Friday, October 31, 2014

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Director: Jonathan Demme                              Writer: Ted Tally & Thomas Harris
Film Score: Howard Shore                               Cinematography: Tak Fujimoto
Starring: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Scott Glenn and Ted Levine

I’ll never forget how delighted I was when The Silence of the Lambs swept the top awards at the Oscars in early 1992. Ostensibly a horror film, it was not only the first such film to win a major Oscar since Fredric March won the best actor award for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sixty years earlier, it was also the first film to win the top five Academy Awards since One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1972. I was also pleased because I had already been a longtime fan of author Thomas Harris and knew that the added publicity would not only increase exposure to his latest novel, but also the first book in the series, Red Dragon, and the film that had been made of it, Manhunter. The screenplay by Ted Tally is a good one, hewing close to Thomas Harris’s original vision, and winning an Oscar in the process. He actually knew Harris and began thinking about a screenplay after receiving an advanced copy of the novel from the author prior to publication. Originally Gene Hackman was the principal mover in trying to produce the film, possibly directing and starring as Hannibal Lecter, the character eventually played by Anthony Hopkins. But Hackman dropped out and Jonathan Demme was brought in to direct. An interesting choice considering the wide range of films he had directed previously and the modest success of most of them.

The story opens on the FBI training grounds in Quantico, Virginia. Jodie Foster plays a cadet who is called into the office of Scott Glenn, head of the behavioral sciences unit, the division that studies serial killers. Glenn is conducting interviews with all incarcerated killers and all have participated except the notorious Anthony Hopkins. Glenn hopes he’ll open up to a rookie in a way he wouldn’t with a veteran officer. She asks if the interview has anything to do with an ongoing investigation into a killer called Buffalo Bill, but he assures her it doesn’t. At the prison she is briefed by the brilliantly creepy Anthony Heald and Frankie Faison is the guard in the maximum-security wing who tells her the rules. But nothing can prepare the viewer for the dolly shot down the corridor from Foster’s point of view and seeing the brightly lit cell with Hopkins, standing dead still in the middle of the floor, eyes blazing. Hopkins, in addition to being a serial killer who ate his victims, is also a brilliant psychologist. He senses immediately that Foster is there to learn about Buffalo Bill, even if she doesn’t know it. Glenn warned her not to give him any personal information about herself but, desperate to make a good showing, she answers questions about her personal life in order to gain information he has about the new killer.

The subplot concerns the killer himself, Ted Levine in his breakout role after appearing in a series of TV movies and bit parts in feature films. He removes much of the skin off of his victims before dumping them in one of the many rivers around Ohio. His latest victim is a young woman, Brooke Smith in only her second film. She is captured when Levine pretends to be attempting to lift a couch into the back of his van with a broken arm. He keeps her in what looks like a partially filled in well in the basement of his house, feeding her very little, and telling her to put lotion on her skin. Meanwhile Foster’s relationship with Hopkins becomes increasingly complex. Glenn has to admit to her that she was sent in to get information about Levine and now she goes with him on several errands concerning the case. Hopkins uses his relationship with Foster to get transferred to Tennessee, as it turns out that Smith is the daughter of a U.S. Senator from that state, the beautiful Diane Baker. Their meeting in an airplane hanger, with Hopkins trussed up so that only his lips and eyes can move, is wonderfully chilling. Eventually the two story lines weave together, with Hopkins’ unique relationship with Foster deepening as he gradually allows her to get ever closer to discovering Levine.

Ultimately, it’s the direction by Jonathan Demme that really defines the film. The choices he makes are very confident, from the long tracking shot that opens the film beneath the credits, to the judicious use of closeups on all of the lead characters, to the entire Memphis courthouse scene, as well as the finale. Demme not only won an Oscar for best direction, but the film won for best picture as well. Finally, both Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster were given statuettes for their performances, completing the sweep of the top honors at that year’s Academy Awards. Other notable faces appearing in the film are the great Dan Butler as an entomologist and Charles Napier as a Memphis police officer, while directors Roger Corman and George Romero make cameo appearances as the director of the FBI and an FBI field agent respectively. The film score was composed by Howard Shore, a Canadian composer who was an excellent choice considering he had worked extensively with Canadian horror director David Cronenberg prior to the film. Though not initially a blockbuster hit, the brilliant characterizations in the film and the solid direction, combined with a controversial plotline, all worked in concert to make The Silence of the Lambs one of the great horror films of all time.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Fear (1996)

Director: James Foley                                     Writer: Christopher Crowe
Film Score: Carter Burwell                              Cinematography: Thomas Kloss
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon, William Petersen and Amy Brenneman

Fear is something of a teen thriller, of a kind Hollywood doesn’t really make anymore. It’s a film that still attempts to appeal to adult audiences at the same time, unlike most of today’s films, which have a distinct dividing line in terms of audience. But even with that, it’s an odd film, slow moving and never really frightening in the way it could have been. The film was only Mark Wahlberg’s third film, and he’s so young that he doesn’t really bring anything unique to the production. He does acquit himself well, however, and certainly does nothing to let the film down. Reese Witherspoon had done a few more films than Wahlberg, though she was still at an early stage in her career as well. She doesn’t fare as well in the acting department, but then she’s never been very convincing on film. Her acting style seems very superficial and lacks any kind of deep emotional center to ground her performances. William Petersen’s appearance is interesting. He burst onto the scene in the mid-eighties in To Live and Die in L.A. and Manhunter, only to disappear into television and minor film work. This was something of a comeback that would only be solidified when he landed the leading role in TV’s C.S.I. a few years later. Amy Brenneman is the other lead and, while adequate, her weaknesses as an actress are evident.

