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Other Dashiell Writings:
Flicks - December
Robinson Crusoe (1954)
Blind Husbands
Trust (1990)
Ulysses' Gaze
The Parson's Widow
Forsaken
The Orphanage
4 Months, 3 Weeks,
and 2 Days
Knee-Deep
in
the Big Maudit
A Film Snob's
Favorites of '07
Blood
for Oil
There Will Be Blood
Flicks
- September
The Childhood
of Maxim Gorky
Great Expectations (1946)
I Married a Witch
Seven Men From Now
Visages D'Enfant
Wild
Man
Into the Wild
Eastern
Promises
No
End in Sight
The
Mind is
a Terrible Thing
Inland Empire
Flicks
- June
The War Game (1965)
Big Deal on Madonna Street
The General Died at Dawn
Yolanda and the Thief
Anthology of Surreal Cinema
Nowhere
to Run
Black Book (2006)
Mafioso
Flicks - March
Julius Caesar (1953)
Man on the Tracks
Miss Julie (1951)
Twelve O'Clock High
Dishonored (1931)
The
Big Picture
Zodiac (2007)
Armies
of Night
Army of Shadows
The Lives of Others
Flicks - December 2006
The Blue Bird (1918)
Raw Deal (1948)
Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Crane World
Tumbleweeds (1925)
Apocalypso
Dreams
A Film Snob's
Favorites of '06
Men
& Children
Children of Men
Cave of the Yellow Dog
Flicks
October 2006
Quentin Durward (1955)
Méliès the Magician
Wisconsin Death Trip
Early Summer
Le Beau Serge
Lucid
Dreaming
The Science of Sleep
Old Joy
Mutual
Appreciation
plus: This Film Is
Not Yet Rated
Flicks
- August 2006
"G" Men
College (1927)
Sunday Daughters
Thérèse (1986)
Two Seconds
Magic
Tricks
Room (2005)
The Illusionist (2006)
Flicks-
June 2006
The Seventh Seal
Criss Cross (1949)
Now, Voyager (1942)
White Nights (1957)
Platform (2000)
A
Scanner Darkly
Darkness
on the
Edge of Town
Twelve and Holding
Lemming
Flicks
- April 2006
Under the Sun of Satan
Life is Sweet (1990)
Noah's Ark (1928)
The Miracle Woman
Let's Go With Pancho Villa
Sophie
Scholl: the Final Days
The
President's Last Bang
Darwin's
Nightmare
Flicks
- February 2006
Stray Dog (1949)
A Generation
Regeneration (1915)
Viva Villa! (1934)
Hearts and Minds (1974)
Why
We Fight
Since
Otar Left...
plus: Ballets Russes
Flicks
- December 2005
Dames (1934)
Bay of Angels
No Fear, No Die
Foreign Correspondent (1940)
The Citadel (1938)
Signs
and Wonders
A Film Snob's Favorites of '05
The
Passenger (1975)
The
Squid and the Whale
plus Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque
Flicks
- October 2005
The More the Merrier (1943)
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Die Nibelungen (1924)
Salvatore Giuliano
The Cameraman (1928)
Capote
Good
Night, and Good Luck
plus Tony Takitani
Flicks
- August 2005
Slacker
Salt of the Earth (1954)
7 Plus Seven
Alias "La Gringa"
Poor Cow
A
History of Violence
(2005)
Winter
Soldier
End
Times
Last Days (2005)
Crash (2004)
Flicks
- July 2005
Purple Noon
Drums Along the Mohawk
The Band Wagon
Red Sorghum
The Marquise of O. (1976)
Howl's
Moving Castle
The
Holy Girl
Flicks
- June 2005
The Hours and Times
María Candelaria
The Last Picture Show
A Woman Rebels
Stromboli
Exile
and Exhiliration
Head-On
Mad Hot Ballroom
Kings
and Queen
Flicks-May
2005
Paragraph 175
Casque d'Or
Storm Over Asia (1928)
The Swimmer (1968)
Green Fields (1937)
Pirates
& Parrots
Enron: The Smartest Guys
in the Room
The Wild Parrots
of Telegraph Hill
Flicks-April
2005
Late Chrysanthemums
Footlight Parade
Imitation of Life (1934)
Spirit of My Mother
They Call It Sin
And
a Child Shall Lead Them
Turtles Can Fly
Oldboy
Flicks
- March 2005
The Fire Within (1963)
A Brief Vacation
Merry-Go-Round (1923)
Torch Singer
I Am Cuba
Moolaadé
Flicks
- February 2005
Five Star Final
Camera Buff
Gervaise
Underworld (1929)
Bachelor Mother (1939)
Notre
Musique
Flicks - January
2005
The Trial (1962)
Seven Up! (1964)
The Long Day Closes
