2024 - March

01-03-2024

What always fascinated me about photos of the Führerbunker is that its walls were adorned with paintings while its already tight hallways were further cluttered with designer furniture. Despite the fact that just meters above their heads the entire kingdom which they had built was being demolished, the doomed leaders of the Third Reich clung to the last shreds of their everyday, lavish lives.

I was reminded of this fact by a story I read about in a piece on Jonathan Glazer's new film "The Zone of Interest". The story says that when Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig moved to their new house on the outskirts of the camp, they hired a soldier to rev a motorbike in their front garden in order to drown out the screams as they went about their day under a veil of indifference.

Glazer's film is based on a novel by Martin Amis but I have a suspicion that a great deal of its tone and style was inspired by this historical factoid.

It's a most unusual Holocaust film in that it never directly shows us any atrocities or violence. We only ever see the roofs of Auschwitz and smoke rising from its chambers of death. Instead, Glazer focuses wholly on the bizarre day-to-day lives of the Höss family and the little domestic dramas they experience as they raise their children mere meters away from a concentration camp.

It's a story so grotesque, I would find it utterly unbelievable if it weren't true.

In fact, the Höss house shares a wall with Auschwitz, a wall beneath which Hedwig plants some vines. "They will cover the wall so we won't see it anymore," she says as a motorcycle engine revs and revs in the background.

The style of the film is decidedly Hanekeian. All the shots are flat, wide, and blandly lit. The characters speak in monotone, uninterested voices about coats and shoes and diamonds they looted from corpses. Hedwig applies a dead woman's lipstick as she bickers with her husband.

A hint of tension develops between Rudolf and Hedwig when there's a suggestion that he might be transferred to a different town. Hedwig doesn't want to leave Auschwitz. She says that Rudolf would have to drag her out of there. She has built a little paradise next to the concentration camp - a beautiful flower garden with a pool for the children to play in - and she feels like the Queen of Auschwitz.

She is played by Sandra Hüller in a marvellously layered performance. Even though she at first appears to be a sweet-natured housewife, Hüller slowly reveals a portrait of a woman who is not only a willing accomplice but possesses just the same quality of blase evil as her notorious husband.

Höss is played by Christian Friedel who gives the finest portrait of the "banality of evil" I've ever seen. With his baby face, pouty demeanour, and penchant for shorty shorts, he is like an overgrown child coasting through a genocide with a shocking amount of indifference. In one scene, he calls his wife from the office to tell her that Hitler is referring to the genocide of Hungarian Jews as "Operation Höss". He tells her this information with a bland voice and his feet leisurely perched on his desk as if he is ordering pizza.

The most astounding aspect of the film is Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn's sound design which mixes an almost constant sound of distant screaming behind every scene in the picturesque Höss garden. Every now and then they layer in Mica Levi's stomach-churning score made up of repeating scales almost drowned out by an echoing bass sound.

These superb performances and sound design go a long way in overcoming some of the film's shortcomings the biggest of which is that the film pretty much makes the entirety of its point in the first 20 minutes and then spends the remaining 85 spinning its wheels.

"The Zone of Interest" is by its very concept a one-dimensional film. A grotesque tale about a group of people trying to live a middle-class suburban life on the outskirts of a concentration camp. Glazer tries to hint at some greater moral complexity of his characters but his attempts at symbolism are either awfully obvious or rather unconvincing.

For example, there is a subplot revolving around Hedwig's mother (Imogen Kogge) who comes to a visit, gets an attack of conscience, and runs away. This character is very poorly developed, however, as she only ever appears in a handful of scenes which makes her hasty departure an anticlimactic and ultimately unimportant narrative dead end.

A clumsy attempt at symbolism sees Höss overcome with a mysterious stomach ailment which I suppose is meant to represent his own pangs of conscience. This kind of high-school-level symbolism was already effectively exploited by Peter Greenaway in his film "The Belly of an Architect" and induced only a groan from me rather than any kind of deeper understanding of Höss's humanity or lack thereof.

The aforementioned Michael Haneke would have certainly found a more interesting and original way to round out this film. In fact, a great deal of "The Zone of Interest" seems reminiscent of Haneke's brilliant "The White Ribbon" which ploughed some of the same thematic fields but did so with a great deal more subtlety, depth, and originality. Haneke's film also left a great deal more impact on me than "The Zone of Interest" precisely because it wasn't one-dimensional and left many of the questions and dilemmas at its centre unresolved.

Still, even though "The Zone of Interest" is not as artful or profound as Glazer intended it to be, it is still undoubtedly an effective film loaded with an atmosphere of unease. Glazer's greatest achievement is that he is able to make us feel the stench of death creeping from the concentration camp into Höss' cosy home. For that reason, the brilliant performances, and some of the best sound design I've ever seen outside of a Denis Villeneuve film, "The Zone of Interest" is well worth seeing.

3.5/4

02-03-2024

I've heard Marko Djordjevic's "Enough for Now" described as the Serbian "Perfect Days" and as glib as that may sound it's not entirely wrong. Both films find immeasurable beauty in the everyday, celebrate simplicity, and focus on the little things which make life worth living. They both follow characters who overcome mundane odds with relentless positivity in the face of the natural grimness of the world around them.

There is no particular plot to speak of just a series of occurrences, large and small, in the lives of a tight-knit family living in the Serbian town of Kragujevac. They are made up of a single father named Moca (Filip Djuric), his adorable little daughter Marta (Miona Pejkovic), his live wire of a sister Visnja (Ivana Vukovic), and their brother Vasa (Nikola Rakocevic) who's an actor in Belgrade and accordingly pops in and out of the film as his schedule allows. A great deal of audience sympathy is stolen by the family dog Kulisa who, for inexplicable reasons, seems to be about as agitated as the Höss family dog in "The Zone of Interest".

The characters never quite feel "real" in a documentarian sense but that's OK since "Enough for Now" has a distinctly fairy tale quality about it. They regularly burst into song, bake each other cake, engage in imaginative roleplay, and possess the enviable ability to turn everything into a game. They are the embodiment of the word adorable, sweet to the point of saccharine, and I don't doubt some could find them insufferable. I was pleasantly surprised to find them warm, loveable, and engaging.

Over the course of the film we see them mourn the loss of an old teacher, take in an old pal's daughter (Milica Jovovic), go on an impromptu field trip to Bosnia, and have a long overdue reunion with some absent friends.

Just as in "Perfect Days", there is a lingering hint of sadness which the characters are desperate to suppress, avoid, and sing away but it remains an undercurrent which Djordjevic never allows to overwhelm the movie. The sole wrong note in "Enough for Now" comes from a reveal late in the movie which really should have come much earlier. Saving it for a third act twist is misguided because it is something which should have been dealt with in greater detail and which could have provided the film with more complexity and ultimately a more believable humanity.

This is Djordjevic's second feature after the offbeat love story "My Morning Laughter". It's certainly a more polished and self-assured film certain to appeal to a more commercially minded audience but I must confess I missed some of the rougher edges of his quirkier and more cockeyed debut.

Both films star the always excellent Filip Djuric and Ivana Vukovic whose flawless interplay and natural charisma are key to this film's immense charm. Excellent performances also come from Nikola Rakocevic as the disheveled wayward brother who clearly misses the warm hearth of home but also yearns for independence, child actress Miona Pejkovic who has the precocious star quality of Mara Wilson at the peak of her career, and a slovenly Goran Bogdan who made me wish I had an old friend just like him.

"Enough for Now" is one of those films routinely described as nice. It's a warm-hearted tale of love, family, friends, and cake and I think it's exactly the film Serbian cinema needs right now amidst the flood of mind-numbing thrillers bending over backwards to imitate Hollywood and self-righteous political parables. Seeing a film so devoid of pretentions and so lacking in self-consciousness is refreshing and encouraging. Like it's protagonists, it's unafraid to be unrepetently and uniquely itself.

4/4

06-03-2024

Hirokazu Koreeda's "Monster" begins with a fire and ends with a flood. These two events are indisputable, definable, comprehensible, and uniformly agreed upon. Everything that happens between those two disasters, however, is in question and subject to interpretation.

Koreeda uses an intricate Russian doll narrative structure to show us how frustrating basic communication can become in a society obsessed with formalities, norms, and appearances. He shows us a group of characters taking part in the same story but interpreting it in wildly different ways. Instead of communicating and trying to understand each other's actions, however, they circle one another like sharks avoiding confrontation, "saving face", all the while sinking deeper and deeper into their own prejudice.

As their lives begin to crumble due to their inability to speak plainly, "Monster" begins resembling a Kafkaesque nightmare. Koreeda's film constantly teethers between absurdism and outright surrealism as characters speak to each other in meaningless phrases, get in increasingly convoluted situations and continuously seemingly wilfully misinterpret each other's gestures.

Consider, for example, the scene in which one of the film's protagonists Saori (Sakura Ando), pays a visit to her son's school in order to find out the cause for her son's increasingly erratic behaviour. Instead of receiving answers, she finds herself in the office of the headmistress who emotionlessly reads a prepared statement while her son's teachers bow in apology. Saori desperately tries to talk to them but is unable to make eye contact with the bowing men. Eventually, she resorts to crawling on the floor asking them if they're human but all they are able to do is repeat the same rehearsed statement over and over again.

Eventually, Saori reaches the conclusion that her son is being physically and verbally abused by his teacher Mr Hori (Eita Nagayama) at which point the film goes back to the beginning and shows us all the same events from his perspective. The Hori we meet here is nothing at all like the cackling, sleazy creep he seems to be from Saori's perspective. Instead, he's a caring, meticulous teacher who is cursed with the luck of Larry David.

Just as we think we're beginning to understand what happened, the film flashes back once again this time showing the events from the perspective of Saori's son Minato (Soya Kurokawa).

Even though all the major plot points remain the same from all three POVs, the characters' experience of them is so vastly different that they even affect our own perception of the very film we're watching. "Monster" feels less like a coherent whole than like an omnibus made up of three very different shorts. Saori lives in a kitchen sink drama mourning the death of her beloved husband and raising her troubled son. Hori seems to be trapped in a Japanese version of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as his attempts to be a good teacher end up getting him deeper and deeper into trouble.

It is, however, Minato's story which completely tips the film on its head. Whereas the first two-thirds of "Monster" seemed like an impressive narrative exercise, Minato's segment slowly turns the film into a deeply personal, unexpectedly touching, and vulnerably tender story of self-discovery through unconditional love. To say more would spoil the tremendous impact the final twist delivers and that would just be unfair.

As with all allegories, some of "Monster's" plotting is tremendously contrived and at times approaches caricature but writer Yuji Sakamoto is successful in presenting a strong case for each of his protagonists. He manages to make them into individual, fleshed-out, and deeply human characters which allows Koreeda to explore the ways other characters in the story perceive them.

This is a difficult task for the film's talented, dazzling cast. Each of them is essentially playing three characters from three distinct points of view. This is most obvious with Eita Nagayama's performance as Mr Hori who seems like a lecherous bully from Saori's perspective, a nosy but caring teacher from Minato's perspective, and an ambitious but unfortunate young man from his own perspective.

Sakura Ando is especially convincing in her portrayal of Saori's dignified but ineffectual struggle with her son's mysterious behaviour. Her frustration with her inability to understand his pain is deeply felt even though it's never directly expressed.

