In a double whammy, Twilight Time has recently brought out splendid new Blu-Rays of two exceptional widescreen colonialist epics, Cy Endfield’s Zulu (1964, set in 1879) and Basil Dearden’s Khartoum (1966, set in 1883-1885). Both come equipped with extensive and informed audio commentaries by screenwriter Lem Dobbs and film historian Nick Redman, who are joined on Khartoum by film historian Julie Kirgo, a writer who also contributes essays on all of the Twilight Time releases, including these two. The first of these movies now strikes me as one of the very greatest of all war films (a genre that I’m not generally partial to), even when it presents combat as potentially noble, succeeding equally in intimate details and in spectacular overviews, whereas the second is at most an intriguing star vehicle for Charlton Heston (as British officer Charles Gordon) and Laurence Olivier (as Sudanese Arab leader Muhammad Ahmad, who dubbed himself the Mahdi), both playing egomaniacal religious fanatics whose two scenes together are the best in the film (although Ralph Richardson as Prime Minister Gladstone also gets in a few choice bits). The audio commentary in this case is notable for how critical and even disdainful it often is — something that I suspect Criterion would never tolerate on any of its own releases. Read more
One singular virtue of the French cinema compared to our own is the possibility of low-budget, offbeat projects that well-known actors are willing to participate in. Michel Deville’s very theatrical adaptation and direction of a whodunit novel by Franz-Rudolf Falk isn’t especially compelling as story telling, but it allows one to see eight of the best movie actors in France — Fanny Ardant, Daniel Auteuil, Richard Bohringer, Philippe Leotard, Jeanne Moreau, Michel Piccoli, Claude Pieplu, and Jean Yanne — acquitting themselves honorably; Ardant and Piccoli are particularly delightful. Better yet, it permits the neglected and prolific Deville to forge an interesting stylistic exercise in mise en scene, restricting most of the action to a cavernous bar resembling a warehouse. The dialogue bristles with breezy wordplay that is not easily translated (the title means “the nonentity,” and refers to Piccoli’s ambiguous role as bartender), but Deville’s ingenious use of ‘Scope framing in charting out the space keeps things lively, fluid, and unpredictable (1986). (Facets Multimedia Center’, 1517 W. Fullerton, Friday and Saturday, June 10 and 11, 9:00; Sunday, June 12, 7:30; and Monday through Thursday, June 13 through 16, 9:00; 281-4114)
From the Chicago Reader (September 1, 1987). Twilight Time brought out a lovely Blu-Ray edition of this, and it looks even better to me now than it did in 1987. — J.R.
A fascinating attempt by rock video director Julien Temple to do several things at once — adapt a Colin MacInnes novel, show the London youth scene in 1958 (while dealing at length with the racial tensions of the period), build on some of the stylistic innovations of Frank Tashlin, Vincente Minnelli, and Orson Welles, and put to best use a fascinating score by Gil Evans that adapts everything from Charles Mingus to Miles Davis. A mixed success, but an exhilarating try (1986). With David Bowie, Keith Richards, and James Fox. 107 min. (JR)
From The Soho News (September 10, 1980). I’ve slightly altered the printed title (from “Fassbinder’s Weenie”) to remove the crude sexual double entendre which tended to be that weekly newspaper’s specialty. — J.R.
The Third Generation
Written, photographed and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
By and large, there appear to be three basic kinds of professional film buffs in Manhattan: asocial, Dracula-like countenances mainly interested in films; plastic, starfucking groupies mainly interested in filmmakers; and a few paranoid dinosaurs mainly interested in power. (Wishing to remain alive, I leave it to the discerning reader to determine who is which.) And according to Rainer Werner Fassbinder — a particular favorite of the second group — there are three generations of terrorists in Germany.
