IF.... (Lindsay Anderson, 1968).
An English public school for boys is the setting for petty domination
by the old over the young, and the strong over the weak, as the teachers
and prefects humiliate and torment their charges in increasingly brutal
fashion. But three defiant students, headed by the sardonic Mick Travis
(Malcolm McDowell) are determined to fight the system at all costs.
The cruelty of young people to one another always serves to amplify
unhealthy power relations in the adult world. To this end, Anderson
exaggerates the already legendary conditions of the English "boys school"
with touches of nightmare and surrealistic black humor. The screenplay
(David Sherwin and John Howlett) is sharp, and full of potent witticisms
and asides. McDowell is riveting in his screen debut, and the film's
social observation and build-up of tension is quite compelling.
Anderson's stylistic experiments are not always completely successful,
however. For some reason, the film keeps switching between color and
black-and-white, but it's never clear why. And despite hints of reality-bending
in the movie's first three quarters, the final descent into fantasy
seems too abrupt to me, even a bit rushed, as if it hadn't been sufficiently
thought out.
This being a film of the 60s, the theme of rebellion is treated with
an in-your-face boldness that is almost unthinkable today. But in comparison
to some of the more self-indulgent experiments of that decade, If....
actually seems restrained, and even a bit intellectual in its dry, rather
distanced approach to its subject. At its best, the picture lets us
glimpse the face of injustice without trying to tell us how to feel
about it, and despite the film's limitations, the bitter satire still
packs a considerable punch.
HENRY IV (Marco Bellocchio, 1984).
No, not Shakespeare, but Luigi Pirandello. A wealthy nobleman (Marcello
Mastroianni) goes mad when he suffers a head injury as a young man.
He believes that he is Henry IV, the 11th century emperor of the Holy
Roman Empire, and lives in an old castle with a group of servants who
pretend to be his royal aides and advisers. After twenty years, a psychiatrist
gets the idea of bringing the nobleman's old flame (Claudia Cardinale)
and her beautiful daughter (Latou Chardons) to the castle, in order
to set up a situation where the sufferer will be shocked back into sanity.
This is one of Pirandello's greatest works (some say his best), offering
a provocative take on insanity and delusion, and whether perhaps society
is more mad than the madman. The real Henry IV waged a long battle against
the Pope, and here the deluded man's quest to overturn his excommunication
adds a religious dimension to the intrigue. Mastroianni is in good form,
and the film's climax is well done, but Bellocchio's direction is unsteady.
He tries to handle the familiar dilemma of "opening up" a play with
cross-cutting, flashbacks, and several outdoor scenes, but the effort
is distracting rather than illuminating. It would have been more effective
to trust the play's dialogue to carry the film, instead of trying to
be so busy. In addition, the cheesy cocktail-music score (Astor Piazzolla)
is completely inappropriate, undercutting the drama at every turn. Nonetheless,
this is a serviceable rendition of a great play, worth seeing for its
very interesting view on the human condition, and for Mastroianni's
performance.
THE SON OF THE SHEIK
(George Fitzmaurice, 1926).
Rudolph Valentino plays a young Arab nobleman who falls in love with
a dancing girl (Vilma Banky). The girl is sincere in her love for him,
but her father and his henchmen are crooks, and they use her to lure
him into a trap. After he escapes, he turns against her, believing that
she was treacherous, and in the meantime his father (played also by
Valentino) seeks to punish him for his disobedient ways.
This picture is a sequel to The Sheik, a 1921 film starring
Valentino and Agnes Ayres. In this case, the follow-up (in which Ayres
appears as the mother) is far more fun and fluid than the original.
Still, it's only a bauble -- a bit of escapist entertainment featuring
Rudy dashing around on a horse, getting in sword fights, and having
steamy love scenes with Banky (their chemistry together is great). The
gimmick of having Valentino play father and son is really just a subplot
to the main action, an excuse to do some split-screen shots and have
Rudy put on a beard and look older. The picture is enjoyable as far
as it goes, silly but diverting, and Valentino is charming in what turned
out to be his last film, showing the ease and assurance in front of
the camera that made him special.
THE GOOD EARTH (Sidney Franklin, 1937).
An adaptation of the popular Pearl Buck novel, given the full-blown
prestige picture treatment by MGM. Paul Muni plays Wang Lung, a Chinese
peasant farmer in the early 20th century. His father arranges for him
to be married to O-Lan (Luise Rainer), a freed slave from the feudal
district manor house. The story follows their life together against
the tumultuous background of Chinese history, through devastating famine
and poverty, the 1911 revolution, and later prosperity.
