What You Cannot See Is Truth

You can read whatever you want into a film, but the validity of what you see can always be open to question. Sitting in the theater viewing Dario Argento’s MOTHER OF TEARS it was tempting to read a great deal into every shot, every line, looking for things that connect to his long career. There’s the wish to proclaim it as some grand artistic summation by the director and yes, certain elements do lend themselves to that theory. But while it does tie in with those other films a great deal, ultimately I got the feeling that Argento just wanted to go out to make a movie with people he knows very well and simply have a nasty good time. There are things I could say about what’s wrong with MOTHER OF TEARS—the expected dreamlike quality feels absent, a lack of appropriate payoff, the expected screwy logic—but I couldn’t help but sit there and enjoy myself thoroughly with a big smile on my face.


Just to make it clear, MOTHER OF TEARS: THE THIRD MOTHER (as it is called on screen) represents the long, long, long-awaited final chapter in the “Three Mothers” trilogy, which began with SUSPIRIA (1977) and INFERNO (1980). The three mothers actually a trio of sisters who are witches, each film focuses on one of them and where they reside and each film demonstrates a variety of the director’s strengths (mood, imagery, gore) and weaknesses (plot, story, which becomes beside the point anyway). SUSPIRIA is sometimes viewed as his masterpiece (it’s not my favorite, but it is the one most people seem to know), INFERNO has some extremely effective passages but seems to resist becoming a fully-fledged storyline right up to the end. So in other words, this is his PHANTOM MENACE, his CRYSTAL SKULL, or maybe most appropriately, his GODFATHER PART III. To have him return to the series and complete it after so long, after so many people had no doubt asked him when he would, it was open to question whether he would attempt to revert to the director he was all those years ago or simply just go full throttle and make what has become, in recent years, a Dario Argento film. He went with the latter but not without some blatant nods to his past. There are definitely moments sprinkled throughout which recall what has come before (not just in the first two films but from throughout his filmography) and there are actors who appear because of what their presence represents than almost any other reason. The film seems determined to not lock itself into its own history, but the past is always there. In some ways, that’s what the film is about as well.


When an ancient urn is discovered in a cemetery outside Rome it is sent by a priest, who seems to suspect what is inside, to the Museum of Ancient Art for study. Once there it is opened by the inquisitive assistant curator Giselle Mares (the beguiling Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) and art restorer Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento, of course). Giselle cuts her finger on the urn while opening it (never a good sign in one of these movies) and after a brief examination of the contents Giselle is rewarded for her curiosity when several mysterious figures (and a monkey) suddenly emerge from the shadows and brutally slaughter her. Sarah escapes, but the opening of the urn has brought the Mother of Tears, Mater Lachrimarum, “the most beautiful of the Three Mothers” back to power. As a wave of witches begin to arrive in Rome from all around the world to celebrate her return, a wave of violence and suicide begins to sweep the city. Meanwhile, Sarah begins to investigate the history of the urn with her boyfriend, museum curator Michael Pierce (Adam James) but as she finds herself being pursued by the diabolical forces Sarah begins to realize that she may be the only one with the power to stop the legendary Mother of Tears.


It’s somewhat surprising that the basic plot doesn’t make an attempt at being more similar to the other two films, such as how they were mostly set in the homes that the witches resided in. Here, that location turns out to be a key to solving the mystery and much of it is set in and around Rome with more of a straight-ahead plot than might have been expected. There are the usual hard-to-swallow beats expected from the director—my favorite is probably how Sarah at one point throws her cell phone away so the witches can’t use it to find her. Putting aside how they’re witches and may not need to trace her phone, the fact that Sarah immediately chooses to go home after doing this, seems to defeat the purpose. And yes, the movie sometimes feels like it needs a slightly bigger budget, such as the montages of chaos in Rome looking too small-scale or the long backstory told using drawings. But the honest truth for me is that the movie has enough moments which sent a charge through me of the sort that I want from an Argento film. All through the film there are moments which could have come from few other directors—Sarah Mandy’s visit to “renowned thinker” Guglielmo De Witt, for one, or an amazing long steadicam shot near the end. One particular section in a bookstore when Sarah is being chased is so absurd, yet at the same time so skillfully done, that it defies stating how good or bad it really is. Ultimately, it’s kind of mesmerizing. The violence goes perhaps farther than even Argento has ever gone—I’m used to this stuff and even I had to shield my eyes a few times. But even where the film seems to step over that line in one scene (those who have seen it will know what I’m talking about) it’s hard to ignore how in that moment the film provides us with one of its most effective grace moments as we get the most chilling impression of the title character the film ever gives us.


Somehow fitting for a movie with the word ‘Mother’ in the title, it is the women who seem continually at the forefront. For all the talk bandied about of how Argento’s films are misogynist I get the impression possibly more than ever before that it’s the women in the film where his main interest lies. The male characters feel little more than functional in the narrative and frankly, I get the feeling that he is more interested in the briefly-seen woman on a bridge who does something horrible to her baby, in an already notorious scene, than he does in a few of the men who actually have substantial roles. As good as Asia Argento is as Sarah Mandy, everything we know about her means that it’s a bit of a reach to buy her as an art restorer who is unaware of her special powers—it’s not too far off from trying to buy Arnold Schwarzenegger as a mere construction worker in TOTAL RECALL. Even so, I can’t imagine anyone else playing the role and while it’s tempting to say that she is allowed few of her expected quirks while on the run through much of the film, but we do get her barking “WHAT??!!” at a curious bystander at one point. As the much-discussed Mater Lachrymarum, Moran Atias certainly look impressive and she does have that one moment I mentioned, but whenever she speaks it all goes out the window. It’s not a voice of power, it’s the voice of a supermodel who wants to know where her latte is. Much more impressive is Jun Ichikawa as another witch whose very screen presence alone is responsible for a few of the most effective moments. Especially interesting is the actress Valeria Cavalli as psychic Marta Colussi who brings an unusual empathic sensuality to her role. Even when given a fairly gratuitous lesbian scene to play, it is at least refreshing to have an actress of that age being presented as a sexual creature. (As for what eventually happens to her, well…) Udo Kier, the one male who really gets to make an impression, comes off as a lunatic in his role as a priest but it’s hard not to get a kick out it considering that he, as another character, provided much of the exposition in SUSPIRIA. Here does a little of the same, with a particularly nice moment when he mentions the name of Suzy Banyon. Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni’s association with Argento goes all the way back to the eighties so it feels important that she is once again being brutally killed off here, and it is an amazing death scene, even if it is a small role. But for me the film which has a large enough role for Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni has yet to be made.


