IRMA VEP - #1074

 

Irma Vep is very much a movie of its moment. Released in 1996, Olivier Assayas’ freeform metafictional experiment captures the intersection of independent film, the old guard that inspired it, and the very hip Hong Kong cinema that was just finding its way into the international mainstream.

The story centers around a past-sell-by-date French film director (played by New Wave-legend Jean-Pierre Léaud), who has been tasked with remaking the silent film Les vampires, an epic-length crime serial that, lest you get it twisted, did not feature actual bloodsucking monsters. Rather, the Vampires of the title are an organization wreaking havoc upon Paris circa 1915. The face of this criminal revolution is a femme fatale named Irma Vep. I can likely do no better at describing her as I did in my 2012 write-up of Louis Feuillade’s original:

“Of all the varied elements of Les vampires, the facet that has found a permanent place in pop culture is Irma Vep. The name is an anagram for ‘vampire,’ and she is both a cabaret performer and the top lady crook in the Vampires organization. Played by one-named actress Musidora, Irma Vep came to embody the image of the vamp, a particular kind of femme fatale--though vamping also means to play up certain seductive traits, to exaggerate one's own sense of desirability, much as Musidora does in the film. Her black body suit…would inspire many larger-than-life ladies that followed, fictional and otherwise, and the character would be paid homage in other movies, on album covers, and, of course, comic books.”

 

1915

1996

Léaud sees no purchase in casting a French woman in the Irma Vep role, as it would be impossible to replace Musidora, so he looks outward and finds Maggie Cheung, who at that point had starred in a couple of Wong Kar-Wai movies, but was also known for parts in action flicks and superpowered genre pieces like The Heroic Trio, a scene of which is featured here. Cheung is playing herself amongst a fictional film crew, a stranger in a strange land, a Hong Kong native who speaks no French, and one of the only people of color on the set.

What Assayas unravels here is a narrative of the difficulties of making a movie, and the pull between art and commerce. Staff complains because Léaud’s character is a tyrant that doesn’t have it anymore, yet they treat their own positions very much like a job. They decry American movies like Batman Returns while doing a remake of what is very much a superhero/villain ancestor, fiddling over the details of their particular fiefdom. All the while not really noticing their lead actress or engaging with her. In the opening scenes, she is very much an object to be talked around, the language barrier used to emphasize she is a necessary nuisance, as if she is somehow to blame for their woes because her role in a prior film production went overtime and caused delays. You almost hope that 90 minutes later she’ll reveal she spoke French all along. 

Assayas gets to have his cake and eat it too with Irma Vep, paying homage to past masters while dissecting and satirizing them, using their innovations to see if he can make something new while also shielding himself with nostalgia. Modern viewers have the added layer of knowing that he would marry Cheung two years later and so Irma Vep celebrating her beauty and abilities is almost like an elaborate love letter*. For her part, we see Cheung in a way we don’t get to that often: completely free to be natural, playing herself with little guard or obvious technique. 

The real breakthrough for the character of Maggie is when she puts on her vinyl costume and runs around as Irma, engaging in free expression. It allows her to find the soul in what her director sees as soulless, to find herself within the symbol of Irma Vep. (And soundtracked by Sonic Youth, no less.) This is what all the artists seek, what Assayas sought, what the French New Wave pursued, what the indie scene of the times was after: space to just be. Irma Vep is at its best when it eschews convention and structure and simply is. The lack of freedom in the fictional project crushes the onscreen director; whereas the unmooring in Irma Vep liberates the real-world auteur. 

There is an inherent irony to there being so much drama on-set while making a film that everyone says is bereft of the same. Assayas is having a grand old time satirizing the self-involved French film scene and the ability of its participants to puff it up and deflate it all in the same breath. One of the more pointed scenes takes aim at the critics and journalists obsessed with intellectualizing the “poetry” of John Woo while complaining filmmakers like Léaud have ruined cinema precisely because they intellectualize everything. All the while, he’s another that ignores Maggie and what she has to say, she’s merely there to reflect his own ideas. 

Which makes it fitting that Maggie Cheung has the ultimate revenge, appearing by herself in the closing, fully in character, the belief that she has something more and better to go to after this. Of all the cast and crew, she’s the one who had a real experience and thus can climb out of the mess they’ve made.

Irma Vep has aged better than I expected. I didn’t rate it much back in the day, it seemed slight. I guess years of seeing creative endeavors get sloppy myself has increased my ability to access what Olivier Assayas has put together. Now I find Irma Vep hilarious and sad and exciting. Like Maggie Cheung, the viewer can stand apart from it all and just let it happen, and thrill at the prospect of rising above.

