Film School Rejects » Loukas Tsouknidas

Acquaint Yourself With ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:42:49 +0000

Back in the day, I remember watching a very funny play brought on stage by an amateur theater workshop during a University students’ festival. For years I couldn’t recall the title or any particular detail other than the fun I had as part of the audience. Then I kind of stumbled upon a movie called The Man Who Came to Dinner. It was based on the play I was looking for and I had as much fun watching it as that time in the theater.

Radio celebrity Sheridan Whiteside (Monty Wooley) arrives in a small town in Ohio called Messalia, where he’s invited to dinner by the Stanleys, a local wealthy family. As he goes up the icy stairs, he slips and falls on his hip. After he’s treated by a doctor that advises him to stay on a wheelchair for at least ten days, Mr. Whiteside lets Mr Stanley know that he’s being sued for a good amount of money and his house is being occupated. He then goes on applying his own rules to the household, getting hold of the phone, the living room, the dining room, the library and the stuff. Along the way he receives a bunch of weird guests, gifts and packages and messes with the family’s business running everybody crazy. Meanwhile his trustful secretary Maggie Cutler (Bette Davies), falls in love with the local newspaperman Burt Jefferson. Sheridan can’t afford to lose Maggie so he brings in actress Lorraine Sheldon (Ann Sheridan) to seduce Burt away. But after a couple of other colorful celebrity friends step in, his plan results to even more mix-up…

Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s broadway play, inspired by the real-life critic Alexander Woollcott’s temperamental personality, is brought to the big screen by William Keighley in a very uncolorful way. It never draws away from its stage origins and it always feels like a play, especially when people frenetically come in and out of the multiple entrances to the house’s main hall. It’s filled up with punch-line dialogue and brief gag-like action, relying mostly on its actors’ skills and its sarcasm to keep us amused. Other than a few moments of outdoors action, most of the film takes place in that hall which at times feels too crowded and others too empty. And like in a play there’s no sense of real time as people and packages fly in from all parts of the US in an absurd pace or characters barge in the house anytime they like, as if they’re all living next door. So, it comes off as a mediocre, timid attempt to make a movie out of a successful stage play, one that compromises the new medium and adds nothing more visually to an already amusing script. Except maybe Jimmy Durante.

Durante plays Banjo -a character based on Harpo Marx- the comedian friend of Sheridan and Maggie’s who busts in the Stanleys’ house with his extroverted personality and his rambunctious sense of humor to give an important relief to the tragedy that’s been building before his arrival. It’s a memorable appearance that shakes things up just when they become a bit melodramatic and Sheridan’s sarcasm ceases to be amusing.

As i said before, this is an actors’ movie. Monty Wooley is excellent as Sheridan Whiteside, a part he knew very well since he also played it on stage. He commands attention every time he talks and he manages to stay likable besides his bloated ego and his misanthropic treating of his less than charismatic hosts. On the other hand, Maggie is romantic, a secretary who’s a guest to the celebrity world and she clearly understands it. Her love for Burt is the bail-out she was waiting for, but she has to fight for it. Bette Davies portrays her in a low-key manner, turning from a known star to a character-actress with no strain at all. As opposed of course, to the glowing Ann Sheridan whose portrayal of Lorraine Sheldon demands that she looks and acts like a wanna-be star: empty, pompous and extremely self-involved. As for the others, Grant Mitchell is great as the pissed-off host-by-force Ernest Stanley, Reginald Gardiner throws in a nice caricature of a star playwright and Richard Travis is charming, though he seems a bit too overwhelmed in the part of local reporter Burt Jefferson.

Celebrity as a concept that’s unavoidably bloated is also timeless and Sheridan Whiteside with his friends never cease to remind us that they come from another world where a bloated ego is the norm whether you believe in it or you make a cartoon out of it. Hart and Kaufman exploit their personal knowledge of such a pompous celebrity’s antics and create an absurd and extreme comedy based on a relatively implausible setting. The outcome is funny, amusing and keeps a pace high enough to avoid getting boring while the witty dialogues make the talky script extremely entertaining.

The Man Who Came to Dinner is not a great movie, but it’s an adequate film version of a great play and the best way to enjoy it instead of waiting for it to come to a stage near you. Plus, it features Wooley, the original Sheridan Whiteside of the Broadway hit.

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Mourn Your Doomed Existence at the ‘Port of Shadows’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:01:09 +0000

Every week, Film School Rejects presents a film that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

Port of Shadows (1938)

Pre-war French cinema gave us, among other things, the poetic-realism school of aesthetics. The team of Jacques Prévert and Marcel Carné was the steady duo of that school, the poet and the director who made a bunch of memorable films together. One of those is Port of Shadows and it begins like this…

After a shot of a ship laying still in a foggy harbor, we see the headlights of a truck before zooming to the driver. Then, from the opposing view, a silhouette of a man appears in the dark. He turns around and facing the lights he demands for the truck to stop. He is Jean (Jean Gabin), a soldier who just got back from fighting in Tonkin, Indochina and is heading to the port of Le Havre. As they arrive Jean notices a dog passing in the truck’s way. He grabs the wheel and turns suddenly, saving the dog but pulling the truck off the main road, having the angry driver demand an explanation. They go outside to pick a fight but Jean calms down and asks for a cigarette. When the driver says he thought he’d pull out a gun, the shot closes up on Gabin’s weary face as he gives a short speech, butt in mouth, over how weird it feels to draw and shoot a living person. He then shakes hands with the man and marches to the port. After a few steps in the damp night he notices a dog following him, the same dog he saved from the truck. He ignores him at first but soon, he drives him off with a stone. Later in the film someone asks him if he doesn’t like dogs. “I don’t like anyone looking for a master,” he declares.

What happens in this movie in terms of plot isn’t nearly as important as the main character and his doomed fate. Jean is an army-deserter, as we understand, trying to find a way out. Where better than a port. On the way, the more he tries to avoid people, the more they bump into him – making their stories a part of his. He meets a kind drunk who takes him to a hospitable shack by the sea where he finds some rest and food. There, he meets the host, a man blabbering about the days he spent in Panama, a suicidal painter blabbering about the futility in life and a beautiful teenage girl, Nelly (Michèle Morgan) to whom he blabbers about love. He almost encounters the other two significant characters, a local storekeeper named Zabel (Michel Simon) and a local gangster named Lucien (Pierre Brasseur) as they are both driven off the shack by Panama and his gun. We learn about a crime that has probably taken place, a guy named Maurice is missing, Lucien is after Zabel for some papers and Nelly is hiding from someone.

But all this implied drama is just the background for Jean’s rise and fall, his finding a moment of happiness only to lose it in a shocking way. “Do you love life?” the painter asks him. “It has its moments,” the soldier replies while looking at Nelly. “Does life love you?” the man comes back. “It’s been rotten to me so far, but maybe she’ll change, since I love her,” Jean says with his signature hardheadedness and his reflexive optimism.

Jacques Prévert, the surrealist poet and steady collaborator of Marcel Carné’s, wrote this script based on a novel by Pierre Mac Orlan. He builds every character as a reflection on Jean’s stranger, the mysterious but likable, the self-confident but withdrawn, the misanthrope but capable of great love. Each one of them has his own moments to throw a short speech or a quotation. The dialogue is full of such memorable exchanges of words, like the ones I cited above. Since people don’t really talk that way, it feels crafted, but it’s pleasurable. Jean walks around, hands in pockets, trying to mind his own business but his path is constantly blocked by trouble. It’s as if, while he knows nobody in this forsaken port-town, they all have been expecting him in a way, to help him fulfill his fate. Totally ignorant of the greater trap and as the dog becomes his shadow, Jean follows his gut and tries his doomed escape while we root for him, sucked in by his personality and appalled by the possibility of an unhappy ending.

Jean Gabin is remarkable and hauntingly familiar as Jean, and his romance with the beautiful Michèle Morgan works like a charm. Pierre Brasseur is a bit over the top in the role of the cowardly small-town gangster but Michel Simon paints a very low-profile, inconveniently slimy villain. Along with the rest, they all feel like a group of caricatures, surrounding the main character preventing him from being invisible.

Marcel Carné’s narration of Prévert’s story is very clear and never lets Jean out of its attention. Nevertheless, he introduces the secondary characters one by one in a careful manner, never failing to accentuate their significance in moving the plot forward. His image of Le Havre, is that of a very limited town where a stranger can’t visit but a few places, and only the footage of the large cargo ships provide some hope towards something greater. The atmosphere looks dumpy and artificially lit, as the photography doesn’t rely on heavy contrast but blends all shades of gray leading to a dull result, while some backgrounds look like they could have been painted.