Scenes From a Marriage
The Squaw Man (1914)
In
Search of Silver Linings
Good films for a bad year
Flicks
- December 2004
Traffic in Souls (1913)
Brute Force (1947)
I Married a Dead Man
Fires on the Plain
The Gunfighter (1950)
Identity
Theft
Infernal Affairs
Being Julia
Sideways
Flicks
- November 2004
Quilombo
Wild Boys of the Road
A Woman Under
the Influence
Close Up (1990)
I Know Where I'm Going!
(1945)
The
Bookshelf
Silent Film, Part 2
It's
Geek To Me
Primer
End of the Century
The
Flicks Archives |
APPLAUSE (Rouben Mamoulian, 1929).
Burlesque star Kitty Darling (Helen Morgan) sends her daughter April
to a convent to protect her from her sordid life. When the adult April
(Joan Peers) eventually returns, she finds that her mother is an alcoholic
mess who submits to abuse at the hands of her boyfriend Hitch (Fuller
Mellish, Jr.) Hitch has designs on April, but she hopes to escape the
life with a sweet young sailor (Henry Wadsworth).
The script was adapted by Garrett Fort from a popular novel. The acting
tends to be too broad, and the mixture of sentimentality and melodrama
is unappealing. The film is dated, yet it was highly innovative for
its time, a milestone in the development of talking pictures. Mamoulian
was a well-regarded stage director hired by Paramount, and this was
his first film. The talkies were limited by cameras installed in sound-proof
booths, and live recording with clumsy, stationary microphones. After
a brief struggle with skeptical studio technicians, Mamoulian introduced
the idea of multiple microphones to record separate tracks, and then
mixing them together later. Post-synchronization freed up the camera
again, which meant that Applause had more fluid movement and
better sound than any talkie before.
Instead of the static and stagy set-ups common in ’29, the film
opens with movement on a city street, then goes inside the burlesque
house for a long show sequence that draws the audience in with song
and movement. It was the beginning of a workable sound film style.
Helen Morgan was a major stage actress who only made a few movies, and
this is the one she’s most remembered for. It’s hard to
believe in her pathetic character, but she certainly gives it all she’s
got. Applause has lost whatever sparkle it may have had, but
its pioneering technique makes it of interest to students of film history.
Embarrassing un-PC moment: April is getting to know her boyfriend Tony
and he says that he doesn’t like his own name because “it
sounds like a wop bootblack.” Oh my.
DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (Julie Dash, 1991).
In the early 20th century, a tiny black community lives, as it has for
decades, on one of the Gullah Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia.
Former slaves who stayed after the masters left, they’ve developed
their own special Gullah patois, a mixture of English vocabulary and
West African grammar, and have remained relatively independent from
the white mainland. This is the world of Daughters of the Dust,
but we only discover it piecemeal, as if we awoke in the midst of this
insulated culture and had to feel our way around.
The style is radically impressionistic—the events are presented
as if through the haze of memory, with enigmatic encounters and conversations
taking place in an atmosphere of languid contemplation. In the beginning,
some people arrive on the island in a small boat. Two of them are former
residents: Viola (Cheryl Lynn Bruce), who has converted from the old
African religion to Christianity, and “Yellow Mary” (Barbara
O.) who is returning from Cuba with a female lover and is regarded with
suspicion by the island community as a dangerous, sexually loose woman.