The film begins with Reese Witherspoon as part of the ultimate blended family. Her father, William Petersen, is remarried to Amy Brenneman whose young son lives with them in Seattle. Petersen is an architect and they live in a gated community on the water. Witherspoon’s best friend is Alyssa Milano who is something of a daredevil and overtly sexual. When she skips class to drag Witherspoon to a popular bar in town, they see Mark Wahlberg and Witherspoon locks eyes with him. That night at a rave they meet again and alone afterward he says all the right things to her. In fact, he’s a little too perfect. When he meets her family he’s charming, helpful, respectful and while it definitely get’s Petersen’s radar up, it’s not enough to set off the alarm. When Wahlberg sets his clock back, Petersen misses a work deadline and winds up having to drive to Vancouver. He takes Brenneman with him, leaving Witherspoon alone with her younger brother, and when Witherspoon invites Wahlberg over she gives him her virginity. But when Wahlberrg sees her friend, Gary Rohmer, hugging her at school, he hops out of the car and beats him up, giving her a black eye in the process. Petersen is ready to shut the whole thing down, but when Witherspoon defies him and goes to Wahlberg's house she sees him having sex with Milano, and then she ends it herself. Or so she thinks.

The last twenty minutes of the film deals with the family’s harrowing encounter with a psychotic teen, jealous, enraged, and murderous. It’s not a great film by any stretch, but the only thing that keeps it from being bad is a fascinating screenplay. Primarily a TV writer, Christopher Crowe sort of defies the clichés and delivers a really watchable story. One of the things he does is lace his script with clues in very interesting ways. In an early scene with Wahlberg and Witherspoon he tells her that if something is too good to be true it probably is. This is juxtaposed with his meeting the family and behaving perfectly, to the point of strangeness. The one crack in the façade is when, in an unguarded moment, he commands Witherspoon to bring him a Coke. The look on Petersen’s face shows that he knows that behavior and can already see his little girl five years in the future, battered and bullied while Wahlberg commands her to get him a beer. Another moment happens near the end of the film when Wahlberg tells Witherspoon not to look at him with her eyes or hear him with her ears, but to feel who he really is. This is juxtaposed with his abusive behavior toward Alyssa Milano, demonstrating his true nature that he keeps hidden from Witherspoon.

While second-unit establishing shots were done in Seattle during sunset, the majority of the exteriors were filmed in Vancouver, Canada. It’s an oft used substitute that I’m sure for most viewers is perfectly acceptable, but for anyone who lives in Seattle, Vancouver is nothing like it. For one thing, the light is very different and even a few degrees of latitude to the north gives the sunlight a much lower slant. For another, the terrain is also very different. Vancouver is much more rocky and cliff-like on the coastline, where Seattle has a much more gentle approach to the water, especially around Mercer Island where the film is supposedly set. The biggest issue with the film as a whole, however, is the glacial pace of the thing. Because Crowe’s screenplay and Wahlberg’s character give so many clues to his sociopathy, the viewer knows something is wrong with him early on. Thus, spending so much time waiting for the family to catch up is not really suspenseful at all. The screenplay should have made him more normal and allowed the viewer to make the discovery along with the family, or made Wahlberg begin torturing them much earlier. Still, there was enough about Fear that was interesting that I didn’t hate it. It’s not recommended, but definitely worth checking out to make an individual assessment.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

Director: Joe May                                            Writers: Curt Siodmak & Lester Cole
Film Score: Hans Salter & Frank Skinner          Cinematography: Milton R. Krasner
Starring: Vincent Price, Nan Grey, Cedric Hardwicke and Cecil Kellaway

After the sequels to their first blockbuster horror films in the mid thirties, The Bride of Frankenstein and Dracula’s Daughter, had done so well one would have thought Universal would have immediately rushed in to do more. And they may well have, but a British ban on horror movies suddenly made excursions into the genre a much more tenuous financial proposition in the late thirties and so it wasn’t until Son of Frankenstein in 1939 that the studio revived the horror films that became forever associated with the studio. Their next project was The Invisible Man Returns but James Whale, the director of the original Invisible Man, had been unceremoniously fired by the new ownership that had taken over the company and so German émigré Joe May was given the job as director. One of the people May had worked with in Germany was writer Curt Siodmak, and so it was through May’s influence that Siodmak was given the first of many writing assignments at Universal, and would go on to pen another film in the series, The Invisible Agent. Siodmak worked with May on the story idea and with screenwriter Lester Cole on the script, and while it’s a very different kind of film than the original it still has its own charm.

