There is that moment when your friend is telling you about his or her life, and it all sounds so perfect, and according to plan, and what you should be doing...so your only proper response is to lie that everything with you is going just fine, and "pretty great myself", out of a sense of competition but also a desire to give a sense of false comfort to yourself. Frances Ha has one of the best of those moments ever captured in a film. HBO's "Girls" had a similar moment in this past uneven season, but Greta Gerwig and Mickey Sumner, as Frances and Sophie, two best friends whose paths post-college are going in wildly different directions, make this phone conversation, crossing the Atlantic, so grand and vivid. Frances is a modern dancer, only she has all the determination and passion for the art form without the requisite talent. Sophie is working a nine-to-five at a book publisher's agency. Clearly one is making more money than the other, and there begins the fork in the road of their relationship.
While Frances Ha is about these two women and how they grow apart over the course of several months, the focus is squarely on Frances, as she bounces from one apartment to another, struggling to find a permanent place in a modern dance company where she has been apprenticing for who knows how long. The film is broken into chapters based on her current address, beginning in Brooklyn, jumping to Chinatown (living with Adam Driver, another link to the film's apparent sister series, "Girls", and Michael Zegen, a single writer whose constant flirtations go unnoticed), then to a couch in the apartment of established dancer Grace Gummer (Meryl Streep's daughter), and finally to a summer camp in Poughkeepsie, surrounded by younger college students judging her lack of upward motion post-graduation. Even a splurge trip to Paris for two days results in missed opportunities and generally ignored tourist sights in the background. Frances' story concludes with a rather pat final sequence, almost too perfect in its solutions to her problems, but does wisely leave room for her continued self-improvement. A character this dynamic and with such interesting quirks and dilemmas cannot be perfected within the space of a narrative feature film. By the end credits roll, Frances has turned a corner, but she has many more ahead of her. As I left the theater, I wondered what was in store for Frances, and hell, myself, as we both traveled life's journey after graduating college and pursue finding stability, love, and a space in the world all your own.
Noah Baumbach, a polarizing director whose work either inspires rage or empathy from his viewers, has rather wisely shared this film with Gerwig, who is credited as the script's co-writer. This makes it far easier to recommend Frances Ha to anti-Baumbach enthusiasts, because the finished product feels more like a Gerwig vehicle, from page to screen, than a Baumbach vision. Gerwig herself, however, has raised the ire of some viewers, who find her hipster pixie girl persona off-putting and phony. To those viewers, I bite my thumb. In this title character, and in just about everything else she's done, she is warm and funny and awkward and beautiful. We wince as Frances makes bad decisions, and applaud her small triumphs, and it's because of the vibrancy Gerwig so fearlessly gives her character. The highlight of the film, seen in the trailer, finds Gerwig running and dancing across New York crosswalks to David Bowie's "Modern Love", with a sense of joyous adventure and eager excitement that cannot help but be infectious. It is this shameless exuberance that makes Frances Ha such a pleasure.
One of the few key directors discussed in Andrew Sarris' "The American Cinema" without a book-length biography is Delmer Daves, which is surprising considering how popular and well-loved many of his films have remained over the years. However, unlike his fellow auteurs working in similar genres (John Ford, Anthony Mann, Howard Hawks), one cannot generally tell a Delmer Daves film by its visual style or its thematic elements. He was, like many of his contemporaries, a solid studio-era director who just so happened to deliver good films time and again, even if they did not distinguish him from others of his type. Anthology Film Archives, whose "From the Pen Of..." series sheds light on underrated Hollywood screenwriters, also devotes several weeks a year to another series, "Overdue", programmed by critics who select a filmmaker who deserves, at long last, a retrospective film series. The month of May spotlights Daves with 5 films, including classic movie fan favorites like 1945's Pride of the Marines and 1950's Broken Arrow. If you asked fans of those films who directed it, one has to wonder if they would know. The stars, yes, are John Garfield and Jimmy Stewart, respectively, but the director? Daves is not a cinematic name brand. Maybe he never aimed to be.
Produced during the same year the HUAC hearings began, the provocatively-named The Red House (1947) is often written about as being a film noir, with its dark shadows and murderous secrets. However, anyone coming to this film expecting something in the noir mode will be disappointed. It does deliver a solid, if a tad unbelievable, mystery, engaging performances, and beautiful suspenseful atmosphere. Daves broke from the studio system to write, produce, and distribute this film independently for United Artists producer Sol Lesser, giving the film a slight edge and individual look that other pictures from 1947 did not offer. More than half is shot outdoors, in some confining spaces, contributing further to the overall independent aura of the production, free from the restrictions of studio walls.
