Classic Movie Review: Husbands (1970)

Husbands (1970)
Directed by: John Cassavetes.
Written by: John Cassavetes.
Starring: Ben Gazzara (Harry), Peter Falk (Archie Black), John Cassavetes (Gus Demetri), Jenny Runacre (Mary Tynan), Jenny Lee Wright (Pearl Billingham), Noelle Kao (Julie), John Kullers (Red), Meta Shaw Stevens (Annie), Leola Harlow (Leola), Delores Delmar (The Countess), Eleanor Zee (Mrs. Hines), Claire Malis (Stuart's Wife), Peggy Lashbrook (Diana Mallabee), Eleanor Cody Gould ('Normandy' Singer), Sarah Felcher (Sarah).

 

It isn’t often that I wish I could see a cut of the film not approved by its director – especially when that director is a genius like John Cassavetes. But with Husbands, I would love to see the first cut of the film – the one he wasn’t involved with. Apparently, after shooting a mountain of film for Husbands, Cassavetes left all of it in the hands of his editors, who went through the footage, along with Cassavetes script, and constructed a film that audiences apparently found hilarious, and pleased the studio executives a great deal. But Cassavetes had final cut, and didn’t like what he saw, and so he retreated into the editing bay himself for a year, and came up with the film we now have. That film is a masterpiece – a dark tale of a trio of middle-aged, middle-class white guys, reeling from the death of their friend, who spin out of control. The film is difficult to watch, as its scene after scene of excoriating, selfish, obnoxious behavior – the three men often berate, and humiliate women. They are apparently best friends, and say so a lot, talking about how much they love each other – how, apart from sex, they prefer each other to their wives. Yet, take many scenes out of context, and you’d think these guys hate each other. It’s a film about these three men, at first cutting loose, letting off steam, and then going further and further – too far, for one of them anyway, to come back from. It is one of the most painful films I have ever seen. So to think there was a cut of this movie that audiences and studio executives not only loved but found hilarious is practically unthinkable.

Cassavetes has always been somewhat different from most other directors. Yes, he is considered the father of the American Indie Cinema – something that he didn’t get credited for while alive – and many (too many) directors have followed the example he set with his debut film Shadows (1959) and its indie follow-up Faces (1968), which unexpectedly became an Oscar nominated hit. Those two films are small scale and intimate – and really good. But they aren’t quite what he would go on to do later in films like Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Opening Night or Love Streams. Those films are unique to him. The emotions in them are often volcanic – almost operatic – while the films somehow remain grounded in some sort of realism. Few directors have followed that lead – perhaps most notably Paul Thomas Anderson in Magnolia, which is often compared to Altman, but is really more like an Altman film directed by Cassavetes. Success mainly eluded Cassavetes when he was alive – even when he tried to make a mainstream film like Gloria (1980), the result is almost schizophrenic – a mainstream story, walking to its own weird beat in a way that detracts from both.

Husbands begins with a montage of photographs of four middle-aged, middle-class suburban New York men. They’re all married, all have kids, and the goof around in those photo. One of them, Stuart, has just died – and it sends the other three – Harry (Ben Gazzara), Archie (Peter Falk) and Gus (Cassavetes) reeling. They put on a good show at the funeral – do what is expected of them. Then they hit the town to get drunk. Then they stay drunk, and get drunker. When the real world starts to intrude – when it feels like they have to go back to their lives, they reject that, and instead board a plane to London to keep the party going.

When you look it like that, it kind of sounds like Husbands is one of those overgrown man-child comedies that dominated American comedy films in the mid to late 2000s. It’s no surprise then that apparently the patron saint of those films, Judd Apatow, is apparently a Cassavetes fan. But in Apatow’s films, the women “save” the men – make them grow up, embrace adulthood, being husbands and fathers. The most lost of all of Apatow’s protagonists in Adam Sandler in Funny People – the one who isn’t married, which I don’t think is an accident. Apatow is so in love with this formula, then even when he had a woman protagonist – in Trainwreck – he simply gender flipped rolls.

But that isn’t the case with Husbands. The wives are not a presence in the movie at all – we can see Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes own wife, in that opening montage of photos, but she doesn’t appear in the film otherwise. Here, the men are running away from their responsibilities, not embracing them.

The New York scenes are long, drawn out, painful. The trio get drunk and end up berating the singers at a bar – many of them women. They seem to be hoping to get a rise out of someone, but they never do. If they are looking for release, for catharsis, it isn’t to be found. In the New York scenes, the trio do appear to somewhat interchangeable – a mass of insecurities, masked behind false bravado. But when they go to London, they become different people – their own personalities start to seep back in. Harry, their leader, becomes even more entrenched in that bravado – pushing aside anyone in his way, including his friends, as Ben Gazzara owns the screen. Peter Falk’s hangdog expression starts to become more pathetic, sadder. He drains the life out of his one-night stand – which ends with her storming off into the rain, a torrent of untranslated Chinese being hurled at him – she just wants to escape. Gus becomes more charming – but it’s a false charm, one built to get what he wants, with nothing behind it.

As the film ends, two of the men return to New York, tails between their legs. Perhaps they were miserable before, but it was a misery they find some comfort in. One is gone – at least for now – and isn’t coming back. The title of the movie becomes telling in those closing scenes – there is something in the film about being husbands specifically – not men, not fathers, but husbands.

This film is one of the most painful experiences you will have watching it. It’s not something you’d want to dive back into too often. But there is so much ugly honesty in it that you cannot look away. It’s a film only Cassavetes could have made.

Classic Movie Review: King of New York (1990)

King of New York (1990) 
Directed by: Abel Ferrara.
Written by: Nicholas St. John.
Starring: Christopher Walken (Frank White), David Caruso (Dennis Gilley), Laurence Fishburne (Jimmy Jump), Victor Argo (Roy Bishop), Wesley Snipes (Thomas Flanigan), Janet Julian (Jennifer), Joey Chin (Larry Wong), Giancarlo Esposito (Lance), Paul Calderon (Joey Dalesio), Steve Buscemi (Test Tube), Theresa Randle (Raye), Leonard L. Thomas (Blood), Roger Guenveur Smith (Tanner), Carrie Nygren (Melanie), Ernest Abuba (King Tito), Frank Adonis (Paul Calgari).