Port of Shadows is one of those films that had a great influence on the film-noir genre which became so popular for a couple of decades later. Even if it’s a lot more romantic, which makes it feel kind of dated, Port of Shadows plays like a song to which you know the words and the ending, but find yourself humming it over and over again.

Old Ass Movies: Go West With ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:45:54 +0000

Every week, Film School Rejects presents a film that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

The Ox-Bow Incident is the story of a lynching that went right, but in the wrong way. Simple as an old man’s morality tale and painfully to the point, it covers a timeless debate concerning law, justice and the misconceptions they suffer in our hands and minds. William Wellman and Lamar Trotti’s film is frighteningly relevant and downright haunting at first sight.

Two regular cowboys, Gil Carter (Henry Fonda) and Art Croft (Harry Morgan) enter a shabby town somewhere in the wild west. Looking for a certain girl, whiskey and any kind of action they go to the only saloon around where they run into a couple of local ranchers and a general bad mood over the cattle-rustling raids that’s been plaguing the business lately. Carter and Croft are rare visitors therefore they amount to strangers when it comes to defending the community from outsiders. A man named Farnley makes it clear to them before engaging in a fight with Carter. Moments after that a hasty rider arrives with news of a rancher named Kinkaid having been killed by strangers, probably the same rustlers they all have been looking for. Despite the absence of the regular sheriff, the storekeeper’s plead to wait and do things by the name of the law and the judge’s demand to bring the suspects back for a fair trial, a triggerhappy posse is formed with a devious ex-military, Major Tetley, as the makeshift leader. As the peaceful-turned-vigilant townspeople ride into the night, Davies, the storekeeper, rides along while his assistant leaves to find the sheriff. Carter and Croft also follow, so that suspicion won’t fall on them. When the riders discover three men sleeping in the woods and a few of their pal’s livestock near them, a tragic farce begins in the name of justice…

Lamar Trotti’s script, based on the Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s novel by the same name, is extremely concise and never, but a few times, does it stray away from the point it wants to make. A point over the concept of law and justice, and the common man who hides personal responsibility behind that one of the mob or even the collective. When the three men, a young farmer named Donald Martin (Dana Andrews) and his hired hands, a cocky Mexican (Anthony Quinn) and a frightened old man, are captured and “properly” interrogated by Major Tetley the following conversation takes place: “You don’t believe me”, Martin concludes, making Tetley respond with a question, “Would you in my place?” “Well, i’d find out. I’d do a lot of finding out before hanging men who might be innocent.”, the soon to be executed replies in a raised, righteous voice. But the Major is rigid and pretty certain of his argument, “If it were only rustling maybe, but… but murder? No!” That’s exactly where the whole fault of the mob’s excuse and it’s misuse of the concept of justice lies. The law would do a lot more finding out for the same reason that these people don’t, and that’s the gravity of the accusation and the fatality of the consequent punishment.

But Major Tetley, despite of what happens in the end and the fact that he’s a figure despised by all his sudden peers alike, does not stand alone in misrepresenting justice for his own reasons. This is a mob and each and every one of its members has given consent to whatever happens and took refuge in the shadow of the collective responsibility. Farnley has probably the strongest reason to be angry as Kinkaid was his lifelong buddy, but the others either want action, to be part of a heroic justice keeping adventure the western fables rant about pompously or they have their own scores to settle. The Major for instance, who lends this lawless posse his big mouth and ambiguous military credentials, openly declares this as an opportunity to make a “man” out of his wimpy son which probably hides his eagerness to prove himself to a crowd that never thougth much of him or his blurred wartime background. Anyway, it’s more than clear in their selfishness and their self-assured swagger that these people don’t want justice, they want the taste of pure revenge, and never even having seen the dead body of the one they are getting it for, it makes their spine tickle even more.

In the middle of all this, a pretty unheroic hero is put, a man who’s as frustrated as the next, having lost his girlfriend to a slick big-city fellow but keeps that anger to himself or channels it through an honest fistfight now and then. Gil Carter, as he enters the saloon with his pal Art in the opening scene, sits at the bar and stares at the overhead painting. It features a woman lying on a bed while a man comes out of the shadow behind her, with eager eyes and his hand stretching out to her body. “Well..”, the bartender prompts for an order. “That guy’s awful slow getting there”, Gil remarks about the picture. Without looking up the barman adds, “I feel sorry for him. Always in reach, and never able to do anything about it.” “I got a feeling she could do better”, Gil replies with certainty only to get his claim rejected by the host, “You’re boastin’”. In this scene Trotti and Wellman introduce us to a character by the way he sees himself in a painting. The man emerging from the shadow is Carter himself, since as he, along with us, learns later in the film, lost the girl he was reaching out for and he lost her to someone better, in social terms. The reluctance that cost him his only love is the one that makes him numb, unable to reverse the outcome, in the farce-trial that follows. Henry Fonda is superb in this part, his eyes don’t just follow the action, they narrate it since he doesn’t talk much or even do what his swagger promises. It’s these eyes, that William Wellman hides in a much talked about last scene where Carter reads Martin’s letter to his wife aloud for the ashamed town’s people to hear, in the film’s only didactic moment –which nevertheless feels totally necessary.

There are a lot more things in the movie that one can recall, like a seemingly useless scene in the middle, where a carriage passes and misunderstands the posse for raiders. The driver shoots at them, almost killing Art before stopping and apologizing by throwing the fault at the night and their attacking stance. Or when Carter finds out about his girl and takes it out at Farnley, kicking him in the face with unprovoked strength. They all underline the main theme of misconceptions, rage and self-appointed righteousness conquering over the essence of justice. Besides Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews, who has the most dramatic role, all the other cast members are equally great in their characterizations, and typical as they maybe, they still are people we know and understand their part in the farce we’re watching. Wellman’s direction is firm and low-key, with a few added moments of great camera movement and ironic mise-en-scene. Having a small budget to work with, his sets are all constructed, but the lighting never lets that become a nuisance and even adds to the stark atmosphere that is required.

This western movie begins with two guys entering a town on horseback and ends with two guys riding away. Still it’s nothing like any cowboy you’ve ever seen, it transcends the genre using it to tell a tale that’s relevant to all genres, times and places. The Ox-Bow Incident is a hell of an old ass movie.

Discover the Class Struggle of ‘Room at the Top’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:53:39 +0000

Every week, Film School Rejects presents a movie that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

Room at the Top (1959)

The class wars concept has always been handled in a not-so-subtle way by manipulative and creative minds alike. In the latters’ case there are probably two ways to do it. You either use your characters as toy soldiers to pinpoint some didactic pre-determined class-conscious moral or use the stereotypes that go with that to establish your characters’ starting position and let them develop from there. Just like Jack Clayton did back in 1959 in his first feature film, Room at the Top, based on a novel by John Braine.

It’s the rags-to-riches story of Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey), a working class bloke and WWII vet who gets a chance to escape his miserable hometown of Dufton and work as a civil servant in a richer, classier place called Warnley. As he arrives at his new work he meets the boss and from their brief talk, we are left with no doubts about whether or not this is an upgrade for our protagonist. “I’m not surprised that you wanted to leave Dufton as soon as possible. You’ll find big differences here you know,” the head of the office points, “You’ll meet a different class of people. We pride ourselves in being civilized here in Warnley.” Joe makes one last try to keep his inferiority complex in check, “Dufton is not much of a place, but we’re not exactly savages there, you know Mr Hoylake,” only to get a patronizing grin and a punchline, “You think not?” He has no answer to that. He shares a similar disgust for Dufton.

He then meets his future flatmate, the likable Charles Soames (Donald Houston) and the other co-workers. Outside the boss’s office Joe gets cocky again, and as he looks out the window a pretty, delicate girl catches his eye, while stepping into a convertible. “Is that what you really want?” Charles asks. “That’s what I’m going to have,” Joe responds with certainty.

A few days later, at the amateur dramatic club’s premiere Joe watches as two women are juxtaposed on stage, the girl from the street, and an older one, who has a much more impressive presence. As he finds out they’re Suzan Brown (Heather Sears), heiress to the local millionaire and Alice (Simone Signoret), a french woman, married to an obnoxious local guy named George Aisgill. After the play is over Joe goes backstage along with Charles to get introduced to the rest of the company. In this brilliant sequence we get all the hints about the characters and their present or future association. Joe finds Suzan alone and throws his best complement at her, moments before he gets acquainted with his upper class rival, Jack Wales, a respectively cocky fellow and a war veteran himself. In another corner Alice asks about Joe and Teddy, half-joking, tells her he’s in love with Suzan. As he leaves the theater, she stares at him tellingly in a mirror.

