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

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
Lang (1933)
“There’s something weird going on here.”

Though criminal genius Dr. Mabuse is safely locked away in an insane asylum and himself seems quite insane, rampant crime continues to reign in the streets in his name. Not only why, but how?

This is a sequel, but the preceeding films don’t feel necessary. Full confession: I’ve never seen them. But this, interestingly enough, I feel like have seen despite never seeing it before. This is one of those classic examples that beget so much. I feel like many a comic book villain descends from this, most notably the chaos-minded Joker. Though his look is famously taken form The Man Who Laughs, a contemporary film to Mabuse, the machinations feel like it tracks back to this. A booby trapped room is very 1960s Batman in particular. The even more obvious connection to me is classic-era Blofeld from the James Bond books and movies. The entire unseen mastermind bit, giving orders to underlings with very specific almost business-like departments (blackmail, drugs, murder) was lifted whole hog into the Bond films and so many others that were to come. Blofeld pulling the strings from prison by mysterious means literally happens in the newest Bond movie. Hell the institutionalized mastermind is integral to Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs too. Stellar lineage.

Though Sherlock Holmes deserves the bulk of the credit for the modern detective, but I suppose we can toss a few kudos toward Inspector Lohman here too. Wait. Crap. Moriarity predates Mabuse. Shit. Well STILL. I think my parallel mostly holds. The visuals are there. Shadowy man at desk.

I somewhat picked this as a Halloween time watch because I (somewhat mistakenly) thought it was more of a horror film than it is. The image I’ve always associated with it is an extreme closeup on Mabuse’s face and his eyes spinning as hypnotic pools. Not to be pedantic but it’s really more of a straightforward crime thriller. But there are some undeniably horror elements. Images of skulls and madness and dungeons. The patented moody, expressionistic lighting. It’s a spectral mystery at times as much as a practical one. How does he do it?

Shocked that the Nazi regime pushed back on a story where an evil mad man uses crime and fear to try to control and subjugate the greater population!

A classic that in many ways still feels very modern.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Going back to something I wanted to pick a few months back but kept getting sidetracked from: Robert Downey Sr.'s Putney Swope. RIP.

 

[Jevo]

The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1933) dir. Fritz Lang

Former policeman Hofmeister who was fired in disgrace, calls his former inspector Lohmann and frantically tries to tell him about a criminal conspiracy he has uncovered. But before he can tell it, something interrupts him and when he's found he's turned insane. He gets hospitalised in a facility lead by Dr. Baum, which also houses Dr. Mabuse a former criminal mastermind who was caught 10 years earlier. Dr. Mabuse was known as a master hypnotic who could make people do his criminal bidding that way. Nowadays he spends his days frantically writing more or less incoherent ramblings on paper. The ramblings are actually detailed criminal plans which are actually happening in real life. Lohmann slowly gets the pieces into the right places and gets on the tail of this criminal conspiracy.

This film is probably one of the few sequels who has a prequel which was silent, while the film itself is a sound film. Although it's a sequel, having watched Dr. Mabuse The Gambler is by no means a prerequisite for watching this film, as Dr. Baum gives a lengthy explanations about who Dr. Mabuse is and (I assume) how the last film ended with the demise of his criminal organisation, for now at least. Bit of an anachronism that you would never see in a film today. But today films are also much more readily available. Lang didn't have the luxury to assume the viewers had seen the original film. It does slow down the film though. Generally the film takes its time getting up to speed. Despite having a very tense opening with Hofmeister hiding and him calling Lohmann. The weak point of the movie for me is the pacing. There's just a lot of subplots which needs to get established before the film can really take off. So we get something set up which should be interesting. But then we cut to another subplot which is still getting set up. Once all the subplots congregate on the same criminal ploy in the last half of the film, the film shines a lot more. The mystery elements of the story are handled really well. Generally the audience knows more than the characters, but there's still plenty of substantial information that the audience are missing until the end.

I like The Testament of Dr Mabuse quite a lot. But it's hard not to have extremely high standards when you know what Fritz Lang is capable of. His previous film M, is in my opinion one of the best films ever made. There's not a single wasted minute in the whole film. Interestingly enough it takes place in the same place as this film, as Inspector Lohmann is in both films.

One last thing I didn't really like was Dr. Mabuse's "ghost". I don't think it's intended to represent anything supernatural, only the influence he holds over Dr. Baum. But I don't think it works that well, and is just a bit confusing.