The film is a work of madness and there’s a degree to which it’s hard to take much of any of it seriously. But for me there’s something there, an embracing of that madness for now and all time which is most obvious in the final shot, a closer which recalls the end of SUSPIRIA and seems just right considering everything we’ve just seen. Argento is who he is and maybe what that ending tells us is that we’re just going to have to learn to live with it. In SUSPIRIA the key line was “Magic is all around us.” Here, after the heroine insists at the beginning, “We’re supposed to believe in what we see,” we are later told, “What you see does not exist. What you cannot see is truth.” The lead character goes from believing in what she knows to accepting what she is. Somewhere in that truth and madness is what MOTHER OF TEARS is about and I couldn’t help but get a great deal of demented enjoyment from it. Sometimes that type of delirium is exactly what is needed in the movies we love.

Not To Drink Is To Call Her Ugly

It’s been less than a year since I attended the American Cinematheque screening of Blake Edwards’ THE PARTY at the Aero in Santa Monica and I still haven’t forgotten the thrill of the standing ovation given to the man at the end of the film. I knew it wouldn’t quite be the same to go back for another Edwards appearance but I did it anyway. After all, I’d never seen WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY? and certainly screenings of it don’t come around very often. That drive all the way out to Santa Monica during rush hour gets worse all the time and no, it wasn’t quite the same. But it was unique and the film was certainly worth it.

Set in 1943 Sicily, the World War II story focuses on Captain Lionel Cash (Dick Shawn) a type-A by-the-book type who is ordered by General Bolt (Carroll O’Connor) to head a company to take the tiny town of Velerno. Cash is assigned a ragtag group led by Lieutenant Christian (James Coburn) and they have little interest in following his orders. Once the company gets to the town, they find the Italian soldiers led by Captain Oppo (Sergio Fantoni) are willing, absolutely happy, to surrender, but not before the annual village festival which is scheduled that night. Reluctantly, Cash is talked by Christian into allowing the festival to proceed and soldiers from both sides freely join in the festivities with wine flowing everywhere. When everyone awakens in the morning hungover, there is a sudden situation involving the mayor’s daughter Gina (Giovanna Ralli) leading Captian Oppo to refuse to surrender. But with headquarters demanding to know what is going on, both sides quickly realize that they have to fake a battle so no one will find out the truth. The real problem develops when what they're doing winds up looking a little too convincing, leading to an unexpected side taking an interest.


Made by Edwards between THE GREAT RACE and GUNN, WHAT DID YOU DO feels more like a romp than an out-and-out comedy, but it still offers many laughs throughout. Within its wartime setting, it never becomes too heavy-handed and the script (story by Maurice Richlin and Edwards, screenplay by William Peter Blatty) is extremely well-constructed with new elements not only continually turning up, but expertly kept in the air and eventually paid off. Edwards’ knack for purely visual gags is greatly on display as well, particularly in the montage displaying the various soldiers the morning after the festival, all passed out in various unexpected places and circumstances. It’s also a terrific example at displaying how good Edwards was with the camera to tell his story--framed through the Scope lens, the town itself becomes another character. Simply put, it’s a very funny, enjoyable film which deserves to be better known.

As for the cast, I’ll freely say that Dick Shawn has never been a favorite of mine. Something about his persona just always seemed too plastic for me to enjoy but it’s safe to say that except for his part in THE PRODUCERS (which certainly wasn’t a lead role) he’s never made me laugh like he does here. The character is consistently played, how he changes makes sense and Shawn becomes one of a number of other Edwards actors who are forced to dress up as a woman at one point and the results are as funny as anything in the movie. James Coburn, in one of another of his sixties iconoclast roles, seems a little like a Hawkeye Pierce prototype here and is just right as his character, consistently funny and unpredictable. Giovanna Ralli is both gorgeous and she has sharp comic timing as Gina and Harry Morgan (speaking of MASH) as Major Pott gets one of the funniest subplots but if you haven’t seen it, no point in my ruining it. WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY? isn’t quite a hidden Edwards masterpiece, but is an example of just how good he could be at the peak of his abilities and would work extremely well for anyone interested in a more lighthearted war movie in the vein of KELLY’S HEROES—maybe it’s my prejudice for Edwards showing, but I think I like this one better. And, of course, the music is by Henry Mancini which naturally gives it an advantage.


