civex Blog

Crime and Punishment (1935)

civex — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:30:07 GMT

Director Josef von Sternberg had a long and distinguished career interrupted by "Crime and Punishment." Among his stellar performances are "The Blue Angel," "Morocco," "Blonde Venus," and "Duel in the Sun," to mention only a few. Many of his motion pictures starred Marlene Dietrich. In "Crime and Punishment," von Sternberg works with Peter Lorre, Edward Arnold, and Marian Marsh to get this gargantuan novel down to 99 minutes of screen time. Since I haven't read the novel, I have no clue what they left out. I'm sure it's a travesty. Since I haven't read the novel, however, I treat the movie on its own merits.

I consider of plot of little importance in this movie version. Raskolnikov (played by Lorre) is introduced as a student with great promise. Our next scene shows him impoverished but too proud to accept a loan from a former school chum. Raskolnikov is slowly pawning all his belongings because he has no other means of supporting himself. The pawn broker (played by the famous Mrs. Patrick Campbell) is absolutely appalling, and her murder by Raskolnikov is, if not excusable, at least understandable.

The irony is that Raskolnikov is famous in police circles because of his magazine article (for which he was not paid) called "On Crime." In this essay (if I understand the movie correctly) Raskolnikov advances the theory that there are two classes of people: those ordinary people who commit ordinary crimes, and an elite class, including Napoleon, whose crimes are somehow superior and above the law and therefore are not to be punished. The head of police, Inspector Porfiry, meets Raskolnikov and praises his work and asks for his help in solving the murder of the pawnbroker. It is not till this game begins that the movie gets interesting.

Until the game between Raskolnikov and Porfiry, Lorre's acting has been random and muddled. In his scenes with Arnold, though, Raskolnikov takes shape and becomes hunted, haunted, angry, brave, cowardly, and a myriad of emotions that play across Lorre's entire body. Arnold is excellent as Porfiry, an old hand at the game of crime, and Porfiry plays the game superbly. In their scenes together, you get to enjoy Porfiry's knowledge that Lorre knows he knows, and we see Lorre's anguish as he realizes Porfiry knows, knows Lorre knows he knows, and we spiral down the hole of madness of he knows he knows he knows.

Lorre is superb playing anguished men. I think he was at his best in "M" as Hans Beckert under the thumb of Inspector Lohmann. It's a shame Lorre was type cast as Sidney Greenstreet's sidekick in so many movies. I saw Peter Lorre on a 50s game show. The contestant was a blindfolded woman who was asked to chose which of three men was Peter Lorre doing a love scene with her. Each actor kissed her hand and murmured sweet nothings to her. The other two men were credible imitators, but the woman blurted out, "I want _him_!" as she picked Lorre. She didn't care whether he was the real Lorre or not; he was the man she believed in his lovemaking. Lorre was a great actor whose talent was not much used.

Les diaboliques (also Diaboliques)

civex — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:21:02 GMT

This 1955 French film stars Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, and Paul Meurisse. It is set in a boarding school which is being run into the ground by Headmaster Michel Delassalle (Meurisse). Delasalle is married (his wife, Christina, is played by Clouzot) and has a mistress (Nicole Horner, played by Signoret) who also teaches at the school. The two other teachers at the school, the doorkeeper, the students, and sundry others can't stand the cad. Delassalle refuses to spend money on maintenance, decent food, and - horror of horrors for the French - good wine.

Delassalle is a despicable lout, and his wife and mistress decide to murder him. Signoret takes the lead and comes up with a credible plan giving them an alibi, and it goes off with those little hitches that keep you on the edge of your seat as you wait for various interlopers to discover the secret in the large wicker basket.

Once they've successfully carried out their plan, things go horribly wrong. The body disappears. The two murderers can't figure out where it went. Then Delassalle's suit is delivered by the dry cleaners. The two women get hints and clues, but they can't figure out who is out to blackmail them. The tension is really well done, subtly played by the actors and realistic. Signoret would have been perfect in a Hitchcock movie as the cold blooded "ice blonde" that Hitch preferred. As the tension builds, the two conspirators begin to fall to pieces and their relationship frays, then breaks. Everything that can go wrong does: a body is discovered in the Seine, but it's not Delasalle's. When Christina goes to the morgue, a detective sees her and offers to solve the missing husband case for her - and he won't take no for an answer.