From that moment on Joe Lampton puts his scheme to win Suzan Brown at work. He enrolls at the dramatic club to get warmer but instead of her, his co-star in the new play is Alice. They become close and though she gives him advice on how to seduce Suzan, he ends up falling for her. Meanwhile Suzan becomes very fond of him and that makes her parents worried. She’s sent to Europe for a trip while Joe receives a sudden job offer from his hometown. He decides to stay in Warnley and keep juggling two very different passions, Suzan and Alice, and two very dangerous men, Mr. Brown and George Aisgill…

Class differences aren’t just a matter of structure but also, a matter of perception. Joe Lampton is undoubtedly young, handsome and able. He also poses as pompously sure of himself, amoral and cunning, but only in a certain context: that of the lower class person who is denied by right the chance to reach the top. For him that’s a case where different rules apply, even if he masquerades his hunt for Suzan as a romantic thing. In his scheme though, there is no typecast for the foreign lady, an outsider who’s unintentionally stuck in the same structure that Joe wants to infiltrate. He wants in while she wants out, so they meet in that gap in the middle, where nobody cares about the other person’s class origins. That’s liberating for Joe as a man, but there is also Joe the social entity who has to fight back at his demons: the very legitimate feeling of his potential being limited by forces he can’t control and a strong inferiority complex feeding from his working class roots and his shabby old hometown.

Jack Clayton and his writers — probably because they have some great literary material to begin with – weave greatly the story of that conflict, between the real person and the perception of himself in the social structure he always fancied. By putting all the characters in the mix they create a plausible world around Joe, a world which he also has to infiltrate as a character himself. The dialogue is very well written, with all the melodramatic cliches used to the story’s benefit while for a seemingly simple set-up, a lot of interaction takes place, giving the film a great pace and a relative suspense. The creators give us a lot of scenes to establish Joe’s position in his new environment and his secession from the old one, the reason he’s trapped in the struggle to prove himself and get that room at the top up to the point he has lost all contact with his previous identity – it’s made totally clear at a working class bar scene where Joe makes a desperate attempt to find some familiarity somewhere. It all contrasts with the scenes along Alice where he loses himself in a newfound escape, where he still has no control but his master is not an aristocrat bunch from Warnley.

The movie is very well cast, all the actors are precise and convincing in their small but important parts. Laurence Harvey is tailor-made for the role of Joe Lampton, a well-built good looking man, bearing a distinct roughness when expressing his words, and a warm uneasiness when expressing his feelings. But the star here is Simone Signoret, in the – quite familiar I guess — role of the sensual mature Frenchwoman, who totally overwhelms Joe with her combination of dominating sex-appeal and subliminal vulnerability. She owns the screen every time she appears – background or foreground — which was enough for getting her the Oscar that year.

Room at the Top is one of the first “kitchen sink” dramas that altered the British cinema’s status in cinematic history. But historical context aside, it’s a compelling drama, with a timeless premise, crafty screenwriting and precise directing.

Try As You May, You Can’t Avoid ‘The Killers’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:21:00 +0000

Every week, Film School Rejects presents a movie that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

The Killers (1946)

Ernest Hemingway’s famous short story The Killers is a cynical prelude to an unavoidable murder and has inspired two feature films since its first publication. The 1946 old ass version was directed by Robert Siodmak in typical film-noir style and was Burt Lancaster’s film debut.

What happens in the first twelve minutes of The Killers is, minus some details here and there and the ending dialogue, the whole Hemingway story. It’s a cold winter evening in a small town and two men (William Conrad & Charles McGraw) wearing hats and overcoats walk through the central street, pass the gas station and in the lunch counter. There they bully the waiter, the cook and a young customer named Nick Adams. After they make sure that the place will be in their full disposal one of them reveals that they’re waiting for a man nicknamed the “Swede” (Burt Lancaster), who, as they already know, comes in every night for his dinner. They’ve been hired to kill him but they don’t know why and they’ve never met him before. Some time later and after a couple of customers are turned away by the waiter, they realize that the Swede isn’t coming so it’s time for them to pay him a visit. They leave their temporary hostages scared but unharmed and go about their job. Nick Adams rushes out from the back and beats them to the Swede’s house where we see him leaning over a man whose face is covered in darkness. Nick pleads him to leave or let him call the police but the man calmly answers that there’s nothing anyone can do. He seems to have already accepted his fate. Nick leaves, the Swede’s face is revealed and the killers arrive…

At this point in the short story, instead of watching the killers, we shift back at the lunch counter where Nick tells the waiter about his conversation with the Swede. “I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too damned awful.”, he says and the old man responds, “Well, you better not think about it.” The script (to which John Huston also contributed only uncredited) doesn’t turn its head away from the Swede like Hemingway’s small timers. Who were these men, why did they kill the Swede and why did the latter choose to wait so stoically for his ending?

These are the questions that come naturally to the audience and consequently move this story forward beyond the killing. The character that the writers choose to bring as the spectator’s extension is insurance investigator Jim Reardon (Edmond O’ Brien) who has to check upon the dead guy’s death-benefit claim and the fact that it has to be payed to a woman the Swede hardly knew. Reardon has absolutely no personal gain from this situation, especially after his boss cynically explains to him the nature of the insurance business and how the yearly loss is compensated by next year’s raised rates. That’s what makes him as impartial as we are and driven by the same curiosity and love of the detective game.

As the hunt for the truth begins, Reardon meets a series of characters who knew the Swede aka Ole Anderson aka Pete Lund. A police officer and childhood pal of Anderson’s (Sam Levene) who was partly responsible for his arrest becomes Reardon’s aid in this quest. Through well narrated flashbacks we learn that Anderson was a boxer who became close with crime figures after he couldn’t fight anymore and fell for a pretty but dangerous dame named Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner). He got in the pen taking a fall for her and when he came out they reunited as parts of a big payroll heist. At that point the interrogations give way to an incident that serves as a turning point. One of the gang members is found shot and during his deathbed delirium he blurbs some new info about the payroll job aftermath. That’s when Reardon and Lt. Lubinsky decide to get more aggressive to find out the truth behind the Swede’s uncontested murder and maybe even his murderers…

Robert Siodmak was a German born director, one of the many that came to Hollywood after the rise of the Nazis in their homeland. He worked during the peak of German expressionism which made him the right man for directing a film-noir, using the light and shade in the best possible manner. The way he controls the narration and the continuity between flashbacks, a viewer never gets tired or loses interest in the story. Of course he has some great characters to work with and a bunch of very well casted actors. Edmond O’ Brien may not be intriguing or someone to identify with but he looks like an everyday guy doing his everyday job, getting naturally excited the minute he steps on a real mystery waiting to be solved. Burt Lancaster, looking bulky and large, makes a great debut. He’s the one we can really like, a strong Scandinavian fighter, looking for love and acceptance among the wrong crowd. He falls like a brick for the femme-fatale, the ravishing Ava Gardner, whose seductive Kitty Collins gets her share of admiration in the beginning and humiliation in the end. The rest of the cast is great, especially William Conrad and Charles McGraw. They are totally believable and enjoyable as the stone cold hitmen with the smart-ass punchlines.

The Killers is a film that expands greatly on an already good story, without spoiling its original dialogue and general feeling of futility. The short story’s ending gets a more humorous version as Reardon’s boss intervenes again from his corporate tower after the riddle’s been solved and the company has made $2500. “Owing to your splendid efforts”, he tells the worn-out yawning investigator, “the basic rate of the Atlantic casualty company as of 1947, will probably drop 1/10 of a cent.” Well, it might be futile, but it was certainly exciting.

Discover Your Dark Secrets in Clouzot’s ‘The Raven’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:09:00 +0000

Every Sunday, Film School Rejects presents a movie that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

The Raven (1943)

Almost a decade before the McCarthy witch-hunt, in post-war France, Henry-George Clouzot received a three year ban from directing because of a certain movie. The Raven, which he did during German occupation, became the subject of many interpretations and one of those, that it was an unpatriotic portrait of the French people, got him in trouble afterwards. The director got back to work in 1947, but his film couldn’t be seen in France until after 1969. Liberté, egalité, fraternité!

In a particular scene late in the film, two men talk under a hanging lamp. “You’re amazing,” the one addresses the other, “You think all people are good or all bad. That good is light and evil is dark.” At that point he grabs the lamp and sends it swinging left and right as he continues his speech, “But where is the dark? Where is the light? Where does evil end? Are you on the good or the bad side?” The other responds with certainty, “What rhetoric! You just stop the lamp.”

“Then stop it,” the first man urges him. As the lamp approaches he hastily grabs the bulb and gets burned.