There is something overwhelmingly Lynchian about Red House, as the small town is introduced by voice-over narration as a quaint locale far from the big bad city and with an innocence that has lasted over generations. Then the squeaky-clean rural setting is corrupted by the mysterious mention of a "red house" residing within the Oxhead Woods, one that produces blood-curdling screams that carry over wild winds in the dead of night. Pete Morgan (Edward G. Robinson) warns his young farmhand Nath (Lon McCallister) to stay away from the woods at night, naturally giving the inquisitive teenager a case of the investigative bug. He recruits Pete's adopted daughter, Meg (Allene Roberts), to help him find the red house, incurring the wrath of Nath's jealous sexpot girlfriend Tibbie (singer Julie London, channeling Rita Hayworth in Gilda) and the villainous advances of property protector Teller (beefcake Rory Calhoun). Pete's spinster sister Ellen (Judith Anderson, who has never been bad in anything) knows the secret of the red house and threatens to burn the dastardly hovel to the ground.
The investigative team of Nath and Meg, and in fact the entire scenario of a small town's secret being hidden not-so-deep beneath the surface, surely had a vivid influence on Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986), and Roberts' Meg is about as impossibly innocent as Laura Dern's Sandy. But even ignoring the obvious Lynch connections, Red House has much to recommend. As the film becomes progressively more intense and mysterious, the sunny vistas become more ominous and threatening, through superb photography by Bert Glennon. Robinson gives one of his finest performances as a man driven by his dark past and doomed to repeat his haunting mistakes, and while McCallister isn't the most engaging hero, Roberts is the ideal blonde American apple pie heroine. As previously mentioned, Anderson is always marvelous, though she is not featured in the film nearly enough, and London and Calhoun provide gender-specific eye candy. If there is a major fault with the film, it's that the running time is far longer than the mystery's interest can sustain. By the time the red house is found, it's some distance from the final act, which is where the discovery would hold more dramatic weight. That said, Daves builds the suspense as Robinson's dark secrets emerge and the lives of those around him are continually threatened. And that dark woodland ending is a stunner.
The complete movie The Red House
Following the excellence of 3:10 to Yuma (1957), it's quite a step down for Daves to deliver such a formulaic western as Cowboy (1958). The film reunites Daves with his Jubal (1956) and Yuma star Glenn Ford, but also saddles him with an unusually cast Jack Lemmon in a role perhaps better suited for someone with more gravitas as a western/action star. It's your rather standard manhood rite of passage story, based on what might have been a more compelling book by Frank Harris, played here by Lemmon. He is a poor hotel clerk who yearns to be a working man, and whose interest in a Mexican beauty leads him to enlist with Ford's cattle trail team. When he discovers she has married in his absence, Lemmon hardens and becomes a heartless cowboy, only softened by Ford's gradual growth towards sensitivity and humanity. Snore. While Daves does include some rather thrilling set pieces (the trail hands play with a rattlesnake with deadly results, Ford must place a ring around a bull's horn, a rough and tumble fistfight around the campfire), they are not enough to completely enliven what is otherwise a puerile genre effort. Even the Saul Bass titles are dull. The supporting cast has some fun faces in it, including Dick York (pre-"Bewitched"), Richard Jaeckel, Brian Donlevy (third-billed in what is essentially a glorified cameo), Strother Martin, and Anna Kasfhi as Harris' love interest (at the time she was Mrs. Marlon Brando). Daves would make a far better western, The Hanging Tree (1959), the next year.
The common perception of the documentary is that we, the audience, are seeing the truth. But it's a "truth" that has been shaped by others, building "performances" out of people seemingly being themselves and often working towards a narrative structure that real life does not always afford. So when Shirley Clarke placed her camera in front of a middle-aged black homosexual hustler in 1960s New York to capture his incredible stories, it takes some poking and prodding to get her subject going in the directions she wants. By the abrupt conclusion of Portrait of Jason (1967), there is the glaring question of what or who exactly it is a documentary about. This question is what continues to make Clarke's work an enduring classic finally reaching a wider audience through its Milestone Video re-release.
The most vivid truth of Portrait of Jason is that its central character, a self-admitted hustler and con artist, is giving the performance of his lifetime. Jason Holliday isn't even his real name; he was born Aaron Payne, but adopted his pseudonym while living in San Francisco. His stories, while involving, can never be fully trusted. But that doesn't stop them from helping to create an engrossing and very human character before our very eyes. Provided with ample alcohol and pot by Clarke and her filmmaking cohorts, who also throw out prompts for good stories ("Talk about Brother Tough. Do some of your act."), Jason's story is his to tell, but it is also molded by the filmmakers, culled from a marathon 12-hour interview session. He recalls his various houseboy jobs, many revealing the world of racial divide he grew up in, but also openly discusses his homosexual liaisons and how well-endowed he is (or isn't). Jason deviates from his established free-wheeling character for hilarious celebrity impersonations, from Mae West to Butterfly McQueen to Katharine Hepburn, which he claims are part of a nightclub act he is actively working to make a reality...before he laughs himself silly at ignoring multiple phone calls from a venue interested in booking him.
