GHOSTLIGHT (2024)

A small town Community Theater in Illinois puts on Romeo & Juliet with their own middle-aged members as those doomed crazy kids and finds the experience transforming/life-affirming, especially so for one grieving family coming apart after the loss of a teenage son.  The sister self-destructively ‘acting out,’ Dad giving in to a mid-life crisis, Mom holding things together by tuning out.  Bet you’re looking for the Emergency Exit right about now.  Yes?  Hard to blame you, but wait; the darn thing grows on you.  Or does if you can get past some mighty large scale acting (big enough to reach the back of the house) and a lot of convenient parallels between Shakespeare’s plot and off-stage life.  Keith Kupferer, the bearish construction worker with a mid-life crisis, is literally pulled off the street to join the amateur theatricals, some with professional backgrounds which explains the deep-dish acting workshop lessons we’re put thru.  Not technique, BTW, mostly trust issues fit for 2024.  With his job in abeyance after recent meltdowns, Kupferer finds the stage routine & rituals far more helpful than the psychologist sessions he shares with his daughter (seriously overplayed by real-life daughter Katherine), on the verge of getting kicked out of school.  By the time the show opens, Mom’s finagled a real auditorium for them at her high school), various misunderstandings and cast changes have led Dad into debuting as Romeo against the troop’s most seasoned player (a delightful fifty-something Dolly De Leon as Juliet).  The whole improbable thing rather touching by the end.  And you’ll wonder if the amateurish vibe from co-directors Kelly O'Sullivan & Alex Thompson has helped rather than hurt things.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Grace Kelly’s playwright uncle George Kelly wrote the mother of all amateur theater plays in THE TORCH BEARERS, filmed as DOUBTING THOMAS/’35 by Will Rogers.  A more recent look at these groups, Alan Ayckbourn’s marvelous/wicked A CHORUS OF DISAPPROVAL/'89, didn’t survive Michael Winner’s direction even with Jeremy Irons & Anthony Hopkins.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/doubting-thomas-1935.html

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE (2012)

Behind the generic title (I stopped counting IMDb listings at twenty), lies this generic movie.  Not bad, just awfully familiar; an early credit for writer/director Ava DuVerney hobbled rather than helped by awards, nominations & overinflated expectations.  Emayatzy Corinealdi is exceedingly pretty (think young Leslie Uggams) as the hospital nurse who puts off med school to stay close to hunky husband Omari Hardwick, currently serving eight years in prison, five with good behavior.  (Charges left purposely vague by DuVerney?)  Meantime, smitten jail-route bus driver David Oyelowo (looking & sounding unnervingly like Detroit Piston Point Guard Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas) is making a big play for her.  He’s a charmer for sure, divorced, too, but it’s no go.  Or is till Corinealdi and her husband’s attorney are ambushed by new info at his parole board hearing.  With no ‘right’ decision, what’s a thoughtful caring sacrificial enabler supposed to do?  Far more interesting, but given far less screen time are the complicated relations & miscommunications buzzing between Corinealdi, her kid sister & nephew, and their resentful Mom (an extraordinary Lorraine Toussaint).  Did DuVerney not pick up on what was unique here while shooting?

THE SNOWMAN (2017)

After the much anticipated SMILIA’S SENSE OF SNOW/’97 tanked (so badly it downgraded multiple A-listers to permanent also-ran status), it revived an old Hollywood maxim on snowy settings equaling bad box-office.  (They left audiences cold in more ways than one.)  An excuse not used since; and no data to support the snowy claim.  Indeed, over the past two decades, especially with the rise in Nordic Noir franchises on the page/on the screen, you can hardly shake a stick without hitting something Frosty & Scandinavian.  But SNOWMAN may revive the old adage.  Set in snowy Oslo, with cast members trying on two or three mismatched accents that come & go (suspect J.K. Simmons has the most fun in vocal inconsistency), Michael Fassbender’s the police dick too busy missing killer clues & forgetting which woman is his wife to bother with a steady accent.  (Wait!  That’s me forgetting who his wife is!  Sorry.)  In defense, director Tomas Alfredson claims the released film (a serial murder procedural that features murder by garrotte and snowmen left as death markers) had the plug pulled before he finished and then got re-edited.  Against him are set pieces showing a distinct lack of action chops.  The big climax where the murderer loses the upper hand on three more victims a botch for the books.*  A couple more like this and producers will again start blaming climate for under-performance.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Anderson’s breakthru pic, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN/’05, also snowbound.  But since it’s about a vampire, iron-poor blood part of the story.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/lat-den-ratte-komma-in-let-right-one-in.html

