civex

Under discussion:

Rashomon  (1951)

Rashomon is a groundbreaking film on many, many levels. Directed by Akira Kurosawa in 1950, it stars Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori and Minoru Chiaki. The gist of the plot is that a man was murdered and his wife raped. Or maybe not. It depends on who's telling the story. The movie's title has become a word in itself meaning a situation in which events and motives are indeterminable, where truth and fact are subjective and uncertain.

The film bears repeated watching; first, for the story, then for the potential meanings. For some reason, I'm reminded of "The Canterbury Tales," which is a series of unconnected stories told by pilgrims on their way to visit a shrine. But in Rashomon, the stories are about the same event although there are few connections between the versions told. We watch as conflicting tales about the same event unfold, leaving us unanswered questions instead of final resolution. It's possible to see the film as a discourse on the nature of truth, of reality even.

Then there's the issue of good and evil: is it black and white or is there gray? Is the nature of humanity to have both good and evil in our beings? Throughout the movie, there is a conflict of how to judge our fellow humans. Each person tells the tale to suit his or her own ends; how can we trust any of them?

I thought the camera was a character in the movie, perhaps because of the issue of objectivity. In the opening scenes, we are shown a woodcutter walking deep into a forest. The camera walks with him sometimes, showing him, but sometimes we see from the point of view of the camera, moving through the forest looking at the trees and skies. Somehow I knew I wasn't seeing the forest through the eyes of the woodcutter; I felt I was supposed to be there, looking for myself. So another potential is that there is no camera -- there is me watching the various scenes. This situation is repeated in the trial where the witnesses looked back at me answering questions as if I had put them to the characters. I was made a part of the problem of finding out what happened, since I elicited conflicting testimony and never resolved it. Among the quandaries of the movie is whether I can ever know the truth. It's much more personal than whether the characters ever know the truth -- It's whether _I_ ever know, can ever know.

Another issue that Roman Polanski brings to the fore in "Le Locataire" ("The Tenant") is whether the camera lies. Our experience in movies is that when the camera is used by the director as the objective presenter of scenes, the camera does not lie. Conversely, when we're seeing events subjectively through the eyes of a character, we accept that the events we see may be distorted, even false. Kurosawa gives us no clue whether our objective view is objective at all. All the views seem to be true and mutually exclusive at the same time. We've watched movies all our lives, and we've come to accept the world within the four corners of the screen as 'true' for the purposes of the movie, but Kurosawa rips that convention to shreds and scatters it among the leaves of the forest. Kurosawa's camera has no claims to truth.

Under discussion:

Diabolique  (1954)

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.

Under discussion:

The Night of the Hunter  (1955)

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.

Under discussion:

Smoke  (1995)

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.

Under discussion:

Revolutionary Road  (2008)

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.

Under discussion:

Beowulf  (2007)

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.

Under discussion:

Little Miss Sunshine  (2006)

Michael Arndt wrote a sick, genius screenplay. I saw reviews for "Little Miss Sunshine" when the movie came out and passed on it. Whatever the descriptions were, they totally missed it. This is a very funny comedy about failure. Epic failure.

"Little Miss Sunshine" was directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, and it stars Greg Kinnear, Alan Arkin, Steve Carell, and Toni Collette, along with others. Arkin won a best supporting actor Oscar for his brief time on the screen, and Arndt won for best original screenplay.

I don't know who did the costuming (I assume Nancy Steiner), but the clothes were wonderfully awful, especially little Olive's choices. (Mom's clothes sucked pretty bad, too.) Dinner seems to have been take-home buckets of chicken all too often, given Grandpa's comments. All the details of a harried, wrecked homelife get nailed in the opening scenes. Nobody has time to think about dress or food, much less be good at anything.

In this family's life, everything goes horribly wrong, and it's so horribly funny that I had to keep backing up the video because I wasn't through laughing when something else happened. Lee Marvin said his horse should have gotten an Oscar in "Cat Ballou," and the family VW van should have in "Little Miss Sunshine."

Although ostensibly about Olive's quest to win a child's beauty contest, this movie is no more about beauty than "Bull Durham" is about baseball. If you liked "The Station Agent," you'll like "Little Miss Sunshine" (and vice versa).