 

[Pink Mist]

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse / Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1933)

Berlin, 1933, a gang of petty criminals are running rampant on a crime spree conducting robberies and murders receiving instructions from a criminal genius, Dr. Mabuse, locked away in an asylum. From the get go, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse differentiates itself from a lot of early talkies in the era of transition to sound which were more or less just rigid filmed plays. The film begins with a wall of industrial sound as we watch a disgraced former cop try to unlock a criminal conspiracy. This wall of industrial sound cloaks the words in this scene making the viewers unable to hear what the characters are saying, and makes it acted out essentially like a silent film. It’s a clever bit of filmmaking and one of many examples how Lang integrated sound in this work both to create tension or obfuscate plot and meaning.

The plot itself in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is really convoluted, and to be honest really difficult to follow at times. Though perhaps this is intentional choice by Lang, I did have trouble understanding what was happening scene by scene occasionally. There also are some pacing issues in the film that make the film feel kind of plodding at times through the beginning of the film after its strong opening scene. But the back half of the film makes up for the drag with some exceptionally thrilling scenes such as the trapped room and gang apartment shootout.

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is a great film, though it does not reach the heights of Lang’s best works. It is notable for being Lang’s last German film before he fled for America to escape the Nazi’s, and this film, which was release the year Hitler came to power, has a very strong and not so subtle anti-Nazi/anti-fascist commentary in which Lang almost literally put the slogans of Nazi’s into the mouths of the film’s villains. Unsurprisingly, it was banned in Germany at the time.

 

[Pink Mist]

Shocked that the Nazi regime pushed back on a story where an evil mad man uses crime and fear to try to control and subjugate the greater population!

Not only that, but a film where an evil mad man writes a manifesto while imprisoned which is used by gangs of petty criminals to wreak terror in Germany. Sounds kind of familiar!

 

[kihei]

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) Directed by Fritz Lang

Within the first couple minutes of the film, I realized that I had never seen The Testanennt of Dr. Mabuse before, which is kind of weird because I had assument that I had. Its claim to fame is that it is interpreted as foreshadowing of the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party. While that may be true, I wondered whether a German in 1933 would have quite got that message or would he/she see the movie as an early genre mash up that was, to my way of seeing, first and foremost a pretty damn good detective story with horror overtones. Hitler came to power in 1933 and at that early date, how many Germans would have seen his rise as evil, given the level of public support that Nazism generated in its early days of power? I'm not saying that this movie can't be seen as a warning of what was to come or what was aleady there, but I also think, given Hitler's level of public support, that things might have been clearer to average German in retrospect than they were in the actual moment of the film's release. Seemingly the Nazis got the message, though, and they didn't like it.

Historically Germany has had an odd habit of casting normal looking people in their movies. There are handsome or attractive German movie stars, of course--Helmut Berger, Maximillian Schell, Romi Schneider--but I am often surprised by how ordinary-looking their actors often are. Otto Weirneke as Inspector Lohmann certainly fits into that category. Our super sleuth could not be more average, more down-home almost. Just a hard working bloke who is good at his job. His rather jovial unexceptionalism added to my pleasure of watching this story unfold. It made me concentrate more on the narrative and less on the machinations of the actors. Werneke often seemed like a good-natured counterpoint to the horrors that were lurking just beyond his grasp, horrors that include ghost-like apparitions and the supernatural. A detective taking a "sensible" approach to these goings on and not being all that flustered by the clues as they unfold seemed reassuring. To some degree, I wondered if that didn't undercut the message, but it made for a more interesting movie.

We don't get a lot os special effects in this film--the sometimes expressionisstic set design does most of the heavy lifting. But when we do, man, it's genuinely creepy. In this case, though, I think less definitely equals more. Mabuse's scary image sitting behind a desk goes a long way. Too much repetition of that image would have only bred familiarity, a bad thing in this case. Unfortunately, the "less is more" philosophy is utter anathema to modern horror where the explicit gross-out, gore supreme image reigns.

I did think, especially for a Lang movie, that the editing was a little wobbly. Occasionally, cuts seemed abrupt and the development of the story confusing. The black-and-white images are marvelous, again balancing on a knife's edge between mundane most of the time and fantastic the rest of the time. To the extent that it is a form of social commentary it is a well-conceived one, but I think I will remember The Testament of Dr. Mabuse as one of the best early detective stories, too.

 

[kihei]

Vitalina Varela (2019) Directed by Pedro Costa

Vitalina Varela arrives in Lisbon from Cape Verde three days after the death of her former lover who she hasn’t seen for forty years. He lived virtually in a hovel in the poorest section of Lisbon. She goes there, partly to mourn him, partly because she has nowhere else to go. There she meets compatriots of her husband who help her fill in some of the blanks about his life. She also meets an acquaintance from the past, an old priest whose faith is hanging on by a thread. She navigates through many emotions of loss: grief, regret, anger, and resignation. Vitalina Varela, the actress, plays Vitalina Varela, the character. The film is based partly but not entirely on her life. By now her performances are somewhere between amateur and professional and she is a remarkable presence here, aided immensely by the film’s dark but evocative cinematography which makes the environs of the slum seem almost otherworldly as though the action takes place on a different planet. And, in a way, it does.

