Change Your Image
francois-massarelli
Reviews
The Others (2001)
Coming to terms with one's death: Amenabar's the Others
The third of Amenabar's features is both the most academic and the most intriguing of this trilogy of the macabre. Before next step, the critically-acclaimed Mar Adentro, the three films were a comment about death, in one form or the other. The Others tells of a family, settled in post-war Jersey, consisting of Grace(Nicole Kidman) and her two children. They were abandoned by all: the domestics have gone, the husband went to the war and never came back, and the whole island seems to be deserted, apart from three servants who one day present themselves at the door, and a strange, ghostly presence in the house... Thus taking the shape of a very classic ghost story, with plenty of creepy scenes, based on an interestingly spooky setting, the film is a success thanks to the incredible sense of timing of all concerned, Director-writer-composer Amenabar first of all, since he manages to direct his 7-or-so actors as if they were puppets while allowing them to use their talent in the construction of lovable, believable characters. This last effort is probably the most rewarding of all, since one of the most annoying drawbacks of Amenabar's Open Your Eyes, his previous effort, was the incapacity of both the director and the actor(Eduardo Noriega) to make the character sympathetic, or just nice(the same could be said, however, of Tom Cruise's over-the-top characterization in the remake by Cameron Crowe)... But despite Nicole Kidman's efforts to render Grace neurotic, obsessive, authoritarian and narrow-minded, we still care for her. She has, after all, good reasons to her behavior: her children live, and share with her, an incredible everyday hell, suffering from an incurable disease making them allergic to daylight: this is the source of multiple compulsory tasks: opening doors, closing curtains, lighting candles, that are repeated throughout the film by the main character so as to avoid contact of her children and too much light... No wonder she got to be on the edge. Besides, we learn at one point how mad she got prior to the beginning of the plot, and her killing her children and shooting herself becomes almost understandable. Another important innovation over the previous effort is the confrontation of Kidman with Fionnula Flanagan as Mrs Mills, who steals the show more than once with her mineral presence and her masterful acting that makes her both lovable and mysterious. Add to this the very solid composition by Alakina Mann as Ann, Grace's daughter, and we have a very engaging cast, that contributes significantly to the success of the film. The entire plot revolves around the final discovery that the three characters are ghosts, and the presence they felt in the house(The Others)is that of the living, not of the dead. This idea allows Amenabar to toy with an Innocents-like mood all the way through, going as far as to quote one of the most frightening moments of Clayton's film around the end, when three ghosts approach a window. This shot, by the way, is also reminiscent of a famous sequence in Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire(1936), thus we can safely think that the young Spanish master knows his history of Creepy Classics... But the most satisfactory aspect of this film, in spite of its very entertaining use of mystery and the author's mastery of direction, writing AND music, making Amenabar the full author of the film, is certainly first the way he deals with his favorite theme, having Grace slowly, but surely dealing with her own death and that of her children and accepting the fact as relief, thus going one step further than Cesar in Open your Eyes; and secondly, of course, the parallel that the viewer can establish between Grace's obsessive Catholicism and Amenabar's identity as a Spanish author, who grew up in an obsessively catholic environment. This can't be a coincidence, and Amenabar's wit(Grace, about the book of the dead: "How could these people be so superstitious?")shows he has probably come to terms with what might be part of an identity crisis. Again, the torment of Cesar, in Open..., had him begin to realize he was in such a crisis; so The Others really cleared the way for Almenabar's next step, Mar Adentro, the film that looks death in the eyes.
Celles qui s'en font (1930)
Musical essay
This short film by Germaine Dulac is a mystery: generally the date given is 1928, but many historians simply forget to even mention the film at all... Now the mystery can be lifted, since it was released as part of a French DVD(Retour de flamme, by Serge Bromberg's Lobster films) compiling restored shorts and cartoons, and transferred complete with the authentic original musical accompaniment, revealing that the film was in fact intended as an illustration of a song(The title of the film), which was in fact 3 minutes long, and which was recorded in 1930, which is obviously the accurate date for the film as well. It is, as usual with Mrs Dulac, highly impressionistic, whatever that means. Consider it as an early clip, in a gloomy, Frenchly poetic style.
