Blindspot 2012: Umberto D.

Directed by Vittorio de Sica (1952)

Starring: Carlo Battisti, Maria Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari

This is exactly the kind of movie dog lovers would bawl their eyes at.  And look at that dog!  Adorable.  But Umberto D. is firmly located in a time and place – Rome, post World War II, when there was still rubble to clean away and mandatory retirement has left Umberto Domenico Ferrari in a very tight situation.  The movie opens with a protest for higher pensions, reminiscent of the Occupy movement.  Umberto is a tenant behind on his rent with a callous woman as his landlord.  His only friends are his dog Flike and the maid, Maria, although she’s concerned about her pregnancy.

It’s an Italian Neorealist masterpiece, and it is so sad.  Umberto is crushed by his circumstances, trying desperately to find enough money to pay for his back rent.  It’s a case study of being nickeled-and-dimed by societal pressures: from buying food and rent to paying for a doctor.  Even the landlady rents out rooms for couples, although for her it is to maintain her lifestyle.  She wants to remove Umberto just to make her sitting room larger.

It’s beautiful in its starkness – whether around the streets or in the apartments,  the clean lines juxtapose against the crumbling areas of characters’ lives.

I can’t rank Umberto D. comfortably against the other films of  this movement.  It’s not as relatable as The Bicycle Thieves, but I remember it better than Rome, Open City.  I’m just not at the point that Umberto is in his life.  Even Maria’s problem – getting a soldier to take responsibility for her pregnancy seems pretty distant.  The lynchpin of the movie is the dog.  I was so much more concerned about Flike than any other character in this movie, which means I’m terrible, but damn that dog!  That dog broke my heart.

Blindspot 2012: Bande a Part

Band of Outsiders

Directed by Jean Luc Godard (1964) Starring: Anna Karina, Sami Frey, Claude Brasseur

There’s a tiny part of me that’s regretting loading my Blindspot queue with a ton of foreign films, since it’s harder to multitask when watching a movie on the second to last day of the month, when I’ve still got homework to get done.

However, one of Jean Luc Godard’s early classics did not skate by me last night.  I managed to give it my whole attention.

There’s something very fun and kinetic about the French New Wave.  It takes a lot of its elements from love of the Hollywood films of the 30s and 40s and they tend to be conscious that what’s happening is a movie.  At the same time, there’s the feeling that a shoe’s about to drop and a character is going to start waxing poetic about an existential crisis.  Bande a Part doesn’t have too many scenes like that, but there is an omnipresent narrator who reveals the character’s thoughts every so often.

After meeting young Odile (Karina) at an English class, Franz (Frey) and Arthur (Brasseur) find out that a lodger at her house is holding a lot of cash in his wardrobe.  They get close to Odile and convince her to help them.  Arthur seduces her while Franz feels lonely in Paris, and Odile keeps switching between helping and resisting.

To be honest, Bande a Part is a pretty uncomfortable story.  Two older, rather emotionless men flit around a young woman and seduce her in order to gain her money.  While certain scenes feel like Odile knows what she’s getting into, there are double the times when it looks like she’s about to get date-raped.  This might be cultural and generational differences, but I’m still drawing the line: It ain’t okay.

Structurally, it feels like a novel ran into a B-movie and left the narration behind, occasionally having moments that are very sensitive about the context this story is appearing.  Those are the moments that remain interesting –  the literal moment of silence, the dance scene, the constant switching between chairs at the table.  These make the French New Wave style feel like the influential movement film history tells us it is, but it’s bogged down by non-characters.  And that’s probably part of the style as well.

As much as I love the kinetic energy of running through the Louvre and dancing in a cafe, I can’t say I didn’t get distracted from the film.  After awhile, I started thinking about Jason Wu’s New Wave-inspired line from Target, which made me wonder: Was the French New Wave a statement of style over substance in art?

The Last Sunset

Directed by Robert Aldrich (1961) Starring: Kirk Douglas, Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Joseph Cotten

This is officially the most ridiculous movie I’ve seen all year.  At first, I had thought: “Oh hey, a western with Kirk Douglas playing a man in black and Joseph Cotten as a drunk rancher? Sign me up!”  The first half is pretty much what I was expecting– O’Malley (Douglas) rides into the ranch of John Breckenridge (Cotten), offering himself as a cowboy for their cattle drive.  He has two conditions: One-fifth of the cattle and Breckenridge’s wife (Malone).  O’Malley and Belle had a thing before he became an outlaw, but now she’s married with a daughter, Melissa.

