Review of Empty Night / Noite Vazia

Sexy philtrums,

Fulsome tantrums,

Unfulfilling sex

The Brazilian film Noite Vazia (1964) is variously but blandly retitled as ‘Eros’ or ‘Men and Women’ in English. Far more evocative, and more fitting, is the direct translation: Empty Night.

Luisinho and Nelson, two jaded playboys, prowl Sao Paolo searching for “something new” and end up spending the night with high-end prostitutes Regina and Mara. Sounds sexist and a snooze, but… there’s something there.

Luis and Regina, the older pair, have a painfully tense anti-chemistry, like two veterans from opposite sides of a war. They hate how much they recognize in each other: bitter tongues, calloused hearts, boredom dulling their wits, age seeping into their bodies. Luis says she’s #367. He counts. He would. Regina says he’s #1800. But I doubt she counts.

Nelson and Mara are less interesting, but at least for them there might still be hope. Nelson’s inarticulate anger masks a sensitive soul, or maybe he’s just another misogynist-in-the-making. Maybe I’m falling into the same trap as his prey: mistaking him for deep and mysterious. Mara, meanwhile, is hopelessly unfit for her line of work: she still feels pity for men, still cares whether they seek her out a second time. But then again, her naïve longing (is the word ‘love’ ever spoken in this film?) might be a lifeline of sorts.

There are tons of little ups and down. Moments of emotion and humanity that, like weeds coming up through pavement, still struggle to express themselves despite a lack of sustenance. Rudolf Icsey’s velvety, inky cinematography provides little sunlight. Rogerio Duprat’s skittish, jaggy bossa nova is hostile soil.

Mirrors and male gaze. 

Two scenes are almost perfect.

A teenage bellboy tries to break in, looking for a place to make out with his timid girlfriend and assuming the suite to be unoccupied for the night. Luis, initially outraged, awkwardly invites the couple to join them. The girl bolts. The boy follows, less certain of what he’s escaping. From their balcony, the four leads watch them reunite in the street, upset with each other, out of hearing. A lot is running through their heads, across their faces: nostalgia, mockery, envy.

Noite Vazia reminds me how much I miss filmmakers who know how to do deep compositions. Almost nobody, appropriately enough, is on the same plane. The girl hides from the moment. The plant fits perfectly.

Late in the night the two couples wake up to a storm. Without words they strips off their clothes and walk out into the rain. It is arguably the film’s most erotically charged scene. It is the only time they experience the sensual pleasure they only pantomime in the bedroom. They can only drifts indolently downhill from there.

The film ends with minor acrimony and a return to lonely routine. Any one of them could have learned something, but they’ve chosen not to. And that’s perhaps the film’s most telling observation. 

Odete Lara, if you can't bring in some Google image search hits, nobody can.

Walrus Rating: 8.5

Film Atlas (USA): Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Country: United States of America

Title: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Butch and Sundance are two outlaws in 1890s Wyoming, members of the successful smalltime Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. Butch is the brains and Sundance the crack shot. Despite differing personalities, the two are best friends and irresistible thieves. However their latest scheme, robbing a Union Pacific train both coming and going, makes them the target of an unprecedented manhunt. Finally cornered on a cliff, the pair memorably leaps into a river below and absconds to Bolivia, with Sundance’s schoolteacher girlfriend in tow, where they reboot their career as bank robbers. For a time their life of romanticized crime is idyllic and their moods improve, but the nagging threat of being tracked wherever they go eventually wears down their morale. They try going straight for a while as security guards on a payroll route, but Mexican bandits give them their first taste of real violence. Finally forced into a showdown surrounded by the Bolivian army, the two antiheroes, still cracking jokes, go out in a blaze of glory.

The United States is home to Hollywood, headquarters for many of the oldest and best-known studios like 20^th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, RKO, Universal, Columbia and United Artists. Despite competition from India, Hollywood still dominates, for better or worse, the cultural mindshare of the movie-going public, setting trends, establishing stars and breaking records at international box offices. The US has also fostered a thriving network for independent and experimental film in cities across the country.

I’ve seen almost ten times as many films from the US, my home country, than any other country which makes it even more impossible than usual to think of a single film to represent it. But Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid encapsulates a lot of the trends associated with American cinema: it’s a western, a star vehicle, an action-comedy hybrid, a buddy film, a revisionist history and a glorification of outlaws who nevertheless get their due in the end. Though made by a relatively lesser-famous director (George Roy Hill), it’s an early example of New Hollywood, a movement that brought rejuvenating technical, thematic and narrative sophistication and European art film influences to the mainstream and made household names of American auteurs like Stephen Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen and George Lucas.