This almost constant laughter of Jason's, as he downs tumblers of booze and chain smokes marijuana cigarettes, is at first charming. But as the film progresses, we wonder how someone can be this jovial, even under the influence. Then his stories begin to betray layers of self-hatred and pain. But then, are these feelings genuine? Are the stories real? When Clarke's fellow interrogator Carl Lee (son of blacklisted actor Canada Lee) accuses Jason of betraying him in the film's final act, the hustler's tense and tearful reactions are unlike anything we've seen from Jason before. But there is that question again, are they real? Does it matter? In the long run, not really, because Jason is one unique showman, and keeping we viewers enthralled for a feature's length is no small feat. This is a film you can come back to numerous times and still be surprised by new discoveries in Jason's stories, his delivery, the narrative structure, and what Clarke is truly attempting to do with this unusual documentary form.
My return to New York was also a return to the movies, and the city continues to be the best place for film lovers in the world. Yes, L.A., even better than you.
Roberto Rossellini's Voyage to Italy (1954) (or as it's referred to just about everywhere but the Film Forum calendar, Journey to Italy) has managed to elude much attention from scholars and film fans over the decades since its release, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that it paired the director with his controversial real-life amour Ingrid Bergman. Andrew Sarris and Francois Truffaut, the original auteurist scholars, were admirers of the film, but it has largely been forgotten in favor of focusing on Rossellini's pre-Bergman work. It's interesting to consider that even as his marital indiscretions with his Swedish muse and wife have been forgiven over time, his films with her still tend to be dismissed. One has to wonder why this particular film has been chosen for a re-evaluation over their other collaborations; Stromboli (1950) is particularly interesting, and has much in common with his neo-realist origins, and Fear (1954) is a fine psychological thriller. Both are better than Voyage to Italy. Beautifully restored by the consistently great Cineteca di Bologna, the re-release of Voyage to Italy is not a complete waste of time, but is also not a revival to get overly excited about.
Bergman and George Sanders play Catherine and Alex, a British couple on their first vacation together alone, driving through Italy to reach Naples, where Alex hopes to place his late uncle's villa on the market. As the two begin to notice that not only are they happier when they are without the other, but they are developing overwhelming romantic desires for others, the journey becomes more uncomfortable and reaches a boiling point with an explosive argument over a borrowed car that leads to words they both wish were never spoken.
We are really given very little information about who Catherine and Alex are, making their eventual discovery that they don't really know each other very well slightly more effective. We don't know either. Sanders, who always tended to be smug and condescending in everything he did, provides vivid contrast to the emotional highs often found in Bergman's performances. If they seem mismatched, all the better. This is a couple that has very little in common, except perhaps the fact that they don't love one another. Based on a novel by Colette, the woman we can also blame for Gigi (1958), the slight narrative of the film is enlivened by striking black and white cinematography by Enzo Serafin. The camera prowls the museums, ruins, and streets of Naples and Pompeii, serving as a fine travelogue of 1950s Italy while also providing comparisons between the doomed couple and the stone works of art. There are also interesting casting choices that outsider film fans will admire. Paul Muller, later to become a member of Jess Franco's regular troupe of thespians, plays a beatnik-type tagging along with a trio of free-wheeling lady tourists, and Leslie Daniels, appearing here as the caretaker of Alex's uncle's villa, somehow followed up his esteemed work in European arthouse films with a memorable co-starring role as the doctor's assistant whose arm is gorily torn off in The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1959/62). From Rossellini to Jan in the Pan...that's quite an actor's journey.
A disastrous ending can completely undo a film, no matter what good came before it. In the case of Voyage to Italy, the final scene seems to contradict everything Rossellini was trying to accomplish in his exploration of a marriage disintegrating. If this was the ending of the novel, it's a wonder that the director even bothered adapting it in the first place. For the master of Italian neorealism to conclude his story with a wildly unrealistic and stylized Hollywood ending voids much of the film's effectiveness. It destroys what could have been a minor, but noteworthy entry in his oeuvre.
You probably know of The Source Family (2012) even if you think you don't. If you've seen Annie Hall (1977), Just the Two of Us (1970), Alex in Wonderland (1970), or Cisco Pike (1972), the Source restaurant, a mainstay of the Sunset Strip in 1970s Los Angeles and home to the Family, is featured prominently in key sequences in those films. As featured in this documentary, the Family even inspired a skit on "Saturday Night Live". Where the Manson Family and Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple have shifted public awareness of cult mentality into negative images of mass murder, mindless followers, and megalomaniacal leaders, Jim Baker's Source Family was quite a different animal. This group began with a health food store and blossomed into a 140-person commune of men, women, and children following a self-written philosophy combining the best elements of major world religions. Of course, all good things must come to an end, and the Family's existence lasted a mere five years before Baker's unusual behavior (including adopting 13 wives and moving the family headquarters to Hawaii) led to family members heading for the hills and eventual group disintegration following their leader's death. Baker, known first as Father Yod and then as YaHoWha within the Family, had a fascinating life story even before he, but to reveal more of this unusual story would rob you of the wonderful surprises in store for the adventurous spectator.