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

Sullivan's Travels  (1941)

For the American Fourth of July, I recommend this Preston Sturges film, starring Joel McRea in the title role and the lovely Veronica Lake as the girl. Look for Franklin Pangborn, Eric Blore, and William Demarest, too.

This is an interesting film for the Fourth; it's a story based on a successful director's unhappiness with his success, so he sets out to bum around America in a search for real life. The director, named Sullivan, plans on making a movie called "O Brother Where Art Thou," and if you've seen that movie (by the Coens), you'll recognize the chain gang scene in "Sullivan's Travels." 

"Sullivan's Travels" could have been a typical "Common Man" movie of the Depression Era, but something brings it up a notch. McRea is excellent, and the script (by Sturges) refuses to show common men as noble brutes and stereotypes. I can see why the Coen Brothers called their insane take off of The Odyssey "O Brother Where Art Thou" and paid homage to "Sullivan's Travels." There never has been a Common Man.

As with "The Lady Eve," Sturges here is relentless in his comedy, but "Sullivan's Travels" has more of an edge as Sturges contrasts wealthy studio execs with working class stiffs in the real America. Naturally for Sullivan, everything that can go wrong does, he ends up in prison, then gets the girl. But pay attention. Sturges pays respect to the underclasses as few other directors did during the Thirties and early Forties.

If you want to see the glorification of the Common Man, watch Gary Cooper in "Meet John Doe" (or just about any other Frank Capra movie). If you want to see another Sturges movie and like screwball comedies, see "The Lady Eve" (reviewed here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/civex/archive/2009/5/18/42317.aspx)  with Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck (and Blore and Demarest).

Under discussion:

Orpheus  (1950)

Jean Cocteau's heartbreaking story of love and longing is based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice updated to 1950, when the film was made.

Cocteau favorite Jean Marais plays the title role, Marie Dea plays his wife (Eurydice), and Maria Casares plays his death. Cocteau was a brilliant filmmaker and screenwriter, and he chose his subjects well. See the paragraph below* for a summary of the ancient myth on which the film is based.

In 1950, Orpheus is a poet who has no following. He accepts a ride from a princess and listens to the radio in her car. During World War II, many people used broadcast radio to send coded messages to underground cohorts or spies in other lands. The princess's radio picks these up, and Orpheus transcribes them as his poetry, to great initial success. Things take a turn for the worse, though, as he's charged with plagiarism and the princess sends Eurydice to the underworld before Eurydice's time on earth was up. The princess is death, and her premature action leads to consternation in the underworld, giving Orpheus the opportunity to plead his case for the return of Eurydice.

A poet of considerable talent himself, Cocteau uses "Orpheus" to examine creativity, bureaucracy, and remorse. In his youth, Orpheus was a national hero for his poetry, but he's older now, and the young poets are replacing him with blank pages - absurdity for its own sake is better than being thought absurd for what you've written. Cocteau was 60 when he wrote and directed this film, and he could look back on fame and its ephemerality with more equanimity than his character Orpheus could.

Cocteau creates a remarkable array of special effects for Orpheus's trip below. Without computers and without much in the way of trick photography, Cocteau manages to persuade us that Orpheus can pass through mirrors and walk backwards through the underground passages. As with "Beauty and the Beast," the effects are the servant of their master, adding to the story, never overpowering it, never intruding. 

The princess's costumes are amazing. The costumes of the motorcyclists that are her outriders are fairly accurate renderings of motorcycle police uniforms, but they mirror her waist-cinched gowns very effectively. Watch the changes in her gown as she becomes infatuated with Orpheus and comes and goes through the mirror-portals. Cocteau was such a genius, as was his costumer, Marcel Escoffier.

As in the myth, death is overcome by love. When death becomes passionate for Orpheus, she knows for the first time the meaning of love, longing, anger, and remorse. She acts for the first time on her own accord, to have Eurydice die so the princess can have Orpheus. The gods are taken aback that death would act without their authority, and they reverse her decision, returning Eurydice to life. Heurtebise, death's chauffeur, has fallen in love with Eurydice, but still he follows death's command and returns to the couple to life at the time of their greatest happiness. The sacrifice of the princess and her chauffeur (played by Francois Perier) is unexpected, and the resulting happiness of Orpheus and Eurydice is heartbreaking when witnessed through the Heurtebise's eyes. 