PHANTOM BOY (2015)

French animation team Jean-Loup Felicioli & Alain Gagnol followed their popular A CAT IN PARIS/’10 with a winning (if less sampled) feature showing similar strengths & weaknesses.  ‘Weaknesses’ perhaps too strong a term; rather an average story sense yet to equal their dazzlingly flat, painterly, poster-ready visuals.  Both films hang on a secret double life; here a teenage boy undergoing chemo-treatments releases a phantom copy of himself at night, flying around the city while his corporal body sleeps.  And what a time to have a ghostly presence on the scene as Manhattan is being attacked by a computer virus released by a Super-villain with the face of a Cubist bust.  The boy soon joined by an injured cop down the hall, the only person to not only witness his phantom form, but to be able to remember it upon waking.  And while their daring adventures and close calls run the story, far more memorable is the visual flair in character design and settings, along with a bold Fauvist color scheme (an urban one) that vivifies every frame.  At the end, we almost get a sacrifice to save the day, but someone chickened out.  The producers?  The distributors?  Felicioli & Gagnol?  A pity.  A willingness to go for the fences and not worry about possible sequels might have made this one work on another level.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  CAT on the whole more successful; this one more intriguing.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/01/une-vie-du-chat-cat-in-paris-2010.html  OR:  Compare the style with some of the BATMAN animated direct-to-video features from the same period.

SEX (2024)

Less deep-dish thought-provoking than advertized; more fun than expected.  This piece of Dag Johan Haugerudor’s very Norwegian trilogy on what Cole Porter called ‘the urge to merge with the splurge’ (DREAMS; LOVE the other two, not seen here) is mostly a series of after-the-fact one-on-one conversations between two co-workers (chimney-sweeps of all things; and with the lucky handshake to prove it) or separately, them and their wives.  At first, you think you’re eavesdropping on a psychiatrist session as a patient describes a dream both awesome and unsettling.  He’s at some social event where he finds himself in the unlikely position of being objectified as a woman (in spite of still being 100% male) by none other than David Bowie.  And he’s not sure how he feels about it.  (He’s a bit like the draft-dodger in HAIR who, when asked if he’s homosexual, says: I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t kick Mick Jagger out of my bed.)  Turns out, we’re not at a psychiatrist’s office, but in a lounge having coffee & confessing to a fellow sweep on the crew.  The co-worker's not sure what to make of this either, especially after his recent experience of having a male client come on to him.  An invitation he took up . . . and rather liked.  Repressed gay?  Bisexual?  Or just a case of  'when opportunity knocks?'  Doesn’t much faze his boss, and didn’t much faze his wife when he told her.  Not at first, but now, after a chance to think, it all looks different.  And while his boss is mostly concerned about his having sex with a client (that’s not good), the wife now focused on his infidelity; not too thrilled with the gay side either.  Crises all ‘round.  The film a talk-fest for sure, but neatly paced, naturally acted and rich in reaction.  Especially from a couple of medical pros there to treat one bruised vocal cord and one bruised hand.  The latter giving the film a real comic jolt between acts two & three.  She’s more concerned with menopause & tattoos than with sexual ambivalence.  As mentioned, this one very Norwegian!  A country where people's shame more likely to center on being a church-going/choir singing Christian.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Does Haugerud tip his hand by making one of the four leads less fit than the other three?  The one who’d no longer fit into their high school uniform?  A subtle, but noticeable dig.