One immediately senses a more atmospheric film than James Whale’s original, and more in keeping with Universal’s horror output of the forties. The credits open over a fog-shrouded hillside with dirt in the foreground that looks like a dead body. Then the camera slowly pans over to the entrance of a large estate. In the servant’s quarters they discuss with sadness the impending execution of Vincent Price, the young lord of the manner, for the murder of his brother. Upstairs Price’s cousin Cedric Hardwicke and his fiancée Nan Grey do likewise. John Sutton, the brother of Claude Rains from the first film, goes to see Price in his cell an hour before the execution, and a short while later Price is discovered missing. A call is put in to the head of Scotland Yard, Cecil Kellaway, but the inspector is unperturbed by the news. It seems that he was part of the investigation into Rains’ murder spree from the first film and realizes Sutton must have given Price the same elixir that Rains used to turn invisible. Price makes his first “appearance” in the countryside where Grey and Sutton have set up a secluded cottage for him to stay in. As with the first film, the race is on for Sutton to come up with an antidote to the invisibility before the drug turns Price mad.

Nan Grey is absolutely ravishing in the picture, and is a terrific actress playing her role with a subdued fear rather than the outright hysterics of most horror film spouses. She had a small but memorable role in Dracula’s Daughter, and would go on to work with Joe May and Vincent Price again in The House of Seven Gables. The subplot in the film involves Cedric Hardwicke’s infatuation with her, and his ultimate design to get Price out of the way, inherit the estate, and win her for himself. It’s a role that is similar to the one he would play seven years later in the Lucille Ball thriller Lured from 1947, a film that Alan Napier would work on as well. Here, he is the drunken foreman of the coal factory that Price owns, and has been given orders by Hardwicke to do away with many of the safety regulations. The film has a distinct moral undertone lacking in the original. While Claude Rains was already half-crazed by the beginning, he was also the scientist who did it to himself. Price, on the other hand, is a victim in the picture, something the screenplay does a lot to establish. Though it was one of his earliest films, Price does a solid job in the title role, wrapped in bandages or just a disembodied voice much of the time.

The direction by Joe May is good, and he even has some nice moments, like the lengthy tracking shot in the scene where Price is chasing Alan Napier through the woods. Special effects expert John Fulton would come up with a new trick on this film, showing the outline of Price in the rain and smoke. But while there are plenty of optical illusions featuring moving objects, there are relatively few effects shots featuring Price himself as they are quite obvious in the film. Nevertheless, Fulton along with sound engineers Bernard B. Brown and William Hedgcock were nominated for an Academy Award for special effects that year but lost out to Alexander Korda’s The Thief of Bagdad. The film score was written by Frank Skinner. He had already scored Son of Frankenstein the previous year, but this was the first he composed with the assistance of Hans Salter, prior to their classic work on The Wolf Man from the following year. Character actors include Mary Gordon as the cook at the estate, Forrester Harvey who plays a caretaker who hides Price for a while, and Billy Bevan playing his standard bumbling Bobbie. The Invisible Man Returns, while very different from its predecessor, still manages to be a success on its own terms, and is definitely one of the better entries in Universal second horror cycle.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Anatomy (2000)

Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky                             Writers: Peter Engelmann & Stefan Ruzowitzky
Film Score: Marius Rhland                               Cinematography: Peter von Haller
Starring: Franka Potente, Benno Fürmann, Anna Loos and Sebastian Blomberg

Deadfall was director Stefan Ruzowitzky’s first American film, and I thought it was so good that I wanted to seek out more from him. It turned out I had already seen The Inheritors, a fantastic historical comedy-drama, and looking back at his other German films one really stood out, the horror film Anatomy, primarily because it stars Franka Potente. She has been one of my favorite actresses since first seeing her in The Bourne Identity and the German film Run Lola Run. More recently she has appeared on an episode of House, M.D., and is currently a regular on the second season of the Amerian version of The Bridge. Unfortunately, this is not a great movie. Sort of across between Coma and Re-Animator, it feels about ten years older than it actually is, but it does have some things going for it. Chiefly, because it’s German, it doesn’t fall prey to all of the predictable American slasher film stereotypes. The acting, for the most part, is also decent, and the special effects are somewhat believable.

The film begins in Munich, with Franka Potente in an anatomy class with a professor who is something of a pervert. He lets her know that she has been selected to attend a more prestigious medical school in Heidelberg that both her father and grandfather attended. Her grandfather is sick in the hospital, while her father wants her to work in his local clinic instead of his belief that she is just chasing after money, but she goes anyway. From there the scene shifts to a man, Simon Schwarz, waking up on an operating table, horrified to see that he is being cut apart. On the train Potente runs into Anna Loos, a buxom blonde, also from the med school in Munich, and Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey, a young man with a heart problem. Once at the new school she is told to meet in the anatomy lab with the other new students. There she sees a dead body move and while the other women are scared off, she discovers that some of the male students have wired the body in order to scare them. Later, Schwering is kidnapped at a bar and wakes up on the table himself. When the head doctor in Heidelberg, Traugott Buhre, reveals Schwering on the slab, Potente gets suspicious and begins hunting for answers. The audience, however, knows that the anatomy museum at the school is being peopled by unwilling victims, and that Potente doesn’t know what she’s getting into.