The movie is about the kind of conditions and pain that the worst off among us have to endure to get through the day. In another way, his movies can be seen as being about a certain kind of immigrant experience as well. While his films are set in Portugal, they often focus on people from Cape Verde, people who do not have an easy lot in life. Most of us don’t even know that lives like this exist, but director Pedro Costa is not pandering for our sympathy. He is here to show the humanity of his characters, their strengths as fell as their shortcomings and disadvantages. All of his movies eventually blur together, in a good way, in my mind, and I remember the people that inhabit this world and their resilience. As well, I remember the brilliant images, an abundance of which could form a museum exhibit, perhaps several of them, of much power and beauty.

Pedro Costa is a Portuguese film director who has taken a unique approach to his art. I first became aware of him when I watched his Fontainhas Trilogy (Ossos; In Vanda’s Room; Colossal Youth), three works that chronicled in extremely stark and realistic ways the lives of poor people living in the worst slum in Lisbon. His works exist in a netherworld of part documentary, part fiction. He tends to focus on the same characters in these films, on their lives, hardships, and hopes. Their environment is beyond dingy, grubby, dirty, dark, and crumbling. Electricity is in short supply, so Costa films in near darkness most of the time, but does so with breathtaking skill. I would argue that his best works represent cinematic masterpieces first and foremost. His images and sparse dialogue nonetheless tend to reveal the soul of his characters, often tormented souls but with strength and perseverance as well. These people have led harder lives than most of us can even begin to imagine. It takes a major talent to make art out of their lives while retaining a social conscience and never falling into exploitation. But Costa does this repeatedly. His humanism infuses every frame and image. I think he is one of the best directors in Europe, and I believe that he makes some of the most beautiful movies on earth.

subtitles

 

[kihei]

My next pick will be Abbas Kiarostami's 24 Frames. Available on the Criterion Channel.

 

[Jevo]

Vitalina Varela (2019) dir. Pedro Costa

Vitalina Varela arrives from Cape Verde to Lisbon to join her husband who left 40 years earlier. However when she arrives she learns that her husband was burried three days earlier. Now in the more slum-like parts of Lisbon she's left with the few earthly possesions her husband left behind. And she starts to retrace his life in Portugal, a life which was entirely secret to her.

Pedro Costa often blends documentary and fiction in his films to varying degrees. He uses amateur actors from neighbourhoods he portrays, and often blends in their stories into his films. He often uses the same actors in several movies, always playing themselves. Vitalina Varela also starred in Costa's previous film Horse Money, and Ventura, here a secondary character, was the main character in Horse Money and Colossal Youth. What is real and what is fictions is mostly really known to Costa and his actors. In this instance Vitalina Varela also has a writing credit on the film, interpret that as you please.

I'm by no means an expert on Pedro Costa and his movies. I've only watched this and Horse Money. But he really impresses me in the way that he can get passionate and deep felt performances from his actors. Probably because they live these lives. Even if the films aren't biographical, at least not entirely so. One big reason is probably how deeply interested he is in their conditions and lives. There's nothing exploitative at all in the way that Costa approaches his films and subjects. I don't think anyone makes movies quite like Pedro Costa, not just his choice of actors and subjects for his films. But also the style he has. It's very slow, even for slow cinema. Many of the set pieces in Vitalina Varela most reminds me of a Roy Andersson movie, and Roy Andersson is so far from ever other filmmaker that he's usually not even a point of reference. Some of it feels almost pruposely artificial, although stil in a completely different way than in a Roy Andersson movie, and without underlying dark comedy.

Costa rewards patience highly in Vitalina Varela with deep eomotions and social commentary. But you also have to give the film all your attention, or you will be left behind.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Vitalina Varela
Costa (2019)
“You kept saying you would come …”

Our eponymous lead ventures to Portugal to reconnect with her long-departed husband, but upon her arrival she learns he just died. She’s left to wander through that personal wreckage. He wasn’t a good man though we suspect Vitalina is aware of this given his negligence. She spent her years building the home and life she thought they wanted. He meanwhile cheated on her repeatedly and lived a not particularly good life. She eventually encounters a priest and fellow immigrant. A bit of a two-hander develops between them though the film opts to leave most things unsaid. It’s her shadowed face that does most of that work. Life moves on.