They continue to talk while the lamp keeps swinging between them, consequently lighting up their faces and leaving them in the dark. Clouzot gives us a great example for the use of black and white aesthetics in creating ambiguity while the term film-noir didn’t even exist at that point if film history. Turns out he was the ambiguous one, a servant of evil under either light or shade: the Nazis banned his film in Germany on account of encrypted dissent long before the French did on account of collaboration with the occupant regime’s film company.

The movie’s narrative takes place “in a small town, here or elsewhere…” as we learn from the opening title. A poison-pen letter has reached the hands of Laura (Micheline Francey), a social worker married to the local psychiatrist, Dr. Vorzet (Pierre Larquey), regarding Dr. Rémy Germain (Pierre Fresnay), a very serious man, stranger to this town and extremely secretive about his past. The letter accuses him of practicing abortion and having an affair with Laura. A series of similar letters appear, accusing everybody in town for something, but mainly pointing at Dr. Germain as the personification of evil. They are all signed by “The Raven.” Dr. Vorzet along with all of the town’s renowned men and officers begin an investigation to discover who hides behind that massive libel. A scapegoat is found and The Raven’s wrath is appeased, but only for a small amount of time. The letters return, this time in bunches, making the postmen worry if they could be held as accomplices…

Vorzet and Germain, as shown in the scene above, are the main dueling characters, the amoral, sarcastic manipulator and the absolutist, loner and misanthrope. They both seem strong-willed and confident but neither has any real control of the chain reactions the poison-pen letters cause. Between them are three women, Vorzet’s wife Laura, her sister and a nurse at the local hospital Marie Corbin (Héléna Manson) and Denise (Ginette Leclerc), the playgirl that compulsively seduces men to make up for her crippled leg. Laura is modest and vulnerable, Marie is strict and prudish and Denise is alluring and vulgarly honest. They are all suspected of being The Raven for one reason or another while the men wander around showing a self-righteous hypocrisy, typical of a closed circle that refuses to acknowledge the failure to maintain its integrity. A circle perhaps of renowned men that Clouzot had no respect for.

When Denise tells Dr. Germain that he’s not just another lover but a man she’s in love with, he reacts in the self-righteous and absolutist way mentioned above, “Naturally, you changed over night. People don’t change. A decent man remains a decent man and…” She then continues his words in a high tone, “…a girl remains a slut? Maybe you’re right Doctor. Then i pity you. You’ll always represent what’s more dismal and most alien in life.” As she leaves the room Dr. Germain asks, “An idiot?” only to get her immediate, well-aimed response, “Oh, no! A bourgeois.”

Even little kids don’t make it out of Clouzot’s and his writer’s web, suggesting a misanthropic view that goes far beyond people of power and responsible adults. Rolande (Liliane Maigné), Denise’s niece, is an irritative busybody who steals money from the post-office’s cash register and constantly sneaks behind closed doors. The director has her react in close-up at anything that happens around her and is not her business, a symbol perhaps of an attitude already passed to the next generation forbidding any hope of change. Meanwhile, as the investigation goes back and forth, like the lamp, people fall in and out of the light, choosing to forget the only thing that has any real significance: Everything The Raven uncovers, despite being straight-up mean, is also painfully true.

Pierre Fresnay, a star in his time, and Ginette Leclerc are totally convincing in their parts, the morally impeccable Dr. Germaine and the morally fallen Denise. But the most intriguing is Pierre Larquey as Dr. Vorzet, likable and seductive, a real mystifier and too clever for each one of the rest. The photography, art-direction and Clouzot’s masterfull helming provide the film with an atmosphere of imprisonment inside the town’s gates, and the feeling that everything happens in a few certain sites involving a few certain people, reducing the rest to a brainless mob. When Marie Corbin is suspected to be the sender and runs to her house through an empty town, we only listen to the mob’s terrible sputter as it closes in on her from all angles. The same mob gathers at funerals and church masses where The Raven drops a couple of letters addressed to “the townspeople.” This is as much about them as it is about the main characters since we know they all have received letters, and they all look for a scapegoat sycophant to relieve them from having to confront the truth.

The Raven and its director ironically became such scapegoats in their time, but a good work of art stands alone, outlasting its interpretations which one by one become irrelevant as time passes. And Clouzot came back stronger, with more good films and misanthropic tales like his aforementioned overlooked masterpiece.

Discover the Intimacy of Class Warfare in ‘Look Back in Anger’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:52:04 +0000

Every week, Film School Rejects presents a film that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

Look Back in Anger (1958)

Whether it was the “Free Cinema”, the “British New Wave”, the “Kitchen Sink Dramas” or the “Angry Young Men Movement” in post-war Great Britain, Tony Richardson was always a big, creative part of it. His first feature film, Look Back in Anger, based on a play by John Osborne which he also directed, is full of the energy that Britain’s creative youth was letting go during a long transitional period in their country’s social history.

Osborne’s story revolves around a young man named Jimmy Porter (Richard Burton), a low-class University graduate who has to push a stall at the open market to make a living for him and his beautiful upper-class wife, Alison (Mary Ure). He’s also a jazz musician, jamming at the local club with his trumpet whenever he feels like blowing some steam. They share an apartment in an attic with their Welsh friend, Cliff Lewis (Gary Raymond), a very common young man with rather common aspirations. Cliff is a happy-go-lucky guy who has no delusions about his limitations in Britain’s seemingly fading, but still quite strong, class system. He loves Jimmy and Alison and seems to be happy just having the privilege of sharing his everyday life with those two. Jimmy on the other hand is a man full of anger and bitterness about the system which he feels won’t ever allow him to reach his full potential – so why even try. This bitterness falls with all its weight on Alison, a woman guilty of her descent just as much as Jimmy is of his own. Alison endures his scornful assaults with signs of resignation while looking for the right moment to announce that she carries his baby.

In this extremely charged environment Cliff plays the role of the peacemaker. He provides Jimmy with a chance to detonate his anger through humor – even of the bitter, sarcastic kind — and Alison with someone to lean on when she feels weakened. This delicate balance is jeopardized and finally falls to pieces with the arrival of Helena Charles (Claire Bloom), Alison’s close friend, an actress and an upper-class descendant herself. Jimmy hates her for what she stands for, and shows his feelings from the very start throwing some of his most insulting scorns at her. She stays as calm as possible, helping Alison get through the first difficult days of pregnancy. But things don’t seem to get any better. Jimmy knows nothing, but never lets anyone speak, so a grave decision needs to be made by Alison…

It’s more than obvious throughout the film, that “Angry Young Men” Osborne and Richardson are in love with their central character, Jimmy Porter. He blows his horn as though he will crush any established notions of how music should sound like, and what genre would be more appropriate to express that need than jazz. Jimmy personifies the makers’ own neglect for old institutions and establishments, and serves as their voice against a society that changed coating but kept everything inside intact. “You’re hurt because everything is changed and Jimmy’s hurt because everything is the same,” Alison tells her colonialist father in a rather cynical attempt at understanding the nature of that bridge-less generation gap. These people watch the same process from a totally different point of view in a way that makes their cooperation seem impossible, an impassable dead-end.

How could Jimmy and Alison ever combine to bring another human being in this world? How could they erase so many decades of class war with only a romantic notion of love as their guarantee?

In this context Richard Burton gives a remarkable and totally believable performance – though a bit theatrical. He talks like a well-educated man, but acts with conflicting crudeness, speaking and acting out everything each and everyone of us have probably thought of saying or doing sometime, but in a controversial manner most of us would never have adopted. His mood swings, that lead to brief moments of humanity and tenderness, suggest the battle within, his refusal to become the educated slave to a ruling class and his understanding that he lets himself down by eliminating his own potential. He gets the irony of things but he’s in no position to laugh it off.

Around him and his peers lies a world full of moral hypocrisy, full of promises of change but little action towards it, even less truth and even more ironies. In kind of a simplistic manner, Richardson shows an old lady having some filthy tabloid fun just before going to church and an open market supervising policeman harassing Jimmy and Cliff, and making consequent attempts at throwing the Indian newcomer guy out. He sells cheaper clothes, making business slow for the others, thus, as a foreigner, he becomes the scapegoat, the punching bag for the low-class bullies. “What made you come to this bloody country anyway?” a furious, powerless Jimmy asks him, only to get this devastating answer, “I came because in India I was an outcast, an untouchable.” Class systems can get worse than the one he’s fighting away.

Along with Burton, Gary Raymond, Mary Ure and Claire Bloom all bring their best to their characters creating an emotional and edgy portrait of social relationships in post-war, post-colonial Britain. Tony Richardson paints the whole picture in stark black and white, with a lot of close-ups and camera angles, never letting Jimmy out of his sight. He tells his story in a clear, dramatic way, experienced as he is with it, from directing the original play.