Edwards, who apparently hadn’t seen the film since it was released, was present for the post-film Q&A which I have to say was just about the strangest of these I’ve ever attended. Since the director, who is very weak by now, was obviously unable to go up front for the talk, he stayed at his seat with a microphone while the moderator questioned him from the screen. Edwards’ advanced age, nearing 86, was very obvious as he acted cagey about certain things and not remembering others. When asked about his directing style which includes many long takes that play out without cuts (seen in many of his films) he didn’t seem to say much about it beyond simply “I did what I did,” which of course manages to say nothing and everything at the same time. Soon enough the entire audience was facing and gradually moving towards the back of the theater, which became an odd sight and a slight murmur went through the crowd as people quickly realized that the woman in the baseball cap next to him who was offering him encouragement in his answers was in fact wife Julie Andrews. Once or twice when someone asked something he didn’t seem to appreciate Edwards jokingly (?) offered to take that person outside and beat the crap out of them. Which, in his current state, certainly wasn’t going to happen, but was still very funny. Maybe I should have asked a lousy question, just to say that Blake Edwards threatened to kick my ass. What I’m saying is, it wasn’t a Q&A that I could coherently summarize.

The second film being shown that night was A SHOT IN THE DARK which I didn’t stay for, partly because I’ve seen it many times already (the same reason Edwards gave, incidentally). With many people around them, the couple slowly made there way outside to the car to applause from people in the street, watching them, myself included. Nothing more to say about it except to think about the sight of a pair of entertainment legends, older than we ever think of them being, driven off into the night down a quiet street in Santa Monica. In addition to witnessing that moment, I’m glad I saw WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY? which served as a reminder of the various reasons why I’m such a fan of the director in the first place and all the special things he has brought to the screen in his long career.

Getting Away With Anything

It’s too bad that there’s not more of a place for the likes of Stuart Gordon in theaters today. The sort of director who can deliver a lean, mean B-movie which takes pride in the label is disappearing fast, if not almost completely gone. I have fond memories of the likes of Gordon’s RE-ANIMATOR and FORTRESS but his new film STUCK, while not science fiction or even technically a horror film, is at heart a B-movie but also remembers to be more than that. It is loosely inspired by a true incident and well aware of the seriousness of what is occurring, yet at the same time very much at heart a genre piece and one that is very, very darkly funny.

As caregiver Brandi Helper (Mena Suvari) learns of a possible promotion at the retirement home she works in, Tom Bardo (Stephen Rea) has reached the end of his rope. Downsized from his job, evicted from his apartment and unable to find work because the computer at the local employment center has no record of him, he must face the fact that he is truly homeless. That night Brandi goes out to celebrate with her drug-dealer boyfriend (Russell Hornsby) at a local bar while at the same time Tom is kicked out of the park where he is trying to sleep. As he walks down the street with his newly acquired shopping cart, Brandi, still high on booze and the pills she’s been popping all night, smashes into him with her car. Only instead of falling back to the road, Tom smashes into and gets wedged in her windshield. Not knowing what to do, Brandi drives home with him trapped there and, scared that she’ll get caught (and, presumably, lose her promotion), parks her car in the garage where she leaves him there, hoping, expecting, that he will die soon enough. Soon Tom, in agonizing pain, begins to realize that help really isn’t coming and has to figure out how to save himself.


In many ways STUCK is a grimy little thriller about grimy people but it’s also about what sort of society causes people to behave this way, especially when no one seems willing to take any sort of responsibility in their situations. “Why are you doing this to me?” Brandi screams at Tom, who is simply trying to escape from her car, refusing to die like she demands that he do. What exactly this represents about society today could be read any number of ways and it becomes pretty explicit, when Brandi’s boyfriend boyfriend, hearing that she has hit a homeless person with her car (and not a ‘real’ person) brushes it off saying, in effect, that these days, “Anybody can do anything to anyone and get away with it. I mean, look who’s in the White House.” The pulp approach to this inherently serious material is refreshing, considering how drab it could have been played and it also would have been interesting to see how someone like Larry Cohen would have approached the basic idea. But considering its deliberately jarring mixture of tones, from the unexpected opening credit sequence Gordon does such a good job it’s hard to want anyone else to have made this film. Hardly a surprise from the man who made RE-ANIMATOR, there is a lot of blood and gore seen in Rea’s predicament and the movie doesn’t shy away from making it seen as agonizing as possible. It says a lot that one of the most grueling of these scenes results in one of the biggest laughs I’ve had in a theater in a long time. Maybe that just means I’m a pretty sick individual as well.


Suvari is excellent, making for a believable party girl working a normal job in an old-folks home. She seems to be neither an exceptionally good or bad person at first—she pops pills and drinks, but is still presented as good at her job-- then thrust into this situation of her own doing takes her to some unexpected places. Though it may sound like Rea has a nothing role from the description, the amount of humanity he brings to the character which could come off as a cipher from a lesser talent can’t be ignored and some of his less-showy moments are the ones that linger even several days after seeing the movie. Long-time Stuart Gordon fans will want to know that the voice of Jeffrey Combs (Dr. Herbert West himself) is heard on a phone at one point.

This sort of scrappy little movie, maybe directed by the likes of Sam Fuller in another era, is almost never made anymore but that it was not only made now, but turned out so effective, is a thrill to see. STUCK is only 85 minutes long, but within that brief running time is a thriller which not only satisfies its own genre conventions but remembers to put some meat on the bones as well. These days it seems that the bigger the movie the more humanity seems to be drained out of it, but here’s a film that for all its blood, is ultimately about trying to remember how to be human in a world where seemingly no one remembers how to be human. And that in itself is a sort of victory.

Quality Is Important In Every Profession

As beautiful redhead Dagmar Lassander lounges in her bathtub smoking a cigarette, she silently thinks to herself, “I’m going to give up cigarettes today. And I’m going to stop drinking. And I’m not going to take any more of those tranquilizers. Anyway, they say it’s bad for you to take them if you drink. That should make Peter happy.” To which I immediately think, hey, don’t feel like you have to stop doing all that because of me! Of course, it’s just the opening of THE FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION, a 1970 giallo directed by Luciano Ercoli. It goes without saying that as the plot proceeds she’s not going to stop smoking. Or drinking. Or taking those pills, either.