The most incredible aspect of the documentary is the sheer volume of archival material used. Assigned by Baker with the task of documenting the Family and its history, Isis Aquarian (the film's associate producer, and ex-girlfriend of famed photographer Ron Raffaelli, also interviewed here) captured daily life, meditations, and key events of the Family's existence in photographs, audio recordings, and home movie footage. Maybe the best material is to be found in the film's soundtrack, made up entirely of original recordings by the Family's rock band, the YaHoWha 13, which released a staggering nine albums in a very short period of time. Original copies of the LP's sell for top dollar among collectors today, but the curious can check out the few CD releases available. Most are available on iTunes listed either under Father Yod and the Source Family or the Yahowha 13. There is even a mammoth 13-CD boxed set, now out of print, that looks to be the final word on the musical world of the Source Family.
5. Heroes for Sale w/ Wild Boys of the Road (Film Forum)
4. What Have You Done to Solange? (Anthology Film Archives)
3. Dial M for Murder in 3-D (Film Forum)
2. Bonjour Tristesse (Film Forum)
1. Don't Torture a Duckling (Anthology Film Archives)
Based on my top 10 favorite experiences seeing classic/vintage movies in a theater, Film Forumand Anthology Film Archivestie as the best repertory theaters in the city for me.
Movies by Theater:
Those marked in red were bad experiences due to patrons, print issues, or the movie itself.
Those marked in gold were the best/most memorable experiences I had in 2012.
Angelika Film Center (4) Jan. 26 - We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012)
Sep. 9 - Hello I Must Be Going (2012)
Dec. 14 - Silver Linings Playbook (2012) Dec. 17 - The Sessions (2012)
Anthology Film Archives (18) Mar. 1 - From the Pen of...: Smile (1975)
April 7 - Spanish Cinema of the Early Post-Franco Era: The Disenchantment (1976)
April 8 - Spanish Cinema of the Early Post-Franco Era: Ocana: An Intermittent Portrait (1978) Sep. 8 - From the Pen of...: Payday (1973) Sep. 8 - From the Pen of...: The Innocents (1961)
Sep. 14 - From the Pen of...: The Stepfather (1987) Sep. 14 - From the Pen of...: Cops and Robbers (1973) Sep. 16 - From the Pen of...: Walk on the Wild Side (1962)
Sep. 16 - From the Pen of...: The Loved One (1965) Sep. 17 - From the Pen of...: The Panic in Needle Park (1971) Sep. 17- From the Pen of...: Play It as It Lays (1972)
Sep. 21 - Giallo Fever: House with Laughing Windows (1976) Sep. 21 - Giallo Fever: Don't Torture a Duckling (1972)
Sep. 22 - Giallo Fever: The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971) Sep. 22 - Giallo Fever: Deep Red (1975) Sep. 22 - Giallo Fever: What Have You Done to Solange? (1972)
Sep. 23 - Giallo Fever: The Girl who Knew Too Much (1963) Sep. 23 - Giallo Fever: One on Top of the Other (Perversion Story) (1969)
Cinema Village 7 April 27 - Tribeca Film Festival: Side by Side(2012) City Cinemas East Village
Sep. 22 - The Master in 70mm (2012)
Film Forum (34) Feb. 9 - Pretty Poison (1968) Feb. 13 - Wellman: Chinatown Nights (1929) & Woman Trap (non-Wellman, 1936) (2) Feb. 14 - Wellman: Nothing Sacred (1937) & A Star is Born (1937) (2)
Feb. 16 - Wellman: Night Nurse (1931), The Purchase Price (1932) & The Man I Love (1929) (3) Feb. 17 - Wellman: Heroes for Sale (1933) & Wild Boys of the Road (1933) (2)
Feb. 21 - Wellman: Stingaree (1934), Central Airport (1933), & Safe in Hell (1931) (3) Feb. 24 - Wellman: Track of the Cat (1954) & Westward the Women (1951) (2)
Feb. 27 - Wellman: The Young Eagles (1930), The Conquerors (1932) & Frisco Jenny (1932) (3) April 2 - The Long Day Closes (1992)
April 9 - Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) April 23 - The Gang's All Here (1943) April 30 - Bonjour Tristesse (1958) May 10 - Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)
May 11 - Grand Illusion (1937) Celebrity sighting: Peggy Steffans Sarno
Sep. 3 - French Old Wave:The Earrings of Madame de... (1953)
Sep. 3 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Sep. 5 - French Old Wave: Le Million (1931) & A Nous la Liberte (1931)
Sep. 9 - French Old Wave: Orphee (1950) & Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Sep. 16 - Port of Shadows (1938) Sep. 29 - Dial M for Murder in 3-D (1954)
Oct. 16 - Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3-D (1953)
Dec. 17 - Consuming Spirits (2012)
IFC Center (7)
Feb. 4 - Kill List (2011)
Feb. 26 - Oscar-Nominated Live Action Shorts (2011)
Feb. 26 - Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts (2011) Sep. 8 - Detropia (2012)
Sep. 8 - Girl Model (2011) Oct. 7 - The Man who Knew Too Much (1934)
Dec. 17 - It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Lincoln Center - Francesca Beale Theater Sep. 9 - Keep the Lights On (2012)
Lincoln Center - Howard Gilman Theater
Oct. 1 - 50th New York Film Festival: Pursued (1947)
Lincoln Center - Walter Reade Theater (15) Feb. 10 - Cinematic Goddess, American Sex Symbol: Myra Breckinridge (1970) Feb. 12 - Cinematic Goddess, American Sex Symbol: Kansas City Bomber (1972)
Feb. 12 - Cinematic Goddess, American Sex Symbol: Hannie Caulder (1971)
Feb. 12 - Cinematic Goddess, American Sex Symbol: The Last of Sheila (1973) Feb. 23 - Film Comment Selects: Silent House (2011) Feb. 23 - Film Comment Selects: Headhunters (2011)