THE REFLECTIVE SKIN (1990)

Now 60, with but three features to his credit (none in the last 15 years), Philip Ridley seems to have stepped back from film.  (Willingly?; he’s also a playwright & painter.)  Judging by his debut as writer/director, he’s something of a missing link between David Lynch & Tim Burton, so the loss considerable.  This one Rural Gothic Horror of high order, visionary & assured from start to finish.  Quite a startling start at that, as three rural pals, ten-ish, barefoot boy with cheek of tan types, catch an enormous frog to use for a cruelly disgusting trick on a sinister local spinster.  Seth (Jeremy Cooper, excellent), the boy who lives closest, just behind the gas station pumps, forced by Mom to apologize is unexpectedly brought into the crazed lady’s confidence, told she’s really a 200-yr-old vampire (Lindsay Duncan).  Meanwhile, back on the farm, his father suffers a meltdown (literally) not long before over-stressed Mom zones out, fixating on nothing but the return of prodigal military son Viggo Mortensen.  There’s a fever in the air, one caught by Mortensen who’s soon bedding the mysterious neighbor, looking older and noticeably thinner while she becomes robust and youthful.  Shot in a sun-dappled honeyed glow by Nick Bicât fit for a countryside idyll, the progressive, prevailing darkness a constant outrage to narrative justice.  The film both repels and reels you in.  One of a kind stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  For a more grounded take on a similarly unnerving farmland freak-out, THE OTHER/’72.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/02/other-1972.html

ADOLESCENCE (2025)

Well-received four-parter from writer/actor Stephen Graham (he plays the father of a teen murderer) and director Jack Thorne is good, but not perhaps the groundbreaker claimed.  Basically a police procedural that emphasizes family reaction and the insensitizing effect on teens of peer-pressure amp’d by internet social media messaging .  Captured in four episodes of one-shot each, a technical challenge only vaguely taken in by audiences.  (Too busy fighting off motion sickness to notice?)  But catnip for actors (thrilled at sustaining a role) and for directors who feast on solving technical challenges.  Here, it’s moderately bothersome in the first two episodes, effectively hidden by Thorne thru the use of what might be called ‘practical’ (as opposed to optical or digital) wipes, having moving objects or groups of people physically walk-the-wipe across the frame to change focus or narrative direction as needed.  Only the last two episodes rise to the occasion and possibilities found in the restrictions of the technique.  (Like writing a poem in a tricky meter or music in some impossible key.)  The third, largely a two-hander for the suspect and his court-appointed psychologist playing a lot like 1950s ‘Golden Age’ live tv.  Even better, a final episode that brings us along with the family on a long drive to a prison visit.  (Will Dad allow a pit stop if we need to pee, but he doesn’t?)  The sense of being stuck with them for this length of time, the most daring, successful and original thing in the series.  (NOTE: Tough topic to give a Family Friendly label.  But that's exactly who the film was made for; perhaps 12 and up.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The modern taste for single-shot films kickstarted by Aleksandr Sokurov when he took viewers thru the Hermitage Museum in RUSSIAN ARK/’02.  Since then, advances in digital filming have made the feat easier to pull off.  Too much so?

LIEUTENANT KIJE / PORUCHIK KIZHE (aka THE CZAR WANTS TO SLEEP) (1934)

While the last few decades have seen a revolution in the number of live symphonic Concert Hall performances of film music, the scores are still ghettoized, relegated to ‘Pops’ programs or Special All-Film Nights; not pure enough for Subscription Series.  While Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto is now regularly played alongside Brahms, a suite from THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD wouldn't be.  A rare exception?  The suite Sergei Prokofiev made from his film music to LT. KIJE in 1934.  (Prokofiev struck again with the cantata  fashioned from his ALEXANDER NEVSKY/’38 score.)  Yet, while this suite (which contains nearly all the music from the film) was instantly popular (still is), the film remains unknown.  Deservedly?  Well . . . pretty much yes.  But still fascinating to see where the cues come from even when early Soviet film technology leaves a lot to be taken on faith visually and sonically.  In a set-up loaded with comic potential the eponymous Lt. turns out to be no more than a clerical error made during the reign of Czar Paul I.  Born by a slip of the pen 1800; dying by pen the same year.  All because no one dares to admit the Czar could be in error.  Anyway, this phantom soldier is useful as a scapegoat.  A very Russian bureaucratic comedy not too far from Gogol’s THE INSPECTOR GENERAL and all too close to THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES.  The comic acting broad even for The Kremlin; very nudge-nudge/wink-wink under debut megger Aleksandr Faintsimmer.  (No Stanislavski’s Moscow Art Players here.)  But it does tell you something about Prokofiev and why he was so excited to visit the Disney studio years before they got around to making their PETER AND THE WOLF short.