With these proclamations made as the film begins the character Minou, played by Lassander, hatches a plan to make husband Peter (Pier Paolo Capponi) jealous. As she goes out that night she is quickly accosted by a threatening man (Simon Andreu) who, though he seems fully ready to assault, abruptly stops and simply mentions her husband saying, “Peter is a fraud. What if I told you he’s a murderer?” before letting her go, implying that he may soon appear again. She confides in her husband about what has happened, but soon becomes suspicious when she learns of the drowning death of one of his colleagues. She also tells her possibly bisexual best friend Dominique (Susan Scott aka Nieves Navarro) about what happened but her friend reassures her (“Try to look on the bright side: You must be bursting with sex appeal…I’d have adored being violated.”) and then Dominique shows off her private stash of photos (“Are they pornographic?” “Yes, but good ones.”) out of which Minou finds one that may contain the face of her attacker. But even this doesn’t help her when he appears again with certain demands. This is followed by one of the characters, any of the characters, having another drink.


I’m not certain if FORBIDDEN PHOTOS qualifies as a giallo (even if the DVD cover refers to it as one) since at the very least it certainly isn’t a body count film. If it wasn’t for some of the seamier plot developments, it frankly wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine the basic set up used in Hollywood in the 40s starring, say, Barbara Stanwyck. But ultimately the plot becomes second to the infectiously sinuous atmosphere on display. The sexual politics at hand are very much of the time and even that probably isn’t much of an excuse when it comes to a few certain plot developments. But even with much talk of being “violated” from that first shot the film makes clear how much it is about how a woman can sublimate herself to please her man and how that ultimately can damage her if she isn’t careful. As Minou, Lassander does a very good job in portraying this desperation. In the opposite role, Susan Scott as Dominique is the most charismatic person here but of course that’s what her character is supposed to be. She seems more omnisexual in her basic persona than anything else and even if it’s never certain whether she can be trusted, the confidence she is allowed to display provides a potent contrast with Lassander’s weaker character. Interestingly, not only do the two women strongly resemble each other—similar facial features and long flowing red hair—but the two male leads have a similarly stoic look and dark hairstyle as well. It’s unclear to me if this is meant to be a comment of the duality of the characters or if there wasn’t much thought to this at all—it certainly never comes into play in the plot, but the mirrored effect does provide some striking contrasts even when some momentary confusion occurs early on.


Even if it can’t be considered a giallo, the film is very much set in the jet-set lifestyle that some of those films are famous for, with apartments that resemble modern art galleries, bizarre fashions on the gorgeous women and bits of business such as a mysterious phone call at two in the morning followed by someone saying, “Now that we’re wide awake, how about a drink?” Best of all is the hypnotically beautiful score by Ennio Morricone which is draped across much of the film like the most luxurious velvet imaginable. One passage involving Lassander simply walking to a location seems to stop the movie just to allow us to let the music and environment soak in. It’s moments like that which draw me back to some of these films again and again. The script by Ernesto Gastaldi is almost deceptively simple, but on second viewing I began to notice much more going on underneath the plotting with more depth to the sexual politics at hand than I first realized. Certainly the look of the film is everything it should be, with some Scope compositions so striking that I found myself sitting up to try and absorb them better.


THE FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION (hey, it's a fun title to type out) doesn’t quite have what I expected it to. There are no stylish murder scenes, the violence which does occur is limited and the plot is fairly free of incident. But the way the film got through to me during its running time as that Morricone music seemed to slink into my brain indicated that it was somehow successful, even if in its own dreamlike, sleazy way. I don’t know if I’ve found a new favorite and this is the sort of thing I probably shouldn't show to some people but I’m sure that I want to watch it again very soon.

A Superior Income From An Inferior Champagne

I’d rather not get caught up in the whole debate about Mitchell Leisen and he caused the likes of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges to want to direct because of whatever he did to their scripts. In all honesty, part of me wants to say, “You’re really going to dispute any opinion that Wilder or Sturges ever had?” But then somebody might bring up BUDDY BUDDY or THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND or some other lesser movie with lots of b-words in the title that one of them made at some point. And it would alter the fact that 1939’s MIDNIGHT, directed by Mitchell Leisen and with a script that Billy Wilder was one of several writers on, remains a true delight.

It’s not just a good film. It has to be one of the true unsung romantic comedies, from not only the golden age of Hollywood, but from all of 1939, widely considered to be the pinnacle of that era. The credits list a story by Franz Schulz and Edwin Justus Mayer but the screenplay is very obviously to work of credited Wilder and Charles Brackett, who would work together on numerous films up until SUNSET BOULEVARD. The sparkling wit of their dialogue contains way too many lines to spoil here as and they also concocted an expertly plotted scenario that goes way beyond the simple Cinderella-setup of the title. The film reveals a world which may have only ever existed in the movies but that doesn’t make it any less enticing. That MIDNIGHT isn’t better known is unfortunate and should be near the top of the list of films to show people who might want to see something from this era but are only familiar with the ones which have been long since deemed classics.


Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert) arrives in Paris by train one rainy night, with nothing but an evening gown that she is wearing. “So this is Paris,” she muses. “Well, from here it looks an awful lot like a rainy night in Kokomo, Indiana.” She comes in from Monte Carlo where she has pawned all her luggage after, she says, “the roulette system I was playing collapsed under me.” Getting a ride from cab driver Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche) she makes a deal with him to drive her around to the city’s nightclubs where she hopes to get a job singing and then she’ll pay him. When the plan fails, he buys her dinner and offers to let her stay at his place that night while he works. Aware of the instant attraction between them, she turns him down anyway because she doesn’t want someone who is “just” a cab driver. Thought he won’t take no for an answer, she is still able to make a getaway and manages to crash a nearby party being attended by Paris society. Once inside, she finds several people becoming interested in her for various reasons including the handsome Jacques (Francis Lederer), the curious Georges Flammarion (an amazing John Barrymore) and his suspicious wife Helene (Mary Astor). When Georges realizes that Eve can help him with a marital problem, her deception is able to continue past the end of the party, but meanwhile Tibor is marshalling all of his resources to track her down again.


