tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11377308800767551222024-03-18T12:30:54.997+11:00This Island Rodfilm commentary by Roderick HeathRoderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.comBlogger911125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-42653814259757452872024-03-11T17:22:00.010+11:002024-03-12T14:43:02.814+11:00The Naval Battle of 1894 (Jia wu feng yun, 1962)<p><br /></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH9lNWyLNNlwQRIelacR3w7KRuwtDFEQu2mUn_fg-jntvH1Puzo2X5ZLJv5vx2tc2Ad69IjIoVAk3gAGI2ZWdhfyoCqMrl8efuNYgJwdxPyfpXnkV6dOC1-9218KBik2m3ltWdO-w6zMP77-jeFmfOx0TK3VzMxYyjhZpXvle_aadZTnDHao3e96Ia1KL5/s900/NavalBattle1894-01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH9lNWyLNNlwQRIelacR3w7KRuwtDFEQu2mUn_fg-jntvH1Puzo2X5ZLJv5vx2tc2Ad69IjIoVAk3gAGI2ZWdhfyoCqMrl8efuNYgJwdxPyfpXnkV6dOC1-9218KBik2m3ltWdO-w6zMP77-jeFmfOx0TK3VzMxYyjhZpXvle_aadZTnDHao3e96Ia1KL5/s16000/NavalBattle1894-01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Where films made in Hong Kong long since
gained international prominence and popularity, the films of mainland China
made between the Maoist ascendancy and the coming of the so-called Fifth
Generation filmmakers of the 1980s still tend to be, for most cineastes, a
blank zone of the world movie experience. Mu Fei’s great <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2015/09/21/spring-in-a-small-town-1948/" target="_blank">Spring In A Small Town</a></i> (1948) proved both a crescendo and dying
sigh for what has been called the “second golden age” of the thriving and
adventurous national movie industry prior to 1949. But filmmaking did not die
with the rise of Communism in China, and in fact exploded in reach: over 600
features were made between the CCP’s takeover and the commencement of the
Cultural Revolution, an event that did almost shut down moviemaking, and a brief
thaw of censorship in the late 1950s saw some movies made provocative enough to
earn official ire and banning. The Maoists had inherited the Soviet conviction
that movies were the ideal propaganda medium for their cause, but faced a real
problem with a lack of movie theatres across the country, and so formed a small
army of travelling projectionists to show movies to the greater populace, a
task that often required dragging along not just projection equipment but also
mobile generators to run it with. Inevitably, the movies of the period took
heavy influence from Soviet cinema, and Nong Yin’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Naval Battle of 1894</i> is one of them – but still retains a
particularly Chinese brand of illustrated texture. I found the movie stashed
away on a corner of YouTube recently, in a rough print with poor subtitles, but sheer intrigue drew me into watching it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDmk_IyvGVipYPezwFHDMzPOoGBq26mHgUJdA36i7yH1G2pK3iYvV5E8DFOz7ATn_ycypauRTCnVJR9XrO-Bnz3iFkAcQRfHn09QRBHGifjygN9lLricXWvHBfOAF2rSskuZgirt8kJijqj3U_NloBFWY8DVU9DowVIf-LgbfOq0qtkn3LzBlmWeliAYm/s900/NavalBattle1894-02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDmk_IyvGVipYPezwFHDMzPOoGBq26mHgUJdA36i7yH1G2pK3iYvV5E8DFOz7ATn_ycypauRTCnVJR9XrO-Bnz3iFkAcQRfHn09QRBHGifjygN9lLricXWvHBfOAF2rSskuZgirt8kJijqj3U_NloBFWY8DVU9DowVIf-LgbfOq0qtkn3LzBlmWeliAYm/s16000/NavalBattle1894-02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Director Lin was an actor turned director
– his available documented credits see him begin his movie career in both
capacities in 1953, acting as assistant director on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Harvest</i>, which he also starred in, and then making his proper
directing debut with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sister Yin</i>. He
made some eleven features over the next 35 years, including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To Cross the Dadu River</i> (1980), a
depiction of the most mythologised event of the Long March, signalling Nong’s
secure status as a filmmaker accomplished at working in propaganda modes. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Naval Battle of 1894</i> depicts what
seems, at first glance, a peculiar choice of historical action in light of
heroic nationalist message it wants to sell: Lin’s film centres on events
before and during the First Sino-Japanese War, a conflict that saw China
roundly whipped by the nascent, swiftly modernised Japanese military and forced
to abandon control of both Korea and Taiwan, one of the many events that sent
the waning Qing Dynasty into a death spiral ended by the 1911 revolution, and
indeed still echoing consequentially through world affairs. How <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Naval Battle of 1894</i> turns that
disaster of a war to its purpose is one point of interest, in a movie that is,
much as expected, pretty heavy on the desired political messaging and themes –
indeed just about every story and character beat is designed to further those
themes whilst still providing at least nominal dramatic meat.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCV1_0ndNFqfBZa4iH7MsdhZZft0fKvju_MMUCem9pAyNQ3-uTFIGWYryv1KQUFucok0OxSNltSOgZ7iRM7jJpgX2ymna3RBHrKAEq5l1VYGnfYydmlt9EwibAl4oKLyUdDm4jyRqZd3RRJz61asOTnPSqdbbi8dj2VNQIdwEa1fmgwH_hUZ8zk32w62Ds/s900/NavalBattle1894-03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCV1_0ndNFqfBZa4iH7MsdhZZft0fKvju_MMUCem9pAyNQ3-uTFIGWYryv1KQUFucok0OxSNltSOgZ7iRM7jJpgX2ymna3RBHrKAEq5l1VYGnfYydmlt9EwibAl4oKLyUdDm4jyRqZd3RRJz61asOTnPSqdbbi8dj2VNQIdwEa1fmgwH_hUZ8zk32w62Ds/s16000/NavalBattle1894-03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Naval Battle
of 1894</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">
spins a quasi-mythical narrative out of a true vignette of the Battle of the
Yalu River, the biggest naval clash of the war, and the attempt by the Chinese
cruiser </span><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Zhiyuan</span></i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">,
under the command of</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> Deng Shichang, to ram a Japanese
foe – sources differ on whether it was the flagship <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yoshino</i> or another cruiser, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Naniwa</i>.
</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The film
opens in the period of skirmishing and stand-off before the proper outbreak of
hostilities, as Chinese and Japanese confrontations on both sea and land
threaten to get out of control. The film’s version of Deng (Muran Li), whose
name is rendered as Teng in the subtitles of the version I watched, is
introduced fuming as he receives orders to bank the boiler fires of the two
warships assigned as escort vessels for troop ships being sent to reinforce
garrisons in Korea. Teng storms ashore to demand to find out what’s going on
from the Admiral of the Chinese Imperial or “Beiyang” fleet, Ding Rucang (Ke
Pu), and is told the order came from the Imperial Viceroy, Li Hongzhang
(Qiuying Wang), who is doing his utmost to accommodate efforts by the
international powers to mediate between the two countries, and is concerned the
battleships’ presence with the troop convoy might be too provocative. When the
troop convoy sails, it’s attacked by a Japanese squadron, headed by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yoshino</i>: one troop ship is sunk and the
commander of the Chinese escort vessel, Fang Boqian (Wenbin Zhou), orders a
speedy retreat from danger, only for a gutsy gunner, Wang Kuo-cheng (Xueqin
Pang), to hack down the white flag Fang raises and start firing on the pursuing
Yoshino, forcing it to turn and run. Members of the crew confront the cowering
Fang in his cabin and tell him of their small measure of success.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1wVhGr_Su7-CbeCFS2wgSKZKdpmHvl2TlY-F3k5Js2dzAwHt4o9Gk5qflbAYEqdtcm7y9p98yvs_EK58h0zeiidCf10DQz6nrKygWVbdJhbFk52TG05IqpnQU0A8phAT3BjgqUFubR2IdrPS9voQxQsmVNJET4P_hz8So_ZfPd9tb-HRAIuZw26vdsX0_/s900/NavalBattle1894-04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1wVhGr_Su7-CbeCFS2wgSKZKdpmHvl2TlY-F3k5Js2dzAwHt4o9Gk5qflbAYEqdtcm7y9p98yvs_EK58h0zeiidCf10DQz6nrKygWVbdJhbFk52TG05IqpnQU0A8phAT3BjgqUFubR2IdrPS9voQxQsmVNJET4P_hz8So_ZfPd9tb-HRAIuZw26vdsX0_/s16000/NavalBattle1894-04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Afterwards Fang, regaining his composure,
craftily manipulates Wang not only into letting Fang himself take credit for
driving off the enemy, but into fleeing the ship with threats of having him
court-martialled for disobeying orders, using the fact that his father was
involved in the Taiping Rebellion for leverage. Wang takes the advice of a
friend in the crew to go and work as a fisherman with the friend’s father, who
labours with his daughter at a seaside village, and they in turn encourage Wang
to write to Teng, telling him about what happened. After breaking with official
rules about rehiring dismissed sailors and taking Wang on for the </span><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Zhiyuan</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">’s
gun crew, Ding confronts the Viceroy with Wang and his story when Fang is being
given an official reception. But Fang and a cunning crony manage to talk Ding
out of reporting the matter to the Viceroy. Meanwhile, as the diplomatic
wrangling goes on, Roper (actor unknown), a Japanese-born but naturalised
American citizen negotiating on the US’s behalf, is revealed to be spying on
Chinese war capabilities whilst using his influence on the other foreign
diplomats to retard preparedness. He pays the old fisherman and his daughter to
take him past the anchored Chinese fleet and holds them at gunpoint to get
closer, but they jump him and hand him over to Teng. But the Viceroy won’t
imprison Roper, handing him over to the American legation, and Teng is finally
stripped of his rank for his constant agitation – until the Empress Dowager is
finally forced to declare war. Ding heads out with the Beiyang Fleet to take
the Japanese on with Teng back on the deck of the </span><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Zhiyuan</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhexaEw3yZ_dvHCNv6VjzKZZriAY8LAAmKOUs10kD-iXdRB1G5K1tUWOD3p7yHdKDncpETeNNvmU9h7u52VI7XFEshlJX7bC5rgPRGA-y_0FI7f5eOVnR12marsPyFUJGNEyF0592gOh3edD9M7iszHVefb6Yyn95eh_NbepYeaTa-EyoxFSfI4AFh7bE75/s900/NavalBattle1894-05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhexaEw3yZ_dvHCNv6VjzKZZriAY8LAAmKOUs10kD-iXdRB1G5K1tUWOD3p7yHdKDncpETeNNvmU9h7u52VI7XFEshlJX7bC5rgPRGA-y_0FI7f5eOVnR12marsPyFUJGNEyF0592gOh3edD9M7iszHVefb6Yyn95eh_NbepYeaTa-EyoxFSfI4AFh7bE75/s16000/NavalBattle1894-05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The storyline harkens back to a major
national humiliation for China and does so in a way that says much about the
state of the nation in 1962, not just in the lingering, knee-jerk regard for
Japan as eternal enemy of the blood, but particularly in the way the film whips
up suspicion of the US by associating it with Japanese aggression. This is sold
not just through Roper’s scheming but in the climax when the Japanese fleet fly
the Stars and Stripes to get the jump on Ding, an idea that echoes the Soviet implication
of the day, still in play in scarcely altered form today, that Nazism was
similarly lurking ready to pounce behind the bastions of NATO. Emphasis is also
placed on loads of US munitions sold to the Beiyang Fleet which proves, for
unknown reasons, to have been emptied of gunpowder and replaced with sand. Lin
depicts the common folk in the fishing village getting
Teng to write out their petition for a war against Japan, emphasising the
conflict then as a grassroots patriotic demand from the noble proletariat, compared
to the dillydallying of the Viceroy and the nominally pacifying but
self-serving operating of the international delegates – which, indeed, has some
validity given the general cynicism of world powers towards carving up the
failing Chinese state of the day. Perhaps the singular quality of propaganda,
as opposed to an offered factional viewpoint, is the absence of any kind of
introspection regarding that viewpoint, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Naval Battle of 1894</i> fulfils this definition in the way it essentially
argues that if China failed at any point in the past, it’s because it wasn’t
aggressively jingoistic enough, as well as dragged down by a deadweight ruling class
and all those damn foreigners. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxBuvRm7f1onUaqUxfYb_lz2AocC3XGNYPuX8PmzLQWeveES8vxiMiNS1MqSN2vnyMt9uLkXT1rqoQmqIXpa7U4HQnpMfS47yr_HF-JOU6PcFy8M2Rakx5KJpigPu3jgLVbQ9IH2lSMcioGB0TqLNAw4l2_m3F8BG6DrtjZVuTv32Qx0M5uUKfaHHO1mnU/s900/NavalBattle1894-06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxBuvRm7f1onUaqUxfYb_lz2AocC3XGNYPuX8PmzLQWeveES8vxiMiNS1MqSN2vnyMt9uLkXT1rqoQmqIXpa7U4HQnpMfS47yr_HF-JOU6PcFy8M2Rakx5KJpigPu3jgLVbQ9IH2lSMcioGB0TqLNAw4l2_m3F8BG6DrtjZVuTv32Qx0M5uUKfaHHO1mnU/s16000/NavalBattle1894-06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Putting all that aside, in many ways <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Naval Battle of 1894</i> is, really, not
that different to what might have come out of Hollywood in the previous thirty
years. An oddly close likeness from around the same time is John Wayne’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2018/01/05/the-alamo-1960/" target="_blank">The Alamo</a></i> (1960), in converting a
historical defeat into a triumphal vision of sacrificial devotion, steeped in nationalist mythology whilst also musing on the failures that led to a dire fate.
The film portrays military leaders fretting and agitating whilst officials,
variably weak, corrupt, or blinkered, fritter away time before the inevitable
outbreak of warfare, then stepping up to the plate when the time comes for
patriotic gore. Teng is offered as the archetypal tragic-heroic leader, the man
for whom his ardent, honest sense of duty is much a cross to bear as a source of
respect and esteem. Teng pushes constantly at the ossified leadership in the
waning Imperial court and contending with various quislings, traitors, spies,
and double-dealers, accused of being a demagogue by his enemies and finally
facing utter humiliation for his pains in exposing Roper and calling for war,
even after a number of his fellow officers band together and protest his
demotion in front of the Viceroy and assembled diplomats. A great amount of the
film is devoted to studying Li’s pockmarked face as Teng reacts to constant
stymieing, embodying the concept of conscientious authority. The film has some
ironic similarities to a Japanese film about that country’s greatest naval
victory, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2014/02/battle-of-japan-sea-nihonkai-daikaisen.html" target="_blank">Battle of the Japan Sea</a></i>
(1969), in the emphasis on the angst suffered by the appointed commander (in
that film’s case Heihachiro Togo, who also commanded a ship involved in both
battles depicted in this film), and for both Sergei Eisenstein’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2010/11/24/alexander-nevsky-1938/" target="_blank">Alexander Nevsky</a></i> (1938) feels like a
model of a slow-burn, concerted depiction of weighty reckoning before the
eruption of warfare and revolving around a fretful but idealised leader figure.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpj8oR-b-ulvlRmwFi_wlv34fCYvOa-JnZf6Ev3H2GYeCo9TSouNgYX98bsLfJQH9f1P_w8lOLAqvo-kmrcRIbakUz9R1vkSOKPHpWdx6TvPtgk4bYEJy7Oc3kLtziK39v746eOBbZtgvMD3mN2EDcF66fbrsByjAXEja4N8vhzv6lDIXxZXwlz6NDhcvO/s900/NavalBattle1894-07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpj8oR-b-ulvlRmwFi_wlv34fCYvOa-JnZf6Ev3H2GYeCo9TSouNgYX98bsLfJQH9f1P_w8lOLAqvo-kmrcRIbakUz9R1vkSOKPHpWdx6TvPtgk4bYEJy7Oc3kLtziK39v746eOBbZtgvMD3mN2EDcF66fbrsByjAXEja4N8vhzv6lDIXxZXwlz6NDhcvO/s16000/NavalBattle1894-07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The main problem with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Naval Battle of 1894</i> is that the
insistence on keeping the political aspect on message throttles much chance of
enriching the tale with character nuance or discursions of interest, some of
which are mooted – like the faintest hints of a romance between Wang and the
fisherman’s daughter, and Wang’s introduction to his new comrades on the </span><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Zhiyuan</span></i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> – but are elided, perhaps
with the conviction such things are mere sops to paltry bourgeois preoccupations</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">. The scene of the
fisherman and daughter overcoming Roper when he tries to force them to help his
spying draws together the personal and the larger concerns with a flicker of
wry humour as well as action. The two humble workers surprise and overcome the
spy: the daughter plants a basket over Roper’s head, disarming him, and when
he leaps overboard into the drink she leaps in after him, trying to hold him at
bay until sailors from the warships come to help. The villains, including the
cowardly Fang, his slimy courtier ally, and the slick but duplicitous Roper,
all might as well be twirling moustaches: the actor playing Roper has a nice,
dapper one to work with. As in any number of wartime morale-boosters, the
perfidy of the enemy and the passion of the heroes (and audience) is provoked
when a likeable supporting character is killed, in this case the old
fisherman’s daughter, when the Japanese start shelling the fishing fleet for
the hell of it. This cues a scene of the disgraced Teng and the villagers gathering around the injured girl and her weeping father: the girl gasps out
Teng’s name as she recognises her hero grasping her and then slumps dead.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTa1Ytm19bKJ_u2MqhnAYO8AUlirPOgS-ZR7erULmNIZNKsTh51M4HGAAgALjpCljCetnnaX8t9dtWIOLRbzJMVExbt1cX7g0uBF7zHiJoLUhz3iMTP5JC0SH6uK5nU-P0SVP0umV-AMsoeAWWSIugY-kh6qVBsG023oqrNBC3JcpIJn5X1SfWIeGwPOX3/s900/NavalBattle1894-08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTa1Ytm19bKJ_u2MqhnAYO8AUlirPOgS-ZR7erULmNIZNKsTh51M4HGAAgALjpCljCetnnaX8t9dtWIOLRbzJMVExbt1cX7g0uBF7zHiJoLUhz3iMTP5JC0SH6uK5nU-P0SVP0umV-AMsoeAWWSIugY-kh6qVBsG023oqrNBC3JcpIJn5X1SfWIeGwPOX3/s16000/NavalBattle1894-08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A lot of the film passes by in duly
executed dialogue scenes. Nonetheless Lin manages to match his visual approach
to the themes of rigidity as the hallmark and ruin of aristocratic power versus
the natural energy of popular movements, and the pacing defined by a slow shift
from tense confrontations and smouldering frustration to eruptions of emotion
and violence. This extends from the opening shot, gazing in through the archway
into Ding’s palace where he meets with his advisors and subordinates, locked in
a frieze of classical decorum, through to the moment when Teng’s fellow
officers prostrate themselves before the Viceroy to protest his dismissal,
composed with attention to the rail-like geometry of the setting and the
powerful emotions being enacted within the strictures of high formality. The
lush decor of imperial statecraft contrasts with the folkloric flavour of the
villagers gathered under leafy boughs and close to flickering beachfront fires.
Despite the roughness of the print I watched there’s still an evocative visual
lustre in the use of colour and slow-winding intensity of the storytelling
rhythm. One striking mid-film sequence provides a relatively subtle and
inventive pivot in story and mood, as the sailors on Teng’s ship wait
expectantly for news of the petition’s reception and Teng’s purpose, a
nocturnal vigil with mist and quasi-expressionist sets riddled with red lantern
glow. Angered by overhearing two cynical, quisling officials, the sailors march
to Teng’s house and overhear him playing a liuqin, the captain silhouetted
through the window of his house. Teng’s playing grows increasingly dynamic and
frenzied as he mentally drifts through scenes of imminent naval warfare, before
a string on his instrument snaps, severing his fugue but also signalling his
new resolve. Here Lin plainly tries to encode his own whisper-to-scream
approach into the story itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg44E3u-wvWwlRpzPoGgCN3VTrQkcqfRsUIWPkmVhyn4pajNczRizyadVyRf95l0-2eNKFU3uzv1N7w-DWdUJz_DeggKbFPZ__XJyvw_TGKIuf0Ytr1ckUbK1I-VDxMkDc6wt_dt1xAY4EyzhTRPv7_F2KUPgv18lMRVmyCG2QvVWpUaOU6SW0yhq5YLX0W/s900/NavalBattle1894-09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg44E3u-wvWwlRpzPoGgCN3VTrQkcqfRsUIWPkmVhyn4pajNczRizyadVyRf95l0-2eNKFU3uzv1N7w-DWdUJz_DeggKbFPZ__XJyvw_TGKIuf0Ytr1ckUbK1I-VDxMkDc6wt_dt1xAY4EyzhTRPv7_F2KUPgv18lMRVmyCG2QvVWpUaOU6SW0yhq5YLX0W/s16000/NavalBattle1894-09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Lin also punctuates the careful pace with
moments of considered use of close-ups to totemic effect, as when Teng and Ding
listen in on the Viceroy hosting diplomats and registering bandied lies and
obfuscation with increasingly appalled gasps and glances, and, more rousingly,
when the fishermen demand declaration of war to Teng after the attack on their
boats, leaping up and lending their individual voices to the collective outcry
before the voices are swallowed up music, whilst Teng looks on with a blend of
wonder and anguish in the face of their passion. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Naval Battle of 1894</i> doesn’t sustain the texture of its more
inspired passages, which means that it proves a halting experience, at least
until the final fight. The battle scenes are realised with an interesting if
incongruous mix of special effects, utilising large-looking models that move
rather too fast for period steam vessels but have a tactile immediacy and
accurate in look, and real warships of an obviously more recent era and design,
but at least looking like authentic, weathered vessels of war. The recreation
of the Battle of the Yalu River at last delivers a strong finish as all hell
breaks out, complete with Fang’s crew hacking him to death when he tries to run
away again, and at least a brief moment of respect for the enemy as the
Japanese commander refuses a prod to abandon ship in the face of danger.
Admiral Ding is wounded and Teng takes over command for a duel of ships that
proves hopeless but refuses to give in. The earlier problems with bad
ammunition come back to haunt the heroic sailors of the </span><i><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Zhiyuan</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">
as they run out of usable shells in the furore, so Teng elects to chase down
and ram the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yoshino</i>, taking the helm
himself and charging through a hail of shells and torpedoes ripping the water
in a desperate effort before being blown to smithereens. A tragic end that is
nonetheless affirmed as the ideal fate of the genuinely brave and true, with
Teng envisioned as a ghostly presence watching over the Chinese shore evermore.
An awkward, uneven, but cumulatively compelling relic of a movie.</span></div><span><div style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><p></p><p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b70sYLoQM78&pp=ygUYVGhlIE5hdmFsIEJhdHRsZSBvZiAxODk0" target="_blank"><i>The Naval Battle of 1894</i> can be viewed for free on YouTube here</a>.</span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhONo2C8PtILjkjmbGsxp4om1lk7dzO3WRp0NdU8ssv3lUHcya2SLCg8g6BkUYXzpqQC5pcQlkFlxm0j3Y9qh9zQiy7eDa_aEVZa65-xizQWxUTcOnDSgpaN_FDFkrADfG7lbj4KNmzud5MjR7_mBv5qogURglTJteL3KcHqRsernBshFg9ABwj5H69Txji/s900/NavalBattle1894-10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhONo2C8PtILjkjmbGsxp4om1lk7dzO3WRp0NdU8ssv3lUHcya2SLCg8g6BkUYXzpqQC5pcQlkFlxm0j3Y9qh9zQiy7eDa_aEVZa65-xizQWxUTcOnDSgpaN_FDFkrADfG7lbj4KNmzud5MjR7_mBv5qogURglTJteL3KcHqRsernBshFg9ABwj5H69Txji/s16000/NavalBattle1894-10.jpg" /></a></div><p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-16922762961113484052024-02-25T01:26:00.014+11:002024-03-12T15:01:56.373+11:00Cobra Woman (1944)<p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrUQdm4lbv9H0OPg-tykn-e-_yAVsDMewhdR39VcpOWAycA5t3lPw3SKTpSXTcN7VOgc2CdRyadlWCMoeWVGP_flKOH8y73yAp-2GhKVlI7j3C8Cqrc23EQ-hMTEugBbYm0vTGg_FwGLRzUfQ4E9CztfYw3DTr6bvtRvzu4CSSa5zC02CR2Tbj-Ogy6RXO/s1456/CobraWoman01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrUQdm4lbv9H0OPg-tykn-e-_yAVsDMewhdR39VcpOWAycA5t3lPw3SKTpSXTcN7VOgc2CdRyadlWCMoeWVGP_flKOH8y73yAp-2GhKVlI7j3C8Cqrc23EQ-hMTEugBbYm0vTGg_FwGLRzUfQ4E9CztfYw3DTr6bvtRvzu4CSSa5zC02CR2Tbj-Ogy6RXO/s16000/CobraWoman01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For a film that might otherwise have
been just another forgotten entry in the ranks of exotic melodramas made in
blazing Technicolor during the 1940s for the escapist consumption of a wartime
audience, Robert Siodmak’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cobra Woman</i>
swiftly found a strange, charmed afterlife. The audience consuming movies in
the United States during World War II was inevitably, predominantly female,
with so many men off fighting, and in between all the flag-waving war dramas
florid escapism also became popular, often with powerful female archetypes at
their hearts. One of a string of similarly gaudy, colourful, stylised vehicles
built around Dominican actress Maria Montez, and her third with popular
co-stars Jon Hall and Sabu, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cobra Woman</i>
aimed to please that audience by casting Montez in a classic diptych of those
archetypes, twin sisters, one humble and true-hearted, the other evil and
imperious, the latter just happening to come swathed in enough sequined
clothing to send an angel blind. This also tickled the fancy of another bloc of
viewers: gay men. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cobra Woman</i> became
a foundational pillar of the evolving concept of camp, beloved by such queer
cultural notables as novelist Gore Vidal, filmmaker Kenneth Anger, and Charles
Ludlam, a key camp aesthetic progenitor through his Ridiculous Theatre Company.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTPfzavyWPK40jEbjmK0mp5rIC9NFZK0LgJ4ob7YrPY14VMbrcCljGkz6htVDJ3zaJQZbYsbo04rsOD4YYjpdXB_eOCwAzylX29AU0OJNFdcLRHNloHEDjh1zNtToawFfkU_BFuLFrvsIkf3qoWRYlIbR2VehlnHPXnI0yJN58VzH5sgu01bPPHj40R02D/s1456/CobraWoman02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTPfzavyWPK40jEbjmK0mp5rIC9NFZK0LgJ4ob7YrPY14VMbrcCljGkz6htVDJ3zaJQZbYsbo04rsOD4YYjpdXB_eOCwAzylX29AU0OJNFdcLRHNloHEDjh1zNtToawFfkU_BFuLFrvsIkf3qoWRYlIbR2VehlnHPXnI0yJN58VzH5sgu01bPPHj40R02D/s16000/CobraWoman02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s particularly amusing that a movie
with such a reputation should have been made by some of Hollywood’s most
concertedly serious talents of the day. Director Siodmak was about to become
one of the major figures of the film noir era, and the script was co-written by
a future director with a prestige literary bent and a reputation in the
meantime as a hard-hitting screenwriter, Richard Brooks. Siodmak made a few
discursions into colourful, self-consciously zany fare in his career, most
notably <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Crimson Pirate </i>(1953),
and his other film of 1944, the brilliant <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Phantom
Lady</i>, confirmed just how knowing Siodmak was when it came communicating in
code in movies with its famous drumming sequence, every inch a companion piece
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cobra Woman</i>’s deliriously
phallus-taming cobra dances. Sops for anyone seeking odd and subversive
delights start early with the sight of Sabu as the film’s most sexualised
performer, leaping around madcap in short shorts and shirtless. Sabu plays
Kado, a young Pacific islander whose slightly infirm grasp of English leads him
to exclaim, announcing he has to attend a wedding: “Today my good friend Ramu –
he is bride!” Said Ramu (Hall) is a sailor, about to marry Tollea (Montez uno),
a comely maiden who was rescued as a child by Scottish sailor MacDonald (Moroni
Olsen) and raised by him and missionary Father Paul (Samuel S. Hinds). On the
eve of the wedding, Kado encounters a mute and hulking stranger, Hava (Lon
Chaney Jr), who blows a peculiar kind of musical instrument that catches his
eye. Tollea is kidnapped before the wedding can take place, with Kado finding
the instrument dropped the body of a dead servant and discovering a deadly pair
of prongs hidden within, delivering a dose of cobra venom.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-bsJgbL4ImD7Xa3Q6HCVciVrD15_HYhofSNAbx1TbnHMubVZYnIy4fI2XrWyflBjZmcCu0jeHriZ2nEDEo-cIzuP-MrGm1OqB-NXk0HoYITtg53xSzgEchj8HW7GWD6HT9YbuWvyuUGiJuH95CzeJYYd9v3uZ1nqOU_AaoaRbgTjpIlWpXnl89b9rclQ/s1456/CobraWoman03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-bsJgbL4ImD7Xa3Q6HCVciVrD15_HYhofSNAbx1TbnHMubVZYnIy4fI2XrWyflBjZmcCu0jeHriZ2nEDEo-cIzuP-MrGm1OqB-NXk0HoYITtg53xSzgEchj8HW7GWD6HT9YbuWvyuUGiJuH95CzeJYYd9v3uZ1nqOU_AaoaRbgTjpIlWpXnl89b9rclQ/s16000/CobraWoman03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">MacDonald finally tells Ramu of how he
came to find Tollea: once during a hurricane his ship was blown onto the shore
of the mysterious Cobra Island, a tiny kingdom utterly hostile to outsiders.
There MacDonald was sentenced to death and tortured into unconsciousness, only
to awaken back on his boat with the infant Tollea placed in his charge, marked
on the wrist with a strange, livid wound resembling a snake bite. Ramu elects
to sail to Cobra Island, with Kado stowing away to lend a hand with an
Amazonian blowpipe MacDonald owned as a souvenir. Kado quickly proves both
himself and blowpipe of use by saving Ramu from a lurking panther as he camps
on Cobra Island’s shore. The next day Ramu sees what he assumes to be Tollea,
walking with a brace of handmaidens to take a morning swim in a sacred pool:
this is actually Naja (Montez dos), Tollea’s twin sister, the high priestess of
the island’s screwy religion built around worship of a King Cobra and placating
of the rumbling volcano that crowns the island with human sacrifices. Ramu
dives into the sacred lake and kisses the bewildered but intrigued Naja, but is
quickly caught by guards and imprisoned by the high priest and vizier Martok
(Edgar Barrier). Meanwhile Tollea learns about her birthright from her mother,
the aging Queen (Mary Nash), who has had her brought back to the island. The
Queen wants Tollea to take her place as the rightful ruler after years of Naja
and Martok’s theocratic tyranny. But Naja has the ability to charm and tame the
King Cobra that is the living idol of the island’s religion in her temple
dances, whereas Tollea as an infant was bitten and nearly died, making her
unworthy according to the faith.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrB93Kma9xpmhW1YTk-3DNRJ8SIYPCpx7oX04Y9plga8GLOvQpxTBJZ2yqv0TYv4wEWw_LPa8LVvbfChturmsaoVMaToyzyvNF3ks56BlAupHfjMqriZSustsJqK4o1D3GKwJYjGiGCLcqOwCEGgMmQ49ZP6ebRbUDaXrhg_WXFBViURDcLHaZvZ9oPQQz/s1456/CobraWoman04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrB93Kma9xpmhW1YTk-3DNRJ8SIYPCpx7oX04Y9plga8GLOvQpxTBJZ2yqv0TYv4wEWw_LPa8LVvbfChturmsaoVMaToyzyvNF3ks56BlAupHfjMqriZSustsJqK4o1D3GKwJYjGiGCLcqOwCEGgMmQ49ZP6ebRbUDaXrhg_WXFBViURDcLHaZvZ9oPQQz/s16000/CobraWoman04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cobra Woman</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> charts
the barely-suppressed Id-scape of the wartime imagination, converting the
horrors of fascism and attendant cult-like political movements into bejewelled
metaphor and articulated through the unveiled schism of bad and good women who look so
much alike even the prospective husband can’t tell them apart with a kiss. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cobra Woman</i> is first and foremost an
assemblage of adventure tale motifs already hoary when the movie was made, and
which the film makes merry sport of. The notion of an island that’s practically
animate with the volcano signalling its quaking wrath that the Cobra cultists
insist can only be appeased with human sacrifice echoes King Vidor’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2016/02/bird-of-paradise-1932.html" target="_blank">Bird of Paradise</a></i> (1932) and Edgar Rice
Burroughs’ Caspak novels, whilst the motif of a lost heir whose lineage is
confirmed by a physical mark left from childhood is one of those mainstays of
melodrama so hallowed it turned up in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Woman King</i> (2022). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cobra Woman</i>
plays a cunning game in the way it makes laughing sport of its cliché-rich
storyline whilst flinging itself wholeheartedly into a magazine cover
fever-dream zone, even as signs of something more serious on Siodmak’s mind
peek through the froufrou. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cobra Woman</i>
shows off Siodmak’s roots in Expressionist-era German cinema. The Cobra Island
citadel recalls the Arabian Nights fantasias in the likes of Fritz Lang’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Weary Death</i> (1921) and Paul Leni’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2017/01/22/waxworks-das-wachsfigurenkabinett-1924-the-man-who-laughs-1928/" target="_blank">Waxworks</a></i> (1924), with some of the high
Technicolor style of Michael Powell’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Thief of Baghdad</i> (1940) thrown in – including Sabu as shared cast member –
and aspects of the beloved fantasy novels <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L’Atlantide</i>. The Cobra Islanders’
mores and ways of worship recall Lang’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-spiders-die-spinnen-part-1-der.html" target="_blank">The Spiders</a></i> (1919), particularly the once again very Freudian image of the
maiden priestess swimming in her sacred pool, into which an intransigent man
will dare dive, but mimicked with more primal and brutal lustre by the
volcano’s maw that burns and yearns for its input human flesh.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjozSDWRENCKqSpx6OWBOfjzMq1_NyWjpYroNKbGFLZHpekx9kf7YXrGuyHQvFvPjkSZABbMMue2kZMx7RXbtxhcEEtSsZPVAfcI8BBp5Ml2VMBAJRoINkrPorPz3PntGz3xB2ko6Tpjp3rlnx4OgQEjcEpVKEYEPxc42-wphoDeWmS1JVQLa8gSUWx3neU/s1456/CobraWoman05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjozSDWRENCKqSpx6OWBOfjzMq1_NyWjpYroNKbGFLZHpekx9kf7YXrGuyHQvFvPjkSZABbMMue2kZMx7RXbtxhcEEtSsZPVAfcI8BBp5Ml2VMBAJRoINkrPorPz3PntGz3xB2ko6Tpjp3rlnx4OgQEjcEpVKEYEPxc42-wphoDeWmS1JVQLa8gSUWx3neU/s16000/CobraWoman05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lang himself might well have taken from
licence in turn from Siodmak for his late career Technicolor exotica pivot with
his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2018/01/23/the-tiger-of-eschnapur-the-indian-tomb-1959/" target="_blank">The Indian Tomb</a></i> (1959),
particularly as the two movies boil down to a charged Freudian image of a
beautiful woman dancing to appease a coiling serpent. As he had done in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2019/10/14/son-of-dracula-1943/" target="_blank">Son of Dracula</a></i> (1943), from which he
carried over Chaney, Siodmak threads a distanced but distinct anti-Nazi
parable, viewed this time not through the familiar motifs of the Dracula mythos
but the prism of compiled pulp tropes and glamour queen worship. Proceedings
come laced with telling jokes revolving around the central cobra image, from
Hava hiding fake snake fang within his flute to Martok keeping a deadly knife
hidden within the Cobra-head staff he constantly carries as a symbol and
bolster for his rather limp projections of authority. The Cobra cultists wave
their arms as their sign of suppliance, imitating the cobra’s striking bite but
also echoing the fascist salute, travestying it as an absurd expression of
atavistic obeisance and blood lust. This is mixed in with some telling sops to
its presumed audience, particularly the theme of Cobra Island being a corrupted
matriarchy, as represented by the noble but impotent Queen, who is finally
murdered in her bed by the prissy Martok, and her good, lost daughter Tollea,
who has the strength to stand up to her wicked sister-doppelganger, but really
just wants to get back to the marriage bed with Ramu. The theme of the
interrupted wedding and the mission to bring down a tyranny turns the
experience of the war for the home front audience with all its missing men and
frustrated nights into a dreamlike simulacrum.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtYEifGtvbcIyvjCM-6o63GHXWaG6IUgX-3TUFjgQGHf_Yxn5yvltLzZ-XN0-ZwOhW9HXb2VuUp1Ac4tCmE9-HnrQAtUEHD1pzuBVKWuo10qgKRpApngzTmufy38zh3XWNO8kBz2zy9dZEJBKehoWUtXmFK7t2X7mkB0yqqefbDUbffKQAZE2tq_vfISOm/s1456/CobraWoman06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtYEifGtvbcIyvjCM-6o63GHXWaG6IUgX-3TUFjgQGHf_Yxn5yvltLzZ-XN0-ZwOhW9HXb2VuUp1Ac4tCmE9-HnrQAtUEHD1pzuBVKWuo10qgKRpApngzTmufy38zh3XWNO8kBz2zy9dZEJBKehoWUtXmFK7t2X7mkB0yqqefbDUbffKQAZE2tq_vfISOm/s16000/CobraWoman06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Naja and Martok’s power is rooted in
the seeming manifestations of divine will enacted through but the King Cobra
that is the baleful non-human arbiter and centrepiece of the island’s religious
rituals, and the rumbling volcano, the devilish duo whipping up frenzies of
superstitious fear in choreographed rites of sacrificial selection. Naja and
Martok want to get married but need to render their control of the island
ironclad before they can indulge such a violation of the sacred customs. The
wicked and sensuous high priestess’s eminence stems from the way she withstood
in infancy the King Cobra’s bite, whereas Tollea almost died from it, and
Naja’s displays of prowess as priestess stems from her capacity to dance before
the King Cobra and not get bitten as it lunges out eagerly for her. The one
thing that unites the twins is their shared appreciation of the hunk of manhood
that is Ramu: Ramu diving into Naja’s sacred pool is a matter of little concern
for the wicked priestess after they first meet and share a kiss underwater, a
moment of near-sublime sensual suggestion. Naja quickly realises that Ramu
thinks she’s someone else, but is happy to let him proceed, only for Martok’s
sentinels to sweep him up and hurl him into the citadel’s dungeon, to await
execution. Martok visits Ramu in the dungeon wanting to exact personal revenge
for his profaning his grand amour, only for Ramu to escape his bonds, overpower
the priest, and leave him trussed and gagged in his place. Meanwhile Tollea
confronts her ruthless sister and tries to use the sheer overpowering force of
her goody-goodyness to make Naja hand over power to her. Fortunately for her, Naja
has an Inspector Clouseau moment, falling off a balcony to her death, forcing
Tollea to take her place in the cobra-tempting ritual.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRxzBDu0RTVd8nw1d5-S2O2oQwUuqxTb1jadFDk0Dh-FqSyxwr1vTXZoc5sWy0Ijw9vwFeqTMSFgWMtHu7AGMqQB73Zxoz86_eA_lWQMVJTB5pl47lUJdmdSmrgRhwvbJ1eAKz5Gz5Y9A2PvX4jUisfEBJpqW5X383cdYuSP_AG8IQw4oHv2xrKg7WpFcB/s1456/CobraWoman07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRxzBDu0RTVd8nw1d5-S2O2oQwUuqxTb1jadFDk0Dh-FqSyxwr1vTXZoc5sWy0Ijw9vwFeqTMSFgWMtHu7AGMqQB73Zxoz86_eA_lWQMVJTB5pl47lUJdmdSmrgRhwvbJ1eAKz5Gz5Y9A2PvX4jUisfEBJpqW5X383cdYuSP_AG8IQw4oHv2xrKg7WpFcB/s16000/CobraWoman07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hall had risen to stardom playing the
persecuted young Polynesian in John Ford’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Hurricane</i> (1937) and starred in numerous vehicles that similarly sold him
as the beaming face of a mythical South Seas ripe for a weary audience to
escape to. Montez, on the other hand, played just about every kind of ethnicity
in the range of Hollywood exotica. The Indian-born Sabu had first found stardom
in Robert Flaherty and Zoltan Korda’s semi-documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elephant Boy</i> (1938), and had found arguably his most famous role
playing Mowgli in Korda’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Jungle Book</i>
(1942) before becoming the meat in the sandwich for Hall and Montez in several
of their vehicles. Sabu is often described as annoying in the film, but his
boundless, bristling on-screen energy and unsubtle way with comedy are put to
as good a use as they could be throughout. That runs from the early scenes
where Kado slyly charms MacDonald by assuring him he’s never heard the urban
myth about Scots being tightwads and getting the blowpipe in reward, only to
then comment “It’s not at all true what you hear about Scotsmen!”, to later
performing a great feat of physical derring-do when Kado manages to penetrate
the Cobra Citadel’s dungeon to rescue Ramu, only to find himself freeing
Martok. He finishes up tied and dangled, shirtless and sweat-flecked, from a
tree in torturous punishment for this, only to then be freed by Hava and Ramu’s
pet chimpanzee who’s hitched a ride specifically to add more comic relief to
the oppressed lives of the Cobra Islanders. Chaney is the most wasted element,
although he was well-used to acting without dialogue after his turns as <a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2017/10/20/the-mummys-hand-1940-the-mummys-tomb-1942-the-mummys-ghost-1944-the-mummys-curse-1944/" target="_blank">the Mummy Kharis</a>. Hava is oddly introduced as the menacing personification of the
long, murderous arm of Cobra Island’s reach, but is then revealed to be the
Queen’s loyal henchman, whose glowering visage and fearsome brawn represent the
foiled potency of the islanders, and is finally turned to righteous uses. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjaN_TV7Gf4B29P7LZOGndYH48UKWHp1621MRoHRZSk2c53rjqa8DlFxToqy1M1y_2eHapDZiltTWkL7w4V-Whl10UNlwp_19RYkaeY0h236i9YxTVAQRU7wzFW9PKEqtpWR9HPPHJKDv5uU87bMkwgIr0UtGBL554VmqatPmojkDyjbz9LtKWkeheXni5/s1456/CobraWoman08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjaN_TV7Gf4B29P7LZOGndYH48UKWHp1621MRoHRZSk2c53rjqa8DlFxToqy1M1y_2eHapDZiltTWkL7w4V-Whl10UNlwp_19RYkaeY0h236i9YxTVAQRU7wzFW9PKEqtpWR9HPPHJKDv5uU87bMkwgIr0UtGBL554VmqatPmojkDyjbz9LtKWkeheXni5/s16000/CobraWoman08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Montez’s heavy accent and limited
acting range ensured her short shelf life as a star – her career melted down
with the failure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Siren of Atlantis</i>
(1949), a proper adaptation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L’Atlantide</i>,
and she </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">sadly </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">died of a heart attack a couple of years later, short of forty.
But they’re also part of her charm, and it’s not that hard to see why audiences
were so briefly fond of her, with the sense of a thinner than usual membrane
between her supposed exotic allure and the viewer. She does a decent job contrasting
the two personas she has to play, and has a particular ball as Naja. Some of
her line deliveries, including “Kiiiing Cobra!” and “Give me that Cobra
jewel!”, provided grist for goofball dialogue fetishists ever since. The
film’s two major set-piece sequences both occur in the Cobra Cult’s temple,
showcasing a gleefully weird fusion of sub-Busby Berkeley musical sequence,
Harper’s Bazaar fashion spread on a theme of “Pagan Rites,” and Rocky Horror
Nuremberg rally, at once hilarious and disquieting in the depiction of Naja’s
frantic selection of volcano fodder in the course of her ritual dance of
domination, with Tollea, Hava, and friendly handmaiden Veeda (Lois Collier)
watching the show from a high loophole. Naja wiggles haphazardly in her tight
silver bedazzler dress before a tremulous rubber snake, arms winding in
supposedly mesmeric and sensually provocative fashion. And that’s before she
stalks out upon the runways skirting the altar to gesticulate with punitive
relish at any, usually pretty and therefore potentially rivalrous face she
spies in the crowd of worshippers. The young lovelies are quickly scooped up
the temple guards (at that rate the island would be left without any
breeding-age women after a half-dozen sessions of this).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBM9cO_8LaaruqwaJ4zZgJTU0ia8icJyhOYdOeLTSAmVUFHOf4b2J9rGyZ1BT9DHghKuBtqSVqUpE8xqRMtHZYFT9-upEfY_LBc0GAMQNkusBNvLjxVu7uZBNoSwj86axWzbUsZ6BOH2Kgj51UayZN7yW56TwEdEMSoR-PoNpB4p25UvIRRtKaXWZXZn90/s1456/CobraWoman09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBM9cO_8LaaruqwaJ4zZgJTU0ia8icJyhOYdOeLTSAmVUFHOf4b2J9rGyZ1BT9DHghKuBtqSVqUpE8xqRMtHZYFT9-upEfY_LBc0GAMQNkusBNvLjxVu7uZBNoSwj86axWzbUsZ6BOH2Kgj51UayZN7yW56TwEdEMSoR-PoNpB4p25UvIRRtKaXWZXZn90/s16000/CobraWoman09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The spectacle is utterly riotous,
particularly as Montez gives it her all with herky-jerky, spasmodic
impersonation of a maniacal cheerleader and would-be Fuhrer who’s taken up
jazzercise before getting down to culling the herd. The splendour is only
amplified by Siodmak’s attentiveness to the mock-monumental setting and eye for
the lustrous colour schemes, and composer Edward Ward’s appropriately woozy,
quasi-arabesque scoring. The finale is the bookend as Tollea takes her sister’s
place, trying desperately to mimic her moves whilst Martok, wise to the
impersonation, waits with relish for the cobra munch on Tollea. But the chimp
saves the day by sneaking in, untying Kado’s bonds, and the lad saves Tollea by
zapping King Cobra with the blowpipe. All hell breaks loose, and the stunt team
get a lot of work swining about on ropes, until it ultimately falls to Hava to
heave Martok with some relish into a pit of jutting spikes that for some reason
fringes the altar. The volcano is placated, the lovers abscond from ruling
duties, and the wedding rite looms again even as it’s teased with the sight of
the chimp trying on the bridal gown, before the primate gets down to patching
up the cheeky hole in Sabu’s shorts, all just fun with the boys. Thus ends an
absolute maelstrom of kinky delights. Mike Hodges seemed to be valiantly
drawing on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cobra Woman</i> for his merry
if comparatively stodgy approximation in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2011/08/05/flash-gordon-1980/" target="_blank">Flash Gordon</a></i> (1980); Spielberg and Lucas would revisit the witnessing from a
vantage of a death cult’s terrors in Exotica-land for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2010/05/20/indiana-jones-and-the-temple-of-doom-1984/ " target="_blank">Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom</a></i> (1984), and also engage the same
urge to place sequined celebrity splendour amidst pulp adventure shenanigans, only
to firmly bifurcate the realms again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-YyzvJBSn6dUtluKR3sHz0Jf5qZlrGZeCn0I1055JVQanHipc1TGz0ouxsPdyQjAbjsIq6vzPPE4kCUiHfBoQC4RkcxihXM9XgfgScx5_xl03fwzVpiZKagQv34mXW7OywcSNHYiKfUZneaYkvHFh6RfJ5L9h19rv-wuUGh4_Yi8RDP2qRMeQr_EhY5iF/s1456/CobraWoman10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1090" data-original-width="1456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-YyzvJBSn6dUtluKR3sHz0Jf5qZlrGZeCn0I1055JVQanHipc1TGz0ouxsPdyQjAbjsIq6vzPPE4kCUiHfBoQC4RkcxihXM9XgfgScx5_xl03fwzVpiZKagQv34mXW7OywcSNHYiKfUZneaYkvHFh6RfJ5L9h19rv-wuUGh4_Yi8RDP2qRMeQr_EhY5iF/s16000/CobraWoman10.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><br /></p>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-60732965863880731762024-02-15T03:35:00.002+11:002024-02-15T04:09:39.234+11:00Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024)<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_G6fV7iW25WQ_JsUVHIbHjt4wlz8tHbQAMl2e0054hRINSb2Bw7afQFmG6ohdZuH7nFSJakx_o-x9CV3bQMjC7Pgf0NQqZwM8dmhO9tMk0iYvAxAbcHY1EbA8BXs7FrHUsoi_6NXqM-SE6vu4WBhz1S6ZJKbOZKS_zJZEBRLLmlYNdaQlt7Ltmi9iUrs/s1152/ForceNatureDry2-01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy_G6fV7iW25WQ_JsUVHIbHjt4wlz8tHbQAMl2e0054hRINSb2Bw7afQFmG6ohdZuH7nFSJakx_o-x9CV3bQMjC7Pgf0NQqZwM8dmhO9tMk0iYvAxAbcHY1EbA8BXs7FrHUsoi_6NXqM-SE6vu4WBhz1S6ZJKbOZKS_zJZEBRLLmlYNdaQlt7Ltmi9iUrs/s16000/ForceNatureDry2-01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here there be spoilers…<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Robert Connolly’s </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Dry</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (2021) took on a genre that’s very popular in Australia, if
usually only in imported form – a crime drama revolving around a troubled but
dedicated cop going out to some boondock locale for an investigation that
brings to light intersecting brands of communal and individual infamy. </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Dry</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> had a sturdy basis in a novel by
the journalist-turned-author Jane Harper, the first in a trilogy revolving
around Australian Federal Police officer Aaron Falk. <i>The Dry</i> proved
internationally successful and it did make one wonder why so few Aussie filmmakers
had tried such a movie before. Ivan Sen’s </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2014/04/21/mystery-road-2013/ " target="_blank">Mystery Road</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (2013) and its various follow-ups offered a similar mixture, but those
were marked by arty and deconstructive impulses, where Connolly’s film was more
assiduously realist and played nice with genre rules. </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Dry</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">’s outback setting and emphasis on social tension recalled
the likes of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Wake In Fright</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (1971)
and </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Shame</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (1986), only with the
familiar beats of the investigative drama infused with something close to the
Proustian in the way the story doubled as a character study of Falk, who had
grown up in the country town he was now obliged to return to, and had been
suspected in the involvement of the death of a female friend when both were
teenagers. The process of solving one crime demanded Falk search through his
double-edged memories of his youth, and finally also discovered the truth about
the old crime too. </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Dry</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> wasn’t in
any way great, but it was the kind of highly watchable, well-crafted movie that made the
idea of sitting through a second helping entirely agreeable.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOvvoN3BDugltSAMaJImcq5C-wndbWQKVIGUNgLeFE2hAflGG56F96XRtrVCA9QAedZAIuBKKjkmTNQD9_Utbr-sWwZZxnUafHvozJDhtMQWnFQ8RcobqsDk-B1b8qJ7at9jGmO3ZqQnB_LUYHiYEFN3YDAMQLim-MzbFbgYgS0SLqYfMPDjfHtTn33bNj/s1152/ForceNatureDry2-02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOvvoN3BDugltSAMaJImcq5C-wndbWQKVIGUNgLeFE2hAflGG56F96XRtrVCA9QAedZAIuBKKjkmTNQD9_Utbr-sWwZZxnUafHvozJDhtMQWnFQ8RcobqsDk-B1b8qJ7at9jGmO3ZqQnB_LUYHiYEFN3YDAMQLim-MzbFbgYgS0SLqYfMPDjfHtTn33bNj/s16000/ForceNatureDry2-02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Force of Nature: The Dry 2</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">,
Connolly’s follow-up and based directly on Harper’s second Falk book, goes
immediately for contrast in swapping the original film’s flat, open,
drought-stricken setting for the depths of the Dandenong ranges of Victoria,
swathed in dense, rugged, and dark bushland and often battered by rain storms.
The initial proposition of the plot is immediately attention-grabbing: several
women who have been lost for days whilst out on a hike, an intended
team-building exercise for a group of work colleagues, stumble out of the bush
onto a road and wave down a passing car. Soon it becomes apparent one team
member, Alice (Anna Torv), has separated from them somewhere in the bush, whilst
another, Beth (Sisi Stringer), is sick from the bite of a funnel-web spider.
Whilst Beth recovers in hospital, authorities begin searching the forest for
Alice. Falk has received a short and incomprehensible call from Alice, alerting
him to the trouble: he and his fellow AFP officer Carmen (Jacqueline McKenzie)
have been running Alice as an informant against the designated greedy slimy capitalist
company she works for, run by the obnoxiously high-powered married couple Jill
(Deborra Lee-Furness) and Daniel Bailey (Richard Roxburgh). Alice was Jill’s
protégé, but it emerges that Jill thought Alice was having an affair with
Daniel, whilst Falk and Carmen had hooks in her because they knew she was
embezzling from the firm.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_8eGOgDus9kmPvUAOy_MoCmM6O3MMowyROkC1oC7OOBxbKXxtAGDeD7Nuefu9qFrvxGHTFmMuQDQk5VtWiIMWI0uW0_VXmg52abp4JirBsMuvC8SCvJF3eObw8o2YujZij1zT2F07K-iV3gv0uBEN634wmzjncr8gFNots-LLjzR2pjAETu6_1n5m-B71/s1152/ForceNatureDry2-03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_8eGOgDus9kmPvUAOy_MoCmM6O3MMowyROkC1oC7OOBxbKXxtAGDeD7Nuefu9qFrvxGHTFmMuQDQk5VtWiIMWI0uW0_VXmg52abp4JirBsMuvC8SCvJF3eObw8o2YujZij1zT2F07K-iV3gv0uBEN634wmzjncr8gFNots-LLjzR2pjAETu6_1n5m-B71/s16000/ForceNatureDry2-03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also on the hiking team were the mousy
Lauren (Robin McLeavy) as well as Beth’s sister Bree (Lucy Ansell), a rookie
employee and recovering junkie who’s still on probation after robbing Beth in
the worst eye of her addiction, and whose habits of attentiveness clocked that Alice was
up to something. Conveniently for Falk, the hikers all elect to
remain at the lodge they departed from until Alice is found, so Falk interviews
each and a picture of the hike and how it went wrong steadily emerges. Most
tantalising to the local cops under Sgt King (Kenneth Radley) overseeing the
search is the report from the women about an old, abandoned cabin they stumbled
upon and camped in overnight, with what looked like graves nearby: the
possibility arises this might have been a hideout used by an infamous serial killer
who used to haunt the locale, Kovac, especially as one grave was that
of a dog, possibly the one Kovac used as a lure to draw victims into the bush.
Eventually Falk gets tired of the preoccupations addling his colleagues and heads
out into the bush with lodge guide Chase (Tony Briggs). Falk works not just from
gleaned information about where the hikers finished up but also memories of
when he and his parents (Ash Ricardo and Jeremy Lindsay Taylor) trekked through
the area when he was a kid, an expedition that itself turned frightening with
his mother vanished and the possibility Kovac was stalking them later became
apparent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitic6zx-Qrg1s9dSYArq5Gq_8_g-IMDIC29yNqtNSwEzPfQ3c8EFv5W6QqE3yBpBlsjKnXQoKH48OyLRFepp1ycB9D0gV5AVQCoLU9IC63YeTPyWUipO5omADoUmmQbrertpnBwEkrc1pUPZa3sJHyi_b-rAGQEEE_Oi22_Ue0wn3j8hFRkwhqi-6ObDd4/s1152/ForceNatureDry2-04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitic6zx-Qrg1s9dSYArq5Gq_8_g-IMDIC29yNqtNSwEzPfQ3c8EFv5W6QqE3yBpBlsjKnXQoKH48OyLRFepp1ycB9D0gV5AVQCoLU9IC63YeTPyWUipO5omADoUmmQbrertpnBwEkrc1pUPZa3sJHyi_b-rAGQEEE_Oi22_Ue0wn3j8hFRkwhqi-6ObDd4/s16000/ForceNatureDry2-04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The best quality of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Force of Nature</i> is the way it captures the omnipresent atmosphere
of being immersed in the Aussie bush, where a wrong turn off the path swiftly
strips one of any cosy assurance about civilisation’s enveloping reach.