In those days, of course, it would have been unthinkable for a studio
to present a major film starring Asian actors. Thus, the lead roles,
and most of the other important ones, are filled by white actors made
up to look Chinese. There was also less concern about accents -- it
was routine, for instance, to have Americans playing at being British,
French, or other nationalities, without going to the trouble of having
them sound different from Americans. Audiences were still so enamored
of the make-believe quality of movies that they didn't look for rigorous
accuracy in such matters. In The Good Earth, then, we have Luise
Rainer playing a Chinese woman with what is obviously a German accent.
(Curiously, the one other major female character sports a German accent
as well, as if that were the chosen accent for Chinese women.)
The overall effect of this cross-cultural imitation is rather jarring
today, but it is the film's patronizing (albeit compassionate) view
of the Chinese that seems most dated. Muni expresses Wang Lung's loves,
desires, and ambitions in a wide-eyed childlike style that precludes
any substantial sense of his inward character, while the portrayal of
Chinese rural life emphasizes cultural backwardness and contempt for
women. No doubt this was accurate to a degree (the misogynistic theme,
in particular, is well employed as a contrast to O-Lan's strength and
goodness), but the overly simplified presentation seems offensively
self-congratulatory, as if the film were saying to American audiences,
"Look how free and enlightened and lucky we are compared to these poor
savages."
Rainer won her second Oscar playing this beaten-down model of humble
submission and love. O-Lan lives a life of complete devotion to her
family (the one time she stands up to her husband is to defend her son),
and the story's pathos rests on her unacknowledged heroism. The performances
are competent, with some beautiful touches here and there, but the film
really excels in its spectacle. The set pieces include a huge rain storm
that threatens to destroy a wheat crop; a riot in a crowded city when
revolution breaks out, culminating in a brilliant sequence where a palace
is sacked by a mob; and (most famously) a terrifying invasion of locusts,
where the farmers take to the fields, using fire and shovels to try
to beat back the insects. This was one of the special effects triumphs
of the era -- the illusion of millions of locusts descending and plowing
through the crops is magnificently achieved.
The Good Earth was the last film produced by studio chief Irving
Thalberg before his sudden death at 37. It is dedicated to his memory,
and it neatly exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of his style
as producer: elaborate spectacle and epic sweep, coupled with a sturdy
yet overly conventional and middlebrow dramatic sense.
REGRET TO INFORM
(Barbara Sonneborn, 1998).
Twenty years after her husband was killed in a mortar attack while
serving in Vietnam, Barbara Sonneborn woke up one morning knowing that
she had to go there -- to see the place her husband died, and also just
to experience this place that had such a profound effect on her life.
The film that resulted, which took ten years to complete, is both a
record of her journey across Vietnam, and a documentary about the stories
of war widows on both sides of the conflict.
Sonneborn's translator, Xuan Ngoc Nguyen, tells of the bombing of her
village, the shooting of her five-year-old cousin, the decisions she
had to make as a 14-year-old about who would survive and who wouldn't,
her life as a Saigon prostitute and eventual marriage to a GI, and the
collapse of her marriage after moving to the U.S. Other Vietnamese women
tell of the terrible trauma and losses that they witnessed, while the
widows of American soldiers talk about their conflicting feelings, the
unspoken fears, how they learned of their husbands' deaths, and the
emotional scars of the war.
All of this, along with footage of Sonneborn's trip through the Vietnamese
countryside by train, is interspersed with remarkable footage taken
during the war, showing the killing and destruction, the pain on the
faces of civilians and GIs, all those terrible images of Vietnam that
seem to have faded from our collective awareness in the past thirty
years. Sonneborn does not present a political analysis of the war or
its causes. The film's entire focus is on the personal experiences of
those who were fighting in it, or caught in the crossfire, or whose
loved ones were affected by it. The painful question of participation
in atrocities is addressed: what effect did it have on soldiers to have
to kill civilians, including women and children, even when this violated
their conscience? How did the reality of war change their views of themselves,
and their ideas about duty and country? For the Vietnamese, the struggle
is to put into words the unspeakable suffering and grief of losing their
home, or seeing their entire family killed, or just the feeling of going
through life in shock, not knowing if they or their loved ones would
live another day.
Regret to Inform carefully and beautifully weaves past and present
together to bring the personal truth about war home to the viewer. One
comes away with the conviction that the only way to really understand
war is on this personal, experiential level. No one who really knows
this truth can ever mouth platitudes about glory and honor in war again,
or advocate the necessity of war without a grave and conscientious acknowledgment
of its devastating cost.
©2004 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
