The Oncoming Hope

I didn't set out to watch a "Black" film on Black Friday, (nor do I wish to pretend that "Black Friday" deserves codification as anything other than a commercial black hole). An interview with Martin Scorsese, who described a certain moment in the film as the one that forced him to become a filmmaker, led me to pluck Black Narcissus from the quicksand of my Netflix queue.

Like me, dear reader, you may have the wrong impression of the film (and the Netflix description certainly doesn't help, with its vague intimations of a crisis of faith in exotic lands, tagging the film in the "faith and spirituality" bucket).

Black Narcissus has elements of horror, romance, and the subtly erotic (the horror scenes are perhaps the most unexpected, and the most beautiful). It's more in the vein of In The Mood for Love than of the "stiff upper-lip" films that transfixed post-war Britain. Sex and desire are ever-present, even through our leads spend most of the film wearing nun habits.

Five nuns, led by Deborah Kerr's Sister Clodagh, move to a remote palace in the Himalayas, kindly lent by an Indian general in exchange for providing schools and medical services to the local children. The sisters are forced to rely on Major Dean, a Brit who know his way about the locals. Needless to say, sparks fly in many directions.

Clodagh's studied restraint sits against the animal attraction between the Indian prince and Kanchi, a lower-class girl rejected by her family for being too open in her many affections. Rather than suggesting that this is some native savagery, Sister Clodagh comes to envy their youthful impetuousness, troubled by regrets of her own.

 

Now, despite being set in the remote hills of the Himalayas, Black Narcissus was fully filmed in Britain, at the Pinewood Studios. Which perhaps accounts for the one jarring weakness in the film.

Despite carefully researching the architecture, the climate and the foliage of its remote setting, the powers-that-be still chose to brownface the female Indian lead, Kanchi.

In an incredible scene, we see Simmons do traditional Indian-style dancing, and to her credit, she's very good at it. But why not hire an Indian actress trained in classical dance? Which, as anyone who's seen even a single Indian movie knows, is literally every Indian actress (I could explain the reasons for intersection of dance and theatre in both classical and modern Indian culture, but I'll spare you).

It's even more jarring when you consider how carefully the film deals with "otherness". Certainly our good nuns believe they're bringing enlightenment to the savages, but Powell and Pressburger make no such judgment. In fact, with one line from our extremely handsome male lead (WWJD), the filmmakers reveal the inherent silliness of such beliefs, that if bringing the "light" means turning a man against his own family, it cannot possibly be more righteous.

(Clodagh and her sisters do come to recognize this, and certainly this contributes to their turmoil. If the motives of the Holy Order could be so wrong about one thing, why can't they be wrong about others, especially the right of a woman to be a woman?)

Basically, the filmmakers are saying that being one of the darkies is in fact a perfectly acceptable (even beautiful) human condition, unless of course you're in a mainstream movie. In which case, bust out the brown foundation and raven-colored hair dye.

Powell and Pressburger's film is well regarded as one of the first masterpieces of technicolor filmmaking, and I'd go so far to say that it's still one of the most beautiful films in existence.

Despite its one great failing, Black Narcissus still stands up as a great study of what makes us human, even under the most stringent rules in the most trying of circumstances. Go watch it, then come back and play in the comments.

"The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92," reads the tagline for Suspiria, Dario Argento's accidental adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Our heroine encounters three impossible things before breakfast, though it takes until dinnertime before she believes them.

Death, sorcery, witches. Our human tendencies prevent us from accepting a description of death as it truly is -- utterly mundane. Death is simple; expiration. Suspiria pretends at creating horror at the manner of death, while Argento knows (and shows) that the real horror is loss. We feel that undercurrent running through every action in the film; loss of control, loss of power, loss of sanity, loss of love. When you reach that point, there's nothing left. Just more death. Everyone reacts to the first loss in the film. We never meet her, but we can figure her out by the way people miss her.

Argento fuses German expressionism (think of the side-eyed angles in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) with a gleeful bloody mindedness the likes of which I've never seen. 35 years have passed since Suspiria came out; no horror movie shows such originality in its set-pieces. Argento takes full advantage of your visual senses, using color and design to great effect.

Suzy Bannion trips lightly through this rabbit hole, a ballet school where students mysteriously disappear and horrific accidents happen to all who cross the tightly drawn Madame Tanner. Part of the surreality of the film comes from Bannion's "curiouser and curiouser" attitude to the awful events that surround her. Even as the ballet school descends further and further into the pit of despair, she's mostly unaffected, which is for the best. Otherwise, the audience would be sitting in constant despair.

Suspiria takes horror back to its roots: nightmares. Think of your nightmares; even the most terrifying are more rooted in whimsy than in terror. The terror, in fact, plays in almost incidentally to the strange narratives our minds plant in our dreams.

After you see it, come back and tell me your thoughts. And that's an order!

Trivia

The building filmed as the dance academy actually exists, including the loony exterior:

The Haus zum Walfisch can be found in Freiburg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, and was known as the House of the Whale when it was built in 1516.

 

Welcome back to Filling the Gaps, our little series on films we should have seen, but somehow missed.

Tarantino fans treat Jackie Brown as the ugly little stepsister in his oeuvre, and critics seem to ignore it altogether, even though it's Tarantino's most effective homage to the art of filmmaking. One can assume it's ignored because it's the least "Tarantino-esque" of his films; you've got the wit, you've got the experimental story telling, you've got the references to genre b-films, but it's more of a human story.