 

There was always something different about an Abel Ferrara movie – even back in his period working with screenwriter Nicholas St. John, where the pair apparently had a vision of marrying exploitation with something approaching art. Some will call that pretension – and to be clear, that is what it was at times. And yet, at their best, Ferrara and St. John really did come up with some strange visions of violent characters, living outside the law, and yet sticking to some sort of moral code. There is a twisted version of Catholicism running through these films, and there is a tension between all the sin, and the moral viewpoint, however twisted, of their central characters. Where the pair fell out, St. John stopped working – and Ferrara’s career became even more tumultuous than it had been before –with some high points, and some dismal lows, as Ferrara abandoned any hope of anything approaching mainstream success. But many of those films the pair made remain fascinating and one of a kind.

King of New York (1990) is one of those films. It stars Christopher Walken as Frank White, a drug kingpin recently released from prison who sets out to become, well, the King of New York. You can see echoes of The Godfather or Scarface in the film, but it’s also very much its own twisted view of crime. It doesn’t take Frank long to start his plan in motion – he acts as if he is going to make peace with the other gangs, but soon alongside his psychotic right hand man Jimmy (Laurence Fishburne) – he is simply mowing them down, and forcing them out. The body count mounts in increasing ways.

Walken is one of the most fascinating of actors. His weirdness can slip into self-parody too easily – and that is basically all he’s been asked to do for years now, so easy to forget how good he can be in the right role, or how he got that reputation in the first place. His Frank White is one of his most fascinating characters – a drug kingpin with a lust for power, who has all the trappings of decadence, but doesn’t seem to enjoy any of it (Jimmy, on the other hands, enjoys it all too much). Frank isn’t above walking around with an almost nude model on each arm, or driving around in his limo surveilling his kingdom. He already has more than enough, and a keen sense of his own mortality – being in prison has convinced him he never wants to go back to that, so he’s going to embrace whatever time he has left. Yet, he almost feels like an alien – watching humanity with a detached, analytical eye for their weaknesses. In another way, he’s simply a capitalist – he knows that people will never stop doing drugs, hiring prostitutes, etc. so it’s pointless to try and stop them. With him, at least, he plans on giving back to the community – building hospitals, etc. In his mind, that makes him moral – or at least more moral than the other options.

The film could have just wallowed with Frank and Jimmy in their excess – but it does something interesting with the police as well. Bishop (Victor Argo), an older cop who is trying to patiently build a case against Jimmy, but his younger, underlings don’t have the patience. As the bodies pile up, these younger cops (led by David Caruso, reminding you he actually could act at one point, and including Wesley Snipes) – decide to take matters into their own hands. They have more in common with Frank than they’d like to think – as they are going outside of regular morality for what they assume are moral purposes. Bishop is the only one who keeps his hands clean – and yet the film acknowledges that by doing so, he isn’t going to get anywhere. He’s the only one playing by the old set of rules everyone else has discarded.

As with all Ferrara films, there is plenty of excess here – lots of violence, perhaps a little less sex than is typical for Ferrara (but a hell of a lot more than what we see in films today). With some of Ferrara’s films, all that excess can overwhelm whatever is being said. Here, they coexist – you need that excess to see Frank for who he is. He isn’t Jimmy for example – his goals are different. But perhaps that just makes him worse.

Classic Movie Rivette: La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

La Belle Noiseuse (1991) 

Directed by: Jacques Rivette.

Written by: Pascal Bonitzer and Christine Laurent and Jacques Rivette inspired by the novella by Honoré de Balzac.

Starring: Michel Piccoli (Edouard Frenhofer), Jane Birkin (Liz), Emmanuelle Béart (Marianne), Marianne Denicourt (Julienne), David Bursztein (Nicolas), Gilles Arbona (Porbus), Marie Belluc (Magali), Marie-Claude Roger (Françoise).

 

Frenhofer was once a great painter – but he hasn’t painted anything in 10 years. It isn’t for a lack of ideas -an idea has haunted him this whole time for a painting called La Belle Noiseuse – the beautiful nuisance – and he started it years ago, with his wife Liz (Jane Birkin) as his model and his muse. But he wasn’t able to bring it to completion – somehow knowing that completing it would destroy his relationship with Liz, and not wanting that to happen. Liz was the last of his muses – and he used the others, and discarded them, but he could not do that this time. Liz tells us that he started painting her because she loved him, then because he loved her. The former is something he experienced before, but perhaps not the latter. Then his dealer shows up at his estate one day with a younger artist – a great admirer of Frenhofer’s – and the artist’s girlfriend. This is Marianne (Emmanuelle Beart), and she awakens in Frenhofer the desire to finish the painting for real this time. It will be an arduous, painful process for all involved.

 

That is basically the plot of La Belle Noiseuse, Jacques Rivette’s four-hour masterpiece about the creative process, but doesn’t begin to describe what the film is like to watch. There aren’t any more twists and turns in the plot other than what I have described above, because Rivette isn’t interested in that. What he is observing here is the creative process itself – what the artist, and the muse, go through in the creation of art. By the end, we will see the painting the process created. Is it a masterpiece? It doesn’t really matter.

 

What we watch, in scene after scene, is the artist and his muse engaged in some sort of tug of war. He will pose her, sometimes in painful poses that he’ll ask her to hold for extended periods of time. She’ll complain that it hurts – and he’ll explain it hurts him as well. The soundtrack is largely made up on Frenhofer’s pen on canvas, sketching out various drafts, sketches, ideas on the page, which we see come together, and just as often discarded. It’s one of the secrets of the movie that we don’t really see the painting at the end of the film come together – so much as all the rough drafts – all the things that are not the painting.

 

Frenhofer is played by the late, great Michel Piccoli, in one of his finest performances. He is stubborn, he is demanding. Somewhere deep down, he knows what he wants – he just has to get there. Beart is his match in every way. She poses, she sulks, she pushes when he pulls, etc. Because she is so much younger than Piccoli, and so stunningly beautiful, we suspect that perhaps we’ll get one of those lame stories about an aging male artist seducing his young muse. But that isn’t this story. Frenhofer doesn’t ever try and seduce Marianne at all. The only time he touches her, is to pose her differently. Jane Birkin is also wonderful as his wife – who knows this won’t turn sexual in any way – but still feels like a kind of betrayal.

 

Perhaps all of this sounds boring – I know that I certainly worried that I would be bored by the movie when I read Roger Ebert’s Great Movies essay about the film. But it isn’t. It’s entrancing. Most movies about painters are boring – they either don’t understand what drives painters, or probably more accurately, have no way of capturing it on film. They concentrate on the troubled lives of great painters – the sex, the alcohol, the drugs, the mental illness, etc. – all of which is far more cinematic than the process of sitting in front of a blank canvas and creating something.

