You Can’t Go Home Again

Posted on by
Reply

In Italy and most of Europe Mario Martone is well known and highly regarded as a director, screenwriter and producer who first rose to prominence in the theater world. He formed Falso Movimento, his first theater company, in 1979 and made his debut as a director of operas in 1989 with the world premier of Lorenzo Ferrero’s Charlotte Corday. However, it was in the 1990s that Martone emerged as one of the leading film directors of the new wave of Neopolitan cinema that produced such major talents as Paolo Sorrentino and Toni Servillo. Martone is still relatively unknown in the U.S. but his 2022 feature Nostalgia garnered critical acclaim on the art house circuit and continued Martone’s fascination with the city of Naples, where he was born in 1959. Based on a novel by Ermanno Rea, the film is a slow burn character study of Felice Lasco, an expatriate living in Cairo, Egypt, who returns to his childhood home of Naples after a 40-year hiatus.

Continue reading →

Natural Wonders

Posted on by
Reply

Olden, Norway might not be a place you have ever heard of or know anything about but it is located in one of the most stunning and pristine natural settings on the planet. Situated at the mouth of the Oldeelva River and close to the Jostedal glacier, the largest inland glacier in Europe, the small village of less than 600 inhabitants is nonetheless a top travel destination for tourists who travel to Norway. It is also the childhood home of filmmaker Margreth Olin, who has made a film about it entitled Fedrelandet (English title: Songs of Earth, 2023) except it is no conventional documentary. Although it does showcase the awe-inspiring beauty of the region, it is much more intimate in scope since the emphasis is on Olin’s relationship with her parents and how growing up in Olden affected her feelings about nature and her place in the world.

Continue reading →

Max Ophuls’ Caught

Posted on by
Reply

Over the years there have been numerous biographies written about aviation legend/studio mogul/eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes; everything from fake ones like Clifford Irving’s Autobiography of Howard Hughes to definitive accounts such as Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness by Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele. In contrast, there have been very few motion pictures about him. Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator (2004), based on the Bartlett & Steele biography, is the only feature film about his life to date. There was also a TV movie, The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977), with Tommy Lee Jones in the title role, and Jonathan Demme’s Melvin and Howard (1980), a quirky docudrama/comedy about Melvin E. Drummar (Paul Le Mat), a Utah man who claimed Hughes (Jason Robards Jr.) named him in his will after rescuing him in the Nevada desert.

Strangely enough, my favorite film about Howard Hughes isn’t a biopic at all but a noir-like melodrama featuring a character who was clearly inspired by the megalomaniac tycoon – Caught (1949), by German director Max Ophuls. Smith Ohlrig, the business tycoon modeled on Hughes, may not resemble him in terms of a biographical profile but on a psychological level he is the epitome of Hughes in the way he interacted with women, his employees and industry rivals.

Continue reading →

Assassination Games

Posted on by
1
The film poster for JAGA WA HASHITTA (1970), a Japanese film that is also known as THE CREATURE CALLED MAN.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Toho Studios began toying with some of its genre offerings by slipping some social or political references into the narratives while adding additional cinematic influences. A prime example of this is the 1970 Japanese film Jaga Wa Hashitta (English title: The Creature Called Man), an offbeat actioner about rival hit men with obvious references to the James Bond spy series as well as American crime thrillers.

Continue reading →

Uruguayan Minimalism

Posted on by
Reply

What was the last movie you saw from Uruguay? I was not sure I had ever even seen a film from that country until I recalled watching La Noche de 12 Anos (English title: A Twelve-Year Night) in 2018. Directed by Alvaro Brechner, it was the story of three political prisoners from the National Liberation Movement aka Tupamaros in Uruguay who were systematically tortured in jail during the military dictatorship of the country in 1973. The only other film I recall that was specific to Uruguay was Costa-Gavras’s State of Siege (1972), a Kafka-like drama based on the real-life kidnapping and assassination of Daniel A. Mitrione, a government official with the United States Agency for International Development. But Costa-Gavras’s film was actually shot in Chile, not in Montevideo where the events took place, and was primarily a French production so it doesn’t really qualify as a Uruguayan production…which brings me to Whisky, a 2004 film by Uruguay filmmakers Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll. Whisky could not be more different than the politically charged A Twelve-Year Night and offers instead a subtle, bittersweet character study directed in the deadpan absurdist style of Aki Kaurismaki (Ariel, Le Havre) or similar kindred spirits like Roy Andersson (Songs from the Second Floor, About Endlessness) or Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, Dead Man).

