LA MUJER SIN CABEZA / THE HEADLESS WOMAN (2008)

Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel tries for the untouchable in this enigmatic film about a middle-class/middle-aged woman who hits something more than a bump while driving home. Pulling over, she’s too dazed & upset to check on things, so continues on her way. Later, after being checked for concussion, she seems not quite herself, barely responding to friends or relatives and sloughing off at work. But now she’s fixated on the event, convinced she’s killed someone, an idea buttressed when a lower-class teen is discovered drowned in the canal near the incident. Martel is careful to only indicate possibilities or likelihoods, keeping everything slightly off-kilter with purposefully misframed shots (usually a bit too close) designed to miss a key piece of info; or with fog-like inadequate lighting. At times, she’ll play out an entire scene from the reverse-angle without letting us see the opposing primary shot we expect to begin with. It’s often effective, she’s an obvious talent, but the story might work better as a half-hour anthology show episode, at feature length, it palls. Intriguing suppositions and mild reverberations of class entitlement carry us only so far. And did Martel really think it was a good idea to burden her film with a misleading horror pic title or to literally shoot the final scene Thru A Glass Darkly?

L'INNOCENTE / THE INNOCENT (1976)

Italian cultural/political icon Gabriele D’Annunzio is better remembered for his affairs with actresses Sarah Bernhardt & Eleanora Duse than for his own over-heated writing. And his two famous mistresses might well have faced off as the rivals in this novel that became Luchino Visconti’s last film. Apparently, D’Annunzio had ANNA KARENINA in mind writing the novel, but it’s Ibsen’s HEDDA GABLER that hovers over the story. Giancarlo Giannini plays a rich aristo who ignores his quiet wife for more passionate partners. But when a fashionable writer briefly takes up with the missus, the husband's interest returns with a vengeance; now complicated by her pregnancy. The delicate, beautifully bosomed Laura Antonelli plays the wren-like wife (the Duse role) while Jennifer O’Neill gets Bernhardt’s putative role as the sophisticated, free-loving mistress. But it's Giancarlo, in a gender reversal, whose part follows and/or reflects the lines of Ibsen’s anti-heroine: stuffy, mismatched marriage; literary lover; unwanted pregnancy; near-comic reversals in the third act; even a climactic suicide by hand gun. The parallels are striking. But could D’Annuzio have even been aware of a play just two years old? Already a famous playwright at the time, writing for Bernhardt (his affair with Duse came later), perhaps he read the Ibsen in translation. Or just read about it. We’ll never know. And we’ll never know if this film could have been improved since Visconti died before post-production. Yet the film is, if anything, more vital than his other late works, with the expected beautiful finish waiting to be broken. It’s a strange, uncomfortable film (and a strange, uncomfortable story), cruel & vicious, a tragic comedy of manners. And while Visconti no longer evinces his former control, it’s a film no one else could have made.

DOUBLE-BILL: Martin Scorsese’s THE AGE OF INNOCENCE/’93 shows how you can get all the exteriors right on these things, and still miss the target.

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999)