LINKS:  Check it out for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCL_wTViYF0    (Don’t forget to turn the subtitles on.)  

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Really a HEAR THIS with the score far more alive on its own than in the film in this never bettered 1957 recording from Fritz Reiner & the CSO.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK9mOTugCxk

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The KIJE score shows up all over the place in the movies.  Probably best used in Woody Allen’s earliest mature work, LOVE AND DEATH/’75.

THE RISING HAWK (2018)

Looking for a historical actioner?  A blood & guts period piece set a few millennium back?  Hordes of faceless combatants set for slaughter while titled nobles feed family grudges via love, war & rights of succession?  Go East, young man; Go East, and grow up with the Asian film market.  Hong Kong, Korea & Japan with a dozen for each made in the West.  (And of those, half artsy fare like Robert Eggers’ THE NORTHMAN/’22.)  So how does HAWK fit in?  Western financed, though writer/director John Wynn of Asian descent, and a story all over the place.  Tired of village-destroying raids, clans of 13th Century Euro-Caucasian settlers move to the Carpathian Mountains to resettle and form new units and one big protection racket to share in.  If they could only get along among themselves!  What could truly pull them together?  A marriage across family lines?  An attack from without.  You’re both right!  Mongols sent on orders from Genghis Khan are threatening, and a son from one of the clans (one of two beefy, boychik brothers) has fallen in love with the daughter of the one Carpathian baron playing both sides of the East/West fence.  (No actual fences, instead, river borders which turns out to be a major plot device.)  Hey, this is sounding pretty good!  Don’t be fooled.  Between the Pan Pipes on the soundtrack; the tasteful Earth-toned color scheme; director Wynn’s lack of close-action chops; the indifferently handled digital effects, a lack of acting skills (rising in reverse proportion to looks); and a last act that’s basically The 300 Spartans for Dummies; this tight-budget epic likely to send you back to the East.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  John Woo put out one of the more entertaining examples of the form in the two-parter RED CLIFF/’08 - ‘09)    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/chi-bi-red-cliff-2008.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/chi-bi-xia-jue-zhan-tian-xia-red-cliff.html

ASH IS PUREST WHITE / JIANG HU ER NÜ (2018)

The poetic sounding title of writer/director Jia Zhang-ke’s hard-edged film refers to the purity of ash residue produced by the intense heat of a volcano.  An apt  description for Zhang-ke at his best, in films so varied he might be a different director on each title.  This one starts at the Mah Jongg clubhouse of a fading town’s local mob hangout, a den of racketeers run by Bin (Fan Liao) and partner in crime Qiao (Tao Zhao), his tough, honest Gal Friday/girlfriend.  But the times they are a’changing.  A new, young gang of thugs is moving in, murdering Bin’s boss and then going after him and Qiao.  Barely surviving an attack, they land in jail; Bin for a year/Qian serving five as she used a gun in defense.  When the story picks up again, they are changed people.  Only, Bin knows it; Qian doesn’t.  All this in the first act.  The rest of the film sees them trying to keep apart and get back together, Zhang-ke orchestrating the moves and frustration with a precision that runs the gamut thru suspense, ironic comedy, revenge, scams, hope and occasional humiliation.  Mostly centered on Qiao (actress Zhao masterful in all moods) while Bin/Liao mostly out of the picture in this act.  The last act changes moods again, as a possible new start/new romance is replaced by something on the order of you can’t go home again no matter how close you think you’ve come.  Easy to imagine this playing in a totally different key as an OTT Hong Kong actioner, but this isn’t that movie.  Splendid, and leaning ever more realistic as the end game comes into view.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The rising waters behind Three Gorges Dam, which Zhang-ke used to motivate the plot of STILL LIFE/’06, also used in this film.  The earlier film, more an art house pic, a good example of Zhang-ke’s chamaeleon like nature as director.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2025/05/still-life-san-xia-hao-ren-2006.html