Mar. 10 - Rendez-Vous with French Cinema: Last Screening (2011)
Mar. 10 - Rendez-Vous with French Cinema: 38 Witnesses (2012)
Mar. 22 - New Directors/New Films: Las Acacias (2011) Mar. 24 - New Directors/New Films: Goodbye (2011) Mar. 24 - New Directors/New Films: The Raid: Redemption (2011) Mar. 24 - New Directors/New Films: How to Survive a Plague (2012) Mar. 29 - New Directors/New Films: Oslo, August 31 (2011)
April 1 - New Directors/New Films: Porfirio (2011)
Oct. 1 - 50th New York Film Festival: Liv and Ingmar (2012) Celebrity sighting - Ricky Jay
Museum of Arts and Design April 19 - Argento: Il Cinema nel Sangue: Suspiria (1977)
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (17) Mar. 14 - Canadian Front 2012: Sunflower Hour (2011) Mar. 14 - Canadian Front 2012: Monsieur Lazhar (2011)
Mar. 15 - Canadian Front 2012: Mesnak (2011)
Mar. 16 - Canadian Front 2012: Romeo Eleven (2011) Mar. 16 - Canadian Front 2012: Starbuck (2011) Mar. 18 - Canadian Front 2012: Cafe de Flore (2011) Mar. 18 - Canadian Front 2012: Roller Town (2012) April 3 - Carte Blanche: Cindy Sherman: Fuego (1969)
Oct. 11 - To Save and Project 10: Call Her Savage (1932) Oct. 11 - To Save and Project 10: Wild Girl (1932) Oct. 14 - To Save and Project 10: Anarchist Movies of the Spanish Civil War - Report on the Revolutionary Movement (1936) & Carne de Fieras (Flesh of Beasts) (1936) Oct. 14 - To Save and Project 10: Barrios Bajos (Slums) (1937) Oct. 14 - To Save and Project 10: Tell Me Lies (A Film About London) (1968) Oct. 16 - To Save and Project 10: San Diego Surf (1968) Oct. 17 - To Save and Project 10: Sparrers Can't Sing (1963) Oct. 17 - To Save and Project 10: Genghis Khan (1950)
Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) (3)
Jan. 28 - David Cronenberg: They Came from Within (1975)
Jan. 28 - David Cronenberg: Rabid (1977) May 11 - Fashion in Film: If Looks Could Kill: Ms. 45 (1981)
Regal Union Square
Nov. 12 - Skyfall (2012)
Tisch - Cinema Studies Cinematheque
Dec. 7 - You and Me (1938) &Remember the Night (1940)
Report on the Revolutionary Moment (1936) & Carne de fieras (Flesh of Beasts) (1936)
Introduced by Spanish anarchist film historian Edouard Waintrop, these films unfortunately didn't feature enough historical context in their prefaces to enforce their historical importance. The first film, a 22-minute newsreel (with photography and production credits to Fox Movietone), captures rebel forces against Franco as they prepare to do battle with fascist forces nation-wide. Where the newsreel wears its anarchist leanings proudly, Carne de fieras is a very different animal. Hiding beneath the veneer of a standard romantic comedy beats the heart of anarchism, not just behind the camera, but in front of it. Successful boxer Pablo, married to a philandering wife, adopts young street urchin Ten Cents after saving the boy's life from drowning. The young comic pipsqueak and Pablo's trainer, Picatoste, become his only confidants when the athlete discovers his wife in her singer lover's embrace. Hoping to distract him from the cuckolding and a recent loss in the ring, Picatoste averts his gaze to Marlene, a beautiful French woman who dances topless in a cage while her co-star, General Marck, keeps the lions and tigers surrounding her at bay. But the lovely vision is pursued by her creepy, possessive servant, Lucas, who threatens to kill anyone who tries to take her away from him.
The cast and crew of Carne de Fieras, captured as ghosts in this photograph
The history behind the film is more intriguing than what appears on the screen. First of all, the feature was never completed. The Spanish civil war halted production and it was never resumed, as director Armand Guerra took his cameras to the battlefields of the war. He and his family fled the country soon after the filmmaker was labeled a propagandist for the rebel cause, and he died of an aneurysm in Paris in 1939. Neither female lead survived the 1930s. Blonde bombshell Marlene Grey, a true-life performer with wild cats, was mauled to death by a tiger during a performance in Marseilles in 1939. Brunette femme fatale Tina de Jarque worked with the rebels as a spy, performing at Republican events and gathering information to relay back to rebel forces, and was captured and executed in 1937 as she attempted to escape with her lover and thousands of dollars in jewels over the Spanish border to safety in France.Despite the film's producers surviving the civil war, they could never hope to make money off completing, editing, and releasing the film: its surprising nudity (Marlene Grey's topless performances are seen twice) and themes of adultery and divorce would have run afoul of the Spanish Republican censors.The footage remained buried in a closet for decades. Sadly, no one remembers the name of the charming young child actor who plays Ten Cents. The film has become a ghost of its former self, capturing a pre-Franco moment in time and the last time many of the film's cast and crew would ever be seenor heard of alive again. The flow of the narrative is understandably fractured, as several key scenes were never shot before bombs started falling around Madrid, but what remains, edited together and restored in 1992 by the Cinematheque de Zaragoza, is a whimsical folly whose charms gleefully overshadow the darkness surrounding its production history.
