PURPLE NOON (René Clément, 1960).
Philippe (Maurice Ronet), a rich playboy, enjoys goofing off in Italy
in the company of Tom (Alain Delon), a young acquaintance who's been
sent by Philippe's father to coax him back to the States. Philippe seems
to have everything, including a yacht and a beautiful fiancee (Marie
Laforêt). Tom has nothing except single-minded cunning and good
looks. His plan: to eliminate Philippe, forge his signature so that
he can steal his money, and then assume his identity and eventually
win the girl for himself.
Clément teamed with Paul Gégauff to adapt the Patricia
Highsmith novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. After a shaky start,
the picture finds a very effective tone of understated calculation,
aided immensely by Delon's breakthrough performance. This Ripley is
not an intellectual schemer, and not particulary self- aware, but an
intensely driven young man, hungry for status and importance, amoral
rather than immoral. Delon is able to mask his character enough to make
him mysterious, while revealing just enough to make him compelling.
The film's rich color (it was shot by the veteran Henri Decaë),
attractive locations, and Nino Rota score create an unexpectedly queasy
effect when combined with the stomach-churning plot, which involves
Ripley spinning more and more complex webs of crime and deceit. Clément
doesn't need to trick the film up with melodrama or shock effects. By
turning a dispassionate gaze on the story's increasingly bizarre developments,
the movie manages to make evil seem mundane and familiar, and therefore
quite disturbing. It's a tight piece of work, both an engrossing suspense
film and a psychological mystery, and thankfully, it doesn't try to
be anything more. The ending is just about perfect.
DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK
(John Ford, 1939).
In 1775 New York, Gilbert Martin (Henry Fonda) marries a well-off young
townswoman named Lana (Claudette Colbert), and they set off north to
try to make a living as farmers in the wilderness of the Mohawk Valley.
It looks like they're going to succeed, but the Revolutionary War, and
the menace of British- allied Indians, threatens to ruin everything
they've worked for.
For some reason, this era of American history has rarely translated
well into film. This picture, however, is one of the happy exceptions.
It was the director's first color movie, and the photography (Bert Glennon
and Ray Rennahan) couldn't be better. Ford, as usual, shows an uncanny
ability to put the camera in the right place at all times--the use of
long shots during the battle scenes are especially effective. That the
film doesn't attain the first rank in the Ford pantheon is due partly,
I think, to the uneven and episodic nature of the source (a popular
Walter D. Edmonds historical novel, adapted by Lamar Trotti and Sonya
Levien) and to Colbert's somewhat rote performance--her tendency to
overplay a line is less hidden in a straight-ahead period drama like
this, than in a comedy or drama with a modern feel.
Nevertheless, there's much to appreciate here. The film's first half
patiently outlines the struggle of eking out a living from the land,
and the portraits of various rustic characters are quite convincing,
despite some typical attempts at low humor. Ford is brilliant at depicting
the cohesive social life within a small community. A joyful sequence
involving a country dance is among his greatest achievements of this
kind. Ford integrates the drama of the individual characters into an
idyllic vision of the American dream--you can see a myth being constructed
before your eyes. Late, there's a scene where Fonda tells Colbert about
a horrific battle in which he got wounded. It's a stirring bit of narrative
reflecting the misery of war --in fact, it's a bit odd that the decision
not to show the battle but tell it through Fonda is more effective than
the film's actual battle scenes occurring later.
The picture's second half is, regrettably, less compelling. Edna May
Oliver shows up in the Edna May Oliver role. Yeah, she's tough, and
she intimidates a couple of Indians that are setting fire to her house,
getting them to move her bed to another room. But it's a show-off performance
that distracts from the period tone. There's also the usual problem
involving the stereotyped depiction of Indians, but this is part of
what you have to expect when you watch a John Ford western (or in this
case, eastern). In addition, we get the fiery, lovable Irish minister
(Arthur Shields), some cloddish humor, and an ending that tries too
hard. Still, it's never dull, Fonda is solidly good throughout, and
the film has an epic sweep and visual power that makes it special.
Ford had already shot Stagecoach and Young Mr. Lincoln
the same year. Not too shabby.
THE BAND WAGON (Vincente Minnelli, 1953).
Fred Astaire plays an aging hoofer (i.e. himself) looking for a comeback
on Broadway. His two songwriter friends (Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant)
create a show for him, but the pretentious director (Jack Buchanan)
turns it into an adaptation of Faust, while Astaire clashes with
his ballerina co-star (Cyd Charisse).
Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the script, using songs by Arthur
Schwartz and Adolph Deutsch. It seems to be satirizing the trend in
musicals towards dramatic unity and seriousness (think Rodgers and Hammerstein),
but a lot of the humor falls flat, and the depiction of the New York
theater is pure hokum. (One genuinely hilarious moment, though, is when
it becomes evident that the show has laid an egg.) We end up with the
old Hollywood fantasy of the show with disconnected musical numbers,
and this involves having to endure Fabray in "Louisiana Hayride" (oy!).
In fact, Fabray's tight-jawed enthusiasm is irritating throughout the
picture.
However, we never really watch an Astaire film for the story, do we?
