Perhaps this is some kind of spoof on movies in which something actually happens. I'd give it a few stars for the Colorado scenery, except all the filming is shakily handheld and so deeply irritating. The horses are quite nice.
Reviews
11 Reviews
The Eternal Strife
(1915)
Slow and stately
18 April 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Britain's first epic film was based on a 17th-century tragic play and said to have been filmed in response to the success of Birth of a Nation, from which it doesn't seem to have learnt much. The stagey acting relies on arms thrust skyward to indicate horror, anger, despair etc. The decor is painted. The pace is mostly slow.
The narrative is a mess: it mostly involves using title cards to say what happens in the next scene, then illustrating it. And yet it still leaves great holes in the plot. What is the jealous Margaret telling King Edward? (Presumably that the man whose marriage she is trying to wreck is a rebel.) What is Richard of Gloucester - the future Richard III - up to, poisoning his brother and then executing a bridegroom and condemning his bride for witchcraft? Just being evil? And why on earth is a defeat in battle for Edward's Yorkists announced, when the film carries right on as if it hasn't happened, with the supposedly defeated Edward still king and the supposedly victorious Lancastrian Matthew Shore fleeing to Flanders?
There are some good visual moments. The aftermath of the two battles - actually the same one, in the same place - shows the defeated, hundreds strong, slithering and sliding down a steep hillside. There's a repeated dynamic camera angle that allows characters to walk toward the camera and exit to the left while remaining in focus (as far as I can tell with a non-HD film 100 years old). There's some highly impressive medieval millinery for the women. And the final sequence, with Jane cast out into a "blizzard", hounded by the crowd, all tinted in blue, is genuinely striking. Alas, with typical disdain for emotional impact, the film has her husband returning to find her but instead of allowing them even an embrace it stops short, in long shot, the second he touches her. The End.
The narrative is a mess: it mostly involves using title cards to say what happens in the next scene, then illustrating it. And yet it still leaves great holes in the plot. What is the jealous Margaret telling King Edward? (Presumably that the man whose marriage she is trying to wreck is a rebel.) What is Richard of Gloucester - the future Richard III - up to, poisoning his brother and then executing a bridegroom and condemning his bride for witchcraft? Just being evil? And why on earth is a defeat in battle for Edward's Yorkists announced, when the film carries right on as if it hasn't happened, with the supposedly defeated Edward still king and the supposedly victorious Lancastrian Matthew Shore fleeing to Flanders?
There are some good visual moments. The aftermath of the two battles - actually the same one, in the same place - shows the defeated, hundreds strong, slithering and sliding down a steep hillside. There's a repeated dynamic camera angle that allows characters to walk toward the camera and exit to the left while remaining in focus (as far as I can tell with a non-HD film 100 years old). There's some highly impressive medieval millinery for the women. And the final sequence, with Jane cast out into a "blizzard", hounded by the crowd, all tinted in blue, is genuinely striking. Alas, with typical disdain for emotional impact, the film has her husband returning to find her but instead of allowing them even an embrace it stops short, in long shot, the second he touches her. The End.
Glückskinder
(1936)
Excellent restoration of a German screwball comedy
14 October 2013
The Murnau institute has fully restored this from several sources. The Coca-Cola poster mentioned by another writer here now seems to feature Wallace Beery, unless my eyes deceive me.
This is very loosely based on It Happened One Night, with a reporter rescuing an heiress (maybe), losing his job over it and fighting with the aid of two friends to get it back while his bride decides getting a divorce is the only way to get them both out of trouble. The lead couple's behaviour sometimes seems a little capricious in order to provide themselves with obstacles to keep the narrative going, but the actors look comfortable in each other's company, their two friends are brightly played, the dialogue rattles along as well as in any Hollywood product of the times, and there's one zany song and dance in a tiny apartment.
This is very loosely based on It Happened One Night, with a reporter rescuing an heiress (maybe), losing his job over it and fighting with the aid of two friends to get it back while his bride decides getting a divorce is the only way to get them both out of trouble. The lead couple's behaviour sometimes seems a little capricious in order to provide themselves with obstacles to keep the narrative going, but the actors look comfortable in each other's company, their two friends are brightly played, the dialogue rattles along as well as in any Hollywood product of the times, and there's one zany song and dance in a tiny apartment.
Carousella
(1966)
Sympathetic Soho strippers
7 December 2011
This comes packaged with "Kim Newman's Guide to the Flipside of British Cinema", an entertaining promotional disc for the BFI's strand of forgotten British cinema on DVD. So you might expect it to be one of those luridly exploitative Mondo Cane-style Soho exposés. Instead, it's a sympathetic documentary about the lives of three strippers - Tina, Julie and Katy - working in the Carousel club in London (which evidently produced the film).
We do get some footage of them doing their acts - mostly consisting of removing clothing to music until their nipples are visible, which now seems exceedingly tame but wasn't then - but far more time is given to their offstage lives. Tina goes out with US sailors to Cambridge; Julie, who's married, plays with her two young children; Katy plans a holiday in Italy with her croupier boyfriend Romano.