 

* Similarly, check the second disc of the Criterion edition of Irma Vep for the short Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung that Olivier Assayas put together a year later. It’s a collage tribute to his love, with the fact that it’s completely silent indicating that Assayas maybe was closer to his made-up filmmaker in Irma Vep than was immediately apparent.

Note: This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? - FILMSTRUCK

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2014. 

Twenty-two years before George Cukor would remake A Star is Born (and even five years before William Wellman's original), the director would set the standard for the quintessential Tinsel Town tale with his entertaining pre-Code melodrama What Price Hollywood?.

A charming Constance Bennett stars as Mary Evans, who, up until her lucky run-in with perpetually soused film director Max Carey, is just another blonde actress making ends meet as a waitress at the Brown Derby. Carey, played with affable aplomb by Lowell Sherman (who soon went on to be a director himself), is working on slightly sobering up before heading off to the Chinese Theatre for his latest premiere. When the girl gets him home safe, she also gets herself a screen test, kicking off an illustrious career and a difficult relationship between two strong personalities--the nature of which seems to be a little more father/daughter until Mary gets married to Lonny Borden (Neil Hamilton), a millionaire playboy who doesn't get this Hollywood life. (Though, given his twisted courtship technique, I'm not sure Lonny's one to judge.) As the scales tip and Max needs Mary's help more than she needs his, it drives a wedge between the newlyweds and eventually propels everyone
into scandal.

Cukor mines some pretty dark material here, seemingly fascinated with the mechanics and mythology that had already sprung up around what was really a very young industry. The studio machine that churns out Mary's publicity--including the hands-on studio head (Gregory Ratoff) who goes so far as to plan her wedding--and the contentious relationship between the stars and the press appears no different then than it is now. There are even scary run-ins with fans, who literally try to tear the clothes from Mary's body. At the same time, the backstage efforts have their own magical efficiency. Cukor inserts shots of the technicians at work, a peek into the complicated choreography of a movie set. Gearheads should enjoy seeing the old cameras, microphones, and the like.

Constance Bennett is a dream as Mary, hitting on several notes that would become archetypical for this type of story--wide-eyed ingénue, a marquee-powered diva, frustrated wife and mother. She and Lowell Sherman make a fine pair. His performance here establishes him as one of the great on-screen drunkards. There is both comedy and tragedy in Max's descent, with neither side played so heavy as to ring false. He's the kind of guy you want to tip a few with, he's so much fun, but whom you also aren't surprised loses control. Naturally, the way What Price Hollywood? brings the starmaker and his protégé together casts them as the only two authentic people in an inauthentic business.

What really makes What Price Hollywood? sustainable, however, is that it manages to have its cake and eat it, too. Like the best behind-the-scenes exposés, Cukor's film loves and hates its subject. He subverts the emerging tropes even while reveling in them. Mary at one point complains that she has a baby in every movie the studio puts her in, to which the boss replies at least this time her character is married. It's the kind of knowing crack that would be censored once the Hayes Code was put in place, though in What Price Hollywood?, the joke holds true: Mary has a baby after her marriage has dissolved. And she gets her happy ending, too.

THE HERO - #911

Eschewing popular conceptions of Bollywood movies, India’s greatest filmmaker Satyajit Ray takes us not just backstage, but totally away from it, to create a fascinating study of a famous film actor mid-existential crisis.

Popular movie star Uttam Kumar plays a variation of himself, portraying Arindam Mukherjee, a one-time stage actor turned box office success traveling by train to Delhi to accept an achievement award even as his latest film is flopping in theaters. Much of The Hero’s narrative is driven by how the other train passengers react to having a star in their midst. There is the sick girl and her mother who profess to being fans, the salty critic who thinks movie stars are by nature immoral, and a young wife who has dreams of stardom herself. Most important, though, is Aditi (Sharmila Tagore, Apur Sansar [review]), a progressive journalist whose feminist magazine usually doesn’t peddle in movie news, but when urged by her mother to gather some gossip about a barroom brawl Arindam participated in the night before, Aditi finds herself sitting across from the charismatic performer. What the young woman finds is a man eager to talk, and before she knows it, Arindam is laying himself bare, telling her the true story of how he earned his way, focusing mostly on the mentor he disappointed and the one who disappointed him.

