Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread II

[kihei]

It looks like The Goalkeeper's Anxiety of the Penalty Kick is widely unavailable. So if no one objects I will change my next pick to Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice (1971).

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Mixing political satire and fart jokes, Seven Beauties is a comedy that goes to hell and back. The journey of Pasqualino, a pretty boy surrounded by ugliness in the form of seven sisters, perhaps representing the seven deadly sins in which he indulges before hitting more hard-core sins: raping and murdering his way through the dregs of WWII Italian society, deemed unfit for jail or asylum he winds up in the army, seemingly the only place left for him to go. But he deserts to find he was actually a long way from the bottom of the barrell. Landing in a Nazi prison camp, he encounters a beauty that puts his sisters to shame. His one-on-one with the camp commander is one of the greatest scenes in moviedom. They say the lowest rung of hell (was it the seventh?) is reserved for traitors --he checks that box too.

Movies about WWII started showing up almost as soon as the first shots were fired, in fact movies like The Great Dictator and The Mortal Storm were raising flags beforehand. But it was a while before the real horrors of Nazi atrocities were seen onscreen. Seven Beauties, made 30 years after the end of the war, seems like the work of a generation of war children still bearing the psychological scars and only beginning to come to terms with them.

 

[Jevo]

Seven Beauties (1975) dir. Lina Wertmüller

We first meet Pasqualino on the run from the Italian army during WWII, which he was formerly a part of. He doesn't get far before he is caught by the German army, and gets send to a prison camp. Being the coward that he is. Pasqualino is doing everything in his power to survive, even going far enough to seduce the obese female camp commander. His plan backfires when he is made Kapo of his barrack, and is tasked with selecting six men for the firing squad. Along the way we are served with a series of flashbacks, which explains how Pasqualino ended up in this predicament. Being somewhat engaged in mafia activities in Naples, who isn't? He is protective of his seven sisters, one of who becomes romantically involved with a pimp, who makes her become a prostitute. Pasqualino kills him, but gets caught by the police and sent to jail. He manages to convert this into military time eventually.

Pasqualino is a schmuck, but not a loveable one. He's inept at pretty much anything he does, and that often gets him into to trouble. He's willing to do anything to save his own skin. No matter how despicable. From stealing excessive amounts of food from an old lady. To signing the death sentence of his close friends. Guess that shows how close they really were in the end. Pasqualino has no one close than his own skin. Maybe his mother and sisters rank close. But despite being an unlikeable schmuck, Pasqualino is still fun to follow. Maybe because the movie has as much disregard for him, as he does for people who are not him. And he has some charm that pulls you in. And he uses that charm to keep himself afloat much longer than he should have been able to in the film. Him returning to Naples and finding that his mother and all his sisters have turned to prostitution to survive while he was away, when the very thing that got him into his big predicament in the first place, was him trying to keep one of his sisters from being a prostitute, was a very nice ending. All the things that he did, and the people that he sent to the firing squads. All for nothing. Seven Beauties is very fun, Pasqualino is very fun to laugh at. Giancarlo Giannini's performance is spot on. And Wertmüller's direction is great as well. There's a surprising amount of laughs in a movie that is often quite dark as well.

 

[Jevo]

Häxan (1922) dir. Benjamin Christensen

It's not often that I feel compelled to use the word "scholarly" about a documentary. But I want to call Häxan scholarly in its approach to its subject matter, and almost feels like a visual thesis on the subject. But maybe that's just me being buried deeply in my own masters thesis, that I've started seeing it everywhere. There's no doubt Christensen has been very thorough when preparing this movie, and he has obviously done a lot of research into witches and superstition in the European middle ages and the renaissance. He even goes as far as naming sources in the intertitles, which is something I don't think I've ever seen before, but gives a certain credence to what's being presented. Apparently the original playbill also contained a bibliography. He starts out the movie with a very theoretical chapter, where he goes through the basics, and presents the beliefs of witches, demons and other supernatural existences. He accompanies this with their depictions in art at the time. A short but interesting opening to the film, and gives the viewer the needed knowledge to comprehend the later parts of the movie. Christensen then moves into examples of these beliefs, with short narrative vignettes showing what was believed back then. Such as a woman being lured away from her husbands bed by the devil, or another woman buying a love potion from a witch. The kind of stories that would surface when someone was being accused of being a witch, or having made contact with the unholy in other ways. From there we go onto seeing how these accusations would develop in the real world. As an old woman is being accused of being a witch by the family of a dying man. She is captured by the clergy, imprisoned, tortured and interrogated until she confesses to being a witch, not unlike Joan of Arc. Unlike Joan of Arc however, she drags others down with her, such as one of the women in the family of the dying man. The last part of the movie, Christensen becomes more reflective, what caused these beliefs to flourish, and where did they go? Are they gone today, or have they developed into something else? He comes with a nice theory that a lot of would be witch cases, was now, or had been in recent times, been classified as hysteria. Another bogus diagnosis. So we shouldn't been too quick to believe ourselves better than those of the past, or we might quickly fall into similarly shaped traps.

