terms of religion as personal belief, with you trying to make contact to the spiritual realm…

APICHATPONG: I think it means more to me in a psychological or scientific way. Thai people, sometimes we pray before we go to bed. For me the praying is to help me sleep, so this kind of thing is more of a chemical balance to adjust your body. I don’t go to temple—I think of praying as fun, a rest for the mind. I just read a book about this. I forget the author, but he said that we take a bath every day to clean our bodies, but we never shower our minds. Meditation is one of the ways to clean our mind as well.

SCOPE: Where’s the UFO from A Letter to Uncle Boonmee? Why is it not in the movie?

APICHATPONG: It’s still in the village. It’s so big we can’t move it! We decided that it would be too obvious to put it in the movie. Because you know the film is about imagination, so if I put this UFO in you might think, “What kind of machine is Boonmee travelling in?”

SCOPE: Do you see the feature and the short as related in any specific way? It’s interesting that the short is all camera movement, while the feature is static.

APICHATPONG: No, they are different. The short was made long before and is more of a sketch for the feature. The two aren’t really related, it’s more about me trying to think about Boonmee when I was in that village, but we shot the feature in a different place, in Khon Khen, and then in Bangkok for the hotel and temple. The installation is very different because it’s shot on video, and spontaneous. Shooting in this way you can go to many locations, but for a feature you have to plan things.

SCOPE: When you’re working for a gallery or cinema do you feel that you’re a different artist, or working for different audiences? How does it impact on what you’re making and how you make it?

APICHATPONG: In a way, yes. But the working process sometimes overlaps, as sometimes I have the same crew and use the same equipment. But I’m aware of the different ways that people will see it. I always have thought that when you see an installation it’s like two animals sizing each other up—you walk in the space, the work is more active, you are judging it like another animal. In the cinema the audience is super-passive, like a zombie. As a director you hypnotize the audience. So that becomes conscious to me when I am making a movie. But that also means that cinema is inferior in a way, in terms of activeness of self, but it also has a strength. When you are a zombie your mind works harder, instead of walking in a space where you exert yourself physically. The power of cinema is extreme, and for this film I try to bring this power to the audience as much as I can. I will keep making both films and installations because they echo each other, and this project, it has many forms, and for me it fits very well with the theme of reincarnation of multiple lives—Uncle Boonmee is another life form.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives  Michael Sicinski from The Academic Hack

 

The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]

 

Only the Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

Ways of Seeing [Yoel Meranda]  October 19, 2010

 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - Reverse Shot  Michael Koresky from Reverse Shot, February 28, 2011

 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - Reverse Shot  Matt Connolly, April 15, 2013

 

Critical Mass  Dennis Kim from ArtForum, May 27, 2010

 

114. Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Loong Boonmee raleuk chat” (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) (2010): Layers of freewheeling thoughts that include philosophy, nature, politics, and life’s contradictions, crossing borders of time, life and death, illusion and reality  Jugu Abraham from Movies That Make You Think

 

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]

 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives  Chris Knipp from Filmleaf

 

Slant Magazine [Ed Gonzalez]

 

World Socialist Web Site [Richard Phillips]

 

CANNES REVIEW | Impenetrable Fantasy: “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”  Eric Kohn at Cannes from indieWIRE, May 21, 2010

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

 

Sound On Sight  Justine Smith

 

Phil on Film [Philip Concannon]

 

The Daily Notebook [Daniel Kasman]  Cannes, May 24, 2010, also seen here:  Cannes 2010. Notre oncle: "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)

 

The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review [Richard Scheib]

 

Movies [Tom von Logue Newth]

 

Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

A Nutshell Review [Stefan S]

 

Lessons of Darkness [Nick Schager]

 

The L Magazine [Henry Stewart]

 

Filmcritic.com  Chris Cabin

 

CIFF 2010: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)  Marilyn Ferdinand from Ferdy on Films

 

The Reel Bits [Sarah Ward]

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Director's Statement for "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" (2010)   Yoel Miranda, September 21, 2010

 

'Rango,' 'The Adjustment Bureau,' 'Uncle Boonmee' | Film Reviews ...  Joe Morgenstern from The Wall Street Journal

 

Cinepassion.org [Fernando F. Croce]

 

Jigsaw Lounge / Tribune [Neil Young]

 

Smells Like Screen Spirit [Don Simpson]

 

CineScene [Howard Schumann]

 

New York Magazine [David Edelstein]

 

Digital Spy [Simon Reynolds]

 

Film-Forward.com [Michael Lee]

 

Living in Cinema [Craig Kennedy]

 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives  Acquarello from Strictly Film School

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

User reviews  from imdb Author: lothd from Bangkok, Thailand

 

User reviews  from imdb Author: crappydoo from New Zealand

User reviews  from imdb Author: Rorysfirstkiss from Switzerland

User reviews  from imdb Author: K2nsl3r from Finland

DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog: Uncle ...  Blair Stewart

Critic's Notebook [Martin Tsai]

Little White Lies Magazine [Jason Wood]

SBS Film [Lisa Nesselson]

 

exclaim! [Robert Bell]

 

Boxoffice Magazine (Richard Mowe) review [4/5]  Richard Mowe

 

Cannes: "Uncle Boonmee's" Excellent Adventure  Andrew O’Hehir at Cannes from Salon, May 23, 2010

 

The House Next Door [Matt Noller]  at Cannes, May 21, 2010, also seen here:  Cannes Film Festival 2010: Day Nine – Fair Game, Route Irish, and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives 

Cannes '10: Day Nine  Mike D’Angelo at Cannes from The Onion A.V. Club, May 21, 2010

Cannes 2010: "Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives", de Apichatpong Weerasetakul (primera entrada)  a message from Chaisiri Jiwarangsan in the chaotic uprisings in Thailand (friend and assistant to Weerasethakul) from Micropsia, May 20, 2010

 

Guy Lodge  at Cannes from In Contention, May 21, 2010

 

NYFF 2010. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Uncle Boonmee Who Can ...  David Hudson at Mubi, September 25, 2010

 

The late, great Apichatpong  Wise Kwai interview with the director from The Nation, April 20, 2010

 

Kong Rithdee  Interview with the director from The Bangkok Post, May 7, 2010

 

Antoine Thirion  Interview (French/English) with the director from Indepencia, May 13, 2010

 

Talking to Cannes’s Top Prize Winner  Dennis Lim interviews the director from The New York Times, May 23, 2010

 

Interview: Apichatpong Weerasethakul: eclectic dreams  Steve Rose interview from The Guardian, May 24, 2010

 

Spirits in the material world - CBC.ca  Martin Morrow interviews the director from CBC News, September 22, 2010

The Architecture of Apichatpong   Jordan Hruska from Interview magazine, September 27, 2010

'You don't have to understand everything': Apichatpong Weerasethakul  Steve Rose interview from The Guardian, November 11, 2010

 

The Hollywood Reporter review  Maggie Lee at Cannes, May 22, 2010

 

Variety (Justin Chang) review

 

Time Out New York [Keith Uhlich]

 

David Jenkins  director profile from Time Out London, May 18, 2010

 

Time Out Online (Geoff Andrew) review [3/5]  at Cannes, May 21, 2010, also seen here:  Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

 

Cannes Film Festival 2010: Burnt by the Sun 2, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Palme predictions and a brief word on the Un Certain Regard winner  Ben Kenigsberg at Cannes from Time Out Chicago, May 22, 2010

 

Was Uncle Boonmee a worthy Cannes winner? Please, tell me  Xan Brooks at Cannes from The Guardian, May 23, 2010

 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives | Film review  Peter Bradshaw at Cannes from The Guardian, May 24, 2010

 

Cannes winner Uncle Boonmee panned by French film critics  Lizzy Davies from The Guardian, September 1, 2010

 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – review  Philip French from The Observer, November 21, 2010

 

Uncle Boonmee, review  Sukhdev Sandhu from The Telegraph, May 21, 2010

 

Cannes Film Festival 2010: there could only have been one winner  Sukhdev Sandhu from The Telegraph, May 24, 2010

 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Cannes Film Festival  Wendy Ide from The London Times, May 21, 2010

 

The Globe and Mail (Liam Lacey) capsule review [4/4]  Page 4

 

Bangkok Post : Of monkey ghosts and men  Kong Rithdee from The Bangkok Post, May 28, 2010

 

The Japan Times [Kaori Shoji]

 

An odd and wise meditation | Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/21/2010  Steven Rea

 

San Francisco Chronicle [David Lewis]

 

Movie review: 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives' - Los ...  Kenneth Turan from The LA Times, March 4, 2011

 

Palme d'Or winner 'Uncle Boonmee' heads to the U.S.  Steven Zeitchik from The LA Times, July 6, 2010

 

Cannes #8: Of lies and ghosts and fathers  Roger Ebert at Cannes, May 21, 2010

 

'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives' - Review - The New ...   A.O. Scott from The New York Times, March 1, 2011

 

Thai Filmmaker Wins Palme d'Or at Cannes  Manohla Dargis at Cannes from The New York Times, May 23, 2010

 

Politics and Film With Apichatpong Weerasethakul  Laurels at Cannes and Battles at Home, by Thomas Fuller from The New York Times, September 13, 2010

 

apichatportrait   Yoel Miranda silent film tribute to Weerasethakul during an earlier interview, October 18, 2010, on YouTube (2:34)

 

Cannes film festival 2010: Apichatpong Weerasethakul wins Palme d'Or  You Tube (where Gabe may be seen just prior to the 3-minute mark) clip from The Guardian, May 24, 2010 (3:37)

 

a conversation  Dennis Lim interview on YouTube (6:56)

 

MEKONG HOTEL                                                   B-                    80

Thailand  Great Britain  (61 mi)  2012

 

Don’t look for camera movement in this film, as there isn’t any, but it does continue the director’s fascination with actress Jenjaira Pongpas that goes back to SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (2006), still, arguably, the director’s best effort.  This film takes place entirely on the premises of the Mekong Hotel in northeast Thailand, an upscale resort with a balcony overlooking the Mekong River, perhaps the real subject of the film, with the banks of Laos seen on the far shore.  With no backstory to actual events in August 2011, the film was shot just after heavy rains caused disastrous, months-long flooding by the Mekong River (see photos here:  Worst Flooding in Decades Swamps Thailand - In Focus - The Atlantic), where reportedly 37 villages and up to 5000 homes were destroyed in the floods.  You’d never know any of this initially, as the camera has a quiet, meditative gaze at the river gently flowing downstream, with classical Spanish guitar blues and jazz accompaniment from Chai Bhatana, who is seen briefly chatting with the director before resuming his performance, which may actually have been his audition, eventually playing a guitar improvisation throughout the entire length of the film, initially gorgeously atmospheric, but overused, becoming tedious by the end.  There’s an introductory bit of flirtatious banter between Phon (Maiyatan Techaparn) and Tong (Sakda Kaewattana) on the balcony, as if they’re just growing attracted to one another, giving the film a romanticized view of the hotel.  But we eventually learn they are already lovers, where Weerasethakul's gentle style is so rhapsodically slow that viewers can altogether miss the most bizarre occurrences, where Phon communicates with her dead mother, Auntie Jen (Pongpas), but is viewed onscreen like any normal person, knitting furiously while chatting with her daughter. 

 

Jen is described as a Pob spirit, perhaps a malevolent Thai spirit that feeds on humans and livestock, which is in evidence several times during the film, often to humorous effect, where we see spirits secretly gorging themselves, much like wild animals.  Like most recent Weerasethakul films, this self-described essay, or “a contemplation on making a fiction,” also weaves its way between the realism of a documentary film and the fictionalized realm of the supernatural, where at one point we hear “Nobody questions the existence of the spirit,” a Buddhist reference to the living and the dead coexisting in harmony.  Within this setting we hear TV broadcasts mention a catastrophic flood ravaging through Bangkok, where Jen recalls disasters in her youth, the 1970’s armed conflict between Communist Laos and Thailand, when she was an 18-year old girl being trained by the Thai government to shoot an M16 rifle, claiming she was a good shot, where a flood of refugees crossed the border into Thailand to escape the military grip of Communist rule. In each generation, past and present, the suggestion is the government’s handling of disasters is inept, where the insatiable appetites of the Pob ghosts can be seen as a metaphorical reference to the government’s own insatiable greed and corruption.  Written, directed, filmed, and produced by the director, the sparse dialogue spends too much time with ghosts exploring similar territory as earlier films TROPICAL MALADY (2004) and UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010), never really registering the devastating human impact of the flood raging outside.  Continuing his languorous style, using exclusively static shots, the film settles its reverent gaze upon the river itself in extended final shots, where the modernity of jet skis on the river ultimately sets the tone for the relative indifference of the present.   

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Alex Kopecky

MEKONG HOTEL is the splendidly embellished remains of an abandoned project, ECSTASY GARDEN, written in 2002. The original narrative focused on a young woman in love, whose courtship was complicated by her vampiric ghost mother. Left behind are rehearsals, ideas, and casual conversations transpiring at a hotel along the flooded Mekong River. Weerasethakul's films exist in liminal states: between past and present, this world and another, or dreams and waking. The production history behind MEKONG HOTEL explains its particular duality as both a film and its own behind-the-scenes documentary. Delivered with characteristically lengthy takes and a nearly incessant meandering guitar track, this is a strong contender for most laid-back sci-fi/horror movie ever made. The tone is so consistent that you can get well into a scene before realizing which register the film is currently employing (fun exercise: categorize what is or is not “diegetic” at any given moment.) As a whole, it has the insistent logic of several different films existing at once. Don't let the brisk runtime convince you to overlook MEKONG HOTEL; it delivers all the joy and mystery you expect of a Weerasethakul movie.

Post Sarkozy Cannes 4  Robert Koehler at Cannes from Filmjourney, May 18, 2012

A sketch for the larger “Mekong Project,” which will include at least one other film, Apichatpong’s work dances between time zones, physical spaces, bodies and finally, the Mekong itself, a wide swathe of drifting water whose flow forms a steady, epochal background for several, lightly handled dialogues. Some of these involve chats between a woman named Phon and a guy named Tong, whose dog is eaten by a ghost called a “Pob ghost,” a unique Thai apparition that can infect its human hosts with the desire to gobble flesh. Ghosts are real in Apichatpong’s cinema, and they take on extremely carnal, almost Grand Guignol effect: At times, they munch on raw meat (it looks a bit like ground steak tartar), but the mood is never close to horror. Rather, Mekong Hotel is pitched more to the tone of a reverie, made even lilting by an element which Apichatpong has never deployed before: Constant music on the soundtrack, written and performed by classical guitarist Chai Bhatana, who describes on-screen to the director that it’s something like “Spanish blues.” It’s perhaps the right kind of music to listen to in order to salve the pain of the recent terrible floods in Thailand, which effectively shut down the country during the end of last year. The scars of the flood haunt the film—an exposed tree trunk at one point appears in the middle of the giant river, reminding one and all about the disaster. Many of the scenes offer glimpses of what could be a much larger film to come. But Mekong Hotel is more rounded than a mere sketch: The spectre of the flood gives way in the astonishing closing image to the river as a field of play and continuity. In a grand long shot from the hotel balcony, several people race around on SkiDoos, carving curves and circles and paisley patterns in the gray-blue current, and then a long boat emerges at the bottom of the frame, cutting a straight line against the current, an arrow of tradition intersecting with the whirls of modernity. It one-ups the magnificent river race sequence in Antonioni’s Il grido, where race boats are seen cutting lovely lines on the surface of another gray river, a set of images that draw great beauty from the interplay between the infinite flow of the river, the shift and shape of the water created by the playful boats. Apichatpong’s final image expands on this, with boats of the past and present brought together in an integrated pattern, history unfolding as the river flows past.

Cannes 2012. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Mekong Hotel" on - M  Daniel Kasman at Cannes from Mubi, May 18, 2012, also seen here:  Daniel Kasman 

 

Mekong Hotel, like Uncle Boonmee Recalls His Past Lives before it, absorbs and re-interprets past projects realized (or not) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A short feature which bridges the imaginary gap between an unrealized screenplay, meagre means, digital cinema, and a roundabout collection of seemingly unrelated interests, the Thai director once again comes up with something unexpected and something hybrid. Part multi-generational ghost-vampire story (an as-yet unrealized script...here's hoping), part documentary of a hotel on the Mekong river, part (fake?) behind the scenes of a production of...something (the documentary? the genre film?), part excuse to play a wash of relaxing, improvised guitar music across the nearly hour long runtime, the film takes slivers of ideas of high fiction, documentary, actuality and the regional-historic and not so much pares those ideas down as creates with the most limited means suggestions of that which could be and now, paradoxically, is, at a slant. The river floats by in the background of most shots—including the dynamically relaxing, entrancing final shot, reminiscent of recent Ernie Gehr New York harbor films, of the digitally-pulsating river motion and circulating vessels—each bare strand of the film is introduced and then, as if forgotten, left, and traces later recalled. Intestines are eaten by possessed ghosts in one section; Apichatpong's regular actress Jenjira Pongas recalls, in a staged interview while crocheting a pink object in front of the river lit by the setting sun, her days as an eighteen year old girl being trained by the Thai government to shoot an M16; the film's actor discusses with an off-camera director which graphic t-shirt to wear as a costume; and, placed behind it all and sometimes in front of the camera, is Chai Bhatana's warming, soothing guitar playing. The opening guitar tune—later subtitled as a rehearsal, then deemed “awful” by the player, who asks “where was I?”—proceeds to play over all these types of images, as if gathering, drawing together. His playing in fact synthesizes the stories and images much as the river, the hotel setting (similar to the dream-genre synthesis of the other Asian hotel film of 2012, Wakamatsu's Petrel Blue Hotel), and the film itself does, casually uniting the disparate, the false and the “facts,” old stories of ghosts and new ones of royal visits and local floods, all filmed in an identical mise-en-scène. It is a small film of disparate parts in flux but held in a fragile, wispy unity. 

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Cinema Scope  Chuck Stephens

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul may be on a first name basis with more people on the planet than any other Cannes-prizewinning filmmaker in history, but no matter how “average” Joe—or Joei, as he’s more recently taken to transliterating his nickname—might seem to become, he never begins to lose his heavenly glow, his beatific gleam. When Joei smiles, cinema and its billion starstruck amants smile with him. He is—like his magical, ephemeral, transcendent films—enchanting, and a generation has now come of age loving his movies about fearlessly grinning boys and freaky ventilation systems and far-out haunted forests; blissfully his as they surrender, still young, to Tropical Malady (2004), as recollective as Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) when they later come to recognize the ways in which each of his films seems to haunt all the others. “It’s as if my films are like mini-diaries of my recollections of certain things and events,” Joei remarked almost a decade ago, describing from the start his filmography as diary and fever dream, neither quite documentary nor necessarily fiction. “I’m finishing one very romantic film of a hotel on the Mekong, in Nong Khai,” Joei says of his latest project. “It’s a one-hour film called Mekong Hotel. My crew goes there, and my friend, who is a guitar teacher, improvises and plays guitar for an hour. My crew is trying to rehearse a movie about this ghost who goes around eating innards. It’s like a documentary but every scene is shot in a hotel room.” The first thing this suggests is the sort of continuity we’ve come to expect from Apichatpong: the final scene of Uncle Boonmee also took place in a hotel room. But in the same way that Uncle Boonmee seemed somehow rounded-off, at once foretold and reconfigured, in the short videos Letter to Uncle Boonmee (2009) and Phantoms of Nabua (2009) and the Primitive exhibition, there are already sets of what the filmmaker terms “satellites of memories” forming around Mekong Hotel. As I type these words, Apichatpong’s new installation, For Tomorrow For Tonight—a reverie about the future, also set along the Mekong, featuring near-future-ish humanoids borrowed from Ray Bradbury and, in the case of a character named “Power Boy,” covered in strings of lights from a Thai karaoke joint—is still on display at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. (There’s also a widely available catalogue available for those out of commuting distance to the show.) Joei’s only been making movies for a little over a decade now, yet it seems like just an instant—the richest imaginable of instants. May it always seem that way.

 

CANNES REVIEW: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Dreamy 'Mekong .  Eric Kohn at Cannes from indieWIRE, May 17, 2012, also seen here:  Eric Kohn

 

Thai director and installation artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul has steadily made his way from exclusively receiving a highly specialized form of cinephilic admiration for his plethora of experimental shorts and structurally ambitious features to global status as one of the most enthrallingly cryptic filmmakers working today. His recent popularity mainly stems from his 2009 Palme d'Or win for "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives." Although an established auteur years before "Uncle Boonmee," that last movie most clearly defined his far-reaching aesthetic of loopy existential storytelling filtered through Thai folklore and other mystical conceits. Weerasethakul's new hourlong experimental feature "Mekong Hotel," cobbled together from ideas for another unrealized project, reaffirms the filmmaker's appeal by simply arranging the same core elements into a distinctly odd collage.

According to the director, "Mekong Hotel" takes its inspiration from a story Weerasethakul originally wrote for a movie called "Ecstasy Garden" with an utterly batty premise. Weerasethakul's initial idea involved an alien vampire ghost who also happens to be the mother of a young woman unaware of her supernatural lineage. In the original plot, the mother's appetite gets the best of her and she devours her kin in the midst of the younger woman's romancing of a local teen boy.

"Mekong Hotel" sort of follows this trajectory without exactly spelling it out; The movie contains scenes of rehearsals for "Ecstasy Garden" in the bedrooms and balcony of the titular hotel in northeastern Thailand, where the Mekong River flows majestically by with a lyrical coherence not unlike the experience of taking in Weerasethakul's movies.

Shot on video with a free-associative style that moves between scripted and non-fiction material, the backstory of "Mekong Hotel" might place it in the tradition of documentaries about botched film projects like "Lost in La Macha" or "Hearts of Darkness," but rather than chronicling a production history, Weeresethakul boils his original idea down to its strangest ingredients. A master of slowly cultivating atmosphere even within the framework of this concise running time, the director threads a mellow acoustic guitar tune through the duration of the movie to establish a peaceful tone that grows in its hypnotic effect, echoing the movie's transition into a bizarre plane.

A prolonged discussion about the "pob ghost," an invented carnivorous species Weerasethakul first heard about in his youth, sets the stage for some of the weirder circumstances that follow, including the mother feasting on the entrails of her sleeping daughter and a monologue in which one of the characters comes to accept his future reincarnation as a horse (and maybe, after that, some insects). Once you get used to Weerasethakul's anything-goes rhythm, it's easy enough to follow him into the realm of science fiction -- when it turns out a wiry machine enables one of the hotel residents to sever his soul from his body. Somehow, the transition fits the scenario, which glides from moment to moment as if Weerasethakul himself possessed such a machine.   

The mellow soundtrack often accentuates the setting's tranquil qualities, but it just as easily plays against it with abrupt cuts to a character caked in blood -- echoing the memorable arrival of the Ghost Monkey in "Uncle Boonmee." Just when the movie slows down, it throws another irreverent twist into the frame, then gradually teeters off in favor of a tidy resolution. Never thrilling or transcendent, "Mekong Hotel" still inches toward profundity.

Despite its mysterious nature, the ploy of "Mekong Hotel" is transparent: Weerasethakul appears in the opening scene taking notes. From the outset, he's a comforting presence -- as if there to assure viewers that, no matter what happens, he has a handle on the situation. And through its lingering set of images and soul-searching monologues, he does: No mind-altering fever dream on the level of "Uncle Boonmee," the doodles for ideas in "Mekong Hotel" still show that, even unfinished, Weerasethakul's world is worth a return visit.

Criticwire grade: B

HOW WILL IT PLAY? Too brief and non-linear for any kind of extended theatrical release, "Mekong Hotel" could benefit greatly from availability online; it could also find eager crowds at cinephile-oriented screening series like New York's Film Comment Selects.

 

Richard Lowell MacDonald  The Face of Auntie Jen from Criticine, May 9, 2012  

 

CANNES 2012: Apichatpong Weerasethakul' s MEKONG HOTEL  Simon Abrams at Cannes from indieWIRE Press Play, May 17, 2012, also seen here:  Simon Abrams

 

Mekong Hotel  Fionnuala Halligan at Cannes from Screendaily, also seen here:  Mekong Hotel | Review | Screen

 

VIFF 2012 - Mapping Memories of Past Ghosts  Eric from Surface2Air, September 30, 2012

 

First Looks At Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mekong Hotel And ...  Joshua Brunsting from Criterion Cast

 

DAILY | Cannes 2012 | Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s MEKONG HOTEL »  David Hudson at Cannes from Fandor, May 18, 2012

 

Surreally Yours: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cinematic Journey ...  Kathie Smith from Walker Art, September 22, 2012

 

Only light and memory - Criticine :: elevating discourse on southeast ...  Apichatpong Weerasethakul conversation with the participants of the workshop conducted by May Adadol Ingawanij and David Teh at Khon Kaen University in the northeast region of Isaan, where the filmmaker had studied, on August 15, 2010, published at Criticine, May 9, 2012

 

Mekong Hotel: Cannes Review  Neil Young at Cannes from The Hollywood Reporter, May 18, 2012

 

Variety [Maggie Lee] at Cannes, May 18, 2012, also seen here:  Maggie Lee

 

Cannes 2012: Mekong Hotel – review | Film | guardian.co.uk  Peter Bradshaw at Cannes from The Guardian, May 18, 2012, also seen here:  Peter Bradshaw

 

Flooding along the Mekong River : Natural Hazards  Phil Star, August 12, 2011

 

Flooding along the Mekong River : Natural Hazards  Earth Observatory, August 13, 2011

 

Scores die in worst Mekong flooding since 2000 | Reuters  Prak Chan Thul, September 30, 2011

 

Worst Flooding in Decades Swamps Thailand - In Focus - The Atlantic  October 12, 2011

 

CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR (Rak ti Khon Kaen)                  B-                    82

Thailand  Great Britain  France  Germany  Malaysia  South Korea  Mexico  USA  Norway  (122 mi)  2015

 

While many have been drawn to this critically praised film, another of an unending number of glacially paced Weerasethakul films where the past protrudes into the present creating a languorous, dreamlike atmosphere, it was actually the film of the festival that held the most anticipation and highest hopes ahead of time for this viewer, but also the biggest let down, where the rural hospital setting seemed to be the closest to SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (2006), the most dramatically complex and visually intoxicating of the director’s films.  But as the 7th film seen by this director, this turns out to be among my least favorite among them.  Premiering at Cannes, 6 of the 19 films screening in Un Certain Regard won awards, but this film was not among them, yet there were outcries in critical circles, including Stephanie Zacharek from The Village Voice, Jordan Cronk from Reverse Shot, Nicolas Rapold from Film Comment, and Daniel Fairfax from Senses of Cinema, charging that its exclusion from Competition films was “incomprehensible,” bordering on criminal, calling it “the towering achievement of Un Certain Regard.”  Compared to everybody else, this director’s films defy description, as he so beautifully integrates a dreamlike mysticism into the narrative of his films, always drawing a line between dreams and waking life, where voices emanating from a distant past or ghosts from the dead often visit the living, where blurring the lines between what’s real and imaginary is usually indistinguishable.  Perhaps one has simply grown tired of this exact same scenario occurring in all of his films, all portrayed so matter-of-factly, as no one ever acts surprised to see them, where he hasn’t really discovered any new way of visually expressing this phenomenon, but continues to make films with similar narratives that emanate from the same familiar world.  It is difficult to shake the fact that one feels like they have seen this film before, though perhaps in another variation on a similar theme.  After awhile it stops feeling revelatory. 

 

Filmed in the director’s home town of Khon Kaen in northeast Thailand, a children’s schoolroom has been converted to a military hospital for soldiers suffering from a rare sleeping sickness, each lying comatose in beds connected to an oxygen mask, also these glowing fluorescent tubes of light that change in color from pastel pink to neon green, easily the most interesting visual feature of the film, and something that is never explained other than to suggest it is an American technology designed to help produce more peaceful dreams.  Jenjira, Jenjira Pongpas Widner, a Weerasethakul regular going back to BLISSFULLY YOURS (2002), is a former student at the school who volunteers to help care for the ailing patients, where she meets Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), a medium who can decipher sleeping men’s thoughts and dreams, discovering the soldiers are sleeping on the burial grounds of an ancient royal kingdom and the site of past civil wars.  It is suggested the ancient mythical warriors are still fighting their battles in the past, drawing strength from the sleeping soldiers in the present, which may prevent them from ever awakening.  This sense of pervading fatalism is at the root of the film, especially after the military took over in Thailand last year following the May 2014 coup d'état, where the country is now run more as a military dictatorship, arresting and imprisoning those they consider dissidents, remaining in jail until they sign an agreement not to engage in political activity, which has always been a lingering fear of this director who is no stranger to censorship, having previous films denied certification for showing monks playing guitars or doctors drinking alcohol, where it’s currently punishable by fifteen years in prison for criticizing the king or insulting the royal family.  As a result, this film sends a message of living in an uncomfortable reality, one that is haunted by the violence of the past, where sleep is no avenue of escape, as ignorance is not bliss, and certainly this film leaves you wondering whether the soldiers will ever awake, as if Weerasethakul is asking the same question from his fellow countrymen. 

 

Like films coming out of Iran, the director is forced to use coded or symbolic language, something that he acknowledges is “frustrating and suffocating,” as it is on the viewer.  Supposedly based on an incident occurring about three years ago where 40 soldiers were mysteriously quarantined in a northern Thai hospital, which was seen as part of the government’s reaction to suppressing the latest wave of political dissent, this is strangely reconfigured into the film’s narrative.  Jen spends a good amount of time moisturizing the body of a soldier named Itt (Banlop Lomnoi), who has no family visitors, until his eyes suddenly open and he awakens for the first time, reporting he recognizes her from his sleep.  As they have lunch in a hospital lunchroom, there is a giant portrait of a military general hanging on the wall, none other than Field Marshall Sarit Thanarat, a ruthless dictator who had his hand in several major military coups in the late 40’s and 50’s, usually followed by a declaration of martial law and the banning of all other political parties, where his regime is considered the most repressive and authoritarian in modern Thai history.  Linking the past to the present, at one point in the film Jenjira nonchalantly tells her boyfriend Richard (Richard Abramson), an American relocated to Thailand, “You’re a foreigner, you won’t get it,” a line lifted directly from the prevailing military junta in response to international criticism of the military running Thailand, spoken to the international press representatives of The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, and the BBC.  Jenjira develops an easy friendship with Itt, who drops in and out of consciousness, but spends most of his waking moments with her, where he discovers heightened senses, noting he can smell each ingredient in the food while also feeling the heat radiating from the street lamps.  They go to a movie together, watching the trailer for some ridiculously violent horror film before theater patrons are lawfully required to stand for the Thai national anthem before a movie begins.  Afterwards they have dinner on the city’s streets, where Itt calmly confesses, “I see no future in being a soldier,” before falling asleep in the middle of a meal, where bystanders walking by stare and point to them in a weird intersection with the real world. 

 

Returning to his hospital bed, the patients undergo some kind of experimental therapy in the evenings, where the changing glow of the lights offers a haunting image of being connected to a constantly evolving spiritual domain.  This director has always remained fascinated by the possibilities that exist outside our human existence, where the Buddhist notion of reincarnation suggests multiple realms of the living, both former and future, all somehow intermingled into a higher consciousness that allows for the existence of divine powers.  Jen lights a candle for Itt at a local Buddhist shrine before having an outdoor lunch where she is visited by two long-dead Buddhist princesses (Sjittraporn Wongsrikeaw and Bhattaratorn Skenraigul), both seen earlier at the shrine, now summarily appearing in the present dressed in contemporary clothing, where Jen doesn’t even act surprised, shot as a seemingly mundane moment as they remind her the hospital sits on sacred ground.  Then, as if turning the pages of a fabled story with Jenjira as the main character, they join her in exploring an overgrown park decorated with slogan-like signs, before wandering into a forest, discovering the ruins of an ancient palace and temple, taking a tour of the former grounds, somehow bringing it back to life, all existing in a quiet state of tranquility.  Most of the second half of the film involves a lengthy conversation between the young medium Keng and Jenjira, where Keng is able to read Itt’s dream thoughts and memories while he sleeps, communicated with enough certainty that Jen tells him at one point, “I have seen you dream.”  While this transmigration of souls can get confusing, Weerasethakul breaks it all down to a moment of intimacy between the two women that feels strangely weird and off-putting, as the behavior has sexual overtones, but really it’s just an expression of tenderness that is completely in keeping with the subject of trauma recovery and emotional healing.  Throughout this entire film, bulldozers are tearing up the land just outside the hospital of what used to be a soccer field, where the incessant noise is certainly not conducive to the usual quiet of a hospital zone.  On this broken ground, however, lies some sort of future, whether searching for something beneath the surface, or constructing something above, as kids still attempt to play soccer among the dirt craters.  This film suggests it’s hard to see with our own eyes what lies beyond, as we’re constantly held back by our own human limitations and the endless pain of the past.  Despite the magical elements of the narrative, attempting to stitch together the alternative states of existence, this remains one of the least involving films of the director’s career, where the camera rarely ever moves in this quietly underwhelming cinematic dreamscape. 

 

Cannes 2015: My God, It's Full of Stars! - Cinema Scope  Mark Peranson

 

So, yes, Apichatpong made “another” Apichatpong film—which is probably, alongside the Hou, the most beautiful film of the year—but never before has his vision with regards to Thai politics been so unblinkingly clear.

 

Melissa Anderson on Miguel Gomes and Apichatpong Weerasethakul at the 53rd NYFF  Melissa Anderson from Artforum

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s luxuriant, hushed Cemetery of Splendour also offers a précis of sorts on a country—Thailand—with history allegorized as deepest REM sleep (or, to put it another way: in dreams begin responsibilities). Like the director’s previous works, notably Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (an NYFF selection in 2010), his latest is populated by all manner of reincarnated beings, mostly benevolent. At least three materialize to advise or console Jen (Jenjira Pongpas Widner), a gentle volunteer who tends to comatose soldiers hospitalized in a former schoolhouse. These wounded warriors, hooked up to glowing Flavin-esque light fixtures that the medical staff insists will “give them good dreams,” are thought to be restaging centuries-old royal battles in their prolonged unconscious state. “I see no future in being a soldier,” one of the combatants says upon emerging from his narcoleptic state, a declaration that resounds all the more profoundly for being uttered so softly.

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Alex Kopecky

It's a fitting choice for a director whose films feel like reveries to set his latest in a clinic for soldiers who are unable to wake up. Likewise, the hallucinatory gradient glow of lamps placed beside the patients' beds to calm their dreams are analogous to the particular narrative and stylistic approach that makes Weerasethakul's work so unique and immediately recognizable. The protagonist, Jenjira (played by Jenjira Pongpas), is a volunteer at the hospital who “adopts” one of the soldiers as her own son. Outside the few hours he is awake, her main channel of communication is a medium whose skill allegedly once garnered a job offer from the FBI. The agents of the soldiers' malady are dead kings—disturbed by a government project to lay a fibre optic cable near their graveyard—enlisting their spirits to wage otherworldly wars. The loose narrative structure that propels the film forward is just as concerned with detailing Jen's life experiences as it with resolving the soldiers' situation, unspooling in leisurely sequences that can feel both casual and monumental. By the end, you realize how much personal and temporal ground you've covered without even noticing as it was happening. The elements of the story certainly encourage metaphorical readings, engaging Thai history up to the present day. For all the enigmas of Weerasethakul's cinema, in the context of the 2014 coup and continued military control of the country, the final five minutes of CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR feel remarkably explicit. What is political cinema? Let us hope that, as opposed to the myriad Sundance-anointed “issue films” coming soon to a theater near you, it's something like this.

Daydream Believers - Film Comment  Dennis Lim, July/August 2015

 

Apichatpong merges the spiritual with the political once again in Cemetery of Splendour, the first of his films to be shot entirely in his hometown of Khon Kaen. The primary setting is a place with an array of past lives: a rural hospital, formerly a school, and long ago, a palace where kings lived, fought, and were buried. The ward is now filled with comatose soldiers, who may be waging war in another dimension on behalf of the still-feuding monarchs, and their mysterious, uneasy slumber provides the purposefully ambiguous central metaphor: sleep as safe haven, as escape mechanism, as ignorance, as bliss.

 

Can sleep be an active as opposed to a passive process? As usual with Apichatpong, but more seamlessly than ever, Cemetery induces a sensation of lucid dreaming—there’s even a guided meditation exercise—and of heightened sensory awareness, especially when the soldiers are attached to glowing chromotherapy contraptions that seem modeled on Dan Flavin’s fluorescent sculptures. The mundane daylight magic of Cemetery proves even more potent than the enveloping jungle night of Apichatpong’s previous films. As the movie turns trippier, its political inflections sharpen: a mass sleepwalk down an Escher-esque maze of multiplex escalators and an impromptu game of lakeside musical chairs suggest ominous string-pulling forces at work. In a remarkable sequence, two characters—one apparently possessed by the spirit of a third—wander around an overgrown, sun-dappled park and, through entirely verbal means, bring to life the palace that once stood there. It’s a rare film that can so vividly take shape as a palimpsest in the mind’s eye. There are no monkey ghosts or sexually adept catfish in Cemetery of Splendour, but this is unmistakably a haunted world: one where the past persists in the present, and memory and myth intrude on physical space.

 

Cannes Film Festival 2015: Part Two - Reverse Shot  Jordan Cronk

 

If The Treasure seems a curious omission from the competition, then the absence of Cemetery of Splendour, the latest from Thai master Apichatpong Weerasethakul, winner of the Palme d’or for 2010’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, is an exclusion bordering on the incomprehensible. Apichatpong’s latest (the unequivocal highlight of this year’s Un Certain Regard) is something of a cumulative work for the director, drawing on the thematic wellspring of his prior work while undemonstratively expounding upon his spiritual concerns. Set in and around a remote military hospital in the director’s hometown of Khon Kaen, the film commences with the arrival to the clinic of the partially crippled caregiver Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas Widner), who tends to the comatose soldiers as their dreams are monitored by primitive machines with vertical tubing that glow florescent as day turns to dusk. Jenjira is intuitively drawn to one soldier in particular, a narcoleptic young man named Itt (Banlop Lomnoi), whose drifting states of consciousness appear to move in synchronicity with Jenjira’s touch. Meanwhile, construction threatens to swallow the facility along with the memories of its inhabitants, the industrial clamor of the surrounding activity ringing through the becalmed hospital corridors.

 

Distinct as they are, Apichatpong’s films all appear to emanate from the same familiar world, their narratives echoing and expanding on one another in a sometimes literal, sometimes enigmatic manner. Ghosts and spirits and the souls of the dearly departed continue to physically manifest themselves in Apichatpong’s work, walking and talking amongst the living, imparting wisdom and elucidating personal and historical particulars all at once. Cemetery of Splendour forgoes much of the grotesquery and exotic imagery of films like Tropical Malady and Uncle Boonmee, instead integrating such elements at a more anatomical level (in this and other more appreciable ways the film feels most akin to Syndromes and Century). The narrative moves at a methodical pace, the director’s visual language by now an elegant, organic facet of the film’s formal infrastructure, accumulating dreams, desires, and divine insight along the way. Among other qualities, this may be Apichatpong’s purest work to date, a film of acute spiritual and personal resolve with a boundless sense of natural wonder.

 

Film Comment: Giovanni Marchini Camia visits the set of Cemetery of Splendor  Film Comment, March/April

Film sets can make for nerve-racking environments, but nothing was further from the truth when it came to Love in Khon Kaen, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s next feature. The 31-day production, which began last October in the director’s titular hometown, was so harmonious that you had to wonder if the tranquil tone characteristic of Apichatpong’s films might simply be a record of their shooting conditions.

Love in Khon Kaen (a working title) reflects on the social and political troubles that have afflicted Thailand in recent years and whose roots stretch back centuries. One of Apichatpong’s regulars, Jenjira Pongpas, plays a middle-aged woman who tends to a soldier suffering from an incurable sleeping sickness, played by Banlop Lomnoi reprising his role from Tropical Malady. A tentative romance blossoms that can only be realized through an escape into dreams, but this oneiric idyll is threatened by sinister forces. The political meaning is buried within an outwardly innocuous but deeply melancholic narrative, reflecting the highly symbolic language in which Thai protest is couched due to draconian censorship laws.

While this is Apichatpong’s most character- and story-driven film to date, the script constantly evolved, from the start of pre-production last spring through to the final minute of shooting. Details about the secondary characters as well as much of their dialogue were rewritten after the casting, borrowing ideas freely from the actors’ lives.

Setting up one shot in an abandoned classroom, Apichatpong found the resulting image too gorgeous to simply have Jenjira walk through as originally planned. He started bouncing ideas off his ADs. First he thought of shooting a boy and a girl flirting inside the empty room. Then he considered using it as the setting for furtive lovemaking. Dissatisfied with both options, he asked two actors standing by, a couple in real life, what their plans were for later that day. When he heard that they would be attending a funeral, he told them to talk about it, called “action,” and sat by the monitor, watching their ad-libbed conversation for several minutes until finally he was content. He moved on to the next shot after one take.

The 44-year-old director expects the film to represent a turning point in his oeuvre. “I’m at a stage where I doubt a lot about career and country. This movie is like a farewell. I have to make a movie to get away from old memories and try to build anew, maybe in a different country, maybe in a different form of filmmaking,” he said. “I’m sick of this place and this movie is a manifestation of this thinking.”

Over the years, as many of his crew attest, Apichatpong has assembled a team that—cliché notwithstanding—might more accurately be described as a family. This was wonderfully and comically illustrated during one scene, when, dissatisfied with a shot of an actor’s bare chest, Apichatpong went looking for a surrogate chest among the crew. One after another, every man on set raised his shirt for inspection. Finally, Suchada Sirithanawuddhi, the line producer, uncovered the most eligible stand-in: Apichatpong himself. Steadfastly egalitarian, the Palme d’Or winner removed his shirt and took a seat in front of the camera.

Apichatpong shows an impressive aptitude for turning setbacks into opportunities on the fly. For budgetary reasons, another scene, in which characters leave a cinema, was shot in a multiplex during business hours. When the extras failed to act naturally, Apichatpong shot an actual audience exiting a screening, together with the actors. Even the film’s finale wasn’t written until halfway through production, as was a completely new role for Sakda Kaewbuadee, another Apichatpong alumnus, who was flown in from France to shoot a single scene.

By all accounts, Apichatpong is equally spontaneous during editing, disposed to restructuring the whole film and eliminating major scenes. When asked whether he expected this edit to be a challenge, he mused for a bit on the nature of the film.

“Editing is always a problem, but in this film maybe more so, because it involves these dreams. All these imagined things…” 

Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, UK ...  Kong Rithdee from Cinema Scope

 

Midway into Cemetery of Splendour, Jenjira Pongpas visits the Shrine of the Two Goddesses with her American husband to make offerings: she gives the goddesses a cheetah figurine for blessings on her bad leg, a gibbon for her strong limbs, and a tiger for the strength of her new son, Itt, one of the soldiers infected by the plague of eternal somnolence whom Jenjira helps take care of.

 

“We have a new son?” her husband inquires.

 

“Yeah, he’s a good man. He serves the nation,” she says. “You’re a foreigner, you won’t get it, honey.”

 

There were chuckles in Cannes’ Salle Debussy when Jenjira delivered that punch line. Foreigners won’t get it? They do, honey, apparently big-time (well, except for Thierry Frémaux and the Un Certain Regard jury). In Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s luminous new film, nearly every critical voice in Cannes got the country humour and elegant formalism, the noiseless collapse of the bulwarks that divide fact and fiction, dream and reality, memory and history, science fiction and superstition. They got the soporific beauty found in the sadness of a torn memoir found in a deserted rural hospital. And they got that every film by Apichatpong is a refraction of his other films, a playful, free-associative realignment of his fears, obsessions, impulses, childhoods, hallucinations, and hopes. In Cemetery of Splendour, the disintegration of the wall between image and life, between cinema and truth, is so complete that the ignorant “more of the same” dismissal miserably fails to see how the filmmaker has refined his aesthetics to a mature height.

 

We all got that, but still there’s another layer, another subterranean graveyard that, to me, distinguishes the new film from his others: the strong, unmistakable sense of social urgency that fills almost every frame of the film. Cemetery of Splendour, set in what looks like a primal realm outside of time, is every bit a film of the present—namely the post-coup Thailand of 2015 ruled by a military junta, the place where we’re stuck in a nightmare from which we struggle to awake. It is also a place of Orwellian absurdity where political expression has been muffled, a poet killed, and artists threatened, even jailed. Amid the enigmatic recollections and truthful beauty, Cemetery of Splendour is the first Thai film that responds to the uncertainty—political, personal, historical—of military-ruled Thailand. It’s all the more astonishing because this dark prophecy is done in the gentlest and most civilized, yet clear-eyed and unflinching, way.

 

True, Apichatpong’s films always hum with subversive tension that exists just beneath their calm appearances—the Thai-Burmese border disquiet in Blissfully Yours (2001), the foreboding gay love in Tropical Malady (2004), the Northeast’s communist past in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)—and this friction between tranquility and anxiety, between bliss and pain, is a textural element that gives his work a rarified beauty. In the new film, that tension is heightened, as the atmosphere of social suppression has heated up the lava in Apichatpong’s dream alchemy. The double language, symbolism, humour, irony, and metaphorical lucidity is wrought with ominous clairvoyance for contemporary Thailand.

 

Cemetery of Splendour’s central metaphor comes in the form of sleeping soldiers whose souls have been sucked out to fight an invisible war for ancient kings. That fable, told to Jenjira by the goddesses, is rooted in the primeval dimension, though it also has a sharp edge at a time when the roles of the military and the monarchy have sparked many debates (and criminal charges). If Uncle Boonmee makes a reference to the Northeast’s historical wounds from the communist era, the new film ponders the deeper issue of its legacy, specifically the propaganda of nation-building that has intensified in the past few years: the official pillars of “nation, religions, monarchy” are visualized in a few ceiling shots of the school that has become a hospital, a place of learning that is transformed into a laboratory of oblivion. When Jenjira and Itt (Banlop Lomnoi), a soldier who just woke up from a long sleep, have lunch in the hospital canteen, a giant portrait of a military general covers a wall. That man is Field Marshall Sarit Thanarak, a notorious, Franco-like dictator who ruled in the mid-’50s and whose revolting shadow still looms with every subsequent coup. Of course, Big Brother spawned a long line of brothers, and they’re all watching us. Jenjira jokes about “spies,” and Apichatpong slips in a powerful anecdote in Itt’s diary about a certain political prisoner, an old man who was jailed for a contentious lèse majesté charge and died tragically in jail in 2012. (Apichatpong also touched on his case, quite obliquely, in the Mubi/Lomokino short film Ashes two years ago). In that diary, there are also occult diagrams that are better left indecipherable.

 

Forgive me if I have to be circumspect. “You’re a foreigner, you won’t get it,” see? Jenjira’s good-humoured jibe takes a darker turn because it has been lifted verbatim from the junta’s all-purpose rebuke of BBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Guardian and every international critic of military-run Thailand. At one level, it mocks the phenomenon of rampant nationalism, which every liberal foreigner can laugh along with, but it also mocks the increasing sense of exceptionalism promoted by the Thai conservatives—the Kingdom of Thailand is so unique that no non-Thais can “get” our situation, and thus every criticism is invalid. To me, this simple joke has yet another bitter layer: Apichatpong is often accused by local dinosaurs of making difficult films to please foreigners, films that Thai people neither care about nor understand. The irony is painful, because Thais should get his films’ deepest nuances; in fact the people of Apichatpong’s home in the Northeast, a region perceived as poor and underdeveloped, should understand his films best, the jokes, the myths, the accent and all (I, too, mostly had to rely on English subtitles). I’m not flashing the exceptionalism card here. It’s just so obvious that Cemetery of Splendour is a cinema of telepathy that draws its spirit from the damp earth and strange lore of that land. Rubbing salt in the wound, it’s not clear if Cemetery of Splendour will be shown in Thailand at all.

 

But to read the film disproportionately through the socio-political lens is to miss its true genius. Cemetery of Splendour is based very closely on Jenjira’s life story. Apichatpong asked her to write down her childhood and memories, from the time she saw war bunkers in her village 40 years ago to her recent love life with an American soldier, as well as the trauma of her bad leg, the saddest leg in the history of cinema—and those details are blurred, blended, and superimposed with the filmmaker’s own. “It’s as if I possess her in the film,” Apichatpong told me before Cannes. And here comes the real battle fought in the depths of our subconscious: among the many threads in the film, that the most meaningful tension comes from the way intimacy surfaces from the cover of turbulence. The struggles of personal memories, of the freedom to remember, of the will to open our eyes and wake up, of Jenjira’s pain and Apichatpong’s past—all of this pushes against the structural forces of systematic mind-washing and national hypnotism: the nation-religions-monarchy pillars, the iconography of power, the militaristic songs played in the background of the hospital as the glowing tubes try to dispel the soldiers’ nightmares, the moralizing signs nailed to trees in the woods where Jenjira and the psychic Keng (Jarinpattra Reuangram) take a long walk. Cemetery of Splendour is the gentlest of war cries that rallies our personal consciousness to overcome the prescribed, unfeeling, unthinking doctrine.

 

The last shot sums it up so beautifully. It also suggests that the struggles continue. As a backhoe keeps digging into the tombs of the past, Jenjira insists on opening her eyes to see the present. Dreams are splendid, but it’s only when we wake up from the cemetery that we—here, there, and everywhere—can perceive the true light of splendour.

 

Interview: Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Film Comment  Nicolas Rapold interview, June 1, 2015

 

At Cannes this year, it was hard not to raise an eyebrow at the strangely divergent pair of fates afforded two former Palme d’Or winners. Gus Van Sant, the top prize-winner in 2003 for Elephant, received one of the coveted slots in the main competition for his weepie Sea of Trees, starring Matthew McConaughey as a suicidal physics teacher. For Apichatpong Weerasethakul, however, the historic 2010 Palme for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives seemed to have been treated as an aberration, and his latest, Cemetery of Splendour, was tucked among the self-consciously global smorgasbord of Un Certain Regard.

 

Second-guessing and gossiping over the competition selection is a perennial pastime at the festival, but at the premiere, Apichatpong would have nothing of it. Introducing the film with characteristic grace, he said he was “honored to be among what’s considered the fresh voices of cinema” in Un Certain Regard, and thanked his partner, his growing “family” of collaborators, even his Twitter fans. And in a moment perhaps insufficiently noted, he saved a word for the strife in his home country of Thailand since the coup by royalist generals; that word was “terrible,” and it spoke volumes.

 

Like Apichatpong’s other films, Cemetery of Splendour is a multilayered, entrancing work of art, but its reception also highlights a danger with cinephilia that revels in the pleasures of the trance without recognizing a deeper anguish in the film. Set in and around an old-fashioned clinic in Khon Kaen—Apichatpong’s childhood hometown in northeast Thailand—the story follows a volunteer, Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas Widmer), as she treats a soldier (Banlop Lomnoi) afflicted with sleeping sickness and befriends a younger psychic, Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram). It’s a tale alive with the warmth of friendship, and the serendipity of dreams and spiritual discovery, but this is not a film about untroubled slumber.

 

It is possible, amidst the playful humor and the vibrant color brought forth by DP Diego Garcia, to see Thailand’s troubles poking through the surface of Cemetery of Splendour. Just as the film interweaves worlds of dream, reality, and animistic presence, so one could read into the clinic’s location (described as the site of past civil wars), the use of the Thai flag’s colors, or the portrait of a military dictator in the clinic’s canteen. Jenjira’s tour of the former grounds of a palace, in a forest decorated with slogan-like signs, feels like another rumination on the past and the present. One could even view the extraordinary climactic shot of Jenjira—eyes wide open—in terms of the symbolism of sight and blindness used by those not supportive of the country’s monarchy.

 

In any case, as Apichatpong affirmed in his Un Certain Regard introduction, his new film “is as personal as ever.” Part of that lies in Khon Kaen’s resonance as the place where his parents worked at a hospital and where he grew up; he looks at the city, he’s said, “with the eyes of sadness.” But as Apichatpong reckons with whether one can go back home again, the notion of home takes on ever greater poignancy and scope in a country that has experienced arduous, and deadly, change. At Cannes, FILM COMMENT spoke with the filmmaker about some of these conflicted emotions, soon after the premiere of Cemetery of Splendour.

 

You’ve said this is a very personal film. Could you talk about why it felt that way? Was it just that it was shot in Khon Kaen?

 

No, it was the first time I shot a movie there [in Khon Kaen], but it was personal more in the expression of hopelessness for me. It feels like living there [in Thailand], it is more and more difficult for me to express things, and to see friends being detained, being put in jail—almost like [I’m] waiting for my turn. But at the same time, I didn’t know that, in working with this fear, if I want to really make a movie—maybe not a movie, but any expression, an interview, an interview, or whatever—I have to censor myself. So I make this film that, I hope, expresses these feelings of not being in reality—in a state of not knowing what state one’s in, whether you are asleep or awake. And at the same time, you really want to know, you want to wake up.

 

This sounds like a bad sleep. In your previous films, it seemed as if sleep could more often be reflective. But this sounds like more of a negative sleep.

 

For me, yes. But my friends saw it, and they feel very sad, and some cried, but for others, and for me too, overall it’s pretty sunny. It’s really done with humor and quite playful in a way. But somehow, that’s how I feel in Thailand—that it’s pleasurable, but at the same time, there’s something underneath…

 

It feels that way in the movie too. You mentioned that you have friends who are in jail?

 

Yes. What happened was—with Facebook or with talking, writing, whatever—since the military took over the country in May last year, people are blacklisted and then asked to do attitude adjustment. So you go, and they won’t release you till you sign [an agreement] that you’re not going to engage in political activity. Otherwise, you will be prosecuted and your financial assets will be frozen. Two performance artists were put in jail for a year, two years, and they’re still there now. You don’t know much about this outside Thailand.

 

With your other films, I felt I could find my way into it, but yes, in this case I wondered what a Thai viewer might be seeing that I am not.

 

Well, there are some references. Some pictures pop up—like of past dictatorships or something like that. Little things.

 

Could you talk about the sequence in which Jenjira and Keng walk through the palace, or where a palace once stood?

 

I wanted to accentuate the nature of cinema that is illusion, but at the same time, there are also layers in life, how we choose to see, or not. Or how belief can really affect how we see. I’m sure when people look at the empty space and talk about this pink stone, I’m sure some people would try to imagine something there, or some bed with crocodile feet, something like that. Also at the same time, it reflects this belief in animist culture in Thailand: that we are living not only in the regular plane but also the spiritual plane. For me, I don’t believe in that, but the observation of this belief makes the culture very interesting—these layers of the indivisible. The trees and every object have other spirits, something that affects your life.

 

And then there are the goddesses who appear. Is that a separate belief from the animism?

 

It’s a bunch [of beliefs], like the whole of Hinduism, Buddhism, and animism…

 

Another moment where I felt I was missing something was the journal we see held in close-up on the screen.

 

I took it from a text of a woman whose husband died in prison because of one law that I am really against, because it’s barbaric and wrong. I don’t think her husband was given a fair trial, and bail was not granted. So he stayed there and died. And in his funeral, his wife released this diary about their time together mostly. It’s not political but…

 

It could be hard to make out its full meaning without subtitles.

 

It’s a tricky shot. It’s quite hard for the audience. Yes, that’s one thing that we cannot do in terms of Thai audiences and foreign audiences understanding. Dates are also important: also hidden on the blackboard [in the clinic, a former classroom] are important dates.

 

The title of the film was changed before its current incarnation as Cemetery of Splendour, because of concerns about the law of lèse-majesté. Could you talk about that?

 

Four years ago, when we came up with the film and started to raise funds, we used [another title], but after a few months, there was a lot of political heat. The coup happened, and it was really extreme. Many people were in jail, so we decided not to go in that way. Even though I talk about a different kingdom in the past in the film, the problem with this law is that anyone can charge you, someone in the street can charge you. So it’s been abused and used like a weapon.

 

How did the movie change for you as you were making it over the past few years?

 

During the development I really enjoyed writing with Jenjira in mind. In the end I made three movie treatments, three stories. So Simon [Field, producer] and I picked the one that we thought is realistic. But it was really smooth—it was the first time I worked in Khon Kaen, and I had a lot of support. Crazy smooth. It feels almost like when we made Syndromes and a Century. Smooth and precise. And I did it with Diego Garcia, the DoP, because my [regular] DoP [Sayombhu Mukdeeprom] was “stolen” by Miguel Gomes [to shoot Arabian Nights]. He promised to come back, but he would have come back like a month before the shoot, and I thought no, we need more preparation. Carlos Reygadas recommended this young guy, and I said, OK, let’s try it, and it was perfect. Diego worked very precisely, so for us, with the time we had, there was not much room for improvisation. It’s really according to the sun, the time. So improvisation happened during the rehearsal, and then we adapt.

 

How did you work on the film’s look with Garcia?

 

I mostly worked on composition and, also closely with the production designer, the shadow and light.  thing was for him to watch all my films and then he understood. It’s my first long film to be shot on digital, so it’s different—you work a lot in the postproduction. In the production you make the best composition and also balance of the tone. And then we did quite intensely work with the postproduction, in terms of the weight: more saturation, and all these things you can do later.

 

Like when the screen went green?

 

Yes, that’s post. But that night with the light, the long shot, that’s really not much manipulation, it’s just their life. When we were in the room, we just ran the camera, and everyone was transfixed because it was so beautiful. You could watch forever.

 

Those dream lights above the beds?

 

Yes, I designed the lights with my designer, with LED lights and a program.

 

There’s a touch of science fiction to that.

 

It’s actually a sign for the next film. I’m more and more desperate to make a science fiction film, because I’ve been wanting to make one for so long. I wrote one treatment already, and it was too expensive. It was called Utopia. But now I think it’s better to do a cheap science fiction, like homemade….

 

That clinic was one of the things that held a personal significance, right? Was it like the school you went to when growing up?

 

Oh, it’s an old school. When I studied, my school wasn’t like that, but a typical school that you could see anywhere in the province. It’s uniform, even the length is the same. Even though I didn’t study in that kind of school, it reminds me of this typical school landscape, and it reminded me of my home. When I was young, until I was 15, I stayed in the house in the hospital, and the house is like that, wood. So it’s a combination of home, school, and hospital.

 

Many layers…

 

Like in the jungle, the forest. It’s like what your mind thinks.

 

Speaking of the jungle, could you talk about the signs posted on the trees that Jenjira passes there? They say things like “Time left unused…is the longest time” or “To forget is to forgive.” Are they common in parks?

 

Usually. Not parks, more in temples. Almost out of the Bangkok, we have these signs, and when we went to do location hunting for schools, there were always these signs. I started to remember how they had all this propaganda when I was going to school, or something that was moral, preaching. Also in the school set [in the film], you see these signs, but really small. But at night, when Jenjira walks and she reads one sign—that kind of sign that says to be a better human, you need to be disciplined—this kind of thing has really shaped the country. It’s become a really conservative country, very morally obsessed. And at the same time it’s become very violent. I look at the Facebook of some people who are really active. We call them ultra-conservative. On Facebook they get very violent toward people who don’t agree with them, almost like witch hunts. They curse and tell people to die. And on their page, they go to the temple and they pray and quote something good and meditate. It sickens me.

 

It’s a weird separation.

 

But it happened. It’s a land of absurdity.

 

But you didn’t have any problems making the movie there?

 

Only Syndromes. Uncle Boonmee got a Palme, so it’s okay, and that’s not political there. For this one, I don’t think I can release it unless I cut something out.

 

Are you going to still be living there for the future you can see now?

 

More and more, no. I feel sad because for sure it will affect what I love, which is film, my film, because the land, this craziness, inspired me so much.

 

Sometimes it gets too crazy.

 

Yes. It affects your daily life. You ask yourself, are you still an artist, if you cannot speak what you want to say?

 

Thailand's Genial Nightmares - The New York Review of Books  Gabriel Winslow-Yost, March 13, 2016

 

NYFF: Cemetery of Splendor - Reviews - Reverse Shot  Michael Koresky

 

TIFF Review: “Cemetery of Splendour” | Movie Mezzanine  Kenji Fujishima

 

MUBI's Notebook: Daniel Kasman

 

Cannes Review: Apitchatpong Weerasethakul's 'Cemetery Of Splendour' Jessica Kiang from The Playlist

 

Cemetery of Splendor (2015 Cannes Review)  Tim Grierson from Paste magazine

 

Movie Mezzanine: Adam Cook

 

Cannes: Joe's Cemetery of Splendor Is Starting to Haunt Me ...  Stephanie Zacharek from The Village Voice

 

The Lumière Reader [Brannavan Gnanalingam]  

 

Cannes Review: Cemetery of Splendor | The House Next ...  James Lattimer from Slant magazine

 

Cemetery of Splendour - Screen International  Allan Hunter

 

Cannes 2015 – Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)  Marc van de Klashorst from International Cinephile Society

 

53rd NYFF. CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR BY ...  Tanner Tafelski from Desist Film

 

Cannes film festival 2015 review • Senses of Cinema  Daniel Fairfax, June 2015

 

NYFF 2015: 'Cemetery of Splendor' | Brooklyn Magazine  Forrest Cardamenis

 

Cemetery of Splendor | Filmmaker Magazine  Howard Feinstein

 

The Dissolve: Mike D'Angelo

 

Grantland: Wesley Morris

 

Ioncinema: Blake Williams

 

Rak Ti Khon Kaen – CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR | Screen ...  Ali Naderzad from Screen Comment

 

The A.V. Club: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

 

THE LIVES OF OTHERS Cannes 2015 | The Brooklyn Rail  Glenn Heath Jr.

 

TIFF 2015 Critic's Notebook #5: An Old Dog's Diary, Cemetery  Livia Bloom from Filmmaker magazine

 

Daily | NYFF 2015 | Apichatpong Weerasethakul's ... - Fandor  David Hudson

 

Daily | Cannes 2015 | Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR  David Hudson from Fandor

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul interview • Senses of Cinema  Amir Ganjavie interview, December 10, 2015

 

Cannes: 'Cemetery of Splendor' Director on His Obsession  Patrick Brzeski interview from The Hollywood Reporter, May 14, 2015

 

'Cemetery of Splendor' ('Rak Ti Khon Kaen'): Cannes Review  Jordan Mintzer from The Hollywood Reporter

 

Cannes Film Review: 'Cemetery of Splendor'  Justin Chang from Variety

 

Cemetery of Splendour review: a very calm sort of hysteria  Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian

 

Cemetery of Splendour: Ancient forces make for a seductive and refreshing film | Cannes review  Donald Clarke from The Irish Times

 

The Measure of a Man - Roger Ebert  Barbara Scharres from the Ebert site

 

At the Cannes Film Festival, Reality Intrudes in a Make ...  The New York Times

 

The Power of Memories: 'Muriel' and 'Cemetery of Splendor'   J. Hoberman from The New York Times, August 8, 2016

 

Weigel, Erik S.

 

EL CAMINO                                                  B                     83

USA  (87 mi)  2008  ‘Scope                   Official site

 

There is a home for each of us, for some it's just harder to find.         —Elliot (Leo Fitzpatrick)

 

Another American indie movie that opens with the death of a loved one, followed by a circuitous road movie by several of his friends that set out on a journey to discover the hidden meaning in their lives.  This sounds like fairly typical indie fodder, as there are multiple templates for movies just exactly like this one, but it seems like each generation must put its own existential stamp on lost, anguished souls.  No new ground is broken here, but the exquisite twentysomething acting adds a genuine feel of authenticity along with actual locations from Washington, D.C. to Mexico.  In a potpourri of mixed media, the opening is a little confusing, mixing flashback memories of actual events with dream sequences, then adding video recordings for good measure, all capturing a long ago connection between two friends who initially met as children in foster care, Elliot (Leo Fitzpatrick) with the video camera and Matthew who is dying of cancer.  At his funeral, another friend Gray (Christopher Denham) gets the idea to take his ashes on a cross country trip to Mexico, as it was a childhood dream between the two of them that was never realized.  Along with Matthew’s former girl friend Lily (Elizabeth Moss, Zoe, the President’s daughter on the TV show The West Wing), they sneak the urn out of the house and head on down the road.  But Elliot intercedes, catching them in the act, and although initially insulted and rejected, demands to come along.  An odyssey ensues. 

 

What’s immediately apparent is the quiet, introverted nature of Elliot, a wounded soul with haunting memories whose video camera captures all, as the film is largely seen through his eyes, as contrasted against the more typically self-serving interests of Lily and Gray, two friends who already know each other and who are more used to aggressively fending for themselves.  As it turns out, each was born into privilege, but both have trouble accepting it.  So both hide behind their uncomfortable feelings with brash, obnoxious behavior that strikes out at others before they have a chance themselves to be hurt. Despite the long distance road journey, what’s unique here is that sexual liaisons don’t flair up and Elliot’s pensive nature becomes more appealing as time goes on, especially considering how open and vulnerable he remains while Lily flaunts her sexuality and Gray, despite having a pregnant girl friend, hits on every girl he sees.  But their exhibitionism gets them nowhere, at least when seen over time, as it leaves only scars.  There’s a surprise appearance by Wes Studi as a man chiseled in frontier individualism, a man who sees through their facades instantly, yet still offers the brief hospitality of his home.  Largely a mood piece, two much better films that come to mind while watching this movie are SCARECROW (1973), particularly the heartbreaking phone calls made by Lily to her disinterested parents, also THE SWEET HEREAFTER (1997), which again features excruciatingly chilling phone calls between a child and her parents, another film where tragic past events end up haunting the living.  This film has smaller ambitions, beautifully shot in ‘Scope by Till Neumann, especially the largesse of the passing landscape, where the brazen confidence of the two friends diminishes with the increased size of the world around them.  As they leave the protectiveness of a familiar environment that they can manipulate, weariness and self-loathing takes its toll while Elliot’s gentle compassion is surprisingly refreshing, even though we know nothing about his current circumstances.  

 

Especially as they enter Mexico, the music by Adam Balazs becomes singularly soulful, adding a highly expressive dramatic texture that marks a change in culture and environment.  By that time, we sense who the characters are, what ghosts are in their closets, and can judge their ability to adapt to the changing landscape around them.  The revolting behavior of Gray is pretty much a constant in this film, a pampered rich kid who preys on the vulnerabilities of others to avoid having to face up to his own, while Lily, an exotic dancer who pretends she’s in school, has to lie to her parents to try to win their approval.  Elliot on the other hand, answers to no one but the deceased.  As he listens to each of them whine about their loveless, nearly non-existent families, he was never fortunate enough to have a family of his own.  His grounded nature plays like a Greek chorus reverberating like echoes against the waves of their petty resentment.  While the trend around him is that everyone else is escaping theirs, all he really cares about is finding a home where he belongs.  It’s not the most profound revelation, but it’s a revelation.  Although there are moments of intimacy and humor, most of the film feels downbeat, an undercurrent filled with misunderstandings and missed opportunities.  But an open ended finale suggests something was found as well, a spark, a brief connection in time.  That combustible moment may be all any of us is looking for.     

 

TimeOut Chicago  Hank Sartin

 

This low-key road movie covers familiar ground, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Introspective, video-camera-wielding Elliot (Fitzpatrick) visits Matthew, an old friend from their time in foster care. Matthew is dying of cancer. At his funeral, Elliot meets Lily (Moss) and Gray (Denham), who both knew Matthew later in life. On impulse, they steal his ashes and set out for Mexico, where Gray thinks Matthew would want his ashes spread. Along the road, they share their grief and discuss their own messed-up lives. Weigel has a nice eye for wide-screen composition, and the three actors give their all to parts that feel ordered from the earnest-indie-film catalog.

 

El Camino  Facets Multi Media

Elliot (Leo Fitzpatrick, The Wire) has not seen Matthew since they were foster kids in Washington, D.C. and now his childhood friend is dying of cancer. There is nothing that Elliot can do except record Matthew's final farewell with the video camera he always carries. At the funeral he meets a stripper named Lily (Elizabeth Moss, The West Wing and Mad Men), Matthew's former girlfriend, and Gray (Christopher Denham, Charlie Wilson's War), a self-absorbed cynic who not only has father issues, but is about to become a father himself. Impulsively, Gray and Lily steal Matthew's ashes and, with Elliot in tow, head off for Mexico to scatter the remains in the Pacific Ocean. What at first appears to be a straightforward task becomes a collective journey of unexpected twists and turns, filled with humor, pain, self-revelation and personal triumph. "El Camino" is an intelligent, humorous and compassionate film about friendship, family and the search for self in today's America. Directed by Erik Weigel, U.S.A., 2008, BetaSP, 87 mins.

Moving Pictures Magazine [Elliot V. Kotek]

With a common bond of brotherhood born out of being temporarily adopted by the same family as kids, Elliot and Matt reunite as Matt is facing death. When Matt's ex-girlfriend, Lily, and pal Gray, thieve Matt's ashes to take to Mexico, they agree to allow Elliot to tag along in exchange for the privilege of paying for their trip's expenses.

As their "Camino" unfolds over six states and some fantastic cities, so do their backgrounds and secrets, one puzzle piece at a time. Gray left behind a girl who's pregnant in his battle to avoid growing into a carbon copy of his congressman father; Lily's a compulsive wig wearer with an affection for psychotropic substances and little connection to her family; and Elliot seems to prefer to watch the world through the viewfinder of his handycam, asking few questions and answering fewer still.

The scenery the filmmakers choose to show is spectacular, lending itself perfectly to the big screen. In fact, having actually taken the time to travel the trip, the filmmakers might have shown off a little more of the fantastic lensing of the climates they traveled through. The photography is first-class, the characters diverse and engaging, and the story a cinematic journey filled with warmth and wonder.

The acting is faultless, led by Leo Fitzpatrick of KIDS fame, and the recently successful up-and-comers Christopher Denham (Charlie Wilson's War) and the star of AMC's critically acclaimed "Mad Men," Elisabeth Moss. While El Camino is a road trip in the classic sense of the word, the film feels like more of a tribute than a trial - there is no sense of danger, no injection of adrenaline and no classic arc to the characters' personal situations. Consequently, and comfortably, the film feels philosophical, a musing on where and what home means for different people at different times, a meandering of thoughts and a search for belonging. And, if it's playing at any festival near you, put it on your list - Weigel's work is a trip worth taking.

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3/4]

"El Camino" is a pure American road movie, freed of the requirements of plot, requiring only a purpose and a destination. It is so pure that it involves two men and a woman, all in their 20s, all in the same station wagon, and there is not a romantic triangle. All three have different needs in life and have joined together only for this journey.

They meet for the first time when their friend Matthew (Richard Gallagher) dies. Elliot (Leo Fitzpatrick) and Matthew were in foster care together. Lily (Elisabeth Moss, from "Mad Men") was his former girlfriend. Gray (Christopher Denham) met him and felt an immediate bond. After the funeral, Gray and Lily decide to steal Matthew's ashes and scatter them in Mexico. Elliot insists on going along, and he will pay. That's the deal maker.

What did Matthew really mean to them? The movie lacks the usual heart-spilling confessions. All three are reticent, revealing themselves in elliptical asides. Nor do they spill the beans about their own lives. They pound on, mile after mile, North Carolina to Mexico, one cheap motel after another, lots of cigarettes, desultory talk, honky-tonk bars, a fight, unhappy telephone calls.

Road movies require colorful people along the way. This one has a couple. Wes Studi plays a self-employed man who repairs their car, invites them to dinner, has strong political opinions (not the ones you might expect) and contempt for Gray's cynicism. Amy Hargreaves plays an older woman in a bar who smiles at Gray and ends up listening to his introspections, and no, she's not a hooker, she's lonely and nice.

Mystery surrounds Elliot. Flashbacks suggest a confused childhood. We have no idea where he lives now, what he does, where he gets his money. I first saw the gawky Leo Fitzpatrick in the breakthrough movie "Kids" (1995), which also introduced Rosario Dawson, and Chloe Sevigny, Justin Pierce and Jon Abrahams. Fitzpatrick is gawky no more. He only gradually sheds his funeral suit and tie, tends to lean forward thoughtfully, gives the impression of not saying a lot of things that he could.

We begin to wonder what ashes will be scattered: Only Matthew's, or perhaps the ashes of the false starts and undirected lives of the living? There are moments of self-discovery along the way, but not underlined with fraught dialogue or painfully intense acting. All three characters seem focusing mostly on themselves. In the way this confounds our road movie expectations, it becomes quietly absorbing.

The film is elegantly shot by Till Neumann in rarely seen 2.35:1 wide-screen, good for the big boat they're driving in and for the landscape they're driving through. This is the opposite of Queasy-Cam, and it makes sense that one of those thanked by the filmmakers in the credits is the contemplative Terrence Malick (another is Gus Van Sant, himself a master of uncertain journeys). At the end, one of the characters has a next destination in mind. The other two seem prepared to simply move away from, not toward, their lives until now -- and that, too, is in keeping with the tone. At a time of life when everything is still tentative, there's insight in a film that doesn't force them into corners.

Chicago Tribune (Maureen M. Hart) review

 

Weill, Claudia

 

GIRLFRIENDS

USA  (86 mi)  1978

 

Girlfriends  Dave Kehr from the Reader

A feminist parable, directed entirely in choker close-ups by Claudia Weill. The surface realism doesn't hide the contrivances, black-and-white morality, and absurdly easy choices built into the screenplay, which still ends up affirming the old canard that marriage and a career are mutually exclusive. With Melanie Mayron, as the woman who is Jewish and liberated, and Anita Skinner, who is a WASP and naturally not (1978).

Time Out

 

The heroine of Weill's chronicle of a woman in New York today - not pretty, not gamine, not even jolie laide - is an apprentice 'art' photographer, an uneasy heterosexual in a world of obsessively potato-mashing males, who is bereft when her poetry-writing flatmate marries and moves out. The slightly spaced gay dance freak who replaces her gets chucked (nice touch) when she borrows our heroine's blouse. But not before she catalyses the film's sidelong appraisal of lesbianism - treated, unusually, as a fair option. The net effect is a warm (if not entirely cosy) liberal feminism.

 

Channel 4 Film [capsule review]

Weill started her film career with a $10,000 grant from the American Film Institute, augmented by friends of the director. This enabled her to turn out a warmly observed semi-autobiographical comedy of human relationships. Fat and insecure Jewish photographer Mayron tries to cope with love, a career and personal independence after her room-mate leaves to get married. She encourages a lesbian to stay, and has affairs with a married rabbi (Wallach) and a professor (Guest). Mayron gives a smart comic-angst performance, getting herself dubbed a female Woody Allen. The same was not said of the erratic director.

Girlfriends  No Celebration of Female Bonding, by Rebecca A. Bailin from Jump Cut, May 1979

 

Wein, Daryl

 

BREAKING UPWARDS                                         C-                    67

USA  (88 mi)  2010

 

A break-up movie for indecisive masochists, where from the opening sequence in bed it’s a struggle for this young couple to maintain their interest and attraction for one another, where co-writer Zoe (Zoe Lister Jones) tells Daryl (director Daryl Wein), in an autobiographical quagmire resembling their own real life, that she’s getting bored with their same tired routines, suggesting maybe they should give it a break for awhile.  But instead of actually separating, they plan to the minutest detail, like a divorce proceeding about who gets the kids, what days they will spend together and what days they will remain apart, making it a rule that they should not contact one another on their off days.  Their subsequent time away from one another brings nothing but distrust, where they develop suspicions and start nit picking, making accusations, and generally increase the level of their dislike for one another, eventually resulting in a full blow flare up where they effectively end it about 30 minutes into the film.  But then they inexplicably continue to see one another, as if that never happened, where they bicker and fight and feel utterly miserable, scenes that are painful to watch as the single note emotional tone of the film never changes. 

 

While there were some in the theater that were laughing, perhaps thinking these abominable situations are reminiscent of their own pathetic lives, there was really nothing to laugh at in this film, as the characters couldn’t be less interesting, showing little to no regard for others, which translates to no self esteem, feeling useless themselves.  Daryl is an adult living at home with parents that don’t even like each other, so he has no model for success.  He has a dead end job as a babysitter for a single woman’s child, showing no real interest in the child or the job, but it’s what he does to earn whatever little he makes, while Zoe is continually trying to mold herself into various roles in order to eek out a living as an actress, currently working in some two-bit theater.  The film is relentlessly downbeat, where what the audience has to look forward to throughout the entire film is watching this couple mope around feeling sorry for themselves, growing more and more defensive, occasionally resorting to bitterness and anger.     

 

Using the Andrew Bujalski template for filmmaking, it’s all based on a minimalist concept of showing the dreariness of ordinary life, where people have to continually delude themselves in order to get through their daily experiences or resort to large drug or alcohol intake.  There’s no concept of ambition, or of a world out there that’s better than the existing doldrums, so the featured characters are mired in a world of their own self-centeredness, continually overwhelmed by their own indifference to everything around them.  This is the American Dream lost without putting forth any effort at all, as it disappeared long ago during early adolescence.  It has no place in these adult lives.  Part of the ugliness of the film are the constant gay references, which the characters think are so cute and witty, as they call men gay to avoid arousing suspicions about men’s real sexual interests, which is another way of avoiding telling the truth.  Since this theme exists throughout the film, the intent is always to neutralize a subject by calling someone gay, which couldn’t be more offensive and derisive, as it suggests gay men are not worth taking seriously. 

 

Similarly, actress Olivia Thirlby makes a few brief appearances in this film, each time suggesting an interesting character may finally be discovered, but she soon drifts out of sight, not to be taken seriously.  Instead the director resorts to the Maurice Pialat trick bag, particularly a dysfunctional family dinner scene that Pialat himself used so infamously in À NOS AMOURS (1983), laying waste to an otherwise celebratory Passover Seder, choosing this moment to humiliate Zoe in front of the entire family, including Zoe’s invited mother, a devastating moment that puts an exclamation point on things gone wrong.  Still, even after the break-up has been announced and plans made to move on with their lives, these two knuckleheads have second thoughts and continue to hold out hope.  After all, their misery, apparently, is the best thing that’s ever happened in their lives, as they went on and made a movie about it.  A glib attempt at something honest, but with all the tedium and without a hint of connection to any of the characters, this is painful to sit through as it feels like such a complete waste of time for everyone involved. 

 

Paste Magazine [Christina Lee]

The first 40 seconds of Breaking Upwards are the film’s most tortuous. Daryl (Daryl Wein) lays horizontally over Zoe (Zoe Lister-Jones), and can barely muster the energy for coital thrusts. Zoe, sighing, tells him to go ahead and come: “Really, it’s fine.” Based on the true story of the co-stars’ relationship, this SXSW selection follows the twenty-something New Yorkers as they ease out of their shared yoga classes and into a break-up by “taking days off” from one another. An original conceit, but the rest of the film trudges through the familiar break-up playbook: Zoe often calls Daryl in tears, Daryl wants to know where Zoe is, and lingering glances toward strangers indicate inevitable hook-ups. The entirety of Breaking Upwards is nearly as joyless and dull as the first 40 seconds, and as it drags on, the film seems unable to do what Zoe wanted from the start—finish, already.

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review [3/4]

It's a homemade New York romantic comedy, part John Cassavetes and part Nora Ephron, but Breaking Upwards centers around a pair of three-dimensional, neurotic, interesting characters and has a strong, certain rhythm that sets it apart.

Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister Jones co-wrote the screenplay together and star as Daryl and Zoe, a young couple with a four-year relationship under their belts. A short montage suggests their routine together: some uninspired sex, sharing a bathroom, checking text messages over breakfast. They decide to "take a break," which consists of three days off each week from one another, including sleeping at their respective parents' houses.

Zoe (looking a teeny bit like a young Barbra Streisand) is an actress currently cast in a play; she becomes interested in her co-star, a tall, aggressive type whom she must kiss on stage (he uses the kiss as a way to get together to work on "notes"). Daryl is a writer and spends his time obsessing about the breakup and arguing with his even more neurotic mom (Julie White), though he also meets a couple of girls, including cutie-pie Erika (Olivia Thirlby). Everything comes to a head over the Passover Seder, and the ending -- refreshingly -- isn't quite what you might expect.

Wein serves as the film's director and editor and he concentrates on moods and rhythms more so than visuals, though he does get a nice sense of New York. Instead, he zooms in on faces and behavior, eye contact and tentative little movements toward and away from others. He rarely steps wrong, and even the most oddball character feels like they could be living next door.

EInsiders.com (Glenn Heath, Jr.) review [2/4]

As with most films about young love won and lost, Breaking Upwards comes from a place of genuine pain, honesty, and most importantly, delusion. It's obviously a passion play about twenty-something malaise hoping to contextualize the complexities of modern romance without depending on the influence of technology and isolation. In this regard it somewhat succeeds, as director/star Daryl Wein often paints an uncomfortably intimate portrait of emotional decline, paralleling eerily unlikable characters who hope their mutual problems will work themselves out. But for the most part, Breaking Upwards is just obnoxious, introducing characters and locations that are simultaneously one-dimensional and simplistic, relying on the familiarities of genre as a crutch.

Post collegiate New Yorkers Zoe (Zoe Lister Jones) and Daryl (Wein) have been together four years and are beginning to feel bored, so the young couple decides to "take days off" from each other, hoping absence will make the heart grow fonder. Predictably, this plot device begins a gradual emotional disintegration, pushing Zoe and Daryl down a difficult road of jealousy, infidelity, and ultimately heartache. Wein surrounds his brooding leads with unhinged parents, uncertain friends, and an uncaring world of pedestrians watching the theatre unfold from afar, as if to paint a modern labyrinthine of communal angst. Needless to say, each character's support system lacks a dynamic impact, making much of the film emotionally moot.

Wein enters Woody Allen territory often, juxtaposing the whimsy of romantic expectation with harshness of realistic consequence. But Daryl and Zoe's young ramblings rarely transcend the surface, and their judgements of each other and their parents are consistently predictable and inane. Wein doesn't have the directing chops to create a convincing visual aesthetic to match his characters, blowing out scenes with natural light, framing actors clumsily and flatly. The potent dialogue occasionally spurts forth a revealing gem of prose that transcends the plot, but these telling moments are too few and far between. With time should come knowledge, but these characters seem to be on repeat mode.

Breaking Upwards isn't a complete indie disaster, say like the dreadful Flannel Pajamas or The Puffy Chair. During it's best moments, the film constructs a convincing trial and error process that speaks to the naive and hopeful soul in each of us, showing the disappointment and the longing stemming from a long relationship slowly eroding away. Ultimately, like all films of it's ilk, Breaking Upwards becomes a cautionary tale, another morose valentine warning the youth against ignoring those pesky problems that inevitably grow into devastating elephants. Older generations may shake their heads at the ignorance on display, but there's nothing new about that. We were all young and stupid once, and Breaking Upwards enters a long line of marginal confessionals professing romantic perspective. But it begs the question, is it Cinema, or just another therapy session?

BREAKING UPWARDS – A Thoroughly Modern Rom-Com  Michael Lerman from Hammer to Nail

The term “mumblecore” gets thrown around a lot when discussing films from SXSW that deal with 20-somethings and relationships. Mumblecore has been described in countless publications as a new “movement” to grow primarily out of New York’s underground, independent film circuit. But if you ask an average critic what a mumblecore film is, they usually give you a long list of cinematic techniques—nonprofessional, improvised performances; digital handheld camerawork; loose time structures that cover, at most, weeks in the characters’ lives—that actually rule out most of the films they discuss and instead whittle the entire movement down to only one movie: Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs. Nonetheless, filmmakers like Aaron Katz and Andrew Bujalski get lumped in under the umbrella of mumblecore because of an underlying tangible reality that their films give to the relationships and lives of the young adults portrayed within their microcosm of a world.

The characters in Daryl Wein’s Breaking Upwards live in that same world, the claustrophobic bubble of New York City, which feels just small enough for you to run into people you know at any given moment and just big enough for those you don’t know to penetrate your life in meaningful and abrupt ways. The story follows a couple who, feeling stilted from the sense of this world’s walls closing in after several years of a relationship, decide to adhere to an agreed upon set of rules and restrictions as a way to reinvigorate their love life. They take days off, split up digital chat rooms that each can dominate and encourage each other to follow a strict regiment of space building, all in the interest of rekindling what they once had. The presence of both sets of parents in the story (probably the strongest among a plethora of well-written, excellently executed performances) serves to reinforce the tiny space the characters live in, one in which they can’t seem to get away from their emotions for each other.

Having said that, Breaking Upwards seems to cross some artificial line into a realm where by no stretch of the imagination could one describe it as mumblecore. The carefully honed acting, beautiful, stable cinematography and pointedly decisive direction all tend towards more traditional Hollywood tropes. But the structure certainly draws from the loose narrative form that we’ve seen come out of countless SXSW projects over the last few years. The film itself has very little to do with its premise. The couple quickly surpasses their exercise and inevitably spirals into a series of collaborative events that destroy their relationship. This is what sets Wein’s screenplay (penned along with co-writer Peter Duchan and lead actress Zoe Lister Jones) apart from any of its influences, taking aspects of the so-called “mumblecore” phenomenon—the purist desire to make cinema that meticulously reflects the pains and triumphs of real life—and successfully combining them with the customs of a big budget romantic comedy, creating a stirring combination that, though seeped in escapist convention, hits surprisingly and emotionally close to home.

In a time when the independent film world seems to be ready to move on from divisive projects built on improvised scripts and handheld camera work, Wein’s film stands out, learning from this ever-growing contemporary film “movement” while reminding us why the traditionally manipulative techniques that tear at your heart strings became tradition in the first place.

DVD Talk (Jason Bailey) review [4/5]  Theatrical review, also seen here:  Jason Bailey

 

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir]

 

PopMatters (Jesse Hassenger) review

 

Film School Rejects [Adam Sweeney]

 

The L Magazine [Henry Stewart]

 

Slant Magazine [Joseph Jon Lanthier]

 

Filmcritic.com  Alex Zalben

 

NPR  Mark Jenkins

 

CinemaSpeak.com review  Warren Curry

 

Boxoffice Magazine (Sara Schieron) review [3/5]

 

The Movie Press (Darcie Duttweiler)

 

Quiet Earth [Chris Webster]

User reviews  from imdb Author: macleod5555 from United States

User reviews  from imdb Author: avhan19 from United States

User reviews  from imdb Author: BoomerMovieFan1 from Atlanta, Georgia

Filmsoundoff.com [Curt Schleier]

 

Film Monthly (Elaine Hegwood Bowen) review

 

Village Voice  Chuck Wilson

 

NewCity Chicago  Ray Pride

 

BREAKING UPWARDS  Facets Multi Media

 

New York Times: director interview  Larry Rohter interview with the director, March 26, 2010

 

Entertainment Weekly review  Owen Gleiberman

 

The Hollywood Reporter review  Frank Scheck

 

Variety (Ronnie Scheib)

 

Time Out New York review [3/5]  Aaron Hillis

 

San Francisco Chronicle (Walter Addiego) review [2/4]

 

Los Angeles Times (Betsy Sharkey) review

 

Chicago Tribune  Betsy Sharkey (capsule review)  

New York Times  Jeannette Catsoulis, April 2, 2010  

LOLA VERSUS                                                       C                     72

USA  (87 mi)  2012

 

Everything about this film screams conventionality, as if it’s crying out to be loved and appreciated for tapping into the mainstream market, especially the targeted 16 to 40 age group.  But unfortunately what it really ends up being is an updated 90210 high school movie for the twenty-something set, where a revolving set of characters are still going through the same relationship and adolescence problems ten years later.  What this does is extend teenage adolescence well into adulthood, at least in the movies, which is the new normal in the highly prized targeted audience that reflects a consumerist society. This is a continuation of Wein’s earlier effort BREAKING UPWARDS (2009), both co-written by the director and actress Zoe Lister Jones (yes, the couple that couldn’t break up in that film are back together again), adding Greta Gerwig into the lead role, a somewhat charming and also punishing performance, as she’s constantly beating up on herself, continually making the wrong choices, where she’s something of a scatterbrained drama queen that revels in the center of attention as she constantly delights in her own failings, surrounding herself with so-called friends to commiserate in her misery, which is just another way of not being lonely, continually having someone to listen to you moan and bitch about your problems.  Real people are not as consumed with their own lives as this portrait, perhaps occasionally, but she never for a second spends time where she’s not obsessing about herself.  This can grow very tiresome after awhile, and is especially wearying considering this is the narrative goal.  One must question the rationale of Gerwig’s agent in accepting this material, as it seems like a crass attempt to break into the mainstream, to make a clean break from the critical acclaim of mumblecore and indie films to the bigger pay checks of Hollywood, where she can be sent the same scripts as milk toast overpaid starlet Jennifer Aniston.  Always appearing neurotic, also physically a bit awkward and klutzy, never at ease with herself, perhaps a less intellectual Diane Keaton, Gerwig would seem to be the perfect pairing in a Woody Allen movie, and she is slated to appear in his next release, TO ROME WITH LOVE (2012).    

 

In much the same way Gerwig’s character as Lola comes from unconventional parents, Bill Pullman and Debra Winger, both seen as weirdly off-kilter survivors of the psychedelic age, where Lola has strived all her life just to be normal, this film couldn’t be trying harder to find the middle ground between the comic wit of New York City Woody Allen and the likeability of TV sitcom Friends, where it ends up closer to the latter.  The film even wraps itself in popular culture references, where a male character relates to Ani DiFranco Ani DiFranco - Both Hands YouTube (3:16), the so-called “queen of hatred” during lovemaking, while Alice (co-writer Jones), the best friend of Lola claims “I learned everything I know about being a woman from 90210,” and Lola herself breaks up with a creepy guy using dialog from THE GODFATHER (1972), “But, that aside, let’s say that I swear, on the souls of my grandchildren, that I will not be the one to break the peace we have made here today.”  Marketed as the next hip comedy from “The Studio that brought you (500) DAYS OF SUMMER (2009),” it feels more like JUNO (2007), filled with wise-cracking remarks about the lack of trust and failed relationships, filled with an upbeat teen musical score that is mostly all-girl, which will really date this film in the long run, but for the present, it couldn’t be a more typically conventional, copycat Hollywood template for making a hit, but which is so obvious in its intentions that it loses any sense of naturalism readily displayed from Gerwig.  Her character takes a swan dive into deep melancholia after her fiancé Luke (Joel Kinnaman) calls off their wedding on her 29th birthday, where much of the actual wedding day events have already been booked and paid for.  Swooning into the arms of friends, she is comforted by her acid tongued best friend Alice, where the two continue to act and behave like teenagers with readily available credit cards throughout (though we rarely see anyone work), while a mutual friend of her ex, Henry (Hamish Linklater), suddenly takes an interest in Lola, all but upsetting the status quo.    

 

While this musical chairs of changing partners takes place, former partners continue to express jealous insecurities, self-loathing, and suppressed anger, where neurotic behavior becomes fertile ground for comedy, supposedly, if it all wasn’t taken so seriously, as Lola falls deeper into misery and self-contempt, acting inappropriately with alcohol abuse and having sex with the wrong partners, guys she could really care less about, but she’s hoping it will somehow make her feel better.  Hint—with your self-esteem at an all-time low, sleeping with the wrong guys only makes you feel more miserable.  Add a little pot smoking and who knows what other pharmaceutical cocktails, this is meant to appeal to the ever indulgent middle class, where pampering themselves is what they typically do.  Between bored yoga sessions and inappropriate party behavior, humor is found in Lola’s appearance at an all-male Russian bath, mostly older guys in towels sitting around sweating profusely while Lola is being slapped senseless with leaves from small tree branches by some oversized Russian health czar, while Alice is seen acting in a horribly wretched play that’s amusingly (we find out later) about genital mutilation, called Pogrom, a Yiddish expression for historic anti-Semitic Jewish attacks in 19th century Russia.  Mild laughs all around, with a likeability factor for Gerwig, beautifully shot by Jakob Ihre, the camera behind Joachim Trier’s REPRISE (2006) and Oslo, August 31 (2011), but the trite script is unsuitably bland and doesn’t even attempt to be anything more, where Gerwig is much more appealing as the dizzy space cadet from the 50’s in Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress (2011) than she is here sleeping her way through all her friends, none of whom are “Mr. Right,” ultimately discovering self-empowerment in accepting yourself, where supposedly a light bulb clicks after years in the darkness, perhaps the weakest feminist message ever, remaining predictably underwhelming throughout, despite the best efforts of a talented cast.  What this feels like is a musician that’s overproduced, where the appeal and fresh naturalism of the artist is overwhelmed by an intruding production design, all but drowning out whatever talent was on display to begin with.  It feels like a Hollywood studio that doesn’t trust the material and/or the director, despite the impressive cast, so it revamps everything in a previously successful format.  Copycat cinema is an old trick, but it certainly minimizes the film’s impact, undermining and suffocating every attempt at innovation or freshness provided by a skilled set of cast and crew, where it’s hard to believe a film’s highest aspirations are only to be average, an easily achievable mark of success in the self-adulation world Hollywood.   

 

Time Out New York [Keith Uhlich]

Carefree 29-year-old Gothamite Lola (Greta Gerwig) never expected to be dumped by her fiancé, Luke (Joel Kinnaman), just three weeks before their wedding. But here she is, suddenly manless, before the opening credits of Daryl Wein’s flimsy romantic comedy have even finished rolling. At first, the shock is all-consuming—she doesn’t even have the motivation to feed herself a potato chip. But Lola’s scatterbrained spunk (a Gerwig character hallmark) slowly returns as she reluctantly reenters the dating pool.

You could describe the shenanigans that ensue as “mumblecore Sex and the City” if HBO’s Girls hadn’t already stolen Lola’s thunder on that front. Guffaw as our flighty heroine trolls downtown Manhattan bars with her snappy, saucy best friend (cowriter Zoe Lister-Jones). Cringe as her parents (an ill-used Bill Pullman and Debra Winger) offer up romantic advice that’s either way too intimate or several generations out of date. Feel the suspense as she waffles over whether or not to take up with her ex’s hipster-musician best bud (Hamish Linklater). Gerwig is plenty charming, considering the rote stuff she has to work with (props to the performer for very nearly selling Lola’s “this is, like, you know, what I’ve learned” climactic speech). Yet this still feels like a real devolution—hopefully short-lived—after her distinctively eccentric turns in Greenberg and Damsels in Distress.

Exclaim! [Scott Tavener]

 

Indie queen and recent Whit Stillman ingénue Greta Gerwig has combated her fair share of difficult scripts. While she has worked wonders with the non-existent (Joe Swanberg's exceptional Nights and Weekends) and heightened the fundamentally flawed (Greenberg), she never really stood a chance against Lola Versus.

Penned by director Daryl Wein and co-star Zoe Lister Jones, Lola focuses on Gerwig's titular heroine, a grad student and semi-charmed Manhattanite whose world falls apart when her long-time boyfriend, Luke (Joel Kinnaman), jilts her weeks before their wedding. Wein deals with the setup briskly, providing a quick-hit portrait of an initially likable Lola just before the collapse.

You've met Lola's peer group before: wacky best friend Alice (Lister Jones), buddy/struggling musician/potential love interest Henry (a miscast Hamish Linklater) and the aforementioned ex-boyfriend/painter. Oh, and Bill Pullman and Debra Winger turn up as tech-savvy, hippie parents. Yes, it sounds like a forgettable sitcom and it often plays like one too.

Like so many '90s, NYC-set half-hour comedies (though not the one about nothing), Lola's Manhattan boasts massive rent-controlled apartments, affordable gourmet foodstuffs and plenty of sunshine.

After the advent of Girls, and also, seven years on from Andrew Bujalski's zeitgeist capturing Mutual Appreciation, a New York City predicated on the Friends mythos – a bygone world even back then – rings particularly false. Of course, being either out of touch or nostalgic is hardly an egregious offence.

But a good sitcom, especially one writ large, has a fundamental requirement: it has to entice viewers to hang out therein. Pretty shots of the city are a decent start, though the problem lies in the characters' total ambivalence and egotism, which would be passable if they were played for laughs. They're not.

Furthermore, while the title may imply a struggle, the plot has little actual conflict to propel it, as Lola drifts from bed-to-bed and one faux calamity to another, testing Gerwig's typically reliable off-kilter charisma and the audience's attention span. There is a solid Ani DiFranco allusion, though it's not worth the slog.

 

Paste Magazine [Annlee Ellingson]

Since breaking out of the mumblecore movies (Hannah Takes the Stairs) in which she got her start as both an actress and a writer-director, Greta Gerwig has emerged in films like Greenberg and No Strings Attached as a fresh face among supporting casts. Tall and curvy, she’s at once beautiful and awkward, a real-world woman who’s easy to get behind—especially in the couple of plum indie leads (Damsels in Distress and now Lola Versus) that she landed this year. The character of Lola, though, poses a bit of a challenge—portraying a suddenly single 29-year-old self-involvedly stumbling through the New York dating scene without alienating the audience—that Gerwig doesn’t quite overcome.

Director Daryl Wein and his co-writer (and real-life partner) Zoe Lister-Jones have crafted a script with moments alternately exquisite and cliché, the promise of genuine emotion conveyed with restraint squandered by puzzling plot developments and familiar fallbacks. Three weeks before their wedding, Lola’s long-term boyfriend Luke (Joel Kinnaman) calls it off. In a smart move, the breakup isn’t shown, and the film moves swiftly to the fallout: Lola gorging on rice chips on her best friend’s couch. Still-single Alice (Lister-Jones) serves as both a foil for Lola’s newfound situation and comic relief, although her one liners—in a script rife with quotables—seems at times weighted more toward shock value than observational humor for both Lola and the audience.

Lola is also comforted by her best male friend Henry (the always delightful Hamish Linklater), and it feels totally natural, albeit ill-advised, when she asks him to spend the night so that she doesn’t have to sleep alone. Their romance burgeons, despite the incestuousness of rebound dating within her and Luke’s circle of mutual friends. What’s hard to swallow, though, is that she betrays him with a stranger she doesn’t even like—a turn of events that could have used more setup and explanation. This unevenness persists throughout: In the film’s emotional climax, Lola’s hysterics at a party where she learns of a secret romance known by all her friends rings true. Her subsequent binge on booze and strip clubs does not.

All of these characters, by the way, are aggressively artistic: Luke paints portraits based on celebrity sex tapes; Alice acts in a bad play called Pogrom that’s an allegory for genital mutilation; Henry’s in a rock band; and Lola is writing her Ph.D. dissertation on the use of silence in French literature and pop culture—a theme that doesn’t noticeably make it into the movie’s script. For the most part, they’re nicely cast, but Kinnaman unfortunately seems out of place. Perhaps for those who watch The Killing, his role as Stephen Holder has become too indelible—his rugged good looks and jive delivery feel airbrushed here.

Lola Versus strives, not always successfully, to strike that delicate balance between what’s sympathetic and what’s simply pathetic: It’s no fun to watch someone sulk or to listen to them complain, and on screen, where these processes can be condensed, one just wants him or her to get over it already. But Wein, Lister-Jones, Gerwig et al deserve some credit for turning the romantic comedy on its head with a love story that begins when the relationship ends.

Lola Versus - Entertainment - Time Magazine  Mary Pols

The title of the latest indie spin on romantic comedy, Lola Versus, offers an enticing ambiguity; who is this Lola going up against? Boys? Herself? The world? Given that Lola is played by the comely and typically winning Greta Gerwig (Greenberg, Damsels in Distress), the last possibility seems least likely. But it is the movie’s uneven writing—half funny and daring, half punishing and senseless—that proves to be Lola’s biggest opponent.

Lola Versus opens with Lola on top of the world. She’s preparing to defend her thesis (on the place of silence in poetry and prose. Ha!) and madly in love with longtime boyfriend Luke (Joel Kinnaman), an artist.  They’re in sync in bed and comfortably co-habitating in his nice loft. When he proposes, she’s thrilled. Then, a few weeks before their destination wedding—in Peru—she comes home to find him sitting on the couch, looking stricken. “Honey, what’s up, did you have a stroke?” she asks. More like groom’s frostbite; the wedding is off. He needs time, space (but as it turns out, not solitude). Lola retreats to her parents’ apartment—Dad and Mom are played by Bill Pullman, and in a welcome but rare screen appearance, Debra Winger—to weep on the couch. But being a careful, sensible sort, deliberately the opposite of her free-spirited hippie parents, Lola even falls apart carefully; choosing rice chips over true junk food.

Among her peers she has two main shoulders to cry on, that of her best friend Alice (Zoe Lister Jones, a regular on Whitney), who is sardonic, unloved by men and prone to making vulgar jokes about unclean vaginas. Lister Jones has no one to blame for this unappealing characterization but herself, since she co-wrote the screenplay with director Daryl Wein. Then there is Henry (Hamish Linklater from The Future), Lola’s best friend forever. Don’t get the idea that Henry is gay or anything; the screenplay very quickly establishes him as nicer than Luke but still a playah in his own skinny jean, boho hair kind of way. “Chicks love old phones,” Henry says, brandishing his ancient cell. “They think it means I listen more.”

Linklater is a whole parade of bashful charm and I liked that joke. I liked a lot of the jokes in Lola Versus, and I wanted to root for Lola in the worst way as she tears up the town looking for her self-esteem and purpose in life. She, like Lena Dunham’s determined-to-be-open-minded character Hannah in HBO’s Girls, is prone to going along with unappealing proposals from men when it is clear she should say no. I knew Lola shouldn’t ever date the pedantic foodie she meets at the fish counter, but I wanted her to, just so that I could continue to enjoy the deadpan delivery of the actor who plays him, Ebon Moss-Bachrach. Sleeping with another inappropriate guy, she makes a big show of enjoying herself, a girl trying hard to prove herself a woman. “So what do you sound like when you really come?” he asks at the end.

In a traditional romantic comedy, that guy, the one that calls her on her pretenses, would turn out to be the guy for Lola. To their credit, Lister Jones and Wein don’t want to go that way; they’re clearly interested in bucking the conventions of the chick flick. But the problem is, they don’t know quite what to do with Lola instead. Their choice is weird, punishing even. The character is subjected to a climactic reveal involving her friends, who remain strangely unsympathetic, willing to twist the knife in Lola’s heart. Isolated and hurt, she spends a night doing implausible things (a scene at a strip club was so unlikely it ruins the movie). We’re meant to believe that the true culprit who screwed up Lola’s life is Lola herself. I didn’t buy that perspective, which is just another simplistic modus operandi of chick flicks. Can’t it be a combination of factors, as in, you know, life? It’s possible that Gerwig, who plays Lola’s moments of deflation and chagrin beautifully, can’t pull off the bad guy. Watching her apologize to her friends made sense; believing that she needed to didn’t.

The broad intent of Lola Versus, trying to take an honest look at life and love in the big city, parallels what Dunham is doing with Girls. Lola is a few years older than Hannah, Marnie, et al., less self-absorbed and more directed (although for most of the movie she’s stuck on one chapter of that dissertation), but she too is a girl, drifting, seeking her identity as a woman. It might not be fair to hold Lola Versus up against Girls for comparison, since Girls doesn’t have the same obligation to wrap up (or attempt to) the lives of its characters in 90 or so minutes. There are plenty of people who say that today’s television is better than today’s movies. That’s a sweeping generalization, but certainly I found it impossible to think about all that’s wrong about Lola Versus, a movie that aspires to be deep but never gets out of the shallows even with a wonderful actress in the lead, without thinking about all that’s right about Girls

Lola Versus | Film Review | Tiny Mix Tapes  Alex Peterson

 

Lola Versus - Reelviews Movie Reviews  James Berardinelli

 

Review: Humor & Heartbreak Mix Unevenly In The Slight 'Lola Versus'   The IndieWIRE Playlist

 

Lola Versus Movie Review | Film School Rejects  Kate Erbland

 

Boxoffice Magazine [David Ehrich]

 

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

DVD Talk [Jason Bailey]  also seen here:  Fourth Row Center [Jason Bailey]

 

indieWIRE [Eric Kohn]

 

The MacGuffin [Spencer Fornaciari]

 

Film-Forward.com [Jack Gattanella]

 

Slant Magazine [Andrew Schenker]

 

Village Voice [Katrina Longworth]

 

Lola Versus | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club  Scott Tobias

 

Erik Lundegaard

 

Lola Versus Review - CinemaBlend.com  Katey Rich

 

Combustible Celluloid Review - Lola Versus (2012), Daryl Wein ...  Jeffrey M. Anderson

 

Lola Versus | Review | Screen  David D’Arcy from Screendaily

 

Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]

 

Smells Like Screen Spirit [Jessica Delfanti]

 

Film Review Online [James Dawson]

 

Fr. Dennis at the Movies [Dennis Kriz]

 

DustinPutman.com [Dustin Putman]

 

CompuServe [Harvey Karten]

 

Battleship Pretension [David Bax]

 

Criticize This! [Andrew Parker]

 

Digital Journal [Sarah Gopaul]

 

Culture Blues [Jeff Hart]

 

Greta Gerwig Talks Lola Versus, Not Fitting In In ... - Cinema Blend  Katey Rich interview with actress Greta Gerwig from Cinema Blend, June 5, 2012

 

The Hollywood Reporter [John DeDore]

 

Variety [Peter DeBruge]

 

You too will dump 'Lola'  James Verniere from The Boston Herald

 

Review: Lola Versus - Reviews - Boston Phoenix  Peter Keough

 

Critic Review for Lola Versus on washingtonpost.com  Ann Hornaday

 

Lola Versus rogerebert.com - Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times

 

Daryl Wein's 'Lola Versus' With Greta Gerwig ... - The New York Times  A.O. Scott

 

Weine, Robert

 

CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI

Germany  (78 mi)  1920

 

Time Out

Undoubtedly one of the most exciting and inspired horror movies ever made. The story is a classic sampling of expressionist paranoia about a hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to do his murders, full of the gloom and fear that prevailed in Germany as it emerged from WWI. There are plenty of extremely boring sociological/critical accounts of the film; best to avoid them and enjoy the film's extraordinary use of painted light and Veidt's marvellous performance. Incidentally, the influence of Caligari on the cinema is much more problematic than some historians suppose. Thematically it has rarely been copied, and the style only really infiltrated in dream sequences and other odd devices.

Raging Bull [Mike Lorefice]

Supremely stylized film largely created and definitely popularized the German expressionist style. Highly influential in it's approach, with set design being arguably the most important aspect, and much of the rest of the effort going toward cinematography and lighting, all of which functioned to distort exterior reality toward the character's supposed inner reality. Though a film to be studied, and deservedly revered for it's groundbreaking technique, the intense stylization tends to get irritating with everyone moving in slow motion and Weine seeming to obsess over their slightest twitch. A great formalist experiment, but the story itself isn't that interesting. Though often credited with things it didn't do for the horror genre (such as create it), it's hard to overly criticize a film that made the important expressionist movement, which was a big inspiration in a later important movement, film noir.

Not Coming to a Theater Near You [Ian Johnston]

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the defining, trailblazing work of German Expressionist cinema. Its historical value is assured, but for viewers today does it have anything more to offer? While neither ignored nor forgotten, it certainly seems to have fallen from the high critical favour it once met. There was a time when Caligari was placed in a central position along with Battleship Potemkin in the development of the art of film, but I doubt that anyone is going to argue that today, despite all the fascination and appeal that the film’s Expressionist “look” may generate.

Truth to tell, the plot is rather thin and creaky, although with a certain quaint charm, and the actors portraying Francis, Alan and Jane indulge in more of that kind of overexpressive silent film histrionics (for example, when Francis tells Jane of Alan’s murder) than is comfortable for modern audiences. But the Expressionist sets still exert a grip on the audience, evoking Caligari’s world of fear and horror with remarkable effect.

In addition, although a lot of the set-ups follow the flat proscenium style of the day (so, a wide shot will cut to a closer-in medium shot, followed by a return to the original wide shot without any change in angle), director Robert Wiene on occasions places his actors very expressively within the shot. Two examples: when Francis goes to Alan’s room after his murder there’s a single shot with Francis’s face “in close-up” in the right foreground and the landlady crouched over in the rear on the left — giving a very striking sense of their feelings of shock and horror. Or, much later in the film, at the mental asylum, there’s the very effective composition of Francis in black seated in the director’s room at the bottom centre of the frame, with the three doctors behind him, standing and all dressed in white.

Finally, two acting performances still work to great effect today, Werner Krauss as Caligari and Conrad Veidt as Cesare, both of whom came to the film with experience in Expressionist theatre. Krauss with his dark cloak and top hat, eyes rimmed with black working as a mirror-image of his glasses, evokes a fascinating otherworldly appearance. He’s physically at odds with the world around him. His body jerks, twists, and shifts; it moves so much more slowly than the other figures around him. In the scene with the town clerk, although the setting is Expressionist, above all in the unnatural and comic height of the town clerk’s stool, the town clerk himself moves entirely naturalistically. Caligari is anything but — moving at half his speed, and even at one point executing a jerky, crab-like side movement across the room.

But it’s Conrad Veidt’s Cesare who’s the most striking figure in all of Caligari. Tall and gaunt, dressed in black, with his pale white face accentuated by the blackened lips and the thick black rims painted below his eyes and over his eyebrows, he parallels Dr. Caligari’s otherworldly note. He moves at a slow dreamlike pace, with a striking look to him — whether he’s almost ballet-like in the way he slides along the wall one arm stretched upwards when he sets off initially to murder Jane; or his quiet solemnity as his black figure enters centre-frame into the dominant whites of Jane’s bedroom. His is an archetypal figure whose power to impress visually still holds when viewing Caligari today.

A host of myths and stories surround Caligari, most of all in terms of its authorship: Who was responsible for devising the distinctive look of the film? Despite the exterior locations of many of the scenes, the film in almost its entirety takes place on studio sets, using canvas backdrops painted in a twisted, distorted, mis-sized Expressionist style. The scriptwriters Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, whose own personal experiences — of authoritarian figures above all in the military, of a triangular love affair, of a bizarre scene at a Hamburg fair — fuelled the scenario and who included technical instructions in their screenplay, in later years also claimed they had determined the film’s visual look right from the start. However, it’s now clear that it originated with designer Walter Reimann, who produced the original designs with Walther R√∂hrig and chief designer Hermann Warm; and this concept was immediately approved by director Robert Wiene.

Wiene’s contribution to Caligari has rather unfairly tended to be discounted over the years, no doubt because none of his other films ever had the impact of Caligari, because the bulk of his other work has in any case been ignored, and because his Expressionist follow-ups to Caligari, Genuine and Raskolnikov, were so much less successful. But Wiene was at the centre of the creative decisions involved in making the film — the initial approval of the design concept, the variations from the script, and above all the controversial frame story.

Janowitz and Mayer always bitterly complained that this frame story undermined the revolutionary message of the film. For them, the film’s basic premise — that the evil Dr. Caligari, who uses his fairground somnambulist Cesare to execute his murder schemes, is in fact the director of the local mental asylum — was a direct indictment of authoritarian figures in society. In their eyes, the frame story completely betrayed the social and political intent of their work.

This frame story adopts a completely different stylistic, eschewing the Expressionist painted backdrops of the main story for a flat realism. In the prologue, an iris-out reveals an old man and a much younger one sitting on a bench in a garden; the old man talks of how the “spirits” around him have driven him from home and family, before a young woman all in white passes them by. The young man declares she is his fiancée and then proceeds to tell their story, with the first Expressionist backdrop being the first shot of the story. (The young man and woman are only named once the story gets under way, as Francis and Jane respectively.) This Expressionist style is then consistently maintained right through to the climax of Francis’s story, with Caligari’s identity unmasked when Francis confronts the asylum director in his office with the body of Cesare.

We then return to the frame story, with Francis and the old man moving to the asylum courtyard, and the appearance there of Cesare, Jane, and a benignly smiling director revealing Francis’s story to have been a psychotic fantasy on his part, literally a tale told by a madman. It’s true that this frame story revelation does undermine Janowitz and Mayer’s original thesis, the twinning of criminality and the authority figure, but I think that certainly for a modern, more skeptical audience the effect is more complex.

In the end, these final scenes of a kindly director triumphantly discovering the key to the curing of Francis’ madness cannot quite expunge the visual effect of the bulk of the film, the portrayal of the director as the evil Dr. Caligari. We simultaneously experience the narrative closure of the good asylum director and remember the asylum director as Caligari. Isn’t it a sign that there are vestiges of Caligari still in the director in the way that there is still something remaining of the Expressionist sets in the final scenes where Francis is bundled up in a straitjacket and led away to a cell, just as the director was in the previous sequence? For one thing, the asylum courtyard still keeps the Expressionist design painted on the ground, as if the Expressionism of the madman’s story has leaked into the frame story. Then, although the Expressionist paintings have been very roughly removed from the walls of the asylum interior, the distorted angles of the doorways and windows are retained. “Caligari” is still there. The frame story may give us the kindly, concerned asylum director, but the full force of the film leaves us with the overwhelming evil of Dr. Caligari.

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here  the entire film may be viewed here

 

Weingartner, Hans

 

THE EDUKATORS

Germany  Austria  (127 mi)  2004

 

by Richard Porton    A Failure of Nerve, from Cinema Scope (link lost)

In recent years, that chronically amorphous entity known as “political cinema” has become synonymous, at least in North America, with high-minded (or, in the case of Michael Moore, low-minded) documentaries. Many such films are laudable, but the recent re-release of Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1965) recalls that a radical narrative political cinema, with no concessions to either liberal pabulum or crude agit-prop, was once possible. The tough-mindedness of Pontecorvo’s masterpiece—a nuanced anti-colonialist film that nevertheless avoids sentimentalizing Algerian terrorism—is conspicuously absent in present-day narrative political cinema. In an era where utopian hopes have been discarded, allegory seems to have much more potency than social realism. For that reason, it’s arguable that recent fiction films not acknowledged by most critics as particularly political at all—e.g., The Saddest Music in the World—are much more politically trenchant than, say, Costa-Gavras’ Amen (2002).

Two vapid—but crowd-pleasing—Cannes Competition selections unwittingly demonstrate how the intellectual and aesthetic impoverishment of much contemporary political cinema can be traced to a fatal failure of nerve. Hans Weingartner’s The Edukators and Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries are distinctly different in tone and style. In the guise of a gentle lampoon of the follies of young German radicals, Weingartner falls back on complacent clichés that dismiss any sort of political commitment. Salles’ sober road movie pays humourless homage to Ernesto “Che” Guevara with a painstaking, and painfully dull, chronicle of Che and his friend Alberto Granado’s youthful trek across Latin America. Yet both films pander to the prejudices of middle-class, nominally liberal audiences. Just as many leftists prefer the novels of Céline (an unrepentant fascist) to the bland pieties spouted by so-called “liberals,” I’d rather be provoked by an intelligent right-wing cineaste instead of being bored by “feelgood” liberal cinema.

Whatever its target audience, The Edukators is, in the final analysis, a de facto paean to what Marcuse used to call “the affirmative culture” and the rest of us term the status quo. As often happens, the film’s conformism is disguised as an affectionate tribute to rebellious youth. The Educkators’ dramatis personae—Jan (Daniel Bruhl), Peter (Stipe Erceg), and Peter’s lissome girlfriend, Jule (Julia Jentsch)—seem remarkably well behaved for young incendiaries. They listen to soothing soft rock and mutter earnest regrets about how bourgeois Germans do little but watch television. Having obviously imbibed No Logo, they are concerned consumers who express nostalgia for the supposedly halcyon days of the 60s. While Jule worries about her debt to a wealthy businessman whose Mercedes she absentmindedly totaled, Jan and Peter “act” on their anti-consumerist passions by breaking into the homes of rich burghers and re-arranging their possessions.

Jan and Peter’s faux-burglaries initially come off as post-Situationist pranks, but there is a naïve, and, above all, moralistic quality to their nocturnal romps distinguishing them from truly radical interventions. Informing the rich that their “days are numbered” does little to pinpoint the dissemination of power in German society and, since Jan and Peter are middle-class kids, their little feats of derring-do are as much self-indictments as audacious assaults on bourgeois propriety. The self-absorbed quality of these break-ins becomes clearer when Jule and Jan begin a furtive romance and the film enters Jules et Jim territory. A raid on the home of Herr Hardenberg, the owner of the Mercedes Jule demolished, is conducted without Peter’s knowledge and goes awry when the millionaire shows up and the trio stage an impromptu kidnapping.

The Edukators’ overweening complacency soon becomes apparent. Hardenberg, the ostensibly villainous millionaire, reveals his true colours as an avuncular ex-radical who once broke bread with Rudi Dutschke. Fondly counselling his young captors and dispensing stale wisdom on the order of “under 30 and not liberal, no heart; over 30 and still liberal, no brain”—a line that received applause from the Cannes crowd—he is a veritable one-man Big Chill. The implicit message is that youthful radicalism, in Germany or elsewhere, is a post-adolescent, essentially innocuous rite of passage.

Although Weingartner attempts to infuse these shenanigans with comic brio, his humour is as flat as the film’s dreary DV cinematography. Like last year’s middlebrow art house hit, Goodbye, Lenin!, The Edukators is satire at its most toothless. Whatever one thinks of the exploits of 60s activists, the complacent Hardenburg is a particularly unedifying caricature of that era and its passions. A more complex, and troubling, trajectory can be discerned in the career of Joschka Fischer, Germany’s foreign minister. Fischer’s rise to power, as both student Marxist and mainstream Green politician, is suffused with equal amounts of idealism, opportunism, tentative courage, and bad faith. The Fischer who glossed over his youthful days as a street fighter and stonewalled when confronted with accusations of his links with members of the Baader-Meinhof “gang” is also the man who stood up to Donald Rumsfeld during preparations for the Iraq invasion. He is, if nothing else, rife with all of the contradictions that often provide fodder for stimulating drama, but The Edukators—a lame farce determined to comfort the comfortable—has little patience for genuine historical ironies.

Weir, Peter

 

Peter Weir - Director - Films as Director and Scriptwriter:, Other Films ...  John Baxter, updated by Rob Edelman from Film Reference

If, as Yugoslav director Dusan Makavajev contends, "Australia is Switzerland, but it wants to be Texas," then it's to the Swiss side that Peter Weir belongs. Even his apprentice shorts show an attraction to international concerns and fantasy that is alien to Australia's documentary-based cinema. Incredible Floridas is a hommage to Rimbaud, Michael a vision of a future Australia gripped by revolution, while the macabre Homesdale evokes evil in the unlikely setting of an isolated retirement home.

Weir dropped out of university to travel to Europe, an experience that profoundly affected him: "It struck me very strongly that I was a European, that this was where we had come from and where I belonged." An ancient sculpture found on a Tunisian beach prompted The Last Wave , and he conceived The Cars That Ate Paris when a French autoroute detour triggered the idea of a tiny village where, he surmised, anything might happen—including local hoodlums customising cars into killing machines.

The absurdist vision of The Cars That Ate Paris puzzled Australian audiences but interested Hollywood. Roger Corman gave the film a small U.S. release while also borrowing some of its concepts for Paul Bartel's Death Race 2000. Universal acclaim, however, greeted Picnic at Hanging Rock , a Victorian fantasy with drowsy, cryptic, and sensual qualities. Weir filmed Joan Lindsay's novel with such skill that most audiences believe the feature's tale of the disappearance of three schoolgirls on a rocky monolith on St. Valentine's Day, 1900, to be based on fact.

Weir chose Richard Chamberlain to star in The Last Wave as a lawyer who uncovers aboriginal cults which foretell the world's end in a new flood, but Australian audiences greeted the film's obscure theme and American star with suspicion. In reaction, Weir made The Plumber , a TV feature recognizable as his work only by its faintly surrealistic premise, in which an unsummoned tradesman invades a baffled housewife's cosy suburban environment.

With Gallipoli , which he calls his "graduation film," Weir shook off his reputation as an occult specialist and a director of essentially local concerns. Though set against Australia's first military adventure—the disastrous 1916 Dardenelles campaign—its scale, style, and outlook, all broadly international, won Gallipoli mass American release, and both director and star Mel Gibson were given Hollywood contracts.

Weir's first fully funded studio project, The Year of Living Dangerously , marked him as an artist capable of handling both big stars and bigger emergencies. When threats of violence from Muslim extremists drove the production out of Manila, he recreated Djakarta in Sydney suburbia. The film turned Mel Gibson into an international romantic lead, and also remade another career when Weir, unsatisfied with the actor playing dwarf Chinese cameraman Billy Kwan, recast the role with Linda Hunt, who delivered an Oscar-winning performance.

When plans to film The Mosquito Coast with Jack Nicholson collapsed, Weir stepped up at short notice to direct a thriller that featured Harrison Ford as a city cop finding affinities with the Amish religious fundamentalists who hide him from danger. Witness , an unexpected hit, decisively freed Ford from his Indiana Jones image, and the revived The Mosquito Coast starred not Nicholson but Ford as Paul Theroux's dizzy technocrat, a man who drags his family to South America in a doomed celebration of American mechanical genius. The film's relative failure in no way harmed Weir's reputation as a director who could change careers and remake images. He went on to direct Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society , a film wherein a schoolteacher bucks a version of McCarthyism in the 1950s. Its critical and financial success powered Weir into Green Card , his first original screenplay, about an emigre musician marrying an American girl to get a work permit. The story attracted Gérard Depardieu, anxious to penetrate the English-language market. "I have the impression of having discovered a brother," the actor said, "like with Truffaut." Such statements suggest that Weir, while mastering Hollywood, has not lost touch with his early European concerns.

Those same concerns were evidenced yet again in Fearless , an unusual film for the 1990s: a mainstream project with deeply serious and sobering overtones. Its scenario examines the after-effects of a deadly plane crash. Unlike other Hollywood films dealing with air crashes which might focus on the superficial fireworks involved in the accident—complete with eye-popping special effects— Fearless explores the psychological impact the experience has on two of its survivors (played by Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez). All too often, contemporary movies make no attempt to dramatize the effect of violence on its victims. Fearless , though dramatically flawed in its second half, is a refreshing change-of-pace in that it faces up to issues surrounding mortality and spirituality.

After a five-year absence from the screen, Weir returned triumphantly with yet another solemn exploration of contemporary life: The Truman Show , a keenly knowing expose of the all-encompassing power of modern technology. In particular, The Truman Show is an exploration of the ability of television to numb the brains of viewers and transform them into mindless robots who think, feel, and consume according to what they are told by their boob tubes. In this regard the film, like Fearless , is downright subversive for a contemporary Hollywood film.

The title character is Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey), a happy-go-lucky insurance salesman who resides in the idyllic, antiseptic town of Seahaven, a planned community on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Truman's life is perfect. His always-chipper wife (Laura Linney) is perfect. His hometown (which he has never left) is perfect. And every day is a beautiful day. Yet little does Truman suspect that, since birth, he has been the star of his own television series. Wherever he goes, hidden cameras record his every movement. Everything in his life is artificial, from Seahaven (which is a massive set) to the weather, from his friends and neighbors to his family and wife (who all are actors). His entire existence is the creation of a fascist television director (Ed Harris) who has controlled all that happens around Truman since the day he was born. Indeed, for nearly three decades, billions of viewers have tuned in to catch each chronicle of the life and times of Truman Burbank (which airs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even as Truman sleeps). At the core of the story is the manner in which Truman responds upon becoming aware of the sham that is his life, and his growing curiosity with regard to what exists beyond his made-up world.

In The Truman Show, Weir deals with such heady subjects as philosophy, religion, principles and ethics, and, in particular, the manner in which technology and the media affect practically everything in our lives. In addition, Weir accomplishes for Jim Carrey what he did for Robin Williams a decade earlier in Dead Poets Society : take a wacky, wildly popular comedy star and reinvent him as a serious dramatic actor.

Peter Weir • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Romy Sutherland from Senses of Cinema, February 8, 2005

 

Crazy Dave's Peter Weir Cave

 

Peter Weir Profile - Turner Classic Movies

 

Overview for Peter Weir - Turner Classic Movies

 

Peter Weir: Biography from Answers.com  biography

 

Peter Weir | Movies and Biography - Yahoo! Movies  biography

 

Peter Weir  biography by Rebecca Flint Marx from Rovi

 

Peter Weir | TV & Film | CriticalMob  brief bio

 

The Mystical Gaze of the Cinema: The Films of Peter Weir by Richard ...  The Mystical Gaze of the Cinema: The Films of Peter Weir, by Richard Leonard, book review Jay Daniel Thompson from Senses of Cinema, March 13, 2011

 

The Films of Peter Weir

 

Peter Weir - Director by Film Rank

 

A Weir View: A Peter Weir Profile (Part 1) | Flickering Myth  Trevor Hogg, July 22, 2009, also seen here:  Flickering Myth Profile 

 

A Weir View: A Peter Weir Profile (Part 2) | Flickering Myth  Trevor Hogg, July 29, 2009

 

 PETER WEIR | Flaunt Magazine  Iconic Director Returns to Form with a Gulag Story of Survival, by Metthew Bedard from Flaunt magazine, 2011

 

Peter Weir Shunned Stanley Kubrick, Made 'Green Card' - indieWIRE  Christopher Bell from indieWIRE, January 11, 2011

 

The Films Of Peter Weir: A Retrospective | The Playlist  Kevin Jagernauth from the indieWIRE Playlist, January 20, 2011

 

Flickering Myth's Retrospective  August 21, 2011

 

Turning the Page - Peter Weir: A Creative Journey From Australia to Hollywood  Trevor Hogg reviews Peter Weir: A Creative Journey From Australia To Hollywood, by Serena Formica from Flickering Myth, February 10, 2012 .

 

TSPDT - Peter Weir

 

Interview With Peter Weir: Gallipoli  Literature/Film Quarterly, 1981

 

Peter Weir Interview  Kyla Ward interview from Tabula Rasa, 1994

 

Peter Weir: The Hollywood Interview | The Hollywood Interview  Alex Simon and Terry Keefe interview, March 15, 2008

 

The Weir Way: Russell Boyd and Lee Smith Talk About Peter Weir Trevor Hogg interviews film editor Lee Smith and cinematographer Russell Boyd from The Flickering Myth, January 19, 2011

 

Portrait of the artist: Peter Weir, director | Film | The Guardian  Laura Bennett interview from The Guardian, May 9, 2011

 

Director Peter Weir on Directing, 'Witness,' the Birth of the Australian ...  Beth Hanna interview from indieWIRE, June 15, 2012

 

Top 250 Directors 

 

501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

 

Peter Weir - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK                               A                     97

Australia (115 mi)  1975

 

All that we see or seem

Is but a world within a dream

—“A Dream Within a Dream,” by Edgar Allen Poe, 1849

 

What we see and what we seem

are but a dream, a dream within a dream

—Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert) from Picnic at Hanging Rock

 

One of the most exquisitely gorgeous ghost stories ever conceived, one that elevates the mystery to the foreground over any explanatory narrative, something along the lines of ELVIRA MADIGAN (1967) or perhaps even BADLANDS (1973), beautifully integrating painter-like compositions which appear like a series of historic still photographs with the eerie use of sound, including perfectly chosen pieces of classical music, especially the repeated theme from the introduction to the 2nd Adagio movement from Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, Rubinstein plays Beethoven "Emperor" Piano Concerto No ... - YouTube (8:24).  Weir has crafted a magnificently sensuous and stunningly visualized film balancing the beauty of young innocent girls against the beauty of nature, which seems to be so beguiling on the outside, green and yellow flora, pastel colored flowers contrasted against the repression of the Victorian era and the unseen, inexplicable and savage side of nature where terror lurks underneath the surface, and where the two seem worlds apart.  Based on the 1967 historical novel by Joan Lindsey, this is a fictionalized mood piece of a dreamy and threatening world, a hypnotic recreation to a real event that took place on a Valentine’s Day picnic in 1900 when three schoolgirls and one teacher disappeared during a field trip to Hanging Rock, a six million year old geological rock formation in Australia. 

 

The story is set at Appleyard College, an Educational Establishment for Young Ladies, which is introduced to the music of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier,” Johann Sebastian Bach - Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C major, BWV 846 YouTube (4:17), as we see the young girls washing their faces with flowers in the wash bowls, or lining up to help one another strap up their corsets, or pressing flowers, where we discover one student, Sara (Margaret Nelson), has developed a school girl crush on another, the luminous Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert).  But Sara is left behind as the others gather in their white dresses, high collars, yellow hats with ribbons, gloves, and stockings, where because of the heat they are allowed to remove their gloves once they pass beyond a nearby town.  Upon arrival to a forested area that surrounds the rock, we are treated to sublime images of young women in hats laying about in a yellow green field, all smiles among the flowers, most shaded by their umbrellas, many with bows in their hair, like a colorful impressionist painting.  But underneath the beauty, ants are scurrying to munch on their uneaten food while inexplicably people’s watches stop at noon.  Four girls decide to go for a walk, under careful instruction not to wander far as there are poisonous snakes in the vicinity, perhaps an Eden-like metaphoric reference to man, led by Miranda, who one of the teachers scanning an art book perfectly describes as a Botticelli angel.  

 

Under the unseen gaze of two young men hidden by the foliage, the girls jump across a brook to the music of Zamfir’s pan flute, Picnic At Hanging Rock - Gheorghe Zamfir, Doina Lui Petru Unc ... YouTube (5:19), passing through forest ferns and flowers until they reach the bottom of the giant rocks where they rest for awhile.  Despite the grumblings of one of the girls, Edith (Christine Schuler), an overweight complainer (“I think I must be doomed.  I don't feel at all well,”), they continue to climb higher until the people below appear as mere specks on the earth, causing one girl Marion (Jane Vallis) to conclude “A surprising number of human beings are without purpose, though it is probable that they are performing some function unknown to themselves,” while Miranda ponders “Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.”  After napping in the sun, Miranda, in a moment of liberation, removes her stockings and shoes and goes on ahead barefoot without a word, followed by two others, leaving Edith in a terrible fright as she screams all the way back down the mountain.  We hear upon her return that one of the teachers ran up the rocks in search of the missing girls, but none were heard from again, despite a search with bloodhounds by the townspeople and police the next morning.  What follows is an official inquiry where the police attempt to piece together how these girls could simply disappear.  Edith is examined by a doctor who finds scratches on her lower extremities, but otherwise “is quite intact.”  All she can remember is the presence of a red cloud hovering overhead and an amusing image of her teacher running up the rock wearing only her pantaloons, having removed her skirt. 

 

But the police search proves fruitless, discovering nothing, reaching an impasse, perfectly illustrated by the inertia of the upper class, shown in an afternoon reverie dressed in tuxedos and top hats strolling arm in arm with their elegant women carrying umbrellas next to a placid lake as a string quartet plays the music of Mozart, Herbert von Karajan - Mozart : Eine kleine Nachtmusik - 2nd Mvt (1949 ... YouTube (5:46).  One of the young men who observed them crossing the brook is haunted by recurring images of a Miranda staring at him from a beautiful impressionist landscape of an Australian flora filled with flowers, or a serene fantasia of a lone swan in the water.  He decides he must search for them, alone if necessary, as “someone has to.”  So he and his friend set out on horseback, where we see images of a spider spinning a web, tropical birds, a koala bear, a chorus of voices, odd squeals, and slowed down sounds of animals in nature, which grow louder and more menacing, until the boy seems lost, paralyzed with fright, eventually needing his own rescue hovering under some rocks, shivering with fright, and clenching his fist, carrying a small fragment of torn lace.  The other boy returns, following a path of white paper left behind as a marker for the other to follow, and under swirling birds and wild animal sounds, he discovers one of the girls Irma (Karen Robson) alone in a small cave and brings her back alive, where she is placed under a white canopy in a recovery room suffering from shock and exposure with bruises on her hands and fingernails, but no bones broken and still “intact.”  But she can’t remember anything at all.  Her recollection is a total blank.  After news of this incident becomes widely known, parents start pulling their girls out of the school, which soon reaches a financial crisis leaving its own future uncertain.  The ghoulish ending only further emphasizes the devastation of the unfathomable event and the impact it continues to have on individuals as well as the community, where today as many as 100,000 people every year come to visit Hanging Rock, which consists of a particularly thick volcanic rock called solvsbergite, found only in Norway and Sweden, and where every Valentine’s Day there is an open-air screening of the film.  

 

The opening moments of the film disappear in a flash and later become the clues, where the police, the community, and all other instruments of authority attempt to find answers for the missing girls.  Like the police, the film continues to ask questions and attempts to fathom the mystery through flashes of memory, like what was said, what was seen, were the women abused in any way, and why were they allowed to just wander off by themselves?  Doesn’t that invoke our biggest fears, that we have to protect our children incessantly, never letting them go, never allowing them any sense of individual freedom, for once they acquire a taste for it, something horrible may happen.  This finishing school whisks these girls away from harm into a completely closed off world where they are isolated and alone in a remote location, supposedly all for their own protection, where they’re allowed zero contact with the opposite sex, or even with the local townspeople.  In this idealized environment, they are dressed to represent a perfect ideal of beauty and womanhood, where as they pass the local villagers on a horse driven cart, they may as well be mysterious creatures from another planet, as no one ever sees anything all dressed up like that except perhaps porcelain dolls.  In this perfect world, in this repressed, upper crest society, one never expects any harm to come to any of them.  But these girls know nothing of the real world, as they’ve spent their entire lives removed from it, inundated instead by poetry and romance novels as well as music, dance, and art, proper etiquette, posture, and dress, and all the customary insinuations of beauty and femininity.  The opposite sex is later expected to challenge their minds with an allure of danger and unseen possibilities, but the school is obligated first and foremost to protect them until they are ready to marry a lord or a baron who will support them the rest of their lives in the manner in which they’ve become accustomed.  This is the fairy tale.  The reality, however, is quite different, as these girls are not on a leash, and they have their own curiosities and inner desires.  What actually happens to them, in the real world, may not fit the fairy tale, as all manner of beastial behavior and depravity exists alongside what one hopes is the discovery of love.  Perhaps the clue to the disappearance is simply viewing it as innocence left behind, lost, gone forever. 

 

The beauty of this film is the layer of mystery that all but engulfs what we know about what happens, as soon the entire opening scenes are fleeting memories, replaced by new realities that include panic, fear of the unknown, and the trauma of forgetfulness.  Several characters experience such severe trauma that their customary intelligence and responsibility all but deserts them, leaving them painfully hurt, isolated and all alone, disappointed that they couldn’t be helpful or do more and live up to their idea of themselves.  But people rarely are who they’d like to be.  People’s high ideals suddenly become replaced with shame and disgrace, where their education and training amount to squat when it comes right down to it.  Some of the best trained professionals cower in fear at the first sign of real danger.  This breakdown occurs within the school’s ranks but also the local village, where both at first are waiting for an explanation, an answer to what happened, allowing the authorities to solve the perceived crime, and when no answer comes, signs of desperation set in.  Individual human beings break down differently, some depending on their level of responsibility, but this film does an excellent job unraveling the layers of defense and self-protection, until eventually there is no one to blame but themselves.  This is the ultimate nightmare, sometimes compounding horrors on top of other horrors in a chain reaction.  The beguiling nature of this film is the allure of mystery, all wrapped up in social class, education, beauty, idealization, art, and the unknown where all the built-in societal foundations can disappear instantly, such as the loss of a job or the death of a loved one, that leave us questioning ourselves with an entirely new view of the world, turned suddenly sour or into an obscure abstraction of what it once was.  Things don’t always make sense, yet they happen.  The mysteries of nature, both inner and outer, are seen as massive when seen in this light, where the sum total of what we don’t know overwhelms that tiny sliver of knowledge that we seem capable of comprehending. 

 

The hypnotic beauty of the film composition, like turning the pages in an art book, or seeing the innocence of young girls on the verge of womanhood, or the lusciously sensual musical score, which includes one of Beethoven’s most sublime works, all add to the surface appreciation of the film, which may be the most beautiful film to ever come out of Australia.  But what’s really special are all of the unanswered questions that circle around in our minds for days afterwords, like the clues left at the beginning of the film.  Why did Miranda suggest to Sara that she needed to look elsewhere for love, as she would be leaving soon?  Why did time stop?  Why did she continue her ascent, when all prevailing reason suggested otherwise?  Was her disappearance actually premeditated?  Did their last words have any special meaning?  Why did no adult accompany the girls?  What was so mesmerizing about the rock that several intelligent and reasonably sane individuals either disappeared altogether or became suddenly traumatized with fear?  Is fate overemphasized?  Why couldn’t they be found?  What does the film have to say about the repressive Victorian era which all but straightjacketed women into *proper* social behavior?  Why have women always been idealized by men and why must they live up to expectations of being perfect?  What was the significance of the two orphan siblings who completely unknown to themselves happened to be living in such close proximity to one another?  To what extent does memory play tricks on us?  Why did the girls turn so quickly on Irma, the surviving girl, their fears unleashed as in Lord of the Flies, lead by Edith, one of the other surviving girls who couldn’t remember anything either?  Why are humans so afraid of the unknown?  Is this really a story, told largely from Sara’s point of view, about the crumbling impact of first love, how nothing in our lives is ever so powerfully in the moment, growing less significant through the years as our views evolve, or about adolescence, a stage in our lives that we eventually leave behind?  How could the headmistress, after seeing what a devastating emotional loss this was for Sara, actually send her back to the orphanage?  Is shame a more powerful human emotion than love?  Is there a more poetic rendering of memory and aging, how earthshakingly significant it can be in one moment, yet after the passage of time, one might actually yearn for forgetfulness?  There is no easy resolution here, but this is one of the most perfect mixes of a fictionalized artistic stylization colliding head on with real events, with all the devastating aftereffects of a great human tragedy.        

 

Time Out review

 

Three girls and a teacher from an exclusive Australian academy unaccountably vanish while visiting a local beauty spot. Set in the Indian summer of the Victorian era, the film is dominated in turns by vague feelings of unease, barely controlled sexual hysteria, and a swooning lyricism. As for the mystery, we're left to conclude that it can only be explained in terms beyond human understanding. As such, the film is rooted in a tradition of sci-fi and horror cinema, depicting the school as a privileged elite, gradually contaminated and destroyed from within by its inability to understand the mystery which confronts it. But in the final count, nothing is satisfactorily resolved because tensions remain unexplored. while the atmospherically beautiful images merely entice and divert. The result is little more than a discreetly artistic horror film.

 

Nashville Scene (Jim Ridley) review  also seen here:  Bookmice

Peter Weir scored the first of the year's hype-machine overkills this summer with The Truman Show, the story of an awakening individual who yearns to escape a repressed, rigidly controlled artificial environment. It's not the masterpiece its studio unwisely promoted it to be, but it is a clever and ingeniously directed film. And it ought to be: The Australian director had made a dry run for it 23 years before. Picnic at Hanging Rock, Weir's deeply unsettling 1975 film about a disappearance at a turn-of-the-century boarding school for girls, has just been given a new reissue; seen in Truman's cathode-ray glow, it's remarkably similar in both theme and style.

Picnic at Hanging Rock opens on Valentine's Day 1900 at stern Mrs. Appleyard's school, where the girls giggle in their rooms and read love poems until they're called downstairs for which they must lace each other into straitjacket-like corsets and assume identical outfits. On a morning expedition to nearby Hanging Rock, an uncharted formation of volcanic rock, four of the girls wander off to explore the summit. As if in a trance, they slip off their stockings and disappear into the rock's womb-like crevices. A few hours later, only one of the girls returns, and she's in a state of hysteria.

So what happened? The lack of a definite answer only contributes to the movie's somnambulant, feverish mood (as well as its fervent cult following). The key seems to be Miranda (Anne Lambert), a blossoming, vibrant girl who's repeatedly compared to "a Botticelli angel." Before she vanished, Miranda confided to a schoolmate that she wouldn't be around much longer; did she have a vision of a sinister fate? Or had she already planned her escape, Truman-style, from the school's repressive confines? The drab Appleyard school has none of the cheery pastels of Truman's Nick-at-Nite hometown, but it's just as stifling to the spirit, the libido, and the imagination's just as unnatural.

In Weir's movies, from The Last Wave through Fearless, nature, weather, geography, fate is beyond the control of man: Even the director's stand-in, Truman's creator Christof, gets a rude awakening when he thinks he's rigged the universe. At best, we're spectators; at worst, intruders. Just as Truman's every move is recorded by hundreds of hidden cameras, the girls in the woods are being watched by unseen eyes: There are several startling shots in Picnic that force us to consider what point of view we're taking. But in both films, the answer comes back: the voyeur's, the director's, but never the creator's.

Fittingly, both Truman and Miranda escape to someplace neither the viewer nor the director is allowed to see. Weir holds out the hope or the threat that there's a realm of existence we can't just invade; that tantalizing possibility gives Picnic at Hanging Rock its mystical, hypnotic otherworldliness. Does Miranda vanish into thin air, or into cold, cold ground? Either way, you may keep returning to the haunting final shot for days. Judging from Peter Weir's subsequent work, he never fully left Hanging Rock either.

Parallax View [Pierre Greenfield]  Originally published in Movietone News, December 1979

This is the second feature film from director Peter Weir, the first being the uneven but fitfully brilliant The Cars That Ate Paris in 1973. Though that movie was too scrappy to make Weir seem more than extremely promising, Picnic at Hanging Rock is something else: an absolute beauty, a movie entirely worthy of cult-classic status at the very least, and a major step forward for its director and, as far as I am able to tell from my very limited experience of it, for the Australian cinema.

That so delicate and subtle a movie could be made at all in Australia, a land much associated with crass behaviour and cultural gaucherie, may surprise some. It’s not, after all, a film made there by outsiders, like Walkabout. That so beautiful-looking and technically fastidious a film could emerge from Australia certainly surprised me: all the (few) other indigenous Antipodean movies that I’ve seen, including The Cars That Ate Paris, were very rough-edged, tending towards muddy colour and threshing-machine cutting, the hallmarks of cheapo filmmaking. Picnic at Hanging Rock is gorgeous, richly textured, full of pellucid colours and images that tremble between tableau and hallucination. It draws us into its web of mysteries, not urgently, not insistently, but seductively.

It draws us, in fact, the way that Hanging Rock, the “geological miracle” that is literally as well as figuratively at the film’s centre, draws its own victims (if that’s the word for them) to … what? where? Once we are into this film, we are also into another world, where we in the audience tread only on the outskirts. Certain of the film’s inhabitants—a trio of schoolgirls and the most senior of their teachers, all visitors to the rock on the dazzlingly bright St. Valentine’s Day of 1900—penetrate the very core of this other world. Others stay on the periphery but seem to become more aware of it, more knowing of its secrets, than we ever do. Unarguably, no one in the film who comes into contact with Hanging Rock is unchanged by it—not the fat girl who can’t keep up with her three friends and so returns to the rest of the party, at the Rock’s base, screaming and bleeding without knowing why; not the French assistante who muses that the leader of the Rock-climbing expedition has “the face of a Botticelli angel” immediately before losing sight of her forever; not the young Englishman who ventures onto the Rock in search of the missing and himself faces the unacknowledgeable. (He, incidentally, is played by Dominic Guard, the go-between of The Go-Between, now on the brink of adulthood and as baffled here by children as he was in the earlier film by adults.)

Just one of the three girls is found; the others, like the teacher, remain missing without trace or explanation. The found girl, Irma, recovers her health (her condition stymies the medical examiner) but not her memory. Whilst convalescing, she peruses an annual called The Rosebud Album, a stray hint that this cinematic labyrinth, too, will have no centre. She cannot or will not say what happened, and even those few who stayed behind at the school during the picnic come under the geological miracle’s spell. Most of all, the school’s headmistress, virago widow Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts in a dazzlingly suggestive performance), seems, like the most unlucky of all her pupils, Sara (Margaret Nelson), in some sort of telepathic communication with the Rock. Sara is an orphan whose guardian has repeatedly failed to pay the school’s fees. Excluded therefore from activities like the picnic, she is traumatically separated from her new focus of spiritual kinship, her room-mate Miranda (Anne Lambert). Miranda, the Botticelli angel, had even warned her that “I might not be around much longer” before leaving, and had been fingering Tarot cards before that. Was Miranda (appropriate Shakespearian name) also in communication with the Rock, in advance of the others? Did she lead her friends into the recesses and secret places on purpose? Sara’s infatuated dependence on her roommate is but one instance of the film’s manifold examples of sexual repression. Does the Rock signify freedom, a liberation of both libido and soul?

Surely, the characters are in need of liberating. The prim young Englishman, Michael, feels constricted by his ancient uncle and aunt. The missing teacher, Miss McCraw, sits stiffly in the outback sun studying a geometry textbook immediately prior to disappearing (though she did make an earlier, impeccably scientific account of volcanic upheaval sound downright voluptuous). Another teacher, Miss Lumley (Kirsty Child), cringingly awaits the dominance of Mrs. Appleyard, who in turn secretly guzzles whisky from her water pitcher and mourns her “completely and utterly dependable” husband. Amongst the girls, Sara pines for her brother Albert, never knowing what we learn only in the film’s last few minutes - that he is one and the same person as Michael’s rough-spoken but plucky groom (John Jarrat), the one who actually finds the missing Irma.

But the Rock cannot be so conveniently tagged as a symbol of escape for those in need of it. Why is it so frightening to all who visit it? Why do two girls escape its power and what causes their many cuts and bruises, or the quality of sheer horror that informs their mutual amnesia? And why does it cause such destruction in the community at large? The school is ruined. Parents withdraw their children; others refuse to pay their bills. Members of the staff abruptly resign. In the village, unrest stirs amongst the populace. The local policeman begins to lose his authority. Michael decides to leave Australia, and suffers mysterious hallucinations, both of Miranda and of the swan which is constantly associated with her in the film’s imagery (even though he never actually sees the little glass model of a swan by her abandoned bedside). Mrs. Appleyard’s drinking becomes more open. Cruelly, she expels Sara from the school, and informs Mlle. de Portiers (Helen Morse), the assistante, that the girl has left forthwith. But then Sara’s dead body is found in the school greenhouse, and when the gardener rushes to tell Mrs. Appleyard, he finds her already waiting in funereal black, veiled and smiling a truly ghastly smile. As the screen fades to black, a voice informs us that her dead body, in turn, was found on March 27—at the foot of Hanging Rock.

There are no explanations, only hints, fragments, omens. Heat and mist enfold the protagonists in the landscape of a dream, entrap them inside an incomprehensible destiny. “Everything,” says Miranda, shortly before vanishing, “happens at its appointed time”; and this is indeed the sense one gets from Peter Weir’s film. It is perhaps a shade too long; a brief subplot involving a school kitchenmaid and her brawny lover is thematically necessary (sexually fulfilled, though without imagination, they are the only ones untouched by the Rock’s influence) but a bit drawn-out and disappointingly prosaic after the splendours of Weir’s mise-en-scène elsewhere. But this is nit-picking. Picnic At Hanging Rock grips one like a vise, and is full of superb epiphanies: the thunderbolt moment when Michael, after searching the Rock alone, recovers from subsequent catatonia  just long enough to thrust a piece of torn lace, from a girl’s dress, into Albert’s hand; the sudden, nervous volte-face when timorous Miss Lumley hands in her notice; the visit of the apparently recovered Irma, clad all in red, to the school gym, where her friends greet her first with hostile silence and then with a barrage of questions about what really happened, giving way to uncontrollable mass hysteria in the process. It’s not going too far to suggest that, in Peter Weir, the cinema has a new poetic master in embryo.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) - The Criterion Collection

 

The Solution to Picnic at Hanging Rock?   Brett McKenzie, analysis and photos

 

Roderick Heath, Ferdy on Films, etc.

 

The Criterion Contraption [Matthew Dessem]

 

AboutFilm.com (Carlo Cavagna) review [A]

 

CultureCartel.com (John Nesbit) review [4/5]  also seen here:  Old School Reviews [John Nesbit]

 

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [5/5]  Richard Scheib

 

Images (Gary Johnson) review

 

Hanging out for a mystery - In Depth - theage.com.au  Andrew Stephens from The Age, January 21, 2007

 

Talking Pictures (UK) review  Howard Schumann

Urban Cinefile (Australia)  Andrew L. Urban

Reelviews [James Berardinelli]

Movie-Vault.com (Avril Carruthers) review [9/10]

Fan page [Tony Whitaker]

Digital Retribution  Mr. Intolerance

OZ Cinema - review  Joshua Smith

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]

 

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review  Criterion Collection

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Dan Heaton) dvd review  Criterion Collection

 

DVD Verdict (Sean McGinnis) dvd review [Criterion Collection]

 

DVD Times  Gary Couzens, Umbrella 2-disc Edition

 

Cinephilia  Umbrella 2-disc Edition

 

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review  Deluxe Edition, 3-disc

 

Cinema de Merde

ScaryMinds

Review By M.G. Wood (Suite 101)

Eye for Film (Jennie Kermode) review [5/5]

 

The Spinning Image (Graeme Clark) review

 

Bloody-Disgusting review [4.5/5]  David Harley

 

CineScene.com [Chris Dashiell] (capsule review)

 

Apollo Guide (Dan Jardine) review [76/100]

 

filmsgraded.com (Brian Koller) retrospective [68/100]

 

Unfashionable Observations

 

Spirituality & Practice (Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat) review

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz) review [C+]

 

Mondo Digital  also reviewing THE LAST WAVE

 

Edinburgh U Film Society (Julia Monelle) review

 

Gods of Filmmaking

 

All Movie Guide [Michael Betzold]

 

Film4 [Richard Luck]

 

TV Guide

 

Variety review

 

Philadelphia City Paper (Sam Adams) review

 

San Francisco Chronicle (Peter Stack) review

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) recommendation [Great Movies]

 

The New York Times (Vincent Canby) review  also seen here:  Criterion Collection Film Essay [Vincent Canby]

 

DVDBeaver dvd review  Gary W. Tooze

 

THE LAST WAVE

Australia  (106 mi)  1977

 

The Last Wave   Mike D’Angelo from Time Out New York

Someday a real rain will come and wipe this scum off the streets," mused Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle in 1976—possibly in anticipation of Peter Weir's The Last Wave, released the following year, in which a torrential downpour in Sydney, Australia, may well herald the coming of the apocalypse. Troubled since childhood by strange premonitory dreams, tax attorney David Burton (Chamberlain, trotting out the same mildly quizzical expression for every emotion) agrees for no good reason—it's not even clear why he's asked, come to think of it—to take on his first criminal case, defending five aboriginal tribesmen accused of murder. When one of the culprits invades Burton's slumber, brandishing a sacred stone covered with runic symbols, our middle-class hero begins to wonder whether there might not be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his secular, rational worldview. Meanwhile, raindrops keep fallin' on his head—sometimes even when he's indoors—and the soggier Sydney gets, the more desperately pensive Burton grows, even as Chamberlain continues his uncanny impression of a guy who can't quite remember whether he turned off the coffee machine before leaving the office.

As evocative as it is patronizing, The Last Wave works best when Weir uses unfavorable weather conditions to create a thick, portentous atmo-sphere of dread: rain pelting the window of Burton's study as he obliviously shuffles papers, safe for the moment in his cocoon. But the director's penchant for mystical mumbo-jumbo (see also Picnic at Hanging Rock, Fearless, etc.) corrodes his vision—especially when it comes to the film's aborigines, depicted here as a generically exotic and incomprehensible Other. (Gulpilil, so memorably inquisitive in Nicolas Roeg's superior Walkabout, is required only to look mysterious; the other aboriginal actors just stare glumly into space, waiting for someone to yell "Cut!") Weir would go on to explore similar themes to better effect in Hollywood, notably in Witness (where the Amish replace the aborigines); Chamberlain would return to television, where he belongs.

 

GALLIPOLI

Australia  (110 mi)  1981  ‘Scope

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

To the young Aussies enlisting with the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) in Peter Weir's Gallipoli, the opportunity to fight on the Turkish front in the Great War is a patriotic duty entered into with a prevailing sense of adventure. It's hard to fathom now that war was ever considered so lightly, but this innocence to the realities of conflict is what makes the film so devastating. Much like Stanley Kubrick's World War I masterpiece Paths Of Glory, Gallipoli concerns soldiers who are led into unavoidable slaughter, but it's more closely aligned to the grunts, and it follows every step in their long journey into martyrdom. After traveling halfway around the world—from the wilds of Western Australia to the sands of Egypt—for basic training, they only begin to contemplate what they've signed on for once they approach the Gallipoli Peninsula. And by then, there's no going back.

As a champion sprinter who enthusiastically volunteers for ANZAC's Light Horse division, although he's under the age requirement, Mark Lee (or, more specifically, Mark Lee's teeth) personifies innocence as an idealist who doesn't think twice about joining the fight. A young Mel Gibson plays his opposite, an older and more world-wise drifter whose cynicism doesn't keep him from befriending Lee and volunteering in spite of his better instincts. The two are assigned to separate divisions—Lee in Light Horse, Gibson in infantry—but they reunite in the trenches, where they're brought in to support the British in a push toward Constantinople.

With piercing use of Tomao Albinoni's "Adagio For Strings," Weir doesn't downplay this defining moment in the nation's relatively short history. Ending with the most unforgettable freeze-frame since The 400 Blows, Gallipoli remains an anti-war movie at heart, but it's also flush with patriotic pride, honoring those who courageously sacrificed their lives, without understating the futility of their mission.

Key features: An hourlong, six-part documentary helps explain Gallipoli's importance in establishing the country's identity. Many of the cast and crew joke that ANZAC Day meant little more to them than a vacation from school until this film came along.

Flickering Myth [Trevor Hogg]

War has the power to shape a country’s psyche especially when the military engagement involves young soldiers senselessly dying. One such defining moment occurred when Australia was barely into its teenage years as a nation with the infamous WWI battle of Gallipoli; it inspired Peter Weir’s 1981 film of the same name.

“I went to Istanbul, hired a car and drove to the battlefield, an extraordinary experience.” recalled the well regarded Australian film director of his 1976 trip to Turkey. “I saw no one in two days of climbing up and down slopes and wandering through the trenches, finding all sorts of scraps left by the armies: buttons and bits of old leather, belts, bones of donkeys, even an unbroken Enos fruit salts bottle. I felt somehow I was really touching history, that’s really what it was, and it totally altered my perception of Gallipoli. I decided right then and there that I’d make the film.”

In trying to capture the enduring significance of Gallipoli for Australians, Weir struggled for years on how to bring the historical event to film. “I could never find the answers in any books… so we [he and writer David Williamson] put the legend to one side and simply made up a story about two young men, really got to know them, where they came from, what happened to them along the way, spent more time getting to the battle and less time on the battlefield.”

Why did Peter Weir select the still relative unknown Mel Gibson for the part of the cynical and free-spirited Frank Dunne? “He told me he wanted me for Gallipoli… because I wasn’t the archetypical Australian.” replied Gibson. “He had Mark Lee [Archy Hamilton], the angelic-looking, ideal Australian kid, and he wanted something of a modern sensibility. He thought the audience needed someone to relate to of their own time.”

Lee’s athletic and somewhat naive character of Archy was inspired by a description of Private Wilfred Harper of the 10th Light Horse in an Australian WWI history book. It read: “Wilfred… was last seen running forward like a schoolboy in a foot-race, with all the speed he could compass.”

The opening scene has Archy Hamilton being put through his running paces by a fatherly uncle armed with a stopwatch. Entering a sprinting competition at a local fair the runner encounters Frank Dunne, a wayward railway worker, and a friendship is born. There is also a more serious game prevalent amongst these carnival activities. Young men are being recruited with promises of fame and glory in foreign lands. The former British colony, in the name of King and country, had entered the international arena of WWI. They were in need of new blood for their next mission which would become the ill-fated Battle of Nek, otherwise known as Gallipoli. Seeing it as a great adventure, Hamilton enlists whereas Frank joins the war effort more out of not wanting to be left behind by his friends.

On their way to meet the departing troops in Perth, Archy and Frank cross a stretch of the Australian Outback that has a surreal lunar quality. The dramatic power of the alien landscape was not lost upon Weir. “It had a fabulously abstract appeal to me, to hear them arguing about the war, and whether it’s right or wrong to go, in the middle of a blinding nothing.” But that was not the only ethereal imagery in the movie, he remarked. “There are moments of unreality in the film - the small boy blowing the trumpet on top of the giant enlistment horse, the night landing, the sequence of the men swimming underwater at Gallipoli beach with the shells exploding around them.”

Orchestrating the principal photography for Gallipoli in Australia and Egypt was a major military undertaking in itself as some of the battle scenes involved using 600 and 700 extras (overall 4,000 people). As the laborious filming progressed, Peter Weir became more and more sensitive to the relentless working conditions of the cast and crew. “I’ll never forget one night addressing the men from the boats,” recalled Weir. “Feeling a bit guilty because we kept them in the boats and wading in the surf for five hours while we filmed shells whizzing around them. I said: “I’m sorry its been five hours, you’re released now and you might go home and get a bit of sleep.” And one of the extras said indignantly: “Don’t be sorry. We only spent five hours, the real ANZACS had to go up the hills under fire, march an hour and a half, then try to sleep with only a thin blanket over them.”

“Gallipoli was the birth of a nation.” Mel Gibson answered when he was asked about the battle’s significance to his adopted countrymen. “It was the shattering of a dream for Australia. They had banded together to fight the Hun and died by the thousands in a dirty little trench war.”

The historical battle happens during the last moments of the film. That was intentional revealed Weir. “I think there’s a Chinese proverb – it’s not the arriving at one’s destiny but the journey that matters. The end of the film is really all about that appointment [with destiny] and how they coped with it.”

The final freeze frame shot of Archy Hamilton running into battle and getting shot echoes the famous picture taken by legendary war photographer Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War.

As for Gallipoli answering the call of destiny, the movie won eight of twelve Australian Film Institute nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Gibson) at the nation’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.

Gallipoli - TCM.com  Sean Axmaker from Turner Classic Movies

 

DVD Times  Gary Couzens

 

Movie Vault [Avril Carruthers]

 

DVDTown [John J. Puccio]

 

The QNetwork Film Desk [James Kendrick]

 

DVD Verdict [Neal Masri]

 

Bill Chambers, Epinions.com

 

MovieMartyr.com   Jeremy Heilman

 

"Let's Not Talk About Movies": Gallipoli

 

Gallipoli (1981) | Celluloid Heroes Paul McElligott

 

Gods of Filmmaking

 

New York Times (registration req'd)

 

THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY

Australia (115 mi)  1982  ‘Scope

 

Time Out

Bedeviled by much-publicised script wrangles (between Weir and source novelist Christopher Koch) and production difficulties (death threats to the crew on location in the Philippines), this bears too many signs of compromise betokening an at least partly US financed project. Gibson is adequate as the Aussie news journalist on assignment in the turbulent Indonesia of late 1965, teamed up romantically with the assistant to the British military attaché (Weaver), and professionally with a dwarf Chinese-Australian camera-man (actress Hunt, extraordinary as the movie's Tolstoy-quoting social conscience). Weir's steamy atmospherics often have the camera standing in for the unwelcome, uncomprehending Westerner in South East Asia to impressive effect; but the delineation of the political forces at work in the last days of Sukarno's regime is often less than clear. The result is a curiously languid affair, rather than the breathless Costa-Gavras-style thriller which was the least one might have expected from this kind of material.

Edinburgh U Film Society [Stephen Cox]

Peter Weir's first American-financed film started the genre of journalists entangled in the violence and politics of Third Worid countries with oppressive military regimes: the genre that gave us Salvador, Under Fire and The Killing Fields. The Year Of Living Dangerously stands as the best of these and deserves to be considered as one of the key films of the 8Os.

Australian journalist Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) arrives in Indochina in 1965: it is his first overseas assignment and he wants to do well. Adopted by diminutive photographer Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt) he is introduced to British consular official (Sigourney Weaver) with whom he promptly falls in love. She gives him secret information regarding an arms shipment to the Communists so that they can escape the predicted war together, but Hamilton uses the information for an exclusive story and is put on the Communists' death-list...

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this film is the performance by actress Linda Hunt (who appeared in Pret-A-Porter) as the male half-Chinese half-Australian Billy Kwan, for which she duly won an Oscar. Kwan is the Tolstoy-quoting social conscience of the film and appears as a cipher for Weir's oriental values and mystical elements. His androgynous quality gives the film an extra layer of symbolic meaning. TYOLD deals effectively with themes of nationality (both Hamilton and Kwan are only half Australian) and betrayal (Hamilton's betrayal of Jill and Kwan, and Sukharto's betrayal of Kwan and the other Indochinese); it is apolitical in that the central communist character is portrayed sympathetically, and Gibson successfully avoids turning his character into a macho red-blooded Aussie male.

TYOLD has none ofthe rawness of Salvador but it avoids the didacticity of Stone's film: its purpose is to tell a love story whereas Stone wants to point the waggling finger at American foreign policy. Both films excel at showing the irrationality of war but in entirely different ways.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"The Year of Living Dangerously" achieves one of the best re-creations of an exotic locale I've ever seen in a movie. It takes us to Indonesia in the middle 1960s, a time when the Sukarno regime was shaky and the war in Vietnam was just heating up. It moves us into the life of a foreign correspondent, a radio reporter from Australia who has just arrived in Jakarta, and who thrives in an atmosphere heady with danger. How is this atmosphere created by Peter Weir, the director? He plunges into it headfirst. He doesn't pause for travelogue shots. He thrusts us immediately into the middle of the action--into a community of expatriates, journalists, and embassy people who hang out in the same bars, restaurants, and clubs, and speculate hungrily on the possibility that Sukarno might be deposed. That would be a really big story, a corrective for their vague feelings of being stuck in a backwater.

Guy Hamilton, the journalist (Mel Gibson), is a lanky, Kennedyesque, chain-smoking young man who has a fix on excitement. He doesn't know the ropes in Indonesia, but he learns them quickly enough, from a dwarfish character named Billy Kwan.

Billy is half-Oriental and half-European, and knows everybody and can tell you where all the bodies are buried. He has a warm smile and a way of encouraging you to do your best, and if you sometimes suspect he has unorthodox political connections -- well, he hasn't crossed you yet. In all the diplomatic receptions he's a familiar sight in his gaudy tropical shirts.

"The Year of Living Dangerously" follows Guy and Billy as they become friends, and something more than friends; they begin to share a common humanity and respect. Billy gets Guy a good interview with the local Communist Party chief. He even introduces Guy to Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver), a British attaché with two weeks left on her tour. As the revolution creeps closer, as the stories get bigger, Guy and Jill become lovers and Billy, who once proposed to Jill, begins to feel pushed aside.

This sounds, no doubt, like a foreign correspondent plot from the 1940s. It is not. "The Year of Living Dangerously" is a wonderfully complex film about personalities more than events, and we really share the feeling of living in that place, at that time. It does for Indonesia what Bogdanovich's "Saint Jack" did for Singapore. The direction is masterful; Weir (whose credits include "Picnic at Hanging Rock") is as good with quiet little scenes (like Billy's visit to a dying child) as big, violent ones (like a thrilling attempt by Guy and Billy to film a riot).

The performances of the movie are a good fit with Weir's direction, and his casting of the Billy Kwan character is a key to how the film works. Billy, so small and mercurial, likable and complicated and exotic, makes Indonesia seem more foreign and intriguing than any number of standard travelogue shots possibly could. That means that when the travelogue shots do come (and they do, breathtakingly, when Gibson makes a trip into the countryside), they're not just scenery; they do their work for the film because Weir has so convincingly placed us in Indonesia.

Billy Kwan is played, astonishingly, by a woman -- Linda Hunt, a New York stage actress who enters the role so fully that it never occurs to us that she is not a man. This is what great acting is, a magical transformation of one person into another. Mel Gibson (of "The Road Warrior") is just right as a basically conventional guy with an obsessive streak of risk-taking. Sigourney Weaver has a less interesting role but is always an interesting actress. This is a wonderfully absorbing film.

The Year of Living Dangerously - TCM.com  Paul Tatara

There was a lot of heat on the set of Peter Weir's politically-charged romance, The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), and it wasn't just the weather. The teaming of Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, both of whom appear at their sleekest and sexiest, was a positive form of friction. But there was also the unwanted attention of an angry group of Muslims who incorrectly assumed the movie's location shoot in Manila (standing in for Indonesia) was anti-Islamic. Weir had to finish the picture in Australia when his increasingly jumpy cast and crew began to feel they were living dangerously themselves.

Gibson stars as Guy Hamilton, an Australian journalist who's covering the 1965 coup against Indonesia's Sukarno government. Hamilton navigates crowded streets that bustle with marchers singing songs of protest, while white Westerners wrestle the hard truths of life in a fracturing political system. Also on hand are Jill Bryant (Weaver), a beautiful woman who works for the British embassy, and Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), a street-smart photographer who initiates a romance between Hamilton and Bryant...both of whom may be the object of his affections. Kwan, who happens to be a dwarf, also serves as the film's occasional narrator.

Hunt, of course, was cast considerably against type when she won the role of the lovelorn Kwan. But her work was startling enough to merit an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Even she didn't know if she was ready for such a challenging role - at one point, she lobbied to have the character re-written as a woman. Weir had originally cast an Australian man as Kwan, but grew disenchanted with the actor in rehearsals. He was floored by Hunt's audition while searching for a replacement, and immediately hired her.

Though it would establish her ongoing career in motion pictures, Hunt, who was already an accomplished stage actress, suffered emotionally during the shoot. "I once ordered room service in the hotel," she later remembered, "and when the bellboy kept saying 'Yes sir, yes sir,' I dissolved into tears. That also happened once in a restaurant."

Even that was a minor problem, though, when stacked against the ominous letters and phone calls that the film company received from outraged fundamentalists. At one point, 10,000 Filipinos filled the Muslim quarter of Manila, muttering curses and shouting threats at the cast and crew. There was even a bomb threat. Gibson remembers receiving a particularly menacing phone call, during which the caller kept asking, "Are you a brave and courageous man, Mr. Gibson?" The actors soon began traveling with bodyguards in tow.

This unexpected real-life situation - which was the result of a complex misunderstanding about why the movie was shooting in Manila rather than Indonesia - was eerily like one of Weir's own films. As he said in a 1979 Washington Post interview: "Everything is built on the real and the ordinary, but there's chaos underneath. We try to protect ourselves from the mystery, but it's all around us, just waiting to reveal itself and terrorize us. The ironic thing about movies is that you can use this highly sophisticated technology to restore the sense of mystery that an industrialized urban society tends to obscure."

Weir ultimately had enough. "I think the threat was very real," he later said. "I received one of the phone calls and read one of the letters. Both combined religious fanaticism with the kind of unpredictability and conviction we saw (during the U.S. hostage crisis) in Iran. I was scared." The cast and crew's evacuation came swiftly, and, for most, not a moment too soon. "We were having lunch," Weaver said, "and a representative of the producer came over and said in a solemn voice, 'It's now 2 pm. By 2:20 we'll be having a meeting, and by 4 you'll be on a plane out of here.' I threw the important things in a suitcase and ran out the door."

Year Of Living Dangerously  Can vision be a model for knowledge? by Carolyn Durham from Jump Cut, March 1985                

 

DVD Verdict  Harold Gervais

 

MovieMartyr.com   Jeremy Heilman

 

RalfBenner

 

DVD Talk (Chuck Arrington)

 

Read the New York Times Review »   Vincent Canby

 

WITNESS                                                                 A                     96

USA  (112 mi)  1985

 

A beautifully written film by William Kelley and Earl W. Wallace that captures the nuances of quietly changing moods, much of it wordless, using the camera as an unnamed character in the film that simply observes without judgment.  Maurice Jarré’s musical score is also effective in highlighting some of the more memorable scenes.  Lukas Hass is Samuel, a young Amish boy traveling with his mother (Kelly McGillis) through Philadelphia on their way to Baltimore, but he witnesses a murder in the lavatory.  Harrison Ford is John Book, a police detective who initially is just doing his job, rounding up the usual suspects, having no luck, as the young boy doesn’t recognize any of them, but in a beautifully developed scene, Ford has the boy searching endlessly through mugshots until a phone call keeps the police officer distracted.  As the words become muted, the action continues in a busy police station, as seen through the perspective of the young boy, heightened by the emotions of the music, as the boy’s eyes peer through a trophy case and become transfixed on the photograph of a decorated officer, Danny Glover.  The look on Ford’s face tells all, as this can only mean the worst possible scenario, police corruption within the ranks. 

 

Ford tells the chief of police, his partner, and no one else, but shortly thereafter, his partner is dead, Glover comes gunning for Ford, who is forced to immediately move the boy and his mother Rachel back to the safety of their home in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the heart of Amish country.  But as Ford attempts to leave, it becomes apparent that he’s been seriously wounded, and the Amish have to decide what to do with him.  Rachel successfully pleads that they need to save his life, as otherwise, the ones that killed him will come for the boy.  The film then immerses itself into the unsubtitled Pennsylvania Dutch language of this relatively obscure culture, showcasing the precision of their daily routines, people living their lives peacefully and productively, remaining apart from the violent world that surrounds them.  Book is caught between two worlds, as the Amish not only save his life, but hide him among their ranks, where he witnesses first hand the rude and vulgar treatment the Amish receive from overly demanding tourists who see them as mere objects they can boss around.  The Amish do not like to have their pictures taken, so despite the apparent realism of the film, no Amish were actually used in the film.  McGillis, in particular, is excellent in the film, apparently living with an Amish widow for several weeks in preparation for the film, doing much of the acting with her eyes alone, showing a fierce independent streak, yet always remaining within the context of plain Amish demeanor.

 

Alexander Godunov, a former Bolshoi ballet dancer, plays Daniel, one of the Amish brethren who pays a call to Rachel, who recently lost her husband, and quietly and unaffectionately drink lemonade together as they sit alone and barely speak.  But his presence alone speaks volumes, as it becomes apparent that Rachel’s affections lie with “the English,” John Book, who recovers under her care, and even begins to be of service around the farm, performing minor carpentry work.  Two stunning scenes are scored to music, one lit by lamplight in the barn as Book attempts to fix his car, where the radio suddenly works, and Sam Cook’s “What a Wonderful World” draws Book and Rachel into each other’s arms for the first time.  But it’s a short song, eventually interrupted by one of the elders.  Later there is a stark moment when she bathes naked in full view of Book, a study in eye contact and body language, a scene that ties them both in knots afterwards.  Another beautiful scene is a barn building, where the entire community comes out at the crack of dawn, working all day to construct a barn, fed food and beverages by the women as every available man, woman, and child works in unison, wordlessly uplifted by the soaring musical score which represents the free will and determination of the Amish spirit, while Rachel and Book exchange glances, recognized by the entire community.  Obviously the acceptance of Book is a danger to all of them, as he is not one of them, and can only bring trouble. 

 

When trouble arrives, it begins wordlessly and quietly, as the corrupt cops peek their car over the horizon, then retreat back out of sight, gathering their assault weaponry before heading to the farm on foot, bringing a bit of “the English” Hell to a pacifist, God-fearing community.  What follows is a HIGH NOON scenario where one man is outmanned and outmatched and has to think his way out of trouble.  The entire film is a dissection of cultural differences, a contrast of values, beautifully pitting aggression against pacifism as seen through the eyes of John Book, which includes his love interest in Rachel, the forbidden fruit in this land of Eden.  This is a gentle and insightful film where violence is an unwelcome intrusion, beautifully expressed by accumulating significant details, establishing the rhythms of life in both worlds, where Ford was actually nominated for an Academy award, yet it is the daring, courageous performance of McGillis’s blunt Amish widow that we remember afterwards.   

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

Fish-out-of-water stories were very popular for a while in the 1980s (Beverly Hills Cop and 'Crocodile' Dundee were two favorites), but none had the classical resonance of this powerful Oscar-nominated drama.

Harrison Ford stars as big city cop John Book who takes on a routine murder case, and unexpectedly discovers the murderer within his own department. The only witness is a young Amish boy, Samuel Lapp (Lukas Haas). To protect the boy and his mother, Rachel (Kelly McGillis), Book takes them both back to Amish country to hide out until the trial.

Australian-born director Peter Weir (The Last Wave, The Truman Show), who specializes in establishing specific places and their rhythms, perfectly captures Amish country. He gives it and its people dignity with only a hint of preciousness. Of course, Book must learn to adapt and control his violent ways to live among these peaceful people, and Weir balances these scenes nicely. The scene in which Book fixes his car and dances with Rachel to Sam Cooke's "What a Wonderful World" has entered into the lexicon of romantic scenes -- both innocent and forbidden. A remarkable early scene in which Samuel points out the killer from among a trophy case is also notable for its excellent use of sound and music. And when the chase/fight finally comes during the third act, Weir successfully incorporates its pulse into the rest of the film's flow.

Ford earned his only Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance, and the film received nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Writers William Kelley, Earl W. Wallace and Pamela Wallace took home Oscars for their screenplay. Viggo Mortensen appears in an early role, and Danny Glover sinks his teeth into an uncharacteristic bad guy part.

Reel.com DVD review [Kim Morgan]

Remember that exchange at the beginning of When Harry Met Sally when the titular couple argues over the ending of Casablanca? Sally, in all her practical on-the-side anal retentiveness, states that she would choose Paul Heinreid over Humphrey Bogart. Why would she give up being the first lady of Czechoslovakia to marry a guy who runs a bar? Harry, shocked, replies: "You'd rather be in a passionless marriage than live with the man you've had the greatest sex of your life with, just because he owns a bar and that is all he does?"

"Yes, and so would any woman in her right mind. Women are very practical. Even Ingrid Bergman, which is why she gets on the plane at the end of the movie."

Peter Weir's memorable Witness (and if you've never seen it, consider this a spoiler alert) holds the same argument. Could the liltingly lovely but Amish Kelly McGillis give up her community to run off with the passionate, tough city cop Harrison Ford simply because, well, they are quite obviously, flat out, over the moon in love with each other?

No, she can't. And that realization only adds the painful but beautifully romantic weight to a movie that's greatly stood its 20 years. A picture that could have been a typical '80s genre picture—hot Amish lady! Murder! Police corruption! Harrison Ford!—was made into something deep, complicated, and passionate while never losing its thriller edge. In his first Hollywood film, the Australian Weir (who had made the great Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli, and The Year of Living Dangerously before this) juxtaposed the old world, quiet environs of Amish country (Lancaster County, PA) with the shock of the modern world, never judging either side as necessarily preferable, and never turning any situation into a stock moment of easy resolution. He also made the film genuinely romantic (and without a sex scene), providing one of cinema's most romantic, erotic kisses.

The "thriller" part of the story is quite interesting. Stepping away from his young, recently widowed Amish mother, Rachel (McGillis), a boy, Samuel (Lukas Haas), witnesses a murder in a Philadelphia train station. Mother and son are then thrust into a case that's been assigned to brash, big-city detective John Book (Ford), who learns that the murderer was, in fact, one of his own—a police officer (played by Danny Glover). Nearly murdered themselves, Book, Rachel, and Samuel head back to Amish country, where they can hide out.

And this is where the film truly begins to distance itself from any genre trappings. What could have resulted was a story filled with typical "in danger" moments or a clichéd look at the simplicity of the Amish lifestyle. Instead, the film slows down, using delicate moments of looks and gestures, even some comedy, to underscore Book's attempts to live within this humble community. And he is humbled. As an outsider, he's well-treated, but there are those who are suspect of him (the Amish are human after all) and his relationship with the pretty widow. The suspicions aren't exactly wrong, as the two are clearly smitten. Weir's talent (and I wish more films would follow his lead) is how he develops the attraction. Both Book and Rachel respect each other, both are trying to be careful—but this is never discussed. Using the power of the cinematic medium, Weir films their expressions and actions so perfectly that no hackneyed speech is required. Just a building of attraction, sexual frustration, and a release that puts the viewer on the edge of her/his seat more than the gun-shooting drama that comes later. And Ford, in one of his finest roles, is especially powerful; he's seeping with movie-star magnetism, but he's nevertheless incredibly real. And his complexities are worn so effortlessly that you never feel a hint of acting in his portrayal. Like Bogart's torn-apart Rick in Casablanca, he's an old-school, sensitive tough guy, and you can well understand why Rachel is crazy about him. When the film first came out, every woman who saw it was. But the movie never plays this on overkill. Just think again of the famous kiss: When's the last time you saw a movie kiss that actually surprised you with real chemistry? And did you ever think you'd see a movie about the Amish that would leave you swooning, and not over the way they make furniture-making look easy?

Well, swoon again. Paramount presents this Special Collectors Edition in a nice transfer that displays John Seale's beautiful cinematography of both the city and the tranquil Amish countryside. Surprisingly, the edition comes sans commentary track, but there is an interesting five-part featurette offering discussion from Weir, Ford, Haas, and McGillis. There's also a deleted scene (it was included in the television broadcast of the film), a trailer, and TV spots. For those who love Witness, this is a disc worth obtaining. Thanks to Ford's underplayed yet intensely potent performance and Weir's elegant yet unpretentious direction, Witness is that rarest of films: It's both subtle and super charged.

PopMatters  Nikki Tranter

At the start of Witness, Samuel Lapp, an Amish child on his first journey from his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Philadelphia, sees the murder of a police officer. Incarnated by then eight-year-old Lukas Haas, Samuel observes this event, entirely alien to his experience, with an expression that isn't fear, at first, but interest. The violence is so new that he can't be sure it isn't "normal" in the big city.

Such wonderment lies at the center of Peter Weir's Witness. Police detective John Book (Harrison Ford) is assigned to the murder case and so, must find out exactly what Samuel saw. Undercover with the Amish, Book too is observing a foreign environment. Bemused at times, he is nonetheless captivated by its simplicity, its decency, and its ability to thrive despite its antiquities.

This blending and occasional clashing of cultures inspired Weir and producer Edward S. Feldman to make the film. On Paramount's new Special Collector's Edition DVD, they discuss the concept as they saw it represented by Book's cop habits and the Amish community, who live without electricity and plumbing, very humbly. Speaking during a 90-minute documentary, "Between Two Worlds: The Making of Witness," Weir says, "Within the one film, you were having not just two cultures, but two time zones. So, without it being science fiction, you really had the 19th century and the 20th century in the same frame." The juxtaposition finds its romantic apotheosis when Book falls in love with Samuel's recently widowed mother, Rachel (Kelly McGillis).

Weir, as Feldman notes in the documentary, relies on his actors' ability to communicate without words in order to establish moods and shape anticipation. "Don't use dialogue if you don't need it. It's a 'moving picture,'" Feldman says, quoting Weir. The film highlights John and Rachel's mutual desire to peer into each other's worlds in images that are nearly without dialogue. In a pivotal scene, John and Rachel dance to music from John's car radio in her father's barn. As the music begins, they stop speaking. Before reaching for her hand, John looks at Rachel. She's unsure, as is he, but he wants to "free" her for a moment, his desire made visible as they dance to Sam Cooke's "(What a) Wonderful World" (performed here by Greg Chapman).

Ford says of Weir's style that there are times when dialogue becomes intrusive, when it "starts to talk about the scene" rather than setting or expressing it. Following the dance, Rachel has seen what John can give her, and John, startled when her father, Eli (Jan Rubes), scolds Rachel, realizes that what is normal for him is abnormal for Rachel.

He and Rachel are engaged in a tug of war throughout the film, as each invites and resists the temptations of the other. John watches through a cracked doorway as Rachel washes herself with a sponge and a tub of water, intently, and Weir's camera acts as his eye, moving along Rachel's arms and legs as she bathes. The moment is sexual but not sexy, and it's revelatory for John in that he finally sees all of Rachel, her body and her culture.

When Rachel catches him looking, however, she doesn't hide as her previously reserved nature might have suggested. Instead, she turns her body to him, naked, embarrassing him so that he turns away. This in turn causes her to feel rejected and embarrassed as well. The more they understand -- or at least see -- about each other, the more lost they become. When John is about to leave Lancaster, again they cannot speak. Her face is almost free of expression, and his is confused and longing. In effect, Weir's "time zones" almost repel one another. There is no way for the relationship to continue without severe consequences: "If we'd made love last night," Book says, after that revelatory moment in the bathing room. "I'd have to stay, or you'd have to leave."

This relationship is explored briefly in "Between Two Worlds," but the documentary focuses mainly on the film's genesis, its endurance as an audience favorite, and its eventual look, which Weir compares to a Vermeer painting: "The stillness and the feeling of another time that those pictures give you," he says. "They disturb your view of time in a way. You can feel the clocks ticking somehow more slowly as you look at these paintings." Witness works exactly this way, assisted by the shifts from bustling Philadelphia and serene Lancaster. It's a picture that takes its time. The participants in the documentary note how unusual this kind of delicate filmmaking looks 20 years down the track -- even Weir says he thought the film would end up "like wine, to be drunk in a season," almost devoid of lasting appeal. He's happy to have been wrong.

Ford, Feldman, Hass, and Viggo Mortensen also discuss the film's significance for their lives and careers. Ford considers it one of the best on his resume, and Mortensen, who debuts here as an Amish farmer, reveals it as a phenomenal education. It's McGillis, though, who, through tears, sums up the film: "What a blessed gift, and you know, there's not a day that I don't think about just how random that was [in reference to her casting]. And when it happened, when that magic happens, it lasts forever."

PLAIN AND SIMPLE | The New Yorker  Pauline Kael from the New Yorker, February 25, 1985, also seen here:  PLAIN AND SIMPLE   

In the new Peter Weir movie, “Witness,” an eight-year-old Amish boy (Lukas Haas), on his first trip to a city, sees a murder taking place in the men’s room of Philadelphia’s Thirtieth Street train station. In order to protect the boy and his mother, Rachel, a widow (Kelly McGillis), from the killers, John Book (Harrison Ford), the police captain who’s in charge of the investigation, tries to hide their identities, and, with a bullet wound in his side, drives them back to their farm in Lancaster County before he collapses. At that point, the film has already built up the contrast between the devout, gentle Amish and the greedy, brutal Philadelphians—seen through the eyes of the child, who takes in everything. In the days of silent pictures, the distinction between rural virtue and big-city vice was a standard theme. The girl on the farm was steadfast; she represented true, undying love. The city girl was fast and spoiled and selfish. This split between good farmers and bad urban dwellers takes an extreme form in “Witness.” Last year’s rural trilogy (“Country,” “Places in the Heart,” and “The River”) prepared the way: moviegoers have been softened to accept the idea that people who work the land are uplifted by their labor. And “Witness” goes the trilogy one better by having its farming people part of a pacifist religious community that retains an eighteenth-century way of life and stresses “plainness.” (The Amish reject buttons as decorative.) Also, in the past twenty years we have been battered by so much evidence of crime in the cities that moviegoers may be ready to believe that city people are, of necessity, depraved. “Witness” seems to take its view of the Amish from a quaint dreamland, a Brigadoon of tall golden wheat and shiny-clean faces, and to take its squalid, hyped-up view of life in Philadelphia from prolonged exposure to TV cop shows. Murder is treated as if it were a modern, sin-city invention.

Though you can feel in your bones that a solemn cross-cultural romance is coming, the first section of the story moves along at an even clip until John Book’s collapse. There’s even a bit of visual comedy in the train station, when the little boy, in his black suit and broad black hat, thinks he sees another member of the sect: he walks over to an elderly Orthodox Jew, and the two look at each other in wordless rejection. But the narrative is becalmed during Book’s recuperation at Rachel’s farm, because the screenwriters (Earl W. Wallace and William Kelley) haven’t provided him with any plan of action. When he rushes Rachel and the boy back to safety among the Amish, it’s because he has learned that the killers are his superiors in the police department, who are involved in a twenty-million-dollar narcotics deal. But once he knows that, his mind seems to go dead. During his stay among the Amish, he gets out to a nearby town and phones the only cop he can trust—his partner—who wonders if they should go to a reporter or to the F.B.I. The suggestion seems to fall into a void, and Book just waits for the killers to track him down and show up at the farm. Maybe the movie is trying to tell us that the whole American system is so rotten that Book has no recourse—that there’s no agency that isn’t contaminated. Whatever the moviemakers had in mind, the way the story is set up there’s nothing for us to look forward to but the arrival of the bad guys and the final fit of violence.

While we wait, “Witness” is a compendium of scenes I had hoped never to see again. There’s the city person stranded in the sticks and learning to milk a cow, and—oh, yes—having to get up at 4:30 A.M. to do it. There’s the scene with this city person sheepishly wearing clothes that are too short and look funny on him, so that the countrywoman can’t restrain herself from giggling. There’s the barn-raising (out of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”) and all the hearty fellowship that goes with it. There’s the natural woman who stands bare-breasted and proud; in earlier American movies, the film frame used to cut her off at the bare shoulders, but you got the idea. “Witness” also takes first prize in the saying-grace department: a whole community of people bow their heads over their vittles. It’s like watching the Rockettes kick. We can’t have prayers in the public schools, but movies are making up for it.

Weir, an Australian filming in this country for the first time (“Witness” was shot in Pennsylvania), has succumbed to blandness. Book’s stay at the farm is like a vacation from the real world; the rural images have a seductive lyricism that’s linked to the little boy’s dark, serious eyes. He’s a subdued child—boyish only in his quiet curiosity and low-key playfulness. Lukas Haas is a good little actor—his shyness is lovely—but the moviemakers’ conception of the boy is so idealized it’s as if they’d never been driven nuts by the antics of a real, live child. This kid never develops beyond our first view of him. He doesn’t argue with his mother, he doesn’t complain, he doesn’t make any noise. He’s a miracle of politeness and obedience—a walking ad for fundamentalist orthodoxy. But Lukas Haas at least stays in his perfect character. As his mother, Kelly McGillis is like a model in a TV commercial that reproduces a seventeenth-century painting of a woman with a pitcher of water or milk. She shifts uneasily between the heroic naturalness of Liv Ullmann and the dimpled simpering of the young Esther Williams. She’s so dimply sweet that when she’s happy she’s like a wholesome, strapping version of a Disney Mouseketeer.

The moviemakers try to balance things by introducing the suggestion that the sect is narrow-minded; Rachel is warned that her interest in John Book is causing talk among the Amish and could result in her being “shunned.” But the whole meaning of the movie is that her life and her child’s life are far better than anything the two could experience in the outside world. And, of course, John Book comes to love Rachel and her bonnet too much to want to expose her to the ugliness outside. (The spoiled city woman is represented here by Patti LuPone, who plays Book’s divorcee sister—a tense urban type to the ultimate degree.) It’s suggested that the women in the community don’t take part in the decision-making, but never that there’s anything basically repressive or stultifying about living in this authoritarian society without music or dance, without phones or electricity, without the possibility of making friends in the outside world. The picture isn’t interested in what life in such a closed-in community might actually be like for a woman or a child. The farm country is used as a fantasyland for the audience to visit; it has its allure, but you’re ready to leave when Book goes—you wouldn’t want to live there and get up at 4:30 A.M. and work like a plow horse. ‘‘Witness’’ uses the Amish simply as a way to refurbish an old plot. And as soon as you see Rachel’s galumphing Amish suitor (Alexander Godunov), with his dear, mischievous grin, you know that the film is going to avoid any real collision of cultures, and the risk of giving offense. The suitor is there so that John Book can make the right, noble decision. He makes the decision for both himself and Rachel. The implication is that, coming from the world of violence and being a man who uses a gun—i.e., a sinner—he knows that there’s no possibility of true happiness out there.

The picture is like something dug up from the earliest days of movies: it starts off, during the titles, with the wind blowing through the wheat, and the actors often look posed. Weir seems less interested in the story than in giving the images a spiritual glow. (It’s easy to imagine this picture being a favorite at the White House.) It must be said that Harrison Ford gives a fine, workmanlike performance, tempered with humor. The role doesn’t allow him any chances for the kind of eerie intensity he showed in his small part as a burned-out Vietnam veteran in the 1977 “Heroes,” and he doesn’t have the aura that he has as Han Solo and as Indiana Jones, but he burrows into the role and gives it as much honesty as it can hold. He’s not an actor with a lot of depth, but he has an unusual rapport with the audience—he brings us right inside John Book’s thoughts and emotions. Granting him all that, I must also admit that the only time I really warmed to him here was when he suddenly broke out of character and, his face lighting up demoniacally, parodied a TV commercial as he cried out, “Honey, that’s great coffee!” (It’s a free-floating joke, like Jack Nicholson’s “Here’s Johnny” in “The Shining.”) It’s a measure of how sedate the movie is that you feel a twinge (as if you were being naughty) when you laugh.

But my instincts tell me that this idyllic sedateness could be the film’s ticket to success. In its romanticism and its obviousness, “Witness” has got just about everything to be a “Lost Horizon” for the mid-eighties. There’s the charming, obedient child, and there’s the widow whose eyes flash as she challenges John Book to look at her nakedness. (And—I swear I didn’t make this up—a storm is raging on the night she flashes him. It’s the same storm that used to rage for Garbo when her passions rose.) There’s the implicit argument that a religious community produces a higher order of human being than a secular society. There’s something for just about everyone in this movie—even the holistic-medicine people. John Book’s bullet wound is healed by folk remedies: Rachel gives him herbal teas and applies poultices to the affected area. (I’m disposed to have some trust in the efficacy of these methods, but I still wish that just once somebody in a movie who was treated with humble ancient remedies would kick off.) Scenes like the one in which some showoff kids try to provoke the Amish to fight can be discussed by editorial writers and in schools. All those dug-up scenes are probably just what is going to sell the movie. There’s a little paradox here; “Witness” exalts people who aren’t allowed to see movies—it says that they’re morally superior to moviegoers. It’s so virtuous it’s condemning itself.

James Berardinelli's ReelViews

 

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

The New York Times (Vincent Canby) review

 

THE MOSQUITO COAST

USA  (117 mi)  1986)

 

The Mosquito Coast Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London

Given that Paul Theroux's harrowing tale of jungle craziness is one of the least filmable properties of recent years, Weir's river journey to the heart of darkness works considerably better than one might imagine. Meticulously translated from the book, Mosquito Coast charts the mental decline and fall of idealistic inventor Allie Fox, who drags wife and family to the jungles of Central America in a doomed effort to bring ice to the natives. Although it's too long, with Weir attempting to negotiate too many psychological bends in Theroux's River of No Return, the director still manages to conjure out of the breathtaking landscape a genuine whiff of mental and physical hell, and in so doing draws from Harrison Ford a tour de force performance as mad Allie. Indeed, this is Ford's movie: Helen Mirren's flower-child-gone-to-seed wife and son Charlie (Phoenix), the heart and voice of the novel, are mere jungle shadows in comparison. Wherein lies the film's major flaw; for try as he might, after a lifetime playing the ultimate hero, Ford finally fails to convince as the ultimate villain, particularly when he's back battling natives à la Indiana Jones. A brave and serious piece of film-making, nevertheless.

Washington Post [Rita Kempley]

Harrison Ford scratches an itch in "The Mosquito Coast." The strong and silent hero proves he has a way with words as the voluble Allie Fox, an inventor who leads his American Family Robinson on an ill-fated adventure in this tragi-comic adaptation of the Paul Theroux book.

Fox is a fractious, funny genius, the sort of individualist who no longer fits into the synthetic fabric of the industrial North. "Look around you," he says to his eldest boy Charlie. "This place is a toilet." Fed up with fast food and afraid of nuclear war, Fox escapes with his angelic family of five to southerly La Mosquito and an imagined utopia untainted by the modern world.

"Have a nice day, America," he says from the deck of the freighter that takes the Foxes to the Central American heart of darkness.

Trouble is, Edisons and Edens cannot coexist: Sooner or later a man of invention will pollute paradise, a grand contradiction that gives "Mosquito" its bite and Ford inspiration for his most complex portrayal to date. As a persona of epic polarities, he animates this muddled, metaphysical journey into the jungle.

The little Foxes are a rosy brood, and Helen Mirren plays archetypal Mother Fox with an eloquent, Meryl Streepish glow. She and the kids -- River Phoenix as Charles, Jadrien Steele as Jerry, and kid models Hilary and Rebecca Gordon as the freckly twin girls -- form a perfect family tableau. And Conrad Roberts becomes a part of the extended family as the compassionate Creole boatman who ferries the Foxes to their new tropical home.

This fantasy family of pliable progeny never challenges Fox's increasingly dangerous tyranny. Like "Fitzcarraldo" before him, Fox is transfigured by the tropics, a stranger in a stranger land. Theroux's theme is handily adopted by Australian director Peter Weir, who works from Paul ("Taxi Driver") Shrader's strange screenplay.

Weir, who also directed Ford in "Witness," has reworked the theme of cultural alienation time and again in such films as "The Last Wave," "The Year of Living Dangerously" and "Picnic at Hanging Rock." Here Weir wrestles with similar notions, but with an uncustomarily comic touch. So "Mosquito Coast" is stripped of its significance and deteriorates into an epic spoofed.

Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]

The Mosquito Coast, based on the novel by Paul Theroux, manages to do the impossible: It makes Harrison Ford come off as a jerk. But despite this (or maybe because of this), The Mosquito Coast is a compelling little movie.

Ford stars as Allie, a brilliant inventor who's never really put his talents to good use. He spends much of his time lamenting the current state of America, which is chock full of fast food joints and welfare leeches. Along with his wife and three kids, he lives a fairly comfortable life - taking odd jobs repairing things. In his spare time, he just happens to invent things like a machine that can instantly make ice using fire as fuel. But one day, he gets sick of the American way of life and convinces his family to move to a place called the Mosquito Coast somewhere in South America. He's actually purchased a small area of land in that vicinity, which basically makes him mayor with a constituency of around 20 people. Allie and family proceed to turn the villagers lives upside down, initially for the better (they build quite an impressive little town, complete with a gigantic ice-making machine), but eventually, Allie begins to relish the power a bit too much and it's all downhill from there.

It really is an intriguing concept, and Ford's never been better. Though he tends to be the sort of actor that basically plays himself in every movie, here he shows a side of himself we've never seen before - the obnoxious side. This isn't a guy that you'd want to know in real life, and if you did know him, you'd spend a lot of time trying to stay out of his way. He spouts lengthy diatribes on the way he thinks the world should be, which basically consists of as little government intervention as possible and no big companies. So, when he moves his family to this remote spot, he figures he's going to have it made in the shade. It's a testament to Ford's talent that we actually care what happens to him, because in a lesser actor's hands, we'd be hoping that some cannibalistic natives would eat him.

Director Peter Weir doesn't exactly keep the pace brisk, but that works here. We need time to get used to Allie before we're thrust into the congo, and Weir's steady direction allows for that. Also worth mentioning is River Phoenix's work as Allie's loyal but skeptical son. As was the case in Stand by Me, Phoenix was an exceptionally capable young actor. In The Mosquito Coast, he really had his work cut out for him playing this conflicted kid but he certainly proved he could hold his own against a heavyweight like Harrison Ford.

The Mosquito Coast is just the sort of intelligent, risky fare that's sorely missing from today's theaters. Check it out.

Flickering Myth [Trevor Hogg]

Returning to the project which was meant to be his Hollywood debut, well-respected Australian director Peter Weir reunited with his Witness star, Harrison Ford, to shoot his 1986 film adaptation of Paul Theroux’s book The Mosquito Coast.

While the filming was taking place in Belize, a small agricultural country of 148,000 people, local residents were all abuzz about the movie. Jungle roads were built and over three hundred Belizeans were employed to aid in the movie’s production. Overall, The Mosquito Coast location shooting poured eight million dollars into the nation’s economy making it the third largest industry in the country at the time.

Weir had high hopes for his second Hollywood picture. “There’s a tremendous amount of emotion in the story.” He explained. “Unless it is harnessed into some sort of framework for me, I’ll be stirring the audience up and they’ll wander out feeling uncomfortable because they were moved, but without understanding what to do with their emotion. I think I’ve got the framework in this operatic feeling. In opera, many times you start with everything wonderful, the songs bright and positive, and then the complexities arise and you end with tragedy.”

For Weir a completed script is just the beginning of the storytelling. “I like to open the door to chance. That implies enormous risks. You presume on the muse visiting you, but at the same time you don’t count on it. Driving to work you see street scenes – a face, a hat, a detail – that you often end up putting into the film that very day. I saw a man with a plastic bag on his head with just his face part cut out and a straw hat on top of that and said, ‘Lets do that.’ But it won’t help the drama itself. You’ve got to have good acting and good thinking.”

Narrated by teenager Charlie Fox, The Mosquito Coast is a story about his father Allie whose frustration with commercialism causes him to resettle his family in the jungles of Central America. Once in his unadulterated paradise the elder Fox cannot entirely let go of the modern conveniences he has left behind. As a result, the eccentric proceeds to construct an ice machine with a religious fervor matched only by that of a Christian missionary who is determined to convert the local inhabitants. A showdown with armed bandits causes the massive mechanical creation to go up in flames. The destruction of the invention lays claim to what remains of Fox’s sanity and utopian ideals.

In regards to portraying Allie Fox, Harrison Ford welcomed the creative challenge. “I had none of the difficulties that other people had expressed with the character being too irascible, too unconventional. I found him more often right than wrong in what he was saying. There is also the complexity of the family story, the relationship between a father and a son and between a husband and a wife. There is humour and pathos, a real range from antic comedy to gut-wrenching stuff.”

Peter Weir believes that the character Ford plays in the movie is very much grounded in reality. “Central America is full of Allie Foxes. I’ve heard of four of them since I’ve been here in Belize. May came down in the late sixties. Belize is one of the last places in the world where you’ll find the drifters, the travelers. No one is down here just on a holiday. If someone says they’re here on vacation, you know they’re C.I.A. or they’re drugs.”

Immersing himself in a setting situated faraway from urban life, the esteemed filmmaker found it to be a welcomed change. “On location in the jungle you don’t have the nine-to-five mentality that you have in city shooting.” Weir remarked. “I like the concentration that results from everybody being at hand and the ideas that abound in the surroundings. The atmosphere of the film is within the setting all around you. You disappear into the film.”

As with many novels adapted for the big screen, modifications needed to be made to the source material. The Mosquito Coast was no different explained Harrison Ford. “Both Peter Weir and I thought we shouldn’t be slavish to the book. We needed a different Allie Fox. In the book Fox is crazy from the beginning. If audiences thought that he were crazy, they’d given up on him.”

Sadly, Ford’s character proved to be so unlikable that the film was universally panned by critics and moviegoers from the test screenings onwards.

Edward Copeland on Film [J.D.]

 

Gods of Filmmaking

 

Washington Post [Paul Attanasio]

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

DEAD POETS SOCIETY

USA  (128 mi)  1989

 

Dead Poets Society  Jim Emerson from cinepad

Hopelessly riddled with paradoxes and contradictions, Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society is a numbingly conventional commercial formula picture that, incongruously, pretends to celebrate non-conformity. It's a film by the extraordinary Australian director Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, among others) that neatly trims its edges to safely and snugly into the Touchstone Pictures factory mold. The only thing surprising about this movie is that Weir has made something so bland and unadventurous.

Nevertheless, Dead Poets Society features Robin Williams' most convincing and restrained screen work -- effectively muting his compulsion to skip from one shtick to another, rather than limit himself to playing a single character -- even though those were the very anarchic impulses that made him a unique star in the first place. And, although Williams' name appears above the title, he's not really in it very much. So, another paradox: It's Williams' best movie work because he's the least like himself and he isn't onscreen long. Consequently, he doesn't have the opportunity to rip holes in the fabric of the movie with his familiarly distracting, manic attention-grabbing tricks.

Unfortunately, in the case of Dead Poets Society -- a sort of Stand and Deliver about wealthy, male, teenage Anglo-Saxons -- these paradoxes (except for the ones involving Williams) don't serve or enrich the movie, they just cause it to collapse upon itself.

Americans have traditionally maintained a romantic, love-hate relationship with the notion of nonconformity. Deep down, we each cherish an iconoclastic image of ourselves. American movies and literature are full of rebel heroes and heroines who reinforce that image, from Melville's Bartleby the scrivener and Hawthorne's Hester Prynne to Joseph Heller's Yossarian and John Irving's T.S. Garp. At the same time (as these characters attest), we sure do resent it when other people don't behave the way we think they ought to -- that is, "like everybody else."

"Carpe Diem, lads! Seize the day! Make your lives extraordinary!" new teacher John Keating (Williams) preaches to his pink-cheeked English lit students at Vermont's exclusive Welton Academy in the fall of 1959. Every school has (or ought to have) a John Keating. He's the outgoing, insurrectionary teacher who opposes the numbing, by-rote brainwashing methods of so much institutional book-learning and encourages his kids to follow their passions, to think for themselves -- his way, of course. When a stuffy introductory essay to a poetry anthology proposes a ridiculous method that reduces literature to a mathematical formula, whereby a poem's "greatness" quotient can supposedly be plotted on a graph, Keating denounces it as rubbish and commands his students to rip the introduction from the book.

He's fun. He cares. He half-jokingly (but only half-) tells the boys that literature was invented to woo girls. He does quicksilver impressions of John Wayne and Marlon Brando. He stands up on his desk -- to get a different point of view on things -- and tries to get his students to follow his example. When the kids dig up Keating's old school yearbook and find that their charismatic professor used to belong to a mysterious cult called the Dead Poets Society, he lets them in on the secret: It was a group of students who met in the ancient Indian caves nearby and read poetry -- their own as well as Walt Whitman's -- thereby causing girls to swoon. Keating makes poetry attractive to these boys by presenting it as an age-old seduction technique. (Well, the impulses behind Shakespeare's sonnets weren't all chaste.) Naturally, the younger generation chooses to emulate their idol.

An older, more experienced teacher questions whether 15- to 17-year-old kids are really ready yet to handle Keating's brand of freedom. "Gee, I never pegged you for a cynic," says Keating. "I'm not," says the other teacher. "I'm a realist." This smells like the set-up for a promising battle of philosophies, but Keating's sympathetic intellectual sparring partner promptly drops out of the movie, reappearing only occasionally and then as a mere background figure. (To a lesser extent, this is also what happens to Keating, who recedes after a couple of classroom scenes.)

So, the only forces opposing Keating's philosophy are rigid and towering ones, personified by Welton's stern, rigid, downright fossilized old headmaster, Mr. Nolan (Norman Lloyd), and the cruel, stubborn parent, Mr. Perry (Kurtwood Smith, who appears to be warming up here for his portrayal of Nazi war criminal Joseph Goebbles in an upcoming TV movie). "After you've finished medical school and you're on your own you can do as you damn well please!" the ruthless Mr. Perry lectures his son, one of Keating's prized students. "But until then, you do as I tell you to!" So, who are you going to root for -- cuddly bear Robin Williams or a couple of fascistic cold fish? The deck is as stacked as it can be.

And yet, in the end, the movie indicates (despite itself) that maybe the cynic/realist from early in the picture was indeed right, after all. Although there's a carefully placed scene in which Keating tries to make the distinction between unfettered self-expression and self-destructive behavior, the principles behind the re-formation of the Dead Poets Society eventually lead to catastrophe. It becomes clear that at least some of the boys really aren't emotionally equipped to incorporate into their own lives the kind of freedom and nonconformism that Keating is selling. Now here's an idea for a movie with provocative conflicts and ambiguities -- a well-meaning, influential teacher who unintentionally becomes the catalyst for tragedy by encouraging his ill-prepared students to fly, Icarus-like, too close to the sun. But you won't find that movie here.

The picture is really about the boys, who get most of the screen time. And each of them is given a character trait, more or less. Noel Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), the bright kid with the Darth Vader dad, decides he wants to be an actor, despite the rigid plans his father has for him. (A couple decades ago, "actor" in this context would have been Hollywood code for "homosexual.") Noel's roommate Todd (Ethan Hawke) is gonna be a writer, but right now he's too shy to express himself. Charlie Dalton (Gale Hansen) is a fledgling beatnik who has a great passion for a local girl. And so on. The other guys aren't nearly as differentiated.

Luckily, director Weir does seem to have learned that the best way to use Robin Williams in a movie is ... sparingly. Either let him exhaust himself, and the audience, in an erratic flight of improvisation so that he bounces all over the place like a rapidly deflating balloon and then exits when he runs out of air; or keep him focused and down-to-earth so that he at least resembles a member of our species rather than some demented extraterrestrial mimic with a berserk radio receiver where his voice box ought to be.

For the first time since 1982's The World According to Garp, Williams plays a recognizably human character who operates within the confines of the movie rather than threatening to tear it apart from the inside to make room for his stand-up act. (The problem with Dead Poets Society is that the movie's generic strictures are too confining altogether.) Nor does he wallow embarrassingly in maudlin, Chaplinesque self-pity, begging the audience to have sympathy for poor, poor him, as he did so shamelessly in the syrupy Moscow on the Hudson and Good Morning, Vietnam.

The best thing about Williams/Keating's classroom technique is the way he analyzes his students until he can determine their needs and see through their defenses. Keating sizes up the boys' attitudes and problems and then openly teases the kids about them. In the process, he disarms them, helps defuse their hang-ups. And in these moments, we see what makes him a valuable teacher. But Keating's noble ideas about passion and beauty are stifled as much by the movie that contains him as by the school that employs him. The simpleminded, formulaic rigidity of Dead Poets Society is, in its own conservative, commercial way, almost as suffocating as the atmosphere at Welton Academy itself.

THE TRUMAN SHOW

USA  (103 mi)  1998

 

Brilliant Observations on 2122 Films [Clayton Trapp]

The social counterpart to the more political The Matrix. Those illuminated veins running through the darkness of a framework that must have boundaries, somewhere. Jim Carrey's life is filmed moment to moment, with actors and sets and without his knowing about it, and broadcast worldwide as a television show. Well, I guess we've all thought about such possibilities, especially as children. As adults maybe we're more inclined to hope that we aren't boring God. Jim's life's unbelievably boring, which makes this something of a prophecy with regard to the incoming "reality tv" wave. So Jim's life opportunities and decisions are largely shaped by the producers, as ours are by family and culture. When Jim discovers the fraud, will he break free? Will you, will I? If I think that I already have, wouldn't that make it less likely that I really will? Natascha McElhone plants enough on him that he's ready to...climb every mountain and ford every stream, you know what I mean. I'm glad. They say that there's someone for everyone. I don't know if that's true, but I do know that nothing makes me happier than that I've found mine. And then keep running together. Never stop.

Nitrate Online (capsule)  Eddie Cockrell

 

Among the most subversive mainstream Hollywood films in recent memory, Peter Weir's The Truman Show was an early year critical favorite that was that rare thing: a box office success too. In the seriocomic role he'd been searching for, Jim Carrey is Truman Burbank, an average guy on the island of Seahaven whose life, unknown to him, is the subject of an immensely popular globally broadcast television show. Everything around him is fake and everyone in his life and in Seahaven is an actor, hired and coordinated by the show's creator, Cristof (Ed Harris, looking improbably smart in a beret and those little accountant glasses that are all the rage). Movies that satirize the media are a dime a dozen in this self-referential age, but what lifts The Truman Show to the rarified heights of such groundbreaking meditations on cinema and self as Citizen Kane and O Lucky Man! is the fortunate confluence of clever script, Weir's assured direction (anyone less seasoned couldn't've sustained the concept through an entire feature), the imaginative photography of Burkhard Dallwitz and the cheery, selfless and grateful performance of Carrey, who seems to be so happy to have a movie of substance -- with no fart jokes! -- that he fairly busts out of nearly every scene. Although the reformatted rental video ruins the essential joke of the movie (5,000 hidden cameras record his every move), the shimmering and properly framed DVD makes up for it

Flickering Myth [Trevor Hogg]

Around the world critics and audience members embraced the cinematic satire. The cautionary tale about the media’s ability to shape an individual’s existence provided Australian director Peter Weir with a few challenges. To solve one of them he turned to a much-loved movie classic. “I think probably the single film that occurred to me was Dr. Strangelove, in terms of tone – humour mixed with major drama. Kubrick pulled it off. He walked the line.” Then there was also an unconventional issue that had to be addressed. “In normal films we’re suppose to forget that there’s a camera,” stated the Sydney native, “but in this case I had to be very conscious of where the camera was. I had to imagine where [the show’s producers] placed it – in a duct, in a button, up his nose or whatever. I turned my head inside out sometimes.”

All the creative problem-solving caused Weir’s imagination to run wild. “I even had a crazy idea at one time which was impossible technically,” he reminisced, “I would have loved to have had a video camera installed in every theatre in which the film was to be seen. At one point, the projectionist would cut the power and could cut to the viewers in the cinema and then back to the movie.”

Interestingly, it was not all the technical issues which made the internationally respected filmmaker reluctant to take on the project. “What held me back in saying yes to the producer was that I wasn’t sure who could play Truman.” He confessed. “It wasn’t just a matter of getting an actor who was a good actor. Then the producer said, ‘Do you know Jim Carrey?’ And I thought, ‘My God, what an interesting idea!” When approached about the role, celebrity tabloid favourite Jim Carrey was immediately receptive. Carrey said to him, “I can draw off the feelings I have. I’m a prisoner.” Weir went on to add with a chuckle. ”Not that he looks for anyone to be sympathetic, nor would he trade places with you.”

After dealing with the comic frenzy of Robin Williams on and off the set for Dead Poets Society, the Australian moviemaker encountered a very different situation with the zany Carrey. “Jim would just go off to his trailer and prepare for the next scene,” recalled Peter Weir. “He was very involved in this project. We could chat, he’s easy going but pretty occupied. He wasn’t a comedian on the set. And he’s a perfectionist, with a capital P. His preparation was intensely thorough, and he didn’t want to be too much a part of the chat on the set because we were often [in character] taking about the show.”

In preparation for the film, the director decided to create a back story to go along with Andrew Niccol’s original screenplay. “I wrote a thing for myself called ‘A Short History of the Truman Show’ about how it all came to be and who Christof [the program’s obsessive creator and producer] was. I wrote it as if it was a press release from the show. Then I found some of the cast and crew asked for it, so I passed it around. We would ab lib together, and I would often play the part of the mid-day shift director on the show who was trying to get ahead. [We decided] there were six shifts per day, and like a radio station, some were more highly valued than others. Obviously midnight to 4 a.m. was pretty much your learner’s position. The directors who did the weekend stuff were very experienced, because of that the time Truman might do something unpredictable.” The role playing was so well embraced Peter Weir decided to take things a step further. “I rang Paramount and said, ‘Listen, let’s put together a little documentary unit and shoot this.’” He told them, “We could use it as a promotional item.” The major film studio agreed with him. “So we shot that and I sort of cannibalized it.” Weir used the mock interview footage of the “cast members” in the T.V. show so to establish scenes in the movie.

For the protagonist to gain the sympathy of the audience he needs a formidable and believable adversary. With The Truman Show this crucial responsibility was given to the godlike figure of Christof. “I think Christof is such an interesting character,” Weir stated in reference to the role played by Ed Harris. “He is kind of an artist. He sees himself as a great teacher, doing something very worthwhile. There was a decision early on in talking to Ed that he would not be crazy, insane – in the legal definition. He is certainly a fanatic, but, on the other hand, while making billions of dollars he was doing something that he thought was beneficial to the world and was demonstrating a way to live. That’s what makes him truly sinister.”

In the movie, Truman Burbank’s idealized world unravels when a falling spotlight nearly hits him. Afterwards his car radio inadvertently picks up a conversation detailing his drive to work. These strange events prick his curiosity so much so he becomes oddly aware on how the whole town of Seaside seems to revolve around him. The insurance salesman’s suspicions are confirmed upon discovering a hidden camera in his house. Truman decides to take control of his life; however, he faces a major obstacle. Christof will do anything short of killing his star to ensure the survival of the show. When an orchestrated sea storm nearly drowns Truman, the program’s creator relents and allows him to enter into the real world.

When asked what The Truman Show is about, Peter Weir answered, “To me, the real centre of the film is the loss of reality. I think now [in the media] there’s so much acting and reenacting, and dramatized news broadcasts and cops with cameras, and society viewing it all second hand. As Bill Gates recently said, ‘We may soon never need to leave our armchairs,’ as if that were a good thing! And that’s what I liked and what I tried to apply to the audience [in the film]. They applaud, they laugh, they cry.”

Weir strongly believes in the dramatic power of implying things. “It can get harder these days because films are so didactic, and they so present everything to the viewer.” Weir explained. “All [the audience] has to do is sit and eat popcorn and keep their eyes open. Whereas I like a film, and like to make films in which, at least emotionally, you are joining in and completing the picture with me.”

With three Oscar nominations for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Ed Harris), Peter Weir went on to the BAFTAS where the British film industry handed him the David Lean Award for Direction.

The Audience is Us (THE TRUMAN SHOW) | Jonathan Rosenbaum  June 5, 1998

 

Crass Consciousness | Movie Review | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum, March 25, 1999

Nick's Flick Picks (Full Review)  Nick Davis

The Man Who Viewed Too Much [Mike D'Angelo]

Salon.com [Charles Taylor]

 

AboutFilm  Carlo Cavagna

 

PopMatters  Cynthia Fuchs

 

Slate [David Edelstein]

 

Nitrate Online  Elias Savada

 

Slant Magazine [Fernando F. Croce]

 

ReelViews [James Berardinelli]

 

Moria - The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review [Richard Scheib]

 

BeyondHollywood.com  Nix

 

Crazy for Cinema

 

Bill's Movie Emporium [Bill Thompson]

 

Home Theater Info DVD Review  Doug McLaren

 

DVD Review  Guido Henkel

 

The Q Network Film Desk [James Kendrick]  Special Edition

 

DVD Verdict [Joel Pearce] - Special Edition

 

Big Picture Big Sound - Blu-ray Review [Brandon A. DuHamel]

 

DVDcompare.net (Blu-ray Disc review)  Jeremiah Chin

 

DVD Verdict (Blu-Ray) [Clark Douglas]

 

Film Intuition: Blu-ray Review [Jen Johans]

 

DoBlu.com Blu-ray Review [Matt Paprocki]

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk  Angus Wolfe Murray

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]

 

Decent Films Guide - Faith on film  Steven D. Greydanus

 

Movie Vault [Greg C.]

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Stephen J. Brennan]

 

The Truman Show | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum (capsule review)

 

Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]

 

Needcoffee.com - Movie Review

 

Gods of Filmmaking

 

Phoenix New Times [Peter Rainer]

 

San Francisco Examiner [Barbara Shulgasser]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Edward Guthmann]

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

New York Times (registration req'd)

 

DDVBeaver - Blu-ray review [Gary W. Tooze]

 

MASTER AND COMMANDER:  THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD             B-                    81

USA  (140 mi)  2003

 

An overblown POSEIDON ADVENTURE, this time with beating drums and Russell Crowe trying his best to be Henry V, a veritable Knute Rockne on the ocean.  But try as I may, after all is said and done, what was it all worth?  What was really gained by this monstrosity called war, by the lives that were lost, and by this re-creation of a moment in history when England chased its own demons around the world until eventually, the world encircled England, discovering itself only to be just a tiny island on the East side of the Atlantic?  What an inflated view of themselves.  

 

I am a big fan of some of the Peter Weir films, Gallipoli, Witness, especially Picnic at Hanging Rock.  This one, however -  you are aware that he changed the names of the countries at war to suit American distribution.  In reality, based on the first and tenth Patrick O'Brian novels upon which the film is based, Britain was chasing an American frigate which was threatening the British whaling trade, but that wouldn't be Oscar-worthy, so he changed the enemy to the French specifically to suit the America-at-war prejudicial tastes.  I find it hard to like something that historically is so blatantly false and misleading, and actually panders to Americans.  The last thing the spoiled American audiences need is some Aussie who's willing to throw truth out the window and dress up British history cloaked in something resembling the Fascistic-altered reality of George Bush's world.  If this is all fictionalized, that's one thing, but at $135 million, this seems to have been carefully crafted under the banner of "film realism."  Hard to separate cinema, even legendary filmmakers, like say John Ford or Leni Riefenstahl or DW Griffith, from the racist undertones of their work, which carries with it a powerful and degrading moral tone.  Some say these are great filmmakers - I have never shared that sentiment.  I have always felt they were great technicians, even innovators in their craft, but as artists, the shape and degree of their moral lapses will always diminish the power of their work.  They will always remain second tier artists, which is how I would evaluate this Peter Weir work.

 

THE WAY BACK                                                     B                     83

USA  (133 mi)  2010

 

Peter Weir hasn’t made a film in 8 years, which is a staggering revelation considering the superb craftsmanship associated with his films, especially the breathtaking visualizations.  Perhaps he hasn’t been able to raise funds after the mixed reception of his last work, MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003), which played fast and loose with the historical facts, actually changing the storyline from the book upon which the movie was based in order to fit the gung-ho George W. Bush saber rattling war scenario that was taking place at that time.  This is a National Geographic funded project which allows him to film in some of the more remote areas of the globe, based on a 1955 book The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slawomir Rawicz, where he and several others escaped from a Siberian gulag in 1940 and in a year’s time walked 4000 miles from Siberia, finding and following Lake Baikal, trekking past the Tran Siberian railway to Outer Mongolia (also Communist), across the Gobi Desert, past the Great Wall of China (still Communist) into the Himalayan Mountains, initially finding refuge in Tibet, but continuing their trek into India where the British government at the time was staunchly against both the Nazi’s and the Russians, though the Russians were a war ally.  There has been some controversy about the book, as it was initially released as the author’s own story, but when it was revealed afterwards that he was released by the Russians under a 1942 amnesty agreement, Rawicz indicated it is actually the story of three Polish men who recounted their stories to him, one of whom is a former Polish soldier, Witold Glinski. 

 

Described as the first Hollywood film about the Soviet gulag, this overly detached and in the end unengaging film opens in Poland in 1940 when it was invaded to the West by Hitler and the Nazi’s, and from the East by Stalin and the Russians, opening with a Stalinest interrogation sending a Polish citizen to a Russian gulag for twenty years for making negative statements about Stalin.  The conditions there are decrepit, with prisoners starving from lack of adequate food, housing prisoners with professional killers who run the inside of the prisons with smuggled weapons.  In reality, these were forced labor camps, something that was common in both Japan and China during this same time period, where the conditions were so brutal that escape seemed the only viable option.  In Siberia, however, the natural elements are so severe, and the distance so great, that chances of survival from an escape are rare to slim.  This film is reminiscent of the epic Japanese War Trilogy THE HUMAN CONDITION (1959-61), a three part drama by Masaki Kobayashi who documents similar conditions when defeated Japanese soldiers were simply abandoned and left on the mainland of Manchuria, China and had little hopes of ever finding their way back home, where the film follows the futile efforts of one soldier who escaped from a Russian gulag only to wander endlessly, starving for days on end without food, making his way alone through the vast emptiness of the barren landscape, eventually succumbing to weakness and starvation, left to die alone, frozen in the bleak emptiness of a desolate winter.  These exact same circumstances await the seven escapees, one of whom freezes to death the very first night. 

 

Featuring breathtaking cinematography by Russell Boyd, the humans are specks on the landscape as they initially make their way out of the Siberian forest before becoming engulfed in the immensity of the world around them, afraid to show themselves in Stalinest nations for fear they’d be turned back in to the authorities, so they instead have to creep around towns and hide where they could.  When they reach flat landscapes, it’s most treacherous, as it’s also harder to find food and water out in the open spaces.  One of the film’s failings is the inability to deal with the subject of starvation, which should have been everpresent throughout the journey, yet they somewhat nonchalantly find food all too easily.  Finding water in the desert was truly miraculous, but there was very little tension established about finding food.  Instead when people started to physically deteriorate, attention was paid to physical injuries or ailments, but no words spoken about food, which had to have been on their minds, perhaps even hallucinating about it.  Also, some of the arduous nature of their adventure is glossed over, as the seasons change from ferocious winter storms to spring pretty quickly.  The film also does little to delineate between the characters, where the audience never develops an emotional attachment to any of them, or understands why one is considered the navigator or leader, when he’s actually the youngest or newest prisoner, which makes little sense.  Who made him in charge?  In reality, it’s human nature for there to have been some dissension in the ranks over leadership, yet in this film there was no discussion whatsoever.  It was this lack of tension or screen intensity between the characters that left a feeling of vague disconnection with the audience, where the enormity of what was taking place rarely developed into an acute sense of awareness or personal triumph, never really becoming quite so intensely powerful as Phillip Noyce’s RABBIT-PROOF FENCE (2002), which remains the definitive film on the subject, perhaps because the journey coincided with monumental social changes, so the epic adventure was superbly and dramatically placed in historical context.   

 

The Way Back Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London  Trevor Johnston

Peter Weir’s first film since 2003’s ‘Master and Commander’ hovers uncertainly between true-life tale and mythic odyssey. Polish soldier Slavomir Rawicz’s memoir ‘The Long Walk’ describes his 1940 escape from a Siberian gulag, across the Gobi desert and over the Himalayas, but subsequent doubts over its veracity means Weir uses fictionalised characters for his screen retelling. Compound this with a seeming disjuncture between the film’s portentous newsreel-heavy historical scene-setting and the elemental drama of the odyssey itself and the viewer is left unhelpfully foggy on where truth ends and dramatic licence begins.

Essentially, this undercuts the overall emotional impact, but on a scene-by-scene basis there are some marvellous things here, not least the extraordinary changing landscapes along the epic route. Snowy tundra and desert wastes leave the cast fighting for attention, yet in this expansive context it’s actually the intimately human moments that come off best. Jim Sturgess digs deeper than previously thought possible as the Polish leader of the escape party, matched by the cussed cynicism of Ed Harris’s ex-pat Yank, and indeed Colin Farrell’s canny turn as a potentially lethal criminal untroubled by his fellow fugitives’ political motives. Most affecting is Saoirse Ronan’s waif-like interloper as the going gets seriously tough and Big Questions enter the frame – where’s the line between compassion and self-preservation? Why, in essence, do we live? Weir certainly earns the right to ponder these issues, yet for all the film’s occasional peaks, we’re left with the sense of a story so incredible even this cinematic visionary is struggling to contain it on celluloid.

Digital Spy [Stella Papamichael]

 

Seven years have passed since Master & Commander (2003), the last big screen outing for director Peter Weir. That's despite a glowing CV that includes Witness (1985), Mosquito Coast (1986), The Truman Show (1998) and Fearless (1993). His latest has echoes of his 1975 study in survival Picnic At Hanging Rock, but with the war-is-hell, macho thrust of his 1981 classic Gallipoli. It isn't quite as great as that film, but it's still an awe-inspiring epic of man versus nature (inspired by true events during WWII) as a group of escaped prisoners run 4,000 miles over hostile terrain.

It's a fine cast of ragtag political rebels, including Ed Harris, Colin Farrell and Mark Strong and led by the comparatively delicate Jim Sturgess (Across The Universe). As anti-Stalinist Polish soldier, Janusz, he is snitched upon by his dear wife (albeit under torture) and promptly despatched to a Siberian gulag. There, he's seen to be a naïve kid. Playing veteran inmate Khabarov, Strong feeds upon that youthful idealism with talk of escape, but Ed Harris (brilliantly double-edged as Mr Smith) warns Janusz that a happy ending is unlikely. And with that in mind, offers to come with.

Colin Farrell is the grimiest of the bunch as Valka, claiming his place on the escape team by virtue of having a knife. He is completely self-serving, but his blunt way of seeing the world also adds dry humour to an otherwise bleak situation. And it doesn't get much bleaker than Siberia in winter. It's not long before the first man falls, frozen just a stone's throw from the campfire. Weir plays with the imagery in a way that is beautiful and haunting, but he doesn't waste time on sentimentality. There is a hard, driving force to the narrative which reflects the grim resolve of the escapees. By now, the world is at war and they are in a daily battle for survival.

Janusz's determination to keep going sets the pace for the film, even though no-one knows exactly where they're headed (Only south.) But there is hope and it comes after the snow has thawed in the shape of Saoirse Ronan. The star of The Lovely Bones brings just as much vulnerability to the part of runaway Polish girl Irena, but she is also keen to prove her toughness to Mr Smith. Initially, he sees her as a drain on the team's resources, but instead she draws out their humanity, tightening the bonds. Again, Weir is skilled in treading that fine line between real, raw emotion and saccharine sentiment, quietly raising the stakes as they go deep into the Gobi desert.

It's here, with little water and relentless heat, that the test of physical endurance reaches a crescendo. At the same time, however, Weir allows the men - having just started to reveal more of themselves - to withdraw back into their shells. Janusz, in particular (though sensitively played by Sturgess) keeps his cards too close to his chest. He seems mad, even arrogant when he tries to steer the team away from a possible watering hole to keep going south. In fact his reason is a good one, but it isn't revealed until much later, in Tibet, when he shuns advice to trek the Himalayas. This last leg of the journey also feels too rushed. Still, there's no denying the scale of the achievement and the bittersweet satisfaction that comes at the end of the road.

 

The Way Back – review  Philip French from The Observer

 

My generation growing up during second world war and the early years of the cold war first learnt to hate the Germans and Japanese, then to discover that our believed wartime allies from the Soviet Union were just as bad and the benevolent, paternal Stalin was as monstrous as Hitler.

There was a literature at our disposal during the postwar decade to help us understand that change, significantly Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Orwell's Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty- Four, and the symposium The God That Failed written by former communists. To these were added in the mid-1950s an international bestseller, The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz, a Polish army officer captured by Russians in September 1939 when Germany and the Soviet Union carved up his country, and sent to a prison camp in Siberia. His book was one of the first detailed accounts of gulag life that most people had read until Alexander Solzhenitsyn published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and later The Gulag Archipelago.

The book's big selling point, however, was not the horrifying story of life in the camps but the story of how seven men escaped from a remote camp and travelled 4,000 miles by foot across Siberia, Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, Tibet and the Himalayas before the surviving members of the party found sanctuary in India in 1941. Solzhenitsyn wrote that escaping from the gulag was "an enterprise for giants among men – but for doomed giants", and The Long Walk is an inspiring tale of courage and survival against superhuman odds.

This is the story Peter Weir has chosen to tell in The Way Back, his first movie since his magnificent Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World seven years ago, and it pursues a favourite theme for him of people weirdly disoriented or displaced in alien physical or mental terrain, whether it be the Galápagos Islands, the Amish community of Pennsylvania or an artificial world created by television.

There is, however, a certain problem at the centre of the project. Quite early on, some observers cast doubts on the overall authenticity of The Long Walk, and it is pretty well established that Rawicz did not make such a journey. He was released under an amnesty in 1942 and rejoined the Polish army in the Middle East, and what seems likely is that he heard the story from a camp survivor, or possibly several, and maybe even convinced himself that such things did happen to him.

Recognising all this, Weir has chosen to speak of The Long Walk as "the Slavomir Rawicz novel" and has given the movie's most intriguing role to Ed Harris, who played the God-like creator of the massive fiction in The Truman Show. He also engaged as the film's technical adviser Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag, the authoritative book on the Soviet prisons, where she writes: "The Long Walk is a superbly told story, even if it never happened. Its convincing realism may well serve as a lesson to all of us who try to write a factual history of escapes from the gulag."

Weir's The Way Back is a riveting film, bracketed by monochrome newsreel material, first of the invasion of Poland, later of the cold war from 1945 to the breaching of the Berlin Wall, and centres on Janusz (Jim Sturgess), a Polish lieutenant tortured by the Russian secret police and sent to the gulag on trumped-up charges.

The harsh prison world in Siberia, where the professional criminals are encouraged to exploit the "politicals", is as convincingly recreated as it was in the version of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich starring Tom Courtenay. But gradually in this dark, snowbound world, beneath the grime of the tormented faces, certain figures emerge, most of whom will become escapees. One of these is an artist, another a former seminarian, a third the enigmatic American Mr Smith (Ed Harris), who warns Januscz that "kindness can kill you in here" but later says that this same weakness could be valuable to him (Smith, that is) while on the run.

The man most obsessed with escaping, a movie actor (Mark Strong) sent to Siberia for making an aristocrat appear too attractive, turns out to be a pipe-dreamer who lives off the hopes of others. A psychopathic convict, ferociously played by Colin Farrell with Lenin and Stalin tattooed on his chest, insists upon joining the fugitives and continues to be a constant source of danger as they break out during a blizzard.

The opening 40 minutes in the camp are perhaps the strongest part, though the trek through frozen forests, along Lake Baikal and across the Trans-Siberian railway to the desert, skirting all settled communities, is full of incident, pain and shared experience. The most notable encounter is with a 14-year-old Polish girl (Saoirse Ronan), fugitive from a collective farm, who joins them on the journey. She gets them to open up and talk of their lives in a way they don't to each other, and enables them to tap long-suppressed feelings of tenderness. The dialogue is rarely more than functional and occasionally sententious, the lapses into sentimentality are rare, but the coda of the elderly Janusz returning to Poland is probably a mistake. Magnificently photographed by Russell Boyd on locations in Bulgaria, Morocco and India, the terrain is awesome, yet never picturesque. And the desert is not romanticised as it often is in Lawrence of Arabia and The English Patient.

Pajiba (Brian Prisco) review

 

The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]

 

Cinematical [Eugene Novikov] at Telluride

 

The Way Back: A Good Walk, Almost Spoiled - TIME  Mary Pols

 

The Way Back: movie review - CSMonitor.com  Peter Rainer

 

Film-Forward.com [Nora Lee Mandel]

 

Phil on Film [Philip Concannon]

 

Moviefreak.com [Sara Michelle Fetters]

 

DVD Talk [Brian Orndorf]  also seen here:  Briandom [Brian Orndorf]

 

Review: The Way Back - JoBlo.com  Chris Bumbray

 

The Way Back Review By harveycritic - MovieWeb.com  Harvey Karten, also seen here:  Review: The Way Back    

 

The Way Back | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club  Nathan Rabin

 

Monsters and Critics [Anne Brodie]

 

Monsters and Critics [Ron Wilkinson]

 

Eye for Film : The Way Back Movie Review (2010)  Andrew Robertson

 

Lessons of Darkness [Nick Schager]

 

No Strings Attached, The Way Back, Summer Wars | A Romcom With ...  Joe Morgenstern from The Wall Street Journal

 

The Way Back | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Andrew Schenker

 

exclaim! [Robert Bell]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]  also seen here:  Common Sense Media [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

The Way Back Review | Empire  David Hughes

 

The Hollywood Reporter [Stephen Farber]

 

Variety.com [Peter Debruge]

 

The Way Back – review  Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian, December 23, 2010

 

Obituary: Slavomir Rawicz  John B. Adams from The Guardian, May 5, 2004

 

Review: The Way Back - Reviews - Boston Phoenix  Betsy Sherman

 

'The Way Back' review: An old-fashioned epic by director Peter ...  Stephen Witty from The Star-Ledger

 

True or not, it's a stirring trek  Carrie Rickey from The Philadelphia Inquirer

 

'Way' a weary slog | Philadelphia Daily News | 01/20/2011  Gary Thompson

 

Review: Survival story thrives on keen direction, dynamic ...  Chris Hewitt from The St. Paul Pioneer Press

 

The Way Back  Marc Savlov from The Austin Chronicle

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Mick LaSalle]

 

Los Angeles Times [Mark Olsen]

 

Chicago Tribune [Michael Phillips]

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Manohla Dargis, January 20, 2011

 

He’s Fought His Own Way Back to Work  Terrence Rafferty from The New York Times, January 9, 2011

 

Sławomir Rawicz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

"To Tell the Truth Is it fact or is it fiction? The perplexing story behind The Long Walk."  Patrick Symmes from Outsider magazine, Summer 2003

 

Rawicz: The Long Walk—A Sobering Reflection on Real Torture and ...  Dr. Pat from BlogCritics, March 31, 2005

 

BBC Investigation into the Rawicz’z claim   Hugh Levinson from BBC News, October 30, 2006

 

Witold Glinski’ – The Real Long Walk?  Dennis Ellam and Adam Lee Potter from The Mirror, May 16, 2009

 

The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz « Confessions of a Writer  July 10, 2009

 

Previous article on Mikael Strandberg´s homepage with comments on the subject  December 6, 2010

 

Discussion at the bottom, the comment page, between Tomasz and Richard Rawicz.

 

Mikhael Strandberg’s website  December 10, 2010

 

The Way Back: Peter Weir's new movie is Hollywood's first film about the Soviet Gulag.  Anne Applebam from Slate, January 24, 2011

 

Dave Anderson's page about Slavomir Rawicz

 

Dave Anderson’s 2004 Long Walk Journey

 

Recent Polish expedition retracing the Long Walk

 

Book reviews: The Long Walk, by Slavomir Rawicz - by Rebecca ...  Rebecca Mikulin from Helium

 

Siberia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Gulag - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

History of the Soviet Russian Gulag

 

mental_floss Blog » Gulags: Then and Now

 

What is a Gulag? | Siberian LightSiberian Light  Anne Applebaum

 

Images for siberian gulags

 

Lake Baikal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Images for lake baikal

 

Trans-Siberian Railway - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Trans-Siberian Railway

 

Trans-Siberia.com

 

Outer Mongolia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Outer Mongolia

 

Images for Outer Mongolia

 

Great Wall of China - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The Great Wall of China - 360-degree Virtual Tour, Simatai

 

Images for Great Wall of China

 

Tibet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Lhasa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Jokhang Temple - Lhasa, Tibet

 

Images for Lhasa, Tibet

 

Weitz, Chris

 

THE TWILIGHT SAGA:  NEW MOON                 C+                   78

USA  (130 mi)  2009  ‘Scope

 

While the first film directed by Catherine Hardwicke was made with no money to speak of, it gained huge popularity as it nicely reflected the angst in the teenage world and was particularly in synch with the mindset of young girls, made doubly troublesome with the introduction of romantic notions, which revealed the first hints of lust with a quiet intimacy in a mesmerizing, almost otherworldly tingehence vampires.  Hardwicke was apparently fired early on in the second chapter, replaced by a Hollywood hack (Chris Weitz) who is given mega bucks and plenty of computer graphic special effects, foregoing the adolescent high school experience almost entirely, which was the draw of the first and is barely referenced here at all, instead finding Kristen Stewart as Bella in the throes of love with Edward (Robert Pattinson), where in one classroom sequence, they are huddled next to one another in the back of the classroom as the teacher is showing a BBC version of Romeo and Juliet.  As it appears they’re not paying attention, the teacher calls upon Edward to utter the play’s last lines, which he does in his characteristic barely audible mumble, but that sets the tone for the film, as suicide becomes a prominent theme, seen in a different light from a vampire, as they’re immortal and never die, so Edward actually envies humans for having this option, which is what he sees in Shakespeare’s play.  To a vampire, suicide is hopeful.  This almost makes you forget that the student is over 100 years old and is repeating the exact same high school class year after year.  Wouldn’t anyone get suspicious, and how many times do they take the same classes over and over again?   Sounds eternally boring.  And in tune with this thought, the tone of this film is downright morose, showing a couple in love that couldn’t be more unhappy, even as they are pronouncing their everlasting love for one another.  When Edward reveals that people are finally getting suspicious about his family not aging, so they have to move, leaving Bella behind, supposedly for good, promising to never see her again, leaving her shocked and surprised to discover that love everlasting really only meant for a few weeks.  With Bella, however, she is in for the long haul, no matter the price.  In his absence, she wiles away her time in isolation by writing emails to Alice (Ashley Greene), Edward’s sister, even though each is returned message undelivered, which leads to bad dreams, waking in the night screaming in anguish.  She soon discovers that Edward’s image reappears whenever she gets near danger, so she goes on a mission to become an adrenaline freak, challenging danger when and wherever she can, which is the only way she can keep him near her.  She decides to call upon an old friend, Taylor Lautner as Jake, a Native American who has always been at odds with their natural enemies, vampires.  But Jake helps build her a motorcycle, becoming her best friend in the process, though it soon becomes clear she sucks as a biker chick. 

 

This sets up a dual track of rival lovers, where Jake also professes his everlasting love, promising he’ll never leave her, like the vampire dude, and in the next breath, like Edward, he’s disappeared.  When Bella seeks him out, he avoids her, revealing that’s the best thing.  But it soon becomes clear when he cuts his hair and transforms himself into a shirtless physical specimen, hanging out with another group of identical looking guys that hang in a pack, that she’s fallen in love with yet another guy with super powers, this one and his friends transform into giant wolves.  These guys have obvious anger management problems, as everytime they get angry, they convert into their animal form.  Like the vampires, this sect of wolves immediately accepts Bella into their secret lair, as vampires and wolves are secretly living among the humans, but hiding their physical transformations.  It’s amusing, however, to see two wolves fighting one another over a girl.  Without any background information in this film, vampires dead set on killing her from chapter one return and try to abduct her, but are run off by the sect of wolves, beautifully shot in an aerial view running through the forest, CGI giant wolves chasing a CGI vampire woman.  Actually all the scenes in the forest are gorgeous and are easily the best thing about this film.  Supposedly set in Forks, Washington, it’s actually shot further north mostly in British Columbia.  Some of the ocean shots of a rugged coastline featuring mammoth rocks with the evergreen forest growing right next to a sandy beach are simply magnificent.  

 

It’s when the movie changes locations that it becomes more ridiculous, as it turns into THE DA VINCI CODE (2006), with a Vatican-like secret society of the most powerful vampires called the Volturi in Italy, a place where vampires can go to die, as they have the power to make a vampire’s life end.  When Alice, who can prophecy the future, sees Bella throw herself off a cliff, something the wolf guys in human form do for an adrenaline rush, she thinks she’s committed suicide, making the ever dour and downbeat Edward yearn for the same, making a beeline for the Volturi.  Alice rescues Bella from her miserablism, and makes a mad dash in the comfort of stylish muscle cars on their journey halfway around the world to Italy to rescue Edward.  Like a Bourne Supremacy image, why shouldn’t vampires like souped up hot cars?  The final showdown of the Volturi seems modeled after the Harry Potter series (can you imagine Harry asking to die or give up his wizardry?), and despite the temporary presence of Dakota Fanning as a powerful vampire, this morbid little game of mental telepathy fails to convince.  Actually it feels like leaving the forest was a mistake, as it’s a sacred place where wolves and vampires have a truce not to interfere in one another’s lives, yet avidly distrust and hate one another, and makes for much more compelling theater, especially when they’re willing to throw everything away, the truce be damned, over the love of a girl.  Much of this is preposterous, of course, as it makes much more sense shrouded in a mood of melancholia set in the rainforests of the immense Pacific Northwest woods.  

 

Shot in digital, blown up onto Super 35, there’s that grainy look to much of this film, which from the outset makes people look strangely dour, a mood that exists throughout this entire film.  There are several scenes with accompanying quiet, morbid music (Bon Iver and St. Vincent’s Rosyln and Thom Yorke’s Hearing Damage), which play like music videos, giving much needed energy that has all but disappeared from this wannabe love story where male lovers simply abandon their women with such ease and nonchalance, and then grow jealously angered and fight to the death if anyone else expresses an interest in the girls they left behind.  Bella’s headlong rush to join the world of vampires for supposed eternal life with Edward makes little sense given how easily these super creatures are misguided, make tragic mistakes, hate themselves, feel their souls are damned, and easily lose faith in humans and one another.  This movie feels like a travelogue revealing all the reasons why a human would NOT wish to become a super creature, as nothing but trouble and misery follows this sect.  Nonetheless, the storyline has Bella inexplicably thrusting herself into their world, supposedly over love, but this fascination for a culture that drinks blood from human flesh feels more like a need to be possessed and dominated absolutely.  It’s unfortunately a sad act to deny her own humanity, which is easily her greatest gift, and why both Edward and Jake are drawn to her.  This fairy tale of unconsummated love is all about the forces of attraction, the power of seduction, and feels very similar to an adolescent couple who show no regard for the possible consequences of unprotected sex, like teen pregnancy or becoming HIV positive, leading to a life far different than they imagined.  

 

Note, from Film School Rejects [Neil Miller]:  Each member of the wolf pack had to have papers proving their Native descent. Spencer is Lakota (Sioux), Pelletier is Cree-Metis, Meraz is Purepecha (Tarasco), Gordon is Hualapai, and Houseman, who was discovered at an open casting call, is Cree.  [Taylor Lautner claims Ottawa and Potawatomi ancestry through his mother.]

 

Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review [C]

It probably won't make a jot of difference to all the screaming tweeners lining up to see this movie, but "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" is not wonderful. Allusions in this film to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" abound, but greatness by association has never been less plausible. Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) continues to have poor choice in men, or, to be more exact, men-boys, or the undead, or werewolves – whatever. Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) is looking pastier than ever, which I guess, along with his jutting jaw and bad-boy swagger, is a good thing. Vampirism becomes him. He's not in the movie nearly enough, though. His rival in Bella's affections is the newly buff Jacob "Jake" Black (Taylor Lautner), who is more like an incipient Michelin Man than a nascent werewolf. (With his six-pack abs, Budweiser missed a product-placement bonanza with this guy.) Since "New Moon" is a transitional piece in the Stephenie Meyer "Twilight" franchise, it often bogs down in exposition. Memo to director Chris Weitz and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg: Just because you make a movie about vampires doesn't mean you suck the life out of your story. Grade: C

Time Out New York (Anna Smith) review [3/6]

The first Twilight film turned tween girls into obsessives, so this sequel’s theme should make perfect sense: romantic and sexual OCD. When pallid, principled vampire Edward Cullen (Pattinson) reluctantly leaves town, chaste girlfriend Bella (Stewart) sulks and mourns for months. Then solace arrives in the bulging biceps of Jacob (Lautner), her Native American childhood friend turned hunky hulk.

It’s not exactly a celebration of female independence, but New Moon still has a handle on its young-adult audience: Hormonal frustration runs amok, and boys become attractive yet dangerous when they come of age (only the good ones keep their monsters in check). This time, we get not just vampires but werewolves, too—spectacular CG creatures that snarl and pounce before transforming back into buff, topless young studs.

Bella sees action too, when she develops a taste for adrenaline in the hope of catching a glimpse of her plasma-sucking protector. Motorbike rides and deathly dives follow, along with a scenic race to Italy to meet an übervampire (Michael Sheen). At one point, a character wearily deconstructs zombie-cinema symbolism while bemoaning the lack of hot guys. Is this sequel defending its fan base and preempting criticism about its transparent agenda? This is a soap opera, folks—and acceptable escapism for those old enough to see it yet still young enough to shriek at undead dreamboats.

Austin Chronicle review [1.5/5]  Kimberly Jones

 

Catherine Hardwicke started the saga with last year's Twilight, a deliciously trashy mash of pulp and pop art that managed to take seriously its central lovers – doomy vampire Edward (Pattinson) and his teenage human paramour, Bella (Stewart) – while maintaining a sense of humor about itself. But Summit Entertainment chucked Hardwicke for the second installment (in a projected four-film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling, young-adult vampire series), and her successor, Weitz, brings zero sense of play or sexual energy to the piece. It’s as if everything’s been buffed to achieve maximum banality. New Moon opens with a Romeo and Juliet quotation – “these violent delights have violent ends” – and not long into the film’s turgid first hour, one can’t help but wish that violent end would come sooner rather than later. At the film’s beginning, Edward dumps Bella – like, the day after her birthday, OMG – and scurries off to unknown lands. He’s mostly absent in New Moon, which turns out to be a boon, because whatever “it” quality Hardwicke coaxed out of Pattinson in the first film (a considerable amount, I’d argue – his Edward was a nice mix of creepy and brooding, with a little Brando marble-mouth tossed in for flavor) has completely gone flat here. Bella, incapacitated with grief, turns to her old pal Jacob (Lautner) for comfort and companionship. And, boy, she sure can pick ’em: No sooner can you say "bad-boy magnet" than Jacob starts morphing into a werewolf. The digital effects here are top-notch (as were the ones Weitz supervised in his last film, The Golden Compass), and New Moon excels in two centerpiece action sequences, including one set in Italy, where a coven of vampire royalty, the Volturi, lives. Sheen’s Aro rules the roost there; he’s apparently a first-rate mind reader. But when he tries to read the thoughts of Bella, he’s stumped – “I see nothing!” he marvels – and it’s all one can do not to snicker. Of course he sees nothing. There’s nothing there. The simpering Bella might as well be a cartoon character with tranced curlicues for eyes, her brainwaves emitting an endless loop of edwardedwardedwardedward. I’m told Bella’s helplessness is true to the spirit of the novels, but so what? It’s almost 2010 – let’s get hip, people.

 

The Onion A.V. Club review [C-]  Genevieve Koski

New Moon goes through great pains to present itself as a descendent of Romeo And Juliet, except without all that icky tragedy in the end. There are warring clans—in this case, werewolves and vampires—a rival suitor, tragic miscommunication, and at the center of it all, two self-absorbed teenage lovers. Throw in a revenge subplot and an ancient, power-hungry clan of evil Italian vampires, and it all sounds potentially thrilling. But in spite of its wealth of conflict, New Moon suffers from a dearth of accompanying tension and excitement, thanks to the increasingly tedious relationship at its center.

After spending the first Twilight movie glowering each other into romantic submission, mush-mouthed teenager Bella (Kristen Stewart) and her ostensibly dreamy but actually creepy, manipulative vampire beau Edward (Robert Pattinson) begin New Moon as the unhappiest-looking happy couple at their rural Washington high school. But in the fallout of a nasty paper-cut incident, Pattinson skips town with the rest of his clan, leaving Stewart to explore her range of mopey expressions alone. After discovering that by acting reckless, she can induce hallucinations of Pattinson scolding her, Stewart sets out to do anything she can think of to provoke those sweet, sweet reprimands. Her plan to—gasp!—build and ride a motorcycle leads to a developing friendship with local gearhead/latent werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner), a cheerful younger boy who promptly falls for her sullen charms, providing Stewart with enough anguish to hold her over until Pattinson’s inevitable return.

New Moon panders to the massive Twilight fan base even more than its predecessor, stuffing its overlong running time with go-nowhere subplots and gratuitous shots of the buff, oft-shirtless Lautner, on top of the protracted silences and longing gazes that have become de rigueur for the series. Admirably, director Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass) manages to maintain the series’ distinctively moody tone while smoothing out the rough edges of Catherine Hardwicke’s initial installment. Twilight’s distracting blue-filtered lens and laughably clunky vampire visuals have given way to warmer tones and markedly better action sequences that make the film more inviting visually, if nothing else.

Lautner helps break up Stewart and Pattinson’s overwhelming dourness, as do New Moon’s occasional attempts at humor. However, while Lautner is the only one of the three principals who can smile without looking exceedingly uncomfortable, his wooden carriage and delivery add up to all the onscreen appeal of a Ken doll, and the film still turns in more unintentional, forehead-slapping laughs than scripted ones, particularly for audiences who haven’t been inoculated by the books. New Moon was clearly made with its disturbingly loyal fans in mind, and while its cheesy, melodramatic charm is unlikely to win any new converts to the series, it succeeds in giving its intended audience exactly what it wants.

Cinema Autopsy (Thomas Caldwell) review [1.5/5]

The second cinematic outing for the emo/tween Twilight franchise continues the love story between18-year-old girl Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and 108-year-old-in-the-body-of-a-17-year-old vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Edward is still refusing to transform Bella into his kind, or sleep with her, and he has become increasingly concerned that his presence in her life will come to no good. Edward and his family of fellow good vampires take off and Bella is left behind devastated. Bella briefly becomes an adrenalin junkie, is tormented by some of the bad vampires from the previous film and then starts to hang out with a pack of werewolves, developing a second love interest with Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner).

The first Twilight film, directed unremarkably by Catherine Hardwicke, was a chaste and bland addition to vampire mythology that at least was of interest for introducing audiences who hadn’t read Stephenie Meyer’s novels into its world of New Age vampires. About a Boy and The Golden Compass director Chris Weitz has taken over directorial duties for the second film and although Weitz is a better director than Hardwicke there is nothing he can do to save this film from its wet, limp and trite script. The dialogue from this film sounds like it is lifted straight from pulp romance and daytime soaps and it is extremely difficult to accept that writing like this is not only given a green light but adored by so many readers. Humour, subtly and depth are all sacrificed for piles and piles of angst and empty sentiment.

On the plus side, the incredibly annoying Edward actually doesn’t feature too much in New Moon apart from the occasional absurd ghostly apparition. Like the Angel character from the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Edward is a tormented vampire who wants to help humanity, loves what he cannot have, broods a lot, has perfect hair and is played by an actor with questionable acting ability. Unlike Angel, Edward contains no sense of humour, self-reflexivity or charisma. When she isn’t pouting too much Kristen Stewart gives a decent performance as Bella but Robert Pattinson was clearly cast as Edward simply because of his looks.

Audiences who want to embrace New Moon really need to question what ideas this franchise is selling to them. On the surface Bella may be an alternative to traditional teenage girl stereotypes but ultimately she is simply a lovesick girl whose sanity and happiness are dependent on a neglectful male. Bella is also surrounded by men who claim to have an innate desire to kill her, especially if they get angry, and their ‘noble’ attempts to protect Bella from their violent tendencies is disgustingly portrayed as romantic. New Moon is not only a poorly structured and badly paced slog but it contains at its core an incredibly regressive message about male violence and the need for women to accept it.

Bloody-Disgusting review [1/5]  Chris Eggertsen

 

TIME Magazine (Nancy Gibbs) review

 

Read a profile of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer.  Stephenie Meyer: A New J.K. Rowling? by Lev Grossman from Time magazine, April 24, 2008 

 

CHUD.com (Devin Faraci) review

 

Slate (Dana Stevens) review

 

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [0/5]  Jessica Baxter

 

PopMatters (Cynthia Fuchs) review

 

Pajiba (Dustin Rowles) review

 

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [2/4]

 

Salon (Stephanie Zacharek) review

 

Slant Magazine review [0/4]  Simon Abrams

 

Film School Rejects [Neil Miller]

 

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [4/5]

 

CBC.ca Arts review  Jason Anderson

 

Screen International (Mike Goodridge) review

 

Film Freak Central review   Walter Chaw

 

Movie City News [Michael Wilmington]

 

Cinescene [Chris Knipp]

 

FilmJerk.com (Brian Orndorf) review [C]  also seen here:  Briandom [Brian Orndorf]  and here:  DVD Talk

 

filmcritic.com (Sean O'Connell) review [2.5/5]

 

Mark Reviews Movies [Mark Dujsik]

 

Sci-Fi Movie Page (James O'Ehley) review

 

The Cinema Source (Andrea Tuccillo) review [B]

 

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [D]

 

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [C+]

 

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [2.5/5]

 

The Flick Filosopher (MaryAnn Johanson) review

 

New York Magazine (David Edelstein) review

 

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [C+]

 

Exclaim! [Denise Falzon]

 

CineSnob.net (Kiko Martinez) review [C]

 

Beyond Hollywood review  Joseph Savistski

 

The Hollywood Reporter review  Michael Rechtshaffen

 

Entertainment Weekly review [B+]  Lisa Schwarzbaum

 

Variety (Jordan Mintzer) review

 

Twilight: interview with Chris Weitz  Will Lawrence interview from The Telegraph, November 12, 2009, including Stills from New Moon

 

Twilight: the vampires and the werewolves  Harriet Alexander from The Telegraph, November 18, 2009, including:  Twilight: Ten things you never knew

 

The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw) review  including a slide show:  Twilight: new blood in New Moon  also photos at the premiere:  Twilight Saga: New Moon London premiere with Robert Pattinson

 

The Independent (Anthony Quinn) review [2/5]

 

The Daily Telegraph review [2/5]  Tim Robey

 

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [2/4]

 

Los Angeles Times [Kenneth Turan]

 

Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips) review

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [1/4]

 

The New York Times (Manohla Dargis) review  including a slide show:  Vampires, Werewolves and Love

 

Film: Media Vampires, Beware   Brooks Barnes from The New York Times, November 13, 2009

 

Weitz, Paul

 

IN GOOD COMPANY                                  B                     85

USA  (110 mi)  2005
 
A film with its heart in the right place, examining the world of older employees who become expendable in a heartless world of corporate takeovers and buyouts, with the promise to stockholders of instant profits at the expense of these long-time, loyal employees who are served their pink slips by new rising star managers half their age who don’t know squat about who they are or what they can contribute.  Dennis Quaid is positively believable as a 50-ish advertising executive who is loved by his staff but is regarded by his new management team like he’s a dinosaur, on the same track as Willy Loman, an outdated, old-fashioned, old school, corporate door-to-door salesman who relies on regular customers who slowly fade away.  In short, he’s not a yes man in the overly optimistic, idealized, new corporate structure, but is one of the few who actually knows how much time and effort it takes to make sales.  In this film, he lives with his expectant wife, his teen-age daughters, one of whom is Scarlett Johansson, who wants to transfer to the more expensive NYU for their creative writing program, which causes this family to have to take out a second mortgage on their house.  Scarlett Johansson gives what I found to be a very lethargic performance in this film, with occasional close-ups that resemble lip gloss commercials, but is perhaps representative of her own generation’s aimless ennui.  Topher Grace plays the 26-year old wiz kid executive with an eye on Scarlett, who loses his perfectly coiffed wife (Selma Blair) at the same time he experiences corporate success, largely because he has so little time for her.  Lay-offs have tragic consequences for families, and interestingly in this film, the impact is shown through the world of the family where the husband is “not” shown a pink slip, where all around him, his friends, those he hired, are falling by the wayside.   Unfortunately, the film only touches on this issue of mid-life layoffs and is afraid to show with any depth just how devastated people’s lives can actually become.  Instead, there is only a brief office scare, and then somehow, inexplicably, like the appearance of the good ship lollypop, the film ends on an optimistic cloud of hope for the future. 

 

Welles, Orson

 

Orson Welles - Films as actor:, Films as narrator:, Films as director:  Cynthia Baron from Film Reference

Orson Welles's reputation as a director has overshadowed his work as an actor. When reviewers do consider Welles's film performances, their assessments are mixed. Some see Welles as a master of bravura performances. Others argue that his work consists of behavioristic clichés that pass for decent acting because of Welles's mellifluous voice and striking physical presence. Welles's performances are not always flawless, but what his critics miss is that often Welles does not aim for naturalism, but instead draws on melodramatic tradition that uses excess and theatricality to illustrate a film's ethical implications.

Welles's best work is in Citizen Kane, Jane Eyre, Touch of Evil, and Chimes at Midnight, along with The Third Man and Compulsion, where his performances dominant the films even though he appears in only a few scenes. Films such as Moby Dick and A Man for All Seasons reveal Welles's unique ability to convey the texts' ethical dilemmas, for with his naturally dramatic voice and imposing presence, his cameo performances become pivotal moments in the narrative.

A veteran of the Todd Troupers and weekly unofficial productions under his directorial control, Welles made his professional acting debut at age 16, and his Broadway debut at age 19. That same year, 1934, he directed and starred in his first film, played a Kane-like figure in a piece of agit-prop theater, and began starring in radio programs (e.g., The Shadow and First Person Singular). In 1937, he played Brutus in his Mercury production of Julius Caesar; the next year he broadcast the infamous "War of the Worlds."

In 1941, Welles played the title role in Citizen Kane. Welles's carefully designed performance does not aim for psychological realism, but instead conveys the different narrators' conflicting views of Charles Foster Kane. In Thatcher's sequence, Welles's quick-rhythmed speech and studied innocence express Thatcher's view that Kane is a young madman headed for a Faustian bargain. In the Bernstein sequence, Welles's exacting diction and flamboyant gestures convey Bernstein's fraternal image of Charlie-the-Great. In the next segment, Welles's performance reflects Leland's view that his friend becomes Kane-the-demagogue: Welles deepens his voice to deliver Kane's political speech, his stance echoes the image on the poster that hangs behind him, and as the segment ends, Welles's body is as immobile as a statue, his voice the booming voice of pitiless authority. In the concluding sequences, Welles's increasingly expressionistic performance shows us that Kane becomes the hollow shell of his ambition, literally puffed-up with self-importance, Kane is an untethered dirigible crashing about, then finally an orator reduced to a whisper. In the films that would follow, Welles revealed his abiding interest in stylized and highly codified characterizations: he consistently played strong characters with his left, three-quarter profile to camera, and weak characters, or strong characters in weak moments, right profile to camera.

Welles was active on stage, screen, and radio throughout the 1940s. Jane Eyre was Welles's first film acting assignment for another director, and his dramatic performance enhanced the mood of Brontë's gothic melodrama. In his own The Lady from Shanghai, Welles played O'Hara with a phony brogue that underscored the film's exploration of deceit, illusion, and artifice. In his last directorial assignment in Hollywood for a decade, Welles played the title role in his expressionistic Macbeth.

The conventional wisdom is that to secure financing for his own films, Welles spent the next three decades hamming-it-up in other people's bad pictures. Yet a review of his performances shows that is not quite the case. Welles gives a brilliant performance in The Third Man, his careful underplaying effectively conveying Harry Lime's sinister character. In the mid-fifties, Welles created notable performances for television; for example, in 1953, his performance in the title role of King Lear was a major success.

Some of Welles's best work was to come. His characterizations in The Long Hot Summer and Compulsion are the work of an accomplished actor. His performance in his own Touch of Evil is disturbing and masterful. Welles's performance as Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight is, quite arguably, the best performance of his career. Drawing on his lifelong study of Faustian figures, Welles gives us a Falstaff who is an endearing but detestable fool. And like his portrayals of other charming but flawed characters, Welles's performance is enriched by the conflicting aspects of his own image: egotist, visionary, wastrel, martyr.

An international celebrity from the time he was a young man, Welles continually subjected his public image to scrutiny: in the 1970s, he appeared regularly on late-night variety shows, in commercials, and in films such as Catch-22 that present us with caricatures of Welles's celebrity personae. F for Fake allowed Welles to reprise one of his signature roles: the entertaining charlatan. Someone to Love, Welles's final appearance on film, provided an apt conclusion to his unique acting career, for it ends with Welles's on-camera call to "cut."

The Films of Orson Welles & Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life, book review by Sidney Gottlieb from Cineaste (link lost):

Orson Welles was a highly literate and literary filmmaker, an artist of the word and the story as well as the image, cut, sequence, and sound. Somewhat less than a scholar but far more than a dilettante—critics often take him to task for not being the former and accuse him of being the latter—he was deeply saturated in and respectful of literature, and was a dedicated reader and prolific writer throughout his life. These habits and interests substantively shaped his approach to cinema. Most of his films are adaptations of literary texts, including old and new classics and contemporary thrillers of uneven quality. He modified extensively and his adaptations were thoroughly cinematic, but he did not share the antiliterary bias of many auteurs, perhaps summarized best by Hitchcock’s well-known statement that pure cinema above all else must distance itself from “photographs of people talking.” On the contrary, much of Welles’s career revolved around creating an innovative cinema of people talking, and literature helped him enormously in this effort. The two books under review in this essay illustrate some of the limitations of a ‘literary’ approach to Welles, but also confirm that the ideal critic of Welles must be, as it were, a close reader as well as a close watcher, attuned to the literary contexts and complex legacy of literature embedded in the thick detail and deep structure of the films.

Robert Garis was exactly that kind of critic, exceptionally knowledgeable about and attentive to not only literature but also theater, dance, and film, and these qualities help account for the deeply personal and finely articulated analyses in his posthumously published study, The Films of Orson Welles. The book is highly selective: we do not hear much about Welles’s life (although the broad contours are sketched in the introductory chapter), his important work outside of filmmaking, or his critical reputation. Undistracted by “background,” Garis aims to give a comprehensive overview of and introduction to Welles by detailed examinations of seven of his films. Although he takes these up singly, there are several recurrent emphases and topics of concern that link otherwise separable chapters. For example, he is remarkably sensitive to tone in the films, and comments frequently on Welles’s careful attention to and modulation of voice as an index of character and state of mind; and although it may seem like a backhanded compliment, he has a deep respect for and cites numerous examples of Welles’s “sheer know-how and competence,” his often unacknowledged mastery of the practical skills (e.g., set design, casting, blocking, camera positioning) that turn imaginative and conceptual brilliance into tangible artifacts.

Perhaps most important is Garis’s repeated examination of what he calls “performance,” a term that takes on expanding meaning as the book proceeds. For Garis, the best and worst aspects of Welles revolve around “his lifelong addiction to the performance of self,” a phrase that applies to (without fully explaining) his well-chronicled selfish and egotistical displays, broken friendships, and implosions and explosions, as well as his remarkable creative energy and uncanny insight in bringing to life galvanizing characters (Kane, Quinlan, Macbeth, and Falstaff among others) who try to fulfill their limitless desires, strain against their circumstances, and struggle to create and sustain a self made up of words, air, and appearances.

In a brief space I can’t do justice to the richness of Garis’s book, but I can at least survey some of his fine impressions and analytical comments as well as some of what I feel are the limitations of his critical approach and signs of his fundamental uneasiness with Welles. (It is this latter, as much as the demonstrable unevenness of Welles’s work, that accounts for a continual oscillation throughout the book between blame and praise, sometimes snooty dismissiveness and grudging admiration.) While in general he is not a great admirer of Welles’s characteristic stylization, Garis concedes that at least in Citizen Kane flamboyance and attention-grabbing techniques add “vividness and strength” to the film’s “serious effects and serious meanings” and do not distract from its subtlety and depth. Garis carefully exposes the “dialectic of contrast” at the heart of the film’s structure and theme, and convincingly demonstrates how this makes Kane a profound dramatization of aging (of both Kane and Welles) as well as a “rich, tight, and unified work of art.”

The Magnificent Ambersons too is a study in aging and transformation, but it works less by displays of cinematic bravura than by carefully integrated theatrical acting, “opulently and lovingly executed” sets, and what Garis rightly calls “choreography,” the arrangement and movement of characters (a skill Welles of course took with him from his years in the theater but which, I think, is also one of the key lessons of his repeated screenings of John Ford’s Stagecoach). Garis praises Ambersons very highly, especially for its overall orchestration and the “fullness and depth” of its portrait of Fanny rather than its broader commentary on an entire society in transition. This is an early hint of a key critical slant—and blind spot—that becomes more and more prominent as the book progresses: Garis’s (although not necessarily Welles’s) primary interest in individuals and interpersonal relations rather than groups and social dynamics. More on this in a moment.

Garis introduces his discussions of The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil with a personal minihistory of film noir, indicating that when he first saw such films he was interested in them primarily insofar as they showed the intervention of “trouble” in the “ordinary, everyday life of ordinary people” and “recorded the look of everyday American people and landscapes in an attentive and respectful way.” While this may outline what is for some a laudable esthetic of filmmaking, it is a curiously idiosyncratic description of film noir, which typically has radical stylization and defamiliarization at its core. And while there is certainly disagreement about the extent to which film noir is tied to socio-political circumstances, “scanting” the ways that these films are about systemic dimensions of “crime and betrayal,” to which Garis pleads guilty, does not predispose one to appreciate much of what Welles’s two films aspire to and accomplish. Still, Garis admits a grudging attraction to these films, and his comments are often judicious and revealing. His criticisms of the often ineffective extravagance of The Lady from Shanghai and Welles’s deficiencies as an actor in the role of O’Hara are not only convincing but serve as take-off points for his much more appreciative discussion of Touch of Evil, where he rightly applauds Quinlan as “one of Welles’s masterworks” and insightfully analyzes the roots of the film’s “dark atmosphere of corruption.” And if he is not particularly concerned with the political elements of the film, he is far more attentive than any critic I know of to the ways that Touch of Evil is a love story, hinging on the fascinating interplay between Welles and Marlene Dietrich.

The book ends with Garis’s examination of “Welles’s Shakespeare,” which one would expect to be a highpoint but turns out to be somewhat anticlimactic. His comments on Othello (as a film that has lost its initial charm for him and now seems to be only “a series of intelligent and tasteful effects” rather than “interesting art”) and Chimes at Midnight (which he admires as “a beautiful and admirable achievement” but discusses for only a few pages) are sketchy and were perhaps unfinished when the book was assembled after his death. I will therefore concentrate on his detailed discussion of Macbeth for one last look at the strengths and weaknesses of his belletristic critical approach and ambivalence toward Welles. In this section Garis becomes a bit of a performer himself, and gives a kind of tour-de-force demonstration of his own literary sensibility in analyzing—and bemoaning—some of Welles’s cuts from and rearrangements of the text of Macbeth, concluding with the startlingly dismissive judgment (one of many throughout the book) that Welles’s “arrangement can’t have come from any considerable thinking about the play.” Despite this claim, he goes on to praise the “special excellence” of the film, evident particularly in the “depth and power” of the way Welles “brilliantly” captures “what is going on between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, which is of course what we want most to see.” To each his own, I suppose, but it seems to me that a critical reading of Macbeth as essentially a failed romance rather than an examination of power, kingship, political domination, and the dynamics of violence misses too much in a great play and an ambitious (though tremendously flawed) film.

This diminution, even in the context of a perceptive appreciation of some aspects of Macbeth, exemplifies what I feel is Garis’s overly narrow approach to Welles. Throughout the book he either avoids or dismisses Welles’s social and political interests and activities, which are highly visible and more than occasionally central in his art and life, especially during his most creative period. A picture of him addressing the American League for Peace and Democracy and one paragraph alluding to It’s All True, his newspaper columns, and his radio work, concluding curtly and somewhat condescendingly that he was for this short time one of many politically naive liberals, doesn’t adequately address a crucial part of Welles as an artist, person, and citizen. We should of course allow Garis his preferences, and appreciate the often stunning critical insights that his close readings yield. But his definition of film is strikingly out of synch with Welles’s. He holds firmly to the prescriptive (and restrictive) premise that film is “a medium ideally, idiomatically, equipped to convey immediate intuitive knowledge of the identities and relationships of human beings and to bring us into the most painful and valuable closeness with them.” To put it most simply, Welles’s notion and use of the film medium expand far beyond that.
Serendipitously, I have recently been listening to an interview with Jean Renoir on the DVD of The Rules of the Game, where he offers some important advice that is relevant here: in choosing a “master,” he says, we should look for someone who is “plump.” I take this as Renoir’s shorthand way of celebrating ambitious and multifaceted artists who, among other qualities, embrace and try to capture and comment on the totality of life, the social and political as well as the interpersonal and domestic. There is a great need to restore Welles to his full “plumpness.” Garis’s Welles is often brilliantly creative but also surprisingly—and unnecessarily—thin.

We get a “plump” Welles—with a vengeance—in Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life. Like Garis, Peter Conrad takes a literary approach to Welles: his constant reference points are works of literature that figure prominently in Welles’s creations, and he conceives of Welles primarily as a writer, broadly defined, incessantly weaving the stories that compose not only his films but also, as the book’s title suggests, his life. For Conrad, there is no real division between art and personal biography, text and life, teller and tale, at least in the case of Welles. Welles not only wrote himself into his films: in a fundamental, even ontological way, he wrote (or at least attempted to write) his own self, using the stuff of literature and mythology. Conrad spends much of his time tracing complex and reversible genealogies, wherein, for example, Kane is part Faust, Cain, Kurtz, and Welles…and so is Welles. I think that there are some problems with this approach to Welles’s life and art, not the least of which is occasional vertigo, but it also generates a dazzling multidimensional portrait and anatomy of a dazzling multidimensional man.

Conrad’s starting point is Welles’s oft-reported “wistful” comment to various relatively sparse audiences for his “one-man shows”: after “enumerating his copious selves”—director, actor, designer, writer, painter, and so on—he would remark, “Isn’t it strange that there are so many of me—and so few of you?” Conrad gives his own version of these “copious selves” in chapters arranged around a cluster of figures that Welles embodied, each of which calls to mind not only an archetypal character but also a distinctive orientation to life and a defining story. These are taken up partly in chronological sequence, and on one level the book moves us from young to old Welles, from Peter Pan to Prospero, from portraying Kurtz to playing Falstaff. But perhaps because Conrad envisions himself as primarily a mythographer rather than a historian or biographer, the book is nonlinear, synchronic as well as diachronic, and the chapters move us not so much through temporal stages in Welles’s life as from one to another character that exists simultaneously and continuously in him.

The chapter titled “Everybody,” for example, is thus not only about Welles’s early work with his teacher Roger Hill editing Everybody’s Shakespeare and his theatrical and radio productions of various Shakespeare plays but also an extensive consideration of the Shakespearean dimension of all Welles’s works and also his conception of himself as an artist. Similarly, the chapter titled “Faust” takes off from Welles’s version of Doctor Faustus in 1937 to discuss his lifelong interest in a character that he repeatedly said he distrusted and rejected. And in the chapter on Kurtz we find this character and his story not only in Welles’s radio versions and script of Joseph Conrad’s story, but nearly everywhere else (in Journey into Fear, The Lady from Shanghai, The Stranger, and The Third Man, for example), confirming that while Welles never made his proposed film of Heart of Darkness, in some ways he never stopped making it.

Some of the characters Conrad discusses, like the ones mentioned above, are relatively familiar to students of Welles, and have been written about extensively. (This is, by the way, never acknowledged, and while Conrad’s refusal, here as in his enormously insightful and imaginative book The Hitchcock Murders, to recognize and cite other critics is perhaps intended as a welcome flight from pedantry and an affirmation of the deeply personal and unique qualities of his connoisseurship, it occasionally strikes me as annoyingly proprietary and ungenerous.) But he also highlights many aspects of Welles not often given sufficient attention. Chapters on not only Faust but also Mercury and Prospero emphasize that we cannot understand Welles fully unless we appreciate that magic was not merely his hobby but his vocation, especially given that theater and cinema are both fundamentally magical and illusory.

Conrad also designates Welles as “Mr. Poet,” “of the romantic kind” defined by Coleridge, Keats, and Baudelaire but mostly by Robert Graves in his “mythopoeic fantasia” The White Goddess, a key text for Welles that Conrad uses very effectively to examine his vision of creativity, technology, the seasons of life, and perhaps at the center of everything, bewitching women. And Conrad envisions Welles as not only a mythmaker but also as a variety of mythic figures. Two of these latter strike me as particularly important in filling out our image of Welles: “Lord of Misrule” calls attention to the deeply-rooted carnivalesque elements in just about everything he did (with the exception of Kane and Ambersons, and even those works show the grim consequences for individuals and cultures that reject mirth, play, and communal life), and “Sacred Beast” convincingly demonstrates that when rightly understood, it is high praise to say that Welles was full of bull, drawing much insight into the dynamics of ceremony, sacrifice, violence, and redemption from his reflections on the corrida.

As challenging and rewarding as this book is, I have some reservations about Conrad’s critical method. His emphasis on the mythic elements of Welles helps him capture, better than most critics, his complexity and Protean character, but it tends to disengage him—or at least put him at one remove—from history and the “real” world: he does treat Welles as a “Pan American,” but the “Pan” here is the Great God Pan and the America he describes is one of “fables of power,” not concrete political circumstances. Also better than most critics, Conrad surveys, as much as possible, the entirety of Welles, and he makes constant references to an incredibly inclusive range of what Welles read, wrote, produced, acted in, directed, said, and broadcast. But this is often done, for lack of a better term, promiscuously—with minor and major activities (e.g., narrating The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, scripting The Little Prince, making The Magnificent Ambersons) run together as though of equal weight and significance—and rhapsodically—free association is a key structural element of the book, and it creates fascinating connections but also dizzying leaps. Finally, cinema is more in the background than one might hope for in a book on Welles. There is little concern here for the details, techniques, and texture of Welles’s films (although much concern for their themes and characters), and few references to Welles’s immersion in cinematic as well as literary history. I wish that among the characters Conrad traces in Welles’s life and works he had found more room for Mr. Cineaste alongside Mr. Poet.

These reservations do not keep me from appreciating Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life as an extremely valuable book, one well worth wrestling with. It is a ‘strong’ reading, not for the timid and, because of its density and demands, probably not for the novice. But it is a far-ranging, witty, and provocative exploration of Welles as one of the modern era’s great storytellers, stories, and characters. To date, this is the most Wellesian study of Welles available, in part because it is so ambitious, expansive, allusive, contentious, overstated, and prismatic. I wouldn’t have Welles any other way, and—despite my occasional quibbles and criticisms—I wouldn’t have Conrad’s book any other way either.

 

Orson Welles  fan website

 

The Estate of Orson Welles  career overview website

 

Orson Welles Profile  Robert Osborne essay from Turner Classic Movies

 

Orson Welles | Movies and Biography - Yahoo! Movies  biography

 

Orson Welles  biography by Bruce Eder from Rovi 

 

Orson Welles • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Jaime M. Christley from Senses of Cinema, January 24, 2003

 

Reel Classics  director profile

 

Film Noir Directors: Orson Welles

 

The Mercury Theatre on the Air

 

American Experience . The Battle Over Citizen Kane | PBS 

 

American Experience . The Battle Over Citizen Kane | PBS  afterthoughts

 

“How this World is Given to Lying!”: Orson Welles's ...   How this World is Given to Lying!: Orson Welles’s Deconstruction of Historiographies in Chimes at Midnight, by Jeffrey Yeager, academic essay           (Undated)

 

Mr. Arkadin - Parallax View  Richard T. Jameson, May 7, 2015, program note originally written for “The Cinema of Orson Welles,” during the Autumn 1971 film series of the University of Washington Office of Lectures & Concerts, November 9, 1971

 

The Other Side of the Wind  Jeff Meyer, 1988

 

Remembering Orson Welles   Gore Vidal from The NY Review of Books, June 1, 1989

 

Out of the Shadows | Movie Review | Chicago Reader  Fred Camper, September 17, 1998

 

Orson Welles: A Touch of Evil  Derek Malcolm from The Guardian, January 7, 1999

 

Welles's monkey business  Brian Pendreigh from The Guardian, December 10, 1999

 

Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin - A Maze of Death • Senses of Cinema  Philippe St. Germaine, November 5, 2000

 

After Midnight - Cinescene  Don Larsson, 2001

 

Great expectations  Tim Cumming from The Guardian, January 9, 2002

 

All's well ... it's not the end of Welles  Maeve Kennedy from The Guardian, March 8, 2002

 

Citizen Kane voted best film of all time  Gerard Seenan from The Guardian, August 9, 2002

 

75 achievements Oscar forgot  Michael Wilmington from The LA Times, February 9, 2003

 

From the Beginning: Notes on Orson Welles' Most Personal Late Film ...  Peter Tonguette from Senses of Cinema, July 25, 2003

 

Peter Conrad on Orson Welles | Film | The Guardian  Genius and Folly, by Peter Conrad from The Guardian, August 28, 2003, also seen here:  Guardian Unlimited Orson Welles Special

 

Get your dirty hands off us  B. Ruby Rich from The Guardian, August 29, 2003

 

From Faust to Falstaff  Peter Conrad from The Observer, August 31, 2003

 

Awesome Welles  Philip French reviews the book Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life, by Peter Conrad (384 pages) from The Observer, September 28, 2003

 

Life and liberties  David Thomson reviews the book Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life, by Peter Conrad (384 pages) from The Guardian, December 20, 2003

 

“The Company of Magicians”: Orson Welles, Abb Dickson, Scarlet ...  Peter Tonguette from Senses of Cinema, July 2004

 

The ones that got away  Fergal Byrne from The Guardian, July 30, 2004

 

F for Fake - Bright Lights Film Journal  Robert Castle, July 31, 2004

 

Reading, writing and the dramatic  Catherine Taylor reviews the book Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life, by Peter Conrad, from The Guardian, October 23, 2004

 

Reading between the lines  Jonathan Beckman reviews the book Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life, by Peter Conrad (384 pages) from The Observer, October 10, 2004

 

Welles: Kane and able  Carl Wilkinson reviews the book  Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios, by Clinton Heylin (402 pages), from The Observer, February 27, 2005

 

Rumble in the jungle  Clinton Heylin from The Guardian, March 4, 2005

 

Touch of genius  Chris Petit reviews the book  Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios, by Clinton Heylin (402 pages), from The Guardian, April 23, 2005

 

Touch Of Terrorism  John Patterson from The Guardian, May 28, 2005

 

The Lady from Shanghai • Senses of Cinema  Chris Justice, July 22, 2005

 

The Magnificent Ambersons • Senses of Cinema  Tamara Tracz from Senses of Cinema, February 7, 2006

 

The Immortal Story: Like the Sound of the Sea Deep Within a Shell ...  Adrian Danks from Senses of Cinema, February 7, 2006

 

Chimes at Midnight | Senses of Cinema  Darragh O’Donoghue from Senses of Cinema, February 7, 2006

 

Mr. Arkadin/Confidential Report • Senses of Cinema  Nelson Kim, February 7, 2006

 

The Trial • Senses of Cinema  Temenuga Trifonova, February 7, 2006

 

The KO blow from RKO  Philip French reviews the book Orson Welles: Hello Americans, by Simon Callow, from The Observer, May 7, 2006

 

The magnificent Mr Welles  Alan Warner reviews the book Orson Welles: Hello Americans, by Simon Callow, from The Guardian, May 7, 2006

 

'This greater drama'  Simon Callow offers his thoughts on his own book, Orson Welles: Hello Americans, from The Guardian, May 20, 2006

 

Review of Simon Callow's ORSON WELLES - JonathanRosenbaum ...  Orson Welles: Volume 2: Hello Americans, by Simon Callows, a book review by Jonathan Rosenbaum from Cineaste, Fall 2006

 

This town is rated noir  Richard Rayner from The LA Times, December 3, 2006

 

Gary Graver  Obituary of Welles cinematographer, from The Guardian, December 8, 2006

 

The Master Builder by Sanford Schwartz | The New York Review of ...   Sanford Schwartz reviews 7 new books on Welles from The New York Review of Books, March 15, 2007

 

girish: Notes on Welles (1)  April 30, 2007

 

Orson calling  Vanessa Thorpe reviews the book Orson Welles: Hello Americans, Volume 2, by Simon Callow, from The Observer, May 20, 2007

 

Cooke's final helping  Judith Rice reviews Orson Welles: Hello Americans, by Simon Callow, from The Guardian, June 2, 2007

 

Citizen Kane tops nostalgic list of America's top 100 films  Dan Glaister from The Guardian, June 21, 2007

 

J. Hoberman Orson Welles - London Review of Books  Thunder in the Mountains, by J. Hoberman, September 6, 2007

 

"The Most Beautiful Six Minutes in the History of Cinema" | The ...  YouTube video clip and comments by Jonathan Rosenbaum on the unfinished DON QUIXOTE, from the Reader, October 18, 2007

 

"Give My Love to the Sunrise" The Lady from Shanghai - Bright Lights ...  Jason Mark Scott from Bright Lights Film Journal, November 1, 2007

 

The Player Kings - The New Yorker  Claudia Roth Pierpont, November 19, 2007

 

The Treasures and the Fakes: The Last Films of Orson Welles ...  Benjamin Kerstein from Senses of Cinema, November 25, 2007

 

1 Orson Welles' three Shakespeare films: Macbeth, Othello ...  12-page essay by Peter Cochran, March 2009 (pdf)

 

The Roundtable.: Take Three: 'Chimes at Midnight'  reviews from Gina Carbone, Mike Gillis and Lars Trodson, April 2009

 

Awesome Orsons: Who's the best on-screen Welles?  Ben Child from The Guardian, December 8, 2009

 

For Orson Welles's daughter, the world was her oyster  Ben Walters from The Guardian, January 29, 2010

 

In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles by Chris Welles Feder  Caroline Boucher from The Observer, January 31, 2010

 

The Past is All Used Up: Orson Welles, Touch of Evil and Erasure  Peter Alilunas from Screening the Past, April 29, 2010

 

Touch of Evil: No 2 best crime film of all time  David Thomson from The Observer, October 16, 2010

 

Citizen Kane: No 5 best arthouse film of all time  David Thomson from The Guardian, October 19, 2010

 

Orson Welles  Ignatiy Vishnevetsky providing 7 Welles budgets, estimated in 2009 US dollars, from Sounds, Images, November 9, 2010

 

Orson Welles's unseen masterpiece set for release  Dalya Alberge from The Observer, January 23, 2011

 

The Other Side of The Wind « Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource  Wellesnet, January 28, 2011

 

Bill Varney dies at 77; Oscar-winning sound mixer  Valerie J. Nelson from The LA Times, April 7, 2011

 

Bill Varney obituary  Sound mixer on Touch of Evil, by Ronald Bergan from The Guardian, June 1, 2011

 

Orson Welles's Citizen Kane Oscar sells for $860,000   Henry Barnes from The Guardian, December 21, 2011

 

The strange saga of Orson Welles's Oscar statuette  Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian, December 21, 2011

 

My love affair with Orson Welles  Charles Saatchi from The Guardian, December 29, 2011

 

Vertigo tops greatest film poll, ending reign of Citizen Kane  Mark Brown from The Guardian, August 1, 2012

 

Orson Welles' criticisms of fellow actors and directors ... - The Guardian  Dalya Alberge from The Observer, June 29, 2011

 

The Film Temple: Director Spotlight #14.11: Orson Welles ...  Max B. O’Connell, July 2013

 

A Conspicuous Gap: On Orson Welles in Italy - Los Angeles Review of ...   Kevin Canfield reviews On Orson Welles in Italy, by Alberto Anile from The LA Review of Books, October 5, 2013

 

selenak | December Talking Meme: Orson Welles  December 14, 2013

 

Discovering Orson Welles   Michael Wood from The NY Review of Books, December 19, 2013

 

Orson Welles at 100: Orson Welles’s Last Movie  Jake Hinkson from Criminal Element, April 16, 2015

 

Campanadas a medianoche (Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles, 1965)   Noel Vera from Critic After Dark, May 2015

 

Retrospective: The Directorial Films Of Orson Welles | IndieWire  May 6, 2015

 

Orson Welles at 100 | Balder and Dash | Roger Ebert  Patrick McGavin, May 11, 2015

 

Why Orson Welles still matters - Directors Guild of America  Terrence Rafferty, Summer 2015

 

100 years since the birth of Orson Welles—Part 1 - World Socialist ...    David Walsh and Joanne Laurier from The World Socialist Website, June 4, 2015

 

100 years since the birth of Orson Welles—Part 2 - World Socialist ...  David Walsh and Joanne Laurier from The World Socialist Website, June 5, 2015

 

Why Orson Welles Matters - LeftLion.co.uk  Ash Carter from LeftLion, June 27, 2015

 

Orson Welles: One Man Band by Simon Callow review – tears ...  Anthony Quinn book review from The Guardian, December 9, 2015

 

Nick Pinkerton on Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight - artforum.c  Nick Pinkerton from Artforum magazine, December 30, 2015 

 

Orson Welles's Mighty “Chimes at Midnight” - The New Yorker  Richard Brody, January 8, 2016

 

Chimes at Midnight | Hidden Cause, Visible Effects  DK Fennell, January 10, 2016

 

Shakespeare, Freud, Machiavelli and Welles: The “Prince Hal Problem”  DK Fennell, March 8, 2016

 

'Chimes at Midnight' | Commonweal Magazine  Richard Alleva, March 10, 2016

 

Looking for Citizen Welles   Michael Wood from The NY Review of Books, March 16, 2016

 

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965) review | Keeping It Reel  David J. Fowlie, March 18, 2016

 

TSPDT - Orson Welles

 

Peter Bogdanovich  The Golden World, Orson Welles interview from This Recording, August 16, 2011, also seen here:  In Which Orson Welles Regards The Magnificent Ambersons - Home ...

 

He's raising Kane  Gaby Wood interviews Ridley Scott about Citizen Kane from The Observer, December 18, 1999

 

Film Journal Article  Peter Tonguette interviews Mike Caveney, a magician who worked with Welles, in The Film Journal, February 2004

 

Peter Bogdanovich - The Magnificent Ambersons Q&A  Podcast interview, Vanity Fair contributing editor David Kamp interviews Peter Bogdanovich before a screening of The Magnificent Ambersons at the Turner Classic Movies Festival, July 15, 2011, Download my podcast here

 

Richard Linklater on making Me and Orson Welles: 'He was the patron saint of indie film-makers'  Jason Solomons interviews director Richard Linklater from The Guardian, December 1, 2009 (video interview, 14:04) 

 

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CITIZEN KANE

USA  (119 mi)  1941

 

Citizen Kane   Ed Gonzalez from Slant magazine

 

Citizen Kane's last word: "Rosebud." It was newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst's pet name for his mistress' vagina. Hearst's love for the female sex organ may be Kane's deathbed-grasp for childhood (here, rendered via toy-sled-as-metaphor) but Orson Welles is always willing to suggest it's something else entirely. In the end it doesn't matter, proving that Kane's fortune, indeed his life, was so big it could never be cataloged and appraised. Welles' masterpiece is, at its simplest, a backward detective story with Kane's lost childhood as an elusive puzzle piece in a lifetime of megalomania. More importantly, it's a guided tour through Kane's freak show past, one that exposes the man's fiendish and compensatory need for a self-made empire and the rationale behind its subsequent decay and downfall. The film's technical innovations are now legendary, from Welles' deft rift on Time's "March of Times" series to his revolutionary use of deep focus. Kane loses his empire and walks to the other end of his office; ordinary windows turn gargantuan, emphasizing Kane's economic castration anxiety. There are no special effects here, just one of Welles' many camera tricks. While Citizen Kane's quirks and hat-tricks have nothing on Dr. Arkadin and the dizzying The Trial, Kane is the closest thing to a pitch-perfect how-to guide from Hollywood's golden age. A master when it came to narrative conservation, Welles showcases the deterioration of a marriage via a breakfast table sequence predicated on swish pans, one-shots, age make-up, loveless dialogue and seemingly elongating furniture. Its themes are multitudinous (the creation of love, the ownership of power, the relinquishment of control), its sights so set on dazzling the eyes that Kane's Xanadu (Welles' answer to Heart's Ranch) is never less than a circus master's house of mirrors. It's a sentimental journey that is, nonetheless, always ready to remind the spectator that there is no trespassing. Indeed, as they say they in the film: "I don't think any word can explain a man's life."

 

Erich von Stroheim - Fred Camper  Stroheim’s review of CITIZEN KANE from Decision magazine, June 1941

This is perhaps the first criticism of a film ever written by a film-maker who coincidentally also in his time — like Orson Welles — played the "Holy Trinity." In our case "Trinity" means that the functions of the Writer, Director, and Star are combined in one person. The man executing these three functions in any case has a gigantic job on his hands which can only be fully appreciated by someone who actually has attempted the same. In fact, Orson Welles went me one better as he was also the Producer. And the Producer Welles permitted without grumbling the Director Welles to execute what the Writer Welles had planned to do. And Director Welles allowed the Actor Welles to do as he pleased.

As the man who plays the "Super. Trinity" earns the applause practically alone — provided the finished product is a worthy one — so must he solely take the blame should one or more of his endeavors not have functioned properly.

In the case of "Citizen Kane," Welles had to take the blame for the malfunctioning of the "story" and Herman G. Mankiewicz may take a goodly share of it for himself. If Mankiewicz wrote the original screen-play as the program announces, then Welles is to blame for not demanding changes and supplementary scenes as well as the omission of existing repetitious ones. If his objections were overruled, he deserves the blame nevertheless for not insisting on those changes. In the souvenir program we are told that Welles "shot" for one week or so "wild," meaning without script. One cannot direct from the "cuff" any longer and perhaps that has something to do with the evident shortcomings of the continuity.

To criticize that film justly is a tough job. Usually, most of the critics simply state their opinion that a film is good, bad or indifferent, but they have not specific knowledge of what makes a film good or bad. It may be the story or only the continuity that is wrong. It may be the direction or the acting. Many times the director gets the blame for a bad story or continuity, although he had nothing to do with them, but had done the best anyone could have done with the material at hand. Actors are blamed for a bad performance when in fact they only did what they were ordered to do by their director. Although Welles did all these things himself, in criticizing his work one must specify in which be has failed.

I shall start (contrary to Welles's technic) at the beginning with the basic element of a film — the story. As a story proper "Citizen Kane" has much to criticize. It is neither big nor vital enough to justify the tremendous outlay of work, time and money which can easily be recognized even by a layman. It is just another story of an over-ambitious man; in this particular case a newspaper publisher, who incidentally aspires to become governor. A man who has built a vast newspaper empire only to see it crumble. A man who collects anything and everything from the four corners of the globe without being in the slightest interested in anything be collects. A man who deserts his wife and child only to be deserted in the end by the woman for whom be deserted. In a way he has ideals at the start, but he has not the necessary character to live up to them. Citizen Kane really cares for three things only; Kane, KANE and K A N E!

There is nothing particularly new in all that. It has happened thousands of times in real life, and it has been filmed many times. And the same mistake made in previous films has been repeated. The laboratory analysis — under the microscope — of Citizen Kane's heart and soul has been forgotten.

No man is so utterly selfish and hardboiled that one cannot find some redeeming feature in his motivations, his actions and reactions. Except for the singularly beautiful incident of "Rosebud," the name of his boyhood sleigh which he utters as he dies, there is not one touch in the film that would tend to make Kane human and understandable. To make a man's insatiable ambition, his cruel selfishness and his ruthlessness really understandable and interesting, one should have visual reasons for his having developed into such a monster.

To be truthful, during the first twenty minutes of viewing the film, I, who have been thirty years in this business of making films, did not know what it was all about. I may be dumb, but I have asked at least fifty people who in more or less articulate form described the same experience. I may be hyper-conservative or just plain old fashioned, but I believe in all sincerity that the form of telling the story of Citizen Kane is not the desired or successful form in which to tell a screen story. All of us have been accustomed to hear or to see a story start at the beginning. Welles's way of telling the story may have its place in a novel or on the stage, but I am convinced that in the cinema it is entirely out of place.

Of course I understand that Kane having been a newspaper publisher, Welles treated his death from a newspaper angle in short staccato flashes. I do not object to that, but I do object to his beginning with Kane's death. Far be it from me to rewrite the story but I do believe that the story might have been so arranged that Kane's death could have been shown in the old traditional way — at the end. Its sacrifice of simplicity to eccentricity robs the film of its general entertainment value. Aside from this criticism of the shortcomings of the story and the radical departures in telling same, I have nothing but the highest praise for the film. The production as a whole can only be classified as superb. The direction — and may I say here that only the initiated will ever understand bow much work and responsibility "direction" embraces-is masterful; except for allowing Erskin Sandford to look like a character out of Dickens.

Aside from Welles himself, the laurels for acting go to Everest Sloane as "Bernstein" who is magnificent in his human simplicity, Joseph Cotton as "Jedediah Leland" is excellent, except for the military white "mustache" the make-up man was permitted to paste on his upper-lip in the sanatorium scene. He looks more like a sergeant of artillery in the old soldiers' home than the idealist he was supposed to portray. Ruth Warrick as the wife gives as "wifely" a performance as may be desired in order to justify somewhat her husband leaving her. Dorothy Comingore as the "singer" sweetheart is very good and in several scenes quite touching in her vulgarity. The rest of the cast, all of which are Mercury players, none of whom I have ever seen on the screen before, give splendid performances. The sets of Van Nest Polglase never distract. The castle sets are magnificent, and so realistic that at times I wondered whether they had really been constructed for the film, or Hearst's castle at Saint Simon had actually been used. The lighting and the photography deserve the highest praise. They prove my contention of long ago that even in sound films we can achieve artistic and beautiful photography assisting and accentuating the drama, which since the advent of sound has been so shamefully neglected. Naturally there are some ignorami (including some film critics) who have called this photography shadowy and spooky. The trouble is that they have been so over-fed with lousy photography since the silent films went out that they have come to believe photography has to be lousy. My high hat off and a very deep bow to Gregg Toland and Vernon L. Walker, A.S.C. The sound in this film is as sound should be.

The "stink" raised by Louella Parsons all over the country about "Citizen Kane" supposedly being the more or less authentic life-history of Citizen William Randolf Hearst and his supposed objection to having the film shown, the supposed attempt of certain Hollywood producers to chip in large sums of money to repay R.K.O. if they would refrain from releasing the film, the supposed objections raised and restrictions imposed by the Hays office . . . to me is a decidedly "fishy" one. Much more do I, and many others with whom I have talked, believe that this was a very clever advertising scheme that came out of the fertile brain of Citizen Welles who, in my opinion, would make as great a director of publicity as he has proven himself to be a director in the film. Whatever the truth may be about it, "Citizen Kane" is a great picture and will go down in screen history. More power to Welles!

Citizen Kane  Jim Emerson from cinepad

That tarnished sign on a forbidding black wire fence is the first thing we see in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, the rather formidable beginning of an opening sequence that's still as electrifying as any in the history of movies. Charles Foster Kane -- the eponymous tragic hero and central enigma of 1941's Citizen Kane -- expires moments after the movie bearing his name comes stirring to life, gasping that cryptic word Rosebud with his last breath. But Citizen Kane, now re-released on its 50th anniversary, is as thrillingly alive as it has ever been.

The thrills of Welles' breathtakingly exciting debut picture are multifarious. For one thing, there's the exhilaration of watching a cocky 25-year-old genius named Orson Welles explore the possibilities of the medium for the first time, playing provocatively with the properties of film as if he'd been doing it all his life. Visually and aurally -- from Gregg Toland's celebrated deep-focus cinematography to Robert Wise's crisp, complex editing to the multi-layered impressionistic/ expressionistic soundtrack -- Kane is as stunning and sophisticated as any movie ever made, and it crackles and whizzes along at a pace that can even keep the MTV generation riveted to the screen.

Then there's the thrill of watching the exuberant young Mercury Players, among the finest actors ever to work in front of a movie camera, having the time of their lives as they projecting themselves into the future and into the past. Their fresh performances still bristle with spontaneity and an edge that few contemporary actors (Robert DeNiro comes to mind) can match. And, behind that NO TRESPASSING sign, there's also the thrill of the forbidden. For Citizen Kane -- in its first few images -- takes us behind that barrier, erected to keep out the public, for an intimate look at a great and powerful man who got everything he ever wanted... and then lost it.

As Bernard Herrmann's ominous score rumbles portentiously on the soundtrack, the camera surmounts several layers/levels of fences and, in a series of dissolves focused on a lit window in a distant tower, moves across the dark, spooky, deserted grounds of Kane's Xanadu estate. That window remains in the same place in the frame -- upper right-hand corner -- in each successive shot, including one that turns the image upside down: a reflection in a disused boating pond. As we approach the window, a light inside (and, soon, a life) is snuffed out. Another match-dissolve takes us almost imperceptibly from outside Kane's castle to inside his room, where... it is snowing. A house sits nestled in a soft, white landscape, but the camera pulls back rapidly and we see it's one of those little liquid globes with fake flakes inside. This wintry world held tight in the palm of his hand, Charles Foster Kane loosens his grip on life. The glass bubble bursts on the floor as his disembodied lips (in close-up) whisper: "Rosebud."

Like that shining window in the distance, Rosebud becomes the elusive focal point for a newsreel reporter's investigation into the life and times of Citizen Kane, an exploration which provides the plot framework for the movie. And like those shifting, sometimes inverted initial images, each person reporter Thompson (William Alland) interviews provides a different perspective, a contrasting image of the same man: Charles Foster Kane.

In one of the film's most memorable images, Kane, having torn apart in anger the bedroom of his wife (who's finally worked up the strength to leave him), walks trance-like down an echoing corridor lined with mirrors, where his reflection is multiplied a hundred-fold into the distance.  Citizen Kane is about those images that we all reflect and project, the sum total of which -- the impressions we make on other people -- are all we that leave behind us.

And that central, unsolveable riddle of personality is at the core of what makes Citizen Kane so endlessly watchable. Charles Foster Kane -- despite the best efforts of Thompson and the people he interviews -- refuses to be reduced to any convenient formula. And how many contemporary movie characters can you say THAT about? Citizen Kane is a portrait of a public and private figure that, by design, remains tantalizingly unfinished. It's an elusive shadow-play, done in a vivid black-and-white that's far richer, more suggestive and mysterious than the neon paint-by-numbers palette of most of today's stupefyingly unimaginative Eastmancolor pictures.

As Thompson puts it near the end of the movie: "Perhaps Rosebud was something he couldn't get or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything. I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle."  It's the mystery -- combined, of course, with the mastery of Orson Welles and his collaborators -- that draws us back to Kane again and again.

Kane is a movie about perception and projection. Critic David Thomson (no relation to the newsreel reporter) has even suggested that: "The whole of Citizen Kane might be Kane's own dreamed recollections in the last moment before his death -- his life flashing before his, and our, eyes. The fact that the film takes the form of investigations carried out by a representative of a newsreel company," Thomson writes, "could be interpreted as showing the degree to which Kane's own publicity has conditioned his attitude to himself."  Indeed, the whole movie seems to take place in a kind of psychic projection room. The deathly, dreamlike hush of Citizen Kane's shadowy prologue jumps abruptly into that blaring newsreel ("News On the March"), which introduces us to the Official Version of the Life of Charles Foster Kane.

But when the film runs out, flipping on the reel of the projector, we're left in the dark -- in a dim screening room with shadowy faceless figures, silhouetted in front of the screen, who (like us) aren't satisfied with the portrait of Kane they've just watched. The movie as a whole -- though as artistically satisfying as a picture can get -- also leaves us with certain unexplicated pieces of Kane's life that only we, as viewers of Citizen Kane, can put together for ourselves.

Yes, we eventually find a symbolic meaning for the riddle of Rosebud -- even though none of the characters in the film is ever priviledged to discover it. But, in the end, the movie reverses itself and we back out of the life and works of Charles Foster Kane the same way we came in: drawing back behind the fence and coming to rest on that stubborn NO TRESPASSING sign, as the remains of a man's life turns to smoke in the distance.

Orson Welles: The most glorious film failure of them all  David Thomson from The Guardian, October 22, 2009

You can say he was a failure – but that only leads to a more demanding appreciation of success than numbers will ever satisfy (George Lucas, I read the other day, has a net worth of around $5bn). Orson Welles never directed a picture that made a profit in his lifetime. He died, alone and broke, in a cottage in the Hollywood hills on 10 October 1985, at which point his affairs and his estate passed into a chaos that he had known and engineered for most of his life. This disorder is such that at least one film, The Other Side of the Wind, which was nearly finished while Welles was alive, has still not been delivered to us.

So he has been dead nearly 25 years and yet there is a gathering current of movies and other fictions in which Orson Welles is a character – both an inspiration and a warning to young film-makers. Beyond that, in 2012, Sight & Sound magazine will publish, as it has done every decade since 1952, its poll of critics and film-makers of the greatest films ever made. As things stand now, I cannot see how Citizen Kane will be replaced as top film – the rank it held in 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992 and 2002. In which case it will have reigned for 50 years. Has world film produced nothing since 2002 to overtake Kane? Slumdog Millionaire? The Lives of Others? A History of Violence? Perhaps some earlier film has so risen in esteem that it will now pass Kane. The Godfather? Vertigo? Tokyo Story? I don't see it. I can believe that new generations groan when told they have to watch Citizen Kane, and worship the past. If the movies breathe new air, shouldn't our best film change every few years? It only backs up the sad suspicion that the movies may be dead (or sleeping) if such a classic still rules.

Meanwhile, the large, busy ghost of Orson watches us with his Cheshire cat smile. In Kane, the hero says that at the rate of losing $1m a year he'll be broke – in 60 years. It's a nifty joke. But Welles's own capital shows no diminution and it has lasted longer than Kane's could have. That's a stranger joke by far. It begins   to suggest that something matters more than money.

Welles possessed intimidating charisma and perilous charm. Of course, we know Welles as an actor, something denied to DW Griffith, John Ford, Preston Sturges and so on. But his aura is more persistent still: few citizens of the 20th century left such an intimate imprint. We see him (as Harry Lime as much as Kane), but we hear him, too. He is a voice in the public imagination, reading John Donne, murmuring, "Free of income tax, old man" to Holly Martins, yet sighing over "no wine before its time".

It may hurt a film buff to admit this, but some film directors are dull fellows – because they have no life beyond film. The monotony of being Martin Scorsese or Alfred Hitchcock is a kind of imprisonment. Welles went off in so many other directions: as actor, as man of the theatre, as the spirit of radio, as a magician, a self-taught know-it-all, a traveller, a world-class raconteur and even a political prospect (he wrote speeches for FDR and he might have been a contender himself if the 1940s had been more hip about divorce).

Welles was such a wonder that biographers have always been drawn to him. There are books on Orson by Peter Noble, Frank Brady, Barbara Leaming, Charles Higham, Joseph McBride, Jonathan Rosenbaum and myself – to say nothing of a book-length interview by Peter Bogdanovich and (so far) the two volumes by Simon Callow that promise to be the definitive work. There are also many studies, some of which overlap with the life if only because of the conjuring way Welles addressed himself as subject. It is a beginner's duty to see Charles Foster Kane as a version of William Randolph Hearst (or other modern power-brokers); it is more interesting to place him as a warning version of George Orson Welles.

But it's not just a matter of biography and critical writing. Orson Welles has become a character. Richard Linklater's new film, Me and Orson Welles, is a fiction about a young actor who meets Welles (played by Christian McKay) and manages to be cast in the 1937 stage production of Caesar. It joins a group of pictures made since Welles's death: RKO 281 (1999), directed by Benjamin Ross, with Liev Schreiber as Welles caught up in the making of Citizen Kane; also in 1999, Tim Robbins cast Angus Macfadyen as Welles in the story of the Mercury theatre's troubled production of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock; and Ed Wood (1994) by Tim Burton has Vincent D'Onofrio in a cameo as Welles in what many connoisseurs reckon the best portrayal (other than those delivered by Orson himself).

It's notable that the Welles in these productions is young still, plump maybe but not obese, a hero to his acolytes. The Welles of 1936-42 worked 20 hours a day, ate double meals to keep going, pursued pretty young women like a demon and lived as if he had no tomorrow. He worked, all at once, in radio, on the stage and in preparation for his great film. He was a looming figure in American life: an offence to Hollywood in the way he achieved a carte blanche contract, and a boy wonder of such arrogance that it was said of him, "There but for the grace of God, goes God."

It's easy to see how this flamboyant figure has influenced would-be directors in America from Bogdanovich (who knew Welles well) and Spielberg to Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Soderbergh. But it's more than the flourish, the eloquence with which he let himself be interviewed, and the effortless seduction of the man himself. If ever our young directors feel fear, self-pity or failure in their lives – then surely they think of Welles again. For Welles is not just the boy wonder; he is Falstaff and Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil – gross hulks. At the root of Welles's fascination lies this question: how can anyone so creative be so self-destructive?

Though Orson Welles scrutinised himself intently, there's little evidence that he sought professional advice – even when his over-eating was sure to kill him. (He was only 70 when he died – yet in his early 20s Hollywood had welcomed him as a new Tyrone Power!) When it came to self-destruction's allure, he liked to tell the story of the scorpion and the frog – of how the scorpion begged a lift across a stream; how the frog did not trust the scorpion; of how the scorpion said, but if I sting you, froggie, you will die, and I will drown. And so they set out and the frog had gone halfway when he felt the pain of the stinger. Why? he cries out, why did you do it? Now we will all die. I know, says the scorpion, but it is my character.

You must not forget how, in the great celebration of American film by French critics in the 1950s, Welles was the outcast hero. Not just the maker of great films, but a scorpion, a genius waiting to be acclaimed. It was a romantic package and Orson was perfect casting. In Truffaut's celebration of movie-making, Day for Night, the director (played by Truffaut himself) has a recurring dream in which he is a little boy in the city at night. He comes to a movie theatre that is playing Citizen Kane. But it's locked and barred so the boy uses his stick to steal stills of the picture. That may be the most poetic tribute to the example Welles set in the world of cinema. For a generation, all over the world, he was the light and Citizen Kane was the film. A flop when it opened, in 1941, it was hardly known when Sight & Sound had its 1952 poll. But by 1962, it had taken over heaven, where it still rules.

Many of the people who revered Welles – and worshipped a system in which Kane might be made – overlooked his faults. People who knew Orson believed this above all: you never let him meet the money people. Why? He was his own worst enemy. You could say: now, Orson, just sit with them for a lunch, be patient, be polite, tell good stories, let them know the patrons of art and progress they would be if they gave you a little of their money. Just be humble. And Orson would say: of course, of course – I get it. Then lunch began and in 10 minutes he had been unruly, offensive, ugly. He turned on the moneybags and lashed them with envy and contempt. He blew it! Because he could not be humble. If you watch Citizen Kane closely, you can see the same trait and the same cocksure grin that goes with it.

Here is perhaps the largest point. Orson Welles was American. After he had amazed his country with his 1938 radio version of The War of the Worlds, he went to Hollywood. The film he made there – Citizen Kane – was a collection of all the new ways of making film, but it was a celebration of the old ways, too. It was brilliant, yet it could not resist lampooning Hearst (a jab that ruined its chance of success).

He may have died broke – his abiding condition – but he did not do it for the money. He did it for the sake of the medium and his artistic soul. That is a dangerous way to go, but it's a big reason why the young honour him. Hollywood has always fancied it could undermine and destroy the great talents that came its way by giving them money. So a kid (call him DW Griffith, call him the Coen brothers) starts out by saying: Gee, I'd just love to make a movie – as a matter of fact, I'd pay you if you gave me the chance. Oh no, says Hollywood, we couldn't do that. It's against the law and the union rules. Have $100,000. Have $1m. But then the film does well, and the kid gets "residuals". The money keeps coming until it's $5m and then $5bn. And by then, the kid has got a few houses or islands, and a lot of big projects, so he really needs $5m for his next contract. And that's when the system says, well, kid, if you need $5m you need us – so be humble, be grateful and put Julia Roberts in your picture.

Through lack of humility and other life- defying urges, Welles never went that way. He was an untamed outcast who got his money however he could – that's the big reason why "legal obstacles" prevent us from seeing The Other Side of the Wind. But don't make a fetish out of that. You can still see The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, F Is for Fake, The Trial, Macbeth, Othello, Chimes at Midnight, Mr Arkadin, The Lady from Shanghai and The Immortal Story, none of which is perfect. But if you've made a perfect film at 25 you grow up fast and you realise that there can be a liveliness in imperfection that draws you on more powerfully than magnificence. If Orson Welles had never made Citizen Kane, he would be a phenomenon. But he did and that leaves us all his children. His real children might tell you that it was a difficult and sad life to be caught with. Alas.

But remember this: Orson died alone in 1985 and you can read the reports as signs of sadness. On the contrary, I suspect he was exhilarated at the end. Real sadness is being worth $5bn and not knowing what to do with it.

The mark of ‘Kane’  Nigel Andrews from The Financial Times, April 29, 2011, also seen here from Slate:  Orson Welles' Citizen Kane: What makes it the best film ever made?

It storms after us down the corridors of history like its own hero. Bloated, grotesque, tremendous; destroying as it goes; influencing and renewing too. Every fresh decade calls it the best film ever made. Every new generation poses and tries to answer the question, “Why?”

Citizen Kane is 70. Three score years and 10 after its New York premiere in May 1941, it is still everywhere. Not just in its own flesh, as reissue, telecast or DVD, but in the monstrous spell it casts on filmmakers. Long after the critics-turned-directors of the French New Wave first made Orson Welles a demigod – remember the young hero of François Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups dreaming of stealing stills from a cinema showing Citizen Kane? – the figure of the haunted megalomaniac, presiding over the shards of his own life, is inescapable. From Michael Corleone in the Godfather films to Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, via Robert De Niro’s Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (the pugilist’s Citizen Kane), the examined life is worth living, irresistibly, for an audience nourished on themes of ambition, self-destruction and the war between private and public actions.

No less ubiquitous since Kane has been the screen drama told through conflicting memories, from Rashomon and Last Year in Marienbad to Memento and Magnolia. No less “modern” in style, especially since Robert Altman added fresh colours to Kane’s master sketch, is the crowded fresco of life enriched with overlappings of plot and dialogue. Kane got there first nearly every time. When it didn’t, its brilliance destroyed the memory of predecessors.

Orson Welles didn’t bother with the ABC of filmmaking. A precocious marvel, aged 25 when he made Kane, he went straight to the XYZ. X for Kane’s home, the mist-wreathed castle of Xanadu, a megalomaniac’s dream built atop a man-made mountain. Y standing for “Why?” – again the simplest, most important question. Why was Kane successful, why was he a failure? Why was he a triumph and a tragedy? Why is he, simultaneously and almost symbiotically, all of us and none of us?”

And Z? That has to be for Zaharoff. Many Kane lovers – me included – think that is how it all began. In 1936 Welles, a radio-producing prodigy in New York, helped to craft a March of Time obituary of the munitions tycoon Sir Basil Zaharoff. Dramatised vignettes opened with Zaharoff’s secretaries burning his papers in the giant fireplace of his castle. Later, witnesses are called to remember Zaharoff’s life. Later still the dying, castle-dwelling Zaharoff, played by Welles, is given his own voice and his own valedictory cameo. He announces a wish to be wheeled into the sun “by that rosebush”.

We know what the rosebush became. “Rosebud”. The most important uttered sound in Citizen Kane, the dying Kane’s last word, the secret to his sorrow. It is the name of his childhood sledge, ultimately thrown to the flames as oblivion sears the movie’s final scenes.

Author and one-time film critic Jorge Luis Borges, who loved Citizen Kane, thought the Rosebud motif its single major weakness. The film, he wrote, “has at least two plots. The first [is] of an almost banal imbecility ... At the moment of his death, [Kane] yearns for a single thing in the universe: a fittingly humble sled that he played with as a child!”

Welles himself dismissed Rosebud as a “dollar-book Freudian gag.” (For my disagreement with Welles and Borges, read on.) It was the single detail in Citizen Kane he freely attributed to screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, whom he fought for credit over almost every other part of the film. The problem of Kane’s true authorship – the authorship of its genius, not just its story – is the subject of critic Pauline Kael’s book Raising Kane, first published as an essay in The New Yorker in 1971. Her contention was that Mankiewicz, the fitfully brilliant, drink-prone brother to Joseph (who made All About Eve), was robbed – partly by Welles’s ego – of the right to call himself Kane’s creator. (In 1941 he was its only Oscar winner, though the screenplay credit had to be shared with Welles after arbitration by the Writers Guild.)

In 1972, the critic and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich wrote The Kane Mutiny, attacking Kael and re-championing Welles. I think Bogdanovich is right. It isn’t the concept, it isn’t the dialogue, it isn’t even the characterisation that makes the movie a masterpiece. It is the vision.

What do we mean by that? Let’s go back to Borges. What was the second of the “two plots” he finds in the film? It is, he says, far superior to the Rosebud plot. It is “the investigation of a man’s secret soul by means of the works he has made, the words he has spoken, the many destinies he has destroyed ... The film teems with forms of multiplicity, of incongruity ... the detested Charles Foster Kane is a simulacrum, a chaos of appearances ... In one of Chesterton’s stories” – Borges’s beloved GK Chesterton – “the hero observes that nothing is so frightening as a labyrinth without a centre. This film is precisely that labyrinth.”

You can script a labyrinth. Mankiewicz helped to do so. But a writer’s pen cannot carve and build it, give it size and echo. The labyrinth in Kane, the tomb of life, the palace of death, is a pure delirium of cinema, the creation of the man behind the camera. Its mirrored infinity is crafted by a director who loved reflections (the fairground hall-of-mirrors shootout at the climax to The Lady from Shanghai), its shadowed enormities by a man who loved shadows (Touch of Evil). Supremely Wellesian is the film’s obsessive “showdowning” – sometimes you have to invent a word when one isn’t available – between the theatrical and the cinematographic.

No one has come near this filmmaker in understanding this tension. Citizen Kane is all “about” the quest to pierce through proscenium enactment to reportorial truth; and to wonder, in the process, if even reportorial truth is the last level of reality. The Kane sets and ambience are monstrously theatrical yet we keep going through them, behind them, above them. The sign over Susan Alexander’s nightclub is – in an “impossible” shot achieved with flyaway scenery – travelled through by the camera. It’s a world of greasepaint and artifice, challenging us to find concealed truths. Welles’s own portrayal becomes more theatrical by the reel. To play the older Charles Foster Kane he spent six hours each morning in the make-up chair: a grown-up playing charades. Yet ultimately the force of the movie, aided by the power of our curiosity, blows the sense of cosmetic make-believe apart.

Rosebud is part of the same action. What seems a fairy-tale simplification, a motif from the props department, opens up to become part of the movie’s resonance. Welles was an amateur magician later in life; his last feature, F For Fake, was all about conjuring and imposture. No wonder the facile-seeming key to Kane’s story – the name of his childhood sled – may be the actual key.

More literally, it is the bud that opens for moviegoers by being the bud that doesn’t open in the movie. On screen ”Rosebud” tells us Kane’s life was nipped in its growth by a too-early rendezvous with wealth and destiny. But in our experiencing of the film “Rosebud” communicates the opposite. The spell of the word grows and grows. Like so much in the movie it starts as a hint, and expands by a process of change, association, counterpoint and contradiction into the holistic and all-comprehending.

The part stands for the whole. The part becomes the whole. The pattern is there throughout, from the famous breakfast scene – 16 years of a marriage elided into a two-minute mealtime montage – to the way the idea of the “jigsaw” becomes revelatory and all-pervading. We look back from Susan Alexander Kane’s epic bemusement over a literal jigsaw in the final scenes to the whole jigsaw technique this montage-rich movie has deployed: from the early News on the March newsreel to the skittering ellipses of Kane’s tycoon career.

Reality in tension with artifice. Crystallisation in tension with expansion. The distilled in tension with the discursive. And, of course, fact in tension with fiction. Was Citizen Kane a portrait of the multimillionaire newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst? Of course it was. Hearst recognised it, banning any mention of the film in his publications. Louis B Mayer, on behalf of a Hollywood threatened with dire reprisal by Hearst, offered RKO Studios $805,000 to burn all prints and the negative.

At the same time, Citizen Kane wasn’t about Hearst at all and has outlived him as an iconic world memory. You could as justly argue, and probably should, that Kane is Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz. Heart of Darkness (later to inspire Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now) was the debut film on which Welles had started pre-production. Too expensive, it gave way to Kane. But the stories are virtually identical. An “explorer” (in Kane, an investigative reporter) voyages “up-river” (against tides of resistance) through a “jungle” (of conflicting and contradictory information) to find a man – or, in Kane, the secret of a man – who has lived as a wilful, ruthless, overlording tyrant.

Then again, Kane is Welles himself. Kane lovers and critics recognise the stormy, capricious boy wonder in front of the camera as the one behind it. The fully-grown genius who was simultaneously an overgrown baby. The cranky tyrant who was a lost, lovable, richly imaginative soul. The rosebud who was also rose ...

Citizen Kane - Film (Movie) Plot and Review ... - Film Reference  Leland Poague

 

Orson Welles at 100: Citizen Kane (1941)  Jake Hinkson from Criminal Element

 

The Film: Kane as the Opposite af a Philosophical Life   Dr. Jorn K. Bramann, also seen here:  "Citizen Kane" 

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | The mark of Kane  David Thomson from BFI Sight and Sound, January 2011

 

not coming to a theater near you  Leo Goldsmith

 

All the Citizen's Men: Kane as Welles; also America - Bright Lights Film ...  Robert Castle from Bright Lights Film Journal, July 31, 2004

 

Raging Bull Movie Reviews  Vanes Naldi and Mike Lorefice

 

Film Court  Lawrence Russell, June 17, 1999

 

Big House Film  Roger Westcombe

 

Edward Copeland on Film  John Cochrane, 70th anniversary

 

The Greatest Films  Tim Dirks

 

Citizen Kane - Turner Classic Movies  Roger Fristoe

 

Citizen Kane (1941) - Notes  Turner Classic Movies

 

Citizen Kane (1941) - Articles  various essays, Turner Classic Movies

 

Citizen Kane Read TCM's Home Video Review on this film  Lang Thompson 

 

CITIZEN KANE 1941: "Rosebud" - TCM CLASSIC FILM UNION Blog ...  Rupert Alistair

 

Citizen Kane at the American Film Institute Catalog

 

CineScene.com Chris Dashiell

 

not coming to a theater near you  Matt Bailey

 

Pajiba  Dustin Rowles

 

rec.arts.movies.reviews  Ted Prigge

 

ReelViews  James Berardinelli

 

Decent Films Guide  Steven D. Greydanus, one of the 15 films listed in the category "Art" on the Vatican film list

 

not coming to a theater near you  Rumsey Taylor

 

Ain't It Cool Movie Reviews  Harry Knowles

 

rec.arts.movies.reviews Long Che Chan, Andrew Chan

 

Edward Copeland on Film

 

eFilmCritic.com  Slyder

 

Movie Reviews UK  Damian Cannon

 

Daily Film Dose  Alan Bacchus

 

Jigsaw Lounge  Neil Young

 

DVD Town  John J. Puccio, Special Edition

 

Future Movies  Ed Colley, Special Edition

 

DVD Review e-zine  Ed Peters, Special Edition

 

Talking Pictures (UK) Nigel Watson, Special Edition

 

DVD Review  D.K. Holm, 60th Anniversary Edition

 

The Digital Bits  Adam Jahnke, 60th Anniversary Edition

 

Home Theater Info  Doug MacLean, 60th Anniversary Edition

 

DVD MovieGuide  Colin Jacobson, 60th Anniversary Edition

 

Buy the Citizen Kane Blu-ray  Fred Kaplan from Slate, September 13, 2011

 

DVD Savant  Glenn Erickson, Blu-Ray, 70th Anniversary

 

DVD Verdict  Barrie Maxwell, Blu-Ray, Ultimate Collector’s Edition

 

Slant Magazine  Chris Cabin, Blu-Ray

 

DVD Talk  Christopher McQuain, Blu-Ray

 

KQEK  Mark R. Hasan, Blu-Ray

 

DVD Town  John J. Puccio, Blu-Ray

 

Combustible Celluloid  Jeffrey M. Anderson, Blu-Ray, 70th Anniversary

 

Edinburgh U Film Society Chris Hansell, and a selection of reviews

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews  Dennis Schwartz

 

Citizen Kane | review  James Brundage

 

Eye for Film James Benefield

 

Movie Gurus  John Ulmer

 

rec.arts.movies.reviews  Chad Polenz

 

Chicago NewCityNet  Ray Pride

 

Matt's Movie Reviews  Matthew Pejkovic

 

Boxoffice Magazine

 

Classic Film Guide

 

He's raising Kane  Gaby Wood interviews Ridley Scott about Citizen Kane from The Observer, December 19, 1999

 

Entertainment Weekly  Owen Gleiberman

 

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide

 

Variety  Todd McCarthy

 

Variety  John C. Flinn Sr.

 

BBC Films Almar Haflidason

Citizen Kane voted best film of all time  Gerard Seenan from The Guardian, August 9, 2002

Welles scion sues for Kane rights  The Guardian, February 4, 2003

Citizen Kane tops nostalgic list of America's top 100 films  Dan Glaister from The Guardian, June 22, 2007

Citizen Kane Oscar to go under the hammer  Rosalind Ryan from The Guardian, October 17, 2007

Oscar won by Orson Welles for all-time favourite Citizen Kane fails to sell at auction  Dan Glaister from The Guardian, December 12, 2007

Citizen Kane: No 5 best arthouse film of all time   David Thomson from The Guardian, October 20, 2010

The Independent Robert Hanks

Philadelphia City Paper  Cindy Fuchs

San Francisco Examiner  Bob Stephens)

Chicago Sun-Times  Roger Ebert, May 24, 1998

The New York Times  Bosley Crowther

The New York Times  A.O. Scott

DVDBeaver

Citizen Kane - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Citizen Kane – Official site from Warner Bros.

 

The Unofficial Citizen Kane Page

 

Scene-by-scene analysis at Movie Movie

 

Citizen Kane and Bernard Herrmann's film score

 

Citizen Kane  from TV Tropes

 

Time Magazine Top 100

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Top Ten Poll 2002

 

BFI Sight and Sound Top Ten Poll 2002 by Sight & Sound Placement

 

THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS       A                     100

USA  (88 mi)  1942

 

The Magnificent Ambersons  Geoff Andrew from Time Out London, also seen here:  Time Out

Hacked about by a confused RKO, Welles' second film (from the novel by Booth Tarkington) still looks a masterpiece, astounding for its almost magical re-creation of a gentler age when cars were still a nightmare of the future and the Ambersons felt safe in their mansion on the edge of town. Right from the wryly comic opening, detailing changes in fashions and the family's exalted status, Welles takes an ambivalent view of the way the quality of life would change under the impact of a new industrial age, stressing the strength of community as evidenced in the old order while admitting to its rampant snobbery and petty sense of manners. With immaculate period reconstruction, and virtuoso acting shot in long, elegant takes, it remains the director's most moving film, despite the artificiality of the sentimental tacked-on ending.

The Magnificent Ambersons | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum, also seen here:  Jonathan Rosenbaum

Orson Welles’s second feature (1942, 88 min.) is in many ways his most personal and most impressive, but of his Hollywood films it’s also the one most damaged by insensitive reediting (like the sublime and personal Don Quixote is among his independent features); in his absence RKO cut the movie by almost 45 minutes and tacked on a few lamentable new scenes (including the last one). For the most part, this is a very close adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s underrated novel about the relentless decline of a wealthy midwestern family through the rise of industrialization, though Welles makes the story even more powerful through his extraordinary mise en scene and some of the finest acting to be found in American movies (Agnes Moorehead is a standout). The emotional sense of America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is so palpable you can taste it. With Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Ray Collins, and Richard Bennett.

Pauline Kael in 5001 Nights

Orson Welles' second film has greater depth than CITIZEN KANE, though it doesn't have the driving force that might have held it together. Working from the Booth Tarkington novel, Welles achieved some great sequences of family life-intense, harrowing squabbles. Tim Holt plays the arrogant mother-fixated son who falls from the American aristocracy to the working class; Dolores Costello, the fragile blond beauty of the silent era, is his soft, yielding mother; and as the nervous, bitter hysterical-spinster aunt, Agnes Moorehead is uncannily powerful, in a hyper-realistic way. (It's a classic performance.) With the amazing old Richard Bennett as the family patriarch, Joseph Cotten, Anne Baxter, and Ray Collins. The film wasn't completed in the form that Welles originally intended, and there are pictorial effects that seem scaled for a much fuller work, but even in this truncated form it's amazing and memorable. Cinematography by Stanley Cortez; editing by Robert Wise. RKO.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - Cine-File.info  Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

You could recut Orson Welles, but you couldn't cut him out. He was like Shakespeare, whose words can be rearranged, taken out of context, or translated into different languages but remain beautiful. There are directors who edit brilliantly but whose films lose meaning if they are cut by someone else. The reason we consider Welles one of the greatest directors is because the genius of his filmmaking lies on a level more basic than the finished film. A single sound recorded by Welles, a single bit of framing overseen by him, is powerful on its own. Which is the reason, perhaps, why his second feature, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS seems greater than his first, CITIZEN KANE; KANE is entirely Welles' film, with very little outside meddling, while AMBERSONS was truncated and rearranged without his input. Diluted, it's still astounding—a movie that is great even as a series production stills, plot synopses, or as a reference. It's the reason we have the word "masterpiece." A heartbreaking expression of the way our memories make the past seem like it was inevitable, AMBERSONS catalogues the decline of a wealthy family through the turn of the 20th century. Every piece—the dense images, Welles' narration—is potent enough to kill you.

Richard Brody  The New Yorker

I’ve long been kvetching in this space about the unavailability of one of the masterworks of the nineteen-forties and, simply, of the cinema itself—Orson Welles’s “The Magnificent Ambersons.” It’s not on DVD but you can have it at 10 P.M. Eastern time tomorrow DIY by means of DVR thanks to TCM (which, parenthetically, is sponsoring a film festival in Los Angeles this weekend—its list of screenings is, er, vertiginous). Welles’s film, from 1942—which followed closely on the heels of “Citizen Kane”—is one of Hollywood’s most infamously mutilated films, having been sliced down by more than a third by the studio, RKO, after an unsatisfactory test screening. Even so, what remains is great enough: another “Kane”-style epic, this one tracks a family’s fortunes as it invokes vast historical changes, and, with its narration by Welles himself and the story’s focus on a pair of male protagonists—the vigorous engineer (Joseph Cotten) who was, in effect, the virtual father of his century, and the arrogant young heir (Tim Holt) who breaks his widowed mother’s romance with the visionary—the director splits his identity into bourgeois genius, decadent aristocrat, and artistic consciousness. It’s even more Joycean than “Kane,” and even more heartbreaking.

The Magnificent Ambersons  Mike D’Angelo from Time Out New York

After searching for more than a decade, film scholar Ray Carney recently discovered the first version of John Cassavetes's debut feature, Shadows, which had been thought irrevocably lost. It's hard not to wonder how this remarkable find will reverberate through the community of Orson Welles fans, for whom the original, untampered cut of The Magnificent Ambersons has long represented the Holy Grail. Even in truncated form, with Welles's bravura tracking shots cut to ribbons and his vision compromised by a tacked-on happy ending, Ambersons is clearly a masterpiece, alternately piercing and haunting; should its full magnificence ever be revealed, Citizen Kane's longtime standing as The Greatest Movie Ever Made™ may wind up in jeopardy.

Adapted from Booth Tarkington's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel (the once-lofty reputation of which has been eclipsed by the movie), Ambersons, which takes place between 1893 and 1912, is a marvelous curiosity: a thoroughly modern exercise in nostalgia. Welles's dryly mournful narration introduces us to the titular family—epitomized by arrogant scion George Amberson Minafer (Holt)—which clings to tradition in the face of the Industrial Revolution and sees its fortunes decline as a result. Difficult though it is to empathize with George, whose disdain for the "vulgar" automobile now seems preposterous, it's also hard not to feel some measure of sorrow at the passing of an era predicated on a degree of courtesy and elegance most people alive today have never known. At the same time, Welles's stunning deep-focus photography makes us profoundly grateful for technological innovation. Torn, we can only stare in awe and wonder.

Wednesday Editor's Pick: The Magnificient Ambersons (1946)  Alt Blog, October 19, 2011, which includes Stephen Farber from Film Comment, Summer 1971

Though Welles never appears in The Magnificent Ambersons, his presence as narrator is crucial to the conception of the film. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS contains the most beautiful, pertinent use of narration I have seen in movies. The narration is not used simply to provide information; it adds to the sensuous atmosphere of the film. The language itself, eloquently spoken by Welles, has a rich, lyrical quality that seems to belong to the aristocratic past; its literary cadences are part of the vanished courtly style that the film mourns. But in an even more important sense, the narration calls attention to the nostalgia that is the film’s subject as well as its dominant mood. We are constantly aware of a voice reflecting on the past, wistfully Invoking its mysteries. From the very start the hushed but intense tone of Welles’ narration suggests the recreation of a child’s fairy tale. The storyteller, the dreamer who calls up the past for us, haunted by the world he brings to life, becomes a character we want to evaluate along with the others. We want to test his voluptuous nostalgia against what we see, and within the film nostalgia is criticized rather than celebrated. For the characters who cannot break the spell of the past- George and Isabel and Aunt Fanny- are doomed, while Eugene Morgan, who comes from a background similar to theirs, has found a way of accommodating himself to the future. He seems freer, healthier, more mature than any of the Ambersons, and he will survive. 

It’s too simple, then, to say that The Magnificent Ambersons is no more than a film of nostalgic reverie, but there is no denying the melancholy intensity with which the film dwells on the Ambersons’ decline. Some of the Gothic scenes of decadence and old age in Kane have a self-conscious, theatrical quality that seems slightly adolescent. But I don’t think that is any longer true in The Magnificent Ambersons. The scenes of Isabel’s death, Major Amberson’s death, the parting of George and Uncle Jack in the railway station, Aunt Fanny going hysterical in the empty old house, George’s last walk home are unusually sharp, poignant moments. One cannot account for the film’s distinctive qualities by saying that Welles was simply being faithful to his source, what is inescapable in watching the film is the graceful, persuasive feeling he has for the material. This film contains some of the strongest, most haunting and desolate images in all of Welles’ work.  

But how does one explain this obsession with ruin and decay in a man of 26, who seemed to the world to be the most youthful and vigorous of artists, the “boy genius”? The scenes of death in The Magnificent Ambersons seem to transfix the young Welles. Is this the famous “self-destructiveness” of the Welles legend, evidence of a morbid, irresistible attraction to decadence? I don’t know the answer to that question, and clearly the sources of any artist’s work are extraordinarily complex. I can only describe what is on the screen: that, among great films, The Magnificent Ambersons is the one you remember for the sad, lush, seductive poetry of death.

The Magnificent Ambersons - Film (Movie) Plot and Review ...  Ronald Bowers from Film Reference

The Magnificent Ambersons has been called Orson Welles's near-masterpiece, second to Citizen Kane . That qualified description derives more from the fact that the film was "butchered" by RKO, rather than from any intrinsic shortcoming on the part of its director.

Following the financial disaster of Kane , RKO executives compelled Welles to choose as his next film a subject with commercial appeal. Welles wanted to film The Pickwick Papers with W. C. Fields but Field's schedule would not permit it. As Booth Tarkington was a favorite novelist of Welles, he selected instead the author's 1919 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the decline and fall of an aristocratic family brought on by the encroaching industrial revolution at the turn of the century. Welles had already presented a radio version of the novel in 1939 starring himself and Walter Huston.

Welles wrote the script in nine days, deleting much of Tarkington's sentimentality, and with a Proustian remembrance of a life of gentility now past, concentrated on the psychological darkness which destroyed the Amberson clan. His was a literary rendering of what was essentially a second-rate novel, a lament, he says, "not so much for an epoch as for the sense of moral values which are destroyed." The film centers on the ill-fated love between the gentlemanly horseless carriage manufacturer Eugene Morgan and the exquisitely beautiful Amberson matriarch, Isabel; the reaction of her spoiled son George Minafer, whose "come-uppance" eventually transpires; and the fate of neurotic spinster aunt Fanny Minafer.

Welles's completed version ran 148 minutes which he reduced to 131. RKO then sent him to Brazil to direct the aborted It's All True and proceeded to edit the film to 88 minutes, including the insertion of the hospital scene at the end. This scene had not been written by Welles and was directed by Freddie Flick and scored by Roy Webb, instead of Bernard Herrmann whose haunting score is so essential a part of the film. This truncated version, says Welles, destroyed "the whole heart of the picture really."

Nevertheless what remains is a luxuriant motion picture combining Welles's unique directorial flair with what Jean Cocteau called "calm beauty." The beginning of the film provides a picture of a bygone era with its good humor and homey virtues, after which Welles slowly and deliberately unmasks the Ambersons' imperfections. The dramatic use of light and shadow in Stanley Cortez's deep-focus photography accentuates and enhances the characters' conflicts. Welles employed a nostalgic irising in and out to begin and end scenes, and he edited the film in the camera—scene by scene, vignette by vignette—rather than relying on the cutting room after the fact. He spoke the voice-over narration himself, a skill honed through his vast experience with radio, a narration he likened to the titles in silent films. He also incorporated overlapping dialogue and street noises as part of the sound track and used groupings of the townspeople in the film as a Greek chorus, whose chattering, gossipy observations of the vicissitudes of the Amberson-Morgans provided succinct commentary and embellished the storyline.

Paramount to the success of Ambersons is the excellent acting. Welles worked meticulously with his cast. Using his script as a guide, he discussed their characters with the actors, rehearsed them at length and then shot the scenes, often allowing them to improve the actual dialogue based on their understanding of their parts. The cast constituted a first-rate ensemble with Joseph Cotten a standout as the gentle, suave Eugene, though the acting honors unequivocally belong to Agnes Moorehead. Her virtuoso performance is one of the finest on the American screen and earned her the New York Film Critics Award.

Reviews of Ambersons were less than enthusiastic. Many seemed to expect a depiction of the typical family wrapped in sugar-spun Americana, rather than the in-depth analysis which revealed warts and all. The New York Times opined that Welles had wasted his abundant talents on "a relentlessly somber drama on a barren theme." The picture was not the commercial success that RKO had hoped for and it was well over a decade before the film was received and appreciated for the master stroke it is.

The Magnificent Ambersons • Senses of Cinema  Tamara Tracz from Senses of Cinema, February 7, 2006

 

Moments of Choice  V F Perkins from Rouge, 1981                 

 

The Magnificent Ambersons | Parallax View  Richard T. Jameson from Parallax View, May 1, 2011, also seen here:  Richard T. Jameson

 

an essay located here  program essay written for "The Cinema of Orson Welles," the Autumn 1971 film series of the University of Washington Office of Lectures & Concerts, October 5, 1971

 

J. Hoberman  Magnificent Frustrations from The Village Voice, February 10, 2004, also seen here:  Village Voice

 

Wednesday Editor's Pick: The Magnificient Ambersons (1946)  Alt Blog, October 19, 2011

 

Magnificent Obsession | Hollywood | Vanity Fair  David Camp from Vanity Fair, January 2002

 

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)  Tim Dirks, also seen here:  The Greatest Films

 

The Magnificent Ambersons - Turner Classic Movies  Lang Thompson

 

Read TCM's article on The Magnificent Ambersons  a collective of articles from Turner Classic Movies

 

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) - Notes - TCM.com

 

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) - Alternate Versions - TCM.com

 

Raging Bull Movie Reviews James Cobo

 

The Magnificent Ambersons: What's Past is Prologue - scanners  Jim Emerson, October 26, 2011

 

The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles - a site for information ...

 

KQEK  Mark R. Hasan

 

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)  Damian Cannon, also seen here:  Movie Reviews UK  

 

Review: The Magnificent Ambersons  James Berardinelli, also seen here:  ReelViews

 

CineScene.com  Chris Dashiell

 

Critics at Large (Kevin Courrier)   DVD review from Critics at Large

 

DVD Town  John J. Puccio

 

DVD Talk  Holly E. Ordway

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews  Dennis Schwartz

 

Combustible Celluloid  Jeffrey M. Anderson

 

Classic Film Guide

 

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide

 

Variety

 

Orson Welles' Ambersons set for remake  The Guardian, July 7, 2000

 

The Magnificent Ambersons  Philip French from The Observer, May 27, 2006

 

Dave Kehr  The Chicago Tribune, February 22, 1987

 

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) :: rogerebert.com :: Critical ...  various critical reviews of the film

 

The New York Times

 

DVDBeaver

 

The Magnificent Ambersons (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The Magnificent Ambersons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Book Review: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington  Melissa, from Confessions of an Avid Reader

 

THE STRANGER

USA  (95 mi)  1946

 

Slant Magazine [Fernando F. Croce]

The Stranger is the comeuppance Hollywood felt Orson Welles deserved for being such an arrogant genius. Marking his return to directing since the studio-imposed evisceration of The Magnificent Ambersons four years earlier, the film seems designed as an act of humbled integration, described by Welles as having been made "to prove that I could put out a movie as well as anybody else." It is also, according to the director, his own "worst" movie, a notion dutifully held by most critics since. The plot, about the hunt for a Nazi war criminal (Franz Kindler, played by Welles himself) hiding out in a quiet New England town, has on the surface more to do with fallout from WWII and the paranoia fermenting the noir genre than with the director's personal themes of truth, art, and mania. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals the film to be as distinctively Wellesian as Citizen Kane, and packing nearly as many technical wonders. The extremely long take through the woods during which Kindler meets and strangles an old colleague who has unknowingly served as bloodhound to the authorities (personified by Edward G. Robinson's shrewd, pipe-smoking investigator) lies in direct contrast with the finale manic montage where the town's ancient tower clock comes back to life; as usual, Welles's stylistic bravura is directed less at reconciling the medium's contradictory extremes than in exploring them. But daring in The Stranger goes beyond pizzazz: Its evocation of quaint Americana is more excoriating than idealized, half Capra parody (complete, literally, with a Mr. Potter of its own in canny town clerk Billy House) and half critique of Pollyannaish complacency in the face of such new horrors as concentration camps (it's no accident that, as the fugitive's unbelieving wife, Loretta Young is forever drawing curtains). The ultimate irony may be that, though the movie proved that Welles could handle a more conventional narrative (and even show a modest profit), the Hollywood system had no interest in housing the maverick-auteur. He must have sensed it: There's renegade poetry in the director staging his stab at a mainstream career as a tale of malignant infiltration, and then proceeding to dynamite it altogether with The Lady from Shanghai.

Only the Cinema [Ed Howard]

The Stranger is an unusual and somewhat awkwardly realized noirish thriller that was the third proper directorial feature of Orson Welles. It's a post-war suspense film about an escaped Nazi who disguises himself as an ordinary high school teacher in a small town in Connecticut. An officer for the war crimes commission, Wilson (Edward G. Robinson), is tasked with tracking down the elusive Franz Kindler (Welles), a mastermind of the concentration camps who, in the aftermath of World War II, has erased all trace of his identity and settled into suburban conformity. He's even marrying local girl Mary (Loretta Young), a naïve beauty whose father is a well-respected judge. Wilson arranges for the release of a lower-level Nazi prisoner, Meinike (Konstantin Shayne), in the hopes that the underling will lead them to the otherwise vanished Kindler. In the film's briskly paced but evocative opening — which Welles had wanted to be much longer, but the footage got cut by the studio — Wilson's detectives track Meinike through a South American port, where deep shadows are populated by silhouetted figures smoking on balconies, and mysterious women weave through back alleys passing messages between the men who hide in the shadows. This exotic opening sequence is a bit of clever misdirection, though, because at the end of it, Meinike finally gets in touch with the contact he'd been seeking, and finds out that Kindler is not hiding in some grimy, out of the way South American town, as so many Nazis did after the war, but is in fact in the quiet, normal little town of Harper, a place as quintessentially American as any place can be.

Welles immediately cuts from South American intrigue to North American small town life, creating a jarring disjunction in mood and style between the expressionist shadows of the opening and the brightly lit streets of Harper, a place that seems to have nothing to hide, no shadowy errands being conducted within its pleasant borders. As Mary says, cheerfully getting ready to walk home alone one night, "in Harper there's nothing to be afraid of." That's a big part of the film's essence, the infiltration of American suburban safety and security by the sinister evil of Nazism. Kindler's presence in this cheery, sunny little town is an affront to the idea that there's nothing to fear on America's pleasant home town streets.

As compelling as this theme is, the script is often clumsy in conveying it, and as with a lot of Welles' post-Kane studio-compromised works, the film has a lot of rough edges. Mary is the biggest problem, and Young is not given much to do with her performance. She remains loyal to her husband even as she starts learning troubling details about this man she loves, and starts seeing indications of the violence he's capable of. She reacts to each new revelation with renewed dedication to him, so her part basically consists of weepy declarations of love and devotion, until later in the film she begins breaking apart, shrieking and fainting constantly. At one point, after learning that the man she knew as Charles Rankin is actually the Nazi Franz Kindler, she runs through the nighttime streets, tearfully insisting, "he's good, he's good," locked into denial. It's an unfortunately one-note role that limits the woman in the story to either blind devotion or hysteria.

Welles and Robinson have much meatier parts, and the film focuses on the tense battle of wills between these two titanic actors. Though the script sometimes tends towards moral speechifying, their performances are strong enough to overcome the blunt nature of the words they're delivering. The real pleasure, though, comes from a few of the quirky bit parts. Meinike, the Nazi underling who kicks off the whole plot, is a fascinating figure, a sinister-looking creep who has, apparently, found religion while awaiting trial for his war crimes. He's tracking down his old boss hoping to convert him, it turns out, and the scene where he drops to his knees in the woods with Kindler and prays is oddly striking. Welles also gets some folksy humor out of Mr. Potter (Billy House), the rotund general store owner who puts on a visor to denote his seriousness every time he plays a game of checkers with his customers.

The film's most memorable scenes are the ones in which Welles and cinematographer Russell Metty allow an expressionist, shadowy noir style to infiltrate the mundane town of Harper. Hoping to shake Mary out of her delusions about Kindler, Wilson shows her footage of the concentration camps on a projector, and Welles includes real images from the camps — the first time this was done in an American film. Welles only shows selected shots from the camps, mostly keeping the cameras trained on the faces of Mary and Wilson, the flickering light from the projector flashing on their faces. The emphasis is on their reactions, the haunted look in Mary's eyes as she sees the horrifying piles of bodies and the evidence of the gas chambers. At one point, Wilson stands in front of the screen, casting his silhouette over the images, and then Welles cuts in for a closeup in which the images are eerily laid across his face. At a pivotal moment at the end of the scene, the tape stops with a loud clicking noise, startling Mary out of her awed reverie — and likely the film's audience with her.

Welles also makes inventive use of the town clock tower, which is an important locale because Kindler has a hobby — Wilson describes it as a "mania," because even the hobbies of Nazis must be creepy — of fixing antique clocks. Once Kindler repairs the long-malfunctioning clock, the deep, chiming bells that go off every once in a while sound a foreboding note, an aural signature, a reminder of the Nazi mastermind's presence in the town. The clock tower is also the site of the brilliant, chaotic climax, in which Wilson and Mary confront Kindler inside the tower, leading to an unforgettably prolonged death scene for the Nazi mastermind, who gets impaled on the sword of an angelic figure who makes the rounds of the clockwork mechanism, chasing a gargoyle-like devil. The symbolism and the irony are obvious, but the result is still affecting and haunting. The same can be said for the film as a whole, which is clunky and uneven but still deeply fascinating and, as usual with Welles, inventively staged.

The Stranger | Senses of Cinema  J.D. Lafrance, December 2003

 

Orson Welles at 100: The Stranger (1946)  Jake Hinkson from Criminal Element

 

Film Noir of the Week  Steve-O

 

Cine Outsider [Camus]

 

Electric Sheep Magazine  Paul Huckerby

 

DVD Verdict  Barrie Maxwell

 

DVD Verdict [James A. Stewart]

 

Slant Magazine Blu-ray [Chris Cabin]

 

DVD Verdict (Blu-ray) [Clark Douglas]

 

Film Intuition: Blu-ray [Jen Johans]

 

Rock! Shock! Pop! [Ian Jane]  Blu-Ray

 

High-Def Digest [M. Enois Duarte]  Blu-Ray

 

DoBlu.com (Blu-ray) [Matt Paprocki]

 

Blu-Ray.com [Jeffrey Kauffman]

 

George Chabot's Review

 

Jerry Saravia

 

A Film Canon [Billy Stevenson]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

FilmsNoir.Net [Tony D'Ambra]

 

Brilliant Observations on 2122 Films [Clayton Trapp]

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Spiros Gangas]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Classic Film Guide

 

New York Times [Bosley Crowther] (registration req'd)

 

DVDBeaver - Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI                             A                     100

USA  (87 mi)  1947

 

I will never grow tired of hearing Orson Welles narrate this film in his most spectacular Irish brogue, featuring all the Welles staples of bold, inventive camera angles, terrific shot locations, original sensuous music, wonderful acting, just superb storytelling, and the glamorous Rita Hayworth in a deliciously sexy and murky story of murder and intrigue and love gone wrong that ends with the memorable Fun House Mirrors scene, perhaps not the best in the Welles repertoire, but always my personal favorite, one that I could watch again and again.

 

Thrillingly weird, virtually unfathomable plot, perhaps Welles’s happiest movie as he seems to be having such a good time, filmed during the break-up of his marriage, however, to Rita Hayworth, who is a stunning ice princess here, who “knows nothing about wickedness,” then proceeds to write the book on the subject, appearing frustrated by her overbearing husband Everett Sloane, the world’s best defense attorney who gets to cross examine himself on the witness stand.  Welles narrates in a thick, Irish brogue, a sailor along for the ride who gets caught up in a little “target practice” at the urging of Sloane’s supremely strange partner, Glenn Anders, who meanders in and out of suicidal and homicidal fantasies, leading to the final, classic film shoot-out at the amusement park and the hall of mirrors – dazzling fun, an extremely cynical film noir comedy that moves between innocent farce and a disturbing world in decay.