Look Back in Anger is a film about a whole generation, but of timeless value, as intense and uncompromising with the past as its title clearly suggests. As intense and uncompromising with its characters as the past they desperately try to overcome.

Steal the Wrong Wallet in ‘Pickup on South Street’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:29:06 +0000

Every Sunday (yeah, yeah, we’re late), Film School Rejects presents a film that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week Old Ass Movies presents:

Pickup on South Street (1953)

Six years before Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, Sam Fuller tried to name one of his own films like that, but the studio told him the title was too “European”. Still there’s nothing “European” – the way the studio meant it – about Pickup on South Street, a harsh violent underworld romance set amidst Cold War paranoia that opens with a purse grifting scene comparable in every way to those of the posterior French masterpiece.

Two men in the subway watch a beautiful woman closely when a third guy approaches slowly but naturally. He flirts with his eyes as he opens his newspaper in front of her. Pretending to read, he then opens her purse and grabs her wallet just before the train reaches a stop. She’s obviously flattered and the two other guys are obviously worried. The very moment the train freezes, the grifter pushes the purse to close and walks out like a gentleman, fractions of a second before her “tails” are on to him. The technique is impeccable but it also serves as a signature, and we can suspect that our guy has probably signed on the wrong piece of paper.

The woman is Candy (Jean Peters), a sexy girl with no agenda, on her way to run an errand for her partner Joey (Richard Kiley), who’s supposedly in the industrial espionage business. She’s followed by two feds, who want to catch the guy at the other end of the delivery red-handed. But the goods are stolen by Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark), a three time loser pickpocket, who faces a life sentence if he’s stuck with a fourth offense. The feds go to the local precinct where they ask Captain Dan Tiger (Murvyn Vye) to cooperate with them in catching the small time crook who’s got his hands on a big time microfilm. It turns out that Joey doesn’t work for big business rivals but for the primary enemy, the communists, and the microfilm contains US state secrets. Tiger calls his “ear” on the streets, an old woman called Moe (Thelma Ritter), who sells cheap ties and information while raising the money to buy herself a nice hole in a decent graveyard. Moe identifies the technique and shows them the way to McCoy. Meanwhile, Joey sends Candy after the grifter also, to find the microfilm before trouble finds him…

Fuller’s story is very simple. A capable small timer gets, by chance, in the middle of a deal that’s part of a bigger league. Full of confidence as he is, he grabs the opportunity to play tough and make it big himself. But along the way a pretty girl, a cold blooded murder and a morality issue larger than “cops n’ thieves” throws him out of his original plan. Now he’s got to play smart also, resolve the situation, avenge a death and get the girl in one piece. In only 80 minutes of screen time, Sam Fuller gets too much plot from these simple ingredients and creates a complete cinematic experience totally enjoyable to this day. With excellent black and white photography, imaginative settings and fighting as close to the real thing as it gets in the movies. Plus some great dialogue, quotable and stylish.

In this seemingly improbable plot setting, his characters work like magic and interconnect beautifully to give a relatively believable result. Skip is the clever individualist that doesn’t give a shit for anybody but himself; Candy is the fragile street girl that searches for a cat to fall for and lean on; Joey is the sleazy traitor who feels that his time is coming; Moe is the streetwise veteran who survives in the margins between good and evil; and Dan Tiger the rough hotheaded copper who sees no further than erasing the smile off the overconfident grifter’s face. It’s a great set of characters played out by a great cast of actors.

Richard Widmark has the perfect grin and a face that makes him look capable for any kind of fight. He moves, flirts and converses with a self-confidence and an arrogance so obvious that makes him a borderline jerk. Jean Peters’s Candy, sexy and luscious as they come, falls for him at eye contact and after all, she seems like the kind of girl who falls for jerks often enough. Like Richard Kiley’s Joey, the kind of yellow, gutless jerk that nobody could ever like. He always seems to be sweating, and he reeks of self-loathing, misery and fear. They both have a chance to beat up the girl and they both do it, but in a very different way and context, and when they face off in the subway guess which jerk gets to have the last grin.

Thelma Ritter got an Oscar nomination for her heartbreaking depiction of Moe, a key female character who brings everybody together and gets sacrificed to pinpoint the glossy moral that lies on the surface. “Even in our crummy business you gotta draw the line somewhere,” she tells Skip when she learns he’s willing to get money from the commies. “You’re waving the flag too?” he tells her off like he did with the feds a few hours before. He’s not going for it, and Fuller uses his reluctance to serve the flag to undermine this general feeling of patriotic debt settlement. In another distinct moment of planted skepticism, Moe lets her feelings for the commies hang out for the traitor to hear, only a bit too honestly, this time for us to hear: “What do i know about commies? Nothing. I know one thing. I just don’t like ‘em.” Unobtrusive criticism embedded in the typical morality tale of “patriots vs. traitors”.

Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street is a great showcase of entertaining filmmaking, along with excellent storyteling, original scriptwriting and credibly depicting unconventional people and situations. It leaves you without a doubt about it: good films are forever.

Discover the Western Comedy of ‘Destry Rides Again’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 23:44:04 +0000

The ’30s weren’t exactly a good decade for the western genre. Right at the last minute though, people like John Ford, Henry King and George Marshall came to the rescue. The latter’s gunslinging comedy Destry Rides Again, which was a box-office success, wasn’t just an entertaining piece of popcorn cinema. It also introduced Jimmy Stewart to the western lovin’ audience – making way for some of his classic performances in this great genre.

In a typical set-up, Tom Destry (James Stewart) is a sheriff with a heavy family name and a reputation for cleaning up Tombstone. He arrives at at the town of Bottleneck, responding to a call from his father’s former deputy, Washington Dimsdale, who has just been appointed sheriff after the sudden disappearance of the previous one. Being the town drunk until recently, Washington receives that honor from the corrupt Mayor Hiram J. Slade who simply wants to help the town mobster and saloon owner Kent and his showgirl Frenchy (Marlen Dietrich) continue their landgrabbing-through-crooked-gambling business without problems. But Dimsdale decides to have the last laugh. He calls Destry to live up to his father’s rep and help him clean up the mess. To his surprise though, Tom is a bit different, refusing to carry a gun to uphold the law unless there is no alternative in sight…

A pacifist lawman isn’t a very common premise to build an action western upon, for sure. But it’s a very good set-up for comedy and the kind of didactic witticisms that are scattered all over the movie’s screenplay. Destry uses his newfound ways to roll against some old-school outlaws, creating an advantage out of the time it takes for them to figure him out, that peculiar man who shoots like a gunslinger but drinks milk at a saloon. He tells short fables to make his point, avoiding the usual macho straight talk, further confusing whoever listens to him and he carves napkin rings to channel his anger. “I knew a man who collected postage stamps,” he tells old Wash when the latter complains about Tom’s persistence not to use his irons. “He used to say that one good things about a postage stamp is that it sticks to one thing until it gets there…”

Different from anyone that ever crossed paths with her, Tom catches Frenchy’s attention. She’s the prototype saloon diva who survives on her feisty personality and her seductive ways in a world of rugged men. Tom also catches a bunch of the saloon’s heavier objects which are thrown at him, after he interrupts the notorious Marlen Dietrich-Una Merkel catfight, by showering them with cold water.

George Marshall never overestimates what he has in his hands. He knows it’s not Stagecoach so he doesn’t try to re-establish the genre, but he also doesn’t degrade it to an easy spoof, leaning toward character comedy instead. James Stewart is the key ingredient in that attempt. He makes Tom Destry look totally believable as a charming, witty lawman who can turn to devious and lethal the very moment his job calls for it. He has the best lines and comes out looking quite good opposite Marlen Dietrich’s natural glamor and star quality. Of course, Marshall should be thankful for casting such a radiant performer as his leading lady, who not only gives life to a tired old female stereotype but also makes the best out of an underwritten character like Frenchy. Dietrich, besides the very realistic bar brawl with the equally fierce Merkel, does everything as if this was her movie, making Stewart fight for every scene they’re both in. That’s chemistry, right there!

These two are surrounded by the typical local gangster, Kent, the tobacco chewing, top hat wearing Mayor Slade, the grumpy old-timer Washington Dimsdale, the jumpy cattle-man Jack Tyndall, his nice sister Janyce, local boarding house owner Lily Belle and her russian immigrant husband Boris. All of them are a bit over the top, with Washington, Lilly Belle and Boris (very expressive performances by Charles Winninger, Una Merkel and Mischa Auer) providing the comic relief while Kent (an unconvincing Brian Donlevy) and his goons are the typical bad guys. The face you can’t forget though is that of Samuel S. Hinds’s Mayor Slade, a very well acted stereotype of the corrupt official, created out of a very short part. Nice supporting cast overall, with a few good lines preserved for them in Stewart’s and Dietrich’s shadow.

