Rene Clement's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley is still a daring and delicious examination with a raging psychopath. Clement's dreamy 60's French cinematic flavour is neither inferior nor superior to Anthony Minghella's later remake. Two different but worthy artistic adaptations of a terrific story.
Rebecca (1940) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson, Florence Bates
****
By Alan Bacchus
This is one of the landmark films in Hollywood and Alfred Hitchcock’s first American picture after he was ‘brought over’ by David O Selznick, super producer of Gone with the Wind. Selznick’s deal with Hitch wasn’t exactly RKO’s carte blanche deal with Orson Welles, but it was significant nonetheless considering the tremendous body of work he created in Hollywood, which established an influential legacy of cinema.
Like Citizen Kane, Hitchcock's first work in Hollywood is an undisputed masterpiece and his only Best Picture winner. Ironically, it’s also the one picture on his resume with the least amount of cinematic authorship. The fact is, Rebecca is perceived as a Selznick picture in the same way as Gone with the Wind.
This perception should not temper the fact that Rebecca is a masterful slice of gothic mystery, a tragic romance and brooding tale of obsession and a terrific film.
Maxime De Winter (Olivier) is a widower aristocrat on vacation trying to get his mind off the tragic death of his wife, Rebecca. Joan Fontaine, whose character is unnamed, is introduced as a meek, paid companion to a snobby spinster, Edythe Van Hopper. When Edith finds out the famous Mr. De Winter is also staying at her hotel, she desperately tries to engage him on her level of upper-class snobbery. But it’s the shy naivety of Fontaine that captures De Winter’s attention, so much so that he proposes to her.
With his new bride in tow, Maxime returns to his extravagant home, 'Manderley', spoken about in grandiose terms as Xanadu is to Citizen Kane. The new Mrs. De Winter desperately tries to fit into privileged life, but she experiences the toughest opponent in Mrs. Danvers (Anderson), the grumpy housekeeper who idolizes Rebecca’s memory. As clues of the true cause of Rebecca’s death get revealed Maxime’s lustre as an innocent widower comes into question, information which would eventually lead Mrs. De Winter to deceit and corruption in order to save her marriage.
Dramatic reveals and story twists come fast and furious once the authorities become involved in superbly melodramatic fashion. It’s a momentum that leads to the fiery finale incited by the now completely deranged and maniacal Mrs. Danvers.
Rebecca is as handsome and controlled a film as Hitchcock has ever made. His B&W cinematography (by George Barnes) was never more breathtaking and elegant as it is here. But it’s the evolution of Joan Fontaine’s character that sets the film apart from most of Hitchcock’s other films. Specifically, De Winter’s courtship of Fontaine is particularly delightful, a triumph of the working class over the snobby upper-crust exemplified by Van Hopper. Through the period set in Manderley, the three lead anchors, Olivier, Fontaine and Anderson, give engaging and revelatory performances.
Other than the emblazoned finale, Rebecca is without Hitchcock’s familiar set pieces of suspense. But it’s the blanketed tone of mystery that hides the details of Rebecca’s sordid past. And few other filmmakers have made better use of a dead character never seen on screen. Even without the overt supernatural presence of Rebecca, both Danvers and De Winter’s memories of her carry the intrigue and suspense.
Rebecca is available on Blu-ray from MGM Home Entertainment.
Notorious (1946) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains
****
By Alan Bacchus
How can you pick a Hitchcock favourite from such an enormous body of work featuring such great pictures? Well, I can surely narrow it down and identify Notorious as one of his best, or at least one of my favourites.
It was part of the David O. Selznick contract, which brought Hitchcock to Hollywood in 1940. While the espionage plotting and set piece anchors are hallmarks of Hitch, there’s a seriousness and sense of emotional grandeur at play that points to Selznick. The love story in Notorious is a genuine romantic conflict, which resounds louder than the thriller spy games or the suspense set pieces. It’s an element that plays out as well here as in Hitchcock's later and more revered films (e.g., Vertigo).
It’s post-WWII, and Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia, the daughter of an American traitor who spied for the Nazis during the War. With her family name dishonoured she's ripe for recruitment by the handsome government agent, Devlin (Grant), to be a double-agent of her own. Her mission is to spy on a group of Nazi sympathizers plotting world domination in Brazil. Alicia accepts the challenge and travels to Brazil with Devlin to begin their elaborate spy games.
She ingratiates herself to Sebastien (Rains), one of the Nazi leaders, and seduces him into marrying her. Unfortunately, she’s also fallen in love with Devlin, which heightens the stakes for both characters to complete their mission safe and sound. But when Sebastien catches on that Alicia's working for the Americans, he turns the tables and conspires to murder her under cover of his even more diabolical and murderous Nazi compatriots.
The celebrated set pieces in this picture involve the tactics used by Alicia and Devlin to source out Sebastien’s evil scheme. A single key to his wine cellar becomes the object of desire – a frequent motif of Hitchcock's that is also used memorably in Dial M for Murder. The most famous shot in the picture, of course, is the monumental crane shot, which starts on a balcony at Sebastien’s party and pushes down into a close-up of the key clasped within Alicia’s hand. It’s one of Hitchcock’s great shots, not only for its superlative technical achievement, but also because of Hitch’s ability to place the drama of a scene in one inanimate but significant object, which, under normal circumstances, would be insignificant.
After the exchange of the key, Devlin’s search in the wine cellar for the smoking gun evidence continues the sequence. As he reaches for the logging sheets between the bottles of wine, Hitch cuts frequently to one of the bottles leaning precariously over the edge. As the tension mounts and the bottle falls we expect Devlin’s cover to be blown. Instead, the moment reverses and reveals the illegal uranium ore located inside the bottle. What a great sequence!
