remission.film

Il Caimano

2007-04-26T16:40:00.000Z

This film has been credited with kicking media-capo ‘Slick Silvio’ (Berlusconi) out of office. For this alone Moretti deserves hero status - particularly in the context of his country’s domestic cinema. There has been a long-standing reluctance in Italy to criticize the grand editore on the big screen. This has partly been down to not wanting to rub against the (until recently) astounding popularity the Prime Minister has enjoyed, and partly down to the fact that in Italy, as in most European countries, film is largely subsidised by television – a medium which Berlusconi continues to dominate. Owning three terrestrial channels and many more radio stations and newspapers, like a modern day Charles Foster Kane, the reluctantly balding impresario has always been the wrong man to cross. However, Moretti takes on the buffoonish but sinister figure, not just lampooning his vanity and greed, but also tackling the apathetic defeatism he has ingrained within the people of Italy - this political and intellectual atrophy is the great man’s ominous legacy.

How to counter the mind-numbing effect of Berlusconi? Moretti provides the answer here with a vibrant, liberating and authentic film that’s unafraid to engage with reality – in stark opposition to the glitzy spin of Berlusconi’s empty empire. Silvio Oralndo plays Bruno, an anxiety-ridden hack producer of B-Movies (such as ‘Lady Cop in Stilettos’) who begins filming a script he hasn’t even read. To his horror, the self-confessed right-winger realises that he is making a scathing biopic of a Berlusconi-type mogul. Having deceived himself into the pressures of political action, Bruno is also trying to hold together his dissolving marriage. The industry turns away from him, either fearful or bored by his new project. But Bruno – a bundle of newly inspired energy – throws himself into the production, confronting the subject and the looming presence of Berlusconi head on. The surprising, challenging conclusion to the film illustrates Moretti’s serious intent and a fine example of the ceaseless invention of this underrated writer / director.

Il Caimano is no Fahrenheit 9/11. It hones a humorous but persistent antagonism rather than a crude frontal assault. For this reason it seems to have been damned for a lack of courage. However, as great talents such as Billy Wilder and Howard Hawks have shown us, humour shows a greater awareness of the social (and human condition) than smug soapboxing. It shows class, invention and not a little ambition to entertain when trying to make a point. Moretti plays a small role in the film as an actor refusing the part of Berlusconi because he is working on a comedy. The screenwriter questions his ethics, wondering if now is the time to be making such a film. ‘It’s always the right time for a comedy’, he says, justifying his own approach, as director.

Woven into the film we’re watching is the movie ‘Il Caimano’ that Bruno is trying to produce. The movie is a genre thriller of power, corruption and conspiracy. Here Moretti displays his convincing talents as a genre director. Scenes from the movie interrupt our Il Caimano, as if Berlusconi is attempting to sabotage his own critique – a not unusual step for a man who once bought the newspaper that was dedicated to exposing his corruption. Further layers written into the narrative are the bedtime stories told by Bruno to his kids. He offers them violent tales of vengeance, which they happily consume. Bruno, like Berlusconi’s shallow commercial channels, satiates them with the trash they want, not what they need.

Often glibly tagged an ‘Italian Woody Allen’, Moretti’s inspired script and meta-textual confidence is somewhat reminiscent of Allen’s purple patch of the late-80s and early 90s. It’s also true that both directors share an effortless naturalism and ear for the right line at the right time. That’s where the comparisons end, really. Moretti is a far warmer director than Allen. I also find him a more human, touching observer of the incredulity of everyday life.

Admittedly, Il Caimano is a bit of a mess – but only in a way that convincingly reflects the untidy existence that most of us lead. I’m sure that we all have unresolved subplots of our own and have friends whose characters are in need of a little more development. Called into action at the last, Moretti presents an immediate and particularly incisive film that allows Italy (and its cinema) to look forward to a more politically engaged and courageous future.

Originally published in Stylus Magazine, May 2007

Roger Dodger (2002)

2007-02-18T18:13:00.000Z

An interesting and well-written exploration into the honey trap of love and sex. Campbell Scott's arch asshole (think James Spader, with a job) is perfectly played. It was also good to see Elizabeth Berkley still alive and in some ways still recovering from her 'fuck-like-she-burns' role in 'Showgirls.' The Mamet-like dialogue and central conceit drew me in. Not thoroughly enjoyable and a little complacent, the film reminded me a little of 'In the Company of Men': dry, cold and more impressive than fun. It's was refreshing to watch a film that feels like it has been worked on, that has a firm grip on its characters. One of the things i've always enjoyed about movies is the way in which we throw ourselves at the mercy of someone else. We entrust them with our soul for a few hours. They either return it soggy or in shreds or, in this case, not only in tact, but a little shinier. there's nothing more refreshing than well-honed cynicism.