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Ben Sachs

Orson Welles famously adapted this noir story on the fly to satisfy contractual obligations. And yet THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI is as inventive as any of Welles' "proper" masterpieces, creating an Expressionist phantasmagoria out of the story's bizarre characters and situations. (One highlight: Welles regular Everett Sloane playing a lawyer, whose crutches give him a machine-like walk, having to interrogate himself in court.) It's also just as personal. If Welles' great theme is, according to Chris Marker, how close we can get to evil, then THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI is no deviation. As Welles' dumb Scotsman finds himself knee-deep in conspiracy, he rationalizes his participation out of love for the alluring woman of the title, played by Rita Hayworth, whom he would soon divorce.

Time Out

Don't attempt to follow the plot - studio boss Harry Cohn offered a reward to anyone who could explain it to him, and many critics have foundered on it - because Welles simply doesn't care enough to make the narrative seamless. Indeed, the principal pleasure of The Lady from Shanghai is its tongue-in-cheek approach to story-telling. Welles is an Irish sailor who accompanies a beautiful woman (Hayworth, then Mrs Welles) and her husband on a sea cruise, and becomes a pawn in a game of murder. One intriguing reading of the movie is that it's a commentary on Welles' marriage to Hayworth - the impossibility of the 'boy genius' maintaining a relationship with a mature woman - and the scene in the hall of mirrors, where the temptress' face is endlessly reflected back at him, stands as a brilliant expressionist metaphor for sexual unease and its accompanying loss of identity. Complex, courageous, and utterly compelling.

Pacific Cinematheque (link lost)

 

Bizarre, exotic noir -- and first-rate Orson Welles. Rita Hayworth (the then-Mrs. Welles) creates one of noir's definitive spider ladies as Elsa Bannister, beautiful wife of a disabled lawyer (Everett Sloane); she persuades an Irish adventurer and sailor named Michael O'Hara (played by the director) to join the crew of her husband's yacht -- and promptly lures him into a complex web of intrigue, betrayal, and murder. The convoluted plot reaches its climax in the dazzling Hall of Mirrors shoot-out, one of the most celebrated sequences in the Welles canon. "Cinematically the film is one of Welles' finest achievements" (David Cook), and it is generally ranked as one of his major masterpieces; its financial failure, however, effectively ended the director's career in Hollywood, where he would not work again for another decade. "The Lady From Shanghai is a morality play without preachment; it can be taken as a bizarre adventure yarn, a bravura thriller, a profound drama of decay, or all three . . . Behind the magical showmanship is the voice of a poet decrying the sin and corruption of a confused world" (Peter Bogdanovich).

 

The Lady From Shanghai - TCM.com  James Steffen

 

Irish sailor Michael O'Hara saves a beautiful woman from a robbery in Central Park; she turns out to be Elsa Bannister, wife of the famed defense lawyer Arthur Bannister. Bannister offers Michael a job on his yacht, which is sailing from New York to San Francisco. During the voyage Michael finds himself attracted to Elsa; at the same time, he becomes enmeshed in a Byzantine web of intrigue between Elsa, Arthur, and Arthur's partner Grisby. During a stop in Acapulco, Grisby asks Michael to pretend to murder him once they reach San Francisco so that he can collect his share of the insurance and run away to create a new life for himself. Michael agrees, only to discover that he has been framed for a real murder; the only way out now is to allow none other than Arthur Bannister himself to defend his case in court.

According to Orson Welles, the idea for The Lady from Shanghai (1948) came purely by accident: "I was working on Around the World in 80 Days [a stage musical of the Jules Verne novel, produced by Michael Todd] and we found ourselves in Boston on the day of the premiere, unable to get the costumes from the station because $50,000 was due and our producer, Mr. Todd, had gone broke. Without that money we couldn't open. I called Harry Cohn [head of Columbia Studios] in Hollywood and I said, 'I have a great story for you if you could send me $50,000 by telegram in one hour. I'll sign a contract to make it.' 'What story?' Cohn said. I was calling from a pay phone, and next to it was a display of paperbacks and I gave him the title of one of them, Lady from Shanghai. I said, 'Buy the novel and I'll make the film.' An hour later, we got the money."

The novel from which the film was adapted was in fact entitled If I Die Before I Wake; in addition to that title, other working titles for the film included Black Irish and Take This Woman. William Castle, who later found fame as the producer/director of gimmicky horror films such as House on Haunted Hill (1958), The Tingler (1959) and Thirteen Ghosts (1960), already owned the rights to the book. He consequently acted as an associate producer and may have contributed to the script.

According to Welles, he originally intended to cast the actress Barbara Laage, an unknown, in the role of Elsa Bannister. However, Cohn suggested Rita Hayworth instead. Hayworth's legendary long red hair was cut short and dyed blonde for the film, much to the discomfort of Harry Cohn and the executives at Columbia Studies, who were banking on the appeal of Hayworth's star image, which had been carefully built up in films such as Gilda (1946). The film was shot on location in New York, San Francisco and Acapulco; the yacht used in the film belonged to Errol Flynn. Welles, who was officially separated from Hayworth at the time, moved back in with her during the production. However, their reconciliation was only temporary; the two divorced before the film was finally released, after a year's delay, in May of 1948. In retrospect, the film has often been interpreted as a commentary on their doomed marriage.

For many years The Lady from Shanghai has had the reputation of being one of Welles' great failures. Welles spoke at length about the troubled production in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich included in the book This is Orson Welles (revised ed. 1998), essential reading for anyone interested in Welles and his work. "Friends avoided me," Welles said. "Whenever it was mentioned, people would clear their throats and change the subject very quickly out of consideration for my feelings. I only found out that it was considered a good picture when I got to Europe. The first nice thing I ever heard about it from an American was from Truman Capote. One night in Sicily, he quoted whole pages of dialogue word for word." Among the problems associated with the film were supposed production delays on Welles' part, the sort of thing for which he had already gained notoriety in Hollywood. In fact, as Peter Bogdanovich has pointed out, most of the delays were due to Rita Hayworth's illness. In addition, the assistant cameraman Donald Ray Cory died of heart failure during the Acapulco shoot. The chief cinematographer Charles Lawton, Jr. also fell ill; the great Rudolph Mate shot part of the film for him, though his credits don't appear onscreen.

Welles' rough cut of the film ran approximately 155 minutes. When it tested poorly with preview audiences, the editor Viola Lawrence, at the request of the studio, cut out over an hour of footage, bringing the film to its current length of 87 minutes. The Chinese opera sequence and the funhouse sequence were originally much more elaborate set-pieces; Welles was particularly proud of the latter and has insisted that it would have been, if anything, more memorable than the climactic shootout in the hall of mirrors. Only a few stills remain to suggest what the funhouse sequence in its entirety might have looked like. However, even more than the cuts Welles objected to the musical score, which consists largely of quotations from the song "Please Don't Kiss Me" which Rita Hayworth sings on the yacht. In his memo to Harry Cohn after seeing the re-cut film, Welles wrote: "The only idea which seems to have occurred to this present composer is the rather weary one of using a popular song -- the "theme¿ -- in as many arrangements as possible. Throughout we have musical references to "Please Don't Kiss Me" for almost every bridge and also for a great deal of the background material. The tune is pleasing, it may do very well on the Hit Parade -- but Lady from Shanghai is not a musical comedy [...]" However, even in its somewhat mutilated form The Lady from Shanghai remains a well-acted and stylish example of the film noir. Hayworth, Sloane and Anders in particular stand out and the movie is distinguished by its striking deep-focus and chiaroscuro cinematography and a number of offbeat touches that only a director like Welles could have dreamed up.

 

The Lady from Shanghai • Senses of Cinema  Chris Justice, July 22, 2005

 

Parallax View [Richard T. Jameson]  a slightly edited version of an essay written for an Autumn 1971 University of Washington Office of Lectures and Concerts Film Series, The Cinema of Orson Welles, February 18, 2011

 

"Give My Love to the Sunrise" The Lady from Shanghai - Bright Lights ...  Jason Mark Scott from Bright Lights Film Journal, November 1, 2007

 

Orson Welles at 100: The Lady from Shanghai (1947)  Jake Hinkson from Criminal Element

 

The Greatest Films  Tim Dirks

 

Film Court  Lawrence Russell

 

Film Noir of the Week  Markham

 

Images Movie Journal  Kevin Jack Hagopian

 

DVD Journal  D.K. Holm

 

The Films of Orson Welles [Michael E. Grost]

 

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

The Lady from Shanghai (1948) - Articles - TCM.com  various collective articles

 

Goatdog's Movies  Michael W. Phillips, Jr.

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]

 

eFilmCritic.com  Jay Seaver

 

Dragan Antulov  

 

Crazy for Cinema  Lisa Skrzyniarz

 

David Dalgleish

 

DVD Town  John J. Puccio

 

DVD Review e-zine  Guido Henkel 

 

Bill Chambers, Epinions.com

 

Projections

 

Erik Lundegaard

 

A Film Canon [Billy Stevenson]

 

The Spinning Image  Graeme Clark

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews  Dennis Schwartz

 

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

 

Combustible Celluloid  Jeffrey M. Anderson

 

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide

 

Variety  William Brogdon

 

Baltimore City Paper  Lee Gardner

 

The New York Times  Bosley Crowther

 

DVDBeaver - Full Graphic Review by Gary Tooze

 

MACBETH

USA  (107 mi) 1948

 

The Village Voice [Elliott Stein]

A borderline horror flick, Welles's expressionist and magical MACBETH (1948), unlike most screen versions of Shakespeare, is pure cinema. It was but three weeks in production at low-budget horse-opera mill Republic studio, stunningly shot by cameraman John L. Russell (who later shot Psycho). Welles is superb as the tragic hero, and in spite of the film's limitations, a good deal of the play's power comes through. One of the director's most personal creations, it's a courageous experiment with a craggy barbaric splendor all its own.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - Cine-File.info  Kian Bergstrom

The story behind the filming of Orson Welles' MACBETH could be a theatrical drama (or perhaps a farce) in and of itself; shot in just twenty-three days with cheap rented costumes and sets leftover from studio westerns, it should be more Ed Wood than Shakespeare. But the end result only hardly reveals the haphazard production, and the residual chaos adds an ambience that solidifies it as being “a perfect cross between Wuthering Heights and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.” Having previously mounted a production of the Scottish Play at just twenty years old (his famed Voodoo Macbeth), Welles took as many liberties with the film version as he did on stage, except instead of casting it with all African-American actors, he opted to change some of the key elements that make Macbeth a revered paradigm. While such edits would typically be ascribed to artistic license, Welles is perhaps the only director of whom it could be said that any deliberate changes were likely made from a place of artistic equality. It's ambitious in both vision and execution, but while Welles had much of the former, he had little with which to succeed at the latter. The version being shown is the UCLA Film & Television Archive restoration from 1980, complete with affected Scottish accents and another two reels that Republic Pictures had Welles cut for the 1950 re-release. (1948, 107 min, Restored Archival 35mm Print)

Slant Magazine Blu-ray [Eric Henderson]

Orson Welles's brutally brisk Macbeth was not just the filmmaker's first Shakespearean feature film, but also, some have argued, his attempt to make a Mercury Players adaptation sans Mercury Players. Most of the cast members he did use aren't in the same league as Agnes Moorhead and Joseph Cotten, but that's only one of the many reasons the movie weighs especially heavy. Welles plunged what was already one of the Bard's darkest works into the primeval darkness of salt mines that, though filmed in high-contrast monocrhome, appear to be perpetually exuding blood. The writer-director assumes the title role of the thane who, in response to the pre- and post-determinate urgings of four women, hacks and slashes his way to assume the crown of Scotland and spends the entirety of his short reign fearing the similarly presaged events that threaten to violently depose him. In Grand Guignol (and proto-Breaking Bad) fashion, Macbeth's fears and dirty deeds only result in him sanctioning further atrocities, all in the name of tying up loose entrails.

Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy. Like all but a handful of Welles's films made for the studios, Macbeth ended up sustaining significant cuts from its original 107-minute running time, in response to critical ire that Welles had taken too many liberties with the original text. (Because cutting more made so much more sense.) Given Welles's prior difficulties with The Magnificent Ambersons and the It's All True project, it's no surprise that his adaptation of the Shakespeare play would emphasize the thematic thread of thwarted ambition, just as it's no wonder Roman Polanski's 1971 version—filmed in the aftermath of the slaughter of his wife, Sharon Tate, and their unborn child at the hands of Charles Manson's subordinates—focused on the inherent brutality of the source text.

The limited scope of Welles's production design, turning Macbeth into the king of a kingdom that resembles nothing so much as a playground replica of Stonehenge, ends up making subconscious comment on his perceptibly fallen fortunes. That Macbeth's crown rests so uneasily in such a stunted, easily manipulated environment makes one wonder if Welles, at this point, wasn't even less confident in his artistic command than anyone realized. Welles infamously pulled the movie from competition at the Venice Film Festival in response, he said, to the belief that Italians could never "get" Shakespeare through translation, but many speculate he was green-eyed over the adulation Olivier's Hamlet received at the same fest. Add to that his defensiveness in interviews, explaining that the reason the film was shot in three weeks was because, quite simply, Republic wouldn't give him any more money. Though surprisingly few seams show in the full 107-minute cut (certainly not in the unbroken, reel-long shot that glides through the entire second act plus change), it still often feels as though the challenge Welles decided to tackle was speed, not clarity—a tactic that blessedly works for what's among the shortest and brusquest of Shakespeare's great works.

Verisimilitude saw Welles insisting on the "burr" of legitimate Scottish accents, a choice that was retracted at the studio's request for the shortened cut, but accents or no, the absence of key Welles's players seems the film's biggest failing. Welles himself rises to the impossible task, inverting his usual charisma so that it here represents soul rot. But beyond him and Jeanette Nolan, who plays Lady Macbeth as though that damned spot she commands "out, out" has metastasized into her quickening diaphragm, the rest of the cast seems stuck in readers' theater mode. Welles told Peter Bogdanovich that no actor has satisfactorily bridged the gap between the Macbeth easily exploited by women in the play's first two acts and the merchant of menace of the play's remainder. In this particular adaptation, Welles the actor arguably makes a better go at it than Welles the director, who may have been concentrating too much on the logistics of his production to put his cast through their paces.

Macbeth (1948) - TCM.com  Roger Fristoe

In the late 1940s, eager to produce a film of Macbeth and having alienated the executives of RKO, where he made Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and Columbia, where he directed The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Orson Welles turned to an unlikely studio to produce his version of the Shakespearean tragedy: Republic Pictures, best known for B-Westerns starring the likes of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, with occasional ventures into slightly more prestigious films headlining John Wayne. "And although there was abundant laughter in Hollywood at the very idea of Orson's having wound up at a plebian studio like Republic," wrote Welles biographer Barbara Leaming, "Orson thought it ideal for his experiment."

Welles, weaned on radio and expressionistic stage productions, liked to work quickly and cheaply and, indeed, often seemed at his best when forced to make much of little. In preparation for his film of Macbeth (1948), he had rehearsed the actors in a stage production that ran for four days in May 1947 at the University Theater in Salt Lake City. He had cast himself as Macbeth, of course, and had settled for Jeanette Nolan, a radio actress and longtime associate, as Lady Macbeth after such actresses as Tallulah Bankhead, Agnes Moorehead, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Mercedes McCambridge proved unavailable. Welles had originally wanted Vivien Leigh as a "seductive" Lady Macbeth, but her husband, Laurence Olivier -- who had helped popularize Shakespeare on the screen with his 1944 Henry V -- would not hear of it.

In spinning Shakespeare's tragic tale of the rise and fall of the ambitious 12th-century Scottish warrior, Welles used his own adaptation, first developed for his successful 1936 stage production of a "voodoo" Macbeth with an all-black cast. He had the film actors record the entire script before shooting began, so that during filming they lip-synched in the style of a movie musical. Some speeches were delivered as soliloquies in voice-over without the actors' mouths moving. The sets, also inspired by Welles' 1936 production, were impressionistic suggestions constructed of cardboard and papier-mâché to represent a castle that had been carved out of a huge rock. Cinematographer John L. Russell (later to shoot Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, 1960) photographed the film in moody yet luminous black and white, leading Welles historian David Thomson to comment that "No film since Kane had had so profoundly organized or expressive a photographic style."

Republic studio head Herbert R. Yates called Welles "an inspiration" when he finished shooting Macbeth in 23 days at a cost that was well under the film's budgeted $884,000. The executive was convinced that his talented filmmaker had created "the greatest individual job of acting, directing, adapting and producing that to my knowledge Hollywood has ever known."

Yates began to have second thoughts, however, when editing on Macbeth dragged on, with Welles interrupting post-production work for travel to Europe and preliminary work on future projects. When Macbeth was at last completed and previewed in Denver, Salt Lake City and San Francisco, the critics savaged it, claiming that the actors' use of heavy Scottish accents, dictated by Welles, rendered the dialogue incomprehensible to American ears. Nolan's highly stylized rendition of Lady Macbeth also drew much criticism, and some were offended that Welles would dare to rewrite Shakespeare.

Republic recalled all the prints and put associate producer Richard Wilson in charge of re-dubbing 65 percent of the dialogue. Twenty-one minutes of footage were cut, leaving the film with a running length of only 86 minutes. These cuts, along with the original recordings, were restored by UCLA archivists in 1980. Eight minutes of musical overture and three-plus minutes of exit music by the film's composer, Jacques Ibert, also were restored.

The Welles Macbeth had to wait for its restoration to be appreciated as a unique cinematic treasure. As Thomson and others have pointed out, the heightened blend of images and sound combines the qualities of theater, film and radio; and the performances, led by Welles' own, are striking and original. The film stands as an important link between the Hollywood phase of Welles' career and his later, more independent European work.

Macbeth - Senses of Cinema  Tony Williams, February 2006

 

Wellesnet | Orson Welles Web Resource » The Michigan ...

 

Only the Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

Orson Welles's Macbeth (1948) | The House Next Door ...  Aaron Cutler

 

Welles, Kurosawa and Polanski: Three Takes On Macbeth ...  Glyn Jones from Fantastic Voyages

 

Movie City News: Wilmington on DVD's  Michael Wilmington

 

DVD Savant - Blu-ray [Glenn Erickson]  also seen here:  Macbeth (1948) - Home Video Reviews - TCM.com

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]

 

Blu-ray.com [Jeffrey Kauffman]

 

DVD Talk [Jamie S. Rich]

 

Macbeth (1948) - Notes - TCM.com

 

Mondo Digital [Nathaniel Thompson]

 

The Spinning Image [Graeme Clark]

 

derekwinnert.com [Derek Winnert]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Spiros Gangas]

 

MUBI [Adrian Curry]  Shakespearean movie posters

 

TV Guide

 

Variety

 

Time Out  Geoff Andrew

 

New York Times: Edited version [Bosley Crowther]

 

Macbeth Blu-ray - Orson Welles - DVDBeaver.com  Gregg Ferencz

 

My Dozen Favorite Non-Region-1 Box Sets by Jonathan ...  #8 by Jonathan Rosenbaum from DVDBeaver

 

OTHELLO                                                     A                     100

aka:  The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice

Italy  USA  France  Morocco  (90 mi)  1952

 

Despite being another one of his troubled productions, where he could never get the finances to make the film, this is a major work by Welles and a stunning achievement.  Driven to madness by the conniving Iago, Welles’s black-faced Othello may seem like an out of date relic, but his performance is sublime.  The film’s most significant achievement, however, despite being shot over several years, is how he showcased a visual potpourri of architectural interests, captured by oblique camera angles, displaying a dazzling cinematic virtuosity. 

 

The Village Voice [Elliott Stein]

OTHELLO (1952), created piecemeal in Italy and Morocco over four years, turned out to be a lesser work than Macbeth. In Welles's version, the Moor is already dead at the start, and as with Citizen Kane, the facts are then investigated. The florid mise-en-scène gives full play to complex compositions and tilted camera angles. Individual scenes are in an unrestrainedly operatic bravura style, and while the film succeeds visually, it ultimately fails as drama. Even Welles couldn't do everything. He seems miscast as Othello, while Micheál MacLiammóir delivers a subtly insinuating performance as an Iago whose anger and jealousy, it is hinted, are motivated by feelings of sexual incapacity.

Othello, directed by Orson Welles | Film review - Time Out  Tony Rayns

Welles' sixth feature (made directly after his avant-garde Macbeth) was shot in fits and starts over a period of four years, on a dozen locations in Morocco and Italy, often without money. Naturally, Welles turned the limitations into strengths. When the costumes didn't show up, he filmed in a Turkish bath. When an actor couldn't make it, he used a stand-in and changed his camera angle. When challenged to match footage shot in Mogador and Venice, he contrived dazzling webs of montage. This is Shakespeare filmed with love and powerhouse enthusiasm, never with reverence. The visual rhetoric is synchronised with the verbal imagery: they hit sensory overload together. A very great film noir.

Welles' `Othello' does Moor with less - Chicago Tribune  Michael Wilmington

Shakespeare's tragedy of "Othello," that supreme study of jealousy and duplicity, provided director-adaptor-star Orson Welles with the source for one of his greatest films: this independently produced adaptation, shot cheaply and sporadically in Italy and Morocco from 1949-1952. It's still imbued with his trademark inventiveness and dramatic force; Welles plays Othello in Moorish makeup and his longtime friend and mentor Micheal Mac Liammoir is a serpentine and obviously gay Iago. (It's a shame Welles didn't have the Iago of his 1951 British stage production, Peter Finch, but Mac Liammoir gives a fine, shivery interpretation.) Suzanne Cloutier is the faithful Desdemona--her reputation is poisoned and life blighted by the venomous Iago, guiding his hated master slowly but surely down the path to madness and murder.

"Othello" has been filmed numerous times, but never with such extraordinary visual grace and power. Welles' film was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival; sadly, it's still little-known among the public at large.

Cine-File: Ben Sachs

In a rare, unmissable screening, Doc Films will present Orson Welles' original cut of OTHELLO. This version has remained commercially unavailable since the early 1990s, when Welles' daughter supervised a "restoration" that drastically altered the film's soundtrack, going so far as to hire sound-alike performers to re-record portions of the dialogue. This was a great loss since, according to Welles scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum, the original is a feat of audio design, as well as visual, imagination. As he wrote in 1995: "Working on OTHELLO without the resources of Hollywood sound equipment, Welles aimed for a rawness in such sound effects as crashing waves, colliding curtain rings, and echoing footsteps. Drawing from his prodigious radio experience, he partly compensated for his inferior [camera] equipment with subtle atmospheric effects dubbed in later and integrated with the music." This rawness extends to much of the aesthetic of the film, which Welles produced independently over a four-year period, shooting when he could afford the celluloid and altering certain scenes when he lacked for resources. (In a justly celebrated example, Welles reset the murder of Rodrigo in a Turkish bath so he could film it without costumes.) All of this makes OTHELLO a watershed in both Welles' career and the history of independent filmmaking, but what of the movie itself?  To cite Jack Jorgens' Shakespeare on Film, it is "one of the few Shakespeare films in which the images on the screen generate enough beauty, variety, and graphic power to stand comparison with Shakespeare's poetic images. [Welles'] visual images compensate for the inevitable loss of complexity and dramatic voltage accompanying heavy alterations in the text." Some of the most powerful images include centuries-old Moorish architecture (found in Italy and Morocco), shot in ever-surprising Expressionist angles, and the looming faces of the cast, which brings a silent cinema intensity to the characterizations.

Rep Diary: Othello - Film Comment  Aaron Cutler, May 1, 2014

The face of a man emerges from darkness, followed by that of a woman. Their eyes are closed, and their bodies lie still in separate beds in what looks like eternal peace. Hooded pallbearers chant a Gregorian theme while carrying the two across a rocky plain. Nearby, soldiers drag another man ahead in chains and throw him into a cage, from which he looks down and sees the march of the mourners’ pageant that bears the lovers’ bodies toward the clouds.

This scene opens Orson Welles’s 1952 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello, now playing at Film Forum in a new digital restoration courtesy of the distributor Carlotta Films. (Three different versions of Welles’s film exist; Carlotta has restored the lone circulating one, which was originally made with permission from the late filmmaker’s daughter Beatrice Welles-Smith in 1992.) The dead man and woman are Othello (Welles) and Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier), and in the cage is the man who helped drive them towards death: Iago (Michéal MacLiammóir). The sequence—an invention on Welles’s part—foreshadows the characters’ fates at story’s outset and thereby trades dramatic suspense for reflection. We will not watch Welles’s rendering of the text to see whether Othello still kills his love but rather to understand why he would do so.

Welles was in a transitional period of exile at the time when he went to Europe to make Othello, his first feature film realized without Hollywood studio funding. Though his debut feature Citizen Kane (41) had survived in his desired cut, his four subsequent features had been released in truncated versions of his desired originals. They included 1948’s low-rent and highly imaginative rendering of Macbeth, in which Shakespeare’s Scottish warrior tries to raise his mind out of filthy medieval mire.

Welles’s Othello was the first film he directed after Macbeth; Welles broke with Hollywood while maintaining a lifelong relationship with Shakespeare. During his long and varied career, he adapted several of the plays into radio programs and films as well as stage productions (including a London theatrical production of Othello which he directed and in which he starred while seeking funds to complete his film’s editing). He adhered to unconventional ideas of fidelity, and often ruthlessly chopped up the plays in order to spotlight what he saw as their driving conflicts. Though Shakespeare’s work is filled with swordfights and suicides, the author’s greatest dramas often consist of people working towards self-understanding. For Othello, Welles cut more than half of the text and re-ordered much of what remained in order to focus on a man attempting to save himself from free fall.

Shakespeare’s play follows a spiteful scheme hatched by Iago, a Venetian military ensign, to trick his Moorish commander Othello into believing that the commander’s new bride Desdemona has betrayed him with another man. The Moor’s suspicions grow until he goes mad with the thought that “Othello’s occupation’s gone.” Welles’s film maintains this basic plot but makes Othello the lead figure rather than Iago, and spotlights the irony that it is actually the Moor who betrays Desdemona by deceiving himself.   

Welles does so primarily by placing Othello and the other characters within a tightly bounded premodern environment, which he would later refer to in his insightful documentary Filming Othello (78) as “a whole world in collapse.” Imprisonment looms over the characters in the physical form of pillars, bars, gates, closed doors, and nets. These images echo Iago’s vow to “make the net/That shall enmesh them all,” but they more closely reflect the fatalistic mindset of Othello, and his double-edged declaration to his servant, the “honest” Iago: “I am bound to thee forever.”

For Welles, Othello was fundamentally a naïf who knew more about war than about women, and who was enchanted by Desdemona to the extent that she fit his male codes of honor. Though the film gives brief scenes (absent from the play) of Othello and Desdemona together in their bedroom prior to his disintegration, the interludes exist around Othello’s concern that “We must obey the time”; the actor’s delivery weights this line with sadness, as though knowing that their time is destined to be cut short. This commander of Venice’s fleets tries to adhere to a militaristic plan of action that ultimately dooms his marriage. He says early on that he fell in love with his wife for how she admired his war stories, and goes on to prove himself strategically wary to a fault in believing Iago to be more true to him than she is. By the time that he realizes his mistake, it is too late. Desdemona is already dead, and her husband has long since been swallowed up, a sinking that Welles stages with shadows cutting lattice-like across Othello’s front.

When Othello looks into mirrors throughout Welles’s film, he sees a man at war with himself. Welles the filmmaker (working with several cinematographers) heightens the movements between darkness and light upon Othello’s face to express internally battling elements; Welles the actor collaborates by giving a firm, sentinel-like performance that allows us to witness the fight as it takes place. In contrast to MacLiammóir’s demonic scampering as Iago and Cloutier’s angelic gliding as Desdemona, Welles’s Othello tends to move slowly and with resolute strides. The film’s early scenes transform as he enters them, replacing manic edits between multiple points of action with calmer, lengthier shots that rest on Othello while he confidently relates his thoughts.

Wholeness eventually gives way to fragmentation, however, as frames shatter into shards in accordance with Othello’s troubled mind. “And when I love thee not/Chaos is come again,” Othello tells Desdemona early, and the film takes Shakespeare’s cue. Its composition of images breaks the Moor’s body into pieces and turns them against each other at strange angles until a late moment when Othello looks up from a dark abyss for the last time in his life.

Welles conceived of his editing strategy for practical reasons as well as thematic ones. Othello was shot in Italy and Morocco during a stop-and-start production process that lasted roughly three years (chronicled in picaresque fashion in MacLiammóir’s 1952 book Put Money in Thy Purse: The Filming of Orson Welles’ Othello). Welles relied upon tight medium shots and close-ups in order to preserve continuity. Throughout, he maintained his conception of the film, which included a blackface performance so quietly straightforward that it broke with how myriad American actors had represented the Moor. In contrast to the usual style of bellowing physicality, Welles’s man lives and dies first and foremost inside his head.

The film, which won the Palme d’Or (as a Moroccan entry) at the 1952 edition of Cannes, commenced a new phase in Welles’s filmmaking: low-budget productions made piecemeal across several countries with aid from private European backers. With that said, Othello stayed coherent to Welles’s American films preceding it. The character of Othello joins a gallery of isolated Welles protagonists such as Charles Foster Kane and Macbeth, whose desire to believe themselves masters of their domains lead them to solitary tragic fates. Their ranks would eventually come to include Gregory Arkadin (from 1955’s Mr. Arkadin), Hank Quinlan (from Welles’s sole subsequent Hollywood film, 1958’s Touch of Evil), and Sir John Falstaff (from his third great Shakespeare film, the recently restored 1965 gem Chimes at Midnight). Welles understood Othello as he did all of his alternate selves—as a person with a universal problem. Like potentially any one of us, they build their own traps and fall prisoner to their thoughts.  

411mania.com [Chad Webb]

During his interviews with Orson Welles over a period of many years, covering numerous projects, Director/Biographer Peter Bogdanovich talked with Welles about Othello. At one point, Welles comments that Shakespeare never made tragedies, but rather melodramas. Indeed some melodramatic elements are incorporated in this version of Othello, one which is different from most, but that's what makes it effective. The approach most adaptations use is to shoot the play in a standard, straightforward way that adheres to the spirit of the stage. Thankfully that is not the result here. You can find these interviews in the book/audio cassette called This is Orson Welles. They are intriguing and informative and offer Welles' account of certain aspects of the Othello filming process.

The central problem for Welles at this time was lack of cash money. After the Citizen Kane/William Randolph Hearst debacle Welles would regularly have trouble finishing his projects the way he wanted. Othello was filmed sporadically from 1948 to 1951 because he rarely had the funds and frequently was forced to improvise. In 1949 he starred in The Third Man and Prince of Foxes, and subsequently used his payments from those to help Othello. But that was how dedicated Welles was. He was quite egotistical and stubborn, but also passionate and intelligent. It was shot in Morocco, Venice, Tuscany, and studios in Rome. Apparently the Italian backer went bankrupt early on during production and so it became a stop-start production. Many scenes begin in one city and finish in another. This led to frenzied editing for some scene transitions.

It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1952 and won the Palme d'Or, but Welles spent a lot of time after that re-cutting and re-dubbing the picture. Many cast members' voices had to be filled by Welles himself, or in the case of Suzanne Cloutier, who portrayed Desdemona; she was replaced entirely by Gudrun Ure, who played the role alongside Welles on stage. Eventually the originally titled The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice was released, but only in New York and Los Angeles, and it drew negative reviews in light of the technical faults. The prints were difficult to watch as the poor audio transfer was glaring. Decades later, in 1992, Beatrice Welles-Smith aided in restoring a 35mm copy of the film that was located in a New Jersey warehouse. It looked good, but needed a complete overhaul in terms of dialogue, music, and sound effects. Many people contributed to improving Othello, and the cost was reportedly over $1 million.

The version that now circulates is undoubtedly much better than the first one, but the dubbing issues and the quality of the video is still very poor. One has to give Welles credit though because the dubbing is masked due to skewed camera angles and the actors having their bodies turned to the side or other odd positions. It could have been more conspicuous. Most have said that if Welles possessed the kind of money it cost to restore the film when he initially made it, there would have been no complaints today. "If" is a common word when referring to Welles and his lost projects. We must accept the film as it stands. After the US edition was released on laser-disc in 1995, it was legally challenged by Beatrice Welles-Smith and then withdrawn from shelves. Some sort of DVD release occurred, and it does turn up on TCM every now and again, so you can find it. I assume the rights battle have still not cleared up completely as no future release is planned.

Othello is not my favorite Shakespeare tragedy, but it does contain fulfilling entertainment and well-defined characters. What I have trouble swallowing is the black face commonly employed. Unfortunately two of the most popular film adaptations feature a white man in black make-up, and personally I can count on one hand the number of times blackface was used appropriately. Two men who were practically born to play the Moor of Venice, and have received awards for their efforts, have only performed Othello on stage: James Earl Jones and Paul Robeson. They were never filmed, but an audio CD of Robeson can be found on iTunes. Laurence Olivier's 1965 version was a nice length, but his affinity for barebones set design and exaggerated acting damaged his depiction. With that I moved on to Orson Welles, which was wonderfully dissimilar and decidedly superior.

The order of events is re-arranged slightly as Welles commences his Othello with the funeral procession of the Moor (Orson Welles) and his bride Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier). The funeral was an example of one of the many liberties Welles took with the source material. During that funeral, the individual we soon learn is Iago (Micheal MacLiammoir) is being strung up in a cage. It all starts when Desdemona, daughter of a Venician aristocrat, elopes with the Moor Othello. Her father objects due to Othello's skin color. Iago, the servant of Othello, sets out to ruin his master by making him think that his wife is having an affair with Cassio (Michael Laurence), Othello's second-in-command and handpicked lieutenant. Iago is angry that he was passed over for the promotion. Othello becomes increasingly jealous and gradually starts believing Iago's lies. He is manipulated rather easily when the hard evidence of a handkerchief falsely points to the adultery. Iago obtained the hanky through his wife (Fay Compton), who eventually sees what her husband is up to, but it's too late.

The acting ability of Orson Welles is usually not questioned, and it won't be here either. This is a brilliant, sufficiently reserved, and haunting performance of the Moor of Venice. It is everything the Olivier approach wasn't. Welles never ventures too deep into theatrics, but when he shouts, it represents a momentous moment. The stride in his walk and the distinct facial expressions are significant portions of his portrayal. Take for instance the scene where he overhears Cassio and Iago laughing with his eyes darting back and forth anxiously. As for the blackface, Welles understands that it is not pretty to stare at, so he places Othello in dark spaces, with his face to the side, or from afar so as not to draw attention to any makeup flaws. Welles also supplies necessary narration and dubs in for Roderigo.

Dublin actor Micheal MacLiammoir, who founded the Gate Theater, hands in his only on-screen performance as Iago, and it fits commendably with Welles' Othello. I feel that the dubbing affects MacLiammoir most, but it is evident that he is a fine thespian, who should have been in more films. One of the underlying reasons for his malicious deeds was his impotence, which Welles did not emphasize heavily, but it does exist for those that notice. Frank Finlay had time to stretch as Iago in the Olivier film. MacLiammoir is pleasing, but not as spectacular. His Iago has genial attributes on the surface and wickedness underneath, which is not as comfortable to gauge. MacLiammoir wrote a book about the shoot called Put Money in Thy Purse that is hard to find, but well worth the time.

Suzanne Cloutier marked the third and final Desdemona. Welles had incessant trouble keeping the same cast around. She is striking and innocent, but since someone else dubbed for her, the depiction is not as polished as it could have been. Still, she does shine towards the conclusion as Othello grows more agitated. Michael Laurence is a terrific Cassio, one who proves his lieutenant status and stands out as fervent and calm in each sequence he's in. His proclamation that he is not drunk is hilarious, as is his swift punch when Roderigo tries to apply a hit and run. Robert Coots plays Roderigo as more of a clumsy fool, often aiming for laughs. Fay Compton is underused as Emilia, but satisfactory nonetheless. The competence of the acting can never measure up to the splendor of the direction. An extra 30 minutes could have accomplished wonders for this group.

In my review of Richard Burton's Hamlet, I stated that I preferred Branagh's full-text version of that tale. I would not say the same for Othello. It does not need to be 3 hours long. Certain chunks can be excised, but Welles takes that too seriously. 93 minutes is hardly enough time to adequately unravel motivations and plot points. His Othello is at times tricky to follow and sprints along without ever stopping to breathe. This serves as a superb account for those who are already familiar with the play. For them, this is more accessible and absolutely never dull. On the other hand, if this is your introduction to Othello, you might wonder what all the fuss is about, and you might be left with some questions.

What saves the speedy pace from thoroughly damaging the film is the exceptional direction from Welles and the music from Alberto Barberis and Angelo Francesco Lavagnino. So many segments reek of Welles' film noir style, and it truly is marvelous in this universe. We are conscious of his trademarks and gleefully embrace them. The masterful compositions compliment his filmmaking perfectly. One famous behind-the-scenes story that arose was that costumes were not available on time. Whether they were late or whether Welles failed to pay for them is up for debate, but to improvise he transported the attack on Cassio into a Turkish bath where the cast wears only towels. It is through these twisted and bizarre turn of events that Welles' genius is displayed. It is one of the best moments in Othello, and would not have had the same impact in regular period costumes. In another scene, when Othello and Desdemona are in the bedroom for the last time, the camera faces the Moor as he walks towards Desdemona from the head of the bed. From her perspective, the viewer observes how scary her husband can be.

On a visual level, no Othello comes close to this one. The army of cinematographers achieve countless gorgeous shots with lingering shadow and light. This way, the surroundings and the environment, not just the dialogue, are highlighted. The majesty of the castle and the thunderous crash of the waves are captured with sheer beauty. A documentary called The Filming of Othello that was made in 1978 and not shown in the US until 1987 is available for those curious. Welles hosts as fellow cast members share memories and random anecdotes. Seeing the film in its entirety is what's important. The hurried tempo obscures many pieces of the puzzle, but Welles concentrates on his vision ahead of Shakespeare's, and it succeeds because no matter how many financial dilemmas he encountered, his priorities were always where they needed to be.

Othello Goes Hollywood | Movie Review | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum, April 9, 1992

 

Orson Welles's Shattering “Othello” - The New Yorker  Richard Brody, April 25, 2014

 

Orson Welles's Film Noir - PlayShakespeare.com  J.A. Macfarlane, June 26, 2012

 

Two Film Versions of Othello - SEDERI - Spanish and Portuguese ...  Two Film Versions of Othello: A Twentieth-century Approach to Shakespeare's Play, by María José Álvarez Faedo from Sederi X (1999): pages 185-192  (pdf)

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

Othello (1952) - TCM.com  Brian Cady

 

Orson Welles's Tattered, Glorious Othello Returns | Village Voice  Stephanie Zacharek, April 23, 2014

 

The Village Voice [Charles Marowitz]  January 18, 1956 (pdf)  

 

Only the Cinema: Othello (1952)  Ed Howard

 

Orson Welles - Blunt Review  Emily Blunt

 

Jackass Critics [Tom Blain]

 

Orson Welles' Othello   Shakespeare online                  

 

Othello (1952) - Orson Welles - film review - Le Film Guide  James Travers

 

moviemorlocks.com – I Am Not What I Am: Orson Welles' Othello (1952)  R. Emmet Sweeney

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]

 

Orson Welles' Othello | Shakespearean Review

 

Movies in the City [Casey Scott]

 

Foster on Film - Shakespeare  Matthew Foster

 

Jay's Movie Blog  Jason Seaver

 

Movierapture [Keith Allen]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Combustible Celluloid Review - Othello (1952), Orson Welles, based ...  Jeffrey M. Anderson

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Mark Radice]

 

Film Forum · OTHELLO

 

MUBI [Adrian Curry]  movie poster

 

Daily | Orson Welles's OTHELLO | Keyframe - Explore the world of film.  David Hudson from Fandor

 

Review: 'Othello' - Variety

 

Othello (2014), directed by Orson Welles | Movie review - Time Out  Keith Uhlich

 

The Melbourne Age [Alfred Heintz]

 

Critic's notebook: Orson Welles's 'Othello' - The Boston Globe  Peter Keough

 

Othello movie review - tribunedigital-chicagotribune  Michael Phillips

 

Othello Movie Review & Film Summary (1992) | Roger Ebert

 

New York Times [Bosley Crowther]

 

DVDBeaver.com - Review [Enrique B Chamorro]

 

Othello (1952 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

MR. ARKADIN

aka:  Confidential Report

France  Spain  Switzerland  (98 mi)  1955                     (2006 rerstored version 105 mi)

 

Mr Arkadin, directed by Orson Welles | Film review - Time Out

Long unavailable for theatrical screening but finally resurfacing on TV in a version edited closer to Welles' cut than that originally released here, Mr Arkadin assumed an equivalent patina of myth and legend to that cultivated by its central character, non-naturalistically posited somewhere between Kane and God. Arkadin is the powerful financier who employs his own researcher to piece together his apparently forgotten past, to find a shabby Rosebud to dramatise his by-now bored puppeteering. Flamboyantly melodramatic, it's a playfully egocentric display of egocentrism and a magician's perverse revelation of his own trickery. Failure or not, it's irresistible.

Mr. Arkadin | Chicago Reader  Dave Kehr

Orson Welles's 1955 film seems a deliberate, bitter parody of Citizen Kane, with the grandeur turned to transparent theatrical fakery and the quest for truth deflected into shoddy opportunism. The film has the eerie, placeless quality of international coproduction (France and Spain in this case); many of the minor characters have been dubbed with Welles's voice, which increases the sense of a sinister puppet show. Sporting an outrageously false beard, Welles plays the mysterious title character, an international businessman who lures a young hustler (Robert Arden) into investigating his past. For all of the film's perversity, there is greatness in it—a greatness harshly criticizing itself. With Michael Redgrave, Mischa Auer, and Akim Tamiroff.

The Village Voice [B. Kite]  February 10, 2004, also seen here:  The Rosebud Express | Village Voice

CONFIDENTIAL REPORT (MR. ARKADIN) (1955) is a film of frantic movement and fragmentation, a mad rush around a maze with no center and no exit, a Eurotrash Citizen Kane in reverse. If Kane's trajectory is basically centripetal, winding down to the memory palace where the (non)answer to a life might be found if one knew where to look among the clutter, Arkadin's is centrifugal, a whirlwind investigation initiated to erase the past rather than reveal it. Both end in smoke.

This is the film in which Welles let the seams show, cracking open the piecemeal construction of Othello (where a reverse shot sequence could cross continents in a splice and, according to Welles, "Any time you see someone from the back . . . you can be sure it's a stand-in") to take rootlessness as an explicit theme. Zip pans link locales, each tipped with a perfunctory signifier (baguette: France): We're in Thomas Pynchon's Zone, a borderless territory where history survives only in junk, bad jokes, and rumor. The seams show, too, on the borders of Welles's magnificently phony wig and beard, but who's to say this labyrinth doesn't have the monster it deserves? A pantomime ogre, a report that annihilates itself, a portrait of Hitler stowed away in a Munich attic, a toy racetrack in the shape of an infinity symbol—all fit elements for a fractured fairy tale, as told in the Zone.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Kyle A. Westphal

No Welles feature has undergone such a sidelong critical re-evaluation as MR. ARKADIN. Breathlessly declared one of the dozen greatest films of all time by Cahiers du cinema a scant three years after its completion, MR. ARKADIN rarely earns such plaudits nowadays. Thanks to the critical archaeologies of Tim Lucas and Jonathan Rosenbaum, it's now frequently treated as something more than--or, perhaps more accurately, other than--a simple movie. Existing in no less than seven versions across multiple media (a radio play, a novelization of Arkadian provenance, divergent film editions under different titles), MR. ARKADIN is a mysterious object without a fixed identity--a shape-shifting penny-ante conspiracy with no daylight between form and function. (Incidentally, the version being screened by the Music Box, CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, is the European release version that reshuffles the chronology to something resembling a conventional narrative. Stefan Drossler's much-ballyhooed 'Comprehensive' assemblage from 2006, which incorporates scenes and bits from most of the extant ARKADINs, never been printed to 35mm and so, ironically, the most compromised version remains the only one available for theatrical exhibition, at least in America.) But it's reasonable to ask whether ARKADIN's pendulum has swung too far towards self-reflexive analysis. As J. Hoberman has productively pointed out, the film itself is a rich experience with several affinities with the contemporaneous American avant-garde. With its crummy sets, crude dubbing, improvised accents, and expansive editing, MR. ARKADIN is the Welles film that most aggressively challenges the expectations of a paying audience. (Could it conceivably have even had one upon its original release? OTHELLO is similarly bereft of means, but at least it has Shakespeare to fall back on.) Like the work of Jack Smith, Ron Rice, or Stan Brakhage, MR. ARKADIN goads its viewers to ask that incredulous question, "How is this even a movie?"--which is, of course, a suggestive provocation and a necessary return to first principles. (1955, 98 min, 35mm)

Mr. Arkadin - TCM.com  John M. Miller

In 1952 Orson Welles was acting in the second season of a popular BBC radio series based on his role as Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949). Welles wrote a few of the half-hour "Adventures of Harry Lime" episodes himself, including episode 37, "Man of Mystery," broadcast on April 11, 1952. The story opens with quite an intriguing hook:

One late afternoon a couple of years ago, a plane was sighted about seventy miles out of Orly Airport in Paris. It was a private plane, medium sized, and nobody was in it; nobody at all. The plane, keeping its course steadily toward Paris, was flying itself. Why was it empty? Who had been flying it? And why, and under what circumstances, had they left it? Why? Thereby hangs a tale.

The plane had been flown by one Gregory Arkadin, who in the radio play employs Harry Lime to investigate his past, feigning amnesia. A year after the broadcast, Welles set out to adapt the story into a feature film. He later told Peter Bogdanovich, "One of the plots I thought up in a rush [for the radio series] was that plot - and I realized that the gimmick was super - it was the best popular story I ever thought up for a movie."

The story, then: Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden), a small-time hood and cigarette smuggler, and his girlfriend Mily (Patricia Medina), are given two names by a dying man on a dockside freight yard in Naples. They are told that the names are worth a small fortune. Mily seeks out one of the names - Gregory Arkadin (Welles), a mysterious and immensely wealthy financier, while Van Stratten attempts to strike up a relationship with Arkadin's daughter Raina (Paola Mori). Arkadin has Van Stratten investigated to discredit him, then makes an intriguing proposal: he will pay $15,000 to Van Stratten to investigate his past, claiming that he remembers nothing before 1927. Van Stratten proceeds to travel across the Continent interviewing people who knew Arkadin before he amassed his fortune. Unfortunately, these same acquaintances also begin to turn up dead.

The financing for Mr. Arkadin came together thanks to Louis Dolivet, a wealthy dabbler in film production. Based in Paris in the 1950s, he had actually known Welles since the mid-1940s, when they both championed Left-wing political causes in America. Welles' previous film, Othello (1952), had been filmed haphazardly throughout Europe over a span of several years. Largely self-financed, Welles filmed whenever he had earned enough money from outside projects to reunite his cast and get cameras rolling again. The more tidy financing for Mr. Arkadin meant a quicker shooting schedule, though the movie still shot for eight months in far-flung locations in Spain, France, and Germany.

The Mr. Arkadin script called for a colorful gallery of supporting characters, and Welles orchestrated a memorable series of bizarre cameos. The film is highlighted, in fact, by such guest stars as Michael Redgrave, almost unrecognizable as an antiques dealer; Mischa Auer looking at his flea circus, as well as the world, through a magnifying glass; Katina Paxinou as the much sought-after Sophie, sad and nostalgic while thumbing through a photo album; and especially Akim Tamiroff as the final person on the hit list, anxious for his last meal of goose livers. (Tamiroff was a favorite of Welles - he was unforgettable as Uncle Joe Grandi in the director's next film, Touch of Evil (1958), and was cast as Sancho Panza in Welles' unfinished Don Quixote).

Critics have often found fault with some of Welles' other casting choices for the film. Arden, who had worked with Welles on the Harry Lime and The Black Museum radio shows in London, is stiff and unappealing as Van Stratten, though that was quite possibly Welles' intention for the character. Paola Mori was Welles' girlfriend and had appeared in a few Italian films, but was inexpressive and spoke English only through a thick accent (her voice in this film was dubbed by Billie Whitelaw). Owing to the blank performances of Arden and Mori, there is little tension in the Arkadin-Van Stratten-Raina triangle. (More trivia involving the leading cast: five years after filming Mr. Arkadin, seasoned actress Patricia Medina married Welles' best friend Joseph Cotten).

Like Othello before it, Mr. Arkadin also fell victim to some technical deficiencies. Welles' full-blown false-nose-and-beard makeup tends to change shape from scene to scene, for example. The sound recording in the film is particularly erratic. The dialogue often sounds muddy, whether it was recorded on location or dubbed in after the fact. It is also disconcerting to hear Welles himself dubbing several actors in the film - not just the bit parts, but major performers like Auer.

Welles admitted that it took him three times longer to cut a picture than it did to shoot, and it was during the editing phase of Mr. Arkadin that he (once again) lost control of the film. Dolivet desperately wanted a Christmas 1954 release, but as Welles missed deadline after deadline, Dolivet took the film away and had others finish the editing. Several scenes which delved into Arkadin's character were eliminated, according to Welles, as was an elaborate flashback structure. Ultimately, several versions of the film were released, though a true director's cut does not exist. European versions bearing the title Confidential Report retain something of the flashback structure, but a version released in America in 1962 is cut to tell a straight chronological story. Due to the Spanish financing, yet another version exists with Spanish dubbing and a few substitute actors. Welles was later to say, "More completely than any other picture of mine has been hurt by anybody, Arkadin was destroyed because they completely changed the entire form of it: the whole order of it, the whole point of it - [The Magnificent] Ambersons [1942] is nothing compared to Arkadin!" Of course, loss of the final cut of his films was a chronic (and according to some, a partially self-inflicted) problem with almost all of Welles' post-Citizen Kane (1941) projects.

Mr. Arkadin, in any version, is disjointed and technically flawed, but contains flashes of brilliance and many memorable set pieces. As it features an investigation of the past life of a man of wealth and influence, some critics have dismissed the film as a pale echo of Citizen Kane. Such an attitude is short-sighted given the themes that Welles visited repeatedly in his oeuvre. After all, Welles' next film, the Hollywood-produced Touch of Evil, also features an outsider who shines an unwelcome light on the past doings of a powerful figure while jeopardizing his wife and encountering a variety of bizarre and grotesque personalities along the way.

Welles Amazed: The Lives of Mr. Arkadin   Criterion essay by J. Hoberman, April 17, 2006

 

Linklater’s Other Orson Welles Tribute  November 25, 2009

 

The Complete Mr. Arkadin (1955) - The Criterion Collection

 

Mr. Arkadin - Parallax View  Richard T. Jameson, May 7, 2015, program note originally written for “The Cinema of Orson Welles,” during the Autumn 1971 film series of the University of Washington Office of Lectures & Concerts, November 9, 1971

 

Critic After Dark: Confidential Report (a.k.a. Mr. Arkadin, Orson Welles ...  Noel Vera, December 24, 2015 

 

Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin | Sequart Organization  Ian Dawe, May 6, 2014

 

Antagony & Ecstasy: ALL ABOUT THE ARKADINS  Timothy Brayton, December 19, 2006

 

Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin - A Maze of Death • Senses of Cinema   Philippe St-Germain, November 5, 2000

 

Mr. Arkadin/Confidential Report • Senses of Cinema  Nelson Kim, February 7, 2006

 

The Films of Orson Welles [Michael E. Grost]

 

Criterion Reflections [David Blakeslee]  May 30, 2010

 

MR. ARKADIN by Orson Welles - Alt Film Guide  Dan Schneider

 

Reverse Shot [Justin Stewart]  June 28, 2006

 

Orson Welles' Greatest Puzzle? – The Illusive Mr. Arkadin – Hope Lies ...  Adam Batty from Hope Lies at 24 Frames Per Second

 

Welles Week: MR. ARKADIN–THE COMPREHENSIVE VERSION ...  Jay Antani from Madison Film Forum

 

Acidemic Journal of Film and Media [Erich Kuersten]  August 17, 2011

 

Collingswood Patch (Robert Castle)  August 5, 2015

 

The New York Sun  Gary Giddins

 

JackassCritics.com [Matt Fuerst]

 

Wellesnet | Orson Welles Web Resource » Mr. Arkadin

 

Orson Welles Lied About This Book | PopMatters  Mike Pursley, May 11, 2010

 

Hiding Out in Welles' masks [Jerry Saravia]

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

 

Film @ The Digital Fix - The Complete Mr Arkadin  Mike Sutton, Criterion Collection

 

DVD Savant Review: The Complete Mr. Arkadin a.k.a. Confidential ...  Glenn Erickson, also seen here:  Mr. Arkadin (1955) - Home Video Reviews - TCM.com

 

DVD Verdict Review - The Complete Mr. Arkadin: Criterion Collection  James A. Stewart, Criterion Collection

 

dOc DVD Review: The Complete Mr. Arkadin (1955)  Jeff Wilson, Criterion Collection

 

The DVD Journal | Quick Reviews: The Complete Mr. Arkadin: The ...  DSH, Criterion Collection

 

DVD Talk [David Cornelius]  Criterion Collection

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]  Criterion Collection

 

The QNetwork Film Desk [James Kendrick]  Criterion Collection

 

Review: Mr. Arkadin or Confidential Report | everythingnoir

 

Review: Mr Arkadin aka Confidential Report | The 24 Frames Cast  Tom Jennings

 

SBS Australia  Peter Galvin

 

The Spinning Image  Graeme Clark

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

DVD: Mr Arkadin | Film reviews, news & interviews | The Arts Desk  Tim Cumming

 

Film Forum · MR. ARKADIN (CONFIDENTIAL REPORT)

 

Confidential Report (aka Mr. Arkadin) | The Cinematheque

 

Philadelphia Weekly [Matt Prigge]

 

Review: The Complete Mr. Arkadin (aka Confidential Report ...  Steve Uhler from The Austin Chronicle

 

Orson Welles at 100 | Balder and Dash | Roger Ebert  Patrick McGavin, May 11, 2015

 

New York Times

 

DVDBeaver.com [Pavel Borodin]

 

Mr. Arkadin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

TOUCH OF EVIL

USA  Mexico  (95 mi)  1958

 

Time Out

A wonderfully offhand genesis (Welles adopting and adapting a shelved Paul Monash script for B-king Albert Zugsmith without ever reading the novel by Whit Masterson it was based on) marked this brief and unexpected return to Hollywood film-making for Welles. And the result more than justified the arrogance of the gesture. A sweaty thriller conundrum on character and corruption, justice and the law, worship and betrayal, it plays havoc with moral ambiguities as self-righteous Mexican cop Heston goes up against Welles' monumental Hank Quinlan, the old-time detective of vast and wearied experience who goes by instinct, gets it right, but fabricates evidence to make his case. Set in the backwater border hell-hole of Los Robles, inhabited almost solely by patented Wellesian grotesques, it's shot to resemble a nightscape from Kafka.

The Village Voice [Michael Atkinson]  Touching the Void

Gather, darkness: Here is the inkiest, most fetid, most despairing Hollywood film ever, the noirest of the noirs, the blackest of cartwheels, a pain-haunted swoop made by Faust after everything else has been sold off and his foot has tripped into the abyss. Orson Welles's 1958 anti-masterpiece TOUCH OF EVILisn't quite typically Wellesian—the past has no relevance, the literary sourcebook is pure Monterey Jack, and the nocturnal style is as unforgiving as a bone bruise. What it is is a note from the underground, a gout of bile from a diseased cosmic liver.

Or it's Welles, attempting to resuscitate his career yet again, doing calisthenics with his camera and lights. Either way, it's a required experience, whether in the old, assembled-despite-Welles's-begging studio cut or the 1998 restoration as per Welles's rediscovered memo, which we get here, a restructuring that helps clarify the wicked mess of misinformation and hyperbole the movie calls a plot. You don't have to be a nostalgic whiner to sort of regret having this seething pulp cleaned up. Motifs borrowed from Delvaux, Tanguy, and Portinari or not, a partial prophecy of Psycho or not, Touch of Evil is a grimy, disreputable thing, best viewed with a head full of revenge whiskey

Pacific Cinematheque (link lost)

 

Plans to launch a so-called "Director's Cut" of Touch of Evil at Cannes earlier this year were blocked by Orson Welles's daughter, who insisted that this original-release version of the work is the Director's Cut. Offering a "Goya-like vision of an infected universe" (Peter Bogdanovich), Touch of Evil is often cited as the final film of the vintage noir period, and is generally regarded as one of Welles' five major masterpieces. The film is set in a seedy town on the American side of the California-Mexico border, and stars Charlton Heston as Vargas, a Mexican narcotics agent honeymooning with his American wife Susan (Janet Leigh). When the town boss is murdered in a spectacular explosion, Vargas is drawn into the investigation, and finds himself ferociously at odds with corner- cutting, corpulent Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles), the local American lawman, who is unshakably convinced of the guilt of a young Mexican suspect. Employing his characteristic baroque compositions, director Welles weaves a tour-de-force tapestry of the grotesque out of flea- bag motels, pot-smoking delinquents, butch bikers, and sweaty backwater hoodlums. Marlene Dietrich makes a brief appearance as the cigar-smoking madam of a Mexican bordello. The film opens with a stunning, swooning, three-minute, single-take sequence that "may be the greatest single shot ever put on film" (James Monaco). "[A] marvellously garish thriller . . . terrific entertainment" (Pauline Kael).

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Kian Bergstrom

The film opens with a close-up of a time bomb. A doomed couple crosses the border from Mexico to California with ticking death in the trunk of their convertible. Another doomed couple moves with them, on foot. In a moment, all the world will explode. But this isn't a film about explosions and death. It's a film about violence, about the horrifying disconnect between words and deeds, about betrayal and lies. As the racist bully of a policeman, Hank Quinlan, Orson Welles exudes grotesquery, sweating bullets of injustice and bigotry with every wheezing step. He blunders through the film, a monstrous presence prepared to do anything to enact his vision of law and order, willing to frame a man for murder just because he doesn't like his attitude. All is transient, in flux, not merely taking place on the border but being about borderlines themselves. Where do we draw that line between interrogation and torture, between investigation and harassment, between evidence and supposition, between the friend and the foe? TOUCH OF EVIL is a film of cold fury, one that gives us a vision of existence as a permanent state of emergency, in which all that was previously thought solid has not just melted but burst into flames. The film begins with a bomb in a bravura long-take that falsely shows the world as whole, coherent, legible, only to destroy that world, to show it as always having been destroyed just moments before. But it ends with a sequence of crushing beauty: Quinlan, pursued through a wasteland of Mexican architectural filth by the mock-heroic Vargas (Charlton Heston), finally learns that in this space of nihilism, where things themselves can lie (a stick of dynamite, a photograph, a corpse) his own words are the only things he cannot escape. Objects are mere opportunities for deceit here, and space just a field of power, mastered by evil and oppressive, corrosive, of the genuine. Only words, perversely, can be trusted, and it's through words, finally, that the monster will be slain, though it's a meaningless victory: the man Quinlan framed has been tortured into confessing anyway. Marlene Dietrich's famous line of elegy, 'What does it matter what you say about people?' is the loveliest and bleakest affirmation of the indefatigability of injustice ever put on celluloid.

Orson Welles: A Touch of Evil  Derek Malcolm from The Guardian, January 7, 1999

It might seem a trifle eccentric to nominate Orson Welles's A Touch Of Evil above Citizen Kane or The Magnificant Ambersons as one of the best 100 of all time. The film, now substantially restored the way Welles wanted it, is by no means his most ambitious. But it remains a mature, complex and endlessly fascinating example of film noir, a genre that has produced more satisfying movies than most others, precisely because of its seeming lack of pretension.

The film was made in 1958, between the infinitely less satisfactory Confidential Report and Welles's adaptation of Kafka's The Trial. It was long after Kane and Ambersons, either of which should have ensured Welles a lifetime of Hollywood finance but didn't. Like them, it was generally underrated by the American critics of the time, who saw in it merely an eccentric thriller rather than a calculatedly dramatic study of the corruption of power and the difference between morality and justice.

Few seemed aware that the opening crane and tracking shot, which lasts over three minutes, would come to be regarded as one of the most extraordinary examples of Welles's technical mastery. No one, that is, except the French, who immediately proclaimed the film a masterpiece.

Welles was aided with the dark, claustrophobic look of the film by Russell Metty's mastery of noir lighting and, of course, by his own remarkable performance as the oversize Hank Quinlan, the driven police captain who is "a great detective but a lousy cop".

The man is sleazy, cynical and full of hatred, but still oddly likable. He knows that the criminals he wants to bring to justice by whatever means are that in equal measure. There is a Shakespearean ring about his final tragedy, as if Falstaff had been transmogrified in time.

He is merely part and parcel of a corrupt world, and somehow pathetic in that he thinks he is basically on the side of right. The Mexican he frames for murder is, we finally learn, guilty.

The story is set in a rundown border town that was actually Venice, Cali fornia, where Roger Corman was later to shoot The Wild Angels, and populated by as unlikely a cast as Albert Zugsmith, the producer, and Universal can ever have assembled for what was intended to be a B-grade police thriller. With Welles were Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Akim Tamiroff, Dennis Weaver and Mercedes McCambridge.

It says a lot for Welles that he also got such good performances from Charlton Heston, as the upright, rather prim narcotics investigator for the Mexican government, from Janet Leigh, as his timorous new wife, who is almost raped, and from Marlene Dietrich, as the prostitute Tanya, who has those famous last words on Hank: "He was some kind of man."

Dietrich's scenes in the brothel are made to seem as if Sternberg, the circus master of her career, was directing her again.

But if the film is noir at its best, it was made at a time when American directors, especially Welles, still looked towards Europe as much as to their own cinema, and to the German Expressionism of Fritz Lang, the maker of M. The film is shot through a lens that gives great depth of focus and also deforms the perspective. It is the visual key to Quinlan's character throughout. The moral key is quite simple, though worked out in a unique way. It is that Quinlan, betrayed by his obsession and eventually killed by his only friend, should not be able to claim, like Raskolnikov in Crime And Punishment, that he can "march over corpses or wade through blood" to do what's right. Or as Heston says: "A policeman's job is only easy in a police state. That's the whole point, captain ? Who's the boss - the cop or the law?''

Plenty of films may have made this point. But Touch Of Evil (which Welles thought was a silly title) expresses it both more strongly and more delicately than most, because he lets us see both sides of the equa tion. There is a mixture of compassion and irony in all his films, and there's the feeling that the camera is also a character, watching with quizzical curiosity. Cocteau once said of Welles that he was a giant with the face of a child. Like a child, he didn't know the meaning of fear as far as film-making was concerned, and that was substantially why his career was stunted by those who did.

Touch Of Evil could have been hopelessly melodramatic and simple-minded. It remains, however, even after repeated viewings, one of the most sophisticated, multi-faceted and watchable thrillers ever made.

Out of the Shadows | Movie Review | Chicago Reader  Fred Camper, September 17, 1998  

Touch of Evil was released by Universal in 1958 on the bottom half of a double bill, in a version butchered by the studio over Welles's passionate protests. The last Hollywood film by the famous maker of Citizen Kane, it was hardly a success at the box office or with critics, seeming to confirm the story told in Welles's obituaries in 1985 that he never lived up to the promise of his first film. The same story was repeated earlier this year by the American Film Institute's poll determining the 100 "best" American movies: though Citizen Kane was number one, none of Welles's other movies made the list.

By the time I saw Touch of Evil in 1965 it still had virtually no recognition in the United States. Though it earned high praise from Truffaut and Godard in 1958, Americans generally thought it a sleazy crime picture. The faculty adviser to our college film society sponsored a showing of it, then ridiculed the film as not worthy of anyone's attention. The outlet that rented 16-millimeter prints of Touch of Evil classified it as a "budget" film and rented it for just $10.

But within a few years, film societies began renting it often, and by the time a friend of mine at Harvard tried to rent it in the late 60s, the distributor told him it had been upgraded from "budget" to "international film masterpiece"--and the rental was now $35. Still, the version we saw was the butchered original release, which included scenes not shot by Welles and excluded about 15 minutes of his own work; in the mid-70s a longer version, the one shown at a pre-1958 preview, was released. This version, produced months after Welles had been removed from the picture, still disregarded many of his wishes, as indicated in a long memo he wrote to Universal in 1957 after seeing the studio's initial cut. Only now, following Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's publication of excerpts from Welles's memo in a 1992 issue of Film Quarterly, has an attempt been made to produce a version incorporating Welles's 1957 suggestions.

This version makes it even clearer that Touch of Evil is a flat-out all-cylinders-running, eye-popping masterpiece, one of a few monumental 1950s swan songs marking the end of the great epoch of traditional studio filmmaking. It belongs alongside Vertigo and The Searchers and Kiss Me Deadly and Some Came Running as a tribute to the kind of directorial vision that used the machinery of the studio to create a work of pure visual poetry, translating a script into stunningly original compositions and camera movements that unify the narrative and the imagery. Viewers with art-house standards of classy dialogue and acting who gravitate to the obvious stylistic flourishes of Citizen Kane will still prefer that film to the integrated visual field of Touch of Evil. But if you're open to the idea that the visual qualities of depth and perspective are a key part of the language that film speaks, Touch of Evil should offer nearly two hours of ecstatic if uneasy pleasure: together the style and script intertwine the themes of moral corruption and mental breakdown.

Even more than the original, this version of Touch of Evil reveals two stories with no initial connection. In the first, Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston) is a Mexican official investigating drug dealing in a Mexican border town; he's accompanied by his American wife, Susan (Janet Leigh). Vargas has imprisoned a member of the drug-dealing Grandi family, but the man's brother, "Uncle Joe" Grandi (Akim Tamiroff), hatches a bizarre plot to intimidate Vargas by attacking Susan, preventing him from testifying. In the second story, a young shoe clerk in the same town, Manolo Sanchez, may have murdered his girlfriend's rich father, Rudy Linnekar--Linnekar's car explodes--so that he and the girl can live off Linnekar's money. Investigating the case is the corrupt police chief of the American half of the town, Hank Quinlan (Welles himself), since the explosion occurred on the American side; Vargas, correctly assuming that the bomb was planted in Mexico, observes Quinlan's investigation closely. (Those who prefer not to know more of the plot are advised to stop reading now.) Halfway through the film the two stories come together: Vargas suspects that Quinlan has planted evidence against Sanchez and begins investigating the police chief, who quickly unravels. Going on a drunk after 18 years on the wagon, Quinlan conspires with Grandi in his assault on Susan.

Welles, conflating the two stories with Quinlan's search for redemption, creates a labyrinthine film, wedding a common motif in Welles films--that of an oversize character on a quest--to another key Welles theme: self-deception. Except for Vargas and Susan, the characters want to be something they're not. Bitterness fostered by the unsolved murder of his wife three decades earlier makes Quinlan want to be a cop who always gets his man--thus his manufacturing of evidence. It may be that, as he says, he framed "nobody that wasn't guilty," but clearly Welles condemns Quinlan's violations of the law.

Emotionally and structurally, Quinlan lies at the film's heart; every other character is presented in relation to him. His loyal assistant Menzies seems the mirror opposite of Quinlan's strength: Joseph Calleia's superb performance manages to suggest a weak, centerless character just this side of effeminate who also helps expose Quinlan in the end. Vargas and Susan, passionate newlyweds, form an almost depressingly normal contrast to Quinlan's apparent kinkiness, revealed in occasional hints of leering voyeurism, which contrast with his fling years ago with Tanya (Marlene Dietrich), a bordello keeper who doesn't recognize him because he's grown so fat. Uncle Joe, who has his own delusions of grandeur, is a sort of minor-key parody of Quinlan: Susan correctly calls Uncle Joe a "ridiculous lopsided little Caesar"--he doesn't even know when his wig's fallen off. Shorter and less monumental than Quinlan, he still recalls the man's ambitions.

The convergence of the two narratives further underlines Quinlan's centrality. And long takes of characters engaged in parallel if unrelated actions reinforce the way that characters echo one another. Indeed, the film seems a giant web, a fatalistic machine driven by duplicity that brings characters together even when they have no wish to be connected.

One of the new version's chief glories is its revision of the justly famous opening shot. Not only were titles originally printed over it, obscuring much of the action and detracting from the shot's complexity, but Henry Mancini's music crowded out much of the ambient sound Welles had so carefully scored. Mancini's music has been removed from the opening, and now we see and hear this shot in all its power--the planting of the bomb by a shadowy figure, Rudy Linnekar and his girlfriend driving across the border, and Vargas crossing at the same time, seeking "a chocolate soda for my wife." Welles's virtuosic camera (aided by the brilliant cinematographer Russell Metty, whose complex composition and lighting work as well for Welles as they did for Douglas Sirk) moves sideways, cranes up, cranes down, moves in and out, and shifts direction, establishing a maze of movements and interconnections: more than once Vargas and Susan's movement parallels that of Linnekar's car, linking their destiny to his imminent death. The sound design--music emerging from various establishments, growing louder and quieter--reveals the importance of Welles's previous work in radio: he's particularly sensitive to the way sound can evoke space. Here the shifting aural perspectives combine with the shifting camera movements to plunge us into an unstable, nearly chaotic world full of momentary convergences.

Virtually every composition, cut, and camera movement in Touch of Evil can be justified as a visual correlative to the narrative. After Vargas unknowingly leaves Susan at a Grandi-controlled motel, he phones her from a store where he's seen alongside the blind storekeeper, underlining Vargas's own blindness. Welles's camera reduces the physical differences between Quinlan and Grandi at the end of a key scene, first showing them seated together, then pulling back and up, equating them. And Welles presents Quinlan's brutal interrogation of Sanchez in two separate long takes, grouping multiple characters in a cramped apartment, conveying not only the interrogation's claustrophobia but the way that Quinlan's corruption ensnares all around him.

But as masterful as Welles's filming is, what makes Touch of Evil a staggering masterpiece is the global quality of his style, which causes every image to echo almost every other in the film. Using a wide-angle lens both affords deep focus--foreground and background alike are sharp--and seems to stretch or curve the space. Welles's intensely physical approach makes one feel the images to be collages of sensuous surfaces. Together his roving camera, complex lighting, and shifting perspectives seem parts of the filmmaker's quest to forge an intimate contact with every object in the world. Each faintly lit street, every corner of every room, seems plumbed by a camera that wants not only to see but to touch everything within view. Welles's script also reflects this almost polymorphous-perverse desire to incorporate everything. Quinlan's desire even extends to others' sex lives: he twists Vargas's words to make it seem as if Susan has gone on a date with one of Grandi's lackeys, and he shows a similar voyeuristic interest in the affair between Sanchez and Linnekar's daughter.

Welles's style perhaps represents Quinlan's own mental state, an interpretation the film supports. Quinlan is grotesquely fat (already round, Welles had himself padded for the role) because he substitutes candy bars for his previous addiction: "It's either the candy or the hooch," he says. Excessive ingestion of food or liquor can blur the distinctions between oneself and the world; often the addict seeks to recover a kind of primal unity lost since the undifferentiated state of earliest childhood. Welles also gives Quinlan a lost love--his murdered wife--as a metaphor for the impossibility of his quest: lacking her, he seeks to dissolve himself.

But as any alcoholic or overeater knows, such attempts at recovering unity are bound to fail. Wherever Welles's camera roams, it encounters spaces broken by darkness; this brokenness is reflected even in the chaotic layout of the border town (the film was shot in Venice, California--a kitschy environment with its own dislocations). The film's most unified compositions occur in brief scenes at the bordello, whose relatively evenly lit rooms suggest the pleasurable, womblike enclosures to which Quinlan would like to return. But he cannot: as Tanya warns him, her "chili" might be too hot for him--a warning his obesity makes plausible.

The film's most pivotal moment, combining its dual themes of the wish for unity and its inevitable breakdown, is a cut very near the end. Menzies calls to Quinlan from outside Tanya's, trying to lure him out and secure his confession on a concealed tape recorder. As Quinlan emerges, we see him from the extreme low angle Welles has already used for him several times--most notably the first time we see him, emerging from a car like a suddenly congealing giant blob. Such images, further exaggerating his belly, make Quinlan seem both powerful and grotesque. Suddenly we cut to a reverse angle shot from behind Quinlan, with the camera rising above him as he leaves Tanya's and plunges into the night and his own doom. This shift seems to twist and turn and reshape space, as the curves created by the wide-angle lenses used in both shots merge at the point of the cut. This is the last of the film's unifying moments, however, and it also suddenly dwarfs Quinlan, placing us outside his psyche for the first time.

In the extraordinary final scene, the camera gives up its striving to unify space. Instead we proceed past disjunct shapes--bridges, canals, oil derricks, drainage ditches, garbage--all of which seem metaphors for the breakdown of Quinlan's mind. An absurdly phallic oil derrick seen from below, for example, is the perfect sign of his failed ambitions as he's faced with the imminent unraveling of his identity as an honest cop. A passionate quest for a lost unity with the sensual world--accompanied almost from the beginning with an acknowledgment of that quest's impossibility, mirroring the larger themes of love and its loss, life and death--is the outsize true subject of a low-budget crime film, ironically labeled by a contemporary Variety review "not a 'big' picture."

When Rosenbaum published a large portion of Welles's memo in Film Quarterly six years ago, there were already three extant versions of Touch of Evil--the original release, the preview, and the version now generally available on video (a melange of the first two). The memo made many suggestions that were never incorporated in any of these, and the possibility of producing a film closer to Welles's express intent attracted the attention of producer Rick Schmidlin, who discussed it with Rosenbaum and interested both Universal and the Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch. (The complete memo, plus Welles's shooting script and other documents related to the film, will be published by the University of California Press, no earlier than the end of 1999.) Engaging Rosenbaum as a consultant and utilizing such materials as scripts, cue sheets, and production reports as well as the memo, they followed Welles's instructions as far as they could. In the minutes following the opening take, for example, the two stories are now intercut; most of the other alterations are smaller. But in Murch's words, "Every single suggestion from the memo [made] the film better."

The commendable result not only plays better than the earlier versions, it looks more like a Welles film. Unlike other "new versions" of masterpieces purportedly closer to the director's intent--a version of Cukor's A Star Is Born, for example, that replaces missing footage with black-and-white stills, a device utterly contrary to Cukor's style--this one does not read like a film scholar's tract or an attempt to salvage wreckage. It's simply a great film made greater. My only reservation is that the print looked a bit soft, not as sharply focused as earlier versions.

But it's important to understand what this new version is not. It's not a "restoration" or a "director's cut." In addition, the memo was written, if one can take Welles's word for it, not to produce a film more to his own taste but to create a clearer story line and better film on the studio's terms. It might be that Welles was prevaricating to get the changes he wanted, but the elaborate reasons he gives for the changes do argue for simply playing better to a typical audience. Further, Welles never saw the results of his suggestions, and he was known to revise even more than most after suggested edits were made. It seems almost certain that if Universal had let Welles back into the editing room, the final film would have been quite different from this version.

Finally, I would argue--and Rosenbaum agrees--that the earlier versions should remain available: typically they're eliminated when a new version is issued. If you want to see A Star Is Born today, for example, you get the black-and-white stills along with the 'Scope and color movie whether you like it or not. In particular, the original release print of Touch of Evil is a historical artifact, a record of what opposing forces--cinematically illiterate studio bosses and a brilliant filmmaker--produced together as well as a record of what millions of people saw. Welles may be the author of the film I love, but for better or worse, Universal is the coauthor, though not as much today as in 1958.

BFI | Sight & Sound | DVD: Touch of Evil ()  Brad Stevens, December 2011

 

Bright Lights Film Journal  Touch of Psycho? Welles' Influence on Hitchcock, by John W. Hall and Gary Morris, September 1995

 

Orson Welles at 100: Touch of Evil (1958)  Jake Hinkson from Criminal Element

 

Touch of Evil - Turner Classic Movies  Frank Miller

 

Notes  TCM

 

Alternate Versions  TCM

 

The Greatest Films - comprehensive analysis of classic US film  Tim Dirks

 

Parallax View [Robert C. Cumbow]  Touch of Evil: Crossing the Line, originally written in 1998, before the re-edited version from producer Rick Schmidlin and editor Walter Murch, and is based on the 109-minute version that was rescued from the vaults in 1975, October 3, 2008

 

Parallax View [Sean Axmaker]  The Making, Unmaking and Reclamation of Touch of Evil, October 9, 2008

 

Parallax View [Richard T. Jameson]  written in connection with the November 16, 1971 showing of Touch of Evil in the University of Washington Office of Lectures & Concerts Autumn Quarter Film Series, The Cinema of Orson Welles, February 19, 2011

 

Film Noir of the Week  David N. Meyer

 

Film Court  Lawrence Russell

 

Slate [David Edelstein]

 

DVD Journal  D.K. Holm

 

Cine Outsider [Camus]

 

"Touch of Evil" - Movies - Salon.com  Michael Sragow, November 1, 2000

 

The Best Tracking Shots of All Time

 

A Touch of Evil  Gerald Peary

 

Ballad of a fat man   Charles Taylor from Salon

 

Big House Film  Roger Westcombe

 

Foster on Film - Film Noir

 

Movie Reviews UK  Damian Cannon

 

Only the Cinema [Ed Howard]  an essay in photos

 

AboutFilm.com Carlo Cavagna

 

VideoVista  Gary Couzens

 

DVD Verdict  Barrie Maxwell

 

DVDTown [John J. Puccio]

 

DVD Review e-zine  Guido Henkel

 

DVD Talk  Jeremy Kleinman

 

DVD Savant  Glenn Erickson, 50th Anniversary Edition

 

DVD Talk - 50th Anniversary Edition [Jamie S. Rich]

 

DVD Verdict- 50th Anniversary Edition [Tom Becker]

 

Blu-rayDefinition.com - UK Blu-ray [Brandon A. DuHamel]

 

DVD Verdict (Blu-ray) (Region 2) [Paul Pritchard]

 

AVForums (Blu-ray) [Cas Harlow]

 

Blu-Ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]  Restored version

 

James Bowman

 

Dragan Antulov

 

Ted Prigge

 

Dennis Schwartz

 

Harvey S. Karten

 

A Film Canon [Billy Stevenson]

 

Nitrate Online (capsule)  Eddie Cockrell

 

Nitrate Online (Capsule)  Carrie Gorringe

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Movie-Vault.com  Aaron Graham

 

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young] Viennale '08 capsules

 

Edwin Jahiel

 

Classic Movie Guide [A.J. Hakari]

 

Classic Film Guide

 

Variety  Todd McCarthy

 

TV Guide

 

Touch of Evil: No 2 best crime film of all time  David Thomson from The Guardian, October 17, 2010

 

Philadelphia City Paper  Cindy Fuchs

 

Baltimore City Paper  Andy Markowitz

 

Albuquerque Alibi [Devin D. O'Leary]

 

Austin Chronicle  Marc Savlov

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Bob Graham]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Peter Stack]

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Howard Thompson, also seen here:  The New York Times

 

The New York Times  A.O. Scott

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles): Opening Shot - TCM CLASSIC ...  YouTube (3:20)

 

THE TRIAL                                                               A                     100

France  (119 mi)  1962

 

The Trial Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London

The blackest of Welles' comedies, an apocalyptic version of Kafka that renders the grisly farce of K's labyrinthine entrapment in the mechanisms of guilt and responsibility as the most fragmented of expressionist films noirs. Perkins' twitchy 'defendant' shifts haplessly through the discrete dark spaces of Welles' ad hoc locations (Zagreb and Paris, including the deserted Gare d'Orsay), taking no comfort from Welles' fable-spinning Advocate, before contriving the most damning of all responses to the chaos around him. The remarkable prologue was commissioned from pioneer pinscreen animators Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago   Brian Welesko

Casting a glib and voluble Anthony Perkins in the role of Josef K., a man compelled to court by a nebulous governmental authority who is ignorant of any crime, provides for a decidedly strange and personal adaptation of Kafka's unfinished story. At times a confounding film, Orson Welles' loose adaptation offers an unsettling and haunting expression of the modern experience. By putting K--and by extension the audience--into byzantine governmental systems, nightmarish and anonymous spaces, and contact with people sometimes better described as moving bodies, Welles "confronts the corruptions and self-deceptions of the contemporary world." Iconic images abound through Welles' aesthetic mastery, using sets and later (when the money ran out) abandoned locales in Paris, Zagreb, and Rome; the scale of an office floor the size of an airplane hangar is astonishing. Welles himself--also appearing as K's lawyer--is monumental in scale as well, looming over the picture in all his anxiety and discontent.

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

Orson Welles called it the best movie he ever made. No, it's not Citizen Kane (1941), it's The Trial (1962), which has finally been released on an essential DVD. Welles always claimed that Kane was the only film over which he had complete control, but The Trial came close. He had control over every aspect except the music, which to my ears, turned out great.

The Trial is based on Franz Kafka's story of a man named K. who is charged guilty with a crime that is never explained to us. Not even K. knows what he has done. The great thing about The Trial is that it's not as grim as the Kafka. In fact, it's quite funny. That's thanks in part to Anthony Perkins who plays K. in a nervous comic performance that equals his Norman Bates in Psycho (1960). Early in the film, Perkins wakes up to find dark-suited men in his room. They start poking around accusingly. They pull up a carpet to find four holes where a dentist's chair used to sit. They make a note about the "ovular" shape on the floor. Perkins explains it to them and tries to tell them that there is no such word as "ovular", but his squirming only makes him sound more guilty. And yet the scene is funny. According to legend, Perkins would often hear Welles' booming voice from behind the camera, "He's guilty as hell!" Welles himself is on board as a reclusive lawyer who reluctantly agrees to take on K's case but doesn't ever help much.

The Trial plays closer to an actual nightmare than just about any other film I've seen. It's filmed with Welles' usual gorgeous deep-focus black and white photography. K. moves from room to room with no seeming connection between the them. Urgent errands fall by the wayside as K. is detained or stalled by more weird characters. Even his escape from the labyrinthine justice building doesn't help much, as he doesn't seem to be able to escape to anywhere friendly.

The Trial is truly affecting in all the ways that make a successful movie. It stuns your eyes and ears with its imaginative playfulness, and it swirls around inside your brain , taking bits and pieces from your own personal nightmares and sharing them with K. It's one of Welles' greatest achievements and should not be missed.

The Trial  Mike D’Angelo from Time Out New York

When Steven Soderbergh unexpectedly won the Palme d'or at Cannes for his first feature, sex, lies and videotape, the opening words of his acceptance speech were, "Well, I guess it's all downhill from here." No doubt he was thinking of the sad fate of Orson Welles, who made the grievous error of creating one of the medium's enduring masterpieces his first time at bat, thus ensuring that everybody would see a steady decline thereafter, whether one existed or not. "Say what you will," Welles insisted at one point, "but The Trial is the best film I have ever made." He was mistaken, of course—that honor does, in fact, go to Citizen Kane, no matter how tired we may be of seeing it cited as the Greatest Movie of All Time—but The Trial deserves more attention than it's hitherto received.

Many of you are probably under the impression that you've already seen Welles's The Trial. I certainly thought that I'd seen it, several years ago, at the East Village's now-defunct revival mecca Theatre 80 St. Mark's, which specialized in beat-up 16mm prints. Already a fan of Kafka's novel, I found the film underwhelming, almost amateurish, with a muddy, indistinct visual scheme and barely audible sound design. "Too bad the poor guy didn't have some money to work with," I thought. "He might have had something here."

Seeing The Trial again, in a 35mm print restored from the original camera negative (discovered in 1995 in the closet of a midtown office building), was a revelatory experience—so much so that I found it hard to believe that it was the same picture. Largely faithful to Kafka's tale of existential dread (the story follows the travails of a meek bureaucrat, played in the film by Perkins, who's arrested for an unspecified and ultimately symbolic crime), Welles's adaptation replaces Joseph K.'s interior monologue with brooding, nightmarish images, now truly visible for the first time in decades. Alternating punishing facial close-ups with elaborate tracking shots through gargantuan, dilapidated sets (including what is now the Musée d'Orsay), Welles expertly evokes the feeling of pervasive paranoia that permeates the book; shots that had looked like little more than shadowy clutter in the print I saw back in '92 now take on an air of sharp menace.

One mildly frustrating aspect of The Trial hasn't changed, however: The entire movie is still rather shoddily dubbed, presumably because it was cheaper to forgo synchronized sound. Perkins, in particular, gives an energetic vocal performance that seems at odds with his more relaxed demeanor on-screen; the syllables you hear match the movements his lips are making, but the sense of disjunction remains powerfully disconcerting. Still, the film's greatness would be evident even if the sound were turned off entirely. Just don't go in expecting, you know, Citizen Kane or something.

The Trial | Peter Bogdanovich - indieWIRE  August 24, 2011

Toward the end of 1968, when I first met Orson Welles, he was so remarkably disarming that I had the nerve to tell him the one film of his I didn’t really like (at that time) was his 1962 adaptation of Franz Kafka’s famous, surrealistically inclined novel, THE TRIAL (available on DVD). And to please me (I would eventually find out), he pretended to agree, but within a year or so, he came closer to the truth: “It’s very personal for me...much closer to my own feelings about everything than any other picture...”

Right at the start, Welles spells out the mood of the film, which, he explains in his narration, has “the logic of a dream, a nightmare...” and, indeed, no other picture ever made has quite so pervasively or so hauntingly captured that terrifying feeling of unnamable horror. The leading character K (exceptionally played by Anthony Perkins soon after his Psycho success) is awakened at the beginning by two police detectives who proceed to ask him a series of insinuating questions, making him aware that he is not only suspected of some terrible, never-named crime, but also that he is feeling and acting inordinately guilty for a person professing innocence. Welles said he himself used to have recurring dreams of having murdered someone, waking in a sweat, wondering where it had happened.

Shot on real locations all over Europe——Prague, Munich, Paris——the film is as enthralling as it is unsettling, and was easily 40 years ahead of its time: The frightening sensation of dread it produces is far more in keeping with the dizzying, unbalanced 21st century than the early ‘60s before even the J.F.K. assassination. Welles smoothly plays the Advocate, a silky, slippery, God-like lawyer K goes to for help, and the picture’s evident distrust of the legal profession and of the easy corruptibility of the Law reminds one of Shakespeare’s famous line: “First, kill all the lawyers!”

Orson told me that he and Perkins, as well as the brilliant international supporting cast, which includes Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Akim Tamiroff, Madeleine Robinson and Suzanne Flon, had an often hilarious time shooting the movie, breaking up over the dank coldness of the inexorably ominous tale. I sat next to Welles at a black-tie screening of The Trial in Paris in the mid-70s——the only time I saw one of his films with him and an audience——and understood through his very amused reactions the kind of deeply black humor the picture contains.

But then Welles was nearing 50 when he made the movie, and I was still in my ‘20s and early ‘30s when we were talking about it: I’m afraid one’s life experiences need to pile up, in their sometimes bewildering and unfortunate ways, before the picture’s real effectiveness can be fully appreciated. It is a profoundly disturbing film, and one of the most uncompromising, relentlessly chilling looks at the awful ambiguities of life in the late 20th century.

The opening fable which Welles narrates——about an accused man and his fruitless lifelong struggle with the Law (dramatized through a unique series of pin-shadow illustrations done by a Russian couple Orson found)——is by itself among the most darkly resonant sequences ever put on film, all the more so because there has never been heard in movies a more eloquent storyteller’s voice than Orson Welles’s (remember, he first became a star on 30’s radio), nor have there been many American film artists of his complexity or depth.

The Trial - TCM.com  Jeff Stafford

You wouldn't think that the existential and often ambiguous dream-fiction of Austrian novelist Franz Kafka would translate easily to the screen but that hasn't stopped filmmakers from attempting to visually recreate his troubling tales about modern man. Since the early sixties, there have been more than twenty film adaptations based on his novels and stories and even a few original concoctions, such as Steven Soderbergh's bizarre black comedy, Kafka (1991) and the amusing spoof, Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life (1993), which won an Oscar in the short subjects category. Actor/director Maximilian Schell filmed a version of The Castle in 1968 and there have been movie versions of Metamorphosis, Amerika, and The Penal Colony. Without a doubt, one of the most successful adaptations of a Kafka novel is The Trial (1963) a.k.a. Le Proces, directed by Orson Welles. No less visually stunning than Welles' masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941), The Trial depicts the nightmarish existence of Joseph K (Anthony Perkins), a clerk who is accused of an unspecified crime, and then begins an elaborate search for justice within a labyrinth of office buildings populated by dehumanized bureaucrats.

The film project began with the father-son producing team of Michel and Alexander Salkind who first worked with Welles on their production of Austerlitz (1960), a historic epic directed by Abel Gance. A few years later, when they offered Welles a part in Taras Bulba (1962), their discussions led to an offer for Welles to direct a literary classic from a list of over a hundred titles. In This is Orson Welles by Peter Bogdanovich (HarperPerennial), Welles said, "They had Kafka's The Trial on the list, and I said I wanted to do The Castle because I liked it better, but they persuaded me to do The Trial. I had to do a book - couldn't make them do an original....They thought The Trial was public domain, and then had to pay for it - but that's another story."

Like most films Welles directed after he fled the studio system in Hollywood, The Trial encountered numerous production problems. Filming was scheduled to begin in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, but was soon abandoned for lack of funds. Welles recalled, "I spent months designing the sets for all the interiors. We were going to shoot the actual big office and the streets of Prague and Zagreb for the last walk with the murderers. And during the time we were in Zagreb, my sets were to be built in the studios. The art director who was to realize my designs had made all the blueprints, everything was ready to go, and, the night before we were to leave for Yugoslavia, Mr. Salkind....said there was no money to build any sets of any kind." But what appeared to be a huge setback for the film turned out to be a lucky break for the director. Welles said that "I was living here (in Paris), at the Hotel Meurisse - it was late at night - wandering around in the sitting room, trying to figure out how to shoot without sets, this story in particular. And the moon is a very important thing for me, and I looked out of the window and saw two full moons. And then I realized that they were the two clock faces of the Gare d'Orsay glowing in the night, and it was really a sign. I went down at four in the morning and got in a taxi and went to the Gare d'Orsay and went in. And from four in the morning until dawn, I wandered around the deserted old railway station and found everything I needed for the picture."

While securing the once famous French train station as the main set was a coup for Welles, there were other production headaches. For a sequence filmed on Mount Vesuvius near Naples, Anthony Perkins and Welles almost tumbled into the crater trying to get a shot. Scheduling restrictions and lack of money also played havoc with Welles' preferred choice of players and when he couldn't find a suitable actor to play Hassler, the defense attorney, he took on the role himself. He also had to loop the dialogue, music, and sound effects for the entire film in post-production.

After a less than favorable opening at the Venice Film Festival in 1962, The Trial has since grown in stature among film scholars over the years and even the director admitted that it "is the best film I ever made." Anthony Perkins, once considered an odd choice as Joseph K, is perfect in the role, conveying the character's paranoia and mounting desperation. In preparation for the part, Perkins was given some artistic motivation by Welles: "You are pinned to the wall with a thumbtack, you are like a sick moth." Throughout the film, Welles stays remarkably faithful to Kafka's novel with a few exceptions, such as the climax that ends with a nuclear explosion instead of a stabbing. Yet, in the end, Welles differs from Kafka in how he views Joseph K: "He is a little bureaucrat. I consider him guilty....He belongs to a guilty society; he collaborates with it."

The Trial • Senses of Cinema  Temenuga Trifonova, February 7, 2006

 

Orson Welles' 'The Trial' Is a Study in Transcendental ...  Orson Welles' 'The Trial' Is a Study in Transcendental Sociology, by Andrew Grossman from Pop Matters, November 7, 2013

 

Orson Welles at 100: The Trial (1962) by Jake Hinkson  Criminal Element

 

DVD Times  Mike Sutton

 

CineScene [Howard Schumann]

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk Chris

 

culturevulture.net  Arthur Lazere

 

Q Network Film Desk  James Kendrick

 

DVD Savant  Glenn Erickson

 

The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review [Richard Scheib]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Critical-Film.com  Scott Wood

 

The Spinning Image  Graeme Clark

 

CineScene.com Chris Dashiell)

 

Movie Vault [Vadim Rizov]

 

A hard K's night  Andrew Pulver from The Guardian, July 10, 2004

 

San Francisco Examiner [Wesley Morris]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Edward Guthmann]

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

DVDBeaver - Review[Brent D. Wilson]

 

The Trial: Before The Law - YouTube  Opening sequence (2:45)

 

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (Campanadas a Medianoche)                     A                     99

aka:  Falstaff

France  Spain  Switzerland  (119 mi)  1966

 

There live not three good men unhanged in England;

And one of them is fat and grows old.

—Falstaff, from Act II, Henry IV Part 1

 

Welles’s quintessential work, a consolidation of 5 Shakespearian plays, including all references to Falstaff, Welles’s favorite literary character, from Henry IV Parts I and II, Henry V, Richard II, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, all somehow held together by narrated excerpts from Holinshed’s Chronicles, a comprehensive description of British history that was first published in 1577.  If ever there were a character Orson Welles was born to play, it is Shakespeare’s big, bold and bawdy rogue, Falstaff, a lover of wine, women, and song (“Come, sing me a bawdy song!”), also of spinning yarns of such exaggerated proportions into spontaneous works of art, while he was a jolly, fat old man, “a fool and a jester,” with a wit and gargantuan spirit that all but overshadowed his true cowardice.  He was the Prince of Wales’s drinking companion in bawdy houses until the prince would become a king, at which time Falstaff was banished from the kingdom, causing him to die of heartbreak right there on the spot.  His love interest was played by none other than Jeanne Moreau.  Chimes is notable for its famous Battle of Shrewsbury sequence, which combines extraordinary realism with humor, as Falstaff himself is hiding behind trees or wandering aimlessly alone in the middle of the battlefield which lays strewn with corpses, all the while taking credit for the dead, also for the beauty of its language, allowing John Gielgud as King Henry IV to rival Welles’s Falstaff for legendary monologues, also for a truly remarkable Mistress Quickly, the innkeeper, by Dame Margaret Rutherford, who despite being the butt of all his jokes, loves Falstaff as a kind of human wonderment, dazzled by his every living breath.  The film’s flaws, especially the poor sound synchronization, due to lack of funds, are among the worst ever experienced and remain intact even after a digital restoration (though archivists are at work in a full preservation and 4K restoration that could take years), and while irritatingly noticeable throughout, are overcome by the breadth of this film’s achievements, which finds Welles most at ease in any of his roles, by the extraordinary mix of sound and music with spectacular sets, superb imagery, and by the magnificence of the actor’s command of the language.  At times hilarious, breathtaking, and heartbreaking, it’s ultimately a tragic work that is one of the least seen in the Welles repertoire due to copyright issues and the shoddy quality of the prints available through the years.  However, it belongs in the pantheon as one of cinema’s crowning achievements. 

 

While Welles was fascinated by Shakespeare from an early age, playing Richard III in his own three and a half hour production of an amalgam of Shakespeare’s historical plays in high school, calling it The Winter of Our Discontent, playing Tybalt in a Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet at age 19, and he was hailed as a theatrical prodigy at the age of 20 with his all-black production of Macbeth in Harlem, which became known as Voodoo Macbeth, while at the same time adapting and performing Hamlet on CBS Radio’s Columbia Workshop, yet at age 22 he also directed, starred and produced his own adaptation of Julius Caesar that broke all Broadway performance records for the play.  At 23 his career was jump-started by the panic, controversy, and overall hysteria generated from his infamous Mercury Theatre radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, where many listeners mistook the theatrics of radio theater for a real live alien invasion taking place in their midst, but the extent of the widespread panic was largely fabricated or greatly exaggerated, either way confirming his celebrity status.  By the time he was 25, he produced a Broadway stage adaptation of nine Shakespeare plays called Five Kings, though it was something of a flop, where according to the Welles biographer Charles Highman, Five Kings | Orson Welles, Welles was drinking heavily while also balancing his sexual exploits, opening without ever successfully completing a dress rehearsal.  As might be expected, the play was “long and unwieldy,” with Welles insisting upon two intermissions, so the three and a half hour play didn’t end until 1 am, well past the endurable limits of most patrons.  More than two decades later in 1960, Welles revived this play in Ireland, where it was his final onstage performance.  Playing Falstaff was not only his lifelong ambition (among so many other projects), so was turning this play into a film, writing an extraordinary screenplay, something of a major achievement by itself, taking sixteen hours of stage time and turning it into two hours of cinema, radically reinterpreting the source material by altering the time lines, shortening the scenes, and restructuring the plays, borrowing lines from different plays and placing them side by side, offering an entirely different context by thoroughly examining the plays through the perspective of a secondary character, Sir John “Jack” Falstaff, creating what is essentially a new story, one that is similar yet never existed in the annals of Shakespeare.  While struggling to get financing for the film, which was made for about $800,000, he lied to Spanish producer Emiliano Piedra, claiming they were instead shooting Robert Louis Stevenson’s action adventure Treasure Island in various Spanish locations throughout Spain in 1964-65, premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966, where a jury led by Sophia Loren awarded a shared Grand Prize to Pietro Germi’s Italian sex comedy SIGNORE & SIGNORI and Claude Lelouche’s lushly photographed romance A MAN AND A WOMAN, handing Welles’s film two awards, a 20th Anniversary Prize and a Technical Grand Prize. 

 

Shallow:  Jesus, the days that we have seen.  Ha, Sir John?  Said I well? 

 

Falstaff:  We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Robert Shallow.

 

Shallow:  That we have, that we have, that we have.  In faith, Sir John, we have.  Jesus, the days we have seen. 

 

—opening dialogue, Chimes at Midnight - Page 32 - Google Books Result

 

With this opening prelude, Falstaff (Orson Welles) and his friend Justice Shallow (the high pitched voice of Alan Webb) make their way through a snowy landscape, arriving at the Boar’s Head Tavern where they warm themselves to a glowing fire and recount the tales of their lives (a scene that repeats itself later in the film, chatting about friends who are old or dead), leading into an unforgettable title sequence, with returning foot soldiers solemnly making their way back from distant battlefields in a long disheveled line, given an especially austere look, with an ill wind blowing the helmet off one soldier, revealing a chilling image of soldiers staring straight at the camera, bending over and laying down their weapons, while behind them hanged men dangle in the background on scaffolds built especially for the occasion.  This searing image speaks volumes, as public hangings are a cold reminder of the harsh consequences of the law under King Henry IV, where England is a police state ruled by terror, sending the military into foreign lands to levy justice, while quelling any unrest by summary executions.  Following the image of a towering castle, a narrator, none other than Sir Ralph Richardson (who was himself a legend at playing Falstaff onstage), concisely summarizes how we got to this point using Holinshed’s Chronicles, explaining Henry IV is a usurper who seized the throne, succeeding the reign of Richard II, who was murdered in the year 1400, while Richard’s rightful heir to the throne, Edmund Mortimer, was kidnapped and remains imprisoned by Welsh rebels.  Seeking immediate remedy, Mortimer’s cousins, Northumberland (José Nieto), Northumberland’s son Henry Percy, also known as Hotspur (Norman Rodway), and Worcester (Fernando Rey) call upon the king to have Mortimer released, where only Hotspur dares to raise his voice to King Henry IV (John Gielgud), seen sitting high atop the throne a good twenty feet above his subjects, with soldiers lining the walls in a cavernous, stone cathedral-like setting with light streaming through the windows illuminating the king, but they are instead callously turned away.  In anger at their rebuke, the three embark upon a plot to overthrow the king.  Given the circumstances described by the narrator, the viewer is quick to mistrust the actions of the king, placing a heavy burden of doubt on the legitimacy of Henry’s rule, setting the tone by providing a moral vacuum for everything that follows.  Who better to fill that void than Falstaff, who is quickly seen entertaining the drunken rabble at Boar’s Head, where the King’s son, Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), heir to the throne, spends his time under Falstaff’s patriarchal tutelage carousing with prostitutes, petty thieves, beggars, and other ne’er do wells, much to the dismay of the king. 

 

The Life Of William Shakespeare: The Classic Unabridged ...  Sidney Lee on The Life Of William Shakespeare: The Classic Unabridged Shakespeare Biography

 

The knight’s unfettered indulgence in sensual pleasures, his exuberant mendacity, and his love of his own ease, are purged of offence by his colossal wit and jollity, while the contrast between his old age and his unreverend way of life supplies that tinge of melancholy which is unseparable from the highest manifestations of humour. The Elizabethan public recognised the triumphant success of the effort, and many of Falstaff’s telling phrases, with the names of his foils, Justice Shallow and Silence, at once took root in popular speech. Shakespeare’s purely comic power culminated in Falstaff; he may be claimed as the most humorous figure in literature. 

 

No other literary figure provokes as much emotional range as Falstaff (whose only rival in Shakespeare is the much younger and more melancholic Hamlet), from his male bluster and moral transgressions to his comic wit, buffoonish pride, mastery of language, passion for living, displaying a cheerfulness that is endlessly contagious, where his one man theatrical show is endlessly engaging throughout the ages, never allowing himself to be outsmarted in verbal sparring, yet ultimately he becomes such a tragic figure.  To that end, a rotund and oversized Welles has a field day with this larger than life character, immortalized by his performance on celluloid, where every line is heavily saturated with comic satire, much of it spoken at breakneck speed, where the man rises to every insult and comic jab, never losing faith in either himself or his prowess for language, becoming a legendary figure before our appreciative eyes, where we can’t wait to hear what he says next.  Surrounding himself with a ragtag group of outcasts and moral derelicts, the leader of a dissolute crew, he is the king of his own castle at telling tall tales with hilarious barroom exaggerations that grow even greater after every drink, always crying poverty to Mistress Quickly (Dame Margaret Rutherford), while she continually reminds him of his outstanding debt before pouring him another round.  Prince Hal, on the other hand, is a magnificent straight man, matching him drink for drink, feeding him endless possibilities to outwit the rank and file, whose level-headed assuredness in himself is not lost to either Falstaff or the audience, as his dexterity with the English language shows supreme confidence in himself.  Considering the times, Falstaff was like a walking professor, as he was consumed by the barbarous treachery that exists in nobility, making a mockery of it whenever he could, where clearly virtue was a concept in name only, as there was none to be seen in British royalty.  Falstaff preferred the more commonplace pleasures of eating, sleeping, drinking, and fornication, along with any other indulgences to be found, where moral excess was his middle name.  Falstaff considered himself a free man, and was certainly able to speak freely, yet his real thrill was liberating himself from the wretched society of the times, the nobility from which Prince Hal was spawned.  Both despised the pretense and moral hypocrisy of the royal court, taking the high ground while undercutting any opposition at the knees, yet as we come to learn, Falstaff’s freedom was not absolute.  While he revels in his marvelous ability to hold Prince Hal’s rapt attention, loving him as he would his own son, he’s the real deal as a progenitor of ideas and knowledge, not an ounce of counterfeit, where he thrives on his grandiose personality, yet Hal remains a mirror image in concept only, as he warns Falstaff of what awaits him, that he will have to reject him and his lifestyle one day, as he is, after all, the prince in waiting, “I know you all, and will awhile uphold / The unyoked humor of your idleness.”  But these thoughts fall on deaf ears, producing only a sad smile from Falstaff, and not one of awareness or recognition, yet somehow we know these two are bound together, no matter what fate has in store for them. 

 

The film’s central dynamic is Falstaff’s relationship with Hal, who avoids service to his king by keeping company with Falstaff, who clearly loves him and lavishes him with affection, accepting him as he is, something his own father is incapable of doing.  Nonetheless this friendship will be challenged, as Hal seems incapable of reciprocating in kind, remaining non-committal, where a good deal of the early horseplay in the tavern is at the expense of Falstaff, playing jokes on him while eagerly waiting for his exaggerated reaction.  While there are moments of delightful comedy, there is also an undertone of cruelty behind much of the humor, making the aging and oversized Falstaff an easy target.  Insults are hurled at him not to elicit audience sympathy, but rather to have a laugh at Falstaff’s expense.  When they agree to disguise themselves to rob a group of traveling pilgrims known to be carrying cash in the nearby forest, Hal plays a trick on Falstaff and steals the loot from him in yet another disguise, causing him to run away in a panic.  But to hear Falstaff boast of his heroics in the tavern afterwards, supposedly fending off a handful of scoundrels with his sword, with the number growing by the minute, with Hal ultimately exposing his fabrication as a pathetic ruse, there’s a building feeling of making fun of the fat guy, where it’s easy to laugh at fools who have been stripped of all dignity and any ounce of self respect, and while there’s a lighthearted tone about it, there’s also something deeply flawed and tragic about the character that must have drawn Welles to playing this role, adding a kind of childlike innocence to his mirth.  While Falstaff cheats nearly everyone he encounters, offering bluff and bravado as a means of garnering his way into our hearts, yet there’s an inherent good nature behind his acts, as perhaps friendship, having a drink and a good laugh, was all he ever desired.  Unlike Hal, he never had designs on becoming a king.  Hal, on the other hand, leads a dual life, one drinking and carousing with Falstaff and his merry men, and another under the scathing watch of his father, the king, who continually chastises him for wasting his youth with villainous company.  The height of the comic fervor takes place when Falstaff and Hal engage in a bit of roleplaying, each one absurdly playing the king, creating a mad flourish of a play within a play, with Falstaff, wearing a pot on his head as the crown, lecturing Hal as only a father can, bringing the house down in laughter before ruminating on the many virtues of that fine fellow, Falstaff.  Yet when Hal assumes the role of king, he berates Falstaff, describing him as “That villainous abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan,” accusing him of iniquities, even threatening him with banishment, with Falstaff (as Hal) pleading for his defense, suggesting he could get rid of anyone else but Falstaff, “Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.”  At some point, the laughs subside and seriousness takes hold, where the play stops being a play and becomes something else in earnest, as in this story, Falstaff, in all his enormity, is the entire universe, where he is a stand-in for all of humanity. 

 

The appeal of Falstaff is described by English literary scholar A. C. Bradley, from Harold Bloom’s book William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare - Page 142 - Google Books Result

 

The bliss of freedom gained in humour is the essence of Falstaff. His humour is not directed only or chiefly against obvious absurdities; he is the enemy of everything that would interfere with his ease, and therefore of anything serious, and especially of everything respectable and moral. For these things impose limits and obligations, and make us the subjects of old father antic the law, and the categorical imperative, and our station and its duties, and conscience, and reputation, and other people's opinions, and all sorts of nuisances. I say he is therefore their enemy; but I do him wrong; to say that he is their enemy implies that he regards them as serious and recognizes their power, when in truth he refuses to recognize them at all. They are to him absurd; and to reduce a thing ad absurdam is to reduce it to nothing and to walk about free and rejoicing. This is what Falstaff does with all the would-be serious things of life, sometimes only by his words, sometimes by his actions too. He will make truth appear absurd by solemn statements, which he utters with perfect gravity and which he expects nobody to believe; and honor, by demonstrating that it cannot set a leg, and that neither the living nor the dead can possess it; and law, by evading all the attacks of its highest representative and almost forcing him to laugh at his own defeat; and patriotism, by filling his pockets with the bribes offered by competent soldiers who want to escape service, while he takes in their stead the halt and maimed and jailbirds; and duty, by showing how he labours in his vocation—of thieving; and courage, alike by mocking at his own capture of Colevile and gravely claiming to have killed Hotspur; and war, by offering the Prince his bottle of sack when he is asked for a sword; and religion, by amusing himself with remorse at odd times when he has nothing else to do, and the fear of death, by maintaining perfectly untouched, in the face of imminent peril and even while he feels the fear of death, the very same power of dissolving it in persiflage that he shows when he sits at  ease in his inn. These are the wonderful achievements which he performs, not with the sourness of a cynic, but with the gaiety of a boy. And, therefore, we praise him, we laud him, for he offends none but the virtuous and denies that life is real or life is earnest, and delivers us from the oppression of such nightmares, and lifts us into the atmosphere of perfect freedom.

 

The centerpiece, however, and the turning point in the film, is the Battle of Shrewsbury, the only battle sequence ever staged by Welles throughout his entire career, and the moment when Henry and Hotspur’s quarrel comes to a head.  Though it starts out amusingly enough, with pomp and a parade of soldiers marched through the middle of town, including Falstaff, who is bid a tearful farewell from Doll Tearsheet (Jeanne Moreau) waving from the window, as they round up all able-bodied men ready for war, with Falstaff immediately securing bribes from draft dodgers, where knights clad in armor are lowered by ropes from tree branches and placed directly onto horses, except for Falstaff, who is too heavy, despite a team of men pulling on the ropes, and unfortunately crashes to the ground, content apparently to walk into battle, seen raising his sword in the direction of the enemy.  The prelude to battle is given an ominous tone, where there is an exchange of last minute demands that are angrily refused, with two sides at opposite ends of a barren field with hovering fog looming between them.  Technically innovative and brilliantly edited, arguably the greatest sequence he ever filmed, rousing music plays as troops charge at one another, where there is a combination of archers, knights on horseback, and warriors on foot all clashing at once, where the moment blows are exchanged, the thundering sound of hooves give way to the brutal sounds of clanking armor, with men being pulled off their horses and bludgeoned, with spears flying through the air continually targeting enemy foes, where it’s impossible to tell one side from the other, as the result is utter chaos.  Placed directly into the center of the carnage, with a soundtrack turned mournful and elegiac, with the cries of men contrasted against a wailing woman’s chorus, Welles produces a six-minute sequence of tracking shots, quick cuts, and hand-held cameras as the warring armies tumble over one another in the mud, relentlessly beating and stabbing one another, slowed to slow motion, where we see legs and boots sunk in the mire along with countless bodies strewn along the wayside.  Throughout it all Falstaff is seen aimlessly running from side to side, avoiding all contact, always scurrying to find refuge behind available shrubbery, where he witnesses the climactic swordfight between Hal and Hotspur, a valiant duel where Hal redeems himself with his courage on the battlefield, where the battle ends with the death of Hotspur, so shocked at the result that he can’t even finish his final speech before he dies.  True to his character, a lying Falstaff takes credit for slaying Hotspur, and doing so before the king, no less, stealing the young prince’s moment of glory, creating resentment by leaving lingering doubts about his son’s valor in the mind of the king.  This intentional deception, added to the senseless brutality of war, have a way of overshadowing any notion of supposed honor, leaving us to ponder the level of gravity of each offense.  While there are a series of eloquent speeches at the end, with Gielgud rivalling Welles at every turn, the king’s health deteriorates, bringing about a last minute father and son reconciliation before he passes the crown to Henry V, but instead of that jubilant moment Falstaff always hoped and dreamed for with Hal suddenly anointed king, the severity with which he cuts his ties with Falstaff is quick and decisive, ultimately becoming a sad tale of rejection and betrayal, leaving him alone to wander the wastelands.  Heartbroke and losing all will to live, Falstaff fades away overnight, leaving his young page (played by none other than his own daughter Beatrice Welles) to announce his death, where in a remarkably grim final shot, his coffin is pushed back out into that barren wasteland.        

 

Colin MacCabe from 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE:

 

Orson Welles was always fascinated by Shakespeare and filmed both an Othello and a Macbeth as well as a television version of The Merchant of Venice.  There is no doubt, however, that his greatest achievement in this vein is his adaptation of the Henry IV plays, Chimes at Midnight.  But don’t go looking for a faithful Shakespeare adaptation here.  Scholarly opinoion divides between those who think the young Prince Hal is merely sowing his wild oats with the drunk reprobate Falstaff and is justified in abandoning him when he comes to the throne, and those who feel that the abandonment of the fat knight shows that Hal is a machiavellian prince with no human feeling.  Welles does not bother to balance his opinions.  This is Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 told from Falstaff’s point of view.  His drinking and thieving, his cowardice and his greed are not faults but foibles.  Falstaff is fat and Welles glories in his opysical embodiment of the corpulent knight.  The comic scenes in Eastcheap, particularly after the faied robbery at Gadhill, are masterful.

 

Shakespeare’s repartee has never been so gloriously performed as it is by Welles.  But even more affecting are the battle scenes shot without nobility or honor, wretched field on which men die to serve the crooked purpose of their masters.  But the real triumph of Chimes at Midnight is the scenes from which the film takes its title, Falstaff’s encounter with Justice Shallow (Alan Webb), the acquaintance of his riotous youth who has become a country magistrate.  The pathos of these encounters, which go well beyond the Shakespearean play, are truly affecting—particularly as we are in no doubt of the tragic emotional fate that awaits Falsaff as he is banished by the love of his life, young Prince Hal now become Henry V.  The cast is magnificent, with John Gielgud as Henry IV, Norman Rodway as Hotspur, Keith Baxter as Hal, and even Jeanne Moreau showing up as Doll Tearsheet and Marina Vlady as Hotpsur’s wife.  One warning:  the postsynchronization of the dialogue is truly appalling—it has to be heard to be believed.  Otherwise a masterpiece.          

 

Orson Welles, Part One - Harvard Film Archive

One of the few films over which Orson Welles wielded complete creative control, Chimes at Midnight is a creative, combinatory adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Even more than a sublime John Gielgud as the guilt-ridden Henry IV and Jeanne Moreau as a lusty Doll Tearsheet, the most fascinating performance comes from Welles himself in a riveting Falstaff that is a classic Welles grotesque—by turns abrasive, gentle, pathetic and boastful. Among Welles’ most moving films, Chimes at Midnight reveals the relationship between Falstaff and Prince Hal to be Shakespeare’s nuanced reflection on the difficult gap between political power and its human instrument.

Time Out Film Guide 2011 - Page 182 - Google Books Result

The mongrel heritage of Chimes at Midnight is hard to credit, given the intensely personal reading of English history and literature that emerges from an incongruous Spanish/Swiss co-production of a life of Falstaff culled from five Shakespearean texts and Holinshed's Chronicles. Infused with a politically acute nostalgia for Merrie England, this elegiac tragi-comedy comes over as uncompromisingly modern entertainment, from its playful ruptures of traditional film grammar to its characterisation of Falstaff as hero at the crossroads of history, a spiritual and thematic precursor of Peckinpah's Cable Hogue. Welles waddles through the foreground with an eye on his own problems of patronage, while behind the camera he conjures a dark masterpiece, shot through with slapstick and sorrow. Magic.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago   Kian Bergstrom

A thoroughly thrilling experience, inspiring on every conceivable level, and one of the saddest films ever made. Welles made a life-long study of Shakespeare, adapting him on stage many times and making, in MACBETH and OTHELLO, two of his best movies. As a very young man, he attempted a mammoth adaptation he called Five Kings, combining scenes from the eight history plays revolving around the War of the Roses and The Merry Wives of Windsor, a project that here, transformed from a youth's ambition to a mature artist's melancholy, forms the seed for CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, a sprawling, strange, and deeply big-hearted melodrama of love and death, honor and betrayal, cowardice and duty, profligacy and desperation. In his films he has always demonstrated a fascination with texture, with visual patterning, with the complex choreographies of incoherent human figures made possible through spaces of grotesque and labyrinthine depth. This is nowhere more apparent than here. In a series of grand kinetic dances, Welles arranges haunting specters of death, swirling amongst and engulfing the lusty, hot-blooded, and immanently life-loving commoners and nobles that populate Shakespeare's version of history. There is no-one so ignoble not to deserve the adoration of Welles's camera, or the dignity of Welles's staging. As Hal, the wastrel son of the usurper King Henry IV, Keith Baxter deserves particular note: he is as affectionate and as cruel as can be borne by one mere character, and his masterful portrayal of Hal's contradictions mirror the contradictions at the heart of the film. No one for more than a moment here is what he or she seems, no space is wholly trustworthy, and no plot truly secret, for the most serious of all games, and the most pleasurable, is that which is played with one's own life as the stake and with no hope of surviving to collect the winnings save in the songs of our loved ones. In short, this film is magic itself, a celebration of cinema as the grandest of tricks, that which alone can transform the past into the present as palpably as memory, and the whole of the material world into the effervescence of poetry. The greatest film by the greatest director. (1966, 119 min, 16mm)

5001 nights at the movies - Google Books Result  Pauline Kael

 

One of Orson Welles' best and least-seen movies. It is damaged by technical problems resulting from lack of funds, and during the first 20 minutes viewers may want to walk out, because although Shakespeare's words on the sound track are intelligible, the sound doesn't match the images, and often we can't be sure who is supposed to be talking. But then despite everything-the use of doubles in long shots, the editing that distracts us when we need to concentrate on the dialogue-the movie begins to be great. Welles brought together the pieces of Falstaff that Shakespeare had strewn over the two parts of Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor, with cuttings from Henry V and Richard II, and fastened them into place with narration from Holinshed's Chronicles (read by Ralph Richardson). Those of us who resisted our teachers' best efforts to make us appreciate the comic genius of Shakespeare's fools and buffoons will not be surprised that Welles wasn't able to make Falstaff very funny; he's a great conception of a character, but the charades and practical jokes and the carousing and roistering seem meant to be funnier than they are. The movie does have a great Shakespearean comic moment, though: garrulous Falstaff sitting with Shallow (Alan Webb) and Silence (Walter Chiari), rolling his eyes in irritation and impatience at Silence's stammer. Though Welles' performance as Falstaff is short on comedy, it's very rich, very full. Oddly, we never really see the friendship of Falstaff and Prince Hal-played extraordinarily well by Keith Baxter-but John Gielgud's refined, monkish Henry IV gives the film the austerity it needs for the conflict within Hal to be dramatized. The film is a near-masterpiece. Welles' direction of the battle of Shrewsbury is unlike anything he has ever done-indeed, unlike any battle ever done on the screen before. It ranks with the finest of Griffith, John Ford, Eisenstein, Kurosawa. The compositions suggest Uccello, and the chilling, ironic music is a death knell for all men in battle. The soldiers, plastered by the mud they fall in, are already monuments. It's the most brutally sombre battle ever filmed, and it does justice to Hotspur's great "O, Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth." With Margaret Rutherford, Jeanne Moreau, Marina Vlady, Norman Rodway, Fernando Rey, Tony Beckley, and Beatrice Welles as the page boy. Shot on Spanish locations, which are photographically stylized-to suggest a slightly unrealistic world.  For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

 

Cahiers du Cinema [Serge Daney]  Serge Daney from Cahiers du Cinéma, August 1966

Welles says of Falstaff "that he fights a battle that has already been lost." And further, "I do not believe that he is looking for anything. He represents a value. He is goodness." There is something very astonishing in the fact that power and genius - unanimously acclaimed as such - should celebrate only hopeless causes or grandiose falls, and that a man like Welles, whose influence on his colleagues is so undeniable, embodies in his art only those who have been defeated. Admittedly this is obscured by an impressive technology, but nonetheless his protagonists tend to be worn out by life, betrayed by those close to them. An extraordinary fate decrees that a man who is too strong can only come to a bad end. And yet from Kane to Falstaff, from pomp to nakedness, from a corpse one doesn't see to a coffin that is carried away, it is always the same story: that of a man who misuses his power.

The conquest of power (aspiring to it, living up to it, obtaining it by force) is precisely what Welles deals with the least. For him, this kind of power is represented by the witches who create Macbeth and the intuition which propels Quinlan. Welles' films start where others end; when everything has been won, the only thing left is to be stripped of all knowledge as death approaches: Quinlan yesterday, Falstaff tomorrow.

Welles' work, faithful to Shakespeare in this respect, is a reflection on the very idea of Power: that excess of freedom which nobody can pursue without finding degradation and ridicule at the end. Power is an evil that gives life only to those who do not already have it. Heroic undertakings, actions that succeed in changing the course of events, intricately woven plots: these belong to men of tthe future, who are born to "tread on kings," men to whom it is granted, at least once in their lives, to shake the world. Kings have other cares; their triumph, like repression or the fruitless re-creation of the past, confers no prestige by definition. Defeat is the only adventure left to them.

Absolute power destroys true power, reducing it to futility. "If there is a sense of reality," Musil says, "there must also be a sense of the possible." And a little further on he adds, "God himself undoubtedly prefers to talk about his creation as potentiality." When power is too great, the possible consumes reality, dooming it in advance: one action is then no more necessary than another; good and evil are interchangeable and equally meaningless. A man like Citizen Kane, who is master of the possible at the age of twenty, winds up being the slave of his whims, surrendering bit by bit to a power that has neither object nor echo, and to action which is arbitrary and foolish, useless and wasteful, which never involves him fully but which distances him more and more from others (like the career of a singer who has no voice, or the collections heaped up at Xanadu.) He who has the power to do the most achieves the least, or uses only a fraction of his power. The laws of humor require that a prodigious expenditure of energy results in a strictly useless life.

In film after film as his work develops and as Welles grows older, the inclination to mockery grows stronger, to the point of becoming the very subject of the film Welles considers his best, THE TRIAL. Everywhere and always, power is in bad hands. Those who have it either do not know enough (Othello, who believes Iago; Macbeth - who is the victim of wordplay), or too much (Arkadin, Quinlan, the lawyer Hastler) - all doomed to act for nothing out of excessive naiveté or intelligence.

In terms of money, the life of John Falstaff is a failure. Shortly before dying, he observes that his friend - the doddering but shrewd Robert Shallow - has succeeded better, and he resolves to cultivate his friendship. Only Falstaff's sudden death, of which there has been no warning, spares him what would undoubtedly have been a last disillusionment. Falstaff was not born to receive, but to give - indiscriminately and without hope of return - or, if he has nothing, to give himself theatrically. Welles calls this prodigality the goodness of Falstaff. That Falstaff - whom Shakespeare especially wanted to be ridiculous - should have become a moving character as imagined and then embodied by Welles, is not very surprising. His death is not the mysterious and legendary disappearance of a Kane, but the prosaic and unadorned event into which the end of the world must be read (although nothing is really emphasized.) "If all the year were playing holidays," says the young prince, "to sport would be as tedious as work." Of what is Falstaff guilty? Not so much of having misused his power, since he hardly has any, being a comic character and one without real courage or authority into the bargain. Perhaps of having been intemperate in his use of words, of having turned his power of parody into an interminably hammy act, an unproductive and tiresome one, where talent, if there is any, asserts itself to no purpose. Even more surely, he is guilty of having survived the squandering of his energy for so long (indicated by the wordplay on "waste" and "waist.") And even more seriously, he is the victim, rather than the guilty one, in making a bad use of his feelings, since he chooses as his friend the very person who will betray him.

Welles' work offers many examples of breaches of confidence (THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI) or betrayed friendships (OTHELLO.) The strange and scandalous complicity that links the young prince and Falstaff for so long reveals more and more clearly that which is never spoken: the differences in their natures. But there would be no mutual fascination if each of them did not feel himself as radically Other: they are symbols of two worlds that are inimical but complementary, opposite sides of same coin. On one side there is Falstaff, who lives off his past, off what he already is, in the gradual entropy of a freedom that has deliberately been abused. On the other, there is the future Henry V, who is nothing yet, who will perhaps be a great king if he discovers the proper relationship between the expenditure of effort and the object to be attained: the austerity and discipline which make the use of power possible.

Deep Focus: Chimes at Midnight - Film Comment  Michael Sragow, January 7, 2016               Deep Focus: Chimes at Midnight - Film Comment 

Get thee to Gloucester, Essex. Do thee to Wessex, Exeter.
Fair Albany to Somerset must eke his route.
And Scroop, do you to Westmoreland, where shall bold York
Enrouted now for Lancaster, with forces of our Uncle Rutland,
Enjoin his standard with sweet Norfolk’s host.
Fair Sussex, get thee to Warwicksbourne,
And there, with frowning purpose, tell our plan
To Bedford’s tilted ear, that he shall press
With most insensate speed
And join his warlike effort to bold Dorset’s side.
I most royally shall now to bed,
To sleep off all the nonsense I’ve just said.

—”So That’s the Way You Like It,” in Beyond the Fringe

Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight, aka Falstaff, in its profound and tragicomic way, does for Shakespeare’s historical dramas what Beyond the Fringe (Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, Alan Bennett, Dudley Moore) do in the hilarious burlesque “So That’s the Way You Like It.” It illuminates them with brilliant irreverence and gusto. Welles views kingly power plays and era-defining battles as cruel, breathtaking absurdities, just as soul-killing for Henry IV (John Gielgud) and his son, Prince Hal / Henry V (Keith Baxter), as they are murderous to that zesty rebel, the warrior’s warrior Hotspur (Norman Rodway).

Falstaff (Welles), the surrogate father of Hal’s supposedly misspent youth, becomes an existential champion for refusing to meet the demands of bloodless respectability and ostensibly patriotic combat. In this magisterial mash-up of Richard II, Henry IV Part I and II, and Henry V (with a dab of The Merry Wives of Windsor), Welles gives Falstaff—the embodiment of Merrie Olde England—the stature and freshness of a modern hero. Welles doesn’t alter the man he always called “Shakespeare’s greatest character,” but he does shift our perspective on him with exhilarating ease and dramatic/cinematic genius.

This rotund knight’s life plays out as an extended improvisation, fueled by appetite and wit. He personifies a golden age of bonhomie that will be ruined by the reign of the Plantagenets. With Chimes at Midnight it is no longer enough to say that Falstaff provides the counterpoint to Henry IV and to “Harry” Hotspur (aka Henry Percy). His disdain for both of them is the point—his implicit repudiation of power divorced from sentiment (Henry IV) and his explicit mocking of military valor (Hotspur).

Welles embodies Falstaff’s good nature with a capital G and N. He considers Falstaff’s unfettered vitality to be the ultimate good, and his relish for wine, women, and wrongs (mostly minor wrongs, to be sure) as England’s last claim to natural living. By contrast, as Falstaff and Welles see it, Henry IV is cripplingly calculating. When Falstaff and Hal take turns impersonating the King, Falstaff claps a saucepan on his head for a crown and tells the Prince: “That thou art my son, I have partly thy mother’s word, partly mine own opinion, but chiefly a villainous trick of thine eye and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip that does warrant me.” Welles’s Falstaff pulls off a wicked impersonation of Gielgud’s Henry IV (as does Baxter’s Hal). But the jolly tilted angle of the saucepan is a pure (that is, impure) Falstaffian flourish.

Later, as Hal prepares to vanquish Hotspur at the Battle of Shrewsbury, Falstaff addresses his bracing putdown of honor to the future Henry V: “What is honor? Air—a trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died a Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No.”

Welles is magnificent as Falstaff. He gives you both the surface playacting and the bedrock emotion behind his self-describing litany of “sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff.” By the time he gets to “banish plump Jack, and banish all the world,” you feel like leaping to your feet and stomping out your applause. Welles and Baxter conjure Falstaff and Hal’s shared affection and odd, contentious rapport. What Hal hides from Falstaff is that he is his father’s son, with a streak of Hotspur in him, too. In Baxter’s marvelous quicksilver performance, Hal, early on, turns away from his obese tutor in pleasure and explains that he will, when the time comes, reveal himself to be the virtuous Prince of his father’s dreams: “Yet herein will I imitate the sun, / who doth permit the base contagious clouds/to smother up the beauty from the world, / that when he please again to be himself, / being wanted, he may be wond’red at.” Under Welles’s direction, Baxter never lets this thread of covert ambition go slack. It supplies this simultaneously expansive and compact creation with escalating poignancy and suspense.

Made in Spain, on a schedule adjusted to fit the timetables of stars like Gielgud, Margaret Rutherford (as the hostess of Falstaff’s favorite Eastcheap tavern), Jeanne Moreau (as his prostitute lover, Doll Tearsheet), and Marina Vlady (as Hotspur’s wife), Chimes at Midnight suffers from inept syncing of the dialogue, especially in the early reels. But the movie has never looked or sounded better than it does in the current restoration (at least based on my teenage memory of the original 1967 American release).

It has in spades what’s missing from most recent Shakespearean adaptations: a rich, clarifying vision. Welles’s lucid framing of the Henriad as an Oedipal triangle, with Falstaff and Henry IV as rival father figures for Hal (and Hotspur as the son Henry IV wishes he had), is the opposite of reductive. Confident that they’re contributing to a solid, organic whole, his actors both dig into their characters’ “humours” and psyches and take wing in visionary flights. According to Baxter, “Margaret Rutherford used to say that working with Orson was like walking where there was always sunshine.” The cast’s joy at collaborating with Welles feeds into an extraordinary ensemble performance—extraordinary partly because each “guest star” shot at different times. Rutherford is rarely more engaging than when she oohs and aaahs over Falstaff’s mimicry, but during filming she never saw what she was applauding.

Gielgud had scored a stage sensation as the weak, imaginative Richard II. No ordinary director would have cast the man Kenneth Tynan described as “the finest actor on earth from the neck up” as the physically robust Henry Bolingbroke. But Gielgud and Welles create a daring revision of Henry IV as an increasingly frail and guilt-wracked monarch. His most eloquent musing—beginning with “O sleep, O gentle sleep, / Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,” and ending with “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”—is both devastating on its own and a remarkable link to the poetic side of Richard II, the man Henry IV deposed.

Rodway shows tremendous verve as Hotspur. The man lives at a pitch of bellicose exultation: Hal refers to him as “He that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, ‘Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.'” Welles takes that sally as his satiric cue for staging Hotspur’s farewell to his wife (Vlady). It’s an exuberant marital tussle. Lady Percy complains about his neglect of her while he struggles to address a call to action and dress himself after his bath. Welles punctuates the scene with rooftop trumpeters who grow in number from one to four as Hotspur spars with her and tries to make his getaway. But the director’s real triumph is the friction he generates between Hotspur’s dynamism and his Lady’s sensuality. In one flesh-tingling moment her rush of blonde hair fills the screen. Then she threatens to break one of Hotspur’s fingers.

Despite the budgetary limitations, the entire movie feels as if it were made in a state of play. Welles choreographs both his actors and his camera with a flow and an esprit that few contemporary directors can match despite their digital tricks and Steadicams. The Eastcheap tavern comes off as dizzyingly serpentine—a labyrinthine adult’s-only playhouse—as Hal tumbles in and out of its corridors and crannies to surprise and torment Falstaff. The lighting throughout is resonant and evocative: the sun enters the vaulted palace of the God-conscious King in eerie clerestory beams. The editing is bold and fluid. Even Welles’s stillest and quietest images are full to bursting with lyricism and emotion. The sight of a weary Falstaff wedged between chattering Justice Shallow (Alan Webb) and Shallow’s stuttering cousin Silence is like a superb, sedentary vaudeville routine.

Falstaff’s rejection of the forced piety of kings and the glamorized honor of soldiers underlies Welles’s Battle of Shrewsbury—a symphony, or, rather, a cacophony of martial chaos. Lances, axes, swords, maces, clubs and shields get used to pierce, cut, scythe, and bludgeon foes who soon lose visibility in fog and mud. The armies swing squads of archers into place as if they were medieval missile launchers; every rider registers as a horseman of the apocalypse. Yet unlike the carnage in Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth, the bloodshed here is sensitizing rather than numbing. You respond not merely to the gore and muck, but also to the conception behind it. Welles is depicting the lunatic history of combat from antiquity to 1403, in 200 shots. At his most audacious, he inserts shots of Falstaff, armored but unhorsed, capering blindly through the battlefield like an upright, overweight armadillo. It’s as if Welles is saying that it takes comedy, too, to convey war’s insanity.

For a second I thought of the mist-choked Beyond the Fringe battle in “So That’s the Way You Like It,” which culminates with Peter Cook wailing “O saucy Worcester.” But then I said to myself, in awe, “No—O immortal Orson.”

Courtney Lehman looks at books discussing Shakespeare in the movies for Cineaste (link lost)

Shakespeare in the Movies: From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love
by Douglas Brode. NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. 257 pp. Hardcover: $25.00

A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television by Kenneth S. Rothwell. NY: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 352 pp., illus. Hardcover: $59.95

Shakespeare in Hollywood, 1929–1956 by Robert F. Willson, Jr. Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. 190 pp., illus. Hardcover: $36.50.

Interpreting Shakespeare on Screen by Deborah Cartmell. London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 2000. 170 pp. Hardcover: $59.95 and Paperback: $18.95.

Framing Shakespeare on Film by Kathy M. Howlett. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000. 255 pp., illus. Hardcover: $39.95.

Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture by Michael Anderegg. NY: Columbia University Press, 1999. 213 pp., illus. Hardcover: $45.00 and Paperback: $17.50.

A Companion to the Shakespearean Films of Kenneth Branagh by Sarah Hatchuel. Winnipeg, Canada: Blizzard Publishing, 2000. 197 pp. Paperback: $22.00

Shakespeare on Film Edited by Robert Shaughnessy. NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. 206 pp. Hardcover: $59.95 and Paperback: $18.95.

Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle Edited by Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray. London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 2000. 244 pp. Hardcover: £42.50 and Paperback: £14.99.

Whether classified as mainstream or radical, loyal or loose, the cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare will always be the product of complex negotiations between playtext and screenplay, early modern and postmodern, live action and framed simulation. Consequently, the reception of filmed Shakespeare has historically been preoccupied with what gets ‘lost in the translation,’ a critical sensibility articulated through an inky rhetorical cloak of mourning for some violated conception of textual fidelity, historical accuracy, or artistic integrity. The singular irony of this approach lies in the fact that the Shakespearean corpus is itself a vast collection of translative moves between and among playwright(s), actors, audiences, scribes, prompters, compilers, and printers. Where this anonymous collaboration ends and ‘Shakespeare’ begins is an impossible riddle indeed. Not even the posthumously published First Folio of Shakespeare’s complete works presents us with a ‘complete’ version of Shakespeare. Emerging during the infancy of mechanical reproduction, the 1623 Folio exists as an artifact of an age that precedes standardized spelling, typography, and print technology. As a result, no two extant versions of the 1623 Folio are exactly alike. Yet the compilers of the First Folio, actors John Heminge and Henry Condell, seemed to anticipate this very problem when, in their "epistle dedicatorie" to the volume, they bequeathed to readers Shakespeare’s "remaines," a word which resonates not as a promise of closure and completion, but as a prompt for continual (re)construction. For the modern consumer, Heminge and Condell might have emended the phrasing to ‘Shakespeare’s remains: some assembly required.’ This injunction strikes at the shared ontological status of Shakespeare and cinema, for both present us with ‘remains’ that require assembly by multiple and, frequently invisible, hands; their fragments are, in effect, constitutive of an artistic enterprise that is not lost, but rather, found in the translation.

Rather than mourning the disappointing divide between an ideal (and therefore unreal) conception of ‘Shakespeare,’ new critical approaches to Shakespeare on screen celebrate the "spectacle of multiplicity" that constitutes both the reel and the real Shakespeare.1 But if these two ‘Shakespeares’ merge beautifully in practice, their union has, until quite recently, been far less agreeable in theory. The problem is one of proprietorship: to whom does the spectacle of Shakespeare on screen belong? To Shakespeare Studies or to Cinema Studies? While Shakespeareans bring a wealth of historical and textual acumen to the analysis of screened Shakespeare, they frequently lack a sophisticated understanding of the film codes through which cinema relays meaning to spectators——meaning communicated by the specifically visual effects of camera angles and movement, degrees of focus, decoupage and montage, lighting, and so forth. By the same token, cinema scholars offer interpretations rich in visual vocabulary, as well as provocative details of production and reception history, but they often lack a nuanced historical understanding of Shakespearean dramatic practice that would lend depth and credibility to their conclusions. This is precisely the problem with Douglas Brode’s new book, entitled Shakespeare in the Movies: From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love. As the author of eighteen books, Brode is an unquestionably prolific film scholar, and his most recent book is valuable for its important attempt to situate Shakespearean film adaptations in the broader context of film history. Like the highly romanticized fiction of authorship featured in Shakespeare in Love (Madden, 1998), however, Brode’s work relies too heavily on an "expressive realist" approach to Shakespeare’s dramatic and cinematic oeuvre, a critical framework that interprets an author’s work as an immediate expression of his life. In the case of Shakespeare, such an approach is particularly suspect, not only because we lack the biographical data to confirm it, but also because this approach patently ignores what we do know about the Shakespearean text. As we have seen, far from being the streamlined expression of a single authorial consciousness, the Shakespearean corpus is a marvel for its status as a cultural artifact from an era in which the production, transmission, and preservation of texts had much more to do with collaborative contingency than individual determinacy.

Nonetheless, impossible appeals to the Bard’s "personal vision" and "authorial intention" govern Brode’s evaluation of the history of Shakespeare on screen. The unstated assumption of the book is that Shakespeare is a precursor of Andrew Sarris’s classic conception of the auteur——the film artist who, through the force of his powerful personality and esthetic preoccupations, is able to overcome all barriers to the expression of his vision. While the suggestion that Shakespeare is in some way a proto-cinematic figure is very interesting, problems arise when critics enshrine their own preoccupations within the formative contours of Shakespeare’s psyche. Repeatedly referring to Shakespeare on a first name basis as "Gentle Will," Brode speculates that the Bard’s marriage to Anne Hathaway is the root of all evil in the plays. Hathaway is blamed (or is it credited?) for the invention of the sharp-tongued Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, as well as for the bastard characters that appear in the Shakespeare canon——a product, Brode contends, of "Shakespeare’s possible fears as to his own children’s questionable parentage." Such spurious claims, in turn, generate Brode’s own highly selective interpretation of Shakespearean film adaptations.2 In describing the Pickford/Fairbanks version of Shrew, for example, Brode conspicuously leaves out the film’s richest and most controversial moment——Pickford’s concluding wink at the camera——a gesture which decidedly undermines the notion that she has been ‘tamed’ by her husband; however, in the Taylor/Burton version (Zeffirelli, 1966), Brode makes the gratuitous remark that "in Taylor’s case, her breasts performed beautifully, but her vocal chords proved disappointing." One can only speculate what Brode might have said about Julie Taymor’s Titus (1999), a film clearly outside the loop of the old boys’ network Brode seeks to create between author and critic in Shakespeare in the Movies.

Predictably, Brode’s butt-slapping, high-fiving, buddy-movie-style approach to the Bard finds no place for the avant-garde and distinctly homoerotic adaptations of Greenaway and Jarman, which are rejected out of hand as the work of an "incoherent radical" and "out-of-control extremist," respectively. Despite his apparent disgust for such "politicized" approaches to Shakespeare on screen, however, it is clear that Brode is not without his own agenda——an agenda he claims to share with Shakespeare. According to Brode, "Gentle Will" was an "admittedly conservative" and "conventional" writer and, therefore, any adaptation that threatens his "old-fashioned storytelling technique and middle-class moral values inherent not only in The Tempest but the entire oeuvre" must be condemned as "a bitter attack." Clearly, Shakespeare in the Movies reflects an attempt to stand up for the "middle class morality" that the steady rise of feminist, Marxist, and queer critiques of cultural oppression have putatively threatened or eroded within the academy. While this charge is itself a red herring——the equivalent of arguing that Democrats don’t have ‘family values’——the real disappointment of Brode’s book is not that he subscribes to culturally-conservative views, but that he credits Shakespeare for their invention.

Kenneth S. Rothwell’s A History of Shakespeare on Screen: A Century of Film and Television stands in stark contrast to Brode’s book, offering a witty and comprehensive history of screen adaptations of Shakespeare from nickelodeons to the Internet. The scope of the book alone is exhilarating, covering every conceivable adaptation of Shakespeare in Anglo-American and international cinema, mainstream and art-house film, television and cyberspace, with focused chapters on silent Shakespeare, Hollywood’s Golden Age, Welles and Olivier, Castellani and Zeffirelli, and the Shakespeare films of the Nineties. As if this isn’t enough to make Rothwell’s History an indispensable resource for Shakespeareans and cinephiles alike, the book concludes with a thirty-page, highly user-friendly filmography. Replete with insightful details of film production and reception, an historical understanding of the cultural milieu of Shakespearean drama, and a broad interpretive vocabulary that synthesizes literary theory with film codes, Rothwell’s book is, in short, the best of its kind.

Rothwell’s wonderfully balanced approach to the once antagonistic domains of Shakespeare and cinema is an excellent example of how the rise of Cultural Studies has invigorated critical methodology in the last decade. Recognizing that ‘culture’ itself is a medium of struggle, Cultural Studies generates alliances across often rigidly policed disciplinary and social lines as a means of both chronicling and participating in cultural change. This approach has been instrumental in making popular culture——and particularly the movies——a subject of legitimate critical inquiry, for as Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler explain, "‘the popular’ in cultural studies involves the observation that struggles over power must increasingly touch base with and work through the cultural practices, languages, and logics of the people…"3 Accordingly, Rothwell’s book explores how the history of Shakespeare on screen is driven by the logic of the proverbial "bottom line," the "iron rule of profit or perish [that] has commodified Shakespeare, dictating the scope, size, frequency, and even the artistry of filmed plays, and [has] at the same time forced the Shakespeare director into an inevitable synergy with popular culture." Though it would be tempting to scorn this "inevitable synergy" in favor of more autonomous, art-house Shakespeare films, Rothwell’s history gives equal attention to the popular and the avant-garde, eloquently recognizing that the cultural practice, language, and logic of ‘Shakespeare’ is nothing if not multiple.

More common than the ‘grand-narrative’ approach to Shakespeare and screen criticism are books that focus on a particular period, critical methodology, or director. Robert F. Willson’s Shakespeare in Hollywood, 1929-1956 reminds us that Shakespeare’s relationship to the cinema during Hollywood’s so-called ‘Golden Age’ (1935-55) was, ironically, not always so golden. Locating the Bard amidst a contentious interplay of corporate organization, star power, genre restrictions, the Hays Code and, of course, the bottom line, Shakespeare in Hollywood goes in search of what we might call the ‘studio Shakespeare.’ What Willson finds, provocatively, is that in an era which begins with the Great Depression and ends with McCarthyism, ‘Shakespeare’ becomes a kind of cinematic superego, emerging as a figure distinctly aligned with human, rather than economic, values, as Hollywood itself attempts to negotiate the conflicting interests of capitalism and conscience.

At a time when MGM’s Louis B. Mayer proclaimed the Bard to be "box-office poison," Shakespeare, Willson argues, turned out to be just what the doctor ordered for an industry anxious to enhance its cultural cachet. Particularly valuable are Willson’s theories as to how these tensions between economics and ethics were handled by enterprising individuals like George Cukor, Irving Thalberg, Orson Welles, Dore Schary, Joseph Mankiewicz, and others; but, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, some of these movie men became ‘made men,’ while others were dramatically unmade in the course of their Shakespearean negotiations. A film like the MGM Romeo and Juliet (Cukor, 1936), for example, lost nearly a million dollars and, Willson speculates, cost Irving Thalberg his life. (Thalberg died from pneumonia, emotionally and physically weakened by the production process.) What was to be the ultimate feather in Thalberg’s cap——producing a lavish version of a literary classic for a cultivated screen audience——turned out to be a "lover’s monument" to the wife whose youth and career he could not keep from the ravages of time. Indeed, Norma Shearer’s thirty-six-year-old Juliet and Leslie Howard’s forty-three-year-old Romeo proved unconvincing in their roles as exuberant youths caught in the adult crossfire of romantic love and family loyalty. Willson’s reading of the film through Thalberg’s own romantic struggle against the iron rule of ‘profit or perish’ reveals, quite poignantly, that the real love story was the making of the film itself.

A far cry from Willson’s arbiter of morality, Shakespeare is cast as a reluctant villain in Deborah Cartmell’s recent book Interpreting Shakespeare on Screen, which explores the "host of evils" perpetuated by film and television versions of Shakespeare in three historical periods: the Forties, Sixties, and Nineties. "There is embedded in our culture," Cartmell explains, "an almost religious need for Shakespeare." According to Cartmell, the danger of this sacramental approach to Shakespeare lies in the "conversion process" and its principal target: students. Unlike the other books considered in this review, Interpreting Shakespeare on Screen is explicitly designed as a resource for students and teachers of Shakespeare, offering interpretive strategies for interrogating culturally dominant constructions of violence, gender, sexuality, race, and nationalism. Introducing students to the rigors of ideology critique and the often pernicious effects of the camera’s gaze can be both rewarding and frustrating. Cartmell’s book delivers similarly uneven rewards.

Interpreting Shakespeare on Screen is most useful when it stretches beyond its discrete interpretive categories to demonstrate how representations of race and sexuality, for example, can be mutually illuminating, revealing a shared system of visually-encoded oppression. The benefits of exploiting multiple frames of reference are illustrated in Cartmell’s chapter on race, wherein she astutely argues that Greenaway and Jarman’s versions of The Tempest resist the representation of Shakespearean racism, but in so doing, they "unwittingly participate in a revised form of Victorian bardolatry, censoring race rather than sex, creating their own versions of ‘Family Shakespeare’." This conclusion offers a provocative prompt for students to explore the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality in The Tempest, as well as the violence and nationalism that worktogether to shore up the imperial construction of ‘family’ in this play. In her analysis of "politically correct sexuality" in Romeo and Juliet, however, Cartmell invokes Zeffirelli’s "daring" homoerotic approach to Romeo and Mercutio’s relationship, but fails to consider Baz Luhrmann’s suggestive treatment of Mercutio as Romeo’s black ‘buddy’/drag queen——not to mention the homoerotic longing implied in the camera’s insistent focus on Romeo’s body. Here it is the critic, and not the camera, who is censoring race and sex alike. Cartmell’s book cannot stand alone on its somewhat inconsistent analysis; but as a teaching resource, it includes valuable supplements for helping instructors engage directly with students on sensitive topics. Some chapters include parallel film and Folio texts, while the Appendices offer useful writing exercises, group activities, and other creative suggestions for inviting students into the interpretive process. Given the fact that the Shakespearean critical enterprise has been historically marked by relentless intellectual territorialism, Cartmell’s desire to share the wealth in Interpreting Shakespeare on Screen is timely and welcome.

Kathy M. Howlett’s Framing Shakespeare on Film and Michael Anderegg’s Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture represent the very best of the work that is currently being conducted in Shakespeare and Cinema Studies. Like Rothwell, both Howlett and Anderegg have been trained as Shakespeare scholars and as cinema scholars, and their work testifies to the extraordinary richness of meaning that this interdisciplinarity generates. Howlett approaches the spectacle of Shakespeare on screen through "frame analysis," a method that takes into account the competing "frames" that contextualize any act of adaptation: Shakespeare’s textual frame, the contemporary cinematic frame and, of course, the ideological frames of both cultural moments——all of which vie for the viewer’s attention. Covering a wide range of popular and art-house films, Framing Shakespeare on Film investigates cinematic representation as both an esthetic and psychological landscape, paying close attention to how shot-composition and genre conventions work to reify or subvert dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity, sexuality and social class, high and low culture, power and perversion. In her chapter on Kurosawa’s Ran (an adaptation of King Lear [1985]), Howlett explores the tensions between the frame of Japanese Kabuki theater, which invites gender transformations, and the frame of Samurai culture, wherein codes of masculinity are rigid and sacrosanct. As in Shakespeare’s King Lear, which ends when even the hard hearts of men "burst smilingly" (V.iii.200), the film ends with a ‘bursting’ of the cinematic frame itself, as the "measured and bounded spaces of masculine identity are repudiated by a woman’s unconditional and hyperbolic love."4 Particularly valuable is Howlett’s attention to the viewer’s complicityin this process; for the viewer engages in the activity of "frame-making or frame-breaking" as much as the camera itself. Howlett’s focus on competing cultural, esthetic, and historical frames——situated within sophisticated readings of the cinematic process and the psychological mechanisms upon which it relies——makes Framing Shakespeare on Film a striking addition to the field.

Michael Anderegg’s Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture offers a fascinating view into the many faces of Orson Welles: dramaturg and auteur, actor and salesman, pedagogue and demagogue, man and myth. Anderegg’s analysis spans Welles’s appropriation of Shakespeare in virtually every realm of popular culture, including the publishing and recording industry, radio, television, advertising and, above all, the film industry. Situated in the context of his other, and perhaps lesser known Shakespearean forays into popular culture like the play-book series Everybody’s Shakespeare and the Mercury Text Records, Welles’s trilogy of Shakespeare films marks a departure from his populist tendencies, revealing a figure "dangerously on the edge of putting off audiences, rather than inviting them in." As Anderegg explains, Macbeth, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight challenge the cultural authority of both Shakespeare and Hollywood, by "pushing the source text toward its own margins or by revealing, through the film’s low-budget strategies and absence of gloss and finish, the fragmentary and tentative authority of the original." Neither a high culture icon nor a Shakespeare for ‘everybody,’ Welles’s cinematic Shakespeare is, as Anderegg intriguingly puts it, "a Shakespeare from hunger."

Like the other critics featured in this review, Anderegg focuses on how the material conditions of production shape a given film, but he is careful not to romanticize the tensions between auteur and financier. Rather, Anderegg interprets the "poverty effects" of Macbeth, for example, as a deliberate attempt to link Macbeth’s delusional ambition to Republic Pictures’ own ill-conceived attempt to produce a low-budget ‘prestige film.’ Both the hallucinatory world of Shakespeare’s play and this Hollywood ‘dream factory’ are, as Welles’s Macbeth makes plain, "well on [their] way to nightmare." Not surprisingly, subsequent films like Othello and Chimes at Midnight self-consciously document Welles’s exile from Hollywood and his attempt to find a home within the European art-house. Appropriately, then, Welles’s final homage to Shakespeare, Chimes at Midnight, is also an homage to his own filmmaking enterprise. According to Anderegg, this film performs an audacious "rewriting of Shakespeare’s text" in cinematic terms, a revision that culminates in an "undermining of language itself." The effect of such a strategy is, quite literally, to shift the weight of Shakespeare’s Henriad away from Hal toward the figure of Falstaff/Welles, who posits "being," "presence," and "physicality"——all inscribed in the distinctly visual language of cinema——as an alternative to both Shakespeare’s and Hal’s reliance on the (often empty) rhetoric of power. In this way, Anderegg concludes that "Chimes, like Welles’ late films in general, approaches something resembling pure cinema, images and sounds that have an emotional and intellectual resonance apart from rational discourse." Anderegg’s Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture may trace a retreat from language and rhetoric in Welles’s Shakespearean oeuvre, but it does so in the most lucid, poetic of terms, generating a powerful presence in the field of Shakespeare and Cinema Studies.

Quite different from Anderegg’s labyrinthine journey through the life and art of Orson Welles, Sarah Hatchuel’s A Companion to the Shakespearean Films of Kenneth Branagh, offers a self-proclaimed straightforward study of Branagh’s films and their theatrical influences. Hatchuel positions herself not as a critic, but as a champion of Branagh. Therefore, her book is composed in (mono)tones of admiration, rather than layers of critical scrutiny. Hatchuel makes her objectives plain from the beginning: "This book does not intend to judge Branagh’s works and assess his critical choices in any way . . . Nor does it intend to evaluate the fidelity of Branagh’s movies to Shakespeare’s plays, as the question of being faithful or unfaithful to a dramatic text becomes tricky when a change in medium is concerned." What the book is concerned with are "the theatrical influences, textual changes, recurrent structures, and codes which have made Branagh’s movies what they are." Consciously or unconsciously, Hatchuel’s book duplicates the accessibility she so admires in Branagh’s work. This approach will come across as fresh to those tired of academic obscurity, but it will prove unfulfilling to those expecting critical depth and political savvy.

It seems only fitting that the final two books considered in this review encompass the brief history of Shakespeare and cinema criticism, even as they carve out directions for the future. For its New Casebooks series, St. Martin’s Press has released a volume of previously published criticism called, simply, Shakespeare on Film, a collection of essays written between 1977 and 1997 that represent a shift in critical focus from appreciation to interrogation, continuity to collision, artistry to ideology. With the exception of the first two essays, which are culled from ‘classic’ Shakespeare and cinema theory and, therefore, are concerned more with the relation between the adaptation and the original than with the political implications of their differences, the collection documents the rise of cultural materialist criticism. If a distinction is to be drawn between Cultural Studies and cultural materialism, it lies in the breadth of their respective approaches. Using various combinations of Marxism, semiotics, feminism, ethnography, sociology, and psychoanalysis, Cultural Studies employs a broad range of theoretical insights to explore the ways in which identity——collective and individual——is articulated and experienced, while cultural materialism focuses more exclusively on the historical and economic structures that shape culture and its products, among them, of course, film. Within this latter critical paradigm, esthetic elements of form, style, and genre become expressions of historical relations of production. To paraphrase Graham Holderness’s important work on this subject, the central question posed by such an approach thus becomes: is Shakespeare on screen a site of "radical potentiality" or "institutional closure"? In other words, are screened adaptations of Shakespeare an implicitly conservative or progressive cultural force?

The essays in this volume offer multiple responses to this question in their critical explorations of screen and stage versions of Taming of the Shrew (Taylor, Zeffirelli), Henry V (Olivier; Branagh, 1989), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Reinhardt and Dieterle; Peter Hall, 1969), and The Tempest (Jarman, 1980, Greenaway, Prospero’s Books, 1991), as well as signature films like Olivier’s Hamlet, Welles’s Othello, Mankiewicz’s Julius Caesar, Peter Brook’s King Lear (1970), and Kurosawa’s version of Macbeth, Throne of Blood (1957). While Shakespeare on Film contains some of the best essays ever written on Shakespeare and cinema, it conspicuously lacks theoretical discussions of recent Shakespeare films, an omission which is remedied by Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle.

The editors of this provocatively titled collection, Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray, contend that Shakespeare is both central to the articulation of fin-de-siècle anxiety and, potentially, the source of some answers to it, since Shakespearean drama likewise stems from a fin-de-siècle milieu. The collection traces the relationship between Shakespeare on screen and millennial themes and images such as urban decay, apocalypse, environmental devastation, multinational capitalism, cultural hybridity, and media saturation. The essays are also concerned with constructions of race, gender, sexuality, and family, as well as the fate of the esthetic and the Shakespearean author-function within an increasingly virtual culture. As with any anthology based on a particular theme, some essays address these concerns more directly than others. Particularly illuminating are the analyses which, rather than glancing backward, take a speculative and often daring look into the future. Predictably, the prognosis is mixed; Neil Sinyard’s essay on AlPacino’s Looking for Richard (1996) sees Shakespeare as an energizing site of postmodern populism, while Richard Burt suggests that Shakespearean authority is becoming increasingly associated with the enervating specter of impotence. Other contributors focus on the bleak ‘big picture’ represented by dystopian films like Christine Edzard’s As You Like It (1992) and the Shakespearean spin-off Tromeo and Juliet (Lloyd Kaufman, 1996). Each film, as Amelia Marriette and Margaret Hane Kidnie respectively conclude, uses the Shakespearean text as a microcosm for exposing contemporary society’s potential for mass destruction in a technologically hip and morally bankrupt culture. In another representative reading, Julie Sanders explores Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) as a symptom of crisis within the British monarchy. Tracing the film’s preoccupation with the violent overthrow of family dynasties, Sanders brilliantly links Branagh’s image of a straitjacketed Ophelia to Princess Diana, a victim not only of an objectifying and deadly media gaze, but also of contemporary versions of female ‘insanity’ like bulimia. Sanders concludes that, as spectators of both this and Shakespeare’s tragedy, we remain, like Branagh’s film, poised ambiguously between complicity and critique. Appropriately, the volume also includes an extensive interview with Branagh, who offers his own reflections on Shakespeare’s future in the movies. Despite the finality suggested by its title, Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle indicates that the most exciting work in the field is only beginning.

While Shakespeare Studies and Cinema Studies have experienced significant paradigm shifts in the last three decades, the evolving field of Shakespeare and Cinema has always been something of a hodgepodge. Not unlike the enterprise of Heminge and Condell, who believed they had created a singular monument to Shakespeare when, in fact, they left behind a textual legacy comprised of multiple takes, Shakespearean film criticism fractures our sense of the relative autonomy of both Shakespeare and Cinema Studies, reminding us that the interpretive process, too, comes with the label ‘assembly required.’ This is perhaps the most important message embedded in this new cultural practice, for just as Heminge and Condell opened the ranks of Shakespearean entitlement by bequeathing the First Folio to "the great variety of Readers," scholars of Shakespeare and Cinema seems to be driven by a similar democratizing impulse, inviting cinephiles and Bardolaters alike to interrogate the spectacle of Shakespeare on screen. This is not to undermine the sophistication of the work currently being conducted in the field, but rather to understand its connection to the "cultural practices, languages, and logics of the people." Is this, then, the ‘new auteurism’——a millennial cultural practice capable of forgoing the Fifties’ romance with the film artist in the interest of exploring all the different ‘Shakespeares’ in the making? But if so, how far will our postmodern preoccupation with ‘frame breaking’ go? At what point will these ‘Shakespeares’ wear out their cinematic welcome, giving way, perhaps, to a virtual frame and a CyBard, anxious to usher us into the fully-interactive age of postmechanical production?

Given the historic reciprocity that has existed between cinema and Shakespeare since the dawn of the motion-picture industry, it seems likely that the destinies of both are intertwined. Where cinema once relied on Shakespeare for cultural legitimation, Shakespeare now needs cinema for cultural longevity in a world which increasingly privileges images over words, and visual over traditional forms of literacy. How this provocative collaboration will end is, as Shakespeare in Love reminds us, "a mystery." But perhaps, as Orson Welles suggests, the trick is not to speculate about what brave new worlds lie behind the Bard’s words, but rather to enjoy all the "Shakespeares" created in their wake. "Shakespeare said everything," Welles once exclaimed. "Brain to belly; every mood and minute of a man’s season. His language is starlight and fireflies and the sun and moon. He wrote it with tears and blood and beer, and his words march like heart-beats."5 If the exciting new books on Shakespeare and cinema are any indication of what "field" those words are marching, spinning, singing, dancing, and thriving in, there can be little doubt that Shakespeare’s heart——at least for now——is in the right place.

End Notes:

The title of this essay is borrowed from a panel discussion organized by Professor Daryl Palmer for the University of Akron’s annual "Shakespeare in the Spring Festival." I wish to thank Professor Daryl Palmer for inviting me to participate, along with Professors Peter S. Donaldson and Jim Slowiak, in such a thought-provoking discussion about Shakespeare’s future in our media culture. I am particularly grateful for Dr. Skip Willman’s extensive comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay, and I also wish to thank Professors James Hetrick and Cynthia Dobbs for their help with the revision process.

1 The phrase "spectacle of multiplicity" is borrowed from Lorne Buchman’s analysis of the cinematic medium in Still in Movement: Shakespeare on Screen (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1991), 12.

2For a detailed exploration of the misinformation Brode propagates, see "Douglas Brode’s Shakespeare in the Movies: From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love," The Shakespeare Newsletter(Spring 2000), 18-23.

3 Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, "Cultural Studies: An Introduction," Cultural Studies, Edited by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 1-22.

4 All citations of Shakespeare’s plays are from The Riverside Shakespeare, Edited by G. Blakemore Evans, et. al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997).

5 Everybody’s Shakespeare: Three Plays, Edited by Roger Hill and Orson Welles (Woodstock, Ill: Todd Press, 1934), 22

Chimes at Midnight | Hidden Cause, Visible Effects  DK Fennell, January 10, 2016

 

Shakespeare, Freud, Machiavelli and Welles: The “Prince Hal Problem”  DK Fennell, March 8, 2016

 

The Player Kings - The New Yorker  Claudia Roth Pierpont, November 19, 2007

 

“How this World is Given to Lying!”: Orson Welles's ...   How this World is Given to Lying!: Orson Welles’s Deconstruction of Historiographies in Chimes at Midnight, by Jeffrey Yeager, academic essay           (Undated)           

 

1 Orson Welles' three Shakespeare films: Macbeth, Othello ...  12-page essay by Peter Cochran, March 2009 (pdf)

 

Campanadas a medianoche (Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles, 1965)   Noel Vera from Critic After Dark, May 2015

 

Chimes at Midnight | Senses of Cinema  Darragh O’Donoghue from Senses of Cinema, February 7, 2006

 

The Film Temple: Director Spotlight #14.11: Orson Welles ...  Max B. O’Connell, July 2013

 

After Midnight - Cinescene  Don Larsson, 2001                         

 

Nick Pinkerton on Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight - artforum.c  Nick Pinkerton from Artforum magazine, December 30, 2015 

 

The Roundtable.: Take Three: 'Chimes at Midnight'  reviews from Gina Carbone, Mike Gillis and Lars Trodson, April 2009

 

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965) review | Keeping It Reel  David J. Fowlie, March 18, 2016

 

Why Orson Welles still matters - Directors Guild of America  Terrence Rafferty, Summer 2015

 

Orson Welles's Mighty “Chimes at Midnight” - The New Yorker  Richard Brody, January 8, 2016

 

'Chimes at Midnight' | Commonweal Magazine  Richard Alleva, March 10, 2016

 

selenak | December Talking Meme: Orson Welles  December 14, 2013

 

Remembering Orson Welles   Gore Vidal from The NY Review of Books, June 1, 1989

 

Discovering Orson Welles   Michael Wood from The NY Review of Books, December 19, 2013

 

Looking for Citizen Welles   Michael Wood from The NY Review of Books, March 16, 2016

 

Chimes at Midnight - Film (Movie) Plot and Review ... - Film Reference  Leland Poague

 

Orson Welles at 100: Falstaff, or Chimes At Midnight (1965 ...  Jake Hinkson from Criminal Element

 

Andrew Sarris vs. The New York Times: a defense of Orson Welles's ...   Andrew Sarris, March 30, 1967

 

For your reconsideration: Orson Welles | The Villager ...  Trav S.D.

 

Orson Welles' Lost Masterpiece: Chimes at Midnight  Caitlin Brady from The Columbia Journal

 

TCM Film Fest 2015: Chimes at Midnight | The Frame  Jandy

 

IONCINEMA [Nicholas Bell]

 

411mania.com [Chad Webb]

 

A Sharper Focus [Norman Holland]

 

Dan Schneider on Falstaff (Chimes At Midnight) - Cosmoetica  also seen here:  Falstaff (Chimes At Midnight) Review (1965) - The Spinning Image

 

Orson Welles's Personal Favorite Chimes at Midnight ... - Village Voice  Stephanie Zacharek

 

Chimes At Midnight · Film Review Orson Welles' late ...  Ignatiy Vishnevetsky from The Onion A.V. Club

 

Henry IV, Part I · The Hollow Crown · TV Review The Hollow ...  Kevin McFarland from The Onion A.V. Club, September 27, 2013

 

Nighthawk News [Erik Beck]

 

Orson Welles' 'Chimes at Midnight' is likely the greatest ...  Peter Rainer from Christian Science Monitor

 

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]

 

Electric Sheep Magazine [Paul Huckerby]

 

READ MORE: "How a Near-Pristine 35mm Print of Orson Welles' 'Chimes at Midnight' Was Found"  Ryan Lattanzio from indieWIRE

 

Restored 'Chimes at Midnight' - Wellesnet | Orson Welles ...  Ray Kelly

 

Falstaff, Chimes At Midnight – THE DISTRIBPIX BLOG  Steven Morowitz and Joel Bender on the restoration process, February 9, 2015

 

Orson Welles' 'Chimes at Midnight' Returns to Cinemas For ...  John Anderson and Matt Brennan from indeWIRE

 

Cinehouse: Blu-ray Review - Chimes at Midnight (1965)  Ben Browne

 

Falstaff: Chimes At Midnight – Orson Welles (1965 ...  Adam Scovell from Celluloid Wicker Man

 

Review: Orson Welles' CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT Reissue is ...  Kyle Anderson from The Nerdist

 

Criterion Prediction #16: Chimes at Midnight, by Alexander ...  Alexander Miller

 

'Chimes At Midnight' Gives Weight To A Shakespearean ...  Bob Mondello from NPR

 

Where the Long Tail Ends  Matt Gamble

 

Movie Review: Chimes at Midnight  Paul Gilbert from The Young Folks

 

Blueprint: Review [David Brook]

 

Falstaff, Chimes of Midnight | Gorilla Film Online  Christopher Small

 

Some Came Running: "Chimes At Midnight" DVD Consumer Guide  Glenn Kenny from Some Came Running, May 11, 2012

 

Film Notes From the CMA  Dennis Toth (final paragraphs)

 

'Chimes at Midnight' Review: Falstaff Redux - WSJ  Joe Morgenstern

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

The Films of Orson Welles  Ryan Jeffrey Sanderson

 

Chimes At Midnight - Movie Marker  Roland Squire

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Citizen Kael | The Monthly  Christos Tsiolkas, February 2012

 

Chimes at Midnight | Chicago Reader  Dave Kerr

 

Wellesnet | Orson Welles Web Resource » Orson Welles ...  Lars Trodson

 

Chimes at Midnight « Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource  November 25, 2011

 

Older Entries - Wellesnet | Orson Welles Web Resource  May 29, 2009

 

Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight | White City Cinema  Michael Glover Smith

 

Chimes at Midnight - BAM/PFA - Film Programs  Juliet Clark from Pacific Film Archive

 

What is your favourite Shakespeare film adaptation ...  Helena Palmer from Oxford University Press

 

Film Forum · CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

 

Northwest Film Forum :: Calendar :: Chimes at Midnight

 

MUBI [Adrian Curry]  movie posters

 

Daily | Orson Welles's CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT | Keyframe ...  David Hudson from Fandor

 

Chimes at Midnight | Variety

 

Chimes at Midnight (2015), directed by Orson Welles | Film ... - Time Out  Tom Huddleston

 

Orson Welles' rarely seen masterpiece is restored and re-released ...  Geoffrey Macnab from The Independent, July 14, 2011

 

Cleveland Press [Tony Mastroianni]

 

Orson Welles ascends in Chimes at Midnight | City Pages  Michael Nordine

 

Review: 'Chimes at Midnight' is an Orson Welles masterwork ...  L. Kent Wolgamott from The Lincoln Journal Star

 

“Chimes at Midnight” and What Makes a 'Good' Film  Marc Mohan from Oregon Artswatch

 

Chimes at Midnight - Los Angeles Times  Kenneth Turan

 

'Chimes at Midnight' review: Orson Welles' finest ...  Michael Phillips from The Chicago Tribune

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]  February 5, 1968

 

Chimes at Midnight Movie Review (1965) | Roger Ebert  June 4, 2006

 

Critic's Notebook - 'Chimes at Midnight,' Welles's Own Shakespeare ...  Vincent Canby from The New York Times, June 19, 1992, also seen here:  online 

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

Chimes at Midnight - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Wellesnet: Chimes at Midnight

 

Why Orson Welles lived a life like no other | Books | The ...  Simon Callow on his Welles biography from The Guardian, November 28, 2015

 

Orson Welles: One Man Band by Simon Callow review – tears  Anthony Quinn book review from The Guardian, December 9, 2015

 

William Shakespeare Quotes at AbsoluteShakespeare.com

 

F FOR FAKE

USA  (88 mi)  1976

 

Time Out Capsule Review

A triumphantly self-amused, self-aware reflection on the verities of art and creativity and the lies that sustain them, Welles' quizzical homage to forgery and illusionism is both a self-portrait and a wry refutation of the auteur principle, a labyrinthine play of paradoxes and ironies that comes off as the cinematic equivalent of an Escher painting. Starting with some 'found' footage of art forger Elmyr de Hory shot by documentarist François Reichenbach, Welles manipulates it into a mock inquisition on the mysteries of authorship, autonomy, attribution and associative editing, arriving back at Kane and the War of the Worlds broadcast via Howard Hughes and his hoax biographer Clifford Irving. Alongside the films of Jacques Rivette, the epitome of cinema-as-play.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List  Ben Sachs

One of the greatest accomplishments of Orson Welles' later period, the documentary/essay film/metafiction F FOR FAKE exists in a category all its own. The organizing subject is forgery, as it plays out in the worlds of art and culture. The figures studied by the film include the famous art forger Elmyr de Hory; Clifford Irving, a journalist infamous for falsifying his stories; and, in some eloquent moments of autobiography, Welles himself. The breathtaking editing design, which builds poetic rhymes and ironies out of the various components, feels at least two decades ahead of its time; the implications created by the juxtapositions (often made between reality and illusion) are consistently profound. As Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote for the Criterion Collection release, "As Finnegans Wake was for Joyce, F FOR FAKE was for Welles a playful repository of public history intertwined with private in-jokes as well as duplicitous meanings, an elaborate blend of sense and nonsense that carries us along regardless of what's actually being said. For someone whose public and private identities became so separate that they wound up operating routinely in separate households and sometimes on separate continents, exposure and concealment sometimes figured as reverse sides of the same coin, and Welles's desire to hide inside his own text here becomes a special kind of narcissism."

F for Fake  Josh Vasquez from Slant magazine

 

Orson Welles's obsession with slight of hand was not only one of the many end results of his love of the theater of magic, its gimmickry and melodrama, but was indicative of a much deeper fascination with the workings of illusion, both in one's art and one's life. His films are permeated with deceptions and masks, disappearances and revelations where all seems fleeting and unknowable, the result of desperately trying to organize bits and pieces of half-recovered truths that in the end amount to a fragile collection of myths. It is a terrible loneliness that lingers in Welles's films, a sense of evening closing in with little having been resolved; as he says with a certain theatrical eloquence in The Fountain of Youth: "The emptiness of one's own home at midnight can seem like an injury." Welles seems to hint, though, that it is precisely this inability to make the puzzle work that results in the necessary recognition of the flexibility of reality and experience. Never promising happiness, indeed often expecting pain and a near impossible sadness, Welles's films grapple with this mystery and take comfort, though sometimes a cold one, in achieving aerial views of their own labyrinths.

This image of Welles as the baroque storyteller is apparent in both his fiction and non-fiction films, although even that distinction would seem a bit misleading as the director's fiction works are filled with many emotional truths and his non-fiction works—of particular note the fragments of It's All True, the series of documentary shorts he made for British television in the 1950s, and F for Fake, a portrait of master art forger Elmyr de Hory—are composed, in part, of artfully elaborated and sculpted "facts." F for Fake is one of the more wistfully humorous of Welles's wrestlings with reality. Roguishly comic yet profoundly bittersweet and edited in seizures with a deliberate, manic grace, the film represents the most flamboyant of its director's magical acts, with Welles himself acting on screen as the narrator/conjuror, pulling the curtain back again and again, each time only to reveal another stage and another curtain in a series of dizzyingly self-reflexive meditations on fakery.

How all the more appropriate that the film should deal with "actual" events, with biographical reality, considering Welles's familiarity with the practice of weaving one's own life story. As he told Jean Clay in 1962, "If you try to probe, I'll lie to you. Seventy-five percent of what I say in interviews is false…my work is what enables me to come out of myself…do you know the best service anyone could render to art? Destroy all biographies. Only art can explain the life of a man—and not the contrary." As an artist so suspicious of biographers and the truth they make a pretense of unearthing, Welles fittingly proceeds to challenge and complicate that most sacred of cinematic cows, the documentary. Sparring no one, least of all himself, the man who once convinced people that Martians had invaded New Jersey suggests that nothing is ever what it seems.

F for Fake is about three hoaxers, Elmyr, the gentlemanly forger and "old emperor of the hoax," Elmyr's biographer Clifford Irving, himself later caught in the act of faking a partnership with Howard Hughes to produce the reclusive multi-millionaire's life story, and Welles himself, the ringmaster. "Everything you will see in the next hour will be true," he tells the audience near the beginning of the film, and yet the first sequence features Welles performing some slight of hand trickery for children in a railway station, mesmerizing them with his voice as much as with his hands, a classic example of the magician's art of misdirection. The viewer is pulled into the act and becomes a kind of accomplice, a willing participant dazzled by the show and taken in by the banter. F for Fake is as profound a rumination on spectator involvement in the fabrication of a reality, the great trick of the cinema, as it is on the fakers themselves. The viewer is the willing rube in an elaborate con game and yet it is, at its best, a well intentioned deception from which both the audience and the creator take something away with them, a fragile truce, a bridge however tenuous hovering over an abyss that tells us that the "real" is an impossibility that defies representation.

The attempt, however, even if doomed, is unavoidable, hence the melancholy of so much of Welles's work, F for Fake included, although the film is far more a celebration of uncertainty than most of its director's output. From this comedy of errors develops an interrogation of authorship: Hory flaunts his ability to make fools of the so-called experts by "authoring" paintings that hang in museums the world over under more famous names while Irving is caught fabricating the Hughes book—at one point, Irving's involvement in faking Hughes's biography causes Welles to ask the viewer if we are then to believe anything that Irving says, even about Elmyr, and is the forger therefore a fraud as well, a "fake faker?" Welles, however, does not excuse himself from such charges.

During one particularly beautiful sequence following Welles as he wanders through parks and country lanes near twilight, the director reflects on his own practiced deceptions. He recalls with bemused nostalgia how at 16 he conned his way into a job at a prestigious Dublin theater, having sold himself as a great American actor, and reminds us of his infamous broadcast of The War of the Worlds that caused a surprising amount of panic in otherwise seemingly stable listeners. "You just have to believe this," he near whispers to the audience as he chronicles several examples of individual and group hysteria, of how people can convince themselves of anything. Welles continually calls attention to his own authorial presence, using footage from other films and repeatedly cutting back to show himself addressing the audience from within an editing suite. This borrowing and assembling is crucial to the film's structure, a symbolic "revealing of the con." Working, in part, with material from a previously existing documentary by Francois Reichenbach on Elmyr, Welles quite literally formalizes this theme by explicitly demonstrating how a film is "authored" in the editing room. By foregrounding his technique, Welles puts his artistry on display and makes a parallel between the painter's use of color, shadow and line, and the filmmaker's wielding of the editing blade. By brilliantly embedding and "fleshing out" the themes of forgery and originality in the formal structure of his text, Welles pushes cinematic representation to another level and suggests that there isn't all that much difference between Elmyr and himself: in For for Fake he is, after all, just a painter using another filmmaker's paints. This makes him a faker of sorts and yet, he urges us to believe, an essentially honest one.

Unlike Irving, both Welles and Elmyr call their shots, drawing attention to their slight of hand, and one senses that that is the crucial distinction. Even the fantasy about Oja Kodar, Welles's partner and a spectral presence throughout the film, and her encounter with Picasso is revealed in the end, much to Welles's delight, as another trick. While it may be a con, it also provides one final lesson, the last achievement of a conjuring narrative. By subjecting the notion of "truth" to a madcap trial, Welles makes a revelatory statement on cinematic representation. F for Fake stands as an essential film because it is one of the most singularly poignant examinations of the essence of the medium itself, a dream, a document, a lie that is at times capable of becoming more real than reality, host to a wealth of paradoxes and contradictions, much like life. It might seem, though, that the final result of the film is an utter negation of meaning but Welles, the old magician and self-professed charlatan, states his belief in one spiritual fact at least, that art is something larger than any one author.

In one of the film's most moving and lyrical passages, Welles ruminates on the cathedral of Chartres, a work of art with no signature and yet transcendent, perhaps all the more so because without a name attached to it the structure becomes a kind of universal product of all human endeavor and yearning. And so it may be this one thing, Welles says, "this grand choiring shout of affirmation which we choose, when all our cities are dust, to stand intact…to testify to what we had it in us to accomplish." The still point at the center of the deconstructing whirlwind of F for Fake, the Chartres sequence suggests that though truth may be a function of discourse, art reflects a truth of a much deeper nature. "We are going to die," Welles says, and that is perhaps the one inescapable fact. Mortality urges people to create in the face of annihilation and so art is what matters; if we are all charlatans, art is what redeems us. At least that is what Welles urges us to believe in a film that amounts to his cinematic last will and testament. It would perhaps be foolish to argue with him.

 

Criterion Collection film essay [Jonathan Rosenbaum]  April 25, 2005

 

Rian Johnson's Top 10 - Explore - The Criterion Collection

 

F for Fake (1975) - The Criterion Collection

 

F for Fake - Bright Lights Film Journal  Robert Castle, July 31, 2004

 

A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity [Adam Lippe] 

 

Not Coming to a Theater Near You [Tom Huddleston]

 

F for Fake | James River Film Journal  July 22, 2011

 

TCM Article  Brian Cady

 

Criterion Confessions [Jamie S. Rich]

 

Filmjourney  Doug Cummings

 

F for Fake  Adam Suraf

 

F for Fake - Movie Review - Stylus Magazine  Josh Timmermann

 

Classic Review: F For Fake « The Silver Mirror  James Monroe Treakle

 

Cine Outsider [Slarek]

 

DVD Savant Review  Glenn Erickson, Criterion Collection

 

DVD Verdict [Patrick Bromley]  Criterion Collection

 

DVDTown [Christopher Long]  Criterion Collection

 

The QNetwork Film Desk [James Kendrick]  Criterion Collection

 

dOc DVD Review: F for Fake (1975) - digitallyOBSESSED!  Jeff Wilson, Criterion Collection

 

F for Fake - Criterion Collection : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video  Francis Rizzo III, Criterion Collection

 

FilmFanatic.org

 

F for Fake - American Cinematographer: DVD Playback  Jim Hemphill

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Nathan Rabin]

 

Jerry at the Movies [Jerry Saravia]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

F for Fake Review (1974) - The Spinning Image  Graeme Clark

 

The Village Voice [Michael Atkinson]

 

SBS Film [Simon Foster]

 

eFilmCritic Reviews  Jay Seaver

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

The Village Voice [Jessica Winter]

 

Reviewing Everything: Review: F for Fake (1973)  Moopot

 

It's pretty, but is it Art? | rantlust  Papi

 

TV Guide Review

 

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

NY Times Review  Vincent Canby

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

IT’S ALL TRUE

USA  France  (87 mi)  1993       originally 1942 unfinished film, reconstruction final collaborators:  Bill Krohn, Richard Wilson, and Myron Meisel

 

It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles ...  Jonathan Rosenbaum from The Reader

A two-part film (1993). The first part is an exemplary, scrupulously researched documentary about the making and unmaking of Orson Welles's Latin American documentary feature of 1942, It's All True—a project doomed by a change of studio heads at RKO, but also by its radical politics: Welles's problack stance and his focus on the poorest sectors of Brazilian life upset RKO and the Brazilian dictatorship alike. (His career never fully recovered from the ensuing studio propaganda; this film represents the first major effort after half a century of obfuscation to set the record straight.) The second part is a simple editing together of the rushes of “Four Men on a Raft,” the most ambitious (though least well-known) of the film's projected three sections, and the only one whose footage has survived nearly in its entirety. It's the true story of four courageous Fortaleza fishermen who sailed more than 1,600 miles to Rio to protest their economic exploitation by the owners of their fishing rafts, beautifully shot in black and white by George Fanto. Welles had intended to narrate the section himself, but the writers and directors of this documentary—the late Richard Wilson, who worked on the original film, and critics Bill Krohn and Myron Meisel—have wisely opted not to second-guess Welles, simply presenting the material as it stands and adding music and sound effects. We also get to see some tantalizing surviving fragments of the other two sections: “My Friend Bonito,” which was shot in Mexico, and “The Story of Samba,” which includes some dazzling Technicolor footage.

It's All True | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Eric Henderson

In Movie Wars, critic Jonathan Rosenbaum holds up the reputation of Orson Welles as a supreme renegade and a warrior against the Hollywood system of moviemaking. One of his most subversive traits, according to Rosenbaum, was in the fact that many of his films lack definitive versions, some (like Mr. Arkadin) having as many as 10 separate iterations, and others existing only in fragments (The Other Side of the Wind). While The Magnificent Ambersons was being kissed off by preview audiences, Welles found himself in Brazil as a cultural ambassador, bringing with him the American government's gospel of solidarity against tyrannous forces on either side of the Americas. What Welles was supposed to film was propaganda. What ended up catching his artistic fancy was the colors of Carnival, the mystery of voodoo (Welles apparently claimed that this production was damned not so much by RKO executive roundelays, but by a witch doctor's curse), and the tenacity of the locals. Eventually, his propaganda assignment evolved into a complex, three-pronged docu-drama that would combine ethnography with epic pageantry. But, just as the dark heart of Ambersons was being ruthlessly excised by studio execs on the homefront, Welles's vision down South was repeatedly hampered by a beleaguered shoot. It's All True (a 1993 documentary covering Welles's aborted production of the same title) is a dual-action bit of cinematic-historic revisionism, fastidiously attempting to clear away the conjecture and Rosenbaum-lauded "mess" of Welles's Brazil episode in the first half, and then presenting newly discovered footage that (we take directors Richard Wilson, Myron Meisel, and Bill Krohn at their words) constitute one of the three segments of It's All True in its entirety. The roughly 45-minute fragment (called "Four Men on a Raft") is quite stunning, a blustery, sky-dominated shoreline world that recalls Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, and it stands apart from many of Welles's other films in that hubris would appear to be ultimately rewarded. Thus, even if there's a faint residue of meddlesome canonical buff-n-shine inherent in the enterprise, It's All True is an essential piece in the Welles puzzle.

Washington Post [Desson Howe]

“It’s All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles” is a well-intended tribute to Welles who -- like so many directors before and after him -- ran afoul of the Hollywood suits who crowned him. But it's the real story around this movie, now 50 years old, that bears telling.

The original "It's All True" was to have been made in the early 1940s by Welles. Hailed as a genius for "Citizen Kane," and about to edit the equally impressive followup, "The Magnificent Ambersons," Welles agreed to make a goodwill propaganda film for the State Department, with RKO financing.

But the patriotic carte-blanche project was to be a career disaster. RKO was soon to pull the plug early, claiming the young director had squandered money and resources on a reckless, non-scripted, commie-sympathetic ego trip. The condemnation set in motion a rapid, irreversible fall from grace for Welles.

The original "It's All True" was to celebrate Latin America in omnibus form. The first of three segments, "My Friend Bonito," was a story about a Mexican boy and his bull. The second, "Carnaval," was a documentary coverage of Brazil's annual carnival; it evolved into a piece about the roots of samba.

For the final piece, "Four Men on a Raft," Welles decided to reprise the true-life story of four Brazilian fishermen who had just become national heroes. To protest working conditions, the four jangadeiros had undertaken a Homeric, 1,650-mile voyage around the Brazilian coast on a rudimentary raft made of logs.

When RKO saw footage of dark-skinned Brazilians crazily jumping up and down in "The Story of Samba," as well as his footage of slum poverty, they panicked and abandoned the project. Welles was left with his ideas and incomplete footage.

In the course of making "It's All True," he was forced to leave the editing of "The Magnificent Ambersons" to studio-appointed philistines (they gave it a "happy" ending); as well as struggle to fulfill his commitment to make "Journey Into Fear." Essentially, he was finished, universally perceived as an uncontrollable, irresponsible filmmaker.

Other problems beset the project, including lost equipment and, worst of all, the drowning of one of the original raftsmen during the reenactment of their arrival in Rio's Guanabara Bay. Determined to pay tribute to the drowned jangadeiro, Welles completed the filming with a lean, low-budget crew. But "It's All True" never saw completion, and essentially his career was finished.

In the 1993 "It's All True," filmmakers Bill Krohn, the late Richard Wilson (an erstwhile Welles collaborator) and Myron Meisel pull the story together as best they can. They have assembled this posthumous tribute from existing footage, old interviews with Welles on the subject and recent interviews with survivors -- or their relatives. The late Welles obviously had nothing to do with this new project. But you can feel his ambitious, quixotic intentions lurking in there somewhere. If nothing else, this brings a chapter of his troubled career to light and tells us of four determined men who -- like Welles -- fought the current every bit of the way.

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]

Welles was not in Los Angeles to defend his film because he was on location in Brazil, directing an anthology film named "It's All True," which Nelson Rockefeller thought would cement wartime relationships between the United States and Latin America, and which almost everyone else, possibly except for Welles and his team, thought was a cockamamie project from the beginning.

"The Nelson Proj-ect," as Welles was later sardonically to call it, would include a Mexican bullfighting sequence, a documentary about carnaval in Rio, a lot of samba dancing in Technicolor, and a black and white sequence telling the story of four poor peasants who sailed their raft more than 1,000 miles to ask the president of Brazil for help for their people.

Much of the footage for "It's All True" had already been shot when the studio, RKO, pulled the plug on Welles' budget and ordered him home. The movie was never released, "Ambersons" was butchered badly in his absence, and his career, which began with what many believe is the greatest film ever made, never ever quite recovered. Welles spent the rest of his life fighting a reputation as a dilettante who didn't finish things, but the "It's All True" fiasco was not his fault.

Now here is a documentary named "It's All True" which brings together much of the surviving footage from the American adventure, and adds interviews with Welles, cinematographer Joseph Biroc, his associate Richard Wilson and others who worked on the project.

Because Welles is arguably the most magnetic and mercurial of all American directors, the film would be interesting on any grounds, but it is also impressive because of the long raft sequence, shown here in an essentially complete state.

The story of the four fishermen and their 1,650-mile journey up and down the coast of Brazil was already famous before Welles filmed it. But the filming began on a note of tragedy. While Welles was shooting the men on the raft in Rio's Guanbara Bay, the tiny craft overturned and one of the men - their leader, known as Jacare - was lost. The same day, RKO pulled the plug, but Welles struggled on with a skeleton crew and eventually did shoot a silent black and white documentary-style story.

The footage was thought lost for years, until it surfaced in a Paramount vault. Now you can see it, like a ghost film from the past.

In its unusual camera angles it resembles some compositions Welles would use in "Macbeth" (1947) and "Othello" (1952), and in its more heroic moments it looks like something by Sergei Eisenstein. The fishermen never emerge as individuals, but their feat - sailing 1,650 miles in the open sea, without navigational aids, in a craft smaller than a bed - remains incredible.

Welles appears both young and old to describe the unmaking of "It's All True." In a sequence shot years ago, he leans toward the camera in a conspiratorial pose, deliberately acting; in later footage, he simply tells the old story once again. Both Welles and the filmmakers who compiled this documentary after his death insist it was Rockefeller and his friend John Hay Whitney who encouraged the South American project, although the controversial Charles Higham biography of Welles says the Brazilian minister of propaganda first dreamed up the scheme. Rockefeller embraced it, Higham says, for shady motives. (It must be said that Higham's lurid view of Rockefeller's secret motives does not find much support elsewhere.) What is clear is that Welles, still in his mid-20s, and heady with the success of "Kane" and the apparent success of "Ambersons," got swept up in a wave of patriotic fervor and embarked on the South American project without really asking himself if this trip was necessary. In Brazil, with no definite script or game plan and with input from countless American and Brazilian functionaries, he seemed to improvise his way through the film. Maybe, given the money, he would have finished it. Maybe not. What remains is some dramatic quasi-documentary footage by Welles, surrounded by the poignant story of a project that went so far wrong that Welles spent four decades under its shadow.

Wellesnet | Orson Welles Web Resource » It's All True

 

It's Note All True: Orson Welles and His Critics  Graham Petrie from the Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter 2009

 

Lawrence Russell on It's All True  Film Court

 

Projections  Jon

 

It's All True  Michael E. Grost

 

KQEK.com [Mark R. Hasan]

 

DVD Verdict  Jesse Ataide

 

CELLULOID DREAMS: Reviews - It's All True (DVD-2006)  Daniel Severin

 

Films in Review » It's All True - Harold B. Lee Library   Dean Duncan, March 26, 2015

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Film Forum · IT'S ALL TRUE

 

It's All True: Based On An Unfinished Film By Orson Welles ...  TV Guide

 

Review: 'It's All True' - Variety

 

Washington Post [Rita Kempley]

 

Austin Chronicle [Marjorie Baumgarten]

 

It’s All True: Reconstructing the Tale Of a Wellesian Disaster  Vincent Canby from The New York Times

 

It's All True: Based On An Unfinished Film By Orson Welles  The New York Times

 

It's All True (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey  Catherine L. Benamou (416 pages), 2007

 

It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey ... 

 

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND

France  Iran                  Unfinished

 

Orson Welles at 100: Orson Welles’s Last Movie  Jake Hinkson from Criminal Element, April 16, 2015

May 6th, 2015 will mark the 100th birthday of the late Orson Welles. To commemorate the birth of the great filmmaker, we’ll be looking back at many of his greatest cinematic accomplishments — movies like Citizen Kane, The Lady From Shanghai, The Trial, and Chimes At Midnight. First though, let’s pull a real Orson Welles move and start at the end, with his last great movie project, the ill-fated The Other Side of the Wind.

The movie was going to be Welles’s grand statement on filmmaking. It tells the story of an aging movie director, Jake Hannaford (played by a wily John Huston) who is trying to stage a comeback in a Hollywood that has basically left him behind. The film was autobiographical, of course — though Welles, being Welles, dismissed any overly autobiographical readings of the film. He labored mightily on the project for years — fighting money troubles and the indifference of the establishment. In the end, the film was left unedited. To this day, it remains virtually unseen, even by most movie fanatics.

A new book looks at this fascinating period in the life of the great director. In Orson Welles’s Last Movie: The Making of The Other Side of the Wind author Josh Karp has assembled the most detailed account yet of the creation of the doomed project.

Writing a book on Welles must be a beautifully daunting task. Beautiful in the sense that Welles makes for excellent company. The Welles that Karp puts on the page is magnificent — he is by turns funny, touching, and brilliant. He’s a flawed man to be sure, but his flaws are as much a part of his legend as anything else about him. It is easy to see why this great filmmaker inspired the devotion of so many people.

But the task of writing a book on Welles must also be deeply daunting because of the unruly nature of the man and his working conditions. As any Welles fanatic knows (and I count myself among their number) there is a complicated story behind the making of just about every Welles movie. In fact, there are usually dozens of complicated and interlocking stories behind the making of any Welles movie. This isn’t the case with most filmmakers. Hitchcock was as great a director as ever lived, but the story behind the making of most of his movies is that he showed up to work and made a movie. With Welles, there are always intrigues and betrayals, twists and turns. Karp tells us that Welles would really have had it no other way. He thrived on chaos (and, indeed, many of his films take chaos as a theme) because it spurred creativity. Karp quotes the director on this very subject: “The great danger for any artist is to find himself comfortable. It’s his duty to find the point of maximum discomfort, to search it out.”

On The Other Side of the Wind, Welles pushed the discomfort as far as it could go. By 1970, when he began the film, his own position in Hollywood could be described as a strange mixture of reverence and dismissal. Everyone thought he was a genius (though some felt he was an overrated genius), and most of them just wanted him to go away. It didn’t matter that he was still a restless creative talent who was still making interesting films (like 1968’s The Immortal Story or 1965’s Chimes at Midnight). In Hollywood, he was a quirky has-been. With The Other Side of the Wind, Welles aimed for a comeback — a chance to prove that he was as important a filmmaker as ever. The film would be a meta-commentary on his career, on the current state of filmmaking, on the way old men destroy themselves. He shot on a shoestring, with friends and associates — most of whom would eventually drift away from the project. With the film, Welles was exploring his own obsessions with film, with the collapse of old men, with the inevitability of failure. People would accuse of him of being unable to finish the film because it had come to resemble his life too closely. He had pushed things too far — stylistically and thematically.

Karp’s book is an absorbing look at a cinematic giant entering his twilight. Welles was a man about whom there was no shortage of opinions, and Karp does a good job of gathering firsthand testimony from many of the people who worked with him on The Other Side of the Wind. The most intriguing, and in many ways tragic, figure in the book is Welles’s cinematographer Gary Graver. Although he was a dedicated cinephile who longed to make great films, Graver’s career never took off and he wound up working in the dregs, cranking out cheapie softcore pornos like Veronica 2030 until the end of his life. Yet in the early ‘70s, Graver was the man most responsible for keeping Orson Welles in the business of making movies. He stood by Welles for years, often without pay, often to the expense of his own family and career, enraptured by the experience and dedicated to the cause that was Orson Welles.

Karp brings the story up to date as much as he can — detailing the decades-long attempts by Welles collaborators like Graver and Peter Bogdanovich to see the film released. He also puts the blame for the film’s long exile in the wilderness squarely at the feet of Welles’s girlfriend and artistic partner Oja Kodar, who, in his telling, has thwarted several efforts to get the film finished because she wanted a larger cut of the pie. (It should be noted that Kodar is not included among the book’s interview subjects.)

The latest news on The Other Side of the Wind, however, is that it is finally finally supposed to be edited and released this year in honor of Welles’s 100th  birthday.

We’ll see. Every dedicated Welles geek has heard this kind of thing before.

As much as I am dying to see the movie, I must admit that I don’t look forward to the response it will get. An Orson Welles movie that has gone unfinished for the better part of forty years? It’ll be called a masterpiece by some and a piece of trash by the rest. In truth, it will never fully be Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind because he never finished editing the thing—and he would have been the first to say that the editing process was where his movies were really born.

Let’s let Karp have the last word on the film as it is:

[T]he film is a fragment, composed of brilliance and madness; finely honed and wildly disorganized; meticulously edited but ultimately unfinished. The movie is a shot at perfection in a world where the director  can no longer control his muse and is left to stumble about in a maze composed of his own art and creativity.  It’s a world that shows Welles at his best and worst, bringing together his polar opposites—but unable or unwilling to recognize that his art and life have become one and the same.

Unfinished Orson Welles Film Gets a Netflix Commitment   Brooks Barnes from The New York Times, March 15, 2017

 

Wellman, William A.

 

"Biography."  Turner Classic Movies, also seen here:  TCMDB

Versatile director whose prolific output was mostly unexceptional but which included a number of cinematic gems.

After an aimless, misspent youth, including a stint in the foreign legion, Wellman became an ace pilot in WWI. He was discharged as a war hero after his plane was shot down and, in 1918, was stationed as a flight instructor at an air base in Southern California. He was then invited to Hollywood by Douglas Fairbanks, whom he had met and befriended before the war.

Garbed in full military splendor, Wellman greeted Fairbanks and was promptly offered a substantial part in "Knickerbocker Buckaroo" (1919); he found the experience unbearable, and acting an unmanly undertaking. He opted instead for a directing career and worked his way up the ranks; has first job, as a messenger, involved delivering fan notices to his estranged first wife, Helene Chadwick. Wellman made his directorial debut with Fox in 1923 and, over the course of four years, graduated from low-profile westerns to major productions; in 1927 he directed "Wings," the first film to win an Academy Award.

Wellman went on to prove a capable, well-rounded technician, and was responsible for such excellent, diverse films as "Public Enemy" (1931), the definitive Cagney gangster film; the original "A Star Is Born" (1937), for which he earned a best screenplay Oscar; "Nothing Sacred" (1937), a scathingly funny screwball comedy; and "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943), a didactic drama about lynching. He also directed two fine war films, "The Story of GI Joe" (1945) and "Battleground" (1949). Among his later wives were singer-dancer Margery Chapin and actress Dorothy Coonan, whom he directed in "Wild Boys of the Road" (1933).

William Wellman  Stephen L. Hanson from Film Reference

William Wellman's critical reputation is in many respects still in a state of flux long after re-evaluations and recent screenings of his major films should have established some consensus of opinion regarding his place in the pantheon of film directors. While there is some tentative agreement that he is, if nothing else, a competent journeyman director capable of producing entertaining male-dominated action films, other opinions reflect a wide range of artistic evaluations, ranging from comparisons to D.W. Griffith to outright condemnations of his films as clumsy and uninspired. His own preferred niche, as indicated by his flamboyant personality and his predilection for browbeating and intimidating his performers, would probably be in the same general class as highly masculine filmmakers like Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Raoul Walsh. While those three enjoy a distinct auteur status, a similar designation for Wellman is not so easily arrived at since much of his early work for Warner Bros. in the late 1930s is, at first glance, not easily distinguishable from the rest of the studio's output of sociological problem films and exposés of organized crime. In addition, his later films do not compare favorably, in many scholars' opinions, to treatments of similar themes (often employing the same actors and locales) by both Ford and Hawks.

It might be argued, however, that Wellman actually developed what has come to be regarded as the Warner Bros. style to a greater degree than did the studio's other directors. His 1931 The Public Enemy , for example, stands above most of the other gangster films of the era in its creative blend of highly vivid images and in the subtle manner in which it created a heightened impression of violence and brutality by giving only hints of it on the screen. Exhibiting similar subtlety, Wellman's depiction of a gangster, beginning with his childhood, graphically alluded to the sociological roots of organized crime. While many of his more typical treatments of men in adversity, like 1927's Academy Award-winning Wings , were sometimes artificial, everything worked in Public Enemy. In Wellman's later films like The Ox-Bow Incident, The Story of G.I. Joe , and Battleground , the interactions of men in various groupings are shaped in such a way as to determine the direction and thematic force of each story. In others, like Track of the Cat , the emphasis shifts instead to one individual and his battle with forces of nature beyond his control. Yet in all cases, the issue is one of survival, a concept that manifests itself in some manner in all of Wellman's films. It is overt and recognizable in war dramas like Battleground or in a disaster film like The High and the Mighty , but it is reflected at least as much in the psychological tensions of Public Enemy as it is in the violence. It becomes even more abstract in a complex picture like Track of the Cat when the issue concerns the family unit and the insecurity of its internal relationships. In the more heavy-handed propaganda films such as The Iron Curtain and Blood Alley , the theme centers on the threat to democratic forms of government, and finally, in the Ox-Bow Incident , the issue is the very fragility of society itself in the hands of a mob.

Wellman's supporters feel that these concerns arise from the latent cynicism of a disappointed romantic but are expressed by an instinctive artist with a keen awareness of the intellectual force of images conveyed with the raw power of many of those in Public Enemy. Yet it is the inconsistency of these images and a corresponding lack of inspiration in his work overall that clouds his stature as an auteur of the first rank. While, ultimately, it is true that Wellman's films cannot be easily separated from the man behind them, his best works are those that sprang from his emotional and psychological experiences. His lesser ones have been overshadowed by the cult of his personality and are best remembered for the behind-the-scenes fistfights, parties, and wild stunts, all of which detracted from the production. Perhaps he never got the chance to make the one indisputable masterpiece that would thematically support all of the seemingly irreconcilable aspects of his personality and firmly establish him as a director of the first magnitude.

From the Archives: William Wellman by Bertrand Tavernier - Film ...  Bertrand Tavernier from Film Comment, February 10, 2012, initially published in the Jan/Feb Positif issue of 2004

This article was originally published as “Pioneer Spirit” in the Jan/Feb 2004 issue. A 42-film William Wellman retrospective runs through March 1 at Film Forum.

Universal City, 1969. A projection room. The film is former blacklistee Abraham Polonsky's Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here. The guests include fellow HUAC defier Adrian Scott, and directors Tay Garnett, Allan Dwan, and William A. Wellman. The man behind the screening, then-distributor and freelance publicist Pierre Rissient, seizes this opportunity to speak to Wellman about Polonsky's difficulties with the Hollywood blacklist. Wellman does not react well. Clearly, the mere mention of the word “communist” makes him see red. But after the screening, he rushes to Polonsky, showers him with compliments, urges Dwan and Garnett to join in the praise, and becomes Willie Boy's most enthusiastic supporter. And he goes even further: upon hearing that Universal chief Lew Wasserman doesn't believe in the film, he unhesitatingly calls to bawl him out and, Wasserman being unavailable, leaves an incendiary message with his flabbergasted secretary: “If that asshole motherfucker doesn't realize this is a masterpiece, if that bastard won't defend Willie Boy, tell him…” You can imagine the rest. The next day, he rallied Henry Hathaway and others to his campaign, creating a sensational uproar.

All of Wellman is contained in this contradiction. On the one hand, the militant anticommunist, the right-wing reactionary, full of anger at certain Democratic presidents. On the other hand, the anarchic fighter, the generous individualist who, when he liked someone or something, forgot his prejudices and principles. His son, William Wellman, Jr., in an article in the March-April 1970 issue of the Directors Guild magazine Action, tersely defined him as “the rebel director.” Then he wrote what could almost pass for an epitaph:

Consider a man who:

Was a juvenile delinquent;

Played ice-hockey for a living as a kid;

Became a World War One flying ace at eighteen;

Was a lousy actor but a good messenger boy;

Became a film director and was fired from almost every studio in Hollywood;

Had many romantic misses before marrying the wife he has had for 36 years;

Has seven children and eleven grandchildren;

Earned and kept a fortune;

Quit after forty years at the top of his profession.

Let's add a few paradoxes:

1.      Wellman's high-profile, groundbreaking films are his most interesting and successful: Public Enemy (31), A Star Is Born (37), The Ox-Bow Incident (43). This isn't the case with other Hollywood directors—think of Ford's The Fugitive or Cukor's Romeo and Juliet.

2.      Said ambition is sometimes difficult to pinpoint. The films he produced himself are not among his best, nor are those he wrote (The Robin Hood of El Dorado [36] is, as a matter of fact, devoid of ambition). The sole exception in the latter category is A Star Is Born, whose sobriety counters the excess and over-the-top melodrama usually displayed by Selznick productions. The film even opens with a close-up of the screenplay, a dramatic device that now seems 30 years ahead of its time.

3.      Wellman was a former aviator, but his best war films were about the life of the foot soldier.

4.      We owe this very macho man some wonderful portraits of women, even some films that are surprisingly feminist in tone: Night Nurse (31), Safe in Hell (31), Westward the Women (51).

French critics in the Fifties and Sixties got it wrong when they heralded Wellman as a progressive, or at least liberal, filmmaker. Certain articles in Cahiers du Cinéma (which expressed surprise that he had made The Iron Curtain [48]) and in the leftist Positif need to be challenged. The Iron Curtain was not a studio-imposed job; on the contrary, it faithfully reflected Wellman’s principles (found again in 1955’s Blood Alley, the French-dubbed version of which spirited away all the anticommunist content)­­—which were closer to John Wayne’s than to those of Ford, who, at the time, was branded by the same magazines as the arch reactionary. These kinds of misconceptions abound, on both ends of the political spectrum, and have stigmatized other directors (e.g., Milestone’s supposed “militarism”). In Wellman’s case, it can be explained by one single word: realism.

Because Wellman made a relatively daring film on the subject of lynching, and a few ambitious and unusually authentic-looking war pictures, he was labeled a realist. The label is justified, provided one knows exactly what it means. The director of Wings (27) belongs to a generation of filmmakers who had become accustomed to being their own masters during the silent era. They often behaved like anarchists and would brook no interference. They had a reactionary bent, but that didn't keep them from challenging taboos and restrictions. The producer, with few exceptions (Selznick seems to have had a creative relationship with Wellman), became the enemy as soon as he attempted to meddle. Wellman sent the producers of Wings to a field without telling them he was about to begin shooting a bombing sequence there; they left him alone for the rest of the project. He is also said to have dumped cartloads of manure in front of a studio mogul's office.

All of these filmmakers—Wellman, Hawks, Ford, Walsh—were creating a new language, and their struggle was an apolitical one. Everything in this battle was of equal value: to shoot on location, to defy the Production Code, to direct a picture about lynching, to be the first to deal with taboo subjects. Aside from his admiration for Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s fine novel, when Wellman took on The Ox-Bow Incident he was equally attracted by the screenplay’s scathing content and by the notion of doing a different kind of Western­—one without women and whose violence worried executives at Fox.

A movie without women—almost. Two minor female characters are of capital importance: the unforgettable and awesome Jane Darwell, barbarism incarnate, and Mary Beth Hughes as Henry Fonda’s former fiancée, whom he meets in a beautiful, uncanny sequence, in the midst of the film’s central chase, after she has married someone else. One could almost say there are three female characters, since in the opening scene a saloon painting of a woman triggers a striking passage of dialogue.

For such directors, the artistic (if one may use a word they disliked) aim was a close mixture of a more-or-less-vague quest for “truth,” a determination to avoid clichés, and the pursuit of “entertainment.” They fought to shoot certain stories as much in order to break rules and challenge conventions as for their actual content, to introduce technical innovations (the rejection of rear projection and studio-bound exteriors) as much as to escape from routine. Their genius lay in their sometimes unconscious grasp of the fact that everything was linked. The setting up of an outdoor crane shot was as important as a screenplay's daring invention. As a result, many of them expressed a measure of pride in certain aspects of their films that, to us, seems (or used to seem) disproportionate. Wellman discussed at length a tracking shot set in the Folies Bergères (Wings) that was quite innovative, and he seemed to feel that Fonda’s way of reading the letter in Ox-Bow (in an extraordinary setup that hides his eyes behind the brim of his hat) was as important as the meaning of the sequence.

While critics noticed innovations in Wellman’s films more often than in those of other directors of his generation, they neglected some of his most original ideas in favor of flashier ones. The linguistic authenticity attempted in Across the Wide Missouri (51) was ignored, even though few Westerns had done anything like it at the time—the Blackfoot Indians spoke Blackfoot, the French spoke French (in the French-dubbed version, they even used a Bearn patios to distinguish between them).

Wellman's vigor is reflected in his often biting comedies and his tough, rugged action films and dramas. He attempted to instill them with the virility he boasted in real life, even directing love scenes while wielding a “suggestive” piece of wood. He also relied on literary sources that were not widely known. As a result, Wellman seemed more of an auteur, a man who brought his own vision of the world to his films. But confusing the use of realism with political commitment has been the source of many a critical blunder. Even George Bernard Shaw, in a famous analysis pitting Shakespeare against Ibsen, sides with the latter “because he is a realist.” Realism is merely a method, not an end. For Wellman, it was an opportunity to more accurately and credibly depict the behavior of people he knew (soldiers, cowboys, flyers), not to analyze or criticize them. Thanks to his talent, the films sometimes go beyond their premises, and even contradict them. Again to paraphrase, Shaw said that he was depressed by how many people saw life realistically and expressed themselves romantically. Let’s apply this remark to American cinema. There is a whole category of directors (Dwan, King) who see life romantically and express it similarly. Others (Walsh, Torneur, Preminger in the Fifties) express it realistically. As for Wellman, he straddles both approaches; he is a half-romantic who films half-realistically. This may be why critics used to single him out. His ambition is immediately visible, as it lies in understating and pruning.

Many of Wellman’s screenplays are characterized by a kind of punctilious, down-to-earth verism that helps de-dramatize the subject's main thrust, while the direction goes counter to the initial point of departure. Not in the most obvious respects (choice of location, direction of actors) but in the internal dynamics. Thus there is a strange contradiction between the de-dramatized tone of some sequences in Yellow Sky (49) or 'The Story of G.I. Joe (45), and a mise-en-scène that often relies on studied, even aestheticized setups. In some of his films, the direction seldom coincides with what it is supposed to express. It remains mostly parallel to the subject. Wellman's vaunted spareness and sobriety seem curiously sidetracked by the visual style, or even the internal relationships between shots. In this respect, Yellow Sky, revisited, is a disappointment. The conventional script (according to Todd McCarthy, based on The Tempest) impedes the dramatic progression by visually emphasizing gestures that shouldn't have been underscored. It's like dismantling an engine to showcase its smallest and most expendable parts.

As a result of this lack of an overall vision, the notion of hero, or protagonist, is undermined—a rare occurrence in American cinema. But Wellman's rejection of individualism is not always counterbalanced by depictions of community, except in the most conventional sense, as in Island in the Sky (53), The High and the Mighty(54), Call of the Wild (36), Robin Hood of El Dorado, the very disappointing Beau Geste (39), or even much of Wings. This is a far cry from Ford’s exaltation of community or Hawks’s self-contained groups of professionals. Wellman underplays what many have seemed to clichéd in Hollywood cinema (the romantic hero, overdramatized action), but this spareness reveals, in his bad films, an equally conventional worldview. Hence the strange impression created by a film like Buffalo Bill (44): what was taken as a critical intention was actually a side effect of Wellman's style, and resulted in a kind of overall dullness from which no real content arose. Clichés are toned down or eschewed, but nothing takes their place. As a result, Wellman seemed more “artistic” and ambitious than Dwan or Henry King.

Wellman's approach is particularly fruitful in his war pictures. The at-times tedious austerity of G.I. Joe or BattlegroundG.I. Joe), the dominant impression is akin to the vision of the Battle of Waterloo by the uncomprehending protagonist in Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma. Wellman's intention was to show “daily heroism” in the tradition of British cinema, but his direction ended up canceling out heroism altogether. In Battleground, there are sublime sequences thoroughly devoid of excitement; even the gags generate no feeling of euphoria. When confronted with the highly original qualities of such films as Battleground, Westward the Women, Track of the Cat (54), G.I. Joe, or Across the Wide Missouri, one gets the feeling that Wellman, as Manny Farber brilliantly put it, wants to tell stories about men “standing around—for no damned reason and with no indication of for how long.”

Such a definition, which could apply to some of his Paramount films of the Thirties (for example, 1930's disastrous Dangerous Paradise), is thoroughly contradicted by most of his Warner-produced pictures of 1931-33 that I have been able to see. They include several daring, brilliant masterpieces in which Wellman's best qualities blossom. Some are justly famous, like The Public Enemy, in which Cagney's superb performance is just as modern as the dialogue by Harvey Thew. Others, such as The Hatchet Man (32), are based on delirious premises, but brilliant direction (at the beginning, a funeral procession turns into a panicked stampede filmed in a series of breathtaking crane shots interspersed with close ups of painted dragons and histrionic exchanges) transcends the mind-boggling plot twists and questionable casting. The closing sequence is staggering: Edward G. Robinson throws a hatchet through a painting to prove he is the Chinatown executioner. The blade pins the bad guy to the wall. For a while we think he's still alive, because his body and head move, but the movement is due to the fact that the hatchet is being pulled out of the wall.

Wellman's social-problem films are among the genre's most radical and violent. Hal Wallis had several shots deleted from Wild Boys of the Road (33) because he deemed them unbearable for the general public; to Wellman they expressed the realities of the Depression. The scenes of gangs of children running after the trains are both spectacular and poignant, and superior to Nikolai Ekk’s 1931 film Road to Life, Wellman’s original inspiration. The word “communism” is even uttered—most daringly. Of course, in Heroes for Sale (33), the Marxist character is co-opted by the System, and Richard Barthelmess tries to prevent the striking workers from rioting. But in addition to brutal repression Wellman shows police-like militias chasing the Reds, and he does it in a critical fashion. It is one of the few films, to my knowledge, that alludes to the existence of communists. The ending is thoroughly uncompromising: the victims of the Depression are still on the road, begging in the rain.

Night Nurse and Safe in Hell are also remarkable films, among the major successes of the Pre-Code period. They give us detailed portraits of the world of labor, and they tackle any number of topics that would soon become taboo. In Night Nurse, a splendid, very sexy Barbara Stanwyck, often seen wearing nothing but her slip, confronts a wealthy, grimacing doctor (probably a cocaine fiend) who, aided by his diabolical right-hand man (a black-clad Clark Gable), tries to starve two children to death in order to seize their trust fund. There is an abundance of provocative lines (“I'm a dypsomaniac, and I like it”) and exchanges (“Why can't my son have a screen round his bed?”—”It's against the rules.”—”What about this one?”-“He is dying, madam”). No cop or judge comes along to reestablish Law and Order. Stanwyck protects a wounded bootlegger who will “take care” of the bad guy at the end, although in a nonchalant, elliptical manner. One line suggests what may have happened to Clark Gable and is confirmed by the closing exchange, worthy of Rowland Brown: “The guy inside was taken for a ride.”—“The Bootlegger?”—“No, he was wearing a chauffeur’s uniform.”

In the even stranger Safe in Hell, a crime melodrama gradually turns into a wry, sarcastic fable. The heroine, clearly a prostitute, believes (mistakenly) that she has killed a man and is wanted for murder (the opening sequences are stunning, their openness and pace still amazing today). She seeks refuge on a Caribbean island from which criminals cannot be extradited. There she must deal with a collection of characters who represent, more or less, the most depraved aspects of civilization. The film at times brings to mind Jean Genet's The Balcony. In Pre-Code Hollywood, Thomas Doherty writes that Sinclair Lewis felt that the cabaret singer played by Clarence Muse was one of only two exceptions to the demeaning portrayal of blacks in Hollywood films (the other being Clarence Brown's doctor in Arrowsmith).

In Other Men's Women (31), another great achievement with remarkable energy and vitality, real locations and elements of every day life are integrated with the plot twists without regard for rules and conventions, making it closer to Renoir than to Lloyd Bacon or Ray Enright. The opening sequence, a bantering exchange between a railroad engineer and his girlfriend in a depot cafe, is paced to the passing of a real train, the man counting the cars as he sweet-talks the girl and drinks his coffee before jumping aboard the last one. Even more impressive, an argument on the railroad tracks between the engineer and his other girl is filmed in one continuous shot. When the girl walks away, Wellman keeps the man framed as he calls after her louder and louder, and she answers off-screen. Cagney, once again, is outstanding.

Toward the end of his career, Wellman returned, less efficiently, to a relaxed, laid-back tone, at least in his war films. In quick succession, he directed two exhilarating, rambunctious movies using young TV actors under Warner's contract: Darby's Rangers (58) and Lafayette Escadrille (58). In the third shot of Darby's Rangers, two guys bump into each other as they look at a recruiting poster. This is the prelude to a series of gags and comical adventures climaxing with a bawdy scene in which Etchika Choureau is hosed down by soldiers in charge of wartime delousing. A number of scenes between Choureau and James Garner involve a bed whose springs are constantly checked and rechecked. Although uneven, the film ends in a fine, fog-bound battle sequence, with a superb lateral tracking shot that ends on a group of Germans lying ready in ambush.

Lafayette Escadrille is even more lighthearted. Ostensibly paying tribute to the American flyers killed in France during WWI, the film actually deals with a gang of pranksters more interested in picking up girls. They must endure French officers who deliver rapid-fire instructions on how to handle the planes, although the Americans don't understand a word of French. They botch everything, drive Marcel Dalio crazy, play the banjo during inspection, nail the sentries to their sentry boxes. One shot suggests the tone of the entire film: when it's announced that the U.S. has entered the war, a young soldier jumps up enthusiastically—and hits his head on the ceiling. Wellman sneaks in two extraordinary shots. Tab Hunter, an actor Wellman was understandably reluctant to use, escapes from a French prison and is seen running in the distance under a stunning stormy sky. Filmed in silhouette against the horizon, he knocks out a sentry and steals his uniform. Earlier, Hunter has met Choureau. A group of soldiers are chatting near a bar. The camera frames the girl's face while everybody around her is talking; Wellman holds the shot for a long time. She simply looks at the camera, while people talk, laugh, walk past. This daring, modern approach leaves you speechless. Such moments make up for the flaws (including the ending, disowned by Wellman) of a ramshackle but very youthful, high-spirited movie.

One might think, then, that Wellman feels most comfortable when he lets himself go, as is the case with many American directors. The truth is more complex. A comedy like Magic Town (47), written by Robert Riskin, is thoroughly anonymous, with only one delightful scene—James Stewart and Jane Wyman competing in a poetry recitation contest (he reads The Charge of the Light Brigade, she Hiawatha). On the other hand, such ambitious, dramatic projects as Westward the Women (from a subject by Frank Capra) and Track of the Cat are outstanding.

We shouldn't forget the excellent Across the Wide Missouri, a film that was reportedly as badly butchered as Huston's Red Badge of Courage, which accounts for several continuity mistakes and some weird ellipses. Despite these flaws, and an obnoxious dubbed-on commentary, the film has a relaxed, meandering narrative style that equals Hawks's in The Big Sky. Wellman, much more at ease with Indians than Hawks had been, depicts them with sly humor: the appearance of the chief clad in a suit of armor is one of the richest moments in Westerns, and Gable's wedding night with his Native American bride makes up for many a racist movie. Wellman reacts with spontaneous generosity to racial minorities—he is closer to Ford in that respect. In his evocation of pioneer life, he yields to a Rousseau-esque romanticism seldom seen in his earlier works, and not devoid of dignity. Even the film's cruel Indian (played by Ricardo Montalban) is presented with simplicity and without any striving for effect. It's actually not him, but a white trapper, who starts the battle in which the Montalban character kills an Indian chief, and his death—he's stabbed with a rifle's bayonet—is one of the most beautiful shots in any Wellman film. After this violent outburst, the movie settles into a melancholy serenity: “Fallen trees rot on the ground; men are buried where they died,” the commentary says, and we can be sure this is the kind of death Wellman yearned for.

This gentle touch would not be found again in a Wellman film, except in the little-known Good-bye, My Lady (56), a nice piece of Americana, as Films in Review might have put it. This modest coming-of-age drama takes place in the Mississippi bayou and deals with a double education: that of a dog called Lady, and of her owner, a young boy (Brandon De Wilde) who is being brought up by his uncle (Walter Brennan) with the help of a black man (Sidney Poitier). This sort of thing had little chance of pleasing the critical intelligentsia, which looks down on family dramas, even though many directors have made masterpieces within the genre. The film is not flawless—a few sequences involving the dog and various minor characters are rather nondescript. But several scenes between De Wilde and Brennan (who is fantastic-watch how he keeps inventing new ways of walking) are extremely powerful. I particularly love the moment in which the boy reads to his uncle as he gradually falls asleep. The accomplished, highly risky ending has a quality worthy of Capra or McCarey.

Track of the Cat remains a truly bizarre movie. The narrative thread is reminiscent of Yellow Sky (but with more of a Dreyer touch) or the outlandishness of Ford's 7 Women. Writer A.I. Bezzerides's reservations are understandable: out of enthusiasm, Wellman allegedly shot the first draft of the screenplay without waiting for rewrites. The dialogue is verbose and heavy-handed at times, while at others one wishes some elements were more developed. A little more action and drama wouldn't have hurt the subject's ambitions (slaughtered Indians are supposedly reincarnated as a mountain lion).

Wellman's refusal to show the cougar, even as a mere shadow, is unduly dogmatic, and fails where Tourneur so elegantly succeeded in Cat People. The director acknowledged his mistake but added that he would have had to show the cat devouring Mitchum—not an easy task. The option he chose, however, weakens the construction (he didn't show the dead animal): the scene where Tab Hunter kills the cougar looks more like an editing trick to mask a filming error than an aesthetic choice, and thus loses much of its power. The repetitive shots of the mountain, instead of enhancing the atmosphere, end up calling attention to the lack of variety in the choice of locations.

As often happens with Wellman, however, the flaws have a way of turning into virtues—or at least the distinction between the two becomes fluid. The static talkiness of the beginning (Lee Server in his Mitchum biography calls it “summer stock O’Neill”) becomes fascinating and truly daring at times. At any rate, Wellman happily tramples on all the rules of Hollywood narrative—identification, emphasis on action, rapport between the audience and the main character. The result is not necessarily successful, but the toughness of the endeavor and the director's obvious personal commitment are admirable and enthralling. The family Wellman and Bezzerides present us with is evil in an everyday, nontragic way. They are mean and petty, full of envy, frightening Puritanism, jealousy, possessiveness, machismo. The mother is atrocious in her very banality. The father's alcoholism is neither picturesque nor joyful but pathetic. As for the Tab Hunter character, he is a terribly passive hero (a trait worsened by the actor, who is wretchedly directed here).

There are astonishing lines of dialogue, such as the father's comparison of women to clothespins (“All my life, I've lived with a clothespin”) or when Mitchum, admirably rigorous and never trying to tone down his character’s harshness, reads and then burns a volume of Keats’s poems. The film is extraordinarily formalist, and not only in its sparse use of color. The narrative gains power from the stark yet self-conscious severity of the setups, which also makes the studio shots more palatable. All the shots around the coffin during the wake (here, again, Wellman, who always favors subtracting, conceals the body) are quite amazing and make up for the heavy-handed repetitions, such as the fumbling for bottles of booze.

I hope the above makes you want to see more Wellman films. I do, and that's all that counts, for one must write primarily for oneself. This article has helped me realize how limited my knowledge of Wellman was. One must have the courage to reexamine one's memories and not feel sorry for oneself. I suspect Wellman never did. His rebellion may have been confused, romantic, sometimes ineffectual. Yet it was necessary and, with all the limitations I have tried to delineate, useful. Incidentally, it was also magnificent.

This article was translated by Jean-Pierre Coursodon, revised from an earlier piece that appeared in Positif.

Film Comment: William Wellman  Scott Eyman interview from Film Comment, originally published in 1978 

This interview, originally published in 1978, appeared in issue #29 of Focus on Film. Many thanks to Scott Eyman for letting us reprint it.

William Wellman was the stuff of which legends are made. Wildly iconoclastic, with a reputation for real-life roistering every bit the equal of the cinematic escapades of Wayne, McLaglen and Co., Wellman is a man spoken of with sly smiles, libellous if loving reminiscences and unprintable anecdotes by his friends and coworkers. What the beloved Hollywood legend of "Wild Bill" wilfully obscures is that under the carefully cultivated roughhouse exterior lay a serious, sensitive film-maker, addicted not to political charades or paeans to conformism but to oblique, level-headed sociological essays and-as Andrew MeLaglen, who served his directonal apprenticeship under Wellman, told me-"common sense adventure."

In his stories, character relationships and film-making technique, "common sense" is the watchword. Wellman's characters may occasionally do crazy, irresponsible things, but they do them for very good reasons. Even when dabbling in the sentimental cynicism of screwball comedy, Wellman's characters act out of real and even desperate needs: Nothing Sacred's Carole Lombard believing she is dying, Roxie Hart's Ginger Rogers on trial for murder, etc.

On the rare occasions when Wellman let himself be seduced away from the gritty realism of his character's inner emotions and outward actions, disaster struck - as in the eminently silly, foolish and almost unwatchable The Next Voice You Hear in which the voice of God, for no discernibly obvious reason, speaks via radio to the People as represented by shirt-sleeved working stiff James Whitmore and tells them of the errors of their ways-off-screen, of course, for what does the voice of God sound like? C. B. DeMille? Charlton Heston? I don't know and obviously neither Wellman nor Dore Schary, whose misguidedly reverent production it was, did either. Being such a pretentious exception to the rule, the gauche and naive The Next Voice You Hear can probably be safely attributed to Schary's passion for preaching to the proletariat. To their everlasting credit, the proletariat didn't seem nearly as interested in listening as Schary was in talking.

Then there's the question of Wellman's supposedly "grotesque," antique style. Along with Chaplin, Wellman was probably the only director of his generation to really appreciate the dramatic value and pictorial possibilities of the medium long-shot. Only when faced with the essentially claustrophobic occurrences of The Ox-Bow Incident(neatly emphasised by the use of tightly-enclosed studio sets-much of the compact punch of the film would be irrevocably gone had Wellman resorted to the easy alternative of shooting it in Monument Valley) - only then would Wellman resort to the convenient option of filling his frame with faces.

One of the best things about William Wellman was that he never took himself that seriously when he was making movies and he certainly didn't in his old age. Unlike the name-dropping of a Bogdanovich, with his endless recitatives of what he said to Orson and Marlene and what they said to him, or the bucolic deprecations of a Ford, Wellman was keenly aware of both his good and bad films. Full of neither false ego nor phoney modesty, Wellman was replete with blistering contempt for the venal money men who run the industry and full of passionate, unstated love for the medium itself.

Probably no other director of comparable talent has been ignored and downgraded for so long. In a modern critical environment where the only universal characteristic is gross exaggeration, the neglect is all the more mystifying. Critics in recent years have been stumbling over themselves trying to find objects of veneration in the rubble of American programme films, stopping the sifting to occasionally throw a stone at a genuinely monumental structure - the vicious and irresponsible downgrading of Chaplin, for instance - to make amiable lightweights like Dwan, Sirk, Leisen, and others too ordinary to even mention, seem larger by comparison - all this while mentioning Wellman in terms of his energy (called "crude") or his intentions (patronised as "good").

Yet, when viewed as a whole, Wellman's career maintains an astonishingly high standard - from the film that singlehandedly created a genre, the grandiloquent and immensely moving Wings, to Lafayette Escadrille, that romantic, aborted, mistitled epic, the most bluntly autobiographical film ever made by an American director and the movie that closed his career.

Wellman's main concerns were with men much like himself, men bristling with kinetic energy and violent enthusiasms, men inclined to trample opposition or interference. What keeps his characters, and indeed himself, from being merely legendary bullies is an abiding sense of vulnerability underneath the crust; Wellman's men are eminently tameable by women of like guts and courage.

It is indeed ironic that his self-imposed retirement was the result of a producer tampering with Lafayette Escadrille-interference he could not surmount, dealing with a subject with which he was too close to settle for half-truths - his own youth.

Like many final works often do, Lafayette Escadrille reveals much about the man who made it. Narrated in a surpassingly gentle and perceptive tone by Wellman himself, it reveals the essential duality of a man who can appreciate both a not-so-good-natured fistfight and a passive moment of contemplative innocence. In one of the most touching and elegiac moments in all of Wellman's work, the camera slowly tracks over rows of young men sleeping in a barracks somewhere in France as Wellman's voice softly describes the tragic fate that lies waiting for most of them, marked for destruction by the juggernaut of war.

In essence, Wellman's was a profoundly American personality, full of drive and energy, while at the same time being fully capable of comprehending and pondering the inescapability of death and dissolution: a quintessential combination of pagan and poet.

Wellman died on December 9, 1975, of Ieukaemia, at his home in Brentwood where this interview was conducted. He was seventy-nine and remained vital and feisty to the end. Respecting his wishes, Wellman was cremated and his ashes scattered from an airplane into the clouds and sky that he always loved.

You were born in New England?

Yeah, in Brookline, Massachusetts. My father was a stockbroker, although not a particularly successful one. And my mother was a wonderful, wonderful woman. She was a little bitty gal named Cecilia McCarthy; she was from Ireland. She had two sons, my brother and myself. When she died she was within two months of being ninety-eight years old and sharp as a tack!

When I was a kid, I was a crazy bastard. I was a good athlete; quarterback on the football team, shortstop on the baseball team, and rover-the fastest and dirtiest player of them all - on the ice hockey team - in those days, there were seven men on ice hockey teams.

When my father had some money, my mother became the probation officer for Newton Highlands, outside of Boston. She always called the delinquents "wayward boys"; she absolutely refused to let anybody call them anything else. So, when I got kicked out of high school, I had to report to the probation officer of the city of Newton for six months - who was my own mother.

What did you do to get kicked out?

I dropped a stink bomb on the principal's bald head. A direct hit. My mother was such a successful probation officer that she was asked to speak to Congress about juvenile delinquency. She told them that of all the thousands of boys she'd worked with, the only one she couldn't control was her own son!

So you had a turbulent, middle class upbringing?

I think it was a little above middle class. But I had a beautiful boyhood, with a wonderful mother. My dad had a little drinking problem, but my mother was in love with him and there was never anyone else. My brother and I had a hell of a boyhood. I used to borrow cars at night and take them out for a ride. But we always brought them back.

After you got booted out of high school, did you go directly into the Lafayette Flying Corps?

No, I tried various things. I tried being a candy salesman, but I never sold a pound of candy. I tried being a cotton belting salesman but I never sold a foot of that. Then my brother, who was in the wool business, got me into Coffin and Gilmour, a Philadelphia wool firm, as a salesman. I never sold any of whatever the hell you sell wool by, pound or whatever. So then I went to work in a lumberyard, and I was a hell of a success.

I started in Waltham, Massachusetts, in the middle of the winter with great big freight cars full of South Carolina flooring. I started out as a lumper and then a piler and I did those things so well that they made me a truckdriver. Then I lost control of the truck one day in Roxbury, Massachusetts and drove through a barn. They fired me, so I decided to get the hell out of there. I'd always wanted to learn to fly, so one of my father's brothers, Francis Wellman, got me in the Flying Corps.

Just because you wanted to learn to fly?

That simple.

Didn't the prospect of getting killed enter your mind? I was nineteen years old, a crazy bastard. It never occurred to me until I got into it. When I got out there, I thought to myself, "What the hell are you doing here?" Then I wished I'd never gotten into it.

How close did you come to getting killed?

I had a crack-up caused by the most useless things in the entire war: anti-aircraft guns. I and an Englishman are the only ones I know of who got shot down by those things. It didn't hurt me, but it blew my tail off so I had no control over the thing at all. Greatest goddamm acrobatics you ever saw in your life.

The courage it must have taken to go up in those flimsy crates . . .

It wasn't courage: we all wanted to learn to fly and that was the quickest way. We only had four instruments, none of which worked, and no parachutes. It was wonderful!

Are you scared of dying?

I hate to think about it. Certainly I am. I don't want to die now and I didn't want to then. I just didn't think about it as much then as I do now. I'm funny that way; I'm an Episcopalian, supposedly. I'm supposed to think there's a God. I say my prayers every night because my mother always taught me to.

Nowadays, lots of people look on World War One with nostalgia, as the last of the "noble" wars.

Balls. In that movie The Blue Max and others, these guys would come back to these beautifully dressed dames and champagne. Goddamn! At Lunéville, where I was stationed, there was one fairly good-looking girl and her mother. One. All the menfolk had been killed and she and her mother took in laundry. She wore wooden shoes, and your reputation was based on whether you were a no shoe man, a one shoe man or a two shoe man. If, during sex, you could shake both her shoes off, you were a hell of a lay.

She took everybody on?

Not everybody. She confined it mostly to flyers. But, hell, there was no one else.

How many pilots were left after the war?

Out of 222, eighty-seven were killed. I flew with Tom Hitchcock, the great polo player. Tom and I were in the "Black Cat" group.

What happened after the war?

During the last six months of the war, I joined the American Air Corps because I was broke and they were trying to get us in. They made me an officer and sent me down to Rockwell Field in San Diego. I taught combat. I used to fly up and land on Doug Fairbanks' polo fields and spend the weekend with him; he had met me when I was playing hockey up in Boston and he was playing at the Colonial Theatre in a thing called "Hawthorne of the U.S.A." He used to come up and watch us play at the Boston Arena on Sundays. For some reason or another, he liked me and asked me to come backstage at the Colonial; that was the start of a very wonderful relationship.

So one day he told me that, after the war was over, he'd have a job for me. So when it was all over, he made me an actor. I was the juvenile in Knickerbocker Buckaroo and then I played a sub-lieutenant in Evangeline.

Eventually, I had guts enough to go look at myself and it made me so sick . . . I ran out of the theatre, went to Doug and said, "I don't mean any disrespect, but I'm no actor." Jesus, the guys from the Lafayette Flying Corps that were still alive were sending me the most insulting letters!

So Doug said, "What do you want to be?" So I pointed to Albert Parker, who was the director of occasion, and said, "Well, what does he make?" So Doug told me and I said "That's what I want to be." It was purely financial. So I finally got a job as a messenger boy, as an assistant cutter, an assistant property man, a property man, an assistant director, second unit director, and eventually I became a director.

What were those early westerns, your first directorial jobs, like?

Oh, we had stories. Bad ones. That was when I made two of the worst pictures I've ever made in my life. One was with Dustin Farnum called The Twins of Suffering Creek [actually released as The Man Who Won]--now, you can just tell what a hell of a picture that had to be. Then I made one with Buck Jones, who was a western star, called Cupid's Fireman. Great, great pictures!

If you look through my whole record, I made a lot of lousy pictures (never intentionally), a lot in the middle, and a few I puff my head out about. I think that's true of everybody. Even Jack Ford, as much as I admire him, went overboard on the Civil War. I got so sick of all those Civil War pictures; he used to have books under his pillow about the Civil War.
Tell me about Wings.

God, I made it in 1927, it's silent, the whole method of making pictures is different, the tempo is different, even the frame size is different. I look at some of those scenes today and say "Jesus, I couldn't have made that." But Clara Bow is magnificent; she holds the thing up. And Coop is good.

The battle sequences are still magnificent.

Oh yeah. All done with hand-cranked cameras. And those air battles - Arlen and Rogers had to go up and do it. There's even a zoom lens effect in one shot: Rogers crashes and jumps in a shellhole; then the enemy plane dives in on him, shooting. As the bullets splash around him, the camera zooms in; how'd you get that effect?

You really want to know the answer? I don't know; I can't remember. Honest and truly, I'd tell you in a minute but I can't remember. I think I did it with a hand-held, battery-run Eyemo. I think. We didn't have zooms, I know that.

In the air battles, how did you get the effect of the planes being on fire after they were hit?

Well, we didn't set them on fire. Almost. We had incendiary torches that the guys would release from the cockpit on signal. We hoped that they wouldn't set the planes on fire and they didn't. We had a great bunch of guys on that film - all those crazy flyers, crazy as I am. We got along fine. They'd do anything I asked.

Did you do any flying yourself?

I did one stunt-one of the German planes that landed and rolled over a few times.

How did you avoid getting hurt?

How can you get hurt? You're strapped in, you duck your head, and let the goddam thing roll over. And you have very little gas in it, to avoid setting yourself on fire.

Being a young director on his first important film, didn't you feel a bit unsure of yourself directing a famous actor like H. B. WaIthall?

No, he was a wonderful guy. I always got along well with character men and women. It was only the stars I had trouble with. And a lot of the stars other directors had trouble with got along fine with me.

How did you come to pick Gary Cooper for Wings?

I'd been looking at so many people, so many guys, and suddenly I saw him. He had that wonderful smile, that wonderful way. I took him down to Texas for weeks. We did the scene and he came up to see me in my hotel room, calling me "Mr. Wellman".

"Mr. Wellman, could I do that over again?"

"Well, what is it that you think you can do better this time?"

''Well, I picked my nose.''

"You keep on picking your nose and you'll pick your way into a fortune."

I told Cooper to always back away from everything and as long as he did that he was great. Hell of a nice guy.

Buddy Rogers has always said you were the best director he ever had.

I love Buddy. He's a tough son of a bitch. To show you how tough he is, he hates flying - it makes him deathly sick. He logged over ninety-eight hours of flying on that one picture. Every time he came down, he vomited. That's a man with guts. I love him.

In the fight scene that takes place in the training camp, Arlen, who I don't like as much as Buddy - too cocky - came to me and said, "You know I can fight. You better tell Rogers because I don't think Rogers knows how to fight." So I said O.K. and that I'd tell Buddy to be very careful. So I went to Buddy and told him exactly what I just told you. He said, "Well, I don't know how to fight." I said, "I know, but you can still kick his brains out." And he did. Kicked the living hell out of him, simply on guts alone.

Did you feel yourself getting into a rut with the aerial combat type of picture?

Not really. After Wings was a hit, they asked me to do another one and I said O.K. [Legion of the Condemned, 1928.] A little while later, Howard Hughes wanted me to do Hell's Angels. They told me, "You don't have to do it, just make an appearance. We don't want to get in wrong with him." So I went over and met him and said, "No, I'm sorry. I've just done two of them and I'm sick to death of them. I wouldn't make a good picture for you." He was very nice and we had an amicable talk. That was the only time I met the great Hughes.

Why did you make Young Eagles?

Buddy's [Rogers'] box-office had fallen off and it was an attempt to make another Wings. It was frightful - a bad movie

. Why did you move from Paramount to Warners?

Money. Every time I ever made a change, it was for either freedom or money, usually money.

How did you come to make Public Enemy?

I got the story from two druggists from Chicago. They were visiting the studio when they stopped me and asked me if I'd read their story. They were such nice guys that I asked them to sit down and have lunch with me. There they told me the story. At that time, it was called "Beer and Blood". I went nuts about it and went in to see Zanuck and told it to him. He said, "Bill, I can't do this, I've just made Little Caesar and Doorway to Hell." I said, "I'll make this so goddamn tough you'll forget both of them." So he said O.K.

How'd you pick Cagney?

Didn't pick Cagney - Eddie Woods played the role, the main role. We had shot for three days, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, I went in to see the rushes and called Zanuck who was in New York at the time.

"We've made a frightful mistake. We've got the wrong man playing the wrong part. This Cagney is the guy."

So he said, "O.K., make the switch."

Didn't Woods resent it?

Sure he resented it, but I didn't give a goddamn. I said, "Look, you're not good enough for us. Play the second lead." And he was lucky to get that. I had to be honest with him. So he agreed - what else could he do? I could always get somebody else if he didn't like it and he knew it.

What about the famous grapefruit scene?

I've been married so many times, and they were all beautiful. 90% of all the domestic troubles I had with these wives was my fault. But this one particular wife, whenever there was any anger (and you've got to have a few rows, for Christ's sake), this beautiful face would just freeze and wouldn't say a word. It used to just kill me. You're whipped, you're licked before you start. Anyway, I like grapefruit halves and when we used to eat breakfast I often thought of taking that goddamn grapefruit and just mushing it right in that lovely, beautiful, cold face. I never did it really, because I did it in Public Enemy.

That was your scene?

That was my scene. I know Zanuck says it's his but he's a goddamn liar. I can show you in the script. Cagney was supposed to throw the grapefruit at the woman.

I'm one of the very few directors who likes Zanuck - as a producer. You see, pictures that still live, that are still successful, are made with the combination of a writer and a director and a producer. The writer and the director gave the producer the talent, the producer gave them the money and got the hell out of the way. Now, for Christ's sake, there's the Producer, the Associate Producer, the Assistant to the Producer, the Assistant to the Associate Producer, all of them lined up against one poor goddamn director. And all the women that they've got, whether they're married to them or living with them . . . Jesus, the pillow talk that goes on has ruined more great pictures than anything you can imagine, including the agents and the unions.

Tell me about A Star Is Born (1937).

I wanted to do A Star Is Born. I wanted to do it badly. Unfortunately, David Selznick, who was a dear friend of mine, turned it down. So I had a long talk with his wife, Irene, who loved the story. They went on a long trip to Honolulu and by the time they got back he said, "You know, that might make a good film after all." Which just goes to show you, anyway you can do it, do it. And try to stay clear of agents.

I take it you don't have prints of your own pictures?

I don't and I never will. The hell with them. I know one director who runs one of his pictures every Christmas. Jesus Christ, if I ran one of my pictures every year, I'd go crazy.

People have asked me a million times, "Why don't you like your own pictures?" I don't know why. I do know that every time I look at one of them, I realize I could have done it better; I can see mistakes.

Although there is one picture that I really like. I haven't as yet gotten sick of it. You'll laugh when I tell you. I was wild about the dame (in a nice way) and she loved Dotty [Wellman's wife, Dorothy] and the kids. She was the only woman I've ever known who could say four-letter words and make it come out poetry. Carole Lombard. I can watch Nothing Sacred forever.

I'm very proud of that kid jumping out and biting March on the leg - you just know that no one likes him after that happens! I thought of that on the set. It was really a midget and I knew which one to get because I'd done the tail end of a Tarzan picture a little while before. Loved every minute of it, incidentally. Anyway, we had used the midget in the Tarzan picture, too.

Did you ever want to move outside the studio set-up and do something completely independently?

For all practical purposes, I have. I've done a lot of things with no one to answer to - Story of G.l. Joe, for instance. I've tried both producing and directing, too: Beau Geste and The Light That Failed, that sort of stuff. And then I found (and this is only my opinion) that I didn't have enough brains to handle two jobs.

And the one thing I really hated was that I began to talk money. I don't want to be in that class of people - money. That's one of the things wrong with the industry, the parking lot people who own the goddamn business now. They don't know anything about making pictures. I didn't like Louis B. Mayer, but I admired him; and, God knows, I loathe Jack Warner but you got to admire men like that: they make a lot of pictures.

And they let you make The Ox-Bow Incident.

You get so discouraged from trying different things that nobody goes to see. For instance, The Ox-Bow Incident. Goddamn it, I bought that from a poor guy that was fired. He was the producer of the B pictures at some studio and they canned him because he got in wrong with the biggies. I liked him.

He called me one day and said, "I'm going to send you a book. If you like it, will you make it with me?" I said, "Sure."

So he sent me "The Ox-Bow Incident" and I went nuts about it. I called him up and said, "You've got yourself a pigeon. Who you gonna put in it?"

He said, "I'm gonna put Mae West in it."

Well, I damn near fell through the phone! These are the things you run up against in this business. I said, "What the hell are you talking about? Am I reading the right story?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Well, what the hell are you going to do with Mae West?" Keep in mind that he may be right - stranger things have happened in this business. He said, "Well, we're going to put a sunken barbecue pit in it and she'll sing some songs to these tired cowboys."

"Oh, shit! Get yourself another boy."

Six months later, I met him again. I'd heard that he was broke, so I said, "Have you still got 'The Ox-Bow Incident'?" He said; "Yes, but I can't find anybody who'll buy it."

I said, "I'll buy it. I'll give you five hundred dollars more than you paid for it."

So I paid him $6500 and I was never so happy in my life. I came home to Dotty [the former actress Dorothy Coonan (Wild Boys of the Road) who married Wellman and retired from the screen, except for a small role in her husband's Story of G.I. Joe] and made her listen to me read the whole goddamn book to her. She loved it but she was scared of it.

I went to David Selznick, for whom I'd made A Star Is Born and Nothing Sacred, I went to Metro, I went to everybody that I'd made money for, and they all said I was nuts.

Now, Zanuck and I hadn't spoken to each other for two years - we'd had a frightful row. But he was the only one left, so I finally went in and he was man enough to see me. I told him about it and he said, "Let me read it."

Three days later he called and said, "Come on over, I want to see you. You've got yourself a job." So we got together and he said, "You can do it, but it won't make a nickel. It's something I want my studio to have, I want my name on it and I think it'll be good for you.

So we made it and they sort of pushed it out; it didn't do much. Then they put it out abroad and it was a hit. Then they brought it back. I still don't think I could retire on the money it made, but at least it was reasonably successful. It's a hell of a story.

Did you cast the film yourself?

Sure. Zanuck and I cast it together.

Casting Jane Darwell, who was usually seen in warm, loving "mother" roles, as a vicious bitch was a brilliant move.

She was wonderful. Fonda, of course, is a fine actor, but he lacks that one something that makes a great star. I call it "Motion Picture Personality". I don't really know what it is.

Would you have rather had someone else in the part?

No. He was great in it.

The cyclical nature of the film is striking; in the beginning, the cowboys ride in and there's this old dog rummaging around. At the end, when they ride out, the dog's still there nosing around.

Oh, that dog. She was an old female with enormous tits that hung way down; I loved her. I used that as a frame for the picture; it started it and ended it. Maybe I'm an artist in some sense, I don't know. I can't draw. I just make pictures.

After you moved over to MGM, you sort of hooked up with Dore Schary.

Yeah, unfortunately.

Unfortunately?

Battleground worked out fine, but it didn't end well.

He'd say, "We're gonna make pictures that we want to make."

I'd say, "What are you talking about, 'pictures that we want to make.' You make pictures to amuse the public, not yourself."

Then he got so screwed up politically and with fighting with Mayer for control of the studio that I walked out of the thing. I wasn't interested in either his politics or Mayer's, I didn't give a good goddamn. They could have killed each other as far as I was concerned.

What happened with Across the Wide Missouri (1950)? What's there is so fine, so first rate, but it's cut so abruptly.

I don't know what the hell they did with it. That was a very good, long picture the way I made it. What might have happened was that they cut it to fit on a double bill with the competition from TV. I've never seen it and never will.

Why not?

The way they cut it, I don't want to see it. Damn it, that was a long picture and good one, too.

Did the script you shoot have a narration in it?

No.

Well, there's one in there, bridging all the story gaps. It's supposed to be Gable's son, looking back on his old man.

Well, that's what the bastards did: they cut out all the action and put in a narration to fill the holes.

Robert Taylor was not a very good actor: how'd you get such a fine performance out of him in Westward the Women (1950)?

I don't know. I had no trouble at all with him. He did everything I asked him to; he was wonderful.

One day he asked me, "Well, who will I be?"

I said, "Be me."

Maybe it helped him.

Generally, how do you go about working with actors?

I have never gotten along with actors. Oh, Joel McCrea was all right. And, like I said, Bob Taylor I was very fond of. But, you see, actors are different. Women look in a mirror all their lives to make themselves pretty and attractive and that's one of the reasons you fall in love with them. But a man looking in a mirror all the time, saying lines to himself, looking at his face to see which is the best photographic angle . . . Well, one of two things happens. Either he learns to love the son of a bitch that he's always looking at or he learns to hate him. All the actors I've known learn to love him.

Yellow Sky (1951).

One of my favourite actors is in that - Greg Peck. I say that sarcastically. We made a good picture with him, despite him.

He asked me one day, "How can I get tough?" I said, "Well, you can't fight. Can you kick a football?"

He said, "Yes."

I said, "Well, then you're going to kick Widmark's head off."

So I showed him how to do it without hurting anybody. And, of course, the one who gives something like that the effect is the one who gets kicked, not the kicker. It's a question of timing. So that made him look tough. Of course, no matter what Peck did, Widmark took the picture away from him, pinned his ears back.

Another time Peck asked me, "How the hell am I going to fight Anne Baxter?"

So I said, "Anne Baxter will kick the hell out of you. And when you start that fight, you better look out for yourself and wear something over your - - - -, because she'll destroy you."

She was a wonderful gal; kicked the hell out of him in that scene. She didn't like him either and that was her one chance of getting even with him.

Did you like working with Wayne?

Did I like working with Wayne? Even though he's the greatest star this business has ever had, hell, no! I signed a contract with Batjac to make six pictures for them - three with Wayne, three without him. Of the three with Wayne, I was responsible for acquiring two - Island in the Sky and The High and the Mighty. How old is he, anyway?

Sixty-six, I think.

Well, he's pretty goddamn old to be a star, but the son of a bitch will keep going until he drops dead on top of a horse.

The problem is, he's a very set guy. Stubborn as hell. And he doesn't get along with directors, except for two. He gets along with Ford and he gets along with me. The only time we had trouble, I called him on it.

Which picture was this?

I think it was The High and the Mighty. I told him, "Look, I'm a goddamn sight better director than you are and you're a goddamn sight better actor than I am. And you coming back here and doing my work is going to be just as foolish as my going up and doing your personality with that lousy fairy walk that you've got. So behave yourself and we'll make a picture." And he did.

Of all your films that I've seen The High and the Mighty is my favourite.

Damn good picture. I own a part of it and, financially, it's the best picture I ever made. I own a third of it and it made a lot of money.

I'm inclined to agree with you about Wayne as a director, although he told me that his films The Alamo and The Green Berets did fifteen million the first time around [interview, FOCUS 20].

If you believe that, you're crazy. The Alamo fell right on its ass.

Well, I wasn't going to tell him he was full of shit.

Well, I'll tell him he's full of shit. As a director, he stinks. That's another problem with him: he's got great ego, he's very stuck on himself, and I think that's true of almost all actors.

What attracted you to Blood Alley?

Blood Alley I did because everything was all screwed up. They were having trouble with their director, Mitchum was acting up, and all sorts of other garbage. Wayne asked me as a favour if I'd do it. I said, "Yeah, I'll do it, but I think it's silly."

So I had Mitchum fired (it was one of those times when he was walking six inches above the ground) and took over. It was a story about rescuing Chinese. Now I think the Chinese are wonderful people: the kids are cute little fellows, the women are gorgeous, the men are hardworking. But goddamit, rescuing a bunch of Chinese doesn't mean anything to anybody.

I said, "Look, Duke, there's been one picture in the whole history of the business about the Chinese that was a success: The Good Earth." If they'd have filled the goddamn ferry-boat with dames, you'd have had something. But he didn't agree with me, so I did the best job I could on the thing, but it was no good. it wasn't exactly rotten, but it sure as hell was in the middle.

What do you think your weak spots are in relation to film-making?

You can't tell. The easiest thing to do is to foul up in your choice of material. How the hell can you figure what people are going to go see? I made a thing I thought was a delightful picture - Goodbye, My Lady. No one has seen it yet.

I love that film.

You're the only one that's seen it that I know of. I thought it was lovely. Maybe it would have been a big hit if the boy had had an affair with the dog. I know what went wrong with it, though. It's a very simple thing. Somebody asked me why the picture didn't work: I said, "I'm not Disney."

Maybe that's why I liked it.

I think Disney's done some good stuff, although not lately. Anyway, that's the answer I gave.

How do you know what goes wrong and makes a bad movie? I worked harder than any other goddamn director I know. I tried harder. I knew how to make a picture, but sometimes something was lacking, sometimes it wasn't. I made some fine pictures.

I've only had one real desire in this business: to make every kind of picture that was ever made. And I did. I made musicals, I made kid pictures, I made romantic comedies, the whole list. I'm very proud of that. Now, how many directors have done that?

Generally, do you overshoot a lot?

You bet your life I didn't. I'm the best goddamn two-take director in the business. One for the take I wanted, one in case something went wrong in the lab. Overshooting is asking for trouble.

When you went into the studio in the morning, did you know exactly what you wanted to get on film that day?

Absolutely. I knew exactly what I wanted. I had a script and I worked like hell at home. I used to work in this house as hard as I did on the set. I never slept well - four hours of sleep was a big night, so I did a lot of the work then. Did you ever get bored by the time-consuming elements of film-making?

Terribly. I didn't always wait; most of the time, we'd try to figure out some screwy way of trying something new.

What's your definition of a bad movie?

A lot of mine.

Including Darby's Rangers?

It's one of THOSE. The thing never stops playing on TV. Must we talk about it?

How about Lafayette Escadrille instead?

That dumb Warner [Jack], my great hate: he raped my Lafayette Escadrille which, by the way, was not Lafayette Escadrille-it was originally called C'est Ia guerre.

It was the story of a very dear friend of mine. I had made it as a tragedy, which it was. It was previewed as a tragedy; it was the only preview I ever had where people stood up as the picture ended and said nothing. Then there was a beat and a beat and a beat and they suddenly started cheering.

And that dirty, rotten bastard decided that killing Tab Hunter - don't laugh - was impossible. At the time, he'd made a record that had sold two million copies. So they changed it to a happy ending and called it Lafayette Escadrille: it didn't have a damn thing to do with the Lafayette Escadrille. All the guys that were still alive thought I was nuts. I told Warner that if I ever caught him alone, which in his case is damn near impossible, what with all those disgusting yes-men, that I'd put him in a hospital. And, so help me God, if I could get hold of him right now, I'd try it. I have never hated a man as much as I hate him. And the whole story of the film was true.

The hero was in the Lafayette Flying Corps with me. (I was not in the Lafayette Escadrille. That was first formed by a particularly crazy bunch of Americans that were over in France, Bill Thor among them. I was in the Lafayette Flying Corps, which was formed by William K. Vanderbilt.) One day a French lieutenant - he was a drill sergeant - hit this pal of mine with a riding quirt, so my pal hauled off and knocked him on his ass. He was, of course, put in jail immediately. That night, we broke in and got him out, along with everybody else who was in the jail. He had to get away from there so he started for Paris. He had to get a change of uniform, so he tried to take a poilu's away from him. The poilu happened to be a savate champion, which started the goddamnedest fight that's ever been known. Finally, he knocked him out, got his uniform, terribly maimed all the time, and sneaked out to where his little gal was waiting for him. An old concierge, who'd lost an arm and was a wonderful old guy, and she nursed him back to health. Eventually, he went back to the whorehouse where he'd met his girl and got a job as a pimp, working between the Folies Bergere and the Olympia, I think. I was there when he married his little girl, his great love, who was an ex-whore and whom he'd met as a whore.

Finally one day he got a chance to see General Pershing, whom he talked into letting him go back and get his wings. He became a flyer and was flying, I think, somewhere in the Champagne when he got lost and strayed into Germany, where a couple of Fokkers dove on him and brought him down. His name appeared in the casualty lists that appeared in the daily Paris papers. She saw it and jumped into the Seine River, committing suicide. When they pulled her out, she had his identification tag clenched in her fist. The only two people who knew this story were General Pershing and myself.

Now, to me, that's a hell of a story. A tragedy. I put all my heart and soul into the thing: I almost went crazy over what happened.

So I made a deal. I shot the happy ending and came home to Dotty and said, "Dotty, I'm tired, I've worked too hard and I made a deal with a man I hate, knowing he's wrong. I'm never going to make another picture as long as I live.'' She said, "I don't want you to make another." And I never have.

It's sad that what I wanted to be my best picture became such a rotten, disappointing thing. That wasn't the first time that happened to me, but it was the worst. Usually pictures are screwed up in New York. Up to a point you can control what's happening out here in California. But even men like Capra lose eventually.

You like Capra's pictures?

Frank Capra, in my estimation, is the greatest director of them all - on one kind of a picture.

Do you ever watch your films on TV?

Never. Never.

Even if Nothing Sacred pops up?

Oh, that's different. I'd watch that, damn right.

How do you feel about the critical attention you've been getting in recent years: the BFI retrospective in London, etc?

Oh, it's all right. It's a switch from before, that's for sure. I never had a publicity man in my whole life - everybody else did, but I never did. I figured the money should be spent publicising the people I was photographing: the Stars.

Besides, who the hell do you think is going to pay money to see Bill Wellman's new picture unless it's some idiot in New York or Hollywood or London? Out in Oshkosh and places where the money comes that makes the business what it is, they don't know who Bill Wellman is and they don't give a good goddamn. Or Capra or Ford.

They might remember who Hitchcock is, maybe von Stroheim if they're old enough, and maybe Orson Welles, who's always gone both ways. In his time, Griffith was a box-office name. But don't tell me I could retire on the box-office value of Bill Wellman! I'm sorry, but I'd be in the Old Soldiers' Home.

What do you consider the director's job to be?

To make the picture. I make that film. I am the director, not Mr. Wayne or Mr. Cagney or Mr. Colman. And they knew it. Women always used to hate working with me, because I wouldn't let them use make-up.

What do you think of institutionalized film-making? Do you think someone can learn to make films by going to school?

I can answer that very quickly. No.

Somewhat in line with that: I won't tell you the director's name. I know him and he's a very successful director. About a year ago, I turn on the TV set and there he is, giving a talk at the American Film Institute - a place, I'm proud to say, where I'm not liked. There were about twenty eager, hopeful directors listening to this man. I said to myself, "This I've got to listen to. Now I'll find out how to make pictures." When that man was through I was so damned confused I wondered how the hell I ever made a hundred pictures. It was pathetic, tragic.

What is the best way to learn to direct?

You have to learn how to live before you learn how to direct. About fifteen years ago, twelve of the so-called "successful" TV directors asked me to come and talk to them. They wanted to know if there was any way I could suggest for them to break into the making of motion pictures. I've never been in TV but I said, "I'll tell you one way it might be done. Find out what some of our great writers have got that the producers wouldn't buy. Guys like Ben Hecht, Johnny Lee Mahin. Get to know these guys, find out what they've got that they think is great. Then read it, see if it's any good and, if it is, go sell yourself to one of these stars. Don't go to the agents, they'll kill you. See one of the stars and sell it to him with the idea that you make it." That's the only suggestion I could give them.

Do you think Pay-TV will mean the death of movies as we know them?

I think the industry is dead now. You can't judge it because of Love Story or The Godfather. God Almighty, you could show those in a toilet and people would pay to see them. In the days I'm talking about, MGM was making sixty-five pictures a year, Paramount the same and so were Warner and Universal - all pictures with stars in them. The problem now is that we don't have any stars anymore, not really. The minute you leave, I'm gonna watch the football game or golf, and I'm gonna watch the stars - the best there are!

What did you enjoy most about making pictures?

The money. A lot of people will say, "How frightful to talk that way about the 'Art' of motion pictures." Well, whatever you want to call it, I had my own way of making a motion picture. I worked very fast; and no one ever over-acted in one of my pictures. That I couldn't stand. I had my own idea of making a picture and I made it my own way. And I got damn well paid. Certainly I wanted the money. I wanted to get to the point where I'd never have to work again if I didn't want to. When I got to that point, it wasn't as nice as I thought it would be. Now, I don't go to see many pictures because I don't want to get the fever again.

You sound discontented.

On the contrary, I'm very happy. I'm seventy-eight years old, I've got a lovely wife - we've been married for forty years (she was only nineteen and for a while I thought they were going to put me away for kidnapping). We've got twelve grandchildren and she personally was a magician. She gave me a girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl. Now, that's calling your shots! And on top of all that, she house-broke me. The only disappointing thing about her to me is how the hell she could stand me for forty years: it hasn't been easy.

As far as my career was concerned, I accomplished what I wanted. I was independent, I made every kind of picture I wanted, I worked like hell and, like I said, I'm seventy-eight years old. What more can a man say?

Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick  website

 

All-Movie Guide  Bruce Eder from Rovi

 

William A. Wellman  Mubi

 

William A. Wellman  brief bio from NNDB

 

William A. Wellman - Director by Film Rank  Films 101

 

William A. "Wild Bill" Wellman - Movie List on mubi.com

 

William Wellman at Reel Classics

 

The Wild Man of Hollywood  Sean McCloy essay (Undated)

 

"The Film Career of William Wellman."  Thomas Quinn Curtiss from The New York Times, February 9, 1994

 

Nothing Sacred - Bright Lights Film Journal  Alan Vanneman, October 1, 2002

 

National Board of Review   William Wellman by John Gallagher, October 2004 

 

The Man and His Wings - William Wellman Jr.  autobiography (184 pages), 2006

 

The man and his Wings: William A. Wellman - Google Books  autobiography (184 pages), 2006

 

Features | Inside/Out: A Modest Proposal Concerning ... - Cinema Scope  Andrew Tracy from Cinema Scope, 2007

 

• View topic - William A. Wellman  Criterion Forum, film discussion group, August 30, 2008

 

Rare Bird  Andrew Tracy from Moving Image Source, February 17, 2009

 

William A. Wellman: a director remembered -- at last | NJ.com  Stephen Whitty, March 28, 2009

 

Home designed for director William A. Wellman sells for $7.5 million ...  Lauren Beale from The LA Times, November 8, 2010

 

WELLMAN Festival - Movies - Film Forum  February, 2012

 

William Wellman Retrospective at Film Forum - NYTimes.com  February 10, 2012

 

Poetics of Motion by Nick Pinkerton - Moving Image Source  February 15, 2012

 

'William Wellman'  Joseph Pomp from The Columbia Spectator, February 17, 2012

 

TSPDT - William Wellman

 

Jean-Pierre Melville's 64 Favourite Pre-War American Filmmakers (Cahiers du Cinema, October 1961)

 

Top 250 Directors

 

501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

 

Less Than Meets the Eye

 

William A. Wellman  Find a Grave

 

Images for William A. Wellman

 

William A. Wellman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

WINGS

USA  (144 mi)  1927                  uncredited co-director:  Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast

 

Time Out

Long touted as a classic by cinema historians, and justifying almost every adjectival extravagance. A spectacular tribute to the American flyers of World War I, born of Wellman's and John Monk Saunders' own experiences with the Lafayette Flying Corps, it's distinguished by matchless aerial photography, logistically-detailed battle scenes and dogfights, a unique blend of 'European' directorial touches with Hollywood pace, and solid performances holding the straightforward love/duty/camaraderie plotline together. Clara Bow leaves 'It' behind to work as a volunteer ambulance driver, while the boy-next-door she loves (Buddy Rogers) performs airborne heroics with his friend and rival-in-love Arlen, and Gary Cooper makes a brief but telling early appearance.

Wellman: Wings (1927)  Billy Stevenson from A Film Canon

This war drama is effectively a pretext for a series of spectacular aerial sequences, which form their own, subsidiary, three-act narrative. These represent an incredible technical achievement, elaborating a relationship between camera and aeroplane that includes shots from the cockpit, wings and nose, and encompasses take-off, landing, diving, spiralling, flying in various formations, bombing and fighting with other planes, balloons and parachutists. However, they also possess considerable aesthetic merit, as Wellman figures the conflict between the "romantic dream" and "stern reality" of flight in terms of a sublime whose parameters are both technological and Romantic, and encapsulated in the moment at which the pilots reach the "high sea of heaven", crossing the cumulus-stratus layer to view it from above. This, in turn, alters the parameters of warfare, translating the canonical space of no-man's-land into vertical terms, with the result that the sky continually looms as a repository of brilliant violence, enhanced by Wellman's taste for wide, open, brightly lit spaces, such as the air training school and, later, the military aerodrome where most of the ground action takes place. Although the latter is, by comparison, stylistically mediocre, there are some notable moments at which Wellman imbues his camera with the flight that it has proven itself capable of depicting, most spectacularly an extended, palpably disembodied pan across a sea of tables towards the protagonist, who, drunk on champagne, is attempting to catch some of the hallucinatory bubbles flying all around him.

Goatdog's Movies [Michael W. Phillips, Jr.]  also seen here:  Movie Vault [Goatdog]

 

The first Oscars, honoring movies that came out in the years 1927 and early 1928, started a trend that continues to this day. At the first awards (and only the first) they had the equivalent of two Best Picture awards, Best Production and Best Artistic Quality of Production. These can be seen as the warring factions of filmmaking in general, pitting the creators of mega-blockbusters against the creators of small, personal films. Which is better, a two-hour movie about the horrors and valors of war that cost millions of dollars and uses actual combat footage of World War I, or a small film about a country boy who commits murder at the prodding of a beautiful city girl? In a way, they had it figured out at these first awards, when they realized that it would be impossible to choose and gave out two different awards to the creators of two different films. To complicate things further, they decided to honor two films for Best Production, this film and Josef Von Sternberg's "The Last Command."

Wings is the story of two rivals, David (Richard Arlen) and Jack (Charles "Buddy" Rogers) who grew up in the same small town. They are rivals over the hand of a girl, Sylvia (Jobyna Ralston). The problem is, she really loves David, and she's just too nice to let Jack down hard, so she doesn't dissuade him in his beliefs. Meanwhile, Mary (played by the famous "It" girl, Clara Bow) is in love with Jack but he doesn't notice. The entry of America into World War I is imminent, and the two boys join up to be pilots in the fledgling air corps (remember, it had only been 15 years since the first flight of the Wright brothers when the war broke out).

We get the typical Rocky-like training segments as the rivals go through boot camp and flight training. Along the way, like all movie men do, they realize that they really like each other, and become inseperable. There's a notable early role by the great Gary Cooper as a fellow pilot who scoffs at the good luck charms they carry. He boasts that he doesn't need one, then crashes his plane and dies. Exit, stage left.

The two go off to France, where the most interesting and exciting scenes of the overlong film take place. The film uses actual footage of WWI dogfights blended seamlessly with staged shots of the two pilots and their German foes. This results in a truly awesome hour of film, where they go on mission after mission and cope with the hardships of war life on the ground. They are both awarded for valor by several different governments, and Jack (but not David for some reason) is sent off to Paris on leave. He gets drunk, runs into Mary, who has joined up as an ambulance driver, but is too drunk to realize it, and she saves him from court martial without his knowledge. Then, it's off to battle for the last big push into German lines.

The strengths of the film are the great battle sequences, the enthusiastic performances of the two leads, and the shining moments when the beautiful Clara Bow is onscreen. This is the first time I have seen her in anything, and I can see what the fuss was about. The weaknesses of the film are the flimsy plot, the punishing lenght (it was about 40 minutes too long), and the almost schizophrenic blend of gung-ho American righteousness and anti-war stances. I can't really figure out where the movie stood on the whole war question. All Quiet on the Western Front, released three years later, is the definitive anti-war film of the pre-WWII era, while this movie, like so many Hollywood films to come out up to the present day, wants it both ways.

 

Articles  Paul Tatara from Turner Classic Movies, also seen here:  Read TCM's article on Wings

 

William Wellman's World War I fighter pilot picture, Wings, is a remarkable achievement that stands as a forerunner to today's big-budget action blockbuster. Wellman (who had been a flier during the war, and later became a barnstormer) and his team of daredevil pilots threw caution to the wind while filming the most staggering action scenes that anyone had ever attempted up to that point. Remember, this was 1927. There were no CGI effects to lighten the director's load, and Wellman wasn't the type to constantly rely on miniatures when he needed to do something extraordinary.

There are aerial sequences in Wings that still dazzle audiences today, and that wouldn't be the case if Wellman had taken the easy way out. Sure, the people who made this movie had to be a bit reckless, if not crazy - the stunt pilots are truly death-defying - but that's why Wings is still a thrilling experience. Even with an accent on melodrama in the narrative and the acting, which was an ever-present aspect of commercial pictures at the time, it's like a bottle of soda that never loses its fizz.

The script follows Jack Powell (Charles "Buddy" Rogers), a small-town auto fanatic who doesn't know that the girl next-door, Mary Preston (Clara Bow), is in love with him. Jack has actually fallen for Sylvia Lewis (Jobyna Ralston), although Sylvia is in love with Jack's best friend, David Armstrong (Richard Arlen). Soon enough, the characters are drawn into the sweeping drama of World War I, with Jack and David becoming fighter pilots. The combat footage, as you might expect, is the real star of Wings. Rogers, by the way, actually learned how to fly a plane during production. There were sequences in which the actors had to not only fly the planes, but operate the cameras while they did it!

In his autobiography, Wellman wrote at some length about the biggest air-raid scenes in Wings. To hear him tell it, he was quite literally orchestrating a military maneuver for the cameras: "We had been rehearsing with 3,500 army personnel, and 65-odd pilots for 10 days. Camera positions on one-hundred-foot parallels erected at the apex of a triangle, and at various distances down one side. Seventeen first cameramen and crews plus positions for twenty-eight Imoes electrically controlled. It was a gigantic undertaking, and the only element we couldn't control was the weather. That is what I thought."

The wild card that Wellman didn't consider was the human element. At this point in the shoot, there had already been a few plane crashes. The pilots weren't badly injured, but the planes were demolished, and the air corps was prepared to pull its participation if another aircraft was lost...and that would doom the entire production. Sure enough, after cueing wave after wave of soldiers on the ground and biplanes in the air - this was the 1920s equivalent of the helicopter attack in Apocalypse Now (1979) - a daredevil flier's plane went down. Fortunately, everyone from the producers to the generals was so thrilled with what they had seen, the wrecked plane was immediately forgotten.

Movie buffs will note that Wings was a pivotal step in launching Gary Cooper to big-screen prominence. Cooper - who plays a heroic, not-long-for-this-world pilot - only appears in one rather brief scene. But his piercing eyes and broad-shoulder bearing burn a hole in the screen. Wellman was mesmerized by what he saw through his camera, not that Cooper himself was convinced that he'd done a worthy job.

After filming Cooper's scene, Wellman retired to his room and took a shower in preparation for dinner. Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and Wellman called for the person to come in. Entering the living room dripping wet, with a towel wrapped around his waist, Wellman was shocked to find Cooper standing nervously. Cooper hemmed and hawed, but it soon became apparent that he wanted to re-shoot his scene, even though he was hardly in a powerful enough position to demand such a thing. When Wellman asked him why, Cooper explained that, right in the middle of the scene, he picked his nose! "Just a minute, Coop," Wellman told the young actor. "You keep right on picking your nose, and you will pick yourself into a fortune."

 

A Mythical Monkey Writes About The Movies  making a case for Best Supporting Actress Of 1927-28: Clara Bow (Wings)

 

moviediva

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture - 1927-1928 (Erik Beck)

 

Slant Magazine Blu-ray [Jaime N. Christley]

 

ReelViews [James Berardinelli]

 

411mania.com [Chad Webb]

 

DVDizzy.com's Great Best Picture Project  Luke Bonanno

 

DVD Talk [Glenn Erickson]  Blu-Ray

 

DVDizzy.com - Blu-ray with Pictures  Luke Bonanno

 

The QNetwork [James Kendrick]  Blu-Ray

 

Blu-ray.com [Martin Liebman]

 

DVD Verdict - Blu-ray [Jim Thomas]

 

Blu-rayDefinition.com - Blu-ray [Lawrence Devoe]

 

Parallax View [Sean Axmaker]  Blu-Ray

 

Classic Film Guide

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

GayCelluloid.com [David Hall]

 

Daily Film Dose  Alan Bacchus

 

eFilmCritic Reviews  Jay Seaver

 

The Flick Filosopher's take  MaryAnn Johanson

 

The Kindler Oscar Chronicles [Elliot Kindler]

 

Matt vs. the Academy [Matt Foster]

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Martin Hunt]

 

Movie Mirror [Sanderson Beck]

 

Armchair Oscars [Jerry Dean Roberts]

 

Variety  Sid Silverman

 

Variety

 

New York Times [Mordaunt Hall] (registration req'd)  also seen here:  The New York Times

 

DVDBeaver - Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

BEGGARS OF LIFE

USA  (100 mi)  1928

 

Chicago Reader Capsule Review  JR Jones

A doctoral candidate in gender studies could have a field day with this 1928 silent drama, for which macho director “Wild Bill” Wellman (Wings, The Public Enemy, Beau Geste) dressed screen siren Louise Brooks in men's clothing and cast her into a hobo jungle. A tramp (Richard Arlen) shows up at a farmhouse to find the owner dead at the hands of his adoptive daughter (Brooks), who claims she was defending her honor; they hit the road together but get hassled by a gang of bindle stiffs whose leader (Wallace Beery) wants the striking young woman for his bitch. This was Brooks's last Hollywood role before German director G.W. Pabst unleashed her ravenous sexuality in Pandora's Box, a film as destined for renown as this one was for obscurity. 80 min.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - Cine-File.info  Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

A young girl kills her stepfather, dresses up as a hobo and runs away to ride the treacherous rails. The girl, of course, is Louise Brooks (who else could it be?) and the film, coming just before her career-redefining collaborations with G.W. Pabst (e.g. PANDORA'S BOX), is both her best American picture and the best of William Wellman's silent films (if not his greatest overall). Part fairy tale, part picaresque, part documentary, BEGGARS OF LIFE features actual hobos in bit parts and a story co-written by the hobo memoirist Jim Tully, but its strongest points emerge from the strange cocktail of Brooks' mysterious femininity and the cocky masculine ego standard to Wellman's direction. It's also nearly impossible to see—aside from bootleg DVDs of questionable quality—making this rare 35mm presentation all the more crucial.

Beggars of Life Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London  Tom Milne

If it weren't for two of its lead performances, this would be a simple period curiosity, one of Hollywood's first sympathetic portraits of life on the run from the police. A vagrant falls in with a young woman wanted for murder; the two of them seek refuge with a group of hoboes, but find their own kind as hostile as the rest of society. Wellman sketches the hobo mentality with a fine economy, but cannot deliver the pace and suspense that the plot demands. Hence the importance of the players. Beery, entering with a pilfered beer-barrel on his shoulder, offers an extravagantly randy, bullying and sentimental performance as Oklahoma Red, leader of the hoboes. Despite his excellence, though, all eyes are on the 22-year-old Louise Brooks, who was about to leave for Germany to star in Pandora's Box. As the movie opens, she has just shot her adoptive father, who tried to rape her. She flees in boy's clothes, tough and vulnerable in equal proportions. The camera loves her, and she rewards it with a performance that radiates inner life.

Wellman: Beggars Of Life (1928)  Billy Stevenson from A Film Canon

Beggars Of Life is torn between two categories of marginality - the sexual precociousness of Louise Brooks, which always finds itself simultaneously endorsed and spurned by 'acceptable' society, here personified as a lecherous father; and the drifting homelessness of 'tramp writer' Jim Tully, upon whose memoirs the narrative is based, and best defined in terms of a communal sexual illiteracy that is tantamount to homosocial attraction, equally evident in the chief tramp's obscene advances, and the protagonist's instinct to treat Brooks as a brother, rather than a lover. This explicates Brooks' outrageous sexuality for what it is - an assumption of masculinity - by placing her in a situation where she can only gain any kind of sexual currency after becoming a man, or at least making some gesture of manhood, most explicitly by playing the majority of her role in drag. Not only does this mitigate her transgressive appeal, but it reduces the tramps' mileu to its sexual economy, at the expense of its logistical challenges, many of which are interesting merely by virtue of their cinematic potential, such as the habit of catching rides on freight trains, which Wellman (incompletely) exploits through so many creative variations on the 'phantom ride'.

FilmFanatic.org

A young woman (Louise Brooks) who has just killed her stepfather in self-defense goes on the lam with a hobo (Richard Arlen) — but the leader of a group of thieves (Wallace Beery) is determined to secure Brooks as his “gal” at any cost.

This silent film by director William Wellman is a clear thematic precursor to his Depression-era flick Wild Boys of the Road (1933), but with a fugitive sensibility and less overt social commentary. The story starts off with a bang, as Arlen walks into a room with a dead man, then spots a beautiful young woman descending the stairs; as Brooks describes how she killed her stepfather after he tried to rape her, Wellman superimposes flashback images over her expressive face, to haunting effect. Arlen begrudgingly takes Brooks (a fugitive) under his wing, teaching her how to hop trains (she doesn’t make it on her first try), and their care for one another slowly begins to grow; the scene in which the two acquaintances lie together on a makeshift haystack “bed” is a nervy, remarkably provocative artifact of pre-Code mentality.

Once Arlen and Brooks encounter a group of thieves (led by blustery Wallace Beery), the story becomes a bit more conventional and less intrinsically interesting — though Beery’s “look” when he dons a trash bag and dark glasses to convene a kangaroo court bears viewing (see still below). Things take yet another turn by the end, when Beery experiences a change of heart — but to say more would give away spoilers. While its rather perfunctory storyline prevents Beggars of Life from being a classic of silent cinema, Wellman does present some lovely imagery (helped by Henry Gerrard’s shadowy cinematography), and film fanatics will likely be curious to see Brooks in her final Hollywood film before she left for Germany to collaborate with G.W. Pabst. (Has any actress EVER been more luminous and compulsively watchable on screen?)

Note: Beggars of Life is actually considered to be Paramount Pictures’ first “talkie”, given the insertion of a song sung by Beery, but this wasn’t included on the version I watched, and in every other respect the film is an archetypal silent picture.

Not Coming to a Theater Near You Review  Megan Weireter

 

CineScene Review  Chris Dashiell

 

NY Times Original Review  Mordaunt Hall

 

THE PUBLIC ENEMY

USA  (83 mi)  1931

 

R. Barton Palmer from 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE:

William Wellman’s melodramatic chronicle of the rise and fall of gangster Tom Powers (James Cagney) is the greatest of the early 1930’s gangster films. The genre’s sometime sympathetic portrayal of ruthless criminals eager for the American Dream of success at the deliberate and unlawful cost of others prompted the institution of the Production Code Administration to supervise the dubious moral value in Hollywood films. Raised in Chicago slums, Powers turns at an early age to crime, graduating as a young man to armed robbery and the murder of a policeman. Later, he becomes involved in bootlegging, making real money for the first time. Though his brother and mother plead with him to go straight, Tom rises in the gang, but after being badly wounded in a battle with rivals, he agrees to rejoin his family. He is taken from the hospital and murdered, his body dumped on the doorstep of his family home.

 

With its simplistic moralism, the plot of The Public Enemy has dated poorly. But Cagney remains powerful and energetic as Powers, dominating the screen in every scene and setting the pattern for all gangster films to come, including The Godfather series. Wellman directs the film with a strong visual sense, designing memorable scenes such as the one in which Powers, in a sudden fit of anger, shoves a grapefruit into girlfriend Kitty’s face.        

 

Time Out  Geoff Andrew

Hard to believe that it was the aptly named Woods and not Cagney who was originally slated for the lead role of Tom Powers, the part that rocketed Cagney to stardom and typecast him as a trigger-happy punk. Now, of course, the film seems the archetypal Cagney vehicle as he graduates from petty theft to big-time bootlegging and murder, but it's fairly seminal for other reasons: the acknowledgment that crime is at least partly the product of poor social conditions, the emphasis on booze as the mainspring for the Mob's illegal income, the deployment of events and characteristics from the lives of real-life gangsters (in this case Hymie Weiss) to create myth from fact. Best known for the rampantly misogynist scene in which Cagney plunges a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's nagging face over the breakfast table, the film is badly let down by the performances of Harlow as a classy moll, and Cook and Mercer as Cagney's brother and mother (the latter coming across as a simpering moron). But Cagney's energy and Wellman's gutsy direction carry the day, counteracting the moralistic sentimentality of the script and indelibly etching the star on the memory as a definitive gangster hero.

A Film Canon [Billy Stevenson]

This is a more historicised, psychologised portrait of the gangster than Little Caesar. Wellman sets the meteoric rise of Tom Powers (Jimmy Cagney) against a montage of Prohibition landscapes, as well as a more conspicuously ethnic mileu, and traces it to the irrational, violent influence of his father, shown beating him in a pivotal early scene. By characterising gangsterdom as the attempt to find, embody or compensate for some lost form of paternal authority, Wellman sharpens Powers' explosive volatility with an undercurrent of insecurity, making any gesture of betrayal or duplicity doubly affronting. It's no coincidence that the most shocking scene involves the murder of Powers' first employer and surrogate father, who dies in the midst of an hysterical invocation of the past. For these reasons, Wellman is particularly keen to stress Powers' domestic life which, dichotomised between his family home and luxurious apartment - or, more specifically, between his unconditional loyalty to his mother and absolute, misogynistic contempt for his lover - bolsters the moral polarities embodied by the gangster, necessitating a particularly strong counterpoint to the depictions of his rise. This comes in the form of a double ending, which ensures that Powers is virtually absent - and, perhaps more importantly in a film so predicated on his aggressive repartee, silent - for the conclusion of his own narrative, creating a profound disempowerment borne out in the pathetic circumstances of his death.

The Public Enemy   Chris Barsanti from Slant magazine

 

Contrary to popular opinion, the best moment in The Public Enemy isn't when Jimmy Cagney shoves a grapefruit in his girlfriend's face—it's the moment Chicago gangsters Tom Powers (Cagney in a career-making performance) and his buddy Matt Doyle (Edward Woods) hear that one of their own is dead, not by a rival gangster, but from being thrown off his horse. Even when Powers and Doyle march into the stable in a welter of cold fury, you don't quite believe they're actually going to execute the horse, and yet they do. In a film that begins and ends with high-toned messages about the evil hoodlums do to society, this was likely originally intended to illustrate the rapacious inhumanity of these gangsters (a horse?), but there's no denying its intrinsic black comedy. Studio-imposed moralizing aside, this is a film with a wicked sense of humor—witness the scene in which a swishy haberdasher feels up Cagney's bicep while measuring him for a suit—that makes up for an occasionally stale plot.

Powers and Doyle are childhood best buddies, growing up petty crooks in the teeming Chicago tenements of the early 20th century and graduating to big-time crimes once the local mob is handed the sweet gift of Prohibition. Director William A. Wellman brings a sociological bent to his depiction of their milieu, using old newsreel footage of the city, carefully marking the passing of the years and paying close attention to the particulars of the characters' working-class Irish surroundings. There's a clean arc to the story as we follow Powers and Doyle from the "social club" where the neighborhood kids do odd crimes for the resident Fagin character, Putty Nose, to their first involvement with burgeoning bootlegger Paddy Ryan, to them living the high life as smart-dressed hoods and the final showdown where Powers stalks into enemy headquarters (a justifiably famous shot where he practically walks into the camera), a revolver in each hand and a killer's stare on his face. The nature of the film's rise-and-fall plot, however, can seem overly premeditated at times, and borders on the simplistic.

The Public Enemy starts by telling its audience that it does not mean to glorify the criminals that it portrays, and unlike some other gangster flicks of the 1930s, it actually doesn't. Although the crook that Cagney plays here has a definite thuggish cool, he's repeatedly shown to be such a thickheaded animal that he doesn't register as much of an antihero (the only thing helping him is that none of the other characters register much in the way of personality, either). He's the kind of overzealous idiot gunman who Bogart would have mocked relentlessly in The Big Sleep. Even so, there's little denying the power of Cagney's presence, from the first moment he's on screen, he radiates such a brash Fenian cockiness you can imagine kids at the time flocking out of the theater and cocking their caps just like him. It's a performance so perfect in its intensity that any other quibbles about the film ultimately recede into insignificance.

 

The Public Enemy | Senses of Cinema  Richard Maltby, December 2003

 

DVD Times  Mike Sutton

 

Dan Schneider on The Public Enemy  condensed version seen here:  The Spinning Image 

 

The Greatest Films - comprehensive analysis of classic US film  Tim Dirks

 

Edward Copeland on Film (Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.)

 

The Public Enemy - Turner Classic Movies  Rob Nixon, also seen here:  Read TCM's article on The Public Enemy

 

Daily Film Dose Greg Klymkiw

 

filmcritic.com  Jay Antani

 

A Mythical Monkey Writes About The Movies  also reviewing LITTLE CAESAR

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com  Jon Danziger

 

DVD Verdict  Rob Lineberger

 

DVD Savant  Glenn Erickson, The Warners Gangster Collection

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]  The Warners Gangster Collection

 

DVD Verdict - TCM Greatest Gangster Films: Prohibition Era [Roman Martel]

 

DVD Talk  Ian Jane

 

DVD MovieGuide  Colin Jacobson

 

KQEK.com [Mark R. Hasan]

 

George Chabot's Review of The Public Enemy

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Classic Film Freak  Orson DeWelles

 

Brian Koller, filmsgraded.com

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Martin Hunt]

 

Crazy for Cinema  Lisa Skrzyniarz

 

Three Movie Buffs

 

Movie Mirror Sanderson Beck

 

Classic Film Guide

 

Film Dungeon  Jeppe Kleyngeld

 

Boxoffice Magazine

 

TV Guide review

 

Variety

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

NIGHT NURSE

USA  (72 mi)  1931 

 

Chicago Reader (Jonathan Rosenbaum) capsule review

A William Wellman curiosity done for Warners in 1931, this gritty thriller, a favorite of film critic Manny Farber, is of principal interest today for its juicy early performances by Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Blondell, and Clark Gable. Hard as nails, with lots of spunk. 72 min.

Time Out review   Tom Milne

A wonderfully pacy thriller, with sparkling dialogue, a nice line in blackish humour, an undertow of pre-Hays Code eroticism, and Stanwyck in full-hard-bitten cry as a nurse foiling a plot to kill two little girls for their inheritance. With neither she nor Gable (in support as a villainous chauffeur; Lyon makes little impact as the nominal hero) worrying about niceties of image, it's tough, taut and fun.

User comments  from imdb (Page 2) Author: manuel-pestalozzi from Zurich, Switzerland

Anyone who thought exploitation movies were invented in the 1960s will know better after having watched Night Nurse. It's a strange mix of comedy, drama and mild sleaze. The story is pretty weak but for fans of Barbara Stanwyck this is an absolute must see. Her performance is very energetic (aggressively shoving her face very close to that of other people, punching big guys, hurtling bottles of champagne around etc.) and she really comes through as a sensuous – albeit tough as nails - nurse. For some time she must wear a tiny band aid on her chin which makes her even more attractive. Joan Blondell is also great as her gum chewing friend, setting the standard for vulgarity. The movie basically deals with the ethics of the medical profession which is treated with amazing cynicism.

The highlight for me was the conversation between the excited Stanwyck character and an older Pappy-type doctor. The nurse suspects foul play in a particular medical case and Pappy tries to calm her down with sensible arguments. The nurse quickly loses her patience and her temper, shouting. „Aw, ethics, ethics, ethics! I'm through with ethics!" It's really a well played scene which brings the character and temperament of the nurse to the fore and reflects the atmosphere of the whole movie. I also liked the unethical doctor with his facial twist and snazzy uniform which must have influenced people who created the wardrobe for Starship Enterprise. His big office has very elegant Art Deco trappings and is in stark contrast to the rather cramped conditions in the ethically operated hospital shown in this movie.

Night Nurse - TCM.com  Jeff Stafford

Lora Hart (Barbara Stanwyck) is hired by the less than scrupulous Dr. Ranger (Ralf Harolde) to care for the Ritchey children, two little girls suffering from poor health. The girl's mother (Charlotte Merriam) is an alcoholic involved in a self-destructive relationship with Nick, her criminally-inclined chauffeur (Clark Gable, in an early performance minus his trademark mustache). It soon becomes apparent to Lora that the children are being slowly starved to death by the doctor and Nick as part of an insidious plot to gain control of the children's inheritance. Although she surprises her employer by taking an active interest in the little girls' welfare, she also places herself in a dangerous situation.

Often overlooked as a minor feature in the collective careers of Barbara Stanwyck, Clark Gable and director William Wellman, Night Nurse (1931) is actually more engrossing than some of their more highly regarded films. For one thing, the often sordid subject matter is directed with considerable verve; Wellman punches up the film's raciness with a steady stream of double intendre wisecracks, mostly delivered by Stanwyck and fellow compatriot Joan Blondell, as they parade around in various stages of undress. The violence in the film is rather strong for the period as well, with Gable beating Stanwyck to the floor in one scene and then carrying her semi-conscious body off to his bedroom for an off-screen rape. More controversial was the depiction of the film's villains - so callous they could murder children for profit - and the movie's pro-vengeance ending which suggested that the police and the courts were completely ineffective in dealing with certain unlawful situations. Of course, all of this makes Night Nurse one of the more fascinating pre-Code melodramas that Warner Brothers released in the early thirties; It also led to tighter censorship controls over content.

Seen today, Night Nurse is particularly interesting for Barbara Stanwyck's performance as a working class gal who knows how to use her brains as well as her fists. Her tough, seen-it-all attitude comes through memorably in such scenes as the one where she finds Mrs. Ritchey, lying drunk on the floor while her two young daughters are left unattended. Looking down on her with digust, Stanwyck mutters under her breath, "You Mother!"

Night Nurse was the first of five films Stanwyck and Wellman made together and the actress would later state that he was one of her favorite directors. She was also bedazzled by her co-star Clark Gable. In the biography, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck by Ella Smith, the actress recalled that she and Joan Blondell grabbed each other's pinkies in awe when they first laid eyes on him: "The instant Clark walked onto the set I knew - we all knew- that here was a striking personality. He commanded attention." Wellman also realized his potential and wrote in his autobiography, A Short Time For Insanity, that in Night Nurse, Gable was "one of the most despicable heavies imaginable, and he did it with such savoir faire that he became a star. The powers-that-be at Warner Brothers liked his performance but decided he was not worth fooling with, not star material: his ears were too big. They forgot to look at his dimples and listen to his voice and see his smile." MGM noticed though and signed him to a long-term contract the same year. By the end of 1931, he had already established himself as one of the studio's top male leads due to his charismatic performances in A Free Soul (opposite Norma Shearer) and Possessed starring Joan Crawford.

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review  Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2

 

DVD Talk [Phil Bacharach] - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2

 

PopMatters [Bruce Dancis]    Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2

 

DVDTown - Forbidden Hollywood, Vol. 2 [John J. Puccio]

 

DVD Verdict- Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Volume Two [Kristin Munson]

 

FilmFanatic.org

 

Jeff Meyer retrospective

 

That Cow (Andrew Bradford) review [4/10]

 

2 Things @ Once

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz) review

 

Classic Film Guide

 

TV Guide review

 

Variety.com [Variety Staff]

 

DVDBeaver dvd review  Gary W. Tooze

 

WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD

USA  (68 mi)  1933

 

User comments  from imdb (Page 2) Author: writers_reign from London, England

William Wellman - especially in his early sound films - excelled in telling stories economically thus packing a great deal into 7 or 8 reels. Here he even squanders a whole reel plus in establishing the leading characters as what in England would be called middle class before pulling the rug out from under them via the domino effect of the Great Depression. Grant Mitchell, who made a specialty of parenting - see, for example, Orchestra Wives/Ann Rutherford - is again quietly effective as the matriarch laid off in middle age, but it is Stanley Clements look-alike Frankie Darro who gets top billing as the Andy Hardy type teen who cuts out the Life Lessons from Judge Hardy and gets them instead from the horse's mouth as he takes to the road. This is very much in the Warner Bros 'straight from the headlines' style and Wellman proves yet again how accomplished he was.

Wild Boys of the Road - TCM.com  Jeff Stafford

 

Warner Brothers was never the sort of studio to shy away from exploring social ills or the harsher aspects of American life and Wild Boys of the Road (1933) is a perfect example of their commitment to this sort of picture during the early sound era. Set during the Depression, the film follows two middle-class boys who take to the road when economic hardships drastically alter their situations at home. Riding east on a freight train, they befriend other homeless youths along the way until railroad authorities force them off the train in Ohio where they create their own hobo camp.

Wild Boys of the Road was William Wellman's attempt to dramatize some disturbing developments in the social fabric of America while at the same time reflecting some of the optimism inherent in the New Deal politics of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Though normally very frugal with film budgets, Wellman went over his allotted production costs on this film due to his emotional involvement in the subject matter. Unfortunately, Wild Boys of the Road didn't do well commercially when released and some critics felt the happy ending was unrealistic. While that may be true in part, everything that comes before the fadeout is tough and uncompromising, particularly a scene where a boy loses his leg to an oncoming train. In fact, studio executive Hal Wallis requested changes to the train amputation sequence in a memo: "I am just looking at the stuff where the train passes over and cuts the kid's (Edwin Phillips) leg off. There is no doubt about it, it is effective but if we ever left this in, there would be more premature births in the theatre and more people dying than were killed in the World War. I hope...you will get it over more by suggestion."

Part of the reason Wellman succeeded in capturing such a naturalistic, documentary-like flavor is because of the real locations used and a cast of mostly unknown actors, Frankie Darro and Rochelle Hudson being the two exceptions. Dorothy Coonan, who plays Dottie, a tough, young girl who rides the rails, is a particular standout and had previously worked as a dancer in Busby Berkeley musicals such as Gold Diggers of 1933. Wellman became infatuated with Dorothy when she starred in his previous film, Heroes for Sale (1933) and soon after Wild Boys of the Road they married, making her Wellman's fourth and final wife.

 

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [5/5]

WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD is a marvelous piece of Americana, a look at the social confusion of the Depression era. The film's two chief characters, Frankie Darro and Edwin Phillips, are California youths enjoying a comfortable lifestyle with their parents. When the Depression hits and their fathers lose their jobs, the boys hop an eastbound freight train to find work. They soon learn that there are thousands just like themselves, all looking for work, all trying to fight the economic depression that is destroying the country. Darro and Phillips find not only a number of other "wild boys" but also Dorothy Coonan and Rochelle Hudson, tough girls who take to the rails with them. Along the way, this mobile group of naive vagrants become a pack of outlaws when they kill a brakeman who has raped Hudson. The kids are finally forced off the tracks in Ohio, where they assemble their own "sewer city" from sewer pipes and supplies--a city founded on new ideals and a commitment to equality. Their city, however, breeds theft in the nearby community, prompting the police and fire department to wash away the vagrants with fire hoses. The gang moves on, suffering from lack of food and money. After getting involved in a theft ring, they're arrested and hauled off to court, where they get a lesson in New Deal ideology.

Blasted by countless critics for its political stance, WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD, if sometimes naive politically, is still superb entertainment. Director William A. Wellman tackled a straightforward "road movie" structure and applied the simplest of New Deal ideas to it. WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD shows with amazing accuracy the feeling of emptiness and apparent hopelessness that ran rampant in the country. The chief problem with the film is its refusal to lay the blame for the Depression at anyone's feet. The film's finish, though technically a happy ending, is rather mindless, leaving the audience with a "don't worry, everything will be fine" promise. Despite these faults, WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD is one of the finest films about youthful idealism to hit the screen. Costing $203,000 to produce, the film had only minimal success at the box office. Besides the superb Coonan (Wellman's fourth wife), the film is peopled with numerous teens, most of whom were, before and after the film, unknowns, adding to the authenticity of the film's atmosphere. The standout among the cast, however, is the appealing, pint-sized Darro, who became one of the foremost Depression era tough kids of the screen.

User comments  from imdb Author: imogensara_smith from New York City

A few years ago the New Yorker magazine, in a breathtaking lapse of taste, published a fashion spread inspired by the iconic photographs of Dust Bowl migrants. Much as I deplored the sleek models in $400 distressed cardigans pretending to thumb rides along a dusty highway, the project tapped into a phenomenon I am hopelessly susceptible to myself: the mystique of the Great Depression. I'm attracted to the cultural products of the time: music, movies, fashion, architecture (why did the world have such thrilling elegance in a time of so much suffering?) But I'm also drawn to the zeitgeist: a profound disillusionment, ranging from wry to bitter, which stands out sharply from America's traditional optimism and innocence.

Please forgive this personal digression, but I think it is relevant to my appreciation of WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD, one of the most vivid—and least glamorous—depictions of the Depression I've ever seen. It's easy to romanticize freight-hopping, but this film, while thoroughly enjoyable, conveys just how awful homeless wandering was. At the same time, it helps explain the dignity that elevates those photographs of the Depression's victims—so foreign to our own graceless era. The key to every character's response to hardship is stoicism: a desire, above all, not to be a burden on others.

The film opens at a high-school dance, where the girls wear evening gowns, the kids dance to the Shadow Waltz (Warner Bros. never lost a chance to cannibalize its own products), and there are some pre-Code jokes about hanky-panky in the backs of cars. But signs of the Depression already creep in: one boy doesn't have 75 cents for admission, and when the main characters come out, they find someone has stolen the gasoline from their car, so they blithely siphon some from a handy convertible. They are Eddie (Frankie Darro, the junior Jimmy Cagney), a pugnacious but tender-hearted boy, and his best friend, the more retiring, sleepy-eyed Tommy (Edwin Phillips.) Tommy's fatherless family is already on the skids, and Eddie promises to help out, until he learns his own father has been laid off, and they too are soon on the verge of being evicted. Eddie bravely sells his beloved jalopy, then decides he and Tommy should seek their own fortune, leaving two fewer mouths to feed.

Step one, of course, is to hop a passing freight. They meet a girl their own age, Sally (adorable, freckle-faced Dorothy Coonan), a tough cookie traveling alone dressed as a boy. They are soon part of a community, with hundreds of bums crowding onto the trains and trying to evade the railroad cops who wait in every freight yard. Realizing they have the cops outnumbered, they decide to put up a fight, pelting the police with eggs and fruit. When they find out that a brakeman (Ward Bond) has raped another of the girls traveling in boys' clothes, they mete out vigilante justice. It's easy to imagine audiences cheering at these assaults on law and order. In a later, even more shocking scene, the cops come to clear out a shanty-town where the young vagrants have been living; again they fight back, but the cops turn fire hoses on them. Things get even bleaker when Tommy is run over by a train and loses his leg. Edwin Phillips is poignant without mawkishness as he tries to shrug off his loss, as he broods over being a drag on his friends, and as—in the film's last scene—he miserably watches Eddie turn handsprings down the street. Frankie Darro does his usual Cagney impersonation (in a hilarious touch, when he runs into a movie theater a Cagney film is playing) but shows real talent and presence. Sadly, none of the three young leads went on to prominent careers. Dorothy Coonan (a spiffy tap dancer too) took the role of Mrs. William Wellman.

The story is packed with incident and sprinkled with comic relief, some from Sterling Holloway, but it's not really a story as much as a portrait of a time, a people, a predicament. It's amazing and yet completely credible how quickly two middle-class boys turn into ragged panhandlers (they don't even ask for dimes, just nickels), one a cripple, one stooping occasionally to petty theft. The hobo community is painted warmly, maybe sentimentally, as loyal, diverse and supportive (blacks and girls are treated as equals). But no one is having any fun; they're not wild, just bone-weary. Eddie, Tommy and Sally wind up in New York, living in a garbage dump; here their fates take a turn for the worse and then an improbable turn for the better. The kindly judge who lectures them on how things are going to be better now, they are going to get a fresh chance, as the camera pans up to the NRA ("We Do Our Part") poster over his head, will likely prompt eye-rolling today. But the audience probably cheered for this too: think how badly they wanted to hear it. The last-minute idealism fails to dull the force of the movie, which approaches the biting austerity of Woody Guthrie anthems like "Hard Traveling" and "I Ain't Got No Home in this World Anymore."

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [3.5/5]

 

Self-Styled Siren: Wild Boys of the Road (1933)

 

CineScene.com (Chris Dashiell) review

 

FilmFanatic.org

 

Movie Mirror  Sanderson Beck

 

The New York Times (Frank S. Nugent) review

 

Wild Boys of the Road - Wikipedia

 

THE CALL OF THE WILD

USA  (95 mi)  1935

User reviews  from imdb (Page 2) Author: Darragh O' Donoghue (hitch1899_@hotmail.com) from Dublin, Ireland

There are some brilliant things in CALL OF THE WILD, such as the vivid portrait of frontier life at the turn of the century. This is, though, largely a disappointing version of Jack London's novel. Much of his anti-capitalism is here, but reduced to the emotional progress of Clark Gable. The theme of tame/wild is invoked - dog, woman, nature - but the crucial Buck plot is sidelined and made cute. The acting irritates in its refusal of depth, although Loretta Young's entrance could be straight out of Cocteau. The landscape is beautiful to look at, but there is little sense of nature as devouring or malevolent.

User reviews  from imdb Author: william walker (weezeralfalfa@yahoo.com) from United States

Gable has it all for a short while: easy pickings gold nuggets, a gorgeous girlfriend he found in the wilderness, a half-wild soul mate lead dog and a bashful wisecracking partner. But, his grasp on all of these is slippery, as the plot develops. I don't fault Hollywood for departing so flagrantly from London's story, which too was just a yarn. I found this version much more entertaining and profound, despite the stereotypical boss-sidekick relationship between Gable and Jack Oakie.

Gable seems to represent sort of an ideal adventurous entrepreneur: a riverboat gambler at heart, who is willing to take big risks and to work for his fortune when necessary, but who tries to grab all he can and beat out the competition. The chief villain is a stereotypical pretentious cutthroat tycoon: the worst kind of capitalist. In contrast, Gable recognizes certain limits in gaining his fortune and honors his commitments to his partners, be they human or animal. Loretta's creed is yet more tempered: You will get what you want only if you deserve it. See the movie to find out how these various creeds interact to determine the outcome.

This is perhaps Gable's most enjoyable role, along with those in "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Boom Town". As in most of his best roles, Gable comes across as rakish: part hero, part scoundrel, but never dull. Like Gable, Loretta is at her physical peak at this time, making for a very romantic-looking couple.

Author: lugonian from Kissimmee, Florida

THE CALL OF THE WILD (20th Century Pictures, 1935), directed by William A. Wellman, released at the time when classic literature becomes classic cinema, ranks one of the finer Jack London based stories transferred to the screen in spite the fact that it's actually a free adaptation to his classic 1903 novel. In true Hollywood tradition, this version plays like a matinée western, handsome hero, comic sidekick, pretty heroine and nasty villain. Instead of a horse, there's a tough St. Bernard by the name of Buck, who, unlike the novel, is a secondary character, leaving much of the story to its hero, Jack Thornton.

Opening title: "Yukon, 1900, Skagway - mushroom metropolis, the first stop on the long trail to the gold fields." After gambling away his fortune at the gambling tables of The Great Northern where people gather together for wine, liquor and cigars, Jack Thornton (Clark Gable) meets up with his old pal, "Shorty" Houlihan (Jack Oakie). Having served a six month jail sentence for opening another man's letter containing a map to a gold mine compiled by the late Martin Blake, Shorty, who copied the map by memory after destroying the original, invites Thornton to accompany him in the search. Along the way, Thornton acquires vicious St. Bernard named Buck from Joe Groggins (Sidney Toler), saving the animal from being shot by the demanding Mr. Smith (Reginald Owen), whom the dog despises; and Claire (Loretta Young), of San Francisco, camping alone in the woods surrounded by wolves, who happens to be the wife of John Blake, son of the late gold prospector. Blake, who's been missing for a week, is believed to be dead. Not wanting to leave the Blake woman alone in the wild, Thornton takes her with them. Together they form a partnership searching for gold while Blake (Frank Conroy), very much alive, having fallen victim to Smith and his murderous assistants (Charles Stevens and Lalos Encinas) out to get the claim for themselves.

With THE CALL OF THE WILD having been screened earlier by Pathe (1923) with Jack Mulhall; adapted again in 1972 starring Charlton Heston, and a several more in later years, it's the Gable version that's remembered best. Gable, on loan from his home studio of MGM, makes one of the finer Jack London heroes, forceful and confident; and perfect Hollywood leading man by the way of romance. Buck, having little to do plot-wise, serves the film's purpose with a key scene in the Dawson City sequence where he pulls a thousand pound load sled through the cheering crowd of spectators a hundred yards on slippery snow towards his calling master as part of a $1,000 bet Thornton made with Smith. Aside from fine chemistry between Gable and Young (who worked together again in the 1950 MGM comedy, KEY TO THE CITY), Buck has his call of the wild with a female dog companion as well.

Anyone reading the closing cast credits will notice that Katherine DeMille, listed for the role of Marie, is non-existent in the final print. According to Bob Dorian, former host of American Movie Classics, during one of its many broadcasts during the 1990s, mentioned that DeMille's scenes were cut after its initial premiere due to her questionable character, reducing its original 95 minute length to 81, where it has been since. It's believed her character appeared during the latter portion of the opening saloon sequence, prior to Thornton's purchase of Buck, which explains the immediate cut from one scene to another. As it stands now, no prints involving "Marie" exists today. What has survived, according to an episode of the 1970s TV documentary, "That's Hollywood," narrated by Tom Bosley, is a cut scene involving Smith's shooting Shorty over a gambling debt. Because audiences couldn't accept comedian Jack Oakie getting killed, it was cut with Oakie's scenes rewritten. Unlike most movies at that time, filmed mostly inside the studio set, THE CALL OF THE WILD ads touches of realism with its location shooting in the Washington State mountains. Rumor has it that freezing temperatures  caused production delays. Overall, THE CALL OF THE WILD is best noted for the off-screen romance chemistry between Gable and Young, as profiled during A&E's "Biography" on either Gable or Young.

Of all the Gable movies placed on VHS and DVD, it's a wonder why THE CALL OF THE WILD was never distributed on home video, considering its popularity due to frequent commercial TV revivals in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, unlike the now forgotten WHITE FANG (20th-1936), another Jack London based story transferred to the screen. Starring Michael Whalen and Jean Muir, it's opening titles read "A sequel to "The Call of the Wild." Aside from the title character being an offspring of Buck, and no sign of Clark Gable's Jack Thornton, there is a villain in the story named "Beauty" Smith, as portrayed by John Carradine, but not the same Smith wonderfully portrayed by Owen. Besides its from former broadcasts on AMC prior to 2005, THE CALL OF THE WILD can be seen occasionally on the Fox Movie Channel. (***)

Movie Mirror Sanderson Beck

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

A STAR IS BORN

USA  (111 mi)  1937

 

Time Out  Tom Milne

Despite the tragic ending, Cukor's remake of A Star Is Born is primarily a glowingly nostalgic evocation of Hollywood knowhow and razz-matazz, with Garland's musical numbers blending effortlessly with the gala premieres, Oscar ceremonies, and privileged moments on set. Wellman's non-musical version (attractively shot in the early Technicolor process), though starting more sentimentally with Gaynor as a wide-eyed innocent dreaming every girl's dream of stardom in her small-town home, develops a much more caustic edge, maintaining a bitterly critical distance from the dream factory. This is no doubt because in 1937 the real-life tragedies that fuelled the script were so much closer in time (Esther Blodgett and Norman Maine were inspired by the story of Colleen Moore and her husband/producer John McCormick, though March's Maine, here an actor, draws variously on the fates of John Gilbert, John Barrymore and John Bowers). The two films make fascinating comparison.

Slant Magazine Blu-ray [Jaime N. Christley]

William Wellman's 1937 version of this oft-told tale, of the rising starlet and the plummeting alcoholic has-been she refuses to cast aside, is usually regarded as the second-best of the lot, a few steps behind George Cukor's 1954 remake, which has the unfair advantage of being one of the unimpeachable masterpieces of American film. Wellman's reputation among auteurists, ironically, has always been that of a second-place finisher, stuck behind Hawks one day, Ford the next, Cukor after that. His direction was always life-giving, a spirited ringmaster, though he was, ultimately, a director of scripts rather than images.

So Wellman's auteur status will likely never be exhumed and placed in the upper pantheon. So what. Take a look under the hood of a movie like A Star Is Born, or one of his pre-Code sparklers, or the larger-scale assignments of his postwar period, and there's a guy who loves the theater of any given setup, punchy small roles and bit players, and the movements of actors, even if he often allowed his effects to be co-opted or mitigated by his other collaborators, in the music and editing departments.

As far as the Hollywood stuff goes, the story may be so familiar by now that you'll find yourself gaping in disbelief that the characters themselves aren't aware of it. Esther Blodgett's (Janet Gaynor) arrival in Hollywood is the stuff of relentless naïveté, played without an ounce of irony or satire. An avant-garde short, The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra, telling a far more pessimistic version of the Tinseltown newcomer, appeared in 1928, hinting that the bloom of the Hollywood dream, in fact, fell away so quickly, it's hard to say if it was ever there in the first place, except in the movies themselves.

Norman Maine's (Fredric March) downward-spiral story is only a little less musty—but then, as evidenced by the redemption narrative Chris Brown's managers have been trying to spin since he beat up a girl, there's something seductive and easy about a male star who goes through the mud and comes out clean the other side, or at least enjoys the sweet vinegar of his victimhood. It is what it is. Esther's skyrocket flight to fame has always been the harder of the two to swallow, but it at least plays into the more palatable fame fantasy, the girl from nowhere who becomes Somebody. (When Garland portrayed the same arc, 17 years afterward, she had only to utter the first few syllables of "The Man That Got Away" and all resistance was crushed.)

The oddest thing about A Star Is Born, at least as far as the 1937 script tells it (and upward of a half dozen different writers had a hand in it, including Budd Schulberg, Ring Lardner, and Ben Hecht), is that it's a mixed bag of comedy, tragedy, tell-all, cautionary tale, and romance. It's conceptually and geographically all over the place, but it's somehow managed with such stern moderation that it stays on course from the first minute to the last. May I remind you that this perils-of-fame tragedy that ends in suicide has the proto-Minnellian (as in The Long, Long Trailer) scene of Gaynor attempting to cook a steak while March drives their camper across bumpy terrain? Wellman never lets the tone of the film go more than a few paces in one direction—happy, sad, passionate, indifferent, vivid, subtle, pastoral, sassy—without issuing a course correction of some kind, bringing it back along some main avenue. There's nothing particularly new here, and the dominant tone is some kind of knowing-ness that inevitably leads the audience to enjoy a feeling of distanced awareness of the tale's agelessness, yet never so divorced from the melodrama that it lacks for effectiveness. That and the powerhouse combo of Gaynor's "indestructible angel" act and March's compromised nobility make for a house with a strong foundation.

A Star is Born (1937) - TCM.com   Kerryn Sherrod from Turner Classic Movies

 

While there have been numerous, well-regarded films about the film industry, from The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) to The Player (1992), none of them can touch the quintessential movie on this subject - the 1937 version of A Star Is Born. Originally based on an idea by director William Wellman, a script outline by Robert Carson and Wellman was pedaled from studio to studio by the director for years before David O. Selznick finally agreed to finance the film. It also helped that his wife, Irene (the daughter of Louis B. Mayer), thought the story had box-office potential. After giving Wellman the green light for production, Selznick became more involved in the creative process, requesting the film be made in the new three-color Technicolor process and demanding a title change from It Happened In Hollywood which was rumored to be the name of a competing project at Columbia Studios. Selznick also ordered numerous re-writes behind Wellman's back. Dorothy Parker and her husband Alan Campbell worked on the dialogue and Budd Schulberg, Ring Lardner, Jr., and John Lee Mahin are a few of the writers who contributed to the screenplay. Selznick's meddling finally ceased when Wellman threatened to sue through his agent, Myron Selznick, the producer's own brother! Regardless of the turmoil behind the camera, A Star Is Born proved to be a compelling subject for most moviegoers because it was based on the lives of a few Hollywood celebrities (It later inspired two remakes, one in 1954 and one in 1976). Obviously, it was a subject close to Selznick because he had made an earlier film - What Price Hollywood? (1932) - that covered some of the same territory (failed careers, alcoholism, suicide).

In A Star Is Born, the central premise concerns a fading matinee idol, Norman Maine, whose career is rapidly declining due to a drinking problem, and his wife, a budding actress whose career is just beginning and will soon eclipse his in terms of success. The fascinating thing about A Star Is Born is that in real life, the actors playing Norman Maine and Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester, were having the reverse experience of their screen characters. Fredric March, in the role of the drunken has-been, was actually at the height of his profession while Janet Gaynor as the up-and-coming actress was really at the end of her career. Gaynor had been a major player ten years earlier when she scored a success in the silent classic, Seventh Heaven (1927). The same strange parallel also held true for the 1954 remake; James Mason was just beginning to establish himself as a leading man in Hollywood while Judy Garland was experiencing numerous health and emotional problems. A Star Is Born would be Garland's last major film role until Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) which was really only a lengthy cameo role.

In keeping with the fame and celebrity obsessed theme of A Star Is Born, Wellman cast many of Hollywood's former but forgotten greats in minor speaking parts like silent star Owen Moore and director Marshall 'Mickey' Neilan. Wellman even found a part for his ex-wife, actress Helene Chadwick, whose fan mail he used to deliver. Of course, the juiciest bits of the story were culled from real-life events. The Norman Maine character was loosely based on infamous stories surrounding John Barrymore and John Gilbert during their final years as self-destructive alcoholics. The climactic suicide at the end of A Star Is Born was also drawn from real-life; actor John Boles drowned himself in the ocean shortly after the death of his wife. The funeral scene bears an uncanny likeness to the way that Norma Shearer was mobbed by fans at her husband's funeral, an incident that occurred while A Star Is Born was in production. And the famous final speech by Vicki Lester was inspired by a national radio broadcast by the wife of Wallace Reid who died as a result of his morphine addiction. Her first words at the broadcast were, "This is Mrs. Wallace Reid....."

During the 1937 Oscar® race, A Star Is Born was up for six Academy Award® nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor (March), Best Actress (Gaynor), Best Director (Wellman), Best Screenplay, and Best Original Story, the only one of the nominations which won an award (for Wellman and Robert Carson). The Academy also gave A Star Is Born a special award for the color photography by W. Howard Greene. After winning his award, William Wellman reportedly took it to Selznick's table and said, "Here, You deserve this. You wrote more of it than I did."

 

The Midnight Palace [Karl Holzheimer]

 

Goodfella's Movie Blog: 1937: A Star Is Born (William A. Wellman)

 

KQEK.com [Mark R. Hasan]

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture - 1937 [Erik Beck]

 

PopMatters [Jose Solís]

 

CineScene.com  Chris Dashiell

 

David M. Arnold

 

DVD Savant  Glenn Erickson

 

DVD Talk  Paul Mavis

 

DVD Talk  Stuart Galbraith IV, Blu-Ray

 

Battleship Pretension [David Bax]  Blu-Ray

 

Matt vs. the Academy [Matt Foster]

 

Cinema Sights [James Ewing]

 

The Movie Scene [Andy Webb]

 

Movie Mirror  Sanderson Beck

 

Classic Film Guide

 

DVD Verdict [Victor Valdivia]  Academy Collection: The Envelope Please, Volume 1

 

TV Guide review

 

Variety

 

The New York Times  Frank S. Nugent

 

DVDBeaver - Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

NOTHING SACRED

USA  (77 mi)  1937

 

Time Out Capsule Review  Tom Milne

Irresistible performance from Lombard as the small town girl, supposedly dying of radium poisoning but well aware that she isn't, who determines to grab all she can get when a newspaper brings her to New York for a last fling as a publicity stunt. Ben Hecht's sparkling script occasionally loses its way between the satire and the screwball romance, but is even more caustic about newspapermen than The Front Page ('The hand of God reaching down into the mire couldn't elevate one of 'em to the depths of degradation'), and provides a welcome antidote to Capracorn in its view of small towns as hellholes to be got out of where an intruder is likely to be stoned or bitten by small boys. Some marvellous digs at the morbid sentimentality of the crowd, too, in particular a scene where a wrestling match is held up for ten seconds in tribute to the doomed girl while the bell solemnly tolls ten times. Quite attractively shot in colour, although prints tend to be suffused by an unpleasant pinkish wash.

FilmFanatic.org

“You’ll be a sensation. The whole town’ll take you to its heart.”

A journalist (Fredric March) exploits the story of a small-town woman (Carole Lombard) supposedly dying of radium poisoning, who hides her healthy status in order to enjoy her new-found fame in New York.

Peary accurately labels this “classic screwball comedy” — scripted by Ben Hecht — as “an attack on the hypocrisy of all Americans” who “revel in their unselfishness and graciousness toward their fellow human beings, yet … delight in other people’s misery … and exploit it”. While Flagg is indeed an outright imposter, taking advantage of a free ride when it’s handed to her, she feels appropriately guilty the entire time — and in reality, she’s just “a 10-cent charlatan compared to the bloodsuckers who profit … from her plight”; thus, she remains an oddly sympathetic protagonist throughout. It helps, of course, that Flagg is played by the premiere screwball comedienne of the 1930s — beautiful Lombard (the “highest-paid star at the time”), who gives a “witty, animated performance”. March is “his usual too stiff self” (as Peary points out, this it “why it’s funny watching a smalltown boy greet him with a bite on the leg” during an unexpectedly laugh-out-loud moment) — but he’s a suitable foil for Lombard, whose energy never flags.

At just 75 minutes, this public-domain title (which exists in multiple so-so transfers — none doing justice to its Technicolor hues) zips along speedily and never loses steam. The rapidity with which Flagg is embraced by the American public as its latest favorite “folk hero” resonates perfectly with the apparent speed of modern-day celeb-culture, in which “breaking news” is available at the touch of a button. Hecht’s merciless script is full of countless juicy moments, milked perfectly for laughs: a photographer (nonchalant George Chandler) pops up to drolly snap shots of Flagg at opportune moments; a group of schoolchildren intone an anthem to doomed Flagg; a bevy of beauties dressed as historical heroines are paraded on horses (watch closely when Jinx Falkenburg as “Katinka”, the girl who “stuck her finger in a dyke” — and thus saved Holland — is on stage). NB: Walter Connelly deserves special mention in a typecast role which he nonetheless embraces wholeheartedly — that of “Oliver Stone”, ruthless editor of the Morning Star newspaper, who genuinely, sincerely finds it problematic to learn that Flagg isn’t really on death’s doorstep.

Nothing Sacred - TCM.com  Jeff Stafford

When Wally Cook (Fredric March), an ambitious newspaper reporter for The New York Morning Star, tries to pass off a penniless Harlem resident as the "Sultan of Mazipan" at a charity event, his hoax is discovered and Cook's editor demotes the reporter to writing obituaries as punishment. In his new position, Cook learns about a young woman in Warsaw, Vermont named Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard) who has just learned from her doctor that she has a short time to live due to radium poisoning. Sensing a great news story, Cook rushes to interview the patient, only to learn the diagnosis was incorrect and the woman is in perfect health. Undeterred, Cook convinces Flagg to pretend the original diagnosis was correct, resulting in a series of tearjerking news stories, national headlines and a wave of public sympathy for the young woman. But how long can their charade last before the truth is revealed?

Nothing Sacred (1937) is a key film in that short-lived genre known as 'the screwball comedy," a unique Hollywood creation that flourished between 1933 and 1940. Distinguished by its eccentric characters, irreverent humor, and breakneck pacing, these films usually featured privileged but irresponsible characters running amok against the backdrop of the Great Depression when society was in turmoil. But while the idle rich were mercilessly lampooned in the most popular screwball comedy of the previous year - My Man Godfrey (1936) - the whole human race gets dished in Nothing Sacred, from the newspaper industry to a public that enjoys reading sob stories about someone else's misfortune.

Ben Hecht, a former Chicago newspaper man working as a Hollywood screenwriter, was hired by producer David O. Selznick to come up with a comedy for Carole Lombard in the spring of 1937. After several false starts, Hecht finally heeded Selznick's suggestion to adapt the short story, "Letter to the Editor" by James H. Street, that had appeared in Hearst's International-Cosmopolitan. Hecht's screenplay was titled Nothing Sacred and included a part for his friend, John Barrymore. Unfortunately, Selznick incurred Hecht's anger when he refused to use Barrymore who, at this point in his career, had become an incurable alcoholic. The final straw for Hecht was when Selznick demanded a 'happy ending' for what was clearly intended to be a very black comedy and the writer walked off the production. The screenplay was then handed over to Dorothy Parker and Robert Carson to polish the dialogue and eventually Ring Lardner, Jr. and Budd Schulberg were brought in to provide an acceptable ending.

Despite the bad blood between Hecht and Selznick, the actual filming of Nothing Sacred was a high-spirited affair that often resembled a non-stop party. Practical jokes were the order of the day and, at one point, Lombard had director William Wellman bound in a straitjacket by some strong-armed crew members so she could have his undivided attention. Wellman, in turn, showed Lombard how to tackle a man in preparation for her free-for-all with Fredric March at the film's climax. Lombard's zany sense of fun even affected the usually humorless March who went careening around the Selznick lot with her in a rented fire engine during a production break. It was generally known in Hollywood circles that Lombard wasn't particularly fond of March ever since he tried to seduce her on the set of The Eagle and the Hawk (1933) but the two actors got along famously on this picture.

Carole Lombard often said Nothing Sacred was one of her favorite films and it's certainly an ideal showcase for this dazzling blonde comedienne who deservedly became the "Queen of Screwball Comedy" after her performances in this, Twentieth Century (1934), and My Man Godfrey (1936). Besides Lombard's performance, Wellman's expert direction, and the sharp dialogue, Nothing Sacred also deserves a footnote in film history as the first use in a color film of process effects, montage and rear screen projection. Backgrounds for the rear projection were filmed on the streets of New York and Paramount would later refine this method in their subsequent color features.

Nothing Sacred would later serve as the basis for the Broadway musical, Hazel Flagg, which premiered in 1953. Then Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin starred in a 1954 remake entitled Living It Up with Lewis in the Lombard role, Dean Martin as the doctor, and Janet Leigh as the reporter.

The Sheila Variations [Sheila O'Malley]

 

Ruthless Reviews » NOTHING SACRED  Alex K

 

Nothing Sacred - Bright Lights Film Journal  Alan Vanneman, October 1, 2002

 

Crazy 4 Cinema Review

 

DVD Savant Blu-ray Review: Nothing Sacred  Glenn Erickson, also seen here:  Nothing Sacred (1937) - Home Video Reviews - TCM.com

 

High-Def Digest [David Krauss]  Blu-Ray

 

DVDTalk.com [Jamie S. Rich]  Kino

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

eFilmCritic Reviews  Jay Seaver

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

The Village Voice [Hazel-Dawn Dumpert]  Film Forum Celebrates Carole Lombard, November 19, 2008

 

Brian Koller  also seen here:  filmsgraded.com [Brian Koller]

 

Three Movie Buffs

 

Movie Mirror Sanderson Beck

 

Classic Film Guide

 

Brilliant Observations on 2122 Films [Clayton Trapp]

 

KL5-FILM [Dave Enkosky]

 

TV Guide Review

 

Variety

 

DVDBeaver - Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

BEAU GESTE

USA  (112 mi)  1939

 

Time Out  Geoff Andrew

The finest of three screen versions of PC Wren's tale of heroism in the French Foreign Legion (the others were made in 1926 and 1966, the latter a travesty). Pictorially ravishing, it features a memorable opening with a fort garrisoned by corpses, and the high adventure tone carries on from there. Cooper is suitably strong in his usual taciturn and gentle way as 'Beau', eldest of the three brothers who join the Legion to cover the mysterious 'theft' of a valuable jewel, but it is really Donlevy who leaves the most lasting impression as the sadistic Legion sergeant. Boys' Own stuff, maybe, but good fun all the same.

seanax.com [Sean Axmaker] 

 

Hollywood adventures don’t come more rousing than the 1939 Beau Geste. Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and Robert Preston are the boisterous Geste brothers, orphans raised by a society lady as gentlemen with a sense of playful camaraderie and undaunted chivalry. Their sense of honor and sacrifice inspires all three of them take the blame for a jewel theft and run off to join the French Foreign Legion, which they do so in order of age (Coop as the eldest, Preston as his partner in trouble and Milland as the loyal little brother in love with their adopted Auntie’s lovely female war, Susan Hayward). Together they square off against a brutal sergeant (Brian Donlevy). The story is irresistible from the prologue, where a squad of legionnaires arrives at an isolated outpost to find a mystery – a deserted desert fort filled by dead men slumped at their posts, a disappearing scout, a confession and a sudden fire that engulfs the haunted fort – that hangs over the adventure like a dark shadow of doom. The action set piece, an attack on the fortress by an Arab army, is a magnificent reworking of the frontier movie Indian attack of a cavalry fort dropped into in a North African setting. The characters are hearty creations and the muscular direction by William Wellman keeps the film briskly moving along. This is the great romantic adventure of hard men, loyal comrades and the fraternal love and sacrifice of brother who risk everything to protect each other and it’s one more exhibit in the case for William Wellman as the most underrated director of the thirties.

 

I Dream of Cinema [Felix Gonzalez, Jr.]

 

An opening quotation from an Arabian proverb announces Beau Geste as strictly the boys club by informing us that a man’s love for a woman “waxes and wanes like the moon,” while the love between brothers “is steadfast as the stars.” Thus, lovely Susan Hayward makes only a thankless appearance before the three privileged Geste brothers trot off for a life of adventure in the French Foreign Legion. As one of them has stolen their aunt’s priceless sapphire, all three run away in solidarity rather than allowing the true culprit to take the fall. But a damper is placed on their fun by the formidable Sergeant Markoff (Brian Donlevy), a sadist in wolf’s clothing who means to destroy all sense of camaraderie between his soldiers.

Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston kick it up as the devoted siblings with an appropriate level of boisterousness. Three man-children whose mutual allegiance stems from childhood games of battleship in their backyard pond, the Gestes’ sense of honor and duty is energetic but decidedly uninviting. Their call to heroism is bland and formulaic, especially when compared to Markoff’s exciting villainy. Brian Donlevy steals not only the film but this viewer’s affection with his no-holds-barred command of both his men and his emotions. At times he is ramrod straight, as when he coldly declines to shoot a pair of deserters, instead sentencing them to wander through the scorching North African desert until they drop dead (likely after several hellish days). In the film’s thrilling climax, he lets loose with unabashed glee as his unit fends off a Tuareg attack. While none of the film’s characters possess much complexity, Markoff comes closest during this sequence as a man more than capable of getting the job done, if for all the wrong reasons.

Despite its air of prestige, Beau Geste is ultimately more of a slight diversion, albeit a handsomely mounted one. After the film’s concluding scene and the full revelation about the aunt’s sapphire (complete with a heavy-handed connection to the title character’s name), it all seems like much ado about nothing. And while memories of the three likeable but vapid heroes end with the closing credits, it’s the scar-faced villain who is missed, lingering still in my mind as he orders his badly whittled-down unit to laugh, LAUGH, until the shooting resumes.

 

Beau Geste (1939) - TCM.com  James Steffen from Turner Classic Movies

 

Major de Beaujolais arrives at Fort Zinderneuf to find all the soldiers dead yet mysteriously still posed at their stations, as if guarding the fort. A letter found on one of the bodies tells the life story of its author Beau Geste, starting fifteen years earlier. The three Geste brothers, raised in a wealthy estate in England, make a vow of loyalty to each other as young men. When a priceless sapphire is stolen from the family, Beau leaves a note confessing to the crime and flees to sign up with the French Foreign Legion. John and Digby follow their brother to Algeria, only to find themselves under the cruel command of Markoff, who schemes to steal the sapphire when he learns of its existence. A plan for mutiny by the soldiers of the fort is intercepted by Markoff when they find themselves under attack by Arabs. As their numbers dwindle, the embattled soldiers prop up their dead to make it appear as if the fort is still fully manned. Beau Geste's letter also explains the mystery behind the missing sapphire.

Largely forgotten now but popular in his day, British novelist Percival Christopher Wren (1885-1941) reflects in his writings the colonial-era values of patriotism, self-sacrifice and a belief in helping the "less fortunate" throughout the world. Born to a privileged family in Devonshire, he graduated from Oxford with an M.A. before serving in the French Foreign Legion. He then moved to Bombay, India, where he worked for ten years as an assistant director of education and physical culture. Returning to the military and earning the rank of major, he fought in East Africa in World War I, then settled in London, where he wrote the bulk of his fiction. His adventure stories drew upon his own experiences in India and Africa and often involved the French Foreign Legion. He described his work as being intended for the "cleanly-minded, virile, outdoor sort." By far his best-known novel is Beau Geste, which was first made into a film in 1926. The sequels Beau Sabreur (1926) and Beau Ideal (1928) were adapted into films in 1928 and 1931, respectively.

Initially Beau Geste (1939) was slated to be directed by Henry Hathaway as Paramount's first Technicolor feature. With this film Gary Cooper satisfied his contract for Paramount, allowing him to freelance subsequently. Ray Milland, on the other hand, welcomed the chance to star in an action adventure after numerous drawing room comedies where he played the suave sophisticate. Susan Hayward, who made her debut in this film, replaced Patricia Morison as Isobel Rivers. In order to make the film more palatable to French audiences, Lejaune, the sadistic French commander of the novel, was transformed into the Russian Markoff. Shot on location in Buttercup Valley near Yuma, Arizona, the film used the same site as the 1926 film, albeit reconstructed - a desert city complete with roads, 136 tents and a movie theater. The valley was eventually renamed as "Beau Geste Valley" in honor of the productions.

The 1939 adaptation of Beau Geste had a difficult time living up to the overwhelming critical and commercial success of Herbert Brenon's 1926 silent version starring Ronald Colman. Nonetheless, a reviewer in Variety wrote that the remake of Beau Geste "is still good cinema" and that "the absurd nobility, brotherly devotion and self-sacrifice of the Geste tribe are still unflagging ingredients for action melodrama." Brian Donlevy in particular was praised by critics for his memorable portrayal of the cruel Markoff. The story was filmed yet again in 1966, this time directed by Douglas Heyes and starring Guy Stockwell. A parody entitled The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977) was directed by and starred wall-eyed comedian Marty Feldman, incorporating footage from the 1939 version cleverly edited to appear as if Feldman were having a conversation with Gary Cooper.

 

Greatest Films - comprehensive analysis of classic US films  Tim Dirks

 

DVD Verdict [Dan Mancini]

 

The Stop Button [Andrew Wickliffe]

 

World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]  also seen here:  Ozus' World Movie Reviews

 

filmsgraded.com [Brian Koller]

 

Three Movie Buffs

 

Movie Mirror [Sanderson Beck]

 

Edwin Jahiel

 

Variety

 

DVDBeaver [Gary Tooze]

 

THE OX-BOW INCIDENT                                     A                     97

USA  (75 mi)  1943

 

Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It's everything people ever have found out about justice and what's right and wrong. It's the very conscience of humanity. There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody's conscience except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?

—Donald Martin (Dana Andrews)

 

One of the few westerns to be selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress National Film Registry, a personal favorite of both Henry Fonda and Orson Welles, where the release date of May 1943 seems significant, as the nation was at war on two battlefronts, where the idea of fighting for freedom and justice against the forces of tyranny held a particularly prominent position in the lives of Americans.  Nominated for an Academy Award, the last Best Picture nominee to receive a single award nomination, the ultimate winner was the beloved CASABLANCA (1943), considered one of the greatest and most popular films ever made, while this film did not do well at the box office.  CASABLANCA gained all the glory, and rightly so, but the power of this little film was often forgotten or ignored until television viewings brought it attention and renewed critical acclaim.  This may also be one of the best examples of the beauty of mythmaking, as this story is so perfectly told that it’s hard to tell whether this incident is mythical or based on fact.  Spare and uncompromising, this is a haunting tale about a lynch mob’s fateful rush to judgment in Western Nevada of the 1880’s, hanging three innocent men for a murder they didn’t commit, becoming a powerful indictment against prejudice and the spread of rampant mob hysteria.  The ramifications still send a repugnant air of disbelief, where perhaps the beauty lies in the reverential pause afterwards, a self-examination and somber reflection on law and order as well as culpability.  Adapted by Lamar Trotti from Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s 1940 novel, something should be said about the novelist, a Reno writer in residence for most of his life, whose father was the President of the University of Nevada, where in the 50’s the author briefly became a professor of creative writing at the University of Montana.  The Ox-Bow Incident was his first published novel and is often considered the first modern western, as it’s concise, psychologically taut and gripping throughout without resorting to formula or cliché, a timeless and iconic story about lawlessness in the American West and the need for moral order.    

 

The film was actually shot directly after Henry Fonda’s career defining performance in Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940), receiving a deferment to make the film before enlisting in the Navy afterwards, where he served for three years, but 20TH Century Fox executives refused to release the movie, terrified of its incendiary political implications, so it sat on the shelf for two years.  Gary Cooper turned down the lead role due to the objectionable material and the somewhat radical use of a black preacher as the moral voice of reason apparently made many white viewers uncomfortable.  For such a short and downbeat film, only 75 minutes, plenty happens, where the writing and direction are near perfect, creating a grim, ultra realistic look quite ahead of its time without a touch of false sentiment, going against the grain with an unglamorous story that has little action to speak of, but could be considered an anti-Western, moving away from those immense landscapes of Indian wars, gunfights, stagecoach robberies, or outlaw shoot outs, narrowing the focus, becoming smaller in scope, literally exposing a defining moment when no heroes rush in to save the day.  It’s an unusual opening, featuring a rougher than usual Fonda along with his sidekick Henry Morgan (who is the main character in the book, reversing roles) as they hit town after a long winter’s absence from a cattle drive.  As they stand at the bar and stare at a provocative picture hanging overhead, they sip whisky while lost in thought, barely uttering a word, yet both exhibit a wry comical flair that provides a nice prelude, a calm before the storm, as news suddenly arrives that a local cattleman has been shot, where a makeshift posse, which is really a lynch mob already gathering on the street, is formed by the deputy, as the sheriff is already out of town investigating cattle rustling.   Several men attempt to quell the erupting emotions, noting the sheriff is already on the scene, but the appearance of Major Tetley (Frank Conroy) and his twisted view of events alters the balance, a friend of the deceased all dressed up in his Confederate uniform, exuding authority and leading the charge for exacting revenge.  The entire town in this desolate region consists of only twenty or so men, yet the performances all around are chillingly effective, using simple characters with plenty of dialog evenly spread around, continually establishing various points of view, where there isn’t a second of wasted time. 

 

Except for an exterior opening and closing, and a beautiful transition shot into the mountains, the film is shot largely on an interior set with painted backdrops, the site of the hanging tree where people sit around and commiserate about what’s to be done, creating a stifling atmosphere of impending doom that couldn’t feel more intensely claustrophobic, where humanity runs amok with the stink of its own foul deed.  There’s seemingly nothing that can change the ominous momentum of outright horror from majority rule, an expression of civilization run off its rails, yet given a certain poignancy from unexpected sources, namely the Major’s son, Gerald (William Eythe), who has a small but influential role, as he refuses to be bullied by his overbearing father and actually offers a rare smile of compassion to one of the prisoners.  The other is the older pastor Sparks (Leigh Whippet), a black man who witnessed the lynching of his brother when he was a boy, whose sole purpose in being there is praying for the men who are about to die.  His spare renditions of Negro spirituals are not pretty, but sound raw and sorrowfully rough-edged, becoming hauntingly effective, a powerful contrast to the otherwise brutally swift proceedings.  Despite the outcry of a few, including Fonda, who’s gun is taken away from him, the sentiment of the majority is bloodlust, actually led by the terrifying cackles of Ma Grier, Jane Darwell as a lynch-loving frontier woman.  A young Anthony Quinn as a Mexican is one of the captured men, who cleverly hides his long-standing criminal background behind his feigned lack of English, but once the mob’s intentions become clear, in perfect English he proudly and defiantly confesses to knowing seven languages, but resolutely refuses to confess in any one of them as he digs a bullet out of his leg by himself, muttering with contempt “This is fine company for a man to die with.”  Dana Andrews as Donald Martin is the leader of this arrested group of three, contending he has a wife and kids at a farm nearby that he recently purchased, where they allow him to write his wife a letter before they hang them.  When they run into the sheriff afterwards, their gleeful mood quickly sours when they learn the dead man is alive and well, merely injured, and the shooter arrested.  The hushed scene at the bar at the end with all of the shamed men lined up for shots of free whisky is an enshrined moment, especially the reading of Martin’s letter (Fonda, with his face blocked by his friend’s hat) which casts a poetic eloquence on their eternally damned souls.  Curiously, the contents of the letter are never revealed in the book, so it was composed by screenwriter Lamar Trotti and remains the high point of the film.     

 

Edward Buscombe from 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE:

A key film in the history of the Western, one of many made in the 1940’s which showed that the Western—previously a genre with low cultural prestige—could take on important issues. In a small Nevada town in 1885, a rumor spreads that a local rancher has been killed by rustlers. While the sheriff is out of town, a lynch mob is formed and captures three passing strangers. Despite their protestations of innocence, the men are hanged, only for the perpetrators to discover the rancher is not dead and the real rustlers have been apprehended.

 

This concise little film (only 75 minutes long) packs a good deal of star power, Henry Fonda is a local cowboy, shown initially as a thoughtless saloon brawler, who eventually stands up against the mob. The three victims are played by Dana Andrews, a patently innocent family man, Anthony Quinn, a Mexican drifter, and Francis Ford, brother of the more illustrious John, a senile old man. Frank Conroy is excellent as the blustering ex-Confederate major who bullies his son into helping with the hanging, and Jane Darwell, notable as Ma Joad in John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath three years earlier, is a merciless old cattlewoman. 

 

The Ox-Bow Incident makes a powerful plea for the rule of law as the basis of civilization. Besides Fonda, the only townspeople who resist the mob hysteria are a storekeeper (Harry Davenport) and a black preacher (Leigh Whipper), who has more reason than most to protest, having seen his own brother lynched. At the end, when the truth has sunk in, Fonda shames the mob by reading out a letter written by Andrews’s character to his wife.

 

Darryl Zanuck, head of 20th-Century Fox at the time, insisted the film be cheaply shot on studio sets; in fact, the confined spaces give The Ox-Bow Incident greater intensity that it might have derived from expansive Western landscapes. The script is based on the highly accomplished first novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, a Nevadan whose later novel, Track of the Cat, was also filmed by William Wellman.    

 

Time Out Capsule Review  Geoff Andrew

 

A sombre, somewhat simplistically liberal Western from a novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark in which three drifters (Andrews, Quinn and Ford), lynched as rustlers on the flimsiest of evidence, are posthumously proven innocent by good guy Fonda (interestingly, the film's dynamics and characterisations can be seen to prefigure Twelve Angry Men). But for all the obviousness of its 'message' (which once made it seem a landmark in the genre), the movie is impressively taut, not merely because of Wellman's tersely economic pacing of his material, but because Fox's decision to cut costs by shooting it entirely on a studio set serves, ironically, to increase the mood of claustrophobic tension. Indeed, its affinity to film noir is evident not only in the dark shadowy photography, but in the gallery of grotesques that populates this decidedly uncelebratory portrait of the frontier spirit.

Decent Films - faith on film [Steven D. Greydanus]

In contrast to the familiar Western device of the hero obliged to take the law into his own hands, The Ox-Bow Incident is a grim, messy cautionary tale, almost an anti-Western, about the dangers of vigilante justice and mob rule.

The brief story is as simple as it is tragic. Recent incidents of cattle rustling have a small Nevada town jumpy, and news that a popular local rancher has been murdered has the townsfolk up in arms. In the absence of the sheriff, a self-appointed posse forms under the leadership of an ambiguously disreputable ex-Confederate officer, despite the ineffectual protests of some, including the town judge.

Illegally deputized by the duputy sheriff, the mob rides in pursuit of the perpetrators, and soon finds the rancher’s cattle being driven by a trio of strangers who claim the herd was legitimately purchased but can produce no bill of sale.

Henry Fonda stars as a ragged cowboy who, like his later character in 12 Angry Men, is uncomfortable with the angry rush to judgment of those around him, but is far less noble or outspoken here. Leigh Whipper plays an unassuming black preacher condescendingly brought along for a veneer of religiosity, and provides a voice of conscience that is tragically ignored. The climax, a letter from a dead man, is devastating.

J & C Christian Movie Reviews

“Ultimate democracy . . . is really a tyranny divided among a multitude of persons.” — Aristotle, Politics

The Ox-Bow Incident is a morality tale about modern law and justice. It is such a morality tale that two things unusual for Westerns occur. First, Henry Fonda, our main character and starring role, is subordinated to the mob that he joins. Second, the movie clearly eschews romance by quickly bringing on and whisking off a love interest for Fonda, which tells us that Politics is more important than Love here. The Ox-Bow Incident was released in the middle of WWII (1943), and frankly we were puzzled that a studio released a non-propaganda film like this. It’s even prescient about ex post facto law being applied to the Nuremberg trials. The clear difference between this movie and other Westerns is that it uses a questionable mob instead of a singular hero out for justice/revenge, which provides a nice antidote to impersonal Man-With-No-Name shoot-em-ups starring Clint Eastwood.

The story moves quickly (the 75-minute running time is rather nice for those with crowded schedules). Fonda and his sidekick ride into town and enter a saloon. Soon after, the men in the town get riled up about a reported murder outside of town. A heterogenous lynch mob forms, featuring our star, a burly old woman, a black preacher, and an ex-Confederate soldier named Tetley. Most, but not all, are bloodthirsty. When they find three men camping out in an ox-bow, a sort of kangaroo court forms. What happens next forms our law-and-justice moral. We will report no more about it, except to say that this lynch mob thinks it’s lawful. It sticks to a semblance of the legal procedures it knows, as when the sheriff’s deputy deputizes all of the mob’s members. Tetley takes on the crucial leadership role, and he demands majority rule. Despite this, the mob is clearly practicing sham justice. They eschew the Biblical rules of accepting at least two or three witnesses and presuming the accuseds’ innocence. They are, in short, a democratic tyranny.

We had the disadvantage of reading the Walter Van Tilburg Clark novel that this movie is based upon, and to us the differences between a book and its movie still applied (the one always being far better than the other). Fonda’s sidekick is the narrator in the novel, a semi-trustworthy teller of events whose injury during the course of events is meaningful and impacts his taletelling. In the movie, however, this sidekick is a pointless character who receives a pointless injury. Also, in the book Tetley is a little complicated, but in the movie he’s an inhuman monster. The C.S.A. pin always easily visible on his hat, his status as a Southern gentlemen and mob leader displaces the movie’s application of its moral, changing it from a contemporary political critique to a commentary on the history of the American South, which we’ve been beat over the head with all of our lives.

Yet the movie does do one thing better: it gets right Fonda’s response to events at the very end. As a sort of accomplice to the mob, he has a burdened conscience, and that spurs him to go beyond the actions of James 1:27. Unlike John Wayne’s and Clint Eastwood’s many film characters, this is a hero we can learn from.

In Review  Adam Suraf

When William Wellman’s “The Ox-Bow Incident” was released in 1943, the world was at war and Hollywood was producing a lot of films that, to say the least, were patriotic and uplifting.  To see James Cagney dance as George M. Cohan in “Yankee Doodle Dandy” or Humphrey Bogart stick it to the Nazi’s in “Casablanca” was to escape from a harsh reality that existed outside of the three comfortable cinematic walls.  So, when Wellman’s highly praised western about the ugliness of mob justice, itself a thinly veiled parable of Nazism, opened to an audience expecting a blue and yellow clad John Wayne battling Indians beneath Monument Valley, it’s no wonder the film flopped, and was quickly shelved for years, before television, and a wiser film culture embraced it for the landmark that it is; the first, and possibly still the best anti-western of all time.

The film, which has recently been released on DVD as part of 20th Century Fox’s Studio Classics series, is a dark, expressionistic morality play about a lynch mob who are out to get a group of cattle rustlers they believe killed a local rancher.  The issues involving western law, mob mentality, a failed belief in the justice system, and personal corruption and cowardice was damning, and it’s easy to see why audiences didn’t take to it at the time, and why Fox studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck was so skittish about releasing it.  True to form, Orson Welles loved it, “They don’t know what they just saw,” he told Wellman after a particularly nasty test screening, but Zanuck was nervous, and for good reasons.

For one, westerns by 1943 were primarily adventure stories, Cowboys and Indians fare with large outdoors vistas and dusty settings beneath a blazing sun, but “The Ox-Bow Incident” was a set-bound drama with dialogue driven characterizations and no discerning good guy.  Sure, it stars Henry Fonda, an idealistic actor if there ever was (only four years removed from Honest Abe in “Young Mr. Lincoln”, and three from Tom Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath”), but his character is hardly a hero; he may stick up for the condemned men, but he doesn’t save the day, nobody does, and for a so-called western to focus the bulk of its action on a mock frontier trial and eventual hanging, in turn becoming a psychological study in morals and lack thereof, was rare and hard to handle.  For that matter, it still is, but we’ve since become more cynical and jaded (Film Noir soon followed, changing everything) enough to expect the worst in people; Hitler, mob justice, Fascism, it’s all one big tumbleweed, and there we are with Fonda, helpless, waiting for the good to come, seep through and prevail, but surprisingly, it never does.

The film, based on the famous Walter Van Tilburg Clark novel, takes place in Nevada, 1885, where two cowboys have reappeared after years spent cattle ranching on the plains.  On the day Gil Carter (Fonda) and Art Croft (Henry Morgan) ride into town, passing a curious brown stray dog on the cold, empty street word comes that Larry Kinkaid, a town rancher, has been murdered.  With the sheriff out of town, the escalating crowd convinces the pigheaded deputy sheriff to join in a posse that will exact its own, quicker form of martial law.  Gil and Art ride along, as to not look too suspicious, but they are two of the few men, including the elderly Mr. Davies (Harry Davenport) and the spiritual preacher, Mr. Sparks (Leigh Whippet) that will be the voice of reason, albeit an insignificant voice when the clan happens upon three men camping at the Ox-Bow, who are automatically found guilty by a makeshift and impartial jury.

The story has four movements, each one a Conradian voyage into a strange form of civil insanity.  It starts in a small, one-saloon town where the posse is formed, and where we meet our primary characters, including Major Tetley (Frank Conroy), who still dresses in his Confederate uniform and extols an iron hand over his pacifist son, Gerald (William Eythe).  The second section is the horse drive towards Ox-Bow, while the third, and the longest, is the capturing of the three men (a rancher, an old man, a Mexican outlaw), their pitiful pleadings and the inconsequential division of the posse, led by Gil. “This isn't slightly any of your business my friend,” says Major Tetley to Gil Carter. “Hangin' is any man's business that's around,” snaps Fonda, who, as a boy, witnessed a lynching that he undoubtedly used as motivation for his character’s anger.

Finally, the concluding movement is a kind of epilogue, which circles back on the dusty town, back to the saloon, that stray brown dog, and a poignant letter from Donald Martin (Dana Andrews), the hanged rancher, to his widow about the savagery of mob justice and the animalistic ways of this particular society.  In a scant 75 minutes, Wellman’s film travels to hell and back in a short matter of day to night, and along the way the fabric of post Civil War society as an unruly and unfocused judicial mess foreshadows the rise of Fascism in Europe, while the destruction of the western as a heroic myth comes to bear in a shattering juxtaposition of morals, ethics, symbolism, and ultimately, character failure.

I call “The Ox-Bow Incident” an “anti” western because it was the first film that I can think of in the American cinema to present the themes and symbols of classic western lore and not glamorize them.  The characters each represent a piece of the West, where if you went against the pack you were deemed effeminate.  Gil is the loner who is supposed to prevail, but fails, just like Major Tetley (a failure at war and as a father) is somehow not entirely the villain, yet he makes a strong case in favor.  By the end, nearly every character is on the same footing; they know an injustice has been done, there is even evidence to support it, but the heat of the moment was too much, the persuading Tetley was too convincing against the passivity of the dissenters and nobody could uphold the true meaning of justice.

Henry Fonda gives one of his best performances as Gil Carter.  Like his more liberal and successful character in Sidney Lumet’s equally claustrophobic “12 Angry Men” (’57), Fonda’s character is sympathetic, but incredibly sullen and bitter about his ineffectiveness.  His legend is sealed during the epilogue when he reads the dead man’s letter to the bar full of guilty men, with his eyes blocked from the camera’s vision by the brim of Art’s hat.  “There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience,” Gil reads with a deflated emotion, “because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience?”  It’s a powerful and justly famous image, one that didn’t appear in the novel, but was added by Wellman and writer/producer Lamar Trotti to suggest the ultimate blinding of Lady Justice.