O’Malley has been followed into Mexico by Dana Stribling (Hudson), a Texan sheriff who wants to bring O’Malley to justice for killing his brother-in-law.  He gets roped into helping the cattle drive, on the condition that he’ll arrest O’Malley at the border.  Stribling falls for Belle on the trip and wants to marry her in Texas.

I just realized that this could have been a really interesting love-rectangle plot, but noooo Breckenridge has to get killed by some fellow Virginians in some damn bar fight.  And there goes half the reason I’m watching this movie…

(Joseph Cotten makes the best drunk character-actor.)

Post-Breckenridge’s passing, the second act is pretty much run of the mill Western fare.  Rock Hudson is so macho-honorable, it almost gave me a tooth ache.  Kirk Douglas does his usual anti-hero charm, which is cool, if he wasn’t working it on the mother and the daughter.  Meanwhile, the women have next to nothing to do (it’s a Western).

I was hoping for something consistently ridiculous and action-related, but the third act takes a dip in the creepy-psychosis area of the swimming pool.  It had been building up to it the entire movie, but I was also hoping for it to not take the shame-road.   Oh, movie, you didn’t have to slum in that way!  You could have come out of this with a little bit of dignity.

That said, several amazing drinking games could be played while watching.

Ace in the Hole

Directed by Billy Wilder (1951) Starring: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Richard Benedict

Chuck Tatum (Douglas) is stuck in the small town newspaper in New Mexico after being fired from the big city papers.  He offers himself to the owner of the Albequerque for cheap, sure that he’ll be on his way out in a few weeks.  A year later, he finds the story that will return him to the top: A man has gotten trapped in a tunnel under a sacred Indian Mountain.

I was torn from the start because Kirk Douglas is really hot in this movie, but he’s such a jerk!  A jerk who wears a belt and suspenders as a running metaphor from the first five minutes.  In any case, the point is to watch him fall, not really to reach some kind of redemption.  He builds up Leo’s (Benedict) predicament so it becomes a large media circus with a literal circus–like, the carnival comes in with rides and everything, as much as the big tent full of Tatum’s former co-workers.

Meanwhile, poor Leo is trapped in a cave and Tatum has made a deal with the sheriff so that he’s the only reporter allowed in to see him.  In order to make the story last, they convince the engineer to go through a more difficult route to save him, which will take days, compared to an easier route which would only take 16 hours.  The drill drives him insane so he can’t sleep, and to make matters worse he’s convinced that he has made the Indian spirits angry, which is why he’s stuck down there.

Leo’s wife (Sterling) wants to leave him and only sticks around because Tatum needs the sympathetic wife figure.  She ends up with a cash cow since the tourists coming by need something to eat and they’re the closest restaurant.  Her character is like the female version of Tatum–she just wants to get out and has no moral qualms about it.  Eh, I didn’t really find her that interesting.  She’s another one of Wilder’s highly amoral, maybe two-dimensional characters, like the boss in The Apartment.  She usually made an attempt to work against Tatum and then gives it up since he’s hot.

Wilder kind of hammers in the morals here, but he gets out some good performances and cool shots.  It’s his commentary on the media, which is lastingly relevant.  However, the throw away jokes are really awkward in their age, but they’re given in the first fifteen minutes, so it doesn’t effect the real plot.

I really like Wilder and Douglas, so this was kind of a disappointment, but that was just my high expectations.  It’s pretty decent, just not my favorite.

 

 

A Star is Born

Directed by George Cukor (1954) Starring: Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson, Charles Bickford, Tom Noonan

A Star is Born is an epic at 176 minutes long, complete with a lengthy song-and-dance number, a strange avant-garde sequence, and plain, good acting.  I watched it thinking “Huh, the depressing Singing in the Rain,” since it follows a similar, Hollywood-centric plot and has the same amount of prestige attached to it.

When Norman Maine (Mason) appears drunk at a benefit, his dignity is saved with the quick thinking of Esther Blodgett (Garland), who dances him into the wings after he walks on stage.  Norman is stunned by this show of kindness and follows her orchestra to their after-work hang out, where he insists that Esther should become a star.

During the lengthy “Born in a Trunk” sequence, we follow Esther’s career as much as her character’s career (and even Garland’s).  Esther becomes a star over night with the new name “Vicki Lester.”  She and Norman run off to get married, but around the same time his studio has to drop him, leaving him adrift, with only an alcoholic past anchoring him to Hollywood’s collective memory.