Directed by John Irvin - who's still working more than 40 years later and best known for TV's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - it's shot in high-contrast black and white; some of its dialogue is recorded live, but there are voice-overs from the women as well. The Cambridge sequence looks staged, but the rest looks like an authentic record of the rather dodgy Soho of the 1960s, the markets, the alleys, the shops and clubs and gambling establishments. (There's even a seven-second clip of The Who playing "It's All Over Now".)
What's unusual about all this is that it takes the women seriously, gives them their own voice, and doesn't impose the usual moral judgment implying that they're headed for prostitution or worse. On the contrary, they're all in the job because they like the money and they like the work. (Only Julie ponders how she'll have to tell the kids some day.) As a result, the censor banned the film for years, fearful that it would act as a recruiting poster for other young women. It might have, too, because the three are shown as competent and autonomous and entirely normal.
We do get some footage of them doing their acts - mostly consisting of removing clothing to music until their nipples are visible, which now seems exceedingly tame but wasn't then - but far more time is given to their offstage lives. Tina goes out with US sailors to Cambridge; Julie, who's married, plays with her two young children; Katy plans a holiday in Italy with her croupier boyfriend Romano.
Directed by John Irvin - who's still working more than 40 years later and best known for TV's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - it's shot in high-contrast black and white; some of its dialogue is recorded live, but there are voice-overs from the women as well. The Cambridge sequence looks staged, but the rest looks like an authentic record of the rather dodgy Soho of the 1960s, the markets, the alleys, the shops and clubs and gambling establishments. (There's even a seven-second clip of The Who playing "It's All Over Now".)
What's unusual about all this is that it takes the women seriously, gives them their own voice, and doesn't impose the usual moral judgment implying that they're headed for prostitution or worse. On the contrary, they're all in the job because they like the money and they like the work. (Only Julie ponders how she'll have to tell the kids some day.) As a result, the censor banned the film for years, fearful that it would act as a recruiting poster for other young women. It might have, too, because the three are shown as competent and autonomous and entirely normal.
A treat
19 July 2011
I'm not a fan of the sub-Bond comic strip or the camp Losey film, but this is very good indeed. Though it's bookended by the violent assault on the casino, it's mostly a variation on Sheherezade in the Arabian Nights, spinning out tales to buy time and cool the tension - most action films would be ratcheting the tension up, but this is about mind-games rather than bullets. Staden looks like a porcelain doll, with white skin, red lipstick and black hair - very feminine and yet very strong (you don't need bulging muscles for these martial arts, you need balance and a brain). Her stories of experiences with her two mentors could have been schmaltzy but aren't, partly because of the constant edge of danger in the exotic settings. Good work from a cast of actors and director I've never heard of, and all coming in under 80 minutes. Remarkable all round.
Love, Life & Laughter
(1934)
Working gal tells king where his duty lies
7 October 2008
Warning: Spoilers
This turned out to be pretty timely, considering Edward VIII was at the same time having to choose between love and duty. Real life isn't like the movies: Edward chose love; Charles Adolphus IX, with some heavy prodding from Nell, chooses duty. It's probably a class thing: aristocrats are heedless of duty while the working class like Fields are much more aware of their responsibilities (she twice rebukes him for 'breaking his contract') and generally plus royaliste que le roi. But the film insists (the same as Sing as We Go) that although disappointed she'll just shed a quiet tear and get on with life. She sings two sad songs, one - Out in the Cold Cold Snow - as a comic number; the other is done straight but then reprised more humorously. It's as if she has to deflect any real emotion with a wisecrack and a song. What a decent chap she is! And so the hero, still rather spoilt, is won by Norah Howard, an appealingly sweet sad sack, and Gracie gets the money to set up a home for sick girls, all with the same haircut, as a consolation prize. This isn't a great film but it was a hit; its values clearly matched those of its audience.
Hell Is Sold Out
(1951)
postwar problems
16 April 2008
One of those films that dealt - perhaps neither deliberately nor directly - with sorting out the muddle of war, and so a very distant relation of The Return of Martin Guerre as much as The Captive Heart. It was Lom's attempt at playing a romantic hero, and it didn't come off; he's too saturnine and grumpy. But artistically this has an upside, as it leaves us unsure whether the heroine will go for him or the more puppy-like, and more British, Attenborough. Alas, it all needs the Lubitsch touch, or at least the Michael Powell one; instead, it's wobbly in tone, shuffling between romance, comedy, farce and the odd echo of the war (Attenborough has blackouts caused by shrapnel in his head), along with some lame satire of Americans. It isn't bad - and it looks great, with high-contrast mono photography - but it isn't very good either.