“In whatever way every citizen was capable of developing some kind of understanding for the actions and motives of the first and second generation of terrorists — or maybe not — to understand the motives of the third generation is more than difficult,” Fassbinder is quoted as saying, in the more than difficult pidgin English assigned to him in the pressbook. “To act in danger but without perspective,” he adds a little later, “the ecstasy of adventure experienced in the absence of ulterior motive; this is what motivates The Third Generation.” Read more
From American Film (December 1979). I’ve trimmed this a bit. — J.R.
“Production alternatives, linguistic and symbolic mutations, new models of the entertainment spectacle, new forms of film consumption, the relation between various media, the financial state of various film industries…”
In the words of an introductory brochure, these were some of the topics and problems to be explored at an international conference, “Cinema in the 80s,” set in the midst of the Venice Biennale. For the thirty-odd speakers, myself included, who had been flown all the way to the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido, there was plenty to think about while overcoming jet lag.
The conference’s three days were devoted to language, industry, and audience, in that order. Simultaneous translation (of a sort) over earphones offered versions of each speech in Italian, French, English, German, and Spanish. Despite these noble efforts, the conference inevitably evoked a Tower of Babel at times. Bringing together academics, critics, and filmmakers from half a dozen countries, thre sessions helped to clarify how far most members of each profession are today from speaking a common tongue. Specialists and experts on their elected turfs, they often respond like fish out of water when confronted with film people of different sorts. Read more
If it had ever been completed, Josef von Sternberg’s big-budget 1937 adaptation of Robert Graves’s I, Claudius for Alexander Korda might have been his masterpiece. But a series of calamities plagued the production, and all we have left today are some tantalizing rushesand this excellent 1968 British documentary about the doomed project hosted by Dirk Bogarde, which includes many of these rushes and interviews with surviving participants, including Graves, Sternberg, Merle Oberon, and Emlyn Williams. But the best reason for seeing this film is the glimpse we get of Laughton’s extraordinary performance as the crippled, stuttering, and otherwise afflicted Claudius. An actor who underwent torturous preparations for some of his roles, Laughton drove Sternberg and others crazy with his agonizing over getting this part right. But when he finally locked Claudius into place, he produced what is arguably the greatest piece of acting in all of sound cinema: better than Brando, better than Olivier, better even than Chaplin in Monsieur Verdoux. The evidence is there to be seen (and heard) in two stunning scenes — Claudius groveling at the feet of Caligula to save his own life, and, even better, his assuming power over the Roman senate — and the film lets us watch him building and refining this monumental role step-by-step. Read more
Almost certainly the best American genre movie of its year (1995 — the sort of beautifully crafted personal effort that would qualify as a sleeper if our film industry still allowed such things. Given the kinky (and highly erotic) sex scenes and the quirky comedy, the expert handling of actors and the playful experimenting with both narrative form and genre expectations, one is tempted to compare writer-director Mark Malone to Quentin Tarantino. But in fact he stands Tarantino squarely on his head; this movie, originally titled Killer (and scripted for contractual reasons under a pseudonym), about the unexpected overnight awakening and humanizing of a cold-blooded hit man (Anthony LaPaglia) by his willing victim (Mimi Rogers), puts back the tenderness and conscience that Tarantino removed from his pulp sources, and does it with soul as well as style. Apart from the wonderful leads, Matt Craven and Peter Boyle are both inspired — and often very funny — in secondary parts. The story may wind up haunting you for days. I’m tempted to call this movie a noir, but since it isn’t misogynistic that would be misleading. Just see it before it disappears. Read more
Somewhere inside this moderately watchable if ultimately incoherent star vehicle is an old-fashioned grade-Z werewolf movie crying to be born. If that were the sort of thing money could buy it would undoubtedly have been factored into the $70-million-plus budget, but it seems beyond the reach of the creative participants, who try for a vague sort of profundity instead. Jack Nicholson plays an honorable failure — a book editor about to discover that he’s being demoted and cuckolded — who comes into his own after being bitten by a wolf, an event that brings out both good and bad aspects of his latent animal nature. Michael Wadleigh’s Wolfen (1981), which also dealt with wolves in Manhattan’s Central Park, is a much more thoughtful and meaningful project; this one lurches along in fits and starts, mixing generic stereotypes (e.g., the villainy of James Spader and Christopher Plummer) with loftier (if more confused) ambitions, and winds up honoring neither art nor commerce. Mike Nichols’s direction is so-so; the two writers credited are Jim Harrison (though the film has no connection with his novel of the same title) and Wesley Strick. Michelle Pfeiffer, Kate Nelligan, and Richard Jenkins also star. Read more
From the August 12 , 1997 issue of Chicago Reader. — J.R.