The screenplay by Ruzowitzky and Peter Engelmann draws primarily on Coma for influence. Potente is the woman in peril, walking into an ongoing medical nightmare in which a secret society of doctors is breaking the law and killing healthy people. At the same time, however, there is a sterility to the sets, beginning with the dissecting lab in Munich and becoming even more so in the anatomy lab in Heidelberg. That part of the film, and its attendant special effects, feels more like Re-Animator. Still, Franka Potente does as good a job as she can, considering the screenplay. She doesn’t have the depth of character to draw on or a naturalistic setting to work against to pull it off. Sebastian Blomberg, as Potente’s boyfriend does a much better job than Benno Fürmann, the jealous boyfriend of Anna Loos. The one standout scene is Loos and Holger Speckhahn going into the lab at night for a sexual anatomy lesson, but the film lapses back into predictability shortly after and therefore can’t build on that energy. Anatomy is slick and stylish, but short on character development. It’s of interest to fans of Franka Potente, but not something I will probably return to.

Maurice (1987)

Director: James Ivory                                        Writers: Kit Hesketh-Harvey & James Ivory
Film Score: Richard Robbins                            Cinematography: Pierre Lhomme
Starring: James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Denholm Elliott and Rupert Graves

Though Merchant-Ivory Productions had been in existence since 1961 when Indian producer Ismael Merchant teamed up with American director James Ivory to produce English-speaking Indian films for the international market, they didn’t really achieve their greatest success until the 1980s when they began filming British stories by Henry James and E.M. Forster. Henry James’ The Bostonians was their first big hit and they followed that up with their most popular film A Room with a View, which was based on the novel by E.M. Forster. For their next film they continued with Forster’s most controversial story Maurice. The novel was about a same-sex relationship between men he knew at Cambridge, and Forster refused to have it published during his lifetime because his perception of the subject matter is that it would be so controversial it could only affect his career and book sales in a negative way. The book only made it’s way to the public in 1971, the year after his death. Despite the film’s critical success, it did not attain the popular success that other films by the production team were able to achieve in the early nineties like Howard’s End.

The film begins with the young Orlando Wells as the title character. He’s leaving his private boarding school to go to a public one, and as he has no male adults in his life one of his instructors, Simon Callow, takes it upon himself to teach the youngster the facts of life. Years later, in college, James Wilby now plays the title character, and he happens across Hugh Grant in the room of one of the other students, Mark Tandy. They strike up a friendship and Wilby, who previously had expressed no interest in music, is suddenly enthralled with Grant’s study of Tchaikovsky. But one summer they become closer than ever but when Grant professes his love for the other, Wilby balks. He’s been brought up Christian and the idea goes against his very nature, or so he thought. Once he decides to return Grant’s advances, the two of them begin a years-long romance. At first Grant is nearly open with his affection, flaunting it in front of the servants, while Wilby is afraid of being caught. But the tables turn after Tandy is arrested and stripped of his position and his title, and ordered to the work farm. Realizing he could lose everything, Grant takes a trip to Greece to sort things out and determines that the two of them should take the traditional course in life, leaving Wilby devastated.

In desperation Wilby turns to the family physician Denholm Elliott, and he in turn sends him to American Ben Kingsley who tries to use psychotherapy to “cure” him. But it’s not until he meets Rupert Graves, the gameskeeper at Grant’s estate, that he is finally able to accept who he is. The heartbreaking thing about this story is something I’m not sure most people pick up on right away. The implication early on is that both Hugh Grant and James Wilby are gay, but I’m not convinced that’s the case. For many of those boys in boarding school or segregated colleges, relationships with those of their own sex is oftentimes the only thing available to them . . . for years. Historian and journalist Richard Rhodes related similar experiences in his book Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey, that sex between boys at boarding school had nothing to do with being gay. Looked at in this light, Hugh Grant’s actions become clear. His dalliance with Wilby after school is over is simply a continuance of the primary intimate relationship he’s had in his life, not a sexual preference.