The three actors were excellent. Meurisse captures the cruel coldness of Delasalle with fleeting expressions across his face that told more than dialogue. Clouzot was small and weak, well-cast as the invalid wife of the headmaster. But Signoret took center stage. While Christina was mousy and dark-haired, Nicole was man-sized and blonde, had plans, and executed them. As the tension mounts and they begin bickering, their relationship takes on overtones of a married couple.

The pacing of the film is decidedly Fifties, but bear with it. It soon picks up, and the relationship and tension between to two women is very well done

The plot was based on a novel, and it was later made into 1996's "Diabolique," with Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, and Chazz Palminteri. I haven't seen that version. Instead, I'd recommend "Mademoiselle" with Jeanne Moreau if you like "Les diaboliques." Another teacher at a school in a small town runs amuck.

The Man Who Laughs (1928)

civex — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:59:07 GMT

Conrad Veidt stars in the movie based on Victor Hugo's novel, L'Homme qui rit. In this silent film, a boy is sold by the King of England to "comprachicos," a word made up by Hugo to represent people who buy children to deform them for the amusement of noblemen and crowds at carnivals. The boy is Gwynplaine (played by Conrad Veidt). Abandoned by the comprachicos, Gwynplaine and an infant girl find shelter with a traveling mountebank Hugo has called Ursus (played by Cesare Gravina) and his pet Homo the wolf (played by Zimbo the dog). The infant grows up to be a beautiful blind blonde they call Dea.*

Gwynplaine is cruelly deformed by the comprachicos - his mouth is surgically altered into a permanent grin. Although Veidt may be best remembered as Major Strasser in "Casablanca," a role in which he appeared suitably dissolute, Veidt was a very attractive young man. His appearance here is bizarre because of the character's deformity, a deformity which makes Gwynplaine the object of ridicule and laughter, except of course to Dea, who cannot see him as he looks, but only as he really is. She falls in love with him, naturally; and just as naturally, Gwynplaine cannot accept her love because of his appearance: she'd laugh at him, too, if she could see him.

It turns out eventually that Gwynplaine is the sole heir to a dukedom; King James murdered Gwynplaine's father and sold (or dontated) Gwynplaine to the comprachicos, and they abandoned him as a child. Queen Anne came to the throne, and in this story the Queen had it in for a duchess who lived in Gwynplaine's former estate. Gwynplaine is discovered, and the Queen restores Gwynplaine to his estate and orders the duchess to marry him. Gwynplaine is a laughing stock of his peers, of course, so he declines the offer, resigns his peerage, and takes it on the lam. The queen is incensed by his refusal to obey her commands, and she sends the beefeaters after him.

Unfortunately, this is the only action in the movie. We know he'll escape to Dea and they'll live happily ever after, but the chase provides some much-needed interest. Most of the film shows us Gwynplaine in his misery, failing to make him sympathetic, heroic, or much of anything else. Produced by Universal, "The Man Who Laughs" was supposed to follow in the footsteps of its popular predecessors, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Phantom of the Opera," both of which starred Lon Chaney.

"The Man Who Laughs" was directed by the German Expressionist Paul Leni, who chose Veidt as his star since Chaney was unavailable. Leni's Expressionistic tendencies are obvious throughout the film in both set design and lighting. Unfortunately, American audiences failed to appreciate the look of the movie, and it was not a commercial success. I suspect the unsympathetic hero was also to blame. In "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," for example, Chaney's Quasimodo is a figure of horror, but still the audience roots for him and wishes Esmeralda would fall for him. Here we have no clue at all why Dea would love Gwynplaine. Gwynplaine fails entirely to interest us, much less to engage our sympathies.