Connolly’s approach to communicating atmosphere is pretty well-worn: overhead
drone shots and accompanying drone music to emphasise that the countryside is a
weird and alien place, and lots of blue-filtered shots in the deep bush,
interspersed with occasional, awesome cliff-top vistas. Nonetheless the
pungency of the feel for place accumulates. The film also sports a good cast,
even if the likes of McKenzie and Roxburgh don’t get to do anything
commensurate to their talents. Bana remains the major strength and well-cast as
Falk, although he doesn’t much resemble the books’ blonde, thirty-something
version of Falk. Bana’s ability to balance a veneer of sturdy masculinity with
a deep vein of wounded intelligence and attentiveness is key to the basic
proposition of his character, a man who’s spent much of his life to date
receiving hard but well-learnt lessons that make him a good and empathetic cop
and a man with an overriding need to save and protect people. But here Bana is
stuck in an awkward position through the way Falk interacts with the narrative
and the other characters. Connolly constant attempts to maintain a familiar
brand of televisual dramatic urgency, urging Falk to stalk impatiently towards
various supporting players and get confrontational, particularly with King, who
he accuses of prioritising the potentially headline-grabbing discovery of
Kovacs’ base and buried victims over saving Alice. This feels extremely forced
and phony, particularly as finding the old shack is the best actual lead the
searchers have.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcfresu8JQUEosT8eSviKd2KkkjWQBIp27y6ZGtgoTs9KqFiSHgLOC5Hwx3XqfZAlzzsrCt81cbqjGTGKzm-ln2YlWgKgV5HLCrOXJ0jJNj4bVHXIzqjaWwalGawp8fTPRikO1iSjDKlU_71xOuqpi5V_55_bDvyMTodH-8Pyo9w7XwPBH3YQ0DGCi5sRq/s1152/ForceNatureDry2-05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcfresu8JQUEosT8eSviKd2KkkjWQBIp27y6ZGtgoTs9KqFiSHgLOC5Hwx3XqfZAlzzsrCt81cbqjGTGKzm-ln2YlWgKgV5HLCrOXJ0jJNj4bVHXIzqjaWwalGawp8fTPRikO1iSjDKlU_71xOuqpi5V_55_bDvyMTodH-8Pyo9w7XwPBH3YQ0DGCi5sRq/s16000/ForceNatureDry2-05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Unfortunately, the problems with this
sequel set in almost immediately, floundering badly when trying to find its
feet in the opening scenes. Connolly sets the story in motion with truly awful
expository dialogue and sloppy cutting between the two different timelines of
narrative. The subplot involving the mystique and lingering sense of threat
stemming from Kovac’s killing spree is best regarded as something present for
an extra tingle of folkloric creepiness, felt to some effect in the flashback
scenes to the Falk family’s misadventures as the urgent search for the lost and
injured mother is punctuated by mysterious dog yelps that might have portended
the killer and his pet trailing their path. The film never explains why,
however, Falk’s father seems so unsettled and paranoid about the dog, given
that the events must be happening before Kovacs’ crimes and modus operandi were
discovered. More importantly, this all proves to be an extremely elaborate red
herring present mostly to hype up the story, because a crime drama in this day
and age without a serial killer somewhere in the mix is unimaginable. Connolly
doesn’t even bother to properly answer the question as to whether the shack
really was Kovacs’. Falk and King’s confrontation after Falk finally locates
the place resolves with a very slight variation on that noble cliché, “We’re
not so different, you and I.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg49_U2FZrE9LssbRUDvOKgYq4PgcqeW7M1un0G9mtPpPAfH-3j5h2i0N91Ps-XjE2FhcANkbA3lZ-oc-LV7cu5fPoCTv_lO3IvlOqHGI2EBN6m-4mGeeBeWwNaGQ5OWaOMUMjofI27mRyECLGGoHSSpvdoz1b_Nz7KKdd7DC1CptAnjYghQDQoIzzl2LIn/s1152/ForceNatureDry2-06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg49_U2FZrE9LssbRUDvOKgYq4PgcqeW7M1un0G9mtPpPAfH-3j5h2i0N91Ps-XjE2FhcANkbA3lZ-oc-LV7cu5fPoCTv_lO3IvlOqHGI2EBN6m-4mGeeBeWwNaGQ5OWaOMUMjofI27mRyECLGGoHSSpvdoz1b_Nz7KKdd7DC1CptAnjYghQDQoIzzl2LIn/s16000/ForceNatureDry2-06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Whilst the greater part of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dry</i>’s power lay in the way Falk’s
teenage experiences and the present-day case interwove, the attempt to extend the motif of
Falk contending with demons from his youth here is laboured, particularly as
the narrative has two paths to take, much the female hikers, one leading to
absurd coincidence and the other to pointless anticlimax, and again like the
hikers finishes up floundering in the zone in between. The film continues to
step in ungainly fashion between the present, Falk’s memories, and the
recounted tale of the disastrous hike. The trekkers prove themselves to be
perhaps the most useless collective of characters I’ve seen in a movie in a
while. Whether accidentally dropping their only map in a big river, or failing
to retrace their steps along what would be a highly visible trail given the
muddy ground would show their footfall, they’re so dumb I started to wish
they’d all been washed away by an avalanche. Of course, it’s supposed to be a
study of the naivete of a bunch of coddled city office workers. Alice’s choice
to act like a nefarious villain and steer this bunch of twits in a direction
opposite to their general choice, because she is the only one who bought a
compass, is however contrived. Whilst a mystery is supposedly being laid out,
the narrative proper threatens to devolve into a string of scenes
and motifs illustrating talking point issues gleaned freely from media of all
kinds, each bubbling up to bask for a moment in the narrative sun: workplace
bullying, corporate malfeasance, jealousy and infidelity, police ethics,
misogyny, misanthropy, the failure of female solidarity, etc, etc. Connolly’s
oeuvre has been one of pretensions to hot-button political commentary matched
to middling dramatics and obvious stylistics – I still wince a bit when I
recall how his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Balibo</i> (2009) set out
to deliver hard-hitting muckraking but became a buddy comedy about being lost
in the jungle. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLjOXgcVGAqOXp-uB-QJqk6qXaa-YZMvCM1cNhGaaUVtDCFZVxH9c4YFmN0mxvzrEh55Axka0fjzemWP8rtap3VqxgAL6SS1duKGk5sVaFQLkXOCUuUabjf_cxhcOwumtsB3te9Gpuc6w2kpMT_WIMOFoGr8gUFWCLr45wa64Cp95pDQe2HXXUfA932XCE/s1152/ForceNatureDry2-08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLjOXgcVGAqOXp-uB-QJqk6qXaa-YZMvCM1cNhGaaUVtDCFZVxH9c4YFmN0mxvzrEh55Axka0fjzemWP8rtap3VqxgAL6SS1duKGk5sVaFQLkXOCUuUabjf_cxhcOwumtsB3te9Gpuc6w2kpMT_WIMOFoGr8gUFWCLr45wa64Cp95pDQe2HXXUfA932XCE/s16000/ForceNatureDry2-08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Where Connolly managed a reasonably
delicate balance in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dry</i>, a film
where the enveloping mood and the actual story were in relatively fine balance,
the sequel extends his lesser habits. And the characters march up to be
designated by type: the moment we catch sight of Roxburgh with blonde thatch we
know he’s the official yuppie scumbag. We can tell Bree was a junkie because she
smokes and has a dreads and multiple ear piercings to tell us she’s kinda wild,
man. Lee-Furness’s presence is bracing, at least, as an actor who connects the
film to the distant whisper of Ozploitation past (she starred in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shame</i>) and who delivers a nice study in
middle-aged last-straw aggression, particularly when she’s glimpsed giving
Daniel a kiss-off. It’s a pity she’s playing a pretty obvious character, the
queen bee who poses as a dynamic, modern, female leader who actually can’t
stand her protégés showing actual signs of will. McKenzie’s Carmen is present
in the story mostly to contrast Falk with another portrait of someone motivated
by goals of success in her field and less than conscientious about the human
wreckage left along the way. More interesting is the choice of making the
object of all the intrigue and seeking, Alice, a character who just about
everyone harbours some degree of antipathy for. Alice has a reputation for
wilful arrogance and crash-or-crash-through tactics, some of which intensify
the peril of the group, but her instincts also prove right, eventually, when it
comes to their escape from the bush. I didn’t quite buy Torv’s performance,
however, as Alice never radiates the kind of closed-off, darkly charismatic energy
the character seems to need. And again, the storyline short-changes us on
elements we’re assured seem to be important, like Alice’s supposed affair with
Daniel, and the embezzlement aspect is left vague, particularly as to how Falk
and Carmen got wind of it and put it to use, but not her employers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZWmUqRSArygUdkZe9ZblzwmiTkvEvKWtcweYrSlZ6vmTG1kt_9kmb7x5gXYOlKt_5cZ3UZtxwsDbgFhUIvDMcmtSRrN9I68V6KYtnFkwOidmjzQs4UrmrUWTonIhC9Xrd9EqNqwAFWSd-SdqGiEsEVTOWCap_SWUXGySy2Wu1lifuV7NEQ7XJ3j1wJiic/s1152/ForceNatureDry2-09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZWmUqRSArygUdkZe9ZblzwmiTkvEvKWtcweYrSlZ6vmTG1kt_9kmb7x5gXYOlKt_5cZ3UZtxwsDbgFhUIvDMcmtSRrN9I68V6KYtnFkwOidmjzQs4UrmrUWTonIhC9Xrd9EqNqwAFWSd-SdqGiEsEVTOWCap_SWUXGySy2Wu1lifuV7NEQ7XJ3j1wJiic/s16000/ForceNatureDry2-09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The climactic revelations about just
what has happened to Alice and the reasons behind it are intended to be twists
you never saw coming, but there’s a difference between being deliberately cagey
and just plain clumsy. The film lurches into the latter realm as the actual
solution to the mystery proves to hinge on a background drama involving
characters who are barely glimpsed. The mechanics of the plot, like a flash
drive left deposited on the ground and that funnel web bite, come across as
flimsy afterthoughts. The confrontation between Daniel and Falk that comes near
the end threatens to finally breach some genuinely interesting ground as Daniel
tries to bring Falk down a peg with Defund The Police-era cynicism over cops in
general, much to Falk’s glowering disdain, tinged with a self-righteousness
that could bear out Daniel’s opinion just a tad if the story gave even a tiny
niche to perch such attitude upon. But Connolly shies away from any sense of
really interrogating his own and his presumed audience’s political morality,
which might at the very least justify yet another red herring subplot that goes
nowhere, and the skirmish between the two men is so fumbled and listless in
execution I wasn’t sure why anyone bothered. Most of my complaints here really
boil down to the fact the film should have been more confident in playing as a mood piece, as the atmosphere is easily the quality of the movie that
lingers. As it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Force of Nature: The
Dry 2</i> remains engaging so long as you don’t think about it too hard
afterwards. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP92VBliaHZ0jsLeHvJW14X50C3J5HQA5BKYBm8xHidE71H-Tg1WzI3yIi5zTUmIHoOe8ZOz5hUyZORCIaVAuHNsLi4POVR49F9YSMEVlgFeLtLiI7qEvrKjMQEL0qUoJf_ZCtyyK8mYsnhoESGDuIr061Ggl2NAel4ofgxPhq_j6sp314tJ8eZ0Ty1nJA/s1152/ForceNatureDry2-10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="486" data-original-width="1152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP92VBliaHZ0jsLeHvJW14X50C3J5HQA5BKYBm8xHidE71H-Tg1WzI3yIi5zTUmIHoOe8ZOz5hUyZORCIaVAuHNsLi4POVR49F9YSMEVlgFeLtLiI7qEvrKjMQEL0qUoJf_ZCtyyK8mYsnhoESGDuIr061Ggl2NAel4ofgxPhq_j6sp314tJ8eZ0Ty1nJA/s16000/ForceNatureDry2-10.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-43972208532440289032024-02-06T15:23:00.002+11:002024-02-25T23:42:51.527+11:00The Day of the Jackal (1973)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfw6PxEfTdHthMn4xBJK7AhNjOrC2z9wD-MADC4NsWmiMaFMIeazB7ywz5CEAHqAB9oI8U7X03P0EyxLaeIcdnL9cJFkj5IqrN3aALNym78Y0Lm3Hkvic1kMrMxxDYMZ9bkBOoZaDNgCb8HKoK9J79AIVJMhcOvJntGZlK3rkfLvikN__SGTpwPD24JSeX/s900/DayJackal01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfw6PxEfTdHthMn4xBJK7AhNjOrC2z9wD-MADC4NsWmiMaFMIeazB7ywz5CEAHqAB9oI8U7X03P0EyxLaeIcdnL9cJFkj5IqrN3aALNym78Y0Lm3Hkvic1kMrMxxDYMZ9bkBOoZaDNgCb8HKoK9J79AIVJMhcOvJntGZlK3rkfLvikN__SGTpwPD24JSeX/s16000/DayJackal01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There had been many globetrotting
thrillers and movies about assassins before Fred Zinneman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Day of the Jackal</i>, and yet it stands
as the design classic of the breed, the one that still echoes through myriad
movies obsessed with hired killers and other rogue agents and operators with
selections of false passports and myriad ways of sneaking past customs
officers. Unlike most of its progeny, Zinneman’s film, based on Frederick
Forsyth’s first and most famous novel, retains individual stature over a
half-century since its release. It’s a film that unfolds in the real world
rather than in the realms of subgenre it helped spawn, and wields a relish of
intricate detail and process, a relish inherited from Forsyth’s book. Forsyth had been a
journalist who covered attempted assassinations of then-French President Charles
de Gaulle in the fractious years when he returned to that county’s leadership
after the disaster of the war in Algeria. Forsyth published his first book, a
non-fiction study of the Biafran War, before turning to a particular brand of
factually-informed fiction encompassing all he had picked up about various
nefarious operators and political factions scuttling just under the surface of
a seemingly placid world in the post-World War II, Cold War-infected age – the
kind of knowledge Forsyth also invested in his follow-ups like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Odessa File</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dogs of War</i>, both of which would be well-filmed too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4E6icH6bPpzqMdXpOUBfMs3hg7Vf0et-t0pjeoJiqVe2CC4AyAIDdw3mgM62woTc1CKVxFfw3Bnayjrdie7pjmu1fT6M9jA8y4RpTq78vYiTSUXa4ll3l5dHQXqrVVK9_i00n1Kxr6dOXT8QFSAcrheqkOfdRGlHybbUTj8JABaEznqWK-0bwkvJoo5aD/s900/DayJackal02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4E6icH6bPpzqMdXpOUBfMs3hg7Vf0et-t0pjeoJiqVe2CC4AyAIDdw3mgM62woTc1CKVxFfw3Bnayjrdie7pjmu1fT6M9jA8y4RpTq78vYiTSUXa4ll3l5dHQXqrVVK9_i00n1Kxr6dOXT8QFSAcrheqkOfdRGlHybbUTj8JABaEznqWK-0bwkvJoo5aD/s16000/DayJackal02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Day of the Jackal</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> also
happened to fit Zinneman like a glove, a perfect vehicle for his particular, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">coolly observant </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">directing talents, which had fully evolved to suit the changed filmmaking
palette of the 1970s after a long period of quiescence following his second
Best Picture Oscar win for </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2008/03/21/a-man-for-all-seasons-1966/" target="_blank">A Man For All Seasons</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (1966). </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Day of the Jackal</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> distils the idea of hunting for an assassin down to its purest essence, even as the particular story is rooted in authentic
but, today, relatively obscure events, unfolding in the slightly distanced realm of
1963 France. De Gaulle became the target for zealots of the French military
caste whose brains melted down after the twinned humiliations of Vietnam and
Algeria, turning the blame for the latter failure on the President and forming
a group called the OAS. The film opens with a docudrama recreation of one of
the OAS’s actual attempts to kill De Gaulle, with the blunt method of waiting
on a Parisian street to blast his passing car with machine guns. Zinneman
stages this opening without scene-setting dialogue, instead fusing a
documentary-like detachment with hints of stylisation, like the fleet of
coal-black Citroens lined up to spirit away the President and his ministers
like prototypes of space capsules about to wing them all away to a great
galactic future, only for the brutality at loose the Earth as it is to rain on
the parade, even if the absurd is annexed as the mad spray of bullets somehow
manages to miss everyone.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM4lPzRtzEIAi0caDBUf74p0W3xK4SD1DDywMcjqtjzccjvoTnd9wPlkD6iaGgK_Tvb_wgLJsMiVwX3Y2H7cNdbY3_q6t0GDfmnZArZ_S0WmVZlbpXymoc1byEcCpWbODKMS7_KpTXk6fpEOYKhyphenhyphenQ9nwOCVdtLnEtlYr_3b8Ozl5bNmuFpjCb07aXque9v/s900/DayJackal03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM4lPzRtzEIAi0caDBUf74p0W3xK4SD1DDywMcjqtjzccjvoTnd9wPlkD6iaGgK_Tvb_wgLJsMiVwX3Y2H7cNdbY3_q6t0GDfmnZArZ_S0WmVZlbpXymoc1byEcCpWbODKMS7_KpTXk6fpEOYKhyphenhyphenQ9nwOCVdtLnEtlYr_3b8Ozl5bNmuFpjCb07aXque9v/s16000/DayJackal03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The interesting prospect of watching a
movie about ultranationalists trying to kill their elected leader to avenge the
offence of making peace and decolonising is quickly swapped for something equally
interesting but more existential and detached from the immediate flow of
history and political contention. The OAS chieftain, Colonel Marc Rodin (Eric
Porter), and his cadre are driven into exile and hiding after the group’s
founder is caught and executed, but they decide to meet with a top assassin
recommended to them to take De Gaulle out with a colder, more methodical and
disinterested touch. This assassin proves to be a breezy-mannered but enigmatic
man with a posh English accent (Edward Fox) and form for taking out political
leaders. He chooses the codename of The Jackal. French security forces get wind
of his hiring when they arrest and torture an OAS bagman, Viktor Wolenski (Jean
Martin), who coughs up The Jackal’s name and objective before expiring. The
French Interior Minister (Alan Badel) convenes a special cabinet of military
and security bigwigs, including the Police Commissioner, Berthier (Timothy
West), who recommends that his deputy, Claude Lebel (Michel Lonsdale), conduct
the investigation to track down The Jackal. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig6tkLL-fWrTsLc_RPwr8YjtN1tqLS_N_qnLs_RzL128_Ibzul6XI3Oc7vFn7kMP5SpoV1oYihyQJWY9sk7uXW3sLKjYoUKOWzh8k8cInaem6FIqZZ_nNrNUuOUAFVJYp77msh92doAEzs9upiklBDYnW8ZjLolgFzzLSs3nx58w4mXrtcP-1Xl88da5sX/s900/DayJackal04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig6tkLL-fWrTsLc_RPwr8YjtN1tqLS_N_qnLs_RzL128_Ibzul6XI3Oc7vFn7kMP5SpoV1oYihyQJWY9sk7uXW3sLKjYoUKOWzh8k8cInaem6FIqZZ_nNrNUuOUAFVJYp77msh92doAEzs9upiklBDYnW8ZjLolgFzzLSs3nx58w4mXrtcP-1Xl88da5sX/s16000/DayJackal04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Trouble is Lebel has to work in secret,
as De Gaulle refuses to change his schedule or alert the populace in the belief
any hint of the plot will damage morale. Lebel and his assistant Caron (Derek
Jacobi) begin chasing leads and get one from English counterpart Mallinson
(Donald Sinden), whose operatives believe they have winnowed down The Jackal’s
identity to one Charles Calthrop. One investigator notes that the killer’s
codename seems drawn from this name, as the French equivalent of Jackal is
Chacal, but he has likely obtained a false passport through using the birth
certificate of someone who died in infancy. Armed with a rough description of The Jackal and his likely alias, the French
cops start beating the bushes. Meanwhile The Jackal carefully maps out and
begins executing his campaign, including obtaining fake papers for various
backup identities, and a specially-made rifle capable of killing at a distance
but which can also be disassembled and secreted.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrxv3KferU-oOBQqDdo-itCotrSSw3pkbTKymSD6vcd6nlyzoRQLR9xa3fRBXLvu3LtjiA_Shm1IML_yexvtKM79HpZt_NGigmHnKSEWSGLJyAROMCwNsVYofUCUiXblaYTyqtLjrfk2gCErxQ2nPxa3xlWRx98dvbYbpIPnvPzpJ97lSnEuHCHYnP6pV1/s900/DayJackal05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrxv3KferU-oOBQqDdo-itCotrSSw3pkbTKymSD6vcd6nlyzoRQLR9xa3fRBXLvu3LtjiA_Shm1IML_yexvtKM79HpZt_NGigmHnKSEWSGLJyAROMCwNsVYofUCUiXblaYTyqtLjrfk2gCErxQ2nPxa3xlWRx98dvbYbpIPnvPzpJ97lSnEuHCHYnP6pV1/s16000/DayJackal05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Day of the Jackal</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> can
readily be described as Zinneman’s retelling of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2021/08/30/high-noon-1952/" target="_blank">High Noon</a></i> (1952) largely from the villain’s point of view, as the
narrative screws inwards relentlessly towards the fraught moment when no
obstacle save pure chance remains between the killer and his target. This connects with
Zinneman’s other studies in fateful journeys towards often deadly or personally
ruinous reckonings, be they with power and justice or merely with one’s own
private identity. More subtly, Forsyth’s story handed Zinneman an ideal way to
dovetail that aspect of his career with his subtler preoccupation with
characters sublimating their natures into roles that seem to rob them of
specific identity but actually allow them to express it in peculiar ways –Fox’s
Jackal seems antipathetic in terms of morality and character to previous Zinneman
heroes like Sheriff Will Kane, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From Here
To Eternity</i>’s (1953) Pvt. Prewitt, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Nun’s Story</i>’s (1959) Sister Luke, or Thomas More, but he resembles them on
the most crucial level of sharing their adherence to a particular ethic that
comprises a core self he cannot escape and elects to pursue to its bitter end.
The Jackal, for all his murdering and sexually fluid opportunism, is virtually
monkish in his self-annihilating dedication to his job, twisting body, face,
and psyche constantly to meet the needs of his mission. Or, perhaps, his
mission is the only way he can completely realise himself: all his unexpected
talents are put to use through his journey, mimicking members of society but
never succumbing to the indignity of being one of them. Thus when presented
with the choice of continuing with his mission despite knowing the danger and
making a clean getaway, the Jackal closes in on his goal and fate. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYLoPtlEhhuU5e9wFlh-qWcStFK7PmNZVE4nVzsbXP8fklCK4zVoRnXZFcrKNU1PXWOKb-vXlilgZtx6kSVwaOvDxWU73TfGAdChGq48fs08iSuTAA-WzGVQWvHWhKsateXpSFAk-_MBgE0Jw0CBSe4ht7SFVr3kZSuccseip-gAaQIiU2BPCXs4pnuvSS/s900/DayJackal06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYLoPtlEhhuU5e9wFlh-qWcStFK7PmNZVE4nVzsbXP8fklCK4zVoRnXZFcrKNU1PXWOKb-vXlilgZtx6kSVwaOvDxWU73TfGAdChGq48fs08iSuTAA-WzGVQWvHWhKsateXpSFAk-_MBgE0Jw0CBSe4ht7SFVr3kZSuccseip-gAaQIiU2BPCXs4pnuvSS/s16000/DayJackal06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Part of the popularity of Forsyth’s
style and story, which had some antecedents in writers like Eric Ambler, came
from his careful documentation of authentic minutiae of craft, particularly ways of hacking a world of state power that constantly seems to be drawing tighter
and ever more suffocating even if in the name of safety and security: The
Jackal slips cordons, deceives officials and cops, swaps identities, seduces
unwitting normal folk, and finally manages to escape the strictures of identity
altogether. In this regard <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Day of the
Jackal</i> resembles another film of 1973, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2013/10/27/the-exorcist-1973/" target="_blank">The Exorcist</a></i>, in exploiting an audience’s rapt enjoyment of the villain’s
subversive actions even as the narrative officially emphasises how evil they
are. The Jackal is characterised as a shape-shifting sociopath who has learned
all the arts of adapting himself to insinuate himself with people and capture
and evade attention depending on the circumstances. The narrative is the
opposite of a psychological study, with The Jackal’s actual inner nature unexamined
and, possibly, as vaporous as everything else about him: he instead becomes a
mythic enigma, a manifestation of everything that slides under the radar. Even
his supposed real name proves to be yet another smokescreen, leaving just who
and what he is entirely opaque, much to the relief of the British government
bureaucrats when contending with all the diplomatic nastiness. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZLP9VH0PVm9t0OkCEFq4paEMU_TnMzGIm2cQgembtaWc8Y-HuPyNtEwUVoUgEQMkUF6xxZWWEy9SkuYcOameh259gukEzqk3NyWDUAD-MfQSGqqXmghnTDF_ENSC2usjT6alnhJlyyIsOmIuA_xTLAQxhH0mG6E6koTTzKHOO11_4m2SLIn3Lx0hGnVzn/s900/DayJackal07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZLP9VH0PVm9t0OkCEFq4paEMU_TnMzGIm2cQgembtaWc8Y-HuPyNtEwUVoUgEQMkUF6xxZWWEy9SkuYcOameh259gukEzqk3NyWDUAD-MfQSGqqXmghnTDF_ENSC2usjT6alnhJlyyIsOmIuA_xTLAQxhH0mG6E6koTTzKHOO11_4m2SLIn3Lx0hGnVzn/s16000/DayJackal07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fox’s cunning, elegant performance
nonetheless weaves a simulacrum of personality around the empty shell, in a
characterisation that manages to locate the point where James Bond and Tom
Ripley intersect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Jackal knows the
lay of the land when it comes to his rarefied profession, a familiarity
established early as he heads to Genoa and makes contact with experts in their
fields who have plainly come to such a locale to subsist on the edge of the
continent of shady flotsam, as men he needs to procure the various IDs and the
gun he require. The first he obtains from a seedy photographer and forger
(Ronald Pickup), the second from a gunsmith (Cyril Cusack). The
differences in the two men – the forger all tight grins and forced joviality,
the gunsmith clipped professionalism and soft-spoken efficiency – resolve
more clearly as the forger tries to blackmail The Jackal for more money and
pays the price of having his neck broken and being stuffed into one of his own
trunks, whilst the latter presents the assassin with his weapon and
lives to collect his pay as a result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Jackal has a pure kind of existential shape when engaged with
raptor-like intensity in his many arts as a professional and multifarious
outlaw, from hastily spray-painting his roadster to secreting his weaponry in
its exhaust to minutely adjusting the sights on his new gun whilst test-firing
bullets at a dangling watermelon. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7oE1bN7AZq5LdrLdODFD_313rg3Ula_6YYq-eZIlWTzdnLA6esk0gFkNLIoHulf-I-7sRuYt5Vu-wkfh2jBjrq9vhFZ8aJm4mYaxtk7_V7iaE5I7pscxIHZWJ6ka4OaZY82fmS4ZuUSvLjRGvSoHJkrA_-vVKmT6lDB78quWr_IKLNQUm2x6PP0yXtQAF/s900/DayJackal08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7oE1bN7AZq5LdrLdODFD_313rg3Ula_6YYq-eZIlWTzdnLA6esk0gFkNLIoHulf-I-7sRuYt5Vu-wkfh2jBjrq9vhFZ8aJm4mYaxtk7_V7iaE5I7pscxIHZWJ6ka4OaZY82fmS4ZuUSvLjRGvSoHJkrA_-vVKmT6lDB78quWr_IKLNQUm2x6PP0yXtQAF/s16000/DayJackal08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At other times he’s a carefully
mimicked pose, all jaunty Home Counties charm, easily getting into the pants of
a bored haute-bourgeois wife, Colette de Montpellier (Delphine Seyrig) he
encounters in a regional hotel, a seduction leveraged with surrealist quips
woven around stupefying coffee table magazines (“I’m enthralled by combine
harvesters. In fact, I yearn to have one as a pet.”) but built around mutual
recognition of good bone structure and the promise of entirely ephemeral and
inconsequential sex. Later he turns up at her humble mansion with a display of
bouncy joviality, him concealing that he needs a place to lay low for a time
and she concealing that she knows now what he is since the cops have visited
her. Eventually, The Jackal, having taken on the guise of a Danish
schoolteacher, annexes a different kind of closed and clandestine society as he
retreats to a Turkish bath and hooks up with a gay man, Jules Bernard (Anton
Rodgers), shacking up with him in his apartment. This proves totally baffling
to the police dragnet urgently sifting the city streets. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Day of the Jackal</i> seems at first to offer its title character
as a very 1970s kind of antiheroic protagonist, one we’re obliged to spend much
screen time with find ourselves in unconscious and unwilling sympathy with as
he keeps on the move, in a manner reminiscent of Hitchcock entrapping the
viewer into siding with Norman Bates. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAC309lGDESlP27nqYeo2GR9yDGeL4KcPmMghLfKsApeVT6917wQshAvOgMSi8abTqNwAoVtUlwUpoEtHuuo4-6Gzo0kYWHWKX9vMnjivPYHDw0LsNH7twOiz0BMObNqDJRfSgWypF37P_SHYgd1KMIbgDATn0WDuiSaLNR4lVsvMaNUJgKTMs-gdQVKW4/s900/DayJackal09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAC309lGDESlP27nqYeo2GR9yDGeL4KcPmMghLfKsApeVT6917wQshAvOgMSi8abTqNwAoVtUlwUpoEtHuuo4-6Gzo0kYWHWKX9vMnjivPYHDw0LsNH7twOiz0BMObNqDJRfSgWypF37P_SHYgd1KMIbgDATn0WDuiSaLNR4lVsvMaNUJgKTMs-gdQVKW4/s16000/DayJackal09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Jackal’s progress is charted via
the killings he commits on the way to his date with De Gaulle, passing through
grades of justification and sympathy. The first, of the forger, is performed
with cold efficiency but there his victim is a creep and fool. Colette is
throttled in bed by The Jackal when she admits that the police know about their
tryst – another Hitchcockian moment where the intimate embrace shades into the
deadly – where the deed is foul but still understandable, even necessary from
his viewpoint, in a rebuke that’s swift and silent. Jules’s murder eradicates
all pity as The Jackal advances with robotic and merciless intent on his victim
after both overhear a TV news flash calling out The Jackal’s current pseudonym.
Meanwhile The Jackal’s cool, sexy, cruel adventures are contrasted with the
representatives of law and order who, at this phase in the modern state’s
development with a couple of decades to go before all bureaucracy started
moving to the digital space, persist on poor salaries in badly painted and
musty offices, snacking on stale cheese sandwiches and dulling their aches and
pains with alka seltzer in between leafing through colossal stacks of records
and documents wedged into manila official folders.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj42AjpKWNam6qTUliH9M-5iEDbqFJ0wunXHvDNpaZHYXwIIB7X-O5dMO9NxBBZhCEIDiDVZHTryWaOZcK0rmj6KRGRGCzkik_QjQ_V31Ac4AxEYw4yDzjDnOpwmnMNwYvLQrrQMT7zjmiv6nCODiAaLrvdC6i83P6uvlXUXUb95Y9hMTFjzfRCYaXlfoB2/s900/DayJackal10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj42AjpKWNam6qTUliH9M-5iEDbqFJ0wunXHvDNpaZHYXwIIB7X-O5dMO9NxBBZhCEIDiDVZHTryWaOZcK0rmj6KRGRGCzkik_QjQ_V31Ac4AxEYw4yDzjDnOpwmnMNwYvLQrrQMT7zjmiv6nCODiAaLrvdC6i83P6uvlXUXUb95Y9hMTFjzfRCYaXlfoB2/s16000/DayJackal10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In between all the procedural coolness
Zinneman deftly charts a running theme of sex and politics entwined in ways
that constantly provoke and reveal the disparity between superficial
respectability and inner need, manifesting particularly in the perpetually
unstable interplay of sex and politics, a disparity The Jackal constantly
exploits like a master musician. Another subplot digs into the same
preoccupation, as the OAS detail a female operative to snare one of the
security cabinet in a honey trap so they can keep tabs in turn on the hunt for
The Jackal: the woman chosen for the task, Denise (Olga Georges-Picot), is the
widow of a young soldier killed in Algeria, a rather bereft and forlorn being
who nonetheless signs up for the role of femme fatale as her loyalties and
grievances are manipulated: she prostitutes herself out for the cause, seducing
the dullard St. Clair (Barrie Ingham) and living with him in his apartment
whilst his family is away, and chips away at his guard in bed. This finally
ends when Lebel uncovers the affair, driving St. Clair to suicide whilst Denise
is arrested, and Lebel confesses, much to the startled and stony look of his
colleagues, that he didn’t know where the leak was coming from and so tapped
all of the cabinet members’ phones. Eventually Lebel realises that The Jackal
intends to shoot De Gaulle at the one civic event he cannot miss without
violating the entire social mythology he represents – the Liberation Day
celebration.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7vOAmT4ZHhrrljIuDOSuV3xg4TzLeAJYo7_vqo98SWz0_2G0riVndKJQJNEjGoopCHqUg9pSHDTEtgigShalFY5rWDzoj_a1zpNgdBseSkCrdQmhFBA8EO0LDySa5vvXsWER7ct6-br2SlBhyphenhyphen4PyihdNOkdye4T8apOgOs8WYMxIFDnKudAhat-mSyLBZ/s900/DayJackal11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7vOAmT4ZHhrrljIuDOSuV3xg4TzLeAJYo7_vqo98SWz0_2G0riVndKJQJNEjGoopCHqUg9pSHDTEtgigShalFY5rWDzoj_a1zpNgdBseSkCrdQmhFBA8EO0LDySa5vvXsWER7ct6-br2SlBhyphenhyphen4PyihdNOkdye4T8apOgOs8WYMxIFDnKudAhat-mSyLBZ/s16000/DayJackal11.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lonsdale, who became an international
fixture thanks to his role here (including his Bond villain in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Moonraker</i>, 1979), gives the film its
slouchy, weary-eyed soul as a man who scarcely resembles anyone’s romantic
image of a swashbuckling lawman, but he’s one of the great movie heroes
regardless. Lebel is a stolid cop in the Maigret mould with a family he’s
forced to abandon for the joys of sleeping in his office for the hunt’s
duration. He’s given an apparently impossible task, particularly as it requires
infinite patience even as the clock ticks down; it’s only at the film’s very
end when urgent speed is required. Zinneman’s filmmaking is matched to the
method of both hero and villain in charting the detail with an apparent
dispassion that blends the real and imagined as skilfully as the plot.
Zinneman’s beginnings as a documentary filmmaker and the one who absorbed
element of neorealism in his 1940s films are evoked in scenes like the long
opening detailing the real assassination attempt on De Gaulle, and vignettes of
the gathering crowds and swelling hoopla of Liberation Day, the staged and the
authentic blending and presenting the ideal backdrop to the climactic drama.
The Jackal, having lodged himself in an apartment overlooking the scene of
presidential grandeur, takes his shot, only to miss his first – a fateful
moment The Jackal knew well he might not get to repeat. And indeed it gives
Lebel just the few seconds required to chase him down, and the cop proves a
much dabber hand with a machine gun than expected, in a spasm of violent action
that comes and goes within the space of ten seconds but delivers with
thunderous effect. The coda resolves on a note of lingering mystery but also
with a businesslike shrug of the shoulders at the inconsequence of solving it,
the end credits rolling on with brusque contempt, just like history. Michael
Caton-Jones’s 1997 remake, simply called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Jackal</i>, is to be avoided at all costs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcyjEni1zeIImhZBpcrqpr1l23qU9sTvdVZPFrUtZvqp7hYTA-jT3LHn1-JMTZ8rxXlm3zMHXq2rwi2oeYP-SzR6V2qWN-3KcT2Fm7ON7vM0VJDhlCvC9TDMv03lnGkSKF4t8t9mVURF_69kQcNHfqGN1w_YrEydVqKtD1M1nVtpJOUAPM7eydcouRie2d/s900/DayJackal12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcyjEni1zeIImhZBpcrqpr1l23qU9sTvdVZPFrUtZvqp7hYTA-jT3LHn1-JMTZ8rxXlm3zMHXq2rwi2oeYP-SzR6V2qWN-3KcT2Fm7ON7vM0VJDhlCvC9TDMv03lnGkSKF4t8t9mVURF_69kQcNHfqGN1w_YrEydVqKtD1M1nVtpJOUAPM7eydcouRie2d/s16000/DayJackal12.jpg" /></a></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-62546257500443665922024-01-19T15:20:00.005+11:002024-02-25T23:53:24.882+11:00Judgment At Nuremberg (1961)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu_qMEoiA5KJ_daAQyUsWTXP2q7OgcxgvJU9GbMOAtyu42zk-NdyqjMNCyzY-DZ-ctcsWdQNq6FQhURpMLdDj6v8VlftCtHaMutNcf1YshXimZgH0RDpcKuhBRUnHLLSqlUF-U5p5ab56mb5FsGlix7wlKAKS5cQOLT704U72cen2F15QiWzVrXD2C6Ph9/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu_qMEoiA5KJ_daAQyUsWTXP2q7OgcxgvJU9GbMOAtyu42zk-NdyqjMNCyzY-DZ-ctcsWdQNq6FQhURpMLdDj6v8VlftCtHaMutNcf1YshXimZgH0RDpcKuhBRUnHLLSqlUF-U5p5ab56mb5FsGlix7wlKAKS5cQOLT704U72cen2F15QiWzVrXD2C6Ph9/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Like
most of the films made by Stanley Kramer, <i>Judgment
At Nuremberg</i> inspires a clash of reactions in me. It’s absorbing,
interesting, and thoughtful, if in a schematic fashion, trying very hard to be a serious-minded movie for
grown-ups. And one that’s also something of an accidental monument to the
inevitably, internally warring nature of movies that try to grapple with truly
important topics. The subject is immediately compelling despite sidestepping
the obvious, in taking as its basis not the first and most famous of the Nazi
war crimes trials grouped under the “Nuremberg trials” legend, but the “Judges’
Trial” held <span>two </span>years later, involving the
prosecution of the judicial enablers of the Third Reich’s legalisation
of racial intolerance and genocide. Abby Mann’s script, expanded from his teleplay for a successful episode of the legendary <i>Playhouse 90 </i>series, like the not-dissimilar <i>Twelve Angry Men</i> (1959), grapples with the problem of immense evil
and its most troubling, dogging companion – immense acquiescence to that evil.
Spencer Tracy is Dan Haywood, a circuit court judge from Maine turfed out of
office in a recent election, who has accepted an appointment as head of a three-judge tribunal overseeing the trial of their nominal counterparts under
the fallen Nazi state, judges who oversaw the codification and enforcement of
Nazi racial laws that resulted in untold numbers of imprisonments, human
misery, forced sterilisations, and killings. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimfGFw2VoCUuJ8iAUMoFpi6gDDGrauetkw7D_6JoSLJtDBi1GhX9oFNIj7DnGNuK7aQlpWGdC51E0P3xeXbqDjh0CYtbaZCVQuj7mYy1fbriA-OxPAoqERaDCsF7q5eR3KYa9nEbd8l4MOu09nQj6zsaqhZNWN4Iw6rHVY1ae6fnvILHwAtnG0CmuKUgi8/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimfGFw2VoCUuJ8iAUMoFpi6gDDGrauetkw7D_6JoSLJtDBi1GhX9oFNIj7DnGNuK7aQlpWGdC51E0P3xeXbqDjh0CYtbaZCVQuj7mYy1fbriA-OxPAoqERaDCsF7q5eR3KYa9nEbd8l4MOu09nQj6zsaqhZNWN4Iw6rHVY1ae6fnvILHwAtnG0CmuKUgi8/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
four judges on trial include the rabid fascist Emil Hahn (Werner Klemperer),
filled with acid disdain for the Allied prosecutors and fond of offering warnings
about the Communist menace (“Today you pass sentence on us, tomorrow the
Bolsheviks pass sentence on you!”), and so is the kind of man very easy to pass
judgment on. But the defendants also include Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster),
an internationally renowned jurist who helped frame the Weimer constitution,
and who, as many believe and testify, remained in his post as judge and
Minister of Justice under the Nazi regime to try and mitigate its worst
elements. Janning remains silent and impassive through most of the trial, after
reportedly refusing to recognise its authority, whilst the defence counsel for
the judges, Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell), takes to his unenviable task with
vigour and purpose. The US Army prosecutor, Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark),
has a well-earned reputation for his unwavering zeal in punishing the Nazis,
sourced in his horror in having participated in the liberation of a
concentration camp. Meanwhile Haywood encounters the widow Bertholt (Marlene
Dietrich), whose former home is currently his requisitioned domicile: she was
married to a Wehrmacht General who was executed for his part in the Malmedy massacre of
captured GIs, a sentence won largely thanks to Lawson. Frau
Bertholt’s campaign to try and elucidate the better side of Germany to the
American judge matches Rolfe’s desire to leave Germany “with a shred of
dignity” by exculpating one of its great men, and mirrors Lawson’s seething,
relentless desire for justice. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXfGknwuU-JLlRS-DzYjyTx6_CoTPZupR-6nay0v_hTb71WWAseLk--sF7eg9KgOhgJu1LFk4Eys6ncxn-3amWm13ILWwy8A4khG23r1qN_foeSnCj7itkbChBpC2bxUEDAapxNXnzVgnifYiNu9kCwfDTMOQSFKMuViM5TFjBF56jlHmPHciUC3lSM0Ew/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXfGknwuU-JLlRS-DzYjyTx6_CoTPZupR-6nay0v_hTb71WWAseLk--sF7eg9KgOhgJu1LFk4Eys6ncxn-3amWm13ILWwy8A4khG23r1qN_foeSnCj7itkbChBpC2bxUEDAapxNXnzVgnifYiNu9kCwfDTMOQSFKMuViM5TFjBF56jlHmPHciUC3lSM0Ew/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Kramer
had been an entrepreneurial and innovative producer of ambitious films, particularly <i><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2021/08/30/high-noon-1952/" target="_blank">High Noon</a></i>
(1952), working independently and then at Columbia Pictures where he shepherded
<i>The Wild One</i> (1953), prior to finally
turning his own hand to directing. His debut was <i>Not As A Stranger</i> (1955), a glossy drama about medical students,
and his second, <i>The Pride and the Passion</i>
(1957), a lumbering costume drama. But his name soon became synonymous with
movies that tackled Big Issues when he turned his hand to a string of would-be
controversial themes in what many felt at the time was a fittingly stark and
sober manner – racism (<i>The Defiant Ones</i>,
1958), nuclear war (<i>On The Beach</i>,
1959), and the clash of religion and science (<i>Inherit The Wind</i>, 1960). In this way Kramer became a favourite for big awards and had a genuine impact on the wider discourse, but also
became a target for hipper critics and audiences who disdained his
brand-emblazoned, talky, hermetic takes on such material. His self-consciously
zany, woozily epic comedy <i>It’s A Mad,
Mad, Mad, Mad World</i> (1963) and the more intimate and droll <i>Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner</i> (1967), tried mixing social commentary with different styles of comedy. The former is perhaps Kramer’s most
interesting and unusual film, even if it’s also awkwardly elephantine for a work
that wanted to say something about the hysterical greed and neediness
underlying American life in the era whilst still making people laugh. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji8U4VKauSlgaPVih_oZlhnBF2U7LRh9Wj0Vix0RWXnZWFSbiwCgJBa9sUzrOvoq4vrh5dj-2ufYQXKmU5JJmJSHz3z9-eENQAZgP67o94WRUl--Qy3nGWWV814dHouFcg033qCM__cM91V66-nrHeFY_GQulLXfv0v8OK5_xYFQ6tgv3MLVA0Ztb7cIgc/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji8U4VKauSlgaPVih_oZlhnBF2U7LRh9Wj0Vix0RWXnZWFSbiwCgJBa9sUzrOvoq4vrh5dj-2ufYQXKmU5JJmJSHz3z9-eENQAZgP67o94WRUl--Qy3nGWWV814dHouFcg033qCM__cM91V66-nrHeFY_GQulLXfv0v8OK5_xYFQ6tgv3MLVA0Ztb7cIgc/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Judgment In Nuremberg</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> by contrast might be
the most successful and coherently delivered of his typical message
movies, one that wants very much to provide a searing and vital moral drama,
even as it actually proves a lengthy mix of blunt hectoring and solid dramaturgy. A succession of scenes can be accused of feeling like extended actor
Oscar reel clips, even if they certainly showcase genuinely strong work from an
extremely talented cast, some of them, like Judy Garland, departing sharply
from their familiar star personas. Like <i>Inherit
The Wind</i>, it’s a courtroom drama, a natural setting for stories that allow
a collision of the furore of individual experience with moral precepts and
rhetoric, and the corralling and cooling effect of procedure. Kramer took cues
from his former production partner Fred Zinneman, taking up the look he had
adopted for <i>High Noon</i> with its stark
black-and-white aesthetic, which coincided at the time with the influence of
live TV plays which had a similar look and had become an accepted argot for
serious-minded drama. With <i>Judgment
In Nuremberg</i>, Kramer’s stolid visual approach is partly mitigated via some
attempts, with cinematographer Ernst Laszlo, to make cinematic capital out of
the seemingly uncinematic material, which consists mostly of people talking,
talking, and then still more talking. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz_Y2rjwDgr8dDveHN-ihiIID1kQHWhYP7aTX2dHsi9I1djWAkgHNd0m5Shpfg2a2yw4xr1tbfXjb3UvbWnEkNBb3MvzE-lCb9GkZeFPYwKsdW4RykpFv34n1EDc5PJARLYqSkWea7SXaLAEgnCxSW9LK6_cmpwAgRXhKboo1liZaOOvRnW_fUB9RwswVd/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz_Y2rjwDgr8dDveHN-ihiIID1kQHWhYP7aTX2dHsi9I1djWAkgHNd0m5Shpfg2a2yw4xr1tbfXjb3UvbWnEkNBb3MvzE-lCb9GkZeFPYwKsdW4RykpFv34n1EDc5PJARLYqSkWea7SXaLAEgnCxSW9LK6_cmpwAgRXhKboo1liZaOOvRnW_fUB9RwswVd/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Aside
from its obvious import, <i>Judgment At
Nuremberg</i> can be described as a culminating example of that obsessive theme
of 1950s Hollywood films, centring on men – and yes, almost exclusively men –
standing by their convictions in the face of danger and disavowal. One admirable quality of Kramer’s film is that it never tries to play as
uplifting in an empty way. “Mankind has not crossed into Jordan,” Lawson notes
in his summative speech as the Cold War looms as a new reality, Widmark’s
inimitable sour drawl put to particularly stinging use in acknowledging the
onrush of history refuses to allow a long draw of breath even after such </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">depths of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">travesty. The arguments wielded by Lawson and Rolfe are allowed
degrees of intellectual weight and genuine moral contention even if Kramer and
Mann are unremitting in their ultimate message. Pauline Kael notably poured
scorn on the film’s moral determinism with much justificiation, but then again,
artists portraying their own hunger for a moral yardstick is as worthy a topic
as ambiguity. Kramer comes on surprisingly strong at the very start, as the
opening credits unspool over footage of the Swastika-capped Zeppelinfeld
grandstand in Nuremberg, culminating with the famous shot of a well-aimed shell
obliterating the Swastika. This image has a pithy, tabloid directness in
describing the downfall and shattering of the Nazi age that is, otherwise,
rather at odds with the film’s aesthetic as a whole. Kramer by contrast sets
the scene for the painstaking process of the trial, including the necessity of
an elaborate system of translation between German and English, whilst also
carefully cueing up the moment when the distancing is disposed of and the rest
of the movie proceeds with direct dialogue, a shift announced with an inward
zoom shot. Laszlo’s camera performs some wonderfully smooth and sinuous
tracking shots circling the advocates as they give their early speeches,
suggesting the momentous forces, however abstract they must remain, being cued
up in the course of the trial as it start.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKNCbvDb9r36kaQTS0GobfD0zyFkCvjYX1i_wCj-_FYANx8T2OxjipFZTuSbbu_ETrdSAev31xKKO0IMqm--NnTUZF4mm44wv6rW07EkpH_TJkIz-AQ_wZL97KqEPu9o_FLJXwZ-7McVjWto8F1uZlj_jzfLtO2RTmZYF3TlJZELX-JDcBXrDwgFvTwrGB/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKNCbvDb9r36kaQTS0GobfD0zyFkCvjYX1i_wCj-_FYANx8T2OxjipFZTuSbbu_ETrdSAev31xKKO0IMqm--NnTUZF4mm44wv6rW07EkpH_TJkIz-AQ_wZL97KqEPu9o_FLJXwZ-7McVjWto8F1uZlj_jzfLtO2RTmZYF3TlJZELX-JDcBXrDwgFvTwrGB/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Such
shots are also used in paving the way for some major dramatic beats, like the
system of reframing leading to the climactic moment when Janning suddenly
stands up and intervenes when Rolfe is in full flight, and the slow camera
pivot and zoom in for punctuation when Janning on the stand testifies with
particularly emphatic, angry amusement. Trouble is, such shows of technique are
so prominent as they exist within a movie that’s otherwise relentlessly
straightforward. The movie unfolds for the most part within the set
that is the Nuremberg courtroom, and yet spurns the integrity concentrating
purely on the courtroom business would have wielded, but doesn’t think much
beyond that limit either, with scenes outside of that setting hardly offering
strong contrast or a jarring relief. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Haywood
attempts to grapple with the ambiguous nature of what Germans knew about the
Holocaust infects and defines his interactions with Frau Bertholt and the
Halbestadts (Ben Wright and Virginia Christine), her former servants, now
technically his. Mann’s screenplay at least lets a few fillips of everyday life
in, like the tribunal aide, Captain Byers (William Shatner), mordantly charting
the course of his relationship with a local German girl, although even this is
couched in terms of the fluctuation of public feeling about the trials. The
film’s one real vignette of entirely incidental characterisation comes when Haywood
finds himself having an awkward, nonverbal, quasi-flirtatious interaction with
a young German woman at a field kitchen only to learn she called him “grandad.”
Haywood describes himself as a “rock-ribbed Republican who thought that
Franklin Roosevelt was a great man.” Tracy is cast, as Kramer did repeatedly, to exploit this sense of him bisecting something essential
about the pre-1960s ideal of an American elder, supposedly armed with a set of ideals that operate over and above mere political concerns.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBCQvpvIX7xX71CNV0w-yLvz1iCdyAWuYqgzAB6VNMEVCDEKltUaSYsjUMVe741vy_XrpAEVGpYyWDoBy5cn4BMxwQGUIxB4q6f8fky5dqR4kfAEje_QN7idHDagzEWcN6W83fudZCBOFUkUAMUDtyFBKm70aKgpZv2yhrLJuFBm1jPZnqmx_GeYo1GEeC/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBCQvpvIX7xX71CNV0w-yLvz1iCdyAWuYqgzAB6VNMEVCDEKltUaSYsjUMVe741vy_XrpAEVGpYyWDoBy5cn4BMxwQGUIxB4q6f8fky5dqR4kfAEje_QN7idHDagzEWcN6W83fudZCBOFUkUAMUDtyFBKm70aKgpZv2yhrLJuFBm1jPZnqmx_GeYo1GEeC/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Dietrich,
in her last major acting role apart from a couple of later cameos, offers a characterisation that serves as a questioning doppelganger to her real
self, as a scion of the aristocratic-military caste of Germany, but rather than
one who fled and became determinedly antifascist, she plays one who stayed whilst taking
refuge in a blend of orthodoxy and contempt for a passing regime only to find
even that opened gates to soul-corroding and self-defeating compromise. An
interesting enough character and theme to be worthy of a film in their own
right, but essentially goes nowhere, as one gets the feeling Dietrich was
placed in the film chiefly to bring in a little well-matured sex appeal:
Haywood comments a little wryly that “it’s a pity this isn’t a magazine story,”
a line that affects spurning any retreat into easeful romance but also
acknowledges the tacked-on tease aspect. The climax of their story delivers a note of bereft tragedy, however, as Kramer cuts from Haywood trying to call her to the sight of sitting in the shadows ignoring the ringing phone, mourning for a man and a world she
knows destroyed themselves but still tries to deny it in herself. By contrast,
Montgomery Clift and Garland play Rudolph Peterson and Irene Hoffmann, two
people permanently damaged by their grazes with the inhumanity of the Nazi
regime as represented by the men on trial, the former a man forcibly sterilised
by Janning’s decree, the latter a woman who as a teenager became a humiliated
pawn in a show trial staged to get a Jewish man accused of having an affair
with her hung. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8M6CCZlwhxc44oMis2GE_-G7YcEUQvGBWvIlm26EucrfrSEdINqjdCcNpVcMFBjjE8tC-W_GtRI_YErfiK6b15ZmAhm4SURaOeIczEeceuxZnCXrp0LZHuOkye69ZVvToNYSAyJDdWF87DulUU7Bqa33bJGM-YFw_Ux3XYBWgtaasEksxnEDnmS1d9IHq/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8M6CCZlwhxc44oMis2GE_-G7YcEUQvGBWvIlm26EucrfrSEdINqjdCcNpVcMFBjjE8tC-W_GtRI_YErfiK6b15ZmAhm4SURaOeIczEeceuxZnCXrp0LZHuOkye69ZVvToNYSAyJDdWF87DulUU7Bqa33bJGM-YFw_Ux3XYBWgtaasEksxnEDnmS1d9IHq/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Films that take on Nazism and the Holocaust as subject matter always contend with a
peculiar double-bind, where they’re found automatically by some to be less than
worthy of the topic or, rather, so automatically worthy little more is asked of
them, but always with tacit awareness that there is right and wrong way to go
about it as far as most are concerned. This was particularly true when <i>Judgment at Nuremberg </i>came out, as the
ranks of such films were far thinner on the ground. In Kramer’s film there is a
subtle but uncomfortable disconnect between the rather familiar and
manipulative dramatics at play in the actual story, and the inevitable
inclusion of the eternally disquieting real footage of liberated concentration
camps. The unutterable pathos and realness of stacks of dead bodies replete
with such piercing, haunting details like the flapping penis on a corpse
being pushed by a bulldozer, things so coldly absurd and awful they almost burn holes
in the screen. Compared to this, no matter how good Monty Clift is, he’s still
caught in an awkward place. And compared to the way, say, actual concentration
camp liberator Sam Fuller contended with the utterly confounded landscape of
post-war Germany, with its variably pathetic survivors and confused occupiers, in <i><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2010/11/14/verboten-1959/" target="_blank">Verboten!</a></i> (1959), <i>Judgment At Nuremberg</i> feels like a
freeze-dried stab at contending with the same world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZRrlM8Y6KmxpNM-RF9ytEV_l7xy-pVbOf2YdCTw2h0QxzFHBhLq_Kxrk4yrWMgJhXb27pidJPY2V_qUOki7UxXrZ5hOgPzZLyp06tWTbyq5X1yOtFabHEkSrx6P9mJzGvG8edPazBpxtZXslZM4UBxU99VdxFW5VTW71SQWZ6CcETcI_-YVQmIUyp257a/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZRrlM8Y6KmxpNM-RF9ytEV_l7xy-pVbOf2YdCTw2h0QxzFHBhLq_Kxrk4yrWMgJhXb27pidJPY2V_qUOki7UxXrZ5hOgPzZLyp06tWTbyq5X1yOtFabHEkSrx6P9mJzGvG8edPazBpxtZXslZM4UBxU99VdxFW5VTW71SQWZ6CcETcI_-YVQmIUyp257a/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">To
be fair, however, the film structures the disparity with a degree of real
acumen, as Lawson has a reputation for showing the films on any pretext, in
order to violate the cool detachment the legal process and the attendant
political concerns starting to affect the gravity, and it works, particularly
on Haywood, whose tells become more distinct and angrily purposeful henceforth.
This is contrasted with Rolfe’s dogged effort to score his points, usually by
pointing out the possibility that, however misguided, the laws were being applied
correctly, and also by noting a more general hypocrisy behind the current legal
vengeance being applied, whether in quoting US Supreme Court justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes and his defence of sterilisation laws in his country, or grudging
pre-war admiration for Hitler’s strength from Winston Churchill. Again, the
trouble is that Kramer and Mann make Rolfe something of a mouthpiece for
rhetoric that would likely get shot right down by a judge in a real court
context, but plays into the movie’s overarching effort to say something about
the slippery nature of ultimate culpability without really contending with it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrC5S8jeqM7bq9UKqjNJHSSoHLiCXsNf59IF21luYhD8GOtFRA23JqV4rWF_xD6fcMfTkGeHBf82n0vc6EuSmqDaQLTybkzUvkJ64vQChEGIapkqEwXiYjOZ8Vzg_uc6hFunSPcZLMP2zwPsSX6N8rLLHRBf2x8ve9cibC6MkAYIIio8rHwp0U14awa42L/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrC5S8jeqM7bq9UKqjNJHSSoHLiCXsNf59IF21luYhD8GOtFRA23JqV4rWF_xD6fcMfTkGeHBf82n0vc6EuSmqDaQLTybkzUvkJ64vQChEGIapkqEwXiYjOZ8Vzg_uc6hFunSPcZLMP2zwPsSX6N8rLLHRBf2x8ve9cibC6MkAYIIio8rHwp0U14awa42L/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">There’s
some appreciable irony in the way Schell, as the least-known major member of
the cast at the time, and playing the same role as he had in the TV version,
won an Oscar for a role that might have been thankless. Undoubtedly he won
for the way he expertly depicts Rolfe’s progressively frazzled and desperate,
and yet concurrently increasingly energetic and vehement efforts to put up a
fight that suggests the lode of guilt and frustration lurking within him. This
drives him to, as Janning puts it, essentially recommit the same offences to justice, as when he suggests Irene really did have an affair with her aging
Jewish patron: Schell’s characterisation almost singlehandedly opens up a
sliver of moral ambiguity the film makes sure to then shut down, when Haywood
delivers him a backhanded compliment as to his skill whilst grimly swatting
down his assertion the prisoners won’t remain prisoners very long. The
seemingly odd casting of Lancaster, whose restrained makeup job makes him look
rather like Thomas Mann, also pays off when the actor’s dynamic physical
presence and mannered verbal style is put behind Janning, hinting how,
despite his age and imminent humiliation, a titanic figure still lurks within,
but rendered a tragicomic joke and sin to himself. It’s telling that the role
made Lancaster appealing to Luchino Visconti for <i><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2015/04/10/the-leopard-il-gattopardo-1963/ " target="_blank">The Leopard</a></i> (1963). The way the film tries to play Janning’s
ambiguity until this point for simmering suspense of a kind is effective, but
also, ultimately, facetious given the ultimate truths it tries to use him to
illustrate.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgblB16eW9PwfFKn3DncMHKCOnnDhLeXapB0uWKfSNkZtorw7V233jm1NODF05VrdjUH83n87FGrJLUw79YPCYD27laTXQsLti0xEK2xzAOiX0N8Vhb0DuzAUNgUH7SCS8B2VWOpNN3tIG5YtsxJ_4qYhp56eLsg0sxNyKeznzubd8scOpE2dTbZCbcSr4-/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgblB16eW9PwfFKn3DncMHKCOnnDhLeXapB0uWKfSNkZtorw7V233jm1NODF05VrdjUH83n87FGrJLUw79YPCYD27laTXQsLti0xEK2xzAOiX0N8Vhb0DuzAUNgUH7SCS8B2VWOpNN3tIG5YtsxJ_4qYhp56eLsg0sxNyKeznzubd8scOpE2dTbZCbcSr4-/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg11.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Janning’s
self-impelled, bitterly reprehending testimony lays waste to Rolfe’s defence
efforts, whilst the trial’s culmination coincides with the worsening standoff
with the Soviets, leading to the Berlin Airlift. Fretful bigwigs soon leaning
on Haywood and Lawson to tone things down. This feels like a bit of a jab not
just at general post-war compromises in dealing with Germany and former Nazi
collaborators, but at efforts in a lot of war movies in the late 1950s and
early 1960s to offer at least the odd “good German” character as a sop to
NATO-era politics. Neither man knuckles under, however, and Haywood sentences
all of the judges to life imprisonment, although a fuming text postscript notes
that all of the convicted criminals from the American zone trials were released
by the time of the film’s release. The last scene, a meeting of Janning and
Haywood in his prison cell, sees Janning tell Haywood he did the right thing,
whilst also, urgently assuring him he never knew things could ever “come to
that.” Haywood ripostes with measured gravitas, “It came to that the first time
you sentenced a man to death, knowing him to be innocent.” Which is true in its
way, but the way Kramer tries to put this over as some statement of shocking
truth that leaves Janning gobsmacked – complete with a gong sounding on the
soundtrack and yet another inward zoom shot on his expression – tries way too
hard to sell this as a profound moment, and it leaves the film off, sadly, with
a virtual neon sign advertising the ultimate lacks of Kramer’s art. The film is
right to call people out on their self-delusion in failure to act before evil,
but it also finally flails before contending with the proof of humanity in that
very weakness. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkUpSvH5xWRZ7Q-GaPza8TSr2YRc3Ay2oX5ZdofM6KwbanXjC-UO3sPgdP2i6cSZOvuuWtdyk2T_TyZ8epwHeSqT2qG9T1ahXXzHF1Bx_n1DO-2ASyWXzSnE09s9J3jftr3MERIZTrWgAY8d8EaMR8vkvv651PFjprRmwwmsK8HZ4UIfXxUY6mmJLc-S6S/s1000/JudgmentNuremberg12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="632" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkUpSvH5xWRZ7Q-GaPza8TSr2YRc3Ay2oX5ZdofM6KwbanXjC-UO3sPgdP2i6cSZOvuuWtdyk2T_TyZ8epwHeSqT2qG9T1ahXXzHF1Bx_n1DO-2ASyWXzSnE09s9J3jftr3MERIZTrWgAY8d8EaMR8vkvv651PFjprRmwwmsK8HZ4UIfXxUY6mmJLc-S6S/s16000/JudgmentNuremberg12.jpg" /></a></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-72009768214891946702024-01-07T01:49:00.001+11:002024-03-12T15:26:12.171+11:00F.P.1 Doesn’t Answer (F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht, 1932)<p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGkNwRjcze_AvzxCB1EMPje_sQ80YaFGDPj8raydGOUPZV5SILljKqkNUHEMAf-6oOm2Onlc-hqH7gs6N2xYJsdax9WHP_G_vZKk2PGciP5Q0gITfCgyyS07Z7S1IYGBmd08YEWkMtMVHxb4jXsfNKQTEX_I-bWNV7J0CFGfp-8mLYXcoxjrc5kSBMfJja/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGkNwRjcze_AvzxCB1EMPje_sQ80YaFGDPj8raydGOUPZV5SILljKqkNUHEMAf-6oOm2Onlc-hqH7gs6N2xYJsdax9WHP_G_vZKk2PGciP5Q0gITfCgyyS07Z7S1IYGBmd08YEWkMtMVHxb4jXsfNKQTEX_I-bWNV7J0CFGfp-8mLYXcoxjrc5kSBMfJja/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Cinema’s first real science fiction movement
was arguably kicked off by Fritz Lang’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2016/10/18/metropolis-1926/" target="_blank">Metropolis</a></i>
(1926) and extended into early sound era, unfolding on both sides of the Atlantic. Karl Hartl’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">F.P.1 Doesn’t
Answer</i> was one of the big-budget products of that mini-boom, and one that sits on a juncture for
lines of enquiry and fascination, branching off along paths historical, genre,
and artistic. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">F.P.1 Doesn’t Answer</i>
was based on a novel by Curt Siodmak, who would later become a major
screenwriter and occasional director in the horror and sci-fi genres. His book revolved
around a striking idea that was, at the time of its publication, cutting-edge,
hard science fiction conceptualism, and one that had been seriously considered
by engineers: the notion that a colossal floating platform could be anchored in
the mid-Atlantic Ocean and used as a way-station and refuelling point for
aircraft flying between the Americas, Europe, and Africa. The idea still has
some steampunk-esque allure for a future that never was, but of course within a
few years of the film’s making it would prove much easier to build planes with
the range to cross the ocean than construct such a platform. The film’s
production had some ironic rhymes with this survey of a cumbersome and
soon-superseded solution to a technical problem involving locale and reach: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">F.P.1 Doesn’t Answer</i> was one of several
movies of the early sound period where different versions were filmed
simultaneously with the same production resources but different actors and
directors. Versions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">F.P.1 Doesn’t
Answer</i> were made in German, French, and English with different directors
and casts, before improvements in sound recording made dubbing the much more
expedient alternative, even if that swiftly opened up a divide of snobbery for
English-language movie markets and everyone else. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-1CTDUcsbi8Rdvf8lolOM7EpTKXEfLD0mPg1cZahFOGGvKC6VNYHpXOMQgLKK1bn2XjRpioQYHUR4Y9K_JTqP3i6Uh5I4PyxMwrsIWn7CLJHrxwxOfko1oCmCxd5NT5tCfmPcMnVto8X9L_1PWXqkNdIgxJkFgRRT7XiQ_eIhRunDImwFlNcGmktmRpAg/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-1CTDUcsbi8Rdvf8lolOM7EpTKXEfLD0mPg1cZahFOGGvKC6VNYHpXOMQgLKK1bn2XjRpioQYHUR4Y9K_JTqP3i6Uh5I4PyxMwrsIWn7CLJHrxwxOfko1oCmCxd5NT5tCfmPcMnVto8X9L_1PWXqkNdIgxJkFgRRT7XiQ_eIhRunDImwFlNcGmktmRpAg/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Of course, a German film made in 1932 inevitably evokes other historical associations, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">F.P.1 Doesn’t Answer</i> proved one of the last of the ambitious,
expensive, often still-famous films that marked producer Erich Pommer’s periods
as the wizard of UFA during its most legendary days, before the Nazi
ascendancy. Aptly, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">F.P.1 Doesn’t Answer</i>
is a movie entirely preoccupied with the opening horizons of the world and its
technology, and the question of whether the spirit of individual people
could possibly keep up with such sharp accelerations, as well as what forces might
conspire to throttle such visions in the cradle. The film opens with a would-be
rousing song, an anthemic paean to the bravery and dedication of pilots, before
shifting to a swanky party where three siblings of the shipbuilding Lennartz
clan are guests. Sister Claire (Sybille Schmitz) gets bored as her brothers
Konrad (Erik Ode) and Matthias (Werner Schott) are ensconced playing cards, but
her ears prick up when she overhears debonair stranger Ellisen (Hans Albers)
mention the family shipyard when he speaks to someone on the phone. Ellisen, a
pilot who’s become celebrated for his skill and daring, soon stages a break-in
of the Lennartz offices and rifles files containing blueprints of a project
marked F.P.1, whilst making sure journalists, including his personal
photographer and publicist Jonny (Peter Lorre), catch wind of his deed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8OKlszN6BzAR3oRQG7BfVPCEfUbIJR4DIrl0K1p6NlvfTioGdoZBF3F4cNsMgRdTQE9VPcsFi1ouIzZGojDLJfgDFpXaTSgzFZ5IbTEt_84bRW73enDD_TZ_9rIvWFQMVk5WvL5u3yvI958ohA3KiXyU_KMMcMV_WyJZWNuFuUldUk4L2-bGPoCdm1MvD/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8OKlszN6BzAR3oRQG7BfVPCEfUbIJR4DIrl0K1p6NlvfTioGdoZBF3F4cNsMgRdTQE9VPcsFi1ouIzZGojDLJfgDFpXaTSgzFZ5IbTEt_84bRW73enDD_TZ_9rIvWFQMVk5WvL5u3yvI958ohA3KiXyU_KMMcMV_WyJZWNuFuUldUk4L2-bGPoCdm1MvD/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Whilst her brothers anxiously try to work
out what was stolen, Claire tracks Ellisen down to a hotel bar, and Ellisen not
only happily admits to his deed but phones up her brothers to tell them he left
the blueprints on a desk. Ellisen reveals it was a publicity stunt to bring
some attention to the F.P.1 project, which was dreamed up by his old friend and
comrade Droste (Paul Hartmann), because the Lennartz honchos have been sitting
on the plans for months without action. Ellisen’s stunt succeeds, as he makes
the F.P.1 project a popular talking point, and soon the Lennartz firm swings
into building the massive craft. There’s an awkwardness to these opening scenes
produced in part by the unnecessarily laboured mechanics of Ellisen’s scheme
and an underlying uncertainty as to what kind of film it wants to be at this
point. The tone veers close to the faintly, prototypically screwball
comedy-like without definite humour, save for one where Ellisen urges Claire to
repeat his instructions over the phone to her brothers only for her to include
his sarcasms verbatim (“You must open your four googly eyes…”), a gag basically
repeated in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2019/06/17/airplane-1980-top-secret-1984/" target="_blank">Airplane!</a></i> (1980). Claire
and Ellisen present common archetypes of the period – Ellisen is the kind of
daring gentleman of action that was everywhere in popular storytelling in the
1920s, Claire a canny product of the flapper age, not quite a business captain
like her brothers but no mere adjunct either: the sight of her in her party
finery surveying the rifled company files still has a faint flicker of
something radical.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwNCkoEUKbrORGQrUfSXtwtApdHQpsSdeYa9tVRgXIioL1f_Z-JQsAxGHMhLRI1b9itqc1RoipSmJ5s0yut2kDRQ-9YPw-rce7DRrQIF8RJ3oEpkRA7d5XBHtcxINjKpX_gDwkIY__0Y6QdpZXar-6NzJcHlMhoa2bxQ0-_QBDkKyR1hT3wuK52aP7yR9x/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwNCkoEUKbrORGQrUfSXtwtApdHQpsSdeYa9tVRgXIioL1f_Z-JQsAxGHMhLRI1b9itqc1RoipSmJ5s0yut2kDRQ-9YPw-rce7DRrQIF8RJ3oEpkRA7d5XBHtcxINjKpX_gDwkIY__0Y6QdpZXar-6NzJcHlMhoa2bxQ0-_QBDkKyR1hT3wuK52aP7yR9x/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">F.P.1
Doesn’t Answer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">
slowly explicates a more unusual take on the basic storyline and characters as it
unfolds, however, with Austrian director Hartl slowly evoking mercurial instability in
Ellisen along with deploying his sliding, attentive camerawork. At times
throughout <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">F.P.1 Doesn’t Answer</i> I
couldn’t help but wonder what it would have looked like if Pommer had hired
Lang to direct it, but Hartl’s sober style starts to count after a while. Like
many early sound films, this one spurns a music score apart from the
interpolated fliers’ anthem and diegetic songs, exacerbating the interesting
sense of flux in the character behaviours, particularly from Albers’
cumulatively effective performance as a man whose zest and daring are hollowed
out and exposed as almost entirely facetious. Ellisen’s humbling runs in
counterpoint to the nominal plot of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">F.P.1
Doesn’t Answer</i>. Ellisen’s ploy to get the F.P.1 built pays off for Droste,
who evolves into the project’s steely-eyed, determined master, whilst Ellisen and
Claire are drawn together. Claire nudges Ellisen to give up his dangerous
lifestyle and settle down with her, but he’s plainly flustered when speaking in
private with Jonny, his frustration mounting until he starts throwing both
objects and Jonny around. He finally receives an offer to fly a new model plane
around the world non-stop with rapturous delight. Claire offers only an ever-so-faintly rueing smile as he reports the offer to her and dashes off with
boyish excitement, signalling her recognition Ellisen won’t settle down, a
moment superbly understated through Hartl’s attention and Schmitz’s performing.
“That’s what Ellisen always says,” Jonny tells her in his indolent way, “‘I’ll
be back in three days,’ and then it takes him three years.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigottECa3C2BhD3ApAdfoTXothoEYDg6UqGN6VSBiDmcEFlJKJy3LUEI2ME8lFITsIn0rBYECiirV1DC5mbwMBHu72d1__YKWEXYMUy2jXPiq_ZaeZZbXwHNngQaPbLIq-5wlWF1SoRdWnG9I9aUl3PCvnZRcKy3UN7F0dwxJGJ6NWwvAF8ePg8cJ8cNaa/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigottECa3C2BhD3ApAdfoTXothoEYDg6UqGN6VSBiDmcEFlJKJy3LUEI2ME8lFITsIn0rBYECiirV1DC5mbwMBHu72d1__YKWEXYMUy2jXPiq_ZaeZZbXwHNngQaPbLIq-5wlWF1SoRdWnG9I9aUl3PCvnZRcKy3UN7F0dwxJGJ6NWwvAF8ePg8cJ8cNaa/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In the next shot Ellisen is winging his
way offer around the world, but when next seen, years later, he’s a shambling,
poorly dressed husk trying to talk up his adventures with the Lennartz brothers
but confessing to Claire that he crashed in the Australian outback during his
circumnavigating adventure and it seemed to break something in him, as all his
ventures since have failed, leaving him destitute and regretful. But Claire in
the meantime has fallen so completely in love with Droste as he builds his
dream she can only say, “I belong to him.” Ellisen’s downfall reminded me
strongly of the early scenes of Lang’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Woman In The Moon</i> (1928) and the depiction of visionaries brought to ruin
by ill fate and the world’s ignorance. Arguably a similar subtext of commentary
is in play, reflecting on the general state of Germany writhing its way through
the shocks of the post-World War I period. Hartl and screenwriter Walter Reisch
(with input from Siodmak) almost seem to be willing Ellisen to become more than
a stock character and lift him to symbolic import, embodying the
endangered and shambolic Weimer-era idealist spirit, and contrasted with the building of the
F.P.1, a statement of confidence in industry and futurism, still looking
outward.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtiMN0m7eZ2ZKysLyFk4JdQN4vuxbUHwAuZQmv2cpm8zhslhwID9vzr62KA4BQ1sZlZmNWVJiJWr8Wfl25iYGDkei7RKGOjgOtQW-P1qWpWvsIT2-KbBlXWguzMdHJn5UtwYC_rATtUgbpbq6MhNa8K3-RnON9LGruIZtvY3uLDud95V1WCQo4zvwHA8ao/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtiMN0m7eZ2ZKysLyFk4JdQN4vuxbUHwAuZQmv2cpm8zhslhwID9vzr62KA4BQ1sZlZmNWVJiJWr8Wfl25iYGDkei7RKGOjgOtQW-P1qWpWvsIT2-KbBlXWguzMdHJn5UtwYC_rATtUgbpbq6MhNa8K3-RnON9LGruIZtvY3uLDud95V1WCQo4zvwHA8ao/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The F.P.1’s construction is depicted meanwhile
in a quasi-abstract montage redolent of the high silent movie style as glimpsed
in Lang and Dziga Vertov. Interludes of the workers on the mighty vessel
arguing over its merits invoke a sense of communal action and expression, but
ultimately the narrative affirms, for good or ill, the F.P.1 as more the
product of Droste’s will. The motif of industrial espionage invoked by
Ellisen’s fake robbery soon gives way to more determined efforts to foil the
F.P.1. Attempts at sabotage during construction are halted by a sinister cabal
of vested interests when Droste uncovers some of their efforts, but resumed once the F.P.1 is anchored in place, with the aim of sinking it. Hartl is almost completely uninterested in
this motivation, only offering a pair of mid-scene cutaways to the nefarious
tycoons plotting the platform’s destruction. The F.P.1 itself
is a fascinating creation that springs right off the page of period sci-fi magazines and engineering articles, realised through a very large model and appearing
the equivalent ancestor of modern oil rigs and airports and the gigantism of
nuclear aircraft carriers. The shift of scene mid-film to the completed and
stationed F.P.1 beholds the impressive sight of the vessel with its lofty
Bauhaus superstructure and oil rig-like stanchions below – the huge model
alternates with a sizeable and costly set built on an island by Erich Kettlehut.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMsEwjiODSG1GO12gx7qf1s4MaBVUbD-AfUkoeT_JJ2LsReCOIMhfR5kO6o9oWZW05BXBA6bSIMvefJFH71Lt66A6lEL0vc8EebiV6g7-VgU5ACMCL_HlR7A62Kjl2aUAVfjkF7pgzMU5urpt7vQRU6bnE0DZdAm1Azzt4fHNwnALrtQZ2Mj82NsaITEr0/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMsEwjiODSG1GO12gx7qf1s4MaBVUbD-AfUkoeT_JJ2LsReCOIMhfR5kO6o9oWZW05BXBA6bSIMvefJFH71Lt66A6lEL0vc8EebiV6g7-VgU5ACMCL_HlR7A62Kjl2aUAVfjkF7pgzMU5urpt7vQRU6bnE0DZdAm1Azzt4fHNwnALrtQZ2Mj82NsaITEr0/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Hartl picks up the communal motif as the
crew of the F.P.1, left without anything to do in the time between rigging
everything and actual planes using the platform, while away the time singing
melancholy songs and fishing from the pylons. Droste gets wind of the effort to
sink the platform when the radio operator is found dazed from an assault, and valves that
control the ballast intake interfered with. Amongst the crew is Jonny, who
signed up in order to get exclusive photos of the platform now that Ellisen isn’t
his meal ticket anymore, but the planted saboteur proves to be the chief
engineer, Damsky (Hermann Speelmans). When Droste sees a message intended for
Damsky coming through on the tickertape machine detailing a rendezvous coming
to pick him up, Droste glances up in confusion only to see Damsky holding a gun
on him. Hartl’s slow-burn style pays off here in the eruption of violent action
as Droste and Damsky have a gunfight in the radio room, whilst the Lennartz
clan hear the sound of the battle coming over their radio to their alarm, and
the two battling men in turn overhear Claire’s frantic cries of concern. Both Droste and Damsky
seem to run out of bullets and Droste rears up for a hand-to-hand struggle,
only for Damsky to slyly pull out a second gun and shoot Droste. Damsky isn’t
much of a shot, however, leaving Droste only wounded, whilst he sets about
ensuring the platform will sink.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRNg8-cuiO5EK24gw0vU8JGF4NaIi5ut4dLgoInn6SpDgRnpOtoCgUB14jJmneXonK0ZnjL_7ne4E1o3Xny5Q5wkbg-AeK6j1PdRly6jOEopzWxY_0Tat9ABWMOhXv85jVDpDy9Cgr4r-7v8Jnnk5zDoWBQYinsCwPAX6O8zgkxxR_ONLiaeG0O4B3j3R4/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRNg8-cuiO5EK24gw0vU8JGF4NaIi5ut4dLgoInn6SpDgRnpOtoCgUB14jJmneXonK0ZnjL_7ne4E1o3Xny5Q5wkbg-AeK6j1PdRly6jOEopzWxY_0Tat9ABWMOhXv85jVDpDy9Cgr4r-7v8Jnnk5zDoWBQYinsCwPAX6O8zgkxxR_ONLiaeG0O4B3j3R4/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">F.P.1
Doesn’t Answer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">
is somewhat hampered by the awkward time frame of the storyline, which is
supposed to span seven years, a period confirmed in inane manner when one of
the F.P.1’s builders, who was complaining of a rotten tooth whilst working on
the platform and later becomes a crewmember, gets the tooth knocked out during
the scramble for the lifeboats as it starts to sink, much to his relief. But
the film’s manner of depicting grand technical enterprise would, in style, be
carried over to the next generation of sci-fi movies for the likes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Destination Moon</i> (1951) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2010/11/when-worlds-collide-1951.html" target="_blank">When Worlds Collide</a></i> (1953) as the
boundaries of sci-fi moved outwards. The human drama on the other hand remains
rooted in the good old eternal triangle: when the F.P.1 falls out of contact
with the shore, Claire becomes afraid for Droste and turns to Ellisen,
languishing in his self-imposed grounding and accompanying poverty, and
convinces him to risk the flight to the platform with her, as the only pilot she knows brave enough to make a venture out to
the platform at such a moment. Ellisen agrees in his oblivious faith that
Claire wants him back in her life, only to be rudely disillusioned when they
reach the stricken platform, and Ellisen turns sour and dissident. Ellisen
crashes upon landing on the platform as Damsky shoots at him, wrecking his
plane, and soon he and Cliare find the saboteur has destroyed other planes
aboard and knocked out the crew by feeding gas into the ventilation system.