Seventy years and a lot of western masterpieces later, Marshall’s little known gem could seem a bit trivial and gimmicky. But Destry Rides Again still delivers honest fun and a couple of memorable dialogs. Plus, the birth of a great western actor and one hell of a catfight!

Discover the Unusual Comedy of ‘The Horse’s Mouth’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:39:06 +0000

Every week, Film School Rejects presents a movie that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

The Horse’s Mouth (1958)

It’s kind of a rare experience to watch a movie made 50 years ago and feel like it could be made today without changing anything but practical details. Fitting perfectly to that description is The Horse’s Mouth, directed by Ronald Neame in 1958, just one tiny stop in Sir Alec Guinness’s great career and his only writing credit ever, along with respectful award nominations.

The movie revolves around one central character, an artist named Gulley Jimson (Alec Guinness) who just got out of a month’s stay in jail for addressing phone threats to his former patron Mr. Hickson. Jimson is the son of a career painter and a proper craftsman. He chose a different path - he’s obsessed with new forms and constantly trying to find money and a larger canvas to paint his unconventional masterpieces on. Meanwhile he’s stalked by Nosey, a wannabe artist, a young man who admires him but doesn’t seem to have a lot going for him in Jimson’s area of creative work. He also has to deal with Cokey, a down-to-earth mistress and his former wife Sarah, a libertine-model-turned-middle-class-mum, as well as the Beeders, a couple of millionaires who consider themselves cultured enough to appreciate an original Jimson. All of these people are extremely drawn to him besides the fact that he pushes them away, constantly exploiting their weaknesses to reach his ultimate goal, his mural of mythical value, his success at putting on canvas exactly what is in the mind…

It seems that Guinness, while writing his screenplay, chose a different path for his character than the original carved out by Joyce Cary in his novel by the same name. He took out all the sociopolitical commentary and focused on the inner burdens of being an artist trying to persuade people that what you do is more than pretty decoration for their living room. No matter how futile this effort seems, Guinness’s Jimson never loses touch with his obsession, never succumbs to the ways of the world even when that would mean getting the money he needs a lot easier. He goes about doing what he pleases, in an arrogant, self-absorbed but also self-destructive way, living off his peers while blessing them with his insulting honesty, and his adventurous nature. But there isn’t a canvas big enough to hold his ego or his magnum opus and there isn’t anything you might like on this man. Yet, he grows on you as you watch him in that totally cliched manner of the village idiot becoming the village wise man due to his self-destructive honesty.

Besides this incredibly compelling central character, Guinness managed to create a great bunch of supporting characters too, whom we come to know better through clever bits of dialogue or little details in their manners and actions. Nosey considers Jimson a genius and yearns to learn from him while cleaning his brushes. But how can you learn anything by stepping in someone else’s footsteps? Cokey is a woman of realistic aspirations, very conscious of her plain looks and her limited potential who tries to win Jimson by protecting him. But how do you keep a spirit like that down to earth? Sarah is a compromised ex-beauty, who keeps Jimson’s naked painting of hers locked up as a reminder that she was once admired for her looks. But how can you be satisfied with yourself through someone else’s work? The Beeders are wannabe patrons whose naivete Jimson exploits, before embarking in a totally unsatisfactory creative orgy in their luxurious appartment building while they are away. They get their painting in a way, but how can you unleash an artist’s furore without losing control?

Alec Guinness practically sinks into the main role, which is natural considering his skills and the fact that he wrote it. He is a pure pleasure to watch as is his supporting cast. From the director’s chair, Ronald Neame creates a paced narrative out of a narration-less story of a character who just drifts back and forth from situation to situation. He also manages to set up some great visual and physical gags reminding us that this is a comedy, though a very unusual one.

The Horse’s Mouth is a movie about art, written and performed by an exceptional artist in his own right. Fortunately it’s made in a way that it will never be outdated, a fresh and funny piece of philosophical commentary and a beautiful sample of cinematic art. As Jimson says: “Half a minute of revelation is worth a million years of know-nothing.” There is a good chance that you’ll find 30 such seconds somewhere in this refreshing film.

Find Timeless Relevance ‘When a Woman Ascends the Stairs’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:40:25 +0000

I don’t know much about the position of women in Japan 50 years ago. I’m sure it wasn’t much better than here in the eastern part (I’m Greek) of the western world though give or take a few cultural differences. But one can learn a lot from a country’s old ass movies, especially if they’re as fresh and universally relevant as Mikio Naruse’s When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, one of his long overlooked works of cinematic excellence.

Naruse’s focus falls on a female character named Keiko, but mainly called “Mama” by her colleagues and clients at the Ginza men’s night clubs of Tokyo. Early on we learn that “she hates ascending the stairs at the club she works, but once she’s up there she takes each day as it comes”. The stairs become a symbol of a woman struggling to get up only to find herself in the bottom of the staircase again and again. Mama became a bar hostess after her husband died, and having vowed to his grave that she will never love another man she handles herself and her clients with dignity, pride and self-containment. That makes her an exception around her working environment and earns her the respect she needs to stay strong and keep on with her survival tour up and down those stairs.

Her life is expensive, because certain luxuries are expected of a woman in that profession: a nice apartment, flashy and well made kimonos or usual trips to the beauty salon. On top of that her mother and her screw-up brother count on her for financial aid. She manages though without a patron or even a companion sending away the fever of loneliness with “some brandy before sleep”. Mama stands out in the Ginza female crowd, she has a good reputation and a lot of fans, but her ways and looks are traditional as opposed to the westernized floozies that slowly become a majority in the area. But even a strong principled woman like her needs a shoulder to lean on, especially in a society where women rarely win. It’s hard to be an exception to the rule and Mama has to find out the hard way before deciding what her future will be like…

In the first scene we watch Mama’s colleagues at the club, having a fair well party for a girl that got married. It means she got away from the everyday struggle of the escort business. Mama comes later with some bad news. A woman from the neighborhood had just committed suicide. She was 43 and still working at the Ginza bars. Mama is 30 and has to face the decisions that come with her age. She can either marry and make a family again or stay in a profession she seems to excel at, even open her own bar and make a better living. But each one of her options involves depending on men: lenders, clients or suitors. And everybody wants something from her, more than the pleasant company she can offer.

We have here a heroine that stands alone against a cruel man’s world, where even family “preys on her” and men are waiting for the opportunity to make her break her celibacy vows. From the christian bipolar worldview that still possesses western cinema, this is a typical Virgin Mary figure ready to be lifted by the writer and the director to regular holiness or get thrown to the gutter of sin with the only way of getting back up being her confessed remorse. Lucky us, this is a Japanese movie. When a younger girl mumbles about how romantic she found the story she heard that Mama left a love letter in her husband’s grave promising never to love another man, the latter bursts her bubble with a white lie. She claims she took it from a novel. Even if it’s the truth, it’s a burden she has to carry and romanticizing it would only make it worse, if not cheap.

Later on Komatsu, the club’s manager and a secret admirer of Mama’s, admits he had loved her from afar because he didn’t want her to break the vow. He didn’t want his heroine to fall and the very reason of his admiration to expire. Mama was different than the girls he managed, a proud, self-sufficient woman, but how could she know she’d be a captive of that image and denied the privilege of her weaknesses. Mikio Naruse and his writer Ryuzo Kikushima honestly love their character. They don’t judge or romanticize her, they just allow her to make human mistakes without any cliched fatalism lurking around the corner, and let her rise up again, ascending those stairs as the strong woman that we’ve come to know all along.

Naruse creates a beautiful atmosphere in the heart of a gradually westernized Tokyo, where the tradition of women providing professional entertainment for men remains intact, except for the dresses, the hairdos, the music and the alcohol. His direction is faultless and discreet, complemented by noir-like photography and a catchy jazz score. Hideko Takamine, Naruse’s muse, is excellent as Mama, as plausible and engaging in her undignified moments as in her dignified ones while the rest of the cast never falls behind.

As much as it’s stylized like one, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is not the average cinematic melodrama for women (or sensitive men) to cry at. It’s not a feminist fable either. It’s a real, timeless story still relevant after 48 years.

Discover Mitchum, Douglas, and Film-Noir in ‘Out of the Past’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:03:38 +0000

Every week, Film School Rejects presents a movie that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

Out of the Past (1947)

Everybody loves those great crime movies spawned partially out of Dashiel Hammet and Raymond Chandler’s dark fiction. A similar novel by the incredible title Build my Gallows High, Daniel Mainwaring’s last, became the basis for one of the most loved pieces of that particular cinematic genre. A peculiar director, Jacques Tourneur, took the writer’s own script and turned it into the delightful experience that is Out of the Past.