The story's framed as a simple heist, but the gangster elements merely provide a skeleton for Tarantino to hang a much more complicated story about unrequited love, loyalty, and the tension between love, greed and fear.

Emotions are important. The characters who make it through the film have the good sense to either love Jackie or fear Ordell, and often both. The "fearless" characters end up with bullets in their brains; Louis, with his post-prison haze, Melanie, with her failure to connect with the real world, Ordell, with his general sense that nothing in the world actually affects him.

Tarantino sets the story up as a delicate conflict between three teams: Louis, Ordell and his concumbines, the ATF agents, and Jackie and Max (the bail bondsman played to perfection by Robert Forster).

Much of the rising action in the film comes from the steady disintegration of these partnerships. In each case, Tarantino provides us with moments of hope that he brutally strips away, most tragically with Jackie and Max.

You can't create this kind of story without a powerhouse acting talent, and the cast meets the challenge. So much of the film is conveyed through fleeting expressions; blink, and you'll miss important character moments.

Even if you haven't seen the run of seventies' films that made Pam Grier a star (I haven't), Jackie Brown provides a perfect showcase for why she's idolized by so many. Robert de Niro plays completely against type as an inept dumbass who sleepwalks through the world until anger breaks him free. Samuel L. Jackson steals the show with a surprisingly restrained performance.

Have you seen Jackie Brown? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Welcome back to Filling the Gaps, our little series on films we should have seen, but somehow missed.

As film fans mourned the recent passing of groundbreaking screenwriter Nora Ephron, I realized it was time to watch Sleepless in Seattle, her most successful film (granted, "most successful" is a matter of degrees with a filmography like hers). I'm sorry I haven't watched it until now; I fell of my chair laughing in certain scenes, and cried big giant monkey tears at least three times in the movie.

I tend to avoid romantic comedies like the plague, for the simple reason that I tend to love them a little too much, which creates such a cognitive dissonance with my feminist and intellectual bona fides that my brain simply shuts down (I'm not kidding. I once was forced to watch a Katherine Heigl romcom on a plane. It pains me to say I loved it. (Seriously, Romcoms On A Motha-------- Plane. THE HORROR).

Sleepless in Seattle clearly rises miles high above the genre, setting an example that was never replicated in Hollywood (there are some French romcoms that live up to it, but, of course, they're in French). I've written previously about my love for Serendipity, which shares a certain approach with SiS; they take the fundamental implausibility of the genre and build it into the plot.

What could be more ridiculous than a Baltimore news reporter stalking a lonely father in Seattle? Frankly, with a tagline like that, it's impossible to believe that the movie wouldn't be a complete trainwreck. But it works, for a few reasons.

1. The Double A-Plot Structure: Most movies have one A-plot and a number of side plots, and they all come together at the end of the film. Sleepless instead tells two distinct stories, allowing neither to fall completely into ridicule. Of course, Meg Ryan's story skirts much closer to the edge of believability, which brings us to the next point.

2. Meg Ryan's Performance: Holy shit, is she good in this movie. She's channeling a young Nicole Kidman, with a wide-eyed intensity to match. Unlike other romcom heroines, she's extremely confident. Her bad decisions aren't a result of a lack of self-esteem, but of a deep-seated unhappiness that she barely seems aware of. The script conveys this economically; when she tells Bill Pullman it's not him, it's her, we know that's actually true. It is her, and that's ok. She ends things and takes a stupid chance because life has disappointed her. And that's one of the most realistic character choices I've seen in a mainstream movie.

3. Tom Hanks' Performance: I cannot even speak about it. Total perfection. Where Annie's disappointment drives her character forward, Sam moves with his anger, which has warped him so badly that he can't love anyone. I'm not convinced that changes by the end of the movie, which is why the film ends where it does.

The ending truly is remarkable in so many ways. Throughout the film, I kept wondering, "Is it just me, or is Sam a terrible father?" He belittles Jonah constantly, ignoring his emotional needs. So when he reunites with Jonah, he actually realizes he's been a bad father. And without anyone explicitly having to say that he's become completely self-absorbed after his wife's death, it's acknowledged, bringing the character's story around full circle.

That's what's great about the film; it's more than just fluff. There are very serious undercurrents bubbling to the surface, which is rare in the romantic comedy genre. The romance, while highly compelling, provides a platform for stories about human weakness.

WHY I HADN'T SEEN IT

To be honest, I didn't even know about it ::fails::. For many reasons that are now obvious, it's not considered one of Sidney Lumet's great films, despite a fantastic performance by Al Pacino.

I found out about the film through The Savage City, T.J. English's fantastic account of police corruption and race riots in the 1960's and 70's. Frank Serpico's a minor character in the book, but his importance to changing the culture of the NYPD cannot be over-stated (in fact, the real-life impact of his actions are weirdly understated in the film).

THOUGHTS

The movie covers the 12ish years of Frank Serpico's life with the NYPD, from the clean shaven days to the full-blown hippie madness.

Serpico's shown as a paragon of virtue in his professional life, though we're given little context as to where his ideals come from. Certain scenes clearly inspired the original Life on Mars series, but somehow the idealism of the protagonist makes more sense in that more fantastical scenario. What gives Serpico the strength to maintain his virtue even when his sanity's at stake?

The film's tight focus on Serpico's greatest moments of stress gives Pacino about 90 minutes of Oscar material. I can't help but think how the film would have benefited from a slightly broader scope. We play ample witness to corruption within the police departments, but we're not shown how scary the '70s really was in NYC. The problem isn't just that policemen were corrupt; the entire politics of the city created a patronage system where entire populations turned to crime as a substitute for their self-worth.