Ellisen and Claire lurch through the gas-ridden halls of the platform trying to
revive the crew.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSdnlxzyL4l-ZudaGLmtPcapqNd80bVlN_w_JN1AG4GjgB3ybqBTR0kXY2rCZdSGWM25819qPoq2234cLUf7K5nQkAyBlAkONIlcjhYRcE8l-pPwp21SFpAea6ahdcpXfsv4D8rRKGcRqeOcqCWXc0JCu0iy3Jmyqwjz_OKCSSKOQnfj8E54yxXrXaGFGW/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSdnlxzyL4l-ZudaGLmtPcapqNd80bVlN_w_JN1AG4GjgB3ybqBTR0kXY2rCZdSGWM25819qPoq2234cLUf7K5nQkAyBlAkONIlcjhYRcE8l-pPwp21SFpAea6ahdcpXfsv4D8rRKGcRqeOcqCWXc0JCu0iy3Jmyqwjz_OKCSSKOQnfj8E54yxXrXaGFGW/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The last portion of the film gathers a
peculiar intensity where the lack of scoring actually helps Hartl in building a
simmering tension without a patent hero or villain. Ellisen
backs up the panicking crew of F.P.1 when they want to flee with some
justification – “We sold you our labour, not our lives!” one crewman barks –
but with his anger and disaffection making for a bad motive, whilst Droste
becomes hard and authoritarian, threatening to shoot anyone trying to leave, his determination admirable but his attitude smacking of proto-fascist fanaticism. Ellisen
wins out as the crew flee in the platform’s lifeboats, leaving Droste, Claire,
and other loyalists as well as Ellisen and Jonny behind. Ellisen plays at being
the sarcastic decadent as he and Jonny lazily play chess in a smoke-filled
cabin, whilst Droste and his men desperately try to cobble together a working
plane. Droste, despite the hole in his shoulder, resolves to try and fly the
plane, but Claire approaches Ellisen and, in an interesting scene, prods him to
step up to the job he was born for: “You can let the F.P.1 go under or not – it
is your decision alone.” The three corners of the eternal triangle emerge as
emblems of different zones of a society in rapid transformation and about to
break apart under the pressure – Ellisen the adventurer, Droste the force
of will, Claire the new age woman with short-clipped hair and pencilled
eyebrows dancing at the edge of gender ambiguity but emotional gravitas that
the film associates with something close to a cosmic feminine. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicaBAGXPJFjQpcMSkUFEL7F8b_3grCBbrdAbaRLKn7o13K8ZArBwn27st_LbQhgfRUWEB5jPA7qv27l6kazethIQaLEqjL9O3OD3Tu_cSumgmfgeV69eqr-koIwoMV0T114GBcVs9yYFJIliC2BPl1KjXZi5ApSqeR7bgGwCnFBUvOvxoHuxwQOh5LHjsz/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicaBAGXPJFjQpcMSkUFEL7F8b_3grCBbrdAbaRLKn7o13K8ZArBwn27st_LbQhgfRUWEB5jPA7qv27l6kazethIQaLEqjL9O3OD3Tu_cSumgmfgeV69eqr-koIwoMV0T114GBcVs9yYFJIliC2BPl1KjXZi5ApSqeR7bgGwCnFBUvOvxoHuxwQOh5LHjsz/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Seeing Schmitz, at the high-water
mark of her career between her two canonical horror movie appearances in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vampyr</i> (1932) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2016/10/23/fahrmann-maria-1936-strangler-of-the-swamp-1946/" target="_blank">Ferryman Maria</a></i> (1936), is always interesting, the sardonic and
sensual twist of her mouth constantly subverting the more stolid emotions she’s
expected to play, her very presence investing Claire with layers beyond the
script, particularly in that crucial climax when she approaches Ellisen and
pointedly refuses to humble herself before him even as she admits chagrin for
using him. Albers was the most popular German male lead actor of the era,
although no incredibly handsome matinee idol something of his appeal comes
through in the way Hartl lets him offer a behavioural study, his Ellisen
seeming to exist in a state of flux when both rich and famous and poor and wretched,
throwing things about with inchaote frustration in the former state and lurching
around boozed up in the latter. He’s particularly good in handling Ellisen’s
reappearance, trying to fake his way through his conversation with the Lennartz
brothers with failing interest in his own façade. Lorre, for his part, gives
one of his oddest performances chiefly in going so utterly deadpan, made up to
look considerably older than he was. Jonny drifts with dozy demeanour until he
needles Ellisen over his behaviour during his squall of self-pity: “We…and
you…waste your time, singing, drinking, playing and bawling, when we should be
giving them a hand – do you think that’s right, Mr Airman Ellisen?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ6Yhrfg5x4luHTcgH_VbVw90lrDv0EWh5DDD7ugIfoMWawQ5SVYDtJYhrL4qHivgag_P5Kb_YD0If2zEmAwlQPghwq6lcDJtImCSheKfyievzuL_bJN8bG7XzFpGr225FB53VvjfxJI8wc4ceQU4U-22ZA9zkJeFQ1Hr52r5vFTzPAyCkleIYPW82oUGj/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ6Yhrfg5x4luHTcgH_VbVw90lrDv0EWh5DDD7ugIfoMWawQ5SVYDtJYhrL4qHivgag_P5Kb_YD0If2zEmAwlQPghwq6lcDJtImCSheKfyievzuL_bJN8bG7XzFpGr225FB53VvjfxJI8wc4ceQU4U-22ZA9zkJeFQ1Hr52r5vFTzPAyCkleIYPW82oUGj/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer11.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ellisen, of course, steps up to the plate
of flying off the F.P.1 in the cobbled-together airplane, maintaining his glaze
of brusque casualness until the moment comes to actually take off, as if it’s
all another annoying chore fate has lumped him with. Take off he does and
manages to reach a ship, parachuting out and being picked up. Radio messages
inform the world of F.P.1’s predicament and planes rush to its aid, but Ellisen
sails off with his rescuers who are heading to Chile in search of condors: “You
need to go to Peru,” he informs them airily as he eases back with a cup of
coffee and drifts off into sleep, “I will show you the way, you herd of sheep.”
The tenor of this ending is truly arresting not just in its avoidance of the
usual triumphal blasts but in the way it resolves the encoded tension of the
film’s moment of making. Ellisen drifting away, leaving behind the
triumph-of-the-will power couple he’s saved and been betrayed by, is almost
like watching the spirit of idealist Germany, the old Germany, the dreamer
spirit, if not dying then dipping into a somnolence and sailing off to reap the
blue yonder for condors, whilst the zombiefied carcass left behind turns to
follow graven eagles. And indeed soon its cast and crew would all make their
choices whether to stay or flee. Hartl, who would go on to head the Austrian
film industry in a furtive manner under the Nazis, more immediately went on to
make a well-regarded sci-fi follow-up, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold</i>
(1934), which would be plundered for it impressive special effects footage by
later Hollywood productions including Siodmak’s own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Magnetic Monster</i> (1953). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHPgJNPfRJ3MGlbuZ8ZNVZMcYSjz-iDIFwWzuhUhbT2b48kh2IAe6s82hvLE6PRAi75zDEpiRw1pXav_R7YQF59Mpge91HA2pZ3KndY6l6Qu0chDmJiG4xQMLwKnTyUtE35Pzez3nMadBB2KUOERSzPKMDCeeqJKZObFgFQ48TzibyK9-j54lvR3o6Clol/s800/FP1DoesntAnswer12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHPgJNPfRJ3MGlbuZ8ZNVZMcYSjz-iDIFwWzuhUhbT2b48kh2IAe6s82hvLE6PRAi75zDEpiRw1pXav_R7YQF59Mpge91HA2pZ3KndY6l6Qu0chDmJiG4xQMLwKnTyUtE35Pzez3nMadBB2KUOERSzPKMDCeeqJKZObFgFQ48TzibyK9-j54lvR3o6Clol/s16000/FP1DoesntAnswer12.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-46526585716783059912023-12-29T19:34:00.001+11:002023-12-29T19:34:05.010+11:00Confessions Of A Film Freak and Collected Writing of 2023<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimkLRIU0tIY3yAJaZ8aX6eg5f1ZdAwWDb_KbC_0uAvOeJUKhU7jae_yTP4hAxTotOhHMW0OWqBQ3ceG7Wbuge-1zLs9X6BpAlSVv0cBmBH9ZWfNgrJyNc0S1lfkXtQxcq6FSC_rLB9MdXf9gPapzukR5aSrOFzrbMx1HMaDYWQySr1TWOnAE5_K2lrEiH8/s1600/CFFBanner02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="961" data-original-width="1600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimkLRIU0tIY3yAJaZ8aX6eg5f1ZdAwWDb_KbC_0uAvOeJUKhU7jae_yTP4hAxTotOhHMW0OWqBQ3ceG7Wbuge-1zLs9X6BpAlSVv0cBmBH9ZWfNgrJyNc0S1lfkXtQxcq6FSC_rLB9MdXf9gPapzukR5aSrOFzrbMx1HMaDYWQySr1TWOnAE5_K2lrEiH8/s16000/CFFBanner02.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Well, the remaining hours of 2023 are rapidly
dwindling and soon the whole sorry year will shuffle off on its unlamented way.
But, as usual, I have taken my stock of the year’s cinema in in my annual
Confessions Of A Film Freak, this time with 92 films commented on, including my
best-of-the-year list:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.wordpress.com/2023/12/28/confessions-of-a-film-freak-2023/" style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://filmfreedonia.wordpress.com/2023/12/28/confessions-of-a-film-freak-2023/" style="font-size: 10pt;" target="_blank">Confession Of A Film Freak 2023</a></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Also as usual, I’ve bundled together all my film
writing for the year on one free to download pdf:<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.files.wordpress.com/2023/12/roderick-heath-film-writing-2023.pdf" target="_blank">Roderick Heath Film Writing 2023</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Thank you for reading, friends, and I shall see you
next when the new year is but a crawling infant.<o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-35746122142480070482023-12-09T17:39:00.004+11:002023-12-14T22:17:36.083+11:00Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYEGQWGqzJhU2bhR6xxqqlcVloimruNzBLI0qASFQoz79wCcD1WUcAbQ03N8sqdj_JI8sMsl70h31aa9W9dZe6_7QWT5g3IKb93cXvEcFRjRT2K_XLIpYTf5Wew0lDBv58HyUrSY50BivbzeAZbgH_NpwF1L1jhFuQK-u-M_XCjHHMZ2bJm3FIhO8lW0r/s1281/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYEGQWGqzJhU2bhR6xxqqlcVloimruNzBLI0qASFQoz79wCcD1WUcAbQ03N8sqdj_JI8sMsl70h31aa9W9dZe6_7QWT5g3IKb93cXvEcFRjRT2K_XLIpYTf5Wew0lDBv58HyUrSY50BivbzeAZbgH_NpwF1L1jhFuQK-u-M_XCjHHMZ2bJm3FIhO8lW0r/s16000/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Despite all the plaudits the series has
gained in recent years, I’ve long found the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mission: Impossible</i> films only sufficient as chewing gum for the
eyes. It’s been a franchise whose most salient characteristic is shared with
its constant hero Ethan Hunt – a sort of slick featurelessness with supernal
human elements, deliberately disposable. I’ve never even thought about watching
any entry more than once, save rewatching the series opener during my
occasional revisits to Brian De Palma’s oeuvre, amongst which it plays as one
of his smoothest but also emptiest efforts, not really intense enough to sustain
itself as a high style exercise, and certainly not articulating his deeper
personality and processing his usual scepticism towards power and institutions and
the people who play games of secrets and statecraft to mere shtick. John Woo
clearly thought he was making a homage to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Notorious</i>
(1946) with his 1999 sequel but wrapped it in silliness; J.J. Abrams and Brad
Bird did decent work on their subsequent entries but didn’t deepen it at all.
So I found the proposal that producer and star Tom Cruise and writer-director
Christopher McQuarrie, who took over the series after an array of random
auteurist guests spots with 2015’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rogue
Nation</i> and 2018</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2018/08/mission-impossible-fallout-2018.html" target="_blank">Fallout</a></i>, wanted
to give the series a truly epic send-off was then at once both intriguing and a
little wearisome. A feeling the mass audience seems to have shared, given
recent tardiness towards movies with “Part One” in the title, healthily
developed in the decade or so since the last two <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2011/07/17/harry-potter-and-the-deathly-hallows-part-two-2011/">Harry Potter</a></i> films struck on a great way to make more money for
studios by spitting franchise cappers. This resulted in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Reckoning Part One</i> not doing as well at the box office as
might have been expected. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih3H1NZT9K5CJJJC1mDfAVsKOLqWAUZEIwVz6i4NLtxHfv5OJYok8pZcJJWCWI7kY8P8P5Ggzwwd-gyV8BiqncRqaDtS0Emr9xCz8duEmspvpUvqB8uqtYh5j3GqexFt8hiXSxzb3X5R_V6UA3RzSStKusXFyZrZIZcwtnGi6s17p1d8bpDawAVVx3qBrR/s1281/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih3H1NZT9K5CJJJC1mDfAVsKOLqWAUZEIwVz6i4NLtxHfv5OJYok8pZcJJWCWI7kY8P8P5Ggzwwd-gyV8BiqncRqaDtS0Emr9xCz8duEmspvpUvqB8uqtYh5j3GqexFt8hiXSxzb3X5R_V6UA3RzSStKusXFyZrZIZcwtnGi6s17p1d8bpDawAVVx3qBrR/s16000/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But I owe full plaudits for Cruise and
McQuarrie’s latest entry, and also an apology for not catching it in theatres
when it came along. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Reckoning</i>
starts with what I</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">ll politely call a miniature pastiche of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Hunt For Red October</i> (1990). A Russian submarine, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sevastapol</i>, whilst testing a new silent
propulsion system, accidentally sinks itself when the experimental AI unit
planted in its computer system fakes an attack by an enemy sub: the AI, dubbed
“The Entity,” has become self-perpetuating and malignantly purposeful, and has
deliberately contrived to place its core intelligence out of reach of anyone
trying to contain or control it. Governments the world over nonetheless
scramble to try and gain access to The Entity, which holds the promise of world
domination with its capacity to invade and manipulate every digital realm, with
the only question being whether it’s wielded by a state power or whether The Entity
becomes the world’s sinister, incorporeal dictator. A two-part cruciform key
which unlocks The Entity’s mainframe on the sunken <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sevastapol</i>, retrieved from the body of one of its dead sailors,
becomes the motivating McGuffin of the subsequent plot. One half of it is
captured by Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) when she gets wind of it, and Ethan
(Cruise) is sent to take it from her by CIA boss Kittridge (Henry Czerny).
After an early fake-out where it seems Ilsa is killed by bounty hunters also
after the key, she turns up again aiding Ethan in his angered efforts to find
out what the hell is going on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmwEJkPrbHWmrBiWrQ3ugJpkGuzZ1_ATFv0-Sj87vm34zt0preYs76m3pF67whiF5vrzEiDZweOt-NbBB5J4wqbuSbA4YYA-8PD6r8FskNROO2A5zam3u7K2rSV_srpRv7EFxUAIReOv6l_XeV9SBEJHVL4Gl1HH7k-JXaNsGYB84h1rBYLUowo1RqtzTA/s1281/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmwEJkPrbHWmrBiWrQ3ugJpkGuzZ1_ATFv0-Sj87vm34zt0preYs76m3pF67whiF5vrzEiDZweOt-NbBB5J4wqbuSbA4YYA-8PD6r8FskNROO2A5zam3u7K2rSV_srpRv7EFxUAIReOv6l_XeV9SBEJHVL4Gl1HH7k-JXaNsGYB84h1rBYLUowo1RqtzTA/s16000/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ethan presses this to the point of forcing
Kittridge to help him infiltrate a meeting of top-level US security officials,
also including Denlinger (Cary Elwes), and then knocking everyone out. Now
understanding the threat and enticement represented by The Entity and resolving
to destroy it, Ethan still doesn’t know just what the key accesses, and so
elects to sell Ilsa’s half to someone who does. But the other half is stolen
from the potential buyer (Christopher Sciueref) when Ethan tries to meet him at
Abu Dhabi Airport, by formidably talented thief Grace (Hayley Atwell). A
mysterious double act of assassins, Gabriel (Esai Morales) and Paris (Pom
Klementieff), are more ruthless in pursuit, and two agents of Kittridge’s,
Briggs (Shea Wigham) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis), only want to nab Ethan. All
four rival parties collide and battle in Rome, where Ethan tries to strike up
an alliance with Grace, despite Grace’s singleminded desire to get paid. Grace
was hired by Ethan’s old frenemy “The White Widow” (Vanessa Kirby), who wanted
in her usual purview to auction off such a goodie to the highest bidder, but is
intimidated when confronted by Gabriel, who proves to be a fanatical believer
in The Entity as a god of death. Gabriel also – holy backstory, Batman! –
killed Ethan’s one-time lover in as-yet murky circumstances, and set him on the
path to joining the IMF. Ethan is soon given fresh, bitter reason to hate
Gabriel, a hate with the potential to finally drive him off his usually
selfless sense of mission and seek revenge at the potential cost of the world’s
end.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvT2Zq8TBMxKH4A65Fw3CxjVzYwQsLkT5QWcf2BMoRAvWxtBWS6c9rBodnA0qCA7L7IEtYxIC32SUkGrYQeq9gJ2qCgQbUCsKbUqpyVWHvSzjd6nreQ8eDitV6GtNj-jzYtKIH_OHT_ghwHSm3agQuYtrXRmFau-FP8v1BnNZmvTHkbtYLoLIirVDV5FjZ/s1281/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvT2Zq8TBMxKH4A65Fw3CxjVzYwQsLkT5QWcf2BMoRAvWxtBWS6c9rBodnA0qCA7L7IEtYxIC32SUkGrYQeq9gJ2qCgQbUCsKbUqpyVWHvSzjd6nreQ8eDitV6GtNj-jzYtKIH_OHT_ghwHSm3agQuYtrXRmFau-FP8v1BnNZmvTHkbtYLoLIirVDV5FjZ/s16000/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Dead
Reckoning Part One</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">’s
more serious and genuinely dramatic take on the usual template is partly
enabled through The Entity. AI, supercomputer, and digital doohickies as plot
drivers are the most timely but also most consistently boring in the current
pantheon of blockbuster storytelling – I still wince a little when I remember
the countdown to the big nasty spy computer going online in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2015/11/spectre-2015.html" target="_blank">Spectre</a></i> (2015). But McQuarrie’s script
actually uses The Entity cleverly in the story, as the AI proves able to
infiltrate security systems and other tech to mislead and misdirect our heroes
and pull veils over its allies. Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames also return as
Ethan’s helpmates Benji and Luther, who find their jobs made harder, and
finally close to impossible, by an enemy who rules the turf of the digital
world they’re usually supposed to command and manipulate to smooth Ethan’s
path: The Entity proves able to erase Gabriel from the sight of cameras in real
time, and later uses deepfake abilities to lure Ethan into a double-edged trap.
This eventually forces them to step back from the tech they usually use with
orchestral skill to stay a step ahead of their foes. That’s another trope this
series made pretty <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de rigeur</i> – heroes
dashing about with their pet tech wizards rattling off instructions in their
earpiece – that’s become stultifying, now suddenly disrupted, even if Ethan and
team quickly develop their workarounds by falling back on twitchier analogue
tech. The stranger thing on display here is that Pegg, who was the funky new
blood in the series a decade ago, now looks rather dismayingly haggard, whereas
Rhames’ ability to blend the gravitas of long and hard experience with
simmering good-humour is a virtue not enough filmmakers exploit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDFMbi_yi6hzC_2HpRBp7PZFj1CnOexG4T0qDDcPHwltpfeAUqUn3EEIcy3v1I_SMqWhW3dyjXkEIwh-XUbUbEJRVoNuzF9yGDGEvDtRAz2lH8KYDUIPOV2uHQTyl1dPIi-mDSvZOcORXRHPPYFoL1VE6WYJGgDodPMWQ7fFboyJ6s8MLzZYE4EcWDu2nE/s1281/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDFMbi_yi6hzC_2HpRBp7PZFj1CnOexG4T0qDDcPHwltpfeAUqUn3EEIcy3v1I_SMqWhW3dyjXkEIwh-XUbUbEJRVoNuzF9yGDGEvDtRAz2lH8KYDUIPOV2uHQTyl1dPIi-mDSvZOcORXRHPPYFoL1VE6WYJGgDodPMWQ7fFboyJ6s8MLzZYE4EcWDu2nE/s16000/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Wigham and Davis also are stuck with the
most thankless type of part in this sort of thing – the representatives of
higher authority who are the straight-arrow doppelgangers of the gone-rogue
protagonists and who might eventually prove to be allies in waiting. Still the
actors give the parts their best: Wigham in particular has the right energy,
coming across as he does at once hardbitten but also a little tattered as a working
stiff playing supercop. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead
Reckoning Part One</i> pulls off a balancing act that’s rare
at the best of times and damn near miraculous considering how indifferently
flung together many movies are in out great and glorious new streaming age. On
the one hand, McQuarrie goes for a more serious and genuinely dramatic take on
the usual template, charged with moments of high melodrama and genuine stakes
for its heroes. The feeling of new uncertainty even pays off in the shocking
mid-film death of a major character, and the mooted generation handover
implicit in the storyline might well lead to greater losses down the line.
McQuarrie alternates the flashy action setpieces with lengthy but increasingly
intense sequences where the characters engage in games of enticing and verbal
strongarming, including a multiparty confrontation in a Venetian nightclub, and
the climactic sequence in which Grace pretends to be the White Widow with one
of the custom IMF masks, sent to deceive Kittridge on the Orient Express.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDk8xKkwNIpvykI5czhrXwJDuYSYE4_Fd37pesnADSmS35Of0wCy1Rg_Jw3o22nWeQCG12-zUsxJ4pT_KLZb8Hc51g84XCzc_PqpKJtDOBZWaCXY4T4m06DGE8McCPIMmqOqH-0J3MNGvoorUs_7oesqsvgtlAQuvH1ko3wsa2s29yuKsSKktldVFPcO-m/s1281/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDk8xKkwNIpvykI5czhrXwJDuYSYE4_Fd37pesnADSmS35Of0wCy1Rg_Jw3o22nWeQCG12-zUsxJ4pT_KLZb8Hc51g84XCzc_PqpKJtDOBZWaCXY4T4m06DGE8McCPIMmqOqH-0J3MNGvoorUs_7oesqsvgtlAQuvH1ko3wsa2s29yuKsSKktldVFPcO-m/s16000/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The outcomes of these scenes feel genuinely
purposeful and ratcheting in their tension, and not just in the way McQuarrie
uses them to turn what used to be the most superfluous parts of these movies –
the parts where the heroes stand around looking at a diagram and and deliver
exposition for the plot – into more dynamic things where story and character
click together. The protagonists are forced to battle their own innermost
natures, and the choices and foes they face threaten to destroy all sure sense
of gravity, as when Gabriel presents Ethan the prospect of seeing either Ilsa
or Grace killed, and Grace is given a shot at gaining all she wants in life at
a terrible price. At the same time, McQuarrie, armed with a newly fine and
inspired touch with his action directing, decorates the film with levels of
freewheeling mayhem and matinee serial-like motion. The film’s first major
action scene sees Ethan dashing into the desert to aid Ilsa, who’s holed up in
a ghost town whilst a band of mounted mercenaries attack her. McQuarrie
delivers such delights as Ilsa pulling down an eye patch to improve her
marksmanship on a colossal sniper rifle, whilst Ethan spins through a
sandstorm, the man himself a whirlwind of violence, all filmed by
cinematographer Fraser Taggart with looming, swooping lensing. And this scene
proves just a relatively throwaway curtain-raiser, touching base with the
conviction that any self-respecting epic film needs an interlude of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lawrence of Arabia</i>-esque (1962)
communion with the desert expanse. More profanely, it also hints that Cruise
never quite gave up on the promise in the last images of his most ridiculed
recent star vehicle, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mummy</i>
(2017).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTGIJ9TPFGyNoLNY-d-7MWSUyLD8BbHGe41eJD5XThNYaGVajeKlnhBPSLY7GVKWIAVAVraLiWntvUd9CSNRW57uBN4laLSiwy4h1xqWJKqZ4lDo6cR89pBIL2Mis6oWynV23_VZjTNoSl9ULXR6VmUt7ToTi2J5fUWc_Omf5uiqIANzuJWYXRadTl8H0V/s1281/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTGIJ9TPFGyNoLNY-d-7MWSUyLD8BbHGe41eJD5XThNYaGVajeKlnhBPSLY7GVKWIAVAVraLiWntvUd9CSNRW57uBN4laLSiwy4h1xqWJKqZ4lDo6cR89pBIL2Mis6oWynV23_VZjTNoSl9ULXR6VmUt7ToTi2J5fUWc_Omf5uiqIANzuJWYXRadTl8H0V/s16000/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Klementieff’s Paris in particular, a
lethally hot, hotly lethal hired gun who grins in delight whilst unleashing
utter havoc in contrast to Ethan, Grace, and Ilsa’s slyer brand of
professionalism, has a quality far closer to the classical ideal of a James
Bond movie character than that rival series has dared offer in years. And
coming out in the wake of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2021/11/16/no-time-to-die-2021/" target="_blank">No Time To Die</a></i>
(2021) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2023/07/02/indiana-jones-and-the-dial-of-destiny-2023/" target="_blank">Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</a></i> (2023), two truly dolorous films that made me wish their heroes had
died sooner, the expert blend of fun and ferocity found here in feels like a
tonic that finally leaves such rival imprimaturs in McQuarrie’s wake. Also one
has to smirk a little at the idea of producer Cruise contriving to shoot a
scene where he gets his head squeezed between Klementieff’s thighs. In a fight
scene, you filthy-minded perverts. This points to one significantly improved
element of this entry – McQuarrie feels newly confident in his action scenes,
aiming bigger and scoring the same. The emphasis is more purely on cliffhanger
thrills, including a most literal take on that word in the climax where Ethan
and grace dangle above a long drop to quick death in a sequence reminiscent of
the best scene in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lost World:
Jurassic Park</i> (1996). The film’s frenzied highpoint comes a little earlier,
however, when Ethan charges pell-mell through the Venetian byways and battles
off Paris and another goon, whilst Ilsa intervenes to save Grace from Gabriel,
and the two super-assassins face off with blades on a bridge, each relishing
the contest as a contest of professional pride as well as of the motives that
have brought them to such a time and place.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT38ns1eDfxbW9iX2QuO41n1eB-7ozGhbhj4hO60ZX4XAQWPd1KNVlIAHi4_w3WAlEGwOolkHS84wygBCVj9JX8SuvPRHiH6XLqEYcW-DQMo44ReNzFmXZ_m5tyrZK3G6BXChVX-SZaiK4QcYi0eGaO-2RbMFX_BE3uYuzln8JsD1jVcA-qctjRPgWweI3/s1281/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT38ns1eDfxbW9iX2QuO41n1eB-7ozGhbhj4hO60ZX4XAQWPd1KNVlIAHi4_w3WAlEGwOolkHS84wygBCVj9JX8SuvPRHiH6XLqEYcW-DQMo44ReNzFmXZ_m5tyrZK3G6BXChVX-SZaiK4QcYi0eGaO-2RbMFX_BE3uYuzln8JsD1jVcA-qctjRPgWweI3/s16000/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The extended car chase in Rome, which
breaks up into several small, tonally and stylistically varied segments,
provide the movie’s midsection and offers a marvellous encapsulation of
McQuarrie’s fresh delight. The usual roundelay of charging down narrow lanes
leaving sideswiped cars in the wake is freshened up not just with particularly
vigorous shooting and cutting, but aspects of high farce. McQuarrie forces
interaction between Ethan and Grace – he has them handcuffed together at one
point, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a la</i> the heroes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 39 Steps</i> (1935) – and Grace, who for
all her talents of guile and sleight-of -hand is no swashbuckler is forced to
ride out a steep learning curve, as she’s not a great driver, so her careening
progress through the narrow Roman streets becomes a carnival of destruction. A
highly manoeuverable IMF car provided for operatives proves unexpected in make
and hard to control, whilst Paris simply crashes through and over every
obstacle in a giant hummer. These ideas help make the sequence distinct from
the many interchangeable car chases in that have permeated recent
action-thrillers, with McQuarrie’s concussive but coherent direction and the
expertise of the actors helping augment it all into a symphony of genre
filmmaking. In particular, the contrast with the similar Tangiers street chase
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,</i>
as comedy-flecked action staging, that the differences could be worth a
semester of film school, particularly as a lesson in how to characterise on the
run. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIfSUoIlXBEMaR-7bA4R_i0c96wJINboYDox2ZrQ9SQMJFxEouoiLmxRdlAKgUHPQiOUTgM-STHtk4QRPpfuYgIeyFXotfwKgvXVcA5izgMNY0oroezyP94Nz7Wx4pFd7HL3xeQ1dtNeo23aGD-74kMGxjge99F_Fn6FPvOoctKkOgmtqenWnyhnHr2u21/s1281/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIfSUoIlXBEMaR-7bA4R_i0c96wJINboYDox2ZrQ9SQMJFxEouoiLmxRdlAKgUHPQiOUTgM-STHtk4QRPpfuYgIeyFXotfwKgvXVcA5izgMNY0oroezyP94Nz7Wx4pFd7HL3xeQ1dtNeo23aGD-74kMGxjge99F_Fn6FPvOoctKkOgmtqenWnyhnHr2u21/s16000/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Cruise himself finally betrays signs of
slowing down just a little: the compulsory shots of him running pell-mell on a
rooftop see him starting to look a bit heavy-footed, even if so much of the
film still revolves around his aura of bulletproof omnicompetence and level of
gutsiness that transcends the realm of the mere actor and becomes almost a form
of existential challenge, closer to a highwire acrobat’s act. As someone
once said of William Holden around the time of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wild Bunch</i> (1969), his compensation for any sign of wear and
tear is finally showing hints of character: if it was hard to believe the Tom
Cruise of the first film back in 1996 would bleed, let alone die, this one
actually moves me through the spectacle of his sheer physical grit. McQuarrie even
turns Cruise’s dedication into a more overt dramatic concern within the film, as Ethan
repeatedly promises to Grace that if he sends her into danger, he will put
everything on the line to come to her aid. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead
Reckoning Part One</i> hasn’t been nearly as successful as Cruise’s previous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2022/06/09/top-gun-1986-top-gun-maverick-2022/" target="_blank">Top Gun: Maverick</a> </i>(2022), but it’s vastly
superior as a work of filmmaking. The only real fault is that it’s a bit
long. Some of the potentially exhausting surplus on display here is hinted by
the way the opening credits, sporting the latest, dramatic variation on Lalo
Schifrin’s eternal theme music (how cool nonetheless that in the context of
a blockbuster movie of 2023 I find I still have reason to mention Schifrin),
don’t unspool until half-an-hour into the film, which could be a new record.
Still, McQuarrie manages to keep his foot on the gas right until the end, so I even
enjoyed the excessiveness of it all. Check that: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">especially</i> the excessiveness of it all. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSDraXKEEap0RfC6XudZkyTn2mhxbNjVHPUEk4eblKYgXA_AK8ieufNUdx7HoN11TGt6xh-VYsLTAWk6qztHv9tMJrkM46Vi5fwk6z07-cX6HmWYnnY1YAqJVs250LKS1GEiYAepxEiAFhuBXAvaOjiltIUp9QiAUEex7TfNWS8GQ_YYb7X_FSK9duzs4B/s1281/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSDraXKEEap0RfC6XudZkyTn2mhxbNjVHPUEk4eblKYgXA_AK8ieufNUdx7HoN11TGt6xh-VYsLTAWk6qztHv9tMJrkM46Vi5fwk6z07-cX6HmWYnnY1YAqJVs250LKS1GEiYAepxEiAFhuBXAvaOjiltIUp9QiAUEex7TfNWS8GQ_YYb7X_FSK9duzs4B/s16000/MIDeadReckoning1Pt1-10.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-75098822443461641642023-11-25T03:40:00.026+11:002023-12-06T01:34:28.050+11:00The Marvels (2023)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6KYCUzw2Aj_SnkKmPK3mJx0brtM5gffRnPYD-0KWYn91iiA9dBHbuYhkQBhEvOsEeiC7Jtzgq-1i8ubkr-VWh-ZsPWx_W8KPKy0EJASC6t4xdpBvrpbLcNcyVUnQYp32I6LorViB1eo3eLvEpvSedG8YLrj8OUm6qK4U-WtVe7tV7SLIrOSCBXQFly-R/s1613/TheMarvels01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6KYCUzw2Aj_SnkKmPK3mJx0brtM5gffRnPYD-0KWYn91iiA9dBHbuYhkQBhEvOsEeiC7Jtzgq-1i8ubkr-VWh-ZsPWx_W8KPKy0EJASC6t4xdpBvrpbLcNcyVUnQYp32I6LorViB1eo3eLvEpvSedG8YLrj8OUm6qK4U-WtVe7tV7SLIrOSCBXQFly-R/s16000/TheMarvels01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It seems already likely that Nia
DaCosta’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Marvels</i> will be
remembered as the movie that marked a decisive downturn in the fortunes of the
Marvel Cinematic Universe, if not quite its crunching headlong demise. The
reasons for the film’s extremely underwhelming performance come down I think
chiefly to a very simple and inevitable phenomenon – general public exhaustion
with the superhero movie glut, which turned a modestly fun type of movie into
the major blockbuster cash cow of the last decade. But other factors are in
play too, some of them more interesting than whole movies in the MCU
cycle. 2023 certainly has marked a calamitous year for superhero movies, with
all the entries put out by Warner Bros.’ DC Comics partnership going belly up,
a raft of failure partly enforced by the way the studio unwisely announced it
was abandoning its long-ailing cycle before the current slate was released,
sapping them of the elusive frisson of interconnectedness that made the style
so addictive. Disney-Marvel, for their part, made a move that on paper seemed
like an ideal business tactic but only resulted in badly diffusing their
audience, their fictional universe, and their reputation for reliable quality:
extending the MCU into a raft of shows featured on their streaming platform,
which meant that whole new characters and vital plot developments in relation
to the MCU seem to be popping randomly into existence for those who were just
happy to watch the movies two or three times a year, when they were reliable
ways to spend a couple of hours in a movie theatre.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJzOnKYSzrO2wzRNfD66pqedgpRzC4zXY7Egx_cxh7kcalTWAdZ759vRwsEube4IS73YwjkStBS2pVbkBSHx7T8K9tKCySRXVBD8PFkdsprJaWNmYr-_xpTpSSkF3U-Fl-8-Ty7ZJFdvpJU6FbohGw7e-i6cjqeuv9MyXoB5BVGAb9skylmdpU_aIki6NO/s1613/TheMarvels02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJzOnKYSzrO2wzRNfD66pqedgpRzC4zXY7Egx_cxh7kcalTWAdZ759vRwsEube4IS73YwjkStBS2pVbkBSHx7T8K9tKCySRXVBD8PFkdsprJaWNmYr-_xpTpSSkF3U-Fl-8-Ty7ZJFdvpJU6FbohGw7e-i6cjqeuv9MyXoB5BVGAb9skylmdpU_aIki6NO/s16000/TheMarvels02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The COVID pandemic also seems to have
marked a shift in audience habits and appetites, as well as political events
that helped break, if not entirely relieve, the fever sweat-like sublimation
from the youth audience that drove the franchise to its wildest heights of
popularity, on top of more mundane things like the storytelling and marketing
savvy that marked Disney-Marvel’s confidence, which reached its natural
high-tide limit with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2019/04/avengers-endgame-2019.html" target="_blank">Avengers: Endgame</a></i>
(2019). Like its major precursor in the MCU cycle, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2019/03/captain-marvel-2019.html" target="_blank">Captain Marvel</a></i> (2018), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Marvels</i> is plainly and proudly the product of the late 2010s zeitgeist,
with the surge in online progressive demands for rhetorically fit films, as a
superhero film starring and made by women. Such was the kind of concession that, after
the success of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2018/02/20/black-panther-2018/" target="_blank">Black Panther</a></i> (2018),
seemed not merely canny but perhaps compulsory in keeping up with the audience
mood, without quite realising how quickly that mood changes in the internet
age. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Captain Marvel</i> was almost
immediately rendered a relic of the particular moment that produced it: it made
a colossal sum of money despite being an astonishing mediocrity thanks to the
feedback loop of being both an entry in a very popular cycle at the height of
said popularity, whilst also proposing to give that cycle a supposed new glint
of radicalism by offering the MCU’s first outright, front-rank female
superhero. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKXIhWpQO1iZ7GPjbB7GMxl_JkiYLmWO-jPw3j0KTEPZh87GzcNTLR9AiDG0_ZrZjodPpMRkfeB-iBfcRYMv6obEZdNVSLWJOE78MDMPfY_HuiZ0TRUZNo0wCKswg702RGgZMWHddZrk-1MuodcxdCvyvDerZTWlWAX2kFfoQGK_2MBqPff9O6yJl3k873/s1613/TheMarvels03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKXIhWpQO1iZ7GPjbB7GMxl_JkiYLmWO-jPw3j0KTEPZh87GzcNTLR9AiDG0_ZrZjodPpMRkfeB-iBfcRYMv6obEZdNVSLWJOE78MDMPfY_HuiZ0TRUZNo0wCKswg702RGgZMWHddZrk-1MuodcxdCvyvDerZTWlWAX2kFfoQGK_2MBqPff9O6yJl3k873/s16000/TheMarvels03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But the turn of the zeitgeist has its
other hemisphere. There’s a large cadre of partisans eager to see it fail as a
nail in the coffin of the franchise’s turn towards such emblazoned progressive
prerogatives, and those who more generally feel the MCU has been degenerating
in quality, and indeed who feel the turn towards embracing social concerns is
being used to veil that rapidly waning product. In all honesty, to my eye, recent movies in the MCU cycle have veered from the pleasantly negligible to
the woozily impressive, but then they always have.
What I would agree with is that, by and large, the recent run have betrayed quite
a bit of hesitation from the creative team when it comes to trying at once to
engage with more complex genre ideas particularly now they’re trying to branch
out into a “multiverse,” but do so in the most simplified, glycerine-soaked
fashion imaginable, so as not to turn off the 8-year-olds and the more easily perplexed dads</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">in the audience</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">. The
multiverse angle in itself, whilst promising endless possibility, feels in
practice mostly like a vortex of self-referential doom. And where the early MCU
films earned their audience with well-crafted and dramatically intent vehicles
for their most famous heroes, the cycle now is leaning on a succession of what
are in TV terms backdoor pilots for second-string heroes being shuffled through
to take their baffling places at the heart of the cycle. <o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">If <i><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2023/07/guardians-of-galaxy-vol-3-2023.html" target="_blank">Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3</a></i> (2023) played as a worthy capstone to the MCU as it stood, <i>The Marvels</i> proposes injecting new blood, only to find the blood bank a little low on stock.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPlto1Hg1CKv-_JuqMOdaZcfPU3aey3_PvYU7k9rfVEFXQgMuGg9yPBh0cKhmNIouSexSbqu-iOE8rlQ_fq-vINrgXMh3cxPXLn6oPA8LoeP5-VXWVMN-YgC8kz5ivx8hsgVB3Be5pKGyBt8HOUIYIiVelSKU-QJRX0ywRZSan0qZvGxf84062SinJvlup/s1613/TheMarvels04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPlto1Hg1CKv-_JuqMOdaZcfPU3aey3_PvYU7k9rfVEFXQgMuGg9yPBh0cKhmNIouSexSbqu-iOE8rlQ_fq-vINrgXMh3cxPXLn6oPA8LoeP5-VXWVMN-YgC8kz5ivx8hsgVB3Be5pKGyBt8HOUIYIiVelSKU-QJRX0ywRZSan0qZvGxf84062SinJvlup/s16000/TheMarvels04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">All of that is, of course, theoretically
distinct from the question of judging DaCosta’s new film as an independent
cinematic entity. DaCosta grabbed attention with the interesting, gritty, if
rather one-note drama <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Woods</i>
(2018) and moved on to more populist fare with a remake of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Candyman</i> (2021). Here she has a near-thankless task, trying to
stitch together a coherent narrative revolving around one established heroine, who
is still nonetheless in need of being properly and effectively defined as more
than a placard advertising supposed awesomeness, and two more birthed in
streaming shows I haven’t seen. Brie Larson returns as Carol ‘Captain Marvel’
Danvers, who, after breaking loose of the villainous Kree Empire and its
supercomputer controller, the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">Supreme Intelligence, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">in her debut film, vanished into deep space for a
quarter-century attending to various missions of mercy only to return in </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Avengers: Endgame</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">. Teyonah Parris is
Monica Rambeau, the daughter of Carol’s old pal and former fellow fighter pilot
Maria (Lashana Lynch), now gifted with superpowers of her own thanks to an
encounter with a witch’s spell (apparently) as well as working as an astronaut for SHIELD’s
less militaristic successor as Earth-protecting sentries, SABER. Kamala ‘Ms.
Marvel’ Khan (Iman Vellani) possesses a mysterious alien artefact, a bracelet that allows her to
briefly form solid matter from light to use as weapons or tools, and a family heirloom that
bespeaks hidden influences in her heritage.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkAr4nxN-yjJ0XY5OW1PWFZSlkZmlstwjzI_qq3G4j9q0oyZJUq8O3MY5m-n61H5XvkIQey-1A0P4OvuIzsguzvwhpqj9rddL9-lmXFV8iXvuVwYFovNv2iZ5jqtnyVOBQCischaKComA1Z2Wp7reOlI4x6MxnmAKKDLgUjTI-TfxuKVQN4DWQeHEnmoak/s1613/TheMarvels05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkAr4nxN-yjJ0XY5OW1PWFZSlkZmlstwjzI_qq3G4j9q0oyZJUq8O3MY5m-n61H5XvkIQey-1A0P4OvuIzsguzvwhpqj9rddL9-lmXFV8iXvuVwYFovNv2iZ5jqtnyVOBQCischaKComA1Z2Wp7reOlI4x6MxnmAKKDLgUjTI-TfxuKVQN4DWQeHEnmoak/s16000/TheMarvels05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The three women are linked together by
fate but not quite by chance, as a Kree warrior, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), now
risen to take the place of Ronan (yawn) as her race’s cosmos-crossing warlord,
wants revenge on Carol for shattering their society and to replenish the
Kree’s plundered natural resources at the same time. To this end she tracks
down the partner to Kamala’s bracelet: the two bracelets are artefacts out of
myth which have the capacity to establish and control hyperspace jump points.
Dar-Benn lures Carol and Maria to an unstable jump point, and the two women, as
well as Kamala through the bracelet she wears, find themselves
quantum-entangled, swapping places and abilities when any of them draws on
their powers. Once they regain sufficient control and fight off some of
Dar-Benn’s goons, the trio join forces and head off into space to try and head
off Dar-Benn’s predations, which include stealing the atmosphere from a planet
being used as a refuge by the Skrulls and the oceans of the water-rich Aladna,
whose prince Yan (Park Seo-joon) Carol is married to, so she swears, purely as
a diplomatic nicety. Meanwhile Carol’s long-time friend and supporter, superspy
Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), contends with Dar-Benn’s ravages, which set in
motion the slow disintegration of the new space platform he commands under the
aegis of SABER. He brings Kamala’s good-natured family aboard, and finds
unexpected aid in the disaster through Carol’s alien cat pet Goose, which is
not just a truly bizarre alien tentacle monster capable of swallowing and
regurgitating people entire hidden within a cute and furry exterior, but proves to be literally having kittens too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_DUk09LjTl96fB_3VvQjpLpm0nFgsJ1gLMdvjU-tu6eElTwi6tL1rIPj71lHUUknY_i_PovhZl1vmIThr83APyKKyE6utcpzFlW8-PBuATObYKk2qJH95GhIrVHS9BSb0MJdvxvj1pHS1ZIKa5ND-vzNKBL1jljygx3r6b3L45r5fUiUhGofKyJZNWr7a/s1613/TheMarvels06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_DUk09LjTl96fB_3VvQjpLpm0nFgsJ1gLMdvjU-tu6eElTwi6tL1rIPj71lHUUknY_i_PovhZl1vmIThr83APyKKyE6utcpzFlW8-PBuATObYKk2qJH95GhIrVHS9BSb0MJdvxvj1pHS1ZIKa5ND-vzNKBL1jljygx3r6b3L45r5fUiUhGofKyJZNWr7a/s16000/TheMarvels06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The way the above synopsis quickly
becomes a near-impenetrable thicket of series lore and characters seems to bear
out the problems besetting the MCU cycles at this point. But in all truth, none
of it’s that hard to grasp. Kamala is the goofy fan-girl unexpectedly thrust
into the same elite zone as her special hero. Monica is her older, weathered but wispily haunted counterpart – she too worshipped Carol as a youngster, but now
finds their relationship charged with discomfort thanks to Carol’s long
absence, from which she returned and spent time with Maria when she was dying from
cancer, an event Monica was absent for because she was one of the victims of
Thanos’s demi-genocide. The trio quickly meshes into a working unit, and
contend with a villainess who’s defined as a radicalised product of Carol’s
righteous but short-sighted actions. Ashton has some icy charisma as Dar-Benn, but her character
isn’t given nearly enough screen time and dramatic heft to resolve as much more
than the regulation guest baddie of the instalment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilp7ODjpn-ZMwSEzZVlS7078E3jTE-Ykygrp5CpO6F0bKTpXQeTkhqeGUY35AvynLSdXs99JJZ13zCZr-QXJ6fvRaCT-zqW_gJDQrkgBYs3UIo71hGY5Yq_B7rwIy7lozx4lDIO1arZSR5lZHPh7eXhVwKCgqnHdCoi3EAB64Mv9WuyZTAc2NbVwJjuxC0/s1613/TheMarvels07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilp7ODjpn-ZMwSEzZVlS7078E3jTE-Ykygrp5CpO6F0bKTpXQeTkhqeGUY35AvynLSdXs99JJZ13zCZr-QXJ6fvRaCT-zqW_gJDQrkgBYs3UIo71hGY5Yq_B7rwIy7lozx4lDIO1arZSR5lZHPh7eXhVwKCgqnHdCoi3EAB64Mv9WuyZTAc2NbVwJjuxC0/s16000/TheMarvels07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">At least until things start to break down
in the last third, I found <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Marvels</i>
surprisingly enjoyable. Even if it at points the film’s plotline felt rushed
and spasmodic – the result, most likely, of some heavy pre-release pruning and
reshooting – then at least the story hits the ground running and for the most
does a good job of weaving in the substantive character and emotional beats
with the footloose tenor of the comedy-action tale it wants to be. The early
scenes of the three heroines faced with sudden, jarring shifts in locale and
situation, and the chaos that ensues, are deftly choreographed and shot – props
to DaCosta and her cinematographer Sean Bobbitt for the nimble
camerawork and glossy veneer. Although it’s a more spirited and
zestily paced, and rather less pseudo-momentous, entry in the MCU cycle than
Chloe Zhao’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2021/11/eternals-2021.html" target="_blank">Eternals</a></i> (2021),
DaCosta reveals similar instincts to Zhao when it comes to wanting to inflect
the superhero movie’s stylistic lexicon with would-be hilarious segues into the
musical, nodding to Bollywood cinema as a point of reference in a sidetrack to
Aladna where the locals only communicate in song and so song-and-dance numbers are the
requisite mode of diplomacy. This is a great idea DaCosta doesn’t develop
nearly as much as she might have, and dumps almost immediately, but still
wrings a few moments of breezy absurdity from.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyLdtsNPHeZcnjkvgR0iWbRqV0hZfOOZgPmVHao2nWDOEyYaOOsXXtKKXnziKvwjp1ZkmEmGRuErVYw9OI6DwMSwHxTfL6upUnLCwPjLvdLDxwmZ78Nx8oXBCrnrHz_IMPl8gcEH5RMBOYmbqI2xhxKiguZaG9xXktZxbXPQouvgM-3Z2x1EWCntiVfs0D/s1613/TheMarvels08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyLdtsNPHeZcnjkvgR0iWbRqV0hZfOOZgPmVHao2nWDOEyYaOOsXXtKKXnziKvwjp1ZkmEmGRuErVYw9OI6DwMSwHxTfL6upUnLCwPjLvdLDxwmZ78Nx8oXBCrnrHz_IMPl8gcEH5RMBOYmbqI2xhxKiguZaG9xXktZxbXPQouvgM-3Z2x1EWCntiVfs0D/s16000/TheMarvels08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This also helps highlight the way DaCosta
and Larson seem anxious to invest Carol with something like specific character
traits, beyond the featureless, waxen stoicism offered in Anna Fleck and Ryan
Boden’s introduction for her, whilst also finding some gently ribbing humour
value in her Kevlar sheen, particularly when being reunited with her
mellifluous husband obliges Carol to break out her best moves and vocals. Early
in the film there’s more emphasis on Carol’s tendency to get frantic and
talkative with father figure Fury, with whom Kamala also connects in rather
more immediate fashion when the two are thrust together to fight off Kree
heavies. Larson</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">s attempts to project glazed toughness still look vacuous, but her way of dropping in expert comic hints of confusion and momentary fazing in the face of the madness mounting about her reminded me of Roger Moore</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">s James Bond, in a good way. Trouble is, we end up with two or three versions of Carol, none of
them still quite adding up into a truly coherent figure. I also got the feeling that
Larson seems to be trying to shake off the character’s rather sexless image,
with rather tighter, sleeker costume this time around, and swanning about in crop-tops
when out of it. Vellani has a lot of personality, which helps make up for the way
the script doesn’t always know what to do with her and her skillset. Parris has
on paper another thankless task, playing the heroine stuck between Carol’s
established omnicompetence and Kamala’s plucky, delighted neophyte, but she
tackles the role with enough conviction to be subtly impressive, particularly
in the gritty physicality she exhibits in the fight scenes: Parris might not be able to move through solid walls like her character, but her eyes certainly seem able to glare through them. There’s a
marvellous mid-film montage set to the Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic” that sees
Carol, Monica, and Kamala forging into an effective team and working out how to
take advantage of their entanglement, sporting some nifty special effects that
make sport of the idea of the destabilised powers idea, and also manage the
extremely tricky feat of amplifying rather than disrupting the chemistry of the
actresses. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2106ewUVMVLtQpeiTX8G93MGE8Xe0L1kpF3UFXIfHLOKQJYirS5RiZfuDHKaeSpeRaNhwJkA1iGMdXNiyg2Lezc0NBZ35shu2FSfZgbTx5-USJ5rYqWiEEHhOFa55aNco6uvaqgvGCRl6UMAga6bzY3zC8W6rYXtwTiaecfciOjqDH_bYJSKOGWWNIHBd/s1613/TheMarvels09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2106ewUVMVLtQpeiTX8G93MGE8Xe0L1kpF3UFXIfHLOKQJYirS5RiZfuDHKaeSpeRaNhwJkA1iGMdXNiyg2Lezc0NBZ35shu2FSfZgbTx5-USJ5rYqWiEEHhOFa55aNco6uvaqgvGCRl6UMAga6bzY3zC8W6rYXtwTiaecfciOjqDH_bYJSKOGWWNIHBd/s16000/TheMarvels09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">DaCosta also nods to her own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Woods</i>, where she cast Lily James
and Tessa Thompson as sisters and left it to the audience to figure it out, as the
quasi-familial bond between Monica and her “Aunt Carol” is noted by the Khans,
with the matriarch noting, “Family is complicated.” The problems with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Marvels</i> are nonetheless as
pronounced as its strengths. Kamala’s family (Zenobia Shroff and Mohan Kapur as
the parents, Saagar Shaikh as big brother) are amusing but the close-knit family who offer equal doses of cringe and warmth for ethnically
specific heroes is rapidly becoming an instant cliché (see also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blue Beetle</i>, 2023), and particularly
this year when Nida Manzoor’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Polite
Society</i> (2023) did interesting and provocative things with the unruly
Desi daughter motif, whereas Kamala is conceptualised in a manner that desperately wants to
play safe with it. The film nudges interesting character-building
territory when Carol is forced to call in Kamala from her efforts to save
Skrulls during the apocalypse Dar-Benn unleashes on their refuge planet,
telling her, “You save those you can,” a moment that brings to the fore the
inevitable moment of crisis sparked when a superhero confronts the limits of
their abilities and the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>moral purview
that drives them. Just a pity the movie never brings it up again. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoMEyOA9aNmxXClGAbQLTuBh7tjAEv_Fb7hQdha7KN8EdLOUSHzFufaiSVYss0dCaGLnb2PH_uFAusDxOH4syfZ9LoP3S7pKxGnpcXmnMKrek900lRHOoEeDq4UBmAZ_XL5Is_LBvFAA8MhXauOrMncd_QGvxoTpiypkN23TAyq5B1trjqljOT8_SwNWad/s1613/TheMarvels10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoMEyOA9aNmxXClGAbQLTuBh7tjAEv_Fb7hQdha7KN8EdLOUSHzFufaiSVYss0dCaGLnb2PH_uFAusDxOH4syfZ9LoP3S7pKxGnpcXmnMKrek900lRHOoEeDq4UBmAZ_XL5Is_LBvFAA8MhXauOrMncd_QGvxoTpiypkN23TAyq5B1trjqljOT8_SwNWad/s16000/TheMarvels10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The script, credited to DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, and Elissa Karasik, is also extremely confused in terms of not only the precise mechanics of how and when the three heroines swap places but also in Carol’s role in the collapse of the Kree. Carol has become
known amongst the Kree, we learn, as “The Annihilator,” suggesting another
interesting possibility with complex ramifications, the great hero from one
viewpoint a bringer of ruin and catastrophe from another – reminiscent of the
way the Doctor became a figure of perfect, Satanic dread and loathing for
the Daleks in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>. We’re told
the destruction of the Supreme Intelligence resulted in civil war amongst the Kree, which
doesn’t quite cover how it also resulted in their sun waning. Not discounting
the likelihood of explanatory tissue being jettisoned during the film’s
extended post-production, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Marvels</i>
still reaps here the usual confusion that results from this sort of movie trying to encompass
relevance to an immediate issue – highlighting both the problems of political
and military interventionism, as represented by Carol, and environmental
degradation giving rise to wars of resources – but doing so in the clumsiest
and broadest fashion possible. It also cops out of wrangling with who deserves
what blame, as the film wants to propose that maybe, just maybe Carol isn’t all good, only to retreat hastily from its own gesture at complication.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Z0bLA9c4iz9-Mo6Y7OKfZ_zkUJ_6yJ7CV-yO-PZoMmZ2wblPlooQZpg3OxX0QRBhuXuXYK7jwkjj7BhjXKW9qugxESUUo_DfLuID-QhBj41JCy2NzF0ixXflWHX0cot9G2au0ezkE1JA9c8J9SaaSLchU2sJD82y6mUhtQo_pMUpmlqgmYgMxRYt8fev/s1613/TheMarvels11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Z0bLA9c4iz9-Mo6Y7OKfZ_zkUJ_6yJ7CV-yO-PZoMmZ2wblPlooQZpg3OxX0QRBhuXuXYK7jwkjj7BhjXKW9qugxESUUo_DfLuID-QhBj41JCy2NzF0ixXflWHX0cot9G2au0ezkE1JA9c8J9SaaSLchU2sJD82y6mUhtQo_pMUpmlqgmYgMxRYt8fev/s16000/TheMarvels11.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><i>The Marvels</i> also has no idea what to do with
a strong supporting cast. At this point Jackson is obviously just turning up to
collect a large paycheck and inject proceedings with a toned-down version of
his trademark macho ferocity, which by now has become rather a gruffly avuncular familiarity. Gary Lewis appears swathed in latex as the king of the
Skrulls, and he does manage to inflect his few scenes with notes of desperation and rage suppressed beneath his affect of nobility. Park is essentially required to pose like a fashion model or Ken doll
when not dancing or fighting, betraying the rather cynical way DaCosta and the
MCU team want to annex some of the fashionableness of K-Pop and camp-hued
musicals amongst the film’s desperately courted teen girl audience, and also never gets to
enlarge upon the exact nature of his and Carol’s relationship. DaCosta is
bolder in suggesting Carol swings both ways when Valkyrie (Thompson) turns up
to take the hapless Skrulls to sanctuary at New Asgard, but of course that
can’t go anywhere either. Despite all the widespread hullaballoo about
diversity in this realm, the MCU is cursed to be a place where all its erotic
impulses are so intensely sublimated they only register on the most exaspearatingly weak wavelengths. Because there is no actual diversity in this sort of thing: it
is an aesthetic, cultural, and intellectual centrifuge, assimilating all,
pulverising all.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_CqS6SOyA9yNhZRRsliR_H3HUxus1laBRw1tDqS9D2P86gXW9ZWmG1Zv0SiPVUy9iMIM8e20A19LCKqo6Tckp1iSZjvjfb9MbABA7o7wXUqm73GA5UR63_37W1dsUK8Ozf8no2AB6I7o0NPdbOcxY2WRI7YN_akXL0N9nNgG_agzxDapOEDbPyhk1oqoQ/s1613/TheMarvels12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_CqS6SOyA9yNhZRRsliR_H3HUxus1laBRw1tDqS9D2P86gXW9ZWmG1Zv0SiPVUy9iMIM8e20A19LCKqo6Tckp1iSZjvjfb9MbABA7o7wXUqm73GA5UR63_37W1dsUK8Ozf8no2AB6I7o0NPdbOcxY2WRI7YN_akXL0N9nNgG_agzxDapOEDbPyhk1oqoQ/s16000/TheMarvels12.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The battle sequence sparked when the Kree
arrive on Aladna is good stuff, if relatively familiar in the more cosmic wing
of the MCU, with vigorous stunt and camera choreography, the bright and colourful Aladna locale offering some contrast to the general dinginess of much
recent CGI spectacle. By the time <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Marvels</i> reaches its actual climactic scenes, however, it more or less falls
apart. Fury and others on the SABER platform are forced to evacuate, using
Goose’s many children to swallow up the crew and puke them back up when safely
back on Earth, a tilt at achieving comic craziness that instead sees both movie
and the whole MCU imprimatur taking a perhaps fatal tilt towards the sloppy and
silly. Meanwhile, the heroic trio (see what I did there? Yeah, Johnny To know
how you do a great all-girl superhero movie) confront Dar-Benn when she is suddenly
and conveniently all alone on her spaceship. A selfless sacrifice sunders the
team even in delivering victory, and Carol literally relights a sun by farting
extremely powerfully, or something like that. Things round off with Monica
plunging into a completely different franchise, whilst Kamala approaches
budding Hawkeye replacement Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) to join a proposed young superhero team. This flourish of
self-satire, a play on the famous first credits scene of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Iron Man</i> (2008), the very moment that unchained the whole MCU
beast, might prove instead to be a highly ironic moment of Ouroborous-like
tail-eating for the franchise. DaCosta has certainly here made a superior movie to <i>Captain Marvel</i>, admittedly a low bar to clear, and if
it had come, say, ten entries earlier in the MCU it might have held its head
high as a playful divertissement for the brand. Now, the best thing about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Marvels</i> is also the worst thing
about it: it’s the kind of movie that you just can’t get mad at. Or feel much of anything for.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></p><p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7mufYQLOVulse0FBGYUro2u-g62xCimzviIs-XhxlXzSqqk5DRJotVuCUdf0QZrNj-Zxg24GgJmAD6cQcXb4O2ySaJgEWpJlInGKoxI8CZTSBe66AQjli8qKZh-0V8Q5Lxd2Bhz48cCRB-YkVjFsQnsAcVI7QCaeXzw9tfJQdFOQ_2ATPdWw5TjfAS5rU/s1613/TheMarvels13.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="1613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7mufYQLOVulse0FBGYUro2u-g62xCimzviIs-XhxlXzSqqk5DRJotVuCUdf0QZrNj-Zxg24GgJmAD6cQcXb4O2ySaJgEWpJlInGKoxI8CZTSBe66AQjli8qKZh-0V8Q5Lxd2Bhz48cCRB-YkVjFsQnsAcVI7QCaeXzw9tfJQdFOQ_2ATPdWw5TjfAS5rU/s16000/TheMarvels13.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-80304984697603761802023-11-19T21:48:00.005+11:002023-11-25T14:26:00.722+11:00God Is A Bullet (2023)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggjVlDxGgHrCd3A_nET9mFMicrc_YwwWffMNXkd8Joxy6VqhyphenhyphenPPO9Wq5fJzRmItfuOO4SsSxmf9utX7RnuokNx0lbKfeZvjG_QoFeYkCYdhg0uVmLIVe_5xLbDWB93HP6fXoZZhcOgnNo9ByVs-J_T86lIY4TNLR3-GlaitZj9ShPLgeplxRGGJYgQfBs9/s1280/GodIsABullet01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggjVlDxGgHrCd3A_nET9mFMicrc_YwwWffMNXkd8Joxy6VqhyphenhyphenPPO9Wq5fJzRmItfuOO4SsSxmf9utX7RnuokNx0lbKfeZvjG_QoFeYkCYdhg0uVmLIVe_5xLbDWB93HP6fXoZZhcOgnNo9ByVs-J_T86lIY4TNLR3-GlaitZj9ShPLgeplxRGGJYgQfBs9/s16000/GodIsABullet01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Nick Cassavetes’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God Is A Bullet</i> feels like a labour at once abandoned in a huff and
unleashed with impunity, operating according to some damaged inner ear of
aesthetic concept, gritty, hyperbolically violent, and truly off-kilter. A
throwback to an age of scuzz-flecked neo-noir that proliferated in the
mid-1990s, movies that dug into the drugged-up, yahoo-reigned underbelly of
American life with a transfusion of peyote trip intensity and gruesome delight,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God Is A Bullet</i> has epic and
philosophical pretences attached to pulp thriller fare whilst indulging its
disreputable streak with a white-fanged leer. Adapting a well-regarded novel by
the pseudonymous author Boston Teran, which was in turn allegedly drawn from
real experiences of the post-Charles Manson freak scene, Cassavetes delves into
a netherworld populated by child-raping, drug-dealing Satanist scumbags and the
Dostoyevskian antiheroes who battle them, made in a key that suggests what
Scorsese might have become if he hadn’t kicked his coke habit and fell into
making flicks for Cannon Films, or if Sam Peckinpah had been born a few years
later and spent a stint in a death metal band. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is
curiously but not badly cast as Bob Hightower, a Texan cop who, despite being
divorced, feels well-settled in his community and church. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivmE6cRrCfXumR3hX7p_1Tz3V8R99AYFNNkDRhqRFYZQrGFBDvVYl3Aldt_6J8GYXzWp4_xn8Q09I0J6NVjl7qavmtbF9qhoOw0Evbnvr3r2XJ0aXD17x83aqIpUUqT15n3bxYbaUf04kfxQQgUPKsTlRPqXXfF4_2wqtSpt0AqBvJ8NaXkCuJRiJWS7Nt/s1280/GodIsABullet02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivmE6cRrCfXumR3hX7p_1Tz3V8R99AYFNNkDRhqRFYZQrGFBDvVYl3Aldt_6J8GYXzWp4_xn8Q09I0J6NVjl7qavmtbF9qhoOw0Evbnvr3r2XJ0aXD17x83aqIpUUqT15n3bxYbaUf04kfxQQgUPKsTlRPqXXfF4_2wqtSpt0AqBvJ8NaXkCuJRiJWS7Nt/s16000/GodIsABullet02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The home of Bob’s ex-wife Sarah (Lindsay
Hanzl), which she shares with her new husband Sam (Kola Olasiji) and her
daughter by Bob, Gabi (Chloe Guy), is invaded by members of a particularly evil
gang headed by the nefarious Cyrus (Karl Glusman): Sarah is gunned down, Sam
crucified and tortured to death, and Gabi taken into a nightmarish netherworld
of child prostitution and eventual human sacrifice to satisfy Cyrus’s utterly
nihilistic and crazed proclivities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bob
resolves to track Gabi down by any means necessary, ignoring the cautioning of
fellow officers, but knows he needs to understand the nature of the truly rare
beast he’s going to duel with, leering as it does out of a zone of existence he
scarcely comprehends. He approaches ‘Case’ (Maika Monroe) – a nickname short
for “Headcase,” currently living in a halfway house. She was once kidnapped as
a child and used by the gang just as they intend with Gabi, but passed some
obscure, torturous test, and so rather than sacrificed was indoctrinated.