The reasons to see "The Man Who Laughs" have little to do with the story. Gwynplaine's appearance in "The Man Who Laughs" was the inspiration the Batman comic book villain, The Joker. Heath Ledger's character The Joker in 2008's "The Dark Knight" says his disfigurement was caused by intentional mutilation, a reference to Gwynplaine.

Perhaps more important, the design of the movie was based on German expressionism. "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is probably the most famous expressionist film, and it too stars Conrad Veidt who plays Cesare, the Somnambulist - another sideshow freak under the control of a mountebank. Although "The Man Who Laughs" was made in America by Universal Pictures, producer Carl Laemmle had been impressed with a German movie "Waxworks" and called on its director, German Paul Leni, to direct "The Man Who Laughs." The influence of expressionism on Leni is clear in the set and lighting designs, and this influence was not well received by American audiences who thought the lighting too dark and the sets too Germanic to be England. Later reviews of "The Man Who Laughs" praise it for its visual style, if not for its content. Leni was well-known in Germany for his works, and his American debut "The Cat and the Canary" was very well-received.

Coming at the end of the Twenties, the movie also came at the end of the Silents. Its release was held up a year so that Universal could couple it with sound of a sort: a music sound track and some sound effects were added, although there was no attempt at coupling sound with the dialogue - the title cards were left in to convey the dialogue.

Veidt himself is also of interest. He played Cesare, the Somnambulist in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and starred in Leni's film "Waxworks." Gwynplaine is a more difficult role because the immobility of his disfigured face prevents Veidt from doing much more than emoting with his eyebrows. Veidt seems to lack Chaney's talent for wringing pity from American audiences no matter what the make up was.

*Hugo has a method to his naming. Ursus of course means bear, and Homo means man; Dea means goddess (Dea was played by Mary Philbin). There the method leaves me, as I cannot divine the meaning behind Gwynplaine (which may mean pale plane - or maybe not).

The Night of the Hunter

civex — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 03:36:12 GMT

This interesting failure was directed by Charles Laughton in his only directing foray and stars Shelly Winters and Robert Mitchum. You may also recognize Lillian Gish and Peter Graves. There's some dispute on how to characterize the film (film noir, horror, melodrama), and I will be so bold as to say that this is one of the flaws in Laughton's vision - he didn't get his vision clearly on the screen.

The story is something like this. It's the Depression. Ben (Graves) is married to Willa (Winters), and they have two kids. Ben is involved in a robbery/murder and hides $10,000, telling only his two kids where the cash is. Ben is caught and sentenced to hang. His cell mate is Mitchum's character, Harry Powell. I guess in the Thirties you didn't have a Death Row, since Powell is in for 30 days for stealing a car. Powell knows the ten grand was never found; Ben mumbles enough in his sleep to let Powell know the kids know the location of the loot. Ben is hanged; Powell serves his time and hightails it to the widow's home.

Powell holds himself out as a preacher, and his relationship with his lord is unique. Mitchum is enthralling as Reverend Powell. Powell has made his living seducing more or less well-to-do widows, murdering them, and taking their money. He marries Willa and starts working on getting the kids to tell him where the money is hidden. He murders Willa, and the two kids hop on their rowboat and float down the river with the reverend in hot pursuit. We follow the story to the end, Powell gets his just reward, the money is returned, and some people live more or less happily ever after in the Depression.

What makes the movie both a failure and worth watching is Laughton's vision of the tale and Stanley Cortez's cinematography. I'm not sure who did the sets and the lighting, but I'll take those designs as my clues that Laughton was making a moral tale along the lines of Homer's "Odyssey" with German Expressionism very much in the forefront. In some scenes, Willa's bedroom is a normal room with an attached bathroom, bed, and the like. In other scenes, the room becomes a cathedral and hell at the same time. In the back of the scene, the ceiling has become highly arched with inset windows, and that part of the set is over lit, almost whited out. This is where Brother Powell holds forth on his sermon of hate and love, communing with his god. In the foreground of the set, Willa is in her bed set on total blackness; she's lighted but in and on a void. The former natural realism of the bedroom is totally gone, and we know we're in another universe where Powell is god, master of love and hate, life and death. And where Powell is master, there's not that much difference between love and hate, and not that great a gulf between life and death. And the set shows us who's where in the grand scheme of things. *Spoilers below for those who haven't seen the movie, so don't look.