A complicated screwball plot and I haven’t begun to get into a number of aspects of it. MIDNIGHT has laughs, enjoyable characters-even the ones who aren’t never becomes all that unlikable—but overall a sense of elegance which works for the piece. I don’t know if this was Paris in 1939—well, obviously it wasn’t, but it’s nice to imagine that it was like this. Leisen brought an earnestness and sensitivity to some of these films–another was the quite moving REMEMBER THE NIGHT, written by Sturges—that not only may have been something that Wilder and Sturges didn’t do, but wasn’t really achieved on this level by most directors (All this does remind me that MIDNIGHT has a few slight similarities to Struges' own THE PALM BEACH STORY, which also features Colbert and Astor). Yes, maybe at times Leisen seems very interested in that opulence—check out how he dotes on the Conga line at the estate party. But there are several camera movements during this section which are very much done for storytelling reasons that manage to add to the plot and the elegance he’s obviously going for at the same time—compare this to the Paramount films from around this time which have truly uninteresting camerawork. If that’s not somebody who knows what he’s doing, what is? In Cameron Crowe’s absolutely essential CONVERSATIONS WITH WILDER, the man himself seems to begrudgingly allow himself to say good things about both MIDNIGHT and Leisen, so maybe this was one of those cases where people didn’t click (Sturges, I suppose, separately didn’t click with him either). Since it’s the film which remains now, that’s probably all that matters.


One of the great things about returning to MIDNIGHT after a number of years away, is realizing just how wonderful Claudette Colbert is. Funny, attractive, vivacious and perceptive enough to be suspicious of everyone who crosses her eyeline, Eve Peabody is a fantastic character and she hits every beat just right. Don Ameche is fantastic—anyone who only knows him from TRADING PLACES and COCOON needs to see this film right now! The nature of his performance is that John Barrymore almost walks away with the film but really, the film is so equally divided in moments from its actors that it doesn’t really happen. Nevertheless, there’s a delight in what he does which is very special. A legendary drinker at this time, his character is roused from boredom at a dull party into curiosity about this odd woman suddenly sitting next to him. It almost plays as if the actor himself is coming to life upon realizing just how good the script he agreed to appear in was. Mary Astor is also very good as the humorless Helene, interested in not much more than hats, yet still consistent and believably even in this farcical context. As a matter of fact, everyone from Hedda Hopper, who also appears, down to the bit players is spot-on in this luxurious Hollywood version of France. Ernst Lubitsch, a friend and huge influence on Wilder, famously said, “I’ve been to Paris, France and I’ve been to Paris, Paramount. I prefer Paris, Paramount.” A shame that we didn’t get to see what Lubitsch might have done with this, but nevertheless MIDNIGHT is one of my favorite examples of what that sentence states. In an ideal world I’d find a girl who has never heard of this movie and she would fall for everything in it as well. I’m still looking.

In Memory of Michael Dorsey's Agent

It’s been less than a year since I first viewed the MICHAEL CLAYTON trailer and mentioned to someone how cool it was to see Sydney Pollack billed right up there with the likes of Clooney, Swinton and Wilkinson. That can’t be something he ever anticipated way back when Dustin Hoffman browbeat him into taking on the role of George Fields in TOOTSIE, a movie he was already directing and would go on to be one of the true classic comedies of the past quarter-century.

Funny thing is, as brilliant and funny as he is in that film (“I begged you to get some therapy.”), he didn’t appear in front of the camera again for another decade when in 1992 he turned up in enjoyable bits in THE PLAYER and DEATH BECOMES HER along with an astonishing supporting performance in Woody Allen’s HUSBANDS AND WIVES. His work in that film seemed to get lost in the controversy surrounding the release along with the deserved acclaim that Judy Davis received but chances are people simply didn’t realize he wasn’t acting. He just came off as so believable in that role that it was hard to believe he wasn’t really that guy, down to the immensely painful sequence where he tries to forcibly remove new girlfriend Lysette Anthony from a party as he simultaneously realizes what everything he’s done has come to. With someone else in the role it could come off as either too comical or too melodramatic, but as Pollack plays it the scene is raw, painful and genuine. There was his role in EYES WIDE SHUT with that amazing scene around the pool table where it just goes on and on but I feel like I can listen him methodically discuss his role in possibly nefarious acts for days. And more recently there’s been his spot-on work in MICHAEL CLAYTON and guest shot on THE SOPRANOS which make me wish we could have more performances from him that would elevate the material in such ways. His presence in films also sometimes made him seem like a truly decent individual right down to his very final moment in TOOTSIE when he drops all discussion about the charade upon hearing about Charles Durning’s proposal and, smiling, asks “What did you say?”


But it’s his work as a director which seems tremendously important right now. It seems like we’ve been losing greats from the film world lately more than usual and I can’t help but wonder if Pollack’s death means some sort of irrevocable shift. His films from personal favorite TOOTSIE to THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR to ABSENCE OF MALICE to OUT OF AFRICA to THE FIRM to THE INTERPRETER are the sort of thing which have fallen by the wayside in the past decade—quality pieces of work produced by Hollywood, intended for adults, out to see a movie on a Saturday night. Without him there to keep on trying to get those films made, I don't know who else is left to do it. In addition to his smooth craftsmanship (and, sometimes, great use of Scope) the projects he worked on had a continuing preoccupation with man-woman relationships in terms of honesty, trust and identity presented in a context which may have sometimes been overly slick, but was always humanistic. The line “You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth” seemed to turn up in a few of them, a line of confrontation which could say what he was interested in exploring with his films as much as anything.

