THE ATOMIC CAFE
(Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty & Pierce Rafferty, 1982).
This documentary about the way the U.S. government framed the dangers
of the nuclear age to its citizens, from the late 40s to the early 60s,
doesn't need any voice-overs, explanations, or editorializing. Simply
by presenting the newsreels, military films, educational and public
service films, and other archival material from that era, the movie
exposes the entire approach of the U.S. (not just the federal government,
but the corporate world as well) to informing the citizenry of this
country, as the willful, wholesale deception and criminal abuse of power
that it was.
The filmmakers sprinkle the picture with amusing atomic-themed songs
from the period, and the spectacle of such blatant propaganda coupled
with widespread gullibility is often very funny. But the laughter is
tinged with horror as you realize that this all really happened in our
country. There is, of course, Bert the Turtle telling the kids at school
to "duck and cover" when they see the flash of the detonation. A minister
discusses whether a family should allow another family into their bomb
shelter (they shouldn't). A military training film ridicules people
who are concerned about nuclear fallout as alarmist crackpots. Most
chillingly, we see army troops being prepared with comforting lies before
they witness an explosion in Nevada at close range, with nothing protecting
them but helmets and goggles, and then ordered to march towards the
bomb site as part of an emergency training exercise.
Only once does the film represent the alternative (i.e., true) reality.
A couple of scientists in an interview from the 1950s point out that
a hydrogen bomb blast would flatten everything within a huge radius,
and that people in bomb shelters would be cooked alive. Behind every
misleading and condescending clip in this brilliantly arranged film
is the sense of an establishment so drunk on its arrogance that it was
willing to accept the destruction of entire cities as part of the game.
It's no wonder that the next generation rebelled in the 60s. When you're
repeatedly lied to on a matter of life and death, not only personally
but for the entire world, it tends to make you distrustful of authority.
The wonder is how so many are still complacent about the godlike powers
assumed by mere mortals, who have so far demonstrated not the least
bit of trustworthiness or honesty concerning the potential of such weapons.
The Atomic Cafe is a brilliant movie because it uses the very
materials that were employed to hoodwink us fifty years ago, to alert
us to the inherent danger of imperial "superpower" ideology today. It's
one of those rare films that is both wildly entertaining and politically
provocative. And now, when Bush and company have publicly declared,
with no approval from Congress or the public, a nuclear first-strike
policy, the picture is more relevant than ever.
MOUCHETTE (Robert Bresson, 1967).
Mouchette, a fourteen-year-old girl in rural France, is shunned by
the other children at school. She spends much of her time caring for
her dying, bedridden mother, and is mistreated by her drunken lout of
a father. When a half-witted poacher, who thinks that he has killed
the local gamekeeper, encounters Mouchette, he tries to use her to establish
an alibi.
Here Bresson has distilled one of his great themes down to its essence:
the crushing of a human spirit through the force of a social order based
on domination and material necessity. Mouchette is strong-willed, ignorant
stubborn, but always striving to love and be loved. She is overmatched
by the tremendous forces against her, but to call the film pessimistic
is to ignore the essentially tragic nature of Bresson's spirituality.
He does not see the fallen world as a fact to be serenely accepted,
but as something painfully inferior to the essential nature of human
beings, to be transcended but never excused or explained away. By stripping
away everything extraneous, he lets us see real purity (not the idealized
kind) in the midst of this poor girl's suffering.
Bresson's use of non-professional actors, and his avoidance of drama
or psychology, has sometimes given the characters in his films a flat,
low affect quality. But not here. Nadine Nortier, in her first and only
performance, is a completely convincing, earthy presence in the title
role. A scene in which she enjoys a "bumper car" amusement park ride
is one of the most intensely moving sequences in all of Bresson. The
work of the other actors is also exemplary.
The entire story takes place in one day, just as the film compresses
the director's ideas about the crushing weight of "earthly" forces on
the soul into the simplest of forms. To say that it's Bresson's most
accessible work is not to minimize its power. Mouchette is a
devastating film. From here we can only go upward.
THREE BROTHERS (Francesco Rosi, 1981).
Upon the death of their mother, three brothers travel to their home
village in southern Italy to attend the funeral and mourn with their
aged father. The brothers have taken very different paths in their lives,
reflecting the social and cultural divisions of modern Italy. The eldest
(Philippe Noiret) is a prominent judge in Rome, who every day must face
the threat of assassination by violent radical groups. The middle son
(Vittorio Mezzogiorno) is a mild-mannered teacher of delinquent kids
at a juvenile center in Naples. The youngest (Michele Placido) is a
disaffected factory laborer who lives in Turin, and has recently separated
from his wife.
The brothers, who have been apart for some time, try to connect, but
without much success. The judge and the worker argue about politics
(labor unrest and terrorism were major issues in Italy at the time).
And they each have dreams - about their past, their present, and their
fears and hopes for the future. In contrast to the middle-aged brothers,
the old man (Charles Vanel) shares a sense of acceptance and love with
his granddaughter, the youngest son's child.
The time-honored idea of portraying a nation's spiritual condition
through the dynamics of a family here seems too schematic. In addition
to having each brother represent a different class, moral viewpoint,
and political orientation, the picture also touches on the tension between
the prosperous, bourgeois north and the peasant and working class south
(a division in Italy that is similar to the situation of the world as
a whole), along with the questions of liberalism versus radicalism,
and violence versus peaceful reform. All this would be quite a thematic
burden for even well-developed characters to carry, but the script (by
Rosi and Tonina Guerra) doesn't bring the brothers alive, relying too
much on dream sequences and flashbacks to create significance.