Laughton and Cortez have some great scenes and shots as the two kids float down the river on the Odyssey to escape Powell, but Laughton never really ties things together. We just have a serious of beautifully composed and filmed scenes. And they are beautiful. Laughton had magnificent visions, but his storytelling lets us down. Nevertheless, "The Night of the Hunter" is worth watching for the same reasons as "Metropolis" and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" -- Laughton was a genius in getting beautiful images on the screen.

With regard to the category of the film, I'll take a stab at it. I'd say that those who think this is a film noir have missed the boat. Some hold that film noir had its roots in Expressionism, which may be. But film noir (in my take on it) had more than darkly lit scenes to create the genre. The text of the film was cynicism shown by a bunch of losers who know they'll never win but have nothing to lose by going through whatever motions they can scare up a motive for. The general disposition of the characters is that no one can be trusted, loss is inevitable, and all their misdeeds will inevitably be punished. Film noir is more than just dark lighting.

In "The Night of the Hunter," Laughton goes more to Expressionism, much more. The sets he uses are highly stylized; they may be realistic in some scenes, but in key scenes the same room will be transformed into some symbolic statement. The transformation of Willa's bedroom, for example, where it becomes a cathedral and a void, heaven and hell. Powell's introduction to the family is by the casting of his silhouette on the wall of the children's bedroom. His constant song is "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," and in one mesmerizing scene he sings it in round with Rachel (Gish), the devil counterpointed by a saint. I'd say the theme of "The Night of the Hunter" is more akin to madness than to cynical loss.

Powell's pursuit of the children, again in my opinion, has less to do with horror than with his mad obsession with the money. He cares nothing for them. His attempts to do them in are not based on his evilness but on his callous regard for money, his callous disregard for human life in his way. In horror movies there is a monster who destroys simply because he's the monster. It's in the script. Here Powell destroys because he's insane, driven by his lust for money. God wills his actions to set the world right by punishing sexuality while he steals the gold.

Another key to the Expressionist bent of the movie is Mitchum's performance. Often his acting is completely believable and natural, but there are many scenes where Powell is off-kilter, the acting is strange. I would suggest that Mitchum's performance has crossed into symbolism, as when Willa's room transforms from a room to the symbol of the relationship between Powell and Willa. Powell has crossed from our reality into his, and we need to understand with his understanding, not ours. Mitchum's ability to swing from completely realistic acting to symbolism gave me new respect for his talent.

It's a shame Laughton couldn't transfer his vision from his mind to the screen. His use of chiaroscuro is a lesson for many directors, yet he didn't allow it to take over the entire movie, using natural lighting extremely well in his idyllic journey scenes. Maybe Laughton should have been a cinematographer.

I have two movies that I class as noble failures: "Liquid Sky" and "Donnie Darko," the theatrical release, not the director's cut. ("Night of the Hunter" doesn't reach their level of noble, though.) Both are remarkable films that failed at the box office and are polarizing to this day.

*SPOILERS-----------

Powell has HATE tattooed on the knuckles of his left hand and LOVE on the knuckles of his right. (Some will know the ancient word for left is sinister and for right is droit.) He does a routine where hate and love struggle and love overpowers. Powell also has a switchblade knife. And he hates sex and sexuality. We see him in a burlesque theater watching a woman do a sensual dance on stage. The camera drops from his face to his waist, and the steel blade pops out of his pocket. Is this phallic? You bet. This is our first symbolic hint of the reverend's proclivities. It turns out he hates all women; on his wedding night with Willa, he coldly refuses sex with her.

In the scene where he murders her, the symbolism is running rampant, and you may notice that he stabs her with his blade held in the hand tattooed with LOVE. The reverend is a twisted man indeed.