Georges Auric's score is spare, but majestic. You can hear some of it in this YouTube clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91cniSsNwz8

and watch some of Cocteau's effects as Heurtebise takes Orpheus back to the real world. I would contrast Auric's use of percussion with Bernard Herrmann's snare drums in "Taxi Driver." In both films, the music is an integral part of the story.

Cocteau comes as close as any soundfilm director to the beauty of cinematography in silent films. "Orpheus" is a beautiful film.

*In Greek myth, Orpheus was the son of Apollo and Calliope (the most gifted of the nine Muses) and a gifted poet and musician. The Greeks rhapsodized about his powers with song and lyre, and I recommend reading some of their myths about Orpheus. When his wife, Eurydice, died, Orpheus played and sang so sadly that the gods wept and allowed him to go to the underworld and beg Hades for her return. His songful wish was granted (Hades himself being reduced to tears), but as ever there was a catch. Eurydice was to follow him, and if he turned to see if she were there she would be swept back to the underworld. (Do you trust your gods?) Of course he couldn't stand it and looked to see if she were there. (What is it about us mortals that we can't follow clear directions and not look back? Story at 11:00 by our senior correspondent, Lot's wife.) There are variations on the story (Greek myths changed with the times and needs of its peoples). In some stories she vanished forever, leaving him bereft. In others, the gods won Eurydice's partial release for six months - giving us spring and summer when she returns to the surface, then fall and winter upon her descent. It's a wonderful story and well worth searching out. And if you've ever been to The Orpheum, now you know the origin of the name.

Under discussion:

Taxi Driver  (1976)

Martin Scorsese's brilliant 1976 film about Travis Bickle has the best music score I've ever heard. Bernard Herrmann died the day he finished his recording sessions for the movie. Herrmann did the music for the radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds," "Citizen Kane" and "Psycho," among many other films. 

The score for "Taxi Driver" has no memorable songs, no hit singles. It's tied inseparably to the visuals, searing and complete. The opening of the movie is riveting, with steam coming from the manholes and a cab appearing through the mists like some monster from a deep lagoon as Herrmann's menacing, sinister score fades in and out. When you've never seen the movie, you don't know what it's about, but you know immediately it's going to be bad. And it is.

If you haven't seen the movie since it came out, it's time to see it again. It's been over thirty years, and Scorsese still has it nailed. It's riveted down and bolted. He welded it. It's still a scorching movie. DeNiro plays Travis Bickle, a Vietnam vet with the scars to prove it. Inside and out. Bickle is seriously mentally ill. He's Holden Caulfield back from the Nam.* He keeps telling people he's got to do something, but he doesn't know what. We know he's going to explode, and we wait with a sick feeling in our stomachs for the carnage.

Jodie Foster was 12 when she played Iris, the child prostitute. It's amazing to see her and realize how good she was. Her scene with Harvey Keitel when he talks her out of running away is mesmerizing. (Some scenes were shot with her 19 year old sister as a body double, by the way.) And her lunch with Bickle is totally natural. She was a star right from the beginning, holding her own with Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel. Incredible.

Keitel is Iris's pimp, the epitome of all that makes Bickle sick, the scummy garbage of New York. Named Matthew, Iris calls him Sport, and she loves him. He manipulates her relentlessly and shamelessly because he makes a lot of money having a 12-year-old whore in his stable. "You can do anything with her," Sport tells Travis, then he spouts a laundry list of filth, sickening Bickle. Keitel is one of my favorite actors; I've never seen him fail in a movie, and he doesn't disappoint here. Sport puts a name and address on Bickle's urge to do something.

