From the Shelf: The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963, Eric Rohmer)
Acquired: December of ‘08 as a Christmas gift.
Seen before?: Once - June 1st, 2008 from a disc checked out from the library.
Eric Rohmer is the kind of filmmaker that makes me realize how inadequate I am at this reviewing game. Give me a piece of mangy, downmarket, unloved genre fiction and I’ll tear it open and describe, in minute detail, what’s going on within its innards. But when confronted with a typically-intelligent work from one of cinema’s grand masters, I’m at a loss. I’ve no idea how to articulate why I like this. I can talk about how Bakery Girl, in the space of twenty-three minutes, sets up the themes and tropes that define the Six Moral Tales cycle (like the consistently amusing disconnect between image and narration, as potent a display of irony as I’ve seen in film). But that’s summation, not criticism. I have nothing to say that will illuminate the work any further than the work illuminates itself - Rohmer’s characters (and films) are far more eloquent about their situations than I am. Obviously, I suck.
Up next: More morality…
From the Shelf: The Bank Dick (1940, Edward Cline)
Acquired: Late 2003 or early 2004, whenever it was that Criterion put their disc out of print.
Seen before?: Once, in August of 2004.
“During Fields’ career, industry standards required good to be rewarded and evildoing punished, but in “The Bank Dick” Fields plays an alcoholic misanthrope who lies, cheats and steals and is rewarded with wealth and fame.” - Roger Ebert
I can’t really improve on that. It cuts right to the heart of The Bank Dick - it’s about an absolute rotter of a man who has everything he wants essentially handed to him by a stroke of luck. If there’s a god in the universe of this film, he’s a capricious trickster god. But you know what? Assholes can also be very funny, especially when they’re as sly, unflappable and weirdly charming as W.C Fields’s Egbert Souse. The Bank Dick is barely a film, held together by baling wire and spittle and Fields’s inimitable personality. It runs around, follows dead ends, speaks nonsense and indulges gags that strike Fields’s fancy whether or not they fit the mockery of a story. But it’s about as funny as a barely-there film can get, with a crazily discursive energy that drags the film through its lurches, fits and starts.
Something that struck me this time around: The sequence where Fields commandeers directorial command of a Hollywood flick is as random as anything else in the film. Its inclusion could certainly be justified via a simple, “Well, why wouldn’t it be there?” But think of this - Fields talks his way into the production because the actual director, a comedy veteran, has gone on a week-long bender and can’t do the job. Sounds to me like a rather nasty caricature of Clyde Bruckman and the making of Man on the Flying Trapeze.
Up next: Baked goods!
From the Shelf: Bad Santa (2003, Terry Zwigoff)
Acquired: I… I don’t actually remember. Pretty sure I bought it rather than received it as a gift, but couldn’t tell you the time frame.
Seen before?: Several times.
This is a film I adore and have seen a number of times. Because I adore it, and because I’ve seen it a whole lotta buncha times, I don’t feel I have anything to say about it that I haven’t already said. Bad Santa, with its gloriously pungent dialogue and perfectly boozy, sleazy performance from the invaluable Billy Bob Thornton, is the kind of film I’ve seen often enough that I’ve incorporated it into my everyday dealings with the world - I’ll quote the film a few times a week, mostly the line, “Well, they can’t all be winners, kid, now can they?” (Though lately, I’ve also grown inordinately fond of “I’m gonna stick my whole fist up your ass.”) Interesting to note on repeat viewings how the creeping sentiment that defines the film’s last third begins to feel earned because Thornton truly invests himself in the character of Willie and allows us to see the flashes of disappointed humanity that he spends all his waking moments trying to drown in alcohol and licentiousness. This is, if nothing else, a dark portrait of a man on the edge of ruin who wakes up just enough to keep himself from going over the edge, and we laugh anyway because the self-destruction is so outsized and surly that it’s sickly amusing. That’s probably why the vulgarity has an impact beyond simple shock - it’s an expression of existential despair as potent as anything by Bergman.
Up next: From one drunk to another…
From the Shelf/D2D update #87: The Babysitter (1969, Tom Laughlin as “Don Henderson”)
(Featured in 42nd Street #2.)
Acquired: Last week, from Amazon.
Seen before?: Nope.
The Babysitter is about a midlife crisis cured by humping. And not just any humping - humping a free-spirited 19-year-old blonde who is decidedly not your wife. Such wonderful things the movies teach us these days!