Mademoiselle (1966)

civex — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:54:48 GMT

This 1966 film starred Jeanne Moreau as a horribly repressed teacher in a small town where things go horribly wrong. It was directed by Tony Richardson, and co-starred Ettore Manni as Manou, the Italian laborer who attracted our Mademoiselle's interest.

Richardson, though, is the subtle star of this movie. His scenes of Mademoiselle are stellar. Richardson and Moreau reveal Mademoiselle's inner secrets in silent scenes of Mademoiselle walking through the woods or dressing in her room. Not until "The Dresser" do we feel such anger watching an actor silently perform a seemingly mundane task.

This is a gripping story of a sociopath who must control or destroy. Mademoiselle's march through the movie is like Sherman's march through Georgia: ramrod straight and completely destructive. Richardson did a remarkable job of capturing Moreau's towering performance.

Smoke (1995)

civex — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 04:27:35 GMT

An inspired script by Paul Auster, directed by Wayne Wang. There are excellent performances by a large ensemble cast that includes Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, Stockard Channing, Ashley Judd, and other great character actors I've never heard of.

The problem with the movie is that it barely hangs together on the thread of a tobacco store. The philosophical issue is whether you think your life has meaning: it starts at the beginning, goes to the end, and you get your reward; or whether you think your life is a series of happenstances that may not be related at all to what's gone before and that you don't build on, but go through and learn from. Maybe.

Keitel plays Auggie, the owner of the smoke shop, and their's a cast of characters that comes into his store and his life, and they smoke and tell stories. Most of the stories work - some of them are told, but many of them are 'shown' as the character spins the yarn. Some of the stories didn't work for me, but the promise of more kept me hanging in.

This is a quiet movie, a thinker's movie. If you've lived a life that's had its ups and downs, you'll fit right in. Who knows - one of the stories they tell may be yours. And Tom Waits's "You're Beautiful When You Dream" will break your heart.

Auster wrote, among other screenplays, "Lulu on the Bridge" (which he also directed), and Wang directed "Joy Luck Club" and a number of other quiet movies.

Lone Star (1996)

civex — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:45:51 GMT

This is a quietly excellent movie about mystery, racism, and love. Chris Cooper plays present-day Sheriff Sam Deeds, filling the boots of his late father, Sheriff Buddy Deeds. Much of the movie is told in flashback by director John Sayles, with the camera panning from a present day scene to the location of some event in the Fifties where we see it replayed, then panning back to the present characters, lost in recollection of those days gone by. It works very well, without having to have title cards telling us when we've moved in time.

The story takes place in a sleepy hick town in Texas on the Mexican border, near a US Army base. In this town, everyone has a past. Even the sheriffs. Sam has gone through a divorce, and we get to see him with his ex-wife, Bunny (Frances McDormand). It's a heart-tugging scene, as it becomes clear Bunny will never be the son her father wanted.

Sam moves back home to see his high school flame, Pilar (Elizabeth Pena). However, his father's friends press him to run for sheriff because the name Buddy Deeds still carries weight, and the current sheriff isn't popular. Sam wins, but it's no victory for him. Sheriff Buddy Deeds took over the job when Sheriff Charlie Wade (played with great menace by Kris Kristofferson), a corrupt, racist man, simply disappeared, never to be heard from again. Since Wade was hated by all the blacks and browns in town, it was a toss up who did him in, and sleeping dogs were let lie.

But "Sleep ... knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care," and Sam keeps getting clues across his sheriff's desk that he can't ignore. Clues about who murdered Wade; unfortunately, the clues point all over the place -- to the African American bar owner who ran numbers in the backroom, a Mexican who ran wetbacks across the Rio Grande in the back of his truck, and it takes some quiet patience to knit up the unraveled threads that go back about forty years.

Sam renews his acquaintance with Pilar, and we meet her mother and learn her mother's past. The African American bar owner has a past, too, and it's bound up with the current base commander (Joe Morton, currently in the TV series "Eureka"). As Sam patiently knits the clues into a fabric that tells the story, we find that everyone's past is intertwined. As Sam pulls it all together, he discovers much more than he bargained for. Much more.

