Flicks
by Chris Dashiell

POSSESSED
(Clarence Brown, 1931)

The Joan Crawford - Clark Gable matchup was bread and butter for Metro in the 30s. This one is about a small-town girl who goes to the city and has an affair with an up-and-coming politician. The first half is quite good. The script (Lenore Coffee, based on an Edgar Selwyn play) has some crackling Depression-era repartee about what it takes to be a success in the big world. There's a beautiful sequence near the beginning where Crawford is looking into the windows of a slowly moving train, the people inside representing everything exciting that she wishes for in her own life. As was common for those days, however, the plot descends to a laughably melodramatic level, with the heroine having to sacrifice herself for the good of her man, and suffer torment for it. Gable's charm is undeniable - at this time his name was still under the title while his co-star got the big letters above it, but this would soon change. I wouldn't call what Crawford does acting exactly - rather, she poses beautifully in her glamorous outfits. She succeeds at what she does best - radiating star charisma. As a whole, not too shabby, if you can ignore the silliness of the film's second half and just enjoy it as a good example of early 30s MGM formula.

HOTEL TERMINUS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KLAUS BARBIE
(Marcel Ophuls, 1988)

A documentary examining the case of Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief in Lyons during the German occupation who was extradited to France from Bolivia in the late 80s and tried both for torture and for sending much of the city's Jewish population to their deaths. The story is appalling enough in its first half, in which Ophuls pieces together, through many interviews, an account of Barbie's crimes in Lyons. It takes an even more disturbing turn when it is shown that American intelligence recruited him after the war, and later arranged his passage to South America, where he became an aide to two different military regimes - actually supervising the torture of prisoners and being involved in arms smuggling, among other things. Ophuls is a mercilessly persistent interviewer. Many of Barbie's colleagues, as well as the American spooks Ophuls persuades into embarrassing revelations on camera, must later have regretted agreeing to talk to him. This film is an extremely valuable document of cruelty, corruption and greedy self-interest, and puts the lie to the idea that the evil represented by Nazism is behind us.

WILD STRAWBERRIES
(Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

An aged professor (Victor Sjostrom) goes on a trip to receive an honorary degree, accompanied by his daughter- in-law (Ingrid Thulin). Along the way, his dreams and reminiscences confront him with the sorrows and failures of his past. He relives the young love that he lost (Bibi Andersson plays the girl in his past, and a hitchhiker that the travelers pick up in the present), his coldness and cruelty in his marriage, and other memories and images which weave through his journey, in which he develops an unexpected bond with his son's wife. Beautifully shot (Gunnar Fischer), with a masterful performance by veteran director Sjostrom, this film is a touchstone for many of Bergman's techniques and concerns. It seemed like something completely new in the world of cinema, for rarely had there been a film whose narrative arc was so completely in the realm of the subjective. The drama of Wild Strawberries lies in the professor's coming to terms with his past and present - and the means by which he does so lie in the symbolic unconscious. The psychological content of dreams, with their obscure and unsettling distortions, had never before been depicted with such boldness. Not everything works - some of the episodes involving people encountered on the journey are not so convincing. But if the film seems less striking today than when it was released, it is partly due to its immense influence on later work, which has made its technique more familiar. This is one of Bergman's most formally unified films. The gentle sadness and reflective quality of this work still retain their power.

THE CRANES ARE FLYING
(Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957)

Once in a great while I stumble onto a little-known gem, a film I have heard mention of, but had little idea of its greatness. This picture was a major hit in Russia, and won the Palme D'Or at Cannes, yet how many in the West have actually seen it? It tells the story of Veronica (Tatiana Samoilova), who must part with her lover Boris (Alexei Batalov) when he joins the army to fight the Germans when they invade in 1941. In his absence she suffers terrible losses, including a cruel seduction by Boris's cousin, a draft dodger. As she evolves from a passionate girl to a woman scarred by tragedy, she clings to the hope of reuniting with her lover.

Kalatozov was one of the innovators in the great period of Soviet silent film in the 20s - a disciple of Vertov. This is evident from the modernist style of The Cranes Are Flying. The picture employs an amazingly fluid and exciting technique - brilliant camera placement and movement, crane shots, hand-held shots, superimposition, dynamic use of sound and music - a style that weds formal beauty with deep emotion. Although it is hard to single out just one scene, I must mention a sequence in which a soldier who has just been shot sees, not his whole life passing before his eyes, but everything that could have happened, should have happened, in his future - a sequence which is executed with such perfect unity of music and montage, with such devastating, poignant effect, that I can literally never forget it.

This film has all the polish of an American studio film combined with the inventiveness of the emerging new waves in world cinema. But what makes it even more special is that, unlike most movies in which a flamboyant style is employed, the form is in the service of a story which is utterly romantic, and I mean that in the best sense of the word. This film revels in the most profound joys and sorrows of the heart, the hardest lessons of life, the deepest nostalgia for what is lost, and the greatest bonds of feeling between people. Its power is aided immeasurably by the performance of the beautiful Samoilova (Stanislavsky's great-niece), who is hypnotizing in a way that I can only compare to the classic star performances of old Hollywood. It is not perfect - what movie is? Sometimes the style is too much, almost overwhelming the plot. Sometimes the story makes its point too patly. But it's a work of rare intensity and compassion. When it was released in the Soviet Union, it caused an outpouring of emotion - audiences wept uncontrollably. The grief over the incalculable losses of the war - millions dead, millions more lives shattered forever - had up until then been smothered in the Russian cinema by the Stalinist "aesthetics" of patriotic glory. Now, finally, the flood was loosed. It was also the first time that realities such as draft dodging, war profiteering and the black market had been acknowledged in a Soviet film.

The Cranes Are Flying has now joined my list of all-time favorites. I know that it is unlikely that this movie will show up on the shelves of your average video store. So if you do happen to spot it, I urge you to rent it right away. You may experience, as I did, a revelation.

Chris Dashiell