Today I had to go to jury duty downtown which wasn’t much fun at all, but getting there required parking in the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Hall, a reminder in that early hour that I still had yet to see Pollack’s final film, the acclaimed documentary SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY. Now his passing comes just after the premiere of RECOUNT, a film he was set to direct before illness forced him to withdraw but still has an Executive Producer credit on. Those pieces of unfinished business remind me of how THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR concludes on an uncertain beat before ending abruptly. That was Sydney Pollack—still driven and determined, but then the finish comes before we’re ready.

Mountain Into Molehill

Maybe the ultimate joke of the mountain-into-molehill thing that we get over the Paramount logo at the beginning of INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is that it’s done in anticipation of what the response to the film would be. No matter how good it was, there would still be people who would find things to complain about and those complaints would be making a mountain out of, well, you know. Or maybe the joke is that it’s an indication over the reduction in scale from the earlier films to now. Maybe it’s just a cute idea that somebody had while making it. Maybe I need to stop spending so much time obsessing over studio logos.


I went in with the full understanding that I wasn’t going to get a movie which would be the absolute equal to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. At the very least I wanted it to be an enjoyable romp and that’s what it is in some ways. But even after a second viewing today (All hail the Vista) I found myself already bored with parts of it. During the parts I liked on my first viewing I looked at it as Spielberg’s EL DORADO (i.e. director and star returning to old themes but it’s so much fun you don’t care) and it seemed pertinent that the ancient city of El Dorado is even brought up in relation to the plot. But after thinking about it for a few days, culminating in the more recent viewing, I have to admit that a few times it skirts over a little too far into RIO LOBO territory (i.e. director and star returning to old themes but no one really seems to care anymore). The script by David Koepp, which for all I know already includes elements from past drafts, feels like it’s at the point where you say, “this is getting there, but we need to flesh out some things and clarify the exposition.” I guess that didn’t happen.


Ultimately, I don’t get why the film is about the Skull. The exposition is lengthy and mealy-mouthed to the point that I can barely remember any of it and I don’t get what the Skull means for Indiana Jones either. At the film’s beginning the character doesn’t need to be convinced to go off on another adventure, but he does seem slightly lost in the world, considering how his job is taken away from and his two closest confidantes in the world (Marcus Brody and his father) are no longer alive. There’s a germ of an idea in how he goes from feeling this way to meeting someone from his past who affects what his future will be, but the film does next to nothing with the concept beyond simply having Marion (a very welcome Karen Allen) show up again. They spar, they bicker and they fall for each other again almost instantly but it all feels pretty arbitrary. For that matter, I can Bond not speaking to Willie Scott ever again (or James Bond breaking it off with one of his conquests) but does anyone believe that he hasn’t spoken to Marion for twenty years? Marion frikkin’ Ravenwood?


I’m not even sure what the answer is to clearing up the Marion portion of the plot. If she’s mentioned earlier (which she very well could have been in a plausible and funny way) there might be the danger that the plot would turn into ‘search for Marion’ thing, just as LAST CRUSADE became a search for the father. But if the Grail represented the father, how would the Skull be a metaphor for Marion? If there’s an answer here I haven’t come up with it and while there may be something in there about how the Skull represents knowledge, it doesn’t resonate in any particular way. I also don’t get why Indy feels so attached to Professor Oxley if he hasn’t see him for twenty years. I don’t get why greaser Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) is so attached to the old professor either. These feel like problems that could have been solved or, at the very least, glossed over in an interesting way, but with no real concept where we can understand and empathize with Indy’s search, it feels like the film has no reason to exist except just to give us some more Indiana Jones action. Well, hey, I like the character too, but can’t we get a little more than that? And does the trip to Peru in the middle have to be that excruciatingly dull?


There are things I liked in there. The opening, while feeling slightly odd, is enjoyable if you look at it as a very odd AMERICAN GRAFFITTI reference. I like all the Area 51 stuff, but I do wonder if it slightly diminishes the end of RAIDERS now that we know where the Ark is kept. Besides, what was once a CITIZEN KANE reference is now an Area 51 plot point? The motorcycle chase is mostly terrific and a good example of the lighthearted action sequences that turn up in these films. It’s also given added oomph by being mostly set in a real place—after beginning on the Paramount lot it moves on to actual locations at Yale. It adds a lot to the sequence and it’s one of the drawbacks of the film that too much of it seems to be shot in the studio. This isn’t entirely without precedence in the series, since a few of the others also featured sets that looked a little too much like sets—I always figured it was part of the old-time-movie feel that they were going for. But they also contained extensive location shooting around the world which added immensely to their flavor and authenticity. I can understand why these guys wouldn’t want to fly off to Tunisia or who knows where anymore. But that doesn’t mean I can’t say anything about it.


Hang on, I thought I was going to discuss things I liked about the movie. Harrison Ford seems like he’s in a better mood than in any film he’s appeared in for years and it is fun to see him revisit the character, even if he does seem to get the voice right some times more than others. Cate Blanchett is extremely enjoyable as Irina Spalko—she’s kinda hot too. Karen Allen seems like she won’t stop smiling much of the time and it’s a fault of the film that it doesn’t want to give too much weight to the reunion of Indy and Marion more than anything she does. But it does genuinely feel like Marion Ravenwood and that hasn’t always been the case with an actor returning to a role after a long absence.