“The Ox-Bow Incident” had a long and bumpy ride to the theater after Wellman purchased it for 5,500 dollars from a friend.  Studio after studio turned it down, it was too dark and unprofitable they’d say, but finally Darryl F. Zanuck (with whom Wellman had previously made the classic “The Public Enemy” in ’31) agreed to shoulder the film, on the condition that Wellman agree to direct two of his future pet projects.  “Wild Bill”, as he was called, prevailed in keeping the tone of Clark’s novel in tact, with the aesthetics of the painted studio backdrops and legendary cinematographer Arthur Miller’s brilliant lighting techniques suggesting something altogether unreal about a subject all too real and problematic.  It’s a raw psychological drama, ahead of its time, complete with inadequate characters and myth debunking, essentially, it’s an essential and one of the toughest and harshest social pictures of the studio era.

Features | Inside/Out: A Modest Proposal Concerning ... - Cinema Scope  Andrew Tracy from Cinema Scope, 2007

It’s the rare critic these days who speaks of limits. Paul Schrader’s fusty musings in Film Comment or Quintín’s notion of “anorexic vs. bulimic cinema” (see Cinema Scope 22) are rather anomalous in calling for boundaries of artistic achievement, however conventionally in the former case and eccentrically in the latter. Meanwhile, Manny Farber’s dictum that “criticism has nothing to do with hierarchies” is invoked ad nauseam, and unquestioningly, as ever more “difficult objects” are introduced to the critical field—a contribution which is as valuable as its bases are knowingly fraudulent. “It’s sheer nonsense, of course, for Farber or anyone else to claim that he isn’t an evaluative critic,” wrote Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Farber’s numerous present-day acolytes continue the sly old fox’s tactic of smuggling filmmakers into the canon concealed in anti-canonical rhetoric. The eccentric, the cast-off, the incidental, the incomplete, the exhilaratingly odd are formed into a cumulative vision, or a vision by its very lack of accumulation. Some notion of wholeness is a requirement of critical thought—we can’t truly think, or argue, in fragments. Thus the scorned spectre of the canon, as well as its exclusionary premises, returns in the very act of banishing it, facing the writer with the choice of either inflating the virtues of those “expressive esoterica” which catch his eye or discounting them as intermittent flourishes from an otherwise dull palate. How does one find a place for that which is more than craft competence yet significantly less than artistic personality?

These problems of classification are not quite so confounding in the case of William Wellman, who is hardly unknown and not even necessarily unheralded: Agee famously praised The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), Bertrand Tavernier is an avid supporter, Rosenbaum has been a vocal champion of Track of the Cat (1954) and Farber proclaimed him “a sentimentalist, deep thinker, hooey vaudevillian and expedient short-cut artist” in his seminal “Underground Movies.” Wellman nevertheless seems permanently affixed to an intermediate position on the explicitly Sarris-influenced roll call of Old Hands, his very versatility with contrasting tones, subjects, and protagonists—his ‘30s output alone saw The Public Enemy (1931), A Star Is Born and Nothing Sacred (1937), and The Light That Failed (1939)—placing him rather higher than Hathaway, somewhat lower than Walsh, and significantly below the starry climes of Hawks and Ford.

Yet the striking oddities that dot Wellman’s diverse filmography make him a difficult object unto himself. The outer motions of journeyman facility are casually ruptured by some strange inner logic: precise yet inexplicable patterns of movement, strange geographies inscribed within seemingly comprehensible landscapes, the creation of odd, private little problems which Wellman “solves” with his own arcane mathematics. The curlicues are visible even in so masterful and compact a statement as The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), judged as “one of those solemn, acclaimed works you don’t really need to see” in David Thomson’s dubious formulation of cinephilia, summarily shutting the door on one of the great American films. Too often regarded as another in the ‘40s spate of prestige liberal message pictures, Ox-Bow’s diatribe against mob justice—concerning three cowpokes hung for a theft and murder which they clearly didn’t commit—avoids platitude by relentlessly maintaining its specificity of circumstance, and thus taking it to the universal. There’s none of the necessary (colour-)coding which Lang’s Fury (1936) had to employ, nor any added weightiness beyond the evident, shattering reality of everyday injustice. Ox-Bow’s grimly inexorable progression is given its sting by the whipcrack pace of its execution, the interminable waiting (a key Wellman motif, as Farber notes) and the heavy air of inevitability pierced and accentuated by a series of short, sharp movements, both physical and verbal: the curt insolence of Henry Fonda’s sarcastically grating voice; a flurry of cigarettes lighting up irrespective of a bullying order; a searing pair of eyes the only visible part of an occluded face; the strangely compelling concealment of Fonda’s own eyes behind a hat brim as he reads a dead man’s letter; and his instantly restrained reach for a gun when his outrage finally peaks, the constraint applied to him somehow only accentuating the action’s epiphanic dynamism.

While the film is a marvel of both concision and evocative punctuation, it nevertheless ruptures its seamless design in the very first scene, as the newly arrived Fonda and Harry Morgan contemplate a lurid barroom painting of a femme la nuit being unwittingly sized up for ravishment. Wellman devotes several seconds of largely silent, and pointedly edited, screen time to Fonda and Morgan’s faces as they drink the spectacle in, before Fonda notes of the would-be assailant that, “It sure is taking him a long time to get there.” After a brief spell of fistfight-induced unconsciousness, Fonda awakes to the painting floating before his eyes once again: “Still not there?” he dazedly queries. Set-up and payoff of an incidental joke, certainly, but with a bizarrely concerted attention that belies its offhandedness. So concerted, indeed, that it breaks free from the film and floats into the opening of Yellow Sky (1948), as outlaw Gregory Peck and his gang ponder another barroom masterwork depicting a naked woman tied to a horse at full gallop (“I wonder what she’s gonna do when she gets down from that horse?”). This is something different from the recurring bits of Hawksian character business or Ford’s rituals of communal songs and dance. No rooting narrative or thematic thread here, just an inscrutable curiosity unaccountably inserted into seemingly familiar terrain.

For the seeker after the esoteric, however, the greatly underrated Yellow Sky shows Wellman not free of wholly evident virtues: a taut script by Ox-Bow scribe Lamar Trotti (from a W.R. Burnett story), incisive performances by Peck, Anne Baxter and Richard Widmark, and fine use made of the vivid topographical contrast of rocky, mountainous terrain shoved up against sun-blasted salt flats (Death Valley makes a cameo). Wellman even strays dangerously close to a recurring thematic motif here: geographical vastness as unseen imprisonment, his protagonists hemmed in by their own possible freedom of movement. The shadowy and twisted soundstage exterior of Ox-Bow, for whose “fakeness” Wellman was regularly castigated, was clearly more than studio expediency. Wellman tends to mark his territory, whether in the stylized, claustrophobic outdoors which mirror the hopeless entrapment of Ox-Bow’s wrongfully accused, the arctic expanses which confine John Wayne and his downed flight crew in the surprisingly effective Island in the Sky (1953), or the seemingly wide open spaces which Widmark delimits in the opening of Yellow Sky, the impassable mountains on one side matched by the uncrossable flats on the other.

However, unlike Anthony Mann’s integrated fusion of terrain, action, and character, Wellman in Yellow Sky introduces a central anomaly into his personal landscape: the titular abandoned mining town, which the nearly dead outlaws chance upon after their torturous flight across the salt flats. And while the town will serve as the site for Peck’s moral regeneration after he and his gang encounter an old prospector (James Barton) and his gun-toting granddaughter (Baxter) who have been painstakingly extracting the remaining gold deposits, this plot function is no more than coincidental. Wellman delights in juxtaposing the town’s incongruent structures with the forceful assertions of nature that loom above them (Baxter holds the outlaws at bay in a barn by firing from the rocks above), or, in the delightfully strange finale, abandoning nature altogether to stage the fateful showdown in the concocted geography of the town’s dilapidated saloon.

Here Wellman deploys his recurring tactic of concealing an eccentric bit of business behind the cover of verisimilitude: prior to the three-way showdown, villain John Russell removes his boots to slip noiselessly into the saloon from the back and secretes himself behind the overturned roulette table, at which point Wellman’s camera arcs leftwards to reveal Widmark concealed behind the bar. Cutting to Peck outside as he charges in through the front door, the camera placidly tracks right as the Kitano-like shootout is made visible solely as bursts of muzzle fire through the darkened windows—and when Baxter bursts in to divine the outcome, her only initial clue is a pair of stockinged feet jutting out from behind a perforated roulette wheel.

Those feet, and comparably fatal results for their owner, will be seen again in Battleground (1949), a return to the gritty, grunt’s-eye view of G.I. Joe. Yet in Battleground the tragic absurdity of infantry combat is accentuated by some truly surreal touches; or rather the pretense of verity touches upon the surreal fabric of the whole. Wellman doesn’t rely on the thudding ironies of Fuller—the battle waged within the Buddhist temple in The Steel Helmet (1951), the sniper perched behind the crucifix in The Big Red One (1980)—for the spaces in between are almost more absurd than the combat itself. “Wellman’s favorite scene is a group of hard-visaged ball bearings standing around—for no damned reason and with no indication of how long or for what reason they have been standing,” growls Farber, and Battleground brilliantly meshes these stylized longeurs with the wearisome slogging—punctuated by moments of freezing terror—of infantry life, in the depths of a French winter no less.

The intentional artificiality of Ox-Bow’s interior exteriors recurs again in Battleground, which forgoes the largely open-air shooting of the acclaimed G.I. Joe. The remarkably detailed soundstage sets afford both an intense simulation of the grueling weather conditions—there are few war films which so insistently emphasize the debilitating effects of cold—and a veritable playground of strange little nooks and crannies for Wellman to have his almost indistinguishable dogfaces crawl into and out of. Entrapment, perplexing entrapment, is again the shaping motif, as the 101st Airborne find themselves surrounded—or so they’re told, as they’re unable to grasp it with their own eyes—by an enemy who remains largely unseen, except for the occasional artillery bombardment or, even more confusingly, disguised in American uniform. Unable to go either forward or back, they go down, into hastily dug foxholes as artillery barrages fall, or beneath the overturned jeep which the wounded Ricardo Montalban burrows beneath, methodically building up a snow wall like a child’s fort.

And throughout, the typical making-strange masquerades as quotidian detail or earthy humour. The aforementioned fatality of the unwisely bootless; Van Johnson fruitlessly carrying his cherished, pre-scrambled eggs in his helmet, quickly dumping them into a mug when called to duty and slapping the helmet back on as long strings of egg residue fall over his face like a wind-whipped veil; the first drag of an inexperienced smoker prompting the camera itself to go in and out of focus; the oddly compelling action-reaction movement of an impromptu snow baseball game, where the “batter” returns the pitch with a snowball volley of his own (shortly before he and his comrades are revealed as Germans in GIs’ clothing). Sacrificing the strong, orienting central figure of Mitchum (or even Burgess Meredith) from G.I. Joe, Wellman focuses on individual eccentricities only in so far as they blend into his general air of offhanded idiosyncrasy, the predictably prole and pan-ethnic cross-section on display never straying into overtly liberal platitudinizing.

Though its muted outlandishness eventually gives way to a certain degree of boredom, Battleground offers further evidence of the ungraspable something which Wellman was so frequently edging towards, this tension between inside and out manifesting itself in small eruptions of hard-etched movement as purposefully executed as they are ultimately pointless. One could idly concoct here some grand metaphor of Wellman’s constrained artistry yearning to breathe free, for which it’s entirely too convenient that Wellman’s long-cherished project Across the Wide Missouri (1951), an attempted panegyric to the liberating freedom of the great outdoors, was hacked by the studio to a derisory 78 minutes. The writer’s thematic needs can piggyback on the hazards of real life with such insidious ease, after all, risking nothing and explaining less. And besides, when Wellman was granted carte blanche by John Wayne, after Wellman made him a mint by directing the truly dreadful The High and the Mighty (1954), he rather perversely turned out Track of the Cat, his most abstract, experimental, and paradoxically claustrophobic work to date.

Cat’s widescreen, WarnerColored weirdness automatically makes it a magnet for cult celebration, even as that celebration is unable to find a place for Wellman himself. Too grindingly intentional for its flourishes to take cinephilic flight, Wellman and A.I. Bezzerides’ adaptation of Ox-Bow author Walter van Tilburg Clark’s source novel, about a fractured family and the lurking beast that materializes their destructive mutual antagonism, tempers its truly exquisite artistry with inescapable campiness (though perhaps that’s merely the effect of Tab Hunter’s unfortunate presence). The internally imbalanced tone is as blatant a contrast as the breathtaking snowbound vistas set against the patent studio sets of the Bridges ranch, or Mitchum’s flaming red coat (bisected with a heavy black bar) against the greys and blacks in which the rest of the cast are garbed—this being Wellman’s famous black-and-white film in colour. It’s this very disparity which makes the film appealing to the connoisseurs of the cast-off, for whom a sustained and fully achieved work like Ox-Bow would be anathema.

Yet if Cat cannot be taken completely seriously, its highlights are so remarkable that it brinks on the revelation of a genuine vision from within Wellman’s subterranean impulses. Rosenbaum has compared the film to Ordet (1955), although the scabrous family confrontations and drunkenly repetitive incantations—taking place largely within the main room of the ranch house and filmed by Wellman with a combination of expressive angles and deliberately stagebound theatricality—bears more than a passing resemblance to Eugene O’Neill. However, the Dreyer analogy is certainly not far off the mark. The omnipresent spectre of death hovering over the damned Bridges clan prompts some striking visual strategies. When the slain middle son Arthur’s (William Russell) torn body is placed upon the grand double bed, Wellman repeatedly shoots the other characters from behind the dark oak headboard, the solid wall of blackness it creates imposing itself like an iron shroud over their bleak and bitter lives; an overhead shot of Arthur’s black coffin being carried over the pure white snow is complemented by the ostentatious low-angle shot from within his perfectly rectilinear grave (shades of 1932’s Vampyr?), a crucifix climactically driven into place under the grey cyclorama sky. These unprecedented techniques are accompanied by more familiar Wellman motifs, though here employed in more explicitly symbolic form. The titular predator, who goes unglimpsed throughout the film, springs from a lineage of the unseen in Wellman’s work: the bodies of the hanged in Ox-Bow; the elided showdown in Yellow Sky; the mostly absent enemy in Battleground. The wintry setting naturally evokes both Battleground and Island in the Sky, though with a far more dramatic emphasis placed upon the microscopic presence of humans within a vast and uncaring landscape.

Yet it’s ultimately rather pointless to try and align Cat’s flagrant oddness with any idea of late-blooming auteurism on Wellman’s part. At best the film is akin to such expressionistic departures as Ford’s ponderous, preciously composed The Fugitive (1947)—with the difference being that Wellman had little of Ford’s thematic and visual foundation to depart from. And thus the unsurprising and self-evident admission that this appreciation has been divided against itself from the start, praising the genuinely distinctive while trying to reconcile it with the absence of an artistic whole, in the case of a filmmaker who was regularly able to exercise considerable amounts of control over his own work.

This is certainly not an overly worrisome critical conundrum, but hopefully the case of Wellman may help illuminate, both by invective and self-incriminating example, a certain tendency of critical practice. While the canon is no more naturally created than the “natural laws” of the free market, ostensibly anti-canonical power plays merely affirm its standard as a measure of accomplishment; they’re acts of inclusion rather than challenge. Almost inevitably, once grasped the difficult object becomes an intriguing work—indeed, it would not have been grasped in the first place were it not intriguing—and the names of those already canonically invested are cannily dropped to bolster the credentials of the hopeful initiate (see above, repeatedly). Canonization has merely become increasingly porous to niche tastes with very little reformulation of its fundamental values. To pretend otherwise, while not exactly an abdication of critical responsibility, nevertheless does little to help explain the fascination with those arrestingly strange moments—and their authors—which derive their power precisely from their necessary relegation outside the highest levels of accomplishment. A figure like Wellman is too large to be only a problem, too problematic to receive only unthinking advocacy. If the creation of a new language is not exactly merited by the breadth of his achievement, then one hopes that at least a few new words could be found.

The Greatest Films - comprehensive analysis of classic US film  Tim Dirks

 

Film Freak Central review (Bill Chambers)

 

Goatdog's Movies  Michael W. Phillips, Jr.

 

Images Movie Journal  Grant Tracey

 

Old Ass Movies: Go West With 'The Ox-Bow Incident' | Film School ...  Lukas Tsouknidas

 

George Chabot's Review

 

Read TCM's article on The Ox-Bow Incident  Paul Tatara, also seen here:  The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) - Articles - TCM.com

 

The Ox-Bow Incident - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Matt Bailey

 

The Ox-Bow Incident [Review] | cineAWESOME!

 

The Ox-Bow Incident  Colin from Ride the High Country

 

FilmFanatic.org

 

Poffy The Cucumber's Movie Mania  Jon Dunmore

 

DVD Times  Nat Tunbridge

 

DVD Verdict  Dan Mancini

 

DVD Savant  Glenn Erickson

 

Fulvue Drive-in  Nate Goss

 

Needcoffee.com - DVD Review  Dindrane

 

Western Fiction Review: The Ox-Bow Incident  book review by Steve M

 

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

EatSleepLiveFilm [Jordan McGrath]

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture - 1943 [Erik Beck]

 

The Stop Button [Andrew Wickliffe]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Bill's Movie Emporium [Bill Thompson]

 

Catching the Classics [Clayton L. White]

 

filmsgraded.com [Brian Koller]

 

The Ox-Bow Incident - Movie Review and Sounds

 

"Let's Not Talk About Movies": The Ox-Bow Incident

 

Jude Wanniski

 

Classic Film Guide

 

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide

 

Variety

 

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]  also reviewing Peter Fonda’a THE HIRED HAND

 

NY Times Original Review  Bosley Crowther, also seen here:  The New York Times

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

The Ox-Bow Incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

TRACK OF THE CAT

USA  (102 mi)  1955  ‘Scope

 

Time Out  Tom Milne

A magnificently dark, brooding Western - Wellman's second adaptation of a Walter Van Tilburg Clark novel (he also wrote The Ox-Bow Incident) - set during the 1880s on a small, isolated ranch in the Californian mountains, where the depredations of a mountain lion bring simmering family resentments to a head. The god-fearing puritanism of the matriarch (Bondi) has turned sour in her favourite son (Mitchum), brought up to ignore feelings and simply grab what he wants; another son (Hopper), a gentle soul, is mystically in tune with nature; the rest of the family have retreated into a variety of repressions and resentments. Scorning the idea that the marauding beast might be the 'black painter' of legend (spirit of the agelessly old, dispossessed Indian kept about the place as a handyman, Hopper suggests), Mitchum sets out to hunt and kill it. A little perfunctory compared to the novel, where the hunt turns into a dark night of the soul as the hunter gradually realises he has become the hunted, these scenes nevertheless have an extraordinary charge (and weird beauty, with the snowy landscapes shot by William H Clothier in black-and-white on colour stock), reinforcing the subtextual theme that the virgin land is at last exacting revenge on the pioneer who raped it.

Chicago Reader  Ronnie Scheib

Mythological westerns, even good ones, are a dime a dozen, but metaphysical westerns are a rare breed. This year's festival provides an opportunity to see William Wellman's supremely odd 1954 allegorical oater—a one-of-a-kind mix of solid Hollywood classicism and overt, nearly avant-garde experimentation—the only way it should be seen: in CinemaScope and unfaded color. Wellman and cinematographer William Clothier set out to make a "black-and-white film shot in color," one rife with abstract expressionist images such as the solitary red slash of Robert Mitchum's hunting jacket in a horizontal stretch of white snow, black trees, and gray mist. The film represents an artistic crossroad both for Wellman (here revisiting novelist Walter Van Tilburg Clark a decade after his famous adaptation of Clark's The Ox-Bow Incident) and his motley collaborators. Mitchum's feared, family-tyrannizing male seems like a dress rehearsal for his tour de force stepdaddy performance in The Night of the Hunter a year later. Screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides's use of the blatant symbolism of the cat—"black 'painter' whole world," to quote the homestead's century-old resident Indian—prefigures the apocalyptic "great whatsit" of his 1955 screenwriting masterwork, Kiss Me Deadly. In Track of the Cat's claustrophobic interior set, a dysfunctional family straight out of O'Neill crowds the frame, declaiming a litany of recriminations and denials, fueled by frustration, scripture, booze, and poetry; outside, in a snowy, silent, unarticulated vastness, a black panther prowls around like some landlocked Moby Dick. Wellman's ongoing fascination with what's just offscreen infuses each space with the unknowable echo of the other, making for one hell of a moody, strange, and unforgettable hybrid.

10 Key Moments in Films (4th Batch)  Jonathan Rosenbaum

1955 / Track of the Cat - Robert Mitchum burning a page from a book of poetry containing the poem “When I have fears that I will cease to be” in order to stay alive.

U.S. Director: William A. Wellman. Cast: Robert Mitchum.

Why It’s Key: John Wayne’s only art movie as a producer suddenly turns literary.

John Wayne produced this strange art film as a favor to William A. Wellman, who’d recently directed him in the highly successful The High and the Mighty. What Wayne actually thought of this curiosity — adapted by ace screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides from an allegorical novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark — is apparently unrecorded. Sometimes it suggests an American version of Carl Dreyer’s Ordet in its portrait of a dysfunctional, mainly male rural family in the middle of nowhere.

The action mainly unfolds in a house where family members quarrel and bicker, but we periodically cut away to a nearby snow-covered mountain where first Arthur (William Hopper), then his brother Curt (Robert Mitchum), hunt for a black panther that we hear but never see. The film’s in Cinemascope and color, but virtually all of it’s designed in black and white, apart from Curt’s red and black coat. Then, after Arthur is killed by the panther, and Curt finds his body, he switches his own coat with Arthur’s black and white one before sending Arthur’s body back home on his horse. He holes up in a cave when a storm starts up, and reaching into Arthur’s coat pocket, finds a volume of John Keats’ poetry. Still later, while trying to keep from freezing to death outside, he feeds a fire with the Keats poem that begins, “When I have fears that I will cease to be…” Addressing his dead brother, he says, “The only time any good came from your moanin’, Boy.”

Track of the Cat  Colin from Riding the High Country

The terms art house or experimental film don’t often get used when westerns are being discussed. While there are of course countless examples of highly artistic westerns, it’s rarely the kind of self-conscious artistry that those labels suggest. There’s also the matter of audience expectation to take into account; when the genre was at its peak the fans were largely thought to want the kind of movie that didn’t veer too far from the traditional. In order to produce an art piece, particularly within a genre widely regarded as being bound by convention, you need a filmmaker who has confidence, clout, skill and vision. Although a combination of such qualities may be rare it is not unknown, and William Wellman was a director who fulfilled the criteria. His production of Track of the Cat (1954) was a daring attempt to fuse the western and the art house movie. Back when it was made, the film was not considered a success yet looked at now, over half a century later, it can perhaps be appreciated better.

Generally, mainstream audiences like to be clear about what they’re watching, and part of the problem with Track of the Cat is the difficulty in categorizing it. Sure it’s a western, but it can also be approached as an allegorical morality tale, a psychological dissection of a dysfunctional family, or even a horror story. At various points the movie is all of the above and this diversity can have a disconcerting effect on the viewer who comes at it unprepared. The plot itself is straightforward, simple and springs no major surprises. It concerns the Bridges, a ranching family living an isolated, insular existence with a seething mix of conflicting emotions buried beneath the apparent domesticity. The arrival of a guest, the fiancée of the youngest son Harold (Tab Hunter), coincides with the early snows and the appearance of a panther that threatens to devastate the herd. However, it’s suggested that this cat may be no normal beast, the superstitious bent of an ancient Indian (Carl Switzer) has planted the seed in everyone’s mind that this animal is the representation of a greater evil – all the evil in the world in fact. And so the two older sons, Arthur (William Hopper) and Curt (Robert Mitchum), take it upon themselves to weather the elements and head off to track down the cat and slay it once and for all. From this point on the film cuts between scenes of this near classical doomed quest and those back at the Bridges’ ranch, where the heightening emotional tension mirrors the increasing physical dangers out on the mountain. Whether one views it as a masterstroke or a failing – personally, I tend towards the former – the titular cat is never seen on-screen. Instead, it exists as a kind of psychological bogeyman, a malign presence stalking the dark corners of the characters’ awareness. Peeling back the layers, I think it’s possible to draw a parallel between the panther and Harold’s fiancée, Gwen (Diana Lynn), as both appear on the scene simultaneously and both represent a threat to the status quo. The Bridges’ world, like the snowbound landscape they occupy, is a barren one: the relationship between Ma and Pa Bridges is a loveless one where each merely tolerates the others foibles, that of Arthur and his wife (Teresa Wright) is only superficially better – a telling comment early on informs us that they will remain childless – and likely to decline, and Curt is nothing but a domineering bully. This leaves only Harold, the repressed and half-forgotten son who has yet to become jaded and bitter. The arrival of Gwen and the cat has the potential to tear asunder the entrenched negativity of the Bridges. Both embody a kind of primal energy that, in their contrasting ways, will violently transform this stale and moribund family.

Track of the Cat was the second time William Wellman filmed one of Walt Van Tilburg Clark’s books (the first being The Ox-Bow Incident a decade before) and he once again produced a notable and memorable piece of work. According to Lee Server’s biography of Mitchum, when Jack Warner learned that the colour movie he was backing had next to no colour in it he was not best pleased. Wellman’s response was simple and to the point:  ” If he doesn’t like it he can go shit in his hat.” It could of course be argued that Wellman’s radical decision to shoot a colour movie using almost exclusively black and white imagery was not much more than a stylistic affectation, an exercise in aesthetics if you like.  However, I believe there’s more to it than that; the colour, or lack of it, used by Wellman, and cameraman William H Clothier, goes a long way towards defining the nature of the characters and their relationships. Black and white infers absolutes, clearly defined parameters. Bearing in mind that the domestic setup is traditionally the province of females, the fact that the decor of the homestead consists of just these two colours reflects the inflexible and puritanical outlook of Ma Bridges (Beulah Bondi). The Bridges inhabit a world where any kind of personal manoeuvrability is severely limited. There are only two notable exceptions to this stark, spartan colour scheme: the red jacket worn by Curt and the yellow blouse of Gwen. Both these colours are indicative of energy, but while Curt’s red conveys the notion of power and aggression, Gwen’s yellow implies warmth and happiness. I think it’s also worth pointing out that when Curt exchanges his jacket for that of his dead brother after the cat’s attack he undergoes a kind of transformation. Now shorn of the symbol of strength and vitality, he dons the cow hide tunic and gradually assumes the characteristics of the prey rather than the predator.

Mitchum managed to capture this character shift very subtly in his performance. There’s a world of difference between the brash, swaggering bully of the first half of the picture and the paranoid, haunted shell of a man he becomes, yet he achieves this switch in a wholly natural and seamless fashion. The role of Curt is very unsympathetic (foreshadowing his work on Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear) but he pulls it off and, in the process, provides evidence of just how versatile and talented he really was. I couldn’t say that any member of the cast struck a false note and everyone involved performed more than competently. However, I do want to single out Beulah Bondi’s turn as the forbidding matriarch. This self-righteous and moralising figure is the lynchpin of the family, binding them all together either in spite of or because of her intolerance. Although there is a terrible quality to this woman, it’s hard not to feel some twinge of pity as she sits in that cold room, waking one dead son, fearing for the life of another and watching the slow disintegration of all she holds dear.

Despite being released theatrically by Warner Brothers, Track of the Cat was made by John Wayne’s production company Batjac and so was put out on DVD a few years back by Paramount in the US, and subsequently elsewhere. The anamorphic scope transfer is good enough, though not perfect. The movie really could use a clean up, but there isn’t anything that acts as a distraction or spoils the enjoyment of the movie. Apart from the main feature itself, where the disc really scores is in the extras department. There’s a commentary track with Tab Hunter, William Wellman Jr and Frank Thompson, a gallery and trailers. Additionally, there’s also a feature on the making of the film which has been divided up into four self-contained featurettes. The film won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it is a remarkable and unique work that deserves to be seen. Aside from the visuals, and they are quite spectacular, it’s one of those multi-layered pictures that rewards repeated viewings. I’ve seen the movie a few times now and there are still things that I’m only just noticing. Whether or not one warms to the film is ultimately down to personal preference, but it certainly refutes the notion that westerns and art house pictures don’t mix. I recommend giving it a chance at least.

Track of the Cat - TCM.com  Paul Tatara

 

Track of the Cat (1954) - Home Video Reviews - TCM.com  Paul Sherman, also seen here:  Track of the Cat - Special Collector's Edition Read TCM's Home Video Review on this film

 

DVD Verdict [Rob Lineberger]  Special Collector’s Edition

 

Track of the Cat - PopMatters  Nikki Tranter

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

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DVD Savant  Glenn Erickson, Special Collector’s Edition

 

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digitallyOBSESSED.com   Nate Meyers, Special Collector’s Edition

 

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Variety

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Bosley Crowther

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

Wells, John

 

THE COMPANY MEN                                            B+                   90                   

USA   Great Britain  (109 mi)  2010

 

This is the first film that attempts to project the magnitude of the nation’s recent economic woes, as seen through the eyes of several white collar managers that are fired, whose lives, as they know it, are inexplicably altered forever, where people have to do a gut check and re-assess what they’re willing to endure in order to survive.  Pride is on the line, as people have a high opinion of themselves, but this film is about watching that veneer of confidence slowly dissipate, as without a job many have a hard time believing in themselves.  The film documents the various stages of the fall from grace, from the initial denial that it’s happening to you, the injustice of it all, leading to anger and bitterness, until eventually one is humbled by the force of having to admit that they’re unemployed, where the social stigma is like having leprosy.  No one wants to get near you, and you’re ashamed to admit it.  The film really gets that defeated tone just right from the start until just before the finish, where a needless Hollywood happy ending is tagged on at the end.  But up until that point, this film surprisingly gets it right, largely due to the viewer empathy established with the characters and the truthfulness of the performances all around, starting with Ben Affleck as a Boston manufacturing super salesman who’s pulling down $160,000 a year, plus incentives and bonuses, until his company merges and in order to keep the stock prices high, he finds himself a casualty, as he’s suddenly terminated in the opening moments of the film and offered three month’s severance pay.  With a million dollar home in the suburbs, a Porsche car, memberships in exclusive golf resorts, and kids who aren’t nearly old enough yet to even be thinking about college, he suddenly doesn’t have the means to pay his bills, even after he sells the house and the car, as he still owes more than they’re worth.  After initially refusing to acknowledge the obvious, that he would never again make anything close to his previous salary range, he just needs to find one employer that’s willing to hire again.  And of course, millions of people in identical situations around the country are hoping for the same thing, where a job offer would be paramount to a miracle, as none are forthcoming. 

 

What makes this film particularly interesting is that it escalates to the people above Affleck, where one of the original co-founders of the company, Tommy Lee Jones, who is now criticizing the decisions of the CEO, his former college roommate and best friend, Craig T. Nelson, who is the driving force behind the decisions to make drastic cuts in personnel, identifying that they’re working for the stockholders not the employees, believing they were well paid and the company no longer owes them anything.  The trustful interplay between these two is cracking, as their priorities are different.  Nelson’s stock options are going through the roof, while Jones is watching good people that he hired a decade ago get tossed along the wayside as collateral damage.  One of those is Chris Cooper, one of the last of the high paid execs to go, and one that doesn’t deal with it gracefully.  For awhile, the more interesting story belongs to the upper echelon, as Jones is actually sleeping with and invested in a personal relationship with the hatchet lady (Maria Bello), the company spokesperson performing the dreaded layoff interviews face to face, while also maintaining a disastrous marriage in an oversized home with a woman he can barely even speak to any more.  It’s interesting to see just how the economic scale affects how the wives deal with the sudden changes, where Jones’s wife will still take her shopping trip to Palm Springs but without the corporate jet while Affleck’s wife can’t pay the mortgage.  Brother-in-law Kevin Costner who’s continually making snide remarks about corporate excess even prior to the news is excellent as a working class carpenter who offers Affleck a job during the hard times, an offer that is rejected out of hand.  Many months later, however, Affleck comes crawling to Costner for the work, even bringing in help that he met on the unemployment line, showing that these are desperate times. 

 

This is writer and director John Wells’s first film, where he’s previously done television work on ER, and he’s aided here by a superlative cast, also the Coen Brother’s ace cinematographer Roger Deakins.  Shot on location in Boston, the giant interior corporate window scenes are especially expressive, as the windows determine the executive pecking order, doled out to those willing to support the CEO and make him look good, as much of their lives is spent on the cocktail party circuit showing themselves and their wives or mistresses off, living the high society life, and basically talking about themselves in an insular world that is defined by the executive yes man mentality, as any critical voice is quickly distanced from the inner circle.  While this film may be told in broad strokes, it does an excellent job framing what goes wrong, showing the world falling apart for certain individuals who are used to being on top all the time, with people catering to their every need.  When that stops, there’s some question about whether these individuals can accept their downfall, as we’re all aware of stories of former employees “going postal,” where they come back to work with a bagful of guns and ammunition after being fired.  This doesn’t go there, but it considers it, meaning anything’s possible.  The film is weakest when it comes to finding a way out of this mess, even for the characters portrayed in the film, as that part of the story really isn’t being told.  What is happening to all these middle class families with kids that need to go to college whose parents have lost their jobs and their homes?  Where are they now?  In my view, they’ve become invisible.       

 

Time Out New York [Joshua Rothkopf]

A quintet of actors carve out a beautiful, ill-fated geometry in John Wells’s layoff drama, which might play like a retort to Up in the Air if it didn’t have shortcomings of its own. Ben Affleck’s 37-year-old former sales star takes out his unemployment shame on the golf range or by raging at random secretaries. Higher up on the food chain—but also given pink slips within the first half hour—are private-jet-cruising Tommy Lee Jones and a rivetingly sour Chris Cooper, who dyes his hair dark for desperate power lunches. The impassive Craig T. Nelson sits above it all, somehow mustering humanity as a hatchet-happy CEO, while salt-of-the-earth contractor Kevin Costner (commanding in a supporting role) represents a return to virtues of sweat and labor.

But for all of Wells’s tough-minded corporate-speak (he did solid writing on ER and The West Wing), the film falls into some regrettable shorthand: Toting cups of Dunkin’ Donuts to the construction site becomes overly symbolic of honest taste; a teen son’s Xbox is a casualty of cost-cutting; and here comes the Big Interview. An undercurrent of Boston wharf work (where their dismantling company got its start) would have made for stronger plot developments. Still, this is closer to James Gray’s mighty The Yards than Indiewood usually gets.

The Fighter, The Tourist, All Good Things, The Company Men | Film ...  Joe Morgenstern from The Wall Street Journal

In a somber drama that plays like a requiem for the American Dream, you may welcome a few frivolities, like the bedroom scene when Maria Bello's glamorous hatchet woman, Sally, throws herself on Tommy Lee Jones's Gene, a veteran shipyard chief, and says "Tell me more about capital depreciation."

A feature film debut by the veteran TV writer-producer John Wells, "The Company Men" tells us much about the human costs of a fragile economy by tracking the experience of three men during a savage spasm of corporate downsizing. The movie is set in the present, and the picture isn't pretty. "American heavy manufacturing is dead," declares the CEO of a conglomerate that includes ship building. The trio's task is to find life in the postindustrial ruins. (Roger Deakins did a stylish job, as always, of photographing not only the ruins but the offices and board rooms of the company's sleek headquarters.)

In addition to Mr. Jones, the cast includes Ben Affleck as Bobby, a corporate executive who can't believe that downward mobility will threaten his suburban house, his golf club or his Porsche (Kevin Costner plays Bobby's carpenter brother-in-law); and Chris Cooper as Phil, an industrial counterpart to Willy Loman who definitely can put a nut to a bolt, having begun his career as a welder. For all his years doing "E.R." and other top-line TV series, Mr. Wells hasn't yet tailored his techniques to the big screen. His actors' line readings can be erratic—though I very much liked Rosemarie DeWitt's performance as Bobby's wife—and the episodic, "E.R."-like structure of the script vitiates the film's emotional impact. Still, "The Company Men" takes on its big subject forthrightly, and, in an era of service industries and financial instruments, it celebrates the virtue of making useful things.

Armond White reviews The Company Men directed by John Wells -- NYPress

The Company Men sentimentalizes the Middle Class that politicians love to placate. Its heroes are corporate shipping executives (Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper and the always-phony Ben Affleck) who, after the 2008 recession, are caught between high-living and guilty. Its story is about how much rich guys care for their downsized employees— even though most of the story deals with Affleck’s descent into manual labor, ineptly working construction with his brother-in-law (Kevin Costner, giving the film’s only solid characterization).

This attempt at dramatizing contemporary social crisis isn’t as insightful as Robert Wise’s 1954 Executive Suite. TV writer-director John Wells (E.R.) stumps like a groveling politician; he unconsciously serves the dominant ideology behind money and power but never questions it. This pity party for the wealthy who are threatened by the possible loss of their privileges (patronizing authority, big houses that don’t look lived-in) compounds the falsehoods of movies like The Social Network. The only good moment has Jones rhapsodizing about, “Building something you can see. These men knew their worth,” and Cooper interrupting, “I liked the $500 lunches.” The worst moment is Affleck’s return to the nest—a sobering fall that turns maudlin and unbelievable when there’s no conversation between Affleck and his dad.

What goes unsaid is the upward mobility of class privilege—the advantages Wells never countenances. He avoids the obvious fact that no masculine skills or training have been passed on or handed down, or that the working class has any thoughts on fat cats or drudgery (the secrets Bruce Springsteen frequently voices). Instead, Wells offers the sentimental, Gen-X narcissism of Affleck playing b-ball with his own son. Critics who praise this politically false economic fairytale can only be part of the system—and part of the problem.

The Company Men | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club  Noel Murray

The Company Men marks the directorial debut of veteran TV producer John Wells (ER), and if anyone ever doubts what industry clout can do, just consider the cast Wells has assembled here. Ben Affleck stars as a corporate sales manager who loses his job after a merger and has to enter the netherworld of outplacement services while clinging tenaciously to a life of privilege he can no longer afford. Chris Cooper plays a company lifer who sweats every round of downsizing. Tommy Lee Jones plays a bigwig trying to fight for the soul of the business he helped start. Craig T. Nelson plays a boss more concerned with business-news headlines than his employees. Maria Bello plays a ruthless HR rep. And Kevin Costner plays Affleck’s blue-collar, corporate-hating brother-in-law.

Those actors—and some wonderfully moody Roger Deakins cinematography—help sell a Wells script that over-explains everything. Wells treats his story like it’s a set of bullet points about the perniciousness of stockholder-driven business decisions, never letting a single “the upper-middle class has it tough, too” or “our families are the real wealth” moment slip past him. But the cast doesn’t treat The Company Men like a slideshow. They take something overly schematic and imbue it with real anxiety, shame, and humility.

To be fair, Wells isn’t entirely asleep at the switch either. As might be expected from a man known for detail-oriented TV dramas, The Company Men has an insider feel when it comes to how corporate layoffs work and how they affect workers of differing ages and social backgrounds. The movie is very clever in the way it repeatedly emphasizes that Nelson and Jones’ business has plenty of money at its disposal; it just has a weakening position in the stock market. (When asked how they could raise the capital to stave off a takeover, Jones surveys Nelson’s office wall and hisses, “We could sell a fuckin’ Degas.”) The actual words in The Company Men are often too blunt, but the movie gets its message across in subtler ways, as when Affleck steps into the outplacement office for the first time, with its shabby cubicles and flickering fluorescent lighting, and realizes just how far he’s fallen. The décor says more than any dialogue could.    

The Village Voice [Karina Longworth]

 

Tracking the parallel trajectories of three employees laid off from cushy corporate jobs at the same Boston-based manufacturing conglomerate, The Company Men is transparent in its ambition to capture The Way We Live Now from a sensitive and equitable—rather than a withering and satiric—point of view. Writer/director John Wells portrays the economic crisis and contemporary workplace experience through three representatives, each of a distinct generation and origin, who end up meeting somewhere in the middle. Bobby (Ben Affleck) is the cocky young hot shot with the perfect-seeming family, forced to trade in his Porsche and his pride and take a job with the proudly-blue-collar brother (Kevin Costner) of his pragmatic wife (Rosemarie DeWitt). Bobby’s two former colleagues, both in post-middle-age/pre-retirement limbo, are large-living, still-idealistic-at-65 exec Gene (Tommy Lee Jones), and Phil (Chris Cooper), a fiftyish boozer who worked his way up to management from the factory floor and can’t conceive of how to fill a day off the clock.

Wells, a sometime-producer for auteurs as disparate as Robert Altman, Todd Haynes, and John Waters, is better known as the showrunner of massively successful network TV franchises such as ER and The West Wing. Wells’s filmmaking stamp, if you can call it that, hews closely to his iconic TV brands: Character is paramount over story, and style—embodied by Wells’s idiom-thick script, Roger Deakins’s coolly detail-oriented cinematography, and Robert Frazen’s cross-cutting—serves primarily to elevate relatable types into archetypes, heroic and/or tragic and/or triumphant and/or martyred. Wells’s weakest link in terms of craft is pacing: Here, he takes his time setting up the distinct social strata and moving Bobby from one (country club) to another (construction site), almost as if he has a full season to flesh out arcs. The whiplash-quick happy ending, probably intended as inspirational wish fulfillment, actually comes off as kind of a joke.

Even with its potentially noxious message—The Bad Economy Is Hard On Rich People, Too—The Company Men was often spoken of as a cousin to another star-studded but decidedly middle-class-focused borderline indie about our crumbling society when it premiered at Sundance in January. Call it Up in the Air, Too!? (tagline: This Time, the Jets Are Private, the Downsizing Is Personal).

The surprise then was how well the gambit worked: With uniformly excellent performances (Affleck—an actor well familiar with rising fast, falling hard, and having no choice but to work his way back into the winners’ circle one calculated decision at a time—is particularly satisfying) and a script that parceled out sentiment judiciously and left a fair amount unsaid, The Company Menput movie-star faces on some of the least sympathetic victims of the financial crisis and still felt like a more mature reckoning with the moment than Jason Reitman’s Oscar nominee. At the very least, Maria Bello’s Adulterous Woman As Symbol for the Chill of Corporate Culture subplot is a lot less simplistic than Vera Farmiga’s; maybe it’s another thing to chalk up to his experience as a producer of long-running ensemble soaps, but Wells seems to know better than to manipulate his audience into falling in love with a heroine, only to reveal that she’s actually the biggest villain.

But after nearly 12 months and a shorter, more upbeat streamline from the Weinstein Company’s own men, The Company Men is less effective as an urgent portrait of our tough times—in part because we’re still living those times and are even more aware now that there’s no quick happy ending. What still rings true, however, is the symbiotic link between money and masculinity. Not exactly dude-friendly (the pyrotechnics are all actorly, and emasculation is as pervasive as the defense-mechanism body humor in a bromance), The Company Men is maybe best understood as a chick flick about dicks: Before its too-easy conclusion, the movie offers a multifaceted glimpse at what can happen when the connective tissue between a man and his source of income is cut, and rarely suggests that it could be anything less than excruciating to stop the bleeding.

REVIEW: The Company Men Offers a Rare Portrait of the Working — and the Nonworking — World   Stephanie Zacharek from Movieline

 

IC Places [Chris Knipp]

 

The Company Men: You're Hired! - TIME  Richard Corliss

 

Chicago Reader [J.R. Jones]

 

PopMatters [Cynthia Fuchs]

 

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DVD Talk [Brian Orndorf]  also seen here:  Briandom [Brian Orndorf]

 

Richard Schickel: Three 'Company Men' and a Pink Slip - Film ...   Truthdig

 

filmsoundoff.com [Curt Schleier]

 

"The Company Men" Review | Into The Blue Again, After The Money's ...  Brian Prisco from Pajiba

 

Film School Rejects [Neil Miller]

 

Monsters and Critics [Anne Brodie]

 

Movie House Commentary [Greg Wroblewski]

 

The Company Men reviewed: Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin ...  Dana Stevens from Slate

 

The Company Men : DVD Talk Review of the Theatrical  Jason Bailey

 

A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity [Adam Lippe]

 

The Company Men | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Bill Weber

 

Cinema Blend [Katey Rich]  at Sundance

 

Cinematical (Erik Davis) review

 

Company Men, The - ReelTalk Movie Reviews  Diana Saenger

 

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Edward Copeland on Film

 

A film that may mean well but doesn - ShowReview  Frank Swietek from One Guy’s Opinion

 

Mark Reviews Movies [Mark Dujsik]

 

Movie Review: The Company Men (2011) – RopeofSilicon.com Movie ...  Brad Brevet

 

exclaim! [Robert Bell]

 

Film-Forward.com  Patrick Wood

 

The Company Men: movie review - CSMonitor.com  Peter Rainer

 

Black Sheep Reviews [Joseph Belanger]

 

Entertainment Weekly [Owen Gleiberman]

 

Variety Reviews - The Company Men - Film Reviews - - Review by ...  Todd McCarthy

 

The Company Men: It should have been downsized - The Globe and Mail  Rick Groen

 

Review: The Company Men - Reviews - Boston Phoenix  Peter Keough

 

'The Company Men' review: Executives cut loose search for the ...  Stephen Whitty from The Star-Ledger

 

Affleck and Costner are in good 'Company' | Philadelphia Daily ...  Gary Thompson

 

'The Company Men' explores the personal costs of corporate ...  Carrie Rickey from The Philadelphia Inquirer

 

Review: It appears the writers decided to lie down on the job ...  Chris Hewitt from The St. Paul Pioneer Press

 

Austin Chronicle [Kimberley Jones]

 

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New York Times (registration req'd)  Stephen Holden

 

AUGUST:  OSAGE COUNTY                               B                     87

USA  (121 mi)  2013  ‘Scope                             Official Site

 

This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends.

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925, Poetry X » Poetry Archives » T. S. Eliot » "The Hollow Men"

 

This may not be one of the best directed films, playing it fairly straight, allowing the actors to control their own destinies, but it is one of the best written Tracy Letts plays, where you get your money’s worth with this winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for drama, a modern generation follow up to Eugene O’Neill’s posthumously received Pulitzer Prize winning play Long Day’s Journey Into Night, written in 1941-42, but not published until 1956, one of his most autobiographical, downbeat, and searingly intense plays adapted into film in 1962 by Sidney Lumet, an unforgettable work that all but obliterates the American Dream.  Tracy Letts takes the original premise of a dysfunctional family, with the matriarch, in this case Meryl Streep, lost to the mad ravings of drug addiction and a lifetime of hard times and disappointment, set nearly half a century later, and there’s nothing even remotely close to a dream seen anywhere in this picture.  In fact, Letts writes his play around themes originated in T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem The Hollow Men, which not only includes “eyes I dare not meet in dreams,” instead belonging to the arid desert of the dead, but then bookends his play to various passages from the poem, beginning with “Here we go round the prickly pear, prickly pear, prickly pear,” a parody of a children’s jump rope song that substitutes a desert prickly cactus for a “mulberry bush.”  Set in the hottest summer month of a flat and empty prairie landscape in Oklahoma, this is the family home of Beverly (Sam Shepard) and Violet (Meryl Streep), where Violet takes handfuls of pills to eradicate the pain from mouth cancer while Beverly, in his late 60’s, has been an alcoholic for over 50 years.  Beverly is seen hiring a live-in Native American housekeeper, Johnna (Misty Upham), and even hands her a book of T.S. Eliot poems in gratitude, a prelude for plumbing the depths of what’s to come.  After repeating the children’s song to himself, Beverly disappears, something he’s apparently done before, but due to Violet’s illness, this time she needs the family’s help, so like the cavalry, family starts arriving at her doorstep. 

 

First to arrive is Aunt Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale), Violet’s sister, and Uncle Charlie (Chris Cooper), followed by the youngest daughter who lives locally, Ivy (Julia Nicholson), and two other daughters that lead separate lives, escaping to distant states, Barbara, Julia Roberts, best she’s been since Mike Nichols’ CLOSER (2004), living in Colorado, separated from her husband Ewan McGregor and 14-year old daughter (Abigail Breslin), but arriving together in a united front along with the sexually fickle Karen (Juliette Lewis) from Florida, who has a young man with a red convertible sports car in tow (Dermot Mulroney), claiming he’s her fiancé.  Barbara immediately gets into verbal sparring matches with her mother, much of which is played for biting black comedy, where the audience is initially thrilled with the cast and is hanging on every line, but the mood turns darker and more somber when Beverly is discovered drowned, perhaps taking his own life, leaving the family in a state of turmoil.  Meryl Streep literally takes over the film at this point, with an accent that sounds just like Cher, but at the family dinner following the funeral she’s so over the top that she verges into Bette Davis and Joan Crawford territory in the gothic horror thriller WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962).  While Violet shows a mean streak towards everyone sitting at the table, she expresses her scorn and bitterness one after the other, literally altering the landscape, as whatever sympathy may have been developing for her sickly character quickly dissipates with her venomous language, becoming a choreography of incessant attack mode, eventually met with fierce resistance by Barbara who starts fighting back, calling her a drug addict, and physically attacks her, going after her pill bottles, leading to sheer pandemonium and mayhem.  Screaming that she’s taking over now, Julia Roberts, America’s sweetheart, has never been seen uttering such physically aggressive, foul-laden profanity, where it’s literally a battle of wills, as Barbara orders a search of the house for all the hiding places and flushes the considerable stash of pills down the toilet.  After going for each other’s throats, the mood quiets down for some quiet family dialogue, where Violet opens up about what a viciously cruel mother she had. 

 

There is little doubt that this is one of Streep’s great legendary performances, stealing almost every scene in the film, but it’s also one of the most vile characters she’s ever played, where many in the audience are left aghast at her despicable foul-mouthed behavior.  She roars and bellows and bullies her way through every moment of the film as she relentlessly goes for the juggler, exposing the hidden weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the entire family, showing her contemptuous disgust with them all, claiming she went through hard times so they could lead relatively comfortable lives, but have they forgotten what she and her husband sacrificed and went through for them?  Did they even know the dire circumstances of their parent’s youth, where in one poignant moment she reminds them of the worst Christmas she ever had, which is a decrepitly sorry excuse for a Christmas memory, yet this is what comes to mind when they’re all gathered around her.  It’s cringe worthy stuff, where painful truth is a piercing dagger stained in shared blood, becoming a bloodbath of revelations, but also meticulously drawn out feelings leftover from the Great Depression, which had a way of terrifying people, many losing their minds, but Violet was resolute that nothing and nobody was going to get the better of her, becoming an indomitable force of nature, like a hurricane or a blizzard, where no one was going to penetrate into her female psyche.  She’s a master manipulator at evoking sympathy or drawing attention, but everyone can see it’s all an exaggerated, often pathetic performance, yet there’s something indescribably delicious at watching a scene-stealer of this magnitude perform at this level of dubious moral ground, as behind the façade of sickly cancer patient is a shrewd old lady, perhaps with a greedy streak, who knows how to protect herself first and foremost and will walk over anybody who stands in her way.  She’s a Queen Lear type character, an über matriarch ripping at the spiteful nature of her ungrateful daughters, feeling like something out of a Jane Smiley novel, where life on the empty flatlands of America’s heartland is an arduous job, where each hundred degree day offers little comfort and no relief whatsoever, eventually becoming an endurance test.  While this film carves out the emotional extremes, every family has contentious moments like these, literally a lifetime of uncomfortable moments, where the last place you want to be is confronting a family elder or sibling, yet there you are screaming your fool head off, demanding a single moment’s worth of respect, yet you’re left utterly annihilated by the sheer force of exasperation and disgust, both at yourself and the undignified world you’re forced to live in.                    

 

Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]

 

Based on the stage play by Tracy Letts, August: Osage County details the emotional chaos that ensues after several family members reunite following the death of one of their own. There's little doubt that August: Osage County, for most of its first half, unfolds exactly as one might've anticipated, as filmmaker John Wells has infused the proceedings with a talky and almost stagy feel that's certainly reflective of the movie's theatrical origins - with the efforts of the film's impressive cast, which includes Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper, going a long way towards initially compensating for the talk-heavy atmosphere. And although it is, in the movie's early stages, difficult to work up any real interest in the various characters' relentless bickering, August: Osage County, once it passes a certain point, morphs into an unexpectedly engrossing effort rife with appreciatively over-the-top and downright trashy elements - with the film's turning point a spectacularly awkward dinner that eventually devolves into a full-on physical fight between participants. It's a captivating (and unapologetically broad) sequence that triggers a second half that's often far more entertaining and watchable than anticipated, with the remainder of the movie jam-packed with similarly larger-than-life moments and chunks of dialogue (eg "eat the fish, bitch!") that pave the way for a powerful, surprisingly moving final stretch - thus confirming, ultimately, August: Osage County's place as a better-than-average adaptation.

 

Film Freak Central Review [Bill Chambers]

 

"Don't go all Carson McCullers on me!" a character admonishes in August: Osage County, John Wells's film version of Tracy Letts's Pulitzer-winning play. I think the line is meant to be ironic, because Letts, author of demented southern gothics like Bug and Killer Joe, is an obvious heir apparent to McCullers. In the context of this timid adaptation, however, it sounds like a studio note. August recently made headlines because the ending may change from what audiences saw at TIFF, and that would be for the better--I somehow doubt that reassuring viewers of Julia Roberts's indomitable spirit ever crossed Letts's mind as one of his goals for the piece--but it wouldn't be enough to take the Garry Marshall tang out of the film. Chewing scenery with her mouth open, Meryl Streep is Violet, the gargoyle matriarch of an Oklahoma dynasty, hooked on pills because of mouth cancer and, let's face it, in obeisance to a certain theatrical tradition. Violet's sister Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale) and daughters Barbara (Roberts), Ivy (Julianne Nicholson), and Karen (Juliette Lewis) have gathered together along with their own families to mourn the passing of Violet's husband and confront some awful truths laid bare by Violet's condition and drug-fuelled compulsion to spill secrets and push buttons. Casting like a kid in a candy store (what in God's name is Benedict Cumberbatch doing here--as the holy fool, no less) and shooting in a functional non-style that 'opens up' the play by going in for the kinds of close-ups you couldn't get without opera glasses, Wells is a producer-turned-director through and through. About his ability to marshal big egos there can be little doubt, but his camera bobs all over the axis of action like a first-year film student, and he shows almost no command of tone, reducing the material's vaguely satirical detours into perversion (incest! statutory rape!) to schematic twists both eye-rolling and curiously palatable. But it's finally the casting of 500-pound gorilla Roberts that kills this thing, throwing its centre of gravity so off-balance that August: Osage County feels not much different from a tailor-made ego trip like Something to Talk About, even before that contentious epilogue.

 

Movie Mezzanine [Anna Tatarska]

I flew to Toronto all the way from Poland. And after the screening of August: Osage County I knew that if I had gone there just for this one film, it would still have been worth it. Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning Tracy Letts’ play, the film is a piercingly insightful experience, funny with all the absurdity of life, sad with its irreversible drive towards death.

John Wells (The Company Men) managed to assemble a truly impressive cast. Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Juliette Lewis, Sam Shepard, Ewan McGregor, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dermot Mulroney, Chris Cooper, Julianne Nicholson, Sam Shepard, Margo Martindale and Abigail Breslin in one single film. One! Directors very often cast well-recognizable actors, because they want to attract an audience and give the public a sense of comfort that’s provided by familiar faces. In this case every casting decision is fully justified by the script. When, at some point, the whole family meets at a table, we witness the purest embodiment of what teamwork means acting-wise. Every trivial remark amounts to a level of high art, the conversation as a whole resembling a skillfully composed symphony, just with insults, regrets and harmful jokes instead of musical notes.

The film discretely yet effectively incorporates local landscapes of the real Osage County in  northern Oklahoma, where it was shot. Vast, majestic landscapes are a silent, yet evocative context – and counterpoint – to the loud, all-over-the place on-screen micro-dramas. When family members are literally vomiting over each other with past grievances and deep-hidden secrets, endless fields of grains and grasses rustle rhythmically, as if watching the impending disaster with utter disbelief.

Diverse characters meet in a closed space and it’s their conversations that propel the action – at first glance, August …  can draw associations with Carnage, Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play. But it soon becomes clear, that Wells is not aspiring to be a master of formal exercise. His use of space and time has theatre-like economical sense to it but instead of focusing on the dramatic structure he uses it as a pretext to tell a story of the most toxic and lethal of all human addictions – family.

The Academy will have to decide whether it is acceptable to award the same actress just two years after her previous win. However impressive Meryl Streep’s transformation was in Iron Lady” the truth is that her performance in August… rises way above that role. As a self-centered, uber-cynical matriarch addicted to pills and constant attention, under Wells’ direction she’s created one of the most memorable performances of her outstanding career. With a cigarette seemingly permanently attached to her lips and bizarre wig concealing devastating effects of chemotherapy, Violet is a breathtaking combination of outrageous and sad. In this character despair meets ruthless bitterness, melancholy mixes with utter lack of compassion, keeping the viewer constantly invested in the story. Fortunately, our emotional effort is regularly rewarded with brilliantly sarcastic jokes that entertain, yet don’t take away even an ounce of the dramatic weight of on-screen events.

Julia Roberts, playing Streep’s daughter Barbara, is an equal partner for the legendary star. She’s authentic, dark, hysterically funny and way too much like her mother, even though her pain is of  a different origin. This is undoubtedly one of the best, if not the best, role in Robert’s diverse career. The director said the actress was truly ready for this not-at-all glamorous, no makeup, emotionally challenging part. “There is a moment in every woman’s life, when your driving a car with your daughter, stop at the lights, see a man gazing at you, and realize, it’s not you he’s looking at, but her. She said she was ready [to become invisible]”. Streep and Roberts – but in fact the entire cast -  act for their lives. Their on-screen battle could serve as a perfect example of what this whole thing called acting (and,in fact, film) is about.

Slant Magazine [David Lee Dallas]

 

Edward Copeland's Tangents [Josh R]

 

PopMatters [Lynnette Porter]

 

'August: Osage County' Review: Plenty of Room to ... - Pajiba  Daniel Carlson

 

David Denby: “August: Osage County,” “The Invisible Woman  David Denby from The New Yorker

 

August: Osage County: An Overcooked Movie-Star ... - Slate  Dana Stevens

 

Osage County - Village Voice  Stephanie Zacharek

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Anne-Katrin Titze]

 

The Steve Pulaski Message Board [Steve Pulaski]

 

Sound and fury signifying not too much… - World Socialist ...  Joanne Laurier from The World Socialist Web Site

 

August: Osage County / The Dissolve  Tasha Robinson

 

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Review: Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep try hard but ... - HitFix  Drew McWeeny

 

Review: Sprawling, Sneering 'August: Osage County ... - Blog  Kevin Jagernauth from The Playlist

 

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Seongyong's Private Place [Seongyong Cho]

 

August: Osage County - Reelviews Movie Reviews  James Berardinelli

 

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Angeliki Coconi's Unsung Films [Hannah McHaffie]

 

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Film-Forward.com [Kent Turner]

 

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August: Osage County - The Hollywood Reporter  David Rooney

 

Toronto Film Review: 'August: Osage County' | Variety  Scott Foundas

 

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Examiner.com [Jana J. Monji]  also seen here:  Pasadena Art Beat [Jana J. Monji]

 

Review: 'August: Osage County' dysfunction doesn't play on ...  Kenneth Turan from The LA Times

 

August: Osage County Movie Review (2013) | Roger Ebert  Susan Wloszczsyna

 

August - Osage County - The New York Times  A.O. Scott

 

Wenders, Wim

 

Wim Wenders - Film Reference  Joseph Milicia

Of the three young German filmmakers who achieved the greatest international fame in the 1970s as the vanguard of a German New Wave, Wim Wenders had perhaps a less radical though no less distinctive film style than his compatriots R. W. Fassbinder and Werner Herzog. Though critics typically cite American influences upon Wenders's "road trilogy" of the mid-1970s, there is a greater affinity with the modernist tradition of the European "art film" exemplified by the Antonioni of L'avventura and Red Desert —dramas of alienation in which restless, unrooted individuals wander through haunted, sterile, but bleakly beautiful landscapes within a free-floating narrative structure. (It is most appropriate that Wenders has directed the "frame" sections for some short pieces by the aged Italian master.) True, the ennui in these films shades into angst and American Beat gestures, and the alienation has strong roots in the spiritual yearning, the love of loneliness and wandering, of German Romanticism. Romanticism seems too to be at the root of Wenders's conception of himself (well articulated in numerous interviews) as an artist: one who evolves spiritually with each work, or reaches dead ends (as he has called The State of Things ) from which he must break out; and who sees each new work as an adventure, not to be mapped out too much in advance.

A crucial observation about Wenders's art is found in cinematographer Ed Lachman's remark that "light and landscape are actors" in his films. Wenders's characters are typically revealed against urban or rural landscapes, upon which the camera frequently lingers as the actors pass from the frame. Most of the films take place predominantly out-of-doors (the studio sets of Hammett making that film all the more of an anomaly), or offer striking views from high-rise windows and moving vehicles. The urban views most often suggest sterility but have a certain grandeur, sharing with his views of desert ( Paris, Texas ) or sea ( The State of Things ) that vastness the Romantics called "sublime." The climactic scene in the peep-show booth in Paris, Texas is all the more powerful and inventive in the context of the epic vistas of the rest of the film. And the urban scene finally becomes the central "actor" in Wings of Desire/Himmel über Berlin , indeed a "Symphony of a Great City," in which the Wall is no barrier to the gliding camera or the angelic inhabitants.

Wenders's films are dialectical: they structure contrasts not as simple polarities but as rich ongoing dialogue, and the later films seem to be in dialogue with the earlier ones. Among the central concerns from film to film are American versus European culture, the creation of mood versus tight narrative, a sense of "home" versus rootless "freedom", and even black-and-white versus color photography.

Wenders's ambivalent fascination with America has been a favorite topic for critics. None of his films is without interest in this regard, but Alice in the Cities is the first to be shot partially in America—a world of boardwalks, motels, neon, and skyscrapers, though still not so different from the urban, industrial Europe of the second half; it is also his first feature to make extensive use of American music, including the Chuck Berry concert in Wuppertal. The American Friend is a dizzying vortex of allusiveness, with its gangsters and cowboys, iconographic presences of Nicholas Ray and Dennis Hopper, miniature Statue of Liberty in Paris, Ripley's digs in Hamburg, hints of an allegory of the American film industry in Germany (the pornographers seducing the hapless framemaker), and a narrative derived from a novel by an expatriate American and strongly echoing Strangers on a Train. Wenders's "American period" from Hammett through Paris, Texas is of course of central interest here, with a whimsically mystical and lyrical embracing of humanity and the particulars of physical life that recalls Walt Whitman. Wenders still calls his production company "Road Movies" (in English).

The mid-1970s films may owe much to the American "road movie" of a few years earlier (themselves echoing Kerouac's On the Road ), but the classical Hollywood cinema is defined by its tight narrative structures, and Wenders can be felt to be wrestling with such a structure in The American Friend. He has said of Paris, Texas , in a Film Quarterly interview, "For once I was making a movie that wasn't meandering all over the place. That's what Sam [Shepard] brought to this movie of mine as an American writer: forward movement, which is very American in a way." Still, Paris, Texas is very unlike a classical Hollywood film, though the problematic Hammett , ironically enough, is like one; and the later Wings of Desire is much more a fantasia upon a great city than a classical symphony. ( Tokyo-Ga too meanders through a great city rather than being a tight documentary on Yasujiro Ozu.)

Also explored dialectically are the concepts of home and homelessness, omni-present concerns in Wenders's films. Alice in the Cities , Kings of the Road , and Until the End of the World could all have as epigraph a Barbara Stanwyck line from Clash by Night quoted by Wenders in a piece on Fritz Lang: "Home is where you get when you run out of places." The State of Things is perhaps Wenders's most bleak portrayal of homelessness, while Paris, Texas expresses the greatest yearning for home, and Until the End of the World portrays home as a trap (both womblike and filled with scientific gadgetry) of obligations to parents—a place the viewers too are trapped for the second half of a long film. Wings of Desire features an angel wishing he could "come home like Philip Marlowe and feed the cat;" an acrobat who has always felt "alone" and unattached, but now, in love, can feel "loneliness," which means "I am finally whole;" and a conclusion in which the former angel muses, "I found Home . . . instead of forever hovering above"—like Wenders's camera in this film. Obviously the issues of home/homelessness shade into the other prominent Wenders theme of aloneness versus tentative human bonds, explored especially in terms of adult-child friendships, unstable male bondings (see Faraway, So Close for its treatments of both of these), and in Wings , the angelic/mortal possibilities of adult heterosexual love.

Until the End of the World , Wenders's most ambitious project to date, indeed a would-be magnum opus, is quintessentially Wenders in its fascination with home and the road, memory and dream, the mundane and the sublime; yet it disappoints, despite its fine moments. Its early scenes splendidly evoke a future world through decor, a few striking process shots, and multiple uses of video and computer screens; yet the film is flawed in its vague and inconsistent notions of science in the second half, the amateurish handling of the few action scenes, the implausibility of some of the heroine's motives, and above all in the lack of enough meaningful connections between the "dance around the world" of the first half and the Australian home-as-science-lab second half. The Australian landscapes, and the European ones of the very beginning, are hauntingly resonant, like so many in other Wenders films, though the hopscotch around the continents in the first half seems to turn the beauties of Lisbon and rural Japan into mere postcards, an effect seemingly unintended. Perhaps the film succeeds best in its use of various video or computer-generated images to suggest the working—and inseparability—of dreams, memories, and desires. Faraway, So Close , the sequel to Wings of Desire in which Damiel's angel partner Cassiel too becomes a mortal but finds it much harder to adjust to a world of time, suffers artistically from an attempt to include too many plot strands, to work farcical gangsters and daring rescue attempts into an otherwise private, meditative film. Wenders seems at his best when his stories are starkly simple, with complexity coming from the textures of the films' environments.

Wenders once claimed, with some relish of paradox, or perhaps recollection of The Wizard of Oz , that black-and-white was suited to realism, color to fantasy. Hence those stylized tales of murder The Goalie's Anxiety and The American Friend , as well as the science-fiction Until the End of the World , were in color, and the "road trilogy" not, with Kings of the Road immediately declaring itself "a Wim Wenders film in black/white." He further claimed himself to be incapable of making a documentary in color—though he was soon to make more than one. Once again Wings of Desire seems a synthesis of previous concerns, if not a downright reversal, with the angels seeing the spiritual essence of things in black-and-white but humans perceiving the particularities of mortal life in color. Such inconsistency—or rather, willingness to change perspective—may be taken as representative of the exploratory nature of Wenders's film work as a whole.

Arts: Chris Petit on Wim Wenders | Film | The Guardian  King of the Road, by Chris Petit from The Guardian, January 5, 2008  (excerpts)

 

Of all film directors of his generation, Wenders and Scorsese were most alert to rock’n’roll and incorporated it into film, which had been slow to catch on: the Ronettes blasting out at the start of Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973) as Harvey Keitel’s head hit the pillow; Wenders dedicating his first feature, Summer in the City (1970), to the Kinks. There had been a tradition of pop stars using films as promotional vehicles, but until Easy Rider (1969) little effort was made to use rock music in film. It didn’t even feature much as a reference. Wenders, on the other hand, was always full of quotes and asides: a line from “Under the Boardwalk” (sung under an American boardwalk) in Alice in the Cities (1974); Dennis Hopper ending The American Friend (1977) with a Bob Dylan quote, echoing Easy Rider. In The American Friend, Hopper played the man who was going to bring the Beatles back to Hamburg when the Beatles were still there to bring back. Today the film looks a lot more modern than the reference, and younger than Lennon’s death in 1980.

 

Wenders once remarked that rock’n’roll saved his life. He also said that the Americans had colonised the German subconscious. For years he made a point of being at home nowhere, which was easy enough to understand after being raised in postwar West Germany, under military occupation, stuck between the silence of German guilt and an American popular culture dedicated to surface and lack of interiority. He grew up on American Forces Network, Stars of Jazz, Radio Luxembourg and Hollywood movies.

 

With Fassbinder and Herzog, he became a luminary of the New German Cinema of the 1970’s, a privileged affair heavily subsidised by state television and a phenomenon of foreign film festivals rather than the domestic box office. Their films shared a transparency of intent, and a wariness of authority and overt manipulation in a common reaction against what had gone on under the Nazis. It was noticeable how rock music - which the modish French new wave had ignored - was incorporated by them, even by Herzog, whose films were neither conventional nor contemporary. He used Cream in Fata Morgana (1971), a crazed desert epic of empty tracking shots, and music by Popol Vuh in his historical Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972). Both Wenders and Fassbinder liked showing music from source. In The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), the latter used the Walker Brothers’ “In My Room” on the equivalent of a crappy Dansette, with an actor in the background hammering on a typewriter in counterpoint to the music, while the foreground actor’s speech was blocked to avoid masking the best bits of the record. In Alice in the Cities, Wenders memorably paused the action to put Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again” on the jukebox; in Kings of the Road, it was Heinz singing “Just Like Eddie” on a portable record player, with the song sung along to, as was the Kinks’ “Too Much on My Mind” in The American Friend by Bruno Ganz.

 

Of the three, Wenders came closest to the everyday, and was the most detached. His films were about the road and restlessness; they were cool pilgrimages featuring the way-stations of modern life: diners, hotels and motels, fast-food stalls, gas stations, trains, planes, trucks, cars. His characters were adrift, misplaced, often lonely and liable to make the wrong move.

 

His cultural ticket was first written by that gloomy Austrian precisionist and definer of postwar German angst, Peter Handke, whose novella The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty was a smart rework of Camus's L’Étranger. Adapted in 1971 by Wenders as an essay in distraction, its minimalist journey through urban and rural landscapes was marked less by any ostensible investigation into a pointless murder than by what was left unsaid, and the professional dilemma of guessing and double-guessing the right way to jump. The dilemma would later be shared by Wenders, caught between Europe and the US.

 

Wenders’s ambition was never in doubt, nor was his confidence, except at the start of Goalkeeper. Kept afloat at first by sly, leftfield observations that are clearly Handke’s, the film discovers its direction only after leaving Vienna on an extended bus journey, during which Wenders’s signature becomes evident: stacked records on a jukebox, twilight turning to dark, and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” heard on a crappy transistor radio with variable reception, cutting in and out of a plangent themed film score, and a train running alongside the bus in one of those moments of parallel movement of which Wenders became so fond. The faltering strands of a film, which were hanging in the balance, come together, capturing what Wenders does best — the banality of life on the road and a magic that comes from granting space and time to those extended moments other films pass over…

 

Rock’n’roll has indeed turned into the new conservatism, and it has been amusing to note in recent weeks the appearance of a white-haired, goateed, avuncular figure dishing out the Turner prize: that former rockin’ rebel Dennis Hopper, deep into the establishment. Ditto Wenders, as president of the European Film Academy, presenting an honorary prize to Jean-Luc Godard, who spoiled the party with a no-show, saying afterwards that his absence was in protest against a prize “imposed” on his entire career. Godard’s snub (at Wenders’s expense) was done as a point of principle, but it generated far more publicity than if he had accepted. Godard and Wenders are both expert manipulators, super-smart curators of their own legends — one outsider, one insider — having worked out, ahead of the game, that as much work needs to go into franchising and branding the image as the films, maybe more. In a very modern sense, the film has become a by-product, almost irrelevant, except as a promotional tool. Providing for acolytes of academia has become a major industry, as have the doctorates handed out in return, both laying the ground for the posthumous reputation. In the later stages, there is only the inconvenience of maintaining the career to keep the franchise going (knowing that one’s best work was done a long time ago) before posterity’s call.

 

Wenders's change of direction in the 1980’s produced his most commercially successful work, but the hits Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire came at the price of diluting his talent. The line between what worked with Wenders and what didn’t was always thin. He started to hanker after comedy; one ending shot for Wings of Desire featured a pie fight. Material got treated more as though he were a singer-songwriter than a film-maker: Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire play like concept albums. Paris, Texas looks more photographic than cinematic, more Eggleston than John Ford, and laid the foundation for Wenders’s second career as a photographer.

 

Wings of Desire is a triumph of location (Berlin) over content: an angel (Bruno Ganz) has a midlife crisis and opts for incarnation, resulting in a Nick Cave concert and hot sex with a circus trapeze artist (the late Solveig Dommartin). With this film, Wenders forsook his customary detachment and embraced engagement, while the Handke-isms turned to parody: “There is no greater story than ours, that of man and woman. It will be a story of giants. No mortal child was begot, only an immortal image.” The inherent vanity was realised in the film it begat, Until the End of the World, realised from an idea by Wenders and Dommartin, a worldwide caper starring Dommartin, whose relationship with Wenders did not survive. The shooting was a nightmare of squabbles and logistics (15 cities in seven countries), but this folie d’amour, hugely cut on release, retains a daft intensity. If Rossellini’s films with Ingrid Bergman and Godard’s with Karina were an obvious impulse of auteur cinema (director loves actress, director casts actress), Until the End of the World marks its epitaph.

 

Yet, on the evidence of websites, many are willing to subscribe to Paris, Texas as a profound statement on emptiness (rather than an empty film), just as enough will testify to the transcendent experience of Wings of Desire — as opposed to a cynical friend of mine who said that Wenders never would have dared “pull that stunt with the angels had Fassbinder been alive.”

 

Wim Wenders—The Official Site

 

Wim Wenders: Biography from Answers.com  biography

 

Gary Johnson, 'Wim Wenders Biography', Images Journal, Issue 1

 

Wim Wenders • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Dave Tacon from Senses of Cinema, May 22, 2003

 

American Madness: Concepts of Culture and Sanity in The ...  American Madness: Concepts of Culture and Sanity in The American Friend and Stroszek, by William Beard, originally published in Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 1992

 

Robert Craig, 'The Art of Seeing Rescues the Existence of Things: Notes on the Wenders Road Films and Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution (Part 1)', Offscreen Journal, January 31, 2002

 

Journal of Religion and Film: Seeing Beyond the End of the ...  Seeing Beyond the End of the World in Strange Days and Until the End of the World, by S Brent Plate and Tod Linafelt from Journal of Religion and Film, April 2003

 

Wim, We Hardly Know Ye: On Wenders' Don't Come Knocking - Bright ...  Ian Johnston from Bright Lights Film Journal, February 1, 2006

 

A winded Wenders - The Guardian  John Patterson, April 21, 2006

 

Wim Wenders: Merging the Infinite Via the Enigma of Cinema  Bill Gibron from Pop Matters, April 2, 2007

 

Wim Wenders DVD review - part I   Andrew Benbow from kamera, April 28, 2007

 

Wim Wenders DVD review - part II 

 

Wim Wenders DVD review - part III

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | The Road Goes On Forever  Nick Roddick, January 2008

 

Arts: Chris Petit on Wim Wenders | Film | The Guardian  King of the Road, by Chris Petit from The Guardian, January 5, 2008

 

Mark Cousins, 'Widescreen [on Wim Wenders' Road Movies]', Prospect Magazine, Issue 143, February 29, 2008

 

notcoming.com | Lightning Over Water  Leo Goldsmith, September 9, 2008

 

Defenders of Wenders'  Richard Brody from The New Yorker blog, October 14, 2009

 

Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas - Focus Features  Walter Donohue from Focus Features, August 13, 2010

 

The Cinematic Journeys of Wim Wenders - Parallax View  Road Movie to the Soul: The Cinematic Journeys of Wim Wenders, by Sean Axmaker from Parallax View, September 27, 2010

 

Regrettably unattainable art · AVQ&A · The A.V. Club  John Teti, February 15, 2013

 

Wim Wenders and Peter Handke: Collaboration ... - H-Net  Rob Kohn, review of Brady, Martin; Leal, Joanne, Wim Wenders and Peter Handke: Collaboration, Adaptation, Recomposition.. H-German, H-Net Reviews, March, 2014

 

From the American West to West Berlin - Places Journal  Nicole Huber and Ralph Stern from Places Journal, April 2014

 

10 Essential Wim Wenders Films You Need To Watch ...  Carlos Audiffred from Taste of Cinema, April 27, 2014

 

Wim Wenders On Claire Denis  The Ibtauris Blog, September 16, 2014

 

Berlin: Wim Wenders Homage to Trace Director's Legacy ...  Scott Roxborough from The Hollywood Reporter, November 27, 2014

 

Wim Wenders's Paris, Texas - BOMB Magazine  Nicholas Elliot, November 28, 2014

 

Fresh Takes on Director Wim Wenders - Wall Street Journal  Ed Lachman, Martin Scorsese and others share thoughts on director Wim Wenders and his work, by Steve Dollar, March 1, 2015

 

Wim Wenders retrospective: five to watch, and one to miss ...  Andrew Pulver from The Guardian, March 4, 2015

 

Everything I Know About Architecture, I Learned From Wim ...  Karrie Jacobs from Architect magazine, April 2015

 

misfit, outsider and the man who helped America to see itself  Ryan Gilbey from The Observer, June 27, 2015

 

TSPDT - Wim Wenders

 

Wim Wenders (The End Of Violence)  Jayne Margetts interview, 1997

 

"It's Images You Can Trust Less and Less."  Richard Raskin interview from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

Wim Wenders interview  Richard Phillips interview from the World Socialist Web Site, January 10, 2000

 

Interview with Wim Wenders  Michael Coles interview from DoubleTake, February 2001

 

INTERVIEW: Wim Wenders Defends "Million Dollar Hotel ...  Anthony Kaufman interview with the director from IndieWIRE, February 7, 2001

 

German film director Wim Wenders takes the road less traveled away from blockbuster thrillers toward poetic and philosophical destinations  Kareem Abu-Zeid interview from The Daily Princeton, March 1, 2001

 

Hopper and Wenders: Until the End of the World - European ...  Dennis Hopper and Wim Wenders in discussion at the Berlinale, from European Film, 2003

 

Wim Wenders Don't Come Knocking | Emanuel Levy  Interview with the filmmaker, February 14, 2006

 

Palermo Shooting With Wim Wender | Emanuel Levy  Interview with the director, May 23, 2008

 

Wim Wenders: Show, don't tell - Telegraph  Mick Brown interview, April 4, 2011

 

Wim Wenders, A Retrospective Interview | Collider   Kristen Yoonsoo Kim interview from Collider, August 28, 2015

 

Wim Wenders - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

SAME PLAYER SHOOTS AGAIN (short)          F                      4

Germany  (12 mi)  1967  

 

obviously, this film did nothing for me, the exact same image shown with a different color palette

 

SUMMER IN THE CITY                 D                     61

Germany  (125 mi)  1970    

 

his graduation thesis film, notable only for it's continuous use of the Kinks music

 

THE GOALIE’S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK (Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter)

Germany  Austria  (101 mi)  1973

 

Dave Kehr - Chicago Reader  Dave Kehr

Wim Wenders's first mature film (1972), based on Peter Handke's novel about a soccer player who kills a young woman for no good reason and wanders off into the German provinces, less to escape the police than to find himself. Wenders's refusal to allow any psychological insight renders the film intriguingly obscure. It is all on the surface, yet the surface remains unruffled. In German with subtitles. 101 min.

Edinburgh U Film Society [Philip Kelley]

If you always suspected that football was in fact a fascinating paradigm of the human condition, this could be the film for you. Apparently, the goalkeeper is intellectually the most interesting player on the football pitch. Wim Wenders' debut feature is a couple of hours in the life of one such keepen an archetypally alienated "existential" hero, even deeper than Eric Cantona. He wanders through the film a spectator of his own actions, as unaware of what he'll do next as we are, having seemingly given up hope of working out a best plan of action. Somewhere along the way an unplanned murder "happens" by his hand; and if you spot the similarities with Meursault in L'Etranger, it's probably no coincidence that Albert Camus did a bit of goal-keeping on the side.

The script is a rather loose adaptation of a short novel by Peter Handke whose German title: Die Angst des Tomanns beim Elfmeter has a bit more credibility than its rather silly English equivalent.

The budget is nothing compared to Wenders' more recent megabucks blockbusters such as Until The End Of The World or Faraway, So Close - the sets here look as though they failed to make the grade for Prisoner Cell Block H, and one can only assume the heavy-handed editing is Wenders' homage to the French New Wave masters. The film is not without influence of its own though - "Beat Takeshi does for baseball in Boiling Point what Wenders did here for football, even starting and ending with a match. For a first feature here the lad from Germany's played a blinder.

Cinepassion.org [Fernando F. Croce]

The sports metaphor is stated in Night Moves ("One side is just losing slower than the other"), Wim Wenders opens and closes on the damp greens of the soccer field. The existential athlete (Arthur Brauss) is introduced adjusting his socks while the ball zips into the net he’s guarding, he strolls off the stadium after a row with the referee, end of the game and beginning of the voyage or vice-versa. His idle wandering around Vienna leads him to the kino cashier (Erika Pluhar), they ride the elevator at night into a neon-bathed hotel room in a brief Magritte effect. She recounts a dream the following morning, "sometimes a fire-extinguisher is a flamethrower," he strangles her with neither reason nor malice. In contrast to Fassbinder’s concurrent crackup (Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?), the rupture here is at once murky and sunlit, a most gently slipping rationality. The aftermath of the murder unfolds in bucolic terrain, a villa near the border run by a former lover (Kai Fischer), less a sanctuary than a tranquil place to wait for the inevitable. "Who gets lost these days?" Clogged with implosive angst, Wenders’ Teutonic Meursault is not out of joint with the world but very much an unnervingly blank part of it, emotional dislocation keeps his frenzy masked until a jukebox earful of Van Morrison’s "Gloria" brings it back. Reality is a videotaped replay on a grainy telly, sprinklings of surrealism (ants in the teapot, flies under the pillow), a mute schoolboy drowned in the woods embodies the state of communication. The anti-suspense builds to a flicker of light behind the protagonist’s numb visage, the human condition as the unlucky goalie "in the wrong corner, sitting in a puddle." The alliance with Hawks’ Red Line 7000 is explicitly acknowledged, Kitano offers a baseball-gangland retelling in Boiling Point. With Libgart Schwarz, Marie Bardischewski, Rosl Dorena, Rüdiger Vogler, and Michael Toost.

Fright Site, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick Review

The German filmmaker Wim Wenders has become deservedly famous with arthouse faves like PARIS TEXAS and WINGS OF DESIRE, but few seem to remember that he started his career with this stark and disturbing study of a senseless murder and its aftermath. Mixing acute social observation with psychological angst, it emerges as one of the most interesting films of a very interesting filmmaker. 

The Package

Wim Wenders, along with Werner Herzog and R.W. Fassbinder, was one of the guiding lights of the "New German Cinema" of the seventies, and THE GOALIE'S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK, Wenders's debut, is one of the most important films of that movement. It has parallels in Fassbinder's WHY DOES HERR R. RUN AMOK? (1971) and Michael Haneke's later THE SEVENTH CONTINENT (1989), two German films that pitilessly examine the dehumanizing effects of modern society. Wenders's film is just as savage in its critique of "modern" (well, circa 1970) Germany, but unlike those other films, both of which end with their protagonists committing acts of shocking violence, this one starts off with its main character nonchalantly strangling a woman to death.

The Story

Having just been suspended for missing a penalty kick, it could be that the Josef is simply upset, but the real reasons for the murder are never explained. For the remainder of the film, Wenders forces us to experience the most mundane details of Josef's life, as he escapes to a small provincial town where he takes long bus rides and carries on meaningless conversations with the local residents. He also passively records the progress of the police investigation of the murder, which always seems to be on the verge of nabbing him-not that this disturbs Joseph any, as his sense of reality steadily ebbs.

By deliberately withholding any explanation for Joseph's actions, Wenders seems to be suggesting that the reasons are too ambiguous to be brought to light-or that perhaps there simply aren't any.

The Direction

Whether one finds this film fascinating or simply maddening (a good case can be made for either position), it remains an uncommonly assured debut. As with most of Wenders's early films (ALICE IN THE CITIES, KINGS OF THE ROAD), it's a "road" movie, meaning that the main character is in transit for the majority of the action, much of which was improvised on actual locations.

The filmmaking is completely uncluttered and naturalistic, lending an even more disquieting air to the already unsettling subject matter. As for the murder itself, it's presented in an unshowy, almost nonchalant manner, the same way in which we see Joseph boarding a bus or chatting with his neighbors. He may be a homicidal sociopath, but Joseph seems to fit in quite well with the world around him-which seems to be the whole point.

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick' review by Joe ...  Joe Baker

 

Wim Wenders Smartly Adapts Peter Handke's “The Goalie's ...  Generosa Fierro

 

Peter Handke: The Goalie's Anxiety At The Penalty Kick - World .  World Literature Forum

 

The Goalie's Anxiety - The New Yorker  Richard Brody

 

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick - KLCUBE free ...

 

'The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick' - Reading Matters  book review

 

Peter Handke's The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick ...  Ilona Meyer book review

 

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972)

 

The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty | Project Gutenberg ...

 

The Goalie's Anxiety At The Penalty Kick Review | TVGuide ...

 

Movie Review - Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter ...  also seen here:  Vincent Canby - The New York Times 

 

The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty (1972) - Wikipedia

 

ALICE IN THE CITIES (Alice in den Städten) Road Trilogy Pt. 1               A                     96

Germany  (110 mi)  1974

 

Long distance information, give me Memphis Tennessee
Help me find the party trying to get in touch with me
She could not leave her number, but I know who placed the call
‘Cause my uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall

 

Help me, information, get in touch with my Marie
She’s the only one who’d phone me here from Memphis Tennessee
Her home is on the south side, high up on a ridge
Just a half a mile from the Mississippi Bridge

 

Help me, information, more than that I cannot add
Only that I miss her and all the fun we had
But we were pulled apart because her mom did not agree
And tore apart our happy home in Memphis Tennessee

 

Last time I saw Marie she’s waving me good bye
With hurry home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye
Marie is only six years old, information please
Try to put me through to her in Memphis Tennessee


—“Memphis, Tennessee” by Chuck Berry, 1959, Memphis, Tennessee by Chuck Berry from movie "Alice in ... YouTube (1:23)

 

Wim Wenders was born in Düsseldorf in Allied occupied Germany just a few months after the end of WWII, where he studied medicine and philosophy at the local university before quitting his studies and moving to Paris to become a watercolor painter in October 1966.  He applied for art school and film school and was rejected by both, working instead as an apprentice copperplate engraver for Johnny Friedlander.  Describing this as the loneliest period in his life, living in a freezing Parisian apartment, he could be found every day from the time the studios closed until midnight at the Henri Langlois’ Cinémathèque Française watching as many as five movies a day and well over 1000 films in his year in Paris.  Returning to Germany the following year, Wenders is the only member (besides Volker Schlöndorff, who’s a tad older) of the 1970’s German film movement to have attended film school, spending three years at the University of Television and Film Munich (which notoriously rejected Rainer Werner Fassbinder), where he met his long-time Dutch cinematographer, Robby Müller, and Peter Przygodda, who edited nearly all his films up until 2008.  Wenders grew quite critical of the German film industry, having spent three months as an apprentice for the United Artists’ office in Düsseldorf, lambasting the industry while working as a film critic for FilmKritik magazine.  As part of the 60’s counterculture, he was active, even arrested once, while protesting against the Vietnam War, but retained an unshakable bond with America, where he continued to devotedly attend screenings of American westerns while becoming an avid collector of rock ‘n’ roll records, having one of the most extensive ever seen, according to Dennis Hopper.  Nonetheless, adapting a painting style to film, even his early shorts reflect a prevailing mood of emptiness, where he started to identify with loners unable to connect to society.     

 

Just having worked on THE SCARLET LETTER (1973), a made for TV film that was by all accounts a disaster to make, where the director was on the verge of abandoning his quest to become a film director altogether, Wenders notes that the only saving grace was filming a short scene between Rüdiger Vogler and a young 8-year old child actress Yella Rottlӓnder, claiming he loved that scene so much that he vowed to make his next project something that only featured those two individuals, which led to the creation of ALICE IN THE CITIES, which turned out to be the most important film of his career, providing the success that he needed, making one of his most exquisite and elegant films, while also claiming they were both an absolute delight to work with.  Unlike the suffocatingly restrictive script of filming a 19th century novel, this is a much more improvisational, free-form style, traveling on the road for the first time in America from North Carolina to New York City, continuing in Europe from Amsterdam to Germany, where the actors themselves carry the film.  It’s also the first example of Wenders’ own unique style, something we can attribute just to him, though in the process, perhaps unintentionally, he also discovered the road movie genre.  What he envisioned was a very personal film, with an idea developing out of the Chuck Berry song, Chuck Berry - Memphis, Tennessee (1959) - YouTube (2:18), identifying with the lead character, Rüdiger Vogler as Philip Winter, a journalist traveling the Eastern coast by car that wanted to write something about the American landscape, but realized he was unable to do so, taking Polaroid pictures instead.  Missing a deadline to submit his story, he contemplates that perhaps the story will come together in retrospect, after he’s had a chance to digest his experience.  According to Wenders, photography is a solitary occupation, which goes hand in hand with Winter traveling alone, reflecting the desperate state of not knowing what he wants or even who he is, as the adventure appears open ended, filled with promise and empty spaces, yet you inevitably end up in the same motels, gas stations, and roadside stops, where they all begin to look exactly alike.  One noted difference between shooting films in America and Europe is that American landscapes are themselves the focus, each shot more spacious, offering more open light, while everything has to be squeezed and framed into the more claustrophobic European scenes.

 

The opening, near wordless sequence is an assembled montage of being on the road, with views of airplanes, highways, motels, cars, trains, taxi’s, sidewalks, alleyways, and boats, all conceivable means of travel, with a variety of shots out the windows and through the windshields of moving cars, but as he’s running out of money, it’s time to head back home to Germany.  At the airport, he learns of a strike that is preventing incoming flights, forcing them to fly the next day to Amsterdam instead, where at the counter he helps translate for another German woman (Lisa Kreuzer) traveling with her young nine-year old child Alice (Yella Rottlӓnder), and helps them find a nearby hotel for the night before looking up an old girlfriend, Angela (Edda Köchl, the director’s first wife, divorced in the same year of the film’s release when Wenders marries Alice’s mother, Lisa Kreuzer), who is forced to endure a litany of complaints about what a horrible trip he’s had, listening to that “sickening” radio and “inhuman” TV, claiming he’s lost touch with the world.

 

The inhuman thing about American TV is not so much that they hack everything up with commercials, though that’s bad enough, but in the end all programs become commercials. Commercials for the status quo. Every image radiates the same disgusting and nauseated message. A kind of boastful contempt. Not one image leaves you in peace, they all want something from you.

 

Winter reflects the director’s ambivalence about America, as he is a character both fascinated and at the same time revolted, with Wenders, in some of his harshest criticism, claiming America has “betrayed and sold” its own dream.  One of the initial discoveries on one’s first trip to America is the extensive influence of money and commercialization, where films, something Wenders finds holy and sacred, are slaughtered by commercials on TV, cut up into tiny pieces and even shortened to fit into convenient time slots, so that the version shown on TV has nothing to do with the original cinematic concept, where it instead becomes the enemy of artistic pursuits.  Winter discovers this while trying to watch John Ford’s YOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939) in a cheap motel, eventually smashing the TV set on the floor in disgust.  One story Wenders often tells is how he used to visit Monument Valley in each of his trips to America, as he felt such an identification with the John Ford westerns that were shot there.  But curiously, they closed the roads into the area and turned it into a theme park, where the only way to see it now is to ride a train packed with tourists, like they have at Disneyland, turning it into a sinister site of exploitation, a commercial advertisement owned by Marlboro requiring paid admission, with speeches on megaphones identifying what used to be fully accessed for free.  It’s this kind of rude awakening that has frustrated Winter and caught him off-guard.  Angela, however, has no sympathy, claiming he was lost long ago, suggesting the ability to see and hear fades away when you lose one’s sense of self.

 

You don’t have to travel across America for that.  You lose touch when you lose your sense of identity.  And that is long gone.  That’s why you always need proof, proof that you still exist—your stories and your experiences—you treat them like raw eggs.  As if only you experience things.  And that’s why you keep taking those photos.  For further proof that it was really you who saw something. 

 

Showing him the door, telling him he can’t stay there, he wanders back to the hotel near the airport and joins his newfound friends, spending the night in cramped spaces, only to discover the mother, who had unfinished business with a boyfriend, has left a note to meet her the next day atop the Empire State building, but she’s a no show, leaving a note in the hotel room to go ahead with Alice and she’d meet them in Amsterdam.  What follows afterwards is largely an improvisation along a theme inspired by long-time friend and collaborator, Austrian writer Peter Handke, who was raising a young daughter as a single parent.  Similarly, Winter finds himself toting around a precocious young girl he barely knows, not knowing the first thing about parenting or fatherhood.  It’s an intrguing idea on many levels, as postwar Germany, after the fall of Hitler, was absent a father figure itself, still struggling along similar themes.  One of the more heartbreaking moments occurs when Alice’s mother fails to show up in Amsterdam, as Alice locks herself up in the airport bathroom traumatized and totally disconsolate, Alice In the Cities 1974 - Excerpt - Nein Nein Nein - YouTube (3:28).  It’s here the focus of the film shifts from taking pictures of transitory moments to Alice and her need to be reconnected to her family.  By default, he becomes an unwilling single parent, going through completely recognizable circumstances experienced by others on a daily basis where he has to set aside his own needs in order to care for a child.  The camera adores Alice as she goes through every manner of mood shift, and can’t really get enough of her, as this young actress literally steals the film with an all-embracing personality, something rarely seen in other Wenders films.  She literally takes this man by the hand, assuming the role of the adult, and leads him around the country in search of some unknown that might only exist in her mind, yet he dutifully does his best to help, driving around the streets of Wüppertal in search of her grandmother’s home that Alice assures him she’d recognize, becoming something of a travelogue in images, including wonderfully captured moments, like the windmill designs on the Amsterdam hotel room window shutters, the brief monorail trip traveling underneath the tracks on the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, or exploring the factories of the Ruhr area, which is where Wenders went to high school.  Easily the most poignant scene, perhaps in all of Wenders’ works, comes when they stop for ice-cream and a young boy sits alone by the jukebox playing Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again,” Alice in den Städten - On the road again - YouTube (4:37), and Alice quietly confesses her grandmother doesn’t live in Wüppertal.  The tenderness and aching loneliness of abandoned children just comes rushing through the screen, where everything Wenders has ever been searching for is contained in that marvelously beautiful scene.  Just a decade later, there’s such a huge difference between the evocative sadness of this jukebox scene and the jubilation expressed by the French New Wave as they collectively dance the Madison in Godard’s BAND À PART (1964) Bande à part (1964) - Dance scene [HD] - YouTube (3:57). 

 

The rug has been pulled out from underneath us when he takes Alice to the police station, as it’s clear that’s the last thing she needs, but poor Winter is running out of options and doesn’t know what else to do.  Fassbinder, for instance, spent his entire career searching for the historical role the Nazi’s played in constructing the German identity, examining the role each German played in the process, not so Wenders, who instead examined all the missing pieces and empty spaces left behind after the defeat of National Socialism, staring straight into the void of a country still struggling to define their own identity, leaning towards America to help fill that void, and to that end, who better than Chuck Berry defines that uninhibited joy of rock music, as Winter attends a live concert in Wüppertal, Memphis, Tennessee by Chuck Berry from movie "Alice in ... YouTube (1:23), which is actually color footage obtained from documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker with the color washed out.  By the time he gets back to his hotel, who should be waiting for him, but Alice, who slipped away from the police, as they go on yet another run at her grandmother’s house, where the police questioning helped restore some missing memories, providing a photograph, much like Travis provides of the vacant lot he purchased in Paris, Texas (1984) scheduled for demolition, or we see them perform synchronous exercising before having a needed swim.  The entire film is a series of vignettes shot in black and white on 16mm by Robby Müller, with a shooting crew of only six people, where each sequence fades to black, providing a sad and melancholy experience of never really getting to a particular destination, but experiencing each other’s company along the way.  The film accumulates a certain density over time, as we realize the temporary nature of the actual time they will spend together before moving on to new aspects of their lives.  However small it may seem over the course of one’s lifetime, the time capsule preserved here in cinematic form becomes a diary-like, intercontinental photo-essay on travel and time, revealing the significance of the transitory nature of things, none more remarkable than a newspaper article read in one of the final sequences where Winter reads about the passing of film legend John Ford, who died during the shooting.  What’s unique about this film is that it generates true feelings, however brief, from well-developed, sympathetic characters, where there is a humaneness and sense of gentle compassion about this film, expanding upon the usual existential emptiness and angst, as these emotions seem to last a lifetime.  

 

Note

Rüdiger Vogler is Bruno Winter in Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3 (1976), while revising his role as Phillip Winter, at least name-wise, in Wenders later film Until the End of the World (Bis ans Ende der Welt)  (1991). 

 

Guest review by Evan Wang

 

Alice in the Cities        A-

 

It opens with a shot of an empty sky except that a plane flies by and finally disappears. The camera pans down to a road sign, and then to the sea. We hear the sound of the tide, and then in the next shot see the 31 year-old Philip Winter sitting underneath a boardwalk taking a picture with his Polaroid.

 

That sequence of images starts Alice in the Cities, the fourth feature film from Wim Wenders, or rather the first one entirely of his own after he realized that the previous three were either too heavily influenced by other filmmakers such as John Cassavetes and Alfred Hitchcock or simply an adaptation from literature. It was also the first time for Rüdiger Vogler, one of Wenders’ regular casting choices, to play the character Philip Winter, who would continue to appear in many of Wenders’ later films with the same name, only in different occupations. Here, he is a German writer commissioned to write about what he sees in the United States but is apparently having trouble coming up with the story and has already missed the deadline. His alternative seems to be constantly taking pictures wherever he goes, hoping to find inspiration, which, of course, does not appeal to his editor, or even to himself. “They never really show what it was you saw,” mutters Philip, but he takes them anyway.

 

Philip has already spent most of his money, and can barely afford a plane ticket back to Munich after selling his ride for 300 bucks. His bad luck does not end here, however, and he arrives at the airport only to find that all the flights to Germany have been cancelled because of a strike. He decides to take the offer of a flight the next day to Amsterdam, and sharing the same fate with him is Alice, a nine year-old girl who is also going back to Germany with her mother, Lisa, who is eager to run away from the breakup with her boyfriend. It turns out that Lisa is not as ready to leave as she thinks, where Philip ends up being the one taking Alice with him, while Lisa has gone back to straighten things out with the boyfriend, promising to meet them in Amsterdam, although she will not be able to keep that promise.

 

As the first installment of Wenders’ so-called Road Movie Trilogy, the “story” part pretty much ends here. The rest of the film is no more than Philip and Alice wandering around different cities in Germany trying to locate the house of her grandma’s that Alice believes she can recognize when they drive by, even though she cannot remember at all where it is. But before we dive into that, let us go back a little bit to a scene where Philip drops in at his ex-girlfriend’s, looking for a place to spend the night before his flight, since the conversation between the two is probably the most sophisticated one in the entire film. He complains about his trip, claiming that “Soon as you leave New York, nothing changes anymore” and that he is being consumed by what he hears from the radio and sees on the TV. “I lost touch with the world,” says Philip. “You did that long ago,” she responds, “You don’t have to travel across America for that.” She goes on saying “You treat your stories and your experiences like raw eggs, as if only you experience things, and that’s why you keep taking those photos, for further proof that it was really you who saw something. That’s why you came here. So someone would listen to you and the stories that you’re really telling yourself.”

 

“The pictures never caught up with reality,” says Philip, again, before she tells him that he cannot stay.

 

We have good reasons to believe that it is Wenders who is speaking here in Philip’s voice as an alter-ego character that is re-created throughout their collaborations, and we know that later he would revisit the same subject in one of his “diary” shorts: Reverse Angle: Ein Brief aus New York, as well his documentary on Yasujirō Ozu, Tokyo-Ga. How do you present what you see in the form of images? A question he has been asking himself ever since his start as a filmmaker, it seems, wondering how to make images distinctly your own unique vision without diluting the reality of the image.

 

It is rare to see a filmmaker as persistently concerned about his relationship with medium and art-form as Wim Wenders. He has so much faith in what a story can do, while always cautious about the role image plays when telling them, so nearly 20 years after Alice in the Cities, he seems to be even more straightforward about it in his epic piece Until the End of the World; “I didn’t know the cure for the disease of images. All I knew was how to write. But I believed in the magic and healing power of words, and of stories,” says Eugene Fitzpatrick who, in the film, is determined in rescuing his lover with his writing from an addiction to a device that can record dreams. One can assume, then, by witnessing an era of rapidly developing technological progress, especially in the communications age, that Wenders’ resentment has only grown, since it was already apparent in Alice in the Cities, to a degree that you automatically know, when you see the “inhuman” TV thrown on the floor by Philip Winter, that there will be more. Also because of this fascination, Wenders’ made his recent documentary, The Salt of the Earth, almost like a fan letter to a master of telling stories through image, the photographer Sebastião Salgado. “He cares about people,” comments Wenders, in voiceover.

 

People who have not been worn out by the dullness and hardship of life, or people with still a little bit of innocence in them, is what Wenders really cares about, likely as much as Salgado does. People are what stories are about, and whom stories are written for. One of my favorite parts of Alice in the Cities is all the kids, mostly seen through Alice’s eyes in her POV shots, listening to a radio on the train, licking an ice-cream next to a jukebox or trying to keep up with the car on a bicycle, travelling, seeing, listening and thinking with our two protagonists, one of whom is trying to get rid of the other by locating her mother, or where her grandma lives, although he never admits it, but they seem to have found much more, and are enjoying the process. It only ceases being fun when everything we do becomes a mission forced upon us, taking on an entirely different purpose. It is not that things no longer change, it is just that we are blinded to see it. What a tragedy for the world of adults.

 

Before he realizes it, Philip has stopped taking pictures, and ironically, in the film, the only picture that matches with reality is an old one found in Alice’s wallet of her grandma’s house, which actually leads them to the correct place. Eventually they stop looking for her mother or grandma, but isn’t it the essence of a “road-movie” that you find something that means much more to you than what you are looking for, even before you reach the destination? It is said that Until the End of the World was conceived as the “ultimate road-movie” by Wenders, however, he might have already made it 20 years earlier with considerably less travelling.

 

We see Philip and Alice on a train in the last shot of the film, and then it starts zooming out until you realize that it is taken from a plane, towards where?

 

Alice in the Cities | Chicago Reader  Dave Kehr

Wim Wenders's roughly styled but sensitive 1974 film about fading cultural identities. Long-faced Rüdiger Vogler, a Wenders favorite, is a German photojournalist in search of the Real America. While in New York, he reluctantly accepts responsibility for Alice, a nine-year-old German girl abandoned by her mother. Together they return to Europe in search of the girl's grandmother, remembered, dimly, as living in a small village. Which one, they don't know. Without a place to stop, the characters continue to move—restlessly, desperately, the end point always out of sight. In English and subtitled German.

Alice in the Cities - The New Yorker  Richard Brody

In Wim Wenders’s 1974 drama, Rüdiger Vogler plays the director’s alter ego, Philip Winter, a thirtysomething German journalist on the road in the United States. Taking Polaroids instead of writing a story, Philip loses his job and must go home. But first, in New York, he’s thrown together with Alice van Damm (Yella Rottländer), a nine-year-old German girl abandoned by her mother (Lisa Kreuzer), and takes her on an odyssey from Manhattan to Amsterdam and a series of German towns. With this film, Wenders crystallized his style of existential sentimentality. His cool eye for urbanism and design blends a love of kitsch with a hatred for commercialism, historicism with a fear of history’s ghosts. Wenders’s New York chapter is a loving time capsule featuring the Rockaway Beach boardwalk and the organist at Shea Stadium; his German towns blend grim industry and grubby necessity. The movie runs on American dreams; a jukebox playing Canned Heat, a Chuck Berry concert, and even John Ford’s obituary lend a touch of life to Wenders’s gray continent. In German and English.

Cinemascope: Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Stadten) [1974]

Though not as universally renowned or recognized as Paris, Texas or Kings of the Road, Alice in the Cities is, nonetheless, one of the most heartfelt, nostalgic and thoroughly satisfying works of the legendary German filmmaker Wim Wenders. This also happens to be the first chapter of Wenders’ celebrated thematically linked Road Trilogy. The movie follows the unlikely bond between and the fascinating, psychologically exploratory and self-revelatory journey of Phillip – a loner German journalist who has been given the job of roaming around and writing about the American way of life, and Alice – a nine-year old lovely little girl abandoned by her mother and incidentally entrusted to the custody of Phillip. Dissatisfied with his drab existence and reluctant of the added responsibility, Phillip undergoes a gradual change of heart and attitude as he decides to roam around Germany with the lovable Alice to find her grandmother. As film critic Hal Erickson so aptly put it, “The plot takes second place to Wenders’ fascination with the contrast between the neon-and-billboard ambience of the U.S. and the rolling hills and the industrial pockets of Deutschland”. I couldn’t have appraised this mesmerizing road movie, boasting of terrific black-and-white photography, more precisely, or for that matter, more eloquently.

[Alice in the Cities] (Wim Wenders, 1974, West Germany)  Jonathan Bygraves from Serene Velocity

Wim Wenders’ best films are populated by itinerant loners, roaming around territories foreign to them with a keen eye for observing the curiosities of a different culture and landscape to their own. Though his earlier films had, to varying extents, exhibited a debt towards the American road movie, it was his 1974 film Alice in the Cities which fully betrayed the director’s love for that type of film, as well as signalling his intent to reinvent it in a European setting and context.

Shot in a choppy, improvisational style belying a debt to Truffaut, the film first follows German writer Philip Winter trawling around the United States, on an assignment to complete a piece of reportage about its culture, from the standpoint of this steadfast European cynic. Mesmerised by its neon-lit boulevards and cheap roadside motels, he takes copious polaroid photographs of everything, but the stifling atmosphere of tacky television and the ever-blaring radio has choked his creative mojo, and he finds himself unable to actually write anything, to the consternation of his agent and publisher.

He decides to return home, but at the airport befriends a woman who proceeds enigmatically to disappear in order to sort out some personal issues, leaving Philip in charge of escorting her precocious nine-year-old daughter Alice back to Europe. It is here that the real journey of discovery begins; Philip, so jaded from his unfulfilling trip to the States, suddenly finds himself responsible for something other than himself, and while initially the relationship between them is frosty, the man and the girl strike up an unusual bond in their search across Germany for her grandmother’s house. He stops taking pictures of everything, and is able to write again. Alice, on the other hand, loses some of her coldness and comes to relish her new found freedom with her newly-found chaperone. For all of her precociousness, we are reminded that she is still a naive young girl – unable to understand why Philip sets his watch back six hours on arrival in Amsterdam.

It is unusual for a ‘road movie’, in that there are no real great revelations, no big surprises, no grand changes in the characters’ outlooks on life; neither is the film a picture-postcard advertisement for travelling around Germany, although there are some wonderfully captured moments – the windmill designs on the Amsterdam hotel room window shutters, the brief monorail trip from Wüppertal, the factories of the Ruhr valley, the pair performing physical jerks in a car park before sunbathing. In their search for Alice’s grandmother’s house, Wenders’ camera scans passing houses, so elegant and provincial compared to the skyscapers and seedy motels we had seen in America earlier.

At times, the film seems almost monotonous, capturing moments where nothing is actually happening – in one extended scene, they order ice-cream in a small cafe whilst watching a boy humming along to a rock and roll song on an old fashioned jukebox; in another the camera lingers for a noticeably long time on a young girl following the pair’s car along a residential side-street on her bike. But these moments in the film give breathing space – an effect similar to the ‘pillow shots’ employed by Wenders’ forefather Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu – and it is the fact that the two of them are increasingly able to do nothing together so easily which illustrates their strengthening bond.

There is little in the way of sentimentality, and unusually for a road movie, it is at times difficult to see exactly where everything is heading. Yet by the end, one cannot help but feel saddened by the pair’s inevitable parting, and moved by the way that they have enriched each others lives in such a simple but unlikely way. Wenders himself cannot bear to split the two, so he finishes with the two of them on the train taking Alice back to her mother, before sweeping away into a panorama of the German countryside, the backdrop to their voyage of self-rediscovery. A similar journey will be undertook in Wenders’ Palme D’Or-winning masterpiece Paris, Texas, though Travis’ and Hunter’s journey will be more about forgiveness and redemption; Alice in the Cities reminds us of the infinite capacity to rediscover ourselves through other people.

REVIEW: Alice in den Städten [Alice in the Cities] [1974 ...  Jared Mobarak

After directing three films he didn’t believe possessed a voice all his own, number four became Wim Wenders‘ make-it-or-break-it moment as far as whether to keep moving forward with cinema or to choose another path. Considering he’s still working today, we know the commercial and personal success Alice in den Städten [Alice in the Cities] provided. The first of his “Road Movie Trilogy” (although he would continue the motif throughout his oeuvre afterwards too), the film had its hiccups as the script written in response to collaborator and friend Peter Handke‘s novel Short Letter, Long Farewell mirrored Peter Bogdanovich‘s Paper Moon so closely that Wenders immediately canceled production. Cajoled by Samuel Fuller to do it anyway, Wenders retooled the script, rolled cameras, and jump-started his legendary career.

The film is ultimately an existential look at a German journalist who is—as his ex-girlfriend/lover/acquaintance Angela (Edda Köchl) says—psychologically lost abroad without an identity. He’s been traveling the winding roads of America for weeks as inspiration for a piece his publisher tasked him to write and he’s struggled from Day One to do anything other than snap Polaroids along the way. We quickly learn he’s doing this so that there’s evidence he has existed despite being alone and bored in a foreign land tainted by the love of his first stop: New York City. Here was a place he could embrace, alive and welcoming unlike the monotonous motels with nothing to do but watch TV. How could inspiration strike if every day remains the same?

Wenders ensures we sympathize with Phil Winter (Rüdiger Vogler) by showing us brief vignettes of car radio chatter, rained upon windshields, and silence save the click of his camera’s shutter spliced together with dissolves to black that last an infinity. It’s as though he’s putting us to sleep along with the character’s creativity, lulling us into becoming one with his struggle until a chance meeting at the airport introduces a smile through Lisa (Lisa Kreuzer) and her nine-year old daughter Alice (Yella Rottländer). They supply him a taste of home—a familiarity to break free from the doldrums of long roads and motionless trees. They give him purpose as a translator to acquire tickets into Amsterdam from which they can all take a bus back to Germany.

Alice also supplies the innocent excitement Phil could no longer muster. To her the Empire State Building was a destination and not another skyscraper competing with every other seen on his journey. Experiencing her enjoyment helps him finally start writing as it proves his ambivalence to the consumerist mentality of the Land of Free as legitimately lacking. It’s therefore a lark to spend a couple hours with the girl, waiting for her mother to join them, and a chore once the reality that Lisa isn’t coming to relieve him sets in. Suddenly this broken down and tired man longing for the comfort of home becomes babysitter to a stranger. Neither sought their current situation and both are drowning in self-pity, lashing out with no escape in sight.

This is where Wenders strikes gold because Alice in the Cities isn’t some cute odd couple pairing for antics or heartwarmingly revelatory meaning of life epiphanies. These two have been thrust together by the allure of a woman as lost or more than they are—her saddling Phil with her daughter a means to kick herself in the pants and return to Europe instead of staying with the boyfriend she’s working up the courage to leave. They try to put on a brave face at first, but arriving in Amsterdam to no Lisa can’t help make Alice feel abandoned and Phil frustrated by his new fate. What was once a laughter-filled adventure with an end in sight ultimately evolves into a tense journey towards the unknown.

The authenticity of this dynamic is beautifully rendered as two people making the best of a tough situation made worse by an utter lack of money. I love how easy it is for the pair to unwittingly con a stranger on the beach (Sibylle Baier) into putting them up for the night and feeding them all via the harmless question, “Do you think he’s my father?” Alice becomes the consummate wingman within this situation and they simply move on along their search for an ending afterwards. The longer they go on, though, the more we wonder whether it will all end horribly in some type of kidnapping misunderstanding. So it’s a welcome development when Phil rents a car to drive the girl to her grandmother’s home.

That in itself is a mystery as Alice draws a blank on her address, but it’s par for the course as far as forcing them in tight quarters to see whether they’ll blow. The risk is real and at one point Phil does get fed up, but these two have formed a bond that unites them no matter what comes their way. It’s a human connection they desperately need right now—she the third wheel in her mother’s globetrotting escapades and he alone seeking solace and pity from whomever is willing to provide it. They are kindred spirits, lonely and longing to be seen and heard when everyone else has pushed them aside. Doing the same to each other would be easy, but sticking together much more worthwhile.

Alice in the Cities: A Girl’s Story   Criterion essay by Allison Anders, May 31, 2016

 

Wim Wenders: “Between Me and the World”   Criterion essay by Michael Almereyda, June 04, 2016

 

Wim Wenders: Songs from Along the Road   Mixed tape on Spotify, June 07, 2016

 

Robby Müller and Wim Wenders   photo gallery, January 13, 2016

 

Alice in the Cities (1974) - The Criterion Collection

 

Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy - The Criterion Collection

 

Alice in the Cities | Tony McKibbin

 

Robert Craig, 'The Art of Seeing Rescues the Existence of Things: Notes on the Wenders Road Films and Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution (Part 1)', Offscreen Journal, January 31, 2002

 

Robert Craig, 'The Art of Seeing Rescues the Existence of Things: Notes on the Wenders Road Films and Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution (Part 2)', Offscreen Journal, January 31, 2002

 

Alice in the Cities: The Uses of Disorientation - Cinephile ...  Brenda Austin-Smith     

             

The End is a Transition: Wim Wenders' Alice in den Städten  David Heslin from Senses of Cinema, October 2014

 

Wim Wenders • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  David Tacon, May 2003

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | The Road Goes On Forever  Nick Roddick, February 10, 2012

 

Where Wim Wenders Went Wrong - The New Yorker  Richard Brody, Septeber 3, 2015

 

In a Lonely Place: On Wim Wenders' Road Movie Trilogy  Ethan Vestby

 

Alice in the Cities - TCM.com  David Kalat

 

Roads to Nowhere and Anywhere, With Kelly Reichardt and Wim ...  J. Hoberman from The New York Times, June 3, 2016

 

Wim Wenders’ “Alice in the Cities” (1974) – A World Where You May Entrust Your Child to a Stranger by Acting-Out Politics  Victor Enyutin, May 27, 2011

 

“Alice in the Cities” (1974) By Wim Wenders  by Acting-Out Politics  Victor Enyutin, February 4, 2015

 

Owen Armstrong, 'Alice in', Vertigo Magazine, No.17 - May 2008                                 

                                   

Alice in the Cities - Serene Velocity  Jonathan Bygraves                     

 

Chris Holt, 'ALICE IN THE CITIES (16 Oct 2008)', abfilms.org.uk, October 16, 2008                  

 

U.S. Go Home: Adam Nayman on "Wenders in the Cities ...  September 24, 2015

 

Notes on Alice in den Städten (Alice In The Cities) by Wim ...  Rüdiger Tomczak from shomingekiblog

 

Assimilation and Alienation in Wenders' Alice In The Cities ...  Georgina Guthrie from The Big Picture

 

Alice in the Cities (aka Alice in den Städten) - Eircom  Harry O’Brien

 

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young]

 

Mark Cousins, 'Widescreen [on Wim Wenders' Road Movies]', Prospect Magazine, Issue 143, February 29, 2008

 

The Essentials: The 10 Best Wim Wenders Films | The Playlist  Kenji Fujishima, Nicholas Laskin, Oliver Lyttelton, and Rodrigo Perez, September 3, 2015

 

Alice In The Cities | DVD Review | Film @ The Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

Alice In The Cities - DVD review by Maggie Woods

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]

 

Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy (Alice in the Cities / Wrong Move ...  Randy Miller III from DVD Talk, Criterion Blu-Ray 

 

DVDBlu Review [Christopher S. Long]

 

Daily Verdict- The Road Trilogy (Blu-ray) Criterion Collection [Gordon Sullivan]

 

All-Star Video: Review: ALICE IN THE CITIES  John Moret

 

MUBI [Glenn Kenny]

 

Gary Johnson, 'Wim Wenders Biography', Images Journal, Issue 1

 

CMI - Alice in the Cities  Dean Duncan

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Past Picks Online [Jimmy Gillman]

 

Cinepassion.org [Fernando F. Croce]

 

Kotto, 'Wim Wenders' Alice in the Cities', You Can't Eat the Venetian Blinds, December 4, 2008  Paul Kell     

 

Alice In The Cities (1974) - Wim Wenders - RoweReviews

 

FilmFanatic.org

 

Chicago Reader Capsule Review  Dave Kehr 

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Spiros Gangas]  also seen here:  EUFS: Alice in the Cities 

 

Alice In The Cities review | Little White Lies  Jonas Milk

 

Alice in the Cities | The Ultimate Picture Palace

 

Alice in the Cities | The Cinematheque

 

Alice in the Cities, the German Drama by Wim Wenders ...  Fandor

 

Alice In The Cities Review | TVGuide.com

 

Alice in the Cities (2008), directed by Wim Wenders | Film ...  David Jenkins from Time Out London

 

Alice in the Cities | Film | The Guardian  Peter Bradshaw

 

Philip French on Alice in the Cities | Film | The Guardian

 

Alice in the Cities (U) | Reviews | Culture | The Independent  Anthony Quinnn

 

Alice in the Cities - The New York Times  Nora Sayre and Lawrence Van Gelder, also seen here:  Alice in den Städten (1974) - Movies - The New York Times 

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W Tooze]

 

DVDBeaver Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

Alice in the Cities - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Road Movie trilogy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

WRONG MOVE (Falsche Bewegung) – made for TV, Road Trilogy Pt. 2                        B-                    81

Germany  (103 mi)  1975

 

I would also like to speak briefly about loneliness here in Germany. It appears to me to be more hidden and at the same time more painful than elsewhere. The history of ideas here could be responsible for this, with everybody searching for a way of living in which the overcoming of fear would be possible. Preaching virtues like courage, perseverance and industry was simply supposed to distract from fear. At least let us assume that is how it is. Like nowhere else, philosophies could be utilized as state philosophies, so that the necessarily criminal methods by which fear was to be overcome could even be legalized. Fear here is taken for vanity or ignominy. That is why loneliness in Germany is masked by all these tell-tale lifeless faces which haunt supermarkets, recreational areas, pedestrian zones, and fitness centers. The dead souls of Germany...

 

—The Industrialist (Ivan Desny)

 

In the second part of the director’s Road Movie Trilogy, Wenders veers into unexplored territory, as it’s largely an out-of-time experiment gone wrong, loosely based on an 18th century coming-of-age novel, Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, set in contemporary times.  In the earlier era, leaving home and traveling was a means of acquiring a wealth of experience that one could draw upon for inspiration and literary expansion.  Released in 1975, made for television, the film won seven major prizes from the German Film Awards, including Best Director and Best Screenplay, though it’s a film that resists interpretation and is perhaps best known for its interesting use of Fassbinder actors, while also notable for Nastassja Kinski’s marvelous movie debut at the age of 13.  Adapted by Peter Handke, an Austrian novelist and playwright who collaborated earlier with Wenders on THE GOALIE’S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK (1972) and later on Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) (1987), there is a coolness of tone that never wavers throughout, psychologically distant and audience unfriendly, featuring an overly detached lead character Wilhelm (Rüdiger Vogler) who readily acknowledges through an inner narration that he has a hatred and distrust of his fellow people, a self-obsessed man incapable of pity, yet he aspires to be a writer.  Blinded by his own shortcomings, he sets out on a journey to discover the truth, with mixed results, as there’s some question whether he learns anything at all, and may simply have taken a “wrong turn.”  Filmed in color, surprisingly, often at dusk, it must be said that this is a sad and gloomy experience, though not without its comical moments, where this lonely odyssey through the minefields of a contemporary post-war German landscape is akin to a self-portrait of the artist and the nation that includes explorations of autobiographical identity, resurrecting longstanding historical issues of guilt, loss, anger, and confusion, where the question of self-worth is always lingering close to the surface. 

 

The film opens with an aerial shot over the town of Glücksstadt in northern Germany near the mouth of the Elbe River, where we find Wilhelm playing a Troggs album before putting his fist through the window, indicative not only of pent-up frustration, but his inability to break through his own alienation to become a successful writer, where we learn he hasn’t spoken in several days, claiming he’s not desperate, just listless and fed up, and that he’d like to be able to write “something essential.”  Certainly one of his impediments is living at home with his domineering mother, played by Marianne Hoppe, a German actress from the 30’s, who not only packs his bags, choosing several books, but buys him a train ticket to Bonn, the provincial Capital of Germany at the time, claiming he needs to get out and explore the world.  From out his window he sets his eyes upon Hanna Schygulla, who just completed work on Fassbinder’s EFFI BRIEST (1974), playing actress Therese Farner, who, after an exchanging glance, boards another train, opening the window while continuing to smile at Wilhelm.  Passing her phone number to him through the conductor, Wilhelm gazes at her as the trains move parallel to one another, Falsche Bewegung YouTube (1:23), a striking motif that also suggests a romanticized notion of idealized love.  Love stories are not something we often get in Wenders’ films, and this is no exception, where the time they spend together could perhaps better be described as the absence of love, ultimately leading to outright revulsion and disgust.  It’s also on the train where he first meets Kinski as Mignon, playing a mute acrobat, juggler, and pickpocket, traveling with her much older father calling himself Laertes (Hans Christian Blech), the same name as Odysseus’s father, where metaphorically he may as well be the father of the nation, having played a role in Nazi atrocities, causing his nose to bleed whenever he remembers the horrors of the past.  Laertes is also a Brechtian street peddler and con artist, hustling meals and tickets on the train, begging money while pretending to be blind, or passing the hat while his daughter performs.  Mignon is a beautiful, strangely compelling character that bears silent witness to the future, which remains continually out of their grasp. 

 

Like a gathering of the spirits, all the central characters meet under one roof, having added to the illustrious assemblage an Austrian poet Bernhard Landau (Peter Kern, who worked in four Fassbinder films), perhaps best known for his bad poetry and personal philosophy, “I never amounted to much and hope to stay that way,” who suggests they can all stay at the country estate of his capitalist uncle, but then leads them into the home of a complete stranger, Ivan Desny as the Industrialist, a role he revisits in THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1979), who strangely welcomes them into his home, where their arrival interrupts his suicide attempt.  What follows is a lengthy speech from the Industrialist suggesting loneliness in Germany is more painful than elsewhere, more hidden, where they are seeking a way of life to overcome their fears, something considered vain and shameful to German citizens.  “That’s why loneliness in Germany is masked by all those revealing soulless faces that haunt supermarkets, recreational areas, pedestrian zones, and fitness centers.  The dead souls of Germany.”  One by one each of the visitors heads upstairs to bed except Wilhelm, still listening intently, where the Industrialist reveals afterwards, “It was very touching to see the way you listened to me.”  The next morning the guests all amble up a slowly climbing hill overlooking the Rhine River, with some moving ahead, others lagging behind, continually shifting positions, including an examination of poetry and politics, placing it in context with the nation’s recent past, where the sense of ascendancy has a casual nature about it, yet at the same time they are seeking higher knowledge by engaging in these philosophic discussions, where Wilhelm asserts “In writing, observation’s better than inspiration,” while at the same time confessing he often misses pertinent details that stand in full view right before him, where the path to knowledge is often illusory.  This theme of hearing or not hearing, seeing but not seeing, plays a prominent role in Wenders’ films where protagonists suffer from inadequate perception of the world around them, often seen meandering, feeling alienated and lost, as the characters are here, dead souls drifting through time, spewing out soliloquies, speaking in philosophical abstractions, where the sense of disconnection to culture and identity is acute. 

 

Not for everyone, as this is easily Wenders’s most inertly dour film, and his most talkative, where little happens, yet the audience is bombarded by subtitles and various literary concepts, where the level of bleakness has never been more pronounced, exacerbated by an almost total lack of identification with the characters, instead getting lost in the contemporary German landscape.  Of particular note is Robby Müller’s cinematography and Jürgen Knieper’s off-putting musical score, where the repeated piano chords are reminiscent of the 5th Movement from Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, which was written in 1941 and first performed in a Nazi concentration camp, played here by Peter Serkin, piano and Ida Kavafian, violin, Louange à l' Immortalité de Jésus - YouTube (8:11).  Like In a Year of 13 Moons (In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden) (1978), Fassbinder at his most despairing, Wenders similarly utilizes the city of Frankfurt, at the time the nation’s financial center, where a scant outline could be seen at the time of skyscrapers being built, where the city becomes, “by extension, about the psychic immiseration of life in the soulless cities of modern corporate capitalism.” (from Thomas Elsaesser, 1996, Fassbinder's Germany: History, Identity, Subject).  This destination feels like a dead end, a place where aggressions grow stronger and relationships die, becoming a study in colorless buildings and the looming presence of high rises, as if always forced to live in the shadow of existence.  In the beginning, as the train pulls out of his hometown, Wilhelm thinks of his mother, “I would remember her better later in some other place.”  Similarly, his parting thoughts to Therese, “I know I shall love you very much one day, Therese.”  While it’s clear Wilhelm has lost his way, the road to enlightenment in this film is a meandering path of continuous soul-searching, reflecting the multiple attempts to interact and find inspiration in human companionship, but discovering instead an ambiguous world filled with sadly unfulfilled characters involved in meaningless relationships ultimately defined by their aimlessness and overall nihilistic tendencies, perhaps best expressed by the image of television sets seen playing in the corner of rooms, but all you see is the flicker of constant snow on the screen.  “If only politics and poetry could be united,” Wilhelm wonders at one point, to which Laertes responds, “That would mean the end of longing, and the end of the world.”  Wilhelm abandons his friends and heads for the other side of the country, finally seen standing atop Zugspitze, the tallest mountain in Germany, still waiting for some insight, like a Buddhist revelation of enlightenment, but in the end, despite the poetic ruminations, he has come to learn very little about himself.  Despite the intellectual pursuits, there’s not much that resembles an actual road movie, instead feeling more like an existential journey through the abyss. 

 

Chicago Reader [Dave Kehr] (capsule)

 

Wim Wenders's dispassionate 1975 study of a painfully alienated young man's journey along the Rhine, where he encounters a number of other angst-ridden souls and bemoans the damage visited on the countryside by German technoculture. Everyone wants to be an artist, but no one has anything to say. The wrong moves are geographical, historical, social, and aesthetic. It's Wenders's most dour film, and the grim tone takes its toll. There is, though, a solid and disturbing talent at work here. With Hanna Schygulla, Rüdiger Vogler, and Nastassja Kinski. In German with subtitles

 

Time Out

 

Made between Alice in the Cities and Kings of the Road, this is an odd and rather uncharacteristic work for Wenders. Basically, the problem arises from Peter Handke's script ('inspired' by Goethe's Wilhelm Meister), which tends towards a symbolism and explicitness Wenders usually steers clear of. The film follows the attempts of the central character (Vogler) to get a grip on an embryonic vocation as a writer, at the same time coming to some kind of working arrangement with the spectres of Germany's past. But Wenders' strengths are also tantalisingly in evidence: the highly-charged road sequences, the meditative use of landscape, and the tensions beneath apparently desultory encounters.

 

Movie of the Week: “The Wrong Move” - The New Yorker  Richard Brody

The rebirth of German cinema in the nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies involved provocative hybrids, such as Jean-Marie Straub’s meticulous textuality and cinephilic classicism and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s ritualistic theatricality and Sirkian melodrama. Wim Wenders, too, started out as a genius of mashup, bringing together American pop sensibilities, Eurocentrically analytical compositions, and a frank confrontation with the horrors of modern German history. For a while in the nineteen-seventies, his audacious ambition was on the front lines of world cinema, as was his 1975 film “The Wrong Move” (which I discuss in this clip). He had a painterly facility that brought warmth to chilly ideas and romanticism to depressing situations; he saw the laid-back charm of the open road along with the oppressive limits of closed borders. In “The Wrong Move,” Wenders adds another spice to the mix: one of the classics of German literature and the primordial Bildungsroman, “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship,” by Goethe, from 1795. With the overlay of the high line of German culture onto the world of young rockers, of the theatrical exuberance of the eighteenth century onto the rumpled rounds of modern urban buskers, and the grand literary heritage onto the indelible national stain of the Nazi-era depravities, Wenders turns a self-consciously casual ramble into a vast soul-searching—which is itself a tradition.

Cinemascope: The Wrong Move [1975]

 

Road movies, partly motivated by US’ sprawling highway network and neon-lit motels, and partly by the possibilities of existential meditations, formed the most definitive aspect of Wenders’ filmography. The Wrong Move was the middle chapter in his famed ‘Road Movie Trilogy’ – it was preceded by the fascinating Alice in the Cities and was followed by the powerful Kings of the Road. This made-for-TV film was also the most curious, overly philosophical and experimental of the lot (also the only one filmed in colour), even if it never reached the breathtaking beauty of the two that this was sandwiched by, thus making it the least watched of the trio. Wilhelm (Rüdiger Vogler), the depressive, uncommunicative and directionless protagonist suffering from a deep sense of existential and identity crisis, wants to be a writer, but hasn’t managed to translate his thoughts into something tangible. Realizing that he’s become akin to a frog in a well, he decides to plunge into a randomly chosen trip across West Germany in search of meaning and truth. He’s joined in his wanderings by an equally weird and drifting group of fellow travelers – Therese (Hanna Schygulla), an alluring but deeply lonely movie actress, Laertes (Hans-Christian Blech), an ageing hippie-like street musician, Mignon (Nastassja Kinski), a young and mute juggler of ambiguous sexuality, and Landau (Peter Kean), a sensitive poet of rather limited talents. The bleak tone, rambling narrative and deliberately disjointed interactions between the oddball characters, along with the underlying thematic strand of regrets, ennui, confusion and aimlessness, made this a dense, aesthetically challenging and confounding watch – striking and off-kilter in some parts while dry and self-conscious in others.

 

Cinepassion.org [Fernando F. Croce]

A loose contemporary adaptation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, the middle installment of Wim Wenders' "road movie trilogy" opens with a scene that's pure Wenders -- a young man gazes out his window while American rock rollicks out of the LP player, until he suddenly puts both fists through the glass, quietly sobbing. That's Wilhelm (Rudiger Vogler), who grudgingly accepts that, if he's ever to become the writer he wants to be, he has to overcome his dislike for people and venture out to accumulate experiences. In place of inspiration, the journey hooks him up with a group of fellow loners, the "dead souls of Germany": an apathetic actress (Hanna Schygulla), an aged ex-Nazi whose nose bleeds from "remembering" (Hans Christian Blech), his mute street-performer travelling companion (a teenage, almost tomboyish Nastassja Kinski), a pudgy poet (Peter Kern), and a suicidally bereft industrialist (Ivan Desny). The movie's West Germany aches from an inability to deal with the past (with a nation's own wrong moves), and Wenders and screenwriter Peter Handke temper the malaise by giving their Wilhelm the slightest hint of enlightenment. Studding the quintessentially German original with his love for American pop (the dilapidated mansion where the gang camps out is a shout out to Rebel Without a Cause, by Wenders idol Nicholas Ray), the filmmaker stages the narrative's progression as a series of clarifications visualized -- extraordinarily expressed in Robby Müller's lengthy tracking shots, as in a walk up a mountain road shifts from poetics to concentration camp memories. If lacking the behavioral felicities of Alice in the Cities and the visual epiphanies of Kings of the Road, the film nevertheless shares their sense of discovery and need to connect and, ultimately, to feel.

Wim Wenders's 'Wrong Move,' in Its First US Release ... - Village Voice  Michael Atkinson

Wrong Move (1975) stands as the artsiest anti-movie of Wim Wenders's road trilogy from the Seventies, back when he was a premier post-Antonionian using aimless road travel as a metaphor for film time, kicking up an existentialist storm of wheel-spinning hipster coolness.

This dyspeptic amble — made between Alice in the Cities (1974) and Kings of the Road (1976) and never before theatrically released in the U.S. — is adapted (by novelist Peter Handke) from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and though it conscientiously evokes the book's self-actualizing Romantic fever, the film itself is as un-Romantic as a train ride to nowhere.

Wenders regular Rüdiger Volger is Wilhelm, a moody, alienated would-be writer who whimsically leaves home and travels across Germany (and vertically, from the Rhine to the Zugspitze mountain peak), idly searching for a moment when he might "become." He never comes close, instead falling in with an actress (Hanna Schygulla), an itinerant father and daughter (Hans Christian Blech and an occasionally nude fourteen-year-old Nastassja Kinski), and a portly poet wannabe (Peter Kern). The five wander, dawdle, drive, encounter a suicidal industrialist, bore each other with recounted dreams, and end up back in the city, their collective "journey" — the aim of which was never articulated — dissolving into stasis and separation.

A bitter, deadpan parody of all things Romantic, Wenders's film is also so ironic about its own emptiness that it ends up being something pure: a pop dirge about how never sitting still may be the only answer to meaninglessness.

Film of the Week: Wrong Move - Film Comment  Jonathan Romney, April 15, 2016

Wim Wenders once said of his film Wrong Move (Falsche Bewegung) that it was about “how to be able to grasp the world through language.” He may or may not have specifically meant words, written or spoken, but verbal communication certainly comes thick and fast in this 1975 feature, now reissued in a 4K restoration. It’s a film dense with philosophizing and speechifying, and the most thoroughly literary of all Wenders’s films. It was scripted by playwright, novelist, and sometime director Peter Handke, who had previously written Wenders’s The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (72), and it was a loose adaptation of Goethe’s 1790s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.

We tend to think of Wenders as a romantic filmmaker, especially since Wings of Desire (87), when a certain gauche sentimentality starts getting the better of him. But in the alluringly dream-like Wrong Move, he shows himself to be a true German Romantic, with a capital R, paying homage to the most archetypal Romantic literary genre, the Bildungsroman, or novel of apprenticeship. In Goethe’s story, a young man who dreams of being a writer sets out on the road, takes up with some theatrical types and tests his dreams against the bitter limitations of reality. And that’s exactly what happens in Wenders’s film, although the reality of 1970s Germany has a harshness that seems fated to destroy his hero’s dreams, if not make them seem derisory. It may be a bleak film in text, however, but it’s hardly bleak visually, the glummer vistas that Wilhelm visits being offset by the neon vividness of much of Robby Müller’s photography, especially with its burnished gold yellows.

There are moments when we wonder whether Wenders’s modern Wilhelm (from which name “Wim” is derived) is for real. And perhaps it’s a little harder in 2016 to accept a hero who dreamily declares that he wants “to write! To write!” Whether in film or in literature, the “blocked writer” narrative—of which Wenders’s previous feature Alice in the Cities (74) was an example—has decidedly fallen from fashion. Indeed, there’s a distinct ironic distance at work between the late 18th-century genius-to-be archetype and the antihero that Wenders presents us with: a sullen small-town brooder, by turns taciturn and verbose, played by the director’s regular alter ego Rüdiger Vogler, who’s first seen sticking his fist through his bedroom window for no clear reason, after listening to a burst of the Troggs. It’s hard also not to think that Wilhelm (Vogler was then in his early thirties) is a little old for such petulant proto-punk gestures, or indeed to be still dreaming of putting pen to paper. And surely, even by the standards of early ’70s German fashion, Wilhelm is intended to look somewhat ridiculous in his reindeer-knit sweater?

It’s certainly a rum journey south that he undertakes, from his hometown of Glückstadt on the Elbe to Germany’s highest mountain, the Zugspitze. His mother (Marianne Hoppe), who’s sold her property to a supermarket, sends him on his way with encouragement to write, and he gets on a train—first stop Hamburg—to find a silent young girl (Nastassja Kinski) staring at him mysteriously. She’s accompanied by a mysterious harmonica-playing elderly man, Laertes (Hans Christian Blech), and both are avatars of characters from Goethe’s novel; in fact, Wilhelm expresses surprise to hear that she’s called Mignon, as if realizing that he’s fallen into a piece of literature. Meanwhile, he exchanges gazes with an alluring woman who’s standing on a station platform kitted out like a ’40s femme fatale: she’s actress Therese Farner (Hanna Schygulla), and although she’s taking another train (observed drawing away, in an elegantly extended travelling shot), she’ll almost magically reconnect with Wilhelm later.

Everything in Wrong Move happens as if by magic—or as if previously written in the pages of another book. While situated in a mundanely real modern Germany, the narrative is entirely anti-realistic. Wandering through the back streets of Bonn, where they observe various signs of local madness (“Do you have any idea what pain is?” screams a man from a nearby window), Wilhelm and his companions acquire the company of a portly, farcically inept Austrian poet, Bernhard Landau (Peter Kern), who later insists they join him at the mansion of his uncle. The incumbent turns out not to be his uncle after all (whoops, wrong mansion), but an industrialist (Ivan Desny) depressed after the death of his wife; the travelers stay there anyway. The next day, they all go for a long discursive stroll around the vineyards over the Rhine—one of the loci classici of German Romanticism… and so it goes on.

Without knowing Goethe’s novel, it’s hard to know exactly how the film relates to it—I’ve read a synopsis, and it appears that this version is narratively close in many ways. But knowing a certain type of cinema that does strange things with literary forebears, you can get a feel for Wenders’s and Handke’s strategy. In some ways, it’s the director’s Pierrot le Fou, a loose, ironically degraded modern wandering (the road movie is cinema’s equivalent of the literary pilgrimage or quest of yore). It channels and alludes to not just Goethe but also Faulkner, Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, and J.F. von Eichendorff’s 1826 novel Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing (Wilhelm’s in-train reading) just as Godard channeled French pre-Romantic idyll Paul et Virginie in tandem with the lovers-on-the-run likes of Gun Crazy. In fact, as a close-but-not-that-close adaptation of a literary classic, Wrong Move is rather like Aki Kaurismäki’s Crime and Punishment (83) in the sense that the director has a copy of the novel in his pocket when he sets off, but the actual letter of the text gets left behind in the journey.

Wrong Move seems more about German history—both political and literary—than about anything else, with cinema seemingly taking a backseat as a preoccupation (notwithstanding clips of Straub and Huillet’s The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach glimpsed on TV). The key figure in this respect is the affable, all-knowing Laertes. He first turns out to have been a runner in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and admits he wouldn’t have shaken the hand of black athlete Jesse Owens; later he emerges as guilty of some major wartime crimes. The film seems explicitly a mapping of modern Germany as a landscape in which Romantic ideals and yearnings are bitterly degraded, if not devalued entirely, as witness the following speech by the non-uncle:

“I would like to speak briefly about loneliness in Germany. It seems to me that it is more hidden and at the same time more painful than elsewhere. Fear is considered a sign of vanity or it is felt as weakness. And that is why loneliness in Germany is masked, masked by all those treacherous, bright, soulless faces that drift through supermarkets, leisure centers, pedestrian precincts, keep-fit evening classes—the dead souls of Germany.”

Here in a nutshell are the theme and the backdrop of Wrong Move—and a token of the now hard-to-swallow snobbishness of ’70s counterculture. (You can’t quite believe in Desny’s establishment character voicing Wenders’s and Handke’s own insights: it seems a rather manipulative sort of ventriloquism.)

The wordiness of Wrong Move is also a little hard to swallow, but what’s clear, ironically, is that it’s really a film about film, and about the desire to film. Wilhelm admits he’s not much of an observer, but prides himself on having what he calls “an erotic gaze”—that is, he will see something he previously missed and get a feeling for it so that it finally becomes a part of him (is this akin, one wonders, to the “ecstatic truth” later proclaimed by Werner Herzog?).*

The script becomes most resonant when its literary cogitations seem most directly applicable to the act of filming. Just as Wilhelm wants to write but doesn’t know what, Wenders’s filmmaking has always been largely about the idea of setting forth, camera in hand, and finding (that is, defining, creating) the object you want to contemplate—Wilhelm says, “A person can write without knowing what… Like wanting to walk.” But the film highlights the difference between observing the world, and seeing it imaginatively, in the mind’s eye or through the camera lens. Wilhelm’s intermittent first-person voiceover kicks in during a car journey: “Sometimes I stared ahead for a long time purposely not looking at anything. Then I closed my eyes and only then, from the afterimage that was produced thereby, did I notice what had been in front of me.” This is all earnest, solemn stuff, and the film doesn’t seem to ironize it; it takes Therese to raise a self-reflexive laugh at the film’s expense when she wearily comments: “Something has to happen. Everything is so matter-of-fact… I feel like we’re putting things off. Let’s do something.”

After his prolix reflections on the contradiction between the personal and the political, Wilhelm does at last cut to the chase—and he does it with a camera in hand. He’s standing, back turned towards us, alone on the Zugspitze, resembling a mythic lonely wanderer in a Caspar David Friedrich paintings. But his education isn’t complete, and he’s still caught in self-absorbed lamentation: “It seemed to me as if I had missed something,” his voiceover continues, “as if I had always missed something with every new move.” And there the film ends—not abruptly, but with a fade to black like the slow fade on the end of a music track, and with Jürgen Knieper’s lugubrious noir-ish score, wreathed in languorous saxophone, playing on—as if the music’s never going to stop, and neither are Wilhelm’s, or Wim’s, travels. On an optimistic note, the road ahead of our wanderer leads directly to the altogether more ebullient journeyings of Kings of the Road; on a less hopeful one, it leads beyond that to the glum speculations of Wenders’s latter-day globetrotting fictions.

*For the record, I’ve always felt that Wenders is possessed of one of the consistently least erotic gazes in cinema—notwithstanding the somewhat creepy eroticization here of a then 14-year-old Nastassja Kinski. Oh well, as we seem to find ourselves saying more and more these days, it was the ’70s.

Wrong Move: Utter Detachment, Utter Truth   Criterion essay by James Robison, June 01, 2016

 

Wim Wenders: “Between Me and the World”   Citerion essay by Michael Almereyda, June 04, 2016

 

Wim Wenders: Songs from Along the Road    Mixed tape on Spotify, June 07, 2016

 

Wrong Move (1975) - The Criterion Collection

 

Wim Wenders and Peter Handke: Collaboration ... - H-Net  From Text to Film or Film to Text? A Reevaluation of Adaptation on the Example of Peter Handke and Wim Wenders, by Rob Kohn, review of Brady, Martin; Leal, Joanne, Wim Wenders and Peter Handke: Collaboration, Adaptation, Recomposition.. H-German, H-Net Reviews, March, 2014

 

Politics of the Self: Feminism and the Postmodern in West ...   Politics of the Self: Feminism and the Postmodern in West German Literature, by Richard W. McCormick (pdf)

 

Where Wim Wenders Went Wrong - The New Yorker  Richard Brody, September 3, 2015

 

In a Lonely Place: On Wim Wenders' Road Movie Trilogy  Ethan Vestby

 

Roads to Nowhere and Anywhere, With Kelly Reichardt and Wim ...  J. Hoberman from The New York Times, June 3, 2016

 

Wrong Move & our institution of high art | PilgrimAkimbo  January 7, 2008

 

1. Falsche Bewegung (The Wrong Move) 1975 - Nostalgia ...  Jeremy Richey from Nostalgia Kinky

 

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

Review: The Wrong Move (1974) - [Jon Fortgang: journalist ...

 

The Cinematic Journeys of Wim Wenders - Parallax View  Sean Axmaker

 

Taking Another Look at Wim Wenders's Wrong Move - Questia  Edward Plater from Film Quarterly, January 1, 2002, opening excerpt only

 

The Essentials: The 10 Best Wim Wenders Films | The Playlist  Kenji Fujishima, Nicholas Laskin, Oliver Lyttelton, and Rodrigo Perez, September 3, 2015

 

Wrong Move - DVD review by Maggie Woods - MotorBar

 

Cine Outsider [Gort]

 

The Digital Fix [Noel Megahey]

 

DVD Verdict- The Wim Wenders Collection (Volume 2) [Brett Cullum]

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]

 

DVDBlu Review [Christopher S. Long]

 

Daily Verdict- The Road Trilogy (Blu-ray) Criterion Collection [Gordon Sullivan]

 

All-Star Video: Review: WRONG MOVE  John Moret

 

WRONG MOVE (Wim Wenders, 1975) | Dennis Grunes

 

kamera.co.uk - film review - Wim Wenders. On The Road ...  Andrew Benbow from kamera, also seen here:  Wim Wenders DVD review - part II 

 

Cover: Wim Wenders: Journeyman | A Film History Magazine  Justin Aylward, August 1, 2015   

 

VOGLER, Rüdiger - Film Reference  Julian Petley

 

User Reviews  from imdb Author: Carl S Lau from Los Angeles, California, September 14, 2003

 

User Reviews  from imdb Author: daydreamblvr1210 from United States, August 7, 2004

 

User Reviews  from imdb Author: lazarillo from Denver, Colorado and Santiago, Chile, March 8, 2014

 

Movie of the Week: “The Wrong Move” - The New Yorker  Richard Brody, capsule review

 

TIFF.net | On the Road: The Films of Wim Wenders

 

Francis Bacon | Jen Mazza - Part 1397 

 

Wrong Move movie review | Cinephilia

 

Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]

 

Cinematic Threads [Matthew Lotti] (capsule)

 

Wrong Move | Brattle Theatre

 

Channel 4 Film

 

TV Guide

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

DVDBeaver Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

The Wrong Move - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

KINGS OF THE ROAD (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3           A                     96

Germany  (175 mi)  1976

 

It has something to do with being born in post-war Germany in a land that tried to forget about its own history, tried to forget about its own myths, that tried to adapt to anything, especially American culture.

—Wim Wenders

 

One of Wenders’ best, clever, existentialist, and amusingly insightful on several different levels, perhaps the only film ever seen where a Volkswagen Bug is driven like a sports car, where it accelerates out of the blocks, screeches around turns, and opens up on the straightaways, blindly flying through intersections at full speed with no regard apparently for the consequences, where the driver (Hanns Zischler) becomes known, affectionately enough, as Kamikaze.  In a memorable opening sequence, he unintentionally hooks up with fellow road traveler Bruno (Rüdiger Vogler), looking a bit like the director himself with that shaggy dog look, who is parked along the side of the road in his live-in moving and storage truck, noted for an illuminated Michelin man doll next to the big lettered emblem above the front windshield, “UMZUGE,” apparently a German reference for a moving van.  Not just a road movie, but more an anthem to road movies, as the three-hour length only accentuates the passing of time, becoming a prominent theme, where the relaxed and leisurely pace never wavers, where the road music is expressed by recurring guitar motifs by Alex Linstädt that couldn’t be more warmly welcoming and upbeat.  Shot along the border regions between East and West Germany, which is listed in the opening credits, along with the correct aspect ratio, of all things, this is a mesmerizing road movie shot in Black and White by Robbie Müller and Martin Schäfer, a film that reaches under the surface to reveal a great deal about the changing face of cinema and Germany’s divided history.  There are plenty of American references as well, mostly in the prevalent use of rock ‘n’ roll music, including English lyrics that they can’t get out of their heads, where at one point the characters remark that “the Yanks have colonized our subconscious.”

 

This could be seen as a German version of Easy Rider (1969), one where the photographic landscapes often dominate the central characters, where the focus may shift to merging trains with the road, or filming reflections off the truck’s windowshield or side view mirrors, all fleeting images of transience.  Clearly a generational movie, one that identifies with the post 60’s cultural changes and the yearning for individualism and freedom, Wenders brilliantly interweaves into the storyline the lives of several elderly people whose pasts shadow the present, often in haunting yet illuminating ways.  Sleeping on the side of the road in his truck, Bruno roams the country roads as a traveling projectionist, repairing old broken down movie projectors, bringing them back to life, at least temporarily, in the small towns with a sole family run theater that is barely surviving due to the commercial influence of American films in the bigger cities, effectively shutting down the German market and the small town picture shows.  One elderly gentleman, a former Nazi party member who ran a theater back in the silent era, explains he had to petition the government after the war to get his ownership re-instated, explaining there were many who were forced to do the same, wondering what good it did any of them as nobody comes to their theaters anymore.  Bruno and Kamikaze, both estranged from their parents, hit the road together as resourceful, free spirited, and independent minded men who face their responsibilities and the future with a casual air of disregard, instead leaning more towards living in the moment.  Wenders’ brilliance in this film is capturing in detail so many of those moments as they unravel in real time.  Like JULES AND JIM (1962), which (referring to the novel upon which it was based) Truffaut called “a perfect hymn to love, perhaps even a hymn to life,” this film is also a celebration of camaraderie and friendship, but this is post French New Wave, where the joyful energy and exuberance has dimmed and both men are more about living and getting on in their lives with some degree of personal satisfaction.    

 

One of the most beautiful sequences involves a theater partially filled with grade school children impatiently waiting for the movie to start, where the time for repairs only makes the kids more tired and restless, until in a stroke of mad genius, Kamikaze turns on a theater light behind the movie screen, where the two are silhouetted like moving puppets, carrying on a charade of physical comedy and farce which changes the expression on the kid’s faces to utter amazement, as if they’re literally witnessing magic for the first time.  In another extended sequence, Bruno meets a bored theater cashier, Lisa Kreuzer, flirting with her openly, eventually forced into service as the projectionist didn’t have a clue what they were doing.  This is the closest he comes to developing a rapport with the opposite sex, where they end up spending the night in a cramped room above the theater, but not as you might expect, as they’re friendly enough, but they can never find the words to get started, leaving each as devastatingly empty afterwards as the theater itself.  Something should be said however for the growing relationship of the two men, so much of which is unspoken, as they are never actually friends, meeting by chance, and neither ever makes any gut-wrenching confessional speeches to one another, but are merely traveling companions whose days run together as they share experiences, becoming familiar but from a safe distance.  Each man is forced to challenge their own personal comfort zone as perhaps they’re living too comfortably, always passing through the lives of others, but never stopping to take hold of real love or responsibility.  Both end up taking side trips to visit their surviving parents with surprisingly different results, where in both cases we see a gentle side of them that is vulnerable and exposed. 

 

Despite being an open road picture, much of what happens takes place in the cramped quarters of projection booths, the front seat or the tight sleeping quarters of the truck, a lone food outlet on the side of the road, an isolated gas station, or the empty confines of a movie theater, all places where they are either alone, peering through a protected booth, or more likely with one other person.  What this suggests is that much of our lives we are tucked out of reach from others, whether it’s family or friends, our memories, even our nation’s history, as we all deal with as much as we can seemingly alone.  The open road or freedom, when seen in this light, actually prevents close personal involvement with others, as we’re too busy leaving or making our escape.  The projection booths are filled with old movie posters of Brigitte Bardot or Fritz Lang, various pin-up girls, but also faces we have forgotten through the passage of time.  When an elderly woman speaks of her disinterest in the kinds of films being made today, suggesting the audience turns into dazed, stone faced robots, she is really reminiscing about the life and vitality of her era, much of which, due to the negative history of the Third Reich, the rest of the world has denounced or forgotten.  Nonetheless it remains an intense recollection that few other memories in her life can equal.   A disconnection to one’s life, or the past, the divisive nature of which becomes another theme of the film, culminating in an intriguing sequence at a dead end border crossing into East Germany, where they arrive at a vacated sentry station in the middle of the night.  The names of American cities are carved on the walls, where they may as well be a million miles from nowhere, and in a drunken confrontation, they amusingly discuss their vital need for women, which unfortunately comes at the cost of individual freedom.  In the bright light of the next morning, peering over into the vast unchartered territory of East Germany, the border is seen as an inhospitable and foreboding place, a combination of forbidden territory and a promised land on the other side. 

 

Kings of the Road | Chicago Reader  Dave Kehr

The first masterpiece of the New German Cinema. Wim Wenders's existentialized road movie (1975) follows two drifters—an itinerant movie-projector repairman and a child psychologist who has followed his patients by dropping out—in a three-hour ramble through a deflated Germany, touching on their private pasts and their hopes for the future. It's full of references to Hawks, Ford, and Lang, and one scene has been lovingly lifted in its entirety from Nicholas Ray's The Lusty Men. As the hommages indicate, one of the subjects is the death of cinema, but this isn't an insider's movie. Wenders examines a played-out culture looking for one last move. An engrossing, enveloping film, made with great craft and photographed in highly textured black-and-white by Robby Müller.

Kings of the Road  Block Films

One of the great films of New German Cinema, and long-unavailable in the US, Wim Wenders’ Kings of the Road is a cross-cultural fusion of the great American road movie and Cold War-era German arthouse cinema. Somewhere along the sparsely populated border between the former West and East Germanys, a lonely film projector repairman meets a suicidal linguist. With no particular destination in mind (save for the repairman’s work-related stopovers), the two men become traveling companions, exploring a Germany defined by division and conflict, Americanization versus national culture, and a nostalgia for the past, as seen through the lens of film projectors in a succession of erstwhile small-town movie theaters. 35mm print courtesy of Axiom Films, UK. This screening is generously co-sponsored by the Department of German, Northwestern University.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Ben Sachs

The quintessential Wim Wenders movie—an epic fusion of cinephilia, chic existentialism, hanging out, observations about the Americanization of Europe, boredom, and bad-ass rock and roll. It is a road movie without a destination—another Wenders specialty—but one with deep feeling for transience: Robbie Müller's claim to have taken inspiration from Walker Evans's photographs of Depression-era America is in no way pretentious. (The slightly grainy, though rich-in-depth black-and-white photography is so masterful that KINGS can be described as the quintessential Müller film, too.) The movie concerns a traveling projectionist and the bourgeois dropout who decides, on a whim, to join him on his tour of servicing rural cinemas. Their journey lopes from one poignantly observed ghost town to another, a perfect landscape on which to depict the men's alienation with contemporary life. (Appropriate for a work about aimlessness, Wenders wrote much of the film during shooting, a method that anticipates the films of Wong-kar Wai.) The film's outlook is very much in keeping with the political defeatism of the New German Cinema, yet it would be inaccurate to describe KINGS OF THE ROAD as a pessimistic work. Wenders achieves a universal melancholy here, which makes the moments of humor and innocence that much more cathartic. Especially impressive is a scene in which the protagonists perform a shadow play on a blank movie screen for a group of schoolchildren in a town where they're working. It is a sweet, impassioned reminder of why movies exist and it alone is worth the cost of admission. 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Iain Harral]

The recent slump in Wim Wenders' critical reputation has occurred not so much because films like Until the End of the World and Faraway so Close have been complete disasters - they haven't - they have simply been shown up as mediocre or unsuccessful by the sheer magnificence of earlier films like Kings of the Road.

Forget plot - Kings of the Road has neither a conventional beginning nor end to speak of - Wenders instead finding interest in the changing relationship between two men as they travel the roads along the East/West German border. As Bruno (the superb Rudiger Vogler), a travelling projection engineer, and Robert (Hans Zischler), recently dumped by his girifriend, roam the country via a succession of declining village cinemas Wenders creates a wonderfully honest picture of the growing bonds between them: the eventual realisation that they have grown overfamiliar with each other, and their subsequent parting of ways.

Robert and Bruno's epic journey is permeated with signs of the cultural invasion of Europe by Americana: posters, adverts and most obviously, rock n' roll, a personal obsession of the director, and coasts on with an incredible and often uplifting sense of freedom. Wenders' visually stunning organisation of landscape and use of location is complemented by some glorious black and white photography and a great soundtrack. Like all Wenders' best movies Kings of the Road leaves you feeling that you've really seen some-thing.

Kings of the Road | Roger Ebert's Journal | Roger Ebert

Win Wenders' "Kings of the Road" is a film of great depth and beauty, and it's black and white photography is worthy of comparison with John Ford's. But is rarely played commercially, maybe because of its three-hour length.

Three hours, yes, but that's not a moment too long. Wenders needs the time to pace the developing relationship between his two main characters.

It's the psychologist in the car and he's reached the end of his rope. The bug, however, does not sink, and so the psychologist has to wade ashore, somewhat sheepishly. The repairman offers him a lift in his van, and, without really planning it that way, they wind up spending several days together on the road.

They talk very little, for each is private and neither is inquisitive; one of the movie's strengths is the amount of information it reveals with a lot of dialogue. The repairman's job takes him from one little town to another along the border between the two Germans, and Wenders establishes a pace that somehow meanders without ever seeming to drag. Gradually the two men arrive at a common truth about themselves, which one expresses to the other during an affecting scene in an old World War II concrete bunker: "I cannot live with a woman, and I cannot live without one."

This is a year for good, insightful movies about women. "Kings of the Road" is almost entirely about its two male characters. And yet it's also about women: About the way men consider them, define them, and define themselves by them. There's one especially good scene in which the repairman has a laison with a girl in one of the towns they pass through, and in its briefness, poignance and futility, it says so much about the difficulties of really communicating.

User reviews  from imdb Author: Camera Obscura from Leiden, The Dutch Mountains: 

Stunning film, in which imagery and suggestion are far more important than the narrative elements. It's a long film (three hours) that you have to experience and be overwhelmed by the atmosphere, rather than watch. Combined with the beautiful black and white photography, it's probably best enjoyed on the big screen, for those with a little patience that is...

"Kings of the Road" is a road movie without a real plot, it's all about the two protagonists and their experiences during their trip. Bruno (Rüdiger Vogeler) is a projection engineer visiting run-down cinemas along the border of West- and East Germany with his large truck, in which he practically lives. One morning, while he is shaving in his truck, he sees a Volkswagen speed by and drive straight into the Elbe river (which at the time formed the border between East and West Germany). The driver of the Volkswagen is Robert Lander (Hanns Zischler), whom we just met in an earlier scene. Appparently, he drove his car into the water in a suicidal rage, because of the break-up with his wife, but Volkswagens float, so he climbs out the moon roof window. Bruno watched the whole occurrence and offers the man some dry clothes and a ride. As Robert has no other plans, he rides along with Bruno while he attends his job.

Wenders addresses several themes, but these are never stressed explicitly. At first it's a film about male relationships, or perhaps even more about communication (or lack of) between men in general. Another distinct element, theme would be a too heavy term, is the deterioration of the German film industry and especially cinemas in small-town Germany since the early sixties, which very much coincides with the enormous influence of American popular culture in German culture, in film and in various other spheres of German society. One character in the film claims, 'The Yanks have colonized our subconscious.' Wenders tackles this issue lightly by adding a delightful soundtrack with American rock music, perfectly matching the mood of the film. As far as music in films is concerned, a match made in heaven.

This is a film where nothing seems to happen, where the experience of space and time was allowed to prevail over the pressure of narrative development. There is this constant self-conscious tension between story and picture, typical for all of Wim Wender's work. As most of the film consists of silent images, the reoccurring theme music becomes even more infectious. The one scene when the two men drive in their motorcycle and sidecar through the North Bavarian landscape is unforgettable, and Bruno rolls a cigarette at 80 km/h. The photography, the landscape, the music. A beautiful moment. Pure magic.

For me Wenders' use of the German landscape and towns along the German border is a time capsule of a different age. It's all in the details. A fair-ground, the children at the cinema, the largely deserted border areas. As a kid, I spent a holiday in the Hassberge in North Bavaria, not far from the border between East and West Germany. At one occasion me and my parents drove up to the border and were all staring across the two-mile no man's land, with the threatening signposts (that must have been even more threatening on the other side) and watched the East German watchtowers through my father's binoculars. I never had the notion there was anything unusual about the situation. On the eastern side of the border, there was a different world, which would last forever, so it seemed.

It seems to improve with each viewing. One of my favorites.

Movie Reviews UK Damian Cannon

A meandering, beautiful, road movie, Wim Wenders conjures up straightforward characters and metaphors for German post-war difficulties with equal ease. Bruno (Rüdiger Vogler) is a wandering cinema-mechanic, travelling between small-town cinemas in his secondhand truck. He scrapes a living by maintaining the apparatus of a quickly vanishing breed of local picture houses, each squeezed out of existence by draconian laws and conglomerate distributors. One fine morning Bruno's parked on the banks of a river, where he leisurely awakes and takes his ablutions. In the distance a VW Beetle races along, throwing up a thick snake of dust. Suddenly it shoots past the truck and into the water, coming to rest some distance from the shore. A young man opens the sun-roof and climbs out, with a single suitcase, then paddles to dry land. Bruno offers Robert (Hanns Zischler) some of his clothes and soon they're travelling down the highway together.

The duo seem to come to a tacit agreement, whereby Robert can hitch a ride for as long as he wishes. Bruno stops at various run-down towns, attending to worn projectors and commiserating with old-timers of the German film industry. Robert keeps mostly out of the way, in fact Bruno and Robert hardly exchange a word. A vast length of time passes before they even introduce themselves, while it's days before Robert mentions that he's just come from Genoa, where he separated from his wife. He's a pediatrician, not that this skill has any relevance in their directionless journey. Occasionally Robert helps Bruno, such as when they perform an impromptu clown act for a rowdy class of schoolchildren (the kids are waiting for their annual movie). Otherwise they tend to gaze at the passing scenery, each lost in their own dreams (neither has a problem with silence or loneliness).

Strange events periodically intrude upon this balanced existence, providing interest but changing little. One of these interludes involves a man (Marquad Bohm) who's wife committed suicide by driving, at high speed, into a tree. The wreck lies nearby while this man relates the entire tragic tale to Robert, waking Bruno in the process. Apparently his wife grew so bored of staying in a particular guest-house that she threatened to carry out such as act; of course the police scoffed at such a domestic tiff and the rest is history. In the morning the car is dragged away and the heart-broken man disappears, presumably to throw himself into one of the nearby grain hoppers. This event energises Robert into visiting his estranged father (Rudolf Schündler) while Bruno ends up with a porn cinema cashier (Lisa Kreuzer).

Kings of the Road is a very special film, one which must be experienced rather than viscerally enjoyed. The aura surrounding Bruno and Robert, two men who are more temporary companions than friends, envelops the entire picture such that nothing ever needs to be explained. People are simply the way they are and act according to their nature, which means that the relationship between Robert and his father is both emotionally opaque and crystal-clear. Wenders utilises silence, the surrounding landscape and insignificant details to suggest depth to each character whilst never giving out explicit facts. The central performances are pretty good, appearing life-like and convincing, although it's difficult to decide when the dialogue is so sparse. The black & white cinematography is excellent, combining the space of wide-screen with a subtle, expertly applied palate of shades of grey.

What's really interesting about Kings of the Road is it's commentary on the decline of the German film industry, and in a wider sense the forgotten border lands between East and West Germany. Cultural domination by the States mortally wounded the grass-roots industry (such as small, local cinemas); as one old man states, he had to petition the State before he could even run his own establishment. Perhaps the movie is a touch self-indulgent but it's clear that Wenders feels deeply for this particular subject. The cumulative effect is of images which linger, to be mulled over at a later time, and an abiding sense of leisure.

Kings of the Road: Keep on Truckin’ . . .   Criterion essay by Nick Roddick, June 02, 2016

 

Wim Wenders: “Between Me and the World”   Criterion essay by Michael Almereyda, June 04, 2016

 

Robby Müller and Wim Wenders   photo gallery, January 13, 2016

 

Wim Wenders: Songs from Along the Road   Mixed tape on Spotify, June 07, 2016

 

Kings of the Road (1976) - The Criterion Collection

 

Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy - The Criterion Collection

 

Catching Up With Wim Wenders' 'Kings of the Road' - Forbes  Richard Hyfler, September 8, 2015

 

Where Wim Wenders Went Wrong - The New Yorker  Richard Brody, September 3, 2015

 

In a Lonely Place: On Wim Wenders' Road Movie Trilogy  Ethan Vestby

 

Roads to Nowhere and Anywhere, With Kelly Reichardt and Wim ...  J. Hoberman from The New York Times, June 3, 2016

 

Im Lauf der Zeit - Film (Movie) Plot and Review - Publications  Ann Harris from Film Reference

 

Tuesday Morning Foreign Region DVD Report: "Kings of the Road (In the Course of Time) " (Wim Wenders, 1976)  Glenn Kenny from Mubi, July 20, 2010, also see here:  The Daily Notebook [Glenn Kenny]

 

On the Road: The Films of Wim Wenders: Kings of the Road - Next ...  Matthew Blevins from Next Projection

 

The Essentials: The 10 Best Wim Wenders Films | The Playlist  Kenji Fujishima, Nicholas Laskin, Oliver Lyttelton, and Rodrigo Perez, September 3, 2015

 

Kings Of The Road - DVD review by Maggie Woods - MotorBar

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]

 

DVDBlu Review [Christopher S. Long]

 

Daily Verdict- The Road Trilogy (Blu-ray) Criterion Collection [Gordon Sullivan]

 

Kings of the Road Review (1976) - The Spinning Image  Graeme Clark

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Flicks - May 2003   Chris Dashiell from CineScene

 

Preview: Wim Wenders On The Road Again | Newcity Film  Ray Pride

 

NYFF '76: Kings of the Road | Film Society of Lincoln Center

 

Trivial Top 20: Best Road Movies - Film Comment  Listed as #6, January/February 2014                       

 

Books on German film   New German Film: The Displaced Image by Timothy Corrigan (213 pages) and West German Film in the Course of Time by Eric Rentschler (260 pages), reviewed by Jan Mouton from Jump Cut, February 1988

 

Variety.com [Variety Staff]

 

Kings of the Road, directed by Wim Wenders | Film review - Time Out  Geoff Andrew

 

Wim Wenders: Kings of the Road | Film | The Guardian  Derek Malcolm, listed at #89 from his Top 100 films

 

Movie Review - Im Lauf der Zeit - 'Kings' Travel Long Screen Road ...  Richard Eder from The New York Times

 

DVDBeaver Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

Kings of the Road - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Road Movie trilogy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

THE AMERICAN FRIEND (Der amerikanische Freund)       A-                    94

Germany  France  (125 mi)  1977

 

Located seventy miles inland on the River Elbe, Hamburg is Germany’s second largest city and Europe’s second largest port. The city was largely rebuilt after being devastated by Allied bombers in World War II. Its Reeperbahn neighborhood is renowned as a red-light district (now greatly reduced) and as the proving ground for the Beatles. With the move of the main dockland downriver, the old harbor front has become the site of HafenCity, Europe’s largest urban development project.

 

As always, the factual city and the cinematic city overlap but are not quite the same. With gulls wheeling across the sky, a tang of North Sea in the breeze, and massive cranes towering over the harbor (which rarely seems more than a stone’s throw away from the action), Hamburg is German cinema’s signifier of flux. It is a city in transit and transition. It is a place of departures--whether by bulky container ship or sleek bullet train. Even more so, it is a place of arrivals, often by foreigners and outsiders--soulful Greek restaurateurs, seductive Italian chefs, mysterious Americans in cowboy hats--who come to imperil and invigorate the regime of German tradition and orderliness.

 

—Martin Rubin, City in Transit: Hamburg on Film - Gene Siskel Film Center

 

Following the magnificent Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3 (1976), Wenders has crafted another existential road movie about angst-ridden people, lost souls who search for identity against the bleakest of landscapes, ignoring plot for the most part, where the mystery of the journey matters more than the destination, where the influence of America is unmistakable, casting two legendary American directors, Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller in minor roles, while pulling Dennis Hopper out of his self-induced drug and alcohol phase to play Ripley was a stroke of inspiration, as he brings a tormented mania to the role where his eerie presence spells trouble whenever he appears, like an Angel of Death.  Wenders, apparently, initially wanted John Cassavetes, but he turned it down and suggested Hopper for the role.  Creating a cinema of alienation that is almost exclusively men, lost in a world they don’t particularly understand, where even the film itself appears to meander aimlessly at times, drawn to painfully beautiful landscapes with endless shots of blank skies and featureless horizons, showing a fascination with flickering television screens and crumbling, deserted buildings, yet Wenders is a visionary director that allows the viewer to drift in and out of the intoxicating atmosphere.  While his 70’s films brought him international acclaim as the vanguard of German New Wave, along with Fassbinder and Herzog, with Wenders there is also indisputably an American influence, where the director grew up with a defeated Germany appalled by their Nazi past, and much like Kurosawa’s late 40’s and 50’s films, embraced the conquering culture of America, where you’re likely to find jukeboxes, coke machines, cowboy hats, neon signs, flashy American cars, and references to the American pop music of Bob Dylan or Chuck Berry.  But perhaps more importantly, Wenders belongs with the modernist tradition of European art film exemplified by Antonioni in L’AVVENTURA (1960) and RED DESERT (1964), who created dramas of alienation and emptiness, predominately shot out of doors, featuring characters that wander aimlessly through bleak city landscapes that provide a starkly beautiful backdrop, where according to cinematographer Ed Lachman, an assistant to Robby Müller on the film, he asserts that “light and landscape are actors” in Wenders’ films.  Made in Hamburg, Paris, and New York, much of it in English, the film is modern and experimental while paying tribute to the great film noir tradition of the post-World War II era, drawing upon gangsters and the suspense thriller, becoming something of a commercial success on the international markets, but especially in America.  It bears some similarity with Nicholas Ray’s BIGGER THAN LIFE (1956), where a character has been diagnosed with a rare blood disease and may only have a short time left to live, which leads to the inevitable catastrophes that follow. 

 

Nicole Huber and Ralph Stern explore the transnational wanderings of Wenders from Places Journal, April 2014, From the American West to West Berlin - Places Journal:

 

Emptiness, vacancy and a camera — whether still or movie — are the starting points for our own exploration of transnationalism and the German city. In the case of Wim Wenders, this framework lends structure and unity to a career that encompasses the early German and German-American “road movies” Alice in the Cities (1974) and Kings of the Road (1976), the later explorations of Paris, Texas, and the “vertical road movie” Wings of Desire (1987), and much later, Don’t Come Knocking (2005). The momentous events underscoring these films are not only associated with emptiness and with landscapes in turmoil but also, particularly in Wings of Desire, with the rise of National Socialism, the tumultuous destruction of World War II, and the resulting emptiness of postwar inner-city “ruin landscapes” (Trümmerlandschaften); an equally important unifying theme is the generational rupture between fathers and sons following such seismic historical events. In this framework, the American West (and the American Western) served a specific and telling purpose for the postwar German West: to envision both traumatic upheaval and utopian projection. This projection was as much of a socio-cultural project as it was a cinematic fantasy. Wenders has commented that his “first memory of America is of a mythical land where everything was much better.”

 

[…] Other West German directors have explored America; Werner Herzog moves from a bizarrely distinctive Berlin milieu to an equally specific rural Wisconsin in Stroszek (1977), and Percy Adlon drops a lost Bavarian soul into the heart of the Mojave Desert in Out of Rosenheim / Bagdad Café (1987). But Wenders is the only German director who consistently negotiates the borders of past and present, city and country, Germany and the American West in his search for a postwar identity and a correlative mythology and imagery. Not unlike Travis, who mutely staggers into the frame after crossing the border from Mexico, Wenders and his generation were literally born into a “landscape in turmoil,” the ruins left in the devastating wake of world war; a topography of absence and vacancy, of lost traditions, generations and faith. Wenders has described postwar Germany in difficult terms: “I don’t think that any other country has had such a loss of faith in its own images, stories, and myths as we have.”

 

[…] Indeed, Wim Wenders has been characterized by both his “obsession with America” and his role in the New German Cinema, the “national cinema of aesthetic experimentation and political opposition” that includes also such luminaries as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta.  By 1984, the year Paris, Texas opened and won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Wenders had extensive experience with crossing the borders between West Germany, West Berlin and the American West. Born in 1945, just months after the end of the war, Wenders views his contributions to New German Cinema as shaped by his “distanced relationship to Germany as a ‘fatherland.'”  Belonging to a “generation without fathers,” without a “tradition of our own,” Wenders draws heavily upon non-German traditions, particularly (as we’ve seen) the American genres of the Western and the road movie.

 

While Wenders’ early films were often described as “angst, alienation and America,” THE AMERICAN FRIEND continues to explore earlier themes from Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3 like male friendship as well as a connection between Germany and America, while also consciously examining cinema itself, adapted from a popular 1974 novel Ripley’s Game by American novelist Patricia Highsmith, who also wrote the source novel for Hitchcock’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951).  As an indication of her popularity, the rights to all of Highsmith’s novels written up to that point had already been bought for various film productions, where Highsmith sent Wenders a draft manuscript before the book was even published.  The story centers around the dubious presence of Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper), a dislocated American in a cowboy hat living alone in a massive estate in the German countryside outside Hamburg, where he’s involved with American art forger Derwatt (Nicholas Ray) in a criminal racket selling forged paintings.  Offended by a curt offhanded comment made to him by Jonathan (Bruno Ganz), an art restorer and picture framer who he learns has been diagnosed with a rare blood disease that may be incurable, so Ripley plots to involve Jonathan in some gangland murders, thinking he’s got nothing to lose, veering into John Cassavetes territory in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1978) which was made immediately “after” this film was released.  Jonathan’s shop is centrally located downtown, where what immediately stands out is the city itself, a dilapidated downtown harbor location in view of ships coming in and going out, with dozens of construction cranes dotting the skyline.  Impressively shot by Robby Müller, this is likely the most stylish Highsmith adaptation, where Wenders has shifted the story’s emphasis with the casting of Dennis Hopper as Ripley, certainly not the image that comes to mind for most readers, as Ripley has that calm demeanor of someone you can trust, while Hopper’s Ridley, even at his most restrained, is a bit wacko, adding a furious intensity that would otherwise not be there.  Wenders delves into his personal eccentricities as if it was part of the landscape, using his edgy, nervous energy that is always about to explode as the perfect contrast to the more politely refined Jonathan, a man with responsibilities who is married with a young son.  It is only the prospect of outlandish sums of money that he can use to take care of his family after he’s gone that lures him into the nefarious activities of this seedy underworld. 

 

Ray’s BIGGER THAN LIFE is a portrait of domestic oppression, with seemingly no way out, while Jonathan’s fascination with a life in crime becomes pallitable only as a response to the rigidity of his own domestic plight.  According to Robert Phillip Kolker and Peter U. Beicken in The Films of Wim Wenders: Cinema as Vision and Desire, 1993:

 

For Nicholas Ray, and many other American filmmakers of the 50’s, domesticity was itself a kind of abandonment, a slippage into the comfortable and necessary at the expense of male freedom.  Wenders stretches this ambivalence across the poles of the characters’ despair.  They remain, even more than Ray’s characters, lonely and hopeless in solitude or in domesticity; adventure exists only as momentary and inauthentic respite.  “Pity the poor immigrant,” Ripley sings (recalling the old Bob Dylan song) as he sits abandoned by Jonathan, who has gone off with his wife to die, alone on the beach near Hamburg — like Philip Winter on the Jersey shore at the beginning of Alice in the Cities (1974). 

 

Hopper’s Ripley is turned into a lone cowboy with no wife or servants and none of the busy domestic life as portrayed in the book, instead he spends lots of time alone in his house talking into a tape recorder, asking himself ponderous questions aloud, or taking Polaroid selfies as if he’s trying to figure out who he is, shouting out to no one in particular, “I am confused.”  Vulgar and crass, while also ambiguous and manipulative, he defines himself with the phrase “I make money,” suggesting shady dealings and a career in criminality while at the same time Hopper is associated with the 60’s American counterculture of Easy Rider (1969), actually singing a few verses of Ballad of Easy Rider, “The river flows/It flows to the sea/Wherever that river goes/That’s where I want to be.”  His residence has a green Canada Dry neon sign overlooking the pool table and jukebox, where he becomes synonymous with American symbols like Coca Cola, his cowboy hat, a Thunderbird car, a yellow New York taxicab, or Marlboro cigarettes, all of which have an influence on European culture.  Ganz’s deliberately underplayed Jonathan, on the other hand, is quiet and introspective, preferring to work alone where he uses his hands and becomes familiar with the feel of wood and the various scents involved with his profession.  While Hopper is manic and explosive, the picture of unpredictability, adding a sense of danger throughout, Ganz, more of an established star of the German stage at this point in his career, is methodical and intellectual, where he meets with his doctor and discusses the results of his lab tests with the calm reserve of a business transaction.  Jonathan is besieged by thoughts of dejection and desperation, where he can’t stop this feeling of his whole world disappearing, where initially, the idea of murdering someone for money seems preposterous, but the thrill of excitement running through his veins adds an element of vitality back into his step that he can’t explain, certainly not to his wife, who begins to suspect something foul is afoot with his sudden association with Ripley, something that is otherwise unthinkable for a cultured and sophisticated man.  His initial disgust at the certainty that the Derwatt painting was a fake quickly fades into the past as he develops an amicable relationship with Ripley, where both share a deep sense of alienation and existential anguish, exchanging small gifts as peace offerings.  Together they comprise a running commentary on the often testy relations between America and Europe.  

 

Ripley is initially approached by French underworld figure Raoul Minot (Gérard Blain) to murder some rival gangsters, but he defers, suggesting Jonathan for the job, spreading rumors of his impending demise, creating a palpable sense of paranoia creeping into his life, where themes of real and fake from his professional career start intruding into his personal life as well, where there is literally no one he can trust.  This uneasy frame of mind makes it easier to enter into a surreptitious lifestyle of secret deals with the criminal underworld, as if he already has one foot in the grave where he is subconsciously communicating with the dead.  This otherworldliness offers him a sense of hope and freedom that otherwise escapes him, where Ripley visits him in his store both before and after the hit, never letting on his connection to the crime, where they develop a curious friendship.  Minot is so impressed with the job that, to Ripley’s surprise, he orders another hit, this time taking place on a moving Parisian Metro train.  Minot is a modernist gangster that probes the psychological state of mind of his young protégé hitman, continually playing upon his weaknesses, alternately coaxing him while offering substantial bribes, raising the incentive by promising to get him into a prestigious hospital in Paris for a second medical opinion, which apparently seals the deal.   Highsmith’s initial reaction to the film was utter disgust, particularly with Hopper as Ripley, but after seeing it a second time, she became convinced that the film captures the essence of the Ripley character better than any other film adaptation, praising Hopper’s performance, calling the film stylish, where she was especially impressed with the scenes on the train, which rival any Hitchcock production.  It’s a thrilling and exhilarating sequence with plenty of tension and suspense, where Jonathan’s near panic in such cramped, claustrophobic quarters closing in around him when things don’t go as planned is a beautifully edited, tightly compressed murder scene.  While it remains unclear just who Jonathan is killing, or what connection they have to anyone else in the film, the real connection is to film noirs of the 40’s, where the atmosphere is so thick you could almost choke on it.   

 

Again, Robert Phillip Kolker and Peter U. Beicken in The Films of Wim Wenders: Cinema as Vision and Desire, 1993:

 

We may recall the sequence in The American Friend in which Jonathan Zimmermann, urged on by Ripley, makes contact with a French gangster, who urges him to assassinate an alleged American mafioso, “an American Jew from New Jersey.”  And he does it, in a chase sequence through the Paris Metro that somewhat disguises what Wenders is doing: demonstrating how easy it is for a German petit bourgeois to become a tool in somebody else’s scheme and reenact the past political crimes of his culture, abandoning conscience, reason, and humanity…

 

So amid the shared pain of unhappy heterosexuality, Wenders’ men seek solace with each other and attempt to find the oedipal roots of their unhappiness.  They finally look past women to the search for their father, and through their father, toward Germany’s history and its manifestation of cinema.  For cinema, as always in Wenders’ films, is the mediation through which his characters attempt to discover themselves and the expression of the possibilities of their salvation.  As Wenders said, “ No other narrative treats the idea of identity with greater urgency and justification than cinema.” 

 

This trip into the lurid underworld both fascinates and repels, where the perspective of Jonathan’s wife Marianne (played by the director’s wife Lisa Kreuzer), is perhaps the most unclouded, as she peppers her husband on his lies and secret affairs that most definitely affect her and their son, especially with Ripley hanging around the apartment as if he owns the place, where she notices a substantial change in her husband’s behavior, where for her, there is a greater fear of the unknown.  Nonetheless, Jonathan trots out the door after the aforementioned Ripley, leaving his wife in a state of unanticipated hysteria, as none of this makes sense to her.  By the time she figures it out, she makes an amusing reappearance, figuring prominently in the apocalyptic finale.  The film provides a host of cinematic tributes, not the least of which are cameo roles of Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray, but also French director Jean Eustache, while also starring Gérard Blain as underworld figure Raoul Minot, an actor with a connection to the French New Wave, working for both Truffaut in his short LES MISTONS (1957) and Chabrol in LES COUSINS (1959), while also taking a page out of Godard’s PIERROT LE FOU (1965), with both films ending with explosions on deserted beaches where the surviving character is named Marianne.  Taking a peek into the home of lead character Jonathan (Bruno Ganz), he has a zoetrope, while his son has a lampshade that animates a color version of the infamous locomotive in Buster Keaton’s THE GENERAL (1926) (http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/Keaton,%20Buster/Annex/Annex%20-%20Keaton,%20Buster%20%28General,%20The%29_04.jpg), while Jonathan and Tom Ripley exchange gifts of optical toys that are themselves references to cinema.  Sam Fuller plays a cigar-chomping crime boss, with a femme fatale girl constantly in tow, who amusingly runs away at the first sign of trouble.  Who knew that a man on the verge of death by an incurable disease would make a great hitman, or that murder would invigorate him?  Wenders creates a visually suggestive look of Hamburg that is highly atmospheric throughout, creating an expressionist red-colored sky at one point following a death, making excellent use of the zig-zagging escalator in the train station, reminiscent of the devastating final scene of Fassbinder’s FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (1975) which was shot in the Munich subway, but the shifting storyline only grows more hallucinatory, veering into a world of cinematic poetry.  Near the end, Ripley sings the opening line of the Dylan song, “I pity the poor immigrant who…” before his thoughts wander off, while what’s not shown are the lyrics that follow, that perfectly describe Ripley’s state of mind, “…wishes he would’ve stayed home, who uses all his power to do evil, but in the end is always left so alone.”     

 

Geoff Andrew from 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE:

A brilliant adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1974 novel Ripley’s Game and one of the most eloquent expressions of Wim Wender’s existential universe. The American Friend casts Dennis Hopper as an American expatriate in Europe, hiring a Hamburg picture framer (Bruno Ganz) who he’s discovered has a possibly fatal illness into committing a murder. The financial reward will help out the man’s wife and son.

 

The film works effectively as a thriller, with muted expressionist colors of Robby Müller’s wondrous camerawork and Jurgen Knieper’s subtly urgent score contributing to the air of paranoid suspense. But The American Friend is also a marvelously astute psychological study, deftly delineating the fear, envy, wariness, and finally, friendship that defines the relationship between the two men, each of them, in different ways, doomed.

 

Typically for Wenders at this highly productive stage in his career, the movie also speaks volumes about the troubled cultural relationship between American and Europe; in some respects not unlike a Jean-Pierre Melville film in its juxtaposition of  Hollywood and European art-movie tropes and motifs. It pays tribute to those traditions with pleasing cameos for Nick Ray and Sam Fuller, Jean Eustache, Gérald Blain, and Lou Castel.   

 

The American Friend | review, synopsis, book tickets ...  Tom Milne from Time Out London

 

Superb adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Ripley's Game, with Hopper as her amiably cynical hero, asked to find a non-professional for a killing or two, and - in echo of Strangers on a Train - drawing an innocent family man (Ganz) into the game by persuading him that the blood disease he is suffering from is not merely incurable but terminal. Good Highsmith, it's even better Wenders, with Ripley, an American expatriate in Germany, first seen keeping a rendezvous with a dead man, then confiding his disorientation to a tape recorder ('There is nothing to fear but fear itself... I know less and less about who I am or who anybody else is'). Ripley, in other words, becomes the quintessential Wenders hero, the loner travelling through alien lands in quest of himself, of friendship, of some meaning to life. Emerging enviously from his solitude to wonder at the radiating warmth of Ganz' family circle, he is irresistibly attracted; but he is also condemned by his own self-disgust to approach only someone on whom he can already smell the scent of death, and by destroying whom he can complete his drive to self-destruction.

 

hardboiled wonderland: Picture Books: Patricia Highsmith  Spacey Thompson 

A cowboy. The hat gives a clue to what Wenders is getting at. In his hands, the story becomes a variation on a pet theme of his – the relationship between the United States and Europe, specifically Germany. This Ripley has his estate in the German countryside, outside Hamburg, and inside it he has a neon Canada Dry sign and a jukebox – signs of his American crassness. It’s inconceivable to think of the novels’ Ripley having these items inside his house. He’d find them vulgar. When Jonathan Zimmerman, the guy drawn into Ripley’s murderous game, asks Tom what he does, Tom says, “I make money.” Could that answer be more American? And what a contrast Tom is to the old-world German Zimmerman, a man who has an actual craft making picture frames. Hopper’s Ripley is less polished than the guy in the book; it’s difficult to envision him playing the harpsichord and gardening. He has no wife and servant, none of the busy domestic life the Ripley of the books has, and he spends lots of time alone in his house talking into a tape recorder, asking himself questions aloud, or taking Polaroid selfies as if he’s trying to figure out who he is. He reeks of ennui and alienation and aloneness. Yet these qualities, in less blatant fashion, are all part of Ripley’s make-up in the books, and by highlighting them, Wenders creates an essential, convincing Tom. In Hopper, the unpredictability of the character is there as well as the sense of danger. This is a guy you know will do anything if circumstances demand it.  He has the biting humor Highsmith gives Ripley. And remorse never enters the picture.

The American Friend has an energy about it that’s exhilarating. It ripples with atmosphere as the camera rolls and tracks through Hamburg. The movie actually begins with plot elements from the second Ripley novel, Ripley Underground, about art forgery, before it gets into the story of how Ripley, because of a social slight, sucks the terminally ill Zimmerman into a web that has the previously gentle artisan killing gangsters.

As Zimmerman, the great Bruno Ganz plays off Hopper’s intensity perfectly. His underplaying and quiet humor compliment Hopper’s brashness. Cameos by Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller add to the fun. There’s a murder at a subway station that’s thrilling and a murder scene on a train that Hitchcock couldn’t have topped. Murder and Ripley’s bracing American influence turn the sick, enervated European into a vigorous figure. This is a movie jaggedly edited and a touch hallucinatory, and it all adds up to an experience you can’t forget. I’ve seen it three or four times and I find it compelling every time.

kamera.co.uk - film review - The American Friend - Ian ...  Ian Haydn Smith

Wim Wenders' gloomy interpretation of 'Ripley's Game' is a stark contrast to Rene Clement's sun-drenched first outing for Patricia Highsmith's complex anti-hero. Though separated by the novel 'Ripley Underground', it takes some feat of the imagination to believe that Alain Delon's suave killer could ever have transformed into Dennis Hopper's world-weary art dealer. And yet, by the end of Wenders' atmospheric thriller, it is difficult to imagine the middle-aged Ripley any other way.

Life has been less than kind to Tom Ripley. Although he manages to escape every scrape he gets into, his reward is little more than survival until his next misadventure. When he is approached by an old friend in trouble, he finds himself at the centre of gangland conflict. Unwilling to carry out a contract killing himself, he approaches a picture framer dying of a rare blood disease, promising his family a comfortable future after his death if he carries out a simple, deadly, job.

Wenders' strength as a director during the 70s lay in exploring the troubled psyche of his male characters and mining the vein that lay between American and European cultures. The American Friend continued these themes, which are highlighted in the opening scenes. Hopper's first encounter with Sam Fuller; two icons of American culture whose personas extended beyond their nationality. Likewise, no matter that much of the film takes place in Europe, Wenders plays film noir against the European art-house scene balancing scenes of hardboiled crime with cool existentialism.

The film succeeded – certainly in the same way that the recent remake failed – because Wenders understood that the story was the backdrop to a moving account of the deepening respect, if not friendship, between two men. As they embark on their adventures it becomes clear that Ripley and the picture framer are living an unfulfilled part of their lives through each other. In the case of the picture framer, Ripley is the life of adventure that he may have dreamed of, but never thought would he would live. For Ripley, the everyday banalities of a quiet family life are an equally alien, and therefore attractive, world. The bitter irony of Highsmith's story is that the closer these men come to their dream, they more they risk their lives. Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz, their faces as grim and stoic as the harsh environments they live in, are well cast as the two leads. In his most famous international role prior to reuniting with Wenders for Wings of Desire, Ganz visibly deteriorates throughout the film, ending up as both a physical and emotional shell; his experience with Ripley making him feel more alive than he ever had, yet pulling him away from his life, at the same time.

Highsmith was unhappy with Wenders' adaptation, and his vision of Ripley's world is certainly far removed from the author's. And yet, divorced from the novel, Wenders crafted a moving and suspenseful thriller that ranks alongside the best of his work from that time.

American Friend - Senses of Cinema  Carlota Larrea, March 2012                                 

Discussion of the New Waves of European national cinemas that emerged after World War II has often focused on those movements’ stances towards American cinema. While Italian neo-realism and British social realism tended to be defined as filmmaking practices opposed to those of American cinema, the French nouvelle vague and the New German Cinema of the 1960s and ’70s looked at American popular culture, and Hollywood in particular, in more ambivalent terms, and often paid tribute to them. Amongst the German filmmakers who engaged in a dialogue with America, two stand out: Rainer Werner Fassbinder through his reworkings of American melodramas, and Wim Wenders with his love of American pop music, movies and spaces. “Angst, alienation and America” was the type of catchphrase used to summarise his early films. Wenders has been especially interested in the power and the hold of American imagery on our minds. He has widely referenced American cinema in his films, set several in the US, cast American actors and even directors. But Wenders has also directed some quintessentially European art house films.

It would be difficult to say whether Der Amerikanische Freund (The American Friend, 1977) is a European or an American film – it is actually an early example of what is now called transnational cinema. As in several of Wenders’ other films, The American Friend explores the way images and stories are created, re-created, how they travel, surround us and even deceive us. The film is Wenders’ adaptation of the then still unpublished Patricia Highsmith novel Ripley’s Game. The rights to all Highsmith’s novels written up to that point had been bought for filmic adaptation, but she sent him the third book in her “Ripliad” still in its manuscript stage. In his adaptation, Wenders kept the main elements of the novel’s storyline. In the novel, Ripley, a rich man, married and living in France, is offended by a British restorer called Trevanny who has been diagnosed with an incurable blood disease. Ripley schemes in order to convince Trevanny to carry out two murders for an associate. The restorer eventually accepts this offer so that he can leave his wife some money. Because of a guilty conscience about his manipulation of Trevanny, Ripley ends up helping him to carry out the second crime. The men subsequently develop an uneasy friendship. Wenders’ adaptation changes Trevanny’s name (and British nationality) into Jonathan Zimmermann, played by Bruno Ganz, and makes him a picture framer and restorer living in Hamburg. Several other of the novel’s locations are changed, and events displaced. The bleak harbour locations sit in contrast to other cityscapes in the film.

But Wenders’ main alteration to the spirit of the original rests in the representation of Ripley. He is played by a cowboy hat wearing, anguished, dislocated Dennis Hopper who had by then long garnered a reputation as a Hollywood enfant terrible. Other Ripley impersonations have been much more faithful to the literary character. Alain Delon, John Malkovich, Matt Damon and Barry Pepper have brought Ripley to the screen, but Hopper’s performance has an edginess which results not only from the character’s criminal past, shady dealings and fraudulent identity. It has the additional echoes of the ’60s American counter-culture, its rebellious search for freedom from social convention and occasional self-destructiveness. The presence of then “rogue” directors Nicholas Ray, who plays painter Derwatt, and Samuel Fuller, who plays a crime boss, also evokes filmmaking on the margins of Hollywood. Hopper’s own personal crisis at the time also feeds into his performance. As Ripley he records his existential anguish on a tape recorder, shouts “I am confused” into the wind, and, in an unscripted scene which he improvised, takes Polaroid pictures of himself while he cries. The spaces he inhabits are full of American icons: a yellow New York taxi, a Thunderbird car, his jeans trousers and jacket, his cowboy hat, his jukebox and Coca-Cola machine, the pool table and Marlboro cigarettes. These numerous extra-filmic echoes add an additional dimension to Wenders’ portrayal of the impact of America on European culture.

Bruno Ganz, on the other hand, was an established star of the German stage, with a reputation for seriousness and introspection and all the high culture associations that came from his performing the theatrical classics. Up until this film, he had only acted in a handful of not very successful film roles. While Hopper’s persona and private and professional life suffuses his role, Ganz performs. His approach to acting was diametrically opposed to Hopper’s. While Hopper was raw, manic, impressionistic, Ganz was methodical, controlled, intellectual. His intensity is of a different kind. As Zimmermann, he is initially a dejected man and then under siege. He is often filmed in a static fashion, falling asleep, getting hurt. Equally, he suddenly bursts into action, and runs through tunnels, airports and train stations. While Ripley’s malaise is existential, Zimmermann’s is, at least to start with, physical. Ganz plays him as an ordinary man trying to make sense of the world around him, to distinguish what is true and what can be trusted. The certainty with which he initially identifies the Derwatt painting as a fake disappears through his dealings with the extraordinary Ripley.

Wenders downplays the thriller elements and the plot’s suspense and slows down a gear to pay attention to the dynamics of the two men’s relationship, which is also an interplay between two approaches to screen characterisation and acting, to meaning and authenticity. After their initial rift, they exchange gifts as a peace offering – these gifts are both optical toys. Together with the recurring motif of the frame and the weakening of the tropes of the thriller, they encourage us to question what we see. Their pairing can also be read as a dialogue between America and Europe.

Who Is the American Friend? - essence of film - Tumblr  Ilpo Hirvonen from Essence of Film, February 8, 2015

 

American Madness: Concepts of Culture and Sanity in The ...  American Madness: Concepts of Culture and Sanity in The American Friend and Stroszek, by William Beard, originally published in Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, 1992

 

Everything I Know About Architecture, I Learned From Wim ...  Karrie Jacobs from Architect magazine, April 2015

 

The Pink Smoke [John Cribbs]

 

Existential Ennui: Ripley's Game and The American Friend ...  Nick Jones at Existential Ennui comparing the book to the film

 

Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear: Der amerikanische Freund ...   Nathanael Hood

 

Der Amerikanische Freund - Film (Movie) Plot and Review ...  Julian Petley from Film Reference

 

World Cinema Review: Wim Wenders | Der amerikanische ...  Dying to Kill, by Douglas Messerli from World Cinema Review

 

Lost & Found (And Hardly Seen) - THE AMERICAN FRIEND ...  Eric Cohen from This Is Infamous

 

Cinema de Merde [Scott Telek]

 

Opening Shots: The American Friend | Scanners | Roger Ebert  Jim Emerson 

 

Wim Wenders – Der Amerikanische Freund aka The ...  Cinema of the World                                         

 

628. Der amerikanische Freund/The American Friend (1977)  1001 Movie Man

 

At The Back [Tom Gooderson-ACourt]

 

Mostly Movies: Classic Movie Review: The American Friend  Jason Ihle

 

GreenCine Daily: RETRO ACTIVE: The American Friend ...  Nick Schager

 

Movie Reviews UK  Damian Cannon

 

The American Friend - Movie Reviews by Jaime Rebanal

 

The Essentials: The 10 Best Wim Wenders Films | The Playlist  Kenji Fujishima, Nicholas Laskin, Oliver Lyttelton, and Rodrigo Perez, September 3, 2015

 

Cine Outsider [Slarek]

 

DVD Savant Review: The American Friend - DVD Talk  Glenn Erickson

 

DVD Talk [Stuart Galbraith IV]

 

DVD Verdict- The Wim Wenders Collection (Volume 2) [Brett Cullum]

 

Faraway, So Close: Wim Wenders :: Stop Smiling Magazine  Michael Joshua Rowin

 

70s Rewind: Wim Wenders' THE AMERICAN FRIEND | Twitch  Peter Martin

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]

 

KQEK DVD Review [Mark R. Hasan]

 

Rusty White's Film World [Rusty White]

 

The American Friend - VideoVista  Gary Couzens

 

American Friend, The | Emanuel Levy

 

Pol Culture: Movie Review: The American Friend  Robert Stanley Martin

 

The New Yorker [Pauline Kael]  capsule review (pdf)

 

Tatum Archive Blog [Charles Tatum]

 

Movie Vault [Goatdog]

 

Talking Pictures [Howard Schumann]

 

The American Friend - ArtsEmerson 

 

Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]

 

The American Friend | Chicago Reader  Dave Kehr

 

Wim Wenders - Film Reference  Joseph Milicia

 

Der amerikanische Freund  Batcol, best photo site

 

Interview with Patricia Highsmith  Gerald Peary interview from Sight & Sound, Spring 1988

 

'American Friend' to Lead Berlin's Wim Wenders Homage ...  ‘American Friend’ to Lead Berlin’s Wim Wenders Homage, by Leo Barraclough from Variety, November 27, 2014

 

BBCi - Films (DVD review)  Almar Haflidason

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]

 

DVDBeaver.com - Review [Pavel Borodin]

 

The American Friend - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

PARIS, TEXAS                                                        A-                    94

France  Germany  Great Britain  (147 mi)  1984

 

is it a rooster
or some woman screaming in the distance

 

is it black sky
or about to turn deep blue

 

is it a motel room

or someone’s house

 

is it the body of me alive
or dead

 

is it Texas
or West Berlin

 

what time is it
anyway

 

what thoughts
can I call allies 

 

I pray for a break
from all thought

 

a clean break
in blank space

 

let me hit the road
empty-headed

 

just once

 

I’m not begging

 

I’m not getting down on my knees 

 

I’m in no condition to fight

 

—3:30 am, from Motel Chronicles, by Sam Shepard, December 9, 1980, Fredericksburg, Texas, Motel Chronicles - Page 20 - Google Books Result

 

Winner of the Palme d’Or (1st prize) as well as a FIPRESCI award and Ecumenical Jury prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, this joint French-German co-production has always been viewed as a bridge between European and American sensibilities, making it one of the few European films to succeed on American soil, where Europeans always regarded this film with greater affection, literally bringing tears to the receptive audience at Cannes, while Americans tended to diminish its significance, curiously less able to see themselves through the lens of a European director.  While Europe is a collection of neighbors living in close proximity to one another, where they’re used to directors like Roberto Rossellini filming the devastated ruins of postwar Berlin in GERMANY YEAR ZERO (1948), America prefers their own stamp of individualism, perhaps better known for their wide open spaces.  Following on the success of his mid-70’s “road movies” like Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3 (1976), which echoes an American tradition, the film continues Wenders’s theme of overall rootlessness, filled with anxiety-ridden characters exiled from home and community, who instead wander the ends of the earth seeking small comforts, where the road is often their only friend.  Wenders himself was in a particularly restless state, having left his home in Germany to make films in America during the 80’s, making new contacts while searching for a creative mark of distinction that might jumpstart his career.  Originally adapted from Sam Shepard’s Motel Chronicles, a collection of poems, short stories, rants, and general observations, this mood of life on the run could all be traced back to Kerouac’s epic American novel of the 50’s, On the Road, a defining work of the budding curiosity behind a postwar generation that simply refused to be confined to the suffocating conformism of suburban sprawl and Eisenhower era conservatism.  The postwar generation of Wenders’ Germany was undergoing their own identity crisis, drawn to American cinema and the European art film as a model, where the alienation and modern angst of Antonioni, perhaps best exemplified by L’AVVENTURA (1960) and RED DESERT (1964), led to intimate portraits of restless, deeply haunted characters wandering through bleak but beautiful landscapes, often expressed within a vague and nearly non-existent narrative structure. 

 

Certainly one of the loneliest films ever written, a film that literally aches from the extent of the looming distance between characters, reflected by the vast panoramic vistas of the American West that stretch out into the horizon, suggesting this extraordinary amount of space is simply impossible to fill, that humans are miniscule players on a much grander scale, where it’s easy to get lost in the sheer immensity of it all.  With a backdrop of faded ghost towns in Texas that have literally dropped off the face of the earth, like Terlingua (population 58) and Marathon (pop. 430), small communities of barely populated houses huddled together, with old broken down piles of junk littering the landscape, where perhaps there’s a bar or a breakfast café to be found, but more than likely it’s a mere speck on the map, where it’s a wonder that anything could survive in this dry and desolate territory in the middle of a desert where there’s no water to be found as far as the eye can see.  After driving the length of the entire Mexican-American border, a distance of 1,500 miles, Wenders decided to shoot in an area of Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert that extends southwards into Mexico, specifically in an area known as the Devil’s Graveyard, which he describes as a “gigantic, abstract dream landscape.”  Wenders emulates the mythical qualities of John Ford in his opening sequence, setting his lead character smack dab in the middle of an unending desert with no conceivable signs of civilization, literally walking across a dry, scorchingly hot wasteland that resembles the path Mexican immigrants must have followed while following their dreams to America.  Accompanying this lone figure in the wilderness is an astonishing bottleneck slide guitar improvisation by Ry Cooder modelled after the Blind Willie Johnson song from 1927, “Dark Was the Night,” Blind Willie Johnson - Dark was the night... - YouTube (3:21), heard here in a video montage tribute to Route 66, Ry Cooder Paris, Texas - YouTube (5:01), which Cooder describes as “the most soulful, transcendent piece in all American music.”  While only a dot on the screen, dwarfed by the endless expanse, Harry Dean Stanton is Travis, dressed in a worn out suit, wearing a red trucker’s cap, carrying the last sips of water in a plastic jug, he is a man literally returning from nowhere, seemingly with no past and no future, just drifting through the eternity of existence.    

 

While Stanton got his start working in various television shows of the 50’s and 60’s, working with Monte Hellman in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and COCKFIGHTER (1974), and Sam Peckinpah in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), after having worked together on so many TV westerns, appearing in over 100 films, but he never had a starring role until this film, always associated as a character actor for the unique look that he brings, gaunt, world-weary and weather-beaten, as if he’s been out in the cold too long.  It was Shepard that chose him for the role, where he doesn’t utter a word for the first 26-minutes of the film, a stubborn, catatonic stranger that comes out of nowhere, a lost soul who vanished off the face of the earth 4 years ago who is now suddenly placed in a position to put his life back together again and reunite with his estranged family.  Wandering into an unmarked bar and roadside café, Travis passes out, where from a phone number in his pocket, his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) is called to come pick him up from Los Angeles.  By the time he arrives, however, Travis has already disappeared again, wandering back out into the abyss, where he has to track him down following the railroad tracks.  Initially Travis doesn’t even recognize him, where there’s a degree of discomfort and disorientation that exists between them for an extended duration, where the viewer can’t really sort it out either, but Walt fills him in that his 7-year old son Hunter (Hunter Carson, the son of actress Karen Black and L.M. Kit Carson, one of the co-writers of the film and director of Dennis Hopper’s 1971 The American Dreamer), has been living with he and his wife Anne (French actress Aurore Clément) since he’s been gone, that when mentioned sends a jolt through his soul.  When it becomes apparent that Travis refuses to fly, they’re forced to rent a car and drive back to LA, becoming an extended road trip that couldn’t be more gorgeously photographed by cinematographer Robby Müller, who shot every Wenders film since SUMMER IN THE CITY (1970), where every landscape is utter perfection and every wayside stop resembles a Walker Evans photograph, where the peculiarly beautiful red sky actually exists, given a pastel neon green accompaniment, creating surreal images, including a shot through the windshield of an orange horizon as a storm approaches casting a fluorescent glow on a desolate hotel in an empty street of some nameless town.  Wenders often waited around for a train that would come by once a day and frame a shot around it, continually creating enormous space and distance between them that parallels the seemingly unbridgeable communication gap.  Out of nowhere Travis finally utters a word, “Paris,” eventually explaining it’s a small town in Texas where he believes he was conceived, showing his brother a photograph of an empty lot that he purchased, perhaps hoping one day to build something on it.   

 

By the time they get to LA, Travis remains shy and reticent, matching Hunter’s initial feelings as well, where they may as well be strangers, though Anne showers them both with affection, speaking through a thick, foreign accent, but her warmness and sincerity shines through, obviously wanting what’s best for both of them, but just what that is hasn’t materialized yet.  The location of the home is exquisite, on a small hill overlooking the Burbank airport, where Travis loves to position himself in the garden with a pair of binoculars watching the planes come in and out.  While it’s slow going at first, Travis reaches out to his son, offering to walk him home after school, but Hunter finds this a lame idea, as “nobody walks in LA” (paraphrasing a 1982 song by Missing Persons), traveling everywhere by car.  Nonetheless, they slowly grow on each other, accentuated by a short clip of Super 8 home movies that shows Travis and a much younger version of Hunter with his mother Jane (Nastassja Kinski) on the beach in Galveston, Texas with Walt and Anne, a very bright and colorful glimpse that resembles a fantasy of pure joy and happiness, with plenty of affection and smiles, exactly what’s missing in the present.  This footage has a special charm, as it’s the first time we see Jane, who appears indescribably happy, but it also works as a flashback, where the idea of a whole other life is suggested, literally planting the seed in the sketches of a narrative that may “want” to come full circle.  This is precisely the effect it has on Travis, suddenly asking about Jane, discovering from Anne that she continues to send money on the 5th of every month from a bank in Houston, Texas.  When Travis picks up his son after school in a car where the rear end has been converted to a truck, he’s a man on a mission, with plans to find his mother in Houston, which intrigues Hunter as well, where on the spot they both hit the road back to Texas.  From the director’s perspective, the film hits a lull until they arrive in Houston, as Sam Shepard wrote a script only up to this point, thinking once the shoot started, they’d figure out the rest on the fly, which simply wasn’t the case.  Shepard was involved with actress Jessica Lange, and the two of them were on location in Iowa shooting the film COUNTRY (1984), leaving Wenders, with the help of Hunter’s father Kit Carson, to figure out the rest.  The film was actually delayed several times when they ran out of money, which gave Wenders some wiggling room.  It’s important to note that he was working with Claire Denis at the time as his assistant director, also Allison Anders as a UCLA film school production assistant, both of whom had yet to shoot their first films, also Agnès Godard as the assistant cinematographer, while at the same time he was calling Shepard on a regular basis discussing ideas.  This small circle of friends, not to mention Robby Müller, is quite formidable, showing an unusual breadth of artistic talent, so from the viewer’s perspective, there may be no distinguishing difference in this interim, though it’s quite clear the powerhouse ending, which is in effect a one-act play, was written by Sam Shepard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright.    

 

Much like Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten) Road Trilogy Pt. 1  (1974) a decade earlier, both films deal with a single mother leaving their child with someone else, which is a story in itself rarely depicted in American films.  In KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979), an Academy Award winning picture that depicted the ugly impact of a contentious custody battle in a divorce, the country was in an uproar when Meryl Streep, the mother, leaves their son with Dustin Hoffman, the child’s father.  In this film, Jane left Hunter with his uncle’s family, with no background information provided whatsoever in the story until the very end, while in ALICE the child is left with a total stranger.  It’s intriguing to consider the effects in each instance from differing cultures, where the idea of viewing Wenders from a feminist perspective imposes values that aren’t inherent in the film, with the same being said from a religious perspective.  Wenders’s films largely take place in an existential void somewhere on the road, far away from any family or home, where characters are lonely and adrift, much like Wenders himself on his American odyssey, where he’s caught in a no man’s land somewhere between Europe and the United States.  What’s uniquely different about this film is how the mysterious wanderer Travis tries to restore his family by aligning himself with the innocence of a 7-year old child, regaining his confidence and perspective through this union, which is a severe psychological shift from the opening.  Only with this restored balance can Travis play the final card, which he does by discovering Jane working in a strange, subterranean peep-show that has sexual overtones, but nothing explicit is ever shown, only suggested.  Instead it’s a twisted fantasy playland for lonely men who wish to tell their troubles to pretty young girls while they basically listen through a one-way mirror where the men can see the girls but the girls can’t see the men, where it’s all talk, no touching, though John Lurie plays an owner or pimp that suggests other business arrangements can be made.  Whether these places actually exist somewhere is open to question, but it works perfectly for what Shepard has in mind, very similar to Robert Altman’s adaptation of his play Fool for Love (1985), featuring long, stream-of-consciousness soliloquies of damaged and tortured souls.  Both are among the most dramatically intense films made by either director, culminating with brilliantly written, spectacularly conceived scenes, where Nastassja Kinski, listening to a long-winded monologue from Harry Dean Stanton, gives the performance of her career, where the camera literally fixates on her as she slowly begins to realize who’s on the other side of the mirror.  These scenes are so acutely sad and theatrically powerful that it takes awhile for the viewer to recover afterwards, as Travis, once again escaping from the reconstructed family he doesn’t think he deserves, disappears into the existential murk of another surreal neon-lit landscape.         

 

Adrian Martin from 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die:

 

Who is that walking man?  Travis (Harry Dean Stanton in his best role) emerges from the vast Texas desert, to the haunting refrains of Ry Cooder’s slide guitar.  Instantly the possibiloity of a story seizes us:  Where did he come from, where is he going?  It turns out Travis is fleeing a catastrophic family breakdown that left his wife, Jane (Nastassja Kinski), who has also since disappeared, and his young son, Hunter (Hunter Carson), in the care of Travis’s brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell).

 

Travis does not want to stop walking.  Walt and others slowly bring him back to language, to sociability, to a remembrance of home and belonging.  But nothing will be right until Travis finds Jane.  He discovers her in a strip cub where she acts as a therapist to th often troubled and lonely customers.  In a touching scene, he tells her his own story through a one-way mirror—he can see Jane but she is unable to see him.

 

Wim Wenders here made one of the archetypal films of the 1980’s.  His European, aesthetic vision—carried mostly by the landscape cinematography of Robbie Müller—meshed perfectly with the American sensibility of writer Sam Shepard.  It is an affecting story of “otherness,” a man who cannot fit into the “symbolic order.”  In the course of his tentative reentry into civilization, Travis naturally bonds with other outsiders, such as a Latin American maid who teaches him eccentric lessons in dress and manners, and especially Hunter, with whom he shares a charmingly childlike rapport.

 

Paris, Texas was a pivotal film for Wenders.  Just as Travis negotiates gingerly his relationship with society, Wenders was slowly coming to terms with the act of storytelling in cinema—an obligation he had hitherto suspended in the wandering, episodic era of his German-language Alice in the Cities (1974) and Kings of the Road (1976).  He was also bringing himself to contemplate traditional values of marriage, family, and community.  For some, he subsequently went too far in his embrace of both conventional cinema and traditional values.  But Paris, Texas, like Wings of Desire (1987) captures the best of both phases in Wenders’s career, both the longing for home and the recognition of a difficult, modern alienation from it.   

 

Deep Focus [Bryant Frazer]

 

Influenced by the American western as much as anything, German filmmaker Wim Wenders sets out to remake the mythic vision of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) as a different kind of family story, reflecting the reality the director found when he set out to see what has become of the American West for himself. Harry Dean Stanton’s performance as the wandering Travis fleshes out an American archetype, and there’s a certain poetry to the way his face fills up one of these frames. Oddly, he’s cast opposite the very European Nastassja Kinski, playing Jane, the wife whose companionship he forfeited years ago. Reunited with his son, Hunter, Travis sets out on his own Ethan-Edwardian quest, chasing after a certain purity of life (as best remembered in a series of Super-8 movies flickering on a foldaway home movie screen) that he can never recover.

 

Time Out

A man in a red baseball cap comes stumbling over the Mexican border and into the Texan desert, mute, bowed but driven by an obsessive quest. When his brother (Stockwell) drives him (Stanton) home to LA, the shards of his broken life are painfully pieced together in fits and starts of talk. Four years ago he 'lost' his family; now he has returned to find them. Reunited with his 7-year-old son, he travels to Houston, where he finds his wife (Kinski) working in a peep-show. Wenders once more finds himself on the borders of experience, finally achieving an unprecedented declaration of the heart, even if man and wife can only perceive each other through a glass darkly. Wenders' collaboration with writer Sam Shepard is a master-stroke, wholly beneficial to both talents; if Wenders' previous film, The State of Things, was on the very limits of possibility, this one, through its final scenes, pushes the frontier three steps forward into new and sublime territory.

Paris, Texas | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum 

While far from being Wim Wenders's best film, this 1984 collaboration with Sam Shepard, about a speechless wanderer (Harry Dean Stanton) returning from the desert and trying to resume relationships with his abandoned and scattered family, has an epic sweep (with superb color photography by Robby Müller) that occasionally brings the movie within hailing distance of its outsized ambitions. (Praised in Europe and widely scorned in the U.S., in part because, like Wenders's Hammett, it treats an American subject from a European perspective, it at least has the merit of treating some old myths out of John Ford with fresh and contemporary insights.) Like Wenders's other road movies, this is largely about the spaces between people and the words they speak—Antonioni updated and infused with German romanticism; the various means of indirection through which the hero communicates with his son (Hunter Carson) and wife (Nastassja Kinski) constitute a striking motif. With Dean Stockwell and Aurore Clement, as well as a plaintive score by Ry Cooder.

Cinemascope: Paris, Texas [1984]  Shubhajit

Paris, Texas ranks as the best film by celebrated German filmmaker Wim Wenders, and is often counted among the finest movies ever made. This is a marvelous road movie that delves into spiritual, post-modernist and psycho-analytical issues. The vast American landscape with its neon billboards, long uninterrupted highways and vast uncharted territories has been wonderfully employed to depict human alienation where communication has become a difficult parameter. Right from its lazily captivating opening sequence, where a mysterious looking man without any name or identity is seen wandering about the Texan deserts, the director keeps us enthralled. Soon we come to know that he has been missing for the last four years and has a young son who is being looked after by his thoroughly Americanized brother and his wife. But the reasons for his sudden disappearance are revealed only at the end through the now legendary one-way glass monologue. Like Alice in the Cities, another majestic road movie by Wenders, here too the complex relationship between a disenchanted adult and an exuberant child plays at the forefront of the movie. Harry Dean Stanton, as the melancholic, taciturn and deeply human protagonist Travis, is brilliant in his understated portrayal; and so is the performance of the kid who plays his young son slowly getting to connect with his father. The long, evocative camera shots and the minimalist acoustic guitar riffs play vital roles in presenting a poetic tale of loneliness, lost love and home-coming.

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

When viewed through a European lens, America tends to look like a strange and disorienting expanse stretching off to the horizon, a place so vast that a person could easily get swallowed whole. Movies like Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms, and even Aki Kaurismäki's Leningrad Cowboys Go America are no doubt influenced by American Westerns; they put a particular emphasis on the landscape, and how its breadth and severity affect both its inhabitants and its visitors. Few directors have been more inspired by American culture than Germany's Wim Wenders, whose famed '70s "road trilogy" films (Alice In The Cities, Wrong Move, and Kings Of The Road) were basically European inflections on films like Easy Rider and Two-Lane Blacktop. When he finally got the chance to capture America directly in 1984's Paris, Texas, Wenders accomplished something rare: He made a familiar landscape seem like uncharted territory.

Anchored to a beautiful Sam Shepard script, which eliminates the potential awkwardness of translation, Wenders starts with the blankest of slates: grizzled loner Harry Dean Stanton, who's wandering through a barren Texas desert. A man with no name, no known history, and no ability to speak, Stanton collapses in a border town, where a local doctor nurses him back to health and contacts his brother (Dean Stockwell), a billboard artist from Los Angeles. As it turns out, Stanton has been missing for four years, during which Stockwell and his wife (Aurore Clément) adopted Stanton's 7-year-old son (Hunter Carson) and raised him as their own. When Stanton recovers his memory and voice, he embarks on a quest to reunite his broken family, which involves abducting his son and driving to Houston to look for his long-lost wife (Nastassja Kinski). But the reasons behind his disappearance rest in a troubled past, which proves difficult to overcome without emotional consequences.

In the audio commentary on the new DVD, Wenders claims that the script was only partially finished before shooting, and the completed half was shot chronologically, which might explain the sense of discovery that makes the film so absorbing. Stanton remains an incomplete picture, as much to himself as to the audience, and Wenders and Shepard deliberately withhold the details, at least until a revelatory encounter in which Stanton and Kinski talk behind a two-way mirror. Usually relegated to supporting roles, where he's long been one of the finest character actors, Stanton disappears into the part in a way lead actors might not have dared, and it deepens the mystery surrounding his character. But Paris, Texas resonates as much for its backdrop as for anything going on in the foreground. Cued to a spare Ry Cooder score inspired by Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was The Night," Wenders and first-rate photographer Robby Müller (Down By Law) evoke the gorgeous Texas sprawl as a reflection of the hero's barren, mournful spirit. When the film ends on a note of weary optimism, it feels like a hard-won miracle.

Nastassja Kinski: From the Heart - Film Comment  Abby Bender, December 1, 2014

As a former model and the daughter of a well-known actor, Nastassja Kinski entered the business with a background that might meet with skepticism. How does an actress already under the dual burden of these two prior roles come into her own? In Kinski’s case, it’s by imbuing each performance with a keen emotional intelligence. At just 14 years old, with the help of German New Wave actress Lisa Kreuzer, she landed her first role, as a mute girl in Wim Wenders’s The Wrong Move (75). The next year, she starred as a nun in the poorly received British horror film To the Devil a Daughter but only won recognition in the U.S. in 1979 with Stay as You Are, an Italian production in which she played alongside Marcello Mastroianni. Roman Polanski’s Tess followed, and that film, along with others featuring the roles for which she is best known, is part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Nastassja Kinski retrospective, spanning 15 years with a particular emphasis on the early Eighties. The nine films in the series showcase a variety of roles and performances, from sad poppet to sensual provocateur, but with none of the superficiality those labels might imply.

Lest this childlike nature imply a lack of power, Kinski has other, more seemingly sophisticated roles, and this chameleonic quality ensures her a sense of agency. She performs memorably in more lurid fare as well. James Toback’s Exposed (83) is by no means the strongest film in the series, with its flimsily constructed plot about a small-town-girl-turned-model who gets mixed up with terrorists, but she still gives a strong performance and is able to deliver a line as cliché as “I’m not like most people” with sexy intrigue. As an older model at a glamorous New York gallery party puts it, she has “the mystery of Garbo, the wit of Lombard, and the sensuality of Monroe,” and her simultaneously confused and satisfied look as she flips through a magazine with her face on the cover shows her awareness of her fantasy object status. Paul Schrader’s Cat People (82) is the better of these two titillating films, with its sweaty Reagan-era music-video aesthetic. Despite Kinski’s claim in the very pages of this publication (Sept/Oct 82) that she didn’t like the film, she is well suited to the role of someone not quite human—she gets to play both overwhelmed and dangerous.

Cat People is obviously a long way from Tess, but her distinct features unite all of the roles on display in the Film Society series. There’s that voice: soft, slightly accented, again almost childlike and vulnerable, but capable of imbuing her lines with emotional power. In Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (84) a classic American road film as envisaged through the eyes of a European director, Kinski plays Jane Henderson, the mysterious, missing wife of Travis (Harry Dean Stanton). Her absence makes her a mythically alluring figure and shapes the film’s plot. She first appears in Super-8 footage, and when we see her in the present tense, at the strange Americana-themed peep show where she works, her presence feels hard won and we hang on to her every word. She speaks in a measured Southern accent that endearingly wavers: she sounds a bit like a child, but has lived a full life, one whose decisions haven’t always been fully explained. With her pink sweater and blonde bob, sitting behind glass, she is an apparition of feminity, composed yet nebulous.

Then, of course, there’s that pout. Surely Kinski has one of the most expressive mouths in the movies. Accented with pink lipstick in Paris, Texas, or with a whistling scene in Tess, the smallest upturn or downturn of her lip is filled with nuance. As a circus performer in Francis Ford Coppola’s One From the Heart (82) she enchants in stylized close-ups, clad in sparkly makeup, her lips forming a perfect smirk. She’s an idealized woman, yet the film is so over the top, and her distinct appeal in such full force that she’s more of an actual pixie than a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. In Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Moon in the Gutter (83), Kinski is a vixen in red lipstick and a red dress and, driving a red car, a beacon of femininity in contrast to the seedy world around her, accompanied by backlighting and a classical score. 

Kinski is one of those actresses who even in a not great film is inevitably interesting: surely the highlight of The Hotel New Hampshire (84) is Kinski, clad in a comical bear suit, playing a sullen (and, surprisingly for her, unlikable) woman of ambiguous sexuality. Here and in her other roles, Kinski isn’t just a naïf—she’s more mysterious and can play more tortured characters than the prototypical gamine, and she’s never simply “cute”. She taps in to a subtle sweetness and sadness that can take us by surprise, putting us in thrall to her, our emotions hinged on the quivering of her lips and her expressive, slightly sleepy eyes. In Paris, Texas, Kinski’s Jane Henderson says: “I don’t mind listening. I do it all the time.” And we don’t mind watching her.

Slant Magazine [Joseph Jon Lanthier]

From its hazily Southwestern skyscraper surfaces to its barren, prickly bush and junk car-pocked bedrock, there's something slightly off-kilter about the America of Paris, Texas. The central masculine cast is nothing if not indigenous—when the sun-punched Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton) first stumbles into frame, his uncultivated, hirsute face and dusty red cap seem like natural geological formations that have been patiently waiting, cragged and craterous, for us to anticlimactically discover them—and the relationship-oriented, plot-shunning dialog by western playwright Sam Shepherd taps into dialectal heartbrokenness without a shred of disassociating local lingo. But there are tellingly alien factors: How did both Henderson brothers wind up with women who drip sophisticated European sex appeal from their ripe lips and honey hair? And why does every truck stop along highway 10 emit the same sickly green aura that glows like a clumsy, wistful metaphor against the ferociously red sunset? And how do aridly panoramic, sneeringly and smokily man-made L.A. skylines upstage the parched siltstone and yucca tree of God's creation in a film with Texas in the title?

Perhaps we've forgotten already that "Paris" is in the title, too, and it comes first. It's meant to be an ironic juxtaposition, of course; none of the movie takes place in the actual city of Paris, Texas, and the lot of stagnant tumbleweeds Travis purchased there years ago on a subsequently fizzled whim provide little more than a conventional objective correlative onto which we can project Stanton's subdued patriarchal anguish. But the angular name pairing additionally and eloquently encapsulates the film's primary tension—that between the hopelessly foreign and the unforgivingly familiar.

Just as Ry Cooder's soundtrack of plaintively metallic glissandos can ultimately only be appreciated only as a white academic's soulful dissertation on authentic black pain, the tenderly talented look and feel of Paris, Texas provided by director Wim Wenders (a German) and cinematographer Robby Müller (a Dutchman) elides spiritual resonance for human curiosity at every possible turn. This means the camera's persistent hunt for beauty can adopt the detached yet voracious reverence of tourism, but in the film's most memorable scenes this tendency infuses the talkative inaction with heart-halting anticipation. Wenders and Müller stage the torturously two-way mirrored, putative peep show conversations between Travis and his estranged, wayward wife Jane (Nastassia Kinski) under sullen blue lights that reminds us of soon-to-be-closing supermarkets, framing the ex-lovers as if they've never heard two Americans speaking so honestly with one another before about their mutual history or their feelings. The punctiliously wide-eyed wonder infects even those of us who are weary of trailer park tragedies with an empathic impatience for how the loose ends will tie up or simply slacken through the conversation.

Where Wenders attempts to find his common, stabilizing ground—his personal identification with the international material—is in the paradoxical fusion of family cohesion and the search for independence, a tug-of-war embedded not only his languid "Road" trilogy (also shot by Müller), but also in domestic influences on Paris, Texas such as Robert Altman's opiatic ode to California 3 Women. As with the warped, often menacing faux-sisterhood binding Sissy Spacek and Shelly Duvall in that remarkably American movie, the unorthodox bond between Travis and his abandoned son Hunter (Hunter Carson) rests tenuously on a foundation of bewildering regret and the irrepressible lamentations of a shamanic id. Travis's transformation throughout his roundtrip trek from low desert to high and back again is subtle enough to entirely ignore—though he does go from refusing to speak to haplessly responsible brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) to embracing a newfound fluency in the language of imperfect reconciliation by the film's end—but Wenders's emphasis, as usual, is on the volatile mutation of the journey rather than its lasting effects on the journeyman. Unlike the characters in Jim Jarmusch's travelogues, we don't fantasize Travis or Jane as autonomous beings with lives that assert themselves past the end credits. We instead think back on winding dirt roads exhaling furious clouds, the gray concrete of freeways caught in an impromptu firmament with a disinterested sky, and multi-layered, nocturnal rainbows of meretricious neon.

Paris, Texas may be missing a crucial piece of authentic Americana, but it still evokes an America most Americans yearn to gaze on. An America as thorny and carnivorous as a hawk talon, as raw and smug as a downtown mural, and as sweetly enigmatic as a vacant lot that doesn't—that can't—exist.

My favourite Cannes winner: Paris, Texas - The Guardian  Guy Lodge, April 27, 2015

According to actor Dirk Bogarde – the president of the Cannes competition jury in 1984 – festival bosses were less than delighted with the selection of New German Cinema graduate Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas for that year’s Palme d’Or. Writing in his autobiography, Backcloth, Bogarde recalls the instructions he was given from the top: “We were to choose films which would please a family audience, not ones which would appeal to ‘a few students and a handful of faux intellectuals. Family entertainment for all the world markets.’”

Hours before the award ceremony, the authorities were aghast when Bogarde presented them with his crew’s decisions. “What about the American films? There are no American awards?” he quotes. “You think that this … Paris, Texas is family entertainment?”

One has to wonder precisely what families the festival selectors had in mind when they assembled a competition lineup that also included Lars Von Trier’s The Element of Crime, Theo Angelopoulos’s Voyage to Cythera and John Huston’s Under the Volcano. By these austere standards, perhaps Bogarde’s jurors (Isabelle Huppert, Stanley Donen and Ennio Morricone among them) accidentally met the festival’s curious brief as best they could: Wenders’ sweetly desolate desert flower of a film may not be family entertainment per se, but it’s as acute and exquisite a film as has ever been made about family itself – a broken one, in this case, which can only be healed by further heartbreak. As for their “no American awards” objection, I can hardly think of a film more in thrall to the flat gingerbread landscape of the new American west, ribboned with tar and neon, echoing with lonesome blues riffs. Sometimes it takes a foreigner to forge true Americana, even in the forbidding Reaganite environment of the mid-1980s.

Cannes juries can be as capable of worthy-minded myopia as Academy award voters, yet this is one year they called it just right. Paris, Texas isn’t just the most enduringly beautiful and widely cherished title from that year’s respectable competition crop, but a film that remains, for this critic, the crowning achievement of Wenders’ speckled, frequently brilliant career: the one in which his dual inclinations toward aesthetic grandeur and emotional intimacy find their most serene meeting point, outclassing even such subsequent masterclasses as Wings of Desire (which netted him the best director prize at the festival three years later) and Pina. It’s a cinematic peak, too, for the spare, sandy writing of Sam Shepard, the actor-playwright whose tough dramatic sculpting of American male crisis hasn’t always translated as well to the screen as it does to the stage: Wenders and Shepard couldn’t repeat the trick two decades later in their arch, affected comedy Don’t Come Knocking.

Wenders brought a certain European elegance to Shepard’s intellectual machismo (the title may refer to an individual town in the US, but it also alludes to the film’s own transatlantic identity). But the men share a romantic fascination with the road, that asphalt spine of American geography and culture alike, leading travellers either to the country’s heart or its great beyond. For dessicated protagonist Travis (so searchingly played by the great Harry Dean Stanton), it takes him in both directions: reunited with his son after going walkabout in the Lone Star desert, cueing a search for his similarly unmoored wife, he can only locate his family home by leaving it.

Paris, Texas is a road movie: that most essentially American of genres, so beloved by Wenders that he named his first production company after it, midway through his celebrated road-movie trilogy of Alice in the Cities, The Wrong Move and Kings of the Road. But it’s also, in a muted, horse-free manner, a western. Beneath its cool urban trappings, it’s a story of detached men scouring the frontier to restore domestic order to a world out of balance. Nostalgic for the stability and rugged individuality of an old west that has since been irrevocably cluttered with the billboards, petrol stations and blinking identikit motels of modern living, Travis chases some semblance of the American dream, not for himself but for a son he barely knows – retreating back into the wilderness when it seems his work is done. As cowboys go, he’s a self-defeating hero; his grimy trucker cap could be either a white or black Stetson.

There’s a gold-hearted saloon girl in this western too: Jane, the strayed, mistreated wife and mother played by Nastassja Kinski, among the most incandescently artificial blondes in all cinema. Instead of ruffled bloomers, she wears a hot-pink angora jumper; instead of a saloon, she plies her trade in a dingy Houston peepshow booth. It’s that confined space, sliced in half by a one-way mirror, that hosts the film’s name-making scene, as Travis, having tracked her down, relates the story of their bad romance in minute, self-mutilating detail. You’d call it a monologue if Kinski’s perfect face weren’t constantly responding to every scarring revelation; cinematographer Robby Muller, a veritable sorcerer of light throughout, shoots this dual confessional (half-spoken, half-silent) with ingenious fluidity, every word mediated by the mirror’s foil-blue glimmer.

These few minutes would constitute a complete, astonishing short on their own, yet they merely mark the climax of a film with reckless beauty to burn even in its incidental passages. Any passing mention of Paris, Texas conjures a gallery of vivid, isolated images – and sounds, thanks to Ry Cooder’s much-appropriated, much-imitated slide-guitar score – that prompt a prickly feeling in the tear ducts. So many mood pieces sustain their mood only as far as the closing credits; the blissful melancholy of Paris, Texas endures with recall and association, however distant from one’s last viewing. Cannes has rewarded many a great film, but none that is quite so permanently, ever-retrievably embedded in my sense memory.

Paris, Texas: On the Road Again   Criterion essay by Nick Roddick,  January 27, 2010, also seen here:  Criterion Collection film essay [Nick Roddick]               

 

Like Flying Blind Without Instruments: On the Turning Point in Paris, Texas   Criterion essay by Wim Wenders, January 27, 2010

 

Press Notes: Paris, Texas - From the Current - The Criterion Collection  February 16, 2010

 

Chef du Cinema: Paris, Texas - From the Current - The Criterion ...  Ron Deutsch from Criterion Blog, May 26, 2011

 

Paris, Texas from Page to Screen - From the Current - The Criterion ...  First page of the Sam Shepard script, April 30, 2012

 

Ready for Her Close-up   photo gallery, June 04, 2012

 

Figure in a Landscape   photo gallery, November 11, 2014

 

Paris, Texas from Page to Screen   Video, April 30, 2012

 

Paris, Texas (1984) - The Criterion Collection

 

Paris, Texas • Wim Wenders film review • Senses of Cinema  Lee Hill, October 5, 2014

 

Revisiting Paris, Texas — The Best Film of the 1980's « The ...  David H. Schleicher from The Schleicher Spin

 

World Cinema Review: Wim Wenders | Paris, Texas  Douglas Messerli from International Cinema Review 

 

Navigating the Hyperreal Wastelands of "Paris, Texas ...  Critical Film, February 27, 2011

 

Wim Wenders's Paris, Texas - BOMB Magazine  Nicholas Elliot, November 28, 2014

 

Best of Both Worlds (Paris, Texas)  Craig from The Man from Porlock

 

Through This Lens: Wim Wenders' 'Paris, Texas' - PopOptiq  Jae K. Renfrow

 

Paris, Texas (1984) | Emanuel Levy   co-written by Emily Mantei

 

Texas Paris - Film (Movie) Plot and Review - Publications  Daniel Williams from Film Reference

 

Kamera.co.uk [Andy Gibson]

 

CriterionConfessions.com [Jamie S. Rich]

 

The New Frontier, Same as the Old Frontier by Eric Hynes ...  Eric Hynes from Moving Image Source, July 18, 2013    

 

Angel Wings and Texan Martyrs: On Wim Wenders  Jacqueline Valencia from These Girls On Film

 

GEOGRAPHY AND TIME: THE SEARCH FOR PLACE IN ‘PARIS, TEXAS’ AND ‘WINGS OF DESIRE’  Steven from The Hungry Suitcase

 

Not Coming to a Theater Near You (Rumsey Taylor)

 

Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders (1984) | SP Film Journal  Chrystal Hooi

 

THE FILM REVIEW REALM: Film Review: "Paris, Texas ...  Grant Douglas Bromley

 

Surrender to the Void-[Steven Flores]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Cinema Sights [James Ewing]

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Niall McCallum]

 

Cinetarium (Jack Gattanella)

 

Bill's Movie Emporium[Bill Thompson]

 

The MacGuffin [Allen Almachar]

 

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]

 

Sam Strange Remembers: PARIS, TEXAS | Badass Digest   Evan Saathoff

 

The Essentials: The 10 Best Wim Wenders Films | The Playlist  Kenji Fujishima, Nicholas Laskin, Oliver Lyttelton, and Rodrigo Perez, September 3, 2015

 

Cine Outsider [Slarek]

 

DVD Verdict [Paul Corupe]

 

Fulvue Drive-in [Nate Goss]

 

Paris, Texas on Criterion - Parallax View  Sean Axmaker, Criterion Collection

 

The QNetwork [James Kendrick]  Criterion Collection

 

DVD Verdict [Daryl Loomis]  Criterion Collection

 

DVD Talk [Casey Burchby]  Criterion Collection

 

Robert Cashill, Popdose  Criterion Collection

 

Paris, Texas (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk Review of the Blu-ray  Adam Tyner, Blu-Ray, Criterion Collection

 

DVD Savant Blu-ray Review: Paris, Texas  Glenn Erickson, Blu-Ray, Criterion Collection, also seen here:  Paris, Texas (1984) - Home Video Reviews - TCM.com

 

seanax.com [Sean Axmaker]  Blu-Ray, Criterion Collection

 

Slant Magazine (Blu-ray)  Joseph John Lanthier, Blu-Ray, Criterion Collection

 

DVD Verdict (Blu-Ray) [Gordon Sullivan]

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]

 

The Look of Paris, Texas | The Sheila Variations  Sheila O’Malley

 

PARIS, TEXAS (Wim Wenders, 1984) | Dennis Grunes

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

The Tech (MIT) [Michiel Bos]

 

The Spinning Image [Daniel Auty]

 

Movie Martyr [Jeremy Heilman]

 

Filmsweep [Persona]

 

One Movie a Day David Wester

 

Movie House Commentary   Tuna

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Philip Kelley]

 

Paste Magazine [Andy Beta]

 

CineScene.com [Howard Schumann] (capsule review)

 

Bonjour Tristesse (English)  gallery photos

 

Harry Dean Stanton: 'Life? It's one big phantasmagoria ...   Sean O’Hagan interview from The Observer, November 23, 2013

 

Film4 [Jon Fortgang]

 

TV Guide

 

Paris, Texas | Variety   Holly Willis

 

BBCi - Films (DVD review)  Almar Haflidason

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]  January 1, 1984

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]  December 8, 2002

 

New York Times  Vincent Canby 

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

Paris, Texas (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

TOKYO-GA                                                               B                     87

Germany  USA  (92 mi)  1985

 

If in our century something sacred still existed… if there were something like a sacred treasure of the cinema, then for me that would have to be the work of the Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu. He made fifty-four films. Silent films in the Twenties, black-and-white films in the Thirties and Forties, and finally color films until his death on December 12th, 1963, on his sixtieth birthday.

 

With extreme economy of means, and reduced to but the bare essentials, Ozu’s films, again and again, tell the same simple story, always of the same people, and the same city, Tokyo. This chronicle spanning nearly 40 years, depicts the transformation of life in Japan. Ozu’s films deal with the slow deterioration of the Japanese family, and thereby, with the deterioration of the national identity. But they do so not by pointing with dismay at what is new, Western, or American, but by lamenting with an unindulged sense of nostaligia the loss taking place at the same time.

 

As thoroughly Japanese as they are, these films are, at the same time, universal. In them, I’ve been able to recognize all families, in all the countries of the world, as well as my parents, my brother and myself. For me, never before and never again since has the cinema been so close to its essence and its purpose: to present an image of man in our century, a usable, true and valid image, in which he not only recognizes himself but from which, above all, he may learn about himself.

 

Ozu's work does not need my praise and such a sacred treasure of the cinema could only reside in the realm of the imagination. And so, my trip to Tokyo was in no way a pilgrimage. I was curious as to whether I still could track down something from this time, whether there was still anything left of this work. Images perhaps, or even people…Or whether so much would have changed in Tokyo in the twenty years since Ozu’s death that nothing would be left to find.

 

—Wim Wenders opening narration, Ozu Notes 2 Richie - Willamette University

 

Made between English-language film Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) (1987), Wenders actually takes a road trip to Japan in the spring of 1983, taking a break from shooting the American film in search of discovering any remnants of late Japanese director Yasuhirō Ozu in today’s Tokyo, some twenty years after he died, using a film language that is personal, powerful and evocative, described by Wenders as a “film diary,” but it's also one of the finest examples of a filmmaker using the medium to honor the work of another, much like the Olivier Assayas pilgrimage to Taiwan when shooting HHH – A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-hsien (1997).  With Wenders narrating the film, it ranges from explicit focus on Ozu’s filmmaking, where Wenders interviews Ozu’s regular cinematographer, Yûharu Atsuta, and one of Ozu’s favorite actors, Chishû Ryû, using clips from his films, to chaotic and often unsettling contemporary scenes of Tokyo, becoming entranced by the wider landscape while observing the country and its culture, where the film screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.  In distinct Wenders style, the opening shots of Tokyo are completely modernistic, with a dynamic sounding synthesizer soundtrack by Dick Tracy (Laurent Petitgand, Meche Mamecier, and Chico Rojo Ortega), Dick Tracy - TOKYO-GA [OST (19:13), that shows little compatibility with Ozu.  Framing the opening and closing of the film with images from Ozu’s TOKYO STORY (1953), Wenders goes looking for many of the iconic images that reoccur throughout Ozu’s career, the trains, rooftops, elevated electric wires, laundry hanging from a line, boats chugging slowly across the harbor, and children at play, then superimposes images from another filmmaker into the middle of his own film, which has a way of aesthetically communing with another artist, making the film itself specifically about filmmakers and filmmaking, where certainly part of the film’s desire is not only to pay tribute to those that came before him, but to examine the director’s own place among the pantheon of cinema itself.  Throughout the film, Wenders is moved to contemplation, like this particular moment where he photographs his own reflection in the window of a moving train, “We gasp and give a start when we suddenly discover something true or real in a movie, be it nothing more than the gesture of a child in the background, or a bird flying across the frame, or a cloud casting its shadow over the scene for but an instant.  It’s a rarity in today’s cinema to find such moments of truth, for people or objects to show themselves as they really are.”

 

Through Wenders’ eyes, Tokyo is an often overwhelming urban landscape, viewed as nearly incomprehensible while he searches out the obsession with all-night pachinko parlors, lined with rows of cramped players sitting next to one another, each lost in a game of mechanical solitaire, followed each night by a lone “nail man” who meticulously checks each of the machines after closing time, observing with a voice that’s flat and emotionless, “This game induces a kind of hypnosis.  Winning is hardly important.  But, time passes, you lose touch with yourself for a while, you merge with the machine, and perhaps, you forget, what you always wanted to forget,” with Wenders suggesting the game actually numbs the lingering, post-traumatic effects of World War II.  But he also discovers the presence of people lined up at a golf driving range sitting atop a skyscraper, watching the collective motion as they each practice their own swing, or swat baseballs from the roof of a department store, or discover a miniature golf stadium, while also discovering a prevalence for fake food displays in restaurant windows, a culturally unique way of promoting their menu, a stark contrast to the photographs that look decidedly less appetizing in fast food restaurants, with the director even venturing into a factory that manufactures lifelike, wax models of Japanese food, amusingly noting that the companies let him film everything except the employees eating.  While riding in trains, including an underground train system with high-tech tube maps, or taxi cabs offering channel surfing television options, we witness the constant presence of street advertising, the mesmerizing symmetry of cris-crossing commuter trains, or citizens in mass ascending or descending escalators, while on the street teenagers have already adopted an American sock-hop identity, wearing jeans or poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and club-embroidered (Tokyo Rockabilly Club), satin windbreakers dancing to the music of the 50’s and 60’s, with the guys doing their best Elvis Presley imitation, resorting to rare body contact when learning new dance steps, but we also catch an occasional glimpse of the elderly, a person reading manga, or an incalcitrant young child that simply refuses his mother’s insistence that he walk in a train station.  For Wenders, “The more the reality of Tokyo struck me as a torrent of impersonal, unkind, threatening, and yes, even inhuman images, the greater and powerful became in my mind the images of the loving and ordered world of the mythical city of Tokyo that I knew from the films of Yasujirō Ozu.”

 

While there is a luscious beauty to witnessing picnics in parks during the height of cherry blossom season, including a lingering impression of watching children play baseball on a cemetery path overrun by a cascade of blossoms, the key to the film is the presence of significant visitors, where there is a chance encounter with French filmmaker and essayist Chris Marker in a small bar appropriately called “La Jetee,” as Marker was working on the finishing touches of his own incredible film masterpiece Sans Soleil (1983) at the time, while fellow compatriot Werner Herzog also turns up dressed in a suit and tie atop the Tokyo Tower, an Eiffel Tower inspired substitute, where Herzog looks so out of place from his natural habitat, staring out over the artifice of high-rises and modern office buildings, uttering something superfluous like, “When I look out here I see that everything is cluttered up.  There are hardly any images to be found.  One has to dig deep down like an archeologist.”  But Wenders is on another kind of mission, “just to look, without wanting to prove anything.”  While it comes as no surprise that the smaller, more intimate world of Ozu has been swallowed up by a rapidly overgrown, technologically advanced, neon cityscape, where giant exteriors have drown out all suggestions of a quieter, more reflective world, the most powerful images of the film come from lengthy interviews with two of Ozu’s closest collaborators, now both in their 80’s, including Chishû Ryû, the director’s favorite actor who appeared in over 35 of his 54 films, always playing a more mature father figure much older than himself, giving all credit for his performances to his illustrious director, suggesting he would never have been a star without him.  Ryû takes Wenders to see Ozu’s grave, marked with a single Japanese character that stands for “nothingness.”  Camera operator Yûharu Atsuta started out as an assistant cameraman during the silent era and after 15 years was promoted to cameraman, working only for Ozu for the next 25 years, claiming he was a man of few words, but cared deeply for his crew, knowing precisely how he wanted films shot, where we see him enact how he setup those tatami shots for Ozu.  Preferring to shoot indoors on a controlled set, the director was bothered by observers during location shooting, so outside shots were mostly transitional, including his memorable litany of trains that appeared in nearly every picture.  Ozu would check out locations only by foot, with Atsuta saying “they would only stop looking when they passed out,” likely holed up in a neighborhood bar, which could lead to an appearance in one of his films, becoming a place where lonely fathers drown their sorrows.  Both men were proud to serve Ozu, passing up greater salary opportunities to stick with him, where their sincerity is apparent, with Atsuta displaying a prized gift from Ozu, a custom stopwatch used by the director to meticulously time his shots.  Trying to explain why he retired after Ozu’s death, Atsuta breaks down in tears and cannot continue, literally humbled by the moment.  Despite Wenders’ contention that the world of Ozu’s Japan no longer exists, his revealing interviews suggest otherwise, where perhaps it can only be found by the traveler who is in no hurry, someone like Ozu, who has the time to sit and observe the minute details of people’s behavior.

 

Tokyo-Ga | Chicago Reader  Ben Sachs

In this 1985 documentary Wim Wenders goes to Tokyo in search of the transcendent beauty he associates with the films of Yasujiro Ozu, but instead he finds mostly soulless, routinized behavior. He posits various reasons for this state of affairs—the postwar Westernization of Japan, the people's obsession with order, the rise of television with its easily digestible images—but lands on no easy explanation. He takes solace in interviewing people who worked with Ozu (actor Chishu Ryu, cinematographer Yuharu Atsuta), and their moving testimonies reveal the sort of loyalty and sympathy that Wenders finds lacking in Japanese street life. Compared with Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1982), another outsider's take on Japan, this feels lightweight, but it contains some hypnotic passages and Wenders's narration provides plenty to chew on.

Tokyo-Ga | The Cinematheque

Inspired by the cinema of Yasujiro Ozu, Wim Wenders travelled to Tokyo in 1983 to find out if, two decades after the Japanese master’s death, traces still remained of the world so richly rendered in sublime films such as Late Spring and Tokyo Story. Wenders’s eye for striking and unusual images finds ample material in the pachinko parlours, golf stadiums, rockabilly teenagers, and plastic sushi models of contemporary Tokyo. Fellow filmmakers Werner Herzog and Chris Marker make brief appearances, but highlighting things are visits with Chishū Ryū, Ozu’s favourite leading man, and Yūharu Atsuta, Ozu’s longtime cinematographer, both of whom offer poignant and revealing accounts of Ozu’s methods. Wenders’s own cinematographer for this eloquent, enjoyable essay film/travelogue was the talented American Ed Lachman, recently a Todd Haynes mainstay. “For many, this is Wenders’s most underrated film”

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

Taking a breather from the Paris, Texas shooting, Wim Wenders hopped a plane, camera in hand, to look for the Tokyo enshrined by the late Yasujiro Ozu (whose work Wenders dubs "the sacred treasure of the cinema"). What he found instead, documented in this filmic journal, was an urbanized dislocation not far from the forlorn emptiness he coached out of German and American vistas. Whether abstracting businessmen teeing off atop skyscrapers or the rigorous, artisanal craft of building a wax sandwich display, Wenders scrambles for humanity seeping through neon and steel -- a humanity linked, inevitably, to the old Japan of Ozu's films (rebellious tykes, cherry blossoms, tranquil countrysides). A far less queasy piece of hero-worship than Lightning Over Water, the picture meditates not so much on Ozu the filmmaker than on Ozu the vanishing feeling, motifs and images reconsidered in a modernized Japan circa 1983 (the trains that fill the Japanese master's pictures with notions of inexorable movement have now become bullet expresses, gliding with smooth, ominous impersonality). Elsewhere, Wenders bumps into Werner Herzog (who bitches about having to space-travel to find pure images nowadays), Chris Marker (whose Sans Soleil would make a superb double-bill with Tokyo-Ga) and two aged Ozu stalwarts, gracious, dignified leading man Chishu Ryu and anecdotal camera operator Yuuharu Atsuta. Wenders' eulogy for a culture alienating its own roots is built, characteristically, upon cinema's capacity for regenerative beauty, though his links to Ozu are, if anything, more tenuous than his affinity with Nicholas Ray -- Ozu's images distill life, Wenders' etherealize it. Cinematography by Edward Lachman.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Alex Kopecky

As far as tributes by Ozu aficionado Wim Wenders go, TOKYO-GA is far more worthwhile than the colossally silly UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (admittedly a judgment I make without the benefit (?) of seeing the 5-hour cut screening later in November), in which a man blinded by modern visual stimuli visits Chishu Ryu to have his vision restored. That anxiety about the purpose and effect of contemporary image-making in contrast to Ozu's perfection of the medium is equally present in this essay film, but in a way that is both more reverent and less pretentious. Wenders set out in 1983 to see if he could recognize the Tokyo of a filmmaker who died 20 years prior, a project both longing for and skeptical of the uncanny feeling of visiting a place for the first time and finding it all too familiar from cinematic memories. He turns his visual and intellectual curiosity to pachinko parlors, cemeteries, wax food production shops, and driving ranges, allured by the city but aware that he may be “searching for something that no longer exists.” There's a cameo by Werner Herzog at the top of the Tokyo Tower, delivering a typically Herzogian rant about the transparency of images that seems even more relevant today than it was in the mid-80s. And if the pontifications on late-night Japanese hotel TV and fascination with public park cosplayers feel familiar, we get a glimpse at Chris Marker's right eye in a brief encounter at a bar named after LA JETÉE. Though Wenders' ruminations on images and memory at times approach the monumental intoxication of SANS SOLEIL, this is ultimately a less ambitious undertaking, one in which the director deploys his wit and insight in the service of genuflecting to an idol. As such, the film begins and ends with the beginning and ending of TOKYO STORY, and the climax is a lengthy, emotional interview with longtime Ozu assistant cameraman/cinematographer Yuharu Atsuta. TOKYO-GA is interesting enough as a travelogue, but it's also one of the finest examples of a filmmaker using the medium to honor the work of another.

Lost in Translation « Film Quarterly  Homay King, Autumn 2005

Lost in Translation might have benefited from a similar treatment—from a clarification that its Japan is but an amalgam of signs and images. It might also have benefited from the influence of earlier films that address the theme of Western perceptions of the East. Chris Marker’s Sans soleil (1983), Leslie Thornton’s Adynata (1983), and Wim Wenders’ Tokyo-Ga (1985) and Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989) come to mind. Of particular relevance is Tokyo-Ga, which documents the filmmaker’s trip to Japan in the spring of 1983. Initially, Wenders goes to research Yasujiro Ozu, but he soon becomes entranced by the landscape as a whole: he films Pachinko parlors, indoor golf ranges, and a factory where artificial plastic foods are produced. Part essay, part travelogue, Tokyo-Ga is narrated from multiple “locations,” in Said’s sense. Wenders speaks to us in voiceover as pilgrim, film historian, and poet-philosopher. At one turn he applies the researcher’s detached gaze to Japanese athletics; at another he reveals the depths of his love for Yuuharu Atsuta’s cinematography. But at each point, Wenders specifies the context of his perceptions and marks his relationship to them. Like Roland Barthes’ Empire of Signs, a book of meditative fragments inspired by a similar trip, Tokyo-Ga makes clear that it “in no way attempts to represent reality itself.” Rather, it could be said, in Barthes’ words, to “descend into the untranslatable … without attempting to muffle its shock.”5

An example of this occurs when Wenders shows two sets of images of the Shinjuko neighborhood in Tokyo, filmed first with his own lens, and then a second time with the 50-millimeter lens preferred by Ozu. “Another image presented itself,” he tells us, “one that no longer belonged to me.” Soon after, Wenders happens upon a group of Japanese teenagers in 1950s styles of dress, earnestly lindy-hopping as the music of Elvis Presley sounds from a boom box in a public park. At no time, however, does Wenders’ camera smirk at them. Rather, it seems to marvel at the inextricable mixture of East and West, and at the emergence of the past into the present in such an unexpected and vital form. Unlike the photographers and karaoke singers in Lost in Translation, these dancers are not foreign copycats mimicking and pirating a superior American ideal. Rather, their rockabilly masks are donned with all the self-consciousness of Kabuki actors. They do not transcribe 1950s America; they translate it.

Nishikata Film Review  Catherine Munroe Hotes

Wim Wenders has an uneven history as a director. He has made some truly great films like Paris, Texas (1984) and Alice in den Städten (1974). He has also made some disappointing films like In Weiter Ferne, so nah! (1993). I know many people consider them cheesy, but I do love Der Himmel über Berlin (1987) and The Buena Vista Social Club (1999) and could watch them again and again. I was prepared to simply adore Tokyo Ga (1985), but instead found myself utterly disappointed.

Wenders bills the film as a quest to find remnants of Ozu’s Japan in contemporary Japan. He says: “Ozu’s work does not need my praise and such a sacred treasure of the cinema could only reside in the realm of the imagination. And so, my trip to Tokyo was in no way a pilgrimage. I was curious as to whether I still could track down something from this time, whether there was still anything left of this work. Images perhaps, or even people… Or whether so much would have changed in Tokyo in the twenty years since Ozu’s death that nothing would be left to find. " (Wenders).

Yet Wenders does little to track down Ozu’s Japan apart from his two interviews with long-time Ozu collaborators: actor Chizu Ryu (whose name he seems unable to pronounce properly, rather calling him “Rio”) and cinematographer Yuhara Atsuta. These interviews are always mediated by Wenders’s presence because he opts for voice-over translation instead of subtitles. This is particularly obnoxious for people who understand Japanese as then one must listen to two languages at once. Furthermore, as the voice-over is done by Wenders himself, I found that it rendered the translation as false because Wenders himself does not speak Japanese. This means that the words of Ryu and Atsuka are mediated by two people: the translator and Wenders. I would have much preferred subtitles. Even if I would not have been able to understand all of the Japanese, I would at least have been able to enjoy the natural rhythms of speech. The few moments we can hear Ryu with out Wenders’s voice-over are truly wonderful. The cadence of his voice has only been mildly affected by his age, and it transported me back to much-loved scenes from Ozu films.

The constant presence of Wenders’s voice does a great disservice to all of the images in the film. His voice is flat and emotionless. At times it almost caused me to fall asleep (my fellow viewers, Stefan and Bettina, did get lulled to sleep!). The most important rule in filmmaking is “show don’t tell” and Tokyo Ga would have been so much better if we as an audience had been able to mediate the images on our own, or just with the unusual soundtrack as accompaniment. The only person apart from Wenders who gets an unmediated monologue in the film is Werner Herzog in his interview atop Tokyo Tower. Herzog whines that there are hardly any Bilder (images) left in Tokyo – that everything has been built up and one must be an archeologist in order to find anything at all in this beleidige Landschaft (ravaged landscape). This only affirms Wenders view that what no longer existed in Tokyo was “the view which could still achieve order in a world out of order. The view that could still render the world transparent.” But in his search for this perceived “view” of Ozu’s, Wenders shows us Tokyo from the point-of-view of the tourist. In contrast, Ozu showed us the world within, the world of the domestic, the everyday. His films showed us that although children grow up, get married, leave home, and people move away or die, the world still goes on. His films are about the transience of life and the realness of the people who inhabit this life however fleetingly. Ozu’s films are about the universal whereas Wenders shows us the surface. I don’t know how strong the image of Japan was for international audiences in 1985, but from my perspective the images Wenders shows us seem very stereotypical: hanami (cherry-blossom viewing – which Wenders does not even name but refers only to people going on picnics), pachinko parlours, golf-putting ranges, the ever-presence of advertising, and so on. [There’s a great 1985 review in the New York Times by Vincent Canby with more on this topic. Click here, though you may need to register with the NYT to read the article.]

At one point in the film, Wenders comments that “The more the reality of Tokyo struck me as a torrent of impersonal, unkind, threatening, and yes, even inhuman images, the greater and powerful became in my mind the images of the loving and ordered world of the mythical city of Tokyo that I knew from the films of Yasujiro Ozu.” I think that Tokyo might have seemed impersonal and unkind if I had come here as alone and unable to speak the language. I have had my image of Tokyo mediated by the presence of my children, who have allowed me into a world I might never have seen. People’s faces light up when they see the children and shopkeepers talk to me. Wenders also needed to spend some time in the homes of middle-class Japanese families in order to see Ozu’s world – an invitation that does not come during a brief stay in Tokyo. Perhaps if he’d done a tour of the minshuku (B&Bs) of Hokkaido he’d have seen a more domestic side of these islands. Ozu’s Japan does exist, but it can only be seen by the traveler who is not in a hurry. A person who, like Ozu, has the time to sit and observe the minute details of people’s behaviour.

Despite all these reservations about Tokyo Ga, it is still worth a view for fans of Ozu and fans of Wenders. There is one moment where he does manage to capture a pure Ozu moment: the scene in the train station with the little boy who refuses to walk. It reminded me of all those petulant little boys in Ozu films -- like the one who give his grandfather a hard time in Early Summer (麦秋, 1951). The section where Wenders goes to see a workshop where they make food models for restaurant display windows is fantastic. It often looks as though they are preparing real food. There are also some wonderful moments in the interview with Atsuta: a camera set atop Ozu’s specially-designed tripod shot against a garden of bamboo trees, Atsuta’s hand holding the beautiful stop-watch that Ozu used, Wenders leafing through Ozu’s screenplay for An Autumn Afternoon (秋刀魚の味, 1962) complete with miniature sketches for shot set-ups. Wenders feels helpless because he cannot read a single word, not even the title – perhaps this film would have suited the title Lost in Translation even better than Sofia Coppola’s attempt at rendering Tokyo on film.

For some truly great tributes to Ozu see Talking With Ozu and Kazuo Inoue’s I Lived, But… (生きては見たけれど1983) – extras on Criterion’s DVD of Tokyo Story. A digitally remastered print of Tokyo-ga is also available for purchase on DVD in Japan   

THE HIGH HAT | Potlatch: The Bottom Shelf  Shauna McKenna

 

Angeliki Coconi's Unsung Films [Theo Alexander]

 

Review for Tokyo-Ga (1985) - IMDb  David Dalgleish                  

 

Filmaluation [Hemanth Kissoon]

 

Getting Lost in Wim Wenders' 1985 Ode to Yasujirô Ozu ...   Hillary Weston fom Blackbook

 

Cine Outsider [Slarek]

 

Film @ The Digital Fix - Wim Wenders' Documentaries  Noel Megahey

 

DVD Talk [Stuart Galbraith IV]

 

DVD Verdict- The Wim Wenders Collection (Volume 2) [Brett Cullum]

 

J-Film Pow-Wow [Chris MaGee]

 

Film Review: Tokyo-Ga – antiTastemaker

 

Groucho Reviews: Tokyo-Ga

 

wim wenders: portraits along the road - The Screen

 

DVD of the Week: "Tokyo-Ga" (Wim Wenders, 1985)  Brandon Colvin from Out 1 Film Journal                          

 

Wim Wenders – Tokyo Ga (1985) | Cinema of the World

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]

 

Tokyo-Ga - Goethe-Institut

 

Tokyo-Ga Review | TVGuide.com

 

Tokyo-Ga, directed by Wim Wenders | Film review - Time Out  Geoff Andrew               

 

Floating Weeds Movie Review & Film Summary (1959 ...  Roger Ebert

 

The New York Times [Vincent Canby] also seen here:  Movie Review - Tokyo Ga - THE SCREEN: 'TOKYO-GA ...

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]                                            

 

WINGS OF DESIRE (Der Himmel über Berlin)                        A-                    93

Germany  France  (127 mi)  1987

 

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves.

 

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 1929

 

When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions. Why am I me and not you? Why am I here and not there? When did time begin and where does space end? Isn’t life under the sun just a dream? Isn’t what I see, hear, and smell only the illusion of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist, and are there people who are really evil? How can it be that I, who am I, wasn’t before I was, and that sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?

 

–—Damiel (Bruno Ganz)

 

One of the remarkable aspects of this film is that it was made “prior to” the fall of the Berlin Wall, which came two years after the film’s release, yet it also feels so relevant to the aftermath of 9/11, a time when turmoil, authoritarianism, and terrorism had such a significant impact in our lives and we were trying to “see” the world in a different light.  For the Düsseldorf-born Wenders, a specialist in existential road movies like Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3 (1976), this highly acclaimed fantasy love story was a sort of homecoming after eight years in the United States.  Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, enter Wim Wenders and this film offering the aerial vantage point of two angels hovering over the city of West Berlin, Bruno Ganz as Damiel and Otto Sander as Cassiel, who existed before Berlin was even a city, before the presence of humans, men in dark overcoats and pony tails with no visible wings, yet they’re perched atop cathedrals, sitting on statues or on the ledges of skyscrapers high above the city, like gargoyles observing the citizenry below.  Invisible to the naked eye, seen only through the innocence and naïveté of children, their presence sensed by the blind, they freely move about the city at will, eavesdropping on the inner thoughts of humans, but excluded from matters of the flesh or mortality, offering comfort, like a light touch on the shoulder or putting their arms around someone in need, though whatever grace they can offer is only momentary, as they can’t prevent fate from happening, as evidenced by a man intent on jumping off a roof to his death.  Witness to the most tragic human events since the beginning of time, there is a meditative somberness and pervasive melancholy felt throughout, as death and misery is their constant companion, where they see and hear everything, perhaps the answer to silent prayers, as the angels lend a glimmer of hope where before there was only darkness, Motorcycle Accident--"Wings of Desire"-HQ with English subtitles YouTube (2:58).  As they meet periodically and recall the events of the day, pointing out particularly elevated moments that stand out, according to Cassiel their job is to “observe, collect, testify, preserve,” where they are God’s witness to the events that transpire below.  

 

As evidenced by the documentary style cinematography of Henri Alekan, who much earlier shot Cocteau’s BEAUTY AND HE BEAST (1946), this is an abstract travelogue of Berlin, a near plotless, highly stylized, avant-garde film that seems to meander through the voices of the living, as random thoughts race across the screen, from strangers populating an airplane to residents inside apartment buildings, even those sitting inside the same room, or passengers in cars or busses to passing trains, including pedestrians on the street, all given a collective stream-of-conscious voice that provides the internal poetry of the film.  The movement of the camera seems to signify the constant movement of the two angels, from aerial shots on high, to the tops of tenement buildings, with a view of children playing in the courtyards below, where vast industrial landscapes reveal a wasteland of emptiness and unused space, traversed by the bearers and collectors of lost souls, a mentally anguishing job that has no beginning and no end, though as we see in their repeated visits to public libraries, there appear to be many more just like them, as there are others that show signs of recognition, while also hanging around after hours when only the cleaning crew is present.  The ambitious scope of this film is highly unusual, where the length plays into a kind of testament of time, where the filmmaker establishes a unique rhythm that moves throughout the infinite scope of history, including images of bombs dropping in World War II as we watch the city burning while Nazi officers talk back and forth among themselves, where we also see Jews identified by the emblematic star, as Damiel reveals some of them stole food from the dogs in the camps.  While expressed in a visually impressionistic mosaic, the film itself becomes an experiment in perception, more like a dreamlike reverie, given an equally eclectic musical design from Jürgen Knieper (some of which can be heard here:  wings of desire soundtrack), the two angels meet every day to compare notes, where the largesse of history stands in stark contrast to the smaller more intimate moments of ordinary life, where they’ll pick out distinguishing fragments of humanity. 

 

The Films of Wim Wenders: Cinema as Vision and Desire  Robert Phillip Kolker and Peter Beicken, 1993

 

Perhaps it is a sign of Wenders’ discomfort with the class-determined particularities of everyday life that leads him to fantasize a heavenly perspective in Wings of Desire. Providing the angelic point of view, the camera descends; it does not observe its subjects as they see themselves, but rather as they are themselves subject to an extraterrestrial force. Wenders’ “symphony of a great city” is conducted from on high. His angels are caring but inescapably condescending. When he plies the angels’ perspective, he creates a well-imagined, even moving trope of a city battered by history, torn by politics, and guarded by fantastic figures, who see and hear everyone’s distress. In these sequences, his camera is more supple and sinuous than it has been, swooping from great heights, entering apartment rooms, wandering and drifting through the city, making divine cinema. But in the end, neither the city nor its inhabitants remain the central object of his gaze. The film is diverted by a quasi-mystical meditation on romantic love, constructed through the conceit of a male angel who desires to slip out of eternity, into time, sexuality, and domestic love.  

 

As Damiel and Cassiel traverse the city, the ease of their friendship is apparent as they discuss being there for the creation of the earth, describing ancient events like they just happened yesterday, where they have literally seen and heard it all, where one might think they’d remain detached and aloof, yet they’re like spiritually advanced monks, sentient creatures themselves, perhaps best expressed by extraordinary feelings of empathy, where they are grief-stricken by a man haunted by the atrocious things witnessed during the war, or emotionally devastated when the man ultimately throws himself off a roof.  To this end, Damiel has second thoughts about living an eternal existence, “Sometimes I get fed up with my spiritual existence.  Instead of forever hovering above, I’d like to feel some weight to me, to end my eternity, and bind me to earth.”  Their perception is expressed in black-and-white, but as they are constantly making intimate contact with the living, the screen quickly moves to color to identify their world, which distinguishes the angel’s reality from the human point of view, a change that occurs throughout the film, reminiscent of a similar tactic used in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946).  However, as angels are privy to human thoughts, this leads to an additional shifting perception that occurs when their thoughts merge, as Damiel becomes fascinated with the dreams of a trapeze artist named Marion, none other than Solveig Dommartin, the film’s real discovery, a unique presence who happened to be the director’s girlfriend at the time, who seamlessly moves from French to English to German in the film, literally diminishing any need for established boundaries, becoming a living personification of a European ideal of merging cultures.  While she soars above the ground as he does, even wearing a pair of feathery wings, she expresses her fears and desires, including a palpable fear of falling, while also lamenting her continued isolation, easily befriending or socializing with others, yet remaining uniquely alone.  Damiel’s fascination with her can be seen at an underground dance club, Wings of Desire - Crime & The City Solution - Six Bells Chime YouTube (4:21), where her existential anguish is a key to understanding the film, confessing “I waited an eternity to hear a loving word.”  Interspersed throughout the entire film is a recurring poem from co-writer Peter Handke that opens with the familiar refrain, “When the child was a child” from “Song of Childhood,” each time representing the exuberant curiosity of a young mind, introducing a theme on becoming, offering clever variations on that theme that runs throughout the picture.    

 

Equally curious is the use of American actor Peter Falk, playing himself, famous at the time for his role as a deviously persistent detective in the long-running television show Columbo (1971 – 2003), where he’s humorously identified on several occasions, even by Marion, where Wenders uses the comedy to alter the seriousness of tone, adding levity to what amounts to a metaphysical experience.  Falk is in rare form as an actor brought to Berlin for a historical return to the concentration camps of World War II, with extras standing around wearing Nazi uniforms and actors playing Jewish prisoners, adding old newsreel footage, resurrecting the ghosts of forgotten memories, showing a vivid connection with the present and the past, but also the clever use of a film within a film.  Falk is mostly seen standing around waiting for his scenes, where he’s prone to taking long walks through a graffiti-laden industrial wasteland, where off to the side is food hut selling coffee.  Falk surprises Damiel by being able to sense his presence, offering his hand in friendship, even though there’s no one there, yet assuredly adding, “I’m a friend.  Compañero.”  It’s the plain-speaking, folksy style of Falk that eventually compels Damiel to trade in his wings for mortality, describing how great it is to smoke a cigarette, drink a cup of coffee, or slap your hands together when they are cold.  Once descended to earth, there’s no guarantee he’ll ever find his ethereal aerialist, especially after the circus disbands and moves on for the season, leaving each of them as disconnected souls in the heart of a thriving city.  With the tug of romanticism in the air, and the suddenly upbeat spirits of Damiel who’s experiencing the joys of being alive, seeing colors for the first time, he initially runs into Falk on the set, sharing a revelatory moment, sending Damiel off on his own to discover his own adventures.  Of all places, the two (Damiel and Marion) finally meet in the Berlin underground, listening to the music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, an Australian artist who lived in Berlin during the 80’s, both drifting to the bar, literally sensing the presence of one another as if they’ve known each other all their lives.  At the time a divided city, the film is a meditation on Berlin’s past, present, and future, a dream of unification, made with a minimalist script, where it’s ultimately an atmospheric mood piece about experiencing a yearning for a deep-seeded connection with life and love, where the world takes on a magical and hypnotic allure, where life is literally an awakening.  Marion has an exhilarating soliloquy at the end that feels like a mad rush of a dream just before one awakes.

 

Now it’s serious. At last it’s becoming serious. So I’ve grown older. Was I the only one who wasn’t serious? Is it our times that are not serious? I was never lonely neither when I was alone, nor with others. But I would have liked to be alone at last. Loneliness means I’m finally whole. Now I can say it as tonight, I’m at last alone. I must put an end to coincidence. The new moon of decision. I don’t know if there’s destiny but there’s a decision. Decide! We are now the times. Not only the whole town—the whole world is taking part in our decision. We two are now more than us two. We incarnate something. We’re representing the people now. And the whole place is full of those who are dreaming the same dream. We are deciding everyone’s game. I am ready. Now it’s your turn. You hold the game in your hand. Now or never. You need me. You will need me. There’s no greater story than ours, that of man and woman. It will be a story of giants... invisible... transposable... a story of new ancestors. Look. My eyes. They are the picture of necessity, of the future of everyone in the place. Last night I dreamt of a stranger... of my man. Only with him could I be alone, open up to him, wholly open, wholly for him. Welcome him wholly into me. Surround him with the labyrinth of shared happiness. I know... it’s you.

  

With Claire Denis working for the final time as Wenders’ assistant director, the closing title reads, “Dedicated to all the former angels, but especially to Yasujiro, François, and Andrei.”  That would be Ozu, Truffaut, and Tarkovsky. 

 

Karen Krizanovich from 1001 Movies to See Before You Die:

 

Cowritten with Peter Handke, Wim Wenders’ sumptuous fantasy Wings of Desire encompasses the division of Berlin, the effects of the Holocaust, and the ultimate beauty of life, daring to make a choice between two worlds — that of humans and that of their unseen but palpable guardian angels — via Damiel (Bruno Ganz), an angel who falls in love with a mortal.  Atmospheric, elegiac, and patiently paced, the film was critically acclaimed and won honors at many film festivals, including the Best Director prize at Cannes upon its release.

 

As in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1946 classic A Matter of Life and Death, Wenders’s heaven is shown in crisp black-and-white, whereas the human world springs to life in vivid color, aided by the work of legendary cinematographer Henri Alekan, who also photographed Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (1946).  High atop buildings or upon the shoulders of statues, angels are watching.  Wearing trenchcoats and Mona Lisa smiles, they are invisible except to children and the occasional blind person who senses their presence.  The angels see everything, feel everything, and so appear at mortals’ sides at times of worry, frequenting lonely bedrooms, libraries, and accident scenes.  Although unable to directly affect the actions of humans, the angels may lend a glimmer of hope where before there was only darkness. 

 

But when the broad-faced angel Damiel goes to the aid of Marion (Solveig Dommmartin), a beautiful trapeze artist who fears she will fall, he begins to long for the simple things humans take for granted:  To touch, to hold, to be seen.  On a dank film set around the ruins of Berlin, Peter Falk (playing himself) is a mysterious man:  He is the actor famous for TV’s Columbo, but he is also the only human who openly greets Damiel.  At a coffee stand Falk extends his hand to the angel, saying:  “I can’t see you, but I know you’re here,” without explaining how he knows the unknowable.  Second-guessing the audience, Wenders allows Falk to be obliquely referred to twice as “Columbo,” a device that amuses and jolts the viewer, making a soothing film experience suddenly less of a reverie and more of a reality.  Inspired by Falk’s recognition, Damiel decides to “take the plunge” and literally falls to his own mortality. 

 

Inspired by the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Wings of Desire’s slow heartbeat pace is essential to the feel of the story.  It takes the time to fully examine questions only children ask, such as “Why am I me and not you?  Why am I here and not there?  When did time begin and where does space end?”  Its slow tempo draws the audience inevitably into a world where priorities become clearer and life in general more hopeful.  A languid, profound, and gentle “message” movie, its popularity demanded a sequel, Faraway, So Close! (1989), as well as an inevitable reshaping by Hollywood into the schematic romantic drama City of Angels (1998), starring Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage.     

 

Counting Blessings - Film Comment  Mary Corliss, July/August 1993

In Wenders’ Wings of Desire, the whole world whispered secrets to the angels of cinema. Then the German director tried his hand at the $25 million epic Until the End of the World—part detective adventure story, part Phileas Fogg road movie—and met disaster. Never one to back off from a challenge, Wenders has blended his two previous pictures. Faraway, So Close! is a sequel to Wings, but with a thriller plot. At the end of Wings, the angel Daniel (Bruno Ganz) had fallen in love and become mortal, leaving his partner Cassiel (Otto Sander) alone to contemplate and guard the universe. Since Berlin removed its dividing wall in the interim, can Cassiel stay separated from humanity for long? No more than Wenders can resist the siren song of the movie muse.

Wings Of Desire | Jonathan Rosenbaum

 

Wim Wenders’s ambitious and audacious feature (1988) focuses mainly on what’s seen and heard by two angels (Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander) as they fly over and walk through contemporary Berlin. These are the angels of the poet Rilke rather than the usual blessed or fallen angels of Christianity, and Wenders and coscreenwriter Peter Handke use them partially to present an astonishing poetic documentary about the life of this city, concentrating on an American movie star on location (Peter Falk playing himself), a French trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin), and a retired German professor who remembers what Berlin used to be like (Curt Bois). The conceit gets a little out of hand after one of the angels falls in love with the trapeze artist and decides to become human; but prior to this, Wings of Desire is one of Wenders’s most stunning achievements, certainly in no way replaceable by City of Angels, the ludicrous 1998 Hollywood remake. In English and subtitled French and German. PG-13, 128 min.

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Candace Wirt

In 1971, Wim Wenders and other luminaries of New German Cinema (including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, and Alexander Kluge) founded the famous Filmverlag der Autoren to produce and distribute their own films, and Wenders and Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke completed their first feature film collaboration, THE GOALIE'S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK (1971). Nearly twenty years later, they co-wrote WINGS OF DESIRE, a beautiful film in the tradition of the German fairytale and dedicated to the angels and to master directors Yasujiro Ozu, François Truffaut, and Andrei Tarkovsky. Wenders tells the story of an angel, Damiel (Bruno Ganz), falling in love with trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin), who flies through the air at the Circus Alekan (named in honor of the film's cinematographer, Henri Alekan). Damiel fervently desires to abandon his spiritual existence to become a human being and experience the pleasures and pains of life, particularly that of love, which can be both. He and the other angels experience the world in black and white, but Wenders uses bursts of color to indicate the magnificent difference in the way humans see it. WINGS OF DESIRE is also an ode to Berlin, recalling the city films of the early twentieth century, such as Walter Ruttmann's BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (1927) and Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA (1929). The original German title is DER HIMMEL UBER BERLIN, meaning The Sky, or Heaven, over Berlin. Wenders begins shooting the city from an angel's point of view in the sky, and his camera later descends to the streets, looking at or out of cars, buses, and trains. He concerns himself with Berlin's history and the stories of its people, particularly since World War II. Recurring shots of the Berlin Wall covered in decorative graffiti figure prominently as does old war footage of air raids and of the victims they claimed lying amidst the rubble. Ultimately, WINGS OF DESIRE is a story about time—as longed for by angels, as lived by Berliners, and as experienced by us in watching the film unfold.

Strictly Film School  Acquarello

Wim Wender's deliberately paced, hauntingly realized contemporary masterpiece, Wings of Desire is, all at once: a political allegory for the reunification of Germany, an existential parable on a soul's search for connection, a metaphor for the conflict between, what Friedrich Nietzsche defines as, the Appolinian intellect and the Dionysian passion, a euphemism for creation. A dispassionate angel stands atop a statue on a winter morning, watching over Berlin. His name is Damiel (Bruno Ganz): a spiritual guide for the desperate, an eternal spectator of life. The world is gray through his eyes, unable to experience the subtlety of the hues and textures of physical being. He spends eternity exchanging daily observations, listening to the people's thoughts, comforting the dying. He reveals to a fellow angel, Cassiel (Otto Sander), that he is curious to experience life as a human. One day, while observing a circus rehearsal, he is captivated by Marion, a French trapeze artist practicing her routine in an angel costume. Receiving the news that the circus is closing, she feels profoundly alone, but is consoled by Damiel's empathic presence. He falls in love with her: her grace, passion, melancholy. They are kindred spirits longing to find an inextricable part of their soul that is missing. If Damiel can transfigure, perhaps he can fill the void.

Wenders manifests the recurrent theme of division through long camera shots, filmed downward. Note the the opening scene of the statue, the suicide leap from a building, and Marion's rehearsal. In essence, Damiel is the Apollinian force: pensive, logical, and spiritual. (Note the contrast to Federico Fellini, who uses upward shots in order to symbolize the carnal man seeking spirituality.) Division is also depicted when Cassiel follows a disoriented, elderly man against the backdrop of a prominent Berlin Wall. Cinematically, the angels' perspective is in black and white, while human perspective is shot in color, creating visual duality. Note the chromatic shift in Marion's trailer after Damiel disappears. She is the archetypal Dionysian force: sensual, risk-taker, dreamer. Nietzsche proposes that the cataclysmic fusion of the two diametrically opposed forces results in the birth of tragedy. In the end, we see Damiel looking upward at Marion, holding her safety line. He is no longer an immortal chronicler of history. He, like the epic heroes of Greek mythology, has fallen.

Wings of Desire - Turner Classic Movies  Felicia Feaster

 

German director Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987), which translates to "Heaven over Berlin" in Wenders' native tongue, is a contemporary fable of two angels watching over life in modern Berlin. In Wenders' hip, cosmopolitan story the two middle aged angels Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander) are an art film variation on the "average Joe" angel of It's a Wonderful Life (1946). The angels wear ponytails and amble through the city full of lonely, pain-wracked, anxious citizens, offering comfort to women in labor and suicidal men. In the words of The New York Times's film critic Janet Maslin, the angels are "like so many existential Clark Kents...mild-mannered, all-seeing individuals poised to assist those in need."

The angels offer solace and silent comfort to the residents of the city to whom they are invisible. The only people able to see the angels are children. But angel Damiel longs for a more intense involvement with human joy and pain. He is inspired to seek mortality by an American actor (Peter Falk) in town to shoot a World War II movie and Marion, a beautiful trapeze artist at a French circus, the Alekan, named for Wings of Desire's cinematographer. Damiel soon becomes infatuated by Marion (played by Solveig Dommartin, Wenders' real life companion) and contemplates becoming a mortal, a process that occupies the movie's second half.

Wings of Desire is a thoughtful visual poem touching on ideas of mortality, existence and time. Though it takes place in a divided Germany, separated by the Berlin Wall, the film seems a prescient look into the future, only two years away, when the two Germanys would finally reunite. Because filming of the actual Berlin Wall was forbidden, several replica walls had to be built to stand in its place. When one of the replica walls warped in a rainstorm, the filmmakers quickly learned it had been created hastily and cheaply from wood.

Wings of Desire was Wenders' return to West Germany and an expression of the unique beauty of the country after seven years in America indulging his American pop culture fixations while making Hammett: The State of Things (1982) and Paris, Texas (1984).

Wenders grew up on American movies and especially loved B-movie melodramas and Westerns. Before he attended Munich's Academy of Film and Television, Wenders had studied both philosophy and medicine. He began his film career writing film criticism. Wenders' obsessive film interests can be gleaned in his first English-language film The American Friend (1977) in which he cast a bevy of cult film luminaries including Dennis Hopper and directors Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller. Bruno Ganz also appeared in the film, which he regarded as one of his favorites, and once came to blows with Hopper over acting technique while working on the film. Wenders later co-directed with Nicholas Ray the latter's candid film portrait of himself, Lightning Over Water (1980). It was not Wenders' last collaboration with another director. In 1995, Wenders co-directed Beyond the Clouds with Italian art house auteur Michelangelo Antonioni.

Wings of Desire also signaled Wenders' turn away from films fixated on alienation, to films centered on romance and the spiritual.

Part of the film's magical, fairy tale ambiance was undoubtedly due in part to 79-year-old cinematographer Henri Alekan, who is best remembered for his exquisite camerawork in Jean Cocteau's fairy tale Beauty and the Beast (1946) and who also worked with Charlie Chaplin and Abel Gance. Alekan's approach to Wings of Desire's atmosphere was unique. He created its distinct ambiance by shooting through a filter made from his grandmother's stockings.

Wings of Desire's ultimate success may have come from its ability to somehow bridge a divide between art house fare and commercial, Hollywood film and reach a large, diverse audience. Wenders was named Best Director at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Part of the film's exquisite, global aura also came from a soundtrack peppered with songs from an eclectic batch of performers including Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (who also appear in the film) and Laurie Anderson.

A sequel to Wings of Desire, Faraway, So Close (1993) was less successful though it did garner Wenders a Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. Hollywood eventually remade Wings of Desire in 1998, as City of Angels starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan.

The Peter Falk role in Wings of Desire, considered one of the most unique aspects of the film, was not cast until fairly late in the film's pre-production phase. Wenders wanted someone iconic for the role and imagined using a painter, writer, politician or musician in the part. Wenders' assistant Claire Denis eventually came up with the idea of using Peter Falk, an actor whose role on the television series Columbo made him instantly recognizable to a large portion of the film-going audience. Wenders was also a fan of Falk from his days as part of the tight cadre of actors who worked with innovative Seventies filmmaker John Cassavetes. In his days working with Cassavetes, Falk was used to not working with a script, and so he didn't balk when Wenders told him he had not yet created Falk's character, despite the fact that the movie was already in production.

To prepare for his part as a former angel-turned-actor, Falk and Wenders spent a weekend together in Germany developing the role, which led to some of the improvisation-inspired moments in the film like the scene of Falk trying to choose a hat to wear. The director also incorporated Falk's habit of sketching in between takes.

Falk's voice-over internal monologue was actually shot after the actor had left Germany. Those inner thoughts, also improvised by Falk, were recorded in an L.A. sound studio with Wenders directing Falk over the telephone.

 

Wings of Desire (1987)  Bryant Frazer from Deep Focus

When I sat down again with Wings of Desire, showing it to a friend who had not yet encountered it, I approached it, as always, from the skeptic's viewpoint. Once again, I was ready to interrogate my own feelings toward this, one of my very favorite movies.

I've always considered my own initial feelings on movies a little suspect, particularly if I first saw the film under circumstances that might lead me to make more of the picture than is actually there. I saw Wings of Desire under ideal circumstances. I was a sophomore in college, my arms thrown wide open to embrace anything on campus that resembled a life-changing experience. I saw it in the company of friends and friends-to-be and was taken by the film's unique meditative warmth, its subcurrent of angst and dissatisfaction, and, perhaps most of all, its audacity. I had a passing familiarity, after all, with those giants of the foreign cinema — Bergman, Bunuel, Kurosawa — but none of their films boasted soundtrack music by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, or asked so unassuming an icon as Peter Falk to play himself as a wise old angel.

The story unfolds in monochrome. It's not black and white (although it certainly plays that way on TV). There's a blue tint to all of the scenes, which may be appropriate considering the film's German title: Der Himmel Uber Berlin. In English, that means The Sky or The Heavens Over Berlin, take your pick. Wenders' cinematographer is the grand old Henri Alekan, who many years earlier photographed Cocteau's magical Beauty and the Beast. The circus in Wings of Desire is actually named the "Circus Alekan" — but I'm getting ahead of myself, and I don't want to give too much away.

The film itself is bookended by poetry. The poem in question is written by the director and his co-writer, the German poet Peter Handke, who helps bring this dangerous conceit to convincing fruition. "Als das Kind Kind war," writes angel Damiel (Bruno Ganz). That translates into English as "When the child was still a child" ... it sounds better if you can appreciate the original German. That child, Damiel tells us, was full of impudent, lively questions about the world. (As it turns out, Damiel aspires to be that child.) The journal where he writes his verse may well be the same journal where he takes daily notes on human existence in the divided city of Berlin. Periodically, he takes a seat next to his angel friend, Cassiel (Otto Sander), and the two of them reflect on the day past, cataloging moonrise and moonset and dwelling on the most inexplicable human behaviors. These angels, you see, move unseen among the citizenry of Berlin. They listen in on private thoughts. They are made privy to the rationale of family squabbles and suicides. As they wander, they occasionally take an active role as guardian angels, whispering comforting words in the ear of a dying accident victim, rousing a metro rider from his dark depression, or trying to talk a jumper down from the ledge overlooking city streets. They're sort of like cops on the spiritual beat.

All this human drama fascinates Damiel, whose visit to the circus crystallizes his longstanding angelic melancholy and makes his yearnings flesh. For it's there that Damiel meets his own angel. Her name is Marion (Solveig Dommartin, who will reappear in Wenders films), and she's as lovely as can be imagined. She performs nightly, swinging from a trapeze with a pair of rather tawdry angel wings pinned to her back. Damiel is mesmerized; he sits among the children in the stands and gazes with a child's delight at the modest wonderment of this little misfit circus. Cassiel, meanwhile, stalks around in the shadows, unsmiling. Perhaps he grows perturbed at his friend's wide-eyed fondness for humans.

Like so many matched pairs in Wings of Desire, Damiel and Cassiel are a study in opposites. Damiel is honest, enthusiastic, and yearns to touch, taste and feel. But Cassiel is wary and dry, seemingly long since sapped of all passion. He betrays no such jealousy of the human animal, but in these scenes we can already sense his quiet frustration, buried beneath an angelic shroud of denial. Late in the movie, Cassiel will wander across the stage where Cave and his band are performing a song called "From Her to Eternity." He leans against the wall and closes his eyes, and the stage lights cast three different shadows off his body, alternating and shifting position and color as though we're watching Cassiel's very essence fragmenting before our eyes.

Peter Falk is in Berlin, too — perhaps he's a symbol of Wenders' increasing fascination with America. The essence of America was embodied by Dennis Hopper in Wenders' earlier The American Friend, and by Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas -- if you ask me, a riff on John Wayne's classic archetype in John Ford's The Searchers. By the time Wenders makes the cliche-ridden Until the End of the World, he has seemingly embraced America in its entirety; paradoxically, he has also crafted a sprawling road movie-cum-science fiction epic that veers all the way across the planet and winds up taking root in Australia. But that's another review.

Falk is shooting an unnamed TV movie, and the locals know him as Columbo. He startles Damiel — and us — when he turns to him at a hot dog stand and announces, "I can't see you, but I know you're there." Why in the world is Falk the only man in Berlin who can sense the presence of an angel? And does it have anything to do with the fact that he's an American — a free spirit, of sorts, in this divided city? We'll see.

Wenders' parable swells into one big happy ending, almost deliriously contented. The upbeat resolution is perhaps uncharacteristic of Wenders' films, and it is therefore indicative of his great feelings of optimism where his divided homeland is concerned. To Wenders, the reunification of Berlin is an affirmation that the city has a single history and, perhaps more importantly, a single future. But more than that -- the duality of East and West Berlin is the duality of the human spirit. The Berlin Wall divides the city no more sharply than does the gulf between the physical and the spiritual, between actions and morals, between men and women. One day, Wenders seems to be imploring us, we can find a way to unite all of these things. He does his own work, uniting the mortal and the angelic that his story has created, the woman and the man.

And several years after the movie's release, the world did its part, tearing down the Berlin Wall in an act no less deliberately symbolic than anything that ever flickered across a movie screen. It may have been impossible for a Wenders fan to watch those television reports of the wall being pulled down by firelight, block-by-block, without imagining that flock of invisible angels circling in the sky above Berlin, at long last throwing back their heads and laughing.

And now, with some 10 years of hindsight, how exactly do I look back on one of my most favorite films? With the knowledge that its creators seem to have become friends of mine. Companeros. The universal appeal of Wings of Desire has to do with the way that it addresses not merely angels above a divided city, but all of us struggling with the divided natures of our lives and our souls. Maybe all of us, at some point, are dear Damiel, seeing the world in color for the very first time, looking for a place to trade in the trinkets of our past for the building blocks of our future. And so it is that, for all of us, Wings of Desire posits a happy ending.

12/22/06 update: The current DVD version of Wings of Desire makes it clear that the black-and-white footage is, in fact, meant to be monochrome. Because much of the film is in color, prints needed to be made on color film stock — thus the unintentional bluish tint of theatrical prints, and the older video versions that were made from them.

Wings of Desire: Watch the Skies   Criterion essay by Michael Atkinson, November 03, 2009                

 

On Wings of Desire   Criterion essay by Wim Wenders, originally written in 1992, re-released November 09, 2009                          

 

An Attempted Description of an Indescribable Film   Criterion essay by Wim Wenders, originally written in 1986, re-released November 02, 2009                          

 

12 More Title Designs We Love   Criterion photo gallery, June 10, 2013

 

Repertory Pick: Peter Falk Remembered   Criterion video, May 24, 2012  (36 seconds)

 

Wings of Desire (1987) - The Criterion Collection

 

Wings of Desire (1987) - Classic Art Films   Matthew   

 

Wings of Desire - Archive - Reverse Shot  Chris Wisniewski

 

Wings of Desire (Wenders, 2009) – Criterion Takes Angels ...  Jeffery Overstreet from Filmwell

 

City of Angels | Movie Review | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum (long review), July 14, 1988   

                         

Der Himmel Über Berlin - Film Reference  Joseph Milicia        

             

'The Role of Memory': Image, Place and Story in the Films of ...   ‘The Role of Memory’: Image, Place and Story in the Films of Wim Wenders, by Jeff Malpas from Academia

 

1 Isolation and Otherness in Wenders' Wings of Desire ...  12-page essay (pdf format)

 

What is Peter Falk Doing in Wings of Desire?  Richard Raskin from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

Camera Movement in Wings of Desire - POV  Richard Raskin from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

A Bibliography on Wings of Desire  Richard Raskin from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

The Interim of Sense  Bodil Marie Thomsen from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

Like a Film, Like a Child.  Morten Kyndrup from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

The City Is More Than Skin Deep.  Darrell Varga from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999              

 

"Warum bin ich hier und nicht dort?"  Edvin Kau from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999             

 

Space, Memory and Identity  Søren Kolstrup from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

Le cadre et le sens dans Les ailes du désir  Marc Chatelain from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

Grief and Invisibility.   Sara Irene Rosenbaum from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) (1987) | PopMatters  Michael S. Smith, September 22, 2003                        

 

Wings of Desire | PopMatters  Kirby Fields, January 19, 2010

 

Wings of Desire - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Charles Hartney

 

Wenders' Wings Of Desire & West Berlin | Zimbo Films  Robert Curry

 

WINGS OF DESIRE - Peter Falk                       

 

"Meditations on Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire" by Ehrlich ...  Linda C. Ehrlich from Film Quarterly, October 1, 1991 (excerpt)              

 

Film as Art [Danél Griffin]

 

Revisiting Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire. - Slate  Jessica Winter, January 12, 2010                                       

 

Wings of Desire - Gordon College                               

 

Wings of Desire - Seattle Pacific University  Jeffrey Overstreet

 

Analysis and Synthesis: Wings of Desire  Richard Baron        

 

Angel Wings and Texan Martyrs: On Wim Wenders  Jacqueline Valencia from These Girls On Film                 

 

The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review [Richard Scheib]                                  

 

The House Next Door [John Semley]                           

 

Wings of Desire | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Bill Weber                            

 

Pastemagazine.com [Tim Regan-Porter]                                  

 

Erasing Clouds [Dan Heaton]

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

The Essentials: The 10 Best Wim Wenders Films | The Playlist  Kenji Fujishima, Nicholas Laskin, Oliver Lyttelton, and Rodrigo Perez, September 3, 2015

 

Wings of Desire - DVD Movie Central  Ed Nguyen

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]  Special Edition

 

DVDTalk.com - Criterion Collection [Jamie S. Rich]  also sen here:  CriterionConfessions.com

 

DVD Verdict [Clark Douglas]  Criterion Collection

 

The QNetwork [James Kendrick]  Criterion Collection

 

Radiator Heaven: DVD of the Week: Wings of Desire: Criterion ... JD Lafrance, Crterion Collection

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]  Criterion Collection

 

Wings of Desire Blu-ray Review | High Def Digest  Joshua Zyber, Criterion Collection

 

DVD Verdict (Blu-Ray) [Gordon Sullivan]  Criterion Collection

 

DVD Savant Blu-ray Review: Wings of Desire  Glenn Erickson, Criterion Collection

 

Wings of Desire (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk Review of the Blu-ray  Ryan Keefer, Criterion Collection

 

Wings of Desire - The American Society of Cinematographers  Jon Silberg

 

Wings of Desire | FilmNotes |  Terry Green

 

Wings of Desire - AMC Blogs  Chris Barsanti

 

Popdose.com [Robert Cashill]

 

Cinema Axis [Courtney Small]

 

Cinema Sights [James Ewing]

 

Bill's Movie Emporium [Bill Thompson]

 

Raging Bull [Vanes Naldi]

 

Some Came Running: Lost angels  Glenn Kenny

 

5 for the Day: Contrapuntal Narration  Matt Zoller Seitz from Slant, January 6, 2006

 

The Film Connoisseur: Wings of Desire (1987)  Francisco Gonzalez

 

The Sky Over Berlin: Wim Wenders and Wings of Desire ...  Walter Donohue from Film Focus

 

Wings of Desire, 1987 | Berlin: A Divided City  Eva Spirova, March 6, 2013

 

Wings of Desire (1987) - Film - Arts and Faith  Christian forum

           

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Wings of Desire - BAM/PFA - Film Programs  Judy Bloch

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Keith H. Brown]

 

"It's Images You Can Trust Less and Less."  Richard Raskin interview from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

"If There Is Such a Thing as Real Angels."  Richard Raskin interview with Henri Alekan, Director of Photography, from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

"Bringing Images to Life."  Richard Raskin interview with Agnès Godard, Cinematographer, from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

Wenders Invents the Film While Shooting."  Richard Raskin interview with actor Bruno Ganz, from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

"To See with a Child's Heart."  Richard Raskin interview with actress Solveig Dommartin, from P.O. V. No. 8, December 1999

 

The Borders of the Frame: Agnès Godard | Keyframe ...  Jonathan Marlow interview with Cinematographer Agnès Godard from Fandor, October 24, 2013

 

Film4 [Jon Fortgang]

 

Wings of Desire | Variety

 

Wings of Desire - Time Out  Geoff Andrew

 

My favourite city film is ... Wings of Desire - The Guardian  Phil Hoad, August 19, 2004

 

Washington Post [Desson Howe]

 

'Wings of Desire' (PG-13) - Washington Post  Rita Kempley

 

MOVIE REVIEW : 'Wings of Desire' Soars With Angelic ...  Sheila Benson from The LA Times

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]

 

Siskel & Ebert  (video)

 

Wings of Desire - The New York Times  Janet Maslin

 

Review/Film - Delving Deep Into Pockets Of Fashion ...  Janet Masin from The New York Times

 

DVDBeaver Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

Wings of Desire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

NOTEBOOK ON CITIES AND CLOTHES (Aufzeichnungen zu Kleidern und Städten)          

Germany  France  (79 mi)  1989 

 

Guest review by Evan Wang                                   A

 

“When you don’t understand somebody else’s craft, the first questions are usually very simple: where does your work begin?”

 

This seems to be exactly where Wim Wenders planned to start his study on the Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto, whose name is credited right after the filmmaker himself, appearing as “A Film by Wim Wenders with Yohji Yamamoto” in the title sequence of Notebook on Cities and Clothes.

 

“Fabric, material, touch, then I go to the forms,” answers Yamamoto, in a scene where the image of him appears on the screen of a tiny monitor placed on Wenders’ editing table, and the entire documentary could not be better summarized by this very moment. An artist explaining his own working methods becomes the material to examine by another artist from a seemingly disconnected field, but the idea, we learn from watching the film, is surprisingly the same.

 

Wenders, too, starts from his fabric and material, images taken respectively by a handheld video camera that goes everywhere with him, filming continuously and silently, along with a 35mm camera that has to be rewound after every minute, fixed on a tripod and as noisy as a sewing machine. Completely different entities back in 1989, when digital image was still a relatively new medium to be experimented with in “mainstream” filmmaking. As a result, the film looks like a collage between these two types of images, either separately or in juxtaposition, where, in several scenes, the composition could be as complicated as placing two video monitors in front of a live fashion show, with different footage seen on each screen, while filming it all on 35mm celluloid. The sound of Yamamoto talking is often barely audible when it comes from the speaker on a digital monitor while also being recorded with the 35mm camera, where the noise remains as loud as it can be. Raw material, intentionally presented to the viewer, is shouting out for attention to the last bit of its originality that, Wenders worried, would soon be lost in the era of “electronic images” where the original print captured on a celluloid negative would cease to exist.

 

Identity, a word singled out by the filmmaker at the very beginning of the film, is a theme he has kept exploring throughout his career. What is identity? In other words, what is unique, in a person, a film, an image, or anything, when “everything changes, and fast?” “Everything is a copy,” claimed Wenders, who was apparently frustrated but at the same time inspired to make this documentary about fashion and one of its preeminent creators, commissioned by the Centre Georges Pompidou in a field he knows little about and has next to nothing to say. Fashion, exactly. What could be further away from protecting one’s identity than fashion, which, by definition, is aimed at setting up trends for everyone to uniformly follow? After all, while filmmakers have only recently encountered the issue of artistic identity with the coming of digital images versus celluloid, the clothing industry has been living with it ever since machines replaced hand manufacturing.

 

But Yamamoto is different, discovered Wenders, who bought a shirt and a jacket of his design, put them on, stood in front a mirror and found a “strange sensation” that in them, he was no one but himself and his identity felt like “a knight protected in his armor.”

 

“In the mirror I saw me, of course, only better, more me than before.”

 

For Wenders, this is usually everything he needs, a moment that brings out the best in him as a documentarian, a master of cinematic portraits of other artists, proven by what he did with a group of Cuban musicians in Buena Vista Social Club, or more recently with the photographer Sebastião Salgado in The Salt of the Earth. In Yamamoto, he found a new mirror.

 

“Who is he? What secret has he discovered, this Yamamoto?” Wenders started studying his subject with a mind full of questions, but did he find the answers at the end? Well, from a film that barely runs over 75 minutes, we do get a few glimpses of Yamamoto working or talking about himself. We learn that his father died in the war, and he looks for inspiration from photo books of people in the 20th century, but what else? “What did Yamamoto know about me, about everybody?” Wenders seems eager to find out, and so do we, but we are not even offered a closer look at the fashion show, or the finished design, in a documentary about a fashion designer! What the hell, Wim? After all the time you spend with him and all the discussions, what do you know now about this Yamamoto, just like what you know about every artist you have ever worked with? 

 

Wait a minute. Really, what does Wenders know about Salgado, Ozu, or a bunch of retired musicians in Cuba? When we revisit these films after a while, all we remember seems to be music on the streets of Havana, the city of Tokyo or the beauty and horror a photographer captures in whatever experience he has gone through, while the subjects, the artists, have remained misty, but living and breathing through their creation, their craft, so the work also comes alive. That is the magic of a Wenders documentary. It starts with music, pictures and cities and goes full circle to, again, music, pictures and cities. Rather than focusing on the artist or the art, it is much more about what is in between, where one feels what inspires art as much as what art can inspire. That is Wim Wenders, who, as a documentarian, is humble enough to put himself in someone else’s shoes and honest enough to invite the audience in as well, but, even so, how would he deal with an artist who designs clothes? Unlike a picture that can be seen or a tune that can be heard, a shirt surely cannot be worn in the form of a movie, yes?

 

Texture is the answer Wenders has found. Images have their own textures and can be woven together just like fabrics spun into clothes in Yamamoto’s hands, as suddenly they form something altogether new, where the digital monster that threatens the way films will look in the future may actually expand the world of cinematic possibilities.

 

Cine Outsider [Slarek]

In 1989 Wim Wenders was commissioned by the Centre Pompidou in France to make a film about the fashion industry, a prospect he did not initially relish but nonetheless accepted. His decision to focus on Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto grew from the discovery that the two most indefinably perfect items of clothing he owned were both designed by this man. The process of making the film prompted him to ponder the nature of identity and the possible relationship between filmmaking and fashion design.

As an investigation of the fashion world, Notebook on Cities and Clothes reveals more about the filmmaker than it does about his subject, who is personalised through a series of interviews but abstracted through the director's experimentation with his own chosen medium of artistic expression. Armed with both a film camera and the then new tool of the video-8 palmcorder, Wenders discovers a kind of liberation in the freedom offered by the camcorder and the intimacy it allows, an early step on a voyage of digital discovery that many filmmakers would subsequently take. The rich beauty of the 35mm film images contrast starkly with the unflattering, high contrast fuzziness of those shot on the 8mm palmcorder, and Wenders is clearly fascinated by the juxtaposition of the two, placing one inside the other in the manner of a pre-digital picture-in-picture. Intriguing in itself, this inevitably focuses our attention more on the technique than the content, but does give rise to some forward-looking questions about the nature of originality in a soon-to-be-digital age.

Occasionally I did find myself connecting with Yamamoto's thinking, as with interest in old photographs and more practical fashions, and I personally share his preference for the asymmetrical over the symmetrical. But the designer's clearly spoken but sometimes inexpressive English joins forces with the distancing effect of the technical handling to create a barrier to total engagement. This is in contrast to Wenders' own thoughts, which are clearly communicated through his softly spoken and articulate voice-over. As a result we learn more about Wenders the filmmaker than we do about Yamamoto the fashion designer, who is at his most communicative when allowed the full 35mm frame and to speak in his native language, nicely summing up his sense of temporal conflict by telling us that "I live in the past and dwell on the present."

Appropriate to the title, the film is a cinematic notebook of off-the-cuff observations, partially explored ideas, and structural and visual experimentation, one that does not quite feel formed into a completed whole. My failure to completely engage with Yamamoto is best summed up by a conversation he has with Wenders in a Parisian pool hall, where I found myself too easily distracted by a background figure, whose agitation looked at one point as if it was going to explode into violence.

As a whole, Notebook on Cities and Clothes takes an interesting and offbeat approach to its subject and includes involving and even insightful moments, but left this particular viewer little wiser about or sympathetic towards what he still regards, rightly or wrongly, as the most superficial and fleeting of all creative industries.

Needcoffee.com - DVD Review

Yohji Yamamoto is easily one of Japan's most well-known fashion designers. Either loved or reviled by the fashion press (and who isn't?), his designs are dark, minimal, and geometric. Fond of elegant simplicity and clean lines, he has drawn flak from the traditional fashionistas of Europe for avoiding the high drama of prevailing design modes in favor of this approach. One of his inspirations, according to the man himself, is the look and feel of partiucular cities. Two of the most common sources of this urban inspiration for Yamamoto are Paris and Tokyo.

Wim Wenders is a renowned filmmaker with a similar penchant for cities, and his stark landscapes and cityscapes in many of his films have been noted as powerful "films of the desiring gaze" towards the urban shape against a horizon. It seems only natural then that these two urbanophiles would get along famously. The result of their collaboration is this film, a documentary about Yamamoto, ostensibly, though the film says as much about Wenders as it does the Japanese fashion designer.

The documentary form lets Wenders play unashamedly with the pure visual aspect of the film, and revel in the interest and chaos of the urban environment without any pretense of story. Yamamoto is often shown inset into such a shot via a small portable video viewer, meaning that even the film's subject takes a visual backseat to the cities themselves. This is not the case during the few fashion shows that are depicted within. Once the actual fashion starts, everything is immediate, with none of Wenders' distancing mechanisms. As soon as the shows end, though, it's right back to cityscapes and video screens for the subjects, with few exceptions. The effect is unusual and a little jarring.

The film manages to convey a pretty frank look into the creative mind of a fashion designer--something that's difficult to imagine with all the posturing and drama obligatory to the European and American fashion world. It also conveys quite a bit about what Wenders and Yamamoto both find so fascinating about the cityscape, and why it figures so prominently in both their creative endeavors. For those interested in artistic process of any kind, this makes for an interesting viewing.

The DVD provides a few cut scenes, lots of excellent Wenders commentary, and a sort of "reunion" featurette revolving around the two principals of the movie. The video is excellent, though the limitations of video technology circa 1989 are really shown in glaring fashion in a few of the devices Wenders uses in the movie to distance Yamamoto from his cityscapes (poor refresh rates on the video monitors make the inset image look really wonky in a few scenes).

All in all, this is a solid pick for fans of Wenders or high fashion, but of really limited interest to most anyone else. I wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to Wenders for the uninitiated, either, as it really requires some broader understanding of his body of work to appreciate some of the motifs that run so strongly through this one.

Film @ The Digital Fix - Notebook On Cities And Clothes  Noel Megahey

Commissioned by the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris to contribute to an exhibition/installation on the theme of fashion, Wim Wenders documentary on the Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto, like his earlier documentary Tokyo Ga, takes an unusual approach to the format and offers here a more philosophical look at the nature of creativity as it applies to the creation of clothes, aligning it with a self-reflective look at the nature of creativity in filmmaking.

Inspired by a shirt and a jacket he owned that had been designed by Yamamoto, in Notebook On Cities And Clothes Wenders considers the nature of image and identity, not so much from what they say about the person who wears them, but from the impulse and inspiration that led to their creation. Interviewing Yamamoto and watching him at work, Wenders considers the influence of the locations of Paris and Tokyo, the designer’s favourite places, and his relationship with people, with the models wearing his clothes, and with the students and apprentices who learn from his work.

As a filmmaker however, Wenders is concerned with the parallels between fashion design and the creative processes of his own work. He notes with interest a common book that he and Yamamoto share as the inspiration for work in a photo book ‘Men of the 20th Century’, and considers the fact that it is people, faces, and clothing – all the identifying characteristics that make people who they are - that are the things that inspire both of them to explore and create. Playing pool with Wenders, the fashion designer supports the auteur-ist notion of both their work, fearing no-one stealing his ideas or designs, since every creator uses the same raw materials, but the unique view he applies is distinctly his own and cannot be replicated.

The idea of copying, duplicating and the questions this raises about identity is also of interest to Wenders. Both men are artists who work in mediums where, unlike painting for example, there is no unique original creation or expression of an idea in a single form. Clothes take on their own form away from the model on the catwalk and become something else when sold through stores and when worn by individuals. Film making is a collaborative process and negatives are duplicated and issued as prints, the films taking on a life of their own as they become a product and are seen differently by individual viewers. Moving towards a digital age, Wenders is also aware of the lines of original creation becoming increasingly blurred.

All these are fascinating subjects to consider, but it must be said that Notebooks On Cities And Clothes isn’t particularly interesting in an of itself as a documentary. Essentially, much of it is made up of scarcely audible talking-head interviews with Yohji Yamamoto, with a droning Wenders narrating ideas. The director tries to make the whole essay visually more interesting and relevant to his theories by using back projections of Yamamoto at work, of fashion shows and of urban landscapes, with the interviews being played-out on handheld devices, recorded in a variety of 35mm and videotape media. Where it fails here is that Yamamoto works instinctively, his designs are his language, and what he does cannot be rationalised or put into words. Wenders on the other hand, tries too hard to think and conceptualise in a Chris Marker manner and the connection that he strives to achieve between fashion designer, filmmaker, cities and the people they work for never really feels like it is convincingly made.

Notebook On Cities And Clothes is a fascinating visual essay that raises some interesting questions in its attempt to fuse the creative processes of fashion designing and filmmaking, but Wenders’ deliberated method, techniques and interviews work counter to the intuitive approach of Yohji Yamamoto. With a rather dry narrative and laboured filming technique, the film consequently lacks the spark of creativity that it is striving to capture. The film is presented well enough on DVD and although without any extra features, it is nonetheless an interesting film to consider alongside the other films it is gathered together with in the Wim Wenders Collection.

KQEK DVD Review [Mark R. Hasan]

 

King Of The Road: Five Films You Need To See During ...   Joshua Brunsting from Criterion Cast

 

A Notebook on Cities and Clothes | Mountain Xpress  Ken Hanke from Mountain Xpress

 

Notebook on Cities and Clothes | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps] 

 

DVD Verdict  Erick Harper

 

DVD Talk [Stuart Galbraith IV] WimWenders Collection Volume 2

 

DVD Verdict- The Wim Wenders Collection (Volume 2) [Brett Cullum]

 

Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]

 

Notebook On Cities And Clothes - Movie Reviews and ...  TV Guide

 

Notebook on Cities and Clothes, directed by Wim Wenders ...  Time Out London

 

MOVIE REVIEW : Wenders' 'Clothes' Is Scanty Stuff - latimes  Peter Rainer

 

Movie Review - Notebook on Cities and Clothes - Review/Film  The New York Times

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (Bis ans Ende der Welt)                       A-                    94

Germany  France  Australia  USA  (158 mi)  1991          Director’s Cut (295 mi)

 

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days,
I won’t forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,
I bless the light that lights on you believe me.
And though you’re gone,
You’re with me every single day, believe me.

Days I’ll remember all my life,
Days when you can’t see wrong from right.
You took my life,
But then I knew that very soon you’d leave me,
But it’s all right,
Now I’m not frightened of this world, believe me.

I wish today could be tomorrow,
The night is dark,
It just brings sorrow anyway.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me.
I’m thinking of the days,
I won’t forget a single day, believe me.

I bless the light,
I bless the light that shines on you believe me.
And though you’re gone,
You’re with me every single day, believe me.
Days.

 

Days, by The Kinks, 1968, Until the End of the World Days - YouTube (2:10)

 

Easily Wenders’ most ambitious film, and one of his least liked, an undefinable, futuristic work that is a wild and sprawling, dreamlike epic, both conceived and imagined as the greatest road movie ever made, complete with a musical soundtrack for the end of time, over a decade in the making, filmed in 15 cities across four continents, originally intended to be shot on 70 mm, finishing in the Congo, a project of such immense proportions that eventually Wenders simply ran out of money and had to scrap many of his original plans, resulting in a shortened 3-hour version that was poorly received, viewed as a jumbled mess with massive narrative gaps, criticized for being overly ambitious, disjointed and underdeveloped, eventually expanding nearly 25-years later to a 5-hour restored 4K version that is more compatible to what the director envisioned.  Wenders began work on the film shortly after completing The American Friend (Der amerikanische Freund)  (1977), but ended up traveling to America by himself when Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios asked him to direct HAMMETT (1982), a film eventually lost in bankruptcy before recovering with the low-budget THE STATE OF THINGS (1982), inspired by the misadventures of the previous effort, then shooting Paris, Texas (1984) in America, Tokyo-Ga (1985) in Japan, and finally returning to Germany for Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) (1987) that became a big international hit.  It was only with the success of that film that he could finally return to this labor of love, not altogether the magnum opus he had hoped it would be, which alternately exposes both the exceptional and the confused side of Wim Wenders’ filmmaking, always intensely personal projects, developing stories about the rapidly changing modern world and the impact on often displaced and disrupted identities, creating an inexhaustible love while simultaneously we’re left with an unending feeling of loneliness, exploring the concepts of home and homelessness, with Wenders quoted as saying, “Home is where you get when you run out of places,” while also examining the impact technology has on our notion of dreams, memories, and desires.  Despite its overall length, emotional distance, and meandering tendencies, it’s nonetheless a work of sheer magnitude where one can’t help but be drawn into astonishing moments, including a killer musical soundtrack, where death, sorrow, and happiness have rarely been mixed to greater impact, where one is simply in awe of its shattering effects, especially days, months, and years after seeing it, becoming a great personal favorite. 

 

Set in the “future” of 1999, there is an apocalyptic undercurrent from a nuclear satellite from India that is losing orbit, threatening to crash into Earth with ominous implications, where the United States is exploring the option of shooting it down, the opening hour or so is a rush of new beginnings, where infinite possibilities are perceived as lurking just around the corner, accentuating a passion for curiosity and exploration, as realized through the central character of Claire Tourneur (Solveig Dommartin), the director’s girlfriend at the time who co-wrote the story and appeared previously in Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) (1987) and the Claire Denis film No Fear, No Die (S’en Fout la Mort) (1990), a luminous spirit-like creature who always seems to be chasing some elusive dream, as if yearning for a state of continual joy and ecstasy, where she is defined by her insistence upon living in the moment.  Seemingly driven by her desires, her magnetic presence dominates the film, with her endless road exploits continuously described like the harrowing adventures of Odysseus from the everpresent voice of the narrator, Eugene Fitzpatrick (Sam Neill), a writer living in Paris awaiting her return who is obviously enraptured by her, whose error in judgment is sleeping with one of her friends, an incident that sets the wheels in motion, as she bolts from the suddenly contaminated safety of their home, fleeing to all-night parties in Venice that resemble the look of fashion catalogues, oblivious to all impending signs of doom.  While returning home, she impatiently avoids the everpresent road congestion, where everyone is fleeing to safer ground, a sure sign of a world in panic mode, finding an alternative route that is amusingly described by her car’s GPS tracking system (before it had been invented) as outside the “Map Zone database,” where she is effectively on her own, Until the end of the world - scene - (Neneh Cherry - move with me) YouTube (3:09).  Like Alice down the rabbit hole, she begins a series of odd encounters, namely a car crash where the people she hits are two good-natured bank robbers on the run, agreeing to smuggle money for them in exchange for 30% of the take, leaving her with gigantic sums of cash, then helping a strange American hitchhiker, Trevor McPhee (William Hurt), who is fleeing an armed gang that turns out to be the CIA.  Quickly becoming fast friends, sharing a flirtatious vibe, she settles into a deep sleep as he drives her back to Paris (secretly helping himself to some of her cash) before disappearing into the night.  

 

Torn between her growing fascination with Trevor while outraged that he stole some of her stolen money, Claire sets off after him, hiring a private detective in Berlin, Phillip Winter, none other than Rüdiger Vogler from Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3 (1976), whose computer tracing technology keeps track of phone calls or credit card purchases, where he thinks it’s a relatively routine job finding this guy, but has lingering questions why Claire is interested in finding him.  Little does he know that they’ll end up chasing this elusive figure around the world, as the audience is treated to a whirlwind tour from Venice to Paris to Berlin to Lisbon to Moscow to Beijing to Tokyo to San Francisco, and finally the Australian Outback, shot with bizarre angles, modern decors, sleek architecture, futuristic props, including tiny fantasy vehicles of the future, video phones, and plenty of technological computer enhancements, where there’s a fascination with the bizarre look and feel of the film, shot by longtime collaborator Robby Müller.  As it turns out, Trevor is not even his real name, but an alias for Sam Farber, the son of a prominent American scientist, initially thought to be a fugitive from justice, perhaps an international thief of some renown, as the U.S. government, along with freelance bounty hunters, are chasing after him for something believed to be in his possession that they deem valuable, though it all plays out like a film noir espionage drama.  Claire’s increasing curiosity about finding him and discovering his real identity are constantly frustrated, yet she’s willing to chase him halfway around the world to find out, where her travels are a constant source of delight, where there’s a mad rush of exhilaration to these travels, with elevated expectations, as the viewer is invited along on this elaborate journey plunging us headlong into the unknown, which may as well be the future.  While there are plenty of comical elements, the time the viewers spend with this single character adds an unexpected degree of intimacy and familiarity, as we literally become Claire’s traveling companions, sharing her experiences and seeing the world as she sees it, marveling at her free-spirited nature and the ability to drop everything to pursue a single-minded notion that hasn’t fully resonated even in her own mind.  None of us know what to expect if and when she finds the object of her dreams, Until the End of the World (Solveig Dommartin) YouTube (3:39).      

 

Unable to get clearance to film in China, Wenders instead sends Dommartin alone with a digital camera to film her own scenes, shot on the sly using a kind of underground technique, most of it seen in a video message sent back home to Eugene that adds a literary accompaniment to the fleeting images that go flashing by onscreen.  The film takes a different turn once Claire arrives in Tokyo, losing super sleuth Phillip Winter somewhere along the way, discovering Sam at last in a state of befuddled disorientation, where he is temporarily blind, lost and alone in the madness of the all-night pachinko parlors seen in Wenders’ earlier film Tokyo-Ga (1985), drowning in the brightness of the neon lights of the city, where she takes him to recover in a remote mountainside inn that offers the feel of a meditative, pastoral retreat which just happens to be run by an aging couple, iconic Ozu stars Chishû Ryû and Kuniko Miyake, the married couple in TOKYO STORY (1953).  A daily regimen of ancient herbal elixirs along with Claire’s tender loving care helps restore Sam’s sight, where we learn he’s not a thief after all, or a con man, but smuggled one of his father’s inventions out of the country before it was about to be confiscated by the U.S. government with military designs for its use.  It’s actually a highly sophisticated camera that records the brainwaves of the person using it, that when played back again uses the brainwaves from the memory of the photographer that when mixed together allows a blind person to see the recorded images in a primitive visualization, where it’s only with this revelation that we understand Sam’s real intentions of running around the world, as he’s been collecting images for his blind mother to see.  This exhaustive effort of recording has taken its toll on Sam, causing the temporary blindness, but like giddy lovers who find themselves madly in love, they’re off to San Francisco to record Sam’s sister Irina (Christine Osterlein) who he hasn’t seen in nearly a decade.  Due to Sam’s condition, he’s unable to do the filming, so Claire tries and discovers she’s a natural at it.  While in San Francisco, of course, they reignite their passions at an intimate bar named Tosca where Claire orders a drink she’s only read about in travel guides, where the bar becomes a subterranean fixture they become enamored with, but in typical American fashion, Claire gets arrested in an absurd police raid that she literally has nothing to do with, calling upon her bank robber friend Chico (Chick Ortega) for help, where he and Sam, not knowing where she is and unaware of each other at the time, spend their days and nights hanging out alone at the bar drinking and playing the jukebox until she mysteriously reappears like a ghost in the night, Until the End of the World / Wim Wenders - San Francisco bar love scene YouTube (1:17). 

 

The lovebirds set sail for the Australian Outback, followed close behind by Phillip Winter, harmonica in hand, dressed in his suit and hat, seemingly always on the case, the lovable and always effervescent Chico, a guy that loves to tell stories, seen throughout in some godforsaken places with a drum set, and Eugene, whose curiosity about Claire’s adventures stir his own imagination, becoming a gathering of the forces, but initially they’re all perceived as weary stragglers who have traveled great distances only to arrive in the middle of nowhere, as time literally stops, where they play a waiting game hoping to pick up any traces of Sam and Claire, who are heading for his parent’s home in the middle of the Outback.  Of course, as soon as they are detected, they all eventually get stranded by some catastrophic event when the United States decides to shoot down the falling satellite, causing an immediate loss of electromagnetic fields, effectively wiping out the world’s electrical and communication systems, where for all they know, they are the last survivors on earth from a catastrophic nuclear nightmare that has wiped out the rest of the world, as depicted in the 1957 post-apocalyptic novel On the Beach, where Australia is the last sign of life on earth before the deadly radiation clouds approach.  With this in mind, the film enters a black hole of emptiness where knowledge has all but evaporated into thin air, not knowing what lies ahead, as Sam and Claire (her wrist still locked to an airplane wing) literally wander through a desert wasteland so beautifully captured by Peter Gabriel - Blood Of Eden (Until The End Of World) YouTube (6:11), (“I can hear the distant thunder of a million unheard souls”), a blending of the future and the past, where all the collective forces come together at Dr. Farber’s lab, a research compound built into the natural interior caves of the surrounding rocks, actually introducing several new characters, including the incomparable Jeanne Moreau as Sam’s blind mother and Max von Sydow as his genius father, a man obsessed and eternally driven by his work, where Sam’s parents curiously reside in an alternative society living among local Aborigines.

 

Most of the additional footage is added to the Australian section, which feels broadly extended, meandering in and out of a dreamlike state, where existence itself is challenged through Dr. Faber’s incredible camera, where once in the lab, brainwaves are sculpted into a new kind of cinematic awareness, plunging into the depths of the subconsciousness, becoming a kaleidoscope of intersecting forms and shapes and colors, resembling prehistoric cave paintings or the primitive language of hieroglyphics, creating an abstract universe that literally reconstructs the idea of human understanding, all discovered during a time when they are unable to tell if the rest of the world still exists, where they may be rapidly approaching the end of the world, Until the End of the World - U2 YouTube (4:33).  The effect on Sam’s mother is profound, where she is literally overcome with emotion, seeing her children and glimpses of the world for the first time, but also incredibly grateful for this final experience, where her sudden death just at the arrival of the new millennium leads into what is arguably the most euphoric and ecstatic scene ever captured in a Wenders film, with Claire leading this rag tag group of survivors into a joyous rendering of a Kinks song, Until the End of the World: Thank you for the days YouTube (5:00), where the Kinks may as well be a direct link into the very heart of Wenders’ soul, where the film slowly drifts apart afterwards, delving into a technological visualization of their own dreams, spending every waking hour addicted to this new scientific breakthrough, losing themselves in the process, mesmerized and also paralyzed by the dazzling effects of technology (foretelling the world of today and all the handheld smartphones where people remain glued to the tiny screens), until somehow they can crawl their way back out of this idyllic, self-induced mirage and rediscover the essential humanity lying within.  It’s a mindblowing reconstruction of human life as we know it, expressed through an extraordinary rendering of weary souls wandering the ends of the earth, driven by an invigorating soundtrack that approaches musical transcendence, where the director crams the beginning with endless streams of continuously moving spaces, accompanied by a restless anxiety of youth and a sorrowful yearning to always want to be somewhere else, where our impulsive lives are seen as waiting disasters that must be overcome, like sprouting wings and learning to fly.  By the end, through the power of brilliant performances, Claire especially has evolved into something new, embracing the future with a kind of muted optimism, where perhaps the worst that can happen is to take things for granted and grow too comfortable, where complacency becomes a lingering stagnation, paramount to death, reflected in the vast emptiness of endless landscapes that seem to stretch into oblivion.  It’s curious how the first half puts so much emphasis on the adrenal rush or romantic inclinations on Claire’s part, where she’s willing to follow her mystery man clear around the world, yet in the end, it just fizzles out in a whimper, without an ounce of fight left in either one of them.  The film is a fascinating exploration about the changing ways we see the world around us, including our overdependent reliance upon technology to process that reality, both conscious and unconscious, diminishing not only the effects of religion in society but any existing faith in ourselves as well, where the power of art remains a propelling force behind our lives, where a road movie becomes a prolonged existential adventure, suggesting each of us wanders alone on our own personal odysseys searching for the light, forever challenged to unlock the clues to our own existence.  

 

Notes on the original 3-hour version

 

While the theatrical 3-hour version is indeed harder to follow, as it’s more confusing with less explanatory material, so it breezes through the opening dance-around-the-world sequence in just over an hour with a different editing scheme, where Trevor McPhee steals Claire’s money much earlier in the car ride, there’s less exposed European architecture, including futuristic compositions of stairways and train stations, fewer uses of those Jetson style modernized cars, barely any shots in China, a shortened Japanese section which really felt gorgeously intimate in the longer version, as it’s when they really fall in love, no special bar in San Francisco, no special drink, Claire doesn’t get arrested or spend any time in jail, and Trevor and Chico don’t spend endless days in the bar waiting for her to show up, instead Chico arrives at their doorstep in a new convertible.  The Australian sequence is completely different, with little to no meandering time with people trying to track down the missing couple, no sense of exile or alienation, which is so heightened in the longer version, less wandering in the desert without food or water, no sense of an emergency, where it’s much more of a disappointment when Sam can’t initially transmit the recorded images, as it seems days afterwards before Claire volunteers her services in transmitting the images, with no explanation whatsoever as to why she could do it, no reference to the fact that she photographed the earlier images with Sam’s sister.  Quite surprisingly, there is additional time spent with the transmitted images in the shortened version, lengthier sequences, where it seems more miraculous, as it’s really the entire focus of the final portion of the film.  They completely leave out the Kinks song sung by Claire on the eve of the millennium, which is arguably the strongest scene in the entire movie, instead Sam’s mother simply dies.  While there is a transition to recorded dreams, and an addiction to watching them, there’s certainly less time spent wandering alone in the outback with people exiled from themselves, completely preoccupied with watching the images over and over again, as it takes place in the span of about 5-minutes, where there’s less narration, as the written word from Eugene’s finished novel seems to immediately snap Claire back to her old self, completely forgetting Sam, where in no time she’s in outer space orbiting the earth receiving a photo telephone message for her 30th birthday, with the slashing chords of the U2 “End of the World” song crashing over the end credits.  Wenders is quoted as saying, “We thought that we only had the right to enter into such a sacred area like a person’s dreams, if we would bring something into the work that was sacred to ourselves.”  Again, this shortened version actually has a greater sense of urgency from the visualization images, as they simply seem so much more astonishing than anything else in the film, and is certainly the most profound recollection from watching the film 25 years ago.  That sense of transcendent urgency, like it’s a futuristic miracle transformed into primitive yet breathtakingly beautiful, painterly images (coming full circle, as Wenders began as a watercolors painter) is diminished in the longer version, but feels essential to the shorter one.  

 

Post script

On a sadder note, radiant actress Solveig Dommartin tragically died of a heart attack at the tender age of 45 on January 11, 2007, where she is survived by her daughter, whose name, curiously enough, is Venus.  As a tribute to her unforgettable presence, here is a gorgeous reconstruction of a song by Jane Siberry (with k.d. lang) entitled “Calling All Angels” used in Wenders’ Until the End of the World, but with images from another Wenders’ film, Wings of Desire, Calling All Angels and their Wings of Desire YouTube (5:21).

 

Obituary by Maxim Jacubowski from The Guardian, February 6, 2007, Solveig Dommartin, Wenders' fearless angel - The Guardian

 

Nights at the circus... Solveig Dommartin as Marion in Wings of Desire

 

The sad news has recently reached me of the death of the Franco-German actor Solveig Dommartin. She was struck down by a heart attack in Paris on January 11 at the obscenely young age of 45.

 

Her acting career began in the theatre in France and Germany. She then worked for a time as an assistant to the director Jacques Rozier (best known for his nouvelle-vague 1962 classic Adieu Philippine) before making her screen debut in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, in which she

memorably played the part of the circus acrobat who ensnares the heart of an angel and causes his fall from grace amongst the black and white roofs and skies of Berlin.

 

Solveig had to learn circus acrobatics and all sorts of trapeze movements in under eight weeks for the film and never used a stunt double. For many people, it is still Wenders’ most striking movie and she will ever be remembered for the part.

 

It was on the set of the film that she began a liaison with Wenders, which was to last several years and led to her co-writing 1991’s Until the End of the World, a daring folly of a road movie in which a band of misfits, seekers, secret agents and femmes fatales roamed the globe in a search

for the absolute, only to end up in the Australian desert.

 

Wenders said of the film: “Solveig Dommartin and I had written the story of the film together, and we thought that we only had the right to enter into such a sacred area as a person’s dreams if we would bring something into the work that was sacred to ourselves.”

 

The fascinating but flawed movie was heavily cut on its initial release, but also exists in different, longer forms that have been shown at festivals and the NFT, and still has absolutely entrancing moments.

 

Solveig only had a cameo appearance in Wenders’ 1993 Wings sequel, Faraway, So Close and, apart from a role in Claire Denis’ I Can't Sleep in 1994, her film career ended together with her relationship with the German director. She directed a 20-min short, Il suffirait d'un pont in 1998, starring Romane Bohringer and Catherine Frot, but had produced nothing since.

 

I met her for the first time at the Courmayeur Noir in Fest film and literary festival in Italy in December 1993; unlike the demure Marion of the Wenders film, the real-life Solveig was a veritable bundle of energy, a boisterous and extrovert young woman who was always the last to leave the hotel bar. She arrived at the festival straight from a Paris registry office where she had just married Fred, a French busker she'd only known for a few weeks, and promptly began flirting outrageously with most men present, under his bemused gaze.

 

But there was a basic, joyful innocence in Solveig and her medusa-like mane that quickly banished disapproval. It was thanks to her that my colleague Adrian Wootton managed to arrange a screening at the NFT of the five-or-so-hour version of Until the End of the World a year later, which she presented, with wide-eyed Fred still trailing in her rumbustious wake.

 

For filmgoers everywhere, she will always be the beauty who enticed an angel down from heaven, but for those of us who knew her, she will be remembered as a hell of a girl.

 

On a Clear Day, You Can See Harvey Weinstein - Linoleum ...  Alonso Duralde from Linoleum Knife, August 24, 2013 (excerpt)

I’ve had that same epiphany a few times myself; the shortened version of Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World seemed like a charming mess when I saw it during its brief theatrical run, but when I got to see his five-hour cut at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles in 2001, it was one of those moments where I truly understood the impact that editing can have on a movie.

Characters who had felt unmotivated and half-thought-out suddenly seemed alive; the story unfolded in a way that made real sense, and an emotional resonance that had been missing from the short version came to full flower. (If you ever get the chance to see this cut — usually screened in three 100-minute pieces with two intermissions — on the big screen, do whatever it takes to be there. Or, if you’ve got a region-free DVD player, try to dig up one of the foreign home video releases.)

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Rob Christopher

Even in its original US theatrical version, which is a mere 158 minutes, this sci-fi odyssey set in the year 1999 was a gargantuan, glorious mess. Wenders' almost obsessive fixation on atmosphere and character at the expense of plot momentum ensured that for long stretches of its running time, nothing seemed to be "happening." (Albeit in the most odd and colorful ways.) Now we'll finally be treated to the elusive director's cut, over two hours longer, the original negative of which Wenders allegedly "borrowed" from the facilities of the movie's distributors in the '90s. Will the additional scenes add up to a more coherent and fluid experience, or just double down on the relentless globe-hopping that's so intoxicating in the shorter version? Regardless, it shouldn't be missed. In addition to a truly ideal cast (Solveig Dommartin, William Hurt, Sam Neill, Jeanne Moreau, and Max von Sydow among others) Wenders managed to assemble one of the greatest soundtracks of all time. The movie was shot in 15 different cities in seven different countries, safely ensuring that this will remain his (and perhaps art cinema's) most extravagant production.

Strictly Film School  Aquarello

 

A novelist named Eugene Fitzpatrick (Sam Neill) recounts in dispassionate voiceover that in 1999, an Indian nuclear-powered satellite had fallen from its designated Earth orbit, setting the spacecraft on a steadfast, but indeterminate trajectory towards an inevitable impact with the planet. Areas that were identified as potential impact sites experienced mass exodus, causing people to aggregate in populational hubs throughout discrete, safe zone cities around the world. Meanwhile, the American government is determined to execute its plan to deploy a ground-based missile defense system that will intercept the satellite before it reaches Earth's atmosphere, despite strong opposition from the United Nations council - a unilateral proposal that some experts believe will register a false atomic detection alarm on the automated defense mechanisms of several countries and will unwittingly trigger a worldwide nuclear holocaust. It is in these days of turn-of-the-century doomsday prophecy, cosmic impact, and threat of nuclear annihilation that Eugene's estranged lover, an aimless pop singer named Claire Tourneur (Solveig Dommartin) decided one afternoon to take a detour through the French countryside in order to avoid a traffic jam, where a collision with an automobile driven by a careless, eccentric bank robber, Chico, leads to an unexpected financial windfall and an intriguing encounter with a pensive and seductive employee from a scientific research foundation who goes by the alias Trevor McPhee (William Hurt). Wanted for industrial espionage in the theft of a prototype imager that had been developed by his father, Dr. Henry Farber (Max von Sydow) - a device that simultaneously records brainwaves and therefore, can be used to synthetically replicate and translate visual images for blind people, in particular, his mother Edith (Jeanne Moreau) who had been without sight since childhood - Trevor has been involved in a protracted international chase with unidentified bounty hunters eager to apprehend him, retrieve the camera, and collect on the large reward offered for his capture. With his financial resources running dry, the resourceful Trevor seizes the opportunity to help himself to Claire's newly found wealth as she takes a nap in her half-repaired automobile during a cross-country trip back to Paris. Returning home only to acknowledge that their relationship has been irreparably damaged by Eugene's admitted affair, Claire soon leaves him to carve out a new life on her own, a destiny that she becomes increasingly convinced is inextricably bound to her guardianship of - and complete devotion to - the charismatic, transcontinental fugitive.

 

Wim Wenders creates a visually and thematically epic, resonantly lyrical and texturally organic meditation on connection, communication, images, and the meaning of human sight in Until the End of the World. Unfolding in loosely threaded but interconnected stream-of-consciousness parts of an overarching narrative trilogy, the film innately reflects the intertextuality of images in the creative process, from Eugene's invocation of personal observations and experiences into the drafts of his fictional novels to the filmmaker's own subconscious, underlying preoccupation on the moral, artistic, and spiritual impetus for his craft. The first part, which revolves around the revelation of Trevor's true identity, becomes a metaphoric deconstruction of the created image: the breakdown of illusion (note Claire's continued donning of a Cleopatra wig even as she seeks to "find" herself in Venice after her breakup with Eugene. The second part, which appropriately opens to Claire's assisted flight of a blinded Trevor to a rural mountainside inn in Japan (in memorable appearances by frequent Yasujiro Ozu actors, Chishu Ryu and Kuniko Miyake), illustrates the translation of images - the internal process of recollection (and reproduction) of sensorial data - into the formulation of personal memory. Note the aboriginal tribal elder's methodical chant that serves as an oral transmission of human history and a people's collective consciousness of their ancestral land. The third part, initially framed in the backdrop of complete geographic and telecommunicational isolation, represents the process of cognition - the assignment of meaning into the experience of images - a personal assimilation into human consciousness that enables introspection and lucidity that can lead to nostalgia, disillusionment, myopia, and madness. It is this deceptive seduction for the search of hidden truth beneath the reflexive clarity of images that is reflected in Eugene's world-weary sentiment, "I had always cherished the beginning of the Gospel According to John, 'In the beginning was the Word.' I was now afraid that the Apocalypse would read, 'In the end, there were only images'. I didn't know the cure for the disease of images." In the end, it is not the transmission of the aesthetic, but the underlying mechanism for universal understanding through images - the primeval, transcending medium of communication - that unifies, and ultimately redeems the humanity of a lost, foundering, and reckless world.

 

kamera.co.uk - film review - Until The End of the World - Edmund Hardy  Edmund Hardy

"1999 was the year the Indian nuclear satellite went out of control. . ." Until the End of the World is an end of the millennium odyssey from director Wim Wenders, developed and created over a decade, filmed on four continents, script jointly written with Peter Carey, and given a huge budget (for an 'art film') of 23 million dollars. Among others, Jeanne Moreau and William Hurt put in performances and the soundtrack features many specially written songs by the big and the credible – Lou Reed, R.E.M., Talking Heads and so on (the soundtrack album considered something of a classic in itself) – and Portuguese 'Queen of the Fado', Amália Rodrigues appears as an on-screen extra! Then the money ran out and Wenders was obliged to reduce his eight-hour film down to 158 minutes for a 1991 theatrical release which was badly received by critics and ignored by audiences.

However, Wenders kept the original elements and has now released a three-part 280 minute version (Bis ans Ende der Welt), available on DVD in Germany from Kinowelt (the film is in English), but the edition under review here, available in the UK from Metrodome, presents the original 158-minute theatrical release. Is there any point to it, when the full-length region 2 German DVD can be ordered from Amazon? Well, with the longer version so completely re-edited, the two versions are effectively different films. This short version does have dramatic moments of mystery which are lost in the extended cut, though what it gains in elliptical speed it then loses in a disastrous blanking out of resonance once everything slows down for the third movement. As with Apocalypse Now, it's pretty interesting to double the mirror and see both shorter and longer versions.

What at first appears to be an ultra-cool road movie – the central character Claire wakes up after a party, she stumbles out while a laconic narrator tells us, "In the fall of 1999 Claire Tourneur woke up in some strange places. . ." – soon shifts into a gliding, spinning tour across the world as the characters chase after each other in pursuit of the restoration of sight, video footage, true love and secret government technology. A novelist, a private bounty detective (who comes to rely on a computerised bear who "searches here and searches there"), government agents, a drifting party girl – these people are cut loose by the satellite of death which is hanging over the world, and the strands of their journeying form a bright foreground – immaculate compositions and elaborate camera movements – while the background (death and the millennium) is beyond images and is simply felt in its effects at various points in the plot (electrical circuits crash while Claire is flying in a plane).

With the soundtrack kicking in and segueing between songs, much of the time Until The End of the World seems like the greatest, most mysterious music video you've seen: highly coloured, switching locations and focus to suit mood, a beautiful woman in a wig and designer clothes. As the characters reach a final point of meeting, the third portion of the film slows down, focusing on the restoration of sight to the blind mother of a renegade scientist – and the technology also gives the ability to see projections of your own dreams: the long and potentially lethal homecoming of simulacra to Ithaca, here a hidden scientific community and lab complex somewhere in the Australian outback. I must say that this shorter version – "the Readers' Digest version" Wenders has reportedly called it – is in the end much less compelling than the longer director's cut. The DVD image is almost pristine (very occasional white spots) but the extras are sparse: the trailer, and an essay by Jason Wood which is an overview of Wenders' career in general and this film in particular.

Until The End of the World marks a middle point in Wenders' career. The road trip in which physical movement translates human emotion into a screen of places; the apparently simple fairy tale plot (which often slide forward on unsolvable atmospheres of mystery); the spiritual humanism set against imitations of life: these all culminate and extend themselves into a film of a damaged but hopeful earth, continually consuming its own mirage-images, expelling or purging them as they arise. The film seems to exist in a technological flowering – and poisoning – of the near future, criss-crossed by every method of transport. "You are leaving the Map Zone database. You are on your own, Claire."

Washington Post [Hal Hinson]

In "Until the End of the World," German director Wim Wenders concocts his own uniquely personal brand of poetic science fiction. Set in 1999, as the world teeters on the brink of the millennium, with a rogue nuclear satellite circling threateningly above, this tantalizing, masterly film presents us with a vision not of tomorrow, but of the day after tomorrow, a vision that seems at once oddly familiar and at the same time just beyond the reach of our outstretched fingers. It's the first movie in which we can actually feel the future pressing in on us. It has the shock of the new.

Wenders, who's best known here for "Paris, Texas" and "Wings of Desire," has made important movies in the past, but this is perhaps his first really essential film, and certainly his greatest. It's the film he's been building up to, an awe-inspiring, culminating work that allows him to express everything he is as a filmmaker. It's his masterpiece.

Written by Wenders with Peter Handke, the picture is a virtual collision of genres, part road movie, part detective story, part futuristic love story. The story line is as complicated as it is delightfully improbable. With her marriage in disarray, Claire (Solveig Dommartin) reels from party to party in a state of melancholy discombobulation. Along the way, she (literally) runs into Chico and Raymond (Chick Ortega and Eddy Mitchell), a pair of bank robbers who offer her a percentage of their take on a big heist to carry the money for them into Paris. She agrees, but shortly afterward, with this windfall stuffed in a duffel bag in her front seat, she encounters another stranger (William Hurt) who asks for a ride in order to elude an Australian bounty hunter (Ernie Dingo) eager to claim the fortune riding on his prey's head.

This favor, which seems innocent enough, pulls Claire into a web of intrigue that takes her from Lisbon to Moscow, Bejing, Tokyo and, eventually, Australia. The stranger (who goes by an alias but whose real name is Sam) is wanted for industrial espionage for "stealing" a special camera invented by his scientist father (Max von Sydow) to take pictures that can be seen by the blind. Sam is on a mission. The device was created for his mother (Jeanne Moreau), who lost her sight at the age of 8, and since reclaiming the machine, Sam, as an expression of love for both parents, has been traveling the world interviewing relatives and friends and collecting images to take back to her.

Though Claire is fascinated by Sam, it's the wad of dough he steals from her bag that prompts her to hit the road with a private eye (Rudiger Vogler) to track him down. Her husband, Eugene (Sam Neill), a soft-spoken novelist who constantly comes to her rescue, is in on the chase too, which, as the numbers escalate, quickly deteriorates into a slapstick enterprise, an existential, sci-fi version of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."

Wenders's humor here is low-key and precise; he's a droll absurdist with a subterranean sense of fun that's expressed not only through his characters, but in his futuristic view of the global scene as well. The future that Wenders shows us here is merely a logical, playful extension of the present; it's the technology-dominated future of videophones and videofaxes and computerized cars, the future that is currently in the process of coming to pass. It's a toy world with its boundaries opened up, and Wenders blithely moves his characters around on it as if they were pieces on a giant game board.

If Wenders had set a different task for himself -- if his goal, for example, were to define the world of tomorrow -- then perhaps he couldn't have afforded to have this much fun with it. But describing the future is less an end than a device for detailing the Zeitgeist of the current moment and, beyond that, exploring the universal and the eternal. "Until the End of the World" is an all-encompassing epic painted on a sprawling canvas. It's an ambitious work, but, strangely enough, it doesn't feel like it; it's not the least bit daunting. Movies built on a scale this vast and with themes this serious are usually more insistent. But though the picture feels like an emptying of the head, it doesn't have the urgency of a purge. Instead, it's rather meandering and casual, especially in its first half, as if it knew that what it had to say was so engrossing that it didn't have to rush.

This is the essence of the movie's charm. As the film progresses, though, Wenders shifts emotional gears, and the movie deepens and becomes more somber. Yet what it loses in surface appeal, it makes up for in feeling. In the last section of the film, we arrive at a destination that we couldn't really have suspected. This final segment takes place in the immense nowhere of the Australian outback where Sam's parents have set up a sort of alternative society with the local Aborigines, far away from the rest of the world and where Sam's father has continued his scientific research. Before Sam and Claire and the rest of their clan arrive, though, the nuclear satellite detonates, shorting out all the world's electrical circuitry -- cars included -- propelling the group into a forced isolation, unsure whether the rest of the world still exists.

It's here, while the final seconds of the century tick away and the year 2000 is born, that Sam and his father try to bring sight to Sam's mother, allowing her to see her children for the first time and her friends for the last. This part of the picture -- and what follows when Sam's father extends his research into the world of dreams -- is spellbinding and profoundly moving. Wenders makes uses of some new video technology here, and he presents us with some startling, never-before-seen images that are, simply, among the most beautiful ever put on screen.

The characters, who have until this point been in perpetual motion, become more vivid too, especially Claire, who metamophoses from an impulsive rootless creature in a black wig into a kind of earthy mother to her new age extended family. In the movie's end, Wenders weaves all his thematic and narrative threads together into a coherent, philosophical whole. Even with the apocalypse, though, his view isn't despairing. A new direction, a new beginning emerges out of the ashes of the old, image-overloaded world, and with it, a sort of muted optimism. A faith in art, too, emerges, for it's the storyteller who leads the way. But that faith in art was implicit to begin with. It's in the performances, in Robby Mueller's dazzling cinematography, and the pulsing, invigorating soundtrack. It's in every frame of this spectacular, thrilling work.

The Cinematic Journeys of Wim Wenders - Parallax View  Sean Axmaker, September 27, 2010

 

Journal of Religion and Film: Seeing Beyond the End of the ...  Seeing Beyond the End of the World in Strange Days and Until the End of the World, by S Brent Plate and Tod Linafelt from Journal of Religion and Film, April 2003

 

Until the End of the World  Toni Perrine from Images, August 1996    

 

Film as Art [Danél Griffin]

 

On Wim Wenders' Until The End Of The World (1991) review/analysis ...  Jacquelyn Valencia from These Girls On Film

 

The Legendary Director's Cut of Wim Wenders' Until the End of  Jim Ridley from The Nashville Scene

 

At Five Hours, Wim Wenders's Full 'Until the End of the World'  Sam Weisberg from The Village Voice

 

A Bright Wall in a Dark Room [Karina Wolf]

 

Matthias Reviews Wim Wenders' Until The End Of The World  Matthias Ellis from Criterion Cast

 

Until the End of the World | Berlinale Special - Furious Cinema  Sebastian, February 11, 2015

 

Until the End of the World (1992) | Emanuel Levy

 

Wenders' Brave New World [Jerry Saravia]

 

Until the End of the World / An Attempt at Analysis - Panix

 

The Essentials: The 10 Best Wim Wenders Films | The Playlist  Kenji Fujishima, Nicholas Laskin, Oliver Lyttelton, and Rodrigo Perez, September 3, 2015

 

DVD Savant: The Strange Case of UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD ...  Glenn Erickson Pt. 1

 

The Strange Case of UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD  Glenn Erickson Pt. 2

 

until the end of the world - review at videovista  Steve Aylett comparing the shorter abridged version to the longer director’s cut

 

IONCINEMA [Nicholas Bell]

 

The Tech (MIT) [Chris Roberge]

 

Until the End of the World – Wim Wenders 1991 | Amber ...  Amber Nowak

 

'Ruins' at the 'End of the World' - PopMatters  Kris Ligman, February 27, 2011

 

The Spinning Image [Graeme Clark]

 

Until The End of the World: the Directors' Cut | Caryn Rose's ...  Caryn Rose from Jukebox Graduate

 

"Until the End of the World" - U2's 12 Greatest Soundtrack Songs ...  Rolling Stone magazine

 

Wim Wenders on Until the End of the World at 20, Its Amazing ...  S.T. VanAirsdale 20th anniversary interview from Movieline, November 15, 2011

 

TV Guide

 

Review: 'Until the End of the World' - Variety

 

Until the End of the World, directed by Wim Wenders | Film review  Geoff Andrew

 

Arts: Chris Petit on Wim Wenders | Film | The Guardian  King of the Road, by Chris Petit from The Guardian, January 5, 2008

 

Until the End of the World review – visionary techno-futurist ...  Jordan Hoffman from The Guardian, August 27, 2015

 

Washington Post [Joe Brown]

 

Austin Chronicle [Kathleen Maher]

 

Deseret News, Salt Lake City [Chris Hicks]

 

Until the End of the World Movie Review (1992) | Roger Ebert  1992

 

At Last! "The End of the World" is Here! - Roger Ebert  Peter Sobczynski

 

New York Times  Vincent Canby, also seen here:  Movie Review - - Review/Film; New Hat for Wenders: Daffy and ...

