50s Transition Films: Murder By Contract (1958) and The Big Sky (1952)

Once a week since the beginning of September Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has introduced films from the 1950s "transition" at the Gene Siskel Film Center. The movie plus a brief introduction and discussion following the film, comes in at a mere $4 (for Film Center Members), making it the best deal in Chicago for cinema. I made it out mid-way through November (finally) for two of the must-see movies on the schedule: Murder By Contract (1958) directed by Irving Lerner, a film said to have influenced Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch and others; and Howard Hawks' The Big Sky (1952). The last film of the year is coming up this Wednesday (12/12) and is sure to please, Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon (1957). Actually, the print we will see is a UK version with twelve extra minutes of runtime, and officially titled, Curse of the Demon. No matter what you call it, it will be great; Tourneur is one of the finest horror and noir directors, the same man credited with Cat People (1942) and Out of the Past (1947).


Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Ah, double rates for women, indeed! Claude (Vince Edwards) is a swaggering contract killer who is hired to take out a target, but it isn't a hulky man like he's used to; it's not the kind he can envision like an old enemy of war, this time he's hired to kill a woman. Don't let her slight figure and delicate piano playing fool you, the lady's got a mouth like a sailor, terrorizing her police escorts and body guards with degrading tongue lashings. She's one of a handful of women scripted in the story, and it is no wonder she strikes fear in his heart, she's the only one of them with authority and voice. If we are to draw noir characteristics into the analysis of Murder, pianist Billie Williams (Caprice Toriel) is clearly Claude's femme fatale. He brustles past his two male counterpart, veritable babysitters employed to keep Claude on schedule and at ease, hence outings to the beach and to other Los Angeles attractions. On a one-week deadline to complete his mission Claude relaxes most of his days away until it is finally revealed to him that Billie isn't a man. With only two days left he hastily demands $10,000 to complete the job (up from his original fee of $500, I believe); the rate is guaranteed to him without any mention of why his stock suddenly soars so high in the murder market. The poster illustrates just how close Claude comes to his target, and he fails out of unspoken insecurities with women in general. It might have been the singularly oddest post-war picture of maladjusted men, and is clearly a part of an anxiety-riddled theme in Lerner's other films from the 1950s, none of which I have seen, but whose titles speak volumes: Suicide Attack (1951), Man Crazy (1953), Edge of Fury (1958), and City of Fear (1959).



Wednesday, November 28, 2007

If Hawks' Red River (1948) is homoerotic, The Big Sky is a confident acceptance of male companionship. Kirk Douglas and his much lesser-known co-star Dewey Martin play two comfortable companions on a fur trade expedition up the Missouri River with "Uncle Zeb" (Arthur Hunnicutt), another amiable character who is employed as the film's gentle voiceover narrator. When the story opens with Boone (Dewey Martin) knocking the lights out of Jim (Kirk Douglas) for no apparent reason, we think the movie will be demoted to a series of macho fights that declare superiority. To the contrary, Douglas's character is too calm mannered to care; he really is a guy resigned to the unwieldy western terrain, but he's rather thoughtfully at peace with that fact. And so, with the typical alpha-male tensions dissolved there's room for the characters to live and breathe together, and they are (as the introductory speaker mentioned; not Rosenbaum, who was out of town at a film festival) quite at ease in one another's company. The voiceover narration by Hunnicutt, in his unpretentious and wise country tone, frames the film with a sense of loyalty and male sentimentality rarely seen in a western.

Another Month in Movies!

Welcome to "One Month in Retrospect!" Whew, time flies when you have every intention of blogging but then don't. So here we go for now, a quick catch up on a few of the movies I've seen since last month. As always, there is no rhyme or reason for the sequence of these particular films, no trio of Westerns for instance that give them any cohesion in theme. It's mildly exciting either way to see my hodgepodge of cinematic priorities, I hope you think?


Fanny and Alexander - 1982 - DVD
Friday, September 21, 2007

Until old Fanny and brother Alexander waltzed along, it had been years since their father Ingmar Bergman visited my living room DVD player. In fact, it could have even been as far back as the college years when I watched The Virgin Spring (1960), a methodical piece on black and white stock that slowly panned from scene to scene, before the martyred daughter's death is avenged by her bitter, mourning parents. On that note, it probably explains why I haven't seen any Bergman since the requisition of college film courses. But in these instances my conscience gnaws away at such unbalanced tendencies, until I realize, humbled and riddled with guilt, that I should give the old Swede another chance. Years of fearing a lulling film like The Virgin Spring led to plain dread in consideration of another Bergman screening.

I do build up these kind of anxieties about watching film, but I air them clearly because I don't think I am alone. I also don't think one should nearly succumb to outright fear of boredom--I mean, it is just a movie after all! So there you have one more insight to my madness. But that will be all there is to say about that topic, because dear Fanny and Alexander was a delight, and an utter redemption of Bergman in my otherwise long and sorrowed thoughts of him.