But Notorious is a masterpiece for equally weighing these great moments of tension and suspense with the agonizing love triangle between Alicia, Devlin and Sebastien. Despite being the antagonist, as played by Claude Rains, we sympathize deeply with Sebastien. Although he’s a Nazi, we recognize he’s genuinely in love with Alicia, and when he realizes she’s a spy the ramifications for their relationship are sad and tragic. And through his diabolical mother, we can see that the decision to attempt to murder Alicia is painful.
Cary Grant’s rescue of Alicia in the final act is the ideal climax, a masterpiece of composition and editing. After Devlin makes the decision to take the ill Alicia out of the house, he’s confronted by Sebastien, who can’t fight back for fear of blowing his own cover with his colleagues. Their journey down the curved gallery steps is drawn out magnificently by Hitchcock’s exclusive use of close-ups of his characters, amplifying the nail-biting tension of Devlin’s tense bluffing game.
The scene caps off one of Hitchcock’s most serious films, mostly devoid of his trademark British wit. The genuine three-way romance and the strong themes of patriotism and trust are as complex and memorable as the love triangle politics in Casablanca.
Europa aka Zentropa (1991) dir. Lars von Trier
Starring: Jean-Marc Barr, Barbara Sukowa, Udo Kier, Eddie Constantine, Ernst-Hugo Järegård, Jørgen Reenberg, Erik Mørk and Max von Sydow
****
By Greg Klymkiw
In 1990, Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin was directing his tragedy of the Great War Archangel which told a tale of lovers afflicted with severe mustard gas apoplexy who forget, at any given moment, who precisely they are in love with. To ensure his actors were always in a trance, he secured, with my deft finagling (in the spirit of full disclosure I was the film's producer) the services of a renowned hypnotist (who, due to a binding non-disclosure policy cannot be named) to place Maddin's on-camera charges in a state of waking and walking sleep during the entire shoot of the film. Complete and utter submission was the goal. Archangel was in black and white, occasionally colour tinted, replete with post-dubbed dialogue (also performed under hypnosis), a cornucopia of in-camera special effects including double (and triple) exposures, matte paintings, rear and front screen projection, as well as a series of optical shots. At the same time, across the pond from the Dominion of Canada, one Lars von Trier was making Europa (renamed Zentropa for its North American release) which, like Maddin's film, was set in a strange never-never land of historical revisionism (though in post-WWII Germany as opposed to Maddin's WWI/Russian Revolution cusp period). It too was in black and white (though with dollops of full-blown colour rather than colour tinting) and was, like Maddin's film, bursting at the seams with wild in-camera and optical effects.
Where they differed, and yet existed in the same zeitgeist, was this: Maddin hypnotized his actors whilst von Trier rendered a movie that literally hypnotized the audience. The results were identical. Much like any living subject of hypnotism, audience-members who opened themselves willingly to both cinematic experiences were, in fact, under the power of suggestion.
Upon first seeing Europa back in the 90s, I was initially coaxed into the alternately pleasurable and disturbing states of waking and walking sleep and as such, became so obsessed with Lars von Trier's vision that I fought hard on subsequent viewings to deflect the hypnotic power in order to fully experience his dazzling, sumptuous genius in all its glory. Twenty years after my initial exposure to his great film, I am not only happy to report that it holds up magnificently, but has deepened for me to such dizzying degrees that I am convinced it is one of the most stunning works of cinematic art I have ever seen.
Over the years, both von Trier and Maddin have been fêted with screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and its Cinematheque. This month, the work of the Danish bad boy genius of cinema is being featured in a TIFF Bell Lightbox retrospective entitled "Lars von Trier: Waiting for the End of the World" running until November 19. Europa is just one of several pictures in this series (including his latest masterpiece Melancholia) and this movie in particular, (playing Saturday November 12, 2011 at 8:00 PM and Thursday November 17 @ 9:15 PM) will be screened as it MUST be seen - on a big screen and projected in glorious 35mm. This is especially important given the special quality in-camera and optical effects have over the much colder digital approach to rendering screen magic today. It is, finally, the warmth of cinema in the format of its birth that allows us to be enveloped in fluffy white blankets of forgetfulness (in Maddinesque parlance) and the sheer joyful terror of being forced into a unique, trance-like state of both yearning and forgetfulness that is, indeed, TRUE magic.
Europa begins with the hypnotic tones of a voiceover belonging to Max von Sydow (The Exorcist himself and longtime Ingmar Bergman star), whilst we slowly cascade over train tracks engulfed in darkness, save for the soft light beaming gently over the centre of the frame. Lars von Trier plunges us into the black tunnel that is Germany just after World War II. Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr), an American of German descent has come to his expatriate father's homeland and taken a job as a railway employee under the tutelage of his persnickety, alcoholic Uncle (Ernst-Hugo Järegård). He meets and falls in love with a fetching film-noir-like femme fatale, Katharina Hartmann (Barbara Sukowa) who is the daughter of the German rail magnate Max Hartmann (Jørgen Reenberg). He is taken into the family with open arms. Max, in particular, is drawn to the notion of Germany becoming more international and is impressed with Kessler's desire to bring his North American, yet German-influenced know-how to the reconstruction of the country.