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gregg Ferencz]

 

Until the End of the World - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Until the End of the World (soundtrack) - Wikipedia, the free ...

 

FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! (In weiter Ferne, so nah!)

Germany  (144 mi)  1993

 

Faraway, So Close - Time Out

Wenders' follow-up to Wings of Desire is a considerable disappointment, a sprawling metaphysical caper movie which has much in common with his previous picture, Until the End of the World. Beginning a few years after Damiel (Ganz) hung up his wings to settle down with Marion (Dommartin), the film follows the angel Cassiel (Sander) as he too becomes mortal. Life doesn't throw him any great romance, however - instead, he finds himself in an extraordinary convoluted (and extremely tedious) mystery thriller. We get jokes, whimsy, hijinks and escapades; we get Lou Reed strumming a new song; we even get bungee-jumping at the climax. What's lacking is any sense of form. The movie meanders for two and a half hours, has glaring continuity gaps, and repeatedly confuses self-consciousness with irony, sincerity with significance. There are grace notes here, but Wenders' ambitions seem far, far away.

Review for In weiter Ferne, so nah! (1993) - IMDb  Scott Renshaw

Wim Wenders' WINGS OF DESIRE was one of my favorite films of 1988. As corny as it might sound, I found it to be one of those rare transcendental film experiences, a beautiful and poetic tale of love and human wonder that left me feeling uplifted. I was unsure of how to approach the idea that Wenders was making a sequel to this singular film, but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, all the good will in the world was unable to salvage FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! Wenders seems to have been unclear as to what made WINGS OF DESIRE special, weighing down a simple story with self-importance and a ridiculously convoluted plot.

FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! returns Otto Sander to the role of Cassiel, one of many angels who drift through Berlin observing and listening in on thoughts. He is curious about the human experience, but reluctant to take the plunge risked by his former companion Damiel (Bruno Ganz). The decision is made for him when he becomes human to save the life of a young girl. Cassiel resolves to use his physical form to intervene for good where he was unable to do so before, but that resolution proves easier said than done. He falls into despair and loneliness, eventually coming to work for a suave black marketeer (Horst Buchholz). Cassiel struggles to redeem himself, all the while thwarted by a mysterious figure named Emit Flesti (Willem Dafoe).

Like WINGS OF DESIRE, FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! shows us the angels' world in black and white, and opens with loosely connected scenes of the angels smiling knowingly over human shoulders as they work and worry. But unless my memory fails me, those scenes go on far longer in FARAWAY, and they become extremely tedious. They include a cameo by Mikhail Gorbachev, thinking important thoughts about world peace, and a scene involving a dying man and an angel played by Nastassja Kinski where the overlapping dialogue created a nightmare for the subtitler. This prologue seemed to go on and on, and while it did provide information necessary later in the story, it could have been done much more efficiently. There are too many characters, many of whom are completely irrelevant to the story.

The film's second act is by far its most effective. The reluctantly human Cassiel copes poorly with his new state, lacking the love which motivated Damiel's transformation. The marvelously expressive Sander is great during these scenes, drifting into drunken despondency with genuine pain. Also intriguing is the relationship between Cassiel and Tony Baker, the German-born/ American-raised racketeer who takes him in. Horst Buchholz has an oily charm as Baker, and there's a lively cadence to his perpetual switching back and forth between German and English. Cassiel is most interesting when he's a fallen angel, with Baker the little devil on his shoulder.

Then, during the climax, it all falls apart again. Willem Dafoe, who as Emit Flesti ("time itself" backwards ... get it?) wanders through the film making ominous but opaque statements like, "Time is the absence of money," becomes thoroughly oppressive in the final half hour. FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! becomes a silly caper film involving stolen arms and kidnapping. Peter Falk, who was so good in WINGS OF DESIRE as Damiel's guide to humanity, is simply comic relief here, although a scene involving the distraction of two security guards is very funny. WINGS OF DESIRE was whimsical, but never dopey, and FARAWAY has a real problem finding its tone.

Perhaps the most egregious sin in FARAWAY is a preachy epilogue that seems only tangentially connected to the film we just spent two and a half hours watching. WINGS OF DESIRE was a kind of message film, but the message was skillfully delivered; in the intervening five years, Wenders seems to have had all the subtlety sucked out of him. The moments that do work in FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! are mired in overplotting, and there's never any flow to the story. What's worse, it has tainted my memories of WINGS OF DESIRE.

Bohème Magazine Online: Wim Wenders' Faraway, So Close!  Eamon Graham

Faraway, So Close! (In weiter Ferne, so nah!) is the beautiful 1993 follow-up to Wim Wenders' 1987 film Der Himmel über Berlin (released in English as Wings of Desire). While a complete analysis of the film would require beginning with Der Himmel über Berlin, the film Faraway, So Close! is easily viewable as an autonomous film. Indeed, Wenders insists that it is not a sequel, and as I saw Faraway, So Close! first (like many others who were unaware of Wenders' earlier works), I'll attempt to deal with the film on its own.

While Der Himmel über Berlin took place in a divided Berlin, Faraway, So Close! explores a re-united Berlin and shows two separated worlds suddenly coming together, and in many ways, the film deals with the fact of being an outsider in a foreign world after a sudden event.

Faraway, So Close! begins in black and white, flying over post-wall East Berlin, to the top of the statue of Victory, from which a man jumps to fly through the city. This man is actually an angel, Cassiel, played beautifully by Otto Sander. The black and white cinematography highlights the boundary - the Wall - between the world of the angels and the world of the humans they watch over, and it is this wall that Cassiel wants so much to climb over in order to see the world as the humans he loves see it.

These opening scenes introduce us to the angels watching over their human charges, including Mikhail Gorbachev in a cameo appearance. Cassiel longs to make contact with the people he watches over and hurts over his inability to save them from accidents, suicides, etc. for to intervene would violate their free will. The angels are recognized in the dreams of children but completely unknown to adults. As he watches over a young child, Raissa, he makes the split-second decision to intervene in order to save her when she falls from an apartment balcony. As actor Otto Sander explained in an interview "Cassiel ... wants to bring himself into play... He wants to do something." Cassiel truly exists in the human world after making a conscious decision to express himself on to human existence. It is this Kierkegaardian leap and the acceptance of its consequences that brings him into concrete existence, and in to a world of colour.

The film begins with the Biblical quote "The light of the body is the eye," and as Cassiel views the world through human eyes for the first time, Wenders shows us the effects of different light on the body - the superficiality of black and white, the essentialness of colour, the beauty of love and the ugliness of violence.

As Cassiel struggles to learn his way around the human world, he'll be watched over by angel Raphaela (played actually quite beautifully by Nastassja Kinski), counseled by former angels Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Peter Falk (yes, Peter Falk), and led astray by Emit Flesti - Time Itself, played by Willem Dafoe. Cassiel will discover jail, alcohol, separation from his friend Raphaela, depression, Lou Reed (!) and homelessness before being taken in by shady but strangely likeable German-American businessman Tony Baker (Horst Buchholz). Cassiel ends up saving Baker's life, and in return Baker lets Cassiel in on the business of illegal arms and pornography. In this world, Cassiel determines to fight against the evil that runs through a human history that seems fated to violence and pain. The relationship between Cassiel and Emit Flesti seems to stress that freedom is at odds with fate; when Emit Flesti quotes a prophecy of a ship sailing into hell with all hands on board, Cassiel responds "I know every prophecy and I've never heard that one."

The final hour of the film has Wenders connecting together elements such as black market arms deals, separated families, and metaphors for German reunification in the same way as the film brings together existentialism, history, theology, ethics and aesthetics (a true feast for the intellectual mind), and while many who see the film are preoccupied with the themes of German reunification (and yes, that is one of the points of the film) I was mostly captivated by the themes of grace, anxiety, time, freedom and alienation as well as by the beautiful and artistic cinematography.

The ultimate message of the film is that hope exists and peace is possible in an existance where freedom is superior to fate, but it's up to us humans to make the leap.

derekwinnert.com [Derek Winnert]

 

Faraway, So Close! - The Science-Fiction, Horror and ...  Richard Scheib

 

Unsung Films [Theo Alexander]

 

The DVD Journal: Faraway, So Close!  Dawn Taylor

 

Counting Blessings | Film Comment  Mary Corliss

 

“A Very Exceptional Situation”: Faraway, So Close! (1993 ...  Jetta from The Iron Cupcake

 

The Tech (MIT) [Jeremy Hylton]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! | Movieguide | Movie Reviews for ...

 

Faraway, So Close Review | TVGuide.com

 

Faraway, So Close! | Variety  Todd McCarthy

 

Washington Post [Desson Howe]

 

Washington Post [Rita Kempley]

 

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

MOVIE REVIEW : 'Faraway, So Close': Wim Wenders ...  Kevin Thomas from The LA Times

 

Faraway, So Close - The New York Times  Caryn James, also seen here:  Review/Film - Faraway, So Close - Wim Wenders's Angels ...

 

Faraway, So Close! - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

LISBON STORY

Germany  Portugal  (100 mi)  1994

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]

In this 1994 Wim Wenders film, previously unreleased in America, Wenders veteran Rüdiger Vogler plays a movie soundman who receives a letter from a director friend (Patrick Bauchau) asking him to come to Lisbon. Once there, Vogler finds that his friend has disappeared, but he proceeds to take up residence in the director's abandoned apartment, adding sound effects to Bauchau's unfinished project, which consists of scenes of everyday life in the Portugese capital. Essentially a meditation on what it means to make films 100 years after their invention, Lisbon Story plays like a cross between Lumiere And Company—the first-rate tribute to the movies' centennial in which Wenders also participated—and The Third Man. It's a small, slight movie, but it's worth watching, and best appreciated by those who already admire the director. Wenders' high-profile failures (Until The End Of The World, The End Of Violence) have sullied his reputation in recent years; Lisbon Story suggests that something less grandiose might be a good next move for him. It's a small gem.

Movie Magazine International [Andrea Chase]

Wim Wender's "Lisbon Story" is something that I'd never imagined a German film could be. Whimsical. It's a beefy, Teutonic brand of whimsy, to be sure, but there it is, nonetheless.

The film begins in dark and gloomy Berlin with Phil, a consummate sound-man, receiving a sun-drenched postcard from his old pal Fritz, a filmmaker. The enigmatic message begs Phil to come to Portugal and save his latest film.

It's irresistible. Phil heads south with determination that neither a temperamental car nor a broken leg can quell. When he arrives, Fritz's gone and not only do none of his friends know where he might be, they also don't seem particularly worried about him. Phil finds Fritz's last film footage, shot using an antique camera, and runs it looking for clues. Soon he's caught up in an eccentric world of teeny-bopper cinephiles, determined mosquitoes, and a lovely chanteuse, played by Teresa Salgueiro of the group Madredeus, who also perform the film's hypnotic score.

What begins as a contemporary, light-hearted re-telling of Graham Greene's "The Third Man" takes a sharp left turn becoming a fluffy version of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Only instead of going quietly mad in a steamy, bug-infested jungle, this Kurtz has pondered too long on the true meaning of filmmaking and invented his own loopy solution to the conflict between art and commerce.

Wender's is subtle in telling this story. He nails down mood with perfectly framed shots. He knows exactly how long to linger to capture the moment and the plot arc as a whole. This is why he's able to visually demonstrate the joy of sound as the camera follows Phil, played by rubber-lipped Rudiger Volger, exploring the streets of Lisbon armed with boom mike and tape recorder. Where you and I might take snapshots, this die-hard sound-man, in blissful if quiet rapture, tapes soundshots of the city's hubbub.

As for the joy of filmmaking, and creativity, for that matter, "Lisbon Story" sums that up with a fanciful cameo by writer/director Manoel De Oliveira, acting out his exposition on the subject.

"Lisbon Story" uses a Portuguese and German cast, speaking very marketable English. Perhaps, this is Wender's balancing act between art and commerce.

Angeliki Coconi's Unsung Films [Theo Alexander]

Lisbon Story is more dream than story – and this, I think, defines and justifies it most effectively. There is no clear structure, no consistently cohesive or progressive dialogue. Wim Wenders subtly reveals some form of portrait of the city, but not in the way one might expect. The film is largely made up of sounds, scattered pieces of Lisbon, strange children, a mysterious filmmaker and Wenders’ protagonist, the sound engineer, Philip Winter. In Philip Winter’s efforts to understand his friend Friedrich’s disappearance, in his enchantment with Portuguese band Madredeus, the singer Teresa Salgueiro and his search for the sounds that would accompany Friedrich’s film about Lisbon, Wender’s self-proclaimed “most entertaining film” emerges.

There are many smaller details that make Lisbon Story such a mystifying piece of cinema. Snippets of Winter reading poetry in bed, Friedrich’s peculiar home, the presence of a mysterious little boy (who later becomes a more significant piece of the puzzle), brief glimpses of the old town of Lisbon with its worn paint and earth-red tiles. These moments work together with the film’s weightier substance, such as the music of Madredeus and the presence of cinema — not in the sense that Wenders’ film is traditionally faithful to the art of cinema; it is not, but perhaps because it is a tribute to what film can strive to be – to turn it into another fine example of the German director’s unique talent.

The film opens on an invitation to Lisbon, and Winter’s journey from Berlin to Portugal in his car. With this and the gentle comedy of the initial sequences, Lisbon Story sets a base upon which it slowly builds up to its more substantial conclusion – Friedrich’s monologue, reflecting fragments of Wenders’ meandering philosophical output, and a debate they both engage in regarding the true meaning of cinema. In this argument, the commercialism of modern cinema is dwelled upon, and the usefulness of images creates simply to sell things – the lost art of making films to tell stories.

Of course, this is reminiscent of classic Wenders; but so too is the gentler, dreamier side of Lisbon Story. Again, his unique contribution to film is well exemplified here. There is so much thoughtfulness, so much sensation and strange disbelief in this film that it reaches every inch of the human body, tingling with sounds and images and unknown motives. There is also a sweetness present, not only in the face of Rudiger Vogler, but also in the way that he simply lives out his time in Lisbon, in his own head, in observation, and in contentment.

And there is no pretentiousness present – Wenders knows better. Perhaps the lack of any kind of real budget provides reason for this (the whole film was funded by the City of Lisbon), while many of the actors haven’t been seen in anything else… This is a real piece of cinema, fuelled by the road, filled with thought, human imperfections, thirsty for truth and sensations. There is comedy in its simplicity, mysticism in its setting, dreaminess in its music and a sense of curiosity in its unfolding. Wenders allows his film to expose itself by itself. Somewhat in contrast with some of better known works, which are laden with personal philosophies, Lisbon Story holds back, it refuses to persist on altering the viewer’s perception of it. It appears almost as though it were an incomplete piece of work, a compliment to Wenders’ cinema, a reflection of himself.

Lisbon Story - Deep Focus  Bryant Frazer

If the cinematic marketplace is ever more dominated by "high concept" cinema, I guess I find myself particularly taken by what must be the "low concept" film. High concept is this: "Die Hard on board the President's plane." "Jodie Foster meets space aliens." And a low concept might be this one: "Film soundman travels to Portugal to add soundtrack to silent film, finds director has vanished, wanders streets with mic and tape deck, chases mosquito, listens to music, talks to children, expounds on the nature of cinema."

And that, in a nutshell, is Lisbon Story, the 1994 film from director Wim Wenders, who cut his teeth as one standard bearer of the "new German cinema" that flourished in the 1970s and early 1980s. After three years, Lisbon Story has finally been picked up for distribution by Fox Lorber and recently enjoyed its U.S. theatrical premiere in New York City. The film is so low-key that in an arid summer of things that go pop, bang, rumble and woosh, it's absolutely refreshing on its own terms.

Wenders regular Rudiger Vogler plays Philip Winter, seen in the first reel driving across Europe to help salvage a film that his director friend Friedrich has been shooting in Lisbon with an old hand-cranked silent film camera. On his arrival at Friedrich's house, Philip finds not the director but instead a passle of children carrying video cameras everywhere they go. He also stumbles across a recording session by Portuguese group Madredeus (playing themselves), who are also contributing to the unfinished film. Philip spends much of his time hunched over a Movieola looking at Friedrich's raw footage and then hitting the streets to record ambient sound on location. Back at the house, he sleeps in Friedrich's bed and reads animatedly to himself from the director's library of books (notably poetry by Lisbon native Fernando Pessoa).

It's sort of a sequel to Wenders' 1983 The State of Things (which starred Bauchau as a director named Friedrich who traveled to Los Angeles to hunt down his producer), but it shares thematic elements with 1991's Until the End of the World (in which Vogler portrayed a private investigator also named Philip Winter). Like The State of Things, Lisbon Story is a personal examination of the filmmaking process. And like Until the End of the World, it's an affirmation of the power of the film image (equated, I believe, with imagination, or "dreams") and a refutation of the seductive idea that video images -- the ultimate "verite," perhaps -- can somehow show us truth. When Winter catches up with Friedrich, he finds that his director friend has lost the faith, discarding his movie camera in favor of a fleet of video cameras that record candid pictures of the city at nominal cost, and that can therefore be deployed at random to capture a "pure" image, unspoiled from being looked upon by human eyes. It then falls on Winter to mount an amiable defense of the act of filmmaking itself, lest Friedrich be forever lost to the world of cinema.

Wenders' wide-eyed fascination with locations continues -- Lisbon Story is a mesmerizing portrait of the Portuguese capital, just as Wings of Desire memorialized a divided Berlin, or Paris, Texas showed us the American west through a European's eyes. There's something hypnotic about Wenders' directorial style, and especially his way with imagery. No matter how trite his dialogue, or how strained his situations, it's enough to simply gaze upon a Wenders film, and I can gaze over and over again.

The script, however, could have used some work. Wenders had the help of a poet, Peter Handke, when crafting his still-gorgeous Wings of Desire. (The less said about purported non-sequel Faraway, So Close, the better.) Australian novelist Peter Carey was on-hand to help make something resembling a narrative out of the sprawling and problematic Until the End of the World. But on Lisbon Story, Wenders is the sole credited screenwriter, and it seems that his dialogue suffers accordingly. For example, when Philip takes a house key from the lovely singer from Madredeus, he asks her, "Is this the key to your heart, as well?" It's charming in part because it's clumsy, but it's unbecoming of a film that's mostly assured in its imagery and purpose. A certain heavy-handedness is on display in long scenes where Philip stretches out in bed, leafing through Friedrich's books and carrying on an imaginary conversation with him. Later, his characters embark on an all-too-literal discussion of the nature of moving images. All in all, Lisbon Story too often violates the cherished literary rule of "show, don't tell." Wenders could hardly be more sincere, or more likable, but the dime-store film theory is unnecessary in a movie that works best when it's least aware of itself.

Lisbon Story: Portugal Year Zero - Senses of Cinema  Carloss James Chamberlin, May 2003

 

Kent Williams - Isthmus

 

A Lisbon Story – Movie Review | In Love With Lisbon  Lily

 

Lisbon Story | DVD Review | Film @ The Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

DVD Savant Review: Lisbon Story - DVD Talk  Glenn Erickson

 

Discussion Questions: Lisbon Story  Architecture and Film, Fall 2011

 

Review for Lisbon Story (1994) - IMDb  Dennis Schwartz

 

Devon & Cornwall Film [Tom Leins]

 

Lisbon Story Movie | TVGuide.com

 

Lisbon Story | Variety  David Rooney

 

Lisbon Story - Time Out  Geoff Andrew

 

Boston Phoenix [Gerald Peary]

 

San Francisco Examiner [Barbara Shulgasser]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Edward Guthmann]

 

Movie Review - Lisbon Story - A City, a Sound and the ...  Janet Maslin, also seen here:  New York Times 

 

Lisbon Story (1994 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

THE END OF VIOLENCE

Germany  France  USA  (122 mi)  1997  ‘Scope

 

Chicago NewCityNet [Ray Pride]

With his exquisite sense of composition and color, of camera motion and musical accompaniment, Wenders' movies make plot and characterization seem almost beside the point. Unfortunately, in a movie as lushly imagined and seductively photographed as "The End of Violence," when story rears its shaggy head, most audiences will smirk or even laugh aloud. Bill Pullman plays a successful producer of violent movies whose personal life is falling apart; wife Andie MacDowell needs more attention than he can provide. A robbery turns into a carjacking, then a multiple murder, and he's thrust into a real-life intrigue. Unfortunately, it's not very convincing. A second strand of story, with Gabriel Byrne as a surveillance expert setting up a grid of video cameras around Los Angeles, provides the potential for many striking ideas about the entire idea of watching, of voyeurism, of the passive consumption of violent images. But not enough is made of this congruence -- or incongruence -- between the lives of the two characters. Wenders' film references are wide and catholic. The banks of monitors are reminiscent of his countryman Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse character, one of the great intellectual versions of the all-powerful boogieman in film history. And the observatory building is site of some of the most famous scenes from Wenders' one-time collaborator Nick Ray's "Rebel Without A Cause." Without this information, some of the choices of location and imagery may puzzle the average audience. Perhaps not. The pulse of the movie is lush and satisfying, but Nicholas Klein's ambitious script simply doesn't add up. "The End of Violence" opens with a bravura sequence that demonstrates the separation between the portrayal of violence and violence itself that's an utter knockout, but when Wenders attempts to engage larger ideas as his simplistic story progresses, he's far less successful.

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]

With Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon, Robert Altman's Short Cuts, and Wim Wenders' new The End Of Violence, the L.A.-As-Microcosm film has become something of a '90s mini-genre. In Violence, Bill Pullman plays a producer of action films whose encounter with real-life violence changes his life (not unlike Steve Martin's character in Grand Canyon, coincidentally). After escaping a kidnap attempt, due to his having received a top-secret document from surveillance expert Gabriel Byrne, Pullman is forced to go underground and receive spiritual rejuvenation in the company of some salt-of-the-earth Latin Americans. Though a cliché, it's unfortunate that this process, like several other major character changes, takes place off-screen, making an already unwieldy movie seem shallow to boot. That's a real problem, too, especially when a movie takes on as big a topic as violence in its many incarnations. Instead of coming off as profound—and anyone who has seen Wenders at his best knows he can be profound—The End Of Violence just seems naive. Which is not to say it's not interesting. It's a Wenders film, which means it's long, detailed, thoughtful, beautifully filmed, digressive and—less here than in some of his other work—smart. Unfortunately, even at its best it seems like an emotionally distant reworking of Wenders' familiar themes of technology, personal relationships, and the elaborate connections between apparently unrelated individuals. In other words, even at its best, it seems pretty close to pointless. And anyone who can figure out what's going on in the final confrontation between Pullman and wife Andie MacDowell—or why this is the second film this year to feature a mysterious cameo by 185-year-old director Sam Fuller—should get a free admission.

CNN Interactive  Paul Tatara

As I was entering the theater to watch Wim Wenders' new movie, "The End of Violence," two old ladies who had just seen it passed me on their way out and wished me good luck. When I asked them what they meant, one of them said, "I may be old, but I'm not slippin' that bad! It's just a jumble."

Well, I was warned. "The End of Violence" (starring Bill "Mr. Squinty" Pullman, Gabriel Byrne, and Andie MacDowell) is a tedious, confusing movie that deals with the dehumanizing effects of technological paranoia. The slow-paced density should come as no great surprise, however. Wenders has been periodically dishing this stuff out like a brooding lunchroom lady for the past decade. Even the casual viewer (who may or may not be slipping) should be able to call his bluff by now.

Some history is necessary to understand what would drive a person to make a movie like this. Wenders is an ambitious German director who had already made 14 films before he was discovered by the American pierced-bellybutton crowd upon the release of "Wings of Desire" back in 1988. Out of nowhere, a filmmaker who had previously been capable of making an obscure thought cinematically-evocative without sending up flares to announce his own brilliance was pronounced a genius. Sprawling spread-eagle in existentialism while shooting in black & white did the trick. "This must be art," the hipsters said as they puffed on their herbal cigarettes.

Suddenly, everybody was clamoring to toil with the Great Man. This lead to ever more nonsensical work, with "Faraway, So Close!" (the titular exclamation point is probably due to the cameos by Lou Reed and Mikhail Gorbachev) and "Until the End of the World," a movie that is very much in the same vein as "The End of Violence". Upon first glance, these latter movies seem highly challenging, but they're really just pseudo-science fiction noodlings that allow Wenders to film whatever he wants to film without having to worry about the chains of clarity that hold down more conventionally fathomable directors.

This rather selfish sense of freedom makes "The End of Violence" nearly unbearable. It's also dull-dull-dull. After a while I was reminded of that bizarre David Lynch vibe, the one where you feel like you're watching someone dance the twist while their batteries are running down to nothing. I'll tell you the plot, but I don't want to imply that the story is composed of interconnected events, at least not the kind that lead to something as quaint as an ending.

Pullman plays Mike Max, a rich Hollywood film producer with a luxurious seaside house and a slinky California-style wife (Andie MacDowell, who is surprisingly lifeless, but beautiful as usual.) Mike is infatuated with technology. For the first several minutes of the film, we see him communicating with people on the phone and via his video-ready computer, but never face-to-face. MacDowell even announces that she's leaving him over the telephone, while standing about thirty feet away from him inside their house. (Oh, I get it! People just can't connect because of all this darn technology!)

One day, Mike unexpectedly finds a highly confidential FBI memo in his e-mail. Later, he gets car jacked and ends up blowing the heads off of the two numskull would-be car thieves. You would think that these two events are unrelated, but maybe they are and maybe they aren't. Either way, Wenders sure isn't going to tell us. Quite surprisingly, Mike doesn't run to the cops. Instead, he disguises himself as a Mexican gardener and spends a couple of months working on some of the fancier lawns in the greater Los Angeles area.

Don't ask me.

Meanwhile, back at a top-secret government spy facility, Gabriel Byrne is using satellites and hidden video cameras to ogle the citizens of southern California as they shoot and rob each other. He thinks his satellite caught what happened between Mike and the car thieves, but he can't seem to get a clear enough image to determine the whole story. Just like the audience. Then, for the next hour or so, everyone says obscure things while staring into the middle-distance, there's some avant-garde poetry, and I ate a box of chocolate-covered raisins.

I wish I could say that interesting performances save this one, but that would be asking for way too much. Wenders seems to have somehow coaxed his actors into revealing their inner tree stumps. Everyone is practically inert, and the dialogue is delivered in a paralyzed monotone. All of the leads have done decent work in the past, so I'll chalk this one up to Wim's' whim. I don't know what conclusion I was supposed to draw from all of this, but the one I came up with is that somebody out there needs to make a good cowboy movie.

"The End of Violence" has some slight sex, quick nudity, and a little bit of profanity. I can make no guarantee as to what the audience members will be muttering.

Andrew O'Hehir - Salon.com

 

END OF VIOLENCE, THE | FilmJournal International  Richard Porton

 

End of Violence, The | Reelviews Movie Reviews  James Berardinelli

 

End of Violence, The  Arbogast On Film

 

Festivale Reel Life [Ali Kayn]

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk  Angus Wolfe Murray

 

DVD Savant Blu-ray Review: The End of Violence  Glenn Erickson

 

Blu-rayDefinition.com » The End of Violence Blu-ray Review  Brandoin A. DuHamel

 

Blu-ray.com [Jeffrey Kauffman]

 

F This Movie! [Patrick Bromley]  Blu-Ray

 

The End of Violence Blu-ray Review | High Def Digest  Matthew Hartman

 

DVD Talk [William Harrison]  Blu-Ray

 

The End of Violence | Blu-ray Review - Ioncinema  Nicholas Bell

 

The End Of Violence Review - Wim Wenders Blu-ray  Ryan Lewellen

 

Combustible Celluloid Review - The End of Violence (1997 ...  Jeffrey M. Anderson

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Nathan Rabin]   My Year of Flops, Case File #58

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Needcoffee.com - Movie Review

 

The End Of Violence Review | TVGuide.com

 

Review: 'The End of Violence' - Variety  Todd McCarthy

 

Edward Hopper and the cinema - The Guardian  From Nighthawks to the shadows of film noir, by Philip French, April 24, 2004

 

Washington Post [Stephen Hunter]

 

Sacramento Bee

 

San Francisco Examiner [Walter Addiego]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Peter Stack]

 

The End Of Violence Movie Review (1997) | Roger Ebert

 

New York Times  Janet Maslin, Also seen here:  Movie Review - The End of Violence - FILM REVIEW; Is It ...

 

DVDBeaver Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

The End of Violence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB

Germany  France  USA  Great Britain  Cuba  (104 mi)  1999
 
David Denby from The New Yorker (link lost): 

In 1996, the blues guitarist Ry Cooder gathered together some wonderful Cuban musicians in their seventies and eighties for a successful recording project. Two years later, Cooder went back to Cuba, this time accompanied by cameras and the German director Wim Wenders, seeking out the men and women of Cuban music on the streets and in the old dance halls of Havana. In this beautiful city that got left behind by the global economy, the bedraggled stone buildings and pre-revolutionary Chevys and Dodges have aged into pure soulfulness. So have the musicians, who still look great, play beautifully, and exude a stirring seriousness and dignity. The movie comes closer to pure happiness than anything else in the theatres at the moment, and it has an intriguing and moving subtext: the Cubans' buried but irrepressible love of things American. 

The Onion A.V. Club [Joshua Klein]

Caught in the middle of a pissing contest between Castro and America, the Cuban people have long suffered through a besieged economy that has transformed a once-vibrant country into just another variant on the Caribbean slum-paradise. Sadly, when the U.S. cut off contact with Cuba, Cuba's vast cultural riches were lost along with the many benefits of America's diplomatic ties. But as Wim Wenders' new documentary Buena Vista Social Club proves, just because we don't know what's going on in Cuba, that doesn't mean there's nothing going on. In 1996, guitarist Ry Cooder went down to Havana in search of some lost Son players. What he found were the various musicians captured on the Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club album, a select group of gray-haired performers forgotten after Cuba's Communist revolution. That album was an eye-opening celebration of Cuban music, a powerful affirmation of the country's heritage and traditionalism. The film serves a similar purpose: The performance scenes are spirited enough to remind viewers that music is far more universal and long-lasting than politics. Here, Cooder and the cast of Cuban musicians are collected once again in a recording studio with ninetysomething singer Ibrahim Ferrer to record a new album. With Wenders' digital camera always running, the living legends ruminate on a life of music that's at last validated by a final performance at Carnegie Hall. Wenders' colorful documentary rarely does more than simply document, though politics can be inferred: Seeing these old singers and instrumentalists smoking cigars and cavorting about like teenagers shows how culture can supercede even the most draconian trade policies.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Buena Vista Social Club (1998)  Peter Curran from Sight and Sound, October 1999

A documentary featuring the 'lost' Cuban musicians who were brought together by guitarist Ry Cooder to record the million-selling album Buena Vista Social Club. The 90-year-old musician Compay Segundo revisits a Havana neighbourhood looking for the eponymous club. Cooder explains his passion for this music. At a studio, the band records their next album, a showcase for singer Ibrahim Ferrer. Each of the main players - singers Ferrer and Omara Portuondo, pianist Rubén González, Segundo and others - recount their lives and personal philosophies. This is intercut with concert footage shot in Amsterdam and the studio sessions from Ferrer's solo album. The band travels to New York where the impressions of those who have never been outside Cuba are mixed with songs from their climactic performance at Carnegie Hall.

Review

Making the film of an album that was perhaps the last, eloquent atmospheric word on the spirit of Cuba, director Wim Wenders finds himself in the middle of the dancefloor, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. Despite his felicity as the director of such documentaries as Notebook on Cities and Clothes and Tokyo-Ga, here Wenders elbows his way into the extraordinary musical performances with cutaways to interviews, exteriors and queasy steadicam shots. There are moments when the music is so badly out of synch with the pictures that it might be two different performances stuck together. At other times, with its numerous voiceovers from the Buena Vista Social Club artists describing their lives, the film seems to be revising Wenders' superb motif from Wings of Desire in which the soundtrack gave us access to solitary characters' thoughts. The more extrovert members of the band sound wise and engaging; the quieter ones like they're giving a statement to the police.

Despite the clumsy execution, the film is a valid celebration of musical sophistication and ageless optimism. This is no slap-down for the running dogs of Yankee-imperialism; there's a Cocoon-like aura about all the participants – their musical gift has thrown up a force field against cynicism during hard times. The visual evidence of Cuba's decline is beautifully caught with overexposed film to create a sunbleached effect that goes with the now anaemic Cadillacs and Buicks that were once part of the sumptuous pre-revolutionary Cuban experience of the 50s.

The musicians are rightly the stars of the film. The singer Ibrahim Ferrer was reduced to shining shoes before being rediscovered and offers rum and biscuits to a small deity in his home, thankful that Cuba's lack of consumerism has protected the human spirit. The elegant 80-year-old pianist Rubén González successfully eludes documentary inquisition by affecting a Ralph Richardson-like air of bemusement. By contrast, the incorrigible Compay Segundo – a combination of Dean Martin and Sid James – brandishes his cigar as he assures us that years of toil in the tobacco fields have had little effect on his sexual potency. The one woman featured is wreathed in old-school glamour: Omara Portuondo wafts through her childhood streets singing to curious bystanders. As she nears the end of the road, you expect her to cry, "I'm ready for my close-up now, Mr DeMille!" On stage she delivers words loaded with raw experience and you feel guilty for thinking her a sentimental old diva.

The concert sections are the most expansive and entertaining parts of the movie. Scorsese's The Last Waltz (1978) apart, few music films ever transmit the immediacy and emotional thrill of live performance. This one does. The musical dynamic fluctuates between strutting, sensual urgency and delicate pathos, and throughout the band smile easily at each other as if they have no real control over this extraordinary rush of dexterity and power. This transcendence is what their musical lives have been about. The performers are physically divided into two tiers. Cooder, dressed in black, positions himself towards the back of the stage, leaving the frontline and the spotlight to the Cubans. Yet because the director repeatedly cuts to him, in his discreet gloom he begins to resemble a brooding gorilla whose continuing approval of the music going on in front of him must be constantly monitored.

When the band prepares for their final concert at Carnegie Hall, there is an opportunity for most of these aged players to see New York for the first time. It's a moving moment when the anti-consumerist Ferrer presses himself against a wall amid the high-rise, traffic-clogged intestine of American capitalism, exclaiming, "It's so beautiful!" Two band members fail to recognise a bust of JFK in a novelty-shop window. The film-maker's lingering reliance on observing these innocents abroad raises an impatience for the final rush of concert footage. The band suddenly look their age as they strike up amid the vastness of Carnegie Hall and are visibly affected by this unexpected gift of noisy acclaim near the end of their lives. The playing is as exuberant as ever and the indestructible tautness of their technique leaves you in awe of the superannuated cool of the Buena Vista Social Club, reaching the summit of their career after only half a century of hard climbing. 

Buena Vista Social Club - Deep Focus  Bryant Frazer

In the opening scenes of the new documentary Buena Vista Social Club, 90-year-old guitarist Compay Segundo is walking the streets of Havana, quizzing elderly residents about the former location of the titular nightspot. Nobody seems to remember exactly where the club was built, although it was the center of a swirling and swinging Cuban jazz scene in the 1940s and 1950s.

Indeed, Cuba seems to have suffered a bout of national amnesia where that musical tradition is concerned -- when American guitarist Ry Cooder showed up in Havana in 1996 to gather together a group of old-style musicians for a new recording of standards from that era, his work as a sort of cultural anthropologist was cut out for him. Unaware of whether these songsters were living or dead, Cooder identified some of the finest of those old songs, and then sought out their makers on the streets of Havana.

The eventual result of Cooder's efforts was an album that bore his name but highlighted the musicianship of The Buena Vista Social Club, a largely forgotten group of Afro-Cuban performers who found, sometimes to their own surprise, that they still had what it takes to fill a recording studio -- or a concert hall -- with a distinctly joyous noise. In a rare example of cosmic justice finally being served, Cooder actually managed to bring these careers back to life before the performers were too ill or too dead to enjoy the revival. The resulting album, driven by intoxicating rhythms and a sly, relentless sensuality, sold a million copies worldwide, won a Grammy, and eventually put those players on stage together at historic concerts in Amsterdam and at Carnegie Hall.

When Cooder returned to Havana last year to record a solo album by vocalist Ibraham Ferrer, filmmaker and longtime pal Wim Wenders went with him, and brought a camera crew. (Cooder scored Paris, Texas and The End of Violence for Wenders.) The result is an understated yet celebratory documentary that showcases these musicians as individuals, but celebrates their performance as a group. When we see a young fan dance down the aisles at the end of one performance, handing off a Cuban flag that the band holds aloft, it's clear that their pride is inclusive, rather than purely nationalist. Seldom could a better case be made for the ability of music to cross borders of politics and prejudice.

The sensibility of Buena Vista Social Club is that of film itself seeking out the source of beauty in this world. In the most effective moments, Wenders' camera literally floats through rooms (much of the film was shot with a Steadicam) in slow, graceful arcs, taking in the architecture and moving inquisitively toward the source of music, a bit like a cat that has just smelled something delicious. Reproduced with the natural acoustics of this grand Spanish architecture, the sound is enveloping and inviting. When Wenders cuts freely to footage of the musicians on stage, the effect is magnificent.

(Unfortunately, despite the presence of ace cinematographers Robbie Mueller and Lisa Rinzler behind the camera, Buena Vista Social Club is somewhat limited by its video source material, which leads to fuzzy edges and blasted-out exteriors on the big screen. This film should really sing in the home environment, especially with its outstanding six-channel sound mix cranked to an appropriate volume.)

Wenders, an insistent sensualist and music buff, is well within his element here. The best things in his last good feature, Lisbon Story, were the impulses of a documentarian -- lovely cinematography, sensitive use of location, and the extensive footage of Portuguese band Madredeus -- that revealed the city itself, rather than his dialogue-heavy struggle with undergraduate ideas about the nature of cinema. The best film he will ever make, Wings of Desire, enjoyed a similarly strong sense of place, as ideas about the duality of the human spirit dovetailed with the geography of a city whose soul was split in two.

Perhaps building on those ideas, Wenders illustrates the seeming duality between the conditions in economically depressed Cuba and the grace and charm of these musicians. But the film avoids overt social commentary, even glossing over the question of how difficult it must have been to secure permission for these artists to perform in the United States. The film's points are made more efficiently than that, never straying far from the music itself.

The arthritic, outrageously talented keyboardist Rubén González, we're told, hasn't owned a piano in 10 years. Ferrer says he actually gave up singing and made his living shining shoes before Cooder came calling. Later, we watch Ferrer wander the streets of New York, his eyes agape as he wonders at the dubious marvels of a midtown Manhattan that he never guessed he'd visit. Even as he regrets the absence of his family, he says he's grateful that at least he can see these things and take those memories back home.

The striking thing here is the capacity of the human soul for spontaneous beauty, even in the face of a fundamental disparity of fortunes. In fact, the inarguable life-affirming power of these performances can shame a viewer into reevaluating his own notion of good fortune and happiness. By the time Wenders tries to verbalize this theme -- a shot of Cuban graffito is inserted near the end of the film, subtitled "We believe in dreams" -- the point could hardly be more clear.

World Socialist Web Site  Helen Halyard and Fred Mazelis

 

An exchange on the Wim Wenders film Buena Vista Social ...  letter from reader, and a response, World Socialist Web Site

 

Buena Vista Social Club - Senses of Cinema  Inge Fossen, October 2014

 

Buena Vista Social Club | PopMatters  Josh Jackson

 

Bay of Gigs - New York Magazine  Peter Rainer

 

seanax.com [Sean Axmaker]

 

BeyondHollywood.com  Nix

 

The Village Voice [Richard Gehr]

 

Buena Vista Social Club Review | CultureVulture  Arthur Lazere

 

Plume-Noire.com Review  Anji Milanovic

 

Buena Vista Social Club - Nitrate Online Review  Eddie Cockrell

 

Cuba-Junky | Buena Vista Social Club

 

DVDTalk.com - 2010 reissue [Jamie S. Rich]

 

DVD Verdict [Victor Valdivia]

 

Dale Dobson - digitallyOBSESSED!

 

DVD Verdict  David Rogers

 

iofilm.co.uk

 

Review of Buena VIsta SOcial Club

 

Buena Vista Social Club | Rolling Stone

 

Haro Online

 

Jeff Stark - Salon

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Beth Gilligan]

 

Slant Magazine [Ed Gonzalez]

 

Kamera.co.uk (Iain Tibbles)

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk  Angus Wolfe Murray

 

Chris Dashiell at CineScene

 

Ry Cooder interviewed by Sam Adams  Philadelphia City Paper, June 7, 1999

 

Buena Vista Social Club Review | TVGuide.com

 

Buena Vista Social Club | Variety  Eddie Cockrell

 

Buena Vista Social Club - Time Out  Tony Rayns

 

'Buena Vista Social Club' (G) - Washington Post  Desson Howe

 

Memphis Flyer [Hadley Hury]

 

Faraway, So Close! | City Pages  Teri Sutton

 

Austin Chronicle [Russell Smith]

 

San Francisco Examiner [Philip Elwood]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Peter Stack]

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]

 

New York Times  Stephen Holden, also seen here:  Movie Review - Buena Vista Social Club - FILM REVIEW; A ...

 

Buena Vista Social Club - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Buena Vista Social Club (film) - Wikipedia, the free ...

 

THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL

Germany   Great Britain  USA  (122 mi)  1999  ‘Scope

 

Exclaim! [Daniel T. Fischer]

Typically a film containing a wide array of eccentric characters with quirky idiosyncrasies elicits one of two responses - humour or annoyance. "The Million Dollar Hotel" prefers the latter. A story about the overwhelming burden of unconditional love was co-written by U2's Bono, inspired by the rooftop location of the band's "Where The Streets Have No Name" music video. It is no surprise that he appears throughout the soundtrack and even has a quick cameo.

The title refers to the residence of several outlandish misfits, the only place where they can find themselves accepted among peers. Jeremy Davies ("Saving Private Ryan") stars as Tom Tom, a childlike simpleton with an obsession for Eloise (renaissance woman Milla Jovovich). The catalyst to their relationship is the investigation of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the demise of ex-tenant Izzy, briefly played by Tim Roth. Mel Gibson is detective Skinner, the FBI agent who is handling the case with questionable procedures, even so far as using the lovesick couple's affections to get results.

Wim Wenders presents Los Angeles with a bleak and dismal atmosphere, giving it a beautiful aesthetic outside the glamour typically associated with the city. No matter how good this film looks it cannot deter from the slow pace, irritating performances from half the cast and a mystery that seems to downplay its own importance. Although it must be said that it does a fair job of exploring the concepts of friendship and betrayal, it certainly is not for everyone. This movie is for those who enjoy being the designated driver at a keg party, spending an excruciating amount of time watching others acting obnoxious with utter sobriety.

Spiegel Online English Review  Von Cristina Moles Kaupp, translated by David Hudson

The world of the high and mighty thrusts its glittering towers into a February morning sky over LA. Bland facades with few stories to tell other than those of luck and money. In a breathless panoramic swoop, the camera sinks and snags on the skeletal construction of a giant neon sign: "The Million Dollar Hotel". Below it, a slight figure lost in himself, Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies). A moment to gather his thoughts, and then, he's off and running to the longest leap of his short life. A smile - a wave - the realization: "life is perfect" - last looks in familiar windows. Over and out, smashed.

But the memories of the last 14 days return in an offscreen voice to tell what's happened at this strange place, the once noble hotel that has deteriorated to a way station at the end of the American Dream. A last resort for junkies, criminals, the dispossessed, the eternal losers. One of them - Izzy - has fallen from the roof. Nothing unusual in this setting - if his father weren't a Jewish media mogul. "Jews don't kill themselves," he says, and so, enter FBI agent Skinner (Mel Gibson). Hard as steel, with a backbone riddled with scars.

His hunt for the perpetrator is one strand in the story: Was it the fifth member of the Beatles, Dixie (Peter Stormare), more brilliant than the others in the band? Or the art thief and painter Geronimo (Jimmy Smits), the incarnation of the legendary Indian? Maybe it was the starlet with the ravaged face, Vivienne (Amanda Plummer), who had hoped to become the bride of the deceased, or the girl with the innocent look, Eloise (Milla Jovovich), unapproachable, beautiful, a wisp of a woman? She's nothing, she says, not even a fiction, and what's more, she's nuts, says so right here in black on white. Nothing can get to her and yet that's precisely what Tom Tom has in mind. He's a bit slow and odd that way anyway. He loves her and wants to reach deep inside her, wants her to take note of him, wants to give in with her to a different set of values. Vulnerable, shy and nevertheless hungry - their childish, mixed up approach to each other, the understanding slowly budding between them, this is the second coup Wenders pulls off with bravado. Peculiarly captivating in impressively beautiful imagery enveloped in the melancholic sounds of Bono, Eno and Lanois. Wenders has planted a search for truths and genuine feeling within his thriller, love story and freak show. An investigation into reality in the realm of those who stare day in and day out into fragments of truth so as not to lose their true selves.

Along the way, Wenders dwells so long on beautiful moments, his story frays. Minutes congeal, what was once in the foreground fades, and the grand scene unfolds: As the rapid-fire lights of the waking city overtake Tom Tom's courageous leap, the simultaneity of various speeds - until he plunges into the infinite blue.

BFI | Sight & Sound | The Million Dollar Hotel (1999)  Richard Falcon from Sight and Sound, May 2000

Downtown Los Angeles, 2001. Tom Tom, a childlike young man, jumps to his death from the roof of the Million Dollar Hotel. As he falls, he narrates the events of the previous 14 days, beginning with the death of fellow hotel resident Izzy Goldkiss who plunged from the same spot. Izzy was the son of media-czar Stanley Goldkiss. FBI agent Skinner investigates Izzy's death. Using Tom Tom as his guide, Skinner interviews the hotel's eccentric residents, including Izzy's artist roommate Geronimo, self-proclaimed "Fifth Beatle" Dixie, the drunk Shorty and addict Vivien. Tom Tom speaks to the withdrawn Eloise for the first time. Skinner plants bugs in each of the rooms. The residents hold a meeting where Geronimo resolves to sell off his "tar paintings" as Izzy's work.

Skinner persuades Eloise to go to Tom Tom's room to elicit information. She falls chastely in love with Tom Tom. Skinner arrests Geronimo for Izzy's murder, so Shorty and the others persuade Tom Tom to confess to the murder on television. At the exhibition it emerges Izzy was an art thief: the tar on the canvasses covers paintings from downtown galleries. Tom Tom escapes arrest. He confesses to Eloise he allowed the suicidal Izzy to fall from the roof after Izzy had told him he had raped Eloise to prove "she was nothing". Tom Tom jumps to his death. Afterwards, his spirit observes Skinner and Eloise consoling each other where he hit the ground.

Review

Ever since his 1987 film Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders has repeatedly claimed to be a storyteller rather than an "image-maker". This curious tension (always central to his work) makes its presence felt during the impressive opening of The Million Dollar Hotel. A digitally enhanced helicopter-mounted camera floats us angelically across the LA skyline, allowing us to relish the marriage of the images with the U2 ballad 'The First Time'. This opening is Wenders' calling card, blending a superb rock soundtrack, lovingly observed Americana, a prodigious visual sense and an openness to the tools of the digital age. But as Tom Tom, Wenders' latest holy innocent protagonist, leaps over the hotel's parapet and Wenders catches him up in the film's death-defying embrace (like Otto Sander's angel catching the falling child in Faraway, So Close), the film crashes to earth without protective armour.

This is a long-cherished project of Wenders', which has gone through many revisions (at one point it was going to be a science-fiction film, presumably along the lines of Wenders' Until the End of the World). U2's Bono conceived of a film based around the hotel on whose roof the band shot the video for 'Where the Streets Have No Name'. In the end, it's business as usual for Wenders' remaining fans, bridging moments of film-making brilliance with passages of dismaying banality and misjudged humour. You would think scriptwriter Nicholas Klein (Wenders' collaborator on The End of Violence) had just rediscovered R. D. Laing, since the 'oddball' characters populating the hotel all owe their adopted identities to their creative response to an insane world. "If enough people believe in the same thing, that's reality... the reality game," says "Fifth Beatle" Dixie. It's a view echoed by the media-czar Goldkiss, who tells FBI agent Skinner, "Truth is whatever most people want to buy - this is Hollywood, an ounce of shit and they make a shit soufflé."

Jimmy Smits, as a Mexican pretending to be Native American, and Bud Cort, underused but still a treat as a drunken opportunist in a loose toupee, do their considerable best with roles driven more by abstractions than a concern with character (a perennial Wenders problem). Each brings memories of 70s films: Cort of his role in Harold and Maude (1971), while Geronimo invokes Will Sampson in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). The concern with abstraction continues when Tom Tom begins courting the wan and ethereal Eloise who tells him she is a "fictional character". All this protests its own postmodernism too much, especially when none of the major characters is developed enough to sustain even simple empathy. Jeremy Davies and Milla Jovovich grate in their roles, and there's a deliberate uncertainty about whether we're meant to take her complete regression and his near autism as willed behaviour or their natural state. Both possibilities, of course, aggravate in different ways.

Tom Tom's ambivalent hero-worship of special agent Skinner ("You could see he was special, even before he told you," he says) does, however, provide some effective comic moments, notably a fast-motion sequence in which Tom Tom pogos around the room to a Spanish cover version of 'Anarchy in the UK'. In turn, Mel Gibson is remarkable as Skinner, both the pre-Oedipal Tom Tom's surrogate father figure and, in his status as an "ex-Freak", a possible comic allegory for a corseted, restricted but brutally efficient mainstream Hollywood.

But if The Million Dollar Hotel means anything for Wenders' oeuvre - and despite the heavily signalled presence of the director's well-established themes the movie doesn't necessarily have to lend itself to auteurist readings - it suggests his attempt to rebrand himself as a 'US independent' film-maker, perhaps the "father of the US independents" as he described himself to a German interviewer. This film proves a 'Wenders' movie' still has the power to astonish, but compared with such recent indie-spirited hits as American Beauty and Being John Malkovich it works far too hard for its quirkiness.

World Socialist Web Site  Stefan Steinbergh

 

“The Million Dollar Hotel” - Salon.com  Charles Taylor

 

The Village Voice [Michael Atkinson]

 

The Million Dollar Hotel  Richard Scheib from Moria

 

THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL - Greg King's Film Reviews

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

 

DVD REVIEW: Million Dollar Hotel - Special Edition

 

The Million Dollar Hotel (2000) - Combustible Celluloid  Jeffrey M. Anderson

 

MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL, THE | FilmJournal International  Ed Kelleher

 

Sonic Cinema [Brian Skutle]

 

MovieFreak.Com - The Million Dollar Hotel Review  Dennis Stephen L.

 

saturday night screening [playingthedevil]

 

Haro Online

 

Past Picks Online [Jimmy Gillman]

 

Movie Vault [Arturo Garcia Lasca]

 

Smoke and Mirrors - New York Magazine  Peter Rainer

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk  Angus Wolfe Murray

 

We are all f***d up! [Jerry Saravia]

 

Rolling Stone [Peter Travers]

 

Million Dollar Hotel Script - Drew's Script-O-Rama  entire script

 

INTERVIEW: Wim Wenders Defends "Million Dollar Hotel ...  Anthony Kaufman interview with the director from IndieWIRE, February 7, 2001

 

The Million Dollar Hotel Review | TVGuide.com

 

The Million Dollar Hotel | Variety  David Stratton

 

The Million Dollar Hotel - Time Out

 

The Million Dollar Hotel | Reviews | guardian.co.uk Film  Andrew Pulver

 

The Irish Times (Michael Dwyer)

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Bob Graham]

 

Wenders Pays a Quirky Visit to 'Million Dollar Hotel' - latimes  Kevin Thomas

 

New York Times  Elvis Mitchell, also seen here:  Movie Review - The Million Dollar Hotel - FILM REVIEW; A Mel

 

The Million Dollar Hotel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The Million Dollar Hotel (soundtrack) - Wikipedia, the free ...

 

LAND OF PLENTY

Germany  USA  Canada  (123 mi)  2004

 

Land of Plenty  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

My enjoyment level was actually well below that probably indicated by a 4, but it did have a few strengths, particularly Michelle Williams' performance. Preachy, simplistic and graceless, Wenders' latest is anything but a return to form, and I strongly suspect its co-producer, IFC, will quietly send it right to the cable channel. Besides its unfunny "gentle humor," wherein the John Diehl character's goofy, paranoia-lite Arab stalking makes him a lovable Archie Bunker for the post-9/11 era, the film's most obvious failing is its conclusion. Rapprochement comes at the expense of depth or even the staging of any actual disagreement, with family values and "why do they hate us" garment-rending filling in for leftist analysis. And so, in the end, Land of Plenty (which I saw, incidentally, shortly after learning that Bush leads Kerry in the polls by a whopping, probably insurmountable margin) just leaves me deflated and sad. It's kind of a badge of the impotence of the Left, a gaping hole instead of the incisive, humanistic protest art we need right now. As I told Victor Morton privately later that evening, the Right keeps winning because they've tapped into some primal myths, and they consistently tell a better story. The best that Wenders can muster ("Arabs and militia-nutters are people too!") just won't cut it.

Raging Bull [Mike Lorefice]  also seen here:  Land of Plenty - Wim Wenders Film Movie Review

A sad disillusioned tragicomedy of angst and alienation in post 9/11 America directed in a laid back manner that accepts the citizens while bemoaning the sad state of affairs and almost sentimentally seeking a return to innocence. Lana (Michelle Williams), a loving pacifist associating with the lowly and unwanted of all races and creeds like her savior Jesus Christ, returns from the West Bank to deliver the letter her just deceased mother wrote to her brother Paul, who has shut everyone out. To this outsider missionary whose new purpose is her own country’s homeless, Los Angeles looks no less slummy than the Middle East or Africa. Like Wim Wenders, she tries to love the Land of Plenty amidst the inexplicable turmoil, poverty, and hatred.

Her uncle Paul (John Diehl) is a blindly raging fear-riddled patriot. Picking the neverending conflict up in Vietnam, his war continues because while the enemy has technically changed, it remains little more than evil incarnate. Confused and bewildered by his country’s increasing lack of identity, not to mention exposure to too many chemicals designed to instead destroy that threat to capitalist maximization known as foliage, the retraumatized vet transforms himself into a lone operative cruising the California wasteland to save the clueless humanoids from terrorist sleeper cells. Paranoia rendering every Muslim a terrorist, this wannabe superhero spends day and night in his own private war zone, secretly probing the actions of even Muslims who have been beleaguered to the point they’re no longer willing to associate themselves with a country.

It’s tempting to see Paul as an amalgamation of crazy politicians who let the country go to seed while squandering all the resources tormenting those who America could by and large coexist with for the benefit of their funders in the “defense” and rebuilding industries. Lana would then be the religious type they leave the fate of the country to: even in the best case scenario they lack the resources to make a difference in the lives of even a percentage of the local needy. But Wenders isn’t after larger political points, he’s simply crafting a small family drama, not surprisingly a bit of a road movie, where a citizen of the world tries to show a product of the endless wars a way out of his own private hell.

When Paul and Lana witness a Muslim is killed in a drive by, they launch their own inquiries. Though no method is foolproof, the point is Lana discovers his hospitable brother isn’t a terrorist without even trying.

Diehl’s portrayal is just about perfect because he’s completely serious about the importance and urgency of everything he does, and totally oblivious to how hilariously deluded he comes off. He matches Nick Nolte for assured manic conviction, with Williams perfectly cast as a calming influence. Unfortunately, Wenders typically decides to bath the film in obnoxious American pop music. At times it’s ironic enough to yield a corny video game superhero tone that’s only suitable only if your vision of Paul is an impotent screwball it's impossible not to laugh at.

Hastily shot in digital grain, Land of Plenty won’t go down as Wim Wenders greatest directorial effort, but it’s important for at least having the guts to grapple reasonably with subjects everyone else would either rather avoid or can’t get funding to tackle.

Land Of Plenty | Reviews | Screen - Screen International  Lee Marshall

Wim Wenders' Land Of Plenty is a post 9/11 parable that is half political pamphlet, half yet another exploration of the director's favourite theme – the stranger in a strange land. But although it is a more controlled exercise than the mess that was The Million Dollar Hotel, it does nothing to contradict those who believe that Wenders best work of the past decade has been in the field of the music documentary, with Buena Vista Social Club (1998) and The Soul Of A Man (2003).

Ironically, the best thing about his latest film is its bedsit-rock soundtrack, and certain dialogue-less road movie breaks that take us back to the glory days of The American Friend or The State Of Things. Strong performances by John Diehl and Michelle Williams (Prozac Nation, United States Of Leland) sweeten the pill, but only Williams (who is starring in Ang Lee's upcoming cowboy epic, Brokeback Mountain) can move more than half a buck at the box office.

The film's liberal message and exposure of the perils of "homeland security" may strike chords in this US election year, but Land Of Plenty is likely to play best in traditional European urban markets (Ocean Films in France and Mikado in Italy boarded at an early stage), among those dedicated, no-longer-young cinephiles who are still prepared to give Wenders a sporting chance. It played at Toronto after competing in Venice.

A script that feels like it is fresh from some film school brainstorming session hinges on the collision of two characters: Lana, a young American-born woman who grew up in Africa and Palestine with her missionary parents; and her unclePaul, a liberal-hating Vietnam vet (damaged, of course, by the chemical weapons and the trauma), who spends his days tailing suspicious Arabs in hisfully-equipped surveillance van.

Anxious to see the homeland she never really knew, Lana returns to Los Angeles, butcomes face to face with the underbelly of the American dream in the inner-city mission for the homeless that she helps out in. As the pastor who looks after her says, in one of the film's many message-laden lines, "the last thing they talk about in the West Wing is poverty in America".

In charting the slow unravelling of Paul's paranoid fantasies about the Arab threat, Wenders is planting a flag for tolerance; but with its almost pleading tone, Land Of Plenty is preaching to the converted at least as much as Fahrenheit 9/11; and it does so with far less energy and verve. Paul's miltaristic delusions generate moments of comedy; but these sit precariously on the film's earnest, heart-on-sleeve foundations. Innocent, tender but determined, Lana is a calming foil; and Williams is nothing if not watchable.

But in the end, it's only when the action moves out of LA into the Californian desert that Wenders hits his lyrical stride, capturing, with the help of cinematographer Franz Lustig, the savage, burnt out beauty of the landscape, which is hardly touched by fragile and irrelevant human encampments like the borax-mining town of Trona.This late spurt is not nearly enough, though, to lift Land Of Plenty onto the arthouse classics shelf.

Beyond the Multiplex - Salon.com  Andrw O’Hehir

 

Review: Land of Plenty (2004) - [Jon Fortgang: journalist ...  Jon Fortgang

 

The Village Voice [Michael Atkinson]

 

PP&P: Land of Plenty - Artvoice  M. Faust

 

Film Intuition   Jen Johans

 

A Nutshell Review  Stefan S.

 

LAND OF PLENTY | FilmJournal International  Eric Monder

 

* OFFOFFOFF film review LAND OF PLENTY movie by Wim ...  Joshua Tanzer

 

Land of Plenty | DVD Review | Film @ The Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

Home Theater Info DVD Review   Doug MacLean

 

DVDTalk [Jamie S. Rich]

 

DVD: Land of Plenty DVD Review - CanMag  Josh Lies

 

Future Movies - DVD Review [Mike Barnard]

 

Reviews Land of Plenty Wim Wenders - Exclaim!  Travis Mackenzie Hoover

 

The Restless Critic: Land of Plenty: Odd, absorbing and little ...  Rustin Thompson

 

Land of Plenty | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Ed Gonzalez

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Land of Plenty | movie review 2005-06-30 | HK Magazine  Scott Murphy

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

2004 TIFF Update #8 - Reviews by David Nusair

 

Land Of Plenty Review | TVGuide.com

 

Review: 'Land of Plenty' - Variety  Leslie Felperin

 

A look back with Wim Wenders | Film | The Guardian  Saundra Satterlee, March 11, 2008

 

The Japan Times [Kaori Shoji]

 

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]

 

The Seattle Times: Movies: "Land of Plenty": Think of it as a ...  Jeff Shannon

 

Getting left behind in 'Land of Plenty' - latimes  Kevin Thomas

 

Land of Plenty - Review - Movies - New York Times  A.O. Scott

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

Land of Plenty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

DON’T COME KNOCKING

Germany  France  USA  (122 mi)  2005  ‘Scope

 

Slant Magazine [Dan Callahan]

Don’t Come Knocking marks the second collaboration between Sam Shepard and Wim Wenders. More than 20 years ago, they made a near-great film Paris, Texas, and a lot of that movie's quality came from the central performance of Harry Dean Stanton. In Don't Come Knocking, Shepard plays the lead himself. He's still a very handsome, striking man, but emotionally he's blocked. That's what the story of the film is really about, but Shepard can't play repression as an actor—he's unable to make his character's plight moving or convincing.

Shepard's Howard Spence is supposed to be a hard-living cowboy star on the skids, yet what movie star from the '70s onward ever made a career out of westerns? When Howard bolts the set of his latest film, he calls his mother (Eva Marie Saint), a woman he hasn't seen or spoken to in 30 years, and she simply welcomes him back home without any fuss at all. After three decades, all she can manage is a "What was your trouble, son?" attitude. She also provides some handy plot exposition: he has a child he didn't know about. Saint doesn't seem to know how to play her role (who can blame her?). It's not meant to be a realistic film, but its succession of improbabilities feels lazy rather than intuitive.

Howard tracks down Doreen (Jessica Lange), a waitress who had his son. Lange grounds the movie in her first few scenes with a palpable sense of wariness and absentminded regret, and Shepard's performance improves when he's with her. But Lange can never resist a pyrotechnical display of emotion for its own sake. In her big scene with Howard, where she tells him off, Lange is so chaotic and over-the-top, laughing, howling, sneering, and weeping all at once, that Wenders keeps cutting away from her, as if he's embarrassed. The film, which had steadily improved with her first appearance, never recovers. As a director, Wenders tries hard to imbue this piece with mood and substance, and he enjoys shooting the lonely streets of Butte, Montana in nicely balanced widescreen compositions, but Shepard's screenplay defeats him.

This is just another male menopause movie, marred by unlikely dialogue and hokey theatrical symbolism. Shepard's Howard, the debauched movie star, worries that he isn't the man his father was, and has the suspicion that acting in front of a camera isn't manly—it isn't authentic, and it's left him without roots. Shepard's concerns are from a different age, and they weren't all that interesting 60 years ago. The other side of the story is dishonest: instead of stardom, drugs, and unlimited sex, all Howard really wants is a Home. This is the vagrant dream of a self-pitying drunk, a passing fancy, and not worthy of a film. As a writer, Shepard seems to have lost touch with his real talent. Though his themes are still present in his recent work, they seem half-hearted, drained of all energy. His preoccupations had a unique tension and coiled sexuality on stage, but on film all that's left is pretension and vague longings for hard, distant men and comforting, unreflective women.

Don't Come Knocking - Screen International  Allan Hunter at Cannes from Screendaily

Reunited for the first time in 20 years, Wim Wenders and Sam Shepard fail to rekindle the magic of their collaboration on Palme D’Or winner Paris, Texas. Don’t Come Knocking is a film of striking compositions and telling moments that never achieves the tender depths of emotion that distinguished its illustrious predecessor and made it such a high point in Wenders career. Stilted dialogue, awkward performances and some unconvincing plot details all work against the possibility of lightning striking twice. Even the music of T-Bone Burnett isn’t a match for Ry Cooder’s contributions to Paris, Texas.

This may be Wenders most marketable work in a number of years but universal critical support cannot be guaranteed and audience curiosity will only be able to carry it to limited returns.

There are interesting comparisons to be made with the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers in which another older man comes to realise that something has been missing from what should have been the most rewarding years of his life. Jarmusch approached the subject with wit and grace; Wenders and Shepard are more earnest and plodding in their attempts to illuminate the themes of absent fathers, lost years and blighted lives.

A star of the kind of westerns that everybody seemed to stop making 40 years ago, Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) walks off the set of Phantom Of The West and rides into the sunset. A surfeit of booze, women and hellraiser headlines have finally prompted a crisis. The search for some sense of himself or some value to his life begins with a rare visit to his mother Lulu (Eva Marie Saint) who informs him that he has a son he has never met.

Sensing that this could fill the void for him, he sets off to Butte, Indiana for a reunion with lost love Doreen (Jessica Lange) and a meeting with the son she bore him 30 years ago.

Don’t Come Knocking sounds promising enough on paper but Shepard’s flinty, care worn Spence never really engages our sympathies. His self-destructive behaviour and critical encounters don’t make us ache for the apparent emptiness in his soul.

The film itself is more an uneven series of moments than a smooth flowing piece. The best scenes are the ones between Spence and Lulu (beautifully played by veteran Eva Marie Saint) and Spencer and Doreen, with Jessica Lange on bravura form in a sequence when she unleashes the pent up frustrations of three decades of neglect.

Sarah Polley remains a marginal, underdeveloped presence as Sky, a young woman who also believes Spence is her father. Tim Roth makes several creepy appearances as the fastidious detective hired to escort Spence back to the movie set but Gabriel Mann badly overplays son Earl’s reaction to his arrival with an unsubtle display of fury and petulance that seems more appropriate to a character 10 years younger. It also seems highly unlikely that he has never heard of Spence given his tabloid notoriety and the fact that his mother’s diner is decorated with posters from his films.

The real shining star of Don’t Come Knocking is the cinematographer Franz Lustig who paints the American west in wonderfully vibrant colours and piercing light, capturing Butte in Edward Hopper visions of lonely hotel rooms and shadow-filled diners. If only the rest of the film could have matched his exceptional artistry then Don’t Come Knocking might have been something special.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Don't Come Knocking (2005)  Richard Falcon, June 2006

The US, the present. Film star Howard Spence, nearing 60 and still playing the lead in Westerns, escapes, on horseback, from the set of his latest film in Moab, Utah. Howard gives away his horse, and takes the train to Elko, Nevada, to see his mother for the first time in decades. She puts him up in a room full of his childhood keepsakes, and he gets drunk at a local casino. Howard is shocked to learn from his mother that more than 20 years previously a woman came looking for him; she was pregnant with his child, conceived in the town of Butte, Montana, when Howard was filming the movie that made him a star.

Howard sets off for Butte in search of the woman, a waitress called Doreen. In a Butte bar, he makes contact with Doreen, who leaves him alone to introduce himself to his grown son, Earl, a rockabilly singer who is performing on stage. Earl rejects Howard violently, and back at his apartment he throws his belongings out onto the street. Howard is shadowed by a gentle young woman called Sky, another illegitimate child of his, who carries her mother's ashes around in an urn. He is also pursued by Sutter, employed by the movie studio's insurers to find Howard. Sky gives Howard Earl's address and he spends a night waiting in the street for him. In the morning, he walks the streets of Butte with Doreen, who tells him his dreams of having a family will not be fulfilled and greets his belated marriage proposal with incredulity. Howard has one last meeting with Earl, which offers him some hope and succour, before Sutter returns to Moab.

Review

Wim Wenders' Don't Come Knocking can be seen as the third part of a loose American trilogy that also includes The End of Violence (1997) and The Million Dollar Hotel (1999). Neither of the first two films was a critical hit. If the early American reviews for Don't Come Knocking are anything to go by, the new film looks set to meet a similar fate. But Don't Come Knocking is never less than fascinating. It reunites Wenders with Sam Shepard more than 20 years after Paris, Texas (1984), and echoes this self-conscious return to the territory of former glories by having its protagonist, burnt-out movie star Howard Spence, return to the location of his breakthrough film in a quest for meaning, identity and kinship.

In Paris, Texas Shepard's hand in the screenplay, as chronicler of a specifically US loneliness, promised a stamp of authenticity to the work of a melancholic European film-maker awestruck by the landscape of John Ford's and John Sturges' movies. Don't Come Knocking turns on this same issue of authenticity. At its beginning, Howard, on horseback, absconds from an impossibly anachronistic Western called Phantom of the West. He visits his eightysomething mother (Eva Marie Saint) in Nevada. She asks him whether he is hiding out "just like Jesse James", which we later learn is the title of the movie he made 30 years earlier in Butte, the Montana town to which he goes in pursuit of the family he unknowingly started three decades before.

Shepard plays Howard as someone who is dangerously starting to believe his own Western outlaw legend (his life of tabloid-nourishing excess is documented in his mother's scrapbook). Having fled Phantom of the West, he smashes his mobile phone and ditches his credit cards. But, nearly 40 years on from Peter Fonda dumping his watch at the start of Easy Rider, he isn't really fooling anyone, least of all himself.

Howard's journey to Montana to see the son he didn't know he had, gives the character a vague purpose which confounds everyone he meets, including waitress Doreen, played with understated intimacy by Shepard's real-life partner Jessica Lange, and their son, Earl, a Chris Isaak-style rockabilly bar singer. The latter responds badly to the revelation and appearance of his father, throwing his own furniture and music onto the street from a first-floor window. Howard uses the discarded sofa to wait through the night in an attempt to make good with his son.

Later, another of Howard's newly discovered illegitimate offspring, Sky, another of Wenders' earthbound angels, suggests the actor stay in Butte. When he asks what he would do there, she responds: "Make it your home." But there are some things a man can't ride around, such as signed contracts and movie-completion bonds, and Howard has to return to Phantom of the West, handcuffed to Tim Roth's uptight British insurance tracer.

Writing about Raoul Walsh's The Tall Men in 1969, Wenders contrasted hectic, mendacious Westerns and quiet ones in which "plot, lines, character and landscape all fit together". His new film doesn't quite achieve this, but it does have a terrific sense of place, something missing from much contemporary US cinema. This is present both in the garish Nevada casinos Howard visits after abandoning his movie, and in the historic, beautifully faded centre of the former cowboy metropolis Butte. The latter is impressively filmed by Wenders' new DoP Franz Lustig, who unashamedly wallows in the eloquent surfaces of Americana. Wenders is still dreaming his American dream.

Not Coming to a Theater Near You [Adam Balz]

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk  The Exile

 

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

 

Wim, We Hardly Know Ye: On Wenders' Don't Come Knocking - Bright ...  Ian Johnston from Bright Lights Film Journal, February 1, 2006

 

Ferdy on Films [Roderick Heath]

 

Dont Come Knocking (2006) | PopMatters  Matt Mazur, August 7, 2006 

 

Jessica Lange: The Anti-Streep | PopMatters  Matt Mazur, October 31, 2006

 

Dont Come Knocking (2006) | PopMatters  Cynthia Fuchs, April 14, 2006

 

Don't Come Knocking Review | CultureVulture  Les Wright

 

DON'T COME KNOCKING | FilmJournal International  Chris Barsanti

 

New York Sun [Meghan Keane]

 

"Don't come knocking" by Wim Wender - review  A. Autino from TDF

 

Swampland:Sam Shepard Stars in "Don't Come Knocking"  James Calemine from Swampland

 

The Village Voice [Michael Atkinson]

 

8½ Cinematheque: 2005: Don't Come Knocking

 

Movie Vault [Le Apprenti]

 

signandsight.com  Katja Nicodemus

 

Moviefreak [Sara Michelle Fetters]

 

Shameless Self Expression [Ryan McDonald]

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

 

Reviews Don't Come Knocking Wim Wenders - Exclaim!  Travis Mackenzie Hoover

 

Georgia Straight [Ken Eisner]

 

digitallyObsessed! - DVD Reviews [Dan Heaton]

 

Film-Forward.com [DVD review] Reymond Levy

 

Don't Come Knocking : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video  Svet Atanasov

 

DVD Verdict [Ryan Keefer]

 

DVD Review: Don't Come Knocking - Monsters and Critics

 

CNS Movie Review: Don't Come Knocking  Harry Forbes, Catholic News Service

 

The Tech (MIT) [Yong-yi Zhu]

 

FilmJerk.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

TalkTalk  Paul Hurley

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Don't Come Knocking | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum (capsule review)

 

Wim Wenders Don't Come Knocking | Emanuel Levy  Interview with the filmmaker, February 14, 2006

 

Don't Come Knocking Movie | TVGuide.com

 

Review: 'Don't Come Knocking' - Variety  Todd McCarthy

 

BBCi - Films (DVD review)  Stella Papamichael

 

Don't Come Knocking (15) - The Independent  Anthony Quinn

 

Visuals save fragmented 'Don't Come Knocking' - Boston.com  Ty Burr, Boston Globe

 

Movie review: 'Don't Come Knocking' - Orlando Sentinel

 

Film review: Don't Come Knocking | Deseret News  Jeff Vice

 

Austin Chronicle [Marrit Ingman]

 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Ruthe Stein]

 

Los Angeles Times [Kevin Crust]

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]

 

Don't Come Knocking - Review - Movies - New York Times  Stephen Holden

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

Don't Come Knocking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

PALERMO SHOOTING

Germany  Italy  France  (124 mi)  2008

 

Palermo Shooting  Jonathan Romney at Cannes from Screendaily

Wim Wenders muses on love, death and his perennial bugbear, the 'Crisis of the Image' in The Palermo Shooting, a metaphysical thriller cum philosophical essay that marks another step on the downwards slope for this once-vital film-maker. Unwisely cast, leadenly written and ultimately farcical in its earnestness, The Palermo Shooting is a glossy travelogue-thriller with metaphysical pretentions, and one of the low points of this year's Cannes Competition. Unlikely to fare well in the market, the film may also find festivals preferring to tactfully take a rain check.

An overbearingly-glossy first half centres on the travails of Finn, played by German rocker and moody scowler Campino. Finn is a successful photographer with a major reputation in the art world, but has a sideline working on slick fashion shoots with the likes of actor-model Milla Jovovich - seen here very pregnant and playing herself. Fascinated by digital photography and its possibilities for visual manipulation, Finn is accused by a high-minded student of betraying 'real' images. Meanwhile, he suffers from elaborate, vaguely Cocteau-esque nightmares involving his dead mother and a mysterious bald cloaked figure (Hopper), whose true identity isn't too hard to guess.

After a close shave in his sports car, Finn wakes up in a tree, has a whimsical conversation with an amateur shepherd, then decides to visit Palermo, ostensibly to take more photos of Jovovich in a 'real' setting, but really to pursue his own metaphysical quest.

The second section sees Finn catching the sights of Sicily, dodging CGI arrows from a mysterious assailant, and getting to know Flavia (Mezzogiorno), a comely art restorer. Eventually, Finn comes face to face with his shiny-pated nemesis, a Grim Reaper in the tradition of Bergman's The Seventh Seal - a jovially creepy spectre who turns out to have his own opinions about the implications of digital photography.

Vaporous, tendentious and inescapably silly, the film livens up briefly when Dennis Hopper takes centre stage: he at least knows how to savour the script's more ludicrous resonances. When Hopper's Death complains, "Why do I always have to play the bad guy?" he gives the film its only merited laugh, among many accidental ones (one of them provided by the cameo appearance of a spectral, hologram-like Lou Reed).

Wenders has often tended towards fashion victimhood, and the film's first half sees him caught in an awkward quandary. Out to expose Finn's world of false consciousness, he lards the film with glitzy hi-tech glamour, all the better to denounce it. But whether it's Finn's glacially modernist HQ, or the section featuring a smugly preening Jovovich, Wenders looks inescapably besotted with the textures he supposedly mistrusts. Yet the Sicily section, where the images are supposedly more 'real' (focusing on old stonework, Renaissance murals and grizzled market traders), comes across as hackneyed touristic colour. It doesn't help to have locals dispense crackerbarrel banalities: "The soul of my city is death... The soul of my city is life."

Campino is a glumly narcissistic presence, his discomfort more than matched by the coyly wooden Mezzogiorno. An end title dedicates the film to 'Ingmar and Michelangelo'; nearly as sad as their passing is the fact that Wenders's once-considerable talent now seems virtually a lost cause. But he can still pick a decent jukebox-style soundtrack, and some redeeming interest is provided by the modish alt.rock likes of Beirut, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Calexico in heavy rotation.

Cannes Review: Palermo Shooting - The Moviefone Blog  James Rocchi at Cannes                 

After 10 days of being pushed, prodded and poked by the world's hordes of paparazzi at the Cannes Film Festival in their spittle-flecked enthusiasm to get a picture of Angelina or Brad or Benicio, the essential plot of Wim Wenders's Palermo Shooting, with a famous photographer on the run for his life and re-assessing his career in Palermo, Italy, sounded like what could be the feel-good film of the festival. I hate paparazzi with a passion; they hog all the power outlets in the Cannes press room, they shove and shout and scream at people in order to get them to look at them so they might thereby increase the saleability of their shot, and, most damningly here at Cannes, they're both annoyingly innumerable and wildly irrelevant. (I know I'm biased, but I see it this way: I can read two reviews of the same film and learn something different from each, get a entirely separate set of insights from each writer, learn any number of things and have any number of ideas raised. I can look at 800 different photographers' snapshots of Gwyneth Paltrow on the red carpet and they all say the same thing: Dahr, she purdy.)

So, yes, the idea of watching a Wim Wenders film about a photographer who's having a crisis of conscience about his profession seemed like a capital idea. Watching Palermo Shooting, though, made any enthusiasm the film's description in the official catalog might have elicited drain away so swiftly and suddenly it boggled the mind. Finn (Campino) is an international hot-shot photographer, who knows he must choose between his serious art or the lucrative globe-trotting fashion shoots that have made him a star. And this, from the get-go, is problem number one: Films about people who have to choose between two different kinds of success are, by definition, boring. The second problem comes with the casting of Campino, who is certainly a well-made slab of Euro-flesh, but whose range of expressed emotional states ranges from hunky bewilderment to bewildered hunkiness.

One night in Dusseldorf, Finn dodges death as he misses a car headed right at him on the freeway; Finn was idly taking a photograph out of the top of his convertible at the time, so it's not as if he's going to get that Driver's Ed gold star any time soon, but he still feels shaken and out of sorts. Seeing a boat nearby with the word Palermo on it, he goes to Palermo, Italy, a beautiful Mediterranean town full of old-world architecture and sunshiny charm. But it seems that someone is following Finn -- a gray-coat-clad archer who fires spectral arrows at Finn that evaporate as soon as they strike. Finn strikes up a friendship with a local art restorer, Flavia (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), and tries to get to the bottom of who his mystery playmate is.

So there could be a relationship storyline -- but the interactions between Finn and Flavia are fairly sexless and limp. There could be an action or thriller storyline -- but Wenders isn't really interested in that, either. There's a quote from the great literary critic Robertson Davies that says "Thou shalt not read The Bible for its poetry"; as a variation on that rule, I'd like to offer that thou shalt not have people run for their lives just so they can dawdle and enjoy the scenery. To its credit, Palermo Shooting is beautifully shot, from the crude concrete vitality of Dusseldorf to the sun-splashed wonder of Palermo. The problem is that Palermo Shooting is pretty much inert, with Finn wandering around like Mopey McGee trying to figure out malaise, and his flight from danger goes from vaguely intriguing to decidedly laughable when it's explained that Death, personified, is chasing Finn down.

There are plenty of funny moments in Palermo Shooting; it's too bad they weren't intended to be funny. When Finn has a moment of reverie in a late-night bar, The Velvet Underground on the jukebox, a spectral vision of none other than Lou Reed drops by to dispense wisdom. I guess it's no good being Wim Wenders if you don't get to do stuff with your famous friends, but it's a pretty silly moment, with the croaking, haggard Reed playing the part like some hipster iteration of Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life. ("Every time a bell rings, a junkie gets a brand-new rig. ..." No, Reed doesn't say that. His actual dialogue is much, much more dull.)

And as Finn wanders Europe, contemplating the mysteries of the universe and dodging Death's arrows, much of Palermo Shooting's dialogue is a series of banalities masquerading as profundities. If you could show me a version of this film with any and all dialogue scenes cut out of it, you would have a nicely-shot bit of film; a travel agency promotional film, perhaps, or a long-form perfume ad. But every time the people on-screen were talking, the Cannes audience was provoked to rueful grunts of sad laughter, each grim chortle or unstifled guffaw saying something like Good heavens, I can't believe the man behind Wings of Desire made this, or Wow, Campino's got the look of a young Harry Hamlin but without any of that burdensome acting ability or charm to weigh him down.

By the finale of the film -- which has Finn realizing that he's actually being followed by Death, personified as Dennis Hopper, and then the two having a nice chit-chat about the nature of existence, the way of all flesh and Death's opinion that film photography is more artistic than digital, the audience was riveted, but really more in that grim way where they were waiting solely out of intellectual curiosity, to see how things could go wrong next.

After Palermo Shooting ended (with a title card offering the film as a tribute "To Ingmar (Bergman) and Michelangelo (Antonioni)," which made me imagine Bergman and Antonioni saying Uh, thanks, but. ... from the next world), the Cannes press audience booed and laughed and stumbled out into the streets for detailed digressions and discussions on how, exactly, Wenders had, as our British friends say, lost the plot. Palermo Shooting goes fairly off the mark, or fires blanks, or has a damp fuse; I'm not sure about which firearm metaphor applies here, and if Wenders can't be bothered to have any cohesion to his signs and symbols, why should I? Palermo Shooting is hardly the worst film I've ever seen at Cannes -- Southland Tales still takes the Palme d'Junk in my book -- but it's still a little sad to see a major filmmaker make such a series of major mistakes in the name of a fairly minor film.

a page of madness [Nicholas Vroman]

 

BERLIN & BEYOND '09 Review: Wim Wenders' "Palermo ...  Arya Ponto

 

Cannes Film Festival 2008 - Slant Magazine  Matt Noller

 

Some Came Running: Lost angels  Glenn Kenny

 

Cannes Festival: Reflections on Our Modern Chaotic World ...  Ron Holloway from Wallwritings

 

Palermo Shooting - Drowned In Sound  Kevin EG Perry reviews the musical soundtrack

 

Shakenstir » 'Palermo Shooting' Soundtrack

 

Celebrity Assasin: Wim Wenders' 'Palermo Shooting ...  soundtrack listing

 

Palermo Shooting - Film - Arts and Faith  Peter T. Chattaway

 

FNC 2008 - A Review of PALERMO SHOOTING | TwitchFilm  Sam Laperriere

 

Palermo Shooting movie review | Cinephilia  Bernard Hemingway

 

Palermo Shooting With Wim Wender | Emanuel Levy  Interview with the director, May 23, 2008

 

Hollywood Reporter [Peter Brunette]

 

Variety.com [Todd McCarthy]

 

Palermo Shooting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

PINA IN 3D                                                               B+                   91

Germany  France  Great Britain  (106 mi)  2011

 

There are situations that leave you utterly speechless. All you can do is hint at things.     —Pina Bausch

 

While well-intentioned, to be sure, the idea of extending the use of 3D technology into the art film is getting ridiculous (see the photos of German Chancellor Angela Merkel adjusting her 3D glasses at the Berlin Festival premiere), as the fact remains very few films are the better for it, as the merit of a film continues to rise or fall based on the overall quality and essence of the film itself, not the use of technology, and this film is no different.  Wenders was intending a collaborative effort with internationally acclaimed dance choreographer Pina Bausch, the longtime director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal (since 1973), but she died just days after being diagnosed with cancer in 2009.  The film is very much a reverent eulogy to her memory, where one by one throughout the film members of the dance troupe are singled out, many offering a reflection on a particular moment they shared together, perhaps the moment they truly felt accepted, while others simply stare at the camera in silence.  One prominent theme advanced by many is the idea that language alone is limited, that dance, and art overall, is an extension of our capacity to understand and better appreciate human expression, that beginning with the dancers themselves, each is responsible for discovering that unique voice within themselves, captured through constant tinkering and experimentation with movement, so that each personality continually radiates their own personal vision while working within a larger dance ensemble.  This mix of individuality within a community of diverse dancers perhaps best expresses Bausch’s artistic vision, combining theatricality with dance, conveying universal expressions of loneliness and alienation with the need for intimacy, mixing sorrow with exhilaration and joy, often comically absurd, but always intensely engaging.  Not so much interested in the movement, more so the idea and motivating force behind the movement, Bausch remains a visionary force with a demand for autobiographical truth and authenticity.  

 

Unlike Frederic Wiseman, Wenders never shoots an entire work uninterrupted from start to finish, but instead interweaves excerpts from four major works, never identifying them by name or the accompanying music, but they include Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Café Müller, Kontakthof, and Vollmond (Full Moon), often mixing various stage works with what looks like variations on a theme using improvisational outdoor settings, where Wenders takes full advantage of the streets outside with the overhead tram passing by, including scenes from inside the tram car itself, or a countryside rock quarry, a public swimming pool, an empty, museum like, all-window room with the view of a forest outside, a beautiful city park, a meditative lakeside shoreline, or various architectural settings, where the surprise element of dance being performed in a natural environment has a special appeal all its own.  What the outdoors also brings is extra light, making this much brighter than the usually darkened 3D experience.  While the music is consistently outstanding, Wenders blends various theatrical pieces, moving from indoors to outdoors, where there’s always a smooth transitional feel, constantly changing the dancers, the costumes, and the stage, where the focus keeps evolving, as if we’re part of a continuing drama that is playing out in human form.  In one of the more quietly intriguing pieces, featuring phenomenal physical dexterity, a woman crawls through a wooden chair on the floor as a man adds another chair on top of that one, which she steps through, continually adding chairs on top of that which she and another dancer safely climb through as the tower of chairs grows ridiculously high, needing a chair to stand on in order to place yet another chair high atop.  Whatever issues one may have with the tame or rather conventional manner of the filmmaking itself, leaving much unexplained and unfathomable, it is a joy from start to finish, as the dance onscreen is simply extraordinary and has rarely been presented with this degree of love and artistic beauty. 

 

We grow familiar with many of the dancers after awhile, probably picking out several favorites, where the diverse cultural background, as many as 17 different nationalities, includes European and Asian, also Central and South American, including indigenous natives, where many are naturally shy and weren’t sure what to expect from Bausch, who was a constant presence but rarely spoke to them, where one mentioned she uttered a single phrase to her in twenty years.  There’s an interesting mixture of young and old, as one dancer is the child of two original dancers, while Kontakthof has young dancers suddenly morph into another version of themselves as older people, still doing the same dance routine.  Café Müller, the dance of a blind woman in a room full of chairs, is beautifully featured, along with Bausch’s Masurca Fogo, in Almodóvar’s TALK TO HER (2002), a dance Bausch used to perform herself in the early 70’s (seen briefly), and receives an extended treatment here, something of a heartfelt homage to the man seen frantically removing the chairs who has now died as well.  The two pieces given the fullest expression are the opening and closing pieces, the violent, ritualistic battle of the sexes in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, performed on several tons of dirt hauled onstage, an enthralling piece making use of a red scarf where a woman is sacrificed to a group of threatening men for the supposed good of the community, a precisely choreographed gang rape scene where you can hear the dancers panting audibly.  The closer is Vollmond (Full Moon), a jubilant work featuring a dozen or more different musical selections, given a modernistic twist, where a gigantic monolith style rock sits off to the side while the stage is beset by falling rain, where at first dancers playfully speed through the water with rowing sticks, eventually bellyflopping on their stomachs doing the breastroke, but eventually the dancers grab buckets of water to splash against the rock, where the spray comes flying off in a near waterfall effect, leaving everyone sopping wet.  Wenders has created a delightful if loosely structured piece that can be hypnotic at times, something of a dance mosaic weaving in and out of meticulous formations that is most fun when the dancers can simply let loose and inhabit new worlds.    

 

Time Out New York [Joshua Rothkopf]

For a director of such blessed providence in the 1970s and ’80s, Wim Wenders has had some fairly boneheaded ideas over the past decade or so. (A movie about a hotel, written by Bono?) Thankfully, filming modern dance in 3-D isn’t one of them: Pina belongs in the rare category of adventurous material matched with a thrillingly immersive form—suck it, Avatar. Germany’s Pina Bausch was a giant of choreography and instruction; her untimely death in 2009 looked likely to put the kibosh on Wenders’s carefully strategized profile.

But something magical has emerged, no doubt due to the dancers’ insistence that the director continue with his plan. Part remembrance and part celebration, Pina introduces us to the many faces of Bausch’s principal artists, who recall her in voiceover as their lips remain sealed. Elsewhere—and kinetically—we see them move, in the stuttering, repetitive style their mentor pioneered. Couples chase and drag each other, returning to their static beginning points and springing off again; Bausch loaded psychosexual content into every gesture. Meanwhile, Wenders’s use of the third dimension is hardly a gimmick, expanding our appreciation of these pieces’ revolutionary use of props, water and even dirt. This isn’t the kind of doc to explain everything (or anything, really)—it does honor its subject, though, and that’s plenty.

exclaim! [Bjorn Olson]

Hot on the heels of Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Wim Wenders is the latest titan of world cinema (no, Michael Bay doesn't count) to embrace the fancy-schmancy world of 3-D. While Herzog eschewed jive-talking robots for the ancient cave paintings of Chauvet, France, Wenders' high art third-dimensional foray is into the world of dance, particularly the work of late choreographer Pina Bausch.

But while Bausch is only shown fleetingly, her work is recreated by dancers (many of whom she worked with regularly throughout her career), allowing her essentialist philosophy of "dance, dance, otherwise we are lost" to be realized in full glory.

Originally intending the project as a biographical documentary, until Bausch's passing, Wenders puts her kinetic, almost violent choreography on display in a number of different venues, both indoors and outdoors, on the stage and in the middle of nowhere. While 3-D still looks like a gimmick to these eyes, lovers of dance will certainly be enthralled with Wenders' compositions, which are immersive and rarely ostentatious.

Wenders intercuts the performance pieces with first-person interviews of dancers young and old ruminating on the meaning of the work and reminiscing about Bausch's personality and how it was inextricably infused into her choreography.

Wenders has always been a master stylist and Pina is no exception. The dance pieces are meticulously recreated and compelling. Wenders seamlessly unites the pieces and brings the common aesthetic into relief. That said, the more personal and human aspects of Bausch's life are left mostly unexamined.

This is largely a performance film, and is better suited for dance aficionados (is there such a thing as dance nerds?) looking to experience the art form through another set of virtual eyes.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List  Doug McLaren

Conceived as a collaboration between Wim Wenders and avant-garde choreographer Pina Bausch, PINA's production, talked about between the two since the mid-80s, hit a major stumbling block with Bausch's sudden death in 2009. Bausch's dance troupe at Tanztheater Wuppertal encouraged Wenders to continue the project, and we are now blessed with what is unequivocally both the best documentation of modern dance and the best 3D movie yet made (sorry, STEP UP 3D). PINA's elegiac mode works as a remembrance of the masterful dancer as well as an introduction to the individuals in Tanztheater's ensemble, achieved by the bold choice of inserting solo performances by troupe members throughout the four Bausch choreographies Wenders restages, with all of these performances captured in an absolutely stunning application of 3D photography. Wim Wenders appears to understand that "3D" does not mean "three dimensional" in a physical sense—3D gives no genuine depth to objects, but rather aligns figures along the Z-axis in the much the same way as a pop-up book or diorama might. Wenders exploits what is otherwise a glaring problem with 3D's nominal verisimilitude and embraces the artificiality of the 3D process. For Kontakthof, Wenders allows a flashbulb to isolate two dancers, effectively flattening the composition and cutting out the figures we are to focus on, to stunning effect. In Café Müller, Wenders acknowledges 3D's obvious artifice, winkingly compositing an overhead shot of the dance's first movement inside a diorama placed in the middle of a field, the chairs that are tossed about in the piece appearing at first as dollhouse furniture. Wenders' use of 3D is nothing short of revelatory, but it is Pina Bausch's choreography that truly captures the viewer. The honesty and physicality of bodily movement in these performances drives a visceral emotional response from the viewer, particularly in the first performance, Le Sacre du printemps, in which the intense movements of the dancers are stamped into a layer of brown earth (and kudos to whomever mic-ed the troupe, as every thump, huff, and slap is reproduced incredibly). The body and its seemingly innumerable gestures provides Bausch a fascinating catalogue of human movements from which she cultivates specific actions from certain dancers according to the abilities of each, resulting in highly specified choreographies. PINA's tightly rehearsed intense physicality delivers on 3D's supposed promise of the immediacy of experience, and it stands out as both a singular work amongst a legendary filmmaker's storied career as well as a fitting tribute to a brilliant choreographer.

Pina – review  Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian, April 21, 2011

Wim Wenders's deeply intelligent 3D tribute to the work of the modern dance choreographer Pina Bausch was conceived as a collaboration with her. Bausch died during the production in 2009, and the resulting film achieves a poignant, elegaic quality, shot through with an overwhelming sense of loss, both on the part of Bausch's dancers, whose thoughtful interviews and dance sequences form the film's backbone, and the director himself. Bausch was a reticent figure, wary of personalities and insistent on letting her work speak for her. She would undoubtedly have been a distant figure in this film had she lived, but now her absence has a sombre, almost tragic quality. The dancers seem like grownup children who have lost a parent, or even apostles of a spiritual movement whose leader has met some kind of sacrificial destiny.

My colleague Judith Mackrell has already offered her expert verdict on the effect of 3D in filming dance. To her judgment, I can only add that for me, the shapes and forms of the dancers have an overwhelming physicality. The choreography has the air of a mysterious rite, released from the traditional arena of the theatre into the streets, though it is fundamentally filmed head-on, as if through a proscenium arch. (The director has said his inspiration for the film was the U2 3D concert movie.)

If its meaning can be summed up – though it is arguably the point of an abstract artform that it can't be summed up – it is probably in the words of a dancer who asks, "What are we yearning for? Where does all this yearning come from?" We spend our lives yearning, and then, in the shadow of mortality, our yearning is redirected backwards, a yearning to understand our past lives, our youth, and again forwards – a yearning to understand the point of our death. Wenders's movie uncovers the crucial state of yearning in Bausch's work.

Bausch was famously the director of the Wuppertal Tanztheater, where she created pieces such as her Cafe Müller in 1978; this is a very European film, and the artistic practice described in it seems very German in its high seriousness and high-mindedness. Could Bausch have flourished in the same way in Britain, with its broadloid Boulevardpresse and its irony'n'celebs media culture? Perhaps not. But then again, she is perhaps not an obvious fit with Wenders, with his fascination with Americana and pop music. Nonetheless, he has created a tremendous film that sets out to make the new 3D technology an integral part of what is being created – a film with clarity and passion.

A Life In Film [Matt Riviera]

 

Why film the performing arts? And how? These questions have been – since the dawn of photography - at the core of our desire to immortalize performance, and allow the ephemeral arts of the stage to be experienced beyond the theatre or concert hall, to live on after the death of its creators.

 

Ballet, theatre and opera are now routinely broadcast in cinemas, but there are elements of live performing arts which the camera simply cannot capture. With his new film Pina, Win Wenders shows us that there are others which only cinema can show.

 

It has taken the iconic German filmmaker over 20 years to find the appropriate language to translate the work of the iconic German choreographer Pina Bausch to the screen, but it was worth the wait: Pina is a nothing less than a documentary masterpiece.

 

Wenders first met dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch in 1985, having just won the Palme d’Or in Cannes for Paris, Texas. In the Q&A for Pina’s Australian Premiere (at the closing night of the recent Festival of German Films), Wenders describes his first viewing of her work in Venice as something akin to being hit by lightning, leaving him a quivering mess. It would be the start of a long friendship, and the beginning of an obsession.

 

For years Wenders agonizes about how to translate this experience through the medium of film. Bausch herself had featured in Fellini’s And The Ship Sails On. In 1990 she directed her only film, The Complaint of an Empress (Wenders was in Australia shooting Until The End of the World, but Bausch enlisted his frequent collaborator Martin Schäfer as cinematographer). Her work opened Almodóvar’s Talk to Her in 2002. That same year fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh shot a documentary portrait of the choreographer. Throughout her illustrious career Bausch has been the subject of filmmakers’ interest, something which Wenders - an ardent cinephile - was well aware of. Still he wasn’t satisfied that the correct language had been found.

 

In 2007 Wenders – who had shot several music videos for U2 - sees U23D at the Cannes Film Festival and immediately knows he has the answer. He rings Bausch to tell her the news: it’s taken over 20 years, but he’s found a way.

 

These are the early days of modern 3D, before the first horror films cheapen the illusion, before the first blockbusters cynically exploit its box-office appeal. Wenders wants to immerse the viewer in the performance, but he also needs the 3D to make itself forgotten after the first 5 minutes. 3D has to remain a means to an end.

 

In 2009, Pina Bausch dies suddenly, only five days after being diagnosed with cancer, at the age of 68. After much consultation with the dancers of her company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, Wenders decides to go ahead with the project. This isn’t a film about Pina Bausch anymore, it’s a film for Pina Bausch.

 

Wenders reminds himself of Bausch’s two conditions: there could be no biographical material about the choreographer, and she wouldn’t answer questions. Rather than limit the filmmaker, these restrictions liberate Wenders, allowing him to focus on his primary objective: to show us the world the way the choreographer sees it.

 

Four or five key works are performed for us, the steadycam snaking through the dancers on stage or perched upon a crane, interacting with them in a manner unavailable to a traditional audience. Other excerpts are performed outside the theatre, in and around the town of Wuppertal, in striking settings at the intersection of the natural and industrial landscape.

 

Suddenly we are amongst the performers in a train tunnel, at a busy intersection, in a suspended railway carriage, on the ridge above a quarry. Blink and the young dancer in front of you is an old man. Blink again and a woman appears before you with the biceps of a circus strongman. Rub your eyes, is what you’re seeing real? It is, but not as you would see it from the stalls.

 

Wenders seeks not to merely replicate or reproduce, but to borrow Bausch’s gaze and use the medium’s power of visual empathy to let us see the world through her eyes. This is the magic of Wenders’ film. By taking dance theatre out of its traditional context – the stage – and into the physical environment, it embraces Bausch’s vision of a world in which we are all dancers.

 

Bausch worked with dancers by asking questions, but the answers were never words or sentences: performers had to reply in movement. Through movement, the dancer’s inner-most history and true character is expressed. There is no role-playing in her dance theatre, and that’s why the work is so moving: everything the dancer conveys is an intrinsic part of who they are. As Bausch used to say, "I don't care how my dancers move, I want to know what moves them." 

 

What we learn about Pina Bausch, in other words, we learn from the dancers. It’s a tight-knit family. Some have been in the company 35 years (Bausch is known for giving older actors opportunities to dance past their prime). Others were born into the company, close to the choreographer from the time they were children. All share a deep connection Bausch, express a profound sadness at her disappearance.

 

Words are kept to a minimum: a short personal testimony about how Bausch brought out the best in each of them. Instead, our questions are answered through movement. It's easy to identify with the dancers, who are not showcased as athletes but as flawed individuals. Every gesture in Bausch’s Tanztheater becomes pregnant with meaning: hilarious or tragic, violent or vulnerable, proud or pained. 

 

The 3D illusion is breathtaking at first, but it never call attention to itself. There is no gimmickry nor visual trickery. The 3rd dimension is put at the service of realism and truthfulness, giving depth to physical movement without amplifying or distorting it. In a few scenes the camera simply cannot keep up with the dancers’ speed: gestures appear staggered, almost strobe-lit. 2D Archival footage is shown projected for an audience or behind curtains: a jarring artificial construct which thankfully, is used too sparingly to shatter the sense of immersion. For the most part however, Wenders’ brings you so close to the dancers you can almost feel their breath on your skin.

 

As the artificial barriers between performers and audience fall, so too do our inhibitions, our reserve. We are included in an emotional and intimate conversation with the dancers, carried out in a language as primal as it is universal. We see what the choreographer sees but we feel what the dancers feel. The filmmaker, meanwhile, disappears entirely.

 

The film succeeds partly thanks to this humility on the part of the director, and the respect and responsibility he brings to the task. Filmmakers think they know a lot about body language. Wenders – a filmmaker who has always questioned the limits of the medium – begins by accepting he still has a lot to learn. Ultimately, the documentary is served by the filmmaker’s obsession with understanding and portraying another artist's way of looking at the world.

 

In Europe, those lucky enough to be familiar with the performing arts have a special place in their hearts for Pina Bausch. This film spreads the love further and wider than physical performances could ever hope to achieve, to film buffs unfamiliar with contemporary dance, to residents of distant shores, to our children and their children and their children after that… Bausch’s dream that her legacy would live on to touch others is fulfilled.

 

You leave the cinema shaken, uplifted, inspired. For a while after the credits roll, you do look the world around you a little differently: every movement holds the promise of visual poetry, people around you appear capable of unsuspected grace, even painful moments seem to conceal a hidden beauty. If you doubt the ability of art to change lives, see Pina. If you have no doubt about the ability of art to change lives, then please, see Pina.

 

The New Yorker [David Denby]

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Anne-Katrin Titze]

 

indieWIRE [Eric Kohn]

 

Brechtian Traces in Pina Bausch’s Choreographic and Cinematic Work  Vera Stegmann (pdf)

 

Movie Review: Wim Wenders' Pina ... - Entertainment - Time Magazine  Richard Corliss

 

Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

Film-Forward.com [Nora Lee Mandel]

 

Movieline [Stephanie Zacharek]

 

Slant Magazine [Jaime N. Christley]

 

Paste Magazine [Emily Kirkpatrick]

 

Filmcritic.com  Chris Barsanti

 

DVD Talk [Jason Bailey]  also seen here:  Fourth Row Center [Jason Bailey]

 

The Wrap [Alonso Duralde]

 

'Pina' Aims for an Unprecedented Double-Play at Oscars  Steve Pond from The Wrap


Obsessed With Film [Robert Beames]

 

Filmleaf [Chris Knipp]

 

Sound On Sight [Simon Howell]

 

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]

 

Next Projection [Rowena Santos Aquino]

 

Monsters and Critics [Ron Wilkinson]

 

Living in Cinema [Craig Kennedy]

 

Pina | Review, Trailer, News, Cast, Interviews | SBS Film  Craig Mathieson

 

Gordon and the Whale [Joshua Brunsting]

 

EFilmCritic [Jay Seaver]

 

Village Voice [Melissa Anderson]

 

Little White Lies Magazine [Zara Miller]

 

The A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

 

Contraband | Joyful Noise | Pina | Contraband ... - Wall Street Journal  Joe Morgenstern

 

Keyframe: the Fandor Blog [Vadim Rizov]

 

Tonight at the Movies [John C. Clark]

 

Cinema Autopsy [Thomas Caldwell]

 

Battleship Pretension [David Bax]

 

AdvanceScreenings.com [Matthew Fong]

 

Bright Lights Film Journal [Robert Keser] 

 

Cannes Film Festival 2011: Day Four – The Kid with a Bike, Pina, & Good Bye  Glenn Heath at Cannes, May 14, 2011

 

Pina - Movie Review of Pina - 2011 - Documentaries - About.com  Jennifer Merin

 

Hollywood Jesus [Darrel Manson]

 

ColeSmithey.com [Cole Smithey]

 

Awards Daily [Patrick Mullen]

 

Spout [Christopher Campbell]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

The NYC Movie Guru [Avi Offer]

 

Wim Wenders on Pina: 'Pina had gone deep into research of the human soul' - video  Video interview by Charlotte Higgins and Henry Barnes from The Guardian, February 14, 2011 (5:12)

 

Wim Wenders: My love affair with 3D   Dave Calhoun interview from Time Out London, Apr 20 2011

 

A Vision of Dance, Preserved in 3-D  Julie Bloom interviews Wenders from The New York Times, December 11, 2011

 

Wim Wenders moves Pina Bausch into a new ... - Globe and Mail  Guy Dixon interviews Wenders from The Globe and the Mail, December 21, 2011

 

It’s 3D or Bust for ‘Pina’ Director Wim Wenders  Alexandra Cheney interview from The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2011

 

The Hollywood Reporter [Deborah Young]

 

Variety [Leslie Felperin]

 

Pina Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London  Dave Calhoun

Growing old disgracefully  Judith Mackrell from The Guardian, November 27, 2002

Movers and shakers for 2008  Judith Mackrell from The Guardian, January 1, 2008

 

Pina Bausch: A life in pictures  The Guardian, February 6, 2008 

 

Chaos theory  Judith Mackrell from The Guardian, February 6, 2008

 

Pina Bausch, star choreographer and dancer, dies  Chris Wiegand from The Guardian, June 30, 2009

 

Judith Mackrell: Farewell to the magician of modern dance  Judith Mackrell from The Guardian, June 30, 2009

 

Obituary: Pina Bausch  Luke Jennings from The Guardian, June 30, 2009

 

Wim Wenders: Pina Bausch Is Dead  Wim Wenders from the Guardian, July 1, 2009

 

Pina Bausch, a genius of dance  Bidisha from The Guardian, July 1, 2009  

 

Pina Bausch: clip-by-clip dance guide  Sanjoy Roy with YouTube dance footage examples from The Guardian, July 1, 2009

 

Tributes to Pina: 'She got the keys to your soul'  Chris Wiegand from The Guardian, July 3, 2009

 

Fiona Shaw on Pina Bausch: 'She made you feel thrilled to be human'  Fiona Shaw from the Guardian, July 6, 2009

 

Wim Wenders's Pina Bausch tribute lives on  Charlotte Higgins from The Guardian, July 21, 2009

 

3D Pina Bausch film to go ahead  Catherine Shoard from The Guardian, July 21, 2009

 

Step-by-step guide to dance: Pina Bausch/Tanztheater Wuppertal  Sanjoy Roy with YouTube dance footage examples from The Guardian, March 30, 2010

 

Pina Bausch for ever  Judith Mackrell from The Guardian, August 9, 2010

 

Guardian [Charlotte Higgins]  February 13, 2011

Berlin film festival: does Wim Wenders capture the magic of Pina Bausch's art?  Charlotte Higgins from The Guardian, February 14, 2011

The true face of modernism  Luke Jennings from the Observer, February 16, 2008

Michael Morris remembers Pina Bausch  Vanessa Thorpe interviews Michael Morris from The Observer, July 4, 2009

Pina – review  Philip French from the Observer, April 24, 2011

DVD: Pina (U) - Reviews - Films - The Independent  Warren Howard from The Independent, September 30, 2011

 

Pina (U) - Reviews - Films - The Independent  Anthony Quinn from The Independent, April 22, 2011

 

Wenders doc captures Pina Bausch's choreography - Globe and Mail  Guy Dixon

 

Boston Phoenix [Ann Lewinson]

 

Pina movie review -- Pina showtimes - The Boston Globe  Ty Burr

 

'Pina' moves in unique ways - BostonHerald.com  James Verniere from The Boston Herald

 

3-D takes 'Pina' to perfection - Chicago Sun-Times  Hedy Weiss from The Chicago Sun-Times, January 12, 2012, also a Slide Show:  View Gallery

 

Pina :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews - Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times  January 18, 2012

 

'Pina,' a Documentary by Wim Wenders ... - Movies - New York Times  A.O. Scott from The New York Times, December 22, 2011, also including a Slide Show:  More Photos »

DVDBeaver [Eric Cotenas]

PINA - A film for PINA BAUSCH by WIM WENDERS - dancers & staff

 

Pina Bausch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Tanztheater Wuppertal - Pina Bausch

 

Tanztheater Wuppertal - Pina Bausch - Dancetheatre Wuppertal

 

Tanztheater Wuppertal - Pina Bausch - Dancetheatre Wuppertal

 

Images for Tanztheater Wuppertal

 

THE SALT OF THE EARTH                                 A-                    94

France  Brazil  Italy  (110 mi)  2014       co-director:  Juliano Ribeiro Salgado

 

For German director Wim Wenders, it all came down to a photograph that he kept in his office for years, a black and white portrait from the mid 1980’s of a blind woman from Mali conveying a feeling of such profound depth and supreme sadness that it served as a constant reminder of the kind of power and impact that art can have on the human soul.  Shot by Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado, this distinctive artistic voice becomes the focus of the film, much like Wenders’ earlier Oscar nominated documentaries BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB (1999) and Pina in 3D (2011), where Salgado literally narrates his life story in a film that examines his life and his work.  The project originated with his son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, one of the principal cinematographers attempting to make a documentary on the life of his father, eventually bringing in Wenders to offer perspective and help shape his overall vision.  The outcome is a work of maturity and profound significance, where the subtle influence of Wenders in helping to choose the photographs by Salgado that moved him the most adds a surprising depth, basically allowing the pictures to tell the story.  Born in the lush hills of Brazil where the rain forest connects to farmland, Salgado earned a master’s degree in economics and began to work for the International Coffee Organization, often traveling overseas for the World Bank, where it was his wife Lélia that introduced him to a camera, forming a working partnership, as she now edits and produces his work.  Developing an interest in photography while working in Africa in the early 70’s, most notably pictures he took in Niger, Salgado studied photography while living in Paris, initially working on news assignments before developing an interest in photojournalism, specializing in social documentary photography of workers in impoverished third world nations.  One of his first assignments was photographing as many as a hundred thousand mud-covered workers, in lines stretching as far as the eye can see, onto rickety ladders plunging into the depths of deep pits in a mammoth Brazilian gold mine called Serra Pelada in the 1980’s, a bleak metaphor for the brutal history of a Dante Inferno human hell on earth, where the unforgettable images resemble the opening Biblical era slave sequences in Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960), showing the backbreaking efforts of workers slaving under the hot sun pressed in such close proximity to one another that they resemble ants in an anthill carrying packs of dirt on their backs, climbing up and down the precarious wooden ladders all day.  Because of the use of mercury in the gold extraction, the area is now contaminated and the mines abandoned, leaving a giant open pit filled with polluted water. 

 

Working on long-term, self-assigned projects that are eventually published as books, Salgado has witnessed some of the most extreme horrors of human experience—war, poverty, greed, famine, genocide, and disasters.  The film is largely a series of photographs shown in what is essentially a slide show narrated by Salgado speaking about the circumstances under which they were taken, reliving a certain autobiographical period of his life, like a film within a film, where the viewer gets the impression Wenders is examining a fellow documentarian reflecting upon his own work.  While there are lovely, poetic touches throughout, the film is a painstakingly meticulous Robert Flaherty style documentation of the bleakness of the human condition as seen through photographs that couldn’t be more sorrowful and mesmerizing, and while the voiceover narration provides perspective, it hardly matches the power of the images.  In the decades of the 80’s and 90’s, Salgado immersed himself into the middle of some of the most brutally terrible and disastrous events of our age, genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, relentless wars, famine, the pitiful human existence in overrun and medically plagued refugee camps, and large-scale environmental disasters like the burning of the oil fields in Kuwait.  Perhaps based on his economic background, he concentrates on how it is always the poor who are the most vulnerable and the worst effected, showing how easily the privileged class remains aloof and a safe distance removed from these catastrophes, where the weakness and ineffectiveness of the world’s response is equally calamitous, as people continue to go about their lives completely unaffected.  While Salgado and Wenders are obviously personally driven, self-motivated, and wildly passionate about their work, it remains an open question what effect, if any, their work has in influencing the rapidly changing world around them.  The global economy has had a remarkable effect internationally, where land and jobs that were once plentiful have dried up and all but disappeared, leaving behind a blighted stain of toxic pollution and personal horrors.  One can’t help but be dumbfounded by the gut-wrenching experiences Salgado continued to seek out, each one more devastatingly bleak and gruesome than the last, where he witnessed one African genocide after another, watching uncountable numbers of people dying right before his eyes, where despite his deep personal commitment to document these images, one of the few who did, the rest of the world inexplicably preferred to look away.  It’s hard to think of another film that makes such a compelling case for making the most out of one’s life, where one man puts himself on the line repeatedly, risking death and deprivation over an extensive period of time, immersing himself in the most horrible war ravaged regions on earth, using only a camera as his voice. 

 

While it’s hard to know just what drives the man or inspires his work, by documenting Salgado’s efforts with this degree of intense scrutiny, Wenders is immortalizing the power of his art, elevating his own artistic relevance in the process, as if making the case before the world of public opinion.  How can one choose to look away?  Perhaps more than presidents or political leaders, Sebastião Salgado has had an amazing influence on his fellow man, as there are few cameras around to witness human atrocities, few have gone through what he voluntarily witnessed and experienced, adding untold emotional layers of depth through the artistry of his pictures.  One assumes there is a moral imperative behind this work, that the camera has the power to offer a voice to the voiceless, that there is an unmitigated force of good behind every image, as each is so carefully composed in such a distinct social setting.  Who are the disadvantaged that still roam the earth?  Largely invisible in reality wherever they go, so far removed from the mainstream, they resemble the dinosaurs we read about in science books, all but eradicated and extinct in our mind’s eyes, where we’ve lost any personal connection to their “living” lives.  When did their lives start to lose meaning?  It was the documentaries of Robert Flaherty and others that brought these exotic images of people in such faraway places to life, where images we could never conjure up in our limited education and collective imaginations suddenly burst into life onscreen, adding depth and extension to our knowledge, perhaps questioning the playfulness of the filmmaker’s methods, but leaving no doubt as to the cultural accuracy of an ethnically different way of life.  Flaherty’s approach, like Salgado, was to live within an existing community, become familiar with their way of life, and understand their story, so to speak, “before” shooting the pictures.  Who knows what drove Salgado to some of the most extreme places on Earth, spending years on each individual project, like visiting a remote Amazon tribe, having a unique ability to befriend total strangers, becoming embedded within the culture depicted in each individual photograph, where decades later he still warmly remembers not just the context of the photo but the individuals he spent time with.  After three decades, Salgado returns to his native Brazil, retiring to his family farm, united with an adult son he barely knew while globetrotting around the planet, where he undergoes a regenerative rebirth of the spirit, transforming the drought-ridden, dried out lands around him through a major restoration project of building a new rainforest ecosystem, replanting specifically indigenous species native to the region, literally creating new plant life that had died and disappeared, a victim of global climate change, calling it his Genesis project, conceived as a potential path to humanity’s rediscovery of itself in nature.  While he may take solace in finding some degree of natural balance, where he can once again walk along the lush grounds, it’s the harrowing images of his life’s work that will remain imprinted in our collective subconscious, where seeing such large masses of war refugees is particularly disturbing, ghostly images of starving children, displaced people trekking across the Sahara, and they are the lucky ones that survived, where Salgado himself was moved to despair, expressing his outrage, “We humans are terrible animals.”  “Everyone should see these images,” he reminds us, “to see how terrible our species is.”  Somber and profoundly meditative, few films leave such a definitive cinematic impact afterwards.

 

Review: The Salt of the Earth | Newcity Film  Ray Pride

In “The Salt of the Earth,” Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado capture a bittersweet, elegant slice of life of four decades in the career of the great Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado and his epic studies of nature and man’s cruelty. Wenders has said that the collaboration between himself and Salgado’s son almost resulted in two disparate films, but the final mingling of approaches works neatly, especially with the imagery seen on the big screen. Wenders hasn’t had the good fortune to make fiction features in years as richly rewarding as “Kings of the Road,” “The American Friend,” “Paris, Texas,” “Wings Of Desire” and “The State of Things,” but both his personal fine arts photography and his recent documentary work, such as “Pina,” are masterful. The Oscar-nominated “The Salt of the Earth” is no exception. “A photographer is someone literally drawing with light,” Wenders muses before we meet Salgado, in fact, before we see the first of the generous selection of his work, “writing and rewriting the world with light and shadows.” But the shadows are also figurative in Salgado’s dramatic, even majestic work: the mark that mankind, industry and the labor of workers have carved into the face and the runnels and the tunnels of our industrialized world. Salgado is not a cheery man, although an optimist, and a cheeky one at moments. “Our history is a history of wars. It’s an endless story, a story of repression, of madness,” he tells us at one point. Two masters meet, the result is glorious, rich with the contradiction of Salgado’s work: beautiful images of the terror of man’s suffering on earth.

The Salt of the Earth - Time Out  David Ehrlich

Yet another Wim Wenders documentary about a fellow artist (Pina), The Salt of the Earth is but the latest example of the director using his camera as a tool with which he might more clearly see one of his favorite creators. But who wouldn’t be interested in making a movie about 71-year-old Sebastião Salgado, the Brazilian shutterbug whose keen vision and dauntless compassion turned his camera into an indispensable witness of inhumanity as it appeared in the 20th century. But Wenders needs him, as his capacity to tell original stories seems to have atrophied. It’s people like Salgado who have helped the German filmmaker remain such a vital voice.

Early on, Wenders offers a strange admission: Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the subject’s son (and a credited codirector), was already in the process of making a documentary about his dad when Wenders was invited to tag along for an outside perspective. Though Wenders’s transparency is to be admired, it immediately identifies why the film lacks the conceptual dynamism of Pina or the urgency of Lightning Over Water; here, Wenders is trying to eke purpose out of opportunity, whereas usually it’s purpose that drives him to create opportunity.

Wenders’s reverent enthusiasm for his subject is evident throughout the film, and he details every chapter of Salgado’s life with an acolyte’s inability to separate the wheat from the chaff. Tracing Salgado’s evolution from an economist to a poet of light, Wenders layers the Brazilian’s wistful reflections over an exhaustive and consistently breathtaking selection of his monochrome work. Salgado’s most formative images are projected onto a semitransparent mirror as he shares his talking-head testimony, the photographer’s silhouette clouding the photographs (and vice versa) in a succinct expression of how inextricable the artist is from his art. 

Although The Salt of the Earth is peppered with new and archival footage of Salgado at work (it’s a delight to see the old man barrels along a stony beach in order to sneak up on a seal for the perfect shot), the film often plays like an annotated slideshow. One frame at a time, we follow along as he isolates moments from the Ethiopian cholera epidemic to the Rwandan genocide, his faith in humanity wavering with every new atrocity he sees. As the film unfolds, a thick tension develops between what Salgado saw and how he remembers it, the cumulative heft of his photographs weighing on his shoulders, until you start to wonder how he has the strength to get out of bed. “Everyone should see these images,” he concludes, “to see how terrible our species is.” But while Wenders makes the case that Salgado found peace, The Salt of the Earth is powerless to share that sense of self-actualization, this otherwise lovely documentary ultimately letting its subject slide out of focus.

Movie Review: The Salt of the Earth -- Vulture  Bilge Ebiri

When I was a kid in the 1980s, Wim Wenders and Sebastiao Salgado were two of the biggest Capital-A Artists in the world: Wenders, the German director who made stoic road movies full of existential longing and wide-open spaces, and whose films were issued in black VHS editions with a huge "WENDERS" on the cover; Salgado, the Brazilian photographer who took images of suffering and labor and war and ruin and turned them into something sensuous and unreal, whose reproductions populated every middlebrow poster store. They had achieved what serious artists simultaneously dread and fantasize about: They had become brands. But there was a very real achievement beneath the commodification, too. Wenders’s cinematic despair was no less sincere for being fashionable, and Salgado’s willingness to go to the most treacherous places and work under the most intense conditions to get his shots came from a place of genuine artistic inquiry and human anger.

That becomes clear in The Salt of the Earth, a documentary about Salgado made by Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the photographer’s son. It’s a fascinating meeting of three minds, and perspectives. Chief among them is Salgado himself, narrating the story of his life, of how he fled the Brazilian dictatorship and then abandoned a promising career as an economist to pursue a crazy artistic passion. He would traverse the world, using his hauntingly expressive photographs to expose the harsh existence of his fellow humans. Meanwhile, we hear Juliano, the son, ruminating on a father who was often absent, and Wenders, the admiring outsider, brought in by the younger Salgado to collaborate on this bizarre project. Given this fractured-three-ways perspective, it’s surprising how smoothly The Salt of the Earth moves, how gracefully it switches back and forth between the personal and the objective.

The film is steeped in melancholy. Salgado has had success, fame, and money, but he has also spent much of his life among refugees, war victims, and slaves, and he seems to suffer from something resembling post-traumatic stress. Retiring to his family farm, itself devastated by drought, he tries to repair the landscape around it — an attempt, perhaps, to achieve some kind of tangible healing in a world whose wounds he spent so many years portraying.

What about the contention by some critics that Salgado overtly aestheticized human misery? The film doesn’t directly address that, but it probably doesn’t feel it needs to. The whole point of the movie is that Salgado wanted to reveal the suffering of his fellow man. The fact that he found beauty there, at least in this film’s view, speaks not to callousness or opportunism but an honest belief that beautiful art can cross borders and win hearts and minds. The beauty draws you, while the tragedy compels you. And Salgado’s journey also speaks to something more in keeping with Wenders’s work. Here is a man trying to punch away, in his own way, at the indifference of the world. That’s not so different from the director’s earlier road movies.

But perhaps the most impressive thing about The Salt of the Earth is its ability to revel in the work itself. In his documentaries, Wenders has tended to focus on other creative figures. When I interviewed him recently, he said that he thinks the creative process is "the last great adventure left on our planet." And, as he did with Pina and with The Buena Vista Social Club, he’s more than happy to cede the screen to the artist at hand: The Salt of the Earth is replete with Salgado’s photography, and the images, seen in succession on a screen, have a mesmerizing effect. Watching Salgado work — giving up on a shoot because he couldn’t find the right background, for example — you realize the thinking and planning that goes behind the shot. A thing of beauty can also be a mechanism, a network of verticals and horizontals and backgrounds and foregrounds. The result may be ineffable, but it’s still constructed from something by somebody.  The Salt of the Earth lays bare the artifice, even as it lets the mystery be.

The Salt of the Earth - Reviews - Reverse Shot  Jeff Reichert

 

Wenders's Salt of the Earth Captures the Brilliance of ...  Stephanie Zacharek from The Village Voice

 

Wim Wenders Film "The Salt of the Earth" Turns Camera on ...  Andrew Alexander from Burnaway

 

The Salt Of The Earth / The Dissolve  Scott Tobias


Slant Magazine [Clayton Dillard] 

 

Nonfics [Dan Schindel]

 

Cannes 2014 Review: THE SALT OF THE EARTH ... - Twitch  Jason Gorber

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Anne-Katrin Titze]

 

ArtsHub [Sarah Ward]

 

The Film Stage [Brian Priestley]

 

The Salt of the Earth - 4:3  Jessica Ellicott

 

Review: With The Salt Of The Earth, Wim Wenders takes a ...  Keith Uhlich from The Onion A.V. Club

 

Photog Sebastiao Salgado's Empathetic Eye in 'Salt of the ...  Jay A. Fernandez from Word and Film

 

Screen Comment [Pang-Chieh Ho]

 

Sound On Sight (Jacob Carter)

 

Wim Wenders and Juliano Salgado on "The Salt of the Earth"  Dan Schindel interview with filmmakers Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado from Movie Mezzanine, March 26, 2014

 

Hollywood Reporter [Boyd van Hoeij]

 

Variety [Jay Weissberg]

 

The Salt of the Earth - The Guardian  Andrew Pulver, May 22, 2014

 

Cannes 2014: The Salt of the Earth review – photographer ...  Andrew Pulver from The Guardian, May 20, 2014

 

Salgado The Salt of the Earth - Los Angeles Times  Kenneth Turan

 

The Salt of the Earth Movie Review (2015) | Roger Ebert  Peter Sobczynski

 

Wim Wenders on Sebastião Salgado in 'The Salt of the Earth'  A.O. Scott from The New York Times

 

Salt of the Earth (1954 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Wertmüller, Lina

 

LOVE AND ANARCHY (Film d'amore e d'anarchia, ovvero 'stamattina alle 10 in via dei Fiori nella nota casa di tolleranza...')

Italy  (120 mi)  1973

 

Love and Anarchy   Passion and pity, by Patricia Erens from Jump Cut, 1974                        

 

Love and Anarchy   Love, anarchy and the whole damned thing, by William VanWert from Jump Cut, 1974

 

Love and Anarchy   Fear and powerlessness, by Gaetano Bresci from Jump Cut, 1974

 

SWEPT AWAY (Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto)

aka:  Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August

Italy  (116 mi)  1974

 

Swept Away   Wertmüller’s women Swept Away by the usual destiny, by Tania Modleski from Jump Cut, 1976                       

 

SEVEN BEAUTIES (Pasqualino Settebellezze)

Italy  (116 mi)  1975

 

Seven Beauties   Survival, Lina-style, by Richard Astle from Jump Cut, 1977              

 

CIAO PROFESSORE!

Italy  (100 mi)  1992

 

Ciao, Professore!  Michael Sragow from The New Yorker

 

It's a baggy-pants comedy version of "Christ Stopped at Eboli," with Paolo Villaggio as an idealistic third-grade teacher from Northern Italy mistakenly assigned to the squalid Neapolitan village of Corzano. The conflicts he faces—such as how violent and vulgar he must become to connect with streetwise eight-year-olds—are played for guffaws as well as poignancy. Smacking one tough kid anguishes Villaggio, but the director, Lina Wertmüller, thinks it makes him more of a man; she replaces the usual schoolhouse sanctimony with her salt-of-the-earth smugness. As in most inspirational teacher tracts, the breakthroughs come when the students evaluate their lives, not when they learn a discipline. The movie is more likable than the run of Wertmüller films, but it's punch-drunk. Many of the boys and girls are so unvaryingly "lively" you wish Villaggio would try to solve their problems by administering Ritalin. In Italian. 

 

West, Simon

 

THE MECHANIC                                                     C                     73

USA  (93 mi)  2011  ‘Scope

 

You know, I’ve always had a soft spot for Charles Bronson, a guy with a tough looking face who always had a gentle side that usually covered up his ferocious behavior, noted for his break out role as a Bohemian beach bum with a thing for Elizabeth Taylor in THE SANDPIPER (1965), and for his superb performances as a mysterious stranger in Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), as a U.S. Army special investigator who travels to France in search of a rapist, developing an attachment with a beautiful young woman in the romantic psychological thriller RIDER ON THE RAIN (1970), and as a charming but mythical outlaw in an underrated western with a startlingly original storyline in FROM NOON TILL THREE (1976).  Bronson, however, was prone to type, and with his tough guy image ended up being type cast to death, all but ruining his career, as he repeated the exact same role over and over again, such as the lone vigilante Paul Kersey in five DEATH WISH movies over a span of 20 years.  But the early 70’s were some of Bronson’s best years, as he exuded confidence and a seasoned maturity, no more so than as a highly specialized mob hit man in THE MECHANIC (1972).  In the role of Arthur Bishop, he takes an apprentice under his wing, Jan-Michael Vincent, who appears eager to learn the skills of the trade, but in the end there is an obligatory double cross.  Nearly thirty years later, the film is being remade, using the same title, but with Jason Stratham in the Bronson role of Arthur Bishop, the cool, consummate professional whose operations are so meticulously planned out, no one even knows he was there, as evidenced by an opening sequence where a drug kingpin is killed while swimming in his own pool undetected by watchful security guards, as all the action takes place underneath while the surface shows nothing drawing anyone’s attention.  When Bishop gets back to his remote glass house somewhere in the bayou of Louisiana, for relaxation he pulls out a record of the highly distinctive Schubert Piano Trio Andante movement made famous in Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON (1975).    

 

Donald Sutherland in a wheelchair makes a brief appearance as Bishop’s friend and longtime superior, before himself becoming the subject of the next hit, something about a plan going awry in South Africa where several highly trained men ended up dead.  Enter Ben Foster as Sutherland’s volatile, hot-tempered son vowing revenge, a younger kid who seems to screw up everything he touches, so Bishop takes him under his wing and attempts to teach him to channel those emotions rather than be driven by them.  While Foster immediately picks up on the adrenaline of the action, and is a rush of energy himself, his scenes careen out of control because he can’t follow the plan and instead creates a bloody catastrophe with every hit.  The two end up in Chicago where we see them scale high rise buildings and leap from dangerous rooftops, making it all look easy, though we never see any training for this kind of operation.  In the Bronson film, there would be word interplay between the two characters, as Bronson always has a screen personality, but these two have little to say to one another and speak through action scenes where they have to develop a trust with one another.  The film does move with a brisk pace, and the Hollywood action sequences are well designed and deliver the necessary tension, however, as predicted, due to Foster’s presence, their work starts to look very messy, making business look bad, drawing the attention of the superiors, as this is certainly the exact opposite of the victims never knowing a hit man was there.  What follows is Foster gets a hint that Bishop may have been involved in his father’s killing, while at the same time Bishop gets a hint that Sutherland was used as a fall guy and never deserved to be killed.  With this kind of toxic information flying through the air, none of it communicated to one another, the stage is set for a final climax sequence which is highly charged and explosive, but differs quite substantially from the original, which was much more daring than the ending here, which actually has a MAD MAX (1979) feel to it, as if the world out there is nothing but a wasteland.     

 

The Village Voice [Brian Miller]

Jason Statham bares his six-pack before speaking his first line in this humorless, efficient remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson hitman movie. Directed by Con Air auteur Simon West, The Mechanic is all business: the solitary assassin and his mentor (Donald Sutherland), the latter’s ne’er-do-well son (Ben Foster), double-crossing, payback, and guns, guns, guns. Where Bronson, without the benefit of computers or miniature video cameras, had the blue-collar gravitas of working—well, killing—with his hands, Statham conveys serene metrosexual assurance. His unruffled Arthur Bishop is as much IT specialist as assassin: Bond without the wit, Bourne without the psychological trauma. His armory is stocked by Glock and Apple, and his vintage-chic bayou hideout is fit for a Dwell profile (“Mr. Bishop likes to restore tube amps and Jaguars in his weekend home just a short boat ride from New Orleans....”). That Foster’s worshipful apprentice begins to dress and behave just like his teacher, then moves into his home, gives The Mechanic a strongly gay vibe. And when Foster does, in fact, go cruising to kill a rival hitman, it’s like neither man can agree who’s the top. In the original, Bronson worked for the mob. Here, Statham, Sutherland, and Foster are employed by smug suits in Lear jets. If they seem sad and obsolete, they are—The Company Men with guns, but no families or pensions. All they have is their job, and retirement literally equals death.

Time Out New York [Keith Uhlich]

Speed is on this Mechanic’s mind. The remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson–Jan-Michael Vincent cult item moves like a mofo through its opening action sequence, in which rugged hitman Arthur Bishop (Statham) takes down a target with they’ll-never-know-I-was-here ease. It’s a pleasure to watch the granite-faced action star do his own stunts, particularly a death-defying leap from a bridge. Yet everything feels hurried. You can’t help but mourn the loss of the original film’s curtain-raiser, a leisurely paced stalk-and-kill that’s as much about existential angst as it is about slow-burn tension. Here, the badasses have to be in constant, monotonous motion. Depth of character is traded for bloody broad strokes.

And what bloodiness! The film more than earns its hard R, especially when Bishop’s sullen protégé, Steve McKenna (Foster, bringing the committed seethe and simmer), enters the picture. He’s the ne’er-do-well son of Bishop’s old friend and, as fate would have it, most recent victim (Sutherland). The remorseful hit man keeps the kid in the dark about his involvement, all while training him to be a lean, mean killing machine. Until he discovers the horrible truth, Steve works out his dead-daddy frustrations by beating carjackers to a pulp, riddling adversaries with bullets and, in the film’s queasiest scene, repeatedly stabbing a hulking gay assassin with a fire poker. Director Simon West (Con Air) excels at meaninglessly slick exploitation. Yet he sticks so closely to the first Mechanic’s narrative template—even ineffectually redoing its most shocking double-cross—that the deficiencies stick out like the gooey digital brains that spritz from certain characters’ heads.

Combustible Celluloid  Jeffrey M. Anderson, also seen here:  Common Sense Media [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Jason Statham, with his growling, British accent and his working class looks, is one of the best action heroes in years, and he steps easily into Charles Bronson's shoes. The Mechanic -- a remake of Bronson's 1972 film -- is less sprightly and sleek than Statham's Transporter and Crank films, but it adds a bit more heft to the drama. Ben Foster matches him as a small, severely damaged, slightly demented soul who eagerly and easily takes to the assassination game. Donald Sutherland and Tony Goldwyn offer sturdy support.

Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) is a skilled, effective hitman thanks to careful planning. Unfortunately, he gets assigned to take out his boss, and friend, Harry (Donald Sutherland). Harry, it seems, was involved in a bloody double-cross that resulted in the deaths of several good men. After performing this painful job, Harry's son Steve (Ben Foster) comes around and appeals to Arthur to train him for the same line of work. Arthur reluctantly agrees, and after a rocky start the two begin to make a pretty good team. Until, that is, Arthur discovers a clue to the origin of the double cross. A bit of revenge is in order.

On the downside, however, there's the sloppy direction by Simon West (Con Air, The General's Daughter Tomb Raider), who cut his teeth in the Jerry Bruckheimer school of filmmaking. His action scenes are ugly and choppy, and his rhythms are slightly off. When in doubt, he makes things bigger. Add to that some slight script improbabilities, such as Steve's sudden, drastic improvement in skill level, and the movie is knocked down a few pegs. But The Mechanic still provides some solid thrills.

Sound On Sight [Simon Howell]

Jason Statham is the closest thing Hollywood has to an undiluted action star. Stallone’s grown too old, The Rock is struggling to leave Disney-flick purgatory, Gerard Butler seems to fare better in romantic comedies, and Vin Diesel is nowhere to be found. Beyond his early appearance in Mean Machine, Statham has never branched out into full-on comedic or dramatic territory, preferring to stick to what he does best: largely-stoic asskicking turns in largely-mediocre action films. As such, Simon West’s The Mechanic, a remake of the Charles Bronson vehicle of the same name, is an ideal property for Statham: it’s a no-frills, no-bullshit, ultraviolent affair with little in the way of comic relief, love interests, supporting turns or elaborate CGI to distract from its primary objective – blowing shit up.

Statham stars as Arthur Bishop, a “mechanic” (hitman) who specializes in jobs that are made to look like accidents, at the behest of a shadowy corporation overseen by soft-spoken suit Dean (character actor and occasional director Tony Goldwyn). When Bishop gets the order to execute his wheelchair-bound mentor Harry (Donald Sutherland), he is powerless to do anything except follow orders – leaving Harry’s ne’er-do-well son Steve (Ben Foster) devastated. Guilt-ridden, Bishop looks after Steve by way of training him to get back at Bishop’s employers and avenge Harry’s death.

The casting of Foster as the perpetually lost Steve is key to the film’s relative success, lending the movie a weight it desperately needs in the face of its largely rote script. The role of the hard-drinking, vengeful son could have so easily devolved into whiny theatrics or one-note badassery, but Foster exudes a wounded toughness that plays nicely off of Statham’s stony confidence. The “training” portion of the film is its most engaging, with Foster finding himself the bait in an elaborate gay honeypot operation and getting the 101 on how to fake a death-by-autoerotic-asphyxiation. The film’s climax is aptly ridiculous, culminating in vehicular destruction of the highest order and a twenty-one-gun salute that will have haters of Goldwyn’s directorial efforts (The Last Kiss, Conviction) frothing at the mouth. In fact, The Mechanic is most disappointing when it tries to be tasteful, as in a kitchen-set showdown that doesn’t turn out to be quite as grotesque as it appears, and a climactic scene that thwarts what might have been a refreshingly nihilistic ending.

West (Con Air) keeps the action sequences relatively coherent, eschewing both Bourne-style hyperactivity and Michael Bay’s effects-laden mayhem, and thankfully amps the film’s violence to unexpected levels, particularly in the many one-on-one skirmishes. (Top prize goes for gruesome resourcefulness goes to Statham for his use of a fire extinguisher’s pin.) Foster’s nuanced turn, along with West’s pleasantly workmanlike direction and a distinct lack of flabby indulgence, help make The Mechanic a consistent, if hardly revelatory, addition to Statham’s long line of no-thinking-man’s entertainment.

Movie Shark Deblore [Debbie Lynn Elias]

 

BeyondHollywood.com  Brent McKnight

 

ReelViews [James Berardinelli]

 

The Mechanic  Dana Stevens from Slate

 

The Mechanic Review | Listless Bad Assery | Pajiba: Scathing ...  Dustin Rowles

 

The Mechanic (2011) - FILM FREAK CENTRAL  Ian Pugh

 

The Parallax Review [Mark Dujsik]

 

The Mechanic (2011) : DVD Talk Review of the Theatrical  Tyler Foster

 

exclaim! [Paul Duder]

 

Monsters and Critics [Anne Brodie]

 

Moviefreak.com [Sara Michelle Fetters]

 

Smells Like Screen Spirit [Dave Wilson]

 

The Mechanic Is A Sleek Whirlwind of Violence!  Sheldon A. Wiebe from Eclipse magazine

 

New York Observer [Una LaMarche]

 

Commentary Track [Helen Geib]

 

Slant Magazine [Nick Schager]

 

The Mechanic | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club  Josh Modell

 

The Rite, The Mechanic, The Oscars | Hopkins Can't Right 'Rite ...  Joe Morgenstern from The Wall Street Journal

 

DVD Talk [Brian Orndorf]  also seen here:  Briandom [Brian Orndorf]

 

ReelTalk [Betty Jo Tucker]

 

Digital Spy [Ben Rawson-Jones]  including an audio interview (3:58):  > Interview: Donald Sutherland

 

A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity [Adam Lippe]

 

Movie Review: The Mechanic (2011) – RopeofSilicon.com Movie News ...  Brad Brevet

 

MECHANIC, THE   Frank Swietek from One Man’s Opinion

 

Filmcritic.com  Sean O’Connell

 

Little White Lies Magazine [Tom Seymour]

 

n:zone [Daniel Kelly]

 

The Mechanic — Inside Movies Since 1920  Mark Keizer from Box Office magazine

 

NCSU Technician [Taylor Cashdan]

 

Film Monthly.com – The Mechanic (2011)  Jeff Burnham

Jason Statham stays true to himself   Stephen Whitty interview from The Star-Ledger, January 30, 2011

The Mechanic | Movies | EW.com  Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly

 

Variety.com [Brian Lowry]

 

The Mechanic Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London  Derek Adams

 

The Mechanic – review | Film | The Guardian  Xan Brooks

 

'The Mechanic' review: Assassins' tale retold in over-the-top movie  Stephen Whitty from The Star-Ledger, January 28, 2011

 

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Mick LaSalle]

 

Chicago Tribune [Michael Phillips]

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Manohla Dargis

 

West, Ti

 

THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL                               B-                    80

USA  (95 mi)  2009

 

This has all the makings of a classic Halloween film, a director in love with 70’s and 80’s drive-in flicks, an isolated mansion on the outskirts of town next to an empty graveyard, a skittish young college girl hired as a babysitter who creates loads of suspense simply by “exploring” the house, a killer on the loose, a full lunar eclipse scheduled to occur just around midnight, a satanic cult intent on impregnating some unlucky victim, and a soundtrack that loves the sound of overwrought Hitchcock horror music.  Ti West takes his time here, letting the audience know this will involve people who believe in satanic rituals from the opening title credits, and then letting the film simmer at a slow burn where not much happens to cause concern.  The movie and the camera have the distinct point of view of a single character, Jocelin Donahue as Samantha, a smart and inquisitive girl whose curiosity may get the best of her, a girl who resembles the roles of Margot Kidder in horror relics like SISTERS (1973), BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974), and THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (1979), before becoming most recognizable as the annoyingly bossy Lois Lane in SUPERMAN (1978).  From the outset, Samantha is interested in renting a nicer apartment but needs some downpayment cash, so she agrees to a highly paid babysitting job from a strange couple that never seem forthcoming when they announce their needs, as it’s not an infant, but an invalid mother in a room upstairs who most likely will be fine, but might need someone there on the premises in the event of an emergency.  Sounds simple enough?  Creepy sounds envelop the house.  Trouble ensues.

 

What this film has down pat is the set up, as after meeting the all-too-creepy Tom Noonan, the demented killer in MANHUNTER (1986) and Mary Woronov, a walking antique from Warhol’s CHELSEA GIRLS (1966), an aging celluloid couple from Hell, Samantha is left alone in a peculiar house where her innocence is easy pickings for the danger that’s going on inside, a house she readily explores, almost giddily, going room by room, investigating every sound she hears, eventually becoming more and more suspicious, so she resorts to carrying a large butcher knife around with her.  But the film’s shining moment is Donahue dancing around the house to her Walkman playing the song “One Thing Leads to Another” by the Fixx (1983), where she’s literally bouncing off the walls, the furniture, and the staircase, oblivious to all that remains hidden from her, which happens to be a satanic ritual taking place upstairs just waiting for her expected arrival, which only heightens the audience’s suspense level even more, as they know something is up.  But this doesn’t materialize until near the end of the film where she frantically has to fend off the Devil’s helpers who’ve been busy altering her mind and body with knockout drugs, satanic bondage, and the devil’s blood, all of which serve an evil purpose that she couldn’t possibly know or understand, so plenty escapes her as she tries to find a way out of the madness that has all but engulfed her.  There is a bloody mess at the end, but few, if any, frightful moments, as the long lead-in for something awful to happen dwarfs what actually happens, little of which is actually shown.  While much remains ambiguous, as the audience, subject to her point of view, is clueless to much of what happens, it’s not difficult to surmise that by the end even death can’t stop her from coming under the clutches of the awesome power of the Evil One, the one who’s been stringing her along the entire time.      

 

The House of the Devil   JR Jones from The Reader

From its freeze-frame credits onward, this indie horror flick by Ti West aspires to the silent, low-boiling dread of 70s drive-in shockers like Black Christmas (1974) and Last House on the Left (1972). Desperate for cash, college student Jocelin Donahue accepts an oddly lucrative babysitting job at a remote house, where she's fussed over by creepy owners Tom Noonan (Manhunter) and Mary Woronov (Rock 'n' Roll High School). Given the opening title about the prevalence of rural satanic cults, you'd have to be an idiot not to know where this is headed. But in keeping with his models, West is concerned with not suspense exactly but the ritual withholding and ultimate lavishing of bloody chaos. With Greta Gerwig. R, 91 min.

Village Voice (Nick Pinkerton) review

The Devil, apparently, lives in an out-of-the-way gingerbread Victorian, just past the cemetery, where college sophomore Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is lured for overnight housesitting by an elegant, forbidding couple (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov, both queerly over-intimate). Though its poster and opening title freeze-frames threaten '80s kitsch, House of the Devil drops the quotation marks quick, lingering over wet autumn atmosphere in a couple of well-scouted locations (under-populated campus; cold, quiet house). Pumping the audience with inhale-exhale zooms and out-of-the-way close-ups, director Ti West's ratcheting of suspense in this alone-in-an-empty-house tale is proficient, if not psychologically piercing, in the best Let's Scare Jessica to Death fashion. What makes House stand out above the bad crop of October horror is Donahue, who commands the frame as soon as she is left alone by her out-of-tune best friend (and mumblecore alum), Megan (Greta Gerwig), who oppresses every scene she plays with strenuous cutesiness and sticky line-readings. Gravely gorgeous in the style of a storybook Snow White, Donahue gives eloquent reaction shots and nails West's pièce de résistance—a bounding, Walkman-soundtracked, Jazzercise dance through the house. Would that this scene's control carried into the finale, panicking into videocam illiteracy just as a steady hand is needed most.

Time Out New York [Keith Uhlich]

Ti West’s slow-burn horror movie is cast with numerous cult icons, past and present—from Cujo mom Dee Wallace to mumblecore muse Greta Gerwig. The film’s grainy textures make it seem like a found object from the locale and era (a slasher-flick version of an American college town circa the 1980s) that it re-creates with loving fidelity. But West isn’t having a nostalgic laugh, plopping period trappings onscreen for their remember-those-days recall value. He’s out for something more timeless: to induce paralyzing fear.

College student Samantha (Donahue) is in desperate need of rent money. So she answers a babysitting ad that takes her—on the night of an eclipse, no less—to an old, dark house owned by the Karloff-like Mr. Ulman (Noonan, who makes a brilliant, half-obscured entrance). Ulman sheepishly explains that Samantha won’t be looking after a child, but after his semi-invalid mother-in-law who, he insists, will be sleeping in her room the whole time. All the girl has to do is hang around downstairs in case of an emergency while Ulman and his morgue-chic wife (Woronov) go out for the evening—$400 for four hours of work.

Despite her reservations (and since this is the age of Reaganomics), money wins out. Samantha’s soon moving freely and curiously around the house, watching the Late Show, jumping at shadows and slowly uncovering a much more sinister plot. When the Karo syrup finally hits the fan, the film loses its footing some, but only because no concrete explanations could possibly do justice to West’s expert buildup. He’s far more adept at and interested in sustaining an unrelentingly ominous mood than in executing the genre-required spook shocks.

The Onion A.V. Club review [B+]   Noel Murray

If nothing else, Ti West’s retro “Satan rules!” thriller The House Of The Devil gets the look and tone of early-’80s horror schlock exactly right. West shoots on grainy, muted color film, and relies a lot on low angles, slow dolly shots, and a spare, creepy score to build tension during the long stretches of the movie when absolutely nothing is happening. Most of the action takes place in a big, spooky old house in the middle of the woods outside a small college town, and The House Of The Devil is set in 1982, at a time and place where the modern still seemed not too far removed from the ancient, the primal… the arcane.

Jocelin Donahue plays a college student fed up with her dorm-mate and eager to earn money for an off-campus apartment. She answers an ad from a couple looking for a babysitter, but after her best friend drops her off at a creaky Victorian manse, Donahue discovers that the couple (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov) doesn’t have a baby at all. Instead, they have an aged parent who needs monitoring, and though Donahue protests that she has no experience with eldercare, Noonan insists that Mother mainly takes care of herself, and that all Donahue will have to do is order pizza, watch TV, and collect $400. Then the pizza guy shows up, and the night takes a very bad turn. 

The House Of The Devil is paced at a crawl, and outside of one early shock, it takes more than an hour for anything even remotely resembling “horror” to occur. (The final 20 minutes is intense, though.) The deliberate style may be a deal-breaker for those who come to The House Of The Devil expecting an outright gorefest. This is more a movie for genre cultists, who want to immerse themselves in all the throwback details: the feathered hairstyles, the spiral phone cords, a thesaurus-sized Walkman blaring a song by The Fixx, and so on. From the opening statistic about documented instances of devil-worship, West aims for a mix of the plausible and the ridiculous, revisiting a world where a knock at the wrong door at the wrong time could end with a person pinned to a pentagram and covered in sacrificial blood.

Sound On Sight (Ricky D)

New York horror director Ti West (The Roost, Trigger Man) makes it clear in his new project The House of the Devil, that he is a fan of the conventions of 1980s horror. House of the Devil hearkens back to the days of late 70s grindhouse cinema, complete with a synthesized rock soundtrack (one of the best soundtracks to any horror film), a freeze-frame opening credit sequence marked with yellow title cards and a cast that includes Mary Woronov (Silent Night, Deadly Night) and horror veteran Dee Wallace-Stone (The original Hills Have Eyes, The Howling) who makes a small cameo.

Set in 1982, House stars Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), a college student preparing to move into an apartment with her friend Megan (Greta Gerwig). In need of money to facilitate the move, Samantha responds to a babysitting gig for the Ulmans (Noonan, Woronov). You’ve seen the story time and time again but West does it better than most and makes some very clever decisions. Despite its many red flags, the director manages to include the assortment of warning sings without making anything too obviously threatening, so when Samantha takes the job for an exaggerated $400 a night, you believe anyone else would too. It also helps that Samantha has her friend come along to keep close watch just in case something does go wrong. Of course, all hell breaks loose, and Samantha does indeed find herself in the house of the Devil.

West is not interested in cheap shocks and scares but rather takes a simple situation and spins tension out of it through careful craft. He’s a patient film maker, and makes great use of long sequences and static shots with an assortment of oddly askew camera angles, each camera positioned deliberately for creative reasons. He’s built a career on his preference for slow-building tension, atmosphere and suspense as opposed to fast-paced action, sex and splatter. His direction is smart, subtle, and passionate, and he likes to test the patience of his audience before rushing into its climax.

The harsh, jarring tone of the musical score steals the show and makes for one of the most nerve wrecking scores in recent memory. Composer Jeff Grace and audio designer Graham Reznick create an atmosphere that suggests something terrible can happen at any moment, leaving you gripping on to your seat in anticipation – yet West still makes room for an eclectic selection of rock/pop tunes highlighted by a sequence in which Samantha dances about, (Walkman replacing Ipod) to the sound of Fixx’s “One Thing Leads to Another”.

Eliot Rockett’s cinematography nails the feel of the early 80’s, and the film is almost entirely shot at night or in dark interior spaces, benefiting the horror awaiting Samantha. The film is so carefully detailed and perfectly attuned to the style of the 80’s that one could actually mistake it for an 80’s production, and the Quantum Creation FX gang (who gave us the effects for Splinter) once again showcase their talent despite a minimal budget.

House of the Devil is not a perfect film, and much like the 2009 hit The Strangers, it’s an exercise in style that is short on story. The already too-familiar plot mixing of Halloween and Rosemary’s Baby may disappoint some, and unfortunately it is devoid of any real payoff, but House proves that the journey is always more terrifying than the destination, making it a remarkable entry into the horror genre.

Pajiba (Dustin Rowles) review

I doubt that many people born after 1980 would have much nice to say about House of the Devil — it’s not an homage, spoof, or parody of a certain subset of early ’80s horror films as much as it actually is one of those movies. If you’d heard nothing about it and picked it up, casually, at a DVD store and watched it at home, you may never realize that it’s a 2009 movie, and it certainly shares nothing in common with its contemporaries, with their big-chested squealers, buff heroes, and Rob Zombie soundtracks. Horror nubiles simply might not understand House of the Devil.

On first blush, the idea behind making a 1980 horror film that’s neither a remake or a sequel sounds itself as gimmicky as the other options, and cheaper, too. Exchange CGI effects for some bad hair and a rotary phone, and voila(!), right? Writer/director Ti West, however, doesn’t just settle for period-appropriate details; he nails the look, feel, tone, film grain, score, and pacing of an actual ’80s occult film. It is precise. Indeed, Ti West has done for ’80s horror what Black Dynamite did for blaxtploitation films, by recreating rather than re-imagining. The result, ironically, is that House of the Devil is not just one of the best horror movies of 2009, but of 1981, as well.

The premise is brilliantly simple: Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), a college sophomore desperate for cash to pay for the first month’s rent on an apartment she’s just leased, agrees to take a strange, last-minute babysitting job for a strange man and his wife on the very night of a lunar eclipse. Samantha doesn’t realize until it’s too late, however, that she’s being set up for use in a satanic ritual.

It really is as straightforward as that. There are no b-plots, twists, or even boogeymen. Save for about 20 seconds around the half-hour mark, nothing really happens for the first hour and 20 minutes of The House of the Devil, which is very much a part of the movie’s appeal. Those familiar with late ’70s / early ’80s horror films, especially those that dealt with the occult (including, say, The Exorcist) may recall the seemingly interminable periods of dead space. There is no tension and release. No comedic moments to break the spell. It’s just a long meticulous, sometimes tediously sleepy build toward its creepy finale. The momentum is slow, but steady, gaining steam not by presenting a series of jump scares and a progressive body count, but by teasing your imagination. To that end, The House of the Devil also suffers, slightly, from the same problems that plagued many of those ’80s films in that nothing the filmmaker presents could ultimately compete with the horrors you conjure in your own mind. But here, at least, it’s nothing approximating a let down.

Indeed, in the end, it is the pacing and atmospherics that set The House of the Devil apart from every other horror movie of the year, or decade, even. The suspense is lingering and prolonged, and the tension slowly builds, ratcheting, tightening its grip, seemingly testing your endurance. There’s really only one potential victim in The House of the Devil and only one narrative focal point, so there’s nothing else to distract your attention away.

What’s truly remarkable about The House of the Devil, however, is that this throwback gimmick never feels like a gimmick at all. There are no nods or winks toward ’80s conventions; it’s very matter of fact, and never distracting. It’s just an outstanding wet-your-pants scary movie that feels like it was released 30 years late.

The Horror Review [Steven West]

Hammer to Nail [Michael Tully]  also a director interview October 28, 2009:  my conversation with West

Salon (Stephanie Zacharek) review

PopMatters (Cynthia Fuchs) review

Film Monthly (Jason Coffman) review

Mark Reviews Movies [Mark Dujsik]

The Horror Review [Horror Bob]

Slant Magazine review  Nick Schager

RAISING HELL: Style vs. Substance in THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL  Brian Matus from Fangoria, November 3, 2009

Cinematical (Eric D. Snider) review  shorter review here:  The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [B+]

The L Magazine [Henry Stewart]

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [3/5]

Bloody-Disgusting review [4/5]   Brad Miska (Mr. Disgusting)

 

Pastemagazine.com [Sean Edgar]

Quiet Earth [Jason Bounds]

CHUD.com (Devin Faraci) review

Fantastic Fest 09: HOUSE OF THE DEVIL Review  Todd Brown from Twitch

Twitch (Simon Abrams) review

Monsters and Critics  Ron Wilkinson

CompuServe (Harvey S. Karten) review

filmcritic.com (Chris Cabin) review [3.5/5]

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review [3.5/4]

 

Oh, the Horror! [Josh G.]

 

FilmJerk.com (Brian Orndorf) review [B+]  also seen here:  Briandom [Brian Orndorf]  and here:  DVD Talk

 

FeoAmante's Horror Thriller (Terrence Kelsey) review 

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir]

Interview: 'House of the Devil' Director Ti West  Todd Gilchrest interview from Cinematical, October 29, 2009

 

The Hollywood Reporter review  Rick Honeycutt 

 

Entertainment Weekly review [B+]  Lia Schwarzbaum

 

Variety (Peter Debruge) review

 

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [3/5]

 

Los Angeles Times (Robert Abele) review

 

Los Angeles Times (By Andy Klein) review

 

Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips) review

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3/4]

 

The New York Times (Manohla Dargis) review

 

Westby, James

 

RID OF ME                                                                B-                    80

USA  (90 mi)  2011                    Official site      

 

This is like a horrible social experiment gone wrong, as uncomfortable as any horror flick, where low self esteem is taken to new heights in this low key, ultra sarcastic Mumblecore take on the hypocrisy of the complacent and comfortable middle class, where what appears to be a typical marriage turns into a psychotic side show.  Married for less than two years, this seemingly happy couple is forced to admit financial defeat career wise as the husband Mitch (John Keyser) has to return from Southern California back to his home town in Oregon where his old high school friends have a job waiting for him.  His wife Meris (Katie O’Grady) has serious reservations about what to expect as she’s leaving everything behind to seek new grounds.  When a surprise party awaits them at their new home, it’s like an invasion of all the juvenile antics left behind in high school, where Mitch fits right in, one of the missing pieces of the old gang, while Meris is immediately exposed as a fraud and an outsider, as she’s not one of “them.” Despite all the superficial smiles to supposedly make her feel welcome, no one reaches out for her and Mitch ignores her pleas of how terrible it makes her feel to have to socialize with people who despise her.  Mitch is welcomed home in style, happy to be with the friends he left behind, and can’t believe the rush of how good it feels after having to admit personal defeat, but he’s no help whatsoever to Meris who is continually humiliated.  When she finally makes a friend on her own, a couple down the street with a newborn baby, the gang gasps in dismay as the husband is from the Middle East, the subject of an FBI interrogation, where they all suspect he may have terrorist connections with al Qaeda, making derisive racial comments with apparent ease, which horrifies Meris, as no one found their remarks at all ugly and hateful.  Welcome back to high school. 

 

Written, filmed, directed, edited and produced by Westby, shot entirely in Portland, Oregon in twenty days, the director makes no reference to the infamous, similarly entitled PJ Harvey song and little use of the geographic region, such as the mountains, ocean, forests, or streams, as the entire film seems to have been shot on the same few city blocks of the Multnomah Village neighborhood, which in the film is called Laurelwood.  This world hasn’t changed since the days of Eisenhower, throwing lavish attention at themselves as strong, upstanding citizens, while deriding anyone from outside their neighborhood who doesn’t meet their high moral standards.  This sneering communal judgment hits Meris right between the eyes, even after she gives up her Middle Eastern friendship, leaving her totally dependent on her bullying husband, not where you want to be when your self esteem level hits an all time low.  When a dinner party turns disastrous, Meris’s drunken ramblings send the film into catastrophic territory, which all but guarantees viewers will be squirming in their seats.  What follows will leave them spinning their heads in disgust, outraged at the turn of events, as Mitch cruelly ends the marriage to return to his high school sweetheart, whose holier than thou mother is Theresa Russell of all people, who like an attention seeking, leader-of-the-pack, cult parent somewhat fatalistically endorses this return to high school social status, as if this somehow makes everything right in the world, where she’s back in the limelight, literally stealing her daughter’s thunder every chance she gets, overprotecting her special little princess that she squeezes in a vice grip of Barbie perfection. 

 

You’d think the poor girl Meris had had enough and would take the first stage out of town, but instead she obsesses over her missing husband and gets a job in a candy shop where the film finally finds its outsider theme in the form of an outlandishly dissatisfied punk employee Trudy, Orianna Hermann, easily the best thing in the film, who finds that getting wasted is her solution for every problem.  Soon she’s got Meris hanging out with the punk girls whose Fuck the World attitude has her smiling and dancing in the streets, making fun of the straight crowd her husband hangs with, as they behave like overprotected suburbanites who never had to grow up and face reality.  Meris slides back and forth into self loathing, becoming more than a pathetic caricature of a woman who hates to look in the mirror, as she’s literally thrown her entire life away for a group of assholes that couldn’t care less.  But the more time we spend around Trudy, the healthier we feel, despite her persona of negativity and disgust, as she’s simply the most uplifting character in the film—whatever that’s worth.  The film itself can be god awful to watch, showing wretchedly bad taste, and is a bitter pill to swallow with bad indie music swirling around in all directions, but it cynically blasts the complacency of the overbearing middle class that sits around on their asses all day feeling good about themselves, where their brain activity has all but been turned off post high school.  In that respect, the film, through Trudy, rings loud and clear.  Unfortunately, the star of the show is Meris who has to undergo as much nonstop torture and personal humiliation as any von Trier actress, which will likely divide audiences.  Anyone who suggests this movie is crap would not be wrong, but it has a surprisingly ingrained subversive message.  Do not miss the scenes before the opening credits, however, as they set the stage for everything that follows, as this weird, off putting little drama is a scathing indictment of a morally vacuous yet self-satisfied American contentedness. 

 

Time Out New York [Sam Adams]

Think of it as a coming-of-age story ten years too late. Meris (O’Grady), aimless housewife to a dot-com washout (Keyser), relocates to her husband’s Oregon hometown, where he takes a job working for his high-school buddies. He falls back into a routine of ball games and racist jokes, while Meris, to her credit, can’t find common ground with his friends’ catty, superficial spouses. Despite pumping herself up for an awkward gathering by repeating the phrase “You’re a social butterfly,” she could still take self-esteem pointers from a punching bag. Soon, she’s divorced, penniless and stranded in a small town. By now, our heroine’s doormat act has worn out its welcome, but when a candy-store coworker (Herrman) introduces her to the belated joys of teenage rebellion, we finally see a spine beneath the character’s thin skin.

Writer-director James Westby draws his characters with a broad brush, thickening the mixture with horror-movie music cues and abrupt zooms; Meris eventually outgrows her delayed adolescence, but the movie retains a penchant for snotty snap judgments. O’Grady, at least, gives a nuanced performance, even if she appears to be doing an uncannily accurate impression of Kristen Wiig. When we flash back to happier days or forward to her brutal recriminations, the disparity can be shocking. It’s a hallmark of her transformation, but also of a unformed life finally finding its shape.

RID OF ME  Facets Multi Media

Meris (Katie O'Grady) has just moved to a picturesque neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, with her hunky new husband Mitch (John Keyser) and high hopes of domestic bliss. However, despite her attempts to fit in, her dreams of a perfect marriage are doomed, as Mitch's old friends (think thirtysomething Mean Girls) reject Meris and set out to rekindle the sparks between Mitch and his buxom high school sweetheart. When the gang succeeds, Maris is brutally cast out of her home and despite becoming quite depressed, she decides to stay in town. Eventually, she finds a job at a local candy shop where she meets and connects with a group of fellow social misfits who introduce her to Portland's outsider scene, which includes black eyeliner, the grimy underworld of the Northwest punk scene, self-discovery, community gardening and 1960s Cambodian rock music!

Filmmaker James Westby (The Auteur) pairs subversive cinematic language with a lively soundtrack and imaginative visual compositions to create a surreal comedy replete with awkward moments of absurdity. From the stunning opening scene, newcomer Katie O'Grady delivers a winning performance as Meris, who inhabits the inner workings of one woman's quest to be herself even when she is on track to becoming someone else. Rid of Me is a splendid example of true independent cinema, which boldly presents an innovative vision and a distinctive experimental style which is ingenious and adroitly handled.

Culture Blues [Jeff Hart]

If the Tribeca Film Festival gave out an award for Best Use of Menstrual Blood in a Narrative Feature, Rid of Me would be a shoo-in. The film opens in a supermarket with Katie O’Grady’s goth’d up Meris shoving a hand down the front of her skinny jeans and smearing horrified Rockstar Supernova alum Storm Large’s face with period blood. As a nation, I think we’ve grown too comfortable throwing around the term “dark comedy” for anything a little left of center, assured that menses face-palms wouldn’t be involved.  If writer/director James Westby set out to reinvigorate dark independent comedies, he’s done it.

Rid of Me follows O’Grady, an introverted weirdo, as she relocates with her surprisingly hunky husband to his hometown. There, she finds herself alienated by his suburban, jockish, Stepford sorority circle of friends. What follows is a literally and figuratively colorful downward spiral, from stammering housewife into vamped up punk-chick.

I’ll admit to hating Rid of Me for about the first half-hour. O’Grady is, at first, a difficult heroine to root for. In early scenes, she seems to be channeling any number of squirrely creepster characters Kristen Wiig has trotted out on SNL. Her supporting cast, at least the polo-shirt clad suburban half, are meant to be doltish for the sake of Westby’s satire, but they often seem to get there via dinner theatre level acting. Westby has no qualms about making his characters emotionally hideous, and that might be a difficult hurdle for some viewers to clear.

Despite the shaky start, Rid of Me eventually reeled me in. I began to genuinely root for O’Grady. At its heart, beyond the sometimes too elitist us vs. them satire, Rid of Me is a story about finding yourself. O’Grady’s journey is one that I think even the most jaded viewers will find commonalities with and even the squares in the audience should eventually come around to the crazy bitch who commits period blood assault in the opening scene.

Westby also possesses an invigorating visual style. Scenes are punctuated by characters posing for the audience, often in ways evocative of their emotional state. It’s like an album of Facebook pictures, and the audience is the photographer. It’s a fun film to look at. Westby has a fresh eye and is undoubtedly a bold filmmaker, something we could always use more of.

Rid of Me isn’t for everyone. For awhile, it wasn’t even for me. Still, it manages to be a comedy both unflinchingly dark and genuinely heartfelt. At worst, it’ll alienate and annoy you. At best, it might be a new cult classic.

Movieline  Alison Willmore, also seen here:  Movie Line [ALISON WILLMORE] (English)

Rid of Me, James Westby’s scrappy dramedy about marriage, divorce and finding your inner punk rocker, begins with an act that makes flipping someone off or putting a brick through a windshield look passé. It takes place in a grocery store, and is the kind of ballsy, juvenile and legitimately shocking gesture that indie films used to chase after because studio features would never dare. These days the division between the two realms is fuzzy at best, but this film, which premiered earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival, recalls when a little roughness in form and content was part of the charm.

Meris Canfield (Katie O’Grady), our heroine and the perpetrator of the Grocery Store Incident, didn’t start off as the heavy-eyelined scary chick she’s become in the intro. At the outset of Rid of Me, she doesn’t really seem like the stuff around which a movie could be based. There just isn’t much too her, physically (“She’s lovely! Thin is in…?” attempts one insincere complimenter) or in terms of personality. A timorous, mousy girl with wide blue eyes and a smile just barely on the verge of sane, Meris is moving to Oregon from Irvine with her husband Mitch (John Keyser), who’s taken a job back in his hometown of Laurelwood. She adores her spouse, a bluff, beefy guy who talks about being embarrassed that he’s slinking back home in defeat but effortlessly rejoins his childhood friends, a matched set of suburbanite jocks who seem to have been waiting impatiently for his return to the fold.

Meris is a housewife — “I love to cook,” she repeats in conversation like a mantra — and her isolation in the new town combined with her inability to mesh with Mitch’s friends soon has her fraying at the edges. She has nothing in common with the three couples, who operate, with a edge of surreality, like a solid unit (or a cult), always together. The men are always glued to a sports game, mock tussling or reminiscing about high school misadventures, while the wives survey her skeptically as she struggles for things to say. Rid of Me, which Westby edited himself, makes frequent use of jittery jump cuts that recall nervous blinking, but tends to linger on Meris as she tries to make conversation, letting her every excruciating botched attempt to fit in linger. The gulf between her and Mitch grows wider with every uncomfortable social gathering (“You’re a social butterfly Meris,” she says, trying to psyche herself up in front of the mirror). She tracks dog shit onto one of their white carpets, she causes their softball team to lose, and she burns dinner — and when Mitch’s ex girlfriend moves back to town, a perfect fit amongst the rest of these perfectly groomed, well-off, slightly racist folks, it becomes clear there’s no place for Meris.

So, halfway through the movie, Meris has to start over, alone in a town where she knows no one and no prospects. And this point is where Rid of Me shifts gears from an almost-thriller about a psychological breakdown to slow-building joyous journey in saying “Fuck it all,” as our lonely, soft-spoken protagonist gets a menial job at a candy store and befriends Trudy (Orianna Herrman), a frazzled punk girl who takes Meris under her wing, gets her drunk, gets her awkwardly laid (by Everclear’s Art Alexakis, even) and presents a snazzy alternative to desperately trying to fit in, which is to not fit in at all. Rid of Me doesn’t cutesy up Meris’s sudden change in lifestyle, just allows it to be a natural outgrowth of not having anything else to cling to — if, say, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, the opposite should be true as well. And these scenes, at a karaoke club, a bowling alley, in a parking lot, capture the giddy feeling of not giving a damn, even if it’s variety of emotion more commonly found in rebellious teenagers than fully grown former homemakers.

Rid of Me is a ragged film that doesn’t always work. Beyond just the midpoint shift, it does seem frequently uneven tonally, and the heightened reality of Mitch and his friends isn’t shared by the rest of the film. The jumpy editing annoys as often as it adds to the feel of the film — there are segments in which it seems the filmmaker worried the audience would get bored if there were fewer than three cuts per second. But the film’s never cloying sincerity is a winning quality, all tied into a heartfelt performance from Katie O’Grady, who inhabits Meris fully through her several transformations in search of her true self. It’s a bittersweet ode to downward mobility and letting go that’s a throwback to a time when slackerdom was more of a lifestyle choice than something forced upon you by grim economic realities.

Slant Magazine [Andrew Schenker]

 

Smells Like Screen Spirit [Don Simpson]

 

Review: The Suburban Horror Of Unhappiness In 'Rid Of Me ...  Gabe Toro from The indieWIRE Playlist

 

MovieBuzzers [Melissa Hanson]

 

NewCity Chicago   Ray Pride

 

Village Voice [Nick Pinkerton]

 

Hollywood.com [Sam Morgan]

 

ColeSmithey.com [Cole Smithey]

 

Director interview  Sharon Abella interview from 1 World Cinema, April 5, 2011

 

Katie O'Grady interview  Kristin McCracken interview of the actress from Tribeca Film, November 11, 2011

 

Huffington Post [Erica Abeel]

 

Rid of Me: Film Review - The Hollywood Reporter  John DeFore

 

Variety Magazine [John Anderson]

 

Los Angeles Times [Steven Zeitchik]

 

New York Times [JEANNETTE CATSOULIS]

 

Wexler, Haskell

 

MEDIUM COOL                                                       A                     97

USA  (111 mi)  1969

"There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in 'high definition.' High definition is the state of being well filled with data.... Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience."
—Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964

A historic mile marker when viewed as either cinema or history, a time capsule of a different era, seen here as a specific time and place, adding a fictional dramatic story among actual footage of the street violence erupting at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago where protesters gathered to demonstrate against the continuing war in Vietnam, but shown through a distinctively radical style not only for its day but of any era.  Wexler, a superlative Oscar winning cinematographer, winning the award twice in five nominations, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and BOUND FOR GLORY (1996), though his uncredited work in Terrence Malick’s DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978) while eventual award winner Nestor Almendros was losing his eyesight should not go unnoticed, has crafted a monumental film that challenges the public’s ability to challenge and decipher truth through the oftentimes distorted lens from the mass medium of television, defined by Marshall McLuhan (McLuhan, Marshall) as a “cool medium.”  From this day forward, as the film proclaims, “The whole world is watching,” but how accurate is our judgment about what we are seeing?  Robert Forster, who made a career in made-for-TV movies before being offered to play a leading role in Tarantino’s JACKIE BROWN (1997), plays a hardened local news cameraman (in a role originally offered to John Cassavetes), a guy who gets the money shots for the ten o’clock news but is shown little flexibility from his employer to examine human interest stories, believing the public has a short attention span and all they’re interested in are murders, accidents, or other acts of violence that leave a city reeling under a perception of neverending turmoil, where the only black people (other than athletes) to make the news are violent offenders.  After the deaths of President Kennedy (November 1963), candidate Bobby Kennedy (June 1968), and social activist Reverend Martin Luther King Jr (April 1968), urban cities like Chicago erupted in a firestorm of uncontrolled violence, all of which played right into the hands of white television producers who had a field day providing video coverage, all of which fanned the flames of racial hostility, as ever since blacks have been disproportionately viewed on TV as dangerous criminals.  The film opens with Forster getting the shot of an accident on a highway, Medium Cool opening sequence (1969) - YouTube (4:12), never even bothering to help the victim, simply phoning it in as is the usual routine—interesting that a similar shot bookends the end of the film, only under a completely different contextualization by that time.  Interesting also that Peter Bonerz, the dentist on the long-running Bob Newhart TV show, plays the sound man who accompanies Forster on his news stories.  Also, it was unusual to hear so much of the Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” speech a year after his death, a complete departure from other films from that time, as he was not commemorated with a holiday until 1983, nearly 15 years later, and not officially observed in all 50 states until the year 2000.  His speeches have become synonymous with that holiday.    

 

Simultaneous to a look at the news coverage is the actual news story, featuring previously unseen documentary footage of the National Guard undergoing riot preparation before the convention, complete with battle formations, tanks, tear gas, and night sticks in simulated rehearsals designed to maintain control of the situation, in anticipation of what was expected to be plenty of arrests, leading to actual footage of police releasing tear gas, where one of Wexler’s assistants can be heard yelling out “Look out Haskell, it’s real!” Look out Haskell, it's real! - YouTube (30 seconds).  In another fictionally dramatized thread, Verna Bloom plays a recently displaced single mother from Appalachia living in the overcrowded slums of Uptown along with her 13-year old son, Harold Blankenship.  Both offer standout performances where the degree of realism displayed contributes to the authenticity of a documentary feel.  Blankenship, especially, in his personal, evocative portrayal plays a vital role in this film, becoming the overlooked human interest story that news crews routinely ignore.  This film does an excellent job in establishing perspective.  There are flashbacks to spending time with his father in West Virginia, where he is given the misguided, sexist advice that only a man can rule his home environment, a theme that seems to parallel the response by Mayor Daley in Chicago, who felt only he could protect the citizens of Chicago from outside agitators, overreacting badly to a perceived threat that largely never happened.  In hindsight, most of the violence in Chicago was initiated by the misguided actions of a police force that nightly stormed what were relatively quiet and peaceful parks with tanks, tear gas, and night sticks in order to enforce arbitrary curfew violations, even though the city had no provisions for where these protesters could go.  After three nights of getting their heads bashed, by the fourth night of the convention the students fought back in bloody retaliation, most of it captured by TV news crews filming live on the streets as the Democrats were nominating Hubert Humphrey for President, a man whose aspirations were derailed on that very night.  1968 DNC: Democratic nightmare in Chicago YouTube (1:15).

 

Perhaps the best sequence in the film is the occasionally humorous aftermath of a black cab driver who finds $10,000 lying on the floor of his cab and turns it over to authorities, who immediately question the man’s sanity, as do his own friends and family.  Forster is part of a news crew that puts his face on the nightly news.  Smelling a larger story, perhaps a connection to drugs, Forster pays the young man a visit in his home on the South side of Chicago the next day, where he is immediately put on the defensive by the shark infested waters of black activists who smell blood on their turf, challenging the very essence of what this man does for a living, asking what business he has coming to the black community, a part of the city that is routinely lied about and distorted night after night by guys just like him.  In reality, none other than Studs Terkel, listed in the credits as “our man in Chicago,” helped mediate a safe passage by the film crew into that neighborhood for a scathing, oftentimes hilarious exposé on racism.  Mike Bloomfield, one of the driving forces of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, provides much of the guitar-heavy soundtrack, where vintage songs by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention appear as well poking fun at the fickle youth playing hippies for a day, such as “Who Needs the Peace Corps?” america is wonderful (from "medium cool" by ...  YouTube (2:57), footage likely shot at the Electric Theater/Kinetic Playground at 4812 N. Clark Street in Chicago, opening April 5, 1968, the day after the Martin Luther King assassination.  There are some extended wordless sequences and brilliant edits in this film, not the least of which is using Wild Man Fischer’s highly unorthodox song “Merry-Go-Round” Merry Go Round by Wild Man Fischer - YouTube (1:56) during an extended roller derby brawl, segued to a sex scene by a couple (including Forster) sitting in the front row, or a long shot from the inside of the convention where the tone shifts radically by the use of the song “Happy Days Are Here Again,” which continues to play over footage of the riots outside as bloodied heads keep getting bashed in by the police.  Wexler places himself in the historic final shot as the audio track of the riots rolls through the end credits.  This film has serious political overtones that are just as appropriate today, feverishly asking more questions than it can answer about the unchallenged power television has in our lives, featuring constantly in motion camerawork that is nothing less than spectacular, and remains one of the best films ever shot in the city of Chicago.     

 

Time Out review

Focusing on a news cameraman's responses and responsibilities to the world framed through his lens - in particular, the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention and its attendant political riots, during which parts of the film were shot - ace liberal cinematographer Wexler's feature debut as director is a fascinating though not wholly successful fusion of cinéma-vérité and political radicalism. Already under the FBI's gaze for his civil rights and socialist documentaries, Wexler was actually accused of inciting the Chicago riots (the script was registered a year before); later he would again be subpoenaed over Emile de Antonio's film on the Weather Underground, which he shot. Recent movies owing a sizeable debt to Medium Cool include Newsfront and Circle of Deceit.

National Film Registry screening notes

A seminal film of 60's independent cinema, Medium Cool came into existence as a pet project of renowned cinematographer Haskell Wexler (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, In the Heat of the Night, Days of Heaven). Wexler spent $800,000 in personal funds (much later reimbursed by Paramount) to craft this angry blend of reality and theater, set against the backdrop of the tumultuous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Interspersing actual footage from these chaotic events (ironically some of the riot footage was later subpoenaed by the government), Wexler used the character of a TV newscameraman to discuss weighty issues of personal/professional ethics, idealism and responsibility. Whose purposes should news footage serve? What is the place and responsibility of an individual in a society marked by out-of-control chaotic turmoil?

The film's title is a not-so-subtle play on Marshall McLuhan's designation of television as "the cool medium." Despite Medium Cool's idiosyncratic, forceful pushing of the traditional filmmaking envelope, critical comment was laudatory. Vincent Canby of the New York Times called Medium Cool "a film of tremendous visual impact, a kind of cinematic Guernica,' a picture of America in the process of exploding into fragmented bits of hostility, suspicion and violence."

Unfortunately, despite enthusiastic critical reviews, studio indifference to the film and the "X" rating (result of a creatively ecstatic bedroom scene--one that Vincent Canby dryly noted: "should give lust a good name") diminished the number of people who saw this complex, challenging, at times perplexing film, dubbed by Wexler as "a wedding between features and cinéma vérité." Disillusioned by the bitter experience, Wexler for the next several years abandoned commercial filmmaking for experimental forays into radical cinema (Brazil: A Report on Torture, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine and others).

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [4.5/5]

Where is the line between fantasy and reality? Check out Medium Cool and you'll have trouble finding it. Pioneering cinematographer Haskell Wexler got the bright idea that the 1968 Democratic National Convention would be a hotbed of riots (with Vietnam in its worst years, MLK recently assassinated, and a growing movement fed up with the government) and he was right. Wexler decided to make a (fictional) movie set during all of this -- but rather than wait until it was over and done with, he took a group of actors to ground zero, tossed them in among the cops and the protesters, and had them "act."

The result is one of the most vibrant and eye-opening films ever made, a bit of fantasy that seems devastatingly real -- because, in large part, it is.

Robert Forster smolders as Chicago TV cameraman John Cassellis, jaded but calmly professional as he coldly documents car wrecks and generous cab drivers, waiting for the Convention to arrive. Meanwhile, he has a few romps in the hay, with a sultry nurse named Ruth (Marianna Hill) and a single mother from Appalachia named Eileen (Verna Bloom), caring for her son in one of the worst slums of Chicago. As Cassellis becomes entwined with Eileen, becoming a surrogate father for the boy, he loses his job and apparently his mind as well -- all while the politically-charged world he lives in begins to melt.

Wexler's creation is masterful -- a hyperrealistic look at the world that should make Robert Altman (who, for some reason, gets massive praise for the dull
Nashville) hang his head in shame. While the circumstances around the making of the film itself is enough to elevate the movie to classic status, the end result is equally impressive. Notably, Wexler introduces some of the best music cues ever -- with a roller derby's audio track slipping over into a sex scene, as well as "Happy Days Are Here Again" playing over the riots (beat that, Tarantino!). The story -- about a jaded America during the 1960s -- has become more relevant than ever.

Originally rated X, Medium Cool has just been reissued on DVD, complete with a telling commentary from Wexler, consulting editor Paul Golding, and actress Hill. Wexler's context is outstanding -- but Hill, who is only in about 5 minutes of the movie, has little to do but cringe and squeal when her (fully) nude scene pops up. Oddly, that makes it even more compelling.

A must-own for any cineaste.

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [4.5/5]

This unique film is part documentary and part fiction; it effectively erases the boundary between the two, making you wonder if it really exists at all. As is evident in the recent flap over factual errors in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, documentaries do not always tell an objective truth; but fiction films are seldom completely fiction, filled with characters who are based on real people in the filmmakers' lives, and events taken from real events. This film skillfully manipulates viewer expectations of fiction and nonfiction. During a riot scene late in the film, when tear gas is rolling over massed protestors, a careful ear (more careful than mine, since I missed it) can hear an offscreen voice shout at director Haskell Wexler, "Watch out, Haskell, it's real!" In this film, it's hard to tell.

The film asks probing questions about the role and responsibility of the media and the effectiveness of a single person in a chaotic situation. Robert Forster plays John Cassellis (the part was supposed to be played by John Cassavettes, and the character's name was modified when Cassavettes had to withdraw), a news cameraman. We follow him as he goes about his job, and it is his unqualifiable morality that is most intriguing. An early scene shows him and his sound man calmly filming the aftermath of a horrific car wreck before calling the police; this footage is followed by scenes at a party where the revelers argue the role of the media as either dispassionate observers or powerful actors.

Cassellis stumbles on a story about a black cab driver who found an envelope filled with money in his cab and turned it in to the police; when he insists on following up on it, he and his terrified sound man journey into a largely African-American neighborhood to interview the man. This scene is one of the first that blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction: the angry black residents of the house tease and threaten him, but somewhere in there they stop playing characters and start talking directly to the camera about their fears, their justified anger at white society, and the reasons why someone might pick up a gun and start shooting. It's a supremely uncomfortable scene, and the segue Wexler uses to get to the next scene is jolting and brilliant.

These bridges between fiction and reality, and comments on the line between the two, abound. Cassellis and his girlfriend attend a roller derby (the 1960s equivalent of "professional" wrestling). Cassellis becomes involved with a poor woman (Verna Bloom) who lives with her son in utter poverty in a slum; the character is fictional and played by an actress, but the slum and its inhabitants are real, and the film doesn't flinch at their poverty. There are also bitter ironies that Wexler couldn't have foreseen. Cassellis is furious when he finds out that some of his footage has been used by the police and FBI to identify suspects; later, Wexler's footage of the 1968 riots was subpoenaed by the federal government.

The last quarter of the film is devoted to the riots that occurred outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. Here, the line is completely gone. Verna Bloom wanders around the grounds of Grant Park, moving between groups of protesters and nervous policemen. The National Guard arrives with tanks; the news cameras are sent away; protesters sit in the street, mostly peacefully, but with some shouting anti-police epithets. Through it all, through the beatings and the tear gas and the terrified protesters and the angry policemen, Bloom wanders, looking for her son. Because I knew what happened at the convention, this portion of the film was like watching a train wreck in slow motion; it's a wonder that Bloom and Wexler weren't injured or arrested or separated. It was a difficult, stomach-churning experience to watch; it gave me that tight, anxious feeling in my chest that I get when I fear that something terrible is going to happen.

One might think that Wexler was a lucky SOB that the riots in Chicago happened while he was shooting, but he says that he had a feeling that Chicago was going to be a mess that summer. August, 90 degree heat, a convention where the party elite gathered in complete ignorance or opposition to their constituents, thousands of police and National Guard soldiers present... yeah, it wasn't hard for him to guess. The strongest image in the film shows protesters shouting "The whole world is watching" as they are beaten by police; the tragedy is that it didn't stop the police from doing it. During the filming, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Maybe Wexler thought he was making a document of the end times. Maybe he wasn't that far off.

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review

What possessed Paramount at this date and time to release Medium Cool is a mystery - here's a film that never made a commercial dent, and directly confronts political controversy. Yes, it's a cinematic landmark and is written up in every text about film and politics and media versus reality, but that's not what you expect studios to give a whit about .... obviously someone at Paramount really cared, and bless 'em.

A documentary-like examination of the violent year 1968, filmed from inside the events at the Chicago Democratic convention that became the focus of the anti-war movement, Medium Cool looks and plays better than it did when new. Unlike many an avowed counterculture epic of the day, the arguments, technique, values and ethics of this amazing picture haven't dated. If anything, it communicates better now than it did then.

John Cassellis (Robert Forster) is fired from a television news program for taking an interest in the subject matter of his work, and for protesting that his superiors are forwarding his news film to the FBI. Leaving his nurse girlfriend Ruth (Marianna Hill), he becomes involved with a Mother and son new to the Chicago slums from Appalachia, Eileen (Verna Bloom) and young Harold (Harold Blankenship). John attaches himself to a docu crew covering the convention, just as Eileen takes to the streets to search for the runaway Harold ... right in the middle of the very dangerous antiwar demonstrations.

Savant saw Medium Cool new in 1969 and responded with some intelligence for a 17-year-old, yet it's important to admit up front that I saw it at a military theater, and was initially attracted by its original X rating. A lot of specifics escaped me, but some messages and images went straight into my skull: the idea that the media distorts the news, and could be easily suppressed, and that the police riots I saw on the television the year before were real.

Through its terrific commentary track, this new disc can address the specific mysteries and concerns that Medium Cool has always raised: How much of the show was docu? Were those actors or real people? The most pressing question was always, how did they get the yellow-clad actress Verna Bloom in the middle of all those real events? I'd always assumed they tossed her in there and made up a story to fit the scenes, afterwards.

The commentary, by filmmaker (and revered cameraman) Haskell Wexler, editor Paul Golding, and actress Marianna Hill, reveals that the movie was not made by magic, only by very intelligent people with brilliant ideas. This was one of the first films I'd ever seen with a 'verité' look, with music that was an important part of the story, with European shooting and cutting techniques unseen in American feature films.

The revelations about the filming are impressive, especially the idea that as early as January 1968, before the assassinations, even, Wexler and co. were writing scenes to take place amid the anticipated riots in Chicago. Like the 'summer of love' the year before in which we heard everyone was going to go to San Francisco, in 1968 the word on the street was that it was 'all going to come down' in Chicago at the convention. The anti-war movement was still a grassroots protest thing and not yet the media circus it later became, with hippies and yippies and Nixon's counterattack and fatuous pop music pretending it was issuing calls to revolution. Chicago indeed became ground zero for this major event. It's when I decided it was time to think for myself, poorly informed as I was. Even my parents were impressed by the images of Mayor Daley's police riot.

The commentary fills in many essential incidentals. Jesse Jackson is one of the speakers seen in a brief Washington DC segment. A protester's tent camp is shown, erected in sight of the Washington Monument, the telling kind of detail that puts the lie to the rubbish version of history shown in trash like Forrest Gump. The anti-war movement was composed of fundamentally concerned citizens, not a minority of political opportunists as always portrayed.

Haskell's camera was only able to enter black neighborhoods in Chicago through the intervention of Studs Terkel, and with the cooperation of the black citizens themselves. And while clearly liberal (defined here as open-minded, concerned with truth and not the status quo), the filmmakers admit their desire to present a point of view they felt was going unexpressed. They present, for instance, the National Guard as relatively benign, except as a harbinger of more use of the military against the public. Mayor Daley gave his cops direct orders to teach the longhaired flag-burners a lesson, and isn't given the same benefit of the doubt.

There is an agenda here. We hear some taunts ("Pigs eat shit" etc.) but don't see flags being burned or any of the other stunts used to attract the media. A famous scripted scene has Ruth goading John about the phony docu film Mondo Cane, where the suffering of an irradiated sea turtle dying on an island was exploited: did the Italian filmmakers rescue the turtle when they were done? Wexler plays sophisticated games with the whole issue of media responsibility, starting with a shocking traffic accident scene on an empty road. John and his soundman (Peter Bonerz, later a comedian) film the victim, and then just leave her there to move on to their next story. Wexler shows a rich woman behaving in an elitist manner, and immediately contrasts it with the kind of urban slum where kids play naked in the street and vandalize cars. The National Guard practices for urban crowd control, pretending to be the protesters they'll face, and portraying them as clownish troublemakers.

Some of the scenes are real and some others obviously scripted, as when a very young Peter Boyle is shown teaching suburban women how to use firearms. The movie is so fresh that its few obvious messages (as when the song 'Happy days are here again' plays against the bloody faces of demonstrators) stick out in strong relief.

It's all very effective, much more so than satiric attempts to confront real issues in feature films. I'm thinking of The President's Analyst, a superior comedy with subversive jabs at government conspiracies and suburban vigilantism that just came off as a wacky joke back when it was new. Medium Cool's multileveled game of what is real and what is media-generated, made me think back then, and still makes me think now. Wexler has some chilling things to say on the commentary, mainly that the cops' only mistake in '68 was to use their thug methods on the press - they beat reporters and roughed up Dan Rather. The media turned against Daley, the cops, Nixon and the war right then and there. Wexler follows that up with the stinger that now our Media are fully in line with the government, and no longer the independent force they once were. His suggestion that our police forces have become military organizations certainly rings true.

Haskell Wexler's skill as a dramatist rarely surfaces in discussions of Medium Cool. His direction of actors is so good that you think the little hillbilly kid isn't acting at all. Professional actress Verna Fields comes off as an authentic West Virginian. There's some technical full-frontal nudity in a scene between Forster and Marianna Hill that was shocking beyond belief back then, yet now seems benign. Ms. Hill reacts with modest restraint on the commentary track, but nobody comments why they felt the movie needed that kind of controversial content. The impression is that the movie earned its X more for its profanity and dangerous political attitudes. When the picture gets intellectual in the camera-looking-at-the-camera ending, it strives for artsy significance, and succeeds better than most. A lot of the show zoomed past this curious 17-year-old, but I did get the message of 'The whole world is watching!' loud and clear.

Paramount's Medium Cool looks as if the negative elements have been sitting in a time warp waiting to be transferred for this DVD. The 16x9 enhancement helps prove that it was shot 35mm; it doesn't look grainy or hastily improvised. The sound is clear, and, yes, those are Frank Zappa songs in the middle of the show, making fun of phony hippies. The menu design is clear and functional. The feature has a new R rating up front, but the old X rating card remains at the end, a nice touch. The cover art features a flag burning in the design, exactly the kind of imagery this film avoids, and doesn't need in these very edgy times for civil liberties. God bless America: anywhere else, they'd have burned the elements for Medium Cool long ago.

Movie House Commentary  Tuna

 

DVD Times [Gary Couzens]   again in a more condensed version here:  VideoVista review 

 

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) dvd review [3.5/5]

 

The DVD Journal [Kim Morgan]

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

 

DVD Verdict (Barrie Maxwell) dvd review

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Joel Cunningham) dvd review

 

Movie Magazine International review  Monica Sullivan

 

All Movie Guide [Mark Deming]

 

The House Next Door [Vadim Rizov]   in a time warp known as the present

 

Apollo Movie Guide [Jeremy Heilman]

 

The Z Review [David Macdonald]

 

The Spinning Image (Graeme Clark) review

 

Movie Reviews UK review [4/5]  Damian Cannon

 

TV Guide

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [4/4]

 

The New York Times (Vincent Canby) review

 

LATINO

USA  (105 mi)  1985

 

Chicago Reader (Dave Kehr) capsule review

No one would deny that Haskell Wexler's heart is in the right place, but this soggy piece of leftist fiction is just about impossible to sit through. Robert Beltran (who played the final course in Eating Raoul) is a Mexican-American--a Vietnam vet and an unswerving patriot--who is sent to Nicaragua as a CIA "adviser." Earnestly he sets about doing his job, but it doesn't take him long to notice that his contra comrades are all bloodthirsty maniacs and that the Sandinistas (epitomized by the beautiful woman with whom he falls in love) are gentle, idealistic, peace-loving people, who only want to be left alone to till their humble fields. In other words, Wexler doesn't have too many startling twists up his sleeve. It's one of those movies that flag their love for "the people," but, with their simplifications, sledgehammer didacticism, and shopworn melodramatics, evidence little more than a contempt for "the audience." With Annette Cardona, Tony Plana, and Luis Torrentes.

Time Out review  Geoff Andrew

 

After the impressive but inevitably compromised Under Fire, it's good to see a movie that deals with conflict in Central America with a real sense of commitment. Wexler's brazenly partisan film may lack the artistic sophistication of its mainstream counterparts, but it gains in power by focusing not on the familiar 'neutral' journalist/photographer figure, but on an invading American soldier, a Green Beret lieutenant (Beltran) drafted to Honduras to train a platoon of 'Contras' for secret raids on Nicaragua. There he becomes embroiled not only in the infliction of death, torture and US propaganda upon the Sandinistas, but in the contradictions of his position. First, he's a Latin American himself; second, he falls for a woman working in Honduras who hails from the village that is his prime target. Wexler's methods involve passion rather than 'balance': black-and-white moralising may occasionally be the result, but there's no denying the emotional punch dealt by the assured combination of taut narrative and intelligently researched context.

User comments  from imdb Author: ANDREWEHUNT (ANDREWEHUNT@aol.com) from Canada

If good intentions translated into great film-making, then I wouldn't be the only person reviewing this movie, and everybody would be giving it a score of 10 on IMDb. Even though this is a well-meaning film, it has justifiably gone on to become a lost historical relic of the 1980s. I actually saw this film at a fund-raiser in Los Angeles and Haskell Wexler was there. Everything about the film was dreadful. The acting, the pacing, the plot development, the screenplay. Robert Beltran plays a sort of combination CIA/Special Forces-type of commando who trains Contras in Nicaragua and falls in love with a journalist. Their relationship develops against the backdrop of the Contra war in Nicaragua. There's little chemistry between them on screen, and the film fails to engage the audience on all fronts: as a love story, as a film about war and warfare, as a drama. There were other, much better films about Central America from the period: Oliver Stone's gritty Salvador (1986) and Roger Spottiswoode's epic/fast-paced Under Fire (1983). This film just sort of disappeared. I don't even know whether it's available on DVD. Maybe I'm being harsh--it has been 20-plus years since I've seen it. And the good intentions were certainly there.

Latino and the Chicano warrior in the U.S. national body  Barbara Korte from Jump Cut, Spring 2008

 

The New York Times (Vincent Canby) review

 

Whale, James

 

HELLS ANGELS

USA  (127 mi)  1930  d:  Howard Hughes           uncredited directors:  James Whale and Edmund Goulding

 

Time Out

 

The Hughes folly over which he laboured for nearly three years, going through a slew of directors (including Luther Reed, James Whale and Howard Hawks) at various stages in the hope of making the greatest and most impressively realistic flying movie ever. Saddled with an atrocious boy's own paper plot about a good brother and a bad brother, both in the Flying Corps and clashing over a girl, the end result is barely adequate. But it does feature a spectacularly elaborate World War I dogfight, and an equally fine Zeppelin sequence. And of course there's Harlow, unflatteringly lit and making a nonsense of the plot by playing her character as an unmistakable floozie, but undeniably making an impact.

 

DVD Savant [Glenn Erickson]

Hell's Angels started as a silent film and took so long to make, it had to be largely reshot when talkies came in. It was easily one of the most expensive films of its era. Aviation and tool works magnate Howard Hughes produced it as a pet project about his favorite subjects, flying and womanizing. The story is unusually violent, racy and profane, even for a pre-code talkie. And it introduced to the silver screen the sex sensation of the 1930s, Jean Harlow.

Presenting a sterling transfer of the UCLA Film Archive's restored version, this DVD resurrects a reel of two-strip technicolor that includes the only color footage ever shot of Jean Harlow ... and her hair really is platinum blonde.

Prewar Germany. After seducing a German officers' wife, the wayward Monte Rutledge (Ben Lyon) weasels out of a duel of honor. His ethical brother Roy (JamesHall) secretly takes his place. Surviving, Roy rejoins Monte at Oxford and is unaware that Monte is making moves on his new girlfriend, the beautiful Helen (Jean Harlow, billed originally as Harlowe). War breaks out and the brothers' German friend Karl (John Darrow) is repatriated to fly dirigible raids over London. Both brothers join the RAF for different reasons and are soon in France flying suicidal raids over enemy territory.

The main reason for Hell's Angels' popularity is the spectacular flying filmed and re-filmed for years by Howard Hughes. Paramount's Wings had shown exciting aerial combat but it pales in comparison to Hughes' two major flying sequences, which made a minimal use of special effects and miniatures. Almost all the aerial scenes including star closeups were shot while aloft and the realism is at times stunning. Thirty or forty biplanes careen through the sky in one close combat sequence. Hughes' flyers were a rough bunch of veterans eager to make big money and just as eager to prove their stuff on camera. Many shots look as though the pilots were taking some heavy risks.

The first flying scene is a giddy combination of expert special effects and anti-Hun sadism. Pacifist good-German Karl is the bombardier on a dirigible crewed by Kaiser fanatics. He misdirects their bombs away from Trafalgar square and into a lake. When the RAF closes in the German commander lightens ship by sacrificing his crew, ordering them to jump to their deaths. It's a disturbing and macabre scene. I'm given to understand that the main dirigible model was built on a vast scale, and when it explodes (in crimson tints) the effect is staggering. It really looks huge.

Hell's Angels also gave Hughes an excuse to rebuild a German Gotha biplane bomber for the final battle. It's actually James Hall strapped into the open-air gun position up front, in what has to have been the most dangerous acting assignment of the era.

Self-styled tough guy Howard Hughes had his writers concoct a story with plenty of his favorite subject matter, loose women and battling male egos. Everywhere the student heroes go there are willing barmaids and society wives to seduce, until the brothers finally come up against the blonde bombshell herself. Jean Harlow is ludicrous as an English socialite but we soon ignore her accent in favor of watching her slink around in skimpy costumes; she's pre-code glory all the way. For Hughes, women were unreliable playthings and Harlow's Helen exists only to humiliate one brother and reject the other. Just when we think she will be redeemed and the lovers reconciled, she opts for big-time harlotry in a petting party with a drunken British officer. The boys have to make do with other good-time girls.

The language is pretty raw as well. The flyers shout very atypical dialogue from plane to plane: "Jesus Christ!" and "You son of a bitch!" Hughes apparently could ignore the censors, something he couldn't repeat for his next filmic outing The Outlaw, which also took years to film.

The film has some interesting politics. The war is seen as a hypocritical travesty and Hughes seems to agree with a street agitator that it is folly to fight in a war that is really about the profits of capitalists. The soapbox orator is labeled an anarchist and beaten by the crowd. But that line of reasoning is later adopted by the "bad" brother Monte and equated with plain cowardice. The only true love and loyalty in the movie is represented by "good" brother Roy; he selflessly takes Monte's sins upon himself until the very end. Compared to the romantic excesses of later stories like The Dawn Patrol, Hell's Angels is hardboiled to the extreme. Captured by the sinister Germans and accused as spies, the brothers' fate is not sentimentalized.

When sound came in in mid-production Hughes scrapped the entire dramatic side of his story and had it reshot with spoken dialogue. Some silent intertitles are still there to translate the German in the dirigible sequence. James Whale was brought in to "stage" the dialogue scenes but the experts say that he basically directed them as well. An English evening dance party was also re-filmed in two-strip Technicolor.

Jean Harlow was a last-minute replacement for a silent actress with a heavy foreign accent. You can't say that she is a good actress but she's certainly the shape of things to come. A full-blown screen goddess in the modern mode, Harlow's sexual attraction hasn't dated a bit and she set the standard for what could be gotten away with in the pre-code era.

DVD Times [Mike Sutton]

 

The Greatest Films - comprehensive analysis of classic US film  Tim Dirks

 

Tao Yue

 

Hell's Angels - TCM.com  Rob Nixon

 

VideoVista [Alasdair Stuart]

 

Classic Film Guide

 

Shane R. Burridge

 

CineScene.com (Chris Dashiell)

 

The New York Times (Mordaunt Hall)

 

WATERLOO BRIDGE

USA  (81 mi)  1931

Waterloo Bridge (1931)  Bryant Frazer from Deep Focus

The pre-Code Waterloo Bridge doesn’t boast early Barbara Stanwyck, but it’s a lot more fun than Baby Face. And auteurists may suspect the reason why — the man behind the camera was no less a heavyweight than James Whale. Granted, when he made Waterloo Bridge he was not yet the James Whale — but it’s said that when he finished this one his studio bosses at Universal were so impressed they gave him the run of the studio to select his next film, and of course he opted to make Frankenstein, casting his Waterloo star Mae Clarke as Elizabeth and working again with ace D.P. Arthur Edeson, who would go on to shoot They Drive By Night, The Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca.

It’s no Bride of Frankenstein, but Waterloo Bridge is real good stuff nonetheless. As the film begins, stage sets are being struck and Myra is saying goodbye to her gig as a chorus-line girl and setting off into the London night. A couple of years later, the rent is past due, England is at war, and Myra is still walking the streets, selling her body to dallying soldiers on leave. One of those soldiers is Roy (Douglass Montgomery, then billed as Kent Douglass), a cute but sappy blonde too dull to identify a prostitute when he sees one. It turns out to be a happy mistake, since he’s likable enough, and by the time he’s fallen in love with her, the feeling is starting to be reciprocated. But Roy lives among the swells (Bette Davis shows up there, too), and Myra feels deeply unworthy.

This could be torturous, didactic stuff, but Whale’s touch is light. An early scene set backstage at Myra’s theater is played for pure bubbly sex appeal — a troupe of singers and dancers making lots of noise in their underwear — and it contrasts with the chilly joylessness of her later life in the city, where sex appeal is a commodity. Clarke plays Myra as a sensible woman, but worried, inwardly tortured, and prone to outbursts. Montgomery’s Roy is a big earnest lug, all strong silence and masculine lumpiness. Whale stages the dialogue with considerable finesse for an early sound filmmaker (I was amused to see the original New York Times review — written by one Mordaunt Hall, which sounds like a pseudonym for Joel Coen — devoting most of a paragraph to cataloging exciting elements on the soundtrack), and the photography is generally lovely and evocative — including impressive optical/miniature shots looking across Waterloo Bridge, over the water, and into the city at night, floodlights swinging back and forth to illuminate the sky.

It’s fun all the way up until the very last scene, which amplifies and terminates the melodrama with alarming speed and clumsiness. Again, that’s the price of life in the pre-Code era, when a woman’s foolish and immoral ways were met with a stern lecture or a sudden bout of profound remorse if she was lucky; the wages of sin if not. (Myra, it turns out, is especially luckless.) The result is a deeply unsatisfying climax to a very well-tooled, if lightweight, romance.

Waterloo Bridge (1940) - TCM.com  Margarita Landazuri

 

Classic Film Guide

 

DVD Times - Forbidden Hollywood Collection Volume One  Gary Couzens

 

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson)   also reviewing the Forbidden Hollywood Collection (Volume One)

 

DVD Verdict-Forbidden Hollywood Collection (Volume One) [Rob Lineberger]

 

Monsters And Critics [Frankie Dees]  also reviewing the Forbidden Hollywood Collection (Volume One)

 

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle)

 

The New York Times (Mordaunt Hall)

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

FRANKENSTEIN

USA  (71 mi)  1931

 

Time Out

A stark, solid, impressively stylish film, overshadowed (a little unfairly) by the later explosion of Whale's wit in the delirious Bride of Frankenstein. Karloff gives one of the great performances of all time as the monster whose mutation from candour to chill savagery is mirrored only through his limpid eyes. The film's great imaginative coup is to show the monster 'growing up' in all too human terms. First he is the innocent baby, reaching up to grasp the sunlight that filters through the skylight. Then the joyous child, playing at throwing flowers into the lake with a little girl whom he delightedly imagines to be another flower. And finally, as he finds himself progressively misjudged by the society that created him, the savage killer as whom he has been typecast. The film is unique in Whale's work in that the horror is played absolutely straight, and it has a weird fairytale beauty not matched until Cocteau made La Belle et la Bête.

A Film Odyssey [Rob Humanick]

 

1931 was a banner year for American horror films, the genre jumpstarted by the near-simultaneous release of Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein, the popularity of which would spawn dozens of sequels, imitators, and rip-offs in years to come (the pattern only to be replicated with the emergence of Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Voorhees nearly a half-century later). Both are regularly considered classics, but while Dracula was seemingly filmed so as to recreate its stage play source material rather than adapting it to the screen (resulting in meandering, lethargic production, Lugosi’s presence notwithstanding), Frankenstein is truly tour-de-force cinema, tremendously flexing the newfound opportunities available to the medium (such as basic editing, camera tracking, use of close up and long shots, etc.), so commonplace now that they are unfortunately taken for granted. To watch Frankenstein is to relive a time when the sound picture was still young, but it is a grand work regardless of its innovative technical mastery.

Frankenstein opens with a warning to the audience, advising them that the faint of heart may want to consider leaving before the shocking and horrifying story gets underway (an ironic precaution, considering that even PG-13 films of the genre today regularly feature dismemberment and gore in levels inconceivable at the time). While its ability to cause audience members to faint in their seats has certainly diminished, in contrast to the upped gore quotient now commonplace (not to mention Mel Gibson’s recent religious contribution to the cinematic world), Frankenstein’s psychological inquiries remain both striking and potent, its morality-lined narrative brimming with existential hurdles on both ends of the scale. Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive), driven by his pursuit of greater truth, bestows life upon a body created from dead corpses; the result is quickly dubbed a “monster” and rejected by all around it, the unmerited hardships it so quickly encounters earning scornful retribution. The formers God complex certainly raises questions as to how far man should go in the name of science, but the film makes no suggestion that a higher being exists to judge the unfolding events. Man and his creation must instead judge themselves compared to each other, their ability or inability to coexist the ultimate test they must wage with each other.

Culture often lends itself to misinterpretations, one of the more egregious examples in both literature and cinema being the association of the title Frankenstein not to the scientist from whom the name is drawn, but instead to the monster he creates. While this wrongful association most likely arose out of sheer laziness, the confusion also reflects the fact that the creator and his creation are, in many ways, two sides of the same coin (exhibited no better than the intimidating cutting between the two while trapped in the windmill). Dr. Frankenstein strives to validate his existence through conquering the impossible, while his creation, the result of said impossibility, is unable to find fulfillment for even the most basic of human needs. No scene in the film is more tragic than the monster’s first (and only) pleasant human encounter. Having escaped from captivity into the countryside, he comes upon a young girl playing by a river. Here, Karloff’s childlike nuances are most soulful, having finally found a companion who sees him as a fellow, rather than sometime to be scorned. The two briefly enjoy tossing buoyant flowers into the water, his sewn-together hands awkwardly grasping their tiny petals, but his eyes in complete wonder as to their beauty. The fun is cut short, however, when the monster mistakenly assumes that the young girl shares the same ability to float; immediately after tossing her off of the bank, he realizes his mistake, and stumbles fearfully away from the scene of the crime.

Karloff is deservingly remembered for his moving portrayal of the childlike monster, but it would appear that the wrongful association of him to the film’s title has also slighted the work of Colin Clive as the monster’s creator. Brimming with flawed ambition and strung out beyond delusion, his performance may very well be the ultimate portrayal of the mad scientist, every line of dialogue delivered as if his very sanity hangs in the balance. After the infamous storm sequence in which life is bestowed on the lifeless body – a miniature masterpiece of crackling scientific instruments, thundering sound effects and fearful onlookers – his half-manic screams of “It’s alive!” are enough to send trembles throughout all five senses. Nearly the entire film is pitched at such a level, marred only by the occasionally overdrawn expository sequence, as well as a closing scene that doesn’t provide half as much closure as it should (a forgivable trait, for it left the door open for what would become one of the greatest sequels ever made). Small quibbles, really. Now if only people would get the damn name right.

 

Turner Classic Movies   Felicia Feaster

Director James Whale's adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein became an instant horror classic when it premiered in Santa Barbara in 1931. As remarkable for its grasp of elemental horror as it is for its visually arresting set design, the groundbreaking Universal film set a new standard for the genre that has continued to influence contemporary film.

Frankenstein opens on an eerie, atmospheric note at a hillside funeral that looks like a set piece for the German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Whale, in fact, screened Caligari as well as The Golem (1922) and Metropolis (1927) to refresh his memory of German Expressionism, a notable influence on the striking look of his Frankenstein.

Assisted by the hunchback Fritz (Dwight Frye), probably the most famous mentally deficient sidekick in horror cinema, Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) can be seen in the film's opening waiting for the funeral to end so that he can dig a freshly buried corpse out of its final resting place before skulking back to his gothic lab. That night Dr. Frankenstein sends Fritz to a local university to carry out the final step in his reanimation project -- to steal a brain to use in their experiment crafted from stitched-together corpses. But Fritz mistakenly selects an "abnormal" criminal brain, which when placed in the creature unleashes terror on their small Bavarian village.

The scene where the Monster inadvertently drowns a village girl Maria (Marilyn Harris) was deemed too shocking and deleted from the film upon its original release, though it was later reinstated. Mindful of the macabre aspects of its production, Universal also added a prologue to the film, spoken by Edward Van Sloan (who also provided an epilogue, now lost, to Dracula,1931) was also added, to warn viewers of the shocking nature of what lay ahead.

Though Frankenstein had been made into other film versions, including a 1910 Edison Company production, a 1915 version called Life Without Soul and the Italian Master of Frankenstein in 1920, none of them offered as memorable a movie monster as the one created by Boris Karloff. And though a flurry of movies were inspired by Whale's penultimate horror film: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and many others, none has yet matched the original power of a film which broke important ground in two regards: in its representation of a scientist who tampers with power reserved for God and of a monster who is not entirely evil, but has sympathetic qualities too.

Tod Browning's Dracula, released 10 months prior to Frankenstein, had a significant impact on Whale's film. Dwight Frye, as Fritz, had also played Dracula's half-wit assistant Renfield in Browning's production of Bram Stoker's novel and that film's Van Helsing - Edward Van Sloan - was recast in Frankenstein as Dr. Waldman. And Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula was so memorable and successful in that film he was initially cast to play the Monster in Frankenstein. Lugosi, however, was said to be outraged by the prospect of playing such a one-dimensional half-wit, preferring the role of Dr. Frankenstein. Nevertheless, he attempted to play the monster but his interpretation was deemed too sensitive and understated. Though Shelley's 1816 novel had featured a sympathetic monster, Universal wanted a more sinister creature so they hired 43-year-old B-movie veteran Karloff to play the role and the actor worked hard with Universal's makeup artist Jack Pierce to insure that their malevolent creation would be unforgettable.

Pierce, who also created the look of Bela Lugosi's Dracula, researched the look of the Monster for three months. Pierce studied anatomy, surgery, medicine, criminal history, criminology, burial customs and electrodynamics, before he even began the grueling daily 5 hour make-up application (followed by two hours of make-up removal) to create Frankenstein.

As part of creating this innovative movie monster, Karloff was also given boots to increase his height to seven feet six inches. The boots weighed a cumbersome 30 pounds, and were combined with steel struts on Karloff's legs to give the reanimated beast his signature lurching walk, part nightmare, part toddler. Ultimately, this Monster created by Karloff, Pierce and Whale did have poignance and played upon viewers' sympathies, causing some to see the Monster as a stand-in for the troubled director himself, who also yearned for understanding.

The struggle of bringing this monster to life on the screen was considerable and caused Karloff to lose 20 pounds over the six weeks it took to film Frankenstein. The strain of carrying Dr. Frankenstein to the summit of a windmill at the film's climax was so great, in fact, that Karloff required hospitalization for back problems.

Though Karloff's performance went unappreciated by the Universal Studios executives, which even excluded the actor from the movie's premiere, Karloff sufficiently impressed his movie audiences. Many viewers were reportedly so terrified by his appearance they fled from the theater in fear. Karloff called the Monster his favorite film role and film history has tended to agree with him -- the actor was identified with the part until the day he died.

In addition to its classic status in the annals of movie making, Whale's Frankenstein was an enormous financial success. Made for only $250,000, the film returned $12 million upon its release.

The production history surrounding Frankenstein is as fascinating as the film itself. Bette Davis was initially considered for the role of the delicate Elizabeth, but Whale -- probably rightly -- believed that Davis was too aggressive to play an ethereal horror movie victim. Instead, Mae Clarke was tapped for the role, an actress best remembered as the dame who gets a face full of grapefruit from James Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931).

Though referred to simply as "the Monster" in Shelley's novel, it is one of the quirks of history that this movie monster's name was so often confused with his symbolic father and creator, Dr. Frankenstein. But in Karloff's hands, the Monster turned out to be a greater star than the titular scientist who created him and ever since the name Frankenstein is synonymous with the monster, not the doctor.

DVD Times  Mike Sutton

 

Film as Art [Danél Griffin]

 

Oggs' Movie Thoughts

 

THE MUMMY   Ernest Larsen from Jump Cut, July 2000

 

James Berardinelli's ReelViews

 

The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review  Richard Scheib

 

Classic-Horror  Nate Yapp

 

The Greatest Films - comprehensive analysis of classic US film  Tim Dirks

 

Not Coming to a Theater Near You [Leo Goldsmith]

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]

 

Crazy for Cinema (Lisa Skrzyniarz)

 

David Dalgleish

 

Reel.com DVD review [Ken Dubois]

 

Reel.com DVD review [Pam Grady]

 

The Flick Filosopher's take  MaryAnn Johanson

 

Bright Lights Film Journal (capsule review)  Gary Morris

 

The New York Times (Mordaunt Hall)

 

Whedon, Joss

 

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING                           B                     83

USA  (109 mi)  2012                              Official site

 

While this film may have had a more interesting history in terms of how it originated, as it was filmed entirely on the premises of the director’s own Southern California home where a group of friends came to visit to partake in backyard Shakespeare parties, acting out various scenes until the director got the idea to shoot this film in 12 days using a variety of TV actors while he was simultaneously making a mega-million dollar Hollywood comic book adventure movie THE AVENGERS (2012).  So while this may have played out as a trifle, a little playful fun to take the pressure off of having to produce a box office success, the director does get the opportunity to restage into the modern era one of Shakespeare’s most comically accessible plays, where the incendiary, rapid fire dialogue does resemble sitcom TV shows.  But that’s precisely the problem, where this feels a little too much like watching television, where there are no major movie stars and none of the performances stand out, where there’s an interesting production design, shot in Black and White, and a few minor alterations in the script added for humor, but overall nothing that particularly stands out.  While it’s perfectly enjoyable, and is meant to be a breezy, lightweight comedy, there is also a certain dramatic heft in the play that is lacking due to time restraints, as tragic elements are lost by not having the opportunity to develop the characters properly.  This is, after all, Shakespeare we’re talking about, the best writer who ever lived, not just some hack working in the business.  This guy pre-dated the business, where in celebrated literary critic Harold Bloom’s book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, he goes so far as to suggest that Shakespeare, and likely the play Hamlet in particular, may be the root of human personality.  All right, so we get none of that from watching this film, which does, however, retain much of the wit, utter wreckage of the English language (by the police detectives, of course), and plenty of physical comedy, including some hilarious pratfalls.  Perhaps the film this most resembles is Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), a delightful comic romp through the woods, borrowing heavily from Bergman’s SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT (1955), where Woody and Mia Farrow’s initial chemistry together is simply off the charts, falling short of that mark, but it retains the same air of happy, good-natured fun.   

 

While the expression “a war of words” may have had its origins with this production, the highlight of the story is the furious verbal interchange between male and female leads, Benedick and Beatrice (Alexis Denisoff and Amy Acker), a saucy pair of sparring former lovers, barely even suggested in the original but explicitly shown here, where what seems like the most mismatched couple in the universe, through a bit of trickery and behind-the-scenes manipulation, comes together in harmony and happily fall in love.  As impossible as that may seem, no one is more surprised than they are, as they spend the entire film endlessly bickering and complaining about one another, literally duking it out with nonstop insults and inflammatory accusations, exhausting everyone’s patience to the point where they’ve had enough, only to start up again like there’s no tomorrow.  While Benedick is vain and something of an arrogant male buffoon, misogynist and cocksure of himself while contemptuously mocking of everyone else throughout, never taking anything or anyone as seriously as he takes himself, so ends up alone sputtering soliloquies most of the time, needing no other audience than himself, Beatrice is one of Shakespeare’s smartest women, who has a brain and is not afraid to use it along with her acid tongue, resembling the combative Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, displaying a healthy contempt for the male species, which makes her the most modern of all characters, seemingly out of place with a more backward group mindset, but Acker is much too meek and middle-of-the-road ordinary, where it’s more important for her to be liked than to be heard.  The language is flowery and delightfully comic, all cast in an air of bourgeois manners and good taste, as these are representatives of the upper crest of society, so behavior is key.  In a parallel love story, this one with younger, more innocent lovers, more openly public for all to see, the noble Claudio (Fran Kranz) expresses his affection for Hero (Jillian Morgese), the fair daughter of governor Leonato (Clark Gregg), where the entire setting takes place on the grounds of the governor’s massive estate.  While the younger couple can barely utter a word, so sweetly smitten with one another, the other two swear off love and marriage altogether, so consumed by the fumes of their discontent.  Two plans are simultaneously hatched in secret, one drop dead hilarious and the other one devilishly cruel, where the eavesdropping Benedick first, followed later by Beatrice, will overhear idle gossip about how much the other is in love with them (where they clumsily hide and step all over themselves to be able to hear), but because of their professed disdain of love, could never actually admit to such a thing, where such flattering attention immediately amends their hostile views, suddenly aglow with love, both primping with peacock-like pride, while in the other, a much darker and malevolent plot is meant to expose the virginesque Hero as a fraud, where in a malicious charade of deceitful disguises and mistaken identity, Claudio is led to believe his beloved is already cheating on him.  Refusing to play the fool, he publicly chastises her and shamefully denounces her at the altar in what is an affront to her virtue, making it difficult to sympathize with him afterwards, but sending the parties into a swooning despair. 

 

If you like unhappy endings, you may as well end it right there, usually a curtain closer between acts where patrons can order drinks in the lobby and decry the injustice of it all.  But Shakespeare isn’t a miserablist, but knew how to sell tickets and enjoyed wreaking havoc on his audience’s expectations, where he is, after all, the author of All’s Well That Ends Well, but that’s another story.  But as in Romeo and Juliet, the Friar comes to the rescue, concocting a little scheme of his own (when did the Church become so ingeniously inventive?), feigning Hero’s death, hoping to extract the truth of the matter as well as Claudio’s remorse.  While there are some behind-the-scenes shenanigans, Leonato also calls in the guards, who unwittingly overhear mischief in the making, where the chief constable Dogberry (Nathan Fillion) gives a credible turn as the most bumbling butcher of the English language, turning a small and truly asinine character into a shameless scene stealer, where he and his minions may get the biggest laughs of the entire film.  The befuddled awkwardness of the police, however, sets the scene for the inevitable turnaround of events, where the mystery of it all is a tapestry of illusion, including the elusive nature of love itself, a bewildering and mystifying enigma that continually alters form, befuddling those within its grasp, who often haven’t a clue what to make of it, as it’s never what one expects, or is anywhere near when you need it, but largely comes as a surprise, as if it’s been there all along but you somehow overlooked seeing it.  The weakest element, however, is how quickly and easily it all wraps up at the end, without ever feeling love is earned, making it all feel superficially cheap afterwards.  And while this is a relatively meek mannered Benedick and Beatrice, who spare the meanness and never deliver the down and dirty maliciousness written into the characters, they continue their wordplay right to the end, never really believing that any of this is actually happening to them, where reality itself cannot be trusted, and the world is not what it seems.  There’s another reality that lives within the existing one, an illusory world that has the power of magic and deceit, but can also reveal unheard of wonders that one never imagined.  Not sure this condensed version adds anything except easy accessibility, something akin to Shakespeare-light, but the film is a comedy of manners, given a brisk pace that accentuates the good life and a few surrealist touches, like an absurd scene in the pool or an arrest captured on an iPhone, where the considerable consumption of alcohol likely violates some unwritten moral law, yet the movie basks in the glory of good over evil, feeling more like a fairy tale where they all live happily ever after. 

 

Exclaim! [Scott A. Gray]

 

It takes a particular sort of courage to adapt Shakespeare for the screen. After its necessity is questioned, the justification of the director's personal vision will be highly scrutinized. Moreover, it takes a special sort of humble whimsy to follow up one of the biggest films of all time (The Avengers) with a simple black & white comedy that appraises the pretence of using cynicism and naivety as impact barriers for the heart.

Genre wizard Joss Whedon (Serenity) demonstrates both qualities in his faithful, but playful take on the Bard's Much Ado About Nothing. Not a line of dialogue has been tweaked, but the setting of the romantic sparring has been updated to a pompous gathering of modern royalty and associated socialites. Just the dress, style of background music and the ability to show footage of an incident merely spoken of in the play, thanks to the magic of cell phone video, are different. Only the superficial has changed.

The jaded, defensive witticisms and ardent declarations of love are just as relevant as they've ever been, even if only a sampling of the comfortable cultural elite could get this caught up in titivating emotions. Whedon's keen, multifaceted sense of humour and ability to cleverly expose the tender hearts people try to hide behind their facades jive wonderfully with the comedic faux-tragedy of deceits driving the plot.

Both in performances and filmmaking, this production is oozing with witty, laidback charm, which is likely a by-product of its intimate construction. Past Whedon collaborators populate the majority of the cast and he's chosen cherished supporting players to take centre stage.

There are representatives from everything he's worked on, from team Angel, Amy Acker plays Beatrix against Alexis Denisoff's Benedick, to Firefly, a hilarious Nathan Fillion pursues Sean Maher as Dogberry and Don John, respectively. Representing both The Cabin in the Woods and Dollhouse is Franz Kranz as the lovelorn Claudio, while Dollhouse compatriot Reed Diamond plays the dangerously misled Don Pedro. Clark Gregg drops in from The Avengers camp to give life to Leonata. While the sole Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum is Tom Lenk, looking all kinds of ridiculous sporting a burly moustache and affecting a tough-cop stance as Dogberry's partner, Verges.

Everyone involved appears to be having a great time, especially Whedon, in his mischievous scene-setting and winking acknowledgement of the cumbersome phrasing of poetry as a manner of conversing as much as his loose, but poised direction of the exceptional cast.

If this is how the man relaxes, his next post-Marvel decompression will be another welcome, low-key joy.

 

Slate.com [Dana Stevens]

Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing was filmed over the course of 12 days at Whedon’s Los Angeles home during a contractually required break between the shooting and post-production of his last project, the gargantuan superhero clustercuss that was The Avengers. As a kind of professional palate cleanser, Whedon and his wife Kai Cole, a producer, decided to get some friends together and whip up a secretly filmed, black-and-white, micro-budget adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most beloved and oft-performed comedies. (If you made it through high school without having to memorize one-half of the big Beatrice/Benedick love scene for an audition piece, you must not have been a real drama person.)

Many of the actors assembled on Whedon and Cole’s rambling, terraced lawn were regulars from Whedon’s past TV shows—Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse, Firefly—or from the movies and Web series he’s moved on to create since. Their degree of experience performing Shakespeare varied widely: Alexis Denisof (who plays Benedick, the male lead) had worked with Mark Rylance at the Royal Shakespeare Company, while Jillian Morgese (who plays Hero, the female second lead) first came to Whedon’s attention while running away from an explosion as an extra on the set of The Avengers.* This combination of let’s-put-on-a-show camaraderie and differing levels of classical training could easily have made this feel like a smug vanity project: not every dinner-party experiment among friends is something that needs to be filmed and distributed. But if you were approaching the Whedonization of Shakespeare with trepidation, go ahead and convert all your songs of woe into hey-nonny-nonny, because this Much Ado About Nothing—while perhaps not an adaptation for the ages in every respect—is as bracingly effervescent as picnic champagne.

Champagne is only one of the liquids quaffed in abundance by the denizens of this movie’s modern-day Messina. Whenever a bit of business is needed, a character opens another bottle of red or pours another round of shots (with no visible effect on anyone’s sharpness of wit or clarity of enunciation—proof that we must indeed be in paradise). The house where the governor, Leonato (Clark Gregg), hosts his guests, Prince Don Pedro (Reed Diamond) and his villainous brother Don John (Sean Maher) is the site of a nonstop, well-lubricated garden party. (It’s also a singularly enviable, light-flooded piece of real estate, designed by Kai Cole, who trained as an architect.) After the royal brothers arrive with their retinue, romantic complications begin to pile up: one of Don Pedro’s young officers, Claudio (Fran Kranz) falls in love at first sight with Hero (Jillian Morgese), the daughter of the governor. Another officer, Benedick (Alexis Denisof)—a cranky sworn bachelor—meets up for the second time with Hero’s tart-tongued cousin Beatrice (Amy Acker). Right there in Act I, Scene 1, the two of them fall into what the audience immediately recognizes as screwball dialogue, 400 years avant la lettre. They can’t stand each other, so they must be destined to fall in love.

Much of the rest of Much Ado exists as a delivery system for the Beatrice and Benedick scenes—delicious putdown-fests that, as often as not, turn into signifying matches between male vanity and female subversion. But though it’s not among the works traditionally classified as “problem plays,” Much Ado does present a thorny problem for the modern adapter. The play’s central conflict involves the disputed virginity of bride-to-be Hero, whose betrothed, Claudio, rejects her at the altar with a stream of scathingly misogynist invective, having been misled by villains into believing that “savage sensuality” has reduced his seemingly chaste beloved to “a rotten orange” (or, as his even less kind friend Don Pedro puts it, “a common stale”).

There’s something about this pivotal dramatic scene—a bunch of men screaming at a young bride about her supposed sexual impurity until she faints dead away from shame—that’s hard to square with the modern, sexually free world in which Whedon’s characters seem to exist. (A dialogue-free opening flashback even shows Benedick sneaking out of Beatrice’s bedroom after a one-night stand, implying that the enmity between them springs in part from a long-ago booty call gone wrong.) But if you can accept—uneasily—the is-Hero-a-slut? storyline as a convention of its time, the play still functions as a canny catalogue of the varieties of human romantic folly—and an ultimately utopian celebration of the power of love to transform skeptics into saps, be they 16th-century military officers or 21st-century filmgoers.

Not every actor speaks the speech quite as trippingly on the tongue as Hamlet might have wished, though Denisof and Acker strike verbal sparks as the prickly lovers. Many members of the supporting cast, from Clark Gregg as the bride’s father to Nathan Fillion as the dimwit constable, Dogberry, also do wonderful work, but this Much Ado is staged as a true ensemble piece. Whedon seems less interested in showcasing individual performances than in creating a collective atmosphere in which Shakespeare’s words can be shared (sometimes with music—the passage known as “Balthasar’s song” is set to music composed by Whedon himself).

I suppose it would be possible to get snarky about the DIY appeal of a film made with what, for a director of Whedon’s success at least, amounts to pocket change. But I only wish more mega-successful directors would use their enforced vacations to self-finance small productions of Shakespeare in their own backyards (and that more directors without global franchises on their resumes were able to get projects on this scale funded and seen). Joss Whedon has made clear that he won’t participate in the next Avengers movie unless Robert Downey, Jr. takes part. Here’s hoping they both blow it off and instead make Richard III on a shoestring budget, with Downey in the lead. 

Paste Magazine [Michael Burgin]

It’s been 20 years since the big-screen debut of Kenneth Branagh’s joyous, sun-drenched adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Critically acclaimed and modestly successful at the box office, Branagh’s Much Ado boasted a powerhouse cast (Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves, Emma Thompson, Michael Keaton and a nearly unrecognizable pre-whatever-the-work-she-had-done Kate Beckinsale, among others). More importantly, it represented an exuberantly manifested understanding and love of the source material, faithfully presented by a talented director.

Now, two decades later, Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing has landed in theaters, and though the cast may be less star-studded and the golden hues muted to a cool black and white, the result is nearly as pleasing.

In Hollywood, a 20-year gulf between a successful film adaptation and some sort of reboot, remake or sequel would usually signal a failure in the performance of the original, or at least some interesting story of development hell and battling property rights. But this is the Bard, in some ways immune to the industry’s insatiable need to repackage, sequelize and rip off anything with a track record in the popular imagination. Granted, Shakespeare’s works are rivaled only by the Bible as inspirational material for pretty much every movie genre out there. (And the day a version of Twelfth Night brings in $100 million will be the day before the green-lit production of an Eleventh Nightprequel is announced.)

Unlike the 1993 film, in which Branagh roughly maintained the setting of the original play, Whedon places his Much Ado About Nothing in present-day California. (The film was shot in Whedon’s Santa Monica home.) Though the setting has been updated, the language has not—a reason for lovers of Shakespeare to rejoice, and for those less familiar with him to go, “Wait, what…?” Much as with Branagh’s version, it’s a decision that guarantees Whedon’s Much Ado will not venture far beyond the confines of the art house theater and Netflix’s “Shakespeare Films” category. Of course, the language is also pretty much the reason the plays of this particular 16th Century playwright are still being made into movies. (Consider Shakespeare contemporary Christopher Marlowe, who has appeared in more films as a character than had his own work adapted to the screen.)

As its title suggests, Much Ado’s plot is a light and airy thing (yet still so, so much better crafted than most movie fare)—Don Pedro (Reed Diamond), fresh from victory over his bastard of a brother, Don John (Sean Maher), stops at the estate of a loyal supporter, Leonato (Clark Gregg). In Don Pedro’s entourage are Claudio (Fran Kranz) and Benedick (Alexis Denisof). Residing with Leonato at his estate are his daughter, Hero (Jillian Morgese), and her cousin, Beatrice (Amy Acker).

Claudio falls for Hero, Hero doesn’t mind a bit (nor does her dad), and to pass the time between betrothal and wedded bliss, Don Pedro decides to trick avowed matrimoni-phobes Benedick and Beatrice into expressing their love for one another. (For his part, Don John tries to cause trouble.)

As with any well-executed production of a much beloved, older play (be it on stage or screen), Much Ado comes loaded with elegant solutions to the challenges of communicating with a contemporary audience in a non-contemporary (no matter how beautiful) language. A celebratory fist bump here, a shared look there—Whedon and his cast usually insert enough non-verbal cues into the proceedings that most viewers will be able to follow the action even when an understanding of the dialogue proves evasive.

Virtually every actor in Much Ado About Nothing is a veteran of at least one of Whedon’s television or film projects, and for the most part, their efforts are not wasted in this particular labor of love. So much of the joy of Much Ado rests on the acerbic Benedick and Beatrice, and Denisof and Acker perform their roles with the energy and charm. As the malapropism-prone Dogberry, Nathan Fillion’s performance is a marked improvement, not only in comparison to Michael Keaton’s “pre-death Beetlejuice” turn in Branagh’s film, but also in how effortlessly it updates the “bumbling constable” character so familiar to the audiences of Shakespeare’s time to its contemporary equivalent.

If there’s a casting misstep, it’s in putting Kranz in the role of Claudio. To borrow from the same categories Whedon played with in The Cabin in the Woods, the soldier Claudio of Much Ado is a basically a jock—an earnest, handsome specimen of a man. Even dressed to cut a more striking figure, there’s a reason Kranz played Marty, the paranoid, pot-smoking “fool” in Cabin and not “athlete” Curt (played by Chris Hemsworth).

In setting and tone, Much Ado manages to smoothly present a contemporary vision of the play’s original setting of wealth and ease—this is how the better, effortlessly hipper, half lives. The performance by Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon of “Sigh No More” (music by Joss, lyrics by William) serves as a languid, melodic theme for the film as a whole.

Modernizing the setting of Much Ado while keeping the original language doesn’t come without a few hiccups. While the premise of a bastard brother rebelling, being defeated and then initially brought back into the fold works well enough in a feudal context, it seems a little strange when presented as a present-day occurrence. In the opening scene of the film, when the messenger reporting Don Pedro’s victory over Don John is asked “how many gentlemen have you lost in this action,” he responds, “But few of any sort, and none of name.” That may have been all well and good in the original context, but I’m pretty sure that even a few, inconsequential deaths would merit harsher consequences than some cable ties (soon removed). Then again, it’s never quite clear what power structure Pedro and his crew represent—U.S. political, government intelligence, urbane drug lords, shadow government?

Later, when Leonato rages that death is best for his daughter if the accusations against her are true, it sounds a bit strange, given the setting. Still, in a world where the phrases “honor killing” and “slut shaming” exist, this scene jars less because it’s alien to the modern context than than because it ill fits the specific California-enlightened vibe of of House Whedon.

Fortunately, such quibbles are just that—briefly noted and easily set aside in a film that successfully meets the challenges of adapting Shakespeare for a modern audience far more often than it falters.

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir]

 

New York Magazine [David Edelstein]

 

Much Ado About Nothing Review: Shakespeare in Like - Pajiba  Daniel Carlson

 

DVDTalk.com - theatrical [Jamie S. Rich]

 

Slant Magazine [Chris Cabin]

 

Sound On Sight  Kate Kulzick

 

Much Ado About Nothing (1993) - Reelviews Movie Reviews  James Berardinelli

 

'Much Ado About Nothing': Joss Whedon's House Party | TIME.com  Richard Corliss

 

Much Ado About Nothing - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Victoria Large

 

Joss Whedon Strips Much Ado About Nothing to His ... - Village Voice  Chris Packham

 

TIFF Review: Joss Whedon's 'Much Ado About Nothing' Is An ...  Christopher Schobert from The Playlist

 

'Much Ado About Nothing': Joss Whedon's Backyard | PopMatters  Cynthia Fuchs

 

Review: Joss Whedons Much Ado About Nothing is light and ... - HitFix  Drew McWeeny

 

theartsdesk.com [Matt Wolf]

 

Smells Like Screen Spirit [Don Simpson]

 

outlawvern.com [Vern]

 

Much Ado About Nothing - Film School Rejects  Rob Hunter

 

Review: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Respects Its Playful ... - Twitch  Todd Brown

 

Screen Rant [Kofi Outlaw]

 

Movie Shark Deblore [Debbie Lynn Elias]

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Jennie Kermode]

 

Film-Forward.com [Megan Fariello]

 

ScreenDaily [Mark Adams]

 

Mark Reviews Movies [Mark Dujsik]

 

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

Digital Spy [Emma Dibdin]

 

Georgia Straight [John Lekich]

 

Sound on Sight [Josh Slater-Williams]

 

Film.com [Jordan Hoffman]

 

Sound On Sight  Trish Ferris

 

Combustible Celluloid Review - Much Ado About Nothing (2013 ...  Jeffrey M. Anderson

 

BeyondHollywood.com [Brent McKnight]

 

Movie Talk [Jason Best]

 

Digital Journal [Sarah Gopaul]

 

Joss Whedon's 'Much Ado About Nothing' - The Hollywood Reporter  John DeFore

 

Much Ado About Nothing | review, synopsis, book tickets ... - Time Out  Tom Huddleston

 

Much Ado About Nothing – review | Film | The Guardian  Catherine Shoard

 

Much Ado About Nothing – review | Film | The Guardian  Peter Bradshaw

 

Guardian.co.uk [Philip French]

 

Much Ado About Nothing: Shakespeare by the last director you'd ...  Michael Posner from The Globe and the Mail

 

'Much Ado About Nothing' movie review - Washington Post  Ann Hornaday

 

The Cleveland Movie Blog [Pamela Zoslov]

 

'Much Ado About Nothing' review: Nothing much ... - Pioneer Press  Chris Hewitt

 

Austin Chronicle [Steve Davis]

 

SF Weekly [Sherilyn Connelly]

 

Pasadena Art Beat [Jana J. Monji]  also seen here:  Examiner.com [Jana J. Monji]

 

Movie review: 'Much Ado About Nothing' a tasty snack for Bard lovers  Kenneth Turan from The LA Times

 

Toronto 2012: Shakespeare, according to Joss Whedon  Steven Zeitchik from The LA Times, September 11, 2012

 

RogerEbert.com [Sheila O'Malley]

 

New York Times [A. O. Scott]

 

Wheatley, Ben

 

SIGHTSEERS                                                          B+                   90                         

Great Britain  (89 mi)  2012  ‘Scope                  Official site

 

Perhaps taking a cue from memorably camp material like The Honeymoon Killers (1969), Wheatley turns the conventional travelogue vacation movie on its ear, though it’s perhaps undone by the sheer unlikeability of the main couple.  Sad sack Tina (Alice Lowe) lives with her manipulative and overcontrolling mother, Carol (Eileen Davies), a somewhat mean and grotesque figure still grieving over the loss of their pet dog Poppy who died a year ago.  Tina is a licensed but pathetically inept dog psychologist who seems to instead sympathize with her mother’s grief.  Given the opportunity to temporarily escape her sheltered environment with Mum, she jumps at the chance to go on a road adventure with her new boyfriend, aspiring writer Chris (Steve Oram), driving a live-in caravan behind them on a meticulously planned trip through Northern England’s Yorkshire territory.  Somehow the ultra-hilarious Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden’s impressionist extravaganza The Trip (2010) comes to mind, but this film builds its cleverness on the sheer conventionality of the two characters that haven’t a notable distinguishing characteristic between them.  Happy to be on their way, to the sound of Soft Cell :Tainted Love Music Video - YouTube  (2:39), though assaulted by a series of miserablist phone calls from Mum who feigns dire emergencies like Bud Cort feigned suicides in HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971), Tina has to spread her wings and let go, finally free of the mad clutches of her mother.  All seems to be going well until Chris becomes overwrought at the callous actions of an unconcerned litterbug at a world heritage site, going on an extended rage until he accidentally runs over the poor guy with his caravan, where blood spurts out from his neck like a cheap B-movie special effect, accentuating the ridiculousness of the act, but also the worthlessness of the litterbug’s life.       

 

Not to be deterred, the couple won’t allow a regrettable man’s death to ruin their vacation, developing a common mindset where they can do whatever they please, like this brief clip where they pass a larger caravan, getting downright giddy over the idea, Sightseers "Dingly Dell" Clip - YouTube (1:11).  As they get deeper into the countryside where the undulating hills dominate the landscape, they park their caravan in close proximity to another couple who have an identical dog as Poppy, where the guy is something of a smug writer, bragging about having written three books, while the girl refuses to allow her dog to be fed junk food.  Chris immediately hones in on their detestable nature, arising at the crack of dawn for his neighbor’s scheduled walkabout, following them into an excluded area before bashing him over the head with a rock, then pulling his pants down to make it look like a sex crime to throw off the authorities.  Grabbing the dog as their own, Tina is overjoyed at the sight, instantly calling Banjo by his rightful name (in her eyes), Poppy.  Taking great pleasure at watching the TV news reports of the crime, Chris is thrilled when it’s reported that the police are on the lookout for a perverted sex criminal.  Tina has an inkling of what Chris has done and develops a theory, by eradicating detestable individuals from the earth’s population, you are in fact elevating the potential gene pool, an idea that suggests selective murder is a Green activity, perhaps enhanced by the trippy version of Season of the witch - Vanilla Fudge - YouTube (8:47), suggesting something mind-altering is in the midst.  So rather than be repulsed by the hideousness of the act, Tina finds herself sexually aroused like never before, where one might even say these are the happiest days of her life.  Off they go on their cross-country journey, where Tina discovers if she doesn’t really like someone, for whatever reason, she has a partner willing to do something about it, willing to go all the way to set things straight, which gives her a feeling of invincibility, like this clip where she grows delirious with her newly discovered power, literally toying with the idea of what her boyfriend will do, Sightseers - "National Trust" Clip YouTube (1:53)

 

The director’s third feature, this is the first he did not write himself, relying instead upon the two lead actors, a TV writing and acting team, along with longtime collaborator Amy Jump.  The film doesn’t seem to suffer from this lack of input, and while it’s basically a series of funny sight and sound gags, there’s not much else, lacking the depth and insight to be much more, yet it’s hands down one of the funniest films of the year.  The film takes a single idea and runs with it, where the musical selections throughout are outstanding, including the exquisite JULIE DRISCOLL ft BRIAN AUGER - season of the witch ... - YouTube  (7:57), offering a twist midway through, as Tina grows so newly empowered that she starts knocking people off with relish, everytime she gets irritated, something that draws the ire of Chris, who believes there’s a selective art to killing, especially murdering Green, so they can’t just pick off random anybodies.  If they’re going to commit themselves to killing thoroughly detestable people, then they must elevate their standards to only the truly despicable.  Other dark serial killer movies go to great lengths to establish character, like Tuesday Weld in Pretty Poison (1968), where her surprising amoral zealousness steals the picture, where even Bobcat Goldthwait’s disturbingly bizarre satire God Bless America (2011) uses a similar premise of blowing away only the most irritating people on the planet.  In comparison, this is more understated, with few cinematic tricks up its sleeve, but one with a unique premise that continually pays off.  While the two leads are forgettable, the kind of people you’d walk right by on the street without a second thought, we learn little about them except they’re tired of living under the thumb of rude, overbearing authority figures, where they fantasize about taking matters into their own hands.  Tina grows out of control, where female empowerment never looked so good, as Chris can’t hide the bodies fast enough, where he’s constantly chiding her lack of ethics when it comes to serial killing.  Something of an English holiday from Hell, visiting tourist sites few would ever think to actually visit, like the Crich Tramway Village, the Blue John Cavern, the Keswick Pencil Museum, or the picturesque Ribblehead Viaduct, before finally reaching a mountainous destination by the end, where there always seems to be a steep ledge making it ever so convenient to push an unsuspecting body into the waiting darkness.  Entertaining, to say the least, and darkly sarcastic, where Chris justifies one of his killings with “He's not a person, he's a Daily Mail reader,” finally drowned out by the sounds of GLORIA JONES- "TAINTED LOVE" (1964) - YouTube (2:14). 

 

Sightseers | review, synopsis, book tickets, showtimes ... - Time Out  Tom Huddleston

That tired old cliché that expectation is the mother of disappointment is proved true once again by this amusing, inventive but decidedly  slight third feature from Ben Wheatley, the director of last year’s phenomenal ‘Kill List’. Working for the first time from someone else’s script – ‘Sightseers’ was penned by TV acting and writing team Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, with input from Wheatley’s longtime collaborator Amy Jump – Wheatley struggles to put his own stamp on what is inherently flawed material.

Lowe and Oram play Tina and Chris, a new couple who leave cosy Midland suburbia on a caravan tour around some of Northern England’s least prepossessing tourist hotspots – Crich Tramway Village, Blue John Cavern, the Keswick Pencil Museum. But Chris’s fusty, ginger-bearded exterior hides the heart and soul of a ruthless killer, and it’s not long before the sheer, bloody-minded rudeness of the English public has him reaching for the nearest blunt instrument.

There are undoubted high points here – Wheatley’s tried-and-tested knack for coaxing naturalistic, improvisational performances from his actors results in some off-the-cuff hilarity, though Lowe and Oram’s original script presumably contained its fair share of zingers. The bleak mood – familiar to anyone who’s suffered a low-rent English holiday-from-hell – is beautifully sustained, thanks to Wheatley’s unerring eye for a crumbling ruin or a spot of flaky paintwork.

But the film never really settles into a comfortable style – it’s never quite funny enough to be comedy or quite nasty enough to be horror, and the goofy breadth of the characterisation means that it’s too blunt for satire (though a few sideswipes at our current austerity hell are well placed). We simply never care about either Chris or Tina, even as anti-heroes. Worst of all, the episodic, busy nature of the script means that Wheatley only occasionally gets the chance to spread his wings. One early sequence on a cliff face is stunning, fusing image, music and material to intoxicating effect, but it’s never repeated.

‘Sightseers’ is a film to file alongside the likes of ‘Somers Town’ by Shane Meadows and Michael Winterbottom’s ‘A Cock and Bull Story’: a diverting, enjoyable but not entirely successful experiment, and a minor film from a major director. Someone, get this man a proper budget.

theartsdesk.com [Emma Simmonds]

Ben Wheatley’s last film Kill List was unmistakable in its moniker, aggressively advertising its deadly subject matter. Taken on title alone Sightseers suggests something more far more innocuous. Depending on your capacity for twisted thrills, you’ll get a nasty or nice surprise; the name may give no hint of the macabre but Wheatley’s third film is hardly less violent than its predecessor. It is, however, a lot funnier. Behind the façade of beauty spots and parochial quirkiness lurk “a ginger-faced man and an angry woman” - two cold-hearted killers primed to pounce. This couple don’t get mad, they get murderous.

Penned by its stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram (with additional material from Amy Jump), this blood-splattered road trip deftly turns gasps into laughs. Sightseers follows the apparently ordinary Tina (Lowe, pictured below right) and Chris (Oram) as they head off on what at first seems to be a sweetly cheesy caravanning tour of the UK. Packing her crotchless knitted knickers, Tina leaves behind a grotesquely needy mother, Carol (Eileen Davies), still noisily grieving for their pet dog Poppy who died a full year ago.

Their planned trip is spectacular, primarily in its naffness - taking in such sights as the National Tramway Museum in Crich, the Ribblehead Viaduct and the Keswick Pencil Museum. When the couple are involved in an (apparent) accident early on, which leaves a man dead, the flash of a satisfied smile from Chris reveals his true nature. Rather than heading home to mum, enamoured simpleton Tina gets stuck in as the violence escalates.

On their travels Tina and Chris encounter a number of detestable individuals and you do find yourself willing for them to act on their brutal, disproportionate impulses. These two might be natural born killers but they’re a million miles away from the slick, posturing American film of the same name. With Sightseers Wheatley continues to draw darkness from the seemingly mundane - by focusing on revenge against recognisable irritants, Sightseers seems to suggest that Britain is a nation of repressed psychopaths, just dying to succumb to the urge to slaughter. Indeed the frequency of murderous looks exchanged during rush hour on public transport, for example, would suggest it’s not far wrong.

While Wheatley’s promising micro-budget debut Down Terrace was hampered by somewhat weak leads, TV comedy-stalwarts Lowe and Oram make for a perfect pairing (as Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley did in Kill List), displaying considerable natural chemistry and a hysterical rapport. Their success is partly down to hard work as, Lowe and Oram spent years working on the concept, performing the characters on stage, even going so far as to create a TV pilot which was rejected on the grounds that it was too dark.

Down Terrace dealt with murder in suburbia, Kill List followed two almost humdrum hitmen and now Sightseers builds heavily on the flashes of black humour in those two films, so much so that it’s an out-and-out comedy. With its deadpan drollery and prosaic psychopaths it’s also in the vein of sitcoms such as Nighty Night and The League of Gentleman, and Wheatley was in fact one of the directors on the darkly surreal sitcom Ideal.

If Wheatley himself is one of the links connecting Sightseers to the world of sitcoms, it’s also his directorial panache which saves it from feeling like TV comedy writ large. There’s a tenebrous touch of Kill List in the sacrifice sequences, escalating violence and oppressive strangeness that seems to hang in the air. Moreover Sightseers boasts a sense of epic inappropriateness throughout; the couple’s killing spree is imbued with romance and a perverse heroism which feels grand enough for the big screen. When Tina describes a victim as an “innocent person”, Chris responds incredulously, “He’s not a person, Tina, he’s a Daily Mail reader”. Sightseers is also brilliantly served by an amusing and atmospheric soundtrack: from the humorously ominous strains of “Tainted Love” as they set off, to the soaring, ironic anthems which accompany or follow their kills.

With the irreverence turned up to 11, you’ll need to park your sense of common decency but Sightseers is wonderfully twisted, hysterically funny and peculiarly and perfectly British.

Jigsaw Lounge / Tribune [Neil Young]

Michael Haneke’s Amour - currently in our cinemas -may have won the Palme d’Or at Cannes back in May, but the film that may well have been the finest at the whole festival wasn’t in Competition, nor was it even up for any prizes in the sidebar where it did feature. The third picture from Brighton’s Ben Wheatley – after Down Terrace (2009) and Kill List (2011) – Sightseers is a deliriously enjoyable, exhilaratingly clever road-movie / comedy / romance / horror hybrid which plays like some dream collaboration between Mike Leigh and John Waters, combining acute social embarrassment with increasingly berserk bloodshed.

Premiering as a “special screening” in the Directors’ Fortnight section of Cannes, Sightseers didn’t actually leave the Croisette empty-handed, as an international jury of critics awarded it the Palme Dog for best canine performance – previous winners having included the animated Dug from Up and last year’s scene-stealing Jack Russell from The Artist, Uggie. Following in such illustrious pawprints, terrier ‘Smurf’ essays the double role as ‘Poppy’ and ‘Banjo’ – in what may or may not be a homage to Vertigo, the two fictional white-haired pooches are seemingly not related, but one may or may not be the reincarnation of the other.

To go any further into this aspect of the plot would constitute an unfair ‘spoiler’, but suffice to say that the main thrust of the narrative concerns Berghaus-clad thirtysomethings Tina (Alice Lowe) and Chris (Steve Oram), unlikely love-birds from the somewhat obscure Worcestershire town of Redditch. Against the wishes of her fretful, controllingly passive-aggressive mother Carol (Eileen Davies) the mousily virginal Tina decides to accept Chris’s offer of going on a caravan tour around the industrial heritage of Midlands and northern Britain – first stop Crich Tramway Village in Derbyshire. But it isn’t long before Chris’s easy-going demeanour cracks to reveal a homicidally bad temper – and by the time the pair have reached their destination, Ribblehead Viaduct in North Yorkshire, the picture’s body-count rivals that of genre predecessors such as The Honeymoon Killers, Badlands, Gun Crazy and Detour (to name a few).

The idea of lovers/murderers-on-the-road has inspired film-makers for decades, and several have managed to put their own particular twist on the basic concept (most recently David Twohy with his criminally underrated A Perfect Getaway). Wheatley’s achievement is to maintain the comedy at an oft-hysterical pitch without tipping over into grotesquerie or silliness, keeping a tight control over tone and pace even as the protagonists’ actions spiral into wild sociopathic psychosis (“We don’t care about being fair, do we? We just care about being happy.”)

If Sightseers marks a significant advance beyond Wheatley’s first (very fine) two outings – both of them combining comedy with much darker material with confidence and persuasive audacity – then much credit must go to Lowe and Oram. Their drum-tight screenplay (“it’s not just an erotic odyssey we’re on”) is the result of their having honed the characters and situations on stage over a period of years, the film’s choice of real-life locations and backdrops now adding extra layers of ironic juxtaposition and acerbic wit to what are by any measure outstanding, carefully nuanced performances (Davies, meanwhile, works sly wonders with much more limited screen-time).

And while the picture may not exactly be tourist-board material, Sightseers joins classics like The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General as horror-inflected, unnerving explorations of Britain’s wilder, more remote landscapes, lending an ominous cast to even the most picturesque of spots. Pretty august company for what is ostensibly just a daft midnight-movie romp of a picture – but to bring such verve and audacity to well-worn genre material is a rare achievement these days. Wheatley, whose fourth feature A Field In England is already in the can, has in three years shown himself to be a freakish, prolific and uncompromised talent, one which UK cinema can ill-afford to overlook, take for granted, or lose.

Sight & Sound [Philip Kemp]  December 2012

 

Slant Magazine [Jesse Cataldo]

 

Review: Ben Wheatleys Sightseers gives a dark spin to ... - HitFix  Drew McWeeny

 

Sound On Sight  Tope Ogundare

 

Eric Kohn at Cannes from indieWIRE, May 23, 2012

 

ScreenDaily [Mark Adams]                  

 

James Rocchi at Cannes from the indieWIRE Playlist, May 23, 2012

 

The House Next Door [Calum Marsh]

 

Film.com [Amanda Mae Meyncke]

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]

 

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

Sightseers - blu-ray DVD review for VideoVista monthly web-zine at ...  JC Hartley from Video Vista, Blu-Ray

 

Sightseers : DVD Talk Review of the Theatrical  Jeff Nelson

 

Sightseers : DVD Talk Review of the Theatrical  Jamie S. Rich

 

The Film Stage [Raffi Asdourian]

 

Sightseers (2012) Movie Review from Eye for Film  Neil Mitchell

 

EFilmCritic [Jay Seaver]

 

Critic's Notebook [Sarah Manvel]

 

SBS Film [Lynden Barber]

 

Sound On Sight  Emmet Duff

 

Digital Spy [Emma Dibdin]

 

Virtual Neon [Damon Wise]

 

Angeliki Coconi's Unsung Films [Theo Alexander]

 

Graeme Clark - The Spinning Image

 

thesubstream.com [Mike Cameron]

 

hoopla.nu [Stuart Wilson]

 

Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]

 

Jeff Bayer  at Cannes from Movies.com, May 23, 2012

 

Alex Billington at Cannes from First Showing, May 24, 2012

 

Oliver Lyttelton  reveals Wheatley’s next film project from the indieWIRE Playlist, May 23, 2012

 

DAILY | Cannes 2012 | Ben Wheatley’s SIGHTSEERS »  David Hudson at Cannes from Fandor, May 24, 2012

 

Xan Brooks interviews the director from The Guardian, May 17, 2012

 

Interview / TimeOut's Tom Huddleston meets the ... - Sightseers Blog  Tom Huddleston interviews the director from Time Out, May 16, 2012

 

Peter Debruge  Variety

 

David Fear  Time Out New York

 

Cannes 2012: Sightseers – review   Peter Bradshaw at Cannes from The Guardian, May 24, 2012

 

Derek Malcolm at Cannes from The London Evening Standard, May 24, 2012

 

Robbie Collin  The London Telegraph

 

Review: 'Sightseers' is bloody good fun  Betsy Sharkey from The LA Times

 

Toronto: Ben Wheatley does bloody road-trip comedy in 'Sightseers ...  Mark Olsen from The LA Times

 

RogerEbert.com [Sheila O'Malley]

 

'Sightseers,' With Alice Lowe and Steve Oram  The New York Times

 

Whitehead, Peter

 

Peter Whitehead: The Exigency of Joy  Nicole Brenez from Rouge, 2006                     

 

Wieland, Joyce

 

REASON OVER PASSION (La Raison avant la Passion)    B                     84

Canada  (80 mi)  1969

 

Joyce Wieland has frequently been called a pioneer.  With paint brush, pencil, crayon, watercolour, knitting needles and film she boldly, passionately channeled her art into many untrammeled fields of politics, feminism, death and sexuality long ahead of the pack.

—Iris Nowell, author of Joyce Wieland: A Life in Art

 

At the time I photographed it [La raison avant la passion] (1967), I was in a panic; an ecological, spiritual panic about this country. [...] I was thinking about The Group of Seven and that certain artistic records have to be made at certain times.  Just look what has happened to many of the places they sketched.  There are old shoes and hamburger buns in those lakes.  That country inspired some of the greatest landscapes painted in this world.  I photographed the whole length of southern Canada to preserve it in my own way, with my own vision of it.  I felt very strongly -- very passionately.  Yet, the total result of the finished film is a nostalgic, sad feeling about the landscape.
—Joyce Wieland

 

Joyce Wieland is considered one of the most important female artists in Canada, perhaps second only to Emily Carr, an early to mid-20th century British Columbia artist who was famous for painting West coast First Nations imagery, evolving into themes of nature before writing a series of autobiographical works.  Wieland was born in Toronto in 1931, and raised in what she described as “Dickensian poverty,” as she was 7 when her father died and 10 when she lost her mother.  Drawings and comic books helped her deal early on with family loss, where her great grandfather was a clown, while her father and uncles were in Pantomime, so Joyce studied commercial art at the city’s Central Technical School, though her earliest work was in film animation, working for a company directed by George Dunning, who made YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968), where her first job was to animate Niagara Falls.  It was there that she met and married Michael Snow, considered today as one of the most influential experimental filmmakers, through when they moved to New York in the early 60’s, he was more of a professional jazz piano player, where they were part of a burgeoning music and underground film scene, which included wild jazz parties and gallery openings.  After seeing the work of George Kuchar and Jack Smith, she began making her own 8mm films, “People were revealing themselves — so much of it was autobiographical.  There was a whole cinema language that people were inventing — without money,” though by the late 60’s she felt her work was diminished by the male attitudes in the art world, “I was made to feel in no uncertain terms by a few male filmmakers that I had overstepped my place, that in New York my place was making little films. ... There was a tendency within the avant-garde in terms of writing and criticism to underrate my work because I wasn’t a theoretician.  Many of the men were increasingly interested in films about visual theories.  I feel there was a downgrading of my work.  It didn’t get its proper place, its proper consideration.” 

 

Criticism and skepticism from her male contemporaries accompanied Wieland’s recognition however, and she had a hard time not only disassociating herself from Snow, but in gaining respect amongst her peers, though she did attain widespread acclaim in New York.  Her early work in the 60’s centered around painting, influenced by the abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who often served as one of her models, where her painting style typified the pop art sexual imagery of the time.  But as the decade progressed, she began exploring different means of expression, including sculpting, lithography, quilts, constructions, assemblages, embroidery, knitting, not to mention cartoons and collages, while also becoming preoccupied with paintings of disasters and death.  By 1967, however, she stopped painting, becoming more of a mixed media artist, where she was unique as both a gallery artist and a filmmaker, with an ability to cross over between both worlds.  In the late 60’s she developed a fascination with social and political activism in art, often combining themes of patriotism with quilting, where one of her most famous artworks is a mural-sized quilt she created for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1968, spelling out Trudeau’s political motto: “Reason over passion,” which also, interestingly enough, became the title for this film.  Wieland eventually divorced Snow, moved back to Canada in 1971 and became increasingly involved in cultural activism, including issues of ecology, feminism, and a Canadian resistance to American imperialism.  She maintained a studio in Toronto until she died of Alzheimer’s in 1998 at the age of 67, but in 1984, she was the first woman to be awarded the Order of Canada, and several years later in 1987 she became the first living Canadian woman artist to have a retrospective of her work exhibited at the National Art Gallery of Ontario. 

 

Wieland’s work became associated with the shift to the rigorous new way of seeing, the intense, almost philosophical speculations on cinema itself that came to be described as 'structural' film.  Playful wit and ironist that she is, Wieland in particular gives the lie to the impression of austerity that radiates from the label.  Her repetitive formats, loops, re-filming, long takes, and static camera are first at the service of the irreverent, nose-thumbing, Dadaist side of her artistic personality, strong on a sense of humour that can be ribald or teasingly ironic .... But a second side is simultaneously present: a side that demands that we re-look at objects, animals, landscapes with fresh, un-prejudiced eyes, and that gives us the rich colours and textures of so many of her images. 

 

None of these films can be watched without being constantly reminded that here is a filmmaker who isn’t just a filmmaker, but is also a painter, sculptor, collagist, quiltmaker, occasional political cartoonist, and artist working comfortably across a range of media and someone who from the late 60’s onwards saw herself as a ‘cultural activist.’ 

 

—Simon Field, free-lance writer on film and art, and Director of Cinema at the London Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1988 – 2004

 

Using Pierre Trudeau’s infamous motto as the title, and brief footage from the 1968 Liberal convention where he was nominated as Prime Minister (1968-79), ushering in an era of Trudeaumania, touting participatory democracy and a Just Society, Wieland’s feature-length experimental film is a silent meditation on landscape, covering the whole length of southern Canada from coast to coast as seen from the Trans-Canada Highway and Railway, becoming a rumination on all things Canadian, bookended by the Canadian national anthem, seen initially as words at the outset, where the director follows by mouthing the words, and played later in a symphonic rendition at the end, with constant recurring still images of the Canadian flag.  The film is a collaboration with fellow avant-garde filmmaker Hollis Frampton, who composed the constantly changing 537 algorithmically determined combinations of the letters in the title which are superimposed over the screen as subtitles.  This rather subversive means of altering its message suggests a society which allegedly strove to allow all individuals to participate in Canadian society may have omitted the social differences and needs of women, turning the slogan into a kind of doublespeak.  Wieland’s original intent may have been generated by a sense of loss, by the thought of losing what in great measure is Canada’s largest treasure, its immense, natural landscape, where the film might be an attempt to preserve an inherent beauty in what was a rapidly changing nation, creating a time capsule, much like a similar effect from various road movies of the same late 60’s era.  She uses hand-held cameras for endless tracking shots that go whizzing by, stopping occasionally for a quizzical look at a water tower or railway station with a town name affixed, where we see endless farmhouses and distant lakes and rivers, but also forests and mountain ranges eventually covered in snow, where the effect is to capture one giant, endless expanse, yet the pace of the film is constant motion, reminiscent of an early age of motion pictures where movement was generated by quickly turning the pages of a fixed image.  While there is a monotony of constant repetition, much like a metronome, the only sound heard is a beeping electronic tone, where this is a superimposed sense of order to counteract the randomness of the natural world that would otherwise be lost in silence while immersing the viewer into the enormity of the nation’s heartland, though there are occasional blips of sound that enter the picture unexpectedly, much like there are occasional pauses.  An example of art for art’s sake, the fixation on form, using stationary camera positions, takes precedence over the subject only in that the viewer is aware of the artificiality of a movie screening, yet the haunting aspect of the imagery, such as a lengthy tracking shot of the sun setting over the continually moving hills beyond, has a near subliminal effect of being etched into the viewer’s subconscious.        

 

Note

 

While there is a Canadian 5-disc DVD Box Set compilation of all of Joyce Wieland’s films, The Complete Works Of Joyce Wieland 1963-86, the 35mm print seen at the University of Chicago’s DOC Theater had deteriorated to a point where the colors had faded and were completely washed out from age, where there was little image left to see at all, but only faint outlines.  Much like Rossellini’s India: Matri Bhumi (1959), where the Cinémathèque Française was only able to partially restore the only existing copy of a badly faded film that had already begun to decompose, the resulting film remains badly faded, which may be typical of films from the late 60's, where most 35 mm prints from that era are mostly faded or saturated in pink/red unless they have been preserved.  In cases like this, the viewer has to imagine what it's supposed to look like without ever getting the chance to see “the real film,” where in this particular screening one does get a vague idea of the director’s intention.     

 

Reason Over Passion Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time  Time Out London

 

Not quite a structural film, Reason Over Passion nevertheless aggressively incorporates its own sense of space (the film almost literally traverses the vast expanse of Canada) and time (80 minutes metronomically click by as computer-generated anagrams of the title flash across the screen). As in all basically formalist work, the political sympathies remain ambiguous, but the film is clearly grounded in an ironic attitude toward the colonial status of Canada (the title is a phrase invoked by Pierre Trudeau), and perhaps even the colonial status of women. The way those sympathies are formulated - re-situating the subject in space, playing on language versus image, raising the notion of a patriotic (sic) ideology - is what gives the film a continuing freshness and surprising relevance.

 

Reason Over Passion | Movie Critic's Choice | Chicago  Fred Camper from The Chicago Reader

 

Joyce Wieland's rarely screened 1969 masterpiece is a neglected landmark of avant-garde film. Taking the form of a cross-country trip on the Trans-Canada Highway, a mostly two-lane road that snakes through forests and mountain ranges, it affords views very different from those offered by U.S. interstates. The sameness of a road trip--the way all windshield views begin to look alike--is modified by a feeling of openness, as Wieland joins images not to fuse two parts of the land but to suggest the unseen spaces between them. Superimposed on the landscapes are anagrams of the phrase la raison avant la passion, taken from a speech by Canada's former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. But the poetic quality of the landscapes seems to argue for passion over reason, as does Wieland's playful rearranging of the letters. At the same time, the systematic way the letters are shifted suggests a rational method, and the film is sincere enough to take the prime minister seriously.

 

User reviews  from imdb Author: chaos-rampant from Greece

The point here is that we have an exercise of some purity in visual grammar while left alone to decide our level of engagement. It starts helter skelter, like an amateur is filming bits and pieces of their vacation across Canada, but gradually gets interesting by segueing into a rhythm of percussive movement. Again bits and pieces but now vanishing and coalescing out of sight in some abstract pattern. We go where the road takes us, and only get to glance out the window. The pattern again means nothing beyond the movement. There is no story, which is just as well. Without any dramatic distraction, we're free to submerge in just the images.

Presumably our point of entry here is that we're meant to puzzle over the title. Do we reason with this as suggested? Do we passionately reason?

My own approach is what I cultivate in my practice of meditation. So how to reason over passion - passion being a distortion, and reason meaning something other than thought - so that we unveil a world as it simply comes into being? A real world that is not our projection. The filmmaker craftily makes this a forbidding venture. We're given a world that is hypnotic but dissonant and with no stillness. So we have to work from our end to balance, just like when sitting down to meditate. We have to be still, passionless. We have to watch and watch without attachment to the whole shifting shape swirling before us.

Maybe you will come up with your own. My girlfriend had a lucid dream while watching. She dreamed of a man being continuously dislocated inside a frame that is continuously shifting shape.

Joyce Wieland: Writings and Drawings 1952-1971 First

A look at the early aspirations and fears of a young woman who would become the renowned Canadian artist Joyce Wieland. A very fascinating personal story unfolds in a series of diaries, kalideiscopic streams-of-consciousness and sketches, of a self-developing individuality and of the philosophical literacy of one of Canada's great artistic innovators.

Joyce Wieland (1930-1998) is legendary for her contribution to the development of contemporary visual arts in Canada. A self-described `cultural activist' she is best known for celebrating Canadian national identity and bringing forward feminist issues within the predominantly male art culture of the time. Initially a painter and filmmaker, she also embraced traditional women's media such as quilts and sewn collages. In her mind, the landscape and ecology of Canada was female. Issues of gender and nationality were interchangeable. Concern with the protection of Canadian confederation and gender issues would repeatedly surface in her quilts, films and assemblages.

Wieland was left in the care of an older sister after the death of both of her parents. She took solace in drawing and creating comic strips. During her high-school years, she was encouraged to enroll in the visual art program. Later, work as a graphic designer and at an animation house provided her with techniques that would be used in future art production. In 1956, Wieland married the artist Michael Snow. Two years later, she had her first solo show and, by 1961, she was represented by Toronto's leading art dealer, Avrom Isaacs, of the Isaacs Gallery.

Wieland then immersed herself in the New York art scene, relocating there with Snow in 1962. She turned to the underground filmmaking community. Most of her own films were made during her stay in the city and shown at local festivals.

Many of Wieland's ideas, including nationalism and feminism were formulated in New York during this time away from Canada. Cooling Room II (1964) shows the influence of American pop culture and filmmaking on her work. Alongside a toy airplane and an image of a sinking ship, a heart cut out of red material hangs to dry on a clothesline. A series of coffee cups with lipstick stains mark the passage of time. The predominance of red and white suggest an equation between heartbreak, disaster and the colours of the Canadian flag. Confedspread (1967), playfully composed of numerous sewn squares of colorful plastic and synthetic fillers, is Wieland's first attempt at using the quilt format as a vehicle of expression.

More quilts would follow: Reason Over Passion (1968) echoed the words of Pierre Trudeau. Her retrospective at the National Gallery in 1971 was its first ever for a living woman artist. In it, she introduced ideas of artistic collaboration to the public by contracting groups of sewers to help create the quilts.

Joyce Wieland's prolific career lasted over thirty years and established her as an icon of Canadian art history. She is credited with introducing ideas and breaking conventions that contributed significantly to the development of contemporary art in Canada.

Media Art Net | Art and Cinematography | Wieland  Of Gerbils and Men: Politics, Satire and Passion in Some Films of Joyce Wieland, by Robin Curtis, 2004

 

Andrew - Canadian Journal of Communication  Musings on Reason and Passion; or, Science and Politics in Ottawa 1992, by Caroline Andrew, 1993

 

Joyce Wieland: True Patriot Love - Canadian Art  Sarah Angel on Joyce Wieland’s 1971 art exhibition “True Patriot Love,” September 15, 2011

 

Collections Canada: Celebrating Women's Achievements  Joyce Wieland biography

 

Full text of "San Francisco Cinematheque Program Notes"  1998

 

Experimental: is it time finally to admit that experimental film ...   The Free Library

 

Iris Nowell » Joyce Wieland  Author of Joyce Wieland: A Life in Art

 

Key Canadian Films by Women - Movie Review - Stylus ...   Nancy Keefe Rhodes from Stylus magazine, October 24, 2007

 

Book Review | Joyce Wieland: Artist on Fire by Jane Lind ...  Sherrill Grace reviews two books, Jane Lind’s Joyce Wieland: Artist on Fire, and Iris Nowell’s Joyce Wieland: : A Life in Art, from Canadian Literature 

 

An essay on Canadian Cfilm) - Cinema Canada  Douglas Ord, Summer 1977  (pdf format)

 

La raison avant la passion  Canadian Women Film Directors Database

 

WNDX: The Films of Joyce Wieland | Cineflyer Winnipeg

 

March « 2012 « jamieherzlinger

 

The Sixties: Passion Politics, and Style - review - Modern ...  Duncan from Modern Canada, February 25, 2011

 

w - Search Results | The Film Makers Cooperative

 

Joyce Wieland - Experimental Cinema

 

Light Industry: Five Films by Joyce Wieland  Marcos Ortega from Experimental Cinema

 

The Complete Works Of Joyce Wieland 1963-86  DVD, 5-discs

 

The reason and the passion of Joyce Wieland | Toronto Star  Peter Goddard. June 29, 2011

 

THE FAR SHORE (L’Autre Rive)                        B+                   91

Canada  (105 mi)  1976

 

And there will be poets like this!  When the eternal slavery of Women is destroyed, when she lives for herself and through herself, when man — up till now abominable — will have set her free, she will be a poet as well!  Woman will discover the unknown!  Will her world of ideas differ from ours?  She will discover strange things, unfathomable, repulsive, delightful; we will accept and understand them.
Arthur Rimbaud in a letter to Paul Demeny, May 15, 1871

The Far Shore is ... symbolically, a story about Quebec culture overwhelmed by the brute power of English Canada.  On the level of subject matter and symbolism, this may be the most densely Canadian movie ever made.
—Robert Fulford, Globe and Mail, 1997

One of the better films at expressing what is uniquely Canadian, using a fictionalized recreation of actual events, borrowing elements from the life of Canadian painter Tom Thompson (1877 – 1917), a forerunner to a group of Canadian landscape painters known as the Group of Seven, which, when seen in an archival photograph all sitting together in the same room, resemble a group of male academics at a business conference.  Nonetheless, they were a group that resisted commercial development on the open expanse of pristine land, believing in the concept of terra nullius, that land untouched by humans had no sovereign owner and thus remained distinctly and uniquely free.  Canada is such a vast territorial nation, most of it remaining untouched and inaccessible wilderness, where there is inevitably a belief in the mystique of the open frontier, like the Wild West, where original settlers were appalled by the thought of constructing fences on the open range.  Thomson worked as a guide in Algonquin Park, a place he and other artists would visit for inspiration, but they continued to venture into unsettled and unexplored regions further north, where Thompson eventually disappeared during a canoe trip on Canoe Lake in 1917, his body discovered a week later, where the official cause of death was accidental drowning.  Theories have proliferated through the years, some suggesting that Thomson may have committed suicide over his situation with a woman that spent her summers at Canoe Lake who was pregnant and carrying his child.  Many other theories abound as well, including some that suggest he was despondent over his lack of artistic recognition, that he may have been involved in a fatal fight, or perhaps killed by poachers in the park.  What is not in dispute, however, is the distinction of this group of Canadian artists who sketched the landscape or painted the natural splendor of an unspoiled nature.  Similarly, one of the film’s strength is its painterly qualities, contrasting the dark and claustrophobic indoor existence, with each object perfectly placed, to the sunlit spaciousness of the natural world outdoors, using visual composition to emphasize mood and psychological states of mind.  The often dazzling use of color heightens the expressiveness of the setting, illuminating the often under-appreciated décor, artworks, or unexplored world of possibilities surrounding them. 

 

Something of a cross between D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Bo Widerberg’s rapturousy beautiful ELVIRA MADIGAN (1967), Wieland decides to explore this period through a feminist take, as Federal authorities granted women the right to vote in Canada in 1918, two years before the United States and two years after the women in Manitoba became the first to vote at the provincial level.  Women in Québec, however, fared much worse, as both male legislators and leaders of the Catholic Church united against women to deny them the provincial vote until 1940.  By setting the film in Québec in 1918, Wieland and co-writer Bryan Barney emphasize a customary view of women as second class citizens, where not only are their views and opinions not recognized, but society was incapable of accepting women as artists.  Nonetheless, shot on 35 mm, this is given a gorgeous natural palette, much of it set in the pure and unspoiled wilds where nature looks much as it did centuries ago, unsullied by human hands.  A pre-opening credit sequence finds Eulalie (Céline Lomez) in her sun bonnet strolling the lakeside paths of a Québec country landscape of flowers and high grasses on a particularly beautiful summer afternoon in 1919, accompanied by a young girl and Ross (Larry Benedict), who attempts to make his affections and his intentions clear, using the most romantic of all settings to ask for her hand in marriage.  Using a combination of English and subtitled French, he initially misunderstands, where he needs the child to intervene and act as the interpreter, where he is then overjoyed to discover she agrees, moving her from her native Québec into his immaculate mansion in Toronto, complete with servants at their disposal.  With circumstances resembling Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), what’s immediately clear is the suffocating atmosphere, as Ross is a wealthy engineer, the property owner of untold amount of lands, and a man used to having things his way, where a wife is little more than window dressing, a domestic fixture and household ornament that he can look at and have his way with whenever he desires.  He expects obedience and complete subservience, failing to recognize any of the unique attributes she displays.

 

Living the life of a bird in a cage does not sit well with Eulalie, who always dresses in ornate clothing with intricate flower designs, wearing hats adorned with feathers, a sophisticated woman who often sits at the piano and plays music she wrote, does her own embroidery and dress design, and often sings to herself, much to the displeasure of her husband who finds her habits annoying and disturbing.  She feels much more at home in the presence of a nearby neighbor, Tom McLeod (Frank Moore) in the Thompson role, as he’s an original painter, described by Eulalie as “a man who loves rocks, trees, and a bit of sky,” but he’s also worked for Ross as a guide, as he’s intimately familiar with the northern territory.  Complicating the picture is Ross’s longtime friend Cluny (Sean McCann), who was Ross’s commanding officer during the war, where the two remain devoutly loyal to one another, but Cluny is purely old-school, as he values Tom’s art only through any commercial value it can bring, seeing only the practical side of life.  This accentuates the cultural disparity between the seemingly educated and cultivated English-speaking and the more artistically inclined French-speaking Québec cultures, as the one is constantly at odds with the other.  Wieland emphasizes this through indifferent acting, where the alienated disconnect between characters creates an unworldly effect, only making their distance even more pronounced, where at times the human dimension actually feels uncomfortable to watch, balanced against the unwavering natural beauty of the world outdoors.  Wieland shows men not necessarily as they are, but as women perceive them to be, harsh and uncompromising, also petty, abusive, and unyielding, expecting women to be molded into the image of a man’s wishes, where she’s impertinent if she refuses, while hating herself even more if she complies with his wishes.  Eulalie’s ease with Tom and her obvious displeasure with her overcontrolling husband sends her husband, or more importantly Cluny into jealous rages, as both men (yes, Cluny as well) desire her sensuality, but feel she is flaunting her feelings for Tom in front of her husband, taking advantage of all that has been given to her, where she can live a life of ease and refinement.  That she should want more feels like a flagrant violation of nature to these men, whose innate desire to control women, to the point of rape and even murder, parallels their violation of nature, where in each case they haven’t the capability to comprehend the natural splendor, as all they can do in each case is destroy what stands before them. 

 

The Far Shore | Chicago - Chicago Reader  Fred Camper

 

Canadian avant-gardist Joyce Wieland translates her favored themes—antimaterialism, Canadian nationalism, the sensitivity of women, and celebration of the natural landscape—into narrative form in this 1975 feature. A period costumer that begins in 1919 Quebec and soon moves to Toronto, it concerns a triangle involving a sensitive young woman; her husband, a crass businessman who purchases mining land in the north; and his friend (modeled on Canadian landscape painter Tom Thomson), who urges him to leave the land alone. As conventional drama the film is defeated by its cardboard characters (the husband actually argues that one can measure a painting's worth by its size), yet Wieland has an eye for soft, liquid colors and for compositions that suggest nature's gentleness and create a loose, open sense of space.

 

User reviews  from imdb Author: jonathan-577 from Canada

It is said that Wieland had a difficult time making this movie, and as someone who comes at film from the visual arts, it figures - narrative film has its own rules and hierarchies. Also its own clichés. This antique tale of a woman (Celine Lomez) who abandons her high-society husband for a Group of Seven-type nature artist worked well enough in the early scenes for me to cagily suspend my animus against mannered period dramas. The staging is precise as well as deliberate, the scenario scores a couple nice points off puritan philistinism, and Larry Benedict's neurotic social climber is fitfully charming as well as tight-assed, leaving the real hateful stuff to professional drunk Sean McCann who provides some welcome counterpoint. As soon as things truck up to the woods, though, we're in big trouble, as narrative and characters alike dissolve into hackneyed metaphor: one guy is Civilization, the other guy is Nature, and in her escape to the latter the girl finds Freedom. As a result, the relationship between Lomez and the painter never gets a chance to develop; there's plenty of ambiguity about how this woodsy loner could sustain a relationship with this cultured, strong-minded woman, but the film unwisely abandons such concerns in favour of the usual shots of canoes and big rocks. And one good dynamite-at-the-picnic gag cannot make me forgive the Easy Rider-style climax - the worst and most familiar kind of sentimental fatalism. How did the creator of "Rat Life And Diet In North America" get dragged into exactly the kind of obscurantist nature-mystic claptrap which that film lampooned so brilliantly? By getting in over her head, is my wholly uneducated guess.

Joyce Wieland's The Far Shore and True Patriot Love  Kristy Holmes from Canadian Art Review

 

This article critically explores Canadian artist and filmmaker Joyce Wieland’s 1976 film, The Far Shore, and her 1971 artist book, True Patriot Love, and the ways in which she imagined and visualized aboriginal cultures and identities. I begin by contextualizing Wieland’s artistic construction of “Indianness” in relation to the ways the Canadian federal government, under Pierre Trudeau, was redefining aboriginal identity throughout the 1960s and early 1970s by way of new policies related to citizenship and cultural belonging, namely, the 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy. Part of the reason, I suggest, that Wieland may have been attracted to exploring aboriginal subject matter in her work is because this was a moment when aboriginality was an identity that was intensely debated not only within the realm of the federal government, but also within more mainstream Canadian media. I explore Wieland’s personal involvement in protesting in support of various aboriginal political causes and argue that while she was clearly sympathetic to the effects that the history of colonization had on aboriginal peoples, the artistic translation of this sympathy does not necessarily mean that her artistic production is free of the expression of colonialist thinking, stereotypes, and constructions. In her film and non-film work, Wieland often romanticizes aboriginal identity and positions aboriginal cultures as existing outside capitalist modernity. What is most interesting, I argue, is the disconnection between Wieland’s own personal involvement in protest and support of contemporary aboriginal causes and what emerges in her artistic production. 

 

Canadian Film Encyclopedia - The Far Shore

It is 1919, and Eulalie (Céline Lomez) leaves her Quebec home to live in Toronto with her new husband, the young and ambitious engineer, Ross Turner (Lawrence Benedict). She quickly becomes disillusioned with life in their stately Toronto house and, as Ross devotes himself increasingly to the demands of his business, Eulalie buries herself more and more in the world of art and whiles away her time at the grand piano. Her playing attracts the attention of Tom McLeod (Frank Moore), a painter acquaintance of her husband’s, whose work she also admires. With her marriage turning sour because of her husband’s boorishness and failure to understand her music, she finds in Tom not only friendship and shared confidences, but eventually love.

In the summer, Tom departs on his annual painting sojourn to the wilderness of northern Ontario, and Eulalie is left in the city to cope with Ross’s growing jealousy. However, during a vacation at their northern cottage with her husband and his friend, Cluny Fitzgerald (Sean McCann), Eulalie again meets Tom. Aware of the difficulties his presence creates in her domestic situation, Tom remains at his own campsite on the other shore of the lake. Eulalie, compelled by her love for Tom and repulsed by her unhappy marriage, takes to the water in a desperate bid for freedom. She is rescued by Tom and they enjoy an idyllic reunion. Ross, consumed by jealousy, sets out with Cluny to exact retribution for his loss, and tragedy follows.

A critical and box-office failure, The Far Shore is nevertheless an important example of Joyce Wieland’s major thematic concerns. Wieland was an early feminist, ardent nationalist and, above all, environmentalist. Visually, the film is a treat, thanks to Richard Leiterman’s luscious imagery and Wieland’s skill in drawing on the work of the Group of Seven. (Wieland introduces Tom, who is clearly modelled after Tom Thomson, putting the finishing touches to a famous Thomson painting, "The Jack Pine.")

A dense and complex northern love story, formal in conception and deliberate in its innocence, flagrant symbolism and portrayal of Canadian myths, The Far Shore is rooted in the landscape and realities of the Canadian experience. Although Wieland was unable to escape the trappings of strained melodrama, the film’s romantic naturalism contemplatively echoes dozens of other Canadian films. Not the least of these is David M. Hartford’s Back to God’s Country (1919), a film which Wieland had not then seen, but which stands as a kind of precursor.

Though it went on to win three Canadian Film Awards – Supporting Actor (Frank Moore), Art Direction (Anne Pritchard) and Cinematography (Richard Leiterman) – The Far Shore was unfairly maligned at the time of its release and was almost unanimously condemned by critics (although a few, including Alison Reid and Barbara Halpern Martineau, wrote detailed, supportive analyses). Most complained of the two-dimensional characters and the film’s melodramatic structure and symbolism.

More recently, however, the film became the subject of critical re-evaluations. Robert Fulford, writing in the Globe and Mail in 1997, stated: "The Far Shore is ... symbolically, a story about Quebec culture overwhelmed by the brute power of English Canada. On the level of subject matter and symbolism, this may be the most densely Canadian movie ever made."

The Far Shore  Feminist family melodrama, by Lauren Rabinovitz from Jump Cut, April 1987

 

Media Art Net | Art and Cinematography | Wieland

 

Toronto Film Review: A Woman's Work is Rarely Done (or ...  Daniel Gallay

 

Key Canadian Films by Women - Movie Review - Stylus ...   Nancy Keefe Rhodes from Stylus magazine, October 24, 2007

 

Book Review | Joyce Wieland: Artist on Fire by Jane Lind ...  Sherrill Grace reviews two books, Jane Lind’s Joyce Wieland: Artist on Fire, and Iris Nowell’s Joyce Wieland: : A Life in Art, from Canadian Literature 

The Far Shore  Quotes from Canadian Women Film Directors Database

Joyce Wieland's 'The Far Shore' (Canadian Cinema ...  paperback book by Johanne Sloan, from Amazon

 

The Far Shore - Sunshine Coast Film Society

 

User reviews  from imdb Author: Tito-8 from North Bay, Ontario

 

User reviews  from imdb Author: Demian Cypher from Toronto, Ontario

 

The Far Shore Review - TV Guide

 

Joyce Wieland's “The Far Shore†at TIFF Cinematheque  Jovana Jankovic from The Toronto Film Scene

 

Tom Thomson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The West Wind

 

Wilbur, Crane

 

CANON CITY

USA  (82 mi)  1948

 

Canon City (1948)  Mark Harris from Patrick Murtha’s Diary

I watched the 1948 prison break film Canon City on Netflix, and found the visual strategies fascinating. There are at least four distinct shooting styles used: 1) standard semi-documentary, for the establishing scenes shot on location at the real prison; 2) expressionistic, with lots of extreme close-ups, interesting shadows, arty angles, and so on, for most of the dramatic dialogue scenes; 3) lyrical/poetic, for most of the outdoor scenes recreating the snowy night of the prison break (which occurred on December 30, 1947, in Colorado; the movie was in theaters exactly six months later, on June 30, 1948); 4) theatrical, mainly scenes in houses showing whole rooms and placement of people in proscenium-arch style (or close to it). I've seldom seen a more pictorially diverse Hollywood feature from that era. No sticking to one style for director Crane Wilbur! But I'm not sure whether this indicates aesthetic sophistication, or catch-as-catch-can incoherence.

The escapee played by Scott Brady, Jim Sherbondy, had a troubled subsequent career and was eventually memorialized in a 1976 paperback original biography, The Gray Walls of Hell by John Harvey Williamson, that goes for a pretty penny on the second-hand market.

Wilder, Billy

Film Critic.Com Obituary   Max Messier

In his impressive library of cinematic creations, Billy Wilder (1906-2002) was the complete filmmaker -- producer, screenwriter, and director -- able to work in various genres -- musicals, romantic comedy, courtroom drama, film noir, and mysteries.

Where would the cinema world be without Wilder’s plethora of classical and culturally profound films, including
Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, The Lost Weekend, Double Indemnity, Stalag 17, and The Apartment? Every film created by Wilder and his writing partners, I.A.L. Diamond and Charles Brackett, still reverberates decades later, with quick directing, sharp dialogue, superb acting, crafty storytelling, and clever plot twists.

After abandoning plans to become a lawyer in the early 1920s, Billy Wilder worked as a writer for a tabloid paper in Berlin and then broke into the screenwriting business in 1929 by writing scripts for many German films. Upon’s Hitler’s rise in power in 1933, Wilder decided to leave Germany due to his Jewish heritage and emigrated to America. Without any type of grasp of the English language, Wilder’s contacts in Hollywood -- notably with the infamous actor Peter Lorre with whom he shared an apartment -- and quick learning abilities led to an eventual writing/producing partnership with Brackett.

Wilder and Bracket produced a series of excellent films in the 1940s – The Major and the Minor with Ginger Rogers, The Emperor Waltz with Bing Crosby, and A Foreign Affair (Oscar-nominated for Best Screenplay in 1948) with Marlene Dietrich. But, their greatest cinematic achievements are evident in two major films from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The dizzy and difficult expose on alcoholism was the basis for the groundbreaking film The Lost Weekend, which garnered Academy Awards for screenwriting, lead actor for Ray Millard, director for Wilder, and Best Picture of 1946. Next up, in 1950, Sunset Boulevard racked up 11 Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) and landed Wilder and Brackett an Academy award for Best Screenplay. No doubt the Academy voters frowned up the harsh tone of the film and its razor-sharp interpretation of how the Hollywood system put to pasture the majority of its silent film stars of years past.

Ironically, Wilder’s best film of the 1940s was absent his partner-in-crime Brackett. The classic noir film Double Indemnity was co-scripted by Wilder and one of American’s greatest novelists, Raymond Chandler. The film starred Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck as conniving lovers bent on murder and an insurance claim, earning seven nominations for Wilder and company, though no one found a place at the podium that year.

After Sunset Boulevard, Wilder and Brackett's partnership dissolved. Wilder’s dramatic films in the 1950s took on a darker tone and were offset by a series of wildly entertaining comedy vehicles. Out of the eight films produced in 1950s, Wilder received nominations for four films and won Best Director Oscars for Stalag 17 and Sabrina as well as Best Screenplay for Sabrina. Wilder’s films of that decade dealt with a variety of issues and topics
. Ace in the Hole, starring Kirk Douglas, dealt with the media circus hoopla after a small-town tragedy. Stalag 17 centered on the honor of men among a savage Nazi concentration camp. He made two of Marilyn Monroe’s classic comedies, Some Like It Hot and The Seven Year Itch, featuring her famous subway vent skirt lift. And it would be hard to forget Audrey Hepburn in her Oscar-winning role in Sabrina's love triangle.

From the 1960s to his retirement in 1981 came even more success, with Wilder's partnership with I.A.L. Diamond, which brought forth a flurry of strong, comedic films. 1960’s Best Picture winner The Apartment should be considered the standard for romantic comedies. Next up, Wilder and Diamond wrote James Cagney’s memorable role as finger-snapping company man C.R. MacNamara in One, Two, Three – which became the role that sent Cagney into retirement due to exhaustion. Afterwards, Wilder employed Jack Lemmon as his leading man for a series of hilarious films including Irma La Douce,
The Fortune Cookie (which launched the team of Matthau and Lemmon), Avanti!, The Front Page, and Wilder’s final film Buddy Buddy.

Billy Wilder garnered over fifteen Academy Award nominations, two Best Director Academy Awards, and three Best Screenplay Academy Awards -- all within a relatively 25 year career. One of Hollywood’s greatest film directors, Billy Wilder’s playful and insightful uses of the English language and his resounding images captured on celluloid decades ago will never be forgotten.

Billy Wilder - Films as director:, Other films:   Philip Kemp from Film Reference

During the course of his directorial career, Billy Wilder succeeded in offending just about everybody. He offended the public, who shunned several of his movies as decisively as they flocked to others; he offended the press with Ace in the Hole, the U.S. Congress with A Foreign Affair, the Hollywood establishment with Sunset Boulevard ("This Wilder should be horsewhipped!" fumed Louis B. Mayer), and religious leaders with Kiss Me, Stupid; he offended the critics, both those who found him too cynical and those who found him not cynical enough. And he himself, in the end, seems to have taken offence at the lukewarm reception of his last two films, and retired into morose silence.

Still, if Wilder gave offence, it was never less than intentional. "Bad taste," the tweaking or flouting of social taboos, is a key tactic throughout his work. His first film as director, The Major and the Minor, hints slyly at paedophilia, and several other Wilder movies toy with offbeat sexual permutations: transvestism in Some Like It Hot, spouse-swapping in Kiss Me, Stupid, an ageing woman buying herself a young man in Sunset Boulevard, the reverse in Love in the Afternoon. Even when depicting straightforward romantic love, as inThe Emperor Waltz, Wilder cannot resist counterpointing it with the eager ruttings of a pair of dogs.

He also relishes emphasising the more squalid of human motives. Stalag 17 mocks prison-camp mythology by making a mercenary fixer the only hero on offer, and Double Indemnity replays The Postman Always Rings Twice with greed replacing honest lust. In The Apartment Jack Lemmon avidly demeans himself to achieve professional advancement (symbolised by the key to a lavatory door), and virtually everybody in Ace in the Hole, perhaps the most acerbic film ever made in Hollywood, furthers personal ends at the expense of a poor dupe dying trapped in an underground crevice. Wilder presents a disillusioned world, one (as Joan Didion put it) "seen at dawn through a hangover, a world of cheap double entendres and stale smoke . . . the true country of despair."

Themes of impersonation and deception, especially emotional deception, pervade Wilder's work. People disguise themselves as others, or feign passions they do not feel, to gain some ulterior end. Frequently, though—all too frequently, perhaps—the counterfeit turns genuine, masquerade love conveniently developing into the real thing. For all his much-flaunted cynicism, Wilder often seems to lose the courage of his own disenchantment, resorting to unconvincing changes of heart to bring about a slick last-reel resolution. Some critics have seen this as blatant opportunism. "Billy Wilder," Andrew Sarris remarked, "is too cynical to believe even his own cynicism." Others have detected a sentimental undertow, one which surfaces in the unexpectedly mellow, almost benign late films like Avanti! and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. But although, by comparison with a true moral subversive like Buñuel, Wilder can seem shallow and even facile, the best of his work retains a wit and astringent bite that sets it refreshingly off from the pieties of the Hollywood mainstream. When it comes to black comedy, he ranks at least the equal of his mentor, Lubitsch, whose audacity in wringing laughs out of concentration camps (To Be or Not to Be) is matched by Wilder's in pivoting Some Like It Hot around the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

The consistency of Wilder's sardonic vision allows him to operate with assurance across genre boundaries. Sunset Boulevard—"full of exactness, cleverness, mastery and pleasure, a gnawing, haunting and ruthless film with a dank smell of corrosive delusion hanging over it," wrote Axel Madsen—has yet to be surpassed among Hollywood-on-Hollywood movies. In its cold fatality, Double Indemnity qualifies as archetypal noir, yet the same sense of characters trapped helplessly in the rat-runs of their own nature underlies both the erotic farce of The Seven Year Itch and the autumnal melancholy of Sherlock Holmes. Acclamation, though, falls beyond Wilder's scope: his Lindbergh film, The Spirit of St. Louis, is respectful, impersonal, and dull.

By his own admission, Wilder became a director only to protect his scripts, and his shooting style is essentially functional. But though short on intricate camerawork and stunning compositions, his films are by no means visually drab. Several of them contain scenes that lodge indelibly in the mind: Swanson as the deranged Norma Desmond, regally descending her final staircase; Jack Lemmon dwarfed by the monstrous perspectives of a vast open-plan office; Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend) trudging the parched length of Third Avenue in search of an open pawn-shop; Lemmon again, tangoing deliriously with Joe E. Brown, in full drag with a rose between his teeth. No filmmaker capable of creating images as potent—and as cinematic—as these can readily be written off.

Billy Wilder: Biography from Answers.com  biography

 

Overview for Billy Wilder  biography and filmography from Turner Classic Movies

 

Turner Classic Movies  Jeremy Geltzer tribute essay

 

Billy Wilder at Reel Classics  profile page

 

Billy Wilder • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Richard Armstrong from Senses of Cinema, May 2002

 

Film Noir Directors: Billy Wilder

 

Billy Wilder Theater | UCLA Film & Television Archive

Billy Wilder  The Director’s Series (43), including 10 Screenwriting Tips, from The Montreal Film Journal

Book review: Billy Wilder; A Talent for Trouble - Bright Lights Film ...   Gary Morris from Bright Lights Film Journal, May 12, 1998

Billy and me  Cameron Crowe from The Guardian, December 2, 1999

The King Steps Out: Goodbye to Billy Wilder  Richard Armstrong from Bright Lights Film Journal, April 2002, also seen here:   Bright Lights Article

Michael Wood reviews 'Conversations with Wilder' by Cameron Crowe ...  book review of Cameron Crowe’s Conversations with Wilder, by Michael Wood from The London Review of Books, March 2, 2000, also seen here:  Scentless Murder 

The New York Times  Aljean Harmetz obituary, March 29, 2002

 

Hollywood maestro Wilder dies at 95 | World news | The Guardian  Vikram Dodd from The Guardian, March 29, 2002

 

CNN Obituary  Paul Clinton, March 29, 2002

 

World Socialist Website  David Walsh obituary, April 3, 2002

 

Billy Wilder: The Chiaroscuro Artist • Senses of Cinema  Anna Dzenis, May 21, 2002

 

Billy, you're a hero  Philip French from The Observer, November 5, 2005

 

NPR  Billy Wilder's Rules of Good Filmmaking, by Nihar Patel from NPR, June 22, 2006

 

Billy Wilder - About Billy Wilder | American Masters | PBS  October 8, 2006

 

Shooting Down Pictures » Blog Archive » Billy Wilder: an Annotated ...  March 29, 2010

 

Billy Wilder, Movie-Maker: Critical Essays on the Films edited by Karen ...  Robert von Dassonowsky book review from Senses of Cinema, June 2011

 

A Foreign Affair - Bright Lights Film Journal  Christina Riley, April 30, 2012

 

Billy Wilder, still less than meets the eye | Film | The Guardian  John Patterson, June 8, 2012

 

Where to start with the films of Billy Wilder · Primer · The A.V. Club  Ryan Vlastelica, January 5, 2015

 

Some Like It Not: The Key to Successful Relationships in the Films of ...   Jason Carpenter from Bright Lights Film Journal, February 29, 2016

 

TSPDT - Billy Wilder

 

Playboy  Richard German interview, June 1 1963

 

Billy Wilder: About Film Noir  Robert Porfirio interview from Images, July 1975, also seen here:  Images - About Film Noir: An Interview

 

The Los Angeles Times  Paul Harnisch interview, March 2, 1986

 

Paris Review - The Art of Screenwriting No. 1, Billy Wilder  James Linville interview from The Paris Review, Spring 1996

 

Billy Wilder's grave (photo)

 

Images for Billy Wilder

 

Billy Wilder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
DOUBLE INDEMNITY                                           A                     98
USA  (108 mi)  1944

 

“It has all the characteristics of the classic forties film as I respond to it. It’s in black and white, it has fast badinage, it’s very witty, a story from the classic age. It has Edward G. Robinson, and Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray and the tough voice-over. It has brilliantly written dialogue, and the perfect score by Miklos Rosza. It’s Billy Wilder’s best movie…practically anybody’s best movie.”     —Woody Allen

 

Author James M. Cain had success in 1934 with his book The Postman Always Rings Twice, while Double Indemnity, continuing ruminations on the same themes of infidelity and adultery, was published two years later in serial magazine installments.  It would be seven more years before Austrian émigré Billy Wilder, assisted on the screenplay by Raymond Chandler, would take the reins in creating what is arguably the seminal example of Film Noir.  Between the Great Depression and the Cold War, especially following the outbreak of World War II, American films created a new style, both visual and narrative, largely based on American crime fiction of the 30’s where the subject is crime and its psychological implications, including gruff, world weary loners who have had their share of bad luck, hard liquor, and failed romances, exuding an existential despair shared by many of the disillusioned returning war vets who found life at home much harder than when they left it.  Ironically, many of its leading exponents would be former European directors who escaped German persecution, like Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Jacques Tourneur, André de Toth, Robert Siodmak, Edgar Ulmer, or Robert Zinnemann, all of whom were well versed in Berlin’s Ufa Studio of German Expressionism and understood the dark psychological state of being trapped by forces larger than themselves, as each experienced this personally in their own lives.  Film Noir may have had its origins with films like STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR (1940) with the mysterious stranger Peter Lorre, or consensus audience favorite THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), introducing Humphrey Bogart as hard boiled detective Sam Spade, surrounded by a cast of exotic characters.  But DOUBLE INDEMNITY may be the granddaddy of them all as it appears to be the first to consolidate what is commonly known as noir style, which deploys many notable features, such as dark lighting that accentuates the contrasts between black and white, grimly realistic black and white cinematography, including impressionistic night time city landscapes inhabited by nocturnal creatures who have trouble sleeping at night, cool seductive femme fatale women and men momentarily caught off guard by their sexual allure that feels more like entrapment, tough, brooding voice-overs or sparse but suggestive dialogue punctuated by cynicism and sexual innuendo, a ruthless desire to greedily achieve the American Dream with plans that go awry due to double crosses, misplaced loyalty, and betrayal, oftentimes leading to murder, with a central character usually ending up wracked by guilt or dead. 

 

First and foremost there is this marvelous script that runs like a locomotive through the entire movie, told almost entirely in flashback, a film beloved by Wilder himself “because it had the fewest takes, and because it was taut and moved in the staccato manner of Cain’s novel.”  Fred MacMurray plays Walter Neff, an unsuspecting insurance salesman who’s usually pretty confident about himself, which is apparent when he first sets eyes on blond bombshell Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson as she's standing on top of a staircase dressed only in a towel, claiming she’s just been sunbathing, to which he amusingly quips “No pigeons around, I hope.”  Despite the obvious, what catches his eye is her ankle bracelet, as if this itself is suggestive of illicit sexual provocation.  It should be noted that Charles Brackett, who scripted Wilder’s first two Hollywood films, refused to work on this film due to “moral grounds.”  Raymond Chandler was never a fan of James Cain and was actually contemptuously dismissive, as the two barely spoke to one another, but the script remained loyal to his original intentions.  Even Wilder acknowledged that most of the dialogue that makes the film so memorable was largely Chandler’s.  Phyllis’s curiosity about obtaining an accidental death insurance policy without her husband’s knowledge piques Neff’s professional cynicism, as he immediately senses foul play and barks his way out the door.  When she arrives at his doorstep shortly thereafter, claiming he forgot his hat, it’s evident he didn’t forget his hat.  But after a few shots of bourbon, they’re in each other’s arms.  This is as steamy as it got in the 1940’s, as sex and nudity were not on display until European films of the 50’s and 60’s.  Instead kisses and crackling dialogue would have to suffice.  In no time, Phyllis positions herself as the offended party, claiming marital neglect, while Neff works the numbers on an insurance swindle known as double indemnity, a policy that allows the highest cash payout based on the least likely causes of death.  While not as steamy as THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946), it follows a similar femme fatale scenario of luring an unsuspecting foil via her sexual prowess to get whatever she wants, where all the time poor Walter is led to believe he’s getting what he wants, the money and the girl.  Simply put, the girl has other plans. 

 

This may be Stanwyck’s most boldly provocative role, as she accomplishes the most with the least amount of effort, never raising her voice, never pleading with or browbeating her man, using legs and looks instead of showing a lot of skin, never resorting to caricature.  Instead she’s as smart as any man, operates by her own rules and is savvy enough to keep most of what she knows to herself while at the same time allowing the man to have enough of what he thinks he wants to keep him happy.  Neff is completely enamored by Phyllis, hoodwinked, sideswiped, harpooned into continually calling her “baby,” showering her with kisses until one point when he finally figures it out and we hear him mutter to himself as he’s walking down the street, “How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?”  Throughout much of this film, it’s as if I heard the voice of Humphrey Bogart speaking, but it was Barbara Stanwyck doing the talking, as she was the one that always remained cool and collected under fire, never breaking a sweat, never acknowledging fear, maintaining her assertiveness throughout.  Pauline Kael describes her as follows:  “Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson—a platinum blonde who wears tight white sweaters, an anklet, and sleazy-kinky shoes—is perhaps the best acted and the most fixating of all the slutty, cold-blooded femmes fatales of the film noir genre. With her bold stare, her sneering, over-lipsticked, thick-looking mouth, and her strategically displayed legs, she's a living entrapment device.”  Needless to say, the film has its devout followers.   

 

Neff’s insurance boss is Edward G. Robinson as Barton Keyes, the guy whose job it is to spot phony claims, and he does so with relish, where the same zeal and conviction displayed in criminal gangland mentality from his earlier pictures is now spent scouring claims searching for every legal angle that casts suspicion on fraud.  He’s a crack investigator who follows every clue and is renowned for his meticulous scrutiny of following the facts, but also a father figure who has taken Neff under his wing.  His character is highly reminiscent of Welles’ later film THE STRANGER (1946), where Robinson is a War Crimes investigator hunting down Welles who’s a suspected Nazi collaborator.  He utilizes this same cunning to break the case down little by little, where Neff all but feels the noose tightening around his neck.  The case has him muttering to himself after awhile, losing all personal conviction once he realizes his perfect plan and his girl have both turned sour.  It is Robinson’s revelations at the end that drive the finale, filled with typical Wilder-driven atmosphere and suspense, but also a kind of dread with having to come to terms with it all, having to stare into the face of one’s own disillusionment.  The film is particularly influential in presenting an entire feature length movie where the two main box office attractions remain scheming and manipulative right up until the end, where both remain outside all moral boundaries, a place where John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards exists in John Ford’s infamous western THE SEARCHERS (1956).    

 

Kim Newman from 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE:

Adapted by director Billy Wilder and author Raymond Chandler from the hard-boiled novel by James M. Cain, Double Indemnity is the archetypal film noir, the tale of a desperate dame and a greedy man, of murder for sordid profit and sudden, violent betrayal. Yet it has a weird, evocative romanticism (“How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?”) and pays off, extraordinary for 1944, with a confession not only of murder but also of love between two men. The last line, addressed by dying Fred MacMurray to heartbroken Edward G. Robinson is “I love you, too.” 

A wounded man staggers by night into a Los Angeles insurance company office, and settles down at his desk to dictate confessional notes on “the Dietrichson claim.” He introduces himself as “Walter Neff, insurance salesman, 35 years old, unmarried, no visible scars—until awhile ago, that is.” MacMurray spent his whole career, first at Paramount then at Disney and finally in sitcoms, as a genial nice guy, always smiling, always folksy; twice (his other change-of-pace, also for Wilder, is The Apartment) he crawled behind his smile and marvelously played a complete heel, his cleft chin sweaty and in need of a shave, his smooth salesman’s talk a cover for lechery, larceny, and murderous intent. The bait that tempts this average nobody off the straight-and-narrow comes fresh from a sunbath, barely wrapped in a towel, flashing an ankle bracelet. Calling at a fake Spanish mansion on Los Feliz Boulevard about an auto policy renewal, Neff encounters Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) and can’t resist putting in the verbal moves on her.  Neff backs off when she innocently asks if it’s possible to ensure her older husband (Tom Powers) against accidental death without him knowing about it. Neff mulls it over and, after an embrace in his apartment, agrees to pitch in with the murder plan.

The couple trick Mr. D. into signing up for a policy that pays off double if death occurs on a train, then arrange it so his broken-necked corpse is found on the railroad tracks. Enter Barton Keyes (Robinson), a claims investigator of Columbo-like tenacity whose only blind spot is his devotion to Neff. Keyes fusses around the case, ruling out suicide in a brilliant speech about the unlikeliness of suicide by jumping off a train and homing in on the gamey blond as a murderess and rooting around for her partner in crime. Keyes doesn’t even have to do much work, because postkilling pressures are already splitting Neff and Phyllis apart, as they try not to panic during meets in a local supermarket and come to suspect one another of additional double crosses. In that stifling, shadowed mansion, with “Tangerine” on the radio and honeysuckle in the air, the lovers riddle each other with bullets, and Neff staggers away to confess. Keyes joins him in the office and sadly catches the end of the story.  Neff asks for four hours so he can head for Mexico, but Keyes knows, “You’ll never make it to the border. You’ll never even make the elevator.”  

Pacific Cinematheque (link lost):

Film noir par excellence. Fred MacMurray, as Walter Neff, staggers into an office, a fresh bullet wound in his side, and proceeds to offer a remarkable confession into a Dictaphone: " . . . I killed Dietrichson. Me, Walter Neff, insurance salesman, 35 years old, unmarried, no visible scars. Until a while ago, that is . . ." So begins Billy Wilder's sordid, seminal Double Indemnity, co-scripted by Raymond Chandler, from the novel by James M. Cain. Barbara Stanwyck, as Phyllis Dietrichson, is the double-crossing dame who has drawn Neff into this dire predicament, seducing him into a devious plot to murder her husband -- and to stage the death as an accident, in order to collect on the double indemnity clause in his life insurance policy. Things, of course, go dangerously awry, and hot on the trail of the co-conspirators is the kindly Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), the insurance investigator who is Neff's best friend and colleague. "This shrewd, tawdry thriller is one of the high points of 40s films . . . Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson -- a platinum blonde who wears tight-fitting sweaters, an anklet, and sleazy-kinky shoes -- is perhaps the best acted and most fixating of all the slutty, cold-blooded femmes fatales of the film-noir genre" (Pauline Kael). "Superb performances by the three leads . . . This is perhaps the best example of Hollywood film noir of the Forties -- a pitiless study of human greed, sex, and sadism" (Sadoul, Dictionary of Films).

Dirty Hands to Down to Earth  Pauline Kael

Every turn and twist is exactly calculated and achieves its effect with the simplest of means; this shrewd, smoothly tawdry thriller is one of the high points of 40s films. The director, Billy Wilder, collaborated with Raymond Chandler in adapting James M. Cain's story (from his book Three of a Kind), and it's a tribute to them that one is likely to remember the names of the principal characters. Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson—a platinum blonde who wears tight white sweaters, an anklet, and sleazy-kinky shoes—is perhaps the best acted and the most fixating of all the slutty, cold-blooded femmes fatales of the film noir genre. With her bold stare, her sneering, over-lipsticked, thick-looking mouth, and her strategically displayed legs, she's a living entrapment device. Fred MacMurray's Walter Neff, an insurance salesman, is the patsy she ensnares in a plot to kill her businessman-husband and collect on the double-indemnity clause in his policy; MacMurray's slightly opaque, regular-guy, macho Americanness is perfectly used here (he has never had better audience empathy). And as Keyes, the claims investigator for the insurance company, Edward G. Robinson handles his sympathetic role with an easy mastery that gives the film some realistic underpinnings. It needs them, because despite the fine use of realistic sets—a cheerless middle-class home, a supermarket, offices—Chandler's dialogue is in his heightened laconic mode, and the narration (Walter Neff tells the story) is often so gaudy and terse that it seems an emblem of 40s hardboiled attitudes. This defect may be integral to the film's taut structure. Another, lesser defect isn't: except for the three stars, the cast is just barely adequate. With Jean Heather, Porter Hall, Tom Powers, Byron Barr, Richard Gaines, and Fortunio Bonanova. Art direction by Hans Dreier and Hal Pereira; cinematography by John Seitz; score by Miklós Rózsa. Paramount.

Time Out London review

Six years before a Hollywood screenwriter’s corpse narrated ‘Sunset Blvd’, a dead-man-walking delivered the hard-boiled voiceover in another Billy Wilder inquiry into moral rot in sunny California. Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), a salesman for Pacific All-Risk Insurance, staggers into the office late one night to record a memorandum regarding the recent death of a policyholder: ‘I killed Dietrichson… for money, and a woman. I didn’t get the money, and I didn’t get the woman.’

There’s nothing but a towel and a staircase between Neff and the woman when they first meet; Neff pays a house call on Dietrichson’s Spanish-revival pile in LA, where old dust levitates in the bands of light through the Venetian blinds, and he encounters the oil executive’s bored, platinum-blonde second wife, Phyllis (Barbara Stanwyck). She’d like to know if she can secretly procure a life insurance policy for her spouse; Neff knows she’s conscripting him for her husband-disposal unit, and he knows that claims manager Barton Keyes (Edward G Robinson) will smell a putrefying rat, but they’ve got power-surge chemistry, and that’s a honey of an anklet she’s wearing…

As poised and languorous as a cat, Stanwyck’s definitive femme fatale could be one of the savvy minxes of the actress’ delectable Pre-Code years – the jailhouse alpha female in ‘Ladies They Talk About’, the secretary trampolining up the office ranks one bed at a time in ‘Baby Face’ – grown older and harder, her manicured ruthlessness calcifying into brutal amorality. With diamond-hard repartee by Wilder and Raymond Chandler (by way of James M Cain’s novel) and ghoulish cinematography by the great John Seitz, this is the gold standard of ’40s noir, straight down the line.

Double Indemnity  Dan Callahan from Slant magazine

 

An accepted classic and archetypal film noir, Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity is visually drab and flabby around the edges. Its seamy tale of murder is not layered in any way; what you see (or, in Wilder's case, hear) is what you get. There are several rude, unexpected jokes that punctuate the movie's languor: When insurance agent Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) first sees flytrap-blonde Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), she's standing on top of a staircase in a towel and says she's been sunbathing. "No pigeons around, I hope," he says, a laugh-out-loud wisecrack that underlines the intense misogyny of the movie. As these two monsters thrust and parry contemptuous dialogue at each other (a scene that has been excerpted on a hundred TV clip shows), it's hard not to feel that the prospect of sex between two people has seldom looked so joyless. Neff and Phyllis are burned-out figures, a horny jerk and a feral sociopath. They show no remorse, no real passion, and they move around the scenario like puppets; the effrontery of their initial meeting might be classic, but it leads to a dead end. The querulous, disagreeable minor characters point up Wilder's sarcastic, shrugging point-of-view. If he doesn't care, why should we?

As Keyes, a crack-insurance investigator who trusts Walter and stays hot on the trail of the case, Edward G. Robinson has several lengthy speeches that he pulls off splendidly, and he steals the film with only a limited amount of screen time at his disposal. Crowned by a silky blond wig that chills her dreamy demeanor, Stanwyck does all she can with a vivid but basically uninteresting villain. She scatters her performance with icy suggestions of sadism and can be downright scary, as in the second grocery store scene where she stares Neff down, but her talent is wasted on such an all-business femme fatale. MacMurray is ideally cast as this chump, but he can't seem to find any chemistry with Stanwyck (later on, they're very touching together in Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow). Double Indemnity improves a little as it goes along, and it would be churlish to deny some of the pleasures to be had from its construction and dialogue, but it's a famous movie that doesn't bear much close inspection.

Movieline Magazine review  Michael Atkinson on Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck was already a world-class veteran by 1944, her filmography consisting mostly of career woman melodramas, weepies and wisecracking comedies. But suddenly, in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, she became for all time the paradigm of the film noir slut: rich, bored, bleached, ruthless and horny as a mink. In this carefully modulated performance--she never even raises her voice--Stanwyck is the ultimate lollapalooza, all legs and sneers and helpless eyes. Few other actresses could've oozed out so much musk with so little effort. We never hesitate for a moment in believing she could blithely steer Fred MacMurray's snappy insurance salesman around by his dick, fueling the engine of this oldest and most wicked of scummy murder stories. She's a martini-soaked onion: pearly, sharp and sweet, the filigree in film noir's glass of cheap gin. After her, audiences saw things through a new window: imagine, two amoral shitheels plot the death of an innocent jerk, and we watch them do it, hoping it works. The darkness has been with us ever since.

Still, Stanwyck's Phyllis is no caricature of man-eating viciousness: she's both scrumptious and fiercely keen. Whomever she's with, she's sustaining two or three levels of deceit at once. Stanwyck knows that sex is Phyllis's primary medium, and her every move is intended to blur a healthy man's vision without his even noticing what's happened. As the scheming gets out of control, you can see the survival instinct focus in her eyes and deepen in her already fleshy voice. She's obviously much smarter than MacMurray's infamous Walter Neff--note how Stanwyck patiently, almost lovingly tolerates his nervous last-minute instructions as they embark on their crime.

She also possesses a mean streak he could never appreciate, even though he breaks the patsy's neck. Phyllis is driving as Neff does the deed on her hubby in the passenger seat, and we're looking at her face the whole time: Stanwyck doesn't seem to move a muscle, but her stillness boils with orgasmic glee. As the commotion beside her settles into silence, she segues into the subtlest of satanic smirks. It's chilling, but the irony is, she's never looked so beautiful. "What's the matter, aren't ya gonna kiss me?" she dead-seriously purrs after the stiff is dumped. Neff looks like he'd rather eat a dead cat, but he does it anyway. He has no choice by that point, and she knows it.

Later in the film, when Neff explains to Phyllis how he plans to kill her to save himself, Stanwyck takes a moment to inspect her fingernail polish. It is a classic gesture. Being sexy in a movie is easy; having it seem so natural, so easy, when everything else the character does is a lie, is what separates the women from the girls. In that final confrontation, outfitted in the soon-to-be-standard femme fatale ensemble of silk pajamas, extra lip gloss and gun, Stanwyck is pure dish, a woman cutting her way through a man's world with the deadly edges of her own desire. Only when Neff presses the gun barrel to her belly is Phyllis at a loss--Stanwyck glows for a brief instant with guileless fear and hurt. To us Phyllis always seemed destined for hate and bloodshed, but Stanwyck knew that the poor woman thought she'd live forever.

Double Indemnity - TCM.com  Rob Nixon

 

Walter Neff is the top salesman at his Los Angeles insurance company, and his close friend, an expert claims investigator named Barton Keyes, wants him to work in his department. But although the two have a bantering, easy-going friendship, Neff decides to stay with his sales job. One day, while making a routine call on an auto insurance client, he meets the client's sexy blonde wife, Phyllis. Although she appears to be subtly seducing him, she coldly rebuffs his advances and sends him on his way. Soon after, however, she invites him to come by her house and discuss additional coverage for her husband. When he arrives, he finds Phyllis alone - no husband and no maid. Their mutual attraction quickly graduates to undisguised lust and before Neff knows it, Phyllis convinces him to sell her additional accident insurance for her husband (without the man's knowledge). It's just the first step in their mutual plan to murder Phyllis' husband and collect on a double indemnity clause in the insurance contract.

Cold-blooded, brutal, highly stylized, and informed with a black sense of humor, Double Indemnity is one of the high points of 1940s filmmaking and a prime example of a genre and style that remains highly influential in its look, attitude and storyline. Critics have argued whether or not this movie can be considered the first film noir thriller, but it undoubtedly set the pattern for that distinctive post-war genre: a shadowy, nighttime urban world of deception and betrayal usually distinguished by its "hard-boiled" dialogue, corrupt characters and the obligatory femme fatale who preys on the primal urges of an ordinary Joe hungry for sex and easy wealth.

Edward G. Robinson, best known as the megalomaniac gangster in Little Caesar (1930), was no stranger to playing characters on the wrong side of the law, but in Double Indemnity he plays the lethal lovers' nemesis, Barton Keyes, a shrewd investigator who can smell a phony insurance claim a mile away. The film places the three leads in an unconventional love triangle - Neff lights Keyes' smokes more often and more affectionately than he does Phyllis' cigarettes, and he tells the other man "I love you" at least as much. At the end, it's Keyes who kneels by the fallen Neff, in what Bernard F. Dick, in his book Billy Wilder (Twayne, 1980), calls "one of the most powerful images of male love ever portrayed on the screen: a pieta in the form of a surrogate father's lighting the cigarette of his dying son." It's the most tender moment in an otherwise hard-as-steel story.

Although Barbara Stanwyck played heavies before, she had never been cast as an out-and-out murderess. She was afraid of the role, she told Wilder. "Well, are you a mouse or an actress?" he replied - just the sort of remark to get the desired reaction from Stanwyck. Never one to back down from an acting challenge, she took the part and turned it into one of her best. Known for her easy-going, non-temperamental, and thoroughly professional approach to acting, Stanwyck worked well with Wilder. "She is as good an actress as I have ever worked with," he later said. "Very meticulous about her work. We rehearsed the way I usually do. Hard. There were no retakes." Indeed, Stanwyck was beloved by many directors, actors and technicians in the business. Probably the only negative comment to emerge about her performance in Double Indemnity has nothing to do with her acting; some critics complained about the fake blonde wig she was required to wear as Phyllis. True, it does add to the character's flashy nature and insincere manner, but as one Paramount executive said after viewing early rushes, "We hire Barbara Stanwyck and here we get George Washington."

Casting Walter Neff wasn't so easy. At first Wilder tried to interest Alan Ladd, then George Raft. After the director told Raft the story, the actor asked him, "Where's the lapel?" Lapel? Raft explained he was waiting for the moment when Neff would flip over his lapel and reveal the police or FBI badge underneath, thus identifying himself as the film's true hero in the final reel. No lapel, Wilder said. No deal, Raft replied. Then Wilder came up with the idea of using Fred MacMurray, who had a much more genial screen image at the time. "I'm a saxophone player; I do little comedies with Carole Lombard," MacMurray argued. Wilder eventually convinced the actor to take a bold step. Years later, MacMurray would look back on Walter Neff as his favorite role.

Double Indemnity was both a popular and critical success upon its release. It also caught the attention of Hollywood at Oscar® time, winning eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Dramatic Score.

 

DoubleIndemnity  The Road to Double Indemnity, by Roger Westcombe from Crime Culture 

 

The Film Journal (Richard Armstrong) review ["Lady in the Dark: Billy Wilder's ___"]

 

The Palace (Michael Mills) essay ["Barbara Stanwyck and ..."]  Modern Times

 

Film Court (Lawrence Russell) review  The Cosmology of Sex, June 2000

 

The Noir Thriller: Introduction   extract from Lee Horsley's book, The Noir Thriller (2001)

 

An Introduction to Neo-Noir  essay on Film Noir by Lee Horsley from Crime Culture, 2002  

 

Blogcritic [Modern Pea Pod]  Modern Pea Pod from Blog Critics, September 10, 2006

 

Rerunning Film Noir   Richard Schickel essay on Film Noir from The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2007

 

Film Noir of the Week  Steve-O, December 26, 2007

 

Cinema Autopsy [Thomas Caldwell]  “I Didn’t Get the Money and I Didn’t Get the Woman,” October 2008

 

Film Noir Studies   various essays on noir by John Blaser

 

DVD Times [Mike Sutton]

 

Pajiba (Dustin Rowles) review

 

Images Movie Journal  Kevin Jack Hagopian

 

The Greatest Films (Tim Dirks) recommendation [spoilers]

 

Double Indemnity   John McCarty from Film Reference 

 

Double Indemnity (1944) - Home Video Reviews - TCM.com  Jeremy Arnold

 

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) retrospective

 

Ruthless Reviews review  Matt Cale

 

Foster on Film - Film Noir

 

Double Indemnity: The Film Noir 'net 

 

Double Indemnity (1944)  William Marling from Detnovel.dom, Detective Fiction and Film Noir

 

FilmFanatic.org

 

The Film Journal (Richard Armstrong) review ["Nineteen with a Bullet (the 60th Anniversary of ___)"]  2004

 

VideoVista review  Roger Keen

 

Murder That Smells Like Honeysuckle  The Nerd Quotient, August 31, 2006

 

Westminster Wisdom  April 27, 2007

 

Double Indemnity | MovieZeal   Phillip Johnston from Movie Zeal, August 3, 2008 

 

Double Indemnity (no 31) ***** « Wonders in the Dark   Allan Fish from Wonders in the Dark, which include detailed comments from Tony D’Ambra from Film Noir, December 17, 2008

 

Double Indemnity (1944): Proto-Noir  Tony D’Ambra from Film Noir, also including Femmes Noir # 1: Barbara

 

Double Indemnity: The Unseen Ending  Tony D’Ambra from Film Noir

 

Crazy for Cinema (Lisa Skrzyniarz) review

 

Double Indemnity at The Muse's Movie Views 

 

Features-on-Film

 

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review  Glenn Erickson, 2-disc Legacy Special Edition

 

Movieman's Guide to the Movies (Brian Oliver) dvd review [4.5/5] [Legacy Series Edition]

 

Fulvue Drive-in dvd review  Nate Goss, 2-disc Legacy Special Edition

 

Tail Slate (Michael Sheridan) dvd review [1/4] [Legacy Series Edition]

 

DVD MovieGuide dvd review [Legacy Series Edition]  Colin Jacobson

 

DVD Town (William David Lee) dvd review  2-disc Legacy Special Edition

 

Film School Rejects (Chris Beaumont) dvd review [A]  2-disc Legacy Special Edition

 

Salon (Michael Sragow) dvd review

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

 

About.com - DVD Review [Ivana Redwine]

 

Double Indemnity Pictures  

 

Double Indemnity   brief review and a gallery of photos

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz) review [A+]

 

Eye for Film (Amber Wilkinson) review [4.5/5]

 

The Flick Filosopher (MaryAnn Johanson) review

 

Knemonic.com - Colin's Pick of the Week

 

Moderns and Classics movie reviews  Brian Bell

 

Close-up Film [Jean Lynch]

 

Double Indemnity  Juliet Clark from the Pacific Film Archives

 

Double Indemnity  Jason Sanders from the Pacific Film Archives

 

Double Indemnity  Lisanne Skyler from the Pacific Film Archives

 

Double Indemnity  Pacific Film Archives

 

Double Indemnity > Overview - AllMovie   Linda Rasmussen

 

Classic Film Guide (capsule)

 

Entertainment Weekly capsule dvd review [A]  Chris Willman

 

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [5/5]

 

Variety review  also seen here:  Double Indemnity Movie Review - Read Variety's Analysis Of The ... 

 

Guardian/Observer

 

The Independent (Anthony Quinn) review [5/5]

 

BBCi - Films  Stella Papamichael

 

Austin Chronicle [Jerry Renshaw]

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) recommendation [Great Movies]

A Guide to Film Noir Genre   A succinct ten point guide, by Roger Ebert, January 30, 1995  

The New York Times (Bosley Crowther) review

 

Dave Kehr  from The New York Times, August 22, 2006

 

Looker  a response to Dave Kehr’s review, August 22, 2006

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

DVDBeaver.com [Adam Lemke]

 

CiakHollywood - Photos  photo gallery

 

screenplay - The Weekly Script 

 

Double Indemnity (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  
 
Double indemnity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

 

Double Indemnity - James M. Cain   book review from The Complete Review

 

recording   The only known recording of Raymond Chandler’s voice from the Rara Avis archives, a BBC Radio interview in 1958 conducted by Ian Fleming

 

Raymond Chandler Ian Flemming voice  Mark Coggins from Riordan’s Desk, March 9, 2007

 

Riordan's Desk: You've Heard Him Talk, Now See Him Act     Mark Coggins reveals photos of Raymond Chandler in Double Indemnity, which comes around 16 minutes into the movie with a bespectacled Chandler sitting on a bench reading while smoking a cigarette, from Riordan’s Desk, January 14, 2009,  

 

"Chandler's double identity: Adrian Wootton on a writer's secret cameo"   Adrian Wootton from The Guardian, June 5, 2009

 

Double Indemnity – Raymond Chandler cameo caught on video  Jay Tomio includes the YouTube (4:22) scene which appears at about the 3:38 mark, from BSC Review, June 8, 2009

 

Thought Experiments : The Blog: Double Indemnity     Bryan Appleyard, June 9, 2009 with a link to this, a scene where Raymond Chandler appears in the movie

 

Raymond Chandler's 'Double Indemnity' cameo | Jacket Copy | Los ...   Carolyn Kellogg captures a photo of Raymond Chandler on the movie set from The LA Times Blog, July 2009

 

Mystery Fanfare: Raymond Chandler Cameo Double Indemnity   Janet Rudolph from Mystery Fanfare, July 15, 2009

 

Film noir - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

 

The Maltese Falcon (1941 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  First Noir film

 

Images - Film Noir    Film Noir, an Introduction

 

Film Noir: Classic noir & neo-noir movies    filmography of noir films

 

THE LOST WEEKEND

USA  (101 mi)  1945

 

Time Out  Tom Milne

A scarifyingly grim and grimy account of an alcoholic writer's lost weekend, stolen from time intended to be spent on taking a cure and gradually turning into a descent into hell. What makes the film so gripping is the brilliance with which Wilder uses John F Seitz's camerawork to range from an unvarnished portrait of New York brutally stripped of all glamour (Milland's frantic trudge along Third Avenue on Yom Kippur in search of an open pawnshop is a neo-realist morceau d'anthologie) to an almost Wellesian evocation of the alcoholic's inner world (not merely the justly famous DTs hallucination of a mouse attacked by bats, but the systematic use of images dominated by huge foreground objects). Characteristically dispassionate in his observation, Wilder elicits sympathy for his hero only by stressing the cruelly unthinking indifference to his sickness: the male nurse in the alcoholic ward gleefully chanting, 'Good morning, Mary Sunshine!', or the pianist in the bar leading onlookers in a derisive chant of 'somebody stole my purse' (to the tune of 'Somebody Stole My Gal') after he is humiliatingly caught trying to acquire some money. A pity that the production code demanded a glibly unconvincing ending in which love finds a way.

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young]

The fact that this pioneering study of alcoholism remains, over half a century later, the best known movie on the subject is probably more to do with Lloyd Cole borrowing the title for a mid-80s hit single rather than any enduring intrinsic merits of its own. Because, despite its multiple Oscar haul (picture, director, script, actor), The Lost Weekend is no classic. Even by the standards of its time, this is a very broad-strokes kind of drama – one that sacrifices subtlety and complexity in favour of a public-service “message picture” exploration of an Issue.

Ray Milland is Don Birnam, 33-year-old failed novelist living with his straight-arrow brother Wick (Philip Terry) in a Manhattan apartment. He’s been alcoholic for years, making only occasional attempts to sober up. When Wick plans a healthy weekend away in the country, Don promptly escapes to a neighbourhood bar where he tells his sorry tale to bartender Nat (Howard de Silva). As the long weekend wears on, Don gradually descends into a pit of suicidal, whisky-fuelled despair – but his girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) won’t give him up without a fight.

“I don’t like you much,” snaps Nat to Don at one point – and the audience may well sympathise. Sober or drunk, Don is rude, sarcastic, aggressive and, worst of all, verbose. He never seems to shut up, flaunting his literary ambitions with endless high-faluting references – tellingly, the scene where Milland makes the strongest impact is the one where he says least, a near-wordless visit to the opera where Don becomes distracted by La Traviata‘s copious drink-swilling.

Wilder and Milland clearly intend to present Don as a self-pitying heel, and they succeed all too well – it’s hard to see what would attract Helen in the first place, let alone lead her to put up with the louse’s boorish antics for over three years. And Helen isn’t the only glamorous woman attracted by Don’s dubious charms – he also toys with affections of ‘good-time girl’ Gloria (Doris Dowling). Then again, Birnam displays few physical symptoms of supposedly chronic alcoholism – we see Birnam rapidly downing whisky after whisky – but he never vomits once, nor does he become especially inebriated.

For all its superficial ‘toughness’, Lost Weekend is very much a Hollywood fantasy version of alcoholism – right up to the entirely unconvincing happy ending which was reportedly imposed by the studio, and is a total deviation from the conclusion of Charles Jackson’s original book. Wilder has some serious points to make about the perils of drink, and society’s treatment of alcoholics – but while he succeeds in his aims, he can’t quite integrate the public-service stuff within a coherent or especially engaging narrative.

The structure is uneven and episodic, with several clumsily-inserted flashbacks in which the image goes ‘gauzy’ in the classic old-movie manner that’s typical of Wilder’s by-the-numbers approach. He’s especially heavy-handed with the background music – excessive even by the norms of the mid-40s, as James Agee’s December 22, 1945 review in The Nation wearily points out. Wilder is on safest ground with comedy, and Lost Weekend is most effective during its few, intermittent moments of dark humour.

The highlight is Don’s abortive attempt at petty theft, which sees him thrown out of a fancy cocktail bar. As the pianist leads the clientele in a mocking chorus of “Somebody stole a purse.” (to the tune of ‘Somebody stole my gal’) the film momentarily flares into vivid, unpredictable life. There’s another strong sequence in which fate plays a cruelly ironic trick on the desperate Don, whose quest to pawn his typewriter on the Saturday morning becomes an epic, fruitless trek as he finds all the pawnbrokers (Jewish and Irish alike) closed for Yom Kippur. This another mercifully dialogue-light for Milland – whose performance elsewhere too often flies way over the top into a very theatrical, hammy kind of capital-A “Acting”. Wyman, de Silva and Terry are stuck with purely functional roles, leaving Dowling and Frank Faylen (eerily Kevin Spacey-like as alcoholic-ward nurse Bim Nolan) to score vivid supporting turns in their brief appearances.

Another reason why the Yom Kippur footage remains of interest is the fact that most of it (with the exception of a few clumsy back-projection shots) was visibly filmed “live” in real Manhattan neighbourhoods – Milland trudges alongside the old Elevated Railway subway line. The “El” has long since gone – unlike McSorley’s Ale House (7th St and 2nd Ave), which was apparently used for the ‘Nat’s Bar’ scenes, and survives virtually unchanged to this day, trading on its Lost Weekend connections to serve drinks that are overpriced even by Manhattan’s exorbitant standards.

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Owen Van Spall]

Though it may seem tame in comparison to contemporary depictions on film of the destructive nature of alcoholism, it is worth remembering that Billy Wilder's 1945 film The Lost Weekend – adapted from the novel from Charles R Jackson whose story depicts the two-day booze-soaked descent into hell of a failed alcoholic writer in 1940s New York City - did not see an easy journey to the silver screen due to its perceived controversial nature in the eyes of the powers that be. Both the Motion Picture Association of America and the liquor industry, even prohibition groups worried that it would incite drinking, all put pressure on Paramount studios during production and even when Wilder finished shooting the film in December 1944, it was not released until November 1945.

Though the films strengths are many, the two pillars it really rests on are Ray Milland's career-best performance as despairing drunk Don Birnam, and Wilder's deft directorial mix of pathos and black comedy delivered with sharp dialogue, all played out on a canvas of stylistic flourishes that take Don on an increasingly dark and surreal journey into his own private hell on the streets and in the dry out wards of New York in one hot summer.

When we are first introduced in the opening scene to Birnam in his brother's cushy apartment, his packing for what seems like a weekend break is soon revealed to be something else entirely as we witness him hang a bottle of rye out of his window on a piece of string. This oddly funny gesture turns out to be something much darker, a ruse to enable him to sneak the bottle into his suitcase when his brother Wick (Philip Terry) is distracted, for this packing session is in fact in lieu of Don being shipped off to a out-of-town sanitarium. This initial act of deceit on the part of the seemingly charming and intelligent Don is but the first of many viewers will see. Eventually stealing money from his brother that was left for their housekeeper, Don flees and embarks on a long binge session across the bars of New York.

By the time his doggedly devoted girlfriend Helen (Jane Wyman) tracks him down, Don has sponged off bartenders and streetwalkers, nearly pawned his typewriter to buy booze, stolen a purse in a bar, threatened a store owner into handing over more liquor and spent a night in a veritable haunted house of an alcoholic ward. But Helen, to her horror, finds out Don has one more level yet to descend to, one that involves one last drink, a goodbye letter, and a pawnshop revolver. But only by falling one more step can Don - by this time truly a pitiful self-loathing wraith for whom “one's too many and a thousand's not enough” - start to put himself together again.

Milland is rarely off screen, and his work here is every bit worth that Academy award. His energetic and fearless performance, and the script, pick through the layers of this deeply troubled man in a way that is funny, painful, and involving but never sensational. The script, from Wilder and collaborator Charles Brackett, does not point Don in a direction where there is an easy answer offered to his problem nor an obvious explanation for his behaviour.

Alcohol had only recently been banned outright in the USA during Prohibition, and had long been the target of religious and conservative groups, yet here is a bold (for its time) script suggesting that Don is the victim of many deep psychological flaws rather than the whisperings of the Devil. As we spend more time with Don, both during his weekend escapades and through several flashbacks, we the viewer can begin to put together the puzzle of what is eating away at Don from the inside, though it is never laid out on a clear plate. Is it his fear at failing in his writing? Has living off his brother's largesse left him humiliated to the point where only booze can numb the pain of self loathing? Is it a midlife crisis given his perceived lack of success? Did he drink to inspire his fingers to bash out those stories on the typewriter, convinced a little fire in the belly would inspire the mind?

Maybe it is all these things, or none of them. What is clear is that Don is human, and human problems will need human solutions, including facing up to the depths he has sunk to. Thus the long weekend we spend with Don becomes part psychological profile, and, for Don at least, part confession (appropriate given he is a writer). Even at the end we are offered no easy way out, though there is a glimmer of hope (perhaps the films only awkward moment). We are also invited to mull over the actions of those around him too - are the various figures Don encounters enabling him or helping him?

The journey to that end is not just a showcase for Millard, but also for Wilder, who gradually takes the film from a neo-realist/documentary-like start to darker and darker places as Don falls further, eventually letting the atmosphere become outright nightmarish by the time we reach the dry-out ward, echoing of the howls of the DTs and drenched in jagged shadows like a German Expressionist film. Wilder famously also shot scenes with Millard on location on the streets of New York with hidden cameras to add layers of immediacy, authenticity and grit. Composer Miklos Rosza's eerie theremin score also helps convey Don's increasing confusion, despair, and lust for the next hit, which is never enough.

Despite its controversial nature and the pressure put on Paramount before its release, the final victory would be the studio and Wilder's, as the film went on to win multiple Academy Awards including for best picture, director, actor, and screenplay. Thus The Lost Weekend's re-release on BluRay, with sharp picture quality and packed with the kind of extras you expect from the Master of Cinema's remastered range, is a reason to celebrate.

Not Coming to a Theater Near You [Victoria Large]

 

Raging Bull [Mike Lorefice]

 

The Lost Weekend (1945) - Greatest Films  Tim Dirks

 

FilmsNoir.Net [Tony D'Ambra]

 

Film Noir of the Week  William Hare

 

ReelViews [James Berardinelli]

 

Horrorview.com [Black Gloves] UK Blu-ray

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

The Lost Weekend: Charles Jackson's Stirring Addiction Novel and the ...  Blake Bailey from Vanity Fair, February 28, 2013

 

A Sharper Focus [Norman Holland]

 

At The Back - 100 Years of Film [Tom Gooderson-ACourt]

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture - 1945  News from the Boston Becks

 

Brian W. Fairbanks Review

 

The Lost Weekend - Ruthless Reviews  Goat

 

The Lost Weekend - TCM.com  Scott McGee

 

The Lost Weekend (1945) - Articles - TCM.com

 

20/20 Movie Reviews [Richard Cross]

 

FilmFanatic.org

 

Can't Stop the Movies [Danny Reid and Ryan Rinchiuso]

 

DVD Verdict [Barrie Maxwell]

 

DVD Movie Guide [Colin Jacobson]

 

DVD Talk [Brian R. Boisvert]

 

Cine Outsider [Camus]  Blu-Ray Masters of Cinema

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]  Blu-Ray Masters of Cinema

 

Blueprint: Review [David Brook]  Blu-Ray Masters of Cinema

 

BigGayPictureShow.com [Tim Isaac]  Blu-Ray Masters of Cinema

 

DVD Verdict (Blu-ray) (Region 2) [Paul Pritchard]  Blu-Ray Masters of Cinema

 

CineScene Review  Chris Dashiell

 

Sound On Sight  Top 10 Films About Addiction, by Yale Freedman

 

ScribeHard On Film [Michael Nazarewycz]

 

Thrill Me Softly [Stefan Hedmark]

 

For It Is Man's Number [Kevin Matthews]

 

V for... [Veronica Bazydlo]

 

Pretty Clever Films [Brandy Dean]

 

MovieSteve [Steve Morrissey]

 

Crazy for Cinema  Lisa Skrzyniarz

 

BasementRejects.com [JPRoscoe]

 

Cinepassion.org [Fernando F. Croce]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Classic Film Guide

 

All Movie Guide [Mark Deming]

 

TV Guide

 

Review: 'The Lost Weekend' - Variety

 

The Lost Weekend | Film | The Guardian  Philip French

 

New York Times [Bosley Crowther]  also seen here:  Movie Review - - THE SCREEN; 'The Lost Week-End,' in Which Ray ... 

 

The Lost Weekend (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

SUNSET BOULEVARD

aka:  SUNSET BLVD.

USA  (110 mi)  1950

 

You see, this is my life.  It always will be.  Nothing else.  Just us, and the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark.  All right, Mr. De Mille, I’m ready for my closeup.
—Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson)

 

Time Out  Geoff Andrew

One of Wilder's finest, and certainly the blackest of all Hollywood's scab-scratching accounts of itself, this establishes its relentless acidity in the opening scene by having the story related by a corpse floating face-down in a Hollywood swimming-pool. What follows in flashback is a tale of humiliation, exploitation, and dashed dreams, as a feckless, bankrupt screenwriter (Holden) pulls into a crumbling mansion in search of refuge from his creditors, and becomes inextricably entangled in the possessive web woven by a faded star of the silents (Swanson), who is high on hopes of a comeback and heading for outright insanity. The performances are suitably sordid, the direction precise, the camerawork appropriately noir, and the memorably sour script sounds bitter-sweet echoes of the Golden Age of Tinseltown (with has-beens Keaton, HB Warner and Anna Q Nilsson appearing in a brief card-game scene). It's all deliriously dark and nightmarish, its only shortcoming being its cynical lack of faith in humanity: only von Stroheim, superb as Swanson's devotedly watchful butler Max, manages to make us feel the tragedy on view.

Pacific Cinematheque (link lost)

World-weary voice-over and tales-told-in-flashback are key devices in conjuring up the doom-laden determinism, the fatalistic inevitability, of the noir universe, but Billy Wilder's mordant Sunset Boulevard really ups the ante: it's narrated by a corpse! An acid account of mondo Hollywood decadence, the film's famed opening has a dead man floating face down in a swimming pool, while William Holden's off-screen voice identifies itself as that of the deceased, and proceeds to relate the sordid series of events that led to this watery demise. Holden is Joe Gillis, a down-at-heels Hollywood screenwriter. Fleeing the repo men who have come to seize his car, he takes a wrong turn into the run-down estate of Hollywood has-been Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), an aging, embittered former silent star living entombed in a mausoleum-like mansion. With nothing better on the go, spineless Joe allows himself to become a kept man in Norma's smothering clutches, and is soon in way, way over his head. Erich von Stroheim co-stars as Norma's devoted butler Max; Buster Keaton, Hedda Hopper, and Cecil B. DeMille, among others, have cameos. This is noir at its most brittle, bizarre, and baroque. "One of Wilder's finest, and certainly the blackest of all Hollywood's scab-scratching accounts of itself" (Geoff Andrew).

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - Cine-File.info  Harrison Sherrod

Drenched in cynicism, Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD ranks up there with Robert Altman's THE PLAYER and David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DR. as one of the best critiques of Hollywood's toxic narcissism and cruelty. The last collaboration between Wilder and screenwriter Charles Brackett, SUNSET BOULEVARD centers on Norma Desmond (played with maniacal intensity by Gloria Swanson), a forgotten silent star who spends her days cooped up in her gothic tomb/mansion, obsessing over her glory days and penning the script which will launch her revival. By chance she encounters Joe Gillis, a down on his luck screenwriter. Their working relationship mutates into a strange sexual dynamic, with Gillis eager to escape; however, he ultimately finds himself contaminated by the greed and disillusionment of Hollywood. Wilder enlisted the help of master cinematographer John F. Seitz, who also photographed DOUBLE INDEMNITY, to lend the film a chiaroscuro, noir-ish look. This is notable during one of the film's most memorable scenes, in which an entranced Desmond watches her celluloid self on the movie screen, the light from the projector flickering over her face creating a kind of literal fusion of reality and fantasy. Look for a cameo from silent film icon Buster Keaton (referred to by Gillis as a "waxwork"), as well as Cecil B. DeMille playing himself. 

Introduction  BFI Sight and Sound

In huge sunglasses, gleaming silk suits, leopard skin wraps, swishing chiffon negligees and killer heels, Norma Desmond is a spider woman, voracious and compelling. Smoking Arabian cigarettes from a unique holder, her wrists sparkle with rock crystal and diamond bracelets by Cartier. Edith Head designed a wardrobe of deliciously dramatic costumes for Gloria Swanson, the diva actress who was "every inch and every moment the star". Arching an arrogant brow or slinking down a staircase, every sinuous move is fascinating. No-one can strike a pose like Swanson.

Hosting a tribute gala to Sunset Boulevard costume designer Edith Head, Michael Douglas said "she was a master of creating a celebrity image for others". Nominated for a record 35 Academy Awards, she won eight, and designed 1,131 films during a career that spanned almost 60 years. Head created costumes for Ingrid Bergman, Gloria Swanson, Grace Kelly, Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Kim Novak, Dorothy Lamour, Janet Leigh, Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood and many others.

Sunset Boulevard is a magnificent combination. Fabulous costumes, snappy dialogue, Oscar-winning set design and score by Franz Waxman, with a cast including Cecil B. De Mille himself and cameos from Buster Keaton and Hedda Hopper. And of course, some of the best lines in movie history... "Mr De Mille... I'm ready for my close-up".

Sunset Blvd.  Mike D’Angelo from Time Out New York

Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of Sunset Blvd., especially for those seeing it for the first time, is the mental teeter-totter effect provoked by Gloria Swanson's deliriously self-dramatizing Norma Desmond. One's train of thought generally stops at the following stations: (a) Whoa, this chick is way over the top; (b) but that's appropriate, since she's playing a washed-up movie star hungry for an audience; (c) even so, c'mon, tone it down a little; (d) then again, Desmond did make her mark in the silent era, when mugging often substituted for dialogue; (e) except I don't remember Lillian Gish or Louise Brooks pulling faces that call to mind the Joker crossed with a Barbary macaque; (f) but their characters weren't necessarily deranged, and this woman is; (g) but still; (h) etc.

Ultimately, Sunset Blvd. is a tale of two corpses—one sardonically narrating his own eulogy as he floats facedown in a swimming pool, the other quietly rotting in her mansion-cum-mausoleum, a casualty of the dawn of sound and the fickle nature of the moviegoing public. (Even now, Jane Fonda is probably burying a pet chimpanzee somewhere on her estate.) Holden's rugged naturalism counterbalances Swanson's overripe theatrics to some degree, but it's no coincidence that this was the Wilder picture that caught the attention of Andrew Lloyd Webber; there's a calculated extravagance to its cynicism that's absent from the director's very best films, from Double Indemnity to Kiss Me, Stupid. Still, watching it on the big screen, it's hard not to feel that the pictures have, indeed, gotten smaller in the half century since.

indieWIRE  Peter Bogdanovich, June 15, 2011   (excerpt)

Movies about moviemakers or making movies usually have unhappy endings. Actually, so do a good many of the movies’ real-life stories. Why a product (or art) that supposedly gives to millions such joy and enlightenment should often lead to such unhappiness for its creators is perhaps some alchemistic punishment too mythic or mystic to conclusively unravel, but maybe it has to do with the dangerously difficult boundaries between reality and illusion, and the mysterious processes of making reality out of illusion and illusion out of reality.

Three of the most painfully intriguing looks at film as hell were released in the first half of the 1950s: Billy Wilder’s acid yet strangely touching chronicle of new and old Hollywood meeting head-on in 1950, SUNSET BLVD. (available on DVD); Vincente Minnelli’s all-star 1952 pageant of the lives and loves that orbit around one typically ruthless and megalomaniacal producer, THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (available on DVD); and Robert Aldrich’s ultra-intense 1955 version of the vibrant, angry Clifford Odets drama about a blackmailed movie star, allegedly based on an actual dark chapter from Clark Gable’s career, THE BIG KNIFE (available on DVD). From all three, the large message seems to be that cinema as a profession should always be advertised with a prominently displayed skull-and-crossbones.

Seeing Sunset Blvd. again today, it is striking how much of its effectiveness relies on the iconography of its players, their individual persuasiveness as founded on the baggage they automatically bring with them onto the screen. From the star roles—-Gloria Swanson as aging silent-movie queen, Erich von Stroheim as once legendarily outsized picture-maker—-to the bits: Buster Keaton and H.B. Warner as two of the “wax-works” from the past. High among the drawbacks of the stage musical version of Sunset Blvd. was its inability to cut to silent close-up reactions of Swanson, Stroheim or even William Holden to shore up the sometimes shaky believability of the plot-line. But the movie maintains the ring of truth to it, and a kind of bitter heartbreak, not simply because so many of the actors bring enormous veracity just by being there—-it is also, after all, awfully well written (by Wilder and the urbane and under-valued Charles Brackett, who also produced), and directed with the edgy suspense of a film noir.