The River (1928)
Diary of a seduction
One cannot be satisfied with this film in its current form; reduced to 45 minutes, deprived of the beginning of the plot and of its end, it will always be frustrating until a print resurfaces which might take us through the missing footage. And yet... miraculously, the scenes preserved are (probably, one has to be cautious) the highlights of the films, the moments which Frank Borzage has taken special care to shoot, and probably those which really interested him: the conscious, blatant seduction of Allen John by Rosalee, her resorting to her own sex appeal to convince him to sleep with her(Put your hand on my heart, Allen John); the meeting between a brooding Rosalee and a naked, swimming Allen John, foreshadowing the much-commented-upon climax of the present version: Rosalee saves Allen John from freezing to death by offering him her warmth: she covers his naked body with her(silk-gowned) shapes, and revives him instantly. Funnily, this sequence has always been the basis for fantasy on the part of French historians after George Sadoul, who saw it in 1929, reported that Mary Duncan was naked. Contrary to other classics from Borzage's late 20s Fox period, this does not feature Janet Gaynor, but the duet Farrell/Duncan: hence a more frankly sensual relationship, which the short version emphasizes by actually eliminating all the other aspects of the plot. Borzage uses Duncan very effectively, by stressing the contrast between her experienced personality and the more childish, naive enthusiasm of Charles Farrell's Allen John. The moment when Rosalee welcomes him home in a winter night, only to find him taking a board game and proposing "entertainment", and the ensuing gesture of Rosalee, sweeping of the board with her hand clearly expecting Allen John to invite her to more entertaining situations, could have been plain ridiculous; but the frank gaze of the actress, the way she lets herself go on the bed, and the sudden realization by Farrell of the situation he is in(He trembles, mouth open , eyes fixed on the woman in front of him; What can he do? What is she doing? Farrell is brilliant here.), all make for a very memorable scene. As usual with Frank Borzage, once they have been together for a few days, a man and a woman actually discover how attracted to each other they've grown. The sensual, or sexual tension is part of Borzage's treatment of a love affair, one that goes beyond reason. But here, contrary to Seventh Heaven or A Man's Castle, the woman leads, with authority. Duncan was the antithesis of Gaynor in that matter. So, until we discover more from this film, with or without sound(It was issued as a part-talkie. None of the sound scenes survive.), this almost entirely satisfactory sketch of seduction by the man who gave us Seventh Heaven, Lucky Star or The Mortal storm is worth unlimited, repeated viewing.
7th Heaven (1927)
Chico, Diane, Heaven
Some films are brilliant. Others are fine. This one is beyond category. Like Murnau's Sunrise, for instance, or Sjöström's The Wind, it is amazingly impossible to describe without going over the top. Especially since it concerns what the French Surrealistes dubbed "L'Amour Fou", the love that goes beyond reason, beyond society barriers, beyond the capacity to back down, and involves the story of a man(Charles Farrell) and a woman(Janet Gaynor) who discover passion through co-existing, and eventually meet up after one of them actually dies. Or does he?