Although there is violence in the movie, it takes a back seat to the development of character. We watch Sam shed his old skin, accept his divorce, and move on. Elizabeth Pena is very good, giving us novels with a brief pause in her walk when she sees Sam again. It's a movie for patient people, and the patience is rewarded with an ending that is moving.

John Sayles directed "The Brother from Another Planet," a completely off beat picture totally unlike "Lone Star" (and starring Joe Morton). And Chris Cooper played Colonel Frank Fitts, a character totally unlike Sam, in "American Beauty." And Frances McDormand - I haven't seen her in a film I didn't like: "Blood Simple," "Fargo," "Burn After Reading."

Revolutionary Road

civex — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:00:29 GMT

This bleak, bleak film was hard for me to watch. Leonardo DiCaprio absolutely mesmerized me as Frank Wheeler, and the supporting cast was phenomenal. Kathy Bates and Kathryn Hahn were heartbreaking; Michael Shannon was alternately dead and manic as the certified insane version of Frank and April Wheeler (April was played by Kate Winslet). But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Frank meets April and they get married. April has dreams of becoming an actress, but she's lousy. Leonardo DiCaprio's attempt to soothe April while blowing off her ambitions was utterly believable. DiCaprio's Frank is a shallow jerk with no soul and no ambition. I didn't know DiCaprio was this good. "Revolutionary Road" shows their lives together in the Fifties, as they end up in the march of grey flannel suits in grey, sterile lives. Shannon's character, John Givings, gives voice to their hopeless emptiness. Frank and April make a big decision to blow it all off, move to Paris, and live a happy, fulfilling life. April actually has a plan, and it looks like she can pull it off. Her dream of being an actress may have foundered, but getting out of the rut of suburban Connecticut, office life in Manhattan, and forced parties and entertainment definitely looks doable.

The characters in this movie are relentlessly human. From the beginning, Frank has no real appreciation for April's dreams, but he eventually realizes she's a human being with some feelings. They have two kids, and Frank wants to be a good father to them, and succeeds for the most part. He's not perfect; neither is April; but who is? As the years pass, Frank seems to be more aware of April's needs, less inclined to dismiss her. I watched their ups and downs, but there was a serious note throughout that kept me edgy, upset. Thomas Newmans' music echoed the tension without being tense; his theme was brilliant, spare.

The picture of life in the Fifties shown in this film is stultifying, claustrophobic, suppressive. One had to give parties, one had to dress correctly, one had to say the right things ("Oh! You shouldn't have! This is _too_ good!") - one had to conform. Frank had the peer pressure of conforming at the office, and April had the wifely peers pressuring her at the home. This kind of pressure makes diamonds. Or it crushes souls. It was a pressure that welded Frank and April into one crushed soul.

April doesn't seem to realize consciously her need to get out of the Fifties; Frank doesn't have that need at all, but he goes along because he intuits that it's a requirement. April has their tickets, their passports, and their dreams all in her hand, ready to go. She even has her job lined up. She'll support them while Frank looks after the kids and looks for work. I watched April's happiness with dread. It's the Fifties. Wives didn't work. Wives didn't support the family. Winslet's April has the brains and the ambition, the soul, that Frank lacks. But it's the Fifties. There's nowhere for her to go with it. There's nowhere for a woman's dreams.

"Revolultionary Road" is powerfully subtle. And the end I was left drained. Empty. There's no Hollywood ending here. I kept thinking of Rick telling Ilsa, "We'll always have Paris." In "Revolutionary Road," I knew they'd never have Paris.

Apartment Zero

civex — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:23:54 GMT

This film has more layers than I can delve into. And I like that.

Let's take the name of the movie. Adrian LeDuc (played by Colin Firth) lives in Apartment 10, but the 1 fell off the door and was never replaced. Adrian has lived in the apartment for years with his mother, but she's suffering from a degenerative mental disease and is now institutionalized. Is Adrian emasculated? Gay? Is the loss of the 1 meaningful? Does the 0 represent gender as well as zero?