Maybe it's because I don't know a whole lot about witches and stuff. But I felt enlightened by watching this movie. I felt like I learned something new, and that's always a great experience when watching a documentary. The knowledge presented didn't feel outdated, despite the movie nearing in on 100 years. Maybe because the study of medieval witchcraft beliefs isn't an area of study where there has been major landslides in that timespan. To me it still holds up as a documentary, and not just as a showcase of some of the best filmmaking technique of the 1920s. Because it is also that. It's look ominous, creepy, and it looks and feels like horror. It's on par with or even above the best horror movies coming out of Germany at the time, like Murnau's Nosferatu. It's apparently the most expensive Scandinavian silent movie ever made, and it shows. The sets made are amazing, the look lifelike when they need to be, and supernatural when the movie calls for that. Much of the time it doesn't feel like sets either, but real places.

There are many technically great films from the same time period as Häxan. I can appreciate them from a technical point of view. But there are many where I have a harder time with appreciating the actual content of the films. But for me Häxan is one of those that still holds up in both areas equally, and that made it really enjoyable to watch.

 

[Jevo]

My next pick will be original Scarface from 1932.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Good people of the forum, apologies for the break here. I am still alive. I’ve been in the midst of a home move which has consumed much of my time these last few weeks. I’ll still have to catch up on The Apartment at some point. I actually watched Seven Beauties and Haxan, just need to get my reviews up (hopefully this week).

Have any of you watched or tracked down Blue Collar? I’m having way more difficulty than I expected. If none of you have watched it yet, I was going to propose an audible. If you have, we’ll stick with it and I’ll figure something out.

 

[kihei]

I haven't been able to track it down either.

 

[Jevo]

I haven't watched it yet, but I think I have been able to locate a copy. It wouldn't be a problem for me if we switched though.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

The video store near my office carries Blue Collar. I've always been curious to see it and was looking forward to it but I guess it can wait.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

It's weird. My local library system is great (only been stumped twice -- both times Czech/Eastern Euro movies) and it shows a single copy of Blue Collar is out there, but it's been three weeks and still seems out. I think someone stole it. Streaming turned up nothing for me either.

So with your blessing (hopefully I didn't waste two hours for Ralph), I want to stick with Paul Schrader and switch to Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters which seems to be much easier to track down.

Thanks for your understanding.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

That works too!

 

[kihei]

Works for me, too. And K, if you have an interest in Schrader, you really should seek out First Reformed. It is among the best films of the new year.

 

[kihei]

Haxan (1922) Directed by Benjamin Christensen

Haxan is an informed guided tour of the history of witches and of superstitious belief in general. It often feels like a contemporary "essay" documentary, the kind favoured by Werner Herzog and Agnes Varda. In fact, I was surprised how little of the information given in the film was in need of an update. All in all the film takes a very responsible, carefully crafted approach, and the narrator's tone throughout is thoughtful, though perhaps a little too presumptive about his audience's lack of fears and prejudices.

But however carefully constructed the tour is, it is the images that will stay in my head much longer than I would like. This is a movie to give children nightmares, one long series of vignettes that personify in images the diabolical nature of witchcraft. Stevenson intends to debunk the notion of witchcraft and his history provides careful explanation and a historical overview of the phenomenon, including looking at then contemporary (1922) practice and how strong parallels remain. If there is a culprit exposed in the documentary, it is the Church. The monks and brothers that we see are uniformly fat and unattractive, and they will stop at nothing to bring pain and suffering to the parishioners supposedly in their care. Part of what makes the images so creepy is that we are always watching the strong prey on the weak. Another related point that Christensen implicitly suggests is worth thinking about, too: as long as religion is around, will we ever be free of superstition? The answer is pretty obvious.