Sarcasm aside, this black-and-white piece of cheesecake from the man who would be Billy Jack has more going for it than first blush would reveal. George Carey is credible in the lead role of George Maxwell, whose life is turned upside down by, respectively, pixieish babysitter Candy Wilson and sultry blackmailer Julie Freeman (who just wants Maxwell to acquit her biker boyfriend of murder). Carey articulates Maxwell’s frustration at the arc of his life (mostly his sex life) with more aplomb that I expected from a cheap potboiler such as this. Patricia Wymer isn’t nearly as effective as Candy - she’s a terrible actress, and you can see her thinking about every word she has to utter - but she’s certainly a lovely-looking young lady, and her lack of inhibition is nothing to sneeze at.
The script, too, is stronger than it seems at first. The dialogue is oft-dopey - in the film’s goofiest scene, Maxwell and Wilson initially bond over tacos, with the older man expressing admiration and wonder for the younger generation’s openness to new experiences, leaving me to wonder how sheltered this guy is if he lives in Southern California and doesn’t know what a goddamn taco is - but the plot takes some unexpected turns and generally seems to be trying its best to keep us on our toes while we mark times between nude scenes. Candy may ultimately be a grindhouse version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but she ends up being an unusually active iteration of the type. She leaves Maxwell better than she found him because that’s what she’s supposed to do; her selflessness, however, does not extend to Julie.
Also, this film contains gratuitous lesbianism and gratuitous biker rape. Not that everything about this film isn’t gratuitous.
Up next: Probably a childhood thing…
From the Shelf: Autumn Sonata (1978, Ingmar Bergman)
Acquired: Early in ‘08, used from an FYE.
Seen before? Once - May 20th, 2008.
True story: I put this film on last week after a long day at work, having not slept well for the previous few nights because of the vicious cold I had caught. So I was sick and exhausted, and I planned to merely watch the first half-hour or so of this before passing out. 90 minutes later, I’m still awake and glued to the TV, desperate to see how it all turns out even though I’d already seen this before. That’s the transfixing power of this bitter blast of Ingmar Bergman.
Thing is, I can’t imagine anyone else making this film - this is so typically Bergman that it skirts the edge of self-parody, or at least self-cannibalization. Yet it works beautifully, partly due to Ingmar’s prodigious facility for this sort of raw-nerve material and partly due to some terrific acting on the part of both Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman, both of whom are as good here as they’ve ever been. Ingrid plays a successful concert pianist who decides to jaunt over to her estranged daughter’s place after her longtime (male) companion dies, and thus the stage is set for a full complement of Bergmanesque agony.
It’s a film of precarious and volcanic emotion, where words are wielded like kitchen knives; this relationship seems dead before Ingrid arrives, and we’re just here to watch the body being buried. The visual scheme, all orange and brown and… well, autumnal, emphasizes this - Autumn Sonata is a film set in a season of dying, of things falling to pieces. Yet at the end, there’s the smallest glimmer of hope and forgiveness. Destruction leads to renewal.
I also liked Ingmar’s use of closeups and tight framing, using the camera eye as an expression of the trapped discomfort of Ingrid’s character. It’s a well-worn trick, but it works, dammit.
Up next: Bikers, blackmail, tits and tacos…
From the Shelf: Army of Darkness (1993, Sam Raimi)
Acquired: In 1998 from some now-defunct online retailer - part of the first batch of DVDs I ever bought.
Seen before?: A whole bunch of times. Can’t remember the last time, but it’s been a while.
Is there anything as painful as revisiting something you love and finding it’s not as good as you remember? I know the manic ramshackle nature of this is really part of its charm, but Jesus is that first act ever slack. Evil Dead II probably would have had the same issues if it didn’t basically cheat by kickstarting itself with a rehash of its predecessor. Because of this, Army of Darkness can’t really pull the same trick, so it condenses the whole thing into a four-minute prologue, and the cold open does it no favors. Raimi’s the kind of guy who needs a minute or two to settle himself into a comfortable groove before he can effectively cut loose, so the opening act of Army is awkwardly paced in a way I’d never really noticed before this. (Granted, that also likely stems from the film’s notorious editing/studio interference woes.) That said, most of this is still absolutely fucking golden. From roughly the old mill on, this thing is as unstoppable as the granite-jawed bumbler/hero that Ash has grown into. But I’d be lying to myself if I continued to ignore how bloody flawed it is.
Up next: Bergman + Bergman…
From the Shelf: Arang (2006, Ahn Sang-hoon)
Acquired: April of ‘07 as a review screener from the sadly-defunct Tartan Films.
Seen before?: Once - May 7th, 2007.
I covered most anything that’s worth covering in my Blogcritics review of this well-worn ghost movie, though it’s probably worth mentioning that the line of dialogue cited in the review (“It’s better to meet a ghost than a pervert”) more or less serves as a keystone to the entire film. Perversity and rape keep popping up as the film rolls on, making the thing seem like a long Korean knockoff of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” (or, as I prefer to call it, “Law and Order: The All-Rape Edition”). Doesn’t make the film any better, but I figured I’d at least bring it up.