16 year old Nick comes to New York to learn all about women from his frustrated player of an uncle, Roger (the Dodger). Much fun is had with the master / pupil set-up and Dylan Kidd makes good use of the bustling bars and lonely crowds that comprise the city. Professional alienation and corporate reduction have forged Roger - a man who, in a better environent or another time might have been a worthy hero - into a bitter and twisted fucker. It's easy to see what Roger is, without deconstructing him on screen. The filmmakers realise that there's more mileage in seeing where he goes rather than where he's been. Kidd doesn't seem to have made strides since the realease of 'Roger Dodger', which is a shame as he has a light touch and a sharp ear. It may not be a whole load of fun, but it's a genuine and well crafted piece of work.

P. Cabrelli

Rocky Balboa

2007-01-28T18:45:00.000Z

It’s hard to know where to begin. I’m not sure I can reach deep enough inside myself. Ever since I can remember, I have had a deep affection for the character Rocky Balboa. In every sense he is one of the most iconic and era-defining creations of modern cinema. He has always been a reflex symbol of heart, guts and glory. He embodies an ethic that’s satisfying and hard not to value: work hard and you’ll get what you want or at least reach a place where you can accept losing because you have given every last inch of yourself to the task.

One thing is for sure, I am rating this movie for the way it made me feel. I’m not certain that’s the right thing to do, but it would be a betrayal of everything I have taken from the franchise if I weren’t to give back just a little. Rocky is romantic and that is something worth preserving. When romance is dead or retired or too punchdrunk to shuffle into the ring, then what's left? Not much. Even the heavyweight cynics can't deny that it’s worth getting something out of life. That's what Rocky is about: taking the hits and moving forward in the face of it. Yes it’s simplistic. Yes it’s corny. But it’s true. The devastating emotional connection between Rocky and the audience is irresistible and unmatched. The tireless, dogged will of the hero is such a winner. Motivated by devotion and self dependence, Rocky has never been beaten as an identifiable cinematic force. Never will.

There were jokes and jeers at the sight of Rocky, a dumpy and sullen figure. But something stirred the moment the training began. When Bill Conti’s ‘Gonna Fly Now’ piped up, several people blurted out ‘Yes!’ – as if they had been waiting to believe again. The pure aspiration of the music and its link with the battered dreams of glory of Balboa are inseparable. The feeling it inspires is so rare that it’s indescribable. To hear it again was just so great. To be honest, my critical faculties are paralyzed. Stallone has somehow released some surge of faith from a long dormant dark place I had forgotten about. There are moments in the film that just shouldn’t work: laying a rose on Adrian’s grave, pounding that poor rack of beef again, a heart-to-heart with the brilliant but credulous Burt Young, Stallone transparently maudling over the loss of youth. But the resurrection of Rocky, long after we had given up hope of his return, is just too mesmerizing to hack away at with petty criticism. Watching the film is simply a wonderful and emotionally manipulating experience.

The opening hour of the film is ponderous and has a great wit to it. The script is emotionally naked and at times awkwardly so. But that's how it is isn't it? People don't always move seamlessly from feeling to feeling. Sometimes it’s embarrassing to watch people cry or open themselves up, particularly those you admire. The script is peppered with gems of bruiser prose reminiscent of FX Toole and Ring Lardner. Rocky refers to the dissatisfaction that remains within him as 'something going on in the basement'. The spiritual poverty of a sedentary life has created a beast within him that seeks violent release. Rocky Balboa illustrates well what happens to the minds and bodies of retired sports stars, the feeling of uselessness and decline that overwhelms them. Defined by their physical prowess, age strikes them the hardest and longest. Boxing may be a crude and simplistic manner to find out what you're made of but it’s also a pretty clear cut one if you are willing to accept its harsh terms. As Rocky says 'what’s wrong with standing toe-to-toe with someone and saying “I am?”' This sort of resolute self-dependence defines the character and the ethos behind the franchise that won so many hearts. Rocky the film and the character, and Stallone the actor and director, are anachronisms making their own individual but complexly entwined last stand.