Istanbul must be a lucky location for James Bond pics. Back in ‘63, the series found its footing by the Bosphorus with FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE/’63. 17 entries later, #19 pays a return visit and comes up better than its rep would suggest. Sure, the action sequences are painfully bloated and lame double entendres clutter up the script, but the film actually has a story that builds, makes sense, and features some neat reversals.* We also get some sweet new characters including Robbie Coltrane’s fine Turkish Pooh-Bah, Denise Richards’ smart, sexy, funny sidekick, and Robert Carlyle’s pain-immune villain. Helmer Michael Apted, a talented non-specialist, is a dab hand at suspense and deals out the big action stuff to the second-unit so as to concentrate on getting a bit of detailed work from the Bond regulars. Plus, there’s a swell Tyrannosaurus Rex of a Tree-Trimmer that almost tops seeing James Bond out on a date with the long-suffering Miss Moneypenny! (It’s just a funeral, but still.) So, keep your expectations under control, let the pre-credit action sequence play out (almost two reels long!), and you’ll have a pretty decent time of it. And don’t forget to wave ta-ta to ‘Q’ (Desmond Llewelyn) who gets a swell send off.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY I: Maurice Binder is no longer around to make those goofy/sexy title sequences, but must we stoop to the ghastly mess we get from Daniel Kleinman? (See our poster to get the flavor of the thing.) And while the producers had dropped John Barry years back to pursue more modish music meisters, Michael Apted tried to amend this diss by assigning Barry to score his next film, ENIGMA/’01. The film, which grossed about one hundredth (!) of what this one made, turned out to be Barry’s swansong.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY II: *You don’t really notice it until the film is over, especially since the first half of the story is something of a feint, but with the substitution of oil for ingots, GOLDFINGER/’64 is the underlying template on this one.

EXODUS (1960)

Producer/director Otto Preminger didn’t exactly shy away from the clunky dialogue & even clunkier exposition of Leon Uris’s wildly successful novel on the founding of Israel, so you’re never quite sure if the film is working in spite of or because of its blunt design. Dalton Trumbo’s script uses those grinding gears as a dramatic response to the intractable political history of the region, and the simplifications are comforting, dragging you in as it manipulates. Playing the angry leader of the underground army, Paul Newman gives one of his best early perfs, maybe because Preminger doesn’t let him linger. The rest of the huge cast are also kept on an emotional leash (Lee J. Cobb only shouts once), though Eva Marie Saint looks faintly ill from the heat. The biggest surprise is that the story isn’t completely whitewashed, there’s plenty of good & bad deeds & will on all sides. But for film mavens, the real prize comes in seeing the strengths & weaknesses of Otto laid bare. Watch an early fight scene where Sal Mineo struggles with a few British soldiers. Mr. P. seems all thumbs. Yet later, when Mineo is tracked & trapped on his way to a terrorist cell, a score of complicated narrative details are covered with a few handsomely composed master shots. Preminger’s preference for long takes leaves some scenes begging for rhythm & air, but it sure helps this four-hour behemoth go down easy. (Though pulling this off on 4 mill also means you print lots of ‘mike’ shadows & camera gaffes.) But now that homes have larger WideScreen sets, Preminger’s technique finally ‘reads’ properly. Alas, the current DVD edition needs a major upgrade.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Two films from 1960 claim bragging rights for breaking the blacklist with an on-screen credit to screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Technically, SPARTACUS wins with its October release. But even with a December debut, Preminger scored points by announcing his intention to give credit first. One of the many Production Code taboos Otto delighted in breaking . . . and publicizing.

THE PAGEMASTER (1994)

The year before TOY STORY/’95 renounced animation’s mission reduction to babysitter and jump-started its return to form, the rear-guard guys tried to cash in on the fast-fleeting popularity of HOME ALONE star Macaulay Culkin with this dreadful piece of cartoony ‘family-friendly’ uplift.* (Too late!, Culkin retired for a decade after his wan ‘94 film crop.) In the live-action bookends, Culkin plays a nerdy scaredy-cat who stumbles into Christopher Lloyd’s magical library. (HARRY POTTER fans who feared what that film franchise might have looked like without real Brits can get an idea of the horror happily avoided by watching these two ham it up, with Culkin in Potterish eye-wear & Lloyd in wizard wardrobe.) Before our lad can find his way out, the library books come alive, the pic switches to animation, and we’re off on a big find-your-way-home adventure, with cameo appearances from varied childhood classics at every plot reversal. Lame doings at best. No one brings anything fresh to the party, but Whoppi Goldberg is a particular disgrace as ‘Fantasy,’ one of the three chattering tomes who serve as comic sidekicks. They help Culkin discover that both books & boys need spines . . . or need to find an EXIT . . . or need only pay half price at matinees. Well, the kid learns something! Which is more than you or your kids will get out of this.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL: *Family-Friendly, that’s code for any harmless film stuffed with phony wonderment that will bore parents & kids equally . . . and count on no one mentioning it to the other party. Martin Scorsese’s HUGO/’11 was a super classy/expensive/floppo example of the form.