I've seen Cybill Shepherd in two movies where she played similar characters: Betsy here in "Taxi Driver" (with Albert Brooks as her opposite number) and "The Heartbreak Kid" as Kelly Corcoran (with Charles Grodin playing her suitor).  In both movies her character is pretty much empty - a blonde who's gotten by on her looks and who has no personality. Betsy provides a whitebread, sane counterpoint to Bickle. The problem is whether we're better off being the sane counterpoint, involved in an election campaign where nothing the candidate says means anything, surrounded by whitebread, incompetent, safe, well-meaning people who truly care whether the candidate's bumper stickers are printed correctly.

Betsy sharpens our focus is on Bickle as he slowly spirals down, letting slip his facade of control, losing his grip on himself, in his solitary hell. Herrmann's score gives music to Bickle's seething anger and danger, underplaying the tempest we feel must be raging unseen in the black night of Bickle's soul. We never see Bickle's torment on his face, but we know his flat affect is the mask of his will to do something, anything to let loose his locked-down demons.

"Taxi Driver" has lost nothing over the years. The characters, the directing, the music all work. See it with a good sound system.

The movie was produced by a threesome that included Julia Phillips, author of "You'll Never Have Lunch in This Town Again." If you haven't read that book, I recommend it. It's free at your local library and well worth the price of checking it out. She also produced "The Sting," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," and a few others. She had a lot to say in her memoir, and she said it well. Julia Phillips died of cancer a few years ago, I'm sorry to say.

*To carry that analogy further, Iris is both Holden's prostitute and Holden's sister, Phoebe. Bickle protects her.

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

The Cheat  (1915)

A silent movie directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Sessue Hayakawa, we get to see avarice, lust, and rampant racism at their glorious best. Worst. Whatever.

Hayakawa is excellent in this movie. DeMille lights him as if he were the female star, and he gives a great performance in mime. The version I saw was the 1918 re-release, and the main character had been changed from Japanese to Burmese after a prolonged protest from the Japanese-American community. (This was very simple for a silent film - they just changed a few title cards and the character's name.)

Fanny Ward plays Edith, spendthrift wife of Richard Hardy, young stockbroker. He's got all his money invested in a company and is waiting for the payoff. She insists on continuing to spend thousands of dollars on frocks and lingerie; at one point another man convinces her that Richard has made an error in judgment, so she gives the guy $10,000 from the Red Cross Fund to double her money in the morning. Naturally, it's all lost, and the Red Cross directors ask her to send the ten grand to the Belgians that day.

Edith has been seeing rather a lot of Haka Arakau (Hishuru Tori in the first release), an ivory merchant who is quite wealthy. Although she is not at all in love with him, she is amused by him while her husband spends all his time on investments. Arakau, though, is smitten with Edith. He offers to lend her money, which she at first refuses; she has no way out, though, when the fund she's lost is requested. She agrees to let Arakau lend her the money, but he makes it clear that he requires sexual favors (without ever saying it, of course) in exchange. She agrees rather than face social disgrace (worse in her status than the theft).

Richard is aware of Arakau seeing his wife, he knows there is nothing going on really, but he's disturbed by it. Hayakawa is very good at being very attentive without being over attentive, and Arakau a very handsome, very wealthy man. When Arakau lends her the money, she's saved from exposure; his demands, though, are instant. He demands her presence that night. Richard's money comes in, and she asks for $10,000, so of course he writes her a check (I can't imagine what $10,000 was worth in 1915). 

She takes it with her to her rendezvous with Arakau, but he insists on his interest in addition to the money. She fights him, and he picks a hot seal (a chop, in Japanese, I think) from his container of embers (don't we all have a container of embers on our desk?), rips her bodice from her back, and brands her on her left shoulder blade. This is a remarkable scene for its violence and his avarice and lust. Their struggle is completely believable. DeMille lights Hayakawa's face just as he might have lighted Brooks or Dietrich.

Edith shoots Hayakawa in the shoulder, wounding him. Richard, discovering Edith has left home, follows his suspicions to Arakau's home, discovers that his wife has shot the man, and claims to have done the deed himself when the police arrive. Edith visits Richard in jail, and again DeMille uses lighting dramatically to emphasize Richard's wrongful imprisonment and her wrongful freedom. 