There isn’t a ton of story here. Nor diaglogue. It’s over 10 minutes into the movie before any words are spoken. I don’t know if anyone tracks words per minute in films, but this would have to rank very very low. The soundscape is mostly one of wind and rain. It’s almost more like a series of chirascuro paintings — static, high contrast visuals (weighted more to deep, dark blacks) of life and scenes in Lisbon. It makes the final few scenes when sunlight finally breaks in all the more powerful. A visual peace signifying an emotional peace.

This is all striking to look at, though it’s hell on someone who is easily distracted. It demands constant engagement and, full disclosure, I give myself about a C+ on that scale. This probably deserves better than I gave it.

Varela is a non-professional (learned this after the fact, not that it really matters). It’s a great, stoic performance executed largelly visually though Costa’s very still camera. Trying as it can be at times, I found it still broke my heart in moments, like when she’s showering and brick comes lose and hits her head. Even here she’s remarkably reserved, far more than most would be in that situation. But she cracks just enough and you can’t help but wish she’d catch a break.

 

[Pink Mist]

Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa, 2019)

A Cape Verdean woman, Vitalina Varela (playing herself), travels to Portugal to find that her long estranged husband has died. This is my third time watching this since it came out. The first time I tried to watch this film was in summer 2020 when I was bedridden with illness and I fell to sleep within 10 minutes of the film. The second time I managed to stay awake for the entire two hours, but only barely. This third time, despite knowing what I was getting into, I still found my engagement and concentration straining and my eyes getting heavy. This is to say that this film is very slow and deliberate. Even compared to slow films this film is very slow. Not much really happens in this film other than observing Vitalina’s grief and suffering as she moves within the spaces of her husband’s life in the slums of Lisbon. However, this film is achingly beautiful, and a masterpiece in composition and lighting, and its slow pace makes it seem like one is watching a series of excellent photographs. Vitalina, who is a non-professional actor is also incredibly effective in her role. One of those films that I can’t say I enjoyed watching, but that I can appreciate it's artistry.

 

[Jevo]

Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) dir. Bill Morrison

In 1978 the site of an old rec center in Dawson City was being excavated in preparation of new construction. But then the workers noticed what looked like old film reels in the dirt. Excavation was stopped and a huge treasure chest of lost films and news reels from the silent era was uncovered, preserved by the Yukon permafrost. Bill Morrison takes these films, and uses them, along with a few clips from films not in the find and historical pictures from Dawson, to tell the story of how the films came to end up in the earth in Dawson City, and to do that you first need to tell the story of Dawson city's early beginnings and the Klondike Gold Rush that settled the town.

Many of the films have suffered damage, this might be a problem for some. But for Bill Morrison it seems to the be the exact opposite. For him the damage to the reels are a form a patina, something with beauty that should be embraced. And he manages to create some wonderfully beautiful compositions with these old films, warts and all. He embraces the style of films. There's no voice-over narration, instead intertitles are used to tell the story, along with a beautiful musical score.

Morrison tells the story of Dawson City both as a film nerd, and as someone critical of the pure capitalism that is a gold rush. Where the few are lucky and become rich, while the rest are either dead, broke or exploited, while still dreaming of making it big in the next gold rush. Not to mention the First Nations groups in the area were relocated to make room for the gold rush. Morrison also explores how this unbridled capitalism has ties to Hollywood, where several big producers learned their first tricks in Dawson, and even Donald Trump.

Morrison goes down a few tangents along the way, including a look at the 1917 and 1919 World Series, of which there was news reel footage of in the find. But he makes these tagents feel natural, and I didn't even consider that these tangets wouldn't form a natural part of the story of Dawson City and the burial of several hundred film reels. Most of all Dawson City: Frozen Time is a fantastic achievement in editing. Morrison has found some fantastic clips in all these films, and uses them to great effect to illustrate the story he's telling, and he does it with both humour and seriousness where appropriate. It's one of my favourite documentaries of all time, and I was really happy to revisit it. It's just as magical as I remember it.

 

[Jevo]

My next pick is Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye

 

[kihei]

Dawson City: Frozen in Time (2016) Directed by Bill Dawson

There is a lot of past and mostly how we picture it is through our imaginations. Obviously it is impossible to observe actual photographs and moving pictures of the first Neanderthals, the Ancient Romans, Italy during the Renaissance, and so on. We have paintings and drawings, but that's not the same as photographing reality. Photography nearly two hundred years ago and cinema several decades later changed how we see the past. Dawson City: Frozen in Time is a remarkable achievement for many reasons and a debt is owed director Bill Dawson for putting it together. But what fascinates me is not so much the once seemingly lost forever silent movie treasures that are rediscovered but the documentary footage of Dawson City's rise and fall.