PT 109 (1963)

There are enough films on the formative events in the lives of future U.S. Presidents to constitute a niche bio-pic genre.  (Lincoln & FDR leading the lists.)  The few where POTUS was still around to buy a ticket constitute a sub-niche.  But only one came out (June 1963) with its subject still in office: this one.  Oddly, Jack Warner assigned Bryan Foy, his old ‘King of the B’s’ to produce.  (He was fresh off HOUSE OF WOMEN/’62, a Females in Prison programmer, giving Foy the biggest budget (4 mill.) he’d ever had.  Script and directing troubles galore (Raoul Walsh considered; Lewis Milestone canned after objecting to the early comic shtick (how right he was!); finally going with tv director Leslie H. Martinson.  Fortunately, Foy had two things going for him: a largely true Greatest Generation WWII story of Kennedy heroics after his little PT boat is plowed by a bigger Japanese ship at night, and his calm stubborn acts to get survivors to safety; and the film’s real ace in the whole, cinematographer Robert Surtees who puts out one stunning location shot after another (Florida Keys subbing for the Solomon Islands), along with top notch second-unit action & ordinance stuff.  (Other than that unconvincing island interior soundstage set.)  So, blame Foy for that formulaic first half (fixing up the ship with colorful characters) and for the bombastic/patriotic score, but credit Cliff Robertson for not forcing a Kennedy accent (Vaughn Meader’s comedy album, ‘The First Family’ likely held him back), holding the impression down to a Kennedyesque ‘toothiness.’  And perhaps director Martinson for casting a host of fresh tv faces (like Robert Culp), fortunately, none of them from that new tv hit, McHale’s Navy.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Obama and Trump were around to buy tickets.  Though just about no one bought tickets to the Trump pic.  PT 109 had a big fund-raising premiere in Boston/June 1963, and was ‘respectfully’ re-released three months after the November assassination.  See poster below.

THUNDER IN THE CITY (1937)

In ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood, filming in England usually meant demotion: punishment of some sort; nothing ready to go at your studio; or your box-office was slipping.  Not that the films were all bad.  Sylvia Sidney now largely remembered for the flop she made with Alfred Hitchcock (SABOTAGE/’36) after her studio protector was fired.  It makes this decent little comedy with Edward G. Robinson something of a puzzle.  Much in demand at the time (at Warners and away from his home studio), perhaps he was being packaged as a ‘ringer’ to get Stateside distribution.  Or just in Europe on an art collecting spree.*  Eddie G.’s an unpolished American publicity exec, kicked out of his job in spite of success by a boss who cares for dignity over ballyhoo.  Off to England to grab a little class, he’s soon back to his old ways, hobnobbing with high & low (distantly related/cash poor toffs and street buskers) while pumping up the stock on a new, mystery commodity.  Old tired Europe vs Ugly American?  Not really; with a script that manages to stop well short of the dumb & the obvious. Robinson dresses properly and knows which fork to use.  While well known Hollywood British Colony types (Nigel Bruce & Constance Collier) help him along.  He's also got a pair of below-the-line Stateside pros for protection (Robert Sherwood on script, Alfred Gilks lensing), so the low production values and effects don’t hurt much.  Lili Deste makes for unusual romantic interest and Ralph Richardson is a solid rival in romance & business.  A bit more style from director Marion Gering might really have put this over.  Give it a Gentlemen’s C for not pushing too hard.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Robinson an art collection decades ahead of conservative Hollywood tastes.    https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-hollywood-gangster-one-frida-kahlos-first-collectors   ALSO: Many miserable Public Domain prints online.  The full British cut of 1'28" in horrid shape, but what appears to be the Stateside release of 1'18' is easy to find in perfectly watchable prints if you look around.