At the trial, Arakau knows that imprisoning Richard will hurt Edith worse than telling the truth, so he lies and says Richard shot him. Richard takes that stand and confesses. I'm sorry to say that these few minutes tried my credulity: why have a trial when Richard confessed from the beginning? The jury goes out, considers, and returns, and Edith is shown wringing her hands in tension over what in the world the verdict could be. Let me see, the victim says Richard shot him, Richard says he shot him - what could the jury find? Guilty! Big surprise. Edith then goes into hysterics, bares her shoulder to the whole court and says she shot Arakau because of what he did to her. The courtroom erupts in lynching mode, but calms down. The judge sets aside the verdict and the prosecutor sets aside the indictment, and Richard and Edith walk out of the room surrounded by spectators as if at their wedding.

This is a good movie notwithstanding it is silent. Hayakawa shows his talent even this early, but he had to wait for his role in "Bridge On the River Kwai" in 1957 to get his Oscar nomination as Colonel Saito, the sadistic camp commander. DeMille also does very well with his cast of upper crust New Yorkers. The costumes are fascinating. Contrast these clothes with "The Mating Call," which is set in that same time but costumed in the contemporary clothing of the Twenties when it was filmed. 

Silent movies get short shrift in America, but "The Cheat" is worth watching for a number of reasons, the best of which is Sessue Hayakawa.

Under discussion:

The Third Man  (1949)

An excellent, depressing look at Vienna soon, too soon, after World War II, "The Third Man" was shot largely in that city and starred Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles, and some other major actors who don't really matter. This movie makes Orson Welles look better than any other movie I've seen him in, especially in his first shot in the movie.

The plot is that the occupation of Vienna by the major powers (Great Britain, US, France, and Soviet Union) leads to a black market. Our naive hero, Holly Martins (played by Cotton), comes to Vienna to see an old chum, only to find that his chum (Harry Lime) was killed in a traffic accident. Holly is just in time for the burial. Lime, it turns out, was selling fake penicillin, placing him on the most-wanted list of most of the police and MPs in town.

Director Carol Reed does an excellent job, and Orson Welles is very good as Lime. The city of Vienna has a starring roll as well, which it plays with admirable degradation.* Martins finds out that Lime was involved in the black market in a way that resulted in many deaths, especially among children. There are puzzling aspects about Lime's death (who was the third man at the accident scene, for example), and Martins, who should have left well enough alone and gone home, is involved in the investigation into Lime's chicanery and death and becomes involved with Lime's distraught surviving girlfriend. It's an excellent film that has recently been released in Hi Def on Blu-Ray DVD, which brings all the glory of its black and white shades of gray back from the blotchy blacks of VHS and standard definition. Reed achieved an admirable number of great shots in the film, and using black and white was genius. Vienna has never looked so glamorously demolished.

"The Third Man" has a great ending that book ends the beginning, leaving us no better off than we were. No, we're worse off. Sometimes we don't need to know what we wanted to know. Superb closing scene.

*If you liked "The Third Man," I recommend reading Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving, which has much of its action taking place in the same town at the same time and which is excellent. The novel is free at your public library. Also listen to Marelene Dietrich sing "Falling in Love Again" from "The Blue Angel." Although performed in the late Twenties, the refrain "I can't help it" sums up the theme of "The Third Man," and Dietrich vocalizes the dreary lostness of post-war Vienna. Look for Marlene on YouTube.

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

Across the Universe  (2007)

Another star performance from Julie Taymor. It helps if you like the Beatles, since "Across the Universe" is a story connected by Beatles songs performed by the various actors, with cameos from the likes of Joe Cocker, Bono, and Eddie Izzard. Taymor is a fantastic director, and she gets fantastic performances from her cast and crew.

And then there's The Beatles. I've seen and heard their songs covered by artists for lo these 40 or 50 years, and it's amazing how much can be gotten from their words and music. Taymor and her performers wring The Beatles dry in several of the sets. Pairing a dead white Vietnam vet with a dead black Detroit ghetto kid with background vocals by a black choir was inspired. And Taymor gives us the best visualization of American foreign policy I've ever seen.