I fully recognize that some of my issues with the film may have to do with the datedness of certain details, but it also seems like a case where Lumet's commitment to "issue-raising" takes precedence over making a deeper study of the setting. Also, Tony Roberts. Can't take that guy seriously. Which is definitely the Woodster's fault.

All that said, the film has many pleasures. Lumet gives New York so much attention that Woody Allen might be jealous. The West Village doesn't look like that anymore, and we can be sure that it never will again. Look at Dumbo, for godssake!

And now, a tour of Al Pacino's ridiculous outfits (Frank Serpico, ever the egoist, claims that Pacino doesn't nearly do justice to his "forward-thinking fashions):

Welcome back to Filling the Gaps, our little series on films we should have seen, but didn't.

Now, you may feel that Practical Magic may not be a gap that necessarily needs to be filled, but I suspect it's more of a personal gap. No movie classic, it has nonetheless hovered in my brain as something I know I'd love (I loved all supernatural shows on the WB...even Charmed). And guess what? I did.

As if there was any chance of failure, with a cast that not only includes Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, but Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing and Aidan Quinn. And of course a terribly homely European named Goran Visjnic.

I'll be honest, I expected a sort of "quirky romantic comedy," so I was pleasantly surprised at the dark undertones present from the start, and how quickly things veered completely off the rails. Well done, Bullman (seriously, can we have more Nicole Kidman/ Sandra Bullock movies? I'm overcome by the CHARMINGNESS of it all).

If you're on the fence about seeing this, I can only recommend this scene of total insanity (and coconuts):

THOUGHTS

The intro pretty much sums up the entire film: "La la la, I know the music's exceptionally jaunty, but really, there's quite a serious curse that killed your family," said Mother Goose-witch. "There may be no males, but you can have all the sweets you want! Da ha!"

There can never be anything more delightful than Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest trading barbs in strange Southern accents, like a cantankerous old married couple that can cut you down with a yeehaw spell. They spark wonderful conversations like this:

"Oh good, we can take them to the summer solstice!"

"Fine, but I don't want them dancing naked under the full moon."

"As you remember, nudity is completely optional!"

There was this great period in the mid-90s where children weren't always portrayed as cloying, but actually a bit intelligent, and sort of interesting in their own right. I miss those days. I also miss the days when said children morph into insanely hot Sandra Bullocks.

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The movie's not perfect, by any means. But I forgive everything for this piece of dialogue:

"She just keeps going through all these guys!"

"One day, a guy will go straight through her."

[Cue Nicole Kidman's character, weeping into her ovaries.]

Practical Magic reminds me that another thing the 90s had was Faith Hill, teaching pop-country fans everywhere about centripetal motion and perpetual bliss. Which explains why the movie sometimes feels like an extended remake of one Amy Grant video you may recall:

In more serious news, Nicole Kidman's a remorseless psychopath, which is kind of a nice twist for this sort of movie to take. I sincerely love how Sandra Bullock plays the bookish, uptight sister, while Nicole Kidman plays the wild one. We forget today, but Kidman once made quite a career as a firecracker before she became a "serious actress."

Favorite thing in the entire movie: Bath salts that transmit Joni Mitchell through the air! Ok, I wouldn't turn that down. Nicole Kidman, why don't you know the lyrics to your magical crystals?

Overall Verdict: Some kind of plot happens, but really, who cares? It's a fun romp that takes some unexpected twists, and Sandra Bullock is utterly charming. It's a shame she hasn't made more movies over the years. But I guess she's ruling the film world in her own way, which is pretty awesome too. Also, it passes the Bechdel test, again and again. If only more movies would realize that female relationships don't revolve entirely around men...

This post was intended to resurrect my long dormant Filling the Gaps series, but as sometimes (often) happens, a film moves me to consider more than its parts, or even the sum of its parts.

In She's Gotta Have It, Spike Lee provides us with a time capsule of a time when independent African-American film burst into the mainstream, providing hope for a whole new type of cinematic experience, only to surrender to racial stereotyping, insidious in the works of Tyler Perry, and backward in the case of The Help.

Spike Lee cannot have predicted the consequences of this film. In creating an almost Woody Allen-esque psychological portrait or urbane, educated, professional African-Americans in Brooklyn, he exposed Brooklyn to the masses. Now guess who can't afford to live in Brooklyn Heights anymore? Middle-class African-Americans. He set out to show America that there's a place in where blacks aren't gangbangers or drug dealers, but poets, artists, dancers and philosophers. It worked.

For someone who's living smack in the middle of the one-mile radius in which Lee filmed, his loving panoramas of Fort Greene, the Brooklyn Bridge and Jay Street provide a view into what now seems like a parallel universe. There are no white people on the streets of She's Gotta Have It. There are few black people in DUMBO today.

So in between all the grand moments of "hey, that's my street!" and "hey, that's my office!", and "hey, the waterfront doesn't have boats anymore!", watching this film also created a pyschological unease. That was 1986. This is 2012. In just over 25 years, Brooklyn has seen one of the most dramatic demographic shifts of anywhere in the country.

But since Lee could never have known what would follow, it leaves us to look at the movie itself, which is as brilliant, moving, and as ahead of its time as so many have stated. He claims he didn't set out to create a feminist film, and yet that's what we're left with. Nola and her many lovers, never disguising her lifestyle to any of them, unwilling to apologize for taking pleasure in her sexuality.