Crucial to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s success was the onscreen chemistry of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the central roles. Wisely discarding stuffy old historical accuracy, the film depicts them as handsome, charismatic, classy, droll, good-humored and non-violent. The fact that they are on the wrong side of the law only increased their allure and tapped into the zeitgeist’s love affair with anti-authority rebels.  The script’s judicious blend of gruff banter and gritty action gave life to the well-worn trappings of the western genre, and maintained a pace of unflagging entertainment. That said, viewers are divided over the film’s famous scene featuring the Academy Award-winning song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” which serves as a sort of intermission or, less kindly, a jarring  interruption. 

However this sequence, along with an oddly tinted montage, a fade-to-sepia freeze-frame ending and frequently stylized editing that has you laughing one moment and mutely tense the next, are testaments to Hill’s willingness to explore the medium despite making what is ostensibly popcorn cinema. Meanwhile his ambiguous treatment of modernization, mistrust towards the anonymous ‘Establishment’ and unabashed glamorization of criminals gave audiences food for thought and marked an influential shift in the perennially refashioned metaphor and mythology of the American West. 

Film Atlas (Slovenia): Dancing in the Rain

Country: Slovenia

Title: Dancing in the Rain / Ples v Dezju (1961)

Peter is a painter, but he spends most of his time morosely drinking at a local dive. Marusa is an actress, but she’s past her prime and skips rehearsals to mope. The two are considered a couple within their limited circle, but it’s a warped, emotionally-abusive relationship always on the rocks. The theater’s pipsqueak line-prompter is in love with Marusa, who’s in love Peter, who’s in love with a nonexistent ideal. Contempt flows back in the other direction. They drink deeply and frequently of alcohol and bitterness. They dream, fantasize and delude themselves to stave off encroaching despair. We watch them as a day passes and the rain rolls in.

Having laid out that heavy-sounding summary, it might be hard to believe that this is an absolutely beautiful film, astounding in its technical ingenuity and abundant imagination. Director Bostjan Hladnik eagerness to play with filmcraft enlivens the rather dire noirish plot and his impatience to experiment, instead of obfuscating the story, serve to better express the psychology of his characters. His bag of tricks includes graphic matches and jump cuts, 360 degree roving camera movements, dream sequences and their surreal geographies, unexpected camera angles and focus pulls, close ups that pull out only to redefine the space with new surprises and abrupt transitions into flashbacks or fantasies often without an edit. One touch that I especially liked was a young couple, lost in their hermetic puppy love, who mysteriously haunt the backgrounds and tail-ends of almost every scene (including even a dream sequence!). Are they glimpses of Peter/Marusa’s past? A metaphor for their albatrosses of ideal love? A reminder that the cycle of innocence and disillusionment repeats itself with each new generation? Mere contrast with Peter Marusa’s failing relationship?

Even more radical and unique is Hladnik’s sound design, which uses often highly unrealistic volume modulation, misleading aural cues and internal monologues from shifting perspectives to create a subjective soundscape. Not every idea works (one scenes has Peter chasing Marusa at an unconvincingly lazy pace so that the camera can keep up), but it’s refreshing to see a film take so many risks.

Hladnik’s visual virtuosity and willingness to experiment reflect the influence of Ingmar Bergman and Robert Siodmak and would have fit right at home in the New Waves then blossoming in France, Czechoslovakia and Japan. Sadly, he remains in obscurity outside of Slovenia.

Film Atlas (Slovakia): The Sun in a Net

Country: Slovakia

Film: The Sun in a Net / Slnko V Sieti (1962)

Teenagers Fajolo and Bela spend a lot of time on the roof, aimlessly half-dating in a landscape of concrete walls and television antennas. Fajolo likes to take photographs, especially of hands. Bela, perhaps, just likes the attention. Without knowing what they want from each other, or themselves, they easily drift apart. Fajolo 'volunteers' to work at a collectivist farm for the summer which produces little despite the fresh blood and the curative properties of a nearby lake. He writes half-hearted letters to Bela, but flirts with Jana, a fellow worker. Back home Bela lounges about with Fajolo's playboy friend Peto. They read Fajolo's letters together while tanning on a seasonal fisherman's pontoon houseboat, which is also, incidentally and unknown to them, Fajolo's own secret haunt. 