GOODBYE AGAIN / AIMEZ-VOUS BRAHMS? (1961)

The rapid changes in social mores (ta-ta Hollywood Production Code) & filmmaking styles (hello New Wave) are nicely integrated in Anatole Litvak’s first Paris-based pic after three decades in Hollywood. Handsomely shot on location by Armand Thirard & superbly designed by the legendary Alexandre Trauner, it’s adapted from a very French Françoise Sagan novel. But, crucially, it’s ‘pitched’ just a few degrees too high, with too many actors ‘selling’ their characterizations rather than playing them. This is particularly the case for Anthony Perkins as a rich, spoiled young man who falls hard for an age-conscious Ingrid Bergman.* She’s susceptible though, right in the middle of a crisis with long-time steady Yves Montand who’s constantly playing around with cute young things. Step by step, Litvak keeps putting his foot wrong, but the film, perhaps because of our attachment to Bergman, who at 46 has acquired a tragic beauty that can take your breath away, grows on you, becoming emotionally engaging in spite of itself.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY I: French businessman/politician Dominque Strauss- Kahn could play the Montand character in a remake.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY II: *Perkins' perf may appear too jejune & ridiculous to swallow these days, but it must have played very well at the time since he won Best Actor @ Cannes. Some things go out of fashion . . . but not his smoking hot little Triumph sports car!

DOUBLE-BILL: Françoise Sagan’s beginner’s luck on her first novel BONJOUR TRISTESSE transferred to its 1958 film adaptation, a masterpiece from Otto Preminger.

SPARTACUS (1960)

The one-two punch of breaking the Commie-Conspiracy/Hollywood blacklist with a proper screen credit for scripter Dalton Trumbo, and the latter-day esteem of co-megger Stanley Kubrick has helped earn this pet Kirk Douglas project a rep as the ‘thinking man’s’ Sword & Sandal pic. It’s certainly an entertaining package, but, now more than ever, the sum looks to be less than the parts. The biggest problem is a simple one of balance, the Brits (that is the Brits playing the noble Romans), wipe the screen from the hapless Hollywood thesps. (Although John Gavin, of all people, is remarkably good as a young Julius Caesar.) So, while the film tries to inspire us with the doomed, but heroic revolt of Spartacus & his army of freed slaves, the first half is taken whole by Peter Ustinov, stupendously funny & eventually touching as the gladiatorial entrepreneur. Part Two is, if anything, even less of a contest, with Laurence Olivier working at full throttle as Crassus, First Consul of Rome. And it’s a sight to behold! (Especially with the noble Roman profile he worked up on the bridge of his nose.) And then there’s that sly pussy-cat, Charles Laughton, nabbing everything that’s left as savvy populist Senator Gracchus. These three also trampled all over Trumbo’s script. Olivier tweaked his part mercilessly (to fabulous result) while Ustinov got hired (off the books) to rewrite his scenes with Laughton. (His own stuff, too, to judge by the sound of things.) The flat, earnest voice of the real Trumbo can be heard everywhere else, as in the deadly love scenes between Kirk and his slavey mate, lovely Jean Simmons who seems to have dropped in from Mayfair, Britannia. And who was responsible for dressing those sound-stage exteriors where these two bill & coo? Or for the night-before-the-battle evening stroll as Spartacus makes like HENRY V with Trumbo & Kubrick lifting a ‘touch of Harry in the night’ from Olivier’s famous 1944 film. (Naughty, naughty, boys.) But then, most of the estates & locations positively reek of California. Even the impressively organized battles are over before they begin. Kubrick, who came in after Anthony Mann had shot enough for about four reels, always kept this one off his C.V. And it wasn’t out of a false sense of modesty.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Was Peter Ustinov the greatest of all movie raconteurs? Most DVD editions of SPARTACUS come with his pricelessly funny 1992 interview on the film, peppered with hilarious impersonations of Laughton (those lips!); Olivier (the hauteur!); dimwit American visitors; and even a touch of sentiment & pride. Endearing stuff.