 

But that’s the secret to Rivette’s film. We only know a little about Frenhofer’s life – even less about Marianne’s. And yet, somehow, throughout the process of the film we learn all we need to learn about them both. It’s a quietly remarkable film – not quite like anything else. Yes, it needs to be four hours long. Rivette, undoubtedly knowing that most theaters wouldn’t play a four-hour film, did recut a 125-minute version for international release in 1991 – but I can think of no reason to watch it. Yes, you may know what “happens” in the film by watching the shorter version, but you cannot possibly understand what it means. How it feels to create – to feel that irrepressible urge to create, and the process you go through to do that. That’s far more important than the end result – which is precisely why we see about 180-minutes of Frenhofer and Marianne locked in the creative process, and only fleeting moments looking at the end result.

Classic Movie Review: Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)

Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) 

Directed by: Jacques Rivette.

Written by: Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier and Bulle Ogier and Marie-France Pisier and Jacques Rivette and Eduardo de Gregorio based on stories by Henry James.

Starring: Juliet Berto (Celine), Dominique Labourier (Julie), Bulle Ogier (Camille), Marie-France Pisier (Sophie), Barbet Schroeder (Olivier), Nathalie Asnar (Madlyn), Marie-Thérèse Saussure (Poupie), Philippe Clévenot (Guilou), Anne Zamire (Lil), Jean Douchet (M'sieur Dede), Adèle Taffetas (Alice), Monique Clément (Myrtille), Jérôme Richard (Julien), Michael Graham (Boris), Jean-Marie Sénia (Cyrille). 

 

French New Wave director Jacques Rivette in general, and his 1974 masterpiece Celine and Julie Go Boating specifically, has long been my biggest cinematic blindspot when I looked at the acknowledged masters. It’s been that way for more than a decade – which is when I finally delved into the works of Soviet master Andrei Tarkovsky. I wanted to see Rivette films – but I didn’t want to do it until I could see Celine and Julie – widely regarded as his best film – and that was impossible to do (at least legally). So I waited – I didn’t see his other films, and wait until I could finally see this one. When it hit the Criterion Channel, I decided the time was right. Before watching Celine and Julie – I watched two earlier Rivette films of the Channel (Paris Belongs to Us and The Nun) – and quite liked them both. Then claim Celine and Julie Go Boating – a film that days later, I’m still trying to wrap my head around.

 

Those expecting a plot in the film will inevitably end up disappointed. This is a long film – 193 minutes – and it loops around and around, playing with story, with character, with theater, with narrative construction. It’s film inspired by Alice in Wonderland, and like the two main characters, an audience member has to be willing to go down the rabbit hole, unsure of what they will find there, to get the most out of the film.

 

It begins with the two of them playing a game together. Julie (Dominique Labourier) sits on a park bench, reading a novel, when Celine (Juliet Berto) walks by, dropping her sunglasses and scarf. Julie picks them up and pursues Celine, unsure of what to do when she inevitably catches up to her. Eventually the two become friends, and their identities blur in some ways. Celine pretends to be Julie when meeting up with an old friend of Julie’s, and rebuffing his sexual advances. Julie pretends to be Celine, and goes on her audition for a travelling magic show, tanking the audition. And all of this is even before they come across a strange house, and enter it – and see an entirely different narrative playing out in front of them – that will eventually lead to murder. The pair of them take turns entering the house, and taking on various roles within it. Eventually, they don’t even need to enter the house at all to be part of the narrative.

 

Whatever lines there are between reality and fantasy – dreams and waking life, are never really made clear. You can easily see why the film is often cited as a major influence on David Lynch – and more recently on Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan (Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Kaili Blues). Rivette invites us into this world, and then lets us determine what precisely is going on.

 

Celine and Julie Go Boating is certainly a collaborative film. The two stars are credited as co-writers of the movie, and they come to their characters organically. The film allows them the time and space to be precisely who they are – there is a naturalism in their performances that feels real, no matter where the movie spins out. It’s hard to say just what Rivette and company are ultimately doing here. The film can resemble something like Daisies – Vera Chytilova’s feminist film about two women trapped in the patriarchal system, but having fun while there (while still being angry). And you get a sense of that here as well. Celine and Julie seem like free spirits – drifting through their lives, having fun. But there is something darker running beneath the surface. Why do the pair of them so want to escape? What are they escaping from? Lynch usually gives us a glimpse of that nightmare, but Rivette doesn’t – not really. His film is more playful than that, and is right up until the ambiguous last shot (which gives the movie its title) – as all of the main character are adrift down the river.

 

Celine and Julie Go Boating has never been an easy film to see – so if you are inclined, you should watch it now before it disappears from the Criterion Channel, and perhaps, from legal viewing again for who knows how long. It’s a haunting mystery of a film – not a puzzle box, as I don’t think Rivette is very interested in having you put together all the pieces (that’s a mistake many make with Lynch as well – thinking that there is a grand solution that only they can figure out)- but a film to get lost in – and drift right down that river with its two leads. It was worth the wait.

Classic Movie Review: Out of the Past (1947)

Out of the Past (1947) 

Directed by: Jacques Tourneur   

Written by: Daniel Mainwaring based on his novel.

Starring: Robert Mitchum (Jeff), Jane Greer (Kathie), Kirk Douglas (Whit), Rhonda Fleming (Meta Carson), Richard Webb (Jim), Steve Brodie (Fisher), Virginia Huston (Ann), Paul Valentine (Joe), Dickie Moore (The Kid), Ken Niles (Eels).

 

If I were to make a list of the three film noirs to start with to get to know the genre, I think they would be John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941), Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) and Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (1947). These aren’t necessarily the best film noirs of all time – although they’d all have to be included in the conversation for that crown – but they are the films that kind of let you know what you’re in for. The Maltese Falcon is the classic detective noir – with a smart, cynical detective getting involved in a case above his head, but figuring it out. Double Indemnity is the classic man getting duped by a femme fatale – dragged further down a spiral into murder and death. And Out of the Past is about the inability to let go of the past – even when you know it’s going to drag you down. It’s got elements of the first two, but in a different way. It’s haunting film – but also one that is at once quite funny, and yet tragic, and never quite what you’d expect.