Nevertheless, the film's most interesting and layered character is one whose POV we intriguingly never get to see. It's the austere headmistress played brilliantly by Yuko Tanaka who stalks the school hallways like a sneaking phantom, never speaks above a subtle half whisper, and always has a slight smile on her face as if she knows a deep, dark secret about you. There's a rumour going around the school that she killed her own grandson in a hit-and-run accident and then convinced her husband to take the blame so that the school wouldn't lose face. Of course, no one ever bothers to ask her what happened. They all express their deepest sympathies and then withdraw to gossip in private.

There is a curious necessity by all the characters to turn others around them into titular monsters and blame them for all the problems in their lives. But which of the film's characters is the true monster? Predictably, the answer seems to be none of them. Koreeda delights in showing us bizarre, seemingly inexplicable behaviour and then showing us that it actually has rather mundane and banal motives behind it.

The fallibility of interpretation and malleability of facts seem to remain pertinent subjects in 2023. First in "Anatomy of a Fall" and now in "Monster". To me, Koreeda's film is the more original and more emotional one carrying more surprises up its sleeve. One of them is the final score composed by the great Ryuichi Sakamoto, a gentle, haunting piano melody which subtly foreshadows the tenderness at the heart of the film which Koreeda slowly reveals. Perhaps his ultimate trick is showing the audience that our own perception of the very film we're watching is false. I sat in the theatre thinking for 90 minutes thinking I was watching a clever, satirical narrative exercise only for it to turn into a warm and gentle human interest story seemingly on a dime. I wonder when I rewatch the film some day if I'll have a whole new perspective on it.

3.5/4

09-03-2024

"Dear Inspector" is a curious little mixture of a police procedural and a romantic comedy which despite its intriguing premise, excellent cast, and some genuinely terrific moments never quite managed to engage me in either its murder mystery or its romantic plot.

The story begins when Lise (Annie Girardot) quite literally runs into her old college friend Antoine (Philippe Noiret). The two had eyes for each other back in the day but never did anything about it. Now, some 25 years later, life has taken them on distinctly different paths. He is a professor of Greek at the Sorbonne and she's a police inspector.

Their burgeoning romance is continually interrupted by a serial killer brutally stabbing politicians on the streets of Paris. Lise is in charge of the investigation but she keeps her job a secret from Antoine even though I'm not really sure why. The film tries to milk this conceit for comedy but it left a sour taste in my mouth. I wonder if Antoine was the cop and Lise the professor if he would have had to keep it a secret.

Either way, this is all "très charmante" but neither one of "Dear Inspector's" plotlines ever reaches any kind of boiling point. Even though the premise makes the film sound like a Francis Veber farce, this film's humour is extremely low-key and gentle to the point where I'm not even sure it could be classified as a comedy.

Instead of creating compelling comedic complications to explore the unique situation Lise finds herself in, director and writer Philippe de Broca relies on one-liners and throwaway gags to elicit laughs. In my case, I can't say he was terribly successful. The film's humour is also distinctly "of its time" featuring a bevvy of jokes which would now be considered at best off-colour and at worst outright homophobic or sexist.

Girardot and Noiret make for a charming couple and their performances are charismatic and sweet but the characters they play are not terribly well profiled. For example, we never learn much about Lise's home life which includes a daughter she is raising on her own nor we do learn anything at all about what Antoine's been up to since leaving college. As we don't really get to know Antoine and Lise, it becomes increasingly difficult to remain invested in their love affair and, by the end, I didn't particularly care whether they got together or not.

The mystery plot seems to offer more excitement with several exceedingly well-staged and surprisingly grizzly murder scenes. I was particularly impressed by the one in which a politician is murdered in the middle of a large protest on a street fogged with tear gas. However, much as with the comedy plot, the atmosphere is only effective until we realize the writing is just not there.

De Broca treats the murders as something of an afterthought. The identity of the killer is painfully obvious and the clues leading to their arrest are half-arsed at best. Most egregiously, the film feels disjointed as the two plotlines are barely intertwined. Antoine doesn't get involved in the mystery plot until the third act which is when the film finally comes to life, at least an hour too late.

Speaking of runtimes, "Dear Inspector" is 105 minutes long and moves at a pace some might find cosy but which I found to be interminable. It has that distinctly French laidback attitude as it meanders through its two equally underdeveloped plotlines. By the midpoint, I kept expecting the Old Man from Scene 24 to pop up and scream at De Brocca to just get on with it already.

There are some little gems to be found along the way, however, such as Georges Delerue's excellent score and a surprisingly touching and elegiac scene in which a choir sings "Agnus Dei" in a crowded bar. But there are also some truly headscratchingly terrible moments such as the one in which Lise uses a handkerchief to pull an awl from a victim's back and then proceeds to hand it to her colleague who grabs the hilt with his bare hand. That's some attention to detail.

Ultimately, none of that matters because the film never managed to engage me. Despite its talented cast and intriguing premise, I found it to be rather thin and inconsequential and something of a slog to get through.

2/4

09-03-2024

Often mistaken for a Hitchcock film, "Gaslight", based on Patrick Hamilton's popular play, indeed mines pure Hitchcock territory. A Victorian melodrama of insanity and murder full of deception and devious twists. Unfortunately, it was produced in 1940, the year Alfred Hitchcock left for America leaving Britain in need of a new master of suspense. Thorold Dickinson, best known for his phantasmagorical adaptation of "The Queen of Spades", puts on a good show here. He may not be possessed of Hitchcock's lightness of touch or his immaculate technique but he infuses the film with a sinister atmosphere of menace and dread.

"Gaslight" is, of course, now best known as the origin of the term gaslighting but in this version of the Hamilton play that is no spoiler. It is immediately clear that the caddish Paul Mallen (Anton Walbrook) is up to no good. We see him pocket his wife's jewellery and then chastise her for losing it. We see him hide paintings around the house and make her think she did it while sleepwalking. He is clearly trying to convince her and everyone around her that she is going insane but why? This is not a whodunnit but a whydunnit and even though the mystery is not all that hard to deduce, it kept me engrossed.

Anton Wallbrook's performance as the villainous Paul Mallen is best described as operatic if not outright cartoonish. He is so openly smarmy and sneering that the biggest mystery in the film is why anyone would trust a word out of his mouth.

The first person to suspect Paul is up to something is a retired police inspector named Rough (Frank Pettingell) who recognises Paul as a suspect in a 20-year-old murder case. The rotund copper becomes intrigued and tries to become close to the unfortunate Mrs Mallen (Diana Wynyard).

"Gaslight" was remade in Hollywood a mere four years later and even though that film has its flaws it does boast a more dynamic and interesting screenplay. Revealing Paul as the film's villain from the get-go is not a terribly smart move as it deprives the film of any kind of true mystery.

Even more troublesome is the characterization of Bella Mallen who is a dreadfully passive character, a broken bird fully under the thumb of her abusive husband. Diana Wynyard presents a terrific, heartwrenching portrait of a victim of domestic abuse but Bella does not make for a particularly good thriller protagonist because she has been robbed of the most important characteristic a lead must have - agency.

And yet, despite a shaky screenplay, "Gaslight" still works like gangbusters. Against all odds, it's a delicious slice of melodrama, beautifully realized despite an obviously tight budget and simply bursting with imagination.

Bernard Knowles' atmospheric photography is the true star of the film. I was mesmerised throughout by his striking imagery such as the close-up of the suspicious Paul Mallen standing under a lamp on a fogbound street. Knowles and Dickinson use the infamous London fog to great effect giving "Gaslight" a downright horror movie atmosphere for who knows what monsters may hide in a pea souper.

Also magnificent is Richard Addinsell's electrifying score which features some surprisingly modern moments. My favourite scene in the film is a hectic montage sequence of an unseen murderer ransacking an old woman's home, desperately searching for treasure. This is the sequence in which Addinsell's pumping score reaches a fever pitch along with Sidney Cole's energetic editing.

"Gaslight" is a tremendous showcase for Thorold Dickinson who keeps the film moving at an engaging, fast pace. His direction is inventive, compelling, and full of mystery and wonder. Seeing this film makes me very sad that his career was cut short so early.

I believe that Dickinson was a worthy successor to Hitchcock. The great master's shadow looms large over "Gaslight". After all, it's a story he would have loved written by the author of "Rope" and shot by one of his favourite British cinematographers. And yet, Dickinson is able to effortlessly make the film recognisably his own.

It should be noted, however, that it can't be a coincidence that the estate agent who sells Paul Mallen his London home and kicks off the plot is named Mr Hiscock.

3.5/4

10-03-2024

Over the past few years, "gaslighting" has become one of those trendy buzzwords which begin feeling like they've been around forever as they slowly lose their meaning. In truth, gaslighting has nothing to do with random Twitter arguments and actually refers to a particularly grizzly form of psychological abuse in which the abuser manipulates his victim into questioning their own perception of reality.

The term originates from the title of Patrick Hamilton's hit play "Gaslight" and the much-lauded, Oscar-winning film which was adapted from it. Craftily, Hamilton uses the mechanics of a thriller to present a particularly nasty and pathological case of gaslighting in which a husband convinces his wife that she is going insane.

The play was first adapted for the screen in 1940 by British director Thorold Dickinson but it is this 1944 American film that everyone remembers mainly because the Dickinson version had been unavailable for decades. Now, when we are able to watch and compare the two films side by side, I have to say I much prefer the lower-budgeted but much more imaginative Dickinson version which oozes a spooky, fogbound atmosphere from every one of its beautifully photographed frames.

And yet, George Cukor's better-known adaptation of the play doubtlessly has a better, smarter, more layered screenplay which takes great liberties with the plot usually for the better. For one, this version takes the time to develop the characters before the sinister plot begins to unfold.

We get to see how the beautiful opera singer Paula Alquist (Ingrid Bergman) falls for the caddishly charming pianist Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer) as they romance each other in the labyrinthine streets of Venice.

Unlike the play and the Dickinson film which begin with the wife already deeply under the influence of her monstrous husband, here we actually get to see how the vibrant, vivacious Paula slowly falls under Gregory's spell. It's a devastating, painful transformation which Ingrid Bergman portrays with her usual gusto. She won a well-deserved Oscar for her performance which precisely essays Paula's descent from a free-spirited, open-minded young girl into a slave of a villain's demented mind.

I also like how this version portrays Gregory. He is less outwardly villainous, hiding his evil plans under an endearing lightheartedness. Charles Boyer certainly lacks Anton Wallbrook's intensity but Boyer's more convincing as a manipulator precisely because he seems like such a nice man.

The last major change from the play is the introduction of Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotten), a sprightly young Scotland Yard inspector who becomes suspicious of the scheming Mr Anton. Cameron is introduced as a love interest for Paula as well as her potential saviour but Joseph Cotten is wildly miscast in the part. His naturally shifty, laddish demeanour is at odds with his outright heroic role and he is quite unable to shake his American accent. Consequently, he comes across as more wooden than appealing.

Unlike Dickinson's film which was made on a tight budget in a British studio, this version of "Gaslight" has the lavishness of 1940s Hollywood on full display with its grandiose sets, gorgeous costumes, and elaborate backdrops. Unexpectedly, this very quality proves to be a hindrance as the film simply lacks the tense and creepy claustrophobia which makes the Dickinson film such a compelling thriller.