Adrian runs an art film theater. At the night we drop in, his audience consists of two elderly women. Adrian is very well-dressed in a suit, his popcorn seller is there, and so is the projectionist. So staff outnumbers audience. Adrian decides to rent out his mother's room in the apartment since it seems she's not coming home.

Adrian compares himself to Felix Ungar, and he's correct. He rejects every one of the prospective tenants, and then Jack Carney (Hart Bochner) shows up in a t-shirt and black leather jacket, standing propitiously by the framed black and white photograph of James Dean. Or maybe it was Montgomery Clift. I can't be sure. Director Martin Donovan's intent is certain, even if I can't remember which androgynous, dead star it was.

Adrian is quite taken by Jack, and they agree that Jack can rent the room. Adrian does Jack's laundry, cooks his breakfast, frets over his comings and goings much more than Felix ever did for Oscar Madison. With Adrian's mother in a mental institution and Jack in her room while Adrian presides, I'm reminded of "Psycho" more than "The Odd Couple."

And things spiral out of poor Adrian's control despite his best efforts. Come to think of it, I'm reminded o Polansky's "The Tenant," too. I saw the DVD of the Director's Cut, which has omitted some scenes from the theatrical release. In the version I saw, the sexual tension between Adrian and Jack is electric without ever making contact. Bochner is stellar in this role. Carney is a relentless manipulator using every means at his disposal, even his sexual ambiguity.

And the layers. The film is set in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the year is 1988. Buenos Aires is seething with anger over the "disappeared." The junta ruled from 1976 through 1983, ending with the failed war over the Falkland Islands or Malvinas in 1982. Although Adrian is a native born Argentinean, he lived for 16 years in England and affects a British accent and refuses to speak Spanish. His choice is both bizarre and alienating. When he hails a cab to follow Jack for some paranoid reasons, he tells the cab driver to follow that man. The cab driver asks if it is political, and Jack refuses to say, repeating his order to follow him. The driver, assuming Adrian is British, refuses and begins shouting "Malvinas! Malvinas!" until Adrian abandons the cab and follows on foot.

Adrian hates the tenants in the building, but Jake manipulates them all, and we may get a picture of Argentina based on his manipulations. The tenant Vanessa is a transvestite. Jack saves her from a beating by a straight man she tries to pick up. Vanessa confesses to Jack that she is a night person. In the night, she has been told, she is lovely. In the night, no one can tell she is a man. She has us fooled in the dark. The scene ends before any resolution between Jack and Vanessa. Argentina, too, may be lovely in the night, when no one can tell what she is.

The tenant Laura is married to a man frequently away on business. Jack meets her in the hall and follows her into her apartment where she unburdens herself to him. He tells her to tell him everything, as if he were her father. She does. The scene ends as the strap of her dress falls from her shoulder and Jack caresses her. If only Argentina had a leader she could lean on, confess to, give herself to.

There is no sex and no violence on the screen, but the movie is full of both. Jack seduces women and men as the need arises. The problem for Jack is that he ends up needing Adrian as much as Adrian needs him - a problem unforeseen and never encountered before. As the relationship between Adrian and Jack plays out, I was mesmerized by the cinematography. Tight shots of Jack's face partially obscured by the closer but out of focus Adrian. Close ups of Adrian's face with butterfly lighting, overexposed just enough to wash out some of the colors of his face. Both actors' faces are whole novels in themselves.

It appears finally that Jack may have been an American mercenary, running a camp where Argentines disappeared. He seems to be on the run. He understands completely how to manipulate Adrian. But Adrian's naivete and willing complicity in the game seems to win Jack over. The end of the movie contains violent deaths, all taking place before we come into the room and see the results. And at the end the final layer is to decide which is Jack and which is Adrian.

This was a foreign film for purposes of the Academy Awards, and neither Firth nor Bochner was nominated for Best Actor, though both deserved the award. If you saw "The English Patient," Firth played the cuckolded husband of Katharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas) to Count Laszlo de Almasy (Ralph Fiennes). He's also been in the "Blackadder" series, the "Bridget Jones" movies, "Shakespeare in Love," and the "Pride and Prejudice" series. He's remarkably good in "Apartment Zero."