This is in vast contrast to the American armed forces occupying the Fatherland. The American commander mysteriously presiding over all matters of a reconstructive variety is Colonel Harris (played by the brilliant, gravel-voiced American expatriate tough guy actor Eddie Constantine, he of Lemmy Caution fame in numerous French movies like Alphaville). Harris knows all too well that Max used his train company Zentropa to transport Jews to concentration camps, but he also realizes that a vast majority of Germany's populace had been, to varying degrees, complicit in the activities of the Nazi regime. He seeks to protect Max since he believes this guilt-ridden rail baron is ultimately important to the American goal of reconstruction. Harris is also embroiled in a secret fight against a mysterious group of German partisan terrorists called Werewolf and while the young American Kessler trains on the railways and romances Katharina, his services are secured to delve into and expose the forces of evil.
Europa is both important and original on numerous fronts. In terms of theme and content, it is one of the most indelible screen portraits of post-World War II Germany ever committed to celluloid. Delivering a narrative which, I think, more than ably points a finger at America's complicity in the evils of Nazi Germany, especially in terms of making it clear how many Americans owned munitions factories IN Germany and did business with the Nazis under the radar. The overwhelming sense that we are in a nightmare world where an occupying force bullies the occupied, yet represents the corporate interests of the occupier is precisely what Lars Von Trier exposes. For all the lip service paid to the needs of assisting Germany with reconstruction, he presents a portrait of American military goons exercising the same sort of encroachment upon basic civil liberties as the Gestapo. While he does not veer away from Germany's rightful guilt in supporting one of the most foul regimes in all of recorded history, his film is not afraid to point a finger at America's military regime and its fascistic defence of America interests - in particular, the corporate interests - using reconstruction as a thin veil over basic greed. Unrestricted sovereignty was not ultimately granted to Germany until reunification in 1990 - a point not lost on von Trier. Both the narrative and mise-en-scène etch a chilling portrait of occupation - juxtaposing the German adherence to bureaucracy with the American adherence to back-door dealing and how both are equally flawed, but also at odds with each other within the context of the political situation.
Mixed into this heady brew of conflicting ideals, von Trier never neglects the thematic elements of complicity, betrayal and redemption. The Americans - in particular, the character of Colonel Harris - are complicit only in their exploitation of the situation while on the German side, complicity is a heavy cross that all the other characters must bear. Betrayal runs rampant throughout the narrative, though von Trier wisely explores this theme within the tropes of film noir elements and melodrama. I place an accent on "wisely" here because at the time the film was made, Germany was on the cusp of reunification and the issues he deals with had repercussions on a world wide scale, but by placing them within this stylized framework, he created a work that is not ephemeral in its power, but is, indeed, truly universal. In this sense, Europa feels less a film of its time, but rather, a film for all times. For example, while I feel the best works of American cinema in the 70s more than adequately capture the overwhelming paranoia of the period WITHOUT feeling dated, these are films directly from the periods of history and culture they represent.
Making a film in any contemporary context and looking back upon a period of history with contemporary eyes, requires an emphasis upon recreating the past world with indelible historical accuracy on as many levels as possible. However, when placing works dealing with historical issues and made during different historical periods - especially a film about the beginnings of occupation in Germany made at a time of German reunification - framing its narrative and themes in an almost post-modern aesthetic allows the artist a context to create a work that's truly visionary. This, is what Lars von Trier accomplishes. Reading reviews from the time of Europa's original release, one sees how even the best of the best acknowledge von Trier's visual gifts, but dismiss and/or outright ignore his narrative and political savvy. This, of course, did not keep the film from finding an audience at the time, but what's phenomenal to me is just how ahead of its time the film actually was, and in a sense, still is. Certainly viewing the film in the context of the current situation we face in terms of the economy, terrorism, the corporate imperialism of America, the domination of the New World Order and the horrendously obvious notion that war is ultimately all about money, Europa is without question a film for our times and, no doubt, will be so in the future as well.
The idea in certain circles, a confederacy of dunces to my way of thinking, that there's something wrong with melodrama is both myopic and elitist. There is, to be sure, good melodrama and bad melodrama, but it is a worthy genre and one that can work quite perfectly when presenting important historical and political themes. I suspect that von Trier and Maddin might well be cinema's leaders in understanding the importance of utilizing melodrama within stories dealing with political, historical and/or humanist subjects. Neither are afraid of filling their work with retro melodramatic devices and doing so, not with tongue in cheek, but playing them straight. When this approach sings ever-so sweetly, it is the humour - both natural and satirical - that comes to the fore - sans the empty spoof-like manner which is the domain of the holier-than-thou, the better-than-that and all the other head-nodding-eye-winking purveyors of mediocrity.
Europa is deliciously blessed with both the crazed big emotions of Douglas Sirk and the humanity of Carl Dreyer. Most amazingly, there are several moments of suspense that even owe their existence to the feverish qualities of D.W. Griffith - notably, several sequences involving the arming of a bomb and the subsequent attempt to disarm the bomb. Von Trier throws in everything including the kitchen sink to extend our dread and anticipation. Our desire for relief to said tension hits stratospheric heights. In addition to the visual flourishes reminiscent of another age, the score is sumptuously derived from a variety of original and pre-recorded pieces - most notably and pointedly from Bernard Herrmann's haunting music from Hitchcock's dreamy expressionistic thriller Vertigo. The stylized performances - aided further with the use of hollow dubbing - are a marvel and in particular, Jean-Marc Barr as the addled protagonist delivers what surely must be one of the bravest performances I've ever seen. He runs the gamut of emotion, but often in a controlled and intentionally stiff manner. He allows himself to be the puppet of Lars von Trier and as such, takes the thankless, but often surprising and engaging task of representing our (we, the audience) point of view. He is our way in to this world and for an actor to expose himself and yield so uncompromisingly to a filmmaker's vision is brilliantly, stunningly, delightfully foolhardy and ultimately, what makes his performance and the film itself so great.