Instead, as directed by George Cukor, this version of "Gaslight" feels more like one of his melodramas - a Victorian version of "Gone with the Wind". Indeed, Cukor is no Hitchcock and this, his only proper thriller, is mostly devoid of suspense or atmosphere. His visuals are workmanlike, his mise-en-scene blandly unimaginative, and his pacing too bloated. Instead of ramping up the tension, Cukor allows the film to meander and slow down as it stumbles towards its third act.

The resulting film is an appealing, lavish production but it has none of the phantasmagoria which made the Dickinson film feel like a fogbound nightmare. It's far too restrained, conventional, and clean-cut to be as compelling and mind-twisting as it should be.

Don't get me wrong, "Gaslight" is a perfectly enjoyable product of 1940s Hollywood with a tremendous performance from Ingrid Bergman as well as some very memorable supporting turns from the likes of Angela Lansbury and May Whitty but once again I find the smaller, more imaginative, and less expensive film to be more impressive than its big-budgeted counterpart.

3/4

11-03-2024

Ellias Barnès (Marc-André Grondin) has not seen nor spoken to his father for close to 20 years ever since he left his Quebecoise home and moved to Paris to become a fashion designer. Now, when he's informed of his father's passing, the hypochondriac Ellis seems solely concerned with whether his dad died of some hereditary disease.

He is so uninterested in his father's death that he decides not to go to the funeral but death brings with it a whole flood of red tape and eventually Ellias is forced to leave his Pariasanne haute couture nest and return to the snowy landscapes of Montreal.

The first act of Xavier Legrand's "The Successor" is an exceptionally evocative piece of work. Buzzing with Sebastian Akchote's disquieting score, the whole film vibrates with Ellias' anxiety reflected in every aspect of the filmmaking from Nathalie Durand's clinical photography to Yorgos Lamprinos and Julie Wullai's arrhythmic editing.

Tasked with trawling through the belongings his father accrued over the years they haven't seen each other, the already edgy Ellias slowly becomes overwhelmed as mementoes of the past he's tried so hard to escape come to face him. A brilliantly awkward and uncomfortable scene plays out when he visits the funeral director (Anne-Élisabeth Bossé) who chooses a truly inappropriate moment to tell him she's a big fan of his work. She also happens to be an old schoolmate whom Ellias, of course, doesn't remember.

What Ellias (and the audience) doesn't expect, however, is the secret kept behind a locked door in the old man's basement. The scene in which Ellias finally opens it and steps into the darkness is a masterclass of suspense as well as the point at which the film's narrative quickly begins to unravel.

I won't spoil the twist "The Successor" has in store except to say that it forces Ellias to make a series of increasingly more unbelievable decisions not wholly supported by the film's screenplay. He is certainly a man in a precarious position - not only a public figure but also a profoundly anxious person on the cusp of achieving his wildest dreams. However, even these heady stakes are vastly outweighed by the monstrous decisions he ends up making in the film.

More egregiously, after an excellent build-up followed by several shaky but thoroughly surprising developments the film abruptly ends at what by all logic should have been the beginning of the third act. Open endings have been the bain of arthouse cinema almost since its inception but the way "The Successor" ends feels less like a provocation and more like a product of a filmmaker lost in the weeds of his own creation.

Here is an ending which is unsatisfying in every possible manner. It fails to tie up any of the film's many narrative loose ends, it fails to provide any answers or conclusions, and it fails to impress upon us any sort of message or overarching theme. In a film full of wild twists and revelations, the ending credits are the one thing which caught me the most off guard. If I'd seen the film projected from a 35mm print, I might have suspected that the projectionist had skipped a reel or two.

The shortcomings of "The Successor's" screenplay are truly unfortunate because the rest of the film is so damn good. Xavier Legrand's direction is assured, precise, and laden with an atmosphere reminiscent of John Carpenter's finest works. Also excellent is the production design by Sylvain Lemaitre and Jeremie Sfez. I just love the bland, suburbanite bungalow in which most of the film takes place. It's exactly the sort of place which would hide a dark secret in its concrete basement.

Best of all is the performance from Marc-André Grondin as the anxious, temperamental great man of Parisian haute couture who slowly turns into a frightened child over the course of the film. Equally good is Yves Jacques as his father's best friend, the awfully good-natured Dominique who somehow always shows up whenever Ellias needs a comforting presence. There is something deeply unsettling about Jacques' performance, something thoroughly creepy about his soothing voice and his fatherly demeanour. It's a real shame that like most of the film, his character remains a cypher.

With so many superb elements, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by "The Successor's" increasingly improbable plotting and deeply unsatisfying conclusion. A film with such excellent performances, so well directed, and so unsettlingly atmospheric deserved a smarter, better-constructed screenplay.

Ultimately, "The Successor" doesn't really amount to much but the journey there is definitely a shocking one and perhaps worth taking if you're willing to be dumped on the side of the road before reaching any semblance of a destination.

2.5/4

14-03-2024

I find that the style of my reviews usually end up reflecting the films they're critiquing. The more succinct and focused the film I'm writing about is, the clearer and more precise my review is. Unfortunately, this also means that once in a while I will face the problem of writing a succinct review about a messy movie. After all, how do you describe a film which doesn't seem to know itself what it wants to be?

"Shoshana" is one such movie and since it seems to constantly cut between three different films it will be difficult to write just a single review about it. It's a film which is at times a history lesson, a political thriller, and a love story but never succeeds in being all three at once. It is an ambitious project which aims to streamline an awful lot of hotly contested history through a tale of a doomed romance but whose screenplay is far too safe, impersonal, and ditactic to ever reach any kind of a narrative boiling point.

The history "Shoshana" mines is the creation of the State of Israel, an unexpectedly timely choice for a 2024 release. Set between 1938 and 1948, the film's director Michael Winterbottom grapples valiantly with a slew of events, names, organisations, and facts (disputed and otherwise). He uses newsreels and voice-overs with alarming frequency not only to establish time and place but also to try and explain the film's complex and still politically sensitive backstory.

These vintage newsreels are fascinating but often threaten to overwhelm us with an unnecessary volume of historical fact. I commend Winterbottom's attempts to be even-handed in his portrayal of a war waged by fanatics but in the attempt to show everyone's side, he wastes precious running time on rather dry history lessons.

The film's protagonist (because it would be wrong to call him a hero) is Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth), a British policeman tasked with keeping the law of the empire in a foreign land. A great deal of the film is a procedural showing his efforts to track down Avraham Stern (Aury Alby), a particularly radical Zionist who has given up on the idea of any kind of peace between his people and the British.

Wilkin's boss, the distressingly matter-of-fact Mr Chambers (Ian Hart) describes the British police as the apex of the triangle of terrorism. Indeed, much of "Shoshana" feels like an old-timey gangster picture about two rival gangs - the Jews and the Arabs - fighting over turf while being hunted by a corrupt gaggle of cops.

Unexpectedly, these portions of the film work the best as Winterbottom proves himself to be more than a capable director of suspense and action. He creates a tangible atmosphere of tension as Wilkin and his colleagues stalk the streets of Tel Aviv where there could be a bomb in every market stall or a hitman behind every corner. Meanwhile, the menacing, charismatic Stern proves elusive as he moves from one safe house to the next, always a step ahead of the coppers.

Now, you may be wondering who the hell is the titular Shoshana. Well, in a perfect iteration of this story, she should be its female lead. A charming Socialist firebrand and a member of the Haganah, an underground Zionist organisation, who also happens to be the love of Wilkin's life.

Logically, the historical events should serve as a background for this classical tale of star-crossed lovers and yet Shoshana's intriguing life story gets buried and ultimately lost among the endless history lessons and police procedural subplots. What a shame because not only is she the film's most interesting character but she is also beautifully played by Irina Starshenbaum who has an arrestingly radiant screen presence.

The film fails to tell this true story in an engaging or even remotely interesting manner. The romance between Shoshana and Thomas is severely underdeveloped. Besides a few mechanical sex scenes, the scenes they share are utterly devoid of chemistry or passion. The script has them spouting more exposition than declarations of love.

It doesn't help, I suppose, that Thomas as played by Douglas Booth is a rather bland, dull character distinctly lacking in passion or energy. He is constantly overshadowed both by Starshenbaum and by Harry Melling who turns in a memorably twisted performance as Geoffrey Morton, the childlike psychopath in charge of the Tel Aviv police force. Next to them, Booth's performance seems to fade into the background.

As a history lesson, "Shoshana" is too didactic and dry to be engaging and far too sanitised and evenhanded to inspire much debate. As a love story, it is painfully short on passion and a compelling leading man.

However, it does work reasonably well as an occasionally gripping police procedural though more in the vein of "The Sweeney" than "Foyle's War". There is something very televisual about this film. It's competently made and consistently entertaining but, in the end, comes across as curiously inconsequential and far too smooth around the edges to have a unique cinematic identity.

Like a good episode of an ITV detective show, "Shoshana" is a pleasant way to spend 100 minutes but I expected rather more of a movie about the Israel-Palestine conflict from a director of Michael Winterbottom's stature. Irina Starshenabum shines in the title role and Harry Melling is enjoyably kooky as the oblivious British imperialist but I very much doubt I'll remember anything about this film come next March.

2.5/4

15-03-2024

"Dune: Part Two" is not a movie, it's an experience. Seen on the big screen, with its alien soundscapes and Hans Zimmer's overwhelming score blaring from the cinema speakers, you will feel as if you've been transported to the desert planet of Arrakis where giant man-eating worms crawl through the sand and the air is infected with Spice, the hallucinogenic drug which is so valuable that the entire galaxy is about to go to war to control its production.

Denis Villeneuve spent the entirety of "Dune: Part One" setting up this magical, mystical world, its superstitions, and its many factions. As much as I admired that film, I felt it was an exposition-heavy prologue for wonders yet to come. I am glad to report that I was right. Free from the constraints of exposition, "Dune: Part Two" is free to fly and dive head-first into the world of Frank Herbert's imagination. Luckily, our navigator for the journey is Denis Villeneuve, for my money, the finest visual stylist working in Hollywood today. He turns Herbert's ideas into staggering images. Stark, unforgettable visions of the future achieved with some of the most convincing visual effects I've ever seen.

With mindless exposition out of the way, the film also has much more room to devote to character development allowing its starry cast to really shine. Timothée Chalamet is superb as Paul Atreides, the hothead false prophet leading an army of rebels against the evil empire. Chalamet fits the part beautifully with his aristocratic features and manners hiding a volcanic rage. He is equally convincing as a lost boy navigating his way through complex political schemes, a love interest and as a formidable leader and the scene in which he finally seizes the power over the Fremen is one of the film's most electric moments.

The two best performances, however, come from the two women in his life. Rebecca Ferguson is wonderfully creepy and sinister as his mother Jessica, a well-trained manipulator using the Fremen's religion to turn them into Paul's willing followers. Equally as good is Zendaya as Paul's girlfriend Chani who slowly comes to realize that the love of her life is not actually the Messiah but just a naughty boy.

The big bad of this film is Austin Butler as the psychopathic Feyd Rautha who assumes control of the Harkonnen forces. I didn't much care for Butler's Elvis but here he turns in a vastly more impressive performance. Slinky and hairless, his Feyd Rautha is a sadist who delights in the infernal mayhem of the intergalactic war. I love how, in the moments of great violence, there's always a childlike, mischievous expression on his face.