BUCHA (2023)

Effective/‘of the moment,’ this Ukrainian war film, from first-time director Stanislav Tiunov, flips the script of those WWII stories where a Good Samaritan, at first reluctantly, works a ruse to rescue hundreds of predominately Jewish hostages from virtual Nazi imprisonment on the other side of some border.  Here, our reluctant hero is a Lithuanian Jew, just out of Russia-Friendly Kazakhstan, but still carrying his Kazakhstan passport, a document that lets him pass thru new Russian checkpoints in a war just begun.  A sort of get-out-of-jail-free card that gives Kostia (Cezary Lukaszewicz) access to trapped families needing a way out of Bucha.  With goods for bribes planted in the car trunk instead of ammo or hidden fugitives, he has tins of beef & Coca-Cola to grease the wheels to freedom.  Not that Kostia is thrilled being in harm’s way, but he owes it to the organization that helped him get out.  So, willing to run the gauntlet for a family of five; a girl needing medical attention; a nationally famous composer.  But a personal close call after being eyewitness to what’s going on leads to his own Damascus Moment, turning him into a kind of Freedom Fighter, even if only a Freedom Fighter with a Kazakhstan passport and a Tesla.  These scenes interspersed with the expected ‘horrors of war’ from various Russian units (they seem divided by ethnicity) each vying for top honors in murder and atrocities.  (Spoiler: Chechens win.)  Unfortunately, it’s at this moment when the film loses specificity and starts to play like a late-‘50s/early-‘60s film about WWII's 'Greatest Generation.'*  Still, often moving and suspenseful.  Plus a real find in a great kid who plays Kostia’s assistant, Dima (Nikon Fedotov), indeed Tiunov handles all the actors with a natural touch.  Then at the end, titles letting us know the fate of many of the actual people whose stories we’ve been following.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Not a match in most ways, but the WWII movie this brought to mind is THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR/'62.  In its different way, quite an excellent film,   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/counterfeit-traitor-1962.html

SAINT OMER (2022)

A strong, but difficult, debut from French/Senegalese writer/director Alice Diop, segueing from documentary to features in a fact-inspired tale of infanticide.  As I said, difficult; and less rare in France than you’d imagine.  Mostly set in the courtroom after a prologue that mercifully ellipses from the actual crime, a series of talking heads in various single or multiple compositions are led, in French legal fashion, by the female judge, as White as the people largely surrounding our two Black leads.  The murderer: a gentle looking, softly handsome young Senegalese/French woman, a former student of law & philosophy who’s admitted to the crime, but doesn’t know why it happened.  Her grasp of details malleable, changing between the start and the end of many responses.  Lies?  Doubt?  Unknowability?  The second lead a novelist, sitting thru the trial for research, elegant as a fashion model, crucially not Senegalese/French but French/Senegalese, and far more comfortable with the culture.  Newly pregnant, and having empathy attacks from the witness’s testimony.  What Diop does best comes thru inside that courtroom, in composition, relative angles and particularly in her use of the somber oaky colors that make the courtroom a sort of natural canvas for placing figures ‘just so.’  The writer’s darker-toned skin standing out against the court backdrop; the accused’s skin tone nearly the same shade as the walls, and dressed in clothes to match.  A woman who feels she has somehow disappeared seen disappearing into her settings.  Fascinating, if not without missteps.  Especially when Diop turns to MEDEA (via clips from the Pier Paolo Pasolini/Maria Callas film*), a story less relevant than Diop supposes; Medea utterly goal oriented.  Then, toward the end when out of the blue, Nina Simone comes on the soundtrack with Rodgers & Hart’s ‘Little Girl Blue.’  Nevertheless, impressive control on something as unique as it is tough-minded.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Pasolini’s MEDEA/’69, the only film from the controversy-seeking Italian to be better rather than worse than its reputation, presumably impressing Diop with its emphasis on Medea’s move from savage to civilized lands.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/medea-1969.html