Though almost certainly not intended as such by the director, Haxan is a very effective horror movie. It makes living in the Medieval world or even later seem like a terrifying existence, one where without warning or justification, people could be preyed upon for being different or because they were disliked. Images of the weapons of torture allow the audience to imagine the suffering these devices inflicted. While some of the devils are hoaky, Haxan comes closer to the spirit of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder's disturbing paintings than any other film of which I know.

subtitles

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Works for me, too. And K, if you have an interest in Schrader, you really should seek out First Reformed. It is among the best films of the new year.

Expect to see it this weekend. The reception to that was indeed my inspiration to pick a Paul Schrader movie. An interesting and, um let's say varied, filmography for sure.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

That works too!

Thanks for understanding Ralph. I'll probably still track down Blue Collar at some point (whenever my library gets its shit together). Just didn't want to hold up the group because I couldn't track down my actual pick.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Seven Beauties
Wertmueller (1975)
“Yes. I’m alive.”

Pasqualino “Seven Beauties” is on the run, deserting from the military amid the chaos of WWII. After he and a recently met compatriot come across some Nazis gunning down a host of innocent civilians, they find themselves captured. Before we get to their next destination, we jump back in time to see how our “hero” found himself in this predicament. He’s a suave, ass-grabbing cad. He cuts quite the charming, anti-hero figure. But he also gets felled with a single punch. The actual man is not the image he projects. Compelled to defend the honor of one of his sisters (the “Seven Beauties”), he winds up accidentally shooting and killing his target. He is sent to prison. He tricks his way into an asylum, rapes a woman and eventually escapes further punishment by volunteering for the Army. This is how he finds himself in war and, eventually, in a Concentration Camp. There, a sadistic warden. He preserves himself by offering his sexual services to her. She ultimately gives him the choice of picking six fellow prisoners to die or allowing all to die. This finally breaks him. He kills his colleague. He survives all the trauma. But at what cost.

Well this was certainly an experience. For me, yet another testament to knowing next to nothing about a film and letting it unfold with no knowledge or preconceived notions. It starts in the realm of comedy. The images of war are juxtaposed with a saxophone that reminded me of the 1980s and a jaunty voice over by Giancarlo Giannini where every statement is punctuated with a comedic “Ohhhhh yeahhhh.” This is a long opening. The initial war scene is heavier, but the flashback puts Pasqualino back in a world of borderline slapstick. The murder is a laugh. Boy does the tone flip in this though. Wertmueller’s images of the camp don’t pull punches and some of the mental trauma at play is effective as well.

Pasqualino is a fascinating character and (it seems) a thorough damnation of a certain type of man. Part of me kept expecting a redemption or conversion of some sort, but it never really comes. He actually gets worse and worse as the situation becomes more hellish. Bless them for that. It isn’t a choice seen often. It’s a pretty brutal view of men. (Not that it is unwarranted). It reminded me of some of the Passolini film’s I’ve seen albeit with a bit more of a comic bent and a little less of fire-stoking sadism.

Uncomfortably funny. Certainly memorable.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Haxan
Christensen (1922)
“Hold your coins, maiden. First smell my ointment.”

Haxan is a time-spanning “documentary” of witchcraft, mixing real info and occasional artifacts with dramatic reenactments of scenes, rituals, etc. It’s split into multiple chapters that hop forward in time. We go from bits of folklore and some rudimentary spell casting to witch trials to the depiction of a whole convent of nuns torn apart by demonic possession.

I found this thoroughly delightful. My question is – was that it’s intent? I don’t mean it in a “this is so bad, it’s good way.” I’m watching it with 2018 eyes and knowledge. From my perspective this wasn’t so much informative or scary even, but rather surprisingly, remarkably funny. Would those who saw it in the 1920s or 1930s say the same? I’d be curious. I can only speak for me, obviously, but I just enjoyed the hell out of it.

I thought the special effects were excellent given the time. The flying/disappearing money was cool. Though again, I wouldn’t call it scary, the stop motion little demon dude coming through the door made and impression and their version of the devil is particularly gnarly. The music contributed greatly to the lightness I was feeling. It was grew dark only at points and generally was peppy. The title cards read very deadpan to me too, which also made me laugh. Satan clubbing a poor nun on the head and then doing a rather lascivious tongue waggle? Hilarious. Really.

(Oh and I tend to not like silent films, so bravo).

Closes with a progressive point that caught me off guard — have we really changed? The old and poor are still suffering. We are still haunted by what some may deem crazy beliefs. It was still true in 1922 and, at least in my opinion, still true today.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

You'd think the message of Haxan--that there's no such thing as witches--would take the edge off the horror. It doesn't, it just transfers the horror to a new perspective. Instead of making us be scared of witches, it is the witches themselves--poor defenceless old women who are accused of witchcraft--who need to be scared of the mob and the inquisitors.