The image that sticks in my mind most is the endless chain of potential gold miners heading out of Dawson City, single file, to perhaps find their fortune but really they court an unknown fate. They could be dead souls trudging to hell, ala Bergman's The Seventh Seal. So many men driven by dreams and probably greed. And so few women in evidence that I had to wonder how did they get there and how hard must their lives have been to risk venturing to such a cold, inhospitable place. It seems like a lonely thing to do, or worse, given the frigid climate, a cold and lonely thing to do. Times must have been hard for people to be that desperate. Just watching them, so many with stern faces, their decisions possibly a mix of hope and despair, I felt just how different they seemed from my own cushy experience. I wouldn't last two days in those conditions, and many of the people we see spent lifetimes panning for gold, moving from place to place as opportunities shifted.

There is a very brief shot of a small group of First Nations people sitting around on the ground passing a pipe around. The reason that shot stays with me is that they appear so relaxed, just enjoying themselves. natural and at ease, not posed in any way. That's not a shot of First Nations people that I have seen many times, which likely speaks to my lack of exposure and experience. In contemporary photographs, do I see accusation in some of their eyes or am I projecting my own guilt and shame? It makes me want to know more about their stories, what happened to them in the long run. When it comes right down to it, just about anyone's life would make an interesting movie.There is also a couple of seconds of shots of a beautiful dark-haired movie star that I did not recognize. Her beauty seemed somehow quite contemporary; she wouldn't have to change much to fit right in today.

This is a documentary that for me is defined by fleeting impressions. Most of the shots last a very few seconds. But as an artifact, Dawson City: Frozen in Time is valuable to me because the images are so distant from my reality and yet so palpable. It's not just the city that is frozen in time, it is the people in it. And I just wished I had got to know some of them better.

 

[Pink Mist]

Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison, 2016)

An estimated 75% of all silent films are now lost. Part of it is due to the passage of time, for most of these films it has been over a hundred years since they were released and in a pre-digital age; but another part is that films weren’t treated as a piece of art like they are today, so after they were consumed they were often thrown away and lost forever. In 1978, while excavating an old rec hall to build a new building in Dawson City, boxes and boxes of old nitrate films were found in a buried swimming pool. 533 reels for 372 silent films were uncovered in the permafrost of the old pool, including many films that were presumed lost until their accidental discovery in Dawson City, Yukon.

Bill Morrison’s film is a video essay that explores this discovery of lost films in connection to Dawson City’s boom and bust discovery of gold in the 1890s. The film is a history of Dawson City and its deep and surprising connection to the Hollywood film industry, but it is not told like a conventional documentary. Morrison uses archival footage and scenes from the films discovered in Dawson City to tell his story of how Dawson City went from boom to bust, and became a forgotten city in the Canadian north and a fitting place for striking gold in the discovery of forgotten films. Morrison’s film is also a critique of capitalistic greed that led to the gold rush in the 1890s in Dawson City which led to almost complete resource extraction in the area and the pushing out of indigenous groups, and which also led to these silent films being destroyed or buried. Dawson City was at the last stop of the North America distribution train and Hollywood did not care if the films were sent back or not, so when films were shown in Dawson City they were either burned or thrown into the river as garbage. But there is also a humanistic side to Morrison’s film as he uses this footage and archival footage to tell small stories about the local characters who made up Dawson City, those who made it big in Hollywood or elsewhere, and the more minor characters who added local charm to Dawson City.

One of the philosophies approaches I dabbled in my university days was object-oriented ontology and actor-network theory which, to simplify, are philosophical approaches which treats objects as subjects who have agency and can act (opposed to traditional philosophical approaches which treat non-human subjects as things which are just acted upon by humans and are a mere prop). Basically, these philosophical approaches asks what happens when we place things at the center of study and explore how things shape the human and material world. A lot of my colleagues were either confused by this approach or would question the utility of it, but if I were to try to explain it today I would just show them this film because it is a great example of this approach in how it centers these lost films in it’s exploration of how Dawson City came to be and the lost films’ relationship to both the people in Dawson City and other things which make up Dawson City (such as the nitrate films burning down buildings and infrastructure in the city).

The film is a such a great and passionate story of Dawson City, that I was surprised that it wasn’t produced by the National Film Board in Canada as that is they type of films that they have traditionally produced. It is an excellent exploration of Canadian history and full of Canadiana that it’s surprising that it was made and produced by Americans. Not that it’s a bad thing or anything as it is a superb documentary, just surprising that an outsider would make this film.

Nonetheless, Dawson City: Frozen Time is essential viewing for anyone at all interested in film history or Canadian history. Great use of footage, a solid score by Sigur Ros collaborator Alex Somers, and an amazing story that needs to be seen. I can see why watching The Forbidden Room brought to mind this film, @Jevo , great recommendation.