Three generations of women on the island are represented by the matriarch
Nana (Cora Lee Day) who believes in the traditional ways, the stern
and resentful Aunt Haagar (Kaycee Moore), and Nana’s granddaughter
Eula (Alva Rogers) who is pregnant, and her husband is not the father.
There are lots of other characters too, including Haagar’s daughter
Iona (Bahni Turpin), who is in love with a Cherokee man.
The society is distinctly matriarchal, and the women—as the title
indicates—are the film’s focus. Viola has come to urge the
family to leave the island and seek a better life up north. Nana insists
on staying and living the traditional way. This subdued conflict, which
only occasionally flares up into argument, is the background for a series
of very casual interactions and musings that at times seem almost dreamlike.
At the center of things is Yellow Mary, who glides defiantly and with
blissful indifference past the disapproving eyes of the island residents,
with the conflicted and bewildered Eulah seemingly the only one attracted
to her independence. The film’s narrator, one gradually realizes,
is Eulah’s unborn child, relating events that she was told about
years later.
The dialect is sometimes difficult to understand, and the film’s
less than stellar sound quality doesn’t help—this was a
shoestring operation, the first feature directed by an African American
woman, an independent film that gained its reputation solely through
word-of-mouth. In addition, one might find oneself looking for shape
in the narrative where there is none. Dash’s eccentric style is
wholly deliberate. The idea is to let the characters and events impress
themselves subliminally rather than through the usual linear channels.
The approach gradually grew on me—the strangeness of this hermetic
island culture soaks itself into one’s mind like a mood or a fragment
of an old melody. In the end, some people leave and some stay, and the
viewer has experienced a different place, and a different way of thinking.
THE NUN (Jacques Rivette, 1966).
Suzanne Simonin (Anna Karina) is forced into being a nun by her parents
because, as she discovers, she is illegitimate—a product of an
adulterous affair by her mother—and her mother’s husband
therefore favors his other children and won’t provide for her.
Unfortunately, the girl does not want the religious life, does not “hear
the call,” and at first refuses to take the vows. When she finally
succumbs to parental and societal pressure, she is so overcome with
despair and confusion during the ceremony that she can’t even
remember what happened. Her career as a nun takes a long and painful
course—her first Mother Superior is compassionate, but she dies
and her replacement (Francine Bergé) is a vindictive persecutor.
Through a courageous appeal, Suzanne manages to be transferred to another
convent, this time under an eccentric nun (Liselotte Pulver) whose overindulgence
of Suzanne is a cover for a feverish sexual attraction.
Rivette had directed the Jean Grault stage adaptation of Diderot’s
novel, with Karina in the lead. For the most part, the film is scrupulously
faithful to its 18th century source, restrained in its style, and straightforward
in its basic structure. The picture is composed almost exclusively of
medium shots—a clever way of lending an old-world flavor to the
story, since we are not distracted by the usual “cinematic”
touches associated with the close-up or rapid montage. Karina’s
intelligent performance lets us view the inward struggle of her character’s
sense of justice with the demands made on her, and she radiates a basic,
believable sense of purity and innocence.
Diderot was of course one of the foremost exponents of the Enlightenment,
and a truly great French author, yet the Church, as if three centuries
had not elapsed, still mounted a campaign against the film and it ended
up being banned by the government. The ensuing public controversy guaranteed
that the picture would be a hit when it was finally released a year
later. Neither Diderot’s novel nor the film is in fact anti-Catholic
or antireligious; they merely show the destructive effects of monasticism
when it is established as a social institution rather than a purely
religious one. With women being forced into a life they did not choose,
corruptions of one sort or another inevitably result.
The only innovation made to the original story is in the finale. The
novel is open-ended, but Grault and Rivette have crafted a tragic conclusion
which draws parallels between the servitude of the nunnery and the subjection
of women in the society at large. I found it quite effective.
WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS
(Mikio Naruse, 1960).
Keiko (Hideko Takamine) is a widowed bar hostess in Toyko, a job that
involves providing company to the bar’s male clients, some of
them married yet lonely. She supervises all the younger hostesses and
is thus nicknamed “Mama.” As she approaches the age of thirty,
her options are to either buy her own bar or try to get married. A younger
former employee has purchased her own place with apparent success, and
that’s what Mama is inclined to do, but her troubled family is
constantly pressuring her for money, and there are a few customers whom
she hopes might release her through marriage from what seems to be an
increasingly dead-end occupation.
I find it puzzling that Naruse didn’t become more well known in
the West. His films are honest, complex, and mature, done in a very
modern, forward-looking style. Here, with apparent ease, he invites
the viewer into the unusual realm of Tokyo’s Ginza district with
its many bars, making an elliptical approach through several characters
and situations before we finally get to know our main character, played
with remarkable grace and intelligence by Takamine, Naruse’s favorite
actress, who had already done nine films with him and would do seven
more. The marvelous screenplay, with its careful interweaving of multiple
characters around a central theme, was by Ryuzo Kikushima, who scripted
many of Kurosawa’s best films. The widescreen black-and-white
photography (Masao Tamai) is exquisite. This is an exemplary production
in every way, not a tearjerker but a multi-layered drama, measured in
tone and covering a wide range of feeling and insight as embodied in
its lead character, and reflecting the restricted choices faced by Japanese
women.
Mama, like all the hostesses, is required to navigate the numerous and
conflicting desires of men in order to survive. When the wealthier ones
start frequenting her younger rival’s establishment, it’s
a warning that her charm may be diminishing and her time running out.
One rich man wants her as his mistress; she prefers another one (Masayuki
Mori) as a possible husband, but she feels conflicted because of loyalty
to the memory of her late husband. Another prospect (Daisuke Katô),
shy and homely, seems intent on a proposal. Add to the mix the bar manager
(Tatsuya Nakadai) who is secretly in love with Mama, and a saucy younger
hostess (Reiko Dan) who finds her own way to get ahead, and you have
an intriguing story presented with subtle artistry. In one decisive
moment, Naruse uses a child circling around aimlessly on a tricycle
to underline a moment of shock and the collapse of hope. Our main character,
however, does not collapse, but continues her life with quiet courage
and resilience.
ALIBI (Roland West, 1929).
A police sergeant is appalled when his daughter Joan (Eleanore Griffith)
announces that she has married Chick Williams (Chester Morris), an ex-convict
who claims to be reformed. Later, when a cop is murdered during a robbery,
Joan provides an alibi for her husband. The police then use a spy (Regis
Toomey) to infiltrate Chick’s gang disguised as a drunk in order
to find out the truth.
The acting is generally stilted and stagy, in the manner of early talkies.
However, the story was more shocking and brutal than any previous American
crime film, setting the stage for later gangster classics such as Scarface
and Public
Enemy. Like most groundbreaking examples of popular
genres, it has become outdated, losing the power to captivate an audience
well inured to the form.
What remains of interest is Roland West’s expressionist style.
He made his name in the silent era doing innovative horror films, and
he was greatly influenced by the bold techniques of German directors
like Murnau and E.A. Dupont. This is evident in Alibi’s
bravura opening, where a series of wordless shots, including a club
beating on prison bars followed by the opening of cell doors and the
emergence of marching inmates, leads to the release of Chick Williams
from prison. Throughout the film West uses shadow, distorted camera
angles, and art deco set design (William Cameron Menzies was art director)
to create abstract visual effects. He also employs the interesting device
of going back in time to show the crime scene again, this time revealing
what really happened.
All this visual flair doesn’t quite fit with the clunky plot,
but at the time it was sensational. The picture was nominated for three
Academy Awards and made a lot of money. West went on to direct a few
more expressionist films, but some bad breaks relegated him to obscurity.
©2008 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
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