A Star is Born stands as a testament to Hollywood’s Technicolor Melodramas, but it experiments with a lengthy photo-montage of what Norman and Esther are doing between their first meeting and getting her to the studio. ( If you’ve seen La Jetee, it’s a bit like that.)  It’s referential towards the industry, commenting that the dance sequence for one of Esther’s new movies will go beyond An American in Paris.  Norman’s career is a testament to the ins and outs of the studio system, right down to how the studios handled the personal lives of their stars.

It is a giant time-suck of a movie, but it’s a consistently great movie, so it’s worth your three plus hours of attention.

Thanksgiving Pick: Hannah and Her Sisters

Written and Directed by Woody Allen (1986) Starring: Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest, Barbara Hershey, Michael Caine, Woody Allen, Carrie Fisher, Max von Sydow

For the holiday movie selection for the fine Turkey-bird season, here’s a classic from Woody Allen (which I had no idea was framed around Thanksgiving): Hannah and Her Sisters.

[Interspersed with inter titles that remind me of an episode of Frasier,?] Hannah and Her Sisters follows a very dramatic family across several years, beginning with the big Thanksgiving dinner.  An interior monologue from Elliot (Caine) tells us that he’s in love with his wife, Hannah’s (Farrow), sister Lee (Hershey).  However, he’s never had the courage to tell her, and instead follows her around and produces awkward conversations.  In the kitchen, Holly (Wiest) is asking for money from Hannah again, hoping to hold up a catering service while pursuing an acting career.

The driving plot comes from Hannah and her sisters’ relationships and careers, another story follows Mickey (Allen), Hannah’s ex-husband and hypochondriac, who gives up his job in television after a possible cancer scare.  He explores different religions and remembers his past with Hannah’s family, from turning to artificial insemination after finding out he’s infertile to a disastrous date with Holly after the divorce.

Mickey’s place in the story isn’t apparent until the very end, but his vignettes and flashbacks allow for a bit of dramedy-relief from the sisters’ stories.  Elliot eventually tells Lee he loves her and they begin an affair, often switching between the guilt at what they’re doing to Hannah as much as the satisfaction they both receive by being with each other.  Holly and her friend April (Fisher) meet David (Sam Waterston), a rich architect, at one of their catering jobs, which perpetuates their acting-rivalry with a love triangle.  Hannah, meanwhile, seems almost out of step in the story: She is a successful actress who takes care of her children, her parents, and her sisters.  The drama that emanates from her life seems to be everything she doesn’t know.

The story is well-balanced between the various plots and each sister has a neurotic moment where they question their place in the family or in the shared-family business of dramatic arts.  Where Hannah is talented, Holly is not; where Holly is focused, Lee is aimless.  By the time the final Thanksgiving scene rolls around, everyone’s situations have changed, whether it’s apparent or not.  A very taut, well-defined drama with an amazing cast.

Singin’ in the Rain

Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly (1952) Starring: Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen

Since seeing this film, I have had the music stuck in my head.  I mean that in the best possible way.  It’s absolutely infectious.  It easily tops the list of “I Have Gone Too Long With This Movie Not in My Life.”

Don Lockwood (Kelly) is a silent film actor who earned fame and fortune acting opposite Lina Lamont (Hagen) in romantic dramas.  However, talkies have just been introduced and Lina’s voice matches her personality.  They get the idea to dub over Lina’s lines with Kathy’s voice (Reynolds), who had met Don through a very unconventional way.

I love Cosmo Brown (O’Connor).  God, the most adorable character in the history of film, am I right? (I am totally right).  I love “Make Them Laugh” and the witty one-liners.

The dance numbers are a sight to see.  What I love about the Golden Age of Movie Musicals that we don’t get too much anymore are the fantastic to watch dances.  They about as realistic as a world where people randomly sing, but also just as infectious.  I know that some musicals are better suited to a minor about of choreography, while others seem to exist just to show it off.  Singin’ in the Rain has the right mix: It’s got great music as well as the dances to match them in energy and talent.

Paths of Glory

Directed by Stanley Kubrick (1957) Starring: Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready, Joe Turkel, Timothy Carey

There are a few things that I am thankful about with regards of Paths of Glory:

1) I am so glad we covered lens and camera movement this week in Film Analysis.

2) I quite probably have a crush on Kirk Douglas.  There, I said it.

3) Criterion Collection! Behold, something I will own very soon!

In the French trenches of World War One, the 701st regiment is ordered by General Mireau (Macready) on a suicidal mission to take the Anthill, in the German territory.  While Colonel Dax (Douglas) disagrees with this course of action, he relents.  While Dax is able to get most of the soldiers into battle, a third stay in the trenches.  Mireau orders them to be shelled, and this attack is only barely prevented.  Eventually, no land is taken and the soldiers retreat.