 

Robert Mitchum, a film noir standard bearer if ever there was one, plays Jeff, and when we first meet him, he owns a small-town gas station, is courting a small-town girl, and is attempting to live a normal life. Then a figure from his past enters town – he sees Jeff by chance, and has come to let him know that he still works for the big man – and that man wants to see Jeff. Jeff doesn’t fight it – knows he has to. And so he spends a long night in the car, with his girl Ann (Virginia Huston) telling his story. A few years ago, he was a detective working out of New York. He is hired by a charming gangster, Whit (Kirk Douglas) – who wants Jeff to track down his girl Kathie (Jane Greer), who shot him, and stole $40,000 and disappeared. Jeff follows her trail to Mexico – but instead of brining her back, he falls in love with her. They try and make a go of it, try to return to the States – and live quietly. But, just as that figure from his past found him at the gas station, a different one spots him then. It all leads to murder, betrayal and lies heaped on lies. When Jeff talks to Whit, he isn’t surprised that Kathie is back with him – and he isn’t surprised when Whit offers him another job. Jeff isn’t stupid – he knows a setup when he sees one. Still, he cannot resist. But as he says, if he’s going to die, he’s wants to die last.

 

Mitchum was probably the most effortlessly cool actor in cinema history. In many of his best roles, he comes across as if he just doesn’t give a shit – in part, undeniably, because Mitchum himself really didn’t. He was a great actor – capable of delivering lived in, deep, dark performances – like his greatest late career role in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) – but here, he uses that effortless cool to great advantage. His Jeff is the smartest guy in the room – and knows it, but doesn’t really care what others think of him. Kirk Douglas is at his slimy best as Whit, and is no dummy either, but Jeff knows enough to make Whit think he is running things, when he isn’t. Jane Greer is here one of the greatest of all femme fatale’s – and she does it by never letting the act drop until the very end. Like Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity, she is manipulating the men throughout the movie – but she doesn’t let her guard drop here. She wants to come across as innocent and naïve, wants to convince Jeff she still is, even when he knows better. It’s a trio of great performances – really, three of the best in all of noir.

 

Director Tourneur was a journeymen director. He would make everything from noir to some of the best Val Lewton horror films (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie) to Westerns to low rent horror films like Curse of the Demon. He had a great visual style, and in Out of the Past, he uses it by not overemphasizing everything. He plays it as cool as Mitchum does – so even in a shocking moment, like a key murder, it seems to come out of nowhere. He gives the actors space to work, to move, to breathe, and seems to know just how great the screenplay here is – full of memorable dialogue, expertly delivered. I’m not sure you can make the case that Tourneur was an auteur – or even that he was overall a great director. Still, I don’t think anyone could have directed Out of the Past any better than he does.

 

The film is a superb entertainment throughout – that acting, that dialogue, that visual look. And yet, it also manages to be a dark, haunting film. The film goes on a scene longer than you may expect – ending with a couple of supporting characters have a conversation, that can be read a number of different ways. This underlies the tragic nature of the story – how the past drags us back in, and won’t let go. This is quintessential noir – and one of the greatest films ever made.

Classic Movie Review: Bullitt (1968)

Bullitt (1968) 

Directed by: Peter Yates.

Written by: Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner based on the novel by Robert L. Fish.

Starring: Steve McQueen (Bullitt), Robert Vaughn (Chalmers), Jacqueline Bisset (Cathy), Don Gordon (Delgetti), Robert Duvall (Weissberg), Simon Oakland (Captain Bennet), Norman Fell (Baker), Georg Stanford Brown (Dr. Willard), Justin Tarr (Eddy), Carl Reindel (Stanton), Felice Orlandi (Renick), Vic Tayback (Pete Ross), Robert Lipton (1st Aide),Ed Peck (Westcott), Pat Renella (John Ross), Paul Genge (Mike), John Aprea (Killer), Al Checco (Desk Clerk), Bill Hickman (Phil). 

 

Bullitt is primarily infamous for the car chase sequence that is right in the middle of the two-hour film. If you’ve never seen that chase, than watching it is thrilling – it really is one of the greatest car chases in cinema history – a chase that starts as a game of cat and mouse of the streets of San Francisco, and minute after minute builds its tension, excitement and speed – heading out to the freeway, and ending in explosions. It is a long car chase – and director Peter Yates let it play out for all that time. The style is the opposite of the quick cutting that dominates today’s action sequences – shots often last seconds at a time (Michael Bay averages under a second per shot) – and its all the more exciting for it. When movie car chases are mentioned – Bullitt’s almost justly ranks alongside the likes of William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971) as the top two in history (depending on the list, either can take the top spot).

 

What’s strange about watching Bullitt though is the rest of the movie around that car chase – which has about 50 minutes on either side of that chase. In it, Steve McQueen plays the title detective in San Francisco. He is assigned to protect a witness at the behest of a politician – Robert Vaughn – who shows up repeatedly throughout the movie to remind everyone he needs this witness alive. Unfortunately, he’s dead pretty early on in the film – dead of Bullitt’s watch. But Bullitt doesn’t want to give up that easy – and disguises the body as a John Doe, and throws it in the morgue, as he tries to figure out what really happened. In terms of plot, well, there’s both a lot of it in Bullitt, and yet it doesn’t really matter. It’s not overly complicated – it could probably easily be the plot of a one-hour police procedural TV show, and not a particularly memorable one at that. What’s interesting in the rest of the movie is McQueen himself.

 

But this point in his career, McQueen was one of the biggest movie stars in the world, with one of the biggest egos. What’s interesting about his performance in Bullitt is how uninteresting a character Bullitt is. He is an emotionless void of a character – McQueen does nothing to try and bring him further into focus. In one of the most thankless roles in movie history Jacqueline Bisset plays Bullitt’s girlfriend Cathy – who complains about Bullitt and that emotionless void I talked about – and he cannot even really argue with her.

 

Perhaps this sounds like a criticism of McQueen – and to be fair, with most actors it probably would be. But not with McQueen – who could make even playing an emotionless void interesting. He plays Bullitt as a man with no emotions – one who is dead inside, who has seen it all, and none of it affects him anymore. I’m not sure you could find a better example of that mid-20^th Century American male tendency to not show weakness, to bury all the feelings deep inside, and not let anyone see it than McQueen in general, but certainly here.

 

The film was directed by Peter Yates – one of the better journeymen directors of the 1960s-1980s – making films like Breaking Away or The Dresser, along with my personal favorite The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) – featuring the best late period Robert Mitchum performance. He perfectly handles that car chase – which is probably the single reason why the film won the editing Oscar that year – not to mention its climax, which almost certainly influenced the climax of Michael Mann’s Heat (1995). But he also knows just what to do with McQueen – who could take what could have been a dull role, and imbued it with something altogether different and interesting, by draining all the emotion out of it.

