The Vault #29 Nick Ray 100th: Johnny Guitar

A typical Western opens with some sort of robbery or injustice. A stranger with a past and a gun rambles into town on a dying horse's last legs to fix things, perhaps while charming a woman or a small child. The stranger will right wrongs that the townspeople can't themselves or that the lawmen won't. The man with no name will be stoic, vicious and effective. He'll ride away with nothing, and we can presume run into another such adventure.

Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954) is no typical Western. For one thing, Sterling Hayden's Johnny does not come to down armed. And the townspeople are not helpless, they are ruthless. And Johnny won't be charming anyone; instead he'll be seduced by local casino owner, former prostitute and future railroad profiteer Vienna, played by Joan Crawford, who was this film's first and only star.

Entitling the film Johnny Guitar seems to have been merely a ploy to convince male viewers this was going to be your run of the mill Western. In fact, its half feminist revisionism and half absurdist melodrama, in line with some of Ray's other films. Though a stranger comes to town and fires some bullets, this film is really about the conflict between Crawford, streetwise and masculine, and hypocritical Emma (Mercedes McCambridge), a vindictive puritan who seems to have the whole county henpecked.

Johnny Guitar follows the formula of many unconventional films: it foregrounds the action in cliche, and then seeks to deride and destroy those cliches. The action starts when a band of ruffians led by Scott Brady and Ernest Borgnine kill Emma's brother. They band, friendly with Vienna, soon lead an angry mob to the casino asking for Crawford's head. It's curious that this film induces the audience to rooting for the woman of questionable morals rather than the zealous hypocrite. Ray gets a lot of humor out of McCambridge's tirades, as she browbeats the ranchers and landowners to kill a woman she has a personal grudge against.

As in High Noon and The Searchers, society eventually puts "justice" into the hands of one: Emma, whose personal rancor for all things feminine and sensual makes her, ironically, the villain of the film. We are not really left with a male role model, just the sarcastic Johnny and the low down thieves (Borgnine is especially juicy as a quick drawing thug). The hero is Crawford, a woman who it is more than implied has slept and is continuing to sleep her way to the top.

This aspect of Johnny Guitar makes it devilish, scandalous fun. We are rooting for a hooker and a few gunmen to actually triumph, and not for the sake of any greater good. In this way, Johnny subverts the idea of the 50s Western as being a morality play. Throw in a few heart-pounding set-pieces, you've got on hell of a picture.

Shock Ai no Corrida: Nagasi Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses

The other night I had the pleasure of being blindsided by Nagasi Oshima's Ai No Corrida (1976: the title in French is Empire of Passion; the less accurate recent Criterion title is In the Realm of the Senses). What I knew going in: Corrida is a political commentary on pre-war Japanese society, a film about a doomed love affair between a former prostitute and an upstanding lord in a society spiraling towards fascism. I expected something along the line of Jeremy Piven's famous summation of Edith Wharton's novels: "he loved her, she loved him, but they couldn't fuck because those were the times!" That is not exactly what Oshima had in mind.

Ai No Corrida, which is the most salacious of Oshima's films, has never been screened in Japan. On of the reasons a translation of its title is tricky is that the original processing and release of the film happened in France, where these types of things are common. The new Criterion has not and probably will not be sold in Japan. It is, by any definition, pornographic material. It depicts several non-simulated sex acts, from angles which display unmistakeable penetration. The political commentary aspect of it is questionable.

However, the action of Ai No Corrida is hardly erotic, nor are its characters shallow and depraved objects whose humanity is sacrificed for the titillation of the audience. It's a beautifully shot romance, or less a romance than depiction of addiction and obsession, a sultry tale that can get trapped in one room for twenty minutes or more as the two subjects get caught in each other's eyes, limbs or other body parts.

I'm not going to give away the kicker. But the seductive and engrossing nature of this film draws the viewer so close, tantalizes them so much, that Oshima is left license to shock us irrevocably. Which he does. The final twenty minutes of this film cannot be forgotten or ignored. Like Straw Dogs or Naked Lunch, Ai No Corrida is a twisted film whose strangest moments add up to a terrifying finale.