 

[Pink Mist]

La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954)

When Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) is sold by her mother for 10,000 lira to a vagabond performer, she is excited to learn to sing, dance, and perform. However, while she is a natural clown, her partner Zampano (Anthony Quinn), the strongman of the circus, is a cruel and beastly man. Upon meeting The Fool (Richard Baseheart) a carefree trickster clown, she contemplates leaving Zampano only to meet a tragic fate that crushes her delicate and childish spirit.

La Strada is an interesting film in Fellini’s career as it is a transitional film for him between his early neorealism work and the magical realism of his later work. The film has all the characteristics of Italian neorealism with a mixture of professional and non-professional actors, on location shooting, stark depictions of poverty and so on, but throughout the work there are subtle touches of magical realism that Fellini would become famous for in his later work, for example a lone horse that wanders the streets at night and bands randomly marching through the countryside. A film about circus performers is the perfect film to introduce magical realism, as mystery and magic is integral to the circus experience, but critics from the neorealism school were apparently appalled by Fellini’s departure from neorealism culminating in a fistfight between Fellini’s assistant director and the assistant director of Luchino Visconti’s Senso at the Venice Film Festival when La Strada won the silver lion.

The film is also notable for Giulietta Masina transcendent performance as Gelsomina. Masina has an exceptionally expressive face that is a canvas for her emotions that would have made her a star in the silent era. Her clown performance and facial expressions are very similar to Charlie Chaplin and works effectively as a childish clown here in La Strada. What is curious though in her role is that Fellini, who was Masina’s husband, wrote a role for her in which other characters frequently called her ugly or that she looked like a vegetable. Not sure what that means about how he regarded her beauty.

La Strada is one of Fellini’s most impressive films which would make him and Masina international film stars. It is often overshadowed by La Dolce Vita and 8 ½ but it is still one of my favourite of his works and I wish to one day see it on a big screen because I think it is a magical film that would translate well to a theatre, just as it moved art house theatre goers in the 1950s.

 

[Pink Mist]

Keeping with the theme of the forgotten films and stars of the silent film era, my next pick is Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Dawson City Frozen Time
Morrison (2016)
"They threw the treasure chest overboard.”

Dawson CIty, Yukon Territories, late 1970s. A massive stockpile of old nitrate films are found buried in the cold, Canadian permafrost. What proceeds to unfold is a dual-track history lesson both of that once thriving gold mining town and physical film itself — how it was made, distributed and in many cases lost. So many damn fires. Not to make light of what was undoubtedly personal tragedies for the people involved, but it’s almost a comical amount of destruction by flame. Wood and combustible film do not mix. I suppose that’s why they just started throwing film in the river.

Dawson’s evolution is a common one for the Gold Rush Era. Displacement of natives. Business and population streams in. The veins gradually run dry. Roads and other, easier ways of transportation rendered it irrelevant. Population depletes to a mere handful left content to continue life out on these fringes. A slew of notable business names got their starts in or near the town including Fred Trump, New York Rangers founder Tex Rickard, the Gugenheims and not one but two future theater operators — the Graumans and the Pantages. In one of those great only in life touches, a 1957 documentary about the town composed of images found in a cabin (town has shit stashed all over) would be nominated for an Academy Award and screen at … the famed Pantages.

The more interesting story here to me was of the movies themselves and the why and how of Dawson becoming this lost repository of what would ultimately be more than 300 silent films recovered and restored. It’s the evolution of an industry, the artistic innovations and the changing financial realities, but seen in an unlikely place. Morrison assembles a really engaging, clever collage from both those found films and other footage he uses to tell his tale. At one point film titles even seem to be standing in for dialog, reactions to revelations in the story being told.

An engaging melding of documentary and an actual artistic approach.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Sorry for the delay on my end. I pop in every few days to see if this has been updated and I must have just missed the last window when this was on the front page.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

La Strada
Fellini (1954)
“Why do you keep me?”

Roving strongman Zampano arrives in a small town. His assistant has died. He buys her sister, the awkward Gelsomina. He’s a cruel man. Brutish. They travel Italy, living performance to performance. People along the way offer to help Gelsomina out of the life she’s living with Zampano, but she steadfastly refuses, remaining loyal to a man who doesn’t deserve that devotion. She the definition of kind to a fault. It’s a tragic revelation that comes to Zampano far too late to matter.

This is a World Cinema 101 movie for me both in its actual reputation and in my personal life. One of the very first foreign films I watched. A good one to start with. Simple, human story expertly executed. Fellini is still pretty grounded here. He’d become much more fantastical soon, but I’ve long harbored a softer spot for this work, perhaps because of that early exposure.

Giulietta Masina is a large part of that. She’s a pitiable presence here. All big eyes and Chaplin-esque schitck and emotional wounds. I don’t say this to be offensive, but she’s almost more loyal pet than fully formed human (which for me actually raises more emotions). You instinctively want here protected and sheltered.