Mireau, outraged by this show of “cowardice” wants a general court martial.  Three soldiers are picked, one from each company: Private Ferol (Carey), Corporal Paris (Meeker), and Private Arnaud (Turkel).  The film shifts from the front to a court sequence, with Dax defending his men before the council.  With testimony that it was a lost cause and evidence that Mireau was doing this to further his own career, it all comes to naught: the honor of the French army must be upheld.  The men are sentenced to be executed by the next morning.

Kubrick proves himself a master camera movement.  The sweeping shots of the battlefield and moving through the trenches are marvelous.  He uses lenses and camera angles and with just one shot, characters situations and relationships are quickly understood.  So many great things to appreciate with this movie, I tell ya.

I Walked with A Zombie

I’ve been meaning to see this since, ah… I was 16 or 17?  I had gotten a box of B-Movie Poster Postcards and this one went on the wall fairly quickly.  We were also watching Cat People in one of my high school film class’s, and my teacher mentioned he had seen I Walked with a Zombie at a local film festival.  They’re similar in that they are horror movies which are not actually about the horror.  The problem is, I’m not sure what this was about.

If you want to get all Freudian, the “manifest content” is that Betsy (Frances Dee) is a nurse sent to work in St. Antigua for the sick wife of a sugar plantation owner.  She arrives, smitten with her employer Paul Holland (Tom Conway), who believes that they live at a sad place.  And who wouldn’t in his position?  His wife Jessica was just about to run off with his half-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison) when she caught a fever and became a zombie.

They continue to bring up the race issue between the rich, Christian plantation family and the black population who participate in Voodoo rituals.  Paul doesn’t hide that the island had a history of slavery and that the population there isn’t at all happy.  With a conflict between religions and ideologies, even upon the medical treatment for the zombie wife.  So you have that, which is quite probably the lead “latent content” of the movie.

You’ve got the same classic B-Movie situation within the setting, where everything has been made very cheaply, although with considerable artistic skill.  Shadows are used to a beautiful extent, usually when Betsy has to run in the night, either to make sure that Jessica doesn’t run off or to find out more information about Voodoo.

Betsy believes that Paul’s wife might be cured by taking her to a Voodoo ceremony, her motives in this being that she wants to see him happy again.  Paul’s mother, the sort of uber-matriarch character for the island, discourages this, though she uses Voodoo for her own purposes.

There’s some stock character-actions working with these characters, like Betsy playing the Selfless Nurse, both in risking her health by taking care of Jessica, but also sacrificing her own happiness for the “happiness” of the man who loves her.  Jessica ends up coming off as this useless character, but it comes as a result of her infidelity.  The further back I get from the film, the more I think it’s a critique on female sexuality or concepts of female roles– often Betsy or Jessica are criticized for being “too beautiful” or at least thinking they are beautiful.  Betsy is the heroine because she is so self-sacrificing, but the men stand around being very passive, with no clear ideas of who is the hero and who is the villain.

So, a fun short little creeper of a movie, but not something I’d write home about.

The Princess Bride

Wow this um… might actually work better on TV than on the big screen?

Just a thought.  It might have something to do with the quality of the projector they were using at the Varsity.  I’m not sure if they are bothering to get 35mm film, the magnetic tape stuff, or just widening the image of a DVD (although I don’t think it’s that).  Something about the picture quality made it seem very much not-like-a-film, is what I’m saying, and more like a BBC special.

Oh, but I love The Princess Bride! Doesn’t everyone?  I remember seeing it for the first time when I was eight and thinking it was Zorro… good times.  Meanwhile, in the Actual Universe!  I think that, now, when we think of “Fairy Tale Movie”, it’s always going to be Disney, and then The Princess Bride. It stands up in a genre of its own, just because.

Buttercup, in love with Westley, though believing him dead agrees to marry Humperdinck, the prince.  And… hijinks ensue.  (C’mon y’all, do I really need to summarize this movie?)

While not as fan-active as the Pulp Fiction screening (no one behind us shouting out famous lines and/or laughing in anticipation of the jokes), it was really fun.  I think just about everyone was mouthing along with “Hello.  My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die!”  The fight scene between Inigo and Count Reuben was probably the best scene to see on the big screen.  Other than that, watching the movie was a lot of “Spot the set!” game.  I love the sets in The Princess Bride, but huge and in front of you lessens the effect you would get from them on the TV.  I love how cheesy-beautiful this movie is.  It is a pulpy fantasy novel come to life, and makes me hope that the next time I’m sick, someone comes to read to me.