The real good news about the movie is that there is a genuine feel in Spielberg’s direction of old-school action. For the most part it’s well-shot, well-paced and you can tell what’s going on. Unfortunately, the real bad news has to do with my honest wish that Spielberg had gone old-school with the effects as well, keeping the CGI to the absolute minimum. Because it was well-done, I enjoyed the chase with the jeeps through the jungle even if I knew a lot of the effects work was digital. But once we got to the ants and everything that transpires in the climax it becomes digital overkill. There’s never any sense of danger to anything that happens and it may be the one thing missing more than any other.


Along with that is wondering what exactly this movie is. If the first three films were homages to films of the 30s set in the 30s, this film is…what? An homage to the 30s set in the 50s? Aside from a few clever topical references there really isn’t anything that makes it seem like a film of the 50s (which reminds me, is the Paramount logo period accurate?). Granted, I shouldn't go too far down this semantic whirlpool, but some bold use of color still would have helped in this regard. Though there is an attempt to replicate the work of cinematographer Douglas Slocombe(lots of dollies into people’s faces) there’s still enough here stylistically that feels like yet another film shot by Janusz Kaminski, which is the wrong sort of look for this film. At least John Williams’ music still sounds like John Williams.


Ultimately, it’s a hard film for me to dislike, but I wish I liked it better. There’s always the hope that as time goes on I’ll find the charm in there and be glad that they actually made the thing. If the first film in the series way back in 1981 felt like the ultimate expression of the joy of filmmaking by those who were brilliant at the craft, CRYSTAL SKULL feels like Spielberg, Lucas, Ford and their other old friends hanging out while making a movie, content to let it be what it will be. There is a difference and it’s one that is felt. But hey, we’ll always have RAIDERS.

A Writer In Search Of A Character

Obviously, I’m happy to have Indiana Jones back in theaters but really, does he have to be in all of the theaters? Can't there be something else to go see? Have the studios pretty much abandoned the concept of counter-programming? Shouldn’t we be getting a romantic comedy this weekend starring Hugh Grant or Julia Roberts or maybe even Hugh Grant AND Julia Roberts? There are some romantic comedies playing out there but they all look pretty intolerable, which is what I’ve heard they are. My point is, doesn’t anyone want to take my money and show me a movie? Genuinely wanting to go to the movies I decided to see what was playing at the Laemmle Sunset 5. I noticed there was a French thriller directed by Claude Lelouch. Boom! Done. I didn’t know what it was about, but the few reviews I glanced at appeared favorable and it seemed likely that there would be a minimum of CGI and talking animals. That’s how I wound up in the Laemmle Sunset 5 on Sunday afternoon sitting in a theater with about twenty senior citizens.


I like that I knew very little about ROMAN DE GARE going in and it makes me hesitant to reveal very much about it to anyone who may actually go to see it as well. I will say that the plot, as it seems to be presented to us at first, involves a missing schoolteacher, news of an escaped serial killer, a mysterious man (DELICATESSEN’s Dominique Pinon) traveling by car from Paris to Cannes, a young woman (Audrey Dana) who has been abandoned at a service station by her boyfriend, a famous novelist (Fanny Ardant), along with issues of identity, creativity, truth and how much might really be known about the people we meet.


After an opening which begins to lay things out in the form of a puzzle, the film picks up a plot strand which seems tangential at first, then blossoms into being more important than we first realize. The first hour, simply put, is stunningly good. Then, as the various pieces begin to fall into place I found myself leaning forward in my seat with excitement and anticipation over what was to come. This doesn’t lead to a letdown in any way, but it did feel like the schematics of the film’s plot felt more apparent as it reached its denouement. It’s almost tempting to overrate ROMAN DE GARE (which translates as ‘railway novel’ or, as we would call it, ‘airplane reading’. Variety reviewed it last year as CROSSED TRACKS) because of what I didn’t know about it going in. After all, it is a French film seen in an arthouse with a fair amount of scenes featuring people drinking wine on yachts in Cannes, lending it the automatic feel of quality and esteem. On the off chance this turns anyone off instead I’ll simply say that for the most part ROMAN DE GARE is an extremely suspenseful, entertaining, thought-provoking piece of work which I highly recommend. The three leads are excellent for reasons I can’t even go into here and the film is helmed superbly by Lelouch. I suppose I should confess that I’ve never seen one of his films before now so I’ll have to do something about that.


True, at first I was thrilled with what I was seeing, then I began to wonder if a few of the revelations were too gimmicky. Now, several hours later, I find myself thinking about the film and its characters, wondering about the choices they made and how they were affected. It might be ‘just’ a thriller, presented in the guise of an arthouse film, but considering what I got I have no complaints. Sometimes it pays to think outside the box and take a chance on a film you’ve never heard of. But now you’ve heard of ROMAN DE GARE, so the next step is up to you.

Illumination

Though I had the opportunity to view the entire INDIANA JONES trilogy in a beautiful theater the other week, I bowed out before the third one. This is not due to any issues I have with the quality of INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE and I would honestly have loved to have been able to see Sean Connery say “I should have mailed it to the Marx Brothers,” on a big screen one more time. But the honest truth is that I was feeling worn out from the first two and simply wanted to be outside for a while. Years ago, I would have stayed and not thought twice. Maybe I’m just getting older. So, I watched it on DVD. Hey, it’s not like I didn’t go see it plenty of times back in ’89 anyway. Some might consider LAST CRUSADE the weakest of the three but I’ve always had a true soft spot for it.