Siren of the Tropics
(1927)
souvenir of a unique entertainer
29 December 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Some spoilers
This is now available more or less in full on a Kino DVD. Baker's first film (though it's silent, making do with occasional intertitles); it doesn't quite know what to do with her. She becomes sort of second banana in her own film, much as the Marx Brothers occasionally were - doing their stuff, but secondary to the conventional love stories. She performs her vigorous, loose-limbed dancing in several scenes, in close up and long-shot, and even in silence she has undeniable star quality. She's seen as a child of nature, passionate, honest, comic (there's a long slapstick chase on a steamer when she's alternately black, from hiding in a coal bin, and white, from hiding in flour) and finally self-denying as she leaves the hero she adores to marry his fiancée, kills his scheming rival (where did she learn to handle a gun like that?) dances once more while smiling through her tears, then leaves for the USA. Still, the movie respects her talents; she appears near-naked a couple of times but it's not leering or exploitative; her colour is never an issue; and she gets to do her dances. She's still great.
This is now available more or less in full on a Kino DVD. Baker's first film (though it's silent, making do with occasional intertitles); it doesn't quite know what to do with her. She becomes sort of second banana in her own film, much as the Marx Brothers occasionally were - doing their stuff, but secondary to the conventional love stories. She performs her vigorous, loose-limbed dancing in several scenes, in close up and long-shot, and even in silence she has undeniable star quality. She's seen as a child of nature, passionate, honest, comic (there's a long slapstick chase on a steamer when she's alternately black, from hiding in a coal bin, and white, from hiding in flour) and finally self-denying as she leaves the hero she adores to marry his fiancée, kills his scheming rival (where did she learn to handle a gun like that?) dances once more while smiling through her tears, then leaves for the USA. Still, the movie respects her talents; she appears near-naked a couple of times but it's not leering or exploitative; her colour is never an issue; and she gets to do her dances. She's still great.
Our Daily Bread
(1934)
depression politics
19 October 2004
Politically, this is one of those movies (like High Noon, for instance) that you can read any way you like. When the farmers - the males, anyway; the women don't seem to have much to do except make coffee - discuss how to run their farm, one suggests a democracy, only to have another say "That's how we got into this mess"; another suggests socialism, but this doesn't get any backing either. Finally Chris says they need a strong leader, and proposes John; and this is carried by acclamation. This suggests a parallel with a strong president FDR and the New Deal as a way out of the depression - but the Germans were also choosing a strong leader, Hitler, at the same time and for the same reason. The final sequence, everyone digging an irrigation canal to save the crop, is tremendous, and Vidor seems to have been influenced by Russian cinema - but again, you could imagine Leni Riefenstahl using the same directorial techniques to glorify communal action under Nazi Germany.
Intacto
(2001)
Ana's luck (spoiler)
16 September 2004
Warning: Spoilers
How does Ana lose her luck? She isn't touched like the winner in the casino. She doesn't sell her luck like the captives. Federico just steals her photo. She doesn't even know about it. Doesn't that have extensive implications? If people can just get lucky by taking, or stealing, photos of other people who know nothing about it, what's the point of it all? No need to run through forests or have creepy insects on your head (incidentally, is Tomas cheating by having molasses on his hair?). No need for Russian roulette. All you need is a camera. It also suggests we could all be having our luck stolen, which is kind of silly - we don't believe it so we don't believe the film. Pity, because I did actually enjoy the movie.
Fox Farm
(1922)
Low-key rural drama, movingly acted
25 January 2004
Warning: Spoilers
A farmer for whom pretty much everything goes wrong is blinded while trying to blow up a tree. He's a fatalist, which exasperates his wife but means he's philosophical about it. The half-gypsy girl from down the road moves in as the family maid and reads him passages from Marcus Aurelius (another stoic); but when his dog is killed, he hands the farm over to his wife and her lover and walks off down the lane. The girl follows him...
The blindness, the sort of affliction that must have happened to a lot of men recently (in world war one), isn't fully convincing - he's still able to find his way across country and locate a haystack to sleep in - but what's really striking about this is the landscapes of a lost rural England, and the low-key acting. Silent movies sometimes involve immense histrionics, but Newall and Everest in particular pare their emotions back. No eye-rolling, no shouting; very stiff-upper-lip. The ending, man trudging off, woman silently following, reads like Chaplin, but less convincingly: The Tramp wasn't blind. Where on earth does Jess Falconer think he's going, and what's he going to do? Just as well there's a loving gypsy to help out.
The blindness, the sort of affliction that must have happened to a lot of men recently (in world war one), isn't fully convincing - he's still able to find his way across country and locate a haystack to sleep in - but what's really striking about this is the landscapes of a lost rural England, and the low-key acting. Silent movies sometimes involve immense histrionics, but Newall and Everest in particular pare their emotions back. No eye-rolling, no shouting; very stiff-upper-lip. The ending, man trudging off, woman silently following, reads like Chaplin, but less convincingly: The Tramp wasn't blind. Where on earth does Jess Falconer think he's going, and what's he going to do? Just as well there's a loving gypsy to help out.
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