Anthony Quinn’s Zampano is a towering presence. It’s a bit one-note until the closing few scenes but he’s a detestable brute. His ultimate breakdown is one of the more effective such scenes in movie history.

The Fool is a counter to Zampano’s brutishness, but not by much. Though he ultimately understands and helps Gelsomina rather than taking advantage of her, his brand of humor isn’t exactly kind. There is perhaps no place for the fragile Gelsomina in this rough world.

 

[Jevo]

La Strada (1954) dir. Federico Fellini

Gelsomina is a simple minded young woman. A year earlier her sister Rosa went on the road with strongman Zampano, but she has died. Now Zampano is back requesting Gelsomina's mother for Gelsomina to come with him instead. With plenty of mouths to feed and 10,000 lire in her pocket, the mother accepts to send Gelsomina with her. At first she's distraught leaving her family. But Zampano teaches her to play the trumpet and a snare drum to be a part of his act. She wishes to please above all else, and he's brutish and intimidating, and doesn't treat her nice. But she develops feelings for him, perhaps because he's the only constant in her life, and she wouldn't know what to do without him. He doesn't mind abandoning her to go off with a willing lady from the bar.

There's few lights in Gelsomina's otherwise melancholic life. Mostly when she finds small moments of joy, like when she's playing with a group of small kids, or when she meets The Fool, who for a short while makes her believe in something better for herself. But in the end she chooses to stay with Zampano. She chooses the evil she knows over the one she doesn't know. Zampano and Gelsomina seems to have a connection, where they often don't seem to really like each other. But they have a connection, where they seem to be happier when together than when apart, all though neither seems to realise it before its too late. They are an unlikely couple, and I find it hard to call them a compelling as well. Both deserve something else, but no one knows what it really is that they deserve.

The problems I have with La Strada are the same I have with many Italian neorealist films. It's a lot of bleak melancholy with no brightness on the horizon. Life is like that for some poor people. But if you don't connect with the characters it's just 2 hours of sadness, with people you aren't really invested in. And I have never been able to connect with Gelsomina. She's in a bad situation due to no fault of her own, but she also doesn't have any agency of her own. Perhaps because she's a woman in a misogynist society, and perhaps because she's not smart enough to navigate adult life. But it leaves me feeling I can only watch her get treated badly, I can never watch her make an attempt to change her situation for the better, not even an unsuccesful one.

 

[kihei]

La Strada (1954) Directed by Federico Fellini

I saw 8 1/2 before I saw La Strada which I saw concurrently with a couple of other early Fellini films along with Michelangelo Antonioni's so-called "Modernity" trilogy (L'avventura; La Notte; L'ecliss). There was an ongoing, heated debate among fans of European cinema at the time as to who was the greater director, Fellini or Antonioni--in some ways this debate was oddly similar to the fervent Beatles or Stones debate in rock music. I was and remain very firmly in the Antonioni camp though I have come to appreciate Fellini's track record beyond 8 1/2 a lot more. At the time, though, to me it came down to a battle betweein an elegant visual stylist and an unabashed vulgarian, which an Italian friend informed me later was actually a Northern Italy/Roma debate thinly disguised.

So I wasn't actually looking all that forward to seeing La Strada again. It is a sad tale and a sad-sack love triangle, and it drips pathos like a leaky dock drips seawater. Anthony Quinn plays Zampano, a brutal circus strongman, Richard Basehart (were Italian actors on strike?) plays the role of a court jester who can't stop poking the beast, and Giuliuetta Masina, Fellini's wife, plays a simple-minded waif who is in effect sold to the strongman for salami, cheese and two litres of wine. What makes the movie exceptional is Masina's performance which doesn't just borrow from Charlie Chaplin, she impersonates him. She is very good at it. All these woeful fates are intwined in a tragic way.

Casting Masina was obviously a no-brainer for Fellini, the role is constructed with her talents in mind, but. I have often had problems with Qunn who is a method actor who likes to vegetate into his roles. Well, he is certainly well vegetated in this one. He turns method acting into another version of ham, and a little of him goes a long, long ways, Richard Basehart is an American actor whose vocal delivery always seemed to me more Royal Shakespeare Company than down-home American. And then there was Masina, who everybody seemed to love but me. She does the Chaplin-thing really well, no question, but her dripping pathos approach begins to gush and I wonder what movie she thinks she is in. Is it a homage to Chaplin or is it the character of Gelsomina that is most important here? With two actors who stop the show on occassion, I have always found it difficult to be moved by this story.