The writing and character development have been carefully considered. There’s a direct line from the already on-his-way-out puncher of the first film and the man for whom the exit sign is a distant memory that we see here. Rocky always had a goofy humour and Stallone effortlessly resumes it here, charmingly so. When Balboa accepts the opportunity to prove himself against the young pretender – the wonderfully named Mason ‘The Line’ Dixon – and the training begins, the character – and Stallone - fight for a last chance and the closing of his narrative that both deserve. Has anything changed? Well, Balboa has lost his wife and he’s like a slumped, slurring shadow of his former self. There is the overriding sense of an impending tragedy. However, as he sheds the pounds and bulks up, it feels like the intervening years (in his life and my own) have been nothing more than time served. ‘The older I get the more things I've got to leave behind’ says Rocky, begging for a discretional license. So, he no longer has nothing to lose, no longer the hungry kid with a mean right. Rather, the character is adrift and as undefined as his flabby physique – looking for an arena in which he means something again. Who are the commission or we to take that away from him?

The big fight itself has clearly been filmed before a real-world major event. The format switches to digital - for practical reasons - and this has a surprisingly naturalistic resonance. The crowd are also in on it and there’s no reason to believe that their affection for Rocky is not as real or even more so than the pay-per-view bums they are there to watch. If anything, the lack of depth and heroics of the modern heavyweight division make it at least plausible that the more wily fighters of fifty or so could jab their way through a title shot with dignity. Bar the freakish Russian Nicolay Valuev, there’s no one out there to worry a legend long past his prime.

Stallone has been brave enough to leave in certain clumsy takes which betray the care and respect that he has approached the character this time round. The comic book villainy of Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago and Tommy Gunn is no where to be seen. Mason ‘the Line’ Dixon is a good boxer with no-one worth fighting. It’s a polished performance by Antonio Tarver, shyly believable. His character is also looking for a test, the key to his own basement. The fight is less spectacular and sensational than the masochistic contests of Rocky I and II, and Stallone / Balboa shows the sag of age. However, the naked aggression of Stallone to prove himself and his character is undeniable and can be felt in the physical pounding he is prepared to take as Balboa and the critical mangling he will inevitably face as director.

The story of Rocky Balboa comes to an end neatly, almost as if a dead man has been allowed to choose the manner of his exit from beyond the grave. Stallone has obliterated the memory of the abysmal Rocky V and redrawn Balboa as a classic American character defined by his ability to take a battering without losing his feet or his head. It was an absolute pleasure to watch the film and wave farewell to such an inspirational force.

Directed by Sylvester Stallone
with Sylvester Stallone, Burt Young, Antonio Tarver & Geraldine Hughes

This review first appeared in Stylus Magazine (www.stylusmagazine.com)

P. Cabrelli

Reflections in a Golden Eye

2007-01-28T18:39:00.000Z

In his autobiography, An Open Book, John Huston states that Reflections in a Golden Eye is “damn near faultless…one of the best films I ever made.” He’s wrong. This brooding, torpid, often ludicrous southern Gothic is full of howlers, woefully miscast and, without doubt, the finest piece of work he ever committed to film.

Adapted from Carson McCullers’ novel by Chapman Mortimer, the movie is imbued with the tragic melodrama of the first author and the stagnant portentousness of the latter. Marlon Brando plays the introverted Major Weldon Penderton, stationed in the Deep South with his adulterous nymphomaniac wife, Leonora, played by Elizabeth Taylor. Taunting Penderton with her conquests, daring him to intervene—or to even care—Leonora is one of Taylor’s most wonderfully spiteful and emasculating interpretations. And Brando? The great man’s reputation sometimes occludes the immaculate subtlety of his craftsmanship. He gives, under Huston’s powerful direction, a performance of unmatched potency and complexity—and, in the process, became one of the first major U.S. actors to play a homosexual leading character.

The role of Penderton was earmarked for Montgomery Clift, but he died before production could begin. It was then offered to Richard Burton and Lee Marvin, who both declined on account of the uncomfortable subject matter. Huston had to seduce Brando, inviting him over to Ireland, reading from the script before him. Originally, Brando claimed to have taken the role because it afforded him an opportunity to ride horses. But, curiously, when asked to mount on the first day of shooting, he cowered in terror and admitted he was scared of the animals. Penderton has his own fear of horses and it seems that Brando—ever the method man—absorbed the anxieties of his character. Indeed, there is a scene in the film where Brando rides the horse naked into the forest, dismounts and whips it into a bloody mess. (Penderton’s repressed homosexuality has no outlet except violence against the defenseless creature.)

Penderton’s masochism isn’t a lonely sentiment in Reflections. Leonora’s frequent lover and Penderton’s superior, Lt. Colonel Langdon, is oblivious to his wife’s self-mutilation. The details are grisly and unflinching: Alison, Langdon’s wife, cuts off her own nipples with garden shears, after her miscarriage, to claw the attention of her husband. However, it is only Anceleto, the effete Filipino houseboy, who offers any comfort. In fact, it is clear that these two marginalized characters are conducting illicit relations of their own.