A friend recently referred to it as “The ATTACK OF THE CLONES of the Indiana Jones Series” i.e. the one that bends over backwards to give the fans what they didn’t get last time out, in this case the extreme approach that TEMPLE OF DOOM took. This is partly true and of course the film doesn’t even try to disguise how much it wants to emulate RAIDERS. The Ark of the Covenant as McGuffin is of course so perfect that the Holy Grail on its own couldn’t measure up but it manages to get around this issue by making one of its lead characters equal to that McGuffin. “Find the man and you find the Grail…” as a line of dialogue might be a little on the nose but by giving additional significance to the “find” portion of the sentence it certainly helps and gives the movie an emotional resonance it wouldn’t have otherwise. And the fact is that Sean Connery, when he enters the movie surprisingly late, elevates the movie immensely no matter how enjoyable it already is to be watching Harrison Ford play Indiana Jones again. There are things I like about LAST CRUSADE—quite a few things actually, but the fact is that if he weren’t there to bring it up to the next level it wouldn’t have much of a reason for being.


One of the things aside from Connery which I do like about the movie is the comedy—the tone of that humor is as specific to this movie as the tone was to the others but there’s something about it this time around that I find particularly enjoyable. There has always been a lot of complaining about the treatment of Denholm Elliott’s Marcus Brody this time around but it feels perfectly consistent with the tone of this film, which is more of a jaunty romp than the previous two. It doesn’t make me like the character any less, he doesn’t seem less intelligent and I enjoy the brief Laurel and Hardy bit that Elliott plays when he is met by John Rhys-Davies as Sallah. Much of this humor is pretty silly stuff, but it honestly works for me. And really, if you can’t get even a small laugh when the Nazi says to Indiana Jones “And this is how we say goodbye in Germany!” right before punching him then I simply don’t know what to tell you.


That stated, there are a number of problems, but I can’t bring myself to refer to the weaker sections of the film as the bad parts. Just call it the weaker stuff. After a slam-bang prologue featuring River Phoenix as Young Indy with some outstanding action, the bulk of the set pieces feel a little bit too perfunctory. As much as I may have complained about TEMPLE OF DOOM, that’s not a criticism I would make with the action there. The boat chase in Venice (though given a nice flavor in the score by John Williams) and the motorcycle chase upon escaping the castle (shot during post-production when Spielberg decided more was needed) are both fine, but uninspired. The airplane battle and subsequent car chase after fleeing the zeppelin also feels a little stilted at least partly to what I remember as some surprisingly bad bluescreen work by ILM. Naturally, this stuff looks better on DVD where it’s probably been cleaned up but my recollections of this are pretty clear. The plotting of the script also has a surprising number of leaky holes, making it clear how much of RAIDERS was pretty close to being airtight. Indy’s father convinces him to head for Berlin to recover the Grail diary. Do they have any idea where to go once they get there? How does Indy manage to corner Elsa in the middle of this giant book-burning rally? How does he know she’s going to be there? How does he know that she’s going to have the book on her? Is punching out a Nazi who shakes his fist at the departing Zeppelin really enough to make them feel like they can sit back and have a relaxing drink? And how do the two of them go from a beach in the middle of nowhere to being driven by Sallah in North Africa in what seems like the blink of an eye? And it’s not a flaw, but here’s a question that has always bugged me: When Ford and Connery are heading for the zeppelin they pass a pair of extras on either side of the screen, each reading a newspaper. They are so prominently placed in the shot I always expect them to be revealed as someone, but they aren’t. Is this a secret cameo by someone, Lucas and Spielberg maybe?


But the screenplay by the late Jeffrey Boam does manage to hold together in spite of these flaws, in part because of its enjoyable sense of fun and clear thematic goal. The rapport between Ford and Connery alone is so good that you wind up forgetting about all other issues. Likewise, the character of Elsa Schneider is erratically written to the point that it’s actually pretty impressive what Allison Doody is able to do with it. And Julian Glover might not make the sort of impression his General Veers did in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK with much less screen time, but he is a good enough actor that you do remember him, more than I can say for a lot of other similar bad guys in recent years. There were a few unexpected reactions to this viewing as well--for all my complaining about the quality of the action in the film, watching it again I was pleasantly surprised to think the tank chase was much better than I remembered. It’s not the truck chase in RAIDERS—after all, what is?—but it’s enjoyable in its own right with numerous bits for the characters throughout and you can follow everything that happens in it every step of the way. That sort of clarity has become a rare thing.


It’s hard to ignore how much the movie works because of Sean Connery’s performance and how well he plays off of Harrison Ford. This feeling culminates in my favorite scene in the movie, when Henry Jones, Marcus and Sallah look over the cliff thinking Indy has just fallen to his death but is in fact peering over their shoulders right behind them. It’s obviously a bit swiped from Abbott & Costello but even Pauline Kael liked how it worked. And watching it this time when the scene moves from that humor to Connery’s emotional joy at seeing his son again, I have to admit that my eyes started to well up. In some ways, this almost serves as the true emotional climax of the film, even though everyone fondly remembers “He chose poorly”. Much of this response of mine had more to do with me than the movie. What the Indiana Jones series means to a generation like mine has to be connected with memories of seeing it with one’s father so a scene like this has to be a little bittersweet seeing it now. Just as seeing the new film will feel slightly off because of who I’m not seeing it with. The themes of fathers and sons obviously run through some very famous Lucas productions and I’m not sure there’s another scene about that very thing in any of them which means as much to me as this one does. I’m not going to get into a debate over whether LAST CRUSADE is better than TEMPLE OF DOOM, but it’s a moment like that which makes it more endearing to me. And it’s one of the reasons why I still enjoy seeing it every now and then. Maybe it’s unfortunate that I didn’t stick around for that screening but there’s a small bit of irony in how even the actual movie is saying that such a regret is a pretty minor one in life. After all, sometimes you simply need to let these things go.