LA FRENCH / THE CONNECTION (2014)

A fact-touched, but largely fictional, drug-trafficking thriller out of Marseilles (1975 - 1981), structurally neat as a pin, and unusually easy to follow.  (And note how its French & International titles are combined on our poster to reflect a certain 1971 movie.*  Writer/director Cédric Jimenez earning rather than coasting on the reference.)  A mano-a-mano duel between the lawman and the dealer, with Jean Dujardin’s magistrate, just promoted from juvie drug crime to the big leagues, playing new sheriff in town to go after longtime drug boss Gilles Lellouche*, a man whose tentacles reach all; from murdering henchmen to judicial bench men and disco club investors,  desk-jockey police dicks and political appointees.  What he didn’t figure on was the obsessive/addictive personality and workaround legal tactics of Dujardin’s Judge, a man who puts everything aside (even family and his own survival) to bring down decades of backroom deals and delivery infrastructure.  Jimnez is technically fully up to date in action-driven movement and editing, but he gets real period texture by shooting 35mm in a style that (presumably with help from cinematographer Laurent Tangy) mimics the color, tone and film stock of the late ‘70s.  (Look for the old animated Gaumont logo, too.  As much a throwback as the men's sideburns.)  Not a great film or even a great story, but solid, pleasurable work.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Naturellement, FRENCH CONNECTION/’71.  (In France, they dropped the article.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/08/french-connection-1971.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Jimnez gives the leads a Michael Mann stare-off meeting midway along.  A misstep, though you can see why he felt he had to.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (2024)

Excluding the rare exception where actor-identification in a role supercedes the person they play (think Gary Cooper/Lou Gehrig), Hollywood bio-pics come in two often self-defeating flavors: WAXWORKS and LITE.  Neither necessarily pejorative; each can be screen worthy, both in use recently.  (Churchill bios always leaning WAXWORKS; Musicians tilting LITE.)  More noticeable (and positive) is a general move away from cradle-to-grave in favor of finding the crucial act to tell the tale in a single stroke.  So, no surprise to see co-writer/director James Mangold going Single Arc-Lite on Bob Dylan: fresh acoustic folksinger to electric literary-rocker.  Alas, no superceding identification in sight, it’s all Bob Dylan Lite (Timothée Chalamet - with a high polish shine); Pete Seeger Lite (Edward Norton - very good); Joan Baez Lite (Monica Barbaro - less good); and so on.  But what ultimately kills the film is what’s not in here: Mangold missing any sense of danger or revolution; something all these culturally revolutionary BabyBoomers had in spades.  Pollack, Mailer, James Dean, Johnny Cash; you never knew what you’d get when they showed up . . IF they showed up.  Here, we know exactly what’s coming and it boils down to the surrogate Father/Son dynamic between Seeger & Bob.  (That and a bit of bed-hopping from Dylan.)  Adolescent rebellion a decade late (arrested development from Bob Dylan?), leaving surrogate Dad and his politically activated acoustic folk behind to play his own electronic-flavored rock/R&B) and bring out a voice of his own.  Mangold’s reductive explanation only defangs and domesticates a difficult/complex personality.  The times they are a’changing, but bio-pic bromides are forever.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Another way to do these things is to have the celebrity figure cast a shadow from just out of frame, as the Coen Bros. have Dylan do in the unsatisfying INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS/’13.

THE WOODEN HORSE (1950)