This is razzle-dazzle filmmaking at its best. The bonus is plenty of food for thought and the cherry on the sundae is the occasional laughs and tears von Trier elicits from us. Some have charged that von Trier's approach is, in this, and other films, cold.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you - once again - the aforementioned confederacy of dunces.
One of the more extraordinary achievements of Europa is the narration. It works two-fold. First, it is a hypnotic device - literal hypnotism and I'd argue that anyone open to the picture on a first viewing will, indeed, succumb. Secondly, it's a wonderful use of the great, though rare literary tradition of a second person point of view. In contemporary American literature this was popularized by Jay McInerney in his brilliant 1984 debut novel Bright Lights Big City. The book announces its bold style and brash approach in these extraordinary opening sentences:
"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy."
The idea of a detached voice speaking directly to its central character in order to relay the narrative was, even in the 80s, not a new approach, but it was one that thrust the pelvis of its literary conceit in the faces of readers all over the world and frankly, proved to be an ideal way of telling the story of a young man in the midst of a cocaine-addled phase of his life. As von Trier's central character Kessler is plunged into a similarly opaque world, we constantly hear Max Von Sydow's "you-are-getting-sleepy"-styled hypnotic offscreen orders to both the character and viewer. In 80s New York, it's coke-fuelled headlong dives into nightclubs. In Post-World War II Germany, its the strange, dreamy, addled world of occupation.
Certainly William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! is replete with both second person point of view and narrative techniques and is, in a sense, very close to the territory von Trier explores in Europa. Where Faulkner's novel is rooted in myth, one in which its central character is representative of the myth of the deep South and resulting in his ultimate, almost inevitable demise, von Trier's Europa seems similarly rooted in myth - in particular that of the Greek goddess of Europa who is seduced by a horny, old Zeus. That Europa herself, in mythic terms, was from a long, noble lineage is also a fascinating element in von Trier's film. We have Kessler, for example, seduced by his German roots and his American need to "do good" (or, one might even suggest the deeper American need to "meddle") and his attraction to the female heir to the Hartmann's rail empire.
In Faulkner's words:
"You cannot know yet whether what you see is what you are looking at or what you are believing."
Beat by beat, shot by shot - this is Europa. Images we will never forget rush by - Kessler dashing in silhouette in front of a huge illuminated clock, a scarlet ocean of blood rushing from under a door, a harrowing walk through mysterious cars on the Zentropa train full of caged Holocaust victims, corpses of "werewolf" partisans hanging from knotted ropes round their snapped necks, exquisitely composed Josef von Sterberg-like shots of Barbara Sukowa resembling Marlene Dietrich come-to-life, the desperate flailing of a drowning man as he seeks life and instead finds redemption and finally, the most gorgeous of all - a midnight Christmas mass in a bombed-out cathedral as puffs of snow gently fall upon the devout.
We cannot know yet what we see is what we're looking at, or what we're believing.
Persona (1966) dir. Ingmar Bergman Starring: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Björnstrand
****
By Alan Bacchus
I admit to not having seen many of Ingmar Bergman’s best works. I liked Seventh Seal, but didn’t care much for Cries and Whispers. Persona, on the other hand is a thrilling mind fuck of a film, comparable to works loopy works of David Lynch and Roman Polanski and certainly better than the overrated Antonioni films of the 60’s.
Persona feels very much a product of the 60’s, on a technical level Bergman crafts number of experimental sequences which, with today’s eyes feels more like a parody of obtuse art house experimentation. It’s a stretch to make sense out of the two psychedelic montages – the first which opens the film and the second at the midpoint –but it’s sheer audacity and ambitiousness is thrilling. The opening scene is 3-4mins cooky sequence featuring a cacophony of imagery and sound – at one point we even see an erect penis cut in there - which at first seems completely random but foreshadows the psychological state of the film's protagonist, Alma.
Then the film settles into a traditional narrative. Bibi Andersson plays Alma, a nurse assigned to provide care to an actress Elisabeth (Liv Ullman) who has suffered a mysterious ailment which has rendered her mute. After some therapy in a hospital Alma takes Elisabeth into the country for a peaceful retreat which might just help induce her out of her psychological funk.
Slowly the roles of patient and therapist reverse themselves. As Alma attempts to unlock Elisabeth’s soul she finds herself reveals intimate details of her own personal traumas. In one miraculous scene reminiscent of Nicole Kidman’s startling revelation to Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut, Alma confesses to Elisabeth an orgy which caused her to be pregnant and then have an abortion. As the ‘therapy’ progresses, Alma’s inability to crack Elisabeth’s drives her to madness.
Other than the Eyes Wide Shut comparison, there’s a lot of ‘late career’ Kubrick in Persona. Lars Johan Werle’s brooding atmospheric music creates a spooky tone like that of Kubrick’s The Shining. And even Bergman’s use of long tracking shot brings to mind Stanley's panache with the camera.
Persona is indeed a technical marvel. DOP Sven Nyvkist’s compositions are instantly recognizable as Bergman’s. As in Cries and Whispers his close-ups are framed and his actors blocked with formal and often peculiarly unnatural arrangements in the frame. Bergman loves his profile shots and even within this limited range with precise framing he finds some arresting and stimulating visual compositions.
And the obtuse psychological themes are not that hard to penetrate either. Though it’s a two-hander Alma’s journey is inward, with the presence of Elisabeth serving only as a Rosetta stone for Alma to understand her own emotional problems.