That its profoundly bleak view was by no means popular upon the initial release is not surprising. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that the picture began to achieve its now legendary stature. I was working at the New Yorker Theatre in Manhattan when in 1961 Dan Talbot booked Sunset Blvd. from Paramount for a flat fee of $25. The film hadn’t played in New York for over ten years, not since its initial release, and at my suggestion we accompanied it with two hilarious 1920s shorts by Buster Keaton, just to indicate the true glory of the silents. We had lines around the block! For the following weeks, Paramount immediately changed the deal and demanded a percentage of the take. The movie played like gangbusters; obviously, it was ahead of its time: the 60s and 70s took to it passionately.

I think it’s my favorite Billy Wilder film, though its utter darkness and edge of misogyny troubles me in a nagging way. Also, Swanson is certainly over the top, though it still works as a stylization left over from silent pictures, even if silent pictures were often a good deal more underplayed than their reputation suggests; indeed, gesture, movement and behavior were more important than words. But the iconic, even mythic, presence and performance of both Erich Von Stroheim and Cecil B. DeMille (as himself) is undeniably powerful in its reverberations. After all, both DeMille and Stroheim had actually directed Swanson—C.B. having in fact made her a star, and Von on his last film at the end of the silent era– an unreleased, not quite completed masterpiece, Queen Kelly, clips of which are shown in the projection-room sequence in Sunset Blvd. Indeed, after a particularly beautiful, shimmering close-up of her, Swanson stands into the glare of the projector’s light, and says vehemently the truest line in the picture: “We didn’t need words—we had faces then!”

“Who Owns This Place?”: Clashing Values in Sunset Blvd.  Andrew Culbertson from Bright Lights Film Journal, May 18, 2006

 

The Devil is a Woman: Sunset Boulevard, Norma Desmond and Actress Noir  Matt Mazur from International Cinephile Society, January 5, 2011

 

Norma and Delilah   Mark Rappaport from Rouge, December 2006                    

 

Sunset Boulevard and Cocteau's Orphee | IdyllopusPress Presents  Juli Kearns, November 20, 2008                           

 

Sunset Boulevard  Colin from Ride the High Country, December 15, 2011                     

 

Westminster Wisdom  Gracchi, also seen here:  Sunset Boulevard: Love, Power and Eternal Youth

 

The Greatest Films - comprehensive analysis of classic US film  Tim Dirks

 

Top 100 Directors: #9 - Billy Wilder (Sunset Blvd. review)  News from the Boston Becks

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture - 1950 [Erik Beck]

 

The Crop Duster [Robert Horton]  November 28, 2009

 

Film Noir of the Week  Steve Eifert

 

moviediva [Laura Boyes]  listed as her favorite film

 

Film Noir Board [Eric Somer]

 

Illumined Illusions--Seeing Cinema in a New Light [Ian C. Bloom]

 

not coming to a theater near you  Michael Nordine

 

“I am big … it's the pictures that got small” : Sunset Boulevard (1950 ...  B.C. Stone  from The Vagrant Mood, March 12, 2015

 

FilmsNoir.Net [Tony D'Ambra]

 

Edward Copeland on Film  August 10, 2010

 

Edward Copeland on Film [Odienator]  March 1, 2007

 

ReelViews [James Berardinelli]

 

Hollywood After Dark on 'Sunset Boulevard' | PopMatters  Brad Cook

 

Sunset Blvd - TCM.com  James Steffen

 

Sunset Blvd. (1950) - Articles - TCM.com

 

The House Next Door [Jason Bellamy & Ed Howard]  a conversation between two critics

 

The City Review [Carter B. Horsley]

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

Sunset Boulevard Review | CultureVulture - CultureVulture.net  Scott von Doviak

 

Stinky Lulu: Nancy Olson in Sunset Boulevard

 

FilmFanatic.org

 

Jigsaw Lounge  Neil Young

 

American Cinematographer  Rachel Bosley, April 2003

 

The Movie Scene [Andy Webb]

 

Fogs Movie Reviews [Morgan R. Lewis]

 

PopMatters [Stuart Henderson]

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com  Jon Danziger

 

DVD Journal  DK Holm

 

Film Intuition: Paramount Centennial Collection 2-Disc DVD [Jen Johans]

 

DVD Verdict: Centennial Collection [Tom Becker]

 

Home Theater Info DVD Review  Doug MacLean

 

DVD Movie Guide  Colin Jacobson

 

Blu-ray.com [Martin Liebman]

 

DVDizzy.com - Blu-ray with Pictures  Luke Bonanno

 

Blu-rayDefinition.com - Blu-ray [Lawrence Devoe]

 

DVD Savant - Blu-ray [Glenn Erickson]

 

Slant Magazine Blu-ray [Chris Cabin]

 

DVD Verdict (Blu-ray) [Daryl Loomis]

 

Q Network Film Desk  James Kendrick, Blu-Ray

 

DoBlu.com (Blu-ray) [Matt Paprocki]

 

AV Maniacs - Blu-ray [Steven Ruskin]

 

NightsAndWeekends.com [Kristin Dreyer Kramer]  Blu-Ray

 

MediaMikes.com - Blu-ray [Mike Gencarelli]

 

Combustible Celluloid  Jefferey M. Anderson, Blu-Ray

 

Just Press Play  Anders Nelson, Blu-Ray

 

Movie Views [Ryan Cracknell]

 

Plume Noire  Jonathan Anderson

 

Angeliki Coconi's Unsung Films [Theo Alexander]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

20/20 Movie Reviews  Richard Cross

 

Sound on Sight   Susannah Straughan

 

Thrill Me Softly [Stefan Hedmark]

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

 

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard]  mostly photos

 

Movie Magazine International [Monica Sullivan]

 

Foster on Film - Film Noir  Matthew Foster

 

Matt vs. the Academy [Matt Foster]

 

rec.arts.movies.reviews  Long Che Chan

 

Kamera.co.uk  Alex King

 

CineScene Review  Chris Dashiell

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Beth Gilligan]

 

Classic Film Guide

 

Sunset Boulevard - William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim  Phase 9

 

Sunset Boulevard - Sky

 

TV Guide

 

Sunset Boulevard | Variety  William Brogdon

 

BBCi - Films  Adrian Hennigan

 

Sunset Boulevard: what Billy Wilder's satire really tells us about Hollywood  Pamela Hutchinson from The Guardian, August 1, 2016

 

Philadelphia City Paper review by Sam Adams

 

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]

 

New York Times [Thomas M. Pryor]

 

DVDBeaver.com - Graphic Review [Gary W. Tooze]

 

DVDBeaver Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

ACE IN THE HOLE
aka:  The Big Carnival
USA  (111 mi)  1951

 

Pauline Kael - GEOCITIES.ws

Billy Wilder produced and directed this box-office failure right after SUNSET BLVD. and just before STALAG 17. Some people have tried to claim some sort of satirical brilliance for it, but it's really just nasty, in a sociologically pushy way. Kirk Douglas is the big-time New York reporter who is so opportunistic that when he gets to where a collapsed roof has buried a man in New Mexico, he arranges to have the rescue delayed so that he can pump the story up. The trapped man dies, while Douglas keeps shouting in order that we can all see what a symptomatic, cynical exploiter he is. With Jan Sterling as the trapped man's wife, Porter Hall, Richard Benedict, Ray Teal, and Frank Cady. Script by Wilder, Lesser Samuels, and Walter Newman. Filmed on location near Gallup, New Mexico. Paramount.

Ace in the Hole, directed by Billy Wilder | Film review - Time Out  Tom Milne

Wilder ran into charges of bad taste with this acid tale of reporter Chuck Tatum (Douglas), resentfully stagnating in a New Mexico backwater after being repeatedly fired from jobs in the big time, who sees a chance to manufacture a scoop when a man is trapped by a rockfall. The sheriff, calculating the publicity value to his forthcoming election campaign, agrees to spin out the rescue operation; Tatum builds his story into a nationwide sensation; and as thrill seekers, media hounds, and profiteers turn the site into a gaudy carnival, the victim quietly dies. As a diatribe against all that is worst in human nature, it has moments dipped in pure vitriol ('Kneeling bags my nylons', snaps Sterling as the victim's wife when invited to be photographed praying for her husband's safety), even though the last reel goes rather astray in comeuppance time.

Ace in the Hole  Mike D’Angelo from Time Out New York

As heartless as the Tin Woodsman and more acidic than urban rain, Ace in the Hole, also known as The Big Carnival, may be the most relentlessly cynical picture Billy Wilder ever made, which places it high in the running for most relentlessly cynical picture of all time. Scarcely a micron of conscience or compassion penetrates the cold, ambitious heart of Kirk Douglas's hard-boiled reporter, who's toiling in dusty small-town obscurity after his drinking and womanizing got him blackballed from every major-metro rag in the country. A local man trapped underground following a cave-in represents his ticket back to civilization. Milking the story for all it's worth, Douglas contrives to delay the rescue for several days, jeopardizing the victim's life and clearing a path to the victim's wife (Sterling), who started packing her bags the instant she heard hubby was immobilized. Crammed with mirthless smiles and pungent ripostes ("kneeling bags my nylons," explains the wife when Douglas suggests she pray for her husband's safe return), it's a film predicated on the dubious but dramatically potent idea that common decency can't last 30 seconds in the ring opposite self-interest.

One caveat, however. At the press screening I attended, the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, apparently unequipped to show movies shot in the pre-widescreen Academy ratio (roughly the same shape as a standard TV screen), projected Ace in the Hole at 1.85:1, cutting off the top and bottom of the image in a sort of reverse-letterboxing effect. Granted, Wilder's genius was more verbal and conceptual than visual, but it's still painful to see his careful compositions so egregiously truncated—all the more so because the print itself is first-rate. When Douglas's chin dimple is being thrown on the backs of chairs instead of up on the screen, something is seriously awry. Am I trying to dissuade you from attending? Not necessarily. But if you decide to pass, be sure to call the theater and let them know why.

Ace in the Hole | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Ed Gonzalez

Not surprisingly, Ace in the Hole was received poorly by the media at the time of its release, and in a last-ditch effort to make money off the film, Paramount re-released Billy Wilder's unsung masterpiece under the more obvious—but no less appropriate—title The Big Carnival. Not unlike Fritz Lang's equally misanthropic Scarlet Street, Ace in the Hole plays the squashing of one man's human spirit for societal-weary gravitas. Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) is an immoral reporter from New York who gets a job at a lowly Albuquerque newspaper, where the home improvement columnist mistakes Yogi Berra for a religion, the editor confuses a bottled ship for a bottle of liquor and the hand-embroidered motto "Tell the Truth" passes silent judgment from its place on the newsroom wall. Wilder makes it clear from the start that this is a story about perception, naïvete and moral irresponsibility. When he's sent to cover a nearby rattlesnake hunt, Douglas's spinmeister stumbles upon a man, Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), trapped inside a cave and exploits the "human interest" story to nationwide acclaim. (Charles is so reprehensible he uses Leo's spiritual panic as an entertainment: "The Curse of the Mountain of the Seven Vultures"!) Over the course of a week, the desert town explodes in popularity and Wilder brilliantly implicates a small community in the man's death. Spectators compete for on-air time, campaign promises are made, deals are brokered, the carnival comes to town and prices skyrocket (pay close attention to the cave's escalating cost of admission throughout the film). Leo's unhappy wife, Lorraine (Jan Sterling), is a femme fatale lost in bumblefuck, none too happy about rubbing shoulders with po' folk all day. She sticks behind when thousands of tourists come to ogle at her husband, but it's not their sympathy she's after. "I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you're 20 minutes," says Lorraine to Charles, who sees himself in her betrayal of her husband, and when he slaps her in order to knock the smug smile off the woman's face, you get a sense that he's punishing himself. The film's genius is the metaphoric impact the pressure outside the cave has on the inside—as the immorality escalates, Leo inches closer to death. And as the drill moves in on the man, its incessant sound serves to punish the people who've deliberately prolonged his suffering. "Why shouldn't we get something out of it," says someone at one point. This is the film's mantra of greed, and Ace in the Hole allowed Wilder to question the very nature of human interest stories and the twisted relationship between the American media and its public. More than 50 years after the film's release, when magazines compete to come up with the latest buzz term (you know, like "Bennifer") and giddily celebrate the demise of celebrity relationships for buffo bucks, Ace in the Hole feels more relevant than ever.

The New York Sun  Gary Giddins

One of many memorable lines ground between the teeth of Kirk Douglas, as the fallen journalist Chuck Tatum in Billy Wilder's brutally trenchant "Ace in the Hole," is a faux-axiom: "Bad news sells best 'cause good news is no news."

In 1951, when the film was released to critical brickbats and public indifference, Americans could remember when good news sold better than anything — from the summer of 1942, when the Allies began to turn the tide, through August 1945, when Japan surrendered unconditionally. Regular bouts of good news fueled the nation and, not least, the newspaper business.

Yet the big party, with strangers kissing in the streets and all that, was amazingly short-lived. Within a year, a psychological depression took up where the economic one left off, as the military looked for a new war, Churchill pointed to an iron curtain, atomic bombs blasted Bikini, communists were hunted in every shadow, and Hollywood, for the first time in 15 years, began releasing a slew of relentlessly caustic movies questioning the most vaunted principles of American life.

In the early 1930s, the Production Code helped to stem the surge of movies that questioned the national commitment to justice and morality. The postwar witch hunt attempted to do the same, but while it temporarily silenced or displaced many filmmakers, it couldn't develop an actual code to prevent depictions of racism, organized crime, and adultery. Even if it could, the noir-ish overcast of the times was far less specific, pointing to a boredom, an ennui, a surfeit of material goods piled on top of hidden fault-lines and pitfalls.

Today, Criterion is releasing a new DVD edition of "Ace in the Hole" with all the bells and whistles, and it looks as fresh as a Jon Stewart montage of media high jinks. The "human interest story," with which Wilder's corrupt journalist hopes to spark America while rescinding his banishment from a New York newspaper, is news of a kind that is neither bad nor good. It is fake news, comic book news that everyone can follow — a week or two of "Paris Hilton Goes to the Big House" (if only Barton MacLane were alive to play the warden). The fact that two men wind up dead, murdered after a fashion, is almost beside the point. They have to die to fulfill the demands of the tale, but their deaths bring neither absolution nor — welcome to the 21st century — closure.

Credit Wilder for having the nerve to make a picture that isn't subtle enough to qualify as un-American. It's outright anti-American, but in a good equal opportunity way than can please neither the left nor the right — it doesn't even acknowledge a left and right. Almost every character in "Ace in the Hole" is a heel, a crook, or a milquetoast; the best of the rest are merely superstitious. Within days of a disastrous premiere, Paramount withdrew prints in order to reopen the film with a more festive title, "The Big Carnival" — a moronic change, but not an inapt description of a movie that unfolds like a George Grosz exhibit brought to life.

As Chuck Tatum explains, the narrative he is about to weave is based on an incident that took place in 1925, when the failed attempt to rescue an explorer trapped in a cave attracted legions of tourists and won a Pulitzer for newspaperman Skeets Miller. When Tatum tells that story, his face is lit in a grotesque mask of greed, as if in homage to Erich von Stroheim. Tatum, a misanthropic alcoholic ( he doesn't drink "much," just "often") stuck on a paper in Albuquerque, chances upon a similarly trapped explorer, Leo (Richard Benedict), a veteran who passes the time singing "The Hut Sut Song." Like any good hack writer, alert to cliché and sentiment, he braids various details, including an ancient Indian curse and grieving parents, with his own inventions, among them the inadvertently homicidal insistence that it will take a week to dig Leo out.

Part of Tatum's plot involves Leo's presumably distressed wife, Lorraine, played with the precision of a diamond drill by Jan Sterling. But Lorraine is a bottle blonde of dance-hall provenance, eager to jump the first bus out of town until Tatum convinces her that she is sitting on a gold mine. Tatum sees in her sullen, slatternly smile the radiance of a gorgon, along with his own worst instincts. Wilder presses the point by giving her alarming close-ups as she closes in on Tatum, rousing a violence that will ultimately do him in.

Even less appealing is the bent sheriff, played by Ray Teal, who carries around a pet rattlesnake when the only rattler he has to worry about is Tatum. The sheriff is so repellant that Tatum scores points with the audience by roughing him up. But Tatum has no soft edges; even what appears to be a last-minute moral turnaround is subject to questions of motivation.

This is Mr. Douglas's most authoritative and merciless performance, and Wilder toys with the actor's volatility in having his character shown up by some of the people he otherwise dominates — the news kid Herbie (Bob Arthur) who verbally matches him, and the editor, Mr. Boot (nailed by Porter Hall), a weedy, yet impressively unimpressed man who appears in Tatum's room alongside an oversize crucifix.

Wilder gives Tatum a singularly witty entrance and one of the most memorable exits in film history, but he doesn't give the audience much intervening relief from the guy's nastiness. In some respects, the faceless tourists who flock to the makeshift fairground are more revolting than Tatum and his stooges. One couple, the Federbers, is meant to represent them. Tatum calls them "Mr. and Mrs. America," and Frank Cady, in the role of Mr. Federber, is the very image of the man in the painting "American Gothic." The thoughtless Federbers underscore the predicament of hopeless entrapment — Leo in his cave, Lorraine in her marriage, and Tatum in Albuquerque. Only Lorraine walks off. The last we see of her, she has missed her bus and is begging for a ride, an indication of her future.

A decade earlier, Orson Welles filmed the story of a newspaperman who launched a war to sell papers: Nothing in "Ace in the Hole" was new or prophetic in 1951. Yet no other film, even those made much later, like "Absence of Malice" (1981) or "Broadcast News" (1987), speaks so directly to the low esteem in which the press is now held. It seems to predict a future filled with phrases like "feeding frenzy" and "news cycle." At the time, "Ace in the Hole" seemed merely unfair and overstated. Wilder, not yet associated with ribald hilarity, was known chiefly for three of the darkest movies made between 1944 and 1950 — "Double Indemnity," "The Lost Weekend," and "Sunset Boulevard" — and even by those standards, "Ace in the Hole" crossed a line. After its failure, he kept his vitriol in check until 1964, when "Kiss Me Stupid" fared just as badly.

"Ace in the Hole" may be unfair, but it is hypnotic filmmaking, one of Wilder's great achievements. The uncharacteristic aerial shots are magnificent, as are the contrasts between sun-drenched desert and foul cavern. Charles Lang's cinematography and Hugo Friedhofer's dissonantly descriptive score match the material. Criterion has done a munificent job in restoring an overlooked gem, complementing a stunning transfer with archival interviews of Wilder, Mr. Douglas, and co-scenarist Walter Newman, and a solid commentary track by Neil Sinyard. An especially charming "extra" is the booklet, which prints splendid essays by Molly Haskell and Guy Maddin as a four-page tabloid newspaper — a touch worthy of Wilder.

Ace in the Hole: Chin Up for Mother   Criterion essay by Guy Maddin, May 05, 2014

 

Ace in the Hole: Noir in Broad Daylight   Criterion essay by Molly Haskell, May 05, 2014

 

Spike Lee on Ace in the Hole   Video interview, May 07, 2014

 

Visions of Edith Head, Legendary Hollywood Costume Designer   photo gallery, October 28, 2015

 

On the Set of Ace in the Hole   photo gallery, March 05, 2012

 

Ace in the Hole (1951) - The Criterion Collection

 

Ace in the Hole (1951) - Columbia Journalism Review  Ryan Chittum, August 12, 2011

 

Ace in the Hole (1951) Billy Wilder « Twenty Four Frames  John Greco, February 18, 2011

 

Evil Under the Sun: Ace in the Hole – Offscreen  Graham Daseler from Offscreen, February 2013

           

Deep Focus Review - The Definitives - Ace in the Hole (1951)  Brian Eggert, January 31, 2016


Carnivals of Our Fathers:" Media Movies" Before the Television Age ...   Robert Castle from Bright Lights Film Journal, January 31, 2012

 

Billy Wilder never got darker than Ace In The Hole / The Dissolve  Scott Tobias, June 24, 2014

 

Truth Is For Sissies | Village Voice  Nathan Lee, January 2, 2007

 

Self-Styled Siren  January 19, 2007

 

PopMatters  Bill Gibron, August 20, 2007

 

Ace in the Hole • Senses of Cinema  Richard Armstrong, March 13, 2002

 

Billy Wilder: The Chiaroscuro Artist • Senses of Cinema  Anna Dzenis, May 21, 2002

 

Film Noir of the Week  Tim, Pt I, click here for part 2

 

Edward Copeland on Film  Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. June 29, 2011

 

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STALAG 17

USA  (120 mi)  1953

 

Stalag 17 | Chicago Reader  Don Druker

Billy Wilder's 1953 tale of men in a World War II POW camp (under the command of Otto Preminger). It's chock-full of typical Wilder cynicism and the offhand transvestite humor that would reach its apotheosis in Some Like It Hot, but its wit falters as the melodramatic tension builds. The resulting letdown is terrific, but along the way there is some of the funniest men-at-loose-ends interplay that Wilder has ever put on film. With William Holden, Robert Strauss, and Peter Graves. 120 min.

Stalag 17, directed by Billy Wilder | Film review - Time Out  Tom Milne

Wilder's PoW movie is a mass of contradictions, perhaps explained by the fact that it was based on a successful Broadway play which partly resisted his characteristic attempt to have his black squalor and eat his airy comedy. On the one hand, uproariously and buffoonishly funny, it can be seen simply as the natural sire of such TV sitcoms as Hogan's Heroes and Sergeant Bilko. On the other, anticipating King Rat through the character of the cynical PoW capitalist played by Holden, it satirically notes that the free enterprise ethic, extended into PoW circumstances, can no longer command Horatio Alger approval; and goes on from there to ask what price democracy when a traitor is suspected, and the PoWs gang up like Fascists to assign arbitrary blame and punishment. The problem is that the two moods aren't properly cross-fertilised, with the resolute bleakness of the settings and Wilder's direction positing a reality that is constantly undercut by the comic opera crew of Germans headed by Preminger. A fascinating film, nevertheless.

Stalag 17 - TCM.com  Rob Nixon

SYNOPSIS: Stalag 17 is a German war camp somewhere near the Danube River containing 40,000 detainees from many countries. Among them are 630 American airmen kept in one compound. And within that compound, one barracks contains a motley assortment of prisoners, including J.J. Sefton, a cynical, opportunistic sergeant who has made his captivity easier by trading with his captors and running schemes among his fellow prisoners to obtain the kind of goods (cigarettes, eggs, etc.) denied the others. The contempt Sefton's fellow prisoners feel toward the sergeant comes to a head on the night of an attempted escape by two of the men in the barracks. Although they seem to have a foolproof plan, virtually guaranteed by Sgt. Price, the prisoner in charge of security, Sefton bets the others the two escapees will not make it to the nearby forest. When the pair are gunned down by Nazis waiting for them at the exit of the tunnel they have burrowed, Sefton collects his rewards - and ignites the suspicion of his fellow prisoners. As the Germans seem more and more aware of secret doings among the prisoners, Sefton becomes regarded as a collaborator and is severely beaten by his fellow captors. But Sefton has the last laugh and eventually ferrets out the real traitor, thus proving his innocence and his genuine patriotism.

In the opening moments of Stalag 17, the narrator, "Cookie," says he's sick of seeing all those war movies but never one about prisoners of war. What follows is a World War II movie audiences of its day hadn't seen before: no real action, a relatively confined location, a cynical main character, slapstick spiked with black humor, and a decidedly bitter edge to the camaraderie expected of American soldiers confined to a prison camp. The incarcerated soldiers, in fact, were not portrayed as noble patriots but as bored, deprived men subject to pettiness, sexual frustration and quick tempers. The offbeat depiction obviously struck the right note with audiences and the film became a smash hit, earning excellent critical notices and awards.

The loner as hero has long been a tradition in many American films because audiences like to root for underdogs, especially protagonists who appear at first to be cynical and self-interested but who perform heroic acts, revealing a deeper need for solidarity and redemption. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) in Casablanca (1942) is one who immediately comes to mind. As with Rick's tortured love affair with Ilsa, such characters garner more interest and sympathy if they are seen to suffer for their outsider status. Such is the case with Sefton, the part William Holden plays in Stalag 17. Writer-director-producer Billy Wilder plays up Sefton's anti-heroic qualities - his exploitive, easy-going relationship with his German captors and his almost relentless zeal for self-preservation. Then he isolates Sefton within a confined, claustrophobic environment where he is beaten down, creating tension out of the audience's desire to see him vindicated.

Wilder's method is heightened by the Oscar®-winning performance of William Holden. For his first decade or so in Hollywood, Holden played leads that traded largely on his good looks and all-American "regular-guy" appeal. Wilder first exploited the dark underpinnings of this image by casting Holden in Sunset Boulevard (1950). In Sefton he gave Holden an even more cynical role, despite the actor's reluctance to appear so unsympathetic at first. It gave the picture the edge it needed and provided Holden's career with the boost to become a major box office star and one of Hollywood's most sought-after actors for the rest of the decade.

Wilder's other achievement was to bring a relatively uninteresting and visually sparse setting to vivid life through imaginative camera placement and the dynamic choreographing of actors within scenes. This is especially evident in two sequences; the discovery of the true spy's identity and the disclosure of it to the rest of the prisoners in the barracks. Wilder creates suspense and expectation through subtle camera movement that picks up clues and reinforces Holden's ostracism from the others while connecting him to their actions and to his ultimate task of unmasking the traitor. As in the case of his later film Witness for the Prosecution (1957), another stage play adapted for the screen, Wilder took what might have been a monotonous, stagy story and transformed it into one of his most dramatically compelling films.

In addition to Holden's matchless performance, Stalag 17 is distinguished by its stellar supporting cast, in particular Robert Strauss (from the original stage play) as Animal (he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar®) and Otto Preminger as the sardonic prison commandant. Though more famous as a director, Preminger is as menacing in this rare acting role as he was said to be in person on his own movie sets. Notorious within the film industry for his often cruel treatment of actors, it seems only fitting that Preminger would willingly agree to play a sadistic authority figure. He attacks his role with a contained but obvious glee. Preminger, however, wasn't the only director Wilder would cast for a film and in the case of Erich von Stroheim, Wilder hired him twice as an actor - for the major role of Field Marshal Rommel in Five Graves to Cairo (1943) and as a former-director-turned-valet for a silent screen star in Sunset Boulevard.

Scapegoating, the Holocaust, and McCarthyism in ... - Senses of Cinema  Sander Lee, April 2000

 

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SABRINA

USA  (113 mi)  1954

 

Time Out

Bogart plays a cold-hearted tycoon whose sole companion in life is The Wall Street Journal. Holden is his wastrel brother, and Hepburn the chauffeur's daughter. Yes, you've guessed what happens. Holden fools around with her, she attempts suicide, is sent to France for a cookery course, returns to melt Bogart's heart, and Holden is left to chair the board. Getting to this characteristic Wilder reversal of roles is romantic, funny and astringent all at the same time. Bogart is the man of plastic - he doesn't burn, melt or scorch - and Wilder satirises him and his ideals ruthlessly. Bogart's age here is crucial: he looks like an undertaker who has sidestepped the youth which Hepburn will give him. The golden boy Holden is the other extreme and equally ridiculous, driving around in his snazzy cars, coerced into a marriage between corporations, and forced to sit on some champagne glasses, enabling Bogart to sort out the Hepburn problem. It's a Cinderella story that gets turned on its head, a satire about breaking down class and emotional barriers (neatly signified in the array of window and glass imagery), and a confrontation between New World callousness and Old World humanity.

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Susanna Krawczyk]

In this rags-to-riches meets ugly-duckling story, Audrey Hepburn plays Sabrina Fairchild, the daughter of the chauffeur to the wealthy Larrabee family of Long Island. Sabrina watches from the sidelines as David Larrabee (William Holden), the profligate younger son, romances a series of giggling blondes at society parties and never notices her longing stares and infatuated glances. To try to snap her out of it, her father sends her to a Paris cooking school, which is, of course, presided over by your standard comedy Frenchman. Encouraged by an aristocratic classmate she learns the ways of the world and is soon well on her way to being a sophisticated young woman.

Upon her return home, almost unrecognisable, hilarity ensues as the elder Larrabee son, Linus (Humphrey Bogart), tries to direct her attentions away from his brother and back to Paris so as not to upset the rigid social order.

Audrey Hepburn's wide-eyed looks and swoony mannerisms are perfect for the part of the dreamy teenager in love, and her theatrical suicide attempt is played with the perfect balance of overblown drama and black comedy, complete with melodramatic suicide note declaring that the object of her affection “probably wouldn’t even cry” at her funeral. As she is rescued by Linus from an undignified suffocation from eight car exhausts, we get the first inkling of the romantic hijinks to come.

Linus is the more serious and gentlemanly of the brothers, apparently enough of a gentleman to recognise the symptoms of a fainting spell before the lady in question has even begun to sway. Bogart plays the character quite subtly, not really letting the audience in on his motives or true feelings at any point. For a purportedly romantic story this can be a problem, but it makes for a more intriguing experience for the viewer than is average. Linus’ relationship with Sabrina demonstrates no particular grand passion, but instead has more of the feel of a firm friendship. This is a movie that is not as frivolous as it first appears.

The comedic side of the romantic comedy formula is largely successful, with a mixture of slapstick, word play and physical humour that works very well to keep the film interesting between romantic interludes. Some of the jokes are telegraphed pretty far in advance (once a man puts champagne glasses in his back pocket, there’s really only one way things can go) but are executed with enough panache so as to still be amusing when they finally show up.

Great use is made in this movie of the famous French song La Vie En Rose, serving both as a signifier of Sabrina’s social and romantic intentions and attitudes, and as a romantic evocation of Paris and bohemian European ways intruding upon a stuffy American family’s cosy existence. She evokes in the (significantly older) Larrabee brothers a sense of youth and life, a feeling which the viewer cannot help but engage with too.

At The Back - 100 Years of Film [Tom Gooderson-ACourt]

Sabrina is a fairytale love story set around themes of rivalry and class. Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn) is a chauffer’s daughter, living on a large Long Island Estate. For some time she’s been in love with the rich and careless David Larrabee (William Holden) who barely notices her. After two years studying in Paris, the grownup Sabrina returns a beautiful and sophisticated woman and David falls in love. The couple’s relationship threatens to derail a big merger for the family company so David’s brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) decides to woo the girl himself before packing her back off to Paris.

This film is one of several in my girlfriend’s DVD collection that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while. Hepburn is her favourite actress but it was Sabrina I chose over other films because of the male stars. I’ll happily watch anything Bogart and Holden are in but have to say that I was a little disappointed with this film. The stars failed to gel on screen and a little reading tells me that Bogart was unhappy for the duration of the shoot with both director Billy Wilder and his co-star Hepburn who he believed needed too many takes to get her dialogue right. There was better chemistry between Holden and Hepburn which isn’t surprising as the two began a brief affair while shooting the movie.

Another problem I had with the movie is that I didn’t really like the characters so was never rooting for them. Holden’s David was spoilt and a little obnoxious and only recognised Sabrina’s beauty when she was all dolled up in tight dresses and bright red lipstick. He is the sort of playboy who gets everything for free and does little to deserve it. Sabrina is a girl who is madly in love with a doofus who is far too old for her and then falls for the brother who is older still. The dynamic never felt right as the age differences were too great. It’s mentioned in the script a couple of times but Bogart was thirty years older than Hepburn. It didn’t really work. Bogart’s Linus was the only character I had any affection for but this waned as the film progressed.

As a romance the film has its sweet moments and there’s some romantic dancing which I enjoyed but because I wasn’t on the character’s sides, I didn’t really care if they got together or not. For a working class girl made good, Sabrina isn’t particularly sympathetic. Even her long suffering father, caught in the middle of the various romances, comes across as a snob. There are some nice shifts in the dynamic of the relationships and several realisations of feelings but they’re always expected. The film doesn’t provide as many unexpected turns or funny lines as I’ve become accustomed to seeing in a Billy Wilder script. Something I did enjoy was a little bit of self promotion. In one scene, two of the characters step out to see a play. The title is mentioned a couple of times and just happens to be Wilder’s next picture, The Seven Year Itch. It’s a cheeky bit of marketing but was a clever idea.

The film, like a lot of Hepburn’s, is noticeable for its costumes. Hepburn looks statuesque and stunning in the various dresses which earned costume designer Edith Head an Oscar. It’s long been rumoured that it was in fact Givenchy that designed the dresses though this is still disputed. The cars also look great and the final boardroom scene is well designed with a window overlooking an important view. In the end Sabrina is a little unremarkable which is surprising given its remarkable cast and director. It’s sweet in places but the casting doesn’t really work and the script stagnates slightly while remaining always obvious.  

Titbits

·         As well as its one win, the film was nominated for a further five Oscars including Best Actress, Director and Screenplay.

·         The stars salaries differed drastically. Bogart got $300,000, Holden got $150,000, and Hepburn only $15,000.

·         Carey Grant was wanted for the role of Linus but turned it down. Bogart never liked being the second choice. 

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THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH

USA  (105 mi)  1955  ‘Scope 

 

The Seven Year Itch | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum

Although it was directed by Billy Wilder, this 1955 CinemaScope classic sometimes seems presided over by Frank Tashlin, with its satire of 50s puritanism and its use of wimpy Tom Ewell as the married and harried book editor driven to dreams and distraction by his upstairs neighbor (Marilyn Monroe, magnificent) while his wife and son are on holiday. Scripted by Wilder and George Axelrod (who bowdlerized his own play to appease the censors); with Sonny Tufts, Evelyn Keyes, and Robert Strauss—also memorable employment of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.

Time Out Capsule Review

Fondly remembered as the film in which Marilyn has problems with her skirt on a New York subway grating, this isn't quite the smasheroo that Some Like It Hot is: Monroe flaunts her attributes too blatantly, and seems less human because of it, while George Axelrod's play, fresh and risqué in the '50s, now appears a little obvious and over-plotted. Writer Tom Ewell's wife goes on a summer vacation, and the timid hubby becomes a flaming ball of sex, but - as with most Axelrod heroes (Roddy McDowall in Lord Love a Duck, Jack Lemmon in How to Murder Your Wife) - it's all in the mind.

The Seven Year Itch - TCM.com Paul Tatara

There are a lot of drawbacks to directing an expensive motion picture, but one of the biggest obstacles is the constant pressure to continually compromise while trying to force some semblance of your original vision onto the screen. It's always been that way, and the situation won't be changing any time soon. Even Billy Wilder, who participated in scores of hit pictures as both a writer and director, periodically fell victim to everything from demanding studio heads to antsy censors.

The Seven Year Itch (1955), which is probably best remembered today for that indelible image of Marilyn Monroe's dress being blown up by the wind rising from a subway grating, is a case in point. The film is often hilarious (despite being dated by unashamed sexism), but Wilder's inability to include an all-important scene of marital infidelity turns what could have been a biting black comedy into a mere Walter Mitty fantasy. Though Monroe, playing a breezily seductive single girl who's supposed to be the downfall of a married man, seems about as threatening as a walking lollipop, she still dazzles in one of her most engaging performances. She's exceptionally sexy, and her comic timing is nearly flawless...not that it came easily.

Based on a popular Broadway play written by George Axelrod, The Seven Year Itch was a significant step in Monroe's transformation into a legend. Tom Ewell (who enjoyed an unexpected career resurgence two decades later, when he co-starred with Robert Blake on TV's Baretta) plays Richard Sherman, a New York-based paperback book publisher who hopes to take advantage of a few months of freedom when his son and wife leave town for the summer. But he quickly gets more excitement than he hoped for, in the form of a dim, but irresistibly attractive young woman (Monroe) who lives in the apartment above his.

There's not much more plot to it than that, as Sherman has conniption fits trying not to think about bedding "The Girl," as Monroe is listed in the credits. The film's theatrical roots and staging are hard to ignore, but a lot of the dialogue, and such touches as Ewell mixing Monroe a libido-loosening martini in a huge water glass, still score major laughs.

It's amazing it works as well as it does. Frustrations arose for Wilder almost from the beginning of production. Although Ewell originated his role on Broadway, he wasn't a particularly electrifying screen performer. Wilder badly wanted to bypass Ewell and give the role to a gangly newcomer named Walter Matthau. But 20th Century Fox wasn't taking any chances with a proven property, so Ewell stayed in, and Matthau was stuck playing second-banana roles for several more years. (He would eventually win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar® for his work in Wilder's The Fortune Cookie, 1966.)

Casting battles were a mere nuisance, however, in comparison to the shellacking Wilder and the play's author, George Axelrod, took from industry censors. "Axelrod couldn't believe what was happening to his play," Wilder later recounted. "On Broadway, the guy has an affair with the girl upstairs, but in the picture, he only gets to imagine how it would be to go to bed with Marilyn Monroe. And just the idea of going to bed with her has to terrify him, or it won't get past the censors." If that was how it really worked, virtually every heterosexual man in America at the time would have been scared out of his wits.

Wilder always insisted that "the difference between a good film and one that is less than what it might have been (in the case of The Seven Year Itch) was a hairpin." Wilder's idea was to not show Ewell and Monroe making love, but just signify that the act had taken place by having Ewell's maid find a hairpin in Ewell's bed. "That's how Lubitsch would have done it," Wilder said. "But they wouldn't allow it. A picture that got down to one subtle hairpin, and we had to cut it out."

Of course, Wilder also had his share of problems with the ever-tardy-and-traumatized Monroe, who never met a director she couldn't drive to distraction. "I would get very angry at her," he said. "For The Seven Year Itch she never came on time once." However, he always maintained a good working relationship with the star. "She thought the way she looked entitled her to special privileges. It was true. But it didn't work with me, because I looked at her not as a man, but as a director. Well, most of the time."

In Wilder's view, inherent dazzle, as opposed to genuine acting chops, is what made Monroe an undying legend. "Working with her," he said, "was like being a dentist, you know- pulling those lines out like teeth, except the dentist felt the pain. But no matter how much you suffered Miss Monroe, she was totally natural on the screen, and that's what survived. She glowed." And today's viewers still can't get enough of that magnetism.

Trivia: Bell potato chips was a regional brand on the West Coast. Wanting to go national, they delivered cases of potato chips to movie sets in the hopes they'd be used as props in a film. Their plan worked when Billy Wilder needed them for The Seven Year Itch - after a scene where Marilyn Monroe came home from the store and started eating them, they became famous.

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TNR Film Classic: Delmore Schwartz on 'The Seven Year Itch' (1955 ...  Delmore Schwartz from The New Republic, April 8, 2011

 

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The 60-Year Itch: Re-watching The Seven Year Itch on Its 60th ...  Micah Nathan from Vanity Fair, June 3, 2015

 

Marilyn Monroe: So Much More Than a Tragedy | Village Voice  Melissa Anderson, June 29, 2011

 

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LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON

USA  (130 mi)  1957

 

Love in the Afternoon | Chicago Reader  Don Druker

A Lubitsch-touched romantic comedy by Billy Wilder, set in Paris and made in 1957. An aging (and obviously aging) Gary Cooper, as a jaded American playboy, romances naive music student Audrey Hepburn to the accompaniment of papa Maurice Chevalier's thunderous Gallic drollery. As Andrew Sarris says, not without its cruelties, but not without its beauties as well.

Time Out  Geoff Andrew

An over-long and only spasmodically amusing romantic comedy, clearly made as a tribute to Lubitsch. Set in Paris, it concerns the predictably blooming love between wealthy American playboy Cooper and Hepburn, the innocent but determined daughter of Chevalier's private detective, whose cuckold client (John McGiver) intends to take revenge on Cooper with a pistol. The script - Wilder's first with IAL Diamond - has its moments, but by and large it's conspicuously lacking in insight or originality, while Hepburn's fresh-faced infatuation for her all too visibly ageing guide to the adult, sensual world comes across as faintly implausible.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - Cine-File.info  Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

Audrey Hepburn is the jeune fille whose father, Maurice Chevalier (who else in Billy Wilder's Paris, borrowed wholesale from Lubitsch?), is a private eye specializing in trailing cheating wives. More often than not, they're cheating on their husbands with Gary Cooper's decaying American playboy, with whom Hepburn becomes infatuated after seeing his image in a surveillance photograph (youth and death, united at last!). After she overhears one of her father's clients plotting to gun down Cooper in the hotel suite where he meets the man's wife nightly, she decides to rescue him. Sneaking across a balcony, she arrives at the window outside Cooper's suite, and the scene that follows in one of the simplest and most beautiful Billy Wilder ever directed. First there's a close-up of Hepburn's face, the expression vaguely startled. The next shot is of Cooper and the cheating wife, but the camera is not placed where Hepburn would be; it's not from her point of view. Instead, it's startlingly close to the couple, who are dancing slowly to a hired Gypsy band. The shot is only a few second long, but it's the closest Wilder would get to any of his characters until THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. Wilder, whose camera is always judging, is here completely without judgment. The lovers are covered by a warm shadow, and the details of their skin and their clothing are tactile; exact, but not caricaturistic. It's not that witty Billy is letting his guard down—it feels more like he realizes that here, his sarcastic stance is useless. This is something wit and cynicism can't affect, and he lets the camera linger a little, before the next shot comes and the comedy resumes. Like all of Wilder's romances, LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON has been vastly underrated in favor of the showier cynical films. Yeah, Wilder appears to be a cynic on the surface, but the joke is on the people who believe in surfaces. It's the sort of thinking that Wilder despised above all: people who see themselves and others as types. The romantic Wilder is not a "secret Wilder"—it's a persona hidden in plain sight.

Crazy for Cinema  Lisa Skrzyniarz

I, like many people, am a huge Billy Wilder fan. If you don't know who he is, you should be ashamed of yourself since you're missing some of the best films ever made. From THE APARTMENT to SOME LIKE IT HOT, there's no other director more adept at mixing comedy, romance and an uncomfortable situation on the big screen. In this outing we get an onscreen coupling of epic proportions: the handsome and virile Gary Cooper and the charming and perky Audrey Hepburn. They are quite an odd match, especially since they have her playing about a decade younger than she actually was. Cooper's still old enough to be her father, but once you know the real spread the romance between the two isn't half as disturbing. Plus, Wilder always knew how to disarm a possible problematic situation. In this case, he has Audrey being the aggressor, so Cooper doesn't seem so disreputable and creepy. He still has a touch of that because he's playing a remorseless playboy, but one is able to put those feelings aside once you see how his character changes during the course of the film.

The film opens in Paris with Maurice Chevalier, as private eye Claude Chavasse spying on American millionaire Frank Flannagan (Cooper) dallying with his current client's wife. He delivers the news and photographic evidence to the wronged husband (McGiver), who decides to take matters into his own hands that evening and take Mr. Flannagan out of the picture once and for all. Chavasse's daughter, Ariane (Hepburn), a headstrong, love-starved, young lady, overhears the conversation and takes it upon herself to warn Mr. Flannagan of his impending doom. Instead of being disgusted by all the illicit liaisons her father has investigated, she finds all the doomed lovers sad and romantic. She also finds Flannagan's face rather appealing, much to her father's dismay. She manages to save the day, arriving at the hotel just in time to ruin his tete-a-tete and save his life. The husband bursts into the room, gun flailing, only to find Flannagan in an embrace with Arianne. Drunk and confused they manage to convince the man that he was wrong and no harm is done.

Though not usually his type, Frank is intrigued by this attractive thin girl, who knows so much about him and cared enough to save his life. Ariane refuses to divulge her identity and attempts to leave, but Frank won't let her go until she promises to return the following afternoon. This begins their secret romance. She knows he's no good. Her father has a file on him 3 inches thick, but she just can't stay away. She also knows the only way to keep him interested is to stay mysterious and elusive. Her behavior confounds him at every turn. When he questions her about other men in her life, she lets him believe she's extremely experienced. After all, he doesn't want some silly schoolgirl falling in love with him, trying to tie him down. He's only in Paris for a few weeks and he wants to have fun. When he returns to Paris several months later, they begin their affair right where they left off, only this time, Arianne twists the screws of jealousy.

She pretends that her daily evening appointment, she plays the cello in the conservatory orchestra, is really to meet another man. In fact, she leads him to believe there have been many, many men. Only Audrey could pull off a listing of 19 lovers without seeming like a whore. Granted you know her ploy to enflame his anger is untrue, but I don't really think it would matter if it were. She's makes you believe she loved all of them, though they are just stories from her father's files. She has a strange mix of sexuality and innocence that is entirely beguiling, so you can't blame her if men just fall at her feet...or that she would give in to amoré. She drives him so crazy with her nonchalant attitude that he seeks out her father to spy on her and tell him who she is. Of all his liaisons she's the only one to make him desperate to keep her for himself. Her father is horrified at the thought of his daughter's heart laid bare to this playboy. He exposes Arianne and begs Flannagan to leave at once and let her go before permanent damage is done. Frank tries to leave, but it's no use. She's the one he's been waiting for.

I must say I enjoyed this film much better the second time around. The first time I was too grossed out by the age difference to accept this romance. Granted Hepburn's character is the aggressor and goes into the relationship armed with the knowledge of exactly the kind of man Cooper is, but it still made me uneasy. However, after getting over that, it's clear to see that she's far older than her years and wants to experience love with a real man, not some schoolboy. In that case, you can't do much better than Cooper, even if he was pushing 60. It takes a bit too long to get to their first meeting, though the build up is suspenseful and fun. I know Wilder was trying to establish character, but I think he could have gotten there quicker with the same basic ideas still in tact. Though Cooper gets the job done, I don't think he was the best choice for this role. Hepburn gives a wonderful performance, as always, yet I can't help but wonder why she was forced to play it so young. One can still be youthful and innocent in your 20s. It makes the machinations of this drawing room comedy seem more contrived than they should be.

All in all, this is a first-rate effort from all involved even with it's pesky problems. It's witty, silly, romantic and fun. Certainly not Wilder's best, but not a bad way to spend a few hours. Especially with lead talent like Cooper and Hepburn, both of whom could read the phone book and still be entertaining. If you're up for something light and fluffy, this is a good film to pass the time with. It won't knock your socks off, but it's definitely worth a look-see.

Billy Wilder Blogathon: Love in the Afternoon | The Wonderful World of ...  Virginie Pronovost from The Wonderful World of Cinema

 

The Movie Projector: I Love Paris: Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon  R.D. Finch

 

Film Review: “Love in the Afternoon” (1957) – let the movie move us   Ulkar Alakbarova

 

Movie Review: Love In The Afternoon (1957) | The Ace Black Blog


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Love in the Afternoon - TCM.com  Kerryn Sherrod and Stephanie Thames

 

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World Cinema Review: Billy Wilder | Love in the Afternoon  Douglas Messerli

 

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TCM's MovieMorlocks.com  Medusa profile of actor John McGiver

 

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Gary Cooper in ''Love in the Afternoon'' | EW.com  Sharon Isaak from Entertainment Weekly

 

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WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

USA  (116 mi)  1957

 

Witness for the Prosecution | Chicago Reader  Dave Kehr

Billy Wilder's 1957 adaptation of Agatha Christie's famous stage thriller. The artificial plotting is all Christie's, but the film eventually becomes Wilder's—thanks to a trick ending that dovetails nicely with a characteristic revelation of compassion behind cruelty. His theatrical mise-en-scene—his proscenium framing—serves the material well, as does Charles Laughton's bombastic portrayal of the defense attorney. With Tyrone Power (nicely feckless), Marlene Dietrich, and Elsa Lanchester. 114 min.

Witness for the Prosecution, directed by Billy Wilder | Film ... - Time Out

The undisputed star of this courtroom drama is Alexander Trauner's magnificent recreation of the Old Bailey, which is just as well, since the presence of Charles Laughton as the defence counsel, and the film's origins as an Agatha Christie novel and play, combine to give the movie a heavy - almost stolid - theatrical flavour. Tyrone Power is surprisingly good as the man accused of murdering his mistress, but the swift twists and turns of Ms Christie's plot soon drain Dietrich and Laughton's roles of any dramatic credibility.

Witness For The Prosecution / The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes ...  Noel Murray from The Dissolve, also seen here:  The Dissolve

Billy Wilder arrived in Hollywood in 1933, when he was still in his late 20s, and it didn’t take long before he was writing and directing movies with a distinctly American flavor, marked by slanginess and gusto. But his work retained some qualities that could be characterized as “European,” including a fascination with human mannerisms and a frankness about sex and sexuality. Characters in Wilder’s films aren’t just quirky and lusty; they have appetites that range wide and run deep.

The 1957 mystery Witness For The Prosecution is an unusually straightforward film for Wilder—at least on the surface. Adapting and expanding Agatha Christie’s short story and stage play (with the help of screenwriters Larry Marcus and Harry Kurnitz), Wilder mostly honors what had made the material so popular before he got to it. Charles Laughton plays sickly, surly, quick-witted barrister Sir Wilfrid Robarts, who ignores the advice of his private nurse Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester) and takes the case of Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power), an American hustler accused of befriending and then murdering wealthy widow Emily French. With the exception of a few flashbacks, the film plays out in long scenes set in offices and courtrooms, carried by the dialogue, the plot, and the wild-card character of Leonard’s common-law wife Christine (Marlene Dietrich).

Witness For The Prosecution has the pace and patience of live theater, but not the look. Wilder doesn’t get overly flashy with camera moves and angles, but he does shift positioning subtly and effectively, moving higher or lower (or closer) to emphasize Robarts’ physical weakness or his powerful legal skills. Laughton, too, plays the material for the screen, often following up a moment of courtroom theatrics with a quiet gesture or facial expression that indicates just how much it’s exhausting Robarts. (The barrister also surreptitiously sips brandy and sneaks puffs of cigars, against doctors’ orders.) But what makes this film more than just an exercise in clever plotting is the way Wilder stages and shoots the flashbacks of Leonard meeting Christine and Leonard visiting Emily. Both scenes are openly informed by sexual desire, with Leonard operating as a cheerful gigolo in the latter, and Leonard trading scoops of instant coffee for Christine’s kisses in the former—and then suggestively asking, “Would you be interested in having the whole tin?”

Robarts exhibits some hostility to women throughout Witness For The Prosecution, but the movie as a whole is more sympathetic, showing Emily, Christine, and Miss Plimsoll as people who suffer due to the caprice and hunger of men. In the Christine flashback, for example, she comes across initially as brashly confident, singing for soldiers in a German nightclub while wearing a men’s pantsuit; but then her confidence gets rattled when one of those soldiers tears her pants and exposes a shapely leg, reducing her to an object. That scene, which comes early in Witness For The Prosecution, establishes an undertone to Christie’s otherwise delightfully easygoing tale of murder and litigation. Regardless of what Christie intended, Wilder’s film is about need.

Witness For The Prosecution - TCM.com  Deborah Looney

Based on the play by Agatha Christie, Witness for the Prosecution (1957) is a complex courtroom drama filled with deceptions, disguises, and plot twists. According to the New York Times, "the air in the courtroom fairly crackles with emotional electricity, until that staggering surprise in the last reel. Then the whole drama explodes."

Sir Wilfrid Robarts (Charles Laughton) is an aging barrister recovering from a heart attack. Against the advice of doctors and his nurse, played by Laughton's wife, Elsa Lanchester, Sir Wilfrid decides to defend Leonard Vole. Vole (Tyrone Power) is on trial for the murder of a wealthy widow. His wife, Christine (Marlene Dietrich), is his only alibi, but Sir Wilfrid doubts whether she is telling the truth. Additionally, Christine reveals to Sir Wilfrid that she is not Leonard Vole's wife. She was already married when they met during the war in Germany. Ultimately Christine is called as a witness for the prosecution, testifying Leonard admitted he killed the woman. But before the case can go to the jury, a mysterious Cockney woman calls Sir Wilfrid saying she has information to help his client. This sets in motion a series of twists leading up to the unexpected ending.

Billy Wilder, known for such films as Double Indemnity (1944), Sabrina (1954) and Some Like It Hot (1959), directed and co-wrote this adaptation of Agatha Christie's hit play. In the book Billy Wilder in Hollywood, author Maurice Zolotow states, "Wilder's idea of an actor is somebody like Charles Laughton." The director was very impressed with Laughton's abilities. On his day off when extras were brought in to film reaction shots, Laughton begged to help out. He read all of the off-camera speeches for the jury members. He read not only his part, but also the judge's, the prosecutor's and even Marlene Dietrich's. According to Zolotow, "it was an exhibition of craftsmanship such as Wilder had never seen. He believes that Charles Laughton had the greatest technical range and power of any actor, man or woman, whom he has known."

In casting the roles of Leonard Vole and Christine Helm, United Artists producer Arthur Hornblow, Jr., wanted an actor and actress for both Witness for the Prosecution and their next film, Solomon and Sheba (1959). William Holden was the first choice for Leonard, but he was unavailable. Billy Wilder and Arthur Hornblow then went to Tyrone Power, who turned down the part. Other actors considered for the role included Gene Kelly, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Jack Lemmon, and even Roger Moore. Eventually, Tyrone Power accepted the role when he was offered both Witness for the Prosecution and Solomon and Sheba for $300,000 each. Before he could complete Solomon however, Power had a fatal heart attack and was replaced by Yul Brynner. Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth were also considered for the role of Christine Helm.

Witness for the Prosecution was nominated for six Academy Awards. Charles Laughton was nominated for Best Actor and Elsa Lanchester for Best Supporting Actress. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Director, Sound, and Editing. And, before continuing, we must insert a spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen the film yet! Marlene Dietrich did not receive a nomination but many of her fans believe she deserved one for her dual role as Christine Helm and the Cockney woman. It's not until near the end of the film that Sir Wilfrid and the audience learn Christine was the mysterious woman. According to Steven Bach in Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend, "Wilder went for surprise rather than the possibly confusing suspense of knowing Christine was up to something. The decision remains controversial.

Marlene's Cockney is widely thought to have gone unappreciated because realized only after the fact. Dietrich supporters claim Wilder's decision cost her an Academy Award nomination, though there are those who insist, even today, that the Cockney isn't Dietrich at all."

Essentials: Marlene Dietrich and WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION ...  Aurora from Once Upon a Screen

 

Witness for the Prosecution (1957) - The Vintage Cameo  Emily

 

JUDICIAL REVIEW: Witness for the Prosecution (1957) | sullivan law  Timothy N. Sullivan

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture - 1957 (Erik Beck)  News from the Boson Becks

 

Film Review: “Witness for the Prosecution” (1957) | The Agatha ...  Rebel Prince from The Agatha Christie Reader

 

Witness For The Prosecution - Agatha Christie  All-About-Agatha-Christie

 

Movie Review: Witness For The Prosecution (1957) | The Ace Black Blog

 

Witness for the Prosecution (1957) | Journeys in Classic Film  Kristen Lopez

 

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Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton in Witness for ...  Cliff Aliperti from Immortal Ephemera

 

WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION with Charles Laughton, Marlene ...  Home Videos

 

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SOME LIKE IT HOT                                                A                     100

USA  (120 mi)  1959

 

After co-writing and directing what is arguably the seminal example of Film Noir with DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), Wilder returns more than a decade later with perhaps the best example of comic farce in American cinema, though Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE OR:  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964) also comes to mind, listed as the funniest American movie ever made by the American Film Institute in 2000 AFI's 100 YEARS...100 LAUGHS, sitting alongside CASABLANCA (1942) as among the most quotable movies ever made.  Overlooked at the time by the sweeping popular success of William Wyler’s BEN HUR (1959), at the time the most lavishly expensive film ever made, a spectacle six years in the making, eventually winning 12 Academy Awards, while this film won a sole Oscar for costume design, notably those shimmering, form-fitting gowns worn by Marilyn Monroe who gives the most sexually appealing performance of her career, always the center of attention, even though she doesn’t show up for the first half hour of the film.  This was perhaps Monroe’s best chance at winning an Academy Award, as she carries the film, but she wasn’t nominated.  The eventual winner for Best Actress was Simone Signoret for ROOM AT THE TOP (1959).  What’s also unique here is that it doesn’t start out as a comedy, but is more of a realistic buddy picture between two jazz musician friends, Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon), somehow caught in a gangster picture, whose rapid fire, back and forth banter suggests an overfamiliarity, perhaps a model for Neil Simon’s THE ODD COUPLE (1968), two guys used to being in one another’s company, which can get annoying after awhile as they continually complain about whatever’s bothering them.  Little do they know what lies ahead. 

 

In a wintry opening setup during Prohibition in 1929 where gangsters are delivering bootleg liquor to a speakeasy disguised as a funeral home, the two are playing raucous dance music in a jazz band for a Rockettes-style chorus line of dancers, where they escape arrest when the place is raided by the cops, beating a hasty retreat through the snowy windswept sidewalks of Chicago.  Hoping to land a job out of town, they wander into a garage where they witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, escaping once again to gunfire, as gangsters make it their business not to leave witnesses behind.  Frantic to the point where they’d do anything, they don disguises dressed as women and hop on a train to Miami with an all-girl band.  Both feel absolutely ridiculous at the idea and are having second thoughts until Monroe sashays by with her curves and her ukulele and boards the train, described by Lemmon as “like Jell-o on springs,” making them instant believers. 

 

Spending the rest of the movie on the run, it’s only when the two guys, dressed as girls, start to make fun of each other that the tone of the film changes, continually bordering on hilarious, adding the alluring sexual element of perhaps *the* leading sex symbol in Hollywood movie history, Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, the singer of the band, and there’s instant chemistry, along with plenty of conflict, as these guys are continually posing as something other than who they are, not to mention the unfinished business with the Chicago mob.  Jack Lemmon as Daphne takes to the role like it’s second nature, laughing giddily and making jokes with the girls, eliminating that invisible wall between the sexes.  Tony Curtis as Josephine, on the other hand, is used to being that good looking matinee idol, as he’s incredibly handsome as a man, but awkward, uptight, and utterly helpless as a girl. 

 

The two are inseparable, never leaving one another’s side, but Daphne freely ad libs about their absent history, suggesting they’ve been studying at a music conservatory, giving them a cultivated and highbrow side to their personalities that none of the other girls have, as they’re much more liberated and open minded.  When Josephine gets a load of Sugar sipping bourbon in the rest room, confessing how she’s always been a sucker for a saxophone player, running away from yet another one, his instinctual saxophone playing male mentality takes over but he’s stuck in a female body, where all he/she can offer is support and friendship.  Band practice is a frenzied riot, containing the first of three Monroe musical numbers, Marilyn Monroe - Running Wild on YouTube (3:36).  The closeness and intimacy of the music only serves to bring the girls closer together, which turns into a Marx Brothers vaudeville routine of pandemonium when word gets out that Daphne’s cubicle is serving liquor. 

 

Once they’re in Miami, all bets are off, as they’re free to go their separate ways, but Josephine as Joe has become hooked on Sugar’s sad dream to meet a millionaire on a yacht, inspired to fill those shoes through divine inspiration, if necessary, which requires devising a mad plan of action.  Since Daphne has been the object of an old geezer’s affection, none other than Joe E. Brown (a guy who grew up in vaudeville) as Osgood Fielding III playing a self-confessed millionaire who happens to own his own yacht, Josephine plots to inhabit his alias as well in an attempt to attract Sugar’s attention, sending Daphne and Osgood to a night on the town dancing the night away while he charmingly lures Sugar to his yacht.  Using a sophisticated Cary Grant accent and the pretense of owning millions, Curtis and Monroe engage in a spectacle of love at first sight, where romance is always the object of their affection.  The scene on the yacht is utterly spectacular, but it’s set up perfectly by another Monroe number, Marilyn Monroe - I Wanna Be Loved By You [HD] (2:53). 

 

Monroe’s dress couldn’t be more glamorous and seductive, backless and barely there covering her voluptuous curves, it literally cries out for sex.  Curtis, on the other hand, plays it coy, repressed and hurt by love, supposedly deeply damaged and pretending to be in a state of emotional freeze, just awaiting the spring thaw where the floodgates will be released.  The two couldn’t be more alluringly attractive, while at the same time, Osgood and Daphne spend the entire night in ultra dramatic fashion, dancing the tango to pulsating Latin rhythms, shaking maracas and carrying roses in their teeth.  By the time the night is over, Daphne’s about given up on being a man, thrilled by the unexpected rush of excitement, while Curtis is ready to throw his wig away for good, but instead they’re met by a mob convention in the hotel, causing them to bolt once again.  In despair, seemingly dumped once again, Monroe sings her final lament, I'm Through With Love/Marilyn Monroe (3:12), which finally touches the heart and soul of the man who has to eventually come clean in a rollicking conclusion that is so memorable that the final line is written on Wilder’s gravestone.   

 

Angelo Errigo from 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE:

Down-on-their-luck jazz musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) witness the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and flee Chicago with an all-girl band bound for Miami, posing as “Josephine” and “Daphne.” Both are taken with Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe), a vulnerable, boozy singer. But Daphne attracts the persistent attentions of lecherous playboy Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), and things get even more complicated when the very gangsters the boys want to avoid , Chicago mob boss Spats Colombo (George Raft) and his henchmen, arrive at the Florida hotel for a gangland summit.

 

The legendary drag comedy is sensationally funny, fizzing from start to finish with great situations, cleverly crafted gags, breakneck timing, and terrific performances. The 1950s top sex goddess at her most enchanting, Monroe’s forlorn-funny turn, maddening though it was for her costars and director to capture, is mythic. Curtis’s self-consciousness in drag gave him an aloof control that is in superb contrast to the uninhibited, priceless Lemmon.

 

Some Like It Hot was independently produced and directed by Billy Wilder in his second screenwriting collaboration with I.A.L. “Iz” Diamond, and was sparked by the German farce Fanfaren der Liebe (1951), in which two unemployed musicians join an all-girl band, take a train journey, and go in for some quick-change romancing with the band’s singer. Wilder didn’t want his two heroes to be camp; they had to be heatedly heterosexual so that their escapade aboard the train surrounded by temptation was comically excruciating. Therefore, they had to have a desperately good reason to masquerade as women. Running from their lives from ruthless killers provided strong motivation.  And while the gangsters have their own good jokes, they are effectively played straight for a note of delicious menace, with Wilder’s neat noir touch of shooting Raft’s key entrances from his distinctive footwear up.

 

The film’s famous last line was written the night before shooting finished by Diamond, who insisted to the dubious Wilder that it was funny because it’s so unexpected; the last reaction the audience expects to Jerry’s revelation “I’m a MAN!” is Osgood’s philosophical shrug, “Nobody’s perfect.” The other most fondly recalled moment is Daphne’s engagement announcement. Lemmon shaking his maracas in absurd ecstasy is a masterpiece of comic timing, Wilder insisting on joyous fits of gourd rattling to leave space for audience laughter between lines. He also overrode objections to filming in black-and-white, not only to enhance the period setting but, shrewdly, to mute the men’s makeup. Their transformation is startlingly amusing, but imagined in Technicolor it would be too grotesque. Industry mavens predicted the film would be a disaster because it broke several traditional rules of film comedy (the story springs from a grisly mass murder, the script was only half-written when shooting began, and the picture runs two hours, to cite a few), but audiences went crazy and still do, long after Some Like It Hot as selected by the American Film Institute as the Best Comedy of All Time.      

 

Time Out

 

Still one of Wilder's funniest satires, its pace flagging only once for a short time. Curtis and Lemmon play jazz musicians on the run after witnessing the St Valentine's Day massacre, masquerading in drag as members of an all-girl band (with resulting gender confusions involving Marilyn) to escape the clutches of Chicago mobster George Raft (bespatted and dime-flipping, of course). Deliberately shot in black-and-white to avoid the pitfalls of camp or transvestism, though the best sequences are the gangland ones anyhow. Highlights include Curtis' playboy parody of Cary Grant, and what is surely one of the great curtain lines of all time: Joe E Brown's bland 'Nobody's perfect' when his fiancée (Lemmon) finally confesses that she's a he.

 

Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Kathleen Sachs

Nobody's perfect. But it still might come as a surprise to some that this famous final line from SOME LIKE IT HOT was originally intended as a placeholder while co­writers Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond thought of something better before shooting the film's last scene. "Neither of us could come up with anything...so we shot that line, still not entirely satisfied," Wilder told The Paris Review in 1996. "But we just hadn't trusted it when we wrote it; we just didn't see it. The line had come too easily, just popped out." Equally prolific as both a screenwriter and director, it's certainly no surprise that Wilder could be as effortless with his words as he was with his direction. SOME LIKE IT HOT is the embodiment of screwball­comedy excellence, with a plot that works just fine and a cast against whose comedic timing you could set a watch. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play struggling musicians who accidentally take part in the infamous Saint Valentine's Day massacre and escape mob retaliation by acquiring jobs as players with Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators. This entails a bit more than just musical know­how, as Curtis and Lemmon don makeup and high heels, inventing themselves as Josephine and Daphne in order to fit in with the all­female troupe. Aboard a train to Florida they meet Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a down­on­her­luck, aptly­named beauty who walks like "Jell­O on springs" and is preoccupied with both ends of the lollipop. Monroe is often symbolized by the upskirt scene from Wilder's THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, but her performance as the sexy­goofy cynic certainly feels more true to life. Curtis and Lemmon marvel at the seeming easiness of female sexuality, and Monroe is surely the best representative of its actual complexity. Gender is certainly fluid in Wilder's farce, with norms and mores being challenged throughout. The film begins amidst pure machismo, and ends with the above declaration of acceptance that could just as easily apply to Wilder as to the characters themselves. The laughs come easy and complex issues of gender and sexuality pop out between mob chases and musical numbers.

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Scott Macdonald]

A pair of unemployed musicians - Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) witness the rubbing out of a police informant by 'Spats' Columbo (George Raft) in the 1929 Chicago St Valentine's Day Massacre. In a blind panic, they disguise themselves as women (Josephine and Geraldine) and pass themselves off in an all-girl band heading to Florida. Temptations arise when Sugar Kane (Marylin Monroe) and other circumstances threaten to uncover their disguise. Joe falls in love with the luminous Kane; all the while Jerry (now dubbed "Daphne") sends multi-millionaire Osgood Fielding III (a peerlessly hammy Joe E Brown)'s pulse racing.

It's one of the oldest comedy tricks in the book, men dressing as women, Joe and Jerry clunking down the train station complaining bitterly about their heels. "How do they move in these things?". Monroe's entrance is even more wonderful - "Would you look at that!? Like Jell-O on springs!". The script is packed with small sight-gags, including a nicely referential one with George Raft picking on a subordinate flipping a coin - "where did you pick up that cheap trick?!" - probably from Raft's performance in Scarface (1932).

This is possibly the raciest picture ever to get a U-rating; a sheer unadulterated sex comedy hidden behind the veil of screwball. What makes this all the funnier is the layered and enormously complex set of emotions running throughout. Nothing is ever on the level. Monroe has never been as explosively erotic, or as much of an oblivious bombshell. Curtis and Lemmon make a simply glorious double-act; the pair's pure libido drives quick-witted quip, sight gag and one running laugh after another. The script is probably the most eminently quotable since Casablanca (1942).

Offscreen, the most memorable quote about Some Like It Hot was Curtis describing kissing Marilyn Monroe as "kissing Hitler". Oh, dear lordy! - Hitler must have been a wonderful lover. Watch Curtis and Monroe giving it some welly during the barely restrained (and hilariously duplicitous) seduction.

The movie crackles with eccentric, delightful and breezy characterisation joined by some of the most astute comic timing ever to emerge from Hollywood. The greatest farce in the movies.

My favourite film: Some Like It Hot  Becky Barnicoat from The Guardian, October 31, 2011

I can't remember the first time I saw Some Like It Hot. I've no idea how many times I've seen it, either. There's no narrative to our relationship; I haven't grown into it or out of it as I've got older, I'm not nostalgic about it. Billy Wilder's classic comedy was sparkling and brilliant the first time I saw it many years ago, and it was just as sparkling and brilliant when I watched it again last weekend.

Still, in the 21st century it seems a rather unlikely cinematic reference point. Since its release in 1959, Some Like It Hot has been repeatedly held aloft in top-whatever film lists. The greatest American comedy of all time, according to the American Film Institute. Number three in the Guardian's list of best comedy films of all time. Fifth greatest film ever made, according to Channel 4. All this for a black-and-white screwball comedy about two musicians disguised as women on the run from the mob?

It's completely deserved. Some Like It Hot is the sum of many impeccable parts. There's the eccentric plot, so daring for its time it wasn't approved by the American censors. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play Gerry and Joe, witnesses to a Chicago mob murder who flee to Florida with an all-girl jazz band disguised as Daphne and Josephine. They meet Sugar (Marilyn Monroe), a down-on-her-luck ukulele player with her heart set on marrying a millionaire. Sun-soaked hijinks and spirited crossdressing are bookended by two brutal massacres, which Wilder doesn't soften for family viewing, while sinister mob boss "Spats" Colombo stalks through the film like a pantomime villain, gun trained on the dames.

Driving the story is a whip-smart script, delivered at times like machine-gun fire, and so intricate that even on my X-tieth viewing I laughed at jokes I'd missed before. Wilder prioritised story and script over cinematic flourishes, and the simplicity of his direction lets you wallow in great one-liners. I won't mention the infamous last line, except to say it's not the only humdinger.

Goofy and clever. Funny and dark. Men and women. Some Like it Hot is all about being two things at once. My favourite of its playful dualities is "sexy and innocent", a terrific combination which has been abandoned by modern-day Hollywood in favour of sexy and crude. There's no room for brash jokes here – not when the finger of an elevator dial can signify something saucy with a great comic-book "doinnnnggg!" – Some Like It Hot is all about sex (see its name), but only if you want it to be (see its name). That's not to say it's prudish – it's classy and sweet, preferring innuendo to insult, and gently building up romance and sexual tension.

My only regret is that it's black-and-white – apparently because Curtis and Lemmon's heavy makeup came out a nasty green on camera. But even without glorious technicolour, there's always something you can't take your eyes off. It could be Monroe, "like Jell-O on springs", quivering under a spotlight, I Want to Be Loved By You popping from her lips like Jessica Rabbit's cartoon kisses. Or Lemmon's gigantic Daphne, frolicking in a bathing suit on the beach, giddy with girlish delight and utterly ridiculous.

Some Like It Hot is famous for being a nightmare set. Monroe was moody and constantly forgetting her lines. Curtis claimed kissing her was "'like kissing Hitler". Wilder the perfectionist shot take after take. But when you watch it? Everyone looks like they're having the most wonderful fun. And that joy bursts from the screen and carries me away every time

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

What a work of art and nature is Marilyn Monroe. She hasn't aged into an icon, some citizen of the past, but still seems to be inventing herself as we watch her. She has the gift of appearing to hit on her lines of dialogue by happy inspiration, and there are passages in Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot" where she and Tony Curtis exchange one-liners like hot potatoes.

Poured into a dress that offers her breasts like jolly treats for needy boys, she seems totally oblivious to sex while at the same time melting men into helpless desire. "Look at that!" Jack Lemmon tells Curtis as he watches her adoringly. "Look how she moves. Like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in motor. I tell you, it's a whole different sex."

Wilder's 1959 comedy is one of the enduring treasures of the movies, a film of inspiration and meticulous craft, a movie that's about nothing but sex and yet pretends it's about crime and greed. It is underwired with Wilder's cheerful cynicism, so that no time is lost to soppiness and everyone behaves according to basic Darwinian drives. When sincere emotion strikes these characters, it blindsides them: Curtis thinks he wants only sex, Monroe thinks she wants only money, and they are as astonished as delighted to find they want only each other.

The plot is classic screwball. Curtis and Lemmon play Chicago musicians who disguise themselves as women to avoid being rubbed out after they witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. They join an all-girl orchestra on its way to Florida. Monroe is the singer, who dreams of marrying a millionaire but despairs, "I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop." Curtis lusts for Monroe and disguises himself as a millionaire to win her. Monroe lusts after money and gives him lessons in love. Their relationship is flipped and mirrored in low comedy as Lemmon gets engaged to a real millionaire, played by Joe E. Brown. "You're not a girl!" Curtis protests to Lemmon. "You're a guy! Why would a guy want to marry a guy?" Lemmon: "Security!"

The movie has been compared to Marx Brothers classics, especially in the slapstick chases as gangsters pursue the heroes through hotel corridors. The weak points in many Marx Brothers films are the musical interludes--not Harpo's solos, but the romantic duets involving insipid supporting characters. "Some Like It Hot" has no problems with its musical numbers because the singer is Monroe, who didn't have a great singing voice but was as good as Frank Sinatra at selling the lyrics.

Consider her solo of "I Wanna Be Loved by You." The situation is as basic as it can be: a pretty girl standing in front of an orchestra and singing a song. Monroe and Wilder turn it into one of the most mesmerizing and blatantly sexual scenes in the movies. She wears that clinging, see-through dress, gauze covering the upper slopes of her breasts, the neckline scooping to a censor's eyebrow north of trouble. Wilder places her in the center of a round spotlight that does not simply illuminate her from the waist up, as an ordinary spotlight would, but toys with her like a surrogate neckline, dipping and clinging as Monroe moves her body higher and lower in the light with teasing precision. It is a striptease in which nudity would have been superfluous. All the time she seems unaware of the effect, singing the song innocently, as if she thinks it's the literal truth. To experience that scene is to understand why no other actor, male or female, has more sexual chemistry with the camera than Monroe.

Capturing the chemistry was not all that simple. Legends surround "Some Like It Hot." Kissing Marilyn, Curtis famously said, was like kissing Hitler. Monroe had so much trouble saying one line ("Where's the bourbon?") while looking in a dresser drawer that Wilder had the line pasted inside the drawer. Then she opened the wrong drawer. So he had it pasted inside every drawer.

Monroe's eccentricities and neuroses on sets became notorious, but studios put up with her long after any other actress would have been blackballed because what they got back on the screen was magical. Watch the final take of "Where's the bourbon?" and Monroe seems utterly spontaneous. And watch the famous scene aboard the yacht, where Curtis complains that no woman can arouse him, and Marilyn does her best. She kisses him not erotically but tenderly, sweetly, as if offering a gift and healing a wound. You remember what Curtis said but when you watch that scene, all you can think is that Hitler must have been a terrific kisser.

The movie is really the story of the Lemmon and Curtis characters, and it's got a top-shelf supporting cast (Joe E. Brown, George Raft, Pat O'Brien), but Monroe steals it, as she walked away with every movie she was in. It is an act of the will to watch anyone else while she is on the screen. Tony Curtis' performance is all the more admirable because we know how many takes she needed--Curtis must have felt at times like he was in a pro-am tournament. Yet he stays fresh and alive in sparkling dialogue scenes like their first meeting on the beach, where he introduces himself as the Shell Oil heir and wickedly parodies Cary Grant. Watch his timing in the yacht seduction scene, and the way his character plays with her naivete. "Water polo? Isn't that terribly dangerous?" asks Monroe. Curtis: "I'll say! I had two ponies drown under me."

Watch, too, for Wilder's knack of hiding bold sexual symbolism in plain view. When Monroe first kisses Curtis while they're both horizontal on the couch, notice how his patent-leather shoe rises phallically in the mid-distance behind her. Does Wilder intend this effect? Undoubtedly, because a little later, after the frigid millionaire confesses he has been cured, he says, "I've got a funny sensation in my toes--like someone was barbecuing them over a slow flame." Monroe's reply: "Let's throw another log on the fire."

Jack Lemmon gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop in the parallel relationship. The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is Shakespearean in the way it cuts between high and low comedy, between the heroes and the clowns. The Curtis character is able to complete his round trip through gender, but Lemmon gets stuck halfway, so that Curtis connects with Monroe in the upstairs love story while Lemmon is downstairs in the screwball department with Joe E. Brown. Their romance is frankly cynical: Brown's character gets married and divorced the way other men date, and Lemmon plans to marry him for the alimony.

But they both have so much fun in their courtship! While Curtis and Monroe are on Brown's yacht, Lemmon and Brown are dancing with such perfect timing that a rose in Lemmon's teeth ends up in Brown's. Lemmon has a hilarious scene the morning after his big date, laying on his bed, still in drag, playing with castanets as he announces his engagement. (Curtis: "What are you going to do on your honeymoon?" Lemmon: "He wants to go to the Riviera, but I kinda lean toward Niagara Falls.") Both Curtis and Lemmon are practicing cruel deceptions--Curtis has Monroe thinking she's met a millionaire, and Brown thinks Lemmon is a woman--but the film dances free before anyone gets hurt. Both Monroe and Brown learn the truth and don't care, and after Lemmon reveals he's a man, Brown delivers the best curtain line in the movies. If you've seen the movie, you know what it is, and if you haven't, you deserve to hear it for the first time from him.

Armchair Oscars [Jerry Dean Roberts]

 

Masterpiece: "Some Like It Hot" - Charles Taylor - Salon.com

 

Some Like It Hot (1959) - Greatest Films  Tom Dirks

 

Some Like it Hot  Jeff Stafford from Turner Classic Movies

 

Slant Magazine Blu-ray [Chris Cabin]

 

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

100 films  Lucas McNelly

 

culturevulture.net  Arthur Lazere

 

The QNetwork Film Desk [James Kendrick]

 

QuickStopEntertainment.com [D.K. Holm]

 

Film Expression [Rex Baylon]

 

digitallyOBSESSED! DVD Reviews  Debi Lee Mandel

 

DVD Savant [Glenn Erickson]

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

 

Crazy for Cinema Review

 

Edward Copeland on Film [Jonathan Pacheco]

 

Goatdog's Movies [Michael W. Phillips, Jr.]

 

Movie Reviews UK  Damian Cannon

 

Home Theater Info DVD [Douglas MacLean]

 

DVD Review - Some Like it Hot: Special Edition - The Digital Bits  Adam Jahnke

 

DVDTown [John J. Puccio]

 

DVD Town [James Plath]

 

DVD Verdict  Terry Coli

 

Blu-rayDefinition.com - Blu-ray [Lawrence Devoe]

 

DVD Town - Blu-ray [James Plath]

 

High-Def Digest [Steven Cohen]  Blu-Ray

 

DVD Verdict (Blu-ray) [Clark Douglas]

 

FilmEdge.net - Blu-ray [Scott Weitz]

 

Film Intuition: Blu-ray [Jen Johans]

 

Home Theater Forum [Cameron Yee]  Blu-Ray

 

MovieMartyr.com  Jeremy Heilman, also reviewing TOOTSIE

 

The Cinema Pedant  Patrick

 

George Chabot's Review

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Anthony's Film Review

 

jdbrecords [Jeffery Berg]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

A Film Canon [Billy Stevenson]

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Malcolm Maclaren]

 

Digital Lard  Ed Parnell

 

The Spinning Image [Samantha David]

 

Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]

 

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

 

Some Like It Hot  Hal Erickson from Rovi 

 

Classic Film Guide

 

Filmcritic.com  Christopher Null

 

DVD Verdict- Billy Wilder Film Collection [Gordon Sullivan]

 

SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)   photos from Classic Movies, also seen here:  CLASSIC MOVIES: SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)

 

Interview: Tony Curtis meets John Patterson in 2008   Interview from The Guardian, April 17, 2008, also seen here:  Some like it very hot 

 

Guardian BFI interview with Tony Curtis  Adrian Wootton interview from The Guardian, April 23, 2008

 

TV Guide Online

 

BBCi - Films  Michael Thomson

 

Some Like It Hot  Philip French from The Observer, July 15, 2006

 

Some Like It Hot (Special Edition)  Rob Mackie from The Guardian, August 10, 2007

 

Why you should watch Fanfaren Der Liebe, the original Some Like It Hot  Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian, April 2, 2009

 

Tony Curtis: a true Hollywood star  Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian, September 30, 2010

 

Some Like It Hot: No 3 best comedy film of all time  John Patterson from The Guardian, October 17, 2010

 

best comedy films of all time  Listed as #3 behind #1 ANNIE HALL and #2 BORAT, The Guardian, October 18, 2010

 

The 10 best last lines - in pictures  Philip French #3 from The Observer, January 28, 2012

 

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  A. H. Weiler

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

Billy Wilder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

THE APARTMENT                                                 A                     99       
USA  (125 mi)  1960  ‘Scope

 

Shut up and deal.   —Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine)
 
Following on the footsteps of his most notable career achievement, SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), Wilder along with his collaborator I.A. L. Diamond wrote what is arguably his greatest film, a strange mix of a satire on the American corporate success story of the 1950’s and a modern day romance at its most wonderful best, moving effortlessly between comedy and drama to romance.  As usual, no one really knows how love strikes, but when it hits, there’s nothing else like it.  Wilder won the best screenplay, best director, and best picture award in 1960, a trifecta of the first order, yet this film doesn’t knock you off your feet with dazzling camera work, but with wit, humor, and some amazing performances by the always nervous Jack Lemmon who is striving for a key to the executive suite and the lovable, yet klutzy elevator operator Shirley MacLaine.  Fred McMurray plays the shrewd boss who wants to have everything, and for the most part does, but ends up instead with only everything money can buy, which isn’t the same thing.  This is an interesting take on marriage, though surprising the unhappy marriage feels like a weight on one’s back, especially when one is wedded to their job.  A far cry from the American Dream, here the job is just another faceless number in the ranks of thousands, in this case an insurance company that actually employs over 30,000 workers where it’s nearly impossible to distinguish yourself, as every desk and every worker looks exactly the same.  While the worker bees flail away on the ground floor with figures and phone calls, tabulating graphs, statistics and flow charts, squeezing every last minute into their working day, the executives on the top floors seem to have plenty of idle time on their hands, sitting alone in spacious offices planning their social lives away from work, inventing excuses like evening board meetings to cover for their extra-marital activities.  At the bottom are the worker drones while at the top are a special breed of male species that can never have enough, an indulgent group that greedily takes what it wants.
 
A scathing critique of American capitalism, Wilder examines the life of a middle man, a drone like all the rest, but he’s got something else, lending out the keys to his bachelor apartment to various executives for illicit sexual affairs, men who remember these special favors and recommend a fast track to the top for their facilitator, C.C. Baxter, Jack Lemmon in another Everyman role.  While he’s obviously being duped out of his own life, spending his time after work dawdling at his desk or standing around outside his apartment waiting for his “special guests” to leave, Lemmon is a good-natured guy, a bit over anxious but eager to please, especially those in positions of authority, so he grovels and prostrates himself before them while pretending it doesn’t matter, that eventually they’ll send in a good word.  Using a voiceover narration by Lemmon, he recites figures and statistics about the position he’s in, becoming a meaningless number that may as well be corporate property, one in a long line of endless desks that stretch as far as the eye can see, exactly as Welles later conceived the life of K, the nameless bureaucrat in Kafka’s THE TRIAL (1962).  Baxter does have something going for him that no one else has, the use of his apartment, even if it is for immoral and salacious purposes.  Wilder pokes fun at this through the use of his neighbors, who think his life is one continual party with one girl after another, with rumba music, bottles of liquor, and festive noise coming through the walls, where he’s bound to eventually drop dead on the spot from exhaustion.  Baxter has so little self esteem of his own that he’s even willing to accept this fake persona as a ladykiller as some kind of personal compliment, an attribute of his real character, borrowing it from time to time as he has no real life of his own. 
 
Like withholding the entrance of Monroe in SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), Wilder teases the audience with the late introduction of Shirley MacLaine as Fran Kubelik, the company elevator operator who performs her service with a smile.  Baxter is especially pleasant with her, but so are all the other male figures, many overly exuberant to the point of being distasteful and obnoxious.  The way the male executives derisively talk about women behind their backs reveals the barren emptiness of their own lives, treating each like a commodity they can impress one another with, like a prize winning trophy.  But all they get out of it is a quick fix, something to indulge their quixotic needs that are simply unquenchable, as the narcissistic greed these men are used to has no limits, as they represent the successful business model that feels like the creation of a new phenomenon of being, the titular head that underlings cannot refuse, taking whatever they desire with their rapacious appetites.  The more the underlings try to please them, the more pleased with themselves these business executives become.  In this manner, Baxter eventually draws the attention of the chief executive of the company, Fred MacMurray as Mr. Sheldrake, who vainly wants the use of the apartment all to himself, offering Baxter an executive position if he plays along.  Of course, who is the object of his cheap affections, none other than Ms. Kubelik, the one woman who treats Baxter like a decent human being.  A real conflict ensues, as both Baxter and Kubelik are separately dragged through the mud by the same lecherous man, who is inseparable from the company. 
 
Wilder quickly turns this satiric comedy on end, where the lives of the characters begin to matter, where the dubious manner in which they continue to be treated becomes an offense, quickly turning to a horrible personal tragedy.  This tumble and fall comes out of nowhere, but has a remarkable effect, as the audience suddenly becomes outraged and sympathizes with the lovable Ms. MacLaine like in no other movie, where she’s smart enough to know what’s happening, but is mostly miserable at herself, never blaming the man or the company behind the abuse.  This is what separates this movie from others, as this is a blisteringly accurate critique of the business world, as the executives are perceived as untouchable, obscenely rich with lavish expense accounts and plenty of high priced lawyers to protect what supposedly belongs to them.  Edie Adams as the executive secretary plays a prominent role as an outspoken whistleblower, surfacing during one of the most outlandish office parties on record, one that rivals the Romans in the picture of decadence, creating a feverish, poisonous effect.  Wilder quickly changes directions on a dime, where the portrait of corporate excess comes to a screeching halt and the impact of human tragedy prevails, focusing instead on an intimate glimpse into the small details of the living, where just getting through each day can sometimes feel like a miracle.  SOME LIKE IT HOT is funnier and more outrageous, but Wilder never wrote anything with greater depth or profound insight, feeling perhaps like this may be his most personal film, the one he’s most proud to have been associated with.  This is the American Dream gone wrong, where the myth becomes a distorted reality, and where a jolt of honesty, a splash of water in the face may finally open the eyes of workers who continue to get exploited in droves.  Despite the passage of half a century, this obscene, lopsided corporate model is the consummate picture of capitalism running amok today.         

 

Frank Lafond from 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE:

Billy Wilder used to scratch American society where it itches. Inspired by David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945), he had to wait ten years for the necessary slackening of censorship before being able to tell the story of the “third” man, the one who lends his apartment to the adulterous couple. Surprisingly, despite the sensitive subject matter, The Apartment won no fewer than five Academy Awards (including Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay), and is now considered by many to be the last “realist” film made by its director.

 

Some have criticized the amorality or Jack Lemmon’s character C.C. Baxter, who gets promoted quickly only because he helps some of the executives at the big insurance company where he works in their efforts to cheat on their wives. But Lemmon—who used to play Wilder’s Everyman characters—brings to the role here a solid touch of humanity, and Baxter finally appears as nothing more than a slavish clerk unwillingly trapped in a situation that already exists at the beginning of the film and is beyond his control. Despite its humor, The Apartment is indeed a severe social critique, as well as an examination of contemporary American life and sexual mores. It is also a strong attack on the basic corruption of the capitalist system, in which anyone with a little influence is capable of feeding off someone else.

 

The Apartment skillfully blends various genres, but, by and large, it begins as a satiric comedy, transforms into a powerful drama, and finishes as a romantic comedy. Meticulously constructed, the disillusioned screenplay by Wilder and I.A. L, Diamond can in some ways be considered a bitter follow-up to The Seven Year Itch (1955)—one that was beautifully shot in a rather gloomy black-and-white CinemaScope. After their summer vacations, when men had affairs in their wives’ absence, they quickly quit their mistresses. Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) is one of these unfortunate girls, and she believes that love affairs are not just another species of consumer good. In the end, the bureaucrat is finally redeemed by love for this other lonely heart, although the film manages to avoid any syrupy feeling. Although Wilder didn’t think that MacLaine and Lemmon formed a great couple, viewers can legitimately hold the opposite opinion.       

 

Time Out  Wally Hammond

Re-teaming Jack Lemmon, scriptwriter Iz Diamond and director Billy Wilder the year after ‘Some Like it Hot’, this multi-Oscar-winning comedy is sharper in tone as it traces the compromises of a New York insurance drone who uses his brownstone apartment as promotional capital by pimping it out, as it were, for his married bosses’ illicit affairs.

This quintessential New York movie – with its exquisite design by Alexander Trauner and shimmering black-and-white  photography  – presented something of a breakthrough in its presentation of the ‘sex-war’ in the age of ‘the organisation man’, with its sour and cynical view of the immoralism, self-deception, loneliness and cruelty involved in ‘romantic’ liaisons.

Directed by Wilder with a professional fluidity, attention to detail and emotional reticence that belie its inherent darkness and  melodramatic core, it’s lifted considerably by the performances: the psychosomatic ticks and tropes of Lemmon as the  poor ‘nebbish’ balanced by the pathos of Shirley MacLaine as the abused ‘lift girl’.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Ben Sachs

For many—including Wilder himself—this was the director's finest hour, the film in which all the elements converged with grace, sass, and a tinge of tragic inevitability. It was inspired by a line that Wilder wrote in his notebook sometime in the 1940s and couldn't forget: "Movie about the guy who climbs into the warm bed left by two lovers." By the time the film was made (during the so-­called "New Permissiveness" of the early 60s), the two lovers had multiplied into several men and countless mistresses and the warmth of the bed had turned musty. The guy, however, retained all the bittersweet sympathy of that initial premise. As incarnated by Jack Lemmon (in the most tolerable performance of his career), C.C. Baxter is the ultimate schlemiel, a resigned bachelor who lends his apartment to his insurance company superiors because he can't imagine any alternative to advancing in a job that kills him. Shirley MacLaine plays the disabused mistress who turns out to be the girl of his dreams, one of the great creations of the movies: her Fran Kubelik is a woman who seems ideal even in her faults—youthful, spontaneous, naive, sexy, resilient: exactly the type who could humanize an office drone like Baxter. The romance between them is so affecting (to say nothing of the dialogue, which pops as only Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's writing can) that it's easy to overlook what a superior piece of filmmaking THE APARTMENT is. Wilder remains underrated as a visual artist; and here, working in sparkling black­-and­-white 'Scope, he creates some remarkable effects, such as the unforgettable loneliness of the apartment itself and the modernist nightmare of the insurance company office (an image borrowed from King Vidor's THE CROWD), where rows of desks seem to extend into infinity. Wilder also employs small objects with an imaginative economy worth of Hitchcock. As he explained in Cameron Crowe's book­length interview Conversations with Wilder: "When Baxter sees himself in [Fran's broken compact] mirror, he adds up two and two. He gave it to the president of the insurance company [Fred MacMurray], the big shot at the office, now he knows what we know. And we see it in his face in the broken mirror. That was a very elegant way of pointing it out. Better than a third person telling him about the affair—that we did not want to do. This was better. This gave us everything, in one shot."

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Jennie Kermode]

The Apartment is famous for its opening voiceover, in which, against a backdrop of stunning imagery which reminds us just how small he is, ambitious young clerk CC Baxter ("Everybody calls me Bud") explains the system which is enabling him to impress his seniors - and which, every now and again, leaves him standing outside in the rain. Baxter (as he is actually known, in the absence of real friends) lends his apartment to company executives who need somewhere discreet to conduct their extra-marital affairs. He orders in the champagne, he makes the excuses, and he hopes for a promotion. But whilst his neighbours think they're living next door to Casanova, Baxter is really lonely, isolated and beginning to feel it.

Everything changes when Baxter meets Fran Kubelik, the elevator operator whom it seems everybody in the company is out to bed. Reserved and delicate, Fran is reminiscent of Audrey in Little Shop Of Horrors, a universal object of desire who never thought she could appeal to a 'nice guy' like our hapless hero. Her appearance drastically alters the tone of the film. In essence it's a slapstick comedy, but Fran is a human being, and as he falls for her Baxter gradually begins to question what he's been enabling. The company is an entirely male dominated structure, with women in supporting roles desperately waiting for their lovers to divorce their wives, being passed around from one man to another with no hope of lasting happiness. Fran's resulting depression has triggered an increasing emotional withdrawal from the world. It's an introspective response, but its results are dramatic.

The Apartment touches on dangerous territory in several areas. It has a playful attitude toward the sexual mores of its day and it certainly doesn't portray its female characters as uninterested in having a good time. In places its sexual jokes, played absolutely straight, must have presented a real challenge to the censor. Yet it is also deeply subversive on a social level, challenging the established way of living which has created such a damaging power imbalance. And by centering its story around the relationship between an exploited clerk and a depressive, it challenges the very pretext of comedy.

Despite all the gloom, The Apartment is a very funny film. It's wittily scripted and inventively directed, a Billy Wilder classic. Even when he's in the apartment on his own. Baxter's interactions with the television keep us laughing. Some of the stereotypes are a little hackneyed now, but so much of this film still rings true that it has that sharp relevancy comedy needs to live and breathe. With finely judged performances from Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, it's a great way to spend an evening, and it's something you won't forget about in the morning.

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young]

HAVING nabbed two Oscars for The Lost Weekend (1945) and one for Sunset Blvd. (1950), Billy Wilder instantly doubled his Academy Award haul when The Apartment dominated the 1961 ceremony. He became the first person to win for producing, directing and writing the same film – sharing the latter prize with his frequent collaborator I A L Diamond. A remarkable achievement, especially when one considers that in the directing 'race' he beat Alfred Hitchock (Psycho), and among the writing 'also-rans' was Marguerite Duras (Hiroshima, mon amour.)  

Nearly half a century later, The Apartment - a nimble, ahead-of-its-time combination of comedy, romance, drama and social satire - remains a much-loved favourite among film-makers, critics and audiences alike. Two newly-restored versions of the black-and-white, Cinemascope-ratio film are being released – one on 35mm, the other on digital – which at least gives audiences the freedom to choose. That's a refreshing, commendable step in an era when older films are too often only released via digital "prints". I say "older films" rather than "classics", because in many instances movies can fail to live up to their exalted reputations when they return to the big screen. And while The Apartment retains much of its humour, charm and tangy cynicism, only the most charitable viewer could realistically now describe it as a creative landmark in American cinema – Hitchcock, in short, was robbed.  

Wilder regular Jack Lemmon stars as C C Baxter, who works long hours at a monolithic Manhattan insurance company. While Baxter isn't an especially bright or talented employee, he is very popular with his bosses – because he owns a small, conveniently-located flat which is ideal for extra-marital liaisons. Baxter finds himself ascending the corporate ladder – but finds that the 'arrangement' with his superiors hampers his own private life when he becomes besotted with lift-girl Fran Kubelik (MacLaine).  

MacLaine's lovely, sympathetic performance (Elizabeth Taylor beat her to the Oscar) remains the freshest, most engaging aspect of The Apartment – the character's breezy straightforwardness all the more appealing given the sleazy, hypocritical behaviour which surrounds her. But while Wilder and Diamond's skewering of conservative corporate culture is suitably deft, their picture lacks the rapier severity of, say, Alexander McKendrick's The Sweet Smell of Success (or, in another medium, Hubert Selby Jr's novel The Demon.) It's much more of a mainstream-oriented crowdpleaser, tart of dialogue and knowingly genial as it explores contemporary mores.

PopMatters [Kate Williams]

Critics and fans both tend to cast a dubious, even scornful, eye upon best of lists.  Whether it concerns sports rankings, political figures, restaurant guides, or works of art, the shifting winds of history and the steadfast flames of personal subjectivity are always too wild to ever allow for total unanimity on any one subject.  Right, wrong, perplexing, or infuriating, such lists will continue to be compiled and passionate debates will forever ring out from the halls of academia to the living rooms of everyday fans. 

In particular, one popular best of list has raised the eyebrows of more than one film lover and critic over the last several years.  The American Film Institute (AFI) comes out annually with lists both serious (best dramas and comedies) and trivial (best thrills and passions).  At number 20 on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Laughs sits Billy Wilder’s classic 1960 film, The Apartment.  The film’s inclusion on AFI’s greatest films list is rarely questioned but its designation, as one of the great comedies of all time, has always seemed a bit odd.

A gentle and playful humor is clearly present throughout the The Apartment, but the overwhelming feeling that pervades and marinates the film’s narrative is that of a melancholic longing.  While not a sad movie by any means, The Apartment is a wonderful (and rare) film that manages to blend both the joy and pathos of life into first-rate entertainment.  Comedy or drama, The Apartment is a classic because of its ability to transcend the simplified stratification of any one genre.

The film’s central story centers on C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), an ambitious young clerk tirelessly striving for achievement and advancement at the large, soulless New York City insurance firm where he works.  Baxter is not above cutting corners and collecting favors as he navigates his way up the long and winding corporate ladder.  He learns that to succeed in business, one must learn patience and the ability to ignore personal indiscretions.  Even a thoroughly decent man, like Baxter, quickly learns that there is very little honesty left in a day’s work.

What complicates C.C. Baxter’s professional journey is that the personal indiscretions that beset and befuddle him are not his own.  Baxter may toil in low-level anonymity at the firm, but knowledge has spread to the junior and senior executives that this industrious little employee is in possession of a quiet, cozy, and gracefully convenient mid-town apartment.  With the tantalizing prospect of job promotion constantly dangled in front of him, and the equally implicit threat of demotion, Baxter begins to lend out his apartment to several of the company’s executives for their private trysts.

Baxter’s apartment may hold the key to his future job success, but it does not come without significant inconvenience and problems.  Baxter swallows hard and is forcefully sanguine about the lack of sleep, sickness, and endless waiting that accompanies his bargain —confident that without sacrifice there can be no gain. The growing popularity of his mid-town retreat increasingly leaves Baxter excluded from his own personal life and the painful irony of this situation begins to emerge. 

It is not until Baxter realizes that the company’s elevator girl, Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) is involved with top boss, J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) that he is spurred into action.  For Fran is the only person at the office with whom Baxter has developed a genuine attachment to, and the knowledge that she is just another girl in a long line of Sheldrake’s mistresses proves to be the spark that reawakens his sleeping conscience.  Baxter must decide whether it is more important to pursue success in business or in matters of the heart.

Winner of five Academy Awards in 1960, including Best Picture and Best Director, The Apartment is an American cinema classic.  Deftly blending social satire with light humor, Billy Wilder manages to weave together a film that is both stinging in its social criticisms and generous in its humanity.  A cautionary tale about business, fidelity and ethics that is skillfully wrapped under the guise of light entertainment, The Apartment is a testament to the fact that the best stories defy categorization.

MGM’s recent release of a Collector’s Edition of The Apartment is a wonderful opportunity for those who have never experienced Wilder’s classic to discover the joy of great writing, directing, and acting.  Lemmon and MacLaine are both exceptional in their roles and their scenes together crackle with wit and tenderness.  The character of C.C. Baxter could have been easily written off as an overly ambitious bachelor whose shallow striving is his only defining trait.  Through the strength of the script and the brilliance of Mr. Lemmon’s performance, Baxter’s personality and the complexities therein are revealed, thus giving dimension to a character that too easily could have been one-dimensional. 

The MGM Collector’s Edition is certainly an improvement over the film’s original DVD release back in 2001.  The standard-issue commentary by Bruce Block, a film historian, is both engaging and stockpiled with fascinating and note-worthy details.  Other extras include an interesting behind the scenes documentary and a loving tribute to the original, ridiculously talented and thoroughly unforgettable Jack Lemmon.  While the technical quality, packaging, and extras may not meet Criterion-level standards, this DVD release should be met with enthusiasm by both established fans and newbies. 

Comedy or drama?  It hardly matters for The Apartment is a deserved classic of American cinema and should be mandatory viewing for both casual and serious cinemagoers alike.

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

Crazy for Cinema

 

eFilmCritic Reviews  David Cornelius

 

ReelViews [James Berardinelli]

 

DVD Savant Review  Glenn Erickson

 

The Greatest Films  Tim Dirks

 

Qwipster's Movie Reviews  Vince Leo

 

Pajiba  Dustin Rowles

 

Nick's Flick Picks (Full Review)

 

The Apartment  Jeff Stafford from Turner Classic Movies

 

Armchair Oscars [Jerry Dean Roberts]  making the case for PSYCHO over THE APARTMENT

 

DVDTalk [Paul Mavis]

 

DVDizzy.com - Collector's Edition DVD Review with Pictures  Aaron Wallace, also seen here:  Ultimate Guide to Disney DVD 

 

DVD Verdict- Collector's Edition [Christopher Kulik]

 

DVD Verdict  Terry Coli

 

Edward Copeland on Film

 

Film Expression [Rex Baylon]

 

Erasing Clouds [Dan Heaton]

 

Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is a Fine Film  zunguzungu May 24, 2009

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture - 1960 [Erik Beck]

 

Old School Reviews [John Nesbit]

 

George Chabot's Review

 

Film Freak Central  Travis Hoover and Bill Chambers

 

The Flick Filosopher's take

 

CineScene.com  Pat Padua

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com  Kevin Clemons

 

Matt's Movie Reviews [Matthew Pejkovic]

 

Edinburgh U Film Society [Malcolm Maclaren]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

The Village Voice [Ed Park]

 

Movie Vault [Nate Anderson]

 

The Spinning Image  Graeme Clark

 

Brian Koller  also seen here:  Brian Koller, filmsgraded.com

 

The Digital Bits  Graham Greenlee

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Bill's Movie Emporium [Bill Thompson]

 

Cinema Sights [James Ewing]

 

That Cow  Andrew Bradford

 

Bitchin' Film Reviews [Blake Griffin]

 

DVD Verdict- Billy Wilder Film Collection [Gordon Sullivan]

 

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide

 

Classic Film Guide

 

Film4 [Daniel Etherington]

 

Variety

 

BBCi - Films  George Perry

 

The Apartment: No 6 best romantic film of all time  Ryan Gilbey from The Guardian, October 15, 2010

 

Peter Bradshaw's review  The Guardian

 

Philip French's review  The Observer

 

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

 

Austin Chronicle [Jerry Renshaw]

 

San Francisco Chronicle  Ruthe Stein

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

The New York Times  A.O. Scott

 

New York Times [Bosley Crowther] (registration req'd)

 

DVDBeaver.com - Review [Gary W. Tooze]

 

ONE, TWO, THREE                                                B+                   92

USA  (115 mi)  1961  ‘Scope

On Sunday, August 13th, 1961, the eyes of America were on the nation’s capital, where Roger Maris was hitting home runs #44 and 45 against the Senators. On that same day, without any warning, the East German Communists sealed off the border between East and West Berlin. I only mention this to show the kind of people we’re dealing with—REAL SHIFTY!       C.R. MacNamara (James Cagney)

Working relentlessly at breakneck speed, Wilder delivers a comic romp not seen since the Marx Brothers, a free for all of unparalleled mayhem, something reminiscent of Howard Hawks’ madcap screwball comedy BRINGING UP BABY (1938) or the Coen Brother’s irreverent antics in O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000) where the film reels off one-liners as if the screenwriters were getting paid by the joke.  The frantic pace is hilarious, as is the use of James Cagney as the corporate emblem of America, synonymous with the product Coca Cola.  What’s weaker here is the overall level of acting, much of it downright pathetic, which may actually add some level of sick cultish appeal to the film.  While many of Wilder’s films have a timeless feel about them and feel as fresh today as when they were written, this is not one of them.  Filmed almost entirely in Berlin, the city Wilder left three decades ago with the anti-Semitic rise of Nazism, this movie relentlessly exploits the politics of the Cold War, making it unfashionably out of date, more of a period piece that may suffer from a time warp.  For those who can set aside today for a glimpse into yesteryear, the experience is not much different than Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE OR:  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), which is the penultimate Cold War exposé.  While Wilder’s breakneck pace is more frantic and his jokes neverending, like a cheap burlesque routine, Kubrick’s vision is more icily chilling, smart and superbly rendered, well acted and brilliantly conceived, with an unforgettable finale, an ending to end all endings.  This film is simply not in that league, pitting capitalism against communism, targeting American imperialism as capitalist pigs with “Yankee Go Home” slogans referenced throughout, made at the height of the Cold War when the Berlin Wall was actually constructed during the middle of the shooting, sealing off the East Germans from the West, requiring extensive on-the-spot screenplay and set adjustments, rebuilding the Brandenburg Gate in Munich.   

Opening with the Saber Dance Sabre Dance - Aram Khachaturian - YouTube (2:25), conducted to full effect by musical director André Previn, a kickass, frenetic theme that plays throughout the movie, few films ever made match this kind of delirious non-stop energy, and most, including this one, have momentary let downs where the pace simply can’t keep up.  Cagney, C.R. MacNamara, affectionately known as Mein Führer by his wife, Arlene Francis, is the tyrannical head of Coca Cola in Berlin who dreams of being the first entrepreneur to break into the untapped markets behind the Iron Curtain.  His every move is satirized, as is the German staff efficiency, where Schlemmer (Hans Lothar), his right hand man, clicks his heels with each new command, while Fräulein Ingeborg (Liselotte Pulver), the curvaceous blond secretary sets the tone for a sex farce, exactly as Lee Meredith did as Ulla with Zero Mostel in THE PRODUCERS (1968).  Hilariously, Cagney’s office features a “Yankee Doodle Dandy” cuckoo clock where Uncle Sam pops out.  The entire premise of the film is Cagney barking out orders at a furious pace where underlings jump into action trying to obey his every command.  It plays like a three ring circus, as people are literally stepping over one another in choreographed pandemonium, where the dialogue driven film is a nonstop torrent of one-liners, zingers that leave one breathless after awhile.  Wilder devises an exaggerated soap opera for the theme, as the Atlanta executive in charge of Coca Cola (Howard St. John) phones MacNamara to inform him of the arrival of his 17-year old daughter in Berlin, Pamela Tiffin as Scarlett, asking him to look after her for a few days.  Without anyone’s knowledge, she stays for months, secretly meeting a communist boyfriend across the border, Horst Buchholz as Otto Piffl, lured by his outlandish views, calling her a “typical bourgeois parasite, and the rotten fruit of a corrupt civilization.  So naturally, I fell in love with him.”  At one point, down in the dumps, thinking his career is over, Cagney quips “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?” an Edward G. Robinson line from LITTLE CAESAR (1931).  Later in the film Red Buttons has a cameo where he does a Cagney “You dirty rat” imitation in front of Cagney, as someone similarly did a George Raft imitation in front of Raft in SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959).  

What follows is Cagney trying to put the lid on this budding international scandal, at first getting Otto out of the way, setting up the poor guy’s arrest by the East German police, where he is tortured by being forced to listen endlessly to the bubble gum sounds of Brian Hyland - Itsy bitsy teenie weenie Yellow polka dot bikini ... YouTube (2:27).  But when Cagney quickly learns that Scarlett’s pregnant and married, he has to embark on a secret mission into the bowels of communist East Berlin to get him back, making excellent use of real locations, especially the burnt out ruins on the East German side of the Potsdamer Platz, all set to the music of Wagner’s Die Walküre shown here (under noiseinthemirror) one, two, three | Tumblr on YouTube (6:43), embellished even further when they meet Russian trade ambassadors at the Grand Hotel Potemkin, where in the smoky ruin of a burned out café, a weary dance band plays a German version of “Yes, We have No Bananas” with a few deadbeats dancing in slow motion while aged comrades sit completely undisturbed playing chess.  Smuggling Otto out of an East Berlin jail is just the beginning, as the pace slackens a bit in a battle of wits with the infuriorated Otto, who defiantly proclaims “Capitalism is like a dead herring in the moonlight, it shines, but it stinks.”  In a furious attempt to take the Bolshevik out of the boy and make him more presentable to his family, as his future in-laws are arriving the next day, Cagney has his work cut out for him.  Engaging the full force of the Western front to accomplish the task, Cagney sneers “That’s just what the world needs, another bouncing, baby Bolshevik.”  This is a completely cynical piece on East-West relations, so when Cagney puts his stamp of family approval and places Otto in charge of a Coca Cola plant, who then immediately vows to lead the workers in revolt, yet stands there ridiculously bare-legged, Cagney snaps at him “Put your pants on, Spartacus.”  While the film is zany and clever throughout, it never rises to more than a theatrical set piece, as most of the action takes place with people standing around in a room, or running breathlessly in or out, creating an exaggerated sense of melodramatic hysteria, but interesting in the way Wilder takes a real international crisis and works it into his movie, spouting silly philosophic gems like “Look at it this way, any world that can produce the Taj Mahal, William Shakespeare, and striped toothpaste can’t be all bad.”

The Chicago Reader  Don Druker

James Cagney is the whole dynamic show in this hilarious Billy Wilder satire (1961) on Coca-Cola diplomacy in divided Berlin. The plot is something about a Coke executive (Cagney) who has to chaperone the boss's daughter (Pamela Tiffin), who is infatuated with one of Berlin's ever-present communist students (Horst Buchholz), who is in turn dedicated to destroying everything symbolized by Coca-Cola, etc, etc. The pace is blistering, and Wilder's deep-seated hatred of Germans has never been put to more comic use. With Arlene Francis. 108 min.

Time Out  Geoff Andrew

Coarse Cold War satire, structured largely as farce, with Cagney as the aggressive Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin, trying desperately to win advancement by selling the beverage to Russia, and simultaneously required to prevent his boss from discovering that the latter's bird-brained daughter has married a rabid Commie from East Berlin. Marvellous one-liners, of course, and Cagney, spitting out his lines with machine-gun rapidity in his final film until his belated appearance in 'Ragtime', is superb (and superbly backed by a fine cast). But the targets of Wilder's satire - go-getting, up-to-the-minute, consumer America versus the poverty and outdatedness of Communist culture - are rather too obvious.

982 (114). One, Two, Three (1961, Billy Wilder)   Kevin B. Lee from Shooting Down Pictures (excerpt) 

One: Is it backhanded praise to say that One, Two, Three is a movie you don’t even have to look at to enjoy? For the first half hour I just wanted to close my eyes and let the non-stop flow of dialogue carry me along. While Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond are known for their wit (”You will send papers to East Berlin with blond lady in triplicate.” “You want the papers in triplicate, or the blond in triplicate?” “See what you can do.”) it’s the musicality of the banter that captivates me: the compulsive clicking of a subordinate’s heels, Cagney’s numerical method of dictating agendas to associates, and countless little moments where the words turned against their speakers, batted around like a beach ball.

That’s not to say the film lacks for visual interest. Cagney’s office is an expansive executive space over which looms a global map of Coca Cola conquest; it’s stately and big enough to contain Cagney’s booming voice, and eventually becomes a staging ground for one of the most breathless one-set slapstick routines of post-30s Hollywood.

Two: Somewhere around the half hour mark, the non-stop stridency of Cagney’s delivery starts to wear on the ears; and when it’s doubled by Horst Buchholz’ angry young Communist, it’s like listening to two bugles blasting at each other over the Berlin Wall. Arlene Francis plays it a little too straight as the hapless wife. The whole middle section feels like an extended set-up for the next set piece, a late night negotation between East and West set over heavy cigar smoke, dishes of caviar and a table-dancing barefoot blonde in a form-fitting polka dot dress. The whole bar starts shaking to their gyrations, ideology coming undone under pure sexual lust.

Three: Back to that finale, a bravado sequence that moves at the speed of thought, as Cagney’s McNamara improvises his way to transform Horst Buchholz from a wet-behind-the-ears Communist to a spit-polish Capitalist in under 40 minutes. Well, at least it’s supposed to be improvised, but it doesn’t quite feel that way – it sounds and looks thoroughly written every step of the way. All the same, it’s a jaw-dropper, the way it summons every plot and subplot laid throughout what preceded it and weaves it into a three ring circus with Cagney the ringmaster-standin for Wilder. It’s an awesome, relentless juggernaut of a sequence that, allegorically speaking, combines Soviet unilateralism, American showmanship and German efficiency. Looking at it meta, it also evokes the Hollywood studio system at the peak of its creative and collaborative energies; as such, timed at the demise of that same system, it makes for a fitting swan song.

The Year in Film: 1961 [Erik Beck]

I’m so glad that this film has had constant showings on cable over the last few years.  When I first began my Directors Project, one of the first that I went through was Billy Wilder.  I had already seen most of Wilder’s films at the time, but I was surprised to discover this film as I had never even heard of it other than its one Oscar nomination.  When I first watched it I couldn’t stop laughing, not from the first minute.

“On Sunday, August 13th, 1961, the eyes of America were on the nation’s capital, where Roger Maris was hitting home runs #44 and 45 against the Senators. On that same day, without any warning, the East German Communists sealed off the border between East and West Berlin. I only mention this to show the kind of people we’re dealing with – REAL SHIFTY!”  Those are the opening lines of the film, delivered in perfect pitch by James Cagney in his most enjoyable performance.  It’s not as great as his performance in Yankee Doodle Dandy, but it is done with breakneck speed and the great lines never stop coming.  That the line was even in the film was a measure of how much they adapted as the film was made.  The Berlin Wall went up in the middle of shooting and Wilder had to move to Munich and rebuild the Brandenburg Gate.  That first line was almost certainly the last one written for the film, yet it makes such a perfect opening line, establishing Cagney’s feelings as a Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin.

Cagney’s troubles (he’s hoping to move up in the company) really begin when the boss’ daughter, Scarlet Hazeltine ends up in Berlin on her European tour.  She ends up in East Berlin and falls in love with a young revolutionary (when she first shows Cagney the picture, her young beau is behind a massive poster for a parade – seeing the poster, Cagney, incredulously remarks “You fell in love with Kruschev?”).  Scarlet is played at perfect pitch by Pamela Tiffin, who is perfect as a young clueless woman, the kind of woman who would say “When he’s 18 he can make his mind up whether he wants to be a capitalist or a rich communist.”, or when pointed out that she has been spreading anti-American propaganda by blowing up Yankee Go Home balloons, says “It’s not anti-American.  It’s anti-Yankee.  And where I’m from everyone is against the Yankees.”  Even better is Horst Buchholz as Otto Piffl, the young German revolutionary determined to get rid of the capitalistic pigs.  There is no one better at playing righteous indignation that Buchholz, and unlike his other well-known films (The Magnificent Seven, Tiger Bay, Fanny), here he is able to play it all for laughs, the kind of man who can say “I’ll pick you up at 6:30 sharp, because the 7:00 train for Moscow leaves promptly at 8:15.” with a complete straight face.

The trouble really develops when Scarlet and Otto get married.  Of course McNamara (Cagney) has a plan to break it up, but this is Billy Wilder and further complications develop that make what was already a breakneck pace speed up around the curves.  All of this is complicated by the marital problems between McNamara and his wife, Phyllis, so elegantly played by Arlene Francis  (when she is warned by her husband that Otto doesn’t wear shorts she wryly notes “No wonder they’re winning the Cold War.”)

The plot in itself is absolutely hilarious, but the way the lines keep coming it’s almost impossible to keep up with all of them.  Look at the moment when McNamara is given a Cuban cigar.  Noting it, he is told by the communists, “We have trade agreement with Cuba. They send us cigars, we send them rockets.”  When McNamara throws away the terrible cigar and tells them they got cheated, that it’s a crummy cigar, he is told “Do not worry. We send them pretty crummy rockets.”  Or how, when told by his wife that their marriages is stale, like a leftover glass of beer, McNamara indignantly replies “Look, Phyllis, can’t we discuss this problem without bringing up a rival beverage?”

Unlike so many of the films that I write about as over-looked, this did receive an Oscar nomination (Cinematography), was nominated by the Writers Guild and nominated for Best Picture – Comedy at the Golden Globes.  But it misses its rightful place as a comedy classic, one that was incredibly timely (the great Cold War lines are so brilliant – when McNamara says “To hell with Kruschev,” Otto replies “The hell with Frank Sinatra.”) and one that is still unbelievably funny, a film that ranks up with Mel Brooks and Monty Python for great comedy classics filled with so many quotable lines.

Austin Film Society [John Kirk]

 

Billy Wilder, Cinema One  Alex Madsen, Wellington Film Society, 1968

 

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

DVD Savant review  Glenn Erickson

 

The DVD Journal  Dawn Taylor

 

Film Freak Central review [Bill Chambers]

 

The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]

 

Clydefro Jones

 

Read TCM's article on One, Two, Three  Paul Tatara

 

Edward Copeland on Film

 

Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee  Peter

 

Dennis Grunes

 

Edward Copeland on Film (Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.)

 

Bill's Movie Emporium [Bill Thompson]

 

epinions [Stephen O. Murray]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

FilmFanatic.org

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Classic Film Guide

 

TV Guide review

 

Los Angeles Times  Susan King, August 12, 2007

 

The New York Times  Thomas Wood, July 19, 1961

 

One, Two, Three - Movies - New York Times  Bosley Crowther, also seen here:  The New York Times

 

KISS ME, STUPID                                                  A-                    94

USA  (126 mi)  1964  ‘Scope

Utter tastelessness was never funnier, where this film opens with Dean Martin at the Sands Resort doing his closing night shtick at Las Vegas, singing “S’Wonderful” in between statuesque showgirls and a host of bad jokes, which, if truth be told, are the mainstay of comedy.  How else could the nation survive Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, The Andy Griffith Show, My Favorite Martian, The Munsters, Gilligan's Island, or Flipper, all among the most watched TV shows of the era when this film was made.  Nonetheless, the film was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency (perhaps the biggest joke of all, especially looking back from the present era where the Catholic Church is embroiled in their own *indecent* sex scandal, covering up decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, effectively eliminating any new order of priests coming out of the United States) and dismissed as too lewd and crude by most critics over the Christmas holiday release.  While adultery could be tolerated by the public in The Apartment (1961), winner of 5 Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture largely because the immoral offender was portrayed as such a sleazeball, it’s harder to justify adultery from a happily married couple in small town America, even if that’s part of the joke, as the film is really a bedroom farce about fidelity in love and marriage.  In comedy timing is everything, and this film was released just a year after the JFK Kennedy assassination, with a nation obsessed and still reeling from the larger implications of what happened, who’s behind it, and who’s running the country?  As a result, this film tends to get lost in the Billy Wilder pantheon of great movies, though it has to be one of his funniest films, where the double and triple entendre quality of the jokes ranks with the Marx Brothers.  Wilder's film treats vulgarity with the same in-your-face brashness as One, Two, Three  (1961), something few other directors could have even attempted, hardly immoral or smutty, where this is really fairly benign and no worse than other pictures.  Vastly underrated, what is perhaps most surprising, and may have been lost on initial audiences, is Wilder attempted to write a genuine sex comedy about a mainstream, small town marriage that was more about what held the couple together in marriage than what kept them apart, brilliantly using a spoof on Dean Martin as a Rat Pack swinger (Dean Martin And The Rat Pack) in an attempt to expose America’s love of celebrity as little more than sexual hypocrisy, meant to heighten the suspense and raise the salacious level of comic expectations, but then throws in a heavy dose of reality like a cold shower, where the couple’s real feelings are exposed by actually downplaying the adulterous sex angle.  Underneath it all, filled with a musical stream of Gershwin tunes, the film has a heart. 

Martin’s lecherous lounge act is clearly a parody of his celebrity, always seen with a drink in his hand, suggesting young showgirls are all clamoring to sleep with him, where keeping up with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. in the Rat Pack is one long unending party of drinks and wild girls, where what Martin does really well is throw out WC Fields style one-liners written by professional joke writers, giving his character a sense of suave sophistication.  Wilder simply uses what he does in his act and places it in a completely off-the-wall and absurd setting, placing Dino away from the bright lights and applause of Vegas, instead plagued with car trouble, driving his own rare 1957 Dual Ghia convertible (only 100 were built) that gets stuck in the tiny town of Climax, Nevada, where not much of anything ever happens.  What’s a swinger to do?  But really he’s been tricked by a couple of locals, piano instructor Orville J. Spooner, everyman Ray Walston from My Favorite Martian, a replacement for Peter Sellers who suffered a heart attack during the first few weeks of shooting, and a somewhat oafish but overeager car mechanic Barney, Cliff Osmond.  The two write songs in their spare time, sending them away to various singers and publishers, but hear nothing back.  Wilder wanted the songs to be awful, so awful they would be hilarious, so he asked Ira Gershwin if he and his brother George had ever written any real clunkers?  Out of the files of shame come the unheard of Gershwin standards, “I’m a Poached Egg,” or “I’m Taking Mom to the Junior Prom Because She’s a Better Twister Than My Sister.”  Dino’s arrival to Barney’s gas station appears heaven sent, so he hatches a plot to remove the fuel valve from his car to give the impression of serious car trouble, explaining it’s an overnight fix, but he can conveniently stay with Orville across the street, who has the entire evening to push their songs, hoping this is a surefire way to get rich quick.  But because of his reputation as a womanizer, the obsessively jealous Orville doesn’t want Dino around his wife Zelda, Felicia Farr, so he intentionally picks a fight to get her out of the house, forcing her to spend the night with her mother while Barney picks up a girl from the Belly-Button Club just outside of town, where the neon sign outside reads “Drop In and Get Lost.”  But not just any girl, it turns out to be Polly the Pistol, Kim Novak, who literally steals the show, a part-time hooker who has a trailer behind the club.  Her job for the evening is to pretend to be Mrs. Orville Spooner and keep Dino and his constantly prowling fingers entertained, hoping he’ll buy a few songs along the way.       

 

The plot thickens.  While we get a taste of Orville playing “Sophia” at the piano, where the chorus returns over and over again like a bad dream, Dino is positively smitten with Polly and the so-called “Western hospitality” where over dinner with Chianti, Orville all but pushes her in Dino’s direction—anything to show him a good time.  Delighted with the turn of events, drinking Chianti out of her shoes, Dino has his hands full.  But refusing to be pawed, Polly shows unexpected outrage, “What right has he got to treat your wife like that?”  Polly is no fool and is really touched by the romance sentiment in Orville’s songs, where she urges him to keep playing, completely changing the movie’s implications, as the hooker with the heart of gold is more interested in the long-term interests of the husband than the raunchy needs of the customer.  Meanwhile, in what feels like a parallel world, poor Zelda has to face her mother, who is nothing more than a sour-pussed old hag (Doro Merande) who can think of nothing but non-stop criticism of her no good husband and her destroyed marriage.  This verbal assault is hilariously cringe worthy, as she resembles the tyrannical ravings of the Wicked Witch of the East, which quickly sends her daughter back out the door in a return to her husband, where she sees through the window a lively and simply extraordinarily intimate dance between her husband and Polly (choreographed by Gene Kelly, who was just passing by the studio one afternoon), where they clearly seemed to be enjoying themselves, so what could she do?  The night of sex and sin has a way of overshadowing Wilder’s real intent, establishing sex as a business, where sex and commerce are interchangeable, but things go awry when Orville starts seeing Polly as a person, not a commodity, so when Dino actually likes one of the more romantic ballads, like “All the Livelong Day,” Orville refuses to sell it, standing up for his pretend wife in this ridiculously fast paced sex farce, suddenly taking all the fun of it, where Orville instead turns on Dino as a cad for making inappropriate, lurid advancements on his wife.  “Whatever happened to Western hospitality?” he pleads as he’s being thrown out on his ass.  But not to worry, the film follows Zelda instead, who turns out to be more than a handful, getting plastered at the local watering hole, ending up in Polly’s trailer just to sleep it off, where Dino arrives shortly afterwards, steered by the bartender to the trailer where all the “action” is.  Having exchanged places with Polly, Zelda realizes what’s up and asks Dino to serenade her with a few choruses of her husband’s “Sophia.”  Adultery within the marriage has a redemptive quality here, as being with an “other” only reminds each one of who they’re really missing.  Love and romance wins out in the end, overshadowing all sins of the flesh, taking us all by storm with this wild little ride in the desert concocted by Billy Wilder.                  

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

Kiss Me Stupid (1964, MGM/UA, $19.98) was one of Wilder's most notorious efforts, raising the ire of the Catholic Church before its release. Dean Martin plays an alcoholic lounge singer named Dino who takes a detour through a small town and meets up with hopeful songwriter Ray Walston. Walston and his partner Cliff Osmond decide that if they can provide Dino with a woman for a night to keep him happy, they'll have a chance to sell one of their songs. They enlist Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak) to "play" Walston's wife for a night, but everything goes haywire and Dino ends up with Walston's real wife (Felicia Farr, Wilder's real-life wife). It doesn't make much sense, but Wilder's beautiful use of the black-and-white widescreen frame, dazzling casting and crisp pace make it an interesting oddity.

Kiss Me, Stupid  Gerald Peary

There are those who consider Billy Wilder's sex farce, Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) his underrated masterpiece, and more who agree with the Time dismissal of "One of the longest traveling-salesman jokes ever committed to film." I'm in-between, appreciating the attempts of Wilder (and his co-writer, I.A.L. Diamond) to step all over the then-still-potent Hollywood Code with smutty jokes and amoral behavior, but finding the movie only intermittently funny. If all the double-entendres could be as salaciously inspired as when Dean Martin maneuvers a woman into the garden "so she can show me her parsley."

The lively story of Kiss Me, Stupid's making is told with aplomb in Kevin Lally's excellent 1996 bio, Wilder Times: The Life of Billy Wilder. Four weeks into the shooting, star Peter Sellers, says Lally, "suffered a mild heart attack after making love to his wife of less than two months, the actress Britt Ekland (and using amyl nitrate to prolong his performance). "Sellers's replacement by the lesser Ray Walston was the first of many problems, climaxing with the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency dooming Kiss Me, Stupid with a "Condemned" rating, as priests across America used their pulpits to urge a Catholic boycott.

Kiss Me, Stupid bombed at the box office, and most reviewers despised it. Wilder, shaken, left for a European trip. "The uproar stunned me," he told The New York Times. "Okay, I had made a bad picture, but why the indignation, why the charges that I had undermined the nation's morals?" In 1965, Hollywood screenwriter, Erenst Lehman, walked into a room where Wilder and Diamond sat in depressed silence. 'We're like two parents who have given birth to a mongoloid idiot," Wilder told Lehman, "and we're afraid to screw again."

Kiss Me, Stupid   Mike D’Angelo from Time Out New York

Condemned by the Legion of Decency and dismissed by critics as a gratuitously smutty trifle, Kiss Me, Stupid, directed by the late Austrian-born maverick Billy Wilder, demonstrates a firmer grasp of American mores than just about anything this side of Sinclair Lewis. A ribald interrogation of celebrity worship, sexual gamesmanship and overweening ambition, it reveals itself from today's perspective as an earthy precursor to Being John Malkovich, encouraging Dean Martin to mock his own boozy hound-dog persona and observing with wry amusement as Novak's careworn floozy eagerly assumes the identity of Farr's proper housewife, and vice versa. (Beavis and Butt-head, meanwhile, would appreciate the film's setting: Climax, Nevada.) At once blissfully silly and hilariously smug, Martin's self-parody can't quite match the spectacle of Malkovich over-enunciating "hither and thither" into a tape recorder or inquiring about mail-order bath mats, but his droll, occasionally courageous performance elevates this minor-key sex farce to another level.

Loosely adapted by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond from Anna Bonacci's L'Ora della Fantasia, the film's plot cheerfully endorses the notion of lovemaking as business transaction, as aspiring songwriter Orville J. Spooner (Walston, in a role originally intended for Peter Sellers) and his pal Barney (Cliff Osmond) scheme to waylay "Dino," who's just passing through Climax en route from Vegas to L.A., via an appeal to his outsize libido. As Novak bumps, grinds and sniffles (in a typical Wilder touch, she has a cold) as the fake Zelda Spooner, a ferociously green-eyed Orville becomes increasingly protective of her honor; his misplaced chivalry doesn't faze the real Zelda, however, who recognizes a golden opportunity when she sees one. In order to secure the necessary seal of approval from the Production Code, Wilder agreed to reshoot the seduction scene between Martin and Farr, substituting a version in which Dino falls asleep in the middle of a back rub (though, significantly, Zelda still awakens naked beneath a sheet). The European version, shown here, restores balance to the film's surprisingly open-minded take on infidelity, and is funnier and sexier besides. 

The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]

A grimly suggestive and unexpectedly tender bedroom farce, Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid is a true film maudit—condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency and savaged by almost every American reviewer when it was released for Christmas in 1964. In the Voice, Andrew Sarris called Kiss Me, Stupid"another exercise in joylessly jejune cynicism." The kindest notices opined that it really wasn't much nastier or more labored than Wilder's previous comedies.

But fashions change, and well before his death this year at 95, Wilder had become a lovable relic whose place in the people's pantheon of post-war Hollywood directors had begun to rival Sir Alfred Hitchcock's. Kiss Me, Stupid is unlikely to inspire a Broadway musical, top an AFI poll, or birth a hundred-dollar coffee-table book, but it could burnish Wilder's posthumous reputation—especially as the crisp new 35mm black-and-white print that opens Friday for a week at Film Forum reinstates the original version of a scene the panicked studio excised during previews.

Some have called Kiss Me, Stupid ahead of its time. Actually, the movie's supposedly sophisticated vulgarity is firmly rooted in the smug ring-a-ding-ding of the Kennedy era. The extended opening credit sequence is a Rat Pack classic, with Dean Martin onstage at the Sands, surrounded by a deadpan harem of statuesque showgirls as he staggers through " 'S Wonderful." No less than Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, Martin gamely plays a comic version of himself as well as a generic star. Referred to as Dino, he's a randy boozer subject to migraines if he doesn't have a new woman every night.

Driving back to L.A. from Vegas, Dino finds himself marooned in the desolate backwater of Climax, Nevada—thanks to the tinkering of a duplicitous gas jockey (Cliff Osmond), an unpublished songwriter who hatches a scheme to peddle some of the material he's been churning out in collaboration with town piano teacher Orville J. Spooner (Ray Walston). Scarcely less subtle than their songs (actually supplied by Ira Gershwin), the pair's plan is to lure Dino to dinner chez Spooner with the promise of the lovely Mrs. Spooner as bait.

Walston, then Uncle Martin of the space-age sitcom My Favorite Martian, replaced the movie's original star, Peter Sellers, who suffered a series of heart attacks a month into the production. That the fortyish Sellers had just married 21-year-old Britt Ekland provided the movie's first leering joke long before it wrapped. (Indeed, the character of the obsessively jealous Orville may have been partially inspired by Sellers.) While it's amusing to imagine Jerry Lewis opposite his ex-partner as Sellers's stand-in, Walston brings his own negative charm. His wizened hysteria enhances the character's unpleasant paranoia, a factor of his having married the too-attractive if not overly bright Zelda (Felicia Farr).

Orville appreciates the strategy of pimping his wife, but modifies it. He provokes Zelda (erstwhile president of her high school Dino fan club) into leaving home so that she might be replaced for the evening by Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak), a freelance hooker who works out of a trailer behind the Belly Button cocktail lounge. Her husky accent part Brooklyn, part Sugar Kane, Novak's Polly is the movie's lone sympathetic character, mainly because she's the only honest whore—too dumb to exploit anyone else. (As the neon sign fronting the Belly Button mournfully puts it, "Drop In and Get Lost.")

Smarmydoesn't do Kiss Me, Stupid justice. The first half is an unending parade of smutty gags and single entendres, with a few toilet jokes thrown in for good measure. The constant tumult in the Spooners' cramped bungalow betrays the movie's stage origins, and indeed, Climax itself is an appropriately desolate stage-set. Kiss Me, Stupid is likely Wilder's harshest view of the American landscape since the orchestrated media feeding frenzy of Ace in the Hole. Pushing all jokes to the far side of the moon, he wrings much defamiliarizing mileage out of a front-yard cactus, a long-necked Chianti bottle, and the parrot in Polly's trailer.

The rancid atmosphere conceals the virtues of the movie's classical structure, detailed mise-en-scène, and deft comic timing. Kiss Me, Stupid hits its stride at dinner—Dino pawing Polly and swilling Chianti from her shoe. "What right has he got to treat your wife like that?" she hisses to the unctuously maniacal Orville. (Packed for maximum cleavage, Novak inhabits the movie with her customary stolid vulnerability.) Polly and Orville's spontaneous dance of joy when it appears that besotted Dino will buy Orville's "Italian" number, "Sofia," is enchanting. (Evidently Gene Kelly dropped by the set and choreographed the routine off the cuff.) Nevertheless, the plan goes awry when Orville begins to imagine that the hooker actually is his wife and, rather than go bowling per plan, boots Dino out on his keister.

Polly is a poignant character and Orville a genuine lunatic—it's sweetly satisfying when they role-play their way into bed. Meanwhile, desperate Dino cruises the Belly Button, where he inevitably finds Zelda, passed out in Polly's trailer. Demonstrating unexpected intelligence, she susses out Orville's bungled scheme and seduces Dino into seducing her with his rendition of the now rehabilitated "Sofia." Or so it is in the restored print. Kiss Me, Stupid's mutually redemptive adultery is closer to the grown-up world of John Cassavetes's Faces than to Wilder's adolescent Seven Year Itch—but it's ultimately a more knowingly tolerant, not to mention funnier, movie than either.

William Wolf, then writing for Cue, was apparently the lone New York reviewer to point out that the clumsy reshoot—in which Zelda is considerably less friendly and Dino's back goes out at a crucial moment, thus subtracting the pleasure and introducing a hypocritical uncertainty into their night together—crucially damaged the movie as a whole. No one will ever confuse Billy Wilder with Jean Renoir, but as a cynic's view of the human carnival, Kiss Me, Stupid is almost empathetic.

Austin Film Society [Chale Nafus]

Read TCM's article on Kiss Me, Stupid  John M. Miller, also seen here:  Articles

DVD Savant review  Glenn Erickson

kiss me, stupid - movie and tv vault at videovista  Richard Bowden

DVDTalk [Paul Mavis]

Kiss Me, Stupid/Billy Wilder  Jonathan Rosenbaum, also seen here:  Kiss Me, Stupid/Billy Wilder - JonathanRosenbaum.com

 

brilliantly using a spoof on Dean Martin as a Rat Pack swinger  Robert Kennedy from I Love Dino Martin, July 17, 2012

 

Film Monthly.com – Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)  Daniel Engelke

 

Love for Sale - Cinescene  Pat Padua

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

DVD Verdict- Billy Wilder Film Collection [Gordon Sullivan]

TV Guide review  Michael Scheinfeld

 

Kiss Me, Stupid Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London  Geoff Andrew

 

New York Times [A.H. Weiler] (registration req'd)

 

Murray Schumach - The New York Times

 

Kiss Me, Stupid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The RAT PACK TRIBUTE! Welcome to RATPACK.com!

 

Images for The Rat Pack

 

Dean Martin And The Rat Pack

 

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES                      B-                    82

Great Britain  (125 mi)  1970  ‘Scope

 

Not sure where Wilder was going with a 3-hour version of this film, which is certainly slow enough as is, originally conceiving a mythic epic of 4 different stories along with a prologue and epilogue divided by an intermission, becoming a bone of contention between the director and United Artists who forced him to reduce the film to 2 episodes, something that haunted him the rest of his life as the missing footage was lost.  Fraught with production troubles, the film was shot on location in Scotland featuring a scene with the Loch Ness monster, where the original sequence was too difficult to light properly and in the trial run the mechanical monster unfortunately sank to the bottom of the sea, forcing Wilder to reshoot the entire sequence in a studio.  Nonetheless, this exposes both a different side of Wilder and Sherlock Holmes, showing a human face to this conventional storybook character, who as he ages grows more sadly circumspect, questioning himself and his abilities, his fading reputation, especially when he is unable to adequately solve a case, unhappy about his lifelong insecurities and loneliness, along with his detachment from women, acknowledging his use of cocaine while intimating he is secretly gay.  Showing a darker more complex side of his personality, Holmes (Robert Stephens) retains his intellectual acumen while Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) is no slouch in that department either, where both are an excellent compliment to one another, displaying, as the title suggests, a more intimate side of the infamous and world renowned investigating team.

 

The opening sequence shows Wilder’s love and fascination with the Russians, our arch enemy during the Cold War, always given that duplicitous face, as if they’d sell out their own mother for a price, using comic exaggeration to overemphasize dialog and dubious character, where Holmes is drawn into a case involving a conniving Russian ballerina, where backstage at a performance he becomes the chosen one selected to sire her future child, as she has the beauty but is looking for the perfect combination of intellect, offering him a Stradivarius violin for his troubles.  Thinking quickly on his feet, he’s required to graciously deny the request as he shares Tchaikovsky’s amorous inclinations which would prove disastrous under these circumstances, insinuating a lifelong partnership with Watson.  When word gets out it spreads across the floor, where Watson is in the midst of drunken revelry dancing to Russian balalaika music with a line of beautiful ballerina dancers, where amusingly one by one the females are replaced by male dancers, all staring adoringly at him.  Afterwards, still in a drunken rage, Watson is furious with Holmes for ruining his reputation with his Army buddies, supposedly staining his reputation across the entire nation, where presumably he’s a ladies man.  Watson’s insults lead to a question of Holmes’ flawed character, as he typically distrusts women in general, which leads to the next case which is literally dropped in their lap. 

 

A driver arrives at their doorstep carrying a lovely woman (Geneviève Page, the brothel Madame in Buñuel’s 1967 BELLE DE JOUR) who can’t remember who she is, but is carrying a card in her hand of Holmes’ address.  They quickly determine her identity, Gabrielle Valladon from Brussels, but not the location of her missing husband, supposedly a Belgian engineer, leading them on a search to Inverness, Scotland to find him.  Despite her coy answers and elusive beauty, Holmes finds her quite the challenge, becoming fond of her and dumfounded actually until a visit from his own brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee) tips him off that she’s working undercover as a secret agent and is a threat to national security.  Their leads uncover a sect of silent Trappist monks, a band of midgets, a communicating parasol, dead canaries, and a strange confrontation with the Loch Ness Monster during a fog drenched afternoon boat ride on a lake.  The parallel lives of the two adversaries interestingly carry a similar underside they both share, each committed to a lifelong commitment to undercover or secret operations, both missing their romantic other half, both relying on their intellectual skills to get them out of trouble, and both emotionally challenged by living lives of such deep-seeded isolation.  Holmes is still Holmes, always the smartest guy in the room, but exhibits a somewhat imperfect character here, developing conflicting feelings on a case, thrown off his game by his developing affection and disappointment in love.  While the characters themselves are excellent, especially Watson, musical score by Miklós Rózsa, again co-written by I.A. L. Diamond, Wilder allows the pace to continually languish, where he never finds a natural rhythm, instead giving it a kind of awkward Victorian Gothic feel.  

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Director Billy Wilder hated the final edit of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970, MGM/UA, $19.98), a subversive take on the world's greatest detective, which hints that he may have been gay. Apparently, Wilder was not present during the editing process, and when he tried to re-cut it, he found that the excised footage no longer exists. Nonetheless, this existing version is still fascinating, funny and clever. Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Watson (Colin Blakely) agree to help a young woman locate her missing husband. The search takes them to Scotland where they encounter the Loch Ness Monster. Best of all, Christopher Lee co-stars as Sherlock's brother Mycroft Holmes. The visual quality of this disc is the worst of the recent MGM/Wilder DVDs, with terrible-looking grain in some shots.

 

Britmovie

Unjustly ignored, the brilliant Billy Wilder chalked up a personal triumph with this handsomely produced mystery thriller which lifts the lid off the secret life of the famous detective, focusing on his melancholia, his cocaine habit and the implied romance between Holmes and Dr Watson. The plot involves a camp Sherlock Holmes falling in love, missing circus midgets, Trappist monks and the Loch Ness monster. This original and ultimately poignant treatment of Arthur Conan Doyle’s celebrated sleuth was drastically cut by United Artists after lukewarm previews and upon release was a box-office flop, but its critical reputation has grown immeasurably with the passage of time.

When an attractive Belgian amnesiac, Gabrielle Valladon (Genevieve Page), is rescued from the River Thames she claims that her engineer husband has disappeared and calls on the help of Holmes and Watson at 221b Baker Street. The subsequent investigation takes Sherlock Holmes (Robert Stephens) and his loyal associate Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) to Inverness in the Scottish Highlands in search of clues. They uncover a plot involving a covert government society, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, who are developing the country’s first submarine at an old castle and disguising the prototype vessel as the Loch Ness Monster! But before he can deduce matters to the elementary, Holmes makes an error in judgement that threatens to jeopardize national security until his intelligent brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee) steps in to lend a hand.

‘It was the pictures that got small…’  Matt Levine from Walker Blog

Maybe it’s the stubborn auteurist in me that prefers Wilder’s late-era, melancholy revision of the Holmes legacy to his “masterpieces”—The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is unabashedly a self-referential work, about fading celebrity, about aging, about the gap between our public personae and our personal selves. It’s also unimaginably melancholy, bittersweetly romantic, and incredibly complex—Wilder and co-screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond tackle a new idea in practically every scene. In addition to the aforementioned themes, the movie ambiguously comments upon Holmes’ drug addiction and his possible homosexuality, revealing the hero as a depressed, insecure man who cannot bring himself to believe that mental fortitude and methodical practicality do not trump all in the modern world. Even more impressive, especially given Wilder’s slate of sexually frank causes célèbres in the 1960s: these potentially scandalous themes are hinted at respectfully and sensitively, as though Wilder respects his main character enough to give the man his own troubled private life, free from our prying eyes. In other words, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes could not be further from the Holmes and Watson we see now in Guy Ritchie movies: really, Wilder is using the Doyle stories as a metaphysical (and metacinematic) springboard to question a plethora of eclectic concepts, some of which he’s never shown an interest in, in his earlier works.

Maybe it’s too convenient to believe that, with The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, the 64-year-old director was evaluating his life, redressing mistakes, facing criticisms—this is a truism of auteur studies that cinephiles sometimes embrace all too eagerly. What’s unmistakably true, though, is that with Sherlock Holmes, Wilder made his most plaintive film and his most endlessly fascinating—a movie that still pulsates with the director’s wit and seamless style, at once encapsulating Wilder’s previous filmmaking sensibility and broadening it in wildly unexpected directions.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List   Kian Bergstrom

 

One of the few unqualified masterpieces of world cinema, Clampett's tremendous THE GREAT PIGGY BANK ROBBERY showcases the director's unsurpassed mastery of drawn animation like no other. As 'Duck Twacy,' Daffy Duck contorts himself in a series of rigorously impossible ways: his eyeballs peer around corners, his head squishes and elongates as he twists to answer the telephone, his body disintegrates itself to escape from fisticuffs, fleeing the fight like milk squeezed from a fist. The most controversial and brilliant of the Warner Bros. animators, Clampett eschewed at all times the merely possible in pursuit of the flabbergasting, developing in the short years of his active career an aesthetic perhaps more truly violent and terrifying than any seen since: in its willingness to destroy the world for the sake of a joke consisting in a single distortion in it, comedy and horror, pain and pleasure are made ruthlessly identical. This very late entry in his tenure at Warner Bros. displays his interests at their purest, fully exploited and integrated into the structure of seven minutes of madness. Under no circumstances should this be missed. It's screening alongside Billy Wilder's uncomfortable THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, as different a film as can be imagined. Where Clampett's frame practically explodes with energy, Wilder stages his foray into Holmesiana in luxurious exactitude, excited at any opportunity to linger on a dusty track, a bit of new-old-fashioned machinery, or an obsolete article of clothing. Subtle anamorphic compositions perform elaborate suspension acts, refusing to reveal their secrets not to heighten suspense but to tease out yet another big-hearted joke within the mise-en-scene, while Wilder's Holmes is a figure not just of cliché genius but of genuine filthiness, a leering, metrosexual detective inhabiting a world staged and shot as though every shadow contains a clue, and every clue a dirty pun. Holmes purists tend to loathe Wilder's revisionist reading, for it turns every convention from the A. C. Doyle stories entirely inside-out and renders the Great Detective not just a fool but very nearly a precipitator of the first World War. Wilder purists tend to view it with despair, as nearly an hour was excised over Wilder's strenuous objections by the studio, never to return. But even in mutilated form, this is Wilder's crowning achievement, a work that deeply reimagines an indelible character by treating his historicity more seriously than any other Sherlock Holmes film. (Piggy Bank: 1946, 7 min, 16mm; Holmes: 1970, 125 min, 35mm)

 

Movie Vault [Mel Valentin]

 

In 1970, United Artists released The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, an affectionate homage to Arthur Conan Doyle’s signature characters, Sherlock Holmes and his confidante/friend/chronicler, Dr. Watson. Co-writer and director Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment) originally envisioned a 165-minute, multi-episode film, comprised of all-new Sherlock Holmes adventures, with some, as the title suggests, offering insight into Holmes’ personality, backstory, and motivation. The studio, however, rejected Wilder’s three-hour, twenty-minute rough-cut, and instead demanded a two-hour version. The final version contains only two episodes out of five, plus a brief table-setting prologue.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes opens with a present-day prologue (present day meaning 1970), with a newly unearthed, sealed box of papers retrieved from a storage facility. The papers belong to Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely), written during his long friendship with Sherlock Holmes. The papers, in fact, contain several unpublished cases. Watson’s voice-over narration sends us into the late 19th century.

In the first episode or case, Holmes rejects one case (involving a family of circus acrobats) and is pulled into another, involving a Russian ballerina. With the first episode, Wilder and his co-writer, I.A.L. Diamond, seek to de-mythologize Holmes, and subsequently humanize Holmes by giving him an emotional life and personal flaws (e.g., his cocaine addiction, mentioned in Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories and briefly, in the first Basil Rathbone/Sherlock Holmes film, but otherwise ignored in subsequent films). Holmes’ dry, droll sense of humor is everywhere evident, including gentle criticisms aimed at Watson’s treatment of Holmes’ skills and talents in nearly superhuman terms (Watson’s literary imagination has added several inches to his actual height, and transformed Holmes from a talented, if amateur, violinist to a concert-ready virtuoso). Holmes, it seems, isn’t above voicing his displeasure with social functions (he hates the ballet).

Cajoled by Watson, Holmes finally agrees to attend a performance by a Russian ballet company, fully aware that the expensive tickets come with strings attached. The “strings” are personified in the form of a temperamental Russian ballet dancer, Madame Petrovna (Tamara Toumanova). In a deft bit of comedy, Holmes uses his verbal skills to deflect her amorous intentions. He does, by slyly suggesting that his longtime relationship with Watson is more than a mere friendship. As word of their relationship spreads, Watson’s simultaneous gallivanting with a group of beautiful ballerinas goes awry when, one by one, male ballet dancers replace the ballerinas.

Watson’s drunken confrontation with Holmes later that night perfectly segues into the next episode. As Watson remonstrates Holmes for lying about their relationship (and the injury to Watson’s reputation, presumably as a ladies’ man), Watson begins to home in on Holmes relationships with women. The ambiguity of Holmes’ response is only answered in the next episode involving a beautiful woman with amnesia, Gabrielle Valladon (Geneviève Page). Gabriele’s incomplete memories lead Holmes and Watson on a search for her missing husband, a Belgian engineer. Their search for the missing husband, with Holmes growing increasingly fascinated with the enigmatic Gabrielle, leads Holmes, Watson, and Gabrielle to Scotland and a confrontation with the Loch Ness Monster.

Along the way, Holmes, Watson, and Gabrielle encounter vertically challenged circus acrobats, Trappist monks, dead canaries, corpses buried in unmarked graves, Scottish castles, and even Holmes’ older brother, Mycroft (Christopher Lee), who warns Sherlock Holmes off the case, citing national security concerns. The initial encounter between Sherlock and Mycroft, inside the confines of the Diogenes Club, a club for the wealthy and powerful in London, is freighted with decades of sibling rivalry and resentment, giving the audience a rare insight into one of Holmes’ formative relationships.

This second, more conventional mystery, while prosaic, and perhaps, too predictable for a mystery involving the great (fictional) detective, serves primarily to humanize Holmes, presenting him as an emotionally vulnerable individual, prone to making mistakes (when emotion trumps reason). This second episode also helps to answer lingering questions about Holmes’ sexual orientation, as well as his complicated relationships and feelings toward women. Last, the second episode shows Holmes, for once, losing a case, making an error in judgment that leads him away from the correct solution to the mystery. The loss adds a tragic dimension to Holmes as a character, a dimension missing, for the most part, from Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories.

Story or themes aside, Robert Stephens, in the lead role as Sherlock Holmes, acquits himself admirably. While most Sherlock Holmes fans prefer Jeremy Brett in the role (Brett played Holmes in a long-running BBC series), and others prefer Basil Rathbone (who essayed the role for American audiences in the 1930s and 1940s). Colin Blakely, as Dr. Watson, is a definite improvement from Rathbone's Dr. Watson, Nigel Bruce. The earlier Dr. Watson was written and performed as a bumbling, stumbling figure, slow on the uptake, and used primarily as a comic foil. Blakely's Dr. Watson is still used as an emphatic comic foil, but his intellectual gifts aren't too far behind Holmes' talents.

Ultimately, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes can be seen as two films: the one currently available to audiences, somewhat undermined by a middling mystery storyline, and the unseen, epic-length film. Sadly, with the unseen episodes irretrievably damaged or lost, an extended edition or a director’s cut, based on restored footage, will never be released. What does exist, however, is a droll, humorous, playful, and humane exploration of a near mythic literary creation.

 

Ferdy on Films [Roderick Heath]

 

This Distracted Globe [Joe Valdez]

 

Read TCM's article on The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes  Brian Cady, also seen here:  The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes - Turner Classic Movies 

 

DVD Savant review  Glenn Erickson

 

Witness For The Prosecution / The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes ...  Noel Murray from The Dissolve, also seen here:  The Dissolve

 

The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes - DVD review for VideoVista ...  J.C. Hartley

 

Film Freak Central review [Bill Chambers]

 

MovieMartyr.com [Jeremy Heilman]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Shane Burridge

 

Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The (1970)  Classic Film Guide

 

TV Guide review

 

Guardian/Observer

 

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes Review. Movie ... - Time Out  Geoff Andrew

 

BBCi - Films  Jamie Russell

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

Wilder's 'Sherlock Holmes' Opens at the Music Hall - New York Times  Vincent Canby

 

Williams, Marco

 

IN SEARCH OF OUR FATHERS

Canada  (70 mi)  1992

 

User comments  from imdb Author: heaven-11 from New York City, USA

This film is an excellent rendering of one human being's journey to investigate his own identity by searching out a father he never knew. I was quite struck by Williams' willingness to expose such poignant and personal moments between he and his parents, as well as a look into his own experience of becoming an independent artist in and out of Harlem after spending much of his childhood at a highly exclusive prep school where, it appears, the young man rarely saw any black faces besides his own. I found this film impressive in its candid, sensitive and intelligent depiction of so personal and delicate a subject.

I recommend "In Search of Our Fathers" to all who enjoy documentaries, as well as to anyone long estranged from a parent or from the "parentage" of their own race and history.

Black autobiographical documentary  Jim Lane from Jump Cut, March 1996

 

Wincer, Simon

 

LONESOME DOVE – Made for TV                     B+                   92

USA  (384 mi, four 90-minute installments, Pt. 1:  Leaving, Pt. II:  On the Trail, Pt. III:  The Plains, Pt. IV:  Return)  1989

 

Gus, why not go up to Montana? It's a cattleman's paradise to hear Jake tell it.        Tommy Lee Jones (Woodrow F. Call)

 

It ain’t dyin’ I'm talkin’ about…it’s livin’.                   —Robert Duvall (Augustus “Gus” McCrae)

 

This project started out as a Larry McMurtry movie screenplay in 1970, where Peter Bogdanovich was lined up to direct John Wayne (Captain Call), James Stewart (Gus McCrae), and Henry Fonda (Jake Spoon).  But once Wayne dropped out, supposedly at the urging of director John Ford, the rest backed out of the project as well, where eventually the screenplay was expanded to a full length novel which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1986.  After director John Huston turned down the project, and Charles Bronson, James Garner, Jon Voight, and even Robert Duvall all turned down the part of Captain Call, it was eventually turned into a television mini-series.  Considered Robert Duvall’s favorite role throughout his entire career, so that’s saying something, but this is a tragic and bittersweet saga, an epic post Civil War adventure that details the colorful interior worlds of the plentiful characters while showcasing spectacular landscapes of the vast American plains, one of the more spectacular TV mini-series to ever play on American television, largely due to the strength of the novelesque writing, adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel, that really documents the life-long friendship between two former Texas Rangers, Duvall as Augustus “Gus” McCrae and Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow Call, known as the Captain.  While Woodrow is a severe taskmaster, a dour and emotionally distant man who continually undertakes back breaking work, Gus is his polar opposite, claiming that for all the hard work Woodrow does, he has to balance the equation by doing as little work as possible.  Both are stubborn, individualistic, tough as nails, and cantankerous men who have survived when others didn’t, proud bastions of the Old West, experts in their field and living legends of their era who are now already forgotten, having paid their dues and are expected to coast easily into the comforts of retirement.  But both are restless souls, driven by the frontier spirit of living free, and like a bank robber who needs to pull off one last heist, these guys feel the need for one more great adventure, deciding on a whim to run a cattle drive from Lonesome Dove, a tiny border town in South Texas, to Montana, a place they’ve never been, but only heard of, a good 2500 miles away where the Captain believes he’ll be the first rancher to raise cattle in Montana.  It’s a crazy idea that makes no sense, but that’s precisely why they feel compelled to do it.  These are the kind of men that don’t want to ever admit that life got the best of them, continually staring death in the face and standing up to outlaws, thieves, and Indians, providing the kind of moral authority needed in a lawless land, where they also continually needle one another about each other’s supposed deficiencies, where their ongoing running commentary throughout the film is a thing of beauty rarely seen over such an extended period of time, initially shown over four consecutive nights in 90-minute installments.

 

Duvall is simply magnificent, an enthralling, wise-cracking character in nearly every shot throughout the entire ordeal, a guts and glory kind of guy (also a Captain) with endless stories to tell who literally commands the screen, where his enthusiasm and his zest for life endears him to the audience, continually charming his way into people’s hearts.  But much of the strength of this work lies in such well drawn out characters and the superb cast that brings them to life.  Robert Urich is Jake Spoon, another former Texas Ranger who rode with Gus and the Captain, but one who drifts and continually strays from moral virtue, displaying selfishness, greed, and weakness, allowing himself to get sucked into other people’s dirty business instead of standing up to it.  Diane Lane is Lorena (Lorie), a beautiful saloon girl who’s sick and tired of seeing the same do-nothing faces of the men in Lonesome Dove, a sleepy town where literally nothing ever happens, where she’s the only good thing to happen in the lives of the available men, but she is suffocating on the monotony of the dreary emptiness.  Ricky Schroder is Newt, most likely the Captain’s son, though he’s loathe to admit it, as his mother died years ago, but entering adulthood he’s still kept in the dark about who his real father may be.  Nonetheless he’s a handsome and likeable kid, a bit green under the collar, but game, the kind of guy who would always lend a helping hand.  Chris Cooper plays the good-natured Sheriff July Johnson from Fort Smith, Arkansas, the town where Jake Spoon accidentally kills a man, who turns out to be the Sheriff’s brother, returning back to Lonesome Dove after nearly a decade to ride out the storm hiding among friends.  Goaded by his pregnant wife Elmira (Glenne Headly) to take their young son on the trail as he tracks down Jake Spoon in Texas, Sheriff Johnson is sent on more than one wild goose chase, as after the Sheriff’s departure his wife immediately leaves town in search of the man she really loves, an outlaw named Dee Boot in Ogallala, Nebraska.  Danny Glover is Joshua Deets, a former slave, but also another former Texas Ranger and an expert tracker, one of the few men trusted by the Captain, a guy who affectionately looks after Newt, as seemingly none of the other men do.  And finally, though she doesn’t appear until the third episode, Anjelica Huston is Clara, the love of Gus’s life, the only woman he still pines over though he hasn’t seen her in a decade, a woman of regal stature who remains sassy and independent, refusing Gus’s earlier marriage proposals.  

 

What’s immediately clear is that the film doesn’t sugar coat history, where the Captain, despite his law abiding standing, sees little conflict when it comes to stealing horses or cattle from Mexicans across the border.  Despite tracking men down for this exact same crime over the course of their entire careers, Mexico is outside the jurisdiction of the United States, so apparently anything outside the law goes, where ironically the entire herd on this legendary drive consists of stolen Mexican cattle.  This reveals the state of mind of Texas Rangers, who had no problem using guns and brute strength to impose their will on others, much like the U.S. Cavalry was doing tracking down the last of the free Indians.  The cattle drive north takes place in 1876 shortly after the death of General Custer, in fact, exactly into the Montana territory of the Little Big Horn where the threat of Indians was everpresent, as Indians had collectively gathered in that region literally to make a last stand against the advancing encroachment of the whites.  While the drive slowly heads north, complete with wind and dust storms, not to mention lightning strikes, Jake has promised Lorie he’d take her to San Francisco, an offer that she leaped at, traveling close to the protection of the cattle men.  But Jake quickly grows tired of the monotony and leaves Lorie alone in search of a card game, where she’s quickly kidnapped by a murderous outlaw Indian named Blue Duck (Frederick Forrest—yes, another white guy in a wig), quickly turning this into a variation of THE SEARCHERS (1956), where Gus goes alone to track her down and bring her back alive.  Like a film within a film, this long and arduous journey coincides with Sheriff Johnson’s fruitless search for Jake and Elmira’s attempted escape north as well, all fraught with difficulties, unexpected horrors, senseless murders, and life threatening situations, where viewers develop a keen sense of how some outlaws, or those beyond the reach of the law, have such a low regard for life itself, routinely killing or brutalizing others for the sheer pleasure of it.  To survive in this vast wilderness outside the safe and supposedly “civilized” confines of the towns and cities required unusual fortitude, expert marksmanship, an ability to survive in the oppressive heat with little to no water, a clear head and a sharp mind, and a kind of fearlessness that doesn’t exist in the ordinary man.  This is what attracts us to a man like Augustus “Gus” McCrae, as despite his warm personal charm, it’s his qualities “outside” the laws of man that make him so endearing, the stuff of myth and legends, where it’s highly appealing to watch this man in action over the course of the entire mini-series.  His adventures carry with it a kind of Greek Odysseus heroicism, as his journey represents places we can only visit in our imaginations.     

 

Because of the historic setting, just at the time of Custer’s last stand, the anxious tone of white settlers continually in fear of unforeseen Indian attacks does accurately represent the state of mind in the West at the time.  Nonetheless, this is hardly an accurate portrayal of Indians, again stereotypically seen as drunk, loco, excessively brutal, and heavily involved in the sex trade of white women (perhaps an idealization of the white male’s biggest fear), or Mexicans, viewed as a lawless nation mixing its citizens among our own, continually projected, along with the Indians, as horribly incompetent shooters, as both groups in the eyes of Texans in particular, are outsider groups known for creating havoc and unwarranted violence in the eyes of whites.  The tone of suspicion bordering on prejudice continues to this day, as Mexicans in Texas and the greater Southwest continue to be portrayed by politicians as illegals, un-American, second class citizens, and a threat to the freedoms of whites.  Unfortunately, this kind of racial perception was largely enhanced by the mythical view of the West, which projected brave men fighting and prevailing against insurmountable odds, where the enemy has been continually dehumanized through newspaper accounts or dime store novels over the course of a hundred years or more so that it has become ingrained and accepted as truth in mainstream American society.  This film makes no attempt to alter the prejudices or misconceptions, but instead uses many of the same deplorable Indian stereotypes seen in nearly all American Western movies, best typified by the great westerns of John Ford.  The real secret of the film’s remarkable success, however, is the strong and endearing characters, so unforgettably placed in the context of American history, making a compelling case for a re-examination of the fundamental principles of American society, many of which were fought over during the Civil War, needing reinforcement in the fragile and potentially vulnerable era afterwards, becoming more solidified over time when justice could finally eradicate the inherent lawlessness of the West.  Perhaps the highpoint of the film is the emotional payoff in the scene of Gus leaving Clara near the end of Pt. III, which is as melodramatic as anything seen in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), a tearful and sweepingly majestic moment that defines how significant it was for there to be valiant men in the West, men of guts and honor and sacrifice, men who deserve to be loved and revered, not forgotten, as it was their vision of a free land that ultimately prevailed.   

User reviews  from imdb Author: swaine from Los Angeles, California

The Lonesome Dove mini-series contains every core element of a classic story of the mythic Old West: romance, tragedy, courageous and independent yet very human heroes, vicious yet believable villains, plenty of action, and the overall grit and determination of frontier life. These elements are all woven into an enthralling story centered on an epic journey across the American frontier--a cattle drive from Texas to Montana undertaken shortly after the Custer massacre. The movie is extremely faithful (in plot, dialogue, and characterizations) to the excellent novel by Larry McMurtry, and especially benefits from McMurtry's genius at narrative and story construction. What makes the film even better are the truly exceptional performances by the first rate cast, that includes Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Ulrich, and Anjelica Huston, and the great musical score, which won a well-deserved Emmy. This is the kind of film about the Old West that only comes along once in a blue moon, and lovers of Old West stories and movies (as well as real-life cowboys) watch it over and over. In my view, it ranks above even the classics of Western film, including Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Shane--and I love all of those films. Even though it is over six hours long, and technically a TV mini-series, it should be considered a great film.

User reviews  from imdb (Page 3) Author: mackjay from Out there in the dark

In simple terms, 'Lonesome Dove' at once pays homage to, and transcends its genre. Many western 'cliches' are touched upon, but never treated conventionally. Most important among them, the notion of the character who will "never die", because he is the hero, or because he or she is "too sympathetic". In Larry McMurtry's 'Lonesome Dove', violence, death, and the cruellest motions of 'fate' can come to any character. For this reason alone, 'Lonesome Dove' resembles few others in the genre: it conveys a believable sense of life at the time and in the place of its setting.

The people who inhabit this tale are as real and unforgettable as any in great film or literature. Partly the result of high-caliber acting performances, these characters also benefit from the epic length of the film, which allows them to grow convincingly. This is above all a tale of human connections. Central to it is the long, deep friendship of Gus and the Captain. These two contrasting men have built around them what is essentially an extended family, but one made up of friends and associates whose connections are as strong as blood. One of the most distinctive and moving features of the film is its emphasis on men and their emotions. The Captain with his reigned-in feelings, Gus with his widely encompassing love, and the unequivocal, overwhelming love between these two friends are the solid ground upon which the story is told.

Seldom mentioned is the photographic beauty of the film. This is no studio-bound effort that could be taking place anywhere. An effort has been made by cinematographer Douglas Milsome to establish a potent feel for place. Scene after scene has the epic feel of people set against the gigantic, brutal, astonishing beauty of the natural environment.

The score by Poledouris is among the finest ever. (This most underrated of all western genre elements is partly responsible for the success of such classics as 'Red River', 'The Searchers' and numerous others.) While a conventional, melody-based work, the 'Lonesome Dove' score stands out for the inspiration of its themes and for the deft use that is made of the music. One example: the great scene of Gus leaving Clare's ranch for what will be the last time is underscored by the films main (title) theme--a beautiful tune of simple, mostly stepwise motion--that expresses perfectly, without a hint of bathos, the profound sadness at the center of human lives.

Accolades for performances could be given all around, but special mention must be made of Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Rick Schroeder, Danny Glover, Barry Corbin, D.B. Sweeney, Anjelica Huston, and Chris Cooper--as the wonderful July Johnson.

'Lonesome Dove', directed by Simon Wincer--a masterpiece worthy of inclusion on any list of great films, the western genre notwithstanding.

dOc DVD Review: Lonesome Dove (1989) - digitallyOBSESSED  Robert Mandel

 

Lonesome Dove is a star-studded miniseries, which tells the sweeping tale of two seemingly old, washed up Texas Rangers who take to the cattle trail after ten years of sedentary ranching outside a fictional sleepy Texas border town from which the series takes its name. Robert Duvall, in perhaps his finest performance, portrays August "Gus" McRae, who is more concerned with whoring and drinking whiskey than taking care of the cattle—or anything else for that matter.

On the other hand is Captain Woodrow F. Call (Tommy Lee Jones) with little humor and even less patience for lazy workers than lawlessness. But it is the third of the trio, the irascible, gambling and whoring Jake Spoon (Robert Urich), who urges his friends to attempt the cattle drive—because he is on the lam, dodging a murder charge. Ironically, it is Call who is taken over by the vision to drive their entire herd 2,500 miles north through the toughest terrain and Indian laden land leading to Montana. Despite reservations, Gus, the more practical of the two, begrudgingly agrees to help his longtime friend and partner, Call, attempt his vision to be the first man to raise cattle in Montana. So begins the journey of the men of the Hat Creek Cattle Company, including a young orphan growing up under their collective supervision, Newt Dobbs (Ricky Schroeder).

Based on the book by Larry McMurtry, who considers this a tale of friendship, the story centers around the archetypical prototypes of the visionary and the practical companion, ala Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. But this story cannot be told with these characters alone, and Lonesome Dove boasts an all-star cast. Despite this, Lonesome Dove is neither full of pretention nor glamorized in any way. Most of these actors were just starting out when this was filmed, including Steve Buscemi, D.B. Sweeney, Danny Glover and Tommy Lee Jones. This is a fine ensemble cast bringing to life the reality of the Eighteen hundreds in the unsettled West. These are the real men, the cowboys, the pioneers, faced hardships untellable. This is not a politically correct tale accessible to the whole family, as it is filled with adult themes, anti-Native American rhetoric and worse. But it is a tale of friendship and espouses the ideal that one should follow their dream through all obstacles.

The story of the making of Lonesome Dove is nearly as epic and fascinating as the actual miniseries. McMurtry (The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment) had written a western in the mid-1970s for Peter Bogdonavich, meant to star the threesome of Henry Fonda, John Wayne and James Stewart, which was never made. After sitting on the shelf for several years, McMurtry picked it up again, keeping only the central trio of characters. After several fits and starts, McMurtry was ready to abandon the story again—but as he sat at a stoplight he saw a Lonesome Dove Church bus happen by, and he knew he had a title. (Strangely enough, McMurtry seems unable to function without a title, working backwards from the title to the ending to the plot and finally, characterization.)

Before the novel came out in June 1985, through a common friend McMurtry met and hit it off with TV movie-of-the-week and specials producer, Suzanne de Passe. Discovering he had a book going into print, Passe requested a copy via McMurtry's agent, Irving "Swifty" Lazar. What came instead was a flatbed cart of boxes filled with Lonesome Dove's galleys! Not even halfway through, Passe purchased an 18-month option, not knowing that the book had already been shopped around and denied by every studio and television station. Both Bogdonavich and John Huston (Maltese Falcon, African Queen) tried to convince Passe to make a 2 hour film. But faithful to the vision of the book, she was convinced the film could not be made in under six hours. Passe and McMurtry decided a miniseries was the only way to fulfill the vision. By that time, McMurtry needed to move on and chose not to pen the screenplay. Bill Wittliff ended up not only writing the faithful adaptation but also co-executive producing.

A year had passed from the option purchase and nothing was happening when Lonesome Dove won the Pulitzer prize for fiction; its fortunes began to turn. Even though westerns were not popular in 1986, and 6 hour miniseries even less so, CBS not only committed to it in one meeting ($16 million), but after seeing just the first 4 hours of Wittliff's script, did the unthinkable—extended the series to eight hours (4 nights). The post-production completed 10 days before it was to air on Sunday, February 4th, 1989. A 23 share would have made the program an overwhelming success; it pulled in a 26.5 rating and 38 share!!

 

Extras Review: I hate the user unfriendly Q&A format, and thought the studios had dropped that after early criticism some two years ago. The audio is atrocious based on the poor acoustics of McMurtry's bookstore and a baby crying in the background. The faux interview was still interesting for tidbits of information (he does little research, characters are fake, etc.) The interview does hold the secret as to which character McMurtry thinks is the "lonesome dove" (although there are many). We also learn that the predecessor to Lonesome Dove was originally written in the 1970s, and McMurtry might have abandoned the story (it was never produced—lucky us) had he not, years later, seen that Lonesome Dove Church bus. Discovering the title gave impetus to the story being written. Perhaps they chopped this interview (and most of the interviewer) out because she practically drools on McMurtry in affirmation of his every thought, and became tedious. 13 questions.

On the other hand, because most of her answers are longer (and then some!), Suzanne de Passe illuminates the viewer on the behind-the-scenes making-of Lonesome Dove from beginning to end, as described above. 15 questions.

Again, I'm glad to receive the information, but the awkward retrieval set up is near nerve damaging.

 

Not remembering the adult themes (I think "whore" is said every two seconds, and "poke" every 10th), I watched this with my step-daughter-to-be. I wasn't sure she'd make it though the dialogue-intense first half-hour, but she did, and she LOVED all 6 hours (in one sitting, mind you) of this tremendous, life-affirming miniseries.

May Gus ride on forever chasing buffalo in that great cowpatch in the sky!

 

Corndog Chats [Adam Kuhn]  reviewing the book, the mini-series, and the adaptation

 

Pluck You, Too!  Thomas Pluck

 

tvdvdreviews.com - DVD Review  Jonathan Boudreaux

 

DVD Verdict  Norman Short

 

DVD Journal  JJB

 

DVD Verdict- 2-Disc Collector's Edition [Gordon Sullivan]

 

DVDcompare.net  Jeremiah Chin, 2-disc Collector’s Edition

 

Lonesome Dove (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk Review of the Blu-ray  David Galbraith IV

 

DVDcompare.net - Blu-ray review  Jeremiah Chin and Noor Razzak

User reviews  from imdb Author: gbrumburgh (gbrumburgh@aol.com) from Los Angeles, California

User reviews  from imdb (Page 2) Author: TumnusFalls from North Bend WA

User reviews  from imdb (Page 4) Author: imdke from Olympia, WA

User reviews  from imdb (Page 5) Author: Aristides-2 from United States

User reviews  from imdb (Page 6) Author: kenobi7 from United States

eFilmCritic Reviews  Teen Movie Critic

 

DVDBeaver.com - Blu-ray DVD Review [Gary Tooze]

 

Lonesome Dove - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Lonesome Dove exhibit   The Wittliff Collections from Texas State University

 

Study Guide for "Lonesome Dove"  The Best Notes

 

Winick, Gary

 

CHARLOTTE’S WEB                                B-                    81

USA  (113 mi)  2006

 

E.B. White’s classic children’s tale gets thoroughly dusted off and brought once again to the screen in this modest but earnest and warmhearted adaptation which retain’s Wilbur’s sense of wonder at the world around him, and a community that recognizes that Wilbur is no ordinary pig.  Opening briefly in an illustrated world of animation before breaking into a colorful landscape of a typical farm, with Sam Sheperd providing the narration that this is just an ordinary world filled with ordinary people and ordinary animals, until something happens that seems to bring them all a little bit closer together.  Dakota Fanning is a farmer’s daughter Fern who awakes early one morning to see the birth of 13 little pigs.  When she sees one is the runt of the litter and that her father intends to kill it, she protests, claiming she will raise it herself.  Her parents agree, but only if she raises it in her uncle’s barn across the street.  On his first day left alone without Fern, Wilbur is left with the other barnyard animals which immediately break out into words, which was a bit remarkable in itself.  Two geese, four cows, four sheep, a horse and a rat are not exactly a welcoming committee for Wilbur, until one voice speaks to him in the night, Charlotte, played by the clearly enunciating Julia Roberts, a spider spinning her web, who becomes his friend.

 

Before long, Steve Buscemi, simply brilliant as the rat Templeton, tells Wilbur the facts of life, that pigs on a farm are bred to be eaten, and that he’s not likely to last past Christmas.  Charlotte, on the other hand, makes a promise that she won’t allow that to happen, though she hasn’t a clue how to make that happen.  There’s a nice contrast between the cynicism of the older animals in the barn and young Wilbur, who finds everything so new and exciting.  Fern is his loyal companion, so much so that her parents become worried.  But Charlotte changes all that by spinning words in her web, “Some pig,” that brings neighbors from miles around to visit the farm, as this is something of a miracle in the heartlands.  But eventually the attention wanes and people go back to their regular lives, until Charlotte spins another word, “Terrific,” and then “Radiant,” which Templeton helps her find by risking his life against a couple of crows while raiding a dump.  Again, this becomes all the rage, enough to grab the farmer’s attention, who believes he’ll enter that pig in the county fair.  Perhaps a first prize is enough to save Wilbur’s life, so Wilbur gathers up Charlotte, who’s expecting, and Templeton, who asks with his usual flair:  “A rat’s gotta ask himself:  What’s in it for the rat?”  Charlotte provides one last miracle, spinning the world “Humble” just above his stall at the country fair.  Even though another pig won the first prize, Wilbur is awarded a special prize, as the entire community has been moved by this strange act of nature surrounding that pig. 

 

Charlotte, however, reveals she’s spun her last web, as she’s dying, but has left a coccoon-like ball to protect her babies until they can be to born.  Templeton helps Wilbur bring the little egg sac back to the farm, where all the animals take great care in making sure they are well looked after.  When they are born, we see hundreds of little creatures crawling every which way, where Wilbur is beside himself wanting to tell them all about their mom.  But most of them spin little strings and fly off in the breeze, carried to far away regions.  Only three remain, who become Wilbur’s new best friends.  In time, Wilbur not only survives his first winter, marveling at the first snow, but many more winters after that, retreating back to the illustrated world of watercolors and pastel colors, with a narrator reminding us of the power of loyalty, friendship, and love.

 

A humble radiance: Charlotte's Web | The House Next Door  Matt Zoller Seitz

 

To say that the new film version of Charlotte's Web doesn't dishonor its source sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it's actually the highest praise. E.B. White's novel has survived not just because of its charming premise, cleanly-drawn characters and hints of allegory, but because it's a perfect book. Every paragraph, sentence and word pulls its weight. Like the title object, it's a functional work of art. So is Gary Winick's film version, which casts Dakota Fanning as Fern, the precocious farm girl who assumes responsibility for a doomed runt pig (voiced by Dominic Scott Kay), then watches in astonishment as the pig becomes a curiosity, a celebrity and then an object of quasi-worship, thanks to the selfless devotion of Charlotte the word-embroidering spider. Like the book, Winick's movie is as solid and cleanly rendered as a Greek sculpture. It doesn't advance the art of cinema, nor does it mean to, but it does something just as rare: it stands up for true classicism. It's not a subversive/self-aware quote-mark-enclosed film school homage to prewar Hollywood; it's a 21st century movie so economical yet satisfying that it seems to have been ghost-directed by William Wyler or Walt Disney in about 1939.

 

The script, credited to Karey Kirkpatrick and Erin Brokovich writer Susannah Grant, doesn't just cherry-pick White's most memorable lines, it leans very heavily on his narration, read here by Sam Shepard -- a gutsy move, considering how many of White's passages are etched in our collective memory. ("It is not often someone comes along that's a true friend and good writer. Charlotte was both.") Winick -- whose borderline-inept Tadpole and serviceable but slight 13 Going on 30 gave no inkling of his potential -- rises to the screenplay's challenge and then some. In its own probably incidental way, Charlotte's Web has more to say about the sources of old movie magic than any number of blockbuster remakes and art-house rethinks. (It's an independent film, by the way, funded by Walden Media -- the family entertaiment production house that backed The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe -- and then picked up by Paramount.) It's not a straight-up computer-animated movie, nor does it foreground animatronic puppetry (as the Babe films did). Instead, it's a live action picture that uses special effects sparingly and tactically (to make real animals' mouths sync up with their dialogue, for instance, or to match a real animal with a digital double for some stuntwork). The effects never call attention to themselves as effects; aside from the obvious unreality of talking mammals and birds, the creatures move more or less as real creatures would -- an approach that gives the whole enterprise a matter-of-fact magic. The movie's compositions, cuts, hues and textures are similarly in tune with old movie values. Seamus McGarvey's cinematography makes the colors pop in the manner of a mid-50s Technicolor drama (bright but not garish, rich but not showily lush), and there's no visible grain, not even in dark shots. Winick and McGarvey's visual grammar favors locked-down closeups, crane shots and dolly shots, eschewing zooms, handheld camerawork and other visual signatures that came into vogue in the second half of the 20th century. Susan Littenburg and Sabrina Plisco's editing holds individual shots held just long enough to clarify a point or fix a reaction, never lingering or prematurely jumping away -- the cutter's equivalent of writing with a minimum of adjectives. These factors subconsciously convey solidity and permanence -- qualities that also describe White's prose.

The performances are conceived in the same spirit. Winick's absurdly overqualified voice-over cast -- Julia Roberts as Charlotte, John Cleese as Samuel the Sheep, Cedric the Entertainer and Oprah Winfrey as Gussy and Golly Goose, Kathy Bates as Bitsy the Cow, Robert Redford as Ike the Horse, and so on -- functions as a laid-back democratic ensemble, serving the scene and the story rather than upstaging them. When a performer shines, it's through precise character work. Roberts, for instance, has never had a role that makes better use of her to-the-manor-born confidence and opacity. What seems like icy vagueness in other roles -- Closer, for example, or Ocean's 11 and 12 -- plays here as craftiness, parental warmth and centered, depthless spirituality; these traits are just right for Charlotte, a mix of ubermom, movie star, Christ figure and eight-legged PR agent. Steve Buscemi's Templeton the Rat is miles away from Paul Lynde's rendition in the 1973 Hanna-Barbera cartoon musical (an OK movie, but one that'll vanish from your memory as soon as you see this version). Buscemi deadpans the rodent's scalawag self-interest in a manner that recalls his underrated star turn in his self-directed Trees Lounge. Buscemi's devotion to psychological plausibility pays off late in the film when Templeton realizes he's developing a conscience, and is startled, appalled, intrigued and finally excited. This sequence of feelings would be tough to sell if Buscemi were playing a human; yet here, with his voice issuing from a CGI-tricked-out rodent, it's not just convincing, it's moving. ("You're very kind," Charlotte tells him. "Don't go spreading it around," he replies.) The human stars acquit themselves just as honorably; first among equals is Fanning, whose beyond-her-years gravity and eerie focus read as righteous fervor. Moreso than in the 1973 film, you get the sense that Fern isn't just a kid taking pity on a pig, but a potential adult who's taking a stand based on an innate moral code (centered on empathy for the condemned, maligned and exploited) that will be perfected over time. This film about barnyard animals is the most humanistic blockbuster of 2006. It's humble and radiant.

 

Winner, Jeff

 

SATELLITE                                                  B-                    82

USA  (100 mi)  2006

 

A film with promise, that opens in child-like animated stick figures with an unknown child’s narration describing a dreamlike reverie, floating off into space, as if examining the world below, a film that suggests we use our imaginations from the very beginning.  This narrator then disappears, where she may be a figment of our imagination, as she’s completely left out of the story, perhaps the ghost of an unborn child, or a spirit of innocence, a voice we never identify until the very end.  Stephanie Szostak is easily the best thing in this film, a French actress who won the Junior Golf Championship according to one of the theater customers, and who previously appeared in THE DEVIL LOVES PRADA.  As Ro, she appears to be watching and then following a man she sees on the street, Karl Geary as Kevin.  They meet and immediately become instant lovers, where they literally drop everything else in their lives in order to allow an all-consuming trust in one another to guide their path.  When Kevin interrupts Ro at work with an intense phone call and demands she quit her job instantly, we get the feel of Hitchcock’s STRANGER’S ON A TRAIN, like he’s somehow luring her astray against her better judgment.  But rather than veer into a psychological nightmare that one of them would dread, they both quit their jobs and start leading a carefree life together without any hint of responsibilities, as if this represents complete freedom and happiness. 
 
Instead of the expected psychological complexities that we witnessed in LAST TANGO IN PARIS, where the lovers concealed their identities, this film turns into a French film fantasy from the 60’s, where they’re always seen in each other’s arms, riding bicycles, riding trains, eventually stealing a motorcycle, which leads them into a freewheeling crime spree where the motivation appears to be “anything goes.”  Driven by a game of challenging dares, nothing appears off limits.  But occasionally, bits of insecurities pop into their relationship at unexpected moments, where all seems lost until they instantaneously make up.  With terrific music by Calla and others which reflect a quiet tone, we’re reminded of the quirky and fragile mood of GARDEN STATE, as Geary very much resembles the odd weirdness of the Zach Braff character, while Szostak’s beauty and remarkable presence resembles that of Natalie Portman.  What’s missing, however, is any sense of risk taking by the filmmaker, who plays it much too safe, with continual one-dimensional character imagery that grows static after awhile.  In what could and should be a free flight, as so much is possible here with such an interesting premise, we’re continually reeled back by the narrow interests of the characters who only pretend to be free, who haven’t really got a clue, so they remain bogged down by their sheer ineptitude.  The opening and closing narration, however, is clever and imaginative, as it sends the viewer into a multitude of questioning about just who this person is. 

 

The Village Voice [Matt Singer]

 

Satellite's two vapid protagonists, Kevin (Karl Geary) and Ro (Stephanie Szostak), fall instantly in love, dare each other to quit their jobs, and drop out of society to become bohemian criminals. In other words, after a brief and cringingly awkward courtship, the film turns into a Brooklyn hipster approximation of Albert Brooks's Lost in America. It should be easy to get behind a movie that plays subway stalking for romance and baby thievery for grand heroism, but writer-director Jeff Winner's tone is so gosh-darned earnest. Everything, from the generically cutesy banter ("Do you love me yet?" "Ask me again at this time tomorrow." "What time is it now?") to the hand job on Metro-North, is played with stone-faced solemnity. Nice low-budget cinematography and authentic New York City locations aside, there's little to engage viewers over the course of 100 wandering minutes. There's no excitement in the couple's love, no buzz from their oh-so-naughty crime spree, just a pervasive detachment, as if these events were being recorded by a camera floating in orbit hundreds of miles above the earth.

 
Slant Magazine [Jeremiah Kipp]
 
Fueled by a lush and energetic soundtrack that captures the whirlwind of young romance, Satellite is a New York love story about two idealists who ditch their dead-end office jobs and take off on their motorcycle for the great unknown. Kevin and Ro (appealingly played by Karl Geary and Stephanie Szostak) are smart and open-eyed as they go down the rabbit hole together in search of wonderland, having many adventures along the way. These romantics swear never to lie to one another, but as they get to know each other they have the slow and difficult realization that sometimes the truth can be shattering and that leaving a shitty life behind can be great, but when the money starts running out that also leads to a new road of trials.

Filmmaker Jeff Winner maintains a jaunty freewheeling tone, always keeping the viewer by the side of his outlaw lovers, and by maintaining that closeness he creates a bond between audience and character so taut we don't lose sympathy when these guys start rampantly breaking the law. And since Satellite avoids neat moral judgments, it's difficult to say whether Ro's conflicted relationship with her father justifies the way she pushes Kevin's buttons at times—or whether Kevin's nice guy demeanor deservedly masks some of his less wholesome secret desires. In other words, Satellite is about the idealism of love and how that is placed within the complex and contradictory real world. Those two states of consciousness, the ideal and the real, are the universe that Kevin and Ro float through.

Satellite is emotionally complex and, at the same time, captures the energetic fun of taking your sweetheart on all the rides at the carnival. Sometimes that feels dangerous, but it makes you hold on to each other all the tighter. If there's a better independent date movie out there right now, I haven't seen it.

 

Satellite of Love: An Interview with Jeff Winner
 
New York Times (registration req'd)  Stephen Holden from the New York Times

 

Winner, Michael

 

DEATH WISH

USA  (93 mi)  1974

 

Time Out

 

Objectionable vigilante trash from the objectionable Winner, with the stony Bronson taking the law into his own vengeful hands when his wife is killed and his daughter turned into a traumatic vegetable after an attack by muggers. The sense of location is strong, emphasising a hostile, nightmarish terrain; but Winner's recourse to caricature when dealing with police and thugs, and his virtually overt sympathies with the confused, violent Bronson, make for uncritical, simplistic viewing.

 

Qwipster's Movie Reviews [Vince Leo]

Death Wish succeeds more as anti-liberal backlash than as a movie, with an engaging premise of a conscientious objector who takes up arms in the streets of New York City when he finds that the criminals have run rampant without anyone to stop them.  Based on the novel by Brian Garfield, the premise of the film pushes forward the notion that if there aren't enough police to help protect the citizens, then the citizens need to start defending themselves.   It's an influential movie, spawning four sequels and dozens of imitators, and striking a chord with an audience that had been increasingly fed up with not seeing justice served to those who inflict harm on others.  It's a simplistic story, with equally simplistic delivery, but it gets its point across, although the hammy acting and spotty direction do little to bolster the ideology into a good film in the end.

Charles Bronson (Love and Bullets) stars as Paul Kersey, a low-key "bleeding heart liberal" working as an architect in New York, where handguns are not allowed.  A devout pacifist, Kersey refused to fight in the Korean War, and generally speaking, he has a good job, with a good family, and little to complain about.  That is, until a trio of hooligans invades his home, attempts to rape his wife and daughter, leaving one dead and the other in a mental institution.  The police are befuddled, so at the urging of one of his friends, he takes up a gun and patrols the streets himself, trying to rid them of as many murderous thugs as possible.  Meanwhile, the police concentrate a good deal of their energy on catching this vigilante, while the press and public praise him as a hero.

I've never been a huge fan of Michael Winner's (The Mechanic, The Sentinel) directorial style, as it feels choppy and stagnant much of the time, and he doesn't always get the best performances from his actors.  I do enjoy composer Herbie Hancock's work, but his improvisational jazz style is ill-suited for a hard-boiled action drama like this.  Death Wish, for all of its interesting points, is just too uneven an experience to fully recommend to anyone who isn't either a die-hard Bronson fan or a lover of average-joe vigilante films in general.  As a testament of pro-gun and anti-criminal rights, it does hit its marks, but as a movie, the flaws are too substantial to ignore.

Ruthless Reviews ("potentially offensive")  Matt Cale

This is the one that started it all; Michael Winner's 1974 classic that helped usher in an era of hostility to liberalism, minorities, and apologists for crime and violence. Without it, Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 would not have been possible. Sensing that the "Silent Majority" of Nixon's America was reaching the boiling point, Winner gave us a film that mocked the notion that pacifism could ever hope to save us from the dark-skinned monsters storming the gates. Charles Bronson's Paul Kersey is, at the beginning, a soft-spoken liberal who loves his wife and loves the Big Apple with every ounce of his bleeding heart. When we first meet Paul, he is relaxing on a vacation with his beautiful bride and the soundtrack informs us that this indeed is heaven on earth. Within minutes, Paul's world is shattered and he is transformed into a hateful, trigger-happy killing machine who has left all remnants of passive liberalism behind. It doesn't seem to matter that Paul never finds the people directly responsible for his wife's murder and daughter's rape, because in this world, it only matters that criminals are taken off the street. One no-good punk is as good as any other.

Whenever I revisit the first film of this series, I am always reminded how easily we could have been spared the final four installments. When Mrs. Kersey and her daughter decide to have their groceries delivered rather than grabbing the bags themselves (it should be noted that the groceries consist of no more than a box of cereal and perhaps two loaves of bread), it leaves an opportunity for a gang of killers (led by "Freak 1" Jeff Goldblum) to steal the address and pay the Kersey family a visit. Moments later, the thugs come calling, burst into the home, and savagely attack the two women. Mrs. Kersey is beaten to death (but not before hearing the classic line "I rape rich cunts like you") and the daughter is forced to perform oral sex. She also suffers the indignity of having her ass spray-painted. The scene is quick and intense, and sets the stage for carnage unprecedented in film history.

Paul buries his wife, institutionalizes his daughter, and temporarily escapes to Arizona, where he meets a client who happens to be a gun nut. The man gives Kersey a going away present and with that gift, Kersey kills his first human being. At first Paul can only use a sock filled with quarters to wound his victims, but it doesn't take long before he graduates to cold steel and hot lead. Paul walks the streets, rides the subway, and prowls about in the dark, all in the hopes of trapping poor young saps into committing a crime. Once attempted, the men are blown away without hesitation. Of course, the vigilante killings terrify the criminal population, reducing crime and embarrassing the NYPD. After all, if they admit that lone gunmen can bring down the crime rate, what need would there be for the thin blue line? At least this is the argument being put forth by the film. Such a belief is similar to the mantra "An armed society is a polite society," and is based more in fear than any reliable statistics. Even though most right-wingers profess an admiration for the police, it is the stated purpose of this film to convince Americans that cops (and their superiors) have given up, given in, and have ceded control to the largely black and Hispanic criminals that rule the streets. Only white men armed to the teeth can save us, after all.

As such, Death Wish is the only overtly political film of the bunch, and it works (so to speak) as a straight drama. A storyline is at least attempted, and there is character "growth" as we watch Paul convert from left to right. And who couldn't sympathize? After all, you don't kill a man's wife mere days after they share cocktails on the beaches of Hawaii. Winner and subsequent directors gave up after the first film and decided to shoot for pure exploitation, which was proper given that few things are as intolerable as a preachy action film. While the first film provides reasonable explanations for Paul's violent outbursts, parts two through five give us a wind-up toy as a character who is let loose to butcher as many people as possible before the camera runs out of film. True, Paul loses a daughter, several good friends, and at least three lovers in the final four films, but it is clear that Paul doesn't give a shit about any of them. Their deaths are mere excuses for Paul to load his weapons. But his first wife -- so innocent and pure it seems -- is a different story. Her death demanded vengeance of the highest order.

Death Wish  Watch out, Chicago, by Marty Gliserman from Jump Cut

 

eFilmCritic.com   Slyder

 

The QNetwork Film Desk [James Kendrick]

 

Digitally Obsessed  Mark Zimmer

 

George Chabot's Review

 

DVD Talk (Chris Hughes)

 

Film Freak Central   Bill Chambers

 

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

 

The New York Times (Vincent Canby)

 

Winocour, Alice

 

AUGUSTINE                                                            B                     86

France  (101 mi)  2012

 

Another strangely unsettling Victorian era mood piece, recalling Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (Arnold) (2011), where more is reflected in tone, unspoken thoughts, and atmospheric visualization than actually providing details or understandable information, written by the first time feature director, where she pulls a story from real life historical events, what little is known, and then reimagines how it might have all played out, finding feminist sentiments within her fictionalized storyline, while keeping her characters completely within their straightjacketed historical times.  What starts out as an 1890’s dissection of class divisions ends up as a bizarre study of sexual dominance.  The key choice here is the brilliant casting of Soko (singer) (aka Stéphanie Sokolinski), a popular singer in France playing the stricken patient Augustine, an illiterate housemaid serving a wealthy aristocratic family, who suffers an epileptic seizure that causes panic at an evening dinner party, where one of the female hosts rather indelicately throws a pitcher of water in her face.  Partially paralyzed afterwards and something of an embarrassment, she’s immediately shuffled off to Salpêtrière Hospital, a sanitarium where the all-male physician staff treats exclusively female patients, where there were as many as 3000 female patients under the care of the chief resident, Jean-Martin Charcot (Vincent Lindon), where he worked and taught for 33 years, drawing students from all over Europe to learn from him.  His neurological studies predate the field of psychiatry, where the distress suffered by these women was commonly called hysteria, which amounted to seizures and violent sexual fits, both mental and physical disorders that he believed to be an organic condition brought on by trauma, where in the 16th century these women would have been condemned as witches.  To the casual observer, most of the patients were more likely suffering mental disorders, where the hospital was a giant storage grounds housing afflicted women.

 

When Augustine suffers another seizure on the grounds, she catches the eye of Charcot, not really her medical affliction, but her irrepressible beauty, where in his mind she can become his prized patient arousing interest within the medical profession, as currently the financial operations has a hard time providing enough meat for all the patients.  From the start, an ethically and emotionally complicated relationship develops between doctor and patient, where like a dog and pony show, Charcot shows off Augustine as his cash cow, literally staging her in front of other physicians allowing them to examine her in a state of undress, poking and prodding her like a medical specimen, reminiscent of Abdellatif Kechiche’s Black Venus (Vénus noire) (2010), another historical film obsessed with the naked female anatomy, where sex in the scientific community is never spoken or admitted to, but everything is explained and justified in detailed scientific vernacular.  “You use big words to say simple things,” Augustine tells him, responding to the routine of undressing in front of Charcot, an act of debased brutality and horror if he’s not there, taking a certain pleasure in pleasing him when he is.  Everything has a sexual context for her, though it’s all expressed silently in facial expressions and body movements, as she rarely utters a word.  What we don’t realize initially, of course, is the underlying sexual subtext for the treating doctor, who goes about his business in a thoroughly detached examination process where everything is expressed clinically, all an act to cover up his inner sexual tensions, as he’s more than a little obsessed by this remarkable young woman.

The film ignores addressing the medical question of male hysteria while allowing it to dominate the physician’s thoughts throughout, becoming a power play of restraint and social manners, where sex is an unseen force overwhelming everyone’s controlled and orderly lives, where in the picture of restraint, Augustine and Charcot take endless walks in a suffocating fog.

 

Chiara Mastroianni plays Charcot’s independently wealthy wife, a woman of influence, and certainly capable of seeing through him, though she maintains a respectable distance, never interfering in his profession.  It’s her connections initially that lure highly influential physicians to visit Charcot’s medical exhibitions, which play out as pure theater before a leering male audience, inducing Augustine into a submissive state through hypnosis, resembling an exorcism, as she is quickly inhabited by her fit of hysteria, expressing sexual gyrations through fiercely uncontrolled bodily movements, where her physical contortions resemble the paranormal visits to Barbara Hershey in The Entity (1982).  Charcot hopes to release the disease’s hold over the patient’s otherwise unexplained partial paralysis by simulating the condition, hoping she will simply snap out of it.  The presentation is a bit grotesque, a room filled with men holding invincible, seemingly God-like power over this defenseless woman, yet the men burst into sudden applause afterwords, obviously very pleased with themselves and lauding Charcot’s medical advancement, which produces little more than mere hope, as the paralysis remains.  Interestingly, over time, Augustine’s condition improves on its own, each time after a highly traumatic event, actually producing the effect the doctor was hoping for, but without a prestigious audience around to see it.  Charcot’s ethics are compromised when he sees signs of improvement, but chooses to ignore them during the most important event in his life, where he’s gathered the most influential team of academics and physicians in France. His career on the line and the funding of his neurology program at the hospital at stake, personal ambition takes precedence over everything else.  While all eyes are on him as well, the sleight of hand theatrical nature of hypnotically induced sexual hysteria has the power to persuade men’s souls.  Though she’s been an uneducated, culturally repressed, lower class woman, never given the time of day, Augustine is suddenly jettisoned into the spotlight, where these exhibitions have conditioned her to understand the power she holds over men, for the first time taking control over her own sexuality.  While the music is by Jocelyn Pook, who also scored Stanley Kubrick’s final film EYES WIDE SHUT (1999), the extraordinary finale is a building crescendo, set to the extravagantly transcendent music of Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten ARVO PÄRT - Cantus in memory of... (4:59), which in this film is nothing less than a liberating walk to freedom. 

 

Augustine | Chicago Reader  Ben Sachs 

 

Set in the late 19th century, this debut feature by Alice Winocour recalls the historical dramas of Benoit Jacquot (Sade; Farewell, My Queen) in the way it inverts the genre dynamic, emphasizing psychology over period ambience. The title character is an epileptic teenage chambermaid being treated by a progressive neurologist; Winocour suggests that his interest in the girl stems from an unrecognized obsession with female sexuality, and that Augustine comes of age when she becomes aware of the feelings she provokes in men. For the most part, though, the psychosexual drama plays out beneath the surface—the movie is so understated it sometimes feels inert. In French with subtitles.

 

Taut and Gorgeously Acted, Augustine Traces the ... - Village Voice  Ernest Hardy

 

"You use big words to say simple things," says Augustine, an illiterate kitchen maid, to the esteemed doctor treating her for the distinctly female malady "hysteria." This would be a show of boilerplate feistiness in most films, but in writer-director Alice Winocour's Augustine, it stands as a subtler, more complex victory. Having been largely silent or monosyllabic for much of the film, subjected to all manner of brutal poking and prodding in the name of science, Augustine (Soko) is defiant just by speaking at all, signaling her emerging sense of self. She's also putting her doctor in check, without the film overselling the moment with heavy-handed music or visual cues. Like many acts of resistance waged by the powerless against the powerful, you might miss its significance if you aren't paying close attention.

Augustine was a real figure, the subject of a case-study by Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, a pioneering 19th-century French neurologist who claimed Freud as a student. The doctor (played by Vincent Lindon) was a formidable man, a celebrity who revolutionized the ways patients were diagnosed and treated while also forging breakthroughs in conceptualizing the workings of the brain itself (thus setting the stage for modern neurology). But according to Winocour's film, his bedside manner was often unthinkingly cruel.

Winocour's take on Charcot's evolving relationship with Augustine as he treats her for mysterious seizures in a grim all-women's mental hospital is filtered through an unwavering but not dogmatic feminist perspective—for the most part. Occasionally her symbolism is heavy-handed, as in the opening moments, as Augustine watches a pot of crabs being steamed alive, but the outrage Winocour stokes is largely measured. The young woman's suffering is made a spectacle in rooms full of male doctors, some of whom all but leer as her violent seizures take a sexual twist. Charcot's brusque manner, the way he ignores Augustine's questions and callously manhandles her nude body, underscores an imbalance of power that has everything to do with differences in gender and class. He wields that power in an especially punitive way once his sexual attraction to his star patient gets the better of him.

But Winocour complicates her portrait of the man, not simply relegating him to the realm of the monstrous. He admonishes a dinner guest who's skeptical about his work, pointing out that in centuries prior, emotionally or mentally unstable women were burned as witches.

Augustine is gorgeously shot, lavishly costumed, and well acted by the entire cast. Chiara Mastroianni is especially good in a small role as Charcot's shrewd wife, Constance. Grégoire Colin, best known for his work in the films of Claire Denis, puts in a cameo as a medical photographer. All those elements coalesce smoothly around Winocour's sociopolitical critique. But the film is something of a paradox, simultaneously passionate and dispassionate, its ending tethered to both bruised triumph and a sense of things falling apart.

Cinespect [Tynan Kogane]

In 1928, André Breton published an article in the French Surrealist magazine La Révolution Surréaliste that glibly announced the 50th anniversary of hysteria. He claimed hysteria was “the greatest poetic discovery of the late nineteenth century” because it represented the unconscious’s revolt against society. The article also included six photographs of a teenage girl during different stages of a hysterical outbreak, which were taken in the 1870s under the direction and supervision of Paris’s leading neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. These photos perfectly emblematize the surrealist agenda—there’s no question about why Breton wanted to appropriate them: In a nightgown, as the girl writhes and gestures for the camera, she is transfixing in a way that is both dreamlike and erotic. The girl’s name is Augustine, and her story, though meteoric and scattered, remains influential and subversive. From a background of poverty, neglect, and abuse, she arrived at the infamous Salpêtrière hospital, became Charcot’s star patient—something of a poster child for hysteria—and then escaped from the hospital dressed as a man.

Alice Winocour’s debut feature “Augustine” takes this dense and troubling historical figure, who has been subjected to various psychiatric, moral, and feminist interpretations, and strips her story down to a quiet and deeply nuanced psychological battle between doctor and patient.

As the film opens, at a velvety, candlelit Parisian dinner party, the young servant Augustine (played by Soko, a French singer recently turned actress) has a violent seizure that leaves her squirming on the floor amid spilt glasses and broken plates. The well-to-do dinner guests gather around her with fear and curiosity, and someone dumps a bucket of water on her head. Soon after, with frayed nerves and her right eye inexplicably clamped shut, Augustine is admitted to the Salpêtrière hospital—a dumping ground for women suffering from mental illnesses. Once there, she immediately has another seizure that attracts the attention of the head doctor Charcot (Vincent Lindon), who has a humorless and godlike presence in the hospital.

Charcot is a strange, inconsistent character whose interest in Augustine comes with a mixture of sadism, lust, genuine scientific fascination, and the opportunistic desire to shape a new exhibit for his lecture performances. Their interactions reveal puzzling, ambiguous tensions: Initially, he circles certain areas of her naked body with black ink; later, before an audience, he puts her under hypnosis and sends her into a sort of erotic seizure; and on another occasion, he puts her into a trance and balances her stiff body across two chairs (proto-planking?).

As their relationship develops, there’s more than a few hints that Augustine might actually be faking some of her hysterical symptoms to satisfy Charcot’s expectations, especially since her malady is altogether inconsistent—for example, after decapitating a chicken in the yard, she faints, regains her eyesight, but wakes up with her left fist inexplicably stuck to her chest. This pairing of two ambivalent, calculating characters seems to pose more questions than solutions, and as they become increasingly interdependent, it isn’t always clear who has the upper hand in their psychological charade. From the start, Charcot is dominating and virile—a snake charmer, an impresario, a magician—while Augustine begins as a victim and a muse, but eventually becomes empowered by her condition and captivity into the belle noiseuse.

“Augustine” is an unsettling film, not because the treatment of hysteria seems inhumane to a contemporary audience, but because of everything left unanswered: the details of Augustine’s malady, Charcot’s credibility, and the confluence of their deceptions. The Surrealists probably would have approved of these qualities in the film.

Augustine (2012) Movie Review from Eye for Film  Anne-Katrin Kitze

Things come in threes, not only in classic fairy tales but also in Alice Winocour's enticing and spirited first feature Augustine. Her film tells the story of a kitchenmaid, who was among neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot's (Vincent Lindon) most famous cases of hysteria in late 19th century Paris.

During my conversation with Lindon at last year's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, we spoke about film and truth. He told me that for him, a film only works if what happens is believable. Winocour adds an extra level of emotional authenticity to her story of Augustine, by including accounts of actual female patients of the 21st century, dressed and coiffed in 19th century styles. The women tell of their woes, of cutting and anorexia without using these words, all caught in the wide net called hysteria, provoking us to think of centuries of "cures" for unruly women, such as witch-hunting or circus displays.

We start in a downstairs kitchen with a pot of live crabs attempting to escape from boiling water. Augustine (perfectly portrayed by Soko) has to serve the shellfish upstairs, feels shaky, and ultimately collapses in front of her employers and their guests, twitching, kicking and convulsing uncontrollably on the dining room floor. The lady of the house and each one of her guests watch in horror and fascination for what seems a very long duration without lifting a finger to help the young woman.

The sense of time stretched out, coupled with inaction and voyeurism, is used twice more, with a vastly different audience witnessing Augustine's attacks. Her cousin Rosalie, also a maid in the household (Roxane Duran who impressed in Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon and Delphine and Muriel Coulin's 17 Girls) brings her to the Salpêtrière, the Belle Époque's most renowned psychiatric hospital, to be presented to the reigning professor of anatomical pathology, Jean-Martin Charcot, god-like, all-knowing, teacher to Sigmund Freud, William James, and Georges Gilles de la Tourette. A marvellous Lindon plays Charcot as powerful, thoughtful inventor - with certain limitations. His elegant wife Constance (Chiara Mastroianni), who quotes Guy de Maupassant's criticism to him over breakfast, receives a compliment now and then. Charcot never emits the tiniest smile to anybody and allows his female pet monkey to climb all over him, even at his office.

His famous demonstrations had hypnotised women perform their symptoms in front of the all-male audience of colleagues and disciples. How much the sexual nature of the doctors' interest was repressed and how it returned in turbulent displays by the patients, is questioned in this film that observes the difference between protégées and case studies. His humanity varies from patient to patient.

Augustine's illness, the doctor calls it "ovarian hysteria" and "hysterical wink," transforms with her. The symptom of a permanently closed right eye – which the girl decorates with a brown velvet ribbon – turns into a clenched left fist after the beheading of a rooster replaces the terror of the initial live crabs.

Movies have looked at female hysteria before. How could they not, with the invention of photography progressing hand in hand with the medical research? Attractive patients are preferred. Keira Knightley's marvelous Sabina Spielrein in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method (2011) is united in spirit with the pretty kitchenmaid.

Augustine belongs to a family of movies that scrutinise the social construct of illness, not with a lecture but with a wayward glance - an enchanted barren vineyard behind the Salpêtrière, linens hung to dry in the winter air. Women are being inspected, drawn upon with red medical pens, compartmentalised.

The score by composer Jocelyn Pook (best known for Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut) turns the feel of the hospital into a new experience. The fascination with female distress fits many an agenda and Augustine shows how fantasies are performative.

In Germany, Pale Mother (1980) Helma Sanders-Brahms reveals a woman whose face becomes paralyzed, post Second World War, when the battles moved inside the homes. Agnès Varda's Cleo From 5 To 7 (1962) ends at the Salpêtrière, and the ghosts of patients past cannot be ignored.

In tone, Augustine is located between Hysteria (2011), Tanya Wexler's comedic exploration that uses the plot of the Katharine Hepburn/ Cary Grant classic Holiday and the heartbreaking Black Venus (2010), in which Abdellatif Kechiche follows the life of Sarah Baartman known as "Hottentot Venus".

Beauty is manufactured, like a symptom on display. "You are beautiful tonight," says Charcot to his wife, startled, looking up from his dinner. "It took me all afternoon," Constance responds. The pet monkey, sitting on the table, decides to have a piece of bread. Winocour's movie is extraordinary.

Movie Review - 'Augustine' - Another Look At A Patient And ... - NPR  Mark Jenkins

 

Slant Magazine [Tomas Hachard]

 

Filmleaf [Chris Knipp]

 

Sound On Sight  Mark Young

 

Hollywood Jesus [Darrel Manson]

 

Battleship Pretension [Scott Nye]

 

Smells Like Screen Spirit [Don Simpson]

 

CompuServe [Harvey Karten]

 

Augustine | Music Box Films

 

Discover: Alice Winocour Pulls the Strings in “Augustine” | Filmlinc ...  Jonathan Robbins interviews the director from Film Comment, May 16, 2013

 

French actress-singer Soko finds quiet showcase in 'Augustine' - Los ...  Mark Olsen interviews Soko from The LA Times, May 21, 2013

 

Neil Young at Cannes from The Hollywood Reporter

 

Leslie Felperin at Cannes from Variety

 

'Augustine' review: Doctor/patient bond receives ... - Pioneer Press  Chris Hewitt

 

Review: 'Augustine' - Featured Articles From The Los Angeles Times  Sheri Linden from The LA Times, May 16, 2013

 

Augustine Movie Review & Film Summary (2012) | Roger Ebert  Geoffrey Cheshire

 

Augustine - Movies - The New York Times  A.O. Scott

 

Jean-Martin Charcot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Winslet, Kate – actress

 

Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes separate after seven years of marriage  Xan Brooks from The Guardian, March 15, 2010

 

What is it like to be Kate Winslet?  Deborah Orr from The Guardian, March 18, 2010

 

Winter Film Collective

 

WINTER SOLDIER                                     A                     95

USA  (96 mi)  1972

 

These are times that try men’s souls

 

A raw and rare look at a soldier’s tale, told collectively in a public hearing in February 1971, organized by none other than losing Presidential candidate Senator John Kerry, filming 100 Vietnam Vets whose recollections of war atrocities they personally witnessed or participated in effectively amounts to a Truth Commission, as veterans tell their story one after the other, organized after the exposure of Sgt. Calley’s reprehensible My Lai massacre, where the public at the time was crying out for the truth.  But of course, as we all learned from Jack Nicholson in A FEW GOOD MEN, “You can’t handle the truth!”  What makes this film so rare is that so few people have seen it, as no news outlets would cover the event as it unfolded at a Detroit Howard Johnson conference room and no distributor has ever picked it up, yet it offers unfiltered description of how young kids were lured overseas and from day one witnessed indiscriminate murder and rampant killing of innocent civilians.
As they were so young, they bought into the military mentality that the enemy was less than human, so whatever bestial behavior that they themselves inflicted was for the good of the country.  Nowadays this kind of graphic reality would simply remain untold, repressed by those unfortunate few who participated, probably suffering from the effects of post traumatic stress syndrome, so the footage itself and its somber tone of repentance is unique.
 
In Vietnam, soldiers couldn’t tell Viet Cong soldiers from civilians, so anyone running from an American mission was shot dead, anyone remaining behind was questioned or tortured for information, and then shot dead, sometimes after bodies were mutilated beforehand.  Live bodies were thrown out of helicopters, kids giving Americans the finger were killed on the spot, occasionally air support got tired of flying overhead and eventually dropped their munitions wherever they felt like and flew away with no repercussions, even when it was discovered afterwards that infants were killed, women were gang raped, then murdered, entire communities were removed from their homes in what was standard operating procedure searching for weapons, afterwards their homes were burned to the ground whether weapons were found or not. 
 
There’s an interesting moment outside the conference room, when a Black Panther member questions the validity of this confessional tone, claiming much of it is irrelevant to blacks, as it never gets to the core of what caused these events to happen in the first place, which he claims is institutional racism, the inbred belief that American GI’s are somehow superior human beings to their enemy, which is the only justification for condoning these horrors.  One American Indian offered his view that these same atrocities were inflicted on his people one hundred years ago, claiming the mentality was exactly the same, seeing Indians as less than human, so scattering the remains of women and children all over the Western plains was acceptable behavior, and it was looked upon as for the betterment of the public good.  The crude film quality, the grainy, non-professional black and white imagery, the intense, repetitive testimony one after the other feels like an ongoing assault to the senses that has a numbing effect after awhile and makes other war films seem like theatrical expressions instead of the real thing.  Among the dozen or so uncredited filmmakers was an unheralded Barbara Kopple, who later filmed HARLAN COUNTY USA. 

 

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

I-House's war film series starts cooking with gas this weekend, with eight films and three guest speakers spread over four nights. The 1972 Winter Soldier records the 1971 hearings on American atrocities in Vietnam, organized in Detroit by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, including then-leader John Kerry. Directed by a collective that included Barbara Kopple, the film is jaggedly edited and unevenly structured, the cutting away from testimony to stock footage occurring almost at random. But the film's power is almost enhanced by the crudeness that gives it the ring of truth. Hearing one G.I. recall the trip to Vietnam as "like a hunting trip," hearing soldiers repeat again words to the effect that "any dead Vietnamese is V.C., [and] living ones are suspected V.C.," or the soldier recalling how two buddies from Philadelphia would compete to see how far they could throw Vietnamese prisoners out of a plane, the extent to which a war with no clear objective spawns a moral vacuum is patently clear.

Winter Soldier  Ray Young from Flickhead

Winter Soldier is a filmed record of the veterans who gathered to relate stories of the atrocities that they and others had committed in the Vietnam War. Held on January 31, 1971, more than 125 voices spoke of horrors beyond comprehension, the rape, mutilation and mass murder of Vietnamese civilians, their villages burned to the ground, their culture irretrievably lost at the hands of the American military.
    
The term ‘Winter Soldier’ is a spin on the opening of a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” Today, any “triumph” associated with Vietnam is tenuous at best.
    
Following World War II and Korea, it was a particularly ugly milestone that unraveled America at the core, polarizing young from old and hawk from dove. In the end, the rightwing conservative was faced with the grim fact that their President was a fraud and a thief; while the leftwing liberal had deflated some pride with a dose of in-your-face compassion.
 
After it premiered at Cannes in 1972, Winter Soldier has been rarely seen in the United States. Its recent revival both theatrically and on DVD was surely prompted by the events unfolding in Iraq. While the film leads one to question the dehumanizing aspects of military training over the concept of war itself, the truly alarming difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that America’s youth is no longer in solidarity, no longer rejecting the hideousness that’s been systematically foisted upon them. To some, the American invasion of Iraq is cool.
    
It’s a tragic reality: a young generation more or less eager to destroy, manipulate and torture with the aid of advanced weaponry under the auspices of a government fueled by the military-industrial complex—something that Dwight D. Eisenhower, an Army General no less, warned us about ages ago. Could this thirty-five-year-old black-and-white movie ever hope to sway the confused, ignorant and angry masses?
    
The veterans sit at a dais, talking about squeezing the dignity and life out of beings which they were brainwashed into believing were not human. Later in a hallway, a black veteran goes on a tirade about how it’s all based on racism, something that the white man couldn’t possibly comprehend. He’s right, of course. How else to explain the flagrant disregard for another person’s life unless one believes they’re superior?
    
As for the film itself, it offers no flourish or grand gesture. It simply reports moments from an event, voices speaking of things once buried in the closet. “The first thing we do is burn down the village and kill everyone just to show we weren’t fucking around,” says one vet. “We just wiped ‘em out, women and children and everything.” These ex-soldiers mirror who and what we are, what primitive ugliness lurks inside our minds waiting to be conditioned and groomed and cut loose, and the times that try men’s souls. But will anyone listen? If George W. Bush can get reelected after Fahrenheit 9/11, it’s very, very doubtful.
 

Slant Magazine [Fernando F. Croce]

Like Peter Davis's Hearts and Minds and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, Winter Soldier is less documentary than in-the-heat-of-conflict document, too close to the bone for "distance." No less a wake-up call, however, the film dispenses with their indoctrinating montage to focus more plainly on the raw material and rawer nerves of its subject—namely the atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War, given voice in the historic testimony by more than 125 ex-GIs at the Detroit Winter Soldier Hearing in 1971. The first time 'Nam vets publicly testified about their experiences, the event was briefly glimpsed in last year's doc Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, and indeed a 28-year-old Kerry puts in a quick appearance early on, though the grainy lenses remain squarely, as they should, on the men trying to come to terms with the horrors they have seen and committed abroad.

The testimonies build up a mosaic of carnage before a stunned audience, or, as Amos Vogel put in a vintage Village Voice review, "a criminal, cosmic jigsaw puzzle"—Vietnamese prisoners thrown out of helicopters as part of bets among grunts, women raped and disemboweled, villages burned down to "show we're not fucking around," children blasted for giving the soldiers the finger, ears and limbs sliced off to boost the body count. Shot in vérité black-and-white in deliberate auteur-anonymity (footage was supplied by 12 activist-filmmakers, including future acclaimed documentarian Barbara Kopple), the film opens on a Thomas Paine quote ("These are times that try men's souls") and proceeds to extract startling political points from the soldiers' devastating speeches, an indictment of the institutionalized indoctrination of bloodlust emerging out of a former grunt's off-the-cuff comment about masculinity ideals enforced since school ("I wanted to see for myself whether I'm a man or not").

The old word vs. image argument might be brought up apropos of Winter Soldier's "artlessness," yet the fact remains that Private Camil's first, frontal close-up, recounting boot-camp training up to his first kill overseas, compresses all of Full Metal Jacket into seven minutes. Ultimately, the film's trajectory is spiritual as well as political ("Won't you forgive me for my sins," goes the blues refrain over the final credits) —the men, their robotic crewcuts since grown into beards and manes, come together for a therapeutic, even exorcizing, moment of communal demons acknowledged and transcended. Numbness to the suffering of others may give way to healing tears and even an understanding of the racial and historical aspects of the issue (voiced by a pissed-off Black Panther and a tearful Native American), though judging from our current involvement in the Middle East, history seems to inevitably repeat itself. "The more things change," and all that, yet it is fitting that one of the screen's strongest antiwar tracts arrived at the beginning of a nation's most self-inquiring decade, when the medium could be seen as capable of inciting change.  

digitallyOBSESSED! [Jon Danziger]

More than three decades since the helicopters left the roof of the American embassy in what is now Ho Chi Minh City, the Vietnam War and its legacy and lessons remain hotly contested, surfacing only most recently in the 2004 Presidential campaign. Was it the overreaching of American empire? The counterculture sapping the resolve of the honorable fighting men? A cautionary tale about not devoting enough manpower and materiel, or one about the perils of fighting a guerrilla insurgency on its home soil? For many the rage of those years is still palpable, and resonates still today; for others, it's a dimly remembered history lesson, more Oliver Stone than David Halberstam, with a rocking soundtrack. Winter Soldier is particularly useful in stripping away some of the myths about Vietnam, allowing us to hear unvarnished war stories from the soldiers themselves, and it's got a particular new relevance, as the U.S. fights on in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The focus of the documentary is a group called Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and their assembly in January and February of 1971, at which vet after vet offered testimony about the horrors they had seen and participated in against Vietnam and its citizens. It wasn't an investigation, wasn't sanctioned by the government, and didn't purport to be either even-handed or exhaustive. But what it seems to have been is purgative for the veterans involved, finally getting a chance to relate what happened, and to expose what soon became known as the credibility gap—that is, the chasm between the successes the military brass were reporting and the experiences of soldiers on the ground. Most of the movie is little more than close-ups of vets telling their stories, so it may not be cinematographically intense, but it is galvanizing. Their horrific tales about torching Vietnamese villages, maiming, raping and killing Vietnamese for sport, tossing POWs out of airplanes, their wrists bound with copper wire, are generally related almost dispassionately, with a fierce amount of ironic distance—how else can you make sense of the hideous things you witnessed and participated in?

The film occasionally cuts to snapshots of the men in country, and the contrasts are startling—fatigues and brush cuts have been thrown over in favor of long hair and moustaches, and no shortage of unfortunate, long early-70s sideburns, and the fresh-faced and eager now are world-weary and sanguine. Even the occasional graphic photo of the injured or the dead aren't as powerful as these men bearing witness—they're not there to plead for forgiveness and understanding, but only to be heard, to spare others the soul-killing experiences they've been through.

Of course one can't determine from this film alone whether or not these stories are representative of all Vietnam veterans; and out in the lobby, between sessions, a couple of the speakers are harangued by some black vets, who rightly point out that the panels we've been watching have been almost exclusively white, and that racism—against both African Americans in the service and the people of Vietnam—hasn't been addressed. That doesn't mitigate the power of what's here, though, and viewing this from our vantage point, the parallels between these stories and those coming out of Abu Ghraib, for instance, are staggering. There's sure to be the obligatory partisan rancor and noise over this movie, too, for one of the organizers of the event, seen briefly at the beginning of the film, is John Kerry. But sending young Americans into harm's way, and putting their lives and their souls on the line, isn't—or at least shouldn't be—a party-line issue. No doubt the vets of this most recent war will for decades be sorting through the psychological shards of their experiences in Iraq, and, as this documentary makes clear, there are lessons here that we might have learned but, to our discredit, did not.

The Village Voice [Michael Atkinson]

If Milestone isn't quite the runaway winner of stateside art-film/retro theatrical and video distribution (Kino, First Run, Wellspring, and Facets vie for the top shelf on a quarterly basis), it's not for lack of kudos—a New York Film Critics Circle citation and National Society of Film Critics nod, and now a week at the Walter Reade showcasing its most recent acquisitions. It couldn't have happened to a nicer or smaller family-run outfit; over the years, Dennis Doros and Amy Heller have put their faith in Mikhail Kalatozov, Lotte Reiniger, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Marion Davies, and Manoel de Oliviera when no one else would.

As it is, their most prescient release might be Winter Soldier, a rarely glimpsed document, shot and assembled by an anonymous filmmaking collective, of the 1971 "Winter Soldier Investigation." A month after the news of My Lai shook Americans rigid, over 100 returned vets testified in a Detroit Howard Johnson conference room that My Lai was no aberration, but a paradigm of U.S. activity in Vietnam. The resulting first-person-witness assault demonstrates, in the fashion of Shoah, that being told can be more lacerating than being shown; we experience not only the atrocities but the shock waves felt by the witnesses and the emotional venom that still necrotized their lives. Not that the sympathies lie only with the terrifyingly calm and earnest speakers; every story is a story about farmers butchered as a kind of sickened imperial bloodsport, and the bootprint the movie leaves might be the deepest of any 'Nam doc.

It's difficult to stomach "Proud Vietnam Vet" bumper stickers after Winter Soldier, or even endure American cinema's self-pitying bankload of fiction movies about the war. (No less unchewable is the subsequent career of John Kerry, a peripheral presence in the movie, in light of his role in the hearings.) Of course, no news outlet would cover the event, and no distributor or broadcaster would touch the film record. Whoever saw it in 1972 saw it at the Whitney; after that, only WNET threw it on once unannounced as a replacement program. Otherwise, the 15 filmmakers—including Barbara Kopple and David Grubin—have had to host private screenings themselves. So, what was intended to be a public turning point in our knowledge of the war's true nature was effectively run underground—which makes the film imperative viewing in 2005 (if not, unfortunately, in 2002). The afterlife of the Vietnam home front experience indicates that we saw it all in our living rooms, or in Hearts and Minds—but, no, we didn't. A Winter Soldier screening should be a voter registration requirement.

Chicago Reader Movie Review  Jonathan Rosenbaum, also seen here:  Arms and the Men

I first saw Winter Soldier, a 1972 documentary about the Winter Soldier investigation held by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Detroit in 1971, shortly after it was made. For years I remembered that the participants repeatedly broke down, but when I saw the film again recently only one soldier who testified was fighting back tears. The others were mostly calm and thoughtful, despite the horrors they recounted. I concluded that I'd been remembering my own response, not theirs.

I always thought this was the most important film we had about this country's tragic involvement in Vietnam, and I still do. It's almost as potent today as it was when it was released, and I suspect it's rarely screened because what it reveals about wartime atrocities and government policies is very hard to face. This is especially true because the soldiers who describe their personal experiences are ordinary Americans and easy to identify with, though at the time some reviewers thought their long hair destroyed their credibility.

The soldiers also describe their fears, their grief at the loss of friends, their frustration at not having been able to understand the languages they heard or distinguish friend from foe. None of this justifies tossing prisoners out of planes, raping and murdering civilians, or randomly burning villages. But it does offer a context in which these and other criminal acts become comprehensible.

During the last presidential campaign, John Kerry's supporters and opponents both alluded to the film and used clips from it, though not in a way that did any justice to the force and conviction of the testimony. As it happens, Kerry appears only briefly, asking a question near the beginning, and he's only one of 30 vets seen over the course of the 95-minute film.

Winter Soldier isn't the most informative American documentary about Vietnam from the viewpoint of the Vietnamese, a distinction that belongs to Emile de Antonio's 1968 In the Year of the Pig. Instead it's a kind of toxic potion made by and for Americans, its title derived from Thomas Paine's 1776 statement "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

I couldn't call this film a masterpiece, only indispensable. It was directed by a collective of 19 people -- some of whom, such as Barbara Kopple, have since become much better known and even celebrated -- and the filmmaking is rather crude and perfunctory. But ultimately this is of little importance. What counts are the soldiers themselves and what they say. Their simple reality exposes the well-made, Oscar-winning, racist fantasies of The Deer Hunter as unconscionable acts of self-justification and self-deception.

Winter Soldier (1972) - Home Video Reviews - TCM.com  Pail Sherwin

 

Winter Soldier (1972) - Notes - TCM.com

 

DVD Savant  Glenn Erickson

 

filmcritic.com  Chris Barsanti

 

World Socialist Web Site Clare Hurley

 

PopMatters  Cynthia Fuchs

 

Shock Cinema  Steven Puchalski

 

documentaries.about.com  Jennifer Merin

 

DVD Talk  David Cornelius

 

DVD Town  Christopher Long)

 

ReelTalk  Donald Levit

 

CineScene.com  Chris Dashiell

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews  Dennis Schwartz

 

Georgia Straight  Ken Eisner

 

Combustible Celluloid  Jeffrey M. Anderson

 

Time Out  Wally Hammond

 

The Guardian  Xan Brooks

 

The Japan Times [Giovanni Fazio]

 

Baltimore City Paper  Bret McCabe

 

City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul  Terri Sutton

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Vincent Canby from the New York Times
 
DVD Beaver  Gary W. Tooze

 

Winterbottom, Michael

 

BFI Screenonline: Winterbottom, Michael (1961-) Biography  Geoff Brown and Pamela Church Gibson, Directors in British and Irish Cinema

Michael Winterbottom's films represent the most striking and varied body of work of any British director to emerge from the late 20th century. Born in Blackburn, Lancashire on 29 March 1961, he studied English at Oxford; film and television courses followed at Bristol University and the Polytechnic of Central London. Initially he worked in the cutting rooms at Thames Television, graduating to direction with TV drama episodes and two documentaries about Ingmar Bergman. Winterbottom has regularly cited major European figures as influences - including Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, François Truffaut, and Bergman himself - and the settings and style of his own work displayed a continental slant from the beginning. The energetic comedy romance Forget About Me (ITV, 1990), second in a long line of collaborations with the writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, focused on two Scots soldiers serving in West Germany, entangled with Hungarian girls during an excursion to Budapest. The equally lively Under the Sun (ITV, 1992), shot in Spain in a spirit of improvisation and serendipity, followed the fortunes of a shy backpacking girl, learning to fend for herself. Both TV films enjoyed festival exposure.

Other TV ventures pursued subjects and settings closer to home, though the hard gaze of Winterbottom's camera still ensured distinctive results, particularly in Family (BBC, 1994), a harrowing four-part series written by the novelist Roddy Doyle. The violent father and damaged children at the centre of the series found echoes in Winterbottom's later films, particularly Go Now (BBC, 1995), an energetic and compassionate TV drama about an ordinary working man (Robert Carlyle) fighting multiple sclerosis, and With or Without You (1999), a frisky romantic drama disturbed by mounting marital disharmony.

In 1994 Winterbottom formed Revolution Films with Andrew Eaton, his producer on Family; his first cinema feature, Butterfly Kiss, emerged the following year. Building on his adventurous television work, this spiky lesbian road movie written by Cottrell Boyce made few concessions to the commercial consensus. A sociopathic drifter with chains and chest bruises (Amanda Plummer) seduces a mousy service station employee (Saskia Reeves) and leads her into her world of random murder and casual violence. Winterbottom gets good visual mileage from the dreary geography of motorway tarmac, car parks and motels: some compensation for the over-episodic structure and fancy words about punishment and hell that ultimately lead nowhere. After this arresting debut, Winterbottom entered the prestige literary adaptation field with Jude (1996). Typically, he picked one of the bleakest possible properties, Thomas Hardy's novel of dashed hopes and illicit love. Sombre and stark in every way, it remains a compelling and underrated film, with a mesmerising performance from Kate Winslet as stonecutter Jude's vivacious cousin, made wan by the kicks of fate.

With typical eclectic flair, Winterbottom switched to a very different style, subject and period for Welcome to Sarajevo (1997). Shot on location, the emotional drama incorporates authentic news footage within its true story of a television reporter (played by Stephen Dillane) setting professional objectivity aside, determined to rescue an orphan child. The film is not afraid to be tart, though some star-struck casting and a script over-laden with irony muffle its final impact. Three offbeat romantic dramas followed: the overstrained I Want You (1998), a seaside drama of obsessive love with Rachel Weisz, filmed in Hastings; the Belfast-set With or Without You; and, most individual of all, Wonderland (1999), a sad family jigsaw puzzle built up from what at first seem scattered scenes about the lives of three sisters (Gina McKee, Shirley Henderson and Molly Parker). With its restless, hand-held photography by Sean Bobbitt, drab settings (London, November, wet), and obsessive Michael Nyman score, the film presents a very different vision of London from the tourist views of its contemporaries Sliding Doors (US/UK, d. Peter Howitt, 1998) and Notting Hill (US/UK, d. Roger Michell, 1999).

Winterbottom collaborated again with Cottrell Boyce on The Claim, an adaptation of Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, transposed to the Sierra Nevada, 24 Hour Party People, and the idiosyncratic futuristic drama Code 46. The Claim (UK/France/Canada, 2000) has more in common with Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs Miller (US, 1971) than with even the most unorthodox heritage product. Impressive ice-bound visuals include the astonishing spectacle of a complete wooden house dragged uphill by horses, but characters in the script's games of love, power, revenge and redemption lack body, and the film proved too offbeat for mainstream audiences. 24 Hour Party People (2002) is a more populist affair, in loud and vivid pursuit of Manchester's punk rock explosion of the late 1970s and beyond, with comedian Steve Coogan well cast as the charismatic music promoter Tony Wilson. Casting proved less of an asset with ill-matched Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton in Code 46 (2003), though this blend of sci-fi and film noir set in an overcrowded future is never less than intriguing.

Among recent films, the Berlin Film Festival prizewinner In This World (2002) best demonstrates Winterbottom's distinctive gifts. Shot on Digital Video by a tiny crew, this involving documentary-style drama about two Afghan refugees travelling overland from Pakistan to seek asylum in England follows no commercial habits in looks, material or technique. One is not even particularly aware one is watching a British film, until the cool emotional temperature and lack of catharsis chills the final stages. His later DV venture, 9 Songs (2004), could almost have been deliberately mounted to exorcise British restraint: an hour-long diary of a passionate affair, intercut with rock concert footage, the film features an unusual degree of explicit sex, though with few rewards for the viewer. By contrast, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005) is Winterbottom's most immediately enjoyable film - an exuberant, brilliantly inventive portrait of movie-making madness, spun round the struggles to make a viable film out of Laurence Sterne's unfilmable eighteenth-century comic novel.

Winterbottom's dizzyingly eclectic output can be loosely tied together by two general concerns. Like the French New Wave directors who helped sharpen his style, he is dedicated to 'people and places' films, largely created on location, exploring a wide range of geographical and social settings. Through all the variations in mood and technique, he seeks to combine social realism with stylistic experiments, bold photography, and expressive use of the widescreen shape. Though the artistic achievements have varied, and no film has enjoyed wide commercial success, in his determination to make idiosyncratic and innovative British films Winterbottom has established an enviable international reputation.

Michael Winterbottom biography and filmography | Michael ...   biography and filmography

 

Michael Winterbottom - Director Biography - Madman Entertainment  biography and filmography

 

Michael Winterbottom Biography, Michael Winterbottom Profile ...  biography from Filmibeat

 

Michael Winterbottom • Great Director profile - Senses of Cinema  Deborah Allison from Senses of Cinema, July 22, 2005

 

Michael Winterbottom - BIFA - The British Independent Film Awards  brief bio

 

Biography | Harry Escott  brief bio

 

Movies Directed by Michael Winterbottom: Best to Worst - Ranker

 

The Best Movies Directed by Michael Winterbottom - Flickchart

 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Wonderland • Senses of Cinema  Bill Mousoulis from Senses of Cinema, June 7, 2000

 

Michael Winterbottom by Brian McFarlane and ... - Senses of Cinema  Dean Brandum, December 20, 2010

 

Michael Winterbottom  Michael Winterbottom on The Killer Inside Me, by Rachel Cooke from The Observer, May 23, 2010

 

Michael Winterbottom: the only man who can make Steve Coogan ...  Tim Robey from The Telegraph, April 22, 2013

 

Five roads to Michael Winterbottom | BFI  Ashley Clark on The Look of Love from Sight and Sound, January 30, 2014

 

Rebel with a realist cause - New Statesman  Leo Robson, January 30, 2016

 

6 Filmmaking Tips from Michael Winterbottom - Film School Rejects   Christopher Campbell, August 9, 2017

 

Michael Winterbottom Explains the Startling Twist Ending of ... - Vulture  Abraham Riesman, August 11, 2017

 

Tribute to: Michael Winterbottom | Sarajevo Film Festival  profile essay by Nebojša Jovanović, August 11 – 18, 2017

 

TSPDT - Michael Winterbottom

 

BOMB Magazine — Michael Winterbottom by Liza Béar  Liza Béar interview, Winter 1998

 

I'm no misogynist' – Michael Winterbottom answers critics of 'The Killer ...   Wally Hammond interview from Time Out London, 2009

 

Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan: 'We're not the big buddies people ...  Laura Barton interview from The Guardian, October 26, 2010

 

Michael Winterbottom: Interviews - MarcoPolo Appart Hotel Metz  edited by Damon Smith, 2011 (pdf)

 

What a Trip: Michael Winterbottom - Page - Interview Magazine  Alison Cohn interview, June 10, 2011

 

Director Michael Winterbottom insists he isn't exploiting Meredith ...  Nick Clark interview from The Independent, February 5, 2014

 

24 Hour Party People Director Michael Winterbottom Tucked a Love ...  Eve Barlow interview from The Pitch, March 16, 2017

 

Michael Winterbottom interview - The Trip - British Comedy Guide  April 2, 2017

 

“The Trip to Spain” director Michael Winterbottom on where Coogan ...  Tom Roston interview from Salon, August 13, 2017

 

Interview: Michael Winterbottom Remembers His Trip to Spain - Film ...  Marc Mohan interview from The Stranger, August 30, 2017

 

Michael Winterbottom - Wikipedia

 

JUDE                                                 A                     95

Great Britain (122 mi)  1996  ‘Scope

 

Sometimes I think you are one person split in two.            — Phillotson (Liam Cunningham)

 

You’re made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.     — Sue Bridehead (Kate Winslet), from 1 Corinthians 4:9

 

This is the real deal, a blistering, uncompromising drama of great tragic literature brought to life onscreen, one of the more underrated films from the last decade or so, a stunningly gorgeous yet ultra bleak and despairing adaptation of Thomas Hardy's late 19th century novel Jude the Obscure (1895), a true tearjerker. featuring an exquisite performance from the hauntingly beautiful Kate Winslet in a love story with a studious yet poor stone mason's son, Jude (Christopher Ecclestone) who after an ill-conceived marriage with Arabella (Rachel Griffiths), the lusty daughter of a local pig farmer, finds his perfect soulmate in his very headstrong cousin Sue (Winslet), a liberated woman well ahead of her times, and given equal weight, their scenes together are simply fabulous.  Despite being driven to learn at an early age and becoming one of the most brilliant students, he is a self taught scholar, a method that is frowned upon and denied admittance into the nearby college in Christminster (a stand-in for Oxford), the place where all his dreams could be realized, all roads opened, but he is from the wrong class, expected to fulfill his ambitions through the working trades, leading to a blindstorm of misfortune.  With dizzying camera movement from Eduardo Serra, the sweeping enormity from the land of his childhood is seen in black and white, while this city of promise that he’s had his eyes on since he was a little boy is shown in glorious color, usually accompanied by liturgical music.  This is an unforgettably beautiful film of awesome power, with believable, sympathetic characters that features some of the most extraordinary screen passion, which can certainly be attributed to the source material.  This is the last novel Hardy would write, largely due to the outcry of negative criticism, where the illicit love affair of an unmarried atheistic couple was considered scandalous.   

 

While a two hour film can hardly contain the graphic detail of a novel, this is nonetheless a major step up from the usual British costume dramas that tend to be dry and soulless adaptations.  Instead what Winterbottom provides is glorious photography and fluid camera movement, an accentuated counterpoint to the excessively bleak subject matter, providing a meticulous recreation of a poor, working man’s prospects in the late 19th century, always drenched in the everpresent gloom of rain, but from out of the muck runs a similar intensity of feeling from the novel, where his leading characters are flesh and blood, literally bursting at the seams from the sight of one another, but their friendship runs hot and cold, as both are afraid to commit, as Jude obsesses over his studies while working as a stone mason while Sue fervently rails against the institution of marriage, valuing her independence, becoming an apprentice teacher for Phillotson (Liam Cunningham), Jude’s trusted childhood tutor who initially planted the seed to become a scholar.  But when Jude’s college application is rejected, his spirits tumble, and with it any hopes of supporting Sue, leaving him the odd man out when she instead accepts the older Phillotson’s hand in marriage, though her decision is based more on Jude’s indecisiveness and the economic practicality of the times.  But when loveless marriage does not suit her, Sue runs away with Jude, where at least for a brief moment in time lost in an idyllic reverie their lives are synonymous with happiness before the world collapses all around them.  Not as fatalistic as the novel, but the tone is just as intense, easily one of my favorite films, and in my view still the best Kate Winslet performance on record, the best of all the Winterbottom films, just a terrific film all around and highly underrated—even the DVD is out of print.  The structure to this film is so precise it's nearly mathematically perfect, the performances exquisite, and the look of the film along with the accompanying music simply sublime, not to mention a terrific screenplay that balances an authentic love story with a searing exposé on the church, conformism and class prejudice—really one for the ages. 

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]

Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure is as dark a vision of life as has ever been committed to the page, and this new adaptation stays almost entirely faithful to that vision. As perfectly played by Christopher Eccleston (Shallow Grave), Jude is a working-class man with scholarly ambitions thwarted by an inhospitable society. Equally good is Kate Winslet (Sense And Sensibility) as his cousin and object of desire, while director Michael Winterbottom brings an appropriately gloomy sensibility to the production. If there's a problem with Jude, it's a problem inherent in Hardy's novel: Its overwhelming fatalism almost seems sadistic in the way it stacks the deck against its protagonists. Also curious is the film's ending, which, though faithful up to that point, suddenly stops a few chapters short of its source's conclusion and narrows its scope. Nonetheless, when so many literary adaptations are content simply to provide illustrations without illumination, Jude's dark light shines.

Jude Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London  Geoff Andrew

This determinedly non-heritage adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure is an often impressive but oddly frustrating movie. Mostly, it's faithful to the story of the lowly but academically ambitious Wessex stonemason (Eccleston) who, after a disastrous marriage to Arabella (Griffiths), daughter of a pig farmer, heads off to the university town of Christminster, where he falls for his strong-willed, comparatively worldly-wise cousin Sue (Winslet). Somehow, however, the film never delivers the punch deserved by one of the 19th century's most movingly cruel English novels. Part of the trouble is that, in trying to cram Hardy's narrative into a mere two hours, Hossein Amini's brisk screenplay rarely does more than skate over the key dramatic moments. The leads, too, lack the chemistry to render the tragic outcome of Jude and Sue's socially unacceptable amour fou as devastating as it should be; Eccleston is too relentlessly 'intense' for Jude to seem a truly attractive prospect, while Winslet's Sue is such a thoroughly modern miss that she finally fails to convince. Eduardo Serra's 'Scope camerawork is eye-catching, and the film is never stilted, but it's hard to see how its emphasis on being 'modern' make the content really relevant to today. Ambitious, sensitive, but ultimately uninvolving.

kamera.co.uk - film review, Jude  Monica Maurer

Tackling Thomas Hardy's bleakest novel is not perhaps the most obvious choice of second feature for the man who gave us the serial-killing, lesbian road movie, Butterfly Kiss, but Michael Winterbottom's free adaptation of Jude the Obscure is inspired.

This success is fundamentally due to a generous screenplay by Hossein Amini which retains the essence of Hardy's dour novel while paring down and contemporising the language. This in turn fuels the performances of Christopher Ecclestone (Jude Fawley) and Kate Winslet (Sue Bridehead) who burn with a symbiotic passion and integrity in the stony-hearted England at the end of the industrial revolution.

Ecclestone (last seen on the box in Our Friends in the North) stars as the aspiring intellectual who, after a failed marriage, falls in love with his unconventional cousin Sue. While Sue is strong enough to flout convention - Jude falls in love with her over an irreverant cigarette and a pint in a pub before they finally move in together - her mercurial nature cannot comprehend or cope with the gut-wrenching tragedy which they eventually suffer.

While the tragedy is one very much of its era, there is a certain timeless quality captured by Winterbottom in Jude. Winslet in particular breathes such feisty life into her part that she transcends the normal limitations of period drama. This is about people, not costumes.

While the intelligent Ecclestone whose noble, hard gaze perfectly encapsulates Hardy's deep-thinking dreamer, he is not quite the Jude who ends up alcholic and dead before he's thirty. However, there's no emotional payoff here - Winterbottom's Jude is full-blown tragedy at its best. It takes your breath away.

User reviews  from imdb (Page 3) Author: CountZero313 from Japan

Winterbottom keeps the temperature of the searing original novel in his faithful, brilliantly realised film adaptation. Hardy was sick when writing Jude, out of sorts, and the bleak tale has in some quarters been credited more to bile than his muse. Jude's fate is certainly more damning than other Hardy heroes such as Tess, and the final third of this tale requires a strong heart to get through.

Jude Fawley is a self-educated stonemason looking to enter the hallowed halls of (a thinly-disguised) Oxford. Class and snobbery combine to crush that dream, but he fights and wins his other dream, to secure the love of his cousin Sue. Headstrong and independent, a prototype Suffragette, she will face her own stern test and be found wanting.

Christopher Eccleston inhabits the character fully. The scene in the pub where he recites the Lord's Creed in Latin, then challenges the undergrads to judge if he got it right, is painful and poignant. Winslet is stunning as the admirable but infuriating Sue Brideshead whose choices in life are oblique but all-too-real. A cold draft of air oozes from her expression every time she shuns Jude. There isn't a missed beat in Winslet's portrayal of a woman who goes from supremely confident to utterly lost.

Winterbottom would go on to tinker and experiment, unsuccessfully, with Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge in The Claim. Here, he keeps it strictly BBC, evoking the early industrial age magnificently in his cobbled streets and fog-shrouded spires. An array of British acting talent fill out the supporting roles superbly, most notably Liam Cunningham as the put-upon Phillotson, and Rachel Griffiths as pig-hugging Arabella, whose rising fortune sways in counter-point to Jude's slow, inexorable decline. In one scene where she encounters her estranged son at a fairground, the interaction between woman and child is both naturalistic and magical. The expression on the face of Little Jude's sister is priceless. Perhaps a happy accident, perhaps genius from the director, but all the more tragic for what follows.

One of the most ill-fated couples in British literature are vividly brought to life in this film, designed to satisfy fans of the novel. Hardy, one feels, would approve.

Jude - Reelviews Movie Reviews  James Berardinelli

One hallmark of great cinema is that, even when the story is tragic, a viewer can leave the theater both reflective and satisfied. Jude, Michael Winterbottom's ambitious, big-screen adaptation of Thomas Hardy's heartbreaking classic, Jude the Obscure, fits perfectly into that category. This is a film of tremendous scope and emotional depth that uncovers the soul of a novel and brings it to life on the screen.

In every way that matters, Jude is faithful to its print inspiration. The rhythm of some of the dialogue has been changed to make it sound more natural to contemporary viewers, and a number of minor characters have been deleted, but the story arc is rigorously true to Hardy's vision. One of the great strengths of the novel is that it centers on two believable, sympathetic characters. Jude effectively captures not only their humanity, but their uniqueness, fashioning a delicate rapport between them and the audience.

For a widescreen period piece, Jude is surprisingly subtle in presenting its setting. Any time you study the background, you'll be confronted with all the appropriate late-19th century surroundings, but the film is so deeply character-oriented that its easy to forget that we're looking back in time. With one very important exception, there are no scenes designed to specifically highlight time and place.

That lone exception happens early in the film. Young Jude (James Daley) has accompanied his beloved school teacher, Phillotson (Liam Cunningham), to the top of a hill outside his town of Marygreen. Phillotson is traveling to Christminster to become a scholar, and, with Jude by his side to bid him farewell, he points out the distant place, shimmering and gleaming on the horizon like Camelot. This vision becomes a driving force in Jude's life. Though he grows up to be a stone mason by trade, his dream is of scholarship, so he spends long hours studying, hoping eventually to follow Phillotson.

Years later, in the wake of a failed marriage to a pig farmer's daughter (Rachel Griffiths), Jude (now played by Christopher Eccleston) finally journeys to Christminster. And, although he fails in his quest for admission to a university, he meets his beautiful, young cousin, Sue Bridehead (Kate Winslet), a modern woman who refuses to be governed by religious superstitions. As she and Jude spend time together, they fall hopelessly in love. But, because they can never marry, the pressures of society doom their relationship. (In fact, it was Hardy's harsh condemnation of society's intransigence, in addition to his sexual frankness, that caused such a stir when Jude the Obscure first reached the public.)

Jude couldn't have been more perfectly cast. Christopher Eccleston (Shallow Grave) develops Jude as a somewhat naive dreamer who is forever chasing an elusive image of happiness. For a while, that's the existence of a scholar, then, for the bulk of the film, it's a life with Sue. Eccleston gets us to care about Jude, a development that is critical to the film's success. His chemistry with his leading lady, Kate Winslet, is electric. When Phillotson says of Jude and Sue, "Sometimes I think [those] two are one person split in two", we believe him. Their initial sexual encounter is both funny and touching.

For her part, Winslet is luminous. The film makers indicate that they chose her because she's "easy to fall in love with", but the strength of her performance far outstrips her natural charisma. Winslet was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in 1995's Sense and Sensibility; what she does for Sue in Jude is both more sublime and more noteworthy.

Liam Cunningham (A Little Princess) plays Phillotson as a tragic, but never pathetic, figure. Rachel Griffiths, who won international attention and acclaim for her role as Rhonda in Muriel's Wedding, brings a similar zest to Arabella, the partner in Jude's ill-fated marriage. Veteran actress June Whitfield (of the British sit-com Absolutely Fabulous) is delightful as Jude's aging aunt, who's never short of advice.

The emotional intensity of Jude rivals that of films like Carrington and The Remains of the Day. The honesty of the story and the faithfulness of the production are two key factors why. But top notch production values and strong performances aren't the only reasons for Jude's success. More important than even these critical elements is the universality of the sad, unforgettable love story that Thomas Hardy first told, and Michael Winterbottom has so effectively re-interpreted.

Jude - Deep Focus  Bryant Frazer

When Michael Winterbottom's Jude, the film version of Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure, introduces Kate Winslet as Sue Bridehead -- the vexing love of Jude's life -- it does so by sticking a cigarette in her mouth smokestack-style and having her do a turn around the room to the visual tune of Francois Truffaut's Jules and Jim. In this, a movie that struggles to avoid any association with costume drama, it's an emblematic moment of cleverness -- an awareness of the film's cinematic antecedents -- that establishes this as a 19th century fable with some measure of currency.

In this case, the antecedent is a story about falling in love with a decidedly headstrong woman. Jude, by comparison, isn't really a love story, but it is certainly a story about what love can do to you. Winterbottom's smart enough to know that he's making a movie, not just "filming a book," and so his movie is nearly as headstrong as Sue, but far less enticing in its personality. Winterbottom, who made his directorial debut in early 1996 with the little-seen Butterfly Kiss, has streamlined Hardy's pessimistic novel into a skeletal but effective (and little-seen) meditation on the ways that society conspires to keep people in their proper place.

Christopher Eccleston (Shallow Grave) is pretty skeletal himself as Jude, a young man against whom the very stars seem to be aligned. As a young boy he is dazzled by the promise of nearby Christminster when his tutor leaves him to study at university. When a man studies in the big city, he's told, he can be anyone he chooses.

Well, not quite, as Jude sourly observes late in the movie. He decides that his failing is trying to do in a lifetime what usually takes generations -- that is, he's struggled to rise above his humble working-class groundings and he has failed. On the way to learning that lesson, he marries one woman and falls in love with another. He finds that his assiduous study of Latin isn't enough to bury his reputation as a "working man." When he finally does kick propriety to the winds, hooking up with Sue in the expectation of a quiet happiness, he finds that life still cannot proceed apace. Because he and Sue are not married -- and because Sue refuses to pretend that they are -- it's a chore simply to find a landlord who will allow them to move in.

Jude is, in some respect, a failure. The story moves too quickly, and with only facile attention given to establishing motivation and atmosphere. Sometimes the directorial shorthand too glib -- we see Jude's wife outside gutting a pig in graphic detail and then cut to Jude inside, glancing out the window from a pile of books on his desk where he studies the classics. Elsewhere, Winterbottom can't help but telegraph the next level of tragedy to befall poor Jude. Much of Jude is fairly bald melodrama, and I'll admit to stifling several giggles, most notably when Jude's ailing aunt (June Whitfield), disdainful of his conduct in matters of the heart, twists the knife in his gut by calling him a "ninny." Fate is cruel, and to Jude it is the cruelest.

Still, a director runs the risk that such potent material will reduce to overstatement and absurdity on the screen, and because Winterbottom's direction is mostly effective, it's easy to forgive the film's lapses. Jude makes stark, effective use of the wide screen and calls hardly any attention to itself as a period piece. The real subjects of the camera's scrutiny are the people involved, especially the long-faced Jude himself. While Winterbottom is never quite able to infuse this version of Jude with a life of its own -- as illustrated by his resort to the Truffaut reference -- it's obvious that he's a capable and literate director.

The movie becomes most absorbing in its latter section, when Jude and Sue finally find one another. Eccleston's fine portrayal of this most hapless man is the linchpin of the movie's first half, and when Winslet becomes his companion and, eventually, his lover, the two performances begin to orbit one another. Winslet's roles in Heavenly Creatures and Sense and Sensibility were such close kin that it was impossible to tell whether her gifts extended beyond her uncommon charisma, but Jude proves her to be a talent of some range. She solidifies these considerations of love, religion, and denial of the same -- my favorite is Hardy's shrewd observation of what it may take to make an avowed atheist believe in God, and in what ways that can represent a betrayal of our mortal companions.

In the course of heaping scorn and misfortune on its characters -- and especially in the gently raging final scene where Jude makes a stirring declaration of love, independence, and selfhood to absolutely no avail -- Jude does eventually complete its picture of a distasteful 19th century world that remains, perhaps, not entirely transformed over all these years. Perhaps it's the gender-swapped counterpart to The Portrait of a Lady. Jane Campion's movie is surer-footed than Jude, but its carefully ironic loveliness stands in interesting contrast to Jude's equally deliberate and ultimately more illuminating bleakness. While James-cum-Campion elucidates a world where a woman is imprisoned in a hell of her own unwitting making, Hardy-cum-Winterbottom illustrates that, so long as we must make our home among other people, freedom really is an illusion.

Jude  James Kendrick from Q Network

 

Movie Reviews UK   Damian Cannon

 

Review for Jude (1996) - IMDb  Scott Renshaw

 

Review for Jude (1996) - IMDb  Dragan Antulov

 

Review for Jude (1996) - IMDb  Ted Prigge

 

Review for Jude (1996) - IMDb  Steve Rhodes

 

Movie House Commentary  Johnny Web

 

Jude (1996) – The Eclectic Scribe  Steph

 

One Literature Nut: Film Review: Jude (1996)  Becky

 

Jude (1996) : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video  Aaron Beierle

User reviews  from imdb Author: dbdumonteil

User reviews  from imdb Author: Dennis Littrell (dalittrell@yahoo.com) from SoCal

User reviews  from imdb (Page 2) Author: spaamie1 from United States

User reviews  from imdb (Page 2) Author: IridescentTranquility from Lancashire, United Kingdom

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Britmovie

 

JUDE - MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM - Joseph Bennett  production designer website

 

Entertainment Weekly review [B]  Lisa Schwarzbaum

 

Jude Movie Trailer, Reviews and More | TVGuide.com

 

Jude | Variety  Derek Elley

 

BBC - Films - review - Jude  Almar Haflidason

 

Great adaptations: Jude the Obscure - Telegraph  Philip Horne, December 4, 2006

 

Sunday Telegraph [Anne Billson]

 

Washington Post  Desson Howe

 

The Richmond Review

 

Austin Chronicle [Steve Davis]

 

Tucson Weekly [Stacey Richter]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Peter Stack]

 

Jude Movie Review & Film Summary (1996) | Roger Ebert

 

Movie Review - - What's Obscure Is Society In a New Tale of Jude ...  Lawrence Van Gelder from The New York Times

 

Jude (film) - Wikipedia

 

WELCOME TO SARAJEVO                     B                     89

Great Britain  (100 mi)  1997
 
This is a fictionalized account with a news video documentary look, complete with snipers, mass murders, death, torture, and other mayhem, similar to MEDIUM COOL in that they attempt to develop a story within the historical realism.  Some of the power of the obviously brutal reality is lost in this story when it veers to describing what happens to only one child who escapes, rather than the horror of the many who were left behind, and how it is impossible to remain objective in similar circumstances. 

 

IN THIS WORLD                                         B+                   90

Great Britain (88 mi)  2003

 

A pseudo documentary recreating the harrowing journey of two Afghani refugees from Pakistan to London, and much as I hated the trigger-happy, fast-cut editing style, with hardly any shots over 3 to 5 seconds, making the first 30 minutes nearly indecipherable, the power of the dramatic subject matter here is undeniable, authentic, and unique, enough to qualify this as a must see - nearly impossible not to be thinking of this film for some time afterwards. 

 

CODE 46

Great Britain  (93 mi)  2004

 

Code 46  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

A bit like "Winterbottom does Wong Kar-Wai doing 90s Wenders doing Blade Runner," and as such, hopelessly muddled and fundamentally harebrained. But it's certainly not without its pleasures. These are predominantly visual; the film shifts between a handheld, neon-saturated waking-dream look (the love story itself, "the inside") and an Alphavillesque future-city architectonics, rigid modernist buildings cutting figures against the sky in near-isolation (the unforgiving remainder, or as the film terms it, "the outside"). Winterbottom takes a theoretically admirable tack, not spending too much time on exposition and just thrusting us into his futuristic world. Sometimes this strategy hits its mark (especially with the World-English mutt language everyone speaks, initially puzzling a la A Clockwork Orange). But the overall result is a distanced non-engagement with William and Maria (Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton, both quite solid). To call their roles schematic would be misleading, since that implies a dominant plan of attack. In fact, Winterbottom throws a handful of gloppy ideas at the screen (memory, human mutation and alteration, Orwellian megacapitalism, globalization, fate and destiny) and just lets them hang there. A promising first draft, to be sure, but then, to say that 92 minutes are not enough time to adequately explore these issues would be to dodge an unavoidable fact -- that Code 46 has worn out its welcome by the one-hour mark. Still, it's not to be dismissed, and perhaps one of these days, it, Until the End of the World, 2046, Songs From the Second Floor, et al., will all comprise some prescient Rosetta Stone of a hypertext, one that will blindside us all with the sense it suddenly makes.

 

9 SONGS                                                      C+                   77

Great Britain (71 mi)  2004

 

Sex, drugs, and rock n roll get blended into footage of 9 live concert performances by the likes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Franz Ferdinand, Super Furry Animals, and others, each performing before a packed house of enthusiastic fans, utilizing changing lighting and shooting through filters to accentuate the look of concert footage, which, as it turns out, is probably the best part of the film.  In between songs at the club each night, a boy meets a girl, he brings her home, they do lines of coke, and they literally fuck themselves silly over a period of time until the girl leaves.  We learn little to nothing about either one of them.  Basically, that’s the whole film.  In poor taste, there is a brief, but unnecessary, male narration, scenes from Antarctica and attempts to link human progress in the 20th century to fucking in the bedroom, perhaps suggesting music and women, and the experiences therein, remind us of who we are at particular times in our lives.  Personally, I find this a bit preposterous in any kind of meaningful way, but the actual film footage of the sexual encounter “feels” authentic, with full frontal nudity, penetration, but unrealistically features an over-indulgent woman who wants it all the time.  The musical performances were a  welcome relief, but perhaps a bit perfected and idealized, overglossed, much more so than the sex, lacking any moments of spontaneity or even joy, but are perfectly programmed.  My guess is people who like the music will like the film, as sexual imagery to your favorite songs sounds appealing.  What this does as a film, I’m not sure, as much of this seems very amateurish.  Sex begins at 8:30, still pounding away at 8:50, next thing you know they’re climaxing at 8:10.  There were several scenes like this where the time sequences didn’t match a completely unnecessary clock on the wall.  Get rid of it.  Who needs it?  It only messes up the film.  The girl in the film, Margo Stilley, never seems to use her brain and instead seems overly selfish and hyper-sexed, like she lives for several orgasms per day, where the lap dancers appeal to her prurient interests, not the boy friend, where she’d just as soon have a vibrator between her legs than talk to her guy, and where she always wants attention paid to her, every moment of every day.  This grates on one’s sense and sensibility after awhile and you wonder where all this is leading.  Is anything really happening?  As their sexual encounters extend over time, she becomes more dominant and kinky, and can barely control herself.  She mentions she has a thing for sexual violence, that she wants to bust him in the lip, then ties up her lover, but this scene is cut short before anything violent or kinky happens, as I imagine the film, short as it is, never turned out the way it was supposed to, that it is a briefer, somewhat cleaned up, condensed and less raunchy version.  In my view, this is simply an extension of the sexualization of MTV music videos, with a bit of a plot twist to merit being called a film, but it’s not much of one.

 

9 Songs  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

Or 24 Hour Pecker People. So here we have a film that's nothing more than the stunt a cynical festival-goer would expect it to be from the catalogue description, leaving the faces of those of us stupid enough to give Winterbottom the benefit of the doubt smeared not so much with egg as stale, coagulating semen. (It's all protein, in any case.) The big attraction: this sex is "unsimulated"!! But I use those scare-quotes to make a point. Even though a real penis is spending time inside an actual vagina, an honest-to-god mouth, etc., the sex remains a simulacrum. These performers (a male cipher and the most annoying female presence committed to celluloid in eons) are too self-aware to engage in sex that resembles anything anyone who was a real person would actually do. It's too exhibitionistic and calculated, especially the Lisa character's dirty talk, improvised / formulated (who knows?) all too deliberately to surprise us with this uninhibited filthy woman, almost masculine in her Penthouse blatherings. How unexpected and transgressive! But here's the other side of this sad coin. While these performed sex acts are too stagy to connect as documentary reality, they are too self-absorbed and solipsistic to be good porn. These actors are indeed having sex, but they don't know how to display their pleasure for a voyeur, how to open up the private and make a place for us. They're all moaning and writhing and, in the truest example of the actorly cliche, all "in the moment." And so, stranded between the anthropological and the prurient, these scenes accomplish only tedium. Oh, and the 9 songs? The bands are okay (especially Franz Ferdinand and the Von Bondies), but the visual record is exactly the slightly-better-than-bootleg quality you'd get from any MTV crew. Sure to please folks like Jared Sapolin who think concert films should make you feel the sweat of the crowd, but those looking for any level of aesthetic engagement will remain unmoved. [And the next morning, he realized that he totally forgot to mention] When the film isn't feebly fucking or rocking, our male protagonist kindly regales us with endless possibly-symbolically-loaded factoids about Antarctica.

 

Why I made that film | Film | The Guardian  Charlotte Higgins from the Guardian, May 19, 2004

Michael Winterbottom's sexually explicit new film was always going to make headlines. But when its female star said she would rather remain anonymous, Nine Songs had all the ingredients for a media frenzy. Margo Stilley speaks for the first time to Charlotte Higgins

You could, perhaps, have seen it all coming. Or maybe not, if you were a 21-year-old with no significant acting roles to your name. What is clear is that Margo Stilley, the female lead in Michael Winterbottom's film Nine Songs - already famous as the most sexually explicit film in the history of mainstream British cinema - is at the centre of an almighty media ruckus.

On Tuesday, tabloid headlines gleefully announced the arrival of the "Muckiest Film Ever" and the "Rudest Film Ever to Hit Our Cinemas". By yesterday Fleet Street's finest had caught up with friends and family in Stilley's native North Carolina. "Mother of Beauty in 'Real Sex' Film Shocker Prays For Her ... Oh God! Oh God!" trumpeted the Daily Express, on startlingly baroque form. "My Prayers For 'Porn' Daughter" and "Bible Belt Mum's Fear For Her Sex Movie Daughter", were the contributions from the Daily Mirror.

Stilley is plainly shocked by her first encounter with Her Majesty's press. "My mother has even had to call up the school where my little brothers go to ask them not to let people into the school to talk to them. There are guerrilla photographers following my family around. I have managed to get myself into a mess."

Some might say that one would have to be either very brave or very stupid to do what Stilley has done. She has exposed herself in all possible senses of the word. Her genitalia quite literally fill the screen. She gives a blowjob. She is penetrated. She lies on a bed, blindfolded, while her on-screen boyfriend, played by the much more seasoned actor Kieran O'Brien, performs cunnilingus on her. But what she is keen to make clear - and she is absolutely right - is that Nine Songs is not some kind of kinky porno flick.

Winterbottom's idea (whatever its merits and demerits as a concept) was to tell a love story from a single angle: that of the physical encounters between the couple. The sex is a metonym for the rest of the relationship: from it, the audience is led to infer the trajectory of their affair. First comes loved-up infatuation; later, there is a moving sequence when the pair, deeply in love, spend the weekend together at the seaside. Finally, we see a poignant endgame when Lisa, Stilley's character, finds more interest in her vibrator than her boyfriend. "She was 21: beautiful, egotistical, careless and crazy," says O'Brien's character Matt, through whose perspective the love affair is recalled from the desolation of Antarctica, scenes of which frame the narrative. That barren, strangely geometric landscape also serves a metaphorical purpose: "It's claustrophobia and agoraphobia in the same place - like two people in a bed," says Matt at one point. The love story is punctuated by footage of bands performing live, mostly at the Brixton Academy. The visits to gigs, like the sex, serve as remembered punctuation points in the relationship.

"The film shows sex in a good light," says Stilley. "It is a monogamous relationship between two people who are in love. Michael was a perfect candidate for making this film - he makes it beautiful, lovely, sweet, kind, sensitive. I think he's done a very good job of it."

In fact the jolt of the film is seeing sex so forthrightly portrayed, not that it shows anything that one imagines most couples don't do behind closed doors. "It isn't shocking," says Stilley. "If you know you are going to watch a film like this, it's not abrasive. It's normal sex that everyone has, not crazy stuff." She also points out that only two episodes go beyond "normal" cinematic sex scenes (though the film is extremely explicit, by any standards). These are the fellatio scene and the final sequence, in which the couple have full penetrative sex. "I dealt with them as best I could," says Stilley. "I expect Kieran did the same."

The process of filming, according to Stilley, was "very easy to cope with", though it's hard to imagine that many women would willingly put themselves in her shoes (or, as in one scene, spike-heel thigh-length boots). After the casting, there was an initial rehearsal. "We rented a hotel room as a studio and did some speaking scenes. There was no sex. It was just a screen test. It was very professional." Winterbottom is also keen to point out that there was every chance at this stage for either of the actors to pull out. "Both Kieran and Margo made a very difficult choice," he says.

Winterbottom had conceived of a shape for the story but much of the script was worked out collaboratively. "We had a strong sense of our characters and we all wrote the scenes together," says Stilley. The process was film for eight days, and have 10 days off, after which the team would come together for discussions. It was a closed set, involving just the two cast members, Winterbottom, a cameraman and a sound man. Despite being the solitary woman in this setup, Stilley says, "Our crew was incredibly respectful and professional. I never felt uncomfortable because they were there."

So were the - literally - bare facts of Winterbottom's film enough to trigger a media storm or was there another ingredient that helped set fourth estate pulses racing. Winterbottom suggests that the Guardian - actually, I personally - was partly responsible because we reported (without naming her) Stilley's request that her name be removed from coverage of the film. By drawing attention to her decision, and thus implying that there was a bit of a mystery, we encouraged salivation from other quarters, he suggests. Perhaps he's right. Stilley, in turn, thinks it's her fault. Of the media coverage, she says: "I'm surprised, and even more by the fact that I've brought most of it on myself."

Should Winterbottom, an established director with numerous credits to his name and a high public profile, have foreseen the fuss the film would inevitably generate and done more to protect the relatively inexperienced Stilley? Or is she - as Winterbottom implies - a grown-up who can make her own decisions? "I am having a really hard time reading what's going on," she says. "I'm not sure people are taking an interest because I chose to remove my name, or because I haven't done any roles before. At the moment I can't really see the wood from the trees."

Regardless of the critical reception of the movie, it will certainly - if and when it gets a certificate - push back the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable in the cinema. Time will also tell whether the quality of the movie justifies its uncomfortable fallout for its female lead. It will certainly take its place in film history.

Stilley will also take hers: but as what? As just "the girl who was in the sex film"? Where does this leave her: will the notoriety of the role dog her career endlessly? Plucked out of obscurity to make the movie, and now the unwilling quarry of a media on the hunt, she is none the less determined. "I am an actress. I was an actress in this movie. And I have every intention of carrying on." She delivers a brave and professional performance in Nine Songs, and Winterbottom said yesterday that he will be casting her in his next film. He also asked me, "Is Marlon Brando just the man who was in Last Tango In Paris?" The answer, of course, is no. But then Marlon Brando wasn't a 21-year-old without a history of famous roles to his name. Nor is he a woman.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Film of the Month: 9 Songs (2004)  Linda Ruth Williams from Sight and Sound, April 2005  

Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs delivers sex and rock 'n' roll from the wastes of Antarctica. But does the earth move

Is 9 Songs British cinema's answer to Nine 1/2 Weeks ? A relationship is born, flourishes, then wanes over a period of a few months; its protagonists engage in a variety of experimental sex acts; these erotic set-pieces are punctuated by parallel sequences in the 'real world'. But instead of Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger we have here Kieran O'Brien and newcomer Margo Stilley, and in place of a Hollywood unusually intent on shocking the malls we're in the territory of a strand of contemporary European cinema that's increasingly comfortable with sexually explicit content. Both films push the envelope of what was or is considered acceptable at the moment of their release, though Adrian Lyne's slick 1985 movie seems coy and tame set against the frank shenanigans of Michael Winterbottom's latest effort. 9 Songs is also the most recent tabloid target for the "UK's most explicit ever film" label, garnering notoriety since its airing at Cannes in 2004 and the BBFC's decision to pass it, uncut, for an 18 Certificate. The board may yet regret the decision – though often today's shock-flick all too quickly becomes yesterday's seen-it-all-before bore. 9 Songs is certainly a cinematic oddity, a pop-punctuated romance with the pink shots left in.

There has long been speculation about whether the next step for mainstream cinematic sex will be the moment when a household-name star 'does it for real' for the cameras (augmented by rumours of established stars' pre-fame porno shoots). There are some precedents: the sex between porn icon Rocco Siffredi and actress Caroline Ducey in Catherine Breillat's Romance appears real enough, while Chloë Sevigny fellating Vincent Gallo in his ill-fated The Brown Bunny or Kerry Fox fellating Mark Rylance in Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy leave little room for doubt. The sporadic hardcore action in Despentes/Trinh Thi's Baise-moi may also have paved the way for what 9 Songs can get away with. And while O'Brien and Stilley are hardly household names, they do class themselves as actors rather than porn stars (O'Brien has appeared in such Brit-TV stalwarts as Coronation Street and Children's Ward, and is becoming a Winterbottom regular, soon to be seen in Tristram Shandy).

The shock value of 9 Songs lies in the sheer vérité of the spectacles laid out, scene by scene, as the relationship unfolds. If hardcore is defined through a checklist of acts, here we have nearly the full house of heterosexual hits: ejaculation shots, fellatio and cunnilingus, vaginal penetration (though, unusually, condoms are ever-present). And unlike in its predecessors, where the sex is momentary, here it takes up most of the screen time between the titular tunes. Whether it titillates is another matter – some may feel there's just too much, drowning the erotic tingle. Or perhaps the handheld artfulness ensures that any frisson is smothered by too-serious intentions. Some, like me, may simply find couple Matt and Lisa too annoying to get caught up in their heat.

One problem is 9 Songs' approach to its heroine. There may be equal-opportunities nudity here (erections as well as labia), but there's still something stereotypical about the way Lisa's pleasure is conveyed, whether she's pictured dancing for her man or tossing back her head in exquisite ecstasy. To make matters worse, these tired mechanisms for framing female abandon are accompanied by a voiceover that celebrates her wild-child qualities ("She was 21 – beautiful, egotistical, careless, and crazy"). We may see more of Lisa than of her European female predecessors – from Maria Schneider in Last Tango in Paris and Béatrice Dalle in Betty Blue to Emmanuelle Seigner in Bitter Moon – but this only heightens a sense of essentially sexualised girl-womanhood: even her irritating capriciousness reinforces an impression of girl-can't-help-it eroticism. And her disillusion with Matt is signalled by an increased interest in her vibrator – as if female sexual autonomy, as for Freud and a whole patriarchal history before him, is a bad sign (evoking the worrying possibility that second-wave feminism had no effect).

Admittedly, since the whole film is drawn from Matt's memories, this is woman as remembered by a man, and as directed by another man, though it would be churlish to blame it all on the male gaze, especially as Winterbottom's profile doesn't lend itself to such gender pigeonholing. A prolific maverick, he has produced films whose sheer diversity may be the only preparation for the unexpectedness of 9 Songs: from the austere misery of Jude through the perfectly pitched period piece 24 Hour Party People to the ponderous sci-fi of Code 46, Winterbottom can at least be relied on never to do the same thing twice.

9 Songs' curious mix of live concert footage and explicit sex makes sense in the context of its flashback structure: sex and songs shape our memories. As Matt looks back at the liaison from the icy wastes of his new job in Antarctica, his ponderous voiceover draws parallels between his frozen present and the warmth of his past ("Claustrophobia and agoraphobia in the same place," he says, snow-bound, "like two people in a bed"). His observation that the Antarctic is "a place where no man had been until the 20th century" seems to position Lisa as a denizen of Freud's dark continent of female sexuality. But 9 Songs is also an attempt to reflect on the way memories are imprintedon our bodies, ensuring we cannot easily let go of our sexual past, however painful. Matt says it is Lisa's smell and taste he remembers, and these lipstick traces don't rub off cleanly.

Cerebral as these reflections might be, 9 Songs will almost certainly be received as yards of 'smut' wrapped up in an elaborate arthouse box. In which case it's a shame the central device of having the concert footage comment on the stages of the relationship is so laboured. In themselves the '9 songs' of the title – musical moments from gigs the couple attend – are fine sequences of pop footage, featuring the cream of the contemporary UK music scene: Super Furry Animals, Elbow, Franz Ferdinand. But their elucidation of the romance is simplistic at best: Primal Scream's anthemic 'Movin' on up' does service for the relationship in ascendance ("You made a believer out of me") while Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's 'Love Burns' illustrates Matt's feelings about Lisa's departure ("Never thought I'd see her go away... Now she's gone love burns"). This is emotional semaphore: the songs tell the tale of love waxing and waning through a simple set of coded signals while the sex plays out as a pantomime of bodies unburdened by psychic complexity. And ne'er the twain shall meet.    

Less Than Transgressive [9 SONGS] | Jonathan Rosenbaum  Jonathan Rosenbaum, August 26, 2005

            

TRISTRAM SHANDY:  A COCK AND BULL STORY             B                     86

Great Britain  (94 mi)  2006

 

An innovative stab at a rare literary work, Laurence Sterne’s 1753 novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, “a masterwork of postmodernism before there was any modernism to be post,” considered by many to be the best of all avant-garde novels, much of it gags and jokes about injury done to the most private part of the male anatomy, reconfigured here as something of a Pythonesque hilarious haphazard mess, similar perhaps to Fassbinder’s BEWARE A HOLY WHORE, as it reveals mayhem on the set of the making of the movie.  Steve Coogan plays a pompous ass in each of his multiple roles, as the befuddled Tristram as well as his overly logical father, relegating fatherhood to a documentation of encyclopedic notations for his son, opening and closing the film with face to face barbs with fellow actor Rob Brydon, each whining and complaining that the other has too big a part in the movie.  In a film like this, based on a novel that continuously breaks character, digressing into God knows what direction, some of it works and is hilariously memorable, such as the scenes leading to the birth of the baby (Tristram), where the doctor is called, only to have detailed maps pulled out in order to discuss some forgettable battle scene that was forgotten eons ago, but has family relevance, as it pertains to the title, while the mother of the about-to-be-born child is screaming to the high heavens and duly ignored by all, while much of the actor to actor scenes mulling about the set, as Coogan is continuously pulled from one scene to the next while attempting to find a spare moment for his lovely girl friend and newborn baby, these grow tiresome after awhile, as nothing really happens.  Coogan’s production assistant, Naomie Harris, is perhaps the freshest thing in the film, attempting to seduce her boss in the middle of a battle scene with the poetic words, “Let’s fuck,” while in other moments describing the wonders of Bresson and Fassbinder, to which the other actors reply, “What’s gotten into her?”  In another over the top moment, after a night of drinking, trying to salvage what appears to be a sinking movie effort, to the sounds of Nino Rota’s Fellini soundtrack music, the production team calls Gillian Anderson in the middle of the night in triple screen images, fly her to the set, film an exquisite scene where she attempts to examine the suspect merchandise, only in the end to cut her out of the movie.  The film ends with Brydon and Coogan trading Al Pacino impersonations.  All in all, it’s a bit too uneven, filmed as a costume drama gone adrift, aimlessly wandering in every which direction, which is perhaps in the spirit of the book, unlikability factor kicks in after awhile, as we grow very tired of these loathsome men, and the film has that dreadfully dull video look to it, which allows this director to churn out films with amazing frequency.   
 
PDF SAMPLE   Chaos Theory: Michael Winterbottom on Tristram Shandy, by Adam Nayman (pdf) from Cinema Scope    

 

THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO              B                     84

Great Britain  2006  co-dir:  Matt Whitecross

 

Once more, leave it to Michael Winterbottom to put his finger on a hot button issue.  Initially, the first reference to this film was seeing the trailers playing in movie theaters, which was a shocking mix next to the Hollywood stylized gimmickry and artificial violence, and then, boom – THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO, which is laced in realism with these searing images of men in orange jump suits wearing black hoods over their heads, all handcuffed, arranged in rows, where they are serving their penance for being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time – Guantanamo, the one subject that remains hands off to reporters and the American public.  Inspired by true events, but filmed in an unflinching, fictionalized documentary style, using non-professional actors, Winterbottom allows his camera to linger well beyond the point many others might pull away, offering the viewer full access to the secret inside operations of the hideously grotesque concentration camp run by the U.S. military.  However, even though Guantanamo is completely off limits to any press, it’s clear that even an intelligent, well-crafted recreation is no substitute for the real thing.
 
We are first introduced to a couple of knuckleheads wearing GAP attire, four young Pakistani friends from England who are convinced by one of them to come along to Pakistan, presumably so one of them can find a bride.  Curious about their Muslim heritage, perhaps interested for humanitarian reasons, believing these are their brothers, they explore the landscape, which leads them into Afghanistan during the American’s initial invasion to rid the nation of the Taliban, which were still controlling the country.  These guys watched the night sky ablaze with gunfire and were impressed by the visuals.  Apparently, the thought never occurred to them to turn around and head the other way.  Taking a long 12-hour truck ride through Kandahar to Kabul, one of them gets lost en route and is never seen again, another is sick the whole way, and once they arrive in Kunduz, it turns out to be the site of ferocious fighting between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban, where dead bodies were left scattered all over the road.  Eventually these guys are hauled into prison camps, placed in closed containers en route where most died from heat asphyxiation.  The survivors are beaten and interrogated, flown to prison camps in the South before having their heads shaved bald, given orange jump suits, their hands handcuffed behind them, black hoods placed over their heads and they’re flown to Guantanamo, where they’re brutalized still further. 

 

The graphic imagery only grows more gruesome and intense, as the American military brutalizes and tortures every single one of them during individualized interrogation sessions, asking the same idiotic questions, browbeating them into making a confession about what they know of al Qaeda.  In one session, if it wasn’t true it would be comically ridiculous, men are chained to the ground in a squat position as screeching heavy metal music cranks up for a few hours as strobe lights shine in their faces.  But the torture only grows more brutal as the men are accused of being al Qaeda recruits, where they are told over and over again that they are al Qaeda, beaten repeatedly to obtain a confession, and if by unfortunate circumstances they succumb, they’ll never see the light of day again.  But these guys weren’t even in the country when the interrogators supposedly had footage of them attending a bin Laden rally, and were miraculously saved by British prison documents which verified at the time they were participating in a prison work release program.  Despite this evidence which was obtained after two years of on-going torture, they remained at Guantanamo for another 3 months, but the severity of their punishment changed instantly, becoming celebrity rock stars, as they were given all they food they wanted, and were allowed to see movies every Sunday night.  But they, and all the rest of the prisoners, endured inexplicable abuse that continues to this day and is completely out of the public’s eye.  In that sense, the film is a jarring eye-opener, as had they not been freed, this film would never have been made.  
 
One must suspend all reason to believe these guys are as completely innocent as they’re portrayed here.  But in the film, they’re completely apolitical, similar, in fact, to the recent Argentine film CHRONICLE OF AN ESCAPE, which was also based on a true story of a completely apolitical professional soccer player who was kidnapped as a suspected leftist and brutally tortured by a Para-military wing of the Argentine government back in the late 70’s.  In that film, a fellow prisoner confessed his name under torture just to get them to stop, which reveals a valid truth about the accuracy of information received under torture.  But in this film, these guys never offer an opinion about the war, or offer any political view, but we are to believe they just happened to be innocently wandering around a war zone?  Strange indeed, however, they’re certainly not enemy fighters, and more importantly, even if they were, unless they had direct knowledge of a terrorist attack, does anyone deserve to be treated this way?  Of the 750 prisoners in Guantanamo, some 250 have been transferred or released, and as of the date the film was released, only 10 have actually been charged as “enemy combatants.”    

 

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

Michael Winterbottom is a filmmaker of impulses. The past year has seen two other works from him, the art-house porno 9 Songs and the skittering mock-adaptation Tristan Shandy, and, despite the strenuously heterogeneous quality of the director's oeuvre, motifs are emerging -- slapdash cutting and framing, as if bothering to compose a shot might squeeze the manic life out of the material, plus an interest in volatile spots (Welcome to Sarajevo and In This World are among this restless traveler's itineraries) and a promiscuous mingling of the staged and the documented. Not content to merely deal with what looks like a mountain of ad-libbed footage (his usual production assistant, Mat Whitecross, gets credit as co-director), Winterbottom mixes straight-to-camera interviews with the real-life people (Asif Iqbal, Ruhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul) with the (nonprofessional) actors playing them throughout their Gitmo ordeal. Footage from BBC and Al-Jazeera punctuates the narrative, Bush points out these are "bad people," Rumsfeld deems interrogative brutalization "for the most part" consistent with the Geneva Convention; meanwhile, Winterbottom's Wrong Men endure kennel cells, humiliation, Koran-stomping, brutally imbecilic inquiries ("You're Al-Qaeda!" "No." Punch to the head. "You're Al-Qaeda!" "No." Punch to the head). The director's slovenliness is a torture device of its own, but the grueling point is well taken -- their ordeal is the audience's, a raw work to be endured (and remembered) as a taste of horrors done in their name.

Stuart Klawans | The Nation

A prisoner squats in the darkness of his cell, cowering under an assault of strobe lights and screeching music. You sit in the darkness of a theater, your imagination ripped open by flickering lights and a soundtrack mix. An interrogator makes up a cover identity for himself, tosses out misleading information, rattles his suspect with evidentiary photos that may not prove anything. A feature filmmaker invents characters, stretches truth to fit the plot, patches in news footage without regard to the original context (or shoots fictional scenes and makes them seem documentary).

Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges here--or grenades to pineapples. But on the formal level at least, Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross's The Road to Guantánamo mimics the actions of its most shadowy characters: the American officials who held captive and brutalized three young British men, all of Pakistani background, on the grounds that they were (as George W. Bush says) "bad people."

Since I greatly admire The Road to Guantánamo and hope millions of people will see it, I'd better be able to justify its use of the always dubious techniques of docudrama. So, to establish a base level of reality, I begin with a question: In what did the alleged badness of Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul consist? Here are the facts of the case of the Tipton Three, as you may learn from sources such as the Center for Constitutional Rights.

In September 2001, shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, 19-year-old Asif left his home in Tipton, outside Birmingham, and flew to Pakistan to prepare for his impending wedding. His friends Rhuhel and Shafiq soon joined him on vacation, along with a fourth buddy named Monir (later lost on the road and presumed dead). Though not unusually devout, the young men were religious enough to visit a mosque while knocking about Karachi; and there they heard, and responded to, an imam's call to support their fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, which was then facing American invasion.

It is not clear to me, either from my reading or from the film, what exactly Asif, Rhuhel and Shafiq thought they might do in Afghanistan: fight against the Americans, provide humanitarian aid or just look around. Considering their youth and history of recklessness (we'll get to that), they may not have had any clear idea themselves. What we do know, with reasonable certainty, is that they crossed the border, quickly realized they'd ventured into a scene of diarrhea-inducing chaos and then (once the bombs started to drop) discovered they had no sure way to leave. After a week or so, the swirl of events carried them from Kabul to the Taliban outpost of Kunduz. There, amid a horde of men surrendering to Northern Alliance forces, they were put onto a hellish transport to Shebargan Prison.

After that, things turned ugly. In late December 2001 US forces took possession of Asif, Rhuhel and Shafiq, who by mid-February 2002 were living in chain-link cages in Guantánamo, at Camp X-Ray. At its core, The Road to Guantánamo is a dramatization of the treatment the men claim to have received there, and subsequently at Camp Delta, from which they were at last released into British custody in March 2004. For more than two years, they had been kept imprisoned without any legal process, to be endlessly interrogated and (by any meaningful definition of the word) tortured--first on the possibility that they might know something about Al Qaeda, and then on the assumption that they were themselves Al Qaeda members. We may gauge the baselessness of these suspicions from the fact that the three are not still shut up in Camp Delta.

And what of the possibility that they'd wanted to take up weapons with the Taliban? We may judge the seriousness of that scenario by the fact that British authorities held Asif, Rhuhel and Shafiq for just one day of questioning in London before releasing them, without charges, back into the general population of Tipton.

So much for the facts. Now for the movie.

The Road to Guantánamo entwines three kinds of narration. The first consists of testimonies given straight into the camera by Asif, Rhuhel and Shafiq. They are in their mid-20s now, robust and bearded (the latter two in the flowing style of the pious). All three speak with quiet self-assurance, laughing incredulously more often than voicing anger--though you'll notice that Asif's eyes no longer work together well.

The film's second narrative strand is a dramatization of these testimonies, shot in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran and featuring previously untried young performers (Rizwan Ahmed, Farhad Harun, Waqar Siddiqui and Arfan Usman) playing the principal roles. These boyish actors, though thoroughly convincing, look nothing like the men you see in the interviews; and so the film subtly marks their scenes as re-creations, despite the immediacy and intensity of these episodes--the jostling market crowds and jouncing buses, the swarms of flies, the shiny new six-foot-square cages.

In style, these parts of the movie recall Winterbottom's remarkable 2002 film In This World, which re-created the journey of an Afghan boy, Jamal Udin Torabi, from a refugee camp in Pakistan to the streets of London. The probings and dartings of the hand-held camera, the unsettling rhythms of the editing, keep you caught up physically in the scenes, which tend to emphasize corporeal experience: how the characters washed, what they ate, where they went to the toilet. But for all that, you may remark during the episodes at Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta that you're not witnessing events but watching a reconstruction of them, based on the inmates' memories. You may wonder: Did the guards force prisoners to kneel in just this way, eating gravel while presenting their buttocks? When a five-man team in riot gear came to seize someone, did they quick-step as you see here, single-file, so they looked like a giant black caterpillar? We'll probably never know; the Guantánamo manual of procedure is not likely to be published. These visceral realizations may therefore be the closest we'll come to the truth, even though they are, admittedly, just realizations.

So The Road to Guantánamo establishes an implied distance between its fictionalizations and the facts--a distance that meanwhile keeps collapsing, due to the film's third type of narration: clips of news footage, and studio-produced voiceovers made to sound like a reporter's off-camera commentary. This material is the glue of the movie, sticking scenes together with a layer of information or a gloss of authenticity. The reportage, both fake and real, thickens the emotion (as does the film's other glue, the soundtrack music, which is the usual Winterbottom minimalism--like "Adagio for Strings" boiled down to syrup). It also adds a weight of objectivity to whatever you're seeing, no matter how subjective the underlying source.

Now, I don't have any problem with this approach--but then, neither am I the sort of person who denies that something awful has been going on at Guantánamo. Those who prefer to believe (despite all evidence to the contrary) that the abuses are minor and necessary--that Guantánamo holds only terrorists and their allies, who are treated no more roughly than they must be--may seize on Winterbottom and Whitecross's double game as an excuse to dismiss the whole movie. These critics (I'm sure they're out there) will insist this docudrama is culpable on both the formal and ethical levels.

Do the ends justify the means? That depends, I suppose, not only on the nature of the ends but on whether the means have a chance of achieving them. From documented facts, rather than docudrama, we know that the means used at Guantánamo, besides being repugnant in themselves, are wildly unlikely to deter the world's terrorists. By contrast, the means used in The Road to Guantánamo are both artful and effective.

Besides, if The Road to Guantánamo may be compared to an interrogator because of the tricks it practices--playing on the audience's suggestibility, for example, by compiling battle scenes out of a handful of night-scope images and a whole lot of sound effects--so too might it be likened in shadiness to the Tipton Three themselves. The young men's salvation, it turned out, was their history of run-ins with the law. "The police were our alibi," one of the men says with satisfaction, noting that he'd been reporting to his probation officer during the whole period when supposedly--so the interrogators said--he'd been off training in an Al Qaeda camp. It's possible for a well-timed misdemeanor to clear you of a hanging offense; and a bit of directorial fudging sometimes can make a film more rather than less ethical.

Winterbottom and Whitecross went to extraordinary lengths to tell the story of the Tipton Three, hauling their crew on a long, risky, dusty journey. That's the adventurous part, which made this production a road movie for the subjects and filmmakers alike. The defiant part has to do with a sense of quiet outrage that runs through the picture. Some of this tone comes from Asif, Rhuhel and Shafiq themselves, but some also comes from the filmmakers' clear determination to do justice to their story.

It's a story that goes far beyond the immediate characters. As Winterbottom and Whitecross show, the Tipton Three were kept at Guantánamo long after it had become obvious that they had no connection to terrorists. How many others, then, are still imprisoned, even though the jailers know they're guiltless? How many remain caged, or shut up in solitary confinement cells, only because the authorities don't want to admit they shouldn't have been kept at all?

Until we get an accounting, let's be grateful we've got the docudrama.

Review: The Road to Guantanamo - Film Comment  Paul Arthur, May/June 2006

Cinematic realism embraces an abundance of styles and production methods; Michael Winterbottom seems determined to try them all. In a lightning 10-year run, he has explored gritty period adaptation (Jude), torn-from-the-headlines dramatic exposé (Welcome to Sarajevo), kitchen-sink minimalism (Wonderland), classical neorealist tearjerker featuring amateur performers navigating real-life locales (In This World), and a faux making-of documentary (Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story). His latest version of the volatile marriage between fiction and nonfiction, The Road to Guantanamo, alternates talking-head monologues by three ill-fated Pakistani guys from the British Midlands with ultra-convincing reenactments-starring raw players of similar background-of their horrific two-year incarceration in America's notorious prison camp for "enemy combatants" seized during the invasion of Afghanistan.

The story of the Tipton Three, a cause that generated considerable outrage in the U.K. but scarcely registered on our increasingly insular mediascape, opens like a slacker road movie: frat boys in the hinterlands, or Dumb and Dumber with skullcaps. Immediately after 9/11, Asif Iqbal (Arfan Usman) heads for rural Pakistan to check out the bride arranged by his mother. He convinces three friends to go with him and, hanging around in their homeland, they casually follow the injunction of a local mullah-at whose mosque they stay to "save money"-intent on aiding neighboring Afghans under attack by the U.S. Thus begins a trip to hell. Asif, Shafiq (Rizwan Ahmed), Ruhel (Farhad Harun), and Monir (Waqar Siddiqui) are shown as observant Muslims, twenty-something charmers completely detached from the religious and political fevers motivating, say, the London subway bombers. Indeed, despite a global tumult around 9/11 and the Blair regime's support for military intervention, we hear nary a word concerning their thoughts or reactions to cataclysmic events exploding around them.

Naive travelers to a fault, they lurch from one place to the next, get sick, get lost, leave a buddy behind, find themselves bivouacked with Taliban fighters in a dusty village, and are swept up by Northern Alliance forces. After a brief stopover for random abuse at an Afghan detention center, they are flown to Cuba. Winterbottom wraps up this wrenching journey in under 30 minutes, then spends the rest of the film presenting matter-of-fact oral testimony backed by excruciatingly detailed, visually overheated scenes of physical and psychological torture, interrupted only by moronic interrogation sessions. Like a cross between Punishment Park and Midnight Express, the pummeling endured by the victims is mirrored metaphorically in the film's jolting rhythms, quick cuts, and disorienting handheld movements. Shot in dv by resourceful cinematographer Marcel Zyskind, Guantanamo has the spontaneous look of eyewitness news footage hammered into blatantly fictional patterns of camera placement, editing, and so on. That is, while we can hardly doubt the veracity of what unfolds-it certainly comports with what we've seen and read of conditions at Gitmo-we also feel Winterbottom squeezing our vital organs of empathy in a stylistic vise. In one scene, Asif is chained to the floor in a stress position and assailed with a strobe light and heavy metal music, an image so culturally loaded it could have been lifted from the director's 24 Hour Party People or 9 Songs. As is true of Asif and company, the heavier the hand, the greater the potential for resistance.

If Winterbottom's primary aim was to personalize, to flesh out, as it were, an important episode in the ongoing barbarism of Bush administration foreign policy, he succeeds admirably: no longer can we relegate reports of prisoner abuse to a list of abstract numbers, faceless photos, or Orwellian parsings of the Geneva Conventions. That said, Winterbottom may have needlessly stacked his rhetorical deck. Documenting a reign of torture far worse than anything claimed thus far at Gitmo, Patricio Guzmán, in The Pinochet Case, concentrates on long-take close shots of survivors giving accounts of torture. Here the absence of archival footage or reenactments forces a deliberately uncomfortable bond with events that are essentially beyond adequate representation.

Winterbottom's hybrid mix of fact and drama is at once vaguely familiar and imbued with troubling ethical issues. At the heart of my misgivings is his dodging of any reference to the attitudes of the Tipton Three toward 9/11 or American responses to the attack. By implying that his recent immigrants are unequivocally apolitical, that their adventures in Afghanistan were the result of idle curiosity, Winterbottom does his theme a disservice. Needless to say, it shouldn't matter whether the subjects spent every waking minute in a public square screaming "Death to America" and for relaxation told anyone within earshot how many infidel throats they planned to slit. Assuming they weren't part of Osama's inner circle or had direct knowledge of an imminent terror attack, they deserved basic human rights supposedly guaranteed by our system of justice. By making the easiest case for injustice-touting three enormously appealing fellows who wouldn't know Osama from Barack Obama-Winterbottom sidesteps obligations associated with documentary filmmaking in favor of blazing agitprop.

Incidentally, after The Road to Guantanamo won a Silver Bear at this year's Berlin festival, the three friends and assorted cast members were questioned by police at a London airport upon their return. One of the actors said he was denied access to a lawyer and was badgered about future roles in "political" films. You can't make stuff like this up.

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A MIGHTY HEART

USA  (108 mi)  2007

 

A Mighty Heart | Review | Screen  Allan Hunter from Screendaily

Michael Winterbottom has become a master at relating dramatic true stories in a documentary style. He brings a typical intelligence and urgency to A Mighty Heart, the 2002 case of the kidnap and execution of American journalist Daniel Pearl.

The star casting of Angelina Jolie as Pearl's wife Mariane proves to be no stunt and is mutually beneficial to both film and performer. Jolie's presence will inevitably lift the profile of the picture whilst the role is the most rewarding that she has tackled since her Oscar-winning performance in Girl, Interrupted in 2000. Any distributor still has to face the challenge of generating an audience for a political thriller where the events are comparatively recent and the outcome is known. A Mighty Heart is smart enough and moving enough to make that a real possibility and should deliver the prolific Winterbottom the biggest audience of his career.

A journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearl (Futterman) was respected for his integrity and desire to tease out a balanced truth from the muddy complexities of global politics. In 2002, he was in Pakistan with his wife Mariane (Jolie) who was expecting their first child. One January day in Karachi he left for a meeting related to a story on the shoe bomber Richard Reid. He never returned and the bulk of the film is a dramatisation of all the efforts that went into discovering his fate and trying to secure his safe release when it was found that he had been kidnapped by a Pakistani group seeking better treatment for hostages held at Guantanamo Bay.

A Mighty Heart does a fine job of making a relatively complicated story approachable. Lies and half-truths fight for acceptance as claims are made that Pearl worked for the CIA or Mossad or even the Indian secret service. The politics of his kidnapping are paramount but are balanced by the personal story of what is at stake for his wife. Flashbacks are effectively and economically used to sketch in the couple's warm relationships and happy memories. The editing ensures an unshowy flow to the narrative and the decision to shoot on the actual locations in Pakistan pays dividends, fulfilling the age-old cliché of making Karachi seem like another character within the story.

The film is also extremely well cast. Angelina Jolie blends into the ensemble, beautifully underplaying her role, sustaining the flawless accent of the French-born Mariane and conveying the dignified spirit of the woman. It is a performance that could bring her some awards attention and one that never overbalances a film filled with strong supporting performances, most notably Archie Panjabi as Mariane's friend Asra and Irrfan Khan who lends great authority to the role of the resolute investigator Captain who was so determined to find Pearl and secure his release.

Mighty Hearts and Dark Deeds   Richard and Mary Corliss from Time magazine

A stately, sexy movie star will walk up the red-carpeted steps of the Cannes Palace this evening, when Angelina Jolie graces the official world premiere screening of A Mighty Heart. Her partner will be here too; Brad Pitt is one of the film's producers.

The film, directed by Michael Winterbottom, dramatizes the relationship of two journalists: Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman) and his Franco-Cuban wife Mariane (Jolie), a freelancer for French TV, who's five months pregnant with a child Danny wants to call Adam. While researching a story on the shoe-bomber Richard Reid, Danny was abducted by Islamic radicals. Five anguished weeks later, Mariane learned that he had been brutally slaughtered. The film is based on Mariane's memoir, A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl, which she wrote to explain her husband to her infant son. Winterbottom is a past master at lending the traditional story-telling format to real stories of the modern world at war. Welcome to Sarajevo, In This World and The Road to Guantanamo all mixed documentary footage with either fictional scenes played by professional actors or reenactments by the actual participants. A Mighty Heart is a more straightforward docudrama, following the horrific tick-tock of Mariane's ordeal. As played by Jolie, she is a demanding, nails-tough woman, while Futterman's Danny is more easy-going but no less tenacious at his job — a good reporter, and a mensch.

There's inherent drama in the coiling of tension as Mariane and a host of Pakistani and American officials track down clues about those involved in leading Danny into the hands of his murderers. This is essentially a police procedural, an accretion of small, agonizing details, rather like the recent Zodiac, which opened in the U.S. in March and is being shown in competition here. And since anyone interested in seeing A Mighty Heart is likely to know the awful outcome, the film also has an inherent lack of drama, despite Jolie's commitment to the project and her occasionally volcanic histrionics. The interest, such as there is, comes from seeing how the authorities manage to elicit the evidence (sometimes by torture), and how so many Pakistanis are implicated in the crime, at least by their sympathy with the jihadists.

The true impact of the film is outside it. Journalists are imperiled as never before; the number of reporters killed in action has reached dreadful heights, as the war zone is expanded from the old-time battlefields to nearly any location where a newsman and an Islamo-fascist might collide. (The BBC's Alan Johnson, missing for seven weeks, is only the latest kidnap victim of Muslim extremists.) Killing the messenger has become a major mission, a prime sport, among the politically and religiously deranged.

We film critics call ourselves journalists, though we can't be killed for it; the only danger in our line of work is getting bored or disappointed as we watch a movie. But we can respond to the palpable threat to our better, braver colleagues — those determined to bring the most important stories to their readers and viewers. Their gift is precious; the price they pay for it may be their lives.

As worthy as A Mighty Heart is, it can't compete as riveting drama with Terror's Advocate, the Barbet Schroeder documentary also showing in Cannes. Like Winterbottom, but long before him, Schroeder has compiled an imposing resume of fiction films (Barfly, Reversal of Fortune, Single White Female, Murder by Numbers) and documentaries (General Idi Amin Dada and Koko, a Talking Gorilla). His new non-fiction study is a biography of Jacques Vergès, a lawyer who defended some of the most infamous activists of the 20th century, from the terrorist Carlos the Jackal to the Nazi executioner Klaus Barbie.

Born in Thailand, Vergès fought in the French Resistance before becoming a lawyer, defending Communist students who protested the departure of French soldiers to the Algierian war. In Algeria he took up the case of Djamila Bohired, the anti-colonial bomber of cafés. After he won her freedom, they married and had two children. He then vanished for eight years, returning to become the lawyer of choice for terrorists — or freedom fighters? — from Europe and the Middle East. ("Today's Palestinian," he says, "is yesterday's Algerian.") Some of these participants speak fondly onscreen of their advocate and their mutual ideology. Asked if he would defend Hitler, Vergès replies, "I would even defend Bush! Of course, first he'd have to admit his guilt."

Part of the film's fascination, at least to those unfamiliar with Vergès, is its novelty; the story is fresh, epic, and challenging to all preconceptions about the use of violence for political purposes. To what extent, Schroeder asks, do individuals practice terrorism and countries practice military diplomacy, when both actions end in the deaths of dozens, or millions, of innocents? The filmmaker has no easy answers; no answers at all; and that moral dilemma hangs over the viewer of Terror's Advocate long after the specific horrors of A Mighty Heart will have receded into the mists of docudrama.

THE KILLER INSIDE ME

USA  (109 mi)  2010

 

Michael Winterbottom finds the killer inside Jim Thompson  John Patterson fom The Guardian, May 29, 2010

Finally, someone gets Jim Thompson just right, and still nobody's happy. I'm surely not alone in thinking that the crime writer's violent, nihilistic essence has never arrived on the screen unalloyed. In Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, for which Thompson wrote the screenplay, his black-hearted sensibility is mediated through Kubrick's competing aesthetic. Steve McQueen slashed pages of Thompson's dialogue from the screenplay of The Getaway (1972), while Sam Peckinpah, ordinarily no slouch in the realms of nihilism, quailed before the hellish bleakness of the original ending. Stephen Frears's The Grifters is adequately nasty but a little too bright, and Burt Kennedy's 1976 version of The Killer Inside Me, starring Stacy Keach as psychotic Texas sheriff Lou Ford, simply lacks the author's true venom.

To get Thompson right, one has to take him cloven hoof and all: you can't put a positive spin on such a pessimistic worldview. Director Michael Winterbottom, in remaking The Killer Inside Me, seems inwardly to have asked his audience: "Do you really want Jim Thompson undiluted? I'm not sure you do, but here he is. Cover your eyes." Thus he simultaneously diagnoses his predecessors' failures and demonstrates why his version has been so ill-received.

He's been accused of misogyny thanks to a scene in which a prostitute (Jessica Alba) is murdered by Casey Affleck's Ford. It's a shockingly ugly event: precisely as in the book, Ford punches her face until it collapses in on itself. Once read, never forgotten: I felt ill when I read it and ill when I saw it; to me that suggests a successful adaptation.

Allegations of misogyny should trouble any artist, and interviews suggest that Winterbottom, never a frivolous film-maker, is perplexed by them, and perhaps half persuaded. But his is a time-honoured narrative strategy which, while more acceptable in the finer arts, always draws wrath down on popular directors. Withdrawing authorial judgment and forcing an audience to construct its own moral relationship with the material is risky. There is no moral arbiter inside The Godfather; you're halfway through GoodFellas before you notice you're having a riot with these murderers. No one condemns narcotics or larceny in Drugstore Cowboy, or mass murder in Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer – and so each of those movies took its ration of grief from the critics for failing to spell things out with numbing obviousness.

Depicting a brutal, misogynistic act by an avowedly misogynistic character does not in itself endorse violence towards women, just as depicting murder doesn't condone it, and no artist should live in fear of the 0.1% of nutters who take works of fiction as instruction manuals. I think we now know why no one ever dared to get Thompson right until Winterbottom.

Michael Winterbottom  Michael Winterbottom on The Killer Inside Me, by Rachel Cooke from The Observer, May 23, 2010

 

Michael Winterbottom on the morality of The Killer Inside Me  Andrew Pulver and Henry Barnes video interview from The Guardian, June 2, 2010  (3:51)

 

THE TRIP – made for TV                                      A-                    93

Great Britain  (107 mi)  2010

 

Quite simply the funniest film seen all year, a masterwork of spontaneous impressions, all of which call into question the legitimacy of one’s identity, beautifully unraveling in a free form exhibition of improvised conversations that seamlessly moves from one fictitious movie character to another, from Michael Caine to Al Pacino, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Ian McKellen, Alec Guinness, Woody Allen and more, supplanting the real lives of two friends, Steve Coogan (as himself) and Rob Bryden, who is his fifth or sixth, but most likely his last desperate choice as a traveling companion, as they go on a weeklong road trip together across Northern England, all expenses paid by a British newspaper The Observer, to review some of the nation’s most prestigious, upscale restaurants in gorgeously posh historic inn accommodations set throughout the painterly English landscapes.  Can anyone think SIDEWAYS (2004)?  Coogan initially wanted to go with his girl friend (Margo Stilley) as an attempt to rekindle their lost romance, but she’s too busy trying to establish her own career, so he’s left frantically searching at the last moment for an acceptable fill-in.  Bryden, like Thomas Hayden Church, is utterly brilliant as the mad side kick, giving an incomparable performance that is among the best of the year, where every improvised utterance is a masterwork of comic art that seemingly rolls off his tongue with the ease of talking.  But it’s not just comic timing and flair, as he also reads poems or breaks into song at a moment’s notice, even memorizing bits of literary phrase that are appropriate for the historic realm they are exploring.  Coogan, ever the miserablist, tries not to laugh or show appreciation, as if he’s paid to keep a straight face, refusing to allow anyone to upstage him, but instead heaps as much scorn and abuse his friend’s way as he can, acting as though he is terrible company, but at times they each try to outdo the other’s impressions in a comic laugh off, where the audience is simply delighted at how good these guys really are.  Some of the best moments are when the guys do laugh, where they can’t help themselves, but this doesn’t happen very often, where Coogan is bound and determined to see his friend as a source of endless aggravation and misery.   

 

Initially shot as a 3-hour British TV series, where each of six visits is a half-hour episode, this is a streamlined version which undoubtedly leaves out choice material, and without it, one can only wonder what’s missing?  So one would guess the original source material would be the way to go, but that’s not how it’s being released in America where only the truncated version is offered.  Even as is, this is unforgettable stuff, endlessly hilarious and filled with intelligent wisecracking wit.  This is also the most gorgeously filmed Winterbottom film since his first real movie success, JUDE (1996), which accentuated with dizzying camera movement the sweeping enormity of the land, and these remain, while at opposite ends of the spectrum, one a wrenching uncompromising tragedy and the other funny as hell, displaying an underlying dry wit, his two best films, largely due to the intensely personal nature of the material.  Here as well, shot by Ben Smithard, the unending beauty of the landscape is a remarkable attraction, seen as their Range Rover SUV whizzes through the curvature of the narrow roadways, often with stone walls on each side of the road, with rolling hills heading off into the horizon, occasionally seen through the mist of an everpresent fog.  Part of the story is watching these guys try to connect back home after dinner each night through the use of a phone, where Bryden induces various sex fantasies with his wife while lying in bed, not at all bashful about embellishing the voices of various celebrity characters, while Coogan is continually seen wandering aimlessly out in the high grass somewhere trying to obtain phone reception, where his conversations are wrought with great difficulty, usually ending badly, where he appears to be the most friendless guy in the universe.  The irony, of course, is that right in front of where he’s standing are some of the most unbelievably gorgeous landscape images, usually in front of a placid lake with the mist rolling by that continually changes the face of the horizon, with amazingly perfect painterly compositions that reflect the still life quality of the moment.   

 

Some of the food offerings are an amazingly pretentious display of overkill, where it appears grass is included with every serving of a 10-course meal, always accompanied by bottles of wine, where in every instance they are given the best window seat.  Not once do we ever see Coogan do any writing on this assignment, where he instead continually moans and bitches about the apparently stalled state of his career or how his girl friend is not there, while the ever upbeat Bryden appears to be having the time of his life.  Both these guys are evenly matched, intelligent, witty, spontaneous, imperfect, openly flawed, yet they seem to use humor to rise above the moment, finding their humanity in their various impressions.  Rarely does Coogan ever have dinner with Rob Bryden, as instead he’s met with a host of interchangeable characters that eventually drive him batty.  Initially he tries to keep up, matching impression for impression, insisting his are superior, but when we see him alone in his room at night attempting to master various Bryden voice inflections, the audience knows he’s been outdone.  Coogan can be vicious when given the chance, never having a kind word to say about anyone else, while continually seeing himself with delusions of grandeur, actually seeing himself as the Don Quixote of Britain.  Not a chance, as that role would have to go to Terry Gilliam whose lifetime projects have continually been sabotaged and destroyed, seemingly by acts of God.  Coogan shows a great deal of disenchantment with himself when he’s alone, the picture of middle aged frustration, where these solitary moments reflect an off camera persona that is quite revealing, quite a contrast to having to live up to his wish fulfillment dream sequence with Ben Stiller telling him all the American directors are lined up and can’t wait to work with him, which sadly, he has to wake up to feeling more isolated and never more alone.  Once back home in the empty, stainless steel surroundings of his overpriced luxury apartment with sliding glass doors and a balcony overlooking the highway construction project, it appears his life will have to remain a similar project in the making. 

 

The Trip  Gabriel Tate from Time Out London

Boiling 'A Cock and Bull Story' down to its essentials, Michael Winterbottom's latest, edited from six half-hours of TV, sends Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on a road trip around the north of England to review restaurants for The Observer. Both are once again riffing on their personas: Brydon is warm and eager to please, Coogan is ambitious but resentful. The melancholy undertone stops things from becoming too self-congratulatory although the plot, such as it is, feels superfluous. The pleasure of watching these two engaging in obsessive one-upmanship, however, remains undiminished.

Super 8 - Wall Street Journal  Joe Morgenstern from The Wall Street Journal

I've always loved comics who do impressions, so I was in seventh heaven bordering on eighth during "The Trip," an English ramble with a pretext, directed by Michael Winterbottom, in which Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden riff on celebrity voices while playing approximate versions of their real—their surreal—selves. The pretext is a newspaper assignment. The Observer has asked Steve the character (and Steve the actor, for all I know) to review a number of upscale country restaurants in the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales. He sees it as a paid vacation with his girlfriend, but she can't go, so Rob takes her place on what becomes a marathon of self-indulgence—lots of scallops and truffle oil—during a voyage of self-discovery.

The selves they discover differ significantly. Rob, a family man, is a happy comic, no matter how oxymoronic that may seem. Steve, an acerbic singleton, sees himself adrift at the age of 43. Brooks babble and Steve does too, going on compulsively about glaciation and rock formation. Rob actually looks at rocks, and feels the passage of time in their presence.

All of that gives the film a philosophical dimension, while deadpan food-prep closeups give it a gastronomic dimension. "The Trip" is probably too long, but I have to say "probably" because I would have been happy with an additional half-hour of Steve and Rob doing more impressions. Rob is like a robot spirit medium that defaults to Sean Connery, although the two friends post other Bonds: Pierce Brosnan, Roger Moore. Woody Allen gets his due; so do Ian McKellen and Alec Guinness. The cream of the jests comes when Steve and Rob exchange impressions of Michael Caine. They don't imitate Michael Caine so much as they become him in vocal modes that include purring, threatening and declaiming. They whisper sweet Michael Caines to each other, doting on subtle deviations in timbre, volume and pitch. All that and scallops too.

The Trip (2011) — Inside Movies Since 1920 - Box Office Magazine  Pam Grady

The stars of Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon) reteam with director Michael Winterbottom for a comic road trip through northern England. Once again, the longtime friends and collaborators play fictional versions of themselves in a mostly improvised and revealing portrait of middle-age angst. After a festival run that included stops at the Toronto and San Francisco International Film Festivals, the film settles into theaters where enough fans of bone-dry Brit humor and Coogan's determinedly obnoxious persona should turn up to ensure modest box office returns.

Just after the London Observer hires Steve (Coogan) to review upscale restaurants in the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales, his younger, American girlfriend Mischa (Margo Stilley) puts their relationship on hiatus, leaving him out of a travel companion. Steve reluctantly turns to his pal Rob (Brydon) to accompany him on this journey through historic sites and bucolic countryside. En route, they pit Michael Caine impression against Michael Caine impression and Brydon's sunny optimism drives the dour, fretful Coogan bonkers.

Coogan is a man with issues. He's heartbroken by Mischa (even if he was less than fully committed to her) and painfully aware that he isn't as famous or as successful as he'd thought he'd be by now. To remedy at least part of his lot, he's contemplating an offer to work in America that might make him the household name he'd like to be, but if he accepts the job will take him away from his children. Steve is peevish and jealous. By contrast, his diminutive Welsh buddy is happy with a lot in life that includes a satisfactory level of renown, a wife he adores, a new baby and a smartphone app (of his "Small Man Trapped in a Box").
There is a certain amount of hilarity in watching the easygoing, completely unflappable Brydon get on Coogan's every last nerve. Also, these are smart, literate guys and it's a lot of fun watching their competition whether they are offering dueling impersonations or trying to top each other in the realm of historical trivia.

Coogan is brilliant at playing this type of exasperating, sometimes repellent character. It's to Coogan's credit, as well as Brydon's and Winterbottom's, that The Trip isn't an extended riff between comedians-it's something more. Beneath the show biz gloss and the appalling behavior is a man struggling to come terms with his life. As he needles Brydon endlessly, the envy that compels him is transparent, but it is hard to tell what gets under Coogan's skin more: Brydon's evident happiness or his sense of equanimity. The Trip is a little repetitive at times, but it is mostly a sharp rendering of an uneasy relationship and of midlife reckoning.

Filmcritic.com  Chris Cabin

 

Fear of mortality, anxiousness, jealousy, and celebrity impressions all take their rightful place on the comedy buffet line in Michael Winterbottom's immensely enjoyable The Trip, a condensed director's cut of the six-part series of the same name that Winterbottom directed for the BBC last year. As much a sparring match as a buddy comedy, the film takes us on a tour of distinguished eateries in Northern England with two comic impresarios, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, as our tour guides, essentially playing half-true versions of themselves. Both well-known stars of television and film in their home country, if not necessarily stateside, Brydon and Coogan take the opportunity to extend the mischief they so merrily dished out together in Winterbottom's minor masterpiece, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. But as in all good comedy, there are dark, serious matters percolating below the surface of their volleying impersonations of Michael Caine, Woody Allen, and Sean Connery.

The difference between their Caine impressions is one of the first subjects grappled with over their first meal at a quaint inn in Lancashire, and the discussion arises a few more times, in between dramatic renditions of ABBA's indestructible hit "The Winner Takes It All" and phone calls to their respective better halves. As comedians, they are naturally competitive to an extent, but Steve is obviously more irritated by Brydon's incessant segueing into his arsenal of impressions and has a hard time holding in his resentment when an old lady asks for Brydon's autograph while they are visiting the cottage where Wordsworth lived. As it goes on, Brydon remains generally unfazed by Coogan, even after a painfully awkward scene wherein Coogan recites a makeshift eulogy for Brydon. But Coogan's barely hidden animosity extends not only to his friend's comedic prowess, but also to the satisfied air that Brydon exudes. He's comfortable in his own skin, and this both fascinates Coogan and drives him crazy. 

In light of these factors, The Trip begins to feel like a less ambitious but far more direct exploration of the impulses and practices of comedians than Judd Apatow's underappreciated Funny People. But Winterbottom's film focuses more on how comedians interact with one another, the agitation that stirs strongly once the neighbor's grass starts looking greener. Coogan takes a certain glee in admitting to his infidelities on the trip to Brydon, a married man with a young daughter. He also puts the bare minimum of effort into patching up problems he's having with his American girlfriend (Margo Stilley of 9 Songs fame). Brydon's acceptance of this begins to border on the unbelievable, especially in a blithely self-aware scene in which he loudly points out the metaphorical value of Coogan's botched attempt to cross a river. But the rapport between the two has become so natural at this point that the film's simple narrative, not unlike Travel Channel programming, maintains a sense of genuine reality throughout.

Sucking on duck-fat lollipops, munching on oversized popcorn, and enjoying the wine cellars of every restaurant they visit, Coogan and Brydon eat extravagant meals that show a far more adventurous attitude towards style than Winterbottom does. There's a clean, honest, and simple look to the film that mirrors the leanness of the narrative. There are some subtle moments of visual bravado, such as Coogan's ascent up a rock formation and the unwanted lesson he receives from a geological expert when he arrives at the top of that formation. Nevertheless, the fact that The Trip works better in its original six-episode format seems inarguable, allowing a bit more of a breather from Brydon's (purposefully) cloying rambling sessions and just a little bit more narrative meat to flesh out the drama that seems unintentionally incomplete by the end of the film.

The theatrical release of The Trip, along with Carlos and the phenomenal Red Riding trilogy, continues a fascinating evolution of television programming and its serialized formats, but it also points to an odd trend in stateside distribution. The popularity of miniseries can be measured easily and almost immediately, allowing distributors to see how a theatrical release may fare in arthouse waters. As much as it may call further attention to the series and garner it new fans, it also ever-so-slightly cheapens the accomplishment of foreign television programmers and producers who take a legitimate chance on a risky property, which The Trip, despite a pitch-perfect cameo by Ben Stiller, most certainly is; you try pitching a series made up partially of conversations about Coleridge and Wordsworth's sexual proclivities and drug habits, not to mention an octave contest. It's a big discussion, one that this reviewer doesn't wish to delve too far into here, and The Trip, no matter its origins, is perhaps the strongest comedy I've seen thus far this year that can clearly be labeled highbrow. Indeed, there is no talk of cocks, bodily fluids, or bestial relations to be found in The Trip, just a mid-life crisis seen through the eyes of a performer who still can't decide if he's trying to be a true artist or a good family man, positions he can't help but see as polar opposites.   

 

Capital New York [Sheila O'Malley]

Michael Winterbottom is one of those directors who resists easy classification. He's not known for making one type of film, and he leaps from genre to genre, sometimes in the same year. From period pieces like Jude and Tristam Shandy, to films that take on current-day issues (Welcome to Sarajevo, The Road to Guantanamo and A Mighty Heart), to smaller comedies and dramas (Wonderland, 24 Hour Party People) Winterbottom is not content to stay put. He also apparently never sleeps, coming out with a film a year since the mid-90s. In 2010, first we had his The Killer Inside Me, based on Jim Thompson's bleak pulp novel, a stylish moody thriller with a creepy sociopathic performance from Casey Affleck, set in a nowhere town in West Texas.

In the same year, Winterbottom has also given us The Trip, a road movie of sorts, starring British comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (who also starred together in Winterbottom's Tristam Shandy). The Trip began as a series for the BBC and the premise was and is simple: Coogan and Brydon play themselves, and Coogan takes a gig as a food critic for the Observer, mainly for the all-expenses paid tour of the restaurants in England's Lake District. Coogan had hoped to take his American girlfriend along, but she breaks up with him right before the trip, so he convinces his good buddy (and professional rival) Rob Brydon (also playing himself) to come along. They pack up the car and off they go.

There's really nothing more to say about what "happens" in the movie, because nothing happens in the movie. There is no real plot, and the point of the "trip" is not the destination but the journey itself. Filmed in a no-nonsense, almost documentary style, The Trip has a casualness to its execution that belies the underlying themes of middle-aged male loneliness, and what friendship provides for a certain kind of man. By that I mean, these are funny men. They make their livings being funny.

It is no secret that professional comics are often very lonely people, and introverts, actually. Comics turn their coping mechanism of humor into a career, but the core of sadness, often unacknowledged, is always there. The best comics, the ones in the history books, like Richard Pryor or George Carlin, allow us to see that part of themselves. That inner angst is part of their comedy. It's an interesting phenomenon, and The Trip never addresses it outright, but it's there nonetheless. The movie works by stealth. It's nonstop hilarity, interspersed with flashes of sadness or melancholia, and by the end, we are primed for the sucker-punch that comes.

Brydon and Coogan drive through the desolate beauty of the Lake District, and visit restaurants with high-end haute cuisine, presented to their table course by course. The food is gorgeous, putting to rest any stereotype one might have about England being a fish-and-chips kind of nation.

The men do a little sight-seeing. They talk about Coleridge and Wordsworth, who both lived and worked in the area. Coogan tries to interest Brydon in the geological processes that formed the Lake District, how the glaciers moved, and the sediments were left behind. Brydon is not as interested in all of that as Coogan thinks he should be. They argue over who has the better room.

Because they are comedians, the banter (which feels improvised) is often hilarious. An ongoing bit involves who does the better Michael Caine impression. Byrdon (whose Michael Caine is damn good) critiques Coogan's Caine, and tells him (as Michael Caine) why he's got it wrong. Coogan (whose Michael Caine is also damn good) tells Brydon what he's missing in his impression. These duelling Michael Caine impressions go on for the length of the film.

Coogan, still upset over his breakup and trying to get cell phone service in the middle of various bleak fields to call his girlfriend in America, hooks up with hotel staff members on a nightly basis. A parade of anonymous women leave his room every morning. Brydon asks Coogan why he feels the need to "chase women," and Coogan replies, "I don't 'chase' women. You make me sound like Benny Hill."

Each pitstop involves another meal, where they talk and argue and follow trains of thought to their logical (sometimes absurd) conclusions. They discuss ABBA with desperate seriousness. They sing together in the car. They meet up for breakfast. At night, Brydon calls his wife at home and jokingly tries to engage her in "a little phone sex, what do you think?" Meanwhile, in the next room, Coogan sleeps with the chamber maid or the desk clerk.

Brydon is huge in Great Britain (he informs Coogan that one of his character voices "is now an iPhone app, can you believe it?"), and Coogan, while successful, has dreams of big Hollywood success. There's a very funny actual dream sequence, where Ben Stiller appears and leads Coogan through a palatial Hollywood house, saying over his shoulder, "Yeah, the Coen Brothers want to meet you, and Scorsese, too ... Tarantino wants to do a project with you ..." The fantastical list of A-list directors goes on and on.

Submitting to the movie's lazy rhythm is one of its greatest pleasures. Letting go of the need for plot and event reaps great rewards. The spontaneous nature of their dialogue is unmistakable (as well as irresistible), and their affection for one another (hidden underneath constant barbs and jabs) is clear. It's fun to hang out with these guys. But again, The Trip works by stealth. The ending, when the two men return home, Brydon to his wife and baby, Coogan to his gleaming bachelor pad, is suddenly melancholy and poignant, the loneliness and longing that has flitted on the periphery now surging fully into the foreground. While a tone-shift at the last moment in a film is a bold choice, here it is warranted and earned.

The Trip has great reverb.

Cinema Scope | Two for the Road: The Trip  John Semley

Midway through Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip, an enticing bit of trivia tumbles out of Rob Brydon’s Welsh mouth: apparently, co-star Steve Coogan (like Brydon, playing “himself”) was in the running for the eponymous role in HBO’s The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), edged out by Geoffrey Rush. Like plenty of things in The Trip, it’s hard to know how this tidbit relates to reality (though a cursory Google search of “Steve Coogan + Life and Death of Peter Sellers” seems to substantiate it), but the veracity is ultimately irrelevant. What matters is that it’s brought up at all, because even this faint invocation of Stephen Hopkins’ so-so Sellers biopic colours The Trip’s naval-gazing dramedy in ways that needle a little too deliberately. Incidentally or not, Winterbottom’s film suggests a kind of alternate universe which orbits around the sun of its grumbling star: one in which it’s Steve Coogan, not Geoffrey Rush, cashing cheques for Green Lantern and unending Pirates of the Caribbean pictures while basking in the critical acclaim of The King’s Speech (2010). For if The Trip is anything, apart from a magnificently satisfying showcase for Coogan and Brydon’s effortless improvisational interplay (and persistent Michael Caine impressions), it’s a teasingly fluid play between the real-deal Steve Coogan and the alternately charming, dopey, and self-pitying “Steve Coogan” that Winterbottom allows his star to present, riffing on the thin line between Coogan’s on- and off-screen manifestations of comic melancholia and unrestrained egomania. (At one point a dreaming “Steve” is confronted by the newspaper headline “COOGAN IS A CUNT,” continued, below the fold, with “SAYS DAD.”)

The Trip is essentially a follow-up to Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2006), Winterbottom’s pleasingly wily film-within-a-film adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s 18th-century mock-memoir in which Winterbottom filigreed dramatic recreations of the title tome (with Coogan as Shandy’s father Walter and the kind-hearted, doe-eyed Brydon as Uncle Toby) with a behind-the-scenes “making-of” that played Coogan’s mordant wit and narcissistic self-involvement off Brydon’s impenetrable good-naturedness. In The Trip, Coogan and Brydon again reprise this refined straight man/stooge double act, Coogan smarmier than ever, and Brydon almost hyperbolically gentle. (In one scene, Brydon lapses into one of his many impressions while ham-fistedly attempting phone sex with his goodly wife, the attempted eroticism bleeding into un-saccharine tenderness.) In a last gasp to salvage a relationship with his gourmand girlfriend (Margo Stilley), Coogan organizes a restaurant tour of northern England, to be memorialized as a magazine travelogue. When she ditches him and returns to America, Coogan reluctantly calls up sometimes-chum Brydon, who agrees to tag along.

The set-up, and the existent aggro-chemistry between Coogan and Brydon, recalls Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), but the film alternately evokes elements of travel programs, cooking shows (in the sensuous close-ups of the extravagantly-prepared and dexterously-plated food, and conspicuous placement of the respective establishments’ names), and a Cooganized (and no less decadent) version of the Joaquin Phoenix prankumentary I’m Still Here (2010). Yet while Coogan and the star of that considerably more toxic pseudo-doc might share a reported fondness for insufflated opiates, the former’s considerably more developed sense of humour (and that of his onscreen foil) proves a tonic to what could otherwise be a tiring joust between the “real” and the put-on. Coogan and Brydon play off each other exquisitely, the latter’s diffident self-confidence unruffled by the former’s barrage of snarky jibes. (Indeed, Brydon is so incurably affable that, in keeping with the film’s Steve-centric latitudes, it’s easy enough to imagine that he’s just some obsequiously chummy projection of Coogan’s fissured bad-man psyche.) While watching two forty-something men duel with Michael Caine impressions, or riff on the solemnity of battle-hardened British historical dramas (“Gentlemen, to bed! For we rise at…nine-thirty…ish!”) might sound like something of a chore, the strain of a lot of the jokes nicely evokes the real sense of being stuck in the same person’s company for too long. Nonetheless, the periodic smacks of unaffected friendship between the two do more to absolve Coogan of his tabloid-testified sins than all his sulky onscreen soul-searching.

In the Steve Coogan emotional-mental lifecycle, The Trip has him cocooning. Between meals and long stretches of driving, Steve stalks the countryside, cell phone raised like an antennae to heaven so he can secure a signal and suffer through calls from his estranged girlfriend or agents (one wants to cast him as the baddie-of-the-week in a Doctor Who, another offers him co-lead in a US network drama called Pathological). We see him gallantly turn down a bump of coke, and place an earnest (if detached) phone call to his son. Most every morning, if he doesn’t wake up to the rustling of the previous night’s conquest slipping out the door, he’s shocked awake by bad dreams. In one such vision, a belligerent Ben Stiller (always funnier in doses) froths about how the Coens, the Scotts and the Wachowskis (“all the brothers”) are bent over backward to work with him. “I don’t work with mainstream directors,” Coogan insists to Brydon earlier in the film. “I work with auteurs.” Given that Coogan has more than a few credits the likes of A Night at the Museum (2006) and Marmaduke (2010), it’s the kind of in-joke the comes off sly enough, gesturing both to the comic’s inflated sense-of-self and Winterbottom’s own claims to Serious Artist status.

The late David Foster Wallace used to talk frequently in interviews about “cleveritis,” the disease of using formal innovations as ends in themselves. More specifically, he diagnosed the condition as “the grad-school syndrome of like ‘Watch me use seventeen different points of view in this scene of a guy eating a Saltine.’” Winterbottom is nothing like patient zero for cleveritis, but he’s come down with it in the past with the recurrent third-wall-breaking direct addresses, actors-playing-versions-of-themselves and curated cameos by real people commenting on events befalling their fictional counterparts. Worse than clever, though, Winterbottom’s recent output has been ugly and plain dull, as demonstrated by the bland romance Genova (2008) and the dead-eyed, misogynistic Jim Thompson adaptation The Killer Inside Me (2010). In light of these badly botched non-efforts, The Trip seems a revelation: painlessly light and pleasingly trifling, as if its director’s only authorial interventions were deciding when or when not to cut the Coogan-Brydon banter. Given his tendency to lapse into formal abrasiveness and vacuity, Winterbottom’s calculated subtraction of himself from the equation is welcome; were it not for the stars, the tinkling Michael Nyman score, and his name on the credits, one would have a hard time guessing that Winterbottom was along for the ride at all.

Early in the film, as he and Coogan set out on their amble through England’s variously wild and windy moors, Brydon rather crisply sets the tone for the film: “It’s 2010,” he says, “It’s all been done before. All you can do is do something someone’s done before and do it different or better.” Winterbottom hasn’t bettered the elegantly enfolded meta-fictional gestures of Tristram Shandy, but he has done it differently, and given all the pertinent signposts he plants to signal his cleverness (without succumbing too ruinously to his sporadic jags of cleveritis), The Trip winds up a modestly successful experiment. More, in his luxuriant fly-on-the-wall framing of Coogan and Brydon’s comic back-and-forth, Winterbottom has coolly matured out of mere cleverness and has begun to edge closer to real ingenuity.

Steve Coogan's Grand Ambitions  Giles Harvey from The New York Review of Books, July 20, 2011

 

Fourth Row Center [Jason Bailey]  also seen here:  DVD Talk [Jason Bailey] 

 

DVDTalk.com - theatrical [Jamie S. Rich]

 

notcoming.com | The Trip - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Victoria Large

 

Monsters and Critics [Anne Brodie]

 

indieWIRE [Eric Kohn]

 

Slant Magazine [Andrew Schenker]

 

Vancouver Voice [D. K. Holm]

 

Mark Reviews Movies [Mark Dujsik]

 

The Trip | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club  Noel Murray

 

The L Magazine [Henry Stewart]

 

Michael Winterbottom’s THE TRIP  Eric Isaac from Screen Comment

 

For A Few Movies More [Nis Zainal]

 

Battleship Pretension [Jack Fleischer]

 

Monsters and Critics [Ron Wilkinson]

 

Film-Forward.com [Adam Schartoff]

 

Culture Blues [Jeremiah White & Jeff Hart]

 

The Film Stage [Nick Newman]

 

Variety [John Anderson]

 

Movie Review - 'The Trip' - 'The Trip,' a Michael Winterbottom ...  Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, June 9, 2011

 

Peter Sellers doing Michael Caine 'not alot of people know that' Parkinson 7  YouTube impersonations with Peter Sellers (16 seconds)

 

Matthew McConaughey  Matt Damon (1:29)      

 

Michael Caine scene from THE TRIP (1:43)

 

Whose Line Is It Anyway  Questionable Impressions from mid Season 3 (3:53)                                                 

 

impersonations  Kevin Spacey (6:39)               

 

Stewart Lee on Top Gear  (15:28)

 

THE FACE OF AN ANGEL                                               B                     86

Great Britain  Italy  Spain  (101 mi)  2014  ‘Scope                                             Official site

 

Michael Winterbottom has made a handful of films that were all based on actual events, from THE LOOK OF LOVE (2013), which examines how Britain’s richest man, Paul Raymond, came out of the Swinging London of the 1960’s, A MIGHTY HEART (2007), based on the memoir of the widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl who was decapitated by terrorist abductors in Pakistan, 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE (2002), a postmodern look at Tony Wilson at the Factory Record label in the mid 70’s, a wild and raucous tale of music, sex, drugs, and the enveloping party scene at one of the most infamous dance clubs of the world, to WELCOME TO SARAJEVO (1997), a brutally authentic glimpse of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, shot on location interspersing actual war footage.  While each has a unique perspective, the films rely upon fairly conventional storytelling, where the structure of each film follows the retelling of true stories.  This film is an altogether different depiction, loosely inspired by the book Angel Face: The True Story of Student Killer Amanda Knox, which left little doubt as to the perspective of its author, Barbie Latza Nadeau, a Rome-based writer for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, who has largely been condemned as a tabloid journalist, where the film documents the media frenzy surrounding the brutal murder of Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student living abroad in the city of Perugia, Italy.  While the headline-grabbing story veered into the exploitive aspects of the alleged killer, her American roommate Amanda Knox and boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, where the murder victim herself was left out of the story while all the attention focused upon the pretty but peculiar 22-year old girl accused of killing her, who spent nearly four years in an Italian prison until the initial conviction was overturned on October 3, 2011 for lack of evidence.  On March 27, 2015, some seven-and-a-half years after their arrest, Italy’s highest court exonerated both Knox and Sollecito, while upholding a murder and sexual assault conviction of Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast native who was found guilty in October 2008 and sentenced to 30 years in prison, which has been reduced to sixteen years.  Instead of a ZODIAC (2007) style police procedural following the evidence or piecing together the clues that led to the crime, this film is a scorching exposé of the dubious nature of the salacious material used to convict Knox, where the sensationalist aspect reported at the time focused upon society’s obsession with the circumstances surrounding the death, namely sex and drugs and a perceived uninhibited, free-wheeling lifestyle of Amanda Knox, where any thought of uncovering the truth was lost in a cynical rush to judgment about her questionable morality. 

 

Excerpt by Bruce Fisher from Injustice in Perugia, September 2010, Barbie's Quest for Success - Injustice in Perugia 

 

Barbie has shown her ability to write tabloid trash in her articles throughout the course of the trial. Her preference for tabloid journalism is also apparent in her book. The title “Angel Face” is depicted to be written in blood on the cover. It is quite obvious that the intention was to show the title written in Meredith’s blood. This is a tacky cover, but not surprising coming from Barbie. I was most disgusted by Barbie’s decision to describe Meredith’s body in great detail. This served no purpose to the storyline and there was no need whatsoever to mention anything about the appearance of Meredith’s private parts. Barbie chose to do this anyway. This clearly shows that Barbie will stop at nothing, no matter how immoral the action may be, in her quest for success.

 

Barbie has a very interesting take on how the murder took place. Here are a few excerpts from Angel Face:

 

“Between 9:15 and 11:15, Amanda, Raf, and Rudy got themselves seriously messed up; Amanda asked Meredith if she could lend her money to pay Rudy, and Meredith reluctantly did so.

 

She prodded Rudy to go see Meredith; he went into her bedroom and started trying to kiss her and fondle her until she called out. Amanda and Raffaele went back to see what was going on, and instead of helping Meredith fend off Rudy, joined in the taunting.

 

By this point, Amanda, Raf, and Rudy were beyond the control of conscience. Raf took a switchblade out of his pocket and started teasing Meredith with it. Rudy had a knife in his backpack, and that came out as well. They had no intention of killing Meredith, but they were taunting her with knives on each side of her neck and she, in essence, impaled herself on the larger knife as she twisted in the grip of someone holding back her arms.

 

The next morning, Amanda and Raffaele wake up around 6:00 A.M. with crippling hangovers and no memories of the night before. They peek into Meredith’s room to find her battered and lifeless body, but they still can’t remember anything.

 

Rudy is nowhere to be found, and in fact, they don’t remember that he was there. Amanda has a hazy recollection of a black man, but the only person she can think of is Patrick.”

 

Barbie believes that Meredith impaled herself on the knife. They were all just teasing Meredith and it was all just a big mistake. We are supposed to believe that Amanda and Raffaele committed a brutal murder and woke up the next day with absolutely no recollection of the act.

 

Barbie’s theory is ridiculous. Quite frankly, she should be embarrassed that this was the best she could do. Just like prosecutor Mignini’s many theories, Barbie’s theory is based on nothing but pure fantasy.

 

I have little doubt why Barbie has chosen to attack those who support Amanda Knox. Barbie is only doing what she can to protect her own interests.

 

One last observation regarding Barbie's article. Barbie takes it upon herself to imagine what Amanda is thinking in prison. Barbie writes:

 

“Amanda Knox must surely cringe every time she hears that another vocal supporter in the United States has taken up her cause.”

 

Barbie has absolutely no idea what Amanda is thinking and she is in no position to speculate. I am sure it will come as no surprise to anyone when I tell you that Barbie is wrong about Amanda's thoughts. Amanda has thanked us repeatedly for the support and she recently thanked Steve Moore for his efforts. This is the simple truth, something that seems to be of little interest to Barbie Latza Nadeau.

 

From a conventional sense, Winterbottom’s film is a bit off the wall, where anyone looking for an historical account will be disappointed, as instead of dealing directly with the murder, the director, with help from writer Paul Viragh, makes this a more peculiar and challenging work by inventing a fictional scenario, inserting an alter-ego into the story, a recently divorced film director named Thomas (Daniel Brühl) who travels to the Tuscan city of Siena to research making a film on the case, which in the film becomes the murder trial of American student Jessica Fuller (Genevieve Gaunt), who has been accused and convicted of killing British student Elizabeth Pryce (Sai Bennett).  Only afterwards has there been a cry of police bungling and forensic foul play, where much of what has been written on the subject is a matter of dispute.  His introductory contact is Kate Beckinsale as Simone Ford, author of a best-selling book on the murder and an international journalist working for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, introducing him to various experts along with a horde of other reporters following the trial, all of whom rationalize their personal limitations by drinking and carousing together afterwards, exhibiting their own spectacle of vulgar coverage, each attempting to out scoop the others in a Darwinian jungle of sensationalist reporting.  Ignoring the tainted and often contradictory evidence obtained, Thomas is appalled by their crass behavior, where they believe their job is to provide and even invent, if necessary, a reasonable scenario of what happened, leading their readers through a crime scene riddled with salacious details.  Refusing to go along with the crowd, he begins to isolate himself from the group, though it’s apparent he’s being asked to do precisely the same thing by the producers of the film, where he has his own doubts about ever uncovering what actually happened, as so much remains the subject of speculation.  So he starts developing ideas of how to present the mundane through a larger artistic perspective, becoming fascinated by the idea of telling the story through the prism of Dante’s Divine Comedy, adding a sublime poetic intensity, where Dante was haunted by his love of Beatrice, where she actually becomes one of the guides in the last book, Paradiso, and the subject of a collection of poems that led to La Vita Nuova.  Adding to this internalized fantasia, Thomas named his own daughter Bea (short for Beatrice, played by Ava Acres), seen in rhapsodic slow motion in the opening scene to this ancient sounding music, The Face of an Angel Soundtrack (OST) - A Ciascun Alma (1:45), where recurring moments running throughout the film are intimate Skype conversations between the two of them, where even as his world appears to be in shatters, she obviously holds his rapt attention.

 

There’s a bit of Nicolas Roeg’s Don't Look Now (1973) in the air, where the ghostly spirit of a dead girl drenches the murky atmosphere with a deteriorating instability.  Identifying with Dante as “a man in the middle of his life who lost his way,” this could just as easily apply to Michael Winterbottom, an artist who repeatedly falls from grace struggling to regain some semblance of relevance once again, as Thomas, seen in production meetings with his producers, has difficulty coming up with an appropriate script, delving into the dark psychological realms, slipping into a moral slide over the edge, having a bit of a breakdown, consuming large quantities of cocaine, where the frenzied media circus (which includes himself) surrounding the incident leads to feverish nightmares producing surreal images that could just as easily be depictions from Dante’s Inferno.  There’s a yearning desire by Thomas to soak up the historical ramifications of the Tuscany region, where he goes to visit the 700-year old grave of Dante Alighieri, identifying with the man in spirit.  Perhaps most significantly, Winterbottom introduces yet another character, a young British student working in the local pubs named Mélanie, played by none other than fashion model Carla Delevingne in her first role, where her character takes on a central role, providing an astonishing degree of vibrancy and youthful energy, literally becoming in life the spirit of the murdered girl, where she represents all the wonderful possibilities that Elizabeth Price never lived to experience.  Even as Thomas desperately struggles with his script, developing paranoid delusions about some of the seedy characters surrounding the murder, Mélanie walks into his life like a breath of fresh air, always upbeat, possessed with a joie de vivre that is hard to miss, where she helps reinstall faith in himself.  Delevingne is marvelous in her role, becoming a portrait of affirmation, infused with an optimism and free spiritedness that couldn’t be more infectious, where her natural charm continually evokes images, at least in the mind of Thomas, of Elizabeth Price, where we hear the music of Phillip Glass, Phillip Glass, Violin Concerto, 2nd movement. - YouTube (8:33), but also the Vivaldi-like swirling violins from Harry Escott’s soundtrack music reach for elevated heights, The Face of an Angel Soundtrack (OST) - Fellinia - YouTube (6:20).  Winterbottom parallels the pursuit of truth in a crime thriller with the struggle to create art, as what the film becomes, ultimately, is an impressionistic tribute to the rustic beauty of Italy itself, as the director becomes immersed in the magnificent spirit of the great Italian artists, feeding off their immortal souls, becoming a cry from the ancient realms.  In a story about a young girl’s murder, it’s curious that so few are seen who are actually moved or emotionally affected by her loss, where this film, which is dedicated to Meredith Kercher, becomes a fitting tribute to her missing life. 

 

The Face of an Angel - Time Out  Dave Calhoun

This is a ghostly and slippery sideways glance at the murder of the British student Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007 – a crime that fellow students Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito seem to have been convicted and cleared of ad infinitum ever since. But it’s also a film directed by Michael Winterbottom (‘The Look of Love’, ‘24 Hour Party People’). So, instead of dealing directly with the murder, Winterbottom and writer Paul Viragh (‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll’) give us a filmmaker, Thomas (Daniel Brühl), who travels to the Tuscan city of Siena to research a film on the case.

Thomas comes face to face with a predatory media pack and has something close to a breakdown in the process. Like all good middle-age male breakdowns, this one involves an encounter (chaste, though) with a beautiful young woman – an English barmaid played with ease and charm by Cara Delevingne: her character represents the youthful spirit cut dead by the murder, but also sheds light on Thomas’s own fractured family background. ‘The Face of an Angel’ ties itself up in some strange knots, and the more pedestrian scenes in London, as Thomas meets with producers and potential financiers, jar a little with the haunting gothic atmosphere that Winterbottom conjures up in Siena. But the film’s layered, enquiring, half-formed and unknowing vibe feels fitting in the context of a tragic real-life story that has inspired all sorts of hysteria and unfounded opinion.

ArtsHub [Sarah Ward]

A filmmaker delves into a real-life, high-profile murder case, his interest falling not with the purported perpetrator, but with the frenzy that played out in the press and the public perceptions such constant coverage inspired. In the feature that eventuates, another director follows the same trajectory, probing the chaos surrounding the legal proceedings, rather than plunging into the particulars of the suspected culprits. 

The first helmer is the ever-chameleonic Michael Winterbottom (The Emperor's New Clothes), here making a movie based on the true crime book Angel Face, which compiled journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau's writings on Amanda Knox's trial over the death of her roommate Meredith Kercher in Italy. The second is Thomas (Daniel Brühl, Woman in Gold), who finds stimulus for his comeback feature in The Face of an Angel by Simone Ford (Kate Beckinsale, Total Recall), an account of the death of English student Elizabeth Pryce (Sai Bennett, TV's Mr Selfridge) and the subsequent arrest of her American roommate Jessica Fuller (Genevieve Gaunt, Land Girls).

So it is that art imitates life in Winterbottom's film, also called The Face of an Angel, as a filmmaker attempts to explore the act of adapting actuality to the screen by charging his protagonist with doing the same. Early in the movie, the helmer's on-screen surrogate is told "you cannot tell the truth unless you make it a fiction", a maxim the feature absorbs into its roving frames. It's an intriguing move by the director, who frequently seems to weave his own pre-production thought processes into the final product, as set against fictionalised career, financing and creative troubles. It's also an approach that endeavours to immerse viewers in a meditation on different mindsets, but sometimes proves distancing and disconcerting instead as it weaves visions and hypotheses into the narrative, as well as tussles with Dante's Divine Comedy.

Of course, such a tactic ensures that the shifting, fleeting nature of actuality and justice comes across as it should, strengthened by the juxtaposition of aligning the audience with one person's viewpoint while questioning the validity and objectivity of others. That's Winterbottom's point, as he works with screenwriter Paul Viragh (Ashes) to make plain, and as they both send Thomas careening through various degrees of affiliated parties – an opportunistic tabloid reporter (John Hopkins, Dancing on the Edge); another British twenty-something holidaying in the area (Cara Delevingne, Anna Karenina); a local blogger, landlord and shady type (Valerio Mastrandrea, Pasolini) – to learn.

Indeed, The Face of an Angel is both about perception and is shaped by it, with imagery to match. Once more, the filmmaker revels in contrast, cycling from the atmospheric Italian gothic of his primary Tuscan location, to the clinical glare of London-set business meetings, to the poetic fluidity of the feature's many dream sequences. In fact, rare is the moment – or the method, including a lead performance from Brühl that veers from brusque to breakdown – that he lets pass by without underscoring the multiplicity of sides to his topic. Winterbottom's film purports to be thoughtful and insular, an aim it achieves as it contemplates the consequences of conflating crime with entertainment and the inherent dangers of appropriating reality for creative endeavours; however it does so in the most broad and blatant fashion, mirroring the behaviour the movie strives to call out.

Dog And Wolf [Mark Wilshin]

Spun out of the real-life trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, convicted and acquitted (then reconvicted and reacquitted) for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher (and dedicated to her), Michael Winterbottom’s The Face of An Angel is, in the first place, a brilliant portrait of the media circus surrounding the trial – with tensions and arguments between journalists reaching fever pitch and a judicial process lurching between twist and turn. But as The Face of An Angel spirals away from the trial, it metamorphoses into a film about storytelling, with production meetings between documentary filmmaker Thomas and his producers, and as Thomas searches in the dark heart of Siena for the right way to tell his story. And like Winterbottom’s previous film Genova or Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, it’s Italy meets horror – only this time both cinematically and literally.

Documentary filmmaker Thomas Lang (Daniel Brühl) is developing a new project, adapting the book by criminal journalist Simone Ford (Kate Beckinsale) about the murder of British student Elizabeth Pryce and the trial of her American flatmate Jessica Fuller. After an interview with her and some heated discussions with the journalists embedded in Tuscany, Thomas accompanies Simone to the trial in Siena, where new developments are expected to come to light. But disappointed with the sensationalism of the trial and the media scramble, Thomas tries to steer his film away from tabloid questions of guilt and into a more metaphorical odyssey of love and desire. But as Thomas begins to lose himself in Siena’s dark, medieval and labyrinthine streets, he meets bright student and barwoman Melanie (Cara Delevingne), a luminescent reminder of the vitality of innocence.

An intriguing examination of the facts and rumours surrounding the Amanda Knox trial, The Face of An Angel is at its best a portrait of the trial and the media scrum surrounding it, exposing the commercial concerns behind the headlines. But reaching for Dante’s Divine Comedy and a curious arthouse horror aesthetic, Winterbottom’s film is strangely unengaging, as it loses itself in a self-referential world of filmmaking, family commitments and fear. Thomas makes for an obvious stand-in for the director himself, and while The Face Of An Angel feels like an unusually honest look at the ethics of filmmaking, it’s also frustratingly oblique – less heart on its sleeve than skeleton in the closet. It’s perhaps the director’s dalliance with the younger female student Melanie – which while trying to resuscitate the beauty and innocence snuffed out by the murder of Elizabeth Pryce, ends up becoming an older man’s fantasy of a relationship with a much younger woman.

While fulfilling in one film Winterbottom’s multigenre, eclectic style, The Face Of An Angel ends up unfortunately as a disappointing mirror of self-obsession. There are flashes of brilliance, as a horror film emerges strangely from the murky waters of something that’s not quite murder-mystery, not quite media satire. But with its domestic dramas and desperate paternal romance, Winterbottom’s film plummets into self-referential dreariness, its plot echoing Thomas’ journey – as illuminating insight becomes lost in a haze of cocaine-fuelled illusions. It’s when The Face Of An Angel struggles for something more profound however that Winterbottom’s film really comes unstuck; a parody of Virgil leading Dante through “the dark belly of the beast” on a metaphorical, quasi-metaphysical quest into the heart of darkness that is only resolved when Thomas uncovers his own Beatrice in the unconvincing shape of Melanie.

It is of course to Winterbottom’s credit that his film tries to find a positive in the murder trial – paying homage in a final-reel fantasy sequence to innocence and youth rather than circling round vicious tabloid rumours of violence and recrimination. But nevertheless, The Face Of An Angel finds its home in an ivory tower of ideas; sadly unengaging on both an emotional and intellectual level. An intriguing puzzle perhaps, but ultimately as wildly unpredictable as the trial itself.

Slant Magazine [Clayton Dillard]

Michael Winterbottom's The Face of an Angel is a mess of tones, but not of ideas, which could well sum up the director's prodigious but uneven oeuvre. Much like Steven Soderbergh, at least until his recent "retirement," Winterbottom seems driven by quantity over quality, directing one or even two films a year at a clip comparable only to Woody Allen. The Face of an Angel finds him in a reflexive directorial mode, examining not just divides between reality and representation (one of his pet interests), but the psychological burden entailed in being called to diagnose cultural woes via a real-life post mortem. Thomas (Daniel Brühl) is a filmmaker hired to adapt a piece of true-crime nonfiction, written by Simone (Kate Beckinsale), about the murder of a young woman, Elizabeth (Sai Bennett), at the hands of three, convicted suspects. Thomas becomes obsessed not only with discovering the truth, but finding a narrative model that could serve Elizabeth some degree of justice and credence in death.