The flashbacks to Arindam’s life in the theatre and the mistakes made on his first movie shoot allow Ray--who wrote, directed, and produced--to leave the train and change up the scenery, but honestly, he didn’t really need the variation. The auteur makes full use of the space, moving up and down the corridors and into different train compartments without ever creating a scene that feels cramped--not even when the whole point is that the other passengers can’t escape each other. Ray peppers his main narrative with mini-dramas throughout the rest of the train, including some tales that parallel the main. The young woman (Susmita Mukherjee) being pimped out by her husband (Kamu Mukherjee) to cinch an advertising deal is an alternate version of the ambitious actress (Sumita Sanyal) whose advances landed Arindam in the fistfight. There are fuzzy lines being drawn between exploitation and self-actualization here, with even Arindam losing focus on whether or not he is still pursuing his career for the right reasons.

It’s pretty easy to see the influence The Hero likely had on Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited [review], predominantly in how the later film is constructed, including the use of surreal and handcrafted dream sequences and how Anderson uses the confined space to force people to get real with one another. Pretenses break down as the night wears on, and Arindam in particular is ready to spill his guts. As a performer, Uttam Kumar has a very natural way about him. He switches back and forth from being “on” to just being himself without ever needing to force it. As Arindam, he sees the difference between the personal and the public, and reacts to each fan like a deft politician.

Seeing how in control of his charm the actor is adds gravitas to the more intimate revelations he shares with the reporter. It’s only here that Ray emphasizes the closeness of proximity, eventually framing the conversation as a volley back and forth, his two leads never in the shot at the same time, too close to fit. In terms of action and reaction, Sharmila Tagore is remarkable, providing a blank, yet empathetic, sounding board for her scene partner, and reserving her deeper response to more private moments, when she is left to absorb what she just learned. Ray could have easily fallen into some cliché with the Aditi character, making her a cold intellectual or a strident feminist who rails against anything popular, but instead he gives her conflicts of her own. There is part of her who enjoys what Arindam does and understands why he could help her magazine, even as she tries to maintain her integrity and have a truly genuine experience with him. One could suspect that Ray is wrestling with his own feelings for other types of movies, the old critic maybe hitting a little too close to home, or the dismissal of musicals being a more barbed attack than is apparent in the throwaway joke..

Beyond all the movie-business material, the community that Satyajit Ray builds in The Hero is also subtly reflective of society. There are the successful people--both the actor and the wealthy business man (Ranjit Sen) share a compartment--alongside the middle classes that either just want to get by or who are looking for a leg up. Only the lower classes don’t seem to be represented here--though maybe those are the train workers who don’t get the same kind of focus, a choice that is a commentary unto itself. These distinctions channel into the themes of who needs the entertainment that Arindam provides, and who judges him for not doing more. It’s a tangle of desire, accomplishment, and remorse, with our “hero” being the only one who has lived all three--a bitter realization that he is stuck with as the train comes into the station, and the community disbands to return to their individual lives.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

CAMERAMAN: THE LIFE AND WORK OF JACK CARDIFF - FILMSTRUCK/CRITERION CHANNEL

This review was originally written for the Criterion Cast in 2011.

Any cinema fan knows the story of a good cinematographer is really the tale of a good painter. Legendary cameraman Jack Cardiff gives us solid proof of that idea, and Craig McCall’s documentary tribute to the influential artist lets us not only hear Cardiff’s opinions about classic painting, but to see his brushwork, as well. Cardiff, who is probably best known for working with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on movies like The Red Shoes [review 1 2] and Black Narcissus [review], left us in 2009 at the age of 96, but he also left behind a tremendous legacy. Having started in the film business in 1918, acting in his first silent film at the age of four, he never stopped working, racking up 73 cinematography credits on IMDB and directing 14 films himself. He shot high art, such as the fevered romance Pandora and the Flying Dutchman [review], but he also made incredible entertainment. In the 1980s, he was behind the lens for action films like Conan the Destroyer and Rambo [review].

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff lives up to its title. It stands as both a biography of the late filmmaker and an exploration of his extraordinary career. Cardiff worked a variety of jobs, including camera operator, in the British film industry at the advent of sound, and he was the principle photographer on his first full-length picture, Powell and Pressburger’s extraordinary A Matter of Life and Death [review], in 1946. He worked with many incredible directors, including Hitchcock, Huston, Hathaway, and Lewin, as well as some of cinema’s most celebrated stars. Sitting in front of McCall’s camera, Cardiff shares stories about Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Orson Welles, and Humphrey Bogart. Singing his praises are such commentators as Martin Scorsese, Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Thelma Schoonmaker, and Charlton Heston, as well as actresses from his Archers work, Kathleen Byron (Black Narcissus) and Kim Hunter (A Matter of Life and Death). Director Richard Fleisher shares tales of collaborating on films like The Vikings, and Peter Yates (The Friends of Eddie Coyle [review]) talks about what it was like to assist Cardiff on Jack’s directorial masterpiece, the 1960 feature Sons and Lovers.

