BANDE Á PART
***½
France
Along with "Breathless" (1960) this may be Godard's most
influential picture - you may have heard Quentin Tarantino named his
production company after it. It's about two small-time hoods who get
involved with the prettiest girl in their English class and muster up a
half-baked plot to rob her aunt. There are constant little bits that
remind you of tired Hollywood formulas like the caper plot or the
melodrama, and the memories gradually grow hazy. Everything that used to
happen in night-time here takes place in broad daylight (except you're
told it's nightfall), rarely goes anywhere, and when it does, it takes
much longer than usual. Awkward, gangly, poetry-quoting teenagers take on
parts usually played by bitter hard-boiled rough-necks. An act of violence
becomes a mundane thing. Much of the picture is moody nothingness but there are great, iconic scenes such as the trio's race
through the Louvre and their much ripped-off dance in a diner.
wr/dir: Jean-Luc Godard
ph: Raoul Coutard
m: Michel Legrand
cast: Anna Karina, Claude Brassuer, Sami Frey, Louisa
Colpeyn, Daniele Girard
BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
*****
Italy
Bernardo Bertolucci’s masterful, beautiful piece of nostalgia for the
wide-eyed passion of that period in life just before disillusionment sets
in. His hero is an exultant 22-year-old Marxist, drawn to the romance of a
permanently pre-revolutionary state far more intimately than he is to the
communist ideals he spouts. The setting is Parma, Bertolucci’s hometown,
which takes on an otherworldly, romantic allure.
dir:
Bernardo Bertolucci
wr: Gianni Amico, Bernardo Bertolucci
ph: Aldo Scavarda
m: Ennio Morricone,
Gino Paoli, Aldo Scavarda
cast: Francesco Barilli, Adriana Asti, Allen Midgette, Morando
Morandini, Cristina Pariset, Cecrope Barilli, Evelina Alpi, Gianni Amico,
Goliardo Padova
BLACK GOD, WHITE DEVIL
***½
Brazil
One of those self-consciously artsy avant-garde pieces where people
talk and move very slowly to underscore the deeper-than-thou solemnity of
the director's ambitions. This one is about a peasant who murders his boss and flees with his wife to the
desert, and it is influenced by mysticism and
American Westerns among other things.
The earlier sections involving a fanatical,
self-proclaimed saint carry an unlikely hypnotic effect. But the second
half, which gets the peasant involved with a bandit, grows a little
tedious.
There were people who reportedly compared Rocha to Eisenstein
based on his work here, which would have been more than
a little far-fetched. But the picture does have a certain staying power - the
stark, desolate landscape is its major weapon.
wr/dir: Glauber Rocha
cast: Geraldo Del Rey, Yona Magalhaes, Othon Bastos, Mauricio
Do Valle, Lidio Silva
THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID
***½
France/Italy
The second adaptation of the Mirbeau novel (the first was done by Renoir
during his Hollywood period almost twenty years earlier) in theory holds a
lot of promise. It teams up a master filmmaker and a commanding star at
the peak of her powers. And the subject matter - the arrival of a young
chambermaid revealing the unorthodox secrets of a well-to-do family - is ideally suited to Buñuel's penchant for attacking the bourgeoisie. The
end result however, is mildly disappointing. It's not one of Moreau's best
performances - more than enigmatic and precocious, she comes off as vague and
scheming. And this isn't entirely her fault. Buñuel holds back on a
lot of crucial information throughout, to the extent that, although never
less than fascinating, the picture ultimately becomes alienating.
dir:
Luis Buñuel
wr:
Luis Buñuel, Jean-Claude Carrière
cast: Jeanne Moreau, Georges Géret, Michel Piccoli,
Françoise Lugagne, Jean Ozenne, Jean-Claude Carrière
DR. STRANGELOVE; OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING
AND LOVE THE BOMB
*****
UK
A high-ranking American general goes insane and
orders the bombing of a USSR site, which would result in an apocalypse.
The end of the world becomes one elaborate joke with kinky imagery and
social satire in what is probably the darkest comedy ever made. Laughter alternates with the
chilling realisation that the events nonchalantly unfolding on-screen are
not only essentially horrific but also still relevant.