The best parts concern the father, his memories of his relationship
with his late wife, and his talks with the little girl. Of the brothers,
Noiret is the most memorable, displaying an interesting mixture of moral
uprightness and gnawing doubt. The photography (Pasqualino De Santis)
is lovely, and Rosi's style is sensitive, with more than a few moments
of lyricism. Three Brothers is by no means a negligible piece
of work. It's thoughtful and honest, but the characters don't attain
enough depth to make it completely satisfying.
STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. (Charles Reisner, 1928).
Buster Keaton plays the son of a Mississippi steamboat captain (the
redoubtable Ernest Torrence), who comes to visit the father he hasn't
seen in many years. The older man is disappointed that his son Willie
is a foppish, incompetent little twerp, so he tries to force him into
being the kind of boy (and ship's mate) that he approves of. Things
get worse when Willie falls in love with the daughter (Marion Byron)
of his father's hated rival.
Don't be fooled by Keaton's habit of giving sole credit to his associate
director. He was in control, and in terms of style, this is one of his
most accomplished works. Among the wonderful comic moments is a scene
in which Torrence tries to buy Keaton a hat to replace his dorky little
beret, with Keaton undermining his plans in his deliciously passive
aggressive manner. Most of the movie is relatively low-key by Keaton's
standards, with some quietly funny gags (such as the weird dance of
indecision between Buster and the girl as he's leaving town) and some
bits that don't work so well (a sequence in which Keaton tries to break
Torrence out of jail, for instance). But then comes the ending, one
of the most spectacular in film history.
The little river town is hit by a cyclone, and Buster must struggle
through the howling winds to save his girl, his father, and the boat.
The cyclone sucks an entire house up into the air, and Buster hides
under the covers of his bed. The bed is whipped through the town like
a streetcar. At one point an entire house falls on him, but he happens
to be standing right where an open window is, so he is untouched. He
leans into the wind, furiously pedaling his legs, going nowhere. The
entire landscape is blowing around him. He even flies through the air,
hanging onto an uprooted tree. The entire perfectly edited sequence
is like a dream, or a maniacal live-action cartoon. It's perhaps the
high point of Keaton's career as a designer of amazing stunts and visual
effects.
Taken as a whole, Steamboat Bill Jr. isn't as funny as Our
Hospitality or Sherlock
Jr., or as beautifully constructed as The General,
but it's an eminent work in the Keaton canon. Pity that it didn't find
an audience at the time. The film's failure at the box office led to
Keaton's unfortunate decision to give up his status as an independent
producer and sign a contract with MGM, a studio that didn't understand
his humor or his methods. It's possible that Keaton's career might not
have survived the coming of sound anyway, but it would have been more
fitting for him to go out on his own terms.
EASTER PARADE (Charles Walters, 1948).
A famous dancer (Fred Astaire) is dumped by his partner (Ann Miller)
who wants to start a solo career. To prove that he can teach anyone
to be good enough to replace her, he picks a chorus girl (Judy Garland)
to be his next partner. Things don't go quite the way he expected -
she falls in love with him, and it takes some time for him to realize
that he loves her too.
Among the legendary musicals produced at Metro by Arthur Freed, this
one has tended to get put somewhere in the second rank by critics. I
avoided it for years just because of the title, which seemed to promise
something bland or hokey. While it's true that there's nothing very
memorable about the plot (but who watches a musical for the plot?),
this is in fact an extremely enjoyable picture, featuring two of the
greatest musical stars ever. And it's chock-full of great Irving Berlin
songs. A lot of musicals have an overabundance of story seasoned with
just two or three decent songs. In this movie, a new song pops up every
few minutes, most of them are delightful, and the dancing is great.
Astaire took the role after Gene Kelly broke his ankle at rehearsals.
You'd never guess that the role was meant for anyone but him. An early
number, "Drum Crazy," shows him at his inventive best, dancing while
playing a variety of drums or drum-like objects at a gift shop in order
to distract a kid from getting the Easter gift that Astaire wants for
his girl. Later, when he's trying to train Garland's character to be
a sophisticated ballroom-type dancer, they do an incompetent dance routine
that is splendidly funny. (It's very hard to simulate bad dancing without
actually being bad.) In what I consider the film's high point, Astaire
performs "Steppin' Out With My Baby" (one of Berlin's liveliest songs)
with a level of energy and exuberance that leaves us no doubt that he
was still the greatest dancer on the planet. In an inspired and almost
surrealistic touch, towards the end of the number, Walters runs Astaire's
footwork at a slower speed than the normal speed of the dancing chorus
behind him, creating a thrilling, otherworldly effect. At least I think
that's what he did - unless Astaire was so brilliant that he could dance
in apparent slow motion.
Garland is charming, and in fine voice. In real life she was beginning
to hit bottom with the health problems that would plague her career
for years. Thankfully, this doesn't show in the film. She does justice
to the beautiful "Better Luck Next Time." And among her duets with Astaire,
the famous comic number "A Couple of Swells," where they're dressed
as bums, is deservedly a classic. Peter Lawford is on hand, as a sort
of alternate love interest (he sports a mildly pleasant voice in a song
with Judy). I must admit that I'm not fond of Ann Miller (even in her
rousing, obligatory tap dance sequence "Shakin' the Blues Away") but
at least she's playing an annoying person, which is fitting. All in
all, a fun way to spend a couple of hours, and another triumph for the
Freed unit. Audiences at the time thought so too. It was a big hit.
And the only time, unfortunately, that Garland and Astaire were partners
on screen.
©2003 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
