LES AMANTS
***
France
The film that made Malle's and
Moreau's names known internationally concerns an upper-middle-class wife who can't find
satisfaction with her provincial home and husband, nor with her Parisian
lover. Then she meets a young stranger and is smitten. Her thoughts are
regularly summarised in perfectly redundant voiceover
narration. Malle is trying to locate the humanity behind the melodrama,
but he doesn't quite succeed. The climactic, moonlit woodland stretches are very
romantic and Moreau is radiant, but it's hard to feel any joy at her
newfound love and intoxication or sympathy
for her princess complex, particularly when she treats
her young daughter like a pet.
dir:
Louis Malle
cast: Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Marc Bory, Judith Magre, José Luis
de Villalonga, Gaston Modot
ASHES AND DIAMONDS
**** THE BIG COUNTRY
***
THE
BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
**½
USA
A valiant, though predictably stolid attempt at compressing Dostoyevski's
novel into a Technicolor prestige picture. The actors are made to say
things like "You are like Russia itself. Too strong. Too
excitable."
wr/dir: Richard Brooks
ph: John Alton
cast: Yul Brynner, Maria Schell, Claire Bloom, Lee J. Cobb, Richard
Basehart, William Shatner, Albert Salmi, Judith Evelyn, Edgar Stehli
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
***
GIGI
****½
THE
HIDDEN FORTRESS
***½
Japan
Chiefly famous for getting recycled into "Star Wars", Kurosawa's
first foray into Cinemascope (or, as the titles announce, Toho-scope)
tells a tale of a pair of greedy peasants who inadvertently aid an outcast
warrior in restoring an arrogant young princess to her throne. Most of the
shots are big, long and majestic, and they have a tendency to overwhelm
the story. The picture is enjoyable, but it would have been more so had
Kurosawa shed around 20 minutes off the running time and had he adopted a
lighter touch to suit the Saturday-matinee nature of his material.
Toshiro Mifune, with his solemn face, bulky thighs and
exemplary posture, is well-cast as the noble warrior. As the princess,
Misa Uehara shrieks every line in what looks to be primal anguish. But
when the subtitles read "That armour makes you look handsome",
you can only wonder at how much gets lost in translation.
dir: Akira Kurosawa
ph: Kazuo Yamazaki
cast: Toshio Mifune, Misa Uehara, Minoru Chiaki, Kamatari Fujiwara,
Susumu Fujita, Takashi Shimura, Eiko Miyushi, Toshiko Higuchi
I WANT TO LIVE!
***½
USA
A call girl and small-time crook is condemned to the gas chamber for a
murder she didn't commit.
It's hard to think of this
picture as more than a slick, stylish vehicle for its ravenous leading
lady. But it has an undercurrent of anti-capital-punishment
propaganda that is all the more effective for seeming so beside-the-point.
It hits you when you don't expect it. Director Robert Wise is very eager
to underline that he's working off fact and he gets you so caught up in the heroine's sordid
lifestyle, her various trials and tribulations that you never get a chance to
question her innocence (which is far from an undisputed fact) and you come
out with all your anger directed at the judicial system.
Wise wrings out the tension masterfully and with minimum fuss - instead of a
standard worked-up orchestra, he relies on a cool, jazzy score. And then
there's Hayward. She throws herself in the role with all the finesse of a
drag queen, purring, scowling and contorting with great relish. She isn't
believable for a second, but she keeps you hooked.
dir:
Robert Wise
wr: Nelson Gidding, Don Mankiewicz
ph: Lionel Lindon
m: Johnny Mandel
cast: Susan Hayward, Simon Oakland, Virginia Vincent, Theodore
Bikel, Wesley Lau, Philip Coolidge
|
INDISCREET
**½
MAN
OF THE WEST
*****
USA
Probably Anthony Mann's last great Western (and last great film) tells a
tale of Shakespearean pull and intensity, with a grotesque variation on
the family-sticks-together notion. Gary Cooper plays a reformed outlaw
unwillingly reunited with his former gang, still run by his demented,
alcoholic uncle (a thoroughly and gloriously unhinged Lee J. Cobb, in
reality 10 years Cooper's junior), with a bunch of sadistic cousins at his
side.
That the picture was greeted with unanimous scorn by both
critics and audiences upon its release very likely had something to do
with its strands of charred modernism and the virulent, uncompromising
portrait Mann paints of the Old West. The majority of its scenes depict or
anticipate decay and horrific violence (of both the physical and
psychological kind) in a way that will unnerve even the most fanatical of
Peckinpah disciples. It's a brutal and profoundly disturbing film, all the
more so for taking place against magnificent, often serene (Cinemascoped)
scenery. Mann works with cinematographer Ernest Haller to cast the iconic
landscapes in a fresher, more organic light, underscoring their
significance to the story's psychology as well as suffusing them with an
eerie beauty.
dir: Anthony Mann
wr: Reginald Rose
ph: Ernest Haller
cast: Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur
O'Connell, Jack Lord, John Dehner, Royal Dano, Robert J. Wilke, Jack
Williams
MON ONCLE
***½
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER
***½
ROOM AT THE TOP
***½
SEPARATE TABLES
***
THUNDER
ROAD
**½
USA
Producer and co-scriptwriter Robert Mitchum took the lead and syphoned
talent off the Ed Wood School of Easy Utility to support him in this
ramshackle exposé of illegal whiskey running in the Appalachians. A
couple of impressive car explosions take place and the movie is blessed
with the stylish under-lit on-location look that comes with a
micro-budget. But the limp pacing and limp actors make it tough to sit
through all the same.
dir: Arthur Ripley
cast: Robert Mitchum, Gene Barry, Jacques Aubuchon, Keeley Smith,
Trevor Bardette, Sandra Knight, James Mitchum, Betsy Holt
TOUCH OF EVIL
*****
USA
A righteous Mexican cop on his
honeymoon gets involved in the corruption of an admired, crime-busting
American detective.
The last - and arguably greatest - example of the classic film noir. Masterfully Welles pushes the conventions of B-grade noir to an almost
breaking point, employing an onslaught of opaque shadows, grotesque
characters and a baroque, greatly atmospheric bordertown setting. The
entire movie oozes
with menace.
dir: Orson Welles
cast: Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Akim
Tamiroff, Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Calleia, Ray Collins, Valentin de
Vargas, Dennis Weaver, Manolo Sanchez, Joanna Moore, Mercedes McCambridge,
Joseph Cotten, Zsa Zsa Gabor
VERTIGO
****½
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