Hugh Grant’s character receives a lot of negative criticism for the fact that he’s apparently duping his wife, Phoebe Nicholls, as well as deluding himself and abandoning Wilby. But Grant’s ability to get married is not necessarily going against his nature but I would argue that he is actually finding it after being sequestered with men for so long. There’s a line of dialogue with Wilby, where he says as much. Assuming that Wilby has fallen in love with a woman he says, “It’s the greatest thing on earth, perhaps the only one . . . Aren’t women extraordinary?” The sentiment seems genuine in the film and gives much more logic to Grant’s behavior. It also makes the story that much more tragic because Wilby has no such option for the simple fact that he is really gay. Hugh Grant is impossibly young in the film, and does a tremendous job. James Wilby’s performance is much less so, but that’s no doubt due to the screenplay. There is an unfocused quality to his performance and, with the lack of voiceover, an emotional disconnect for the audience. And his willingness to rebound into the arms of a servant is a disturbing in a way that isn’t resolved before the film ends. Rupert Graves, continues the excellent work he began in A Room with a View, and the cameos by Simon Callow and Helena Bonham Carter are fun. Maurice is certainly an interesting film, fascinating in a way, but ultimately too one-dimensional to be considered great.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Director: James Whale                                     Writer: William Hurlbut & John L. Balderston
Film Score: Franz Waxman                              Cinematography: John J. Mescall
Starring: Colin Clive, Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger and Elsa Lanchester

There have been very few in cinematic history--The Godfather II and Terminator 2 come to mind--but The Bride of Frankenstein is one of those rare sequels that actually managed to surpass the artistry and popularity of the original film. And it’s easy to see why. James Whale had been chafing at the idea of going back to horror films ever since finishing with The Invisible Man, but because Universal was so keen on having him direct the sequel to Frankenstein, he used this as a bargaining chip and cashed it in to do One More River. At the same time, he knew the studio wouldn’t take him off the sequel and so he took full control of the production from the screenplay right down to the makeup and made the film in his image just as Dr. Frankenstein created his monster. One way he did this was by taking the elements of humor from his previous films to a new level. The inclusion of actors like Ernest Thesiger and Una O’Connor, and to a lesser extent, Dwight Frye, to undercut the horrific elements of the first film changed the complexion of the sequel completely. The other aspect of the film that separates it so dramatically from the first is the film score by Franz Waxman. It is not only one of the great horror film scores, but one of the great scores of any film from the thirties. But with Waxman seemingly working with Whale to emphasizing the humor, it does tend to push the film toward a more popular taste that leaves it wanting as a true horror film.

The film’s opening is incredibly unique. Going back to the very beginning, it starts on a stormy night with Elsa Lanchester as Mary Shelley, Gavin Gordon as Lord Byron, and Douglas Walton as Percy Shelley, discussing Lanchester’s novel Frankenstein. Gordon’s trilled Rs are almost distracting as he waxes rhapsodic about it, but what’s truly fascinating is how he recounts the story with scenes from the first film, like something from a TV show but nothing I’ve ever seen before in a feature film. Then Lanchester says there is more, and picks up the story from the burning windmill. Where Colin Clive had lived in the original film, he begins this one dead and comes back to life like his monster. Meanwhile Karloff, having fallen through the floor of the windmill, kills the parents of the little girl he drowned in the first film before coming after Clive. The presence of Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Pretorious is so borderline camp that it nearly destroys the film. But Whale simply continues to push forward with a complete lack of shame as the jealous Thesiger steals Clive away from Valerie Hobson as the new Elizabeth and demonstrates the tiny people he has created. The set pieces in the film are extraordinary, from the Christ-like crucifixion scene in the woods, to the scene with O.P. Heggie as the blind hermit which John Carradine stumbles upon, to the underground crypt scene between Karloff and Thesiger, and of course the finale with Lanchester as Karloff’s bride.

The supreme confidence James Whale displays in the film is startling, and that’s saying something considering how skillful he was already. But one has the sense that his acceptance of the assignment meant that he could do whatever he wanted and take whatever chances he desired, and there was nothing anyone would do about it. The moving camera work in the scene where Colin Clive is brought home is absolutely beautiful. And the way Whale brings him back to life, paralleling the same scene in the first film when Karloff moves his hand, is genius. Whale keeps some of the Expressionistic elements of the first film, but uses them sparingly, and the Dutch angles in the laboratory scenes at the end add the perfect touch of menace. Ultimately, however, one has the sense that in creating something so distinctive, that Whale was not only creating a masterpiece but undercutting so completely the ideas that the horror film had been founded on, that he was also attempting to ensuring that he would never be asked to film another one again. To his dismay, however, the Laemmle’s immediately wanted Whale to go to work on Dracula’s Daughter. He had been promised the directorial duties on Showboat, however, and continued to emphasize that production in talks with the owners in the hopes of recreating himself as an A-list director. But after the Laemmle’s lost the studio in 1936 his hopes were dashed when the new ownership simply wanted to get rid of him altogether.

In Richard T. Jameson’s essay for The A List, he first addresses the way the doctor’s name became grafted onto the monster in the wake of the first film’s success. But in the prologue to Bride, Gavin Gordon supports the notion by saying that Frankenstein is the “monster created out of cadavers” and thus transferring the name to the monster for all time. Jameson recognizes Ernest Thesiger’s Pretorious as the pivotal role in the picture, with Valerie Hobson presaging his entrance by devolving into near hysterics at her delusions of the image of death entering the room beforehand, but fails to emphasize the fact. Instead he rehashes the tired old cliché of the film as a gay allegory, referencing Whale’s sexual orientation and obliquely tying the persecution of Karloff to the idea, when it is Thesiger who is the key to understanding the film. He is, as Hobson recognizes, the Angel of Death. He first lures Colin Clive away from his wedding bed, but then coerces him when that isn’t enough. He dines in the crypt with Karloff and at the end brings death down on everyone--though the studio changed the ending you can still see Clive in the laboratory when the walls come crashing down. Lanchester says as much in the prologue when she talks about the hubris of the doctor attempting to usurp god’s authority, and Pretorious is the personification of death in Karloff’s own reading of “Appointment in Samarra” from Targets, with the doctor unable to outrun his fate. The Bride of Frankenstein is, and always will be, one of the great films of the thirties in any genre.