Each lover approaches Nola's lifestyle as a "disease," a mental ailment that she needs to cured of, for a woman that doesn't want to settle down must surely be unnatural. Of course, this is a comedy, so each man's approach to curing her is markedly different. The one who seems most sympathetic throughout the movie does punish her most brutally in the film, in a manner that I'm not convinced fits into the movie.

If you haven't seen She's Gotta Have It, make sure you do. It's a wonderful film for many reasons, not least it's gender and racial politics. It's also incredibly funny.

 

 

 

 

 

WHY I HADN'T SEEN IT:

To be honest, I hadn't even heard of it until Tony Curtis died. A number of memorials took care to remind us that, hey! Tony Curtis had a dramatic career once! (I, for one, was shocked).

WHY NOW:

Of late, Twitter has been the best source for movie recommendations. I was discussing "favorite old movies" with a number of people my age, and we all gushed over All About Eve (having seen All About Eve is itself a sign of good taste, for disliking it is impossible).

More than one person then commented, "If you like Eve, then you need to meet J.J. Hunsecker, Eve's little brother!" That was the sound of heart going squee.

THE MOVIE:

The best kind of entertainment is that which lets us intrude on the lives of truly horrible people. When you add in a script as witty as Sweet Smell of Success's, you have filmic gold.

When we first meet Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), we're led to believe that he's the worst kind of horrible people: the one with the pretty face. But that's only because we've yet to meet J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster).

But no! We actually meet J.J. first! Just his eyes, plastered on the side of a truck, staring out over the grim newsyard like the eyes of T.J. Eckleberg, complete with golden glasses. The truck guides us all through New York, until we land on our antihero, Sidney Falco.

And before we are given even a moment to take measure of Falco, J.J. interrupts again:

Falco keeps showing glimmers of what resembles a conscience, and keeps finding the wherewithal to suppress that conscience. What drives that ability to suppress seems uncomplicated at first: the ol' greenbacks. But there's something almost noble about his tireless pursuit of it. He runs around town as much to maintain his image as a shyster as to reap the profits of being a shyster.

Even still, J.J. steals his thunder. Sidney sets up petty swindles, then J.J. tries to break up his sister's true love with a guitarist named Steve. Falco hits the town without a coat so he doesn't have to pay the coat-check tip. J.J. wears his coat, and doesn't bother to tip.

You can almost see the film as a trail of one-upmanship (not unlike Jeux d'Enfants, but considerably less sentimental). After Sidney schemes to prostitute a woman he once called a friend (and probably lover), J.J. tricks poor, idiotic Steve into asking for his own funeral.

They're a pair of horror stories existing in perfect tandem. If there's one weakness in the film, it's that we don't get to see them turn their considerable manipulative skill against each other. Falco worships J.J. until the very end. It almost seems like the only honest statement he makes in the whole film is when he claims that J.J. is one of his "best friends."

J.J., meanwhile, holds Sidney in slightly lower regard than a cigarette crushed under his fine leather shoe. He doesn't love Sidney the way Sidney loves and worships him (interestingly, only Sidney and J.J.'s sister love him. Everyone else hates him.) J.J. only loves his sister and, more crucially, himself.

There is no coded homo-eroticism here, like we see in Gilda. One line sums it up: "I'd like to take a bite out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic." That may sound homoerotic, but look at Sidney's face:

The line is definitely more of a case of J.J. throwing his dog a bone: "Look at you, little Sidney, you're almost as evil as me," he says, with a patronizing pat on the head.

The movie thrives on three opposing forces: how Sidney sees J.J., how J.J. sees J.J., and, most fundamentally, how Susie sees J.J. Oddly enough, the rest of the world doesn't really figure into this strange triangleSo when the movie ends, we know that this story is finished.

OTHER

-I don't think even Woody Allen has taken better advantage of the city of New York. The neon lights have never seemed quite so sinister. Like J.J's omnipresent glasses, they watch over events both seedy and magnetic.

-I'm a little stupidly in love with J.J. What does that say about me?

- I know what I said earlier about homoeroticism, and yet there is this publicity still:

ONCOMING FIRSTS

-1st Burt Lancaster movie (and definitely not the last!)

WHY I HADN'T SEEN IT

I'm as mystified as you. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and at least in the description, this sounded a bit like the movie version of the same, also written by James L. Brooks, who wrote all my favorite episodes of MTM.

THOUGHTS

Broadcast News is often linked, unfairly in my opinion, to Network. For my money, it's the superior film. The satire is much more on-point; Network fires guns at far too many targets, to the point where the whole thing becomes a bit absurd. Network offers us wonderful lessons about our age (as I wrote about here), but the various subplots do not achieve the resonance of Howard Beale, orator for the ages.

Framed by a love triangle, Broadcast News keeps its theme simple: what is the state of journalism now? And what will it become? The future did not look bright, even in 1987.

Everything in the plot centers on these questions: on the surface the film's about Albert Brooks's wonk-ish journalist vs. William Hurt's vacuous anchorman, but Jane's slow transfer of her affections from one to the other isn't merely a statement on the peculiarities of love and loss. It's a statement on the debasement of her own values, occurring simultaneously with the debasement of broadcast journalism.

I AM JANE, CAREER WOMAN

Broadcast News features one of the best depictions of a "career woman" put to film. Despite decades of Hollywood and conservatives telling us otherwise, being a career woman doesn't actually mean you give up on all other life, or that you become shrewish or mean.