That being said, La Strada is richly thematic. The fact that it ends by focusing on Zampano means the it is pretty much extending its sympathy to everybody. As well, I like how Fellini has modified neo-realism so that he retains much of its feel while allowing him to make stylistic choices that are anything but neo-realistic. And then praise must go to Nino Rota, the Italian film composer, who collaborates with Fellini in so many memorable works. When I think of Fellini, whatever image that comes to mind is almost always accompanied by Rota's distinctive musical score, playing along with the image. Like Einstein's notion of spacetime, music and image seem part of one fundamental entity in those Fellini movies scored by Rota. However, the fact remains that La Strada is a movie I respect more than like.

subtitles

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Putney Swope
Downey Sr. (1969)
“We all voted for him because we thought no one else would.”

Putney Swope is elevated to the top job in a big New York advertising firm. Chaos ensues. Consider the man stuck it to.

I wasn’t necessarily invested in the chaotic, unfolding story, but viewed almost as a series of skits, especially all those fake interstitial advertisements and I think it works like gangbusters. This bounds back and forth over the line between offensive and not. It skewers some wisely, others not so much. It’s a well-intentioned, if not always well thought out offender. If that makes any sense at all.

It peaks early both for edge and pure humor. The board room scene is an almost overwhelming stream of caustic lines and laughs climaxing in the election of Swope to lead the business. The biggest guffaws come from the uncomfortable but ironclad logic behind Swope’s assent to the executive suite. That’s razor sharp satire. Well that bit and the poor schmuck who doesn’t quite grasp their previous president was dying, not playing charades, which isn’t exactly smart, but is just a good old fashioned laugh.

Nothing cuts quite that hard again. There is part of me that wants to push back a little on it and call it somewhat shallow in its observations, but frankly given the state of discourse over matters of race in this here United States over the past few years, I’ve been reminded that many do not see disparities where I believe such things have always existed (leaving this as high level as I can so as to not trip the politics alarm …). I wonder how certain of those folks might view this movie – offensive? A relic? A lie? A good natured ribbing? Some of these above?

The movie is a mess at points. Intentionally and necessarily so. It’s the low budget sort of production that you just need to forgive its occasional cheapness and shortcomings and go on with the bigger mission.

It’s easy to see why this has developed a culty power and following over the decades.

 

[kihei]

Putney Swope (1969) Directed by Robert Downey

It didn't take much to shake up American film in 1969, at least until Easy Rider which came out about a week after this film and Medium Cool which came out about a month later. This was the era when John Wayne's The Green Berets was Hollywood's only direct response to Viet Nam. Yes, there was a counterculture; no, they didn't make movies. That would come later. So Putney Swope made a sort of underground splash, a very limited one in small theatres in big cities. The relatively few people who liked it rather liked the anti-establishment idea of it more than the movie itself, a kind of hipster-ish attack on the advertising industry, a very easy target but one that deserved a good whack anyway.

Putney Swope left me cold then and it leaves me cold now. Some of the mock commercials in it have bite (thinking of "Face Off" here), but the satire itself seems really hit-and-miss and the productions values make it look like it was made way on the cheap (it was, $120,000) by some lower West Side Greenwich village types. Seeing it again, the movie goes downhill fast. It also seems like it is often uncomfortably settling for white people's stereotypes of black people rather than anything closer to reality. Even a largely failed project like Don't Look Up possesses cleverer satire than what for the most part Robert Downey dreams up. Downey's approach is more like sketch comedy with little weeding out of weak material. While it has some good lines here and there, Putney Swope seems like an underground artifact from the exhilarating but increasingly remote world of the '60s. Someone, I suppose, could argue that you just had to be there at the time to dig this far-out flick, man. But truth be told, you didn't really have to be there at the time for this one.

 

[Pink Mist]

Putney Swope (Robert Downey, 1969)

When the token black man on the board of a Madison Avenue advertising agency is inadvertently elected the head of the board, he promptly fires all the white employees of the agency (save one token white man). Putney Swope is a biting satirical film about race relations more broadly and in corporate America in particular, tapping into the “what ifs” of the civil rights era fear (and held by many today, see discourse by people with a particular leaning when Obama was elected) of “what would happen if black people got rights and power?”. The film is chaotic and there is loosely a plot, but it is primarily a series of sketches poking at race relations and American consumer and corporate culture.

Some of the sketches are pure gold. The Face Off advertisement for the pimple cream is funnier than many sketch comedy videos released today and feels very modern. The film’s humour feels like a precursor to the sketch comedy and alternative comedy of today. Some of it has not aged well though and it is at times clear that it is written and directed by a white man. The first half of the film is also a lot stronger than the back half (the opening scene of the board room vote is such a good sketch) before it gets a little too messy for its own good, but a lot of its themes and satire are still relevant today.