Classic Movie Review: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) 

Directed by: Jack Arnold.

Written by: Harry Essex and Arthur A. Ross and Maurice Zimm. 

Starring: Richard Carlson (David Reed), Julie Adams (Kay Lawrence), Richard Denning (Mark Williams), Antonio Moreno (Carl Maia), Nestor Paiva (Lucas), Whit Bissell (Dr. Thompson), Bernie Gozier (Zee), Henry A. Escalante (Chico), Ricou Browning (The Gill Man - in water), Ben Chapman (The Gill Man - on land), Art Gilmore (Narrator), Perry Lopez (Tomas), Sydney Mason (Dr. Matos), Rodd Redwing (Louis - Expedition Foreman).

 

There are a few reasons why Creature from the Black Lagoon has survived so many years – and is still watched nearly 70 years after it came out, even as its special effects now look amateurish, and the acting and writing probably always did. The Creature aka Gill Man was the last addition to Universal Monsters – the lineup from the 1930s that including Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Mummy and The Invisible Man – coming out decades after those films, which at the time, were being rediscovered by newer audiences on TV. So perhaps, the movie was in part a cynical ploy to cash in on some intellectual property that Universal already owned. But that doesn’t explain why the film continues to be watched – and enjoyed all these years later.

 

For that, you have to watch the brilliant underwater sequences in the film – which remain stunning all these later. A group of researchers head deeper into the amazon, searching for more fossils of a creature once a fossil of its hands was found – never dreaming that a still living, breathing example was still alive down here. The lone woman in the group – Kay (Julie Adams) decides, stupidly, to go from a swim in the black lagoon. As she glides along the surface, we see the creature swimming beneath her. The camera cuts back and forth between her on the surface, him underneath – and most beautifully, with the two of them swimming together – the creature knowing it, Kay not. It’s a sequence that is incredibly creepy of course – the monster could attack at any moment. But it’s also beautiful – almost serene. You can see how someone like Guillermo Del Toro could watch this movie, and be inspired to make The Shape of Water – essentially turning it into a love story. That underwater sequence is brilliant – and most of the rest of them are as well. They remain stunning to look at all these years later.

 

The film was directed by Jack Arnold, and in addition to those underwater sequences – the biggest thing the direction does here is slowly increase the tension and sense of dread in the movie. It is a movie that builds slowly for a 78-minute creature feature, but that tension serves the movie well. The creature only gradually reveals himself – and then still moves slowly, deliberately. For a movie about a man in a giant rubber suit, it is amazing how much tension the film generates.

 

When the movie isn’t underwater, or isn’t deliberately building tension – meaning when it focuses on its human characters, its nowhere near as good. The characters are basically stale archetypes – and even if Julie Adams’ Kay is supposed to be a researcher herself, she is basically spoken to as if she was a child, by everyone on board the ship. The dialogue is wooden and stale – and you really don’t care about the various people other than a Gill Man fodder.

 

Still, its remarkable how well this film works all these years later. Yes, its easy to snicker at the special effects – or lack thereof – here. But taken on its own terms, the film works remarkably well. It’s still tension filled and beautiful all these years later.

Classic Movie Review: Johnny O'Clock (1947)

Johnny O’clock (1947)

Directed by: Robert Rossen.

Written by: Robert Rossen and Milton Holmes.

Starring: Dick Powell (Johnny O’clock), Evelyn Keyes (Nancy Hobson), Lee J. Cobb (Inspector Koch), Ellen Drew (Nelle Marchettis), Nina Foch (Harriet Hobson), Thomas Gomez (Guido Marchettis), John Kellogg (Charlie), Jim Bannon (Chuck Blayden).

 

Like many a noir hero before him, the title character of Johnny O’Clock gets drawn into a dangerous web deeper and deeper, until he cannot get out. But Dick Powell’s Johnny isn’t quite your average noir hero despite this. He isn’t a cynical detective in the Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum vein, and he isn’t a poor sap drawn in by a femme fatale – as perfected by Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity. Powell plays Johnny with movie star cool and charisma. He is a legend in this world. It is a deliberate choice that although he is the title character, he isn’t the first one we meet. That would be Inspector Koch (Lee J. Cobb) – who comes into the high-end hotel where Johnny lives, and asks for – by a number of different names. Everyone knows Johnny.

 

In this film, Powell plays Johnny as kind of carefree playboy – someone who floats along on top of the world he inhabits, with a care. He runs a casino – the money behind it is Guido (Thomas Gomez), but Johnny is the face of the operation – the one who keeps things running. He has that nice hotel room in that fancy place, an underling, Charlie (John Kellogg) to do his bidding, and he goes from one girl to the next without caring that much. The women don’t even seem mad at him when it’s over – they knew who he was when they started, and they’re just happy to be there.

 

The plot of Johnny O’Clock is rather complex. It starts with a murder of a cop, and then an apparent suicide of the girl who works in the casino, who was with that cop. Her sister, Nancy (Evelyn Keyes) shows up – and wants answers, and like every other girl in the film, falls for Johnny. Guido likes Johnny – but when he finds out that his wife, Nelle (Ellen Drew) is another of Johnny’s conquests, he thinks that perhaps Johnny can be set up to take the fall. There are crosses and double crosses throughout – and a gunfight climax. And through it all, we still like Johnny – who may be a heel, but he’s better than most of the people he’s around.

 

The film was the debut of director Robert Rossen – who would go to direct better films like The Hustler (1961), and who’s All the King’s Men won the Best Picture Oscar just two years after this film. This was also the same year he directed Body and Soul – which has one of John Garfield’s best performances. His skill is evident from the start here. Johnny O’Clock is fairly lightweight for Rossen – and film noir – and he seems to know it, prioritizing speed and entertainment value over everything else. He gets a very good performance from Powell here – in full movie star mode – and an even better one from Lee J. Cobb, one of the best character actors of all time. They almost appear to be in different movies – yet it somehow works. Less successful are the female characters – who are kind of one note, and leading lady Evelyn Keyes seems to think she’s in some kind of overwrought melodrama, not a noir at all.

 

Johnny O’Clock isn’t one of the great noirs. It is in the Columbia Noir collection on Criterion – and like many in that series, it was lower budgeted than a prestige movie – a programmer designed to be entertaining, and make a quick buck. On that level, it works. It isn’t the best work of any of the major contributors – but it’s an entertaining B-picture – and that’s enough.