Fact-based, yet by-the-numbers WWII P.O.W. breakout story (THE SO-SO ESCAPE?), decent rather than pulse-pounding, ‘veddy-veddy’ stiff upper lip British and intended that way.*  The gimmick’s in the title, a bespoke wooden ‘vaulting’ horse, built in the Stalag by officer-prisoners as a Trojan Horse able to hold three men inside.  It's an A-frame structure hiding a tunnel digger who secretly burrows while incarcerated officers camouflage verboten activity with jumps & flips over the ‘horse.’  Ease boredom!  Keep in shape!  Finish the hole!  All this still fresh in 1950, but for modern audiences the film only comes fully to life after three men (Leo Genn, Anthony Steel, David Tomlinson) clamber inside and are carried to a tunnel entrance hidden in plain sight.  Only then does director Jack Lee* get the engine to turn over as we stick to Genn & Steel and watch them finesse their way thru German occupied cities trying to find the resistance and a passage to Sweden.  Great locations and period detail backing the intriguingly uneven relationship growing between Genn’s helpless English-only superior officer and Steele’s indispensable multi-linguist.  The ending’s a bit abrupt, but better too little than too much.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For fuller realizations of U.K. precursors to THE GREAT ESCAPE/’63 try THE  COLDITZ STORY/’55 or THE PASSWORD IS COURAGE/’62.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-password-is-courage-1962.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Writer/producer Ian Dalrymple had a freakishly strong year in 1938 earning two Oscar® noms for co-adaptations of G.B. Shaw’s PYGMALION and A.J. Cronin’s THE CITADEL.  Then never nom’ed again.

WHEN STRANGERS MARRY / BETRAYED* (1944)

First give thanks for easy-to-find mint prints all over the internet on this tasty film noir from Poverty Row Monogram Pictures.  Decent film elements from this source not something you take for granted.  Second, a tip of the hat to penny-pinching producers The King Bros. who lined up four future Oscar® winners for a Monogram ‘second’ feature: scripter Philip Yordan; actors Kim Hunter & Dean Jagger; composer Dimitri Tiomkin.  Most importantly, the film’s a fun watch, even with schlock director William Castle already jonesing to be a new Alfred Hitchcock.  Not only the plot, a rip-off of SUSPICION/’41 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/06/suspicion-1941.html), Castle blatantly lifts THE 39 STEPS/’35 shot of a cleaning lady finding a body and her shriek cutting to a train whistle.  (Jacques Tourneur’s CAT PEOPLE/’42 also gets badly burgled.)  Bumpy going in general (as if shots were missing), but hard to take offense with all the suspenseful/creepy set pieces.  And dig that deep focus hotel room composition.  (Castle certainly does, even repeats it.)  Plus untrustworthy characters to fill the narrative as child-bride Hunter starts to believe Dean Jagger, the traveling salesman she barely knows and impulsively married, may be the Silk Stocking serial killer.  When Jagger doesn’t arrive at the Manhattan hotel he’s booked for them, Hunter’s lucky to bump into past beau Robert Mitchum who’s long held a crush.  Hoping to find him, they see Homicide Detective Neil Hamilton for help.  (Hamilton a deadpan hoot in one of Monogram’s minimally decorated offices.*).   Once Jagger does appear, the couple is soon on the lam, sticking out as the only Whites at a Harlem Jazz Joint before finding overnight refuge in an uptown rooming house.  Fate comes knocking anyway; followed by a neat double-helix twist you may not see coming.  Ending with yet another Hitchcock lift; only this one anticipates the tag in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN/’52.  Ten bucks says the idea wasn’t Castle’s, but in Yordan’s script.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Good lord, Mitchum was a lean fellow with an amazing V-shaped build at the time.  Check out the broad shoulders/skinny waist in that big double-breasted suit!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Film re-released in ‘49 as BETRAYED with Mitchum jumping from third to first billed.  ALSO:  *Hamilton plays nearly the same role nearly the same way 20 years on in TV's BATMAN.

CANOA: A SHAMEFUL MEMORY (1975)