The crafting,
particularly the striking, crystalline camerawork (which switches to
hand-held very effectively during the battle scenes), is immaculate. In
three separate roles, Peter Sellers shows off three distinctively
imaginative, bravura feats of comic timing. The supporting performances
are likewise perfectly pitched.
dir: Stanley Kubrick
wr: Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George
ph:
Gilbert Taylor
pd: Ken Adam
cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott,
Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Peter Bull, Keenan Wynn, Tracy Reed, James Earl Jones
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
***½
Italy
A mysterious bounty hunter arrives at Mexican
border town, controlled by two brutally feuding families.
In itself, this is little more than an entertainingly violent,
roughed-up remake of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" (1961). But as the first
Spaghetti Western, this proved to be one of the decade's landmarks. And
Leone caught Eastwood's vocal chords at their most raspily effective. Two sequels and countless rip-offs followed promptly.
dir: Sergio Leone
cast: Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volonte, Marianne Koch
GOLDFINGER
****½
UK
Special agent James Bond goes up against a
megalomaniac hungry for gold.
The third and definitive Bond instalment, jumping from one exciting,
brilliantly mounted set-piece to the next, with deliciously smug
one-liners, forever-cool gadgetry and Connery's effortless charisma to
drive it.
dir: Guy Hamilton
cast: Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, Gert Fröbe, Harold
Sakata, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn
THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW
*****
Italy/France
In his most famous and possibly best film, Pier Paolo Pasolini gives the
first book of the New Testament a stark, earthy work-over, bringing to it a
sense of poetry and transcendence that stays true to the Christian fathers'
intentions but has nothing to do with the kitschy earnestness of the
Bible.
wr/dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini
ph: Tonino Delli Colli
ed: Nino Baragli
pd: Luigi Scaccianoce
cast: Enrique Irazoqui, Susanna Pasolini, Margherita
Caruso, Marcello Morante, Mario Socrate, Settimio Di Porto
A HARD DAY'S NIGHT
***
UK
The first Beatles movie. Budgeted at $500,000 and intended to cash in
on Beatlemania before it wore off, it returned its cost many times over
and was credited for introducing things like handheld camera and fast
cutting to English language film.
The plot is like a parody of plots - in
the end it amounts to: will the gang find Ringo in time for the big show?
The plot isn't important though. The picture is purely intended as silly,
anarchic fun and to this day you'll find plenty of people who swear it
works as such and compare it to the Marx Brothers' movies.
But the Fab Four
struggle with the limited grasp of acting that is required of them. Comic
timing doesn't come to them naturally and they don't know how to pretend
they're not reading cue cards. (An emaciated grandfather also features
prominently, and he's there to be crotchety, but he's just eerie.)
It's not a tedious picture - a few witty exchanges do come off - but those becoming acquainted with the Beatles may suspect the footage with all the screaming girls in the
audience was
lifted from another concert.
dir: Richard Lester
wr: Alun Owen
ph: Gilbert Taylor
cast: The Beatles, Wilfrid Brambell, Norman Rossington, Victor
Spinetti
I AM CUBA
*****
USSR/Cuba
Not the crude propaganda, not the ham-fisted metaphors, not even the
droning, didactic Russian voiceover (which also swallows up the droning,
didactic Spanish dialogue) manages to diminish Mikhail Kalatozov's
staggering achievement. The famous single take that begins at the top of a
skyscraper and ends underwater three floors down comes early on and,
mind-blowing though it is from a logistical perspective, even that is
overwhelmed by the dynamism and eerie, skewed poetry of the visuals to
come.