Haxan opens and closes with documentary sequences beginning with an overview of the historical background to medieval superstitions and ending with examples of how witch behaviour can be explained as hysteria, sleepwalking or other disorders now known to modern man. But it's what comes in between that make Haxan truly memorable and frightening: a case study of how one accusation of withcraft against an old woman spirals into a chain of accusations resulting in torture and murder. Best way to test if women are witches? Drown them. If they sink, they're innocent. Dead, but innocent. If they float, you've got a witch. Wonder how many negative results they got before considering there might be a flaw in their logic? By Haxan's count, 8 million lives were lost---and there were a lot fewer lives to spare at the time--as a result of witch hunts.

But there's the truly scary thing--there was no "logic" at the time. The medieval era were dark ages indeed. You can't help but feel sorrow for victims of the mass insanity. Lives at stake, contingent on the shape a spoonful of molten lead takes when solidified in a bucket of water. And no asking for a second opinion either, that type of sense wasn't common at the time. The learned men--men of the church, representing Christ and compassion--were just as deep into superstitious beliefs as anyone. The horror lies is in the absence of reason, and therefore doesn't depend on special effects which are primitive compared to what we're used to seeing today. Haxan will probably be sending chills 100 years from now.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

A gay poet who was one of Japan's most prolific and beloved writers, a right-wing militia man who commanded his own private army, a famous celebrity who had trouble finding himself...Yukio Mishima was one complicated dude, an intellectual tough guy with a sensitive soul. Appropriately, his bio-pic Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is one of a kind, more an imaginative profile of a misunderstood mind than a straightforward chronicle of the events of his life. The "life story" part of the movie consists of showing us his final day, or rather his final morning: it's all over before lunch. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters cuts back and forth between scenes of this day, in which he attempts to launch a military coup to return executive power to the emperor, and dramatized excerpts from his fiction. It's in these segments where we get a sense of who he was.

Mishima spends much time philosophizing, either directly or through his characters, on the nature of beauty and art, the limitations of words and action, and related topics. I'd be lying if I said I grasped it all. Only knowledge can turn life's unbearableness into a weapon? OK, sure. Hard to tell if these statements were part of a coherent worldview or just random, rambling observations. Symptoms of a torn mind I guess, Mishima's characters have internal conflicts which lead them to acts of violence. Something I'll pay closer attention to next time; this time I'm mainly feasting my eyes on the production design, specifically the striking sets of the fictional segments which are staged as theatre settings, plays within a play. Dropping pretenses of realism and the re-enactment of life, Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters digs deeper into the real man.

 

[kihei]

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) Directed by Paul Schrader

Mishima seems to have been an artist of almost infinite complexity, a mass of seemingly contradictory but nonetheless interrelated parts--writer, playwright, film maker, warrior, right-wing militant, feudalist, nationalist, and all around risk taker true as he could be to his inner voices--in other words, one hell of a complex package, seemingly tightly controlled and potentially volatile at the same time. He has almost more going on in him than one person can contain. He also seemed to treat his life as a kind of art object with its own uncommon aesthetic and its own public audience. In short, he is exactly the kind of subject that calls for an uncoventional approach to telling his story, and director Paul Schrader delivers just that and in spades. His approach is to create a wildly imaginative mosaic of Mishima's life--a collection of important bits and pieces that attempt to do justice to the multi-layered personality that he is dealing with in a manner of organisation that is almost Godard-like. The end result is undeniably impressive, though more intellectually engaging than emotionally involving. With its use of both conventional autobiographic material and scenes based on Mishima's fictional creations, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is one gorgeous art object in its own right. Whether the approach actually captures the man, I don't know. I'm not sure any other approach would have worked better. I do know the movie kept me watching intently from the first frame to the last, though ultimately I felt I learned more about the director's sensitivity toward and commitment to his subject and about his command of the medium than I did about who Mishima really was. He remains a study in fragments. But with a movie this beautifully constructed and visually dazzling, I can accept that shortcoming readily, that is, even if it is one.

subtitles

 

[Jevo]

Mishima: A life in four chapters (1985) dir. Paul Schrader

Yukio Mishima was one of the biggest stars on the Japanese literary scene in the post war years, and also very renowned internationally. This serves both as a biographical film, as well as a dramatization of three of his novels. The film starts and ends on November 25th 1970. The day where Mishima and members of his private militia tried to instigate a coup d'etat, with the aim of reinstating a ruling emperor in Japan. The movie starts on the morning as Mishima prepares for the event, and ends with suicide after their failure. In between the movie is filled with flashbacks to Mishima's life, which again are interwoven with dramatisation of three of his novels. While the novels aren't strictly autobiographical, Schrader uses them to draw parallels between them and Mishima's real life.