Case’s peculiar variety of grit, evolved to become indifferent to such
brutality, allowed her to walk out on the gang and kick their inculcated drug
habit, even if she still lingers in a state of simmering fear and pessimistic
detachment from anything resembling normality. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOfoBjBbcKAhHkwHLHYcOqpfCGF6qafVQ5smEA3-SpcM4shiAALy-H7xhE25rmwd7NPF_-HJuWaiFogKvCQTznM7Sv1RBAa3i9XIrqW4ByHNVdN3mpFDZLr3GKIKkyn4wIp1Ur8TmM25JcqJcVVfwsS9q5X6ljAxwMQMWEAwoE6wG-k3KSR0Ca2NjDFGTZ/s1280/GodIsABullet03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOfoBjBbcKAhHkwHLHYcOqpfCGF6qafVQ5smEA3-SpcM4shiAALy-H7xhE25rmwd7NPF_-HJuWaiFogKvCQTznM7Sv1RBAa3i9XIrqW4ByHNVdN3mpFDZLr3GKIKkyn4wIp1Ur8TmM25JcqJcVVfwsS9q5X6ljAxwMQMWEAwoE6wG-k3KSR0Ca2NjDFGTZ/s16000/GodIsABullet03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Bob is her opposite to a near-comic
degree, generally regarded as well-meaning but naïve, dismissed as a desk
jockey by his colleagues. In forming an alliance with Case he begins a hard
schooling into her world and its cruel philosophy. Case takes him to see a
one-armed, professional tattooist dubbed ‘The Ferryman’ (co-producer Jamie
Foxx), who decorates the gang’s bodies with their elaborate cabalistic symbols
and quasi-tribal livery, and decorates Bob similarly so he won’t look out of
place when they approach their hangouts: Case adds a spider tattoo to his cheek
herself as a finishing touch. This proves to be a calculated calling card, as
her ex-girlfriend in the satanic brood, Lena (Gina Cassavetes), has the same
tattoo. Coster-Waldau’s role echoes his part in Brian De Palma’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2019/06/domino-2019.html" target="_blank">Domino</a></i> (2019) where he similarly
conspired to pull apart his own screen persona and played a character whose
role as social centurion with certain faiths breaks down, forcing him to
rebuild himself and his worldview in a battle with real evil, although in Bob’s
case he emerges as scarred literally and figuratively. The Ferryman himself has
his skin marked with his own art, including strange pale traces on his face
that render him even more fervently strange and otherworldly than the more
usual white-boy hides he decorates, and he gives a safe harbour for the
dyspeptic duo when they need it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7bJTFIdQnavJC1kV6VFVqMdbCGkLCbNVhyv3lt78Ixh1Px-Z-ae_H_caybDyZB_yU2gXUDe-C1eoGjay_0cfJ-QDDfIRPMaCwi8L1C1t8xe5nbbcsqXsONoPKtwkcVxl1mO7V2nHDZ5Xv6r-svHDY_mE4zWbmRub_io4W0ROEM4WxaGexFilyko9Sl0Nn/s1280/GodIsABullet04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7bJTFIdQnavJC1kV6VFVqMdbCGkLCbNVhyv3lt78Ixh1Px-Z-ae_H_caybDyZB_yU2gXUDe-C1eoGjay_0cfJ-QDDfIRPMaCwi8L1C1t8xe5nbbcsqXsONoPKtwkcVxl1mO7V2nHDZ5Xv6r-svHDY_mE4zWbmRub_io4W0ROEM4WxaGexFilyko9Sl0Nn/s16000/GodIsABullet04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">When Cassavetes became a filmmaker back
in the mid-1990s, he seemed bent on following in the footsteps of his father
John, as a maker of movies shot through with shaggy realism and jagged intimacy
as realised through an open-ended feel for actors deploying behaviour, as
hinted by his debut, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unhook The Stars</i>
(1996), and more fully developed with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She’s
So Lovely </i>(1997), adapted from one of his father’s unproduced scripts. Then
he started swerving with breakneck intent, making the slick, silly social issue
thriller <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">John Q</i> (2002), before
scoring a massive popular hit with the well-made romantic drama <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Notebook</i> (2004). A second detour
into mass-market weepie fare didn’t pay off when he adapted Jodi Picoult’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Sister’s Keeper</i> (2009), and the
couple of films he released after that made no trace. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God Is A Bullet</i> is a defiant swerve back to Cassavetes’ roots in
squirrelly studies of shambolic wanderers and lowlifes, with a new gloss of
trash-art ambition. The narrative shape feels close to one of Paul Schrader’s
early odysseys of revenge nursed through jaunts in grimy underworlds, blended
with a desire to capture a perverse subculture. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQHYsftDrU9wcg5bMEn6odLbYnb1ZVt4qsjSWqdy3m6t4YdvjwMvOpNH3eyzxQUYWKd68vxlt0-ABwA-ZQkU8TzoKIZ9W7mm8ZJcTj-8FoOzHWApCJiH-mcl3ueDXrQy-UsfHBURWkLhg4jDu1_h2RJB0uFKdF_OT2kw0Wu16rSqv3fKvyUaZSZjmnnYO_/s1280/GodIsABullet05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQHYsftDrU9wcg5bMEn6odLbYnb1ZVt4qsjSWqdy3m6t4YdvjwMvOpNH3eyzxQUYWKd68vxlt0-ABwA-ZQkU8TzoKIZ9W7mm8ZJcTj-8FoOzHWApCJiH-mcl3ueDXrQy-UsfHBURWkLhg4jDu1_h2RJB0uFKdF_OT2kw0Wu16rSqv3fKvyUaZSZjmnnYO_/s16000/GodIsABullet05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">God Is A
Bullet</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">
contemplates, deep down amidst all the rifled squalor, a genuinely interesting
and troubling concern: what if our enemies deserve our most unremitting wrath,
having plumbed the limits of evil through choice and predilection, but have
invaded our minds, raped our dreams, perverted our thoughts so perfectly, that
we cannot expel them or exist without them, for their extremism was designed to
remove all sure sense of moral structure around them and us, so even blowing
their fucking head off feels like an impotent gesture? Monroe, whose presence
in a movie usually suggests something interesting in the offing, goes to town
playing Case, whose early shakiness when Bob first presents her with the path
back to the underground quickly gives way to a flinty embrace of her own
anarchic will, stalking with bandy-legged bravado into the fray as she comes to
perceive her destiny as indivisible from a reckoning with Cyrus and his dirtbag
crew. She sets about playing both her new self-appointed shepherd for the Lord
and the old one under Satan against each-other, sowing seeds of distrust in
Cyrus’s gang, including against the perma-wired nightspot owner Errol (Jonathan
Tucker), with Cyrus later making a deal with her and Bob to give them a chance
to get back Gabi if they’ll kill Errol. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD2pQ0N6mBBdZQQ9tYtzaxn9KQLBvO7uSGVmtIlC0oG2MIR8DqLwtyvdWg7xGsr_9TSnj4RzzAjOUVPyGOAhkkOnbqa-O7ksyUSK9aAmaJLWAlJKug2eV-2O18bJt4mA6nq2_H6nUNAGtxCrGtqqxT79QC1FCb8ob0V_h4Ej24XAhoGJyIiMSr2aKizKYc/s1280/GodIsABullet06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD2pQ0N6mBBdZQQ9tYtzaxn9KQLBvO7uSGVmtIlC0oG2MIR8DqLwtyvdWg7xGsr_9TSnj4RzzAjOUVPyGOAhkkOnbqa-O7ksyUSK9aAmaJLWAlJKug2eV-2O18bJt4mA6nq2_H6nUNAGtxCrGtqqxT79QC1FCb8ob0V_h4Ej24XAhoGJyIiMSr2aKizKYc/s16000/GodIsABullet06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Flashbacks depict the young Case (Elise
Guzowski) being snatched by the Satanists and later being served up, under blue
flapper wig and smothering make-up, as jailbait morsel for various perverts,
just as she glimpses Gabi similarly enthralled by Cyrus when she zeroes in on
his gang. The title comes from a nihilistic exegesis Case delivers to Bob over
a diner booth, an anti-philosophy she proclaims in contrast to both Bob and
Cyrus’s polar-opposite faiths, both of which she holds to be an illusory search
for meaning in the chaos of existence. Bob, who early on clumsily suggests to
Case she might have held on to herself more effectively if she’d had a better
foundation in religious schooling, quickly finds his formerly smug sense of
security rattled as he’s obliged to grapple with truly invidious evil,
abandoning all the yardsticks of his old life and literally becoming marked
with the signifiers of the enemy, forced quickly to blow off an array of body
parts as he’s forced to extract Chase and himself from a succession of sticky
situations, including a gang-rape Cyrus sets up down in a hellish carnival zone
populated by zombiefied meth fiends and skinhead fucktards. Cyrus and crew
retaliate by dosing a rattlesnake with a little cocaine and placing it in Bob’s
truck.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiGyNiRuU0L7Rqp230kx6u6hjXAV7mDXcwdjdfMM2tDvdKC0QnSF6VT4P15e9K0wRk9kr5NvdshgWcS5hxwSPhPebylMUlttyOQJzC2CHRMHfeFA7-EwIev8Zy4s9m-463iBU_AJWdlrKSgCjWMgRPXdbBN6okq1UisrL0f-nLRi9nwZ9pb56mS2Yl2KXl/s1280/GodIsABullet07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiGyNiRuU0L7Rqp230kx6u6hjXAV7mDXcwdjdfMM2tDvdKC0QnSF6VT4P15e9K0wRk9kr5NvdshgWcS5hxwSPhPebylMUlttyOQJzC2CHRMHfeFA7-EwIev8Zy4s9m-463iBU_AJWdlrKSgCjWMgRPXdbBN6okq1UisrL0f-nLRi9nwZ9pb56mS2Yl2KXl/s16000/GodIsABullet07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Cassavetes mixes in a subplot that
suggests the “normal” world Bob feels he’s falling out of isn’t that much less
amoral and awful. Bob’s colleagues and supposedly concerned pals John Lee Blayken (Paul
Johansson) and Arthur Naci (David
Thornton) were responsible for Gabi’s taking in the first place, having long
ago employed Cyrus and his taste in violence as a standover man in a crooked
land deal – he simply shot the old woman they were leaning on and faked her
signature on necessary documents. Then they hired him to dispose of, who was
having an affair with John Lee’s lusty wife Maureen (January Jones), the kind
of woman who idles away the time drunkenly provoking her husband into walloping
her and laughing at the results as his proof of impotence: eventually she turns
the tables and blows her creep of hubby away with cold impunity. Cassavetes’
weird approach to telling his surprisingly involved story alternates
brute-force storytelling with languorous road movie cues complete with the odd
Bob Dylan and David Bowie song on the soundtrack for hues of wispy poetic
pathos offsetting the down-and-dirty savagery of the rest.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMQ0sEelt_vAKRAq5Shdw0SW5EhPUjDQh7Qmo4XS5XYpHTSb949MpXGnJExvpkDO2LkajiR7wfvRH2oU5YYdwroPmO7GCukO7cS2c-aJ5pz5qxcaHHF6AJn_FwBnBowPjKwXcV7A_fl3GJm3vz2LpDzTaaz2G4CT_lRBADKusCWRhKX7S50RuZstv5DiDT/s1280/GodIsABullet08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMQ0sEelt_vAKRAq5Shdw0SW5EhPUjDQh7Qmo4XS5XYpHTSb949MpXGnJExvpkDO2LkajiR7wfvRH2oU5YYdwroPmO7GCukO7cS2c-aJ5pz5qxcaHHF6AJn_FwBnBowPjKwXcV7A_fl3GJm3vz2LpDzTaaz2G4CT_lRBADKusCWRhKX7S50RuZstv5DiDT/s16000/GodIsABullet08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">And to be fair, Cassavetes actually comes
close to offering a visual companion piece to the kinds of feverishly
hallucinated, city-on-the-edge-of-forever narratives Dylan often manages to
paint. At the heart of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God Is A Bullet</i>
proves eventually to be the peculiar evolving relationship between Case and
Bob, with their nominal roles as victim and saviour, elder and protégé, warrior
and damsel often blurring and sometimes totally inverting: it’s Case who
coaches Bob through his heartsick confrontations with his own violence and
temptations to total moral nullity, taking him into her bed to play maternal
soother. In a vignette of purified neo-noir mystique Bob, whilst gazing out the
window of the ratty hotel room he shares with Case, muses on his own reactions
to his ex-wife marrying a Black man and realises now he doesn’t like what that
says about him. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVUCMlokiNyD35zYJQ9u_OqlsSAkL3WSYy8Kv6ycOOTZX4mpzxsGCbYrWC-zj9JHPxmFHutluIsgjssI9WODGSkmwKUIxB7cW8bIj7J-5aw6t3B5x2m6oUuJlk3g3UQH7U60qd64lJGTrhl7mkd6AF4rVI9vSUDl6mza0vCJfxVMPKWmChSdT75CZ9hjTw/s1280/GodIsABullet09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVUCMlokiNyD35zYJQ9u_OqlsSAkL3WSYy8Kv6ycOOTZX4mpzxsGCbYrWC-zj9JHPxmFHutluIsgjssI9WODGSkmwKUIxB7cW8bIj7J-5aw6t3B5x2m6oUuJlk3g3UQH7U60qd64lJGTrhl7mkd6AF4rVI9vSUDl6mza0vCJfxVMPKWmChSdT75CZ9hjTw/s16000/GodIsABullet09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Cassavetes’ careening approach with his
editing, jumping back and forth in chronology practically at random, is trying
at times, but also feels in its own kind of synchronisation with the drama it’s
portraying and the fractured headspaces of his heroes, and the lawless zone
where they stumble about. One jaggedly impressive scene sees Case and Bob
venture into a house in the middle of nowhere the gang use as a site for their
drug deals and satanic rituals, the wildest reaches of Case’s memories and
Bob’s imaginings illustrated in flash-cut visions of dank rituals and gory
aftermaths. I dare say the material here would too strong a meat for many
people, although Cassavetes manages to circumnavigate the truly obscene. The
wonder of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God Is A Bullet</i> that whilst
Case’s brand of philosophy is only the inverse of a bumper-sticker and meme culture,
the film itself does actually manage to convey the stuff of a dark moral
fairytale. The Satanists call anyone they don’t like, but particularly anyone
reeking of normality, “sheep”, and Bob’s passage from lamb to wolf isn’t pretty
but he comes out of it having made a case for the objective of good even if
he’s forced to flirt with primeval savagery to get it done. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0-5e2qhupaiJjwLQt-GsJA4lSD1-NhyphenhyphenoGp5K4e4NwQAuGYuCnkE-IEzyTN0bYHySPxas0B4qOLXoXCpyNHWmsJhVhi7kA1LR3TjgwQPyOR73Vt6JrvNKK5xpncee6UMsowDmhaD37N_1SYxI8fujPKkL7in3e8f9iZvYT5-mUKL1T5-B0UZC-K7OXPR8H/s1280/GodIsABullet10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="545" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0-5e2qhupaiJjwLQt-GsJA4lSD1-NhyphenhyphenoGp5K4e4NwQAuGYuCnkE-IEzyTN0bYHySPxas0B4qOLXoXCpyNHWmsJhVhi7kA1LR3TjgwQPyOR73Vt6JrvNKK5xpncee6UMsowDmhaD37N_1SYxI8fujPKkL7in3e8f9iZvYT5-mUKL1T5-B0UZC-K7OXPR8H/s16000/GodIsABullet10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Case’s tests of herself eventually confirm
she never quite lost her humanity in Cyrus’s soul-killing world even as she
expounds her bleak philosophy, a truth she first proves in cunning fashion when
Cyrus, having broken her nose upon first seeing her again after her exile,
orders her to kill Errol to prove her loyalty. Case performs a writhing dance
and points the gun at the quaking target before jamming the gun in her mouth
and pulling the trigger, displaying not just her own bravado but also the
strange juice she gets from re-entering Cyrus’s world, a world where she can
play the wild shamanka who guards the gates of heaven and hell. She gets lucky
in her assumption it was all a ruse, although whether she actually thinks it’s
lucky is ambiguous: she expects at some point in the drama to finish up as a
brutalised corpse, and is merely looking for the path that might bring her some
small, salutary grace before that end and save Gabi from sharing her fate. Case
brings the same dancer-of-death bravura to combat, as she gets in close with a
shiv and slices throats and stomachs. And of course there’s another part of her
that’s still an utterly lost and bereft little girl, seeking out her mother
amongst random shoppers but terrified of actually tracking the real woman down.
Finally Bob and Case agree to kill Errol for Cyrus to steal his cash in a bogus
drug deal in exchange for Gabi’s return, and Bob has no problem now employing
the Satanists’ argot for death – “You’re crossing over” – before shooting
another lowlife.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwsCO-WSXCSdk3J359md3YLqvA4RAOU0Lfu-djdONvnT8yFyyPznE0SlvO2BJtLmUpDWIUmjN6kyIrNGUSPDyuQOJ3aiXL7o2ipBrBm4Go_N6sWzkaBLcHMDPE9MOWHfSNh4pkhfHQFtcJ7iZJNQWQIBelR0t_gt5S89F9xeNPSPXOWoElJikxmnHAlFw9/s1280/GodIsABullet11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwsCO-WSXCSdk3J359md3YLqvA4RAOU0Lfu-djdONvnT8yFyyPznE0SlvO2BJtLmUpDWIUmjN6kyIrNGUSPDyuQOJ3aiXL7o2ipBrBm4Go_N6sWzkaBLcHMDPE9MOWHfSNh4pkhfHQFtcJ7iZJNQWQIBelR0t_gt5S89F9xeNPSPXOWoElJikxmnHAlFw9/s16000/GodIsABullet11.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The film barrels into an absolutely
madcap action climax as Cyrus fulfils his promise to reunite Bob with a
brutalised and tattooed but still intact Gabi, whilst also contriving to trap
them and Case in a quarry where they can be massacred in their own personal
wild hunt, spraying-and-praying with assault weapons and flamethrowers. But Bob
and Case prove ruthlessly effective hunters, and battle goes down with a
ferocity of violence that achieves the lunatic purgative effect it seeks,
particularly when Bob blows off the jaw of one of Cyrus’s sleaziest enforcers.
The story doesn’t even end there, but extends to a coda as Case goes it alone
to track Cyrus down to his last hiding place for their own, particular
reckoning, before wrapping up with a reunion for two damaged and screwed-up people
that is nonetheless one of the most oddly romantic in any recent movie. I can
understand the harsh reviews <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God Is A
Bullet</i> copped in most quarters – it’s a film that feels enacted in defiance
of just about every maxim of current cinema taste, and I don’t even know if it
will eventually find cultish favour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
in a modern movie scene littered with desperately phony efforts to dress up
clichés of genre film with gimmicky pseudo-art, and excruciatingly shallow
touchy-feely game-playing, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">God Is A
Bullet</i> retains, a little like its villains, a truly peculiar integrity in
the way it embraces its fetid little universe, whilst also proving, ultimately
and bracingly, rather old-school as story. Hail Satan, baby. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT3ki4eoOFgzxeE17tV4KK1GBEHWlOwD4XjIXtDhdEa8Z-dsV7D0MHm8LFJU1NY5BzQO22xGdzfIB-02HLSyUnChsp7bhwL8chtu4MTtzu0lqMarfeGxxFEXlHKHHUFRMK7FymeSYDi4CXKoba8FfyviLWV_qDtUieFqs1mopJMHTBwKfwepBRTsvSjKEt/s1280/GodIsABullet12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT3ki4eoOFgzxeE17tV4KK1GBEHWlOwD4XjIXtDhdEa8Z-dsV7D0MHm8LFJU1NY5BzQO22xGdzfIB-02HLSyUnChsp7bhwL8chtu4MTtzu0lqMarfeGxxFEXlHKHHUFRMK7FymeSYDi4CXKoba8FfyviLWV_qDtUieFqs1mopJMHTBwKfwepBRTsvSjKEt/s16000/GodIsABullet12.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-91383483193992383402023-11-05T21:38:00.009+11:002023-12-06T02:04:07.600+11:00A Haunting In Venice (2023)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs8QqWe6PlkU7Eh5te2JlYc30Kv9Q4uA-WFQY_f5qd5AYNlDdkt6GHXXriEnrh85C-yjJ8mM8fezv_1lKBcevrA1W0mf_y1jxTed1m6ZtjWtVmNi_S-h9nEIQoz7RINPTsbm8GRK3E3XvnQH6P9fjL7hekz1oniYBO9tAxEoLuUjvTECK8frQLMjSg2vfb/s1283/AHauntingInVenice01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs8QqWe6PlkU7Eh5te2JlYc30Kv9Q4uA-WFQY_f5qd5AYNlDdkt6GHXXriEnrh85C-yjJ8mM8fezv_1lKBcevrA1W0mf_y1jxTed1m6ZtjWtVmNi_S-h9nEIQoz7RINPTsbm8GRK3E3XvnQH6P9fjL7hekz1oniYBO9tAxEoLuUjvTECK8frQLMjSg2vfb/s16000/AHauntingInVenice01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The year is 1947: Hercule Poirot (Kenneth
Branagh) has moved to the canal-veined city of Venice and entirely given up
detective work. He’s even hired a former local cop, Portfoglio (Riccardo
Scamarcio), as a bodyguard to fend off people petitioning for his aid. But
Poirot is drawn out of his routine when an old friend, the novelist Ariadne
Oliver (Tina Fey), comes to visit and asks him to train his ingenious eye on
the spirit medium Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), whose apparently genuine
talents for communing with the dead have flummoxed even Ariadne’s expert
scepticism. Ariadne brings Poirot to a Halloween party being thrown by former
opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly) in the crumbling Venetian palazzo she
owns, as Reynolds is going to conduct a séance after the party. The Palazzo has
a reputation for being rich with spirits for contact, as a former hospital
supposedly haunted by child patients abandoned to their fate by medical staff
during a plague outbreak, a tale that’s given rise to the tale of the
“Children’s Vendetta,” which holds the spirits of the dead attack anyone
belonging to the healing professions who dares stray into the building. This legend is recounted to a flock of
children invited to the party in the Palazzo, which breaks up when until a
chandelier plunges with eerie timing to the floor.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWYonF4pQEiUV2HMOW9UCD5uRSpYr2FSbvjwukH72ke08ZtzReAlaIx_O4EmDHalwkgPvatuv2F5SWIinyszgszkRc_O2-carf7AeQ_jRbwyC3bOwNbWfOOypDr4FW4ggzKWw5F5-rJz4nfg9-Oj1vP2uDyDbSEqi57_l5KNfYEwrfJkZ2xpWHgZ712lyr/s1283/AHauntingInVenice02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWYonF4pQEiUV2HMOW9UCD5uRSpYr2FSbvjwukH72ke08ZtzReAlaIx_O4EmDHalwkgPvatuv2F5SWIinyszgszkRc_O2-carf7AeQ_jRbwyC3bOwNbWfOOypDr4FW4ggzKWw5F5-rJz4nfg9-Oj1vP2uDyDbSEqi57_l5KNfYEwrfJkZ2xpWHgZ712lyr/s16000/AHauntingInVenice02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A more recent and palpable death hangs
over the house: Rowena’s daughter Alicia died there a year earlier after being
beset by terrifying visions supposedly of the Palazzo’s haunting ranks. Also
present for the séance are Alicia’s former fiancé Maxime Gerard (Kyle Allen),
who Rowena writes off as a venal fortune hunter; Dr Leslie Ferrier (Jamie
Dornan), Alicia’s former doctor and a man all but destroyed by his role in
liberating a concentration camp; and Rowena’s housekeeper, the former nun Olga
Seminoff (Camille Cottin). Dr Ferrier’s bookish and precocious son Leopold
(Jude Hill) has a penchant for quoting the well-thumbed volume of
Poe he prefers reading to playing games with the other kids. Poirot quickly
reveals confederates who help to amplify the uncanny impact of Reynolds’ performances, in the form of the Holland siblings, Desdemona (Emma Laird) and Nicholas (Ali Khan), only for Reynolds to be gripped by a more urgent and believable manifestation
of forces beyond. Poirot remains unconvinced, and after a charged confrontation
with the medium, who mockingly drapes him in the creepy mask and cape she arrived in,
he decides to follow her advice to dare a playful act: he tries his luck at
apple bobbing, only for someone to try and drown him in the water-filled basin.
Reynolds is flung from a high balcony soon after and impaled on a statue before
the Palazzo, and Poirot locks the cast of suspects within the building as a
mounting storm shakes the structure. But Poirot finds his familiar gifts
impeded and his perceptions muddled, possibly by the Palazzo’s malign spectres
– or possibly by some more concrete enemy’s connivance.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxpngSGCHx9CzfgzQtcxzSAuXCQLEN2jwF8klpEQNCbjkwPulK1tflGZ79kmsuD3AnvzaOzC-1agz7J1PivWqr1Ek4rGs97_41B4scTx7R7YAcgEl7EPnpqVsPhJSKZJZH9dtvOa92vUJYcCwfSWJQMeqJWacZxykPCT58yMcLNqlEurVvYUFgC5iEcdwv/s1283/AHauntingInVenice03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxpngSGCHx9CzfgzQtcxzSAuXCQLEN2jwF8klpEQNCbjkwPulK1tflGZ79kmsuD3AnvzaOzC-1agz7J1PivWqr1Ek4rGs97_41B4scTx7R7YAcgEl7EPnpqVsPhJSKZJZH9dtvOa92vUJYcCwfSWJQMeqJWacZxykPCT58yMcLNqlEurVvYUFgC5iEcdwv/s16000/AHauntingInVenice03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As Branagh’s third trip to the well of
Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot tales, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Haunting In Venice</i> is the loosest as adaptation: Branagh and his regular
screenwriter for these films, Michael Green, improvise freely on the template that is Christie’s 1969 novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hallowe’en
Party</i>. As well as shifting the setting from the homey climes of rural
England to the titular Italian city, the timeframe now beholds a world also just starting to recover from the dread of war. The film starts a bit awkwardly in this
regard – I swear if I see another movie or TV show that tells me it’s the
happier end of the World War II zeitgeist by cueing up “In The Mood” I might
rip my teeth out – and in justifying Halloween shenanigans in Venice through
the presence of American servicemen. More cunningly deployed at the outset and
end is Vera Lynn’s version of “When The Lights Go On Again,” with its
languorously romantic wartime anticipation of peace and frivolity returning,
but posited in the context of a peace where the recent past, both in the
macrocosmic and personal senses, just will not be easily shaken off. Branagh is
one filmmaker who, for all his oft-erratic energy, knows well the value of
cultural signposts in that regard. Plainly the shift in setting is down to
trying to keep up the brand after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2017/11/17/murder-on-the-orient-express-2017/ " target="_blank">Murder On The Orient Express</a></i> (2017) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2022/04/death-on-nile-2022.html" target="_blank">Death On The Nile</a></i> (2022), and besides, who can begrudge a filmmaker wanting to
film in Venice? The choice of locale is also, in its way, just as bold and
theatrically fruitful as, say, Branagh shifting the setting of his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As You Like It</i> (2006) to Meiji Japan.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> A Haunting In Venice</i> has gained notably
better reviews at large than its waywardly interesting precursors. Doubtless
that’s because, as well as being shorter and snappier, it sticks to one chosen
genre style, with a more sombre tone, and Branagh’s florid impulses seem
particularly at home in a realm bordering the fantastical.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhluEVp24eEA-__BpeHb9EFz4XK0axJZPoo2ZGoj83k6l4VfaZ2dQQ-4SrmFfQ8vvlg8xXdp3pAm5IbnM_gdP76UuYshzLlQCRHA2KEqpUYqPi9Ljm1U9aPoF6agT3cQIZ6tsPVpgUjbcbewVKzFqhX0-Uq-CBIexm1g-SRdXwGlMEQ4hNnYLOaZTA6klyt/s1283/AHauntingInVenice04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhluEVp24eEA-__BpeHb9EFz4XK0axJZPoo2ZGoj83k6l4VfaZ2dQQ-4SrmFfQ8vvlg8xXdp3pAm5IbnM_gdP76UuYshzLlQCRHA2KEqpUYqPi9Ljm1U9aPoF6agT3cQIZ6tsPVpgUjbcbewVKzFqhX0-Uq-CBIexm1g-SRdXwGlMEQ4hNnYLOaZTA6klyt/s16000/AHauntingInVenice04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Poirot films have nonetheless so far
given Branagh licence to be far more ebulliently himself than with the soberly earnest, if also rather calculated, memoir of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2021/12/belfast-2021.html" target="_blank">Belfast</a></i> (2021), taking on
the well-worn paths of a popular mode – Branagh remains brusque when it comes
to the ritual structure of the whodunit, if not bored by it – and turning it
into a theatre for his excitable creation and passion of taking cross-sections of cultural inheritance. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Haunting In Venice</i>
isn’t as fascinatingly chaotic as a curate’s egg containing Branagh’s artistic
touchstones, stylistic peccadilloes, and self-critiquing gestures as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Death On The Nile</i> was, and doesn</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">t offer anything as arresting and, yes, haunting as that film</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">s coda. But the
compensation is that, after the lumpy if efficient early scenes, this one proves his most
effective and dovetailed blend of style and story in a long time, venturing
back into the lurching, looming, floridly gothic zone he traced out to great
effect in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Again</i> (1991) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein</i> (1994): it’s
a zone Branagh clearly relishes but hasn’t braved since the latter of those two
films bombed. Cineaste nods aplenty, too, with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2018/12/07/dont-look-now-1973/" target="_blank">Don’t Look Now</a></i> (1973) is the most obvious. Branagh also signalled his affection
for the stylistic cavorting of giallo cinema as long ago as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dead Again</i>. Such expected touchstones
collide with nods to John Hough’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2010/09/legend-of-hell-house-1973.html" target="_blank">The Legend of Hell House</a></i> (1972), Augusto Caminito’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vampire In Venice</i> (1988), Stanley Kubrick’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2009/11/03/eyes-wide-shut-1999/" target="_blank">Eyes Wide Shut</a></i> (1999), and Roy William Neill’s Basil
Rathbone-as-Sherlock Holmes classic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Scarlet Claw</i> (1945): the latter in particular, with the motif of the
slashing wounds of the Children’s Vendetta and the misdirection of seemingly
supernatural forces. There’s even a little tip of the hat to <i><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2014/04/28/the-thing-1982/" target="_blank">The Thing</a></i> (1982)
as the Holland siblings are tied to a chair when suspicion falls on them,
only to freak out as the building starts to shudder and resound during the storm:
Desdemona delivers a furious slap to Portfoglio when he finally releases them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgogpQtbuvxOS8u_hGeujry8Uv77YW81b2dXqNvTQGbWKsSTjq_pKIQUK7V0MIet7T-GbQSwRZy9AsYxTjT1qDHYhjc9lEtjIp5U44i5nsLsk0a3Auwpm4O3IFHUvPkx_fJyV-F_PxOADVOHdx9CiaMEyeEke4kdp8jNlbW0zaIPtfIVL4KxIJeaBri3lSM/s1283/AHauntingInVenice05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgogpQtbuvxOS8u_hGeujry8Uv77YW81b2dXqNvTQGbWKsSTjq_pKIQUK7V0MIet7T-GbQSwRZy9AsYxTjT1qDHYhjc9lEtjIp5U44i5nsLsk0a3Auwpm4O3IFHUvPkx_fJyV-F_PxOADVOHdx9CiaMEyeEke4kdp8jNlbW0zaIPtfIVL4KxIJeaBri3lSM/s16000/AHauntingInVenice05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A Haunting
In Venice</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">
also returns to what is now certainly the linking motif in Branagh’s Poirot
films, in trying to approach the detective as a proper dramatic character
rather than a collection of foibles and facilitator of plot. The theme of the
great detective forced to work through his own demons to solve the case
could become tiresome, but it’s leavened by Branagh and Green’s choice
to visit the detective at various set intervals in his biography. Each entry
in what now stands as a trilogy has posited pivotal moments for Poirot, whose
career has been described as a constant struggle with abhorrence of horror and anarchy born of
one war, and gains a fresh catalyst in the wake of another.
Here, the detective is struggling again to escape his essential identity as the
proverbial mind like a steel trap that has the actual function of ensnaring the
nefarious, this time with a pervasive sense of foreboding and impending mortality. If Poirot is trying to work out how to live a life free of other people’s
crimes and failings, then Branagh is perhaps musing on, for better or worse,
finally straying well past his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">enfant
terrible</i> days, even at a moment when his creative<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>vitality seems to be on one of its periodic upswings. Branagh
casts Hill, his alter ego from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Belfast</i>,
as the boy who is both in effect his damaged father’s carer and Poirot’s
youthful counterpart, anointed and excluded for having heightened awareness of
the dark and sad things of the world as a by-product of uncommon intelligence
and curiosity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi34AjaoqccrGWE3mGVNen28kjNSh_UvjrfW9s6qPNCoGMI9yFeZXEm-rteJ_BEfPK9RX-MVYdDPvHOnIq7gKcHMUiuHJW1xzWSXeVPN8hbajgFvJwxCzuBbMPDx0Goh09PikR8QDiHNuhE0W8WG8SWSQbje9vHRrjM7iNwHDq33MNMdHtDDoATxpdjtAc9/s1283/AHauntingInVenice06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi34AjaoqccrGWE3mGVNen28kjNSh_UvjrfW9s6qPNCoGMI9yFeZXEm-rteJ_BEfPK9RX-MVYdDPvHOnIq7gKcHMUiuHJW1xzWSXeVPN8hbajgFvJwxCzuBbMPDx0Goh09PikR8QDiHNuhE0W8WG8SWSQbje9vHRrjM7iNwHDq33MNMdHtDDoATxpdjtAc9/s16000/AHauntingInVenice06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The notion of haunting is, of course,
pursued literally and psychologically, but with a surprisingly multileveled
approach – crimes of history, of war, and of human intimacy are all in play.
Branagh has an absolute ball convening his cast in the crumbling reaches of
Rowena’s Palazzo with its mouldering murals and décor, its dank and secretive corners stuffed with the refuse of forgotten crimes and permeated by creepy
dolls and mouldering skeletons disgorging swarms of bees, as we’ve stumbled out of the Christie into the
world of Poe. After the early stutters, the film settles down for gloriously
eerie scene-setting as Poirot and the other guests for the party are brought to
the Palazzo by gondola. Later Reynolds arrives by the same method but wrapped
in robe and mask in a piece of theatre calculated to declare herself the queen
of worlds beyond. Soon he’s cutting loose with increasingly feverish camerawork
– with Haris Zambarloukos doing grand work as cinematographer again – as Dutch angles
proliferate, wide-angle lensing transforms the house into a system of spatial
traps and Pirnesian labyrinths, overhead shots spin upside-down, and Scorsesean
tied-to-the-actor shots register Poirot’s dizzied state. The slow
build from general creepiness culminates in a spasm of hysterical action
two-thirds through as a surging storm swell sets the lagoon into chaos and
sends menacing echoes up through the bowels of the building. Poirot and Portfoglio penetrate rooms long sealed off from the light and find evidence the house’s legends are largely true. Dr Ferrier has
“nerve storm” and gets into a brutal fight with the angrily sarcastic Maxime,
who regards him as complicit in Alicia’s death through incompetence, and the
fisticuffs almost end with Ferrier giving Maxime a meal of broken glass until
his son coaxes him out frenzy. Even Poirot starts glimpsing ghostly little girls.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBofBE9D4H5zeQ56j-1ygqyEv6u0G9yicJg7UK-k9e0loSHNGqjH6Sau1RXeo0g8I4gfbLQBPdFHxFAroXS6jkzJ9_JM11Z2Pot-jfcLjppYlO_62Ylc1m3PTfwlSWktqNuJP4CgYl20o1BcEyyOYXo2hd3rHwMRmRa504rLTJ8bM2VAfLEVMp0LoK16up/s1283/AHauntingInVenice07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBofBE9D4H5zeQ56j-1ygqyEv6u0G9yicJg7UK-k9e0loSHNGqjH6Sau1RXeo0g8I4gfbLQBPdFHxFAroXS6jkzJ9_JM11Z2Pot-jfcLjppYlO_62Ylc1m3PTfwlSWktqNuJP4CgYl20o1BcEyyOYXo2hd3rHwMRmRa504rLTJ8bM2VAfLEVMp0LoK16up/s16000/AHauntingInVenice07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Branagh delights in extremes of
gothic gusto we get tragically little of in contemporary film, and the way
he uses the stolid grounding of whodunit structuring to sway way out and
then snap back in towards the sensible centre is genuinely clever. I did hope
Branagh would really go for sturm-und-drang in the climactic scenes and have
the Palazzo collapse in the storm, but, alas, in this subgenre the centre
always holds. Another aspect of the script contends with a seed of metafiction
Christie planted in her later Poirot stories, expanding it into a motif that
engages with Branagh’s take on the character and the uneasy relationship of art
and life, which he also parsed in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Belfast</i>,
and which takes sly aim at some of the common gripes about Branagh’s earlier Poirot entries. Christie
introduced the recurring character of Ariadne into her creation’s world as a wry and recurring self-portrait. Branagh and Green take it a step further in
making Ariadne a detective story writer who feels a degree of entitled dominion
over Poirot’s mystique, as she claims to have made him famous with her thinly
veiled depiction of him in one of her early books. <o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">Even as she seems to be pressganged into playing Girl Friday to Poirot’s efforts, Ariadne proves to have an entirely different agenda in mind.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrmLjIaXCGZEHgTKFCe5jjUOfyE-_LY4m4zff1M2RM-bp1fBOp-4XXZrdesi7P4PXVTTLr6e5tmeQFyEHRpH6ChJebW35jDl0sVbbX1c9SH87AuIWDsRb3yz5Jyu78biQ1F9lq4F_fx-tM4JfRBn54C2lHGJ0HJw09B4KDZ5mnhtw8aGrONFXEriKgfioA/s1283/AHauntingInVenice08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrmLjIaXCGZEHgTKFCe5jjUOfyE-_LY4m4zff1M2RM-bp1fBOp-4XXZrdesi7P4PXVTTLr6e5tmeQFyEHRpH6ChJebW35jDl0sVbbX1c9SH87AuIWDsRb3yz5Jyu78biQ1F9lq4F_fx-tM4JfRBn54C2lHGJ0HJw09B4KDZ5mnhtw8aGrONFXEriKgfioA/s16000/AHauntingInVenice08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ariadne
herself is struggling with a recent run of failures after dozens of
bestsellers, and, as emerges in the course of the movie, tries to contrive a
way of writing a scenario for Poirot to enact and regain her creative spark in
the process – to write him, in effect, to assert a form of authorial propriety
and so recharge her career. This connects in turn with the more urgent drama as
Poirot experiences disorientation and hallucination to a degree that makes
him genuinely consider not just the waning of his detecting gifts but the
possibility his little grey cells have deteriorated and he’s lost all sense of
what’s real and what isn’t. But there’s also the possibility someone is trying
in turn to manipulate him – also, in effect, trying write him. And of course
Poirot is also contending with the filmmakers presenting him as the vehicle for
their psychologising portrait. And they really are writing him, into something
Christie never quite did, and the tension lends an edge of mischief to the
whole affair: Ariadne’s self-congratulation as Poirot’s discoverer and
populariser then becomes Branagh’s ironic manner of acknowledging the
assimilation and personalisation of a hallowed figure in the pop culture
character pantheon. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2CUQFUHlSZvIx_a7FWu2IGhfYnDe0fyVZqGgtM2iM6UwzyPr4pdpnBIpjB2i-G1fZC-yth04D9GYwydyfqRfbozjaKN_Ys59CT65xb4B1xHoCh1pftLclCKxMKcJ_E8S_431zwUIHp2K6zAeH4kYcOTS7JTZOWeEO3BoGHd6BwHUixq9MTDjPR8bU6jbu/s1283/AHauntingInVenice09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2CUQFUHlSZvIx_a7FWu2IGhfYnDe0fyVZqGgtM2iM6UwzyPr4pdpnBIpjB2i-G1fZC-yth04D9GYwydyfqRfbozjaKN_Ys59CT65xb4B1xHoCh1pftLclCKxMKcJ_E8S_431zwUIHp2K6zAeH4kYcOTS7JTZOWeEO3BoGHd6BwHUixq9MTDjPR8bU6jbu/s16000/AHauntingInVenice09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Branagh’s casting is less
self-consciously star-studded than the previous two entries, with the bigger
names more balanced by newer performers and character actors. Newcomer Laird in
particular has a striking face, elfin in look but with a
steel-welding glare, ideal for a character revealed to be, along with her
sibling, a survivor of the age of rubble who fell into creating ghosts for a
living. Yeoh has some fun in an unusual part as Reynolds, the expert
mediumistic performer charged with sly, feline energy when she feels the weight
of Poirot’s falling on her, comprehending that they both exist to mediate
between living and the dead: it’s a pity she’s necessarily dealt out of
proceedings so early. Fey isn’t quite as convincing in a role that requires a
jolt of hard and bullying egotism underlying the superficial sophistication,
but she does well enough. Dornan for his part continues to impress as he
stretches his talents, deftly inhabiting a febrile character, and his moments
with Hill, reuniting them after <i>Belfast</i> as father and son but with the lines between
each role blurred, wield rare emotional immediacy. Young master Leopold proves
by movie’s end to have made a fateful foray into trying to take a hand in
manipulating the people around him and the ambiguities of life – again, to try writing
them – with ultimately tragic consequences, as it proves he has unwittingly
caused the whole murderous business. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Pg-RLwgMJxRVUqdVupdOVB7M8NujmkHebrudBK6DFygOKDyjrkRVfB8P2Xhto6H69j6Cukm0Wie_wRyV50Qdwj3mTuwXTZQKzVkuUu2Wjk7aj6kYqLoxi84aCQQRz0I1y8VlHDzyPhGgTa3Y26eTS9BKlQhlHkzO_hzO60Y0obz9h-YlQE4IghMU0CHc/s1283/AHauntingInVenice10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Pg-RLwgMJxRVUqdVupdOVB7M8NujmkHebrudBK6DFygOKDyjrkRVfB8P2Xhto6H69j6Cukm0Wie_wRyV50Qdwj3mTuwXTZQKzVkuUu2Wjk7aj6kYqLoxi84aCQQRz0I1y8VlHDzyPhGgTa3Y26eTS9BKlQhlHkzO_hzO60Y0obz9h-YlQE4IghMU0CHc/s16000/AHauntingInVenice10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The actual mystery is pretty
straightforward in comparison to its baroque decoration, with the mechanics,
like a jar of honey that doesn’t taste quite right, rather easy to spot. That
said, I liked that the story this time around takes aim at one of the usual,
peculiar niceties of the whodunit style, where the killer seems indifferent to
the presence of a great detective or operates only to foil them, rather than
take them out of the picture: here the way the film plays out is defined in
both story and form by the efforts made to hobble Poirot’s faculties, all sense
of sure moorings and the solidity of forms battered from without by the storm
and within by moral ruckus and hallucinogenic dosing. Killer gets their
comeuppance, possibly with some supernatural aid, and sinks into the calm of
depths under the raging water. The cold grey light of dawn
illuminates bodies carried away, a sight invested with a surprising sense of
mournful, dumbstruck weight – the solving of the mystery is only ever a comparative
afterthought in comparison to the way events have destroyed lives. But
Poirot’s sense of efficacy is ironically restored through receiving hints that
existence still has aspects of mystery and that not everything is reducible to
intellectual formulae. In the same way, the best quality about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Haunting In Venice</i> is that it’s a rare
modern movie that fully grasps the lesson of any good Halloween party, knowing
well that to really have fun sometimes requires getting more than a little dark
and serious. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip319eGy2LLWKy1G8vDPix2DA9uF1t4FM3CayBuuGBfYGV5lN0uUk39FNdOzxR_Rb_4eSD1Fq2bKQ6LTEC8StH10TYSm6Kqa6mj_tYw_plZ1WG5pKBCCUbT6lh4dk095g98IjOMUuok2rBlTGNrp5OAHuOIp5x9VzZ0inS0rPXokTgZZ_aeber8H6aAJvo/s1283/AHauntingInVenice11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip319eGy2LLWKy1G8vDPix2DA9uF1t4FM3CayBuuGBfYGV5lN0uUk39FNdOzxR_Rb_4eSD1Fq2bKQ6LTEC8StH10TYSm6Kqa6mj_tYw_plZ1WG5pKBCCUbT6lh4dk095g98IjOMUuok2rBlTGNrp5OAHuOIp5x9VzZ0inS0rPXokTgZZ_aeber8H6aAJvo/s16000/AHauntingInVenice11.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-3294822971481451382023-10-25T20:19:00.011+11:002023-10-30T18:02:02.058+11:00Mill of the Stone Women (Il Mulino delle Donne di Petra, 1960)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwdxKIAiihkLv6IYSSN7l7F3OTTTUI1acniQvbY5Z-31GCKj_sCY2KAkLj9Y6atufEYneRIGx0_21fb6Fos7-wktp91i6WLUfNHxxzNPjPH8B08dwcUWYjoI0iWVC3uUWSiYXWNkJkqNsVPsgh3CMH4Fg55TJza6wF4R8Y1Orud-9V8hJIblJGWBnSsM9Z/s960/MillStoneWomen01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwdxKIAiihkLv6IYSSN7l7F3OTTTUI1acniQvbY5Z-31GCKj_sCY2KAkLj9Y6atufEYneRIGx0_21fb6Fos7-wktp91i6WLUfNHxxzNPjPH8B08dwcUWYjoI0iWVC3uUWSiYXWNkJkqNsVPsgh3CMH4Fg55TJza6wF4R8Y1Orud-9V8hJIblJGWBnSsM9Z/s16000/MillStoneWomen01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A
small gem from the first great Italian horror wave, sparked by Riccardo Freda and Mario
Bava’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Vampiri</i> (1956), and which developed in counterpoint to the emergence of the Hammer style in Britain, Giorgio
Ferroni’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mill of the Stone Women</i>
unfolds in a lushly-coloured, lithographic nineteenth century Flanders,
where stark windmills sweep and slash against a perpetually gloomy sky and
endless perversity is contained within the picture book climes. One windmill
has become popularly known as the Mill of the Stone Women, because it’s owned
by art professor and sculptor Gregorious Wahl (Herbert A.E. Böhme), the
interior filled with the many fruits of his sculptural labours. It also
contains a remarkable mechanical carousel, built by Wahl’s great-grandfather
and maintained by his descendent and approaching its centennial. The carousel
sports figures of historical female figures trundling around in a wobbly
pageant, many of them in macabre poses and situations, including poisoners,
hanging victims, and Joan of Arc on her pyre. Pierre Brice is Hans von Arnim, a
young scholar and faculty assistant hired to write a monograph about the
carousel. Staking out a chamber in the windmill as an office, Hans soon
encounters Wahl’s beautiful daughter Elfie (Scilla Gabel), and the enigmatic
physician and researcher Dr Loren Bohlem (Wolfgang Preiss), who seems to be
Wahl’s perpetual guest. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS6cUPCBhwKTThrVhWYzkLvM1g2B5tF0BMlBOHQepOWKg55q84NZybIzmWmG0z7A2UMVAbdwICjXO9cj2BUPqScGVT3E8AJ8kQLsObae585a1A7JhMY1iLCbUTCZ-IeSAJ2yU6ka-2IwlFR62FbTK7cyMZ_31p81ZJ9pQ-15tNoFc36j12AvWFqpTETgl3/s960/MillStoneWomen02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS6cUPCBhwKTThrVhWYzkLvM1g2B5tF0BMlBOHQepOWKg55q84NZybIzmWmG0z7A2UMVAbdwICjXO9cj2BUPqScGVT3E8AJ8kQLsObae585a1A7JhMY1iLCbUTCZ-IeSAJ2yU6ka-2IwlFR62FbTK7cyMZ_31p81ZJ9pQ-15tNoFc36j12AvWFqpTETgl3/s16000/MillStoneWomen02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Although
Hans is romantically attached to his childhood friend, art student
Liselotte Kornheim (Dany Carrel), he’s soon ensnared by Elfie’s urgently
desirous advances, sneaking back into the windmill and spending a night of
passion with her. Wahl later warns Hans about getting too close
to Elfie, explaining that her health hangs by a thread and can’t withstand any
violent emotions. Hans tries to break the affair off, but after becoming irate
Elfie collapses in a sudden fit. Hans, after carrying her limp form to her
room, observes strange, ugly lesions breaking out on her apparently dead body.
Stricken with guilt and convinced he’s responsible, Hans, after wandering the
nearby town, returns to the mill and takes a pill given to him by Bohlem to
settle his nerves. Hans then confesses to Wahl, who berates Hans as the young
man becomes increasingly feverish. Soon Hans is roaming around in
a delirium. He breaks into the Wahl family crypt to see if Elfie has been
placed there and finds her laid in a sarcophagus, and spots local model and
chanteuse Annelore (Liana Orfei) bound to a chair through an open doorway in
the mill, only for the door to slam shut and all trace of her to vanish when he
finally gets it open again. Finally, in a completely distraught state, he
confronts Wahl and Bohlem, but now finds them acting completely bewildered as
if nothing strange has transpired, and Elfie appears just as alive as ever. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0NWixRPasXcSXgKsSN6MLVCNTJLVBM1QIo0DPyRc1CIaRhYfFLN-GmVFlBo9HfIXV-d8sGqFX_A6uo53L8dq4z1Ylh3wMFXTMy5tkbVFxJ9EaDtvagE4ClGteH6ZA1_flYmbGv5IaScOenSNILPNuwTHuL4W4FKrPfs3s01kZn2Wry_DTs4a1Ft_siRAJ/s960/MillStoneWomen03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0NWixRPasXcSXgKsSN6MLVCNTJLVBM1QIo0DPyRc1CIaRhYfFLN-GmVFlBo9HfIXV-d8sGqFX_A6uo53L8dq4z1Ylh3wMFXTMy5tkbVFxJ9EaDtvagE4ClGteH6ZA1_flYmbGv5IaScOenSNILPNuwTHuL4W4FKrPfs3s01kZn2Wry_DTs4a1Ft_siRAJ/s16000/MillStoneWomen03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Mill of the Stone Women</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> has the gall to come
out of the gate with an opening credit stating it was based in a story in the
book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flemish Tales</i> by one Pieter van
Weigen, although book and author are both completely fictitious. Ferroni’s film
is rather an eager mash-up of several then-recent, successful
films, including Andre de Toth’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">House of
Wax </i>(1953), Henri-Georges Clouzot’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Les
Diaboliques</i> (1955), Georges Franju’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2008/05/23/eyes-without-a-face-1959the-devil-rides-out-1967/" target="_blank">Eyes Without A Face</a></i> (1959), and Terence Fisher’s Hammer films, with some
nods to Carl Dreyer’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vampyr</i> (1932)
inserted for good measure. Perhaps the film’s most effectively atmopsheric shot nods to
one of Dreyer’s signature images whilst evincing its own fresh artistry: Hans
gazes upon a widow, swathed entirely in black, a bouquet of bright pink and
yellow flowers in her lap, waiting at a ferry stage as a boy rings the bell and
the ferry is rowed out of the vaporous mist cloaking the Flanders landscape.
Ferroni deploys a coolly measured realism in the early scenes infected with
only the faintest hint of something queasy registered by the trundling, herky-jerky
progress of the carousel figures, their bodies and faces twisted and tweaked to
enact macabre moments, and coterie of looming statues that decorate the mill,
and the array of cogs and wheels constituting the machinery that drives the
display.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOyLMl_ke3cJRu-_O2z7ndswEUJud0k56Fq6IwGknBetso2cw0eMrQrVUmwnLTSaFG11LZZXekdBGU4ptRPXr2-gBHFpHbTGgvI7IOam8CWnIckBPXeN3BkfWJ6ORppQwNsuoihKxegg4WPPuXa0zdVV-Yl4eAN7mwCZ-t8pZogLoeyX-hEaSlU9tho-v1/s960/MillStoneWomen04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOyLMl_ke3cJRu-_O2z7ndswEUJud0k56Fq6IwGknBetso2cw0eMrQrVUmwnLTSaFG11LZZXekdBGU4ptRPXr2-gBHFpHbTGgvI7IOam8CWnIckBPXeN3BkfWJ6ORppQwNsuoihKxegg4WPPuXa0zdVV-Yl4eAN7mwCZ-t8pZogLoeyX-hEaSlU9tho-v1/s16000/MillStoneWomen04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ferroni’s
eye remains inspired throughout, putting the Technicolor palette (and Pier Ludovico
Pavoni’s painterly photography) to use in forging poetic imagery that gains steadily in ghoulish intensity.
The eerie off-white simulacra of the sculptures. The blazing red of a proffered
rose left to Hans by Elfie and the yellow flowers surrounding her pale blue
corpse in its grave. The peculiar flatness of the often grey-blue-soaked and
deserted surrounds of the windmill, a fresh contrast to the usually jagged
locales of Gothic horror films. Ferroni was an interesting, fitfully talented
filmmaker who, like most jobbing Italian directors, tackled the full array of
the standard national industry genres. Moving on from the short documentaries
he made during World War II through post-war dramas, he made a brief horror
dalliance with this film before then working on sword-and-sandal epics and
Spaghetti Westerns, usually under his pseudonym Calvin Jackson Padget, which
earned him a tip of the hat in Quentin Tarantino’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2019/08/23/once-upon-a-timein-hollywood-2019/" target="_blank">Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood</a></i> (2019). Ferroni would bring something
of the same bewitched fervour he achieves in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mill of the Stone Women</i> to his peplum film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2013/03/hercules-vs-moloch-ercole-contra-molock.html" target="_blank">Hercules vs. Moloch</a></i> (1961), which wields similarly vibrant
gothic imagery in its underground temple filled with animalistic priestesses
and murderous tyrant who delights in scarring the beautiful. Ferroni would also
make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Trojan Horse</i> (1961), the
first of a linked diptych of films starring Steve Reeves as Aeneas, and a movie
that takes a surprisingly wry and antiheroic attitude to the Trojan legends and
their mythical heroes. His last movie, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Night of the Devils</i> (1972), would be a feature-length recapitulation of
“The Wurdalak” episode in Mario Bava’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2012/10/31/i-tre-volti-della-paura-aka-the-three-faces-of-fear-black-sabbath-1963/" target="_blank">I Tre Volti Della Paura</a></i> (1963). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWIpOVgIa4KiX1IZ5LEsGhaxqZYniQ5qwnTxt4HDm-ld71lbrTYiGufoCSMrcvhLyQkqNEqBqFxfyK3Mwg23Ja0FRTsSY6YpJP9_mmscbNiARi0dN9ef2biMzRqEr8shKZydBHJpuFpv4NwGRiaaEneAd40tsFzQqevikfGtpebksjgMUsy-rmjrLGROE8/s960/MillStoneWomen05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWIpOVgIa4KiX1IZ5LEsGhaxqZYniQ5qwnTxt4HDm-ld71lbrTYiGufoCSMrcvhLyQkqNEqBqFxfyK3Mwg23Ja0FRTsSY6YpJP9_mmscbNiARi0dN9ef2biMzRqEr8shKZydBHJpuFpv4NwGRiaaEneAd40tsFzQqevikfGtpebksjgMUsy-rmjrLGROE8/s16000/MillStoneWomen05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Mill of the Stone Women</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> is hampered by its
derivative storyline, and it doesn’t quite deliver the dynamic, insistently forward-rolling
force Bava or Fisher usually achieved. The biggest real problem in this regard is
the long midsection depicting Wahl and Bohlem’s efforts to make Hans unstable
enough so he will cease being a distraction and temptation to Elfie and not be
believed if he ever speaks out about the mill’s inhabitants and their peculiar
habits. The theme of an orchestrated plot to drive a protagonist off the rails
or entirely mad with contrived hallucinations and inexplicable discoveries, set
off by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Les Diaboliques</i>, was already a
bit of a wearying cliché in the genre by this point – William Castle wouldn’t
have had a later career without it – and whilst Ferroni does his best to
enliven it with his visual and sonic flourishes, the film ambles as long as it
lasts. Brice is a more expressive handsome young hero than usual in this sort
of thing, portraying Hans’ increasingly crazed state well, but things become
much more interesting once it focuses on the Wahls and Bohlem, and their game
becomes clear. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCMTm6JyZGZO7yyE84qHAlOUmsr8Fka5cemki4h0IdZg__K4dyEmeBXWrFGHzGxskeIPK8RN1IoAZBIpRNu5ijcRzBrJBB7KYdzjbH2vNsaqz0TEAOG1UajNXF7nvU-ZC7xa4Ndf9-0YmAQ9x8NuzEArPnTeZooQ_h8CRSXps2nyPpfdMDB2uKtpi1mUXW/s960/MillStoneWomen06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCMTm6JyZGZO7yyE84qHAlOUmsr8Fka5cemki4h0IdZg__K4dyEmeBXWrFGHzGxskeIPK8RN1IoAZBIpRNu5ijcRzBrJBB7KYdzjbH2vNsaqz0TEAOG1UajNXF7nvU-ZC7xa4Ndf9-0YmAQ9x8NuzEArPnTeZooQ_h8CRSXps2nyPpfdMDB2uKtpi1mUXW/s16000/MillStoneWomen06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Elfie’s
malady is eventually revealed to be a disease that manifests with her scabrous
lesions and when advanced enough gives her the appearance of death. Her total
degeneration can be held off and temporarily reversed, as Bohlem has found,
with regular, total exchanges of blood with other women, who, alas, die from
their new, poisonous blood supply. Wahl then hides the corpses in plain sight
by caking them in plaster to exhibit as his statues, or swathing them in rubber
and parading their bodies as statues on the carousel. Wahl keeps Bohlem, who’s
been drummed out of the medical profession, specifically to do this job, and
Bohlem is particularly dedicated to it because he’s in love with Elfie, though she
despises him in turn. Whilst riffing on the theme of the compulsively driven
and heedless patriarch trying to save his beloved daughter as borrowed from
Franju, Ferroni presents his own, darkly tinted spin on it, transmuting it into
an effective assault on the basic false promise of the classic Victorian social
order, the exemplary men of different social bastions, Wahl the academic and
artist, Bohmer the scientific healer, but both locked within their own, fetid
regions of ego empire, with Elfie the nominal object of all their efforts.
Ferroni ironically presents them early in the film acting out their roles with
iconic perfection, Wahl sketching his daughter whilst she plays the piano with
doll-like grace and Bohmer stands by as the gentleman suitor.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ-MlIg9mI7h2ZM1rFr0DoKoJTLZ-hlfNN4S0tHQBS_2Nsi7JN4liE8w16YTCGMVw9PKTfm_lf9_1C0W6uvesGCWo9ynx6ckGQudXxE4WWZZASIdbsFWDChqpucRUakii-Eua45TQWhyN65avmSLAE3BIKAG-Hyxgp0wKVKuN94b63P0f9GPJn4TrWcq1W/s960/MillStoneWomen07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ-MlIg9mI7h2ZM1rFr0DoKoJTLZ-hlfNN4S0tHQBS_2Nsi7JN4liE8w16YTCGMVw9PKTfm_lf9_1C0W6uvesGCWo9ynx6ckGQudXxE4WWZZASIdbsFWDChqpucRUakii-Eua45TQWhyN65avmSLAE3BIKAG-Hyxgp0wKVKuN94b63P0f9GPJn4TrWcq1W/s16000/MillStoneWomen07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Under
the surface, the reality: Wahl’s overriding sense of paternal duty and
authority simmers under a shallow veneer of bonhomie and bourgeois rectitude,
but eventually making clear he’s willing to indulge all kinds of perverse and
vicious machinations to sustain Elfie’s life. The daughter herself is no plaintive, fairy-tale waif or tragic victim, but an aptly Frankensteinian
mirror to her father’s obsessiveness, a case of repression turned into greedy,
vampiric egotism, snatching onto Hans as a lover and gloating over the bound
and gagged Lise with the knowledge that life and possessions of Hans can only
belong to one of them. This in turn mimics and counters Bohmer’s constantly
frustrated efforts to coerce Elfie into loving him, failing that, he tries to
blackmail her father into forcing the match. It’s amusing to see Preiss, who
more normally played gentlemanly German officers in war films and also the
mastermind Dr Mabuse in some post-Fritz Lang entries in that legendary series,
playing such a role, investing Bohmer with a blend of charmless entitlement,
simmering erotic demand, and faintly ridiculous impotence. Gabel’s startling
beauty meanwhile is ideal for the genre in a way similar to Barbara Steele, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvt1NDdH6fUt0KsEH5TLsy3o0tc8Fwx3Z4dwus8rKwPMPkxh0n1J9Gg67A0uDa6sP3W1esrJGfTjbaHXvpfQ8H0A86YPOfoZcV6PUNgoGA7BIkeGo5J4z8nJlD6E1BaIjmZ6GPO3jlsrlOj5V_FNeVuFJZEJPUufWsQh_eUAgTa7MiwKIOGrUlJHw1X1mB/s960/MillStoneWomen08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvt1NDdH6fUt0KsEH5TLsy3o0tc8Fwx3Z4dwus8rKwPMPkxh0n1J9Gg67A0uDa6sP3W1esrJGfTjbaHXvpfQ8H0A86YPOfoZcV6PUNgoGA7BIkeGo5J4z8nJlD6E1BaIjmZ6GPO3jlsrlOj5V_FNeVuFJZEJPUufWsQh_eUAgTa7MiwKIOGrUlJHw1X1mB/s16000/MillStoneWomen08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
film reaches its apogee as Ferroni maintains his cooly detached method even whilst tracing out potently sleazy imagery. Once they’ve killed Annelore to
replenish Elfie, Wahl indulges his strange artistic bent and refashion her
corpse into one of his figures. After pumping her full of preservative, he
cakes her hands in plaster and poses her after a clay bust he’s prepared, and
then carefully fits a travesty of a rubber mask over her face. For the final,
cynical touch, he suggestively outfits her as a shackled and appealing slave
and martyr, before setting her up as a perpetual passenger on the carousel.