Up next: The reason I got a DVD player…
From the Shelf: Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)
Acquired: A long, long time ago (probably mid-2000).
Seen before?: Twice, both times from this DVD, Last viewing likely late in 2003.
For my money, the greatest war film I’ve ever seen. There’s the famous Truffaut quote about a truly anti-war film being impossible to make because cinema makes war seem exciting; if we accept this as a truism, I submit that Coppola’s extraordinary, expansive rendition of the Vietnam War should be considered the rare truly anti-war film, because it makes war seem exhausting, paranoid and terrifying, and it does so better than any film I can think of that isn’t named Come and See. Most of the military grunts we see are twitchy, frightened young men who do whatever they can to distract themselves from the fact of the war, and the few truly competent soldiers we see are all completely insane, ranging from the outward barking mania of surf-obsessed Colonel Kilgore to the mind-blown, hollow-eyed fellow at the Do Long bridge who is uncannily accurate with a grenade launcher. At the center of it all is the grim Captain Willard, who exists only as a man of war, and the enigmatic Colonel Kurtz, whose clarity of vision regarding his purpose and function in the war machine have left him both the sanest and most psychotic man in the film. The overarching idea here is not of war as a cause of psychosis but as an incarnation of it - madness is endemic to the soldier because what they’re participating in is madness, and you can only simmer in that shit for so long before it rubs off on you. Apocalypse Now is a hugely harrowing vision of Hell from a great filmmaker who would never again work at this level - but then, most filmmakers never even get to this level.
Up next: Ghosts and perverts…
From the Shelf: The Ape (1940, William Nigh)
Acquired: Given to me by my mother a number of years ago.
Seen before?: Once - February 15th, 2005.
I didn’t have much to say the first time around, and I don’t have much to add to that not-much. This is a B-movie programmer of the worst kind, the kind that is neither interesting nor incompetent enough to be memorable. It’s literally film as product, cranked out like a sausage and tossed out to an audience that wasn’t there to see it but wanted their money’s worth for the day.
The only one working beyond basic workmanship, as was true for many a film in which he appeared, is the great Boris Karloff, who seems to be doing all he can to invest his stock character (the obsessed mad scientist) with soul and gravitas. Karloff’s character is easily the most noble in the film; though he commits evil deeds, he does them in service of a worthy cause (curing paralysis), and everyone he sins against is pictured as loathsome wastes of breath. I’d think the screenwriter was trying to make a point about the slippery morality of working for the greater good if the whole of the film wasn’t so threadbare; instead, I suspect he was typing pages five minutes prior to their filming.
Up next: The river and death…
From the Shelf: Amarcord (1973, Federico Fellini)
Acquired: May of 2007, from Amazon.
Seen before?: No.
A flashback crafted as only Fellini could. Loosely structured around a handful of characters, notably towheaded teen Titta and temptress-in-red Gradisca, this details a year in the life of an Italian village. Mussolini is in power, yet while Fascism is a part of the lives of the citizens (and there’s a terrific setpiece involving a Fascist parade and an enormous bust of Mussolini), it doesn’t seem to have a large effect on their day-to-day existence, maybe because they’re too busy living their lives or maybe because it’s a comment on what we choose to remember when we look back on past times. We remember that which stands out, and for, say, a young man deeply in the throes of puberty, whether or not the woman down the street was a loyal Fascist would occupy less space in your mental storehouse than the time the local tobacconist shoved your face into her massive breasts.
Its status as an explicit memory piece gives a certain weight to the Fellini gallery of grotesques. If these people are extravagant caricatures, if they walk around with leers carved on their faces like statues, it’s because they’re frozen in a certain time by the narrative and narrator(s). Did Volpina, the local prostitute, spend her every waking minute hunting men and carrying a look on her face that spoke of deep, insatiable hungers? Probably not, but that’s the image that gets burned in precisely because it’s so indelible. The mundane fades while the outsized and the unusual holds fast; to understand what this film does and why is, potentially, to understand the whole of Fellini’s work. It’s a film of moments, of incidents and beautiful images and great galloping desires splattered across an immense canvas. There’s room in here for the ridiculous and the serene, the extravagant and the understated, the terrifying and the joyful and the tragic (sometimes all at once, because such is life). There are parts and pieces here - the epic snowstorm near the film’s end and the peacock that happens along, the thick and unyielding fog in autumn - that get as close to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s intoxicating magic realism as nobody else in cinema has. Reflect on what a Fellini-directed adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera would look like. Then reflect on the fact that the adaptation that actually exists was made by Mike Newell. Then reflect on why that should make any sane person weep bitterly.
Up next: Boris, he’s my prime mate…