The film is based on a book by Barbie Latza Nadeau detailing the 2007 abduction and murder of Meredith Kercher. All of this could be played much heavier and more gruesome than Winterbottom opts for, though the film isn't without ham-fisted renderings, including a recurring vision Thomas has in which a young girl is playing on a beach, replete with ethereal hymns on the soundtrack. She appears to be an imagined version of Elizabeth as an adolescent—not Thomas's actual daughter, with whom he Skypes regularly while in Siena, Italy researching for the film. These would be thoroughly silly machinations were The Face of an Angel not busy constructing deeper parallels simultaneously. When Thomas meets Melanie (Cara Delevingne), a young local, she becomes the third piece in an increasingly troubling identity crisis for Thomas, whose role as father, lover, and caretaker are being rolled into a singular, potentially perverse manifestation. Winterbottom compounds this through Thomas's sexual relationship with Simone, adding a fourth, angelic face to his compendium of tangible nightmares.

Thomas is also going through a divorce, something his colleagues consistently, often incidentally, remind him of. But he's focused on the work at hand; at a dinner with close friend Roxanna (Nikki Amuka-Bird), he reveals he's thinking of "using the shape" of Dante's Divine Comedy as the structure for his film. When Thomas says that Dante was "a man in the middle of his life who lost his way," he's not just speaking of Dante, but also himself and also Winterbottom—at least, such anxieties accompany the ecstasy of influence, where the command to do something small inevitably turns into a work that's grandiose and overreaching.

The same problems plague the protagonist of 2002's Adaptation.; his writing pursuits drive him to near insanity and, eventually, land him in a thriller akin to those he bemoans. Winterbottom lacks the absurdist wit of Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, but his convictions are legitimate, especially as the film begins to catalogue various cinematic forbearers, chopping bits and pieces of films ranging from Tenebre to Mystic River without batting an eye. Yet Winterbottom isn't interested in stitching them into a seamless new form; he prefers a messier, shaggier dog of a thriller.

The Face of an Angel jam-packs multiple aesthetic models into one. The film begins as a giallo, with Thomas functioning similarly to the David Hemmings character in Deep Red. That would be a single track for Winterbottom to take, which would likely mean a film considered to be, at the very least, accessible and tight. That seems to be Winterbottom's point (one of many): When Thomas is told by production execs that they want a "true-crime thriller," it's an impossible task for him, as he's incapable of thinking through a project without splintering it in at least a dozen different directions, partly out of reverence for his subject, but more damningly, out of an inability to wrangle his own ego.

Winterbottom functions similarly, especially as the details of his own film become increasingly unhinged. Suffering from insomnia, Thomas starts doing cocaine to stay awake; he even does a line immediately following a Skype session with his daughter. He dreams of being chased by a monster in an alley and sees Melanie take a bite out of a beating heart. Midway through the film, Thomas says his own film will be "a dream or a nightmare," as if the two are synonymous. Perhaps they are for Winterbottom, who's made a film that plays reasonably as the true-crime thriller many will be expecting, but more overtly as a genuine attempt to construct a philosophical treatise tinged with elements of self-diagnosis.

Between Journalist and Advocate: The Amanda Knox Case ...  Kate Zernike from The New York Times, October 7, 2011

 

Our Amanda Knox obsession insults Meredith Kercher - The ...  Barbie Latza Nadeau from The Independent, March 28, 2015

 

Reviews The Face of an Angel Michael Winterbottom  Robert Bell from Exclaim

 

Movie Review: Look Away From Face of an Angel  Bilge Ebiri from Vulture, also seen here:  It's Hard to Take Face of an Angel Seriously -- Vulture

 

The Face Of An Angel / The Dissolve  Scott Tobias

 

Review: Michael Winterbottom's Heavy-Handed, Self ...  Kevin Jagernauth from The Playlist

 

Review: Michael Winterbottom tackles the Amanda Knox ...  Jesse Hassenger from The Onion A.V. Club

 

The Face of an Angel  James Kendrick from Q Network

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]

 

Filmoria [Chris Haydon]

 

Critic's Notebook [Tim Hayes]

 

Toronto 2014 Review: Winterbottom's THE FACE OF AN ...  Ryland Aldrich fromTwitch

 

The Face Of An Angel review | Little White Lies  Sophie Monks Kaufman

 

Mystery 'The Face of an Angel' Refuses Suspense | Village ...  Simon Abrams from The Village Voice

 

Movie Review: "The Face of an Angel" | Movie Mezzanine  Amir Soltani

 

The House Next Door [Tomas Hachard]

 

Michael Winterbottom's 'The Face of an Angel ... - Grolsch  Ashley Clark

 

Film-Forward.com [Kent Turner]

 

derekwinnert.com [Derek Winnert]

 

In conversation with Sai Bennett and Genevieve Gaunt ...  Rebecca Cope interview from Harper’s Bazaar, March 17, 2015

 

The Face of an Angel - The Hollywood Reporter  Deborah Young

 

The Face of an Angel review - The Guardian  Paul MacInnes

 

The Face of an Angel review - The Guardian  Peter Bradshaw

 

The Face of an Angel review – crime drama fails to ring true ...  Mark Kermode from The Observer

 

Review: 'The Face of an Angel' - Los Angeles Times  Gary Goldstein

 

The Face of an Angel Movie Review (2015) | Roger Ebert  Glenn Kenny

 

Review: 'The Face of an Angel' Dabbles in Murder and ...  Jeannette Catsoulis from The New York Times

 

The Face of an Angel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Winters, Shelley – actress

 

Shelley Winters Top and Bottom   Georgia Lea from Rouge

 

Wise, Kirk and Gary Trousdale

 

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

USA  (94 mi)  1991 

 

Beauty and the Beast   Michael Stagow from The New Yorker

 

It's got storytelling vigor and clarity, bright, eclectic animation, and a frisky musical wit. In this Disney version of the fairy tale, Belle (the voice of Paige O'Hara) is a book-reading French provincial girl—a virtuous sort of Mademoiselle Bovary. She dreams of Prince Charmings but gets more of one than she bargains for when she becomes hostage to the buffalo-like Beast (the surprisingly orotund Robby Benson). Underneath his fang-gnashing glower, he's a prisoner of adolescence—unlike Peter Pan, he wants to grow up. He's the opposite of Belle's lunkheaded village suitor, Gaston (Richard White), a narcissistic macho man. Throughout, the Howard Ashman-Alan Menken score is clever and fluid in the best Lerner-and-Loewe manner, with flashes of oddball humor that keep everything light and bouncy. (Gaston's theme song trumps "C'est Moi," from "Camelot.") There's a great cast of supporting utensils at the Beast's enchanted castle, led by Jerry Orbach in an ebullient voice turn as the Chevalier-like candleholder, Lumiere; David Ogden Stiers as Cogsworth, the mantel clock; Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts, the tea pot; and Jo Anne Worley as the Wardrobe. There isn't anything particularly haunting, and not all the script's variations are fresh. But this is easily the zippiest Disney cartoon feature in the thirty-one years since "101 Dalmatians." Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise directed the screenplay by Linda Woolverton. 

 

Wise, Robert

 

THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE

USA   (70 mi)  1944       co-director:  Gunther von Fritsch

 

More Films Watched Recently  Mark Harris from Patrick Murtha’s Diary

 

There is absolutely nothing puffed-up about the reputation of the nine "horror" films that Val Lewton produced in the Forties; they are that good. The Curse of the Cat People is a most unusual sequel to Cat People in that it launches into an entirely different direction while still being carefully grounded in the events of the earlier film. It is a delicate, thoughtful film about the sensitivities of childhood, and finally very moving: this guy was in tears during the final scene.

 

The Curse of the Cat People   Ed Gonzalez from Slant magazine, also reviewing the Val Lewton Horror Collection

All of Lewton's films seem to capture their characters in limbo: either between cultures, life and death, or past and present. The Curse of the Cat People was Robert Wise's first directorial credit, which he had to share with Gunther von Fritsch, who was fired from the production after too much dillydallying. The film is nowhere near as popular as its predecessor, and though it's a different beast altogether, it's in many ways superior. The story follows Kent Smith and Jane Randolph's characters from Cat People to Sleepy Hollow, where their daughter, Amy (Ann Carter, one of cinema's great child performers), not only befriends an old woman down the lane who believes her grown daughter actually died when she was six but also Simone Simon's dead Irena Dubrovna. There's a very sinister bedtime story vibe to the film that easily erases the bad taste of the dialogue, which too often speaks the psychology of the story. (Not surprisingly, the film is often studied in college psych classes.) The details, like Amy thinking she can mail letters by putting them inside a tree trunk, are so specific it doesn't come as a surprise that many such particulars were inspired by incidents from Lewton's youth.

BORN TO KILL

USA  (92 mi)  1947

 

Born to Kill    Fernano F. Croce from Slant magazine

The usually meek Robert Wise trades his chameleonic tastefulness for full-on, jazzy misanthropy in this nasty melodrama. The main vipers on display are Lawrence Tierney's blithely murdering thug and Claire Trevor's randy socialite, braided together by each other's lowdown wiles. The action shoots from seedy Reno to moneyed San Francisco, where Tierney marries Trevor's newspaper heiress sister as a way to stay within screwing distance of his perverse "soul mate," whose lust scarcely diminishes upon discovery of his throttling, stabbing past. Wise swims in the genre's amorality, scoring a kitchen brawl to big-band radio tunes, terrorizing a soused matron at a nocturnal beach skirmish, and leaving the last word to Walter Slezak's jovially corrupt detective.

THE SET-UP

USA  (73 mi)  1949

 

The Set-Up     Nick Schager from Slant magazine

Robert Ryan's washed-up palooka clings to the belief that one punch will land him back on the fast track to respectability, not realizing (thanks to his greedy manager) that the fix is in. Robert Wise's The Set-Up isn't noir by any serious definition, its boilerplate fatalism undone by overbearing moralizing and the fact that Ryan's boxer is too one-dimensionally good to register as tragic. There's a dynamism to Wise's rough, real-time in-ring action (an influence on Raging Bull). But the same can't be said about Ryan's wife's (Audrey Totter) nighttime stroll through the city—littered with eye-rollingly obvious symbols of an alternate, "normal" life—or the stereotype-upending ringside spectators, highlighted by a hilariously bloodthirsty blind man.

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW                            A-                    94

USA  (96 mi)  1959

 

Influenced by THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950), while also the only American film that even remotely resembles the stylistic virtuosity of John Cassavetes classic Shadows (1959), this was the first production of Harry Belafonte’s own company, HarBel Productions, making this the first film noir with a black protagonist.  Adapted from the William P. McGivern novel, a crime novelist known for his focus on characterization and the psychological effects of corruption in the big city, to capture the gritty realism they were looking for they hired blacklisted writer Abraham Polonsky from Force of Evil (1948) to write the script under an assumed name of John O. Killens, where the writing credit wasn’t officially restored until 1997.  Jean-Pierre Melville credited this film as a formative influence, while James Ellroy is quoted in a July 1998 British Neon magazine article listing his ten favorite crime films (all 50’s films except his top two), James Ellroy Selects His Ten Favourite Crime Films – July '98:

 

This is almost the very anatomy of noir in that it deals with racism and fucked up sexuality.  It’s a film of desperate, twisted guys anxious to make one last score, robbing a smalltown bank in upstate New York.  Of course they’re subconsciously self-destructive men and they screw it all up.  It’s just the best heist-gone-wrong movie ever made.  It’s also rooting through the psychological and social issues of the time, which are significant and profound.  Robert Ryan is really fuckin’ great in this and Harry Belafonte is good too. 

 

Robert Wise, whose directing credits include WEST SIDE STORY (1961) and THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965), listed as #2 and #4 on AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals, may also forever be known as the guy RKO Studios brought in to recut the end of Orson Welles’ THE MAGNIFICENT ANDERSONS (1942), actually reshooting several sequences, considered one of the great hack jobs in cinema history, as the original Welles ending was destroyed and has been lost forever.  Wise’s track record with film noir, however, is pretty good, including BORN TO KILL (1947), the nastiest of his noirs, THE SET-UP (1949), a gut-wrenching boxing drama that won the Critics Prize at Cannes, and this remarkable film which is just loaded with late 50’s atmosphere, starting with a brilliant jazz score written by John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet (Milt Jackson vibes, Percy Heath bass, Connie Kay drums, Bill Evans piano, Jim Hall electric guitar, Joe Wilder trumpet, and a studio orchestra), Odds Against Tomorrow (John Lewis) Highlights - YouTube (13:27), and the strikingly fresh black and white cinematography from Joseph C. Brun.  Shot on exquisite locations on Riverside Drive in Manhattan (also the soundstages of the Gold Medal Studios in the Bronx) and in the small Hudson Valley town of Hudson, New York (identified as Melton in the film) about 120 miles north, both of which are located on the banks of the Hudson River, each providing their own unique charm, from the kinetic vibrancy of big city life to the seedy squalor of the desolate industrial landscape alongside the railroad tracks, used to great effect in the haunting poetry of extended sequences before the planned heist, as each man is lost in their own thoughts waiting it out alone while quiet jazz interludes accentuate the melancholy of these isolated moments.  Jazz scores became popularized with Michel Legrand’s dreamy and melodic score to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) (1964), where every song feels hummable, but in terms of films literally drenched in sensuous atmosphere, consider Alex North’s moody score in Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), one of the earliest jazz scores in American film, wonderfully capturing the simmering heat and sweat of the story and its New Orleans location, Streetcar Named Desire - Alex North (Highlights) - YouTube (6:05), or Elmer Bernstein’s collaboration with Chico Hamilton in Alexander Mackendrick’s SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957) heard here “Night Beat” (2:16), Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s music for Otto Preminger’s ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959), one of the greatest scores of all time, where a snippet can be heard here Flirtibird (2:14), (all of which can be heard on a 5-CD recording Jazz On Film Noir (Vol 1-5) by Various Artists on Spotify), while who could ignore François Truffaut’s collaboration with Miles Davis in FRANTIC (1958), renamed ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, JEANNE MOREAU IN "LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD" (MILES DAVIS THEME) YouTube (2:15), composed in a one night session, music that so beautifully captures the aching sorrow of loneliness, sadness, anxiety, and regret, where the record under the original title remains a collector’s item. 

 

It should probably come as no surprise that Polonsky’s screenplay is riveting throughout, where this is largely a grim character study of three down and out, self-destructive men that “lead lives of quiet desperation,” yet cover their inner anxiety with male bravado and bluster.  Opening on the windswept streets of New York where the sun is out but the overcast sky is dark and foreboding, we feel the emptiness in the lives of the characters even before they are introduced.  Robert Ryan is Earl Slater, a hard-nosed and embittered ex-con initially shot on infra red film, bleaching his skin tone, making him appear as a walking ghost as he approaches Hotel Juno on Riverside Drive.  The first words out of his mouth are racially derisive, mocking a young black girl playing out front on the sidewalk, picking her up and calling her a “Pickaninny.”  Inside the hotel, he has no time for small talk, ignoring the friendly chat from the black elevator operator, Mel Stewart in his first uncredited role before Nothing But a Man (1964), heading straight for the room of Ed Begley as Dave Burke, an ex-cop whose career was ruined when he refused to cooperate with State Crime Investigators (a pointed reference to McCarthyism and Hollywood blacklisting).  Both men at their end of their rope, world weary and broke, they don’t even like each other, which is not altogether uncommon among criminals, but the question is can they work together to pull off one last big score in what seems to be a well-thought out bank heist?  Slater doesn’t like it, sensing more risk than reward and backs out of the deal.  Within minutes of his departure, Harry Belafonte as compulsive gambler and nightclub singer Johnny Ingram pulls up in his white Alfa Romeo sports car, joking with the kids outside and paying them money to look after his car, and unlike Slater, actually engages in friendly conversation with the elevator operator before knocking on Burke’s door.  Despite owing heavy debts to underworld loan sharks, where he could use some quick cash, he backs out as well, as bank robbery is not his thing.  What follows afterwards is an intimate exposure to the deteriorating lives of these two men living on the edge, where Slater is living in a hotel with a hopelessly devoted girl that’s crazy about him, Shelley Winters as Lorry, but he’s growing sick of living off of her money.  His wounded male pride leads him back to Burke, who outlines his plan, targeting a small team of bank clerks working after hours every Thursday evening when the bank is full of cash preparing the next day’s factory payrolls, where they open a side door for a delivery of coffee and sandwiches (delivered by a black man), which is their way in, and why they need Ingram.  Slater is fine with the idea except for one problem, “You didn’t say nothin’ about the third man being a nigger,” which is a perfect lead-in to Ingram’s nightclub act, Odds Against Tomorrow - The Club Scene (1959) (9:16), which is strangely interrupted by the overtly gay advances of Coco (Richard Bright), one of the bodyguards of the mob loan shark Bacco (Will Kulava) who’s come to collect after Burke urged him to put the squeeze on Johnny.  Ingram’s marriage is on the rocks from his gambling habits, where it’s clear his wife Ruth (Kim Hamilton) still has feelings for him, but doesn’t trust his irresponsible example in front of their young daughter Eadie (Lois Thorne), who obviously adores her father, where we actually get a glimpse inside a middle class black household, extremely rare for 50’s films, where an integrated PTA meeting is going on in her living room.  All of these social references to blacklisting, racism, integration, homosexuality, capitalism and pursuing the American Dream add a unique context to this film, giving it an underlying socio-political subtext, where the darker elements of film noir allow a certain subversive thematic content to appear in the otherwise conformist era of the 50’s.  Bacco’s strong arm tactics, threatening Ingram’s wife and child, drive him back into the waiting arms of Burke, the mastermind behind the operation, but not before a blistering argument between Ingram and his wife:

 

Ruth:  The child can’t have a father that lives your life. 

 

Johnny:  You’re tough.

 

Ruth:  Not tough enough to change you.

 

Johnny:  For what?  To hold hands with these ofay friends of yours.

 

Ruth:  I’m trying to make a world fit for Eadie to live in.  It’s a cinch you’re not going to do it with a deck of cards and a racing form.

 

Johnny:  But you are, huh?  You and your big white brothers.  Drink enough tea with ‘em and stay out of the watermelon patch and maybe our little colored girl will grow up to be Miss America, is that it?

 

Ruth:  I won’t listen when you talk like that.  You’d better go.

 

Johnny:  Why don’t you wise up, Ruth?  It’s their world and we’re just living in it. 

 

Not sure you hear that kind of dialogue anywhere else.  It is significant that this film was released “before” the Civil Rights era, where Slater’s views were in step with the views of a majority of whites, especially in the South where in September 1957, Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus became the national symbol of racial segregation when he used National Guardsmen to block the enrollment of nine black students who had been ordered by a federal judge to desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School, requiring President Eisenhower to send in U.S. Army troops to enforce the order.  It is in this poisonous racial atmosphere that the film was released, causing little stir at the box office, presumably due to the social objections.  ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is film noir’s pessimistic answer to the feelgood liberalism of Stanley Kramer’s more hopeful THE DEFIANT ONES (1958), featuring black and white actors Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis as escaped convicts who are literally chained together by leg irons in a film wondering whether blacks and whites could set aside their differences and actually work together in the interest of survival, where they both end up cradled in each other’s arms at the end.  Slater’s unrelenting racism is shocking in its raw unfiltered expression, where Ingram hates him the minute he sees him.  Both men are given scenes of public humiliation sending them over to the dark side, as Johnny gets drunk and makes a fool of himself onstage, while Earl is goaded into a senseless bar fight with a soldier (Wayne Rogers) who’s just showing off trying to impress a girl.  The outcome in each case is awkward and unexpected, where both come off as loose cannons.  Robert Ryan is thoroughly convincing in one of his best roles, completely emasculated, associating lack of money with a lack of self respect, seething with anger and self-disgust, showing his true loner qualities when he toys with the flirtatious interest of his neighbor Helen (Gloria Graham), first rejecting and then succumbing to her sexual advances, becoming an erotic dance of seduction, where her arousal is stimulated by descriptive thoughts of how he killed a man barehanded, which he willingly whispers into her ear.  Both worked together a decade previously in Edward Dmytryk’s CROSSFIRE (1947) and their raw and smoldering descent off the edge of respectability into the darker realms of S/M territory is one of the more graphically revealing scenes of the film, especially the world weariness and self-loathing they both convey.  Ryan and Belafonte work exceedingly well together as well, where in real life Ryan was a progressive leftist speaking out for economic and racial justice as early as the 30’s and 40’s, refusing to cave in to the intimidation and smear tactics of McCarthyism, repeatedly defending the rights and civil liberties of those like Polonsky who came under attack.   But in the film, Slater is violent and miserable, lashing out at a world that refuses to accept him, growing so brutally antagonistic that his noxious racial contempt calling Johnny “boy” even draws the ire of Burke. 

 

Don’t beat out that Civil War jazz here, Slater!  We’re all in this together, each man equal.  And we’re taking care of each other.  It’s one big play, our one and only chance to grab stakes forever.  And I don't want to hear what your grandpappy thought on the old farm down in Oklahoma!  You got it?

 

While the robbery is saved for the end, this corrosive hatred seen throughout powerfully sets the stage for what follows, where they split up to avoid being conspicuous, with Ingram arriving by bus, while Slater drives the getaway car, meeting Burke dressed as a hunter just outside Melton, becoming a tense crime procedural whose brilliance is taking its time before the main event, shifting the exteriors from a teeming city landscape to an outlying industrial wasteland, where time literally stops, each man biding their time to allow reflective, contemplative moments where the poetic images of a desolate sky over the river beautifully merge with the quiet improvisation of the music.  Slowly the characters reconnect into the normal routines of any small town, where people stop and talk to strangers on the street and don’t simply ignore one another like they do in the cities.  Still, they reappear back on the streets like the walking dead, ghosts of humanity who would prefer to remain invisible, hoping to make quick work of it before they can get away unseen.  All tormented by their own personal demons, tensions mount as things begin to unravel despite having devised an excellent plan, where it’s a good idea using a side door entrance offering little protection from the unexpected and out of sight from the main street.  Thoroughly unprepared for the worst, however, falling victim to their own ineptitude by their blatant unwillingness to trust and help one another, there are swift mood changes where they quickly turn on each other instead, and with a vengeance, as Slater continues to insult Ingram, fulfilling each bleak promise that this film makes.  Steeped in a mood of existential dread, forced to crawl out of the global catastrophe that was World War II, living under the specter of the atomic bomb and global annihilation, these men operate under a disastrous cloud of fatalistic possibilities, each one a powder keg waiting to explode, continually colliding into one another during the build-up, where racial hatred eventually ignites the fuse.  The stunning originality of the work suffers from a finale that we’ve seen before, whether it be Raoul Walsh’s White Heat (1949), though Cagney’s Cody Jarrett intentionally chooses his fate while here it happens accidentally, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) or Sam Fuller’s House of Bamboo (1955), all reflecting culture clashes along with increasing apprehensions of impending disaster during the nuclear age, while the heist-gone-wrong format does recall Kubrick’s equally taut THE KILLING (1956).  While it is a fitting conclusion, with no hero or villain in a conventional sense, it resembles the rebellious examples of gangster films of the 30’s like Cagney’s ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938) or THE ROARING TWENTIES (1939), while the granddaddy of them all may be Bonnie and Clyde (1967), all Depression era films where oppressive social and economic forces turn the protagonists into thieves, where robbery is an act of rebellion against that oppression.  Money is the key to power and respect in modern society, and without it, Slater and Burke feel powerless, struggling against an unyielding society that offers no second chances for aging ex-cons, where one last score can somehow reinstate their lost manhood, while Ingram is up against a nation that promises equality, but it only exists out there somewhere just out of reach.  In the end Slater and Ingram are eventually made equal in spite of themselves.  The film is listed at #16 on the “Czar of Noir” Eddie Muller’s Top 25 Noir Films - Eddie Muller. 

 

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW | mardecortésbaja.com

Odds Against Tomorrow is steeped in the mood of existential dread that characterizes the classic film noir — and more specifically the sense of male impotence in the face of a world gone horribly wrong.  It makes sense to see the root of this dread in the global catastrophe that was WWII and in the spectre of global annihilation summoned up by the atomic bomband (Robert Ryan photo).

When the subtext of a tradition like film noir gets as close to the surface as it is in this film you can be pretty sure that the tradition is just about played out.  Film noir didn't disappear after Odds Against Tomorrow, but it became something else — neo-noir, which is always, at least in part, a commentary on the old form in its less self-conscious incarnation.  But by centering the psychological dread of a character like Belafonte's in a particular social problem like racism, the ground is prepared for the politically conscious films of the Sixties and onward.  True noir, while
always attuned to social ills, and always political in that sense, trafficked in a more existential brand of hopelessness.  O

Odds Against Tomorrow - TCM.com  Jeff Stafford

 

Three men - an embittered ex-con (Robert Ryan), a former cop (Ed Begley) who was fired from the force for illegal activities, and a chronic gambler (Harry Belafonte) - try to change their lousy lot in life by forming a partnership in crime. But a plan to heist a payroll from a small-town bank in upstate New York is doomed from the start because of the racial tensions within the group.

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) is often acknowledged as one of the last films to appear in the film noir cycle which reached its height in the post-World War II era. However, this crime thriller is much more complex than the standard genre entry. While it's certainly gritty and downbeat in the best noir tradition, it also works as an allegory about greed as well as a cautionary tale about man's propensity for self-destruction. Financed by Harry Belafonte's own company, Harbel Productions, Odds Against Tomorrow allowed Belafonte to exercise complete creative control over the film's conception and to handpick an expert cast and crew to bring his project to the screen. In an article in the New York Times, Belafonte said, "The character I play is not thrown in for a racial thesis, but because the bank robbers - played by Ed Begley and Robert Ryan - need a Negro who can enter the bank as a colored delivery man. While Robert Ryan hates the Negro, it is not merely a racial antagonism. He hates everybody, and the Negro is no stereotype of sweetness and light either. No brotherly love saves everyone here. Their hatred destroys them both."

Robert Ryan gives one of his finest performances here as the pathetic, venom-spewing racist Earle Slater. Off screen, Ryan was a compassionate activist who was committed to such liberal causes as SANE and the ACLU but on-screen he was often cast as angry, misanthropic characters who occasionally expressed themselves through violence. Crossfire (1947), Beware, My Lovely, and On Dangerous Ground (both 1952) are probably the best examples of this typecasting. Shelley Winters and Gloria Grahame also have minor supporting roles in Odds Against Tomorrow but while their scenes are brief, they both make indelible impressions. You can also spot Cicely Tyson, Wayne Rogers, and Zohra Zampert in tiny roles.

Odds Against Tomorrow was filmed on location in a small town in the Hudson River Valley, New York City, and at the Gold Medal Studios in the Bronx. Director Robert Wise completed the film between his Oscar-winning productions of I Want to Live! (1958) and West Side Story (1961). The screenplay was written by Nelson Giddens, blacklisted writer Abraham Polonsky (who wasn't allowed to accept an onscreen credit until 1968), and black novelist John O. Killens, who later penned the revisionist antebellum drama Slaves (1969). The latter film also provided work for former blacklist victims, director Herbert J. Biberman and his wife, actress Gale Sondergaard. The moody, evocative jazz score is by John Lewis, the pianist for the Modern Jazz Quartet.

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Lost and found: Odds Against Tomorrow  Paul Tickell, December 2011            

Less interested in its heist than its characters’ psyches, Odds Against Tomorrow was a favourite of Jean-Pierre Melville – and Paul Tickell

Although it gets the occasional screening and is available on DVD, Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) remains a neglected masterpiece. In its treatment of race and with its African-American star Harry Belafonte (who was also the film’s executive producer), the film is ahead of its time. It is also a testimony to Wise’s versatility – this is the director who gave us everything from The Curse of the Cat People (1944) to The Sound of Music (1965).

Odds Against Tomorrow is best described as a noir-ish heist movie. The heist movie often concerns itself with process – a minute but exciting examination of some spectacular robbery or kidnap. It also likes to linger over the fallout when the job goes wrong. But Odds Against Tomorrow shows little interest in the planning and mechanics of its heist – a bank robbery in a small industrial town outside New York. What really distinguishes the film is its concentration on what goes wrong beforehand – so much so that the robbery only occurs at the very end of the film.

The ending is truly apocalyptic, as the robbery leads to a shootout in a petrochemical plant and then an explosion reminiscent of Raoul Walsh’s White Heat (1949). But there’s no self-combusting Jimmy Cagney yelling, “Made it, Ma. Top of the world!” This is total obliteration – a damnation of biblical proportions without even the saving grace of Cagney’s gleeful nihilism.

The infernal flames are of a piece with the film’s opening shots, which depict New York as some kind of doomed, windswept city of the plain. The malign wind is more metaphysical than elemental, its force even greater in the first interior shots – of a hotel through whose lift shaft it howls like a banshee.

Things are already looking – and certainly sounding – bad. But Wise’s film is no parade of glib pessimism. It earns its despair. For screenwriter Abraham Polonsky (blacklisted as a communist during the McCarthy-era Hollywood witch hunts, and credited here as John O. Killens), tragedy is located in a set of social meanings, not some abstracted ‘human condition’. Polonsky’s interest in the social as well as the psychological – and ultimately also the political – is rooted in story and character. Most of what goes wrong before the heist, which is being organised by ex-cop David Burke (Ed Begley), can be attributed to the racism of one of his recruits – ex-con Earl Slater (Robert Ryan). Thus the bank robbery is doomed to failure for ‘personal’ reasons and not because of some breakdown in the plan or because of some great detective work.

Ryan’s racist – an interesting role for an actor so vociferous in real life on behalf of civil rights – is no cardboard cut-out. He doesn’t exactly gain our sympathy, but there is an understanding of his desperate circumstances. Stigmatised by his time in prison and out of work, Slater has a steady girlfriend, Lorry (Shelley Winters), but still feels like a loner. Further troubled depths are revealed when we see him first rejecting and then succumbing to the sexual advances of his neighbour Helen (Gloria Grahame).

Just as Earl Slater is no straightforward villain, Ed’s other recruit, African-American Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte), is no obvious hero. (Slater, of course, hates him on sight.) Ingram is a nightclub singer who is certainly one for the wine, women and song – and the horses. His gambling debts leave him at the mercy of loan-shark gangsters. His womanising and general flakiness have led to a painful separation from his wife and their daughter. However, against the odds, he is trying to make a go of things. And failing.

The extensive location shooting in the film was pioneering, right from the windswept opening; the use of specialist infra-red stock makes the streets look utterly real yet somehow out of kilter, with Slater more like a ghost than a man of flesh and blood. This ‘estranged’ realism is carried over into scenes set in New York’s outlying districts, a phantasmagoria rather than suburbia: industrial wastelands and waterways jammed with flotsam and jetsam. Killing time before their bank job, the robbers feel equally washed up as they contemplate the floating jumble.

It’s in scenes like these that Wise gets behind his characters’ social personae and into their psyches. It’s all done by suggestion – by mood and image rather than crude psychologising. These are cinematic states of mind that have come to be associated with European auteurs, but here they are in 1950s America. Indeed Odds Against Tomorrow was French noir director Jean-Pierre Melville’s favourite film.

Wise, a former film editor who cut Citizen Kane, is adept at finding the fleeting moment that reveals a character’s soul. To describe such moments – for instance, when Johnny sees a discarded doll in the water – is almost to kill them by critique, like breaking down a delicate butterfly into its component parts. But it’s the parts coming together that produce these elusive moments. That floating doll conjures up the women in Johnny’s life, and that includes his daughter; but it’s also Johnny himself – with whom the gods are toying before they discard him. It’s all of these things and none of them. After all, Johnny is just looking and the film only suggesting. But that’s symbolism for you: the art of suggestion.

The score by John Lewis, pianist of the Modern Jazz Quartet, plays a big part in the making of such moments. It’s vibrant and aggressive, following events as they unfold while also at times leading them like some motivational force. But Lewis’s bebop hardness and objectivity (before the MJQ, he played with Charlie Parker) can also switch at the drop of a hi-hat into something more subjective and soul-searching.

These swift mood changes don’t happen without the light touch of editor Dede Allen, who would go on to work with Arthur Penn on Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Night Moves (1975). Gene Hackman’s private eye from Night Moves wouldn’t be out of place in Odds Against Tomorrow. Here’s a man who bites off more than he can chew, which is as good as asking the Fates to come and get you. And in Odds Against Tomorrow, they do. The genius of the film is that its Greek tragedy is rooted in the here and now of a racially divided 1950s America. And there’s no need for a chorus: the characters’ dry oneliners and gallows humour provide their own running commentary.

What the papers said

“Strongly reminiscent of the sort of socially significant melodramas that Hollywood was making ten years ago. The same players are given the same melancholy-tough dialogue… and the message is still the same – a generalised plea for racial tolerance in a context of seediness and corruption… [it] emerges as an efficient but unnecessarily portentous thriller.”
Monthly Film Bulletin, Feb 1960

“Robert Wise has drawn fine performances from his players. It is the most sustained acting Belafonte has done. Ryan makes the flesh crawl as the fanatical bigot. Begley turns in a superb study of a foolish, befuddled man.”
Variety, 31 December 1958

Movie Review: Odds Against Tomorrow  The Girl With the White Parasol 

 

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Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) - Notes - TCM.com

 

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Classic Film Guide

 

TV Guide review

 

Odds Against Tomorrow | Variety

 

Time Out

 

New York Times [Bosley Crowther]  October 16, 1959, also seen here:  "Odds Against Tomorrow: Race Prejudice Mars Hold-up of a Bank"

 

"Bringing Home A World Of Injustice"  Stephen Holden from The New York Times, June 11, 1999

 

"Abraham Polonsky, 88, Dies; Director Damaged by Blacklist"  William Honan from The New York Times, October 29, 1999

 

DVDBeaver [Gary Tooze]

 

Odds Against Tomorrow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

WEST SIDE STORY                                              A                     99

USA  (152 mi)  1961  ‘Scope  co-director:  Jerome Robbins

 

“Things are alright in America / If you’re all white in America.”

 

As Allen Ginsberg was constructing the beat imagery from Howl (1956):  “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” some of the generation’s better minds were working on this film which followed the 1957 Broadway production, including exquisite music from Leonard Bernstein several years after composing the music for ON THE WATERFRONT (1954), his only two film scores, socially relevant lyrics from Stephen Sondheim in his first assignment, the brilliant Jerome Robbins doubling as the choreographer and co-director along with Robert Wise, who worked as Orson Welles’s film editor on CITIZEN KANE (1941) and THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942).  This collection of artistic forces, like the perfect alignment of the stars, defines what’s so special about this film, creating an abstract, thoroughly modern work that brilliantly synthesizes artifice with social realism through dance movement, amusingly clever lyrics, gorgeous melodic tone, excellent camerawork that creates pace through kinetic energy, and a heartbreakingly sorrowful story that parallels the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, but with a different outcome.  Noted for its shifting rhythms, spectacular music and unusual economy, one of the shortest books in musical theater, it brilliantly intermingles lyrics and dance to provide marvelous insight into character, where we become intimately familiar with the leads.  The sheer magnificent beauty of this ‘Scope film is undeniable from the quiet opening aerial shots over Manhattan to the Saul Bass designed end credits.  What work against it are the limitations of its own era, where whites were typically cast as the leads even when portraying other ethnic backgrounds.  As this is largely a clash of cultures, where whites feel threatened by the Puerto Rican Spanish invasion into their neighborhood, realistic casting might have helped delineate the differences between the Jets and the Sharks, rival gangs that share the same turf.  Instead Natalie Wood, fresh off her Academy Award nominated performance in SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961), plays Maria with a fake accent, the young Puerto Rican girl who falls for Tony, Richard Beymer (Benjamin Horne on Twin Peaks thirty years later), an ex-Jet, where time literally stops when their eyes meet across a dance floor.

 

Rita Moreno as Anita, however, is a force of nature in this film, never anything less than superb, as if finally offered the role of a lifetime to play exactly who she is and she easily outshines everyone else in the film.  Check her out in the fabulously upbeat “America,” where she simply sizzles on camera, kicking those legs, strutting her stuff, and relishing her moment to shine.  Why they dubbed her voice with Betty Wand in the fiercely personal “A Boy Like That” and the “I Have a Love” duet with Maria remains a dubious decision as her instant shift of mood in that scene from downright hatred to sympathy is truly remarkable, as she couldn’t have been more “in her element.”  Natalie Wood’s voice was also dubbed by Marni Nixon, a professional dubber who also sang Audrey Hepburn’s part in MY FAIR LADY (1964) as well as Deborah Kerr’s in THE KING AND I (1956), while Jimmy Bryant dubbed all of Richard Beymer’s songs.  This sort of thing simply wouldn’t be done today, but that speaks to social progress within the movie industry itself.  The songs themselves are as sublime as ever, as this is one of the best scores ever written in American musicals where the range of emotion is simply outstanding, from rousing jubilation to petty humor to first love to unadorned hatred to raw, agonizing grief.  But cinematically the dance interpretations are what really excel, as the constant motion makes excellent use of the entire widescreen, and the dances are always in character, reflecting the angry sarcasm directed across gang lines, contrasted against the quieter, more personalized solo moments.  The gang leaders themselves are excellent, Russ Tamblyn as Riff, the hot headed leader of the Jets (also making his career reprise thirty years later as Dr. Jacoby in Twin Peaks) and George Chakiris as Shark leader Bernardo, Maria’s down to earth older brother and Anita’s boyfriend, a guy who previously escorted Marilyn Monroe in the “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” number from GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953).  So there’s talent galore in this film and you feel it from start to finish. 

 

The film is as timeless as the music, as it’s a staged musical shot on location in the streets of New York that’s actually about something that remains socially relevant fifty years later.  Unfortunately, the mindset of neighborhoods remains closed where people don’t accept outsiders, where prejudice is rampant, and even with the election of the first black President, there isn’t an ounce of sympathy for new immigrants.  America remains divided along racial lines and still does not exactly embrace interracial romances within the family.  That this film is able to deal with such complex issues through song and dance is a testamant to its concept and design, brilliantly exemplified by the “Quintet” sequence that takes place before the rumble, which is pure Sondheim carried out to a stunning musical climax by Leonard Bernstein, where five separate characters are lost in their own thoughts, each wondering what’s going to happen, all singing various melodies and themes simultaneously in a truly bravura moment in the film.  I’ve always had a weak spot for “One Hand, One Heart,” which has such a sacred feel that it could be sung in church.  But there’s such a wildly imaginative, wonderful depiction of youth in this movie with its idealized expectations which collide with reality at some point, sending a jarring message to those in the audience, as we’ve all been there.  We’ve felt exactly as Maria has, a girl who dreams that things will be different, and most likely never handled the situation with as much grace as she does when she discovers it isn’t.  Death is a prominent theme, foreshadowed throughout by the lyrics, especially in the love songs, “Only death will part us now,” but the integration of life and death, love and hate, and ultimately joy and sorrow is as dramatically powerful here as any other musical on record.  The poetic realism in Jacques Demy’s 1960’s movies come to mind, in particular THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964), a full blown opera that also mixes dazzling color schemes with mood, but WEST SIDE STORY works both as a Broadway musical and a staged cinematic experience, where the striking visual originality of the film, especially blown up to 70 mm, may best encapsulate the full scope of the drama.  An interesting note, the on location slums that were used to provide authentic backgrounds in contrast to the dream-like atmosphere were leveled after the film to make room for the Lincoln Center.    

        

Time Out London review

Time to click your fingers, dig out your best denim and act like a tough guy on street corners. No, it’s not a New Kids on the Block reunion but a rerelease of ‘West Side Story’. So how does the film – which won ten Oscars on its 1961 release – stand up now? Very well indeed. Old-fashioned song-and-dance routines set to Leonard Bernstein’s music apart, there’s something thoroughly modern about the whole affair – a mood set by the gliding opening aerial shots of New York City that embrace key landmarks before finding the mean streets, moody subway lines and dingy bars of Lower Manhattan. There’s a turf war going on down there, a battle between the all-American Jets, led by Riff (Russ Tamblyn), and the Sharks, a local band of Puerto Ricans (played largely by made-up white boys). The core of the story is a loose update of the classic ‘Romeo and Juliet’ tangle, with Jet Tony (Richard Beymer) and Shark chick Maria (a stunning Natalie Wood) falling head over heels and sparking fireworks between their respective camps.Largely it’s simple, rousing stuff, but the debate among the Puerto Ricans about the attraction and repulsion of the American dream, as caught in the song ‘America’, remains current. The film divides opinion by sex: the forward-looking girls see the potential benefits (‘industry boom in America!’) while the nostalgic boys resent their new home’s hardships (‘12 in a room in America!’). There’s also a still-relevant, cheeky dig at social theory in the hoodlums’ chirping ‘naturally we’re punks’ and ‘this boy don’t need a judge, he needs an analyst’s care’. These days, we’d slap an ASBO on the lot of them.

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

In the one-hour documentary accompanying the new double-disc West Side Story DVD, the show's lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, insists that neither the Romeo And Juliet-derived 1957 Broadway production nor the 1961 movie adaptation have anything profound to say about bigotry, juvenile delinquency, or William Shakespeare. To Sondheim, West Side Story is about the theater, and nothing else. Creator/choreographer Jerome Robbins and composer Leonard Bernstein set out to shred the conventions of song-and-dance stagecraft in order to find newer, more abstract ways of conveying raw emotion, and for the movie, Robbins and co-director Robert Wise continued the experiment. Wise, a veteran editor, worked with Robbins to create a sense of rhythm and kineticism with cutting and framing, letting gestures from separate shots flow together in time to Bernstein's jazzy score. The young performers speak in a rabbit-punch style, treating screenwriter Ernest Lehman's dialogue like music; when they dance around the colorful sets, they're pinched by the camera in such a way that even the sky looks like it could scrape the tops of their heads. In spite of all this artistry, and even though the movie remains beloved more than 40 years after its initial theatrical release, many cineastes (and even musical buffs) haven't embraced West Side Story. The story of two New York City gangs–the Puerto Rican Sharks and the Anglo Jets–battling for control of their mutual neighborhood "turf" may try too hard to be streetwise and slangy, making it all the odder when the supposed tough guys start dancing in tandem. The Shakespeare swipes are even cornier, as an ex-Jet (Richard Beymer) and the Shark leader's sister (Natalie Wood) sneak away from their respective crews for sparkless romantic rendezvous set to straightforward love ballads. Given the often-exaggerated Puerto Rican accents, the abstractly choreographed knife fights, and the flat inevitability of the second act, West Side Story often fails as believable drama. Taken on its own terms, though, and seen with the impressive digital polish of MGM's special-edition DVD, Robbins and company's work can still persuade. On a purely emotional level, the musical doesn't have the transportive power of contemporary productions like My Fair Lady, or the lusty swagger of the early rock 'n' roll movies, but Sondheim's lyrics are witty, and Bernstein's complex symphonic structures are the aural equivalent of watching a diver flip, twist, and jackknife into the water. West Side Story works best as a spectacle of color and movement, as an example of how smart creators and inspired staging can let the rage and pressure of youth come through in a turn of the head or a flip of the arm.

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review  Les Wright

An operatic overture introduces and summarizes Leonard Bernstein’s sublime musical program. A sequence of aerial-view establishing shots hover over and mythologize Manhattan as the cultural capital of the twentieth century. Further establishing shots bring the viewer to ground level, on an asphalt basketball court and into the midst of a neighborhood Anglo street gang. Macho gang posturing is expressed as a modern ballet stroll through their turf (choreographed by Jerome Robbins), somewhere on “the west side” of The City.   

Before the plot has even begun to unfold, the viewer is completely mesmerized by what is about to happen. West Side Story is profoundly affecting in the virtuosity of ensemble performance art—the direction of Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, the lyrics of Steven Sondheim, the choreography of Jerome Robbins, the performances of the actors (drama, song, and dance) and of Natalie Wood in particular, and, above all, the music of Leonard Bernstein.    

West Side Story has often been characterized as a latter-day, American Romeo and Juliet. It is true that the romance upon which the plot pivots is in the troubadour tradition of doomed romantic love (Tristan and Ysolde or Abelard and Heloise as much as Shakespeare’s Renaissance-era tragedy). But that is more a narrative device upon which a much greater tragedy (again, mirrored palely in the Shakespearean family feud) is framed. That the film is such a passionate homage to New York by so many New Yorkers among its ensemble is inescapable. That the time film’s arete, or aesthetic excellence, suggesting in the phrase of Albert Auster, “the beauty and menace of the city,” is a monumental transformation of the Hollywood musical into “serious art” is equally undeniable.   

The American musical as a distinct genre emerged with The Golddiggers of 1933 and similar 1930s spectacles. On the surface, Golddiggers is the classic Hollywood musical as fairy tale, a rags-to-riches story of a troupe of Broadway hoofers being rescued from the crushing reality of Depression-era poverty by a wealthy but humbly down-to-earth love interest, who saves the day.  Remarkably, that film’s spectacular closing production number is a tribute to “the forgotten man,” the World War I veteran abandoned by his government and manning the bread lines of the Depression. The closing act is a surprising direct political attack on American domestic social policies of the day.   

West Side Story, which is arguably the apex of this tradition, does not hold back in its political critique. But it soars high above polemic or melodrama, suggesting that beyond the sociological truisms of the 1950s--that post-World War II juvenile delinquency is produced by harsh social circumstances--there are much larger invisible and impersonal powers in play.   

An Anglo boy falls in love with a Puerto Rican girl in 1950s Manhattan. As a city of immigrants, both ethnic clans can lay equal claim to New York as their home—much in the spirit of Edward Steichen’s  Family of Man photo exhibition mounted in 1955 at New York's Museum of Modern Art. But the two street gangs, the Anglo Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks, represent warring factions of the same human family, much as the Oedipal tragedy played out between the warring brothers, Eteocles and Polynice. The more specific the details, the more universal the underlying conflict seems to be—gang rivalry among high-school-aged Americans is not merely an uncontainable lower-class “problem,” but a fundamental tragic aspect of the human condition.   

As grand opera, West Side Story expresses both the private joy of first love and communal joy of planning a wedding. As ballet, it formalizes the gang-fight as dance. This idea foreshadows the transformation of dance-as-symbolic warfare, as expressed in the documentary about New York’s 1980s ball scene Paris Is Burning by one of the “house children,” who explained that such dance contests were a gay form of gang street fighting. West Side Story is musical as spectacle combining sound, dance, color, movement, sets, story, acting, mise en scene-- all bursting out and showering down upon any given audience watching in the anonymous intimacy of a darkened movie theater.    

West Side Story embraces this very irony of Americans as a nation of intimate strangers. It addresses a shatteringly abrupt loss of the illusion of innocence and security. By finding the terrible beauty in violence, hatred, and ignorance, it questions why society persists in its blind will to punish anyone who flirts with transgressing the social order, who dares embrace someone or something which is “different.” The Jets v. Sharks gang war, like any guerrilla war, is meaningless and only spawns greater hopelessness. If Bernstein and company can articulate this in one circadian moment, why do we, as the family of man, not “get it,” century after century?

West Side Story - TCM.com  Jeff Stafford

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has served as the inspiration for countless interpretations of that classic story - from the 1936 film adaptation by George Cukor to the recent interracial musical romance, Save the Last Dance For Me (2000). But West Side Story (1961) is easily the most dynamic and visually exhilarating version of this famous star-crossed romance. From its imaginative staging (a poor neighborhood in New York City's West Side) to the gravity-defying choreography of Jerome Robbins to the beloved music score by Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, West Side Story convincingly updates the Shakespeare story for modern times adding the topical issue of racial prejudice for dramatic impact. The Montagues are now identified as the Jets, an Anglo street gang, while the Capulets have been transformed into the Sharks, a rival Puerto Rican gang. The character of Friar Lawrence is now a neighborhood druggist and other updated parallels include Bernardo killing Riff (just as Tybalt killed Mercutio) and Tony killing Bernardo (just as Romeo killed Tybalt). Only the double suicide ending of Romeo and Juliet has been altered.

West Side Story enjoyed a first wave of success on the Broadway stage, with Carol Lawrence and Larry Kent as the leads. Typical of Hollywood, a new cast was assembled for the film version with the exception of George Chakiris, who played Riff, not Bernardo, in the London production. Initially, everyone from Marlon Brando (34 years of age at the time) to Elvis Presley was rumored to be interested in the role of Tony but it was Keir Dullea who originally tested for the part. When he refused to cut his long, wavy blonde hair so he would look like a gang member, former child actor Richard Beymer tested for the part and was hired. The role of Maria was also originally slated for a relative newcomer - Barbara Luna - but when the producers saw Natalie Wood test for the role they knew they had found their Maria. Unfortunately, Wood was not up to the operatic demands of the role. Even though she worked with Jerome Robbins sixteen hours a day to reach perfection and knew all her songs by heart, her voice was eventually dubbed by Marni Nixon, who would later dub Audrey Hepburn's singing voice in My Fair Lady (1964). Beymer was not a professional singer either and his singing voice was dubbed by Jimmy Bryant. Initially Wood campaigned to have Beymer replaced because she didn't like him but the producers refused to honor her wishes and she kept her animosity in check for the remainder of the shoot.

As expected, the film version of West Side Story was an epic undertaking for United Artists so it was decided that two directors were needed. Hollywood veteran Robert Wise was chosen to handle the dramatic and technical end while Jerome Robbins would focus on the musical sequences. However, both men couldn't have been more different in temperament or how they approached their craft and clashed from the beginning. Robbins wanted everything to be completely faithful to his stage production and resisted any changes. In his autobiography, Oscar-winning composer, arranger, and musical director Saul Chaplin discussed Robbins' confrontational personality: "Jerry was by far the most exciting choreographer I had ever watched. He seemed to have an endless stream of exciting ideas...At the same time, he was such an insane perfectionist that it was impossible for any of the dancers to achieve the standards he demanded immediately. To make matters worse, he had a very low tolerance point. When he was displeased, he heaped such verbal abuse on the dancers that the place took on the atmosphere of a concentration camp. They didn't dance out of joy, they danced out of fear....I wondered how he ever got anyone to work for him until I asked one of the dancers. The reply was "How else would I ever get a chance to dance like that?" I didn't invent the notion, but it's further proof that being a successful dancer requires a certain degree of masochism."

Eventually, the studio was forced to remove Robbins when he caused the production to go over budget due to his refusal to stick to the arranged shooting schedule. Other problems included some dangerous location shooting (rocks were thrown at crew members from rooftops during filming around an abandoned section of West Sixty-eighth street) and ineffectual police surveillance while shooting on a rundown section of 110th Street (the crew eventually hired a local street gang for protection). Yet somehow Robert Wise completed the film, despite having to assemble Robbins' unfinished "Prologue" number, which became one of the most important sequences in the film.

When West Side Story opened theatrically, it quickly became the number two box office hit of the year (101 Dalmatians took the number one spot). Hollywood was wild about the film too and awarded it ten Oscars including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno), Best Supporting Actor (George Chakiris), Best Color Cinematography, and Best Director. The latter category brought Wise and Robbins together again to accept the award though neither acknowledged the other in their acceptance speeches. As for Natalie Wood, she created quite a sensation at the Oscar ceremony by appearing with Warren Beatty (Their romance broke up the Natalie Wood-Robert Wagner marriage). Ironically, she was up for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in Splendor in the Grass, not West Side Story, but lost to Sophia Loren in Two Women.

WEST SIDE STORY  A Puerto Rican reading of "America," by Alberto Sandoval Sanchez from Jump Cut, June 1994

 

Theory and practice  U.S. Latinos and the Media: Theory and Practice, by Chon A. Noriega from Jump Cut, June 1994

 

Chicano personal cinema  Willie Varela from Jump Cut, June 1994

 

The Greatest Films (Tim Dirks) recommendation [spoilers]

 

West Side Story (1961) - Articles - TCM.com  Behind the Scenes, Rob Nixon

 

James Berardinelli's ReelViews

 

eFilmCritic.com (David Cornelius) review [5/5]

 

Movie-Vault.com ("Le Apprenti") review

 

DVDTalk [Paul Mavis]  MGM Classic Musicals Collection

 

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review  Special Edition

 

DVD Review e-zine dvd recommendation  Ed Peters, Special Edition 

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jon Danziger) dvd review  Special Edition 

 

Audio Revolution (Bill Warren) dvd review [Special Edition]

 

DVD Verdict (Michael Stailey) dvd review [Special Edition]

 

DVD MovieGuide dvd review [Special Edition]  Colin Jacobson

 

Foster on Film - Shakespeare

 

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [4/5]

 

The Flick Filosopher (MaryAnn Johanson) review

 

Classic Film Guide (capsule)

 

Entertainment Weekly capsule dvd review  Scott Brown

 

Variety (Whitney Williams) review

 

Guardian/Observer

 

Time Out Chicago (Hank Sartin) review [5/6]

 

Movie review: Sing-along 'West Side Story'   Michael Wilmington 

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) recommendation [Great Movies]

 

New York Times (registration req'd) [Bosley Crowther]

 

DVDBeaver dvd review   Gary W. Tooze 

 

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

USA  (174 mi)  1965

 

The Sound of Music (1965)  Idyllopus from Big Sofa

 

Wiseman, Frederick

 

I thought I'd comment on a recent series of films that played at Facets during last week's Documentary festival, where they did a little mini-retrospective on Frederick Wiseman, easily one of the more influential filmmakers alive today, and one of the most intelligent, yet still relatively unheralded, as perhaps documentary films continue to take a back seat to commercial features.  Even the recent German film shot in the French alps monastery, INTO GREAT SILENCE (currently playing at the Music Box), where the filmmaker himself (Philip Gröning) had to abide by the near wordless monastery protocol; this could easily have been a Wiseman film, as it utilized the same fly-on-the-wall approach where after 3 hours the audience is so closely immersed into the subject matter that we feel a need, perhaps even a responsibility, to comment on the subject matter afterwards.  We literally become experts on the subject simply by the totality of information that is thoroughly imbedded into his films

 

Wiseman spends 2 or 3 months filming, then a year editing, picking subjects that he'd like to spend a year learning about, notorious for not bringing pre-conceived notions into the filming, but delving into every nook and cranny of these institutions, where his films are basically a presentation of facts, something that probably comes from his background in teaching law present the evidence and allow the jury to make up its own mind, trusting their judgment.  In this way the filmmaker elevates the role of the viewer, as his style of film not only includes our witnessing of the material, where the camera serves as our eyes and ears, but also demands our participation afterwards in dissecting what it means.  Despite the length of some of these films, the intelligence, the very depth of exploration, fulfilling Wiseman's desire to fully represent the subject, is what distinguishes a Wiseman film from other documentaries. 

 

from Wiseman fan Alan Andres:

 

All of Wiseman's films are filled with very dark wry humorous observations. It's cringe-inducing humor, which, curiously, I note a lot of viewers fail to mention or appreciate. (He's also very attuned to language. There's a lot of humor if one listens closely to what is being spoken.) Rather than objective, Wiseman's films have a clear point-of-view and he's quite ruthless about a lot of the people who appear on screen in positions of authority.

That doctor in Titicut Follies is a monster, but his cigarette ash dangling over the funnel through which the inmate is being force-fed, creates one of the most grotesque and sickly funny moments in film. Wiseman creates some awful suspense as the viewer actually wonders if the ash will accidentally fall in the food. (And yes, it does.)  [edit.  I seem to recall it does not.]

There are scenes like this in a lot of his films. (A classic is the high-school valedictory address in Canal Zone, in which a student attempts to deliver a cliche-ridden speech while the film's audience is mesmerized as his morterboard tassel is blown into in his glasses, creating a tangled mess on the templebar. The more he tries to shake it away, the more the breeze returns to snag the tassle in his glasses.)

I rate Basic Training quite highly. The review (below) mentions FULL METAL JACKET, yet doesn't note that Kubrick ran Basic Training over and over when he was preparing the film. It was one of Kubrick's major touchstones when he made the film. I saw Basic Training in 1972 on PBS and it made a profound impression on me at the time.

 

Frederick Wiseman  Zipporah Films, Wiseman’s own website, by Philippe Pilard (originally published in La Sept/Arte)

Fred Wiseman is probably one of today’s greatest living documentary filmmakers. For close to thirty years, thanks to the Public Broadcast Service (PBS), he has created an exceptional body of work consisting of thirty full length films devoted primarily to exploring American institutions. Over time these films have become a record of the western world, since now more than ever as we approach the century’s close, nothing North American is really foreign to us.

The institutions that Wiseman examined early in his career – a hospital, a high school, army basic training, a welfare center, a police precinct – have “problems” that the filmmaker uncovers. His approach reveals the profound acknowledged and unacknowledged conformity and inequality of American society. Wiseman’s films are also a reflection on democracy. What do his films portray, the “American dream” or the “air conditioned nightmare”? Both, but also a questioning of the world and of existence.

Occasionally, his films describe less circumscribed institutions – the world of fashion, a public park, and a ski resort. In addition to examining the social and ethical questions he is not afraid to confront the “big” metaphysical questions particularly in the films about handicapped children and dying patients. The filmmaker is trying to encompass all of human experience in his films.

In the past, Wiseman had already made movies outside the borders of his own country, in the Sinai, in Germany, and in Panama. In each of these films, however, his subject was Americans abroad.

In 1993, in his film BALLET, he followed the American Ballet Theatre rehearsals in New York and performances in Europe. For a long time Wiseman had wanted to make a film in France and in 1995 he tackled that most French of institutions, The Comedie Francaise. Both in BALLET and LA COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE Wiseman raises questions about the conditions necessary for artistic creation: how to create those conditions which allow a director, an actor, or a dancer to achieve the goal of a perfect even sublime performance; how the specific dialect for the theatre works, the dialect which both places in opposition and transcends the solitude of individual creation and group collaboration.

“Documentaries, like theatre pieces, novels or poems are forms of fiction,” claims Wiseman. Over the years his films have become more a skillful mix of observation, testimony, reflection, an absence of prejudice, and courage, and humor. A complex body of work, as great works of fiction (novels, drama, music, and film) can be, with the same profundity, contradictions, and questions without answers.

Salmonrun Media » Salmonrun Media - Blog, News, Services, and ...  

Mr. Wiseman is one of today’s greatest living documentary filmmakers. For thirty years he has created an exceptional body of work consisting of over thirty-five full length films devoted primarily to exploring a vast expanse of American institutions. From the Ida B. Wells public housing development in Chicago to the American Ballet Theatre, Mr. Wiseman has investigated all aspects of American life.

Born in 1930 in Boston Massachusetts, Mr. Wiseman initially studied law at Yale University. A member of the Massachusetts Bar, Mr. Wiseman was a Lecturer-in-Law at Boston University and a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University before becoming a filmmaker. Mr. Wiseman started his career by producing a fiction feature film about Harlem teenagers, The Cool World (1963), adapted from the novel by Warren Miller and directed by New York filmmaker Shirley Clarke.

In 1967 Mr. Wiseman made his debut as a documentary filmmaker with Titicut Follies, an expose that chronicled the various ways the inmates at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts are treated by guards, social workers and psychiatrists. Titicut Follies introduced audiences to Mr. Wiseman’s unobtrusive and objective approach to filmmaking, referred to by some as “observational mode” – where subjects are not interviewed, identified or asked to interact with the camera. Instead the camera acts as a fly-on-the-wall observer, using its seemingly clandestine nature to observe all aspects of the world around it.

Due to its revealing nature, Titicut Follies became mired in lengthy litigation with state authorities, and the ensuing controversy resulted in Mr. Wiseman garnering the inaccurate reputation as a muckraker. Though Mr. Wiseman has gone on to examine the ins and outs of hospitals, high schools, army basic training, a welfare center and a police precinct, his films have also been concerned with the institution of American culture. And though his initial films did seem to be motivated by a desire for social change, recent films lack an ardent activist drive and instead are about the film experience itself, about finding narrative themes and exploring symbolic potential in the everyday through editing. They are also longer. Mr. Wiseman’s recent films can run into the 3 and 4 hour mark, a drastic increase from the 84 minute running time of Titicut Follies.

In 1971 Mr. Wiseman founded a distribution company, Zipporah Films. Though his works have been shown on PBS, Zipporah Films is committed to preserving, promoting and funding Mr. Wiseman’s body of work through rentals, screenings and lectures.

His 1970 film Hospital, which depicts the daily activities of the Metropolitan Hospital in New York City, with emphasis on the emergency ward and outpatient clinic, went on to win numerous Emmy Awards. In 1992 he filmed High School II, where, in the midst of the Rodney King trial and Los Angeles riots, Mr. Wiseman turned his camera on Central Park East Secondary School (CPESS), a uniquely successful alternative high school in New York’s Spanish Harlem, setting the stage for frank, illuminating and engrossing conversations about race, gender, discipline and sex education.

In Ballet (1993) and La Comedie Francaise (1996) - the first time a documentary film-maker has been allowed to look at all the aspects of the work of this great theatrical company in Paris – Mr. Wiseman examined the conditions necessary for artistic creation: how to create circumstances which allow a director, an actor, or a dancer to achieve the goal of a perfect performance; how the specific dialect for the theatre works, the dialect which both places in opposition and transcends the solitude of individual creation and group collaboration.

Though films such as Central Park (1989) and Aspen (1991) Mr. Wiseman not only explored both locations as areas of recreation by showing the daily lives of the people who play and work in the areas, he also examined how both Aspen and Central Park are maintained and operated. While Central Park shows the complex problems that the New York City Parks Department must deal with in order to keep the park open to the public, Aspen depicts the contrast between Old West Values and a frivolously commercial venue.

During his expansive career, Mr. Wiseman has received numerous awards and accolades including the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, the Grand Prix at the Marseille Festival of Documentary Film and a personal Peabody Award.

Common Places ArtForum - Find Articles   Steve Vineberg from ArtForum

WE CAN ARGUE OVER WHETHER OR NOT Frederick Wiseman is the most gifted documentary filmmaker America has ever produced, but he is surely the most obsessive. He began his career in 1967, abandoning his law practice to chronicle the treatment of inmates at Bridgewater, Massachusetts's State Prison for the Criminally Insane. The outcome of that effort was Titicut Follies, a legendary muckraker of a picture (though we can only speculate about the reforms it might have inspired, since its release was held up by legal hassles for two and a half decades). In the thirty-three years he has now been making movies, Wiseman has conducted an exhaustive exploration of the way Americans live, recorded in thirty movies about institutions (High School [1968], Juvenile Court [1973], Welfare [1975]), industries and careers (Meat [1976], Model [1980], Missile [1987]), significant spaces (Canal Zone [1977], Central Park [1989], Zoo [1993]), artistic endeavors (Ballet [1995]), communities (Aspen [1991], Public Housing [1997]), dist inctive modes of existence (Blind [1986], Deaf [1986], Near Death [1989]). Each is a remarkably extensive examination: It's not unusual for a Wiseman film to clock in at three hours--and a few even run to four.

On the triple occasion of the completion of Wiseman's thirtieth documentary, Belfast, Maine (1999), his receiving the Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to human-rights filmmaking, and his upcoming seventieth birthday, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is mounting a complete retrospective of his nonfiction films. (His single foray into fiction, 1980's Seraphita's Diary, is the only work not included.) The month-long festival--which began in late January with the American premiere of Belfast, Maine--is a rare opportunity to see these pictures, many of which have been shown publicly only once or twice since their initial airing on public television. In Wiseman's hometown, Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Harvard Film Archive screened most of the early films together in 1993, but the tribute Lincoln Center is paying him this season is nonetheless overdue. Wiseman must be the least famous American director of his caliber; indeed, the genre in which he works generally dooms filmmakers to obscurity. But Wiseman began his career at the outset of the richest and most varied period in American movies, the Vietnam era, and the first phase of that career--which ended with the dwindling of this "American Renaissance" around 1975--produced a series of features that have to be counted among the signal achievements of those years: High School, Law and Order(1969; about the Kansas City police force), Hospital (1970), Basic Training (1971), Juvenile Court, and Welfare.

Though these pictures have much in common with Titicut Follies, they are notably different in tone. They're raw, knotted depictions of the combat ordinary human beings wage in and against nightmarish bureaucracies--women and men whose lives are defined, at least temporarily, by these interactions. And in almost all cases Wiseman's unblinking gaze refuses to distinguish between the struggles of clients whose circumstances have placed them within the purview of these systems and the struggles of the employees who attempt to make them work. He doesn't validate the notion of villains, and in fact the joyous surprise in film after film is how decently most of his subjects behave when they have to deal with the misery, bafflement, and defeat of people whom the massive, antiquated machine--maddeningly slow and inefficient--fails to assist. The only characters in a Wiseman film we don't sympathize with are the officials who see themselves as the voice of the system and refuse to acknowledge its inadequacies--to borrow from Brecht, those who aren't sufficiently detached to comment ironically on the roles they play. High School contains, sadly, the largest contingent of these self-satisfied menaces, like the administrator who instructs a student to accept an unjust punishment from a teacher because it's good for his character, or the woman who reads aloud, in assembly, a heartrendingly naive letter from an alumnus about to be dropped into the jungles of Vietnam, proudly holding up his missive as proof that the school has done its job. And they pop up occasionally else where--the field sergeant in Basic Training who seems to be trying to turn himself into a machine, the judge in Juvenile Court who dispenses facile psychiatric advice. But there are astonishingly few of them. If Wiseman had come to these subjects with a political agenda, he wouldn't have discovered all the ways in which the humane impulse pulses through the corridors of ill-designed, dilapidated bureaucracies. Law and Order and Basic Training stand out boldly from the more typical films of the era in their insistence on presenting cops and military officers as ordinary human beings whose intention actually is to serve others.

Welfare, my own favorite among Wiseman's films, completed in 1975, was the last of this amazing bumper crop. He couldn't keep it up forever--the urgent tone, the seat-of-the-pants feel of cinema verite, the sense of vast structures crumbling around us; he was by then forty-five, and the culture, too, was changing. Beginning with Meat in 1976 and Canal Zone in 1977, his movies lost that urgency and began to take on a more contemplative mood; in 1980, when he began collaborating with the photographer John Davey, they became visually more evocative. William Brayne, who'd shot all of Wiseman's previous pictures, from Law and Order through Manoeuvre (1979), had a marvelously gritty, free-form style. Davey became Wiseman's partner just before the documentarian added color to his palette, and the new cinematographer's more classical aesthetic is better suited to the later movies, with their patient layering of information, their love of physical detail (particularly in the workplace), their musical structure (characters, locations, activities recur like refrains). For Wiseman, there's no such thing as banality; he sifts the material of the apparently banal until he's found the variety of its texture. In a movie like Central Park or the luxuriantly shaped Belfast, Maine, an epic measure-taking of a small New England fishing town, that process is not only deeply engaging but deeply beautiful.

“Frederick Wiseman:  Discovering America,” by Joanna Topor MacKenzie, Chicago Documentary Festival program guide 2007 (no link)

 

A documentary film is written in the editing room.  On the surface this is just the truth of non-fiction filmmaking.  No one knows ahead of time who will win the spelling bee, walk out of the hospital or throw the election, just as no one knows ahead of time which filmed moments will resonate with audiences or which subjects will come across as most affecting.  On a deeper level however, this truism speaks to what it means to be a successful documentary filmmaker.  Ultimately, documentary filmmakers have to be comfortable with the challenge of not knowing what their film will look like and feel confident that they are masterful enough to form a structure out of hundreds of hours of collected footage.  For 40 years Frederick Wiseman has exemplified this desire for discovery, the one that fuels great documentarians.  The result is a body of exhilarating and focused work that provides profound insight into every fiber of American life, from the classroom to the military and from welfare offices to New York’s Central Park.

 

“You make or break film in the editing,” Wiseman says, “You can have good material and ruin it in the editing room or have mediocre material and substantially improve it.”  Not having a known outcome cam be overwhelming for some directors and those would not survive long in Wiseman’s world, one that is literally dominated by years spent holed up in the editing room.  “The shooting of the film is usually 6-8 weeks and the editing takes about one year.  The focus and the rhythm occurs by studying the material and trying out all the possibilities that occur to me,” he explains.  Though Wiseman’s process seems similar to that of any commercial editor – cutting, pasting and reworking – he is not shepherded by scripted beats, climaxes and denouements, but rather by revelation.  “I don’t have a story in advance and I don’t set out in these movies to prove a thesis,” he told Salon in 2002.

 

The lack of thesis that has become characteristic of Wiseman’s films reveals another idea about documentary filmmaking, namely a profound regard for subject matter.  In the opening shots of Domestic Violence (2001) for example, as Wiseman cuts between Tampa Florida skyscrapers, there is no mood music to set the tone.  As commuters race down Tampa’s highways there is no voice over to tell us what we are to expect.  “This is the reality I’m showing you,” the film seems to say and leaves us free to draw our own conclusions.  Similarly in Hospital (1969) Wiseman takes us from the emergency room to the insurance processing center without justification.  Behind all the doors are people and processes that make up this institution and Wiseman is interested in all of it.  He is not here to tell us what’s wrong with health care or to exalt driven doctors, he is showing us the machine behind the institution of the hospital and asking us to be curious.

 

Preconceived notions are the lifeblood of fiction, where stories eschew reality, couching grit in drama, and don’t give audiences more than they can handle.  Wiseman on the other hand has made a career of getting behind the socially acceptable facades of American institutions and presenting audiences with the sharp reality of women dealing with physical abuse, patients being admitted to the emergency room and abandoned children processed through the system.  “Institutions are a way of looking at different aspects of American life in microcosm.  I’m interested in the relationship between what goes on within the institution and what goes on outside,” he explains.  Perhaps more so than any other visual artist, Wiseman has held up a mirror to Americana by taking his camera into places that most of us would rather not see, such as the public housing office in Chicago; are morbidly curious about, such as the inner-workings of a mental hospital or would not normally think capable of making a statement on American culture, such as a department store. 

 

Wiseman’s first non-fiction film, Titicut Follies aired in 1967.  It was an expose that chronicled the various ways the inmates at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts are treated by guards, social workers and psychiatrists.  Titicut Follies introduced audiences to Wiseman’s unobtrusive and objective approach to filmmaking, where subjects are not interviewed, identified, or asked to interact with the camera.  Instead the camera acts as a fly-on-the-wall observer, using its seemingly clandestine nature to take in the world around it.  This unobtrusive approach has marked Wiseman’s films for the last 40 years.  Though many film scholars have tried to label Wiseman’s distinct style, the filmmaker is quick to rebuke all titles, explaining that he is drawn to his subjects out of curiosity not to bolster any proposed trademark style.  “I pick topics that I’m interested in learning something about and that I think I can spend a year studying.”  Sticking to the tenants of unknown outcome and regard for subject matter, Wiseman isn’t observing so much as absorbing.  Because he doesn’t come into the project with a desired resolution, his stance is that of intrigued student and the result is an eye-opening voyage into little discussed or pondered elements of American culture.

 

With a body of work composed essentially of filmed social studies, it’s hard to think that Wiseman isn’t motivated by social change.  Not only do the open frames scored with natural noise beg to be dissected for a meaning, it’s easy to think that his style of documentary filmmaking – in essence a presentation of facts – as a natural extension of his time spent studying and teaching law. But for the filmmaker the two have nothing in common.  ”I didn’t like teaching law and was always interested in movies.  In my mind there’s no connection between my making movies and studying law.”  Still, his early films garnered him the reputation of a muckraker – someone looking to rustle the feathers of the establishment in the hopes of promoting social change.  Wiseman became mired in legal battles with the state of Massachusetts over the provocative images shown in Titicut Follies and after moving quickly on to the inner workings of a hospital in his 1969 film Hospital, it’s easy to see why Wiseman was thought to be an activist.  Films about being blind and deaf and poor in America followed, yet he insists social restructuring was never his intention.  “My films are not made to produce social change, but rather to explore the complexities of the place that is the subject of the film.  I neither know how to produce social change or to identify it when it is alleged to exist.”

 

Though he may feel otherwise, Wiseman has in effect written the text on how to ignite the quest for change and that is by delving into every facet of the institutions he photographs.  By positioning his camera in the very essence of American society and exposing the masses to the ins and outs of institutional life, Wiseman has drawn out eyes to the basic foundation of American living and shown us its cracks and seams.  By not starting out with a defined intention other than to be in a place for up to 2 months and take it all in, Wiseman immerses himself and the viewer in the lifeblood of the stories he’s telling.  In the end they have a common tone:  everyday people trying to reconcile bureaucracy with the circumstances of quotidian life.

 

Looking at Wiseman’s oeuvre, poignant and provocative titles like Meat, Juvenile Court, and Basic Training attest to the filmmaker’s steadfast commitment to unearthing difficult topics, but look closer and one changing trait emerges:  length.  The relatively short running times of Titicut Follies and Hospital have given way to films that last up to 4 hours.  “I only make things as long as they need to be” he was once reported as saying and as his films get longer one can only imagine the breadth of information he is looking to process.  Subjects in Wiseman’s films are not judged or polarized, in fact he is open about his dislike of interviews altogether.  And because he regards his subjects with awe and interest he requires that his audience do the same and to that end length is about making viewer and subject equal, not about pontification.  As long as it takes to whittle down the hundreds of hours of footage to arrive at the heart of the matter is as long as the film will be.  Wiseman’s films therefore transcend the pity associated with domestic violence and welfare and show us the mechanism associated with healing and rehabilitation, they also go beyond the typical notions associated with a multiracial high school in Queens New York to show us the mechanism of education and fostering independent thinking.  Length in effect speaks only to Wiseman’s desire to fully represent the topics he’s filming.

 

But that’s not to say that Wiseman’s only interested in the truth behind societal systems, it is also the cultural aspect of life that draws him in.  Before they were reality TV fodder Wiseman was there to capture the day to day of a model’s life (Model, 1980), he was one of the first to comment on the changing face of small town America (Aspen, 1991 and Belfast, Maine 1999)and to wonder how a ballet is crafted (Ballet, 1995).  He was also the first documentary filmmaker allowed to look at all the aspects of the work of La Comedie Francaise (1996) – is the oldest continuous repertory company in the world, founded in Paris in the late 17th century.

 

Ever the perpetual student of America, Wiseman’s goal is to explore as much of the country as possible and this journey leaves little room for looking back on his body of work.  Though he has been generously funded by PBS and each of his films have been screened there, he claims never to think of audience ahead of time.  He is his own worst critic and the only one that matters.  When asked how he feels his films have evolved, he claims to have no idea, “I don’t know how to gauge whether my films have changed over the years.  I’m simply trying to make as many films as I can on subjects that interest me.”  Essentially, by not aiming to be America’s magnifying glass, Wiseman has succeeded to be the country’s most valuable investigator, showing us over and over again just how complex and electrifying we are.       

 

Zipporah Films

 

Frederick Wiseman - Bio

 

Subterranean Cinema   another Wiseman film website

 

The Filmmaker  brief bio information from PBS on P.O.V. for their showing of HIGH SCHOOL

 

Wiseman, Frederick - Museum of Broadcast Communications  Biography by Hal Himmelstein

 

Frederick Wiseman - Director - Films as Director ... - Film Reference  Andrew Tudor profile essay, also seen here:  Frederick Wiseman facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com ...

 

Frederick Wiseman's Radical Take On Institutions - Culture Trip  Shelton Lindsay (Undated)

 

The Cool World: Frederick Wiseman | News | The Harvard Crimson  Allan Katz, April 24, 1962

 

Frederick Wiseman — MacArthur Foundation  links to dozens of articles written about Wiseman, a 1982 MacArthur Fellow, August 1, 1982

 

Fred Wiseman's novelistic samplings of reality | Current  David Stewart, February 2, 1998

 

Titicut Follies • Senses of Cinema  Michael Price, March 13, 2002

 

The Birth, Life, and Death of a Nation: A Portrait by Frederick Wiseman ...  Jared Rapfogel from Senses of Cinema, March 13, 2002

 

Riefenstahl's Heights and Wiseman's Follies: Allegories of Flesh in ...  Riefenstahl’s Heights and Wiseman’s Follies: Allegories of Flesh in Olympia and Titicut Follies, by Anya Meksin from Bright Lights Film Journal, November 1, 2005

 

Documentary Diva » Frederick Wiseman for DocPoint  Betsy A. McLane, November 29, 2005

 

American Cinematographer: Frederick Wiseman  The Doyen of Direct Cinema, by David E. Williams, February 2006

 

Buried Alive: On Frederick Wiseman's Juvenile Court - Bright Lights ...  Tom Sutpen from Bright Lights Film Journal, February 1, 2006

 

A Chronicler of Culture: The Continuing Career of Frederick Wiseman ...  Bob Fisher from Documentary, 2007

 

Frederick Wiseman - The Threepenny Review  Frederick Wiseman essay On Editing, Spring 2008

 

DVD PICK: Frederick Wiseman documentaries -- chicagotribune.com  Dennis Lim from the Chicago Tribune, August 8, 2008

 

3quarksdaily: The Humanists: Frederick Wiseman's High School (1968)  Colin Marshall, December 14, 2009               

 

On the Level: The Films of Frederick Wiseman - Bright Lights Film ...   Mark Dow from Bright Lights Film Journal, January 31, 2011

 

Frederick Wiseman: The Tawdry Gruesomeness of Reality  Errol Morris from The Paris Review, February 28, 2011

 

Ghost Meets the Man: Frederick Wiseman's "Titicut Follies" (1967) on ...  Craig Keller from Mubi, August 31, 2011

 

What Wiseman Knew | California Magazine - Cal Alumni Association  Liza Gross from California magazine, Fall 2011

 

Comma, Space: Frederick Wiseman's "High School" (1968) on ... - Mubi   Michael Keller, April 24, 2012

 

Tough Love and Revelation: The Films of Frederick Wiseman | by ...  Andrew Delbanco from The New York Review of Books, December 10, 2012

 

The Paradox of a Great University | The New Yorker  Richard Brody, November 15, 2013

 

Frederick Wiseman: 'One common misconception is that I'm a ...  Tim Robey from The Telegraph, January 10, 2015

 

Finding the American Ideal in Queens | The New Yorker  Richard Brody, November 3, 2015

 

Lost in Jackson Heights - Los Angeles Review of Books  Ratik Asokan, March 27, 2016

 

Frederick Wiseman's first decade of docs kicks off ... - Los Angeles Times  Justin Chang, August 26, 2016

 

Frederick Wiseman deserves more than celebration. He deserves to ...  Ty Burr from The Boston Globe, March 24, 2017

 

Frederick Wiseman: The Filmmaker Who Shows Us Ourselves - The ...  The New York Times, April 6, 2017

 

New York's Film Forum showcases the early films of documentary ...  Eric Monder from Film Journal, April 13, 2017

 

"The Complete Wiseman, Part I: Early Wiseman" - Fandor  David Hudson, April 14, 2017

 

Reality television: 50 years of Frederick Wiseman documentaries ...  Ray Rauthier, Press Herald, May 14, 2017

 

The Uncivil Servant: A Frederick Wiseman Retrospective | Jewish ...  Mitchell Abidor from Jewish Currents, September 4, 2017

 

Frederick Wiseman On the American Condition – Tablet Magazine  Fred Wiseman Is Here, by Sean Cooper, September 13, 2017

 

How Frederick Wiseman Shot The Great American Novel – The Forward    Daniel Witkin, September 13, 2017

 

Review: Ex Libris: The New York Public Library | Frederick Wiseman  Nicolas Rapold, September/October 2017

 

TSPDT - Frederick Wiseman  also listing Wiseman’s ten favorite films, Source: Sight & Sound (1992)

 

Frederick Wiseman - Salon.com  Richard Covington interviews Wiseman, August 26, 1996

 

A Discussion with Frederick Wiseman, Part I | IndieWire  Jim McKay interview, December 18, 1997

 

A Discussion with Frederick Wiseman, Part II | IndieWire  Jim McKay interview, December 19, 1997

 

Gerald Peary: Interviews: Frederick Wiseman  March 1998, also seen here:  Documentary Is Never Neutral | An Interview with Frederick Wiseman

 

Fred Wiseman  Kaleem Aftab and Alexandra West interview Wiseman in 1999, also seen here:  Interview with Wiseman from Film West Irish Film Journal (pdf)

 

Frederick Wiseman - Salon.com  Nick Poppy also interviews Wiseman, January 30, 2002

 

The Follies Of Documentary Filmmaking - VICE  Jesse Pearson interview, September 1, 2007

 

Truer Than Fiction by Nicolas Rapold - Moving Image Source   Nicolas Rapold interview, August 2, 2008

 

Boston Phoenix [Gerald Peary]  which includes an interview with Wiseman, March 23, 2009

 

An Interview With Frederick Wiseman | Filmmaker Magazine  Daniel James Scott interview, Januuary 10, 2012

 

Wiseman.pdf  Harlan Jacobson interview from Film Comment, January/February 2012 (pdf)

 

The Choice and Order: An Interview with Frederick Wiseman on ... - Mubi   Daniel Kasman interview, September 28, 2013

 

Frederick Wiseman Interview • At Berkeley - Senses of Cinema  Darren Hughes Interview, December 17, 2013

 

At Berkeley: Frederick Wiseman on Why He Went Back to School - PBS  Craig Phillips interview from PBS, January 13, 2014

 

Peter Debruge  interview at Cannes from Variety, May 23, 2014

 

Wiser Ways of Looking: A Conversation with Frederick Wiseman - Mubi  Kiva Reardon interview, October 3, 2014

 

An Interview with Frederick Wiseman - Hazlitt   Calum Marsh interview, November 7, 2014

 

Frederick Wiseman's Cosmic Joke: A Conversation With the Elder ...  Jeremy Sigler interview from Tablet magazine, December 15, 2014

 

FREDERICK WISEMAN with Sophie Hamacher | The Brooklyn Rail  Sophie Hamacher interview, March 5, 2015

 

Frederick Wiseman on How to Stay in the Business of ... - IndieWire  conversation between Wiseman and his long-time producer Karen Konicek, May 5, 2015                        

 

BOMB Magazine — Frederick Wiseman by Nicholas Elliott  November 5, 2015

 

Article An Interview with Frederick Wiseman - Metrograph  Eric Hynes interview, March 2, 2016

 

Documentary Filmmaker Frederick Wiseman | Interviews | Tavis ... - PBS  Tavis Smiley interview, video interview and/or full transcript, November 17, 2016

 

Frederick Wiseman - Page - Interview Magazine  Kent Jones interview, March 12, 2017

 

Frederick Wiseman Talks Up the Vitality of the New York Public Library   Graham Fuller interview from The Culture Trip, September 14, 2017

 

Pictures from an Institution: An Interview with Frederick Wiseman  Akiva Gottlieb interview from Documentary, September 14, 2017

 

Frederick Wiseman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

TITICUT FOLLIES                                                  A                     95

USA  (84 mi)  1967

 

TITICUT FOLLIES, or the musical revue that takes us into the showroom of the Bridgewater State Hospital for sex offenders and the criminally insane, is the only Wiseman film that features a variety act of singing performances, where we witness the intermingling of guards and inmates who are indistinguishable, directed by one of the guards who appears to have an Al Jolson complex.  The lightness of these musical sketches contrasts mightily with the severity of the subject matter, an uncompromising exposé revealing appalling prison conditions, run at that time by the Department of Corrections, not the Department of Mental Health, featuring a seemingly deranged criminal psychiatrist with a German accent, a constant cigarette dangling from his mouth, a man who literally toys with his patients, as well as groups of sadistic guards who travel in packs and gleefully taunt naked patients with the exact same question over and over again just to get them riled up, driving them into tantrums, both examples of some of the more offensive professional behavior imaginable.  Even after spending their time in their solitary cells naked, we routinely see the men stripped naked again every day as well as they return from the outdoor courtyard, the contents of their clothes pockets removed and placed in a pile on the floor, resembling Auschwitz, before they are otherwise herded through various lines prodded along like cattle.  Unlike Wiseman’s other films, the camera here never stops moving, zooming in and out of faces in a crowd, becoming a constantly roving eye that is continually searching the premises, sometimes gazing through the tiny inmate’s cell peepholes long *after* the guards have left, the camera still lingering, staring at men who have nothing to do all day but stare out into space.  Nearly all the patients and staff smoke, with plentiful images of solitary moments alone in a haze of smoke.  Patients are interviewed about their conditions, one in particular feels it has deteriorated since his arrival at this institution, much of which resembles men in obvious states of psychotic delirium and complete detachment, reminiscent of the early 19th century depiction of French asylums by the Marquis de Sade in Peter Brook’s disturbing 1966 film MARAT/SADE based on the play The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, which eerily also encouraged dramatic performances by the inmates.   

 

Using more French New Wave-style quick cuts than any of his other films, which produces a more experimental or avant-garde style, the camera observes men standing around talking to themselves, while another lectures vociferously in racist demagoguery that is nearly indecipherable, another man plays a trombone in the outdoor prison courtyard, but there are also close up images of men getting a shave, another man splashing in his bath, actually drinking the bath water.  In an unusual sequence, women are allowed on the premises to help celebrate a birthday party, cutting the cake, leading the game activities for the less than eager men, trying to offer them some semblance of a good time.  There are few young men here, most are older and grizzled, victims who could just as easily be examples of gulag conditions in Siberia, as they don’t ever appear to be leaving this place.  In perhaps the most grotesque montage of his career, Wiseman cross-cuts images of a patient being force fed liquid food through a tube shoved down his nose, where the German psychiatrist is smoking leisurely, allowing the burning embers of his cigarette to dangle precariously just above the feeding container, while at the same time we see images of this same patient’s body being prepared as a corpse, eventually following his body until it is laid to rest, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as only in death is his soul released from behind the walls of this horrid confinement.  

 

Shortly after the film screened at the New York Film Festival in 1967, the film caused an outrage and was actually banned by the State of Massachusetts, the first such film banned for reasons other than obscenity or national security, apparently believing the graphic realism portrayed, which includes full frontal male nudity, was not in the public interest and could perhaps present a danger to the public.  To this day this is a painfully difficult and wrenching film to see, yet the inhumane treatment has current Guantanamo ramifications, where yet another set of prisoners have absolutely no rights under the law, and whose dehumanized treatment remains tightly concealed tucked away from the public’s eyes.  History repeats itself, and then as now, it does no good to conceal such institutionalized ugly truths, which if seen in the light of day, such as this film can provide, then it might help alter the public’s view, leading to a demand for immediate changes in the manner in which this kind of government institution conducts itself.  

 

The Chicago Reader: Don Druker

Frederick Wiseman's first documentary (1967) is a masterpiece of muckraking in which he examines the workings and inhumanities of a state mental hospital in Massachusetts. Wiseman's focus is on the complex relationship among liberal professionals (who come off badly), guards (who come off not so badly), inmates whose only reason for being locked up is that they are “mentally ill” (whatever that means), and inmates who've committed serious crimes and have to be segregated. As with most Wiseman documentaries (High School, Law and Order, Hospital, Basic Training), the emphasis is on institutions and the way they dehumanize.

Time Out

 

Trained as a lawyer, Wiseman has chosen as his ever-evolving cinematic subject the American social contract, and how the machinery of the state upholds or shreds it. His first film is a hellish descent into a Massachusetts institution for the criminally insane where, it would seem, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. The editing often purposefully blurs the distinction between patient (some irretrievably deranged, some desperately lucid) and doctor. Wiseman fixes his steady, steely gaze on abuse, neglect, medical ineptitude, and appalling conditions; one horrifyingly expressionist segment, rare in Wiseman's work, cross-cuts between the force feeding of a patient and the later preparation of the same man's corpse. The film is often extremely difficult to watch and was, for a long time, nearly impossible to see. The Massachusetts authorities suppressed Titicut for a quarter century, arguing that it violated the privacy of the inmates - a risible claim, as it's painfully clear that these men had no rights at all.

 

Cine-File Chicago: Doug McLaren

Acclaimed documentarian Frederick Wiseman's career focus has been the documentation and analysis of institutions, be it high school, the hospital, Army training, or most recently, the Idaho state legislature (STATE LEGISLATURE plays at Chicago Filmmakers in March). TITICUT FOLLIES, his first film, exposes the dire workings of a Massachusetts mental institution in the late 1960s. This unflattering portrayal landed the film in a legal struggle for general distribution, blocked as it was by the State of Massachusetts, which was finally resolved in 1991. Though the film unfortunately missed out on the political punch it could have had were it widely released in 1967, it still manages to shock and appall audiences with the graphic mistreatment of the inmates. What could and should have been a whistle-blowing film is now merely a document of past abuses. It is still compelling nonetheless. Even though it is mostly remembered as a harrowing exposé, it isn't all doom and gloom. The title of the film shares its name with the play the inmates put on for their guards and nurses. It is a swirling, bizarre pageant that casts light, however dim, on the inmates' lives. This is Wiseman's signature move as a documentarian: to show that institutions, even flawed and failing ones, are a complicated web of good and bad with no easy solutions.

Subterranean Cinema  Amos Vogel, FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART

Prisons and mental institutions, where recalcitrant or ill-fitting citizens are put out of sight, are the dirty secrets of civilized society.  As they are owned and controlled by precisely those who wish to keep them secret, and are also confined to specific, enclosed spaces, filmmakers are easily kept out.  Wiseman's achievement in creating this unique film document is therefore all the more impressive:  it is a major work of subversive cinema and a searing indictment -- without editorializing narration -- of the "system".  Wiseman (and his extraordinary cameraman-anthropologist John Marshall) officially gained entrance to a state prison hospital for the criminally insane, where the film was shot, and obtained the co-operation of it's psychiatrists, guards, and social workers.   Massachusetts, however, subsequently obtained an injunction preventing the film's exhibition, thereby keeping the secret.

This is a gallery of horrors, a reflection of man's infinite capacity to dehumanize his fellow beings. Broken men, retarded, catatonic, schizophrenic, toothless -- many incarcerated for life -- vegetate in empty cells, bare of furniture, utensils, toilets, or beds.  They are incontinent, they masturbate, babble, put on a horrifying annual variety show (the "Titicut Follies"), beat against the bars in rage, and scream.  They stand on their heads for minutes on end while chanting self-invented hymns, or are force-fed through the nose while a Dr. Strangelove psychiatrist himself (!) pours liquid down the stomach tube.  They are taunted or patronized, drink their own dirty bathwater while in the tub (smilingly calling it champagne), and die, ignomiously, their bodies shaved before burial and cotton-wool stuffed into their eyes.  The camera flinches from nothing:  here it is, it says, and since you are not doing anything about eliminating this, at least have the courage to watch.

TITICUT FOLLIES  Gregory J. Howard , State University of New York at Albany School of Criminal Justice

"Why do I need this help? You're ruining me!" So begins a dialogue between a bundle of nerves prisoner and a short, Germanic man, apparently of letters, who controls the prisoner's fate. Standing in the desolation of the institution's yard, the authority figure attempts to convince the prisoner that if he were "sent back to prison today, [he would] be back to Bridgeport today or tomorrow." As if to emphasize the point and to garnish it with an air of legitimacy, the authority figure, who would appear to be a psychiatrist, asserts, "If you don't believe me, you can spit in [my] face." Pressing the matter still further, the prisoner asks, "How do you know that I am a schizophrenic- paranoid?" to which the doctor retorts, "Because you had psychological testing."

And so goes the absurdity captured in the theatrical revue of a mental institution called "Titicut Follies." Examining the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Bridgewater, an institution for the criminally insane, Frederick Wiseman chronicles the daily lives of the prisoners and staff in "cinema verite" style. Granted access to the institution for 29 days of filming, Wiseman captures images and interactions that are both macabre and revolting. Whether it be guards badgering a prisoner for voiding on the floor of his cell, a doctor telling a prisoner "to chew" his food as he is force fed through his nose with a tube, or an interaction between prisoner and doctor as described above, Titicut Follies is a powerful and disturbing examination of the world of a mental institution which, among other things, questions the traditional boundaries separating the deviant from the conformist.

More subtly, Wiseman also makes problematic the common assumption that mental institutions are founded on a bedrock of rationality and order. Of course, the medical model adopted by these institutions in the twentieth century makes an explicit commitment to the logic of the scientific method-- the driving force of positivism --, yet Wiseman deftly and ironically presents the institution as a place of chaos and absurdity, despite the regimentation and extraordinary control that it exudes. Careful and clever editing results in the presentation of disembodied images, taken out of context, which make the functioning of the institution seem incomprehensible. The lack of order conveyed in the film and the inability to distinguish readily between the guards and the guarded leads one to question whether the institution has any greater purpose than the systematic degradation of human beings-- both prisoners and guards.

Of course, painting the institution as a place mired in degradation and exploitation is ironic given Wiseman's own use of the prisoners and guards as his "subjects." In using these people as the vehicles for his polemical attack on mental institutions, Wiseman has been accused of doing to the prisoners what he condemns others for doing. In fact, it was this point which resulted in a series of court cases, dating from the 1967 release of the film, in which the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared the documentary obscene and exploitive, banning it from public viewing. Only after 24 years has this restriction been lifted, allowing the film to be aired on public television for the first time in early 1993. Nonetheless, while the legal entanglements have apparently dissipated, the moral quandary still remains, and it tugs hard at those who partake of this film.

Named after the annual talent show held at Bridgeport in which both prisoners and staff participate, Titicut Follies is a highly charged polemic that, by necessity, moves its viewers both intellectually and emotionally. The documentary would be a useful addition to classes which deal with punishment, deviance, treatment, ethics, and possibly even research design because it raises basic questions concerning the identification and control of individuals deemed deviant by the larger society, or at least the criminal
justice and mental health systems. In addition, it forces viewers, albeit not intentionally, to consider the moral and ethical boundaries which pertain to the observation and study of human beings.

When does one cross the line from a reasoned and informative examination of the human condition to a systematic exploitation of individuals aimed at rattling one's own ideological saber? On what moral basis do we and should we determine who shall be the kept and who shall be the keeper? Are there readily identifiable characteristics which distinguish the two? These questions and more need to be explored, and this film provides a useful mechanism for making them more salient to undergraduates and professionals alike. Given its rich theoretical content and the power with which it speaks to the audience, this film is a fantastic pedagogical tool. Accordingly, it receives four gavels on the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture's esteemed rating scale and comes highly recommended.

Film Threat [Phil Hall]

One of the most famous documentaries ever made has barely been seen by the general population. It never had a theatrical release, nor has it been released on home video. It was only televised once, and the filmmaker has refused to allow additional broadcasts. And if that’s not enough, it was banned by the courts from being publicly screened for a quarter-century.

The film in question is Frederick Wiseman’s 1967 “Titicut Follies,” and even today this production generates controversy for its contents and the manner in which it was created. Time has not diminished its emotional impact – it is still among the most disturbing films ever created – but it does allow for a fresh examination of what Wiseman presented and (more importantly, at least to this writer) what was not presented.

Wiseman was a professor at Boston University’s law school when he decided to try his hand at documentary filmmaking. His subject was the Bridgewater State Hospital in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Despite its name, it was not a traditional medical facility. Rather, it was part of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections and it was used to confine prisoners deemed criminally insane. Rather than offer the traditional hospital setting of beds and rooms, the prisoners were kept in barren cells without furniture and plumbing – a mattress on the floor and a bucket were used instead.

There is no denying Bridgewater was home to plenty of insanity. Many of the inmates seen on camera appear to be in their own world: men standing around yelling in gibberish, cursing into the air, even breaking into song without provocation (unless they felt they needed to be entertaining for the camera aimed at them). But the criminal backstory behind these men’s confinement is largely ignored. Except for one man, who acknowledges his imprisonment for pedophilia, no one in the film ever gets to explain how they would up as prisoners.

And that is where “Titicut Follies” triumphs and fails. As cinema verite, it is a startling examination of the ebb and flow of Bridgewater’s routine days. There is no story line, per se, but only a series of everyday occurrences as the anonymous inmates and the Bridgewater staff interact freely. Yet at the same time, a significant chunk of the story is absent: just who are these people? Not just the inmates, but also the staff (particularly the correctional officers, who appear to have more contact with the inmates than the medical personnel and who clearly had to be affected by the depth of their work).

There are a few clues about some of the people here. A Russian man named Vladimir complains he was transferred from a penitentiary to Bridgewater over a year-and-a-half earlier for observation and he repeatedly requests being transferred back. He states the medication he is being given at Bridgewater is making him ill and the facility is wrecking his emotional health. The doctors he pleads with, however, state he is paranoid and prescribe stronger tranquilizers to calm his visible agitation.

But what is not shown is this: who is Vladimir? Why was he sent to jail? And why was he sent from jail to Bridgewater? And was he really sane, or were the medical experts (who come across as condescending and detached in the film) genuinely knowledgeable about his condition? It is impossible to determine if this is cinema verite or manipulative filmmaking.

Likewise, another inmate is the focus of a lengthy sequence where two correctional guards take him from his cell to the Bridgewater barber for a shave. The inmate is naked (as many of the inmates are) and he seems totally incapable of communicating. He speaks in weird, loud growls and snarls, and he clearly abhors eye contact. Some critics have faulted the correctional officers for treating the man in a patronizing manner by the way they speak to him (the guards are a bit loud and repeat the man’s name in each sentence when addressing him). But I can’t see abuse there – if anything, the guards are guilty of trying to communicate with a man who seems beyond the normal range of conversation. At the end of the sequence, there is a brief breakthrough: the inmate acknowledges he was educated to be a teacher. But what happened between his education and his incarceration? The viewer never knows.

Perhaps this manner of filmmaking is meant to build the sense of instability and unrest which permeates Bridgewater. Lord knows the film captures enough genuine scenes of unfortunate actions. Most egregious is a doctor in charge of tube-feeding a hunger striking inmate has a cigarette dangling from his lips as he inserts the feeding tube into the inmate’s nose. The viewer cannot help but wonder if the ashes of the cigarette will fall into the tube (they don’t). This lengthy sequence is intercut with a dead inmate’s body being prepared for burial – which offers a gruesome reminder that for many Bridgewater inmates, the only escape is into death.

But mostly, the sequences here are pathetic for their warped view of fractured humanity. There is a segment where an elderly inmate, who is clearly in his own world, happily splashes in a bathtub while three correctional officers sit around him and make sure he thoroughly cleans himself without drinking his bath water. A birthday party for an inmate brings a small level of happiness for the men who are gathered for a rare reprieve to enjoy cake and games. The film’s title comes from a variety revue staged by both inmates and guards – watching the performances, it is impossible to determine who is insane and who is on salary.

If anything, the film’s most dramatic moment is also its quietest. A diminutive inmate, surrounded by three large and lumpy guards, is told to remove his clothing. The inmate obliges and is quickly naked. He is then escorted by the guards up a staircase and through a labyrinth of hallways until he arrives at an open cell which has no furniture or signs of a toilet and sink. Without requiring instruction, the inmate enters the cell. A guard closes the cell’s heavy door and bolts it shut. The camera peers through a small window in the cell and finds the inmate looking out the cell’s barred window to the outside world. The inmate is in silhouette – as if he no longer existed and became just a living shadow.

“Titicut Follies” created a sensation when Wiseman debuted it at the 1967 New York Film Festival. It was immediately hailed as a shocking expose of human rights abuse of the mentally ill (though, ironically, no inmate in the film ever complains to the camera of being physically injured and none bear any marks of violent treatment). But Elliot Richardson, the Attorney General for Massachusetts, was horrified with the film and took an extraordinary step of seeking the court-ordered banning of the film. Richardson argued the inmates’ right to privacy was violated by Wiseman. The filmmaker, though, cited he had consensual waivers from the inmates who were coherent and he had a waiver from the Bridgewater superintendent on behalf of the inmates who were not (the superintendent, who actually hoped the film would work to raise funding for his facility, was the legal guardian for his mentally incompetent inmates). The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled against Wiseman and “Titicut Follies” was ordered removed from exhibition – with the sole exception being small non-theatrical screenings for selected legal, educational and medical professionals.

The ban on “Titicut Follies” marked the first time an American movie was prevented from being shown for reasons other than obscenity or national security. The ban stayed in effect until 1992, and the legal conflict cost Wiseman a great deal of money before he could present his film again. In 1993, Wiseman allowed “Titicut Follies” to be broadcast on PBS, which was the first and (to date) only time it reached a national audience.

So where is “Titicut Follies” today? Wiseman has yet to allow the film to be seen in commercial presentations. It is only legally available for rental through Wiseman’s Zipporah Films for non-theatrical screenings in a 16mm or videocassette format. Wiseman will sell a video of “Titicut Follies” to non-theatrical venues – for $500.

For those who don’t have $500 to spend on a videocassette, fear not. “Titicut Follies” is available from several collector-to-collector video services and at least two P2P web sites for a fraction of its official cost. The copy being presented in those outlets comes from the 1993 PBS broadcast, and the quality is more than fine.

“Titicut Follies” occasionally turns up in film society and festival retrospectives of Wiseman’s brilliant career. With luck, it may someday turn up on Netflix or at your local video store. Until then, you can only peek into the criminally insane world of Bridgewater via a dip in the Bootleg Files.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material is not widely appreciated by the entertainment industry, and on occasion law enforcement personnel help boost their arrest quotas by collaring cheery cinephiles engaged in such activities. So if you are going to copy and sell bootleg videos, a word to the wise: don't get caught. The purchase and ownership of bootleg videos, however, is perfectly legal and we think that's just peachy! This column was brought to you by Phil Hall, a contributing editor at Film Threat and the man who knows where to get the good stuff...on video, that is.

Titicut Follies • Senses of Cinema  Michael Price, March 13, 2002

 

Riefenstahl's Heights and Wiseman's Follies: Allegories of Flesh in ...  Riefenstahl’s Heights and Wiseman’s Follies: Allegories of Flesh in Olympia and Titicut Follies, by Anya Meksin from Bright Lights Film Journal, November 1, 2005

 

Ghost Meets the Man: Frederick Wiseman's "Titicut Follies" (1967) on ...  Craig Keller from Mubi, August 31, 2011

 

'Titicut Follies' at Stranger Than Fiction | PopMatters  Cynthia Fuchs

 

notcoming.com | Titicut Follies - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Rumsey Taylor

 

Titicut Follies - Reverse Shot  Joanne Nucho, May 10, 2006

 

Raging Bull [Mike Lorefice]

 

New York's Film Forum showcases the early films of documentary ...  Eric Monder from Film Journal, April 13, 2017

 

ColeSmithey.com [Cole Smithey]

 

366 Weird Movies [Shane Wilson]

 

Kinetoscope Film Journal [Matthew Deapo]

 

Jerry at the Movies [Jerry Saravia]

 

Big Screen Boston [Paul Sherman]

 

Cinetarium (Jack Gattanella)

 

FilmFanatic.org

 

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]

 

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

 

World Socialist Web Site  Richard Phillips

 

Letterboxd: Jeremy Heilman

 

PRX » Piece » Ep. 4: Frederick Wiseman  Todd Melby audio podcast interview discussing the film (27:12) 

 

TV Guide

 

Montreal Mirror [Matthew Hays]

 

Austin Chronicle [Kathleen Maher]

 

Titicut Follies Movie Review & Film Summary (1968) | Roger Ebert

 

New York Times  Vincent Canby, also seen here:  Movie Review - - The Screen: 'Titicut Follies' Observes Life in a ...

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

Titicut Follies - Wikipedia

 

HIGH SCHOOL

USA  (75 mi)  1968

 

Time Out

 

Wiseman's second film, one of the documentaries marked by a certain compulsive austerity - the reject the traditional crutches of commentary, background music, gloss colour or fancy camerawork - in which he explored aspects of American institutional life. In High School, as might be expected, the American Dream is watched in the making. It is in the oppression of the adult/child relations that the full squalor of the bourgeois ideal is squeezed out.

 

The Chicago Reader: Dave Kehr

One of Frederick Wiseman's early cinema verite documentaries (1968), but not one of his best. Wiseman shoots his subject (the students and teachers of an "average" Pennsylvania high school) in a choppy, impressionistic style: his camera stays zoomed in on faces (and often fragments of faces) in a way that effectively obscures the social context his film is trying to evoke. A rather simplistic message emerges: that the school's business isn't education but regimentation. Wiseman's later long-shot, long-take style would be at once more convincingly "real" and more intellectually responsible.

Adobe Acrobat Document  Download this essay  David Bordwell from Film Art

Frederick Wiseman’s High School is a good example of the cinéma-vérité approach. Wiseman received permission to film at Philadelphia’s Northeast High School, and he acted as sound recordist while his cameraman shot footage in the hallways, classrooms, cafeteria, and auditorium of the institution. The film that resulted uses no voice-over narration and almost no nondiegetic music. Wiseman uses none of the facing-the-reporter interviews that television news coverage employs. In these ways, High School might seem to approach the cinéma-vérité ideal of simply presenting a slice of life. Yet if we analyze the film’s form and style, we find that it still aims to achieve particular effects on the spectator, and it still suggests a specific range of meaning. Far from being a neutral transmission of reality, High School shows how film form and style, even in cinéma-vérité, shape the event we see on film

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago   Michael Castelle

HIGH SCHOOL, Frederick Wiseman's second film, has been found heavy-handed and didactic by some critics in comparison to his later productions, which can strain for an unattainable impartiality. But the hoi polloi subjectivity-thermometer of IMDB's user reviews suggests that, if anything, it has retained its multiplicity of interpretations: for the radical anti-authoritarian, it is a concise proof-of-concept of Ivan Illich's 1971 classic text Deschooling Society; and for the less critically minded, it is a series of captivating snapshots of an urban generation-gap long past. It's unclear which meaning the film might have for Doc Films local audience--the students of prestigious University of Chicago, who have played the game depicted here and won. This generation beyond the draft, granted the possibility of an intellectual freedom unknown to the 1968 Northeast-suburban Philly students here portrayed: what can it mean for them, for this film to say--with directness, honesty, all the clichés that make up the notion of verité--that the primary purpose of schooling is to produce obedient soldiers for a rationalist war machine?

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

It may not enjoy the notoriety of his previous Titicut Follies (whose release was blocked for years due to its candid portrait of life inside a Massachusetts mental institution), but Frederick Wiseman’s 1969 High School stirred up controversy of its own, particularly in the Philadelphia area — not surprising, since it was shot at Northeast High. In the last three decades, Wiseman has established himself as one of America’s most venerable documentarians, most regularly applying himself to non-narrative overviews of social institutions and communities. The expansive focus (i.e., long running times) of such recent films as Public Housing and Belfast, Maine has largely relegated them to PBS viewing, but the Prince’s screening offers an extremely rare chance to see Wiseman on the big screen. High School ruffled feathers with its view of secondary education as a place where children are indoctrinated into conformity. (Wiseman returns almost obsessively to shots of gym-class calisthenics, where girls’ bodies bob up and down in dehumanized unison.) While one starry-eyed young teacher makes a go at instructing her class in the finer points of "the poet Paul Simon" (the context makes "Dangling Conversation" seem even more absurd), a brush-cut dean of discipline instructs one strong-willed student to accept detention even though he denies that he’s done anything wrong. "We are out to establish that you are a man and that you can take orders," he explains. Given the film’s time frame, it’s hard not to see the disciplinarians’ line-holding as a bulwark against the nation’s social upheaval, a last chance to turn out new members of the Silent Majority. But there’s plenty that hasn’t changed as well, even if these days the starry-eyed teacher has a pierced eyebrow and schools her students in the finer points of "the poet Ja Rule."

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

Titicut Follies surveyed the human body in panic; the body, in Frederick Wiseman's follow-up, is the edifice, for a further literalization of Robin Wood's term for Franju ("terrible buildings"). "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" guides traveling shots to Northeast High, Philadelphia, for another societal deconstruction through an institution -- education as the molding (or draining, rather) of personality for the outside world, both teachers and students locked in the assembly-line process, one assuring the other that "there are places to be individualist." The camera sticks tightly to the clash between pimply teen and beefy dean, who wants "to establish you can be a man and that you can take orders"; elsewhere, a Spanish lecture on "existentialista" Sartre, and the advisor telling parents of the dangers of "imposing preconceived values and dreams on an individual." Is it any wonder that thick, horn-rimmed glasses are an insistent component of the grainy compositions? Myopia may be rampant, though the goal of school is crystal-clear: the grooming of individuals for the established societal norms, social and sexual. Diagonal focus shifts from one busy typewriter to another as the timer ticks away, lessons on feminine poise amount to a blunt geisha class, gym warm-up scored to "Simon Says," the auditorium pep-talk for the girls on birth-control pills rhymed later with the ad-libbing gynecologist ("Virginity is a state of mind," to the boys' applause). Vietnam hovers in the wings, so, when "Casey at the Bat" can be leeched off its vigor, the system becomes bent on turning a student into no more than a "body doing a job," a letter from a stationed soldier read by the principal, her beau-travail beaming providing the last stinger. Charlie Brown pinned to a gym board and doting over Simon & Garfunkel ("The poet is Simon") signal that it is 1968, but Wiseman's view extends to the John Hughes oeuvre and the haunted halls of Van Sant's Elephant, monitors and bullies and nerds and rallies recorded while the zoom, still free from the documentary's professed neutrality, locates fidgeting fingers, and minds. In black and white.

Comma, Space: Frederick Wiseman's "High School" (1968) on ... - Mubi   Michael Keller, April 24, 2012

 

3quarksdaily: The Humanists: Frederick Wiseman's High School (1968)  Colin Marshall, December 14, 2009 

 

Commentary | High School | POV | PBS  Caroline Anderson and Tom Benson discuss the impact of Frederick Wiseman’s HIGH SCHOOL on students today, August 28, 2001

 

notcoming.com | High School - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Beth Gilligan

 

Tough Love and Revelation: The Films of Frederick Wiseman | by ...  Andrew Delbanco from The New York Review of Books, December 10, 2012

 

For Criterion Consideration: Frederick Wiseman’s High School  Catherine Stebbins from The Criterion Cast, January 16, 2011

 

The World of Wiseman: "High School" (1968) on Notebook | MUBI  Dave McDougall, January 21, 2009

 

Kinetoscope Film Journal [Matthew Deapo]

 

Brooklyn Magazine: Alejandro Veciana

 

FilmFanatic.org » High School (1968)

 

FilmFanatic.org [Sylvia Stralberg Bagley]

 

Movie Vault [Vadim Rizov]

 

Letterboxd: Alice Stoehr

 

TV Guide

 

Montreal Mirror [Matthew Hays]

 

Movie Review - - FILM REVIEW; 25 Years Later, Wiseman Goes Back ...  The New York Times

 

High School (1968 film) - Wikipedia

 

HOSPITAL – made for TV

USA  (84 mi)  1970 

 

The Chicago Reader: Jonathan Rosenbaum

Set in New York's Metropolitan Hospital, Frederick Wiseman's feature-length documentary of 1969 is one of the most powerful in his continuing series of investigations of various American institutions. Most of the emphasis in this setting is given to the emergency ward and outpatient clinics. 84 min.

Time Out

Wiseman's fourth film, one of his celebrated vérité projects on American institutions: a series of despairing (or blackly comic) vignettes from the low priority end of the health/wealth equation, shot with comprehensive austerity at Metropolitan Hospital in New York City. As with most of Wiseman's films of this period, a marshalling of evidence that's angrily illustrative of symptoms of the 'system's' malaise, but mute with regard to analysis of their cause or their cure.

User reviews  from imdb Author: brocksilvey from United States

Acclaimed documentarian Fredrick Wiseman trains his notorious camera on the goings on of a hospital used primarily by people from a lower income bracket, and the results will likely sadden and horrify you.

Wiseman is always skilled at making you think he's being totally objective; it appears that he just turns his camera on and lets it run. However, he manages to construct a compelling indictment of how the poor are treated by the American medical industry and anyone with an ounce of warm blood in their veins will be enraged by what they see.

There are heartbreaking moments in this film, like doctors telling a woman she has only a limited amount of time to live and her complete unresponsiveness to the news. There are also moments that make you want to turn away from the screen, like the sight of a young man who's been given a purgative for a drug overdose spewing vomit all over the room, and then falling down in it. Indeed, much of this movie makes you feel guilty for watching at all. Shouldn't people's privacy and dignity be honored in situations like this? On the other hand, how would the majority of us know how the poor are treated if people like Wiseman didn't document it? The movie doesn't really pose and questions or answers, yet it manages to be completely compelling nonetheless. I saw it in a documentary film class and there was plenty of debate inspired by it.

User reviews  from imdb Author: Daniel Yates from Montreal, Canada

In my entry on "High School", talked about how Wiseman was criticized for showing a close-up of a girl with over sized glasses. Some considered that shot to be unnesesarry and potentially embarrassing to the girl. However, are such issues really the filmmakers problem? Should he just film what he sees? Perhaps Wiseman didn't find the girl to be awkward looking at all.

But the above example is only a minor one. Here's a more problematic example. In "Hospital", there is a scene in which a nurse questions an elderly man. The old man begins to cry as he confesses his fears about possibly having cancer. In addition the doctor asks him many intimate and embarrassing questions about sores on his genitals and the condition of his urine. The first part of the scene consists mainly of a close-up of the man's face as he talks to the doctor. The second part takes place after the doctor has examined the man's genitals. Importantly, Wiseman does not show the examination, indicating a concern for the man's privacy. Even the sustained take of the man crying, despite the fact that he might be embarrassed to see it later, lets us identify with, and have sympathy for the old man. We realize that his fears are justified, and he does not look foolish for crying.

But there are still ethical questions to be asked. In his essay, "Ultimately We Are All Outsiders: The Ethics of Documentary Filming", after giving a dramatic description of the above mentioned scene, attempting to place us into the shoes of the old man (describing Wiseman and his crew as "strangers") critic Calvin Pryluck writes: "How valid would you consent be if one of the strangers tells you, as Wiseman does, 'We just took your picture and it's going to be for a movie, it's going to be shown on television and maybe in theaters… do you have any objections?' Wiseman finds, as did Allen Funt of 'Candid Camera,' that few people do object."

Pryluck then states that there is pressure placed on people to agree to be filmed in situations like that. 'The picture gets taken, and damn the consequences' he writes. Pryluck's doubt about the validity of the permission given to Wiseman to film is justifiable. It could be possible that in a situation like that, the old man would not be in the proper frame of mind to give permission to let a camera crew film him.

However, Pryluck's statement is in itself manipulative. How does he know what Wiseman says when he asks permission? How does he know that Wiseman pressures his subjects? How does he know that Wiseman films first, then asks permission? Although Wiseman has stated that he tries to remain "invisible" while filming, he has also stated that the subject knows that he is there from the beginning. As to whether he pressures his subjects, Wiseman himself stated in a 1998 interview with "The Boston Pheonix": "I try to be friendly, and I hope that I am friendly, but not phony. I try not to convey the impression that we are going to be friends for a long period of time." Pryluck's comparison of Wiseman's style to that of "Candid Camera" is also unfair in that Wiseman does try to surprise his subjects, does not use actors to provoke responses from subjects, and does not set out to make comedy.

What about comedy? If there is a situation that ends up being humorous, and a person in the scene could be made to look foolish, is Wiseman really calling the person a fool? In another scene from Hospital, one that seems to be very entertaining and amusing to audiences, a young man is brought in claiming that he is sick from pills he had swallowed that were given to him by a stranger in the park. After a long and funny scene in which he repeatedly asks "am I gonna die?" and the very patient doctor reassures him that he will not, he is placed on a stretcher and rolled into the next room. Cut to the next scene, where the patient is in the room talking to two policemen who are trying to find out more about the man who gave the patient the drugs. All of a sudden, the patient begins to throw up all over the place, splattering vomit on himself and the policemen. In between attempts to apologize, not only to the policemen, but it seems for his entire life up until that point, he continues to spew out more vomit than it would be thought the human body could contain. Finally after all is done he sits on the stretcher looking very embarrassed and says to himself, "I think I should go back with my family."

This scene elicits big laughs from the audience. In the previously discussed scene, we get the impression that because it is dramatic, we can identify with the patient, and therefore it is not exploitative. Here however, a point could be made that it is exploitative, because we are not encouraged to identify with the subject, but laugh at his situation. A case could be made though, that because his situation was not life threatening, we could afford to laugh at it. Perhaps that young man, now middle aged, would laugh at that footage as we do were we to see it today. Still the fact that Wiseman chooses to focus on it so graphically could give credence to those who would call it sensationalism. Then again the graphic nature of the scene could help to illustrate what hospital workers have to go through every day.

Critical Care: Dr. Frederick Wiseman - Film Comment   Matt Morrison, May 13, 2016

“Man is not born with disease. He acquires these disorders when he tries to adapt to a certain level of civilization.” —Hospital

As every essay about medicine must open with a pearl from William Osler, I will start with my favorite: “Remember how much you do not know. Do not pour strange medicines into your patients.”

Frederick Wiseman is, in this sense—in the best sense—an Oslerian. His films careen, cartwheel, and leap up against the very face of reality, but are always aware, on a cellular level, of quite how much they do not know. They never promise The Real Thing: an unalloyed vision of Life Itself. On the contrary, at every occasion, Wiseman hastens to remind us that he is a person, not a robot—his editing choices informed by his instinct, his moods, his rakish humor. He is a humble, elfin saint.

Before I began my own rotation at Metropolitan E.R., a friend passed me a copy of Wiseman’s Hospital (70). I watched in awe as a man on mescaline was fed ipecac, projectile regurgitating for what seemed forever. He yells, “Somebody in the park gave it to me!” He begs the staff to play calming music. It is as hilarious as it is touching—particularly when played in one’s mind over “Yakety Sax.” Wiseman gives us such moments frequently, the gravity inextricable from the levity. A solemn argument concerning child services—over a boy who fell from a window—hilariously and bathetically concludes with a nurse repeatedly asking for dinner. The boy’s ice cream drips down his face.

Elsewhere, we watch a young gay hustler, who says he does “male prostituting—and sometimes female because I get confused.” He laughs. His situation could not be more dire—a desperate psychiatrist is seen phoning help, to prevent his winding up in an institution. But the hustler, and Wiseman, know the absurdity of it all.

Wiseman gives us fault lines, derangement, sanctity—and unknowing. In Near Death (89), the nescience is of a different sort than we find in Titicut Follies (67); its doctors are graceful, masterful, all too aware of their frailties. Dr. Taylor, a mustachioed intensivist vaguely resembling John Oates, is seen repeatedly chanting the priestly mantra: “We cannot ever predict the future.” Another ICU physician, Dr. Stein, wisely notes: “In this day and age… doctors now are extremely reluctant to say, ‘We can’t do anything for that. We have no way to help that.’” They have become the new priests.

Near Death is a tranquil, threadbare film. It says: we own this strange thing, Life, and have no way to speak of it, so we end up talking about Milrinone, blood pressure, and Christmas trees. In one of my favorite sketches in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, the doctors overseeing a birth demand an EEG, an “AVV,” and a machine that goes “Ping!,” all while forgetting to even bring in the patient. Confused and terrified? Amplify the Ping!

The humor of Wiseman’s films arises from this impulse—the cockeyed, misty desire to Do Something. Humans in ludicrous fixes, dashing up the wall, the ipecac scene a prime example. Utterly disgraced, we don’t give it to anyone, practically ever. The poor man: he needed a dark room, and Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. As all of us do, at times.

Wiseman knows that there is as much honor as absurdity in the skirmish. We are awed by the infinite delicacy of Near Death’s ICU attendings, desperate to affect authority, anxious to comfort. I have tasted those Nature Valley bars. In one scene, someone whispers, “Let’s make a plan before the other doctor gets here.” Capable of the greatest love, and cloak and dagger on the order of Thunderball. Friends! Doctors are humans, too (with the notable exception, of course, of Dr. Oz).

It baffles how we could have done it back then, without CTs, cardiac stents, and oximetry. Hutber’s law: improvement means derangement. Wise, elder doctors mock us now, with our fancy equipment; we’ve forgotten the value of a good H&P. They are right. We have these magical tools, but they never bring us The Answer. My GlideScope knows I need it; he, and his nephew, the SonoSite, they mock me.

Wiseman’s cinema is, to tempt a barbarous metaphor, an origami owl: silent, desultory, unobtrusive. It watches us. It is a mystery how he opens us up. (Wiseman’s explanation? “Vanity and indifference.”) My coworkers were once the subjects of ABC’s New York Med—and I was similarly surprised to see how little it changed people. Except the time a nurse paused compressions to ask the cameraman if her underwear was showing. (The patient lived.) The observer effect, it’s complicated.

In “Dante… Bruno. Vico… Joyce,” Beckett’s essay on Finnegan’s Wake, he contrasts Dante’s world, tidy and teleological, with the work of Joyce—earthier, messy, and purgatorial. That is Wiseman: purgatorial, and tragicomical. In one memorable scene in Near Death, a devout wife recalls laughing at a secretary on autopilot: “They called to ask if Charlie’s appointment is on; I said, he’s in the ICU. They said, ‘Does that mean he wants to cancel?’” When my grandmother was in hospice, we used to make her chuckle by sneaking in mini-bottles of whiskey. What else was there to do?

Osler’s unknowing isn’t ignorance—it means humility. At our best, we get Dr. Taylor: knowledgeable, tender, and searching. At our worst: Titicut Follies, and Hollywood Upstairs Medical College.

The final, heartrending scene of Hospital is set in a chapel. I don’t think it’s incidental that Wiseman ends here. A priest speaks of “our littleness.” They sing “Ave Maria.” Wiseman knows he can’t touch direct cinema, pure life, any more than we can fully preserve it. But we put on our coats, and resist the strange medicine.

The Steve Pulaski Message Board [Steve Pulaski]

 

The New Yorker: Richard Brody   October 05, 2015

 

ColeSmithey.com [Cole Smithey]

 

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

 

The L Magazine: Jeremy Polacek

 

Letterboxd: Jesse Cataldo

 

Hospital (1970 film) - Wikipedia

 

BASIC TRAINING                                                   B                     87

USA  (80 mi)  1971

 

Shot while the US Army implemented a mandatory draft during the Vietnam era, Wiseman’s camera follows a group of ordinary young men as they make their way through the regimented basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, from the Army’s low key opening remarks, which are something of a bore, an introduction to what will only become even more dull and dehumanizing as time goes on, to the closing ceremony which is filled with the pomp and circumstance of a marching band, invited families, and more patriotic speeches (which are also something of a bore) before they are shipped overseas to Vietnam.  In between, we witness plenty of marching, where one soldier in particular, Private Hickman, has drifting feet, as he can’t march in step with the others.  Despite being pulled out of formation and given private marching instructions, he continues to misstep.  Later, we learn this same soldier has attempted suicide by taking an overdose of pills, believing he can’t do anything right, where he’s referred to the Army Chaplain to redirect his attitude, where he’s told giving up only guarantees that he won’t succeed, and soldiers must succeed in their missions, but the Army and his fellow soldiers continue to ridicule his combat readiness, reflective of Kubrick’s Private Pyle in FULL METAL JACKET (1987), another soldier who responds poorly to military indoctrination. 

 

Utilizing the same cameraman for a full decade from LAW AND ORDER (1969) through MANOEUVRE (1979), William Brayne, who captures a raw, gritty realism filming exclusively in black and white, the men are introduced to their M-16 rifles and are immediately curious if these weapons have ever killed anyone, then run through an obstacle course where they’re given chest-on-the-ground crawling lessons, followed by bayonet training, including choreographed thrust and pull movements, gas mask drills where they remove their masks and saturate their lungs with gas, causing extreme discomfort, including vomiting, lessons on how to set off a mine and get the best results, namely, point it away from your men, target practice at the firing range and mock war maneuvers, complete with explosives, again interspersed with plenty of scenes of more marching, where they walk in step to humorous chants about Nixon and Vietnam, two subjects they’re about to become intimately familiar with. The ritual of the events seem to captivate the camera, as these are time tested methods where young soldiers are encouraged to leave their opinions and personalities at the door, they’re of no use to them now, as they simply need to obey orders and follow commands for the remainder of their military careers.  Despite the constant drone of the drill sergeant, the young men actually adjust quite well, except one white and one black soldier who get into early troubles, the origins of which are left unknown.  Most of the draftees and nearly all the commanding officers are white, and it becomes apparent that the Army is as yet not truly an interracial enterprise, at least not in Kentucky, which suggests that other problems of a racial nature would likely resurface, but only after they’re shipped off into combat and all hell breaks loose.  Unlike any other Wiseman film seen, there are inner-titles at the conclusion of the film which identify the military base, also acknowledging that the Army reports changes have occurred in training methods since the film was made, a rather superfluous and unnecessary afterthought.  Despite establishing a rhythm of dull, stylized dehumanization, like factory workers on an assembly line, this film was not rated higher as it fails to deliver new insights about what’s already known about the Army’s approach to basic training. 

 

Chicago International Documentary Festival  JR Jones from the Reader

Frederick Wiseman's fine black-and-white documentary (1971) follows a group of army draftees through eight weeks of basic training at Fort Polk, Kentucky, in the summer of 1970. It's notable for Wiseman's careful observation of the process and his fleet, economical editing; beneath its prosaic surfaces roil the issues of racism and the ongoing debacle in Vietnam. 89 min.

Time Out  

A companion piece to Wiseman's earlier High School, this is another bleak cinéma vérité study of institutional indoctrination: in this case, the US Army. Filmed at the Fort Knox training centre, Kentucky, it follows a group of new recruits from induction and orientation through to the regimented discipline of the graduation ceremony (prior to shipping out to Vietnam). Beneath the austere 'objectivity' of Wiseman's camera, the editing implicitly emphasises the perpetual process of dehumanisation intrinsic to the system, and finds a focal point of sorts in the maladjusted Private Hickman, whose inability to fit in leads to a suicide attempt. Hickman is a skinny precursor to Stanley Kubrick's Gomer Pyle, and the first half of Full Metal Jacket borrows significantly from Basic Training.

Basic Training  Gerald Peary

Cambridge, Massachusetts filmmaker Frederick Wiseman shot Basic Training (1971) thirty years ago, the summer of 1970, as he followed a company of draftees at Fort Knox, Kentucky, through their eight weeks of army training, from climbing off the bus and getting their first crewcuts to graduation day: armed and ready for duty in Vietnam. Stanley Kubrick seemed to get some of his Full Metal Jacket drill sergeantry from Wiseman's film. However, the two works couldn't be more different: Kubrick's strident, anti-military expressionism versus Wiseman's subtle, fly-on-the-wall realism. And Wiseman, a non-PC left-leaner in his 35-year career, dares to show the military brass here as mostly OK, surprisingly concerned for the well-being of the callow grunts put before them, and shockingly neutral about fighting Nixon's war.

Besides the beautiful black-and-white 16mm photography (even now, Wiseman has never worked in video or, as his own editor, used an Avid), Wiseman can be counted on for some mordant humor:a sad-sack private being trained in latrine duty, another goofy one coming on like Jerry Lewis or Lou Costello in mucking up his marching steps. And in practically every Wiseman movie ever, whether his real-life characters are welfare workers, policemen, or high school teachers, there are scenes in which those in power deliver condescending lectures in living to the beleagured souls who must stand there sullenly and take it. Here, of course, it's commissioned officers, mostly white, giving gung-ho sermons to recruits in trouble, mostly African-American.

User reviews  from imdb Author: Daniel Yates from Montreal, Canada

In my entry on "Hospital", I discussed the ethical issues surrounding Wiseman's use of comedy to reflect a certain viewpoint. In that entry I mentioned a seen in which hospital workers are shown dealing with a young man who can't stop vomiting.

Another more complex and more disturbing case of Wiseman using comedy to illustrate a point is in "Basic Training", Wiseman's film of a U.S Army training center in Fort Knox, Kentucky. When we first see Private Hickman, he is unable to keep in step during drill practice, while the drill Sargent berates him. This scene is funny, but when we next see Hickman, he has unsuccessfully tried to kill himself by taking too many sleeping pills. Then we see him in council with the army Chaplain, who seems to completely ignore Hickman when the Private tries to confide in him. Instead the Chaplain accuses Hickman of "not really trying to get to the top." The last time we see Hickman, he is being used in a demonstration of how to sneak up behind an enemy and kill him by strangling him with his helmet strap. What starts out as being awkwardly funny ends up being a painfully sad example of the degrading nature of the military.

Is Hickman being exploited, or is it necessary to show his pain in order to illustrate the sometimes harsh nature of the Army? Even if we are meant to sympathize with Hickman, are we seeing too much? It gets to be horribly depressing, even though it makes its point strongly and clearly. Now we are back to the question of whether it is right for Wiseman to inject his own opinion into the film. It should be said that Basic Training shows examples of new recruits being successfully trained, but is Wiseman being ironic? After seeing Hickman, is it possible to feel good about any other soldier being integrated into a system that could easily destroy a person's spirit? Perhaps not, but should Wiseman be faulted for the fact that by showing all sides, the side that shows the army at its most questionable stands out in our memory and affects our judgment of the other scenes? Is that not our own feelings about human worth taking over?

notcoming.com | Basic Training - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Cullen Gallagher

 

Letterboxd: Filipe Furtado

 

JUVENILE COURT

USA  (144 mi)  1973

 

Juvenile Court, directed by Frederick Wiseman | Film review - Time Out

A distillation of over sixty hours of footage taken during a month in Memphis. The material that is kept is obviously that which most clearly reveals the layers of assumption and prejudice that form the basis of the entire court process, but also that which contains the most tension, irony, pathos and drama of one kind or another. All Wiseman's work has this sort of ambiguity, of apparent objectivity and latent distortion. Despite this, his films are more intelligent documentaries than you'd ever expect from the likes of the Beeb, demonstrating how much a film-maker actually robs his audience when he wants to seduce more than inform. Generally Wiseman informs.

User reviews  from imdb Author: Daniel Yates from Montreal, Canada

I've been writing about a number of Frederick Wiseman films here on the IMDb. The issue of ethics in Documentary films fascinates me, and Wiseman's films are perfector a discussion of that type. In my entry on "Basic Training", I discussed what role the audience plays in judging a films ethical standpoint. I continue that discussion here.

In "Juvenile Court" there is a scene in which a psychologist questions a 15-year-old boy who has been accused of molesting a small girl he was baby-sitting. We later meet the mother of the girl who seems nervous and sexually obsessed. We see the boy agree to take a lie detector. Then we see some attorneys, some counselors, and the judge in the case discuss whether or not the mother might have fabricated the charges. That is the last we see of that case. As Thomas R. Atkins wrote in a 1974 article in "Sight and Sound": "The characters have spoken for themselves, and each viewer can have his own reaction, make his own judgment according to his particular prejudices and values. The implications of the legal issues and human attitudes extend far beyond the innocence or guilt of this specific defendant, raising tough questions about the system of juvenile justice as well as the condition of society in general."

But some could argue that the goal of documentary is to present the facts and not to make ambiguous statements about the issues. Then again, it could be said that documentary films are not the same as news programs, and should be about representing the ambiguities of life, and as Atkins suggests, to use the events in the film to focus on broader issues.

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

 

The outside world is glimpsed twice only, the opening and closing shots; if corridors here seem more spacious than in Frederick Wiseman's previous portraits of institutional hell, it's because of the filmmaker's feel of dilated humanity coursing through them. The Juvenile Court of Shelby County, Memphis, provides the setting, though we could still be in Basic Training: youngsters are herded, booked, frisked, and shorn while waiting for a maiden taste of the justice system. A probation-breaking 11-year-old girl sobs, a couple argues the difference between punishment and abuse when it comes to a child's spanking, a 15-year-old is accused of molesting the girl he was baby-sitting -- each case could be a film of its own, and Wiseman's density of narrative (and his refusal to inflict answers) illustrates his respect for the mystery and largeness of the lives on display. A pimply delinquent listens as Bible-carrying rehabilitators promise him liberation and direction through Jesus, then joining them in prayer; on trial later, the kid insists on his alibi and refuses to plead guilty, so the court declares he can't really "turn to the Lord." Who gets to decide? Judge Turner presides humanely, as do the other social workers, but Wiseman knows how society attempts to order complex problems into tidy verdicts, particularly when determined off the record and behind the chamber's closed doors -- a judicial decision is detailed, from genesis to delivery, in the extended final passage, a gulf widening between the attorneys, psychiatrists and courtroom officers settling somebody's future with businesslike, determinist concern and the shaky juvenile just outside, asking "Isn't there any justice?" (For the documentarian it's not a matter of youth versus adulthood or innocence versus guilt, but rather the labyrinth both sides find themselves helplessly locked into.) Wiseman's halls can be as desolate as Kubrick's, yet hope lies in the kids' prematurely wounded faces, caught in close-ups made Cassavetesian by pragmatic-compassionate gaze and faith in life making it through America's meat grinders. In black and white.

 

Buried Alive: On Frederick Wiseman's Juvenile Court - Bright Lights ...  Tom Sutpen from Bright Lights Film Journal, February 1, 2006

 

notcoming.com | Juvenile Court - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Rumsey Taylor

 

WELFARE                                                                B                     88

USA  (167 mi)  1975

 

While generally recognized as one of Wiseman’s better efforts, this is a dizzyingly frustrating film experience, a film where no one ever gets serviced, but instead gets lost forever in a vicious cycle of waiting in perpetuity for help that never comes, continually rewinding the audience backwards, followed by brief encounters of dissipation in time, only to return once again from where we started, never really allowing us or the welfare clients to ever get a straight answer from this agency.  First of all, a prelude into the world of welfare, none of which is explained or even alluded to in the film.  Tom Wolfe wrote a hilariously revealing book based on two lengthy essays in 1970 called “Radical Chic & Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers,” the second part of which was based on a guerilla theater method guaranteed to gain welfare’s attention, namely create a scene so loud and messy, usually racially intimidating (mau mauing), that it would immediately draw attention and take center stage, drawing the welfare workers (flak catchers) out of their comfort zone, forcing them to instantly deal with a particular person, where in many instances they end up giving them whatever they’re asking for just to make them go away and stop causing a disturbance.  Variations on this method are featured throughout this film, which targets a typical New York City welfare center, one of the few of his films where people are obviously pandering to the camera, becoming over-indulgent, self-centered drama queens, exaggerating the extent of their apparent misery or injustice, sometimes, it appears, simply to pass the time away, as the Waiting for Godot scene implies, where one client reminds himself (the camera – us) that in the play, Godot never does appear.  There is no beginning or end to this drama, only a state of being in between, like being in limbo, treading water, trying to make sense of the whole situation.  Despite many client’s contention that they’ve been there for days on end, they’re still routinely told to come back the next day.  Most are insulted, asking what can they do tomorrow that can’t be done today?  The answer – find whatever it is they are looking for.  Welcome to the world of welfare before the implementation of computers, where records are kept on different floors, where searches to find them in many instances prove unsuccessful, where a client contends they’ve already provided the requested information, but the record can’t be found to substantiate the claim, leaving people in this seemingly neverending purgatory of having to wait indefinitely.  Perhaps this is best expressed by one woman who we are told walked out of an interview, but she is then helped by another welfare worker who found the initial welfare interviewer’s methods inappropriate, acting as a mediator in an attempt to get her back into the interview, where she is told she now must wait until all the other interviews for the day are completed.  From time to time we see her sitting alone, gazing off into the distance, without any hint of resolution.  Filmed in black and white, the drab, ugly, colorless setting couldn’t be more denigrating to all who pass through there, which is the same at every welfare office across the nation. 

 

One particularly lengthy interview reveals a mildly mentally unstable woman who reports she hasn’t been receiving her benefits causing her to have to move to a new address, but she seems to be driving the worker crazy, as he’s simply out of his element and can’t begin to find his, or her, way out, which is particularly evident when he’s dealing simultaneously with two different clients at his desk in two different languages, carrying on conversations with both at the same time, which was more than a little exasperating.  Eventually she is joined by other family members who have already been seen by other workers for their own cases, but are now waiting for her problem to be resolved with little success.  One aspect that is NOT mentioned in the film is that these interviews take place shortly after January 1st, 1974 during the infamous SSI conversion, where many welfare cases were “grandfathered in” to automatic flat grant Social Security cases called SSI, a brand new concept, so there was plenty of confusion and miscommunication between welfare and Social Security at the time.  Witnessing these workers thumbing their way through stacks of computerized data trying to confirm just what agency is responsible for providing the checks or for changing the address, all the while hearing the client state repeatedly that she never received anything, but received some emergency stipend instead, so where is her original benefit?  None of these problems are ever really explained well to the clients or the film audience, instead people are left confused and most likely believe the welfare department was simply inept at dealing with what turns out to be another agency’s responsibility.  Of course clients are going to get frustrated when they are rebounded back and forth between agencies like ping pong balls, but that, in its infinite wisdom, was the new Federal law, so it was actually designed with that purpose in mind.   

 

Part of the film gets bogged down in the eccentricities of the process, not just the drama queen aspect, but in offering a public forum for people who are willing to talk shit in front of the camera, which may fill an entertainment void, but doesn’t really contribute much about the welfare system overall.  One white guy who was reportedly beaten pretty severely by three blacks and who was recently released from the hospital carries on an unending conversation with a black security guard, threatening at one point to wipe out the entire black population, rambling on about the effectiveness of lynchings in Mississippi, forming his own white organization, the NAAWP, all of which comes across as pretty lame and ridiculous after awhile, as the guy obviously had nothing better to do than to become an irritant, trying to goad others into playing along.  Eventually he was forcibly removed from the premises, which apparently he was asking for all along, his intentions being simply to cause a scene.  This lengthy sequence seems to sidetrack us from the more purposeful visits of people in need, where workers and supervisors are frantically searching for information in order to know what to do, and where the size of the building itself looms as an enormous goliath, like a giant warehouse where things can easily become lost or misplaced.  There is always a huge amount of space that is left unoccupied, that is never filled, leaving workers plenty of room to shuffle clients back and forth, up and down stairs all day long, creating a quagmire of futility, always leaving themselves the fallback position that the clients can come back again the next day and do this all over again.  And in this business, every new morning looks exactly the same as the previous morning.  Nothing ever changes. 

 

Welfare | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum

One of Frederick Wiseman's strongest documentaries, this nearly three-hour look at a New York welfare center (1975), which concentrates on the interactions between clients and social workers, is both pungent and unbearable in its depictions of frustration and anger on both sides of the counter. Wiseman's customary refusal to add an offscreen commentary makes the film even more compelling, though it may irritate viewers who feel they need to know more about the cases to decide how they feel about them. Throwing us into the thick of things without a map, Wiseman dares us to reach conclusions according to the evidence of our eyes and ears. It's impossible to emerge from such an experience unscathed. 167 min.

Time Out

 

Wiseman's unsparing vérité camera takes us to a New York Welfare Center, where America's victims (all races, ages, and emotional conditions) parade their misery to receive enough money to survive. The film has a sharp eye for the exhausted, melancholy, and angry faces of social workers and clients, both groups ensnared in a vicious, heartless system - where who is responsible becomes the prime question, fatalism the reigning philosophy, and the general atmosphere one of claustrophobic bedlam. Wiseman avoids facile stereotypes: his case-workers are not callous heavies, nor are the clients members of a heroic, politically conscious mass. Some of the Center's staff attempt to ease the bureaucracy's dehumanising red tape, but given the hopelessness of the institution, their gestures are almost quixotic. The film never editorialises, sentimentalises, or attempts to be dramatic, but its cumulative effect is to make one enraged enough to cry out for the dismantling of the whole welfare (or is it the capitalist?) system.

 

Cineaste Selects: Forty Years of Favorite Films — Cineaste Magazine   Cynthia Lucia

1967 marks the first appearance of Cineaste, and it also marks the first documentary directed by Frederick Wiseman—arguably the most important documentarist in American film history. From that first film, Titicut Follies, through his most recent State Legislature (2007) (reviewed in this issue of Cineaste), Wiseman has continued to weave a complex tapestry of American politics, ideology, and culture through observing its institutions—revealing the humiliating treatment of inmates at the Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Follies, the exercise of authority in Philadelphia’s North East High in High School (1968), and the arbitrary experimentation at the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Primate (1974), as well as the care and patience extended to children at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind in Multi-Handicapped (1986) or in a Florida shelter for battered women in Domestic Violence (2001). Whether institutional rules are enacted with eerie precision, as at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in Missile (1988) and the Neiman-Marcus flagship store in Dallas in The Store (1983), or whether people struggle to navigate thorny psychological and bureaucratic terrain, as on Chicago’s South Side in Public Housing (1997), and in Memphis’s Juvenile Court (1973), Wiseman’s camera remains consistently dispassionate, though keenly attuned to the perplexing contradictions, dark ironies, accidental humor, and genuine struggles played out in the various theaters of American life.

Institutional complexity (and chaos) is nowhere more powerfully captured than in Welfare (1975), shot in 1973 at a New York City welfare office, where the overriding impression is of caseworkers and clients equally caught in an incomprehensible quagmire of forms, protocol, and contingencies. In one instance caseworkers discuss a woman, just out of the hospital, whose expected check hasn’t arrived. “She’s a conversion; there’s nothing we can do,” says one, with further instructions that she contact Social Security—a telling revelation of systems so unwieldy they cannot (or refuse to) communicate with each other. In another case a client is told that she will lose her monthly rent allotment of $150 because the apartment she’s living in costs $170. Although the woman offers to augment her allotment with $20.00 from her earnings, the rule remains inflexible—designed it would seem to encourage transience or homelessness. When I interviewed him more than a decade ago (Cineaste, Vol. XX, No. 4, 1994), Wiseman observed that in a system serving millions of people “rules and regulations are necessary;” his camera here, however, captures an absurdity with life-defeating consequences. Racial tensions surface in one scene as a frustrated Vietnam veteran proclaims, “I’m getting a 357 magnum and blowing every black I see out of existence,” a line that resonates starkly in a later scene when several children play in a waiting room, using umbrellas as rifles. People wait; the camera watches; frustration, anger, and feelings of helplessness grow.

Although adopting the observational mode common to all of his documentaries, in Welfare Wiseman uses frequent sound bridges in order, he said, to indirectly “raise the question of resources” but more importantly to show the absence of privacy, “the State in relation to the people.” Among the most compelling moments is one in which several clients address the camera directly—a rare occurrence in Wiseman films, where the camera remains unobtrusive and unacknowledged. “I can show you so much stuff,” one man proclaims, pulling papers and more papers out of his pockets, as another man addresses the camera saying he needs to mail letters but has no stamps. Is he asking for a handout or is this just one more expression of powerlessness in the face of a system so Byzantine in its bureaucracy? It seems the latter, as echoed in darkly ironic shots of file drawers stuffed, a caseworker flipping through books of forms while surrounded by towers of paper, and a computer spewing out more and more tapes and forms—not quite Kalfka, but close, as the camera sustains its gaze, refusing to waver from this interminable scene of bureaucratic replication.

Like so many of his films, Welfare takes us into bowels of the system, showing us that “it’s not easy,” as Wiseman modestly has pointed out. Perhaps he is implicitly answering critics of direct cinema, as well, suggesting that a more conventional form, providing contextualizing detail and proposing possible solutions, would be hopelessly naïve.

Frederick Wiseman: Welfare | Film | The Guardian  Derek Malcolm’s Century of Films

For over 30 years Frederick Wiseman has trained his camera on American life and institutions, having no obvious polemical stance but merely observing, sometimes in minute detail, what he finds. He shoots for many hours, so that his subjects begin to ignore the camera, and edits the collected material for much longer. The surprise is that what he finds is often nothing like what we, or even he, might expect.

Some have criticised his even-handedness, remembering Titicut Follies, his first effort, about life in a prison for the criminally insane. That became mired in litigation with the state authorities and gave Wiseman the reputation of a controversial attacker of the system.

Thereafter, his films went less obvious ways, neither courting notoriety nor seeking to confirm or even deny expectations. Partly because of this, his work is of great value, almost as slices of the times we live in or, as he has called it, "a form of natural history".

His masterpiece, perhaps, is Welfare, which looks at the New York benefits system from the point of view of the officials administering it and the claimants crowding their offices. The result is both mind-boggling and eye-opening. Mind-boggling because this is clearly a bureaucracy pitted against people least fit to deal with it; eye-opening because those running it are not inhuman and frequently do everything they can to help.

Any half-hour of this long film provides revelations, like the girl claimant who is told by her interviewer that he's looking after two and a half million people and that if a couple of thousand don't get what's due them, he's doing a good job. Or the German immigrant who says that God only helps you if he wants to and that, under the circumstances, "I'd better look for a nice place to hang myself."

"Are you attending a clinic?" an officer asks a woman who says she's been ill.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I have no money," comes the utterly logical riposte. And without a note from a doctor, she can't get a dollar.

An ex-druggie who got himself work, an apartment and a dog, then lost everything but the dog, is told he can have a room in a hostel. He objects that he can't take his dog there. But the official says: "We're giving assistance to you, not your dog."
"I don't say it's right," says a man who admits stealing food. "I say it's necessary. . . I'm waiting for something that will never come: justice."

Every small tragedy is a large one for some people. Even the police who patrol the offices get involved. They are mostly black and there are racists about, but they keep their cool, even when told they breed like rabbits and will cause blood on the streets one day if they're not wiped out first.

Throughout all this, Wiseman's camera simply looks and records. It doesn't have to do anything else. It's the editing that's important. We may see everything through his eyes, but we are at liberty to form our own opinions. David Thomson, the film critic and historian, disdains Wiseman's neutrality, wishing him to be crazier or at any rate less guarded. We should, however, be grateful for his essential lack of bias. It's one way to get at some sort of truth.

notcoming.com | Welfare - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Katherine Follett

 

Welfare – Frederick Wiseman (1975) – The Art(s) of Slow Cinema  Nadin Mai, June 29, 2017

 

New York's Film Forum showcases the early films of documentary ...  Eric Monder from Film Journal, April 13, 2017

 

DVD of the Week: Welfare | The New Yorker  Richard Brody, September 14, 2011

 

Brooklyn Magazine: Vadim Rizov

 

THE STORE                                                            B                     85

USA  (118 mi)  1983

 

How do you make a department store look interesting?  The first of his films in color, and the first since LAW AND ORDER (1969) to utilize a new cinematographer, John Davey, whose virtuosity renders a more visually poetic look to the film, finding aesthetic design in the workplace such as double images of people as seen through reflective mirrors, Wiseman takes a head to toe look at the Neiman-Marcus operations in Dallas, Texas, their corporate headquarters, as they ready themselves for the Christmas season.  As singers and carolers voice their merriment, along with an occasional glimpse of an elf, behind the scenes managers are devising ways to increase their holiday sales, which at that time was a highly personalized strategy, as customers were pampered and catered to in order to gain their business, hoping to hold onto them as steady customers.  The camera frequently returns to the elevator, the entranceway to each floor, following shoppers as they head in and out of the store, watching them navigate their way through each department, eavesdropping as women smell perfume fragrances, experiment with the latest make up, get their nails or hair done, where we see a colorful image of one woman sitting under a hair dryer looking particularly futuristic, or trying on clothes with individualized salespersons acting as their own company emissaries, or see the latest offering in luxury sable coats, a specialty item of the store costing as much as $45,000, as the founder, Stanley Marcus, twice a year personally picks out the most luxurious fur coats in the marketplace to make available to his customers.   It does seem odd that in such a heat-oriented climate there would be a demand for sable coats, but this is Big Texas, where only the best will do. 

 

Except for one eager applicant, who sold her skills as well as her allegiance to Neiman-Marcus in a filmed job interview better than anyone else in the film and should have been hired on the spot right there on camera (“I don’t want you to recommend me, I want you to highly recommend me!”), nearly all the blacks employed at the store work in the low end jobs, janitorial services, door men, shipping and receiving, servers passing out champagne to shoppers from hand carried trays, or somewhere else in the basement far away from the prized, mostly white customers, one of whom was shopping for over $100,000 worth of jewelry in 3 pieces, a necklace, a bracelet, and matching earrings.  But we see hard nosed shoppers who know exactly what they want and communicate to the precise detail the specifics of their requests while store clerks run around sideways to make sure they get it.  Some customers call in their orders and the store picks it out for them, having it waiting for them when they arrive.  “Would you like anything gift wrapped?”  Interspersed with pictures of shoppers are various sales meetings, discussions how to improve their advertising methods and marketing strategies, all designed to increase sales, the life blood of their business, we are told in introductory remarks.  A common theme trumpeted to all employees is the pride of working for Neiman-Marcus, where they constantly puff themselves up with an inflated view of themselves, believing they are a rare and special breed of privileged managers and store clerks. 

 

From sales clerks doing their morning exercises, stretching the parts of the body that they use most often, their fingers as they register sales, and their facial muscles to support that constant smile, to a singing chicken that tells dirty jokes and eventually delivers a strip tease at an employee’s birthday party, from gift wrappers to photography sessions, to endless shots of customers and employees alike smoking freely, to an in house announcement that they had lost or misplaced an irreplaceable Waterford crystal, could people please keep an eye out for it?  Near the end of the film, the high fallutin’ bigwigs show up, one of whom includes none other than Lady Bird Johnson stepping out of a limo as they gather for the store’s 75th birthday in a formal dinner honoring Stanley Marcus, including introductory remarks from Art Buchwald, who reminds the audience that Marcus took an unpopular moral stand during the McCarthy era which undercut his own sales, which somehow, even if true, seems completely at odds with the emphasis placed on the almighty dollar that dominates every sequence that came before.  Marcus then serenades the dinner crowd with his Rex Harrison spoken version of Sinatra’s “My Way.”  The film is a fairly satiric look at class and privilege (I kept looking for Will Farrell’s Elf to step out from behind one of those aluminum Christmas trees), as it’s a look back in time to a Christmas holiday that may as well have been spent worshipping the god of consumerism.

 

The Store | Chicago Reader  Ted Shen

The store in question is Neiman Marcus's flagship (and corporate headquarters) in Dallas, and as with many of Frederick Wiseman's documentaries scrutinizing American institutions, this 1983 feature provides a kaleidoscopic look at day-to-day operations, in this case during the Christmas shopping season and on the eve of the store's 75th anniversary. Wiseman eavesdrops on jewelry sales, fashion shows, strategic meetings, training sessions, job interviews, photo shoots, and other protracted activities; company bigwig Stanley Marcus gets flattering attention, and Lady Bird Johnson makes a cameo appearance. The pursuit of consumerist pleasure has seldom been so glorified or so tedious--this sociological record is best saved for a time capsule. 118 min.

User reviews  from imdb Author: ladyofspain

There's a saying that you pass through boredom into fascination, and when it applies to Frederick Wiseman's movies, it's true. This film, shot during the Christmas season at a Nieman Marcus in Dallas, allows you to be a true fly on the wall in 1982 as rich people shop for holiday dresses, displays of plush E.Ts are put up, some office workers have a birthday party (complete with a guy in a chicken suit), and people behind the scenes control the flow of goods in and out as the well-heeled purchase gifts. This movie fills me with more warm nostalgia than any repeat viewing of It's A Wonderful Life ever could, as it makes me a participant again in the 1982 of Christmas past - not the reconstructed version, assembled from the detritus and artifacts remaining in our era, but allowing me the experience of existing, living, and breathing in the past again. Its real-time, judgementless pace takes a moment to adjust to, but once you do, just being an impartial observer on a moment in time and space is endlessly absorbing.

TV Guide

A wicked indictment of consumerism, THE STORE shows the inside operations of an American department store circa 1983.

 

At the Neiman-Marcus store in Dallas, Texas, the various departments get ready for the busy Christmas season. Before the store opens one morning, the head of the sales department gives a pitch to the other salespeople, and several saleswomen perform calisthenics. During the day, the teams in the coat, jewelry, and food departments go to work on the customers. Meanwhile, in a meeting, a salesman discusses the "aggressive" plan to make high-pressured calls to "top customers."

As the day wears on, more items are sold, including bridal gowns, and a woman gets her hair done in the store salon. Behind closed doors, executives discuss the use of commercials to advertise and how to stop shoplifting. In other backrooms, workers alter and mend clothing that will be sold later. A woman applies for a job with the store. More sales-push pep talks take place. And a birthday party for a staff worker turns raunchy.

 

Just before Christmas, carolers sing "Silent Night" around the store, while the packing department ships out the goods. Many celebrities, including Lady Bird Johnson, attend the 75th anniversary reception for Neiman-Marcus, featuring Stanley Marcus, one of the store founders. Art Buchwald introduces Marcus by saying his "devotion to this country's freedoms far exceeded" his "desire for bigger profits." Marcus, in turn, talk-sings, "My Way."

 

As with so many Frederick Wiseman documentaries, THE STORE, turns ordinary events into extraordinary viewing. The simple, everyday acts of buying and selling become biting commentary on capitalist culture as Wiseman's camera eavesdrops on the planning meetings, sales transactions, and general operations of an institution designed to make money (the concluding Buchwald tribute backfires in light of the preceding vignettes).

 

The portrait, however, enables viewers to understand multiple points of view. In his first color documentary, Wiseman makes the store items both attractive and gaudy (the seduction of artifice and packaging is also a theme in his prior film, MODEL, 1980). The salespeople come across as both ruthless with customers and victims of the store management. Similarly, the customers emerge as both naive and obnoxious. Interesting extemporaneous moments occur as poorer customers look afraid to enter the expensive jewelry department, and a group of Asian women work silently on the clothing in the backroom (the exploitation is nearly palpable). The most unsettling sequence, the birthday party for an African-American woman, ends with a hired stripper making jokes about the woman's age as he strips out of a chicken outfit. The reciprocally dispiriting interaction sums up much of the on-screen activities throughout the film.

 

THE STORE ends appropriately with the power-elite taking credit for their efforts, even invoking patriotic sentiments about their greed (Marcus compares one's first visit to the store with the day Kennedy was shot). Once again, the disenfranchised (the silent African-American chauffeurs) stand in contrast to the authority figures (Marcus, the celebrities). Through judicial editing, Wiseman reveals cultural differences, rhetorical hypocrisy, and social irresponsibility. THE STORE deserves a visit.

 

The Pink Smoke [John Cribbs]

 

notcoming.com | The Store - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Evan Kindley

 

The Steve Pulaski Message Board [Steve Pulaski]

 

New York's Film Forum showcases the early films of documentary ...  Eric Monder from Film Journal, April 13, 2017

 

Martin Teller

 

HIGH SCHOOL II                                                     A                     97

USA  (220 mi)  1994

 

One of the best films about education ever made, alongside Jan Troell’s 1969 Swedish film EENY MEENY MINY MOE and one of the better Wiseman efforts, simply a brilliant observation of an excellent school as it goes about its business of educating, the first of Wiseman’s films to revisit an earlier subject, choosing in this case the Central Park East secondary school, a diverse inner city New York City alternative school of gifted kids in East Harlem that has an excellent record in sending and preparing students for college.  Of interest, while the student body is largely black or Latino, 45% black, 45% Latino, and 10% white, the faculty and administrative staff are largely white, which is directly brought into the discussion with a black student who claims at times he vehemently dislikes his white teachers, while his mother is there reminding him that he could just as easily dislike a black teacher, that the real focus should be that nothing should deter him from making his best effort in the classroom.  We hear an interesting conversation with the principal, who happens to be one of those fussy grandmotherly types who always seems active and alert along with a few advisors who are talking with a returning 15-year old Latina girl who recently had a baby, with her mother and the baby’s father present, discussing the kinds of problems she would likely encounter, including a possible violent conflict with another girl now out of school who may still have unresolved issues to settle, the huge amount of time a newborn demands, the lack of sleep, the pressures of wanting to be with other kids and still having time for her schoolwork, while politely advising her that there are alternative schools that allow young mothers to bring their babies to class.  This is an interesting introduction to some of the school staff while also revealing the special accommodations they are willing to make for students, while at the same time offering a brief glimpse of the student’s home life.   Later we see two students called on the carpet for creating a disturbance, where one teacher is trying to get to the bottom of the problem, and is meandering around the subject, never really getting to the point when one kid bluntly states that the other kid is just trying to be annoying, which brings a smile to this kid’s face, like a light goes on in his head, finally, somebody understands.  An hour or so later on into the film, we see this same kid in a peer mediation group discussing a punching and pushing incident over some ill-advised verbal taunting.  This session was one of the more aggravating of the entire film, as they again speak at length talking around the issues, with two older black students as well as a teacher never really holding either kid accountable for their behavior, where the annoying white kid continually states he has no interest in being this black kid’s friend, where the recommended solution is simply to ignore one another, yet they are in every class together, spending more time in each other’s company than with their own families, so this felt like a feeble and untenable solution, never addressing the racial conflict and obvious disrespect the white student was showing his fellow black student.   

 

Without utilizing any narrative, music, or inner-titles, just a fly-on-the-wall approach to observing what is taking place, where it takes awhile to familiarize ourselves with the players, there are multiple discussions among students about the recent Rodney King incident where the white police were legally absolved of any responsibility in the senseless beating of a black man who offered no resistance, who may have suffered some brain damage from the severity of the beating.  The kids were outraged, so some were organizing a student march to city hall to protest the decision, while also displaying a civility about voicing their displeasure, something they felt was lacking in other schools around the country who advocated or resorted to violence.  Of interest, an out of town high school from Michigan was visiting the school, where we witness an all-white, all-girl glee club sing an ultra-white bread choral rendition that brought many snickers from the audience, all of which was preceded by a young Latino’s speech about getting along, that he was aware of the anger many students felt, reminding them that they needed to greet these kids with respect, that this chorus was not their enemy.  We hear a meeting of the faculty discussing the best way to coordinate the curriculum, where the AP teachers appear challenged by the others, as if they are some kind of elite ivory tower establishment separate from the reality that the rest of the school faces.  One teacher skillfully reminds them that when she attended an AP seminar earlier in the year where some 40 schools were represented, all were private schools except two public schools from New York City, of which they were one, explaining it was exceedingly difficult to remain competitive with these schools and their seemingly unlimited resources, so any extra push AP classes could provide to prepare their kids for college was not only a fairly common practice, but a vitally necessary one. 

 

We witness classroom sessions discussing the different kinds of love in Shakespeare or Lorraine Hansberry’s changing views on the American Dream, a debate class arguing multiple points of view of the same argument on immigration, a sex education training class for teachers explaining the proper use of condoms, after school tutoring or in-class help with class assignments or homework, conferences with parents, students and teachers, and occasionally we get views of quiet, empty hallway corridors, where the brightly colored drawings and paintings by the students are decoratively displayed on the walls.  What we never see is any physical ed or sports activities, focusing entirely on academics.  The most devastating segment is near the end, when a young boy is being lectured to and berated by his own mother for not being totally forthcoming about his academic deficiencies, where the teachers are all praising his obvious intelligence and ability, but believe he is coasting along, failing to complete certain assignments.  When an interim report of “does not meet expectations” is sent home, the embarrassed mother wants answers, which only places more unbearable pressure on her kid, in a searingly emotional segment that is simply painful to endure.  After a long protracted silence filled with tears, when the kid finally begins to stand up for himself, we learn he’s one of the brightest kids in the class, and probably better than most all other students in the exact same categories for which he was being negatively evaluated, where he has to one by one disagree with the teacher’s ratings, offering his own assessment, which by the end of the discussion is accepted by all as probably being closer to the truth, but this is the school’s way of “motivating” him.  Despite the obvious good intentions, this is an agonizing scene to witness, which is calmly followed afterwards by an uninterrupted speech by the principal, who is never acknowledged, but turns out to be Deborah Meier, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship as an innovative educator, as she speaks to a group of disinterested, vacant faced people as she describes for them her reasons for what education can provide in people’s lives, a quiet, analytic perspective on intelligence that began with her approach on capturing the attention of kindergarten age students, utilizing the same approach for elementary and secondary schools, claiming college should be no different, that life itself is a continuing dialogue that we have with ourselves searching for more than what we already know.  

 

This is easily one of the most intelligent and skillful approaches to filmmaking that one is ever likely to experience on how to approach the aspirations of knowledge with every new generation, offering as exhibit A an engaging group of students and faculty, capturing some of the more enlivened discussions on the subject of education that we could ever hope to find, where the remarkable brilliance of youth is simply captivating, where it’s impossible not to be reminded of what it was like to be feverishly young again, a time when our horizons were unclouded, where anything was possible, and where everything that troubles us today was not continually getting in our way of knowing more.  

 

Chicago International Documentary Festival  Jonathan Rosenbaum from the Reader

 

Frederick Wiseman's second film, avoided overt editorializing but clearly indicted the authoritarianism, banality, and mediocrity of American public education, as exemplified by a typical high school in Pennsylvania. Twenty-six years later, Wiseman investigated the more ethnically diverse Central Park East Secondary School in Spanish Harlem, and High School II (1994), three times as long as the original, offers an inspiring brief for the virtues of progressive education. Whether the topic under discussion is the Rodney King verdict, the practical complications of teenage parenting, the structure of literature courses, or individual student performances, the interactions between students, teachers, and parents mostly seem like models of intelligent and enlightened behavior. 220 min.

 

All Movie Guide [Tom Wiener]

In Frederick Wiseman's first "sequel" of sorts, he revisits an institution common to nearly all adults. His first foray into secondary education, 1969's High School, was set at Northeast High in suburban Philadelphia, where he found stultifying conformity and bored students, with the tumult of that era a largely distant backdrop. This time, he's on more fertile ground, an alternative secondary school on the Upper Upper East Side of Manhattan, with as ethnically diverse a student body as any Hollywood producer would want for a film about inner city kids. The staff, on the other hand, is largely white, an issue addressed in one of the film's earliest vignettes, a meeting involving three adults and a troubled black student. Wiseman's great good fortune was to be filming in the aftermath of the Rodney King trial verdict, and some of the film's best scenes deal with the students' reactions. Most of the scenes here are intimate encounters: teachers working one-on-one with students or leading small discussion groups, counselors meeting with a parent (there are never two present) and his or her child. As in all of his films, Wiseman avoids narration or direct interviews to set the context and address issues, depending upon the simple act of observation to reveal what's important about the institutions he profiles. Wiseman's results here are mixed. Few memorable individuals emerge from the film, and one faculty meeting seems to go on forever, involving an issue that's too abstract to be grasped without some supporting context. There are moments when you sense the camera is inhibiting the students from opening up more, both in the classroom and in meetings with counselors, though one of the film's strongest vignettes is of a 12-year-old boy breaking down in tears when he's confronted about his work habits by his mother and two staff members. But the film does often capture something that often eludes dramatic narrative features about schools: the complex series of negotiations that go on between adults and adolescents in a learning environment.

notcoming.com | High School II - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Leo Goldsmith

 

School Spirit | The New Yorker  David Denby

 

Tough Love and Revelation: The Films of Frederick Wiseman | by ...  Andrew Delbanco from The New York Review of Books, December 10, 2012

 

TV Guide

 

High School II | Variety  Daniel M. Kimmel

 

Montreal Mirror [Matthew Hays]

 

TV Review : A Hopeful 'High School II' Values Critical Thinking - latimes  Robert Koehler

 

FILM REVIEW - The New York Times  Caryn James

 

BALLET                                                                    A                     98

USA  (170 mi)  1995

 

This is one of the most joyous and loving films on record, where without a word of narration, we immerse ourselves in both the onstage and behind the scenes cast and crew of the American Ballet Theater, profiling the managing administrators, principal and supporting dancers and choreographers as the company prepares for its European Tour in 1992.  The camera is completely unobtrusive and beautifully captures the flavor and personality of the various ballet choreographers as they work with their dancers in daily rehearsals at the company’s Lower Manhattan studio.  Former dancers themselves, each rehearsal is superbly presented, exhibiting a performance ready flair where they are learning to refine the interpretation.  Right off the bat, as we witness dancers warming up, we are lured into this intoxicating world of precision and grace, where the choreographers occasionally let their bodies demonstrate, which is one of the most wondrous aspects of the film, particularly when we’re allowed to witness the impeccable movements of Irina Kolpakova, a former prima ballerina for the Kirov ballet, whose love for the art simply can’t be contained in her outgoing smile and elegantly flowing body movements.  The poor lead dancer from the company (Amanda McKerrow) pales in comparison during the rehearsal session, but it’s a unique opportunity to learn from one of the greatest ballerinas in history.  Later we see her being interviewed with the aid of a Russian interpreter and her buoyant energy, her love for dance remains vibrantly alive even after she has retired from performing, which may as well be the theme for the film. 

 

Wiseman typically shuns narration, emphasizing the subject over individuality, but one of the film’s limitations throughout is the lack of information about who these choreographers and dancers are, many of them legendary in their own right, or what dances are being performed.  At least initially, this is a relevant point, as another one of the choreographers turns out to be the legendary Agnes de Mille, the niece of Cecil B. DeMille, now a gruff, plain-speaking elder spokeswoman who directs from a wheelchair, occasionally spouting out sounds as directions.  Another unidentified dancer gets an eruption of applause from people witnessing her flawless execution in a rehearsal room, while another rehearses to the music of German Lieder, where the exquisite voice of the man singing at the piano only complements this art form, a wonderful merger of music and dance movement.  Early on in rehearsals, where we can see other dancers practicing off to the side during the main rehearsals, we witness the jubilant moves of percussion-laced, African-influenced dance, whose choreographer is black, a man who can’t stop himself from being delighted by what he sees, joining in with the dancers himself, creating a brilliantly flowing work that is simply sublime, perhaps the dance of the entire film, as it veers away from established practices of traditional ballet execution and invents a new technique expressing a feeling of complete liberation, where the men and women dip and flow together miraculously in rhythm, simply an infectious feeling of energized delight.  Interspersed with these rehearsals are dancers resting, laying on their backs in hallways bracing their legs up against the wall or getting massage treatments for specialized ailments, or we see Jane Hermann, one of the administrators on the phone attempting to head off foreseeable problems, but also confronting inopportune disasters head on, where her linguistic skills, which are as precise as the dancer’s moves, turn incendiary and graphic when she learns they’ve been unexpectedly undercut by a “Russian” ballet troupe that will be preceding them the week before their tour which will not only cut into the financial proceeds but duplicate some of the exact same dances, which she anticipates will drive the ticket sales down.  The contrast between the elation from the effortless freedom of dance movements and being double crossed by your business partner couldn’t be more pronounced, but both are part of the same artistic enterprise.

 

The mood of the film changes somewhat when they finally get to their European destinations, spending a week in the outdoor Acropolis in Athens, where nightfall is illuminated by the moonlight, also performing in Rome and Copenhagen, where the dances are filmed using only two cameras, one in front zooming in or out that meticulously follows a precise path of movement, not always following the lead action, sometimes sticking with off-lead performers, but always capturing the beauty of the moment.  Another camera is just offstage, a memorable view in Chaplin’s LIMELIGHT (1952), which is able to capture close ups and follow a different line of movement from the side angle.  These two cameras are amazingly effective, lead camera by John Davey, assistant camera by film director Lodge Kerrigan (KEANE [2004], CLAIRE DOLAN [1998]) who also worked with Wiseman in HIGH SCHOOL II (1994), and essentially offer the viewer front row seats.  The speed of the free flowing movements from multiple directions can at times resemble slow motion or fast action photography, but everything is filmed in natural time.  The authenticity of the performances is one of the special features of the film, as is the action captured offstage after the performances, such as the next day under a brilliant sun when the company hits the beach, or spends time together having fun on the roller coaster and carnival rides at Tivoli in Copenhagen, and most especially at a night club one night when the company hits the dance floor, an unforgettable picture of these dancers letting loose, where their undeniable rhythm and grace is nothing less than phenomenal.  Always in these group moments there is plenty of camaraderie, applause, and joyous laughter.  Traveling informally with this relaxed group is an unexpected delight, which when added to the pleasure of witnessing them perform onstage at such a high level of expertise just increases our appreciation for them over time.  Despite the 3-hour running time, this is a near perfect film.  There isn’t a moment that doesn’t radiate with a special degree of warmth and love, a film that may produce tears of joy from the sheer beauty of it all, leaving the viewer with a feeling that you just might want to share this with the whole world.

 

From what I can tell, some of the music and principal performers:

 

Tchaikovsky’s "Sleeping Beauty" and Cesar Frank's “Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra”

 

Choreographers/ballet masters: Agnes de Mille, Irina Kolpakova, David Richardson and Michael Somes. Principal dancers: Alessandra Ferri, Cynthia Harvey, Susan Jaffe, Christine Dunham, Julio Bocca and Wes Chapman.

 

The Other – Amanda McKerrow                     

Bruch “Violin Concerto” – Robert Hill and Julie Kent

Prokofiev “Romeo and Juliet” – Alessandra Ferri and Julio Bocca

Tchaikovsky “Swan Lake” – Susan Jaffe and José Carreño

Stravinsky “Rite of Spring” – too many to name

 

Chicago International Documentary Festival  Jonathan Rosenbaum from the Reader

 

During the early stretches of Frederick Wiseman's 1995 documentary on the American Ballet Theatre, it's great to see rehearsing dancers and their prompters thinking with their bodies, then trying to explain their thoughts and feelings in words. In keeping with his interest in institutions, Wiseman looks occasionally and tellingly at other parts of the company's operations, particularly its handling of business. The final 70 minutes shows the dancers on the road in Europe, resting, practicing, and performing; apart from a thrilling performance of The Rite of Spring, this section is oddly anticlimactic, perhaps because the camerawork has become more touristic. 170 min.

 

MC Journal (Samantha J. Gust)

Ballet is a gritty, detailed and fascinating behind the scenes look at the tedious and grueling preparations for an American Ballet Theatre ballet production. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman gives viewers an inside glimpse at what it takes to successfully stage a ballet production including rehearsals, business dealings, dancer recruitment, makeup application, photo shoots, costume fittings and interviews with the press. Several scenes show dancers receiving treatment for pulled muscles and body alignment. Lively footage of the dancers enjoying themselves in between performances as well as actual live performance footage is also included.

Wiseman is non-intrusive in his filming, and no one involved plays to the camera. The film quality is good, and the sound is as good as the acoustics in the various filming locations allow it to be. There is music, but only when it was actually playing during filming. The lack of music in all other segments helps to remind the viewer of the realism. There is one scene containing expletives.

Ballet will surely give viewers who have never been involved in such a production a greater appreciation for all the work involved in creating a ballet production. Experienced ballet producers and dancers will strongly identify with this film. Ballet is an excellent example of great documentary filmmaking - a learning tool for film students.

Highly recommended for academic libraries supporting dance and film programs as well as public libraries with circulating video collections.  

Variety.com [Godfrey Cheshire]

"Ballet," the 27th documentary by Frederick Wiseman, provides a detailed behind-the-scenes look at 1992 rehearsals and parts of a European tour by American Ballet Theater. While sharply observed and intrinsically fascinating to dance fans, pic's cumbersome length and lack of explanatory guidance for the uninitiated make it far more suitable to PBS, where it will air June 26, than to theatrical sites.

As in his previous docus, Wiseman eschews commentary and interviews in fashioning an intimate institutional portrait that emphasizes group interaction over individual personality, and facts over interpretation. For the first 100 minutes, his camera stands back and watches the daily routine at the company's Lower Manhattan headquarters.

Episodes in the loft studios convey the rigorous interplay between the dancers' youthful physicality and the thoughtful, demanding acuity of their older instructors. In one passage, wheelchair-bound choreographer Agnes de Mille searches for words to describe the action she wants from a young female dancer, finally coming up with "a visible scream." The phrase feels just right, and in capturing the moment of its formulation, Wiseman conveys the spark of creativity with similar eloquence.

The downside is that viewers not already versed in this world will be unable to identity de Mille, the other choreographers depicted, the leading dancers or the works being rehearsed and performed. Lack of such basic information may suit most Wiseman projects, where the subjects are unknown and their actions easily understood in context, but in "Ballet," where much depends on the personal and aesthetic histories of the protagonists, the filmmaker's usual method leaves a galaxy of questions unanswered.

Result makes it seem that the veteran documentarian places greater value on maintaining his trademark style than on revealing his subject. Coming at a time when the funding for such companies is under attack, Wiseman's opaque approach does little to help dispel their "elitist" image.

Pic's later sections prove more accessible in concentrating on perfs in the scenic Roman-era theater on the slopes of the Acropolis in Athens and in Copenhagen. These visceral episodes need no explanation.

notcoming.com | Ballet - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Megan Weireter

 

Tough Love and Revelation: The Films of Frederick Wiseman | by ...  Andrew Delbanco from The New York Review of Books, December 10, 2012

 

Ballet - Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO)  Samantha J. Gust

 

TV Guide

 

FILM REVIEW: BALLET - The New York Times  Caryn James

 

PUBLIC HOUSING

USA  (200 mi)  1997

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List   Beth Capper

Frederick Wiseman is well known for his long observational documentaries detailing the workings of American public institutions, ranging from the meat industry to the welfare office. His 1997 film PUBLIC HOUSING depicts daily life at the Ida B. Wells public housing development on Chicago's south side--the oldest African American housing development, initiated at a time when segregation was still a part of public housing policy. Phillip Lopate writes in Film Comment: "[In Public Housing], again and again one is struck by the goodwill, resourcefulness, and genuine care shown by the social workers, cops, teachers, nuns, and sex education advisors for their often passive, resigned, rebellious, stoned, felonious charges. Again and again one is made to feel the distance between problems and solutions." (1997, 195 min, 16mm)

Public Housing - Educational Media Reviews Online (EMRO)  Scott S. Smith

What more really needs to be said in support of the purchase of a documentary from Frederick Wiseman, the master of direct-cinema and creator of the classic The Titicut Follies (1967), other than that it is available? This powerful work examines daily life in the Ida B. Wells public housing complex in Chicago, chronicling the activities of its residents and various other people associated with it, including community activists, social workers, and Chicago Housing Authority representatives. Instead of depicting heroes and villains, the documentary presents people attempting to cope with the grinding cycle of poverty, whether as individuals who are themselves impoverished or as those whose role is to assist the residents. Police officers are portrayed as both bullying and as genuinely concerned, as cynics and as social workers. Who is more deluded, the HUD representative who blithely tells residents how they will empower themselves and get loans of tens of thousands of dollars to start their own businesses or the various residents cut down by drug addiction who assert that they have things under control. Inside of an apartment an obviously uncomprehending aged gentleman is evicted while outside children play basketball and gardens are tended. While one child is tended to lovingly, another's face is slapped for some infringement. In other words, this is an unflinching presentation of real life. Although race and the effects of racism pervade this work, nothing is clearly black or white, all is tinted in shades of gray.

Public Housing is presented with no musical accompaniment, no narration, no interviews, and, with the exception of the title shot and the closing credits, no titling or captions. It is up to the viewer to come to conclusions about what has been presented and why. Public Housing is appropriate for junior high through adult levels (there are a very few instances of offensive language) and would be an excellent tool to generate class discussion. Although the sheer length of the program might tempt an instructor to pick and choose segments to show, much of the power of the work would be lost without the juxtaposition of the various scenes; it might be best to commit enough class time to show the entire documentary, perhaps broken up by taking discussion breaks at several different points during the program. The technical quality of the videotape is outstanding and it should be considered for all general collections and for use in support of programs in sociology, political science, public administration, social work, and urban studies. Highly recommended.

Boston Phoenix [Gerald Peary]  which includes an interview with Wiseman, March 23, 2009

 

It's like a broken record: the cry of "foul" each year when the Academy announces its nominations for Best Documentary. Do the voters -- generally imagined to be a bunch of male industry retirees with time on their hands -- have their heads in close range of their prostates? Hoop Dreams and Crumb are two of the most egregious recent non-nominations; and Cambridge's Errol Morris has been virtually blackballed by the Academy, denied nominations for The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, and this year's Fast, Cheap & Out of Control.

Frederick Wiseman, the dean of American documentarians, thought for a moment that he might try to qualify this year, after his more-than-three-hour opus Public Housing played so successfully at last October's New York Film Festival. Was it worth it to open Public Housing for a week in LA or New York, expensive prerequisites for an Academy Award nomination?

Astutely, he decided it wasn't. Wiseman has done perfectly well -- even receiving a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant -- without once being an Oscar candidate. He's made 30 nonfiction features in 30 years, starting with his two incendiary classics, Titicut Follies (1967) and High School (1969). The Cambridge resident and former BU law professor has long been celebrated for scrutinizing American institutions in such rich, multilayered works as Hospital (1970), Juvenile Court (1973), and Welfare (1975), and for the corrosive humor of films like Primate (1974) and Meat (1976).

Public Housing, which aired on PBS in December, is among the finest of all his works. To discuss the film and other documentary matters, we recently visited Wiseman's office at Zipporah Films, in Cambridge, and squeezed in next to the nondigital Steenbeck editing machine that Wiseman bought used from WGBH, and on which he is editing his 31st film, Belfast, Maine.

Blabbermouths  Walter Kirn from Salon, December 3, 1997

Public Housing, Frederick Wiseman's new documentary about Chicago's Ida B. Wells Housing Development, aspires to the sort of classical detachment that academic anthropologists cultivated before they realized that no such stance was possible and overcorrected in the other direction. Instead of trying to be flies on the wall, they became ants at the picnic. They crawled all over everything. Rather than listen, they talked, and rather than measure things clinically, they supposed--then deconstructed their suppositions. Over time, something similar happened with documentaries. The project of trying to know the other (Nanook of the North) became another reason to probe the self (Sherman's March).

Wiseman is having none of it. As Public Housing, his 28th film, attests, the grand old man of unobtrusive, I-am-a-camera documentary movie making (Titticutt Follies, High School, Hospital, Juvenile Court) still believes in standing back, facing forward, and shutting up. Early in the three-hour film, a woman is hassled for loitering by two cops who seem to suspect her of illegal drug use. Wiseman provides no background for the scene, just patiently lets it play itself out, even when it gets boring, which it does. First the cops act stern with the woman, berating her for ignoring an earlier order to move along. The woman doesn't react. Next the cops try tough love, predicting certain doom for her unless she cleans up her act. She stands there numb. Finally one of the cops tries a pep talk. They tell her she has "potential." Nothing. The scene ends in stalemate. As if trapped in an urban Ionesco play, the cops have said all the right things, the woman has gone through the motions of listening, and tomorrow the ritual will be repeated.

I f the austere, meandering Public Housing has anything so blatant as a theme, it's the impotence, for poverty, of the talking cure--the endless stream of sex-education classes, group-therapy sessions, self-esteem talks, inspirational lectures, and issue-oriented puppet shows directed by the haves at the have-nots. Scene after scene comes down to the same thing: one person giving advice or encouragement (canned, sincere, or both) to someone else who is too stoned, defiant, or damaged to profit from it, assuming they're even listening. So pure is Public Housing's indictment--not of racism or injustice but of the pathetic means by which society pretends to battle them--that it's hard to discern at first. The film begins conventionally, by giving us someone to root for. The name on her desk is Helen Finner. She's black, half toothless, and president of the tenants' council; she is seriously pissed off as she browbeats a housing official over the phone on behalf of a homeless pregnant girl. Though it's clear that Helen is playing to the camera, Wiseman doesn't intervene, because sometimes neutrality means letting people perform--especially if you happen to agree with them. And conveniently for the audience, Helen's speechifying ("No one under the sun should be homeless with all these units vacant in public housing!") evokes a familiar moral universe where passion ceaselessly battles red tape. The scene leaves the good liberal viewer feeling secure that he knows who the villains are, who the heroes are, and what the fight is about.

That security slowly dissipates. One way Wiseman moves around the housing project is by following service people on their rounds. In one scene he watches a courtly exterminator spraying poison in a woman's kitchen. The man gets in the corners, he squirts around the baseboards, but there's something ineffectual about his efforts--as though he knows, in his bones, that the rats will win. When he instructs the woman in the application of boric acid, giving specific directions about its placement, the woman seems to appreciate his concern. But she also grows more hopeless. She tells him she needs an exterminator every day, not just once in a blue moon, and he responds by complimenting her housekeeping and gradually easing his way toward the door. He's free, with a job to do and places to go, but the woman seems stuck in her poison-laced apartment.

The sense of inertia grows heavier from there. We meet some men arranged around a table in an anonymous utility room. They've given themselves a proud title, "Men of Wells," and they obviously consider themselves role models for the younger black men in the project. They're full of brave talk about responsibility and other Million Man March-style self-help buzzwords, but they have a crippling problem: low attendance. As the men go around the table exhorting each other, making excuses, and promising to do better, the meeting becomes a meeting about not meeting. The men want to do the right thing, but they just can't, and why they can't is left a mystery.

The sharpest enactment of the theme of futility is an extended lecture on birth control to a roomful of women holding babies. The kids scream and holler as the earnest teacher holds up a condom and describes its use--a bit too late for these particular women, who are already mothers and are overwhelmed. The reaction shots show blank stares as the lecturer--clearly a graduate of some public-health course whose jargon and attitudes she's swallowed whole--gamely perseveres, serving up interesting facts about sperm and comparing condoms by brand name and design. She seems to think that if she can just get through this, just finish her lecture, things will be all right--if not for the audience, then at least for her. Like other teachers and counselors in the film, she's found a foothold in the professional helping class, and even if her efforts don't save others, they're saving her. As long as she keeps talking.

Over and over, without context or analysis, Public Housing displays two types of people locked in a joyless, exhausting dance: the bright-eyed motivators and their dazed, distracted clients. A professional athlete holds forth on how to form small businesses. Perky puppets teach anti-drug rhymes to restless kids. A teacher guides a discussion on elder abuse. After a while the tenants seem like prisoners--not just of their crumbling apartments but also of the people trying to set them free. Leaky sinks and milling rats are bad enough, but what may be bleakest about living in public housing is having to serve as a captive audience for the latest reformer's bright ideas. Old-style liberals, it's said, threw money at social problems, but today's new-style ones throw words at them. Wiseman's film makes the effort seem like a subtle form of punishment.

notcoming.com | Public Housing - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Evan Kindley

 

PUBLIC HOUSING - Ruthless Reviews  Plexico Gingrich

 

The Steve Pulaski Message Board [Steve Pulaski]

 

World Socialist Web Site  Sheila Brehm

 

Gerald Peary: Interviews: Frederick Wiseman

 

Public Housing | Variety  Ken Eisner

 

FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW; An Intimate Glimpse Of Hope and Despair In ...  Janet Maslin from The New York Times

 

New York Times [Samuel G. Freedman]

 

Public Housing (film) - Wikipedia

 

BELFAST, MAINE

USA  (245 mi)  1999

 

Belfast, Maine | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum

Frederick Wiseman's patient, four-hour unpacking of a small town in Maine confirms the impression of his previous masterpiece, Public Housing: that the masterful documentarian of High School (1968) and Welfare (1975) has now become a masterful essayist. Or maybe he's been an essayist all along but has lately begun exercising his intelligence and organizing his documentary materials in increasingly subtle and nondidactic ways. What seems different and special about his recent work is its avoidance of easy theses. He picked as his subject this seaside community of 6,000 inhabitants, 99 percent of them white, because he lived a few miles away. He explains his approach as follows: "To document both change and continuity brought about by economic pressure on everyday life in Belfast, I examine its institutions and everyday practices. I also take a look at places where people interact: family life, commerce, public services, and public places." My favorite scene is a high school teacher's brilliant lecture on Moby-Dick that throws a great deal of light on everything else, but a lot of what I remember most vividly is the documentation of the daily work involved in preparing and packaging seafood--none of it boring to watch. Released in 1999, this went pretty quickly to PBS, but a big screen gives it the monumentality and weight it deserves. 247 min.

Boston Phoenix [Chris Wright]

Frederick Wiseman is laughing. Not a muted titter or a cordial chuckle, but a noisy, head-thrown-back, straight-from-the-diaphragm hoot -- a-hoo-ha-ha! The source of Wiseman's merriment is the question he's just been asked: "Do you consider yourself a dramatist, or a historian?"

He finally stops laughing, looks his red-faced interviewer square in the eye, and adopts an air of somber civility. "I'm very bad at generalizations," he says. "I resist them. It simplifies things too much, a question like that."

Whether dramatist or historian -- and he is, in some measure, both of these things -- Fred Wiseman is widely acknowledged to be one of America's finest documentary filmmakers. But, though he may not suffer fools gladly, he hasn't picked up the habit of thinking of himself in grandiose terms. Even his appearance suggests a no-frills disposition: a V-neck sweater revealing a rumpled undershirt; hair that is frazzled and flyaway, looking as though it's trying to escape.

Wiseman's subjects clearly feel at ease with him, and it's not hard to see why. In his Cambridge office -- a miniature Manhattan of stacked film cases, empty cartons, and crinkled papers -- he'll offer you a cup of tea, plunk his feet unceremoniously on his ancient Steenbeck film-editing machine, and invite you to fire away with your questions.

But at the center of this benign lack of order there lies a crisp, slightly daunting intellect. As the doyenne of American film criticism, Pauline Kael, wrote in the New Yorker: "Frederick Wiseman is probably the most sophisticated intelligence to enter the documentary field." He has a wide, watchful gaze that could bore holes in a brick wall, a wit that could strip paint. When Fred Wiseman laughs at you, you know you've been laughed at.

Next week, Wiseman's latest film -- Belfast, Maine -- will air on public TV. It is his 31st film in 33 years, and very much in his characteristic style. The movies, like the man, are doggedly down to earth. They shun abstractions and generalizations, building drama and insight with the accretion of unadorned detail. The most common phrase bandied about in relation to Wiseman's films is "reality fiction," but his sardonic disdain for such pretentious terms is apparent. "I made that up as a joke," he says, "and somebody picked up on it."

However you describe them, Wiseman's films are remarkable for the way they get to the heart of big-picture issues -- emotional, spiritual, political, social -- without ever resorting to high concepts or snazzy production. They are much less slick than the films of other well-known documentarians: they have none of Errol Morris's goofy ironic flourishes, or Ken Burns's sepia-toned sentimentality.

Wiseman's films have no voice-overs and no background music. No one speaks directly to the camera. They are, in a sense, pure voyeurism: Wiseman helped pioneer the fly-on-the-wall style, in which you simply enter another person's life and watch it unfold. His stark, unwavering shots capture a level of intimacy and immediacy that no amount of commentary or interpretation could create. As Wiseman puts it, his films -- and his subjects -- speak for themselves.

His first film, Titicut Follies (1967), was set in the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The movie -- which was banned in Massachusetts until 1991 -- depicts harrowing scenes of abuse and degradation, and it seemed to position Wiseman as the film world's crusading reformer. His subsequent films, however, resisted this narrow definition. In his wide-ranging career, Wiseman has found himself everywhere from a modeling agency in New York City to a public-housing development in Chicago, from the Belmont Race Track on Long Island to the Neiman Marcus headquarters in Dallas. What ties his eclectic body of work together is its single and central preoccupation: American institutions. Specifically, how institutional authority shapes the most basic human relations -- how it can serve both to stifle and to sustain the human spirit.

"I've always been interested in how people organize themselves into communities," Wiseman says. "I grew up before and during the Second World War, and so the issue of how people are organized to live together in some reasonable way was the issue of my childhood on a vast and catastrophic scale. I remember hearing Hitler's speeches on the radio when I was six or seven years old, and my parents' reaction to those speeches."

Wiseman was raised in a middle-class Jewish household -- his father a lawyer, his mother a hospital administrator -- in Brighton, Massachusetts. When he enrolled at Yale law school, it looked as though he would follow in his father's footsteps -- but for one small problem. "I couldn't stand what I had to read," he says. "I wasn't interested in the issues."

Accordingly, like many aspiring filmmakers, Wiseman skipped class and went to the movies. In the late '50s, he spent a couple of years in Paris, where he discovered the joys of 8mm moviemaking. "This was at the time when the technology was developed that allowed you to shoot these documentaries," he says. "I had the thought that since you could make movies about anything, why not try making them about ordinary experience, which is where you can get at the things that are very funny and very sad."

In the four decades since he first had that thought, accolades have poured in from heavy hitters such as Janet Maslin ("unforgettably real"), Gene Siskel ("a super super filmmaker"), James Wolcott ("visually lacerating"), and David Denby ("an intensity usually found only in fiction").

And yet Wiseman has not been without his detractors. One complaint arises from the similarity of the issues raised in his films. As one critic put it, "Fred is actually making the same film over and over." Wiseman, of course, begs to differ. "It's not unusual that one person would be thinking about the same kinds of issues," he says. "My movies are concerned with issues of control and issues of authority. Questions of the relationships of people to authority crop up in all my movies. But if there's not an infinite number of variations that are expressed in the movies, there are certainly a wide number. The abstract themes are similar, but the specifics are always different." Rather than making the same movie over and over, Wiseman says, "I am making one long movie, which is now 70 or 80 hours long."

There are those who would insist that Wiseman has made considerably more than one long movie. Belfast, Maine, for instance, has a running time of a little more than four hours; another, Near Death, clocks in at a whopping 358 minutes. An additional criticism aimed at many of his films is that they are not only long but, to put it bluntly, long-winded. Wiseman is unapologetic. "I think I have a responsibility to the people of Belfast," he says. "Even at four hours and eight minutes, you only begin to suggest the complexity of a place like that."

Belfast is a scenic if slightly shabby town tucked away by Maine's Penobscot Bay. As in many small towns, its quaint façade masks a beehive of social problems. The movie, like Wiseman's other work, unearths these problems by exploring the institutions that bind the town's disparate cast of characters together. Over the course of the film, the camera records a group of good ol' boys yammering away in a local convenience store, a health-care worker tending to the aging and destitute members of the community, a high-school teacher lecturing on the class implications of Melville's Moby Dick.

These scenes suggest a spirit of community and commonality among the people who live in Belfast, despite the hardships many of them face. The care with which one social worker rubs the feet of a withered old man provides one of the film's wonderfully touching moments. It's a fine example of how Wiseman intermingles dignity and humiliation, hope and despair.

As always, Wiseman also explores the alienating effects of institutions. A large number of Belfast's jobs, for instance, are in food manufacturing, and Wiseman's film addresses factory life wordlessly, by tracing the production-line journeys of sliced smoked salmon and stuffed potato skins. In one memorable scene, we follow a batch of sardines from the delivery truck to the tin. The sequence -- which lasts for nearly 10 minutes -- is at once depressing and hilarious, poignant and repulsive. Above all, these factory scenes hammer home the tedium and degradation suffered by the workers who spend their days performing the same grindingly repetitive tasks.

Wiseman would recoil at the perception of a Marxist critique behind his depictions of factory work. "What I'm interested in is reflecting the complexity of experience," he says, "not simplifying it in the service of some ideological purpose." Indeed, Wiseman mitigates the gloom by juxtaposing these scenes with less dehumanizing pursuits. He dwells on the nipped and bloodied fingers of those who snip the tails and heads off sardines, for instance, in much the same way he dwells on a man lovingly painting a landscape. In some strange way, the care with which Wiseman observes these two pursuits affords each an equal measure of dignity.

Wiseman's films invariably crackle with the interplay between hope and hopelessness. Whether plucking cheer from the horrors of a mental institution in Titicut Follies or despair from the glossy good-time world of the fashion industry in Model, Wiseman seems to thrive on creating a unity of opposites. "That's what I find," he says a little grumpily. "I think I would be doing a disservice if I picked one of those and excluded the other -- that would be phony, it would be false, it would be a simplification."

Yet this assertion is something of a simplification in itself. Wiseman the historian says his technique is to just show up and start shooting, but what he "finds" accounts for only a tiny part of his filmmaking. "The story is wherever he allows his camera to fall," writes one critic. But it's far more complex than that. Belfast started with 110 hours of footage before being whittled down to four. This is where Wiseman the dramatist comes in.

"I'm interested in a kind of narrative -- I guess that's too trendy a word -- in the kind of story you can tell with this kind of material, how to give it what I think of as a dramatic structure," Wiseman says. "I work very hard on the structural aspect of a movie."

The bulk of Wiseman's work takes place in the editing room. Belfast, for instance, took only eight weeks to shoot, but 14 months to edit. The sardine sequence alone took about five weeks to edit. "By the time I'm finished with a movie," Wiseman says, "I've been sitting at this machine" -- he taps his Steenbeck for emphasis -- "seven days a week, 14 hours a day, for months. It's a very difficult time. It's like a fighter after a championship fight -- it's like you're shadowboxing. I can't stop working."

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Wiseman's craft, though, is the way he is able to insinuate himself into the lives of his subjects. The editing of the scenes, the arrangement and timing may be wonderful, but what you can't help being amazed by is what he captures on camera. People chat unselfconsciously. They play, they argue, they confide. One previous subject of Wiseman's attributes this to the filmmaker's ability to make himself "invisible." But it's not as easy as all that, Wiseman insists.

"You can't stay too much in the background, because the camera is never more than seven or eight feet away," he says. Trying to hide the fact that you're shooting would be "as if you have a coffin with roller skates on it, and you're pushing the coffin around in the hopes that no one is going to see it." Then again, he says, you can't be too blatant. "The worst thing you can do is say, 'Don't pay any attention, don't look in the camera,' because then they'll look in the camera."

Whatever it is that Wiseman does, it works. In Belfast -- which is currently being screened at Belfast's Colonial Theatre -- there is a scene where a young woman discusses the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. It seems almost unthinkable that she would assent to having these painfully intimate details broadcast before the entire country, let alone her community. In another scene, a woman sits patiently, an infant on her knee, while a health worker picks through her hair for lice. Why on earth do people do this?

"The answer to your question," says Wiseman, "is that I don't know. Naturally, I've thought about it. There are varying elements involved, in varying degrees for different people. One aspect is that people are pleased that someone's paying attention to them. Another is narcissism. Another is indifference. Another is media saturation. Another is that most of us aren't good enough actors to change the way we are simply because our picture's being taken. We all have ways of behaving. If we don't want our picture taken, we say no. But once people agree, they act in the ways they would ordinarily act. Also, most of us think that what we do is right and appropriate. Why would we ever do anything that wasn't right and appropriate? I think this helps the documentary filmmaker."

So would Fred Wiseman consent to having his life captured by a documentary filmmaker? This question he doesn't have to think about at all.

"No," he says, "probably not."

notcoming.com | Belfast, Maine - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Leo Goldsmith

 

Tough Love and Revelation: The Films of Frederick Wiseman | by ...  Andrew Delbanco from The New York Review of Books, December 10, 2012

 

The Big Picture  Peter Rainer from New York magazine

 

Stuart Klawans, The Nation

 

iofilm.co.uk

 

All Movie Guide [Mark Deming]

 

Belfast, Maine | Variety  Eddie Cockrell

 

Controversial Belfast documentary returns to local screens - Bangor ...  Emily Burnham from The Bangor Daily News

 

New York Times  Stephen Holden, also seen here:  Movie Review - - FILM REVIEW; Seaside Town Under the Microscope ... 

 

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE                             B+                   91
USA  (196 mi)  2001

 

Time Out

Wiseman takes a typically lengthy, penetrating look at wife-battering and related matters, focusing on the work and inmates of The Spring, a shelter in Tampa, Florida. As ever, we get a sense of what the institution is trying to do and how, as well as a vivid portrait of the fear, courage, confusion, revenge, rage and complicity of individuals (victims, staff, cops and culprits). The final sequence, of two cops trying to calm down a couple seemingly bent on self/mutual destruction, is extraordinary, and the perfect summation to a fine film.

Chicago International Documentary Festival  Reece Pendleton from the Reader

One wouldn't expect a documentary by Frederick Wiseman about domestic violence to be anything less than powerful, but it's his subtle, low-key approach to such an emotionally charged subject -- one too often presented in luridly melodramatic terms -- that makes this 2001 film so devastating. After some brief early sequences involving police responses to domestic-battery incidents (one of which is very graphic), Wiseman spends the bulk of his time at a Tampa, Florida, shelter for abused women and their children, observing the shelter's deceptively mundane activities: intake interviews, staff meetings, case-management sessions, support groups, and schoolroom activities. The picture that emerges from these scenes is fittingly complex, and it sets up a final sequence that's as haunting as anything I've seen in a long time. 196 min.

Slant Magazine - Film Review: Domestic Violence  Ed Gonzalez

 

From a distance, Tampa seems like any other city. Director Frederick Wiseman stays far at first, staring at the occasional tree that peaks through the city's many skyscrapers. Then, he moves closer. Past closed doors, swing sets and unkept gardens lies domestic violence. Wiseman is patient and uncompromising, letting his camera observe and record the lives of women torn apart by a legacy of abuse. The title of Wiseman's latest couldn't be more blunt, which is, of course, the point. Domestic violence is as much a pathology as it is an institution. Wiseman shows little interest in answers because, sadly, there seem to be none. Rather than ruminate on possible solutions, the director structures Domestic Violence as a guided tour through a well-oiled machine. At three hours plus, Wiseman's latest allows female wounds and tales of survival to say everything that needs to be said about friends and neighbors consumed by relentless cycles of abuse. Observing the many counseling sessions within a women's shelter, Wiseman exposes the entire psychological spectrum of domestic violence: the fear of leaving home, the desire to castrate the male and, most tragic, the effect this pathology has on the children involved. Domestic Violence is scary, in part, because Wiseman's omniscient gaze seems so relentlessly nihilistic. Wiseman doesn't pretend to know the answers, he's merely concerned with the way things are. Just as he observes skyscrapers and run-down vehicles from afar, he never moves close on the fresh bruises that still sting his subjects' faces. By letting the women speak, Wiseman participates in their healing process. There may not be safety or answers outside the women's institute, but, at the very least, Domestic Violence suggests there is a way out.

 

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE  David Noh from Film Journal International

 

If Frederick Wiseman hasn't yet achieved National Living Treasure status, there is truly something amiss. His latest documentary, Domestic Violence, is a searing, epic treatment of a nationwide blight that seems to be, horrifyingly, ever on the rise. Wiseman focuses on the city of Tampa, Florida, which is home to The Spring, its largest center for battered woman and children. As usual, his camera is probing and yet seemingly invisible, achieving footage that boggles the mind in its honesty and intensity. The wail of a police siren signals the coruscating visit to yet another hellish household, and we see distraught women, bloodied and broken, in the aftermath of discord. His interviewees talk openly about the very lowest moments in their lives, as often semi-willing participants in their own physical and emotional destruction. Wiseman himself confesses to being surprised by their frankness and recounts their response that "they wanted to have their stories told, because they thought it might help other people."

Wiseman's focus on The Springs is a testament to his humanity, in that he not only reveals the horror, but is just as intent on showing the healing. As always in his work, his film is scattered with small, revelatory miracles. Children blithely skip through the hallways of the shelter, unaware of exact reality, imagining this all as one great, new adventure. A plump, fatherly teacher leads the kids in a silly yet love-filled nursery rhyme that's like a healing, aural balm. A group of female senior citizens' eyes pop open when told of pregnant women having babies literally beaten out of their bodies. Never judgmental, blessedly free of preaching, the closest Wiseman gets to any editorial comment are the simple, yet telling shots of the many billboards hawking cheap liquor and sex, which litter the Florida highways. The film is 196 minutes long, but, perhaps more than any other Wiseman work, is always hypnotically absorbing and informative.

 

Domestic Violence  Oksana Dykyj from the Educational Media Reviews Online  

Domestic Violence is Frederick Wiseman's 32nd film. His vision as a completely independent filmmaker and producer is one that chronicles American life without compromise. His films began to record the last third of the 20th century and the beginnings of the 21st, and in many ways can serve as archival documents of how America lived, worked, and behaved from the 1960s on. Wiseman's vast catalogue of institutions profiled includes education, medicine, religion, the military, welfare, housing, retail, food, the community, the workplace, leisure and the arts. One of his most compelling films, La Comédie française his detractors, and there are only a few, complain that his films are demanding to watch and should be given an introduction in order to provide context. Wiseman, however, refuses to offer easy solutions and thus forces his audience to work it out for themselves. In a June 1970 interview, he observed, "The way I try to make a documentary is that there's no separation between the audience watching the film and the events in the film. It's like the business of getting rid of the proscenium arch in the theatre." Thirty-two years later his comments still stand true. Attention to details in the imagery allows the viewers to construct their own narrative and to assemble their own individual ideas to form personal interpretations. The passage of time is noted, yet no conventional elements are used except for a sustained and detailed exposition of situations, whether routine comments or those of extreme stress and anguish. His style remains constant: the dependence on hand-held camera and direct sound, the superb editing that only comes into consciousness with careful viewing, and the use of film as the shooting medium, all add to his distinction from other documentarists. This style becomes more apparent now in the age of cheaply made video documentaries dominated by manipulative voice-over, intrusive non-diegetic music and a preponderance of still, lifeless images.

Domestic Violence was shot in about five weeks but the editing took over a year. There was more than 110 hours of footage to edit down to 3 hours and 16 minutes. It distills the harrowing experience and presents the various facets of the ugly side of human power and control. The police respond to calls for help and attempt to help the victims, crisis hotline workers staff phone lines, the Spring Shelter admits a number of women who are then shown participating in workshops/therapy sessions as well as their children who attend classes and group sessions. This Tampa, Florida shelter (one of 38 in Florida) admits about 1650 people each year of which 1000 are children. The average person admitted is a woman around the age of 26 with 2 or 3 children. There are also approximately a dozen men admitted every year as well. According to the statistics presented by one of the staff members giving an orientation tour, domestic violence consumes a third of all police time.

Formally structured as always, the film begins with a long shot of the Tampa skyline in the morning and ends with a similar shot at night. The days come and go and domestic violence remains unfettered. Many different groups could greatly benefit from watching this video and using sections of it as the basis for their discussions. The sections on police interaction with victims would be a good teaching tool for police academies, the therapy sessions would greatly enhance counseling training as well as academic areas of psychology and sociology. But perhaps, most importantly it would be of great help if it became part of the small collections available in women's shelters. For victims of domestic abuse, to know that others have survived, would indeed initiate the healing process. Finally, as always, this is an important document for popular culture, communication studies and any academic area dealing with documentary.

The Birth, Life, and Death of a Nation: A Portrait by Frederick Wiseman ...  Jared Rapfogel from Senses of Cinema, March 13, 2002

 

Domestic Violence - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Jenny Jediny

 

Filmmaker, Heal Thyself | Village Voice  J. Hoberman, January 29, 2002

 

Reviews of Domestic Violence and Collateral Damage.  David Edelstein from Slate, February 8, 2002

 

The Steve Pulaski Message Board [Steve Pulaski]

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

 

Domestic Violence  Jeremy Heilman from Movie Martyr

 

Chicago Tribune [Michael Wilmington]

 

New York Times  Elvis Mitchell, also seen here:  FILM REVIEW; Battering Begins. The Police Come. It All Starts Again ...

 

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE 2

USA  (196 mi)  2002

 

Domestic Violence 2 | Variety  Russell Edwards

Veteran documentarian Frederick Wiseman proves he has not exhausted his material with "Domestic Violence 2," a second riveting look at domestic violence in Hillsborough County, Florida. Lensed back to back with 2002's "Domestic Violence," "DV2" preemed on pubcaster PBS in March in tandem with the tube premiere of the first film in the series. Since Wiseman has long been a fest favorite, "DV2" is sure to have strong legs and, like its predecessor, will do well with pubcasters willing to accommodate the helmer's predilection for elongated pics. Similar success with educational groups is also sure-fire.

Familiarity with the first film is in no way a requisite for appreciation of what Wiseman does here. Foregoing traditional docu props of voiceover narration and informative subtitles as he first did in "Titicut Follies" (1967), Wiseman gets astounding mileage as the camera observes the bureaucratic action in a series of Florida courts.

Docu begins with a police response to a 911 call. A woman and her b.f. are being briefed by officers on their rights, immediate and long term consequences, and what "domestic violence" entails; latter is particularly handy for auds unfamiliar with Florida State laws.

Pic moves to the arraignment court where perpetrators and victims have initial hearings. Thanks to Close Circuit TV, the victims, standing near the judge, and the perps, in a separate chamber, can be seen simultaneously. After the arraignment court, "DV2" follows cases involving parental visits, restraining orders and support payments. Wiseman eschews sensationalism, in favor of more pedestrian fare. Of the numerous cases on screen, few mention weapons and only one mentions a gun. Despite this, courtroom intensity is unflagging, due to helmer's overwhelming fidelity to bureaucratic procedure and his seamless immersion technique, which, as ever, demands great stamina. Most cases witnessed are the result of physical disputes but most of the courts lack any emotional hysteria. However, one case presents a woman racked with grief that is palpable, a climactic reminder that submerged below the legal formality are painful and potentially explosive emotions. Welcome comedy relief is occasionally provided courtesy of the dry wit of frustrated judges.

Wiseman anticipates and rebukes criticism of his using the lower class citizens of Hillsborough County with a wordless, but indisputably potent coda. Powerful finale clearly shows that the issue of domestic violence is not confined to any one social strata, and, any viewer who has judged the participants of these cases by either class or race, is caught in Wiseman's eloquent and well-constructed trap.

Domestic Violence - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Jenny Jediny

 

Women and Children | The New Yorker  February 11, 2002

 

Domestic Violence 2 : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video  Stuart Galbraith IV

 

THE GARDEN

USA  (196 mi)  2005

MediaRights

This is an intimate look into the many events that take place at Madison Square Garden, America's best-known center for popular live entertainment. The number and scope of events held annually at the circular landmark are amazing. Vast, exhaustive, and powered by Wiseman's signature fly-on-the-wall cinematic style, The Garden roams from the sawdust of the circus to the come-ons at a job fair; from the strategy sessions of Garden management to a Bible class attended by NBA all-stars. Wiseman, always observing, always exploring, always lets his camera and the voices of his subjects tell their stories, large and small. The variety and number of events held annually at the circular landmark are themselves amazing--from the cat show to the dog show to an NAACP convention to a live-action Sesame Street extravaganza. The Garden is portrayed as a universe unto itself, but it also serves as a metaphor for modern urban life.

The New Yorker  David Blum

It seems difficult to imagine that the owners of Madison Square Garden, who refer to it, rather boisterously, as the World’s Most Famous Arena, would object to the release of a documentary about the Garden that had been filmed, with their consent and coöperation, by one of the world’s most acclaimed directors. But then these owners—the Dolan family, under the aegis of the Cablevision Systems Corporation—are an odd lot, evidently as fond of discord as they are leery of the bad press that arises from it. And the director, Frederick Wiseman—who made such withering documentaries as “Titicut Follies” and “Hospital”—certainly has a history of inspiring what you might call coöperation regret.

More than a decade ago, Wiseman had the idea of chronicling the goings on at the Garden. “I’d always been fascinated by this place where so many different forms of entertainment came together under one roof,” Wiseman, who is seventy-five, explained last week. “Hockey, basketball, wrestling, the circus—it’s unique in American culture.” In 1997, Wiseman made a formal approach to an acquaintance who had become a Garden executive. Before long, David Checketts, who was the Garden’s chief executive at the time, and who was not familiar with Wiseman’s work, signed off on the idea and granted him full access. During February and March of 1998, Wiseman, under the watchful eye of the Garden’s p.r. chief, Barry Watkins, shot more than a hundred hours of 16-mm. footage, recording the bustle and tedium surrounding such events as the N.B.A. All-Star game, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and the Westminster dog show, as well as Rangers and Knicks games.

The result, which is called, with characteristic concision, “The Garden,” is standard-issue Wiseman cinéma vérité: clever juxtapositions forming a subtle commentary on American life, no narration necessary. The film opens with a four-minute sequence of circus elephants parading through the streets of New York at night, on their way into the Garden; the viewer, once inside, almost never leaves, except for occasional exterior shots of homeless people and passersby. We see employee training sessions, locker-room meetings, cat-show preparations, and, in painstaking detail, the process of converting the Garden floor into a sheet of ice for a hockey game.

Wiseman’s cameras also capture three closed-door meetings in which Garden management discusses its strategy for labor negotiations. These sequences were apparently what jarred Garden executives after Wiseman sent them a videotape of the movie, last November. Back in 1997, Wiseman had agreed in writing that the Garden would have final approval over the film, although the contract, he said last week, stipulated that approval could not be “unreasonably withheld” and had to do only with issues of confidentiality. Wiseman needed the Garden to sign off on the movie within weeks; the Sundance Film Festival was planning to give “The Garden” its American première on the afternoon of January 22nd, and the movie was scheduled to be shown soon thereafter at a retrospective in Vienna, at the Berlin Film Festival, and, in March, on PBS.

After a couple of weeks, Wiseman got a letter from a Garden attorney, Robert Brandon, saying that the company would withhold permission for its release unless Wiseman agreed to make some changes. The lawyers wanted him to cut dialogue from the management-meeting scenes, on the ground that it revealed proprietary information about business strategy. “They only wanted a few lines removed, but they were the kinds of lines that would have made all the scenes meaningless,” Wiseman explained. (One disputed line, delivered by Robert Russo, then the general manager of the Garden: “In the labor negotiations I would like you to think outside the box.”) When discussions between the two sides went nowhere, the Garden made it plain that Wiseman had to withdraw his movie from Sundance—and everywhere else he planned to show it—or face the prospect of a lawsuit. Cablevision can be a stubborn and litigious adversary; it has, for example, spent millions of dollars to fight the New York Jets’ proposed two-billion-dollar stadium on the far West Side of Manhattan. “I couldn’t afford that kind of legal battle,” Wiseman said.

Wiseman withdrew “The Garden” from Sundance the night before the première, citing “unresolved issues” between him and the Garden. He also pulled it from Vienna and Berlin. So far, aside from Garden management, only a handful of curators and critics have seen it. “It’s an homage, really,” said Christoph Huber, a film critic for Die Presse, a daily newspaper in Vienna, who saw it on videocassette. “It makes no sense to me at all that Madison Square Garden wouldn’t want it shown.”

It is also more than three hours long, seven years out of date, and, by Michael Moore standards, a little slow, and therefore unlikely to find a wide audience outside the festival circuit. Still, the Garden apparently continues to object to its release, citing, in an official statement, “certain matters that were to have been discussed between the parties prior to the film’s exhibition” and saying that “that process has yet to be completed.” There also seems to be some dispute over who was responsible for obtaining permission from the various teams, leagues, and performers who appear in the film. One theory, advanced by a former Garden executive who knows the byzantine inner workings of the place, is that James Dolan, the C.E.O. of Cablevision and the chairman of the Garden, learned of the movie and, without having seen it, ordered that it be made to go away. Wiseman believes that, among Garden executives, only Barry Watkins and Robert Brandon have watched the movie from beginning to end, and, he added, “I’m guessing they probably fast-forwarded through a lot of it.”

It is unusual for Wiseman to give a subject the right to view and approve a film he is making. After the release, in 1967, of “Titicut Follies,” a documentary about frightening conditions at the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, questions were raised in the state legislature about how Wiseman got permission to film the inmates, and Elliot Richardson, who was then the Massachusetts Attorney General, and who had originally approved the film, got a restraining order that prevented the film from being shown publicly. That decision wasn’t overturned until 1992, by which time Wiseman had wormed his way into dozens of American institutions with his 16-mm. camera and had been richly rewarded by critics for doing so. Wiseman has never cut anything from his films at the request of a subject. As for what will happen to “The Garden,” he said, “I honestly don’t know. All I know is that I made a movie and I want the public to see it.”

By Christoph Huber  Garden Party: Frederick Wiseman’s Society of the Spectacle, from Cinema Scope, 2005

In an irony worthy of some of the finest ambivalent moments in his work, Frederick Wiseman’s fantastic new documentary The Garden remains invisible for the time being. Pulled at the last moment from Sundance and Berlin, as well as from a near-complete retrospective at the Vienna Cinematheque, due to “unresolved issues between me and the Madison Square Garden,” as a dry statement by Wiseman put it, rumours have it that those issues are rather puzzling, at least for those outside the dispute. For one thing, the new Madison Square Garden management seems unhappy with the inclusion of board meetings that show the old management discussing union negotiations (The Garden was shot years ago, as evidenced by the footage of the artist now known as P. Diddy performing as Puff Daddy); there’s another theory about the management wanting to keep a low profile due to New York’s 2012 bid for the Summer Olympics. Wiseman’s statement ends with the assertion that “we are discussing these issues with the goal of resolving them so that the documentary can be screened in the near future,” but until then one can’t help ruefully shaking one’s head. After all, Wiseman is no stranger to controversy. His first film, Titicut Follies (1967), which exposed the inhuman conditions in the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Bridgewater, was withdrawn from circulation until 1992, and quite a few of the following films have stirred up heated debates on topics ranging from animal research (the underrated Primate, 1974) to Public Housing (1997). So Wiseman, who completed a law degree at Yale, then practiced and taught before embarking on a directorial career, has made a point of always entering a legal contract with the institutions he films. Which works both ways, of course—although in this case certainly to the detriment of the cinephile, at least until matters are resolved.

There can be little doubt that Wiseman is the greatest American filmmaker alive—as Olaf Möller pointed out recently, he is for modern US cinema what John Ford was for the classical era: the most ceaseless chronicler of the way society works, never neglecting the human efforts made to keep it running, yet ever so acutely aware of the weariness and contradictions that inevitably arise along the way. Wiseman’s body of work is furthermore enhanced with every expansion, each subsequent “reality fiction” (the director’s preferred term) commenting on, fine-tuning, and even partially revising (often according to societal changes) the others. As Wiseman has pointed out, you can see his oeuvre as one long film, basically the Great American Novel of the last 40 years, comparable to the touchstones of 19th-century literature, just with the protagonists removed. This point is cogently illustrated by the inclusion of a high-school teacher’s fascinating lecture on Moby Dick in the superb Belfast, Maine (1999). In itself, that film probably works as the most conclusive representation of that one mammoth complete Wiseman film, patiently and diligently tying together many of his central themes and motives with the marvellously subtle, nondidactic intelligence that shines through most clearly in his late epics.

The Garden is another such junction, an alternately hilarious and unsettling account of the going-ons in the titular center for popular live entertainment on New York City’s Madison Square. Bringing out the clowns and elephants right in the beginning, Wiseman certainly doesn’t conceal that this is his—as Kent Jones aptly phrased it—“Society of the Spectacle.” Although the hugeness of the whole operation, let alone the mind-boggling diversity of events in the arena, makes it look like a universe of its own, it couldn’t be clearer that this is a film about society at large, with Madison Square Garden serving as terrain for the daily depiction of national identity. Laconic, thorough, and attentive as usual, Wiseman neither succumbs to the spectacle(s) on display, nor does he embrace that rhetoric of self-definition; instead he prefers to unpack the way they are assembled these days—in an unholy alliance of pop culture and politics, religion and regulation, show business, sport, and science, a grand carnival that ostensibly also functions as a spiritual centre. (Pointedly, the film begins and—practically—ends with circus numbers.)

Shrewd choices highlight the way events are staged. In concert scenes—besides P. Diddy, Wiseman includes Mary J. Blige, Salt ‘n Pepa, and an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical!—he often focuses on other cameras recording the action, or how the stage lights are operated. At another point, there’s a remarkable sequence about ten minutes in length in which he meticulously details the preparations for a hockey game, with special attention lavished on the careful painting of the lines on the ice, which, it is clear, soon will have to be removed again. Indeed, the actual “great events” are given less screen time than the work that’s put into preparing them, creating a sense of constant flow of come-and-go that’s clearly at odds with the monolithic self-definition of the site, so crucial to attracting its customers. (They’re of course unified by the capitalist rationale: “Be welcome for whatever you want, just leave your bucks.”) In between Wiseman characteristically includes many fascinating stretches devoted to food, that most essential wheel for keeping the machine humming—food being processed, packaged, cooked, sold, and eaten in vast amounts. Not to mention being thrown away.

A marvellous scene depicting a professional wrestling match becomes a showcase for virtuoso vérité, which Wiseman makes exciting as ever: of course, here any editorial strategies would seem highly unnecessary, as being staged is part of the fight itself. Applied to some rather weird industry conventions, the vérité method yields insights into the way business is run as a show. Coffee promoters poke and stir in their cups while being lectured on the finesses of taste and how to communicate them to their customers; in the end, it’s revealed that they’re hawking instant coffee. The “International Cat Show” culminates in a demonstration of the right way to massage your cat, including pseudo-scientific blather such as “the grand florage—a French word that means stroking,” with the three different correct speeds for massage being fast, slow, and no motion, a.k.a. “no-mo.” In this culture, entertainment, science, and business have become indistinguishable.

Before attending to her demonstration, the cat-massage lecturer tries to impress the audience with her credentials: “I wrote my thesis on massage from a feline point of view.” It’s one of the many moments in The Garden that points to an important strand in Wiseman’s work—the relationship between man and animal, a topic that he’s been treating in a very unconventional way ever since Primate, whose title pointedly and tellingly does not distinguish between the two species of man and animal. Indeed, the near-Marxist Meat (1975), a paradoxically spiritual masterpiece, considering its almost exclusive depiction of the most desolate proceedings—it’s about “animal processing,” as the owner of the portrayed meat factory, calls it—goes one step further, in having a fearful worker suggest that the humans may soon be treated like the animals. Indeed, the flak Wiseman took for Primate—which involved his extensive, frequently context-free depictions of animal experiments—seems misguided. Why chide him for a breach of etiquette, when he achieves such queasy objectivity. Refusing to take a pre-conceived stand, his portrayal in Primate seems surprisingly even-handed, matter-of-factly, registering that the monkeys are clearly on the losing side of the equation. That also makes the moments where the human folly (and man’s self-asserted supremacy) is exposed, so funny—as in the scene where a scientist, with due dedication, shows a monkey how to use his swing. Wiseman’s black humour is on full display here, as it is at times in The Garden: notably in a scene where the audience is seen at its most attentive during a dog show, where absurdly and perfectly tailored rare species are paraded. Second thoughts about the animals, unavoidable in Wiseman’s earlier “animal films” (see also: Racetrack [1985] and Zoo [1993]), are naturally unwelcome here: that could disturb the show.

Aptly, the central scene in The Garden—usually crucial in Wiseman’s films—is a press conference by none other than born showman Don King, promoting the venue itself: “The Garden is the Mecca of boxing.” (He also drops an intertextual reference that I challenge even the most dedicated Wiseman followers, accustomed to exploring the myriad of interconnections between his films, to have expected, by extolling Madison Square Garden as the place where “the great Sonia Henie” was ice-skating. I Miss Sonia Henie is the title of a little-known collaborative short from 1972, instigated by Karpo Godina at the Belgrade Film Festival, and pairing Wiseman with such unlikely co-directors as Tinto Brass, Milos Forman, Paul Morrissey, Buck Henry and Dusan Makavejev.) More importantly, King touches on another leitmotif of The Garden, declaring, “It’s a spiritual thing that goes beyond the money.” After that point, further scenes centre around this theme, climaxing when a preacher lectures basketball stars on the parallels between their “struggle” and the biblical antagonism of good and evil: “We gotta battle!” “Amen!” With this chain of links established—from the American Dream to the Garden’s self-definition to fighting—it’s hard not to read the last movement of the film as a political gesture. After the final scene—a woman is shot from a huge cannon, the acrobats line up behind the theatre entrance of the arena, the curtain closes, and then there’s applause—Wiseman inserts a last, brief montage of the exterior shots of New York that have punctuated the film. In the twilight you can see the World Trade Center’s then-extant twin towers protruding from the clouds.

Secret Garden | The New Yorker

 

The Garden    Diane Weyermann, Sundance 2005                      

 

BOXING GYM                                                          B                     84

USA  (91 mi)  2010

 

This is a change of pace for Wiseman, as it’s relatively short and dispenses with the long takes, giving us quick cuts instead of a long overall view.  Again, without any narration, interviews, music, or voice-overs, where the audience sees what the camera sees, this different editing method gives the audience just a glancing view of Lord’s Boxing Gym in Austin, Texas, a place where the young and old come to train and get in shape, where some are serious boxers, but others simply need a physical outlet from their daily lives.  The feel of the gym is old and run down, where they don’t emphasize the latest in sterile training equipment and instead focus on an old-fashioned hands-on technique, using tried and true methods to train boxers, increasing both their speed, strength and their endurance.  What they don’t stress is actual fighting, or hand to hand combat in the ring except for those trained fighters.  Instead they teach technique, discipline, footwork, rhythm, hand and eye coordination, and overall fitness, claiming if the body is fit, the rest will follow.  From the outside, this looks like a prefab building constructed underneath a corrugated tin roof, not particularly impressive looking, a former warehouse basically looking like a hole in the wall.  With no signs of an air-conditioner anywhere to be seen, this place must heat up like nobody’s business, especially in the summer heat of Texas, which means everything that we see is immersed in body sweat, suggesting there must be a pronounced odor to the place.  While all of the equipment looks old and broken in, often times strung together with tape, the overall activity taking place in such cramped quarters is impressive, as there’s something going on in any direction we look.  People here take this gym seriously. 

 

What’s also interesting is the equanimity of the sexes, as women train just as hard as the men, where their skill level is impressive.  Some mothers bring their newborn babies, which they set aside in a basket as they work out, attending to them as needed.  Everything is timed here, where a bell goes off in one minute and three minute intervals, where workouts are targeted for maximum effort within these guidelines, like an athlete running wind sprints.  This gets the juices flowing, and each individual gets a feel for their own individual stamina.  Richard Lord is the owner and ringmaster, a no nonsense guy that used to box as a super flyweight who gives it to his customers straight, that for $50 cash each month, they can get out of this gym whatever they choose to put into it, and some are obviously more dedicated than others.  One guy who’s an actual fighter seemed to prefer to sit around and chat rather than actually train, which is inordinately hard work, especially at his level.  But training makes all the difference when it comes to professional boxing, so these guys know what they’re talking about, as they trained World Lightweight Champion Jesús Chávez (44 – 7) and female junior flyweight Anissa Zamarron.  Posters of great fighters can be seen strewn all over the walls.  Anybody can get in shape and learn the proper techniques of fighting, and the gym seemed to be open pretty much all hours of the day and night, closing only in the late hours.  With this kind of accessibility and dedicated people who are willing to humanize the individualized person to person training methods at every level of skill, from young children to experienced fighters, everyone feels they’re getting something beneficial out of the experience.  But again, the quick cutting method changes the level of depth, as it means that the camera only sparingly discovers each subject, which is hugely different than many of Wiseman’s best films that literally immerse the viewer into the real time routines of the institution being observed, where there is no question about what is going on because we view the proceedings at every level of operation.  This is more scatterbrained and seems to just explore the surface.       

 

Time Out Online (David Jenkins) review [4/5]

 

Yet another confident, engrossing and lyrical doc from Wiseman, and another example of the master director’s ability to hone in on the human minutiae of a job, skill or leisure activity to make the subject feel attractive to those who would ordinarily slice their arteries before sitting down to a film about, say, boxing. Setting up his camera in the tumbledown maze of gaffer tape and tattered boxing posters that it Lord’s Gym in Austin, Texas, Wiseman simply observes a clientele of mixed gender, age and background as they spar, practice, interact, chat and work out without a hint of aggression or machismo. Wiseman's love of people is palpable, and the militant objectivity of his technique has rarely felt so compassionate.

 

Boxing Gym  J.R. Jones from The Reader

 

Legendary documentary maker Frederick Wiseman follows his epic La Danse—The Paris Opera Ballet (2009) with another record of fancy footwork, this one courtesy of R. Lord's Boxing Gym in Austin, Texas. Maintaining his usual observational restraint, Wiseman surveys the crowded little facility as people from all walks of life come in to learn and train, and his movie draws no distinction between serious young contenders and regular folks just hoping to stay fit. Unfortunately, the movie is too narrow in scope to become anything but modern-day Americana; for all the bobbing and weaving, Lord's little business can't provide the sort of deep institutional intrigue that powers Wiseman's greatest works.

 

The House Next Door [Fernando F. Croce]  at Toronto

 

Reversing Darren Aronofsky's recent shift from the wrestling arena to the ballet stage, the great documentarian Frederick Wiseman follows last year's La Danse with this brisk, lightweight, unexpectedly genial look at Lord's Boxing Gym, a spot for wannabe pugilists in Austin, Texas. Whether stationed at the edge of the ring or between punching bags, the observational camera takes in all the contenders passing through—men and women, adults and children, beginners and professional. It's a place of aggression controlled and channeled, though, unlike the military assembly line of Wiseman's 1971 Basic Training, the people sparring on the ropes aren't bodies being turned into fighting machines, but merry amateurs, doting parents, and scrappy vets. Rather than a fixation on the violence of the sport, there's a serene appreciation of muscle, sinew, and movement: "It's about the art," somebody says. A more detailed look at the personal drives of the aspiring fighters would have made for more piercing reportage, though it's hard to fault Wiseman's optimistic contemplation of the almost familial atmosphere of democratic athleticism on the screen.

 

Review: Boxing Gym  Ray Pride from New City

 

While Frederick Wiseman’s films have a reputation for extended running times, encouraged by a period when finance largely came from PBS, recent movies, such as last year’s “La Danse” (in a return run at Siskel this week) and “Boxing Gym,” manage their observational heft at more compact duration. Obstinacy is everything with the nearly-81-year-old documentary-maker. In a late-blooming career spanning almost forty features, the patient, exacting filmmaker has found his own way of observing the world: with extended takes in cinema vérité fashion, recording his own sound, watching a process unfold and then returning to his edit warren with miles of film, within which a movie is waiting to be found. Fellow filmmaker Errol Morris recently told the Boston Globe that he thinks it’s wrong to consider Wiseman a documentarian, but rather, “as one of the most important living film directors, period.” His observation of “the sweet sport” may be one of his most engaging in ages, immersed in the dance of repetitions of the members of a slightly seedy Austin, Texas boxing gym. Process, slow and simple. Men and women, young and old: Wiseman goes with their punches. “Documentaries, like theatre pieces, novels or poems are forms of fiction,” Wiseman has written, which, without the evidence of his lovingly shaped, eminently constructed films, would sound like vainglory. The meditative results of “Boxing Gym” are true fiction. 91m.

 

Boxing Gym - The A.V. Club (Film)  Noel Murray

Say this for Frederick Wiseman: No one is ever going to accuse one of his documentaries of being fake, or a hoax. Wiseman’s latest film, Boxing Gym, adheres to the same vérité principles he’s been following since the ’60s. He settles into one place—in this case, an Austin, Texas gym where amateurs, pros, and hobbyists of all ages and ethnicities practice footwork and jabs—and just takes in the action and conversations, without trying to guide the action or even ask any questions.

In keeping with its subject matter, Boxing Gym is a little faster-paced and dynamic than some of Wiseman’s other films about public institutions. It’s much shorter, with more camera moves and quick cuts. But there’s no narrative, and though Wiseman spends a lot of time observing the gym’s owner and manager, Richard Lord, he doesn’t stick long enough with Lord—or anyone else, for that matter—to turn Boxing Gym into a character sketch. The movie isn’t all that aestheticized, either. Boxing Gym is shot on film, and it features more than a few beautiful shots, but whenever anything looks too good, Wiseman cuts away quickly. Anything that smacks of a director imposing a point of view on the material, Wiseman avoids.

As such, viewers’ interest in Boxing Gym will likely wax and wane, depending on their interest in martial arts. There’s a lot of footage of athletes skipping rope and socking heavy-bags here, and not enough of the downtime, when they sit around and talk technique, chat about their kids, tell anecdotes about what they do when they aren’t working out, or pontificate about how dangerous the world is becoming. Still, anyone who’s spent any time around gym-rats will appreciate how well Wiseman captures that peculiar mix of geekiness and sweaty determination that marks those who use brute physicality as an escape from the grind of everyday life. And in a way, Wiseman’s intimate-but-unrevealing approach suits the culture he’s observing. People walk in the door, pay their $50 monthly fee, and get as much action as they can before the round-timer goes beep.

User reviews  from imdb Author: BadMF9 (consumer.probe@yahoo.com) from United States

Frederick Wiseman is one of the few film-makers working today that I genuinely admire. He started his long, sprawling career in the late 1960's, with one of his first documentaries, the daring and controversial "Titicut Follies". It was a grim, objective look into the cruel workings of a since-demolished Massachussetts mental asylum for the criminally insane. Patients are treated about as despicably as you can imagine, either sickly abused or disregarded by the doctors and staff.

Cut to 43 years later, and Wiseman's new documentary "Boxing Gym" was released at the Cannes Film Festival. One of the reasons I admire Wiseman so much is that he's one of the most dedicated film-makers I can recall. He's remained loyal to a distinct formula or code of film-making, which he pioneered. This basically has him going every year to a new American building or institution, filming days and days of footage, before cutting it down into a lean, 2-6 hour documentary (which usually airs on PBS). He's captured a vast canvas of subjects and people, from ballet and dancer, to high school and students, to the zoo and its workers, to boxing and boxers.

He doesn't direct people on what to say or do, he is merely a luminous presence that with his camera records the day-to-day workings of the given institution. Since there is very little manipulation of the images, many will argue it's simply "observational cinema" or "cinema verité", a label which Wiseman sincerely objects to as untrue, and for the latter, a "pompous French term". He's a director who does very little "directing", however it's his editing that marks his stance as a serious artist. It's where he gets to be creative, and input his own personal feelings.

Take for example a nauseating scene from 'Titicut Follies' in which a doctor is feeding a patient soup through a straw and funnel directly into his nostril. The patient appears brain-dead or severely drugged, but has trouble breathing during the grotesque ordeal, gagging several times. At one point, a big sliver of ash from the doctor's cigarette falls and lands in the funnel. This sequence is inter-cut with grim, somber shots of the patient, only days after, being prepared for his burial. It's a profound use of editing, Wiseman inter-cutting the scene with shots of the patients skinny dead body, as if to say modestly that the institution abused and killed him.

Pioneer documentary film-maker Frederick Wiseman, with a career spanning a little under half a century, has done a lot in all this time. He's captured America in a very un-manipulated and refreshingly honest way, which is certainly unique amongst cinema. Some of his documentaries can drag and become quite boring, but most of them are meant to be screened privately for a college or institution. They're difficult to find, but are usually available in University libraries, or occasionally broad-casted on PBS.

The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review

Some documentaries have a way of sneaking into your brain and becoming reference points for larger subjects. Frederick Wiseman's "Boxing Gym" is one of them. The title describes the setting, a pleasantly seedy training venue in Austin, Texas, and suggests the ostensible subject—the remarkably strenuous things people do to learn how to box, or get better at it. The people at Lord's Gym (founded 16 years ago by Richard Lord, a former professional boxer) are a diverse group: men, women, rich, poor, white, not white, kids, grownups, geezers, fancy dancers, genial clods. What they do is interesting to begin with; then the camera's gaze turns their rhythmic movements into balletic abstractions. But Mr. Wiseman has more on his mind than meets the eye. This has been true of each of the 35 narrative-free documentaries he has made since the late 1960s. It's also true that his films have demanded attention and patience, and rewarded it to varying degrees. This one is both demanding and extremely rewarding, because it's really a meditation on violence.

That's far from obvious at first. The incipient violence of the gym's rituals remains incipient for almost an hour while boxers punch punching bags or trainers' gloves but not each other. (The duct tape that holds one punching bag together belies the brand name Everlast.) A smart young Brit talks about the perverse pleasure of taking punches as well as throwing them: it was "fantastic," he recalls, to get hit in the face harder than he'd ever been hit before. A young musician from Mexico displays dazzling footwork in the ring, then does a few seductive dance steps to show a buddy how cumbia goes.

Just as we're wondering if we will ever see an actual fight, a couple of sparring partners throw themselves into it with impressive intensity. But the big turn that "Boxing Gym" takes is verbal. A man getting his hands taped (he's obviously affluent and extremely articulate) speaks of early reports he has just heard about the massacre at Virginia Tech. Others pick up on the grisly details, and speculate on what such shootings signify. "I don't care how much psychology you learn in school," one boxer says, "you never gonna know who's gonna kill, who ain't gonna kill."

And there it is, set to the relentless beat of speed bags and rope jumpers, the mystery of violence and its infinite permutations. At this point the movie invites us to wonder what we've actually been seeing in this gym. Not killers, that's for almost sure. These people have come here to work out their aggressions by fine-tuning them, to control them in the course of unleashing them. But the counterpoint between the choreographed physical assaults and the discussions of Virginia Tech raises provocative questions about human nature—about our nature. As "Boxing Gym" draws to a close, another couple of sparring partners go at each other with real ferocity, and get the bloodlust coursing in our veins.

WEBTAKES: Boxing Gym — Cineaste Magazine  Jared Rapfogel (2010)

Though it’s no secret, it bears repeating that Frederick Wiseman’s body of work constitutes one of the greatest achievements of American documentary cinema. In turning his attention over the past four decades to one after another of our society’s various institutions—from law enforcement to the military, high school to hospice, the monastery to the racetrack, the welfare agency to the ski resort, the zoo to the department store, and so on—he has painstakingly constructed a portrait of a society as revealing and detailed in its individual parts as it is sweeping in its cumulative breadth.

At eighty years of age, Wiseman’s commitment to his life’s work shows no signs of flagging. His thirty-seventh film, La Danse, a portrait of the Paris Opera Ballet, was released to great acclaim late last year, and continues to screen around the world. And hot on its heels comes Boxing Gym. Shot prior to La Danse but edited subsequently, the new film turns its sights on Lord’s Boxing Gym in Austin, Texas, a small, cluttered, quasiutopian outfit, run by the charismatic and dedicated Richard Lord, whose membership spans multiple races, ages, and cultural backgrounds.

Within the context of Wiseman’s (admittedly diverse) oeuvre, Boxing Gym is unusual in several ways. It’s among the most spatially restricted of all his films—other than a few brief shots outside the gym, and a closing montage picturing the Austin skyline, Boxing Gym takes place entirely within the cramped confines of the converted garage housing the gym. And it’s equally focused in terms of the activities it depicts. Even when they feature institutions with fairly specific functions (Hospital,Juvenile CourtWelfare), Wiseman’s films tend to reveal a variety of situations and occupations. But Lord’s Gym is the site of a strikingly limited spectrum of activity—Wiseman records numerous conversations and interviews with prospective members, but for the most part the film bears witness to a hypnotically repetitive regimen of training exercises.

As a result Boxing Gym is Wiseman’s most palpably physical, body-centered film (a quality it shares to some extent with Basic TrainingBallet, and of course La Danse). The repetitive, physically strenuous nature of the gym’s activities is mirrored in the film’s rhythm and structure—while appearing simply to knit together a record of the gym’s daily operation, in its cumulative effect it registers as a kinetic and highly cinematic study of bodies in motion. Wiseman focuses on the process rather than the goal, on the endlessly repeated training exercises rather than on actual boxing matches. And the constant movement, the nonstop physical effort, becomes hypnotic, giving the film a surface texture remarkably distinct from many of his other recent films (such as the far talkier, more static State Legislature or the twoDomestic Violence films).

The focus on physical training has the effect of bringing to the forefront an aspect of Wiseman’s films that has always been present but is often underestimated, especially as his films have grown longer and freer in their construction: the artfulness of their editing, pacing, and formal structure. Often mistaken for mere accumulations of material, they are in fact something like reality collages, essays constructed from blocks of documentary footage. He is often criticized for eschewing voice-over or explanatory texts that would provide context, and for maintaining the illusion that his camera is not a factor in the situations he records. But apart from the fact that the effect of his presence on the proceedings should, to any perceptive viewer, be so self-evident as to require no acknowledgement, these criticisms overlook the fact that Wiseman’s films are designed to do much more than simply provide information. He aims not only to document but also to lead his viewers to reflect on and question the significance of the institutions he films, and the roles they play in the lives of those who take part in them. These larger questions—about the nature of human society, the relationship between individuals and institutions, and the ways in which people interact and influence each other—emerge organically from the immersive experience his films afford, from their attention to rhythm and structure, strategies which draw us into a space encouraging reflection.

One of the central insights provided by Boxing Gym is that the gym provides its members much more than boxing expertise, or even physical training in general. It’s both a community center—a place where it’s possible to interact with others outside the contexts of work or family—and a space apart from the demands of daily life, where its members can focus on the simple and almost meditative act of physical training. In fact, boxing per se is almost entirely absent from Boxing Gym—there’s an abundance of sparring, training, and education regarding the mechanics of the sport, but virtually no actual one-to-one boxing. There’s even something comical about the disjunction between the violent connotations of the sport and the entirely nonaggressive, communal nature of the form it takes at Lord’s. During a meeting between Lord and a family who’s interested in signing up their son, the young man reveals that he’s epileptic and can’t safely take a punch, and Lord assures him that he won’t be trading blows any time in the near future. And later someone at the gym explains that most of the members avoid street fights like the plague, for fear of missing time at the gym thanks to injury. Wiseman makes it clear that for most of them, their training is an end in itself, a discipline and a pastime, not a road to ritualized violence.

With the possible exception of Belfast, Maine, a masterpiece that represents a kind of summation of Wiseman’s work (since it surveys the many different facets and institutions of a single town), Wiseman’s films rarely assert their status as cinematic works of art, content to qualify as pieces in a larger, breathtakingly ambitious whole. Nevertheless, Boxing Gym qualifies as one of Wiseman’s most memorable recent works. A piece in the puzzle that’s almost incidentally a major achievement in its own right, its uncharacteristically short running time and concentrated subject matter belie its formal perfection and the depth of social perception that we’ve come to expect from Wiseman over the past four decades.

not coming to a theater near you (Leo Goldsmith) review

 

Frederick Wiseman's Knockout Boxing Gym | Village Voice  J. Hoberman, October 20, 2010

 

Boxing Gym - Reverse Shot  Farihah Zaman, October 19, 2010

 

The House Next Door [Elise Nakhnikian]

 

Movieline (Stephanie Zacharek) review [8/10]              

 

Slant Magazine [Andrew Schenker]

 

The Steve Pulaski Message Board [Steve Pulaski]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]

 

Film-Forward.com [Nora Lee Mandel]

 

Cinema Without Borders (Robin Menken) review

 

The NYC Movie Guru [Avi Offer]

 

The Hollywood Reporter (Ray Bennett) review

 

Variety (Rob Nelson) review

 

Torontoist [John Semley]

 

Boston Globe (Wesley Morris) review [3.5/4]  November 12, 2010

 

Fighting the good fight  Sam Allis interviews Frederick Wiseman and Errol Morris from The Boston Globe, November 14, 2010

 

The Boston Phoenix [T. Meek]

 

The Cleveland Movie Blog [Pamela Zoslov]


The Dallas Morning News (Chris Vognar) review [4.5/5]

 

Austin Chronicle [Kimberley Jones]

 

Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan) review

 

Pasadena Art Beat [Jana Monji]

 

Frederick Wiseman Grapples With the Sweet Science  Dennis Lim from The New York Times, May 21, 2010

 

Frederick Wiseman's 'Boxing Gym' — a Review - NYTimes.com  Manohla Dargis, October 21, 2010

 

CRAZY HORSE                                                       B                     87

USA  France  (134 mi)  2011

 

Wiseman seems to have altered his documentary style somewhat, discarding the long, overall view for something smaller and relatively compact, dispensing with the long takes, offering several quick cuts even within 10 seconds, which is something we would never have seen earlier in his career.  After all the dreary and social unpleasantness Wiseman and his camera crew have unearthed for decades, revealing social realism through unedited cinema, perhaps now in his early 80’s, having allegedly shot more than 7 million feet of film in his career, it’s about time he retreats into the claustrophobic confines of the fairer sex.  One could think of worse projects than being stuck for perhaps months at a time behind the scenes of the Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris, known for offering the most sophisticated female nude review anywhere in the world.  Anyone who’s sat through BALLET (1995) or LA DANSE-LE BALLET DE L’OPERA DE PARIS (2009), using a style that shuns narration, emphasizing subject over individuality, knows Wiseman creates a rather hypnotic approach at studying the endless rehearsals and constant behind-the scenes-persuasion to present the cultural refinement and artistic beauty of ballet onstage, where his patience pays off in the end, as one can only marvel at the finished product, where dance sequences (including rehearsals) will be shown in their entirety, often ravishingly beautiful.  This is much different, chopped up into pieces like more mainstream documentaries, lacking much of the personal intimacy of his best work.  Nonetheless, even without his signature shot, as not one dance number is seen from start to finish, Wiseman does capture the flavor of the nightclub, founded in 1951 by Alain Bernardin, a sort of French Hugh Hefner of the erotic fantasy review business, as he originated the stylish, high art presentation, but committed suicide in 1994 at the age of 78, using a shotgun in his backstage office (not revealed in the film, as it’s something they apparently don’t like to talk about).  In this business, one doesn’t grow old gracefully.  

It’s fair to say that this erotic review features first and foremost the woman’s derrière, fixating on it as if the many forms it takes is the most resplendent example of the feminine form, the most visually enticing and sexually alluring, where the pronounced curve is nothing less than an art form and God’s gift to mankind.  No busty women here, as this is nothing like a stripper joint, instead each woman is carefully chosen for her athletic ability to move gracefully onstage and for having what one calls the money shot, the perfect posterior.  While the women are occasionally completely naked onstage, more often they wear G-strings or scant costumes where the tits and ass remain fully exposed, where one carefully choreographed dance called “Teasing” is completely dedicated to the wonders of the bare derrière.  But Wiseman’s discreet edits never allow it to become too sexy, as it would most likely be if seen in the club itself, where every table is seen with a champagne bottle placed in a bucket of ice along with two glasses.  While the glitz and glamor of the kaleidoscopic live acts are a colorful onstage spectacle, where we’re able to see short sequences, the more intriguing shots are the girls in rehearsal, still barely clothed, but without any costumes, wigs, and makeup, where they’re more relaxed and each girl has an identifiable charm and personality.  Without any narration, we never learn the identities of any of the dancers, as none are interviewed, and all perform several ensemble pieces where there’s uniformity in costume, where no individual star gets their name up on the marquee.  Even backstage where women are seen doing last minute costume or make up changes, few individuals stand out, so the way it’s presented, it’s all about product.  Wiseman adds just a touch of Paris, adding a few scenic outdoor shots of boats motoring down the Seine River or a few outdoor street café’s.

Behind the scenes at management meetings, however, it’s a continual jostling match, where despite the obvious talent of all involved, it’s a dysfunctional family relationship, where it’s a wonder anything ever makes it successfully to the stage.  The artistic director Philippe Decouffé, who choreographed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, seen as a Bob Fosse style relentless perfectionist and workaholic, pleads at length for time to break in and prepare new material, but the club operations manager, Andrée Deissenberg, insists there is no other option as the shareholders refuse to allow any break in the current onstage productions.  This forces Decouffé and the dancers to invent, rehearse, and stage all new material during existing working hours, as the show must go on.  The sad truth is management simply doesn’t care, where “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is their working business model.  So long as there are beautiful girls dancing naked onstage, they’re giving the public what they want.  What do they care if the costumes are worn, if a dancer misses a step, or if the lights are off cue?  Ironically, Decouffé and Deissenberg have a history, as both worked together at the Cirque du Soleil before coming to the Crazy Horse.  It’s a battle of egos, as the costume designer can’t keep up with the new numbers, as Decouffé’s imagination simply runs away with him, where he’s continually adding new elements into existing works to keep the show fresh and alive.  The club does give Decouffé something of an alter ego in the form of Ali Mahdavi, a man he obviously loathes, an artistic consultant brought in to modernize the look of the routines, a guy who hogs the spotlight in front of Decouffé and the cameras every chance he gets, namedropping Fellini and Fassbinder to the international press as he exaggeratingly explains that working for the Crazy Horse is the highest pinnacle in art.  There is no mention of the shelf life in the career of a nude dancer, as none appear to be out of their 20’s, and at the tryouts, where interestingly a male transsexual auditions, plenty of even younger girls fit the bill looking to showcase their physiques for the future. 

 

Crazy Horse  David Jenkins from Time Out London

Another year, another mesmerising piece of coolly-objective documentary surveillance from the master, Frederick Wiseman. Here he escorts his dinky crew to Paris's (in)famous Crazy Horse erotic review club and trains his cameras on the wads of naked flesh, slathered in gaudy lighting (and even gaudier garments) and paraded nightly on its modest stage. As Wiseman has us examine the athletic and erotic forms the human body can take as well as the industry that cultivates and profits from those shapes, the film feels like it could become part of a trilogy with his 2009 film about the Paris Opera Ballet, 'La Danse' and 2010's 'Boxing Gym'. And Wiseman's careful editing and non-interventionist stance means he often gives the purportedly tasteful venue enough rope to hang itself with. Its cheesy veneer is seen clearest in a hilarious scene where the girls record a lackluster novelty anthem for one of their brash new numbers.

Crazy Horse | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club  Noel Murray

Part performance film, part backstage documentary, Crazy Horse is familiar in form, yet remarkable both for its subject and for who’s sitting in the director’s chair. The Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris has been staging sexy burlesque routines since 1951, with special emphasis on grand spectacle and erotic artistry ever since managing director Andrée Deissenberg and choreographer Philippe Decouflé took over in the ’00s. Unlike most documentaries about the grueling act of theatrical creation, Crazy Horse is nudity-riffic, featuring scene after scene of half-clad dancers rehearsing. And behind the camera for all this? None other than Frederick Wiseman, legendary documentarian and cinéma-vérité pioneer, who aims to take in life with as few filters as possible—not even the filter of direct, contextualizing interviews. So don’t look to Wiseman’s Crazy Horse for any sort of history of burlesque, either general or localized. This movie is all dancing and dance preparations.

In that sense, it has a lot in common with Wim Wenders’ recent documentary Pina, though Wenders’ tribute to the life and work of choreographer Pina Bausch was a little more explanatory. A lot of Decouflé’s work deals in abstractions, as did Bausch’s. The dancers in Decouflé’s show contort themselves unnaturally, and strain against obstacles, and work with mirrors and lighting effects that alternately reveal and conceal. These routines are beautiful, and captured by Wiseman’s cameras in close-up, from multiple angles, and with lighting that captures every wrinkle and sheen in the dancers’ costumes, such as they are. Like Wiseman’s recent documentary Boxing Gym, Crazy Horse is dynamic and expressive as it shows human bodies in motion.

As for the offstage sequences, they’re imbued with Wiseman’s usual strengths and weaknesses. With all the emphasis on eroticism, it’s easy to wish for the occasional leading offscreen question about what’s sexy vs. what’s vulgar, and whether those distinctions matter in cabaret. (The subject comes up only in passing, in creative discussions and publicity sessions.) But Wiseman’s fly-on-the-wall approach is as effective as ever at recording aspects of a business that other filmmakers might miss, such as Decouflé’s frustration that the Crazy Horse’s stockholders won’t let him close up shop to work full-time on building a new show, and the way the costumer worries that the light is striking one dancer’s buttocks in the wrong place. Anyone could make a film about a theater full of naked women; only Wiseman would take equal interest in the person who handles the ticket-ordering, and the one who makes sure there’s a bottle of champagne on every table. 

GrandLife Hotels – CRAZY HORSE – A Film by Frederick Wiseman  Miriam Bale

“The French government should force everybody to come and see the Crazy Horse, to understand what level of beauty a woman can reach. And to understand that it’s much more than about desire, it’s about emotions that go beyond your mind that touch your unconscious and go through your veins. I have goose bumps.”

That Frederick Wiseman, the esteemed documentarian who has made definitive documents on soul-killing American institutions such as Welfare, High School, and Shopping Mall could take a documentary on a chic Paris nude review and make it feel both boring and virtuous is remarkable, and makes for crowd pleasing movie-going. It’s a very Catholic experience; you can get your yayas out and then pay a little cultural penance, too.

It starts out almost overwhelming: colored lights, shimmering costumes, and a never-ending parade of perfectly round bouncing bottoms. The effects are kaleidoscopic in Saturday morning cartoon colors, with colored spots or psychedelic shapes projected on perfect bodies embellished with red lipstick, black eye-makeup, colored wigs and not much else. It gets a little hot and bothered in the Film Forum and you wonder if all this overlapping gorgeousness can sustain itself.  But then Wiseman’s camera pulls back—or zooms in, actually—to examine all the tedious details that go into creating this spectacle.

His camera focuses on a knee or an ass until it’s almost abstract, until the body part is just a colored shape but with an odd stray hair or familiar jiggle.  Then an hour or two is spent on the logistics of too many visions trying to come together to put on the chicest nude review in the world (according to the people at the Crazy). But what is chic? Pondering this almost impossible to define term becomes part of the fun of understanding what Crazy Horse is in comparison to other burlesque shows. It’s glitzy and kitschy but without being tacky, a tricky line to ride. The bodies are neither rib-jutting, stick limbed lanky nor cartoon voluptuous. They are thick-thighed with solid yet lissome torsos, bodies both taut and round. It’s interesting to watch the Crazy Horse bosses, mostly gay men and women, examine a line of possible new candidates and reject the girls with spaces between their legs. Apparently they are after some kind of ideal.

But at some point you realize that this is not only sex-without-guilt, as has been claimed, it’s sex-without-sex. It’s glamour for gay men. But who understands the power of femininity—apart from messy flesh or emotions—better than a woman-loving queen? As the artistic director and Crazy Horse super-fan says, “The French government should force everybody to come and see the Crazy Horse, to understand what level of beauty a woman can reach. And to understand that it’s much more than about desire, it’s about emotions that go beyond your mind that touch your unconscious and go through your veins. I have goose bumps.” And when Wiseman goes back to the show, ending with a giddy and hilarious number in which the showgirls sing badly that “Champagne tastes like the girls of the cra-zee,” so do we.

Cinema Scope | Crazy Horse (Frederick Wiseman, France/US)  Mark Peranson

Over the last decade, I’ve realized that Frederick Wiseman devotees are incapable of critical thinking when it comes to their master. They fail to see (or refuse to acknowledge) that in composing his career-long grand narrative analysis, Wiseman sometimes loses sight of the particularities of the institution under observation; at times, he’s been just plain lazy as an editor. To what extent his unofficial status as the chronicler of American life has weighed upon him as a burden I can’t say, but my complaints disappear into the shadows in Crazy Horse, his 39th film, and, for my money, the most entertaining movie he’s ever made. Maybe this has something to do with Wiseman’s differing takes on the American and French nations. Put another way, America for Wiseman is high school, legislature, public housing, hospital, the army; France is the Comédie Française and strippers. (Common ground is found in ballet.) In both definitions of the word, Le Crazy is indeed an institution.

In the press kit for Crazy Horse, Wiseman states he made it because “I thought the idea amusing.” And this is perhaps the best reason to make a film. To be fair, he continues to list other issues that interest him: the difference between cabaret and ballet (again, cabaret, more amusing); the way the Crazy Horse isn’t really vulgar but hints at vulgarity; and, crucially, the topic of erotic fantasy and the body. The club’s legendary opening number, “God Save Our Bareskin,” which Wiseman withholds until close to the end, sees the ladies sporting Buckingham Palace guard bearskin hats and not much else, parading across the stage in near-military manoeuvres. Allowing for some imagination—which is what the film, bracketed by two scenes of staged shadow play, is essentially about—we’re not that far from what Wiseman captured in Basic Training (1971).

After some elegant punctuation scenes that will reappear over the course of the film, taking us either off-stage or out of the club, Wiseman begins the film with a too-lengthy montage of Crazy Horse numbers, most filmed in close-up and too-long takes, most with a bevy of buttocks proffered up to the camera. Trouble, I thought, but it’s a fake-out. Though of course no narration or background is provided, Wiseman is showing us the mostly unsubtle numbers that have been performed at the club for years (such as “Baby Buns”); and judging from a perfunctory 2003 documentary produced by the cabaret itself, which sprints through the entire hour-long show of 15 numbers, Wiseman’s chosen some restrained ones. After this, Crazy Horse slowly finds a convincing structure as it focuses on the development of a new show choreographed and directed by Philippe Decouflé (a trained mime and the brains behind the Albertville Olympics opening and closing ceremonies) titled, in figurative and literal six-foot-high letters, DESIRS.

Decouflé’s charge is to create a dazzling premiere that will “impress the intellectuals,” but is burdened with the need to rehearse new numbers while the poor dancers are performing the old show every night. A seemingly principled and well-intentioned artistic mind, he is wont to expound on the need to “face what creation is about”; in the first staff meeting, we see the classic art vs. commerce battle as Decouflé attempts to convince the managing director, Andrée Deissenberg, to give him more time and resources to realize his vision. (Le Crazy may be an institution, but it’s a private one.) Throughout the whole film, there’s something incredibly charming—Wiseman might say inherently “French”—about the totally irony-free pronouncements about art and legacy when it comes to a chic nude revue. This comes to a beret-topped head when Wiseman reveals his trump card: the flaming “artistic director” Ali Mahdavi, who has seen various permutations of the show 40 times. His Le Crazy obsession follows, chronologically, “Saint-Laurent, Marlene Dietrich, Helmut Newton,” and his motto is “There are no ugly women…only lazy ones.” (I could go on for the rest of this review about Ali, but some things are better discovered for oneself.)

The periodic appearance of endearing lunatics—the put-upon costume designer who describes a tiny skirt as “more elegant, like for a female CEO,” and later delivers the precious line, “You don’t take chances with a naked girl,” being one of them—is one thing that keeps the entertainment value at a high level. But to everyone’s credit, the dance performances convince us that this nude revue is an art on par with ballet, or Bob Dylan or Bono. It doesn’t hurt that, as a friend noted, Wiseman’s HD camera, with cinematography by John Davey, captures the greatest colours seen in cinema since the death of Paul Sharits. Employing a wide array of gels, projections, effects (polka dots, leopard patterns), and front and side lighting, the eye-popping, often narrative numbers at the Crazy Horse are drop-dead cinematic—at times they approach kaleidoscopic op art. Often, all that Wiseman wisely does is let a scene play out in a long take and let the astonishment sink in. The dancers’ bodies themselves are cinematic vehicles, either used to produce shadows on coloured backdrops, or as objects themselves onto which light and image is projected.

Cinema in essence involves the projection of desire, and what Wiseman cleverly does in Crazy Horse is present desire, illustrate its operation and deconstruct it, with the technical rehearsals of the numbers showing the peculiar sweat and effort required to create this seamless illusion. (While arguing with Ali over the grand finale, Decouflé demands, “Can I have an almost naked girl inside the letter?”) Along the way, Wiseman also allows for the intellectualization of desire: pace Plato, it’s important that the dancers are indistinguishable from each other in order to create the ideal conditions for the perpetuation of desire. And make no mistake, as seen in a priceless audition scene, the women are definitely seen as objects, even by their employers (except when they’re transvestites). To drive it home, Wiseman often shoots a scene without allowing for a glimpse of the dancer’s face, preferring a longing gaze at yet another shapely buttock, making for a point of view not only masculine, but cinematic (rather than theatrical). Yet as Deissenberg points out, Le Crazy famously appeals to women and men alike—but maybe women even more. For here, through the fusion of art and eroticism, through frustration and imagination, women are being given more than just “the desire to desire.”

Still, the film could be a little shorter.

Slant Magazine [Andrew Schenker]

 

Butt Seriously: Life is an Erotic Cabaret in Crazy Horse - Village Voice  Melissa Anderson

 

REVIEW: No Ifs or Ands, But Lots of Butts in Frederick ... - Movieline  Stephanie Zacharek

 

Review: Frederick Wiseman's 'Crazy Horse' A Fantastic Meditation ...  Brandon Harris from The indieWIRE Playlist

 

CRAZY HORSE Review  Jim Tudor from Screen Anarchy

 

TIFF 2011: CRAZY HORSE Review  Kurt Halfyard from Screen Anarchy

 

Filmcritic.com  Chris Cabin

 

Meniscus [Christopher Bourne]

 

Filmleaf [Chris Knipp]

 

PopcornReel.com [Omar P.L. Moore]

 

Richard Schickel: 'Crazy Horse': A Study in Erotic ... - Truthdig

 

ColeSmithey.com [Cole Smithey]

 

DVD Talk [Jason Bailey]  also seen here:  Fourth Row Center [Jason Bailey]

 

Crazy Horse : DVD Talk Review of the Theatrical  Jamie S. Rich

 

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

Film-Forward.com [Kevin Filipski]

 

Paste Magazine [Emily Kirkpatrick]

 

Slackerwood [Elizabeth Stoddard]

 

Crazy Horse - Movie Review - 2011 - Documentaries - About.com  Jennifer Marin

 

HollywoodSoapbox.com [John Soltes]

 

Crazy Horse : The New Yorker  David Denby (capsule)

 

Venice and Toronto 2011. Frederick Wiseman's "Crazy Horse" on ...  David Hudson from Mubi

 

Variety [A.O. Scott]

 

Crazy horse - review | Film | guardian.co.uk  Xan Brooks

 

Crazy Horse - Boston.com  Ty Burr from The Boston Globe

 

Review: Crazy Horse - Reviews - Boston Phoenix  Peter Keough

 

You'll be glued to 'Horse' - BostonHerald.com  James Verniere

 

Philadelphia Weekly [Matt Prigge]

 

Crazy Horse - Film Calendar - The Austin Chronicle  Marc Savlov

 

Alibi.com [Devin D. O'Leary]

 

'Crazy Horse' review: A look at Paris cabaret  Walter Addiego from The SF Chronicle

 

Crazy Horse movie review by Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips ...

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

Crazy Horse (2012)  A.O. Scott from The New York Times

 

Zip! Looking Closely at a Strip Club - New York Times Toni Bentley from The New York Times, January 13, 2012

 

Paris 'Crazy Horse' exotic dancers strike over wages  MSNBC News, May 17, 2012

 

AT BERKELEY                                                       A-                    94

USA  (244 mi)  2013

 

What I’m interested in is making movies about as many different subjects as I can, and as many different forms of human experience.

— Frederick Wiseman

 

Wiseman has made a couple of shorter documentaries of late, including BOXING GYM (2010) and Crazy Horse (2011), which seemed all too brief, requiring shorter shots with more edits, and while still interesting, the director feels much more comfortable returning to his longer format of four-hours here, which allows greater exploration.  Without any identifying commentary, and no narration whatsoever, the chosen subject here, the University of California at Berkeley, is a sprawling campus situated on 172 acres across the bay from San Francisco, still managing several major American laboratories, two for the Department of Energy, and perhaps the most infamous, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (still the largest employer in the State of New Mexico), where Berkeley physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb during World War II.  The Berkeley Lab has discovered 16 chemical elements, more than any other university in the world, while also producing 72 Nobel prizes.  Yet today, when people think of Berkeley, they are likely reminded of the radical activism of the 60’s, including anti-war demonstrations and the birth of the Free Speech Movement that spread across college campuses throughout the nation.  The same site remains an active location for protests and marches, where a Free Speech monument has been erected, also the Mario Savio Free Speech Movement Café.  Wiseman was granted free access to the university by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who also happens to be a physicist, by the way, where we’re witness to the fall 2010 semester, a time that coincides with the downward spiraling economy, where between the years 2008 and 2012, the state appropriations decreased by 27%, or nearly a billion dollars, to its current all-time low, causing salary reductions and furloughs for faculty and staff while roughly doubling the tuition costs.  Of course, the student response was a drumbeat of protests, where Birgeneau reveals “Protests are part of the culture at Berkeley.”    

 

The economic reality is state expenditures have undergone a radical shift from appropriations for higher education to massive expenditures for prisons and correction programs, where that trend isn’t likely to turn around any time soon.  Despite the budget storm, the university has maintained their top global position (currently ranked #9) and top national U.S. News and World public school rankings (listed as #1), the top public university for the 16th year in a row.  What’s clear from the outset is Berkeley is a public funded institution, yet it more than holds its own with the prestigious Ivy League private schools with histories dating back to the Puritans.  This is no small accomplishment, as they must carry the torch that public funded universities are more accessible and offer greater diversity, a theme heard throughout the film, but with higher tuition and fees, students are witnessing the benefits of the best and cheapest systems of higher education eroding away.  And while the film may surprisingly offer more air time to the administrators, it’s the classroom sections that truly elevate the film.  Wiseman provides a cross section view of the administration, faculty, and students, literally eavesdropping on a variety of subjects, where we immediately zero in on a classroom discussion about whether it is in the public interest, whether it is considered part of the greater good to provide financial incentives and aid to help the poor both here at home and abroad, where the lone black woman in the classroom indicates the country has been averse to helping poor black neighborhoods throughout her entire lifetime, so it’s something she’s grown to expect, suggesting people of color have had to learn early on that if they work hard enough, they may at least get *an opportunity* to receive a world class education and the accompanying career benefits that come with it, while middle class whites, who are suddenly suffering from the economic challenges themselves, have always *expected* that education should be given to them as a birthright.  So from her perspective, why should black tax dollars help support poor whites that generationally have never wanted their tax dollars to help support black students?  This searingly intense discussion contains some of the most interesting classroom discussion heard since the high school class in Laurent Cantet’s Palme d’Or prize winning film The Class (Entre Les Murs) (2008), and is easily one of the most riveting scenes of the year, yet it provocatively expresses what kinds of challenges are unique to public schools, where they are part of a larger ideological clash between idealism and practicality, and are expected to define their own vision for the future.

 

When the camera moves outside, there’s plenty of activity with music groups performing before a largely disinterested throng, or various student protests marching through the center of the campus, yelling their slogans while other students are seen lying on the grass.  Meanwhile the campus security is holding a meeting devising a plan on how to maintain adequate security in anticipation of a large student protest expected later in October.  Working in cooperation with the city of Berkeley mayor, police, and fire departments, three tiers of security are agreed upon, one where the campus police provide all the necessary containment, or a second level that may need available units from local police to assist, while the most serious is an official request for back up, a state of emergency that wasn’t used for over ten years, perhaps out of respect for the school’s history, but was called upon twice in the past year. Chancellor Birgeneau is a fascinating and sympathetic figure, always upbeat, looking for new ideas and comments, where as a former protester himself, he supports student protests, as the university is a major player in the existing free speech movement.  He’s also addressing the subject of tenure with his faculty team, suggesting there’s a difference between making a case supported by evidence, and cheerleading, liking someone and thinking they deserve tenure, something easily seen through in a matter of minutes.  Like any university, it’s only as good as the teachers in the classroom, where despite laudatory research projects and other commendable work, he still insists upon excellence in the classroom.  For most of the other administrators, they appear to be doing their job, where we see them at work, while Chancellor Birgeneau operates at a different level, seen more as a visionary, as he oversees every aspect of the university, always seeking ways to improve at every level, to leave it in better standing than when he took over.  Currently the ethnic enrollment of new students in the Fall of 2012 is 24% White, 21% Chinese, 12% International, 9% Mexican, 8% South Asian, 5% Korean, and only 3% Black.   

   

When the demonstration finally materializes, it’s a big event, with speeches touting the effectiveness of protests held a year ago when the legislature caved and rescinded some of their planned cuts, where they recall the significance of 60’s activism, where a movement is larger than any few individuals and has the power to change history.  As they march to the student library, they take over the building, issuing a set of demands that the Chancellor must meet by 5 pm of that same day, where a lot of loud rhetoric with students holding microphones makes a lot of noise.  What’s perhaps most interesting is not the various speeches, but watching those from China or Muslim women with their faces covered in headdress staring silently at what must seem like life on another planet, as all of this activity is forbidden in their countries, yet this has to have a profound effect upon them, extending to their network of family and friends.  No one is arrested, as they are allowed to voice their concerns, and when the Chancellor’s office drafts a carefully worded response that doesn’t really commit to anything, they all soon dissipate and return to their classes.  While this momentarily creates an empty void where there was an energetic build-up for a major confrontation, but its all part of the college experience, building ideals and expectations, followed by disappointments that lead to a new set of expectations.  One of the classroom discussions is on Thoreau’s Walden Pond, where behind the placidity and stillness of the peaceful lake, an image that renews itself even after seasonal storms or icy winters and lives on in perpetuity, is a carnage of animal and plant attacks, where in order to sustain life, one set eats the other to survive, something that caused great concern to Thoreau, who despite all attempts to live a spartan existence, himself relied upon food and local resources for sustenance, concluding that man would always be separate from nature.  One of the unique perspectives offered is that of a veteran’s group, many of whom were initially sinking from the difficulties incurred in the transition from military to student life, but with the help of a campus veteran’s group, a resource not always available at universities, they were able to reassess what their goals and missions were.          

 

As always, some segments are more intriguing than others, but Wiseman’s film absorbs the many arguments and perspectives offered and remains accessible throughout, feeling perhaps more political than his earlier work, but due to the all-encompassing depth of the examination, it’s an invigorating and continually thought-provoking piece, where the viewer receives a variety of relevant insight not likely encountered any other way other than experiencing it yourself.  Some of the more interesting shots might be called transition shots, used much like Ozu, where Wiseman films a janitor sweeping a lengthy staircase, or a landscaper’s leafblower clearing a walkway, or various construction projects taking place, where we see a team pouring cement, eventually leveling it off, or a steamroller flatten out a layer of road asphalt, as these are projects showing the public’s tax dollars at work.  Former Cabinet Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is seen instilling his views that all major goals of any project need to be challenged in order to be successful, where part of a good working team is providing that self criticism.  Working in the Clinton Administration, it nearly killed him that in government he was surrounded by so many “yes men,” people whose idea of keeping their jobs was simply telling the boss what they think he wants to hear, revealing a story about being in a crowded elevator full of his handlers after a particularly ineffective TV talk show, asking what did he do wrong?  While the consensus told him he remained on point and made effective arguments, a lone voice from the back from a nearly inaudible woman suggested that he used his hands too much, immediately generating daggers in the looks from superiors.  But she reiterated, when asked again, that for TV you’re more effective without all the hand gestures.  Reich said he remembered that woman and kept her on his staff, and gave her multiple promotions, always remembering that she was someone who would provide an honest answer when he needed it.  There’s another classroom discussion dissecting the metaphors in John Donne’s love poems, a humorous skit on the social pressures of Facebook, while there’s also a staged performance of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, where one of the hallmarks of the play, besides depicting ordinary life in America, is deciding what time capsules to choose that a hundred or a thousand years from now will tell the future something about these times we’re living in.  In a beautifully abstract dance piece, mixing fantasy and a folksy American reality, what’s clear from this film is art survives as a timeless expression. 

     

In Review Online [Kenji Fujishima]

Frederick Wiseman is, of course, one of the elder statesmen of this kind of direct-cinema documentary, and after a few years appearing to move away from his rigorous institutional examinations and focusing more on bodies in motion in La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (2009), Boxing Gym (2010) and Crazy Horse (2011), At Berkeley marks a welcome return to exploring the nooks and crannies of a social institution—in this case, college, specifically University of California, Berkeley. This isn’t necessarily fresh territory for Wiseman; he had already tackled a learning institution back in 1968 with High School. College, however, is arguably a more open institution than high school (or at least the high school Wiseman explored in ’68), and At Berkeley, across its engrossing 244 minutes, plays as much a celebration of the seemingly infinite possibilities of higher learning as it is a critique of the business behind it. Thus, scenes of classroom and campus activities alternate with scenes of teachers and administrators in meetings as the latter group try to keep the college afloat amidst budget cuts.

This somewhat dialectical approach gradually broadens into a larger ideological clash between idealism and practicality, as, late in the film, a group of students stage a demonstration calling for education to be free, as it was in the university’s storied past. The group’s aims are admittedly amorphous, centered around an idea rather than a specific event…but the administrators’ detached reactions to the protests are rather telling in the large chasm between the university’s mission and the compromises they’ve been forced to make in an economically uncertain environment. Have these administrators perhaps lost sight of what drove them to work at this university in the first place? As usual, Wiseman steers clear of easy judgments, allowing us to draw our own conclusions from the scenes he presents. By the end, the tensions remain but the molding of maturing young minds continues unabated.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Kathleen Sachs

It's hard to tell whether Frederick Wiseman is an idealist or a cynic. Many of his earlier films, including the infamous TITICUT FOLLIES (1967) and the lesser-known ESSENE (1972), reflect the insidiousness of the institutions that they're portraying, while some of his more recent films, in particular BALLET (1995) and LA DANSE (2009), reveal a certain hopefulness in their depiction of rigorous dedication and irreproachable aesthetic beauty. Wiseman's 38th feature-length documentary, AT BERKELEY, certainly won't provide any definite answers to that dilemma one way or the other; in fact, it serves to present Wiseman as more of a polarizing figure than ever before, but with such a subtlety that only Wiseman is capable of achieving. Though it sometimes serves as an overview of the nation's preeminent public university, with many references made to Berkeley's colorful past (including scenes taking place in a cafe named after the Free Speech Movement of the mid-60s), the impetus behind the film's 'narrative' arc is the state of California's progressive disinvestment in public higher education. At the beginning of the film it's revealed that the state of California contributed only 16% to the university's overall operating budget that year, down significantly from years before when the university had already experienced significant cuts. Wiseman takes care to remain impartial to those affected by the downsizing, giving as much attention to a staff meeting at which it's announced that hundreds of low-paying jobs were saved by the previous year's furlough requirements as he does to a middle class student's tearful declaration of guilt over asking her parents to finance her education. One might think that, considering the political slant of some of his earlier films, he'd be more firmly on the side of the student, but just as much consideration is given to the beleaguered administrators. As he strives above all else for fairness, it's no wonder that Wiseman reflects the October 7, 2010 student protests as being a dismal display of disorganized and unrealized idealism rooted in a radical form of entitlement. At the protests, a commanding young activist declares that tuition should be free, a seemingly pure aspiration that conflicts with the activist group's contradictory list of demands. In a staff meeting following the disbandment of the sit-in, then-chancellor Robert Birgeneau decries the group's lack of focus, almost as if he would have taken them more seriously had their protest resembled those of his heyday. A decidedly bitter scene, it seems that Wiseman has lost faith both in the institution and in those taking it on. A few scenes later, a group of veterans discuss what it means to them to have been accepted at Berkeley- seemingly insignificant, it resembles many of the film's previous interludes meant to reflect daily life on the Berkeley campus, fiscal uncertainty aside. But in that moment, during which the campus' least radical students ponder what it means to have moved from one institution to another, one gets a glimpse of the hope Wiseman has for those operating within the machine.

Exclaim! [Robert Bell]

 

Having already established an effective template for deconstructing and analyzing the complexities that comprise a functioning institution, documentarian Frederick Wiseman hones his craft primarily by digging deeper into the subject and making shrewder decisions about the juxtaposition of filmed observations to comprise a narrative. At over four hours, At Berkeley takes its time to consider the various perspectives, ideas and bureaucratic necessities that go into maintaining the core mission statement of the University of Southern California, Berkeley, starting with surface observations about their quest to imbue students with discernment and critical thinking before dissecting just how this ideal is maintained.

Wiseman sits in on several class discussions, watching grad students' debate about philosophy, literature, teaching styles and the evolution of culture, often stepping back towards the impact that the poverty line encroaching on the middle class has on the heteronormative, primarily Caucasian identity. While the students discuss global concepts, becoming aware of how their motivations are shaped by the various socio-cultural signifiers shaping their education and career trajectory, At Berkeley steps back to assess how the administrative office keeps everything functioning.

Though discussions about the development of processes as a method of evading the emotional component of human interrelations arise amidst the administration, economy and finance continue to pervade their thinking. Noting that government funding continues to dwindle, the evolution of the university from a learning institution to a research institution—a particularly fascinating segment observes the development of robotic legs for the paraplegic—as a mode of survival leads us into emotional debates about the cost of education.

Cleverly, these student protests—primarily from the affluent trying to shape their own moral and political identity—are juxtaposed with contrary facts, showing a vast disconnect between student perception and the behind the scenes reality of how the budget is determined. Their liberal education has given them enough historical context to have a convincing vocabulary when formulating idealized social structures (free education, for one), but their limited experience—existing only within the lexicon of theory—leaves many arguments contradicting the hard proof preceding.

This disconnect between student and bureaucrat bleeds into the many other areas of Berkeley, showing an institutional hierarchy where universal solipsism needs to be tempered by those with an understanding of basic economic flow. Professors seeking tenure or exploiting offers from other institutions to obtain more money understand their own needs, but don't necessarily appreciate the balance between budgetary and ideological needs that goes into deciding who is qualified for security. Similarly, department heads see only their needs for additional funds for resources and research, unappreciative for the needs of other departments and other areas of the hierarchy.

Wiseman, who never interjects or forces a perspective, merely absorbs the many arguments and perspectives flying around, putting them together in a thematically logical order to give us an idea of how Berkeley operates. It's an invigorating and perpetually thought-provoking piece that has a more active, tangible political dialogue than some of his earlier documentaries, making it slightly more accessible and clear for a broader audience.

Interestingly, this isn't because Wiseman has changed anything about his style or structure; it's simply because the subject—a university—has verbal argument and an active dialogue built in. Artistic organizations, like a ballet or high end strip shows, are more visual, leaving the audience to draw their own conclusions about the peculiar relationships between art and commerce.

Though a four-hour documentary does seem like a daunting task, At Berkeley is never dull or tedious, inspiring constant thought and fuelled by an abundance of ideas that vacillate between ignorant and astute, giving us an idea of the fascinating tapestry of human thought that goes into making Berkeley function.

 

Film Chronicles the Inner Workings of Berkeley - The New York Times  Nicolas Rapold from The New York Times, August 27, 2013 

 

 It has taken Frederick Wiseman 45 years to get from high school to college. The master filmmaker’s latest portrait of an institution, “At Berkeley,” centers on the University of California in Berkeley and joins an extraordinary résumé that stretches back to “High School” in 1968 and his controversial debut, “Titicut Follies,” in 1967. In between, Mr. Wiseman has established himself as one of America’s greatest chroniclers in any medium.

“What I’m interested in is making movies about as many different subjects as I can, and as many different forms of human experience,” Mr. Wiseman, indefatigable at 83, said in a phone conversation during his summer break in Maine.

His output seems to have matched his ambition. “At Berkeley,” his 40th feature, will have its world premiere on Sept. 2 at the Venice Film Festival. It joins a cinematic panorama of subjects whose understated titles belie their depth: “Basic Training,” “Welfare,” “Meat” (meatpacking plants), “The Store,” “Boxing Gym,” “Ballet,” “Deaf” (special-needs school), “Belfast, Maine.” The richly observed films are sprawling and intimate, dense with the raw material of human endeavor and discourse, and free from the ready-made storylines and messaging of mainstream documentary, much less voiceover.

In “At Berkeley,” we witness the autumn 2010 semester at a university in crisis, yet thriving. Mr. Wiseman uses the institution’s settings — the meetings, classes and protests — as stages to play out its multifaceted drama of people and ideas. A student’s tears at a financial aid session turn the moment into a portrait of middle-class America on the ropes. Budget meetings show the struggle to maintain the values of public education, and create a profile of a leader in then-Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. A goal is scored in a field hockey game. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich in a lecture makes an example out of a valued former aide who was unafraid to criticize him. And — this is Berkeley — a reading room is occupied by the latest generation of student activists.

“I deliberately contacted Berkeley first,” Mr. Wiseman said. “For two reasons: It’s public and it’s a great university.”

Mr. Wiseman made his pitch in a letter to Mr. Birgenau, who promptly invited the filmmaker to visit. By the end of lunch together, the filmmaker had permission to shoot at will — with the exception of tenure discussions — and began production in the autumn of 2010. With the paid assistance of a former chief of staff for chancellors, John Cummins, Mr. Wiseman picked his way through the campus, amassing 250 hours of footage over 12 weeks of shooting.

While his recent films, “Boxing Gym” and “Crazy Horse,” are essentially confined to single-building locales, Mr. Wiseman and John Davey, his longtime cameraman, traversed a campus of 1,232-acres, or about 500 hectares, for “At Berkeley.” Its students, faculty, staff and local residents number in the tens of thousands, “with all the problems of a small city,” Mr. Wiseman said. Like any good navigator of gatekeepers, the filmmaker cultivated his sources.

“Secretaries or administrative assistants are always very important people for this kind of a movie, because they know what’s going on,” he said.

What was going included budget wrangling after a steady decline in state financing for the university: from 54 percent of the budget in 1987, to 12 percent in 2012, according to The Daily Californian, the campus newspaper. Mr. Wiseman said that wasn’t why he made the documentary, but Berkeley ends up serving as a bellwether for the broader predicament of public institutions under economic pressures and anti-government politicking. While Mr. Birgeneau has been criticized for his handling of the budget, “At Berkeley” depicts a delicate balancing act with an eye toward preserving scholarships and teaching standards.

Mr. Wiseman — wry, sharp, and unfailingly precise about what his films do and do not do — is typically reluctant to generalize. But he spoke freely on the threat faced by public universities, and especially the humanities.

“There’s a political agenda behind that, which is to dumb people down. Because if you don’t study the humanities and you don’t have technical education, you’re not going to know about all the questions connected with the Enlightenment or free speech or representative government,” Mr. Wiseman said, adding, as if to temper his comments: “Blah blah blah.”

Intellectual and civic engagement are prominent themes in Mr. Wiseman’s films. The meetings and class discussions of “At Berkeley” are the marketplace of ideas in action, just as his 2007 film “State Legislature” shows the mundane workings of state government.

In his scenes and sequences in “At Berkeley” and other films, Mr. Wiseman seeks to do justice to both “the literal and the abstract,” resulting in a lengthy, analytical editing process. Take, for example, the odd, even comical recurring sight of battle-ready camouflaged Reserve Officers’ Training Corps students doing drills and lobbing fake grenades on campus. It’s at once a reminder of the existence of these programs, of their financial value to campus coffers, of the reach of war even into the groves of the academe.

The classes on display, with their ceaseless talk of complex ideas, bring out one of the film’s underlying themes.

“There’s a question of how do you conceptualize with words, and how do you conceptualize with images,” Mr. Wiseman said. The filmmaker said he struggled over whether to include one lecture about dark energy, which he could not make heads or tails of. (The lecturer: Nobel Prize winner Saul Perlmutter.) Ultimately, he saw a value in the experience of disorientation, recalling how he, in “Deaf,” did not subtitle sign language.

As expansive as Mr. Wiseman’s film is, the average observer might still reasonably ask: where’s the beer? That is to say, what about student life? We see students walking, lounging, playing field hockey, acting on stage, studying, discussing race, but dormitory life is not in evidence.

“One of the reasons I called the movie ‘At Berkeley’ as opposed to ‘Berkeley’ was to suggest that these were all events that took place at Berkeley but there was no suggestion that this was ‘all’ of Berkeley,” Mr. Wiseman said. His wittiest take on the social scene comes within the film: a student musical number about Facebook.

Mr. Wiseman made a point, however, to highlight the campus’s diversity. Its composition forecasts the future of the country at large, when whites will be a minority and he noted its makeup is far different from his own experience at Williams College, where he graduated in 1947.

“Williams, when I went there, was academically superb and wildly anti-Semitic,” Mr. Wiseman recalls. “As it turned out, the Jews and the Christian rejects were the most interesting people on campus. Nevertheless, when you’re sent as a 17-year-old leaving home for the first time, it’s hard to deal with.”

Mr. Wiseman spotlights what could be a mission statement for his larger project, in one student’s stage performance of a monologue from “Our Town” about a time capsule. Even the ancient metropolis of Babylon, the young thespian recounts, left little to no record of day-to-day life.

Mr. Wiseman’s next film is about the National Gallery in London, which he interrupted the production of “At Berkeley” to shoot, and it’s still in the editing stage.“At Berkeley” is tentatively to be released on Nov. 8 in the United States.

'At Berkeley' review by Michael Sicinski • Letterboxd

 

At Berkeley - Reviews - Reverse Shot  Genevieve Yue, November 4, 2013

 

At Berkeley, Krugman's warning becomes reality - Salon.com  Andrew O’Hehir, November 9, 2013

 

The Paradox of a Great University | The New Yorker  Richard Brody, November 15, 2013

 

Toronto Review: Frederick Wiseman's Sprawling 'At Berkeley' Is ...  David D’Arcy at indieWIRE

 

Slant Magazine [Andrew Schenker]

 

At Berkeley - Indiewire Blogs  Oliver Lyttelton from The Playlist

 

Back to school for Frederick Wiseman | Movie Review | Chicago Reader  Ben Sachs, January 1, 2014

 

At Berkeley | Reviews | Screen  Tim Grierson at Screendaily

 

Filmleaf [Chris Knipp]

 

Venice 2013: truth, lies and admin – American documentaries on the ...  Ashley Clark from BFI Sight & Sound, September 9, 2013

 

Crisis Cinema: Toronto International Film Festival 2013 - Lola Journal  Girish Shambu, October 14, 2013

 

On Screen, Around the Quad: "At Berkeley"  J. Hoberman from Blouin Art Info, November 7, 2013

 

The A.V. Club: Ben Kenigsberg

 

Hammer to Nail: Robert Greene   September 27, 2013

 

Frederick Wiseman's At Berkeley Featured in New York Times ... - PBS  Craig Phillips

 

MUBI's Notebook: Daniel Kasman   September 09, 2013

 

Day 9: Cats, college, and farewells / The Dissolve  Mike D’Angelo

 

Vulture: Bilge Ebiri   September 27, 2013

 

Daily | Venice + Toronto 2013 | Frederick Wiseman's AT BERKELEY ...  David Hudson at Fandor

 

The Choice and Order: An Interview with Frederick Wiseman on ... - Mubi  Daniel Kasman interview, September 28, 2013

 

Frederick Wiseman Interview • At Berkeley - Senses of Cinema  Darren Hughes Interview, December 17, 2013

 

University Of California Budget Still Rocky After Years Of Drastic Cuts  Tyler Kingkade from The Huffington Post

 

At Berkeley: Venice Review - Hollywood Reporter  Deborah Young

 

'At Berkeley' Review: One of Frederick Wiseman's Finest | Variety  Leslie Felperin

 

Time Out New York: Joshua Rothkopf

 

Finally, campus gets to see what Wiseman saw ... - UC Berkeley News  Barry Bergman, December 5, 2013

 

RogerEbert.com: Matt Zoller Seitz

 

'At Berkeley,' a Documentary by Frederick Wiseman - The New York ...  The New York Times

 

NATIONAL GALLERY                                           B-                    82                               

USA  Great Britain  France  (181 mi)  2014  

 

Paintings change, and how you look at them changes as well.

For those who would pay to sit through three-hours of what amounts to a series of art history and art restoration lectures from one of the great museums of the world, The National Gallery of London, featuring 2400 paintings from the 13th to the end of the 19th centuries (leaving more contemporary fare to the Tate Gallery, London), then this is the film for you, and must be considered invaluable for scholars, art historians and teachers who would find this of considerable use in the classroom.  But for those lovers of Frederick Wiseman movies, where certainly part of the beauty is the lack of explanation, but total immersion into a field of particular interest, this may come as a bit of a surprise, as there may be more non-stop verbal explanation in this movie than all the other Wiseman films combined, which surprisingly doesn’t allow for moments of introspection due to the continuous stream of verbal explanations.  For some, that will be a good thing, as film critics are near unanimous in offering high praise for this film, as it delves into a specific area of museum expertise, which is what the institutions are renowned for, but it comes up short on the cinema end, as after all the explanation, there is precious little time spent with the actual paintings themselves, literally a few seconds and that’s it—and then they move on, which feels very unlike a Wiseman film that usually allows for a meditative view of art, where it becomes a living and breathing entity.  But here it remains more of a historical concept, where Wiseman appears to be more interested in the ideas behind the paintings than the paintings themselves.  There’s an interesting point made early in the film as a curator discusses with Gallery director Nicholas Penny the need to make art exhibitions more accessible to the general public, as a certain educated segment of society will always visit museums unprompted, while another section of society has no idea what lies inside the hallowed hallways, where she questioned whether the museum was actually focusing on reaching those individuals.  Judging by this film, the answer is no, as this is really a scholarly approach, where the greater the education and familiarity with art in general, the greater one’s appreciation for the film.  But let’s not forget, due to budget restraints, one of the first cuts in the public school systems is eliminating art from the curriculum, where nations as a whole are setting a precedent devaluing art’s significance.  So the language of this film is simply not reaching that segment that remains unfamiliar with the value and appreciation for art. 

Unfortunately, when treated in this way, art only has value to the elite class, represented by the museum’s well-educated all-white staff, which historically was how many of these paintings originated, as only royalty or the church could afford to commission the great artists and buy and/or appreciate art, hanging it on the walls of their vast churches, castles and chateaus, as now it hangs on the walls of museums waiting for the public to find it.  Large exhibitions generate huge advertising dollars notifying the public of gallery openings, where enormous crowds stand in line where they are ushered through crowded exhibitions, often so crowded you can barely see the paintings, while the rest of the art world lies unseen behind obscure corridors in the museum that are never entered or explored.  One of the more intriguing aspects of the film is the revelation explained by a tour guide to a group of racially mixed students that the foundation of the Gallery was funded in part because of the slave trade, where the gallery was built on profits from insuring slaves, where now the museum has its own isolated wing devoted to the “Slavery Collection.”  Nonetheless, few of the paintings discussed are even identified ahead of time, so unless the viewer is already familiar with the painting or the artist discussed, many viewers may not know what they’re talking about and will only get a brief glimpse afterwards.  Unlike other Wiseman films where the camera remains completely unobtrusive, nearly every speaker in the film is very well aware that the camera is pointed at them, where they often seem to be giving performances, shot in brief increments, as there are more and quicker edits in this film, contrary to the usual Wiseman methodology that prevents any practice of staging.  One of the tour guides identifies how a painting is a static moment in time all condensed into a single image, while some novels may take 6 months to read, sticking with the reader for the entire duration, or feature length movies may unwind over several hours.  But when one glances at a painting, sometimes all you get is a quick glimpse, while for others that capture our interest the viewer may sit and meditate over what they are looking at.  Much of what the guide provides is the story behind each painting, placing it in historical context, but also identifying thematic elements within the painting itself.  One of the more scintillating moments was a discussion with a group of legally blind people who were given elevated Braille materials that they could feel and touch to help them understand Camille Pisarro’s only nighttime painting The Boulevard Montmartre at Night (1897), see Original. 

 

The National Gallery is not among the largest museums, where Wiseman initially approached The Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the charge to bring a camera into the museum was prohibitive, as Wiseman never pays any fee, so the smaller intimacy is what attracted the director.  While the film doesn’t have the curiosity factor of At Berkeley (2013), which literally takes the viewer inside the classrooms of one of the most prestigious public universities in the world, where students and professors alike are engaged in scintillating discussions, or the contemplative reach of Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours (2013) that takes us to Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, seen through a developing friendship of a museum guard and a regular visitor, where the museum comes alive for Cohen’s distinctive focus, offering both a meditative glance at many of the paintings, but also a keen appreciation for people that spend time in museums, something altogether missing in Wiseman’s film.  Filmed in 2011-12 during major exhibitions for the 16th century Italian painters Titian and Leonardo da Vinci, and also 19th century British landscape painter J. M. W. Turner, with a major emphasis on the 17th century Dutch Masters Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer, one memorable sequence involves the meticulous cleaning of Rembrandt’s Portrait of Frederick Rihel on Horseback, see Original, where an X-ray taken of the painting reveals another painting hidden underneath.  Another involved a discussion of Turner's The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, 1817, see Original, depicting the fall of Carthage, a particularly bloody affair in 146 B.C involving the Battle of Carthage where the Romans set the city ablaze while capturing 50,000 men sold into slavery, where Turner’s emphasis on a blood-red sun looks as if it was painted with dried blood.  A discussion of modern restoration techniques indicates the painstaking, time-consuming work involved to create a protective lacquer coating that is state-of-the-art reversible and future-proof, as it can be eliminated in fifteen minutes should a better system ever be devised.  Along with the paintings, down in a basement work area are craftsmen carving out luxuriously designed frames to be used, including one austere looking older woman whose sole job was to place a golden inlay around the wooden frame, chiseling it directly into the wood.  There is a Greenpeace protest against Shell Oil drilling in the arctic that draws a crowd outside the museum, as they raise a giant banner on the front of the museum structure itself, proclaiming “It’s No Oil Painting,” but mostly Wiseman’s focus is on the inside collection, where spectators are seen huddling around the paintings, squinting at the fine detail, while a few are sitting on the bench asleep, some couples are seen kissing, ending with a modern ballet by two members of The Royal Ballet of London, Leanne Benjamin and Ed Watson, dancing in front of two Titian paintings, Diana and Actaeon and The Death of Actaeon, mythological scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translating the visual into yet another language, suggesting art is all about interpretation. 

 

POSTSCRIPT

 

There is a bit of controversy surrounding the film, which attributes Rubens as the painter of Samson and Delilah, 1610, where doubt was cast when the National Gallery purchased the painting at a 1980 Christie’s art auction for $5 million dollars, a record at the time.  According to independent artist and scholar Euphrosyne Doxiades, she believes it is a fake, that the composition does not match the original copies made during the artist’s lifetime, suggesting it is painted in a more heavy-handed style than the artist’s other work, and does not employ the layering technique of glazing common in oil painting at the time and mastered by Rubens.  She also finds it odd that one of Samson’s feet is not fully depicted within the canvas.  “Rubens is the painter’s painter par excellence; as a colorist and a draftsman, he is unique in the history of art.  When I first saw the National Gallery’s ‘Samson and Delilah’ in 1987, immediately I thought it could not have been painted by Rubens and I supposed that it was a copy — a 20th century copy.” For an institution like the National Gallery to present such a work as genuine, she says, is “offensive.”

 

She and her son launched a website AfterRubens.org, to coincide with the National Gallery’s major exhibition of Rubens’ work in 2005, Rubens: A Master in the Making, where more than 100 drawings and paintings were on display.  The case against Rubens can be found on the website here, The Strange Story of the Samson and Delilah: after Rubens, while in December 2005, Edward M. Gomez also summarizes the history of the case at Salon, Is “Samson and Delilah” a fake? - Salon.com.  According to a scientific analysis of the painting’s age, it does date back to the correct period, but it was earlier attributed to Dutch painter Gerard van Honthorst, a painter who, like Rubens, worked in Rome under the shadow of Caravaggio at the start of the 17th century.  Despite the claims, a majority of the art historical scholarly community has accepted Rubens as the painter. 

 

National Gallery | Film Society of Lincoln Center  Film Comment

 

Frederick Wiseman’s glorious new film is about the energies of, and around, painting—discussing, framing, mounting, lighting, repairing, restoring, creating, and, perhaps most of all, looking at painting. This is a film of color, light, and sensuous action, in the artwork on the walls and within the universe of London’s great National Gallery itself. In fact, the dividing line between the paintings and the life around them dissolves almost immediately, as Wiseman attunes us to pure response: the individual’s response to the paintings, the painter’s response to the subject at hand, the filmmaker’s response to the people, activities, and light around him. There are discussions of budgetary concerns and social media, but the film and the people within it are always drawn back to the magnetic power of the art itself. National Gallery is a film of faces: the faces of those looking and the faces of those who look back from the canvases, in an endless, joyful exchange.

 

Film Forum · NATIONAL GALLERY

 

London’s National Gallery, one of the world’s foremost art institutions, is itself portrayed as a brilliant work of art in this, Frederick Wiseman’s 39th documentary and counting. Wiseman listens raptly as a panoply of docents decode the great canvases of Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Turner; he visits with the museum’s restorers as they use magnifying glasses, tiny eye-droppers, scalpels, and Q-tips to repair an infinitesimal chip; he attends administrative meetings in which senior executives do (polite) battle with younger ones who want the museum to become less stodgy and more welcoming to a larger cross-section of the public. But most of all, we experience the joy of spending time with the aforementioned masters as well as Vermeer and Caravaggio, Titian and Velázquez, Pissarro and Rubens, and listen to the connoisseurs who discourse upon the aesthetic, historical, religious and psychological underpinnings of these masterpieces.

 

TIFF 2014 | National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, US ...  Kiva Reardon from Cinema Scope

After a quick establishing shot of the stone lions that guard the British National Gallery, Frederick Wiseman plunges into the building itself with a rapid-fire montage of the iconic works that hang on its walls. The effect is nearly overwhelming—especially for a viewer like me who dropped the one Art History class I dared enroll in—though it’s fair to assume this is Wiseman’s intent. The veteran documentarian of institutions paints a portrait of Britain’s greatest art gallery that has far more to do with its people than the oil paintings it houses.

Running just under three hours, National Gallery is on the shortish side for Wiseman, though, as is his way, the film is still created through the editing rather than voiceovers or onscreen explanatory text. Following a cast of characters which includes amusingly animated tour guides, appropriately anal retentive restorationists and enthusiastic marketing specialists pushing for the gallery to make its appeal more populist, Wiseman does what he does best: creates a holistic sense of a place as an organic habitat rather than a mere organization.

One recurring strategy in the film is Wiseman’s tendency to cut between the works hanging on the walls and the gallery visitors staring at them, trying to decipher their hidden meanings. In part, this is a way to animate the possible tedium of filming static paintings, but it also feels intentionally indicative of what Wiseman asks from his own documentary work: patient decoding.

Art Movies - Film Comment  Nicole Armour, November/December 2014

National Gallery is yet another comprehensive installment in Frederick Wiseman’s formidable, lifelong study of public institutions. Here he observes every facet of the London museum’s operations and presents an intimate overview of the efforts of all its departments toward a common goal: to assert and ensure the continued relevance of the art-historical past. Curatorial and conservation staff are shown discussing specific works with groups of visitors, helping them to find narrative in a composition or envision the role religious paintings played in a culture vastly different from their own. The film upholds the belief that the commonalities of self-expression, storytelling, and insightful observation reverberate through time.

Wiseman ably affirms the museum’s mission of public service, which calls to mind Mollie Panter-Downes’s World War II dispatches from London for The New Yorker in which she reported that while the National Gallery was forced to relocate its collection for safety reasons, it still sought to provide succor to the populace. Despite rectangular shadows on the walls where paintings once hung, the museum invited London’s residents to gather for lunchtime concerts and companionship instead. This anecdote, and Wiseman’s film, disprove any accusations that the National Gallery sides with elitism. 

What’s truly moving about Wiseman’s film is the director’s use of portraiture to convey the museum’s efforts to draw a link between modern people and the artists and subjects who came before them. National Gallery is a movie of faces—those of visitors, upturned and searching across the flat planes of paintings, and those of subjects, noble and otherwise, who look out in their full personhood from the museum’s walls. Wiseman rarely enlarges upon the paintings with historical exposition. All rendered visages, alive and dead, are presented as part of a human continuum. When we see museumgoers scrutinize a painted face, it’s an optimistic act of recognition.

Cine-File Chicago: Kathleen Sachs

Reviewing a Frederick Wiseman film is a satisfying but often futile task, questions of film form notwithstanding. (Wiseman's laborious editing techniques and clear visual style have been consistent throughout his nearly fifty-year career, making those the easiest aspects of his films to analyze. It's really only the content that changes, with each film focusing on a new institution.) Every critic proclaims to have located the central theme of the Wiseman film in question; Wiseman himself indulges his myriad of interviewers in their inquiries-as-statements about what that film is really about. His 39th documentary feature, NATIONAL GALLERY, is no exception to this rule, itself being as open to interpretation as any of the paintings on display at the London art museum he's depicting. (In one scene, a gallery employee remarks that his colleague interprets Hans Holbein the Younger's painting The Ambassadors as being a murder scene, with no such conclusion explicit in the work.) What's most unique about NATIONAL GALLERY to this reviewer is that it's a curious blend between the controlled and oftentimes controversial institutional documentaries Wiseman is most known for (TITICUT FOLLIES and HIGH SCHOOL, among many, many others) and his more laissez-faire depictions of various cultural organizations (BALLET about the American Ballet Theatre, LA COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE about the eponymous theatrical company, and CRAZY HORSE about the infamous Parisian cabaret, among others). In a recent interview, Wiseman said that he "wasn't particularly interested in the power struggles within the gallery--some of them are suggested in the movie, but that seemed to me less interesting than what the paintings suggested about human behaviour." That's evident in the film, and indeed, Wiseman doesn't spend as much time depicting the organization's administrative struggles as he did in last year's AT BERKELEY. Instead, he meditates heavily on the art restoration process that happens behind closed doors, providing not only important information about the fascinating process, but also a veiled reflection on what it means to invest in and restore art. In a way, this is the film's central "conflict," just as the administrative meetings were the central conflict in AT BERKELEY. These scenes raise questions not only about the art being restored (if it's being restored, and thus altered, is it really timeless?), but also about the resources going into the maintenance of art that the museum is struggling to present to an increasingly apathetic audience. Wiseman doesn't provide an answer to this dilemma one way or the other, and as always with him, it's debatable as to whether or not this "conflict" is even intended to be construed as such. He ends the film similarly to AT BERKELEY, with a beautiful dance performance that's taking place within the museum's hallowed halls, a curatorial decision that raises more questions than it answers. Wiseman's passion for dance is no secret, but the reasoning behind his decision to include it in films not already about dance is; in NATIONAL GALLERY, it could be anything from the metaphorical coming-to-life of the art he so admires to a contrast between the staticness of that which hangs on the walls and the fluidity of a live dance performance. Or perhaps he simply just really likes it.

MUBI [Daniel Kasman]  May 20, 2014

In a major highlight at Cannes, the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs presented a new work by America's greatest living filmmaker, documentarian Frederick Wiseman. The subject is London's National Gallery, which the filmmaker reveals as a palace of paintings through which courses the evolution of storytelling, imagemaking, representation, and pathways from the human world to that of heaven. It is a palace that is a museum, an archive, a restoration house, a business, and an exhibition, a pre-cinema cinematheque. The building and Wiseman's beautiful film of it contain a great expanse encompassing the meeting of humanity and art, a meeting continually renewed through time.

National Gallery is not, as may be expected, an investigation into the workings of the museum; it would much rather discuss the wonders of art. Wiseman gives much of his film over to the talks, lectures, and briefings of the gallery's staff of docents, historians, guides, and restorationists. We hear and see performed many different vectors of interpretation not just of the museum's mission but specifically of how to understand paintings, ranging from a historical or social context of its time of creation, to aesthetic praise, narrative explication, artist intentionality, and the craft of the art itself. Yet the film makes clear the reliance such educative appreciation has on restoration and exhibition, both of which share equal importance in the film with the paintings themselves and their accompanying interpretations. The tension between restoration, appreciation, education, and exhibition is defined early on in a back room meeting between marketing and art staff, and later visualized in the generally one-way communication of museum staff to groups of kids, tourists, the elderly, donors, visitings scholars and more. Keeping, showing, and telling are the action verbs driving the institution as well as the film itself.

Central to the film's rather voluptuous tone is a personal aspect of the film that Marie-Pierre Duhamel has written about elsewhere: the obvious analogy between the art of painting, its presentation, reception, history, and preservation, and that of Wiseman's art, that of the cinema. It is a connection National Gallery makes immediately at the beginning by one guide's theory that flickering candle light would make a painting seem to move. Indeed, the discussions of restoration, and whether to preserve a painting as an image to be understood or an archeological artifact of culture, is at the forefront of film preservation as well.

The correlation between the museum's paintings and history of imagemaking and storytelling and that of cinema is direct, but the film's copious range of explanations and contexts for the paintings on display—and how they are displayed and why, how they are restored and what the effect is—fully transform National Gallery into a richly contemporaneous essay on the curation, exhibition, reception, and preservation of culture in our time. (That it is also the director's first production shot on the Red digital camera brings these issues back to cinema, again.) This roving record of explanation, so centered on the way people talk about art in the National Gallery, is imbued with a presentness beautifully tied to addressing an audience of the curious, the involved, the dedicated. Wiseman's camera and microphone unexpectedly connect National Gallery to his recent performance films (La danse, Crazy Horse), capturing marvelous live performances on the value and meaning of art. With the museum serving as a collection of odes to human expressivity and beauty, National Gallery is an ode to an ode: an essay that in its cinematic movement animates the keepers and narrator of some of the greatest paintings in the world.

Frederick Wiseman's "National Gallery" | The New Yorker  Richard Brody, November 6, 2014

 

How We Look When We Look at a Painting | The New Yorker  November 13, 2014

 

Museum Guide | Frieze  Nick Pinkerton, October 31, 2014

 

A Grande Dame in Close-Up - The New York Review of Books  Jenny Uglow, January 7, 2015

 

National Treasure, Too: Museum-going With the Great Frederick ...  Wesley Morris from Grantland, November 11, 2014

 

Is the National Gallery Film Really a Masterpiece? - Crisis Magazine  K.V. Turley, January 12, 2015

 

National Gallery - Reverse Shot  Max Nelson, November 5, 2014

 

National Gallery review | Sight & Sound | BFI  Michael Atkinson, January 9, 2015

 

Philip Brophy on Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery - artforum ...  November 4, 2014

 

National Gallery | Film Review | Slant Magazine  James Lattimer

 

National Gallery | Review - Ioncinema  Blake Williams 

 

Filmleaf [Chris Knipp]

 

The Film Stage [Peter Labuza]

 

National Gallery review: Fred Wiseman behind the scenes at the ... - BFI  Isabel Stevens at Cannes from BFI Sight and Sound, May 17, 2014

 

Cannes Film Festival 2014: National Gallery Review - Slant Magazine  Budd Wilkins

 

Cannes Review: Frederick Wiseman's Heady, Nourishing ...  Oliver Lyttelton from The Playlist

 

The A.V. Club: Mike D'Angelo

 

The L Magazine: Nicolas Rapold

 

Film Divider [Craig Skinner]

 

Exclaim! [Robert Bell]

 

Is “Samson and Delilah” a fake? - Salon.com  Edward M. Gomez from Salon, December 19, 2005

 

The best documentaries of 2014 | Sight & Sound | BFI  Robert Greene from Sight and Sound, January 9, 2015

 

Cannes Film Festival 2014: Part One - Reverse Shot  Jordon Cronk 

 

Girish Shambu's blog: Girish Shambu   November 10, 2014

 

Dork Shelf [Andrew Parker]

 

Daily | Cannes 2014 | Frederick Wiseman's NATIONAL ...  David Hudson from Fandor 

 

At Berkeley: Frederick Wiseman on Why He Went Back to School - PBS  Craig Phillips interview from PBS, January 13, 2014

 

Peter Debruge  interview at Cannes from Variety, May 23, 2014

 

Wiser Ways of Looking: A Conversation with Frederick Wiseman - Mubi  Kiva Reardon interview, October 3, 2014

 

Frederick Wiseman's Cosmic Joke: A Conversation With the Elder ...  Jeremy Sigler interview from Tablet magazine, December 15, 2014

 

'National Gallery': Cannes Review - The Hollywood Reporter  Jordan Mintzer

 

VARIETY Jay Weissberg]

 

Time Out New York: Keith Uhlich

 

Cannes 2014: National Gallery review - Frederick Wiseman ...  Andrew Pulver from The Guardian 

 

National Gallery, review - The Telegraph  Tim Robey

 

Frederick Wiseman: 'One common misconception is that I'm a ...  Tim Robey from The Telegraph, January 10, 2015

 

RogerEbert.com: Glenn Kenny

 

Cannes: In "National Gallery," Frederick Wiseman observes ...  Ben Kenigsberg from The Ebert Site

 

The New York Times: Manohla Dargis   November 04, 2014

 

IN JACKSON HEIGHTS                                        B                     89

USA  (190 mi)  2015

 

Rigorously shot, impeccably edited and at times startling in their beauty, these films usher us into often otherwise anonymous spaces and lives, and help make the invisible visible.  Fiercely political, Mr. Wiseman nonetheless rejects the social activist label.  “Documentaries,” he acidly wrote in 1994, “are thought to have the same relation to social change as penicillin to syphilis.”  Neither social activism nor journalism, they are instead “fictional in form and have no measure of social utility.”

 

—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times, December 21, 2007, The Week Ahead: Dec. 23-29 - New York Times

 

Perhaps more than anything, Wiseman’s new film is a documentation of American democracy in action, as the director takes us inside the meeting rooms of so many different grass roots organizations that it will be hard for most viewers to come away from this film without being thoroughly educated on a host of issues, all of which reveal the extraordinary diversity that exists within this New York City neighborhood in north-central Queens, a historic district since 1993 (so no high rises) that is barely half-a-square-mile, where 167 different languages are spoken.  Less than half-an-hour from Midtown, where prices are a world away from the trendy establishments in Manhattan, it is also considered the most ethnically and culturally diverse community in the world, where the sidewalks are literally bustling with activity, where roughly half the 67,000 residents are Latino, including immigrants from the Caribbean, Mexico, and every country in South America, especially Bolivia, Colombia and Peru on the east side, where street carts sell pineapple drinks with shaved ice under Spanish signs.  To the west are Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, who comprise about 20% of the non-Latino population, displaying bright colors, clothes, jewelry, and richly embroidered saris in the shop windows.  A section of 37th Road has been turned into an open street pedestrian mall, where tables and chairs are set up in the middle of the street allowing bikes, skateboarders, rollerbladers, and various other street traffic to get by, often passing by a line of street vendors displaying their wares out on the sidewalk.  The neighborhood is noted for its expression of extreme tolerance, where people are very accepting of everybody else, which is certainly on display in an early scene conducted by city council member Daniel Dromm as he lists off dozens of nationalities while hosting a political fundraiser at a local Jewish community center.  Forced to initiate a Kickstarter fundraiser campaign of his own just to make this film, it is a monumental effort, shooting for nine weeks, editing for ten months, where 120 hours of footage was reduced to just over 3-hours in length, which is fairly typical of Wiseman documentaries, allowing viewers total immersion in the field of exploration, with no explanatory commentary or interviews, where viewers must appraise the findings and come to their own conclusions. 

 

After chronicling the challenges of higher education in At Berkeley (2013), or exploring what’s behind the scenes of a world class art museum in National Gallery (2014), Wiseman’s films have a way of being provocatively indispensable, certainly one of the greatest living documentary filmmakers, where he stands alone as having compiled a body of work that is literally a time capsule record of the western world.  Noticeably absent in this film is any shot of New York outside the explored neighborhood, where viewers are literally confined to this perplexing mix of an almost idealized community comprised of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, where every wave of immigrant experience coming to America s represented.  As we see a street corner named after Julio Rivera, Councilmember Dromm recalls the origins (Tears for Julio Rivera 25 Years After his Murder - Gay City ...), where he was killed in 1990 by 3 marauding skinheads “hunting homos” in Jackson Heights, noting the police had little interest in solving the case, where he was seen as a “throwaway,” offering no reward for his murderer, assigning it to an officer who was on vacation.  But a groundswell of community support, spearheaded by Dromm himself, a gay man who was a grade school teacher in 1990 suddenly turned social activist, sparked neighborhood interest in obtaining justice for Rivera, standing up against homophobia, and eventually founding the Queens LGBT Pride parade in 1993, an event where Dromm is considered the honorary Mayor.  No sitting New York City Mayor had ever walked in the parade until Wiseman’s filming where current Mayor Bill de Blasio is seen waving to an enthusiastic crowd.  The scene shifts to a neighborhood club discussing what would be an appropriate meeting place, and while there are several options, most agreed that the Jewish community center was the most actively supportive, as the synagogue is largely out of the neighborhood, but the community center embraces people of all faiths, including Muslim prayer groups (where we are witness to a Ramadan prayer), and were on the front lines supporting LGBT rights when other religious organizations dragged their feet.  There was an interesting cut to a support group of female transsexuals discussing places where they could feel comfortable, noting that police often harass them in places where they work.  Of particular interest was a black male claiming he gets “less” harassment from police and whites in general when dressed as a trans woman, where she walks down the street completely invisible, than when he’s dressed as a man, where he is viewed with skepticism as a potential purse snatcher.  In a similar circumstance where an Hispanic transsexual was discriminated against at a local restaurant, we see the LGBT community rise up in anger protesting in Spanish outside the doors of the restaurant.       

 

Certainly one thing that’s different in this film is listening to a series of lengthy speeches advocating various political causes, many of which are in Spanish, subtitled in English (half the film is in Spanish), where your eyes are forced to continuously follow the laborious text, missing whatever else is shown onscreen, like the intensity of emotion (or lack thereof) in the room.  Public meetings have a tendency to be long winded and often taxing, even when exhibiting the best of intentions, where they can become monotonous after awhile, especially when so many are seen in succession.  That is not the case when listening to a collection of immigrant stories, in particular an Hispanic woman describe her harrowing adventure crossing the border from Mexico into America, where they were literally left for dead at some undisclosed location, forced to recall landmarks from a street sign or a bridge they passed along the way to help identify their location, losing their cellphone coverage during their only call, where they waited for nearly two weeks before being rescued.  The Hispanic community groups are filled with younger and more energetic workers, describing their working conditions as minimum wage cooks in fast food restaurants or taking cleaning jobs when nothing else was offered.  They receive plenty of support and welcome feedback from others who have experienced similar circumstances.  This is in sharp contrast to hearing the aching loneliness described by a 98-year old white woman with all her faculties intact, describing how she has outlived everyone else in her family, has no friends left, where the $2000/week in-home nursing care providers never actually “talk” to her, as they never reveal anything personal about their own lives, where someone has the audacity to recommend that she “pay” for someone to come in and talk to her, suggesting money can buy anything.  Another scene shows a small gathering of elderly Jewish Holocaust survivors listening to a heavily accented speaker read about the Shoah, a remarkable event made even more shocking by the number of empty chairs surrounding them.  There are frequent shots of Roosevelt Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares, displaying tiny shops and storefronts underneath the elevated subway tracks, where there is a staggering amount of restaurant choices in the community, but the one that stands out is the live poultry market, where there are crates of chickens and roosters waiting for slaughter, which is graphically shown in its abhorrent exactitude. 

 

While there are shots of Colombian soccer enthusiasts during the run-up to the World Cup, where the euphoric patrons of a bar spill out onto the street to celebrate, resulting in multiple arrests, Arabic lessons are taught to equally enthusiastic children, prayers are seen at a colorful Hindu temple, while another customer sits in the chair getting a splash of color in one of the local tattoo shops, but easily the most comical sequence is a tutor session for aspiring cab drivers, where people of all foreign nations seem represented, but it’s cleverly taught specifically for “foreigners” with amusing anecdotes from the home countries.  The most dominant recurring theme in the film comes from a group of about 50 Spanish small business owners whose leases are not being renewed in a shopping mall where some have been in business for over twenty years.  While they have been told that legally landlords have every right to raise rents and renew to businesses of their choice who will pay the higher rates, it appears they are being driven out of the neighborhood by the room needed for a Big Box store like Gap or Home Depot, who may take up the space of 30 or 40 small businesses while offering opening week discounts of 30% or more to drive the remaining smaller markets out of business.  They blame this effect on a Business Improvement District (BID), where the higher prices of major Manhattan businesses are filtering into certain designated neighborhoods that have traditionally been filled by smaller businesses.  This can be fatal for many ethnic restaurants and small businesses operated by immigrant families, triggering a domino effect, as these employees are inevitably supporting families both in America and back home as well, where the loss of income will be devastating.  This may also alter the complexion of the neighborhood, driving out many of the ethnic groups that currently comprise this microcosm of cultural diversity.  Another constant theme we hear among Spanish minimum wage workers is how they are routinely pushed to work 50 or 60 hours a week but are only paid for 40, threatened they will be let go if they don’t comply, where they need the income, but employers are robbing them of wages.  This is also part of the immigrant experience, or the “American way,” forced to capitulate to capitalist exploitation or they’ll find someone else eagerly waiting in line to replace you.  Perhaps the final word on the subject comes near the end of the film.  Here we have traveled the entire world.  No matter if you are Chinese, American, Dominican, Colombian, Argentinian… we see all the countries here [...] when a person wants to steal money from their workers, he doesn’t care.  He doesn’t care if they are from his country or family.  If his heart is set on making an extra dollar on the worker’s back, he will.” 

 

In Jackson Heights | New York Film Festival

 

Frederick Wiseman’s 40th feature documentary is about Jackson Heights, Queens, one of New York City’s liveliest and most culturally diverse neighborhoods, a thriving and endlessly changing crossroad of styles, cuisines, and languages, and now—like vast portions of our city—caught in the gears of economic “development.” Wiseman’s mastery is as total as it is transparent: his film moves without apparent effort from an LGBT support meeting to a musical street performance to a gathering of Holocaust survivors to a hilarious training class for aspiring taxi drivers to an ace eyebrow-removal specialist at work to the annual Gay Pride parade to a meeting of local businessmen in a beauty parlor to discuss the oncoming economic threat to open-air merchants selling their wares to a meeting of undocumented individuals facing deportation. Wiseman catches the textures of New York life in 2015, the music of our speech, and a vast, emotionally complex, dynamic tapestry is woven before our eyes. A Zipporah Films release.

 

In Jackson Heights | Brooklyn Magazine  Adam Cook

 

Leave it to the old masters to set things straight. Arguably the best premiere at TIFF has been 85-year-old Frederick Wiseman’s In Jackson Heights, which New Yorkers can see at the New York Film Festival in October and in theaters in November. In three hours, this remarkable documentary immerses the viewer in this incredibly diverse neighborhood (they say 167 languages are spoken there!), and we become intimately acquainted with its communities, their strength and their struggles. We meet LGBTQ support groups, praying Muslims, the lonely elderly, oppressed immigrants, dancers, soccer fans, dog groomers, small business owners, and even a taxi cab tutor teaching his students. Wiseman enters these people’s spaces and observes them in practice and in dialogue. We hear as minorities express the issues they face on a daily basis and try to take action to improve where they live. The film reveals Jackson Heights to be a complex and difficult place, full of people trying to better their lives and the lives of those around them.

 

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago  Kathleen Sachs

 

Though it may seem as if Frederick Wiseman, the octogenarian director of such controversial documentaries as TITICUT FOLLIES, LAW & ORDER, and, most recently, AT BERKELEY, is getting softer in his old age, IN JACKSON HEIGHTS proves that his subversiveness has just gotten subtler rather than going away altogether. What appears to be a mere celebration of diversity is actually a scathing indictment of a new world order that disrupts local economies and renders communities obsolete. IN JACKSON HEIGHTS is about the Queens neighborhood that’s home to many nationalities, assorted non-profit organizations, and an array of committed activist groups. The primary focus is on gatherings of people as they support, protest, celebrate, and grieve. Wiseman intercuts these longer sequences with brief depictions of day-to-day life and musical performances respective to various cultures. The most jarring scenes are those of a halal butcher slaughtering chickens and a nail salon worker dutifully picking away at a bloody toenail; in this way, Wiseman shows the harsh realities of lives that are otherwise improved by community. In another scene, a woman describes her daughter’s harrowing journey from Mexico into America after having escaped arrest near the border. It’s a not-so-subtle reminder that not only do the residents of Jackson Heights work hard in their day-to-day lives, but that they also worked hard to get here. The film’s through line is community organizing surrounding the deceptive Business Improvement District (BID), which puts local businesses at risk and creates conditions for corporate franchises to take their place. The subject of gentrification is not shied away from, but instead directly addressed by those most affected. And just as he did with the artwork in last year’s NATIONAL GALLERY, Wiseman uses shots of flowers, produce, drug paraphernalia, and other items sold in local shops to highlight the beauty of what’s at stake. He’s documented New York City more than any other place, and while he’s recently been fair-minded to an almost bothersome degree, IN JACKSON HEIGHTS takes a hard stance against that which threatens the beloved neighborhood. It ends with fireworks, celebrating those seeking freedom and condemning those who limit it.

 

TIFF 2015 | In Jackson Heights (Frederick Wiseman, US ...  Boris Nelepo from Cinema Scope, September 11, 2015

 

Frederick Wiseman’s modus operandi was perhaps best described by German film critic Olaf Möller: “[His] work is about civilization and its creation, the work it takes.” In Jackson Heights adds another chapter to Wiseman’s monumental ongoing treatise while also offering another installment in a separate cycle devoted to various isolated communities (a trilogy is now formed with Aspen [1991] and Belfast, Maine [1999]).

 

Jackson Heights is a neighbourhood in Queens, New York’s biggest borough, where 167 different languages are spoken by one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse populations in the world. Wiseman focuses on encounters between several subsets of the locals, including gay activists who, in the course of a year, meet at a Jewish centre to discuss a massive upcoming Pride parade and Mexicans who share their experiences about crossing the border. Almost all the locals are concerned with the enforcement of the ominous Business Improvement District Strategy, which threatens to jack up real estate prices as large corporations like the Gap squeeze mom-and-pop shops out of the area.

 

The film presents the fruits of a colossal undertaking: nine weeks of shooting, ten months of editing, and 120 hours of footage whittled down to a 190-minute running time. That In Jackson Heights was a modestly budgeted production shows in a few instances of sloppiness that are quite uncharacteristic of Wiseman, as broken pixels are noticeable in some images and mics dangle in the shot every once in a while. That being said, this kind of nitpicking is essentially moot. Packed with extensive monologues, the movie in a sense captures the birth of political discourse (Romuald Karmakar’s Democracy under Attack: An Intervention would make for an interesting companion piece). Certainly infused with melancholy, this portrayal of waning cycles of life, both human and communal, nevertheless illustrates quite vividly the benefits of grassroots democracy, self-government, and mutual respect––in other words, it lays bare the inner workings of civilization itself.

 

Make It Real: The Long and the Short of It - Film Comment  Eric Hynes, November 4, 2015

 

It was terrific theater. For 18 extraordinary, excruciating minutes this past spring at the Hot Docs Film Festival, Frederick Wiseman sat across from a firing line of industry gatekeepers at the Hot Docs Forum pitch session. Call it the master and the money. Wiseman participated in the event voluntarily, perhaps even hopefully, though not happily. (The night before, during a more congenial public discussion about his work, he tersely said of the impending Forum: “I’d rather not express my opinion about the event.”) With financing for his films not as robust or reliable as it used to be, Team Wiseman took to this open appeal, and later to an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign, in search of finishing funds for his Queens-set film, In Jackson Heights (which recently had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival).

 

This sort of discomfiting sight is not uncommon at these events, which play as a public flaying more often than they end in a coronation. But rarely do you see a filmmaker this established in this setting, and what made the scene truly dramatic was that even up against two-dozen representatives of the documentary world’s leading broadcasters, distributors, funders, and financiers, Wiseman proved to be a formidable force. And so when, in the final moments of the discussion, someone went there with the maestro and questioned the inconvenient length of his films, it was as close as we’re likely to come to a candid, honest reckoning with how and why art gets shaped by commerce both here and abroad.

 

After a series of hosannas and “let’s talk after the session” comments from the panel, Jason Spingarn-Koff, then still managing the Op-Docs program for The New York Times, deadpanned that Wiseman’s films are usually roughly two-and-a-half hours longer than the longest short ever presented in his series. From there, Mette Hoffman Meyer of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation took the ball and ran with it, lamenting that she could only show his films in their entirety late at night. “I think you should think about making [In Jackson Heights] 90 minutes so that it could be shown in primetime in all these European countries, because otherwise there’s little audience,” Meyer said. “Your films are wonderful, but very few see them because they’re so long. I would encourage you to at least think about making the films shorter.” It’s a clichéd phrase, but I assure you that a hush really did fall over the room.

 

“Certainly there’s a paradox involved,” Wiseman began, sounding a small note of practiced conciliation before continuing. “Perhaps one of the reasons people like my films is because they’re complex explorations of complicated subjects. I try not to simplify them in service of reaching,” he said, before backing up to form a more perfect rejoinder, “of having some fantasy about reaching a larger audience. My obligation, my first obligation, is to the people who gave me permission to make the film, to represent their experience as accurately as possible. Sometimes, because of the nature of the subjects, that makes them long.” This was followed by robust applause, the first such response to a pitcher-panelist parry I’ve ever witnessed in that kind of setting.

 

Now, there are two sides to this exchange, or to borrow Wiseman’s conception, two paradoxes in play. Firstly, it wasn’t hostility to artistic freedom that drove Meyer’s line of questioning, but rather the constrictions of the company for which she works, and for whom she’s tasked with programming films suited to their schedule. Similar things could be said of every other broadcasting, distribution, and funding rep in that room. Each has an assignment, a mission to find pieces that fit some larger puzzle—be it a style, taste, season, slate, or demographic. Everybody wants to back and showcase good films, but most everyone also has obligations that exceed simply honoring the call for good films. Failing to serve those obligations puts one’s job at risk, at which point one is helpless to honor the art form in any way. If the mission is to program documentaries for tidy and predictable slots—say, 90 minutes—Wiseman’s films simply don’t fit the plan. Thus, considering her avowed appreciation for his films, of course Meyer wishes Wiseman would work in a shorter form.

 

Spectacle aside, the only thing remarkable about this is that a wish for a shorter running time was raised instead of an outright demand. It’s standard practice for documentary films to be chopped up into various sizes to satisfy the requirements of broadcasters. That’s because according to this vestige of an outmoded, pre-streaming TV era, feature-length nonfiction films should take the shape of television programs, even if it’s obvious that what’s being shown is a film and not a news magazine segment—no small matter in an era when documentary features are a more desirable and reputable asset than a news magazine segment. And so you have artists who are contractually obligated—contracts that are crucial for having their films seen by these audiences as well as for recouping production costs—to rejigger their art, and effectively cede editorial control to an outside party. (Wiseman’s contract with PBS, which has long broadcast his films in the U.S., stipulates that his features are not to be edited down or broken into an episodic series.) Reader’s Digest has twice filed for bankruptcy this century, but its meddlesome, condescending mentality is still going gangbusters on public television.

 

You can see how filmmakers without Wiseman’s clout or reputation would have no choice but to accede to this practice. You can also see how even a filmmaker of Wiseman’s clout and reputation still has to answer to it. I’m reminded of a line from The Right Stuff, in which David Clennon’s liaison man asks Harry Shearer’s NASA recruiter why the government’s not interested in pursuing the greatest pilot in the world, Chuck Yeager: “You mean for this ‘space race’ you don’t want our best pilots?” “I didn’t say that,” the recruiter clarifies. “We want the best pilots… that we can get.”

 

It doesn’t have to be thus. Not when viewing platforms and practices are evolving beyond this mold it-box it-ship it approach. And not when broadcasters have always found ways to accommodate worthwhile programming that goes on a bit long, from annual presentations of The Ten Commandments and The Sound of Music to weekly football games and the odd Mad Men over-spillage. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, saith the proverb, and indeed it’s a problem of wills, not ways. (Insert digression about Avatar and The Hobbit, and about which kinds of filmmakers are above reproach in this department.) Could there have been a program less accommodating of the clock than Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, which totaled nearly four-and-a-half hours and was split into four unevenly timed episodes, each one lasting several brazen minutes over a clean 60? Whether HBO did so to honor the film’s subject, artist, or exquisitely calibrated musical composition, it summoned the will to deal with the unwieldy run time, and furthermore to do so in primetime.

 

Few documentary filmmakers have been as troubled by the implications of running times as Joshua Oppenheimer, who twice cut down The Act of Killing from a preferred cut of two hours and 40 minutes. “We finished editing the two-hour-40-minute cut, and then people started seeing it and saying this is a really important film, and we love it,” he told me early last year. “But if you want anything more than a couple of cinemas in the United States to show it, if you want a wider audience to see it, cinemas will probably take the 95-minute version, which we were obliged to make for broadcasters. But we didn’t want that to happen. We wanted more of the film to be accessible to a wider audience. So we decided to make a two-hour version whose architecture and pace is perhaps closer to the 95-minute version than to the 2 hour 40 min version.” It’s hard to argue against that strategy, because the shortened version of The Act of Killing did reach a surprisingly sizeable theatrical audience and received an Oscar nomination. Yet I’ve heard Oppenheimer speak on numerous occasions since then, and he never fails to emphasize that the original cut of the film is the definitive cut of the film, and that those who’ve seen the shorter version haven’t seen the film as it was intended to be seen. His vision was compromised, and though he compromised it willingly, and evidently benefited from that compromise, it clearly hasn’t sat well with him.

 

If The Act of Killing hadn’t been Oppenheimer’s first feature, perhaps he’d not have felt the pressure to cut down his art for the sake of, in Wiseman’s words, “having some fantasy about reaching a larger audience.” Except Oppenheimer did reach a larger audience, which might help explain why his masterful follow-up, The Look of Silence, came in at a far tidier, theatrical, and broadcast-palatable one hour and 43 minutes, a full hour shorter than the preferred cut of its predecessor. Now, I’d act as a human shield to prevent a single frame of that film from being touched, but I feel the same way about the three-hour National Gallery, the 10-hour-13-minute Shoah (cut down to eight hours and 23 minutes for U.S. broadcast, crucial I’m sure for reaching that wider audience), and Guy Maddin’s six-minute The Heart of the World. “Ideally films have their own natural length,” Oppenheimer told me, and you’d hope he was stating the obvious.

 

In the quote above, Wiseman talks of accurately representing the lives of those he films, and that often entails longer scenes in which the contours of personality and labor can become apparent. He’s never just pointing the camera and letting scenes play out—he’s shaping things to give that illusion. Witness any of the lectures in National Gallery, or the faculty meetings in At Berkeley, all of which feel complete yet never are. But even that illusion takes time, especially when he’s crafting a narrative about an entire community. To monkey with that would result in something akin to what Oppenheimer experienced in the shortening of The Act of Killing. “In the longer cut, it’s just a little bit slower, and there are more pauses, intimate pauses. We rest with the characters, and we take in the horror, and we feel that horror,” he said. “When you speed up the film, you lose those pauses, so it becomes less of an intimate and less immersive experience, and when you speed up the reenactments, you become less immersed in the evolving nightmare of them, just a little bit, and your position as a viewer becomes more like somebody watching these men as they reenact what they’ve done, as opposed to being immersed in that nightmarish surreal reality.”

 

If you in any way accept Andrei Tarkovsky’s assertion that cinema is “sculpting in time,” all of this meddling with film running times is no minor matter, but rather a violation of the very medium of the art. Yes, there are business concerns. And yes, it’s easier to book and broadcast films that adhere to a predictable, modular length. Much as it’s easier to fit a dozen Giacometti sculptures into a gallery space than a single Richard Serra. There are costs to working with unwieldy sizes and materials, but if a curator thinks the work is worthwhile, doesn’t she try to find ways of accommodating (and marketing) it rather than ask the artist to lop off a chunk of the original object? Isn’t it time for documentaries to be seen as—and for their makers to own them as being—works of art with their own internal integrity?

 

I’m not saying these films are perfect, or that the process of shaping and refining a film isn’t a fraught one. But if Fred Wiseman feels that his film needs to be four hours long, and he’s willing to accept the possible limitations on audience engendered by that length, why should anyone question it? The real question is why, if so many of us respect the art and artist—specifically in this case and in principle—we don’t find more ways of building a bigger box for the work rather than asking it to fit into ones we’ve already got. Break down a wall in the gallery. Push back that episode of Nova for a night. Don’t assume that the audience won’t be there. Why not put more effort into telling your audience how the art is worth those extra minutes, instead of asking the art to conform to your own needs, and to the supposed needs of an audience? And with so much changing theatrically, in broadcasting, and online, with viewing habits evolving in ways that are often unanticipated and not intuited, why not spend a minute considering how to better serve the films as they are instead of telling me how naïve I am about a business that, the last time I checked, is a swiftly, wildly moving target?

 

Lost in Jackson Heights - Los Angeles Review of Books  Ratik Asokan, March 27, 2016

 

"In Jackson Heights" Is Galvanizing and Unsettling | Movie Mezzanine  Jake Cole, November 2, 2015

 

World Socialist Web Site [Mark Witkowski and Fred Mazelis]

 

NYFF: In Jackson Heights - Reviews - Reverse Shot 

 

In Jackson Heights - Reverse Shot  Chris Wisniewski, November 4, 2015

 

Venice Review: Frederick Wiseman's Documentary 'In ...  Jessica Kiang from The Playlist

 

GARDEN CITY REVISITED Frederick Wiseman's In Jackson Heights ...  Zach Lewis from The Brooklyn Rail, December 9, 2015

 

Finding the American Ideal in Queens | The New Yorker  Richard Brody, November 3, 2015

 

The Steve Pulaski Message Board [Steve Pulaski]

 

Film Inquiry [Alexander Miller]

 

Spectrum Culture [Jesse Cataldo]

 

In Jackson Heights | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Jaime N. Christley

 

Brooklyn Magazine: Nicolas Rapold

 

Nonfics [Daniel Walber]  

 

Film-Forward.com [Nora Lee Mandel]

 

TIFF 2015: In Jackson Heights – Articles | Little White Lies  David Jenkins

 

TIFF 2015. Correspondences #2 on Notebook | MUBI  Daniel Kasman

 

The Film Stage [Rory O'Connor]

 

The House Next Door [Keith Uhlich]

 

The A.V. Club: Mike D'Angelo

 

Halftime Disappointment at the Venice Film Festival ...  Giovanni Marchini Camia from Filmmaker magazine

 

Ten Outstanding New Documentaries to Watch | AnOther  Carmen Gray

 

Live for Films [Trevor Hogg]

 

Cinemablographer [Pat Mullen]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

CineVue [Ben Nicholson]

 

Cinema Romantico [Nick Prigge]

 

Reverse Shot's Best of 2015 - Features - Reverse Shot  listed at #1 by Michael Koresky

 

The best documentaries of 2015 | Sight & Sound | BFI  listed at #5 by Robert Greene, January 18, 2016

 

The Best Movies of 2015: Highlights From a Year ... - Village Voice  listed at #6 by Melissa Anderson

 

Film Forum · IN JACKSON HEIGHTS

 

Frederick Wiseman's IN JACKSON HEIGHTS - Fandor  David Hudson

 

BOMB: Nicholas Elliott   Nicholas Elliott interview, November 05, 2015

 

'In Jackson Heights': Venice Review - The Hollywood Reporter  Boyd van Hoeij

 

Venice Film Review: 'In Jackson Heights' - Variety  Jay Weissberg

 

In Jackson Heights review - immersive documentary brings ...  Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian

 

Metro US [Matt Prigge]

 

RogerEbert.com: Matt Zoller Seitz

 

Jackson Heights, Queens: Diverse and Evolving - The New ...  C.J. Hughes from The New York Times, May 20, 2015

 

The New York Times: Manohla Dargis   November 03, 2015

 

EX LIBRIS:  THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

USA  (197 mi)  2017

 

EX LIBRIS – the New York Public Library review: Fred Wiseman's ... - BFI  Neil Young from Sight and Sound, September 2017

The director’s latest magisterial study of a public institution is a tribute to the power of education and the importance of community, characteristically ambitious yet surprisingly brisk.

Patience is a virtue; it is also a lion. One hundred and sixteen years old, the white marble beast has guarded the steps outside the main branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL) with her identical counterpart, Fortitude. The principles they embody have sustained Frederick Wiseman across the half-century of his unique career, which arguably culminates in this, his 42nd documentary film. A quietly magisterial enterprise, over the course of 197 minutes it visits the myriad buildings and activities which serve the city under the NYPL’s banner and lion-head logo.

Since debuting with Titicut Follies (1967), the Bostonian has established himself a seemingly unchangeable fixture in documentary cinema. Come rain or shine, Wiseman has brought his discreetly observational eye to institutions both in the United States and – increasingly since 1996’s La Comédie-Française ou L’amour joué – abroad. Having alternated between American and European subjects in the current decade, Wiseman with EX LIBRIS (titles and credits alike deploy majuscule orthography) completes an unofficial Stateside trilogy after At Berkeley (2013) and In Jackson Heights (2015), 244 and 190 minutes apiece.

These durations daunt. But given the sheer scope of his enquiry here, it’s quite a remarkable achievement that editor Wiseman brings EX LIBRIS in under the 200-minute mark. The ‘easier’ approach would have been to concentrate on the structure most associated with the film’s subtitle. And there’s certainly no shortage of material across the four vast storeys of the Beaux Arts ‘main branch’, officially renamed the Stephen A Schwarzman Building in 2008 after the Trumpist billionaire who funded the latest renovation (the NYPL has always been a ‘public/private partnership’).

But while Wiseman returns often to the august confines of the Schwarzman, he roves freely across the city’s diverse boroughs to provide glimpses of library outreach and community work at the most basic grass-roots level. The NYPL, we see, isn’t just a bunch of books. It plays crucial roles in filling education gaps for children and adults alike, spreading internet access to those languishing in what administrators (during one of those protracted managerial discussions which invariably prove catnip for Wiseman) dub the “digital dark”.

Ordinary users are shown (enjoying rather more screen-time than the institutions’ manual staff); illustrious visitors are heard: the action kicks off with a speech by Richard Dawkins, who stresses the importance of “stating simple facts” and pays tribute to “the poetry of reality”. It ends with Edmund de Waal, who aims for “a passionate lucidity” and restates the fundamental thesis of his bestseller The Hare with Amber Eyes: “method is interesting… the manner of what we make defines us.”

At these moments – and there are dozens studded throughout EX LIBRIS – the application of such phrases to Wiseman himself, his method and manner as encapsulated by this film, is near-irresistible. The huge canvas becomes an inadvertent self-portrait of this most self-effacing of auteurs, whom one senses entirely shares the NYPL’s noble aims and belief in the power of education, community and hard work. EX LIBRIS is thus an illuminating, informative and gloriously productive match of artist and subject; Wiseman – now approaching his 89th year – embraces the vast ambition of the NYPL while revelling in its multifarious minutiae. It also feels very much like the defiantly optimistic summing-up of a colossal, unique corpus. But on this evidence there is no ebbing of either patience or fortitude, and further chapters may yet follow.

Slant Magazine [Chuck Bowen]

A sense of quiet defines Frederick Wiseman's films that cannot be found in unmediated society, embodying a dream of unencumbered meditation. In this context, it's inevitable that this titanic documentarian would chronicle a library, a seemingly miraculous institution in which a few notions of an ideal society are imperfectly realized, particularly a widespread availability of education and art. Throughout his career, Wiseman has forged an incomparably epic survey of bureaucratic institutions, understanding that knowledge begets personal engagement which leads, in turn, to empathy.

In Ex Libris: New York Public Library, Wiseman films dozens of the titular institution's branches, identifying each building's location with a pillow shot of intersecting street signs. That's the sort of astute stylistic choice that characterizes Wiseman's cinema, which offers no identifying titles on screen and is composed of no talking heads. We're immersed in the New York Public Library, asked to find our bearings as if we wandered into one of its buildings, as elegant tableaux show people of varying colors, economic stations, ages, and cultures in poses that particularize their existences in seconds.

Wiseman's aesthetic is governed by a masterful sense of control, as the filmmaker carefully selects and prunes anecdotes to utilize the New York Public Library as a synecdoche of America, while allowing for a pleasing and resonant sense of individual mystery. In a computer lab, a man looks up a screening for colorectal cancer while someone utilizes Google Earth nearby. Elsewhere, we see library employees fielding phone calls, one of which is a haunting request for a book on bereavement. Later, a woman ascends stairs to an unseen floor, exiting the film to continue her life, while another woman surveys a floor below her, clearly searching for someone. These vignettes, which are often centered on tapestries of faces that reveal a wide spectrum of human emotion and experience, suggest the wealth of life that exists in any given public space, engulfing us, to which we're often oblivious.

Wiseman captures various functions of the New York Public Library, showing how it serves as a multi-purpose social hub—which we learn is a conscious step to keep such institutions alive in an increasingly digital culture. We see Patti Smith discussing Genet's influence on her writing, and Yusef Komunyakaa observing the “politics of language.” A teacher discusses Karl Marx, George Fitzhugh, and the debate of real estate for solving the ongoing conflict between labor and capital. Fitzhugh famously insisted that slavery was an ideal institution for directly addressing the essential requirement of bourgeoisie society: an inferior class that serves the superior, affording the latter time for study and contemplation. As disgusting as that thesis is, Fitzhugh confronted a truth of modern society that even liberals would prefer to brush under the carpet, suggesting that class warfare is a distraction designed to remain unresolved so that castes may stay in place.

It suggests a college course and a guided tour wedded together as a work of prismatic humanist art.

Seen late in Ex Libris, this teacher's seminar casts a pall over the documentary, as the exhilarations of the library are fruits that are enabled by said bourgeoisie hypocrisy. Yet, the books, workshops, interviews, concerts, and study halls also suggest a hope for knowledge as a fount of democracy as well as for a more diverse economy via job training—the sort of infrastructural revisions that Hillary Clinton failed to sell to the country in the lead-up to last year's presidential election. But the hypocrisy sticks in the viewer's throat, especially when we look at the attendees of the 90th anniversary of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and witness a sea of predominantly wealthy and Caucasian faces—the very faces that must be courted so that this library may continue to receive private funding.

Like National Gallery, At Berkeley, and In Jackson Heights, Ex Libris is obsessed with the precarious existence of institutions that get by on the ruling class's fickle interests. The library is a communal paradise, a step toward an unrealized ambition of this country to make good on its promise of existing as the land of the free. The film suggests a short story collection that gradually coheres into a novel. The scenes blur together and form thematic patterns, as Komunyakaa's “politics of language” is illustrated by the meetings of the library's board and by critiques of racism in Texan textbooks.

Led by President Anthony T. Marx, the board is always concerned with funding, crafting PR messages each year so as to continually renew urgency of public interest in order to disguise the unsurprising truth: that they seek unconditional “baseline” funding. A particular concern for the board is the democratization of the internet for those too poor to afford it, which eventually leads to the dispersing of portable “hot spots.” Though such potentially uplifting scenes are complicated by the wariness on customers' faces and by other moments in which the board of the “people's” library attempts to euphemistically discuss ways to discourage the homeless population from loitering. The board meetings come to suggest anxiety dreams of comic futility, in which people are forever discussing intricate blends of private and public funding, speaking mostly in platitudes that Wiseman understands as necessary for affecting accumulative change.

Ex Libris is overwhelmingly stimulating, suggesting a college course and a guided tour that have been wedded together as a work of prismatic humanist art. Wiseman is a master of dramatizing the relationship between the macro and the micro of society, building to epiphanies in which we see how board meetings come to influence, say, the rapture that's experienced by an elderly dance class as they move to Kool and the Gang's “Celebration.” We're not even allowed to take the ability to return borrowed goods for granted, as Wiseman films—with a wry sense of elaborately mundane geometry—the conveyor belts that sort books and electronics into various boxes.

Wiseman's un-emphatic editing—itself a kind of democracy—exhibits a willingness to survey each person and corresponding action with the same lucid dignity. This filmmaker is a portraitist of ideals, of the insidious inspirations and nightmares that enable and undermine them, and, implicitly, of the political waves that have yet to balance this duality of first-world life.

Review: Ex Libris: The New York Public Library ... - Film Comment  Nicolas Rapold, September/October 2017

Over a hundred years ago, steel billionaire Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of New York City’s branch library system. Power created knowledge, one might say, and in Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, Frederick Wiseman surveys the institution and, in the process, reexamines how knowledge can be power. And I do mean process: Wiseman remains voracious for the stuff of daily life. He shows us people reading, researching, and surfing the Web, administrators circling round policy, the star speakers at public events (from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Patti Smith), the library’s classes and reading groups (serving ages 8 to 80 and beyond), the fundraisers for shaking the trees, and the vital community role of library spaces in informing citizens and allowing the airing of concerns. You can almost see the filmmaker grabbing armfuls of flyers about NYPL events, activities, and offerings—its ongoing, citywide yet low-profile feast of engagement and learning—and working a highlighter down to a nub.

At the same time, thanks to Wiseman’s editorial selections, Ex Libris becomes a breathtaking work of erudition, attaining Godardian or Straubian levels of quotation and association. Among the referenced and discussed on screen are Karl Marx, Orientalism, George Fitzhugh, Albrecht Dürer, Malcolm X, and Primo Levi—not to mention the in situ arts and letters of Coates, Smith, Miles Hodges, and Elvis Costello. Which gets us closer to the heart of Wiseman’s genius: through—not despite—his granular detail and editorial collage, he in fact shoots a living cinema of ideas constantly reflecting on the way we live as a society. With a detectable urgency, from At Berkeley (2013) to National Gallery (2014) to In Jackson Heights (2015) and now Ex Libris, the 87-year-old master has of late been reflecting upon participatory democracy and the public space, and the hard work and the satisfactions of each (as well as the hard work of… hard work).

Wiseman is constantly finding solutions for how to represent such ideas—and thinking itself—and in Ex Libris, he even has fun portraying the experience of reading, most amusingly in a breathy audiobook recording session of Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark. The resonance of reading leads him to some deeply personal emotional truths, as when a retiree group analyzes Love in the Time of Cholera through the lens of decades of their own experience, in a sequence that puts the lie to the notion of individual psychological arcs as the prime guarantor of documentary insight. It’s but one example of how the pedestrian environs of NYPL auditoriums and meeting rooms provide the stage for stand-up-and-cheer moments of wonder, often shepherded along by the system’s self-effacing rank-and-file. An impassioned performance by Hodges, a dazzling New York poet, single-handedly rejuvenates the art of oratory. A demonstration of ASL for a public audience becomes enormously evocative when the Declaration of Independence is used as an example: we see how it might be signed when it is read aloud in anger, and when it is read as a plea to a king.

That scene alone may bring a patriotic tear to the eye, yet Wiseman also, like a melancholy refrain, keeps returning to the lasting American wound of race. Physically speaking, the film visits and revisits staff meetings and the 42nd Street research library while radiating out to the city’s local branches and contrasting clientele and services: from Greenwich Village’s Jefferson Market, which resembles a well-kept Ivy League reading room, to the humbler Harlem River Houses branch, to the handsome Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—where we glimpse a T-shirt reading “Gentrification is the new ethnic cleansing.” In these tours and in its quotations, Ex Libris considers the question of historical narratives and the myriad ways they’re shaped, maintained, and in turn shape lived reality. An adult education class spotlights the jaw-dropping arguments of pro-slavery Southern theorist Fitzhugh about capitalism and slavery, while elsewhere Coates calls out the whataboutist rhetoric of black-on-black crime. Race has been a consistent concern of Wiseman’s: the centerpiece of his second New York film, Welfare (1975), set at a Manhattan public assistance office, is a ready-for-present-day-Twitter debate between a racist white WWII veteran seeking welfare and a black guard, who just happens to be a Vietnam War veteran himself.

For all the behind-the-scenes incremental decision-making on view—Wiseman is the poet laureate of the staff meeting, where lives are changed little by little—Ex Libris does underplay the recent strategic crisis under much-featured NYPL president Anthony Marx, which threatened to gut the 42nd Street research library and spin off branch buildings under dubious terms. But those controversial plans still reverberate in the film’s meeting mantra of balancing public and private partnerships, its boons and its dangers. Above all, Ex Libris reaffirms Wiseman as an essential American artist of our time, and, in an era of crumbling institutions and cratering civic awareness, an exemplary observer and thinker.

Cinema Scope | Ex Libris – The New York Public Library (Frederick ...  Tom Charity from Cinema Scope, September 5, 2017

Let’s start with this: the transitions in Fred Wiseman’s new film (and there are many) have a simple and specific beauty. They double as establishing shots, each comprising a brief cluster of New York street views, usually including an intersection sign to pin us to one of the 88 branches in the world’s biggest city-library network, and also as a kind of rest, a bridging and a breathing point. These shots rarely last for more than a few seconds—you rarely hear much about Wiseman’s brevity, but he’s actually about as succinct a filmmaker as you will find, if you’re really paying attention. As illustration: to coax us in to the three-hour-and-17-minute Ex Libris, Wiseman hits us with the title card, a shot of the sign bearing the words “New York Public Library,” a shot of the landmark Stephen A. Schwarzman Building from across the street, a medium close-up of a revolving door, and, boom, into the first scene. Total running time: 15 seconds.

Swift as they are, these transition montages serve as Ozu-esque interludes, moments of relief and reflection, a counterpoint in their airiness to what is otherwise a film of interiors, of words and content. Then again, if you were to pull them out of the movie and run just the transitions end to end, wouldn’t it make for an entrancing waltz around the Five Boroughs? And wouldn’t it also speak eloquently of the social and economic disparities—and diversities—to be found in the city?