The Vault #28 Mitchum Golden God Edition: The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Eddie "Fingers" Coyle is tired and broke. He's not smart enough to move up in the Boston mob, and he's too old to run around with the up-and-comers. He just wants enough dough to take care of his wife and three kids without them having to go on welfare, pay off the mortgage on his cluttered row house, and maybe get a little sun in Florida a some point in the distant future. The only problem is, Eddie just got busted for driving a truck full of smuggled goods, and he's looking at a 3-5 bit in a New Hampshire prison.

Who better to play the booze-swilling everyman than Robert Mitchum, complete with sagging gut and mournful eyes? Eddie Coyle, like Mitchum in the seventies, has seen his glory days pass. Peter Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle, based on novel by George Higgins, is a rare bird: its an ensemble piece which doesn't lean too heavily on its high-profile star, instead spending a good deal of time in procedural moments with minor chracters. The pacing is perfect, following a string of bank robberies by mafia soldiers to whom Eddie provides guns, while our hero must decide whether or not he will turn rat to stay on the outside to provide for his loved ones.

The real star of The Friends of Eddie Coyle is the city of Boston. Its curious that the English-born Yates, who also directed Bullitt, should be famous for a pair of movies that bespeak a native's familiarity with two of the U.S.'s most unique and atmospheric cities. It's also odd that a pitch-black film noir take place almost entirely in daylight, but all the better to show off the meticulously selected locations, which include cold T-stops, sleepy suburbs and the Common. Anyone who thought Martin Scorsese was stumbling upon something original in The Departed needs to see this film.

It's an understated film; the dialogue crackles with a studied rhythm characteristic of David Mamet, but at the same time, the performances seem lived in, naturalistic. When we think of Scorsese, Melville, Mann, Dassin, and other masters of the crime drama, we are reminded of virtuouso scene-chewing by the best in the business, from Alain Delon to Mark Wahlberg. Rather than heighten the effect of a life-or-death situation, Yates does the exact opposite. Mitchum and Boyle are so matter of fact, the film takes on a documentary, neorealist slant. It meanders instead of rushing, it builds to a climax without underscoring it; it delivers a twist in a straightforward and unconcealed fashion. As a result, every moment of The Friends of Eddie Coyle is more believable, more engaging, and ultimately, more devastating.

The Vault #27 Mashup: Mississippi Mermaid

In 1958, Alfred Hitchcock directed Vertigo. The Master of Suspense, who had been box office gold for almost a decade, struck out with the tale of a femme-fatale with a dual identity. In 1965, Jean Luc Godard made Pierrot Le Fou, the epilogue to his ten film marathon that took the French New Wave from post-modern riff to the territory of conceptual art. These two films provide all the context needed for today's entry, Francois Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid (1969).

Working from Godard's blueprint of the smoldering Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless) as petty bourgeois looking for a fresh flame, Truffaut adapts an American pulp novel into a smirking film noir. Katherine Deneuve plays a bride found in the personal ads, who travels to the remote island of Reunion off the coast of Africa, where Belmondo owns a cigarette factory (anyone familiar with the actor should realize the humor in this - its a wonder he ever turns a profit). However, it soon comes out that Deneuve is not quite who she seems to be, and the couple finds themselves on the run in Europe.

Truffaut combines Hitchcock's smooth as silk dialogue and plotting with Godard's irreveren rhythm and iconography (complete with red two-door convertible) to create a movie full on intrigue, wit and romantic non-sequiturs. Belmondo and Deneuve have minimal chemistry together, but Truffaut seems to realize this: they are both playing at love without ever meaning it. It's wonderful when, late in the film, they finally begin to fall in love with one another, even though they can never admit it.