Meanwhile Bela and her brother Milo treat their blind mother with exaggerated care, sensing her frail emotional condition and unspoken family skeletons. The sibling bookends the film by dictating descriptions of his surroundings for his mother's sake, actually soothing lies, first of a rare and spectacular eclipse (in reality, totally obscured by clouds) and lastly of the view from the pontoon, visited one final time. "The water is like a mirror" says Bela, as they stare at a dried up lake bed. And perhaps she's right.

Arguably the birthplace of the Czechoslovakian New Wave, The Sun in a Net introduced a playfully experimental style and a willingness to flout 'correct' Socialist Realist attitudes. The censors must have squirmed a bit trying to parse director Stefan Uher's film, which coyly sidesteps explicitly political topics and critical generalities, while managing to suggest a pervasive decay undermining the official version of things: couples don't stay together, parents are busy with their own pain, families are tense. Cities are cloying but communes are a bore. 

Uher simultaneously walks another tricky tightrope: filming malaise, without inducing it. He does so with a practiced eye and ear for the rhythms of teenage moods; the way youths are fickle and immature and yet more conflicted and intelligent than outsiders realize. The black and white cinematography is crisp and textured, with perfectionist compositions that transmute simple flats and fields into complex engaging scenes. The editing (perhaps the hallmark of the movement's innovation) has flashes of provoking contrast, juxtaposing two places, two moments, two people, one in front of the eyes and one in front of the mind; as when Fajolo has a stab of yearning for Bela while swimming with Jana or stares at a laborer's hands and remembers a model's in an ad. The Sun in a Net may be academic, melancholic and transitional, but it's also compelling and very much alive.

My Favorites:

The Cremator
The Sun in a Net
The Return of Dragon (1968)

The Shop on Main Street

Pictures of the Old World
The Boxer and Death
Celebration in the Botanical Gardens

Birds Orphans and Fools

Major Directors:

Dusan Hanak, Juraj Herz, Juraj Jakubisko

Film Atlas (Romania): Forest of the Hanged

Country: Romania

Film: Forest of the Hanged / Padurea spânzuratilor (1965)

Forest of the Hanged follows a group of disparate East European soldiers serving the Austro-Hungarian army in WWI. We are introduced to Apostol Bologa (Victor Rebengiuc, who reminds one of Anthony Perkins with a hint of Peter O'Toole) at dusk on a muddy hillside where a Czech deserter named Svoboda will be hanged. Bologa ruled against Svoboda and supervises over the hasty, ill-organized death sentence. A Romanian forced to fight against his own people, Bologa is already racked with guilt and his nerves further deteriorate over the following days. He and his officer friend Klapka (a coward played by director Liviu Ciulei) become fixated on a powerful searchlight that the enemy uses to harass them and which his artillery unit is mysteriously unable to hit. Despite its negligible military value,  Bologa leads a suicidal assault that neutralizes the target and he is briefly declared a hero.

However his victor's request to be transferred to another front so that he doesn't have to kill his Romanian brethren is interpreted as treason. Outside the commandant's house, he is criticized by Muller, a pacifist, who points out that Bologa is trying to cheat his conscience: killing men of any nationality is a sin. Bologa plans to desert that night, but his side leads a charge where he is injured and sent on leave to recuperate. He returns home but finds himself unable to reintegrate into the carefree world of his father and fiancé. Back at the front he proposes to Ilona, a peasant girl (mistaking his longing for innocence and purity as love) only to be asked to oversee another trial: 12 farmers, including Ilona's father, who dared to plow their fields in the combat zone. Bologa, knowing that the graves are being dug in advance of the verdict, makes a final decision to flee.

In the entire 158 minutes of Forest of the Hanged we never see an enemy soldier or anything that feels like a battle. Liviu Rebreanu, author of the 1922 source novel, is concerned not with combat and logistics, but with psychology and, as Bologa puts it, the "moral impossibility" of war. The invincible searchlight is established as a vivid metaphor for Bologa's guilty conscience, but destroying it only temporary drowns out the guilt without resolving anything. Klapka initially defends the beam, "There is so much darkness that every light is welcome," but the fear that his own cowardice will be exposed soon expresses itself as hatred for the light as well. The only ones willing to face the truth head-on are a Polish doctor (when an Austrian complains that the men have been spoiling dinner by talking of the execution for a full three hours, he points out that humanity has been talking about the execution of Christ for centuries) and Muller (who quarters in an antique carriage behind a tannery, obscured by mountains of boots and curtains of belts). Both of them die. Muller, in one of the film's many interwoven subplots, is taken on a 'patrol' (actually a hush-hush execution) by an old man who agrees to the assassination in exchange for his son being withdrawn from combat.