Friday, October 10, 2014

The Clock (1945)

Director: Vincente Minnelli                               Writers: Robert Nathan & Joseph Schrank
Film Score: George Bassman                          Cinematography: George J. Folsey
Starring: Judy Garland, Robert Walker, James Gleason and Keenan Wynn

In 1943, after appearing as an extra in three films, Robert Walker was finally given a feature role in a war film, Bataan, and that set his career for the rest of war. He appeared in seven war films over the next two years. But it wouldn’t be until the actor appeared in a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951, Strangers on a Train, that his image would become indelibly etched in the minds of moviegoers. Unfortunately his untimely death the following year ended a career that was on a real upswing. One of Walker’s wartime pictures is The Clock, a frothy romantic comedy set in New York City that is notable for being Judy Garland’s first dramatic starring role in which she didn’t sing. She had become romantically involved with director Vincente Minnelli during their previous film, Meet Me in St. Louis, and when the dailies of the initial director Fred Zinnemann were not very good she suggested he be replaced by Minnelli. The merely average box office for the film had to do with audience expectations for Garland, especially the lack of music, and the fact that audiences were war-weary by the time of the May release date.

The film opens in Penn Station. Robert Walker is a serviceman who has just arrived in New York City for two days of leave. Once out on the street, however, he is confronted with the enormity of the buildings and decides to head back inside. While he’s reading a newspaper Judy Garland trips over his foot and loses a heel. He gets it fixed and tags along with her up Fifth Avenue, still stunned at the scenery. Though she tries to let him down easy and wants to get home to her apartment, Garland winds up taking him to Central Park and then to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where they walk and talk, mostly he does, about what he wants after the war, to settle down in his small hometown. Eventually she does catch her bus, but Walker runs it down and she agrees to see him that night, under the big clock at the Hotel Astor. When Garland finally gets home her roommate, Ruth Brady, grills her about being picked up by a uniform. But Garland is also from a small town and is drawn to Walker’s simple charms. After promising Brady she won’t go out with him, Garland ditches her boyfriend and meets Walker anyway. At the end of the evening they wind up in Central Park again, and have one of the most beautifully simple first kisses ever put on film.

Trying to get Garland home they meet milkman James Gleason who gives them a ride, and later a drunken Keenan Wynn in a lunchroom, and eventually the evening turns into an entire night together. But when they’re accidentally separated on the subway, the clock on Walker’s leave threatens to run out before they can find each other again. Because it’s MGM, there are a number of cameos by familiar character actors. Dick Elliott plays the friendly man in at the train station, and Garry Owen plays the fare collector on the bus. Lucile Gleason plays James Gleason’s wife and silent star Barbara Bedford plays the U.S.O. manager to whom Garland goes to in desperation. The humor in the film isn’t forced and there are some nice comedic moments. One is a fun bit in Garland’s apartment when Alice Brady keeps asking her boyfriend, Marshall Thompson, all kinds of questions and then never gives him time to answer, keeping up a running dialogue nearly every second that she’s onscreen. And there’s another wonderfully funny scene in a diner while Garland and Walker are trying to have a serious conversation and Alfred Sabato stares between them from the table next to theirs.

Director Vincente Minnelli was unhappy with the footage that Fred Zinnemann had shot and scrapped it all. He filmed all of the exteriors and interiors at the studio, even constructing a gigantic Penn Station set. Exterior shots of the city were cut into rear projections shots with the actors because it was decided that location shooting would be prohibitively expensive. He does a terrific job in the closed space of the studio by opening up the film through the use of a crane. The establishing shot in the train station from above is particularly fascinating, with the extras expertly emulating the randomness of a large crowd. When he works around the escalators in the beginning it’s equally arresting how free the camera feels. Minnelli’s camera lovingly caresses Garland, and the effect is not undeserved. She does a terrific job in this straight dramatic role and it makes one wish that she would have been allowed to do more work in this vein. But she wouldn’t have another dramatic role until Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961. The Clock is a lightweight, predictable romance that nevertheless still has a lot of artistic value and is well worth seeking out.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Kon-Tiki (2012)

Director: Joachim Rønning                              Writer: Petter Skavlan
Film Score: Johan Söderqvist                          Cinematography: Geir Hartly Andreassen
Starring: Pål Sverre Hagen, Anders Christiansen, Tobias Santellman and Gustaf Skarsgård