Working off a straightforward/fact-based script by Tomás Pérez Turrent on how small-town mass hysteria led to a mistaken-identity mob-lynching (the corrupt local priest falsely tying the victims to the 1968 international student uprisings), Mexican director Felipe Cazals used linear deconstruction and Brechtian distancing devices to create this classic of political engagement and generational cinematic change.  The story simple enough for a fable, a Grimm fable, as a happy-go-lucky group of 20-somethings, low-wage University workers, head off for an overnight hike on a nearby mountain.  But bad weather leaves them seeking shelter in an unfriendly rural town.  And while they find welcome at a farm building for the night, word has already spread (even on the town loud speaker system) that these kids are front men for a Communist invasion of rioting students out to destroy the church and local monuments.  Hasn’t their priest been warning of this for months?  The rest plays out like a lethal game of rumor, lies multiplying into violent attacks on the outsiders, though the first victim is a long distrusted local.  And neither the law nor a Hollywood-style voice of reason to stem the vicious tide of hate.  Cazals over-eggs the first half of the film with too much endearing larky behavior by the university crew, but there’s no denying the power of the inevitable atrocities of the something wicked this way comes second half.  Or the lack of justice after the fact.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Stateside mob violence of a different kind, but with a similar feel comes over strongly in Joseph Losey’s THE LAWLESS/’50.  OR:  *Take director Cazals’ advice, as seen in an Extra on the Criterion edition where, in conversation with fellow Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu (BTW  Guillermo del Toro introduces the film), Cazals says the only film influence on this was Juan Bustillo Oro & Fernando de Fuentes’ EL COMPADRE MENDOZA.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/10/el-compadre-mendoza-1934.html

THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES (2018)

The work of film essayist Mark Cousins can be a bit precious and navel-gazing.  (Fine if the navel in question weren’t his but the subject’s!)  But in this fresh take on Orson Welles’ life & legacy, the style suits Cousins and subject equally well.  Probably the best film on Welles.  (Or is till Cousins misguidedly continues into post-mortem supposition.)  Aided by Welles' lifelong habit of sketching everything he was thinking about, Cousins organizes a peripatetic life with drawings casual and frame-worthy; by-passing protective moats to enter the Wellesian fortress.  Focusing more on the work than the life, this telling is immediately enveloping even for what’s not in here.  Not a word on weight.  Nothing on Hollywood disappointments.  Passing over the WAR OF THE WORLDS scandal.  Indeed, not quite enough on mundane commercial success as actor (largely for self-financing projects) or showing how Welles could coopt the system when it fit his purpose.  Instead, his astounding range of media reinvention (radio, film, theater), and nods at some bravely controversial political stands, particularly on race issues far ahead of the curve.  Much of this told thru a previously overlooked treasure of archival holdings of those quick-stroke drawings.  The University of Michigan archives seems an especially rich repository.*  Revelatory stuff.

DOUBLE-BILL:  The film points out a couple of attempts at dramatizing events: Richard Linklater’s ME AND ORSON WELLES/’08 surprisingly worthy; Tim Robbins’ CRADLE WILL ROCK/’99 weirdly mean-spirited.  Or look for most of his own work covered within.  Just type the title wanted into our SEARCH Box located on the Main Site (left side/top of the page).

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Has an exhibition of drawings using works spread across various institutions been attempted?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Cousins errs in showing clips from TOUCH OF EVIL/’58 in Academy Ratio (1.33:1).  The full frame negative was meant to be cropped down to 1.85:1, common practice at the time in many non-anamorphic films.  Universal Pictures was apt to send out uncropped full-frame prints where, if shown without the correct aperture plate, they'd reveal all sorts of studio-set artifice (lights, girders, wiring) hanging above the intended image.

THE TRIBE / PLEMYA (2014)

The sole feature from Ukrainian filmmaker Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi is distressing, but worth it.  (Surrounding this, he’s made about a dozen short subjects.)  A real misérable story, it follows (and ‘follows’ is the word for his tagalong/long-take film technique) a just-arrived deaf teenage student at his new boarding school.  Co-ed, though more boys than girls, the all-deaf institution a horror house for ‘parking’ unwanted kids in a kind of Survivor Academy of little learning and scams on & off campus, organized thru a pecking order of seniority rule.  Daringly, Slaboshpytskyi leaves the (Ukrainian?) sign language entirely untranslated (no subtitles/no voice-over, just natural sound) as 16-yr-old Sergei is greeted with a series of rough hazing assaults to put him in his place before he’s even found a dorm spot.  Later, he’ll be assigned various low-level jobs to make a few bucks selling crap on trains or pimping girl students at a truck stop.  Cash split between him, the girls and the older boys.  Sergei will wind up paying for his own session, losing his virginity and his heart.  He’s already losing any sense of humanity.  (Sex, violence and an edit-free bathroom abortion all Hard-R level.)  Everything fascinating and horrifying.  As for teaching , a smattering of subjects.  We see history and shop; if there’s any literature, the reading matter would likely be LORD OF THE FLIES.  Finally pushed too hard, the worm turns in Sergei with grisly finality.  No gloss, no answers, certainly no happy ending.  Really, no ending at all.  Just departure.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: We’re a long way from ZÉRO DE CONDUITE/’33.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/05/complete-jean-vigo-1930-34.html