"Dune: Part Two" also contains a great deal more plot deftly navigated by the screenwriters Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts. Herbert's book is notoriously dense with schemes, double-crosses, and complex political discussions which the screenplay smartly and economically streamlines into a compelling, suspenseful tale of Shakespearian betrayals and struggle for power.

And yet, even amidst all of these complicated plot developments and the characters' inner turmoil, Villeneuve still finds the time to immerse us in the universe of Dune. His film is just as interested in the way sand flows between the fingers as it is in the machinations of the intergalactic empire. He focuses just as much on the way Jessica's scarf flitters in the wind as he does on her devious plot.

This is what I love the most about Villeneuve's sci-fi films. The universe he creates around the characters is so tangible and so believable that the whole film feels like an excursion into the unknown. Greig Fraser's phenomenal photography is a major part of the film's success as well as Patrice Vermette's production design which do a great job of creating an individual and recognisable identity for each planet and each family. Costume designer Jacqueline West similarly homes in on the rich history of each of these families giving them distinctive cultural backgrounds.

Indeed, one of my favourite elements of Herbert's writing is the way he incorporates real-world cultural heritage in his vision of the future. Unlike other sci-fi writers who tried very hard to be as alien and otherworldly as possible, Herbert posited that even thousands of years into the future, the human race will not lose the connection to their cultural roots. In the film, this is best exemplified through Hans Zimmer's spectacular score which takes familiar, historical motifs (bagpipes, Islamic chants, throat singing) and updates them for the year 10,191. That makes the soundscape of Villeneuve's "Dune" feel much more real and grounded than that of David Lynch's "Dune" which featured an excellent soundtrack that still tried way too hard to be spacey and out there.

Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" films are a true act of fandom: works of love, passion projects. He is so clearly enamoured in the world of Frank Herbert's creation that it is impossible for us, the audience, not to be sucked in as well. This is why, "Dune: Part Two" feels more like a portal to another world than a mere movie. As I sat in the theatre, I swear I could feel the heat of the planet Arrakis on my face.

But this is not just a formidable technical achievement. It's a film full of excellent performances, great passion, and some touchingly human moments. I was invested in Paul and Chani's relationship as much as I was in the great climactic battle and, for me, that is the sign of a truly successful epic.

4/4

16-03-2024

A Balkan wedding is no small affair as immediately clear from the opening of Ivan Marinovic's second film "Forever Hold Your Peace". Hundreds of people have been invited, a feast worthy of a medieval king has been prepared, and a large band has been hired. Now, imagine, if you will, that on the eve of this tremendous spectacle, the bride should have a change of heart and decide to call the whole thing off.

This is exactly what happens in this film when Dragana (Tihana Lazovic) realizes that she's no longer in love with her fiancee Momir (Goran Slavic). She's a firebrand, the kind of person who dreams big and burns brightly. He, on the other hand, is a kindly but mousy local boy, entirely contented to live in his childhood home, go to work every day, and get drunk with his mates every night. They are a mismatched couple and it's telling that her change of heart doesn't surprise anyone all that much. It's just that her timing is really, really bad.

But Momir's formidable father Leso (Momo Picuric) who has the kind of face that Sergio Leone would fall in love with is not going to let all the preparation go to waste. After all, what will the neighbours think? What will the family say? It just doesn't do to cancel a wedding the night before! So, he strikes a deal with Dragana. She will go through with the wedding, pretend everything's alright, and then get an annulment the following day.

This is an ideal set-up for a manic farce but Marinovic's film takes a slightly different tone. Instead of making a comedy of errors, Marinovic has made a comedy of manners - good and bad. He delights in all the strange and colourful wedding customs followed in this Montenegrin town and much like Krsto Papic in his brilliant "Handcuffs", Marinovic uses them to build a bizarre, almost absurdist atmosphere.

There is a great deal of singing, drinking, eating, and a surprising amount of dynamite being thrown around. The bride has to throw a lemon onto her groom's house but a group of naughty children hidden on the roof keep throwing it back. Leso and the best man (Goran Bogdan) are supposed to throw a stick of dynamite each into the nearby ravine but one of them accidentally drops his making the entire wedding party take cover.

The cast is made up of characters as colourful as the customs they're following. My favourite was Nikola Ristanovski as the groom's smarmy uncle who left Montenegro many years before and now lives somewhere in America. Also excellent are Mirjana Jokovic as Dragana's housewife mother who wishes nothing more but for her daughter to finally settle down and Snjezana Sinovcic as Momir's mother who is the only one willing to see Dragana's side of the story.

The comedic chaos ramps up as the film moves along but there is definitely a dark undertone to the proceedings. Dragana is clearly unhappy with her life but feels trapped in her home town. She once had great dreams of living in London which now seem impossible to achieve. Instead, she is now facing the greatest nightmare of any big dreamer - settling down. In that sense, Momir is the ideal representation of that nightmare - an oblivious manchild traditionalist living under the thumb of his controlling parents.

Like a Montenegrin remake of Robert Atlman's "A Wedding", "Forever Hold Your Peace" is a whale of a good time. It moves at a furious pace, delivering a whole host of memorable gags and quotable lines while still finding the time to develop its characters and expand on their inner lives.

Unfortunately, the film ends on a rather bum note with an unnecessary epilogue which undermines a great deal of the film's careful and thoughtful character development. Far be it for me to praise Emir Kusturica but he always knew that you have to end a party with a big bang. Instead, Marinovic opts to end his film with a disappointing whimper which appears to be supporting the traditionalist values he'd been parodying up to that point.

3/4

19-03-2024

At 5 am, on June 29, 1944, in Rillieux-la-Pape, France, seven Jews were executed by Paul Touvier, a member of the Vichy Milice who then spent the next 40 years evading justice. Norman Jewison's last film "The Statement", based on a novel by Brian Moore, turns the hunt for Touvier into a sleepy, turgid thriller instead of seriously exploring the loaded historical and political circumstances surrounding the inability or the unwillingness of the French police to capture Touvier for all those decades. Who was protecting him? Who was harbouring him? Why was he pardoned in 1971 by the French President?

This institutional indifference to crimes committed by WWII collaborationists was much more deftly explored in 2014 by Giulio Ricciarelli's "Labyrinth of Lies". "The Statement", on the other hand, tries to turn Touvier's story into a Frederic Forsyth-esque spy thriller in which he's harboured by some kind of an evil Catholic conspiracy while simultaneously being hunted by an Israeli task force and a determined French judge. Full of confounding twists and with all the intensity and suspense of a Sidney Sheldon mini-series, "The Statement" doesn't even manage to be a trashy bit of pulp fiction. What an unfortunate swan song for such an eclectic and interesting director!

For the purposes of the film, Paul Touvier has been renamed Pierre Brossard and is played by Michael Caine. This is an unusual part for Caine who has never played such a thoroughly unlikeable character before. His Brossard is a charmless, snivelling, cowardly hypocrite who kills people and then prays for forgiveness. Caine does an admirable job of muting his natural charisma and turning Brossard into a real creep but whether that's enough for us to believe him as a French war criminal is another matter. He's just too recognisable an actor with his highly imitable voice and instantly familiar gestures to fully disappear into a role. In the end, instead of seeing a fully fleshed-out character on screen, I just keep seeing Michael Caine acting.

The movie keeps cutting back and forth between Brossard's attempts to evade capture and the investigation led by a French judge named Livi (Tilda Swinton). Despite being repeatedly told that this is a major operation, we never see anyone else doing any investigating besides Livi and her sidekick Roux (Jeremy Northam). They interview witnesses, visit potential hiding spots, posit theories, and generally seem to be having a good time.

These scenes are the epitome of dryness. They feel like they've been lifted from one of those mind-numbing police procedurals you see on ITV. It doesn't help, I suppose, that the film tells us right from the beginning where Brossard is hiding and who his comrades are so that there really isn't a smidgen of mystery. On the other hand, Livi and Roux are so underwritten and so lacking in passion that I cannot imagine ever caring for them as characters.

The televisual nature of the film extends to the cinematography as well. DP Kevin Jewison's photography is flat and bland exhibiting no attempts at style or atmosphere. The direction is similarly uninspired resulting in a thriller with no thrills moving at the leisurely pace of an average daytime soap opera.

The rest of the cast is filled out with such recognisable British thespians as Alan Bates, Charlotte Rampling, John Neville, Ciaran Hinds, Frank Finlay, Edward Petherbridge, Colin Salmon... This is one of those films where the casting is so eclectic that you keep expecting the waiter to be played by Laurence Olivier or Alec Guinness to come in carrying a letter. None of them are used to any great extent as they serve only to provide exposition and then disappear from the film altogether.

One of the worst scenes in the movie is the one in which Brossard visits his ex-wife played by Rampling. The dialogue, written by Ronald Harwood, consists entirely of awkward, clunky exposition. "You are my wife," Brossard tells her as if she doesn't know. They then proceed to relate the entire history of their marriage to each other before Brossard threatens to kill the family dog. Riveting stuff indeed!

The film ends with a dedication to the victims of the Vichy regime. It's a noble gesture but they deserve a better movie. "The Statement" is a bizarre project. Directed by the great Norman Jewison, written by a notable playwright who had previously created incisive, intelligent plays on this very subject matter, and starring a whole slew of first-rate actors, it should by all rights have been a prestigious production. Instead, it's a cheap-looking, clunky thriller which suffers from a dreadfully underwritten script interpreted by a bunch of actors who look and behave as if they're slumming in some low-rent cop show. Only Caine seems to be taking his part seriously but as good an actor as he is not even he can make much of a one-sided character like Brossard.

1.5/4

19-03-2024

Even by standards of 1930s British cheapies, "Juggernaut" feels pretty darn cheap with its reused sets, stilted dialogue, and long wide shots. The film is so cheap that it even gets many of the actors' names wrong in the opening credits. Anthony Ireland becomes Antony Ireland, Morton Selten becomes Morton Setten, and Nina Boucicault becomes Mina Boucicault.

And yet, even with all of its flaws, I found this to be one of the more entertaining quickies I've seen mainly due to a few solid performances and its fairly entertaining though notably unambitious plotting.

There is no mystery in "Juggernaut" nor much of an attempt at character or plot development. The premise is established in the first few scenes and this remains the status quo until, quite literally, the very last shot.

The main villain of the film is Yvonne Clifford (Mona Goya), the much, much younger wife of a sickly millionaire Sir Charles Clifford (Morton Selten). As he lies dying in his creepy mansion, she is living it up on the French Riviera with her rather indiscreet lover Arthur (Anthony Ireland). When Sir Charles finally puts his foot down and decides to cut her allowance, Yvonne comes up with a dastardly plot to kill the old man.

Enter Boris Karloff as the sinister Dr Sartorius, a research scientist strapped for cash who agrees to kill Sir Charles in exchange for funding. Karloff is very good in "Juggernaut" and one of the most interesting aspects of the film is the way he doses the doctor's insanity. As Sartorious plan slowly goes awry, so his true nature is revealed. Karloff also does a great job of making Sartorious more than just a stock, caricature villain. For most of the film, in fact, Sartorius seems like a decent man gone astray in his almost fanatical desire to do good and discover a cure for a variety of diseases.