Not everything worked for me, but what didn't work for me may well work for you. It's over two hours, so be prepared for a break or two, but it never dragged for me. Taymor is inspired, and she got a cast and crew that was inspired as well. Great effects, great choreography, great lighting, great dancing. Be aware that the cast does not imitate The Beatles, they sing the songs within the context of what's going on in the movie. This leads to some interesting differences in what you thought the songs were about. And never fear: the songs stand up to it. The Beatles were that good.

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

This is the best movie I've ever seen, ranking as one of my three all-time favorites.* Bogart and Bergman are pitch-perfect in their roles, Rains is debonair and corrupt, Veidt is snakely and villainous as he should be, and Henreid is forgettable, but who cares? We even get Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, along with S.Z. Sakall. Of course it was directed by Michael Curtiz in 1942 and released in 1943.

The typical movie is boy meets girls, boy loses girl, boy gets her back. In this version, Rick has already lost Ilsa, he gets her back, then he gives her up for the greater glory of France. Well, okay not France but for democracy and all that's decent. The dialogue is excellent with more memorable lines in each minute than most other movies generate in the whole show.

Sigh - they all come rushing back: "Round up the usual suspects!" "Oh, he's just like any other man, only more so." "'I came to Casablanca for the waters.' 'It's a desert - there are no waters.' 'I was misinformed.'" "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

The movie presents Rick as a cynical egoist, interested only in preserving himself. But we learn from his dossier that he's been involved with freedom fighters in several countries, then we learn of Ilsa. We decide that Rick is a cynic because she broke his heart, and he thinks he was a sap. Cynicism is a shell. Ilsa walks into his gin joint and back into his life, and Rick's shell thickens before our eyes. Of course, as the movie goes on, we see his shell melt away, and Rick emerges as the hero we knew was hidden deep inside all along. 

The dialogue is excellent, and so is the directing (Michael Curtiz). "Casablanca" is full of minor characters who add to the richness of the world Rick lives in, adding depth that his character hides. Through his interactions with them, their affection for him and his gruffness toward them, we see his cynicism for the shell it is. Inside that steel exterior beats a heart of concrete.

The ending is superb, melodramatic, and heartbreaking without being maudlin and tearjerking. Noble, but not overdone, maintaining the breeziness and snappy dialogue in the face of Nazi jackboots. (Okay, so jackboots don't have faces, but you get the point, see.)

Everything works. It all comes together and stays together throughout the whole movie.

*I call "Casablanca" a movie because it's a great romantic movie about a guy and a girl. I call "The Dresser" a film because it's about marvelous characters, and we get to watch their development during the film; "The Dresser" is art on a high level. "The Princess Bride" -- I dunno where it fits. It's just my favorite fantasy epic swashbuckler that rises so far above whatever genre it is that it doesn't fit anywhere.

FOR SOME REASON THERE'S A BUG IN SPOUT AND I CAN'T ASSOCIATE THIS REVIEW WITH THE MOVIE. I'VE MENTIONED IT A COUPLE OF TIMES IN THE BUG FORUM AND EMAILED ABOUT IT, BUT NOTHING HAS HAPPENED WITH REGARD TO GETTING THIS FIXED.

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

THX 1138  (1971)

Drug evasion is a criminal act in this film directed by George Lucas, starring Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasance. The film is chock full of fascinating visions, but it doesn't hold together as a story, I'm sorry to say, and the 2004 director's cut has some computer-generated special effects which are intrusive. Lucas needs to stop with the CGI and let his movies alone. (I can hear Obiwan Kenobe now: "Lucas! Stop with the force!")

The female lead, Maggie McOmie, is very good as LUH 3417, vulnerable and childlike. She leads THX 1138 (by taking him off his medication) into having feelings for the first time. As a result, both are arrested (drug evasion). Unfortunately, we lose the loveable LUH and are stuck with THX for interminable scenes where nothing happens.

I'd call this movie a series of more or less connected scenes with many excellent ideas, some amusing, some dead-on scary. Lucas does an excellent job of foreshadowing and using early scenes to set us up for what happens later, but the characters are drugged into somnolence, and it's hard to care what happens to anyone but LUH. And she's out after the first half.