The film drew laughs at its recent resurrection at the NFT in London, no doubt the sight of Brando prissily applying cold cream to his face was just too much. I mentioned that this film is miscast, and that is one of its fundamental strengths. Brando is awkward as Penderton, patently unsure of himself trying to fit into the role of a gay man. Taylor, on the other hand, is far too unashamedly glamorous and wonderful for the gutter slut she portrays. However, the discomforted manner of the actors plays on the heavy incredulity of it all. Nothing is more excruciatingly affecting than watching the unlikely transpire.

Comparable to Lumet’s The Fugitive Kind, another looming highpoint of Brando’s career, there is the stink of hate in the air in Reflections, even in the lovemaking and the promises. Like a seedier, morally inverted version of From Here to Eternity, there is an excitement in the dissolution—anyone is capable of anything—and Huston’s gloomy film feeds from this negative energy to create an unlikely but compelling tale of turgid erotica.

Something must be said for the overall, contradictory, beauty of Reflections in a Golden Eye and the richness of its images. Brando never looked sharper or more poised for action. Indeed, so taken was Coppola with Penderton’s upright figure that he used stills from this film in Apocalypse Now to stand-in for a young Colonel Kurtz. A resplendent Elizabeth Taylor, with her bouncing behind, rapacious eyes, and lazy sexuality turns the camera into a leering eye. Huston, too, is on top form, making full use of the small, perfectly designed set—roving, peering into windows, stealing private moments from unsuspecting characters. This is an underhand and unsavory film that peels back the respectability of the base and the lives of its notables, reveling in the morass that writhes beneath.

Directed by John Huston

with Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Forser

Screenplay by Carson Mcullers and Chapman Mortimer

This article first appeared in Stylus Magazine (www.stylusmagazine.com)

P. Cabrelli

Phase IV

2007-01-28T18:30:00.000Z

Phase IV is the only feature film directed by Saul Bass, the ingenious credit sequence specialist and it really is a truly remarkable, almost alien piece of work. The story begins in space, a shot of the sun emanating a solar flare. The narrator tells us that the effect on earth, while some predicted annihilation, was almost imperceptible. The sole alteration in the nature of the universe is that ants seem to have picked up a signal from the flare, something that shifts them up the evolutionary scale, something that gives them purpose, a desire to dominate the planet. At first they concentrate on eliminating their nearest threat: spiders, mice, lizards. Later, they direct their sole attention to the next most advanced creatures on the planet: us.

The phases referred to in the film indicate the stages of evolution the ants go through to assert their dominance over mankind. This may all sound like a 50's B-movie, and it may very well take its cue from such pulp, but Phase IV is a uniquely composed masterpiece of surreal science-fiction. Set in the bleached vistas of the Arizona desert, Saul Bass delivers effectively the feeling of an awakened terrestrial intelligence that seems to have merely been lying in wait for us. The tactical battle that ensues between the research station and its two scientists (the crazed Englishman, Hobbs, and the cool Californian Games Theorist, Jim) is enthralling.

Bass simply tweaks the dial of the way things are to create an apocalypse in microcosm, the natural extension of which is clearly sinister, dystopian. The ants build reflective sand-towers to overheat the station. Jim desperately tries to communicate with the ants using geometrical symbols (“It's the only universal language between intelligent creatures, goddamit!”). In a particularly unnerving scene, the ants send back a circle with a dot in the middle, representing the research station and the girl whom they plan to abduct. The girl (Kendra) is played by the stunningly beautiful Lynne Frederick, rescued from a nearby farm. Strangely, Kendra is not her real name, but the name of her horse, who was killed by the ants. It is never made clear why she adopts this name, but it is somehow tragically resonant.

“Phase IV” itself is the final stage of the battle for dominance, the ants replacing their queen with Kendra. Jim discovers her in a creepy underground construction, a place that represents the ants' attempt to make a human space, comfortable for their new queen. I have always found this final scene very disturbing, viewing how the ants 'decide' to accommodate Kendra. They create a room, with four walls and a doorway, a space that's semi-human, like in the final scenes of Kubrick's 2001, there's the definite sense of humanity's demotion. Finally, a blue light emanating from the heart of the ant colony—presumably an effect of the solar flare—seems to merge the central ant intelligence with that of Kendra and Jim, sending them back out into the world:

We knew then that we were being changed,

We didn't know why…but we knew we would be told.