The doomed Marlene Grey doing her wild cat cage dance
CARNE DE FIERAS in its entirety, in Spanish language only.
Barrios Bajos (1937)
Recalling the best of America's pre-Code shockers, Barrios Bajosis a mix of proto-noir imagery and angst-ridden melodrama, not completely satisfying but an intriguing curio none-the-less. Translated as Slums, the sordid back alley narrative begins with a woman's scream and a man scurrying from his upper-class apartment building, finding solace in a dingy bar where a woman croons the title song for an appreciate audience of winos and whores. Ricardo has killed his wife's lover, and the police are on the hunt. The newspaper boys scream "Crime of passion!", leading him to seek shelter in the home of his old friend Valencia, an ex-con now working at the docks for meager wages. Meanwhile, deceptively friendly Rita encourages a drunkard to return home to his wife, Rosa, who leaves in a rage right into the arms of the elderly woman, eager to bring the young woman into her house of ill repute, overseen by slimy pimp Floreal. However, the two sex traders don't count on Valencia taking a shine to Rosa, who resembles his late wife, and protecting her from a life of prostitution by securing her a job as a barmaid in the bar below his apartment. Floreal sends his bleached blonde mistress Mae to discover the identity of Valencia's mysterious roommate Ricardo, believing the truth will enable him to blackmail Rosa into joining his stable.
Of course all of this sounds like good, scummy fun in the vein of Warner Brothers' memorably provocative social dramas of the 1930s. There is an extended sequence of Rita's prostitutes arriving to the town port in cars at 3am to service a ship full of sailors, as well as shocking moments of Rita letting a man visibly sniff cocaine off her finger to ease his wallowing pain and Mae having her head smashed through a glass window! Where the Hays Code stopped this kind of material from being shown, or even hinted at, in the United States by 1934, General Franco would ensure that Spanish cinema would not encourage this kind of behavior up until his death in 1975, by which time American cinema had embraced all manner of previously censored material, including hardcore pornography. This is what makes Barrios Bajos such a special film. Despite problematic pacing and a few performances that miss the mark, director Pedro Puche features so many jarring moments in his rather predictable crime story-turned-love triangle that it oddly succeeds at winning over the audience.As Valencia, the film belongs completely to Jose Telmo, in a performance that recalls, again, the working-class heroes of Warner Brothers. Pilar Torres' Mae is a cheap, sleazy delight, stealing scenes whenever she swaggers on-camera.
If you speak Spanish, you can watch the whole film above. No Spanish needed to enjoy Pilar Torres.
Tell Me Lies (A Film About London) (1968)
Perhaps best known for directing Lord of the Flies (1963), Peter Brook made his biggest mark in the world of English theater,working as official director of the Royal Shakespeare Company for two decades.His cinematic adaptation of Marat/Sade (1967) raised eyebrows, and he utilized most of the same cast (from his theatrical company) for the rarely-seen docudrama Tell Me Lies, one of the most provocative and unique films about the Vietnam War I have ever seen. There is nothing quite like it.
Actors Mark Jones and Robert Lloyd (as well as Mark's live-in girlfriend, Pauline Munro) are moved by a magazine pictorial on civilian injuries in Vietnam to do their own documenting and research into the anti-war movement taking place in London. Scenes of actors playing MP's wildly dancing at a party to a pro-Vietnam rock song mix with real veterans and protesters sharing their thoughts on the conflict. The famous, and still horrifying, footage of the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk appears, as well as newsreel footage of Viet Cong street executions and American soldiers feeding young Vietnamese children, now homeless after napalm wiped out their villages. Notorious black civil rights figure Stokely Carmichael talks about freedom and peace with lovely, soft-spoken French-Vietnamese Jacqueline Porcher, the cast breaks into catchy musical numbers, Glenda Jackson (pre-Oscar and pre-dental work) plays a protester who reveals by film's end that she prefers being isolated from the conflict so she can maintain distance from it, Jones dreams about blowing up the American Embassy and imagines himself a US soldier drawn into a Saigon gay bar to connect with other men, Lloyd re-enacts the self-immolation of Quaker Morrison, an unnamed American comedy troupe (including Bill Macy before "Maude") perform "101 Things to Say to Get Out of the Draft", and many other whacky, controversial sequences weave in and out of the unusually structured narrative. Brook admitted during his post-screening Q&A that the film did not begin with a defined shape, a process which took place in the editing phase. One gets the feeling that he and his cast came up with ideas on the fly and whichever ones worked the best made it into the finished film. It gives most of the film a kind of improvised, free-flowing spirit that frequently works in its favor.