I know this is a cult favorite and was the genesis of lots of dystopian sci-fi hits. I saw it when it first came out (in a theater), and I saw it again in March 2009 (played on wide-screen TV). It holds together remarkably well (except for the late CGI additions) as a vision, but the story just isn't there, and the final scene just doesn't work anymore. I recommend seeing it because of its ideas, which are outstanding.

Under discussion:

Film Name  Production Year

Delicatessen  (1991)

Brilliantly inspired lunatic genius. This movie is set in another universe that looks like maybe a post-apocalyptic French village. It's along the same lines as Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," a world in which too much has gone wrong and there's an underground group trying to right things. It's another "best movie you've never heard of" candidate, directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet; starring a bunch of French actors you've never heard of. (Well, I've never heard of them.)

I'm unwilling to try to summarize the plot, I won't even try to describe it. It's a bizarre, funny movie that you'll love or hate. The characters are wonderful, the situations are delicious, and the possibilities are intriguing. As I sit here remembering the movie, the scenes wash through my mind, and there is nothing I can recount here that would make any sense.

Caro has done nothing else I've heard of. Jeunet wrote and directed (in the American English titles) "A Very Long Engagement," "Amelie," and "The City of Lost Children," all of which I've seen, and "Alien 4" (also known as "Alien: Resurrection"), which I've seen parts of as I've surfed the channels. "Delicatessen" is nothing like them, nothing like anything else you've seen.

Ultimately it's a series of more or less loosely connected skits that are fall off your chair hilarious, tied together in a building with a street-level deli and people renting rooms on the five or so floors above. The originality of the scenes is unequalled. 

Under discussion:

Hot Shots! Part Deux  (1993)

Following up the "Top Gun" parody with a "Rambo" parody, Pat Proft and Jim Abrams score a perfect 10 again. Starring Charlie Sheen, Lloyd Bridges, Valeria Golino, Miguel Ferrer, Rowan Atkinson, Bob Vila, and many more, this comedy nails its genre. Don't worry about the plot, just watch everything on screen a few times because you're still missing stuff. If you're old, you'll laugh at the name of the character Richard Crenna plays (Col. Denton Walters). Golino was Ramada Thompson in "Hot Shots!," but here she's Ramada Rodham Hayman. The other female characters include Michelle Rodham Huddleston, Lavinia Rodham Benson, and Mrs. Rodham Soto.

This is a hilarious comedy that competent adults will appreciate.

Under discussion:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford  (2007)

I hope it's not a spoiler to say that Ford does shoot James somewhere near the end of the movie. I thought it would never get to that point, though.

The cinematography is very good. I enjoyed looking at many of the scenes. But the parts of the movie I liked best were the voice overs. And when you like the voice overs better than when the characters are characterizing and expositioning, there's a problem. I understand the movie was cut originally to four hours, and then it was trimmed down to the two and a half hours it was released in. I'd suggest cutting another hour out.

The part of the movie after Ford shot James was the best, so I'd leave that as is. I'd figure so many feet per minute. Then I'd just take a scissor to the parts in front of the assassination until I'd cut an hour's worth of feet out. Snip here, snip there, then see what I'd left in. I'd be satisfied with whatever was left.

I understand Casey Affleck got rave reviews for his complex portrayal of Bob Ford. I think Brad Pitt was playing Warren Oates. I really liked Paul Schneider as Dick Liddil and Kailin See as Sarah Hite. The problem I have is that the movie was a series of scenes, some connected with each other, some not. Sort of like portraits of people. Long portraits. Like you're sitting there watching the portrait process as the paint dries. Great cinematography, lots of pretty scenes. But the only thing that got the movie going was the voice overs where we're being told what happens in between the static portraits and landscapes.

Until the end, when we see Bob Ford and his brother Charley spiral into self-parody and death. The life of Jesse James was made less interesting than the unraveling of the life of Ford.

Roger Deakins was cinematographer for this film, and he's been involved as cinematographer or director of photography for a few score others, including "Sid and Nancy," "Barton Fink," "The Hudsucker Proxy," "The Shawshank Redemption," "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski," "O Brother, Where Art Thou," "Intolerable Cruelty," "The Lady Killers" (you can't win 'em all), "Jarhead," and "No Country for Old Men."