Here, Ferroni hits upon a bizarre and effective metaphor for a particular kind
of artistic misogyny, suborning the living to an ideal of the perpetual, and
takes the core idea of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">House of Wax</i>,
the irony of the artist of death, the skip-the-middle-man approach to
transforming models into art, to a new place, with the twinned imagery of the
artificial simulacrum of life sustained by the carousel figures and Elfie
herself in her unnaturally sustained persistence, as the narrative winnows its
ideas down to a needling single point, that one person’s existence is often
paid for by another. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbos2OVAO75UDxN9dYmzrL_2x1Rb7P1TmM6T9ouQbw2bSfS7LAvyRUJ1YNraZOsBP5Y3wM50K4VbMIYs_bdNOOBGvIurYBimOBKfrPxhVyy4yEiMYnmdCgOywtsS-mg4Uh6wL447HF47UxrGipmeG_TtnI5nPs7ashGuFk71KoAPTcrh96bzoFnIujXg13/s960/MillStoneWomen09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbos2OVAO75UDxN9dYmzrL_2x1Rb7P1TmM6T9ouQbw2bSfS7LAvyRUJ1YNraZOsBP5Y3wM50K4VbMIYs_bdNOOBGvIurYBimOBKfrPxhVyy4yEiMYnmdCgOywtsS-mg4Uh6wL447HF47UxrGipmeG_TtnI5nPs7ashGuFk71KoAPTcrh96bzoFnIujXg13/s16000/MillStoneWomen09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
script is obliged to split the rest of the narrative with another trio, Hans,
Liselotte, and her fellow art student, the good-natured if slightly naughty
Ralf (Marco Guglielmi), who fulfil the basic function of opposing the evil trio
with their youthful, stolid goodness. Liselotte<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and Ralf are first introduced sketching Annelore, working as a live
model in Wahl’s class, stuck in a pose as Liberty in evil contrast to her
later, enforced guise as a captive. Ferroni’s efforts to capture the Hammer
brand nostalgia for a Mittel Europa that never quite was extends to a scene of
Annelore regaling a tavern crowd. When Bohmer discovers accidentally that
Liselotte<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>has exactly the right blood
type to help him entirely cure Elfie, he and Wahl kidnap her, but when Bohmer
tries to get the upper hand over Wahl, the professor stabs him the gut whilst
declaring his total possession of his daughter. Hans and Ralf, driven to get to
the bottom of things once Liselotte<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>vanishes, learn that most of Hans’ visions were faked, finding a
sculpted dummy of Elfie in the Wahl crypt, and come to the rescue, whilst Wahl
discovers his killing of Bohmer also cost the last chance of saving Elfie’s
life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiATnWL9rY_WJUyABekETIU1fGMWcy9vA4tG77zwYrPcdRx2S32D4Y1AzEpKyE7xVgdeLHkNR70jMFLrH4t00RPmRY1zU3EW841gPbSAek4un6sN8gle7eP7HGQ2WS6gSg65YxMJo4d8yCKADFyK_Nru4weyqIDEsO2ztWMEXSFD0Vy6_uvd8KsFeQeH0WT/s960/MillStoneWomen10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiATnWL9rY_WJUyABekETIU1fGMWcy9vA4tG77zwYrPcdRx2S32D4Y1AzEpKyE7xVgdeLHkNR70jMFLrH4t00RPmRY1zU3EW841gPbSAek4un6sN8gle7eP7HGQ2WS6gSg65YxMJo4d8yCKADFyK_Nru4weyqIDEsO2ztWMEXSFD0Vy6_uvd8KsFeQeH0WT/s16000/MillStoneWomen10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The mill catches on fire, the heroes
fighting to escape the blazing building whilst Wahl tries to his last breath to
drag Elfie’s body to safety, but he is finally trapped. A note of brutal humour
tolls as Annelore’s severed head tumble from its post atop her rigid body on
the carousel and rolls up to Wahl’s feet whilst he accuses Hans and the others
of killing his daughter. Ferroni dives in for close-ups of the carousel figures
as they burn up, all loaned a special sick power in the awareness these aren’t
just artworks but the mortal remains of people. In his cruel punchline,
Ferroni’s camera slowly craning back and away from the sight of the glaze-eyed
father petting his dead-weight daughter’s hair as the flames whorl about them
and the mill machinery creaks on, before offering a coda with the heroes
standing at the ferry landing, Ralf ringing the bell to call the boat over and
take them back to the land of the living whilst the mill is consumed. </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mill of the Stone Women </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">isn’t quite
consistent or original enough as a narrative to count as a true classic of the
genre, but the truly perverse grandeur Ferroni delivers in the finale is a testimony to a talent that too rarely got to truly cut loose, delivering something here that lingers with a special,
haunting frisson in the mind.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBZzT2fTBWmhCvXhGD7xC-25rHhanX6TSB2dCwMbpDtAbdkUgTpxQAHW3FQc-KGC62iSMjTqIWj6iIrubu2S29b43rv0ySN6cmff30UUQ8j53MOTAOMd8jE_YTxwDZFlzenmMq4p0Y9RxFnj1QaiQdRY-gY6rOLQOJ9_DvZjKWW9U4jo5IllawX8UpwzZ7/s960/MillStoneWomen11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBZzT2fTBWmhCvXhGD7xC-25rHhanX6TSB2dCwMbpDtAbdkUgTpxQAHW3FQc-KGC62iSMjTqIWj6iIrubu2S29b43rv0ySN6cmff30UUQ8j53MOTAOMd8jE_YTxwDZFlzenmMq4p0Y9RxFnj1QaiQdRY-gY6rOLQOJ9_DvZjKWW9U4jo5IllawX8UpwzZ7/s16000/MillStoneWomen11.jpg" /></a></div><br />Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-88430942604124240602023-10-16T21:38:00.011+11:002023-11-09T19:38:31.680+11:00Hellraiser (1987)<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUzeSEYtolCT5ABxuIcgunZTezK_PCqjl4NeBInn7uovAaCBIDKoy10XGIAh-bCfV9yJXXCO1kFgrWSbrKXdAt-1cA0PTEqApVkYDHVHyi1muvROrO_aF9jrQsdTxjvd-6E11QGV9C855_g2bWKJ9lD5aWJxKNHyFaIJ18Oy3Oq-lAYJhYoD7ock1GeIzA/s1024/Hellraiser01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUzeSEYtolCT5ABxuIcgunZTezK_PCqjl4NeBInn7uovAaCBIDKoy10XGIAh-bCfV9yJXXCO1kFgrWSbrKXdAt-1cA0PTEqApVkYDHVHyi1muvROrO_aF9jrQsdTxjvd-6E11QGV9C855_g2bWKJ9lD5aWJxKNHyFaIJ18Oy3Oq-lAYJhYoD7ock1GeIzA/s16000/Hellraiser01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Clive Barker’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i> has proven a work of modern horror filmmaking with a
lasting legacy. It’s also perhaps the only notable work of horror cinema
directed by a major genre writer (pace fans of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Maximum Overdrive</i>, 1987). Barker established his particular brand
of blood-soaked, angst-ridden horror writing in the late 1970s, his work
permeated by nightmarish meditations whilst set in humdrum scenes of suburbia
or housing projects, riffing on classical genre motifs but springboarding from
modern, scalding perspectives on subjects ranging from the sexual to the
sociological. Barker was from the beginning a multi-discipline artist, also
working in theatre, painting, and short filmmaking, positioning him uniquely
well for when he made the leap to adapting his own novella “The Hellbound
Heart,”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i>, as well as featuring actors he met in his avant garde
theatre days, also betrays a focused and original visual imagination. Barker
took his shot at directing a feature after he wrote the scripts of two films, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Underworld</i> (1985) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rawhead Rex</i> (1986), but finished up
disliking the results. Barker still had to file down the edges on his own work
in the process of adapting “The Hellbound Heart” with its unabashed sexual imagery
and themes informed by Barker’s time spent working as a prostitute, but even in
doing so came up with an angle on familiar ideas like undead revenants and
demonic tormentors that sent an electric thrill right to the synapses of horror
lovers in the VHS age.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDzl4qk9VIccOCs29P_kK-wjJ2uJRQyH0FBwU_k9JnVvTmYfKDExfKauz-lTfjjmE-pNi5R7rvR0OXY1MeEBouR2YwUBxPKxS18ROPXh0Xd7AAEqF90bV8ypDAxl2IrPIVdXAVrv_ck3f6PfNQMwCzlcAhxSA-ilTcIYtONI2giFcTYpdkVUtnZ8X1hG2/s1024/Hellraiser02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGDzl4qk9VIccOCs29P_kK-wjJ2uJRQyH0FBwU_k9JnVvTmYfKDExfKauz-lTfjjmE-pNi5R7rvR0OXY1MeEBouR2YwUBxPKxS18ROPXh0Xd7AAEqF90bV8ypDAxl2IrPIVdXAVrv_ck3f6PfNQMwCzlcAhxSA-ilTcIYtONI2giFcTYpdkVUtnZ8X1hG2/s16000/Hellraiser02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Barker’s other famous creation in the
contemporary landscape of horror franchising was the ghetto-haunting wraith called
the Candyman, created for his story “The Forbidden,” featured in one of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Books of Blood</i> anthologies of his short
works that popularised his writing, and would be filmed as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Candyman</i> in 1992 by Bernard Rose. Where Candyman was the embodiment
of angst and malice reaching out of boles of social exclusion and oppression, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i> situates its exploration of
evil through a deliberate dichotomy, couched in humdrum suburbia and the pathos
of ordinary emotions, invaded by emissaries of an unknowable realm beyond, who
delight in transmuting petty human sensations into paradigms of existence
blending both heaven and hell, pleasure and pain. The story hinges on a small,
ornate puzzle box bought by the black sheep bohemian and wandering sensualist Frank
Cotton (Sean Chapman) in a Middle Eastern café from a dealer who comments
enigmatically, “Take it – it’s yours. It always was.” Frank returns to his
empty family home in the United States and succeeds in opening the box. This
proves to open a doorway to a netherworld from which emerges a quartet of
entities bearing the imprints of physical torture and disfigurement, beings he later
calls Cenobites, who tear him to bloody pieces after orgiastic torments. The
lead Cenobite (Doug Bradley), with a flourish that turns Sadean humour into a
form of both religion and art, arranges the pieces of Frank’s split head like a
jigsaw puzzle in a shadowy antechamber of Tartarus, as if all but daring
someone to put him back together, and then leaves the puzzle box in Frank’s
house.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM536ASVvwnv7iNB-CuAQPUOaEoFGAhbvmlNha5sGThyphenhyphenM5yHnft6BW4EI_fHxN7O5P4XDr-Pe-X9MT6zopjsn8oZabWT_-zZ2ISMyrvk0IcLIJnCUHlXV8BLpOOHkLqLb4F-h-zJuPEYPKzJmnhX1X4j3kEJKNKu7F6dYWtUBT2I1wQ4_vOLbrEzD_wx0A/s1024/Hellraiser03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM536ASVvwnv7iNB-CuAQPUOaEoFGAhbvmlNha5sGThyphenhyphenM5yHnft6BW4EI_fHxN7O5P4XDr-Pe-X9MT6zopjsn8oZabWT_-zZ2ISMyrvk0IcLIJnCUHlXV8BLpOOHkLqLb4F-h-zJuPEYPKzJmnhX1X4j3kEJKNKu7F6dYWtUBT2I1wQ4_vOLbrEzD_wx0A/s16000/Hellraiser03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Sometime later, Frank’s straight-arrow
brother Larry (Andrew Robinson) decides to move into the house, which he technically
co-owns with Frank, presuming his brother is still on the run after one of his
sketchy adventures. Larry doesn’t know that his wife Julia (Clare Higgins),
who’s been cold and distant with him for some time, had an affair with Frank. Her
relationship with Larry’s </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">teenage</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">daughter by another, deceased wife, Kirsty
(Ashley Laurence), is equally strained, and has driven Kirsty to try living
apart from her and Frank, despite her great affection for her father. When
Frank scratches himself whilst moving in, the blood he spills in the room Frank
died in is sucked up by the fine threads of his corporeal form left caked under
the floorboards. A partly recomposed Frank tears himself loose to confront an
initially terrified Julia, and he convinces her to start bringing men to the
house and then kill them, so he can finish refashioning his body by soaking up
their flesh. Frank explains that he escaped the captivity of the Cenobites and
needs to flee before they realise it. When Kirsty becomes the horrified witness
to her stepmother’s homicides and her uncle’s grotesque condition, she flees
the house with the puzzle box. Opening it whilst being kept under observation
in hospital, Kirsty encounters the Cenobites, who want her to be their next
plaything, but she tells them of Frank’s escape and strikes a tentative bargain
to lead him back to them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58q_nzrqsaf4jVwcCY5lKG2YUNuJGzICtXYJYr-aTpJV-WBQRUtPbEmmFI1Vw42BPrr5sJaZ9FlWwcFTd0K6jb4r988y81kIMF9wgFEdJa8LEYv7Ub69r14nKzmTHF-rhAr81w0-PXt05NN_j50QXyOdPC9t0a73eKNfp_J43zvcHZEE9_ewvE-vaCmQs/s1024/Hellraiser04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58q_nzrqsaf4jVwcCY5lKG2YUNuJGzICtXYJYr-aTpJV-WBQRUtPbEmmFI1Vw42BPrr5sJaZ9FlWwcFTd0K6jb4r988y81kIMF9wgFEdJa8LEYv7Ub69r14nKzmTHF-rhAr81w0-PXt05NN_j50QXyOdPC9t0a73eKNfp_J43zvcHZEE9_ewvE-vaCmQs/s16000/Hellraiser04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Some of the constituent parts of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i> are certainly familiar enough
to a genre fan. The motif of a normal person drawn into using sexual luring and
murder to revive a supernatural being tied to a certain space, is very similar
to “The Gatecrasher” by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, filmed as an episode in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From Beyond The Grave</i> (1973). Frank’s rebuilding
of himself repeats the structure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2021/10/04/the-keep-1983/" target="_blank">The Keep</a></i> (1983), as each killing restores partly towards completeness, and
something of Mann’s stylistic influence is apparent elsewhere, like the sight
of seemingly solid walls splitting to reveal menacing portals into dank
labyrinths. Frank’s initial, agonising revival from gelatinous mass to
partly-fleshed ghoul recalls visions of Christopher Lee’s Dracula being reborn
in films like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2015/08/23/dracula-aka-horror-of-dracula-1958-dracula-prince-of-darkness-1966/" target="_blank">Dracula, Prince of Darkness</a></i>
(1966) with more sophisticated, in-your-face special effects. The visions of
Frank in hell with its ritualistic and eternal dismemberment recall those in
Nabuo Nakagawa’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jigoku</i> (1960). It’s
more the way Barker decorates that template with his own special tweaks and perversities
that elevates the material, including, most obviously, the sadomasochistic
aspect to the Cenobites’ ethos and appearance. The lead Cenobite describes
himself and his fellows by the ultimate bohemian catchphrase: “Explorers in the
further reaches of experience – demons to some, angels to others.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrI1jecM7a7zGAHhzSPZScTvwb9JtfRpdJ0X1Y0n-4lPfhz8naw_haIsJxzB4oVxcRqau1TbrOzsBzXPWq6S4Yv9PVKhrvOuwaQQtempSp9brur5rLGJxH2_HiudE1s4-_nmGBy2lOndm6cF4DvcBgQy0TLQWY1qGEs3HL4Ur-4UhktHDrS1kjma4GKRZo/s1024/Hellraiser05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrI1jecM7a7zGAHhzSPZScTvwb9JtfRpdJ0X1Y0n-4lPfhz8naw_haIsJxzB4oVxcRqau1TbrOzsBzXPWq6S4Yv9PVKhrvOuwaQQtempSp9brur5rLGJxH2_HiudE1s4-_nmGBy2lOndm6cF4DvcBgQy0TLQWY1qGEs3HL4Ur-4UhktHDrS1kjma4GKRZo/s16000/Hellraiser05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The lead Cenobite, face studded with
nails driven in with geometric precision like some Dantean form of acupuncture,
became the centrepiece of the film’s marketing campaign. After being officially
dubbed “Pinhead” in an opportunistically-produced if still Barker-based sequel,
he became a recurring horror character to rival the likes of Jason Voorhees and
Freddy Krueger – and arguably outdoing them by persisting without quite
degenerating into the vaguely campy mainstays they did, in part because the
character’s origin, however much it was augmented away from Barker’s control,
remained rooted in something properly forbidding and alien. Regardless of the
character’s later life, the lead Cenobite is certainly incarnated with
sepulchral authority by Bradley, with hints of relish of his role as impresario
of delightful torture from a realm where all sensation is interwoven when there
is no mortality to limit it – “We have such things to show you!” Barker also
displays flashes of powerful visual imagination in sequences like Kirsty
opening the box and accessing labyrinthine spaces guarded by a chimera that
resembles a cross between a monstrous foetus and a scorpion. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2AaAwhlIrcqiNMcoTMr8twReEbBUJG6DySZbZD83NvoCuhvBP9i1PUwu_fIbPe4gowZvKmhK-r2WoxJIVSfHoveQXiOdfWZH11rX91UtW6WbVmvthZ3RfO3iGoWutBD5GAloEWUUuGf8aZaB0EmTybFeQtklpt4TI6waU09L3YNBpZiBoEqaDBKTYCVoa/s1024/Hellraiser06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2AaAwhlIrcqiNMcoTMr8twReEbBUJG6DySZbZD83NvoCuhvBP9i1PUwu_fIbPe4gowZvKmhK-r2WoxJIVSfHoveQXiOdfWZH11rX91UtW6WbVmvthZ3RfO3iGoWutBD5GAloEWUUuGf8aZaB0EmTybFeQtklpt4TI6waU09L3YNBpZiBoEqaDBKTYCVoa/s16000/Hellraiser06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Similarly arresting, if little more than
decorative filler, is a portentous dream sequence in which Kirsty, in a room
filled with swirling down, beholds blood welling through seemingly pristine
blanket whilst the sound of a baby wailing fills the air. The very end sees Kirsty and her
boyfriend Steve (Robert Hines) witness as a gnarled derelict (Frank Baker)
transforms into a vision of a Satanic emissary straight out of medieval art, a
skeletal dragon with wings, horns, and long swinging neck. This delivers a
swerve into a far more traditional image of hellspawn, but feels contiguous
with the rest, as if that echo from deep medieval lore and the modern variation
of it based in rough trade from the piercing parlour and all other such imaginings
are on a continuum, attempts by the human to understand things far beyond the
limits of the senses. Barker can even be said to have picked up something
implicit in his clear inspirations like the illustrations of Hieronymus Bosch
and the pages of Dante’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inferno</i> and
done something with them no one else quite dared, in taking stock of all the
utterly freakish and malefic tortures described in that medieval idea of hell
and pondering whether they might constitute fun after a while, if one has been
released from the familiar rules of corporeal existence.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNuX9p_WsoZySUFpZ65HjXRiG3DaNW-DnfU9G7bpwxnXTZ0g8Ke9Jnnx5IvJUqoeu6jGpMLKxaFCAGrojZQMOWAP_QztKhYvt0aYTBc6Zyj1w3QNU6tVQqt48u7WPUxZYd0QV83aNuBBU0JddFoQDScr4gtKDISc7rYr3_Km_2MxIzZvHtmFqh1BSuxA6l/s1024/Hellraiser07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNuX9p_WsoZySUFpZ65HjXRiG3DaNW-DnfU9G7bpwxnXTZ0g8Ke9Jnnx5IvJUqoeu6jGpMLKxaFCAGrojZQMOWAP_QztKhYvt0aYTBc6Zyj1w3QNU6tVQqt48u7WPUxZYd0QV83aNuBBU0JddFoQDScr4gtKDISc7rYr3_Km_2MxIzZvHtmFqh1BSuxA6l/s16000/Hellraiser07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Judged as an actual movie, as an animation
of its concepts, however, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i>
isn’t all that particularly good. Barker’s choice of setting the movie in
America despite being filmed in old Blighty might well have helped its box
office, and is even integral to its thematic insistences – digging into the
state of the family ideal in the age officially ruled by Reaganite forces but
riddled with the fallout of feminism and the counterculture era. But the choice
of setting also strains the mostly British cast to breaking point in trying to
put on their best Yankee brogues, and the locations are similarly obvious, and
the result feels more than a bit laboured. Which is a pity because both
visually and in its preoccupations <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i>
feels close to other British horror entries of the 1980s, including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Appointment</i> (1981) with its bleak musing
on fate and the family unit, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Xtro</i>
(1983) with its flesh-twisting rebirths. Echoes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2018/10/23/blue-velvet-1986/" target="_blank">Blue Velvet</a></i> (1986) resound, and David Lynch in turn clearly
remembered it for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mulholland Drive</i>
(2001). Barker’s story builds to the crucial moment when Kirsty opens the box
and encounters the Cenobites. The notion of the innocent, straightlaced young
woman confronting the darkest threats and temptations of the universe is one
that carries an obvious load of kinky potential, hinted at with Laurence’s
increasingly intense, shadow-eyed appearance redolent of dark knowing and
corruption, and also offered dimensions of possibility for exploring just what
the film thinks of good and evil and the million shades between. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl8b7eTfGJSYN33-EH9gvOjvY6-XsKPPYK7R5QTqOp8m6NfT8EXYglrer5JvB3fzY11DsiqplOiipQW4SzKHzaPtUtrv2J2-UqwnerAjOoLv80j-Y1VqtCoLekHFg9c02awa1LNttFdC8ns3O7vrW2-qlnwew0gszy014kUrEaVIl5loXNbbUD-ZrAE2RQ/s1024/Hellraiser08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl8b7eTfGJSYN33-EH9gvOjvY6-XsKPPYK7R5QTqOp8m6NfT8EXYglrer5JvB3fzY11DsiqplOiipQW4SzKHzaPtUtrv2J2-UqwnerAjOoLv80j-Y1VqtCoLekHFg9c02awa1LNttFdC8ns3O7vrW2-qlnwew0gszy014kUrEaVIl5loXNbbUD-ZrAE2RQ/s16000/Hellraiser08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ultimately the story proves to be about
Kirsty’s capacity to resist corruption, confirmed when she consigns the box to
a bonfire after banishing the Cenobites, only for the derelict-demon to rescue
it and wing it away to the next, less scrupulous inheritor. And yet Barker is
actually barely interested in Kirsty – she’s basically present because the
trends of horror storytelling in the 1980s had bent towards young female
heroines (and the less said about her dim, cardigan-wearing boyfriend the
better). Kirsty forges a deal with the Cenobites to deliver Frank back into
their hands, the Faustian consequences of which the climactic scenes
essentially drop in favour of some Ripley-isms: “You go to hell!” she screams
at the Cenobites, which is ironic because, like, they’re from hell. Laurence has some awkward moments as an ingenue, but eventually proves quite strong in the role, that said, and it feels chiefly thanks to her Kirsty
registers as much as she does. Julia’s transfixing erotic neediness, which
drives her violate all limits of god and man, is much more interesting if not
invested with any particular depth beyond having her incarnate inchoate sexual
need unfulfilled by a normal life. The basic, almost preternatural nature of
her urges are communicated fiercely through Barker’s use of flashbacks to her
affair with Frank. Julia’s superficial staidness conceals an intensely
transgressive passion for her brother-in-law, awoken just as she was facing
domestic settlement with Larry. Frank in turn never quite got off the Hippy
Trail. The two got it on behind the back of the almost comically oblivious
decent but weak-willed daddy, even after death.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz1kC23E7gt_e0ogc2ytdZkPiaFZqMu7iCEmB2jBJxVk7wnbIswHANSvbkWhRBoxYQ4v6lZp6p-XOJTAg8Z3-Oujm674SXW9ETa-OU0nLwCYF6lBb6k_h8aUd-M3pBioiwO_F8hSaSLFJg8bMKFNVHEocxdtYu7LuD2Z8iJmN35GyCML3GLa_BnXGqoQ1s/s1024/Hellraiser09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz1kC23E7gt_e0ogc2ytdZkPiaFZqMu7iCEmB2jBJxVk7wnbIswHANSvbkWhRBoxYQ4v6lZp6p-XOJTAg8Z3-Oujm674SXW9ETa-OU0nLwCYF6lBb6k_h8aUd-M3pBioiwO_F8hSaSLFJg8bMKFNVHEocxdtYu7LuD2Z8iJmN35GyCML3GLa_BnXGqoQ1s/s16000/Hellraiser09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Frank is initially shy about his
post-mortem appearance (“Don’t look at me!”) but Julia is eventually,
obliviously emboldened to suckle on his bloody fingers, whilst Frank coolly
lights himself cigarettes to while away his skinless solitude. But the revived
Frank is rather blankly and clunkily villainous, even if one interprets him as
having been restored with some traits absorbed from the Cenobites. Julia’s enthralment
to his project is similarly given no shading after her initial fear. Still, to
Barker’s credit he depicts Julia’s victims with surprising nuance – her first
pick-up (Antony Allen) becomes angry and insulting when she suddenly seems to
withdraw consent, but quickly turns apologetic – when it would have been all too
easy to make them either disposably pathetic, or as uniformly deserving in some
way, as Edgar Wright did a little too archly in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2021/12/03/last-night-in-soho-2021/" target="_blank">Last Night In Soho</a></i> (2021). The casting of Robinson is one of the
wittier touches, playing on his reputation earned since <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2021/01/05/dirty-harry-1971/" target="_blank">Dirty Harry</a></i> (1971) for playing psychos, even as his official role
actually asks him for a level of floundering pathos as the unexpected avatar of
besieged normality, as Larry, for all his plaintive desire to get his family
back together and on solid footing, is cuckolded by his wife and brother and
finally skinned and worn as a guise by the latter, who then gets indulge
incestuous come-ons to Kirsty – “Come to Daddy!” Frank-as-Larry repeatedly
hisses with glee, in a climax that lets Robinson suddenly pivot to his more
familiar creep act whilst finding a wicked metaphor for the sudden
transformation of the beloved father into abusive monster. Still, this twist
isn’t executed with much bite or impact, in part Barker never quite
establishes the emotional dynamic between father and daughter as convincing,
and also because he makes the switch way too obvious – Kirsty doesn’t seem
to notice her dad is all </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">gnarled and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">covered in blood.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMuc8dfdQUhyphenhyphenBVin1PjyIpssc7zJ0r59rPPio6tUI_hVhkie25Fxnnlz7i9RG_5hyT1u34hiUDdglQPTLKngVHtTd5fD3PnBkohlkpzPkdAoqV0UDx2ddCa0i72V8mgNpxy4Touu3yvYSOYoNJ_Zmpqdr1DAnowlAxXWT9S8K2ka_v953ufyMKvjUACvxB/s1024/Hellraiser10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMuc8dfdQUhyphenhyphenBVin1PjyIpssc7zJ0r59rPPio6tUI_hVhkie25Fxnnlz7i9RG_5hyT1u34hiUDdglQPTLKngVHtTd5fD3PnBkohlkpzPkdAoqV0UDx2ddCa0i72V8mgNpxy4Touu3yvYSOYoNJ_Zmpqdr1DAnowlAxXWT9S8K2ka_v953ufyMKvjUACvxB/s16000/Hellraiser10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Barker pushes the performances to
hover uneasily between naturalism and something more stylised, close
to genre shtick, a problem that also manifests when Kirsty sees the derelict
lunching on grasshoppers in the pet store she works in, a moment present because Barker feels things need another jolt of weirdness there. The deeper problem is
that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i>, whilst elevated well
above the run of the average in the 1980s horror stakes, is nonetheless also to
some extent an equally pertinent example of what for me was going wrong with
the genre about this time. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i>
is bold and vivid, successfully skirting a low budget to suggest a vast complex
of lore and strangeness just beyond the margins of what is seen, and what is
seen is invested with a level of galvanising originality and impact. And yet </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">whilst Barker’s conceits are intriguing and sometimes confrontational, the speed with which they were assimilated into the general fabric of the genre points to how his approach to them saps their disquieting value. </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The meat of the story and
its symbols invoke a level of existential angst and psychological unease the
script never really digs into and Barker’s direction can’t convey, and whilst
<i>Hellraiser </i>seems to inhabit the realm of surrealism, it actually betrays that
artistic mode. Instead, the characters are presented on a level contiguous with
the medieval morality plays the visuals reference. The Cenobites and the puzzle box wield
genuine mystique, but their blatantness made it inevitable they would become
the stuff of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fangoria</i> magazine
covers. As a result, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i> isn’t
particularly frightening or exciting – the closest it comes is being
impressively icky and morbidly fascinating. But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i>’s semi-classic status persists if only because it’s a
rare horror movie of its era that had authentic vision and edge. Other works from the '80s with similar impact, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Evil Dead</i>
(1982), are comparatively playful, where <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hellraiser</i>
manages a finer balance for the most part: whilst ambitious, it takes itself
seriously and still delivers down-and-dirty goods. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg62KZkrphOkmuy8hkfMW79nLuK3rCIZThDF8uWyOppi_J-0QMDvRmbeMqq6sSoiMsfoht7arV3oIEQziF7NdhnCGATxozQQhaQR3xjPqXvVeX2YA-B-iPBRD444-g4dt9rjbxHuAYU810qH1z9FEnbmdnO4FhuK1ufzRCoz2998Pnj99ARC9SkP5Ygwz0S/s1024/Hellraiser11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg62KZkrphOkmuy8hkfMW79nLuK3rCIZThDF8uWyOppi_J-0QMDvRmbeMqq6sSoiMsfoht7arV3oIEQziF7NdhnCGATxozQQhaQR3xjPqXvVeX2YA-B-iPBRD444-g4dt9rjbxHuAYU810qH1z9FEnbmdnO4FhuK1ufzRCoz2998Pnj99ARC9SkP5Ygwz0S/s16000/Hellraiser11.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-52162383772709825432023-10-09T18:24:00.010+11:002023-10-10T01:54:27.937+11:00La Llorona (1933)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsyAXyZHpbB4tzA21koPLR7aPkK3zktgpuMruoSFUoxsJJBg1enwmqLajV_sp9VGpOLWv5aLuB_RS2jHrrdXRktTpYZe6Qhyb2ca_ZoaygOFzoDEpKu678SYEgS7xKBak7nB_wULWf0HEb1AOAr5msp7P10YlLjCt_wGsOU54fU3gQ7DPlP53hrTRKpWDc/s800/LaLlorona01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" height="462" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsyAXyZHpbB4tzA21koPLR7aPkK3zktgpuMruoSFUoxsJJBg1enwmqLajV_sp9VGpOLWv5aLuB_RS2jHrrdXRktTpYZe6Qhyb2ca_ZoaygOFzoDEpKu678SYEgS7xKBak7nB_wULWf0HEb1AOAr5msp7P10YlLjCt_wGsOU54fU3gQ7DPlP53hrTRKpWDc/w640-h462/LaLlorona01.jpg" width="640" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Part of the unique texture and attraction
of Mexican folklore lies in its peculiarly tragic and melancholy mystique,
welling from a worldview borne of civilisations crashing together, of conquest
and deprivation, in deep and significant conflict with the sprightlier
fantasies of the nation to its north. The figure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la llorona</i>, the Weeping Woman, has deep roots in both Iberian and
Mesoamerican cultures, was forged into modern form by their meeting, and
persists across the Americas. The specifically Mexican version of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la llorona</i> stands alongside the imagery
of the Day of the Dead as the country’s most famous folk cultural product. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La llorona</i> is a ghostly woman, cursed to
wander forever<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for the crime of killing
her child after being betrayed by her husband. Always seeking her child in a
tormented and distraught state, she visits indiscriminate vengeance on those
unlucky enough to stray in her path. She has similarities to other mythic
figures including Lilith from Talmudic tradition, Medea from the Greek, and the
Irish banshee, in that her appearances supposedly portend death, particularly
for children who stray too close to water, a function that places her in a long
tradition of campfire tales designed to keep children close at hand. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD95UmARykgJZFk8WFOOss5p5oCNki_sSMZuPa7GHdcPSe8MEMOLGo0cWefZ8M_IJkednO8k7XhQVBKoGW1ui9Z9uCd9COoMV5mU4vVmyoxci9Z9kLFxrWWhKX78KaSqQM6BZaXI-pQnxcuq5qw3SFEg_qFIve8pUWw3RxYW20kpVp0SAxIkly98CUTqOp/s800/LaLlorona02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD95UmARykgJZFk8WFOOss5p5oCNki_sSMZuPa7GHdcPSe8MEMOLGo0cWefZ8M_IJkednO8k7XhQVBKoGW1ui9Z9uCd9COoMV5mU4vVmyoxci9Z9kLFxrWWhKX78KaSqQM6BZaXI-pQnxcuq5qw3SFEg_qFIve8pUWw3RxYW20kpVp0SAxIkly98CUTqOp/s16000/LaLlorona02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">One of Mexican cinema’s first sound films
when it was released in 1933, Ramón Peón’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La
Llorona</i> is fascinating not least because of the way it tries to enfold an
entire national historical paradigm into its narrative, simultaneously
dramatizing and analysing its cultural roots, and illustrates those ideas with flashes of artfully composed imagery and layers of complex storytelling. Peón, a Cuban-born director and actor, made hundreds
of films in a forty-year career, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La
Llorona</i> is easily the best-remembered. The script was co-written by Fernando
de Fuentes, often described as the first great master of Mexican film in the
sound era, and who would go on to make his own classic horror film, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">El Fantasma del Convento</i> (1934). The
opening vignette strikes an immediately creepy and mysterious note as a man
hears a deeply unsettling spectral shriek, and promptly drops dead from a
sudden heart attack. The body is brought to Dr Ricardo de Acuña (Ramón Pereda),
who dismisses the supernatural report attached to it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgymA-VchCKiisgPO1620Ervjr-DMMqmoOiUNJy-21onYxkt8kBtnIwJ7rJvUFjwkLlkRJKRhGzzE6hoR3z8B57PX63KRxPtW42AIkhRR2DhjqKXNPbsDggO3zc_qEG2xJuVf-UDLHmVAWFhLN9r01oYjDIv_tbNUfpTUe8xQp-GbGdAN82ITco8gxFUrwj/s800/LaLlorona03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgymA-VchCKiisgPO1620Ervjr-DMMqmoOiUNJy-21onYxkt8kBtnIwJ7rJvUFjwkLlkRJKRhGzzE6hoR3z8B57PX63KRxPtW42AIkhRR2DhjqKXNPbsDggO3zc_qEG2xJuVf-UDLHmVAWFhLN9r01oYjDIv_tbNUfpTUe8xQp-GbGdAN82ITco8gxFUrwj/s16000/LaLlorona03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ricardo soon learns, however, that he is the
special heir to a peculiar curse, rooted in the great and terrible history of
the nation, thanks to a literal and figurative spectre haunting his family,
about to manifest on the fourth birthday of his son Juanito. Ricardo’s father
Don Fernando (Paco Martínez) takes him aside after the birthday party and
cautions him that Juanito might be doomed to follow in the footsteps of
Ricardo’s older brother, who was knifed to death on his fourth birthday like
many other first-born in the family. The Acuñas, Don Fernando tells Ricardo,
are connected to the heritage of Hernan Cortés, the conquistador of Mexico. The
tangle of their inheritance is connected with the lingering trauma of both the
larger national project and its microcosmic likeness, found in Cortés’
relationship with Doña Marina (María Luisa Zea), the native Aztec woman
remembered to history as La Malinche who served Cortés as translator and
mistress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to Don Fernando’s
recounting of folklore, Marina, after being stripped of her son by Cortés, fell
into hopelessly insane wandering in the search for her missing child. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfkpWCVS8bzUqCvgsGnb2_x_tCacL_LFN-p1Qtbw-Gwu6L3JChJFaM4U2DlaO3xWMLfE_kAqoEFl1zHuH3IlnxDG700cSI2weccbPWeTHPm0I2uui0J3O-OYPBU4Q55QMKtSk5A7uhm3jX1sN2wMGxkBaDToxAhIwa1o7my8DylJyuz5Bwtf-knVBjWQ9T/s800/LaLlorona04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfkpWCVS8bzUqCvgsGnb2_x_tCacL_LFN-p1Qtbw-Gwu6L3JChJFaM4U2DlaO3xWMLfE_kAqoEFl1zHuH3IlnxDG700cSI2weccbPWeTHPm0I2uui0J3O-OYPBU4Q55QMKtSk5A7uhm3jX1sN2wMGxkBaDToxAhIwa1o7my8DylJyuz5Bwtf-knVBjWQ9T/s16000/LaLlorona04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A few generations later, one of the
conquistador’s heirs, Marquis Rodrigo de Cortés (Alberto Martí), had a child by
another mistress with a suggestively Aztec name, Ana Xiconténcatl (Adriana
Lamar), and hesitated at naming their son his official heir as he planned to
marry an aristocratic woman. Set upon by robbers in the street, Rodrigo’s sword
battle with them attracted the attention of the gallant Captain Diego de Acuña
(Pereda again), who aided him in fighting them off. Diego’s immediate
attraction to Ana and appalled reaction to learning of Rodrigo’s deceptions
inspired him to angrily intervene at Rodrigo’s wedding, confronting the wedding
party with Ana and child. Whilst Rodrigo and Diego met to duel to the death,
Ana, in a fit of vengeful loathing, killed her child and then herself, only to be transformed into the shrieking wraith of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la llorona</i> to haunt the land ever since. The good modern doctor, Ricardo is sceptical after his father’s recounting of this folklore, but is quickly confronted with evidence the curse is still in effect – if being executed by
rather more earthbound interests.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh70ybNQxcDKCgPnHGYHk6M_Tg8oTef72os8N74e8IWdpCnh8h4zuw4rGAVYNcuRL8F6DgFmoKJAz7aaPjNRieQn2y_u2Z6SR1MDHceQK9_vWgPSIbazMGDKJskT2eZSzA7ypHbUkY5f10n_qwPZTS2WIM1eZylBCxjahlJO9R4PRFm_7v1Wy41oVdV5bvh/s800/LaLlorona05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh70ybNQxcDKCgPnHGYHk6M_Tg8oTef72os8N74e8IWdpCnh8h4zuw4rGAVYNcuRL8F6DgFmoKJAz7aaPjNRieQn2y_u2Z6SR1MDHceQK9_vWgPSIbazMGDKJskT2eZSzA7ypHbUkY5f10n_qwPZTS2WIM1eZylBCxjahlJO9R4PRFm_7v1Wy41oVdV5bvh/s16000/LaLlorona05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peón displays a touch similar to the
likes of Tod Browning, Karl Freund, and Carl Dreyer, certainly on the same page
as them in trying to evoke a sonorous atmosphere in the unfamiliar climes of
newfangled talkie cinema. The opening is a marvellous little ideogram of visual mystique and symbolic punch, sketching a basic folkloric representation of an
encounter with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la llorona</i>, with the
solitary man walking down a city street at midnight and passing by an ornate
old archway and barred gate, suggesting the irreconcilable nature of past and
future, rich and common folk, Latin American heritage and modern urban
cosmopolitanism. The man hears <i>la</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">llorona</i>’s
fateful cry and slumps down. Peón cuts to a gruesome close-up of the man’s
pain-warped face and tracks down to observe his fingers curling up in death,
then dissolving to the sight of them, now cold and stiff, jutting out from
under the clinical white sheet covering his corpse in the hospital ward. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZx7HSB1FLB2gjRTkkcbnxq4q1LrJbbba8tJV8AMjh6fpy28sTEirAuiuBHP5MbDPvRKzJNhv4dq6jNeMFSRffknxRX4zq_Wa5_fJxlVWM5Hcqfy72OtUgcSzLXFsQxj9fYMkDix-lm3VQXg2L9-jIDOGvTvtr4lpAZ_my3r30HgJU9l8sRk6vwYydgVLO/s800/LaLlorona06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZx7HSB1FLB2gjRTkkcbnxq4q1LrJbbba8tJV8AMjh6fpy28sTEirAuiuBHP5MbDPvRKzJNhv4dq6jNeMFSRffknxRX4zq_Wa5_fJxlVWM5Hcqfy72OtUgcSzLXFsQxj9fYMkDix-lm3VQXg2L9-jIDOGvTvtr4lpAZ_my3r30HgJU9l8sRk6vwYydgVLO/s16000/LaLlorona06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The dead hand is quickly hidden again
under the gleaming linen, linen the same colour as the swathing white of
surgical gowns worn by Ricardo and others on his medical team, and the bright
lights overhead render everything lucid and tame, the product of mere
biological phenomena. Peón presents the swathing white as emblematic not
just of modern, antiseptic medical knowledge, but of a virtually angelic
counterpoint to the grim nocturnal maledictions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la llorona</i>. Ricardo, handsome, brilliant, and springing from an old
and respected family, is the very exemplar of a modern Mexico,
wielding both scalpel and scientific rationality with precision in
dispelling any lingering ills in the bodies both physical and politic.
Nonetheless Ricardo is soon drawn into the chamber of arcana that is his
father’s study, with all its amassed lore regarding the history of the family
and its fatefully shared heritage with the founding figures of Mexico, to be
regaled with legends of ancient loves and hates, life and death, passion and
crime, each a stage in the evolution of a schismatic inheritance and also a
repeating point in a cycle. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuzHrnhrkzmxYPffxw0odwNOIjGAN9AcfovxRP8AsqQh34e018I3Yd-bi-nXD8TEUPfWMfYKKP6vekEUnCpKAo34iBhilgxmL50Bj7TpiII8w7MGw9u-KgrlFjQmI0I3SADwfVgk4NvWeWeHnJVix7A8GXqZJ5-xkt0C8eIE-ImZOF7VjSUTjho-VGn99c/s800/LaLlorona07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuzHrnhrkzmxYPffxw0odwNOIjGAN9AcfovxRP8AsqQh34e018I3Yd-bi-nXD8TEUPfWMfYKKP6vekEUnCpKAo34iBhilgxmL50Bj7TpiII8w7MGw9u-KgrlFjQmI0I3SADwfVgk4NvWeWeHnJVix7A8GXqZJ5-xkt0C8eIE-ImZOF7VjSUTjho-VGn99c/s16000/LaLlorona07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peón’s habit of letting his camera linger
on the far side of capacious sets seems to betray a common uncertainty with
early sound filmmaking on mediating style in the new medium, but as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Llorona</i> unfolds the director proves
to be trying hard to create a carefully manipulated sense of unity in space and
sound, weaving a subtly haunting atmosphere. He offers brilliant flashes of camera
invention, like the pivoting shot of the young children ensconced for Juanito’s
birthday feast, caught in the peculiar geometry of the ornate dining table.
Later Peón offers a similarly, dreamily graceful survey of the Marquis Rodrigo’s
wedding guests, as if trying to emphasise his story as unfolding within a
social-historical texture and meditating on a bygone age’s expression of its
values in a similar way to the early depiction of the modern medical ward: such
are the way-stations of life and death in diverse epochs. The first scene of
Rodrigo and Ana contains a fillip of desperate romanticism as the Viceroy finds
he cannot leave Ana’s presence without returning for another passionate
embrace, Peón filming them with Jesus on the cross and flickering candle
hovering hazily in the foreground in boding patience for their prospective
union and caution against the imminent decisions that will destroy them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQRGPwfu2fDAu7oJTUvIgNV89-IRCf98_gDhR3Q6sJy0yyyycwQbdiL4FD23shwL0okxpxTsl-Ww78_puk5nAzOJs1RUN6QTyrLdJ5STVI2Q4aIiceo5nOLDevkqkvO8wtGcSBZP78HhUWVcTQHJH1QPOyA9JdEWp7DrZA00u7v0JBTqeqQ0TgYHNu5C16/s800/LaLlorona08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQRGPwfu2fDAu7oJTUvIgNV89-IRCf98_gDhR3Q6sJy0yyyycwQbdiL4FD23shwL0okxpxTsl-Ww78_puk5nAzOJs1RUN6QTyrLdJ5STVI2Q4aIiceo5nOLDevkqkvO8wtGcSBZP78HhUWVcTQHJH1QPOyA9JdEWp7DrZA00u7v0JBTqeqQ0TgYHNu5C16/s16000/LaLlorona08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peón marvellously cordoned
universe unexpectedly marries a distinctively Latin American type of
gothic horror with aspects of the unstable, fiend-riddled secret worlds within
worlds out of Louis Feuillade and early Fritz Lang. Peón’s dreamily stylised
evocation of colonial Mexico City is a survey of implacable brick walls with
patches of florid design like outcrops of coral, a place of polarised interiors
and exteriors, a civilisation arranged so twains do not meet, at least not
until coincidences force new pollinations, as when Captain Diego saves Ricardo
and so is ushered fatefully into his love nest. The flourish of swashbuckling
action as the two men fight off the criminal gang proves ironic, given the next
time the two men meet with swords in hands before Ana’s house it’s to kill
each-other, as well as the sense of illusory action in a story actually about
cyclical history and dogging truths that cannot be easily slain. Later Peón reveals the interiors of the castle-strong Acuna villa to be riddled with
secret warrens, within which lurk the living reminders of historical legacy and
guilt: a mysterious lurking figure, swathed in black robe and hood, gazes out
from hidden nooks upon the hapless family, stone knife in hand and telltale
signet ring carved with a skull motif on the knuckle. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjFW8_6zMfrAjNxrwqnkIgGOkHuerXAUmOuyIFiivlUEJ0Xuoe73xyKOCFgsmY96dZ6CY-VLFv7aqfJHvGWNYjAA3SUoiAvkijcNbrIDriGXLAHmi4uYrlFMv5wU3vJ9OxfWhmAX2UKjbX_PdV_w_r3zdW8xG8fw2RsHHDZufdWA74I4ZhqgHcEGxy1GZM/s800/LaLlorona09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjFW8_6zMfrAjNxrwqnkIgGOkHuerXAUmOuyIFiivlUEJ0Xuoe73xyKOCFgsmY96dZ6CY-VLFv7aqfJHvGWNYjAA3SUoiAvkijcNbrIDriGXLAHmi4uYrlFMv5wU3vJ9OxfWhmAX2UKjbX_PdV_w_r3zdW8xG8fw2RsHHDZufdWA74I4ZhqgHcEGxy1GZM/s16000/LaLlorona09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The first flashback sequence sees Ana
donning these trinkets before committing the slaying of her and Ricardo’s son,
a gesture that removes her crime from the realm of a pure spasm of maternal
nihilism and instead inducting the killing into a ritual lineage stretching
back to Aztec times, with Ana and her descendants at once victims and
malefactors, avenging crimes done unto them but also riddling their nation with
the literally manifest spirit of atavistic anti-reason and primal evil. The
second flashback, depicting La Malinche’s ordeals, is offered as an interlude
of expressionistic pathos, Marina and her loyal maid hovering in desolation as
the scene of being stripped of her son plays out in superimposed remembering,
before the ill-starred woman wanders the streets, clasping at random children
in her daze before being dragged before Cortes, who frees her, only for her to
retort, “Free? Your offspring will suffer my revenge!” Marina is revealed to
wear the skull ring and possess the stone knife, deliberately slaying herself
in the ritual manner so her spirit emanates to reign over a benighted country.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZqOgBr0_AFPe_oWwSlDemLbYZtZL_7fjkmercFx9U1UR-1-POl0RkmLyoCtZubGtiObZOvQxjUw2AyGqr_hSJ0NFzv3DmlJdA6yf-mWq-iW1COSvmIysjIabL54-Ks0zpbxeulGIyVk5gAgdtnmv9i4ZoosltNs9V6uGCT8L96J_DeKSGrjbXPsXLagMT/s800/LaLlorona10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZqOgBr0_AFPe_oWwSlDemLbYZtZL_7fjkmercFx9U1UR-1-POl0RkmLyoCtZubGtiObZOvQxjUw2AyGqr_hSJ0NFzv3DmlJdA6yf-mWq-iW1COSvmIysjIabL54-Ks0zpbxeulGIyVk5gAgdtnmv9i4ZoosltNs9V6uGCT8L96J_DeKSGrjbXPsXLagMT/s16000/LaLlorona10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Meanwhile the theme of superstition is
more humorously mooted when the Acunas’ aging servant Mario (Carlos Orellana),
noting only thirteen children are sitting at the party table, adds himself to
their number. Mario, whilst offering the film’s comic relief, also nonetheless
evinces another of the film’s themes as one of the servants in the Acuna
household who belong to a servile class that’s been serving the family for
generations, also including Nana Goya (Esperanza del Real): the type of
aristocratic largesse and loyalty is ultimately revealed to have been the
vehicle for the insidious curse to linger, as the generations of nominal
servants have actually been sleeper agents claiming their sacrificial victims
from the family’s first-born sons. Ricardo foils the first attempt to snatch
his son away by the lurking killer when he manages to penetrate the labyrinth
under the house and win back the boy, but other attempts will be made.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwapiFNKKjxCf9dDlVXVOGKB8ug8jUUFh6LvGCAoRqeuOPnqz6tSI5Fuz9_C_eOdIlQC2EjF2mSUObUoozKUDAw0J58ukcxGl96KnXzLwEdFESisbqLNv_XK5BJMT6kpZh27OVwr2Pqlq4fQcaSmPtnu3ZjkX04RMpH1tBVnIn7pAXY12J2pTXafkPgYcl/s800/LaLlorona11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwapiFNKKjxCf9dDlVXVOGKB8ug8jUUFh6LvGCAoRqeuOPnqz6tSI5Fuz9_C_eOdIlQC2EjF2mSUObUoozKUDAw0J58ukcxGl96KnXzLwEdFESisbqLNv_XK5BJMT6kpZh27OVwr2Pqlq4fQcaSmPtnu3ZjkX04RMpH1tBVnIn7pAXY12J2pTXafkPgYcl/s16000/LaLlorona11.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This mischievous evocation of social
hierarchy turned into a double-edged weapon feeds into the deliciously surreal
sight of the robed killer, eyes gazing out amidst pale circles within black
cloth, stalking out from secret passages in monkish garb with murderous intent
to invade the plush environs of the Acuna manse with its fanciful décor, whilst
down below the house an Aztec sacrificial temple has been installed, a sinister
place complete with carved stone altar and billowing smoke from votive fires.
The forces of modern lucidity and authority soon turn the tables as police join
the Acunas in penetrating the hidden passages, bringing light and clarity to
the seemingly fathomless mystery after the assassin slays Don Fernando and sets
sights on young Juanito. Ricardo and the cops find a hidden book in this
labyrinth, which gives up the details of the curse’s roots in La Malinche’s
experience, and soon after catch the hooded killer poised in the temple over
Juanito ready to deliver the sacrificial blow, only to be gunned down and
revealed as Nana Goya. Pereda readily embodies both the classical, forthright
Mexican gallant and his keen-eyed descendant, the sharp corners of his
moustache enough to cut a swathe through all musty legends. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_wpZoiXIaH1_UYynMi46oWs9CCKZf5iV9_DIoVg_BzGyg2mErtNQcB87PmJUQQj13wnwo0lJLU4Ufswah7P9CXAJxUd5KjSj1Tr-JMnN3xXWmplmLwnwsyovFH_d5m93kGi6GZU7QKmWGebSUm8UQNdrGI-ysGQOUDVQXlsDNPZJF2negaHBc-0Vkm8MR/s800/LaLlorona12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_wpZoiXIaH1_UYynMi46oWs9CCKZf5iV9_DIoVg_BzGyg2mErtNQcB87PmJUQQj13wnwo0lJLU4Ufswah7P9CXAJxUd5KjSj1Tr-JMnN3xXWmplmLwnwsyovFH_d5m93kGi6GZU7QKmWGebSUm8UQNdrGI-ysGQOUDVQXlsDNPZJF2negaHBc-0Vkm8MR/s16000/LaLlorona12.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But it’s Lamar who really invests the
film with a compelling screen presence, projecting intense sensuality and a
smouldering wilfulness redolent of a nature barely contained by the ornate
trappings of Spanish imperial-era garb, provoking the most taboo reactions from
the descendants of the conquistadors and turning the same capacity for livewire
passion on herself in an auto-da-fe which births <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a la llorona</i> shade. The ghost rises up from her splayed corpse and
wafts out the villa window, releasing her weird and wild shriek, arresting the
duel of her treacherous lover and her erstwhile defender, an exceptionally
simple but peculiarly effective vignette. A similar spirit is also seen
vacating the body of Doña Marina and, at the very end, from the felled corpse
of Nana Goya, a concluding touch that delivers a particular sting. Where the
majority of the film seems to be demystifying the whole idea of the eponymous
shade, which is a veritable world-spirit, the emblem of woe and unstilled
tragedy itself, and reducing it to something accountable to human agency, this
conclusion finally reveals <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la llorona</i>
to be a perpetually reborn force, defying attempts to place such entities at
the mercy of modern rationality, always to haunt the nation as the roving
expression of its accumulating sins. Whilst not free of the creaky
qualities of early sound cinema, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La
Llorona</i> is a classic of world horror cinema that deserves to be much
better known.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZHjN0-z5AEdexC66oGffJoC_Uzjf7BHIgTTZiBDWAVsKAwAZd2u0KM2z1UWjp92HfDipdwCmVmXjMUAir52OUia_XGfFd4U5Kp_VIwFsavvuHkMhVlTZxxhHtDIiEsuIV5H8ShK1oP1xbt6pv1sEQReFDf6OCvSKbUkWNRvuKryiZSyzzB_0-F5zUv9tn/s800/LaLlorona13.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZHjN0-z5AEdexC66oGffJoC_Uzjf7BHIgTTZiBDWAVsKAwAZd2u0KM2z1UWjp92HfDipdwCmVmXjMUAir52OUia_XGfFd4U5Kp_VIwFsavvuHkMhVlTZxxhHtDIiEsuIV5H8ShK1oP1xbt6pv1sEQReFDf6OCvSKbUkWNRvuKryiZSyzzB_0-F5zUv9tn/s16000/LaLlorona13.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-30721425195324214532023-10-05T17:09:00.012+11:002023-10-29T23:35:53.320+11:00Halloween Horror 2023 Links<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCSkqVaUld8Mz16gynB4uqRBcSEvGkkNOX6bQn1am4_Ajpz-6TvbXPHEPwdkoXiSdNYVccTwaQO3ZNM3hhpFIJvL73ZmMgE8WC0iBCkEC8fwALw3qtX7HDe5Q_ub9oFiVcNk4e22MSZv3h_Xvjh1e1tJSg62MCGQO7MLyVN6GAbHF3dMxWbEOptJqRjdsu/s1600/TheBlackCat28.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1190" data-original-width="1600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCSkqVaUld8Mz16gynB4uqRBcSEvGkkNOX6bQn1am4_Ajpz-6TvbXPHEPwdkoXiSdNYVccTwaQO3ZNM3hhpFIJvL73ZmMgE8WC0iBCkEC8fwALw3qtX7HDe5Q_ub9oFiVcNk4e22MSZv3h_Xvjh1e1tJSg62MCGQO7MLyVN6GAbHF3dMxWbEOptJqRjdsu/s16000/TheBlackCat28.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">Links for each piece for Halloween Horror 2023, progressively updated here as they appear:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">1. </span><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-magician-1926.html" target="_blank"><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Magician</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">
(1926) at This Island Rod</span></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">2. <a href="https://filmfreedonia.wordpress.com/2023/10/04/the-black-cat-1934/" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Black Cat</i>
(1934) at Film Freedonia</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">3. <a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2023/10/la-llorona-1933.html" target="_blank"><i>La Llorona</i> (1933) at This Island Rod</a></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13.3333px; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">4. <a href="https://filmfreedonia.wordpress.com/2023/10/13/night-tide-1961-queen-of-blood-1966/" target="_blank"><i>Night Tide</i> (1961) / <i>Queen of Blood</i> (1966) at Film Freedonia</a></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13.3333px; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">5. <a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2023/10/hellraiser-1987.html" target="_blank"><i>Hellraiser</i> (1987) at This Island Rod</a></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">6. </span><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2023/10/20/the-sorcerers-1967-witchfinder-general-1968/" style="font-size: 13.3333px;" target="_blank"><i>The Sorcerers</i> (1967) / <i>Witchfinder General</i> (1968) at Film Freedonia</a><br /><br /><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">7. </span><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2023/10/mill-of-stone-women-il-mulino-delle.html" style="font-size: 13.3333px;" target="_blank"><i>Mill of the Stone Women</i> (1960) at This Island Rod</a></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13.3333px;">8. <a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2023/10/29/nosferatu-a-symphony-of-horror-1922/" target="_blank"><i>Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror</i> (1922) at Film Freedonia</a></span></p><br /><p></p>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-36909638809872389222023-10-01T17:32:00.019+11:002023-10-03T18:54:59.918+11:00The Magician (1926)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLntgy1Pf-BhOHiD7RDfzsIQe0UZCcZaiaUEvFVjz7tHeNMPjnugKYYd2800go4LaBY82PYUVYYTSM5U0a67i3v1PG1UMNMO0O8FLLVRtivnDyrlNBiYdATmoar369DeWZ3-prqb_95_gGdlzvZqebZ0QieoXoNphDodPc8DIYEG10-AO-OHgMrBD8Y0ju/s766/TheMagician01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLntgy1Pf-BhOHiD7RDfzsIQe0UZCcZaiaUEvFVjz7tHeNMPjnugKYYd2800go4LaBY82PYUVYYTSM5U0a67i3v1PG1UMNMO0O8FLLVRtivnDyrlNBiYdATmoar369DeWZ3-prqb_95_gGdlzvZqebZ0QieoXoNphDodPc8DIYEG10-AO-OHgMrBD8Y0ju/s16000/TheMagician01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Rex
Ingram’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Magician</i> is a cinema relic replete with potent and fascinating
elements, and even if the film as a whole doesn’t quite cohere into a total
classic, it’s hard to ignore its influence, direct and indirect, on so much
fantastic cinema that followed. The source was a novel by W. Somerset Maugham,
who, desiring to write a money-spinning work after his first few literary
efforts gave him a name but not much else, drew on his acquaintance with the
writer and mystic Aleister Crowley, who was just starting to emerge as a
self-invented figure worth of modern folklore and proto-tabloid execration
exploring forbidden realms of mysticism and sexuality. Maugham’s fictionalised
portrait helped make Crowley a figure of popular infamy, embodying all that was decadent
and wicked about bohemia in the public imagination when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Magician</i> was first published in 1908. Crowley himself was apparently amused
and likely benefited from the notoriety, but also irked that Maugham had drawn
so blatantly on his works and life. The novel was considered unusually strong
stuff at the time, and when Ingram came to film it, he delivered one of the
relatively few serious-minded horror films produced and released by a Hollywood studio in the late silent era.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj5mc0TYJwlPOh-jOBC6zQqQPJjQuzpqe9IJK4PTuYHZ6Ublr95fkWPwOvT-rvroLuYpJaMOyDGrYHYIIkAcc6GTnhzO7eMjhRAkYU46xAPkS-ivkXUl84qzqod8VKALwk54NfSosQwYHegLsK2p_kmZV231LBV75q8Skd5ShJXlIxVBy05TdvjqLoF9qR/s766/TheMagician02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj5mc0TYJwlPOh-jOBC6zQqQPJjQuzpqe9IJK4PTuYHZ6Ublr95fkWPwOvT-rvroLuYpJaMOyDGrYHYIIkAcc6GTnhzO7eMjhRAkYU46xAPkS-ivkXUl84qzqod8VKALwk54NfSosQwYHegLsK2p_kmZV231LBV75q8Skd5ShJXlIxVBy05TdvjqLoF9qR/s16000/TheMagician02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Magician</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> opens with a striking
sequence in which young and ardent artist Margaret Dauncey (Alice Terry) is
working on a huge, teetering clay sculpture of a devilishly contorted figure,
as if conjuring out the depths of her psyche an image of perversity and
corruption. To give form to such a dream immediately exacts a price, as the
statute slowly splits and tears, crashing down upon Margaret and breaking her
back. Margaret’s damaged spine is repaired by an equally exacting if more
practical kind of artist, Dr Arthur Burdon (Iván Petrovich), in a feat of
prolonged surgery. This medical miracle is watched by many in a scene contrived
to evoke an otherworldly chorus looking on at this delicate drama of life and
death, with surgical team and witnesses all swathed in white coats. Amongst the
audience is Oliver Haddo (Paul Wegener), who represents
rather the Devil’s minority report, gazing on with wide, bulbous eyes and an
attitude of patronising indulgence, provoked when another viewer calls Burdon a
magician: “The saving of a human life is a comparatively simple matter,” Haddo
retorts, “On the other hand, the scientific creation of life does indeed call
for the powers of a magician.” Burdon’s surgery is successful, and he quickly falls in love with her, able to do what both Haddo and Margaret aspire to in romancing the product of his labour. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjReTXtHtD_VO7bealmruk_o_8FtjQElz-C1F6qhl9i3YyMQavtqmSdqA0vXhaNoMoTGdogzUqgEcZzzGl-Qao8Pyyyuv3LkCqgqjhw9Xy43JwrJ5qpnLUHNu010hXdiOCB26JJ8IzzAYnkEeAj0nP0A_g2sO1c71RdIHT5jYG_bWR6N_wHYn65ulIItC35/s766/TheMagician03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjReTXtHtD_VO7bealmruk_o_8FtjQElz-C1F6qhl9i3YyMQavtqmSdqA0vXhaNoMoTGdogzUqgEcZzzGl-Qao8Pyyyuv3LkCqgqjhw9Xy43JwrJ5qpnLUHNu010hXdiOCB26JJ8IzzAYnkEeAj0nP0A_g2sO1c71RdIHT5jYG_bWR6N_wHYn65ulIItC35/s16000/TheMagician03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
couple, planning to marry, nonetheless keep crossing paths with the unsettling, enigmatic Haddo. When the three of them attend a performance by a snake charmer at a
Parisian fairground, Haddo insists on demonstrating his ability to magically neutralise the
snake’s venom, by letting the serpent bite him. Haddo indeed doesn’t die, but the
snake bites one of the young female performers and she immediately expires – an
incident Burdon and Margaret’s uncle Dr Porhoët (Firmin Gémier) blame Haddo
for. But Porhoët himself is intrigued by the esoteric arts that obsess Haddo,
who gloatingly hands Porhoët a book he’s looking for in the Library of the
Arsenal, albeit after Haddo has already torn out the most vital page. Haddo
wants to perform a ritual alchemist’s experiment detailed on the stolen page, which
claims that one can create a homunculus with the blood of a blonde maiden. And,
of course, he sets his sights on Margaret: after mesmerising her and tricking
her into thinking she’s damaged goods after treating her to a bacchanalian
hallucination, Haddo marries her and steals her away to Monte Carlo, near where
he has constructed a laboratory in a medieval alchemist’s tower. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihfA-aGB-n7BI_CwTJLa5mqf1u2c5mYZrnTEp2TXNm_xQO9tQZI5gnpHBRXOuQ8H5IqPnNHN5Cx0j4TYPvQ1pWO9DLe6NMmO-J5utbrme9bajt3_QlnJMuK-MByRMejVfVokLF7s-lOlA6vvyinuIUFWfITzb2GQJ67DlcBuZzqlq9bjEFHZP3kVi1Y5s7/s766/TheMagician04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihfA-aGB-n7BI_CwTJLa5mqf1u2c5mYZrnTEp2TXNm_xQO9tQZI5gnpHBRXOuQ8H5IqPnNHN5Cx0j4TYPvQ1pWO9DLe6NMmO-J5utbrme9bajt3_QlnJMuK-MByRMejVfVokLF7s-lOlA6vvyinuIUFWfITzb2GQJ67DlcBuZzqlq9bjEFHZP3kVi1Y5s7/s16000/TheMagician04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ingram, whilst today largely overshadowed by other greats of silent cinema, was considered one
of the great stylists working in Hollywood throughout the 1920s, standing up
with the likes of Erich Von Stroheim and Maurice Tourneur amongst the
filmmakers who brought a new visual artistry and discipline to the vigorous
young art form. The Irish-born Ingram was the son of a clergyman but gravitated
to more free and artistic climes, first studying sculpture at Yale after immigrating to the
US in 1911. He entered the movie industry as an actor and swiftly started
working behind the camera, debuting as a director with 1916’s <i>The Great
Problem</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. Ingram’s rumoured lover,
the MGM executive June Mathis, presented Ingram with her young would-be star
discovery Rudolph Valentino, and Ingram directed Valentino’s career-making
vehicle </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse </i>(1921), a hit that also cemented Ingram as a major director.
Ingram chose to expend much of his clout in a bid for independence from studio
executives, eloping with Terry, the female star of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse</i>, and setting up his own small
film studio under the MGM auspices outside Nice on the French Riviera. He made
most of the rest of his films there, with a young up-and-coming director named
Michael Powell working as his assistant.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiayxg0N1mP5LoCVDLxzOafuB0gmUabb96Ww-aa5-Cy4KzMUxjiAsATVg7wXTpGrr-L4kDmXrR7M2oAjo9gCv4XRvADiiBMZASjK792Q5fR0ZKunk-0sChSuvDuyqpJiT0aCvLY3qkYw_5Eq5AO3VCfh5MTqdeN89U5puBdq-wLIamdojY9I0F35wZtA_BE/s766/TheMagician05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiayxg0N1mP5LoCVDLxzOafuB0gmUabb96Ww-aa5-Cy4KzMUxjiAsATVg7wXTpGrr-L4kDmXrR7M2oAjo9gCv4XRvADiiBMZASjK792Q5fR0ZKunk-0sChSuvDuyqpJiT0aCvLY3qkYw_5Eq5AO3VCfh5MTqdeN89U5puBdq-wLIamdojY9I0F35wZtA_BE/s16000/TheMagician05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ingram’s
removal from watchful overlords gave him the freedom with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Magician</i> to make a film closer in nature to the horror films
being made in Germany at the time. That he had ambitions in this direction was
signalled most clearly by hiring Wegener, who had helped make and starred in
two movies about the Jewish legend of the Golem, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Golem</i> (1914) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Golem: How It Came Into The World</i> (1922). Ingram reportedly had a lot of
trouble with Wegener’s unsubtle acting presence, and indeed his Haddo rather
fatally lacks any kind of insidiously charming or seductive quality, instead occupying
the screen with toadlike intensity that treads close to ham. That said, Wegener is effective in its way – his bulging eyes, as they had when he played the
Golem, wield the same transfixing luminosity that makes them feel like emblems
not just of the oneiric but of silent film itself, the gaze out of the darkness
at the edge of the liminal enticing viewer and heroine. Ingram makes the
disparity between his coolly stylised realism and the broad projected menace of
the actor with a jot of knowing humour: “He looks like he stepped out of a bad
melodrama,” Burdon comments after one uncomfortable encounter with the
self-described sorcerer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzK0wBzm8nk9iF6qXhFK-X35BBla8-viypLY6xZL3WiLU1LKe3uYLIXmcB56TEVshZBjh0VUIqn7R4x-JIm_JcUg86cIWB9pX2oiQrOZZdJZTy7OmvcHKuHdXjUgcJt4GhWmpLo5wX8e8kF-j3digmWTcWnG6m7gQt3uN1YtpRorC_oLR6NBuTNQ68RXSf/s766/TheMagician06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzK0wBzm8nk9iF6qXhFK-X35BBla8-viypLY6xZL3WiLU1LKe3uYLIXmcB56TEVshZBjh0VUIqn7R4x-JIm_JcUg86cIWB9pX2oiQrOZZdJZTy7OmvcHKuHdXjUgcJt4GhWmpLo5wX8e8kF-j3digmWTcWnG6m7gQt3uN1YtpRorC_oLR6NBuTNQ68RXSf/s16000/TheMagician06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Despite the artistic emulation, Ingram’s
visual style skews away from the Expressionist approach then prevalent in
European horror cinema, or rather moulds into a more naturalistic façade.