In terms of viewing Mississippi Mermaid in light of Truffaut's other work, comparisons become difficult. Certainly intended as a thinly veiled homage or spoof of Godard, much of the precociousness, narration and gag-humor of films like Shoot the Piano Player and Jules et Jim is nowhere to be found. What can be found: more references to Orson Welles (the first several months of the courtship are told through scenes at the breakfast table and a gradual journey towards a bucholic cottage shrouded in snow). A treat for cinema-lovers and plain old lovers alike.

MUST SEE CINEMA RIGHT NOW STOP READING: The Hurt Locker

America, we have a winner.

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is probably going to win best picture this year. It has the the fast pace, the riveting performances and the skillfully choreographed suspense of a great summer action movie. All these qualities justify its July release. The character development, subject and emotional punch this film packs, however, bespeak an enduring comment on the insanity of war sure to be looked back upon for decades. 

The Hurt Locker is extremely simple in its construction. It follows the most dangerous job in the military: bomb diffusers, the men who disarm IEDs (improvised explosive devices). There has been no war to date where this job has been as important as Iraq. A three man bomb group (Guy Pearce, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty)  sustains a casualty and the team leader is replaced by hard-drinking, thrash-metal listening James (Jeremy Renner). James is a crazy son of a gun who throws smoke grenades for no reason, refuses to use the probe robot and takes off his protective suit when the bombs are big enough to blow through it. Just think of Kilgore in Apocalypse Now.

Over half of the film is just spent plodding from mission to mission with James, as he clashes with by-the-book Sanborn (Mackie) and weak-willed Eldridge (Geraghty). The previous sentence contains the worst use of the word "plodding" in the history of the English language: in its most straightforward moments, The Hurt Locker  is a white-knuckle, edge-of-your seat thrill-ride which barely allows one to breathe or think. And this aspect of the film's form is essential to its content.

Bigelow opens with a quote: "for war is like a drug". While this might seem cliche, and recall for some of us the famous Truffaut saying about the impossibility of making an anti-war film because the process of going to war seems so exhilarating, it is a perfect thesis for Locker. Renner, the gung-ho adrenaline junkie, seems most at peace, most happy, when he is the closest to dying. This calls to mind two specific cinematic reference points: 1) the stoic cops/criminals of Michael Mann and Jean-Pierre Melville, who proceed into danger with zen-like poise and 2) The sad addicts of Darren Aronofsky, especially Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, whose vertiginous highs and lows seem to have been studied by Renner in preparation for this role.

Which brings me to the most important thing about The Hurt Locker: Bigelow has learned from everyone else's mistakes, especially with respect to movies about Iraq and the Middle East in general. This film is not overtly political in the manner of Lions for Lambs or Syriana; it does not play up the sentimental "war at home" angle of Stop-Loss or In the Valley of Elah; it doesn't get lost in action sequences like The Kingdom and Black Hawk Down. The Hurt Locker succeeds because it uses pieces of each of these films sparingly, and in doing so, creates a complete experience of war most closely compared to David Simon's phenomenal Generation Kill. 

Before I put a bow on this thing, I must praise Renner and Mackie, whose performances are pitch perfect, both in combat and on the base they call home. Though neither is a complete unknown, neither is an established star. Bigelow (or the studio) chose well with these two. Despite a flurry of more recognizable actors in smaller roles,  our attention never waivers from the anonymous heroes at the story's center. Both should be considered for the Academy Award in their respective categories.

Grade: 95/100  

Summer Movies Orgy Part 5: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Went to a midnight screening, no biggie, so I thought I'd let you mortals in on a little HP and the Half-Blood P review.

There is pretty much no franchise, including James Bond, which has had as deep a well of fresh material as the Harry Potter series. J.K. Rowling has produced 7 books in a little over a decade, and with each more popular than the last, film versions are nbot only necessary, they are a sort of bulletproof success that is a once in an industry occurrence. For example, last night in Danvers Massachusetts (where?), as many as five midnight showings were completely sold out. Potter makes other cash cows like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings look like small potatoes. It took George Lucas 8 year to produce the first trilogy; Potter has had six movies in the same span, the first five of which rank in the top 21 non-adjusted profit lines of all time. Half-Blood Prince is sure to join the ranks soon enough.