Classic Movie Review: Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) 

Directed by: Bryan Forbes.

Written by: Bryan Forbes based on the novel by Mark McShane.

Starring: Kim Stanley (Myra Savage), Richard Attenborough (William Henry 'Bill' Savage), Judith Donner (Amanda Clayton - The Child), Mark Eden (Mr. Charles Clayton), Nanette Newman (Mrs. Clayton), Gerald Sim (Det. Sgt. Beedle), Patrick Magee (Superintendent Walsh).

 

There are a pair of exceptional performances at the heart of Bryan Forbes Séance on a Wet Afternoon. Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough play a married couple, who have responded to the death of their baby in differing ways – for her, it has deepened whatever mental illness she has already has, and for him, it has stricken him with grief. Stanley plays Myra, who makes her living as a psychic, and she is the domineering and controlling one in the relationship. Attenborough is William, her long-suffering husband, who is better able to interact in the real world, but powerless to stand up to his wife. She has an idea on how to advance her career. All he needs to do is kidnap the child of a wealthy couple – Amanda Clayton (Judith Donner) – and she can step in and “find” her, safe and sound, and become the famous psychic who cracked the case. No one is going to get to hurt – at least, that is what Myra assures William.

 

The film was directed by Bryan Forbes – not much remembered today, but he certainly has a few gems on his filmography – none better than this. This is a slow-burn thriller – it lacks the kind of action you often get in these sorts of stories, because it doesn’t need them. It is all about the psychology of these two damaged people. It all builds to that title séance – which will, of course, bring everything crashing down.

 

Stanley received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her role here. Stanley was always a fine actress – but she often got her roles after others turned them down – in this case Deborah Kerr, Anne Bancroft, Shelley Winters and Simone Signoret all passed, before it fell to Stanley. Those are all great actresses – you can argue all had better careers than Stanley – but she was the right choice for this role. It is a role that is chilly, domineering, and yet fragile – Myra is teetering on the edge of her own sanity, any slight push will be too much for her. William knows this, of course, and he goes along with what she wants. He has tried to leave her in the past – but needs her. She is perhaps her only connection to anything. Attenborough was a fine actor – and I’m not sure he’s ever been better than he is here. He is quiet man, one who has mainly been beaten into submission. He will do anything for Myra – but this may just be the push he needs to grow a spine.

 

Forbes shoots the film is chilly black and white – and the action cuts between the countryside in England, where the couple live, and London – where William travels to kidnap the child, and do other things involved in the ransom, etc. His direction here isn’t flashy – he allows scenes to play out minute by minute, and for Stanley and Attenborough to have stretches of silence. Heightening the realism is the location shooting on the streets of London. The closest thing the film has to an action set piece is the money exchange, and the fallout, in a crowded subway platform.

 

For the most part, they don’t make thrillers like this anymore. The film deliberately lacks action – there are no shootouts, no murder, no blood, and really only that one chase in the subway. It is a thriller grounded in the reality of its two leading characters – their psychological underpinnings, their perverse attachment to each other – that co-dependence deepening into something dangerous. It’s a movie you cannot look away from, for fear of missing something subtle, dark and disturbing. And it is all the more thrilling because of it.

Classic Movie Review: The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

The Lady from Shanghai (1947) 

Directed by: Orson Welles.

Written by: Orson Welles based on the novel by Sherwood King.

Starring: Rita Hayworth (Elsa Bannister), Orson Welles (Michael O'Hara), Everett Sloane (Arthur Bannister), Glenn Anders (George Grisby), Ted de Corsia (Sidney Broome), Erskine Sanford (Judge), Gus Schilling (Goldie), Carl Frank (District Attorney Galloway), Louis Merrill (Jake Bjornsen), Evelyn Ellis (Bessie), Harry Shannon (Cab Driver). 

 

I don’t typically spend a lot of time on extra-textuals of a movie – the how and why it got made, because in the end it is what onscreen that matters. Those making of stories are interesting, but if what is onscreen doesn’t work, then it doesn’t really matter. The one exception though is probably the films of Orson Welles. Welles, of course, made Citizen Kane (1941) – widely considered to be the greatest film ever made as his first film, and it was really the only film of his career he got to make exactly how he wanted to make it. His Hollywood career after that was largely made up of fighting with executives, who would take his films away and recut them, leaving them not quite the films Welles wanted. Even when he escaped Hollywood, he wasn’t immune to that – and he often didn’t have the money to do what he wanted to either. Welles remains one of the great directors in film history – but also one of the greatest “What ifs” in film history. One can only imagine what Welles could have and would have done if left to his own devices.

 

Take The Lady from Shanghai (1947) as an example. It’s a film Welles didn’t really want to make – he agreed to do it to continue to get funding for his Around the World in 80 Days – which never did. He said he’d adapt a book he never read, and so he ended up with this noir tale. The story is full of double crosses and triple crosses – complicated murder plots and reversals. And yet Welles doesn’t seem to care much about them – leading to the film having almost a slapdash quality to it. Perhaps if we saw the full version, it wouldn’t, but what remains feel like Welles having a lark. That extends to his performance as well – where he plays an Irishman, with a brogue, who isn’t particularly bright and gets himself into trouble when he falls for the beautiful Elsa (Rita Hayworth, who Welles was married to at the time, but wouldn’t be for much longer). Welles seemingly wanted to piss everyone off – which explains some of the decisions he makes, including having Hayworth cut off her famous mane of red hair – which had made her a star in Gilda, for a shorter cut, dyed blonde. And then , of course, there is the most famous sequence in the film – the almost Avant Garde climax set in a funhouse full of mirrors, that Welles had intended to last for 20 minutes, but which is shorn down to 3 minutes here – and yet remains one of the best sequences in all of cinema.

 

The Lady from Shanghai then probably shouldn’t work. It is a film with a complicated narrative, then the director doesn’t seem interested in, and seems to just skip some connective tissue. How Welles and Hayworth fell in love in the movie is pretty much not there – they just are one scene. Welles also loves a lot of shots of the boat on the water, gliding through paradise, which add nothing really to the narrative. When we get to the courtroom climax – where the main character is on trial for his life, Welles pretty much plays the whole thing as a farce. Welles himself is miscast in the lead – he’d probably be better suited playing Grisby or Bannister – and in a few years, that is exactly who he would have played.

 

So why, then, does The Lady from Shanghai work – and for the most part wonderfully well. Is it simply because Welles is clearly having so much fun – and so is everyone else – that it rubs off on the audience? Is it because the scenes that Welles leaves out are pretty much the scenes that aren’t really needed anyway, so what you’re left with is what you’d remember anyway? Is it just that amazing climax?