The rest of the characters are nowhere near as compelling. There's the old man's terribly noble son Roger (Arthur Margetson) who is determined to put an end to Yvonne's nonsense; there's the loyal butler (J.H. Roberts), a staple of every British home; and, finally, there's Sartorious' lovely nurse Miss Rowe (Joan Wyndham), the only person who can stop the doctor's evil plan.

Even though the set-up promises a whole lot of suspense, most of "Juggernaut" is made up of lengthy conversations and arguments about Sir Charles' inheritance. I suppose most viewers may find the film's decidedly uneventful second act a dreadful bore but I very much enjoyed the sarcastic back-and-forths between the hysterical Yvonne and the stiff-upper-lip Roger. "I... AM... THE.. MISTRESS OF THIS HOUSE," she screams. "I think not," replies Roger with a nonchalance that would stump James Bond.

Mona Goya's performance is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Karloff's. Where Karloff is subtle and measured, she is loud and melodramatic. While Karloff makes a great effort to nuance his performance, Goya comes into every scene as hot as a volcano. While I'm certain that her performance would be quite divisive for most people you definitely cannot argue that she has an unmissable screen presence.

"Juggernaut" is not a good movie by anyone's standards but I found it to be awfully charming and fun in a way only these cheap quickies can be. On top of that, Henry Edwards' direction is surprisingly nimble and dynamic for a film like this and I quite enjoyed some of W.L. Trytel's stock score even though the film's soundtrack seems to be made up of a constant loop of the same 30 or so minutes of music.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this film to anyone who's new to the world of British Z-movies but for a seasoned connoisseur, "Juggernaut" is a must-see.

2/4

20-03-2024

Charles Laughton makes an uncommonly sympathetic murder for the time in Robert Siodmark's deliciously twisty little thriller "The Suspect". Set in the Edwardian era, Laughton plays the kindly middle-aged tobacconist Philp Marshall suffering under the thumb of his domineering wife Cora (Rosalind Ivan). Shrill-voiced and emotionally manipulative, Cora's behaviour would nowadays be categorised as domestic violence.

Then, one day, a young secretary named Mary (Ella Raines) walks into Philip's store and propels the sad, lonely man into the giddy romantic heights of pure happiness. Smitten with her youthful, peppy energy, Philip begins seeing Mary every evening for dinners and shows, and, quite unexpectedly, Mary begins caring very much for the kind and gentle Philip.

After a few weeks of their illicit nightly meetings, Philip and Mary decide to make their relationship official but Cora will have none of it. Unwilling to give her long-suffering husband a divorce, she vows to destroy Mary's reputation by spreading word of the affair around London. It is at this point that Philip realizes that he only has one way to free himself of the venomous Cora and be happy with the angelic Mary and that is to murder his wife.

From that point on, "The Suspect" plays out like a prototype of a "Columbo" episode. Philip, the ill-fated murderer, is set upon by the tenacious Inspector Huxley of Scotland Yard (Stanley Ridges), a devious shadow dweller who seems to teleport himself wherever Philip goes appearing, like a ghost, from the thick London fog to prod at his increasingly guilt-ridden suspect's conscience.

Laughton, one of the finest actors ever to grace the silver screen, gives a delightfully compelling and complex performance as a truly decent and sweet man driven to horrid acts. These are my favourite kinds of thrillers - the ones about ordinary people, ill-equipped to deal with the extraordinary situations they find themselves in.

Stanley Ridges proves himself to be more than a worthy fencing partner for Laughton and the tension-filled scenes in which they play their cat-and-mouse games are the film's most electric. However, the film would not work at all were Cora not so thoroughly disgusting and nasty and were Mary not such a temptingly delightful and loveable person. In that sense, Rosalind Ivan and Ella Raines are asked to carry the picture and they are more than up to the task.

Based on the novel by James Ronald, the thriller aspects of "The Suspect" become a tad convoluted as a dastardly blackmailer enters the picture and Philip begins considering a second murder. The film is far more interesting as a morality play, however, building up Philip as the fairest and gentlest man in all of London and then slowly dragging him down the path towards sin and damnation.

In these non-Christian times, Philip makes for an even more likeable protagonist and I have to confess I rather hoped he'd get away with Cora's murder. Were "The Suspect" made a couple of decades or so later, after the dreaded Hays Code was abandoned it might have ended up being an even more complex and fascinating study of the morality complexities inherent in the criminal justice system.

However, Siodmark portrays Philip's side of the story as favourably as he possibly could have at the time. Even more unusually, he makes the policeman a far more wily and sinister character than the killer taking this Edwardian melodrama into the sphere of shadowy morality more common in a film noir.

Ultimately, these aspects make "The Suspect" a fascinating thriller rather than its somewhat predictable plotting. The film is also rather handsomely produced with Siodmark's perchance for shadowy, contrast-heavy visuals nicely fitting the film's Edwardian setting. Less fitting are the pronounced American accents of Ella Raines and Dean Harens. Raines struggles admirably but unsuccessfully to hold onto an English accent while Harens doesn't even try. He's as American as apple pie which is a bit disconcerting since he's playing Charles Laughton's son.

The conclusion of "The Suspect" is a tad underwhelming if inevitable but the film still holds together quite well. Buoyed by a likeable, well-tempered performance from Laughton, this is a lesser Siodmark thriller, for sure, but not lacking in suspense or moral complexity. It was especially interesting to me as a "Columbo" fan since so many of the good lieutenant's infamous techniques are employed to great effect by the nosey Inspector Huxley of Scotland Yard.

3/4

21-03-2024

One of the best suspense thrillers of the 1940s, "The Big Clock" is a clever subversion of the old innocent-man-on-the-run plot in that our protagonist is both the wrongfully accused and the one pursuing him. Imagine, if you will, "The Fugitive" if Dr Kimble and Lt Gerard were the same person.

Our protagonist is George Stroud (Ray Milland), a diligent crime reporter who latches onto clues like a dog to a bone. He is tasked with covering the murder of Pauline York (Rita Johnson), a socialite who was last seen in the company of a mysterious man. Tracking down this suspect shouldn't be hard for a crafty investigator like Stroud. After all, the suspect has been seen in the company of Miss York by multiple witnesses and their accounts should be more than enough. However, there is one problem: the mysterious man Stroud is looking for is none other than Stroud himself.

A further complication is the fact that the real killer of Miss York is Stroud's own boss, the imperious and all-powerful publishing magnate Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton) who was conducting an illicit affair with the victim. Janoth, terrified that Pauline's companion saw him on the night of the murder, mobilises the entire might of New York City's press corp to identify this elusive suspect.

Based on a deviously clever novel by Kenneth Fearing, "The Big Clock" is absolutely laden with suspense as Stroud has to cover his tracks and track down all the witnesses and possible clues which might identify him before his snooping colleagues get to them.

As the title implies, the major motif of the film is time which is mercilessly running out for our man Stroud. Clocks appear constantly throughout the movie in various forms as an inescapable reminder of approaching doom. In a way, time is the true antagonist in this film, pursuing and trapping Stroud with a kind of malevolence rarely achieved by even the finest slasher villains.

The result is a truly breathless thriller with an overwhelming atmosphere of claustrophobia as the walls and ceilings of Stroud's once-spacious office seem to close in on him. I absolutely love the production design of "The Big Clock" with its frighteningly angular art deco stylings. It is a film full of impersonal, unfriendly spaces which heighten the unsettling air of mounting tension.

"Citizen Kane" is the film most famous for its use of ceilings but I would argue that "The Big Clock" uses them to an even greater advantage. Cinematographer John F. Seitz emphasizes low-angle shots in which Stroud is almost always framed in the middle, surrounded by his pursuers, and boxed in by ceilings looming over his head. There truly is "no way out" of this predicament.

John Farrow's direction is wonderfully dynamic as his freely roaming camera follows the constant movement of actors in unusually long takes. Farrow favours shooting scenes in uninterrupted shots, relentlessly building up tension before suddenly releasing it with a simple cut to a close-up. His camera is free from any conventional limitations and it frequently seems to fly around the set, moving in and out of rooms, through walls, and across tables.

The wonderful thing about George Stroud as a protagonist is best described in his own words as he reflects on the improbable situation he finds himself in: "Thirty-six hours ago, I was a decent, respectable, law-abiding citizen with a wife and a kid and a big job." Now, he's a desperate fugitive. My favourite kinds of thrillers are the ones about ordinary people in extraordinary situations and the irresistably charming Ray Milland makes for a marvelous everyman.

However, it is as always the brilliant Charles Laughton who steals the show with his quite literally towering performance as Earl Janoth, the emperor of the press. Dressed in a natty suit with an ill-fitting moustache, constantly nattering on about time, he glides through his offices like Farrow's camera, seemingly unconstrained by the laws of physics. I have never seen an actor so perfectly convey a sense of pure power. His command over every one of his employees is as effortless as it is unquestionable.

But Laughton makes Janoth into a more interesting and layered character than he is written. He slowly reveals Janoth's deep-rooted insecurity and the sensitivity which has made him so imperious and nasty. There is a marvellous scene between Janoth and his mistress Pauline in which she deftly wounds him with a well-timed remark about his weight. The close-up of Laughton which follows is absolutely electric. He makes you feel Janoth's hurt turning into a blinding, murderous rage!

"The Big Clock" is a taut, complex, relentlessly suspenseful thriller with a uniquely interesting visual style and a dynamic, pacy direction from the underrated John Farrow. It also features a delightfully quirky comic performance from Elsa Lanchester who specialized in kooky characters long before Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter graced the silver screen.

4/4

22-03-2024

Mary Roberts Rinehart is one of the great forgotten dames of the mystery genre. She was one of the most popular novelists and dramatists of the 1920s and had her work adapted for film more than 20 times before becoming thoroughly overshadowed by the emergence of film noir in America and Agatha Christie in Britain.

Her work is now best represented by the films it spawned such as Roland West's 1926 adaptation of Rinehart's megahit play "The Bat". Unfortunately, this silent comic mystery has over the years become better remembered for inspiring Bob Kane to create Batman than for Rinehart's writing.

To be fair, "The Bat" is a poor representation of Mary Roberts Reinhart's talents. In their attempts to condense the play's complex plot, Roland West and his co-writers have made a royal mess of Rinehart's storytelling. Even though the broad strokes of the story are the same, Rinehart's careful exposition has been reworked into a series of rushed info dumps and the focus of the film has been changed from the play's mystery elements to its now rather more overt farcical stylings.

The result is a confusing and confused narrative drowning in a surplus of poorly explained characters, motivations, and criminal endeavours. At least three different dastardly plots are introduced simultaneously in the film's frantic opening act and, quite frankly, I had a devil of a time keeping up with all of the developments.

The bare bones of the story concern a loot of 20,000 USD concealed in a hidden room somewhere in a sprawling mansion inhabited by the spinsterish Miss Cornelia Von Gorder (Emily Fitzroy) and her kooky maid Lizzie (Louise Fazenda). Before long, a number of suspicious characters descend on the house in search of the money. However, the old dark house is also stalked by an unseen predator - an elusive jewel thief known only as The Bat.

After a genuinely rousing and astoundingly stylish prologue, the film disappointingly becomes stuck inside the mansion and acquires a distinctly stagy feeling. The interminable second act, in particular, drags as characters run around the house in a mindless search for the hidden room.

Nevertheless, "The Bat" is saved from becoming unbearably tedious by two very important elements - its visuals and its comedic stylings. Let me begin with the latter. Farcical in tone, "The Bat" has that breathless, madcap energy reminiscent of later mystery capers like "Clue".