Beginning inauspiciously in a reconstructed, Dickensian Paris, the adventures of Chico and Diane start by an encounter, and in a scene that is paralleled by other Borzage films(A Man's Castle, Mannequin, Street Angel)has the man sheltering the woman at his home on the roofs to protect her both from prostitution and her family; This type of cohabitation is often the key to Borzage's love affairs in his melodramas, as if it was necessary to cohabit before discovering a connection between two people; at Chico's, they will co-exist, and fall in love, and even(As in Man's Castle and The Mortal storm)resort to a mock marriage before being separated by war: the necessity of fashioning a sacred link will elevate their love further. Chico is drafted into the French ranks; all the ensuing days though, they will "communicate" by taking an 11 o'clock break in whatever they're doing, in order to be reunited in thought, until one day Chico does not answer Diane's message. After a period of despair, Diane is ready to give him up, but as the war finishes, Chico unexpectedly returns: Borzage shows him in the street, blinded by a wound, but transfigured by love, walking through the cheers and congratulations of the people around him, as if both born again from the atmosphere of joy and indifferent to it, since his only goal is to see Diane again, to reach her before she stops believing in him. As the two lovers reunite they are all alone, in Seventh Heaven. This "ascension" motif is echoed in a surprisingly effective way by the fact that Chico works in the sewers when he rescues Diane(She is figuratively speaking "in the gutter" herself)and lives just under the roofs, where he can see the stars; thus we are foretold what the movement will be; Borzage had a set built to allow the vertical use of a camera in order to shoot the ascension of the stairways in one take. Another sign of the times is the expressionistic depiction of war by Borzage (Who will repeat the device in Lucky star two years later) war, seen in this film, is mud, explosions, sweat and fear, with no . It is a world entirely deprived of realism, but more simply it's a world that neither Chico nor Diane want to acknowledge. Apart from being very close to Murnau's experiments in stylization(Faust, Tartuff, Sunrise, The last Laugh), it is also a significant departure, on the part of an American director, from the realism of war as it was seen in The Big Parade(Vidor, 1925) or Wings(Wellman)the same year. Ford would partially repeat the move in his "Four Sons" in 1928 for... Fox. As everything in the film, war is a mental place, hence the possibility of escaping it mentally at a given time, or even simply an annoying obstacle between Chico and Diane, just as the notion of duty(Chico's duty as a soldier keeps him far away from his lover), or morals(If they submitted to the moral standards of their day, Chico would never offer Diane any shelter, let alone permanent accommodation, not even with a fake wedding): what we see in this film is desire elevated to the point of becoming a conduct. Chico desires Diane, or to be with Diane so much that he resuscitates. War, social conventions, death, nothing can stand in the way.
Seventh Heaven is at first glance very usual melodramatic fare, but enhanced by the impressive skill of director Frank Borzage on the one hand, and also benefiting on the other hand very much from the rivalry of Murnau's Sunrise, that was also shot at the Fox Studios at the time. Everybody at Fox was invited to see what Murnau was doing, and the dailies provoked many a vocation. Ford, for instance, never recovered from seeing these images. Seventh Heaven is probably the first film having benefited directly from Murnau's influence, and it is a blessing that Borzage, without topping Murnau's effort, was able to almost equal it, by refusing to compromise by tampering with the lack of logic of the plot, or by allowing his two actors(Gaynor and Farrell, brilliant as ever together)free reign in the expression of their emotions, as suggested by the very genre of the film: Borzage's infamous tendency to weep on the shooting of his films is reported to have always been a key element of his direction on such films as this or his powerful MGM melodramas of the late 30s.
To sum up, these twelve reels are an emotional experience, like the aforementioned masterpieces, and decidedly a key film from an exceptional period in the history of cinema.
The Mysterious Lady (1928)
The best of Fred Niblo
This is to my mind the most brilliant of all of Garbo's silent films, and I never fully understood the attitude of most critics who simply dismiss it on the account of the Divine Woman's own lack of care for this particular entry. True, she did not like just doing this film, and true, Mauritz Stiller was actually dying while she was shooting this, therefore, we can understand that she thought poorly of it; yet this was shot at the peak of silent film-making, in 1928, and never before had Fred Niblo been so good, never had his full command of the motion picture been so obvious. All through the film, the direction is superb, subdued and subtle, while the gorgeous settings, MGM's trademark, are lit and photographed at their best. Niblo makes the best of his composition skills, with or without Garbo in the shots, and the way he deals with the extras, putting the stars in the distance, swallowed by the crowd, is clearly an innovation for 1928; his use of a few, but decisive shots based on a moving camera proves that, like the European imports(Murnau, Leni, Fejos, Christensen) or like his fellow Americans (Ford, Borzage,Wellman), he was aware of the German experiments. Of course, the spy story is not the source of any intellect-expanding masterpiece, but, hey, this is a stylish and entertaining film that foreshadows some of Hitchcpock's best British films of the decade to come. And Niblo even handles suspense in a remarkable way in the last five minutes. The edition id remarkable, the print being a bit worn but still clear; and an emasculating restoration has been avoided, retaining thus the crystal-clear, crisp quality of William Daniel's photography. And to conclude, a question about Garbo: who else on earth could wear these dresses and get away with it?