Hart Bochner was the sleazy Harry Ellis in "Die Hard" ("Hey babe, I negotiate million dollar deals for breakfast. I think I can handle this Eurotrash."). He's excellent in "Apartment Zero."

Beowulf (2007)

civex — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:27:07 GMT

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, this is a "performance capture" film. It stars performances by Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, Brendan Gleeson, and Crispin Glover. Oh, and Angelina Jolie.

Performance capture, also known as motion capture, basically means the actors wear skin tight clothes with markers on them and act in front of a green screen. Later, computers render the peformance digitally, with costumes, sets, and even the characters created by algorithms. For some people, this is a killer, and they can't accept the movie as a movie. I have some agreement with this. Wright Penn's character, Wealthow, was a blank for me. Whatever expression the actress gave the character, it never showed on the CGI face. Brendan Gleeson's Wiglaf, on the other hand, was totally credible throughout.

But you must know that the sets, the costumes, the scenery, and the characters are all generated on computer and do not look photorealistic at all. My perspective was that I was watching a comic book playing out on the screen, with excellent illustrations and an actual story. In one scene, we see a dragon swimming underwater, breathing fire and making the water boil around its mouth - I thought this was excellent. The fantasy aspects of "Beowulf" worked wonderfully. But when the characters talked, the motions and facial expressions weren't real, and often I had no feeling that the characters were walking on whatever surface they were supposed to be on. Overall, I was not so distracted from it to have it spoil the story for me. And "Beowulf" certainly tells a story.

Scriptwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary took liberties with the original story, an ancient English heroic poem of uncertain date and origin. I've read a translation of the poem, and the movie does not follow it too closely, but the screenplay is epic in itself and worked well for me. Scholars may be disappointed, but movie goers will not be. This is an action drama, with enough emphasis on character, loss, flaw, and disappointment to keep the adults in attention.

Because the movie is computer generated, the art aspects of the movie can really come to the fore. I did not feel ever that the performance capture aspects were used as tricks; Zemeckis kept the story in the forefront, with the animation as the servant of the story at all times. Both the old king (Hrothgar, played by Hopkins) and Beowulf (Winstone) had their flaws; no comic book heroes they. The artwork surrounding the characters was outstanding, in my very humble opinion, and added to the feel of the story.

I am a great fan of illustration, and I saw the movie as excellent illustration with very credible plot and characters. It has great action, although some may find the gore a bit much in the battle scenes. Because the performances are in computer, I think the scenes are more realistic than live action battles, and this realism may be disturbing to those that are disturbed by such things - you know who you are.

Glover performs as Grendel, and he gives a very interesting performance, taking Grendel far afield from the epic poem by making Grendel a touch more human than monster.

A couple of notes: Beowulf and his kin are not being called "geeks" in the movie; they are "Geats," natives of a no longer extant kingdom somewhere in Scandinavia. The most feared animals in Europe during the Dark Ages were bears. As was common among unschooled folk, it was considered bad luck even to say the word bear, so other terms were made up. In England, the common word was "brown," the color of the unnameable, which at the time was pronounced "bruin." In Scandinavia, bears were referred to as bee-wolves, a word combination having no meaning on its own now called a kenning. The Scandinavian spelling of bee-wolf was - you guessed it - Beowulf. So our hero is a bear, the most fearsome creature on the continent. The characters refer occasionally to their worship of Odin. Gaiman has written a novel called "American Gods," which has Odin as a central character. Other forms of Odin's name include Woden, Wotan, and surprisingly Mercury. Our day called Wednesday is a form of Woden's Day, the germanic form of the latin Dies Mercurii, also known as mercredi in French and miercoles in Spanish, which use the latinate form. (Why we pronounce Wednesday "wenzdi" is another question.) Additionally, Gaiman wrote "The Sandman" series of comic books, which brings me back to the visualization of this movie as a comic book in action with most excellent illustration.