I'm not familiar with Mishima or his writings. But he's certainly an interesting personality. Formed in his youth by his fathers strict parenting style, who disallowed his ventures into writing as effeminate. Which forced Mishima to hide his writing and interest from his father. Later on in his life he starts to live out his suppressed homosexuality. All while still being heavily influenced by his father and others beating him down for doing things they considered effeminate, and that strong affects his relations to his male lovers. Possibly as a result of this he develops a sort of body cult around himself, where he develops a strict physical training regime that he adheres to at all times. And he also later starts his own militia. Again possibly a remnant of his military fathers parenting, and Mishima himself being rejected from the army during WWII as well.

Schrader does some fun things visually during the movie. He changes between colour and b/w during the movie, depending on the time period of the specific scene. Which he isn't exactly the only one to do. But more fun is the way the dramatizations are filmed. The set design is in such a way that, it is obviously sets that it is filmed on. Like it is a theatre play inside the movie. It makes for some fun viewing, because the sets are so well done in those sequences. I really liked those for that reason.

Some biopics leaves you wondering if this persons life really was interesting enough to make a whole movie out of it. I'm not really having that feeling after watching Mishima. He certainly has an interesting story, and Schrader also tells it in an interesting way, by incorporating some of his writing into the movie as well. I don't recall seeing that approach before.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Mishima (A Life in Four Chapters)
Schrader (1985)
“The principle, it occurred to me, was death.”

The life of famed Japanese multi-multi-hyphenate (though most notably as a writer) Yukio Mishima spanning from his youth and his rejection from military service due to tuberculosis to the evolution of his professional career as his personal, sexual and political beliefs become gradually more radicalized. This culminates in a famed failed attempt at a coup after which he took his own life. The man formed a damn army! The biographical part of the story is intercut with black-box-theater-like enactments of three of Mishima’s works, each representative of where the man was at that point in time, each walking the same path he himself would walk.

On the surface it struck me as an odd match for Paul Schrader, an American raised in a strict religious household in Michigan (if I recall correctly), and a man probably best known for his writing (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) than his directing. But as I watched it, Mishima himself as depicted by Schrader, isn’t more than a few degrees of difference from a Travis Bickle or Rev Toller of his newest movie, First Reformed. These are men whose convictions (right or wrong) drive them from meek marginalization to violent self-destructive acts of radicalization. It’s intriguing to think of that trio as a piece and possibly chart where Schrader himself stands on these actions and how he may (or may not have) changed over the decades. But I’ll sidestep that for now in case folks haven’t seen First Reformed.

The connection to Schrader feels much clearer to me having watched this. That said, Mishima is kept at a distance. This exploration seems more clinical and psychological than emotional. I was never moved, so to speak. But I was always engaged.

This is due in large part to the execution. Schrader’s approach is fascinating structure for a biopic. One I quite liked. Four significant chapters of life interspersed with representations of his work that did a lot to color in the lines the core narrative drew. Thinking and writing isn’t a particularly photogenic exercise. Schrader has a nifty work around here though. Add to that the decision to shoot those sequences like plays and it makes for a striking look/feel. Vibrant colors jammed into a confined space. The spectre of death by his own hand runs throughout. Suicide is in his writing. It’s in the film Patriotism, which we see in production with Mishima acting out the very actions that he’d take to later end his life. It even feels like it’s in his planning. The coup is sloppy, almost comedic at one point, if we all weren’t aware it would wind up so tragic. I half wonder if it was intentional? Mishima is shown to be a very disciplined, exacting man and he seemed to get the ending he wanted though perhaps not in the way he wanted.

I haven’t poured through every bit of Schrader’s filmography but I’ve consumed a fair amount (over 50 percent) and this is so far and away his most visually and structurally out there.

The only weird bit for me was the Phillip Glass score, which is soaring and memorable — the problem is, it was reused about 15 years later in The Truman Show and thus is burned into my brain in that context. Both men do get their freedom.

 

[kihei]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I hope you do a review of First Reformed on the movie page. I am very curious to get your take.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Next pick -
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Cassavetes (1976)

 

[kihei]

Off to Quebec City for a few days, so I will be late with everything.