Especially good are the gags involving the frazzled Lizzie memorably played by Louise Fazenda, a highly-regarded and experienced comedic performer of her day. She makes the neurotic maid not only a funny but also a rather likeable character. She is also given several very funny lines (delivered, of course, in the form of intertitles) my favourite of which she says to her employer, the scatterbrained Miss Von Gorder: "For twenty years I've stood by you through socialism, theosophism, and rheumatism but I draw the line at spookism"!

However, if you've heard of "The Bat", it's certainly because of its celebrated visuals. While nowhere near as flashy as Roland West's sound remake "The Bat Whispers", this silent film certainly has a stark visual identity of its own.

Pitched somewhere between German expressionism and the later work of Gregg Toland (who debuted here as a camera assistant), "The Bat" is absolutely dripping with atmosphere thanks to Arthur Edeson's chiaroscuro photography. Edeson singlehandedly makes the film's stagy production design feel sinister, moody, and doubtlessly cinematic.

Especially superb is the film's prologue sequence in which we see The Bat execute a daring robbery at the offices of jeweller Gideon Bell. Bell's futuristic highrise is located in the middle of a Metropolis-esque cityscape beautifully realized using dramatically-lit miniatures. It is these shots of the shadowy city which remind me the most of Batman comics rather than The Bat himself whose costume resembles a rat wearing a skirt more than the caped crusader.

Sadly, it is currently impossible to see "The Bat" in all its glory. This is a film desperately in need of restoration. The only copy currently in circulation is a very poor VHS rip which doesn't display Edeson's dynamic photography with the fidelity it deserves. Equally as disastrous is the musical accompaniment present on that copy. Made up of seemingly randomly stitched-together excerpts from such eclectic composers as Elgar, Banfalvi, and Rimsky-Korsakov, it does the film's wonderful atmosphere a grave disservice.

"The Bat" is ultimately a mixed bag. It is beautifully photographed and atmospheric but also rather confusing and frankly dull as a mystery. It's a poor representation of Mary Roberts Rinehart's work and perhaps best seen as a bonus to its much more intriguing sound remake "The Bat Whispers". However, it absolutely should be restored as it has been unfairly neglected just like most of Roland West's work.

2.5/4

22-03-2024

The first 18 minutes of Roland West's "The Bat Whispers" alone rank it among the most visually impressive movies of the 1930s. It begins with a close-up of a clock on top of a skyscraper after which the camera vertiginously drops down to street level just in time to catch a police car racing to a potential crime scene. The crime in question: another daring robbery performed by the notorious jewel thief known as The Bat.

In another spectacular shot for the time, the camera shows us the cops arriving at the house of jeweller Gideon Bell after which it flies up like the titular bat towards Bell's window and enters his room finding him sitting there, gun in hand, waiting for The Bat to rob him.

That shot is thoroughly outdone less than 10 minutes later in what must be the most spectacular shot in the film. The camera, so free and unbound by laws of physics, flies through the gates of a mansion, across the lawn, through the front door, down a dark hallway and into the room of Miss Cornelia van Gorder. It's the kind of shot which would now be accomplished using CGI but which West had to create with miniatures, clever dissolves, and lots of blind luck.

After this 18-minute showreel of visual dexterity, the film settles down into a more familiar, creaky old dark house mystery based on the hit Broadway play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood. The plot goes as follows: a fortune stolen from a bank is concealed in a hidden room somewhere in the sprawling mansion inhabited by the spinsterish Miss Cornelia Von Gorder (Grayce Hampton) and her kooky maid Lizzie (Maude Eburne). Before long, a number of suspicious characters descend on the house in search of the money. However, the old dark house is also stalked by The Bat, a rarely seen but frequently heard predator willing to murder anyone to get his hands on the loot.

The film's visuals become a whole lot more conventional once the plot kicks into gear. The dialogue scenes especially are stilted and stagy as was the norm in the early days of talkie films. However, Roland West still has a few tricks up his sleeve and the film is peppered with further impressive shots. I absolutely love the moment, for example, in which a character leaps out of the window and the camera follows him out and across the lawn. Another superb moment is a top-down shot showing The Bat crafting a devious trap for anyone who might find his lair.

The cinematography supervised by Ray June is frequently quite breathtaking. The shadowy manor set is a great playground for striking chiaroscuro compositions. June also delights in playing with storm lightning coming in through the mansion's huge windows. In one particularly striking shot, The Bat's silhouette is illuminated for just a few moments by lightning as he climbs a tree before once again disappearing in the dark.

Roland West had already adapted the Rinehart/Hopwood play once before in the form of his 1926 silent film "The Bat". The qualities of that version are almost completely inverted in this talkie. The 1926 film had a terrific, likeable cast caught up in a muddled, confusing script. Now, the screenplay is much, much better. The exposition of the complex plot is greatly helped by copious amounts of dialogue lifted straight from the play. However, the cast is far weaker.

Especially bad is the performance of Maude Eburne as the quirky comic relief character. Her shrill voice, cartoonish physicality, and incessant whining have the effect of nails being dragged on a chalkboard. I was also not terribly fond of Grayce Hampton's cold, aloof, and rather rude Miss van Gorder who was a much warmer and sweeter character in the 1926 film.

I must say, however, that West's direction is a tad more elegant in this film and he does a much better job of balancing the film's thriller plot with its farcical elements. Unlike the 1926 film which resembled a silent version of "Clue", "The Bat Whispers" is a whole lot spookier and suspenseful. A more coherent plot certainly helps that as well.

Interestingly, "The Bat Whispers" is one of a handful of early talkies shot in 65mm. In order to accommodate cinemas which didn't have the required equipment, West shot another version of the film on 35mm. This means that there are two versions of this film, one in widescreen and the other in fullscreen, both featuring the same cast saying the same lines in pretty much the same shots.

Which version to see? I say, without a doubt, go for the widescreen version. While the fullscreen one may be more conventionally well-framed (no empty space on the sides of shots, less headroom, etc.) it often feels like a crude afterthought. It features lots of flubbed lines, awkward cuts, and jittery camera moves. It is quite evident that the widescreen version was the one the filmmakers put all the effort into. The fullscreen version also just doesn't have that wow factor that 65mm gives to a film.

3/4

22-03-2024

It's not every day that you see a mystery film which opens with a bad guy confessing to his crimes but here we are. The plot of "The Bat" begins when bank manager John Fleming (Harvey Stephens) asks his old friend Dr Malcolm Wells (Vincent Price) to help him fake his death. Fleming has just stolen a million dollars from the bank and needs a way out. Instead, the greedy Wells kills him and decides to keep the money for himself. But first, he has to find it!

The loot is hidden somewhere in Fleming's house which is currently being rented to famed mystery novelist Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead) and her kooky secretary Lizzie (Lenita Lane). Just as Wells puts his Scooby-Doo plan involving rabid bats into action, another interested party begins looking for the cash - a masked thief nicknamed The Bat who leaves a trail of corpses in his path.

"The Bat" is the third film adaptation of Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood's hit play. Written and directed by Crane Wilbur it takes out pretty much every element which made the original successful. The old dark mansion with creaky floorboards and moving shadows is now a cosy summer house on the edge of a picturesque village. The sinister burglar in a bat costume is now a blunt murderer with a metal hand (for no particular reason). The celebrated mystery plot has also been significantly reworked and simplified to the point where most of its surprises are revealed in the first 25 minutes.

The result is a surprisingly listless and frankly dull affair. An unambitious slight traipse through familiar cliches executed without style or energy. This is most evident in the film's visuals which are more reminiscent of an "Alfred Hitchcock Present" budget episode than a horror film. Joseph F. Biroc's photography is fatally overlit and completely lacking in atmosphere. Even though most of the film takes place at night, every scene is lit with the same kind of flat, supermarket lighting. Thus, the scenes in which our murderous villain stalks through the house under the cover of night actually have him sneaking around in what appears to be broad daylight.

Crane Wilbur's screenplay is relentlessly talky full of long, long exposition dumps. The scene in which Fleming confesses his crimes to Wells only to have Wells turn on him, for example, could have been a clever, ironic moment were it not a 6-minute dialogue scene shot in a series of unbroken wide shots on a flatly-lit sound stage. The result looks like an excerpt from a community theatre production of "The Bat".

Unforgivably, the film wastes its talented cast. Vincent Price is as deliciously wily as ever but he's relegated to playing third fiddle at best. His scenes are too few and far between for my liking. Instead, most of the film focuses on Agnes Moorehead's bland novelist-turned-detective and her screechingly annoying secretary. There is a whole host of suspects buzzing around them as well but they're so forgettable that whenever one of them got killed I genuinely couldn't remember who they were.

"The Bat" does have a certain kind of charm to it, however, which is best described as televisual. It's the kind of comfortable viewing you leave on the TV as you do the dishes or iron your clothes. It's best kept in the background and occasionally glanced at in between chores.

I suppose, if it had come out as a TV play or an episode of an anthology series, I might have been a bit kinder in my assessment of its values but as a feature film it really is a wash. Utterly devoid of atmosphere or mystery, it trudges along amiably and forgettably which, to me, is the worst kind of sin.

2/4

25-03-2024

A man is running to catch a departing train. He is late and tired and wishes nothing else but to lie down in his bunk but he's forgotten his ticket. The ticket inspector refuses to let him on the crowded train but she eventually relents after he offers to buy two tickets in order to be alone in his car.

Unfortunately for him, when he finally boards the train he finds that a beautiful young woman is already in his car. She shouldn't be there as it's a male-only sleeper car but the man doesn't want any fuss so he lets her stay.

The man, hiding behind a pair of sunglasses and a dismissive demeanour, is played by Leon Niemcyzk who projects the kind of harried, cruel aggression which John Cassavetes had in his film noir roles.

The woman, an icy blonde with a thousand-yard stare, is played by Lucyna Winnicka. She has a haunted elegance about her which reminded me of the finest French actresses of the day.

Both of them are clearly running away from something. Eager to leave their traumas on the platform they just departed, they are reluctant to be in each other's company at first. Both of them wish they were in the car alone. But the cramped, claustrophobic sleeper car breeds familiarity and as the train moves through the seemingly desolate Polish landscape, the man and the woman will form a true kind of travellers' bond - a bond of two lonely souls on the run.

The train is crowded indeed and cinematographer Jan Laskowski does a fantastic job of making us feel like we're among the unruly crowd of passengers bumping, grinding, pushing against each other squeezed into an amorphous, smelly, sweaty blob of human flesh.

We get to meet a few of the passengers as our two heroes go in and out of their sleeper car. There's a bored lawyer's wife (Teresa Szmigielowna), for example, who will flirt with anyone to pass the time as her husband (Aleksander Sewruk) practises grandiose speeches in the courtroom of his mind. There's a lovesick youth (Zbigniew Cybulski) trying desperately to cross the barrier between the second-class car he's in and the first-class car she's in. Crowding the corridor is a passenger (Zygmunt Zintel) who refuses to sleep in the bunk beds because they remind him of Buchenwald. My favourite character, however, is Helena Dabrowska's officious ticket inspector who rules the first-class car with an iron fist.

There is a lot of humour and levity in Jerzy Kawalerowicz's "Night Train" but there's an undertone of oppression and menace running throughout the picture. The news that one of the passengers might be a murderer on the run adds to the atmosphere of tension which grows and grows.