But of course James Brooks knows this, he created the first successful television show about a career woman, even managing to avoid weird misogynist traps like Bill Holden's speech to Faye Dunaway at the end of Network (again, I wrote about this here). (Now that I think about it, I could write an extremely long feminist critique of Network, as every last woman in power in that film is seen to be corrupt, laughable or dangerous. But those old men, they have principles.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jane is in many ways the logical product of everything Mary Richards fought for (through the course of the show, we see Mary fight for equal pay, her right to adult sexual relations outside of marriage, and most importantly, her right to find definition and meaning in her life without marrying and having children). In many ways, the show normalized a wider conception of femininity, allowing that women can focus on their careers and still be women.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show transformed societal thinking because television had unprecedented power at the time. When 25 percent of all households are watching your show every week, you really can change expected norms. Broadcast News similarly exists in a world where television has this kind of power. And it suggests that the cheapening of television can lead to the very cheapening of the viewer, making the viewer's tastes less discerning and more consumptive in nature. And Jane brings this to life, making an explicit choice of Pretty-But-Dumb over Intelligent-Erudite-But-Often-Depressing.

Of course, part of what makes the film great is William Hurt's performance as Tom the handsome anchorman. Tom's essential lack of intelligence is always right there in front of you, but like Jane, we want so badly to like him, and so we do. He is that charming, that attractive. So even when we learn the truth about his on-air duplicity, our instinct as the audience is to forgive, and we want Jane to forgive him as well, even though we know that it's wrong, that he's wrong for her, and so on.

OTHER NOTES

-I fell instantly in love with Holly Hunter's Jane, who is surely the prototype for Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation. She's not a woman concerned abut having it all; she has it all, and will never lose it.

-Why do Mary and Holly have the same haircut? We're talking 1973 vs. 1987 here.

-How do you get Jack Nicholson to do a cameo in your film? Maybe he's not the egomaniac he's always seemed like. His quick appearances do resonate, however.

-Joan Cusack definitely deserves some kind of award for her general fashions in the film (look at that wonderful hair!):

ONCOMING FIRSTS

-First Holly Hunter film

-First James L. Brooks film

IN CLOSING

Do you want Jane to end up with Tom or not? Should she have dumped him or not?

(part of an ongoing series at The Film Experience. Head over for more Aliens love).

I'm a failure as a movie fan. Why? I hadn't seen a single film in the Aliens quadrilogy until earlier this year, despite an abiding love and respect for science-fiction, action and female badasses. I wish that I can offer an explanation, but I have only one: I'm a failure as a movie fan.

And what a movie I'd been missing! The original Alien has a whole bunch of qualities to recommend it, but at its base, it's a horror movie set in space, a slasher flick gone futuristic, a superlative example of the genre, but still a genre exercise nonetheless.

Sigourney Weaver earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Ellen Ripley in Aliens, which came out 7 years after the original amidst a ton of backstage infighting and production difficulties. If you're interested in the behind-the-scenes, Tom Shone provides a detailed rundown of what was going on. I recommend reading it, the stuff about Cameron v. the British Crew is hilarious (Union-mandated raffle hour!).

Aliens taught the world a lesson in how to make sequels, a lesson that Hollywood has sadly failed to learn. Cameron fought for his vision, even though that vision was completely different from Ridley Scott's, leading to a more cerebral and thoughtful film than its predecessor.

What surprised me about Aliens is what a human story it is: underneath the action, the outer-space/far-future trappings and the terrifying monster, it's the essentially the story about a woman who rediscovers her inner strength and her humanity after losing everything, including 57 years of time.

1980's film culture was so dominated by films celebrating machismo it's impossible to believe that this movie was made, a movie that, at its core, is about motherhood. Yes it has all the James Cameron trappings --innovative special effects, disdain for big business, big action sequences -- but it all centers around one theme: the extraordinary lengths a mother will go to to protect her children. And I'm not just talking about Ripley here.

This is a war between two mothers, and both mothers in question know it. This is partly what makes Ripley such a remarkable character: she feels empathy. She learns to recognize the humanity even in creatures that are 100%  inhuman, whether it's Good Queen Xenomorph or the Android Bishop. I would argue that her journey to accepting Bishop is as moving as anything else in the story.

But in spite of that empathy and that understanding, something more primal kicks in within Ripley when she faces off with the Xenomorph queen. She recognizes that they are mirror images, she knows it, but that doesn't stop her from doing what she needs to do as a woman, as a caregiver and as an saviour of Earth. Even though she already knows that it's not the alien's fault, that it's the humans' fault for having the hubris to invade other worlds and raid their resources. It's the humans that are arrogant enough to think they can control entire other species through corporate/military power.

Now, I've just given you a lot of words. And you know what they say about pictures? This shot says it all:

I know it's not the shot others would select as their favorite from the film, but just look at it for a few seconds. It's all right there: the embryonic Earth, the serene Ripley, the passage of time. Ripley is shown here as Gaia, as mother Earth, which is only fitting as she's the one who saves planet Earth from alien destruction.

Now I wanna hear from you. Did you prefer Alien or Aliens? Should I watch the third and fourth movie, or skip them?

 

Gilda is the rare movie that you can love and appreciate in spite of the fact that it leaves more questions than answers.

That said, it has a lot of elements working in its favor, particularly the actors.

There's nothing I can say about Rita Hayworth that hasn't been said a thousand times before; she is stunningly beautiful and very capable in handling the contrasts between Gilda's dark emotional undercurrents and her oft-blinding brightness.

