DEMONS IN THE GARDEN
(Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, 1982).
Spanish memory, and cinema, continues to be haunted by the trauma of
the Civil War in the 1930s. This film takes place in the aftermath of
Fascist victory, and uses the story of a troubled family to map emotional
fissures in the soul of Spain.
Encarno Paso plays the matriarch of a farming clan that runs a prosperous
black market business on the side. Juan (Imanol Arias), the younger
of her two sons, flirts with his brother's wife (Ana Belén) while
getting the family ward Ángela (Ángela Molina), the orphaned
daughter of a Republican, pregnant. He runs off to Madrid to work for
Franco. Angela raises her son (Álvaro Sánchez Prieto)
alone, but the matriarch forces her to send the boy off to live in the
big family house. There he becomes the center of competition between
his grandmother, his aunt, and his protective mother, who visits him
regularly. This situation threatens to turn the boy into a spoiled tyrant,
but he has his own ideas and desires.
The theme of a group of frustrated women living vicariously through
a little boy neatly skewers the baleful influence of machismo in Spanish
society. Gutiérrez Aragón wisely tells the story primarily
from the point of view of the little boy, who is played by the young
Sánchez Prieto with admirable assurance. The conflicting motives
and messages of the adults appear both humorous and pathetic in the
eyes of a child. One of the more telling moments shows the boy, who
has always longed to know his father, discovering that Papa's "important"
position with Franco is actually that of official cook.
The director is at his best when he allows the story to develop gradually
through the awakening consciousness of its young hero. He stumbles a
bit by trying to make the soap opera elements coalesce into some kind
of wild satiric vision - the adult characters don't have enough depth
to carry this off. Demons in the Garden is admittedly a minor
work, but nevertheless an interesting and off-beat take on the confluence
of family and political malaise.
AMERICAN MADNESS (Frank Capra, 1932).
The great Walter Huston plays Thomas Dickson, a banker who runs his
business on principles of conscience and trust - treating his customers
like friends and making big loans to those in need. His investors, frightened
by the Depression, want him out so they can sell the bank to a big conglomerate,
but he won't budge. A crisis occurs when the bank is robbed, with the
collusion of one of Dickson's employees, who is over his head in gambling
debts. When news of the bank robbery spreads around town, gossip inflates
the amount stolen, resulting in full- scale panic and a run on the bank,
the lobby filling up with customers wanting to take their money out.
Dickson has a near riot on his hands, and it looks like he'll lose everything.
Robert Riskin's script, with its conflict between honest, neighborly
values and the cold-heartedness of big business, is similar in theme
to his later films with Capra. But here there is a blessed absence of
idealistic speechifying. Huston, one of the finest actors of modern
times, turns Dickson into a living, breathing presence. His self-assured
conviction, the relaxed sense of humanity that he always projected so
well, makes you admire and love his character as if he were real.
There is a subplot involving a teller played by Pat O'Brien, who won't
clear himself from being a suspect in the robbery because he thinks
his alibi would prove that Dickson's wife (Kay Johnson) is having an
affair. However, the most exciting aspects of the picture center around
the panic in the bank lobby, with the crowds of people clamoring for
their money. Although the film doesn't present anything close to a social
critique, these wonderfully edited scenes (the hectic cutting contrasting
nicely with the film's smoother opening sequences) convey how scary
the mood of the country was in the Depression, and how close we really
came to complete social collapse.
The direction is a model of economy and speed - there doesn't seem
to be a wasted moment in American Madness, which whirls by in
thoroughly absorbing and entertaining fashion. It's a great film - tough
and funny and moving - that has unfortunately been overshadowed by Capra's
more popular later work.
BEN-HUR (Fred Niblo, 1925).
The most expensive film of the silent era, and perhaps most plagued
by difficulties, during a shoot that dragged on for three years, Ben-Hur
remains an impressive achievement in many ways. Unlike a lot of the
older attempts at the epic form in cinema, it still conveys a sense
of gigantic power, and its technique - editing, photography, camera
placement and movement, is at times uncommonly beautiful. This is a
much better film than the 1959 William Wyler version, in large part
because the silent aesthetic was more hospitable to this kind of grand,
larger-than-life narrative.
The less said about the well-known story - concerning the sufferings
of the eponymous Jewish nobleman and his quest for vengeance against
his former friend, a Roman named Messala, all set against the backdrop
of the life of Christ - the better. The pseudo-religious claptrap, the
fascination with pagan warrior adventure concealed by insufferably superficial
ideas about Christianity - all of this is so ludicrous that it almost
defies comment. One must view Ben-Hur as spectacle, and not think
too much about it as drama, in order to appreciate it.
The greatest sequence is, of course, the chariot race, with its amazing
set and its thrilling sense of speed and danger. Niblo and his crew
really outdid themselves here - it's been imitated by countless films
ever since. This is the scene everyone remembers, but a battle between
Roman galleys and pirate ships earlier in the picture is almost as great.
(The fire that breaks out in the film actually got out of control, and
for a few tense hours the crew in Italy thought that some of the extras
had drowned.) In the case of both these sequences, the silent form augments
the splendor, giving the action an epic cast that sound only tends to
diminish.
