The Watcher and the Watched

The Polish film poster for A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE (1988)

A lonely nineteen-year-old boy watches his neighbor Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska) through binoculars as she moves about her apartment across the courtyard in her underwear. Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) has been spying on this alluring older woman for almost a year and he has his routine down to a fine science, which includes setting his alarm clock to go off at the time she comes home from work so he won’t miss a thing. He soon graduates from binoculars to a telescope he stole from a local school. He also calls her up occasionally on the telephone but never has the nerve to say anything. His obsession, however, has come to the point where he requires more direct contact and so he begins to manipulate some face to face encounters with Magda through his work as a postal clerk and a milk delivery man for the apartments. While this basic premise for Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Krotki Film o Milosci (English title: A Short Film About Love,1988) sounds like the set-up for a creepy voyeur thriller in the vein of Rear Window (1954), Psycho (1960), or Peeping Tom (1960), the movie that unfolds goes in a completely different direction, depicting two lonely souls – one cynical, the other naïve – who forge a unique connection through unlikely circumstances.

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Expect the Unexpected

The French film poster for EVERYONE WANTS TO KILL ME (1957), directed by Henri Decoin.

When a movie refuses to fit snugly into a specific genre, that could be a sign that the filmmakers were either unable to capture the desired approach and tone or that the story/screenplay dictated a less conventional approach to the narrative. I suspect that the latter reason is why Tous Peuvent Me Tuer (English title, Everyone Wants to Kill Me, 1957), directed by Henri Decoin, is hard to place into any specific film category. If you were to watch the movie with the sound turned off, you would probably classify it as a brooding French noir. Yet, if you add in the music score and the animated performances, it comes across as an almost lighthearted crime caper flick. Add to this a segue into prison melodrama which soon becomes a whodunit murder mystery. And just to keep things off balance, stir in a romance, some comic relief and a wrap-up that positions the entire affair as a morality play. 

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The Secret World of Cenci and Leonora

An eerie promotional image from the 1968 film SECRET CEREMONY starring Mia Farrow and Elizabeth Taylor, directed by Joseph Losey.

Pretentious art house bomb, neglected masterpiece or inscrutable personal project for Joseph Losey? Secret Ceremony (1968) had the misfortune to follow Boom! (1968), the director’s notoriously lambasted film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore starring the world’s most famous celebrity couple at the time, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Equally challenging for mainstream audiences, Secret Ceremony was promoted as a kinky psychodrama with lesbian overtones and such tag lines as “It’s time to speak of unspoken things” and “No one admitted the last 12 minutes.” Yet, despite the presence of Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Mitchum and Mia Farrow, who had just appeared in the as-yet-unreleased Rosemary’s Baby the same year, the movie was too strange, decadent and moody to hold the attention of moviegoers and critics expecting a more traditional genre film.

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Lee Marvin in Canicule

As a big Lee Marvin fan, I have seen a large amount of his work on TV and the screen, even many of the early roles in the fifties when he was an unbilled bit player or an extra in such films as the war drama Teresa (1951) or the suspense thriller Diplomatic Courier (1952). As he moved into larger supporting roles, usually playing the heavy, he often became the most electrifying presence in the film, whether it was a noir (The Big Heat, 1953), western (Gun Fury, 1953) or drama (The Wild One, 1953). But he really hit his stride in the early sixties starting with his fearsome gunslinger in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and moving into starring roles with a string of iconic performances in The Killers (1962), Cat Ballou (1965), a dual role which won him the Best Actor Oscar, Ship of Fools (1965), The Professionals (1966), The Dirty Dozen (1967) and the cult favorite Point Blank (1967). Nobody, however, even Marvin himself, could have predicted that one of his final movies would be made in France with an international cast and the result – Canicule (English title: Dog Day, 1984) – is certainly one of the oddest films of his career, if not the most eccentric.

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No Man’s Land

The Hungarian poster for THE RED AND THE WHITE (1967).