In reading other reviews and analyses of the film, there’s seems to be some confusion about the notion of the title. Some people see a merging or switching of personalities between Alma and Elisabeth – that is, Alma assuming the ‘persona’ of Elizabeth. I don’t particularly see it this way. By the end of the film Alma has assumed the place of patient, after her psychological breakdown, but not in place of Elizabeth. The question of whether Elizabeth ever existed, or if she was a fabrication of Alma’s mind I can’t fully answer, but it’s a mind fuck nonetheless and the work of a master filmmaker.
Shutter Island (2010) dir. Martin Scorsese Starring: Leonardo Di Caprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams
*1/2
By Alan Bacchus
Despite the opinions of some people who claim this film as a masterpiece (inc. my colleague Blair Stewart who posted the first review HERE) It pains me to give such a low rating to Mr. Scorsese, but other than the abominable New York, New York, Shutter Island is his worst film – an overwrought melodramatic stink bomb, one giant red herring much less clever than it thinks it is.
NOTE: I write this review assuming everyone has seen the movie...needless to say SPOILERS are ahead.
Shame on Marty for stooping so low as to use easy ‘shock’ images of dead children and the Holocaust in the same film. When you strip away Shutter Island, there’s actually nothing going on, and no suspense whatsoever, and so it takes flashbacks to dead children and the Holocaust to provide the meat. Except these moments are not earned by Scorsese because they are parachuted into the script instead of organically fusing itself into the narrative.
For example, Leonardo Di Caprio is crazy, and so since his past is only told to us in brief flashbacks absolutely anything could have happened to him to cause this insanity. Lehane/Scorsese choose two traumatic events – witnessing the Holocaust and having his equally crazy wife kill her own children. This is certainly enough trauma to cause his insanity, but without knowing the character beforehand, seeing how his relationship with his wife could have progressed to the point of her killing her own kids, it feels false and unearned.
Of course my discontent with this film is fundamental to the point of the story. If you can't accept the 'twist' the movie fails. For two thirds Lehane and Scorsese proceed to lay the groundwork for the investigative potboiler of US Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner searching for a missing patient by the name of Rachel Solondo. It’s a rather brooding procedural filled with numerous mysterious details such as cryptic messages on scraps of paper, shifty-eyed administration staff who appear to be hiding information, a mysterious government communist conspiracy, etc.
Then at the two thirds mark the rug is pulled out from under the audience to reveal a completely different journey – that Daniels, is not a Marshal, but a patient of the facility going through some experimental role playing game monitored by his Doctors. Upon first viewing the bombshell didn’t so much shock me as stab me in the back for reversing everything I had invested in the characters in the first place. The twist essentially renders everything before it null and void. Therefore, if you don't accept the twist upon second viewing, the experience of watching this ruse play out is even worse. The twist reveals a number of gaping plot holes which become even more frustrating the second time 'round.
Are we to assume Mark Ruffalo was ‘acting’ the entire movie for the benefit of Daniels? Same with Dr. Crawley and all the other staff?
How did everyone keep a straight face? Was there a group meeting where the other staff members laid out this elaborate game?
And shame on you Marty for resorting to the laughable ‘word jumble’ in the third act to convince us the Leo is crazy. The moment Kingsley reveals the conveniently laid out white board word scramble of Andrew Laeddis – Edward Daniels reduced the film to a notch barely above Hardy Boys or the Da Vinci Code. These cheap tactics might have worked if there was any sense of humour in the picture, unfortunately it's so heavily handed its ultimately a dead weight.
There’s even little in the way of technical flare to entertain me, nothing of the authorship which earns the title 'A Martin Scorsese Film’. Even Robert Richardson’s photography which sparkles with colour and glossiness is beautiful to look at, but too beautiful and has no gothic authenticity.
Shutter Island is Martin Scorsese light, a phoned-in performance from Marty and a stain on his filmography.
Shutter Island is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment
Rider on the Rain - U.S. title Le passager de la pluie - French Title (1970) dir. René Clément Starring: Marlene Jobert, Charles Bronson, Annie Cordie, Gabriele Tinti and Marc Mazza
***1/2
By Greg Klymkiw
Discovering movies you’ve never seen before is always fun – especially when you, like me, have seen over 30,000 feature films and think (wrongly, of course) that you’ve seen everything worth seeing. When those undiscovered titles are gems like “Rider on the Rain”, A.K.A. “Le passager de la pluie,” the rise of tantalizing gooseflesh is all the more deliciously palpable as it overtakes your body and soul.
This thoroughly entertaining and creepy Euro-trash thriller from the 70s has been kicking around for a long time in North America in a variety of downright awful English-language public domain transfers on both VHS and DVD.
Until recently, however, I had no idea how good it actually it was.
This was not for lack of trying. Alas, the public domain copies I saw were truly abysmal - the cropping distracting, the faded colours hard on the eyes and the English dubbing so sloppy that, on each attempt, I didn’t even made it to the rape scene which, of course means, that I never sat through it long enough to even see Charles Bronson make his first appearance.
I recently, however, came across a Russian DVD release of the exquisite Studio Canal re-mastering of the French-language version with English subtitles (and for those inclined, subtitles in Russian, Spanish, German, Hebrew and a variety of Asian languages). I can now say I have watched the rape scene, Charles Bronson’s entrance and then some.
Directing over thirty films from the late 30s to late 70s, René Clément was truly one of the great French directors, but in recent years especially, his remarkable canon seems to have been largely ignored in favour of those of the Nouvelle Vague ilk and some of the more recent works of Breillat, Noë, Cantet, etc. This is not to say that any of the above needs to be dismissed in favour of Clément, but I do think some sort of major re-assessment and appreciation of his fine output is in order.