Don’t tell anyone, but this blistering piece of provocation by independent writer-director Neil LaBute, his first feature (1997), has a lot to do with capitalism and how it alters our notions of masculinity and romance; in short, it’s about how business affects the way we live and think and feel. Two 30ish male execs (Aaron Eckhart, Matt Malloy) sent to their company’s branch office for six weeks decide to date, flatter, and then humiliate a woman they pick at random. (They settle on a deaf typist, deftly played by Stacy Edwards.) It doesn’t sound like a believable story without the context provided by LaBute’s concentrated minimalist style and the strong performances, but all the nuances here count, and most of them add up to something pretty potent as well as scary. Check this one out. 93 min. (JR)
From the Chicago Reader, March 1, 1997. This neglected gem has recently become available on DVD. — J.R.
From the dazzling opening shot on, this vest-pocket Grand Hotel, set around a big-city train station, is a good example of the tangy Warners movies of the Depression that film histories tend to neglect — as they do its talented director, Alfred E. Green. But pay them no mind. This 1932 film manages to sock a lot into 75 minutes, and the cast alone — Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Blondell, Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, David Landau, and Guy Kibbee — keeps it special. (JR)
Recommendation: On David Bordwell’s web site, one of my models in setting up this one, there’s a very useful and eye-opening (as well as brain-enhancing) post about frame counts, and how these differ on DVDs (both PAL and NTSC), laserdiscs, VHS copies (considered more cursorily), and 35mm and 16mm prints. I discovered this January 28, 2007 entry belatedly, in a footnote, while checking out David’s latest blog entry, which provides a useful link. [5/26/08] Read more
My interview with Alain Resnais in New York in December 1980 yielded three separate articles, written for Soho News, American Film, and Omni. This is an unedited draft of the latter; I can’t recall now whether or not it was ever published in some form, but I think it probably wasn’t. The other two, which were published, are posted elsewhere on this site, here and here. -– J.R.
From the 42nd floor of Manhattan’s elegant Park Lane Hotel, where French director Alain Resnais has been holding court, Central Park in the winter looks remote and unfamiliar, like the terrain of another planet. It resembles Resnais’ unexpected smash hit Mon Oncle d’Amérique -– a unique, original blend of art and science –- by resisting precise description almost as confidently as it invites contemplation and wonder. And if the angle of vision that helps to account for this strangeness faintly suggests the vantage point of an amused yet saturnine deity, gazing down almost nostalgically, something of the same ambiance seems to inform the relation of the 58-year-old Resnais to his haunting comedy.
A master director who’s also a master of indirection -– always electing to tell a story in a different offbeat manner -– Resnais has never scripted any of his own features, But all of them are unmistakably personal reflections, generally about the past. Read more
From the Chicago Reader (April 30, 2004). It’s great to catch up with Andrey Zvyagintsev again a decade later, thanks to his wrenching and politically caustic Leviathan. — J.R.
Beautifully structured and emotionally wrenching, this 2003 debut feature immediately establishes Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev as a master. It charts a father’s uneasy return to his wife and two adolescent sons after a long and unexplained absence, a reunion capped by his ill-fated fishing trip with the two boys. A former actor, Zvyagintsev elicits first-rate performances from his male leads, but what registers most is the sharpness and intensity of his vision of nature and childhood experience. Nominated for an Oscar and winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, this has been described by the director as “a mythological look [at] human life,” as accurate a description as any I’ve encountered. In Russian with subtitles. 106 min. Music Box.