Kawalerowicz treats the titular night train as a microcosm, a cross-section of 1950s Poland. This is not an unusual narrative device in Eastern European films and indeed "Night Train" reminded me of quite a few movies from my own Yugoslavian cinema such as Aleksandar Petrovic's "Three" in which a crowd waiting for a train turns feral when they're told that a German spy might be among them or Nikola Tanhofer's suspenseful "H-8" in which a group of passengers on a bus hurl towards tragedy.

Kawalerowicz's film also has a distinctly Western bend. The soundtrack is made up of Jazz tunes (most prominently Artie Shaw's "Moon Ray") and our two protagonists are more like the heroes of American movies than your standard Polish workers. Kawalerowicz also clearly owes a debt to Hitchcock whose influence is keenly felt in the way that the suspense of "Night Train" builds towards a climax in which the train passengers band together to catch the mysterious killer.

The best thing about "Night Train", however, is the way Kawalerowicz makes us feel how puny and banal most of the events we're witnessing truly are. We see small fights break out which are quickly squashed, a killer on the run is easily apprehended, and a romance which blossoms on one station quickly dies when one of the lovers has to disembark on the next platform.

All the while, the night train keeps moving up and down its tracks, following its set path across the country. Our heroes get on and off, get to know one other along the way and then never see each other again. "Night Train" then is a tale of passing intimacies, close acquaintances, and firey passions soon extinguished.

3.5/4

26-03-2024

Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning's novel "The Invisible Host" is most often marketed as the precursor to "And Then There Were None" but it might as well be seen as a precursor to the "Saw" movies. This sparkling little potboiler is set entirely in a swanky penthouse where a group of eight unsuspecting guests are invited to play a series of games with their unseen host who communicates with them through the radio. The winner gets to leave the penthouse and the losers will die.

It is a shame that "The Invisible Host" is relatively obscure in the mystery canon because it really is one of the sharpest and most thoroughly entertaining thriller novels of the 1920s. Bristow and Manning's premise is not necessarily new, there had already been a slew of plays and films set in old dark houses where travelers become trapped with some sort of a masked killer, but they provide several deviously clever twists on the old chestnut which make the story feel fresh and innovative.

Told mostly through dialogue, the novel should have been ideal for all kinds of adaptations but I find that neither the Owen Davis play nor the Roy William Neill-directed film quite capture the verve and thrill of the original novel. The problem with both is that they tend to get bogged down in exposition rather than allow the suspense to build uninterrupted.

"The Ninth Guest" is the name of the film adaptation and it is a decently diverting if clunky whodunnit from 1934. There is a distinctly cheap and unambitious air about it reminiscent of poverty row films but the Bristow/Manning premise is still a whole lot of fun and there are enough twists and turns in the plot to keep one's attention.

The screenplay was written by Garnett Weston and while he does stick fairly close to the plot of the novel he was forced to compress it into a 65-minute film so a lot of texture and fine detail got lost along the way. Most notably, the characters become rather thinly drawn and thus indistinguishable. Their motivations and backgrounds are poorly sketched out and there is barely any time to get to know them before they start dying. This obviously renders the mystery plot somewhat moot since it's impossible to figure out which one of these cardboard cutouts is the killer.

The sole distinguished performance comes from Edward Ellis who brings some much-needed energy to what is a rather workmanlike production. His corrupt Irish politician is suitably muscular and menacing without ever losing the decorum befitting a member of the high society. "The Ninth Guest" came out the same year as "The Thin Man" in which Ellis similarly gives a brief but highly memorable supporting performance as a surly murder victim.

The rest of the cast mostly fades into the set with the exception of Vince Barnett as the utterly unnecessary comic relief. I am thankfully unfamiliar with Barnett's work but judging from his performance in this film he is a kind of second-rate Charlie Chapling. His schtick is ill-fitting in a murder mystery and I found myself quite literally cringing whenever the film cut to him.

Roy William Neill does a thoroughly workmanlike job directing the film. He relies very heavily on ticking clocks and crooked close-ups to generate suspense which works only some of the time. The actual murder scenes, however, are quite well executed even if the kills are not quite as fiendishly clever as those in the novel. I am particularly sad that the best kill Bristow and Manning came up with has been cut from the picture. For those who read the novel, I am referring to the one in which a character dies due to their bad taste in furniture.

"The Ninth Guest" thus is a diverting but wholly unremarkable whodunnit which doesn't come even close to being a good screen representation of Bristow and Manning's sparkling writing. I would recommend it only to those who've already read the novel. Otherwise, go pick up "The Invisible Host" and dig into one of the most delicious pieces of 1920s mystery writing.

2.5/4

26-03-2024

Is there an actor in the history of cinema who played pitiable figures as well as Charles Laughton? Think of his disfigured Quasimodo sitting lonely atop the Notre Dame or his performance as the imperious Earl Jannoth whose thunderous rage is carefully hidden until the woman he loves calls him fat or even the sadistic Captain Bligh whose own men betray him and leave him in the hell of the high seas as they sail for paradise.

Isn't it fitting then that his big American break came in "Payment Deferred", Jeffrey Dell's play based on the novel by C.S. Forester in which Laughton played one of his most dejected, put-upon, and haunted characters, the perenially broke bank clerk William Marble.

His performance in the play was so well received it warranted a film adaptation in 1932 directed by Lothar Mendes. Laughton reprises his celebrated role and steals every scene.

It is astonishing how he absolutely radiates desperation in each shot of this film. Note, for example, an early scene in which Marble explains to his wife Annie (Dorothy Peterson) and daughter Winnie (Maureen O'Sullivan) that they are destined for the poor house. Desperate for their love and with a false note of self-pity, he reminds them of a bottle of cyanide they keep in the house. "Looks like we'll need a drop before we're through with this".

Marble's desperation oozes out of him like sweat and it's so pungent that you can't blame luck itself for avoiding the man. His most desperate moment comes when he sets upon his young, rich nephew James (Ray Milland) trying to coax a loan out of him. He tries joking with him, pleading with him, threatening him, and when nothing else works he finally kills him and steals the money.

He gets away with the murder and decides to enjoy his early retirement but a punishment avoided is only payment deferred and the wages of sin are death as Marble will soon learn.

Think of "Payment Deferred" as "Crime and Punishment" via Alfred Hitchcock. Indeed, the first 25 minutes or so are astonishingly Hitchcockian for a film which came out well before the master of suspense became a household name. For example, there is a marvellous shot in which the camera focuses on a glass of cyanide as it travels towards its intended victim which seems to herald that famous shot from "Suspicion". Another clever shot is a close-up of Marble's clothes irretrievably stained by poison. Finally, there's a purely Hitchcockian silent montage sequence in which Annie realizes what her husband has done. Mendes cuts back and forth between the clues to Marble's crime and a close-up of Dorothy Peterson's face accomplishing an ideal demonstration of the Kuleshov effect which Hitchcock loved so much.

The remaining hour of "Payment Deferred" is not nearly as fascinating after the film settles down into its predictable formula. Even though Marble is now rich, his life begins to fall apart until he begins feeling nostalgic for his days of poverty. His delicate daughter Winnie turns into a whiny snob, his wife is racked with doubt and guilt, and Marble himself falls for the charms of a sexy, wily woman (Verree Teasdale) who turns out to be a filthy blackmailer.

These scenes are far less visually potent and bear all the hallmarks of a filmed stage play. However, the film is absolutely carried by Charles Laughton whose performance feels less like an acting job and more like a vivisection. Marble's tormented emotional life is torn apart in front of our eyes and examined in gory detail. Laughton is fearless in portraying Marble's humiliations including a devastating moment in which his attempt at a sexual pass is met with derisive laughter.

This is not a performance which is quite as cinematic as Laughton's Quasimodo or Bligh but there are more than several hints at what made it so electric on stage. My favourite moment of the whole film is a sneaky little aside in the style of Richard III in which Laughton clearly shows us Marble's thought process as he decides to commit murder. It's a brief, silent moment but totally electrifying.

"Payment Deferred" doesn't quite bear the emotional heft it might have had on stage in 1931 but it is an amusing little morality play handsomely staged by Lothar Mendes who shows himself to be quite a crafty visual stylist when he wants to be. Of course, like any film featuring Charles Laughton, most of the film rests squarely on his broad shoulders and he carries the film across some of the script's clunkier moments effortlessly.

3/4

27-03-2024

In the midst of a raging battle for the town of Saragossa, a man sits admiring a book. A soldier from the opposing army approaches to kill him but also becomes entranced by the mysterious manuscript. The two men, wearing different uniforms, lay their weapons aside for the time being and read.

That's the beginning of "The Saragossa Manuscript", one of the most labyrinthine films I've ever seen, a Borgeisan adaptation of "One Thousand and One Nights" or perhaps a Napoleonic version of "Pulp Fiction". I have to resort to trite comparisons because words fail me in attempting to accurately describe the experience of watching this film.

The titular manuscript tells the story of Alfonse Van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski), a captain in the Walloon Guard crossing the Sierra Morena mountains on his way to Madrid. Unfortunately, his way is blocked by the Spanish Inquisition who are hunting him for unexplained reasons and seem to take a particular delight in smacking him over the head with an icon.

While wondering around the mountain trying to find a way out, Alfonse encounters a number of strange individuals including a hermit who is also the local holy man (Kazimierz Opalinski), his one-eyed servant who is possessed by demons (Franciszek Pieczka), a Gypsy king (Leon Niemcyzk), and a pair of brigands who have been hanged but come down from the gallows every night.

Each person Alfonse encounters tells him their life story in which, more often than not, they encounter another colourful character who tells them their life story. At one point in the film, what we're watching is a pair of soldiers reading the story about Alfonse being told a story by the Gypsy King about meeting a merchant's son who tells him the story about a cad who told him about the story about a woman who told him how she drove her husband mad.

That's five different narrative layers, five different unreliable narrators telling five different stories in a single film. The result is a mind-boggling masterpiece of surrealism, the cinematic equivalent of the Winchester House made up of dozens of different stories some of which intersect, some of which don't, some of which contradict each other, and some of which don't ever reach any kind of a sensible conclusion.

Based on an unfinished novel by Jan Potocki, in lesser hands "The Saragossa Manuscript" could have turned into an exhausting formalist exercise but director Wojciech Has' take on the story is a genuinely entertaining romp full of humour and adventure.

Screenwriter Tadeusz Kwiatkowski groups the stories into two distinct but complementary halves. The first half of the film deals with stories revolving around a spooky inn which appears to grant the visitor his deepest sexual desires but at what cost? There is a nicely creepy atmosphere pervading the first half of the film and Has uses the surreal nature of Potocki's stories to give the film an engrossing, phantasmagorical air akin to Masaki Kobayashi's "Kwaidan".

The second half of the film deals with the stories told by the Gypsy king whose tone is overtly farcical. These are the tales of proud merchants, their lovelorn sons, and a rascally nobleman named Don Roque (Zdislaw Maklakiewicz) who is half a matchmaker and half a con artist. Has is as deft at comedy as he is at fantasy and there is a joyful, playful tone to this half of the film. He also accomplishes a wonderful moment of clarity and catharsis when all of these seemingly disparate comedic sketches eventually fit together like pieces of a puzzle. It is a wonderful moment which elicited cheers from the audience I saw the film with.