That said, he still is deservedly acclaimed in many quarters for the heartbreaking tale of childhood and war “Forbidden Games” (“Jeux interdits”) and the magnificently amoral Patricia Highsmith adaptation “Purple Noon” (“Plein soleil”) which reveals Anthony Minghella’s watchable, 1999 version of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” as the uninspired wank it really is. In addition to the above, Clément delivered the tense, claustrophobia of “Les maudits” and his marvelous post-war crime drama with Jean Gabin “Le mura di Malapaga.”
In this and his other pulp suspense pictures, Clément’s respect and debt to Hitchcock is clear, but subtle - unlike, say, DePalma. Not that I’d ever crap on Brian DePalma, whose work I love dearly, but his approach to Hitchcockian-styled suspense is clearly and deliciously over-the-top, whereas Clément adds a dollop here and a dollop there of Hitch, while maintaining a sense of ambiguity that is all his own. Chabrol, too, is a fine French suspense director, but I tend to find his films more workmanlike than Clément’s and his voice is certainly not as rich and distinctive.
Clément, like Hitch, is fond of recurring visual motifs, but Clément is careful (as Hitch always was) to make sure they are thoroughly integral to the world of HIS narrative. They’re not thrown in willy-nilly.
For example, the references to date and time as well as the clock shots – especially those focusing upon a pendulum either locking in or not moving – are dazzlingly evocative, but they are always used to move the story forward. Also, Clément’s use of colour, light and composition reveals a great visual stylist and, like Hitch, he wields his palette like a master – a born filmmaker, his very DNA hardwired to the art and business of creating cinema.
With “Rider on the Rain”, Clément even uses a stunningly gorgeous ice goddess (albeit a truly Gallic version of a Hitchcockian leading lady) as the central femme fatale. Gamine, red headed, lightly freckled beauty Marlene Jobert appears as Mélancolie Mau (gotta love that name), the beleaguered wife of Tony (the suitably nasty Gabriele Tinti), a downright horrendously repugnant old world sexist pig who questions her every move and keeps her in an iron-clad grip – in spite of his seemingly endless jaunts all over the world as an airline pilot. Mélancolie’s mother, Juliette (a brilliant Annie Cordy) is a self-hating drunk who operates a bar/bowling alley and turns her self-loathing into a weapon against her own child.
These happy people all live in a seaside resort town. As the movie begins, it is the off-season and few souls wander the empty streets. A nasty torrential downpour brings a tall, creepy, bullet-headed stranger (Marc Mazza) to town on a bus that normally wouldn’t even stop at this time of year. The stranger, whose name is Mac Guffyn (get it?), wanders about the town with seeming aimlessness, but soon it’s obvious he’s targeting our heroine, following her everywhere with a steely gaze.
For her part, Mélancolie runs a few errands, including a dress shop visit to pick up a fashionably hot number to adorn her sultry frame for a wedding she’ll be attending the following day. Speaking of hot numbers, it’s not just the clothing that’s delectable – the ravishing Jill Ireland (Mrs. Charles Bronson) has a small role as the dress shop proprietress, primping and preening our gamine heroine whilst Mac Guffyn stares salaciously through the store window. Mrs. Chuck doesn’t see him, but Mélancolie does. She freezes in terror, but does not reveal to anyone that she sees him.
Well, before you can say “rape”, Mélancolie is back home and the oval-domed Mac Guffyn enters quietly, throws her to the bed and savagely forces himself upon her. She eventually passes out, wakes up alone, considers calling the police, but mysteriously doesn’t. Mac Guffyn shows up again. He’s merely been resting up for sloppy seconds. Mélancolie engages in a brutal physical fight with him, grabs a double-barreled shotgun from the basement, shoots him and finally, blood gushing from his chest, he still attempts to get up and our plucky gamine beauty bludgeons the creep to death. Again, for very mysterious reasons, she does not call the police, but instead, drives his body out to a remote cliff and dumps it into the sea.
The next day, as if nothing has happened, she and her sexist pig husband attend a wedding. During the ceremony, she spies the smirking, gorgeously mustachioed Charles Bronson, drilling holes into her with his intense Slavic eyes. At the reception, Bronson introduces himself as Harry Dobbs (Christ! Another great character name that you’ve just gotta love!), an American colonel of seeming disrepute and predatory intentions. For some reason, he knows she’s murdered Mac Guffyn.
For the rest of the movie, a strange cat and mouse game plays out where Dobbs relentlessly tries to get Mélancolie to admit to murder and she does everything in her power to deflect his accusations. There is, of course, more to all this than meets the eye – one layer of mystery lies on top of yet another and Mélancolie finds herself mixed up in something very creepy, dangerous and well beyond her comprehension. As for Dobbs, his intentions remain murky, but as the film progresses, it becomes obvious that both characters are becoming inextricably drawn towards one another.
While the picture is far more ambiguous than Hitchcock would ever tolerate, it’s still a terrifically suspenseful and entertaining mystery thriller. It’s even been suggested in some quarters that the film inspired Jim Morrison to write his evocative hit “Riders on the Storm” and given certain images and plot elements of the picture, it’s not entirely inconceivable. The opening lyrics that comprise the song's eerie refrain definitely mirror Mélancolie’s situation:
Into this house we’re born Into this world we’re thrown Like a dog without a bone…
The “sins” of Mélancolie’s mother have definitely rubbed off on her, though she’s tried her whole life to live with them and “like a dog without a bone”, she seems ill-equipped to deal with the cards dealt her way, but still manages to persevere – with, of course, a little help from a grinning Cheshire-cat-like Harry Dobbs.