But I think Glenn Ford is the real coup here; when we meet him, he is characterized by an open, honest face and an easy wit, despite the fact that he's obviously a hustler. His blank physical appearance serves the chameleon character well; we see Johnny transform and distort in every direction possible as he faces growing success, power, torment and eventually redemption.

The direction was also startling; Gilda is not bathed in darkness as you might expect, but Vidor is careful and precise in his use of shadows and camera angles. There's very little that's showy, but everything works. Not to mention the pornographic camera gaze on Rita Hayworth's show stopping number; has there ever been a more erotic glove removal?

The film is also very clearly structured, which is in direct contrast to the seemingly incomplete story; we never do find out about the truth of Gilda and Johnny. That it is so well put together prevents the audience from feeling cheated; their past is something for us to put together in our imagination, and I bet what we imagine will always be ten times worse than the truth.

CONSIDERING THE HOMO-EROTIC

Critics and scholars get hung up with the question of original intent. But I would argue that's irrelevant in this case; we can only judge what appears to us on screen.* Even if you ignore the scary-comic scenes with Johnny, Ballin, and Ballin's little friend (a giant stick with the power of piercing!), there's considerable textual evidence to support the reading of homosexual leanings between the two male leads.

Let's look at Ballin. He is never represented as an altruist, and Johnny has no demonstrable skills when they first meet. So why invite him to his posh establishment? And what was a mover and a shaker like Ballin doing in the dingy alleyway in the first place, an alley full of hucksters and hustlers? It's not unreasonable to assume that he was trolling for sex, or something like it.

Later, once Johnny gets himself hired by Ballin, Ballin presents his first and most important rule: no women. He wants Johnny for himself. This clearly goes both ways. When Ballin returns from his trip, and announces his new wife, Johnny turns hateful and distrustful even before he knows that it's Gilda. The homoerotic angle adds a whole layer to the early antagonism between the two; he hates her in equal parts for coming between himself and Ballin, for showing up in his life at all, and for making him love her.

That none of these elements supersede the others perhaps reduces the relevance of the past relationship between Gilda and Johnny; what we are concerned with is how Johnny's conflicting desires play out now in Argentina. Youthful indiscretions are nothing but fuel to the fire; we don't need to know the facts to appreciate that it was heinous enough to mutate these two characters into shells of their former selves.

When Johnny steps into the role of Ballin, he becomes Ballin entirely; he absorbs his cruelty and sadomasochism as completely as he absorbs his penchant for shady business dealing. And that darkens his relationship with Gilda even further.

What makes the second act so compelling is that having done every thing they can to deny their love for one another, they can no longer resist its pull. And giving in warps them both; it gives Gilda a sense of security that she is incapable of recognizing as false, as she's never experienced the real thing. And it gives Johnny a vehicle to exercise his newfound power and sadism. He can't deal with his desire for her, cannot even act on it, so he chooses to torment her in every way possible. Gilda is powerless as a woman, as an individual, as a lover. Their mutual obsession twists them both horribly out of shape.

These are not the emotions of children at play, no matter what Ballin believes of Gilda. And while the movie wants us to believe it's about sex; it's equally about power. Ballin has all of it until he's dead, then Johnny inherits it. And Gilda has nothing but her sexuality.

 

*I say it's irrelevant, but that didn't stop me from researching. And I found this:

“Women in Film Noir”, Edited by E.Anne Kaplan, chapter 8, footnote #3.

“According to Ford, the homosexual angle was obvious to them at the time; they could see the implications in the relationship between the two men in the early part of the film- nothing stated, just mood.”

From John Kobal: “The Time, the Place, the Girl; Rita Hayworth."

FEMINIST STREET CRED

Gilda is distinctive in that it's the first picture in Hollywood with a female screenwriter, female producer, and topline female star.

ONCOMING FIRSTS

-First Rita Hayworth movie (woohoo!)

-First classic film noir (shocking, I know!)

 

 

WHY I HADN'T SEEN IT

For whatever reason, the name Wim Wenders hadn't really entered my radar until quite recently, so all I knew about this film was that it was the film that was remade into City of Angels. I never saw that one either, due to the fact that a) NIC CAGE!, b) mawkishness alert.

WHY I SAW IT NOW

If you may recall from my New Year's Post, one of my goals this year is to develop a more holistic understanding of German culture after World War II, which seems to have subsumed its identity entirely, and in my opinion, unfairly. But I have a closet Germanophile friend who read that post and has made it his mission to point me to relevant pieces of literature and film to try to answer that question, for which I am much obliged. We started last week with The Edukators, which I would have written about but I was not then, nor am I now, in the mood for being unkind. But I am eternally grateful for him sitting us down to watch Wings of Desire.

THE MOVIE

The movie is bound by the story of angels walking the Earth to observe humanity, or perhaps less to observe than to absorb the essence of what makes them human. But in the way of such films, the angels are gifted with omnipotence but yearn to experience humanity itself. Bruno Ganz's Damiel, a kindly onlooker for the first half of the film, slowly becomes consumed  by a lonely trapeze artist (Solveig Donmartin), and he follows her through rehearsal, through performance, and through her life.

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that in the first half of the movie, nothing happens, to the point that we were all falling asleep. The thoughts that our friendly angels overhears are all poetic, often mundane, but never exhilarating. Brief entertainment is provided by Peter Falk playing himself, whose role becomes unexpectedly and amazingly important (though I won't spoil it here).