A soundtrack album was actually released! I want it!
Restored from a recently discovered internegative at the BFI, Tell Me Lies mixes bold color with stark black-and-white for an interesting palette, though the film never defines the reasoning behind the coloring of each individual sequence. At 118 minutes, the film threatens to wear out its welcome in several instances, but the clock stops during riveting moments like a lengthy, heated debate at a dinner party between Jones, Munro, and several stuffy members of Parliament, the aforementioned Carmichael-Porcher conversation, and Jackson's final act confession. With BFI's track record of sterling DVD/Blu-Ray releases, here's hoping Tell Me Lies hits the format very soon so it can be rediscovered by a generation of viewers who could benefit from its radical, angry vision.
The re-release trailer for TELL ME LIES, including the catchy title theme song
MoMA's To Save and Project Festival, dedicated to screening recently restored and preserved films from archives and studios around the world, opened its 10th annual event with a brand-new restored print of Clara Bow's 1932 comeback vehicle, Call Her Savage. A little back story is necessary to put the importance of this film into context. In the second half of the 1920s, Clara Bow was the most famous movie star in the world. She was the top box office star for Paramount Studios, and also regularly beat better-regarded stars at more prestigious studios in ticket sales. Star, studio, and public were exceedingly happy with the "It Girl" persona and its lucrative rewards until the business transitioned into sound, causing Brooklyn-born Bow panic attacks about her voice, fearing a childhood stutter would re-emerge. The mix of Bow's personal problems with the new technology and dwindling box office returns when Paramount continued to stick her in formula "It Girl" films led to her early retirement in 1931. A year later, Fox offered her a two-picture deal to return to the screen, and the results were Call Her Savage (1932) and Hoop-la (1933).
Clara brandishing her bullwhip
In Savage, Bow plays Nasa Singer, a wild hellion introduced riding her horse while screaming "Yippee!" before being thrown yards away from a rattlesnake, which she proceeds to bullwhip back into the brush, and turning the whip on her family servant, Moonglow, when she hears him laughing at her fall. Nasa's temper will continue to haunt her as she marries a sleazeball gigolo to spite her stuffy father, gets into a catfight with a woman who taunts her nickname "Dynamite", and sinks her engagement to a millionaire's son by destroying the dinner table during another fight at a dinner party. The ultimate journey of the film is to discover the root of her anger, but there is no suspense in the search for truth because the audience has been privy to Nasa's mother's affair with an Indian brave in the first act of the film.
Pre-code Clara
In all of its pre-Code glory, Savage has some decidedly provocative moments. Bow's erect nipples are seen through a shirt and a nightgown in separate scenes; Bow's slimy husband is introduced coyly discussing his and his girlfriend's hotel affairs; gambling and drinking rums rampant in the high society life; a major character develops mental illness from a bad case of venereal disease; Bow prostitutes herself to pay for medical prescriptions; a child dies in a fleapit hotel fire; and characters slum in a Greenwich Village gay bar, where queer waiters perform a song in maid drag (an unbilled Mischa Auer appears in this scene). And most miraculously, Bow's character goes unpunished for any of her wrongdoing. In fact, the abrupt ending is just one of the myriad of issues plaguing the film. It is the capper to a script with no clear sense of what kind of film it wants to be. The film can be split into chapters, which might be sensible considering it's based on a novel, except none of them really gel together. Gilbert Roland, one of Bow's long-time paramours, plays Moonglow, a character hinted at as the right man for our heroine, but that proposed scenario never materializes. Thelma Todd and Monroe Owsley steal more scenes than they should as Bow's chief nemeses.
Clara's winning smile
Of all the problems with Savage, Clara Bow is not one of them. Her character is poorly drawn, but her performance is funny, bold, and touching at all the appropriate times. Despite the concerns of the studio and Bow herself regarding her voice, there is not one thing wrong with it, nor her dialogue delivery. But where her performance sings, and where it always did, especially in the silent days, are in wordless moments. Bow was a seventh-grade dropout, never took an acting class in her life, who became a star because of her natural ability to inhabit a character so fully that the audience is completely on her side, man and woman, falling in love with her. When her face lights up with mischief and joy, the audience smiles and laughs, hearts singing. When her breezy sexuality is at its most enticing, men want her completely and women want her "It" for themselves. When her eyes well with tears (and Bow remains one of the few brilliant screen criers), the audience cries with and for her. You don't need words for these emotions, and that is where even in her sound films, Bow is a resounding success. She overcomes the considerable production issues of her films simply by being Clara Bow. There are few like her, then and now. If you aren't familiar with her work, discover what you are missing. If you don't like her, we have nothing more to say to each other.