In addition to being an incredible treatise on wartime compromise, sin and guilt, Forest of the Hanged is also a masterpiece of cinematography. The opening hanging alone could fill a chapter-length study. Ciulei makes even his long takes restless and jumpy, choreographing elaborate camera movements that sweep, pivot, zoom, crane and reframe as if desperately trying to understand this miscarriage of justice. Edits fling us absurdly far out from the action and then throw us abruptly back in: near the crowd, the accused, the executioner, until it is all mixed up. Svoboda barely murmurs a word, but in his face is everything: confusion, fear, disbelief, resignation. Behind him is the dying sun, later resurrected as the searchlight. And even before all this there's the shot introducing Bologa (when we've no idea he will be the main character) approaching the godforsaken gallows from a distance and framed, for a foreshadowing moment, by the empty noose.

My Favorites:

Forest of the Hanged

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Then I Sentenced Them All to Death

4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days

Tuesday After Christmas

Stone Wedding

Hooked
Child's Pose

Major Directors:
Liviu Ciulei, Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Cristi Puiu

Film Atlas (Malaysia): My Mother-in-Law

Country: Malaysia

Title: My Mother-in-Law / Ibu Mertuaku (1962)

Listening to the radio, Sabariah falls in love with the saxophone jazz of Kassim Selamat (P. Ramlee) and calls in to arrange a blind date. But both Sabariah and Kassim get cold feet and unknowingly come up with the same plan: have friends stand in at the first meeting while they sit nearby and watch in safety. The ensuing comedy of errors soon sorts itself out. Sabariah and Kassim are now a couple (as are their best friends), but Sabariah’s evil mother Nyonya would prefer she marry Dr. Ismadi, a wealthy, caring optometrist. Nyonya eventually gives in, but determines to have the last laugh and cuts her off financially. Sabariah soon learns the downsides of a love match and has difficulty adjusting to poverty. Kassim takes a construction job, bitter that his wife prohibits him from pursuing music out of hope for reconciliation with Nyonya.  But the mother-in-law has schemes of her own and when Sabariah goes home for the final stages of her pregnancy, Nyonya telegrams Kassim lying that his beloved has died in childbirth. Kassim cries himself blind, literally, loses his job and is forced to wander the streets where he is rescued by a woman. The woman’s grief stricken daughter, Chombi, takes pity on him, nursing him back to health while falling in love. One day he overhears a sax and is soon mounting a comeback under an assumed name. Sabariah, long-since believing herself abandoned and now married to Dr. Ismadi, attends a concert. Shocked to see her missing first husband, she asks her second husband to cure his blindness, without his realizing their past history or Kassim knowing the identity of his benefactor. They all have good intentions, but tragedy results. I quite enjoyed the story so I won’t spoil the final act, except to say it gets surprisingly gory!

Actor-writer-director-musician P. Ramlee was sort of the Orson Welles of Malaysia; multitalented, popular across generations and occasionally pretty idiosyncratic. My Mother-in-Law, often cited as his best work, is a case-in-point: what starts as a wacky romantic musical comedy veers sharply into unexpected neorealism (with an underlying critique of the caste system) and onward into increasingly intense and tragic melodrama. I found the first 20 minutes almost insufferable, but in retrospect it is rather clever exposition that lures the viewer into a comfortable light-hearted mood, before springing its trap. I’m a melodrama apologist and as it came to dominate the latter half of the film I found myself appreciating the blend of Hollywood (I’d be surprised if Douglas Sirk’s Magnificent Obsession wasn’t an influence), Bollywood and ancient Grecian flavors. This is a movie jam-packed with plot and while the editing can be rough, jarring and confusing, it helps propel things along considering all the ground that it has to cover. The pacing doesn’t leave the actors much time to sell all the big emotions at play, but it’s a great ensemble and they put their whole selves into it. My Mother-in-Law allows you to smile at the absurd coincidences and still get caught up in the emotional throes, and that may be the definition of soap opera, but I'm fond of it all the same. 

Images from the climactic Oedipus Rex-esque montage.