The acting is in the grand style - normal for films at that time, and
in this case mostly appropriate for the material. Ramon Novarro does
a fine job in the title role, rarely overdoing it. Francis X. Bushman
is rather over-the-top as Messala, though. His brand of melodramatic
villainy hasn't aged well. The real drag is that after the chariot race,
we must endure the long, stupid story of Ben-Hur searching for the mother
and sister who have become lepers, dovetailing conveniently with the
crucifixion, and of course Jesus heals them, blah blah blah. It's dishonest,
embarrassing, and - what's even worse - very dull.
Arguably the driving force behind the film was Metro screenwriter and
powerhouse June Mathis, who got the project off the ground and helped
keep it going, through the firing of the first director (Charles Brabin),
and numerous setbacks during the production, which eventually led to
a retreat from Italy so that the picture could be finished in Hollywood.
The print I watched was the marvelous Kevin Brownlow-David Gill reconstruction,
with the quaintly pretty two-strip technicolor sequences restored, and
a marvelous Carl Davis score. This is one of those cases where the amount
of money that was spent is actually evident in the on-screen result.
It's a Hollywood epic that really feels like an epic. Despite the story's
inherent silliness, and the disappointing finale, Ben-Hur manages
to evoke awe, and should be seen at least once as a choice example of
the glory of old Hollywood.
DESTINY (Youssef Chahine, 1997).
In 12th century Arab Andalusia, the philosopher Averroes (Nour el Cherif)
and his followers find themselves under attack by a cult of religious
fundamentalists who seek to insinuate themselves into favor with the
Caliph. One of the Caliph's sons (Kaled el Nabaoui) is a student of
Averroes who has his teacher's books copied so he can smuggle them out
of the country before they are burned. The younger son (Hani Salama)
is a dancer who becomes brainwashed by the fanatics.
This sketch of the plot only gives the barest idea of the film's numerous
characters and plot strands. In fact, this movie truly sports "an embarrassment
of riches." There is so much going on in Destiny that at times
it's hard to follow the story or remember who's who. From a less dynamic
artist than Chahine, Egypt's foremost director, this might be deadly.
Here, the themes and ideas are so interesting, and the style so exuberant,
that I found myself swept into the picture's imaginative world.
The challenge to freedom posed by fundamentalism is obviously something
that resonates with the situation in the Muslim world - and the world
as a whole - today. To this nascent force Chahine opposes the realms
of reason and art - the first embodied by the character of Averroes
(Cherif's intelligent performance is the glue holding the story together)
and the second by the culture of song and dance, portrayed through the
device of a gypsy troupe attached to the philosopher's school, and headed
by a beautiful and charismatic woman (Laila Eloui). There are a few
musical numbers in the film - nothing too elaborate, but serving as
a symbol of the joy-inspiring function of culture, as opposed to the
death-fixation of the fanatics, who consider all singing and dancing
to be against the Koran.
Blessed with gorgeous photography and production design, Destiny
is an unusual hyprid of popular entertainment, historical fiction, and
message film. The elements of musical and melodrama, and the surfeit
of plot, prevent the characters from developing much depth, but we are
never in doubt for an instant that a wise and supple mind is guiding
us, or that the film's message is sorely needed.
SANJURO (Akira Kurosawa, 1962).
An unconventional samurai (Toshiro Mifune) comes to the aid of a group
of naive young warriors in order to save their mentor, who has been
kidnapped by a corrupt official seeking to frame him for his own crimes.
Mifune reprises his character from the previous year's Yojimbo
- and the plot situation is similar. But this time, Kurosawa is playing
it tongue-in-cheek. Yojimbo was quite self-conscious about the
samurai genre, sometimes humorously so, but more serious in its portrayal
of a new ideal of nobility. Sanjuro shares this ideal, but portrays
it through outright comedy and ridicule of convention, both the convention
of the samurai film and the rigid Japanese code of honor that underlies
it.
Much of the laughter comes from the contrast between the earnestness
of the young samurais, who judge by appearances and are always wrong;
and the casual, unkempt, worldly-wise Sanjuro, who has thrown off society's
conventions, and looks at his job as a necessary but annoying duty.
Mifune is a hoot in the title role, disgruntled, bemused, trying to
get some sleep but being interrupted by the neurotic scurrying of the
idiots in his charge - at one point he joins them in a dubious enterprise
because "it might keep me awake." In one of the film's most inspired
touches, a captured enemy is locked in a closet, but freed by the kidnapped
mentor's gentle wife. The man stays around, out of gratitude to the
woman, and is won over to the other side, popping out of the closet
with important advice from time to time, and then disconsolately returning
there when his job is done.
There is some fighting in Sanjuro, and a famous scene of outrageous
bloodletting at the end, but as a whole the film is light on action,
with the emphasis on wry comedy. The plot becomes rather implausible,
to say the least, but in a story of this kind one doesn't expect realism.
And in addition to being funny, the picture has something important
to say. Sanjuro uses violence, but he doesn't feel good about it. The
kindly old woman tells him that swords are best when sheathed, and he
comes to realize that she's right. Kurosawa here bids a definitive farewell
to the "eye for an eye" ethos of revenge that has plagued humanity for
centuries, and looks forward to the mature tragic vision of his later
work.
©2002 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