INTRUDER IN THE DUST (1949)

Clarence Brown was the most naturally gifted of M-G-M’s top ‘house directors.’  (Robert Z. Leonard, Sidney Franklin, T.S. Van Dyke the others; contenders like Jack Conway a full tier lower.)  But how much is that saying at producer-oriented M-G-M, film factory of L.B. Mayer & Irving Thalberg?  In Brown’s case, more than he gets credit for.  A bit like Henry King over at 20th/Fox, his critical rep held down by dud prestige assignments he couldn’t refuse and wasn’t right for.*  But give Brown something in his element, like kids or Americana, and he was a director to reckon with.  This daring adaptation of a recent William Faulkner novel (script by Ben Maddow a year before he wrote THE ASPHALT JUNGLE with John Huston) is Brown’s last substantial work, and a great one.  Yards ahead of other racially progressive films starting to come out, and, unlike so many progressive films, not dating faster then last night's talk show.  Shot on location in Mississippi (what a difference that makes!), its racially motivated story of a stubborn, independent Black man charged with a White man’s murder in a town heaving with lynch-anticipation still powerful, and not afraid to be off-putting or amusing.  The scenes of the whole town buzzing with carnival-like excitement at the possibility for violence still astonishing.  As if the build-up to the desegregation riots of a decade later were being caught in advance.  Whatever did the hundreds of local Moms/Pops/Kids used as extras, think when they saw the pic?  Did it play at the town bijou?  As the man charged with murder, .Juano Hernandez isn’t anything like the noble, worthy victims usually put in these roles.  But then, much could be said for the whole cast, catching the sophisticated, complicated treatment you’d imagine from Faulkner.  Will Geer as a neighboring sheriff you expect the worst from, particularly fine here.  So too the few Hollywood supporting players (Elizabeth Patterson, Porter Hall) getting a rare chance to sink their teeth in something other than their default character personae.  Superbly caught locations & atmosphere in Robert Surtees’ lensing, just a speck of process work; hardly any score either.  The film ought to be better known and celebrated; perhaps the tough dialogue is too uncomfortably accurate to pass nowadays.  

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Brown’s rep still based on dull, slow moving early Garbo Talkies, so his best known titles are some of his worst.  Instead, try something as thrillingly rough as THE TRAIL OF ‘98/’28; as sexy as A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS/’28; as fully lived in as POSSESSED/’31 or as warmly humane & funny as AH, WILDERNESS/’35.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-trail-of-98-1928.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/03/possessed-1931.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/04/ah-wilderness-1935.html

DEUS E O DIABO NATERRA DO SOL / BLACK GOD, WHITE DEVIL (1964)

After starting in the late ‘50s/early ‘60s, French Novelle Vague soon spilled over European borders and jumped continents as youthful cineasts took it up as their own under various names.  In Brazil, dubbed Cinema Novo, it likely began with this ambitious film from 25-yr-old writer/director Glauber Rocha.  Crossing more disciplinary lines than a professor at an understaffed Mid-West Liberal Arts college, there’s populist impulse, Leftish agenda, folklorist embrace, religious fervour and Spaghetti Western nihilism roiling the texture and bubbling under the surface of this episodic tale of woe, an unpicturesque picaresque that roams Brazil’s scrubby/water-starved NorthEast plains from some timeless past. 1830s? 1930?  It starts splendidly as a desperate peasant refuses to let a cattle & land grande screw him out of his pay and take a beating, instead pulling out a blade, killing the capitalist and taking to the road for the rest of the film; on the lam in various allegorical hats of trade, revolution, religious penitent, commune seeker, all coming to grief with wife in tow.  Roche alternating between grubby, magic, and Neo-Realism, all failing in one way or another.  The themes absolute catnip for Academic types looking for topics to write on, but cumulatively indigestible as film fare in spite of its influence and cultural importance.  Those not enrolled in the class may not see the need to finish the homework assignment.