So, we can hypothesise that Kendra and Jim are to assimilate the rest of humanity, that a new symbiotic intelligence has been created by the solar flare, effectively destroying mankind, forever altering the history of the planet. The perfect organization, resilience, and communal power of the ants is deified within the film, and the thematic and spiritual anxieties seem to dissipate with the emergence of Kendra and Jim, human of form but with a new, selfless desire to progress for the good of the colony.

The film, as you might expect from the visually inventive Bass, is beautifully put together. The ants themselves are wonderfully captured on screen. Believe it or not, there are several amazingly emotive scenes from the insects. Bass has constructed the story around them so effectively that their obviously natural actions take on greater significance. The desert shots highlight the sparse oddity of our own landscape, showing that this planet is as alien to us as any beyond the stars. There are segments of the film which feel like an art installation, they are so perfectly formed and individually defining. In particular, the scene where Kendra, Jim and the central ant intelligence merge, is a magical expressionistic collage of abstract images, reflections, cross-fades, and superimpositions. The only film that comes anywhere near this in terms of communicating effectively the dread and wonder of an alien presence is Event Horizon (another drastically underrated film).

Phase IV is a rare film that certainly approaches the medium from another direction. It offers a glimpse at something truly threatening, fully expressing the shallow, inessential position that humanity occupies in the universal order. Part science-fiction, part-horror, the film always makes me feel unsafe, detached. Saul Bass, at the first attempt, created an incredible, powerful film. Funnily enough, there are no credit sequences.

Directed by Saul Bass

with a whole load of genius ants.

This article first appeared in Stylus Magazine (www.stylusmagazine.com)

P.Cabrelli

Sorcerer (1977)

2007-01-28T18:23:00.000Z

William Friedkin’s fraught remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic Wages of Fear (1956) is one of the great works of the New Hollywood movement. However, the paucity of the director’s later career and the poor critical reception on the film’s release means that it remains relatively obscure, despite its towering ambition and forceful execution. Before the juvenlisation of Hollywood by Spielberg and Lucas, there was Sorcerer, a film of rare and courageous power. In many ways a rival to the later, insanely driven Apocalypse Now, we follow a group of desperados stranded on the borderlands of oblivion, never certain if they are moving toward or backing away from destruction.

The narrative is a punishing one from the start: to extinguish a refinery fire, four hopeless men stranded in a squalid South American town are hired by an oil company to transport two truckloads of rotten and unstable nitroglycerine over two hundred miles of treacherous mountain terrain. If the men succeed – if they manage to survive - they will be paid enough to escape the godforsaken country they find themselves in. The journey is arduous and offers almost certain death. Friedkin deviates from the original only in the smallest details, inserting some particularly arresting visions of the town: a hot, wet pocket of hell where the shit of the world has piled high. His remake has a timelessness thanks to the consistent greed of ‘the corporation’: ‘where there’s oil, the Americans aren’t far behind’ mutters a local under his breath. Not only that but corruption always stinks and there’s plenty to sniff at here.

Friedkin cuts down severely on the characterization and exposition of Clouzot’s original, which has been the cause of much derision. However, he makes the film even more rigid with anxiety, evermore difficult to witness with the context removed. If anything, Sorcerer is an improvement on the classic because of the intervening years. A remake has an inevitable relationship with the original and the time between the two has incubated a livid desperation in which the repulsive little town has sunk further still into the mire and the men willing to risk their lives, incomprehensibly, value them just that little bit more. As bad as Clouzot could imagine things, Friedkin made them that much worse – his capacity for searing nightmare reaching that much deeper.

There is something pure about the narrative, basic and essential: each movement, every expression of humanity could be punished with death along the rocky road. Sorcerer depicts the ultimate repression of the body and soul. The results are nerve-wracking and the intensity unmatched. These are men way beyond themselves, stranded and floundering in un-negotiated territory. Friedkin has forged a grim, cruel and fatalistic film that surpasses anything he created before or attempted since. Perhaps if he hadn’t blown himself so hideously and arrogantly before Hollywood the film wouldn’t have been the vehicle for the backlash against him. A sustained and singular mood of despair is irresistibly drawn out of the perilous situation and the bitter will to live of the desperados is compelling. They move toward the fiery depths as some sort of salvation, inching toward the heat and certainty of damnation, torching at last the caged false identities they have caged themselves within. Long time dead, they seek the cleansing that only burning can bring.

The road becomes something more, a ribbon of crisis and exasperation, wending its way through the dark heart of the jungle and beyond, into an alien and jagged landscape of the mind, suggesting a transcendental plateau has been reached through the pain and torment of their journey. Friedkin’s control of the waning psychological conditions of his characters is intimate and pressing. There’s no need for analysis or existentialism here, their souls are plastered to the windscreen, in the suspension of the trucks, under its creaking wheels, even soaking through the sweaty pores of their faces as they inch over the rickety bridge between life and death a splinter at a time. Everything is on the line and Friedkin ratchets the drama until snapping point.