Le pompier des Folies Bergères (1928)
incredible
Released on a French anthology DVD as part of the "Retour de Flamme" series, this is the most(Choose an adjective)film I have ever seen; anonymously directed, though a few people actually credit it to Luis Bunuel, the purpose of this short seems to be to provide advertisement of some sort for the Folies-Bergères theater, where in 1928 as in 2006 girls danced in the nude on stage; the fireman of the title is so excited by the spectacle that he mentally strips every woman he crosses path with, and sometimes even men: a priest, but also a full regiment(Hence the dubious Bunuel credit, no doubt); and the film is JUST THAT: endless, surreal, tasteless and blatant exposure of breasts and other body parts, with one small exception: Josephine Baker herself has the right to keep a bra on, as her image from a poster comes to life and spins the poor fireman's head a little further towards insanity.
The Circle (1925)
Early Borzage
Two years before his big break at Fox with Seventh Heaven, Borzage was one of the few directors who had a trial run at the newly-formed MGM. And just as the others(Benjamin Christensen, Josef VonSternberg, Dmitri Buchowetzki)he was more or less fired after more or less completing a picture, which was assigned to him by his bosses. This is adapted from a successful play, which might be surprising for a silent, although it was not rare, and it features the improbable Creighton Hale as the hero of a multi-layered love triangle: on the day she might flee with the family's best friend, the wife of a boring but wealthy man(Hale) invites her mother-in-law, who fled with her husband's best friend 30 years ago, to come back to the family castle, in order to ask her if her own intention is worthwhile. Although she looks 50 years older(As does her beau)the mother somewhat convinces the young woman, who flees, but... the husband catches her back. This was meant to be comedy, and it is not very good as such, but the interest is of course the possibility to see the future director of Seventh Heaven or Lucky Star deal with the theme of love and its consequences and inject his own treatment of love matters into this brew. It is clear from the outset that, although it is meant to be a comedy, the passion elements are treated seriously, and the dilemma is all the more remarkable that we never feel the heroine's intention to commit adultery and escape her husband as a sin. We are in Borzageland, the country in which love has all the power. So, however flawed, this little film is worth a viewing, considering that the man who directed it would very soon become a genius.
L'uomo meccanico (1921)
The first science fiction film
The improbably famous André Deed, known mainly for his farcical character of Boireau(in French) or Cretinetti(in Italian)in split-reel comedies in 1910, became a director once the craze for silly burlesque film had died away and led to the more artistic wave of feature-length works that most European filmmakers were prone to create during the teens. He was, in Italy mostly, considered as a Melies-influenced artist and it is very easy to speculate, imagine or fancy anything about his films since they are all, or most of all, lost. So the DVD edition of the Mechanical Man comes as a very interesting treat for any historian, any science fiction fan, or even any person interested in the silent film, even if it is in a much truncated form. Once the viewer gets accustomed to the poor quality of the transfer, and to the fact that 55 minutes of the work are now gone forever, what stands out is the incredible uniqueness of the film: it starts(in the current form) as any proper serial would do, with suspense, a criminal fire, a daring escape, masks and chases... then we move to the romantic subplot, involving an awkward and rather self-consciously Ugly Deed, who can't pass for a Valentino, nor a Fairbanks. We are directed next to scenes in which the robot is introduced, triggering much Nosferatu-like suspense(To protect themselves against the giant robot, the characters close doors behind them, and feel safe, but they-and we-all know that the robot will keep on moving forward and of course will dispose of the door in his own sweet way, rendering any action against him useless)and the finale is very much in the somewhat excitingly scary mold of a Méliès-meets-Feuillade-meets-L'Herbier type of work: dazzlingly original, eccentric, suspenseful and highly visual. At the end, the heroes learn of the identity of the villain: she is one of the supposed victims of the robot, and the director has so blatantly stripped and exposed her in the last robot scenes that we feel her true identity was probably the only missing piece of the puzzle as far as she was concerned... this erotic undercurrent is one of the bases for the artwork for posters that were long the only extant material concerning this film. 3 years before Aelita, 6 before Metropolis, this film invents a typically European science fiction and does so with such vitality , fun and pace that the vision of this museum artifact, however painful the prints makes it, is really a pleasant experience.