Now, as a caveat to those who might use my review to assess whether they want to see the film or make up their minds about it having come back from the theater, I should speak of my familiarity with the Potter world, a vast universe of silly names and ipso facto inventions. I have read the first five Potter books, and seen in their entirety the first three films (I've also seen large portions of the fourth and fifth, though nowhere near start to finish). I loved the direction Alfonso Cuaron took my favorite of the books, Prisoner of Azkaban, but once in college I never made it out to the theaters. This means I have not read Half-Blood Prince, so I might not be the best person to assess this adaptation. 

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince goes the direction all of our favorite franchises have gone in the past five years: dark. Like The Dark Knight, Quantum of Solace and Watchmen, Harry Potter no longer seems intended for children. HBP is not a light movie full of dazzling effects and airy actions sequences. It is a brooding piece comprised almost entirely of subplot which hangs on between the traumatic events of Order of the Phoenix and the gloom and doom of Deathly Hallows.

The only respite one gets from this slow sense of foreboding is from the sexual confusion teen comedy element provided by Harry's friends. This aspect of the film surprised me the most; it seems as Harry's readership has grown up, so must the concerns of the films. And by grow up, I mean digress. Most of the second act seems concerned with Ron Weasley's romantic entanglements, while Draco Malfoy's evil scheme is left largely in the periphery. 

Like I said, I have not read the book, but it was hard for me to visualize reading this story. Vry little happens until the last twenty or so minutes, and then the climax seems tacked on. While David Yates makes a masterfully composed piece whose atmosphere and danger perfectly echo Azkaban, one does not feel very satisfied by the ending. Potter seems to have evolved from a serial to a saga, and I suppose any sort of intelligent progress should be welcomed.

Grade: 85/100

The Vault #26: The Earrings of Madame de...

In the essay "A Certain Tendency in French Cinema", Francois Truffaut bemoaned the tendency of post-war cinema of focusing on the screenwriter and ignoring the director, suggested that stiff adaptations of famous novels did not make for interesting character studies or societal commentary. He attacked the "tradition of quality" as one which kept cinema in an unbreakable stasis, one which only an artistic and creative approach to cinema which composed on the moving image's own terms could hope to change. Cinephiles largely skip this period of French cinema which spans from Marcel Carne's L'enfants du Paradis (1945) to Roger Vadim's ...And God Created Woman (1956). That is with one very important exception.

Maxime Ophuls was a German-born Jew who fled to Paris in 1933. He directed elegant, often literary, period pieces which can certainly be called "quality". However, he did not rely on separate screenwriters; after Francois' heart, he wrote his own scenarios and in doing so brought his own worldview to the screen. His penultimate film, The Earrings of Madame de... (1953) (Simply Madame de... upon its initial release) is a satirical masterpiece which deserves to be considered with the finest films of any era. 

Madame de...(Danielle Darrieux), never to be named in the film, sells her wedding gift to a jeweler so that she may pay off a debt. She tells her husband (Charles Boyer) the earrings were stolen and he believes her, despite knowing otherwise. He retrieves the jewels and gives them to his mistress, who loses them at a roulette wheel in Morocco, where they are bought by the well-to-do Baron Donati (Vittorio de Sica, director of Bicycle Thieves), and find their way back to Rome and eventually the titular madame. 

Think of the film as Au Hasard Balthasar, but instead of following a loving and humane beast, Ophuls focuses on an ostentatious symbol of fabricated love. While we may ultimately sympathize with Donati's romantic longing, no character is really safe from this class conscious satire that bridges the gap between Renoir's Rules of the Game and Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid. Boyer is particularly amusing as a husband who knowingly allows his wife's infidelity, content for some other man to have to listen to her.  

It would be easy to look at a film like Madame de... and simply see "cinema of quality", a "white telephone" film set in a world of opera and grand ballrooms, but it in fact exposes the bourgeoisie for what they are: venal, greedy people with as little moral fiber, or less, than the rest of us. And that's certainly something to smile at.  