The lead role was originally written for Steve McQueen, however, Friedkin refused to expand the small role of the bar girl to incorporate Ali McGraw. Frightened that a year in the jungle would destroy his marriage, McQueen passed. Friedkin was right, there is no place for the female touch on this testing, masculine pilgrimage of agony. These men long ago abandoned notions of love, the only recipient of their affection is escape. However, as the director later noted, a single close-up of McQueen would have made the film the success it deserved to be. Hot from Jaws, Scheider came on board and is absolutely terrific: taught, menacing and lean, he seems the embodiment of desperate discontent. An actor of great poise and intent, when Scheider let’s loose he is thunderously wild. The rest of the cast, particularly Bruno Cremer as the suave, doomed Serrano, are pitched just right, framing their characters with the freedom of the damned. Friedkin never quite allows them the camaraderie of Clouzot’s band of ruthless jokers, keeping the reigns tight and the tension high – always just a moment away from slitting one another wide open, they are outcasts until the end.

To gain Clouzot’s permission to remake the film, Friedkin promised that it wouldn’t be as good as the original. It’s not easy to say whether or not he kept his promise and I suspect he did his best to break it, but it certainly plucks at the audience’s raw nerve with a more delicious conviction. Criterion’s 1999 restoration includes important material cut from the original, adding a more rounded view of the characters without ever betraying their essential mystery. The insidious soundtrack, synthesised and baroque, jangles against the Goya-like wastelands to ill effect –ensuring that in almost every way this is a remorseless piece of work with a cruel and heartless end. However, the film is not an exercise in cynicism, rather it celebrates the dogged heroics of the human spirit, the quiet determination of life to prevail even against the fiercest opposition.

Directed by William Friedkin
with Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal and Ramon Bieri

This first appeared in Stylus Magazine (www.stylusmagazine.com)

P. Cabrelli

Stay

2007-01-28T18:12:00.000Z

Stay is heroic in its failure. It plays like an extended Night Gallery episode: Bold, conceptual, phoney, insincere, maybe brilliant—probably not. It is as great as it is awful, at times, refreshing and downright thrilling. Forster’s film benefits from the same medium-budget freedom of such movies as Dark City, Impostor, The Jacket, and The Machinist. Psychological sci-fi is enjoying a renaissance of late, similar to the poverty row b-movie noirs of the late ‘30’s and early ‘40’s, producing experimental directors and writers, inventive alternatives to the bland over-marketed movies in wider release. This type of movie is always ridiculed by critics for being a little different—four-dimensional, expressive, genuine. Unlike their bigger budget rivals, these movies don’t need to counter-balance all points of interest by playing with themselves in masturbatory self-reference. They’re honest stories; true fantasy.

Sam (Ewan McGregor) is a psychoanalyst confronted with the enigmatic, suicidal artist Henry. He becomes drawn into Henry’s confusing world of signs and symbols, unable to determine precisely whose nightmare it is that he’s examining. Stay tackles the always-intriguing dilemma of whether it’s better to remain in your own delusions—or escape to an unforgiving reality. The most memorable example of this can be found in Philip K Dick’s dazzling Ubik. Other movies, like The Matrix, Vanilla Sky, and Dark City, thrash around playfully in the conceptual trash of the notion. Forster’s film, however, packs a remarkable emotional resonance, the swirling, Escher-esque set design and violently effective formal fragmentation hinting at the sort of guilt-laced, emotional turmoil Henry is experiencing. The torturous repetitions of scenes, stairwells, glimpses, and tropes run a tight and telling parallel to the broken, anxious sentiments lurking beneath the surface, and to Henry’s cool exterior.

The film’s problems lie mostly in the remote performances of Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor. Each speaks with a slow drawl, careful not to disturb their pulpy American accents. The dialogue is, at times, just awful, a little too aware of itself, but not stylised enough to really zing. Watts, in particular, is hard to believe as a recovered depressive/artist. Maybe she’s too beautiful, maybe it’s how clean her clothes appear when she paints, or maybe it’s because she lacks edge. No matter how many shots I see of her scarred wrists, I can’t seem to shake the idea that she’s never been in real danger in her life. If she were to slit those tanned wrists, like some pretty Hollywood immortal, I imagine they’d instantly heal.