Wiseman is 87 now. It may be a little presumptuous to suggest he’s reaching for a summation, but it is sure that he’s only making the films he wants to. Over the last decade, those projects have taken him to Paris (twice) for La danse (2009) and Crazy Horse (2011), to London for National Gallery (2014), to Berkeley and to Austin, Texas (for At Berkeley [2013] and Boxing Gym [2010] respectively), and twice now to New York City (his previous film was 2015’s In Jackson Heights). It’s a cosmopolitan itinerary, and taken together these expansive and enjoyable late Wisemans are a far cry from the punishing confines of his first film, 50 years young in 2017, Titicut Follies, even if his methods remain similar. There is an apparent shift of emphasis away from social subjects and towards aesthetics and culture, though Wiseman would no doubt be quick to reply you can’t separate the two. Indeed, that is one of the themes of Ex Libris: how does Andrew Carnegie’s mission to bring knowledge to the masses hold up in the 21st century? Or to put it another way: is the library an anachronism in the internet age?

In fact, the New York Public Library has been at the vanguard of integrating e-books into the public lending system, and judging by the meetings we see here, the administrators are as focused on digital access as they are on books. “Three million New Yorkers don’t have broadband internet connectivity,” says Tony Marx, the Library’s president and CEO. “You can have all the content in the world but if you don’t have connection to it, it does you no good.” In response, the Library partnered with New York City to “loan” wi-fi itself, enabling hotspot access within the home for those families who can’t afford it.

Similarly, the Library has easily assimilated digital literacy as a natural adjunct to its traditional education programs, a service that is likely to remain in plentiful demand.  Wiseman shows us people poring over books, to be sure, but also working on laptops and tablets, consulting smart phones and examining microfiches; adults nervously negotiating downloads; kids eagerly learning how to code. He shows career fairs, teen outreach projects, early learning classes, seniors in a dance class, book clubs, and civics lectures. Art students are introduced to the Library’s Picture Collection, a repository that has served and inspired New Yorker artists from Diego Rivera to Andy Warhol for nearly a century now.

But this, too, is only a fraction of what Wiseman finds. The modern library is also an arts hub, a platform for writer talks and panels, for poetry readings and recitals, an exhibition space for artists, a recording studio for audio books, an archive for academics and journalists, and a forum for all and sundry. Like La danse and the other recent films, Ex Libris affords the audience quite considerable spectacle: the pleasures of performance (the Double Entendre quartet, for example, pianist Carolyn Enger, and the poet Miles Hodges); celebrity appearances (snippets of on-stage interviews with Patti Smith and Elvis Costello); and stimulating discourse with thinkers like Richard Dawkins and Yusef Komunyakaa and Edmund de Waal. We get snippets from Love in the Time of Cholera, the Declaration of Independence twice over (angrily, and as an entreaty, both in sign language), a soupçon of Nabokovian erotica…it’s almost intelligentsia porn, except that these trimmings are interspersed with behind-the-scenes budgetary meetings, strategic planning sessions, and the hands-on work of filling shelves, filing records, and answering the phones (“The Gutenberg Bible is temporarily unavailable for viewing”).

It’s a broad tapestry by design. If the film’s branch-hopping seems to present the city in microcosm, the NYPL could also stand as a summation of 2,000-plus years of Greco-Roman civilization, the culmination of human thought to this point. Indeed, Richard Dawkins puts that idea on the table in the very first scene: “We are privileged,” he says, “to live after Einstein, after Darwin, after Newton, with brains big enough to comprehend [our own complexity].” Does Wiseman see a parallel with Dawkins when he identifies himself as “a lover of truth?” Probably. “Truth” is a word that crops up again and again over the course of the film. So too “poetry,” often in close proximity: “Science is the poetry of reality,” says Dawkins. “I wanted to write about the truth of our real time,” echoes Patti Smith. “And the truth of our time includes poetry and dreams…”

It’s very clear from his recent films that Wiseman cherishes art (even pugilism becomes a form of choreography in Boxing Gym). And if his work has concentrated on systems, networks, and process over individualism and psychology, there remains a strong current of humanism in his cinema, which has always been pluralistic and progressive to its core. Asked to what extent he considers his poetry political, Yusuf Komunyakaa talks about how the architecture of the work is inherently so. And that’s true for Wiseman too. The administrators at the New York Public Library espouse an old-fashioned liberalism, the idea that education is the key to overcoming inequality. Wiseman may admire the marble Victoriana of the Schwarzman Building, but he is not blind to the patrician legacy inherited by the overwhelmingly white board of directors (he cuts, wittily, from the board’s annual photo shoot to Hispanic teenagers taking selfies on the steps outside).

Race and the African-American experience is another critical thread running right through the movie. In one lengthy author talk, Ta-Nihisi Coates argues that Islamic voices espousing emancipation for the slaves were written out of history just as surely as white colonial governments’ implication in the slave trade has been downplayed. (There is also an admirably lucid explanation of the relationship between slavery, capitalism, Abraham Lincoln, and Karl Marx from an unnamed library staffer.) The film’s penultimate scenes are set in the Harlem Rivers branch, and touch on how a recent McGraw-Hill textbook blandly erased slavery from the topic of immigration by referring to African-American “workers” instead. Books still matter, and words too.

But Wiseman gives the last word to the artist Edmund de Waal, citing Primo Levi: “Method is interesting,” he says. “The value of looking and thinking about how an object comes into being as an idea…The manner of what we make defines us.” By these measures, the subtle and authoritative Ex Libris stands as the most diligent and the most cogent political film of the year.

Ex Libris Review: Frederick Wiseman Visits the New York Public ...  David Ehrlich from indieWIRE

 

'Rat Film,' 'Strong Island,' and 'Ex Libris' Documentary ... - The Ringer  K. Austin Collins, September 12, 2017

 

Frederick Wiseman's “Ex Libris” | The New Yorker

 

TIFF 2017. Correspondences #1 on Notebook | MUBI  Daniel Kasman, September 7, 2017

 

The Film Stage [Jose Solis]

 

Time: Stephanie Zacharek   September 07, 2017

 

Frederick Wiseman - Page - Interview Magazine   Kent Joes interview, March 2, 2017

 

'EX LIBRIS: The New York Public Library': Film Review | Venice 2017  Deborah Young from The Hollywood Reporter

 

Venice Film Review: 'Ex Libris: The New York Public Library' - Variety  Jay Weissberg

 

Ex Libris: New York Public Library review – the restless mind of the city ...  Jordan Hoffman from The Guardian

 

Review: We the (Library-Card Carrying) People of 'Ex Libris' - The ...  Manohla Dargis from The New York Times

 

Wnendt, David

 

WETLANDS (Feuchtgebiete)                              C-                    68

Germany  (105 mi)  2013

 

Not for the meek or timid.  Taking a page from many recent films that objectify women’s bodies, viewed as demeaning from a male view, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Don Jon (2013), where Scarlett Johansson plays the male fantasy version of a voluptuous tease, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Black Venus (Vénus noire) (2010), a wretchedly abusive early 19th century historical example of European racism, and even to some extent his sexually exploitive lesbian film Blue Is the Warmest Color (La Vie d'Adèle, Chapitres 1 et 2) (2013), especially as seen under a male eye, but then it becomes empowering by female directors, like Hager Ban-Asher’s The Slut (Hanotenet) (2011), where the director herself plays the lead character, or Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty (2011), where a woman becomes a gorgeous plaything, a look but don’t penetrate porcelain doll, where liberation is achieved by defying the male stereotype.  Jonathan Glazer takes a stab in Under the Skin (2013), again using Scarlett Johansson, turning an extraterrestrial perspective into a feminist view of female objectification, where women are judged and valued through surface artificiality, and what’s inside hardly matters.  David Wnendt is a German director who has for the most part created a lesbian fantasy, where a young anal-obsessed woman seeks liberation by freeing up her body to perform any gross and vulgar task she can imagine, testing the limits of bad taste right from the outset, notably the opening half-hour, and then plunging ever deeper into a full-blown exploration of anal fantasies.  What separates this from the rest is the whimsically comic view that a woman’s body is meant to be shared as often, and in as many ways, as possible, where it has a blaring punk music soundtrack that growls for attention, pushing the envelope of what’s deemed acceptable, and then going farther into repugnant territory.

 

Carla Juri is our bad girl Helen (age 27 when she made the film, though she’s perceived as a teenager), initially seen as a little 8-year old girl (Clara Wunsch) receiving instructions on how not to trust anybody, including her own mother (who allows her to jump into her arms from a ledge and then intentionally fails to catch her, hoping this memory of a painful injury will provide fruitful results), but also proper instructions from her mother (Meret Becker) on how to clean and maintain proper hygiene for her private parts, as her worst nightmare is having an accident and being discovered with unclean underwear.  As a result of her mother’s fanatical obsessions, Helen as a young adult has been ingrained with a hyper interest in her female orifices, where the title of the film refers to her vaginal region, where one of her favorite pastimes is rubbing it on every known filthy object imaginable, seen in the opening scene of the film cleaning an indescribably filthy toilet seat until it is spotlessly clean.  Due to her mother’s feverishly persistent cleaning habits, Helen likes to go a good week or so without cleaning, where the overwhelming stench from her pubic region is perhaps what she’s most proud of in herself.  While the idea of accepting yourself, gross and all, is well meaning, the film goes to great lengths to create nauseatingly uncomfortable images, a bit like Kirby Dick’s SICK:  THE LIFE & DEATH OF BOB FLANAGAN, SUPERMASOCHIST (1997), which was known to make viewers pass out in the audience.  Whether or not one agrees with the film’s premise is not the issue, as it discovers new heights in sexual material as comical farce, where it simply grows deliriously ridiculous, yet like any bad car accident, it’s hard for many people to look away, as the tendency is to be curious about outrageous displays of colossal disasters happening before our eyes. 

 

After awhile this may grow repetitive, where the viewers may be asking themselves how far they really want to go with this, as it can get grotesque after awhile even as it attempts to maintain a tone of silly fun.  It is somewhat reminiscent of Marina de Van’s IN MY SKIN (2002), which is an admittedly squeamish film of not only self-mutilation, but self-cannibalism as well, where the degree of excess is mind-boggling, yet de Van’s film plays as an arthouse horror film, while Wnendt’s over-the-top exaggeration is meant to be comical throughout, where Helen is no shrinking violet, but extremely comfortable in her own skin.  She winds up in the hospital under particularly inauspicious circumstances, and immediately takes to one of the nursing staff, Robin (Christoph Letkowski), always exposing herself, but also asking for his help in getting her separated parents back together, choreographing their visits so they would bump into each other.  In this way, it’s a good-natured comical farce, a fantasy of what the world would be like if people could simply accept one another and be happy with themselves.  Helen’s partner in crime is her girlfriend Corinna (Marlen Kruse), where they go through teenage experimentation together, each showing a fearless resolve to overcome all inhibitions, where Corinna’s attempt to please her punk drummer boyfriend is one for the ages.  Adapted from a Charlotte Roche novel, one would think this is unfilmable, or better yet, should never be filmed, where there’s a pizza sequence that will probably leave the audience wishing it had never been filmed, as one hopes no one really gets the idea, but the film is apparently very popular in Germany where they don’t have sexual phobias and taboos like the more puritanical USA.  The one thing going for the film is its overall snarky tone of subversiveness, like the raw and graphic sexual imagery found in underground comics, and some humorous use of music, but Helen’s naïve notion of happiness is fairly sweet and innocent, and certainly far from deviant.  You’d think she may outgrow many of the most disgusting habits once she gets them out of her system, where it’s not the exploitive imagery, but mostly her candy-colored, light and cheerful attitude that carries the film.   

 

In Review Online [John Oursler]

Sexually untameable teenager Helen (Carla Juri) is obsessed with her pussy, loving the natural, unwashed smell of it most of all. She likes to rub it on often dirty, unsanitary things in an unfailingly transgressive display of female sexuality. For her, the world's offerings are in service of an exhibitionist-friendly exploration of her vagina. Director David Wnendt’s audacious and uproariously funny study of adolescent lust follows Helen as she experiments with boys and girls, prostitutes, vegetables, furniture, and sexually transmitted diseases. It's often so boldly graphic that shielding your eyes may be the most reflexive line of defense. Unlike Lars von Trier’s similarly plotted Nymphomaniac (Vol. 1 especially), Wetlands doesn’t get bogged down in an intellectualized debate on female sexuality; it prefers to simply show and rejoice it.  

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Wetlands is how it’s as thrilling aesthetically as it is thematically. In many ways, it carries the look and feel of early Wong Kar-Wai films, specifically Chungking Express, in its brisk and unadulterated celebration of youth and youthful discovery. There are also hints of last year's neon-drenched coming-of-age film Spring Breakers, in which Harmony Korine effortlessly captured the joy and disappointment of growth. The downside is that the obligatory moralizing contextualization of Helen’s story feels slightly at-odds with Wnendt’s effusive style, and the story, tying her proclivities back to Mommy and Daddy, doesn't probe deep enough to offer any fresh insights. Luckily, this thread is weaved only sporadically throughout; Wetlands ends as effervescently as it begins, leaving you both in shock and appreciation at the refreshing frankness on display.

'Wetlands' Review: It's Like 'The Parent Trap,' Only ... - Pajiba  Seth Freilich

Hand jobs, masturbation, aggressive toilet seat rubbing, hemorrhoids. That’s the first five minutes of Wetlands. The next 105 minutes pile it on from there. Anal fissures, anal blisters, erect penises, guys who like to be sh*t on, guys who get off on shaving girls, boobs, p*ssy (if you’re offended by that word, be warned that it is used more times than it is even shown), piss, sh*t, semen, p*ssy mucus, blood, vomit, a sexualized avocado pit, vegetable masturbation, so much more semen, drugs, sex, brothels, Catholic imagery and … bloody tampons. There should be a clear understanding that Wetlands is a disgusting film, a NSFW movie that can only be released with an NC-17 rating in its current cut. And yet, it is a surprisingly sweet film.

Wetlands tells the story of Helen (Carla Juri), a German teen who is raunchy, candid and frequently off-putting. She holds a fascination with body fluids and her own sexuality, loves her brother and her best friend, and more than anything would simply like to see her divorced parents get back together. Based on a bestselling German novel, Charlotte Roche’s Feuchtgebiete, the movie is kind of a romance (in its own, bizarre way) and also one about friendship, but more than anything, it is the story of a young woman cutting her own path in the world, trying to coalesce a possibly-traumatic past into a hopeful future. When a (gross and gnarly) shaving accident lands Helen in the hospital, she has time to think back on both her childhood and the recent past, while developing an interesting relationship with her male nurse and scheming to use her rectal injury as a tool to maybe, just possibly, get her folks back together.

The film’s narrative structure fluidly moves through time, from snippets of childhood memories to drug-fueled all nighters, back to Helen’s hospital room, etc. But the movement is never confusing, and is a credit to director and co-writer David Wnendt. As you can tell from the first paragraph, this is a movie that could easily have taken the path of sensationalism, seeking to shock and awe viewers into gross submission. Instead, much of the perversity serves to better understand Helen, and Wnendt shows a surprising care and deftness in moving the film along (though the film does get lost in itself sometimes). The movie is gross and perverse, to be sure, but it is also deftly filmed and cleverly edited, and manages to sharply walk the line of not sexualizing the teenaged Helen while still fully exploring and showing her sexuality. As for Helen, Carla Juri’s performance is fantastic. Helen is gross and sometime repulsive, yet Juri makes her instantly likable and keeps a subtle warmth underneath Helen’s surface. Juri speaks English (her next film is a British one) and I’m really excited to see what becomes of her career.

Ultimately, Wetlands is not a great film, and there are some beats here and there that do not quite work. But it is an interesting, often funny film with some clever direction and a fantastic lead performance. In other words, it’s kind of the quintessential film festival flick. Only, you know, with copious amounts of semen.

Sundance Review: WETLANDS | Badass Digest  Devin Faraci

For its first thirty minutes Wetlands was one of the best films I had seen in years. Watching the first act of Wetlands is an exciting experience as the movie comes out the gate big and brave and unique and featuring a central character who is a woman and who is in control of her body in every possible way. But then as the film goes on its unable to maintain its breakneck pace, and as the narrative unfolds what had been a transgressive explosion slowly morphs into a filthier version of a standard Sundance movie.

The opening scene has main character Helen walking barefoot into a public toilet that is flooded with two inches of brown water. She sees a splotch of an unfathomable filth on the seat, a kinky pubic hair embedded in it. The camera flies in towards the splotch and zooms down to a microscopic level, exposing the worms and the protozoa and the bizarre life teeming within, finally revealing a fantasy world of strange monsters in their own ecosystem contained within this drop of horror. And then Helen rubs her bare vagina on the seat, leaving the toilet clean.

What an opening! It’s no wonder that Wetlands can’t sustain that, but I wish it did. Helen, played by the absolutely amazing Carla Juri, is a character for the ages. She’s gross and obsessed with bodily fluids and keeps her pussy just dirty enough to emit an odor that will captivate men who don’t even realize what’s happening. I’ve seen very few characters as joyfully filthy as Helen, and none who were women. But when the plot kicks in - while shaving her ass Helen nicks herself and creates a huge, bloody anal fissure that sends her to the hospital - Wetlands begins faltering.

The envelope is absolutely pushed multiple times, including a sequence where four men ejaculate - in tight close-up and in slomo - on a pizza, but in many ways that makes the story’s slide into familiar territory all the more frustrating. Towards the end of the film I realized Wetlands is essentially a Fox Searchlight movie told from the Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s perspective (with more bodily fluids).

It’s worth reiterating how good Carla Juri is; her big eyes are captivating and she is so fearless and free that the performance melts away, replaced simply by her being. Juri is truly extraordinary.

I wish the rest of Wetlands lived up to that first half hour. And I wish the film allowed Helen to simply be a complete weirdo instead of psychoanalyzing her and possibly curing her at the end (the final image of the film, Helen yelling in a cleansing rain, says to me that she is ‘getting better,’ basically the Ally Sheedy at the end of The Breakfast Club treatment). For all the ways Wetlands tries to transgress, I wish it had gone further here, letting Helen be Helen.

SXSW 2014 Review: WETLANDS Paints An ... - Twitch  J. Hurtado

 

Film Threat - Wetlands  Erik Childress

 

Sundance Review: 'Wetlands' - Film.com  David Ehrlich

 

IONCINEMA [Nicholas Bell]

 

Film Pulse [Adam Patterson]

 

IndieWire [Eric Kohn]

 

True View [Mark Saldana]

 

The Hollywood Reporter [Boyd van Hoeij]

 

Locarno Film Review: 'Wetlands'  Scott Foundas from Variety, also seen here:  Variety [Scott Foundas]

 

Wojtowicz-Vosloo, Agnieszka

 

AFTER.LIFE                                                             D                     57

USA  (104 mi)  2009

 

Not to be confused with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1998 film AFTER LIFE, which I guess doesn’t have the dot in between, which may be its only essential purpose, perhaps the only logical gesture found in this film so far.  First Lindsey Lohan in I KNOW WHO KILLED ME (2007), and now Christina Ricci in this film, both celebrity starlets starring in films where the movie may play out only in their imaginations while they lie helplessly confined at the mercy of some sick sado-porn lunatic, where the sleight of hand filmmaking refuses to go into grotesque SAW (2004) territory, offering a glimpse of it however, before veering into a more comfortable netherworld that exists between the living and the dead.  This is a movie gushing with its own ghoulish morbidity, where the naked body of Christina Ricci, Morticia’s rebellious daughter Wednesday from THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1991), is not only objectified, but taken one step further where she’s accentuated as a naked corpse.  This film would seem to hold a special fascination for budding necrophiliacs, including the mortician’s stainless steel tools of the trade, since the film takes place almost entirely within the claustrophobic confines of the enclosed morgue.  After a potential engagement dinner goes terribly wrong between Ricci and her hot-tempered boyfriend Justin Long, Ricci loses it in her car on the way home and crashes into a semi-truck.  The next time we see her she’s a cold slab in the morgue questioning whether she’s dead or alive with the mortician, Liam Neeson.  He, of course, produces the death certificate as proof of death, but also an aggravated harsh tone towards the deceased about how they always whine about still being alive.  Neeson insists he has a rare gift for being able to speak with the dead.

 

What follows is pretty much the same established tone throughout, without an ounce of suspense or tension, as the living world is filled with loathsome creatures who waste their opportunities in life, who only become aware of their deficiencies after it’s too late, where Neeson attempts to coddle them into accepting death as their fate now, as at this point they have no choice.  He can’t bring them back to life, but accepts them for who they are in death, obviously much easier than the dead accepting themselves, seen instead as constant whiners and complainers, pretty much just as they were in life.  While the film never spells out the narrative, constantly leaving avenues open, one would have to say it’s not an open and closed case, as the facts get muddied along the way, but no one accept Neeson appears to have the ability to speak to the dead, though one weirdo kid may be able to see them in this netherworld, as his home life reveals a mother who’s pretty close to dead already, doing absolutely nothing but watch TV all day and night.  Since there isn’t a single compelling character in the entire movie, it pretty much seems like a waste of time, as it turns out it doesn’t matter if she’s dead or alive, as it all turns out the same anyway, where the world of the living and the dead are both filled with wretched, self-centered creatures who have absolutely no regard for anyone but themselves.  Fittingly, this film fits into the same prototype of indulging in its own sensory deprivation, becoming only more morbid as the film progresses.  

 

AFI [Robert Koehler]

 

When are the dead in fact dead? In its pleasure at simultaneously embracing and sending up horror genre conventions, AFTER.LIFE suggests that the line between the living and the dead is thin indeed. Christina Ricci and Justin Long (fast earning a reputation as the busiest man in American movies) play a sophisticated couple on the emotional razor’s edge: Paul wants to tie the knot, while Anna is hardly ready for the leap. What neither count on is the sudden presence in their lives of Liam Neeson’s undertaker, Eliot, who claims to have a gift of talking with the dead. The truth of the matter is something that first-time feature director Agnieska Wojtowicz-Vosloo—fresh off her acclaimed short, PATE—enjoys toying with. But the most fun is watching Neeson discovering fresh variations on a ghoulish role of the kind that was once the province of Vincent Price.

 

The Village Voice [Nicolas Rapold]

 

Somewhere in Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's awkward debut feature is a macabre and almost quaint Gothic mystery begging to be left alone. After blowing up at her boyfriend (Justin Long) over dinner, Anna (Christina Ricci) drives off and suffers a disastrous crash—then gets chatty on the mortuary slab. The funeral director (our friendly B-movie bear Liam Neeson) says she's a halfway-there soul that only he can hear, but what of the Deschanel-eyed spooky kid who thinks he saw her up and about in a synthetic-red slip? What might have played well as a multipage Poe rumination gradually gets pulled to bits by thudding Ricci-Neeson face-offs in the poster-ready funeral-prep chamber, and Long hissy-fits over being denied access to his would-be fiancee's body. There’s potential in the filmmaker's comfort with drawing out still moments and slipping into dark visions without drawing boundaries (and Ricci's ample naked lounging lends a certain Continental touch). All of that just as easily turns into dead air and, by the end, a revelation telegraphed so unremarkably that it's hard to enjoy—not to mention Neeson's missed opportunity for vamping it up a little, what with a script that has him calling the corpses in his charge "you people!"

 

The Onion A.V. Club review [C-]  Scott Tobias

Unrelated to the Hirokazu Kore-eda movie of the same name, the unclassifiable gothic thingie After.Life stars Christina Ricci as a young woman who gets in a car accident and wakes under the care of creepy funeral-home director Liam Neeson. She may or may not be dead, so the tense conversations she has with Neeson are either abstract and metaphysical, like some strange way-station between life and death, or terrifyingly literal, if she’s really alive and Neeson is keeping her captive. (Between this, Black Snake Moan, and Buffalo ’66, Ricci apparently has a fondness for roles where she’s prisoner to the oddly obsessed.) That neither-here-nor-there quality gives After.Life some distinction, but it also accounts for why the film is so maddeningly inert, caught in a pretentious no-man’s land between horror and melodrama. 

First-time feature director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo, who scripted with her husband Paul Vosloo, brings sharp colors and a sterile chill to the scenes of Neeson quietly tormenting Ricci on the slab. Their back-and-forth is the main attraction, but they’re essentially repeating the same conversation: Neeson insists Ricci is dead and he’s merely ushering her ungrateful soul to another place, and she suspects otherwise. Meanwhile, Justin Long more or less reprises his Drag Me To Hell role as Ricci’s boyfriend, the hapless Everyman trying to protect her from supernatural doom. Wojtowicz-Vosloo keeps the pace at a stylish slow-burn for much of the way, and Neeson acquits himself by underplaying what might have been an overtly ghoulish villain. But all their efforts just contribute to the excessive foot-dragging that leads the big reveal, which pegs After.Life as an overlong, absurdly attenuated Twilight Zone episode.

Fangoria.com [Michael Gingold]

If you’ve ever wondered what a SAW film would look like if Jigsaw were more contemplative than bloodthirsty, you’ll definitely want to check out AFTER.LIFE, in which Liam Neeson plays a mortician who can speak to the dead, and lecture them about how they never used their time on this Earth to truly live. Or can he?

That’s the question at the crux of Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo’s feature directorial debut, of which Neeson’s eerie-calm performance is the best part. He plays Eliot Deacon, operator of a suburban funeral home where young teacher Anna Taylor (Christina Ricci) comes across his slab after perishing in a car crash. Ricci plays dead convincingly, but not for long; soon, she has woken up wondering what she’s doing there. She believes she’s not actually deceased, and that Eliot is keeping her a prisoner in his cold, sterile prep room. Eliot assures her she has passed on, and that she’s experiencing a purgatory state in which she must accept her fate and move on to the next world.

Another person who refuses to accept that Anna is dead is her boyfriend Paul (Justin Long), who might just also be experiencing a touch of guilt, since Anna was fleeing their argument in a restaurant when she got into her accident. He gets no sympathy from Anna’s cold, domineering mother Beatrice (Celia Weston), but Jack (Chandler Canterbury), one of Anna’s grade-school students, might hold some of the answers regarding her situation, since he’s taken an interest in Eliot’s activities that could be seen as rather unhealthy. Meanwhile, back in the mortuary, Anna makes vain attempts to escape her confinement, while Eliot calmly lectures her about how she shouldn’t be so reluctant to embrace death, since, in his estimation, she was always afraid to truly experience life.

So…is Eliot some kind of moral gatekeeper between the two realms, helping or cajoling souls into taking that final trip? Or is he a judgmental madman who uses drugs to put his victims in temporary physical deathlike states, preparing to deliver them to horrifying fates? It could have been an intriguing mystery, but intentionally or not, the script by Wojtowicz-Vosloo, Paul Vosloo and Jakub Korolczuk, and the director’s presentation of it, stacks the deck. All the subjective evidence we see points to one explanation, and the only thing backing up the other is the word of one character who’s decidedly unreliable. More exploration of how Anna wasted her one shot at life as she tries desperately to get another might have provided a second, compelling focus, but this doesn’t get explored to any significant extent until well into the movie’s second half.

To the extent that AFTER.LIFE manages to hold the attention nonetheless, it does so due to Wojtowicz-Vosloo’s precise visual filmmaking and the performances of the two leads. Though Anna’s specific problems are more given lip service than dramatized, Ricci embodies her in compelling fashion—and sometimes literally, in long later stretches where she plays her part completely nude, and completely without self-consciousness. Neeson deftly avoids any potential temptation to tip his performance one way or the other regarding his enigmatic role, underplaying and creating in Eliot a composed obsessive who’s thoroughly plausible in either case. (Conversely, Long embraces the opportunity to stretch from his typical comic roles into more dramatic territory a little too enthusiastically, practically frothing at the mouth at certain moments in his quest to convince others that Anna is in danger.)

In concert with cinematographer Anastos N. Michos, production designer Ford Wheeler and costumer Luca Mosca, Wojtowicz-Vosloo immerses the principals in evocative environments, particularly Eliot’s inner sanctum, which is coldly beautiful, unnervingly forbidding and convincingly utilitarian all at once. Throughout, the director and co. make sparing, specific use of the color red, from the dye job Anna gets shortly before she perishes to the dress she wears for part of her time in Eliot’s lair.

What’s not on view, in terms of crimson content, is much blood. Wojtowicz-Vosloo is out to scare you in more subtle yet still visceral ways, particularly in her presentation of the details involved in preparing a corpse for its final interment; those viewers with strong intimations of mortality will likely experience extreme discomfort. She wants to get under your skin while making you think about the bigger life-and-death picture at the same time (though she’s not above the occasional easy jolt or loud music stinger), and clearly has ambitions beyond your typical simplistic horror fare. If her own material in AFTER.LIFE somewhat fails her, it still demonstrates sufficient promise to make her next feature worth anticipating.

Cinefantastique [Steve Biodrowski]  April 9, 2010

 

Sense of Wonder: Why is Christina Ricci not a horror star?  Steve Biodrowski from Cinefantastique, April 15, 2010

 

About.com [Mark Harris]

 

Mark Reviews Movies (Mark Dujsik) review [1/4]

 

Filmcritic.com  Jules Brenner

 

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3/4]

 

The Horror Review [Alan G. Richter]

 

Bloody-Disgusting review [3/5]  Ryan Daley

 

The L Magazine [Henry Stewart]

 

ReelTalk (Donald Levit) review

 

HollywoodChicago.com review [1.0/5]  Matt Fagerholm

 

JoBlo's Movie Emporium ("JimmyO") review

 

eFilmCritic.com (Mel Valentin) review [2/5]

 

The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review

 

Slant Magazine [Nick Schager]

 

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review [2.5/4]

 

DVD Talk (Jason Bailey) review [2/5]  theatrical release

 

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [C]

 

CompuServe (Harvey S. Karten) review

 

Big Picture Big Sound (David Kempler) review [2/4]

 

The Hollywood Reporter review  Frank Scheck

 

Entertainment Weekly review  Lisa Schwarzbaum

 

Variety (Ronnie Scheib) review

 

Time Out New York review [3/5]  Keith Uhlich

 

Philadelphia Daily News (Gary Thompson) review [C+]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Walter Addiego]

 

Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips) review

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2.5/4]

 

The New York Times (Manohla Dargis) review

 

Wolf, Alan

 

IN MY SLEEP                                                           D-                    52

USA  (105 mi)  2009

 

This film has a script fraught with possibilities, but dies a slow death in the hands of a director who’s clueless about how to engage an audience and build suspense, creating a relentlessly pointless work that would have a hard time finding a time slot on network TV.  It makes you wonder how stuff like this finds an audience at all, as someone very early in this production should have realized the lack of overall talent spread throughout this entire production, which is really just a gathering of a bunch of pretty faces set to a Hitchcock wannabe drama that hasn’t an ounce of tension or suspense, yet pays homage to the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack of hysteria in a movie that is emotionally flat and disengaging from the outset.  As a high school project, this might be impressive in the classroom, but as a paying customer in an actual theater, this is a huge disappointment and has no business being there.  The initial problem is the lack of range in the lead actor, Philip Winchester as Marcus, who works as a male masseuse and plays much of the film shirtless displaying his muscles, which might work in the porn industry, but does nothing to advance any interest in a story about a habitual sleepwalker, whose condition is so severe he routinely drives his car, meets girls and has sex, but then remembers nothing the next day as he was asleep the entire time.  Women, of course, find this explanation hard to believe, as does the audience, as there is no credible medical evidence provided.  Instead a doctor gives him sleeping pills and tells him to call if his condition gets worse.  Well this is the take two aspirin and call me in the morning diagnosis that makes little sense, especially when he wakes up covered with blood and a knife next to his bed.  You’d think that might qualify for “getting worse,” but instead Marcus enrolls in a sex addiction class.  Clearly the film has lost its central premise when a chronic sleepwalker, who may or may not have committed a crime, decides to receive voluntary sex therapy as his sole medical treatment for his potentially criminal sleepwalking condition.  This is where in a real theater a real audience bolts for the door. 

 

But it only gets worse, as rather than seek medical advice, Marcus decides he’ll go it alone, even as more blood appears daily when he awakes, and signs point to clues that he may be a killer in his sleep, as someone died the night he awoke in blood, and the camera he sets up to record anything gets smashed, and even weirder, handcuffs that he uses to keep himself stuck to his bed get removed in the middle of the night—like anyone could fall asleep while handcuffed to their bed and then have the Houdini expertise to pick the lock in their sleep.  The film never shows a single shot of this nighttime persona, but Marcus grows more delirious over time, having nightmarish dreams and Freudian issues that appear out of the blue where he’s certain it all reverts back to his relationship with his deceased father.  Without a shred of evidence to lean one way or the other, it’s fascinating to watch Marcus develop these advanced psychological theories without ever visiting a psychiatrist, reading up on the subject, or doing any investigative work on his own.  These ideas simply appear to him out of nowhere, which he accepts with greater certainty than any medical treatment.  The shallowness of the characters, little more than a revolving door of pretty girls, only leads to more confusion, as he trusts none of them, feeling there is a conspiracy afoot to set him up, growing more paranoid by the minute.  Like Indian medicinal healing, the audience is expected to believe that out of his delusions comes clarity, a rational plan of action, and a resolution to the story.  In an overwrought film where nothing makes sense, this makes the least amount of sense, yet incredulously, that’s how the director wraps it up, as if out of the fog he envisions, finally, a clear path to his future.  How fortunate, or to put it another way, in your dreams.       

 

Time Out New York review [2/5]  S. James Snyder

 

Marcus (Winchester) is a beefcake variation of Dr. Jekyll—nympho masseur by day, sleepwalker by night. Every morning, he jolts awake to wonder: Who drove my car? Why is this knife in my bed? When a nearby friend is stabbed, Marcus starts cuffing himself to the bed. That we never actually meet his Mr. Hyde is an inventive twist, but all the labored explanations (and tedious psychology) that follow the bad behavior and bloodshed make for a serious buzzkill. Parsing one’s dreams, after all, is only fun for the dreamer.

 Chicago Reader  Ben Sachs

A sex-addicted masseur with a sleepwalking problem (no, really) begins to suspect himself of doing terrible things while unconscious; after his best friend's wife is murdered, he embarks on a self-investigation, part detective work and part self-help, to determine whether he's the culprit. This psychological thriller lacks any suspense or plausible psychological insight, but beneath the anonymous LA settings, belabored Hitchcock references, and community theater acting, writer-director Allen Wolf maintains an unwavering moral outlook and a genuine fascination with the workings of guilt. His independent production has the same demented integrity as the Poverty Row dramas that once thrived on Hollywood's outskirts.

The Village Voice [Vadim Rizov]

 

Marcus (Philip Winchester) is a parasomniac: It looks like he's awake, but he's sleepwalking, a convenient excuse for, say, sleeping with your best friend's wife. And lo and behold, when she turns up dead, it's hard for Marcus to maintain his friendship with Justin (Tim Draxl). Sure, he didn't mean to kill anyone, but waking up with a bloody knife in hand would make anyone suspect the worst. The biggest problem with Allen Wolf's thriller is that there are so few characters that it's immediately clear what's going on; there's simply no one to suspect besides the obvious. A slightly bigger problem is that the movie's risible. To kill time while Marcus figures out how that knife got in his hand, there's a Freudian subplot about the origins of Marcus's sleep disorder, with a repressed memory flashback that makes Hitchcock's Spellbound look like a paragon of convincing psychology, plus dream sequences straight out of Glen or Glenda? It's very much an L.A. movie, complete with an endless parade of heavily-made-up club girls and two protagonists who work as masseuses; Wolf's camera is so enamored of their chiseled, shirtless bodies that the whole thing becomes unintentionally homoerotic. It may be worth seeing just for the memorable sight of Lacey Chabert—ex–Party of Five kid as neighbor Becky—attempting to interpret Marcus's dreams based on what she once learned in night school.

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Mike Hale

“In My Sleep” is meant to be Hitchcockian — the writer and director, Allen Wolf, more or less says so in his director’s statement — and maybe it is, if you think of it as, say, Hitchcock’s senior project for film school. Mr. Wolf, in his feature film debut, generates a few genuine scares but he doesn’t yet have the style to pull off the kind of lightly surreal comic thriller that he’s trying for.

Philip Winchester, star of the short-lived NBC series “Crusoe,” shows off his spectacular pectorals as Marcus, a sensitive masseur whose soul dies a little each time he’s forced to give a happy ending to a Hollywood cougar. Marcus has parasomnia, an extreme form of sleepwalking that leads to sleepcooking, sleepdriving and even sleephavingsex. When he wakes up covered in blood, he fears that he’s crossed the line into sleepkilling his best friend’s wife.

Lacey Chabert and Abigail Spencer are charming as two of the women caught up in Marcus’s nightmare (Ms. Chabert’s character has to handcuff him to his bed at night, so he can’t wander), who also serve as two of the film’s flock of suspects. “In My Sleep” works so hard to keep you guessing about the culprit’s identity, in fact, that before it’s over you may stop caring.

Slant Magazine [Ed Gonzalez]

Spectacularly witless, In My Sleep is another depressing reminder of what happens when you give cameras to jocks. Ripped from too many headlines, the plot concerns an L.A. spa masseur, Marcus (Philip Winchester), suffering from both parasomnia and sex addiction and who comes to believe that he may have killed his best bud's wife in his sleep. Marcus's sleep disorder and problems with commitment are presumably related and meant to be understood as byproducts of some horrible event from his youth, the details of which his mother (Beth Grant) suspiciously withholds from him.

In sleep he's haunted by a mysteriously cloaked figure with a keyhole mask (a head-slappingly literal sign that secrets are waiting to be unlocked), and when he doesn't cuff himself to his bed at the end of the night with the aid of his annoying upstairs neighbor, he almost always ends up half-naked in the fetal position next to his father's grave. Dude obviously has daddy issues, supported not only by the red herrings—both animate and inanimate—that hilariously abound, but also by the film's most prominent motif: Winchester's worked-out physique, an aphrodisiac for all the film's women that he's furiously sculpted in response to his deeply buried traumas.

As in David Kittredge's upcoming Pornography, a Mulholland Drive rip set within the gay porn industry, In My Sleep seems keen on proving with its murder mystery that Angelino's beefcakes have feelings too. Its solipsism is blinding, but this much is clear: Though the film's absurd plot machinations suggest writer-director Allen Wolf might have a sweet spot for old-school giallos, his sense of style also implies that he reveres the collected works of Aaron Spelling.

Gordon and the Whale [James Oster]

 

Boxoffice Magazine (John P. McCarthy) review [1.5/5]

 

Big Picture Big Sound (David Kempler) review [0.5/4]

 

filmsoundoff.com [Curt Schleier]

 

IN MY SLEEP  Facets Multi Media

 

Variety (John Anderson) review

 

Wong Jing

 

GOD OF GAMBLERS  (Du Shen)

Hong Kong  (126 mi)  1989

 

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

Hong Kong's second-highest-grossing film of all time (somewhere behind John Woo, I suspect) is a remarkable amalgamation of gambling, farce, Hong Kong gangster shoot-'em-ups, and... chocolate. Ultra-suave Chow Yun-Fat is Ko-Chun, the legendary God of Gamblers, a man so lucky at games of chance that he literally never loses. When a chance accident delivers a brutal blow to his head, Ko-Chun is stricken with amnesia and reduced to a state of infantilism, with a sudden, massive craving for chocolates. Taken in by a group of small-time hoods and poor-luck gamblers, he is nursed back to health and used by them to win high-stakes games. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, right-hand man, and bodyguard are searching for him high and low, but so are a seemingly endless barrage of assassins sent by an old gambling enemy. Double- and triple-crosses crop up all over the place, and the film has more plot twists than a Sue Grafton novel. All of this occurs at roughly the speed of sound until the explosive ending in which -- surprise! -- all is revealed. This is Hong Kong cinema at its finest, and Chow Yun-Fat has never been better. If you've never seen him in action, try to picture an Asian Cary Grant/Harrison Ford/Sean Connery mix, only better. I'd even go so far to say he may be the most charismatic actor I've ever seen -- he's that good. Director Jing may not be John Woo's equal when it comes to explosive editing, but he's no slouch, either: this story moves like a luge, jumping from comedy to bloodshed in an adrenaline-overdosed heartbeat. Whew!

 

The Illuminated Lantern [Peter Nepstad]

 

review  A Free Man in Hong Kong

 

DVD Times  Dave Foster

 

KFC Cinema  Brandon Fincher

 

Wong Kar-wai

 

The Director's Chair - Wong Kar-wai - DVD Beaver

Epicurean hedonism seems to be lurking under the surface of Wong's exceptional eye for composition and color palette, texture of image and sound, even the very choice of actors and actresses. Masterfully combined, these elements create a unique vision of cinematic beauty. Captured by a drifting camera and nostalgic music, the films surrender to a Herakleitean flux: narratives afraid of a strict locus, characters resistant to stagnancy and commitment, a time-flow that defies linearity; all vaguely reminiscent of Robbe-Grillet and the nouveau roman. Wong's work returns to the inability to define longing, to accept the gravity of living, to allow satiety to stop movement, to acknowledge mortality. The episodic digenesis, fractured by elisions that defy deterministic explanations, simply refuses to yield: to logic, to convention, to old age. Through his idiosyncratic work, Wong has demonstrated an unconditionally personal love for cinema.

Kar-Wai, Wong   Art and Culture

 

The combination of stunning visuals and edgy, sensitive storytelling in the work of Wong Kar-Wai has spread a new dawn across the horizon of Hong Kong film. Originally a graphic design student, Wong fell in love with photography and was influenced by such names as Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Richard Avedon. He briefly worked as a production assistant for television drama serials, then progressed to scriptwriting, notably for a popular soap opera/thriller. When he finally left TV production, it was to write ten feature films in just five years. His most recent pictures, "Chungking Express" (1994), "Fallen Angels" (1995), and "Happy Together" (1997), have focused on urban alienation and people with such dissolute and pointless lives that they are unable to connect emotionally with others. His incisive and de-glamorizing camera paints cities as claustrophobic cages in which people pace like trapped animals. This unflinching vision lends his work a bleak, nervy atmosphere of unfulfilled longing, loneliness, and desperation. "Happy Together" garnered Wong the 1997 best director award at the Cannes Film Festival.

 

Hong Kong WARTIME AND POSTWAR CINEMA  profile by Film Reference

Among the Hong Kong New Wave filmmakers, Wong Kar Wei is perhaps the most celebrated by critics. He is a winner of many awards, including a best director award at the Cannes Film Festival for Chun guang zha xie (Happy Together, 1997). Wong's films are usually narrated by characters' internal monologues, which creates a seemingly haphazard, fragmented postmodern style. They reflect modern living, urban alienation, lost opportunities, transient love relationships, and acute melancholy.

At the age of five Wong and his parents moved to Hong Kong from Shanghai. Since he could not speak the local (Cantonese) dialect, his first few years were spent going to movie houses, which later became his obsession. Upon graduating from Hong Kong Polytechnic, where he studied graphic design, he joined TVB, the most popular local TV production and broadcasting channel at the time, becoming a scriptwriter for TV drama series. The popular TV soap opera series "Don't Look Now" ("Ge Dou Bou," 1982), of which Wong was one of the major writers, attracted quite a bit of attention at the time because of its unusual story. Wong started his film career as a scriptwriter, making his directorial debut with Wang jiao ka men (As Tears Go By, 1988), which was shown during the critics week at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989. It was unique in its untraditional narrative structure and visual style.

His second film, A Fei zheng zhuan (Days of Being Wild, 1991), marked the beginning of his long-term partnership with cinematographer Christopher Doyle. It is set in the 1960s, a period that continued to attract Wong in his later films. Although Days won five Hong Kong Film Awards, including for best film and best director, its unfamiliar style and story (or, for some, lack thereof) led to its box-office failure. Four years later, Wong tried his hand at a period martial-arts genre film, Dong xie xi du (Ashes of Time, 1994). During a break from the frustrating production of this film Wong made a quickie, Chong qing sen lin (Chungking Express, 1994), essentially a prank of two consecutive love stories in which no one seems to get it right. The film, which was endorsed by Quentin Tarantino but was reluctantly distributed by Miramax, soon became a cult film in the United States and Europe, and it raised Wong to auteur status.

Wong works with the same crew and cast (mostly superstars such as Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, and Andy Lau) for most of his films. His work is marked by mesmerizing visuals that draw attention to themselves and refuse any deep historical reading. His images almost always reside in the contemporary time period even when they are images of the past. Using the strengths of Doyle, whose hand-held camera effectively translates light and shadow into mood and style, Wong's films are about lost moments that sink deeply into one's emotional memory, a (lost) past filtered through the desire of the present. Thus, Days of Being Wild is a memory of the 1960s constructed through the experience of modern living in the 1980s, Chungking Express is about the 1970s imagined from the metropolitan view of the 1990s, and Happy Together is an old-style romance conducted through the culture of twenty-first-century global migration.

BFI | Sight & Sound | The Innovators 1990-2000: Charisma Express  Tony Rayns from Sight and Sound (January 2000)   

The Chinese diaspora has supplied many of the best film-makers of the 1990s, but none had more impact than Wong Kar-Wai

For the first time since 1994, when he interrupted the post-production of Ashes of Time to make Chungking Express, Wong Kar-Wai is currently making two films at once. This isn't from choice, of course; it's a result of the collision between his own aleatory approach to production and the financing crisis which has hit the Hong Kong film industry.

The first film (it has no English working title) was supposed to be another quickie to be shot and cut in short order for completion in the summer of 1999. Just as the low-budget Chungking Express (which went from start of shooting to premiere in just three months) was designed to offset the overspends on the lengthy and expensive Ashes of Time, so this new film was intended to help Wong's company through its cash-flow problems in the wake of the costly Happy Together. It stars Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung as people who meet when they discover that their respective spouses are having an affair. The original plan apparently was to divide the film between scenes in the 60s and scenes in the 90s, but Wong has found himself too much seduced by the adventure of imagining pre-modern Hong Kong to give equal time to the present-day part of the schema. Too much seduced, also, to keep the project within its original parameters - which is why it isn't yet finished.

Meanwhile contractual obligations have forced Wong to start work on the second film, 2046, which is being shot in various East Asian cities including Bangkok and Tokyo. The title refers to the fiftieth year after the handover of Hong Kong (you'll recall that Deng Xiaoping promised the territory 50 more years of capitalism), but the film is not planned as a political satire. It has three strands of storyline, each distantly inspired by the plot of a 19th-century opera, all centred on relations (sexual and otherwise) between humans and androids. The film stars Tony Leung, Faye Wong and Thai singer Thongchai Macintyre among others - but not, as some press rumours have had it, Bj&ouaml;rk.

It would be rash to speculate how either film will end up looking, sounding and moving (that's a mistake Wong himself never makes, even when he's shooting), but it's already obvious that both projects offer ample scope for his patented approach to solipsistic characters trying to break out of their traps - not to mention period and future settings of the kind likely to provoke interesting ideas from his closest collaborators, designer/editor William Chang and cinematographer Chris Doyle. The films are being made, however, at a time when it has become important to Wong to reinvent himself. A few months ago, after showing me some haunting and evocative rushes from the Maggie-and-Tony film, he commented wryly: "Too many other directors are -doing' Wong Kar-Wai these days, so I have to do something different."

It isn't just the recent proliferation of Wong Kar-Wai wannabes that is pushing him in new directions. Wong was one of the first film-makers in Hong Kong to establish his own independent production company, realising that he could retain full control of his work - and make films in his own idiosyncratic way, following a process of trial and error - by becoming his own producer. (His company is called Jet Tone in English, Zedong - as in Mao Zedong - in Chinese.) He keeps Jet Tone going mainly by pre-selling his projects in those markets where his name and those of his stars are bankable. But the East Asian market for Hong Kong films has all but disappeared in the last three years; the gravy train doesn't stop here any more. Wong has sustained Jet Tone's cash flow by making two extraordinary extended commercials (one for the Japanese fashion designer Takeo Kikuchi, the other for Motorola) and by publishing a series of fine-art collectibles: a visual diary of the making of Happy Together, folios of poster designs.

It's still a little easier for Wong to pre-sell unmade projects than it is for most of his contemporaries in the Hong Kong film industry, simply because his audience is different from (and distinctly more loyal than) Tsui Hark's or Johnnie To's. But it's nothing like as easy as it was five years ago. Nowadays foreign investors demand something more than a title, a genre, a director and a list of stars; they want to read scripts. And Wong, of course, is not in the habit of writing scripts in advance of shooting. His solution has been to start writing fairly detailed outlines of the projects he wants to make - while retaining the option of deviating from them during production when better ideas come up. And systematising his ideas into detailed outlines is beginning to change the way he thinks about his work.

Wong's film career has already encompassed two fairly remarkable U-turns. Trained as a graphic designer, he spent two years working as a production assistant on serial dramas at the ruthlessly ratings-minded television station TVB. He moved into the film industry as a writer in 1982, initially contributing ideas and gags in the script department of Cinema City, another by-word for unrestrained commercial calculation. But Wong slowly gravitated towards more sustained writing, culminating in scripts for a gangster trilogy written for his director friend Patrick Tam. Tam filmed only the final part of the trilogy (Final Victory/Zuihou Shengli, 1987); the first part later became the basis for Wong's own directorial debut (As Tears Go By/Wangjiao Kamen, 1988) - the only occasion to date when he has followed a pre-written script.

As Tears Go By was a spirited and well-acted first feature, rather obviously indebted to Mean Streets for its plot outline and three central characters but lent a sheen of originality by Andrew Lau's energetic handheld camerawork with its stop-motion action climaxes. The film earned Wong an invitation to the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes, where reviewers ignorant of Hong Kong cinema found it shockingly violent. But the Wong Kar-Wai now known to the rest of the world surfaced more clearly in his second feature Days of Being Wild/A Fei Zhengzhuan (1990) in which he erased every bad habit he had learned during his decade in the television and film industries by turning his back on both conventional scripting and genre film-making.

Days offers a languorous and stylised vision of a wealthy young playboy sowing chaos and confusion in the lives of those around him in 60s Hong Kong and Manila. A Fei Zhengzhuan means -The Truth about A Fei', -A Fei' being the generic nickname for a youthful tearaway. The title was used for Rebel without a Cause on its release in Hong Kong and Taiwan, which means it conjures up memories of James Dean for at least one generation of Chinese viewers. But the Leslie Cheung character at the centre of Days of Being Wild is less a rebel than a misfit, a serial seducer too egotistic to give or receive real affection, emotionally blighted by the absence of his parents who abandoned him when they moved to the Philippines. Like Wong and William Chang themselves, the character is a Shanghainese boy brought up in Cantonese Hong Kong; as such he must represent the dislocation they felt as kids in the 60s. The key thing about the character, though, is his not-so-latent death wish, provocatively blurred with his longing for his missing mother.

Using precisely six characters (plus some very carefully chosen props and locations and incongruously Latino music tracks) to evoke old Hong Kong, the film gradually resolves itself into a meditation on the chasm between youthful burn-out and youthful survival, the supporting characters orbiting the protagonist coming to represent the various ways forward actually taken by most young Hong Kong residents of the period. Wong originally planned the film as a diptych; the second part would have shown the same supporting characters six years on, now in orbit around another Hong Kong archetype, the chancer/gambler played by Tony Leung glimpsed in the mysterious coda.

This mix of oblique/imaginary autobiography, Hong Kong social commentary, inspired rereadings of pop culture and explorations of the ground between loneliness, existential solitude and solipsism set the pattern for all Wong's subsequent films. The same could be said of the use of ultra-charismatic stars in what are essentially character roles, the preference for the visual over the verbal and the sparing but potent use of voiceovers to illuminate the gaps between thought and deed. None of the many Wong Kar-Wai imitators and wannabes has come close to matching this density of reference and effect; most pick up only on the tics and tropes of style, missing all the resonances.

At some level Ashes of Time/Dongxie Xidu (1994) is clearly the missing Part Two of Days of Being Wild - except that it's set in the margins of a famous novel by Jin Yong and displaced from 1966 Hong Kong to a remote desert in some heavily mythologised past. The film remains Wong's magnum opus, an epically imagined panorama of "turmoil in the hearts of men", to quote the opening caption. This time Leslie Cheung plays Ouyang Feng, the first of Wong's agents for hired killers, dispassionately plying his trade from an isolated inn; thanks to drinking Oblivion Wine he cannot remember the emotional trauma that led him there or why he has reason to feel no pity for others. The assorted customers, killers and victims who come his way represent another constellation of bad life choices, a gallery of divided selves and obsessives, all of them rejecting intimacy to avoid being rejected themselves. In this context the action scenes (choreographed by Sammo Hung and shown in stop motion like the fights in As Tears Go By) serve mainly to introduce a Leone-esque aspect of genre commentary into the proceedings.

Chungking Express/Chongqing Senlin (1994) and Fallen Angels/Duoluo Tianshi (1995) form another diptych, both films juxtaposing twin stories of urban lives and would-be loves. Both tales in Chungking Express concern cops on the beat, both of them smarting from having been dumped by their girlfriends. The first is a rookie (played by Taiwanese-Japanese singer Kaneshiro Takeshi) who is too hung up with his musings on the existential implications of expiry dates to notice that the enigmatic older woman he meets in a bar is a murderous drug-runner. The second (Tony Leung) is a homebody too much in love with the idea of escape to notice that the girl-next-door has the mother of all crushes on him. The film's spontaneity and quirky humour reflect both the speed with which it was conceived and executed and Wong's enthusiastic reading of the Japanese novelist Murakami Haruki.

The darker Fallen Angels interweaves its two stories, one a moody blend of frustrated sex and excessive violence, the other a tragic farce or farcical tragedy about two hopeless obsessives. The resulting emotional swings make the film hard to take in on first viewing; this, more than any other of Wong's films, is the one which sets the line of demarcation between those who just don't get it and those who find the effect wildly exhilarating and inspiring. Everyone notices the film's kinship with Chungking Express, which is anyway underlined by a series of playful references back to the earlier film, but what its admirers relish most is its parallel identity as the urban twin of Ashes of Time - complete with another emotionally etiolated agent for hitmen, another protagonist who cannot remember his former lovers and another terrifying vengeful abandoned wife.

Wong's Cannes prize-winner Happy Together/Chunguang Zhaxie (1997) brought his passion for Manuel Puig and other Latin American novelists into frame with his desire to take a more detached view of Hong Kong identity in the year of the territory's reversion to China's sovereignty. From Puig comes the Argentinian setting and the unembarrassed focus on a gay man trying to rebound from a destructive affair; from the more domestic agenda comes the grand metaphor of living apart together, a cipher for both personal relationships and the larger commonalities and differences between China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. It's well known that what was planned as a two-month shoot eventually stretched to five; it's less well known that a generous sampling of the unused footage (including Shirley Kwan's performance as another lonely émigré in Buenos Aires, missing from the film as released) will be seen in the forthcoming Buenos Aires Zero Degree, a meta-film assembled from Wong's rushes by video artist Kwan Pun-Leung.

Since Wong's creative evolution is still very much in progress, it's premature to try to sum up his achievements. The rushes from the first of his current films reveal a vision of 60s Hong Kong very different from that of Days of Being Wild: this time the look and behaviour of the protagonists seem drawn from melodramas of the period, while the streets they inhabit are crowded with in-character extras. Does this represent the beginning of some kind of filmic -exchange' with the Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang, whose dystopian millennium film The Hole/Dong (1998) has its stunted, plague-threatened protagonists escaping into dreams of musicals from the 50s? Or is it merely that Wong's determination to reinvent himself is pushing him to explore areas beyond his own prior experience?

One thing is already clear, and it serves to define Wong's importance as an innovator. Although he draws on many and disparate sources in his films, he is never a postmodernist bricoleur. His work deals with primary emotions, not secondary echoes of emotions; he cares about feelings, not cultural gestures. Consider the sequence in Fallen Angels in which the crazed He Qiwu (Kaneshiro Takeshi) uses a camcorder to record images of his father, who is trying to get some sleep. The sequence lasts all of three minutes and speaks volumes about father-son relationships, parental expectations and disappointments, filial rebellion and love, and emotional inarticulacy; does any other sequence in contemporary cinema get as close to these issues so succinctly? Wong Kar-Wai isn't the future of cinema. But he does point one way forward, no mistake.

Wong Kar-Wai.net  audience discussion forum

 

Chasing The Metaphysical Express: A Wong Kar-Wai Fansite   biography, essays, film reviews, photos and links

 

Kar Wai Wong - Director Biography - Madman Entertainment  biography and filmography

 

TCMDB  profile

 

Wong Kar Wai | Biography and Filmography | 1958 - Hollywood.com  biography and timeline

 

All-Movie Guide  bio from Jason Ankeny

 

See all Wong Kar-Wai films  Filmography

 

Wong Kar-wai - Strictly Film School  Acquarello reviews

 

The History of Cinema. Wong Kar-Wai: biography, reviews, links  Piero Scaruffi reviews

 

Wong Kar-wai at the End of Time  brief comments and reviews of Wong Kar-wai films

 

Wong Kar-Wai  Filmography with reviews to his films from Love HK Films

 

Wong Kar-wai | Film Studies For Free  links to various articles

 

Wong Kar-wai • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  Elizabeth Wright from Senses of Cinema, May 21, 2002  

 

Chinese Puzzle | Movie Review | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum on Ashes of Time, March 9, 1995

 

Kinema Article  Wong Kar-wai: Time, Memory, Identity, by Toh Hai Leong from Kinema, Spring 1995, also seen here from FilmsAsia:  Wong Kar Wai 

 

Mediations on Loss: A Framework for the Films of Wong Kar-wai by ...  Anthony Leong analytical essay from Asian Cult Cinema, January 1999

 

FCMM: Into the 21st Century – Offscreen  Donato Totaro, July 2000

 

Hong Kong Cinema Books Reviewed • Senses of Cinema  Steve Erickson from Senses of Cinema, September 12, 2000

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | In the Mood for Love (2000)  Amy Taubin from Sight and Sound, November 2000

 

Of Love and the City - Film Comment  Kent Jones on In the Mood for Love from Film Comment, January/February 2001

 

Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love: Like a ... - Senses of Cinema  Like a Ritual in Transfigured Time, Stephen Teo from Senses of Cinema, April 10, 2001

                         

The Cinema of Wong Kar-wai - A 'Writing Game' • Senses of Cinema  compiled by Fiona A. Villella from Senses of Cinema, April 10, 2001

 

Ways of seeing wild in the cinema of Wong Kar-Wai   7-page essay by Robert M. Payne, films considered include Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, and Happy Together, from Jump Cut (Fall 2001)

 

The Seduction of Wong Kar Wai  Chris Khoo from FilmsAsia, undated, but after 2002

 

Director Wong Karwai  Biographical essay from China Culture, May 2003

 

Wong Kar-Wai's Happy together The new Hong Kong cinema - Google Books Result   Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together, by Jeremy Tambling (122 pages), 2003, the book itself may be previewed online

 

culturebase.net | The international artist database | Wong Kar-Wai  In the Mood for Hong Kong, article by Ulrich Joßner, May 30, 2003

 

Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of time The new Hong Kong cinema - Google Books Result  Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time, by Wimal Dissanayake (190 pages) June 1, 2003, the book itself may be previewed online

 

Wong Kar-wai: His movies, his soundtracks and more   book review of Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together, by Jeremy Tambling (122 pages) from China Daily, December 23, 2003

 

Wong Kar Wai (Editions Dis Voir) by Jean-Marc Lalanne, David ...  Wong Kar Wai (Editions Dis Voir) by Jean-Marc Lalanne, David Martinez, Ackbar Abbas, and Jimmy Ngai, reviewed by Acquarello from Kino Culture, 2004

 

Hong Kong Dreaming: Thoughts on Chungking Express  Luisetta Mudie, 2004

 

For the Love of Cinema: The 28th Hong Kong International Film ...  report by Janice Tong from Senses of Cinema, July 26, 2004

 

Editions Dis Voir: Wong Kar wai   reviews of 3 essays and an extended interview by Jean-Marc Lalanne, David Martinez, Ackbar Abbas, and Jimmy Ngai, by Acquarello from Strictly Film School, August 28, 2004

  

Living in Dreams: Wong Kar-Wai | PopMatters Film Feature  Restrospective essay from Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, June 3, 2004 

 

Glamour Lives, in Chinese Films  Manohla Dargis on Chinese actresses Shu Qi, Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li from The New York Times, December 5, 2004

 

Peter Brunette - Wong Kar-wai (Contemporary Film Directors) - Scribd  175-page book by Peter Brunette, 2005

 

Unhappy Together: Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 - Bright Lights Film Journal  Ian Johnston, January 31, 2005

 

Wong Kar-Wai: Auteur Of Time  by Stephen Teo (212 pages), book review by Colin Odell and Michelle le Blanc from Kamera, March 16, 2005

 

Resonant Textuality: Visualising and Conceptualising the Cinema of ...  Wong Kar-wai by Stephen Teo, book review by Dana Polan from Senses of Cinema, April 15, 2005

 

2046: A Matter of Time, A Labour of Love • Senses of Cinema  Stephen Teo from Senses of Cinema, April 15, 2005

 

2046 | Wong Kar-wai | Nathan Lee - Film Comment Magazine  July/August 2005

 

Chris Hamm, review of Dissanayake, Wong Kar-Wai's Ashes of Time  book review, October 2005

 

The Aspect Ratio  Scott Gleine, edited from his paper, The Lasting Influences of the French New Wave in the work of Wong Kar Wai (December 2006)

 

Soundtrack Track Listings for All Wong Kar-Wai Films  Wong Kar-wai Forum, December 5, 2006

 

Lonely Hearts: Wong Kar-Wai's Obscure Objects of Desire  Essay by Jeremy Cohen from EyeCandy, Winter 2006

 

ROMANCE, INSULARITY AND REPRESENTATION  Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love and Hong Kong Cinema, by Giorgio Biancorosso from the Shima Journal (2007) in (pdf) format

 

Films of Wong Kar-Wai, text version - eJumpcut.org  Allan Cameron analyzes Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046  from Jump Cut, Spring 2007

 

Directors: Wong Kar Wai « The Grotesquerie   Director Profile, an evaluation of style and themes, May 11, 2007

 

At Cannes, Blueberry Nights and Romanian Days  A.O. Scott Cannes review from The New York Times, May 18, 2007

 

FLYING INKPOT THEATRE REVIEW: Wong Kar Wai Dreams by The Finger ...   Kenneth Kwok reviews Wong Kar-wai’s play Dreams from The Fling Inkpot Theatre Reviews, June 13, 2007

 

Selling Television Sets by Turning Up the Glamour  Eric Pfanner from The New York Times, August 14, 2007

 

Blueberry thrill - The Scotsman  Sheila Johnston from The Scotsman, February 8, 2008                    

 

A Valentine to Wong Kar Wai | Cinema Junkie by Beth Accomando   essay using quotes from people that worked with him, by Beth Accomando from Cinema Junkie, February 14, 2008

 

How Wong Kar-wai lost his way. - By Grady Hendrix - Slate Magazine  April 3, 2008

 

The Middle Age of Wong Kar-Wai | The American Prospect   Noy Thrupkaew from The American Prospect, April 18, 2008

 

Wong Kar-Wai to direct Leung-Lau wedding _English_Xinhua  from Chinaview, July 15, 2008

 

Travellers’ Tales - The FEER Blog » Blog Archive » Wong Kar-Wai’s ...  Wong Kar-wai directs Tony Leung and Carina Lau wedding, complete with soundtrack, July 21, 2008

 

UW Press: Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time   book review of Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time, by Wimal Dissanayake (190 pages), July 25, 2008

 

Movie City Indie: Wong Kar-Wai naked... <i>in a manner of speaking</i>  Ray Pride posting which reveal wedding photos of Tony Leung and Carina Lau, also a glimpse of Wong Kar-wai “without” his trademark sunglasses, July 27, 2008

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Ashes of Time Redux (2008)  Mark Sinker, October 2008

 

Wong Kar-Wai, the Film Auteur :: Forging Memories of Yearning and Regret  Sly from The Open End, January 17, 2009

 

Wong Kar-Wai, the Film Auteur :: Forging Memories of Yearning and Regret [Cont'd]  Sly from The Open End, January 18, 2009

 

Ashes of Time Redux (Web Exclusive) — Cineaste Magazine   Martha P. Notchimson, Winter 2009

 

In the Mood for Love • Senses of Cinema  Carla Marcantonio, October 11, 2010

 

The House Next Door [The Conversations] [Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard]  The Conversations: Wong Kar-wai, April 29, 2011

 

Mapping the Mind Between Movies: Intertextuality in the Work of Wong ...  Michael Ward from Bright Lights Film Journal, April 30, 2011

 

WONG KAR WAI MARATHON: The Informal Trilogy | Film Misery  Justin Jagoe on Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, and 2046, collectively known as Wong Kar Wai’s Informal Trilogy, December 8, 2011

 

Modern Discontent in the Films of Wong Kar-wai - Bright Lights Film ...  Michael Blancato from Bright Lights Film Journal, July 31, 2012

 

Cinema Scope | One Horizontal, One Vertical: Some Preliminary ...  Shelly Kraicer on The Grandmaster from Cinema Scope, 2013

 

Mondays: Wong Kar-Wai & Christopher Doyle - doc films   Kevin Kwok, January 9, 2013

 

The Grandmaster: A Tour de Force - Lola Journal  Yvette Bíró, August 2013

 

Retrospective: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai | IndieWire   August 19, 2013, also seen here:  The Essentials: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai - The Playlist 

 

Keynote: Chungking Express / The Dissolve  Keith Phipps, October 14, 2013

 

Poetry as Motion: Taking a Closer Look at Wong Kar Wai's The ...  Jacob Mertens from Bright Lights Film Journal, October 31, 2013         

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014            

 

Wong Kar Wai As A Metaphor Of Love. Part 1: 'Days of Being Wild ...   Ekaterina Petrakova from the Berlin Film Journal, May 14, 2014

 

Wong Kar Wai As A Metaphor Of Love Part 2: 'In The Mood For Love ...   Ekaterina Petrakova from the Berlin Film Journal, May 14, 2014

 

Wong Kar Wai As A Metaphor Of Love Part 3: '2046' | Berlin Film Journal   Ekaterina Petrakova from the Berlin Film Journal, May 14, 2014

 

The Peerless Style of Chinese Director Wong Kar-wai - Esquire   Calum Marsh, July 21, 2014

 

Cinephiliac Moments: The Phantom — Photogénie — Cinea  Adrian Martin on Leslie Cheung, August 18, 2014

 

The Grandmaster review | Sight & Sound | BFI  Vadim Rizov, December 5, 2014

 

Numéro Cinq at the Movies | Wong Kar Wai's Secrets, or My Sense of ...  Wong Kar Wai’s Secrets, or My Sense of an Ending, by R. W. Gray, June 2015

 

Where to begin with Wong Kar-wai | BFI  Ann Lee from Sight and Sound, February 22, 2016

 

Wong Kar Wai's 5 Most Essential Films | Hollywood Reporter  Boyd van Hoeij, March 13, 2016

 

The author's gesture: the camera as a body in Wong kar-wai's In the ...  Jake Ivan Dole on In the Mood for Love from The Cine-Files, Spring 2016

 

The 10 Best Shots: Celebrating The Eye Of Christopher Doyle  Nikola Grozdanovic from The Playlist, May 2, 2016

 

Wong Kar-Wai's Color Obsession in One Mesmerizing Supercut ...  Video by Glass Distortion, by Jude Dry from indieWIRE, February 1, 2017 (2:34)

 

The side-by-side comparisons that show how Hong Kong director ...  The side-by-side comparisons that show how a Hong Kong director influenced “Moonlight,” Alessio Marinacci video juxtaposes scenes from Moonlight against Wong’s Days of Being Wild (1990), Happy Together (1997), and In the Mood for Love (2000), by Zheping Huang from Quartz, February 28, 2017 (1:48)

 

All 10 Wong Kar-wai Movies Ranked From Worst To Best « Taste of ...  Ben Creech from Taste of Cinema, April 4, 2017

 

The Best Movies By Wong Kar-Wai You Should Watch - Culture Trip  Rebecca Sharp, May 11, 2017

 

In pictures: Happy Together – the Tony Leung-Leslie Cheung ...   Edmund Lee from The South China Morning Post, May 14, 2017

 

All 10 Movies of Wong Kar-wai, Ranked From Average to Best – The ...  Aditya Mandhane from The Cinemaholic, June 21, 2017

 

Visual Framework: Watch How Wong Kar-wai Uses Frames Within ...  Video by Evan Puschak, article by Caleb Hammond from Moviemaker, July 17, 2017 (8:59)

 

How the cinema of Wong Kar-wai reflects a Hong Kong in transition  David Pountain from Little White Lies, July 18, 2017

 

Wong Kar-Wai Bio: In His Own Words [VIDEO EXCLUSIVE] - uInterview  Wong Kar-wai video, article by Catherine Valdez, July 27, 2017 (3:08)

 

Wong Kar-Wai  They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They

 

Interview @ Looksmart  Wong Kar-Wai: the director who knows all about falling for the wrong people, interview with the director by Elizabeth Weitzman, February 1998

 

BOMB Magazine: Wong Kar-wai by Han Ong  Interview and short feature by Hang Ong from Bomb magazine, Winter 1998

 

Gerald Peary - interviews - In the Mood for Love  Gerald Peary interviews Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, March 2000

 

TIMEasia.com | Wong Kar-wai: And The Winner Is ... | 5/24/2000  Interview by Stephen Short, May 24, 2000

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | In The Mood For Edinburgh  Tony Rayns talks to the director from Sight and Sound, August 2000 

 

Arts: Jonathan Romney on Wong Kar-Wai | Culture | The Guardian  Feature and interview by Jonathan Romney, October 23, 2000

 

Filmmaker Magazine | Winter 2000: MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA  Augusta Palmer interviews Christopher Doyle from Filmmaker magazine, Winter 2000

 

Interview @ indieWIRE  The "Mood" of Wong Kar-wai; the Asian Master Does it Again, interview by Anthony Kaufman, February 2, 2001

 

Interview with Tony Leung • Senses of Cinema  by Trish Maunder from Senses of Cinema, April 10, 2001

 

Interviews - Reverse Shot  Vicente Rodriguez-Ortega interviews cinematographer Christopher Doyle, August 27, 2004

 

At the Movies: Interview with Wong Kar Wai  Interview by Margaret Pomeranz from Margaret and David at the Movies on ABC, June 2005

 

Filmmaker Magazine: Web Exclusives  Cannes '07: Wong Kar-wai on My Blueberry Nights, Howard Feinstein interviews the director May 15, 2007

 

iW PROFILE | “My Blueberry Nights” Director Wong Kar Wai | IndieWire  Profile "My Blueberry Nights" Director Wong Kar Wai in Q & A session with Dennis Lim, article by Benjamin Crossley-Marra from indieWIRE, April 2, 2008

 

Wong Kar Wai Hits the Road | Film & Video  Interview by Bryant Frazer from Film & Video, April 3, 2008

 

Wong Kar-Wai on "My Blueberry Nights" | Film News | Film | IFC.com  Interview by Aaron Hillis, April 3, 2008

 

Exclusive Interview with Wang Kar-Wai by Mighty Ganesha  Monkey Peaches interview April 7, 2008

 

Interviews: Wong Kar Wai, Jason Kohn - Deep Focus Movie Reviews + ...   Interview by Jason Kohn, April 8, 2008

 

Norah Jones tries her hand at acting in 'My Blueberry Nights ...  Rafer Guzmán interviews actress Norah Jones from Pop Matters, April 10, 2008

 

How Wong Kar-Wai's shades kept me in the dark | Film | guardian.co.uk  Interview by Xan Brooks May 20, 2008

 

Christopher Doyle & Wong Kar Wai - Page - Interview Magazine  Du Ke Feng interview, November 25, 2008

 

Dennis Lim - ArtsBeat Blog - The New York Times  Dennis Lim interview, February 17, 2013

 

Interview: Wong Kar-wai on The Grandmaster | Feature | Slant Magazine   Jake Mulligan interview, August 15, 2013

 

Three Scenes From The Grandmaster, Explained -- Vulture  Bilge Ebiri interview, August 23, 2013

 

Tony Leung on playing The Grandmaster / The Dissolve  Keith Phipps interview with actor Tony Leung, August 26, 2013

 

Wong Kar-wai on 'The Grandmaster' - The New York Times  January 10, 2014

 

Wong Kar-Wai interview: the revered film director on returning to his ...  James Mottram interview from The Independent, December 6, 2014

 

Visions from the Movie Sets of Wong Kar Wai | SSENSE  Thom Bettridge interviews Hong Kong Photographer Wing Shya, sharing photo stills from the movie sets of Wong Kar-wai, September 2017

 

Ranked 14th on The Guardian's 2004 List of the World's 40 Best Directors

 

501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

 

Wong Kar-wai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Join the Wong Kar Wai Flickr group  photos shared in the manner of Wong Kar-wai’s visual eye

           

Wong Kar-Wai Cinematheque   clips from several films

 

Tribute Wong Kar-Wai   (3:19) on YouTube

 

dj shadow - six days  MTV Music Video (3:45)

 

Tribute to Wong Kar-Wai   (3:48)

 

Thompson On Hollywood: Wong Kar Wai Short  There’s Only One Sun, 9:35 minute commercial for Philips next generation Ambilight television starring Amélie Daure

 

AS TEARS GO BY (Wang Jiao ka men)                        B                     89

Hong Kong  (102 mi)  1988

 

First of all, the re-released version which is supposedly a new 35 mm print has the worst sound of any in Wong’s repertoire, and one of the worst I’ve ever experienced, as the Chinese language in this theatrical release has been altered from the original Cantonese to a Mandarin dubbed version, so the mouths are not moving in synch with the sound, while all other sound feels like it’s been pulled through a cavernous tunnel as well, all of which means it just sounds shitty from start to finish, as if it’s been altered, and, of course, it has, which in many ways ruins the Wong Kar-wai experience which is uniquely drenched in excessive sensuality.  The DVD version on Kino remains in Cantonese, so apparently, in their rush to get the rights to the theatrical release, the distributor opted to purchase or was handed an inferior product, so the film was a major disappointment in that respect.  Also of note, this is the only Wong Kar-wai film that was not shot by Christopher Doyle, instead by Andy Lau, yet the look of the director is imprinted throughout the film, opening in signature Wong Kar-wai fashion in near hallucinogenic neon colors and a pulsating synthesizer soundtrack, shot in a languorous pace using a mix of slo-mo and hyperkinetic camera movement, near hypnotic cigarette smoke, alienated characters who are outside societal constraints, characters meeting while waiting out a rainstorm, terrific set pieces, especially lounges, night clubs, social clubs, pool halls, or food sequences, prominently featured street scenes which simply burst with activity, music that features an American influence, in this case a heavily synthesized Giorgio Moroder produced song, “Take My Breath Away,” featured in the Tom Cruise blockbuster TOP GUN (1986), here sung by Cantonese singer Sandy Lam, and the usual staple of extraordinary actors, in this case Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau, both of whom work again in Wong’s next film.  Despite the novel look of the film, this is the most generic of his films, typical of Hong Kong Triad gangster films in terms of excessive bullets, blood and violence leading to a sense of futility and despair, yet it enjoys occasional imaginative flair in the writing, especially in the way the romantic leads use evasive language, never speaking directly, yet also displaying a yearning afterwards that better expresses how they really feel.  Set nearly entirely within the generic Hong Kong gangster structure, what sticks out is the outsider’s version of romantic love, a brief moment of hope and possibilities which must be set aside for a Mafia-like blood feud code of honor within the Triad family. 

 

Probably the strangest character here is Jackie Cheung, the wildly uncontrollable, hot tempered younger Triad brother to Andy Lau, who always has to intercede on his behalf to bail him out of trouble.  Lau is a cool-tempered Triad veteran with a killer instinct, a man who fights his own battles and backs down to no one.  Though it may take dozens to restrain him, in this film there’s no Tarantino Kung Fu magic where one guy can mow down dozens of onrushing fighters.  Here, people actually get beat up and hurt badly.  When Maggie Cheung arrives at Lau’s door wearing a SARS mask, a supposed third cousin in need of a place to stay while seeking medical care in Hong Kong, Lau opens his door and his apartment to her while he goes about his usual business.  In time, however, especially after a furious rage, their eyes meet, and after a heated moment ends in passive restraint, she returns home.  When the relationship with his own girlfriend sours, beautifully expressed in an accidental meeting in the rain shrouded in ponderous mystery, and the Triad muscle is starting to put a little heat on him as well, he decides to pay her a surprise visit, which adds a light, comic touch, especially the long montage sequence featuring the song “Take My Breath Away” which ends in a passionate embrace in a telephone booth - - very Miami Vice.  Of trivia interest, William Chang, the noted Production Designer for all of Wong’s films, has a small role, playing the doctor Maggie Cheung was about to marry, who also treats Andy Lau near the end.  Unfortunately, much of the film is not about romance, but is bogged down in the conventional business of street thugs who flail away at one another with pool cues, baseball bats, knives, fists, and eventually guns every chance they get, not a pretty sight, leaving the audience saturated to no end.  But Wong Kar-wai is a master in establishing mood and atmosphere, and this film is no different, offering occasional moments of brilliance rising head and shoulders above generic, but the formulaic world of thugs wins out in the end in what has turned out to be Wong’s only film that follows a pre-written script.    

 

As Tears Go By, directed by Wong Kar-wai | Film review - Time Out

 

A Hong Kong remake of Mean Streets (with emphasis on the violence and the love story, but nothing on Catholicism), this was the first feature from Wong Kar-Wai, recently [1995] established as the great romantic of the Asian avant-garde. It's more generic than either the gorgeous Days of Being Wild or Chungking Express, and less interesting, but it's clearly the work of a gifted film-maker, highly atmospheric with a number of exciting set-pieces (there's a deliriously kitschy romantic montage set to the Mandarin cover of Berlin's 'Take My Breath Away'). If it fails, ultimately, it's because the relationship between the rational gangster Lau and the impetuous Jacky Cheung never really rings true. A cut above the usual HK action melodrama all the same.

 

As Tears Go By (1998), directed by Wong Kar-wai | Movie review  David Fear

Long before Wong Kar-wai perfected his dreamy, ennui-infused aesthetic (or got hopelessly stuck in blueberry goo), he made a name for himself with this warhorse tale of small-time hoods on the road to ruin. Every director has to start somewhere, and in Wong’s case, that meant giving Hong Kong cinema its own Mean Streets: Andy Lau is the Keitelesque wise guy, Jacky Cheung is the dangerously unpredictable screwup, and an oh-so-young Maggie Cheung provides the long-suffering romantic interest. Poses are struck, punches are thrown, and lines are crossed as the film slouches toward a no-future ending.

Seen back in the day, As Tears Go By must have seemed like a moodier alternative to all that HK hyperkineticism; it’s impossible to watch Wong’s debut now, however, without scouring the stock plot for traces of future genius. The filmmaker hasn’t yet figured out how to properly employ a pop narcotic (Marianne Faithfull’s hit is MIA, though you do get a Cantonese rendition of “Take My Breath Away”), and he’s only coyly flirting with stylistic flourishes. But Wong’s baby steps are still strong enough to make you sit up and take notice; the minute you see that opening shot of neon-blue TV monitors, you sense that a major player has stepped into the fold.

Cinepassion  Fernando F. Croce

The template is A Better Tomorrow (and Mean Streets and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie), but the pinwheeling, phosphorescent spirit is undiluted Wong Kar-wai. Hong Kong here is an underworld of vendettas and torpedoes, neon is slashed into swaths of color and people have names like Snooker King and Big Mouth Kay; "FUTURE" glows in one screen-filling sign, ceremonial music emanates out of a boom box. Andy Lau is the low-level hood whose tentative salvation from gangland scamming comes from the countryside in the form of Maggie Cheung, his weak-lunged cousin. The uproarious street theater revolves around Lau's protégé (Jacky Cheung), a hothead fuck-up who brings in the story's obligatory brotherly bond and precipitates the hero's dilemma. The auteur is himself suspended between stools, the testosterone of '80s triad demolition jobs versus the melancholy sense of ephemeral emotion of Days of Being Wild onward. Wong handles both poles fantastically. When his pal turns up bloodied after a brawl, Lau steps out for revenge in a throbbing set-piece of blue filters, crimson steam and smudged slo-mo; elsewhere, a dissolve from a jukebox playing "Take My Breath Away" in Cantonese leads to the couple's transcendental make-out session in a telephone booth, their kiss atomizes the screen. The score favors pounding synthesizers over Nat "King" Cole, tough-guy mystique is shouted about -- the hero must stand by his macho obligations, yet it's Cheung's lingering hurt as he takes off that fixates the camera. Wong's style is still emerging from the Hong Kong action genre, but would John Woo or Ringo Lam ever include a note of serendipitous grace (Lau bumping into a former flame while hiding from the rain, and suddenly experiencing a dizzying opening up of what is and what might have been) between shootouts? Cinematography by Lau Wai-keung. With Alex Man, William Chang, Kau Lam, and Ronald Wong.

As Tears Go By: Wong Kar-wai's First Moody Move | Village Voice  J. Hoberman, April 29, 2008

Wong Kar-wai made his debut feature 20 years ago—an event that BAM is marking with the movie's first non-Chinatown theatrical run. Ostensibly a conventional tale of triad loyalty, As Tears Go By announced the presence of a genuine Hong Kong new wave—as well as an ambitious cineaste.

A vehicle for Hong Kong stars Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau, pivoting on a debt enforcer's relationship with the doomed, heedless, daredevil flake (Jacky Cheung) who is his protégé, Wong's hoodlum love story is relatively low-key—some memorably brutal beatings notwithstanding. But the then 32-year-old Wong was clearly au courant in his knowledge of international festival cinema: He modeled Jacky Cheung's fuck-up on Robert De Niro's Johnny Boy in Mean Streets, and Maggie Cheung's country girl—a waif who shows up on her worldly male cousin's doorstep—on Eva, Eszter Balint's character in Stranger Than Paradise.

Despite these tributes to Scorsese and Jarmusch, Wong's youthful cinephilia was essentially stylistic. For all the generic comic bits and hyperbolic action sequences it contains, As Tears Go By is less interested in violence than mood—and the mood, as always with Wong, is one of reverie. The director's trademark set pieces, based on mega close-ups of tiny details and a strategic form of step-printed, smeared, slow-motion violence, are already present. So too is his characteristically mournful atmosphere—a fusion of smoke, neon, and fetishized pop. The English-language title is taken from a wistful ballad, pointedly absent from the soundtrack; the opening shot is a nocturnal image in which clouds of street steam are reflected in the blank screens of a dozen TV monitors in a shop window.

Although As Tears Go By can be clumsy in its attempt to reconcile genre and sensibility, this discordance has its benefits. Called upon to act after several years of playing perky girlfriends, Maggie is fetchingly awkward and genuinely confused as the naïf who falls for a small-time, big-town tough. And the filmmaker is more than willing to risk everything for l'amour. A Cantonese cover of "Take My Breath Away" underscores the lovers' first, daringly prolonged kiss. It's this cool yet vaporizing passion that's the hallmark of Wong's sensuous romanticism—present in his first movie no less than his latest, with its screen-filling image of a sleeping Norah Jones's pie-à-la-mode-flecked lips in My Blueberry Nights.

Asian Cinema Drifter  Tuna from Asian Cinema Drifter

 

Wong Kar Wai’s first directorial feature as he moved up from writing was his not-so-subtle transferal of Scorcese’s Mean Streets to the “nicer” streets of Hong Kong. The film fits in well to add to the late eighties trend of heroic bloodshed gangster films, so throw in a fine cast consisting of some of Hong Kong’s greatest actors and what more is there to worry about? Ok so it doesn’t have the arty and unique appeal of Wai’s later films, and it’s more of a rough, commercialized genre film with your cookie-cutter plot. But still, it’s executed well enough to make Wai stand out like Woo or Lam at the time, just to show us what he could do before moving in another direction.

Andy Lau plays our main character, Wah, a cool and tough gangster at a mid-level triad position and ‘big brother’ to a younger, idiotic and rasher gangster, Fly. One day, Wah’s aunt forces him to give his cousin, Ngor, who is visiting a nearby doctor for test results on her lung disease, a place to stay. All at once, Wah has relationship problems with his girlfriend, seems to develop feelings for Ngor and has to constantly take responsibility for Fly’s mistakes and attempt to reform Fly’s and his dangerous ways.

Ambition and fame. Brotherly triad love. Leaving the life for the girl. We aren’t breaking any new ground here folks, but we are seeing these themes working correctly as they should, capturing our emotions with a combination of nice pacing, good characters and overqualified actors playing them. The stars hold the piece together firmly, as Andy Lau shows the right emotion at times, and frequently switches from his bored triad persona, to self-pity and then bursts out with charm, or revenge bent energy to round out his character. His relationship with Maggie Cheung as Ngor is easily the most captivating part about the movie, as the familial relationship is callously tossed aside in a passionate reuniting scene, set to a Chinese cover of “Take my Breath Away,” which might have made the scene classic if not for a certain other movie that tainted the 80’s. Maggie is perfect as usual, with no make-up and no funny faces here as she changes from her Police Story comedy persona into a far more dramatic and touching performance. Jackie Cheung is also fitting, as his character is someone the audience can really detest, but he is able to add more dimension and drive to the character to give a hint as to why Wah is so dedicated to protecting him.

Nevertheless, the romance in the film still works the best, and shows that Wai saw his expertise in the field as well when he moved on. It isn’t even the focus of the film, but merely a side endeavor (as part of the commercialism again) that somehow soars above the rest of the film. It’s somewhat refreshing as a Wai fan to see a film that doesn’t focus on the romance as its hook (the closest we get next is Ashes of Time), but one that can tie it into the overall story just to enhance its characters.

That’s not to say the triad parts are unbearable, but they are more of the run-of-the-mill gangster stuff that isn’t anything to write home about. We get internal feuding, grudges, and heroism, many of the same themes that have been overwritten into films and can’t stand the test of time as well as a good romance. Once you also take into account that the other interesting aspect of the film about the difficulty in the repetitive cycle of triad life is taken straight out of Mean Streets, you can’t really give Wai much credit. While some of these generic elements may hurt the film for viewers who’ve dug deep into the similar films of the same era, I can imagine how wonderful an experience it may be for someone just being introduced.

For everyone else, it will mainly bank on your appreciation for the characters, patience, and fanboyism. Whether it be for the actors, or the chance to see Wong Kar Wai’s debut picture, coming into the film as a fan can feed your eagerness and hold you over. You get to see Wai’s early visual style at work, as he films his actions scenes a la Ashes of Time and Fallen Angels with his groggy fast-paced hand-held action camera in tense moments. He also delivers key well-placed shots courtesy of Andrew Lau at a cinematographer position to almost capture another dream-like experience amidst the neon-lit streets or the bright day that still feels dismal.

But what keeps me with the film most of all is my never-ending fascination with the particular style packed into Hong Kong films from the 80’s and early 90’s. There’s just something about the synth soundtracks, the straightforward story, and that indescribable mood I bring up in every review from the period. There’s that ability to blend anything together and make it work like no genre can. As Tears Go By, is no exception to the rule, and even if it isn’t anything special in the grand scheme of film, there are those irreplaceable little things that definitely warrant a viewing.

 

Peter Brunette - Wong Kar-wai (Contemporary Film Directors) - Scribd  175-page book by Peter Brunette, 2005

 

The Film Sufi

 

Only the Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

As Tears Go By - Archive - Reverse Shot  Sam Ho, August 9, 2013

 

Review: "As Tears Go By" (Wong, Hong Kong) on Notebook | MUBI  David Phelps

 

WONG KAR-WAI MARATHON: 'As Tears Go By' | Film Misery  Justin Jagoe

 

First Film Series: Wong Kar-Wai's As Tears Go By - intercut  Cody Lang, May 7, 2013

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

notcoming.com | As Tears Go By - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Leo Goldsmith

 

wong kar-wai – MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE  Jesse Ataide, September 30, 2016

 

Between Productions [Robert Cashill]

 

As Tears Go By | Film at The Digital Fix  Anthony Nield

 

As Tears Go By | Film at The Digital Fix  John White

 

Hong Kong Digital - DVD Review  John Charles, also seen here:  Hong Kong Digital #138: As Tears Go By / Days of Being Wild 

 

As Tears Go By: The Wong Kar-Wai Collection : DVD Talk Review of ...  Matthew Millheiser

 

dOc DVD Review: As Tears Go By (Wong gok ka moon) (1988)  Robert Edwards

 

as tears go by - review at videovista  Patrick Hudson

 

As Tears Go By : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video  Earl Cressey

 

As Tears Go By Blu-ray (Hong Kong) - Blu-ray.com  Svet Atanasov

 

Retrospective: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai | IndieWire  August 19, 2013

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014

 

Bina007 Movie Reviews

 

eFilmCritic Reviews  Jay Seaver

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk  Gary Duncan

 

MFS Movie Database review  Marcus Chan

 

Hong Kong Cinemagic - As Tears Go By

 

Strictly Film School  Acquarello

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

As Tears Go By | Chicago Reader  JR Jones

 

Austin Chronicle [Joey O'Bryan]

 

Struck by Love in a Moody Underworld - The New York Times  Nathan Lee, May 2, 2008

 

DVDBeaver.com [Henrik Sylow]

 

As Tears Go By (film) - Wikipedia

 

Kissing scene in "As Tears Go By"   (2:40)

 

YouTube - As Tears Go By (Wong Kar Wai 1988)   (2:57)

 

DAYS OF BEING WILD (Ah fei zing zyun)        A-                    94

Hong Kong  (94 mi)  1991

 

I always thought each minute flies by, but sometimes it really lingers.

 

Usually thought of as the Asian REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955), as even though the social circumstances are different, young adults older than high school kids, it’s still disaffected young adults with no foreseeable hope in their future, whose wandering, drifting status leads them into a self destructive oblivion.  A wonderfully raw and sensual look at this director’s second film, collaborating for the first time with cinematographer Christopher Boyle, conceived as the first of two installments, but due to box office failures, no second film was ever made, leaving a spare, almost Tsai Ming-liang tone.  The story is about the first generation after WWII, set in Hong Kong in 1960 where characters are consumed by fate and chance, the longing for love, missed opportunities, and by torrents of neverending rain.  We see how short-lived friendships have longer lasting impacts, which seems to counter the prevailing mood of indifference and ennui.   This dreamy, melancholic, yet completely absorbing film saturated in an exotic haze features exquisite performances by, at the time, little named actors who are all now big stars.  The noir mood throughout is positively captivating, sweltering with heat and passion, filled with a reckless sexual abandon of early youth, which is ablaze in energy and hope that is all but extinguished by the dark emptiness of the night. 
 
There is some eye-opening camera work as well as jolting big band Latin musical interludes featuring the music of Xavier Cugat and the songs “My Shawl,” “Perfidia,” “Siboney,” “Jungle Dreams” (which played during the fight sequence), also some dreamy Hawaiian music that opens the film, “Always in My Heart” by Los Indios Tabajaras, and later their version of “Maria Elena” plays during Carina Lau’s dance for Jackie Cheung, while Cugat’s “Maria Elena” plays when Leslie Cheung dances in his underwear (see also:  Soundtrack Track Listings for All Wong Kar-Wai Films).  Anyone familiar with GOODFELLAS (1990), shot just a year earlier, would be familiar with the signature shot as Ray Liotta and his girl enter the Copacabana night club, matched here by an even more impressive shot that starts out on the street before it enters a doorway and glides up a staircase, continuing around a staircase overhead into various rooms and doorways until they land at an empty dance floor, a shot where the camera must have been strung on a wire as it moves so rapidly.  
 
In an idealized vision of dreamy sensuousness mixed with controlled restraint, Leslie Cheung is simply brilliant as Yuddy, the handsome and irresistible young ladykiller with a violent streak, who beats the crap out of a guy with a hammer but then immediately combs his hair afterwards, who preens and dances alone in his underwear in front of a mirror, and who loves and leaves two extraordinary women vying for his attention, the late night insomniac Maggie Cheung as Su Lizhen and jealous dance hostess Carina Lau, known as Lulu or Mimi, both of whom are left crying from heartbreak.  Abandoned by his own mother at age 5 and left to be raised by others, a Shanghai kid brought up in Hong Kong where they don’t even speak the same language, mirroring Wong Kar-wai’s own move at age 5 from Shanghai to Hong Kong in 1963, he’s emblematic of an emotional disconnection that’s likely typical of Hong Kong in the 60’s featuring a brooding, self-centered loner who has no use for others except for what they can offer him.  Yuddy’s plans to find his real mother go awry and his aimless, short-sighted views get him nowhere, leading to an eventual spiral of utter despair.  Also woven into the fabric is street cop Andy Lau who dreams of being a sailor but befriends Su Lizhen during her romantic complications, usually in the pouring rain, also Rebecca Pan, a late 50’s Hong Kong singer, as Yuddy’s benefactor from a young age, and a very peculiar but masterful final sequence featuring a young gambler Tony Leung, which ends the film exactly as it began, using the same mannerisms as his predecessor, combing his hair in front of a mirror, and one by one placing into his pocket poker cards, change, a wad of money, a comb, a folded handkerchief, cigarettes, and a lighter before he goes out, where he seems primed to take the place of Leslie Cheung.  According to the director, “It is the most intriguing ending of all my films.”

 

Days of Being Wild, directed by Wong Kar-wai | Film review - Time Out  Tony Rayns

Wong Kar-Wai's second feature is a brilliant dream of Hong Kong life in 1960. A young man of Shanghainese descent drifts through a series of casual friendships and uncommitted affairs, unconsciously pining for a relationship with his mother, who has started a new life in Manila. He finally takes off for the Philippines, where he sets himself up for the ultimate fall... The terrific, all-star cast enacts this as a series of emotionally unresolved encounters; the swooningly beautiful camera and design work takes its hallucinatory tone from the protagonist's own uncertainties. The mysterious appearance of Tony Leung only in the closing scene heralds a sequel that will sadly never be made. But this is already some kind of masterpiece.

Days of Being Wild | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum

Wong Kar-wai's idiosyncratic style first became apparent in this gorgeously moody second feature (1991), whose romantic vision of 1960 Hong Kong as a network of unfulfilled longings would later echo through In the Mood for Love. Leslie Cheung, Hong Kong's answer to James Dean (in fact the movie appropriates its Cantonese title from Rebel Without a Cause), plays a heartless ladies' man, raised by a prostitute, who eventually leaves for the Philippines in search of his real mother. Maggie Cheung is a waitress whom he woos with his philosophical ruminations on a wall clock, and Andy Lau is a lonely cop who yearns for her. This was conceived as the first of two movies, and its puzzling coda was intended as a teaser for the second part; the box-office failure of Days of Being Wild precluded a sequel and delayed its stateside release for years, though its lack of dramatic closure now seems almost appropriate. As critic Tony Rayns has noted, it's "the first film to rhyme nostalgia for a half-imaginary past with future shock." In Cantonese with subtitles.

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

The poet laurelate who peeked from behind the muscular neon paraphernalia of As Tears Goes By fully emerges in Wong Kar-wai's ravishing second feature, opening with an irresistible bit -- slick-haired lothario Leslie Cheung gets countertop looker Maggie Cheung to stare at his watch for a full minute. "I'll always remember that minute because of you," he declares. That is no Meet-Cute, but the key into Wong's full-bodied romanticism, where time, or, more specifically, the characters' memory of it, provides them with emotional mementos from a world in continuous flux. Clocks are everywhere, yet for the ladykilling hero time is to be spent mainly lolling languidly in beds with his latest conquests, leaping from shy Cheung to coquettish nightclub wriggler Carina Lau. The rambler's odyssey for a sense of self takes him from Hong Kong to the Philippines and into a spoof of John Woo braggadocio at a barroom melee, but Wong's narrative delights in multiple yearning. Awaiting outside in the rain, lovelorn Maggie bumps into stoically tender cop Andy Lau, and a reverse tracking shot of the two walking and chatting with night lights reflected on the wet street culminates in a stunning shot of missed connections around a phonebooth and "Dream Lover" faintly heard somewhere -- Wong is Godard's spiritual son, but there's something of Jacques Demy's sensitivity to the evanescence of emotions in him, too. The setting is the early '60s, and the overwhelming feel for the past stems not only from the characters' dislocation in an unformed cultural topography, but also from a director's ache in recreating a time that may have never existed in the first place. Christopher Doyle's visuals stay lushly attuned to characters' floating reveries, yet in the end the moment has inevitably passed, slowly tracking through a bluish-green jungle as a rumba reverberates down memory. The last shot validates Wong's nostalgia, particularly as the smoothie primping himself up in front of the mirror turns out to be Tony Leung, to pick up the sublime cha-cha nearly a decade later in In the Mood for Love. With Jacky Cheung, and Rebecca Pan.

CineScene (Howard Schumann)  also seen here:  Talking Pictures (UK) review

In Wong Kar-wai's 1991 film Days of Being Wild, Yuddy (Leslie Cheung), a charming drifter captures the attention of store attendant Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung) by asking her to look at his watch. When she sees that it says one minute before 3:00PM on April 16, 1960, he tells her that she will never forget the moment and will dream about him that night. The next time they meet, the moment becomes two, then one hour, then weeks and months but Yuddy is like the mythical bird with no legs that just flies and flies and never lands. Abandoned by his real mother and brought up by a wealthy alcoholic courtesan (Rebecca Pan), he does not know where he came from or where he is going. He treats women with little respect, discarding them when they no longer serve his purpose. When one lover asks him if he loves her, he tells her that during his life he will be friends with many, many women but won't know whom he truly loves until the end.

Days of Being Wild unfolds like a dream with color filters, unusual shadows, and the sights and sounds of Hong Kong's rainy nights and sweltering summers. Based on the director's memories from his childhood and admiration for the style of Argentinean novelist Manuel Puig (Heartbreak Tango), the film is a series of episodes involving six people who touch each other's lives. After his short-lived relationship with Su, Yuddy meets a cabaret dancer who calls herself Mimi (Carina Lau) but their relationship fares no better and she is left to suffer the consequences of their breakup. Meanwhile, Su meets Tide (Andy Lau), a gentle policeman whom she is able to confide until he suddenly leaves Hong Kong to become a sailor. Each character seeks a sense of identity and fulfillment. After Rebecca tells him of her plans to move to America with her boyfriend, she finally lets him know who and where his real mother is. After Yuddy goes to the Philippines to try to find his mother, the lives of the main protagonists come together in a powerful conclusion.

Days of Being Wild may sound like a soap opera but the film reaches a much higher artistic level. Supported by outstanding performances by Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, and Jacky Cheung as Yuddy's only friend Zeb, it is a tone poem about longing and one's search for identity. We care about the characters even though they don't seem to care about themselves. Like many of us, they pine for the things that might have been, the word that was never said, and the love that remains elusive. A commercial failure but an artistic triumph, Days of Being Wild is a moody, atmospheric film that with its background of popular music, in this case 1950's rumbas and cha-cha's, forecasts the director's later In the Mood For Love. As a beautifully realized example of alienated people desperately seeking their place in the world, however, it stands securely on its own.

Hong Kong Digital (DVD Review)  John Charles, (excerpt), also seen here:   Hong Kong Digital #138: As Tears Go By / Days of Being Wild 

Riding the wave of gangster thrillers spawned by the success of A BETTER TOMORROW, TEARS did solid business and that, coupled with the accolades the movie received from foreign critics, prompted producers Alan Tang Kwong-wing and Rover Tang Kwong-chow to essentially give Wong carte blanche for DAYS OF BEING WILD. Working with sync sound (still rare for HK movies at that point) and partnered for the first time with the idiosyncratic but undeniably brilliant cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Wong turned out the first of what might be termed his "signature" movies.

The film is set in 1960 and revolves around handsome cad York (Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing), who is either incapable of or unwilling to treat women with any degree of compassion or respect. After taking up with shy, withdrawn clerk So Lai-chun (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk), he soon moves on to scatterbrained dancing girl Mimi (Carina Lau Kar-ling), who is more willing to put up with the sort of games he plays. York's behaviour can, at least partially, be attributed to his foster mother (IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE’s Rebecca Pan Di-hua). A former courtesan turned embittered alcoholic, she refuses to tell York who his real mother is, forcing him to stay with her by dangling this bit of crucial information just out of reach. Policeman Tide (Andy Lau Tak-wah) notices Lai-chun brooding outside York's apartment building and, over time, becomes her confidant. Tide's interest eventually turns into unrequited love, a situation that also befalls York's friend (Jacky Cheung Hok-yau), who desires Mimi but is soundly rejected by her. York is finally able to learn the whereabouts of his true mother and heads off to the Philippines in search of her. There, he finds both rejection and Tide, who is now a sailor.

If AS TEARS GO BY makes a few concessions to commerciality, then DAYS OF BEING WILD qualifies as the first "true" Wong Kar-wai movie. It's all here: the similarities in approach to Jean-Luc Goddard's early output, the underlying theme of unrequited love, measured pacing, skeletal narrative structure, languid takes of beautiful, brooding protagonists, alternating voiceover monologues, and gorgeous compositions complimenting William Cheung Suk-ping's impeccable art direction (finding great beauty in squalor this time). Also, like the films Wong is known for, this is best appreciated through multiple viewings, though the undercurrents here are not as rich or extensive as those found in his later work. The performances are all very good, especially Leslie Cheung as the mother-fixated lothario and Carina Lau as the hopelessly misguided Mimi, who refuses to accept what is painfully obvious to those around her. Tony Leung Chiu-wai appears in the final minutes here as part of a bit designed to set up a sequel. As the film was poorly received by audiences, it has yet to be produced but Wong's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (reviewed in issue #128a) can be considered a companion piece. The director has stated that he regards MOOD as another chapter of DAYS and, in fact, Maggie Cheung's character in this later film, Su Li-zhen, shares the same name (Mega Star's subtitles for DAYS use the Cantonese equivalent, So Lai-chun) and could theoretically be that girl a few years later. Might Tony Leung's handsome, unnamed stranger also be the character he plays in MOOD?

Asian Cinema Drifter  Tuna  

 

As the first part of his trilogy consisting of In the Mood for Love and 2046, Wong Kar Wai explores 1960’s Hong Kong with a story about the handsome Yuddy, who learns from his “mother” that she isn’t his true birth mother, but to keep him from abandoning her, she refuses to reveal his mother’s name. Meanwhile, Yuddy starts up two relationships, one with Su Li Zhen, a quiet, simple girl who works at a sports arena ticket window; and the other with a loud dancer named Mimi, full of pride and style.

Days of Being Wild is one of those movies that I’d love to recommend first to Wong Kar Wai newcomers, but never get to because they end up watching Chungking Express or In the Mood for Love first. It’s difficult to understand how I’d have reacting having seen Days of Being Wild first, and seeing Wai lay a foundation for the themes he explores in his later movies more interestingly and stylistically. Would those have had a weaker impact? Or would Days of Being Wild have seemed like a better movie? Either way, simply because Wai is refining his talent, caught halfway between a structured screenwriter’s handbook story and wanting to be as free as he can, we get nice look into his beginnings without the glitz and heart that filled his later films.

A myriad of those cliché themes fill the structure, from Yuddy’s inner workings, to the romance, to the setting of the hot summer days. As its been pointed out nearly everywhere, Wong Kar Wai evokes a pseudo-French new wave feel that partially emerges in the film resembling an atmospheric version of Truffuat’s Jules et Jim, in story and structure. To top off the relationship qualms, dishonesty and search for love; Yuddy has psychological parental issues to explain his playboy ways and seeks to resolve these by finding his real mother. While these cliches seem to stick out, Wai hammers them down so they aren’t as painfully obvious as you’d expect, like the magnificent mood set by the sweltering summer days Wai creates in the tight gritty rooms and dimly lit hallways. Even watching Yuddy show Su Li Zhen a clock, and explain to her they’ll always have this minute for friendship, as cheesy as it sounds, we can’t help but love it. It feels like something we'd see a soft-boiled Humphrey Bogart do if he were lovelorn and desperate. Yuddy’s pickup line is magic. We know it. He knows it. And lucky for him, Su Li Zhen knows it.

The plot fails to be as engrossing as we’d like though, as Yuddy and Mimi generally come across as spoiled and unlikable while only Maggie Cheung as Su Li Zhen captures our hearts and has the screen time to revel in it. Leslie Cheung and Carina Lau put out magnificent performances, but there’s something about their characters and relationship that can’t match up to the subtlety of Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau’s midnight walks. Sure the inner goodness in us wants everyone to find happiness as we voyeuristically glimpse at these moments of depression in their lives, but when Leslie evokes the stubbornness of his character, its hard to feel pity for him in the context of the film. Perhaps the point was to make a few of them unlikable characters, or it's just a personal perspective, but despite all the actors giving remarkable performances, it’s a shame when the characters they emulate aren’t the types we really want a glimpse at.

Surprise, Days of Being Wild is another beautiful evocation of a bittersweet mood only Wong Kar Wai can create. An early work of Christopher Doyle’s as well, his visuals are a foreshadowing of what to expect to be expanded on in Fallen Angels and Happy Together. There are the fuzzy moonlight composed promenades of Su Li and Tide, the freedom and peace of the brilliantly green Phillipines or the stuffy dark workplace of Su Li in the sports arena. It brings about this mood that sets us in the melancholy world of the characters filled with passing moments of happiness that Wai’s ear lends its assistance to. Spanish oldies and island and paradise reminiscent instrumentals are two of the perfectly expressionistic types of music that can inspire us to take a vacation ourselves.

Days of Being Wild, for older Hong Kong fans, can be remembered as the film that sucked them into Wong Kar Wai’s vacuum of metaphorical greatness. Literally put, it’s a good interlude to his career. Though the clichés of alienation and love are more apparent and less effective than his other works, a decent Wong Kar Wai movie is still lightyears ahead of many modern romances we see today.

 

Movie review: 'Days of Being Wild'   Michael Wilmington from The Chicago Tribune

Lost in a haze of voluptuous shadows and flickering lights on glowing flesh, the main characters of Wong Kar-Wai's neglected classic "Days of Being Wild" are five reckless youths in 1960 Hong Kong, enslaved by passion and illusion, along with an aging "mother" who knows some of the truth behind the lies.

Sometimes cinema's highest achievements become clear only in retrospect. "Days of Being Wild"—now clearly revealed as one of the peaks of Hong Kong filmmaking and a masterwork of contemporary cinema giant Wong—was a commercial and critical flop on its 1991 Hong Kong release and ignored or low-rated afterwards in America. Yet in this current re-release by Kino International, which also included the movie in its superb DVD set featuring five films by the director, we can see how important Wong's second feature was to Asian and world film history and how crucial to penetrating his steamy, impassioned art and worldview.

With a cast of young actors who eventually became Asian and world superstars—including Andy Lau and three Cheungs, Maggie, Jacky and the late Leslie (who played the transvestite theater actor in "Farewell My Concubine")—as well as fiery images crafted by the great visual team of director-writer Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle, "Days" now seems a triumph of movie pop poetics.

The settings are Hong Kong and the Philippines in 1960, and the tale so wildly romantic that it sears our imaginations. The main character is a seductive young gangster named Yuddy (Leslie Cheung), the magnetic force in a group that also includes his two girlfriends—frostily beautiful bartender So Lai-Chun (Maggie Cheung) and pert dancer/showgirl/bar girl Mimi (Carina Lau)—along with Yuddy's shady pal Zeb (Jacky Cheung), lovelorn cop Tide (Andy Lau) and Yuddy's nameless adoptive mother, a regal-looking former hooker (Tita Munoz).

"Days" begins with a scorching erotic encounter between Yuddy and So, which is ignited by an evocation of time (Yuddy's request for a mere minute's relationship) and ends with the two entangled in the sheets. All the other main characters are also, it seems, aroused or galvanized by the effortlessly sexy Yuddy—and Tide and Zeb are in love with, respectively, So and Mimi. Yuddy himself is obsessed primarily with finding the birth mother who abandoned him, whom he eventually tracks to a fate- and doom-ridden climax in the Philippines.

With almost palpable heat and an intense noirish visual style, the film records the erotic encounters and peregrinations of this promiscuously entwined group. They're all wanderers, originally from different geographical locations: Shanghai, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Macao. And Yuddy's flight from the beds of Hong Kong to family reckoning in the Philippines echoes a myth he recounts of a bird who flies constantly and only lands once—at his death.

All these actors are great camera subjects. But, quite deliberately, Leslie Cheung's performance as Yuddy is intended to evoke that eternal symbol of alienated adolescence, James Dean. The Hong Kong title of "Days of Being Wild" more accurately translates as "The Story of Rebellious Youth," which is the most common Hong Kong title translation for Dean and Nick Ray's 1955 classic "Rebel Without a Cause."

Like Dean's Jim Stark in "Rebel," Yuddy is a seeming hood-hedonist who is actually locked in a painful quest for identity and family love, and "Days," like "Rebel," breaks your heart with its violent poetry. The visual style, arranged in four distinct acts oscillating between intense closeups and long, complex tracking shots, is drenched in darkness, trapping the lovers, friends and enemies in Wong's vision of the past. And, as always for this very time-obsessed filmmaker ("In the Mood for Love," "Ashes of Time," "Chungking Express"), we are made constantly aware in the story of both remembrance of things past and the remorseless flow of present time.

The current power of Wong's "Days of Being Wild," of course, is augmented by a different kind of nostalgia, including our views of these eventual Hong Kong filmmaking and acting greats in their incandescent youth—and especially our sight of the young Leslie Cheung, more than a decade before his suicide in 2003. Like Dean, the much more prolific Leslie died relatively young. But he also leaves some classics of youthful romance behind, most particularly "Days of Being Wild," this gorgeous story of rebellious youth. As we watch, fire and flesh, passion and the past leap from the screen.

Peter Brunette - Wong Kar-wai (Contemporary Film Directors) - Scribd  175-page book by Peter Brunette, 2005

 

The Film Sufi: "Days of Being Wild" - Wong Kar Wai (1990)

 

As Years Go By | Village Voice  J. Hoberman, November 9, 2004

 

Days of Being Wild (阿飛正傳) (1990) - LoveHKFilm.com  Kozo (Ross Chen)

 

AHFEI ZHENG ZHUAN   Scarlet Cheng from Film Reference

 

Days of Being Wild - Reverse Shot  Nathan Kosub, July 17, 2007

 

Days of Being Wild - Reverse Shot  Aliza Ma, August 3, 2013

 

Review: Days of Being Wild | The House Next Door | Slant Magazine  Andrew Chan, February 4, 2009

 

The House Next Door [The Conversations] [Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard]  April 29, 2011

 

Observations on film art : Years of being obscure - David Bordwell  June 24, 2008

 

WONG KAR WAI MARATHON: The Informal Trilogy | Film Misery  Justin Jagoe on Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, and 2046, collectively known as Wong Kar Wai’s Informal Trilogy, December 8, 2011

 

Wong Kar Wai As A Metaphor Of Love. Part 1: 'Days of Being Wild ...   Ekaterina Petrakova from the Berlin Film Journal, May 14, 2014

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-Wai, 1990) | Forrest In Focus: Critical ...  Forrest Cardamenis

 

Oeuvre: Wong Kar-Wai: Days of Being Wild - Spectrum Culture  Erica Peplin

 

Days of Being Wild Review (Wong Kar-Wai) | Public Transportation Snob  Dan Heaton

 

Cinephiliac Moments: The Phantom — Photogénie — Cinea  Adrian Martin on Leslie Cheung, August 18, 2014

 

The History of Cinema. Wong Kar-Wai: biography, reviews, links  Piero Scaruffi reviews

 

New York Sun [Nathan Lee]

 

Days of Being Wild  Ed Wealu from Cinema Without Borders

 

Gerald Peary - film reviews - Days Of Being Wild

 

Days of Being Wild - TCM.com  Sean Axmaker

 

The Wong Kar-Wai Collection Read TCM's Home Video Review on this film  Nathaniel Thompson on the Wong Kar-wai Collection

 

Days of Being Wild | Film at The Digital Fix  Gary Couzens

 

Days of Being Wild | Film at The Digital Fix  Anthony Nield

 

Days of Being Wild | Film at The Digital Fix  John White

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Matt Peterson) dvd review

 

VideoVista review  Paul Higson

 

DVDActive (Paul Griffiths) dvd review [7/10]

 

Retrospective: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai | IndieWire  August 19, 2013

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014

 

Days of Being Wild  Acquarello from Strictly Film School

 

Days of Being Wild | Larsen On Film  Josh Larsen

 

UNDERRATED #4: Days of Being Wild - REEL GOOD  John Roebuck

 

Daily Film Dose [Alan Bacchus]

 

eFilmCritic.com (Jay Seaver) review [4/5]

 

Days of Being Wild - Hong Kong Cinema  YTSL

 

Bina007 Movie Reviews

 

Movies into Film.com (N.P. Thompson) review

 

Thoughts on Stuff  Patrick Meaney

 

not coming to a theater near you (Rumsey Taylor) review

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk  Emma Slawinski

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

MovieMartyr.com  Jeremy Heilman

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Time Out Hong Kong - 100 Greatest Hong Kong Films [Edmund Lee]  listed at #5

 

Days Of Being Wild - Movie Reviews and Movie Ratings | TVGuide.com

 

Boston Globe review [4/4]   Ty Burr

 

Washington Post (Desson Thomson) review

 

Austin Chronicle [Joey O'Bryan]

 

Austin Film Society [Chale Nafus]

 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Carla Meyer]

 

Los Angeles Times (Kevin Crust) review

 

Long-Overdue Release for a Triumph of 1991 - The New York Times  Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, November 19, 2004

 

DVDBeaver.com [Henrik Sylow]

 

Days of Being Wild - Wikipedia

 

Image results for Days of Being Wild photos

 
CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Chung Hing sam lam)       A                     99
Hong Kong  (100 mi)  1994

 

A quirky, wonderfully fresh and inventive love story, featuring a dazzling, unforgettable and truly fabulous performance by Cantonese pop star Faye Wong, who also sings a Cantonese cover of a Cranberries pop song at the end which actually had the patrons happily humming the tune as they were leaving the theater, and add to that the incredible use of the Mama’s and the Papa’s song, “California Dreamin,” which never sounder better.  Also featured is a strong, understated Tony Leung, who in the storyline barely knows what hit him, also Brigitte Lin.  The story follows two fragmented stories of two beat cops who have both recently been dumped by their girl friends, whose inner lives are explored through interior monologues that are startlingly unique and sometimes hilarious.  What Faye Wong does in Tony Leung’s apartment is simply ingenious.  She is a constant delight and there’s no one I can think of in the last 40 years that can match the appeal of her unique performance. 
 
I can truthfully say I enjoyed this film as much as any film I saw all year, a dizzyingly satisfying film, and the best of this genre that I’ve seen, as the overzealous, visual flair of cinematographer Christopher Doyle matches the myriad of thoughts from the interior monologues which underline the innovative imagery, like layers of musical counterpoint, a remarkable portrait of urban loneliness and the search for romance through some incredibly off-beat comedy, a choreography of missed opportunities where the mere suggestion of romance can be a dream.  Having recently seen Jacques Demy’s 1967 song and dance musical THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, where a continuous stream of near misses are perfectly designed, and are actually a carefully crafted, beautiful construction of abstract thoughts which Demy has down to an art form, Kar-wai uses the same abstract premise in a contemporary setting, ships passing in the night, lingering moments in slow motion while a frenetic urban congestion passes by in speeded up motion, traveling through an impressionistic blur of neon-lit colors, when the hand-held cameras slow down, there are solitary moments of observation and reflection, charming small moments filled with a bittersweet melancholy, imagery always underscored by music, such as a repeating reggae refrain in a bar, or the use of a walking bass line underscoring a soprano sax of what sounds like Pat Metheny.  The similarity to a Demy musical is not to be dismissed, as the adjectives used to describe the construction of this film is amazingly similar. 
 
The ending reminded me of a more recent Hong Kong film, Peter Chan’s 1997 film COMRADES, ALMOST A LOVE STORY, which is to say that film owes a lot to this film, as the improbable of improbables, a chance moment in time in a world dominated by heartbreak, where unsuccessful relationships and cris-crossing paths finally lead, quite accidentally, to a bizarre, yet wildly inventive expression of romance.  “What a Difference a Day Makes.”

"Dream Person"
by Faye Wong
(cover of "Dreams" by The Cranberries)

"Know Oneself and Each Other"
by Faye Wong
(cover of "Bluebeard" by The Cocteau Twins)

"California Dreamin'"
by The Mamas and the Papas

"Things In Life"
by Dennis Brown

"What a Difference a Day Makes"
by Dinah Washington

Chungking Express, directed by Wong Kar-wai | Film review - Time Out  Tony Rayns

Wong Kar-Wai's movie tells two loosely interlinked stories, both about lovelorn cops who get involved with women who are wrong for them. In the first, Takeshi Kaneshiro tries to pick up Brigitte Lin in a late-night bar, unaware she's a big-time heroin smuggler who's spent the evening hunting down some absconding drug couriers. In the second, the boyish Faye Wang (a star is born!) gets a crush on Tony Leung and starts breaking into his apartment to redecorate it while he's out. This is what Godard movies were once like: fast, hand-held, funny and very, very catchy. The year's zingiest visit to Heartbreak Hotel.

Chungking Express | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum

An immensely charming and energetic comedy (1994, 97 min.) by Wong Kar-wai, one of the most exciting and original contemporary Hong Kong filmmakers. Though less ambitious than Days of Being Wild (1990) or Ashes of Time (1994) and less hyperbolic than Fallen Angel (1995), this provides an ideal introduction to his work. Both of its two stories are set in present-day Hong Kong and deal poignantly with young policemen striving to get over unsuccessful romantic relationships and having unconventional encounters with women (a mob assassin and an infatuated fast-food waitress respectively). Wong's singular frenetic visual style and his special feeling for lonely romantics may remind you of certain French New Wave directors, but this movie isn't a trip down memory lane; it's a vibrant commentary on young love today, packed with punch and personality. In Cantonese and Mandarin with subtitles.

Chungking Express   James Wolcott from The New Yorker, this reviewer certainly missed the boat, so much so it’s infamous (and who is James Wolcott & where is he today?)

 

Arriving on a rolling thunder of advance hype and an endorsement from Quentin Tarantino, this Hong Kong import—directed by Wong Kar-Wai—consists of two loosely connected stories about lovesick policemen captivated by mysterious women. One dame (Brigitte Lin Chin-Hsia) is a drug smuggler disguised in a blond wig and sunglasses, the other (Faye Wang) a kooky chicklet in a fast-food joint who swings her head as she listens endlessly to "California Dreamin'." Although the film snakes its way through the packed and labyrinthine shopping arcades of Hong Kong (there are few patches of natural light), "Chungking Express" is no romping, stomping John Woo-Jackie Chan blood-squib festival—it's a romantic comedy tickled silly by its own dopey cuteness. It dotes on its lonely-guy heroes as they dote on themselves. The first cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro) ponders the expiration dates on cans of pineapple, asking if love has a past-due date, too. The second (Tony Leung Chin-Wai) steps into his flooded apartment and wonders if it's been weeping in his absence. The film is so talky, repetitious, visually stuttery, and slackly paced that sitting through it once is like seeing it twice. For cultists only. In Cantonese and Mandarin

 

Asian Cinema Drifter - Asian film reviews for your unspoiled ...  Tuna from Asian Cinema Drifter (link lost)

 

Damn Tarantino stole my thesis on Faye Wong’s attraction. While watching Chungking Express, you get this feeling Faye Wong plays one of those characters every views falls in love with. Like say Audrey Tatou in Amelie or Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Then after watching his little follow-up and his explanation of it, granted I came up with this a few years too late, I still feel robbed. Nonetheless, with all thievery put aside, it perfectly sums up my sentiments on Chungking Express. These are the types of characters that Wong Kar Wai makes you fall in love with. More expressive and arguably deeper than those in In the Mood for Love, Wai is able to infuse such originality into a light breezy whim he had while stuck on editing Ashes of Time.

Chungking Express is comprised of two love stories set in the busy streets of Hong Kong that are connected by way of a take-out restaurant. The first story explores a connection between a drug dealer who loses her shipment and a lonely cop 223. Recently coming off a break-up of a five-year relationship, 223 purchases a can of pineapples with the expiration date of their breakup every day for a month, to determine where his life will go. The second story deals with another lovelorn cop who befriends a detached lovable cashier at the take-out. She gains access to his apartment and begins to amuse herself by changing little details and seeing if he notices.

First and foremost, this is exactly the type of film you show to those who have lost all faith in romantic comedy. It manages to avoid the annoying clichés, keep the warm familiar ones and give the audience such a deep connection with the characters. Wai effectively uses the cheesy voice-over technique but it’s so fitting. The internal monologues never seem forced and are sporadic, but they add the key insight into characters at the perfect moments. Clichéd metaphors and symbols are often referred to in these seemingly overdramatic monologues and conversations, but once again, the way the story is shaped so we're still touched by them like we're hearing them for the first time.

The best way to describe Chungking Express is like a dream. It has this fluffy feeling like we’re floating through Hong Kong watching these lonely characters try to find love. Without a distinct plot and instead glimpses at periods in the character’s love lives, we can’t help but get caught up with them. We don’t care how many times we see the lovable Faye Wong dancing to California Dreamin' at the counter. We don’t care how overdramatic it is with Takeshi Kaneshiro jogging to keep from crying. It’s all flawlessly illustrated through Wai, as obvious as it sounds, without a script. This positively affects the direction of the film because without a clear solid narrative, Wai is given the freedom to focus on what he feels is the truth and what generally feels right.

The technical experimentation is perhaps the most striking and lends itself even further to the dreamy mood. Capturing the frenzy of Hong Kong with a simple handheld camcorder and weaving through “glossy” and grainy footage, Christopher Doyle beautifully adds to the melodrama. Combined with some haunting ambience, reggae and the Mamas and the Papas, the film stretches our emotions by forbidding us from figuring out if we should be happy or sad. This aesthetic experience expressed by the combination of sight and sound strengthen the set themes with a deeper perspective of life in Hong Kong.

In creating this film which basically sort of wanders, Wai masterfully ties together his plot, characters, technical choices, and music into one consistent mood for the viewer. He knows exactly what he wants us to notice and contrary to negative critics, he does have a point. Instead of just composing pretty shots without a clear goal, he puts the importance in living with the characters. Chungking Express at its core, is a gorgeous art-house film that restrains thought, and simply wants us to feel its magic.

 

Mark Peranson from Cinema Scope (link lost): 

If there’s one thing the 90s taught us, it is that one must look East. While Hou won’t date, unlike the cans of tinned pineapple in Chungking Express, Wong may well be the decade’s best representative. Litanies of memory shards, broken moments of incandescently recaptured time, pop in both visual bravada and musical backwash, this is Wong Kar-wai. Exuberant, lyrical, visually inventive, and oh so cheesy, Chungking Express and Fallen Angels — two films that relate to each other more closely than any other pair produced this decade — are something I will call a "duology." Even if there were better films-as-art made, these two very time-specific films about pain and loss, rendered in the most palatable, high modernist style imaginable, are the 90s. (Even if Hou’s Goodbye South, Goodbye manages to be neck-deep in both pools of wealth.) Possibly the last great modernist, Wong Kar-wai’s modus operandi in both parts of the duology (or is it bi-ology?) remains the same — song-lyric simple, fragmented studies of urban alienation, memory, disenchantment, and love-sickness with those bruised pineapples for protagonists. In Chungking, the connections between the two halves are so slight as to be missed completely by most, including the director; the same goes for connections between both films. Angels, in comparison, presents a spiraled narrative modeled on a double-helix, spawning a living, breathing structure.

A dream in sound, Chungking is film as pop record, a film starring pop stars, and that singular stand-out, Faye Wong, whose only appearance since has been in a Wong Kar-wai Motorola ad. (She will be in WKW’s upcoming 2046, when — or if — he finishes.) The last shot of Chungking is, after all, given over to the character with the most screen time — the stereo. The action is divided between the Chungking Mansions, where pineapple-eater Takeshi Kaneshiro looks for love in the wrong woman, and — after a stunning transition — the Midnight Express fast-food counter, where Faye does her ineluctably charming and endlessly viewable ketchup-and-mustard dance, dreaming of a construct known as "California" and playing games with another cop, #663, chef-salad eater Tony Leung, in his apartment overlooking the Central escalators.

Chungking is often cited as an À Bout de souffle for the 90s, and Faye is its Jean Seberg. I spin it over and over again like a hit 45, perhaps because of the performances, perhaps because it is a film about repetition-compulsion, musical and romantic playing, a masked ball — with characters often living eyes wide shut to their romantic realities. It may also be another Vertigo, in a decade full of them (e.g., Basic Instinct, the Last Seduction, Exotica, Nouvelle Vague, Secret Defense, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Lost Highway, I can go on) — but far less creepy. Watch, dream along with the Cranberries, as the main characters remake themselves — most notably, Faye into #663’s lost love, though Brigitte Lin, in her second-to-last-role, seems to channel Cassavetes’ Gloria, kid and all — and project their emotions outside of rational adult proportions, often onto inanimate objects.

One of Wong’s many marvellous antinomies is that his relentlessly fun films, so dependent on improvisation on the part of cast and crew, are some of the most precise things around. (Hou and Wong are, in many ways, excellent opposites — gravity to weightlessness; even if Hou also claims to make up his shots day-of., at least he’s got a script.) An internationalist by nature and education, Wong draws on Leone, Resnais and Godard, among others — my last viewing of Chungking Express pulled out a splinter of Rivette — and his characters are as isolated from their country as much as they’re dislocated from each other, and, in Fallen Angels, even from their own haircuts. And yet, with Chungking in hand, Fallen Angels remains a fresh viewing experience, if not akin to learning how to see for the first time, a dense work yielding more resonance with each subsequent viewing of its ultra-wide angle palette.

The third line of Chungking, excised during the former’s hasty filming and regionally dependent improv, Angels is so self-contained as to be a time capsule in itself. Intentionally an uncomfortable mix between art-cinema and genre play without lapsing into self-parody, Angels’ stylistic barrage defies casual description. Intercut rather than sliced, Fallen Angels’ central quadrology each deliver Wong’s voice-over mix of comedy, confession, and longing, and shoves plot to the backseat. The first, arch-serious, side of the mirror involves an Agent (Michele Reis) cleaning the flat of a Hitman (Leon Lai), whose assignments she books and whom she secretly loves. The reverse farce involves an ex-con (Takeshi Kaneshiro again, a stand-out, muted from eating bad pineapple) who reopens stores that have closed for the night and physically forces customers to buy his goods, and an hysterical young woman (Charlie Young), with whom he falls in love for the first time, only to lose her to the memory of another.

If there was any doubt, Wong’s a diehard romantic. The Fallen Angels are also lovers; rather, people who love but ultimately fail to connect — they only occupy each other’s space, and they are linked only by editing. (Once more, in opposition — in Goodbye, South, Hou gives us the take of the decade — a lock, load, and run four-minuter encapsulating his spatial system, where his central quadrology are all trapped in the same apartment, and the only way out of the frame is by jumping out of the window.) Melancholy infuses their world entire, as love not had or love lost is the equilibrium. The happiness and sadness — two emotions yielding melancholy when the latter directly follows the former — point to Wong’s deliberate strategy of coexistence. Loneliness and connection are flip sides of one two-headed coin — everything functions this way, as Wong inserts both binaries in the same space: love/hate, memory/reality, pain/pleasure, noir/comedy, monochrome/colour. This makes sense of the weirdest "happenings": see the scene where Reis sits calmly, internally balanced and content, while for no apparent reason, a raucous brawl ensues in the background.

As the Flying Pickets pour syrupy harmonies over the final poignant images, it’s shocking to discover that the ending to such an absurd film can be so engaging and convincing. Some years from now, when Wong has been immortalized with the Nobel Prize for Film for his unflagging cinematic innovation — how many cut-up contemporary narratives are his cousins? — scholars will look back at Angels as the ultimate endpoint of (the only) 90s post-MTV film style. It also draws the curtain on an independent Hong Kong, whose countdown began in 1994 with the ticking clocks in Chungking Express, whose skyscrapers adorn Fallen Angels’ final frames, along with one last puff of pretty smoke — a transition, light and grave, a look up into the sky closing the book, returning slightly beyond the clouds seen at Chungking’s beginning. It’s pure, impassioned — youthful, we are all young at heart — poetry, and always chokes me up.

Hong Kong Digital #262: Chungking Express  also seen here:  Hong Kong Digital - DVD [John Charles]

During a three month break in the editing of his troubled period epic ASHES OF TIME (reviewed in issue #154), director Wong Kar-wai crafted this irresistible confection, which is both a contemporary valentine to classic French New Wave cinema and a thoroughly charming celebration of human ardour and the randomness of life in the city. It tells two very divergent yet somewhat interwoven stories, centering on handsome policemen and their encounters with two very different, fascinating women. However, both parts deal equally with Wong's love for and mastery of cinema. Rarely has there been a motion picture (outside of Jean-Luc Godard's filmography) that was so willing to play with the medium's edicts regarding velocity, cadence, image, and texture. He also cares deeply for his lead characters. Like the film itself, they are dynamic, distinctive and wonderfully quirky.

Story #1 centers on Qiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), aka. Badge #223, a hopeless romantic who has just been dumped by his girlfriend, May. He relentlessly muses about fate, while consuming can after can of pineapple (May's favourite food)...but only cans that expire on May 1st., his birthday. After a particularly painful evening of soul searching, he crosses paths with the enigmatic "Woman In Blonde Wig" (Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia, as an exquisite incarnation of the classic noir heroine), a drug smuggler whose band of East Indian "mules" have absconded with their cargo. After initially passing within inches of each other, they meet again in a bar, get drunk, and end up in bed together...sort of. Story #2 involves Badge #663 (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), a forlorn cop who has just been dumped by his stewardess girlfriend (Valerie Chow Kar-ling). He gains a secret admirer in the form of Faye (Faye Wong), a flighty young woman who works at The Midnight Express, a fast food stand that is one of 663's regular haunts. Faye (who is obsessed with The Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreaming," which she plays endlessly at high volume) expresses her affection for 663 in a decidedly original manner: she breaks into and secretly tidies his apartment. Over the course of several visits, she cleans, rearranges furniture, and even switches the labels on tins of food. Slowly but surely, this adds variety and mystery to 663's dreary routine and, in the end, Faye becomes his lover...sort of.

Better experienced than recounted, CHUNGKING EXPRESS is gratifyingly clever and worthy of multiple viewings. Wong has always twisted narrative conventions and this effort will be no less disconcerting to those taken aback by his other work (there are no introductions, just recapitulations). Even by 1994, the director’s films had already had substantial impact in their home territory, and served as a choice point of reference for critics and comedians alike. Meanwhile, Wong's trademark "Blur-O-Vision" action sequences were picked up on by everyone from Tsui Hark (THE BLADE) to Wong Jing (RETURN TO A BETTER TOMORROW), and became a stylistic requirement of the flourishing goo wak jai crime genre. When all is said and done, CHUNGKING EXPRESS (which won several prizes at the 1994 HK Film Awards, including Best Picture) will probably be remembered as Wong Kar-wai's signature film. It is laidback and lightning paced, cutting edge and retro, capricious and somber, a mass of incongruous actions, missed opportunities, unguarded sentiment and unfettered bliss. Just like life...sort of. 

Two versions of CHUNGKING EXPRESS have been issued on domestic video. The film was the first release from Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures, and he presented Wong's "International Cut" of the film. World Video’s tape and laserdisc were derived from the original, shorter 98 minute HK release. Among the differences: the scenes where The Blonde and her mules prepare for the smuggling trip are much shorter in the HK version; the sequence where Qiwu loiters outside his girlfriend's window occurs earlier in the US print; traditional Indian music plays in the background during the smugglers' arrival at the airport in the US print, while the HK version features the title theme; the HK version deletes most of The Blonde's search for the smugglers and all of her subsequent kidnapping of a little Indian girl (in order to extort the whereabouts of the drugs); Faye Wong's rendition of "Dreams" no longer plays in the background of a sequence in the international version but can still be heard later on and during the end credits. The longer version is more satisfying and the HK print may have been shortened for no good reason other than to keep the running time under 100 minutes, thus insuring the requisite five shows a day in theatres.

Criterion released a laserdisc edition of CHUNGKING EXPRESS back in 1997 and, like that large platter release, the Miramax/Rolling Thunder DVD presents the aforementioned longer international version of the film, which includes approximately 4 minutes of material not seen in HK prints. However, the new transfer may be too spic and span for its own good. Wong made CHUNGKING EXPRESS on the fly, and it is a small picture with a rough-hewn texture that was at least partially by design. Criterion’s 1.66:1 transfer retains more of the expected flaws, as well as a light amount of grain, giving it a more film-like appearance. Miramax’s rendition (which features a sliver more on the right side, but crops the horizontal portion of the image to the North American standard of 1.85:1) benefits from the extra resolution, but removes most of the wear and grain. One suspects that the older transfer is probably a bit more in line with what Wong and Doyle would have liked, but if you do not have access to the LD, this is still not a bad way to see the film. The DVD includes an introduction and wrap-up by Quentin Tarantino, the HK and US trailers, and a Sneak Peeks section featuring promo spots for six other titles. Onscreen title: CHUNG KING EXPRESS.

Blur as genre   Howard Hampton from ArtForum, March 1996

The eternal city of youth beckons anew: romantic urban ciphers (cops, gun moll, stewardess, fast-food gamine) bathed in neon reflections of themselves, style as metaphysics (sunglasses at midnight), gaiety and sorrow entwined in a hungover reverie. That's the mood of Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express, the 1994 Hong Kong movie-cum-international-sensation that finally opens this month in America under the banner of-who else? - Quentin Tarantino. Wong, though, goes in for cerebral Pop abstractions instead of brain-splatter pulp. A dazzlingly adroit synthesis of art cinema and MTV, Chungking Express has a deadpan cosmopolitan energy that conflates successive New Waves - Godard's and Debbie Harry's. (In Wong's most recent film, Fallen Angels, 1995, a feverish extension of this masculin/feminin mystique, currently making the festival rounds in the West, there's even a tough cookie called Blondie.) The cheerfully lost (well, maybe just misplaced) souls adrift through Chungking Express listen to their interior monologues as if they were soundtracks. Which they are: the movie repeats the 1966 Mamas and Papas hit "California Dreamin'" so often it becomes a sleepwalker's mantra.

Chungking Express presents life as a radiant blur. Wong's visual trademark (in collaboration with cinematographer Chris Doyle) is a look of hyperreal clarity broken with interludes of sensuous, pixilated slow motion. Unfolding in Hong Kong's overdeveloped underbelly, the cramped social space bordered by the fleabag Chungking House hotel and the bustling Midnight Express food stand, the film sketches two virtual love stories that almost but don't quite overlap. In one, a forlorn plain-clothes cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro) tries to romance a mystery woman in a bar (Brigitte Lin Chin-Hsia), unaware she's a drug dealer whose confederates have double-crossed her. The second has a take-out counter girl (the endearingly gawky Faye Wong, an updated Jean Seberg by way of Amanda Plummer) stalking an impassive uniformed cop (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), sneaking into his apartment to rearrange it like some housekeeping poltergeist. (Since he credits inanimate objects with a mind of their own, he never suspects a thing.) But plot here is merely a cursory formality, a means of ruminating on the arbitrariness of signs and relationships, the tricks desire plays on itself, the present as deja vu.

The first policeman measures the transience of time and love by the expiration dates on pineapple cans - feeling like a discarded one himself, he calmly devours 30 cans of pineapple and then goes out drinking, reasoning that "alcohol's good for digestion." The second gives pep talks to his soap, pining for a stewardess he's lost touch with. These yearning cops are pet-shop boys peering at a shimmering aquarium Hong Kong - the local equivalents of West End girls float past, out of reach but never out of mind. Wong calls Chungking Express "a road movie of the heart," but it's a road that keeps turning back on itself: even as life is happening, it's experienced as memory. A convenience mart will look as lush and enchanted as an oasis, but it dissolves any sense of place in the process. The movie's appeal is partly that, like a Circle K store, it could be set anywhere: this city of sensibility might as well be Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York. In the same way, the swirl of images and sensations is so thick it tends to obscure how pleasantly familiar all Wong's pop and cinematic free-associations are. Have Jean-Jacques Beineix's playful Diva, or even Robert Longo's ominously blissed-out video for New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle," been forgotten so soon? Combine the two and you have the essence of what Wong is doing in Chungking Express: boiling down a couple of decades worth of hip archetypes to a smooth, wonderland veneer.

It's a marvelous formula, but the solemn press build-up ("It must be blindingly obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that here is a supreme stylist of the cinema") will leave a lot of people scratching their heads when they discover that beneath its technique and elliptical form, Chungking Express is a lighthearted comedy. (As they will, unless they mistake charm for subversive chic.) The movie treats its existential baggage nonchalantly, serving up melancholia with a smile. Yet to read Wong's press clips you'd think this was a visionary come to save Hong Kong film from itself. Wong and Chungking Express are being hyped as though they were the antitheses of action director John Woo and of HK's glut of what are disdainfully referred to as genre films. Never mind that quite a few of those pictures are more audacious and suggestive than Wong's work so far; what cineastes mean when they hail Wong as the greatest director to come out of Hong Kong is that he's the most Eurocentric, the most taken with the high masters of auteurism. Even so, a look at Clara Law's 1992 Autumn Moon shows that he's hardly the lone "serious" Hong Kong director. Moreover, Law's beautifully modulated film anticipates many of the central themes (isolation and youthful longing in a commodified world) and devices (contrapuntal voice-overs, the outsider who filters life through a video camera) of both Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. Next to Law, Wong's treatment of this material looks far less personal - he seems a swoony prankster trying out attitudes before a mirror. (This is most apparent in how the two handle sex: Wong is coyly voyeuristic, Law gives us visceral, disruptive physicality.)

The notion of Wong as a figure far beyond the crass confines of genre is misleading. Rather, and more interestingly, his movies treat "art film" as genre. He instinctively translates art tropes into pop signifiers, the inverse of the way Woo worked in his great, obsessive death-opera Bullet in the Head, 1990. From the start, Wong has blurred the gap between straight genre pieces (the neo-martin Scorsese gangland of the 1988 As Tears Go By) and private fixations (trauma as nostalgia in 1990's Days of Being Wild). Chungking Express strikes a lovely, sanguine balance between the poles; Fallen Angels goes off the deep end of self-obsession. (It's crammed with so many allusions to his past work, it's like a noisy greatest-hits medley).

As loath as some critics are to admit it, Wong's esthetic is a logical outgrowth of the Hong Kong reanimator mode: fusing wildly disparate styles and taking them to sublime extremes. It's much easier to wax rhapsodic over Wong's formalist panache if you've never seen the wondrously unhinged Naked Killer, an HK B-movie of such elegantly deranged perversity and gleeful psychosexual mischief it explodes every convention it careens over. Lin's trench-coated, revolver-packing dame is fun in Chungking Express (the world-weary Marlene Dietrich tone when she demands "whiskey" is glorious), but the conception is anemic next to the complex, Jules et Jim-in-Vietnam changes that director Tsui Hark rang on it with Anita Mui in A Better Tomorrow III. Likewise, Wong's avant-garde action sequences (darting smears of frenzy and chaos, slowed down but not enough for the eye to fully register everything) in Fallen Angels and especially in Ashes of Time, 1992, bowl the uninitiated over, but they're really just minor refinements of the imagery of mainstream Hong Kong pictures like the science fiction Wicked City and the martial-arts fable The Bride with White Hair. (Wong's movies borrowed the leads from those films too.)

Purity in movies finally breeds a puritanism of the senses, but Wong is too fond of enchanted junk-shop milieux to succumb to abstinence. What's rewarding in Wong's oeuvre, what's alive in it, is lack of artistic purity. It's no accident that Ashes of Time, an austere, dreamily ironic swordplay epic, is at once so anomalous and so utterly characteristic of Hong Kong film at its most satisfying: where else would someone combine Akira Kurosawa and Alain Resnais to make the equivalent of The Seven Samurai at Marienbad (and have this constitute a genre, albeit a genre of one)? After all, Chungking Express' best sequence has Leung Chiu-Wai fooling around with air hostess Valerie Chow to Dinah Washington's "What a Difference a Day Makes," tenderly landing toy planes on her sweat-coated back - a scene inspired by Wong's childhood memory of a Pan Am commercial.

Chungking Express is in fact an advertisement for itself, but its characters are so good at killing time you hardly notice the film doesn't quite get around to delivering the goods it seems to promise. Fallen Angels, originally conceived as a third story for Chungking Express and now expanded into a full feature, is instead a commercial for Wong. With its showy wide-angle close-ups and punch-drunk hand-held camera moves, it's more a frantic resume than a movie. And there's no way any parodist is going to top Michelle Reis' latex mini-skirted, chain-smoking, strung-out-on-love routine here: clutching a cigarette even when she masturbates (a scene Wong digs so much he has her repeat it), Reis is the ultimate fantasy of supermodel self-abasement.

The one truly fresh thing in Fallen Angels is Kaneshiro, returning as a crazier variant of his sweet, oddball cop in Chungking Express. Now he's a mute ex-con who breaks into closed shops at night and benevolently accosts passersby into becoming his customers/victims. Here Wong does extend the spirit of Chungking Express: Kaneshiro is a present-day version of Marcel Carne's Baptiste haunting a Chungking Boulevard of Crime, in search of love and the perfect gesture.

As such, Wong's alter ego isn't so far from the desert exiles of Ashes of Time. Perhaps he's looking for the one Lin played there, she who was nicknamed "Defeat-Seeking Loner." They were made for each other.

Chungking Express: Electric Youth   Criterion essay by Amy Taubin, November 16, 2008

 

Cop 223 Gets Lucky   Criterion essay by Curtis Tsui, October 14, 2008

 

Under the Influence: Barry Jenkins on Wong Kar-wai   video essay, November 29, 2016 (3:22)

 

Chungking Express (1994) - The Criterion Collection

 

Peter Brunette - Wong Kar-wai (Contemporary Film Directors) - Scribd  175-page book by Peter Brunette, 2005

 

The Film Sufi

 

Keynote: Chungking Express / The Dissolve  Keith Phipps, October 14, 2013

 

Chungking Express by Wong Kar-Wai (Review) - Opus  Jason Morehead, December 19, 2004

 

Chungking Express - Reverse Shot  Michael Koresky, July 12, 2013

 

Chungking Express (重慶森林) (1994) - LoveHKFilm.com  Kozo (Ross Chen)

 

Radiator Heaven [J.D. Lafrance]

 

Aboard the Human Express | Metrograph  Andréa Picard, March 1, 2017

 

The House Next Door [The Conversations] [Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard]  April 29, 2011

 

Modern Classic Film Review: Chungking Express - - - The Ooh Tray  Ed Perry

 

Trajectories of identification: travel and global culture in the films of Wong Kar-wai  Allan Cameron analyzes Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046  from Jump Cut, Spring 2007

 

Wong Kar-wai's “Chungking Express” – 2016 HKIFF Review  Chan Yuan-Kwan from Meniscus Review

 

Criterion Files #453: Chungking Express - Film School Rejects  Landon Palmer

 

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young]

 

Chungking Express - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Rumsey Taylor

 

Chungking Express (Criterion) | Film Review | Tiny Mix Tapes  David Harris

 

Hong Kong Dreaming: Thoughts on Chungking Express  Luisetta Mudie, 2004

 

Chungking Express | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Matt Noller

 

Asian Movie Web [Manfred Selzer]

 

Oeuvre: Wong Kar-wai: Chungking Express - Spectrum Culture  Pat Padua

 

Beyond Hollywood  Nix

 

Chungking Express (Chung Hing sam lam) | The Reviews  Ken B.

 

MOVIE REVIEW: Wong Kar-wai’s CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994)   Helen Reviews Stuff

 

AV Club on “California Dreamin’” in Chungking Express  Steven Hyden, October 5, 2009

 

The Stranger on Chungking Mansions  Charles Mudede on the Chungking Mansions, a Hong Kong high-rise featured in the film, June 10, 2015

 

Chungking Express | Reelviews Movie Reviews  James Berardinelli

 

Pulling Focus: Chungking Express (1994) « Taste of Cinema - Movie ...  Shane Scott-Travis from Taste of Cinema

 

The Wong Kar-Wai Collection Read TCM's Home Video Review on this film  Nathaniel Thompson

 

dOc DVD Review: Chungking Express (Criterion) (1994)  Joel Cunningham, Criterion

 

Chungking Express: Criterion Collection : DVD Talk Review of the ...  Preston Jones, Criterion

 

DVD Movie Central [Ed Nguyen]  Criterion

 

DVD Reviews - Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love (Criterion)  Rob Hale from the Digital Bits, also reviewing IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

 

Criterion Confessions: CHUNGKING EXPRESS - #453/FALLEN ...  Jamie S. Rich, also reviewing FALLEN ANGELS, also seen here:  DVD Talk [Jamie S. Rich]

 

Chungking Express - The A.V. Club (Film)  Keith Phipps

 

chungking express - review at videovista  Steve Hampton

 

Chungking Express / Fallen Angels | Film at The Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

Film @ The Digital Fix - remastered Korean DVD [Noel Megahey]

 

Chungking Express Bu-ray and DVD review | Cine Outsider  Slarek, UK Blu-Ray 

 

Chungking Express Blu-ray - Blu-ray.com  Svet Atanasov, Criterion Blu-Ray

 

DVD Savant Blu-ray Review: Chungking Express  Glenn Erickson, Criterion Blu-Ray, also seen here:  Chungking Express Read TCM's Home Video Review on this film

 

Chungking Express (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk Review of the Blu-ray  Ian Jane, Criterion Blu-Ray

 

Retrospective: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai | IndieWire  August 19, 2013

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014

 

Raging Bull [Vanes Naldi]

 

Letterboxd: Mike D'Angelo

 

Chungking Express - TCM.com  Jeremy Arnold

 

Movie Review – Chungking Express (1994) - Flickering Myth  Simon Columb

 

PopOptiq [Justine Smith]

 

The Spinning Image [Daniel Auty]

Chungking Express | The Asian Cinema Blog  Agne Serpytyte

Chungking Express (1994) Review | cityonfire.com

 

eFilmCritic [Jay Seaver]

 

Talking Pictures [Howard Schumann]

 

Brooklyn Magazine: A.J. Serrano

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Daily Film Dose [Blair Stewart]

 

Ozus' World [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Chungking Express (Chung Hing sam lam) - Movie Review and ...  Judd Blaise, All-Movie Guide

 

Time Out Hong Kong - 100 Greatest Hong Kong Films [Edmund Lee]  listed as #25

 

Chungking Express - Movie Reviews and Movie Ratings | TVGuide.com

 

Chungking Express | Variety  Derek Elley

 

Chungking Express | Film | The Guardian  Jonathan Romney, September 14, 1999

 

Time Out Hong Kong [Edmund Lee]

 

Rewind, film: 'Chungking Express' directed by Wong Kar-wai | South ...  Kate Whitehead from The South China Morning Post

 

Tucson Weekly [Stacey Richter]

 

San Francisco Examiner [Walter Addiego]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Mick LaSalle]

 

Chungking Express Movie Review (1996) | Roger Ebert

 

`Chungking Express' A Satisfying Feast For The Eyes - tribunedigital ...  Michael Wilmington from The Chicago Tribune

 

New York Times [Janet Maslin]   also seen here:  Movie Review - - FILM REVIEW; Mocking MTV Style And Paying ...  

 

New York Times    Holiday DVD’s, Charles Taylor and Stephanie Zacharek, October 31, 2008

 

DVD Beaver [Gary W. Tooze]

 

DVD Beaver - Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

Chungking Express - Wikipedia

 

Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’”   brief scene from the film (2:36)

 

Faye Wong’s “Dream Person”; Cranberries cover  (4:09)

 

Quentin Tarantino on "Chungking Express" - YouTube (11:59)

 

ASHES OF TIME (Dung che sai duk)                B                     84                   
REDUX                                                                      A                     95

Hong Kong  China  Taiwan  (100 mi)  1994       Redux (93 mi) in 2008

 

The harder you try to forget something the more it’ll stick in your memory.  —Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung)

 

A nearly indecipherable film with a Buddhist bent, told in the Sergio Leone western style featuring sweeping panoramic vistas and lone, isolated characters passing through desolate outposts on the edge of a desert.  Using an inner narrative from several of the characters and an overlapping story that to say the least is confusing, this is a philosophical martial arts flick with only a few action sequences, most shot in a dizzying display of slow mo, but featuring a Who’s Who of some of the greatest Hong Kong actors in the business, so it’s impossible to ignore.  Leslie Cheung acts as a fixer, a mysterious swordsman who can fix other people’s problems for a sum of money, without which he won’t move a muscle.  Most of the characters in the film are introduced to him in a state of desperation, usually requesting his services.  The entire film plays out as if in a dream state, with haiku chapter headings that read like I Ching, The Book of Changes, yin/yang philosophical predictions about the future.  While there’s a fascinating look to the whole thing, shot by Christopher Doyle, it feels like in incoherent mess, as if subject to endless wanderings, never really getting to where it needs to go.  Yet the prevailing mood throughout is a heightened sense of longing and regret told through such a lushly romanticized format where sadness literally pervades throughout every shot of the film. 

 

Told out of sequence, introducing characters with little or no explanation as if blown in by the wind, there’s a haunting theme of people feeling disconnected from their pasts that they may impulsively wish to correct, as if in a fit of anger or jealousy, which rarely in the end restores any sense of meaning or purpose, but may only leave them further removed.  Adapted from the Jin Yong martial arts novel “The Eagle-Shooting Heroes” set in a period so long ago, the film is fraught with ancient sayings and such a heightened sense of love and honor that both appear to be completely unattainable.  Using dreams and flashback sequences to capture the state of mind of several characters, one wonders what any of this has to due with the human condition, as the sense of detachment is so prevalent that it outweighs all other cinematic considerations.  These characters may as well be the last people on earth, where the film expresses their futile memories which become even more lost and insignificant over time.  Missed connections have always been a prominent Wong Kar-wai theme and this movie can’t seem to get enough of them.   

 

REDUX:  Though set in the past, this has more of a feel for a modern era existentialist drama, where being lost in the desert is a metaphor for our lost or empty search for meaning in our lives where we can’t make sense of the modern landscape any better than the wandering souls of this movie.  The opening and closing segments are different, integrated now into seasonal headings, also there is a completely new musical arrangement throughout the entire film until the end when the percussive themes were fondly reminiscent of the original.  It appears some of the sequences were eliminated while others were extended, particularly the bandit action sequences in autumn, where the blind swordsman sequence (like Kurosawa in slow motion) also appears lengthened and re-edited, moving from such fast paced choreography to near still shots, reflecting in tranquillity on what was lost or remains far away, where Jackie Cheung may have a bit more screen time, also some of the other stars, such as Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau have some additional footage.  But what’s stunning here, particularly for anyone who has ever viewed those wretched DVD copies floating around for the last fifteen years, is the cleaned up look of the images, especially the ravishing hyper-saturated use of color, where the photography is nothing less than spectacular throughout, approaching experimental art design.  The whole philosophical outlook appears to make more sense, certainly the yin and yang aspect between the two brothers, especially as so much is told out of time, as hints are dropped all the way through, which when connected, turn this into a variation on a sci-fi story, as we discover in this version that the narrator is actually deceased, a la SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) or AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999).  The acting performances are uniformly excellent, where especially potent this time around is Maggie Cheung, and the director knows it, filming her final close up in portraiture holding a flower.  Even the inner narration sub-titling is a little different, clarifying some of the order, as the final expressions on memory actually appear much earlier in the original version.  As we’re viewing the film, it’s particularly potent to reflect on the significance of Leslie Cheung’s impact now that he’s gone in a film that is to such a large degree a memory play.  In hindsight, it all makes much more sense now and the experience is nothing less than phenomenal, a huge upgrade, making this one of his best films, finally resembling the masterpiece that the director envisioned.   

 

Ashes of Time, directed by Wong Kar-wai | Film review - Time Out  Tony Rayns

An all-star cast, Chris Doyle's extraordinary cinematography and innovative action sequences choreographed by Samo Hung were not enough to turn Wong Kar-Wai's most ambitious movie from an art house triumph into a commercial success. Wong takes characters from a famous martial arts novel (Jin Yong's The Eagle-Shooting Heroes) and deposits them in the middle of a vast desert to work through their various obsessions and manias: set in the eye of an off-screen storm, it's a tender group portrait of fallible people crawling from the wreckage of their lives. At its emotional core is Brigitte Lin playing a self dangerously divided between Yin and Yang.

Mary Corliss  Film Country for Old Men, Richard and Mary Corliss at Cannes from Time magazine, May 19, 2008 (excerpt)

National cinemas have different Golden Ages. For Hong Kong, it was the decade from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s, when directors like Tsui Hark and John Woo were revitalizing the crime film, and when young Wong Kar-wai was revolutionizing the misty romance. At the time, Hong Kong also had perhaps the world's greatest roster of glamorous stars, and prominent among them were Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin, the two Tony Leungs, Jacky Cheung, Carina Lau and Charlie Young. All of them are in Wong's 1994 martial-arts reverie Ashes of Time, which had a special screening last night in a version revised by the director.

Leslie Cheung is a killer-for-hire who runs an inn in a remote part of China. The other stars come by to engage his services or to hide from those ready to kill them. The film — shot by that picture-taker and mood-maker of genius, Christopher Doyle — is essentially a series of gigantic closeups of these beautiful faces. Lau's face holds do much emotion, she can break you heart just by being photographed; Maggie Cheung has never looked more ravishing than in her long, pensive scene here; the planes of Tony Leung Ka-fei's visage have the drama of great modern architecture. Leslie Cheung, wise, pouty, ever dangerously alert, binds this poetic, episodic film. A suicide at 46, in 2003, Leslie will live forever in glorious films like this one, which I'm happy to say is being released for U.S. theatrical distribution by Sony Pictures Classics.

In Ashes of Time, Leslie Cheung says, “the root of men's problems is memory.” Yet memory is the root of identity for many of us, and for some of the best films at Cannes.

Excavating the Past to Set the Record Straight  Manohla Dargis at Cannes from The New York Times, May 20, 2008 (excerpt)

CANNES, France — Memory twists and turns, peering into this and that dark corner in Wong Kar-wai’s “Ashes of Time Redux” and Terence Davies’s “Of Time and the City,” two beautiful entries at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The selections, both screened out of competition, find each director working through the past, with Mr. Wong revisiting one of his older features, the martial-arts fantasia “Ashes of Time” (originally released in 1994) and Mr. Davies returning to Liverpool, the city of his birth and the backdrop for his earlier autobiographical films, including the haunting and haunted “Distant Voices, Still Lives” (1988).

Mr. Wong has explained that he set out to make the definitive edition of “Ashes” after he discovered that there were many versions floating about, authorized and not. Culled from prints gathered from around the world, this newly re-edited and digitally tweaked iteration runs about 10 minutes shorter than the original, and rather more coherently. The fragmented story involves a melancholic desert dweller (the late Leslie Cheung), who functions as a kind of broker for various swordsmen (Tony Leung Chiu-wai included) and their clients (Brigitte Lin, among others). Drenched in shocking color — the desert shifts from egg-yolk yellow to burnt orange under a cerulean sky — the film is Mr. Wong’s most abstract endeavor, a bold excursion into the realm of pure cinema. It also now seems like one of his most important. “Ashes of Time Redux” will be released by Sony Pictures Classics in September. We’ll have more to say about it then.

Cannes Film Festival, 2008: "Ashes of Time Redux" (Wong, Hong ...  Daniel Kasman at Cannes from Mubi, May 25, 2008

Jonathan Rosenbaum rightly described Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film Dead Man as an “acid western,” but I wonder if he had known that Wong Kar-wai beat Jarmusch to the punch in 1994 with his acid wuxia, Ashes of Time. Re-cut and restored finally in a Redux re-release, Wong’s film is his most singular statement and is finally available in a beautiful print, properly subtitled for the first time for Western audiences.

At once a mirage that vaporizes in undulated waves of saturated color and stuttered movement before you can grasp it, and a definitive version of the filmmaker’s paeans to lost love and resigned memory, Ashes of Time Redux is Wong’s most important film and his first masterpiece. Known so much for rooting his love stories in constrictive urban spaces, Wong’s epic is as abstract as a love story, let alone a chivalric martial arts film, can be. Structured into sections named after the four seasons, each rhymed with the greatest swordsmen from the four points of the compass, Ashes of Time doubles, triples its lost memories. Swordsmen see one woman in another, a wandering fighter sees the second woman in the first, a woman (the fantastic Brigitte Lin, in the film’s best performance) plays twin brother and sisters, both obsessed with each other and both obsessed with the same sword-fighter. With the land nothing but a vast desert (”Beyond the desert? More desert”) the martial heroes and their memories of love cross one another not in space but in time, spinning shadows of a whirling birdcage carving a sense of criss-crossing, looping time rather than casting shadows to carve out space in Leslie Cheung’s inn at the crossroads of time .

In the film’s most glorious gesture, an epilogue tangent says that Brigitte Lin’s twin sister would later duel only her own reflection in water, as there was no greater match for her skills. Wong has never taken his stories of lost love to such hallucinatory, oneiric heights, grounded, if only just barely, not by an urban Hong Kong setting but by conventions of the wuxia world and dialog pulled from the film’s source novel. Here is the matrix of melancholy, before it is rooted in society, before it becomes associated with the 1960s, or Shanghai, of pre-1997 Hong Kong, or the future. Here it is closest to Alain Resnais, a filmmaker Wong has always had a great deal in common with thematically but only in Ashes of Time and its crypto-remake 2046 has the filmmaker challenged film form to tackle memory and longing through pure neo-expressionism. Messy, intoxicatingly insular and obsessive, and painfully tortured by a kind of ecstatic regret, Ashes of Time has re-emerged as one of cinema’s greatest films.

Ashes Of Time Redux  Lee Marshall at Cannes from Screendaily

 

The first surprise about Wong Kar-wai's revamped, re-edited and rescored version of his 1994 cult wuxia classic Ashes Of Time is just how little has been changed. The second is how much these minor tweaks still have helped clarify the Hong Kong auteur's interpretation of Louis Cha's historical fantasy novel The Eagle-Shooting Hero, confirming that his most poetic, experimental film belongs not in the curiosity cabinet but on the big screen.

Wong Kar-wai is still a potent arthouse name. The difference between this and most previous other re-edits is that large swathes of its potential audience will not have seen the original – which was patchily distributed at the time, and has since been available only on muddy Hong Kong laserdisc or incomplete French DVD. So distributors' main targets will be receptive new viewers, rather than the small brigade of hardcore Wong fans.

In the end it's still Chris Doyle's striking original vision that dominates. Despite an end credit for extra cinematography from Kwan Pun-leung, new material is minimal, stretching, at a guess, to less than a minute in all (most of the extra five-and-a-half minutes' running time is taken up by the longer end credits). A few fight scenes have impressively been re-edited and one spectacular water sequence featuring Brigitte Lin looks new.

The seasonal chapter headings of the film's five interlinked stories – spring, summer, autumn, winter and spring – have been reinstated. Colour has also been digitally remastered. But the main novelty is aural, not visual. Chinese musical prodigy Wu Tong has completely rearranged the original score, giving it a lush sweep that enhances the wistful yearning of these stories of memory and desire. World-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma also features as a soloist.

In the end we are left with the feeling that Wong has simply restored, rather than revisited, one of the most remarkable works of his career. Ashes Of Time uses its wuxia source material as a peg on which to hang a ravishing study in displaced, frustrated desire and loneliness, with a star-studded cast at their prime (Maggie Cheung has never looked more beautiful, or Tony Leung Ka-fai more tragically romantic). The drifters that pass through the film's remote desert locus are bound together by the film's narrator, the late Leslie Cheung, playing a world-weary agent who, for a fee, puts clients in touch with swordsmen-for-hire. Four years after Cheung's suicide, Ashes Of Time Redux reminds us of what a fine actor he was.

 

Hong Kong Digital #154: Ashes of Time   John Charles, also seen here:  Hong Kong Digital - DVD Review

A film that absolutely requires multiple viewings to be fully appreciated, Wong Kar-wai's period fantasy is a captivating character study filled with affecting performances, stirring music, and mesmerizing imagery. Difficult to summarize, it centers around the cynical, world-weary Ouyang Feng (aka "Malicious West") whose interior monologues set up much of the narrative. After ten years of fighting, Ouyang (Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing) has retreated from White Camel Mountain into the desert, where he runs an inn and "solves problems" as a middleman for people with the right sum to offer. He is visited annually by Huang Yaoshi (aka "Evil East"), an old friend with similar views on life, who has taken up with the woman Ouyang spurned a decade earlier (played by a radiant Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, who is not credited). A year earlier, Huang (Tony Leung Kar-fai) promised to marry Murong Yin (Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia, whose real voice is heard only in the Mandarin version), the sister of swordsman Murong Yang (also Lin), but later reneged. Now, Yang has come to the inn seeking vengeance and engages Ouyang to kill his old friend. However, it becomes apparent to Ouyang that Yin and Yang may actually be the same person. A young girl (Charlie Yeung Choi-nei), with nothing but a mule and some eggs, offers them to Ouyang in payment for wiping out the bandits who killed her brother but the innkeeper balks and advises her to proffer sexual favors instead. An all-but blind swordsman (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), needing money so that he may return home, is hired by some villagers to slay the horse thieves who have been tormenting them but is slaughtered when his sight finally fails him. Skilled young fighter Hong Qi (Jacky Cheung Hok-yau) accepts the girl's offer and decimates both her brother's killers and the remaining horse thieves but, in spite of his great abilities, cannot be a good husband to his long-suffering wife (Bai Li), whom he stubbornly refuses to bring along on his martial adventures.

Upon first viewing, much of the film seems overly oblique, with its non-linear presentation, myriad flashbacks, and preponderance of voiceovers, but one remains entranced by the sheer radiance of the visuals, the quality of the performances, and the enveloping, adventurous score. Upon second viewing, the relationships become clearer and fresh possibilities emerge as doors open to reveal degrees of profundity and commentary on love and other human foibles that went previously unnoticed. Later viewings allow one to fully integrate the easily perceptible and more intellectually demanding pleasures into a unique and supremely stimulating whole. One of the main plot elements is a magical wine which causes one to forget the past, an ingenious device that allows Wong to alter the flow of events, interweaving them into and around the lives of the protagonists. While the wine does seem to work on the characters who do consume it, the effect is disastrous: Huang cannot remember even his best friends and Murong is pushed once and for all over the brink into insanity. The others are consumed by the memories of their loved ones and haunted by the wrongs they have done them. It is a pain that drives one man into both literal and spiritual exile and another to pursue a noble but, ultimately, lamentable death. The characters are consumed by loneliness and alienation, adrift in their own worlds, save for fleeting contact with others who share their emotional burdens. In keeping with this predicament, the occasions where they do manage to connect physically (particularly in a beautifully realized sequence where Brigitte Lin strokes a seemingly sleeping Leslie Cheung, with each using the occasion to fantasize about the lover they have lost) provide only fleeting comfort. The only person to emerge happy is the least complex: Hong. His exposure to Ouyang's cynicism leaves him a better person and reinforces a joy of life that the rest have lost and are seemingly incapable of recapturing.

While director of photography Christopher Doyle dazzles the viewer's eye with one gorgeous sandscape and unique tableau after another, ASHES does possess some recognizable roots in film history. Although presented with Wong's customarily stylized slow motion, Tony Leung Chiu-wai's battle against hordes of swordsmen is reminiscent of the combat found in Japanese samurai films, while the soundtrack offers up an accompaniment for this footage that would fit right into the spaghetti western of your choice. The swordsman and his affliction is also reminiscent of Cameron Mitchell's titular character in Sergio Corbucci's Italian western, MINNESOTA CLAY (1965), while Leung's last thought before death was echoed previously by one of the villains in the second entry of Toho's LONE WOLF AND CUB series. The film ended up going way over budget and schedule (Charlie Yeung's role was originally played by Joey Wang Tsu-hsien but all of the latter's footage had to be scrapped when Wang was not available for reshoots) and then spent several more months in post-production, while Wong and four editors cut and re-cut it (the director dashed off the much more economical CHUNGKING EXPRESS during a brief break in the editing). Ironically, these delays caused it to arrive right at the end of the late 80s/early 90s swordplay cycle, which is fitting as it redefines the parameters of that genre, while also continuing some of the themes and character archetypes Wong broached in AS TEARS GO BY and DAYS OF BEING WILD (both reviewed in issue #138). The resulting hybrid is one of the most challenging and rewarding films to emerge from HK since the start of the New Wave and a superb achievement. A parody of the same source material (Jin Yong's "The Eagle Shooting Heroes"), which also takes drastic liberties, was filmed concurrently with much of the same cast and crew (!) by Wong's partner, Jeff Lau Chun-wai, as DONG CHENG XI JIU and appeared in theatres over a year before this picture.

World Video has released a domestic English market version of ASHES but it is such a travesty, it does not even deserve a full review. The company simply took their poor quality Chinese market version and matted off the bottom third of the picture, to cover up the original Chinese and English subtitles, and put new video generated English subs on top. The result is a compositional disaster and a far from appropriate presentation for any film, let alone one as beautifully composed as this; Wong and Doyle should sue.

Mei Ah's rendition has its drawbacks but is far closer to the way this looked theatrically. The film is presented at 1.87:1, with the upper matte seeming a bit tight at times, and the source material displaying light wear throughout. With its heavy conceptual grain, brownish colors, and varying contrasts, this is a very difficult film to present successfully on video. Mei Ah has done a much better job than World but there are instances of gatefloat and graininess that cause noticeable compression flaws; the theatrical subtitles are also a bit unstable. The Cantonese track sounds strident and mildly distorted but the Mandarin dub, with its overly prominent vocal track, is less appealing and sacrifices the original sync recording. There is no menu and the chapter stops are simply placed at five minute intervals throughout. The disc originally came in a jewel case packaged inside an outer sleeve but is now only available in a standard keepcase.

Ashes of Time Redux (Web Exclusive) — Cineaste Magazine   Martha P. Notchimson, Winter 2009

Among all of Wong Kar-wai’s films, Ashes of Time, originally distributed in 1994 and restored and subtly reedited in 2009, is one of his least known, and (until now) least accessible films. It is also his most overt testament to his interest in China’s long history of art and thought—a passion almost invisible in his best known, most celebrated cinema. Loosely based on Louis Cha’s modern adaptation of Eagle-Shooting Heroes, an ancient series of Chinese martial-arts tales, Ashes substantially refashions Cha’s narratives in ways that reflect Wong’s poetic imagination and his point of view about the relevance of the ancient to the modern world. The 2009 DVD of Ashes of Time Redux, a newly remastered, rescored, color- corrected version of the 1994 original, makes it possible for a large spectatorship to become acquainted with its cinematic beauty, as well as its ingenious narrative use of the classical Chinese approach to history and time.

The film and the revealing Q&A between Wong and Jim Hoberman of The Village Voice, the disc’s principal extra, offer a unique opportunity to peer into Wong’s artistry. Wong’s lucid explanation of his work practices and his attitude toward film also gives aficionados the chance to rethink the surprising number of commentaries by Western critics who insist there is an overt politics in his films, such as David Bordwell’s assertion that all Hong Kong movies immediately preceding England’s 1997 handover of Hong Kong to Communist China should be understood as expressing anxiety about this unsettling change in political status. Close consideration of Ashes and Wong’s very candid comments to Hoberman suggest the opposite. Ashes of Time, like all of Wong’s films, contains no explicit political messages about anything. But it might be said to have a political life of sorts as a revelation of the futility of the atrocities committed by the Red Guard to eliminate the philosophy and art of precommunist China.

Given the harsh suppression by Mao of all things connected with the thousands of years of Chinese civilization before the Communist Revolution—particularly during the 1960s and early 1970s, when his Red Guard engaged in the savage destruction of traditional works of art and architecture, as well as people with expertise that could be traced to precommunist traditions—a film that cherishes those traditions, or some of them, may well be considered a de facto political act. This seems a particularly apt description of Ashes, since although it was the first Hong Kong film to be shot on the Chinese mainland, it exhibits no caution with respect to things still forbidden to mainland directors, such as the mysticism of the Chinese Almanac, a central influence on Ashes. The very nonconforming beauty of Wong’s images, inspired by the Almanac’s linkage of nature and human destiny, can be seen, by virtue of the film’s circumstances, as a bold enterprise of some interest to China watchers as well as to Wong’s admirers.

Set in ancient China, Ashes is a picaresque film that traces the many vicissitudes in the lives of a pantheon of martial-arts heroes through their correspondences to the seasons as set forth in the ancient Chinese Almanac, the earliest version of which was written in 132 B.C. A practical guide to living based on the natural cycle, the Almanac is also a visionary text that augurs the most auspicious moments for taking on enterprises by associating the rise and fall of human energies with the points of the compass and with its own symbolic table of natural elements. Part of the film’s force is that in its emphasis on the fraught, ever changing relationships between heroic conduct and the global mapping of the universe by the Almanac, its fatalistic perspective is necessarily a challenge to the dominant beliefs in both mainland China and the pragmatic West. Another source of its fascination is as an exception both among martial-arts films and the works of Wong Kar-wai.

Certainly, Ashes is an exception as a martial-arts film, most of which depend on an almost hagiographic adulation of a single martial-arts hero, whose development as a warrior is chronicled. The typical martial-arts hero earns his spurs as a result of the spectacular discipline he learns through lessons from a master, enabling his victory over any or all of the following: unethical martial artists and their practices; an invading would-be conqueror; and/or a deviant Chinese cult. By contrast, Ashes, depicting scenes from the lives of several fully mature warriors, is not primarily about their ability to vanquish opponents, but rather is a fatalistic vision of their existence as small specks in an immense universe, moved by cosmic patterns of nature, time, and destiny much larger than themselves.

Ashes is equally incongruous as a part of Wong’s filmography. All of his other films are about modern-day Hong Kong and America, depicting the tensions between human nature and man-made technologies, the adverse affects of which are compounded by a rigid, hypocritical set of bourgeois moral and ethical constraints and limitations. At the heart of Wong’s contemporary films is the fact of an indelible human nature, but this fact is always obstructed by the artifices of modernity. Wong’s modern stories demonstrate the way Westernized Hong Kong and the American technocracy impact negatively on a smorgasbord of mixed elemental traits, both desirable and undesirable, in his characters: the lyrical tenacity of love, the beauty of the unadorned human form, greed, violence, vengefulness, and the unvarnished impishness of human perversity.Ashes displays those same traits as the essence of human baggage, but in a world that is relentlessly organic. In this, the most beautiful martial-arts film ever made, perhaps the most beautiful film period, Wong studies his characters, without the distractions of plastic clothing; onrushing trains, planes, and cars; the glare of electric light; the relentless repetitions of escalators and recorded music; and processed and mass distributed food measured to the specifications of aluminum cans and glass bottles.

Tormented by modernity, the characters in Wong’s contemporary tales lose and misrecognize their soul mates and often die of artificiality. In Ashes, the martial-arts warriors of long ago are innocent of today’s technology, but they testify to the unchanging suffering of the human soul as they too often live loveless lives despite the nontechnological purity of their natural bodies, swathed in flowing fabrics and topped by untonsured and unstyled masses of hair. They live in shelters hewn from rock and wood, festooned with fabric worn by time and the elements into shreds that move with the ebb and flow of the seasons instead of rigidly standing in opposition to them as Wong’s modern settings do. They are surrounded by animals with whose grace and visceral presence they blend. They move through space either on foot or on horseback, merging with the rhythms of the hours and the natural expanses, instead of cutting and denying them in vehicles moving at excessive speed. The lights and shadows around them are made up of the brilliant and muted colors of nature and the flickering of sun through organic materials, not the chemically produced hues of neon. Yet, even in this unmediated state, these souls are vehicles for Wong to reveal to us, not a golden age before the Fall of the human race into modernity, but the innate capacity of people for denying themselves their happiness even when there is no constricting technological culture to bedevil them. Wong evokes the flaw in human hard wiring by juxtaposing it to the structure of the universe as described by the Almanac.

At the 2008 New York Film Festival press screening of Ashes, press kits were distributed that gave a cursory description of the Chinese Almanac’s schematics of the seasons and the meaning of metals, woods, and the four elements. Further inquiry has revealed to me how immensely complex the Almanac is, making it as impossible to give a simple interpretation of the implications for the characters of the wind rising in the West, or the insects returning to life, as it is to interpret a dream in a great work of art. The best the newcomer to the Almanac can do is to become aware of the cosmic layers of meaning in Wong’s narrative, and of how little is reserved in the actions of his warriors for free will and personal preference. The Almanac schematics also serve to make us aware that what there is of free will tends to result in human perversity and dissatisfaction. This theme is announced in the first line of the film. Amidst a display of stunning natural images juxtaposed to images of martial artists in combat and at rest, the following words appear on the screen: “It is written in the Buddhist canon, the flag is still, the wind is calm. It is the heart of man that is in turmoil.”

The characters in Ashes are as contrary as the characters in Wong’s modern films, but we see more clearly what is driving them. Unobstructed by the irrelevant distractions of modern life, they can reveal with clarity their fraught, out-of-sync relationships to cosmic patterns. The central character, Ouyang Feng (Leslie Cheung), supports himself by preying on the cowardice and vengefulness of the average person. A man who chose the freedom of the open road over the love of a woman, the loss of whom he has never recovered from, Ouyang is not the great martial arts warrior he once wanted to be, but a kind of parasite, who acts as an agent for warriors who will kill for hire, much as we see in the main characters of Fallen Angels (1995), a Wong Kar-wai film about emotional starvation with a modern accent. While in Fallen Angels we cannot perceive why a killer and his agent are so hell bent on lives full of murder and destruction, in Ashes we can clearly see Ouyang’s clients and changing staff of swordsmen and women, as a who’s what of human refusal to go with the flow of nature and destiny that inevitably leads to regret, violence, and melancholy death.

Consider, for example, Murong Yin (Brigitte Lin), a high-born princess of the Murong clan who has a male alter ego, Murong Yang (Lin again), who is actually a fragment of her own personality that she calls “her brother.” Murong Yang approaches Ouyang to arrange for the death of a man who has insulted “his sister;” almost immediately after Yang leaves, Murong Yin approaches Ouyang to kill “her brother” for seeking the death of the man she loves most in the world. Ouyang refuses the job because, as he says wryly, there’s no way that he can get paid by either client. Yes, even without OxyContin and modern machines that go too fast, human beings in their most organic state drag defeat from the jaws of the plenitude they might experience if they gave themselves over to the rhythms of the time and place they inhabit instead of clinging to convoluted, self-destructive, willful desires.

Wong balances episodes of self destruction with episodes in which by chance, luck, or sudden insight, some of his characters stumble into a happy harmony with the flow of life. We learn from Ouyang that Murong Yin/Yang ultimately becomes a great martial artist by demonstrating proficiency with her sword against her own image in water. This knowledge is accompanied by dazzling images of her, as, with her new relationship to the split in her personality, her life takes a turn for the better. Instead of seeking her own death, she, in harmony with nature, inspires the water to cascade majestically around her, as she faces off against herself in a series of classical martial arts positions. Later, after Ouyang gains insight into the damage he caused by refusing love for reasons he doesn’t fully understand, he too finds a better way, ending his career as a money obsessed agent for assassins and entering into his true destiny as a great warrior.

Not that Wong is, at least on this DVD, so direct about his purposes. Rather, the extras—“Born From the Ashes,” a kind of “Making of Ashes of Time Redux” featurette, and the extensive Q&A between Wong and Hoberman—turn our attention to the importance Wong attaches to the textures of his films, and the necessity he feels to vary his approaches to keep his work fresh. Wong explodes simplistic rumors about his supposed practice of working without a script and reveals how the personalities and histories of his actors are part of the materials with which he works when he creates their roles. For example, Murong Yin/Yang is Wong’s invention. Not in any of the stories Cha translates from the ancient texts, Murong Yin/Yang grew out of Wong’s interest in the talents of and the previous roles played by Brigitte Lin, who had all but been confined to (very successfully) playing male martial artists. Wong explains that the contradiction of Lin’s ultrafemininity—the standard of Chinese beauty, he says—and her type casting “as a guy,” fascinated him and led to his creation of this gender bending character. Wong’s humor and intelligence, and his diplomatic impatience with clichés, are vividly conveyed by his responses to Hoberman’s questions and comments. When, for example, Hoberman speaks of Ashes as insanely gorgeous, Wong chimes in humorously, “gorgeously insane.”

Like all great sensual and visionary artists, Wong honors the importance of direct experience of his cinema, which cannot fully be translated into words. This is not the usual delivery system for thoughts political. Nor is it necessarily easy for an American audience to appreciate Wong’s perspective once it is grasped, since fatalism is not high on the list of American enthusiasms. However, elsewhere, for example at Lincoln Center, he has spoken in an edgy manner about his seriousness in using the Chinese Almanac as a framing device in Ashes. If some will want to reduce Ashes to the trivial level of newspaper horoscopes because of this, others will recognize that Wong’s dedication to the unspoken, the oblique, and the miraculous—all of which is facilitated by his use of the venerable Almanac—rather than to the programmatic, the rote, and the theoretical, has produced a film that stands intriguingly as an oppositional cultural document.

Peter Brunette - Wong Kar-wai (Contemporary Film Directors) - Scribd  175-page book by Peter Brunette, 2005

 

Ways of seeing wild in the cinema of Wong Kar-Wai   7-page essay by Robert M. Payne, films considered include Ashes of Time, seen here:  Wong Kar-Wei 2 - eJumpcut.org, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, and Happy Together, from Jump Cut (Fall 2001)

 

The Film Sufi: “Ashes of Time” - Wong Kar Wai (1994)

 

Chinese Puzzle | Movie Review | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum, March 9, 1995

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Ashes of Time Redux (2008)  Mark Sinker, October 2008

 

Mapping the Mind Between Movies: Intertextuality in the Work of Wong ...  Michael Ward from Bright Lights Film Journal, April 30, 2011

 

Not Just Movies: Ashes of Time Redux  Jake Cole, January 10, 2011

 

Ashes of Time by Wong Kar-Wai (Review) - Opus  Jason Morehead, February 23, 2003

 

Ashes of Time Redux by Wong Kar-Wai (Review) - Opus  Jason Morehead, April 5, 2017, originally published May 26, 2009 here:  Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-Wai, 2008) - The Other Journal

 

easternKicks.com [Andrew Heskins]  March 30, 2009

 

Amy Taubin on Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time Redux - artforum.com / film  October 10, 2008

 

Wong Kar Wai's Ashes of Time Gets Its Comeback | Village Voice  Michelle Orange, October 8, 2008

 

Ashes of Time Redux | PopMatters  Shaun Huston

 

Raging Bull [Vanes Naldi]

 

Ashes of Time Redux - Reverse Shot  Chris Wisniewski

 

REVIEW | The Perfect Storm: Wong Kar-wai's “Ashes of Time Redux ...  Michael Koresky from indieWIRE

 

The House Next Door [The Conversations] [Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard]  April 29, 2011

 

Observations on film art : Ashes to Ashes (Redux) - David Bordwell  December 18, 2008

 

Ashes of Time (東邪西毒) (1994) - LoveHKFilm.com  LunaSea

 

AsianMovieWeb [Manfred Selzer]

 

Movies [Tom von Logue Newth]

 

Surrender to the Void-[Steven Flores]

 

A Nutshell Review [Stefan S]

 

Ashes of Time Redux | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Fernando F. Croce

 

Ashes of Time Review (Wong Kar-Wai) | Public Transportation Snob  Dan Heaton

 

Ashes of Time Redux Review - IGN  Todd Gilchrist

 

Oggs' Movie Thoughts  Oggs Cruz

 

Ashes of Time: Redux | Film Review | Tiny Mix Tapes  Hatchet

 

The History of Cinema. Wong Kar-Wai: biography, reviews, links  Piero Scaruffi reviews

 

Hong Kong Digital #261: The Brave Archer  the novel the film is based upon 

 

Ashes of Time | Film at The Digital Fix  Michael Brooke

 

Ashes of Time Redux | Film at The Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

Ashes Of Time Redux | Film at The Digital Fix  John White

 

Ashes of Time Redux : DVD Talk Review of the Theatrical  Jamie S. Rich

 

Ashes Of Time Redux - The A.V. Club (Film)  Keith Phipps

Ashes of Time Redux – DVD Review - Cinefantastique Online  Steve Biodrowski

 

Ashes of Time Redux DVD Review  HK Film

 

Qnetwork.com - Search Engine and Entertainment Portal - Ashes of ...  Ashes of Time Redux, by James Kendrick, Criterion

 

Ashes of Time Redux DVD and Blu-ray review | Cine Outsider  Slarek

 

ReelTalk [Jeffrey Chen]

 

seanax.com [Sean Axmaker]

 

Electric Sheep Magazine  Sarah Cronin

 

Ashes of Time (1994) Movie Review | BeyondHollywood.com  Nix

 

Retrospective: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai | IndieWire  August 19, 2013

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014

 

ASHES OF TIME REDUX (1st capsule)  Victor Morton from Rightwing Film Geek

 

Ashes of Time Redux  Mike D’Angelo

 

MovieMartyr.com [Jeremy Heilman]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

The Stop Button [Andrew Wickliffe]

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Amber Wilkinson]

 

Ashes of Time (1994) Review | cityonfire.com

 

Cinepassion  Fernando F. Croce

 

Ashes of Time | Larsen On Film  Josh Larsen

 

Mondo Digital

 

Ashes of Time  YTSL

 

Time Out Hong Kong - 100 Greatest Hong Kong Films [Edmund Lee]  listed as #53

 

Christopher Doyle & Wong Kar Wai - Page - Interview Magazine  Du Ke Feng interview, November 25, 2008

 

Film Review: Ashes of Time Redux | Hollywood Reporter  Peter Brunette

 

Review: 'Ashes of Time: Redux' - Variety  Derek Elley

 

Film review: Ashes of Time Redux | Film | The Guardian  Peter Bradshaw

 

alibi.com [Devin D. O'Leary]

 

Austin Chronicle [Joey O'Bryan]

 

Las Vegas Weekly [Mike D'Angelo]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Reyhan Harmanci]

 

Ashes of Time Redux Movie Review (2008) | Roger Ebert

 

FILM REVIEW;Pain of an Aging Warrior - The New York Times   Lawrence van Gelder, May 17, 1996

 

'Ashes of Time Redux,' Wong Kar-wai's Phoenix Project, Is Rising at ...  New York Times, October 3, 2008

 

DVDBeaver Blu-ray review [Gary Tooze]

 

Ashes of Time - Wikipedia

 
FALLEN ANGELS (Do lok tin si)                         B+                   90
Hong Kong  (96 mi)  1995

 

There are some lingering storylines here from CHUNGKING EXPRESS, but mostly this is a dizzying cinematic style with no natural shots at all.  Cinematographer Christopher Doyle distorts every frame with almost exclusive use of wide angle lenses, completely disorienting the picture into a drug induced hallucinogenic haze, featuring a relentless motion of passing trains traveling through an extraordinary world of loneliness cast in a night landscape exploding in a neon glitz, a rollercoaster journey through an impressionistic montage, slowed down, stopped, completely exaggerated, with a reggae rap soundtrack underneath that repeats, like a mantra, a dream world which, through its repetition, becomes somewhat exhausting after awhile.  This is experimentation to an extreme, truly style over substance. 
 
Leon Lai plays a professional hit man (“I hate digging bullets out of my body.  It’s exhausting.”), who shares a hotel room with a female manager wearing black leather and mesh stockings, who masturbates in his absence.  He meets a hyperactive woman in an empty McDonald’s who just throws herself at him, always wanting immediate sexual gratification, breaking into a melodramatic fit if he’s not interested.  An ex-con stops speaking once he eats a can of expired, outdated pineapple slices, a reiteration of a theme from CHUNGKING EXPRESS, who breaks into locked street vendor booths at night and bullies people into buying his goods, such as force feeding a family with mountains of ice cream one night.  He meets a woman who acts out her emotional world on the telephone, feeding her quarters, as they somehow understand each other’s thoughts and fall in love to the slow blues music of “Sweet Home Chicago.”  All encounters seem accidental.  Even the ex-con visits his father with a video camera, filming his father cooking steaks on a grill or going to the bathroom, while his father is always trying to pull away from the camera.  Ultimately, however, his father wakes in the night, compelled to watch these images.  Images are like memories, powerful, exhilarating, but fleeting, lost in the unending void of the night.

"#2 Karma Coma"
Performed by Massive Attack

"Only You"
Written by Vince Clark
Performed by The Flying Pickets

"Go Away From My World"
Performed by Marianne Faithfull

"Speak My Language"
Written and Performed by Laurie Anderson

"Wang Ji Ta"
Written by James Wong
Performed by Shirley Kwan

"Simu de Ren"
Written by Hong Yifeng and Ye Junlin
Performed by Chyi Chin

Fallen Angels, directed by Wong Kar-wai | Film review - Time Out  Geoff Andrew

Tired of the wounds incurred at work, Hong Kong hitman Wong Chi-Ming (Lai) decides to break his partnership with the agent (Reis) who hires and secretly loves him; when he meets the punkish Baby (Mong), there's a small chance his loneliness will come to an end, but the agent's still keen to revive their relationship. Meanwhile, mute ex-con He Zhiwu (Kaneshiro), who makes a living by re-opening shops closed for the night, meets up with Charlie (Young). Helping her hunt down her ex-boyfriend's new lover, He Zhiwu falls for Charlie himself, but after she disappears, he fills his time shooting videos of his flophouse-proprietor father. As stylish and audacious as Days of Being Wild and Chungking Express, Wong Kar-Wai's film is another poignant but occasionally playful study of forlorn romance and melancholy solitude. Good-looking twenty-somethings struggle to make it through the night in the neon-lit streets, bars and diners of a Hong Kong rendered magically moody by the extreme wide-angle lens of Chris Doyle's fluid camera. Exhilarating and, in the end, unexpectedly touching.

Hong Kong Digital #161: Fallen Angels  John Charles, also seen here:  Hong Kong Digital - DVD Review

Wong Kar-wai's follow-up to CHUNGKING EXPRESS is very much in the same style and spirit as that film. Reportedly, one of the stories in this film was originally planned for its forerunner and a modicum of the footage here was also left over from that project. Some have accused Wong of simply repeating himself with FALLEN ANGELS but, more accurately, the two movies are interconnected, utilizing the same stylistic approach and recurring motifs (like the resonant use of a pop song).

Love, again, provides the main narrative linchpin, along with the fleeting bonds created by random encounters. Ming (Leon Lai Ming), a suave but lazy assassin, receives his orders from The Agent (Michelle Lee Kar-yan/Michelle Reis), a beautiful, melancholy, chain-smoking woman dressed in various provocative outfits. She is obsessed with him but he's never even met her once during the nearly three years they have been working together. The Agent lives in a building owned by the father of He Qiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro). Mute since the age of five (when he ate a can of expired pineapple), Qiwu is a free spirit in the most uninhibited sense. "Re-opening" various stores in the middle of the night and conducting business with passersby (whether they want to or not), Qiwu exists in his own world even when spending time with his aged father. After one close call too many, Ming decides to hang up his gun. Informing The Agent in a rather unique, albeit characteristically passive manner, he encounters blonde-wigged "Baby" (Karen Mok Man-wai), who hides her loneliness beneath a berserk exterior. While making his rounds, Qiwu continually encounters Charlie (Charlie Yeung Choi-nei; image), an even more deranged girl, who is out to get revenge on someone named "Blondie" for stealing her man. Qiwu develops feelings for Charlie but she is far too single-minded and vacant to notice.

Like CHUNGKING EXPRESS, the visuals and structure are aggressively offbeat and the film is filled with a joyous, creative energy (even when the characters are brooding endlessly) that makes almost every set-up seem magical. The action unfolds at every speed and cadence imaginable, the editing and camerawork alternate freely between hyper and comatose, and the image is both over and undersaturated. Grain, glare and overt distortions are stylistic enhancements. Musical underpinning comes courtesy of Frankie Chan Fan-kei and Roel A. Garcia's très chic score, supplemented by songs from Laurie Anderson, Marianne Faithful, Shirley Kwan Suk-yee, and others. While there are resonant moments running the gamut from darkly comic (such as one poor man's misfortune to continually be one of Qiwu's "customers," culminating in he and his family being forced to consume gallons of ice cream!) to poignant (Qiwu's relationship with his understandably exasperated but loving father), FALLEN ANGELS is also filled with some marvellous asides, such as when Ming (who has just performed a hit and is trying to keep a low profile) runs into an obnoxious junior high classmate who won't leave him alone. If it takes a darker view of life and love than the unabashed romanticism of the previous film, FALLEN ANGELS still manages to end on an upbeat note, leaving one both smiling and dazzled. The film won the cinematography, music, and Best Supporting Actress (Karen Mok) prizes at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

Wong Kar-wai's movies, post AS TEARS GO BY, are not exactly easy to evaluate on video. Compared to the HK DVD from Ocean Shores, Kino's transfer is sharper with more detailed contrasts and somewhat richer colors. Ocean Shores' source print has less wear and Kino's sound is a bit scratchy but these faults are not too distracting and the U.S. release is the better choice. Kino's rather Anglocentric English subtitles are contained in opaque strips and cannot be removed. The disc comes with a theatrical trailer and the back cover write-up makes the rather lazy error of referring to the director as "Kar-wai" and to the characters by names that differ from the ones provided in their subtitles. The inside cover offers an excerpt from a Village Voice article about the film by J. Hoberman.

Fallen Angels: Review by Shelly Kraicer  Shelly Kraicer from a Chinese Cinema Page

Well, this may be the Wong Kar-Wai movie for people who don't especially like WKW movies. For those like me who do, it's a disappointment. If you are anticipating another leap forward, like Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, or Chungking Express, then you're not going to find it, I suspect.

To be fair, Fallen Angels is dazzling: a virtuostic display of movie making that would stake out WKW's claim to being one of the most innovative, assured, technically brilliant directors now working. But he doesn't need to do this: we know that he has mastered the medium. In the past, his technique has always been in the service of a fascinating vision: something original, deeply felt, passionately argued. I'm afraid that that's what is missing this time around.

The movie is full of wonderful things, drawn from among the usual set of WKW virtues: cinematography, performances, music. There is an unforgettably disturbing opening shot, extracted from late in the film's narrative, of Michelle Lee (Agent) strung out, shaking, smoking, dominating the foreground, Leon Lai (Killer) behind: all in black and white, the whole image warped by the movie's trademark fish-eye lens. This works; the emotional punch of this scene haunts the rest of the movie.

WKW's jump-and-blur action photography is back, even more elaborately contrived, for several gunplay-mayhem scenes (WKW doing John Woo?). At its best, it provides a deliriously exciting kick to a scene like Takeshi Kanashiro and Charlie Yeung fighting their way out of a restaurant under attack.

And there is the wet lens scene. We see Charlie and TK, together at a table, facing the camera; Charlie looks off to the side, oblivious, while TK moves gently, hesitantly back and forth, touching her; his voice narrates falling in love for the first time; over a honky-tonk bluesy vocal. WKW films this in black and white, ultra-slow motion, through a shimmering distortion, as if water were flowing across the camera lens. Movie magic. Christopher Doyle wins another cinematography award.

The performances: Wong Kar-Wai is a casting wizard:

·  More than anything, Takeshi Kaneshiro's performance gives movie its heart. He starts out buffoonish, playing hilariously against type, but deepens into the movie's most fascinating character, and the one we end up feeling for. He has a mesmerising, charismatic physicality that dominates his scenes (the one described above, and the hilarious/sweet/pathetic dance of ketchup-death at the Midnight Express lunch counter). Awards material.

·  Leon Lai: looks perfect in his role, but doesn't really have a lot to do.

·  Charlie Yeung: a very funny, manic, hammy performance in territory that's no longer the exclusive property of Anita Yuen.

·  Karen Mok Man-Wai: pulls off with aplomb a virtually impossible role: kind of a crazed, pushed-to-neurosis version of Faye Wong in Chungking Express

·  Michelle Lee: darkly, desperately glamourous & sexy. WKW uses her in a way opposite to how he uses Leon, pushing against her star persona. It works: Lee gives a bravely gritty performance that should win her serious respect.

It's hard to get a handle on precisely what's gone wrong with Fallen Angels. It has the strenghts of a WKW film, but they are skewed, out of balance. Sometimes its screenplay is upstaged by the score: more often it is overshadowed by the cinematography. The effects, the virtuostic filmmaking call attention to themselves, instead of drawing us to feel more deeply into the story. Part of the problem might be this film's genesis, as the third, unused story from Chungking Express. You could think of Fallen Angels as CE distorted, pulled to extremes: the humour of CE's second part is broadened, and the violence of its first part is made more explicit. But it doesn't really break new ground.

I've enjoyed repeated viewings of WKW's other movies: they are so full of meaning, and yet elusive, that they reveal different facets each time you see them. But Fallen Angels doesn't give much more the second time around. Which is telling, I fear. It still could be the best HK movie of the year. And it has scenes that will likely be talked about and techniques that will be imitated in less interesting movies. But we'll have to wait for Wong Kar-Wai's next project to see him create something really new. 

Asian Cinema Drifter  Tuna

 

Fallen Angels feels like a darker continuation of Wong Kar Wai’s 1994 film Chungking Express. Apparently, as a third story meant to be part of Chungking Express, Fallen Angels is in a way the anti-thesis to the artificial happiness of the 1994 work. Although it sticks with a similar structure, floating through the lives of several characters, immersing us in the surreal nightlife of the lovelorn inhabitants, we can see the film as a prelude and transition to the interest Wai finds in unrequited love later on in his career. Even if it seemed to be in vain of Chungking Express, it can't be maligned for rehashing the same work because it takes a vastly different approach. It’s not just Chungking with explicit female “loneliness,” but instead a multi-toned piece that may touch you to the (understandable) point where you may in fact prefer it over its “inspiration.”

Fallen Angels is basically the interlacing of several lives broken into two distinctive stories alternating between each other for center stage. The first story involves a hitman on the verge of quitting, who happens to have feelings for his female partner, whom in fact he hardly ever sees. The feelings are mutual, but an unsaid rule keeps them apart, for partners are better off without personal relationships. The hitman breaks off the partnership, then meets another woman referred to as Blondie, but his feelings are torn because of his partner. Alongside this story, the story of a mute, his father and a depressed girl is told. The mute, He Zhiwu falls for a girl named Charlie, recently dumped by her boyfriend. He Zhiwu comforts and accompanies her, as she goes on and on about still having feelings for her ex. Meanwhile he spends his nights working by taking over people’s shops and forcing passing pedestrians to buy items in the middle of the night.

Most likely, the reason one (myself included) ends up loving Chungking Express a whole lot more is the characters. In Fallen Angels, Leon Lai as the hitman gave an average performance, but did the best he could as his character had no distinctive qualities, feeling bland and uninvolved when compared to the passion of Michelle Reis as his partner. She’s the one Wai makes you fall in love with for this movie, as her character goes through drastic changes and she fits the transition perfectly. Takeshi Kaneshiro as the mute was by far the best performance in the movie. Although he had narration to tell his story, his scenes were downright hilarious at times and emotionally powerful at others. You could see the emptiness and loneliness in him too, even though he was unable to verbally express his feelings. In the one scene, he tries to get a girl’s attention by dramatically “stabbing” himself with a broom and pouring ketchup on the “wound” and fails. By simply weighing the utter despair of his character with his ability to still make us laugh, a striking combination is formed to make us wish there were more characters like his or Reis’s. The characters of Blondie and Charlie were played quite well by Karen Mok and Charlie Yeung respectively, seeing as they annoyed the hell out of the viewer as they were supposed to. The characters themselves were not good choices. They were given too much screen time if they were meant to serve as unlikable people, and they were made too unlikable if they were meant to have so much screen time.

The camera work done by Christopher Doyle and Wong Kar Wai was a dizzying handheld spectacle blurring the night streets of Hong Kong throughout the film. The same technique of handheld camera style used in Chungking Express was successfully used here for different purposes. The wild camera movements helped create tension and realism. This style was used perfectly in the hitman’s missions as it followed him through the location giving a sense of pressure and panic as it brushed by people and objects quickly and almost incoherently. Subjective camera was also meshed with the handheld style, which helped show the beauty of the Hong Kong streets at night and retain the on-going modern, and rarely melodramatic sense of loneliness. Well rarely melodramatic for a Wong Kar Wai movie anyway. Fallen Angels also makes use of the tight close up shot at every opportunity, giving the viewer a sense of restraint, to reflect an unrequited love in these darker and oddly similar to In the Mood for Love lives. This style was used in a gorgeous shot which took place in a restaurant as a depressed and silent Michelle Reis sits at a table eating noodles slightly shaking and smoking while her face creates a tight shot covering the right side of the screen. Meanwhile on the left side another whole event is occurring when a fight between two patrons destroys some tables and bring others into the brawl. All this occurs, while she eats her noodles and smokes in the same fashion, only affected by her emotions. All together, the camera works in the same way as Wai's other films by demonstrating a mood with the visuals. Doyle has a similar effect by choosing blurry and fuzzy cinematography at key points for senses of dreaminess and pain. While emotion may not ooze out of certain characters like in Chungking, the entrancing camera work helps make up for a lot of it. If Chungking felt like a dream, Fallen Angels feels like you're sleepwalking.

The score for Angels includes all types of music including an exotic noir-like electronica, light pop, racy guitar work, blues and oldies-esque music. Repetition is a key aspect of Wong Kar Wai’s style in all aspects of his movies. Musically, in Angels, the haunting electronica music is heard three times and all accompanying the tension in the hitman’s missions. This repetition is foreshadow and gets the viewer ready and expectant of what occurred previously when the music played. This is why when the hitman’s partner says, “I’ve got one last favor” and then you see him in a restaurant with the music playing, you know what is going to happen and your mind runs off ideas.

Fallen Angels ends up being Wong Kar Wai’s best moody film, sucking us completely in with perfectly compatible elements. The editing, working with the camera helps create stylish shots and scenes through with unique arrangements. The opening scene of the movie is cut well by combining shots of the female partner going from the train station to a hotel room to clean it up. Rather than show the whole walk over from the train, the scene is broken into no more than two second intervals with shots changing as the woman we follow gets blocked by obstructing objects. Once she reaches the apartment, she begins to clean and cuts are made between small tasks she has to give the viewer the essence of her experience. Immediately it cuts to the hitman, taking the same route as the girl, in the same fashion with very similar cuts and repetition, which immediately alerts the viewer of their connection. Wai does some simple editing that says so much about the ironically mundane jobs this murderous duo has. They do this all efficiently by routine that you wouldn’t even know how “dead” they seem on the inside. I don’t even want to get started on the beginnings of Wai’s lighting and color experimentation here because I'll go on for days about each shot's dynamic mood based on the color palette.

See the movie. It was the last shot that did me in, and as desperately as I want to give it away, it's much nicer to experience it with the rush. Again it sums up the film well because it is yet another cheesy film school metaphor that’s laughable if anyone else ever did it, but not in Wai's case here. This ending scene just leaves you dumbfounded, thinking of one word when the credits roll. Beautiful.

 

Peter Brunette - Wong Kar-wai (Contemporary Film Directors) - Scribd  175-page book by Peter Brunette, 2005

 

The Film Sufi: "Fallen Angels" - Wong Kar Wai (1995)

 

Ways of seeing wild in the cinema of Wong Kar-Wai   7-page essay by Robert M. Payne, films considered include Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, and Happy Together, from Jump Cut (Fall 2001)

 

Trajectories of identification: travel and global culture in the films of Wong Kar-wai  Allan Cameron analyzes Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046  from Jump Cut, Spring 2007

 

Appreciation: Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels | The House Next Door ...  Kenji Fujishima, June 21, 2006

 

The House Next Door [The Conversations] [Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard]  April 29, 2011

 

Fallen Angels Review - A Wong Kar-Wai Fansite  Ed Shum

 

Only the Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

The New Cult Canon: Fallen Angels  Scott Tobias from The Onion A.V. Club

 

WONG KAR WAI MARATHON: 'Fallen Angels' (1995) | Film Misery  Justin Jagoe

 

Demystifying Fallen Angels - MediaCircus.net  Anthony Leong

 

Fallen Angels - Reverse Shot  Jordan Cronk, also seen here:  •Stereo Sanctity•: Film Review: Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels (1995)

 

REBELLIOUS JUKEBOX : Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels [8/10] | Neil ...  Neil Young from Jigsaw Lounge

 

Fallen Angels Review (Wong Kar-Wai) | Public Transportation Snob  Dan Heaton

 

Oeuvre: Wong Kar-wai: Fallen Angels - Spectrum Culture  Katherine Springeer

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

Fallen Angels (墮落天使) (1995) - Love HK Film  Kozo (Ross Chen)

 

notcoming.com | Fallen Angels  Leo Goldsmith

 

World Cinema Review: Wong Kar-wai | 墮落天使 (Duòluò tiānsh ...  Douglas Messerli

 

From the Vaults: 'Fallen Angels' | Arts | The Harvard Crimson  Jude D. Russo

 

MOVIE REVIEW: Wong Kar-wai's FALLEN ANGELS (1998 ...  Helen Reviews Stuff

 

A Nutshell Review  Stefan S

 

Medium.com: John Oursler   June 03, 2015

 

Fallen Angels [1995] : Wong Kar Wai And The Art Of Longing - High ...  Nivedita Nair from High On Films

 

Retrospective: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai | IndieWire  August  19, 2013

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014

 

Chungking Express / Fallen Angels | Film at The Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

Gram Parsons - Fallen Angel | Film at The Digital Fix  Eamonn McCusker

 

Fallen Angels  John White from 10k Bullets

 

dOc DVD Review: Fallen Angels (Duo luo tian shi) (1995)  Matt Peterson

 

DVD Savant Review: Fallen Angel - DVD Talk  Glenn Erickson

Criterion Confessions: CHUNGKING EXPRESS - #453/FALLEN ...  Jamie S. Rich, also reviewing CHUNGKING EXPRESS, also seen here:  Chungking Express + Fallen Angels DTS (Region 3) : DVD Talk ...

Fallen Angels Blu-ray Review | High Def Digest  Steven Cohen

 

Fallen Angels (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk Review of the Blu-ray  Adam Tyner

 

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov]

 

Fallen Angels Blu-ray - Blu-ray.com  Casey Broadwater

 

Nite Owls: Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels (1995) - Blu-ray / DVD review  Simon Kinnear

 

Fallen Angels (1995) Review by PJ - Chinese Movies - spcnet.tv

 

Fallen Angels - Shock Cinema Magazine  Steven Puchalski

 

Fallen Angels and Poetry of Urban Loneliness | The Asian Cinema Blog  Agne Serpytyte

 

The Necessity of Wong Kar Wai | KQED Pop | KQED Arts  Laura Schadler, September 3, 2013

 

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Raging Bull [Vanes Naldi]

 

Combustible Celluloid Review - Fallen Angels (1995), Wong Kar-wai ...  Jeffrey M. Anderson

 

'Colossal,' 'Stalker,' 'Suspiria,' 'Fallen Angels,' - The Film Stage

 

Fallen Angels (1995) - Wong Kar-Wai | Review | AllMovie  Elbert Ventura

 

Fallen Angels - Movie Reviews and Movie Ratings | TVGuide.com

 

Fallen Angels | Variety  Leonard Klady

 

Boston Phoenix [Gary Susman]

 

Fallen Angels - Film Calendar - The Austin Chronicle  Russell Smith

 

Review: Happy Together, and Fallen Angels - Screens - The Austin ...  Marc Savlov reviews two DVD Special Editions from The Austin Chronicle

 

San Francisco Examiner [G. Allen Johnson]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Edward Guthmann]

 

Youthful Spirit Mixes With Emotional Impact in 'Angels' - latimes  Kevin Thomas

 

Fallen Angels Movie Review & Film Summary (1998) | Roger Ebert

 

New York Times  also seen here:  Movie Review - - FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW; Better a Broken Heart ...  

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

Fallen Angels (1995 film) - Wikipedia

 
HAPPY TOGETHER (Chun gwong cha sit)                A                     96
Hong Kong  (96 mi)  1996
 
Off-beat, in your face look at two Hong Kong lovers, superbly played by Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung, who get lost in Argentina, doomed lovers from the start, perfectly reflected in the opening black and white shot of the front of a car, where they are lost out on a desolate highway, trying to read a map on the hood of their car, only to see it blow away in the wind.  There is a narration underneath that only briefly explains the action, an on again off again relationship between two exiled male lovers whose fantasy of going to the great falls together is achieved only with the purchase of a cheap lamp, with a swirling interior light, and a bright, colorful replication of the waterfalls with water continuously streaming down.  This is as close as they ever got as a couple, as their isolation and loss is expressed by a long helicopter shot over this huge, gigantic falls, as an extremely romantic, Spanish tune plays underneath it all.  But they argue, fight, make passionate love in their underwear, only to argue and fight some more, eventually breaking up.  One always seems to suggest that they want to “start again,” as their life without one another is just as violent and disappointing.  One becomes a dance hustler in a bar, who eventually gets beat up (Cheung), while the other stays drunk, hawking customers for a tango bar (Leung), until they meet again and Leung tries to nurse his ailing partner back to health, only to see him sneak out late at night when he recovers, leading to more violence and mistrust between these two extremely lonely lives, exiled on every possible level.  Balanced against this portrait of alienation is some extremely bold and passionate cinematography by Christopher Doyle, featuring quick edits, a mix of black and white and color, some exaggerated to an extreme, a style which is brilliantly effective, especially the choice of the Spanish music to match these terrific images.  Winner of Best Director at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. 

"Cucurrucucu Paloma"
by Caetano Veloso

"Bar Sur I"
Live Recording

"Chunga's Revenge"
by Frank Zappa

"Bar Sur II"
Live Recording

"Prologue (Tango Apasionado)"
by Astor Pataleon Piazzolla

"3 Amigos"
Live Recording

"Milonga for 3"
by Astor Pataleon Piazzolla

"I Have Been In You"
by Frank Zappa

"Happy Together"
by Danny Chung

Happy Together, directed by Wong Kar-wai | Film review - Time Out  Tony Rayns

Wong Kar-Wai and cameraman Chris Doyle have crafted their most lyrical film. The romance between two gay men from Hong Kong ends soon after they arrive in Argentina. Lai (Leung) gets a job as a doorman at a Buenos Aires tango bar and starts saving for his ticket home. Ho (Cheung) turns tricks for fun and profit, but comes running back to Lai for comfort when one of his clients leaves him bruised and bleeding. Lai befriends - and somehow draws emotional strength from - a Taiwanese kid on his way south to 'the end of the world'. The three main characters give Wong all he needs for a piercing meditation on the meaning of partings, reunions, and attempts to start over. From afar (Buenos Aires is Hong Kong's antipodes), he crystallises the anxieties and hopes of Hong Kong people on the eve of the return to China.

Happy Together | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum

A star vehicle, not only because its leads were two of the hottest stars in Hong Kong cinema (Tony Leung and the late Leslie Cheung) and a Taiwanese pop star (Chang Chen, who played the 14-year-old hero of Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day), but also because writer-director Wong Kar-wai is something of a star himself. In fact his aggressive mannerist style—the use of different characters as narrators, the variable speed of Chris Doyle's frenetic cinematography, the shifts between color and black and white—forms the core of this 1997 story of doomed love between two men in Buenos Aires, one of whom befriends a straight Taiwanese youth in the same city. Structurally and dramatically this is all over the place, but stylistically it's gripping, and thematically it suggests an oblique response to the end of Hong Kong's colonial rule. Incidentally, a friend of mine from Buenos Aires tells me that this film captures that city better than any other. In Cantonese, Mandarin, and Spanish with subtitles.

Hong Kong Digital #159: Happy Together  John Charles, also seen here:  Hong Kong Digital (DVD Review)

Wong Kar-wai won the Best Director prize at Cannes for this estimable work which, while more readily accessible than some of his earlier projects, still beautifully conveys the director's characteristic themes. Ho Po-wing (Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing) and Lai Yiu-fai (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) are a gay couple, living in Buenos Aires, whose relationship is winding down. The pair soon split up, with Yiu-fai supporting himself by working as a nightclub doorman, while Po-wing sells himself on the streets. Yiu-fai does his best to avoid Po-wing but takes him back into his life when the hustler is badly beaten one evening. Shamelessly manipulative but also utterly dependent, Po-wing seeks to restart the sexual element of their relationship but Yiu-fai resists. Eventually, the two begin arguing once again, prompting Yiu-fai to leave and switch jobs. He meets Chang (Chang Chen), a Taiwanese tourist, who has run out of money and works to support himself, and the two strike up a platonic friendship that eventually helps Yiu-fai see where he wants to go with his life. Racked with boredom, Po-wing returns to hustling and the two men seem to finally part company. Still, no matter how much he seemingly wants to extricate himself from Po-wing, Yiu-fai keeps the man's passport, making it impossible for them to be ever be totally apart.

Like the director's earlier films, the predominant topics here are loneliness, the longing for love, and the waiting one must undergo for affection to be reciprocated. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle gives HAPPY TOGETHER an even more varied and unique look than on his other collaborations with Wong from this period, juxtaposing stark black and white and hazy, high contrast color. Time is manipulated through the use of slow motion, random freeze frames, time lapse, jump cuts, and flash frames, and everything unfolds to an eclectic selection of music that ranges from local standards to Frank Zappa. While it lacks the narrative density of ASHES OF TIME and the playful restlessness of CHUNGKING EXPRESS and FALLEN ANGELS, this is an engrossing, deceptively simple character study, buoyed by three superb performances. The production gained some notoriety prior to release when Leung revealed to the press that he had agreed to do the film on the basis of what turned out to be a fake script. Only once he was in Argentina did Leung see the real pages and he was none too happy about the love scene he had to do with Leslie Cheung (it occurs in the opening moments and was also the first scene to be shot). His discomfort seems discernible at times but in no way hinders his interpretation of the character or the quality of his work.

Kino's domestic DVD and Mei Ah's HK release (which usually measures about 1.50:1, though a handful of shots appear in fullscreen) look radically different. The import has deeper colors and much harsher contrast, offering far less detail in many shots than Kino's more subdued presentation. I have not seen the film theatrically but suspect that the Mei Ah edition is probably closer to Wong's original intentions. Regardless, Kino's rendition is much easier to appreciate on a video monitor. Purists may want to look at both: Mei Ah for the original look and Kino for the opportunity to pick up nuances in the camerawork and production design that are not visible in the HK version. The end credits carry the Dolby Stereo logo but neither version has any discernible channel separation and boast only slightly wider soundscapes than an average monaural film (again, this may have been Wong's intention all along). A brief interview with the director is included on the inside cover of the snapper case and a theatrical trailer follows the feature.

Asian Cinema Drifter  Tuna

 

You've got to give credit to Wong Kar Wai and the stars of Happy Together for making it work. Simply asking Tony Leung to be in his next movie, without telling him it was a gay romance, Wai had him come down all the way to Argentina to shoot. Then on the very first day, Wong sprung it on him that they were going to do the sex scene with Leslie Cheung. And still, a shocked Leung stayed with it, and together they made a pretty convincing romance in spite of the circumstances. It’s with this sort of whimsical adaptability, Happy Together seems to find most of its strengths, but a few key weaknesses as well.

Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing, two gay lovers with a turbulent on-and-off relationship decide to take a trip from Hong Kong to Argentina during one specific “on” period in order to see the waterfalls. While on the road, they fight and break-up, leaving Yiu-Fai stranded in Buenos Aires, working a job as a doorman at a tango bar earning money for his return ticket. Meanwhile, Po-wing, the type that’s in the relationship for the short-term rush, has his fun with other men in Argentina, but soon reenters Fai’s life, hoping to “start over” like the many times before.

In Happy Together, Wong Kar Wai seems to push some of his talents to the extreme, while at the same time, making some vital changes to add a totally different spin to this romance. Most obvious is the fact that Wai makes a foray into the gay relationship, as both characters play their parts perfectly and manage a convincing story, in spite of the odd casting situation with Cheung’s real life homosexuality and Leung’s heterosexuality. The roles were also handled well through Wai’s usual lack of a script because the characters could mold to the actors, as Cheung played the more aggressive and active one while Leung is far more composed and calm. This is shown rather early on and is even noticeable in the three minute sex scene that kicks off the film. Yes there is rather long one, and while that may be off-setting for some male viewers, keep in mind that Leung had to go much further than you.

The other change Wai makes lies in the place of the relationship. While all of Wai’s previous efforts dealt specifically with finding love and making it work out, Happy Together works with things that happen after the relationship. Since the characters break up early on into the film, we instead get a far longer glimpse at the recovery and unsteady rekindling. It’s a very different perspective for a romance, but it fits in fine here with Yiu-Fai and Po-wing’s attitudes, and the cyclical nature of their relationship. In the end, it’s a nice change for Wai to always keep his films different while maintaining the same characteristics that set him apart.

So you can probably see the cinematography praise coming from a mile away, as Wai uses Chris Doyle again to provide arguably the best visual style out of all their collaborations. Along with the sort of abstract, fuzzy and dream-like shot composure comes a color palette highly defined with sharp tints dominating each scene. Wai could use anything from black and white to just casually filling one room with a cool blue and moving outside to a striking red shine covering the walls. As far as I can tell it serves no metaphorical purpose and is part of Wai’s experimental side, but needless to say, it really catches the eye and at times enhances the mood of the film. The music is also particularly stand-out with a beautiful blend of spanish music to fit the South American setting, with a catchy rock tune or two thrown in to keep us on our toes. The soundtrack can stand alongside any of Wai’s other works by maintaining that addictively serene and melancholy musical taste you can’t bear to stop listening to.

Then why is the film not perfect you ask? It’s difficult to say because it may even be a matter of preference. I've given the film a couple chances, trying to overcome the soporific style of certain scenes in the middle. When I find myself impatient at the same points every time, it definitely can’t be only me. There’s just something way too irrelevant and uninteresting about that middle act involving Yiu-Fai’s friendship with a cook played by Chang Chen. Surely enough, when the resolution to the film starts to form, my interest unexplainably peaks again, as we are treated to a visually stunning rendition of The Turtles' "Happy Together" with enough hyper-kinetic train movements to give Spike Jonze a seizure. Perhaps just the lack of action in the Chen subplot did it in? Or the ambiguity? I doubt it. It's just that it seems so tame and safe when compared to the humor and wit behind Leung and Cheung's chemistry. It helps to add to Yiu-Fai's character growth, but even so, nothing truly stands out about the Chen relationship, and it slowly gets dragging. Throwing in this sharp contrast to the earlier, more vibrant relationship can seem like an ingenious decision on paper (provided Wai wrote it down), but on camera it hardly grabs.

Winning best director for the film at Cannes, Wai again proved his worth to world cinema. Naturally fans will relish the stylistic improvements and change of pace and gender, while those with Wai problems will find even more here. Sure it has its fair share of flaws and can be as slow as his other films, but any memorable shot, be it the camera floating longingly around the waterfalls or Wai’s now-signature lean-on-the-shoulder-in-the-cab-scene will make nearly all its small problems worth forgetting.

 
Chinese Cinema Page  Shelly Kraicer

 

Yiu-fai (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Po-wing (Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing) have "started over" their relationship, for the umpteenth time, but this time they've gone all the way from Hong Kong to "the end of the world", Buenos Aires, to do it. Po-wing is the flightier one; who flits in and out of Yiu-Fai's life whenever he needs Yiu-fai's care. Yiu-fai is the quiet, loyal nurturer, the sufferer, the brooder with an undercurrent of violence. He's a landing pad for Po-wing, his cook, his shopper, his dance partner, whatever Po-wing needs. But they're headed for another inevitable breakup. There are complications: Yiu-fai meets a co-worker, a displaced Taiwanese teenager named Chang (played by Chang Chen), with whom he begins to spend time. The film begins and ends with a voyage: to the Iguazu Falls, whose mystery draws Yiu-fai, and to Taiwan, to Chang, family and home. 

We watch how two men fall in and out of love, but (as Wong repeatedly insists on in his interviews) "Happy Together" isn't essentially a "gay" film: just a story of how two very different men love each other and can't tolerate each other. 

Maybe this story is one we are already a bit too familiar with; Wong Kar-wai's greatest gift, up to now, has been to tell us stories whose shapes and contents we've never even begun to think of, before. 

But, he has never made anything quite like Happy Together's kaleidoscope of of beauty. Wong's virtuosity (and that of his long-time collaborators, cinematographer Christopher Doyle and editor/production designer William Chang) in finding, creating, and altering images seems absolutely unconstrained. Images so suffused with emotion that they take your breath away:  

  • stuttering slow motion effects isolating the briefest moments of emotional connection: as Yiu-fai and Po-wing eye each other, as Yiu-fai and Chang shake hands 
  • fractured, prismatic montage, as Po-wing and Yiu-fai confront each other through a blizzard of quick cuts, coming from every available angle and distance, yet whose perfectly assured rhythm makes them all hang together as a sense of one (irreducibly fractured) moment 
  • a long take (40 seconds, which is long for this film), the camera holding relentlessly on Yiu-fai who, unable to articulate his sadness, weeps into the tape recorder that Chang gives him  

Wong knows how to make us feel time's flow in every possible way: fracturing and speeding it up by jump cutting with abandon; playing with extreme fast-motion to film Buenos Aires and Taipei traffic so we feel the compressed, giddily accelerated pace of urban time; slowing a tender lovers' dance to the moment-lasting-an-eternity that it will persist in memory. 

The filmmakers' technical wizardry extends to a control of colour that encompasses harsh high contrast black and whites of the road-movie opening, blue- and sepia-tinted monochromatic transitional scenes, highly-saturated colours of its urban settings, and the uncanny naturalism of the most arresting image of the film: Iguazu Falls. The film is built around this scene: it is shown near the beginning and again near its end, just before the coda. We see the Falls -- locus or fetish-object of the characters' yearnings -- from high overhead, in an image that slowly rotates through 180 degrees, taking all the time in the world. The first time, as a place that can't be reached; and at the end, as an arrival point, however temporary, for Yiu-Fai (in between, Wong inserts a series of obsessively repeated shots of a rotating Iguazu Falls souvenir lamp in Yiu-fai's room). The two framing shots connect directly with a similar pair of shots in Days of Being Wild -- the full screen of slowly swaying, rich green tropical trees -- similarly deployed near the beginning and end of that film. And both pairs of scenes are suffused with a particular kind of rhapsodic music that Wong uses to signify a kind of perfect world -- real or imaginary, close at hand or impossibly far off -- that his characters need to believe in in order to survive. In Happy Together, an ecstatically tender Caetano Veloso song, and an excerpt from Astor Piazzolla's Tango Apasionado, suffused with desire. 

If you are looking for embedded echoes of Wong's other films, you'll find them: 

  • playful ones, when Yiu-fai accuses Chang of looking like the Blind Swordsman, who was Tony Leung Chiu-wai's character in Ashes of Time. 
  • narrative echoes, like the date stamped on Po-wing's and Yiu-fai's passport, May 1, 1995, which marks not only the beginning of Happy Together, but the date from Chungking Express when Faye's boarding slip to Tony Leung (Cop 663) expires (and the birthday of Takeshi Kaneshiro's Cop 223). 
  • formal echoes, like the fast-motion shot of Buenos Aires traffic from dusk to night, a clock-billboard askew on the right side of the screen. This parallels the architecture of the opening shot of As Tears Go By, where a screen of TVs recedes from the right of the screen, beside a high-angle shot of an urban night street scene. An image that perfectly captures one of Wong's favourite tropes,Ê a visibly fractured space, inhabited by two different kinds of time, each unfolding at its own pace 
  • and structural echoes, like the above-mentioned waterfall and forest scenes. 

As Wong himself has admitted, "... all my films are not stories. I think they are more about characters. The story line is not strong" (interview in the New York Times, Sunday October 12, 1997). Faced with this kind of carefully conceived visual bounty, though, it seems churlish to complain about what seems like an uncharacteristically impoverished narrative. 

Even more so, when you consider just how fine the performances are that Wong has again elicited from a gifted cast. Taiwanese pop-idol Chang Chen has a sweet, easy presence that plays well as the third member of the lovers' triangle. Leslie Cheung is a joy to watch, not, this time, because of his preternatural onscreen beauty, which is pretty much a given, but somehow despite this, in the way he becomes the impishly childlike, exasperatingly selfish, irritating and yet oddly magnetic character that somehow has a claim on Yiu-Fai's love and on our attention. A fine stroke, to dissolve the burden of Cheung's own aura of narcissism by casting him as a character whose self-love is gently mocked. 

And Tony Leung Chiu-wai must be the most prodigiously gifted actor in contemporary Chinese cinema, along with Maggie Cheung. What a courageous, risky, completely unguarded performance, that reaches deeper into the source of his craft than a "star" might be expected to offer. Leung has steadily built up a substantial body of work, from Hou Hsiao-hsien's City of Sadness (1989, Taiwan), through a series of widely varied, richly characterized roles in films like Hard Boiled (1992), He Ain't Heavy He's My Father (1993), Mack the Knife (1995), Cyclo (1995, Vietnam), and Wong Kar-wai's two 1994 releases, Chungking Express and Ashes of Time. In Happy Together, Leung reaches the top. He draws, fearlessly, on what looks like a limitless reservoir of sensitivity and power, and creates a character who burns himself into your memory. 

I'm left thinking that Wong's new film needs time to sink in, time for its various aesthetic strategies even to be noticed, let alone accounted for.Ê If at first it seems as if the film's story is overwhelmed by its technical invention, if its substance is destabilized by its form, then even this impulse has significance. The constant theme of Wong Kar-wai's cinema is that the formal conditions of our experience have changed so radically that they compel us to live an entirely new kind of experience to fill them, to fulfil all of their promise and potential. That's just what is at the crux of Happy Together: a productive tension, a pressure on its content by its structure, that hints at an expansion of possibility without any of the old limits. 

In the preceding remarks, I've been preoccupied with drawing out one thread of Wong Kar-wai's art: his proposal for a new "technology" of time, one which offers to render re-intelligible a radically changed world. Wong is just as ambitious in regards to space, the other defining vector of our experience. For a very preliminary indication of where his equally radical technology of space may be headed, we could look closely at Happy Together's epilogue. Does this most problematic section of the film even begin to address the question of "why in Argentina?": why have Wong and company wandered so far away from home? I'm going to suggest that issues of place for Wong are impossible to disentangle from their ideological implications, their relationships to power. Issues which are more prudently addressed through indirection, from a certain distanced, displaced setting: hence, Buenos Aires. Wong even jokes about this gambit, in the film, with upside-down shots of Hong Kong traffic illustrating how that city might look to Yiu-fai from his geographically inverted perspective. But contrary to Yiu-fai's expectation, home has a way of appearing more rather than less immediate when you are as far away as possible, on the opposite side of the world. 

After Yiu-fai reaches Iguazu, the film seems to arrive at a place of repose; it feels finished, fading to black for several seconds. Cut to airborne camera sweeps of Chang at the southern tip of Argentina, then to the epilogue, as Yiu-fai, now in Taipei, watches news of Deng Xiaoping's death on TV, then goes out to a night market and finds Chang's parents. The final image seems to be right out of a film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan's pre-eminent filmmaker. Yiu-fai watches out the front of a speeding train (on Taipei's new urban transit system), as it zooms along elevated tracks, pulling into a station . But, on top of this sequence that is quintessentially Hou, Wong inscribes an urban nighttime location (against Hou's more typically rural settings), and another fast-motion time twist. The emotional weight of the scene, though -- its sensation of freedom, a euphoria in simply being-in-motion (which contrasts with the various traps of stasis that Yiu-fai and Po-wing were mired in, in the rest of the film) -- seems very close to the central scene of Goodbye South Goodbye (1996): the long ecstatic motorcycles-in-motion shot, of Jack Gao and company sailing along a country road. 

This scene is one of the very few points of connection that I am aware of between the contemporary cinemas of Taiwan and Hong Kong. And it is telling that it should closely follow an abruptly inserted on-screen image of Deng Xiaoping's televised funeral. In the parallel new futures of both post-colonial Hong Kong and its post-1997 cinema, old political and cultural entanglements have ruptured, and new options become possible, along with new dangers. Yiu-fai, freed from his own emotional entanglements (one might even say that he has undergone a moment of de-colonization in his personal life), barely takes notice of the momentous events on the mainland, unfolding on his TV set. In this briefest of glances towards and then immediately away from Deng on TV, the film registers, then peremptorily dismisses a mainland connection. This is not where the "story about a reunion", promised in the film's original subtitle, is headed. 

Yiu-fai's new world heads back to Hong Kong through Taipei. It finds its momentum in the energy and sense of possibility that comes from both of these cities' spaces, together. Perhaps this is what really is at the heart of the "happy together" that the film's ecstatic conclusion celebrates: a synthesis, full of possibility, of two cultural spaces, or two cinematic spaces, or two ways of life. An embrace which is also a rejection, after a long struggle, of seductive alternatives with no future. 

Peter Brunette - Wong Kar-wai (Contemporary Film Directors) - Scribd  175-page book by Peter Brunette, 2005

 

Happy Together • Senses of Cinema  Joe McElhaney from Senses of Cinema, November 5, 2000

 

The Film Sufi: “Happy Together” - Wong Kar Wai (1997)

 

Ways of seeing wild in the cinema of Wong Kar-Wai   7-page essay by Robert M. Payne, films considered include Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, and Happy Together, from Jump Cut (Fall 2001)

 

Trajectories of identification: travel and global culture in the films of Wong Kar-wai  Allan Cameron analyzes Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046  from Jump Cut, Spring 2007

 

Last Words: Wong Kar-wai, HAPPY TOGETHER - [PANK]  January 7, 2011

 

“Happy Together” - Salon.com  Charles Taylor, October 31, 1997

 

Cult Confusion (HAPPY TOGETHER) | Jonathan Rosenbaum  January 23, 1998

 

Happy Together - Reverse Shot  Matt Connolly, July 14, 2013

 

Only the Cinema: Happy Together  Ed Howard

 

The House Next Door [The Conversations] [Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard]  April 29, 2011

 

No-Home Movie: Emotional Dislocation in 'Happy Together' and ...  No-Home Movie: Emotional Dislocation in ‘Happy Together’ and ‘Moonlight,’ by Jonah Jeng from The Film Stage, January 4, 2017

 

Oeuvre: Wong Kar-wai: Happy Together - Spectrum Culture  Drew Hunt

 

The bitter romanticism of Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together  David Pountain from Little White Lies, July 16, 2017

 

Happy Together | Blu-ray Review | Slant Magazine  Eric Henderson

 

Review: Happy Together - Conrad Clark - Cargo Collective

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

notcoming.com | Happy Together  Leo Goldsmith

 

World Cinema Review: Wong Kar-wai | 春光乍洩 Happy Together  Douglas Messerli

 

Happy Together Review (Wong Kar-Wai) | Public Transportation Snob  Dan Heaton

 

Happy Together (1997) - LoveHKFilm.com  Kozo (Ross Chen)

 

WONG KAR WAI MARATHON: 'Happy Together' (1997) | Film Misery  Alex Carlson

 

Letterboxd: Mike D'Angelo

 

A Mighty Fine Blog: Film Review: Happy Together (1997)  Edwin Davies

 

Happy Together Movie Review - MediaCircus.net  Anthony Leong

 

Saturday Editor's Pick: Happy Together (1997) - Alt Screen

 

Retrospective: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai | IndieWire  August 19, 2013

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014

 

Wong Kar-Wai's Happy together The new Hong Kong cinema - Google Books Result   Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together, by Jeremy Tambling (122 pages), 2003, the book itself may be previewed online

 

Wong Kar-wai: His movies, his soundtracks and more   book review of Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together, by Jeremy Tambling (122 pages) from China Daily, December 23, 2003

 

Happy Together | Film at The Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

dOc DVD Review: Happy Together (1997) - Digitally Obsessed  Joel Cunningham

 

Happy Together Read TCM's Home Video Review on this film  Pablo Kjolseth

 

The Wong Kar-Wai Collection Read TCM's Home Video Review on this film   Nathaniel Thompson

 

Happy Together (Blu-Ray) Read TCM's Home Video Review on this film  Sean Axmaker

 

Happy Together Blu-ray - Blu-ray.com  Casey Broadwater

 

Happy Together (Blu-ray) - The A.V. Club (Film)  Scott Tobias

 

Happy Together (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk Review of the Blu-ray  Chris Neilson

 

Happy Together | aka Buenos Aires Affair (1997) Review | cityonfire.com

 

Happy Together: Wong Kar-Wai's filmic techniques | Connor's Film ...  Connor Gillooly

 

Happy Together Review | SBS Movies  Margaret Pomeranz

 

eFilmCritic Reviews  Jay Seaver

 

Cine-File Chicago: Kyle A. Westphal   also reviewing IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

 

MovieMartyr.com  Jeremy Heilman, also reviewing LAN YU

 

The Film Script: <i>Happy Together</i> (Wong Kar Wai, 1997)   Brian Mulligan

 

Messthetics - Cinescene  Pat Padua

 

Gay Essential [Alexander Ryll] (Capsule)

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk  Angus Wolfe Murray

 

Happy Together (1997) - Wong Kar-Wai | Review | AllMovie  Jonathan Crow

 

Time Out Hong Kong - 100 Greatest Hong Kong Films [Edmund Lee]  listed as #79

 

Happy Together - Movie Reviews and Movie Ratings | TVGuide.com

 

Review: 'Happy Together' - Variety  Derek Elley

 

In pictures: Happy Together – the Tony Leung-Leslie Cheung ...  Edmund Lee from The South China Morning Post, May 14, 2017

 

Toronto Star CitySearch

 

Happy Together - Film Calendar - The Austin Chronicle  Russell Smith

 

Review: Happy Together, and Fallen Angels - Screens - The Austin ...  Marc Savlov reviews two DVD Special Editions from The Austin Chronicle

 

Dallas Observer

 

Albuquerque Alibi [Angie Drobnic]

 

Hong Kong director dissects gay breakup - SFGate  G. Allen Johnson

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Edward Guthmann]

 

Wong Kar-Wai Movie Reviews & Film Summaries | Roger Ebert

 

Movie Review - - FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW; Renewable Love, and ...  Stephen Holden from The New York Times

 

DVDBeaver.com [Donald Brown]

 

Happy Together (1997 film) - Wikipedia

 

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Faa yeung nin wa)           A-                    93
Hong Kong  France  Thailand  (98 mi)  2000     In The Mood For Love

It is a restless moment.  She has kept her head lowered to give him a chance to come closer.  But he could not, for lack of courage.  She turns and walks away.

A quiet choreography of missed chances and missed opportunities, rendered more powerful by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-Bing’s poetic dreamlike images that continue to skirt around the issue of love, until, just for a moment, it creeps right up on you and it hits you with full force.  Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung are a marvel to behold, giving perhaps the performance of their careers, neighbors who slowly come to realize their respective spouses are having an affair, leaving them plenty of time to mull over the consequences, their lives stuck inside claustrophobic work and living quarters of Hong Kong in 1962, their relationship is always respectful and courteous.  Initially, they vow:  “We won’t be like them.”  But as time passes, to the lush sounds of Nat King Cole or the hauntingly sensual repeating musical refrains written for the film by Umebayashi Shigeru, played to slow motion images of the sumptuously overdressed Maggie Cheung making her lonely run to the street for noodles, the two of them learn to take full advantage of their time together, sharing noodles over dinner, working on a martial arts story he is writing, hiding her in his room in order to remain undetected during a marathon mahjong game taking place outside his door, standing on the corner taking refuge from the rain, smoking cigarettes on the street under a lone light bulb, waiting for the rain to pass. 
 
Cheung does constant wardrobe changes, continually astounding us with one artfully decorative cheongsam after another, spending up to six hours a day, according to interviews with Tony Leung, just setting her hair.  The attention to detail is nothing less than impressive.  The two of them rehearse scenes together while slurping noodles, practicing their reactions when they ask their spouses if they are having an affair, telling themselves this isn’t real as their innermost feelings are about to explode.  “I didn’t expect it to hurt so much,” she says, which leads to a tearful embrace and the unsuspecting feelings of love, where Leung sadly confesses into her dress, which is a bouquet of colorful flowers, “I thought we won’t be like them.  I thought I was in control.  I was wrong.  Feelings can creep up just like that.” 
 
That era has passed.  Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore.
 
Much to his dismay, her husband returns, and as she wouldn’t leave him, Leung decides to he must leave for Singapore to start a new life as a newspaper reporter, a change reflected in the world conditions occurring all around them in 1963, and in the mysterious unanswered clues left behind in Leung’s room.  Eventually in 1966, covering the historical return of French General Charles de Gaulle to Cambodia, he visits the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat, a sacred temple that has survived for nearly a thousand years, where he leaves a private whispered secret. 

 

He remembers those vanished years as though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch.  And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.

Yumeji's Theme"
Composed and recorded by Umebayashi Shigeru
Courtesy of Emotion Music Co., Ltd.

"Aquellos Ojos Verdes"
Written by L.W. Gilbert and N. Menendez
Performed by Nat 'King' Cole
Publisher: Peer International corp. (Peermusic (SE Asia) Ltd.)/
Campbell Connelly Co. & Ltd. (BMG Music Publishing HK Ltd.)
Courtesy of Capitol Records
Under License From EMI - Capitol Music Special Markets

"Te Quiero Dijiste"
Written by Maria Grever
Performed by Nat 'King' Cole
Publisher: Southern Music Publishing Co., Inc. (Peermusic (SE Asia) Ltd.)
Courtesy of Capitol Records
Under License From EMI - Capitol Music Special Markets

"Quizas, Quizas, Quizas"
Written by Osvaldo Farres
Performed by Nat 'King' Cole
Publisher: Southern Music Publishing Co., Inc. (Peermusic (SE Asia) Ltd.)
Courtesy of Capitol Records
Under License From EMI - Capitol Music Special Markets

From Joshua Klein in 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE:
IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE takes place in a tiny and tightly packed tenement house in Hong Kong during the 1960’s, where two neighbors spend so much time in close proximity that it’s no wonder their lives ultimately cross.  Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung suspect that their respective spouses are having an affair, but they’re not sure if they should follow suit with an affair of their own. Instead they meet for quiet meals and shy discussions, passing the time together as it dawns upon them that maybe they really are meant for each other.

 

However, director Wong, working as usual without a script, allows the tale of infidelity to play out in an oddly reserved and unpredictable manner.  Where the viewer might sense simmering romance, Wong sees sad resignation.  The two potential lovers cling near one another like satellites, but they seem to understand that they may never be able to share the same orbit.  This is not unrequited love but resisted love, as Leung and Cheung struggle to stay apart even though they seem destined to be together.  Wong choreographs this strange relationship with the grace and rhythm of a waltz.  Working with his usual director of photography Christopher Doyle, he tracks the couple in slow motion as they pass each other on the tiny staircases, fret about the weather on the shadowy streets, and cryptically act out the kind of arguments they might have were they actually lovers.

 

Once again Wong also brilliantly uses music, in this case a Nat King Cole instrumental cue that grows in mysterious power the more the theme is replicated.  Each scene is luminous, spilling over with carefully researched but understated period details captured in a dreamlike haze by an eavesdropping camera.  Cheung, clad in a series of beautiful dresses, is stunning, the perfect counterpart to the handsome and tasteful Leung, so in many ways you are rooting for the two to end up together.  That they don’t doesn’t come as a surprise, but the emotional power of their non-relationship proves remarkably effective.

 

In the Mood for Love, directed by Wong Kar-wai | Film review - Time Out  Tony Rayns

Wong's paean to the agony'n ecstasy of buttoned-up emotions is a kind-of sequel to Days of Being Wild, shaped and scored as a valse triste. In Hong Kong, 1962, Mr Chow (Leung) and Mrs Chan (Cheung) are neighbours who discover that their spouses are having an affair. He finds excuses to spend time with her, apparently intending to jilt her. Then they fall in love, but (aside from one reckless moment in a hotel) repress their feelings. He runs away to work as a journalist in Singapore; in 1966, covering De Gaulle's state visit to Cambodia, he's in Angkor Wat trying to unburden himself of the secret which overwhelms his life... Every charged frame of the film pulses with the central contradiction between repression and emotional abandon; the formalism and sensuality are inextricable. Career-best performances from both leads, Leung having a Cannes 'Best Actor' prize to show for his.

Cine-File Chicago: Brian Welesko

Taking place in 1960s Hong Kong or in the memory of 1960s Hong Kong—that city deemed too modern, many of the film's exteriors were shot in Bangkok, after all—Wong Kar Wai's film is a beautiful rumination on its title. Much has been made of IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE's restraint, and there is that: a couple, married to other people who are themselves having affairs, become intimate in every way but physical—save for slight, loaded gestures and tight spaces. The film is pregnant with the overwhelming feeling of infatuation, executed in a lusciousness that recalls something from a dream. But for every restraint there is a counterpoint in excess: Maggie Cheung's many gorgeous dresses are as flamboyant as they are confining; the musical score is both pitch-perfect and overwhelming, familiar and foreign; the cinematography is so rich and meticulous that its multitude of color is evocative of Douglas Sirk's melodramas. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE has hit upon such acclaim because of its local particularity—a commemoration of sorts for Hong Kong's transfer of sovereignty that had not yet happened—as well as its thematic universality as a transnational melodrama. As characters move through Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Cambodia, and the film shifts forward and backward in time, we are reminded of the fluidity of borders, time, and memory. The moment is paramount, and Wong Kar Wai gives us a series of beautiful, sumptuous moments that we can live in forever.

In the Mood for Love | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Ed Gonzalez

 

In the Mood for Love is Wong Kar Wai's ravishing evocation of a unconsummated romantic relationship put through an emotional and cultural ringer, a retread of sorts through Happy Together territory, this time without the kinetic patchwork of jarring film stocks that have become Wong trademarks since Chungking Express. Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) move in next-door to each other in the same apartment building. He's a journalist who dreams of publishing martial-arts novels. She's a secretary at a shipping company. They choose to remain loyal to their spouses, and through Wong's glorious masterstrokes, they come to resemble butterflies caught in a rainbow-tinted industrial web. Wong's use of the interior space is impeccable, recalling Max Ophüls's obsession with background planes as prisons. During the woeful first half of the film, Wong emphasizes the couple's emotional distance by refusing to frame them in the same shot during conversations. Their faceless spouses are noticeably absent from the film, both tending to their own love affairs with each other. Michael Galasso's sweaty soundtrack complements Wong's broad color splashes and erotic compositions. Desire is fabulously displaced into the film's mise-en-scène. Li-zhen must descend a staircase on her way to the local market. Mo-Wan frequently passes the woman on his way up the stairs. This constant ascension and descension looks like performance art but feels like sex. Mo-Wan's spiritual journey ends within the confines of a crumbling temple. His emotional collapse is paralleled with the political turmoil of the country. For Mo-Wan, Li-szhen's absence seems tolerable if only because Wong allows him to experience a release of sorts. Mo-Wan caters to an ancient myth by unleashing his pent-up frustrations into a crack between an ancient stone. In the Mood For Love is ravishing beyond mortal words.

 
In The Mood For Love Shelly Kraicer from a Chinese Cinema Page

Time Blossoms, Time Fades

This year's festival circuit sees the appearance of three Chinese-language masterpieces, one from each from each of the three Chinese-speaking territories: Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love from Hong Kong; Jia Zhangke's Platform from mainland China and Edward Yang's Yi Yi from Taiwan. Not since 1994 (a year that featured Vive l'Amour, Chungking Express, Ashes of Time, Ermo, and To Live!) have Chinese film masterpieces been so strikingly central to the international art film scene.

First among these is Wong Kar-wai's best film since 1994. If Fallen Angels and Happy Together are the master's mannerist exercises in stylistic refinement and intensification, In the Mood for Love is a departure; a heartaching, eye-bewitching masterwork that stakes out new ground. It might even signal the beginning of what will some day be called Wong Kar-wai's "middle period."

There is much that is new in In the Mood and much that looks back to Wong's earlier films. Narrative structure, though present, seems to figure less and less. Here, Mr. Chow (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighbouring apartments in Hong Kong on the same day in 1962. Through frequent encounters in tight hallways, claustrophobic staircases and rain-soaked alleyways, they grow closer, soon realizing that their respective spouses are carrying on an affair with each other. We hear the spouses, but never see more than the backs of their heads.

After Chow and Chan make their discovery, everything changes, but everything stays the same. Oblique conversations gain in intensity, but nothing can be said to "happen." Chan is trapped by an all-night mahjong party in Chow's tiny bedroom, but they only talk. They meet for dinners. They rehearse conversations in which they play each other's spouses, to practice how Chan will confront her husband about his infidelity. Though role-playing affords them the only moments of physical flirtation they allow themselves, their lives entwine. Chow, a journalist, starts to write a martial arts novel, and moves to a hotel room. He enlists Chan to help him with his writing. Their intimacy is refracted through shared fantasy: this time through jointly imagining Chow's novel. Chow takes a new job in Singapore and leaves Hong Kong. A series of epilogues bring the story forward, first to 1963, then to 1966.

But this is not a film that tells a story. It shows a way of life, and reconstructs a set of memories: memories of Wong Kar-wai's own youth in early 60s Hong Kong; memories of Wong's parents' life in Shanghai, filtered through a Hong Kong that revived Shanghai's transplanted urbanity after 1949 (and reconstructed in present-day Thailand); memories of the characters, as they might look back from the epilogues through memory's haze at a reconstructed, romanticized and elliptically conjured past.

Asian Cinema Drifter - Asian film reviews for your unspoiled ...  Tuna from Asian Cinema Drifter (link lost)

 

Ever since Fallen Angels, Wai has continued down the path of guiding his romances to the areas of painstaking unrequited love and loneliness. With In the Mood for Love, he reaches his peak in the subject, that takes romance and adultery and views them through surprisingly original lens, characters to fall in love with, and an aesthetic sense to die for. His minimalism in the romance echoes the genius of Christmas in August, while he adds an aching layer of the relationship that leaves an unrequited desire in the viewer that is more gripping that it has any right to be.

In the Mood for Love is a simple story. Chow Mo Wan and Su Li Zhen move into apartments next to each other in 1960’s Hong Kong. Initially “happily married,” they realize their spouses are taking exceedingly long trips, stay at "work" quite late, and bring home remarkably similar gifts of ties and purses. Chow and Su-Li refuse to be like them, but are in fact rather curious about how the relationship started...

And so Wong Kar Wai severely limits his focus to just our two main characters. He wants the perspective to stay with them while we fail to conjure up an ounce of sympathy for their spouses. Wai manages to simply convince us of the spouses' presence through early curt, cold conversations where they remain out of sight. This works not only for audience emotion but for plot development as well. Curious to determine how the relationship started, Chow and Su-Li, switch gears and attempt to emulate the other's respective spouse. It's a remarkable style of showing the characters' imagination, restraint and tension as they teeter on the line between doing the same, or being different from their cheating spouses.

The main characters themselves are not anything particularly special. They are respectable people, living decent lives at the time, commited to their marriages. Although they are not nearly as quirky as those in Chungking Express or Fallen Angels, In the Mood for Love's leave a lasting impression that travels much deeper than Wai's others. You can sense the emotion in each glance, each passing moment that you try to understand the character’s thoughts. The characters never act outside of their boundaries, they never make eccentric uncharacteristic choices, and Wai gives their personalities just the right amount of interesting details to make them expressive identifiable characters, while also rather sullen closed ones as well.

As for the cast, Tony Leung Chiu Wai pulls it off as the more deeply touched and affected of the two. His expressions signify restraint and passion at the same time and capture the depth of the romance. Much of the acting lies in the subtlety of the character's actions. The littlest things like glances, facial expressions and body language are consistently pulled off perfectly by the actors and provide even more emotion to the film. Maggie Cheung is beautiful in filling in the role of the woman, that Wai subtley shows has entirely different responsibilities from the man. Wai also has this way of making you fall in love with the actresses in all of his movies. Maggie has this charisma and this unexplainable presence that when given the chance, resonates to steal the show; And Wai always gives her these chances.

Technically, the film is of highest artistic quality as well. Instead of going for the fast paced Hong Kong frenzy of his long-time cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, Wai adds Mark Lee Ping-Bin to make a complete turn around and focus on the beauty of slow moving shots to deliver an steady, contemplative experience. This film’s shot composure is better than most any. It can easily be dissected and any frame is worthy of display as a picture. Generally slow moving and tightly constrained, the camera usage is one of many examples of symbolism in the film. Aside from camera techniques, Wai uses lush color choices that serve similar artistic and literary purposes. By dressing Su Li Zhen in elaborate beautiful dresses, he uses this fantastic display of colors to reveal the most contradictory emotion of being lovelorn, as characters wonder why she dresses up for a simple trip to a noodle stand.

Wai never let us down in the past with “California Dreaming” or the dismal electronica of Fallen Angels but even so, the radiance of the Galasso and Umebayashi score for the film surpasses expectation. My favorite scenes in the film consisted of the times when little actually happened and instead we were treated to an emotional break to watch wonderfully edited montages supported by a haunting string orchestra. Other favorites included two perfect Nat King Cole songs used in the background with the steady emotional beat of Aquellos Ojos Verdes as the two eat each other’s spouse’s favorite dish to heartbreakingly role play the initial stages of the affair. It's through a combination of these montages, and vivid background music selections that we simply float by the relationship in quick breezes, rather than linger for unnecessary filler. Wai makes the ninety-something minutes fly by eliciting a ranged atmosphere to fill the film, leaving you cold one moment, and warm the next. When combined with the up and down emotions of the plot, the film has the accessibility to be personally impacting.

So not only is In the Mood for Love my must-see Hong Kong film that I’d recommend over the frenzied action flicks, or the dramatic wu-xia that generally represent the industry, but, it's my favorite film period. It can stand alongside anything for me and marks the pinnacle of the gradual maturation of Wai, Leung and Cheung, with a simply timeless film. With mediations on time, loneliness, marriage, love and those same themes you can think of, descriptions do everything but explain how remarkable the film is. So, to borrow some cliche myself, my only advice is, "you've got to experience it for yourself."

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | In the Mood for Love (2000)  Amy Taubin from Sight and Sound, November 2000

Hong Kong, 1962. Shipping-office secretary Mrs Chan rents a room for herself and her husband in landlady Mrs Suen's house. On the day she moves in, journalist Chow Mo-Wan and his wife begin lodging in an adjoining flat owned by Mr Koo. Suspecting their spouses of having an affair, Mr Chow and Mrs Chan go out for a coffee and talk about their partners' infidelity.

After meeting in a local restaurant, Mr Chow and Mrs Chan take a taxi ride home: Mr Chow is dropped off in the pouring rain some way before the house. The next day, he's ill; Mrs Chan makes some sweet syrup for him. Later, Mrs Chan visits Mr Chow in his room and discusses martial-arts comics with him (he plans to write one himself). Mrs Chan stays overnight to avoid being seen leaving his room by Mrs Suen and her tenants who are playing a parlour game outside.

Mr Chow gets a place of his own. Visiting him, Mrs Chan pretends he's her husband and asks him if he has a mistress. After Mrs Suen tells her she's spending too much time with Mr Chow, Mrs Chan declines his invitation to come over. Later, Mr Chow asks Mrs Chan to join him in Singapore where he has a new job. When they meet again, Mrs Chan gets him to promise not to call her.

Singapore, 1963. In his new flat, Mr Chow notices a lipstick stain on a cigarette stub. Mrs Chan is seen some time earlier in the room.

Hong Kong, 1966. Mrs Chan and her young son visit Mrs Suen, who's about to move to the US. Later, Mr Chow returns to his old lodgings and asks about Mr Koo, long gone. In Phnom Penh, Cambodia to cover the visit of General de Gaulle, Mr Chow visits a ruined temple, the Angkor Wat, where he whispers a secret into a hole in the wall.

Review

A year or so before Wong Kar-Wai began shooting In the Mood for Love, he answered a poll in the Village Voice about favourite film endings. Wong listed two: John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclipse (1962). About the second he wrote: "A sequence of empty shots at the end of the film revisits many of the locations seen earlier. Suddenly, one realises this film is not about Monica Vitti or Alain Delon, but about the place they live in." Wong must already have been thinking about In the Mood for Love, in which two of the most charismatic actors in the world - Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung - are nearly upstaged by the wallpaper. But the place - Hong Kong in the early 60s as recreated in 1999, basically in Bangkok - is not so much the star of the film as the indispensable ground of its being.

Like all of Wong's films with the exception perhaps of Ashes of Time, In the Mood for Love has an exceptionally vivid sense of place. But here, what we might also call the landscape or the environment operates differently than in the three films Wong made in the mid 90s - Chungking Express, Fallen Angels and Happy Together. In those hyperkinetic works, the camera seems to be on a collision course with something that we know is the real world. Hong Kong or Buenos Aires is transformed into a uniquely filmic space in a way that only heightens their immediacy. Despite their eliptical, somewhat non-linear narratives, these are films cast in the present tense.

In the Mood for Love, on the other hand, is a memory piece. And unlike Wong's early film Days of Being Wild, which is also set in the early 60s, its subject is not the past, but rather the memory of the past and the rendering of that memory in film. An intertitle, placed between the main body of the film (the narrative of the extra-marital affair between Mr Chow and Mrs Chan) and the epilogue (in which Mr Chow, having lost track of Mrs Chan's whereabouts, visits Phnom Penh) reads: "That era is over, and everything that belongs to that era no longer exists." In other words, there is no going back to the place that Hong Kong was before the anti-colonial demonstrations of 1966 and no way the particular experience Mr Chow and Mrs Chan had with each other in that place at that time could ever happen again. Not just because the people are older and perhaps less vulnerable, but because the times themselves have changed.

Thus what we see on the screen is less the depiction of an extra-marital affair than of its remains as they are re-envisioned and fetishised in the mind's eye. The images are simultaneously more intimate and more distanced than in Wong's other films. The shots are brief and they often disappear from the screen before we can quite grasp the meaning of what we've seen. The connection between shots or between sequences of shots is eliptical in the extreme.

As always in Wong's films, movement is eroticised. But here, there's no rush, no dizzying climax to the movement. Instead, there is a more striking use of slow-motion images and of shots in which we see actors from behind as they move away from the camera's eye. In one emblematic shot, the camera hovers behind Maggie Cheung as she climbs the stairs to her apartment, her swaying hips sheathed in one of her many flowered cheongsams, her rice bucket dangling from her hand. The shot is repeated at least three times, each repetition accompanied by the same slow dissonant mazurka on the soundtrack. The music, the slo-mo, and the incongruity of the elegant dress and the clumsy rice bucket make the moment seem like a dream.

The elusive, erotically charged, dreamlike quality of the film as a whole is heightened by the way shots are framed so that we always seem to be looking through doors or windows or down corridors to see the action, such as it is. This layering of the image is expressive of the kind of layering which goes on within the characters. Drawn together when they discover their spouses are having an affair, Mr Chow and Mrs Chan disavow their own attraction to each other by playing a kind of game of acting out what they imagine Mr Chow's wife and Mrs Chan's husband do when they are together.

The film, thus, is not only a treatise on memory but also on the art of acting. What happens to Mr Chow and Mrs Chan is what happens to great actors when they have the experience of being simultaneously their real-life selves and the characters they're playing. And Cheung and Leung give the most subtle performances of their careers here. But this mixing of fantasy with a heightened sense of corporeality is also what happens in any great love affair, which, recollected after the fact, leaves one wondering where the person one was then has gone.

At the end of the film, the fragile hot-house world that nurtured the affair has disappeared, and we are returned to ourselves and the real world of crumbling empires with a newsreel clip of de Gaulle visiting Cambodia, and then with the visit to the ruins of Angkor Wat, which will outlive all - not only the story of Mr Chow and Mrs Chan's love and loss but its memory as embodied in this exquisite, fragile film. In the Mood for Love ends with a title that speaks to its fetishistic quality: "The past is something he could see but not touch." It's not what's present in the image that makes us desire to see this film again and again, but rather, the absence that haunts it.

Hong Kong Digital #128a: In The Mood For Love  John Charles, also seen here:  Hong Kong Digital - DVD [John Charles]

Tony Leung Chiu-wai appears in the final minutes of Wong Kar-wai's DAYS OF BEING WILD as part of a bit designed to set up a sequel. As the film was poorly received by audiences, it has yet to be produced but Wong's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE can be considered a companion piece. The director has stated that he regards MOOD as another chapter of DAYS and, in fact, Maggie Cheung's character in this later film, Su Li-zhen, shares the same name and could theoretically be that girl a few years later. Might Tony Leung's handsome, unnamed stranger also be the character he plays here?

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE opens in 1962 Hong Kong. Secretary Su Li-zhen (Cheung) and newspaper man Chow Mo-wan (Leung, who won the Best Actor prize at Cannes) have rented neighboring rooms in a building owned by the nosy Mrs. Suen (Rebecca Pan Di-hua) that is also occupied by her transplanted Shanghainese friends. Li-zhen and Mo-wan often pass in the hall and, occasionally, in the street, greeting each other politely and engaging in superficial small talk. However, it gradually becomes apparent to both of them that their mates (played by Paulyn Suen Kai-kwun and Roy Cheung Yiu-yeung, who are heard but never clearly seen) are having an affair...with each other. This draws Li-zhen and Mo-wan closer and, after a while, they even pretend to be their respective spouses, rehearsing confrontations that may never come to pass. While their attraction is genuine, each is hesitant to pursue their own affair and this reluctance is exacerbated by social convention and the ever-prying eyes of Mrs. Suen.

If that synopsis seems rather brusque, it is simply because IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE is, like most of this director's work, more concerned with character and effect than narrative. Dispensing with the voiceover narration this time, Wong creates a mood entirely through imagery, editorial rhythm and musical motifs (like the repeated use of a mournful string piece and the Spanish Nat "King" Cole song "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas" ["Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps"]) that gradually becomes hypnotic. Receptive viewers will be carried along in this almost narcotic-like haze that is as much a familiar and integral part of a Wong Kar-wai movie as the masterful cinematography and art direction. As befitting a love story that is never consummated in the traditional sense, MOOD emerges the director's most tender and restrained work to date. The majority of Li-zhen and Mo-wan's time together unfolds in confined spaces (rooms, hallways, alleys) with the camera positioned in a way that makes the viewer a secret observer sharing these private moments (although we do so in an assenting, rather than voyeuristic, mien, Wong is also reminding us of how little privacy these two have). As is his practice, the camera stays on the captivatingly beautiful leads for "unnatural" periods of time, allowing us to absorb the subtlest expressions of emotion on their faces, thus communicating volumes while seemingly imparting little or nothing (Cheung is particularly adept at this and manages to top what she accomplished in her celebrated ASHES OF TIME cameo). The film is a masterful exercise in subtle technique: sexy without being openly sexual, eloquent without being obvious, beautiful without being overpowering, and dream-like without ever leaving the realm of possibility.

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (which was also awarded the Grand Prix de la Technique prize at Cannes) was started by Christopher Doyle but, as the shoot dragged on and on, he had to leave because of other commitments and was replaced by celebrated Taiwanese DP, Mark Li Ping-bing (EIGHTEEN SPRINGS, FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI). The compositions are formal, with beautifully balanced colors and contrasts, eschewing the makeshift experimental extremes Doyle tended to favor, and a movie this meticulously designed requires a very attentive transfer. Fortunately, Criterion has delivered a 16:9 presentation that is stunning in its clarity and richness. The colors in the 1.80:1 transfer are gorgeous: reds are deep but never bleed from their boundaries, flesh tones are spot on, and the remaining hues are distinctively separated. Blacks are deep and uncompromised and contrasts are vivid. The image is remarkably detailed; even the age and weather-related wear adorning the exterior walls of buildings looks textured. Any flaws the source material contained have been digitally removed and edges remain stable throughout. Some vertical jitter is apparent in two scenes but that looks to be a production fault. The film was originally mixed in standard Dolby Stereo and that track is available, along with a 5.0 option, and an isolated music and effects track in 2.0. Only one previous Wong film was mixed in Dolby (HAPPY TOGETHER) and it had virtually no stereo effects whatsoever. This time, the director really uses the process to great advantage. The soundscape is subtle but impressive, with excellent high/low range and a superb delivery of the various musical pieces; dialogue is crisp and immediate. Rear channels are used sparingly to provide atmospheric effects, like rain and street noise, but they are enveloping and effective just the same. There is a smoothly executed layer change at 42:24.

In addition to the feature, four deleted scenes (presented in non-anamorphic 1.80:1 and mono) totalling 32 minutes are included, three of them available with optional director commentary in Cantonese with removable subtitles. Of primary interest is a coda set in the 1970s, featuring Paulyn Suen (seen most recently in Takashi Miike's outrageous ICHI THE KILLER, where she is billed under her new English name, Alien Sun) as Mo-wan's wife. She knows of his past dalliances with Li-zhen and intentionally puts Mo-wan on the spot by taking him to Mrs. Suen's building.

Wong says very little on the track and does not elaborate at all on why the sequences were dropped, not surprising really when one considers the oblique way he approaches each project. The director does provide some information about subjects like the locations and one of the gorgeous cheongsams worn by Maggie Cheung but never in much depth. Given how sparse and indirect his comments are, one is less disappointed that Criterion was unable to get him to sit for a talk during the feature.

The company has also included HUA YANG DE NIAN HUA, a fascinating 2m 28s montage of images Wong pulled from a number of vintage Chinese features, most of which were considered lost until some nitrate prints were discovered in a California warehouse during the 1990s. Focusing on the popular actresses of the time, the short's lovely vintage costumes and imagery perfectly compliment the look and feel of the main feature. Unfortunately, the transfer (provided to Criterion by Wong's company, Block 2 Pictures) is framed too tightly on top, bisecting a number of heads. An essay on the score is also available (with direct chapter access to the cues under discussion), along with brief notes from Wong and composer Michael Galasso.

But that is merely the start: a second dual layer disc has been included that offers a multitude of additional supplements. "@In the Mood for Love" (51m 6s) is an absorbing look at the origins of the project, which began as "Summer In Beijing" with a more overtly erotic tone and went, in time-honored Wong Kar-wai fashion, through several evolutions. We are shown this via tantalizing excerpts from a number of scenes that did not make the final cut (in particular, a wonderful bit where the two characters do the Twist which was simply too lighthearted to remain in the movie). Leung and Cheung discuss how they dealt with Wong's extremely abstract style of direction and storytelling, and we are also shown bits from the film's premieres at various festivals. "Interviews With Wong Kar-wai" consists of two segments (22m 12s and 15m 47s respectively) in which the director elaborates (in English) on such topics as the turns the project took (there was originally to have been two other stories) his thinking in regards to the characters and atmosphere, how films by directors like Seijun Suzuki, Robert Bresson, and Michelangelo Antonioni influenced his thinking, and the problems the Asian Financial Crisis had on the production.

"The Toronto International Film Festival Press Conference" (43m 28s) was taped right after the film's screening there in September of 2000, with Cheung and Leung fielding fairly basic questions from moderator Robert Gray and several reporters. A lot of information that was covered in earlier supplements is repeated here and the program has only modest value, aside from providing fans of the two stars with a chance to hear them speaking English in an informal, contemporary setting. A promotional section features various TV spots, trailers, and posters from France, Hong Kong, and the U.S., some unused art and concepts, plus the movie's electronic press kit (18m 16s).

Rounding out the platter are text supplements consisting of an essay on 1960s Hong Kong illustrated with images from the movie, a similarly designed section devoted to Wong, and detailed cast and crew bios. A thick booklet tucked inside the keep case offers the Liu Yi-chang short story that inspired the film, liner notes by Li Cheuk-to, and a guide to the 27 chapters encoded for the feature (as per usual with Criterion, the extras are also chaptered and indexed). The one complaint in regards to this entire release is that the font used for the text sections can be a bit hard on the eyes, depending upon the size of your monitor. That said, Criterion has assembled the sort of reverent package and presentation that devotees of Wong Kar-wai (and Hong Kong cinema, in general) are rarely blessed with.

Of Love and the City - Film Comment  Kent Jones from Film Comment, January/February 2001

Perpetually in the vanguard of world cinema, Wong Kar-wai reinvents and reenergizes his aesthetic with each new picture. With In the Mood for Love, his latest variation on a cherished theme, he delves into a universe of understated passions restrained by decorum. 

The word is that In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai's latest urban fantasia about two neighbors whose spouses are having an affair, is a departure for the director. For aficionados, it's a welcome return to the contemplative tone of his earlier mood-drenched period piece, Days of Being Wild. True enough. In the Mood for Love is composed with a more sedate camera than the tactile handheld pov of the previous movies, and it shares with Days of Being Wild a Viscontian immersion in the ambience and mores of Hong Kong in the early Sixties. But in all other ways, the new movie is entirely consistent with the director's development since Chungking Express.

The last few films in particular feel like reconnaissance flights over dangerous interpersonal territory, getting off vivid snapshots of emotional stalemates in play. wkw has perfected a giddy technique, which appears simultaneously to delve into and flit past the repetitive avoidance strategies and game playing of lonely individuals or couples (at times, he seems like a healthier, more sensual Egoyan). Not uncommonly for a modern filmmaker, he has less of an aptitude for emotional gradation and development than for rough and ready, lunging portraits of emotion-as-action. His films are made up of moments that seem to have been grabbed out of time, as though he's almost always just missed it.

What makes the movies feel like special events, and what makes Wong Kar-wai feel like the Jimi Hendrix of cinema, is the way every emotional tone is blended into the swirling color and motion of city life. As a city filmmaker, he's without peer. He understands the city as more than just evidence of Western infiltration (Edward Yang), as a physical entity that exerts its influence over human affairs (Tsai Ming-liang), or as a romantic repository of dreams (Woody Allen). He sees it—guiltlessly—as the natural state of contemporary men and women, operating at the correct speed, the sedate rhythms of rural life being a thing of the past. And just like Hendrix with his endless bag of tricks, effects segue into one another with matchless fluidity, and the viewer/listener gets a quick trip to heaven. During moments like Tony Leung's fast-motion elevated train ride through the glittering Taipei night at the end of Happy Together, questions of representation drop away and film viewing gives way to pure ecstasy. Like Tarantino and Wenders, those other art hero epiphany-builders, wkw is continually going skyward, exploding his exclusive, up-to-date form of cinematic beauty over the narrative like a fireworks display. What makes him a genuinely great director is the fact that his fusion of speed, color, and vision, always linked to desire, dictates both the form and the subject matter of his work.

The fluidity is still there in the supposedly “classical” In the Mood for Love, as is the merging of emotional and physical (meaning urban) space. This time, the director's eye gets quick fixes on states of decorum, good manners, politeness, swallowed feelings, which register fleetingly but vividly. There's a piercing moment early on (one among many) where Maggie Cheung's Mrs. Su is sitting in her neighbors' crowded room, a beehive of activity, nonchalantly reading the paper. There's a faint smile on her face to signal the appearance of calm. Her carriage is erect, her back arched and barely touching the back of the chair. Meanwhile, she's wearing a dress in which it's virtually impossible to be comfortable.

In the world of 1962 Hong Kong, which is so overcrowded that people rent out rooms in their apartments to middle-class couples, where the old folks watch the younger ones like hawks with culturally ordained authority, appearances are all-important. The film gets directly at the feeling of always putting up a good front, of being on guard against disappointing people, by isolating small physical events in corridors, tiny rooms, restaurants, offices, street corners. This time, the viewer isn't carried along by the gorgeous restlessness of the camera (best exemplified by 1996's Fallen Angels) or the Polaroid-ish visual scheme that reached its peak with Happy Together.

In that film, Chris Doyle's cinematography suggested a happier, more modishly color-saturated Robert Frank job (Doyle is one of two cinematographers listed on the credits of In the Mood for Love, and it's debatable how much of his work survived the final cut). But wkw's visual music hasn't disappeared—it's just spikier this time, more rhythmic than melodic. In the Mood for Love moves with elliptical stealth. Very often, the only indication that time has passed is the color of Maggie Cheung's outfit: she wears the same style of Mandarin, or cheong sam, dress throughout the movie, and unless you're paying very close attention, you may not notice that a change from blue to red or green has signaled the passage of days, weeks, sometimes months.

The strategy gives every moment real emotional urgency. In the matter of Cheung's Mrs. Su and Tony Leung's Mr. Chow, you start to ask: How much has changed with the passing of time and how much has stayed the same? How many times will these kind, proper, self-deprecating people displace their longing—for their spouses, for each other, for emotional freedom—with another ritualized walk to the local noodle-shop followed by another night alone? Every wkw movie has its own brand of sumptuousness. This one is more restricted than ever before in its locations (it's almost all interiors) and visual focus. In the previous films, part of the thrill was wondering where the camera was going to alight next, and the knowledge that a scene was more likely than not to end up in a spatial configuration radically different from the one in which it began. A good portion of Happy Together takes place indoors, too, but Doyle's camera finds so many small wonders that it feels as vast as a rain forest. In In the Mood for Love, the camera is pinned down, obliged to repeat the same povs again and again on repeated activities and behaviors, like musical refrains—Leung and Cheung knocking on each other's doors and talking to each other's offscreen spouses, Leung's wife barely glimpsed behind the partition at the hotel where she works, Cheung walking down the steps of the noodle-shop and wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.

But even within the film's locked-down symmetries (which replace wkw's usual lachrymose voiceover as a structuring device), every shot remains a quietly ravishing event. Cheung passing her hand over her husband's back as he plays mahjong, then sitting on the edge of his chair, in slow motion: a sad, graceful moment, where the line of her body conveys the sense of a woman playing the dutiful, admiring wife. The palette may be more restrained than in the previous movies (heavy on grays, whites and beiges, with great swathes of red), but every object glows as ecstatically as ever. Dramatically, In the Mood for Love isn't terribly different from Happy Together, which had a similarly fraught, episodic, improvisational shoot. Once again, the structure is theme and variations; once again, the focus is the predicament of a couple.

The earlier film was about two wayward souls wedged between staying together and parting. The new film is about two people who've built their identities on foundations of niceness, who suddenly find themselves stranded and clinging to each other, but who are finally too self-censoring to give in to romance. Whereas most of Happy Together consists of Liu-fai and Ho-ping's dance of devotion and rejection, most of In the Mood for Love is given over to Mr. Chow and Mrs. Su's dance of longing and fear, interestingly refracted through an odd dramatic device: each one playacts the role of the other's spouse, in order to understand the affair, or possibly (intentionally? unwittingly?) re-create its dynamics. Every other character—Li-zhen's philandering boss, Chow's happy-go-lucky friend, the nosy landlady (“Young wives shouldn't stay out so late—people will start to wonder”)—is a satellite, and the husband and wife go almost unseen, their offscreen voices used as rhythmic punctuations in a movie that feels less like a narrative than a beautifully drawn-out musical improvisation—Wong Kar-wai's “Blue in Green.”

Both films lean more heavily on one character than the other. Happy Together was Leung's picture, but In the Mood for Love belongs to Cheung, whose beauty lights up the movie like the polar star lights up a winter sky. Cheung is one of the few modern actresses who understands her own physical beauty as an expressive instrument, and who also has the smarts and intuition to take it somewhere substantial. There have been plenty of portraits of repression in the movies, but they've rarely been as filled-out or as radiant as this one.

Acting for Wong Kar-wai is a totalizing experience—since there's no script, the actors and the director are creating characters, a dramatic arc, and a new expressive vocabulary all at the same time. Cheung and wkw have found as graceful and supple a throughline for her Su Li-zhen as it's possible to imagine. Even more than for Leung's Chow, with his gelled hair and immaculate bourgeois wardrobe, the clothes make Li-zhen: they dictate the way she moves, and the rigid tension with which she displaces her anger and her desire. Cheung understands that the machinery of repression can't reveal itself too readily, but can only be divined through her character's strenuous efforts to keep it up and running (in comparison, Leung plays the Mr. Nice Guy act a little too broadly at times). She understands the inherent sadness of being a “good person.” There's a moment late in the film where she's framed in a window, as carefully as Dietrich was framed in the shadows for her final Shanghai Express prayer. It's a portrait of beauty at the service of a thankless goal: to draw a veil over a heart that's sacrificed itself to the happiness of others. Cheung's is a genuinely heroic piece of acting, and it puts the vaunted best actress award at Cannes to shame.

Where In the Mood for Love differs from Happy Together is in its decenteredness and lack of resolution. The further the new film moves from the core dilemma in the cramped apartment, the more diffuse it gets. Chow's move to Singapore feels vague, as does Li-zhen's phantom visit to his apartment while he's away at work. This is the film's ultimate almost, the capper to a series of near-intimate moments where inner propriety dampens passion. Which would be perfect were this just another movie about two people who don't sleep together. But there are quite a few layers of complexity generated between these characters. Are they actually in love with one another? Or are they in love with the idealized images of their spouses they project onto one another? Or are they just friends who share a need for love and companionship in the abstract? The film touches on all these possibilities, and when it's at its most powerful it suggests that they all exist side by side. This delicate, not-so-brief encounter, probably long forgotten by both Chow and Li-zhen (there's a strong sense that all the action is being remembered—it has something to do with the film's breathless movement forward), deserves to be sifted from the ashes of time, in the same way that the story itself was sifted from the myriad possibilities wkw threw down during the epic shoot. It's all there, but a little fancy intellectual footwork is required to tie everything together. Near the end, when we've skipped ahead to the troubled, destabilizing year of 1967, Li-zhen goes back to her old apartment house with a child in tow.

A few months later, Chow comes to visit their former landlady, who's left for America. He's told that her old apartment is now occupied by a woman and her son. He thinks nothing of it and leaves. The near-miss is a timeworn, instant heartbreaker, but it feels odd here—if they were to meet again, what would they say to each other? Would they sleep together? Or would they just keep on being polite? As for the coda, where Chow whispers his secrets into the wall of an abandoned temple at Angkor Wat, it doesn't really carry much weight (hilariously, there's a “Tell your secret!” section on the official In the Mood for Love website).

For some people, the spatial, geographical, and rhythmic change-up is perfect. To these eyes, it feels like a failed version of Happy Together's final side trip through Taipei, as off the mark as its model was on the money. In a sense, In the Mood for Love tries to duplicate Happy Together's similarly improvised final form: one couple's dynamics are replaced with another's; Hong Kong on the eve of June 1997 becomes Hong Kong on the eve of the Cultural Revolution and the escalation in Vietnam; the Taipei subway becomes a Cambodian temple; and the falls at Iguazu find their equivalent in the secret desires locked in Li-zhen's heart, betrayed by her too-eloquent body language and mournful gaze. But where the geographical displacement of Happy Together gave resonance to the whole idea of going home, the idea of leaving doesn't do much for In the Mood for Love, which probably would have found a more fitting resolution with a staccato move, a sudden rupture. On the other hand, why complain? This is as intoxicating, as exquisitely nuanced, and as luxuriously sad as movies get.

It's been a while now since Wong Kar-wai first cast his spell of melancholy urban enchantment over America's more adventurous moviegoers. When he first broke with Chungking Express in the mid-Nineties, it was like tuning into a fresh signal on a new frequency: his filmmaking felt as though it was driven by a seductive urge to dissolve the viewpoints of director, camera, lonely-hearted hero, audience, and screen into one throbbing, super-sensitive entity. wkw made quite a team with his dp Chris Doyle (actually, there's a third, less flamboyant silent partner: production designer/editor William Chang). Young directors from all over the world wanted to work with Doyle—plenty of older ones, too. His cinematography had a personality, even a mind of its own. The more love-struck neophytes wanted to be Wong Kar-wai, the handsome guy in the colorful sports shirts, forever smiling from behind his dark glasses, who made movies on the fly starting with nothing more than an inspiration, like a painter or a sculptor or a choreographer.

Now, in the year 2000, his newness is a thing of the past, the imitators who tried to perfect the slurred-motion effect of Chungking Express have come and gone, and he hasn't made the kind of impact we all hoped he would in the American market: this was one secret cinephiles never wanted to keep to themselves. For those who love his films, it's hard to separate them from the legends behind them: the insane financing schemes, the endless shoots, the patient, devoted casts and crews, the hours and hours of material shot and discarded, the marathon editing sessions in an effort to beat the Cannes deadline. It's difficult not to see each movie as the final result of a long, heroic undertaking. And the stories and myths endow them with a certain interactive splendor. Somewhere, there's an alternate universe where the character played by Stanley Kwan in Happy Together is alive and well, and Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung make love with abandon. I'm sure these moments and characters are just as fully achieved as their corollaries in the finished films. This is an artist who's generous to a fault, compiling a stock of grace notes and delivering the finished films, and the sagas of their creation, like gifts to his audience.

In the Mood for Love   Criterion essay by Li Cheuk-to, March 04, 2002

 

In the Mood for Love: Haunted Heart   Criterion essay by Steve Erickson, October 02, 2012

 

Under the Influence: Barry Jenkins on Wong Kar-wai   video essay, November 29, 2016 (3:22)

 

In the Mood for Love (2000) - The Criterion Collection

 

Peter Brunette - Wong Kar-wai (Contemporary Film Directors) - Scribd  175-page book by Peter Brunette, 2005

 

The Film Sufi: “In the Mood for Love” - Wong Kar Wai (2000)

 

The author's gesture: the camera as a body in Wong kar-wai's In the ...  Jake Ivan Dole from The Cine-Files, Spring 2016

 

Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love: Like a ... - Senses of Cinema  Like a Ritual in Transfigured Time, Stephen Teo from Senses of Cinema, April 10, 2001

 

In the Mood for Love • Senses of Cinema  Carla Marcantonio, October 11, 2010

 

ROMANCE, INSULARITY AND REPRESENTATION  Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love and Hong Kong Cinema, by Giorgio Biancorosso from the Shima Journal (2007) in (pdf) format

 

WONG KAR WAI MARATHON: The Informal Trilogy | Film Misery  Justin Jagoe on Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, and 2046, collectively known as Wong Kar Wai’s Informal Trilogy, December 8, 2011

 

FCMM: Into the 21st Century – Offscreen  Donato Totaro, July 2000

 

In The Mood For Love by Wong Kar-Wai (Review) - Opus  Jason Morehead, September 2, 2001

 

Trajectories of identification: travel and global culture in the films of Wong Kar-wai  Allan Cameron analyzes Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046  from Jump Cut, Spring 2007

 

The House Next Door [The Conversations] [Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard]  April 29, 2011

 

Best of the Decade #3: In the Mood for Love - Reverse Shot  Eric Hynes, December 29, 2009

 

“In the Mood for Love” - Salon.com  Stephanie Zacharek, February 2, 2001

 

Now This is How You Make a Melodrama: 'In the Mood for Love ...  Jose Solís from Pop Matters, November 29, 2012

 

Criticwire Classic of the Week: Wong Kar-Wai's 'In the Mood for Love ...  Vikram Murthi from indieWIRE, November 12, 2015

 

The Sheila Variations [Sheila O'Malley]

 

Best of the Decade Derby: In the Mood (or not) and 13 ways of looking at Maggie Cheung  Kevin Lee from Also Like Life, February 27, 2009

 

7 Reasons Why “In the Mood for Love” Is The Best Romantic Film of ...   Hrvoje Galić from Taste of Cinema, January 5, 2017

 

In The Mood For Love - The A.V. Club (Film)  Mike D’Angelo, November 14, 2011

 

Wong Kar Wai As A Metaphor Of Love Part 2: 'In The Mood For Love ...   Ekaterina Petrakova from the Berlin Film Journal, May 14, 2014

 

In the Mood for Love  Cynthia Fuchs from Nitrate Online

 

Oeuvre: Wong Kar-wai: In the Mood for Love - Spectrum Culture  Pat Padua

 

World Cinema Review: Wong Kar-wai | 花樣年華(In the Mood for Love)  Douglas Messerli

 

In the Mood for Love Review (Wong Kar-Wai) | Public Transportation ...  Dan Heaton

 

MOVIE REVIEW: Wong Kar-wai’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000)  Helen Reviews Stuff

 

In The Mood For Love: Movie Review - Culturekiosque  Simma Park

 

Musical Parallels of In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar-Wai) – Celluloid ...  Adam Scovell from Celluloid Wicker Man

 

In the Mood for Love - Cinescene  Shari L. Rosenblum

 

Numéro Cinq at the Movies | Wong Kar Wai's Secrets, or My Sense of ...  Wong Kar Wai’s Secrets, or My Sense of an Ending, by R. W. Gray, June 2015

 

Wong Kar-wai's dark Hong Kong romance about infidelity, In the Mood ...  This dark romance about infidelity is the best movie of the 21st century, female critics say, by Zheping Huang from Quartz, August 25, 2016

 

Wong Kar-wai's Cinematic Muse, Hong Kong, Shines in 'In the Mood ...  Max Hayward from Lindsay-Online, April 18, 2017

 

Images - In the Mood for Love  David Ng

 

Understanding The Themes Of Wong Kar-Wai's 'In The Mood For Love ...  Alex Leptos from Movie Pilot, June 23, 2017

 

J.B. Spins [Joe Bendel]

 

Beyond Hollywood  Nix

 

Retrospective: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai | IndieWire  August 19, 2013

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014

 

In the Mood for Love | Film at The Digital Fix  Michael Brooke

 

In The Mood For Love - The A.V. Club (Film)  Scott Tobias

 

Movie Gazette - DVD [Anton Bitel]

 

A Nutshell Review  Stefan S, Criterion

 

Movie Habit - DVD [Marty Mapes]  Breck Patty review, Criterion

 

DVD Reviews - Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love (Criterion)  Rob Hale from the Digital Bits, also reviewing CHUNGKING EXPRESS

 

Surrender to the Void - DVD [Steven Flores]  Expanded Criterion DVD Review

 

In the Mood for Love Blu-ray Review | High Def Digest  Steven Cohen, Criterion Blu-Ray 

 

Blu-ray [Dr. Svet Atanasov]  Criterion Blu-Ray 

 

In the Mood for Love: The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk ...  Jamie S. Rich, Criterion Blu-Ray 

 

Slant Magazine - Blu-ray [Calum Marsh]  Criterion Blu-Ray 

 

DVD Compare - Criterion Blu-ray [Pat Pilon & Noor Razzak]

 

Blu-ray Definition [Brandon A. DuHamel]  Criterion Blu-Ray 

 

The Phantom Tollbooth [J. Robert Parks]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

In the Mood For Love - Deep Focus  Bryant Frazer

 

Krell Laboratories [Christianne Benedict]

 

In the Mood for Love - Rolling Stone  Peter Travers

 

Movie Martyr [Jeremy Heilman]

 

In the Mood for Love  Acquarello from Strictly Film School

 

cityonfire.com | In The Mood For Love

 

Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young)

 

The Films of Wong Kar-wai  Mondo Digital

 

In the Mood for Love Film Review | East Asian Cinema

 

Film Review: In The Mood For Love - The Real - The Original Quail ...  Alex Carrigan from Quail Bell magazine

 

In the Mood For Love review | SBS Movies  Margaret Pomeranz

 

In the Mood for Love | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum

 

Cine-File Chicago: Kyle A. Westphal   also reviewing HAPPY TOGETHER

 

The History of Cinema. Wong Kar-Wai: biography, reviews, links  Piero Scaruffi reviews

 

In the Mood for Love | The Asian Cinema Blog  Agne Serpytyte

 

Eye For Film [Angus Wolfe Murray]

 

'In The Mood For Love' is the Greatest Film of the 21st Century. Here's ...  Gautam Anand from The Cinemaholic, May 13, 2017

 

Time Out Hong Kong - 100 Greatest Hong Kong Films [Edmund Lee]  listed at #1

 

Gerald Peary - interviews - In the Mood for Love  Gerald Peary interviews Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, March 2000

 

TIMEasia.com | Wong Kar-wai: And The Winner Is ... | 5/24/2000  Interview by Stephen Short, May 24, 2000

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | In The Mood For Edinburgh  Tony Rayns talks to the director from Sight and Sound, August 2000 

 

Arts: Jonathan Romney on Wong Kar-Wai | Culture | The Guardian  Feature and interview by Jonathan Romney, October 23, 2000

 

Filmmaker Magazine | Winter 2000: MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA  Augusta Palmer interviews Christopher Doyle from Filmmaker magazine, Winter 2000

 

Interview @ indieWIRE  The "Mood" of Wong Kar-wai; the Asian Master Does it Again, interview by Anthony Kaufman, February 2, 2001

 

Interview with Tony Leung • Senses of Cinema  by Trish Maunder from Senses of Cinema, April 10, 2001

 

Review: 'In the Mood for Love' - Variety  David Rooney

 

Arts: Jonathan Romney on Wong Kar-Wai | Culture | The Guardian  Jonathan Romney, October 23, 2000

 

Peter Bradshaw's review  The Guardian, October 26, 2000

 

The things we do for love...   Peter Preston from The Guardian, October 28, 2000

 

In the Mood for Love: No 5 best romantic film of all time - The Guardian  Ryan Gilbey from The Guardian, October 15, 2010

 

My favourite film: In the Mood for Love | Film | The Guardian  Peter Walker from The Guardian, December 19, 2011

 

Austin Chronicle [Marjorie Baumgarten]

 

Seattle Screen Scene [Melissa Tamminga]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Edward Guthmann]

 

In the Mood for Love Movie Review (2001) | Roger Ebert

 

New York Times [Elvis Mitchell]  also seen here:  FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW; Just Next-Door Neighbors Till Love ... 

 

DVD Beaver [Gary W. Tooze]

 

DVD Beaver [Pascal Acquarello]

 

In the Mood for Love - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

EROS

Hong Kong  Italy  USA  France  Luxembourg  Great Britain  (104 mi)  2004

Wong Kar-wai:  THE HAND 
Steven Soderbergh:  EQUILIBRIUM   
Michelangelo Antonioni:  THE DANGEROUS THREAD OF THINGS

 

Eros   Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

Here comes a little hypocrisy. Above, I'm, in a way, praising Wong Kar-Wai for operating on (thematic) autopilot, all the better to appreciate his supple cinematics. (In fact, looking over that review, I worry that spitting and sputtering of that sort means I've developed Tonguette's Syndrome. Not so, trust me.) But in The Hand (Job) , Wong's contribution to the hopeless, misbegotten Eros omnibus, he's bringing a watered-down, danker version of his signature moves to bear on a bland, obvious story more suited to Ladies' Own Erotica. This is the sort of mush-minded Wong-lite that any number of young Asian hacks could serve up without breaking a sweat. Gong Li's performance is adequate; Chang Chen's slightly better. (But Senator, you're no Tony Leung.) Soderbergh's Equilibrium is, I suppose, the best of the bunch, but that's saying little. It wins out only by aiming so low. Robert Downey, Jr. does his thing, Alan Arkin does his, and Soderbergh has sense enough to mostly stay out of the way. Never as funny as it wants to be, its 50s trappings negligible and meaningless (you can imagine the props arriving in a large crate stamped "cinema du look"), it's a pleasant diversion, and in this company, that makes it a freakin' lifejacket. Antonioni's The Dangerous Thread of Things, pretty much savaged anywhere film reviews are sold, is indeed a sad, flaccid windsock of a film, a shallow contribution to a hypothetical Diario dalla Scarpa Rosso Golden Auteurs edition. (Weirdly enough, Schwarzbaum of all people seems to have gone for it.) It's frustrating to watch late Antonioni, not just because the man is pissing on his legacy, but because the films induce a kind of helplessness in the viewer, a critical paralysis that comes from the realization that to fully articulate Thread's numerous failures would be pointlessly cruel.

 

Eros: The Hand  Kozo (Ross Chen) from Love HK Film

 

Three totally unconnected movies about eroticism. The first film is good, the second is amusing, and the third is bewilderingly bad. Asian Cinema fans can rest easy: Wong Kar-Wai directed the first film.

    

We could talk about "Equilibrium", the short film by Steven Soderbergh, or "The Dangerous Thread of Things", the short film by Michelangelo Antonioni. However, this is an Asian film site, and neither of those films qualifies as anything approaching Asian. They are, however, connected to "The Hand", the short film by Wong Kar-Wai, in that they're all part of an anthology movie called Eros. All three films are supposed to deal with the subject of eroticism, and all do - after a fashion. But we're only here to talk about "The Hand', so we'll reduce the other two films to one sentence each. "Equilibrium" is witty, entertaining, and unfathomable. "The Dangerous Thread of Things" is blindingly bad arthouse-flavored softcore porn. "The Hand" is good, and again, it's by Wong Kar-Wai. Everyone still following along?     

 

Chang Chen is Zhang, an apprentice tailor enthralled by one of his master's clients, the gorgeous courtesan Hua (Gong Li). At their first meeting, she immediately worms her way into his consciousness with her forceful, erotically-charged presence, plus a particular favor she proffers via her extraordinarily skilled right hand. The reason for her charity: Zhang is a talented tailor who has yet to know a woman's touch. If he's going to be servicing woman with his skills, he better be okay with touching them. It's questionable if Hua's sexual schooling makes Zhang a better tailor, but from then on he's hooked - by her. The years pass, Hua's clients change, and all the while Zhang longs for Hua's touch once more. When he has time, he makes her clothes.
     

With "The Hand", Wong Kar-Wai seems to be heading back into In the Mood for Love territory, i.e. repressed longing in intimate, confined spaces. Plus it has to look and sound great. Wong is aided and abetted by his usual cinematic partners (Christopher Doyle on cinematography, William Cheung Suk-Ping on art direction, Peer Raben on music), so those expecting 40 minutes of gorgeous-looking cinema won't be disappointed. Those expecting something as accomplished as either In the Mood for Love or 2046 could be put off, however, as "The Hand" doesn't really do that much during its slight running time. As is usual for a Wong Kar-Wai film, there's not much of a plot, and without ample time to develop the longing between Zhang and Hua, "The Hand" resonates less than it probably could.
    

However, what "The Hand" does excel in are its moments. Wong Kar-Wai constructs a simple story with moments of truly gorgeous emotion, delivering on the promise of eroticism in a reserved, but astoundingly effective way. Intimate physical contact is given almost palpable erotic charge; at one point, Zhang measures Hua's body with his hands instead of a measuring tape, and the years of desperate longing between the characters practically bleeds from the screen. The actual (fully-clothed) sex in the film might seem a bit too lurid for some, but Wong manages to make it affecting in its utter sadness. "The Hand" is not one of Wong Kar-Wai's truly outstanding works. However, the images created and feelings evoked make it a worthy stop in the director's almost flawless filmography.

 

Cinepassion  Fernando F. Croce

What is Eros? Or, less portentously, what is Eros? Popular in the auteur-happy 1960s, the omnibus film (is it even a genre?) huddles directors around a theme (ranging from life in paparazzi-infested Rome to, say, the effects of 9/11) and lets them loose on an all-paid holiday of self-indulgence. Eros presents a collection of three short films centered on the idea of sensuousness, of erotic allure conjured up through images and sounds for the people out there in the dark -- the basis of cinema, that is. Not only the most universal of themes, but also probably the most subjective, which arguably fits the unavoidable unevenness of the anthology film fine; for further proof, simply browse your local porn den. Imagine the dream-team taking off on the concept of celluloid erotica: Josef Von Sternberg, Bernardo Bertolucci, Pedro Almodóvar. (Now imagine the nightmare version: Catherine Breillat, Todd Solondz, Michael Haneke.) Almodóvar, incidentally, was originally slated to contribute a segment before being replaced by Steven Soderbergh, who, along with Wong Kar-Wai, plays fan-boy fawner to presiding divinity Michelangelo Antonioni, grand capo of aching libido.

Keeping up with the theme, the segment order might have mimicked the coital structure (foreplay, main course and, uh, snuggling), but Eros ejaculates prematurely, as it were. Wong's opening dazzler, The Hand, is the film's greatest third, set in the director's 1960s-set Hong Kong -- the narrative is a pocket-sized In the Mood for Love, a young, callow tailor's apprentice (Chang Chen) and his unconsummated passion for courtesan Ms. Hua (Gong Li), cruel and luxuriant upon their first meeting but then aging and ailing. "Remember this feeling," she tells him after unzipping his virginal trousers, and remember it he does, sticking by her side as she sinks to rainy-night hooking and bedside disintegration. Not a frame wasted, the segment is a jewel of chaste torridness, camera modulation (Chris Doyle at the helm), décor, bodies and limbs in movement -- to Wong, the tools for evoking eroticism even as it escapes the grasp of his characters. In one beautiful shot following a screaming bout with a client, Li readjusts her coiffure with the kind of grace that only women in Wong Kar-Wai films have; later on, Chen measures his amour's figure by tenderly caressing her waist and shoulders. For Wong, gestures remain futile physical attempts at capturing the evanescent rapture of Eros -- it's no accident it concludes with the screen's most heartbreaking handjob.

Sex Is Comedy might have been a nifty title for Soderbergh's Equilibrium, if it hadn't already been scooped by Breillat, or if there were much sex or comedy here. Actually, his slender jaunt showcases plenty of the director's egghead drollness, staging a cabaret-anxiety pas de deux with Robert Downey, Jr. whining on the divan while Alan Arkin pantomimes to someone out of the frame. Eroticism? Purely conceptual -- the notion that what excites you bores me. Somewhere in the monochromatic '50s, a jittery adman (Downey) recounts to his increasingly distracted shrink (Arkin) a recurring dream (shot in lush color disfigured by handheld wobbliness) about an unnamed looker materializing in his bedroom. Passably amusing, the flyweight almost-sketch, for all its gimmicky energy (at least more inclusive than the celebrity bash of Ocean's Twelve), begs the question -- What is it doing here, bracketed by statements by these masters? "I wanted my name on a poster with Michelangelo Antonioni," has been Soderbergh answer. Fair enough. What about Master Antonioni, by the way?

The concluding third, The Dangerous Thread of Things, was shot in 2001 by the 89-year-old Italian giant, nearly twenty years after his crippling stroke. Critic after critic has tagged it a senile embarrassment on the level of direct-to-vid soft-core, devoid of insight and coherence. The people tagging it pointless and boring probably never understood the creator of L'Avventura and L'Eclisse in the first place, for this is quintessential Antonioni, a mini-masterpiece to match Wong's. Eros has always been one of the filmmaker's main enigmas, with physical contact (sex above all) a cruel palliative, heightening rather than soothing the notion that people are utterly unconnected (and unconnectable). "How can you pollute the air with your empty words?" -- the first line triggers audience derision, but the chortling dies in the presence of such beauty. A trio of warbling sirens by a waterfall, a wine glass languidly dropped on the floor, the sea reflected on a glassy panel. Yet beauty is never just decorative to Antonioni's abstracting lenses, and his statuary-like protagonists, an imploding couple (Christopher Bucholz and Regina Nemmi) and a fantasy girl (Luisa Ranieri) along a lush coastal resort, remain oppressed by their own outer perfection.

Above all, Eros is a homage to Antonioni, complete with Caetano Veloso mooning rhapsodic over baby-Kama Sutra crayon sketches in between episodes, but the maestro's work is its own tribute. As Wong, Antonioni finds form itself sensuous, and, being with Godard and Warhol one of the most important creators of cinematic form in the past five decades, he locates film's inherent pact to erotica in the way people brush against each other, close yet far away, and in the way the camera can address (and perhaps redeem) the spiritual void by rendering it into tangible feeling. The segment crams the highest amount of naked flesh, beside which the contributions by his grandsonly admirers come off as maidenly, though the insistent nudity, far from signaling an old man's lechery, reveals an old artist's awareness of the vulnerability of the body in housing the spirit, just as the medium exudes fragility in expressing the essence of reality. The beach encounter of the two doppelgangers that curtains the story (and the film) is a typically beautiful Antonioni riddle, unexplained, refusing exact pinpointing as it shifts in the mind. Soderbergh is just bumming a ride, but Wong and Antonioni ravish the senses.

Only the Cinema [Ed Howard]

 

Triple X   Michael Atkinson from The Village Voice, March 29, 2005

 

Wong Kar-wai Dominates Uneven “Eros” | IndieWire  Peter Brunette from indieWIRE, September 17, 2004

 

indieWIRE [Nicolas Rapold]  Nicolas Rapold with responses from Kristi Mitsuda and Nick Pinkerton, April 5, 2005

 

New York Sun [Nathan Lee]

 

Eros - Pajiba  Jeremy C. Fox

 

Eros | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Nick Schager

 

China-Underground  Cina Oggi

 

Eros (2004) | PopMatters  Zach Hines

 

Flipside Movie Emporium [Rob Vaux]

 

Confessions of a Pop Fan [Jamie S. Rich]

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

Eros Review | CultureVulture - CultureVulture.net  Arthur Lazere

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk  Steven Yates

 

ReelTalk [Adam Hakari]

 

Raging Bull [Mike Lorefice]

 

Eros (Hong Kong Edition) | Film at The Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

Eros - The A.V. Club (Film)  Scott Tobias

 

DVDTalk [Joshua Zyber]

 

DVD Clinic [Scott Weinberg]

 

Movie House Commentary  Tuna

 

Film-Forward.com  Marie Iida

 

eFilmCritic Reviews Jay Seaver                       

 

Eros   Acquarello from Strictly Film School

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Eros | Variety  David Rooney

 

The Japan Times [Giovanni Fazio]

 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Mick LaSalle]

 

Los Angeles Times [Carina Chocano]

 

Eros Movie Review & Film Summary (2004) | Roger Ebert

 

New York Times  A.O. Scott from The New York Times, April 8, 2005, also seen here:  FILM REVIEW; Sex, Sex, Sex, Seen Through Experienced Cinematic Eyes  

 

DVDBeaver.com [Runar]

 

Eros (film) - Wikipedia

 

2046                                                               B+                   91

Hong Kong  Germany  France  China  (129 mi)  2004

 

“It is a ghost story haunted by the absence of Su Li Zhen.” Nathan Lee from Film Comment

 

Love is a matter of timing.  It’s no good to meet someone too soon or too late.

 

“IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE is a love story, but 2046 is a story about love.”  That, according to film writer Amy Taubin, was the distinction made by the director.  By all written accounts, this is a follow up to the 2000 film IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, which takes place in Hong Kong in the mid 60’s, and does include the same Tony Leung character and an all too brief recollection of Maggie Cheung, Su Lizhen, the love of his life, as everyone else seen here, Carina Lau, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Faye Wong, beautiful and sensual in their own right, all looking very much like perfectly dressed mannequins, have lost all meaning for him.  More likely, this is the final work in an abstract and vaguely interconnected trilogy of films that all take place in Hong Kong in the 60’s.  I found the music, the mood and the womanizing more perfectly matching his 1991 film DAYS OF BEING WILD, which takes place at the beginning of the 60’s, including Leung’s resemblance to the suave, debonair lady’s man, Leslie Cheung, also the theme of several missed connections and the recurring image of a lone streetlight in the rain.  However, rather than the reckless sexual abandon of early youth in that film, which is ablaze in energy and hope, with a defining film style, his first collaboration with cinematographer Christopher Doyle, this film reflects a time in his life at the end of the decade when love has come and gone, briefly reprising Carina Lau’s role of Lulu, “You treat all men this way?” and again using Xavier Cugat’s romantic masterworks “Siboney” and “Perfidia” to reflect the mood of love, still marked by dazzling, unusual use of color, the director’s remarkable visual invention, and the ever-present swirls of smoke wafting from continually lit cigarettes. 
 
He started playing the game and had many one night stands.  After all, how many 'once-in-a-lifetime’s' can you get? 

 

Nearly working without a script, placing plenty of faith in his actors who are allowed greater freedom of improvisation, the lush costumes and unspoken internalized world of IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE dominates the look of this dreamy ‘Scope film, five years in the making, jumping back and forth in time, making references to themes and characters from past films, like period clothing and hairstyles, and familiar reoccurring phrases and music, like MOOD FOR LOVE’s “feelings can creep up just like that” or the romantic croonings of Nat King Cole, but even more impressive is the use of Connie Francis’s rendition of “Siboney,” followed immediately by an electric blur of sci-fi images of the future that comment on Leung’s memories of the past, as he is still haunted by the memories of his failed relationship with Cheung - a love so perfect that nothing else can measure up.  Initially told completely in voice-over, where the opening scene of Leung at the gambling tables could easily take place immediately following the final scene of DAYS OF BEING WILD, only 12 years later, Leung mysteriously returns from Singapore in search of Lulu, several days after he tenderly placed her drunken unconscious body in room 2046, he returns again to the Oriental Hotel asking for her in room 2046, the same room where he and Cheung had some of their more memorable moments together, but the girl is gone and the room is unavailable, so he takes room 2047 next door, where a recurring image throughout the film is watching him voyeuristically peer into room 2046, as the women residing there become the object of his desires, where one day he hears Faye Wong, (again playing a character without an ounce of pretense, using the character name Wang Jing Wen, the same name she used in real life when she began her singing career), the owner’s older daughter practicing Japanese to herself, a scene that surprisingly begins with a close up on her feet (one of several Bressonian moments) as she moves back and forth across the room.  She is deeply in love with a young Japanese man who her father disapproves of, as he despises everything Japanese since the war, sending the young man away, back to Japan.  When the young man asks if she’ll come with him, she can’t utter a word.  Afterwards, we see her alone on the rooftop next to the decaying neon sign of the hotel, accompanied by the operatic sounds of Bellini’s “Norma,” a recurring image that repeats again with different characters.  She remains sullen and alone, writing martial arts novels in her room.

Every passenger who goes to 2046 has the same intention.  They want to recapture lost memories because nothing ever changes in 2046. Nobody knows if that’s true because nobody’s ever come back.

Surprisingly, this moment and these characters become imprinted in Leung’s imagination, who offers to receive her boy friend’s letters and pass them on to her, and with her collaboration, he assumes the identity of the Japanese boy friend (Takuya Kimura) as an alter ego in a sci-fi story entitled 2046, “as bizarre and erotic as possible without crossing the line,” that features a futuristic train that endlessly travels through a neon lit world to the year 2046, where one can recapture their lost memories, where everything is always the same, but once there, it is nearly impossible to leave.  Only the author has managed to do it based on his apparent desire for change.  Understandably, much of what is currently taking place in Leung’s mind is reflected in a fictionalized recreation in the book.  His stand-in falls for a futuristic rendition of the girl next door, a doll-like android (with delayed reactions?) that is always sexually subservient, ready and waiting for plenty of raunchy sexual action, but also mysteriously cries (Faye Wong).  This accentuated, over-sensualized look of the android very much resembled the brightly lit, highly colored, melodramatic look of indifference, women as mannequins locked inside their interior world, much as they were portrayed in Fassbinder’s THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT.

I once fell in love with someone.  After a while, she wasn’t there.  I went to 2046.  I thought she might be waiting for me there.  But I couldn’t find her.  I can’t stop wondering if she loved me or not.  

Sometime later, a younger call girl from the hotel, a girlish and more rambunctious Zhang Ziyi, whose would-be love of her life has left for Singapore without her, so she starts flirting with Leung, at first becoming drinking buddies, then despite herself, falls head over heels for him, but he remains cold and distant and can’t commit to another relationship since Cheung, as he has subsequently developed a lifestyle that matches the final scene of DAYS OF BEING WILD, a lady’s man charmer with a detached lifestyle filled with one night stands in his hotel room.  Again, despite the obvious sexual attraction that is expressed with explicit bedroom scenes, and the existing onscreen chemistry between the two, Leung inexplicably walks away.  Time passes, expressed through changing increments of time, December 24, 1967; one hour later; ten hours later, or even one hundred hours later...

If someone wants to leave 2046, how long will it take?  Some people get away very easily.  Others find it takes them much longer.

Leung has flashbacks of earlier days in Singapore, another woman using the identical name as Cheung, Su Lizhen, this time played by the near wordless Gong Li, an extremely detached, yet elegant, black gloved gambler known as “Black Spider.”  She exudes melancholy in every frame, but helps him gain back his lost winnings, which allows him a means to return to Hong Kong, but she insists on one condition, that he never again gamble.  Once more, despite the obvious onscreen chemistry, including one of the longest, roughest, yet impassioned kisses in memory, something that was meant to forge and imprint their desires forever, Leung once again walks away.  Isn’t it her hips that we keep seeing over and over again as an expression of sensuality that reoccurs endlessly in his mind?  And again, Carina Lau’s Lulu makes a brief appearance, still flirtatious with a mean streak, seemingly exasperated by her failed relationships with men, still lost in love with Yuddy from DAYS, and still as hot tempered as ever.  Leung again has casual Christmas eve dinners with both Zhang (“Why can’t it be the way it was?”) and Wong at similar spots several years later, but his dead-end, cyclical universe just reveals more of the same.  As Leung grows more and more immersed in his world of fiction, the film feels as if it’s drowning under the weight of its own inertia.  I’m not sure the trips to the future really work, despite some clever ways of resetting his present into another storyline.  Despite the alluring precision of the opening half of the film, it’s ultimately a passionless story without an end, becoming a whirlwind of repetition, a mirror reflection of its own image, an intoxicated universe filled with continual interweaving memories, where similar to the melodramatic notion of romance gone wrong in DAYS, women are left crying in their own tears from the indifference of the men who leave them, dragging on perhaps a half hour too long, feeling flat in the end, as if someone let the air out of a balloon, with a sagging over-orchestrated musical score as well that by the end is dying a slow death, fading into nothingness.

"2046 Main Theme"
Composed and Arranged by Shigeru Umebayashi

"Siboney"
Written by Lucuona Ernesto, Theodora Morse
Instrumented by Cugat Xavier
Performed by Connie Francis

"Sway"
Written by Pablo Beltran Ruiz
Lyrics by Norman Gimbel
Performed by Dean Martin

"The Christmas Song"
Composed and Written by Torme Mell, Robert Wells
Arranged by Shigeru Umebayashi

"Julien et Barbara"
Composed and Arranged by Georges Delerue

"Polonaise"
Composed and Arranged by Shigeru Umebayashi

"Casta Diva"
(from the opera "Norma")
Written by Vincenzo Bellini
Performed by Angela Gheorghiu
London Symphony Orchestra
Direction Evelino Pidò
Courtesy of EMI Record Ltd.

"Perfidia"
Performed by Xavier Cugat

"Lost"
Composed and Arranged by Shigeru Umebayashi

"Decision"
Composed by Zbigniew Preisner

"Adagio"
Performed by Secret Garden

"Oh! s'io potessi dissipar le nubi... Col sorriso l'innocenza"
(from the opera "Il Pirata")
Written by Vincenzo Bellini
Performed by Maria Callas ,
Philharmonia Chorus & Orchestra, Monica Sinclair
direction Nicola Rescigno
Courtesy of EMI Records Ltd.

From DAZED & CONFUSED:
When Wong Kar-wai’s romantic sci-fi opus 2046 emerged into the light at Cannes last year, blinking from its five-year-long production, it was incoherent and clearly unfinished.  A few months of Kubrickian tinkering later and the film arrived at the London Film Festival fully formed and packed with Wong preoccupations:  loss, longing and the many faces of love.  “It all depends on what you mean by love,” the Chinese director explains through a translator.  “Whether you have to live with a person, or if you can’t with a woman like the writer in my film, but you still have a memory of her and you enjoy that even more.”  The writer in this film is Tony Leung, a lounge-suited lothario and hardened reincarnation of the writer we saw shattered by an unconsummated love affair in Wong’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE.  Entirely consistent with his unscripted and non-linear working ways, 2046 budded from the side of IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, and the director began filming scenes while still in production on the earlier film.  He regrouped his cast – Tony Leung, Ziyi Zhang, Faye Wong, Takuya Kimura, and Maggie Cheung – as and when they were available over the following years.  Leung’s writer, after rejecting the capricious Ziyi Zhang, channels his romantic frustrations into a pair of sci-fi stories.  The number in the film’s title refers not only to the number of a hotel room but also the year in which his sci-fi novel is set.

 

Wong insists, unconvincingly, that he is not obsessed with refining a single theme in his work.  “It’s like you’re working on a mathematical equation and to start with you don’t have the answer or an interpretation,” he explains.  “But a few years later you have a different idea, so you want to talk about it again.  But that doesn’t mean you’re going to stick with the equation for the rest of your life.  Some people spend years on these equations, right?”
 

2046 | Review | Screen  Allan Hunter in Cannes from Screendaily

The title may suggest a space age drama but Wong Kar-Wai’s long-awaited 2046 proves to be an elaborate, languorous continuation of In The Mood For Love that revisits the Tony Leung character as he once again struggles with the impermanence and impossibility of true love. The restraint and repression of the earlier film are replaced by an intense rush of passion, pain and pleasure but the heart is doomed to suffer just as much as before.

Told with sulphurous style, this doesn’t have the precision or poise of In The Mood For Love but its mixture of gorgeous imagery, hypnotic storytelling, heartbreak and political resonance will make this one of the major arthouse titles of the year especially if it wins the Palme D’Or as many were predicting after its first Cannes press screening.

Less instantly accessible than In The Mood For Love, 2046 is almost misleading in the way it sets up a futuristic story in which a mysterious train transports people to a place where they can recapture lost memories. 2046, of course, is the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China. Who knows what that event may hold, what will have changed and what will remain of a past that many might want to revisit in their romanticised memories.

It is just a work of fiction, of course, that writer Chow Mo Wan (Leung) creates from aspects of his own life in the way that he also created stories in In The Mood For Love.

Pitched at an operatic level from the very beginning, the film loosely unfolds in the second half of the 1960s, several years after the brief encounter that formed the basis of In The Mood For Love.

Bruised and battered by love, Chow Mo Wan now pursues a playboy lifestyle in which romantic commitment is largely confined to the pleasures of one night stands.

The relationship with Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi) promises to be different. They seem to have the measure of each other - playful and flirting in the manner of a Bogart and Bacall before tumbling into mad, passionate sex. There is the promise of something deeper that is constantly sabotaged by a cruel act or callous gesture. There is never a moment when they are both willing to commit everything at the same time and they suffer accordingly over what might have been. “I just want us to be drinking pals,“ he states at the first sign that they could be something more. They continue to scratch at their attraction like an open wound that they cannot bear to see heal.

There are other relationships, real and perhaps even imagined, with Lulu (Carina Lau Ka Ling) and with a woman from his past Su Li Zhen (Gong Li).

The film is played like a concertina of time periods and characters that expands and retracts around successive Christmas eves. The festive season is marked by traditional songs from Dean Martin and Nat King Cole whose velvety tones added so much to In The Mood For Love.

2046 may not be as crystal clear and coherent as some viewers may wish but it shares the same core story of In The Mood For Love in which two people cannot find a way to make love work for them. Everything else is almost a reflection, expansion or illustration of what is embodied in that central relationship and leads to the conclusion that something must change for Chow Mo Wan if he is to avoid an eternity as an emotionally hollow victim of love, pining, like F Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, for the one that got away.

Using three directors of photography, among them Christopher Doyle, Wong has created a typically ravishing film that satiates the senses with the way it sculpts light and shadow, the richness of its colour palette and the attention to detail in all those plumes of billowing cigarette smoke, glistening skins and carefully struck poses that might come straight from a Jack Vettriano painting. It is not just an exercise in style and sensuality. It also has warmth and substance and a desire to engage the brain as well as touch the heart.

Viewers will have plenty to analyse and debate over the film’s metaphorical and political significance, especially as Wong has included newsreel footage of street riots in the 1960s and keeps repeating that things need to change if the mistakes of the past are to be overcome.

2046, Cannes festival | Film | The Guardian  Peter Bradshaw in Cannes from the Guardian, May 21, 2004

Four years ago in Cannes Wong Kar-Wai had a smash hit with his romance In The Mood For Love, about a man and a woman, played by Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, having a melancholy, platonic affair in parallel to the adultery of their spouses.

A year later he presented his enigmatic short film In The Mood For Love 2001, showing the same characters in modern Hong Kong. His sensationally lush and languorous new film, 2046, is clearly an extension of this drama, unfolding on a canvas of sometimes almost glutinous richness - part sequel, part variation on a theme - with a startling narrative like something by Dennis Potter.

Leung plays Chow, a rackety journalist and pulp-fiction author in sixties Hong Kong, living in a cheap hotel and escaping the painful memories of a failed liaison.

He's a raffish bachelor with the cruelty of a natural heartbreaker and a knack of inspiring love in beautiful women while being too wary and worldly, or just too shallow, to return their passion. Chow's emotional life is displaced into a sci-fi novel he is writing called 2046, a Kubrickian fantasy of a hi-tech global train network with a service called 2046 in which people can reclaim their memories.

The action is interspersed with Chow's futurist vision with characters in fictional guises. It looks sensational, though sometimes resembling the kind of luxury goods commercial that Wong Kar-Wai has made (for BMW cars).

Meanwhile, Chow indulges a passion for the women who live in Room 2046. Bai (Zhang Ziyi) is a beautiful girl who falls in love with him. Wang (Faye Wong) is the hotel proprietor's daughter who develops a tendresse while collaborating on a novel. And Gong Li plays a mysterious gambler.

The director and his cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, contrive their familiar close-ups and shabby interiors, often showing an eye for a beautiful female sashaying up stairs. In watching the film we are marooned in a virtual "present" time of exquisite unhappiness. It is an absorbingly mysterious, richly sensuous film.

The Late Show  Mark Peranson from the Village Voice, May 25, 2004

CANNES, FRANCE"Due to a delay in receiving the film 2046 by Wong Kar-wai, it has been necessary to modify the schedule for Thursday, May 20." With this unprecedented communiqué, Cannes shuffled a full day's screenings, and filmdom's biggest tease left us hanging again. "Over the last four years there is a joke: When is the film going to be finished?" Wong said at his press conference. "Before 2046, or maybe in 2046? But this joke is over, and I am so glad. Thank you very much."

The new film's die-hard romanticism recalls Wong's previous movie, In the Mood for Love, but the Scope-shot 2046 is more complex, trapped in a Resnais-like time warp. This vertiginous film about waiting is well worth the wait. "At the beginning I thought 2046 was only the continuation of one character [Tony Leung's Mr. Chow]," Wong said the day after the premiere, refuting the suggestion that the new film is a sequel to In the Mood, and explaining why Maggie Cheung appears only briefly. "I knew that if I had Maggie in the '60s sections, then the film must be a sequel. But I didn't want to make A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later. They had a beautiful story, and it should be preserved."

Maybe, finally, Wong has learned his lesson. Dividing the critics and ignored by the jury, Wong might work more practically in the future. (Next: a more structured film about Bruce Lee with Leung, but also a follow-up to 2046 focusing on Gong Li's one-gloved gambler.) This need for change provides 2046's intriguing subtext. "I realized I was making a film about myself, about our process of making films! This film concludes all of my previous work. It's like a reunion of all the past moments. We tried for something different, but the past kept coming back.”                                                          

Wong was reluctant to detail his sprint to the finish line, which he blamed on CGI problems. Rumors circulated that he spliced in a scene the morning of the screening, while a wonky sound mix spawned charges that 2046 is nowhere near complete. Hiding behind his sunglasses, Wong was artful in his dodgery: "Anyone can say the film isn't complete, but you could say this about all of my films. But this is the final editing—as of May 2004."

2046  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

The current version of 2046 (which Mike insures me is far different than the more elliptical Cannes edit) does in fact operate as a sequel to In the Mood for Love. Tony Leung is back as the same character, once lovelorn and demure, now a preening playboy. Maggie Cheung's character appears briefly here and there as a fleeting but still-present memory. But this is not a sequel in any conventional sense, and I think it's more appropriate to consider it both a remix of and an expansion on the previous film. In fact, 2046 is a virtual summary of Wong's thematic concerns and formal conceits: doomed love, swoony romanticism, the tyranny of time, memory and regret; 1960s Hong Kong interiors, teal and avocado Formica and Lucite paint, yellow wall lamps pushing against darkness with feeble golden haloes, the strategic bisecting of the frame, the truncation of the human form, and the play of flatness and depth, this latter usually the governing function that organizes all of the above ingredients. Although 2046 introduces the element of time travel and light sci-fi into Wong's overall schema, this only serves at long last to fully literalize his preoccupation with temporality. (In the same way, one of the subplots, about a beautiful robot whose impending mechanical failure manifests as slowed-down reaction time, provides Wong for the first time with a concrete narrative analogy for one of his favorite visual motifs, slow-motion step-printing.) 2046 is, in every possible sense, a summation of everything Wong has been doing for the past twenty years.

 

And yet, it's something more. There is no question (at least for me) that 2046 lacks the emotional punch of ITMFL, if we restrict emotional impact to the province of narrative alone. Narratively, Wong has brought all his subtexts to the surface, and in so doing has flattened them. And yet, this very flatness, the treatment of storytelling as a kind of armature of convenience, allows 2046's true impact to come through. This is, without doubt, Wong's most formally accomplished film, and the very act of muting the narrative drive allows the film, and its viewer, to hover in the present, with sumptuous greens and golds, the plasticity of light. Using rack focus, linear composition, and the greatest resources in his arsenal, Christopher Doyle and William Chang, Wong turns virtually every frame, every edit, into a play of surfaces and textures. Most of the film is a set of variations on one master trope: half the widescreen frame is dominated by an out-of-focus, foregrounded color field, while the other side expands inward, into either narrative space or the physiognomy of his actors. Typically, his editing follows a logic dictated by these formal terms, the interplay of color and light, rather than any conventional narrative grammar. (In fact, when Wong feels the need to make transitions in the stories clearer, his falling back into mere shot / reverse-shots hits the eye with a sad thud. This film, a near-perfect object, falters only when character and story assert themselves over the sculptural values at work.) In a way, Wong has so perfected his ideational apparatus that he can set it off on autopilot, and dig into the pure potentials of the medium. And ironically, this focus on the purely present image, its physicality and its transience, takes us right back to his philosophical concerns, only on a higher, more immediate plane. I'm not sure, but I think Wong may be the first filmmaker to have fully absorbed the lessons of both Brakhage and Sternberg.

 

[SECOND VIEWING: Well, what can I say. The first time, it seems, I had it almost completely wrong. It's not that 2046 isn't a beautiful, sensual experience (it is), but that somehow my first viewing was so discombobulated, almost willfully off-key, that I now recognize neither myself nor the film itself in it. It seems that I was fixating on the surface of things, bending 2046 into a non-narrative experience of perpetual presence. Furthermore, my focus on plastic values to the exclusion of Wong's very deliberate narrative elaboration doesn't even feel correct. It's as though I was describing another film, one that does in fact introduce certain visual motifs (such as the division of the widescreen frame) but like Mr. Chow himself, never fully commits. To borrow from the Russian Formalists, there really is no aesthetic dominant in 2046, apart from the play of light along well-selected mise-en-scène, the usual Chang / Doyle one-two punch. What was really shocking to me, and admittedly disappointing, is how linear 2046 really is, not unlike an omnibus film although with small musical reprises, such as the two late reappearances of Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi). But it's really just one scenario after another, with the Leung / Zhang pairing serving as the dramatic backbone of the film. There is no incessant remixing or temporal crisscrossing. There is no abandonment of conventional editing or exposition. What there is, in fact, is the adoption of serial non-monogamy -- coupling after coupling with some reconjured through memory but for the most part presented in their entirety -- as the framework for a character study of sorts. Chow never changes, but our time spent with him allows us to observe minor shifts in his chilly emotional seismology. 2046 has commonalities with recent examinations of stranded masculinity, such as Broken Flowers and The Brown Bunny, but Wong sets his film just before an emotional breakthrough that never happens. This is certainly compelling, since it provides the inverse of ITMFL's romanticism, another mode of halting time. But I was wrong to observe a halting of narrative. In fact, 2046 represents the most straightforward explication of Wong's concerns. Whereas before, this seemed to me like a virtue -- that instead of weaving a tale, he was blowing an exquisite, abstract work in glass -- now, with a clearer view of its formal structure and its blocky, rather deliberate story construction, 2046 strikes me as a solid entry into the Wong Kar-Wai filmography, but far, far shy of a masterpiece. Meanwhile, I'm troubled as to how I could've been so off the mark. Did I just desperately want 2046 to be something other than what it is? I can't even take comfort in having come back from 2046, because honestly I'd prefer to still be luxuriating in the film that wasn't there.]

 
Asian Cinema Drifter  Tuna

 

After years of waiting and hearing rumors upon rumors of rewrites, reshoots, reedits, complete plot changes, then missing out on Cannes and another few excruciating months of ancitipation, the idea of having seen 2046 can leave one in disbelief.

Even if it takes him more than five years to put out a picture, the wait is welcome. When on the surface it may look like Wong Kar Wai has used his time to repeat his love story process, he's actually done something very special with a story you rarely see as a sequel. 2046 plays out as a sequel to 2000’s In the Mood for Love, following Tony Leung’s character, Chow Mo Wan’s life after his relationship with Maggie Cheung's Su Li Zhen. The film is more of direct a sequel than In the Mood for Love was for Days of Being Wild, and as an entire series, you can see the little connections when Carina Lau’s character pop up again as a girl Chow “met in Singapore a while back."

The film begins with a melancholy Takuya Kimura in monologue describing the vague importance of a train that takes its passengers to 2046, so they can relish their lost memories for nothing ever changes there. He then goes on to narrate how no one ever leaves 2046, with an oddly foreboding mystery that eventually leads to Chow Mo Wan in 1966, still a writer, living a life of one-night-stands and spontaneous passion. Over a four year period of time, Wan develops companionships between a prostitute, the daughter of his landlord, and a professional gambler dressed completely in black, while tying in his experiences to a story of love he’s writing about set in a futuristic city in 2046.

Whatever sci-fi gimmick everyone speculated about is nothing more than a story Leung's character is writing in parts of the film. Those expecting a Wong Kar Wai film with the ultra-cool edge of sci-fi are in for a disappointment; when instead, it’s once again a look at the 60’s, the period’s characters, and an interesting narrative with a sci-fi story within the film used to metaphorically resolve relationships in a style that we could swear we’ve seen before. Nonetheless, those who go in just expecting a Wong Kar Wai movie, will no doubt get what they saw coming.

In most ways, 2046 is completely about expectations. Director expectations are contemplated first and foremost, especially when Wai’s last film was four years ago, in a near flawless exercise of beauty. Wai’s always stuck with a distinctive style, no matter what the film. Immersed in a blend of poetry, cliché and love, his dialogues and monologues are a rare occurrence these days, however easy it may seem to recreate. Along with his “script,” is the choice of theme he has, usually rooted deeply in love and his twisting perspectives of an overused topic. 2046 takes the theme to a level of passion, feeling like the most explicit scenes of intimacy Wai’s used (which may not say too much). Nevertheless, although little meditation or speculation is required for this more shallow take on the theme, it rests mainly in explaining motivation behind the characters that appear top priority, and the message they relay to us through experience.

We make think Wai is getting too self-referential in spite of the fact he’s repeated many elements in all his films over the course of his career. What stands out are the parallelisms between his other films that seem to get in the way of any momentum of originality 2046 tries to reach. Simple scenes like Wan taking the heels off his drunken sleeping friend can be equated to Kaneshiro in Chungking Express; or Wan’s playboy commitment-free lifestyle’s strong resemblance to a certain friend in Days of Being Wild. Don’t start maligning 2046 as a Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back yet, as here Wai has a unique message that relies on the minimalist references to In the Mood for Love and its effect on an ultimately confused and torn Chow Mo Wan. There are these subtle reasons that create a foundation for his relationships with these women, and although the reasons seem like rehashed elements from WKW's last film, they work discreetly to the utterly genius effect of explaining why Chow Mo Wan acts in certain ways. It’s difficult to say whether Wong Kar Wai meets the enormously high expectations built up over the last four years. But really, no matter how much you want to see the film, you can’t hype it up. This isn’t the film you sit at; waiting for that one scene to wow you into realizing it’s the greatest movie you’ve ever seen. It’s one that requires you watch without forethought, and then enamor yourself with the drama that unfolds.

Of course the drama that unfolds is another subtlety in itself when even that can creep up on you well after watching. On the surface, 2046 can be looked at as a three year writing process guided by a simplistic girl-hunt that’s nothing more than a trail of broken hearts and attempts at viewer sympathy. Instead, what 2046 brings is the process of recovery. It’s a closer look at the man who whispered his secret into a tree and tried to forget the past. His character can switch with the blink of an eye from passionate to self-pitying to cruel, while maintaining that carefree exterior to protect himself for whatever reasons he has. The film never asks you to get in on the emotion. Perhaps that is the slight edge it’s missing, when Chungking had its breeziness or In the Mood for Love had its tragedy. All that 2046 seems focused on is the continuance of a potentially vastly interesting character with the added hope that a viewer might find something to relate to. The drama consists of things we’ve all seen, but when put through Wai’s lens, they seem bright, polished off and good as new.

Speaking of lens, technical expectations make up part of the anticipation in going to a Wong Kar Wai movie. With Christopher Doyle behind the cinematography, it’d be safe to assume we get a visually artistic masterpiece, and while it doesn’t bask in the exuberance of his past work, in some ways, a masterpiece is what we get. It’s been an ongoing trend now, seeing Chris Doyle’s photography as more toned down than the sheer extravagance we last saw in Hero, and once again, we get a relevantly tight atmosphere with shots wrapping around corners or forcing intimacy upon characters in limited space. With the added touch of vibrantly red corridors, stirring retro neon sci-fi sets, and Ziyi’s elaborate dresses, (which not too unintentionally resemble Maggie Cheung’s), the colors struggle to outweigh a contrastingly grainy mood Wai illustrates. Aside from visual composition, the easiest to love touch that Wai puts on his film is the magnificent score boasting a mix of the haunting Shigeru Umebayashi, the operatic Peer Raben and a bit of the obligatory oldies with Nat King Cole’s "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" or Dean Martin’s "Sway." Even the soundtrack echoes the sequel status, but with a new mix of titles, the intended repetition and a scene of Tony Leung rhythmically chewing to the beat, the music choice never fails to work the viewer’s mood over.

With a dream-like cast that almost measures up to Ashes of Time, the actors works wonders mainly stemming from the charisma between the females and Tony Leung. Each relationship presents something noticeably different, be it the passion and vanity between him and Zhang Ziyi, or the warmth of a summer friendship with Faye Wong. Gong Li gets a role smaller than expected as something of a five minute opener and fifteen minute closer, but for the depth and restrained relations with Leung, it tends to shine just as much as the others thematically and entertainingly. Aside from the main players, Takuya Kimura as Faye Wong’s Japanese boyfriend, Ping Lam Siu reprising his role as Ah Ping, Carina Lau as Lulu and Cheng Chen as her destructive boyfriend all play small supporting roles of varying importance to the plot. Maggie Cheung only gets her due in brief flashbacks, while one gets the semblance from certain futuristic footage of her that more was in the works, just never used. The cast is self-explanatory, as every actor portrays their character with the conviction necessary to simply fill 2046 with so much maneuverability that the littlest things matter the most when you realize how much Wai has created in the world of Chow Mo Wan.

2046 is somewhat of a difficult movie to recommend. As a rabid WKW fan, the movie fit perfectly, even without surpassing the majority of his films, but simply as a continuance of his career. Seeing In the Mood for Love is essential in understanding the development of Tony Leung’s character as we quickly see him in a completely different light shortly after his introduction in this. Noticing the traits that cleverly attract Chow Mo Wan to the five distinctive women of his life, even without any strong emotion, we feel like part of his world more than ever. The uninitiated may see it as a passable collection of love stories that don’t matter, but anyone with a shred of fandom for WKW should be satisfied with the outcome.

 

Hong Kong Digital #274: 2046  John Charles, also seen here:  Hong Kong Digital - DVD Review

That rare contemporary filmmaker blessed with the degree of critical cachet and international respect that allows him the freedom to work at his own pace, Wong Kar-wai’s films invariably transmute en-route, gaining and losing cast members and technicians, and sometimes end up bearing almost no resemblance to the project that was announced. However, 2046's journey to the screen was positively Kubrickian, taking the better part of four years. Even after months in post-production (which led to inescapable quips about the title also representing the movie’s release date), 2046 arrived three hours late for its (already delayed) Cannes screening, immediately after which Wong took the movie right back into the editing room for one more fine-tuning (reportedly adding four minutes and slightly altering the score) prior to its general release overseas. Happily, in the wake of such long-simmering anticipation, we are blessed with one of the director’s finest works to date, a beguiling intermingling of characters and themes from DAYS OF BEING WILD and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, exquisitely produced and performed in the manner that has made Wong one of the most admired cinematic artists of the past two decades.

Three years after the events depicted in MOOD, writer Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) is still burdened by memories of his failed relationship with Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk). He checks into a Wanchai hotel and requests room 2046, the number of the apartment in which he and Lizhen shared their most prized moments together. As that one is not yet available, he settles for 2047 and courts high class prostitute Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi), who falls for him against her better judgment. Mo-wan also develops feelings for the hotel owner’s daughter (Faye Wong), an aspiring writer deeply in love with a Japanese man (Takuya Kimura) her father despises for no reason other than his nationality. Mo-wan also recalls earlier days in Singapore, where he encountered Su Lizhen (Gong Li), a mysterious gambler known as Black Spider, who uses her talents to help him out of a financial jam. However, in spite of an obvious, intense connection between them, this Lizhen cannot remain with him for reasons of her own. As Mo-wan grows more and more immersed in his world of fiction, he concentrates on a science fiction story called "2046." While set in the future, "2046" is not so much a time as a place and Mo-wan’s present situation and mind set are reflected entirely in his fictional creations.

The above synopsis provides a general overview of the events unfolding in 2046, adding an unavoidable conventionality to a cursive storyline that operates on several levels, including the notion of traveling to the future to revel in one’s memories of the past. Most of the story unfolds in ‘60s Hong Kong, with our view of Mo-wan’s fictional creation confined almost exclusively to a seemingly endless ride aboard a similarly limitless train. Some have criticized the CGI FX in these scenes as being cartoonish, but like the train’s sterile interiors and the outlandish uniforms and hairstyles sported by its android attendants, the fanciful look is in-keeping with the sort of involved, overwhelmingly gaudy future that a ‘60s writer might well dream up.

While it was originally intended to be something completely different, 2046 evolved into a most unusual and effective continuance of not only IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, but also DAYS OF BEING WILD. Carina Lau Kar-ling’s reprisal of her character, Lulu (still capricious, grasping, and thoroughly unsuccessful with men), is accompanied by an echo of Yuddy, Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing’s troubled protagonist. The noble and gentlemanly Mo-wan has devolved into a rather cold and cynical man unable to commit, a somewhat milder distillation of traits displayed by Yuddy. The dependably suave and subtle Leung (who has a silent, introductory cameo at the end of DAYS) flawlessly personifies this evolution, displaying similarly caddish behavior yet still retaining some viewer sympathy because he is also torturing himself, while Yuddy’s misogyny arose from his mother’s abandonment of him and seems routed entirely in revenge. Zhang Ziyi also gives an exceptional, heartbreaking performance in a role that offers her many challenges and Gong Li imbues a small, seemingly one-note supporting character with a world-weary melancholy that conveys volumes. A decade after she almost stole CHUNGKING EXPRESS, Faye Wong retains her impish allure and, if the role seems more ornamental than her fellow Mainland actresses, it is no less vital to the look and ambiance Wong Kar-wai has strived for.

The film’s long gestation and Wong’s improvisational style have, not surprisingly, caused some of the film’s name performers to be almost entirely absent from the final cut. The prominently billed Chang Chen (HAPPY TOGETHER), Dong Jie (HAPPY TIMES), and Thai actor Bird Thongchai McIntyre barely appear, but Siu Ping-lam makes a memorable return appearance from MOOD as Mo-wan’s flaky editor and Maggie Cheung captivates in what barely qualifies as a cameo. Christopher Doyle had to depart the production, due to other commitments, with the balance lensed by two other cinematographers, but the visuals remain consistently arresting in the familiar WK-W style, from the purposeful use of color to the swirls of smoke wafting from omnipresent cigarettes. While some of 2046 seems markedly different, the film still operates in much the same manner as its two earlier chapters, reiterating the period clothing and hairstyles, varied music (including Nat "King" Cole and even Dean Martin), long takes, and a dreamlike atmosphere always on the margins of even the more conventional sequences. While not explicit in the least, the sexuality is more up-front and far less delicate (Gong and Leung share a kiss that is among the roughest yet most impassioned in memory, and both Zhang and Lau have bedroom scenes more daring than expected), yet these moments seem every bit as romantic, poetic, and heartfelt because of the viewer’s emotional investment and the fascinating, self-referential universe. This continual interweaving and amplification of memories produces as intoxicating and seductive an aura as Wong has created thus far in his films, making 2046 a captivating achievement and one that retains its allure in repeat viewings.

Wong’s first film to expand beyond the borders of 1.85:1, 2046 is presented here at 2.42:1 in an anamorphic presentation that looks quite good for the most part. Of course, with this director, it is difficult to provide a definitive evaluation; 2046’s cinematography and visual design are so striking, the film would likely still impress even in a mediocre transfer. That said, Mei Ah’s master suffers from some minor issues, including a flaw I have not encountered before. When the DVD is viewed in slow motion or still step, the first frame of every shot buckles slightly to the right and then snaps back. Presumably, this is a PAL conversion malady, and it is thankfully not evident at regular speed. There is also some room for improvement in terms of contrasts, consistency of hues and digital compression and, hopefully, a future edition will offer the film at its maximum luminance. Until that time, this HK DVD is a more than adequate rendition. The disc defaults to the original sync sound audio, a mix of Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese, while the Mandarin track retains the Japanese but presents all of the Chinese dialogue in that language. The former is obviously preferable and the mix is crisp and clear, with good use of the surround channels and the sort of enveloping atmosphere needed to compliment the elaborate visuals. A mild hum can be detected during some especially quiet moments. The English subtitle translation is dodgy at times (eg. "satin" instead of "set in"), though always coherent.

Only a trailer and largely useless "Databank" feature are included as extras, but a second platter offers some additional supplements. Not nearly as extensive or well-designed as one would like for a such an exemplary film, the "Making Of..." (36 minutes) does features elucidative comments from Wong and some of the leads, with Leung and Zhang offering the most intelligent and worthwhile observations about their characters and the preparation required. Unfortunately, the English translation is weaker than that seen in the feature. "Ziyi Footage" (3 minutes) offers behind-the-scenes glimpses of Zhang acting in various scenes and posing for stills. Anyone hoping to find out more about the "Theme Music" will be disappointed to learn that the section merely features a reprise of the piece over a montage of shots from the movie. The final section, "6 Lovers," is equally superfluous. The same trailer is carried over here, along with a shorter, less interesting one for the International market and a disappointingly brief animated photo gallery. Five textured color postcards are tucked inside the keepcase (which comes in an outer sleeve). Obviously, the best way to experience 2046 for the first time is on the big screen (Sony Pictures Classics’ U.S. release begins on August 5th), but if you cannot wait for the eventual Region 1 DVD, the Mei Ah edition will do.

2046 | Wong Kar-wai | Nathan Lee - Film Comment Magazine    Elusive Objects of Desire, by Nathan Lee, July/August 2005

After five years in production, dozens of interruptions, numerous cast changes, multiple cinematographers, the reconstruction of a half-million-dollar set, the completion of three major side projects, an eleventh-hour world premiere at Cannes, two radically different edits, a thousand import DVDs, endless rumors, infinite expectations—the phenomenon known as 2046 has finally arrived. What does it all add up to?  First, what it is not: a science-fiction film by Wong Kar Wai. Or at least not the one suggested by the first visual tease I discovered on the Internet several years ago: a sepia-tinted still of—what?—some fabulously convoluted dystopia? I recall the numbers “2046” emblazoned lengthwise across the image in an embossed, label-gun font. I remember only the widening of my eyes and the flush of heat behind them as inchoate visions of Wongian futurism offered themselves to my imagination. The details of that evocative jpeg are vague in the memory; I can no longer find it on my hard drive; the web has since been glutted with hundreds of official images connected to the final project. Did it really exist? I just spent over an hour searching for it. I just left for 2046.

Every passenger who goes to 2046 has the same intention. They want to recapture lost memories because nothing ever changes in 2046. Nobody knows if that’s true because nobody’s ever come back.

Vestiges of a lavish science-fiction movie turn up in 2046 as excerpts of a novel being written by Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung), a lovelorn journalist in mid-Sixties Hong Kong. Voluptuously frazzled, it looks like a space oddity designed by Hussein Chalayan. On board a sleek intergalactic locomotive,  a moody youth with wild hair (Takuya Kimura) stares out the window of a crimson corridor. A smear of pixels races past. The craft is cold, labyrinthine—passengers are encouraged to hug one another for warmth. The young man does so with his obscure object of desire, a haute couture android (Faye Wong) with “delayed reactions” and avant-garde telephony. Other sequences will follow: fish-eyed sprints through fluorescent compounds, heavy android petting on wrought-iron beds, languid fembot lolling about. Not quite, as Chow describes, “as bizarre and erotic as possible without crossing the line.” Dangerously close, in fact, to avant-Barbarella.

Chow was formerly a writer of martial-arts novels. Adapted for the screen, would they look like Ashes of Time? Wong’s world is an eternal return, an iOeuvre on shuffle, an intricate, epic remix. We have met Chow before. He was first glimpsed in the enigmatic finale of Days of Being Wild, holed up in the first of many hypnotically appointed chambers (of the mind) to come. Smoking a cigarette, paring his fingernails, filling his pockets, combing his hair, he was readying for a night on the town. It took him nearly a decade. Days’s famous coda is the (delayed) madeleine of Wong’s celluloid recherche: the great Proustian reverie of In the Mood for Love comes flooding out from its shape, sound, and texture.

I once fell in love with someone. After a while, she wasn’t there. I went to 2046. I thought she might be waiting for me there. But I couldn’t find her. I can’t stop wondering if she loved me or not.

Set in early Sixties Hong Kong, In the Mood for Love was the story of a rapturously sublimated romance between Chow and his impossibly beautiful neighbor Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung). Muffled by shyness and powerful codes of propriety, their affections detonated as if deep underwater. Mood was an erotic depth charge; 2046 is the pattern made by its aftershocks. Echoing with repetitions, synchronicities, somnambulistic swoons, dream states, meta-narrative, and many kinds of doppelgangers, it is a ghost story haunted by the absence of Su Li Zhen. So the first thing 2046 adds up to is a sequel. This seems obvious now, but it wasn’t nearly as explicit in the notorious ur-cut shown at Cannes last year. One suspects that the extent to which the release version directly continues the narrative of Mood may have been settled on very late in the game. And it isn’t difficult to imagine other versions surfacing some day: a pure sci-fi, an experimental montage, a wordless pantomime, a melodrama in Japanese, a half-dozen self-contained romances. A poem is never finished, said Valéry, only abandoned.

Returned to Hong Kong after a sojourn in Singapore, Chow has grown dissolute (and a mustache). He is surrounded by women, sirens, pseudo-Sus. The first we meet is a shadowy femme fatale known as (among other things) the Black Spider (Gong Li). 2046 will return to her mysteries and so will we. Next is Lulu, aka Mimi (Carina Lau Ka Ling), a doleful, tempestuous former lover with whom Chow reunites one drunk evening at a nightclub. Ever the gentleman, he returns her unconscious form to the Oriental Hotel, room 2046. It was in room 2046 of another hotel that Chow and Su Li Zhen may or may not have consummated their affair. A few days later, returning to check on Lulu, the hotel manager, Mr. Wang (Wang Sum), tells him she has checked out. Chow inquires about moving into her room. It is being “renovated.” Several nights earlier Lulu was stabbed by a jealous lover. Chow moves into 2047.

Down the hall sizzles Miss Bai Ling (Ziyi Zhang), an intensely alluring courtesan wrapped in diamonds, embroidery, coral-colored silk, and contemptuous sass. Li Zhen was modest; Miss Bai is coy, her reticence an easily foiled gambit. It’s a sign of Chow’s malaise that he treats her unkindly—I mean, it’s fucking Ziyi Zhang! Still, she is frivolous and, far worse, available. Chow fatigues and shifts his attentions to Wang Jing Wen (Faye Wong, again), eldest daughter of the hotel manager. (Her sister is reduced to a Popsicle-sucking Lolita with a single scene, but for all we know appears on several thousand feet of discarded film.) Wang is claimed—an ideal object of adoration. Against the wishes of her father, she is in love with Japanese Tak (Kimura Takuya, again). Chow facilitates their affair by receiving his letters and passing them on. Wang, an aspiring writer, is soon collaborating on his potboilers.

All of the women of 2046 are, in a sense, aspects of one woman, the woman, and not the woman that Su Li Zhen was, but the one she might or could have been. He’ll never know. Why can’t it be like it was before?

A synthesizing, retrospective work, 2046 is the summation of Wong’s lyrical melancholia. As such, there’s something decadent, terminal, and slightly suffocating about it. Production designer William Chang’s shabby-chic surrealism reaches apotheosis: peppermint-stripe sconces, op art wallpaper, lush velvet curtains, boas of thick gold tinsel, mirror upon mirror upon mirror, each of supernal lucidity. For the first time in his career, in his longest film to date, Wong frames in cinemascope, as if to accommodate the full flexing of his plastic muscle. From Ashes of Time to Happy Together, he is all dizzy kinesis, step-printed expressionism, giddy new-wave verve. In the Mood for Love slowed everything back down, narrowed the focus, keyed itself to the character’s concentration and a rapt backward gaze. 2046 is hieratic, frieze-like, neo-classical. Shot almost entirely in medium-to-tight shots, heads fill the frame like marble busts propped on hidden supports. The far ends of his compositions are habitually given over to a shallow-focus volume of wall or curtain, so that Wong often seems to be shooting in 1.66:1 or 4:3, with a luxurious buffer of pure form. 2046 is a voyeuristic narrative we peek at through apertures and spy on around corners. The geometry of the film is parabolic: our sight line follows its relativistic poetry along a curvature of space.

There is nothing in the editing as conspicuously virtuoso as Maggie Cheung’s jump-cut quickstep up and down the hotel stairs of Mood, unless it’s the first, flabbergasting montage of sci-fi fragments spilling from Chow’s pen. More expansive, plot-wise, than its laser-lean predecessor, the episodic sequel is micro-tight within any given scene, but the cumulative shape has a drifting, arbitrary quality. God knows it could go on and on, variation upon variation—it must have been a monumental task in the editing room. Where the rhythm clicks magically is in the pas de deux between Chow and the women. 2046 is a sequence of two-handers, and for each Wong has invented a unique variation on the inescapable shot/counter shot. Chronologically, the first encounter with Black Spider is also the last, so Wong pivots the layout of their talk around a wide axis, flipping them to the edge of the frame with a swerving, hook-like energy. (The dominant visual motif of the scene is a curved wooden balustrade.) Dialogue with the pained, passionate Lulu is arranged into deep-red diptychs that trap her in little boxes of open space, hot chromatic weight pressing in. Wang’s goodbye to Tak is another study in diptychs, green-black in hue. Her dinner with Chow late in the picture is bewildered by a prismatic effect, as if photographed through the tear of a crystal chandelier. The relationship with Bai is consummated, with physical directness and the cutting reflects this, remaining perfectly clear and keeping classical sight lines in synch. The opposite is the case in the tour de force of the method, Chow’s conversation with Mr. Wang about the renting of room 2046. They stand in a hallway, withholding information and guarding ulterior motives. Wong fragments the space into shards, breaking up the actors in mirrors and offsetting their eye lines. They dissemble; Wong disassembles.

For all its balance and grandeur, 2046 is the most nervous of Wong’s films. Political anxiety gave the film its title: China’s promise, in 1997, that nothing would change in the free-market enclave of Hong Kong for 50 years. Money problems permeate the narrative. Chow is a low-end gambler, a low-paid hack, late on the rent. His relationship with Bai is complicated by ambiguity and embarrassment over the expectation of payment. Riots sparked by economic resentment invade the film’s texture as archival  footage. (The first resulted from an increase in the Star Ferry fare; the second was an anti-colonial uprising by angry young Maoists.) Implicit as well is Wong’s own anxiety about his $15 million project running amok.

If someone wants to leave 2046, how long will it take? Some people get away very easily. Others find that it takes them much longer.

2046 is a place, a time, the name of a novel, the number of a hotel room, and, in the form of an anime megalopolis, the first digital representation in Wong’s cinema. 2046 is also, always, 2046: a cine-Narcissus enraptured by its own depths, unnerved by what it sees, struggling to pull away from its own image. Given the difficulties, the expectations, the reputation at stake, the scrutiny, the daunting perfection of In the Mood for Love—how could it have been otherwise? Anxiety: “Science-fiction films are not about science,” wrote Susan Sontag. “They are about disaster.” Ground control to Major Wong … 2046 is a vacuum touched by death. Lulu is stabbed, Wang (it is hinted) attempts suicide, Su Li Zhen’s absence vexes the narrative. The movie embarked on its long gestation at the dawn of the death of Hong Kong’s autonomy. Wong’s future is digital; celluloid has a shelf life, like canned pineapple. The future is sold; a logo for LG Communications is prominently displayed in the opening animation. Time and space collapse in memory—memory collapses in memory. The trials of the present are projected onto the future. Both times are fiction. 2046 is a spectacular act of self-interrogation. Why can’t it be like it was before?

At the end of The Hand, Wong’s contribution to the omnibus Eros, a prostitute played by Gong Li melodramatically expires in the arms of her tailor (Chang Chen, briefly seen in Chow’s sci-fi). A concentrated ars poetica on the trilogy of Days/Mood/2046, Wong’s masterly short took the making of quipao gowns as the radiant symbol of his own craft. The Hand annotates the most portentous visual motif in 2046: the slo-mo sway of Gong Li’s glove. Attired entirely in her namesake color, Black Spider is the film’s most obscure figure. Her past was like her black glove, a mystery with no solution. Her name, we discover, is Su Li Zhen.