He hasn't lost his touch here, and The Band Wagon has enough
excellent songs and dance numbers to make up for the corniness. Astaire
opens the picture with the soft "By Myself," and then the exuberant
"Shine My Shoes," which is a lot of fun. Later there's a wordless "Dancing
in the Dark" with Charisse in white, in a faux Central Park, and it's
one of the lovelest, most breathtaking dances ever filmed. Finally,
at the climax, we get the "Girl Hunt Ballet," a long, elaborate sequence
starring Astaire and Charisse that combines incredibly inventive choreography
with bold production design. And it's very, very sexy. Everyone knows
that Charisse wasn't a great actress, but that fact has tended to obscure
how marvelous a dancer she was, and how alluring a beauty. Here she's
at her best in a dual role, as a blonde victim seeking help from Astaire's
hardboiled detective, and a brunette femme fatale in black, and then
stunning red. (I'm convinced that Minnelli and company were influenced
by the Kelly-Charisse "Broadway Ballet" from Donen and Kelly's Singin'
in the Rain, made the previous year. The similarities are too striking
to ignore, but in any case this is an actual improvement on the original.)
The Band Wagon's slipshod structure and story has dimmed its
lustre in comparison to producer Arthur Freed's earlier triumphs, but
it's still fun, and definitely worth a look.
RED SORGHUM (Zhang Yimou, 1987).
In a story told by the two main characters' grandson, Gong Li plays
a girl who is sold as a wife to an old leper who owns a winery. On the
way to her new husband, the man in charge of carrying her litter (Jiang
Wen) rescues her from a bandit's rape attempt in the middle of a field
of sorghum. Later, after a distressing wedding night with the old man
(whom we never see) the girl returns home for a visit with her father,
only to be raped, now by the litter-carrier who has fallen in love with
her. (It appears, however, that she is happy about this, since the man
is young and virile.) In her absence, the husband is murdered, presumably
by the litter-carrier, and the girl inherits the winery. She then rallies
the workers with the help of the winery's foreman (Ten Rujen), and they
continue to make wine, but the return of the litter-carrier to claim
her hand causes tensions.
This was Zhang's first film as director, and it became an international
success. It's easy to see why. The widescreen pictorial composition
and color schemes are marvelous. Zhang uses the color red to signify
both the passion of love and the violence of war (the story takes place
prior to, and during, the Japanese invasion). The moving shots through
the sorghum fields add poetry to the action. And the story's darkness
and moral ambiguity increase the film's power and appeal. In comparison
to Zhang's later work, the film seems rather schematic, and lacking
in social critique. This is to be expected from a first film, I suppose.
Set safely before Mao's victory, the picture in its latter half turns
into a rousing story of heroism against Japanese oppression. A scene
where Japanese soldiers demand that an expert butcher flay a Chinese
prisoner alive is a grim and unflinching reminder of the cruelty suffered
in China during the war.
Setting aside the film's questionable sexual politics, Red Sorghum
is a very accomplished debut, and one of the breakthrough works for
China's "Fifth Generation" filmmakers. Its success announced that mainland
Chinese cinema was no fluke, but a force to be reckoned with. It also
introduced a major star-- the beautiful Gong Li, who does more than
a creditable job portraying a woman of indomitable courage and determination.
THE MARQUISE OF O. (Eric Rohmer, 1976).
This meticulous adaptation of the famous Kleist novella, filmed in
German with a German cast, demonstrates the French director Rohmer's
peerless ability to produce period films that feel completely faithful
to their source and time. The title character, played by Edith Clever,
is a widow with two children, the daughter of a commandant whose castle
is besieged by Russian troops during the Napoleonic wars. Attempting
to escape from danger, she is threatened with rape by soldiers, only
to be saved by a dashing Russian officer (Bruno Ganz). Months later,
however, she realizes that she's become pregnant, but has no memory
of how it could have happened, and her parents refuse to believe in
her innocence.
Rohmer reproduces the delicate pictorial beauty of 18th century portrait
painting with the help of the brilliant cinematographer Néstor
Almendros. The film has an abundance of medium shots, using the straight
lines and box-like forms of hallways and rooms to accentuate the sense
of formal propriety and restriction of the time. These visual strategies,
combined with the lack of music and a rigorous avoidance of the romantic
conventions so familiar to us from later drama, create a marvelous period
illusion. The result is not a stuffy relic of a bygone time, as one
might expect, but a true translation of a pre-romantic sensibility into
a form that we can experience and understand.
Clever seems the perfect choice to play the Marquise. She is expressive
and believable in the role of maligned virtue, yet subtly erotic. Edda
Sieppel and Peter Lühr are flawless as her parents, even when the
story requires them to be histrionic in a way that can make us laugh
today (and Rohmer fully intends for us to laugh) yet accurately reflects
a standard of noble behavior for the time. Ganz looks remarkably youthful
here. His character is a bit wooden, but he manages to make us care
about him.
The point of the Marquise of O. is not really the mystery of
how she became pregnant. Any semi-alert viewer will have figured that
out early on--indeed, the only mystery is why the characters take so
long to do so. Kleist meant to show how social values having to do with
honor and the ideal of spotless virtue become destructive when they
take the place of simple familial trust and affection. Rohmer's style
is somewhat more detached than Kleist's, but he is true to the great
author's theme. The Marquise is a heroine because her virtue is founded
on love rather than on respect for opinion and formality. The film,
so accurate in its portrayal of a world steeped in formality, lets the
warmth of that love shine through all the more.
©2005 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