dir: Mikhail Kalatozov (aka Kalatozishvili)
ph: Sergei Urushevsky
ed: Nina Glagoleva
m: Carlos Fariñas
cast: Sergio Corrieri, Salvador Wood, José Gallardo, Raúl
García, Luz María Collazo, Jean Bouise, Alberto Morgan, Celia Rodriguez
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INTENTIONS OF MURDER
*****
Japan
Shohei Imamura's rich, dense, often startling portrait of a fleshy,
uneducated lower-class housewife's day-to-day struggle to maintain a
modicum of dignity in an environment where dignity is continually claimed
and advertised, though only nominally maintained. Imamura is, as ever,
generous with the sex and violence - as he ought to be, since the major
matter on his mind is the clash between natural impulse and social
convention, particularly among society's disenfranchised. Just as
arresting as his subject matter though, is the idiosyncratic perspective
he consistently adopts in the staging of scenes. He is consummately
skilled at drawing humour and tension (simultaneously) from absurd but all
too palatable circumstances, all the while remaining utterly, commendably
resentful of sentimentality and didacticism.
dir: Shohei Imamura
wr: Shohei Imamura, Keiji Hasebe, Shinji Fujiwara
ph: Sinsaku Himeda
ed: Matsuo Tanji
m: Toshiro Mayuzumi
cast: Masumi Harukawa, Ko Nishimura, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi,
Yuko Kusunoki, Ranko Akagi
MAN'S FAVORITE SPORT?
**½
USA
Sapped of all spirit, Howard Hawks attempted rehashing his (as well as
other people's) older, better
screwballs into this Technicolor stillbirth. He originally sought Cary
Grant for the lead but had to settle for Rock Hudson, who is about as
good-looking as Grant, but not half as goofy or charismatic. He plays a
fishing expert who has never caught a fish and gets to interact with three
interchangeably attractive women, even the brightest of which is a pale
copy of Katharine Hepburn. It isn't an entirely tedious movie - there are
a couple of decent wisecracks involving a portable mock-Native
American. But it's depressing to see Hawks resort to ripping himself off
when one of the ladies' dresses gets ripped and Hudson is forced to press
himself against her back as a decoy.
dir: Howard Hawks
cast: Rock Hudson, Paula Prentiss, Maria Perschy, Charlene Holt,
John McGiver, Norman Alden, Roscoe Karns, Forrest Lewis
A MARRIED WOMAN
**½
France
Godard’s
first real stinker, it’s nominally the study of an adulterous wife and
her role as a consumer. But mostly it’s about navel-gazing, which
certainly played a part in Godard’s career up until now but was never
before the crux of an entire picture.
One of the bigger problems is Macha Méril, the lead. Her
face is blank in every reaction shot. She doesn’t seem involved or
interested in anything that surrounds her, so we in turn never get to be
interested in her.
There are numerous lengthy shots involving arty and very
self-conscious Juxtapositions of naked body parts. Initially they seem
arresting until you notice that half of them look like something out of an
art-school-grad’s photo essay.
wr/dir: Jean-Luc Godard
cast: Macha Méril, Bernard Noël, Philippe Leroy, Rita Maiden
MARY POPPINS
**½
USA
An ideal nanny lands at the doorstep of a London
family in the early 1900s.
Sugar-coated family fun, with variable numbers and
cinema's most nightmarish attempt at a Cockney accent.
dir: Robert Stevenson
cast: Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, Glynis
Johns, Hermione Baddeley, Elsa Lanchester, Reginald Owen, Ed Wynn, Jane
Darwell
MY FAIR LADY
***
A British professor accepts a bet to transform a
Cockney flower girl into a lady.
The studio's decision to replace Julie Andrews with Audrey Hepburn in the stage
to screen transfer has been maligned for decades. You can see why. Her
attempt at Cockney is the year's second-strangest. She looks lovely but
you're scared because she's always about to open her mouth.
Rex Harrison fits the part of obnoxious, whiny Henry Higgins
a little too well. You don't want him to open his mouth either (especially
not to 'sing'). You could argue it's his character, but think
back to Leslie Howard's excellent Professor Higgins in the non-musical and
generally superior "Pygmalion" (1938).
George Cukor was once a very dependent director but grew less
and less so as the years weathered him. From the neverending titles sequence to
the neverending ballroom sequence, the picture is bloated. And it never
stops feeling like an overlong stageplay.