One of my vivid memories from childhood was watching the exploits of the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl on the National Geographic specials that were so much a part of the seventies. Heyerdahl singlehandedly proved that ocean voyages could have been made by peoples in pre-Columbian times and radically altered the assumptions about the ethnic makeup of native populations in South America and the Pacific Islands. Of course, in those days he was proving the ability of Africans to cross the Atlantic to South America in boats made of papyrus reeds. But twenty years earlier he had done the same thing in the Pacific, his first voyage captured in the film Kon-Tiki, in a raft made out of balsa wood to prove that South Americans had traveled across the ocean to the Pacific Islands. Appropriately enough for a national icon, this is a Norwegian production. As the most expensive national production ever undertaken, a decision was made to shoot the film both in Norwegian and English in order to ensure a more lucrative international run than a subtitled film was likely to achieve. I watched the English version, but in looking at the Norwegian version there is almost nothing to choose from.

The film opens with Heyerdahl as a child, jumping out onto blocks of ice being cut and falling into the icy water. He is pulled out and told to never take chances like that again. The scene then cuts to him years later with his wife on the island of Fatu Hiva in the South Pacific. Like all scientists of the time, he originally believed that the Polynesian islands had been initially populated by Asians. But after spending years studying the people and writing about them he gradually became convinced that people from South America were the first to reach the islands. After failing to interest a publisher in his work, he was joking told that the only thing that would prove his theory is to actually build a raft and drift all the way from Peru to Polynesia. Joining Pål Sverre Hagen as Heyerdahl are five other men, including Anders Baasmo Christiansen as an engineer looking for adventure in his life, Tobias Santellman as an ex-military man and the only one aboard with sailing experience, and Gustaf Skarsgård as a Swedish photographer who wants to document the voyage.

Though it is a fascinating film in terms of the danger involved, since the men were out on the ocean alone with no support boat trailing them, the film is not without its flaws. The biggest one is not having access to the thoughts of Hagen as Heyerdahl. And there was plenty of space to do this as he kept records of the entire journey and there were several scenes with him at his typewriter. Some voiceover would have been a nice way to heighten the suspense of the journey and allow the audience to become a bit more emotionally invested in the characters. Still, it remains a compelling drama. Even the early scenes with Hagen and Agnes Kittelsen as his wife on the island of Fatu Hiva are nicely done, especially as he accumulates evidence for a new theory of how the islands were populated. The scenes on the ocean were filmed in open water and are breathtaking at times, especially when other forms of life like sharks and whales appear. Liberties were taken with the actual events, which to my mind should never been an issue with historical dramas, as feature films are still a fictional medium despite the source material. Nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign language film, Kon-Tiki is a fitting tribute to a true twentieth-century explorer and a Norwegian hero.

Hotel Rwanda (2004)

Director: Terry George                                    Writers: Terry George & Keir Pearson
Film Score: Rupert Gregson-Williams             Cinematography: Robert Fraisse
Starring: Don Cheadle, Nick Nolte, Sophie Okonedo and Fana Mokoena

Hotel Rwanda is the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in Kigali, Rwanda who became an unwitting savior of hundreds of people during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. The event was a shameful episode in international diplomacy as the Western world essentially stood by while a civil war in that country killed over a million men, women and children. This was also another example, as if more were needed, of the disastrous effects of European colonialism in Africa. At one point in the hotel bar, news cameraman Joaquin Phoenix asks a Rwandan reporter what the difference between the Hutu and the Tutsi actually is. He’s told that there is none. The Belgian’s, when they controlled the country, selected blacks who were taller, lighter skinned, and had thinner noses to fill the positions in their government and military and called them Tutsi. The Tutsi naturally abused their power against the majority Hutu population during that time. When the Belgians left, however, they inexplicably attempted to atone for their sins by putting the Hutu in charge. This naturally led to reprisals against the Tutsi and fomented a civil war between populations who had no real genetic or cultural differences.

Don Cheadle plays the manager and scrounger for the top hotel in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, procuring gastronomic delicacies, as well as expensive liquor and Cuban cigars for his guests. One of his suppliers is Hakeem Kae-Kazim, a militant Hutu who wants Cheadle, also a Hutu, to join him in the fight. But Cheadle has no politics and has made a point of making friends with the generals and diplomats who stay at the hotel. One night when his neighbor is beaten and dragged away by the police he can do nothing. As he tells his wife, Sophie Okonedo, all of his credit is being saved for his own family, if they should need it, and he can’t afford to spend it on a neighbor, however nice. One night when he comes home from work, he finds half the neighborhood hiding in his house. He makes room for them, but when soldiers break into his house one morning they threaten to kill them all, including his wife and children who happen to be Tutsi, and he manages to save them by opening the safe at the hotel where he used to work. From then on, his family and friends become trapped in his hotel, along with numerous other refugees, protected only by a thin United Nations peacekeeping force led by Nick Nolte. And when even the U.N. decides to pull out, Cheadle must use all his wits to keep himself and his family alive.