Ingram specialised in lush sprawls of carefully contrived misé-en-scène nudging
the real towards the stylised. This is apparent in the film’s best scenes. That
opening with the slowly cracking and collapsing statue. The otherworldly tint
of the surgery scene. Haddo’s first entrance into his medieval lair with
alchemist’s apparatus stretching like monuments across the frame and voluminous
space lost in shadow. A survey of a Monte Carlo casino interior, a place
teeming with lost souls and dirty pretty things. The climactic scenes are
particularly potent in the way Ingram uses the colossal furnace in Haddo’s
laboratory, yawing open ready to receive Margaret’s body once relieved of its
heart, to cast infernal shades on the drama, the hellish counterpart to the
angelic lustre of Burdon’s surgery. The film’s key and most famous dream
sequence nods not to Lang or Murnau but to Benjamin Christensen’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Häxan</i> (1921) as a model. Haddo visits
Margaret in her apartment and, after gazing upon the bust of a lusty fawn she’s
sculpted and grasping what it says about Margaret’s sublimated desires,
mesmerises her. The pair pass together through a hallucinatory zone,
envisioning a bacchanalian orgy amidst twisted, bulbous, Boschian structures and
spindly, wraith-like trees, overseen by Pan tooting his flute amidst semi-naked
revellers. The living embodiment of Margaret’s fawn bounds over to her and
scoops her up in a blatantly erotic clinch. The fawn is played by Hubert
Stowitts, an American dancer then working with the Folies Bergere, wearing only
a scanty loincloth, in a vignette it’s about as racy as mainstream silent
cinema gets.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAoxNgM42p-84kMUNo3lKhSmJ_vg3jgaq_LIRK8-wZhyFm7xAMacObPdYEdRA8zpMX9Jo0jemSqFmpKBdDY_uehWmyGRp7CN4P_6Vq7oVSq9fH765CsLEekp3ywNhPJ6z8vqGu-pMl1pb1Mexq3Ophf9YHlj9mCByyOYotYwybWhFGLCfwzEfwATdqawO0/s766/TheMagician07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAoxNgM42p-84kMUNo3lKhSmJ_vg3jgaq_LIRK8-wZhyFm7xAMacObPdYEdRA8zpMX9Jo0jemSqFmpKBdDY_uehWmyGRp7CN4P_6Vq7oVSq9fH765CsLEekp3ywNhPJ6z8vqGu-pMl1pb1Mexq3Ophf9YHlj9mCByyOYotYwybWhFGLCfwzEfwATdqawO0/s16000/TheMagician07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ingram’s
careful, even standoffish approach as a filmmaker is indeed the source of both
much of the pleasure and the frustration of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Magician</i>. It’s been said that Ingram was losing interest in cinema by this
point and might only have overseen the production, indicated
by the way he credits himself as “supervising” the film’s shoot. And it’s arguable that
Ingram’s emphasis on careful but distant composition betrays an eye that wasn’t
keeping up with what was happening in late silent film as montage was becoming
more overt. But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Magician</i> doesn’t
feel slapdash: indeed, there’s a feeling of tense control throughout. Ingram
seems to have invested himself in the film in reflective ways. Where in the
novel Margaret was merely characterised as an art student, Ingram makes her a
practitioner of his own, first art of choice. He makes the act of sculpture, the creation of
simulacra that conjure the corners of the mind into the closest thing to
tangible existence, into a motif that inevitably echoes in Haddo’s desire to
make a more perfect kind. Both are artists of perversity, but with Haddo a far
more extreme realm. This connects in turn with the feeling that Ingram is using
both to explore his own reported, compulsive fascination with the physically
grotesque and misshapen. This fruitful idea is nonetheless robbed of some of
its potential power by the script, which follows Maugham’s lead in making
Margaret otherwise a fairly gossamer, virginal damsel in distress, rather than
someone tempted powerfully by the dark side, but Ingram traces out kinky
contours nonetheless. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQCnCY67CAqv5Oz9jGT83vVoqGZsvwsew5Nz2S2wcOeHBOSFPjvX0yFWXuroy8_XrI0SKe-Aod6JrIBTCJsBHVETPfRpa_3zrtbvYc_OtFQmnavFl_85mc1J_1AwXKt2yxEU_e39qlnMmEONRkX1SzyoaI1rTyTCbVu53cq3DAhwj5cK5lXfPOG_IH-Xvg/s766/TheMagician08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQCnCY67CAqv5Oz9jGT83vVoqGZsvwsew5Nz2S2wcOeHBOSFPjvX0yFWXuroy8_XrI0SKe-Aod6JrIBTCJsBHVETPfRpa_3zrtbvYc_OtFQmnavFl_85mc1J_1AwXKt2yxEU_e39qlnMmEONRkX1SzyoaI1rTyTCbVu53cq3DAhwj5cK5lXfPOG_IH-Xvg/s16000/TheMagician08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Margaret
assures Burdon that Haddo has never actually slept with her, but Ingram signals
something transformative and sexual in their relationship anyway when Burdon
finds her in the casino and she’s wearing a dark, transluscent gown with a high collar. This
garment reminded me of the one Mia Sara’s heroine is given to wear in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Legend</i> (1985), enough to make me wonder
if Ridley Scott ever saw this film. Likely the influence comes via Powell:
Powell would transmit his experience working on this film through the fantasy
sequences of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Thief of Baghdad</i>
(1940), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Red Shoes</i> (1948), and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tales of Hoffmann</i> (1951), and also
arguably even echoes in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2019/10/01/peeping-tom-1960/" target="_blank">Peeping Tom</a></i>
(1960), only with the device of the alchemist’s mad design transmuted into a
film camera, a sliced-out heart exchanged for the captured image. Powell
himself appears as a dopey audience member at the snake-charming show whose hat
floats away atop of loose balloon, a jot of comic relief just odd and dreamy
enough to suggest Powell himself might have come up with it. There’s a lot of
comic relief in the film despite its attempts to take the material seriously,
some supplied by Gladys Hamer as Susie Boyd, a painter friend of Margaret’s who
in the opening scene, in a wry poke at the pretence of modern art, is observed
changing the title of her new artwork, a cubist study of the Parisian skyline,
to better suit her vague purpose. More intrusively silly is some stuff with
Henry Wilson as Haddo’s servant, who somehow survives a climactic explosion to
be left dangling by his long-johns like a Buster Keaton character.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMrqQjfV54XnRqEcr4W3BqzaEUyWJamwPmvMpbMDw2DUXxYGSmGdOk-yUkkFkohy4WrE_6TZ-u4ND1-75IFUsNp4wUg3Z4lbtdzJmhXBuG6IPeAng-1_LQyb1m9OAPVP_b7epX2OHDals02QDQePaWBUL4ejTfuFWxPsnKz4QweJAWWYmunvR1Slu0Tocz/s766/TheMagician09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMrqQjfV54XnRqEcr4W3BqzaEUyWJamwPmvMpbMDw2DUXxYGSmGdOk-yUkkFkohy4WrE_6TZ-u4ND1-75IFUsNp4wUg3Z4lbtdzJmhXBuG6IPeAng-1_LQyb1m9OAPVP_b7epX2OHDals02QDQePaWBUL4ejTfuFWxPsnKz4QweJAWWYmunvR1Slu0Tocz/s16000/TheMagician09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
film also hews to the general demystifying mood of ‘20s Hollywood horror in
ultimately shying away from any confirmed concession to the supernatural, with
Haddo revealed late in the story to be an escaped mental patient. Despite its
hesitations and interludes of stolid nicety, the film maintains a simmering
mood of menace, until finally combusting for a grand denouement. Burdon and
Porhoët dash to the rescue whilst Margaret is strapped of course to a table at
the maniacal villain’s mercy as a slew of similarly decorous damsel would be in
the next twenty years of horror films. Ingram’s subtle approach pays off as his
camera retreats before the grimly set, shadow-cleaved face of Haddo, marching
towards Margaret with murder in mind. Haddo defends himself from the would-be
rescuers with ferocity, wildly hurling alchemic concoctions and gleefully
opening up the furnace to push Burdon into its maw – but guess who actually
falls in. James Whale undoubtedly took great licence from these scenes for his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankenstein</i> films, in both the overall
look of his laboratory scenes, and particularly the climactic explosion of
Haddo’s tower which he would restage in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2016/09/30/bride-of-frankenstein-1935/" target="_blank">Bride of Frankenstein</a></i> (1935). The laboratory’s destruction takes all of
Haddo’s secrets with it, although Porhoët has by this point already burned up
the stolen page, having decided that there are some things man is not meant to
know, et cetera. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxdpfd5P6fX_bXc5Jmge8HMhZMcpvxIEBjYiPmwNKFoaAAY6Iwu72S_Snzos-vkHviCXaDt3DoOnrHyiSfFeImey9M5G9FyyLYz_vlMmvdL-v-hM-W6pye39joZ1oW5WuIN6yz0Gkr5tw3J0qy1bkEiJxQfjs8nX6snq0oPgrfU275DliMx98FgxfOKiNC/s766/TheMagician10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxdpfd5P6fX_bXc5Jmge8HMhZMcpvxIEBjYiPmwNKFoaAAY6Iwu72S_Snzos-vkHviCXaDt3DoOnrHyiSfFeImey9M5G9FyyLYz_vlMmvdL-v-hM-W6pye39joZ1oW5WuIN6yz0Gkr5tw3J0qy1bkEiJxQfjs8nX6snq0oPgrfU275DliMx98FgxfOKiNC/s16000/TheMagician10.jpg" /></a></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-9703945411648559202023-09-20T00:37:00.007+10:002023-09-20T00:56:13.816+10:00Halloween Horror Hype 2023<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLAsq2vRQUmXio6tnmxVB-MmG8l5wgIZWSpJrOV7K953hKzzmLrB9BGDmQ4PjE6_U1RjbvNomVv573Uy3HuD-7208zMxptkuVgz_wok7CPvZLOl2mcYbIBPyaGRh6ncO4qngmUDywGTSi9PYIDi7i93wsF2Rp-0lCFoRi-S6hlhHLALHHtnnymtMetjwX2/s888/halloweenhorror2023-1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="888" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLAsq2vRQUmXio6tnmxVB-MmG8l5wgIZWSpJrOV7K953hKzzmLrB9BGDmQ4PjE6_U1RjbvNomVv573Uy3HuD-7208zMxptkuVgz_wok7CPvZLOl2mcYbIBPyaGRh6ncO4qngmUDywGTSi9PYIDi7i93wsF2Rp-0lCFoRi-S6hlhHLALHHtnnymtMetjwX2/s16000/halloweenhorror2023-1.png" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That subtle
chill in the air, the breath of dark tidings at dusk, the shiver that runs up
your back – yes, it’s getting to be that time of year, friends. This Island Rod and
its sister site Film Freedonia will be hosting my annual Halloween Horror festival, an ancient tradition stretching back to the mysterious and mystic year of 2009, through October, and I’ll be posting links to all essays on both sites. See you
soon. Until then, beware the full moon, stay off the moors.</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To tide you over, if you</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">re a newcomer to my writing or just like</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;"> digging through an archive of musty and forgotten lore</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">, some links to previous years of Halloween Horror:</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2022/10/07/halloween-horror-kill-list/" target="_blank">Halloween Horror 2023</a></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-compleat-halloween-horror-2021.html" target="_blank">Halloween Horror 2022</a></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-compleat-halloween-horror-2021.html" target="_blank">Halloween Horror 2021</a></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2020/10/halloween-horror-2020-links.html" target="_blank">Halloween Horror 2020</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2019/10/halloween-horror-2019-links.html" target="_blank">Halloween Horror 2019</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2018/10/halloween-horror-2018-links.html" target="_blank">Halloween Horror 2018</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2017/10/halloween-horror-fortnight-at-ferdy-on.html" target="_blank">Halloween Horror 2017</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-LQI3N8iY__S_8B9lc78aFinRY6yyW86TpyWD-pq3PQYdlVewpBlVfPK6WhqdvHeCVHNapCwdRmHylN_bwTTEIFL6qvuXdqscH7gOZ7snqsAABMdQP27AXQPMKzRfteiOXo8qKouXDf-qYNEbuXkABQeX8Eqo9XMgtJSEPeaHR4hDb03BRMhM2LPNqpAg/s888/halloweenhorror2023-2.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="888" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-LQI3N8iY__S_8B9lc78aFinRY6yyW86TpyWD-pq3PQYdlVewpBlVfPK6WhqdvHeCVHNapCwdRmHylN_bwTTEIFL6qvuXdqscH7gOZ7snqsAABMdQP27AXQPMKzRfteiOXo8qKouXDf-qYNEbuXkABQeX8Eqo9XMgtJSEPeaHR4hDb03BRMhM2LPNqpAg/s16000/halloweenhorror2023-2.png" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghsWdAAWRVTKX9mhg330LYxdWRm8LoLz37n6GxN9emfAF4sxx7Uaq6VFlYnU9uqzbmw9NY2vUs2msjjXazZP_GnFuW0tqwTDZZMMumWbDX2UAyIxMlV8dwnoAk2cBo7LA8U9kFTZ69hd9jIIcOy5HoezJyTgaVLQFDA38vMIT0_OJo1jeV0rl5s8WzqIZJ/s886/halloweenhorror2023-3.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="886" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghsWdAAWRVTKX9mhg330LYxdWRm8LoLz37n6GxN9emfAF4sxx7Uaq6VFlYnU9uqzbmw9NY2vUs2msjjXazZP_GnFuW0tqwTDZZMMumWbDX2UAyIxMlV8dwnoAk2cBo7LA8U9kFTZ69hd9jIIcOy5HoezJyTgaVLQFDA38vMIT0_OJo1jeV0rl5s8WzqIZJ/s16000/halloweenhorror2023-3.png" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkschn21pUvSUMhOuHTjenVaZKLJgy6_q8rs1npKH2hmYPNSc7eW428rRfvnJJbUBKJMhTvAbVcTdZq9O65PeRYlx96nwvOxf-R-8R0Wdef_Uicxdxc8P2KqU-O5Ige2v8clbWjcPzVRjH8GUb6B_besDJO_yh4liKwMiK8ymc5HVKgB48b-GkOQktTk8p/s887/halloweenhorror2023-4.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="665" data-original-width="887" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkschn21pUvSUMhOuHTjenVaZKLJgy6_q8rs1npKH2hmYPNSc7eW428rRfvnJJbUBKJMhTvAbVcTdZq9O65PeRYlx96nwvOxf-R-8R0Wdef_Uicxdxc8P2KqU-O5Ige2v8clbWjcPzVRjH8GUb6B_besDJO_yh4liKwMiK8ymc5HVKgB48b-GkOQktTk8p/s16000/halloweenhorror2023-4.png" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-92072639913847284562023-09-14T17:02:00.008+10:002024-02-14T15:06:54.707+11:00Gold (1974)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR-1sJ4fkKlS_unZvUnDo10csUTWhRUYplnF1InfYFUEYYxS5LBVENZt5aCq880oxSEsXyDcrkt0Xs_tVN0iNvL-BoUf7WI-tTsImk30UPcsQhP9hM16E_r4XNVfkW6PQS5mVd-9VDL8fGc8j25P_Q8cCJeb9XlULMGNuqacY8jXhcR7C1wsdyPOt5_lIQ/s1280/Gold01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR-1sJ4fkKlS_unZvUnDo10csUTWhRUYplnF1InfYFUEYYxS5LBVENZt5aCq880oxSEsXyDcrkt0Xs_tVN0iNvL-BoUf7WI-tTsImk30UPcsQhP9hM16E_r4XNVfkW6PQS5mVd-9VDL8fGc8j25P_Q8cCJeb9XlULMGNuqacY8jXhcR7C1wsdyPOt5_lIQ/s16000/Gold01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Peter
R. Hunt’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold</i> comes at you with all
the flashy, bristling paraphernalia of the very 1970s-style,
based-on-the-bestselling-novel blockbuster it so shamelessly wants to be.
There’s Roger Moore, his tanned chin big and dimpled enough to be taken for a
jutting butte of the rolling African landscape. Susannah York at her most
beautiful and spunky. Corporate intrigue and conspiracy, sabotage, explosions,
assassinations, floods, slimy corporate villains, irascible but decent tycoon
patriarchs, and stalwart African miners singing in pitch-perfect harmony. Elmer
Bernstein’s florid, hyping score infuses images as mundane as a plane flying
over Manhattan with an aura of legendary significance, backed up by Ousama
Rawi’s gritty-glistening cinematography. A pretence towards aping the style
template of the James Bond films extends to opening and closing credits by Bond
designer Maurice Binder scrolling by whilst some Tom Jones clone warbles a
bluesy theme tune. But from today’s perspective that most refreshing aspect of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold</i> as an aspiring popular
entertainment is that it’s set in a demonstrably real world, tapping a scene of
actual, gruelling work for the setting of a swaggering action-adventure movie,
employing a coherent and reasonably intelligent plot, and sporting characters who embody romantic fantasies but are also definitely imperfect.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-BgyHmHmleda15jvpoyZW2wQG2eQFvWUmqnEup90AG95NQduHpYeDGvtgx0Mang5mTBWks6RY2eYiICcTBb6nk7ffZLqaCHotixUdns8ugnCPaVkBEEoChqkBmvwQLPS3H3NX8wIsiEguFEqg6Pbs0OPX7kIkLZp2ZdlAAxN5zjBKGjQhxghPyjyxQNi/s1280/Gold02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-BgyHmHmleda15jvpoyZW2wQG2eQFvWUmqnEup90AG95NQduHpYeDGvtgx0Mang5mTBWks6RY2eYiICcTBb6nk7ffZLqaCHotixUdns8ugnCPaVkBEEoChqkBmvwQLPS3H3NX8wIsiEguFEqg6Pbs0OPX7kIkLZp2ZdlAAxN5zjBKGjQhxghPyjyxQNi/s16000/Gold02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gold</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">’s also one of those
movies where the making was a thorny proposition. Hunt had been an important
and lauded editor in British filmmaking even before he became the secret weapon
of the Bond series’ production team. Starting with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2008/11/17/famous-firsts-dr-no-1962/" target="_blank">Dr. No</a></i> (1962), Hunt’s fast cutting style and willingness to include
camera motion and blur in the midst of action scenes helped give the Bond films
their signature kinetic, almost avant-garde impact, and eventually Hunt
lobbied for a directing promotion, which he received for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On Her Majesty’s Secret Service</i> (1969). The blend of rollicking
verve and visual and and emotional elegance he invested in that film is perhaps
the chief reason it’s often bandied now as the best Bond film. Nonetheless Hunt
didn’t get to direct for another five years as he determined to leave the
series behind, and altogether his directing career proved an unfortunate bust,
and yet <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold</i> does at least prove <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On Her Majesty’s Secret Service</i> wasn’t a
fluke. Hunt was hired by independent movie mogul Michael Klinger, who had
scored a success producing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Get Carter</i>
(1971). Klinger had bought the rights to two novels by the northern Rhodesian-born
(now Zambia) writer Wilbur Smith, and first tried to hire Steven Spielberg to
make the movie, having been impressed with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Duel</i>
(1971). When Klinger then nabbed Moore, the fresh-minted Bond himself just off <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2017/05/28/live-and-let-die-1973-the-spy-who-loved-me-1977-for-your-eyes-only-1981/" target="_blank">Live And Let Die</a></i> (1973), as the film’s
lead, he then seemed determined to drape the film in as much Bond-esque
paraphernalia as he could, hiring more personnel involved with the series
including Hunt and Binder.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGvmo2p56s15nGf7_7OTSGSTWG1JumxHmJtQQQBKvao3P87LQ1G_aaawx5aSf8TSmCE1XT-kRue42bmtPonEVf7Q1iE0X1xNykeZflJHolMjKa4W--szmtXdnWCSPcO2KQr-btKgrFOgSKll6Cm-X_GTGe2QAJex-yOXJ106tbj4a05ImnMukTb91p4pUx/s1280/Gold03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGvmo2p56s15nGf7_7OTSGSTWG1JumxHmJtQQQBKvao3P87LQ1G_aaawx5aSf8TSmCE1XT-kRue42bmtPonEVf7Q1iE0X1xNykeZflJHolMjKa4W--szmtXdnWCSPcO2KQr-btKgrFOgSKll6Cm-X_GTGe2QAJex-yOXJ106tbj4a05ImnMukTb91p4pUx/s16000/Gold03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Smith’s
books were hugely popular (the author died at the end of 2021) for their
forceful melodrama and depiction of the African landscape as an ideal cradle of
epic undertakings still possible in the stolid modern world, and one of his
novels had previously been filmed as Jack Cardiff’s pithy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2012/01/25/dark-of-the-sun-aka-the-mercenaries-1968/" target="_blank">Dark of the Sun</a></i> (1968). Smith actually
laboured in a mine for a time to research his book, which was entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold Mine</i>. But actually shooting the film on location in South Africa proved extremely troublesome, at a time when international opinion was
turning decisively towards isolating the country culturally, as the filmmakers had to contend with union
bans and York’s vehement activism for the length
of the shoot. The film was chiefly financed by South African businessmen, and
there’s a definite overtone of appeasement in the tourist board-approved
discursions to things like staged Zulu dance ceremonies and lush shots of
bushland and cityscapes, including a drippy sequence of Moore and York flying
over the outback to the strains of Bernstein and Don Black’s Oscar-nominated
ballad “Wherever Love Takes Me.” Despite all this ballast, however, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold</i> is for the most part stylish and
full-blooded. Moore is Rod Slater, underground work boss of the huge
Sonderditch gold mine outside Johannesburg: in the opening scene he and work
crew head Johnny N’kulu, known to everyone as ‘Big King’ (Simon Sabela), lead a
rescue of some miners trapped by a roof collapse, including the mine’s general
manager Frank Lemmer (Norman Coombes), who dies of injuries before he can be
brought to the surface. Confusion is rife as to just what Lemmer was doing tunnelling
in the place he was working, near a thick natural dyke the miners believe holds
back an underground lake. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinP3CIuBhRXztddL7hVF1Rmm5-8eVBGf10x87hJMDZrIpBhvxJlXiuQwZ57FO0kA3Hd_9iCcirmBmnhSIKWMKqA9416c7Jsw1Bd0eXiXG0Py4nLJ2FqfReAv9JzhIKOcW1c8WL8lRd1xvO-SrOGMRKLMnqjK9aN1koSMi364OGPOubTKA9sCZPgEV1p0uD/s1280/Gold04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinP3CIuBhRXztddL7hVF1Rmm5-8eVBGf10x87hJMDZrIpBhvxJlXiuQwZ57FO0kA3Hd_9iCcirmBmnhSIKWMKqA9416c7Jsw1Bd0eXiXG0Py4nLJ2FqfReAv9JzhIKOcW1c8WL8lRd1xvO-SrOGMRKLMnqjK9aN1koSMi364OGPOubTKA9sCZPgEV1p0uD/s16000/Gold04.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Slater
is approached by the mine director, Manfred Steyner (Bradford Dillman) to
take Lemmer’s place, over the objections of the actual owner Hurry Hirschfeld
(Ray Milland), an aging but forceful entrepreneur who wants a more experienced
hand for the job, but Steyner gets his wish through some manoeuvres. Dirty feet
are at work, of course: Steyner, who is married to Hirschfeld’s daughter Terry
(York) but really loathes both them both, is working in league with a syndicate
of greedy European investors, headed by the silken-sleazy Farrell (John
Gielgud), to sabotage mining operations at Sonderditch. Knowing full well thanks to his surveyors that the dyke holds back a reservoir, Steyner has sold the
investors on a plan to sneakily breach the barrier and flood Sonderditch, with
the desired end of causing a huge spike in gold prices which will circumvent
pricing regulations and make them all billions. Steyner shows Slater a
falsified report showing gold behind the dyke, and instructs him to dig
straight for it. Slater obeys but proves cautious, preparing explosive charges that can seal off
any unleashed torrent. Steyner’s plan soon factors in attraction between Slater
and Terry, contriving to let them have the clandestine affair they’re so
plainly itching to indulge. He gives them a chance to head off for a
dirty weekend whilst he secretly orders the dyke breached, so Slater won’t be
around to run disaster control and will cop the blame.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij2WkH5jsLk6gSdAQ0arO29bxN6idGh-CJJuTWGjzCw-uzVUu_ZB37jENpf64OIzmJqmbuqI0ADxsBwhGBz_2pjbFG0bac1Iqu2Mf81uVVro4YT6Or8h83i4O5iVoaFrQdKDi9pNyNJDiOwtsr3akfy4iQ5oElGmMq6lUv8bGX8BYoKQifBkuRFC6aIvsa/s1280/Gold05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij2WkH5jsLk6gSdAQ0arO29bxN6idGh-CJJuTWGjzCw-uzVUu_ZB37jENpf64OIzmJqmbuqI0ADxsBwhGBz_2pjbFG0bac1Iqu2Mf81uVVro4YT6Or8h83i4O5iVoaFrQdKDi9pNyNJDiOwtsr3akfy4iQ5oElGmMq6lUv8bGX8BYoKQifBkuRFC6aIvsa/s16000/Gold05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Hunt
grounds the thriller and trashy bestseller elements with a blend of big movie
hype and documentary realism in shooting around authentic mine locales. The
first descent into the mine depths is conveyed with a lengthy shot staring back
up a shaft from a descending lift, the small rectangle of light and connection
with the surface dwindling to a tiny gleam, capturing both claustrophobia and a
sense of atavistic awe inherent in digging deep into the earth. Hunt films ranks
of authentic miners undergoing a health inspection whilst singing a work song,
and films the actual mining operations with a feel for the extreme physical
straits of such labour. Hunt segues into a long montage about a half-hour in
that’s close to being a visual essay, scored over by one of the tribal work
songs, depicting in fascinating detail the actual processes of the mining from
rock face to ingot smelting (as well as incidentally revealing the class and
racial politics with the uniformly Black miners and their white bosses). The early
scene where the rescuers try to extricate the trapped and mangled Lemmer
proceeds with restrained drama right up until the mine surgeon starting to cut
off Lemmer’s leg, when Hunt cuts with cold wit to a screeching alarm whistle
topside. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SIz6u3yzD4FG9o8nypEymjfMQXixpCSR9frbX_u-5ou3l9-xZJ_ToUoYimiR-8RS9ddpsn8KNpEbft_z-2D-LX4fjxR0GczBUFSHE12hR9psOPLseqsuP7C9Pgf9PeC2zomUXnO6pAYlHnBd36y4GvBUzsVockNF6ZtNDryZXYpgYK2K3fv12zcwL_RT/s1280/Gold06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4SIz6u3yzD4FG9o8nypEymjfMQXixpCSR9frbX_u-5ou3l9-xZJ_ToUoYimiR-8RS9ddpsn8KNpEbft_z-2D-LX4fjxR0GczBUFSHE12hR9psOPLseqsuP7C9Pgf9PeC2zomUXnO6pAYlHnBd36y4GvBUzsVockNF6ZtNDryZXYpgYK2K3fv12zcwL_RT/s16000/Gold06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A
great deal of the fun to be had here lies is the way <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold</i> rifles every layer of the mining operation and the plot to
undo it all, relating the highest level to the lowest with a conceptual zest
that is, in its way, reminiscent of Upton Sinclair, and quite biting in its
cynical understanding of big business, even if the characterisation of the coarse
but essentially noble Hurry bleeds off some of the Marxist steam.
Coldblooded boardroom decisions made on another continent spell death to who
knows how many workers, and the players in the game utilise whatever tools and
tactics required from letter bombs to intimate psychology. At one point,
realising that one of his cabal is threatening the conspiracy by selling stock
too early, Farrell sends him a letter bomb that he cuts open whilst at
breakfast with his family: the bomb goes off and kills them all. Farrell also
arranges for Manfred’s underling Stephen Marais (Tony Beckley, competing
with Dillman to register maximum sleaze) to help Manfred accomplish the plot
but then assassinate him at the end of it. Dillman all but cornered the market
on playing smarmy creeps in movies around this time, but he’s particularly fun
here playing the kind of man who uses his wife to work on his behalf with her
father and then dangles her out as live bait for Slater. Whatever erotic
offence he countenances in the romance, which isn’t much, is readily dwarfed by
the anticipated pleasure of revenge over his father-in-law, who so often
reminds him of his subordinate place. This is played out in a stinging aside of
characterisation as Hurry lights up a cigar in Manfred’s presence despite his dislike
of smoke and tells him to get over it, only for Manfred to later snap sharply
at Slater to not light up in his presence. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh31z5dWLlGmlOHGyVrn3jELKxSbwYVRYercE50V1mu4Tzs1Y5eA2YhlQ-jVuJIarBmbQzwK16vuP0gpgZpVr88yqRG3Pj8Uxlxnno8kgcoMF_LAamsucMYc5yL8hZXRlG58X8UBsmWLhwb1hWH520pWoGXgviuycf-mE083Xc4Xz0aI72DK_PtFt1WKc0l/s1280/Gold07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh31z5dWLlGmlOHGyVrn3jELKxSbwYVRYercE50V1mu4Tzs1Y5eA2YhlQ-jVuJIarBmbQzwK16vuP0gpgZpVr88yqRG3Pj8Uxlxnno8kgcoMF_LAamsucMYc5yL8hZXRlG58X8UBsmWLhwb1hWH520pWoGXgviuycf-mE083Xc4Xz0aI72DK_PtFt1WKc0l/s16000/Gold07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Moore
needed more roles like the one he has in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold</i>
in his career. He plays a self-made man uncertain on the corporate ladder
although he’s exactly the kind of smart, virile, hands-dirty operator necessary
for actually running the show, and whose playboy lifestyle on downtime proves
as much a source of trouble as pleasure. As with his later role in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wild Geese</i> (1978), Moore revels in
getting to play a more substantial, rougher hero than his version of Bond was
generally allowed to be. Slater confesses to feelings of resentment towards
Terry and anyone else who came upon what they had easily, and lays down the law
in his work with forceful words when required and even fists on occasions, as
when he harshly chastises one of his crew bosses, Kowalski (Bernard Horsfall),
for assaulting one of the Black miners. “It’s why they do it that beats me,”
the Sonderditch physician says to Slater, referring to the miners: Slater
answers with curt humour, “For the money, like the rest of us.” His romance
with Terry is at once a necessary aspect of the plot and a time-out from it, invested
with some flesh, in both senses of the term, by Moore and York. Terry is the
kind of blueblood who whiles away time without her limp-dick husband reading
the collected letters of Anton Chekhov and flying her Cessna fearlessly, a
talent that also proves vital by the film’s end. Moore gets one of his best
moments of acting in as he looks back at Terry whilst about to descend into the
disaster-stricken mine, knowing full well it will likely be the last time he
sees her, and even if he does return, the consequences could be worse than the hell
below.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQtQGf_2mmHwfUfZNJHyQ7IIAehurAZhaz2g1FRoBHKPWslayCZP0Ix5NE0odCax_9b9egweQ3HGxsm0l5C4rbhCkpMQ01Y8HTC9rs4DMvKLTgFbd6qmUYN218t0QZo1Z7PSJBTCqdJ1uVW5xAwquOzzVGUECaKiXs91y1E2vkmR3SH-JQ5QzyM60_lAKX/s1280/Gold08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQtQGf_2mmHwfUfZNJHyQ7IIAehurAZhaz2g1FRoBHKPWslayCZP0Ix5NE0odCax_9b9egweQ3HGxsm0l5C4rbhCkpMQ01Y8HTC9rs4DMvKLTgFbd6qmUYN218t0QZo1Z7PSJBTCqdJ1uVW5xAwquOzzVGUECaKiXs91y1E2vkmR3SH-JQ5QzyM60_lAKX/s16000/Gold08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Despite
soft-shoeing around the apartheid-era setting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold</i> is firm in branding the villains as racist creeps and the
heroes as egalitarian. Slater wallops the bigoted and violent Kowalski, who soon
proves to be in on the deal with Manfred. King is more or less the film’s
real hero, awarded a gold-plated mining helmet by Hurry for
his role in rescuing the trapped miners at the start, and becoming Slater’s
strong right hand underground. He’s characterised as indomitable and determined
and, finally, self-sacrificing, and he finishes up drowning Kowalski in a
puddle when he intervenes in his skulduggery. Slater is allowed a degree of
vulnerability, as when he brings Terry to his bachelor pad apartment and, after
first trying to play it cool, then sheepishly admitting he doesn’t want her to
be another one-night-stand, just a hair too late to stop her leaving. Manfred
plays the lovers like an organ, as they flee to one of her father’s properties
out in the veldt where they can’t be contacted, only for Manfred to let the
hammer drop on, ordering drilling to recommence, which results in a drowning
deluge exploding into the depths of Sonderditch. Tension ratchets as Hurry
fumes at the poppet head and radio broadcasts are interrupted by appeals for
Slater to contact the mine. Finally one of these broadcasts manages to
penetrate the lovey-dovey bubble around the couple, whereupon they fly directly
to the mine. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYew-Igw2CM_UQBfaGEspJ7I9BiBsJDBQe1o2fXssHY_flqqTGjqaDhejOOpJZWdVvIgMJ5cbtvzlcdLXFBt_d87W1SdiOTbxsDiTDBLjjgvIp0I9glPjERCBk2mFOHm2LUUJ_T8-iE6Xp0fn2DF1Gi96VGen7mR7c_-Imwv1hBvSCm8up9VGQvh_rVzJX/s1280/Gold09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYew-Igw2CM_UQBfaGEspJ7I9BiBsJDBQe1o2fXssHY_flqqTGjqaDhejOOpJZWdVvIgMJ5cbtvzlcdLXFBt_d87W1SdiOTbxsDiTDBLjjgvIp0I9glPjERCBk2mFOHm2LUUJ_T8-iE6Xp0fn2DF1Gi96VGen7mR7c_-Imwv1hBvSCm8up9VGQvh_rVzJX/s16000/Gold09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Terry,
stung by Slater’s angry belief she deliberately drew him away on Manfred’s
bidding, performs the risky trick of landing her plane on a road through the
mine: “What have you got to say now, bigmouth?” she demands upon pulling up.
The underground climax really makes the film, as Slater and King venture
together on a rubber dinghy through the mine tunnels, and agonisingly labour to
reconnect the explosives Slater set up to seal off the flood, which Kowalski
sabotaged before getting his clock cleaned by King. This unfolds in a phobic
space filled with churning water flow, collapsing piping, and raining debris.
Whilst certainly filmed on the Pinewood soundstage, this sequence is convincing
to the point where you feel genuinely concerned for Moore and Sabela’s safety,
and they really are taking risks, and indeed the complexity of staging it
pushed the film well over budget. The heroes are battered and bloodied to the
point where Slater’s arms are crushed by a suddenly shifting hatch, and King
sets his friend adrift on the dinghy so he’s not around when King sets off the
explosive and dies for the sake of him and the other trapped miners. Meanwhile
the conspirators get their just deserts as they turn on each-other in a wryly
malicious manner, a scene that achieves a weird beauty thanks to Hunt’s trademark
editing ferocity. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gold</i> certainly
isn’t a deep philosophical experience, but it’s the kind of movie that
satisfies me deeply, particularly after watching some CGI-infested contemporary
product. Moore and Hunt reunited for Klinger’s second Smith adaptation, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shout At The Devil</i> (1976), to much lesser effect.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzPo93tcxR65tJikeUjDFu3irLwARPPrubCRk-SWLn1AQWZbGL2KPaFQNrNUvQ3juIzZ89f80EZGtnMuE8S-tKDfv3vELnsKnGC6a_nzKZs8ta9Stw2KYeNS8B1mFqxgpGK39vsuPBh82xhWqOt4dllisAE4Z7R7J9Dhzd5EC6mGxPTedMsiqYXpNcU3R/s1280/Gold10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzPo93tcxR65tJikeUjDFu3irLwARPPrubCRk-SWLn1AQWZbGL2KPaFQNrNUvQ3juIzZ89f80EZGtnMuE8S-tKDfv3vELnsKnGC6a_nzKZs8ta9Stw2KYeNS8B1mFqxgpGK39vsuPBh82xhWqOt4dllisAE4Z7R7J9Dhzd5EC6mGxPTedMsiqYXpNcU3R/s16000/Gold10.jpg" /></a></p><br />Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-83087222645961381062023-09-01T22:57:00.020+10:002023-09-15T04:51:35.473+10:00The Razor’s Edge (1946)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcRxTO3p3W8TX6phZTgrpJNFR1WjXtb_BXpcTgflChqufNhNXpVLbvmJGVyzr90kxgYGlWDMxy0W2ln8ymJ9EaK7M-jN_XwxIzaOgmDW5WpFuynT31EEwteJAizRJrX9yNHLwuven5wcRmOTcdVLvtBGZ9GAxvHSHmdxravqazhEwtYNap8fsNuXtv6bSd/s766/RazorsEdge01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcRxTO3p3W8TX6phZTgrpJNFR1WjXtb_BXpcTgflChqufNhNXpVLbvmJGVyzr90kxgYGlWDMxy0W2ln8ymJ9EaK7M-jN_XwxIzaOgmDW5WpFuynT31EEwteJAizRJrX9yNHLwuven5wcRmOTcdVLvtBGZ9GAxvHSHmdxravqazhEwtYNap8fsNuXtv6bSd/s16000/RazorsEdge01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">W.
Somerset Maugham’s novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Razor’s Edge</i>
is a work of literature </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">at once</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">classical in style and narrative, much as one would expect
from that author who held aloof from most modernist show, but also one that’s prototypical, in depicting a young seeker
of experience, wisdom, and immaterial fulfilment contending with a venal world,
for later generations from the Beats to the Counterculture, New Age, and Green
movements. As such, it’s one of those literary works best read at a certain
age, and can make a real mark when you have much the same open, seeking mindset
as its central character. Maugham’s writing, as smoothly textured as a bottle
of good brandy, laced his fascinating story of a young World War I veteran
whose efforts at seeking enlightenment and positive use in the world are
contrasted with his variably snobbish relatives and variably life-battered,
mammon-worshipping, or basely instinctual generational companions. The novel’s
huge success when published in 1945, at a moment when the world at large was
starting to look forward to the end of World War II and pondering where to go
from there, set the seal on Maugham’s reputation and was also swiftly adapted
into a film despite being an extremely difficult story to adapt. Not least
because a great deal of its action takes place off-stage, so to speak, away
from the viewpoint character, who happens to be Maugham himself, at once indulging
his literary celebrity and using it as angle to sell his story as something
from the blurred ground between fact and fiction, whilst also exploitig it cleverly as
a state from which to meditate on the drama.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwFlyHaNhX-dn33xC8H9NOOo-UctU841vxXtvVK79cpH1ZLkGzOMj4jgUoUyUSbh-JVz6_MemMcUmvlYEfY1ODE6tsfxnYikd0gsY97xlOtp1Or4DqLcG2jOgI4nso3hnPC9dVZqCVoQkz9I7I890V3MHkjsuB8wPXqIPvXDTufxgKVxNg6orjtjboF1pI/s766/RazorsEdge02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwFlyHaNhX-dn33xC8H9NOOo-UctU841vxXtvVK79cpH1ZLkGzOMj4jgUoUyUSbh-JVz6_MemMcUmvlYEfY1ODE6tsfxnYikd0gsY97xlOtp1Or4DqLcG2jOgI4nso3hnPC9dVZqCVoQkz9I7I890V3MHkjsuB8wPXqIPvXDTufxgKVxNg6orjtjboF1pI/s16000/RazorsEdge02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Twentieth
Century Fox honcho Darryl F. Zanuck spun the adaptation into a major
production, hiring the esteemed Edmund Goulding, one of Hollywood’s A-list
directors. Born in Middlesex, England, Goulding was already a successful
playwright, actor, and director in the theatre before he braved a move to
Tinseltown after one of his plays, <i>The Quest of Life</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">,</span> was filmed in 1916. After years
working as a top screenwriter and sometime actor, he made his directorial debut
with 1925’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sun-Up</i>, and with 1927’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love</i>, a starring vehicle for John
Gilbert and Greta Garbo, established his unique talent for working with
high-powered stars. So adept did Goulding become at this he was nicknamed “the
lion tamer” about Tinseltown. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Razor’s
Edge</i> also saw Goulding forming a brief but potent partnership with star
Tyrone Power, which they would carry over a year later for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nightmare Alley</i>. In his early directing career Goulding was hired
to finished <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Queen Kelly</i> (1929) for
Gloria Swanson after she sacked Erich Von Stroheim, and directed the dramatic
sequences in Howard Hughes’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2012/05/30/hells-angels-1930/" target="_blank">Hell’s Angels</a></i>
(1930) when it was still a silent production. In the 1930s he made two
heavyweight classics, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grand Hotel</i>
(1932) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dark Victory</i> (1939), both
of which, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Razor’s Edge</i>, were
nominated for Best Picture Oscars but Goulding himself was not nominated for
Best Director. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB867CadwhrWdra6y_hCauoKBGlLsxYs8yhkDK7BChQQOBH3dKT6HjJt5u1AdYG1IkNhJT8sC3yiwHZUMosYhp6GZ_wbhBa-ga2JgfB317QgtEsHJEgAP5fkTpjmNpVWt5FjY898Y8Cv7frtz9RlQrJj9_4gN0Ai6ZQkUVzvNzEenyhcBEnfFyivOH_ZTG/s766/RazorsEdge03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB867CadwhrWdra6y_hCauoKBGlLsxYs8yhkDK7BChQQOBH3dKT6HjJt5u1AdYG1IkNhJT8sC3yiwHZUMosYhp6GZ_wbhBa-ga2JgfB317QgtEsHJEgAP5fkTpjmNpVWt5FjY898Y8Cv7frtz9RlQrJj9_4gN0Ai6ZQkUVzvNzEenyhcBEnfFyivOH_ZTG/s16000/RazorsEdge03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Power
plays Maugham’s protagonist Larry Darrell, scion of the American Midwest’s
upper crust, who, after returning from service in the Great War, finds he has
an entirely altered perception of life and purpose compared to the surging
confidence and worldliness his old friends and relations are developing, as the
United States experiences a post-war boom. Maugham himself (played, in an
ingenious bit of casting, by Herbert Marshall) meets Larry at a party at a
Chicago country club he’s been invited to, alongside one of his great friends
from Paris, the expatriate art dealer Elliott Templeton (Clifton Webb).
Templeton is disdainful of Larry, who refuses to play along with Templeton’s
gleefully snobbish and Francophile ideas of how to be a civilised man. Larry</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">s engagement to Templeton’s neice, the beautiful socialite Isabel
Bradley (Gene Tierney), ultimately founders when he proves equally unwilling to
adapt to her ideal of a go-get-‘em American. Isabel instead marries the
eligibly stolid Gray Maturin (John Payne). Maugham also meets Larry’s
childhood friend Sophie Nelson (Baxter) and her boyfriend, Bob MacDonald (Frank
Latimore), who later get married, but Bob and their young child are killed in a car crash, leaving Sophie a bereft and ruined survivor.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQHJ03sVtVQI-dCeA5WOADgeZFREpMJ0SbcoI63LPgK2r2bYyuF2m17fsZ_68yQOcH1vJh_7UG9lu25gXABTEEEOic9YIhOX0ap_hn8Zgi3L7i1vDDa-adRsHZurIediy7cmkkHjqmEBd0PLKkWR7BBXQiwXgAVGbX6VW4t820uU_eslFJ8Dg4jGY105Tc/s766/RazorsEdge04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQHJ03sVtVQI-dCeA5WOADgeZFREpMJ0SbcoI63LPgK2r2bYyuF2m17fsZ_68yQOcH1vJh_7UG9lu25gXABTEEEOic9YIhOX0ap_hn8Zgi3L7i1vDDa-adRsHZurIediy7cmkkHjqmEBd0PLKkWR7BBXQiwXgAVGbX6VW4t820uU_eslFJ8Dg4jGY105Tc/s16000/RazorsEdge04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Larry
moves to Paris to live on his small inheritance and get his head sorted, but
his bohemian lifestyle there causes final breaks with Isabel and Templeton, and
he instead begins an odyssey that leads him first to labouring jobs, including
in a French coal mine, and then on a pilgrimage to the Himalayas. There he obtains the first glimmerings of enlightenment during a retreat into the mountains, and
also becomes adept at hypnotic therapies. When he returns to Paris, Larry
eagerly tells Maugham of his experiences, and applies his new knowledge to
helping Gray, who’s been stricken with tortruous headaches since being left
penniless in the 1927 Stock Market crash, and now lives with Isabel and their
children in Templeton’s Paris apartment. Isabel still feels a possessive
prerogative towards Larry. When Larry encounters Sophie, now an alcoholic and
working as a prostitute in an extended self-destruction trip, he helps her stop drinking with his therapy and resolves to marry her, a choice
Isabel finds so objectionable she carefully crafts a situation that drives
Sophie back to drinking, and later turns up dead, murdered in her voyage
through the Marseilles gutter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCnFLmOV-xnZNopg9pwKdxN323rHVhS7024yL3Rvsgo4K5OiGsKZbojR911XUhY2Bn4Q-cc-h4msbyjp8VYg3VWKVTLVBy1Zkiudh-lgdmbJFBs8LMiX3TccSJN7Vs_XRZJBp6Tcq-9EGOVTg3Z75z3UONZqnhp6qR1qDxrtz9hneK-g2aJKJ3wZ6pzgKk/s766/RazorsEdge05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCnFLmOV-xnZNopg9pwKdxN323rHVhS7024yL3Rvsgo4K5OiGsKZbojR911XUhY2Bn4Q-cc-h4msbyjp8VYg3VWKVTLVBy1Zkiudh-lgdmbJFBs8LMiX3TccSJN7Vs_XRZJBp6Tcq-9EGOVTg3Z75z3UONZqnhp6qR1qDxrtz9hneK-g2aJKJ3wZ6pzgKk/s16000/RazorsEdge05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Larry’s account of travelling to the outer precincts of
human ken is a place beyond Maugham’s wryly cultured status as an epitome of
the worldly: “I am of the earth, earthy; I can only admire the radiance of
such a rare creature.” Unlike the film’s 1984 remake by John Byrum, Goulding’s
version doesn’t try to depict Larry’s wartime experience. Larry instead tells
Isabel about how a comrade sacrificed himself to save his life, an act that
constantly haunts and motivates him. Goulding however does illustrate some of
his seeker’s journey, including brief, atmospheric depictions of Larry’s spells
in the coal mine and a Tibetan ashram. The vignette at the mine sees Larry as
one of many grime-covered men trudging through the rain by carts crammed with
soaked ore, and taking refuge in a steamy-windowed bistro where Larry converses
with the guilt-ridden former priest turned worldly wise miner Kosti (former
Pabst and Lang actor Fritz Kortner), who puts him on the path to Tibet. There
he converses with a (nominally) Hindu holy man (Cecil Humphries), before
retreating to a shack high in the mountains, eventually reporting to the old
mystic his brief, transcendental feeling that “you and God were one,” and
departs soon after with a sense of purpose. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDuuZaSGo0wR7u6zQ1bH1M0RsebKjW4j0fffE8iOK4vNob9IH3hsf4TTtMvpFIciI-o7EQxEN0mEOfXVKBEqsGLp2MEmOhxl9uELWCuox-uh8rYol67fJ5HaRTJjIXf5n6PFP9pqGw35F0rLNXgo5W9mcVpNV0ooGEH_14Rhwz3V8FFq4n8uvEGcVgzBoi/s766/RazorsEdge06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDuuZaSGo0wR7u6zQ1bH1M0RsebKjW4j0fffE8iOK4vNob9IH3hsf4TTtMvpFIciI-o7EQxEN0mEOfXVKBEqsGLp2MEmOhxl9uELWCuox-uh8rYol67fJ5HaRTJjIXf5n6PFP9pqGw35F0rLNXgo5W9mcVpNV0ooGEH_14Rhwz3V8FFq4n8uvEGcVgzBoi/s16000/RazorsEdge06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
film is tellingly uneasy in contending with Larry’s spiritual experience, with
the Holy Man’s doctrines and descriptions pitched to the fuzzy zone between
Buddhist philosophy and standard-issue Christian thought so as not to upset the
average parochial 1946 audience. The impulse explored in the narrative recalls
the same zone as Frank Capra’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lost
Horizon</i> (1937), but where that film offered its Himalayan never-never as a
dream of escape, Larry returns to the world, hoping to seed it with the fruits
of his learning. A flash of transcendental yearning is captured well enough in
the image of Larry, a small and silhouetted figure, pausing for a moment on his
path to wonder at the sun breaking through cloud above the soaring mountains.
The most exasperating aspect of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Razor’s Edge</i> lies in Goulding’s direction, but also some of its strongest
elements, too. Goulding was always deeply engaged in all aspects of filmmaking,
including writing and arranging the careful mise-en-scene of his sets and
images, and, then as now judging by that Best Director Oscar neglect, what
Goulding did was easy to underrate, but he was relatively indifferent to visual
expression. Goulding’s specific purview lay in his dexterity at orchestrating
the kind of actor-centric, dialogue-heavy, theatrically-influenced style of
movie that quickly became the mainstay of Hollywood’s idea of prestige cinema
in the talkie era, and giving it the dynamic sheen of a well-stitched tapestry.
Particularly with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dark Victory, </i>he
got in close enough with his camera to make consciousness of its presence fade
away. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhshxkmpSCDkYjT_ziHEzg8ngEZubWBL-qYMWep1m8ayZz27Y89dMjaky9s80_GnPhaMHNMBOinIszuJdKiImF_elomO9dvUrqSo1wQAkM6Dbd40QCrVdV2kUSiHkEXh3squ-oEAn9pBLNdTm9xZeGzwFVKmcUyvcdf2PUulOdfvddmE9zAkV9wLTFgK_D3/s766/RazorsEdge07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhshxkmpSCDkYjT_ziHEzg8ngEZubWBL-qYMWep1m8ayZz27Y89dMjaky9s80_GnPhaMHNMBOinIszuJdKiImF_elomO9dvUrqSo1wQAkM6Dbd40QCrVdV2kUSiHkEXh3squ-oEAn9pBLNdTm9xZeGzwFVKmcUyvcdf2PUulOdfvddmE9zAkV9wLTFgK_D3/s16000/RazorsEdge07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Razor’s Edge</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> is on the other hand
genuinely hurt by his lack of a sense of expanse or expression, even if that also
does make it feel reasonably consistent with Maugham’s style, constantly
grazing worlds of human drama and longing from the semi-safe recline of a
chaise lounge in a friend’s apartment. It’s a long film at nearly
two-and-a-half hours, with about ninety-five percent of it unfolding as purely
conversational scenes in good-looking rooms. Not that there’s no
fun in that, particularly thanks to the keen eye displayed for design contrast
via Arthur C. Miller’s lush cinematography. Power and Tierney come swathed in
chic monochrome clothing, a pair of angular, Art Deco cinema gods adrift within
the riotous Rococo splendours of Templeton’s apartment. Whilst the film tries to depict the urgent search for spiritual meaning, the closest it comes is to be found in the sublime pleasure of looking at beautiful movie stars. That said, as well as
the vignettes mentioned above, there’s a good passage of witty technique early
in the movie, as Templeton tells Maugham about his intention for bringing Larry
around to the delights of decadent civilisation. His voice continues to be
heard over a montage of Larry’s voyage to Paris and engagement with life amidst
the proles, Templeton’s promises of fine society and aristocratic lovers
contrasted with Larry mixing with sailors and flaneurs and demimondaines. Later,
Goulding provides the first movement of a motif, as he follows Larry and Isabel
on a romantic night out in Paris, which Isabel intends as the prelude for a
night of passion in the hope he’ll get her pregnant and be forced to marry her:
Goulding’s camera weaves sinuous figures through the stages of their trawling
through busy and riotous locales.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwRSOIAThSJ23rctPlxs7O6vtozkuB1nk-9pjQPf5nTCeAkGEEp-8UMdsEfJgxqMSVkUEUw6J5UqX2pyQdRRAOn70-G0C-DrwpfXZbZn6PsVkSFbQF2EYPnEidwuwa5xLBPvqqS8qZyGd2xszZW6XrXGZurhxQulOf8ympi-rcaXZpzYMNrQva5bkrCp8u/s766/RazorsEdge08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwRSOIAThSJ23rctPlxs7O6vtozkuB1nk-9pjQPf5nTCeAkGEEp-8UMdsEfJgxqMSVkUEUw6J5UqX2pyQdRRAOn70-G0C-DrwpfXZbZn6PsVkSFbQF2EYPnEidwuwa5xLBPvqqS8qZyGd2xszZW6XrXGZurhxQulOf8ympi-rcaXZpzYMNrQva5bkrCp8u/s16000/RazorsEdge08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This
is then echoed ironically which Larry ventures into a Parisian opium den to
retrieve a doped-up Sophie and gets into a fight with several of her would-be
paramours: Goulding’s camera performs similar snaking moves through this smoky,
grimy Hades in following the hysterical Sophie, capturing glimpses of the
brutal fight she’s accidentally provoked, before fleeing out into the rainy
night and narrative oblivion, the unconscious Larry carried out bodily and
dumped a moment later. Goulding combines a theatrical sense of space and
staging with his camerawork here, with cumulatively ironic effect in the
contrast of the two women who are Larry’s loves and burdens in life, and the
illusory difference between the swankier climes of Paris and its dankest den of
vice. The second scene is in effect the real climax, the logical and tragic
conclusion for Larry’s efforts to save Sophie from herself, but the movie keep
going for nearly another half-hour as Larry and Maugham are sadly reunited to
identify Sophie’s body once found, and contrive to do a good turn for Templeton
when he’s fallen out of social favour, a much worse death for him than the
physical one he’s experiencing. In a move the remake would also commit,
Goulding contradicts a very particular point of the novel,
in which Maugham takes it upon himself to confront Isabel with knowledge of her
guilt in Sophie’s downfall, which he keeps from Larry in his desire not to
wound Larry’s innocence as he resolves to head back to America and try to work
good in his own particular way. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHX0T8j5PQZqxmcy-1smz5lxmaxGJzfmuoodydgqGdfC-4uLAVHu8cxWanhYuDmTMH7yR4sbzDWyMjU22Pvw7cinK_sDjuHzKabLtZualVGIFgoeQfYAGpqokL3OmIxoHeUAJczURAedjNg-h0sZjkteS6Vh1R47jt0cl0SxZEByKMwR2KR4uH3PXdr5yj/s766/RazorsEdge09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHX0T8j5PQZqxmcy-1smz5lxmaxGJzfmuoodydgqGdfC-4uLAVHu8cxWanhYuDmTMH7yR4sbzDWyMjU22Pvw7cinK_sDjuHzKabLtZualVGIFgoeQfYAGpqokL3OmIxoHeUAJczURAedjNg-h0sZjkteS6Vh1R47jt0cl0SxZEByKMwR2KR4uH3PXdr5yj/s16000/RazorsEdge09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Both
adaptations instead have Larry make the confrontation instead, is if to satisfy
a need for the hero rather than the author, inserting himself as both viewpoint
and actor in the drama, to settle the account before moving on with his life,
but changing this essentially removes the very point of Maugham’s presence in
the book as a fillip of metafictional morality. Marshall is nonetheless
excellent in a way that suggests he knew the writer well enough to capture his
mannerisms, and he and Tierney have a great scene in which the writer disarms
and charms her when she’s on the warpath with a teasing succession of
compliments of her physique, including her “exquisite legs…I can’t cease to be
surprised because they were thick and lumpy when I first saw you – I can’t
imagine how you’re managed it.” “An iron will!” she retorts. Marshall helps
Goulding in retaining something of the novel’s air of savoir faire, mixed ever
so gently with definite hues of camp. So does Webb, who is essentially asked to
give the same performance he got famous with in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Laura</i> (1944) but it’s a good act, particularly when the withering
Templeton is tormented by his pathetic but authentic need for validation from a
Countess who, like him, is another American expat posturing as a European
aristocrat. Elsa Lanchester has a strong cameo as the Countess’s secretary
who’s fond enough of Larry to let him steal some of her stationary to forge a
salving letter of invitation to a swank soiree Templeton is then gaspingly able
to send his regrets over before expiring.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZz2ojLHR0XXVAdqj3tIk_dFyul8GGZVwocS-3-2ZLWDqGGHa0uFUQjElTsZD9S1YTcND2FveQzT8AJVTCTphkaqyu1c2vxCG46E0EGH_qRtts5IGcysp21xcKbVzwxixd646nzirvodkT-2_0mNWrxh4n33Uqt99Y3ZMtjIOvwDqHWAHEZl4PKUUmZ3bS/s766/RazorsEdge10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZz2ojLHR0XXVAdqj3tIk_dFyul8GGZVwocS-3-2ZLWDqGGHa0uFUQjElTsZD9S1YTcND2FveQzT8AJVTCTphkaqyu1c2vxCG46E0EGH_qRtts5IGcysp21xcKbVzwxixd646nzirvodkT-2_0mNWrxh4n33Uqt99Y3ZMtjIOvwDqHWAHEZl4PKUUmZ3bS/s16000/RazorsEdge10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Power’s
aura of earnestness suits the character, the light of mystical experience in
his eyes as he speak with the Holy Man, and even if he can’t quite capture the
depth of a man who’s had a tragic and transfiguring experience that drives him
to ever more subliminal explorations of existence, he does nonetheless put over
a difficult role without seeming at all naïve or deluded. Tierney has one of
those parts she seemed born to play, the lethally callow and entitled
lover-killer poised under a guise of magazine chic. The main problem is that
her character, essentially the villain of the piece, is given a bit too much
attention when it’s Baxter who ultimately owns the film, which made her career
and captured a Supporting Actress Oscar in playing Sophie. It’s the kind of
role any young, hungry actress would give a limb for, and in strong contrast to
her later, now better-known roles in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All
About Eve</i> (1950) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2014/05/07/the-ten-commandments-1956/ " target="_blank">The Ten Commandments</a></i> (1956) where she brought shows of calculated, high camp
bravura to the fore, here she expertly walks a line between naturalism and
heightened display in a manner that contrasts the other actors in acting style
and register, in her way anticipating the oncoming era of the Method actors in
shaking up the Hollywood style. It also feels telling that Goulding and Power
immediately moved on to make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nightmare
Alley</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>as that film looks so much
like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Razor’s Edge</i>’s evil twin,
similar preoccupied with a roving hero seeking esoteric knowledge and wielding
spiritual powers, albeit with the earlier film’s earnestness swapped out for a
ruthless portrait of flimflam, whilst Tierney went on to star in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leave Her To Heaven</i>, a more outright
exploitation of her talent for playing beautiful psychopaths. Much like its
hero, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Razor’s Edge</i> is a
flickering flame of higher yearning and fading art before the oncoming age of
doubt and angst. But in its own right, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Razor’s Edge</i>, whilst a lumbering nugget of ambition in theme
and scope and a bit too straightforward in handling it all, ultimately does
succeed at telling a story with manifold layers and literate depth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Yl2ahGUc2eBg2qHAxAwDLHpHSSQDlk167iB1XN6knjpb0ClaLWUUodvK7Ncbt9ky_8Mqs-fVbEywTgRRHJSNf8GHB96thO9VMeuCoB5bwqyApTjPOOBQjyc3xuY5_PkQI8Tl9DpEDPIztlJ5DEQCvlYn7Qu6ak_cgeriKMSCEkipWsQWh9s1TS1bEh84/s766/RazorsEdge11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="766" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Yl2ahGUc2eBg2qHAxAwDLHpHSSQDlk167iB1XN6knjpb0ClaLWUUodvK7Ncbt9ky_8Mqs-fVbEywTgRRHJSNf8GHB96thO9VMeuCoB5bwqyApTjPOOBQjyc3xuY5_PkQI8Tl9DpEDPIztlJ5DEQCvlYn7Qu6ak_cgeriKMSCEkipWsQWh9s1TS1bEh84/s16000/RazorsEdge11.jpg" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-70961657018794166172023-08-19T16:28:00.008+10:002023-09-02T01:14:29.114+10:00The Furies (1950)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk87t-AOgr87l81cIrVlcynbipikH0QLeM3KpHvfAxKrIaWtLcVCR9hW7ldIJij67lnoItQybTRT6eVfsQlLH5NoQn3NyujlPn4fmbq_OyWKykpci1X2xjrkIX5tkZTes8D0TilXKadafquraMsjFkrOEuwgmmkBH841YygALLE5M3QCP7lJieLTRFauiT/s1440/TheFuries01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk87t-AOgr87l81cIrVlcynbipikH0QLeM3KpHvfAxKrIaWtLcVCR9hW7ldIJij67lnoItQybTRT6eVfsQlLH5NoQn3NyujlPn4fmbq_OyWKykpci1X2xjrkIX5tkZTes8D0TilXKadafquraMsjFkrOEuwgmmkBH841YygALLE5M3QCP7lJieLTRFauiT/s16000/TheFuries01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Furies</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> sits at a crossroads in
director Anthony Mann’s career, as well as marking the sunset of the great
Walter Huston’s. Mann had already signalled his shift from noir films to
Westerns as his essential genre speciality, having nimbly blended the two on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2009/01/21/border-incident-1949/" target="_blank">Border Incident</a></i> (1949), and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Furies</i> immediately preceded his
defining “adult” Western <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Winchester ’73</i>
(1950). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Furies</i> is also officially
a Western, but one that signals disparate streams of evolution in the genre
over the next few years as well as in Mann’s own oeuvre, but its fertility is
also a source of jarring unevenness. The title refers to a colossal cattle
ranch owned by T.C. Jeffords (Huston), a property he assembled piece by piece
with relentless, empire-building verve. Now aging but still charged with vim
and vigour, T.C. has mortgaged his property through the San Francisco-based
Anaheim Bank to the tune of $100,000, partly to give his fiery daughter Vance
(Barbara Stanwyck) a dowry, whilst his acerbic but docile son Clay (John
Bromfield) is marrying a local heiress, and T.C. is glad to be rid of him. T.C.
decides to let Vance manage The Furies, admitting that he has no talent for
management, particularly with money: he usually pays people he does business
with in IOUs he calls “T.C.s” and has even had specially printed up to look
like a form of currency. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtBQst5f8tQ6jxjx9xUEAiisjiO4uqDmJmcRjctc-h47pmpPzdoxXNeaedYxXcYLdNz29PCavMCPbPV62sogmgV-EERFc43lN9XT2no4E6Y0LmzctKVvpuEYRg4RLKanGpuzTZQ0qDcHE18JC_mZPcWlzED4I0Y0s_urdrQ3yDYOcduJjXOcq8R2Ktmya9/s1440/TheFuries02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtBQst5f8tQ6jxjx9xUEAiisjiO4uqDmJmcRjctc-h47pmpPzdoxXNeaedYxXcYLdNz29PCavMCPbPV62sogmgV-EERFc43lN9XT2no4E6Y0LmzctKVvpuEYRg4RLKanGpuzTZQ0qDcHE18JC_mZPcWlzED4I0Y0s_urdrQ3yDYOcduJjXOcq8R2Ktmya9/s16000/TheFuries02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">T.C.
fends off trouble securing his bank loans over the issue of both his “trifling”
IOU debts – which Clay calculatedly lets slip to Anaheim’s agent Reynolds
(Albert Dekker) – and also the large number of squatters on The Furies, all
seemingly Mestizo families, and Vance, whilst happy enough to drive off most of
the squatters, insists on letting the family of her childhood friend Juan
Herrara (Gilbert Roland) stay. When it comes to masculine affection Vance
oscillates between Juan and gambling house owner Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey),
the son of a rancher whose former property is now the core jewel of The Furies,
and T.C. and Darrow maintain a smouldering enmity over the topic. Rip is uneasy
about getting involved with Vance despite her strong interest in him, and
eventually, cynically accepts T.C.’s offer of half the money he got on loan to
leave her alone. Vance is left stung and broken-hearted whilst Rip uses the
cash to leverage becoming a banker, acting as local agent for Anaheim. But the
most potent conflict in the Jeffords’ life arrives in the form of Flo Burnett
(Judith Anderson), a San Francisco widow and mistress of T.C.’s, who soon makes
it plain she intends to marry the old coot and leverage Vance out of her role
at The Furies, a development that soon leads to dark and perverse places for
both father and daughter. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4anydzEp0ssysAh-T1_zC5eX5o1glZMXOmSZunTLpbTf9yGRFjGwbvn1toFaOybJ7Z8qSAZ31Gfxj4JM6i0CiQUkVdJMmASGAD0fZdym105iktPJ-eDwk-WKcyij4-iXLZ2oW6XRfZP4F5WSjKuyh50JtLMq9bbqWdKD3bkxPTFPjyLJMuzgARIRand5w/s1440/TheFuries03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4anydzEp0ssysAh-T1_zC5eX5o1glZMXOmSZunTLpbTf9yGRFjGwbvn1toFaOybJ7Z8qSAZ31Gfxj4JM6i0CiQUkVdJMmASGAD0fZdym105iktPJ-eDwk-WKcyij4-iXLZ2oW6XRfZP4F5WSjKuyh50JtLMq9bbqWdKD3bkxPTFPjyLJMuzgARIRand5w/s16000/TheFuries03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Furies</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> was adapted by Charles
Schnee from Niven Busch’s novel, and it retains a peculiarly novelistic density
in its storytelling, twisting and turning in telling a family saga in a manner
that anticipates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2019/02/23/the-godfather-1972-the-godfather-part-ii-1974-the-godfather-part-iii-1990/" target="_blank">The Godfather</a></i> (1972)
as much as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Giant</i> (1956) in the course
of assimilating classical Grecian and Shakespearean themes and melding them
with familiar genre tropes. Mann himself felt the story had strong kinship with
Dostoyevsky, particularly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Idiot</i>,
and indeed the characters have a similarly, intensely divided nature very much
like those of the Russian master. The imagery of the grand Victorian homestead
built amidst the expanses of the heartland but rife with secret desires looks
forward to Terrence Malick’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Days of
Heaven</i> (1978). Mann’s film also seems to have mooted an interest in strong,
strident female characters in the genre leading to the likes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rancho Notorious</i> (1951) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Johnny Guitar</i> (1954), as well as further
starring roles for Stanwyck in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cattle
Queen of Montana</i> (1955) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Forty Guns</i>
(1957). More immediately for Mann it marks not just his noir concerns shading
into the Western but also, more unexpectedly, an overture for concerns he would
pursue more exactingly in his later historical epics. In particular, the
fatefully close coexistence of love and hate in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">El Cid</i> (1961) and flickers of madness and incest in an imperial
family, as well as the battles between dispossessed and angry outsiders raging
at the new hegemony, he would pursue in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2010/05/29/the-fall-of-the-roman-empire-1964/ " target="_blank">The Fall of the Roman Empire</a></i> (1964). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmSgqnTUSXaYQ1XRvc1DpVrRDIK1muZVTakGXBygvqjZqlBvB8BWpezH_6t9HG9xK8HbuFNR2VjstceISwqq96rPIEqcI4YDEk1Fgf_3opWhpm8mdk2N3IjSkgXMFPsqYV2B6XLRmB3Wc1O0YS4799vHud2XpxyH08k6OtoVmJLX61DsWCenTpmG2v4WA-/s1440/TheFuries04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmSgqnTUSXaYQ1XRvc1DpVrRDIK1muZVTakGXBygvqjZqlBvB8BWpezH_6t9HG9xK8HbuFNR2VjstceISwqq96rPIEqcI4YDEk1Fgf_3opWhpm8mdk2N3IjSkgXMFPsqYV2B6XLRmB3Wc1O0YS4799vHud2XpxyH08k6OtoVmJLX61DsWCenTpmG2v4WA-/s16000/TheFuries04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Furies</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> anticipates the waning
of the Western even as it arrived at the beginning of the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">genre’</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">s </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">era of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">greatest popularity, in the way it subverts the familiar morality play structure of the genre and instead contemplates the endless perversity of human beings. Mann offers T.C. as emblem of white American manhood, containing multitudes –
avuncular and ruthless, physically powerful but emotionally reckless,
alternating magnanimity and exploitative zeal in equal measure. </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Furies</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> is, despite being eagerly
rediscovered after decades of relative obscurity, an extremely uneven and
frustrating film. That unevenness is however wound in with some of the unusual
things it tries to pull off. The Jeffords, in their relations with each-other
and those who fall into their orbit, inhabit realms of emotional extremes that
verge on the surreal, the film profoundly ambivalent about T.C.’s waning,
titanic masculinity and Vance’s surging, vengeful femininity as they enact a
generational drama that feels like it ought to have been simplified a little or
explored in a grand, sprawling epic, which in particular might have encompassed
the story’s larger canvas in dealing with the squatters and the legacy of the
Jefford hegemony in more depth.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVvSpvuoLC7Tl5_zLURMQt9pYRL0pLFPjbuxirTJ-Fe9ekn_xulZV5NaZxzZPl9DWkdiTZTF4ANPrRnlm2IqRba6DBhQfcqcp2dhNbT_X15gGhVyzVjsb1LMDaKprYEI8203_V5kPu_A4T0F5jIu6QTy59uPRfyjABDwML8I5z94J50NJafUYn4gy1lLbu/s1440/TheFuries05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVvSpvuoLC7Tl5_zLURMQt9pYRL0pLFPjbuxirTJ-Fe9ekn_xulZV5NaZxzZPl9DWkdiTZTF4ANPrRnlm2IqRba6DBhQfcqcp2dhNbT_X15gGhVyzVjsb1LMDaKprYEI8203_V5kPu_A4T0F5jIu6QTy59uPRfyjABDwML8I5z94J50NJafUYn4gy1lLbu/s16000/TheFuries05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
film breaks roughly into thirds, with the first third depicting Vance getting
jilted by Rip, and the second seeing T.C. bringing Flo into the mix, and the
third with Vance’s campaign of revenge on her father. The resulting episodic
quality is awkward, and some major characters are sent off to the margins and
forgotten, including Flo and ‘El Tigre’ (Thomas Gomez), the fearsome old
Mexican frontier scourge who now serves as T.C.’s enforcer. Corey, a good actor
but not usually one who played romantic leads, is interestingly cast as Rip,
with his low and cynical drawl and hard gaze charging his scenes with Vance
with a quality of two asteroids made of iron drawn into an orbit and
periodically colliding in sparks and rubble. T.C. disdains Rip both as a
natural enemy as the son of a former rival and as a man without principle. T.C.
eventually seems to prove his point when he buys Rip off, but this proves only
an incident in a longer game that eventually sees Rip funding Vance’s efforts
to bankrupt her old man whilst their old attraction, and loathing, bubbles away
merrily. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBZ3t6vmt_q0cov9J83W2e4BNo8VdxQ5kZpD9LhFHVun1AW-2j5c9jdv5YgRABCZissX4gk9aiKsJEZSLsltZV7YJFajGcGhR2rixSZtuEtNVkTaa5xNpeM-iKyfyLPjSCmzUtMQ4SvOvuCTAombV4nApUVnqkTDJuyRRGUtZ77wjIGCJzGXB3wkLzvEED/s1440/TheFuries06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBZ3t6vmt_q0cov9J83W2e4BNo8VdxQ5kZpD9LhFHVun1AW-2j5c9jdv5YgRABCZissX4gk9aiKsJEZSLsltZV7YJFajGcGhR2rixSZtuEtNVkTaa5xNpeM-iKyfyLPjSCmzUtMQ4SvOvuCTAombV4nApUVnqkTDJuyRRGUtZ77wjIGCJzGXB3wkLzvEED/s16000/TheFuries06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
deep-woven kinkiness in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Furies</i>
goes a long way to making up for the spasmodic quality of its story, and gives
the film its subterranean cohesion as a portrait seething sexual natures underneath
the familiar, imperial grandiosity of the Western. Mann makes as clear as he
possibly can, given the constraints of the era’s censorship, that T.C. and
Vance have a relationship that borders on the incestuous – and the metaphorical
vignette of T.C. requesting that Vance massage an old wound in his back, indeed
indicates pretty plainly that they’ve gone over the border and annexed the
continent beyond. “I’ve spoiled most of ‘em for ya,” T.C. tells Vance when she
announces she’s going husband-hunting. Later, Vance is confronted by her
ultimate displacement by Flo, who T.C. now gets to massage the offending
vertebra, sparking Vance’s Electra complex to singular heights of frenzy. An
early scene depicting Vance and Juan climbing a mountain together and sharing
pieces of bread – they place them in each-other’s mouths – as the rest all
sweaty and puffing after their exertions also presents a perfect instance of
Old Hollywood’s method of communicating sex. Shades of sadomasochism inflect
Vance’s attraction to Rip underneath the official search for a chauvinist
he-man, as she seeks a man strong enough to dominate her where she’s well-used
to dominating all comers: Vance groans that Rip is the only man who ever dared
hit her, and after they break she tells Juan she needs him: “There’s no-one
else to pull the bit on me when I’m wrong.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhglF3lpdG6bCKIFuP_E8WW9xpKjwInfF4PGJGLy9TristjRxb_iJ5y2tl3FPSbfj1GLt5qiwT1o20xWcZ2I1VQkltuY6knczCdAdVGEXd-PsQWSDXPVdIX_lSxDzquMpHcB_api-OHz9hULI6J9nnVfIkqnqabxQItq6nXudu7Fc087hXPbUMiHspiUEE3/s1440/TheFuries08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhglF3lpdG6bCKIFuP_E8WW9xpKjwInfF4PGJGLy9TristjRxb_iJ5y2tl3FPSbfj1GLt5qiwT1o20xWcZ2I1VQkltuY6knczCdAdVGEXd-PsQWSDXPVdIX_lSxDzquMpHcB_api-OHz9hULI6J9nnVfIkqnqabxQItq6nXudu7Fc087hXPbUMiHspiUEE3/s16000/TheFuries08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
drama unfolds amidst Mann’s customarily awesome sense of landscape, inscribed
in monochrome sweep – even John Ford wasn’t as confident as Mann in capturing
landscape in black and white – with surging dusk skies and craggy rock forms
looming with primeval weight, captured by cinematographer Victor Milner. The
name of the ranch brings both the seething emotions that pervade the place to
the fore as well as the realm of mythical concept the storyline raids, and The
Furies as a physical space encompasses all the little worlds also contained
within its people. At the centre, the homestead, surrounded by grand vistas for
domain-dreaming, rivalled only by the Herreras’ pueblo home, built like a small
fortress built atop a rocky hill. Over there, a favoured glade for lovers to
meet, there, a muddy pit where T.C. gets stuck early in the film whilst trying
to save a stranded calf, watched by an amused Vance, El Tigre, and Reynolds. Juan
and some other pueblocitos see him stuck, and, Juan has to dissuade his fellows
from taking the best chance to assassinate their hated overlord when he has his
feet literally stuck in the mud. When Vance first visits the Herreras’ pueblo
she is cold-shouldered by Juan’s silent, boding mother (Blanche Yurka) as she
polishes up a rifle, awaiting the inevitable day when the pueblocitos will
fight back against the gringos with the savage relish of the insulted and
injured. <o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">Despite the fragmented story Mann builds up to his signature brand of intimate brutality with a remarkable slow-burn of emotional tension. After Rip vacates the scene for the time being, that tension is evinced in the evolving rivalry between Flo and Vance, defined by Vance’s unusual feeling of impotence against Flo’s breezy, utterly reasonable-seeming but unswerving purpose in steering Vance out of her place at The Furies and as first in T.C.’s heart. Finally, Vance lashes out maniacally, stabbing Flo in the face with a pair of scissors, leaving her badly scarred. “If she dies, I’ll kill you,” T.C. tells Vance before pushing her out of the room, and she descends the stairs and leaves the homestead with slow, impassive tread.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaiYE2gm2Dp7x0AxHJM-5Hf8fEI9cwiqX9IieuHrk4SoaBkTJoygUk42SR1YPrcNyi2ZV4pPuS_SSy3uv8U52R1LH2dn6TYGIqlent0EI3gWPuPbl4YVVELdVZeMQZ7f7pvOzYj_L4Um_J2i3CpO3K2_vwAviHteIz-5Nb-78U7fRit1yIf2QVeQgbJPWA/s1440/TheFuries09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaiYE2gm2Dp7x0AxHJM-5Hf8fEI9cwiqX9IieuHrk4SoaBkTJoygUk42SR1YPrcNyi2ZV4pPuS_SSy3uv8U52R1LH2dn6TYGIqlent0EI3gWPuPbl4YVVELdVZeMQZ7f7pvOzYj_L4Um_J2i3CpO3K2_vwAviHteIz-5Nb-78U7fRit1yIf2QVeQgbJPWA/s16000/TheFuries09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Vance leaves the homestead and takes
refuge with the Herreras, whilst her father goes on the warpath, laying siege
to the pueblo with El Tigre and his ranch hands, whilst the Herreras, violently
insists, including the mother now blasting her foes with her rifle with
unpeeled, Madame Defarge-like relish. After T.C. and his men start hurling
dynamite at the fortress, Juan finally insists they all surrender with a
promise to vacate The Furies, but T.C. finds a pretext to hang Juan
nonetheless, mostly to hurt Vance, who then declares her undying hate for T.C.
and intention to find a way to “take your world away from you.” </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">These
two scenes are some of the best work of Mann’s career, shifting gears from the
intimate tension and sudden explosion of interpersonal violence in Vance’s
assault on Flo, and the thunder of the siege on the pueblo, in which both sides
are happy to abandon all pretence of civility and make war. All played out in
Mann’s most starkly architectural compositions, rock forms, human bodies, and
twisting thorny branches all contending and battling, the twinned crucifixions
of Flo’s scarring and Juan’s hangings expressions of . The brilliant diptych of
scenes concludes with the wildly emotional zenith of Vance’s threat to T.C.