I’m honestly not sure. What I do know is that The Lady from Shanghai isn’t quite like anything else that Welles – or anyone really – has ever made. It’s part of the Columbia Noir collection on the Criterion Channel right now, and I’ve been churning through all of them right now. For the most part, they are fun, fast, B-movie – decent noirs, that hit the notes you expect. And then comes The Lady from Shanghai, and it’s like a noir from a different planet. I love it.

Classic Movie Review: The Apartment (1960)

The Apartment (1960) 

Directed by: Billy Wilder.

Written by: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond.

Starring: Jack Lemmon (C.C. Baxter), Shirley MacLaine (Fran Kubelik), Fred MacMurray (Jeff D. Sheldrake), Ray Walston (Joe Dobisch), Jack Kruschen (Dr. Dreyfuss), David Lewis (Al Kirkeby), Hope Holiday (Mrs. Margie MacDougall), Joan Shawlee (Sylvia), Naomi Stevens (Mrs. Mildred Dreyfuss), Johnny Seven (Karl Matuschka), Joyce Jameson (The Blonde), Willard Waterman (Mr. Vanderhoff), David White (Mr. Eichelberger), Edie Adams (Miss Olsen). 

 

If I had to recommend a “classic” movie director to someone who was looking to start to get in older Hollywood movies and looking for a place to start, I think that director would be Billy Wilder – and The Apartment may well be the film I suggest they start with. It’s a testament to just how great Wilder is that The Apartment is probably not even his best film – that would be Sunset Blvd. (1950) or even his funniest – that would be Some Like It Hot (1959). And you can go down the line to many great films he made – Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), Ace in the Hole (1951), Stalag 17 (1953), Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and One, Two, Three (1961) – and even that list is missing some classics. His films don’t seem to age – you could change few details of The Apartment, and pretty much have a film you could set today, probably in some tech company in Northern California, and you wouldn’t have to change much else. This is a comedy – one of the best American comedies of all time – but it sticks with you because of the sense of loneliness and sadness that runs through the entire film. It’s anchored by two of the best performances by two legendary actors – Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine – and yes, it is a romantic comedy. But it’s a romantic comedy about two adults – realists in an imperfect world, and when the credits role, after the perfect closing line, you have no idea whether or not it will work out between them. But you want it to – they seem right for each other. And they take their time making that decision – with their heads, as much as with their hearts.

 

Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a cog in the machine of a massive insurance company. He’s good at his job and ambitious to boot – part of that ambition has led him to lend out his bachelor apartment to executives in the company, looking for place to take their mistresses before getting on the train at night and returning to their wives. Baxter has a crush of Fran Kubelik (MacLaine), the pretty elevator operator in the building – not knowing that she was once, and will be again, the mistress of the big boss – Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) – who will eventually call on Baxter for use of that famous apartment.

 

So the famous Wilder cynicism is baked right into the concept of The Apartment. Neither Baxter nor Frank or naïve kids who fall head over heels in love. They are sad, lonely people. Wilder sets the film during Christmas, usually a cheerful time, but also chose to shoot it in black-and-white, which drains all those cheery lights and decorations of their color and sheer. Baxter has no family of any kind – at one point, he shares how he spent last Christmas day, and it’s downright pathetic. Fran does have a sister – she lives with her, and her brother-in-law, but that doesn’t stop the loneliness for sinking in. They are both “company men” in their way – and looking to climb the ladder in their own ways – him by getting promoted, her by marrying the boss. They both love Sheldrake in their own ways – and so much they cannot see what an asshole he is – perfectly played by MacMurray, as the type of guy who always gets what he wants, and seems offended when he doesn’t.

 

This was a key film for both Lemmon and MacLaine. Lemmon had already won an Oscar at this point – for his manic performance in Mister Roberts (1955), and had become a bigger star with his role in Wilder’s Some Like It Hot the year before. MacLaine had been doing comedies as well – and delivered a great, tragic turn in Vincente Minelli’s Some Came Running (1958) prior to The Apartment – which earned her the first Oscar nomination of her career. They are both brilliant here – both nominated for Oscars (Lemmon lost to Burt Lancaster, who finally won for Elmer Gantry, she to Elizabeth Taylor, who finally won for Butterfield 8) – but the roles propelled towards their future careers, where they would continue to be great. There is some shared DNA for Lemmon here between C.C. Baxter, and his last great performance – as Shelley Levine in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) – the once great salesman, now aging and incapable of closing. MacLaine would age into greater roles as well – she wouldn’t win an Oscar until Terms of Endearment (1983), not so much a similar character, except that it’s clear that both of these women had seen some things, been hurt, learned, and then kept going.

 

The key scenes in The Apartment as far as the romance goes are odd – in that they come in the wake of a Fran’s suicide attempt, in the apartment, that she doesn’t know is Baxter’s (she assumes Sheldrake will find her). They fall in love while she recuperates. And yet, they don’t fall into each other’s arms at the end – they actually both go back to Sheldrake for a while, needing one last kick in the teeth before they are ready for each other. Which brings you to one of the most perfect endings in cinema history. It’s the ending you want, the ending you feel you deserve, and its sweet and funny. But it also somehow manages to fit in as the perfect ending to this cynical, adult romantic comedy. How Wilder and company pulled it off is nothing short of a miracle.

Classic Movie Review: The Haunting (1963)

The Haunting (1963) 

Directed by: Robert Wise.

Written by: Nelson Gidding based on the novel by Shirley Jackson.

Starring: Julie Harris (Eleanor Lance), Claire Bloom (Theodora), Richard Johnson (Dr. John Markway), Russ Tamblyn (Luke Sanderson), Fay Compton (Mrs. Sanderson), Rosalie Crutchley (Mrs. Dudley), Lois Maxwell (Grace Markway), Valentine Dyall (Mr. Dudley), Diane Clare (Carrie Fredericks), Ronald Adam (Eldridge Harper). 

 

I’ve said before that I’ve never been one for ghost stories – I don’t believe in ghosts, and for the most part, ghost story movies don’t much scare me, because it’s the same thing again and again – and unlike the horror movies that really do scare me, I can never project myself into those situations – never really feel that fear, so it all becomes an exercise. That’s probably why it took me so long to watch The Haunting from 1963 – considering my many to be the greatest ghost story movie of all time. And now, having seen it, I can only agree with that assessment – but with a caveat. It’s certainly one of the greatest of its kind ever made – but it works that well because it may not be a ghost story at all.