It's interesting to note that Bow considered this one of her favorite films, though I personally think the better film, also containing the better performance, is her very last feature, Hoop-la, screened at last year's To Save and Project. The notoriety surrounding Savage, as well as its slightly more accessible availability,has earned it more acclaim, while Hoop-la receives little to no attention today. This is a shame. It deserves the accolades Savage has received over the years. But both stand as testament that Bow could have had a successful talkie career, with a better studio behind her and if she had actually wanted to continue. She left Hollywood of her own choice, before the cruel business had the chance to toss her out when it was done exploiting her.
The first four minutes of Clara Bow on-screen in CALL HER SAVAGE.
Wild Girl(1932)
Joan Bennett as "wild girl" Salomey
The same year as Call Her Savage was attempting to revitalize Bow's career, Raoul Walsh was shooting a much more satisfying pre-Code melodrama for Fox. Shot entirely on location in Sequoia National Park, Wild Girl is a beautifully stylish backwoods tale with an unusual love quadrangle and some disturbing and provocative imagery. Based on a play, which was itself inspired by a short story, "Salomey Jane's Kiss", Walsh's pulpy tale follows Salomey, a tomboyish country girl living on a woodland property close to Redwood, CA. She is pursued by handsome poker player maverick Jack Marbury and weaselly bloodhound owner Rufe Waters, as well as lecherous mayoral candidate Phineas Baldwin, but her heart is won by a mysterious stranger who wanders into town and shoots Baldwin for wronging his sister back in Virginia. Several other sordid crime subplots interweave with the love story of Salomey and the stranger, but in a satisfying and ultimately rewarding way.
Salomey and the "wild children" of the woods
I will admit, Raoul Walsh has completely flown under my radar over the years. While Andrew Sarris and other critics and academics have sung his praises in the re-appreciation of lesser-known Hollywood auteurs, Walsh has primarily avoided my interest because of his frequent work in the western and action-adventure/war genres, never my favorites. Now that I've seen two of his films in the space of two weeks, it's safe to say that I need to see more of them. He has an interesting visual eye, made all the more intriguing because he wore an eye patch. The photography in the film is breathtaking, capturing the light shining through the huge trees splendidly, and the location work is even more stunning considering this is still early on in the sound era. In delightful pre-Code moments, a skinny-dipping Salomey meets the stranger for the first time as he wanders into the lake to quench his horse's thirst (the four backwoods children she swims with are also seen nude from behind in rather startling footage); the shooting of Baldwin is surprisingly graphic; the myriad of prostitutes and saloon girls, including wise-cracking Millie (the marvelous Minna Gombell), who cackles as the supposedly moral Baldwin lays dying at her feet, are portrayed frankly; and the Sheriff and his men lynching a stagecoach robber in the woods is a haunting sequence. The events in the film are connected by a unique framing device: the entire film is realized as a visual book, with the opening credits featuring the actors in character introducing themselves, and the standard transitional wipes are transformed into turning pages. It adds an otherworldly literary feel to the film, more successfully than the novel-like Savage, and accents Walsh's frequent and picturesque fairy tale images (including an introductory sequence of Salomey and her Mammy rushing down a mountain overrun by baby bears that scurry into the trees and bushes as the humans approach). This is a real jewel of a movie, not as well-aged and fascinating as other films of the same era from Warner Brothers and RKO, but just as deserving of a contemporary audience. Let's hope that this restored version, as well as Bow's two beautifully preserved Fox films, will see home video release soon.
Ralph Bellamy and Eugene Pallette play cards behind the scenes
Before she became a brunette femme fatale in the 1940s, Joan Bennett was modeled as an almost identical blonde surrogate to her older sister, Constance, also a successful ingenue type during this period. While Constance would be used to greatest effect in comedies like Merrily We Live (1938), Topper (1937), and Our Betters (1933), Joan excelled in melodramatic parts like Salomey Jane in Wild Girl. She's quite superb and surprisingly natural here, without the haughty tones she would adopt later in her career. Male lead Charles Farrell was most popular in the silent years, perhaps most memorably as Janet Gaynor's love interest in Borzage's Seventh Heaven (1927). While John Gilbert was drummed out of Hollywood when the microphone revealed his high-pitched voice did not match his swarthy ladies' man image, Farrell somehow survived into the 1930s despite a similar handicap. He's handsome enough, but some viewers may be left wondering why in the Hell Salomey doesn't go for Ralph Bellamy, perhaps never more charming and handsome as gambler Jack Marbury. Always-welcome character actor Eugene Pallette, with his bullfrog voice and bug-eyed reaction shots, reliably steals scenes left and right (remember My Man Godfrey?). Unbilled as Salomey's Mammy is Louise Beavers, making the most of a thankless and stereotypical role, a few years from her ultimate performance in Imitation of Life (1934). Beavers was more talented than many white actresses of the period, but of course the color line in Hollywood kept her from getting many real chances to demonstrate her gifts.
Alas no video clips from Wild Girl. It's that rare! It is screening again at MoMA on Thursday October 18 at 4:30PM. Follow this link for more information on the screening. Obviously I highly recommend you add it to your calendar! It's one of those once-in-a-lifetime movie experiences that makes rep theater in New York City such an embarrassment of riches for film lovers.