All of this chatter is generously decorated with clips from Cardiff’s most famous efforts, including outtakes and photos from his archives that illustrate how he put some of his more innovative camera tricks together. Cardiff shows off a photo of himself and Marilyn, and tells a great story about how it came to be autographed by the actress and her then-husband, playwright Arthur Miller. He also lets McCall peek into his portfolio of photographs of famous actresses, a combination of obsession and work research. Cardiff loved taking pictures of the beautiful women he was charged with lighting, and the still photographs taught him how to best capture their famous faces.

When it’s all spliced together, Cameraman is a fascinating portrait of an artist at work. You might want to watch it with a pen and paper handy, because you’re going to walk out with a list of movies you will want to see as soon as possible. While it’s sad that Jack Cardiff passed away, it’s fortuitous that first-time director Craig McCall managed to get Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff in the can before he did. Cameraman is an invaluable document of the creations of a true original, and even with the heavy hitters analyzing his work here, there is nothing to compare to hearing it straight from the artist’s mouth. A must for all cinema lovers.

DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE - #895

Though not yet released on disc, Criterion is offering David Lynch: The Art Life on digital platforms like Amazon and iTunes.

One wouldn’t expect any portrait of David Lynch to be all that straightforward, but the straight story is exactly what you’ll get when watching David Lynch: The Art Life. Building a narrative from an extended monologue by the auteur, directors Rick Barnes, John Nguyen, and Olivia Neegaard-Holm put together a pretty clear path from Lynch’s early life to his first film, Eraserhead, backing the anecdotes with home movies, personal photographs, and images of Lynch’s art, as well as contemporary footage of the man at work in his home studio. David Lynch: The Art Life is both insightful and surprisingly unassuming. Those expecting Lynchian digressions into uncharted weirdness will be surprised to find there are none here. Rather, the artist looks back with clear eyes at the building blocks and stepping stones that led to his cinematic career.

Those also expecting behind-the-scenes gossip or explanations about Lynch’s challenging filmography are going to be more disappointed than surprised, however; The Art Life is not about that. Nor is it about taking Lynch’s formative memories and looking for their reoccurrence in his fictions. There are some things you might infer for yourself--the tale of the naked woman emerging on his suburban street when he was a child brings to mind Isabella Rossellini’s nude escape in Blue Velvet; his time growing up in Spokane may have been the origin of Twin Peaks [review]; etc.--but the documentarians instead work with Lynch’s fine art, finding images that match his words and juxtaposing the two in provocative ways. David Lynch: The Art Life is a lesson in the other side of the director’s creative life, the one not seen as regularly.

The greatest revelation here is just how average Lynch’s experience seems. But then, isn’t that also thematically in tune with the cinematic stories he would eventually tell? Beneath the most innocuous surface lurks darker thoughts. It just takes a willingness to look behind the veneer to find them--and that’s exactly what David Lynch: The Art Life does.

THE PLAYER - #812

My thing about movies that are about movies is that the good ones make me want to watch other movies. If I watch The Bad and the Beautiful, for instance, I’m going to want to chase it with Cat People. Who didn’t watch the opening of The Player back when it was released in 1992 and not immediately go view--or even re-view--Touch ofEvil? Or how about pairing it up with Bicycle Thieves [review]? Better yet, another movie about movies, based on a book about movies, Elia Kazan’s vastly underrated adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon. Monroe Stahr, the movie mogul in The Last Tycoon, was modeled after Irving Thalberg, whom surely director Robert Altman and writer Michael Tolkin had in mind when they created Griffin Mill, their motion picture wunderkind, as played by Tim Robbins.

And it’s not just that The Player is about movies, it’s utterly in love with them. You get that right from the virtuoso opening shot, which runs without cutting for 8 1/2 minutes (certainly no coincidence), referencing not just Touch of Evil, but The Sheltering Sky and Rope and a couple of other films that pulled off similar feats (this was pre-Tarantino, mind you). There are easter eggs throughout this thing, and not just the cameos by then au currant celebs, but jokes and winks and the careful placement of other films and filmmakers to cue the audience to what is coming next. Be it Griffin walking under a movie marquee as the lights go out on The Bicycle Thief to signal his own oncoming moral dilemma, or the fake-out of Lyle Lovett walking by a Hitchcock photo as an indicator of suspense and a deep visual pun about “the wrong man.” The murder victim declares, “See you in the next reel, pal,” ironic last words befitting the noir plot Griffin Mill will find himself in, as predicted by the posters in his office.