Peter Brunette - Wong Kar-wai (Contemporary Film Directors) - Scribd  175-page book by Peter Brunette, 2005

 

2046: A Matter of Time, A Labour of Love • Senses of Cinema  Stephen Teo from Senses of Cinema, April 15, 2005

 

The Film Sufi: “2046” - Wong Kar Wai (2004)

 

Unhappy Together: Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 - Bright Lights Film Journal  Ian Johnston, January 31, 2005

 

2046 by Wong Kar-Wai (Review) - Opus  Jason Morehead, February 2, 2005

 

WONG KAR WAI MARATHON: The Informal Trilogy | Film Misery  Justin Jagoe on Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, and 2046, collectively known as Wong Kar Wai’s Informal Trilogy, December 8, 2011

 

Trajectories of identification: travel and global culture in the films of Wong Kar-wai  Allan Cameron analyzes Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046 (Films of Wong Kar-Wai, p. 3 - eJumpcut.org) from Jump Cut, Spring 2007

 

The House Next Door [The Conversations] [Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard]  April 29, 2011

 

Ferdy on Films [Roderick Heath]

 

In the mood for Leung - Salon.com  Stephanie Zacharek, August 5, 2005

 

2046 - Reverse Shot  Eric Hynes, August 5, 2005

 

2046 - Reverse Shot  Kristi Mitsuda, August 13, 2013

 

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

 

Review: 2046 (Hong Kong, 2004) | Cinema Escapist  Anthony Kao

 

How the cinema of Wong Kar-wai reflects a Hong Kong in transition  David Pountain from Little White Lies, July 18, 2017

 

Wong Kar Wai As A Metaphor Of Love Part 3: '2046' | Berlin Film Journal   Ekaterina Petrakova from the Berlin Film Journal, May 14, 2014

 

2046 - Deep Focus  Bryant Frazer

 

2046 | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Ed Gonzalez

 

World Cinema Review: Wong Kar-wai | 2046  Douglas Messerli

 

Review: 2046 (Personal Favorites #60) - ScreenAnarchy  Niels Matthijs

 

2046 Wong Kar-wai - Not Coming to a Theater Near You  Matt Bailey

 

2046 - IGN  Todd Gilchrist

 

Wong Kar-Wai's Sequel to Everything - April 15, 2005 - The New ...  Grady Hendrix from The New York Sun, April 15, 2005

 

Reverie and Regret - Gay City News  Steve Erickson, August 4, 2005

 

2046 Review (Wong Kar-Wai) | Public Transportation Snob  Dan Heaton

 

2046 (2004) - LoveHKFilm.com   Kozo (Ross Chen) from Love HK Film

 

BeyondHollywood.com  Nix

 

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young]

 

Mad About the Boy | The New Yorker  Anthony Lane, August 22, 2005

 

2046 Review | CultureVulture - CultureVulture.net  Arthur Lazere

 

Filmbrain  From Anna Karina’s Sweater

 

The History of Cinema. Wong Kar-Wai: biography, reviews, links  Piero Scaruffi reviews

 

Retrospective: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai | IndieWire  August 19, 2013

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014

 

2046 | Film at The Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

2046 | Film at The Digital Fix  Mark Boydell

 

2046 | Film at The Digital Fix Michael Mackenzie

 

Movie Gazette Review [Anton Bitel]

 

2046 - The A.V. Club (Film)  Scott Tobias

 

2046 : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video  Svet Atanasov

 

2046 : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video  J. Doyle Wallis

 

Wealth and Welfare:  Louisiana films, and Be Cool, Guess Who, Elizabethtown, Loggerheads, 9 Songs, Cote D’Azur, 2046, Red Eye, Thumbsucker, Proof, and Good Night, and Good Luck, with Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death and The Gospel  Daniel Garrett from Bright Lights Film Journal, December 2005

 

Film/Classic: 2046 - The City Review  Carter B. Horsley

 

Spannered | Wong Kar Wai | 2046 | film | reviews  Max Leonard

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

Confessions of a Pop Fan [Jamie S. Rich]

 

CineScene [Howard Schumann]

 

A Nutshell Review  Stefan S.

 

Movie Magazine International [Joan K. Widdifield]

 

ReelTalk [Jeffrey Chen]

 

2046   Acquarello from Strictly Film School

 

Ten Cinematic Love Letters To Cities | AnOther  Carmen Gray

 

2046 (2004) Review | cityonfire.com

 

20/20 Movie Reviews [Richard Cross]

 

Plume Noire - Film review  Fred Thom

 

SPLICEDwire | "2046" movie review (2005) "2046" review, Wong Kar ...  Rob Blackwelder

 

2046 :: Movies :: Reviews :: Paste  Michelle Devereaux

 

Film-Forward Review: [2046]  Marie Iida

 

Asian Ovation: FILM REVIEW: 2046  Jeffrey Wang

 

Lessons of Darkness [Nick Schager]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Cannes Preview: 2046 - Like Anna Karina's Sweater  Filmbrain, May 11, 2004

 

2046 | Chicago Reader  Jonathan Rosenbaum

 

2046 | The Asian Cinema Blog   Agne Serpytyte

 

2046 (2004) - Wong Kar-Wai | Review | AllMovie  Derek Armstrong

 

Fran Kranz on 2046's essential lessons about love and hope / The ...   Tasha Robinson interviews actor Fran Kranz on Wong Kar-wai’s film from The Dissolve, October 17, 2013

 

2046 - Movie Reviews and Movie Ratings | TVGuide.com

 

Review: '2046' - Variety  Derek Elly

 

2046 (2005), directed by Wong Kar-wai | Film review - Time Out  Geoff Andrew

 

2046 | Reviews | guardian.co.uk Film  Peter Bradshaw, January 14, 2005

 

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

 

Wong Kar-Wai's '2046': What's Love Got to Do With It?  Stephen Hunter from The Washington Post

 

Austin Film Society [Chale Nafus]

 

Austin Chronicle [Kimberley Jones]

 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [G. Allen Johnson]

 

2046 Movie Review & Film Summary (2005) | Roger Ebert

 

Glamour Lives, in Chinese Films  Manohla Dargis gazes upon Chinese actresses Shu Qi, Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li from The New York Times, December 5, 2004

 

Desire and Loss in the Curve of a Back  Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, August 5, 2005, also seen here:  2046 - The New York Times 

 

Still in the Mood for a Collaboration  Karen Durbin from The New York Times, August 7, 2005

 

DVDBeaver.com [Warren Murphy]

 

DVDBeaver.com [Peter Frost-Olsen & Rigmor Kappel Schmidt]

 

2046 (film) - Wikipedia

 

2046 (film) - encyclopedia article - Citizendium


MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS                                   B+                   90

Hong Kong  China  France  (111 mi)  2007  ‘Scope  revised US version (90 mi) 

A few years ago, I had a dream, and then one night, a door slammed and the dream was over.  —Jeremy (Jude Law)

Exploring typically American subjects like heartbreak, adultery, death, alcoholism, and gambling, this was a pleasure to watch from start to finish.  Perhaps Wong Kar-wai can make films like this in his sleep, as this is a throwback to many of his earlier films, especially CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994), changed to an American setting with English-speaking actors.  From the opening shot, you’re pleasingly aware you’re back in the good graces of a Wong Kar-wai film, as the luminous photography (this time by Darius Khondji) is gorgeously captivating, seeing neon-lit colors at night with trains streaming through the night sky like shooting stars.  All the signature trademarks are displayed right from the outset, a color scheme bursting off the screen, mesmerizing imagery which is at times speeded up, as in the case of trains zooming by, or more often slowed down to reflect characters out of time speaking an ambiguous open-ended language where they exist in a universe all of their own.  How many times do we see Norah Jones, Wong’s youthful American protagonist, isolated off to the side of the frame gazing dreamily at the world passing by?  How often did we see Faye Wong (also a young pop singer) in a similar state of reverie?  While stealing liberally from his own work, quite surprisingly this film has a beginning, a middle, and an end, which actually feels very unlike Wong Kar-wai and seems forced or contrived, with the shorter running time cutting nearly twenty minutes from the Cannes version, cutting off some of the musical sequences in mid-song, creating a few abrupt edits where anyone used to the hypnotic feel of a Wong Kar-wai film knows something was cut out in order to make this shorter and more accessible for the mindset of Americans who suffer from a chronic case of attention deficit disorder when tempted with something other than fast-paced Hollywood action.      

Norah Jones is by no means an actress, nor does she pretend to be, but the director is interested in her eye’s response to the changing world around her as she’s half-Asian, born Geethali Shankar, daughter of Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar, so she fits right into this story of an undiscovered life that as yet has no meaning, a naive, dreamy-eyed woman caught out of time who needs a journey of rediscovery to find her way back into her own life.   She plays Elizabeth, whose song “The Story” opens the film:  “I don’t know how to begin, ’cause the story has been told before,” which sets the tone for an impressionistic autobiographical experience as she stumbles confused and disorganized into a small New York City café run by Jude Law as Jeremy in the late night hours before closing, asking him to hold onto a set of keys and give them to anyone asking for her.  But when no one asks, she sheepishly returns every night like a lost animal without a home, commiserating with Jeremy, explaining her guy has found himself another woman, but in her eyes, he’s still her guy, wondering how to let go.  Jeremy offers a food metaphor, as some popular pies sell out night after night, while other pies remain strangely intact, like a blueberry pie, which no one ever orders.  Elizabeth immediately orders a slice or two and falls asleep on the counter with ice cream still visible on her lips.  In a close up reminiscent of FACES (1968), we see a peacefully sleeping Elizabeth, who may as well be Alice stumbling down her rabbit hole, as the emptiness of her life soon blossoms into what resembles a dreamy road sequence, disappearing overnight into Memphis, Tennessee, where she finds work as a waitress in a diner and a bar under the names Betty and Lizzy.  Throughout the rest of the film, she writes post cards to Jeremy offering an accompanying voiceover of internal mood.   

Face down on the counter we meet Arnie (David Strathairn), a regular drunk with a running tab who drowns his sorrows in drink professing each time to quit, but as his marital woes continue to get the better of him, drinking is the best remedy.  In a dark, smoke-filed room, to the tune of Otis Redding singing “Try a Little Tenderness,” time once more comes to a stop as his wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz) walks into the bar in slow motion, a woman whose mere presence turns heads, something she takes great pleasure in, so of course she wears a red dress.  Sue Lynne is a character out of a Tennessee Williams play, where trouble, which she steadfastly avoids, follows her wherever she goes.  Arnie, unfortunately, is the recipient of her world of pain, as despite being married to him, she wants nothing more to do with him and cavalierly offers herself to everyone else in town.  With brilliant performances from Frankie Faison as the bar owner Travis, also Straithorn and Weisz, Jones is reduced to a secondary role of an innocent bystander who can only watch in utter horror as she continues to serve the poor man drinks, where her own heartbreak seems like a fading, distant memory.  The tragedy here only increases, amusing at first in its volatile familiarity and in its shot-through-a-looking-glass-window fight sequence, but it becomes the dramatic heft of the film, which finds an unusually mournful resolution with a long, uninterrupted take between a suddenly contemplative Sue Lynne and Lizzy, culminating in a slow, sad rendition of “Harvest Moon” by soulful jazz singer Cassandra Wilson, which I thought was the most powerful sequence in the film.

Moving to Reno, Nevada, the film turns into CINCINNATI KID (1965), a film known for its cool demeanor, epitomized by Steve McQueen and a theme song sung by none other than Ray Charles.  Here Natalie Portman as Leslie, a bleached blond in a trashy outfit with a brash Southern accent, assumes the McQueen role at the poker table, sassily badmouthing all comers, predictably assuming the dominant position as the player to beat, and then in the moment of triumph, loses suddenly and gracelessly, fighting off her own inner demons.  Jones, now going by the name of Beth, is once more a fly on the wall and is seen serving drinks to the players.  She witnesses the Portman meltdown, which only grows worse after she is repeatedly turned down on all requests to front her some cash.  In a desperate maneuver, she offers to give up her Jaguar convertible to Beth should she lose in exchange for her savings.  Back in the game, she once again flaunts her opposition and works her way back to another final showdown.  Shown only in aftermath, the two head out of town to Vegas where Leslie needs to see her money man, displaying a battle of wits along the way, a verbal exchange between a woman who still has faith in people and a chronic liar who believes absolutely no one.  Leslie is such an indisputable liar that even when she professes the truth we still have reason to be suspicious.  Portman is especially appealing hiding behind this poker face, believing nothing can touch her, that she’s invincible, while inside her heart is also breaking.  There’s an interesting scene with Cat Power, who sings two songs on the soundtrack, who appears as the lost girl friend of Jeremy, who returns late one night to see him again, where after a few words and a tender kiss, she disappears again in a cloud of dust.  Beautifully enhanced by the music of Ry Cooder, transience is an overriding theme, a byproduct of heartbreak, where one’s life takes shape and meaning only through experiences over time, suggesting you can only see your true face by seeing it reflected back through the faces of others.    

 

My Blueberry Nights - The A.V. Club (Film)   Scott Tobias

When great international directors come to America—think Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms, or Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas—the results tend to be awkward, yet beautiful: awkward because the filmmakers find the language and culture dauntingly unfamiliar, and beautiful because they have fresh, unvarnished impressions of America. Those qualities are in full effect in Wong Kar-Wai's wounded road odyssey My Blueberry Nights, which opened to shrugs at Cannes last year and now arrives in theaters 20 minutes leaner, and no doubt a little worse for wear. Informed by iconic pieces of Americana like Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks," plus a soundtrack that pairs Otis Redding and Mavis Staples alongside soulful contemporaries like Cat Power and Cassandra Wilson, the film views the nation's cities as all-night hideaways where doomed romantics can suck gin, fork a pie, and quietly lament loves lost or never found. In other words, Wong has succeeded in turning America into a Wong Kar-Wai movie.

Making her acting debut, singer Norah Jones doesn't leave much of an impression, though part of the point is that she's a passive participant in her own life. Still reeling from an ex-boyfriend who left her for another woman, Jones starts hanging out at a moody New York City café run by Jude Law, a fast-talker who immediately takes to her. The two become friends, but the restless Jones, anxious to leave the city (and memories of her ex-boyfriend) behind, travels to Memphis and takes two waitressing jobs in the hope that she'll raise enough money to buy a car. She winds up entangled in a messy separation involving an alcoholic cop (David Strathairn) and his cheating wife (Rachel Weisz), so she flees again, this time to Las Vegas, where she befriends a poker shark played by Natalie Portman.

In spite of the location change, My Blueberry Nights takes place in Wong's unmistakable cinematic universe, where the lives of lovelorn singles are ruled by repetition and obsession, and their loneliness isn't so much piercing as luxuriant. Wong knows this territory well, and films like Days Of Being Wild, Chungking Express, and Fallen Angels have explored it without some of the shaky dialogue and performances that dog My Blueberry Nights. (Though it should be said that Portman and Strathairn do excellent work.) And yet Wong's visions of a New York café, a Memphis bar, and a Vegas casino—not to mention the swaths of beautiful country in the Southwest—have that enveloping quality that make his films so persistently seductive. The natives should feel flattered.

Wong Kar-Wai's Dreamy Nights :: Stop Smiling Magazine  Patrick Z. McGavin at Cannes, May 17, 2007

Wong Kar-wai makes the most off-handed and superfluous movement emphatic and particular. His new film, My Blueberry Nights, his ninth feature and first in English, opened the 60th Cannes Film festival Wednesday afternoon.

It is far from his highest achievement, but it evidences no betrayal of his special gifts. Wong transposes his elliptical, enigmatic style to an American idiom. Rather than the nihilism of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, he works in a more melancholy and plaintive register, shaping the work around his customary themes of isolation, solitude and loneliness. Wong is often thought of as the most Proustian of contemporary directors, and memory is almost always tormenting and unforgiving in his movies.

The new film is a road movie lost in time, the story circling and pirouetting around the reflections and bruising experiences of Elizabeth (pop star Norah Jones, in her first film role), a young woman coping with her raw, fragile identify following the end of her five-year relationship. Wong remains rather uncompromising, and the film has a musical rhythm constructed like a fugue, drawing out variations of ecstasy, pain and liberation as the story moves horizontally from New York to Memphis and Las Vegas.

Working from his original story, Wong wrote the script with the crime writer Lawrence Block. Storytelling’s never been his strength, and the new movie is bound to disappoint many as insubstantial and repetitive. Wong’s movies are all fever dreams designed to frustrate and undermine as narratives. He is an imagist par excellence. Collaborating with the great cinematographer Darius Khondji (Seven), Wong maintains the claustrophobic intensity of In the Mood for Love and 2046, working in widescreen in fascinating and non-conventional ways, shooting mostly in interiors and using a very short, compacted space and repeated close ups to heighten emotion and feeling.

My Blueberry Nights is most effective visually, the camera probing, fluid and tense in the arrangement of objects, the almost ominous row of street lights, the nighthawk landscapes and emptiness of a New York subway car, or the alternately thrilling or confining open spaces of the American West. Wong also finds poignancy in the kind of lower depth roles (cops, waitresses, bar maids, card sharks) that tended to animate the most feverish, morally complex and interesting films of the past.

It has some awkward moments, and dovetailing narrators that duplicate what Wong’s camera has already told more beautifully. Regardless of what language or country he is working in, Wong is unparalleled in his photographic admiration of women. Nobody has a more discerning eye for the shape and contours of women’s faces. Jones, Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz and Chan Marshall (turning in an enigmatic part as Jude Law’s former lover) are mesmerizing.

Jones is young and unformed as an actress, but she’s a sharp presence and beautifully expressive. Wong largely finds a way to work around her technical limitations. Burdened in the past by portentous roles that repressed her naturalness, Portman finally is unleashed, for once burrowing into a character. She imbues her part of a gambler with insouciance and edge that acknowledges her intelligence.

My Blueberry Nights is inevitably transitional. Wong’s entire artistic output is that of an outsider, a natural given he was born in Shanghai and moved with his family to Hong Kong as a young boy. Music has always been judicious and inspired in his work, and he gets a pang of regret and remorse from Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness.” By playing off his typical preoccupations, Wong is never subjected to the loss of identity or absence of a strong point of view that afflicts so many foreign-born directors working in America for the first time. Like pretty much all of his work, it floats and whirls in the imagination.

New York Sun [Nicolas Rapold]

One might say Norah Jones has a knack for making debuts. Her cappuccino-smooth first album, 2002's "Come Away With Me," moved more than 20 million copies and netted half-a-dozen Grammy Awards. If a dash of right-place-right-time factored into such mass success, fortune must still be smiling on the 28-year-old singer-songwriter: In her first foray into acting, she was handpicked by the art-house rock star Wong Kar Wai to star in "My Blueberry Nights," which opens in the city next Friday.

Ms. Jones didn't know why the director singled her out for his first feature since the kaleidoscopic fantasy-romance "2046" four years ago. But after watching "In the Mood for Love" and "Chungking Express" (which starred the Taiwanese pop phenom Faye Wong), she knew she couldn't pass up the opportunity. "Who doesn't want Wong Kar Wai to dress them up, put makeup on them, and shoot them?" Ms. Jones beamed recently at the offices of Blue Note Records, which released her third album, "Not Too Late," a little more than a year ago. "I thought, gosh, if this guy wants me in a movie, I'll probably look my best. Might as well do it while I'm young."

The good-humored pianist had never acted before, but "My Blueberry Nights" fittingly has the feel of a cycle of songs. In Mr. Wong's version of a road movie, Ms. Jones plays the lovelorn Lizzie, who befriends a SoHo cafe owner (Jude Law) before embarking on a cross-country journey of self-discovery (and waitressing). With David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, and Natalie Portman co-starring in segments, Ms. Jones's character sometimes fades to the background as she nurses her wounds, a bit like a lover from one of her songs.

But acting before the camera was something entirely new — and welcome — for someone well-rooted in her profession at a young age and, even after the ubiquity offered by fame, used to an intimate local circuit.

"It was really good for me to be thrown out of my comfort zone," Ms. Jones said. "I love my New York musicians I work with — I've been working with a lot of the same people for six or seven years — but it was really fun to be outside of my element and with a bunch of strangers."

As it turned out, though, music was very much a part of the making of "My Blueberry Nights." For one thing, Ms. Jones wrote and performed the lead song ("The Story") on the film's soundtrack, which features a mix of Cat Power, classics, and covers, as well as burnished Americana by Ry Cooder. But Mr. Wong's famously multitextured cinema apparently found some of its own groove during the shoot.

"When we were in New York, we listened to two Cat Power songs for three weeks to rehearse camera angles and mood with," Ms. Jones said. "Anytime we shot without sound, it was: 'Ready, start music, action!'" She suggested the selections (from Cat Power's "The Greatest") used on set, as well as a Cassandra Wilson cover of a Neil Young song and Otis Redding's heart-wrenching "Dreams to Remember," played during the Memphis segment of the shoot. Each song ended up on the soundtrack (and Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, herself appears in the movie in a brief but astonishingly evocative turn).

Other quirks of Mr. Wong's filmmaking also fascinated Ms. Jones, who found him "very sweet" and accommodating. His indispensable production designer, William Chang, who essentially co-creates the director's sensuous films, rarely even needed to talk to his colleague. And Mr. Wong, known for his trademark sunglasses, demonstrated a lynx-like night vision.

"We'd be shooting at nighttime, and he would have his shades on, in the dark, looking at the monitor," Ms. Jones said. "Very mysterious, that man."

Shooting wrapped in late 2006, and Ms. Jones soon began a tour for her third album. (The film's distributor, the Weinstein Company, held the project after a mixed reception at last spring's Cannes Film Festival.) The demanding schedule ("Sometimes you agree to do too much") wrapped up last September, and since then, Ms. Jones has been doing something different.

"Nothing," said the singer, who grew up in Texas but lives in Manhattan. "I'm relaxing, taking some time off. I do stuff in town, and might do a little recording to see how some new songs sound. But I'm not in a rush to jump back out."

Future stints on-screen are not in the offing, though the singer warmed up to the process by the end of making "My Blueberry Nights." In fact, when it came to her scenes with Ms. Portman (as a gambling Vegas gal), acting in a movie was as fun as ... being in a movie.

"We were in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Nevada," Ms. Jones said. "Me and Natalie in the car, in a Cadillac. I felt like I was in 'Thelma and Louise'!"

She laughed, launching into a drawl: "'Welllll, Thelma ...' But we didn't go off the cliff."

User reviews  from imdb Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

Wong Kar Wai, the Hong Kong auteur, has made his first movie all in English and set in the USA--and built around Grammy Award singer Norah Jones. More coherent than many of Wong's efforts, it's been accused of being a "trifle"--or is it just that the plot seems silly now that it's all clear and in English? Like all Wong's work, this is a film that's romantic, sad, and gorgeous to look at from first to last and full of strong, catchy pop-blues-country music (Ry Couder did the score). The beautiful Ms. Jones's character, variously known as Elizabeth, Lizzie, Beth, or Betty, turns up at a New York café run by Jeremy (Jude Law), a guy from Manchester, England, drenched in love-longing because her man has dumped her for somebody else. Jeremy has a jar full of keys from patrons, each with a story, and Lizzie gives him hers, hoping her boyfriend will pick them up again. Jeremy has his own lost love, Katya (Cat Power); she'll turn up later on just to say goodbye. Jeremy's keys stand for doors he himself doesn't want to close.

Though Lizzie's boyfriend never turns up, Jeremy and Lizzie begin to have late night chats and sugar orgies, she eating a piece of blueberry pie with ice cream--picking blueberry because that's the pie that's always left over at the end of the day.

There's a fight in the café, and Jeremy plays around with a surveillance camera, which he seems to use as a kind of diary. Soon he will be alone, and Lissie will be away.

This time instead of improvising as in the past, which among other things contributed to his last film, 2046, a kind of summation of his Chinese themes and characters, taking five years to finish, Wong made up his story, with Norah in mind, and then had it turned into a finished screenplay (subject to plenty of revisions, of course) by crime novelist Lawrence Block. This one had a low budget and took just a couple of months to make. Shooting time, that is. It really took a year to do the editing, but Wong had that finished, to everyone's surprise, just in time for My Blueberry NIghts to be shown as the opener at Cannes last year.

Like Wong's other films, this one encapsulates several different stories. The second one comes when Lizzie decides to "cross the street" to revisit Jeremy by the "longest way possible," which turns out to be a trip to Memphis and Nevada and points in between, thousands of miles and nearly a year--a time of self-discovery, no doubt (though she doesn't observably change), and a period to avoid the inevitable romance with Jeremy. Landing in Memphis Lizzie works at two jobs, saving up money to buy a car. At a bar she encounters the drama of the drunken cop Arnie Copeland (David Strathairn) and his estranged wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz). Both are fine, acting their heads off in scenes heady with barroom dysfunction. For once, an on-screen drunk admits to going to Alcoholics Anonymous--and collecting a beginner's chip over and over and over. He throws the chips on the bar and they make a satisfying chink. But Arnie comes to a bad end, though Sue Lynne, despite rejecting him, keeps his tab open as she lights out for the territory. Through all of this Lizzie constantly sends Jeremy a stream of postcards that are a kind of intimate diary, and he desperately tries to track her down by phone and letter, without success.

Every young filmmaker dreams of making a road movie, Wong Kar Wai has said. Though he's now fifty, this is a kind of new beginning, or felt like one to him. But, he said, this movie isn't really a road movie; it's a vacation. And it's not about a journey, but about distance. Maybe the trip across the street for Lizzie is all a dream--one by Sam Shepherd, working with David Lynch. Sue Lynne gives Lizzie a generous donation for being Arnie's barmaid too, and she lights out for Nevada. There she's working at a gambling dive where she meets a young woman named Leslie (Nathalie Portman) who's a pro, and they wind up leaving town together. Eventually, Lizzie ends up back at Jeremy's café, and he's waiting for her.

Coming after As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Ashes of Time, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood For Love, and 2046, Wong's excursion into America is completely consistent and logical. Those who seem disappointed, may miss the ellipses and madcap improv of the earlier films, and may have failed to notice that they were full of pop novel gimmicks and romantic cuteness. Wong's sentimentality passes muster because of cryptic story lines, poetic voice-overs, hypnotic uses of music, and adventurous camera work--mostly by Christopher Doyle, here replaced by the half-French and wholly brilliant Darius Khondji --made infinitely rich by complex editing. My Blueberry Nights is full of criss-cross angles, fast overlaps, closeups so shallow atmospheric Americana may go unnoticed, till a lovely panorama flits by. Color is typically warm and dense. The effect is to make every frame a pleasure.

Reciting Wong Kar Wai's list of features brings home how he single-handedly made the Eighties and Nineties an exciting cinematic time, from the first days when you had to go to a theater on the edge of Chinatown, and then you watched badly subtitled Hong Kong prints found in esoteric video shops, to the time when Tarantino's Miramax label, Rolling Thunder, distributed Chungking Express in a good print with clear titles and the secret was out.

Maybe Wong never did anything better than Days of Being Wild, the first film in which he became truly himself. But what does it matter? The quintessential stylist, he cannot make a film that doesn't give rich aesthetic pleasure.

Raging Bull [Mike Lorefice]

I’ve yet to see a Kar Wai Wong film that wasn’t overrated, but early indications are that My Blueberry Nights will reverse that trend. Wong’s first English language feature may be far from a masterpiece, but even though Wong isn’t at his best when he’s pressed for time and thus sticking to a script, it’s by no means a mess. It’s Kar Wai Wong through and through, both exquisite and flawed. The imperfections are apparently noticeable now that the language and environment are more familiar, but Wong’s true character becoming more obvious doesn’t change the fact he’s a talented and intriguing filmmaker.

Wong’s films are successful because they sweep the audience away in the romantic mood. They are films taking place in the mind’s eye where everything is filtered through a longing, aching, or broken heart. Memory, especially the passionate feelings Wong’s romances deal with, tends to push emotion to the ends of the spectrum, causing characters to either be wholly idealized visions or the devil’s spawn. Wong’s cinematic manipulation such as richly saturating color, applying filters, and altering frame rate and film stock simply visualizes these conceptions.

Though Christopher Doyle isn’t behind the camera, what Doyle has said about filming the style of the director rather than bringing his own style proves to be accurate. No one would rate Darius Khondji as highly as Doyle, yet Khondji gives Wong the precise and beautiful compositions everyone has come to expect from a Wong film. It’s dreamily atmospheric with neon lights, utilizing shallow focus to elaborate interior shots through glass or whatever can possibly come between the actors and the camera. Khondji isn’t as restless as Doyle, but if anything that’s a positive.

The stylization of Wong’s dialogue may not be as apparent as his visuals, but it’s always been a projection of the character’s point view, particularly their memories and desires. It has never been naturalistic, though this isn’t as obvious when you are largely processing it through subtitles. Even in Cantonese, dialogue was never a strongpoint of Wong’s films. His narratives are rather aimless, as he’s better at circling around what he’s trying to say, and that makes for more interesting cinema than condescending preaching anyway. My Blueberry Nights is obviously going to be less successful since Wong isn’t working in his first language. That being said, I feel it’s more that it strikes us as inferior because we excuse awkward dialogue to translation problems and liabilities. Similarly, while there’s an exactness to Wong’s set design, he’s never strived for it to be in the department of realism. If this is suddenly an issue, it’s because having lived or spent time in these places the film isn’t meeting our perceptions of them. We see New York City in a different light than Hong Kong, startled by it being so calm and empty it’s disquieting, but this alteration has no particular impact on the film.

My Blueberry Nights is disappointing in that Wong continues to repeat himself. One might hope he could be more than a director of melancholic romances of unrequited love creating broken hearts who eventually start over, but Wong’s themes don’t change, which is perhaps as it should be given his excellence in the subject. Wong adds to his body of work largely by altering time and place. His last film set in contemporary Hong Kong was 1995’s Fallen Angels. In the Mood for Love and The Hand took place in the 1960’s, 2046 in said futuristic year, while Happy Together was set in Argentina and now My Blueberry Nights in the USA.

Wong’s preoccupation is what makes the human heart tick, and his films are capable of succeeding at any time or in any place because that’s fairly universal, especially in the fairy tale manner he deals with it. Where My Blueberry Nights clearly fails to reach the heights of Wong’s best Hong Kong films is in the acting department. The dialogue of those films was also diversionary and insignificant, but he had Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung, who are among the best at expressing the unexpressed. Certainly a large part of the emotion in any Wong film is created by the visual style, which remains the same, but the best actors took it to another level through their ability to subtly express emotions such as desire, longing, and regret. My Blueberry Nights still doesn’t play events as being of increased significance, but it’s much talkier than Wong’s Hong Kong movies, sometimes bogged down to the point we wonder if Lawrence Block intended the script to be a play. The real problem though is while the feelings are thankfully still expressed through interest rather than declaration, the Hollywood actors are typically too focused on dialogue, and thus don’t do as good a job at surfacing the interior.

Wong had more success pairing an actor (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) with a well known singer (Faye Wong) in Chungking Express (partially because he also had Brigitte Lin to rely upon), but Norah Jones does fine in her acting debut. She’ll never be a great thespian, but keep in mind her role is simply to be a passive witness to the unfulfilled dreams and unrequited love of desperate hardened addicts. Her two encounters with Jeremy (Jude Law) bookend three short stories of rocky relationships, with Elizabeth (Jones) learning from the failure of others. There’s never much doubt she’ll start a relationship with fellow hopeful innocent Jeremy, the diner owner she meets at the outset when she’s trying to reconnect with her longtime boyfriend who recently left her for another woman. The slight wistful film is her 300 day road trip to purge the pain and heartbreak of the failed relationship before beginning anew with Jeremy, who she writes to from her various stops but never provides with a return address.

By far the best segment has Arnie (David Strathairn) and Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz) as a couple who rip each other to shreds. Arnie is an alcoholic cop obsessed with wife Sue to the point he shows no interest in any other person despite the fact Sue has left him long ago for survival rather than indifference. He drags her back in every time he sees her, which is something she doesn’t try to hard to avoid given she frequents the same bar (Elizabeth funds her trip through short lived waitress jobs).

The only advancement for Wong is the story of Leslie (Natalie Portman looking about bad as she’s capable of as a bleach bland with short curls), as her problems are with her father rather than a lover. Further differentiation comes from the fact Leslie’s father never actually makes an appearance. Unfortunately, cast against type, normally naturalistic Portman fails to pull off her jaded all knowing gambling addict role, always seeming very much in a movie.

If Wong remakes The Lady From Shanghai, a near masterpiece from a better director that’s at least arguably better than any film on Wong’s resume, especially doing so with Nikoru Kidoman, that’ll be his first sellout. In the meantime, while this English language debut veers closer to an introduction for those with subtitlephobia than the bold faced entry in his filmography we always hope for, it does add a little to his resume, is interesting and pleasurable enough, and most importantly is clearly still a film by Kar Wai Wong.

My Blueberry Nights: Love Drives Full Circle – Offscreen  Donato Totaro, August 2008

 

Norah Jones Is Sweet as Pie in My Blueberry Nights | Observer  Andrew Sarris, April 1, 2008

 

The Middle Age of Wong Kar-Wai | The American Prospect   Noy Thrupkaew from The American Prospect, April 18, 2008

 

My Blueberry Nights: Not very much there, but was there ever? - World ...  David Walsh from The World Socialist Web Site, May 15, 2008

 

Blue Skies and Blueberry Nights - TIME  Richard and Mary Corliss, May 16, 2007

 

Wong Kar-wai's blueberry-pie America - Salon.com  Andrew O’Hehir, including an interview with the director, April 3, 2008

 

The House Next Door [The Conversations] [Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard]  April 29, 2011

 

Blueberry thrill - The Scotsman  Sheila Johnston from The Scotsman, February 8, 2008

 

My Blueberry Nights - Reverse Shot  Sarah Silver, March 29, 2008

 

My Blueberry Nights - Archive - Reverse Shot  Vicente Rodriguez-Ortega, September 19, 2011

 

My Blueberry Nights (2007) - Love HK Film  Kozo (Ross Chen)

 

PopMatters [Cynthia Fuchs]

 

How Wong Kar-wai lost his way.   Grady Hendrix from Slate, April 3, 2008

 

Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights reviewed.  Dana Stevens from Slate, April 4, 2008

 

My Blueberry Nights (2007) | PopMatters  Bill Gibron, June 29, 2008

 

My Blueberry Nights | PopMatters  Shaun Huston, August 27, 2008

 

The Pink Smoke [Marcus Pinn]

 

Surrender to the Void-[Steven Flores]

 

My Blueberry Nights: Wong Kar Wai Tries American Pie | Village Voice  Michelle Orange, April 1, 2008

 

My Blueberry Nights | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Ed Gonzalez

 

Review: "My Blueberry Nights" (Wong, USA) on Notebook | MUBI  Daniel Kasman

 

WONG KAR WAI MARATHON: 'My Blueberry Nights' (2007) | Film Misery  Davin Lacksonen

 

My Blueberry Nights - Public Transportation Snob  Dan Heaton

 

Film Review: Wong Kar-wai's “My Blueberry Nights”  Christopher Bourne from Meniscus Review

 

Electric Sheep Magazine  Sarah Cronin

 

New York Sun [Meghan Keane]

 

My Blueberry Nights (2007) Movie Review | BeyondHollywood.com  Kevin Nichelson

 

Commentary Track [Helen Geib]

 

A Nutshell Review  Srtefan S.

 

My Blueberry Nights | Reviews | Screen - ScreenDaily  Allan Hunter at Cannes from Screendaily

 

ReelTalk [Adam Hakari]

 

The Film Script: My Blueberry Nights (Wong Kar Wai, 2008)

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014

 

Retrospective: The Films Of Wong Kar-Wai | IndieWire  August 19, 2013

 

My Blueberry Nights | Film at The Digital Fix  Noel Megahey

 

My Blueberry Nights | Film at The Digital Fix  Clydefro Jones

 

My Blueberry Nights | Film at The Digital Fix  John White

 

DVD Talk theatrical [Jamie S. Rich]   

 

DVD Talk  Brian Orndorf

 

My Blueberry Nights Blu-ray (United Kingdom) - Blu-ray.com  Svet Atanasov

 

Moon In The Gutter: My Blueberry Nights  Jeremy Richey

 

New reviews: 'My Blueberry Nights' a la mode and 'The Forbidden ...  Sean Axmaker

 

Film-Forward.com  Elizabeth Bachner

 

Cinemattraction.com [Tim Hayes]

 

My Blueberry Nights - CinemaBlend  Josh Tyler

 

Review: Portman Peps Up Sluggish My Blueberry Nights | WIRED  Hugh Hart

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk   Emma Slawinski

 

Norah Jones In My Blueberry Nights: "Lovely." But Can She Act?  Maria from Jezebel magazine, April 4, 2008

 

Movie Review – My Blueberry Nights - Fernby Films

 

REVIEW: My Blueberry Nights [2007] | www.jaredmobarak.com

 

My Blueberry Nights :: Movies :: Reviews :: Wong Kar Wai :: Paste  Sean Gandert

 

MovieMartyr.com [Jeremy Heilman]

 

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

 

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

 

My Blueberry Nights | Chicago Reader  JR Jones

 

iW PROFILE | “My Blueberry Nights” Director Wong Kar Wai | IndieWire  Profile "My Blueberry Nights" Director Wong Kar Wai in Q & A session with Dennis Lim, article by Benjamin Crossley-Marra from indieWIRE, April 2, 2008

 

Wong Kar Wai Hits the Road | Film & Video  Interview by Bryant Frazer from Film & Video, April 3, 2008

 

Wong Kar-Wai on "My Blueberry Nights" | Film News | Film | IFC.com  Interview by Aaron Hillis, April 3, 2008

 

Interviews: Wong Kar Wai, Jason Kohn - Deep Focus Movie Reviews + ...   Interview by Jason Kohn, April 8, 2008

 

Norah Jones tries her hand at acting in 'My Blueberry Nights ...  Rafer Guzmán interviews actress Norah Jones from Pop Matters, April 10, 2008

 

My Blueberry Nights - Movie Reviews and Movie Ratings | TVGuide.com

 

My Blueberry Nights | Variety  Todd McCarthy

 

My Blueberry Nights (2008), directed by Wong Kar-wai | Film review  Ben Walters from Time Out

 

Film review: My Blueberry Nights | Film | The Guardian  Xan Brooks

 

Film reviews: My Blueberry Nights and The Edge of Heaven - Telegraph  Sukhdev Sandhu

 

The Japan Times [Giovanni Fazio]

 

My Blueberry Nights - Film Reviews - Film - Entertainment - smh.com.au  Payl Byrnes from The Sydney Morning Herald

 

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

 

Austin Chronicle [Kimberley Jones]

 

Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Mick LaSalle]

 

Los Angeles Times [Carina Chocano]

 

Wong Kar Wai makes his American statement - Los Angeles Times  Mark Olsen from The LA Times, April 6, 2008

 

My Blueberry Nights Movie Review (2008) | Roger Ebert  Jim Emerson, site editor

 

My Blueberry Nights - Movies - Review - The New York Times  A.O. Scott, April 4, 2008 

 

Wong Kar-wai - Movies - New York Times   The Master of Time: Wong Kar-wai in America, Dennis Lim, November 19, 2006

 

At Cannes, Blueberry Nights and Romanian Days  A.O. Scott Cannes review from The New York Times, May 18, 2007

 

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

 

My Blueberry Nights - Wikipedia

 

THE GRANDMASTER (Yi  dai zong shi) 

Hong Kong  China  (130 mi)  2013  ‘Scope                    US cut (108 mi)                         Official site

 

Brisbane International Film Festival 2014 Review - Senses of Cinema  Sarah Ward, March 2014

Asian cinema, a mainstay of programming under the 18-year reign BIFF’s first director, Anne Demy-Geroe, returned to prime position as displayed by Wong Kar-wai’s controversially re-edited Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster). The film’s selection was burdened with the weight of substantial baggage, three versions of it having now been seen in different regions around the globe. In keeping with the bulk of the Western world, and with the release preferred for English-language territories, BIFF screened the so-called “Harvey Weinstein cut”; whatever the feature may be in its other iterations, even sliced and diced it makes for a rousing historical martial arts movie that does justice to its notable subject. Ip Man was a finessed fighter whose later-in-life teachings of Bruce Lee have cemented his story as one of persistent legend, but this tale of origins is just as mesmerising. The calm, calculated visual language of the consummate Wong effortlessly transcends any alterations in form, his lavish offering unfurling with lyrical sumptuousness befitting the auteur’s life’s work. The long-in-gestation The Grandmaster also merges its exquisite imagery with irony, raising a wry smile for its focus on – aptly so – the fleeting and ever-altering nature of everything. Change flickers across the poised, polished faces of the leads: the sorrowful Ziyi Zhang and the stoic Tony Leung the picture of pained grace and perpetual melancholy as they swirl around each other in the mist of the unattainable and unrealised.

Berlinale Diary #1 - Film Comment   Giovanni Marchini Camia, February 7, 2013

In terms of the Berlinale’s lukewarm record when it comes to opening films, The Grandmaster by this year’s jury president Wong Kar Wai is a significant improvement from previous entries such as Tom Tykwer’s The International (2009) and Wang Quan'an's Apart Together (2010). To those devotees left disappointed by 2007’s My Blueberry Nights, however, the Hong Kong auteur’s highly anticipated Ip Man biopic will not represent the hoped-for return to form.

With The Grandmaster, Wong has made his most commercial film to date. Compared to his other martial arts venture, Ashes of Time (originally released in 1994 and re-released in a redux version in 2008), it almost seems to be the work of a different director altogether. While the latter was a complete reinvention of traditional wuxia, featuring a heavily metaphysical, virtually unintelligible plot and barely any fighting, The Grandmaster is much more faithful to genre, delivering enough breathtaking fighting scenes to satiate even the most ravenous martial arts fans.

Though a considerable departure from the director’s characteristically elliptical style, the narrative is the film’s biggest weakness. The story starts in 1936 with Northern China’s preeminent martial arts Grandmaster Gong Baosen’s search for new talent on the eve of his retirement. He travels south to Foshan and finds Ip Man, played by Wong’s ever-reliable collaborator Tony Leung. This initiates a multi-strand narrative spanning the next two decades and involving Ip Man, Gong Baosen’s daughter Er, his top disciple and eventual traitor Ma San, and a nationalist secret agent called The Razor. Although wisely keeping the political turmoil of the era as a backdrop, the film is still overwhelmed in its endeavor to juggle the various storylines. The character of The Razor, for instance, is completely underdeveloped and would best have been left out entirely—he is barely granted any screen time and apart from a narratively inconsequential encounter with Gong Er, he has no relation to the other characters, rendering his eventual ascension to the status of grandmaster wholly arbitrary. Even Ip Man is not given adequate exposition, his story laid aside halfway through the film only to be picked up again towards the end and requiring a closing montage to tie up loose ends. Traces of Wong’s favorite themes are recognizable throughout, for example in the impossible love between Ip Man and Gong Er, but these too are not given enough room to breathe and truly develop.

In aesthetic terms, however, Wong does not disappoint. Working with French DP Philippe Le Sourd for the first time, he has crafted another gorgeous opus with a dark palette dominated by black and gold and abounding with his signature use of slow motion and oblique facial close-ups, imbuing this story of honor and tradition with the gravitas it demands. And then there are the fighting scenes. Choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Kill Bill fame, they are meticulous spectacles, each one more impressive than the previous. The climactic showdown between the Gong Er and Ma San, which takes place on a train platform during a snowy New Year’s Eve, is such a fine piece of cinema that it's worth the price of admission alone. Luckily, it’s in very good company. 

Cinema Scope | One Horizontal, One Vertical: Some Preliminary ...  Shelly Kraicer from Cinema Scope

The good news about Wong Kar-wai’s new film is that, following the debacle that was My Blueberry Nights (2007), the good Wong is back. The Grandmaster not only banishes the (thankfully now easily forgotten) memory of Blueberry, but also manages to continue building on themes and forms from Wong’s previous films while steering his art in an entirely new direction—and this despite the fact that, on the surface, The Grandmaster puts him squarely back in the kind of genre territory he hasn’t occupied since his first film, As Tears Go By (1988). Wong also finds himself in a commercial situation that is relatively new for him but now standard for (almost all) Hong Kong filmmakers: that his film be releasable in the mainland (i.e., censorship-ready), and attractive to mainland Chinese audiences. (The Grandmaster seems to have met both requirements: it has done extraordinarily well at the Chinese box office, and looks to be Wong’s biggest hit by far in Chinese-speaking territories.)

The Grandmaster is a martial-arts film, whose complicated narrative strategies and ambitious attempt to re-stylize a form that—on the evidence of the past ten years of Chinese action blockbusters—looks to be increasingly moribund, sets it apart from its generic brethren. The film dutifully works through the high points of the biography of Ip Man, the founder of wing chun and mentor to Bruce Lee, but in an often elliptical fashion, heavily dependent on intertitles for context and plot, punctuated with flashbacks and flash-forwards (some marked, some unmarked). These create a varied narrative rhythm with “abnormal” pauses and accelerations that seem to echo the alternating stop-start, slo-mo/hyper-speed syncopations of the film’s action scenes. The first wave of English-language reviews coming out of the Chinese and Berlin premieres—whose different versions contained many minor and some significant variations (I write about the China version here)—complained about the film’s “ill-behaved” narrative speed and structure. This may be a deliberate strategy on Wong’s part; it may betray an as yet unresolved tension in the film between its loyalty to genre and its historical ambitions. The Grandmaster both fulfills and frustrates the requirements of the period action-movie biopic, Wong continually puncturing the fabric of his generically templated narrative with his radical telescoping of events and chronological leaps. Not just conventionally mapping narrative onto (a) real life, in The Grandmaster Wong is mapping cinema onto history—or, if you will, imbricating history into cinema.

There has been a flurry of Ip Man films recently, most notably Wilson Yip’s 2008 Ip Man and the 2010 sequel Ip Man 2 (both starring Donnie Yen, today’s preeminent kung fu star actor). Herman Yau’s The Legend Is Born: Ip Man (2010) and his upcoming Ip Man: The Final Fight are attempts to ride the box-office success of those two hits. (The Grandmaster would actually have predated the Yip diptych, but was held up by a frequently delayed production process.) All the films are biographically based, which is to say that they are anchored in a certain set of facts about Ip Man’s life—his birth in 1893 in Foshan, near Guangzhou in southern China; his wealthy background; his early kung fu studies and subsequent rise to fame as a master of the southern style nanquan, or southern fist; his troubles under the Japanese occupation and descent into poverty; his relocation to Hong Kong, development of his unique wing chun style, establishment of his kung fu school, and career as a wing chun teacher. The Donnie Yen films, rather stolid but effectively streamlined examples of straight-up, nostalgic Shaw Brothers-style kung fu, highlight Ip Man’s anti-Japanese “heroism”—a stance that’s conveniently in synch with the propaganda priorities of the Chinese government.

What does Wong Kar-wai do with this kind of generic structure? His usual mode of gorgeously, impressionistically photographed dreams saturated with a Proustian longing for times and loves lost and haunted by the tragedy of a time never to be regained does not immediately seem to lend itself to the kung fu world; his one previous martial-arts film, Ashes of Time (1994), was an idiosyncratically auteurist variation of the more glamorous, “upscale” wuxia sub-genre, in which noble swordsmen joust for honour. Both the plebian kung fu and the aristocratic wuxia sub-genres are in essence vehicles of moral instruction, addressing contemporary Chinese society with sometimes conservative, sometimes radical readings of what it means to pursue a worthy life, and positioning this search against a broader social context of tumultuous, often corrupt times. Though history has often been in the background of Wong’s films—especially in In the Mood for Love (2000) and 2046 (2004), but as early as Days of Being Wild (1990)—it has constituted more of a background, an atmospheric setting for his characters’ romantic preoccupations. History has not been a subject in itself. With The Grandmaster, Wong moves history from the background to the foreground. This is a major revision of his cinema, and one with interesting structural and formal implications.

Wong’s film follows Ip Man’s history with fictitious embellishments. The film begins with Ip Man (a restrained and noble Tony Leung Chiu-wai) already established as a kung fu master in Foshan when the northern grandmaster Gong Yutian (Wang Qingxiang) arrives from Dongbei, in the northeast of China, to announce his retirement and anoint a successor in the south through a tournament in the Golden Pavilion; this establishment doubles as a luxurious brothel and meeting place for martial-arts masters. Gong’s hot-headed disciple Ma San (Zhang Jin) claims the title, but Ip Man asserts himself with an impressive display of fighting skills, and then defeats Gong in a ritualized competition. Refusing to accept that a Gong family member can be defeated, Gong’s daughter Gong Er (played with cold ferocity by Zhang Ziyi) challenges Ip Man to another fight, which she nominally wins. When the Japanese occupation of Dongbei threatens the south, Ma San, who is now allied with the Japanese, confronts and kills Master Gong. While the vengeful Gong Er hunts for Ma San, Ip Man, his family fortune lost in the war, retreats to Hong Kong after famine kills his daughters. The two later meet again in Hong Kong, where Ip Man has established his martial-arts school. After avenging her father’s murder in a brutal battle against Ma San (in a complex, viscerally exciting action set piece set on a train platform that is already being hailed as a potential classic of the genre), Gong Er, her spirit extinguished, sinks into dissipation. (The Hong Kong sequence also features a couple of scenes with the film’s third major star, Chang Chen, whose role as a former Kuomintang agent seems to have been drastically cut down from its initial conception.)

Seven impressive action sequences punctuate the largely chronological action, giving local kung fu fans the spectacular—and spectacularized—fighting set pieces that they expect. The film’s opening action sequence—a nocturnal, rain-drenched battle between Ip Man and an anonymous gang of challengers—immediately sets the terms of Wong’s variation on the martial-arts visual style. As opposed to the classic Shaw tradition, where extended takes seek to emphasize the clarity and flow of the action, most of the shots of this four-minute sequence last for one second or less, a hyper-montage style (a Wong trademark, though usually deployed at slower speeds of cutting) accentuated by an extensive use of extreme slow motion and close-ups that isolate certain moments of contact, action or reaction. A traditional critique of overly “montaged” kung fu action scenes would claim that the style sacrifices the sensation of bodies moving and colliding with palpable force in real space. Wong, however, while cutting as quickly as any Hollywood action film, manages somehow to preserve that visceral sense of impact; one can almost imaginatively “feel” the movements echoing empathetically through one’s body. Tsui Hark has come closest to achieving this paradoxical synthesis of style and effect in his postmodern soaring wuxia swordplay, but not in the close-quarters combat of kung fu.

The set piece in which Ip Man defeats Gong Yutian is unique: there is no fighting, but rather, in something approaching pure dance-movement, a contest to see if Ip Man can break a small round cake that Gong is holding. Arms intertwine; positions recalibrate; no blows are exchanged. This non-action action sequence most clearly reveals the influence of Wong’s co-screenwriter and martial-arts consultant Xu Haofeng, whose The Sword Identity (2011) and Judge Archer (2012) have redefined contemporary wuxia cinema with an emphasis on conceptual abstraction, clear, quick action and severe, almost minimalist design. Xu believes that the most profound action occurs in the mind, and thus shows only the barest essentials of it on the screen—a kind of superstructure that evokes the philosophical and moral underpinnings of the martial-arts discipline. Though Wong certainly doesn’t abide by Xu’s dictum that absence conveys the greatest meaning—visual excess is in his blood—he seems to share Xu’s ideological position that what is manifest on screen are only the phantasmal physical traces of deeper political, social, and spiritual forces.

Zhang Ziyi and Tony Leung finally fight in the film’s centrepiece: their erotically charged wuxia-style combat that seems to fly up the stairwell of the Golden Pavillion. This intimate physical encounter—the couple end up frozen in a Wongian instant of time, her upside-down face a millimetre from his—manages to transmute the emotional and sexual charge of Leung and Maggie Cheung’s In the Mood for Love affair into action-cinema terms. The interrupted sexual charge of this scene infuses the rest of the film with Wong’s trademark aura of eros-regret.

While The Grandmaster explicitly places Ip Man’s life against key moments in China’s tumultuous 20th century—from the late Qing period into the warlord era, through the brutal Japanese occupation and Chinese resistance, the revolution and the founding of the People’s Republic, and then to a new future in Hong Kong under British colonial administration—history enters the film most powerfully through metaphor. Characters frequently pause to enunciate epigrammatic phrases which apply equally to the martial-arts world, with its moral and philosophical jianghu (i.e., a closed world with its own coded behaviours), and the larger context of Chinese history; lines like “There are northern and southern fighting styles, but can a nation be divided into north and south?” explicitly link kung fu philosophy to a discourse of nation. The organizing structure of the film’s dialogue and imagery is insistently bipolar: north and south are differentiated both geographically (Wong drenches the film’s southern scenes in rain, while the northern scenes swirl with snow) and conceptually, with the characters constantly contrasting northern and southern styles. (Tellingly, Master Gong’s life work, which remained incomplete, was to combine the northern and southern schools into one.) At both the beginning and end of the film, Ip Man boils down his theory of kung fu to a binary opposition, between heng (horizontal) and shu (vertical): “Kung fu, two words: one horizontal, one vertical.”

As Wong has stated in interviews, he is less interested in the mechanics of kung fu than in the philosophies of kung fu practitioners: their discipline, their modesty, and, in particular, their generosity, which is to say their dedication to continuity, to passing on to the next generation what previous generations of masters have taught them. One way to parse The Grandmaster is to see it as establishing an opposition (through its narrative, dialogue, and conceptual underpinnings) between Ip Man, who opens and closes the film, and Gong Er, who dominates its middle section. Ip embodies the grandmaster’s traditionalism and dedication in the face of disruption; his commitment is to continuity, to existence through and across time. Gong Er is the opposite, her desire for vengeance fixing her firmly within time. In order to avenge the murder of her father, she embraces a temporal dead end: she renounces marriage, offspring, and, most importantly, signals the end of a kung fu tradition (the Gong family “sixty-four hands” technique) by refusing to pass it on to a disciple. This opposition between continuity and renunciation is as much historical as philosophical-moral. Hovering in the near future as The Grandmaster ends are the great famine of 1958-1962 and the Cultural Revolution of 1968-1976, when family lineages, the country’s cultural inheritance, and Chinese cultural continuity itself were irreparably damaged; a philosophy that seeks to preserve continuity under the threat of disruption thus becomes intrinsic to the characters’ (and to a nation’s) struggle for survival in the face of a traumatic century and a wounded history.

“Kung fu, two words: one horizontal, one vertical”—the epigram has a variety of meanings. The simplest is that there must be a loser (lying on the ground) and a winner (left standing); in a larger sense, the epigram captures the unalterable oppositions in the ways we think and behave. Nations, peoples, “the Chinese” themselves are divided; China (north) and Hong Kong (south) are two utterly different worlds; Ip Man and Gong Er’s mutual attraction will never be able to reconcile their opposing ways of being. Master Gong’s unification project is in principle unachieveable. Gong Er is principled vengeance, a passionate engagement with the world, an immersion in history which results in her sacrificing the possibility of leaving any legacy; Ip Man must dispassionately remove himself from historical struggles in order to preserve the classical equilibrium that allows him to transmit tradition, and thus to preserve a civilization with value. Neither Ip Man nor Gong Er inhabits a complete world, and their tragedy may be that their worlds, our worlds, are forever destined to be divided.

The Grandmaster: A Tour de Force - Lola Journal  Yvette Bíró, August 2013

 

'The Grandmaster' review by davidehrlich • Letterboxd

 

The Grandmaster review | Sight & Sound | BFI  Vadim Rizov, December 5, 2014

 

Poetry as Motion: Taking a Closer Look at Wong Kar Wai's The ...  Jacob Mertens from Bright Lights Film Journal, October 31, 2013

 

Observations on film art : THE GRANDMASTER: Moving forward ...  David Bordwell, September 23, 2013

 

Love is a Battlefield: The Romantic Violence of Wong Kar-wai - MTV  Jake Cole, August 21, 2013

 

Critic After Dark [Noel Vera]

 

The Grandmaster - Reverse Shot  Nick Pinkerton, August 21, 2013, also seen here:  Fight Song by Nick Pinkerton - Moving Image Source

 

Movie Review: Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster -- Vulture  Bilge Ebiri, August 23, 2013

 

The Grandmaster Review - IGN  Roth Cornet

 

Tony Leung's 'The Grandmaster' Is Beautifully Alone | PopMatters  Chris Barsanti, February 27, 2014

 

Ferdy on Films [Roderick Heath]

 

The Grandmaster May Be Streamlined, But It's Still a ... - Village Voice  Stephanie Zacharek, August 21, 2013

 

“The Grandmaster”: A moody, dreamy martial-arts epic - Salon.com  Andrew O’Hehir, August 21, 2013

 

The Grandmaster / The Dissolve  Keith Phipps

 

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

 

Seongyong's Private Place [Seongyong Cho]

 

MovieXclusive [Gabriel Chong]

 

White City Cinema [Michael Smith] 

 

ScreenAnarchy [James Marsh]

 

The Grandmaster | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Chuck Bowen

 

The Grandmaster – 2013, Wong Kar-Wai | Wonders in the Dark  Allan Fish

 

outlawvern.com [Vern]

 

Berlin Review: Is Wong Kar Wai's 'The Grandmaster' Really a Martial ...  Eric Kohn from indieWIRE

 

Review: The U.S. Cut Of Wong Kar-Wai's 'The Grandmaster' | IndieWire  Rodrigo Perez

 

A Nutshell Review [Stefan S]

 

Tiny Mix Tapes [Jafarkas]

 

Paste Magazine  Leland Montgomery

 

Krell Laboratories [Christianne Benedict]

 

Wong Kar-wai's kung fu biopic is an epic fail | Movie Review | Chicago ...  Ben Sachs from The Chicago Reader, August 28, 2013

 

Ruthless Reviews [Devon Pack] (Potentially Offensive)

 

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]

 

Performing ArtsHub [Sarah Ward]

 

BeyondHollywood.com [Nix]

 

The Auteurs: Wong Kar-Wai | Cinema Axis  NinVoid99, January 5, 2014

 

DVDTalk.com - theatrical [Jamie S. Rich]

 

DVDizzy.com - Blu-ray with Pictures  Luke Bonanno

 

Blu-ray.com [Martin Liebman]

 

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

DoBlu.com Blu-ray [Christopher Zabel]

 

Film Intuition: Blu-ray [Jen Johans]

 

Film-Forward.com [Jack Gattanella]

 

Cagey Films [kgeorge]  Kenneth George Godwin

 

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Anne-Katrin Titze]

 

Empire Magazine [Kim Newman]

 

U.S. cut of 'The Grandmaster' mostly thrilling, despite excessive ...  Josh Spiegel from Pop Optiq

 

ColeSmithey.com [Cole Smithey]

 

Movie Mezzanine [Tom Clift]

 

The L Magazine: Calum Marsh

 

The House Next Door [Veronika Ferdman]

 

The House Next Door [Joseph Pomp]

 

review: Tony Leung has magnetic screen presence in ... - Screener  R. Moore from Screener TV

 

The Necessity of Wong Kar Wai | KQED Pop | KQED Arts  Laura Schadler, September 3, 2013

 

Blood Brothers [Matt Reifschneider]

 

Blueprint: Review [Justin Richards]

 

The Academic Hack: Michael Sicinski

 

Letterboxd: Mike D'Angelo

 

MUBI's Notebook: Adam Cook

 

arts•meme: Robert Koehler

EFilmCritic [Jay Seaver]

 

TailSlate.net [Brian Milinsky]

 

INFLUX Magazine [Armin Callo]

 

Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]

 

Dennis Lim - ArtsBeat Blog - The New York Times  Dennis Lim interview, February 17, 2013

 

Interview: Wong Kar-wai on The Grandmaster | Feature | Slant Magazine   Jake Mulligan interview, August 15, 2013

 

Three Scenes From The Grandmaster, Explained -- Vulture  Bilge Ebiri interview, August 23, 2013

 

Tony Leung on playing The Grandmaster / The Dissolve  Keith Phipps interview with actor Tony Leung, August 26, 2013

 

Wong Kar-wai on 'The Grandmaster' - The New York Times  January 10, 2014

 

Wong Kar-Wai interview: the revered film director on returning to his ...  James Mottram interview from The Independent, December 6, 2014

 

The Grandmaster: Film Review | Hollywood Reporter  Clarence Tsui

 

The Grandmaster | Variety  Maggie Lee

 

Time Out New York: Joshua Rothkopf

 

The Grandmaster review – thrilling but often incoherent martial arts ...  Mark Kermode from The Guardian

 

The Grandmaster – Wong Kar-wai pulls his punches | Film | The ...  Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian

 

The Grandmaster, film review: Wong Kar-Wai's martial arts epic is a ...  Geoffrey Macnab from The Independent

 

The Japan Times [Giovanni Fazio]

 

Nashville Scene: Jim Ridley

 

Austin Chronicle [Kimberley Jones]

 

SF Weekly [Sherilyn Connelly]

 

Review: Wong Kar-wai's 'The Grandmaster' has great martial arts style ...  Kenneth Turan from The LA Times

 

The Grandmaster Movie Review & Film Summary (2013) | Roger Ebert  Steven Boone

 

'The Grandmaster,' Wong Kar-wai's New Film - The New York Times  Manohla Dargis, August 22, 2013

 

DVDBeaver Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

 

The Grandmaster (film) - Wikipedia

 

Woo, John

 

Woo, John   Art and Culture

Two killers -- former friends split by the ordeals of life. One turns to a life of crime. The other, to law enforcement. Each transforms into a human weapon and they face off in slow motion. Welcome to the world of filmmaker John Woo, a master of hyper-stylized action flicks, who proffers "heroic bloodshed" in intricately choreographed, wonderfully exuberant, ultraviolent scenes that play like apocalyptic ballet.

Born in mainland China but raised in Hong Kong, Woo came from a poor family and immersed himself from an early age in the fantasy of Western cinema, in particular, the work of Sam Peckinpah, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and Jean-Pierre Melville. In his prolific career, Woo has done everything from comedy to romance, but it is his signature-style action films that have set him apart in cinema. Action extravaganzas such as "A Better Tomorrow" (1986) and "The Killer" (1989) prompted American director Sam Raimi to compare Woo's gift with Hitchcock's mastery of suspense, and Quentin Tarantino to comment that Woo can direct action scenes "like Michelangeo can paint ceilings!" Woo has often worked with martial arts experts, employing fight choreographer Jackie Chan in his debut film "The Young Dragons" (1975), and Hong Kong action stars Chow Yun-Fat and Leslie Chung in later films.

The release of 1993's "Hard Target," made him the first Asian director to make a mainstream Hollywood film, and he has been churning out American action flicks with varied success ever since. Thanks to Woo films "Broken Arrow" and "Face-Off," American actors John Travolta and Nick Cage have received a second life in Hollywood as action heroes.

Hong Kong Action @ Art + Culture

Thousands of pilgrims flock to a small cemetery in a sleepy Seattle neighborhood each year. They bring flowers, proffer gifts, and bow to the god of martial arts and Hong Kong action, Bruce Lee. Introduced to the world in the 1960s by the legendary Shaw Bros. productions, Lee and fellow actor Jackie Chan made Hong Kong synonymous with low-budget kung fu movies.

In the 1970s, a new breed of renegade directors, including John Woo and Tsui Hark, turned their hand to action, building on the legacy of Lee. While their production standards remained low compared to those of Hollywood, no one could match the demonic verve exhibited by Hong Kong's hyperkinetic auteurs. They tied the framing and breakneck pace of comic books to the elaborate choreography of a Busby Berkeley musical with homicidal impulses. This was movie making of an all-too sanguine variety, where often as not the on-screen frenzy splashed blood on the camera's lens. Car chases destroyed whole villages, climactic shoot-outs were staged in maternity wards, stunt men were expected to execute four-story falls -- starting with a mid-air collision and ending with a crashlanding through a skylight onto a banquet table whose diners were all heavily armed and rather testy.

Before its return to Chinese rule in 1997, Hong Kong provided the crucible in which this new kind of action film could be forged, one without respect for the niceties of film grammar or codified genres. Where else could a kung fu cannibal comedy ("We Will Eat You") be made, much less mask timely political satire? Where else could indigenous superstition and myth combine with fanatical scrutiny of American film (there may be no calculating the cumulative effect of Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead" on the lexicon of Hong Kong camera movement and editing) to create "A Chinese Ghost Story," Tsui Hark’s extravaganza starring martial arts monks, flying ghosts, and a vampire tree with a 400-foot tongue?

Most of Hong Kong’s action directors have been triple-threat-and-beyond talents: not content with helming their self-scripted efforts, Hark, John Cheung, and others would act and produce as well. Hark eventually founded his own Film Workshop, which enabled him to produce not only his own films but also titles for directors King Hu and John Woo, generating a string of box office hits such as "Peking Opera Blues," "The Killer," and several installments of "Once Upon a Time In China."

As Hong Kong's pop art films moved beyond simple martial arts themes, they required a new kind of star. Chow Yung Fat became the new archetypal leading man in these vehicles, at once debonair and sadistic; his female counterparts were played by the fearsome Michelle Yeoh and Maggie Chung. All of these actors and many directors from Hong Kong’s outrageously fecund scene have since been attracted to foreign productions, especially in the face of impending oppression by the city's new Communist landlords. Though the fate of its best talents abroad is still uncertain, there is no question that Hong Kong has raised the bar for all-stops-out entertainment over the past 30 years.

John Woo  Michael Den Boer from 10k bullets

Yusen Wu (AKA John Woo) was born on May 1st, 1946 in Guangzhou, China. He grew up in Hong Kong where he began his career as an assistant director in 1969, working for the Shaw Brothers. He directed his first feature The Young Dragons in 1974 and has been prolific ever since. He would work in a variety of genres, but it wasn’t until A Better Tomorrow (1986) that established him as a master of stylized action set pieces, better know as heroic bloodshed that would forever cement his place in Hong Kong films. A Better Tomorrow would mark the first collaboration between John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat they would go on to make A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987), The Killer (1989), Once a Thief (1990) and Hardboiled (1992).

After the success of The Killer (1989) John Woo was offered several deals in Hollywood. He would remain in Hong Kong for a few more years. In 1990 John Woo would direct one of his most personal films A Bullet in The Head, a film about friendship and brutalities of the Vietnam War. In 1993 he would finally leave Hong Kong for Hollywood and his first film Hard Target would be his first failure in years. Hard Target would be tampered with by its star Jean-Claude Van Damme and Universal the films producers. What was left after all the tampering was a film that looked nothing like a John Woo film.

A trademark he has adopted since making films in the U.S. is the use of doves as a symbol for peace in his films. Since coming to Hollywood John Woo films have to achieve the success he once had in Hong Kong. His strongest U.S. film to date is 1997’s Face/Off which employs like many of Woo’s films, slow motion/freeze frames and the Mexican standoff involving two characters pointing guns at each others heads. Other recurring motifs through out Woo’s Career, Scenes of hyperkinetic choreographed action, Characters often use a gun in each hand, Characters are often alerted to danger by seeing a reflection, One character throws a gun to another character and his characters often mimic the actions of other their counterparts, typically accompanied by flashbacks of those scenes. John Woo may never regain the status he once held in Hong Kong here in the U.S., still his legacy of films that are bold and have set many standards for future filmmakers.

The Films of John Woo and the Art of Heroic Bloodshed by Anthony ...  Anthony Leong, reviewing more than a dozen films from Media Circus, 1998

John Woo was born in 1946 in Mainland China, the son of Christian parents. At the age of five, his family moved to Hong Kong to escape the Cultural Revolution, where they struggled for a number of years, having to live in the streets for a short period of time. In those days, his mother would take him to the theater to watch Western cinema, which inspired the young John Woo to be a film-maker. After leaving high school, he hooked up a group of students who shared a passion for film. They would screen European arthouse films, discuss what they had seen, and eventually, they began to make their own films.

In 1969, Woo got his first big break as a script supervisor in Cathay Studios. He followed that up in 1971 with a move up to assistant director in the famous Shaw Studios, where he was mentored by Chang Cheh, who taught him the art of filming action and the importance of editing. His directorial debut came in 1973 with "The Young Dragons", a kung-fu actioner that featured two elements of what would later become the John Woo style: the dynamic fluid camera work and the elaborately choreographed action sequences (choreographed by the future Jackie Chan). On the strength of this first effort, Woo moved onto Golden Harvest where he started off with martial arts films and a filmed Chinese opera, but then became a comedy director with the success of "The Pilferer's Progress", a comedy that starred Hong Kong comedian Ricky Hui.

However, by the mid-1980s, Woo was running out of steam. His latest films were duds in the box office and it looked as though he was a has-been. It was at this time that he sought funding for a pet project, "A Better Tomorrow", which caught the attention of producer/director Tsui Hark (who came to Hollywood earlier this year for "Double Team").

"A Better Tomorrow" was a paradigm shift for Hong Kong cinema. Before 1986, Hong Kong cinema was firmly rooted in two genres: the martial arts film and the comedy. Gunplay was not terribly popular because audiences had considered it boring, compared to fancy kung-fu moves or graceful swordplay of the wu shu epics. What moviegoers needed was a new way to present gunplay-- to show it as a skill that could be honed, integrating the acrobatics and grace of the traditional martial arts. And that's exactly what John Woo did. Using all of the visual techniques available to him (tracking shots, dolly-ins, slo-mo), Woo created beautifully surrealistic action sequences that were a 'guilty pleasure' to watch. There is also intimacy found in the gunplay-- typically, his protagonists and antagonists will have a profound understanding of one another and will meet face-to-face, in a tense Chinese standoff where they each point their weapons at one another and trade words.

Woo also integrated the themes of loyalty and honor into his films, inspired by his fascination with the films of Ken Takakura and Jean-Pierre Melville. Woo created characters that were tragic heroes, sensitive to the consequences of their actions and caught in a state of moral contradiction that had no easy solution. On one hand, these characters were bound by what the Japanese call giri, or duty and obligation. However, their duty and obligations often ran contradictory to their ninjo, their feelings or unsubconcious response, be it love, revenge, or friendship. These characters find the distinction between right and wrong blurred, creating both uneasy alliances and conflict with those around them.

In addition to the above, the John Woo film is typified by many of the following aspects: given his Christian upbringing, it is not surprising to find the widespread use of Christian symbolism in his films, with scenes being crafted in locations with religious significance or icons being prominently displayed. Woo also likes to use mirrors in his action sequences-- reflective surfaces will warn the protagonist of impending danger or used against hidden attackers. Finally, the use of juxtaposition figures prominently in his films. Woo will cut between two scenes, sometimes similar and sometimes disparate, to make a comment on the situation. For example, in "Hard Boiled", as police detective Tequila wanders the bookstacks of a library in search of a murder weapon, Woo juxtaposes it with the murderer planning the murder, walking down the exact same bookstacks, as a method of illustrating the 'thinking like a criminal' thought process of Tequila and the similarities of the motivations between the two characters.

"A Better Tomorrow" combined both these elements of narrative, the visceral and the thematic, and a new era of Hong Kong cinema was born, the era of Heroic Bloodshed. Following ABT's release in Hong Kong in 1986, a slew of copycat films came out, some of which came close, but never exceeded the intensity of Woo's work. The films of the Heroic Bloodshed era typically had the same plot that was built around ABT: an innocent is drawn in willingly or not so willingly into the underworld, under the watchful eye of a 'big brother', the hero is betrayed, the hero takes revenge and often dies a tragic death at the end.

Woo went on to make several more films after gaining international recognition with ABT, and here they are in chronological order: (the reviews follow)

John Woo Biography - Hong Kong Film Net  biography

 

John Woo - Director - Films as Director:, Other Films ... - Film Reference  John McCarty profile essay

 

John Woo | Chinese director | Britannica.com  biography

 

John Woo | Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos | AllMovie  Jason Ankeny biography

 

The Top 10 Movies Directed by John Woo - Flickchart

 

Doves And Bullets: The 5 Best John Woo Movies - Screen Junkies  Undated

 

The Melville Style by John Woo | A-BitterSweet-Life    John Woo essay on Melville contributed to the French journal Cahiers du cinema, 1996

 

John Woo Revisited  KJ Doughton from Nitrate Online, reviewing A BETTER TOMORROW, THE KILLER, A BULLET IN THE HEAD, HARD-BOILED, and FACE/OFF, March 12, 1999                      

 

The Emerging Dragon: John Woo • Senses of Cinema  Boris Trbic, June 7, 2000

 

Hong Kong Meets Hollywood – Offscreen  Donato Totaro, July 2000

 

The Gangster as Hero in Hong Kong Cinema – Offscreen  Michael Vesia, August 2002

 

Director John Woo takes on China's greatest literary work ... - PopMatters   Ikuko Kitagawa, October 31, 2008

 

The Global Acculturation of Film: John Woo's Cinematic Trademarks ...  Stacie Leung, April 21, 2009

 

The view: John Woo's departure from Hollywood is a loss to us all ...  Danny Leigh from The Guardian, November 20, 2009

 

<em>John Woo's The Killer</em> - Screening the Past  James Brown reviews John Woo’s The Killer (125 pages), by Kenneth E Hall, from Screening the Past, April 18, 2010

 

John Woo - DGA  Jeffrey Resner, Winter 2013

 

John Woo's Mesmerizing The Killer Changed Action-Movie History ...  Tom Breihan from The Concourse, June 5, 2015

 

The sincerity and sensation of John Woo's The Killer / The Dissolve  Keith Phipps from The Dissolve, June 30,2 015

 

From John Woo to John Wick, Here's Your Guide to Gun Fu - Vulture  Kevin Lincoln, October 12, 2016

 

5 Reasons Why John Woo's Style Of Directing Movies Is So ...  5 Reasons Why John Woo's Style Of Directing Movies Is So Legendary, by Dena Pech from Movie Pilot, January 4, 2017

 

Gun-Fu Hustle: Celebrating the action cinema of John Woo  Nick Pinkerton from Little White Lies, March 27, 2017

 

How director John Woo changed Hollywood's history of violence - The ...  Barry Hertz from The Globe and the Mail, July 27, 2017

 

TSPDT - John Woo

 

Interview with John Woo - Bright Lights Film Journal  Jillian Sandell, January 1, 2001, originally appearing in the all-Hong Kong edition, 1994

 

John Woo on "Red Cliff" and the rise of Chinawood  Andrew O’Hehir interview from Salon, November 18, 2009

 

John Woo - Wikipedia

 

LAST HURRAH FOR CHIVALRY  (Hao xia)

Hong Kong  (106 mi)  1978

 

Last Hurrah for Chivalry  Tuna from Asian Cinema Drifter

 

You see there was a time when I didn’t even think John Woo could make a movie without guns. Even more so an entertaining one. Yet by some lucky chance, I checked Netflix’s (in the past) pitiful foreign film section and found The Last Hurrah for Chivalry waiting there to be rented. No HK superstars. No trademark doves. No pistol opera. Maybe the earlier stages of the Mexican stand offs, but the point remains. You wouldn’t even know this was John Woo had his name not been attached. Surprisingly, he did a phenomenal job at besting many Shaw Brothers films during the golden age, leaving one question to haunt everyone for all of eternity, “Why won’t he make another kung-fu film?”

Leaving out dramatic twists and shocking revelations (oh yes, quite surprising), the plot initially follows as a skewed revenge. Kao, a well-off swordsman bitter from the murder of his family, hires a swordsman, Chang, to take reap vengeance for him. Meanwhile Chang befriends a compulsive drinker and soon the truth begins to reveal itself through hidden motives and double-dealings.

A generally simple plot involving some drama for kicks isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Of course it comes off as cheesy, but therein lies the beauty. The obvious aspect to look for is the quality of the fights and although the first half wasn't too impressive it's heavily redeemed later. The beginning contained some instances of action, but mostly worked on the plot development and lacked entertainment. It's funny in retrospect how I stopped the movie at this certain point and decided to finish it the next day. The next day came and expecting to finish off a mediocre movie, the tension immediately started building and then came some of the most pleasing action for the period. Containing fight choreography with a superb blend of swords and fists, it proved superior to many Shaw Brothers films as it had a modern, more realistic tinge. Rather than creatively avoid taking direct shots of attacks, it was generally consistent and showcased the overall visual bliss of the fight through longer shots. The actual fight choices were the usual mass of men with swords against one man or two but I appreciated the action on a level higher than the unbeatable Return of the Five Deadly Venoms.

The other satisfying aspect of it was that Woo just keeps pushing it. You don’t want the fighting to stop and it listens, just bombarding our heroes with enemy after enemy. There you go thinking there’s one fight left and then twenty more men pop out. Although spreading out the action would have been beneficial to the film overall, the second half still highly redeems it. The barrage of fighting leaves you stunned, coming out thinking its one of the best martial arts films you've seen, when in actuality it may only be the best half of a martial arts film you've seen. The main characters seem to bond easily in the later parts and especially with the fighting. So rent it and stick with it through the end. Or fast-forward as well and even if the unrewarding plot twists won’t make sense, the fights make the experience worth it.

 

Oggs' Movie Thoughts

 

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

 

Kung Fu Cinema [Mark Pollard]

 

KFC Cinema  Peter Zsurka

 

ispitonyourmovie.com  feral cat

 

DVD Review e-zine   Guido Henkel

 

HEROES SHED NO TEARS  (Ying xiong wei lei)

Hong Kong  (93 mi)  1986

 

KFC Cinema  Martin Cleary

 

HEROES SHED NO TEARS was filmed by John Woo way back in 1984 but was shelved by the Golden Harvest Studio who thought that the film - by their top ‘comedy director’ at the time - was too violent. When A BETTER TOMORROW was a smash hit only two years later HEROES was dusted off of the shelf and released.

Eddy Ko takes on the starring role in HEROES as Chan Chung, a grizzled war-veteran who’s dedication to the mission in hand is absolute. Chung wants to provide a better life for his son and there’s a fair amount of screen time shared between the two of them. Ko has a fairly expressionless face which works well in this role managing to look both deadly serious and a hard bastard - and with the trials and tribulations that his character is subjected to he’s hardly going to be grinning. Sometimes scenes with child actors can be awkward but Ko seems totally at ease in these and they play very well. While Chan Chung is not a particularly well developed character (a flashback scene serves to explain some of his military background and a friendship, but little else) the rest of the gang of mercenaries fare even less well. If the key to a film in which a group of people have to work together as a team is to distinguish each of your main characters clearly, then HEROES SHED NO TEARS fails quite early on. None of the other team members is given much else to do other than walk around shooting guns, slinging grenades and only occasionally (which is surprising considering the amount of lead flying around) get shot. After the first big climax of the film instead of trying to solidify just who any of the other team members are, the film suddenly veers off into two bizarre comedy scenes. These scenes are quite amusing but they don’t serve the film well as they provide a jarring change of tone. Instead of personalising two of Chung’s gang they’re cheap laughs and manage to highlight them as a couple of buffoons.

Lam Ching-Ying makes a noticeable entrance as a Vietnamese General whom Chung and the gang manage to annoy in a very bad way - which is clearly not the cleverest thing to do. Lam Ching-Ying portrays menacing characters very well and here his cold stare works well on-screen alongside Eddy Ko’s hard, expressionless face. Unfortunately Ching-Ying’s General is a cartoon-like character as his single-minded pursuit of Chung veers towards the ridiculous. Of course, Lam Ching Ying is always watchable, but his role highlights just how flawed the material is.

Another character the fleeing group manage to stumble across is an American war-veteran played by Philippe Loffredo. It’s at this point in the film that it makes it’s most unnecessary detour into a ‘drugs and sex’ scene that may be at home in a different style of war film (as seen in plenty of U.S. films about the Vietnam war), but in a Hong Kong production like this feel totally out of place and exploitative. Along with the earlier comedy scenes, this section of the film serves to alienate us in time which could have been better spent developing and characterising the group in order for the inevitable climax to make more of an impact.

HEROES SHED NO TEARS is a cheap genre movie by anyone’s standards. The script is severely under-developed, the pace is very uneven and some of the acting is bad to say the least. The film is very violent and it’s quite graphic in a way that is different to Woo’s later films, as it often lingers on particularly gruesome shots. HEROES obviously manages to attain some interest by being an earlier work of it’s director, and John Woo himself considers the film to be the first into which he managed to tap into with his personal style. There are plenty of elements in the film which are recognisable in his later work - for example the use of P.O.V. and tracking shots, the energy of the camera during action scenes as well as the use of slow-motion and some of the more melodramatic moments in the performances. For viewers familiar with Woo’s later work this is worth a recommendation, and the presence of Eddy Ko and Lam Ching-Ying provide just enough credibility to the production to overlook some of it’s most basic flaws.

 

DVD Times  Noel Megahey

 

DVD Outsider  Slarek

 

ispitonyourmovie.com  feral cat

 

Varied Celluloid - Guest Review  Bullet

 

Dragan Antulov

 

A BETTER TOMORROW  (Ying hung boon sik)

Hong Kong  (95 mi)  1986

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]   also commenting on the sequel

Sometimes a single scene can make a career; A Better Tomorrow has a scene that made two. Nearly half an hour into John Woo's film, an implacable Chow Yun-Fat, clad in a trenchcoat and equipped with two pistols, performs a dinner-table assassination, then retreats to retrieve a series of guns previously hidden to allow a safe egress. The whole sequence, which alternates swift action with slow-motion details, plays out in less than two minutes. Still, it proved long enough to establish a new breed of Hong Kong action film and a new type of action star, though its director had labored anonymously for years within the Hong Kong studio system and its star had seen his modest early-'80s success erode by mid-decade. A huge hit in Southeast Asia upon its 1986 release, A Better Tomorrow sent hundreds of would-be Chows into the streets to learn firsthand the foolishness of wearing trenchcoats during Hong Kong summers. This development doubtless disturbed Woo, as it revealed how many fans missed the point. It's worth noting that in the key scene, Chow suffers an injury that reduces his character to ruin for the remainder of the film, as the whip of violence snaps back with unexpected suddenness. Contradictory though it may be, for all his fetishization of bloodletting, Woo's work also displays a clear hatred of it, as A Better Tomorrow—only now, alongside its sequel, receiving wide American video release in its original form—ultimately makes clear. As much an examination of the principles of friendship and family as an action film, Tomorrow dusts off an ages-old melodrama plot: the relationship between two brothers, one (Ti Lung) a gangster, the other (Leslie Cheung) a cop. Chow has a supporting role, his character serving as an example of the wages of sin, but he neatly steals the film. In him, Woo found the perfect vehicle for his career-long (not counting last summer's disappointingly undistinctive Mission: Impossible 2) obsession with the contemporary struggle between good and evil, a theme established here in bold, sweeping strokes. As good as Tomorrow is, Chow and Woo would go on to make even better films together. Though not without its virtues, A Better Tomorrow II isn't one of them. The first film's conclusion would seem to prohibit it, but here Chow returns as the never-mentioned twin brother of his character from Tomorrow. He seems a bit squeezed-in, as does some commentary on the first movie's success and a subplot in which Chow nurses a reformed gangster back from insanity. Overall, ABTII (Woo's least favorite of his films) plays like a halfhearted remake of its predecessor. Even so, superlative action scenes, particularly a bloody guns-grenades-and-swords finale with a body count to rival the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan, help wash away many of the flaws. Action for its own sake may not have been the film's intended point, but it'll do.

Apollo Movie Guide [Ryan Cracknell]

John Woo is one of cinema's most influential directors. His slick and stylish action sequences make everything he directs watchable. However, what sets him apart from most every other action director is his attention to detail. A Better Tomorrow is widely regarded as the film that started it all and made Woo an international superstar. While it doesn't rely on style quite as much as his later films, it has a complex plot, hundreds of flying bullets and buckets of flowing blood.

Ho (Lung Ti) and Kit (Leslie Cheung) are brothers on opposite sides of the law. The elder Ho is involved in the Hong Kong underground, part of a violent counterfeit operation. Oblivious to his brother's underworld ties, Kit enrols into the police academy and becomes a cop.

Ho and his partner, Mark (Chow Yun Fat), end up in a bloody battle following a deadly takeover attempt by a rival gang. Ho ends up in jail and Mark with a permanent limp following a bullet to his knee. When he is released from prison, Ho tries to pick up the pieces of his life and start anew by getting a job driving a taxi. Kit is now on the case of a continuing counterfeit scam, now headed by the dangerous Shing (Waise Lee), but is ordered off the case upon his brother's release, thus creating further tension between the two.

Ho ends up back in the story, this time with blackmail on his agenda. The movie is from John Woo, so you know it'll culminate with plenty of bullets in a violent confrontation.

A Better Tomorrow deserves its status as an action classic, as it never lets up, while still managing to keep a strong story. While not as stylish as Woo's subsequent Hong Kong films such as The Killer and Hard Boiled, or his later Hollywood fare, which includes Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2, A Better Tomorrow lays the foundation for what was to come.

The teaming of Woo with star Chow Yun Fat is likely never to become tired. Their work together is always a marvel to watch, and this is certainly no exception. While he's not the star as far as the amount of screen time, Fat still manages to garner much of the attention with well-timed one-liners made even more effective with the constant presence of aa cigarette or a match dangling from his lips.

The film's title is appropriate, considering the groundwork it laid for future action films. While his counterparts in Hollywood bumbled through the late 1980s with unimaginative action duds like Over the Top with Sylvester Stallone and Raw Deal, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Woo was half a world away setting the standard.

The Gangster as Hero in Hong Kong Cinema – Offscreen  Michael Vesia, August 2002

 

A Better Tomorrow (Ultimate Edition)  John White from 10k bullets

 

Austin Chronicle  Marc Savlov

 

A Better Tomorrow (1986)  Lee Wong from Love HK Film

 

DVD Times  Dave Foster

 

BeyondHollywood.com  Nix

 

DVD Verdict  Nicholas Sylvain

 

ispitonyourmovie.com  feral cat

 

Fresh Visual  David

 

Two Degrees of Anthony Wong

 

DVD Review e-zine   Guido Henkel

 

VideoVista    Tony Lee

 

Dragan Antulov

 

DVD Verdict  Adam Arseneau reviews A BETTER TOMORROW I and II

 

Peter Reiher   comments on A BETTER TOMORROW I, II, and III

 

Trash City  reviews A BETTER TOMORROW I, II, and III

 

A BETTER TOMORROW II  (YIng hung boon sik II)

Hong Kong  (105 mi)  1987

 

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

John Woo has remarked that this is one of his worst films, and though that's hardly the case here, it's also worth noting that this certainly isn't one of his best films, either. Pressured into a sequel he would rather have skipped in the first place, Woo (and screenwriter/producer Tsui Hark) seems to have had other things on his mind, and unfortunately, it shows. The story follows two brothers who go undercover to infiltrate a massive counterfeiting scam along the Hong Kong dockside. Kit and Ho befriend ex-gangster-cum-shipping magnate Lung in an effort to get closer to the Hong Kong kingpin, but suddenly the aging con finds himself caught in an elaborate frame-up which forces him to leave the country. The film takes a left turn here, to New York City, where Lung meets up with old pal Ken (Chow Yun-Fat), the owner of a Chinatown restaurant (and identical brother of Mark in the first film!). Eventually, Lung's enemies locate him stateside, but instead of killing him, they opt instead for driving him mad by killing everybody else. Now a drooling idiot, Lung is placed in Ken's care and slowly but surely rehabilitated. There's still another hour left in the film at this point, but why bother going into it here? Hark's script, like many of Hark's films, is a convoluted mess, rife with weird inconsistencies and contrivances, but nevertheless constantly steamrolling ahead like some unstoppable Dr. Seussian juggernaut. Like most Hong Kong films, this whips along at a wild pace, but even John Woo is unable to add much of his usual stylistic panache to the proceedings. The whole thing feels like a rush job, and it shows in the less-than-brilliant set pieces that crop up from time to time. It's too bad Woo has this little blotch on the otherwise immaculate record of his Eighties-period films, but then, even film titans have their off-days, I suppose.

 

Apollo Movie Guide [Ryan Cracknell]

 

Usually, sequels stink. They attempt to cash in on a superior original with little regard to quality. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, and John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow II is one of them. While it’s no better than the first film, A Better Tomorrow II is certainly its predecessor’s equal. What this sequel gives up in credibility, it gains from a more refined and distinct style that has become the signature of John Woo.

Brothers Ho (Ti Lung) and Kit (Leslie Cheung) are back, this time trying to save their uncle Lung’s (Dean Shek) struggling shipyard from being taken over by opportunistic gangsters. Ho and Kit work undercover to bring the gangsters down, but as violence escalates, they become desperately in need of help. The solution is an ocean away in New York City, in the form of Ken ( Chow Yun Fat), cocky twin brother of Mark, a character in the original film.

When I first read that Chow Yun Fat was going to be in this sequel, I was a little worried as to how this was possible, given the events his character went through in the original. While a celluloid resurrection is not unheard of, the typical way of getting there is nearly always tacky. But, again, Woo pulls it off here. Although not terribly imaginative, the introduction of Ken provides plenty of laughs as a break between the action scenes.

Made just two years after the original, A Better Tomorrow II is a good measure as to how far Woo’s sense of style was emerging. While the first film was nice to look at, this one takes things to the next level. While it’s still not nearly as polished as some of his later films, the foundation was clearly laid.

Behind all the shooting and smashed glass, Woo raises a dilemma – to achieve peace, one must be prepared to fight. Then, when the battle is won, tomorrow will be a great day. Perhaps he takes this line of thinking to the extreme, but it’s always fun to watch.

John Woo is as much a conductor as he is a director. Blood and bullets are his instruments of choice and his films are his symphonies. There is no director alive today that can bring objects to life better than Woo can. While American Beauty proclaimed the beauty of a plastic bag blowing in the wind, for years Woo has been showing us the same sort of beauty with rippling black trench coats and flickering flames.

A Better Tomorrow II is a showcase for John Woo’s tremendous skill both as a storyteller and as a composer of violent masterpieces.

 

DVD Times  Dave Foster

 

DVD Outsider

 

A Better Tomorrow II (1987)  Lee Wong from Love HK Film

 

KFC Cinema  Joseph Luster

 

review  A Free Man in Hong Kong

 

A Better Tomorrow II 1987  Michael Den Boer from 10k bullets

 

BeyondHollywood.com  Nix

 

ispitonyourmovie.com  feral cat

 

Two Degrees of Anthony Wong

 

City on Fire  Joseph Kuby

 

Varied Celluloid Review

 

Love and Bullets  a DVD comparison

 

Hong Kong Film Net

 

THE KILLER (Dip hyut shueng hung)

Hong Kong  (111 mi)  1989

Washington Post [Hal Hinson]

Watching John Woo's "The Killer" may be like eating popcorn, but it's not just any old brand; it's escape-velocity popcorn, popcorn with a slurp of rocket fuel. Its story is a collision of exuberant pulp, samurai mythology and modern, urban noir. The main character is a hired gun named Jeffrey (Chow Yung-Fat) who wants out of the business but can't quit until he kills one last time. The reason for this farewell hit is to finance an operation to restore the eyesight of a beautiful cabaret singer (Sally Yeh) who wandered accidentally into the line of fire during his last job.

That Jeffrey is haunted by the memory of this accident -- that he has a conscience at all -- shows what a purely pop creation he is. Jeffrey isn't simply a thug, he's a man who approaches his job philosophically, a man with a code, an artist even, who is selective about his targets and just as interested in the aesthetics of killing as he is in the money he makes. It's also in keeping with the comic book spirit of the film that Jennie, the singer, is a doll and that the two fall desperately in love.

Woo bangs his story around as if it were a ping-pong ball. After Jeffrey makes his final hit, he becomes a target for both a renegade cop named Lee (Danny Lee) and the head of the crime syndicate who hired him and wants to avoid paying the bill. This puts him at the center of a virtual downpour of lead, and if there's anything Woo knows how to handle, it's bullets.

The director's greatest gift is his talent for Dexedrine-spiked, apocalyptic action; he's a combination of Peckinpah and Mack Sennett. The violence in "The Killer" is virtually nonstop, and if the film has a fault it's that there are too many epiphanies for one sitting; Woo keeps trying to top himself, to jack up the level with every shootout, but instead we start to overdose on the balletic mayhem. A little less, in this case, might be more, but Woo is a more-is-more filmmaker; all he knows how to do is stomp metal and streak toward the edge.

Few directors have the chutzpah to be as extravagantly preposterous -- or the talent to back it up -- that Woo has. It's a waste of time to talk about "The Killer" in terms of character or emotion; in that respect, all of Woo's heroes are merely icons, symbolic dancers whose movements he choreographs. That Jeffrey and Lee, the hunted and the hunter, join together in a kind of spiritual brotherhood to save Jennie seems predestined; they're both samurai loners, heroes, men apart. And it seems perfectly fitting, too, that Woo's precipice-dancing should result in overwrought tragedy. With this kind of talent, how could he resist blowing everything sky high?

Stylized kineticism isn't merely one of Woo's traits, it's his essence. Which is another way of saying that though his gifts are sizable, they're also one-dimensional. His ideas overreach themselves with such a virile swagger that they border on comedy. With excess like this you can't help but laugh. This is a rush of a movie.

The Killer  Tuna from Asian Cinema Drifter

 

Initially calling The Killer a pistol opera felt somewhat misleading. Describing the action through lame phrases like “dances of death” was giving in to the pretensions. As I watched, what I saw on screen was a rough, loud, bloody circus. I finished it, put it away for a while, and through some subconscious manipulation of thought, I began to think of it as almost poetic. Woo makes one of the most “dignified” action films with heavy emphasis on the beauty of shoot-outs, but at the same time placing importance on the style of the settings among other minor meticulous details. What Samuel L. Jackson said in Jackie Brown about the Killer is fine example of its influence and the embodiment of cool that came with Chow Yun Fat. “You can't tell them anything…The killer had a .45, they want a .45.”

The Killer follows a hit man named Jeff out to pull off his last job for enough money to help a girl he accidentally blinded from a previous hit. Her name is Jennie and he slowly begins to fall in love with her. Double-crossed on the pay off for his last job, he’s forced to face an entire mob of gangsters and a clever inspector hot on his tail.

Leaving behind him a trail of dead bodies, empty clips and his own blood, Chow Yun Fat manages to capture everything likeable about his character while maintaining the firm discipline that comes with his job. Finding no difficulty in showing his heart of gold, Jeff affirms his morals, gains the audience’s sympathy and follows through with a trite plot in trying to leave to business to live a life of peace.

Woo’s dizzying and meaningful gun fights instated The Killer as a staple of the genre. In combining glamorous showdowns with character development and a simple story, Woo is able to tease the audience just enough and finally deliver the goods when it counts. Much of what lies in the excitement of an action movie is the build-up. The Killer helps set up these conflicts, tie together characters and introduce bad-ass scenarios for Jeff to follow through with. With a meaningful (still cliché) story and set-up, the reward the audience receives in the action scenes make the entire film flow smoothly. Fights never seem out-of-place and as the tension rises between Jeff and his antagonists, the film explodes into blissful action. Every subtle action matters in the fights. Woo tends to favor these types of stylish nuances like sliding on a table rather than running past it; and it is in this innovative use of the environment the fights make for some exciting and jaw-dropping sequences.

The other role that stood out was Sally Yeh as Jennie. She puts tons of emotion into this role as a helpless girlfriend, but not the usual type that stays off to the side. She is a key part in even the action and adds depth to her character. Her fear strongly connects with the audience because of her blindness; and because of the dimension she added to her role the audience roots for her well-being along with Jeff’s.

As said before, The Killer is a staple of the HK action genre and depicts what makes action so much more special there. Woo’s landmark film is required Asian cinema viewing for its influence and its lasting appeal. Fifteen years later, it is still better than recent films that try to recreate its magic.

 

The Gangster as Hero in Hong Kong Cinema – Offscreen  Michael Vesia, August 2002

 

The Criterion Contraption [Matthew Dessem]

 

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

 

Killer, The  Michael Den Boer from 10k bullets

 

DVD Journal  Gregory P. Dorr

 

BeyondHollywood.com  Nix

 

LoveHKFilm.com (Lee Wong; Ross Chen)

 

Furie's review

 

Jiminy Critic Reviews "The Killer"

 

KFC Cinema  Joe Shieh

 

Ted Prigge

 

Two Degrees of Anthony Wong

 

VideoVista   Tony Lee

 

DVDActive (David Cox)

 

The Gline DVD review

 

Austin Chronicle [Kathleen Maher]

 

The New York Times (Stephen Holden)

 

DVD Cult Review  Tony Mustafa

 

DVDAnswers.com - region 2 review  David Cox

 

Hong Kong Digital - DVD Review

 

DVDBeaver

 

BULLET IN THE HEAD  (Die xue jie tou)

Hong Kong  (136 mi)  1990

Tony Leung

No one who sees John Woo's most intense film, Bullet in the Head, can remain neutral: you either love it or you hate it.  This epic remains Woo's personal favorite, the inspiration for which he drew from 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre.

Set in 1967, BITH tells the story of lifelong friends Paul (Waise Lee), Ben (Tony Leung), and Frank (Jacky Cheung). The financially ambitious Paul suggest that the trio go to war-torn Vietnam for quick-money opportunities.  Ben, who is initially hesitant about leaving, changes his mind after his wedding to Jane (Fennie Yuen) is marred by a fight in which he and Frank take revenge against a thug named Ringo. Ringo dies, and the trio decides to leave HK for Nam until things cool off. Their associate, Mr. Shing, gives them a suitcase of penicillin and Rolexes for a Mr. Leong, who runs the Bolero nightclub in Saigon.  Jane bids goodbye to Ben amid the chaos of the 1967 HK border riots.

Once in Saigon, the three receive their first look down the muzzle-end of frontier capitalism when their taxi is blown up by a Vietcong bomber.  Our boys are put in an on-the-spot suspect lineup by the local authorities, tasting pavement and fear.  The real perp is discovered and summarily executed, so they are free to go to the Bolero nightclub to meet Leong.  The musketeers meet their D'Artagnana in Luke (Simon Yam), a Eurasian hit man working for Leong.

In BITH's most exhilarating gunfight (a classic Woo-choreographed slugfest), the trio joins forces with Luke to unseat Leong and free the drug-addicted torch singer Sally (Yolinda Yam).  Using pistols, submachine guns, shotguns, knives, and explosive Havana cigars, they fight off Leong's minions, kneecap the nightclub owner, and abscond with Sally-and a heavy crate of gold.

While Ben and Frank are most concerned with Sally's welfare-she took a round during the firefight-Paul is obsessed with the gold, which becomes an albatross around their necks.   Arguments escalate and relationships fray until the boys are pointing their guns at each other's heads.  Sally dies of her wound, and the trio is captured by the Vietcong, who find an envelope with CIA-surveillance photos hidden among the gold leaves.

The film becomes extremely harrowing at this point, as the VC force Frank to shoot his fellow prisoners in the head.  When Frank becomes unhinged by the horror, Ben takes over to spare his friend, machine-gunning the bound and pleading captives.

As in the deer hunter, the guns are turned on the VC, and the three escape with the help of Luke and the U.S. Air Cavalry.  Frank is seriously wounded with a gunshot to his skull, in a sequence that must be seen rather than described.  Brutally intense, this film is not easily forgotten.

Credit: "Sex and Zen & A Bullet in the Head" by Stefan Hammond & Mike Wilkins.  This is a wonderful English guide to the films of Hong Kong.  

DVD Times  Michael Sunda

 

KFC Cinema  Daniel Thomas

 

Jun Yan

 

DVDActive (Chris Gould)

 

Love HK Film  Ross Chen

 

City on Fire  Joseph Kuby

 

The G Line DVD review

 

Two Degrees of Anthony Wong

 

Varied Celluloid Review

 

H.K. DVD Heaven (Chris Gilbert)

 

VideoVista   Jeff Young

 

Bullet in the Head 1990  Michael Den Boer from 10k bullets

 

Hong Kong Film Net

 

The New York Times (Jane H. Lii)

 

HARD BOILED  (Laat sau sen taan)

Hong Kong  (126 mi)  1992

 

IndependentCritics.com [Jacob Hall]

How many windows can shatter in one film? How many villains can be gunned down? How many dual pistol duels can occur? How many explosions can erupt? How many double crosses can take place? Well, the answer is in "Hard-Boiled," but I lost count somewhere along the way.

"Hard-Boiled" is an early John Woo film, before he cam to Hollywood and turned out mediocre crap like "Paycheck" and "Windtalkers." This was when he was an inventive and stylish action filmmaker with the agenda to thrill and shock. This was also at the height of Chow Yun-Fat's career. With these two people at this time working together, eventually they were bound to turn out the action film to top all action films.

While "Hard-Boiled" is not my favorite action film, it is one of the best. The story is weak and wholly unbelievable, but the action is some of the best ever put on screen.

The heroes of the film are Yuen (Yun-Fat) or Tequila in the dubbed version, and Tony (Tony Leung Chiu Wai). Yuen is an on-the-edge cop who goes in with all guns blazing, and Tony is an agent who has infiltrated a ring of dangerous criminals. What they uncover is rather laughable, but the journey there and what happens afterward is a bloody good time.

All that Woo is famous for is here: the brutal violence, strong action, slow motion and duel pistols. "Hard-Boiled" also supposedly features the highest on-screen body count in film history. This is made obvious by the climax, one of the longest sustained action sequences I have ever seen.

If you are faint of heart, weak of stomach, or VERY strong of moral, then you probably won't like "Hard-Boiled." But if you're an action and you haven't seen this, than you know what to rent next.

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

(This print of Hard Boiled is John Woo's “director's cut” which includes several extra minutes deleted from the initial release print. Let's see... that ought to allow at least a couple hundred more gunshots and edits. We here reprint our review as we originally ran it.) From the opening moments of Hard Boiled, in which we see hair-trigger cop “Tequila” Yuen (Chow Yun-Fat) pour out a jigger of his namesake and jam on clarinet at a sleazy jazz club (and say, isn't that John Woo setting up all those Tequila Slammers behind the bar?), you get the feeling that you're in for something just a little bit out of the ordinary. As inspector Yuen, Chow Yun-Fat is once again back with his favorite director, and this time out he's nosing around illegal arms caches set up by one or more arms of the Golden Triad, those resolute runners of guns, drugs, and curiously bronzed birdcages. Chow's performance as Tequila brings a hyper-realistic new meaning to the term smooth: in the opening tearoom shootout sequence, he manages to go through clip after clip after clip, his 9mm braying like an ass on fire as he fluidly dives, rolls, and slides down the streamlined center of an escalator, killing god knows how many renegade arms dealers and never bothering to break a decent sweat. Action heroes like this are apparently stopped at America's borders. Woo's obsession with the virtues of brotherhood and betrayal are in full evidence, as when Chow teams up with cop Tony Leung to go undercover into a hospital housing a literally massive arms cache in its basement. In its final 30 minutes -- the notorious hospital shootout that director Martin Scorsese is rumored to be so fond of -- Hard Boiled approaches something like a kind of Zen violence, an aria of muzzle-flashes, bullet hits, and tightly-edited explosions. It's nirvana for seekers of action, and it rarely gets any better than this.
 
AboutFilm  Carlo Cavagna

Hard Boiled is not the best of John Woo's Hong Kong crime movies (that honor goes to The Killer), but it is certainly a superior film. Hard Boiled is also somewhat different from the others. While Woo's other Hong Kong movies also feature spectacularly melodramatic crime stories centered around flawed men trying to live their lives honorably, Hard Boiled is less optimistic and more brooding than movies like The Killer and A Better Tomorrow.

Chow Yun-Fat plays a maverick, moody, Mel Gibson-like cop nicknamed "Tequila." He is determined to bring down Hong Kong's ruthless gangs of illegal arms traders, and will take incredible risks and go against the wishes of his boss (Philip Chan) to do so. The only time we ever see Tequila deriving any enjoyment from life is when he plays his clarinet in a jazz nightclub, and even then, the songs are melancholy. Meanwhile, his boss is running an illegal undercover operation, in which a cop named Tony (Tony Leung) has become a highly regarded  hit man. As a hit man, Tony must murder people in cold blood in order to maintain his cover. His sanity is in question, and his despair is even greater than Tequila's. As he has done so often before, Woo initially places these two characters in opposition to one another, but eventually establishes a personal connection between the two and brings them together in a common cause--destroying the gangs.

Like in The Killer, the two protagonists are opposites, but also the same. Tony commits heinous acts, but mourns every life he snuffs out. He leads a double life. Tequila, on the other hand, is impatient and straightforward--he cannot pretend to be anything that he is not, and he does not grieve for his victims. However, both Tequila and Tony are troubled loners; they both kill in the name of justice; and they both wear their burdens on their sleeves. In the end, their sadness and their burdens are what bring them together and provide a basis for their tentative and possibly doomed friendship.

Woo clearly believes that there is truth in archetypes. He embraces archetypes and trusts in his artistry and his actors to prevent them from becoming cliches. The slightly crazy hero and the tormented killer are characters we've seen many times before. The emotions Woo conveys--sorrow, anger, grief, love, respect--are basic and presented broadly, without subtlety. Melancholy jazz music = sorrow. Man sailing in boat alone = loneliness and isolation. Flowers =  beauty and life. Heroes must protect the innocent from madmen. Men with sins on their conscience must earn redemption. And friendship is worth sacrificing everything for.

Yet, Woo's characters and emotions do not feel shopworn. With the help of his fine actors, Woo imbues his archetypes with enough humanity that they never become cliches. Chow Yun-Fat is a bona-fide movie star--always watchable, always compelling. But Tony Leung (little known in the U.S. but a star in his own right) may be an even better actor that Yun-Fat. It is thanks to him that his murderous character becomes worthy of the audience's sympathy.

Hard Boiled is the last movie Woo made in Hong Kong before emigrating to the United States (in advance of Hong Kong being turned over to Chinese control by the British) and it shows. Replete with images of departure and closure, Hard Boiled seems almost to be Woo's regretful farewell to the city. In addition, Woo's outdoor shots are subdued, and there is little sunlight in the movie. Despite their shocking violence, Woo's movies usually convey a certain joy in life. Hard Boiled is darker, more nihilistic. The violence is a little less graceful, a little more stark. The characters' lives are more grim. They may be able to solve their problems, or to escape from them, but it's questionable whether they will ever know peace.

It's been suggested that Woo was looking ahead a bit to his U.S. film career when he made Hard Boiled, because it is the most "American" of his Hong Kong films. There may be something to this theory. In particular, the long climax, set in a hospital, is reminiscent of action films like the Lethal Weapon and James Bond movies. It's elaborate and exciting, but it's disappointingly American. Still, in addition to classic Woo themes, Hard Boiled contains all the trademark Woo-isms, like double-handed gunplay, men holding guns to each other's heads, and high body counts. There are even birds, which Woo also used in his action sequences in The Killer and Face/Off.  Despite some differences in outlook and mood, Hard Boiled is unmistakably a John Woo film.

Slant Magazine [Ed Gonzalez]

 

“Give the guy a gun and he's a Superman. Give him two and he's God.” This is the mantra of manhood that runs throughout John Woo's best films, from the "outmoded" pop melodrama The Killer to the Travolta/Cage smackdown Face/Off. Before going Hollywood and subsequently going bust (see—or don't see—Windtalkers and Paycheck), Woo made one last film in his native China that remains one of his finer moments. In Hard Boiled, Chow Yun-Fat stars as Yuen (alias Tequila), a police officer investigating a sinister arms ring. When his partner dies in an elaborate shoot-out, Tequila joins forces with a mysterious undercover agent, Alan (Tony Leung), in order to infiltrate mobster Johnny Wong's secret lair tucked inside a hospital's basement level.

A master stylist, Woo is similarly brilliant at examining the moral and social hierarchies of his patriarchal crime worlds, often casting his female protagonists as subversives (The Killer's perpetually panic-stricken blind woman exists to perpetuate collisions between bullets and all sorts of female signifiers, from tea to tears). What does it say about the men in Woo's films that they're only allowed to love each after unexamined male bonds have deteriorated? Because Yun-Fat's characters in both The Killer and Hard Boiled confront the implications of their friendships to men only after they've lost partners (and subsequently found surrogate replacements), violence in Woo's films becomes a kind of masochistic, homoerotic ritual—men use violence to destroy each other and love each other.

In Hard Boiled, Woo makes an art form out of creating deceptive surfaces. Sam Raimi has fairly compared Woo to Hitchcock, but I would argue that a comparison to Argento is more relevant (compare Hard Boiled's bloody library book-mark sequence to Tenebre's delirious misty bathroom set piece). "Are you somewhere feeling lonely or Someone loving you!" is the strange message Tequila's on-again-off-again girlfriend, officer Teresa (Teresa Mo), receives at the police department with her latest bouquet of flowers. Are the flowers from Tequila or someone else? More importantly: Where's the question mark? (We're meant to notice the exclamation point.) This is Woo and screenwriter Barry Wong working overtime to "hard boil" the spectator and domesticize Tequila (by film's end, Woo casts the cop as Alan's best bud and a surrogate father to a "pisspot" newborn boy.)

Every image in the film has a visual double entendre, an encoded moral, romantic and social message. (Only after watching the film again did Woo's interest in Windtalkers' Navajo code breakers seem to make sense.) The undercover Alan communicates with the film's police contingency via pop songs, flowers and love letters—masculine procedure is encoded in (and permitted by) femaleness. And just as Alan is undercover, so are the film's flower boxes and steely, Feng Shui-less morgue containers. Everything is a ruse and no one is immune in Woo's signature land of aesthetic confusion. Tequila isn't really fishing in one scene early in the film—he's just waiting to negotiate with a lowlife double agent, Foxy (Wei Tung). He catches a small fish while he waits, but that he throws it back says plenty about his character.

Woo's characters are often unwittingly placed in uncomfortable situations with no apparent method of escape before they're bounced deliriously and half-embarrassingly from one elaborate set piece to the next. Because there's an intrinsic humor to the auteur's rhythmic, unpredictable action poetry, I like to look at his films as Karaoke action melodramas. What distinguishes Hard Boiled from other Woo films is the symbiosis between movement and morality. The film's audacious second half takes place almost entirely within the confines of a hospital, where Johnny Wong's gang offs much of the patient population. The body count is ridiculously high. Gratuitous, yes, but an honest projection of male power and social relations. There's a moral "quality" to the bloodshed that you won't find in your average Hollywood action film.

 

-Barbara Scharres   Criterion essay

 

The Gangster as Hero in Hong Kong Cinema – Offscreen  Michael Vesia, August 2002

 

DVD Times  Michael Sunda

 

The Criterion Contraption [Matthew Dessem]

 

KFC Cinema  Joseph Luster

 

Raging Bull [Matt White]

 

InsidePulse [Robert Sutton]

 

Mike Bracken--Epinions.com

 

Cinepassion.org  Fernando F. Croce

 

Varied Celluloid Review

 

BeyondHollywood.com  Nix

 

Tony Leung

 

Cinema Crazed  Felix Vasquez Jr.

 

Furie's Review

 

Sex, Gore, Mutants  M.C. Thomason

 

Two Degrees of Anthony Wong

 

Free Man Review

 

Love HK Film  Ross Chen

 

City on Fire  Joseph Kuby

 

China Dragon

 

Hong Kong Film Net

 

The New York Times (Vincent Canby)

 

DVD Beaver

 

HARD TARGET

USA  (97mi)  1993

 

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

Stop holding your breath. John Woo's American debut is as thoroughly a “John Woo Film” as any of the director's Hong Kong actioneers, with few if any compromises made in the way of bullets, bodies, and overall mayhem. Basically an updating of The Most Dangerous Game, Van Damme is Chance, a wandering combat veteran who finds himself the target of a methodically amoral group of “hunters” who offer similarly talented individuals $10,000 to act as human prey for their wealthy clients. Van Damme -- ever pissing off the forces of evil -- doesn't even receive the cash offer; head killer Fouchon (Henriksen, in another brilliantly shaded portrait of cool villiany) decides to off this annoying little vet sans recompense. Ideally set in New Orleans, the film is almost pure Woo, overflowing as it is with his trademark candles, doves, and 9mm semi-auto muzzle flash. Literally thousands upon thousands of blank rounds were expended during the making of Hard Target, and you can bet it shows. Woo, well known for his almost obsessive attention to detail, has layered the audio tracks to create some of the most, well, explosive-sounding explosions ever heard on film. To be fair, this isn't The Killer. Woo's unique penchant for over-the-top male bonding is basically nowhere to be seen, but then this is, after all, a very American story, despite Woo's name at the top. Instead, we have Yanci Butler as the young lady who enlists Chance's aid in discovering who killed her father. Thanks to Chuck Pfarrer's well-thought-out script, Butler's character is far more fleshed out than most of Woo's female leads. Too often, they end up becoming just so much shrieking background scenery; it's a nice change of pace to see a strong, competent woman in a John Woo film. If you've never heard of the man, this is your chance to see what all the buzz is about. And just ignore Wilford Brimley, who “turns in a salty, lively performance as Chance's crafty Cajun uncle.” Um, sure... whatever.

 

Washington Post [Desson Howe]

Bikers, bouncers, post-apocalyptic bullies from hell -- it doesn't matter who comes at Jean-Claude Van Damme. He makes human rubble out of all of them. It's in his contract. In "Hard Target," an action picture set in Louisiana, he faces bloodlust-broker Lance Henriksen, psychotic South African sidekick Arnold Vosloo, and a medium-sized collection of henchmen and good old boys. In fighting terms, it's a piece of cake.

But there's a much more ethereal opponent to be contended with -- a familiar foe from previous movies. The harder Van Damme tries (and boy, does he try in this movie), the more elusive it becomes. Folks, we're talking about the acting specter and, before its intimidating maw, Jean-Claude stiffens and keels over.

"Hard Target," patterned loosely on Richard Connell's famous short story "The Most Dangerous Game," is about ruthless businessman Henriksen's high-stakes, big-money pastime for sadistic businessmen. For half a million, the rich (accompanied by Henriksen's goons) can hunt human quarry -- homeless individuals with military backgrounds and no family ties. At the end of the game, the bodies are disposed of, and Henriksen's looking once again for a few good men. Merchant sailor Van Damme tangles with these folks when forlorn daughter Yancy Butler hires him to locate her missing father. Naturally, the father's a recent hunting victim, and naturally, Van Damme finds himself similarly caught in the cross hairs.

In a genre full of such Academy Award contenders as Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal, acting comes second to roundhouse kicking. But Van Damme is clearly determined to change that. To probe the soul of his character (laconic drifter capable of kicking people), he has grown his hair long, curled it and packed it with gel. He has also adopted an earring and let his stubble grow. De Niro dreams of commitment like this. Then there's Van Damme's presence. At the beginning of the movie, distraught Butler -- carrying a lot of money -- finds herself in a dangerous street, surrounded by New Orleans punks. Van Damme arrives just in time to bust heads and save the day. Surveying his fallen, groaning foes, he quips in that inimitable Belgian accent, "You know, izza sham. Dis used to be such a nass part of town."

When Van Damme isn't duking it out with the English language, scriptwriter Chuck Pfarrer is filling Henriksen's mouth with villainous pseudo-profundities. Even in a second-rate action picture like this, and despite Henriksen's commendable efforts, they're painful to listen to. "It has always been the privilege of the few to hunt the many," he intones philosophically, describing his recreational enterprise. "You paid us a half a million to find out if you're alive or dead," he tells a client who balks at delivering the coup de grace to his appointed victim.

The movie marks the American debut of Hong Kong director John Woo, well known to cognoscenti for his cultish, cinematic, violent spectacles. But Woo's creative presence is practically stifled. There are some flashes of his deliriously wild style -- a slow-motion moment here, a well-chosen freeze-frame there. He also introduces American audiences to his taste for unique motorcycle stunts and very, very loud car explosions. But these Wooisms are disappointingly minimal. Essentially, "Hard Target" is a risk-averse Van Damme vehicle, steered by many hands, and set on tracks leading directly to the delivery entrances of the country's video stores. Woo isn't the driver by any means. He's just a VIP passenger along for the ride.

LoveHKFilm.com (Ross Chen)

 

Hard Target  Michael den Boer from 10k bullets

 

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review   Richard Scheib

 

James Berardinelli's ReelViews

 

The New York Times (Janet Maslin)

 

BROKEN ARROW

USA  (108 mi)  1996

 

Austin Chronicle [Joey O'Bryan]

 

A lively action picture with a spirited sense of humor, Broken Arrow is a great deal of fun, even if it isn't exactly a return to form for its celebrated director, former Hong Kong action auteur John Woo. The script, written by Speed scribe Graham Yost, follows that hit's “pull-out-all-the-stops” formula that takes a seemingly impossible situation -- in this case, it's a pair of young heroes, an air force pilot (Slater) and a park ranger (Mathis), trying to stop a charismatic maniac from stealing a pair of nuclear weapons -- and then complicating it a thousandfold. In Yost's world, things always have a habit of going from bad to worse, and it's this relentless approach that supplies Broken Arrow with its non-stop barrage of chases, fist fights, explosions, and gunplay. Woo, always the craftsman, realizes these explosive moments with plenty of verve -- his restless camera endlessly spinning, panning, and tracking alongside the characters, capturing the action with a nervous energy. But, surprisingly, the greatest joy to be found here is not in the action sequences but, rather, in Travolta's wildly comic, deliciously evil turn as the chief bad guy, who, like all great villains, may be crazed and psychotic, but proves irresistible, nonetheless. The rest of the cast is also good, with Slater and Mathis making a likable, attractive pair of heroes, and co-star Delroy Lindo projecting a memorable presence and stoic dignity -- an impressive feat given his minimal amount of screen time. Good performances, cool action, jackrabbit pacing, and a decent script… so what's wrong with Broken Arrow? Well, it's just that I miss the poetry and unabashed romanticism of Woo's previous films. Occasionally, the Woo touch is obvious. It's clear during the slam-bang sequence inside an abandoned copper mine, or when, after a particularly narrow escape, the camera takes time out to follow a fluttering butterfly across the surface of a shining lake -- but, all too often, Broken Arrow feels like watered-down Woo. His patented use of slow motion, dissolves, freeze-frames, and (of course) extraordinarily messy blood squibs, are almost totally absent here, and while that probably won't mean much to the average moviegoer, for the hard-core Woo aficionado, it's somewhat jarring, to say the least. Still, despite the picture's virtual lack of Wooisms, and a couple of silly errors in logic, Broken Arrow has a lot going for it… and stands on its own as a supremely entertaining Hollywood-style actioner, even if we've come to expect a bit more than that from a master like John Woo.

 

Tucson Weekly [Stacey Richter]

 

John Woo'S SIGNATURE shot--two guys, each simultaneously pointing at gun at the other's head--crops up about a dozen times in Broken Arrow, his latest English-language Hollywood action flick. There, in a microcosm, lies Woo's basic philosophy of filmmaking: If something works, repeat it. And his philosophy: It's a kill-or-be-killed world. Hope you're armed.

If this sounds a little cartoonish, it is, but who wants a morality play invading their escapism? Broken Arrow is a swift, entertaining action movie with appealing good guys and likable--no, lovable--bad guys. It features chases and fights on or in planes, boats, trains, trucks, helicopters and copper mines. (what, no spaceships?) All this is standard movie fare, but Woo, a veteran of the energetic Hong Kong film industry, has a genius for directing action sequences. His choices are invariably creative and unexpected, especially in the hand-to-hand combat scenes (the opening boxing sequence is brilliantly edited). Broken Arrow is full of jump cuts and slow motion, and though it's not as quirky as his work in Hong Kong, Woo's instincts are still different enough from the standards of Hollywood that this movie seems like a breath of fresh air.

I'll concede the first 15 minutes are rather wooden. These are minutes solemnly devoted to Character Development. We meet two Air Force pilots, Deakins (John Travolta) and Hale (Christian Slater). Deakins is Hale's commanding officer; soon, we see all too clearly they have a father/son relationship, with a healthy dose of rivalry tossed in. We learn this because they say things to each other people would never say, and reveal the kind of information conversations simply do not reveal. "You push too hard--that's why you've been passed over for promotion so many times!" And: "You love to fly, don't you? You're in this for life." Yeah, right. Well, you just have to wait, because once past that hump, the mayhem begins.

The term "broken arrow" refers to a nuclear weapon that's missing or stolen, apparently, and the bulk of the movie consists of the good guys trying to get one back before the bad guys torch the world. The good guys turn out to be Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis (together again at last, five years after Pump Up the Volume). Mathis plays Terry, a park ranger inadvertently sucked into the fracas, and she serves both as a love interest and an action hero in her own right. Travolta is commander of the evil guys, and, as usual, he's a pleasure to watch. As Deakins he waltzes through his moves with charisma and glee. Travolta is a very good actor rather than a great actor; it's hard to lose yourself in his performances. I'm always quite aware that he's acting, but he's so magnetic and has such presence that he conveys something more singular than great acting. Like John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart, there's always a lot of Travolta in the role.

And what fun he has playing a villain! He's so cocky and sporting in his malevolence that it's hard to hate, or even dislike him. It's interesting that for all the cartoonish aspects of Broken Arrow, the villain ends up being something less than pure evil. The character of Deakins calls to mind the worthy adversary figure from old westerns; even the location evokes John Ford films--southern Utah, around Lake Powell, in the wide-open West. It's no surprise then that Deakins also reminded me of that other bomb-loving cowboy, Slim Pickens. References to Doctor Strangelove pop up all over this movie, from the scenes back at Central Control (reminiscent of the War Room in Strangelove), to the final demise of the bad guy.

Mathis and Slater do a decent job with their mostly athletic roles, though Slater tends to pale next to Travolta. Slater has the face and voice of a character actor, and I've always wondered how he gets so many leading-man jobs. Is he cute? I've read that he smokes heavily--a fun fact to keep in mind as you watch him leap and bound for an hour and a half. Mathis, on the other hand, is more appealing, though her role doesn't give her a chance to display much more than fear and spunk. Still, fear and spunk are all you really need in a fun piece of fluff like this one.

Nitrate Online  Carrie Gorringe

Vic Deakins (Travolta) is a rather urbane individual, in a wry sort of way, somewhat like a James Bond for the scofflaw set. Always calm and collected under (almost) any crisis, he even finds the time to instruct his henchmen on the finer points of criminal equitette. "Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons?" he chides one overeager assistant in a tone of barely-restrained disapproval that is usually reserved for the parvenu dinner guest who is vulgar enough to mistake his vichysoisse for the finger bowl. Ah, yes, the thermonuclear weapons ... Roughly some ten to twelve hours earlier in screen time (forty minutes or so in real time), Deakins was actually Major Vic Deakins, a maverick bomber pilot with an axe or two to grind against a military establishment which he believed was not sufficiently appreciative of his considerable talents to provide him with a promotion.

One night, while he and his co-pilot, Riley Hale (Slater) are out on a top-secret war games flight, Deakins hijacks the B-3 stealth bomber in which he and Hale are flying, complete with the aforementioned thermonuclear weapons. Deakins ejects Hale from the cockpit over a vast stretch of desert, confident that Hale will die of exposure before he can ever file a report. Moreover, Deakins, in his final transmission to Colonel Max Wilkins (Lindo) at Ground Control, makes it seem as if the plane is going to crash and places the blame on Hale. After Wilkins reports to Washington that the Air Force has a "broken arrow" on its hands (military jargon for the loss of nuclear weapons), search teams are sent out to recover the weapons; their members are trapped in a ruse and killed. Meanwhile, Hale does not die as expected; the area over which he has been ejected is a U.S. National Park, and his flight did not go unnoticed by a park ranger named Terry Carmichael (Mathis). Gradually, after a series of scuffles, some of them quite interpersonal in nature, Carmichael comes to believe Hale's story, and the two of them team up to thwart Deakins' attempt to blackmail the U.S. Government, nearly getting themselves killed several times in the process. After reentering civilization, they learn from Wilkins and others that Deakins' destination for the second bomb has changed, and Wilkins, Hale and Carmichael head out after Deakins and his gang.

As might be expected from a John Woo film, Broken Arrow has all of the requisite action and excitement. Woo is ably assisted by Yost, the screenwriter behind last year's action hit, Speed. Yost obviously borrows extensively from his former work, contriving action sequences aboard moving vehicles which are sufficiently heart-stopping. But, for all of this, the overall impression of Broken Arrow is a lot like the description of war: moments of boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer terror. It is the former element which at times threatens to prevail; Yost's screenplay doesn't give the characters much to do or say in between the elaborately-choreographed action sequences. Consequently, there's so much narrative torpor that the characters seem to be running a cross-country pursuit through a viscous fluid to get to the next bit of SFX. Speaking of SFX, there are some fairly implausible plot devices utilized in their favor, including an underground nuclear explosion, the results from which will tax most sorely the credibility quotient of anyone familiar with the laws of nuclear physics; hasn't Yost ever heard that fallout travels quite capably through rushing water, thank you very much? Depicting individuals getting up and running away unharmed from the results of a multi-megaton blast involves such a degree of wish fulfillment that one could be forgiven for assuming that Yost had some ghostwriting help in this affair from someone who did time at the Pentagon in the 1950s. The explanation provided in the film is barely adequate to sustain belief, and will, no doubt, not survive the rigors of even the most basic post-screening beer-and-bull session.

Fortunately, the ensemble acting is extremely good, with Travolta as the film's very able and necessary fulcrum. Travolta's performance is essentially a continuation of his work as "Chili" Palmer in Get Shorty, but he gives Deakins less loose-limbed hipness than was given to Chili Palmer and more of a pressurized cool and wit; it's a role that's informed by a fair amount of remaindered and corrupted Hegel, thus bordering at times on camp, and Travola, bless his heart, plays up the role of sociopathic stoic for all it's worth (a worth that should not be underestimated). In his role as the solidly upstanding military officer, Slater provides the likeable counterpart to Deakins. Lindo, demonstrating more facets to his acting ability (after having kept Spike Lee's execrable Clockers barely afloat almost single-handedly), provides a deft admixture of military bearing and human compassion. As Carmichael, Mathis displays more feisty courage than is usually permitted to most heroines of action films, whose usual modus operandi consists of standing around and screaming for help while the hero tries to fight off three thugs simultaneously; this spunky young lady actually possesses the wherewithal to pick up reasonably weighty objects and to clonk the baddies over the head with them whenever it is deemed necessary to do so (usually quite often), and, moreover, she can climb a mean moving train. If only Broken Arrow had tapped into all of this energy, the result could have been much different.

One might have expected more from Woo in his American film debut. Blame it on the special effects budget or the meddling of Hollywood (not known for trusting a sure commodity after having purchased it), but Broken Arrow isn't quite up to par. Admittedly, the film has its moments, but not many of them. The film isn't really bad, but it isn't really great, either, and the waste of so much talent in the pursuit of mediocrity has to be the worst crime of all.

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FACE/OFF

USA  (138 mi)  1997

 

Film Threat  Ron Wells

What we have here is the first, true American John Woo movie. After watching Robert Rodriguez steal from him, Tarantino steal from him, and everyone else steal from him, he apparently decided, "DAMMIT! I'm going to steal from myself!" I am amazed by the shear volume of shots stolen from "The Killer" in this movie. There's even a shootout in a church with doves flying about.

Here's the story: Travolta is an FBI agent who's been on Cage's trail for years. Cage attempts to off him one day but only kills Travolta's young son, instead. Now it's PERSONAL! Fast forward to around 1999 and Travolta finally catches Cage and his brother in a bloody gun battle in a plane hanger. Cage ends up in a coma and his brother goes to prison. Then the

FBI find out Cage had placed a very large bomb of nerve gas somewhere in Los Angeles. Travolta gets talked into an insane plan of having his face removed and replaced with the dormant Cage's. With only around four people knowing of this plan, Travolta's character (now played by Cage) enters the prison to trick the brother into revealing the location. Can you figure out what happens now?

If you can't, I'm still not going to spoil it for you. Let's just say Cage and Travolta get to walk a few miles in each other's shoes, making each distinctly uncomfortable. OK, the premise may be a little hard to take, but there's plenty of good writing here, anyway. If you want your action films to be completely plausible, well it's going to be an all-around crappy year for you; but if you've been waiting for Hollywood to take the restraints off the finest action director in the world, then June 27th will be a day to celebrate.

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

A grand return to form for modern cinema's most exciting action director, Face/Off is the film Woo fans have been waiting for since the director arrived on our shores after leaving his native Hong Kong four years ago. Although the original script was conceived as a futuristic science fiction thriller, when Woo came onboard he jettisoned about 95% of the script's more outré trappings in favor of a modern-day setting with just a few improbabilities left over. No matter. Face/Off works like a charm right on down the line thanks to brilliant, exhilarating performances from Cage and Travolta, and the many tremendously enjoyable action set-pieces that are Woo's hallmark. Travolta plays FBI agent Sean Archer, a man haunted by the death several years ago of his young son, who was accidentally shot by terrorist-for-hire Castor Troy (Cage). Since then, Archer has been tracking Troy relentlessly, and when he finally gets his man (putting him in a coma in the process), the nightmare seems to be at an end. The only problem that remains is the biological weapon that Troy and his deranged, genius brother Pollux (Nivola) planted somewhere in downtown San Francisco before their capture. To uncover the location of the doomsday device, Archer undergoes a radical new surgery technique to graft Castor Troy's face onto his own, thereby allowing him to get close to brother Pollux in prison and trick him into giving up the necessary information. The procedure works masterfully, and now Archer, for all intents and purposes, is his most hated enemy. Unfortunately, while he's in lock-up picking Pollux's brain, the real Castor Troy wakes up from his coma, steals Archer's face, and murders everyone who knows the truth about the FBI's high-tech switcheroo, leaving Archer stuck in prison while Troy is free to grant his brother a pardon, infiltrate the FBI, and get it on with Archer's wife Eve (Allen). All this may sound a bit confusing, but with Woo at the helm, it's a wild roller coaster of mixed identities and passionate violence. And it's a joy to watch Cage play Travolta and vice versa. Far and away the best of summer action films thus far, Face/Off whips along like liquid mercury, filled with sly, dark wit and some of the most exciting action set-pieces to have come out of Hollywood in years. No one alive on the face of the planet can direct gunplay like John Woo, and Face/Off is a veritable showcase for the man's talents, combining rapid-fire editing with 10,000 rounds of pure cordite-scented adrenaline. Add to that the stunningly over-the-top performances of both Cage and Travolta, and you have not only classic John Woo but also the most entertaining film of the summer, a brilliantly conceived actioner that takes everything and everyone involved with it to the next awesome level.

 

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WINDTALKERS                              C                     74

USA  (134 mi)  2002  Director’s cut (153 mi)

 

The Boston Phoenix    Peter Keough

John Woo is a diehard advocate of the lone-gunman theory. His Hong Kong actioners with Chow Yun-fat exploded as much with the angst and aplomb of his isolated anti-hero as with the operatic action sequences. Hollywood’s big budgets, big stars, and emphasis on spectacle have diluted the director’s purity, especially in this war movie. The generic special effects, epic sweep, marching armies, military strategy, and musty conventions scatter Woo’s integrity to the winds.

Based on actual and deservedly publicized historical facts, Windtalkers is the tale of Navajo Marines in the Pacific during World War II enlisted to devise an unbreakable code based on their language. Sent into the field, these "windtalkers" are paired with veteran soldiers ostensibly entrusted with their protection but secretly ordered to kill their charges should they risk capture. The code is more important than the man who speaks it. Adam Beach as Navajo windtalker Ben Yahzee conveys an honest sweetness that’s hard to resist, and Nicolas Cage’s scarred Sergeant Joe Enders wallows in a believable nihilism, but these two never connect. Neither does the theme of individual loyalty versus social duty so important in Woo’s films resound, and his trademark balletic violence misfires. War is not hell in Windtalkers, it’s like a John Woo movie on a larger, more mechanical scale, tawdry background to the cornball and cliché’d excesses that in the best of this director’s work take on the aura of the iconic. Here, it’s all windy talk.

Slant Magazine  Ed Gonzalez

 

There is exactly one shot in Windtalkers that's vintage John Woo: a digital butterfly flutters above a muggy stream in the Solomon Islands before the water turns bloody from the corpse of a floating soldier. If Woo feared that his signature, lyrical language of violence would compromise the authenticity of the WWII battleground, the end result here is something not unlike Randall Wallace's equally quick-to-tire We Were Soldiers. Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down set the unfortunate standard by which Hollywood shoots and maims soldiers for public consumption. What with onscreen war now resembling a game of auteur one-upmanship, Windtalkers seems to confirm that the actual game may be less morally cumbersome than our reasons for watching. Though Woo's pyrotechnics are undistinguishable Wallace's, there's no mistaking the humanity at work here. It's difficult to accuse Windtalkers of being plagued with the kind of white man's burden that typically trivializes multicultural warfare on film (see the smoking cigars, propelling ceiling fans and other signifiers of evil in Black Hawk Down, the generous give-the-enemy-a-girlfriend-too portions of We Were Soldiers and the emasculating Japanese culture shots of Pearl Harbor). Nonetheless, Woo's humanity is unmistakably ham-fisted. With Steel Helmet and Big Red One, Sam Fuller tore away at the very archetypes films like Saving Private Ryan espouse. You can set your watch to Woo's tedious battle-funeral-battle-funeral procedural and Frances O'Connor's ridiculous "Dear Joe" narration and, while he successfully dodges many readymade archetypes, the director stages harmony as an awkward blind date between the races. Navajo code breakers must be protected from the Japanese enemy at all costs. Joe Enders (Nicolas Cage, perpetually passing a kidney stone) and Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach) meet cute, exchange post-vomit Lifesavers and negotiate racism in the ranks just in time for the we-are-the-world jam session that brings a harmonica and Navajo flute together at last.

 

Nitrate Online (KJ Doughton)  

Until it finally hits a stride during a rousing third act, John Woo’s latest balletic bloodbath could be deservedly renamed “Windbreaker,” and not the kind you wear to the beach on a breezy day.  His Windtalkers is the latest in Hollywood’s current, never-ending batch of World War II epics, and it gets silver stars for sensational action set-pieces, but a court-martial for its stale dialogue and uncreative, “been there, done that” structure. 

Woo is a natural choice for directing a war film. In fact, one could argue that each elegantly shot movie that the Chinese filmmaker has ever helmed is a war film. The Killer’s grand finale was an orgy of Sam Peckinpah-style ballistics that made The Wild Bunch look like Driving Miss Daisy in comparison. The body count of baddies downed Hard Boiled’s trigger-happy hero rivaled that of Platoon and Saving Private Ryan combined.  Meanwhile, another superb slug of early Woo magic, Bullet in the Head, boasted a P.O.W. torture sequence that rivaled The Deer Hunter’s harrowing Russian Roulette scene for sheer intensity.  Woo can certainly walk the walk.

However, Windtalkers has only the brilliant battlefield choreography to hold it afloat.  The filler passages involve the 1944 clashes between U.S. and Japanese forces on the island of Saipan, and the crucial part that Navajo code-breakers played in such gruesome skirmishes.  Nicolas Cage milks his distressed, loose-cannon eccentricity for all that it’s worth, depicting Marine Sgt. Joe Enders as a man tight-roping across frayed ends of sanity and plagued with flashbacks of previously endured war horrors.  He’s teamed up with Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), a New Mexico Navajo trained at California’s Camp Pendleton to transmit radio messages from one U.S. military squadron to another, without the vital information being deciphered by Japanese translators. 

When Enders is ordered by military brass to supervise Yahzee in the field, and guard his partner’s code at all times, the implication is to dust the Navajo counterpart before allowing him to slide into enemy hands.  After the uneasy team is called into battle, they’re saddled with the usual cluster of supporting character soldiers, including a hayseed racist who instigates the obligatory Woo fistfight with Yahzee.  There are other tired sequences in which the white grunts look onward in curious admiration as the Navajo code breakers perform a “protection ceremony” to ward off evil spirits, slathering ash across their face while Native American reed music sounds off in the background.  Ultimately, there’s a betrayal of sorts, and Enders is left to prove his sincerity to Yahzee.  This stirs up a bit of drama, but it’s too little too late.

The script is generic Hollywood banter straight from the Pearl Harbor cliché heap. When commander Jason Isaacs (who livened up The Patriot as a ruthless redcoat, and is totally wasted here) informs Enders of his mission to oversee the code talker, Cage’s rebellious G.I. rants, “I’ll best serve the corps killing Japs, not babysitting some Indian.”  Later, a tacked on love interest (Frances O’Connor) writes to Enders, announcing, “I took in a stray dog. He reminds me of you. At least he keeps me warm at night.”  Suddenly, the sappy love banter in Attack of the Clones starts sounding like David Mamet in comparison. 

Ultimately, it’s difficult to dismiss a film staged with such finesse and care, especially one about such an important and overlooked chapter in wartime history (the film is based on actual coding developed by twenty-nine Navajo Marines in 1942, a system which was never cracked by the Japanese).  But Windtalkers is awfully familiar. Perhaps if Woo had moved the Navajo component center-stage, and jettisoned Cage’s unnecessarily domineering presence, his film would take on a more crisp, original feel.  As it stands, Hollywood’s latest World War II installment has more in common with Michael Bay than with the fever-dream lunacy and go-for-broke kick of Hard Boiled.  Too bad.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Windtalkers (2002)  Andrew O'Hehir, September 2002  

 

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PAYCHECK                         C                                 72

USA  (125 mi)  2003     
 

A film about memory erasure that bears a poor resemblance to MINORITY REPORT.  Yes, the improbable occurrences are intriguing, and Uma Thurmon is always a little special, but all in all, this is hardly more than your average John Woo weekly entertainment.  Ben Affleck is dull as ever, and brings the mood of this film down, down, down, requiring action stuff to make up for what's missing in zero character development.  Philip K Dick has seen better days.

 

City Pages [Ed Gonzalez]

 

When Tom Cruise's character in Minority Report uses his fingers to sort through computer-generated representations of a crime, there's an unmistakable aesthetic and ethical urgency to the scene: The ballet of movement hinges on the character's connection to the future and his sense of right and wrong. (At the same time, the sequence questions the way we absorb images.) When Ben Affleck's character in the ditzy Paycheck uses his fingers to arrange images of a computer's hard drive, there's none of the same excitement. To save a human life, Cruise's character had to sort through the particulars of a grisly crime scene. To collect a hefty...uh, paycheck, Michael Jennings (Affleck) navigates the inside of machines in order to help megacorporations outwit their competitors, at which point his memory is erased in order to preserve the companies' secrets. Left without a defense mechanism after one three-year contract job, Michael uses a series of clues inside a jiffy mailer to escape the wrath of an evil and powerfully intuitive CEO (Aaron Eckhart) who seemingly conducts business inside Dr. Evil's perpetually foggy subterranean lab. The weird science that explains how someone can look into the future is easy enough to accept. (Remember, this is sci-fi.) Harder to swallow is the self-centeredness of Michael's nightmare. A flurry of multimedia flash-forwards spuriously evokes the destruction of the human race--but is Michael in it for the salvation of the world or Uma Thurman's booty? Thurman runs with the inherent melodrama of her scenes, but mostly flies solo, as Affleck is left wanting charisma, Eckhart lacks the requisite kookiness, and director John Woo's signature two-guns-blazing standoffs look clumsily out of place in the equivalent of watching someone piece together a jigsaw puzzle for two hours.

 

Reel.com [Tim Knight]

 

Still smarting from the critical and commercial beating he took with Gigli, Ben Affleck tries to redeem himself in Paycheck, the latest sci-fi action flick based on the work of cult novelist Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner). Efficiently directed by John Woo—who could use a hit himself after Windtalkers flopped—Paycheck is a moderately entertaining thriller that fails to make the most of its intriguing premise. Unlike Blade Runner or Minority Report (2002), which was also based a Dick short story, Paycheck never transports you to a strange and unsettling new world. There's a slight cheesiness to the film, both in terms of the acting and the uninspired production design. You leave Paycheck feeling as if you've just watched a big-budget version of a made-for-television movie.

Set in the near future, Paycheck depicts the most unusual career path of engineer Michael Jennings (Affleck). For a lucrative fee, he regularly develops hi-tech projects for companies; they in turn selectively erase the projects from his memory to prevent Jennings from duplicating his work for rival companies. Although it's certainly fraught with risk, the money is too good to resist. So when Michael's slick friend Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart) offers him billions of dollars in exchange for three years' work on a top-secret project, Michael readily agrees to have his memory wiped clean at the project's completion. Three years later, Michael discovers that he forfeited the money in exchange for a manila envelope of worthless things. His confusion turns to panic, however, when he's implicated in the murder of a co-worker. Double-crossed by Rethrick and sought by the FBI, Jennings realizes that the manila envelope contains everything he needs to survive. With the help of a beautiful biologist (Uma Thurman), Michael races to stay one step ahead of both the Feds and Rethrick, who wants him dead.

While it's a reasonably intelligent and well-paced film, Paycheck isn't very gripping. There's precious little suspense as to the outcome and the action sequences lack the flair Woo brought to the far superior Face/Off (1997). As for "Bennifer," he is earnest and rather bland—big surprise, huh? It also takes a considerable suspension of disbelief to buy him as a "brilliant" engineer. To be fair, Affleck has given engaging performances in films like Chasing Amy (1997), Forces of Nature (1999) and Bounce (2000). He even held his own opposite Samuel L. Jackson in Changing Lanes (2002). But in action films like The Sum of all Fears (2002) and now Paycheck, Affleck always comes across as a bit of a lightweight.

Ever since Ridley Scott transformed Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into the sci-fi/noir classic Blade Runner, filmmakers have adapted five of the late writer's short stories for the big screen. In addition to Blade Runner and Paycheck, the others include Steven Spielberg's critically praised Minority Report and Total Recall (1990), an ultra-violent and incredibly entertaining action extravaganza starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although it's certainly better than the other Dick-inspired films—Screamers (1996) and Imposter (2002)—Paycheck fades from memory once the end credits roll.

LoveHKFilm.com (Ross Chen)

Entertaining, efficient commercial cinema which is as digestible as strawberry Jello—just not as tasty. John Woo earns the film's namesake by crafting a ridiculous, but tight thriller which has no real flaws other than its all-too-noticeable lack of passion and creativity. Decent fun for those who like their films prepackaged by some guy in marketing.

John Woo directs Paycheck, a sci-fi action thriller which mines the short stories of Philip K. Dick, the celebrated author who also inspired such fine films as Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report. Those flicks featured futuristic visions that were both thought-provoking and rich with portentous detail. Paycheck gets on the thought-provoking train in the beginning, but before long it derails into an efficient, competent action thriller that's only a shade above all-out ludicrous. MTV junkies and fans of leading man Ben Affleck will likely find this to be a welcome diversion, but fans of John Woo and more discerning moviegoers may not be so charitable.     

Affleck is Michael Jennings, a reverse engineer who takes hush-hush jobs from big corporations with the caveat that he will have his memory wiped when the job is over. He agrees to work for old buddy Jimmy Rethrick (Aaron Eckhart), who hires Jennings for a three-year project that will pay megabucks. All Michael has to do is give up three whole years of his life, let those years get wiped from his mind, then sit back and enjoy the earnings. It sounds almost too easy, which is exactly what it is. Jennings does awaken three years after the job is done, but he finds that his stock options were forfeited, apparently by himself. Bewildered, all he can do is follow nineteen clues delivered to himself in a paper envelope. The clues are innocuous everyday items—a cigarette lighter, a can of hairspray, a few keys and other assorted consumables—but there clearly is a purpose for each and every item in the envelope. With former buddy Rethrick now gunning for Michael's life, he must piece together his past, and hopefully discover why he gave up his massive payday in the first place.     

Paycheck has a plot which can be easily spoiled, so explaining what happens in this film would get us a red flag warning from the Anti-Spoiler Coalition of America™. To avoid that, let's just cut straight to the chase: this movie is entertaining but bland as skim milk, which is probably the dairy equivalent of leading man Affleck. Paycheck's plot is deceptively puzzle-like, but everything falls into place with such rote efficiency that any and all surprise is relegated to a split-second of weightless wondering. After certain plot points are dispensed (and Jennings' clues revealed), the film goes about its routine business, which means time for motorcycle chases, Affleck ass-kicking sessions, and blatantly literal pontificating on the perils of sci-fi. Nothing that happens is offensive or annoying, and the connecting of the dots makes for some intruiging storytelling. However, when the dots are connected, all you get is a straight line, and not a picture with even the bare minimum of complexity. Other works of Philip K. Dick provided meaty material to chew on, but Paycheck is ultimately pretty dry stuff.     

Which brings us back to the man behind the camera: John Woo. Once Hong Kong's number one filmmaking export, Woo has since ditched his celebrated emotional themes and hyperkinetic camerawork for something far more powerful: marketing. Paycheck has great source material, a relatively hot leading man (this film was shot before Gigli was released), a respected leading actress (Uma Thurman, who struggles valiantly with a cardboard script), and a director who has shown that he can do some pretty cool stuff. Those elements do work together to form an entertaining enough package, but in the end that's all this is: a package. Everything about Paycheck fits the Hollywood mold so perfectly that it could have been cooked up by any number of suits at a power lunch. Woo's action in Paycheck is far from the surprising hyperkinetic work that we're used to (ah, the power of PG-13), and it's even a step below the stuff that blew up in Mission: Impossible 2. Without John Woo to surprise us, all we're left with is the film's premise, which is interesting, but still surprises a lot less than it probably should. Paycheck lives up to its namesake by earning its creators one, and there are probably many moviegoers who will feel this film matches their dumbed-down Hollywood expectations. However, those who view John Woo as a beacon of cinematic quality might end up asking for a refund.

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The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review  Richard Scheib

 

The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]

 

Sci-Fi Weekly   Patrick Lee

 

Guardian/Observer

 

James Berardinelli's ReelViews

 

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Elvis Mitchell

 

Los Angeles Times [Manohla Dargis]

 

RED CLIFF (Chi Bi)                                                C+                   77

China  (146 mi)  2009  ‘Scope

 

This is what Kurosawa might have looked like had he not had his own vision and made movies for Hollywood instead, using plenty of computer graphics to increase the grandiosity of the film, giving it that quality where battle formations continue all the way to the horizon.  In a word, this film is excessive, the most expensive Chinese film ever, where Woo has an insatiable appetite for merciless bloodlust, with endless portrayals of battle scenes, reminiscent of LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (2002), especially how the defense of Red Cliff resembles that of Helm’s Deep, an epic struggle to save the world (in this case China) from losing it’s own vision of humanity.  Originally released in a two-part five-hour version in China, this is the streamed down 150 minute American version which couldn’t be more repetitive, which omits any sense of personal characterization and instead provides money shots of blood and battle sequences.  However those fanboys who love plenty of loud explosions, boiling fire, flying arrows and gouging spears for their evening’s entertainment will not be disappointed.  Sadly, I kept wondering where was Kurosawa’s poetry?  There is a Japanese thread throughout, particularly in the use of music, where a young boy plays a flute over battle dress rehearsals, where they all stop to listen at one point, while also featuring percussive Japanese drums which announce one side’s presence as they advance into battle.  Loosely based on a true historical event that took place nearly two thousand years ago, a warlord from the north gets cocky after a few successful battles and has Napoleonic ambitions about expanding his empire to include southern China as well, claiming the two warlords in that region are traitorous rebels that need to be overthrown, all in the name of the emperor, who reluctantly allows this bloodlust to continue because he’s too weak to stand up to the ambitious General Cao Cao (Fengyo Zhang) who calls himself the prime minister.  Takeshi Kaneshiro plays a unique role as a war strategist, a guy with near mythical abilities to predict what will happen ahead of time, who convinces both southern warloads to join an alliance to increase their odds against the overwhelming numerical advantage of the advancing northern army that numbers nearly a million foot soldiers.  While all the others display their prowess on the battlefield, the war strategist calmly observes from a distance, in deep meditative thought as if floating above a lotus blossom.  For the most part, we sense his optimism by his wry smile that broadcasts when he’s on to something.  

 

While the costumes and hairpieces are extravagant, the weaponry and armor impressive, the acting and character development is nearly non-existent.  We are treated, however, to several aerial views of the immense battlefield, as the southern flank is nestled into a protected, well-fortified mountainside retreat while the northern invaders decide to position themselves across the river waiting for the best position to strike.  An early skirmish produces several elaborate battle formations, which are remarkable examples of near kaleidescope human choreography setting the stage for a highly anticipated rumble on the river by means of fire.  At times it’s hard to tell who’s fighting who, a perception problem that lingers for prolonged periods of time, but it hardly matters, as the nonstop, incessant display of action is Woo’s trademark, featuring near miraculous martial arts sequences catching spears in mid air, using the broken sticks to fend off dozens of enemy soldiers, showing a dashing display of horsemanship, ducking barrages of flying arrows, leading the enemy into hidden traps before a white dove soars above the fray showing a world in perpetual turbulence below.  The thrill here is the extraordinary reliance on mammoth set pieces, the colossal scale of the battlefield sequences whose choreography and adrenaline racing sequences continue to overwhelm the viewer, usually preceded by an eerie calm before the storm where combatants attempt to get philosophical.  Woo obviously knows how to shoot ass-kicking action shots, with a neverending fascination for gunpowder and explosives, be it bullets, swords, or arrows, where he’s actually playing to the stereotype of his already defined persona, and that’s pretty much what this movie delivers.  That’s the fun of it, whereas other than the zen calm of Kaneshiro’s war consultant, matched occasionally by the cunning brilliance and unwordly battlelfield prowess of Tony Leung as one of the southern leaders, none of the other characters stand out, even the ruthlessly ambitious Cao Cao, who more than racking up a series of victories seems to relish the concept of humiliation in defeat and the idea of breaking his opponent’s will, breaks character himself and loses sight of the bigger picture that he’s had his eye on throughout the entire movie.  In this manner, good and evil are portrayed as typical Hollywood stereotypes, where the lure of a beautiful heroine is once again a siren amidst this testosterone-laden world with the power to tilt the world on edge.  A film of rampant carnage, it is not by accident that a final idyllic CGI shot of China resembles the luminescent perfection of Valinor, the home of the immortals in The Lord of the Rings.  One doesn’t indulge in credulity here, but in the fanboy male adolescent fanstasy that bigger and louder is better.  

 

Special Note for costumes and art direction

 

Little White Lies magazine  Jonathan Crocker

Six years after his risible Hollywood tech-thriller Paycheck, John Woo goes back to Asia to whip up nothing less than the most expensive Chinese-language picture ever. Those pins and needles in your backside should tell you it’s got to be one of the longest, too. Mercifully spliced down into one whopping 150-minuter from its original two-part, five-hour cut, the story sees rebel kingdoms unite against the tyrannical Prime Minister in 208 AD China.

It takes a good hour for Woo’s giant, lumbering neo-epic to start rolling. Asian all-stars Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro crank up their best brooding looks, struggle to find some depth in their rice-paper-thin characters and generally wait around for the director to light the fuse on his next set-piece.

Thankfully, as slow and traditional as it is, Red Cliff just gets better and better once it catches fire in the second half. An amazing extended camera shot follows a dove (well, a pigeon) across an entire fleet of ships and men to soar between the two warring armies. A terrific ‘arrow-collecting’ sequence sees a tiny fleet allow themselves to be pin-cushioned by enemy archers – only to sail home with their ammunition.

But nothing prepares you for the extraordinary final third: a 1,000-strong armada of battleships in a blazing 45-minute assault on their enemy. Hands down, one of the most remarkable extended siege sequences you’ll ever see.

Time Out London (Tom Huddleston) review [3/6]

 

The Battle of Red Cliff occupies a similar place in Chinese folklore to the Arthurian legends in our own: a sprawling epic narrative with roots in historical fact, retold so many times that any resemblance to reality has been lost. Drawing on myriad sources – from ancient myths to modern archaeological studies – John Woo’s grandiose take on the material aims for the middle ground between action fantasy and gritty historical war epic.

Buoyed by a string of military victories, power-hungry prime minister Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang) sets his sights on the lush, fragile kingdom of Wu. But he’s reckoned without the strategic brilliance of Zhou Yu (Tony Leung) and Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who lure Cao Cao’s army into the titular gorge, setting the stage for a desperate last-ditch battle.
In Asia, ‘Red Cliff’ was released in two parts, totalling almost five hours. At half that length, this international cut ditches personal interplay and political intrigue in favour of battles and bloodshed. Not that Woo dumps character altogether: aided by a fine cast, he ensures that the central figures are distinct and memorable.

But the film’s focus is on spectacle, and here Woo delivers, if not in quite the majestic fashion one might have anticipated. Grand set-pieces abound, from a stunning hilltop battle to the climactic fire-and-brimstone bloodbath, but there’s little we’ve not seen before. Nevertheless, as old-fashioned mythic entertainment, ‘Red Cliff’ succeeds in solid, sometimes magnificent fashion.

 

Cinema Autopsy (Thomas Caldwell) review [4/5]

NOTE: This review discusses the Western release version of Red Cliff, which condenses the two-part Asian releases version into one single 148 minute film.

John Woo’s last really top-notch film may be as long ago as 1997’s Face/Off but as the director of action classics such as the Better Tomorrow films (1986 and 1987), The Killer (1989), Bullet in the Head (1990) and Hard Boiled (1991) he is still the greatest living action director. Set in 208 AD in China during the Han Dynasty, Red Cliff may not contain any of the stylish and violent gunplay that defined so many of Woo’s gangster films but it is still a gripping character-driven film with spectacular action sequences. Based on the seven hundred year old novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Red Cliff is very loosely based on historical events about two Chinese kingdoms that formed an uneasy alliance in order to take a stand against the Chinese Prime Minister who was intent on waging war against all the separate Chinese states. The resulting conflicts culminated in the Battle of Red Cliff where the vastly outnumbered Kingdoms of Xu and East Wu defended themselves against the massive imperial army on the banks of the Yangtze River.

Red Cliff has a distinctively Eastern feel to it and the constant pans, snap zooms and melodramatic dialogue, acting and music all evoke the types of Chinese language films that were made predominantly in Hong Kong from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. Western audiences who have only previously seen ‘respectable’ Chinese language action films such as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hero and House of Flying Daggers may not immediately warm to this extremely busy and operatic style of filmmaking but, as wonderful as those aforementioned films are, Red Cliff is more in synch with Hong Kong and Chinese genre films.

John Woo’s kinetic camerawork is present in Red Cliff, as are other elements of his distinctive visual style, but within the stylistic conventions of historical Chinese action/dramas. Woo’s typical thematic concerns are also here as the narrative of Red Cliff includes lots of grand statements about morality, duty, friendship, respect and honour. Long-term fans will also be pleased to know that Woo’s trademark uses of slow motion (albeit used more discretely than usual) and shots depicting white doves are also present and accounted for in Red Cliff.

The many battle scenes are intricate, inventive, highly improbable and completely exhilarating. The scale of some of the scenes evokes the great battle sequences from The Lord of the Rings films while other moments evoke Braveheart but without the pomposity. The climatic sequence is incredibly impressive in scope and the final showdown is absolutely nail biting. Red Cliff should probably not be relied upon for a serious depiction of Chinese history, but as a return-to-form John Woo film that evokes old-school Chinese historical action cinema, it delivers all the goods.

Eye for Film (Jennie Kermode) review [4.5/5]

In what is known as the Three Kingdoms period of China's history, the northern part of the country was torn by a brutal civil war. Upon eventually ending it, powerful prime minister Cao Cao, whose emperor is little more than a puppet, set his sights on the south. There to resist him were two warlords - aging and battle-worn Liu Bei and the younger, more peacefully inclined Zhou Yu. Alone, neither stood a chance. It took a wily diplomat to unite them and attempt to reshape the fate of the empire.

If you are a fan of historical epics, this is one of the best. It's also a superb war film, effortlessly blending strategic planning, tactical manouvres, dramatic action sequences and glimpses of what it all looks like to the people on the ground. John Woo has stuck quite closely to the historical events but still manages to pack in enough surprises to provide some thrills for those who know them well. Unfortunately an hour of footage has been cut out for the UK release, which makes parts of the story confusing for newcomers. Nevertheless, there's plenty to enjoy.

What really gives this film an edge over similar epics is its beautifully drawn characters. These are much more than ciphers for the plot or historical archetypes, and they have been approached with sympathy and balance so that we get a real insight into motives on all sides. Tony Leung makes an intriguing Zhou Yu, a man seeking balance in his own life but forced to make difficult decisions that threaten everything he loves. His intellectual depth enables him to engage directly with the innovative strategies of the diplomat, who is convincingly played by Takeshi Kaneshiro. Meanwhile, Fengyi Zhang creates a complex Cao Cao, a man whose once noble goals have led him astray, and whose one weakness is his infatuation with Zhou Yu's beautiful wife Xiao Qiao (newcomer Chiling Lin).

Behind the fascinating story of battlefield action and brilliant tactics, much of this film adheres to the ancient Chinese principle of the necessary balance between yin and yang. As Cao Cao is consumed by his own pride and military ambition, and Zhou Yu tries to counter him without falling into the same trap, Xiao Qiao wields a wholly different influence and a not inconsiderable power, even if she spends most of her time writing, tending the sick and making tea. This is not presented as the only option for a woman - Zhou Yu's sister Sun Shangxiang (Wei Zhao) wants to be a soldier, and acquits herself well, though she learns a soldier's lessons in the process - but it is a valued role and it serves as a vital counterpoint to the destruction going on around her.

The battle scenes in this film are spectacular, engaging both the intellect and the gut. The naval battles, in particular, feature technology rarely seen on film. It's humbling to consider that all this took place nearly 2000 years ago, with the Chinese soldiers using gunpowder to spectacular effect - and also having almost 100% literacy - when European culture was primitive. Despite the period, both the action and the characters here seem thoroughly modern and yet not anachronistic. This fits well with Woo's dynamic style. Though he shows a new-found flair for subtle drama, his genius for action is as strong as ever. He brings this slice of history thundering into the present, and you'd be a fool to miss it.

The Film Sufi

 

Twitch (Todd Brown) review  Anita Wong

 

A Nutshell Review  Stefan S, also seen here:  Twitch review

 

Twitch ("The Visitor") review

 

BeyondHollywood.com  Nix

 

The Storyboard  Guo Shao-hua

 

MovieVortex [Cassam Looch]

 

Lunapark6

 

Mediasearch, Australia review  Carmine Pascuzzi

 

ViewLondon (Matthew Turner) review [4/5]

 

John Woo on "Red Cliff" and the rise of Chinawood  Andrew O’Hehir interview from Salon, November 18, 2009

 

Channel 4 Film

 

Variety (Derek Elley) review

 

The view: John Woo's departure from Hollywood is a loss to us all  Danny Leigh from The Guardian, November 20, 2009

 

Independent.co.uk [Nicholas Barber]

 

The Independent (Anthony Quinn) review [3/5]

 

The Daily Telegraph review [3/5]  Tim Robey

 

The Daily Telegraph review [3/5]  Mike McCahill

 

The Irish Times review [3/5]  Donald Clarke

 

DVDBeaver dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]  Gary W. Tooze

 

MANHUNT

China  Hong Kong  (106 mi)  2017  ‘Scope

 

Cinema Scope | Manhunt (John Woo, Hong Kong/China) — Special ...  Leonardo Goi, September 11, 2017

Brace yourselves: after the American sojourn that brought the likes of Face/Off and Mission Impossible 2 and a detour into Chinese historical-blockbuster mode with Red Cliff, John Woo has returned to the Asian police thrillers which earned him global fame with the hilarious, all-out-bonkers and thoroughly enjoyable Manhunt.

Zhang Hanyu stars as Du Qiu, a star lawyer who’s long defended a major Osaka-based pharmaceutical company, and is now ready to move to the States for a new job. But the pharma empire’s boss, fearing Du may reveal the truth behind some of the company’s dodgy experiments, has him framed for murder. After a night out, Du wakes up in his bed next to a dead woman. The police arrest him for murder, but the lawyer somehow manages to escape. With Du on the run, authorities send infallible detective Yamura to hunt him down.

What follows is a thrilling and entertaining chase that reads like a delirious farce and looks like the sort of wonderfully choreographed action film you’d expect from Woo. Based on Juko Nishimura’s novel You Must Cross the River of Wrath, Woo’s script is hard to take seriously, as the characters constantly exchange risible B-movie lines (some of them in English, which only adds to Manhunt‘s farcical aura). There’s a memorable scene in which Yamura has to defuse a bomb whose detonator is strapped around a kid’s belly; as he chooses which wire to cut, he asks the boy, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Response: “A hero”—and lo, Yamura snips the right wire.

But if the screenplay is (knowingly) nutty, Manhunt’s chases are something to marvel at. Whether aboard speedboats through Osaka or inside a country house besieged by armed bikers, Woo’s action scenes jovially parody some of the director’s patented leitmotifs (e.g., the white doves Du and Yamura set free while battling). But while such touches will likely result in old-time fans welcoming Manhunt as a wonderful throwback to the director’s golden years, the film’s unapologetically goofy energy may also help introduce new audiences to the wonders of the Woo Cinematic Universe.

'Manhunt': Venice Review | Reviews | Screen  Jonathan Romney from Screendaily

Intrepid cops, flying glass, mid-air shootouts in balletic slo-mo – not to mention a fair few of the director’s trademark white doves… Manhunt is a John Woo movie like he used to make ‘em, before his US period including Face/Off and Mission Impossible 2, and recent Asian historical diptychs Red Cliff and The Crossing. In fact, Manhunt is Woo’s first Asian police thriller since 1992’s Hard Boiled, the film that consolidated his international auteur status.

Things may not be radically different since the old days; notwithstanding the fact that the setting is Japan rather than Hong Kong, the approach is much the same. Indeed, bar some 21st-century digital trimmings, the film feels very much like Woo’s own knowing pastiche of his innovative 80s-90s period, to which he throws in some jokey, fairly overt nods. Familiar and perhaps even retro though it is, Manhunt is a thoroughly enjoyable full-tilt action lark, which should introduce a new generation to Woo’s patented style.

The film starts briskly with a melancholy type, lawyer Du Qiu (Zhang Hanyu, recently seen in Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall) drifting into a quiet seaside bar where he narrowly misses two seemingly placid women, Dawn and Rain (the latter played by Ha Ji-won) slaughtering a convention of hoods. These hit women later turn out to be working for Du Qiu’s own employer, pharma company boss Sakai (veteran Jun Kunimura, also seen in Hard Boiled).

Sakai isn’t happy about Du Qiu leaving his employ and heading for New York – which may be why the lawyer finds himself framed for the murder of a woman sent by Sakai to dissuade him. Du Qiu has Asano, a crooked police officer, gunning for him, but he has more to fear from honourable and tenacious cop Yamura (Masaharu Fukuyama, currently seen in Hirokazu Koreeda’s The Third Murder).

Very soon, cop and quarry find themselves reluctant allies on the run, along with Mayumi (Qi Wei), a young woman who blames Du Qiu for the death of her fiancé. Eventually the allies get to the heart of a fiendish, slightly Marvel Comics-style ‘human superweapon’ project, with the aid of Rika (Nanami Sakuraba), an ingénue female copper who starts off as goofy comic relief, then proves as tough as the rest.

You can tell that Woo is sending himself up from the start, partly because of the droll meet-cute between Du Qiu and Rain – she falls for him because of their backchat about old films – and partly from the almost farcically generic comic-book style passages of English dialogue (the script is otherwise in Japanese and Mandarin). Zhang and Fukuyama vie to out-butch each other with their terse B-movie delivery of lines like, “There’s only one end for a fugitive – a dead end,” and “I will be back – with the truth.”

If the script defies you to take it seriously, there’s no messing about with the superbly choreographed action, which takes in a motorbike raid on a country mansion, a speedboat chase through Osaka, a clifftop collision with - what else? - a dovecot and a climactic showdown in a pharmaceutical lab that’s this film’s equivalent of the traditional Bond villain lair. Younger fans of the modern actioner may find Manhunt a little old-school, especially in its unabashed romantic heart and flag-waving for the square-jawed good guys. But it’s breezy, handsomely mounted fun that shows that Woo has lost neither his mojo nor his sense of poetry.

John Woo's Manhunt plays like a joyous parody of his action classics ...  Tasha Robinson from The Verge

Film Freak Central Review [Bill Chambers]

MUBI's Notebook: Kelley Dong  September 10, 2017

The Film Stage [C.J. Prince]

Slashfilm [Chris Evangelista]

 

'Manhunt' Review | Hollywood Reporter  Deborah Young

 

Venice Film Review: 'Manhunt' - Variety  Jessica Kiang

 

Manhunt review – John Woo rolls back the years with big pharma ...  Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian

 

RogerEbert.com [Brian Tallerico]

 

Wood, Andrés

 

MACHUCA

Chile  Great Britain  Spain  France  (115 mi)  2004

 

Machuca  Ed Gonzalez from Slant magazine

At once a reaction to Salvador Allende's policies of nationalization and a last hurrah against communism during the tail-end of the Vietnam War, Augusto Pinochet's CIA-backed coup against the Marxist Allende may be one of the United States' most embarrassing blunders on the world political stage. In supplanting Allende, the United States may have protected its economic interests in Chile but it also helped to usher in one of the darkest periods in Chilean history. Though it skimps on historical details, Andrés Wood's wonderful Machuca is nonetheless alive with contemporary resonance. The film's plot more explicitly recalls Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants, but its spiritual kin is Hope and Glory, because Wood, like John Boorman before him, conflates a boy's coming-of-age with a country's bourgeoning social and political upheavals. The film's opening shot represents the calm before the storm: In Santiago de Chile 1973, Gonzalo Infante (Matías Quer) prepares to go to school. It's just like any other day, except when Gonzalo arrives at his Catholic-run school, he and his classmates learn that the leftist Father McEnroe (Ernesto Malbran) will be bringing poor children into the classroom. Soon the sheepish Gonzalo befriends Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mateluna) and together they confront their opposing realities, their shared human consciousness symbolized by the young girl who loves them both. Machuca's poverty speaks for itself (the shit-clogged toilet outside his house; his underwear that poses as swim trunks), and though there's very little violence in the film, there isn't a single frame that doesn't reek of Pinochet's looming 9/11 coup. In this way, the film is more sobering than something like City of God—its rich tapestry of subtle implications, bitter confrontations, and allegorical signs isn't eager to please but nonetheless means to appeal to a universal sense of right and wrong. From Gonzalo's sister's boyfriend intimidating Machuca with nunchucks to a Marxist slogan finally being erased from a wall repeatedly seen throughout the film, it's a testament to the film's power that it can probably be enjoyed and understood with the sound turned off. Next to a shot of Gonzalo riding on his bicycle out of a burning hell (kind of like the poster of the Lone Ranger on his wall), there's no more powerful shot in the film than the sight of a frazzled McEnroe eating the communion wafers at his church, in essence denying God to a roomful of bourgeois ghouls for denying Machuca's people their humanity.

Wood, Natalie – film actress

 

The Official Natalie Wood Website

 

Natalie Wood Style and Beauty Page

 

"Natalie Wood Biography – Yahoo! Movies".

 

ARCHIVES: Natalie Wood's death  various stories and links from The Los Angeles Times

 

From the archives: actress Natalie Wood drowned   The Guardian, 1981

 

" TV Weekend; A Documentary Remembrance of Natalie Wood"  John J. O’Conner from The New York Times, July 8, 1988

 

"I blamed myself for Natalie Wood's death: Robert Wagner on the night his wife disappeared | Mail Online"  Robert Wagner from The Daily Mail, February 19, 2009

 

Authorities reopen probe into Natalie Wood's 1981 drowning death ...  Michael Martinez from CNN News, November 17, 2011

 

Natalie Wood investigation prompted by boat captain's comments  Andrew Blankstein, Richard Winton and Sam Allen from The Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2011

 

Robert Wagner supports inquiry into Natalie Wood's death  Andrew Blankstein, Richard Winton and Sam Allen from The Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2011

 

Natalie Wood's Death Is Being Reinvestigated, Los Angeles Authorities Say  Michael Cieply from The New York Times, November 18, 2011

 

Yacht captain blames Robert Wagner for Natalie Wood's death  The Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2011

 

Natalie Wood: Detectives will interview captain as a first step ...  Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton from The Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2011

 

Natalie Wood Death: Boat Captain Dennis Davern Blames Actor ...  Anthony McCartney from The Huffington Post, November 18, 2011

 

Natalie Wood case reopened after new evidence emerges   Andrew Gumbel and Esther Addley from The Guardian, November 18, 2011

 

Natalie Wood's death to be reinvestigated by LAPD  Ben Child from The Guardian, November 18, 2011

 

"Wagner waited hours to call Coast Guard after Natalie Wood vanished, captain says"  Michael Martinez from CNN News, November 18, 2011

 

Christopher Walken Offered Natalie Wood Death Theory in Past ...  Sophie Schillaci from The Hollywood Reporter, November 18, 2011

 

Natalie Wood May Have Struggled for Hours Before She Died  TMZ, November 18, 2011

 

Natalie Wood Autopsy Report | The Smoking Gun  The Smoking Gun, November 18, 2011

 

Natalie Wood: Photos of a Life Cut Mysteriously Short   Life magazine photos from Slate, November 18, 2011

 

Mystery of the reopened Natalie Wood case - latimes.com 

 

'Leave her there, teach her a lesson': Natalie Wood's sister reveals ...  Rachel Quigley from The Daily Mail, November 19, 2011

 

Natalie Wood's fatal voyage  CBS News, November 19, 2011

 

Natalie Wood: A Hollywood Life in Pictures  People magazine

 

PHOTOS: Natalie Wood | 1938-1981  The Los Angeles Times

 

Images for Natalie Wood

 

Natalie Wood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Wood, Robin – film critic

 

Official Website of CineACTION!

 

Authorship and film criticism in britain and the us in the 1960s ...  Barry Keith Grant profile essay from Film Reference

 

Wapedia - Wiki: Robin Wood (critic)   biography

 

Robin Wood (critic)  biography from Absolute Astronomy

 

Robin Wood (Film Critic) at AllExperts  biography

 

NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Robin Wood (Film Critic)  biography

 

Robin Wood - Alfred Hitchcock Wiki

 

Robin Wood's Top 10 - The Criterion Collection  expanded here:  list

 

Robin Wood Bibliography  Cinemonkey

 

Amazon.com: Ingmar Bergman (Movie Paperbacks) (9780289796696 ...   Ingmar Bergman, by Robin Wood, (144 pages) London: Studio Vista, 1969.

 

Howard Hawks  244 pages, Wayne State University Press, 1972

 

Personal Views: Explorations in Film   444 pages, Wayne State University Press, 2006, (originally 1976) also here:  Wayne State University Press - Personal Views: Explorations in ... 

 

Criticism of Robin Wood by William Van Wert  Robin Wood as Poddleganger, by William Van Wert from Jump Cut, 1977

 

Robin Wood, 'Responsibilities of a Gay Film Critic',  Film Comment, Issue No. 1, January - February, 1978  also seen here:  Responsibilities  (pdf)

 

<product> <article-title>Personal Views: Explorations in Film ...  Jonathan Rosenbaum on Personal Views:  Explorations in Film, from Film Quarterly, Summer 1980

 

Hitchcock’s Films [Revisited]  448 pages, Columbia University Press, revised 1989

 

Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood ...  360 pages, Columbia University Press, 1998

 

What Lies Beneath?  Robin Wood from Senses of Cinema, 2001

 

Christiane Gerblinger, '"Fiery the Angels Fell": America, Regeneration, and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner', Australasian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1, July 2002  essay that examines Wood’s film analysis

 

Joe McElhaney, 'Review of Hitchcock's Films Revisited by Robin Wood, revised edition, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002)', Senses of Cinema, Issue 24, January 2003  Joe McElhaney’s book review

 

Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan-- and beyond - Google Books Result  363 pages, Columbia University Press, 2003

 

"Rio Bravo" (BFI Film Classics): Amazon.co.uk: Robin Wood: Books  88 pages, BFI Publishing, 2003

 

Robin Wood, CineAction  Doug Cummings from Film Journey, December 22, 2003

 

Bill Krohn, 'Friedkin Out', Rouge, 3, 2004

 

Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan… and Beyond (Robin Wood)  Arthur M. Eckstein’s book review from Film International, January 1, 2004

 

Robin Wood, 'Revenge is Sweet: The Bitterness of "Audition"', Film International, Issue 7  Robin Wood from Film International, January 1, 2004

 

Robin Wood, 'Only (Dis)Connect; and Never Relaxez-Vous; or, "I Can’t Sleep"', Film International, Issue 11  Robin Wood from Film International, January 1, 2004

 

Frances Pheasant-Kelly, 'Review of Hitchcock’s Films Revisited: Revised Edition by Robin Wood, New York: Columba University Press, 2002', Scope, Issue 1, February 2005   Frances Pheasant-Kelly book review

 

Robin Wood A descriptive, illustrated bibliography of the work of the noted film critic, Compiled by D. K. Holm and Brad Steven, October 2005  also seen here:  A Robin Wood biography

 

Hidden in plain sight: Robin Wood on Michael Haneke's Cache ...  Robin Wood on Caché, from Artforum, January 1, 2006, also seen here:  Hidden in plain sight: Robin Wood on Michael Haneke's Cache ... 

 

A Life in Film Criticism: Robin Wood at 75  YOURflesh magazine, November 9, 2006, also seen here:  An interview with Robin Wood 

 

In The Company Of Glenn: Robin Wood, le patron  Glenn Kenny from On the Company of Glenn, January 16, 2007

 

Robin Wood, 'Michael Haneke: beyond compromise', CineAction, Summer 2007

 

CineAction's 'A tribute to Robin Wood', CineAction, Winter 2007 

 

(Visual) Notes on Culture: Robin Wood on DIARY OF THE DEAD  Notes on Culture, January 10, 2008

 

Robin Wood, 'Fresh Meat', Film Comment, Volume 44, Issue No. 1, January - February, 2008   essay on George Romero’s Diary of the Dead

 

Film Comment essay  A Better Tomorrow, review of Munyurangabo from Film Comment, March/April 2008

 

Bright Lights After Dark: Robin Wood Retires  C. Jerry Kutner, October 2, 2008

 

I Fear the Worst on a Day Like Tomorrow: Robin Wood on "Taxi Driver"  December 17, 2008

 

Robin Wood, 1931-2009  Glenn Kenny from Some Came Running, December 18, 2009

 

Robert Cashill  Obituary from Between Productions, December 18, 2009

 

Movie City Indie: Report: film critic and scholar Robin Wood has ...  Obituary from Movie City Indie, December 18, 2009

 

Robin Wood: February 23rd, 1931 — December 18th, 2009  Keith Uhlich from The House Next Door. December 19, 2009

 

Film Studies For Free: Crossing the Wild River: Robin Wood, 1931-2009  Obituary from Film Studies for Free, December 19, 2009

 

Robin Wood, 1931 - 2009  David Hudson from The Auteurs, December 19, 2009

 

Robin Wood 1931-2009 - RevLeft  Joseph McBride from RevLeft, December 19, 2009

 

A conversation with film critic Robin Wood  David Walsh interview from the World Socialist Web Site, October 16, 2000

 

An interview with Robin Wood  Interview by Armen Svadjian from YOURflesh magazine, November 9, 2006

 

Robin Wood (critic) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Wood, Sam

 

BEYOND THE ROCKS

USA  (85 mi)  1922 

 

Beyond the Rocks  Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

It goes without saying that the discovery and restoration of the 1922 Gloria Swanson/Rudolph Valentino melodrama Beyond the Rocks is a cause for celebration. As Martin Scorsese notes in an accompanying introduction, "Every film found restores another piece of our collective memory, our sense of our past, and our history," a statement that should hold true across the cinema spectrum regardless of the quality of the work in question. Certainly to this latter end, Beyond the Rocks is no masterpiece. After a rousing opening two reels (in which Swanson's doe-eyed Theodora Fitzgerald is twice rescued from cliffhanging peril by Valentino's dashing Lord Bracondale) the film settles into a rather static and dull rhythm dictated by a subdued pile-up of plot contrivances and by the leads' distinct lack of hearts-afire chemistry. Surprising that the impossible love between Theodora and Bracondale is so dispassionate considering the actors involved (can this be the same woman who later let loose with a Martyr Mary's display of mother-love in The Trespasser and the same man who made a female populace swoon with Son of the Sheik?)

It wouldn't be the first time that two extreme movie personalities cancelled each other out; ultimately, the best moments of Beyond the Rocks are those that isolate the actors within their own negative space, emphasizing silent cinema's spiritual power through gesture and close-up (Swanson projects outwards, her liveliness simultaneously repelling and attracting the audience, while Valentino draws us closer into envious contemplation—how appropriate that their characters' love revolves around a narcissus flower.) It is these intimate, isolationist sequences that offset Beyond the Rocks' soggy, submissive melodrama and act as a pressure-cooker undercurrent that explodes in the film's lunatic climax, which finds Theodora's cuckolded husband Josiah (Robert Bolder) fending off a gaggle of rampaging North African mercenaries, but not before entertaining a hilarious revenge fantasy against his unfaithful wife that effectively raises the film's triangle of self-love and loathing into the realm of myth.

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

USA  (96 mi)  1935  d:  Sam Wood and (uncredited) Edmund Goulding

 

Time Out review

The Marx Brothers at the turning point, just before their gradual descent into mediocrity at the hands of MGM, who wanted their comedy to be rationed and rationalised. It's a top budget job, opulent and meticulous, with its fair share of vices: this is the first Marx Brothers film where you really feel like strangling the romantic leads. But it has even more virtues: there's no Zeppo, the script's generally great (Kaufman and Ryskind), Dumont's completely great, and the Brothers get to perform some of their most irresistible routines - the stateroom scene and all.

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review  Ben Stephens

The highest grossing (and reportedly Groucho’s favorite) of all the brothers’ movies, A Night at the Opera marked something of a turning point for the Marxes. After their switch from Paramount to MGM, producer Irving Thalberg (perhaps wisely) wanted to find a way to contain some of the scattershot mania that had characterized the brothers’ earlier films.    

Under the direction of the appropriately named Sam Wood, this film does indeed feel more ordered than previous fare such as Animal Crackers and Horse Feathers, and this is both its chief strength and its chief weakness. The free-form spontaneity on display in those earlier films did indeed give them an unfocused, episodic feel (similar to the feel of early Woody Allen movies), but they also had an unpredictability and freshness that is missing in the later work. This film stands as a stepping stone – there is still much to enjoy, but plodding formula is looming large on the horizon.   

Given that so much of the Marx humor relies on knocking the pompous off their perches and down to size, the idea of turning them loose in an opera house seems like a perfect recipe for comedy (especially with the somewhat leaden Zeppo out of the picture), and indeed it is. In an opening scene that runs like a comic equivalent of the explosion-heavy pre-credits sequences that would later come to characterize the James Bond franchise, Groucho lounges in a fancy restaurant, alternately wooing and insulting his perennial foil, the divinely unflappable Margaret Dumont. Both performers are at the very top of their game in this scene. As always, Groucho knows exactly how far he can go, insulting Dumont into a haughty sulk before he has to jump to one knee and reel her back in with his tried and true “Can’t you see what I’m telling you? I love you!” routine.   

After similarly characteristic introductions to Harpo and Chico, the film runs into its real problem: the love story. This is an element that was always present in the Marxes material to a certain degree, but one that began to move into the foreground around this period, presumably to ‘structure’ the film and increase its broad audience appeal. Like all commercially-oriented artistic compromises, this one causes the material to fall between two stools; the film is allowed neither to sustain its comic momentum due to the romantic interruptions, nor to flesh out its romantic leads sufficiently due to the comedy. This may perhaps be a generational difference, but it is hard to believe that even 1930s audiences went to see a Marx brothers movie hoping to see two drippy but good-looking youngsters endlessly crooning at each other. The youngsters in this case are Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle, and every minute that they are on screen is more or less unbearable. Curly of hair and chiseled of jaw, Jones plays an ambitious but unknown Italian opera singer, and Carlisle is his equally ambitious and equally unknown singer girlfriend.   

The ever-scheming Chico becomes Jones’s agent and promises to help him find his big break. Enter Groucho, who is tangentially connected to the New York opera scene, and he and Chico proceed to enter into one of the funniest scenes in the whole Marx canon: the ‘party of the first part’ scene in which they write up Jones’s contract. Despite the fact that he is most commonly paired with Harpo, many of Chico’s funniest scenes are with Groucho. There is something very brotherly about the way the two of them proceed haltingly through surreal conversations such as this one. Looking up occasionally to see if the other is still with them, they pit non-sequitur against non-sequitur in a game of surrealist ‘chicken’, waiting for the other to blink first. They tear clause after clause from the contract, often for little or no reason, until each is left with a tiny strip of paper on which to sign. This scene, with its nonsensical deconstruction of not only the language but the very fabric of formality could be the most sublime embodiment of the benevolent anarchy of Marx Brothers.   

The film has several other standout scenes, such as one aboard an ocean liner, in which Groucho crams a trunk the size of a refrigerator into the smallest state room on the boat (during which process he asks the porter, “Wouldn’t it be easier just to put the state room in the trunk?”) and then crams brother after friend after maid after manicurist into the room until it is a seething mass of arms and legs. Also worthy of special note is the scene in which Chico entertains a group of children with an impromptu piano recital that proves once and for all that, in his hands, the piano is a very funny instrument indeed.   

Pacing problems do mar the comedy on occasion, with long silences and reaction cutaways that give the distinct feeling of being elbowed in the ribs by the film’s editor. The climactic sequence in the opera house has an enjoyable circus feel to it (fans of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon may well be surprised to see that Harpo Marx was running on wires up vertical surfaces twenty years before Ang Lee was even born.) Aside from an extended final duet that leaves viewers wondering if the director genuinely believes that he was making an Allan Jones/Kitty Carlisle movie all along, this is a great film; a fascinating and hilarious exercise in organized chaos.

User comments (Page 2) from imdb Author: theowinthrop from United States

The Marx Brothers were set adrift by Paramount in 1933 after making arguably their best satiric comedy DUCK SOUP. For two years they rarely worked together (an exception was a briefly heard radio show called FLYWHEEL, SHYSTER, AND FLYWHEEL about crooked lawyers which had Groucho and Chico - unfortunately, like their silent film HUMORISK, the recordings of the show no longer exist*). Zeppo left the team, to pursue a career as a movie agent. Chico and Harpo did some band touring.

[*The scrips have survived, and been published.]

Then Chico made a valuable contact - he played cards with Irving Thalberg, who was almost as powerful a figure at MGM as Louis B. Mayer. Thalberg decided to sign the brothers to a contract where he'd be their producer. The contract was a unique one - it promised the brothers a percentage of the gross of the first two films, which was a rarity in Hollywood acting contracts. The contract also enabled the brothers to perform their material from the film live on stage. This enabled them to hone material as they did in vaudeville and on Broadway. They were lucky in the writers for this first film (George S. Kaufman, Morris Ryskine, and Al Boasberg). And they had a good cast, including their old "female" Marx Brother Margaret Dumont.

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA has (since it appeared in 1935) been accepted as one of the best Marx vehicles, and ties with DUCK SOUP as their supreme work. It's detractors say that it had too many points that would bring down the Brothers later films after A DAY AT THE RACES, such as the love story that is tied to the plot and the fact that the brothers are frequently brought to a low point from which to rise with all their power against their opponents. The latter seemed to "humanize" them too much. Actually the love stories had been part of their movies since THE COCONUTS, and in HORSE FEATHERS and DUCK SOUP the villains did momentarily trounce the brothers. As for humanizing the brothers, their antics at the opera here and the race track in A DAY AT THE RACES are so devious and strenuous you find them comic supermen in both films. It is the tragedy of the post 1938 years (after ROOM SERVICE) that Mayer simply did not care to help them as Thalberg had done.

The plot of the film is how Otis P. Driftwood (Groucho), an agent for Mrs. Claypool (Dumont) (trying to make a splash in society) arranges to have her meet Herman Gottlieb (Ruman), the head of the Metropolitan Opera, while they are in Italy. Ruman is willing to have Dumont finance the season of the Met, and is trying to sign up one Rodolfo Lasspari (Walter Woolf King) as his new tenor. King is a good tenor, but an egotist and bully, constantly beating his servant Tomasso (Harpo). He has been trying to get his soprano Rosa Castaldi (Kitty Carlisle) to take an interest in him on a social basis. But Rosa is in love with a junior tenor in the chorus, Ricardo Baroni (Allan Jones). Ricardo's friend Fiorello (Chico) is his agent, and manages to hoodwink Driftwood into contracting to get Ricardo to be the lead tenor at the Met, while Gottlieb manages to get a contract with Lasspari. The plot follows how the characters get to America by ocean liner (Ricardo, Fiorello, and Tomasso as stowaways), how the stowaways and Driftwood run afoul of the law by a public hoax, how Driftwood and Rosa both lose their positions at the Opera, and how the Marxes get their revenge on Gottlieb, the New York Police, and Lasspari in the concluding twenty minutes of the film.

Pauline Kael once described the conclusion as: "The Brothers do to IL TROVATORI what should be done to Il TROVATORI." It is a worthy target as far as popular operas go. Verdi's music is wonderful as ever in that opera, but the storyline is so complicated and ridiculous (about a missing nobleman's son, and the rivalry of the surviving son with a gypsy for the love of the heroine) that people tend not to consider it among their favorite Verdi operas (not like, say AIDA or RIGOLETTO). It's improbable plot involving stolen children and gypsies is shown for what it is when (in demolishing the production) Harpo causes various backdrops to rise and fall, including a pushcart on an American street and a battleship's gun turret to fall behind the gypsy woman's campfire! You just cannot take it seriously.

The conclusion is wonderful, but so is the double talk of the contract negotiations between Groucho and Chico (later repeated with Ruman), the great stateroom sequence (written by Al Boasberg), the City Hall greeting by the Mayor to the three Russian aviators, and the wonderful almost surreal sequence where Police Sgt. Hennesey (Robert Emmett O'Connor) goes between two rooms and a fire escape to find beds flying from one to another, and to find an old woman and a man with a strange beard and mustache reading a paper at the end (Harpo and Groucho - Chico pretending to be a chair underneath Harpo)- believing he has managed to enter the wrong apartment! The singing by all three leads (King also had a decent voice) is fine, with Jones and Carlisle given a first rate tune ("Alone") for their duet in the departure sequence. Jones has a decent follow-up with "Cosi, Cosa", turned into a major production with Harpo, Chico, and the "immigrant" passengers singing and dancing to it.

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA remains a first rate comic masterpiece, and a fine addition to the Marx Brothers' work in general.

The Greatest Films (Tim Dirks) recommendation [spoilers]

 

A Night at the Opera - TCM.com  Rob Nixon

 

Film as Art [Danél Griffin]

 

moviediva

 

THE MARX BROTHERS COLLECTION - DVD  Walter Chaw

 

eFilmCritic.com (M.P. Bartley) review [5/5]

 

CultureCartel.com (John Nesbit) review [5/5]

 

Crazy for Cinema

 

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jon Danziger) dvd review  The Marx Brothers Collection

 

DVD Talk (John Sinnott) dvd review [4/5]   The Marx Brothers Collection

 

DVD Verdict (Patrick Naugle) dvd review   The Marx Brothers Collection

 

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review   The Marx Brothers Collection

 

A Night at the Opera (1935) - Home Video Reviews - TCM.com  Jeremy Arnold, The Marx Brothers Collection

 

Edinburgh U Film Society (Ben Stephens) review

 

Decent Films - faith on film [Steven D. Greydanus]

 

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

 

Marx Brothers Night at the Opera Treasury

 

Guardian/Observer review

 

The New York Times (Andre Sennwald) review

 

DVDBeaver.com [Henrik Sylow]

 

A Night at the Opera (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Groucho's greatest line: "A night at the opera" (1935)  (1:46)

 

A DAY AT THE RACES

USA  (111 mi)  1937  d:  Sam Wood

 

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

 

Who's dat man! Harpo Fucking Marx, laying the groundwork for Jimi Hendrix and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, playing a piano/harp, and leadin' the barn dance! Groucho has the most flawless delivery, and the telephone scene is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Our early civil rights champions rock the fascists with "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm!" Maureen O' Sullivan is so sweet. That song, that dance, that timing, those walks and face that... Vaudeville.

 

Time Out review

The Brothers' second film for MGM should be retitled 'A Week at the Races' at least: it's overlong, overweight, overplotted. Even the comedy scenes are often played to excess, with too much raucous slapstick (like Harpo's destruction of Chico's piano). The plot formula established in Opera is repeated, but the script and characterisations are shallow: who'd have thought to find the Brothers fighting to save a sanatorium when there's a nice racetrack alongside? Still, worth seeing for its good stretches; you can always stock up with refreshments when anyone starts singing.

User comments (Page 5) Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico

I think this may have been their second picture for MGM, made under Thalberg, who died during filming. It was a personal loss to the Marx Brothers because Irving Thalberg was a personal friend as well as a tasteful if commercial executive. It didn't damage their performance.

The MGM films don't show the reckless antinomian impulses of their earlier Paramount films but they have better production values and what they lack in anarchy they make up for in structure. This is a very funny movie if you're in the mood for this kind of comedy.

It has some classic set pieces and some memorable Marx-Brothers lines. I'll just mention a few in passing, without getting into the story because the story, as usual, doesn't amount to much and ends in a silly horse race.

1. The scene involving Harpo as a peanut vendor and Edgar Buchanan as a lemonade stand attendant. Chico shows up and they begin harassing Buchanan. There is a silent sequence involving the switching of dropped hats in front of the peanut stand. I can NOT watch it without cracking up. The encounters end with Harpo dunking his feet in Buchanan's vat of lemonade. "Pea -- NUTS, to you."

2. The medical examination of Margaret Dumont by Groucho, a veterinarian posing as a doctor, under the scrutiny of two real doctors, including a skeptical Sig Rumann. The farcical goings on destroy the set when they wind up with the overhead sprinklers turned on. "Are you MAD?" Dumont screams. "No, we're not mad, just terribly hurt," Groucho mutters and the brothers exit the examining room on horseback.

3. "All God's Children Got Rhythm." It takes place in an African-American shanty town, a musical number in which the darkies are led around by Harpo playing a pennywhistle. Yes, it's racist, but the performances by the black cast can't be faulted. (They include a young Dorothy Dandridge.) The jitterbug numbers are brief but stunning. The three couples are really excellent dancers, and it's not just a matter of radiating some inner agency. Sometimes a dancer pauses, holding a pose for a beat, the way Fred Astaire (but not Gene Kelly) did. Their timing is exquisite. The troupe we see are "Whitey's Lindy Hoppers," organized in the mid-30s by the head bouncer at the Savoy Ballroom in New York. "Who dat man?"

4. Finally, I won't really try to describe the scene in which Groucho tries to seduce the blond Thelma Todd and is constantly interrupted by Chico and Harpo in various disguises, except to note that when Todd enters Groucho's hotel room, she hands him her coat. "I always take the wrap," he says, throwing it on the floor. "Thank you," says Todd. "Thank YOU!" (Can't help chuckling as I think about it.)

See it if you can.

A Day at the Races - TCM.com  Deborah Looney

Before A Night at the Opera (1935) had even hit the theaters, writers were already at work on a script for MGM's second Marx Brothers film. But it would take half a dozen writers over a year and a half and eighteen different scripts before Irving Thalberg, the head of production at MGM, would give A Day at the Races (1937) the go-ahead. Scriptwriter George Seaton recalls the process they went through, "Mr. Thalberg was most kind and he would say, 'I think this script is a good one fellas. Now I'll tell you what to do: Start over again.' He would instruct us to 'save this scene' or 'save this character' and we worked and we worked."

In the final version of A Day at the Races, Groucho, Harpo, and Chico rush to save the Standish Sanitarium from bankruptcy. Unless the hospital's owner, Judy Standish (played by Maureen O'Sullivan, best known as Jane in the Tarzan films), can pay the mortgage, she will have to sell it to Mr. Morgan (Douglass Dumbrille). Morgan owns the local racetrack and wants to turn the hospital into a casino. Groucho plays Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, a veterinarian who poses as a medical doctor to try to get money for the hospital from the wealthy Mrs. Upjohn (Margaret Dumont). Harpo plays a jockey and Chico is a racing tipster; both are friends of Judy's. Author Juliette Friedgen states, "As in all of the Marx Brothers films, the gags in A Day at the Races are the most important things, not the believability of the plot."

A Day at the Races faced a few legal problems. The original name for Groucho's character was Dr. Quackenbush. Everyone agreed it was a ridiculous name for a doctor, but then they discovered thirty-seven actual Dr. Quackenbushes in the United States. Since most of them were eager to sue if their name was used, Groucho's character was changed to Hackenbush. At first Groucho was disappointed in the name change, but he grew to love Hackenbush so much that he even signed it to letters.

Another lawsuit actually made it to court. A woman once sent Groucho a note asking, "Wouldn't it be funny if you three nuts ran a hospital?" Since the plot of A Day at the Races has Groucho running a hospital, the woman sued MGM for plagiarism. The scriptwriters had to testify and go through all eighteen scripts explaining the evolution of the story.

As with A Night at the Opera, the Marx Brothers followed Thalberg's suggestion and went on a cross-country road show in support of A Day at the Races. This gave the brothers the opportunity to see how audiences would react to comedy sequences they were planning for the film. Each week the writers focused on a different scene by changing the wording to see what got the best reaction from the audience. George Seaton said, "by the time we got back to the studio after six or eight weeks on the road we could take an average and know exactly how many seconds a laugh would last. In this way, Sam Wood in directing or editing could cut to a reaction shot until a laugh died down so that the audience wouldn't miss the next line."

Less than two weeks after filming began on A Day at the Races, 37-year-old Irving Thalberg died of pneumonia. According to Joe Adamson in Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo; A History of the Marx Brothers and a Satire on the Rest of the World, "It was a big blow not only to the Day at the Races company, not only to the whole Irving Thalberg production unit, not only to the entire MGM studio, but to everybody who had ever had anything to do with making a movie. Hollywood was full of people who either respected him professionally or felt very close to him personally, or both." Thalberg had already approved the story for A Day at the Races before his death, but many believe the film didn't live up to A Night at the Opera because Thalberg wasn't there to make daily decisions during filming. Years later, Groucho admitted, "After Thalberg's death, my interest in the movies waned...The fun had gone out of filmmaking." Even without Thalberg's presence, A Day at the Races earned four million dollars at the box office, a record for the Marx Brothers.

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jon Danziger) dvd review

And they're off! This second Marx Brothers picture at MGM, the last one under the auspices of Irving Thalberg, is another instance of the boys at their best. It may not shine quite as brilliantly as its predecessor, A Night at the Opera, but it still works very well, includes some of the funniest set pieces that the Marxes ever put on film, and has weathered the years as one of the daffiest film comedies of all time.

The picture very much follows the template established by A Night at the Opera, in plopping Groucho, Chico, and Harpo down into what, on paper, sounds like a fairly conventional melodrama. Here our young heroine Judy (Maureen O'Sullivan) is up to her eyeballs in debt, and is going to lose the family business, the Standish Sanitarium, to greedy bankers, who want to turn the place into a casino. Judy's beloved, Gil (Allan Jones), has bought a racehorse, which he intends to run at the track nearby, collect great pots of cash in winnings, and tell Judy's debtors where they can go. It's just about the oldest possible set-up, with the Snidely Whiplash figure preparing to tie the young maiden to the train tracks, or thundering at her, "You must pay the rent!"

Of course, that's just the frame—what makes the movie as pretty as a picture is that the terrible trio are in the foreground. Despite its title, most of the film doesn't in fact take place at the track; we spend the bulk of our time at the sanitarium, which is not an insane asylum, but more like a spa for the worried well, or the Very, Very Nervous. The guests there, rather like in The Magic Mountain, have come to take the cure; among them is, shockingly, Margaret Dumont, playing the rich and widowed Mrs. Upjohn. (You cannot fathom my pride at analogizing a Marx Brothers movie to Thomas Mann.) Dissatisfied with the Standish faculty, Mrs. U insists that only one doctor can cure what ails her—the famous Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush, on whom she clearly harbors a crush. The joke is that not only is the good doctor played by Groucho, but that his specialty is quadrupeds—he's a veterinarian. Helping out around the hospital is a flunky with a felt hat and an absurd Italian accent; he's called Tony, and of course it's Chico. And doing what he can to ride to glory nearby is Stuffy the jockey—i.e., Harpo.

The story is certainly serviceable, but the stellar bits are the comic set pieces, the best of which may be Chico and Groucho at the track, with the former shaking down the latter, ostensibly providing Groucho with tips on the next race. But equally hilarious are the proliferation of Dr. Steinbergs when it's time to examine Mme. Dumont, or Groucho dancing with the rich widow while simultaneously trying to put the moves on a slinky young thing across the floor. Also, Harpo and Chico play the silliest game of charades in film history. The movie also has some of the best one-liners in the Marx canon—e.g., when Groucho is asked: "Are you a man or a mouse?" "You put a piece of cheese down there and find out."

Director Sam Wood must have felt like he had to contribute something, so we get the occasional gratuitous close-up, of, say, Harpo's hands on the harp; and the film sometimes seems a bit askew, with a couple of old-style musical numbers plopped in for no good reason. One features a row of chorus girls in diaphanous gowns; another features Harpo as a Gabriel of sorts, leading the Crinoline Chorus, an African-American troupe playing the locals, in a whiz-bang jazz number. (The unfortunate coda to this is the one unpleasant moment, in which the brothers hide from the bad guys by putting on blackface, talking and acting in the worst stereotypical manner in a "hilarious" effort to blend in.)

But it's well worth tolerating just a modicum of unfortunate moments to enjoy the film, which climaxes in the inevitable horserace. Seabiscuit obsessives may want to have a look at this, as well, for these sequences were shot on location at Santa Anita, perhaps the most beautiful racetrack in America.

The Greatest Films (Tim Dirks) recommendation [spoilers]

 

THE MARX BROTHERS COLLECTION - DVD  Walter Chaw

 

Crazy for Cinema (Lisa Skrzyniarz) review

 

DVD Talk (John Sinnott) dvd review [4/5]  The Marx Brothers Collection

 

DVD Verdict (Dan Mancini) dvd review  The Marx Brothers Collection

 

A Day at the Races (1937) - Home Video Reviews - TCM.com  Jeremy Arnold, The Marx Brothers Collection

 

Guardian/Observer review

 

DVDBeaver.com [Henrik Sylow]

 

Harpo Marx plays Rachmaninov  (1:42)  A Day at the Races on YouTube

 

Marx Brothers A Day At The Races  (6:54)

 

Woolf, Aaron

 

KING CORN                                                             C+                   78

USA  (88 mi)  2007

 

An all too friendly look at the effects of corn in our diets, a film that takes great pains not to offend anyone, putting as cheerful a face on the subject as could possibly be imagined, which has the effect of undermining the seriousness of its own message.  The filmmaker follows two college friends from Boston who are concerned about such high concentrations of corn found in their hair follicles during a nutritional exam by a physician, so they both move temporarily to the small town of Greene, Iowa, population 1015, to examine the overall effects of growing just one acre of corn in the heart of Midwest corn country.  Much of this seems the result of reading Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of many who contributed their thoughts on camera to this film, but these kids demonstrate a genuine curiosity, not the least of which is discovering they both had great grandfathers who originated in that small Iowa county.  After getting permission to grow one acre in an endless landscape of nothing but rows of corn, I expected to hear how these kids were the butt of the town’s jokes, but that never materialized, or it was cut out, as the town welcomed these kids like they were all part of some high school science project.     

 

It’s not just cars that run on corn ethanol.  At one point, both walk down the aisle of a grocery store checking the food content of labels and discover high fructose corn syrup is listed on every single product in the entire aisle, which brings to mind words from the Talking Heads song “And you may ask yourself – Well…how did I get here?”  Without even realizing it, a product with absolutely no nutritional value has become one of the biggest staples of the American diet, from corn starch, corn oil and corn syrup, all key ingredients in prepared foods, are mixed into chicken and cattle feed so it’s included in meat products, frozen yogurt, salad dressings, pasta sauce, condiments, snack foods, gum, toothpaste, soft drinks, beer, vitamins, and nearly every sweetener, contributing to record levels of obesity and diabetes in this country.  Corn feed is used to fatten up livestock before they are slaughtered, so it’s having the same effect of fattening up the American population.  What’s the overriding cause behind this change, as corn sweeteners were never used prior to 1970?  Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, a man who was run out of office in the 1970’s for making tasteless, racist jokes, later pleading guilty to tax evasion (see:  Earl Butz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), facts that were conveniently absent from the film, was identified as the man responsible for the wholesale changes in agriculture policy in America, developing a policy that includes government corn subsidies with added incentives to grow more.  This in effect makes growing unprofitable crops profitable to farmers, as the government will make it worth their while if they can grow enough.  In effect, it is driving small farmers out of business, as farming and food ownership have become monopolized by corporate conglomerates that produce on a massive scale, a fact barely touched upon in this film.  We are seeing the effects of their workmanship on the grocery store shelves.  The intended Wal-Mart effect is to drive prices down so food is less expensive than anytime in history, but at what price? 

 

What the kids did do was learn how to plant corn, starting with ammonia fertilizer which increases bushel growth something like 4 times, and with the help of giant tractor equipment, they were done planting in less than twenty minutes.  Then they sat back and watched their corn grow.  These kids tried to go to a fructose processing factory but were told cameras were not allowed, so they filmed the PR representative who spoke of the glories of corn sweeteners.  They even spoke to Earl Butz, now age 98 in a wheelchair, who sugar coated the beauty of such low food prices, calling it a miraculous improvement from all previous generations.  But their research led them to discover that they were growing a near inedible food product, that in order to increase growth, all nutritional value has been bred out of the corn, that 70% of the corn crop is used as sweeteners in soft drinks alone.  There is literally nothing good nutritionally that has come from this increased productivity in corn.  In the end it was a 9-month project, where these kids were undecided what to do with their harvested corn, as it appeared there were no good alternatives.  Local farmers agreed that they grow it to sell it, not to eat it themselves.  In the end, families with a history of multi-generations in the farming business are getting out, as they’re not really helping feed anyone anymore, they’re simply selling a product, which doesn’t have the same sense of moral worth about it, like providing the reasons to get up at the crack of dawn, to feed and take care of their farm animals, to tend to their crops, as nowadays it’s nearly all mechanized.  The dehumanization of the food industry has become one of the most common targets of documentaries these days, as they themselves are cheap to make, and information easily flows through statistics and charts and proven facts, but these kids hardly took this issue to task, and besides one 98-year old man, think of feeble Charlton Heston in Michael Moore’s BOWLING FOR COLOMBINE (2002), they never really got through the doorways of the people responsible for this human catastrophe in the making.       

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis conceived this documentary and appear onscreen as tour guides and guinea pigs, much like Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock. Though their onscreen personality is considerably less, and they seem more interested in making jokes and messing around, their reporting is still fascinating, and King Corn becomes an indispensable supplement to Spurlock's Super Size Me (2004). By coincidence, Boston friends Cheney and Ellis both had great-grandfathers living in the same small Iowa farming community. When a doctor tells them that their hair has high amounts of corn residue, they set out to discover why. They do so by planting their own acre of corn and attempting to trace where it all goes. The modern growing process is horrifying enough; apparently, the finished crop is inedible until it's processed. But from there, it goes to feed cattle and gets turned into sweetener. Essentially it's in everything we eat, or at least every form of junk food. Amusingly, the film forgoes fancy graphics or animation; it uses toys and magic markers to illustrate its points. The film mourns the loss of real farming and real food in favor of higher output and greater profits, but thankfully, because of our heroes' lackadaisical approach, King Corn doesn't have a hint of self-righteousness. Every so often, Cheney and Ellis give a shrug and order another cheeseburger. But viewers may come away with an entirely different conclusion.

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir]

A deceptively intelligent new entry in the regular-Joe documentary genre, "King Corn" follows two recent Yale graduates as they "return" to the rural county in Iowa where (by coincidence) both of them have ancestral roots. Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis meet some distant relatives, but also decide to grow a single acre of corn, the Hawkeye State's signature crop, and then follow it as far into the food chain as they can. Cheney and Ellis are a virtually indistinguishable pair of post-fraternity fellows in backward Red Sox caps, but the movie they made with director (and Ellis' cousin) Aaron Woolf is a chilling one.

Propped up by irrational subsidies and massive doses of fertilizer and herbicide, Midwestern corn production reaches new highs almost every year. Most of the golden grain is not going to wholesome summertime dinners but rather into the production of cattle feed and high-fructose corn syrup for soft drinks and other sweetened products. Corn is ubiquitous in the American diet even if you think you're not eating it, and the deranged overproduction of corn instituted in the Nixon era has directly contributed to epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes. Thankfully, this information arrives via a graceful and frequently humorous film that captures the idiosyncrasies of its characters and never hectors.

Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips)

A breezy diary from a pair of first-time farmers, as well as a wry rebuke to a nation devoted to eating cheaply but not necessarily well, “King Corn” makes its points without much finger-wagging. Like “Super Size Me” and “Fast Food Nation,” it will not make you want to rush out and order a hamburger, at least a conventional burger processed from corn-fed cows. It will, however, get you thinking about all that corn, and why such a low-nutrition, high-subsidy crop has become so ubiquitous in the American diet.

The film was shot in 2004 and 2005 and details the month-by-month heartland odyssey of Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, two college pals who relocated for a growing season to Greene, a northern Iowa town of 1,015. Their mission was to grow a single acre of corn and then track the yield’s final destination, whether as the source of high-fructose corn syrup or cattle feed. Part of the fun here is in seeing a couple of newbies trying a new line of work on a tiny scale. As they learn about government subsidies and ammonia fertilizer and how many minutes it takes to plant an acre’s worth of seed (18 minutes for 31,000 seeds, if you have the right equipment), Cheney and Ellis learn also about their ancestors’ way of life. By improbable coincidence both men had great-grandfathers who lived and worked in the same Iowa county.

Besides the footage of a very funny homegrown attempt to concoct corn syrup in an ordinary kitchen, the creepiest thing in “King Corn” is a scene in which a hole bored into a living cow’s stomach reveals the ungodly fattiness of a lifelong corn-fed diet. It’s not just the feedlot residents who are suffering. One New York cabby says on camera that after cutting out high-fructose corn syrup-flavored soda, he lost nearly 100 pounds. A Brooklyn doctor at one point sums it all up: “We subsidize the Happy Meals but we don’t subsidize the healthy ones.”

You Are What You Eat   Bunny Crumpacker, a book review of The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan for the Washington Post, April 9, 2006

Most of us are at a great distance from our food. I don't mean that we live "twelve miles from a lemon," as English wit Sydney Smith said about a home in Yorkshire. I mean that our food bears little resemblance to its natural substance. Hamburger never mooed; spaghetti grows on the pasta tree; baby carrots come from a pink and blue nursery. Still, we worry about our meals -- from calories to carbs, from heart-healthy to brain food. And we prefer our food to be "natural," as long as natural doesn't involve real.

In The Omnivore's Dilemma , Michael Pollan writes about how our food is grown -- what it is, in fact, that we are eating. The book is really three in one: The first section discusses industrial farming; the second, organic food, both as big business and on a relatively small farm; and the third, what it is like to hunt and gather food for oneself. And each section culminates in a meal -- a cheeseburger and fries from McDonald's; roast chicken, vegetables and a salad from Whole Foods; and grilled chicken, corn and a chocolate soufflé (made with fresh eggs) from a sustainable farm; and, finally, mushrooms and pork, foraged from the wild.

The first section is a wake-up call for anyone who has ever been hungry. In the United States, Pollan makes clear, we're mostly fed by two things: corn and oil. We may not sit down to bowls of yummy petroleum, but almost everything we eat has used enormous amounts of fossil fuels to get to our tables. Oil products are part of the fertilizers that feed plants, the pesticides that keep insects away from them, the fuels used by the trains and trucks that transport them across the country, and the packaging in which they're wrapped. We're addicted to oil, and we really like to eat.

Oil underlines Pollan's story about agribusiness, but corn is its focus. American cattle fatten on corn. Corn also feeds poultry, pigs and sheep, even farmed fish. But that's just the beginning. In addition to dairy products from corn-fed cows and eggs from corn-fed chickens, corn starch, corn oil and corn syrup make up key ingredients in prepared foods. High-fructose corn syrup sweetens everything from juice to toothpaste. Even the alcohol in beer is corn-based. Corn is in everything from frozen yogurt to ketchup, from mayonnaise and mustard to hot dogs and bologna, from salad dressings to vitamin pills. "Tell me what you eat," said the French gastronomist Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "and I will tell you what you are." We're corn.

Each bushel of industrial corn grown, Pollan notes, uses the equivalent of up to a third of a gallon of oil. Some of the oil products evaporate and acidify rain; some seep into the water table; some wash into rivers, affecting drinking water and poisoning marine ecosystems. The industrial logic also means vast farms that grow only corn. When the price of corn drops, the solution, the farmer hopes, is to plant more corn for next year. The paradoxical result? While farmers earn less, there's an over-supply of cheap corn, and that means finding ever more ways to use it up.

Is eating all this corn good for us? Who knows? We think we've tamed nature, but we're just beginning to learn about all that we don't yet know. Ships were once provided with plenty of food, but sailors got scurvy because they needed vitamin C. We're sailing on the same sea, thinking we're eating well but still discovering nutrients in our food that we hadn't known were there -- that we don't yet know we need.

We've lost touch with the natural loops of farming, in which livestock and crops are connected in mutually beneficial circles. Pollan discusses the alternatives to industrial farming, but these two long (and occasionally self-indulgent) sections lack the focus and intensity -- the anger beneath the surface -- of the first. He spends a week at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley, a farm that works with nature, rather than despite it. Salatin calls himself a grass farmer, though his farm produces cows, chickens, eggs and corn. But everything begins with the grass: The cows nibble at it at the precise moment when it's at its sweetest and are moved from pasture to pasture to keep the grass at its best height. Their droppings fertilize the grass, and the cycle is under way. There's a kind of lyrical symmetry to everything that happens on this farm. Even the final slaughtering of chickens is done quickly and humanely, in the open air. It isn't pleasant, but compared to the way cattle are fattened and slaughtered in meat industry feedlots and slaughterhouses, it is remarkably reasonable.

We needn't learn how to shoot our own pigs, as Pollan does; there's hope in other ways -- farmers' markets, the Slow Food movement, restaurants supplied by local farms. To Pollan, the omnivore's dilemma is twofold: what we choose to eat ("What should we have for dinner?" he asks in the opening sentence of his book) and how we let that food be produced. His book is an eater's manifesto, and he touches on a vast array of subjects, from food fads and taboos to our avoidance of not only our food's animality, but also our own. Along the way, he is alert to his own emotions and thoughts, to see how they affect what he does and what he eats, to learn more and to explain what he knows. His approach is steeped in honesty and self-awareness. His cause is just, his thinking is clear, and his writing is compelling.

Be careful of your dinner!

Amazon.com: Erik Marcus "Author o...'s review of The Omnivore's ...  a book review by Erik Marcus reprinted with permission, initially appearing in VegNews magazine May/June 2006

 

Unhappy Meals   a lengthy article by author Michael Pollan in the New York Times magazine, Januray 28, 2007

 

The Omnivore's Dilemma - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Killer Movie Reviews (Andrea Chase)

 

The New York Sun [Martin Tsai]

 

DVD Talk   Brian Orndorf, also seen here:  eFilmCritic [Brian Orndorf], or again here:  FilmJerk.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

Moving Pictures Magazine [Elliot V. Kotek]

 

Film Journal International (Eric Monder)

 

Reel.com [Gary Goldstein]

 

The Village Voice [Robert Wilonsky]

 

Austin Chronicle [Marrit Ingman]

 

San Francisco Chronicle [Walter Addiego]

 

Boston Globe   Janice Page

 

Washington Post (Ann Hornaday)

 

New York Times (registration req'd)  Matt Zoller Seitz

 

Woolf, Mike

 

RICHARD GARRIOT:  MAN ON A MISSION                 B-                    80

USA  (83 mi)  2010                    Official site                   Man on a Mission - Trailer - YouTube (1:29)

           

During the middle of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, a time when people are out of work and losing their homes in record numbers, when there are more homeless children attending schools than any other time in our nation’s history, when businesses are dissolving and schools and states are bankrupt and can’t find the funding for essential programs, this director decides to make a film about a gazillionaire?  Going into the film one has to wonder who’s really interested?  What could that possibly have to do with anyone’s actual life these days?  If the guy wants to spend his fortune jumping off cliffs in Acapulco, or dining in the best establishments in the world, collecting stamps or Maserati’s, build schools, adopt orphans, teach himself Chinese, or learning to hang-glide, it’s his right to do as he pleases.  But why should anybody care?  When it turns out the guy wants to donate $30 million dollars to the Russian space industry in order to become the 6th private citizen allowed to travel into space, one can’t exactly be surprised.  The whole world is on a Reality TV kick where they can make a television show and now a movie on just about anything, and in a sense, that’s exactly what this is, as the film is a kind of infomercial on one man’s mission into outer space, documenting his every move in preparation for the flight as well as the 12 days he spent aboard the International Space Station.  What’s most surprising, however, is the film is a kick, especially the bouncy and always upbeat music from Brian Satterwhite and John Constant (from Candi and the Strangers), which from the opening sounds a bit like Ennio Morricone from the Sergio Leone films, which couldn’t be more curiously atmospheric.  As it turns out, Richard Garriot was a geeky kid who felt every kid’s dream was to be an astronaut, which was accentuated in his own childhood because his own father actually flew as one of the first science officers on two space missions, 60 days on Skylab 3 in 1973 and 10 days aboard Spacelab-1 in 1983, which was the 6th mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

 

Nearsightedness prevented Richard from ever becoming an astronaut, even after successful laser surgery, but he built a fortune designing video games, creating his first interactive game at 17 just for fun, where each successive attempt was more successful, eventually selling over a million copies.  His wealth allowed him to follow in his father’s footsteps by purchasing a seat from Space Adventures, a USA based space tourism company, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft for $30 million dollars.  This film documents his extensive preparation for an October 2008 mission, which includes a great deal of scientifically induced physical stress in order to simulate anticipated conditions of space travel, where nearly everyone gets space sickness almost immediately upon exiting the earth’s atmosphere.  What separates this film from other space missions is the more personal point of view, as it doesn’t include the data heavy NASA slant, where almost every move is scientifically calculated.  Instead, Richard is still a geeky guy with a pleasant social demeanor, who can’t help expressing his gratitude at every step of the journey, as he knows how unique an opportunity this is, the first American father and son team to ever venture into space.  By the time he passes his final exam, where his every move is evaluated by scores of Russian military advisors, he’s on his way to Baikonur in Kazakhstan, the home of the Russian space center, where he’s greeted by his father, and the family of others headed into space.  The actual liftoff is nothing less than breathtaking, where the beauty and grace belie the physical sickness that must accompany being shot out of a cannon straight up into the atmosphere with sufficient force to break the gravitational field.  Since Richard, looking a bit like Paul Giamotti, is just an ordinary guy, not a trained astronaut, one can only imagine what kind of punishing ordeal this must be. 

 

Richard’s point of view remains being awestruck at every turn, trying to get the hang of objects floating in thin air, keeping food from flying away, where you don’t move from place to place as much as float, where he gets along well with the other cosmonauts, hooking up to relieve several others at the International Space Station, one of whom has that wild Kaurismäki hair that resembles the Leningrad Cowboys (Home - LENINGRAD COWBOYS * Buena Vodka Social Club), where some will remain for months while Richard will return to earth with the replaced cosmonauts.  What’s most impressive is the view of earth from outer space, where what surprised him the most was the condensed areas of population, as the rest of the earth simply didn’t look like that.  He compared the actual Space Station to the Fritz Lang movie METROPOLIS (1927), where the American section was clean and bright, actually looking sterile and antisceptic, while the Russian sector was darker and more lived in, showing plenty of clutter and general disorganization, which perfectly matches the contrast between Kubrick’s immaculately clean look of 2001:  A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) and Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS (1972) where the rundown space ship is seen in a state of disarray bordering on chaos.  One amusing scene on the Space Station shows 3 weightless men attempting to chase one another in a circular cylinder, much like a hamster running wheel.  Richard takes great care to contact ham radio enthusiasts from outer space, something his father did as well, where there’s a special connection between both of them that’s rather extraordinary, as his father shares his every move and most likely planned or coordinated his activities in space, which includes being there when the aircraft returns to earth.  The idea of encouraging other civilians to purchase a ticket to space is ridiculously absurd, considering the price, yet this is a walking advertisement for exactly that. 

 

Note – While not in the film, apparently there is an 8-minute science fiction film shot in space by Richard Garriot while aboard the International Space Station, assisted by two fellow Americans and one Russian cosmonaut called Apogee of Fear, written for him by Tracy Hickman, which apparently makes numerous references to classic science-fiction movies including The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Forbidden Planet (1956) and Galaxy Quest (1999).  The movie has finally cleared NASA’s scrutiny for public release, as it was Garriot’s intention to include it in the documentary MAN ON A MISSION, but it was still under administrative review, apparently done without NASA’s knowledge and consent.      

 

NewCity Chicago  Ray Pride

When the dream to become an astronaut can be attained only by having already become a decamillionaire… That’s the world we live on, and some of us hope to rocket from. Videogame designer Richard Garriott’s father was an astronaut, but his own hopes were dashed when he developed nearsightedness in childhood. (Garriott was one of the founders of MMORPGs, or “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games.”) But what if you had the money in advancing years to found a company—”Space Adventures”—and could scrawl your name onto a $30 million check to buy your way onto Russia’s Soyuz and the International Space Station? Woolf takes insufficient pains to demonstrate that Garriott isn’t a moneyed oligarch dilettante, as he follows the year training with the Russian space program in “Star City” to become the first son of an astronaut to go into space. Director Mike Woolf captures the intensity of preparation (and Garriott’s overarching self-promotion), and then Garriott shoots his point-of-view once in space. While lightweight, “Man on a Mission” is still a likeable glimpse of an experience almost no one has ever had firsthand. (Space, not splendiferous wealth.) 83m.

TimeOut Chicago    Hank Sartin

Richard Garriott is a prime example of the species nerdus millionairibus. The son of an astronaut, he made a fortune designing video games. In keeping with the pseudo-medieval flavor of his games, he wears a homemade silver snake necklace, used to dress up in knightly garb and sports a rattail braid. Even while gallivanting around the world having Branson-esque adventures, he’s remained obsessed with going into space, like his father. It’s a personal dream, but it also promotes the commercial enterprise he’s involved in, Space Adventures, which sells orbital space flights. His quest is the subject of this thin but engaging documentary.

The story of Garriott’s flight on a Russian rocket and time spent on the International Space Station cries out for a little critical distance, or at least some questioning of his self-presentation. The Garriott we see here is all public face, explaining the challenges of astronaut training with a mix of geeky pleasure and hucksterism. Director Mike Woolf accepts it all with gee-whiz enthusiasm.

Yet those objections fade in the second half, when Garriott is on the ISS. We’ve all seen footage of life in zero-G, but Garriott’s extended home movies from space give a detailed sense of how it all works and how cluttered the ISS is. And certain images, like a look out the capsule porthole during the burn phase of reentry, amaze simply because they are not special effects.

Onion AV Club  Alison Willmore

Like many kids, Richard Garriott wanted to be an astronaut. But unlike most, he knew it was more than an abstract dream—his father, Owen K. Garriott, spent two months aboard Skylab in the ’70s, and plenty of his parents’ friends also worked at NASA. He learned early on that he wouldn’t be able to follow in his dad’s footsteps, at least not by way of the U.S. government, because his nearsightedness was an automatic disqualification. Richard Garriott: Man On A Mission is a disarmingly enthusiastic documentary about how its subject eventually found his own way into orbit. The film summons up the childlike wonder and optimism inherent in space exploration, while examining how it’s opening up to self-funded travelers.

Mike Woolf’s doc isn’t the first about space tourism—Christian Frei made an improbably tedious 2009 feature (Space Tourists) about Iranian-American businesswoman Anousheh Ansari, who flew to the International Space Station in 2006. Man On A Mission benefits from being filtered through the viewpoint of Garriott, an unabashed geek for whom space travel has been a lifelong and pragmatically (on relative terms) chased goal. A videogame developer best known for creating the Ultima series, Garriott was a role-playing-game pioneer, programming his first effort on an Apple II while still in high school, and selling it himself, with huge success. With his long rattail braids, his homemade sterling-silver snake necklace, and his alter ego of “Lord British,” Garriott is an unusual, goofy, unpretentious character who’s used the wealth he’s had most of his life to do things like explore Antarctica and canoe down the Amazon.

Man On A Mission intertwines Garriott’s story with an overview of what a $30 million Soyuz ticket buys, and what it involves—including months of training in Moscow’s Star City, and hours of intensive Russian-language lessons. Woolf compensates for the standard structure with exhilarating footage of Garriott’s flight and space-station visit, with its peek at the daily life aboard the cramped quarters with world’s greatest view. Garriott’s sincere enthusiasm and fan-ish observations (“Thank you, space-Flowbee,” he says, when trying out a provided vacuum beard-trimmer) make his trip seem not like a wealthy person’s ultimate indulgence, but instead the longed-for, doggedly pursued, and ultimately earned fulfillment of a dream. 

NASA Relents: Apogee of Fear , First Sci-Fi Film Shot in Space, Will Be Released  Matt Blum from Wired magazine, January 19, 2012

Good news! Following many reports over the last few days that the first-ever science fiction film to actually be filmed in space was being kept from release by NASA, there is now word that the space agency has relented and that Apogee of Fear will see the light of day after all.

The eight-minute film was shot by Richard Garriott aboard the International Space Station on his trip there as a paid civilian in 2008. Based on a screenplay written for him by Tracy Hickman (best known as co-creator of the Dragonlance shared universe), Garriott made the film with the assistance of two NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut.

He had hoped to release it along with the documentary he made about following in his astronaut father Owen Garriott’s footsteps (Man on a Mission, which is playing in indie theaters across the country). But NASA put the kibosh on those plans without giving a great many specifics as to reasons, except that it was outside the scope of Garriott’s agreement with them. It seemed as though Apogee of Fear would remain hidden from the public eye.

Now I am pleased to report that things have changed for the better. In response to a query to NASA on the subject, I received the following reply from Bob Jacobs, deputy for communications at NASA:

NASA is working with Richard Garriott to facilitate the video’s release. While the project was not part of his original Space Act agreement with NASA, everyone involved had the best of intentions. We hope to resolve the remaining issues expeditiously, and we appreciate Richard’s cooperation and his ongoing efforts to get people excited about the future of space exploration.

It sounds like NASA is leaving open the possibility of making some edits to the short film, but on the whole it reads like great news to me. The agency certainly seems to understand why it’s important that this kind of thing is released to the public, and the fact that the word “expeditiously” is in there bodes well for that happening soon.

So watch this space: We’ll be sure to let you know if we hear anything else about Apogee of Fear. It may turn out not to be very good, of course — there’s no way to know, really — but its historical importance should make it worth eight minutes of your time regardless.

'Man on a Mission': Lord British in Space  Cynthia Fuchs from Pop Matters

 

In Astro-Dad's Footsteps: A Son's 'Mission' To - NPR  Mark Jenkins from NPR

 

Man on a Mission | Film Review | Slant Magazine  Joseph Jon Lanthier

 

Fantastic Review: Man on a Mission | Film School Rejects  Cole Abaius

 

MAN ON A MISSION  Facets Multi Media

 

Man on a Mission - Page 1 - Movies - New York - Village Voice   Nick Pinkerton

 

Garriot interview  Tium Morrison interview of Richard Garriot, the 6th private citizen allowed to travel into orbit, from Time magazine, September 25, 2008

 

Director interview  Debbie Cerda interview from Slackerwood, March 11, 2010

 

Documentary details Garriott's space adventure  Matthew Odam from Austin 360

 

Hallo, Spaceboy! 'Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission' Returns to Earth ...  Marc Savlov from The Austin Chronicle

 

Movie review: 'Man on a Mission'  Betsy Sharkey from The LA Times

Chicago Sun-Times: on Garriot  Richard Garriott, Space Cowboy, by Jana J. Monji, January 3, 2012

New York Times  Neil Genzlinger

 

Richard Garriott, astronaut Owen Garriott's son, flies to the ...  Robert Pearlman from Collect Space, September 28, 2007

 

Richard Garriott  official website

 

Richard Garriott: Biography

 

Richard Garriott's Space Mission

 

Owen K. Garriott - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Astronaut Biography: Owen Garriott

 

Worden, Fred

 

HERE

USA

 

Here  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

The estimable Lee Walker (who, as far as I'm concerned, should have the word "estimable" legally affixed to his "name") noted that 2005's "Views From the Avant-Garde" selection featured several of what he called "third eye" pieces. Rapid alternation between two sets of images resulted in optical / mental combination into a third, "impossible" image. The cinema of Paul Sharits and Ken Jacobs' "Nervous System" project should be seen as progenitors of this kind of work, but as Walker noted, the advent of video has made these pieces quite a bit easier to forge and manipulate. (Hence, one assumes, their recent proliferation.) I haven't seen a lot of other recent work in this vein, but I must say that Worden's Here impressed me, in part because his use of video struck me as a logical extension of his abstract animation work on film. Worden's cinema has long been about activating the pictorial field, playing with the instability of the frame, left / right / up / down relationships, and the throbbing iluusion of depth within overall flatness. In the films of his I'd seen before, he did all this using an all-over hand-drawn (or dripped) web of lines and forms, reminiscent of Pollock or late Brice Marden. So it was jarring at first to see him working with found footage and in video, but over the running time, Worden brings the goods. He demonstrates that he can achieve similar effects using the right kind of photographic material -- in this case, alternating long and medium shots of knights on racing steeds from Robin Hood, and several Méliès films. What these have in common, and why they work so well in this project, is that they both treat the image as an all-over field, with objects interspersed throughout the foreground and background but also legible as pulsating hashmarks on a flat canvas. Moving between these two types of information, or making shifts within a single image set (say, moving rapidly between close-up and extreme long shots in the Robin Hood footage) produces hypnotic visual anomalies that I'd never really seen before in video. The best parts of Here are like a tornado whipping around the screen. But although the effects generated are frequently astonishing, Here isn't always clear in its articulation of its different passages, and some effects (like the intra-frame, Serene Velocityesque zooming) don't work nearly as well. Moreover, I think that had Here been presented as a silent video, it might've been a much stronger (if more challenging) piece overall. Despite all this, it's clear that Worden has found the means to extend his precise formal language in video, and I look forward to seeing what he does next.

 

EVERYDAY BAD DREAM

USA 

 

Oct  Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

Workman, Chuck

 

HOUSE ON A HILL                                                 B+                   90

USA  (89 mi)  2003

 

This director is known for his film montages that are featured at the Academy Awards, however his choice to shoot this film on video ruins the look of the film, which is never as big as it should be, sometimes splitting the screen image into 2 or 3 rectangles or squares within the screen, which is never as bright, always containing a dull and flat surface, and is never as interesting as this film would otherwise be, contrasting the natural world with the documentary video world, which might have looked terrific.  As it is, the style constantly frustrates the viewer, as what we are looking at continues to diminish before our very eyes, constantly breaking into smaller pieces on the screen, none of which are ever large enough. However, that said, the lead performance of Harry, played by Philip Baker Hall, known for his roles in Paul Thomas Anderson films, such as HARD 8 or MAGNOLIA, is one of the best performances I’ve seen this year.  He is simply stunning to watch.  He is featured as a contentious, aging architect who was once famous, with a past connection to a piece of land high on a hill overlooking a beautiful vista containing the charred remnants of what was once a stylish home he designed.  What’s left is an iron arch that seems to oversee everything, like an omniscient soul.  A rich, young couple buys the land and plead with him to rebuild the home, as they love the location, and want it designed with his input.  At first, he resists, but changes his mind when he learns they’ve hired a filmmaker, the beautiful and talented, young Laura San Giacomo, to document his life.  The film then begins to simultaneously move forwards and backwards with the construction of the home, while he and his ex-wife, Shirley Knight, recall for the camera how they split up, and how they lost their son in a fire on that site, which stopped any further construction.  As it turns out, Harry gets re-energized with the project, and his creative world coincides with the creative talents of the young filmmaker, and the film has a very imaginative feel at this point, until the married couple decides to separate and both projects come to a stunning halt.  The film moves in a deliberate, relaxed pace and develops a very moving portrait of a man and his art.  Underneath it all, the film score is written by jazz great Charlie Haden, most often it’s understated, weaving in and out of the mosaic beautifully, delicately rendering soft mood atmosphere with old standards, which only heighten the artistic experience.
 

Wray, Jeffrey C.

                                   

THE EVOLUTION OF BERT                                B+                   91

USA  (77 mi)  2014

 

While indie films are rare, Black indie films are even rarer, where the two that come to mind are Danny Green’s Mr. Sophistication (2012), about an attempted comeback of an edgy black comedian, which premiered at the Chicago Film Festival in 2012 and then was never released, and Barry Jenkins’ extremely popular relationship movie, Medicine for Melancholy (2008), an award winner that played the festival circuit, but was never released on more than seven screens in any given week in the entire country, and was usually only shown on three screens or less.  Many of the more popular “black” indie films are actually directed by white directors, like Craig Brewer’s HUSTLE & FLOW (2005) and BLACK SNAKE MOAN (2007), Lance Hammer’s BALLAST (2008), even perennial indie filmmaker John Sayles took a stab with HONEYDRIPPER (2007), all set in black neighborhoods using primarily black casts.  While the title leaves something to be desired, making it sound like a quirky Walter Mitty style movie about a nerdy character, or a reference to Sesame Street, but instead it’s a funny stream-of-conscious exposé on being black in America, a well-acted film that wears its intelligence on its sleeve, featuring a terrific cast of non-professionals, blending fantasy and fiction, using a jazzy musical score by Kris Johnson, making this a thoroughly enjoyable experience.  Perhaps what’s most unusual about this film is that it was shot 15 years ago when the director was a professor at Ohio University in 1998, shot sporadically over several months, and then just sat on the shelf while family, children, or other jobs took precedence.  While now he’s an Associate Professor of Film Studies/Creative Writing at Michigan State University, it took a grant award to allow the team to shoot the epilogue nearly ten years later, where the post production aspects of the film were only finalized just this year.  So it’s like a time warp taking us back in time, yet loses none of its initial thrust, which is a satiric coming-of-age film, the development of a social consciousness, and a comment on what it means to be black in America.    

 

Randall Stokes is a refreshing discovery as Bert, your typically intelligent, good-looking, and thoroughly confused black college student who is completing his final semester at school as a history major, but is no clearer about how he intends to spend his future, where his parents are ready for him to enter the job market.  We realize the extent of his difficulties in a hilarious dream sequence where he envisions his future in multiple possibilities, including a black Republican, a token corporate Negro doing the soft shoe, a man following his dreams, and another more emblematic representative of the working man. 

The first in his family to graduate college, Bert’s problem is how to define himself, to find what distinguishes him from the rest of the students, as he seems to be a very personable guy with an optimistic streak, hangs with his best friend Nate the DJ (Nate DeWitt), while romancing Nita (Nakeshia Knight), his friendly, attractive, poetry spouting girlfriend for the past two years.  Because he’s so close to the finish line, he starts questioning this relationship, imagining what his life would be like with other women.  Nate immediately tells him not to give up on a good thing, suggesting other girls that respect him as part of a healthy couple wouldn’t give him the time of day if he was single, as a good part of their allegiance is to Nita, where respecting him is part of respecting her.  Easily the most revelatory character is played by the director himself in dreadlocks, playing Duke, a perennial student who’s been through it all and tries to school Bert about what to expect.  His advice about the future is so uncannily accurate that he comes across as a bit of a mystic, always wearing shades, usually found with a smile on his face.  When asked why he never takes off his shades, he gives three reasons:  his eyes are sensitive to light, he refuses to give the white man the pleasure of that smiling face with understanding eyes, where despite the violent racial past, whites still expect the black man to make them feel more “comfortable,” so shades freak white people out, and lastly, he’s just plain cool.  They meet in a quiet moment when Bert is listening to the music of Walter Jackson on his headphones, Walter Jackson It's all over - YouTube (2:57), where Duke is curious what he’s listening too, claiming they both love “old-school” music. 

 

Losing much of the stereotypes and cliché’s that generally denigrate blacks and lessen their potential cultural impact, music is such an essential ingredient in the film, told in a freeform, essay-like experimental style that integrates black history with contemporary affairs, girlfriend issues, and anxiety about the future, where jazz music, hip hop, R & B, along with poetry readings further emphasize self-expression.  Randall Sisco is a street musician who appears throughout the film, where he acts as a kind of Greek chorus, offering blunt comments on what he observes, while there is also an unusually soulful version of “Caifornia Dreamin” reminiscent of Bobby Womack, Bobby Womack California Dreamin (1968 cover) - YouTube (3:19).  Using a handheld camera by Joe “Jody” Williams throughout, the 16 mm film has a spontaneous feel, where the pace is fast and loose and highly observant, covering a remarkable amount of territory, where the film aesthetic becomes a way of exploring the black experience, enhanced by the authenticity of such well-written, well-developed characters, even those in secondary roles, where the director leads them into inspired monologues, often expressed through long takes, with occasional jump cuts to offer jarring images that express a new experience or idea, becoming a meditation on black identity.  Whether then or now, students are well aware of stereotypes, how black men in particular are pigeonholed into acceptable, non-threatening career choices, where they are forced to follow existing rules and guidelines rather than use their imaginations to invent their own.  Some of the more inspired scenes reveal angered female indignation at the way black men typically mistreat them, where Bert is no different, though he probably realizes afterwards that he deserves a swift kick in the head.  Witty and poignant, the film offers a candid discussion on the black reality, using genuine characters and inspired musical choices, but it’s the poetry that elevates this film to another level, offering several samples from Nita as well as Bert’s final “Resurrection essay,” creating theatrical moments in time that deserve to be treasured and held in posterity.      

 

The Evolution of Bert (Jeffrey C. Wray, 2014) — Chicago ...  Chicago Cinema Circuit

 

The Evolution of Bert screens on Sunday, October 12 and Tuesday, October 14. Director Jeffrey C. Wray is scheduled to attend. More information can be found at the Chicago International Film Festival's website here. This is a capsule review. A full review will be published upon the film's United States theatrical release. 

 

Jeffrey C. Wray’s The Evolution of Bert opens with a surreal scene that details the limited prospects made available for the ordinary black man.  The surrealist imagery is compounded by a vibrant jazz score and shot on 16mm black and white film, making for one of the more unusual cinematic experiments of the year. The essayistic approach does possess an inherently grounded quality though, as the film explores the life of a young black man as he wraps up his final semester of college. The anxieties of ending a long-term relationship, of finding a job, and of obtaining the approval of his professors are the sort of prevalent issues that course through a student’s life, but this uniquely black perspective is what makes The Evolution of Bert so intrinsically nuanced.

 

Shot in the late nineties and concluding its final chapter in the mid aughts, The Evolution of Bert is an act in observing social and racial instituted mechanics at play. The picture possesses many striking comments on the mechanisms of maintaining the social order between blacks and whites, and moreover, it is a film that is aware of the imprisoning nature of sacrificing one’s passion for the perceived safety of a socially-acceptable position. It’s the sort of frank discussion on post-collegiate life that plagues many graduates, black or white.

 

The film’s relentless musical arrangements do begin to weigh heavily on the film, as does the inherent lack of narrative unity. Bert is a film that perhaps could have benefited from either a full-on rejection of narrative and character devices or used a bit more focus on its central character. It stands at a bit of an uncompromising medium, either possessing too much polish or not enough.  

 

It remains a commendable effort though, one that’s riddled with the sort of primal anger and fierce imagery that makes it difficult to discount despite its structural flaws. 

 

The Evolution of Jeff Wray  The Big Green, November 4, 2004

 

For many filmmakers, making movies, which involves a lot of time and money, is a risk. Everything must be carefully planned out, and if the plan is not faithfully adhered to, the movie will be a disaster.

Jeff Wray doesn’t see it that way.


Wray is a film professor at Michigan State, where he is also co-director of the film studies program. Before leaving his teaching position at Ohio University in 1998, Wray filmed a movie that started as a careful plan but became a loose experiment.

While attending film school at Ohio University, Wray became a teaching assistant and found the shift from student to teacher to be a dizzying one. Many students came to him, asking for advice on how to get into the film industry, but it was the young black students that concerned him the most. In these students, Wray saw a great anxiety building, especially in those from Ohio.

“Folks were really concerned about leaving,” he said. “They didn’t want to leave because their families were there.”

These conversations inspired Wray to write a screenplay that became “The Evolution of Bert,” a film that follows an African-American man as he faces college graduation, girlfriend issues and an uncertain future, things Wray remembers all too well. As an undergrad during the recession in the 80s, he recalled, “Nobody had a job. It was rough.”

He said he articulates this anxiety through the character of Bert.

The script, which started as a straightforward plot, evolved into an experiment for Wray. For instance, the opening scene became a dream sequence, and subsequent drafts used fantasy sequences and voice-overs.[bert2]

“I feel like we are more in the head of Bert with those scenes as a part of the story,” Wray says.

Filming “Bert” was also less traditional. Because of a lack of time, Wray was unable to finish rewrites of the script and jumped into the shoot. Armed with a borrowed 16 millimeter camera, he stuck close to what he had of the script, but when it ran out, he made up whatever he needed. This proved to not only easy but exciting, due in part, to Wray’s leading man Randall Stokes, a natural at improvisation.

“I told the other actors, ‘if you forgot your lines, just follow him. Follow what Bert does.’”

Wray said sticking to the script means nothing without a human touch.

“If lines come out as I wrote them, and sound wooden, that isn’t good,” he said. “If it comes out as warm and with feeling, I’ll take that more or less as it’s read. I try to go for that feeling of reality.”

That feeling of realism inspired Wray’s writing. A typical day would be filming in the morning, followed by a break, then more shooting at night. During filming, he would scribble new scenes.

The writing of new scenes while shooting and the use of improvisation, led to an uncertainty as to the movie’s length. The film was shot sporadically over several months, leaving Wray unaware of how much footage there was. When the film returned from the lab, he knew he had enough for a feature.

Rather than using computer editing systems common in the industry, Wray used more traditional editing methods, He used a flatbed editing system, which meant literally cutting the film by hand. This turned out to be time-consuming, but let Wray further experiment with Bert’s misadventures.

“It was so much slower,” he says, “but most of what I edited was in no way like the script. The editing was like experimentation.”

The experimental nature of the film pushed Wray’s editing capabilities. He planned on following the story as he had laid it out in his head, but he soon decided to keep making the film in the experimental way.

He described his editing as “playful,” which he believes has paid off in a satisfying way. He said this film is probably one of his favorites of the films he has made.

“I love it!” he says. “My wife says you shouldn’t tell people you like it so much, but I do.”

Wray is currently trying to get financing for his next project, a 40-minute trilogy called “The Soul Searchers.” As he does, he plans to continue teaching film and screenwriting classes, something he is happy with and sees himself doing for a long time.

“I’m content with where I am,” he says. “I like teaching and the atmosphere of colleges. In reality, it’s been validating.”

As for Bert’s future, Wray plans to distribute the film himself. He believes the film also has the potential to break into film festivals, largely because of the audience it can reach. Wray says the film is not only for college students, but for older people too.

“I want people to kind of go ‘Now this is different.’”

 

The Evolution of Bert  (pdf format)

 

Wright, Edgar

 

SHAUN OF THE DEAD

Great Britain  USA  France  2004

 

BFI | Sight & Sound | Shaun of the Dead (2004)  Kim Newman from Sight and Sound, May 2004

 

Wright, Joe

 

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE                         B+                   92                                           

Great Britain  (127 mi)  2005

 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

 

Opening with exquisite Schubertian music played with an effortless grace by Jean-Yves Thibaudet, this elegantly sets the tone for what follows, as this Jane Austin adaptation plays loose with the actual historical period that frames the novel,
which was saturated in social restrictions where a marriage refusal could mean financial ruin.  Surely there were greater risks and more severe consequences than what is suggested here, where the severity of the moment is expressed by what seems like outlandishly foolish behavior of the mother, who from a modern view, shows no thought of happiness for her own daughters, but only to the business of getting them all married, in keeping with the spirit of the novel, but this is instead a very romanticized, picturesque and deliberately paced love story.  Keira Knightly, who in real life had not yet turned twenty, is perfectly cast as the headstrong, quick witted and glamorous Elizabeth, a character the author described “as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print,” the second oldest of five daughters, ages ranging from 15 to 21, all of whom are open for marriage, a scandalous thought from the upper classes who prefer to send them out one at a time.  Brenda Blethyn is the overly chatty, indiscreet and blubbering mother who complains of problems of the nerves, but then has the nerve to describe one of her daughter’s best friends to a perspective suitor as overly plain.  Donald Sutherland, on the other hand, a father surrounded by all these women, is an understated force to be reckoned with who prefers peace with a quiet dignity.  Matthew Macfadyen, as Darcy, is actually quite good, especially when he comes alive in the latter moments of the film, in his role as the rich, but noble and stiff, statuesque eligible bachelor who prefers, if at all possible, not to dance or even talk to anyone, but is overheard at a dance by Elizabeth describing her as “tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.”  She vows to loath him forever for his impudence, using language that sounds quite Shakespearean: “I might more easily forgive his vanity had he not wounded mine.”

 

What follows is a choreography of coincidence, the families happen to be neighbors that live within walking distance from one another.  The mother of five daughters can’t be blamed for thinking dollar signs when he’s living right next door in the form of another rich eligible bachelor who has fallen for her oldest daughter, but the mother broadcasts her feelings of an impending marriage much too openly and in such poor taste, especially when it occurs during these extraordinarily photographed, lavishly decorated costume dance sequences, where the continuously moving camera of Roman Osin brilliantly moves from room to room, following the moods and conversations of the characters.  When this love is suddenly separated, apparently by none other than Darcy himself, who believes the young woman’s family standing too low, Elizabeth is enraged, which leads to the most perfect moment in the film when the two tell each other exactly how they feel, which, of course, ends badly, but then leads to another wonderful moment where Elizabeth is alone in a darkened manor lit only by candlelight, staring at herself in the mirror, contemplating a letter left behind by Darcy explaining his reasoning.  This is the actual turning point in the film, leading to a wonderfully quiet exploration of Darcy’s manor, believing his is out, walking in a state of reverie among the nude statues.   
 
While not the devastatingly powerful work of Michael Winterbottom’s 1996 film JUDE, which with utmost precision lays out the staggering horrors of class difference and prejudice, this film, despite an intoxicating painterly pan-view of the barnyard while twirling on a swing, overlooks some of the messy historical details and enlarges the focus on the two lovers, who with mysterious fascination, always seem to be bumping into one another quite unexpectedly.  The beauty of Jane Austin’s story is the natural inclination of both lead characters, Elizabeth and Darcy, to resist the business at hand, the social game that must be played in order to win another’s hand in marriage, thinking it unseemly and filled with so much artifice and pretense.  This is perfectly captured by the film, where what each seems to appreciate about the other is the degree of contempt they share for undeserved social status and class hypocrisy.  Of course, when one is handsome and rich, while the other is dirt poor, what we’re talking about is of Cinderella proportions.  And this film builds to its “knight in shining armor” moment, which is a thing to behold, as it’s set up beautifully.  Darcy, who is the subject of BRIDGET JONES DIARIES, has undergone a complete transformation in Elizabeth’s eyes, which is reflected in his manner and behavior.  There are also a few unique moments expressed as daydreams, where the internal thoughts are silently but seamlessly revealed, but only for the briefest of moments, such as the show of a hand, an isolated dance, or even a shadowed appearance which plays into that magical moment, as we’re never sure if it’s real.  Unfortunately, we know how the book turns out, and it would be scandalous to actually change a classic novel’s ending.

 

Pride & Prejudice  Give me a break claims Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

 

Dear Reader, I could stand it no longer. Here's one I was suspicious of, but I gave in to peer pressure. P&P is one of the most acclaimed films of 2005. Now I see why, but I'm not buying it. The assumption seems to be, literary adaptations and period pieces are usually so tasteful, so middlebrow, polished to such a high sheen, that Wright's minor formal innovations gleam like understated genius. In fact, his directorial gestures are fairly simple. He shoots in natural light, with a filter designed to capture the sun-dappled landscape in a manner more befitting one of those American B-pictures from the 1970s that (as we all know) were the pinnacle of the cinematic art. He also stages significant scenes in the manner of a second-rate Altman, using telephoto lenses to radically flatten out space, and cheating on the sound design, giving the illusion of immersing the viewer in an unruly bevy of activity but in fact always tweaking things for maximum legibility. In terms of the narrative, Wright ratchets Austen's character types into bulging caricatures (Mr. Collins and the younger Bennetts in particular), and coaxes from Keira Knightley a wan, lifeless performance. (That it is garnering Oscar talk is just a mark of exactly how much the industry has invested in the white chick from Bend It Like Beckham, and how badly it aims to reap return.) Sorry, but unless the insertion of a medium close-up of a pendulous pair of hog balls represents some level of modernist subversion of the text (it doesn't), what I saw doesn't really merit such universal praise. There's no there there.

 

THE SOLOIST                                                         C+                   79

USA  Great Britain France  (117 mi)  2009  ‘Scope

 

Somewhat uneven and manipulative take on mental illness, reminiscent of the portrayal of schizophrenia in A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001), glorified here in telling the real life story of a former Julliard musician who dropped out after he began hearing strange voices and became one of the 90,000 homeless people in Los Angeles, pushing his shopping cart full of belongings wherever he goes, where dressed like jazz eccentric Sun Ra he can be seen humming tunes or talking to himself in endless run-on sentences.  Robert Downey Jr. plays Steve Lopez, a cryptic LA Times reporter who falls off his bike one day bloodying is face, where as he sits and recovers he hears someone playing classical violin—on only two strings, as it turns out.  Intrigued at this, he decides to write a column about Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), probably one of only a handful of black musicians who ever attended Julliard, the most prestigious music school in the country.  Through bits and pieces of flashbacks that continue throughout the film, we get a brief view of his childhood, where anyone interested in classical music stood out, as everyone else had the radio blasting soul music all the time.  The column spurs the interest of one reader who decides to send Nathaniel her cello, his instrument of study, which Lopez offers to him, but under the condition that he store the instrument at the nearby community college where he could play anytime he wanted, as it’s too valuable to keep on the street.  While this sounds reasonable enough, this turns out to be the hardest first step in the film, as Nathaniel resists, preferring the sound under a concrete freeway overpass with cars racing by, where he can remain anonymous, a threat to no one.  The college turns out to be a homeless shelter for the mentally ill and is surrounded by a sea of homeless people that resembles a makeshift open air army hospital, and for a person preferring to be alone, navigating one’s way through the masses can be a daunting undertaking.  The rest of the film is immersed in the glorious music of Beethoven and becomes a buddy movie, as the two develop a friendship, where the scenes shown in the trailer do not appear in the film, where apparently attempting to visit him in a hospital Lopez says “I’m the closest thing to family that he’s got.  I’m his…friend.”  Something of a tearjerker, it’s portrayed as a long and difficult journey where Lopez’s initial self-serving arrogance receives its comeuppance, but it’s nothing to match the terror and everyday heroics of Nathaniel’s lone struggle.  

 

Remember after the success of the movie SHINE (1996), where Geoffrey Rush won an Academy Award portraying the real life character upon which the story was based, another schizophrenic pianist named David Helfgott, who went on tour afterwards (which continues into the present, by the way:  Helfgott Tour Schedule) where he was scheduled to play the infamous Rachmaninov 3rd Piano Concerto, as he did in the movie, which turned into a critical fiasco, as he couldn’t play it nearly as perfectly in real life as it was portrayed in the movies?  (“Truth is stranger than fiction”—from Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar in Following the Equator, 1897).  Well that’s not going to happen with Nathaniel Ayers, as he apparently refuses treatment, as he does in the film, so he still continues to hear voices, but music has a calming effect on him.  For the viewer this remains troubling, as there’s some question as to why they are turning this series of newspaper columns, which eventually became a book, into a movie?  Just what is supposed to be gained?  The troubling part is that the movie doesn’t leave it open ended, as it should, but instead manipulates the very illness that it attempts to be honest and truthful about.  The final sequence of the film does a disservice to the mentally ill as well as the homeless, as it presents what appears to be a realistical portrayal of joyful camaraderie among the inflicted into what is in fact a happily ever after wish fulfillment fantasy vision.  Additionally, when Lopez gets Nathaniel into a rehearsal of Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Beethoven’s Eroica, the director chooses artistic license to display Nathaniel’s state of mind, using a fantasia-like musical conception that hardly resembles Kubrick in 2001, more like the associative color scheme shown on Windows Media Player computers, while earlier, when Lopez hears Nathaniel play the cello on the streets for the very first time, the director starts with a solo instrument playing before eventually adding full orchestra accompaniment, which suggests he doesn’t trust the reality of a single instrument, so he accentuates its impact through sheer manipulation.  Unfortunately, this undermines the believability of the rest of the film, especially some terrific performances, such as Downey Jr, who feels conflicted questioning his own sanity in attempting to understand this troubled man, or Nelsan Ellis as the college administrator who asks some of the key questions of the film, which Lopez at the time thinks is bullshit, but eventually comes around to accept, because ultimately any decision must be initiated by Nathaniel, and not simply imposed on him, like shock therapy.   Lisa Gay Hamilton, however, provides some of the best moments of the film, seen only in a few scenes but has a major impact as Nathaniel’s sister, as she more than anyone else knows him and loves him, and knows how heartbreaking it is time after time to have to walk away from him and leave him alone.  But rather than follow her lead, the film unfortunately tacks on an artificial feel good ending whose undermining dishonesty derails the film.    

 

The New Republic (Christopher Orr) review

"I do words for a living," Robert Downey Jr. explains testily at one point in his new film The Soloist, and though the statement belongs to Downey's character, real-life L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez, it might as easily be Downey's own. No other star in film today offers line readings so meticulously crafted and yet so self-conscious. As the syllables tumble out, Downey seems already to be reassessing them: Did he really choose to utter those words? Should he have chosen better ones?

Casting Downey as a journalist--and particularly as a prose stylist, rather than an investigative ace of the kind that typically populate Hollywood newsrooms--is a perfect nod to his unique gifts. Where writers, newspaper and otherwise, typically self-edit on the page, Downey does so aloud: pausing, considering, rephrasing, in constant, fascinated dialogue with himself. Little wonder that many of the best moments in The Soloist consist simply of Downey's Lopez composing his thoughts into a tape recorder.

The trouble begins when Lopez gets out of his own head and into the world director Joe Wright (Atonement) has prepared for him. The Soloist is the true story of Lopez's discovery of, and fitful friendship with, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a homeless, schizophrenic cello player. Lopez first meets Ayers at a low point for both men: the former recovering from a gruesome bicycle accident, the latter playing a two-stringed violin on the streets of Los Angeles. "I've had some setbacks," explains Ayers. "Me too," replies Lopez. After learning that Ayers was a gifted Juilliard dropout, Lopez decides to make him the subject of a column. The column, in turn, leads a retired musician to donate her cello to Ayers. When Lopez delivers the instrument, and hears the magic Ayers can conjure from it, a bond is formed.

Tiscali UK review  Kevin Murphy

There are 90,000 homeless people in Los Angeles. Each of them has a story to tell. The Soloist is one. Based on true events, it's about Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a gifted musician who studied at Jullliard, America's most prestigious music school, and went from a promising future as a concert cellist to trundling around downtown Los Angeles, his worldly possession in a shopping trolley, playing a two-stringed violin to an audience of pigeons.

It's an extraordinary story, one that was chronicled by Steve Lopez in his weekly column for the Los Angeles Times, and subsequently turned into a book. The Soloist focuses on Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.) and his relationship with Ayers and how their friendship impacts each other. With such a compelling subject, The Soloist should be absorbing, but in the hands of director Joe Wright (Atonement), it gets mired in overblown romanticism. Susannah Grant's script wanders off on aimless tangents while a forced sense of drama elevates events above any plausible sense of realism. In Hollywood it's not simply enough to tell the truth, even when the truth is more remarkable than anything a writer could conjure up.

How anyone ends up living rough on the streets is invariably a result of misfortune. It's something that could easily befall any of us, which is what makes us uncomfortable in their presence. They come from every walk of life. A vast number are there because of medical reasons, cast aside from a society that doesn't care, which is disturbing in one of the wealthiest cities in the world. Nathaniel Ayers began suffering from schizophrenia while at Juilliard, but even though he lacked the ability to cope with life, his musical gift was never impaired. It is what sustains him.

After first encountering Ayers, Lopez begins featuring him in his Points West column. One immediate result is a generous reader donates a cello to Ayers who has been reduced to playing his beloved Beethoven on a violin that has just two strings. Lopez's motives are at times conflicted. On the one hand he wants to fix Ayers, get him medication, a home and perhaps even revive his career, while at the same time he exploits his story for professional gain. Ayers, on the other hand, is simply grateful to have a friend. Foxx did a great job in his portrayal of another disabled musician, Ray Charles, but he is definitely not known for his subtlety and his depiction of Ayers, with his eccentric dress sense, is as loud as Ayers' playing is quiet. Teamed with the equally extravagant Downey, who imbues Lopez with a frenetic, nervous energy, the mix is one that sees both actors dueling for attention.

Trying to understand what goes through the mind of a schizophrenic is a topic best left for a film with more substance than this, so the sequences of psychedelic imagery used to suggest how music affects Ayers appear trite and misplaced. It's yet one of many examples where The Soloist's embellishments detract from the story rather than enhance it.

filmcritic.com (Chris Barsanti) review [3/5]  also seen here:  Reel.com review [3/4]

Joe Wright's worlds-colliding drama The Soloist has so many strikes against it that it's hard to imagine coming out the other end feeling anything but relief that it was over. Think of it: a based-on-a-true-story about a cold-hearted journalist who meets a mentally disturbed homeless man who just happens to be a world-class musician. Together, the two strike up a unique friendship against the backdrop of Los Angeles's Dickensian skid row and imploding newspaper industry; a bright flower blooming from the crack in a downtown sidewalk. Also, one of the men happens to be black and the other white.

On paper, the treacle-meter for The Soloist is nearly off the charts. But while Wright (Atonement) hasn't fashioned anything like a classic, and the screenplay by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) is frequently thin on motivation, the film is not even close to the disaster that it should have been. This is higher praise than it may sound.

Right off, it's clear that both leads are at the top of their game in a story that normally brings out the worst in actors of this caliber. As columnist Steve Lopez, Robert Downey Jr. could have been your bad-boy big-city journalist stereotype -- think Russell Crowe in the recent State of Play. And Jamie Foxx, playing fallen musical prodigy Nathaniel Ayers, could have fallen into the trap of playing his character's problems for tears instead of understanding. Just at the point when these two highly-praised actors should be swimming in overconfidence, they turn in performances as deft and graceful as anything either has ever done. In these actors' hands, neither of these characters is anything like a caricature, despite a story that cries out for them.

A lengthy and stylistically fractured segment following Lopez through a serious bicycling accident and its results introduces us not just to his ad-hoc writing method but also to the pell-mell newsroom, as wondrously deglamorized as any true ink-stained wretch could hope for. Lopez seems a sardonic and selfish crank, but not an inordinate one considering the business, and certainly not a man who needs a jolt of true experience to jump-start the dead battery of his humanity.

Only after creating Lopez as a real person does the film bring on Ayers, playing Beethoven mournfully in a downtown park, on a violin with only two strings. A gentle guy who spent a couple years at Juilliard in the early 1970s before mental illness got the better of him, Ayers lives most of his life in a fog, unable for instance to understand why just because Lopez is standing right next to him means that Lopez can't also be flying the jetliner passing overhead. His dialogue is a circuitous loop of memories and manias, with the prodigy he truly is able to flicker through only occasionally.

The two men's problematic friendship is immediate, and brilliantly played. Lopez desperately wants to help Ayers, and goes to extreme lengths to do so (contacting his family, trying to get him into new housing), but the film doesn't pretend his motives are entirely altruistic. At no point is Lopez given the sort of slap-on-the-back adulation expected from such a four-square humanitarian story. In fact, the one scene that should have been his reward for all those days trying to help return Ayers to a more structured life and hanging out down on skid row is cut short. At a banquet honoring Lopez, instead of seeing his heart-swelling speech, we get his drunk ex-wife and boss (played by Catherine Keener, who only seems to show up when somebody needs their teeth kicked in verbally) lacerating him for exploiting Ayers. (One of the homeless shelter workers, played to no-nonsense perfection by Nelsan Ellis, also does a memorable job of cutting Lopez's self-serving naïveté to ribbons.)

Just as the film (mostly) dances a fine line between finding the soul in Ayers and Lopez's friendship without romanticizing it, it also provides an unusually humane portrait of the homeless. Several of the skid row-set scenes and flashbacks to Ayers' mental breakup have a flickering horror to them that recalls some of Wright's wartime set pieces in Atonement. But these moments still find space within them to present the damaged souls who washed up on those downtown streets as human beings, not freakish figures to be pitied or feared. The Soloist seems less interested in twisting its people and plot into moral lessons than it is in displaying each of its characters as individuals deserving of being regarded on their own terms.

Probably the best lesson one can take away from The Soloist is that there is no lesson to be taken, unless it is that one should treat one's fellow man with respect, and if you needed a movie to tell you that, well....

Salon (Stephanie Zacharek) review

If you've seen the trailer for "The Soloist" -- in which Robert Downey Jr. plays a journalist who befriends, and tries to help, a schizophrenic and homeless man played by Jamie Foxx -- you probably think the movie is one of those uplifting friendship stories guaranteed to elicit one or two obligatory tears before sending everybody home feeling good. That's what the guys who edited that trailer want you to think: Movie advertising is never about nuance, but movies often are.

Actually, "The Soloist" is a triumphant movie about failure, and the best things about it can't be captured in a craftily edited trailer. The picture is based on a true story, that of Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez, who one day came across a Skid Row denizen, Nathaniel Ayers, playing a violin with only two strings. Lopez learned that Ayers had attended Juilliard at one point, but his mental illness prevented him from functioning normally in the world. He wrote about his friendship with Ayers in his columns, which were later adapted into the book on which this movie is based, "The Soloist: A Lost Dream, and Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music."

Come to think of it, the title of that book does have the same feel-good vibe as the movie's trailer. But the redemption that director Joe Wright and his actors go for in "The Soloist" is the thorny kind, the sort that means acknowledging limitations instead of blithely believing you can break through them. Wright, who previously directed the Ian McEwan adaptation "Atonement," as well as the controversial (among Jane Austen fans, at least) "Pride and Prejudice," likes a certain grandness of emotion, and in places he takes the risk of tipping the action into excessive melodrama. (The script, adapted from Lopez's book, is by Susannah Grant.) But that kind of risk-taking is what's missing in so many mainstream movies these days: It's become unhip to feel, and Wright is having none of that. He takes firm control of the movie's tone and shifts it around as necessary: The first half of "The Soloist," which describes Lopez's meeting and initial attempts to help Ayers, really does appear to be about sweeping, life-changing redemption; the second, more clear-eyed half is about the hard work that happens after you feel you've been redeemed -- or after you've done the redeeming.

Downey's Lopez is a hardworking newspaper guy who's become ground down not just by the demands of his job but by the depressing landscape of newspaper journalism in general. There are sequences in "The Soloist" in which Lopez might be talking on the phone as a fallen colleague marches past him in the background, toting file boxes or a potted plant. (Another recent movie, Kevin Macdonald's "State of Play," also addresses, head-on, the death of newspapers; although "The Soloist" was originally slated to be released last fall, the fact that these two movies are appearing almost simultaneously only highlights the urgency of the situation.) Like so many newspaper professionals, Lopez is good at cranking out copy week in, week out, but keeping it fresh has taken a toll on him. (It doesn't help that his marriage to an editor at the paper, played by Catherine Keener, has fallen apart, although the two maintain a close, if prickly, friendship.) So when, wandering around the city one day, he stumbles upon Foxx's Ayers, getting some weirdly gorgeous music out of that two-stringed violin, he sees a great story in front of him. Later, he'll see the actual man.

"The Soloist" is less about a friendship between a journalist and a down-and-out, mentally ill musician than it is about the process of really seeing what -- or who -- is in front of you. The first encounter between Lopez and Ayers is both funny and jarring. Lopez tries to ask him straight, journalist-type questions and gets nowhere. For one thing, Ayers lives in a different Los Angeles, one ruled over by his god, Beethoven, and one where the best acoustics can be found under certain overpasses and not in a concert hall. He answers Lopez's questions with jittery, free-jazz nonanswers that are like abstract paintings -- there's meaning in them, but you have to dig for it.

Lopez eventually learns that Ayers was a musical prodigy at Juilliard, a gifted cellist. He contacts Ayers' sister (played by Lisa Gay Hamilton), who has lost track of him. When he begins writing about Ayers, readers respond enthusiastically -- an elderly woman even sends him a beautiful cello, and Lopez arranges for the instrument to be kept safe at a local community center, so Ayers can play it whenever he likes. Lopez pushes further: He wants medication for Ayers; he wants to find him a place to live; he wants him, of course, to keep playing music.

But the question of what Ayers wants for himself is more difficult to discern, and the increasingly fraught push-pull between these two men is what keeps "The Soloist" whirring. Downey and Foxx are wonderful here. When you're looking for an actor to play a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, Downey is the go-to guy. What's remarkable about him, though, is that he finds so many shades of subtlety in the ideas of guilt, responsibility and anxiety. Lopez takes delight in Ayers -- the man's passion for his music awakens in Lopez a kind of healthy envy, a wish that he too could have such strong feelings about something -- and Downey radiates that joy quietly, with a gently arched eyebrow or a gradual, slow-creeping grin. But he also shows us how much Lopez's helplessness pains him. Foxx's Ayers may be tortured, but Lopez's suffering, as Downey plays it, may be almost as great. He's tortured by what he can't do, whereas Ayers has achieved a state that eludes so many people who are much better off: He's a success at living in the moment.

Foxx doesn't make Ayers an object of pity. Nor is the performance a "Rain Man"-style stunt. Foxx plays a person, not a condition, and he uses more than just dialogue (in Ayers' case, stuttering, repetitive rambles) to shape the character. For one thing, there's pageantry in Ayers' ever-changing uniforms: He favors sequined Sun Ra-style get-ups that look as if they've been fashioned from strippers' castoffs. Foxx wears these outfits resplendently, reveling in their crazy, joyful elegance. But his Ayers isn't just the lovable, harmless loony: Foxx shows us, sometimes with nothing more than a glancing frown, that even in his perpetually confused state, Ayers resists having his life usurped. His grasp of reality may be tenuous, but his sense of self-possession is still vital. "The Soloist" is only partly about the isolation of mental illness; it does a better job, maybe, of getting at the isolation human beings feel when they've tried to do the right thing and realize that they can never really do enough. In the end, "The Soloist" is about how unknowable other people really are -- an idea that's terrifying until you step back and see the wonder of it.

Film Freak Central review  Walter Chaw

 

The New Yorker (David Denby) review

 

Pajiba (Dustin Rowles) review

 

The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review

 

Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review [B]

 

Decent Films Guide (Steven D. Greydanus) review [B-]

 

Movies into Film.com (N.P. Thompson) review

 

PopMatters [Cynthia Fuchs]

 

Reverse Shot [Jeff Reichert]

 

PopMatters [Bill Gibron]

 

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [2.5/4]

 

The Onion A.V. Club review [B+]  Tasha Robinson

 

Slate (Dana Stevens) review

 

Slant Magazine review [1.5/4]  Ryan Stewart

 

hybridmagazine.com review  Chelsea Stark

 

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [B+]

 

CompuServe (Harvey S. Karten) review

 

The Soloist  John Hazelton from Screendaily

 

Village Voice (Ella Taylor) review

 

CineSnob.net (Kiko Martinez) review

 

Critic's Notebook [Robert Levin]

 

Monsters and Critics  Anne Brodie

 

Film Intuition [Jen Johans] 

 

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review

 

The Hollywood Reporter review  Kirk Honeycutt

 

Entertainment Weekly review [B]  Owen Gleiberman

 

Time Out Chicago (Joshua Rothkopf) review [3/6]

 

Boston Globe review [3/4]  Ty Burr

 

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [2.5/5]

 

Tulsa TV Memories [Gary Chew]

 

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [2/4]

 

Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan) review

 

Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips) review

 

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2.5/4]

 

The New York Times (Manohla Dargis) review

 

Wright, Jon

 

GRABBERS                                                             C                     76

Ireland  Great Britain  (94 mi)  2012  ‘Scope                  Official site

 

A riff on the cheap 50’s B-movie sci-fi flicks like THE BLOB (1958), or the tongue-in-cheek 70’s revisionist ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES! (1978), though compared to that, a $6.5 million dollar budget for a movie like this must seem like a blockbuster budget, as this is a movie, first and foremost, about having low expectations.  If this had been made by a high school student, they would be commended for succeeding in referencing the era of the 50’s, while also making something ridiculously absurd, where the exaggerated Irish stereotypes might be forgiven due to youth and inexperience.  But for two fully grown Irishmen, written by Kevin Lehane from Cork and directed by Belfast born Jon Wright, you’d think they’d have had their fill of Irish stereotypes.  Apparently not, as they’re instead using their familiarity to portray an array of local drunkards, a quirky small town community, a church filled with ardent non-believers, dysfunctional police, and a venerable old drunken fisherman with a tall tale that nobody believes, like spinning a drunken fable into a mythical yarn, and while it’s supposed to be goofy fun, it ends up being tedious and overly repetitive, little more than mindless entertainment for the evening, a far cry from the beauty and depth of say John Sayles’ THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH (1994), which really has the fairy tale feel of local Irish legend.  This movie, on the other hand, is all about using stereotypes and cliché’s, reinforcing throughout that the Irish really love their whisky, getting everyone in town stinking drunk, thinking it’s all jolly good fun, continually paying homage to movies from the past, but the sheer thoughtlessness of much of this film is overwhelming.  Even the opening scene where three fishermen at sea witness a flash of light coming from outer space, their response plays out as dumb, dumber, and dumbest, attacked by blood sucking aliens, setting the tone for what follows. 

 

Set in Erin Island, a sleepy fishing village near the coast of Ireland, the town is so small there are only two policemen, and while the chief is away on a two-week trip, they bring in a temporary cop from Dublin, Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley) a by-the-numbers rookie who feels that without any real crime to speak of this should be an easy two-week holiday.  Her local partner is Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle), a wildly alcoholic and buffoonish cop who can barely think or speak straight, falling over himself at every turn, appearing to be little more than an obnoxious lout.  When a local fisherman named Paddy (Lalor Roddy) claims he’s caught a mysterious sea creature in one of his lobster cages, no one bats an eye, as he’s perhaps the most drunken man in town, a guy who brings his own home brew “into” the bars to swig along with the usual fare, but always has a ready smile plastered across his face.  But after a group of dead whales wash onto the beach, and the fishermen are reported missing, the police think maybe they’ll take a look, bringing along a crack scientist, Adam Smith (Russell Tovey).  When the female blood sucker suddenly attaches itself to Paddy’s face, an homage to Ridley Scott’s ALIEN (1979), it quickly spits it out in disgust, leaving a trail of slime, where the booze-guzzling cop figures out it must be the alcohol in his blood.  As there’s a male lurking out there searching for the female, they figure the only way to save the town from impending disaster is to get the entire town drunk, making them each toxic to the creatures from outer space.  While it may sound brilliant, the technical expertise is lacking in creating a feel of impending doom, where it’s nothing like John Carpenter’s THE FOG (1980).  Adding to the mix, the town is attacked by a barrage of baby aliens, a tribute to Joe Dante’s GREMLINS (1984), where brooms and sticks and stomping feet seem to do the trick with the little critters, while the giant creature is right out of James Cameron’s ALIENS (1986), where in no time the town is under siege.    

 

While the entire spectacle has a cheesy mid 80’s feel to it, an era before the arrival of the quality CGI special effects that really took hold in the mid 90’s with Pixar’s TOY STORY (1995), the story actually unfolds through the initially chilly relationship between the two cops, where O’Shea, threatened by her arrival, is so astonishingly drunk that Nolan sticks him in the slammer to sleep it off.  But when they realize what they’re up against, a surreal invasion from outer space, nothing makes more senses to this team of amateurs than to stomp the damn thing to death, giving it a thorough beating, something of a defensive reaction to getting slimed by the creature, where science hasn’t even a clue afterwards if the critter is still dead or alive.  Despite the danger level, humans absurdly continue to put themselves at risk while herding the local church parishioners into the tavern for an open bar, oblivious to the danger lurking outside, where the director sends out baby monsters to contend with while withholding a glimpse of the nasty creature while the entire population proceeds to drink and party  themselves into a state of oblivion.  Meanwhile, the master plan is to get the rookie cop filthy drunk along with everyone else while the actual drunkard cop remains sober, like a designated driver, becoming the eyes and ears for the town, like their gallant night watchman who’s expected to save the town against the monster.  This little twist allows the thoroughly straight-laced Nolan, who’s never been drunk before, a chance to let her hair down, where after plying her with alcohol, in no time she’s confessing all her personal secrets.  This allows the two of them to actually develop some chemistry together, where’s she’s the one now making a goddamned fool of herself while he has to exercise personal restraint not to take advantage of her sudden sexual promiscuity.  Of course the sexually charged moments are a cue for the appearance of the badass monster, where the rest of the film is a showdown between a suddenly responsible and often clueless O’Shea, with a ragingly drunk partner as his back up, while townsfolk are mere foils against the evils deeds manifested by this mammoth blood-sucking creature from outer space.  The drunken carousing gets pretty stale after awhile, yet it’s the predominate image onscreen, where rather than a cleverly crafted horror film, this plays out more like a neverending Irish wake, which the creative team behind the film obviously thought would be hilarious.  While this creature feature is silly fun, it’s also stupid fun, never really rising to anything beyond that.  Unfortunately, audiences are so deadened by what Hollywood throws at them these days, and so starved for ideas, that this is what passes as creative filmmaking. 

 

TimeOut Chicago   Nigel Floyd

 

Fans of the 1990 monster movie Tremors, starring Kevin Bacon, will enjoy this ambitious stab at replicating its engaging blend of primal scares and character-driven comedy. The inhabitants of a small island off the coast of Ireland are puzzled when lacerated whales wash up dead on the beach. Confusion gives way to terror when a giant squid-like creature with eyes on stalks emerges from the waves, wreaking havoc with its lashing tentacles and retractable beaky mouth. Whiskey-soaked Garda officer Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle) and his rookie sidekick, Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley), are as unprepared as the laidback locals. The chance discovery of the monster’s alcohol aversion offers possible salvation, in the form of a drunken lock-in at the local boozer – but that’s no help for Lisa, who’s teetotal. Kevin Lehane’s smart script and Nvizible’s seamless visual effects make this a big improvement on director Jon Wright’s debut horror movie, Tormented. Sadly, the climactic showdown shifts the focus from the pub and the sozzled locals, undermining the ensemble feel and diluting the suspense.

 

Guardian UK  Peter Bradshaw

 

With a dollop of cheerful bad taste and maybe the memory of Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead somewhere in the backs of their minds, director Jon Wright and screenwriter Kevin Lehane have created a likable and technically impressive comedy-horror. Richard Coyle stars as Ciarán O'Shea, a permanently drunk cop on a remote island off the coast of Ireland; Ruth Bradley is the attractive new temporary officer, Lisa Nolan, an uptight workaholic drafted in from Dublin. To their dismay, and that of the laidback locals, the island is threatened by a mutant strain of weird creatures with fangs and tentacles, known as "grabbers". These hideous beasts are deterred by just one thing in a potential victim: a high blood-alcohol rate. So Ciarán and Lisa decide that they can only attack the monster after fortifying themselves with an almighty lock-in. It is fantastically silly, often funny, with some unshowy but very serviceable digital effects. Russell Tovey offers game support as the nerdy forensic scientist with a crush on Lisa; Lalor Roddy is the incorrigible Paddy Barrett, who first captures a grabber and keeps it in his bathtub, and Bronagh Gallagher is the formidable pub landlady under the poignant impression that the lock-in is to celebrate her birthday.

 

Electric Sheep [Evrim Ersoy]

Grabbers is one of the most persistently entertaining and thrilling films of this year: a throwback to the B-movies of the 50s, it’s a smart film that uses Irish locations and humour to create a unique spin on the genre.

When an island off the coast of Ireland finds itself invaded by aliens, the small community can only rely on their alcoholic Garda (a terrific Richard Coyle), rookie Garda Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley on top form) and love-rival scientist Dr Adam Smith (Russell Tovey doing his usual routine) to save them from being obliterated.

Enjoyment of Grabbers relies as much on the audience’s ability to have fun as anything else: this is not a serious, lofty film but a fun science-fiction ride with some terrific set pieces and some of the best CGI delivered from these shores. Considering the budget of the film, the special effects really shine: they are almost as good as in the pinnacle of the genre, the Korean monster masterpiece The Host.

The structure of the film plays out like any number of B-movies from the past: Tremors, Deep Rising even Attack the Block. However. it’s the local flavour that adds a unique twist to the proceedings: not only as provided by our heroes but also by the members of the small village on the island who all create some memorable and very funny characters that riff on recognisable stereotypes. True, it’s not exquisitely in-depth characterisation, but when the end result is so charming and well put together, that it’s impossible to complain.

Grabbers might not be anything new –most of the film feels like it was put together by taking the best examples of the genre. However, along with Cockneys vs Zombies, it is a refreshing genre film, something that we need more of in UK cinemas. And if that sounds like damning with faint praise, be assured it isn’t. Grabbers will delight not only the fans of the genre but also anyone who wants to spend 94 minutes in the company of some charming and bumbling characters fighting a greater evil the only way they know how – through sheer determination and liberal doses of Guinness.

Screen Daily  Kim Newman

This little Irish genre movie is like everyone’s favourite parts of Tremors and The Guard rolled together.  Given that aliens have been paying more attention to the British Isles of late, this might well appeal to audiences who have responded to such UK-based efforts as Attack The Block and Storage 24, but offers a warmer, weirder human story to go with its excellent CGI monster effects. 

Something from outer space falls into the sea near an island off the Irish coast, and bloodsucking tentacle-creatures emerge to terrorise the locals.  The fact that the invaders react to alcohol like Superman to kryptonite, which gives long-term hard-drinking Garda Ciarán O’Shea (Richard Coyle) an excuse to order a lock-in at the local pub and insist his uptight temporary superior, Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley), get drunk for the first time in her life, even as he straightens up his act and becomes a resolute, resourceful hero.

‘Hey everybody, it’s all right, it’s grand,’ declares a tipsy Lisa in one of the least-reassuring statements committed to film. ‘There’s nuttin tryin ta kill ya.’  Coyle and Bradley are very winning leads, bickering and bonding between the monster attacks and enjoying the snappy exchanges and put-downs (‘How much have you had?’ ‘Not enough to fancy you.’ ‘Well then, keep drinking.’). 

Grabbers seesaws confidently between Irish cynical whimsy – itself no easy mix to capture, as too many ‘Oirish’ films have shown – and science fiction thrills.  Though the denizens of the pub keep up the wry patter (‘I say we feed it Father Potts - unless it eats shit it’ll choke itself to death’) and some of the horrors have a slapstick edge, it delivers proper excitement and awe as the alien invaders are seen off. 

It’s a pleasing revival of the invaded island sub-genre of Island Of Terror and Night Of The Big Heat, and fits into that curiously British (and now Irish) genre of pub-under-siege picture, as seen in vintage items like Devil Girl From Mars and Strange World Of Planet X.  TV genre fixture Russell Tovey (Being Human) pops in as an English scientist who enthusiastically dissects and analyses specimens, gets amusingly drunk with the rowdy locals – familiar faces like Ned Dennehy, David Pearse and Bronagh Gallagher prop up the bar – and then gets swatted into the night by a giant angry squid. 

With the bloated example of Battleship on one side and numberless SyFy channel knock-offs like Battle: Los Angeles on the other, Grabbers shows that it is still possible to make an inventive, exciting, entertaining invasion-from-outer-space picture on reasonable resources.   Kevin Lehane’s smart script is canny enough to sidestep the expectations of fans who might think they know how films like this are supposed to play out, while the monsters are as well-realised as anything in far more costly productions. 

Director Jon Wright scripted the weak online serial Beyond The Rave, then directed the solid British teens-in-terror picture Tormented; this is a big step up in ambition and effect. Grabbers screened at the Edinburgh Film and shows at the upcoming annual London genre event FrightFest.

Exclusive first look at Grabbers - the salt. company - news  Alan Jones from SALT

 

Grabbers / The Dissolve  Noel Murray

 

Slant Magazine   Drew Hunt

 

Exclaim! [Robert Bell]

 

Twitch [Alex Koehne]

 

The Film Corner [Greg Klymkiw]

 

Flick Feast [Kevin Matthews]

 

Filmstalker  Richard Brunton

 

Fangoria.com [Michael Gingold]

 

0-5 Stars Moria - The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review [Richard Scheib]

 

The Spinning Image [Graeme Clark]

 

Film School Rejects [Kevin Kelly]

 

A Nutshell Review [Stefan S]

 

Sex Gore Mutants [Stuart Willis]

 

Grabbers | Review — U.S. Indie News, Filmmaker ... - Ioncinema  Nicholas Bell

 

BeyondHollywood.com [James Mudge]

 

theartsdesk.com [Emma Simmonds]

 

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

EFilmCritic [Jay Seaver]

 

Eternal Sunshine Of The Logical Mind [Bob Turnbull]

 

Eye for Film [Scott Macdonald]

 

SFX [Ian Berriman]

 

GRABBERS  Facets Multi Media

 

NPR [Ian Buckwalter]

 

Trespass Magazine [Sarah Ward]

 

Director interview  Steve Cummings interview from IFTN, August 1, 2013

 

Grabbers: Edinburgh Review - The Hollywood Reporter  Neil Young

 

Variety [Dennis Harvey]

 

The Telegraph [Robbie Collin]

 

IrishTimes.com [Donald Clarke]

 

Irish Examiner

 

The Edinburgh Reporter [Ryan McNeely]

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian [Jesse Hawthorne Ficks]

 

Chicago Tribune

 

Grabbers Movie Review & Film Summary (2012) | Roger Ebert  Ben Kenigsberg

 

Wu, Alice

 

SAVING FACE

USA  (91 mi)  2004

 

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; The Cinema of Boy Meets Boy and Girl Meets Girl  Ginia Bellafante from The New York Times, July 15, 2006

 

Wu Nien-jen

 

A BORROWED LIFE (Duo Sang)

Taiwan  (167 mi)  1994

 

Time Out review   Tony Rayns

 

Taiwan's foremost scriptwriter turned director to make this sprawling and highly resonant autobiographical film. Spanning the years from his childhood in the 1950s to the present, it centres on his often difficult relationship with his father, a coal miner turned gold miner who considered himself Japanese rather than Chinese and never fulfilled his role as head of the family. Wu not only uses his own story as a yardstick for the social, cultural and economic changes Taiwan has seen over four decades, but offers an indelible picture of the mining community in which he grew up. Regrettably, the protracted closing scenes flirt with the clichés of melodrama.

User comments  from imdb Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

The correct title of this film is simply "Dou-San," the name of Wu Nien-Jen's father. Wu, probably best known for writing two of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's most famous films, City of Sadness and The Puppetmaster (he also wrote Dust in the Wind for Hou and other scripts for Edward Yang, who had a big crossover hit with Yi Yi). Dou-San was educated in Japanese when that country controlled the island, but the members of his family prefer Mandarin, which he understands only partially. He loves his family, but feels a little isolated from them. The story centers around the relationship between father and son, from Wu's earliest memories to Dou-San's death in 1990 (the death is mentioned right away in the film, so this is not a spoiler). There are ups and downs, all very beautifully rendered by Wu.

Personally, I found Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films tedious as hell, even the two I liked. My only real criticism of Dou-San is that Wu emulates Hou's style too closely. This was his first film, and he is a good friend and frequent collaborator with Hou, so that makes perfect sense. Wu even said that he first approached Hou to direct the film, but he said that, since it was a personal story about his own father, he should direct it. I'm at a loss to say why I prefer Dou-San to any of Hou's films that I've seen (the only important one I haven't seen is Flowers of Shanghai). I was lucky enough to see the film with its director present - a rare opportunity indeed, especially since I live in the Midwest (the print we saw was literally printed and shipped by Martin Scorsese himself, believe it or not; Wu's second film, Buddha Bless America, was the one that was originally scheduled, but no print could be found). Perhaps I was so touched simply because he was there. I was trying to imagine what emotions he was feeling as he watched the film. I'd like to think that's untrue, of course, and that I'd have loved the film if I had seen it without him there. I know, though, that there are at least half a dozen sequences that I'll remember forever from this film. 9/10.

World Socialist Web Site  David Walsh

A Borrowed Life is another extraordinary film from Taiwan, by veteran screenwriter Wu Nien-jen. Born in 1952, Wu began writing scripts for the Central Motion Picture Corporation in 1978. He has worked with most of the directors responsible for the resurgence of Taiwanese cinema--Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Chang Yi, Wang Tong and Ke Yi-cheng, among others. He has written more than 70 screenplays. A Borrowed Life is his first film as director.

One can learn a great deal from this film, both about life and about how to present its truth in artistic form.

This is an autobiographical work; Wu has made a film about his father. Sega (Tsai Chen-nan) has come to Chioufen in northern Taiwan to marry into a somewhat more prosperous family than his own. Chioufen is comparatively well off because it is a mining village, enjoying a boom in the early 1950s. Sega goes to work in the gold mines.

He and his wife (Tsai Chiou-fong) have three children. Sega likes to leave his oldest son in the movie theater and go off to drink with his friends and the hostesses. There is scant pleasure in the lives of any of the miners or their families.

Sega looks back nostalgically to the period when the Japanese ruled Taiwan--until 1945--and longs to make the trip to the imperial palace in Tokyo and to Mount Fuji. He insists that his family call him "Do-san," an approximation of the Japanese To-san (father).

The film has several decisive moments at which painful truths are revealed in an understated but powerful fashion. In one sequence, Sega, his wife and children travel to his family's home to see off his younger brother, who has joined the army. The celebration goes off smoothly, all obligations are met, no one says a word about why the brother is enlisting or what it might mean. But as he is going out the front gate, followed by Sega, their father shouts, off-camera: All my life I've raised sons who were used by others!

The gold mines are becoming exhausted. Sega is laid off. He goes to the pawnshop to sell off family heirlooms. More and more people are leaving the village. Eventually, after an extended period of unemployment, he goes to work in the coal mines. He and his son, Wen-jian, quarrel about his gambling at mahjong.

In one memorable scene, Wen-jian goes to the coal mine to meet his father. Sega comes out of the mine, pushing a car full of coal along a railroad track. He is black with dust, his ankle is bleeding. The son offers to help push the car up a hill. The pair move away from the camera. The father simply says to Wen-jian: Study hard. What took Claude Berri tens of millions of dollars and several hours to establish in Germinal is more than summed up in a minute or two by Wu.

The film is called A Borrowed Life. A "stolen life" might be more appropriate. Sega's life is first of all stolen by the mines--he becomes stricken with emphysema; by all sorts of civic and family obligations which are essentially meaningless; and by his own fantasies about Japan and the emperor.

He retires from the coal mines at 55; his pension goes to help his younger son set up a business. When he is 59, he is diagnosed as a diabetic. By this time, he is obliged to carry an oxygen tank wherever he goes. He quarrels with his wife and family. His only consolation is his grandson, but he regrets that the boy does not speak Japanese.

In 1990 he is admitted to an intensive care unit, hardly able to breathe. After a final visit with Wen-jian, he pulls the IV from his arm and jumps out of the hospital window. He dies shortly afterward.

Here is a film about a working class life which does not strain to convince, or hammer or pull at one's heartstrings. It movingly sets out the essential facts and relationships and leaves the spectator free to draw his or her own conclusions. It is heartening to know that such a film has been made--and in the 1990s.

Doc Films  A Time for Freedom:  Taiwanese Filmmakers in Transition, essay by Edo S. Choi and Paola Iovene, Spring 2009 (excerpt)

Even a brief overview of Taiwan cinema in the second half of the 20th century must take into account its multilingual context. The majority of films produced in Taiwan in the 1950s and early 1960s were in Taiwan's native Southern Min language, and represented locally popular genres such as opera films and romantic comedies. By the 1960s Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party, the sole ruling party since its ousting from the Mainland by Mao Zeodong's Communist Party, was aggressively enforcing the teaching of Mandarin in schools and the use of Mandarin in cinema and other media. Launched by the state-owned Central Motion Pictures Corporation (CMPC), so-called ``healthy realism'' became the dominant genre. Mostly set in rural Taiwan, these films imagined a harmonious agrarian society, a vision which was often well-received by local audiences, but also represented the ideological whitewash of a repressive government.

Pressured by foreign competition, mostly from the Hong Kong industry, CMPC sought to diversify their production, experimenting with costume melodramas, comedies, and musicals. Pai Ching-jui's romantic comedy The Bride and I (1968) well exemplifies this attempt to compete with glitzier foreign products by toning down ideological content. One of the highlights of this important filmmaker's career and a box office hit, this delightfully self-reflexive work calls attention to the constraints that both political and commercial demands imposed on filmmakers at the time, thus combining light comedy and veiled cultural critique.

With the death of Chiang Kai-shek and the diplomatic isolation that followed the 1971 UN decision to recognize the People's Republic of China, the 1970s marked a dim, claustrophobic period in Taiwanese history, where cookie-cutter escapism prevailed, mostly in the form of adaptations of popular romance novels. But by the 1980s, facing ever-increasing competition from Hong Kong and Hollywood, CMPC inaugurated a ``newcomer policy'' aimed at attracting new talent to the local film industry. This institutional support was crucial for the emergence of the New Taiwan Cinema, whose exponents were given carte blanche, as well as the full wealth of the company's subsidies. Economic imperatives had at last superseded political ones, as the Nationalist Party gradually lost its grip on the country's imagination.

In 1980, Wu Nien-jen, a precocious novelist, found himself hired as a creative supervisor to reinvigorate CMPC's productions. The resulting project In Our Time (1982) inaugurated the New Taiwan Cinema with its quotidian tales of childhood mortification, sexual awakening, and urban maladjustment. It also occasioned the first film from a young former journeyman of television, Edward Yang. But it was Growing Up (Chen Kun-hou, 1983) that first attracted broad critical and popular attention to the movement. Penned by Hou Hsiao-hsien, eventually the movement's most prominent filmmaker, in his first of many collaborations (nearly every work of his career) with another novelist, a young woman named Chu T'ien-wen, Growing Up established some of the movement's key stylistic approaches and narrative concerns, with its subdued manner in relating the story of an adolescent boy grappling with everyday pangs amid Taiwan's fraught provincial context. The same year saw the release of The Sandwich Man, Wu Nien-jen's second omnibus film consisting of three shorts including Hou Hsiao-hsien's first personal project as a director. It was immediately hailed as a ``completely new start for the Chinese cinema of Taiwan.''

Most of the New Taiwan filmmakers, including Hou, Wu, Chu, and Yang were born in the late 1940s or early 1950s, and raised under a military dictatorship with a pro-Mandarin, anti-communist ideology at its core. They witnessed the economic take-off of the 1960s with its rapid social and political transformations. Each represented a different stratum of Taiwan society, and thus a different attitude towards its problems. For their parts the two writers Wu Nien-jen and Chu T'ien-wen were natives, and respectively represented that society's proletariat and literati cultures. On the other hand, the two filmmakers Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang both hailed from the Mainland, their families having fled the Chinese Civil War. The former's clan was rural and working class of the Hakka, a Han subgroup from Southern China, while the latter's family was urban bourgeois from Shanghai, settling in Taipei.

These four individuals outline a representative cadre of a larger group, some trained at home and some abroad. Drawing inspiration from the Hong Kong New Wave or international art cinema, or shaped by their work in television and the popular film industry, they emphasized a naturalistic acting style, location photography, and everyday depictions of Taiwan. Perhaps most importantly, their films returned to the use of Southern Min as their spoken idiom.

Chicago Reader (Jonathan Rosenbaum) capsule review

Variety (Ken Eisner) review

The New York Times (Stephen Holden) review

 

Wyatt, Rupert

 

THE GAMBLER                                                      C+                   78

USA  (111 mi)  2014  ‘Scope                 Official site

 

A wish fulfillment fantasy flick that is oddly intriguing, considering the film largely accentuates the tragic consequences of gambling gone wrong, where the lead character is a train wreck simultaneously happening on several tracks, as every blissful moment of winning is followed by days, weeks, and perhaps even a lifetime of regret.  As a result, the film has a sinking ship feeling about it, with Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) as the central figure that seemingly can’t help himself, a man drowning in gambling debt who sees his only way out as borrowing even larger sums of money, who has a predilection for doubling huge bets, momentarily compiling enormous sums, until he bets it all and eventually loses everything.  A remake of a 1974 James Toback script by the same name, the earlier film starring James Caan, which was itself a loose adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s 1867 novella by the same name.  So who should choose to rewrite the story?  None other than William Monahan, the Academy Award winning writer of Martin Scorsese’s THE DEPARTED (2006), his only Oscar as a director, which was a rewrite of a Hong Kong gangster film, Andy Lau’s INTERNAL AFFAIRS (2002).  Suffice it to say this is largely a writer’s exercise, as Bennett’s character is a loathsome, know-it-all bastard who routinely stands up to gangsters and lowlifes while moonlighting as a college literature professor where he literally excoriates his students, discouraging them from even trying, suggesting if they’re not geniuses or in possession of some unique and remarkable gift, they shouldn’t waste their time attempting to be floundering writers, as they simply don’t have the talent for it.  The existential dilemma that he finds himself in with his own life becomes the standard mantra in his classroom, where as one student points out all his lectures come down to the question of “To be, or not to be.”  One might assume his bleak, fatalistic outlook comes from his gambling addiction, but then what is the driving motive behind his addiction?  As the professor bemoans the fact in his classroom that students aspire to such unrealistic dreams, suggesting they need to get more realistic, one might think this same advice could be applied to himself, as gambling seems like a means to escape having to face his own essential real-life problems.         

 

Despite Wahlberg’s study of both college professors and gamblers in preparation for the role, he seems woefully detached and unconcerned, perhaps even miscast, as his personalized lecture hall philosophizing would never be condoned in an actual university, but feels more appropriate in front of a group of recovering addicts, as they’re actually in search of answers to the kinds of questions he’s posing, which rarely have anything to do with actual literature.  His fascination with the best and brightest of his students, Amy (Brie Larson, much too nice, similarly miscast), singling her out in front of the classroom, identifying her as the only student with a natural flair for writing, whose talent is head over heels above all the rest who he claims have no potential whatsoever, actually showing contempt for the other students, is not only professionally inappropriate, but qualifies as excessively cruel and discouraging treatment towards the other students and would likely be grounds for immediate dismissal, if not a lawsuit.  It’s curious that this director, whose previous film was RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011), would be so blind to this illusory portrayal.  As the professor then enters into an inappropriate relationship with that aforementioned gifted student, Amy, who also moonlights as a casino waitress, so has seen the man in the throes of action, she witnesses his world spiral out of control.  Like Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s Mickey One (1965) or Ben Gazzara in Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), one night, in a matter of hours, Jim Bennett is down a quarter of a million dollars to the casino owner Mister Lee (Alvin Ing), borrowing another $50,000 on the spot from a loan shark lurking around the tables who preys on the desperate impulses of gamblers just like him, Neville Baraka (the dangerously terrific Michael Kenneth Williams), instantly sizing him up, “I think you’re the kind of guy who likes to lose.”  With the money due to both within a week, with no conceivable means of paying either one back without borrowing more, we begin to think this guy operates with a death wish.  And if Amy, the student, is so smart, with her future so bright and the world supposedly at her feet, what is her interest in such a self-loathing downer of a guy who has no conceivable idea of respect for himself or anyone else?      

 

The path of destruction only escalates from there, as Bennett comes from an aristocratic family of wealth and it’s only a matter of time before he visits the matriarch of the family jewels, none other than Jessica Lange as his mother.  She has no interest in feeding his habit, knowing how helpless he is to his own weaknesses, yet when she learns that the loan sharks will likely come after her and the entire family if the debt is not paid, so she hands over the entire amount needed to cover his debt.  While the sensible thing to do would be to pay the money, Bennett is not wired that way, convinced that his lucky strike is the next roll of the dice.  At the same time, he pays a visit to Frank (John Goodman), yet another gangster loan shark who’s aware of his entire situation and has little to think over, as the man has nothing to offer that’s not already in hock.  Nonetheless, it’s a desperate game they play, and play it they must, where in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden he writes, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  What is called resignation is confirmed desperation…A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.”  Growth or wisdom remain an open question by the end of this film, which hardly qualifies as a film with any real insight.  While this may be to gamblers what David Cronenberg’s NAKED LUNCH (1991) is to drug addicts, as both are hard corps depictions of the lurid and enticing world that addicts themselves are trying to avoid.  Ultimately this will not go down as one of the better gambling movies, or even stand up to the original 1974 version where a much more intensely gripping James Caan originates the expression, “I’m not going to lose it.  I’m going to gamble it.”  As unrealistically as this film turns out, the director shows he truly has no conception of a gambler’s addiction, where this fantasy happy ending may as well be one of those pipe dreams that all the drunks commiserate over in Eugene O’Neill’s THE ICEMAN COMETH (1960).  Much better films about gambling would include Robert Rossen’s masterful THE HUSTLER (1961), which depicts gambling as a gritty vocation with immense personal risks and costs, Norman Jewison’s THE CINCINNATI KID (1965), with a brilliant cast and an amazing final scene, Robert Altman’s California Split (1974), that takes us through a lengthy marathon of various 1970’s gambling tables while searching for that magical run, only to end in a devastating numbness and emptiness, a deflated weariness of the soul with no joy or agony because someone won or lost, but utter exhaustion because the dreamed about run is finally over, and Mike Hodges’ novel take in CROUPIER (1998), the rare gambling film to be seen from the perspective of the dealer, showing a completely unglamorized view of being caught up in the same dreary world day in and day out, forced to witness the losers over and over again, where the sheer monotony leaves him in a similar state of captivity as the players.   

 

Film Racket [Bill Gibron]

You can tell by the look on his face, this isn’t going to end well. A dour and disheveled man, his suit ill-fitting and his mouth configured into a disgruntled grimace, walks into a shady situation with a chip on his shoulder and a briefcase full of cash. With one spray of the cards, he’s down $10,000. After discussing his situation with the men in charge of this illegal gaming establishment, he owes more than $250,000. Of course, he can’t help it. Indeed, college professor Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is The Gambler, an angry addict who can’t control himself where wagering is involved.

He’s also the protagonist for Rupert Wyatt’s (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) remake of James Toback’s 1974 film starring James Caan. As scripted by Oscar winner William Monahan (The Departed), we get a similar slice of seedy social underbelly with the kind of snappy dialogue that makes the otherwise predictable plot zip right along. With a collection of excellent supporting performances and solid work from Wahlberg at the core, what’s basically a “been there, done that” idea gets a new lease on cinematic life.

We soon learn that Bennett is a good professor, a no-nonsense kind of guy who won’t give in to newfangled teaching ideas. He comes from a wealthy family, though his late grandfather (George Kennedy) and his rich witch mother (Jessica Lange) refuse to lend him the money to help get him out of trouble. While there are hints that he used to date his students and indulge in other vices, he actually refuses the advances of a talented writer (Brie Larson) who wants to know more about him.

That’s because Bennett has a bigger problem now. He owes a quarter of a million dollars to an Asian crime boss (Alvin Ing) and has borrowed even more from a notorious gangster (Michael Kenneth Williams) to no avail. Both are promising violence if he doesn’t pay off his debts. He’s decides to approach a dangerous loan shark (John Goodman) hoping to make one final score and set everything right. Of course, considering his luck and the life he’s led so far, it doesn’t look like Bennett will come close to succeeding.

With Wyatt’s unflinching desire to see his characters hit the very bottom of their own individual downward spirals and the words Monahan puts in their mouths while doing so, The Gambler frequently feels kinetic and alive. It zings and zaps through the various pitfalls in Bennett’s life without turning things into an exercise in sadism. Every move our characters make seems to have some personal resonance, even if we don’t recognize it at first. When Lange’s wretched matron heads to the bank to bail her son out (reluctantly), the attitude she presents is masked by her fury at the teller giving her grief. When she gets outside and finally talks to her son, we get the real reaction to his choices — and it’s heartbreaking.

Goodman also has moments like this, times when we know he wants Bennett to fall in with his high interest rate routine and yet, almost like a father, he warns his “son” of the consequences. There is a subplot involving a future NBA prospect and points shaving, but it almost feels out of place, as if Monahan, having taken massive liberties with James Toback’s original narrative to begin with, needed a way to link this remake back to the source. The performance by newcomer Anthony Kelly is excellent, but the motives seem mired in a desire to reference the past.

Luckily, Wahlberg’s work is the glue that holds this all together. He’s cocky and convincing, barely allowing his ever-present fear to show through. By the end, when we wonder if he’ll ever work his way out of this mess, we can see the panic in Bennett’s eyes. It’s all Wahlberg, and it’s great. Too bad the main storyline of The Gambler is so obvious. With a little more finesse we’d have a great film instead of a very good one.

In Review Online [Veronika Ferdman]

If you haven't seen Karel Reisz's 1974 The Gambler before seeing Rupert Wyatt's new Mark Wahlberg-starring remake, don't watch it in close proximity to the new version. Here is yet another classic case of an original that makes the flaws of the remake seem that much harsher.

There's some wonderful mise-en-abyme surrounding Reisz's original. James Toback wrote the heavily autobiographical script about a Jewish college English professor with a deeply self-destructive gambling problem while he himself was leading a double life as a heavy-duty gambler and English professor at The City College of New York. Toback originally embarked upon writing the script (which first started as a novel) as a sort of homage to Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Gambler—and Dostoevsky, who was himself a heavy gambler, wrote the novel in order to pay off his gambling debts.

Toback/Reisz's The Gambler is in the pantheon of Robert Altman's California Split (1974) and Jacques Demy's Bay of Angels (1963) as films about gambling that are able to create genuine and detailed portraits of the thrill of the game and the debilitation of the compulsion, the addiction. The failure of the remake lies in its near-complete failure to dive into a gambler's psychology.

In the Toback/Reisz film, it is clear that the reason James Caan (despite being from an incredibly wealthy family, having a beautiful blonde girlfriend, and a reasonably good job) is willing to risk losing everything—money, girlfriend, even his life—is precisely because he is in love with the sensation of risk that comes with the gamble. For that reason, it's telling that, in one of his university lectures, Caan speaks about how William Carlos Williams reaches the conclusion that George Washington is not really the ideal American because what Washington fears most is risk. Or, perhaps, he is the ideal in that what we want is to lead lives that reduce risk to a zero, where everything is planned and we feel in control of our own fate. For Caan's gambler, however, this is the ugly antithesis of what it means to be alive; he finds intoxication in the moments before the card flips over or the ball comes to rest on the roulette wheel—the moment before all is revealed, when fate could still swing either way.

Alas, in his script for Wyatt's remake, William Monahan seems to have no similarly incisive handle on what makes Wahlberg a compulsive gambler. The entire film basically plays as one scene after another of various characters looking Wahlberg up and down and offering a variation of "oh my god, why are you so self-destructive when you have everything going for you, you poor pretty rich boy." The crux of Wahlberg's problems have little to do with gambling and seem to be based in some sort of death wish.

As one of his students points out, all of Wahlberg's English lectures seem to come down to the question of "to be or not to be." One would assume his existential black hole derives from his gambling addiction, but then his gambling addiction seems to come from his existential mess. By comparison to Toback's more philosophical bent, this chicken-or-egg question is much less interesting, and is just a way for the film to escape from having to really dig into either problem.

In preparation for the role, Wahlberg sat in on a number of lectures to get a sense of the way professors conduct class. However, whatever it is he sat through does not seem to have made too much of an impression on him as Wahlberg's lecture-hall scenes, in which he is eviscerating students and acting too devil-may-care to not have been fired ten times over take place on a different planet from the reality of any sort of classroom one is likely to find here on earth. Nevertheless, Wahlberg's sheer commitment also provides the film's main joys outside of the scenes containing John Goodman and Michael K. Williams as two of his creditors.

Though The Gambler is at times fun to watch, its tone is too light and consciously cool to support, much less investigate, the darkness of the material that so wholly permeates the original. And Monahan/Wyatt's The Gambler concludes on far too neat and upbeat a note, proving that no one associated with this film knows a lick about gamblers or addiction.

Variety [Justin Chang]

There’s enough swaggering cynicism for three pictures but barely enough soul to sustain even one in Rupert Wyatt’s “The Gambler,” a stylish, energetic but disappointingly glib remake of Karel Reisz’s still-potent 1974 drama of the same title. Mark Wahlberg tears into one of his meatiest roles as an English professor drowning in a sea of blackjack debts and self-destructive impulses, a born risk-taker who’s aptly described as everything from “the kind of guy that likes to lose” to “the world’s stupidest asshole.” But it’s that surfeit of macho attitude in William Monahan’s script that keeps Wahlberg from coming anywhere near James Caan’s sly brilliance in the earlier film, making this a movie of slick, surface-level pleasures that’s unpersuasive at its core. In a roll of the awards-season dice, Paramount is launching “The Gambler” Dec. 19 with a one-week Oscar-qualifying run before its Jan. 2 wide release, when the collective draw of Wahlberg and a juicy supporting cast should yield solid if not hefty B.O. payouts.

Released just a month after “California Split,” Robert Altman’s more idiosyncratic take on the pleasures and perils of going all in, Reisz’s original “Gambler” marked the heavily autobiographical screenwriting debut of James Toback, who initially objected when Paramount announced plans for a remake without his knowledge. (The scribe has since given the project his blessing and received an exec producer credit, while original producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff retain those credits here.) In its broad narrative outlines if not its jazzier sense of style, the remake remains largely faithful to Toback’s self-probing study of a Harvard-educated New York academic who finds himself increasingly at the mercy of his gambling addiction, alienating his nearest and dearest while seeking to evade and outwit all the bookies and collectors on his tail.

In this Los Angeles-set retelling, Wahlberg plays Jim Bennett, a cynical motormouth who spends most of his evenings at the blackjack tables and roulette wheels of a Korean-run establishment, where he’s racked up enough debt that the casino’s tolerant owner, Mr. Lee (Alvin Ing), can no longer turn a blind eye. Learning that he has one week to pay back $240,000 or face grievous consequences, Bennett makes his situation immediately worse by accepting $50,000 from a beret-wearing loan shark named Neville Baraka (Michael Kenneth Williams), establishing a pattern of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and squandering every bailout that comes his way. On more than one occasion, Bennett approaches big-time lender Frank (a superb, bald-pated John Goodman), who warns him not to make the mistake of appropriating his services, lest he find himself forced to pay the ultimate price.

Bennett’s compulsion springs at least partly from his privileged upbringing, and he reacts with more contempt than gratitude when his acerbic mother, Roberta (Jessica Lange), coughs up the requisite quarter-million in cash, though she warns him that it’s the last time she’ll come to his rescue. But a solution that easy would scarcely satisfy the story’s dramatic requirements, much less Bennett himself, who seems hooked on more than just the possibility of winning big. What excites him is the far more dangerous thrill of pushing himself to the limits and potentially losing everything, so that he can rely on his wits and sheer dumb luck to pull himself back from the brink. When a concerned croupier balks at dealing him another hand, telling him it’s for his own good, Bennett fires back: “You don’t come here for the fucking protection.”

By day, Bennett (sort of) teaches a college class on the modern novel, which mainly consists of bashing the know-nothings and burnouts who call themselves his students, using Shakespeare and Camus to pound home the idea that only a few lucky geniuses are able to rise above mediocrity in their chosen field. One such exception is Amy Phillips (Brie Larson), a quietly brilliant literature student and part-time casino employee who knows about her professor’s double life (shades of “Half Nelson”), which naturally leads them to the next level of inappropriate intimacy. But Amy isn’t the only pupil who will figure into Bennett’s escape plan: The others are Dexter (Emory Cohen), a state tennis champ, and Lamar (Anthony Kelley), a GPA-challenged basketball star who might be just what Bennett needs to dig himself out of his latest hole.

Virtually without exception, the dialogue in “The Gambler” is pitched at a level of caustic, hyper-articulate, testosterone-fueled bluster that swiftly announces itself as Monahan’s handiwork. In that respect, the script proves a sturdy fit for Wahlberg, who may be no viewer’s idea of a professorial type, but who knows how to toss off Monahan’s profane zingers with aplomb, as he did in his Oscar-nominated performance in “The Departed.” Here, playing a guy so bored with his coddled, complacent existence that he can only feel alive by risking everything, Wahlberg proves no less ferociously eloquent — too eloquent, frankly, to the point where you wish that Bennett would spend less time sounding off about what an empty shell he’s become, and more time simply being.

There are a few attempts to underline the notion that this guy is sinking in own excesses, particularly in the surreal use of water imagery; in one dreamlike interlude, a bathtub (a nod to a scene in the 1974 film) briefly opens a window into his childlike soul. But in the end, “The Gambler” doesn’t seem especially interested in exploring these tortured depths. Even as a clock counts down the days to his deadline (a device that generates little in the way of suspense), Bennett doesn’t really deepen in complexity or pathos; he just gets snarkier and more self-satisfied. Given his near-total disregard for his own safety, it almost feels like a waste of energy for a viewer to root for him to survive, or to take much pleasure in the film’s softly redemptive ending; by the time Bennett finally takes a well-deserved punch from one of Mr. Lee’s thugs, you may feel less inclined to flinch than to cheer.

Neither of the two actresses is well served by the script’s awfully stunted view of women, though Lange succeeds in upping the emotional ante in her few scenes as the embittered mother, reacting to her son’s dilemma with equal parts scorn and horror. Larson, so good in last year’s “Short Term 12,” is a wonderfully poised presence here, but it’s one of the film’s more glaring failures that it gives us no real sense of Amy’s intellectual potential; the moment she falls into bed with Bennett is the moment she ceases to be a figure of interest. Williams, Ing and especially Goodman deliver uniquely pungent variations on the role of the reluctant enforcer, waxing philosophical about their methods and never resorting to physical violence unless absolutely necessary, while Richard Schiff has an amusing scene as a pawnbroker whom our hero approaches in his hour of need.

Wyatt, the accomplished helmer behind 2011’s terrific “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and the under-appreciated 2008 prison drama “The Escapist,” keeps the energy percolating at a high level throughout — mainly through a stream of arresting and unpredictable musical choices that include Chopin, Cole Porter and Bob Dylan, encompassing everything from Dinah Washington’s soulful “This Bitter Earth” to Scala & Kolacny Brothers’ haunting a cappella cover of “Creep.” (Wyatt shares the music-supervisor credits with Theo Green and Clint Bennett.) Pete Beaudreau’s editing is sharpest in the casino, where the rapid-fire blackjack games naturally heighten one’s attention; a time-lapse gambling sequence and a few tilt-shift effects further distinguish d.p. Greig Fraser’s often dark and moody visuals, which make atmospheric use of recognizable L.A. landmarks (including USC and Downtown) as well as other California locations.

Little White Lies [Adam Woodward]

 

Flavorwire [Jason Bailey]

 

The Gambler / The Dissolve  Scott Tobias

 

Writing: Movies [Chris Knipp]

 

The Gambler is a Dressed-Up Genre Picture -- and a Good ...  Stephanie Zacharek from The Village Voice

 

The Gambler | Reviews | Screen - Screen International  Tim Grierson

 

DVDTalk.com [Jeff Nelson]

 

Review: Mark Wahlberg tempts fate in the sly and ... - HitFix  Drew McWeeny

 

Slant Magazine [Steve Macfarlane]

 

Cinemixtape [J. Olson]

 

The Steve Pulaski Message Board [Steve Pulaski]

 

The Film Stage [John Fink]

 

Sound On Sight  Colin Biggs

 

INFLUX Magazine [Kristina Aiad-Toss]

 

Film Freak Central Review [Angelo Muredda]

 

Digital Spy [Stella Papamichael]

 

Cinema365 [Carlos deVillalvilla]

 

'The Gambler' Review: 'Wonder Boys' Goes Ass-to ... - Pajiba  Dustin Rowles

 

Blu-ray.com [Brian Orndorf]

 

IONCINEMA [Nicholas Bell]

 

Concrete Playground [Sarah Ward]

 

Georgia Straight [Ken Eisner]

 

Twitch [Peter Martin]

 

Gambler, The | Reelviews Movie Reviews  James Berardinelli

 

The Hollywood Reporter [Todd McCarthy]

 

The Gambler review - The Guardian  Jordan Hoffman

 

The Gambler review - The Guardian  Mark Kermode

 

The Gambler review - The Guardian  Peter Bradshaw

 

JapanCinema.net [Trang Le]

 

Examiner.com [Travis Hopson]

 

Examiner.com [Jana J. Monji]  also seen here:  Pasadena Art Beat [Jana J. Monji]

 

Kansas City Star [Jon Niccum]

 

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

 

Review: 'The Gambler' - Los Angeles Times  Mark Olsen

 

The Gambler - Roger Ebert  Odie Henderson

 

Review: Don't Bet on This Oddly Lifeless 'Gambler' Remake ...  Manohla Dargis from The New York Times

 

Wyler, William

 

William Wyler.com

 

William Wyler at Reel Classics

 

Overview for William Wyler - TCM.com

 

William Wyler | Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos | AllMovie  Hal Erickson biography

 

William Wyler Movies | Ultimate Movie Rankings

 

William Wyler - Jewish Virtual Library  biography

 

William Wyler | American director | Britannica.com  biography

 

William Wyler - Director - Films as Director ... - Film Reference  Charles Affron profile essay, also seen here:  William Wyler facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles ...

 

William Wyler - Hollywood's Great Director - Hollywood's Golden Age  biography

 

William Wyler » historyonfilm.com  biography

 

wyler is dead at 79; director had won 3 academy awards  obituary from The New York Times, July 29, 1981

 

BOOK EXCERPT : Withering 'Heights' : William Wyler's romantic epic ...  The following excerpt from A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood's Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler, by Jan Herman, to be published January 1996, from The LA Times, December 10, 1995

 

William Wyler • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema  David Cairns from Senses of Cinema, April 15, 2005

 

William Wyler « Twenty Four Frames  Wyler review archives by John Greco, February 1, 2009                         

 

Self-Styled Siren: More Takes on William Wyler  March 19, 2006

 

William Wyler: Interviews - DGA.org  John Patterson review of book edited by Gabriel Miller, Winter 2010

 

William Wyler: Oscar Top Actors Director - Alt Film Guide  Andre Soares, 2011

 

Ben-Hur - Bright Lights Film Journal  Getting It Right the Second Time: Adapting Ben-Hur for the Screen, by Gordon Thomas, June 4, 2014

 

10 Greatest Films Directed by William Wyler - The Greatest Movies ...  Robert Frost from Quora, December 11, 2014

 

The Heiress: William Wyler unveils the psychological ferocity of Henry ...  David Denby from Library of America, May 4, 2016

 

TSPDT - William Wyler

 

William Wyler (1902 - 1981) - Find A Grave Memorial

 

William Wyler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

COUNSELLOR AT LAW

USA  (82 mi)  1933

 

Long Pauses [Darren Hughes] Darren Hughes from Long Pauses

 

In the foreground sits Harry Becker (Vincent Sherman), a young radical who only the night before was beaten and arrested by the police for, as his mother explains it, "making Communist speeches." He sits here with George Simon (John Barrymore), a high-powered attorney whose office overlooks Manhattan from atop the Empire State Building. Harry is in Mr. Simon's office begrudgingly, having only come at the behest of his mother, a stereotypically diffident immigrant who had once lived down the street from George's family. That was back in "the old days," back before George had worked his way through school and made his name and fortune as a ruthless defender of promiscuous divorcees, corrupt politicians, and rapacious business leaders. "Keep your charity for your parasites!" barks Harry, shaking with rage. Simon, both wounded and piqued by the comment, turns to look at the angry young man. And then the fun begins.

Adapted from a successful stage play by Elmer Rice, Counsellor at Law was a production of Universal Pictures, then still under the control of founder Carl Laemmle and his son, Carl Jr. In 1925, the elder Laemmle had allowed a cousin's young son to direct his first film, a two-reel western called Crook Buster, and in the eight years since, William Wyler had made forty or fifty pictures for Universal. Except for The Love Trap (1929), a charming romantic comedy and Wyler's first talkie, none of these early films are, as far as I know, readily available on DVD. While I enjoyed The Love Trap -- and enjoyed the natural and nuanced lead performances, especially -- I wasn't quite prepared for Counsellor at Law, which, unlike so many other studio dramas of the '20s and '30s, is shockingly contemporary in tone, characterization, and mise-en-scene. It is also the perfect introduction to the films of William Wyler.

Rice's play premiered at the Plymouth Theatre on November 6, 1931, some six months after the Empire State first opened its doors. It was the second of two new plays written and produced by Rice that year, joining The Left Bank as a great critical and commercial success. Rice sold both scripts to Universal, but only Counsellor at Law made it into production. Carl Jr.'s growing confidence in Wyler was evident in his handing over of such a valuable property to the young director. Laemmle had paid Rice $150,000 for the play, an impressive sum during the Depression, and as a kind of insurance on his investment had also contracted Rice to adapt the play himself. After a quick first meeting between the writer and director in Mexico City, Rice flew home to New York to begin revisions and Wyler returned to Los Angeles to begin casting. Principal photography began three weeks later, and exactly three months after that the film opened at Radio City Music Hall to rave reviews.

Pauline Kael later described Wyler's film as "energetic, naïve, melodramatic, goodhearted, and full of gold-diggers, social climbers, and dedicated radicals." That is to say, it is a product of those peculiar days of the early-1930s, when the collapse of world markets revealed for all to see the diseases that plague capitalism and when "being Left" in America was still uncomplicated by Stalin and Mao. Counsellor at Law is no Waiting for Lefty (1935) -- Rice was a generation older than Clifford Odets and the other founding members of the Group Theatre, and didn't share their idealism or fervor -- but the play/film is still very much of the era in its ambivalence about (if not quite antagonism toward) economies founded on greed and exploitation. Waiting for Lefty ends, famously, with a chorus of actors chanting "Strike!" as they make their way off stage and past the seated audience. If Counsellor at Law can be criticized for surrendering to a "happy ending" convention that mucks up any would-be "sound-as-brickwork-logic" Marxist reading of the text (to borrow a phrase from Norman Mailer), then it should also be commended for sparing audiences Odett's brand of didacticism. As would be the case again and again throughout his long career, Wyler mines the source material for its humanity and, in doing so, gives us a compelling critique of specific historical conditions that rises above sloganeering.

Note: I hope to return to this post someday and give Counsellor at Law the formal reading it deserves. It's really a fantastic film.

ROMAN HOLIDAY

USA  (118 mi)  1953

 

Time Out

 

This has the hallmarks of a Billy Wilder picture - Americans abroad, masquerades leading to moral transformation - and Wilder would doubtless have turned it into a blazing masterpiece. Wyler's style was not particularly suited to comedy - the film is a little long, a little heavy at times, the spontaneity a little over-rehearsed - and he simply makes a wonderfully enjoyable movie. Hepburn is the Princess bored with protocol who goes AWOL in Rome; Peck (Holden would have been better, edgier) is the American journalist who has the scoop fall into his lap; and Albert (the best performance) is the photographer who has to snap all of Hepburn's un-royal escapades. This sort of thing was churned out by Lubitsch in the '30s, on the Paramount back-lot; Wyler went on location, and in 1953 that was a real eye-opener, Hollywood's answer to neo-realism. The movie remains a great tonic.

 

Roman Holiday  Gerald Peary

The You want handsome? You want class? You want a gentleman among gentlemen? All hail Gregory Peck, 87 on April 5, 2003, among the best-loved of all Hollywood actors, by his colleagues and by the public, and star of the wonderful (and wise) romantic comedy, Roman Holiday (1953), available in a newly restored 35mm print, in celebration of the film's 50th birthday.

I talked to Harlan County USA filmmaker Barbara Kopple, who, urged on by the actor's daughter, Cecilia, made a documentary about Peck several years ago, mixing interviews with scenes of his charming one-man stage show. Kopple found no secret Peck: he was as kind and humane in person as he seems on screen. "For me, he is the Atticus Finch character in To Kill a Mockingbird," Kopple said. "It's a film about ethics and social justice, which shows him to be a wonderful father. Peck speaks out on the gun control issue. He does it with finesse and dignity, and people listen."

Was there anything on the cutting-room floor of Peck losing his temper? "No, never!" said Kopple. "He's a very private person, but he liked our crew, and trusted us. The only thing he felt uncomfortable about was that he can't walk so well anymore. He's a tall man, and he was touchy about us filming him walking and trying to get somewhere."

Half a century ago, Peck was, at 37, an agile match in Roman Holiday for elegant Audrey Hepburn,23; and he was so courtly that he, a huge Hollywood name, allowed filmmaker William Wyler to give Hepburn the moving, expressive closeups, which led to an Academy Award in her first major role.

In the year of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, Hepburn plays Princess Ann, heir to the throne of an unspecified European country, who, faced with endless formal meetings and parties with fossilized nobility, can't take it anymore. Nearing a nervous breakdown, she races away from a Roman palace and, without revealing her royal identity, hooks up with a normal American guy, Joe Bradley (Peck), whom she meets on the street. She doesn't know that he's a journalist. When he figures out who she really is, he promises his editor an inside scoop story, all the time they're falling in love. Will he sell her out to his tabloid-minded newspaper?

Roman Holiday, though transposed to Italy, owes its setup to the 1934 screwball classic, It Happened One Night. In each case, a runaway rich girl meets up with a pragmatic, seemingly amoral newspaperman. Romance ensues. She finds fun among the common people, and he discovers he's got a heart and scruples. It Happened One Night is the funnier of the two movies, and with a satisfying if predictable comedy conclusion. Roman Holiday is enjoyably inconsequential throughout; but just when you ready yourself for a heart-warming commoner-gets-princess ending, perfectly reasonable considering the appealing leads, there's a jolt.

The last ten minutes of Roman Holiday are really something special, as Hepburn's Princess Ann has returned to the throne, as Peck's regular Joe waits for her to abandon it all, leap into his adoring arms. Though the movie is fifty years old, Roman Holiday's astonishing ending won't be given away by me.

Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]

No one in movie history made a debut quite like Audrey Hepburn. She was barely detectable in movies like The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) before she got her big break in William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953) playing a princess on a goodwill tour. Her screen charm and presence were unequalled in history by all but a handful of movie stars. And in playing the role of a princess, she became one and won an Oscar for Best Actress.

The Academy rarely gives awards for debut performances and rarely to young people who have a hot career ahead of them. That's how solidly Audrey won over all of Hollywood. And when we watch the film today, nearly 50 years later, we're still won over. The princess role was perfect for Audrey. She was stunningly beautiful, a gamin with a long neck, huge almond-shaped eyes, appropriate lashes, and thick eyebrows that drew attention to the eyes. Her charming English accent (although she was born in Brussels) was the finishing touch -- no one in Hollywood sounded as good. She was noble and elegant. You wouldn't want to think about sex with her (sex with a princess is out of the question) but she was so charming you wanted to spend an afternoon cuddling her and listening to her speak. And thus Roman Holiday is her perfect picture.

But is it her best film? I would concede that it's a great place to start watching Audrey's films, but it's not quite a masterpiece. Let's start with the content, which is flawless. The story was credited to Ian McLellan Hunter but was really written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. (When the movie's story won an Oscar it was Hunter who picked it up.) The screenplay is by Hunter and John Dighton. Rumor has it there were more uncredited writers including Ben Hecht and some Italian screenwriters. But it all comes across as an old-time fairy tale. Princess Audrey is tired of making appearances and giving speeches so she sneaks out to experience Rome. Newspaperman Gregory Peck and photographer Eddie Albert show her the town. Audrey tries to hide the fact that she's a princess and doesn't know that Peck and Albert are journalists. Peck and Albert know that she's a princess, but don't let on that they know. In a lesser Hollywood film (one starring David Spade or Adam Sandler), the whole long joke would be that no one is in on the charade and there would be lots of slapstick designed to conceal it. But since Trumbo and the others were smart enough to let everyone in on it, we can relax and enjoy.

But the trouble comes with respected and boring director William Wyler. Wyler was one of Hollywood's top helmers and he always turned in a quality product without any personal stamp or artistic invention. He didn't rock the boat and the suits liked him for that. When Wyler was behind the camera for serious Oscar contenders like Wuthering Heights (1939), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) or Ben-Hur (1959), he was fine. But for Roman Holiday, he was too stiff and uncaring. The movie needed a lighter touch from someone like Ernst Lubitsch (who was dead by then), George Cukor, or Howard Hawks. Think of how much fun Hawks' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes from the same year was and you'd have an idea of how much better Roman Holiday could have been. Picture the scene in which Audrey rides a motor scooter for the first time and it gets away from her. Wyler's thuddingly distant approach to the scene makes it dull, when it could have been lively. It's as if he were more interested in photographing the real Roman locations than getting inside the characters.

In other scenes, though, Wyler was smart enough to simply let Audrey do her thing. In one scene early on, Audrey is fast asleep in Peck's arms and Peck must figure out what to do with her and where to put her in his small apartment. Wyler lets a simple wide shot record the actors' rhythms rather than trying to impose himself on the scene. At other times, the atmosphere of Rome actually enhances Audrey, as when she walks around Rome haphazardly spending what little money she has left on a haircut. Whatever else one can say about Wyler, he was smart with actors.

In the end, Roman Holiday succeeds because Audrey is the real "auteur" of the picture and not Wyler. Her presence is such that she inevitably takes over whatever movie she's in. When we think of Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) or Sabrina (1954), we don't think of them as Blake Edwards or Billy Wilder movies. They're Audrey Hepburn movies. As far as that goes, she's at her best in Roman Holiday and I still get immeasurable pleasure when I watch it.

The Film Sufi: “Roman Holiday” - William Wyler (1953)  June 23, 2014

 

Roman Holiday - TCM.com  Frank Miller

 

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The Greatest Films - comprehensive analysis of classic US film  Tim Dirks

 

Roman Holiday (1953) - Articles - TCM.com  Andrea Passafiume

 

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THE BIG COUNTRY

USA  (165 mi)  1958  ‘Scope

 

The Big Country  Colin from Ride the High Country

The Big Country (1958) has been described as a Cold War allegory, and I guess the reasons for that are fairly clear for anyone who wants to see them. It’s also been referred to as a traditional “stranger in a strange land” style tale, which is once again obvious enough. Whilst the latter is a theme that’s been visited too many times to mention, the former tends to date movies badly if that’s all there is on offer; one has only to compare a one-note diatribe like Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue to multi-layered works such as Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, Richard Brooks’ The Professionals, or Aldrich’s Ulzana’s Raid to see the difference. What raises The Big Country above a trite critique of contemporary politics and lends it a timeless relevance is the fact that it’s also an examination of man (or should I say men) and what he’s made of. The hero continuously has his masculinity questioned and challenged, and it’s his refusal to play others’ games and conform to preconceived ideas of how he should or should not act that builds up his stature in the viewer’s eyes while, conversely, it is diminished in the eyes of his fellow characters.

Jim McKay (Gregory Peck) is the archetypal easterner come west. His arrival is enough to literally stop the locals in their tracks, gazing in wonder at this alien figure with his trim suit and odd hat. McKay is a seaman who’s come to this new land to wed Pat Terrill (Carroll Baker), daughter of a wealthy rancher. Within a very short time McKay has a run in with Buck Hannassey (Chuck Connors) and his brothers, and so gets his first taste of the situation he’s landed himself in. The Hannassey’s are a rough and ready clan of ranchers engaged in an off and on vendetta with McKay’s future father-in-law Major Terrill (Charles Bickford). The cause of the feud is a piece of land that both families covet due to its providing that most valuable of commodities in the parched prairies of the old west, water. Having said that, the bitterness and venom that both Pat and the Major express when speaking of their not so welcome neighbours hints at some deeper source for the rivalry. Right away you can sense McKay’s unease at the raw hatred he’s exposed to, and the fact that he refuses to share in it and even backs off confronting the Hannassey’s shocks his bride-to-be. In fact, McKay seems to do nothing but disappoint his betrothed; he avoids taking a ride on the unbroken horse that’s traditionally wheeled out to give all newcomers a rough welcome, and worst of all turns his back on a fight that the Major’s foreman Steve Leech (Charlton Heston) goads him into. As far as Pat is concerned, these all amount to calculated insults and his shunning of such public displays of machismo cast doubts on his manhood and, by extension, on her pride and judgement. However, the viewer gets to see what Pat and her father don’t: that McKay is no coward, he’s merely a man with a deep sense of personal honour who’s offended by the act of showing off to others and proving to them that which he’s very sure of himself. When Pat rides off in a huff, and the Major and Steve go hunting vengeance, McKay quietly takes out that unbroken horse and sets about taming it. Time and again the animal hurls him into the dust of the corral, and time and again McKay gets back in the saddle until he finally bends it to his will.

The thing about McKay is he’s spent years sailing the oceans of the world and knows full well what hardships he’s capable of enduring. He feels no obligation to show the Major what a big man he is for the simple reason that he’s already proven that to himself. To McKay, that’s all that matters: that a man should know his own abilities and that his woman should believe in him just because she is his woman. For Pat, however, that’s not the case and she comes to feel shame for having chosen a man who regards acts of bravado as beneath him. If further evidence were needed of McKay’s physical courage then it comes in a remarkable night time scene. Having begged off a public brawl with Steve, McKay pays him a nocturnal visit to “say goodbye”. The two men walk out onto the moonlit prairie and engage in a brutal fist fight that was marvellously filmed and choreographed. Director William Wyler shot the whole scene without music and the only sounds heard throughout are the grunts and gasps of the two men punctuated by the thud of bone striking flesh. Wyler also made excellent use of the camera in that scene, alternating between close-up, medium and ever widening long shots that point up not only the isolation of McKay and Steve but also their insect-like insignificance (and indeed the insignificance of their struggle) in that vast landscape. By the end of their bout, as both men stand bruised and bleeding, McKay asks Steve what he thinks that has proved. In addition, there’s also the standoff with Buck late on, when he rides into the Hannassey’s place to try and rescue Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons) and head off a bloodbath in the making. As Rufus (Burl Ives), the patriarch of the Hannassey’s, does the honours the two men take the requisite number of paces and turn to face each other down the barrels of McKay’s antique duelling pistols.

I’ve already mentioned William Wyler’s masterful use of the wide lens, but it’s to be seen all the way through the film. The whole thing is a visual delight that takes in both the sprawling prairie vistas and the blanched rocks of the canyon between Terrill’s ranch and the Hannassey’s place. Blanco Canyon is the setting for the scene that, for me at least, is just about the finest in the picture. The Major has decided that a showdown with the Hannassey’s is unavoidable and sets off to finish things for good. When it becomes apparent that he and his men will be riding into an ambush, the Major turns to Steve for support. However, this man has had his bellyful of mindless violence and says so. The Major rides off alone to meet whatever fate awaits him. Steve has looked on this man as a surrogate father all his life and you can see the anguish etched into his features as he watches him depart. He mounts up, and the camera moves to the mouth of the canyon and the lone figure of the Major. As Jerome Moross’ spine-tingling score slowly builds the angle shifts slightly and Steve gallops into view, drawing level with the Major he looks back to see the rest of the ranch hands come one by one round the rim of the canyon. There’s not a word exchanged between Heston or Bickford but the flickering glances and quickly concealed smiles speak volumes. To me this is cinema at its purest, where visuals, score and subtle expression tell the viewers all they need to know about the nature of a relationship, and in this case what masculinity is about – the importance of loyalty, affection and sheer guts even when good sense should dictate otherwise.

I honestly couldn’t criticise any of the performances and just about every major character felt fully rounded. Peck’s hero is maybe too straight down the line but that’s a minor complaint when you consider that such a role was necessary amid all the complexity elsewhere. Charles Bickford should be the guy to hiss at, but the raw courage and determination he invests in the Major tempers the less savoury aspects. There aren’t really any absolute villains in The Big Country, Chuck Connors comes the closest but even he is more to be pitied than anything. He shows himself to be only a step or two above an animal towards the end but it’s hard not to see him as something of a victim of circumstance in some respects too. I thought Charlton Heston gave one of his best performances in a role that ensured he got to act in a restrained and measured way, his lower billing probably contributing to that. Burl Ives picked up a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his part and I’d say he deserved it on the basis of a couple of memorable scenes alone – his gatecrashing of Major Terrill’s party and the climax, where he is forced to do the unthinkable, immediately spring to mind. Both Jean Simmons and Carroll Baker did well portraying two opposite sides of the female character and made the most of their screen time.   

MGM’s R2 DVD of The Big Country is slightly disappointing. The anamorphic scope image is generally clean and sharp with good colours but there are some really irritating instances of shimmer, especially when any of the wooden buildings are on view. What’s maybe more annoying is the fact that the disc is practically barebones. This is an important film, and not simply because it’s an epic production; it’s a movie that’s both visually and thematically rich and deserves better. Anyway, despite some reservations about the DVD the film itself is a genuine classic that ought to have a place on the shelf of those who consider themselves western fans, or even just fans of quality cinema.

FUNNY GIRL                                                           B+                   92

USA  (155 mi)  1968  ‘Scope

 

I'm the greatest star there is by far, but no one knows it.                    —Fanny Brice (Barbra Streisand)

 

It has been commonly said that the musical 'Funny Girl' was a comfort to people because it carried the message that you do not need to be pretty to succeed. That is nonsense; the 'message' of Barbra Streisand in 'Funny Girl' is that talent is beauty. —Pauline Kael

 

One of the few films that opens with a six minute orchestral interlude and plays with an intermission, where the film up to that point is marvelous, falling flat afterwards in a story that resembles Judy Garland’s career ascent and James Mason’s descent in A STAR IS BORN (1954).  Like that film, an old veteran director, William Wyler (in his only musical), a guy who directed 35 Academy Award winning performances, was brought in to replace Sydney Lumet who had artistic differences, as George Cukor was Garland’s choice, as he was known at the time as an actress’s director.  Cukor was much more successful, but what each film has in common is the explosive performances of the stars, as in this film Barbra Streisand, who also appeared in the Broadway role in 1964, put her name up in lights and proved beyond a doubt that everyone else in the production was secondary, as she was a full blown star, while Garland rose to heights never before reached since THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), and pulls off perhaps the greatest performance ever in a musical production.  Streisand’s career took a similar descent afterwards, but not due to any lack of talent or a deterioration of her performances, but due to her “diva” temperament where her public persona took a nosedive, known for telling everyone exactly what she wanted them to do, where she insisted that things be so perfect all the time until no one wanted to work with her anymore, developing a reputation as a control freak, this despite winning two Academy Awards, one for Best Actress in this film, another for composing the Best Original Song, “Evergreen” from the 1976 remake of A STAR IS BORN, also eight Grammy awards, four Emmy awards, a special Tony award, an American Film Institute award and a Peabody Award, while also recording over thirty Top Ten best selling albums with nearly a fifty year span in between, and is the only artist to release number one albums in each of five consecutive decades.  But due to her partisan activism in the Democratic Party, Streisand made President Nixon’s infamous Enemies List in 1971, just 3 years after the release of this film.  

 

The story revolves around Fanny Brice (Streisand), a turn of the century vaudeville star whose talent could easily have made her one of the first Talkies’ female stars, but her looks didn’t conform to the Hollywood standards of beauty, which is a theme that opens this film, as Brice has been raised with realistically lowered expectations of her own self image and has profound issues over her lack of what she feels are society’s standards of beauty, claiming “I'm a bagel on a plate full of onion rolls!”  Even in her initial performance as a Ziegfeld Follies girl, her self-deprecating sarcasm, altering the script (without permission), appearing pregnant on a stage filled with Busby Berkeley style beauties, won the endearing affection of the audience, and five curtain calls.   Her never take no for an answer and nothing-can-stop-me determination is what won the hearts of theater companies, where she’s seen singing “I’m the Greatest Star” to an empty theater which immediately wins her a job performing an ensemble singing act on rolling skates, a hilarious skit that veers out of control since she doesn’t know how to skate, an outlandish performance that Bette Midler would immediately replicate on stage with mermaids and wheelchairs.  Her brash wit and non-conformist style are a revelation in a business that is used to tried and true routines.  But what really bowls them over is her voice, as she’s sensational, actually acting out the songs she’s singing, adding humorous asides as if she’s speaking to an invisible character in the song.  In my lifetime, only Judy Garland and her daughter Liza Minnelli, think Bob Fosse’s CABARET (1972) and Martin Scorsese’s NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977), come close to providing the same personal magnetism and electrifying voice on stage. 

 

Fanny’s onstage performance earns her a backstage admirer, Omar Sharif (an Egyptian born actor who was vilified in both the Arabic and American press for sharing his role with a Jew, including a screen kiss, shot during the deflating impact of the 1967 Six Day War) as gambler and high roller Nick Arnstein, a gorgeously handsome guy in a perfectly pressed suit who lives each day as if it was his last, where his charming and impeccable style is impossible for Fanny to resist.  Nonetheless, as his business calls him to places around the world, nothing serious develops except an initial infatuation, where she sings “People” to Nick with tears of joy in the alley behind her mother’s house on Henry Street in the Jewish slums of New York’s Lower East Side.  Meanwhile, she becomes a blossoming star whose magnificent voice and unprecedented comic timing make whatever production she appears in a smash hit.  But when they meet again, set in a luminous brightly colored red dining room, which includes a bed, Fanny is swept off her feet to the duet “You Are Woman, I Am Man,” which leads to their marriage and firstborn in a montage that stretches no more than 30 seconds.  And when people question Nick’s character, she blows the lid off their objections by belting out “Don’t Rain On My Parade.”  But as her career ascends, Nick has money troubles and he’s too proud to live off her accumulated wealth, ending in a disastrous embezzlement charge where he’d rather plead guilty than create negative publicity that might derail her career.  Streisand is magnificent in this film, as is much of the restored art direction where the eye-popping colors jump off the screen.  Her modernized, bringing the curtain down rendition of “My Man” My man - Barbra Streisand - YouTube (2:38), the only song in the production to be shot on film live, is reminiscent of Garland’s off the charts power and stage showmanship, star qualities that we haven’t seen in nearly half a century since the release of this film.   

 

Funny Girl Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London

 

Wyler's only musical, Funny Girl is the fictionalised biography of Fanny Brice (Streisand), the ugly duckling who became a glamorous Ziegfeld star and achieved fame as a comic, so puncturing the mythic public eroticism of the Ziegfeld Follies. The film's central irony is not the usual one of public success at the expense of private pain, but the complex one of success at the expense of personal knowledge. Streisand never looks into the mirrors that Wyler surrounds her with. Well worth watching, even if most later Streisand movies aren't.

 

Funny Girl   Mike D’Angelo from Time Out New York (link lost)

For those young enough to think of Barbra Streisand only as a national joke—and that includes pretty much everybody born after 1968, I'd imagine—the rerelease of Funny Girl, her first Hollywood star vehicle, should come as something of a revelation. Yes, the woman's ego very nearly qualifies as the country's 51st state. Yes, her trademark juxtaposition of insecurity and bravado can be a little grating. Yes, you can see in this brassy musical the seeds of The Prince of Tides and The Mirror Has Two Faces and that hideously self-congratulatory farewell concert. But you can also see why she became a star—how her sheer determination to be adored, combined with a self-deprecatory acknowledgement of her physical imperfections, won audiences over. There's nobody like the Streisand of yore in movies today, and today's movies are the poorer for it.

That's not to say that Funny Girl is a classic, however. Based on the life story of Ziegfeld sensation Fanny Brice (the movie is playing, appropriately, at Clearview's Ziegfeld theater), the film works like gangbusters during its first hour or so, when it's charting its heroine's stubborn rise from aspiring chorus girl to triumphant headliner. Once she's made it to the top, however, there's nowhere left for the picture to go; the second half centers around Brice's tiresomely tempestuous marriage to inveterate gambler Nicky Arnstein, with a blandly handsome Omar Sharif sucking the life out of every scene in which he appears. Jaunty burlesque numbers involving girls on roller skates give way to mournful, check-out-my-diaphragm-control solos, and Streisand's wise-gal effervescence gradually evaporates, leaving only a puddle of schmaltz.

Nonetheless, Streisand fully deserved the Oscar she won for this performance (in a tie with The Lion in Winter's Katharine Hepburn), if only because her work represented the last gasp of pure showmanship to grace a medium in transition. How can you put somebody so much larger than life opposite a Jeff Bridges or a Nick Nolte and expect people to keep a straight face? True, the laid-back naturalism evinced by post-Method actors (even in such unabashed popcorn pictures as Jaws and Groundhog Day) allows filmmakers to explore subjects and milieus that had previously seemed unthinkable. But take a look at this glorious, maddening folly—at the spectacle of Fanny Brice subverting one of Ziegfeld's saccharine odes to feminine beauty with a strategically placed throw pillow—and you'll also see what we've lost.

Goatdog's Movies [Michael W. Phillips Jr.]

Barbra Streisand's Funny Girl isn't so much a movie as it is a 2.5-hour announcement that Barbra Streisand is here, she's great, and she's a force to be reckoned with. Yes, I called it "Barbra Streisand's Funny Girl," and I'll stick by it, thank you very much: the credits say that William Wyler directed it, but he had nothing to do with the musical numbers (he was nearly stone deaf), and either as a stylistic choice or as a result of meekly caving to Babs's overpowering personality, there's little here that doesn't have Streisand's handprints all over it. She's in nearly every frame of the film, and it's as if there's a blazing spotlight focused on her that burns away anyone else's attempts to share the screen.

My friend and colleague Nick Davis named Streisand's as one of the top six Best Actress-winning performances of all time, and, after finally seeing the film, all I can do is wonder if #6 is high enough. She does it all here—singing and dancing, comedy and tragedy—and she nails every single scene; she doesn't have a false moment in the entire film, which is an amazing achievement given the camera's intense scrutiny. She lives up to the responsibility of holding the audience's rapt attention, and she makes it look easy: this is a natural, unforced performance, easily one of the three or four best Best Actresses in Oscar history. As much as I love Katharine Hepburn, and as much as I adore her in The Lion in Winter, their historic tie shouldn't have been a tie. It should have been Babs alone in the spotlight, like she is in her brilliant breakthrough performance.

There is a movie taking place around her, but it's well nigh impossible for me to separate it from the central performance. It's the flashbacked story of the rise and rise of Fanny Brice, one of Florenz Zeigfeld's biggest stars, who made her name not for being gawgeous but for being incredibly funny and talented. Along the way, she gets married to the wan, oily gambler Nick Arnstein (Omar Sharif in a wan, oily performance), who helps get the lanky, unique-looking chorus girl discovered but then finds life as her sidekick difficult and then impossible. Sharif is much better in later scenes than he is toward the beginning: He's supposed to seem irresistible, but he doesn't look committed to the part, and only late in the film does his essentially unchanging, boring performance fit the story—after 145 minutes at the edges of Streisand's kleig lights, his wilting starts to make sense.

Streisand is the answer to any questions or concerns I can raise about the film. Yes, the musical numbers were shot incredibly poorly, and the still camera employed during some and the sloppy side-to-side rocking employed in others demonstrated that perhaps Wyler should have excersized a little more control or found someone with a flair for staging. Wasn't William Seiter, the master of not getting in the way of incredibly talented musical stars, still around, fer chrissakes? But then again, Streisand is in all of the musical numbers, and if the film doesn't do much with them, at least it lets us bask in her dazzling singing and song interpretation. Whether making with the funny, like in the early rollerskating number, or making us reach for tissues, like in the incredible finale, she's mesmerizing. Yes, for a period piece, the costumes were horrific (thankfully, Oscar refrained from nominating Irene Sharaff that year); Sharaff draped poor Barbra in a series of unflattering Empire-waisted gowns that make everybody look fat and made her look like a half-deflated birthday balloon. These costumes had more to do with the 1960s when the film was released than with the 1920s when it was supposed to take place. (Er, I might not have a Barbra-related excuse for that—the costumes hurt everyone, including her.) Yes, the film probably didn't need to be 155 minutes long, as there doesn't appear to be enough story to fill a solid two hours. But we get to spend that extra half-hour with Barbra Streisand delivering one of the greatest musical-comedy-tragedy performances of all time. But perhaps I'm repeating myself.

The last scene contains an almost tacit acknowledgement that this film isn't really about Fanny Brice at all, but about Barbra Streisand and how awesome she is. Fanny has just broken things off completely with her disgraced husband; she still loves him, but she understands that he can't handle the Babs and has to go. The stagehands inform her that she's on, and she emerges on stage—but it's a different stage than any we've seen thus far. The lighting is different, favoring cool blue lights instead of the Zeigfeld glitz of earlier scenes. Her costume is different; thankfully, they've abandoned those awful Empire-waist gowns in favor of a more modern black dress. She doesn't look any more like a character in a period piece; she looks like Barbra Streisand going onstage for a number in 1968. And, of course, she knocks 'em dead.

The film was nominated for eight Oscars including Streisand's win for Best Actress: Picture, Cinematography (Harry Stradling Jr.), Film Editing, Supporting Actress (Kay Medford), Original Song, Music–Score of a Musical, and Sound.

“Funny Girl” - Salon.com  Stephanie Zacharek, August 31, 2001

 

Behind the Camera - Funny Girl - TCM  Andrea Passafiume

 

Funny Girl - TCM  Frank Miller

 

Funny Girl (1968)  Harvey S. Karten

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture - 1968 [Erik Beck]

 

Funny Girl - DVD review (1 of 2)  John Puccio from DVD Review

 

dOc DVD Review: Funny Girl (1968)  Dale Dobson from diditallyOBSESSED

 

DVD Savant Review: The Barbra Streisand Funny Girl / Funny Lady ...  Glenn Erickson from DVD Savant

 

dOc DVD Review: Funny Girl / Funny Lady (Boxed Set) (1968, 1975)  David Krauss from diditallyOBSESSED

 

DVD Verdict  Barrie Maxwell

 

Funny Girl Review | Empire  David Parkinson

 

Brilliant Observations on 1492 Films [Clayton Trapp]

 

TV Guide review

 

Variety.com [Variety Staff]

 

Guardian/Observer

 

BBCi - Films  Jamie Russell

 

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

 

Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]

 

BarbraStreisand.com, the Official Site

 

Barbra Streisand - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Fanny Brice - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Xiao Jiang

 

ELECTRIC SHADOWS                             C+                   76

China  (95 mi)  2004

 

Kind of a nostalgic example of what’s coming out of China today, as this film seems directly influenced by the West, but in the worst sort of way, adding poorly conceived melodrama with over-accentuated acting styles to create what I’d call, instead of pulp fiction, peasant fiction, where there’s little subtlety or creative expression.  Most of this film tries to be too cute, interspersing old Chinese film footage as a mix of memory and the childhood reality of a young girl (Qi Zhongyang) who lived in a poor rural village where they featured outdoor movies most every night.  So we see cuts of old films as the little girl watches it, but also as she looks back later in life.  Much of the film is told through the little girl’s eyes, which makes the film feel like a fable or children’s story, with Cinderella elements, as adults that should love her mysteriously mistreat her and routinely misunderstand her, even going so far as to lock her in her room at one point.  The only friends this girl has are the characters seen in movies, which becomes her secret love and obsession. 

 

Meanwhile, her secrets are opened quite by accident by a young country bumpkin on a bicycle, Xia Yu, who rides into a stack of bricks on his way to the outdoor theater, falling mercilessly to the ground, unleashing a violent passion from this strange young girl, who is then sent to a psychiatric hospital, but writes a note for him to please look after her fish, giving him a key to her apartment.  As the plot unravels, the young man reads the girl’s diary, and the film places the girl inside a film of her own recollections, converging at the end with real life where everything is suddenly placed in perspective.  It really only gets good when the girl’s inner secrets are exposed and her darkened movie studio apartment window is suddenly opened, the light shines in, and her favorite pair of childhood binoculars are perched on the balcony pointing to her parents home, parents who had lost contact with their daughter years ago, but obviously, she hadn’t lost them.  While it is never explained how she is somehow able to afford such a nice apartment in a high rise building, as there is no mention of her ever working, the ending loses the childhood playful tone that characterizes the film, where the entire world is seen through children’s eyes as stereotypes and good and evil, and suddenly takes on a more serious look where genuine emotion guides us to the finale.  But a good ending does not a good movie make.  Unfortunately, the storytelling is very elementary, the film of average interest, where this might have made a more interesting book, as the movie version is simply too flawed from amateurish directing.