A man named Joe Stephanos (Paul Valenine) arrives at a small town gas station looking for the owner, Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), about an old score that needs to be settled with his boss, big time gambling operator Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas). Before confronting his past, Jeff decides to open up about it to his current love interest, a decent country girl named Ann Miller. On the way to Sterling’s lake house he unfolds his story to her, a typical smart detective meets femme-fatale and acts against his own good scenario, while Ann listens carefully, ready to forgive and forget. Inevitably, while diving into his own past, Jeff Markham—as is his real name—will find out that it’s not that easy to escape it…

Though film-noirs is a very much discussed and disputed genre, there are certain widely known distinctive elements that define a prototypical noir script. Out of the Past carries all those elements with pride, never trying to pass as anything else than what it is. Jeff is a smart, honest man with a shady past. He relies on a good girl named Ann for his salvation through unadulterated love. He used to be a cynical son of a bitch who fell for a woman named Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer). She’s incredibly attractive but swings from sweet and helpless to bitter and deadly in no time. She’s also the girl of a gangster who admires Jeff’s character and skills, although he would pick her over him without further thought. A tough henchman, a crooked partner and a jealous country man complete the puzzle of people that are out to get the main character. Plus the deaf-mute boy (Dickie Moore), Jeff’s weird assistant.

Robert Mitchum, with his imposing build and weary eyes, seems perfect for the main part, the man who constantly falls in and out of the sense of controlling his own destiny. Though an archetypal film-noir’s fall guy, he never once holds a gun. He depends on his brain and his instincts, the latter being the soft spot which Kathie takes advantage of.

Another character who never holds a gun during this flick, where murder is always looming, is the big-deal gangster. Kirk Douglas plays Whit Sterling in a very distinct way, more like a businessman with an admiration for skills as much as beauty than a hardcore, trigger-happy facilitator. Besides, he already has a man to do the dirty work. The henchman Joe Stephanos, played with an extreme touch of self-awareness by Paul Valentine, delivers some of the best lines in a movie which, more than enough, seem to be about the punchlines.

It’s too obvious at times, that the writer and probably the actors had a lot of fun inventing and delivering such dialogue as when a woman, after he had just told her about finding old pal Jeff because of a sign, tells Stephanos, “It’s a small world…,” only to get a reply along with a crooked smile, “Or a big sign!” There is another opening scene where Jeff sits by the lake with his newfound love Ann while she wonders about his mysterious profile.

“You’ve been to a lot of places haven’t you?” she asks in an innocent tone.
“One too many.”
“Which did you like the best?”
“This one right here.”
“I bet you say that to all the places,” she comes back with a totally unforeseen sense of humor retaining that same innocence in her voice. That’s only one of many moments that the wordplay becomes totally, unrealistically enjoyable and the film feels constructed in the most well-meant manner. It’s like exchanging jokes with the makers through the screen, a craft that’s been extremely underrated throughout film history.

That said, there is no way to get past the fact that some of the main actors combine their idiosyncratic performances with an almost obscene knowledge of their being in a movie. For a film that isn’t a latter-day hommage but a landmark film-noir it feels to me—without taking under consideration the b-movie playfulness in all this—kind of exceptional.

What keeps all those characters in unison and supports that self-awareness undertone is of course Jane Greer’s femme-fatale, a woman not only embodying the related film-noirs cliches, but also using them to carry herself around the plot and drive all the men to their respective doom. Her performance is great, seductive one time despicable the next, capable of murder in the most natural way, walking an indistinct line between acting out of fear and scheming for survival in a man’s world.

There is also Dickie Moore’s deaf-mute kid, a very strange character who seems to be the only one to know Jeff’s past in that small town, probably because he can’t talk. Still, he’s loyal to the troubled man and even commits the one murder he would face sooner or later, that of his rival for Sterling’s respect, Joe Stephanos. The boy is the last person we see, as he burst’s the good girl’s bubble and waves a goodbye to a “big” sign that says “Jeff Bailey”—Markham’s failed attempt at living the normal life and dodging the genre’s inevitability.

Jacques Tourneur and his cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca both show a very strong sense of film-noir aesthetic. The stark dark/light contrast and the extreme use of all kinds of shadows thrive in their hands as mood-building and character-manipulation tools. The plot is over the top as expected but not annoyingly implausible, though I don’t think that was an issue for the writer. It doesn’t drag at any point, not even during the long flashback, and voice-over narration is used sparingly.

Out of the Past is a well crafted film, a whole genre’s showcase and above all, pure cinematic fun.

Loukas Checks in With Our First Quantum of Solace Review!

Loukas Tsouknidas — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:09:34 +0000

Editor’s Note: Our good friend and European Station Chief Loukas checks in with our first account of James Bond’s latest cinematic adventure Quantum of Solace, which hits theaters in Europe starting October 31st and then here in the United States on November 14th. Check out his report below…

Like every movie goer out there, I’ve seen all of the James Bond movies at least once and chatted with friends over who was the best in depicting the famous—though not that profoundly written—character. Two years ago Casino Royal gave us a look inside the making of Bond, MI6 superspy, with Daniel Craig in the main part, a new face to recharge the respective conversation. Quantum of Solace begins an hour after its predecessor’s ending (a sequel for the first time in the series), to complete the agent’s profile and make Craig a serious nominee for best Bond ever.

In short, we find the enraged agent caught in a car chase in Sienna, on his way to meet M (Judy Dench) and their captive Mr. White. After shaking off the bad guys, he appears at the lair, only to discover, along with his boss, that there will always be some ghost organization with people everywhere to make life difficult for them. This time he has to chase a certain bad guy on foot—parkour-style of course—before finding himself in Haiti following a lead, where he bumps on Camille (Olga Kurylenko) a wild lady with a murderous agenda and Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), an international facilitator with an eco-friendly covert operation.

That’s when he strays away from his own objective, avenging the death of Vesper Lynd, and gets mixed up in a very modern conspiracy involving a military coup d’etat, the oil trade and a country’s water supplies. What else is there for this superspy to do, but take charge and do the world’s laundry for us?

From the very start Marc Forster and his writers (including Paul Haggis) give us a taste of what will follow—pure unadulterated action. The chase on Sienna’s rooftops and the way it resolves is one of the most engaging pieces of high-paced filmmaking I’ve ever seen, and it definitely made me want more. The key ingredient here is Dan Bradley’s coordination. He’s the man behind Bourne’s relentless action and he shows what he can do for Bond also. So, what we practically get is 106 minutes of vehicle (all kinds, really) chasing, gun fighting, punch throwing and stuff exploding with small intervals of character building, plot laying and a slice of flirting. I guess that’s not the best possible package for a classic Bond fan-boy. Well, I’m not one. Plus there is someone who makes a very good case in favor of this new approach, and that’s Daniel Craig.

The English actor has given new life to a character that was trapped to its own stereotypes. Perhaps it’s the fact that we’re watching the origins of the whole Bond myth and his persona is being gradually formed, but Craig is like nothing we’ve ever seen from his predecessors. He really gets down and dirty, he brawls in street manner, he kills with no hesitation, he acts out of impulse and most importantly he’s full of rage and he knows it. Daniel Craig looks just right for the job, as he brings total credibility and a shitload of suppressed energy to the screen. And the best part? He still doesn’t care what the fuck it is that he’s drinking. I think there is a good chance he might top the Bond charts soon.

Olga Kurylenko is impressively tanned and feisty while she seeks a revenge of her own, but she doesn’t really hit it off with the man. That’s Gemma Arterton’s job as a female agent that’s supposed to put him back on a plane to London. She’s adorable but not enough to make us forget Olga. Judy Dench and Giancarlo Giannini hold their own as expected while Jeffrey Wright makes a strong reappearance as CIA agent Felix Leiter. The bad guy is portrayed with the required arrogance by Mathieu Amalric yet he isn’t enough of a presence to even suggest a fight worth watching. Nevertheless he gives it his best try in the end.

The film’s politics seem current, with Bolivia as the place of unrest and in the center, a simplistic poke at the holy dimensions given to everything that passes itself as eco-friendly and the dangers this approach holds. Of course the plot is more or less implausible, but the film’s pace never gives us any time to think it over. Who cares. It’s good enough to put James Bond in tough places, and make M and his government consider him a threat, hence giving him the opportunity to be alone against the world.

I had a great time watching Quantum of Solace. This is good entertainment with a real actor up front, and I hope they keep it up that way for future Bond films.