If you’re a cinephile, you’re going to eat this stuff up.

If you’re not, if you’re just a casual movie fan, then no worries, you’re going to dig The Player, too. It’s more than a collection of in jokes and elbowing Hollywood in the ribs. Altman and Tolkin bring an honest-to-goodness murder plot along with all the references. The Player is a movie that aims to be as good as all the other movies it emulates.

In terms of story, it’s simple. Griffin Mill is a hotshot Hollywood producer who appears to be going cold. In the midst of his concerns that his boss is bringing in his replacement (Peter Gallagher), he’s also getting harassing post cards from an anonymous writer that he never called back. When the threats turn scary, Griffin tries to figure out who it is, settling on one writer in particular, David Kahane (played by a young, nearly unrecognizable Vincent D’Onofrio). Griffin tracks Kahane to a revival screening of the Neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief (or Bicycle Thieves) and tries to reason with him. Only, Kahane isn’t the guy--even if he hates Griffin all the same. Accusations cause tempers to flare and a scuffle ensues, leading to the writer ending up dead and Griffin trying to make it look like a robbery.

And he’s successful for the most part. The only problem is, someone saw the two of them together, and the cops (Whoopi Goldberg and Lyle Lovett) think it’s suspicious that the movie exec was somehow randomly the last person to see a no-name scribe alive. This line of thinking is only heightened when Griffin starts dating the deceased’s girlfriend (Greta Scacchi). In any conventional script, Griffin would certainly look guilty.

Which, of course, we know he is, but that’s immaterial. The question that lingers, what will he do to get out of it? That’s what any good suspense movie is about. Plus, we know that the real stalker is still out there, and he could strike at any minute. Somehow these things have to converge, right? That’s what the rules of screenwriting have taught us. Not to mention that the fake moviemakers in the movie we are watching keep harping on the need for a happy ending. Griffin Mill has to find his way out of it, or The Player will fail.

That might actually be The Player’s most ingenious bit, how Tolkin builds in all this conventional wisdom about what makes a successful movie--twists, turns, sex, surprising rescues, happy endings--and then delivers on each. It’s the artiest of blockbusters, The Player is. Like if the Kaufman Brothers in Adaptation cracked the code and managed to sincerely make it work. (Which, let’s be honest, it works in Adaptation; as soon as Donald takes over, the film becomes a crowdpleaser.)

Tim Robbins brings an interesting energy to his performance. He is both slimy and trustworthy, at times believably dim and yet otherwise extremely cagey. It’s excellent casting, how we feel about Griffin is probably how a lot of people feel about Robbins, who himself can be seen as a little pretentious and also a bit of a windbag due to his openness about his politics. Yet, he also always seems like a decent guy, he’d probably be pretty nice in person. We like him, but we want to hate him, too.

Fans of Hollywood lore will see other nods to history in The Player, perhaps most deftly in Fred Ward’s fixer character, which resembles MGM’s Eddie Mannix, immortalized in both the films Hollywoodland and more recently Hail, Caesar! There is also some amusing commentary about television actors wanting to be in movies, which seems only ironic and outdated given how so much and so many have shifted from the big screen to cable television for better opportunities in recent years. Tim Robbins himself was last seen on HBO in a bad Dr. Strangelove rip-off.

Television may be the current perceived assassin of big studio pictures, but moviemakers have had many threats before this one--including TV, which was originally supposed to be the death knell of the moviegoing experience back in the 1950s. Most would say the changing of the guard in the 1960s was the true end of Golden Age Hollywood--which is largely what Altman is paying tribute to here. His movie studio resembles the classic system as much as it does the bloated 1980s version he’s critiquing. The Player actually came at a time when independent films were having their heyday, and the Sundance crowd was moving in. I guess these things are cyclical. If the auteurs of the 1960s and 1970s gave birth to the blockbuster, then the indie scene of the 1990s gave us the mega blockbuster. Would there even be a Griffin Mill now, or would he just be a collection of stockholders?

I guess it doesn’t really matter. All we can say for sure is that he’d still be getting away with it. Now more than ever.

Tim Robbins, Sydney Pollack, and Robert Altman on set.