It’s curious, how references to other works of art in literature are perfectly acceptable—and yet, in cinema, they typically ring so false. David Benioff’s script relies too heavily on quotation, leaning rather precariously on the power of greater work. The bottom line, though, is that Stay is incredibly watchable, despite its more frustrating ingredients. The moment before Henry is about to kill himself, the characters of his fantasy scream in protest. Total Recall and Vanilla Sky feature similar tangents: Figments of the imagination begging for continued existence, justifying their reality, hanging in the balance of a conceptual universe. Here, it’s a particularly touching moment, however brief.

The last five minutes of Stay are pure Rod Serling, the apparent situation slowly uncoiling, then lashing back into shape just before it swallows its own tail. It may explain too much, but that’s science-fiction for you; equilibrium is restored, leaving the Big Idea stranded, left to find its own way home.

Directed by Mark Forster
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling

This review first appeared in Stylus Magazine (www.stylusmagazine.com)

P. Cabrelli

The Lady from Shanghai

2007-01-28T17:56:00.000Z

SCENE

Reclining listlessly on her yacht, Elsa Bannister, urged by her eager, voyeuristic husband Arthur and his vulgar crony Grisby, sings “Please Don’t Kiss Me,” a tired, broken hearted elegy. It is here and now that her lover, Michael O’Hara, realizes the depth of his feeling, the acuteness of her longing and the ominous current which is dragging them all under.

**
This scene was never supposed to exist. Panicked that a Rita Hayworth film without a musical number would sink at the box office, producer Harry Cohn ate $60,000 of his own money and ordered Orson Welles to shoot it. As it turns out, it’s impossible to imagine The Lady from Shanghai without it.

The scene begins with the camera lingering over Hayworth’s body, as if it were a lover bearing down on her, uncomfortably forced to heed the title of the song. The allure of her vacant expression feeds an unconsummated tension. If ever the limitations of the cinema were apparent, it’s here. Somehow Welles, only Welles, makes this tormenting restriction of the medium a key element of the drama. Of course Arthur Bannister, crooked of body and mind, could never satisfy a woman like Elsa. He, too, hangs over her—looking, but not touching.

Orson Welles, as the ‘black Irishman’ Michael O’Hara, creeps below deck, as if in Elsa’s subconscious, an anxious, oversized figure. “Talk of money and murder, I must be insane,” he mutters, “or these people are lunatics.” Blame Elsa. As the song progresses, the camera descends, the lover unable to stay away. Simultaneously O’Hara is drawn upstairs as she exhales the song with the smoke in her mouth, almost in one long, dispassionate sigh:

Please don’t hold me
But if you hold me
Don’t take your arms away.
Comes a change of weather,
Comes a change of heart
And who knows when the rain will start?

Bathed in shadow, O’Hara watches her entertain the sweaty boredom of Arthur and Grisby. So beguiling is Hayworth’s performance that her mouth eventually seems the very center of the universe. Like a siren’s call, it’s what will send O’Hara crashing to the rocks. How ironic: on a yacht, all ostensibly drifting in the same direction, and yet each character trying to drag the other their own way. While quite beautiful, there’s also something deathly in Elsa’s delivery. She lays still, as if on a slab, disturbed only by the cigarette she brings to her lips. Her movements seem unnaturally premeditated, hinting at the fate—the unerring heartbeat of noir—which will befall her. Her delivery is the antithesis of Gilda’s ebullient “Put the Blame on Mame.” Here she seems to have withdrawn so far into herself that the revelation of her murderous greed later on comes as no real surprise.

Film noir floats on a thin raft. The surface is a visual seduction, the melodic allure of romance. Below it? The threat of a dragging tide. But, inevitably, the men of noir are always drawn toward the kiss, even in the face of its assured consequence. The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Out of the Past are true illustrations of the genre’s preoccupation with destructive, manipulating women. As if in microcosm, Elsa’s song warns at the fateful outcome of her own seduction: “Please Don’t Kiss Me” is a plea for both of them. Ready to shoot her, in the famous mirror sequence, Arthur can take the trap no longer, “Of course killing you is killing myself, it’s the same thing. But you know, I’m pretty tired of both of us.”

The slow, mournful song comes to an end with Elsa mouthing “away,” the lingering lover leaving her mouth unkissed. Elsa closes her eyes, turning away before the slow fade out, as Welles ends the scene with the same deathly imagery with which it began. It’s possibly the finest concession to an anxious studio ever made.