Casting Huston as T.C. was an interesting choice, because whilst Huston could
play villains and hard-asses, he had an onscreen likeableness that was
difficult to quell, much as Stanwyck’s innate aura of independence is
capitalised on in playing Vance: both characters, and indeed just about
everyone in the film except for the self-defeatingly honourable Juan, act awfully
and do terrible things throughout the story. And yet Mann also finds them
fascinating and all too human in their extremes, and still wants by the end for
the audience to see their finer qualities. T.C. provides a show late in the day
of his still-guttering physical prowess as he wrestles a wild-living bull on
his property to the ground, to prove that he is still king of The Furies.
Meanwhile Vance sets about her revenge with assiduous dedication, using first
her own money and then financing provided by Rip to buy up all of T.C.’s IOUs,
and finally uses them to pay him off after tricking him into thinking he has
buyers for all his cattle, which T.C. needs to pay back the bank loan.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwNrvXrV_te7_MYlsT6gqUghKj5ocGoTuOnBNx5L1VcjK7Lxpen9LEb5cKfbqu8AH5q6n3IrRMoOPNx3w5vyp5GMqfiNcq8lMW2t3kkHS6sc4WDXZpksKUfzPfzzjcSug_WhU8iMms1pxc9zGkDA2QcI-gCsMgBur9KxqmDERijXyU-jSZjmQgW9_QEalD/s1440/TheFuries10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwNrvXrV_te7_MYlsT6gqUghKj5ocGoTuOnBNx5L1VcjK7Lxpen9LEb5cKfbqu8AH5q6n3IrRMoOPNx3w5vyp5GMqfiNcq8lMW2t3kkHS6sc4WDXZpksKUfzPfzzjcSug_WhU8iMms1pxc9zGkDA2QcI-gCsMgBur9KxqmDERijXyU-jSZjmQgW9_QEalD/s16000/TheFuries10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Furies</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">’ ultimately feminine,
if not quite feminist, focus is also emphasised when Vance, after setting out
to seduce the Anaheim Bank’s eponymous owner to win an extension for T.C.’s
loan just long enough for her conclude her plot, she instead talks to his wife
(Beulah Bondi), who rules over him, and gets her to manipulate him into the
extension: “I like a clever woman,” Mrs Anaheim comments. This flash of
solidarity and mutual understanding contrasts a pathetic vignette of T.C.
asking Flo for money he gave her as a dowry to stave off foreclosure and the
scarred and heavily drinking Flor refusing, explaining that he would eventually
get rid of her and leave her penniless and so needs all she has: “Money is the
only thing that makes loneliness bearable.” The trouble with Mann’s readiness
to indulge his characters is ultimately that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Furies</i> seems to building to, and cries out for, a finale as
equally maniacal as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Duel In The Sun</i>
(1946) and indeed the pueblo siege sequence. But the film instead shies away
from pushing the generational conflict too far. Vance is finally moved by
T.C.’s ultimate, almost incidental acceptance of being outmanoeuvred by his
daughter, just before he’s gunned down in the street by Mother Herrera, a
concluding twist that’s certainly fitting but also a bit of an afterthought. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Furies</i> wants its critical,
subversive cake, and to eat it too, in exalting of the old bristling
frontier-taming he-man and his haughty progeny. But that clash of impulses
is truly fascinating, an admission of the deep crack running through American
soul. The film’s most overt flaw is that Franz Waxman’s score is a little too
florid and intrusive. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFuAQaGJsqLJvOlqmHqASQ7L7yDz1PANAg5bshc6HDo5kb7u49Cf0vSTb_WKhAWomNbV_zV6Qvr4tiItG1zgnG7cTImSX8PDVWRUrDdjigFQ7eyMjzcw25qDwpqRqHmTS5pypPZxiWGY8tan0x72l78pYuJWgv5Ci31HBGM0t0MkLd2OVlMgToczoF99m4/s1440/TheFuries11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1088" data-original-width="1440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFuAQaGJsqLJvOlqmHqASQ7L7yDz1PANAg5bshc6HDo5kb7u49Cf0vSTb_WKhAWomNbV_zV6Qvr4tiItG1zgnG7cTImSX8PDVWRUrDdjigFQ7eyMjzcw25qDwpqRqHmTS5pypPZxiWGY8tan0x72l78pYuJWgv5Ci31HBGM0t0MkLd2OVlMgToczoF99m4/s16000/TheFuries11.jpg" /></a></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-26119317700696379522023-08-05T14:10:00.015+10:002023-08-06T05:35:08.498+10:00Glory (1989)<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4RSbfOQAcwMuaJR7jFDg-OXVbom4jdayGcE3_oTy2P3pVt0gYmaGgIgt_6CriOFZX5yqd6efpf8_4PIp6BhglAlUNvJJ5rFOuYCG99PnSM4SFCf51X82zVWcvzRNNWq7OYUkHfSQ6ECBOguZO6RVAcDRH2N8nNjxzOO7bNJdb0ZAVzqg6WJkPrk5jjVIB/s1004/Glory01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4RSbfOQAcwMuaJR7jFDg-OXVbom4jdayGcE3_oTy2P3pVt0gYmaGgIgt_6CriOFZX5yqd6efpf8_4PIp6BhglAlUNvJJ5rFOuYCG99PnSM4SFCf51X82zVWcvzRNNWq7OYUkHfSQ6ECBOguZO6RVAcDRH2N8nNjxzOO7bNJdb0ZAVzqg6WJkPrk5jjVIB/s16000/Glory01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Recounting
the true story of the formation of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry regiment,
the first fully regular African-American fighting force deployed the Union Army
during the American Civil War, Edward Zwick’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i> holds an important if awkward place today in terms of films
grappling with a great historical event and an important moment in American
social evolution. It can be argued that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i>
helped spark a great upswing in interest in the Civil War, compounded by Ken
Burns’ famous documentary series the following year. Indeed, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i> might finally have lodged the war
firmly today as the great Homeric experience of US history, chiefly by dealing
squarely with the racial dimension of the conflict, which had up until that
point often been awkwardly downplayed in movies tackling it. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i> explicitly recast the drama of
freed slaves and other Black fighters as the innermost core of the war’s meaning, about which everything
else was essentially drapery, and the empowerment of those people anointing
them as not merely historical bit players but the essential, mythical patriotic
heroes of the business. The film also helped propel a remarkable cast to
prominence, most particularly Denzel Washington, who captured a Best Supporting
Actor Oscar and gained his path to major stardom, as well as Morgan Freeman (in
concert with his role in Bruce Beresford’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Driving
Miss Daisy</i> the same year) and Matthew Broderick, who was trying to leave
behind his Ferris Bueller days.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDm6ngxJS04e6yXMM8BtNw60LkiqGzvbzuudlAiUgqXA-mAeGnhbEhoo3EFMBPftc5DzgiwhKsmCEfpaH0wk7p8UsL3ztSBCLPbXAGJ0Jdq2HrRPs3nOla6PXwPJxt5Mfe1pZUdXs3MBLWNjm7BaqlIVST-K3tVBJKSYruXIbnCOjU_3ge8ldV3MW6-YG5/s1004/Glory02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDm6ngxJS04e6yXMM8BtNw60LkiqGzvbzuudlAiUgqXA-mAeGnhbEhoo3EFMBPftc5DzgiwhKsmCEfpaH0wk7p8UsL3ztSBCLPbXAGJ0Jdq2HrRPs3nOla6PXwPJxt5Mfe1pZUdXs3MBLWNjm7BaqlIVST-K3tVBJKSYruXIbnCOjU_3ge8ldV3MW6-YG5/s16000/Glory02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Today,
nonetheless, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i> might be a bit unfashionable. Zwick’s directorial career hasn’t produced anything one-quarter
as good, with follow-ups like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Legends
of the Fall</i> (1993), <i>The Last Samurai</i> (2003), and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Defiance</i>
(2008) proving overripe even when trying to recapture the same tone and force. <i>Glory</i>’s emphasis on emerging racial and soldierly solidarity, as told at least initially from the viewpoint of a white character, doesn’t mesh that well with
contemporary intersectional concerns. On the other hand, the story of that
character, Robert Gould Shaw, is certainly worth telling. Shaw, played by
Broderick, is the fresh-faced young Captain who, in the brutal opening
depiction of the Battle of Antietam, sees many of his men killed, and he
himself is wounded. Shaw is found alive after the battle by gravedigger John Rawlins
(Freeman), and after stumbling to a medical tent, where he’s regaled by the
screams of men having limbs amputated, he’s told by a medic that Lincoln’s
going to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Returning home to wealthy,
abolitionist and progressive home in Boston, Shaw encounters Frederick Douglass
(Raymond St. Jacques), and is asked by his father (Peter Michael Goetz) and his
friend the state governor, Andrew (Alan North) to consider leading a “Colored”
regiment now being formed. Shaw gains immediate volunteers from two childhood
friends, Cabot Forbes (Cary Elwes), already a serving Major, and Thomas Searles
(Braugher). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbYl8VCMT7qrzVNROrY5wtzTlPyqH4FknCcG40kUKk8B92pP5Ci5eLWRiJa7BaFReisMlQ778KqTdwa_WL1nl4jH3dY8cwZHwRAtO3fPwxVhjHbY0VWQ2rP5vqGpBMJXj36Nx0SilHMFVcP2CWsjE1fmB-cd-IOc4aLajB8MvIxgNrCLUmIQShOvfQZXR8/s1004/Glory03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbYl8VCMT7qrzVNROrY5wtzTlPyqH4FknCcG40kUKk8B92pP5Ci5eLWRiJa7BaFReisMlQ778KqTdwa_WL1nl4jH3dY8cwZHwRAtO3fPwxVhjHbY0VWQ2rP5vqGpBMJXj36Nx0SilHMFVcP2CWsjE1fmB-cd-IOc4aLajB8MvIxgNrCLUmIQShOvfQZXR8/s16000/Glory03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But
the problems of building the new regiment prove strenuous for all concerned. As
a cultured and intellectual man, Thomas is held in disdain by both most of his
comrades and the rough white soldiers training them, including the hulking
Irish hardass Sgt Mulcahy (John Finn), and Shaw, groping his way through his
new position of authority as Colonel, insists Thomas and the other recruits
take all the hard knocks as he knows what’s waiting for them is worse. This is an
attitude Forbes starts to resent, although Thomas seems to accept it despite his suffering. Thomas lives in a tent at close quarters with both
Rawlins, who proves so able and stalwart a leader that he’s made a
Sergeant-Major, and Trip (Washington), a provocative and resentful former slave
who has a problem with all authority. Trip is whipped after absconding from the
camp, but Rawlins alerts Shaw to the problem that drove him off, a lack of
decent footwear, so the Colonel goes on the warpath to get his men properly
outfitted and paid as the War Department keeps proving slack in supporting
them. Finally, when the regiment is ready, it’s shipped south, but detailed to
behind-the-lines duties, including essentially working as armed looters for a
cabal of Northern officers enriching themselves during the campaign.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAaH-9vMw8Mm3yEcfSXVvy0qyAkthk95sNFAAH9FR0vV2ECLzKU3D5dE20F0aCbwABW1Xf_U2axSGaJDVSr5ScO6EOI0pVm8qDvALzDDzHfEsLOzpoR6EBejDgD1TmVr4pRS1yXsgqTjHmIiibOZDHvY9HVto2NyizMktcg1cfdA53i3ydu8Z1xujG5Q3L/s1004/Glory04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAaH-9vMw8Mm3yEcfSXVvy0qyAkthk95sNFAAH9FR0vV2ECLzKU3D5dE20F0aCbwABW1Xf_U2axSGaJDVSr5ScO6EOI0pVm8qDvALzDDzHfEsLOzpoR6EBejDgD1TmVr4pRS1yXsgqTjHmIiibOZDHvY9HVto2NyizMktcg1cfdA53i3ydu8Z1xujG5Q3L/s16000/Glory04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">One
of my favourite films when growing up, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i> is still an excellent film, even if some of the tricks of
Kevin Jarre’s screenplay in wringing the drama for a certain level of
reassuring, cheer-along audience feeling seem a bit tired now. Such tricks
include repeatedly stressing how Shaw’s lack of superficial confidence
nonetheless sees him finally bring to bear a confrontational cleverness to bear
against pompous jerks in the chain of command. Zwick
handles those moments with the savvy of a pro, like having a number of tough
Black soldiers form a guarding ruck outside a quartermaster’s office whilst Shaw wreaks havoc within. It also seems plainer now that the
Oscar-winning cinematography by the veteran Freddie Francis and the
self-consciously epic score by James Horner do much of Zwick’s work for him in
touching the drama with the gleaming lustre of the mythic. Zwick nonetheless
does a fine job, particularly in the early scenes as he communicates Shaw’s
shell-shocked state after the battle, drifting through his parents’ mansion and
partygoers, the visuals turned languid and dreamy. The film gains much authority from
directly quoting Shaw’s letters to form Broderick’s narration, allowing it to
maintain a unifying vision even as the story quickly becomes more of a communal
portrait, with characters like Trip, Rawlins, Thomas, Cabot, and the stuttering
Private Jupiter Sharts (Jihmi Kennedy) also earn narrative focus. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHvkRK1Crzs7H47nemLSU3hd2mTEgkrR-bTPr62Vlsd33JQoKkMmOKGE4i74Shb1ErUmou_KHbwxxfhyEdEtkWIYGRUXgIRPI_-0maM8JMl3QcDMxFHZQr5o6XX030z2zX9wZQ7Eyj1CgdPx_eodDV9IkClhIqWlA3JBjpiOZbwIhI_QJsOz5EDU8RWWzt/s1004/Glory05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHvkRK1Crzs7H47nemLSU3hd2mTEgkrR-bTPr62Vlsd33JQoKkMmOKGE4i74Shb1ErUmou_KHbwxxfhyEdEtkWIYGRUXgIRPI_-0maM8JMl3QcDMxFHZQr5o6XX030z2zX9wZQ7Eyj1CgdPx_eodDV9IkClhIqWlA3JBjpiOZbwIhI_QJsOz5EDU8RWWzt/s16000/Glory05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Moreover,
whilst it’s overtly a film about racial and social justice, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i> never reduces its characters – its
main characters, at any rate – to placards or clichés, allowing the
psychological and interpersonal travails of the men of the 54th to entwine with
their external journey, with a keen feel for social divides. The tension
between Trip and Thomas in particular has a sharp feel for painfully
contrasting personalities, as Trip constantly tries to provoke and express
disdain for Thomas’ education and expectations for their lot, where Trip has
been taught in the cruellest possible terms how alone he is in the world. The
lashing scene most likely won Washington his Oscar as he angrily takes off his
shirt to reveal a back entirely gilded by whip scars, holding his gaze on Shaw
all through it and not making a sound even as tears stream down his face: it’s
an electrifying moment of acting and filmmaking that condenses an entire
historical complex into a single image. But Washington’s excellence throughout
can’t be understated, as he evokes both Trip’s simmering rage even in seemingly
easy conversational situations, and also his lurking desire to discover
something, anything, worth fighting for. “Ain’t none of us clean,” he tells
Shaw when the Colonel offers to make him the bearer of the regimental colours,
something Shaw quietly agrees with, and Trip turns the offer down. That said,
Braugher is equally brilliant in a less spectacular part, as a man contending with
bitter and constant humiliation and hurt, particularly when he’s beaten up by
Mulcahy during a bayonet drill and writhes in shame and anger, whilst on a
similar path towards discovering a more complete version of himself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCCa6sqnhB2VdoqQ5jiKBBJPjyTG1WAHfEL9GT62NobuQ-AukwZ0BvV2QJg24Th_CrI_oozyBi587VvkgC8o1PyCtKsms5G2h5g4wnk7XUxur9KD1sglfOEbVzmmFx1nmk9dg-EmV3mlV85s7VnUo0-NjglCV5SuSnQspN7xEanmAK5rpxxmFoXWkba_DH/s1004/Glory06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCCa6sqnhB2VdoqQ5jiKBBJPjyTG1WAHfEL9GT62NobuQ-AukwZ0BvV2QJg24Th_CrI_oozyBi587VvkgC8o1PyCtKsms5G2h5g4wnk7XUxur9KD1sglfOEbVzmmFx1nmk9dg-EmV3mlV85s7VnUo0-NjglCV5SuSnQspN7xEanmAK5rpxxmFoXWkba_DH/s16000/Glory06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Freeman’s
customary aura of authority, soon to be leaned on like a crutch by half the
directors in Hollywood, is also invaluable in playing Rawlins as the ideal
elder figure for the mostly young soldiers, particularly when he rounds on Trip
and tells him off for deriding his comrades. Broderick’s performance was by
contrast a topic of criticism at the time of release, with some noting he
seemed to accidentally make Shaw look weak. That’s a point I don’t think
entirely fair – Zwick and Jarre emphasise that Shaw feels out of his depth,
even if proves himself ultimately not to be, and it’s plain that Zwick cast him
precisely to exploit his boyish persona to emphasise that in wars even the
leader tend to be quite young men, but this choice came with a risk: if Broderick, as the contemporary quip goes, doesn’t have a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>face that knows what an iPhone is, he at
least seems to know what a Walkman is. And yet many of the strongest scenes
deal with the way Shaw’s attempt to remain stern and stolid throughout the
training, much to the aggravation of Forbes, who starts sarcastically
addressing him like a slave master, and Thomas, who’s stricken with need of his
old friend’s help and humanity, but also knows he’s lost them for the duration
of service. “Let him grow up some more,” Mulcahy advises Shaw after Thomas
receives another had lesson. Shaw himself tries to evoke something of the
terror of combat for his men with angry purpose: when Sharts is too pleased
with his own shooting prowess upon first receiving his rifle, Shaw discharges a
pistol repeatedly behind Sharts’ back as the rattled man tries to reload his
rifle. Broderick also handles the more idealistic side of Shaw well, the ring
of high-flown rhetoric heard in his voiceover, the glint in his eyes when he
prepares to lead his men into a fateful charge, even if he never quite
convinces in depicting the damaged and frightened aspect of the man. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjddLoHy0uM5E9XCROpWhWbvHRhrj3TuI6xnO5CIxJG7hi-QA9NGvzjYv1x9HS_rurWasf0r9VE2J5rHXQ9ivTDiBdiM3BGzpb2sw5-ad2GvEF0TjRfBsKuIK_kUZjB47-YtG8x66UFrEknwGgAAU4g3ZQKbsdAEB19S1rktbXDk1bUfJ7gXQ08KkczhPm/s1004/Glory07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjddLoHy0uM5E9XCROpWhWbvHRhrj3TuI6xnO5CIxJG7hi-QA9NGvzjYv1x9HS_rurWasf0r9VE2J5rHXQ9ivTDiBdiM3BGzpb2sw5-ad2GvEF0TjRfBsKuIK_kUZjB47-YtG8x66UFrEknwGgAAU4g3ZQKbsdAEB19S1rktbXDk1bUfJ7gXQ08KkczhPm/s16000/Glory07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
54th’s story wasn’t entirely obscured to the haze of history: Walt Whitman
wrote his rather more inferring and restrained tribute with the famous poem “When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” and Shaw and his men commemorated in a
bas-relief sculpture on a memorial on Boston Common by Augustus Saint-Gaudens,
which is featured<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>under <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i>’s closing credits (also, in one of
those sharp twists of history, Shaw’s son was later, disastrously married to
Nancy Astor, who would become Britain’s first female MP). Nor was it entirely
the first film to deal directly with the idea of former slaves fighting in the
way, as Raoul Walsh’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Band of Angels </i>(1957)
and Andrew V. McLaglen’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shenandoah</i>
(1965) had both offered interesting stabs at the theme, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i> was the first to deal outright and
properly with an historical example. The guiding stylistic choice of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i> was to evoke the religious imagery
and motifs draped around so much of the Civil War’s action and moral drama and
utilise it for its own act of contemporary canonisation. Jarre drew the title
from a report by a war correspondent who reported on the 54th in action, and as
if in obedience to this association, the blend of Horner’s chorus-heavy scoring
and Francis’s images, so often glimpsed through veils of smoke, steam, and fog,
imbues a constant edge of the numinous and leans into the notion what we’re
seeing is a kind of extended ritual of praise and mourning. Which is indeed
fitting, given its end. This note is sounded when Shaw roams through the
reception in his house, the gently warbling chorus on the soundtrack evoking
Shaw’s estrangement and feeling of being caught between life and death, and
reaches an apogee in the practically operatic lead-in to the concluding battle
scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgAF35kPutEqqrl1RKfEfm8MVE5KkHUVxdSJQoQhfmW-KLBrR5wi1pBzN2lC6UzF_ipxVneFCSlqYmZ5Nscb6jpv1Rh5GZmDDAxONh6Vsx7k5P7kNyE7a7owH3v1evpu1-NIaO_1iP1k4mAMV3e1n7TF2xFxQaBRX8NchU_g6bsB53MfRZ-Jxxy5kuOROq/s1004/Glory08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgAF35kPutEqqrl1RKfEfm8MVE5KkHUVxdSJQoQhfmW-KLBrR5wi1pBzN2lC6UzF_ipxVneFCSlqYmZ5Nscb6jpv1Rh5GZmDDAxONh6Vsx7k5P7kNyE7a7owH3v1evpu1-NIaO_1iP1k4mAMV3e1n7TF2xFxQaBRX8NchU_g6bsB53MfRZ-Jxxy5kuOROq/s16000/Glory08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">It
might be said this choice is both an indivisible part of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i>’s power and a debatable aspect, so determined it is to
sanctify the action and cause of the protagonists. If as Edmund Wilson said so
much of the classic American cultural exploration of the war was, as he called
his cynical book on it, “patriotic gore,” then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i> exemplifies that description. The climactic depiction of the
54th’s ill-fated assault on the Confederate Fort Wagner, a formidable redoubt
on the coast outside Charleston, might have been pitched as sad and ugly, even
absurdly wasteful, but Zwick depicts as a moment of titanic apotheosis. The
film grazes more complex perspectives in its third quarter, when the action
shifts from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, and the 54th find themselves
seconded to service with a sleazy zealot, Colonel Montgomery (Cliff DeYoung), a
Southerner who sided with the Union and leads his own band of conscripted,
lawless former slaves merrily loot a town on his behest. He pauses to gun down
on one his men when he gets too free with a white woman even as he blames the
woman for starting it, before commenting, “Secesh’s got to be swept away by the
hand of God like the Jews of old.” Here Zwick seems to be
shifting into territory vaguely reminiscent of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Big Man</i> (1970) and another generation of eccentric and
scabrous portraits of American history, but he quickly swerves back to the
noble struggle again. Montgomery and his kleptocrat commander General Harker
(Bob Gunton) prove to be mere racist and larcenous paper tigers for Shaw to manoeuvre
around, repeating the move he pulled with the quartermaster in threatening to
report their illicit activities. There are also plenty of hallowed war movie
clichés, like the inevitable scene of the tough drillmaster goading a luckless
neophyte into trying to jab him with a bayonet – in this case the scene plays
out between Thomas and Mulcahy, who’s interestingly characterised as a man
ready and willing to utilise base abuse to galvanise his men but also suggests
genuine respect for real effort, but unfortunately vanishes from the film
before something meaty can be developed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDiqdK4g1tkJj_WCJCpBSKYZGo_aX1hs7Od1lPHujbfgX4x-337jUUAykqAGWRNqsVk3-fe1LQy_gSuRV_I3W0jLsOXarPQKTxJWZqKCJJACmvIsuduWa-EjzN3nzz-RKwi3xnOQcJm8VS-b6il7SmA2BedwZn_jAWxx8P3SGoYA5F78TVeBgj0OdYC-7z/s1004/Glory09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDiqdK4g1tkJj_WCJCpBSKYZGo_aX1hs7Od1lPHujbfgX4x-337jUUAykqAGWRNqsVk3-fe1LQy_gSuRV_I3W0jLsOXarPQKTxJWZqKCJJACmvIsuduWa-EjzN3nzz-RKwi3xnOQcJm8VS-b6il7SmA2BedwZn_jAWxx8P3SGoYA5F78TVeBgj0OdYC-7z/s16000/Glory09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
film is on its surest ground when dealing with combat as the ultimate arena of
masculine rectitude, albeit finding that an idea already starting to crack open
in the face of a new age of warfare. A flash-edit depiction of a Union
officer’s head being smashed to a bloody pulp by a cannon ball seems to have
inspired a similar, more cartoonish moment in Roland Emmerich’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2012/03/patriot-2000.html" target="_blank">The Patriot</a></i> (2000) and, more agreeably,
anticipates the jaggedly, horridly glimpsed corporeal mangling of the D-Day
sequence in Steven Spielberg’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saving
Private Ryan</i> (1998). The 54th’s first proper battle action sees them
putting up a fearsome show against an attack of Rebels in an eerie forest
setting, where the smoke of the blazing muskets and miasmic haze commingle and
the enemy charges out of the murk to do battle. Thomas is wounded in the melee
but recovers to save Trip’s life with his hard-won bayoneting skill. Zwick and
his cast pull off a quiet but marvellous scene as the soldiers sing a spiritual
with a clapped-out, insistent beat, giving each man a chance to voice a
testament before their last battle. The “Ain’t nobody clean” scene is very much
the moral and thematic linchpin of the drama as the film allows Shaw and Trip a
vignette of serious contention in their values and worldview voiced in a manner
that sounds convincing for two men of their stations in the era, with also a
low-burning fire of admiration growing in each man for the other. This gains
its proper resolution only at the end, when Shaw is killed trying to rally the
men with the company flag, and Trip dashes forth to take up the mantle, only to
be mortally wounded himself. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaiWo5yWtrJj7F5JxdJwc3exfe1Wq8B7mEBQ3zY0nUv4_YusZ40xY9sTkfbFcPzZwJyIuADuumYTlCWmZaZYPlW3eRsNgPXKQSNpXqX-K818ECS9F1NW2U_fyhwG9yf5dKESEKDHDDQyswrH3paFLLcuBPBq-9oVj3Ah_prIIPce6WNDYsoCEXtQt4W1T9/s1004/Glory10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaiWo5yWtrJj7F5JxdJwc3exfe1Wq8B7mEBQ3zY0nUv4_YusZ40xY9sTkfbFcPzZwJyIuADuumYTlCWmZaZYPlW3eRsNgPXKQSNpXqX-K818ECS9F1NW2U_fyhwG9yf5dKESEKDHDDQyswrH3paFLLcuBPBq-9oVj3Ah_prIIPce6WNDYsoCEXtQt4W1T9/s16000/Glory10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
climactic assault on Fort Wagner is an awesome unit of filmmaking, whilst
also exemplifying Zwick’s self-consciously momentous and mythologising approach that risks turning cornball in its earnestness, with the
ranked soldiers caught in the low sun, Shaw chasing off his trusty steed before
pulling his sabre and ordering the advance, Horner’s surging, mournfully heroic
theme shifting into martial pounding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The actual combat is truly something, the staging, captured with Francis’s
crisp and pictorial colour, his care in lighting and Zwick’s staging, blending
with the score to create a zone of the truly hellish and heroic. Zwick manages
to keep it visceral without descending into the jumbled and incoherent, as the
54th’s most determined fighters, including Thomas and Forbes, charge into the
fort’s interior only to find themselves confronted by a deadly fusillade that
blasts them out of the world. The concluding, slow-motion shot of Shaw and
Trip’s bodies being tossed into a common burial pit, a true flourish, turns the
intended Confederate insult into an icon of salutary honour, and the tragically
failed assault an American Thermopylae that inspires a vast wave of Black
soldiers to follow in their wake. At its least, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Glory</i> is a fine, slick, intelligent entertainment; at its best it’s
worthy of the men it portrays.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5zgf_s8hCOxOnuCLrq7EzinDpnBHYyMmc1_g3Gqns4tQyPwAH7Hl1rCMY5qW1Mko6ekWG--HXFbo3VFqAtowRkPLdHJDDOku-kD3u0S1Us7CpdE0FyPnV8sbOWTCh4pIV4W1JeW8w03ye2ZxfC8XvbF2Oykk9ZY9gquvYSWvJoDi-C95tl_yR3PAWw0TQ/s1004/Glory11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1004" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5zgf_s8hCOxOnuCLrq7EzinDpnBHYyMmc1_g3Gqns4tQyPwAH7Hl1rCMY5qW1Mko6ekWG--HXFbo3VFqAtowRkPLdHJDDOku-kD3u0S1Us7CpdE0FyPnV8sbOWTCh4pIV4W1JeW8w03ye2ZxfC8XvbF2Oykk9ZY9gquvYSWvJoDi-C95tl_yR3PAWw0TQ/s16000/Glory11.jpg" /></a></div><br />Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-10969970134730596552023-07-24T19:05:00.033+10:002023-11-25T03:27:04.418+11:00Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)<p> </p><p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpHXfg_A9c6vtaxudyR-VIzLNH8tZWFfJHpu9n1Jg1kpAwF40sRX4EvEp3pIE0wpEnHGOW01GoQHkLsNlgp2JTG0dUqxqJGVEvoQjDZzbO4coAoBZ8upDvXcDtM5MPN3pkee912NLHxk7BKPkBNjNT9eNv__b9pfmpgu97E140SFTk-QcJZTgLxo_Nb7Sp/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpHXfg_A9c6vtaxudyR-VIzLNH8tZWFfJHpu9n1Jg1kpAwF40sRX4EvEp3pIE0wpEnHGOW01GoQHkLsNlgp2JTG0dUqxqJGVEvoQjDZzbO4coAoBZ8upDvXcDtM5MPN3pkee912NLHxk7BKPkBNjNT9eNv__b9pfmpgu97E140SFTk-QcJZTgLxo_Nb7Sp/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Here there
be spoilers…<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">With the strong feeling pervading the
current cinema scene that the superhero movie epoch is, if not yet on life
support, then certainly tailing off, perhaps likely to persist only in a few choice
properties until some future resurgence, James Gunn’s </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Guardians of the
Galaxy Vol. 3</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> feels both like a symptom of the causes of the wane and a
curative for it. It’s overlong and overstuffed, with whole portions of movie
passing by as blurs of barely-motivated filler dotted with zany but pointless
make-work. But in its best portions the film packs force rare in this mode at the
best of times. Moreover, it gave me the feeling Gunsn has finally managed
something he’s been trying to get at all through his directorial career, but
never quite punched through the layers of hip cynicism and sarcastic schmaltz
he purveyed in differing degrees in the previous entries in the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2014/10/03/guardians-of-the-galaxy-2014/" target="_blank">Guardians of</a> <a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2017/04/guardians-of-galaxy-vol-2.html" target="_blank">the Galaxy</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> series and </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-suicide-squad-2021.html" target="_blank">The Suicide Squad</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (2021), and precursor
work like </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Super</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (2011) to articulate.
The film kicks off in challenging manner for those of us who have rapidly
fading memories of the last reels of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2019/04/avengers-endgame-2019.html" target="_blank">Avengers:
Endgame</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (2019), where the Guardians salvaged the earlier-model Gamora (Zoe
Saldana) from amongst the carnage of Thanos’s forces. Now the younger, more ruthless Gamora has abandoned her rescuers and instead taken up
with the populace of piratical Ravagers led by Stakar Ogood (Sylvester
Stallone).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_y_MqzJZayOasSE9z5cHWFlB_aZFEnBqeKsdsak97sY7onCefjENXx1WDgV7H-toKs6bduzKboEO7Bpux2vCDpOr3ZkBe08mx2cUI8iYlW5RF8CwzXjwZFiLySSXYuJKmxE0BgIqYu0c51Rg-6htZcwrN9F1IFhtrhbiclQjVTk0KAWkZFdvUZyo224hN/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_y_MqzJZayOasSE9z5cHWFlB_aZFEnBqeKsdsak97sY7onCefjENXx1WDgV7H-toKs6bduzKboEO7Bpux2vCDpOr3ZkBe08mx2cUI8iYlW5RF8CwzXjwZFiLySSXYuJKmxE0BgIqYu0c51Rg-6htZcwrN9F1IFhtrhbiclQjVTk0KAWkZFdvUZyo224hN/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Now the Guardians have set up an office
at Knowhere in officially hopeful terms, even as they’re actually gripped with
pervasive angst. Peter ‘Star Lord’ Quill (Chris Pratt) is drinking away his
grief for losing the Gamora who loved him. Rocket Raccoon (voice of Bradley
Cooper) struggles with his confused and tormenting identity. Nebula (Karen
Gillan) is as truculent as ever and now also frustrated at carrying the load by
dint of being the most functional member, much as Mantis (Pom Klementieff)
bemoans her attempts to avoid manipulating the emotions of her friends whilst
doling out ignored advice. Drax (Dave Bautista) is still cheerfully
oblivious and Groot (voice of Vin Diesel) is, as ever, I Am Groot. Things are shaken
up when the bedazzling superbabe Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) crashes into the
Guardians’ headquarters with the apparent object of kidnapping Rocket. The
Guardians manage to fight off the insanely powerful but, being essentially a newborn, clumsy and overeager
Warlock. But Rocket is badly injured and they find he cannot be treated with
ordinary methods, as he has a safeguard in his cybernetic implants imposed as a
sort of copyright protection by whoever first augmented him into the
anthropomorphic chimera he is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4yU_oaYam3EgmoqckwarBQNacgGX_waol1s1CJIBtsGpQ-PttiT81nlJfxnzeIBhN-xDq3W10l_4CGR0wddGo4HDda3Lp3h4DegrFjUIO7hfG7ooV633AoiQAj7Q4pcGX9I8IO7gs5eKYuaae2-Rr4J4FhTd5AeDw2LpC0a6NL8w9yVLlrH_-RfTgde1H/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4yU_oaYam3EgmoqckwarBQNacgGX_waol1s1CJIBtsGpQ-PttiT81nlJfxnzeIBhN-xDq3W10l_4CGR0wddGo4HDda3Lp3h4DegrFjUIO7hfG7ooV633AoiQAj7Q4pcGX9I8IO7gs5eKYuaae2-Rr4J4FhTd5AeDw2LpC0a6NL8w9yVLlrH_-RfTgde1H/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This proves to be a nefarious being known
as the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), obsessed with mutating and
augmenting animals into sentient beings, out of some faith this is the path to
forging a flawlessly harmonious society, but doomed to constantly destroy everything he creates when it falls short of his vision of perfection.
The film unfolds in two strands for much of its length, cutting between the
efforts of the Guardians to find the key to healing Rocket, and the injured
Rocket’s dream-conjured recollections of being forged in extremes of agony and
heartbreak by the High Evolutionary. Rocket, it emerges eventually, was a
by-product created only to work out some kinks in one of his projects, but
instead proved the one creature he’s made so far capable of genuine creative
and independent will. The High Evolutionary is desperate to get him back, as
much out of rage against his creation’s defiance as for a need to understand
what made him special. Rocket also meditates on the first of his accidental
families, the otter Lylla (Linda Cardellini), walrus Teefs (Asim Chaudry), and
rabbit Floor (Mikaela Hoover), all twisted yet lovable cyborgs made
by the High Evolutionary, and killed finally by his heedlessly contemptuous
machinations. This drove Rocket to rip his creator’s face off and flee in a
spaceship. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Y8AJ45k6KGNd26MeUqpJnHQv9CrDXWJauj-fhAqm9wI8NlytK2nAf_Ep4OcbzaeDBLTS2wV9XQtTlfMYLAjXFInzaVAYjFNCQ5odx6P32ToKA0yXiwTbfg_hCLU3c7Y1e4kGLjJ7KHci6Yl7AmcAwu5EiO7pOa4gVUUFZWme8RD7M-a3eRozTSDWR7lD/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Y8AJ45k6KGNd26MeUqpJnHQv9CrDXWJauj-fhAqm9wI8NlytK2nAf_Ep4OcbzaeDBLTS2wV9XQtTlfMYLAjXFInzaVAYjFNCQ5odx6P32ToKA0yXiwTbfg_hCLU3c7Y1e4kGLjJ7KHci6Yl7AmcAwu5EiO7pOa4gVUUFZWme8RD7M-a3eRozTSDWR7lD/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The most awkward and disordered parts of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3</i> come in
the first half, with a long quest by the Guardians to penetrate the space
station called the Orgoscope, headquarters of one of the High Evolutionary’s
legitimate, money-spinning bioengineering enterprises, and steal the codes to
Rocket’s implants. This sequence, which sports Nathan Fillion as Master Karja,
a dedicated but emotionally volatile security chief, and unfolding in a rather
obscene-looking, organically-fashioned environ, is one Gunn tries to put to
good use, with plentiful sidelong flashes of comedy and characterisation, like
Mantis using her enthralling talents to make a security guard (Benjamin Byron
Davis) fall in love with Drax, and Peter using his less fanciful but similar
gifts to manipulate manager Ura (Daniela Melchior). But it’s still an example
of something that’s endemic in contemporary screenwriting, a sequence full of
twists and turns that finally add up to very little, with a specific objective
that’s easy to forget about as the scene drags on and proves to finally lead on
only to another objective. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirY1AGVaCknQgX5MVooao9oZLS-1Y4Vl2rzZQKRb0ErOxdmeEyk-3WRqxYCwznUHX4vsDZq7tQiEvazrHkmC_YY04qlF3wr3rdUiZSBTC3rSI7WoSy2AFl7bU2mEVGLAjE4ghrZY-HNABDzgn0y0LZ0UH6b-taLTMY3JVL46Q3cfWiAYdfb3kE6y-rIR2y/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirY1AGVaCknQgX5MVooao9oZLS-1Y4Vl2rzZQKRb0ErOxdmeEyk-3WRqxYCwznUHX4vsDZq7tQiEvazrHkmC_YY04qlF3wr3rdUiZSBTC3rSI7WoSy2AFl7bU2mEVGLAjE4ghrZY-HNABDzgn0y0LZ0UH6b-taLTMY3JVL46Q3cfWiAYdfb3kE6y-rIR2y/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Poulter’s Warlock is a vision of gilded masculine beauty in exterior but an
overgrown, tumultuous brat in nature. But Warlock, well-regarded by comic
book fans as one of the more interesting and ambiguous of esoteric Marvel
characters, is done few favours by being introduced in hurried fashion as a
comic relief antagonist. A hurriedly described backstory renders him the
progeny of Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki), whose race we learn was developed by the
High Evolutionary and who fostered Warlock’s creation as the zenith of their
breed. The film rather oddly insists on playing Warlock’s presence and persona
for laughs when he’s essentially the same as Rocket, with a redemption arc
that’s clumsily and randomly grazed before he’s finally anointed as a member of
the new iteration of the team that charges the screen in the epilogue. Gunn
also has to awkwardly shoehorn Gamora, a familiar presence yet newly strange in
persona and present in paradox-defying ways, into this narrative, which is
officially about closure and resolution for a beloved gang of fractious
comrades. Still, he does at least give Saldana a chance to play the role with
an edge of brutal expedience and jerkwad zest, which is cool.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsWlv_f4Dt_37NUA4NccizwgUjVeGqB2A6_8WtYbekI7HB9DET3YSO120rsxanqj-Cjs0uku2tmpcL7v2L_qFCZYHGk65-KdWvVNFBKYuKCdgptId2TYCP1JgqYfyvjR-QdhsEbCgt_xh8balbQMhT9wKmsRy7mK4_8trN6xmpRlu-MLAvwc3XkZ26if0l/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsWlv_f4Dt_37NUA4NccizwgUjVeGqB2A6_8WtYbekI7HB9DET3YSO120rsxanqj-Cjs0uku2tmpcL7v2L_qFCZYHGk65-KdWvVNFBKYuKCdgptId2TYCP1JgqYfyvjR-QdhsEbCgt_xh8balbQMhT9wKmsRy7mK4_8trN6xmpRlu-MLAvwc3XkZ26if0l/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gunn, who gained his start as a writer
working for the beloved exploitation studio Troma, has long been obviously
struggling to suppress one side of his creative imagination. That side is
rooted in the gritty climes of underground comic books and seamy video store
shelf fodder aimed at stoned collegians, rather than the bright, shiny halls of
mass-market pop culture his talents have landed him in. Gunn’s evident desire
to introduce some of that darker, harder, weirder edge into a movie
subgenre pitched on the safest possible wavelength obviously paid off to a
degree in first <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardians of the Galaxy</i>
film, which proved a surprise smash hit, standing as both the first real
evidence that the Marvel Cinematic Universe brand was growing strong enough to
launch hitherto obscure properties to blockbuster prominence, but also one that
in some ways really made the brand what it became for the next few years. Gunn’s film gave it a breadth it didn’t really have before when it was just
iterating familiar heroes like Thor and Captain America, and opened up zones of
space opera, connecting the earthbound with the high fantasy of Thor’s world. Arguably it also laid seeds for the brand’s implosion by making
goofy, jaunty comedy and flashy spectacle a more overt part of the style, leading out to utter miscalculations like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2022/07/thor-love-and-thunder-2022.html" target="_blank">Thor: Love and Thunder</a></i> (2022) and tepid CGI-fests like <i>Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania</i> (2023). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVRcd6_fJNfyOOjBWpnSdMdXncRx23zaXIsc4t_AEjf8oIsQsc4MKRwHVuDl9OfoMST0T5jIaUKIoatVJn-GVHJB2umsj1UviMXgyoQsNHOXQbmKSdUBQ6HvR_uXTzPAIO40hrLJvTGxRBD84MMBePMe7BSCTF_ZuVusNGIzvEaPd7-Z3uB4kNRCWaZ3pa/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVRcd6_fJNfyOOjBWpnSdMdXncRx23zaXIsc4t_AEjf8oIsQsc4MKRwHVuDl9OfoMST0T5jIaUKIoatVJn-GVHJB2umsj1UviMXgyoQsNHOXQbmKSdUBQ6HvR_uXTzPAIO40hrLJvTGxRBD84MMBePMe7BSCTF_ZuVusNGIzvEaPd7-Z3uB4kNRCWaZ3pa/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">But in his well-made and amusing but
dramatically limp sequel, and in the randomly reflexive, terminally adolescent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Suicide Squad</i>, Gunn felt to me like
a guy putting on an act, playing at emotional largesse and trying to evoke the
feeling of being a ten-year-old watching oddball 1980s movies but without
conviction, and has dashes of nastiness felt as a consequence ill-at-ease, even
a bit offensive. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardians of the
Galaxy Vol. 3</i>, at least, he proves far bolder in making a movie that feels,
at least in portions, like a pure account of a sensibility he’s never quite
managed truly expressed before, not even in the self-conscious desecrations of
something like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Super</i> and its attempts
to portray weirdoes clinging on to self-actualising fantasies, a notion Gunn
reiterates here in both of Rocket’s “families.” Purveying images of small, cute
animals being mistreated is arguably a pretty cheap way of forcing audience
involvement, but I admit it worked for me. That’s in part because Gunn actually
treads pretty damn close to territory he courts, one part <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankenstein</i>, one part <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Island of Dr. Moreau</i>, with an appropriate sense of proper horror and existential menace
just over the margins. So he lets himself indulge utterly perverse creations of
the High Evolutionary, including a twisted pig-man (one for the Seinfeld fans,
perhaps) and some mutant-animal-cyborg henchmen, like Judy Greer’s War-Pig, who
look exactly like they might have sprung off the pages of some outré
alternative graphic novel of the late 1980s. The textures of Henry Braham’s
cinematography, Judianna Makovsky’s costumes, and Beth Mickle’s production
design exploit the Orgoscope scenes to leave behind the hard, steely contours of the earlier films in exchange for bulbous
biomechanical forms straight out of Moebius. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6vbCQDD5_z2LnIOBpHGHHeGWyy8AUh1nkfcbsJn5lMlyF_lsaaZN0ymUyrbNhakknE5IvATF_Qloa3KyoyCgKopNS3TcOgtWsUx-SSriPy-U0yjop_k0n9w76iXpUKzWvYsfQ4Tf63UIlBd1gdZK2hZpl4ajMhiqm90k1i0IL2s_FsAZxd8RtwqFvrt_Q/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6vbCQDD5_z2LnIOBpHGHHeGWyy8AUh1nkfcbsJn5lMlyF_lsaaZN0ymUyrbNhakknE5IvATF_Qloa3KyoyCgKopNS3TcOgtWsUx-SSriPy-U0yjop_k0n9w76iXpUKzWvYsfQ4Tf63UIlBd1gdZK2hZpl4ajMhiqm90k1i0IL2s_FsAZxd8RtwqFvrt_Q/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Gunn contrasts this to whiplash effect
with the jolly innocence of the younger Rocket and his friends from the
laboratory cages, oblivious to the cruelty of their cybernetic
attachments and biological enhancements, their mistake-of-a-cruel-god self-awareness actually, thankfully facilitated
by their blindness in Plato’s Cave. Rocket, the only one of them to be made
aware of why he’s been made and of the precariousness of their position, has
the tools to save himself, but is also fatefully prey to emotional torment and
fear, a fear he then tries to expel through his more familiar attitude of
bravado, before he’s saved by his more recently-acquired friends and declares finally, “I’m done
running.” The Guardians catch up with the High Evolutionary on a planet
known as Counter-Earth, where the mastermind has constructed one of his
intended model societies. This proves to be a veritable lampoon of middle
America with sprawling suburbs populated by mutated animal people, those who haven’t backslid into crime and drug use</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">leading pointlessly humdrum lives</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">.
This could have been a grand satiric coup, but it’s one Gunn isn’t allowed to
do much with. The High Evolutionary, disappointed by yet another project,
destroys Counter-Earth in a feat of apocalyptic carnage that Gunn is obliged to
keep as bloodless and terror-free as possible, in one of his plainer
concessions to his Disney paymasters.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_DzdOUyOK5VIaVnnxHQhHyVA8nxHk2t0IHnKn-UCTr5Sb6ZKl_bzaWcdvse2m6Sh_tzzCkDUiIZS_8fxypVfQwlicIXTuilkdA57p_CrTZdkTU1_6yms8piz4PrW18YNVXE4YNI3gE0ARb0DpMI48I1OW7MBsaU2RmQc7yVvz2BZHPfrt7_HzzzqpPe4I/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_DzdOUyOK5VIaVnnxHQhHyVA8nxHk2t0IHnKn-UCTr5Sb6ZKl_bzaWcdvse2m6Sh_tzzCkDUiIZS_8fxypVfQwlicIXTuilkdA57p_CrTZdkTU1_6yms8piz4PrW18YNVXE4YNI3gE0ARb0DpMI48I1OW7MBsaU2RmQc7yVvz2BZHPfrt7_HzzzqpPe4I/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Subtext is all over the place here, of
course. As in Ridley Scott’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2017/05/21/alien-covenant-2017/" target="_blank">Alien: Covenent</a></i> (2017), the theme of the gene-rewriting mad scientist is replete
with reflections on creativity itself. That’s conjoined with a writ-large,
very acidic attitude towards the studios Gunn and other hapless filmmakers have
signed on with to make their blockbusters in recent years, Faustian bargains
that are supposed to deliver greater freedom but have instead only made such
filmmaker increasingly subjugated as the pool of one-for-me, one-for-them
financing dries up. Gunn, who infamously was fired by Disney-Marvel for old
online outrageousness, then re-embraced to deliver one more cash-cow, reflects
with simmering anger on a landscape of creative by-products that emerge as
cynically misshapen chimeras without purpose beyond moving onto the next grand
act of investor portfolio service masquerading as creativity. The High Evolutionary</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">s fury with Rocket</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’s recalcitrant insistence upon having an identity</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> is Gunn</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’s portrait of</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> the franchise and its overlords</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> urgent attempts to keep tight leashes on the upstart creatives actually asked to make the individual movies. As a metaphor for what’s going wrong at the moment
Hollywood, with a recent release landscape littered with such endlessly reshot,
release schedule date-filling, cobbled-together calamities as </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2023/07/02/indiana-jones-and-the-dial-of-destiny-2023/" target="_blank">Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">
(2023) and </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The Flash</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (2023), this all proves Gunn has been paying attention, and is damn near as slyly yet boldly
vicious as Tim Burton was with his </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Dumbo</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">
(2019), a film that, under the cover of providing yet another IP makeover,
portrayed dismayed artists and performers selling out to a soulless,
all-consuming corporate behemoth and then burning it all down.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLvPR-QB0jtQv54JRMXIRTgXXxYmAo6mJqZ9JAnuMpP94gptk9AwgEBqLmGNHp0hMfC9tdJqGQ1jk1Tk24Tcp9L3bx83YvY6vtPUpXg2kUDn68PfZPa3clhNsUscB8Jcq6yPGb9ARC2aTWeCUH8fwkew8RegzIX7vLXARxqv4uqWLegxWtpw1aNfkP1lc_/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLvPR-QB0jtQv54JRMXIRTgXXxYmAo6mJqZ9JAnuMpP94gptk9AwgEBqLmGNHp0hMfC9tdJqGQ1jk1Tk24Tcp9L3bx83YvY6vtPUpXg2kUDn68PfZPa3clhNsUscB8Jcq6yPGb9ARC2aTWeCUH8fwkew8RegzIX7vLXARxqv4uqWLegxWtpw1aNfkP1lc_/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">On a more prosaic level, the lead
performances are good if cramped for space. Bautista and Klementieff prove the
truly valuable players this time, the former landing the lion’s share of good
lines and the latter given witty ways of playing her character’s efforts to
avoid being little more than the tide pool for and barometer of her companions’
traits. Pratt plays a shaggier, disconsolate Quill, one whose mind starts to
wander off to lives unlived as he considers where the one he’s leading has left
him, but still clicking back into cocky heroic gear when needed. By contrast,
Gillan’s Nebula, previously just about my favourite character in the MCU, here
feels a little jammed as a character, still brusque and raging and having not
quite escaped the realm of colourful support figure lacking a significant
dynamic with another character. Whilst he arguably doesn’t get enough chance to
convey much nuance in the role, Iwuji also impressed me with his mixture of
elegance and ferocity, his High Evolutionary doomed to perpetual cycles of hope
and frustration, constantly suffering for keeping his eyes fixed on a prize so
nebulous and ideal that every other form of suffering is incidental and unconcerning to him.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1QiQH5R1jWNQnsuMJDWN0LXLRUGmp7QhYEpWfhRQsZDgvrNoKJXYwcZkyBmeMG_IVGvmgfyCkDJ1JVp-s6Kw487qp93_7JJXGLD4rRRf2fhle7ckK_H9bTV_P3vFExFfoLxJxB49NeZzpQSOihvPxP9mecQKu_fHXmGblU9M6EZECIKkxRCF69bETLw6I/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1QiQH5R1jWNQnsuMJDWN0LXLRUGmp7QhYEpWfhRQsZDgvrNoKJXYwcZkyBmeMG_IVGvmgfyCkDJ1JVp-s6Kw487qp93_7JJXGLD4rRRf2fhle7ckK_H9bTV_P3vFExFfoLxJxB49NeZzpQSOihvPxP9mecQKu_fHXmGblU9M6EZECIKkxRCF69bETLw6I/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-11.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The scene shifts to the High
Evolutionary’s spaceship from a frantic climax that interestingly if a little
clumsily tries to avoid easy outs: Gunn shows Rocket as the more evolved
creature in his confrontation with the High Evolutionary by refusing to kill
the man, who is finally revealed as pathetically damaged, but
what actually happens to the High Evolutionary is left frustratingly vague in
the madcap parade of the conclusion. Still, there’s a merry vehemence to the
film’s insistence on animal rights, and the emphasis on the Guardians finding
their collective parental reflexes stirred in regard to all sorts of creatures,
ranging from monstrous-looking but actually non-carnivorous squid-like creatures
used as guards, and a race of Star Children the High Evolutionary has fostered. One of the children, a girl called Phyla (Kai Zen), joins Warlock, Rocket,
Groot, Cosmo, and Kraglin (Sean Gunn) as the next version of the Guardians, as the others all heed
the call of new missions and responsibilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s certainly all too busy, with Stallone just around to be a mascot
again. And yet this frenetic aspect actually helps Gunn finally weave together
something of the messy, characterful quality of the kinds of ‘80s B-movies he
tries to channel. Seemingly random flourishes, like Cosmo the telekinetic
Soviet space dog (voice of Maria Bakalova), are sometimes put to some proper use.