TROIS SOUVENIRS DE MA JEUNESSE / MY GOLDEN DAYS (2015)

Faux Truffaut from Arnaud Desplechin, a real turkey from this elsewise talented French writer/director.  With an autobiographical feel to it, Desplechin charts the sentimental education of presumed alter-ego Paul Dédalus in the ‘70s and ‘80s; recalled in his fifties by Mathieu Amalric as a middle-aged Paul, but mostly played by Quentin Dolmaire as Paul in his teens and early twenties.  At first,  Desplechin seems content to tick off how some of the major political issues of the day affected Paul & friends (a suspenseful involvement with the Jewish-Russian ‘Refuseniks;’ live tv coverage as the Berlin Wall comes down), but this is just a feint for the real subject of interest, Paul’s on-and-off relationship with ‘the eternal female,’ mostly during his college days over in Paris while his besties & lovers remain stuck in a small town hours away.  The messed up, but alluring girl in question is Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), a wouldn’t-say-yes/wouldn’t-say-no mental case meant to trigger the film’s central JULES ET JIM/’62 situation(s) since whenever Paul has an extended stay for school in Paris, one of Paul’s pals takes up with Esther.  Instead of JULES ET JIM, it’s PAUL ET IVAN; PAUL ET BOB; PAUL ET KOVALKI.  Perhaps if we could see on screen what we are told  we are seeing in Esther (lackluster Lou Roy-Lecollinet with but two features after this), this wouldn’t play like THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES.  Jeanne Moreau, your legacy is secure.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Other than a re-watch of JULES ET JIM (real François Truffaut, too much like great music for a film journal to successfully write about), A CHRISTMAS TALE/’08 is a great place to repair your relationship with Desplechin.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/04/un-conte-de-noel-christmas-tale-2008.html

DON Q SON OF ZORRO (1925)

Wisely, Douglas Fairbanks dialed back on production values after the gargantuan levels seen in THE THIEF OF BAGDAD/’24.  Now, merely deluxe.  Unwisely, he twisted an unrelated Spanish romancer into a sequel of sorts to his own THE MARK OF ZORRO/’20.  And while it’s charming, exciting, fun (with loads of the signature Fairbanks bounce), it also pegged Doug as something of nostalgia act to sophisticated Roaring ‘Twenties Youth; a slide from avant to devant garde that only escalated over his last three (superb) silent features.  Fairbanks, lithe as ever at 42 (check out the torso in those tight, high-waisted Spanish pants!), gets away playing twenty-something heir to Zorro’s California estate.  (Fairbanks as son and repeating as Papa Zorro.)  In Spain as a sort of family tradition finishing school, he falls for 19-yr-old Mary Astor, aristo daughter of Papa Zorro’s old BFF, but finds romance blocked by rival Donald Crisp (he also directs*), and by lower-class striver Jean Hersholt, blackmailing his way up in politics.  A foreign diplomat’s murder, a frame-up for the killing, a faked suicide leap, an innocent man returned to prove he’s not guilty, Papa traveling back to Spain from Cali to fight alongside his son.  Not much is missing here, but not much particularly memorable, either.  And now, it’s a little too smooth, with all the bumps ironed out of every story beat.  The film’s running gag (and gimmick) has Doug, that wild American kid, using a long bull whip as his weapon of choice.  Entertaining as far as it goes, but better/fresher things await just ahead.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Standard Fairbanks recommendation is THE THIEF OF BAGDAD/’24, though our top two picks remain WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY/’19 (Victor Fleming’s superb/very Buster Keatonesque directing debut); and THE IRON MASK/’29, Doug’s farewell to silent cinema, both touching & exhilarating.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/thief-of-bagdad-1924.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Best known as a great supporting actor, right up thru the ‘60s (Oscar’d for HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY/’41), Donald Crisp was a busy silent film director with over 70 credits, including Buster Keaton’s THE NAVIGATOR/’24.  Presumably, with more input on this one.  Keaton said he mostly hung out with the writers in the gag room.