There is a natural inclination to make comparisons of the film to Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, but the fact is that there are hundreds of stories like this in history, of people who refused to allow people to die when they had the power to prevent it, even if only temporarily. Clearly, this is Don Cheadle’s masterpiece and it’s a shame that he hasn’t been able to find another role equally as dynamic. What makes his performance so brilliant is that he navigates the accent with ease and thus becomes utterly believable, something a lot of American actors have difficulty with. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance and would certainly have won had he not been up against Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of Ray Charles in Ray. Other notable performances in the film are Fana Mokoena as the Hutu general who is friendly with Cheadle but can’t be seen to be protecting the Tutsi people that Cheadle is harboring, Cara Seymour as a Red Cross nurse who is trying to save as many Tutsi children as she can, and finally the great Jean Reno as the owner of the hotel who, surprisingly, calls in every favor he has to buy Cheadle more time.

One of writer-director Terry George’s goals in making the film was to expose the fact that blacks don’t really count in the eyes of the West. And in case the entire film didn’t make the point directly enough, he has Nick Nolte as the U.N. general put it to Cheadle as bluntly as possible. When the U.N. forces finally arrive at the hotel, it turns out they are only there to save the whites who are trapped there, leaving the blacks to fend for themselves. Despite the compelling story, however, there are some problems with the film. While it was partly shot in Kigali itself, during the opening ride in the van with Cheadle and Desmond Dube I was actually shocked that the director resorted to green screen effects to show the passing scenery outside. But this cheapness is indicative of the film as a whole. There is a claustrophobia to the production, not only in the hotel but the neighborhood where Cheadle lives as well, that combined with rather pedestrian lighting and lack of color manipulation severely diminishes the impact of the tremendous acting. While the film has been criticized for not opening up to show more of the horror of the genocide, I don’t think that was really necessary. The glimpses the audience does get--Phoenix’s camera footage, the drive along the river, and the Tutsi women caged to be raped--seems to be enough. Despite its disappointing production values, Hotel Rwanda remains an important film and the best example of Don Cheadle’s prodigious talent.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

What's the Matter with Helen (1971)

Director: Curtis Harrington                             Writer: Henry Farrell
Film Score: David Raksin                              Cinematography: Lucien Ballard
Starring: Shelley Winters, Debbie Reynolds, Dennis Weaver and Agnes Moorehead

In 1971 I was only ten years old, and it was the glory days of movie watching. Even though I grew up in a small town, we had one of those old movie palaces from the twenties that was still in operation--and is still in operation today. Not only that, but the town that bordered ours had two smaller, but just as luxurious, movie theaters. When a bunch of older kids in the neighborhood decided to go to the movies I could always persuade my parents to let me go too, and this is one that I vividly remember attending that summer between third and fourth grade. What’s the Matter with Helen was one of a slew of films--including Who Slew Auntie Roo--that were made in the wake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. They featured older actresses past their prime who had psychological problems and went on killing sprees onscreen, almost as if Norman Bates’ mother hadn’t really died. This one starred Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds, and while I remember almost nothing from the film except a scene filmed on cropland with a plow being used as a killing machine, I do remember that it scared the pants off me.

The film has an historical setting and begins with a Depression era newsreel, with Winters and Reynolds leaving the courthouse as the mothers of two convicted murderers. Reynolds runs a dance studio and wants to move to California while Winters is a religious fanatic who can’t bear the thought of leaving her son. After a number of threatening phone calls, however, the two wind up moving to California and start a new dance studio, with Reynolds teaching and Winters playing the piano. The eccentric Micheál MacLiammóir is an elocution teacher who wants to get access to the dance students and Reynolds agrees, much to the disapproval of Winters. Dennis Weaver plays the wealthy father of one of the students and as he becomes increasingly fascinated with Reynolds, she begins using him to get more publicity for the studio. This also greatly disturbs Winters, who doesn’t approve of their extra-marital relationship. What is the matter with Winters is that she saw her husband killed before her eyes in a farming mishap when she couldn’t stop the plow, and now every sharp instrument, from knives to scissors to the blades on a fan, become her obsession. Even so, by the middle of the film it’s difficult to tell which of the women is more psychotic.

Unlike the Joan Crawford and Bette Davis vehicle that began it all, the tension and suspense in this film is diluted at every opportunity by either the dancing of Debbie Reynolds or her students, to the point where the bloody conclusion is almost more satisfying than it is horrific. It’s a shame because the story is basically a good one, and yet Winters’ psychology is never really explored in any meaningful way. Agnes Moorehead plays a radio evangelist who Winters desperately wants to confess to, and when Winters is rejected she really begins to unravel. But ultimately the religious aspect is left just as unexplored. For the most part the film looks like a television movie, which is what director Curtis Harrington primarily made, though there are some atmospheric hand-held shots. But the preponderance of television actors and studio-bound exteriors, in addition to poor production values, really weaken the film. The ending, while chilling, also seems rushed and makes what should have been a powerful conclusion somewhat less than climactic. Even the great film composer David Raksin wasn’t able to raise the artistic level of the film. Still, What’s the Matter with Helen did well with audiences at the time and is a film I remember fondly. Whatever you do, however, don’t go in with high expectations.