Sons of Liberty (1939)
surprising short
However minor this sort subject is, one cannot fail to notice that, given the date of conception and release, the subject matter(Reminding the general American public of the Jewish contribution to the Independence of the Nation through the portrayal of Haym Solomon)and the direction entrusted to the care of Michael Curtiz rather than, say B. Reeves Eason or Don Siegel, this is not just another short. Warners, at the time, peppered their films(the Sea Hawk is a good example) with allusions to the imminent conflict and this might have been a naive, but very dignified attempt at preparing the American moviegoer of 1939 to the inevitable moment when a decision would have to be taken. Anyway, it is also very much a Michael Curtiz film, even clocking at twenty minutes; Claude Rains is rather good, a bit solemn at times, but the subject demands it; the use of color is quite impressive, but not surprising for a director who experimented with it as early as 1932(Doctor X) and 1933(Mystery of the Wax Museum)and his trademark use of shadows is also present. A theme present in many Curtiz features finds its way in this tiny two-reeler, with Solomon having to make a choice, take sides and leave his mark in history, like Rick and Captain Renault in Casablanca, or Captain Blood... So, although minor, this is pretty much a typical Curtiz Warner film... to be found on DVD alongside a brilliant(But much funnier)film, the 1939 Curtiz/Flynn western Dodge City... not bad indeed.
Crazy Like a Fox (1926)
Not politically correct, but who cares? A brilliant short!
This hilarious Charley Chase two-reeler is probably, alongside Safety Last, or The General, among the best of American silent comedies; forget the fact that it's only 25 minutes long, it is constantly brilliant, from the sheer simplicity of the construction(Charley decides to pass as an extreme mental patient to escape a marriage arrangement until he realizes the bride is the woman of his dreams)to the clarity of the gags involved, notwithstanding the contribution of Chase as an actor, who is of course so dignified, so dapper at the beginning that he falls deep into his pretense of madness, and seems to really enjoy the trip all along. Add to this the wonderful, brilliant and lovely Martha Sleeper, who was always Chase's equal in the films they made together, the presence of Oliver Hardy in an interesting departure from his usually 'heavy' roles, the impeccable direction by Leo McCarey, and you have a little masterpiece of invention that stands repeated viewings, like most of, say, Laurel and Hardy's masterpieces of the late twenties.
La merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d'Arc (1929)
A neglected gem from 1928
An impressive film, but obviously it was cursed from the beginning: it was planned(1927) as a rival production of Dreyer's masterpiece, but due to delays and to the fact that such a shooting could only take a huge amount of time and money, allowing many of its stars(Philippe Hériat or Gaston Modot, for instance) to fool around with other productions in between takes and shooting days, it was only released after the Passion, in late 1928. The result is of course that not only Dreyer's film was chronologically first, but today it is also generally regarded as the best of both Joan Of Arc movies from late 20s France. De Gastyne's film also suffered from the crisis in the French Cinema of the late twenties, in France,which would prove problematic for Feyder, Gance, Renoir, L'Herbier, and even Dreyer's Joan! This epic, however, is a surprise; Simone Genevois is not Falconetti, but she brings to the role the necessary kindness and the soft determination of young Joan. The settings and the general historical feeling are quite convincing as well, and this is in large part due to the skill of the actors. Like Fairbanks or Chaney, Modot, Hériat have faces and bodies that make them look good in a borrowed costume; they look authentic, and the same could be said about the settings, never expressionistic or suggested, on the contrary of Dreyer's film, they contribute to giving a nice period feel. The restoration, by Renée Lichtig, was made from various prints, including 9.5mm material, that could have been provided by Kevin Brownlow; given that the latter has always been rather enthusiastic about the film, I think he would certainly have agreed to contribute on such a project. To conclude, this film is highly recommended... if you can track it!