Review: In the Loop

Hollywood has produced many political satires that take place at the highest levels of government, from Canadian Bacon to Wag the Dog, movies that make farce of the fate of the world. They usually employ a wildly exaggerated and cartoonish fearless leader making decisions based on lack of intelligence. Throw in some Marx Brothers style slapstick and a couple of broad pop-culture references, and you have a movie whose topical humor has a shelf life of a maximum 18 months.  

The notable exception is Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick's brilliant sendup of Mutually Assured Destruction. That Armando Iannucci's latest, In the Loop, has drawn comparisons to the Peter Sellers classic is a promising sign, but not indicative of the film's form or content. Strangelove is, like those other political comedies, a slapstick work of caricature and a minimum of detail. On the contrary, In the Loop balances a level of realism found in true-issue films like Traffic and The Insider, while populating the story with broad archetypal characters whose interactions are instantly awkward and hilarious. 

The trouble starts when Simon Foster, British diplomat, misspeaks when he calls U.S. intervention in the Middle East "unforeseeable". Having unknowingly helped to reveal an American hawk's plan to invade (some country), Foster and Communications director Malcolm Tucker have to spin the story so they keep their jobs, if not keeping Britain out of a major conflict. The ensemble is rounded out by romantically involved aides to both sides, the female Secretary of State and a threatening though peace-loving general portrayed by James Gandolfini.

While In the Loop starts slow and never reaches a fever pitch of hilarity, its story is extremely well-paced and its plot twists and turns (there are several) are easy to follow and ever-engaging. Despite spending most of its two hours in spin cycles and bureaucratic red tape, its very interesting and funny throughout, populated by half a dozen great performances. There might not be too much commentary, but verisimilitude allows the viewer to make up their own mind. A very smart, wry film.

Grade: 92/100  

Summer Movie Orgy Part 4: Public Enemies

You know what you're going to get from Michael Mann. Men will be at work. Cops and criminals will face similar challenges. Something will be elaborately stolen. And some really accurate machine gun fire may occur. These are the staples of his best films, from the epic Heat to the mind-bender Manhunter to the understated Miami Vice. Where Mann gets in trouble is when he strays from this formula, as in the cornball period romance Last of the Mohicans or the face-driven biopic Ali. Michael Mann thrives with crime movies set in worlds of his own creation. He doesn't need strong female performances or true-story details encroaching upon his hyper-masculine oeuvre. 

Mann's latest, Public Enemies, at first glance, should be right up his alley. It's about one of the most famous cat-and-mouse games of all time: the newly created FBI vs. John Dillinger. It allows Mann to research the sounds and feel of Thompson sub-machine guns. Dillinger was a bank-robber, Mann's favorite archetype. And the famous American prestige picture nature of the story allows for a high budget, a deep roster of recognizable actors, and master photographer Dante Spinotti. 

The result is muddled. Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard do a fine job as special agent Melvin Purvis and love interest Billie Freshette, but Mann's slip shows in his handling of Johnny Depp's John Dillinger. We never really get a sense of Dillinger as the story moves from one exciting set-piece to another, and that makes certain moments cringe-worthy, especially those in which Depp monologues about how he'll never be caught, how he and his moll are going to run away together, and about being a celebrity and Robin Hood figure in the eyes of the public. The fame Dillinger is something handled particularly poorly by Mann, who, unlike in Ali, fails to put the newsmedia front and center.

Where the movie does succeed forcefully is in its depiction of Depression-era America. The casting of a motley group of pug-faced gangsters make Depp's cronies convincing, as well as his mob ties. Mann doesn't miss details ever, and putting him in as rich a setting as Chicago can only lead to great costumes, meticulous sets and plenty of murky backlit gunfights. The violence is brutally realistic, especially as it takes its toll on Bale's men, beaten down by the determination of Dillinger. 