Speaking of ‘80s references, this time around Gunn nods often to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2019/01/14/robocop-1987/" target="_blank">RoboCop</a></i> (1987), including in the High
Evolutionary’s bionic attachments and an interpolated theme in John Murphy’s
score that mimics Basil Poledouris. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCCodc86RcPd0x4sBCg-QOVdp0_iCcFN8bx44JX7M3Nku2FmOB7nnApsbFY_kyPP3Heu9oER4Lnkh1GNEpVqfrpWqa3hXGJSSo5LK5LKEPdqleH7OyRguoNViQ3gno9W2TjILnvwPf2Kbay_KNKPeIZihAodKqk7NUucojSbGHrTAUAtOIY1LiWbYIokfR/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCCodc86RcPd0x4sBCg-QOVdp0_iCcFN8bx44JX7M3Nku2FmOB7nnApsbFY_kyPP3Heu9oER4Lnkh1GNEpVqfrpWqa3hXGJSSo5LK5LKEPdqleH7OyRguoNViQ3gno9W2TjILnvwPf2Kbay_KNKPeIZihAodKqk7NUucojSbGHrTAUAtOIY1LiWbYIokfR/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-12.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">That Peter has moved on from his old
Walkman to a retrieved Zune after his last visit to Earth allows a shift from
the previous films’ super-‘70s-hits vibe to a more eclectic survey. The
opening use of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ is surprisingly deft in setting the movie’s
emotional tone and thematic reach, and the concluding whorls of Florence and the
Machine’s ‘Dog Days’ hit exactly the right triumphal tone, in a concluding
chapter for a trilogy that muses in sidelong fashion on the alternations of
angst and escapism, authentic emotion and hip irony, dotting the history of
modern pop music and well as pop cinema. And it’s this constantly toggling
aspect of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3</i>
that finally sold me on it. The sharply careening alternation of the grotesque
and the cheery, the seething and the whimsical, achieved a kind of critical
mass, aesthetically speaking. Even if Gunn’s science fiction motifs still lack
any genuine cleverness in the way they interact with his stories, he at least
uses his clout to make something challenging in the blandest of blockbuster
imprimaturs. He doesn’t shy away from Rocket’s loss of his first family, and as
a result actually, finally made me feel something in relation to the MCU for
the first time in a while, and indeed the first time from Gunn in anything
beyond mild amusement or queasiness. That’s because, where in Gunn’s
earlier films the darkness and the whimsy felt disparate and cynically
melded, here they work in something like concert – the hard tone shifts are
not a bug but the point of the movie. For the first time I felt like Gunn was
really getting close to something genuinely meaningful in his movies, a sense
of the common and perhaps necessary proximity terrible, transfiguring pain has
to the eventual possibility of wild joy. Despite its problems, <i>Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3</i> would be a fine and proper end for the MCU as it
stands. But it won’t be.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE2LsW6Uw-ou9OeF8ECl_ng-dvW8zrN4_6p5H-3kM87_9f9BcyUE_ipA2uLh_nC47JJIEx_E2adkCqAcAwh8mVfvzL6MfNdvJrYsJeMsead28b2uYH18AO4TX61qDqg36VCpjVeq2V85hwXVA5hg-kvHQVY4e6GEppcI9ifhbbgYEfzmw0BgL1ns6Xwlvt/s1024/GuardiansGalaxy3-13.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE2LsW6Uw-ou9OeF8ECl_ng-dvW8zrN4_6p5H-3kM87_9f9BcyUE_ipA2uLh_nC47JJIEx_E2adkCqAcAwh8mVfvzL6MfNdvJrYsJeMsead28b2uYH18AO4TX61qDqg36VCpjVeq2V85hwXVA5hg-kvHQVY4e6GEppcI9ifhbbgYEfzmw0BgL1ns6Xwlvt/s16000/GuardiansGalaxy3-13.jpg" /></a></p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-88677940828454601632023-07-18T18:10:00.018+10:002023-07-22T23:54:18.238+10:00The Message (1976)<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><b>aka Mohammed, Messenger
of God</b></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuyoYHlAE6RvjPZFLV8VhTXkpQ2ei-YScwcwXME0IucBQ6MKGm2FVYkET7PPzvsMz_ZyhZtOeLs-bi0-tur59SACKnTgJ5biVKXysguRUIsBc4ZDCeSkrjuSQSjla1ONhIJs04XL90TIZuBXl_VWvBA2McWtf8NeoYMj9xeuE5W4eVkgh4t_jq2Us_ZM-p/s1278/TheMessage01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuyoYHlAE6RvjPZFLV8VhTXkpQ2ei-YScwcwXME0IucBQ6MKGm2FVYkET7PPzvsMz_ZyhZtOeLs-bi0-tur59SACKnTgJ5biVKXysguRUIsBc4ZDCeSkrjuSQSjla1ONhIJs04XL90TIZuBXl_VWvBA2McWtf8NeoYMj9xeuE5W4eVkgh4t_jq2Us_ZM-p/s16000/TheMessage01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Moustapha
Akkad’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Message</i> holds the truly
arresting claim to being possibly the most viewed film in history, and the film’s mere
existence is worth
remarking on. Akkad was a Syrian filmmaker who moved to the US in the 1950s to
study at UCLA. Akkad came under the wing of Sam Peckinpah who served as a
mentor figure, before he started working for CBS as a producer. He’s
best-known, to cineastes in the west at least, for producing John Carpenter’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Halloween</i> (1978) and umpteen sequels,
but he also directed two feature films, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Message</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lion of the Desert</i>
(1981). Both were passionate, expensive throwbacks to the days of epic cinema
as practiced by the likes of David Lean and Anthony Mann, at a time when such
movies were entirely out of fashion. The subject matter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Message</i>, the early days of Islam and the proselytising of
Mohammed and his first disciples, was fired by Akkad’s zeal and desire to
communicate the essence and history of his religion to the world, but was also
bound to cause problems. He faced enormous trials to get the film made, in the
face of indifference from Hollywood backers and outright aggression from the
various Middle Eastern countries he tried to make it in, because, whilst Akkad
consulted with Islamic scholars to keep the film as accurate to both history
and religious doctrine as possible, many still thought he was risking an act of
blasphemy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1WEZNc9-tfCbKIX9tf4SynlMoQtQ6DnP40yhWn-FzHeVrfud6KkWxNrcIgj5kDVQLPUKilrFPNsQ_EcHq-9rtSScPM3wTjgs6ZSO9W-1wyoPbvQ4Jahfu59pXBfPiAZlzloke0hB0X1k3t-DZG9MOAIR1YBmmSzEZOKHwr8c4YSmrYVvjHy_YhEOW_K1L/s1278/TheMessage02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1WEZNc9-tfCbKIX9tf4SynlMoQtQ6DnP40yhWn-FzHeVrfud6KkWxNrcIgj5kDVQLPUKilrFPNsQ_EcHq-9rtSScPM3wTjgs6ZSO9W-1wyoPbvQ4Jahfu59pXBfPiAZlzloke0hB0X1k3t-DZG9MOAIR1YBmmSzEZOKHwr8c4YSmrYVvjHy_YhEOW_K1L/s16000/TheMessage02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Such
were Akkad’s labours indeed that they provide instant subtext for the movie,
mirroring the travails of the early Muslims as portrayed. Eventually, after
being forced out of several countries he was filming in and failing to get
enough financing to finish the movie, Akkad secured funding from Libyan
dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who would later also back <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lion of the Desert</i>, leading to both films being critically
dismissed upon release in the west, whilst misunderstandings about the film
sparked violent threats and incidents in both its UK and US releases. After a
few early screenings under the title of <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mohammed,
Messenger of </span>God</i>, Akkad changed it to the more benign <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Message</i>. The central problem of making a movie about Mohammed
and the source of much of the disquiet the film met is a thorny one indeed,
given the long Islamic tradition of not portraying the Prophet in likeness or
performance, one Akkad obeyed. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Message</i> gets around this convention by having Mohammed’s presence
continually suggested through point-of-view shots, with other actors addressing
the camera, or carefully blocked out in wide shots. Otherwise his words and deeds are reported by others. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjZ8RswWzsBEU2XYU7K9lfy7fGzu8ByqiCmEEQ3AnU5UwOI5V9c6q-MN_QRPZuK4kGB-04NAeBviAOfc7lvWrsNneiJ1ea5FFFdZDLIaxkkPXEy99Ds9xrObm0ChQQWpVUkFpvn0TbGMGGeW4C8ZyMXlJyrfaESlCAJaI9j3CrAytN3gWoxPEd93GKVWol/s1278/TheMessage03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjZ8RswWzsBEU2XYU7K9lfy7fGzu8ByqiCmEEQ3AnU5UwOI5V9c6q-MN_QRPZuK4kGB-04NAeBviAOfc7lvWrsNneiJ1ea5FFFdZDLIaxkkPXEy99Ds9xrObm0ChQQWpVUkFpvn0TbGMGGeW4C8ZyMXlJyrfaESlCAJaI9j3CrAytN3gWoxPEd93GKVWol/s16000/TheMessage03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Despite
being largely dismissed in the west for their status as “petrochemical epics”
and sporting some similarity to other ego-empire products around the same time
like the Moonie-produced <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inchon</i>
(1981), both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Message</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lion of the Desert</i> are good if lumpy and
stylistically unambitious movies. Akkad’s straightforwardness as a filmmaker is
for both films at once a drag and a strength: even if the films shuffle along
earnestly at points, Akkad nonetheless applied expansive talent
for spectacle that harkens back to those old epics but fuses them with the
gritty and tactile intensity of ‘70s filmmaking. It also has a dose of rather less elevated emotional drama and dark passion to sustain it. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">Come for the historical, religious, and ethical meditations, and stay for Irene Papas as a raging, heart-devouring avenger.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">So blatant were Akkad’s
desires to emulate Lean and </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lawrence of
Arabia</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (1962) in particular that he hired one of that film’s stars, Anthony
Quinn, and its composer Maurice Jarre, as well as regular Lean collaborator
Jack Hildyard as cinematographer. The script for the English-language version
was written by H.A.L. Craig, who amongst other things had written another epic
international boondoggle, Sergei Bondarchuk’s </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2021/03/01/waterloo-1970/" target="_blank">Waterloo</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (1970). </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">For the international release, i</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">n contrast to contemporary demands for ethnic
authenticity in casting, Akkad had no problem populating the scenes filmed in
English with international actors (whilst Arabic
actors played the major roles in the Arabic version) including Quinn and his </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2023/05/16/the-guns-of-navarone-1961/" target="_blank">The Guns of Navarone</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (1961) and </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2019/01/28/zorba-the-greek-1964/" target="_blank">Zorba The Greek</a></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (1964) costar Papas, alongside a battery of good British character actors and the familiar
Hollywood actor Michael Ansara, who </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">like Akkad </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">was Syrian.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigg_fukdBsmlQccYzq_Ayw6GEY3yiJ5j_BkDUy4SyeX-SknPuI6lo4hJj13c0SB7YwPPP1bgXzls0sj2ZKFebUtYmjbI3UGzeuoRj8hav-wEqBhs4KBKFI8CI2rBCV92UT_soAuDp-z5szfgBRvhK3amNmB9RHiupsI8tskL3eveJDRzK5nFeaz6XCfvHS/s1278/TheMessage04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigg_fukdBsmlQccYzq_Ayw6GEY3yiJ5j_BkDUy4SyeX-SknPuI6lo4hJj13c0SB7YwPPP1bgXzls0sj2ZKFebUtYmjbI3UGzeuoRj8hav-wEqBhs4KBKFI8CI2rBCV92UT_soAuDp-z5szfgBRvhK3amNmB9RHiupsI8tskL3eveJDRzK5nFeaz6XCfvHS/s16000/TheMessage04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Akkad
avoids any kind of portrayal of mystic experience, inevitable in part because
the Prophet himself is off camera and his divine communings abstract, although
he does offer one strong visual metaphor early on as his camera zooms in on the
mouth of the cave where Mohammed’s divine revelation is supposed to have
occurred, until the screen is filled with blackness, with the flame of a
burning oil lamp then slowly rising into view. Otherwise Akkad maintains an
entirely tangible portrayal of history and the verified events of Islam’s early
days: the subject here rather is the transformative power of faith itself, as
both a source of persecution and suffering but also, finally, world-reordering
power. The film opens with messengers on horseback bringing Mohammed’s call to
follow his new faith to the Byzantine and Persian Emperors and the Alexandrian
Patriarch, met with scoffs and bewilderment by the great men and their
entourages. The film then steps back a decade or so, to depict the Mecca of the
time, making its money from pilgrims coming to visit its many shrines and idols
of a variety of gods which have accumulated around the Kaaba, a holy place
instituted according to tradition by Abraham. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwj2wvGigHL18izqou6uZ6AxMehfgbQ0ihP71ZZmXw0-MgSO55tgwOVEpR2MYNJr7HHcATtpm_ZjbPPZXEDSPVky4gMNFusdEZQtiDIr4iDEhD3jnkyLWCEeJoKm_ucHdYVxPnmPIMcM2_X4N2isCasgQGGnR3HOT6KUdC8hEm7jlNUpyPxN9BmeCeMBld/s1278/TheMessage05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwj2wvGigHL18izqou6uZ6AxMehfgbQ0ihP71ZZmXw0-MgSO55tgwOVEpR2MYNJr7HHcATtpm_ZjbPPZXEDSPVky4gMNFusdEZQtiDIr4iDEhD3jnkyLWCEeJoKm_ucHdYVxPnmPIMcM2_X4N2isCasgQGGnR3HOT6KUdC8hEm7jlNUpyPxN9BmeCeMBld/s16000/TheMessage05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ansara
plays Abu Sufyan, one of the city’s regime of potentates. Akkad scores an
early, rueful point about the perpetually diplomatic lot of the artist as he
depicts Sinan (Gerard Hely), a marketplace poet and reciter, who carefully
changes the satirical lilt of his jests about Abu Safyan when the potentate
himself strays close to listen. Papas is Safyan’s wife, Hind bint Utbah, and her
father is Utbah ibn Rabi'ah (Robert Brown), another of the city bigwigs. The
potentates get their collective noses out of joint when the upstart Mohammed
begins preaching his new monotheistic creed, a threat to their theology and,
more importantly, their economy. Mohammed’s gathering adherents, mostly ardent
young relatives, like his adopted son Zayd (Damien Thomas), and his uncle and
protector Abu Talib (Andre Morell), are persuaded by the ardency of his reports
from the edge of creation, and the fact he came away with a book of knowledge
despite being illiterate. Mohammed’s message however quickly starts stirring
discontent, including amidst Utbah’s house as Hind, her father, and brother Walid
(George Camiller) clash with another, converted brother, Hudayfa (Habib Ageli),
a conflict that quickly typifies a war of generations and outlooks the city
overlords soon decide must be stamped out. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh56SJzAQWlUnXmFpn3LAiNhoHKy1JuSvKMixyjJdUVu5xPwh6yMj1rgwaPW64pb5DQFjuGTAfxn94IYbOoJfuKbxEmu_TWT3_pWhOSn0fB0xHvQiZ0268J8hapJaiIeJM0FWTDZjUMKVoYVxEGVOWO6wUxkwLAcoqpp9ppqLiriZp4krFHKhY3-u3Y7g2Q/s1278/TheMessage06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh56SJzAQWlUnXmFpn3LAiNhoHKy1JuSvKMixyjJdUVu5xPwh6yMj1rgwaPW64pb5DQFjuGTAfxn94IYbOoJfuKbxEmu_TWT3_pWhOSn0fB0xHvQiZ0268J8hapJaiIeJM0FWTDZjUMKVoYVxEGVOWO6wUxkwLAcoqpp9ppqLiriZp4krFHKhY3-u3Y7g2Q/s16000/TheMessage06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">When Mohammed and his followers march on the Kaaba to “declare” themselves, they
find themselves up against an angry mob who think they intend an iconoclast
rampage, and the devotees defend Mohammed from assault. Another of Mohammed’s
uncles, the tough and much-respected Hamza (Anthony Quinn), riding into the
riot after a hunt, challenges the elder Abu Jahl (Martin Benson), who’s whipped
up the crowd, and slaps him when he calls Mohammed a fraud before affirming his
nephew’s religion. Bilal (Johnny Sekka), the Black African slave of Umayyah ibn
Khalaf (Bruno Barnabe), refuses to whip one of the new faithful on his master’s
behalf and instead announces his interest in the religion. Bilal is brutally
tested with whips and heavy rocks laid on his torso to make him recant, but
Zayd successfully buys Bilal’s freedom from his frustrated owner. Another of Mohammed’s new followers, Ammar (Garrick Hagon), is confronted by his fretful
parents, Yasir (Ewen Solon) and Sumayyah (Rosalie Crutchley), only for him to
convert them. Later the family achieve the grim honour of being some of the
first martyrs to the cause, parents tortured to death by the potentate Abu Jahl
(Martin Benson) before the gaze of their bound and screaming son. Coming across
the bodies of them and other martyrs left strewn by Abu Jahl, Hamza advises Mohammed and his flock to flee, and soon all of the new faithful are hunted by
Meccan authorities whilst their property seized. Some of the faithful,
including Mohammed himself, find refuge in Medina, whilst Ammar and others head
to Abyssinia, where they appeal to the Christian king, Al-Najashi (Earl
Cameron), to protect them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMfFa0h7PYmzREv69_1oHW5CaVv6rE0dGyMCzjibjDIDSunxJESBDPkjJCaCf1JfP3mgZoKZGoMFdc0sVK7jHrjLr__6_dkYlJOQySIGO6IVU4wVCT6JUnP4KoRXPpBPMUYgJe0qrlHiQJayTofwz77TnvvqdnkiZ6UDYUSXoN4jaZTzGyFino86N7U99O/s1278/TheMessage07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMfFa0h7PYmzREv69_1oHW5CaVv6rE0dGyMCzjibjDIDSunxJESBDPkjJCaCf1JfP3mgZoKZGoMFdc0sVK7jHrjLr__6_dkYlJOQySIGO6IVU4wVCT6JUnP4KoRXPpBPMUYgJe0qrlHiQJayTofwz77TnvvqdnkiZ6UDYUSXoN4jaZTzGyFino86N7U99O/s16000/TheMessage07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Despite
the sober, realistic approach Akkad takes for the most part, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Message</i> tries in a an ungainly
manner to bridge the divide between a serious historical film and a work with a
proselytising bent, meaning it’s afflicted by some familiar flaws of religious
epics. This includes the general, doe-eyed solemnity in portraying Mohammed’s
young adherents, who are virtually interchangeable in portrayal with any number
of depictions of Jesus’s apostles with their ardent appealing and noble
rectitude in the face of persecution, and the awkward effect of having
characters constantly discuss or complain about Mohammed’s choices and actions.
And yet this last aspect, an offshoot of the need to keep the Prophet himself
abstract, does to a certain extent highlight the potential power of
that attitude: rather than offering a mere presence, the weight falls on the
poetry and moral force of the Koran’s reported words. There’s also one of those
mildly amusing moments of improbable, instant perfection in depicting a moment of crucial invention, when Bilal, called
upon to perform the first ever Muezzin’s call to prayer after the adherents
debate how best to do it and decide on the human voice, does so in flawless
fashion. More successfully, Akkad strains to emphasise the liberal and
egalitarian influence of the emerging religion, particularly in standing
against the common practice of burying newborn female children alive as an
unwanted burden, and forms of slavery that treat the slave as a mere thing, as
part of his overall project of trying to portray his religion with both
sympathy for his brethren and elucidation for everyone else. Muhammad Ali, who
at the time was dabbling in work as an actor in between boxing bouts,
supposedly expressed an interest in playing Bilal, only to be turned down by
Akkad, who said the audience wouldn’t be able to believe Ali as a meekly
suffering martyr. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaZHKfHMO6dPcWCAi_MgG8mHWjz9V8gFZmNC4SXkzLyhe6ggmptZvmCSAsmTkqrYonZNxSTkhDgl0LBsoL_l9vyPRdnjkC9TWwLDUX8QkEegsczrfb-urxfk5BUly42EEnwNScHJQyIrTO110s_saPGkrajp2aB1zQJm3gqw4BR2mImIEfjqvS1sWJDu9J/s1278/TheMessage08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaZHKfHMO6dPcWCAi_MgG8mHWjz9V8gFZmNC4SXkzLyhe6ggmptZvmCSAsmTkqrYonZNxSTkhDgl0LBsoL_l9vyPRdnjkC9TWwLDUX8QkEegsczrfb-urxfk5BUly42EEnwNScHJQyIrTO110s_saPGkrajp2aB1zQJm3gqw4BR2mImIEfjqvS1sWJDu9J/s16000/TheMessage08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Akkad
is more able to apply an artist’s touch around the edges. Hamza, played by
Quinn with well-calculated macho bravura and star charisma, turns his aura of
bristling, bullish force to a holy purpose, drawn initially into declaring his
support for Mohammed and his creed out of purely personal, familial loyalty but
soon becoming the elder statesman and military leader of the fledgling
movement. Morell is also strong as Abu Talib, already an old man when the story
begins, lamenting the end of the great religious festival Mecca sees every year
because he might not live to see the next, and eventually left broke and bereft
by popular disgrace, dying in gasping pain even as he still tries to reconcile
Mohammed and the Meccan rulers. One of the most compelling scenes depicts
Cameron’s Al-Najashi holding court to decide on the fate of the Muslims who
have come to him for shelter, with some Meccan diplomats demanding they be
imprisoned and surrendered to them. Al-Najashi gives the Muslims a chance to
defend themselves and questions them on their matters of faith, including the
role of Jesus in their religion, and concluding, as he draws his cruciform
staff across the floor at Ammar’s feet,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“the difference between us and you is no bigger than this line,” and refuses
to hand them over.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8XOLmoBntCoGHUwiKkIzdlXqAlaMDjJIJ1SWh2-nj9Mq-egfzVrLnrTF4hw6lx5lryEmd6FSrkTHoZ_-0KXCzFmcR4STyoAFS7kyKVjUbFxS7eL5JoJk85pLoRNO2GsPVJS3dxEdLlcfLWOuqvUnhVTlMO5L-AW6ACC4UJnIulMalLjP3Jvrc_w5xN8IY/s1278/TheMessage09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8XOLmoBntCoGHUwiKkIzdlXqAlaMDjJIJ1SWh2-nj9Mq-egfzVrLnrTF4hw6lx5lryEmd6FSrkTHoZ_-0KXCzFmcR4STyoAFS7kyKVjUbFxS7eL5JoJk85pLoRNO2GsPVJS3dxEdLlcfLWOuqvUnhVTlMO5L-AW6ACC4UJnIulMalLjP3Jvrc_w5xN8IY/s16000/TheMessage09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Akkad
finds ritual and human energy in depicting the Muslims build their first Mosque
in Medina, initially a simple, hand-crafted structure which Mohammed
contributes to despite frail health and Hamza’s entreaties to sit it out. When
the exiled Muslims hear that their personal possessions are being carried by a
caravan, accompanied by an escorting army led by Utbah, Walid, and others, they
appeal to Mohammed for permission to attack, and whilst counselling peace
declares they have the right to go to war to reclaim what’s theirs. Hamza leads
the Muslims in a deft series of manoeuvres to catch their foes at the well of
Badr, where Bilal tells the army the discipline the Prophet demands of them.
Hamza and some other Muslim accept a challenge for a fight of champions, during
which Hamza kills Utbah, and the furious Meccans attack en masse only to be
soundly defeated. A year later, Walid returns and bests the Muslims at the
Battle of Uhud after the ill-discipline of some of the Muslim warriors leaves a
flank vulnerable to cavalry. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhitarOoeRXeWxy9D1fHu9gx_kyb75vhlqLeBtXeRDd2ii2IOiGEHspQ1YcLShe8vwxLwgTVsD8_A7kSFsvkeqiF28uH9TsuPCRq7ABfI1xKc_JnoTDXRUADZpI2zk61gVfY5Dq9KLGQKKbmY8Dlk8lzXelhKrDKfquxfH2vkvpyZk_yvGrq_bdooEPeIBt/s1278/TheMessage10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhitarOoeRXeWxy9D1fHu9gx_kyb75vhlqLeBtXeRDd2ii2IOiGEHspQ1YcLShe8vwxLwgTVsD8_A7kSFsvkeqiF28uH9TsuPCRq7ABfI1xKc_JnoTDXRUADZpI2zk61gVfY5Dq9KLGQKKbmY8Dlk8lzXelhKrDKfquxfH2vkvpyZk_yvGrq_bdooEPeIBt/s16000/TheMessage10.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The
upshot of this vigorous yet pointless to and fro of success in war carries
symbolic inference – in the end the moral abacus balances out, both sides
suffering hard losses, victory proving in essence illusory. Bilal gains personal satisfaction
in slaying his former owner in the fray, but the scene is also set for Hind’s
desire for payback on Hamza. The more immediate and consequential result of
inspiring the factions to agree to a ten year truce, which gives the Muslims
time to really gain a foothold, their numbers soon grown exponentially. Papas’s Hind, the exemplary pagan, gives the film its real juice, conceived as a
scornful, implacable antiheroine not far from the kinds of Attic tragedienne
roles she played in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2022/03/antigone-1961.html" target="_blank">Antigone</a></i> (1961)
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2010/06/13/the-trojan-women-1971/" target="_blank">The Trojan Women</a></i> (1971). Hind
proves an even more vehement enemy of the first Muslims than even her father
and brother, decrying Mohammed as a man who “starves himself into dreams.” When
Hamza kills her father, Hind vows bloody revenge – “With my nails, Hamza!” she
snarls, curling her fingers into leonine claws, “I’ll give you measure for
measure with my nails!” She commissions a warrior slave for the job after he gives a
display of his prowess with a spear in a routine with a dancer, and he slays Hamza
in a cold assassination during the Battle of Uhud. Hind gloats over Hamza’s
corpse before desecrating it by having the warrior cut him open so, it’s
implied, she can literally consume his innards. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRro2BtR2CXn_rO_AZ_Ty1YNmsxIAQf0sG09tvUkhoPJX3-4HhbwruasubJv42_K-Bmc01QVO3uHwwiL0VuIBPQFrpe2zRHBpOyR-fCjxu66ZzKmvoNywYypqcfhFxpp88J5-Q7TTtTCI1zyCwaDM9CayedSxA3ubU-lqKGMy4aPFfsWZ6SYjUfXdNiDGn/s1278/TheMessage11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRro2BtR2CXn_rO_AZ_Ty1YNmsxIAQf0sG09tvUkhoPJX3-4HhbwruasubJv42_K-Bmc01QVO3uHwwiL0VuIBPQFrpe2zRHBpOyR-fCjxu66ZzKmvoNywYypqcfhFxpp88J5-Q7TTtTCI1zyCwaDM9CayedSxA3ubU-lqKGMy4aPFfsWZ6SYjUfXdNiDGn/s16000/TheMessage11.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">By
comparison, the film proves disappointingly cursory in portraying the Meccan elders’
capitulation to the Muslims once their grip on popular opinion becomes too
strong to resist. Abu Safyan and Hind accept that “the way we lived was wrong”
whilst expecting to be massacred when Mohammed and his people enter Mecca, only
to find they’re left in peace, a moment that ought to pack more punch than it
does. Finally the Kaaba is cleansed, and the sight of Bilal climbing atop the shrine
to give the call to prayer earns a powerful shot from Hildyard, Sekka’s
gleaming black skin and jubilant expression contrasted with the swathing white
robes of the crowd below, before fading into real footage of the Hajj, and
surveys of the faith’s vast international and multicultural reach in the modern
world. Long, orthodox, and occasionally preachy as it is, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Message</i> is still a solid, interesting film that does something
not enough movies have done, and the possibility that it is, indeed, the most
watched film of all time suggests it did eventually find its place. In a final
tragic irony, Akkad was killed along with his daughter in the 2005
Amman, Jordan bombings, at the age of 75. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKQqtnuiViYG0mNqKA_UR20MJFhrwqLQsHrQJoYufihWvw3fO9eAE0kqxxPfX88e2rQ5THvojPTdKlGv53-ZMvctqHkhsEbVOt1vqXwM-E650pmk34K2-Q5jBu2yQsVdKu0836ePNp5oy_i0p9UZ0i0zZDtnai5EezGBKYzdbUnGXS9NAMCDoMGAEZNX8H/s1278/TheMessage12.jpg" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKQqtnuiViYG0mNqKA_UR20MJFhrwqLQsHrQJoYufihWvw3fO9eAE0kqxxPfX88e2rQ5THvojPTdKlGv53-ZMvctqHkhsEbVOt1vqXwM-E650pmk34K2-Q5jBu2yQsVdKu0836ePNp5oy_i0p9UZ0i0zZDtnai5EezGBKYzdbUnGXS9NAMCDoMGAEZNX8H/s16000/TheMessage12.jpg" /></a></o:p></span></p><br />Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-25236133012300413132023-07-08T20:45:00.016+10:002023-08-20T01:30:44.097+10:00Wait Until Dark (1967)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSATfKcEGDE-jbgtAdcHOb3xX4EkZsxmsdBT7WAaqMGs2Ft7qkGRPJYuVnjJrClkti-NimU5ZLs0Rohp9j9Km5I0fEfnE9W4uC_4zJ0Rmc-e4uKnZoT57Cr-8ASaQAokPoJt86tVq1wR6eTVGKw_iDa8MFY53lnCOl4mo7gZJsPDW1uJqp8mOnq53y23Rl/s1280/WaitUntilDark01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSATfKcEGDE-jbgtAdcHOb3xX4EkZsxmsdBT7WAaqMGs2Ft7qkGRPJYuVnjJrClkti-NimU5ZLs0Rohp9j9Km5I0fEfnE9W4uC_4zJ0Rmc-e4uKnZoT57Cr-8ASaQAokPoJt86tVq1wR6eTVGKw_iDa8MFY53lnCOl4mo7gZJsPDW1uJqp8mOnq53y23Rl/s16000/WaitUntilDark01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">A
genuinely exciting, nimbly mounted thriller, Terence Young’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wait
Until Dark</i> is one of those movies that gives being based on a stage play a good name, and also one that anticipates where the darker fantasies of popular cinema were drifting by the late 1960s, with particuarly important impact on the thriller and horror genres. The source material was written by
Frederick Knott, whose other best-known work, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dial M For Murder</i>, was adapted with full ingenuity by Alfred
Hitchcock in 1954. As with that precursor, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wait
Until Dark</i> unfolds almost entirely within the confines of an ordinary city
apartment, with a brief prologue setting up the stakes of the drama. Lisa
(Samantha Jones) is the young and comely drug trafficker who cleverly arranges
for a shipment of heroin to be smuggled inside a vintage doll, watching with
impatience as an elderly toymaker (Jean Del Val) secrets the dope, before she
brings it to New York on the plane from Montreal. Spying a sinister-looking man
in dark glasses watching her intently from the airport observation deck, Lisa
asks a man who was on the flight with her, Sam Hendrix (Efrem Zimbalist Jr), to
look after the doll for her on a speedily invented pretext. A few days later,
two con artists, Mike Talman (Richard Crenna) and Carlino (Jack Weston) are
attracted to Hendrix’s apartment by a note supposedly written by Lisa, who they
both know. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqKViAyforQI_mcaili2QHv3M1dE-0F4dQJKMbnu65Kbuja2lDavfLaQpMp8WEZa_MXJOmrsCXu6RBRo1CQ3EWfDj-Y1ylgxUJUBcAUoibw1rmpVRqZWC3TOeHjInlkxbTZYYOpSFNRS5y49w_FVMlQQF59ztxNoYcjD5fY0S4VoLg9slLHKI0jF66QoG2/s1280/WaitUntilDark02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqKViAyforQI_mcaili2QHv3M1dE-0F4dQJKMbnu65Kbuja2lDavfLaQpMp8WEZa_MXJOmrsCXu6RBRo1CQ3EWfDj-Y1ylgxUJUBcAUoibw1rmpVRqZWC3TOeHjInlkxbTZYYOpSFNRS5y49w_FVMlQQF59ztxNoYcjD5fY0S4VoLg9slLHKI0jF66QoG2/s16000/WaitUntilDark02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In
the Hendrix apartment they encounter Lisa’s corpse, and the man who killed her,
the same menacing watcher from the airport. He gives his name as Roat (Alan
Arkin): a slick, confident, ruthlessly intelligent ruffian, Roat explains with
icy deliberation that Lisa worked for him but tried to go into business for
herself, demanding his punitive reprisal and seizure of the spoils. But he
can’t find the doll Hendrix brought home with him, having searched everywhere
except for a very secure safe, leading him to conclude the doll is kept inside
it. After the three criminals expend all ritual shows of pride and distrust,
the con men agree to help Roat in his plan to procure the doll. Sam
shares his apartment with his blind wife Susy (Audrey Hepburn), and the trio
count on manipulating her into opening the safe. Talman poses as a former army
buddy of Sam’s, having seen his service photos on the wall, whilst Roat playacts
as both an aggrieved father and his sheepish son, whose wife they try to
make Susy think Sam has been having an affair with and then killed, with
the doll constituting proof. Susy responds just as the villains want, her devotion to
Sam expressed in an urgent search for the moppet, but she doesn’t know it’s
been borrowed by upstairs neighbour Gloria (Julie Herrod), a girl of about
twelve who’s both something of a friend and bratty<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>nemesis for Susy. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnqryXD8018Myq4hVSVL_CznXaEtt9kTQqeawQL8tZNCG6rX0xPcYPolZJPcljdbZlJooGXBXghbokBzDRW7KqDqc3v60iIjFuGRLxIsfeOOSr3PuId0Rj3ySynnFqSBHANmqBtHeQwYQ2IZ0VEYM1JD1caQFY2h4MNIIRBEQxVqTJ22XCCGbQ3AZtKUd_/s1280/WaitUntilDark03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnqryXD8018Myq4hVSVL_CznXaEtt9kTQqeawQL8tZNCG6rX0xPcYPolZJPcljdbZlJooGXBXghbokBzDRW7KqDqc3v60iIjFuGRLxIsfeOOSr3PuId0Rj3ySynnFqSBHANmqBtHeQwYQ2IZ0VEYM1JD1caQFY2h4MNIIRBEQxVqTJ22XCCGbQ3AZtKUd_/s16000/WaitUntilDark03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Wait Until Dark</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> is first and foremost a
tailor-made starring vehicle for Hepburn, who necessarily dominates although
she’s barely glimpsed for nearly the first half-hour, which instead
is devoted to portraying the trio of criminals as they’re forced together and
negotiate their uneasy alliance, and privileging the audience to the mechanics of their operation. The offbeat casting of Arkin, in one of his first roles after making an eye-catching starring debut in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming</i> (1966), is
particularly cunning, and one I tend to think of before any other of the
actor’s. Roat’s penchant for guise-changing suits Arkin’s usually
comedy-courted talents, particularly as he has evident fun playing both the meshuggener
patriarch and his milquetoast offspring. But the version of Roat that really makes the
impression is his professional appearance, which has a quality of the
emblematic not just for this film but the whole realm of thriller movie
sadistic masterminds: with a crown of black, fashionlessly cropped hair, black
leather jacket, and eyes hidden behind round-lensed sunglasses, his accent
betraying plebeian Noo Yawk roots but used in a clipped and imperative manner
that confirms his sense of being special and elect in his criminal genius, Roat
is instantly established as the devil in this particular dark. By comparison,
Crenna’s Talman is asked to inhabit the idea of ever-so-helpful, possibly
romantically appealing nice guy, something he can do to a tee. Weston’s Carlino
is a former policeman turfed out for unstated bad behaviour who now merely
playacts a cop in the stings he stages with Talman, and is asked to do so again
in Roat’s scheme. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMWqaB3mmKc_L9-AXCO8BPA39z4fKaftrEAaYm2Q9HSoQGXQLcRdHTsVbASDBLNYKbLcp7WARUN3-nj6Pd5g0Ix1ZS8MVIc4yZhbbJWO-lFmn6ZC9fJftZFc84AmA7TdEUS5PjakdqemThPpJvG7pLLdo9JrDpG_-zlL2O25Z24rN5VWCH9jYTgpuDW881/s1280/WaitUntilDark04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMWqaB3mmKc_L9-AXCO8BPA39z4fKaftrEAaYm2Q9HSoQGXQLcRdHTsVbASDBLNYKbLcp7WARUN3-nj6Pd5g0Ix1ZS8MVIc4yZhbbJWO-lFmn6ZC9fJftZFc84AmA7TdEUS5PjakdqemThPpJvG7pLLdo9JrDpG_-zlL2O25Z24rN5VWCH9jYTgpuDW881/s16000/WaitUntilDark04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">After
a couple of decades as a jobbing screenwriter turned director in the British
film industry, including flashy Technicolor action dramas like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Storm Over The Nile</i> (1955) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action of the Tiger</i> (1957) alternated
with personal dramas, Young had made himself a hot property with his work on
the first two James Bond films, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2008/11/17/famous-firsts-dr-no-1962/" target="_blank">Dr. No</a></i>
(1962) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2011/06/from-russia-with-love-1963.html" target="_blank">From Russia With Love</a></i>
(1963). The style Young applied to those two films, with a slow-burn brand of
tension alternating elastically with explosions of action and pop
art-inflected showmanship, laid the groundwork for the Bond brand’s vast
success, even if Guy Hamilton’s slicker approach on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Goldfinger</i> (1964) helped steer it off on a gaudier path. Here Young
gets to deliver just about an entire movie in the key of intense,
claustrophobic gamesmanship he brought to the Orient Express scenes in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From Russia With Love</i>, hinging on the same sense of incipient violence and entrapment. This is first evoked in the lengthy
early scene that sees Roat applying a precise variety of intimidation through
assumed authority over Talman and Carlino. That pair resort to adopting
household objects as gladiatorial weapons to face down Roat’s wickedly
proffered jacknife and even more wickedly proffered aura of all-knowing smarts,
eventually pushing Roat to a smirking surrender, even as he actually pulls off
the feat of drawing the two men even more securely onto the hook he’s snared
them with.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirnajiFm-MPoMkeJDR9IVsNDJYb7u0YOtaMdzxL7K9zVAqDItmH77J09-Mwe3yh9BUikbrKBq4qA3w1Z_ykkbH9Kwi1AB0p5HLzuFDF23MKqPCGnLAxmul2MORco7HspxDFLXsNW2vwJTnjtMgMe0B-jq2R9teCDpdg90rqht4FjK9grg_VuWLNRuj5fjU/s1280/WaitUntilDark05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirnajiFm-MPoMkeJDR9IVsNDJYb7u0YOtaMdzxL7K9zVAqDItmH77J09-Mwe3yh9BUikbrKBq4qA3w1Z_ykkbH9Kwi1AB0p5HLzuFDF23MKqPCGnLAxmul2MORco7HspxDFLXsNW2vwJTnjtMgMe0B-jq2R9teCDpdg90rqht4FjK9grg_VuWLNRuj5fjU/s16000/WaitUntilDark05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">By
contrast, Hepburn’s Susy as a figure of pathos and insecurity, whose reflexive
desire to shield her husband, stoked by the criminals, is as much a sign of
her dependency as her ardour. It’s made clear as the film unfolds that Susy met
Sam not long after being blinded in a car accident as she stumbled on through
her new existence. This anecdote is touched with significance as a character
metaphor, as Susy has to contend with the falsity of appearances even when
officially oblivious to them. Talman in particular recreates the allure of her
husband as a supposed comrade in arms but retouched with an aura of romantic
mystery rather than the working photographer who has to occasionally leave her
for his labours, whilst Carlino impersonates authority and Roat provokes the
spectre of infidelity, deception, and even murder. Meanwhile Gloria reflects
Susy’s infantilisation back at her as an angry, wilful girl frustrated by her
absent parents and attached adoringly to Sam and, in more fraught but also
finally more genuinely loyal fashion, to Susy herself. Gloria makes a peevish
display of temper as she terrorises Susy in throwing her dishes around after a
brief verbal argument, only to then start ashamedly help Susy in picking
everything up again. “I only threw unbreakables,” Gloria comments, “I learned
it from Daddy.” Sam himself constantly prods Susy to keep pushing herself even
as it wears on both of them, “Do I have to be the world’s champion blind
person?” Susy demands at one point, to his vehement declaration, “Yes!” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMAr6kIy6tiLiO_mbINMF2l1I4b2k3hs3cVpGaS-nlbc-qzJ0h39C2zJWx1mXNIULIUlw7kL9sY7eHxpwLh5F1IuGdKqQtiQ5pDJ6E__GNgOw4ukXEaQzA4aI2M4WDKO2szKIzG99HhUiDvwDV2W_gaGYFCPuXUhgph9QYLfo2u1_Jfx0mCQ8DjgTVPnbx/s1280/WaitUntilDark06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMAr6kIy6tiLiO_mbINMF2l1I4b2k3hs3cVpGaS-nlbc-qzJ0h39C2zJWx1mXNIULIUlw7kL9sY7eHxpwLh5F1IuGdKqQtiQ5pDJ6E__GNgOw4ukXEaQzA4aI2M4WDKO2szKIzG99HhUiDvwDV2W_gaGYFCPuXUhgph9QYLfo2u1_Jfx0mCQ8DjgTVPnbx/s16000/WaitUntilDark06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Which
Susy soon begins to prove herself, as her finite grasp on details that others
think they’ve successfully masked, like the way they keep trying to quietly
work her blinds to signal to their confederates, and the way Roat’s shoes make
the same sounds when he’s dressed as both father and son, begins to fray the
web of deceit. Gloria eventually lends her invaluable aid after she tries to
sneak the doll she purloined back into the apartment, only for its telltale
music chime to go off: Gloria’s observations reported through rings of the
telephone eventually tips Susy off to conspiracy. The connection between Susy
and Gloria is very much the heart of the movie on an emotional level, each of
them consumed by anxiety and feelings of being adrift but finally becoming a
functional unit when working together. When Susy has her leave the house to try
and intercept Sam, Gloria not only successfully dissembles her way through the
criminal cordon but jauntily rattles their cage by insisting on departing with
as much insolent noisemaking as possible, dragging a stick along the iron barred
railings along the street. Of course the narrative would have been infinitely
briefer if Roat and the others simply held Susy up and threatened intimate
violence upon her unless she opened the safe for them, and likely more
effective. But also rather less like a good story.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-WoHMe_sNC3XvmiH8nPTD8pivcUMU9WHFA82aLQSIgaCJRgHf6XpRET0RXrb_L681RSNx-UEgHGMMpzWryr7RUj31PVh2kqkblJt_ifohCD_8OHf7G07roB9iBVL7WF89mNGjNq8R5IznfKgvh-eIhPA4mj_McmsGUgup6L7iOsI_9xSnknhQXI1Ts5aa/s1280/WaitUntilDark07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-WoHMe_sNC3XvmiH8nPTD8pivcUMU9WHFA82aLQSIgaCJRgHf6XpRET0RXrb_L681RSNx-UEgHGMMpzWryr7RUj31PVh2kqkblJt_ifohCD_8OHf7G07roB9iBVL7WF89mNGjNq8R5IznfKgvh-eIhPA4mj_McmsGUgup6L7iOsI_9xSnknhQXI1Ts5aa/s16000/WaitUntilDark07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">As
a film, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wait Until Dark</i>’s creative reflexes
move in interesting if slightly misaligned directions. On the one hand it’s
classically stagy kind of material, built around exploiting the limitations of
the setting and invested with a meta-theatrical edge reminiscent of Peter
Shaffer’s more overt work in that frame, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sleuth</i> (filmed
by Joseph L. Mankiewicz in 1972). Roles are played within roles, all aspects of
an act of elaborate theatre within theatre, particularly as Roat dresses up as
both father and son for the nominal sake of fooling not the sightless Susy but
anyone else in her building, but serving chiefly to engage actors and audience
in a dance of dramatic and performance sleight-of-hand. More immediately and
with a more intriguing influence, however, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wait
Until Dark</i> works keenly as cinema. The film was released at a moment when
stories about luckless, helpless people at the mercy of vicious
outlaws and crazies were starting to become popular and was about to permanently nudge
horror cinema off on a new tangent, when the giallo style was evolving towards
its breakout moment with Dario Argento’s debut three years later. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wait Until Dark</i> has notable similarities
to “The Telephone” episode of Mario Bava’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2012/10/31/i-tre-volti-della-paura-aka-the-three-faces-of-fear-black-sabbath-1963/" target="_blank">I Tre Volti della Paura</a></i> (1963), likewise unfolding entirely in an apartment
with a lone woman terrorised by a lurking killer. The crucial moment of Susy
realising her telephone line has been cut and that she’s at the mercy of the
killer, experiencing a brief squall of total despair, would be remixed by
Argento in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Bird With The Crystal
Plumage</i> (1970) for the killer’s assault on Suzy Kendall in her flat, and
also echo in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2009/12/23/black-christmas-1974/" target="_blank">Black Christmas</a></i> (1974). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNc-A5Q5Y7nhRgcP-xArW7q3Ezt1QK8qCT6w5caNVndTNf_hvpzyD_Eh5DWuVMbfp8kLosGCaYNipUno9mLntVb0ebSVl3YYMzi7K600FqQmuPl_EZM97ngpH8VOpvg56gamkaYa_JOuBLFCXZhHHvVXhejJm9rUSLHbvrWC0k8KRe9R-1D-Pgoq_dbOOR/s1280/WaitUntilDark08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNc-A5Q5Y7nhRgcP-xArW7q3Ezt1QK8qCT6w5caNVndTNf_hvpzyD_Eh5DWuVMbfp8kLosGCaYNipUno9mLntVb0ebSVl3YYMzi7K600FqQmuPl_EZM97ngpH8VOpvg56gamkaYa_JOuBLFCXZhHHvVXhejJm9rUSLHbvrWC0k8KRe9R-1D-Pgoq_dbOOR/s16000/WaitUntilDark08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Arkin’s
Roat, with apparel that seems to fit right in with the demimonde but also makes
him seem like a dead-eyed serpent in human guise, wields a clinical approach
to home invasion – he wears cheap plastic gloves to prevent fingerprints, which
finally gleam and rustle with perverse menace as he threatens Susy in the
climax. He feels like an intermediary between a film noir type of criminal
and the disembodied anxiety projection not just of giallo villains with their
signature black gloves but also of the later slasher movie killers. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wait Until Dark</i> feels like it was at
least as strong an influence on John Carpenter’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Halloween</i> (1978) as Bava and Argento, most obviously in its focus
on a solitary, imperilled woman with only a child for company, but also
apparent in the finale’s shock resurgence of the seemingly mortally wounded
villain, as Roat, stabbed in the gut by Susy, suddenly springs out of the dark
in attempt to tackle her. Ditto the jarring early moment when Talman finds
Susy’s body where Roat left it, stuffed into a plastic suit bag and left
hanging inside a cupboard as a particularly ghoulish surprise for the
interloping conman to locate – a moment that prefigures the common
finding-the-bodies scene in later slashers. This nascent emphasis on cinematic
dexterity and game-playing feels slightly detached from the theatrical reflexes
of the plot even as one grows from the other. The film is also slightly
hampered by unnecessary sidelong gestures, like a cameo by a twit neighbour
(Frank O’Brien) who offers a brief jot of comic relief as he heads off on a
skiing holiday for “chasing stretch pants,” and composer Henry Mancini segueing
from the kind of menace he was good at into jazz-pop sounds in a modish manner
for when the film was made.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhBPLxKSvXvA3W5chSPJ6ZNJ4Tr6ehN_AzZ79KtzT572GGvDnNqMFR6ZA0G18wHlaA84vCOMdgJyxc3zCSfj8Np1_C6AL8XGLEsROYHsvrFlMtoeOlQpgtH_DBD30gJ55qSbFVolwWxC9TgvYBQbtDbFVQoF0oHbJFTLUZOCw0nRNFfEIXd-voI6C9WAG/s1280/WaitUntilDark09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRhBPLxKSvXvA3W5chSPJ6ZNJ4Tr6ehN_AzZ79KtzT572GGvDnNqMFR6ZA0G18wHlaA84vCOMdgJyxc3zCSfj8Np1_C6AL8XGLEsROYHsvrFlMtoeOlQpgtH_DBD30gJ55qSbFVolwWxC9TgvYBQbtDbFVQoF0oHbJFTLUZOCw0nRNFfEIXd-voI6C9WAG/s16000/WaitUntilDark09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">And
yet <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wait Until Dark</i> is never less
than hugely entertaining, particularly when the games finally give way to the
raw, close-quarters, immediately thrilling spectacle of Susy defending herself
against Roat, who steps to the fore once the other two men eventually prove
expendable assets. Hepburn’s quality of flighty fragility and accompanying
emotional exposure serves her particularly well here (Lee Remick debuted the
role on the stage) and the film, produced by her husband Mel Ferrer, was a
significant hit, but it proved nonetheless her last screen role for nine years.
The climax’s compulsive force stems not just from the familiar fight for
survival by the good but vulnerable against the heedlessly evil, but in the way Susy’s
cleverness is matched against Roat’s in a sort of life-scaled chess match
of challenge and response, each move countering the last. When Roat makes clear he intends to rape Susy before
killing her, she is driven to use deadly force. In a battle that seems to be an
open-and-shut scenario for Roat, Susy cleverly uses her advantages, knocking
out every light bulb in the apartment save one, and that one used to carefully
herd and then disorientate her foes, whilst she herself knows every inch of
this tiny kingdom. But Roat responds with his own coldly dextrous wit and
inspiration, throwing obstacles her way including Talman’s corpse and the
contents of a tank of gasoline tossed about in abandon, to cower Susy with her
greatest fear, fire, as well as deducing and utilising the one source of light
left to him. The film builds to a relentless suspense crescendo, which echoes
through to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2020/05/01/the-terminator-1984/" target="_blank">The Terminator</a></i> (1984), as
Roat, injured but still driven by malign will and determination to prevail,
drags himself across the floor in a murderous spell as Susy tries with her
last, desperate recourse to find a last redoubt to defend. It’s terrific stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq4aitYvtEsSRmIg6HTVB4A66u5qrc33yAepDikckE1xNffcjIuIpl8kXOVpPVci5saWlSOPuwuZU020BN54dD4k4O7wz3EGi8VJA2vcShQZpRHOS9qk2Nn1lpj4otuo90W3ASd8wP5Rlp_1j9DCiLgVCkflu8llwvPQ7U8Y4taFRkOCrynUiSKVV3Vp60/s1280/WaitUntilDark10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq4aitYvtEsSRmIg6HTVB4A66u5qrc33yAepDikckE1xNffcjIuIpl8kXOVpPVci5saWlSOPuwuZU020BN54dD4k4O7wz3EGi8VJA2vcShQZpRHOS9qk2Nn1lpj4otuo90W3ASd8wP5Rlp_1j9DCiLgVCkflu8llwvPQ7U8Y4taFRkOCrynUiSKVV3Vp60/s16000/WaitUntilDark10.jpg" /></a></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1137730880076755122.post-13154724602543106622023-06-29T18:23:00.005+10:002023-06-30T02:49:19.604+10:00Extraction II (2023)<p> <span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjacedHrM3we9kTASiHB8kS5AvpQz-mIr2--g1KUkcl_31ShAHq42n8QhKRpP_Qjk6jVJ2XUtvnbqt2XHaVnvgKld5CH--SV-ncXDGR2NYF0La60c1SZCU_bn6n4qxQMelVTkBqFKeuI6lPfDFR7aUkrcjXztmqoB8sijG4YwpG2x2WGfi0MZI_SHBbizcQ/s1011/ExtractionII01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1011" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjacedHrM3we9kTASiHB8kS5AvpQz-mIr2--g1KUkcl_31ShAHq42n8QhKRpP_Qjk6jVJ2XUtvnbqt2XHaVnvgKld5CH--SV-ncXDGR2NYF0La60c1SZCU_bn6n4qxQMelVTkBqFKeuI6lPfDFR7aUkrcjXztmqoB8sijG4YwpG2x2WGfi0MZI_SHBbizcQ/s16000/ExtractionII01.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Sam Hargrave’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Extraction</i> was the sort of movie that once would have been a lock
to debut on the big screen, and would have been seen to best effect there, but
instead came along as ideal streaming fodder of the COVID pandemic moment in
2020. It was superbly-made if generically conceived, straightforward to a fault
but muscular and gritty in seeking to blend several different templates in
recent genre moviemaking. Like any number of action flicks and spy movies of
the past twenty years or so, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Extraction</i>
was set in a demi-world of swashbuckling mercenaries and slums controlled by
hordes of disposable villains, complete with lots of lip service to the moral
ambiguity of the modern world whilst celebrating raw masculine heroism in a
quasi-paternal mould, willing to ply its mission of protection up to and over
the edge of death. The film revolved around nobly suffering, damage-taking and
carnage inflicting hero Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth), a former member of the
Australian SAS and veteran of the Afghanistan War turned mercenary specialising
in pinpoint missions to snatch people out of danger. Rake’s omnicompetent
bravado and rather masochistic grit in combat proved to be sourced in his
personal demons, connected less to war than in his guilt over leaving his young
son, who was dying of leukaemia, to go on deployment, a choice he made over
being forced to watch his son die, but now haunts him and inevitably destroyed
his marriage. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIRpXDsftZKuHAcKv7kN3paktovmgTQREjiRcuAz2c7qDa52CWef1CsG4gisDQvJTFZGWrvOekf9TP4FuquP7Y9gjWhG4rWNNOxRZq42Kgy6nHwoYXA1SR7RZPap5dAbK66t3vHFSyyP8OF2rkaGUFsahpnh5BwP2sO7BBShaWFUppiO5RnfGEfqDaBj1I/s1011/ExtractionII02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1011" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIRpXDsftZKuHAcKv7kN3paktovmgTQREjiRcuAz2c7qDa52CWef1CsG4gisDQvJTFZGWrvOekf9TP4FuquP7Y9gjWhG4rWNNOxRZq42Kgy6nHwoYXA1SR7RZPap5dAbK66t3vHFSyyP8OF2rkaGUFsahpnh5BwP2sO7BBShaWFUppiO5RnfGEfqDaBj1I/s16000/ExtractionII02.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">In the first film Rake battled his way
out of the alleys of Dhaka with the son of an imprisoned drug dealer, keeping
him from the clutches of a rival, but was shot and fell off a road bridge into
a river at the climax. An epilogue to the first film hinted Rake had survived
as he was glimpsed out of focus in the background of a shot of the boy he
saved. The sequel insists on depicting how Rake endured, showing him being
dragged out of the river and nursed in a hospital back to something like
fully-functional health. The other members of his tiny but well-honed cadre –
his agent and guardian angel with a big rifle, Nik Kahn (Golshifteh Farahani)
and her young brother Yaz (Adam Bessa), who specialises in tech surveillance
and intel – fetch him from hospital and install him in a cabin in the Austrian
Alps to complete his convalescence. He’s visited one day by a man (Idris Elba)
who doesn’t give his name but has big wheel energy, and dangles a mission
before him. The mission, should he choose to accept it, is to extract Ketevan (Tinatin
Dalakishvili), the wife of an imprisoned Georgian drug lord, Davit (Tornike Bziava),
along with her teenage son Sandro (Andro Japaridze) and daughter Nina (Miriam
and Marta Kovziashvili). This mission has immediate personal appeal to Rake,
given that Ketevan is sister to Rake’s ex-wife Mia (Olga Kurylenko): she gave
Rake’s name to the mystery man as the operative best suited to the job. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_pmW6MJFa_agp86LPxZfmQI7ebq46Lmr2dzOUN7u6nlKKFjRoRdPGVK1h5K-MRPCKN3qwhZXT5PqeLctZJ7ZSF8y3Yk01R2CYbNu7kkLaSyzM0QQLesWNSoJY_OyWye2OJd2p1b3YiB4Ui8WHDyhtGeD7-xZjHGAwOkRn7r7TaAi4Npa3chQPMxrXASVm/s1011/ExtractionII03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1011" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_pmW6MJFa_agp86LPxZfmQI7ebq46Lmr2dzOUN7u6nlKKFjRoRdPGVK1h5K-MRPCKN3qwhZXT5PqeLctZJ7ZSF8y3Yk01R2CYbNu7kkLaSyzM0QQLesWNSoJY_OyWye2OJd2p1b3YiB4Ui8WHDyhtGeD7-xZjHGAwOkRn7r7TaAi4Npa3chQPMxrXASVm/s16000/ExtractionII03.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Davit and his brother Zurab (Tornike
Gogrichiani) control a cartel dubbed the Nagazi. Both men are hardened and
merciless enforcers, brought up with an unforgiving hand by their thug father
after fleeing Georgia’s civil strife as children, whilst their uncle Avtandil
(Dato Bakhtadze), who took them in as refugees, manages their day-to-day
operations. Zurab is introduced expressing his displeasure with a pet
government minister, who has failed to prevent Davit’s sentence being extended
by ten years at the behest of the US, by ramming a garden fork through his
throat and casting his body into a ready-dug pit. The immediate problem with
grabbing Ketevan and kids is they’ve been forced to reside with Davit in the
ultra-tough Tkachiri Prison with him, an arrangement that suits Davit given
that he knows Ketevan would flee him otherwise. After Davit is killed during
the raid by the combined efforts of Rake and Ketevan, the fugitives suffer the
wrath of Zurab, determined to repay any damage to his clan with the force of an
irate Jehovah, whom he believes to be on his side. Sandro, who’s been
brainwashed by the rhetoric of his father and uncle and now distraught over his
father’s death, contacts Zurab and gives him their location once Rake and
company have reached the peace and security of Vienna. Not that Zurab and the
Nagazi give a damn about the peace and security of Vienna, assaulting the hotel
where the heroes are holed up with attack helicopters and a squad of masked,
armoured goons. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvfRXT2YgYU7Gp41HkRW625189PxFHVhY2zx4HLbcI3dErowVOuwAIsjpw-x2uDR6WK5pzc357xaJjG9DmSTpxIui6vafH_hfb5xWLrLN7t4VmiNKmlrW2CrkmQorGlyb9GsqtxTkMdejF__X4YJxnY036YqduNZzHDJUjT4kABTfuxXT6zPJ2E_sJ6tVN/s1011/ExtractionII04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1011" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvfRXT2YgYU7Gp41HkRW625189PxFHVhY2zx4HLbcI3dErowVOuwAIsjpw-x2uDR6WK5pzc357xaJjG9DmSTpxIui6vafH_hfb5xWLrLN7t4VmiNKmlrW2CrkmQorGlyb9GsqtxTkMdejF__X4YJxnY036YqduNZzHDJUjT4kABTfuxXT6zPJ2E_sJ6tVN/s16000/ExtractionII04.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The plot of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Extraction II</i> is of course essentially a pretext to hang dazzling
action set-pieces from like so much fresh-washed, whiter-whites laundry. It
doesn’t bother going through the motions of nudging the compulsory note of
cynicism over the lot and reliability of the intelligence community and the
frayed figures if the War on Terror the first film indulged, where Rake
sought refuge with his former intelligence officer pal, played by David Harbour, who
proved rather less than stalwart in his aid. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Extraction II</i> instead goes for interludes of familial melodrama in
between the ferocious fight scenes. The first film, which was drawn from Ande
Parks’ graphic novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ciudad</i>, was
deliberate in the way it contended with multiple forms of father figure,
ranging from the most evil and corrupt to the most selfless and dedicated. The
latter position was filled by Rake, albeit one perpetually driven to try and
burn out the memory of his transfiguring loss and his own weakness before it. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Extraction II</i>’s choice then to bend the
arc of its story concerns towards making family business and responsibility
risks getting too cute, but also makes some more thematic capital through the
question as to whether Sandro’s soul can be saved from the malignant clutches
of his uncle. Sandro is torn by conflicting urges to protect his mother but
also embrace the conviction of the family credo that only igneous toughness can
fend off the evil of the world. Which is a proposition Rake and the film
entirely agree with, albeit preferring Rake’s gallantly defensive version.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizHlNrAkimkwDJjAKaS05RLSHm2qAXDqTOpjvz94bhQrWcJ7Zq71AYBPRM2MHV5dMeb5_zau3_ffCM0Ls_PIloCO2rGwhSc-9liNPq_62iK3UbyusZFcIn_siGCj9WUfUkRKKgEeO7MQZh7bBimG67B4cmUbJ-SsIoQfCQJYxoRnVmWo0zF-J8QkyKn6Ua/s1011/ExtractionII05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1011" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizHlNrAkimkwDJjAKaS05RLSHm2qAXDqTOpjvz94bhQrWcJ7Zq71AYBPRM2MHV5dMeb5_zau3_ffCM0Ls_PIloCO2rGwhSc-9liNPq_62iK3UbyusZFcIn_siGCj9WUfUkRKKgEeO7MQZh7bBimG67B4cmUbJ-SsIoQfCQJYxoRnVmWo0zF-J8QkyKn6Ua/s16000/ExtractionII05.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The film takes on the unfinished business
in Rake’s life whilst trying not offer too easy and complete a point of closure
for it, with Kurylenko showing up two-thirds through to give a face to the lost
wife and mother who persists in a deeply ambivalent place, the war of feelings
for her former husband all too apparent in her stricken expression. In a coda
that goes for something I didn’t entirely expect, Mia gifts Rake a last piece
of salving knowledge before saying her permanent goodbyes. The pain of Rake and Mia’s shared loss is an event that charges all the savage and self-martyring frays
Rake puts himself through with the quality of a Sisyphean load, and also makes these films akin to a modern version of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">A.E.W. Mason</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">s <i>The Four Feathers</i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">: no act of
death-dealing and destiny-mastering imposed on the world’s evildoers or
flesh-tearing and blood-gushing suffered himself can make up for Rake</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 13.3333px;">’</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">s one, definitive moment of cowardice, but he can still damn well try. It is at once reassuring
if a bit frustrating that, after a decade trying to prove himself a flexible
leading man in a classic Hollywood mode, ranging from glaze-eyed </span><a href="https://filmfreedonia.com/2015/07/22/blackhat-2015/" style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;" target="_blank">Michael Mann protagonist</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> to</span><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2016/07/ghostbusters-2016.html" style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;" target="_blank"> goofball comic relief</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">, Hemsworth seems to have finally found a
part </span><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2011/09/thor-2011.html" style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;" target="_blank">other</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2017/11/thor-ragnarok-2017.html" style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;" target="_blank">than</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span><a href="https://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2022/07/thor-love-and-thunder-2022.html" style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;" target="_blank">Thor </a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">people want to see him in (albeit one where he channels elements of those earlier performances), only for it to be a basic
action hero with requisite good muscle tone and a name that sounds like an
eight-year-old came up with it whilst inventing a schoolyard game. But it’s a
role Hemsworth inhabits exceedingly well, particularly given his choice of
playing him as Australian, which here allows a moment watching Aussie Rules on
TV, which helps Rake seem a little more specific amidst the ranks of such
screen berserkers, and his capacity to capture Rake’s soulfully macho suffering
even in the midst of bashing skulls with a pipe.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih30051JlfC_9yzlkoC68ukRZmfiA6H7mvoeENVeoR2tH9oxLzKIvjr2BnkS9qqg09862etyeg7MhcmZWmD0vCFQI4W051TImNDWjXYxecbHWx5Nsjw_fzwqiqhnF8EqL-bq1fmjTEGl7vZubfBwfbOVNHUXD46qVUOyjoYe6wXrLOYl0pdrhRvdRM1VVG/s1011/ExtractionII06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1011" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih30051JlfC_9yzlkoC68ukRZmfiA6H7mvoeENVeoR2tH9oxLzKIvjr2BnkS9qqg09862etyeg7MhcmZWmD0vCFQI4W051TImNDWjXYxecbHWx5Nsjw_fzwqiqhnF8EqL-bq1fmjTEGl7vZubfBwfbOVNHUXD46qVUOyjoYe6wXrLOYl0pdrhRvdRM1VVG/s16000/ExtractionII06.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The first film’s guiding principle was to
take a story and situation easy enough to imagine any number of action stars
from days of yore taking on and mating it with the close-quarter kung-fu and
gun-fu tussles of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">John Wick</i>
films, pivoting around an extended single-take (or, rather, the digitally
contrived approximation of such) fight scene that saw Rake rampaging through Dhaka.
Naturally, in making a sequel Hargrave had to accept the challenge of outdoing
that bit of showmanship, and so here deploys a 22 minute sequence that caps off
the film’s first third, following Rake as he crashes into the prison, battles
his way out again with his charges and team, and all flee by car and train,
fighting guards, prisoners, and Nagazi toughs all the way. I’ve long been
inured to the supposedly visceral but actually, usually laboured pseudo-realism
of most one-take scenes, but fair’s fair: here Hargrave, his crew, and his cast
go utterly for broke in a sequence filled with wild, brutal, intricately staged
battles and chases, and come up with instant classic of the genre. Particularly good is the portion when Rake and Ketevan are forced to fight
their way through a prison yard where a riot between rival prisoner gangs and guards is already in hearty progress. Ketevan
proves quite handy in a fight herself as she swats cons with a shovel and Rake
performs his patented close-quarters combat, even catching fire at one point
but not letting it slow him down.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiU4OUJGIc6cOSVorXb_rSk_ZRUcietjmyOUMZphxOwQqm3HEBoPk7AOzZX49gDbTZFQp0_yqZ0mdjMODvBQqUf9tuwWSsoE5AIUf_Guws1SvHsaU8FvktLbat32pS9RInTBlVqFwjkGWU4QImgqY_Zd3-kCrkx1891BNpvVQZoJwL--P0Mh5lJ4ycp042/s1011/ExtractionII07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1011" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiU4OUJGIc6cOSVorXb_rSk_ZRUcietjmyOUMZphxOwQqm3HEBoPk7AOzZX49gDbTZFQp0_yqZ0mdjMODvBQqUf9tuwWSsoE5AIUf_Guws1SvHsaU8FvktLbat32pS9RInTBlVqFwjkGWU4QImgqY_Zd3-kCrkx1891BNpvVQZoJwL--P0Mh5lJ4ycp042/s16000/ExtractionII07.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">This gives way to the vicious immediacy
of Rake’s fight with Davit, resolving with both him and Davit’s
less-than-loving wife smashing the life out of him, and then a delirious chase
in cars and a commandeered train, all without dropping the pretence of being
one, long shot. Even if the seams are apparent at many intervals with signs of
digital compositing and masked cuts, this scene succeeds at the essential
mission of such a sequence, achieving a wild, crazy, relentless energy and
immersive enthusiasm, in one of the most spectacular and entertaining action
sequences offered in recent moviemaking. It also helps that where the first
film was tightly focused on Rake as the essential human punching bag, whilst
its intriguing supporting figures (and actors) remained a bit vague, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Extraction II</i>’s more free-flowing and
expansive brand of mayhem gives them all something to do. Hargrave particularly
gives Farahani a great opportunity to get in on the deadly tussles in a
show-stopping combat in a train control room. Farahani isn’t just asked to
suddenly play a blank, karate-kicking she-badass either, as Nik has to face her
own hard loss in the course of the film as well as gruelling physical damage,
driving her to take just as deep a personal interest in the mission as Rake, and
frustrated by his constant choice to go off alone without consultation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPbKw2yAPl7PZphuMVyCSg7_TZ5l_tNtnXQURi11-9Yfh8jyOBroodwCjo9Z2DLbTecIS6Xlc703jSfj7jxgJ9Wjk1BcJCPYoFHBdxFFgdS30O6KqNN0DrvlQrtXq6wh7DkShvcW-vikXJaqf1NF4_uSoU3xdO6zNGc8FWtqsH9OvpzN8WTq4tu0z5I_um/s1011/ExtractionII08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1011" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPbKw2yAPl7PZphuMVyCSg7_TZ5l_tNtnXQURi11-9Yfh8jyOBroodwCjo9Z2DLbTecIS6Xlc703jSfj7jxgJ9Wjk1BcJCPYoFHBdxFFgdS30O6KqNN0DrvlQrtXq6wh7DkShvcW-vikXJaqf1NF4_uSoU3xdO6zNGc8FWtqsH9OvpzN8WTq4tu0z5I_um/s16000/ExtractionII08.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The rest of the film’s battles after the
central set-piece are more prosaic if still well-done, particularly when Rake
finishes up dangling off the awning of the Vienna hotel, trying desperately to
hang onto the unconscious Nik whilst Zurab takes coldblooded delight in
shooting him between the knuckles. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Like its precursor, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Extraction II</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> was written by Joe Russo, I presume bashed out during
a lunch break between zillion dollar Netflix deals for him and his brother
Anthony. The duo have, at least, tried to turn the vast hitmaking leverage they
worked up with their Marvel films to making elaborate but relatively
down-to-earth genre fare. Certainly the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Extraction</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">
films so far have been infinitely more rewarding than the ridiculously
expensive and utterly soulless entry in this mode the Russos did themselves,</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> The Gray Man</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (2022), but </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Extraction II</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> doesn’t escape some of the
more pernicious problems with this kind of movie either. Contemporary action
thrillers all seem to unfold these days in a zone of supposedly globetrotting
locales that are all filmed in the most blandly anonymous fashions, centring
the contemporary language of utterly interchangeable signifiers of
international swank, particularly in architecture, that manage to make the most
far-flung capital look like a corner of Toronto. It all makes me ache more than
a little for the kinds of 1970s thrillers made by directors who knew how to
make something of local flavour: John Frankenheimer’s </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Ronin</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> (1998) might have been the last gasp of that kind as well as the first of the new. My
attention here began to drift when Hargrave teed up the one billionth recent
shoot-out and run-about scene staged around the environs of a swanky but
boring-looking and flavourless modern building, in this case the hotel where
our heroes are besieged by the attack Nagazis.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYM2VfyugV2eySUgggT6wuh1Gs-xof2ASSaq4_P7yc0F_T_5lULtEPXcDMrXnWanc_qKKSiuLYF-VObM3_1gG5ThU5vARMPkA-24zr3Sh89QS8PKIL-2R0uma1ObQyoAecJzLTAhGwNyDDkQDr23EyliJ-TZGITlY1BZ69hBOeSdLe5DsfqXRzc04z_Z8W/s1011/ExtractionII09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1011" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYM2VfyugV2eySUgggT6wuh1Gs-xof2ASSaq4_P7yc0F_T_5lULtEPXcDMrXnWanc_qKKSiuLYF-VObM3_1gG5ThU5vARMPkA-24zr3Sh89QS8PKIL-2R0uma1ObQyoAecJzLTAhGwNyDDkQDr23EyliJ-TZGITlY1BZ69hBOeSdLe5DsfqXRzc04z_Z8W/s16000/ExtractionII09.jpg" /></a></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">Extraction
II</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> also
still, taken overall, suffers from the same basic problem as its precursor and
too many other movies like it, in mistaking mere sufficiency on a dramatic
level for efficiency. But Hargrave’s talent for action staging keeps shocking
it to life, as well as Hemsworth and Farahani’s talents for playing people who
only stop hurting, ironically, when they’re deep in the eye of adrenalized
death-dealing, a state between life and death that relieves all the agonies of
the former but is distinct from the latter in that you’re still moving.
Hargrave keeps managing to toss up jolts of gruesome delight, like a henchman
having his head bashed in by a falling barbell, and building to that excellent
suspense moment with Rake and Nik hanging off the building, the very definition
of a cliffhanger where I waited with real pleasure to see how, and even if,
they could be plucked from the situation. It’s also aggravating that the film
can’t be bothered thinking up a good narrative pretext to draw Rake and the
Nagazis together for a showdown: Hargrave and Russo just have Zurab call Rake
and invite him to a punch-up, and Rake obliges, albeit with more firepower than
Zurab expects. The grand battle resolves however in an effectively intimate and
gleefully brutal bout, before the raging monster gets a coolly punitive
comeuppance. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Extraction II</i> was a
movie perfect for the mood I was in whilst watching it, granted, but I feel it
moved this franchise to the head of the pack when it comes to current action
series on its own merits. The very end sees Elba return in a setup for another
sequel that for once I felt pretty happy to anticipate, and only hope the
filmmakers continue to have the courage to keep letting their material evolve. Oh, and bring it out in movie theatres, you wimps.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p align="left" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNPp37yQ8iIBF50cZaa9Aonv657QOsp-8bEgIbNf7AzHfHTs3xJ-dgMMq4w8TvAtH7rQTHUXrIVNXVOwVAxyc84CMdxpJTj7wEauMQFLGOMNMB9rsWMWIFGoSg4CeV5H2FUice1yImf_vEXcd9lAHrrYT3Co7Os43sNjwVao7U-O2z2y9PpF8FxCtZMHKn/s1011/ExtractionII10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="1011" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNPp37yQ8iIBF50cZaa9Aonv657QOsp-8bEgIbNf7AzHfHTs3xJ-dgMMq4w8TvAtH7rQTHUXrIVNXVOwVAxyc84CMdxpJTj7wEauMQFLGOMNMB9rsWMWIFGoSg4CeV5H2FUice1yImf_vEXcd9lAHrrYT3Co7Os43sNjwVao7U-O2z2y9PpF8FxCtZMHKn/s16000/ExtractionII10.jpg" /></a></p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Roderick Heathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08107539379079558068noreply@blogger.com4