CONTEST: Alex North’s score opens in brilliant fashion, using a dissonant mode that perfectly fits Saul Bass’s stunning credit sequence. And, of course, there’s the big love theme everyone knows. But in-between, a disheartening amount of repetitious ‘filler’ and whole reels where he barely seems to be taking in the action at all. Then again, if you’re really in need of a big slurpy Spartacus theme, you must try out Khachaturian’s Lenin Prize winning ballet version from ‘54. So slurpy was this Spartacus love theme, it got repurposed for another fatalistic period romance shot in the ‘60s. And with no Romans in sight. Name the film to win a DVD Write-Up of your choice. As always, no Googling, please.

THE GIRL FROM MISSOURI (1934)

Irresistible. Thanks to scripter Anita Loos, Jean Harlow owned the funny, sexy broad department @ M-G-M in the mid-‘30s. Loos defined the type for Harlow’s studio debut in RED-HEADED WOMAN/’32 and, of course, years before in her signature creation, GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES’ Lorelei Lee, the Little Girl from Little Rock. This film is, for all intents & purposes, The Further Adventures of Lorelei Lee, now a Little Girl from Missouri named Eadie. This platinum blonde even has a matching brunette sidekick in man-hungry Patsy Kelly. And, just like the novel, Harlow’s character is out to nab a millionaire while Kelly goes for the hunky doorman or the flatfoot. But the main story has Jean smoothly segueing from middle-aged Lewis Stone after he suicides to his business rival Lionel Barrymore. If only she wasn’t so attracted to that handsome wise-ass kid in the old man’s office. That’s Franchot Tone in a wonderfully likable perf. (Imagine Jon Hamm doing rom-com in the ‘30s.) And what luck!, he turns out to be Barrymore’s up-and-coming son. But marriage? Barrymore goes to extravagant ends to put the kibosh on things, but the plot has some sharp edges to go with the funny lines. Heck, even Jack Conway’s megging is up to speed on this zippy delight.

DOUBLE-BILL: Howard Hawks’ GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES/’53 made Loos’ creation far too coarse & obvious, with a leering, male adolescent tone that all but subverts Loos. But Jack Cole’s choreography & Travilla’s costumes undoubtedly stamped Marilyn Monroe’s form on Lorelei Lee . . . or was it vice versa?

DANGEROUS WHEN WET (1953)

Esther Williams only had a couple of pools left to conquer when she made this frustrating chamber-sized musical. Frustrating because it comes so close to being really good. Esther plays the eldest daughter of a health-crazed farming clan who get a shot at swimming the English Channel as a publicity stunt for Jack Carson’s ‘Power Beverage’ company. Along the way, everyone but Esther gets disqualified, Carson ‘settles’ for the charms of sexy French contestant Denise Darcel and Continental smoothie Fernando Lamas successfully puts the moves on Williams. Helmer Charles Walters keeps everyone from pushing too hard, with unusually relaxed playing from natural vaudevillians like Carson, William Demerest & dear Charlotte Greenwood who gets to shine with a moment of eccentric dancing. But not much else is quite as good as it should be. The Arthur Schwartz/Johnny Mercer score is painless, but hit-free; the scenes in France have no atmosphere; Lamas is a handsome devil, but emotionally onanistic; even the much excerpted Tom & Jerry meet Esther animated underwater dream adds little. With its spirit of good, breezy fun; a nail-biting race; and a fast & funny wrap-up; it’s a shame that just as Williams was finding a personality sans water-ballet spectaculars, her studio was getting ready to pull the plug.