LA MUJER DE LA FILA / THE WOMAN IN THE LINE (2025)

Fact-inspired ‘Mother-Love’ story from Argentina, ‘fesses up’ to trimming the truth ‘for dramatic purposes’ in a title-card just before the End Credits.  How you feel about this subterfuge from writer/director Benjamín Ávila may make you second guess the entire film.  On its own terms, it’s an involving and emotional journey thru the police procedures, courts and prisons of 2004 Argentina under a Perónist government.  You know what’s coming: miscarriage of justice ripping apart a happy home (working single-mom/three kids) when a SWAT Team invades to arrest eldest son Federico Heinrich (excellent) without warrant or charges.  Held in a prison archipelago at 18, it takes weeks to find out what’s going on.  Sympathetic lawyer impotently suggesting patience while Mom (Natalia Oreiro) seems a bit naive about the lack of basic rights under this right-wing So. American legal system.  Eventually, after many long waits in line, she establishes a routine for visits, bringing clothes, blankets, food, phone cards, etc.  Two new friends help her thru the confusion: another prisoner’s mom who’s been thru this drill for most of her life, and a long-term prisoner who shares her lawyer and is able to get word out to her when her son can’t.  But the film only jumps to a higher level not, as you might expect at an emotionally raw, self-support group for prisoner wives & mothers, but during Mom’s all-girl social get-together, friends who know more about her situation than they let on, but whose condescending ‘help’ gets under her skin.  It also hints at the fictional twist the film uses to add suspense, texture and a chance for Mom to play crime sleuth.  The revelation coming at a cost . . . to the film.

HIGH ROAD TO CHINA (1983)

How pissed off was Tom Selleck when ‘the powers that be’ at CBS and MAGNUM, P.I. contractually kept him from making RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in 1981?  First-choice for Indiana Jones, he was enough pissed off for someone (those same powers that be?) to palm off this copycat INDIANA JONES on him two years later.  A similar ‘30s period adventure in serial-style with Selleck as a trouble-prone free-lance pilot stuck with a rich, irritating heiress on a hunt to find missing Dad Wilford Brimley, missing somewhere in the Near-East, before thieving business partner Robert Morley inherits his fortune.  Directed with occasional flair by the unprolific Brian G. Hutton (only nine features in spite of two snappy Clint Eastwood WWII adventures - WHERE EAGLES DARE/’68; KELLY’S HEROES/’70 - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/where-eagles-dare-1970.html ; https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/kellys-heroes-1970.html).  Bouncing from one set piece to the next, all depends on chemistry between the bickering romantic leads, with Bess Armstrong’s strong-arm tactics simply too irritating for Selleck to respond to.  He sulks when he should smoulder.  Dwarfed by RAIDERS’ success and leaving unresolved plot lines at every turn of the tale, the film barely gets by; less debacle than forgettable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  An enormous star on tv, Selleck’s film career never got into high gear.  Ironically, ending with THE LOVE LETTER/’99 which was also a last feature (and something of a vanity project) for co-star Kate Capshaw.  Married to Steven Spielberg whom she met when playing the irritating gal pal role against Harrison Ford in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM/’84, a part that might well have been Selleck’s.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Listen out for John Barry’s fine score.  ONE - because it’s the best thing in here, and TWO - because figuring a grand tune was going to waste, Barry all but reused the Airborne Love Theme in here for OUT OF AFRICA two years later.