Then, like flipping a switch, the movie changes. Damiel has followed the trapeze artist into a goth club, where a bunch of Berlin hipsters bob their heads to Crime in the City, a spinoff band from Nick Cave's The Birthday Party. All of a sudden we viewers are no longer constrained to a disaffected higher plane; we join Damiel in his yearning to be there. Just to be there and feel what everyone else is feeling.

Unexpectedly, the film reminded me of one of my favorite graphic novels, Neil Gaiman's Death: High Cost of Living. It's a universally beloved spinoff from the Sandman series, where he personified Death as a continually perky goth girl with endless compassion and unerring faith in humanity. She maintains that compassion by coming to Earth and becoming mortal for one day in every 100 years, and always finds kinship with the most downtrodden. (Aside, just talking about this makes me want to run and read the whole series again...) There's something in the tone that matched Wings of Desire; it oozes love for humanity despite all its warts.

Throughout the film, even through the slower bits, Winders gives us absolutely stunning imagery, from Daniel's brief sojourn on the top of a statue to loving shots of the circus and of that most mundane of places - the public library. Every decision Wenders makes radiates love, love of film, love of humanity, and love of life itself.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

Oddly enough, while Tom vaguely knew of the existence of City of Angels, he knew almost nothing about it. Once I started to convey what I knew of it, he let out an anguished cry of "WHY DO THE AMERICANS RUIN EVERYTHING!!!" But nothing I could say held a candle to actually watching the trailer for it. Once the laughter passed, the first thing he said, then, was, "How odd. Just a 90 second trailer and they mentioned God."

All four of us present just nodded our heads in amazement, like, "Wow, go Wenders, way to make a movie about angels that actually has almost no religious subtext whatsoever!" Well I did a little research, and Wenders was apparently inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's Angels, modeled on the concept of Islamic angels, intangible beings characterized by their lack of free will.

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT

-Nick Cave. Speaks for itself.

-Berlin-porn. Seriously, it's astonishing how different Berlin looks now from the Berlin of the movie, and Wenders adds another layer of context by comparing 1987 Berlin to what existed before the war. And if you've had the pleasure of visiting Berlin since the Wall came down, you can have a fun time in the slower bits identifying what stands now in the open spaces of the film.

ONCOMING FIRSTS

-First movie I've seen with Wim Wenders, but assuredly not the last. I've wanted to see Paris,Texas for ages, and also Until the End of the World, even though that one's regarded as a little bit of a disaster.

WHY I HADN'T SEEN IT
While it has one of the most recognizable quotes ("Greed is good.") and one of the most famous villains (Michael Douglas in an Academy Award-winning performance as Gordon Gekko), I was under the impression the movie itself wasn't that great. It seems like a lot of people who reviewed the movie back when it came out complained about the 'liberal moralizing,' but those same critics now hold Gekko's attitude and behavior as a harbinger of our Great Recession. And really, it tells of financial manipulation that only increased through the 1990s and today (see Soros's breaking of the Sterling, for instance).

THE MOVIE
Wall Street, in its broadest sense, tells the story of desperately bored Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), longing to get ahead in his career and easily seduced into a less than reputable lifestyle by financial shark Gordon Gekko. Throughout his descent and subsequent redemption, he vacillates between the angels on his shoulder. His father (Martin Sheen), a hardworking union man, and Bud's boss try to keep Bud on a moral line, where there are no shortcuts to financial success. Gekko, however, sucks Bud in with a life of easy money, women and prestige, in exchange for what seemed like a minor trade-in of principle.

In the first few shots of the film, we meet Bud Fox getting onto a crowded elevator; he can already be seen as the slickest, oiliest looking person in the shot, hinting at his future corruption. Like Vito Corleone, he's not that "good" at the start, he just hasn't had the opportunity to sell his soul as yet. However, I had issues with Charlie Sheen's acting. Most of the time it was fine, but there were times when he seemed to predict Christian Bale's manic energy in American Psycho, which fit into the style of that movie, but definitely was jarring here. The best scenes were with his father, when he didn't seem to emit an air of complete disconnect with the world around him.

We hear about Gekko before we see him; he's an unapproachable pillar of the community that Bud had to call 59 days in a row before earning a 5 minute hearing. He certainly has a strong force of personality, but as I mentioned, Bud was never incorruptible, so Gekko doesn't have to drive too hard at him. But Gekko drives too hard anyway, and that's how he loses Bud. There were instances when I thought Gekko is really not the criminal mastermind that he fancies himself to be.

Side note: what is up with Daryl Hannah? She really does ruin everything she's in (except Bladerunner and Kill Bill). Seriously, no dramatic roles for her. And her RIDICULOUS outfits.

OVERALL
Side note: Am I the first person to notice that for whatever reason, it's a bunch of women leaving the auditorium when Gekko begins his iconic speech?

WHY I HADN'T SEEN IT
Future Dirty Old Man syndrome. In the course of this Filling the Gaps series, I have realized that seems to be why I haven't seen MOST so-called classics from the 1970s.

I also had the general feeling that I already 'knew' Woody Allen movies, having seen so many of them, but now I know that most of his pre-London films are watered down versions of Annie Hall.

MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL?
Diane Keaton is the original manic pixie dreamgirl (see this Jezebel article to find out more about why this type can be completely loathsome if mishandled). There's no other way to explain her profound weirdness in this movie. The original article refers to the fact there's no way a girl like that could be real except as the perfect imagined mirror to Woody Allen's character.