"The Saragossa Manuscript" is an impossible film to categorize. When I tried to describe it to a friend they asked me if it was an experimental film and I suppose in a way it is. Its narrative construction is certainly incredibly audacious and unique. However, describing it as an experimental film would also make it sound far more austere and unapproachable than it really is.

More than anything else, "The Saragossa Manuscript" is great fun. It's in turn spooky, funny, and romantic. The three-hour runtime is certainly felt but Has' stylish and assured handling of the material makes this more than an enjoyable watch.

3.5/4

28-03-2024

The filthiest days of war are the last days of war. The days when all dreams of honour and glory have been stripped from the shell-shocked minds of the few surviving soldiers squabbling in the dirt and the mud over the ruins of a country they once called home.

Jerzy Hoffman and Edward Skorzewski's "The Law and the Fist" perfectly captures the lawless nature of the last days of WWII. The film begins with a group of poor, emaciated, miserable returnees from the concentration camps travelling through the desolate remains of Poland and stumbling upon a woman being gang raped by her fellow countrymen.

Hoffman and Skorzewski establish a horror-like atmosphere of barren wastelands populated by wandering souls rescued from hell and returning to nothingness. One of these people is Andrzej Kenig (Gustaw Holubek), a survivor of Dachau who is looking for work after finding out that his house has been burned to the ground and that his family is dead.

He eventually joins a group of five resistance fighters tasked with "clearing" a recently liberated town, making sure there aren't any renegade Nazis hiding in the nearby woods, and making it inhabitable by the incoming onslaught of wounded fighters and concentration camp survivors.

The horror-like atmosphere of the film is most evident in these early scenes in which Andrzej and his comrades wander through the eerily empty town littered with garbage, broken glass, and an occasional corpse.

Trouble begins to brew, however, when Andrzej realizes that his comrades are not the brave resistance fighters he thought they were. Instead of trying to make the town inhabitable, they are there to loot as much as they can from houses and shops before escaping across the border. The group's leader, a man calling himself a doctor (Jerzy Przybylski), is especially interested in stealing all the expensive hospital equipment which will leave the incoming wounded without any hope of medical help.

Like a hero from a John Ford western, Andrzej finds himself as the sole honourable man determined to get justice in a lawless land. But Hoffman and Skorzewski's film ends up being closer to a psychological thriller. Andrzej, still weak from his days at Dachau and armed with only a single gun, is unable to take on the remaining five fighters and decides to wage a different kind of war on them.

A tension of inevitable violence permeates the picture and the directors wisely allow it to simmer. The characters speak in veiled threats, behaving carefully around each other, endlessly plotting to kill each other but never quite getting the upper hand. The film's suspense relentlessly builds especially as the doctor begins to realize that Andrzej is not on board with his nefarious scheme.

With his gaunt appearance and big ears, Gustaw Holoubek is not your typical action hero and he's not meant to be. Andrzej is no muscular avenger. He's a tired, broken, haunted man who clings onto the one last remaining vestige of his old life - his sense of righteousness.

However, "The Law and the Fist" has a murky morality and Hoffman & Skorzewski don't paint Andrzej's antagonists in an entirely negative light either. Like Andrzej, they have also been through hell and now feel like they're owed something in return. One of these men, Czesiek (Zdislaw Maklakiewicz), is also a survivor of the concentration camps. He tells Andrzej that every night he told himself that if he survives the war he is going to become rich and this is his chance.

Especially good is the performance of Jerzy Przybylski as the scheming doctor/gang leader. As soon as he arrives into the town he begins referring to himself as the mayor. He puts on a gregarious, jokey exterior but his eyes betray a stone-cold schemer, the kind of man who is more than willing to turn on anyone who might oppose him.

The tension doesn't let up until the very end of the film which doesn't have the nobly victorious note you'd expect from an American western. "The Law and the Fist" certainly takes a lot of pointers from the films of John Ford and Fred Zinneman but I feel that, in the end, it's a lot closer to a taut psychological thriller with the morality of a spaghetti western. What a superb mix!

The film is based on a novel by Jozef Hen, an excellent writer who fought in the war and whose first-hand experiences lend the film an air of authenticity. Jerzy Lipman's stark black-and-white photography adds the final touch to its grimy, gritty atmosphere. Boasting a fine score from the iconic Krzysztof Komeda, "The Law and the Fist" is a first-rate, tension-filled, morally ambiguous thriller and a tangible, memorable portrayal of the nasty final days of WWII.

4/4

29-03-2024

In my life, I've seen an embarrassing amount of video nasties, war documentaries, and John Waters curios but I've never been as thoroughly repulsed by a movie as I was by "The Promised Land" which I suppose was exactly the reaction director Andrzej Wajda wanted me to have.

His film is a distressingly vivid portrayal (with a sharp anti-capitalist edge) of the heyday of industrialisation in Lodz, a cutthroat age with a massive social divide where the rich lived in luxury and excess and their workers hoped to be mauled by a factory machine before they starved to death in some ditch.

Wajda shows both sides of the coin in a brutally graphic and unwaveringly straightforward manner shoving his camera straight into the heart of the action - the factories, the offices, the meeting rooms, the ballrooms... He lingers on the dirt under a woman's fingernails as she begs for money, he gives us a close-up of a bullet wound in the head of a bankrupt factory owner, he shows us (in shocking detail) an orgy during which a capitalist makes business deals while openly parading his underage sex slave...

He seems to revel in showing us the kind of details a lot of lesser directors would consider to be in "poor taste". However, this is a tasteless world. A world in which profit is the only god, a world without morality, a world without tradition or measure, a world in which no cruelty goes unrewarded and no weakness goes unpunished.

Frequently, "The Promised Land" turns into out-and-out grotesque. Take, for example, a truly disgusting scene in which the pregnant wife of a millionaire bites the head off a fish while holding her lover's genitals in her other hand. In another scene, Wajda shows us an extreme close-up of a female singer whose teeth are rotted black. To call the effect sickening would be an understatement.

Furthermore, the film's three cinematographers (Witold Sobocinski, Edward Klosinski, and Waclaw Dybowski) shot most of the film with extremely wide-angle lenses which, combined with Wajda's constant and very dynamic camera movements, is sure to make even the sternest sailor feel a tad queasy. The choice of lenses is absolutely brilliant as it makes Tadeusz Kosarewicz's already stern and forbidding sets appear to be crumbling and squashing the actors, boxing them in and giving the whole film a horrifying sense of claustrophobia.

Perversely, the cinematography occasionally shows us moments of unbelievable beauty in the midst of this grim chaos. There is, for example, a poetically romantic shot of the rising dawn coming through the windows of a Lodz apartment. Wajda also finds great beauty in a horrifying scene of a factory fire. As burning men run down the streets of Lodz screaming in horror, the fire casts beautiful red shadows all over the city's striking medieval architecture.

The relentless, disorienting pace of Halina Prugar's editing is anxiety-inducing. The world of 19th-century Lodz seems to be sizzling with excitement at all times while the noise of factory machines pervades every room. The streets of the city are constantly littered with people and you can almost smell their sweat and the dirt on their skin as they push past each other in a desperate rush to make some money.

Based on a novel by Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont, "The Promised Land" places our three protagonists right in the middle of this bustling, treacherous world. We follow their attempts to open a textile factory which are frequently thwarted by lack of funds, industrial politics, and outright hubris.

It would be wrong to assume, however, that our three protagonists are any better than the world they inhabit. There are no good people in "The Promised Land" which shows us that capitalism is like a virus which infects anyone it touches with pure evil.

The first of our heroes is Karol (Daniel Olybrychski), a member of the impoverished landed aristocracy with a particularly sadistic streak. He has learned his trade as a factory foreman quite literally whipping his workers into shape and now hopes to become a corrupt capitalist himself.

He is helped in this endeavour by the wily, sleazy Moryc (Wojciech Pszoniak), a Mephistophelian figure and an unscrupulous social climber, and by his best friend Max (Andrzej Seweryn), the moody son of an unsuccessful factory owner who eagerly awaits his father's death.

Wajda uses these three up-and-coming capitalists as our guides into the underworld but never allows the audience for a second to side with them. They exploit and cheat anyone who comes into contact with them. Karol, especially, is almost psychopathically evil, taking gleeful pleasure in the suffering of others.

In fact, one of the many great strengths of "The Promised Land" is how unafraid it is to make its leads utterly unsympathetic. There is a stunningly effective moment in which Moryc, after stealing money from a friend and then laughing in his face about it, turns straight towards the camera, reaches out and touches it. When it happened, I instinctively recoiled not wanting to have any sort of contact with this monster of a man who, terrifyingly, now appeared to be aware of my presence.

Terrifying is a great way to describe "The Promised Land". Even though no one would describe it as a horror film, it's without a doubt in my mind the scariest movie I've ever seen. The wide-angled lenses, the misty cinematography, and the grotesque imagery make it feel like a three-hour fever dream.

Meanwhile, Wajda never shies away from showing us pure splatter. There is a brilliant moment in which a worker's arm is severed by a machine which keeps producing miles of white cotton stained with bright red blood. The most startling shot in the movie is the one in which two men fall into a machine and their guts spray all over the lens of the camera. Jörg Buttgereit wishes he could make shots as vividly disgusting as Andrzej Wajda.

The horror of it all is only somewhat offset by moments of pitch-black humour. There is a very funny scene at a funeral, for example, in which two capitalists discuss how happy they are that all of their workers are there so they don't have to pay them for the day. There are also a few sharply satirical snatches of dialogue such as the one in which one man informs another that Victor Hugo has just died. "How much money did he leave behind," the other man asks as if that's all that matters.

But these are only brief moments of light in what is a relentlessly grim, horrifyingly graphic, and brutally anti-nostalgic descent into pure hell. If anyone ever extolls the virtues of the 19th century, just show them this film and they'll shut up.

Last but not least, I have to comment on the score by my favourite Polish composer Wojciech Kilar which is characteristically brilliant and perfectly encapsulates the anti-nostalgic tone of the film. Kilar also does a brilliant job of showing us the way industrialisation completely destroyed the "chivalrous manners" of the landed aristocracy.

His score begins with the kinds of sweeping strings you'd expect from a romantic period piece but they very quickly turn into a sinister spinning waltz instantly creating a dizzying, disorienting soundscape which fits in beautifully with the film's breathless pace. Eventually, even the spinning waltz is overtaken and drowned out by the heavy droning synth base mimicking the sounds of heavy industrial machinery.

This rhythmic droning acquires an almost ritualistic quality which reminded me of Robbie Robertson's fantastic score for "Killers of the Flower Moon". It doesn't surprise me that Scorsese is a huge fan of "The Promised Land" since he homages the factory fire sequence in the arson scene from "Killers".

But the sheer power of "The Promised Land" is hard to mimic. It is probably the most vividly tangible movie I've ever seen. Its portrayal of pure hell is comparable only to real-life footage of atrocities such as the ones shown in "12 Days in Mariupol". But Wajda is before all else a great artist and the way he shows us these horrors and gives them a satirical and at times poetic edge surpasses the possibilities of the documentary medium. Since I've already mentioned Scorsese I'll feel free to use his most famous quote and say that "The Promised Land" is pure cinema and add that after only a single viewing it has joined the ranks of my all-time favourite films.

4/4