Mac Guffyn, of course, is the literal “rider on the rain” of the English title – a serial killer/sexual deviant who is not unlike Morrison’s evocation of:
… a killer on the road/his brain is squirming like a toad…
And finally, in spite of Mélancolie and Dobbs falling for each other, it’s clearly going to remain unrequited – so much so that they each admit their love to themselves, but not each other and Mélancolie stays with her brutish husband and Harry goes off alone in his sports car. Again, one can imagine Morrison seeing the film and penning the lyrics:
Girl ya gotta love your man Take him by the hand Make him understand… Gotta love your man, yeah!
Certainly even the opening shot of the film feels like it could have inspired Morrison and team – a huge body of water looking like a lake or river as rain drops plop violently on the surface of the water until the wheels of a bus splash into frame, revealing that we’re actually looking at a rain soaked highway through a wide angle lens. This is followed by a series of shots of the bus itself - seemingly bereft of passengers until it stops, then drives away to reveal the trench-coat-adorned Mac Guffyn, standing in the rain and clutching a small ref leather bag.
Furthermore, if there is any truth to Morrison being inspired by the picture, surely such inspiration extended to other members of The Doors. The song “Riders on the Storm” is endowed with one major similarity to Clément’s picture – it’s superbly scored by Francis Lai with a number of evocative themes – many of which feature the kind of varied and sophisticated instrumentations favoured by the band itself. This, by the way, is an original soundtrack album worth owning – rare, but not impossible to track down. It works, not only as film score but also as music that bears both close scrutiny as well as its simple ability to create background mood for just about any social situation one finds oneself in.
In spite of the theorizing about the film’s influence upon Jim Morrison, the point might be moot if centred solely on the title since the English title “Rider on the Rain", translates from the French title “Le passager de la pluie” more literally into “The Passenger of the Rain”. While this, in and of itself, might have also been influential, it’s probably less about the title but Clément’s images and themes that might have had a greater impact upon the late, great Lizard King.
Another interesting aspect of Clément’s film is that it opens with the following quotation from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”:
The pit was very deep, or she fell very slowly, because while she fell, she had time to look around and to wonder what was going to happen next.
This is an apt opening quotation for a number of reasons. Firstly, the movie is endowed with odd dream logic to its narrative structure. Secondly, Mélancolie does indeed experience a long, slow fall/descent. Thirdly, she wanders through the picture with a wide-eyed wonder of a naïf being led by a grinning Cheshire cat – none other than Harry Dobbs and Bronson’s charmingly sardonic visage and performance.
Bronson’s performance, by the way, will be a revelation to those ever who doubted his abilities as an actor. He’s always had considerable star power, but many have ignored the qualities he owned below the skin-deep tough guy exterior. His performance here is so compelling, one wishes he had more roles in his career like this one – roles that could have mined his myriad of thespian gifts.
Marlene Jobert as Mélancolie is also a revelation. In spite of her performance in this and Godard’s “Masculin feminin”, she never quite maintained the stardom of many of her contemporaries in France. Her Mélancolie is, however, nothing short of extraordinary. She takes a complex character and breathes the kind of life into it that makes both her and the role nothing less than unforgettable.
And what a role it is – so sexy and so mysterious, especially early on in the proceedings. For example, some of Mélancolie’s head-scratching moves at the beginning of the film (not calling the police and dumping Mac Guffyn's body – moves that set all the picture's wheels in motion – have often been mistakenly seen as either problematic storytelling and/or ambiguities.
I’d suggest they are neither.
This is, after all, the story of a woman who carries and tries to shed the sins of her mother and is locked in a marriage wherein she is constantly abused into submission and, by her very actions, her journey of self-discovery is responsible for finding what it was she loved in her man in the first place and she learns to work at mining those aspects rather than succumbing to his worst traits and/or running away from them. It’s a blossoming, a maturation process. She confronts everything head-on and takes us on a thrilling serpentine journey of sex, murder, mystery and suspense.
What more could one possibly ask for?
It’s a terrific picture!
See it!
This is a hard movie to get in the original French version. For my part, I wish to thank the Lord Jesus H. Christ for my obsessive frequenting of Russian video stores in North and West Toronto where I found the DVD. The release even appears legit, as I have seen it advertised on Amazon. The Studio Canal version is also available on Amazon. This is probably the best way to see the picture on this side of the Atlantic, especially since there appears no sign of a North American DVD or Blu-ray release of Studio Canal’s pressing.
Never Take Candy From a Stranger (1960) dir. Cyril Frankel Starring: Gwen Watford, Patrick Allen, Felix Aylmer, Niall McGinnis, Bill Nagy, Michael Gwynn and Budd Knapp
***
By Greg Klymkiw
In the movies, Canada never gets a break. As noted in Pierre Berton's almost pathologically well-researched (and very funny) book "Hollywood's Canada", he outlines Canada's penchant for offering up its anus to any two-bit non-Canadian huckster in exchange for the equivalent of coloured beads. In the case of Berton's book, the Canadian government gives away its aspirations to manufacture an indigenous film culture (save for National Film Board of Canada documentaries) with the promise from all the major studios in Hollywood that Canada will be featured prominently as a setting in Hollywood films to promote tourism to Canada.
The product yielded from this was mostly B-movie westerns that portrayed voyageurs as boozing lechers looking primarily for white women to rape (since they get "it" easily from Native women), peaceful Canadian Plains Indians as blood-thirsty psychos wildly attacking wagon trains, geographical locations completely unlike what they were in reality and pole-up-the-butt Mounties bent on "getting their man". Burton details over 600 such films.