See the Courtroom Through the Eyes of ‘12 Angry Men’

Loukas Tsouknidas — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:42:03 +0000

Every week, Film School Rejects presents a film that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

12 Angry Men (1957)

Courtroom dramas are usually shot in court and revolve around defendants or their lawyers. Sidney Lumet, for his first big screen attempt, took a chance on a script based on a TV play by Reginald Rose that deals with another courtroom entity, the jurors. His 12 Angry Men are exactly what the title suggests and they have to bear each other in a locked room for ninety-six engaging, cleverly staged minutes.

The case is simple but critical. A kid of unidentified but implied ethnic background is accused of stubbing his father to death, before walking away in the night. The twelve jurors have to reach a unanimous verdict; the kid can be found guilty based on the evidence or not-guilty based on reasonable doubt. If found guilty, he gets a mandatory death sentence, more specifically the electric chair. Those men are locked inside a room on an extremely hot day with a fan that isn’t working and lots of reasons to be somewhere else.

Juror #1 (Martin Balsam) calls for a preliminary vote. All are in favor of guilty but one. Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) thinks that 5 are not enough to decide for someone to get the chair treatment. Everybody jumps at him before taking turns in presenting their reasons for voting against the defendant. They all seem like they have good points but #8 is strongly in doubt and wants to re-examine them. Amidst general dissent, he calls for a secret vote without his participation and if the outcome remains the same he will follow. Otherwise they’ll talk things through. Juror #9 decides to back #8 up, for having the guts to take a stand. A dramatic debate begins, where the case is not always the main focus and one by one, the 12 men—all from diverse backgrounds—will find out a lot about each other and themselves…

Obviously this is a drama, the success of which is mainly based on the performances and the interaction between the twelve actors who play the jurors. It’s a play turned feature film and is shot entirely in a single room. Lumet does everything he can to put the cinematic language in good use, with close-ups, camera movements and—as he later analyzed—three different shooting angles. In his debut, he has to handle twelve characters of almost the same importance since they all weigh in the outcome, split screen time between them according to the script and highlight the turning points of the plot. He pulls it off with subtlety, making it feel most of the time as if there is no director, like we ‘re watching the whole scene through an open window.

The real star of the film is, of course, Reginald Rose’s script, an adaptation of his own play. The twelve men are revealed to us one by one through small monologues, momentary expressions or sudden reactions. We don’t hear their names, only their numbers—from their sitting order—and some professions. What we learn about them is their prejudices, and the amount of their intent to show concern for another human being. Each represents one of the many stereotypes people apply to when they refuse to think for themselves and take real responsibility for their actions. Each is very recognizable to us today because, besides a few references to baseball teams and a certain building or movie, nothing highlights the time or the social conditions surrounding the incident. Hence, making the characters timeless and easy for a guy from another age and country, like me, to place it in a current context.

“Nice bunch of guys, huh?”, says #6 (Edward Binns) to #8 (Henry Fonda) in the lavatory. “They’re about the same as anyone else”, the latter responds emphasizing the non-personified account of these 12 Angry Men. Angry for a lot of reasons, but not one of them having anything to do with the accused and their job in that room. Gradually though, the battle comes down to the two key jurors, #8 (Henry Fonda) and #3 (Lee J. Cobb), the first and the last one to admit doubt over the kid’s guilt, the man who doubts himself and the one who doubts everybody else but himself. Until that last moment of truth (or, more accurately, the acknowledgment of not being certain of what the truth is) a thorough debate reveals a pretty clear image of the preceding trial and even motivates us to participate in our head. Nor too didactic neither too self-explanatory it comes out as easy to follow but difficult to predict, allowing a certain suspense to build up.

Henry Fonda, fourteen years after his character in The Ox-Bow Incident couldn’t save the accused from lynching, goes against another type of lynch mob, more conventional and structural, but not that much different in its intrinsic faults. He leads the pack brilliantly while he’s supported by the opposing emotional force of Lee J. Cobb, his performance being equally engaging. All ten of the other character actors are also in top form—this is a heavily rehearsed movie and it shows—taking full advantage of the screen-time they get while making every interaction worth watching.

12 Angry Men is one of the great pieces of cinema that Sidney Lumet has given us over the years and a timeless study in the complex way we apply our interpretations of truth and justice. Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov took a chance on the same premise last year in 12, putting Rose’s ideas in the Russian-Chechen conflict context. He reminded the world of Lumet’s gem while succesfully proving its everlasting ability to make a strong point.

Discover Revolution with Viva Zapata!

Loukas Tsouknidas — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:03:03 +0000

Every week Film School Rejects presents a movie that was made before you were born and tells you why you should like it. This week, Old Ass Movies presents:

Viva Zapata! (1952)

There is one single word that has been so abused in these last decades, during the great communications and media outbreak, that it has totally lost its meaning: revolution. Flashback more than a few decades ago, when a certain revolution took place in Mexico. Emiliano Zapata was an important figure in it, so when Elia Kazan and John Steinbeck attempted to create a critical work for the delicate matters surrounding organized massive struggle, they chose his story as the center of their symbolism. The outcome was Viva Zapata! with its moments of truth and those of tasteless manipulation toward preconceived notions.

Steinbeck and Kazan’s Zapata (apparently they took a few liberties with the character) is a prototypical leader for the poor masses. A man of their kind but with a bit of rich blood, illiterate but smart, crude but handsome, tough but caring, desirable but a monogamist and, above all, just and proud. From the very beginning, he stands up to president Porfirio Diaz when he calmly tells the truth right to his face and gets a red circle around his name for it. At that point he becomes the potential messiah, chosen by none other than his most obvious enemy.

Marlon Brando’s Zapata is young, sturdy and though rough as a thinker, he seems to be constantly aware of his fate as a revolutionary. His instincts draw him to it while his sensible choices flirt with the conventional. His moment of weakness comes when he is asked to lead the forces of the south to battle. He declares that, “he can’t be the conscience of the world.” On the first chance he gets he clashes with the authorities, becomes a prisoner and gets saved by the people in a beautiful sequence that symbolizes his christening as their leader. His previous decision gets overturned by his nature. Zapata’s only strong tie to the common life is his love for a certain woman, Josefa (Jean Peters). He has to make a good enough name for himself to win her father’s appreciation but he’s too impulsive. Still, his love for her is always equal to the love he has for his people.

Brando’s acting is too obvious in making Zapata larger than any average Mexican around but then, that’s probably what a savior should look like. What he expresses quite good though, is the combination of his hero’s raw manners with his kind heart, the crude cliche that transforms the writers’ main character from a human being to an identifiable prototype. On his opposite there is his equally rough brother Euphemio, played with burning intensity by the excellent Anthony Quinn, a character that’s a lot more real, who succumbs to his human weaknesses – making Emiliano look even better by contrast.

Between those two stands a fictional character, Fernando Aguirre, who comes to life in an extremely creepy way by Joseph Wiseman. Aguirre is the symbol for logic, “his only friend,” as he declares. Not only is he aware that victory is momentary, a struggle is essentially never-ending and utopia is a delusion but he lives by these perceptions, predicting the next winner with frightening accuracy, taking their side at the right moment. Like the shadow of a universal truth that can’t be beat he stands behind every new turn in the revolutionary process. Another fictional character is Pablo (Lou Gilbert), Zapata’s literate sidekick who symbolizes the ethics of the revolution. “Can a good thing come from a bad act? Can peace come from so much killing?” he asks Zapata just before his friend executes him in the holy name of discipline.

The clash of those four elements is the most interesting and well-constructed part of the film amidst a pastiche of pompous symbolisms like the white horse standing for Zapata’s living spirit in the end. Mixing non-fictional characters like Emiliano and Euphemio Zapata with fictional ones to present a train of critical thought on a complex subject like “the revolution” is an excellent idea, as long as everybody knows they’re not watching the history channel. The politics of both creators aside, their biggest mistake while blowing this idea was the simplistic “triggerhappy” approach which underestimates the viewers’ ability to watch and judge by themselves. While revolution thrives on loud slogans and vivid battle cries, its criticism can’t rely on those tools because it goes for people’s minds rather than their hearts. It should be clear instead of simple, thought provoking instead of didactic and, most importantly, it should work for the revolution instead of against it if it wants to be trusted.

As for the rest, the script fast forwards through time a lot without any explanations while giving its other non-fictional characters an unfair treatment, especially Harold Gordon’s Fransisco Madero, who comes out as a naive fool more than a beaten idealist in an unfitting comical way. Direction and photography work in providing certain moments with extra emotional weight while the action sequences are perfectly made.

The movie’s old ass trailer concludes with the hilarious, selfloving hurrahs “Viva Elia Kazan!” and “Viva John Steinbeck!” Unfortunately Viva Zapata!, though certainly noteworthy, is more about them than their beloved historical figure.

Film School Rejects » Loukas Tsouknidas

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