But she's actually likeable, and very very watchable. The interweb reveals that Annie Hall was actually a major style icon who continues to influence designers like Stella McCartney today. No one would actually want to dress like Natalie Portman in Garden State (Which was a direct rip-off of Kate Winslet's look in Eternal Sunshine, which had a practical purpose of illustrating the changes in timelines. Natalie Portman, on the other hand, blech.)

"THE NEW ANNIE HALL"
However, there are many things that elevate this above pure dreck like Garden State and entertaining-yet-forgettable fare such as 500 (Days of Summer), which I remember being sold as 'the new Annie Hall.' For one thing, it has cracking dialogue. Woody was at his comedian finest, keeping the jokes fast and furious.


IS ALVY SINGER WOODY ALLEN?
While Woody Allen is essentially playing himself as Alvy Singer, Neurotic Jew Extraordinaire (which has surely become it's own overused movie trope by now), that character type was still in its infancy at the time. And then again, it seems apparent to us now that Woody=Alvy, given that he's continued to basically play Alvie Singer as recently as Scoop, but was it obvious to moviegoers at the time? Must research old reviews...

Allen also made ample use of brilliant visual gags illustrating how Alvy sees conversations differently from everyone else, he reads into every last shred of subtext. So we end up with the Neurotic Jew version of Disney classic Sleeping Beauty, which I'm fairly certain that Walt himself would never allowed near the building.

BULLET POINTS OF AWESOME

• Unexpected Christopher Walken!
• Unexpected Paul Simon appearance! Annie Hall has seriously certifiable taste in men, Woody Allen then Paul Simon! Have there ever been less attractive men starring in Hollywood films?

ONCOMING FIRSTS

• Only the second movie I've seen with Diane Keaton, the first being The Godfather, which I just saw last week.
• First Woody Allen "New York" film.

WHY I HADN'T SEEN IT
It's a combination of Jack Nicholson-phobia and 70's Movie-phobia. The 70's are well known to be a dead zone of American films, with a couple of strong years at the beginning and the end, but an arid wasteland in between (Grease absolutely is part of the wasteland, but at least it's highly entertaining, if atrociously retrograde).

But the Jack Nicholson-phobia was probably stronger. Having now seen Chinatown, I am completely opened up to seeing his other films, while before it was just lodged in my head that he's a dirty old man whose acting style chiefly consists of 'smug.' Ah preconceptions, how you laugh when you force me to give you back.

THE MOVIE
Starting Chinatown without any idea of what to expect, you can be forgiven for thinking the film is going to be lighthearted. Jack Nicholson rolls from quip to quip with a spirited enthusiasm for his line of work, especially the tawdry bits. He is the hopeful character, strangely un-cynical. So when events start to get dark, really dark, watching him lose his faith only accentuates the soul-crushing power of Chinatown.

Chinatown is a film noir in the light, with some scenes almost shadowless, hypersaturated by the oppressive California sun. The audience stumbles on clues when Jake does; neither is privileged, which gives the creeping sense of dread more immediacy.

The pacing is slow but never laborious, as if Polanski is trying (and succeeding) to seduce you into the film. Each discovery creeps up slowly until the last act, where revelations regarding Evelyn (our femme fatale), her father, and their curious history are furiously dealt.

But oh, the denouement. Chinatown has one of the most honestly bleak conclusions ever filmed, owing to a late rewrite by Roman Polanski of the original script by Robert Towne. Chinatown was Polanski's first Hollywood film after his wife's (Sharon Tate) murder at the hands of the Manson family, and those events undoubtedly darkened his world view.

ONCOMING FIRSTS

• First Jack Nicholson film (apart from Batman, but I barely remember that one. As a kid I preferred Batman Returns and Batman Forever (hey, I was a kid! Nipple-suits meant nothing to me!)
• First Faye Dunaway film

Enter Filling the Gaps, a series about the films that you're 'meant to have seen,' that you never got around to (and when I say you I mean me, though more than likely you as well.) I will try to keep you unspoiled, and will undoubtedly fail. Complain in the comments.

After watching Sunset Blvd for the first time, I really had to reflect on why this was considered an all time classic; it's not that I didn't enjoy it, in fact I stayed up until 3 AM to finish it.

(Bizarre childhood confession: while this is the first time I've seen Bill Holden in a film, I am ashamed to say that my first introduction to him was in a very late episode of I Love Lucy, one of the really terrible ones, where he plays himself as a crush of Lucy and Ethel.)

Leaving that aside...


It's the earliest example I can think of in so-called 'canon' movies that uses a multitude of literary tropes: an unreliable narrator, in-medias-res story form, and most importantly, metafiction.

But, the greatest accomplishment of the film, without question, is getting former silent movies stars to put aside their egos and play failed versions of themselves in a 'talkie'.

What a rogue's gallery, described by our narrator as "The Waxworks": Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson as a thinly veiled parody of her own career. Buster Keaton, looking almost skeletal, Hedda Hopper, Anne Q. Nilsson and H.B. Warner, amazingly playing themselves, as actors trapped on their pedestals even though their fans have long deserted them.

Cecil Demille also plays himself, in one of the most honest roles in the film, setting a  counterpoint to  Norma Desmond's delusions while William Holden's Joe Gillis is content to play along and pacify her. Until he isn't, of course. I do wonder, though, how many films since this one have hinged their final act on the hero suddenly 'finding a conscience.'

I'm not sure this is a movie that everyone would enjoy, but I certainly did, and it improves in my mind the more I think about it.

CANONICAL QUOTES
-"You're Norma Desmond...you used to be big." "I am big. It's the pictures that got small."
-"All right, Mr. Demille. I'm ready for my closeup."