On the plus side, he does make you believe the subtext to the
relationship between Dr. Higgins and the Professor is intentional. And the
soft focus lensing makes everything look very pretty and a bit easier to
endure.
dir: George Cukor
wr: Alan Jay Lerner
ph: Harry Stradling
pd: Cecil Beaton
cast: Rex Harrison, Audrey Hepburn, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid
Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper
THE NAKED KISS
****
USA
A prostitute reforms into a small-town nurse and
is haunted by her past.
A compulsive trash classic with outbursts of style
alternating with hilarious misjudgements. The exclusively leaden dialogue and
performances only add to the fun.
dir: Samuel Fuller
cast: Constance Towers, Anthony Eisley, Michael Dante,
Virginia Grey, Patsy Kelly, Betty Bronson, Marie Devereux, Karen Conrad
ONIBABA
***½
Japan
Maybe the earliest of Japanese thrillers exclusively concerned with being
sadistic and erotic, Kaneto Shindo's is a bizarre tale of two women in an
isolated rural region, who subsist in warring medieval Japan by
slaughtering stray warriors and trading their weapons for food. It has
minor philosophical pretensions about how humans can regress to primal
survival instincts when cut off from civilisation. But mostly it's about
bloody killings, sweaty monkey sex and waiting - sometimes for a very long
time - for things to go bump in the night.
wr/dir: Kaneto Shindo
cast: Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Sato, Jukichi Uno, Taiji
Tonoyama
LA PEAU DOUCE
***½
France
François Truffaut's carefully observed, clinically detailed, highly
sophisticated and deeply cynical account of adultery. With no evidence of
charisma or physical appeal, you have to assume it's through intellect
that Jean Desailly has managed to attract and marry the alluring Nelly
Benedetti, and it must be intellect that helps him seduce the comparably
sexy flight attendant, Françoise Dorléac.
The awkward cover-ups and hide-and-seek games that the
adulterous couple is forced to endure in this film stand against
everything the movies have taught us about the casual and irreproachably
glamourous methods of infidelity in French society. So this must be a
truer depiction of how these things would have functioned in real life.
Except for the explosive finale - irrespective of how many newspaper
articles it was probably based on, it screams Movie!
dir: François Truffaut
wr: François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard
ph: Raoul Coutard
m: Georges Delerue
cast: Jean Desailly, Françoise Dorléac, Nelly Benedetti, Daniel
Ceccaldi, Laurence Badie, Philippe Dumat, Paule Emanuele
SÉANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON
****
UK
A medium convinces her meek husband to kidnap a
young girl so she can guide the police in their search.
A tense and unsettling thriller that seems terribly reserved and understated until
it starts crawling under your skin.
wr/dir: Bryan Forbes
ph: Gerry Turpin
cast: Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough, Mark Eden,
Nanette Newman, Judith Donner
THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG
***½
France
The daughter of an umbrella storeowner falls
pregnant to a poor auto mechanic, who must leave to do army service for
two years.
A bold, vibrant experiment, with all of the dialogue sung. It works better
than you'd expect, but it isn't enough to steer the melodrama.
wr/dir: Jacques Demy
ph:
Jean Rabier
cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Ellen Farnen, Marc Michel, Mirreille Perrey
WOMAN IN
THE DUNES
*****
Japan
One of the sexier staples in the modernist cine-canon is this strange,
arresting existentialist allegory, wherein an alienated though virile
entomologist ends up trapped in a fetching widow's hut at the bottom of a
sand pit. A dialectic on the elusive meaning of freedom follows,
underscored by an erotically charged atmosphere and some evocative,
mesmerising compositions. The film's unorthodox though deep resonance
creeps up on you gradually.
wr/dir: Hiroshi Teshigahara
ph: Hiroshi Segawa
ed: F. Susui
m: Toru Takemitsu
cast: Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida, Koji Mitsui, Hiroko Ito, Sen
Yano
YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW
***
Italy
Three Italian women use sex to their advantage.
An enjoyable, richly textured trio of bizarrely sexy and
generally amusing tales, which never quite manages to reach a point.
dir: Vittorio de Sica
cast: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni
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