All in all, Public Enemies has some of the problems of Mann's weaker films, but not so much that you should avoid this picture altogether. The performances are strong, even when the screenplay sometimes is not. In the end, you get what you came for: hard-nosed action, constant tension and plenty of bullets.

Grade: 89/100

Direct-to-DVD: In the Electric Mist

In 1983, Bertrand Tavernier directed Coup de Torchon (Clean Slate), an ingenious black comedy about an oafish French police chief in a backwater African outpost who snaps, going on a killing spree. When I first saw Torchon, I was blown away at its blend of cheesy film noir tropes and biting social commentary, while coming off as hilarious at points. The other interesting thing is that the film is a transplant of American pulp writer Jim Thompson's Pop. 1260, which was set in the segregated South; moving the story back twenty yeas and across the Atlantic was brilliant. I wondered "why hasn't Bertrand Tavernier done anything else notable?"

So I was very excited to learn of In the Electric Mist, a mystery penned by another of my pulpy co-nationalists, James Lee Burke. The film stars Tommy Lee Jones in his traditional over-wise sheriff role, along with John Goodman and Peter Sarsgaard. Sounds like a recipe for success, right? Then it got shunned off to DVD hell, and I was left disappointed and confused.

Upon viewing this film, it reeks. Everyone phones it in. The story has something to do with an unsolved murder in the 60s of an escaped black convict, but also with the ghosts of confederate dead. Throw in the fact that this is all set immediately post-Katrina in an underfunded Louisiana parish, and you have a gigantic mess. The mystery is racial, the sheriff befuddled, so it seems Tavernier territory, right? Wrong. The studio clearly wanted the movie to be about American race and American Katrina, so why transplant Tavernier across the pond?

It has all the elements of Torchon with none of the strengths. Total disaster. The choice of director makes sense, but everything else went wrong.

   

The Vault #25: Reprise

[The French New Wave] That's as good a headline as any to introduce Joachim Trier's Reprise, a festival-circuit nomad that finally hit theaters in America last year. The film is the story of young writers, just like Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim. It features Georges Delerue's score from Godard's Contempt. At one point, protagonists Erik and Phillip watch Eric Rohmer's Clare's Knee. Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier makes no effort to disguise his influences; he wears them on his sleeve.

Erik and Phillip are novelists; Phillip is brilliant, troubled, fast to fame. Erik struggles and slowly comes to the forefront of Norwegian literature. The story is not particularly important. This film is about art and artists, and it pays homage to great authors, musicians and filmmakers from before either character was born. Its no wonder that one of the major themes of Reprise is the impossibility of originality, that Erik and Phillip have come onto the scene too late to have the importance of their mentors. Everything has been done, every avenue explored, and now all that awaits is mundane family life, middle age, and death. 

Calling the film Reprise can be dissected (at least) two ways: we can call Trier lazy for copycatting, and look at the film as yet another weak indie attempt to capitalize on the trendiness of the New Wave. Godard's ironic third person narration, Truffaut's sense of humor and Resnais' surreal, non-linear romance all play big parts in the overall structure and plot of the film. Escaping the mimicry is impossible. Which brings us to the other interpretation. Reprise is sly in its detail. The familiarity conveyed by the actors gives the film a more genuine and less arty feel than many French films. 

So what does this say? The characters are trapped, just as the audience is, with knowledge of what has come before. Phillip wears a Smiths t-shirt; the soundtrack prominently features Joy Division. Reprise is a fascinating look into a nation, in this case Norway, with little cultural currency of its own. Even its greatest artists cannot hope to be at the cutting edge. Even as he produces this film, Trier is admitting his own lack of originality. It's certainly in league with Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation, a case of an artist producing something seemingly flawed and unoriginal. 

Reprise is not without actual merit though. The editing, driven by the narration, is frenetic, often funny, with its impressionistic freeze frames and what-if scenarios. Its hard to imagine the actors playing other roles, but here they are perfect. It's messy, but its a creation about creating, and very worthwhile.