Directed by Orson Welles
With Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane
Screenplay: Orson Welles

This review first appeared in Stylus Magazine (http://www.stylusmagazine.com/)

P. Cabrelli

The Fallen Idol (1948)

2007-01-28T17:44:00.000Z

There are lies and lies,” mumbles Baines, butler to the French Ambassador, to his severe, sadistic wife, “and some lies are just kindness.” The shifting importance of truth is the subject of Reed’s incredible domestic thriller, a theme with which the characters seem to have a desperate, frightful relationship. A year before he directed The Third Man, Reed took his fluid, uniquely perceptive camera into the home.

Felipe, the inquisitive 10 year-old son of the ambassador, is left alone for the weekend with Baines, with whom he enjoys a scampish relationship, and Mrs Baines, a cold-hearted, sexless matron. Felipe slips out to discover Baines pleading with his mistress in a local tea shop. Baines asks for Felipe to keep this a secret, which he does, unsuccessfully, letting it slip to Mrs Baines later on. This becomes the first confusion for Felipe: When is it acceptable to bend the truth? Mrs Baines contrives a trip to her sick aunt. However, she remains in the embassy, to confront Baines, who has arranged to have dinner that evening with Julie, his mistress. The two are genuinely in love, but Baines, a kindly man, fears his wife.

At a moment of incredible tension, Mrs Baines beats Felipe, after he fails to keep her secret that she is hiding in the basement. Baines comes to the boy’s rescue and the husband and wife argue at the top of an ominous marble staircase. Felipe observes the argument from the fire escape. As the husband and wife descend inside, Felipe must hop down to the next window. By the time he reaches it, Mrs Baines lies at the foot of the staircase with a broken neck and Baines, his friend and father figure, stands over her fearfully.

The audience is aware of Baines’s innocence, as we “witness” her independent, accidental fall. However, in the eyes of the young boy, Baines is a murderer whom he is desperate to save. The beautifully pitched arc of the film has Felipe—having had his notion of truth obscured by deceitful adults—resolve to “lie” to the police and protect Baines, who, of course, is perfectly without guilt. The benevolent lies of the boy incriminate Baines, who entraps himself in a tangle of lies and inconsistency in an attempt to present an acceptably “true” story to the police.

Graham Greene’s screenplay is perfectly judged, enticingly paced. This is a fine example of what British cinema could do at its heights. Like Powell and Pressburger or Hitchcock, Reed was an idiosyncratic craftsman whose presence could be felt in every thought-out frame. The economy of meaning for which Hollywood is rightly celebrated was natural to Reed, keeping the audience alert in the knowledge that everything on screen has a purpose. This is a mesmerizing thing, no doubt providing the world of fiction, and each significant moment within, a sense of meaningful destiny, which can be lost in the lives of real people. Reed’s film never veers into fantasy; the warmth with which he treats the subject is, at once, thrilling, funny, and moving. The decline of British Cinema is no doubt due to the seeming unwillingness to persevere with such well-rounded films, moving away from the simple idea of entertainment into whatever it is now.

Ralph Richardson is tremendous as the admirable, flawed Baines. His frustrations are particularly English in a quiet, internal, and devastating way. Kind, charmingly distracted but fundamentally weak, Baines is an unfortunate working-class idol for the naive, upper-class Felipe. The butler, rendered powerless by so many, lacks the social confidence to emerge from his affair with dignity. He even turns down the opportunity to use the diplomatic sanctity of the embassy (foreign soil over which Scotland Yard has no authority) by not wishing to “inconvenience his Excellency.”

There are some beautifully poignant moments in the film, one particular example being the scene in the teashop where Felipe discovers Baines. The butler continues his conversation with Julie, now referring to Julie as “your friend.” He pleads with Julie to talk to this “friend,” so sure that “her chap” begs her to stay, rather than move back to France. It’s excruciating to watch Baines, so desperate to unleash his passion for her, filter his emotions through yet another screen. Later in the film, another effective moment sees Baines and Julie playing hide and seek with Felipe, almost discovering Mrs Baines, who hides in the house, herself seeking revelation, truth. One suspects that it remains far too contorted, twisted, and unrecognisable to ever be uncovered.

The final moments involve Felipe apologising to Baines, not for telling the truth, but for lying ineffectively. He is confused, telling Baines that he thought God took care of such things. “Trouble is,” replies his doomed friend, “we’ve got a hand in the game.” There are so many defining moments in this perfectly executed film, and this is one of them. The world—not just the playful world of Felipe—is about negotiating the rules of the game. Almost everyone here gets it wrong, making them fallible, pathetic, and, of course, much like the rest of us.

Directed by Carol Reed
With Bobby Henrey, Ralph Richardson, Sonia Dresdel
Screenplay: Graham Greene
A+

This review first appeared in Stylus Magazine (www.stylusmagazine.com)

P. Cabrelli