Imagine a life during wartime where your country is invaded by foreign forces and your friends and neighbors have either joined the resistance or sided with the enemy in order to save their own skins. The lines were more clearly drawn during the American Civil War where geography, uniforms and flags were the distinguishing physical differences but in Europe, wars and revolutions were much more complicated and confusing for the opposing sides. Consider, for example, The Red and the White (Hungarian title: Csillagosok, Katonak, 1967), directed by Miklos Jancso, in which Hungary collapses into chaos in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. As depicted by Jansco, the landscape becomes a no man’s land where the roles of the oppressors and the oppressed are constantly switching and non-partisan peasants are caught in the middle with no control over their fates. The result is a visually mesmerizing, almost absurdist view of power changing hands almost as rapidly as gamers in an interactive duel.

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A Concert Pianist’s Worst Nightmare

The German film poster for the 1924 silent classic THE HANDS OF ORLAC.

What is the worst thing that could happen to a celebrated world class pianist? It would have to be something that destroyed his famous hands, wouldn’t it? The Hands of Orlac, based on a novel by Maurice Renard, has been adapted for the screen numerous times but the 1924 version by German director Robert Wiene remains a masterpiece of silent horror cinema.

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Off the Grid

The Swedish film poster for The Outlaw and His Wife (1918).

A master of 20th century cinema, the Swedish director and actor Victor Sjöström is best remembered for his moving performance as the elderly physician reflecting on his life in Wild Strawberries (1957). As a director, his highly acclaimed 1921 adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf’s novel The Phantom Carriage convinced MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer to bring him to America where Sjöström directed the prestigious projects He Who Gets Slapped (1924), with Lon Chaney, and two starring Lillian Gish, The Scarlet Letter (1926) and The Wind (1928), arguably the pinnacle of his Hollywood tenure. While The Outlaw and His Wife (1918) is not as well known, it is considered by many film historians to be Sjöström’s silent-era masterpiece and, nearly a century after its release, is enjoying a revival that should elevate its stature in the director’s pantheon.

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Marching into the Great Unknown

Do you like knowing what to expect when you go to a movie? Some moviegoers like everything laid out neatly and wrapped up at the end with no ambiguity. But when the director’s intentions and directorial choices are never made obvious or explicit, it can result in a baffling but memorable viewing experience. Welcome to Serge Bozon’s La France (2007), which had been widely praised at various film festivals (it was nominated for two awards at the Cannes Film Festival), but never made much of an impact on U.S. film critics and moviegoers.     

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Lucille Ball, Douglas Sirk and a Serial Killer

That unlikely combination in the header is just part of the quirky appeal of Lured, a 1947 mystery released by United Artists which is also equal parts comedy and romance. It was a remake of the French film Pieges [1939] by Robert Siodmak and starred Erich von Stroheim, Marie Déa and Maurice Chevalier. Most biographers of Lucille Ball and director Douglas Sirk have routinely dismissed it as an insignificant film in their careers but I think part of the problem was that critics and audiences expected a genuine thriller and got something else entirely. It is an eccentric original and highly recommended for anyone who wants to see Lucille Ball in one of her most underrated and accomplished performances; she plays dance hall hostess hired by the police as an undercover female detective and “bait” for a London serial killer.   Continue reading

Cinerama Disaster

In the disaster film genre, Krakatoa, East of Java (1969) holds the distinction of being the only one presented in the Cinerama widescreen format but is also the most erroneously titled movie of all time. As many historians and movie critics have pointed out, Krakatoa is west of Java but veracity is not one of Hollywood’s strengths in producing historical epics. And Krakatoa, East of Java is not a factual recreation of the famous 1883 volcanic eruption in the Indian Ocean but a lavish B-movie adventure that uses the cataclysmic event only as the background and climactic resolution to its cavalcade of international stars and multiple subplots that play out as pure soap opera.  Continue reading