Film Atlas (India): Emperor of the Mughals

Country: India

Title: Emperor of the Mughals / Mughal-e-Azam (1960)

The year is 1568, and Emperor Akbar, greatest of the Mughal dynasty that ruled the Indian subcontinent for three centuries, makes a desert pilgrimage hoping for a male heir. His wish is granted in the form of Salim, though unfortunately he’s a born profligate. Akbar, seeing that ease and pleasure are spoiling his child, commands him to lead an army through 14 years of triumphant warfare. He returns a hardened general, with tasteful dabs of blood accenting his face. During the festivities celebrating his homecoming, prince Salim is presented with a breathtaking sculpture that turns out to be Anarkali, a modest court maid gifted in song and dance. Salim and Anarkali fall instantly in love, secretly passing poetry by floating lotuses down the palace pavilion’s fountain-fed private river. The jealous Bahar, an ambitious rival dancer, makes sure the affair is discovered by Akbar. The emperor is outraged by Salim’s intention to marry below his station and makes every attempt to hinder the couple, including chaining Anarkali in the dungeon. Salim respects the sovereignty of his esteemed father over a vast kingdom, but defends the freedom of his heart. Their relationship breaks down, leading to shouting matches, ultimatums and war. Tragedy ensues, but only after Salim and Anarkali are granted a few precious hours of happiness.

Emperor of the Mughals is, if one adjusts for inflation, perhaps the most the successful Indian film ever made and certainly one of its most enduringly popular. It is emblematic of the Bollywood blockbuster model: a timeless obstacle-laden romance writ on a larger-than-life scale, big-name stars, lavish production values, memorable musical numbers and, of course, a three-hour running time. Director K. Asif overcame titanic production setbacks to get it made (shooting first began in 1946, fourteen years and a different cast away from the finished version), but the sheer visual splendor of Mughal-e-Azam shines through.

It’s best enjoyed by sitting back and admiring the opulence: the flamboyant fabrics, faceted mirrors and filigreed jewelry. The soirees in gardens and clashes of armies. The gilt on everything from copulas to crowns. The romance is a flesh-and-blood extension of this theme with Salim and Anarkali part of the visual feast. Dilip Kumar (Salim) and Madhubala (Anarkali) have chemistry, charisma and commitment, even if their tragic love has little resemblance to a real-world relationship, and although scrupulously, even absurdly chaste (in accordance with industry censors), they know how to squeeze every drop of sensuality out of a glance, a gesture or a dance. The rest of the film admittedly doesn’t hold up quite as well, but it entertains. The acting and writing, for instance, are heavy-handed and overwrought, firmly in the tradition of grand historical epics. The emotions are presented only in their most intense varieties, which only makes them all the purer to savor. One can also find, behind all the pomp and bombast, interesting conflicts being grappled with: the barriers of caste and class, the primacy of love versus principles, the responsibility to rule versus the right to privacy, the limits of parental and government authority and every manifestation of loyalty put to test. It’s interesting to note that Akbar, as in history, is truly a great leader while his son mostly just wants schmooze with a hot girl, but one can’t help rooting for love.

Bollywood is second only to Hollywood in terms of cinematic influence, and surpasses it in terms of film production and viewership. That said, I approach popular cinema (be it from the U.S., India, Nigeria or elsewhere) with a great deal of skepticism and, like many Western cinephiles, I find Bollywood films to be frequently hampered by their long runtimes, ubiquitous songs, limited themes and reliance on formulas, not to mention notoriously sloppy DVD releases (poor transfers, unsubtitled musical numbers, distracting watermarks) further aggravated by endemic piracy. But India is more than just the hindi-based Bollywood; there is also a ‘parallel’ cinema grounded in socially-conscious realism and artistic aspirations, fostered by internationally-regarded auteurs like Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Bimal Roy, Shyam Benegal and Mani Kaul. I chose to write about a film firmly in the Bollywood tradition, but if musical spectacles aren’t your cup of tea try The Home and the World, Salaam Bombay, Subarnarekha, Mr. Shome, Our Daily Bread or Pather Panchali.

My Favorites:
The Home and the World
Sholay
The Lonely Wife
Scorching Winds
Court (2015)
Ankur
The Golden Thread / Subarnarekha
Salaam Bombay!
Guide
The Big City
Emperor of the Mughals
Mother India
Mr. Shome
Hero / Nayakan
In Two Minds / Duvidha
I'll Die for Mama / Deewaar
A Day's Bread / Uski Roti
Throw of the Dice
The Pathetic Fallacy

Major Directors:

Shyam Benegal, Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, Mani Kaul, Mehboob Khan, Mira Nair, Satyajit Ray, Ghatak Ritwik, Bimal Roy, Mrinal Sen