Continue reading →

Human Cargo

Posted on by
Reply
A scene from LA PROMESSE (The Promise, 1996), a Belgium film about an immigrant trafficking business starring Olivier Gourmet (left), Assita Ouedraogo, and Jeremie Renier.

Igor is a fifteen-year old kid who, in some ways, is like most teenagers his age. He likes to have fun hanging out with friends, ride his moped around and work on customizing his go-kart in his spare time. The problem is he doesn’t have much spare time. He works as a mechanic’s apprentice at a gas station but even those hours are cut short by his demanding father Roger, who needs him constantly for jobs involving building renovations, money collection and other activities related to Roger’s exploitation of illegal immigrants. Because of this, Igor has had to grow up fast with his multiple adult responsibilities but he likes the money he makes and the trust his father has placed in him. All of this is about to change when he becomes friendly with Assita, who has arrived with her newborn baby to join her husband, a West African man who does work for Roger. This is the basic set-up for Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s La Promesse (The Promise), a groundbreaking 1996 film for the brother filmmaking team about the brutal trafficking and mistreatment of undocumented immigrants in Belgium. It also serves as a stark but moving coming-of-age film.

Continue reading →

If You Go Down in the Woods Today, You’re in for a Big Surprise

Posted on by
Reply

When the film version of James Dickey’s 1970 novel Deliverance, directed by John Boorman, first appeared in 1972, it was perceived as a new kind of survival tale, one in which suburban men were confronted with the primeval forces of nature and completely traumatized by the experience. While it was mostly a character-driven adventure story, it had nightmarish elements that could easily classify it as a horror film yet it had a much broader appeal than a niche genre item. Nevertheless, some filmmakers took Dickey’s basic premise of some city folks venturing into unknown rural territory and turned it into a horror film template. Some of the more infamous titles are Wes Craven’s cult favorite The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Mother’s Day (1980), a sick black comedy from Troma Entertainment, Just Before Dawn (1981), directed by Jeff Lieberman (Squirm, Blue Sunshine) and The Final Terror (1983) featuring Daryl Hannah and Rachel Ward in early roles. My favorite though is the lesser known 1977 Canadian film Rituals (aka The Creeper), which comes close to generating the kind of white-knuckle tension that defined Deliverance while adding a number of gruesome horror tropes that make it consistently creepy and harrowing.

Continue reading →

Living Large in Texas

Posted on by
Reply

Director William Wyler had spent most of his film career trying to gain creative control of his pictures but kept falling short of his goal in his dealings with Paramount and other studios. In 1956, he attempted to remedy that situation by entering into a joint venture with his good friend, Gregory Peck, to create an epic western called The Big Country (1958). In Wyler’s words, the film was “about a man’s refusal to act according to accepted standards of behavior. Customs of the Old West were sort of debunked.”

Continue reading →

The Virgin of Nuremberg

Posted on by
Reply
The Italian film poster for THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG which is also known as HORROR CASTLE (1963), starring Rossana Podesta.

Mary, the wife of German aristocrat Max Hunter, is visiting her husband’s ancestral castle for the first time and is completely unsettled by the mansion’s violent past; 300 years earlier it was the home of “The Punisher”, a sadistic fiend who tortured and killed women deemed guilty of adultery. One room of the mansion even serves as a shrine to the past with its museum-like displays of the family implements of torture. The castle’s domestic staff is no less intimidating with Erich, a disfigured servant, and Marta, a grim-faced housekeeper with a flair for morbid stories, in constant attendance. Left alone by her husband while he conducts business away from home, Mary tries to suppress her mounting terror as reports of a missing servant girl lead to rumors of “The Punisher” and his return from the grave.

The opening sequence of the Italian film La Vergine di Norimberga (U.S. release title, Horror Castle (1963) could be a primer for Gothic horror films with every cliche of the genre on display. A dark, stormy night. A creepy castle. A frightened woman in a nightgown exploring the darkened corridors by candlelight. Where it departs from the predictable formula is in the dramatic payoff – the gruesome discovery of a mutilated woman locked inside an iron maiden, “The Virgin of Nuremberg” (the original Italian title of the film).

Continue reading →

Like Moths to a Flame

Posted on by
Reply
A publicity photo of Clark Gable and Joan Crawford in the 1931 melodrama POSSESSED.

It was just the sort of rags-to-riches tale audiences craved during the Depression era. A working class woman with a shady past finds romance with a high society lawyer running for political office. There’s one major obstacle to their happiness though – he’s married. But Possessed (1931) is less about the road to a bright future for these star-crossed lovers than the on-screen sexual chemistry between the two stars – Joan Crawford and Clark Gable. It was their third film together but it was the first time the duo truly clicked with audiences as a screen couple.

Continue reading →