 

The movie is based on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and is about a group of four people, who go to the damned house to “study” it for a few days. The house is already old, but has been cursed ever since it was built – its owners die mysteriously, or are driven mad, etc. The leader is Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson), who is a real doctor, who sometimes indulges his interest in the paranormal, much to the chagrin of his wife and those around him. He is joined at the house by Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn) – who will one day inherit Hill House, and more important two women. Theodora (Claire Bloom) is a psychic. Eleanor (Julie Harris), the real protagonist of the movie, doesn’t have any special skills – but is sensitive herself, believing she has already had contact with ghosts in her childhood.

 

The movie is about these four people in the house together, as strange things start happening. All of those things feed into Eleanor’s already shaky psyche – so much so that the movie can be read in two very different ways – one that the house is legitimately haunted, and the other being that it is all a projection of Eleanor’s increasing mental breakdown. It is also quite possible that Hill house isn’t haunted – that Eleanor is – and she brings those ghosts along with her.

 

The film was directed by Robert Wise – who made it between two films for which he’d win Best Director Oscars – West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965) – although this film couldn’t be more different than those big budget, all singing, all dancing epics. This is a pared down horror movie, shot in beautiful, spooky black-and-white, almost all in that house, with just these four people. The “ghosts” in the film are nothing but sounds – persistent knocking, perhaps a door handle jiggling, and cold spots in rooms. The film could easily have been made on the cheap.

 

All of those tricks that Wise and his crew work – and wonderfully so, even if they have become a cliché in the decades since. They work in part because they are at the service of a story that is less concerned with ghosts, than in its characters. Russ Tamblyn is in fine form as the cynical, rich playboy who wants to dismiss everything. Johnson gives off the right air of fatherly concern and intelligence. But it’s Bloom and Harris are particularly great. Bloom barely tries to hide the fact that she is playing Theodora as a lesbian – it is what drew her to role in the first place, and it’s perhaps another example of people not taking horror films seriously, so you can sneak in things you wouldn’t get away with elsewhere. It isn’t a judgmental performance either – but one in which Bloom is very in tune with her character. All of these characters, and how they act though, end up feeding into Harris’ increasing breakdown – sneaking up on her. Harris and Bloom are truly great in the film.

 

That is what I will remember about The Haunting. Yes, Wise and company devise brilliant strategies to keep the tension up, and to scare you with nothing more than some clanging pipes. But like all great horror films, there is more here than that – it digs deep into Eleanor’s fractured, repressed psyche – which may be worse than the ghosts.

Classic Movie Review: Under the Sun of Satan (1987)

Under the Sun of Satan (1987)

Directed by: Maurice Pialat.

Written by: Sylvie Pialat and Maurice Pialat based on the novel by Georges Bernanos.

Starring: Gérard Depardieu (Donissan), Sandrine Bonnaire (Mouchette), Maurice Pialat (Menou-Segrais), Alain Artur (Cadignan), Yann Dedet (Gallet), Brigitte Legendre (La mère de Mouchette), Jean-Claude Bourlat (Malorthy), Jean-Christophe Bouvet (Le maquignon), Philippe Pallut (Le carrier), Marcel Anselin (Mgr Gerbier), Yvette Lavogez (Marthe), Pierre D'Hoffelize (Havret), Corinne Bourdon (La mère de l'enfant), Thierry Der'ven (Sabroux), Marie-Antoinette Lorge (Estelle).

 

Those who take their faith seriously can be absolutely tormented by it. It is easier to just blindly believe is a benevolent God, who has a plan for you, and will protect you – unless of course it’s your time to go, and then, again, that’s all part of God’s plan. But some of the deepest believers are the ones most tormented by doubts – they take questions of faith seriously – because they take the questions religion raises seriously. And perhaps because they do, they end up doing the most damage.

 

Maurice Pialat’s Palme d’or winning drama Under the Sun of Satan stars Gerard Depardieu as Donissan, a priest who does in fact take questions of religion seriously, and because of that he is plagued by doubts. Those doubts in turn make him a fairly ineffectual priest – unable to provide much in the way of comfort or guidance to his parishioners. His boss and mentor is Menou-Segrais (Pialat himself), who has doubts as well – but is better able to hide them, and deliver something to the parishioners that they need. It may be cynical, but it helps.

 

The key sequence in Under the Sun of Satan takes place when Donissan is sent to walk from his small town to another – over the fields. A man stalks (Jean-Christopher Bouvet) after Donissan, and engaging him in conversation – playing on his doubts. There scenes thrum with even homoerotic of homophobic tension depending of your view on them – and, of course, it slowly becomes clear that this mysterious stranger is Satan himself. As a result of this encounter, Donissan is either blessed or cursed, depending on your view, with some Godlike powers – visions, the ability to heal the sick, etc. But are you still doing God’s work, if the power to do so comes from Satan? And what happens when your good intentions all go awry? Nowhere is this more apparent that with Mouchette Sandrine Bonnaire) – a teenage girl, with a self-destructive streak, engaging in one affair after another with older men – one of whom she has just killed. Donissan wants to save her – but he well damn her instead.

 

Under the Sun of Satan is the kind of talky, heady religious drama that Ingmar Bergman could have done remarkably well. It has a cynical view of, and religion – and questions seriously the notion of God and belief. Naming one of the major characters Mouchette also undeniably brings to mind Robert Bresson’s film of the same name from 1967 – about a young girl suffering through one humiliation after another. Bresson was another filmmaker who could make long, serious conversations about God cinematic and interesting.

 

Unfortunately, I don’t really think that is Pialat’s strong suit. He is better suited in films like Police – large, sprawling casts of people talking over each other, rather than this type of serious, religious drama with long conversations about God, religion and belief. It’s a testament to the performances by Depardieu and Bonnaire that they work as well as they do – although it’s hard to deny that they are merely symbols, not real characters – and no one else is even given that depth. The film looks great – particularly that long journey between towns featuring the scenes with Satan – and the events leading up to Bonnaire’s shocking act of violence.

 

But taken as a whole, Under the Sun of Satan is the type of film that is more interesting to talk about than it is to watch. Everything is here is metaphor and symbolism, and long drawn out conversations. Bresson could have pulled this off. Bergman and Carl Th. Dreyer probably could have too. Hell, at the moment, I’d love to see a Paul Schrader version. But in the hands of the immensely talented Pialat, I just don’t think he quite figured out how to pull it off as anything more than an exercise.