Fanny also came to me on the heels of director Ingmar Bergman's death (July 30, 2007), and the adrenaline debate between Chicago Reader film critic and historian Jonathan Rosenbaum, who says, to paraphrase, "Hey, what's the deal with Bergman?" To which Chicago Sun-Times critic and otherwise national film-reviewing-hero-to-the-masses, Roger Ebert, responded (again to paraphrase), "Hey, Bergman's a big deal!" After reading what they both had to say, as per usual, my opinions fell somewhere in the middle. I was inclined to side with JRo off the bat, what, in light of my aforementioned sentiments of the director; and it was the first time I had come across real criticism of him. Being provocative has its merits. But Ebert wins this round. (Though drawing from my own film school experiences, Rosenbaum wins on his point that Bergman is not as big as Godard in college curriculum. Godard and the French New Wave provide a hell of a lot more grist for the academic mill than Bergman's contributions from a singular national cinema that had a fraction of the former's world-wide influence.) As I write this now I realize in recent years I watched Bergman's Persona (1966) in 2004, a film that provides searing commentary on issues of human identity, and the contrast between our interior and exterior selves; that is, how we think we look compared to how we actually do. When we think of this issue within the frame of a film, a medium that functions upon mass spectatorship and the inevitable blurring of a star's character with the actor's actual identity, the result is profound.

Fanny and Alexander is the brightest, and most decorous in terms of its narrative: the characters feel natural at their home and with one another, lending it to be a more proper picture of something real, and in fact, Fanny is an autobiographical work. I suppose what sets Fanny apart from the more tedious Virgin Spring is just how easy it is to watch, though (judging from memory) it seems to maintain the exact aesthetic of films like Virgin Spring, The Seventh Seal (1957), or Persona; there is a quiet detachment, I think, from all of these movies, because they're so temporally ponderous. But Fanny spent minute after minute in the same scene without the feeling of hours passing by. I flip-flop between valuing form over function; there were mesmerizing moments, for instance, in Hungarian director Bela Tarr's recent The Man From London where a calm came over me in a long take of a shadowed alleyway, or a view of the city through a window frame; and at other times the tedium of its static shots had the potential to lull me to sleep. But Fanny and Alexander strikes a perfect balance between its story and technical form.


The War - 2007 - PBS Broadcast
Sunday, September 23, 2007

And I haven't even mentioned Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's new documentary, The War. Of this 14-part series I've seen roughly 4 or 5 segments, so that said, perhaps I'll wait to discuss it in further detail until I've seen the whole thing. For starters, though, the research that went into this documentary is a feat in itself, and the characters they profile have simply jaw-dropping stories. One criticism: it's coverage of the Dresden bombings was particularly thin and didn't touch a bit on its unethical controversies; for as many horrors as Burns retells, The War rings a touch sentimental.



Monster House - 2006 - DVD
Monday, September 24, 2007

I also saw Monster House, which was alternately funny and terrifying; it's one of the smarter kids' flicks, and a lot of fun.

And no I did not see only three movies since September 21st. I have a handful more to report on, including flicks from the Chicago International Film Festival, and much-awaited new releases like Eastern Promises! (Hint: so good!)

Out 1: Spectre - 1972 - Film

Saturday, June 9, 2007

"I don't get it" is the tip of the iceberg, though I'm not beating myself up for it. Apparently, for the folks who had seen the full 750 minute version of Jacque Rivette's Out 1, the measly 4 1/4 hours of his 1972 Out 1: Spectre was "just blowing by." At least that's what I overheard at the Gene Siskel Film Center during the intermission. Not having seen the former version of the film (and indeed its own separate masterpiece, I am sure) I watched Spectre with bouts of awe, unavoidable weariness, and indulgence.

Mostly I am fascinated by a filmmaker who has the audacity to create a film that's originally 12-and-a-half hours in length, then, not yet giving it up, reforming it into a new piece of art—that is, the 4+ hours I witnessed a few weeks ago. Then, and with just as much pride, the movie nearly filled the theater, making me question what kind of person it takes to willingly subject oneself to hour after hour of images in the dark—passing up meals, sunshine, and necessary bathroom breaks—to watch this filmmaker's 12 or 4-hour creation?

Well, I am one of those spectators, though I don’t have an answer. To describe it best (like any film that, in my opinion, runs over 3 hours) Out 1: Spectre is an experience. It is all at once baffling, beautiful, philosophical, and yes, cathartic. The first couple hours of the film bounce among different sets of characters abruptly; the transitions are raw, making the various groups' connections indecipherable; it's a puzzle. Intermission comes and goes, and according to Rosenbaum a few minutes ahead of schedule, as per the original screening in Paris thirty-five years ago. Though, renewed with caffeine and a good stretch, the latter half of the movie read differently, more relaxed. The characters intermingle, some semblance of a narrative emerges, and you've otherwise become comfortable with the fact that you're not quite sure what's going on, so you just watch.

And therein lies the indulgence. In retrospect the movie is a colorful barrage of movement, acting, speaking; with no defined form it is life emerging from long and short intervals of time. I can't think of anything more delightful that escapes my understanding.