Berton even gives examples of how Hollywood gets their fingers into the pie of Britain's indigenous film industry during the "quota quickie" period (where unscrupulous Brits generated micro-budgeted trash to appease the government quotas, yet still make money) by hiring a puppet Canadian to be the "producer", use Hollywood-based British talent - on and behind the camera - and then to collect the financing and profits. This was an especially easy way to exploit Britain as well as Canada since anything made in Canada, counted as British, since Canada was essentially a colony belonging to the monarchy.
"Never Take Candy From a Stranger" is a low-budget Hammer production from Britain. It's not a western, nor is it a British "quota quickie".
It is, however, set in Canada.
And while, as the film's narrator tells us, this story could be set anywhere, we will see the tawdry events unfold in Canada.
And what, you ask, is the tawdry event?
CHILD MOLESTATION!!!!!
Yes indeed - child molestation in Canada! Eastern Canada, to be precise. What the makers of the film mean by Eastern Canada is somewhat unclear since that would place the film in the rugged, rocky landscape of inbred territory in the Maritimes. Funny though, it looks like the backlot of Bray Studios - in Mother England, not in the Dominion of Canada. An Eastern Canada setting in the fiddle playing environs of the Maritimes would also mean that the child molestation was being carried out by Roman Catholic priests upon young boys in orphanages and troubled-boy schools. As well, none of the law enforcement people in the film appear to be the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but are in fact, a lot like sheriffs and state troopers from the good old Red, White and Blue below the 49th parallel.
No matter, Canada it is. Britain has always had a long history of misrepresenting their own colony in the Great White North. One of my favourites is Powell-Pressburger's "The 49th Parallel" which depicts Nazis entering Canada via U-Boat through Hudson's Bay, encountering a Quebecois fur trapper played by Laurence Olivier, dining in the swinging city of Winnipeg, hooking up with some Mennonites on the prairies, encountering a war-weary non-patriot played by Leslie Howard and finally, an American soldier played by the Canadian actor Raymond Massey.
But, I digress.
We open with little Sally Carter (genuinely well played by Gwen Watford) as she plays with a new chum. Sally is a new arrival to this Eastern Canadian enclave of perversion. The gentle rough-housing between the two girls leads to Sally losing 35¢ in the grass. She laments that this was to be her candy allowance for the week. Her all-knowing new friend helpfully offers to take her to a place where they can both get all the free candy they want. Lo and behold, just behind them is a creepy old mansion and from a top window we discover they are being spied on by a foul, dirty old man, Clarence Olderberry (Felix Aylmer).
Later that evening, Sally admits to her parents that she and her friend went to visit a kind old man for candy and stripped naked for him and did a little dance. Dad (Patrick Allen) is furious. He is the new principal of the school in this small town (though it looks reasonably urban) and he is a square-jawed type looking for justice. When he visits the local constabulary, he's told not to press charges since the old man really didn't "do anything" to the children. They also mention that the old man is essentially the patriarch of the town - responsible for starting its chief industry. He's been a highly influential citizen and well respected. Besides, the sheriff/state-trooper/constable/RCMP-officer adds, Olderberry's son, Clarence Jr. (CANADIAN ACTOR Bill Nagy) will use all his power to make their lives miserable and defend his Dad which will end in complete acquittal for the disgusting, slavering old lecher who, as it turns out, has quite a long history of child molestation that's been hushed up.
Peter is even more intent than ever to press charges and go to trial. From there, we go to an extremely intense courtroom battle, followed by a beautifully directed sequence of nail-biting suspense.
Canadian flubs aside, I really have to say this movie was a great find. The scenario as depicted more-than-adequately, depicts how child molestation was, for far too long, ignored, repressed and misunderstood. As well, far beyond its time period, it shockingly and frankly depicts the horrors that victims of sexual violence go through during a trial where unscrupulous defence lawyers will pin blame and shame upon them instead of their repulsive clients who deserve a bullet between the eyes rather than the mollycoddling afforded to them.
Cyril Frankel's direction is lean and mean. In addition to directing endless hours of British cop, crime and sci-fi TV series, he also delivered one of the most terrifying and sadly underrated Hammer Horror pictures of all time, "The Witches" as well as "The Trollenberg Terror", one of the trippiest genre blenders you'll ever see. "Never Take Candy From a Stranger" barrels along with the force of a souped-up GTO engine and the suspense set piece at the end is worthy of J. Lee Thompson's school "chase" between the Bob Mitchum's brutal rapist and Greg Peck's daughter in "Cape Fear". It might actually dazzle further as certain twists and turns during this final sequence in "Never Take Candy From a Stranger" had me on the edge of my seat until the devastating resuts. Add to the stew some truly rich cinematography from the legendary Freddie ("The Straight Story", "The Elephant Man", his first Oscar win " Sons and Lovers" and his second Oscar win "Glory") Francis and you have an intelligent, suspenseful, powerful and slam-bang little thriller.
On a side note, one of Canada's greatest stage, television and voice veterans, Budd Knapp, appears in a small supporting role. Mother England was always happy to toss us colonial savages a few bones.
"Never Take Candy From a Stranger" is currently available on the great new 3-disc DVD set entitled "Icons of Horror - Hammer Studios" from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Persona (1966) dir. Ingmar Bergman
Shutter Island (2010) dir. Martin Scorsese
Rider on the Rain - U.S. title
Never Take Candy From a Stranger (1960) dir. Cyril Frankel
