THE LAST WALTZ - #1118

 

I used to have a Thanksgiving ritual involving The Last Waltz. I am not unique in this. If you google “Thanksgiving movie,” Martin Scorsese's 1978 documentary is pretty much the first thing to pop up. And I didn't even invent my ritual, I stepped into it.

Years ago when I still lived in Portland, OR, I would spend most holidays on my own. It started when I was originally a comic book editor and was essentially looking for any time where I might have peace. Holidays proved a good option. Everyone's attention was focused elsewhere, and so I could be by myself, uninterrupted. This meant dodging invitations and making excuses to family, but it was worth it if it meant I could stay home and get drunk with my cat and marathon movies all day. It wasn't me being antisocial so much as being pro-Me. Ron Swanson would understand. 

 

When I had moved into the upper Northwest in the early '00s, it put me within blocks of a place called The Stepping Stone Café. They were open for the holiday breakfast shift, and I would take myself down there and grab a seat at the counter, order a fat stack of pancakes they called “Mancakes”--no joke, the triple stack was over six-inches thick and the size of the whole plate--and just gorge myself. Most of the time my actual holiday meal later would be something like a turkey sandwich with cranberry, or whatever diminutive version of a Thanksgiving spread I could find in the store that was easy to prepare, so I could eat as much as I wanted for breakfast, I didn't have to keep room. Not to mention this would be the base I would pour whiskey on for the next 10-12 hours.

Those Thanksgiving mornings, the Stepping Stone would play The Last Waltz. Now, if you haven't seen it--or even if you had and your memory is just poor because you got totally blotto after doing so--you might be wondering how a documentary showcasing the final concert of 1970s roots rockers The Band is a Thanksgiving film. The answer is simple: they recorded the show on Thanksgiving. And guitarist/singer Robbie Robertson at one point thanks the audience for spending the day with them. Pretty straightforward.

 

You could tell the staff at the Stepping Stone knew the movie by heart, and they each had their moment where you could see them paying attention. Like if it were me I'd perk up when Neil Diamond came on, and I'd take a bathroom break when it was Van Morrison, who looks and sounds like a troll, let's be honest. (It's okay to hate him now, right? His caustic old age has vindicated me, yeah?) Whatever chunk I'd see was the chunk I'd see, it was not planned, it was reliant on when they hit play versus when I arrived. That was my exposure to The Last Waltz. Playing the soundtrack in the background as I type, I can actually smell the maple syrup.

For those not really in the know, stumbling on this review wondering if this Criterion disc is worth picking up or if you should rent/stream the film somewhere, The Last Waltz is a combination concert film and denouement. Scorsese interlaces interviews with members of the group with performance footage. The songs we hear are not just from The Band, but their collaborations with famous guests like the aforementioned Diamond and Morrison, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr, Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan, and many more. It's a celebration not just of this particular combo, but of a certain era of rock-and-roll. Scorsese's cut is joyful and funny, and slyly introspective, cherry-picking moments that reveal what the music has meant and what is passing.

 

 

Of course, having established themselves as the backing section when Dylan went electric, whatever these guys did would get attention, particularly from the peers who agreed to pop up for this farewell. Not to mention the clutch of solid records and handful of genuine hits--“Up On Cripple Creek,” “The Weight,” “Ophelia,” etc.--that followed, legitimizing them as a songwriting force in their own right. This set is all killer and no filler.

That said, I, for one, agree with drummer/singer Levon Helm that there is too much Robertson. But I also got a shitty email once from Robbie Robertson so maybe I am biased. I was trying to get him to write an introduction for a comic book I was editing called Skinwalker that I felt he'd have an affinity for. He declined via his assistant, whom he instructed to mansplain what a skinwalker was. Which clearly showed he hadn't even looked at the comic. Call me Team Levon.

Come on, though, let's be fair, when you think of The Band, the first voice you hear in your head is Levon Helm. His verse on “The Weight”? Top of the heap!

And then the next voice you'll hear is that of bassist Rick Danko. So Robbie Robertston isn't even top 2.

Team Levon.

 

Funny thing, I am not entirely sure I had ever watched the full run of The Last Waltz in one go before this Criterion edition. I may have only just seen pieces at The Stepping Stone, despite owning a previous release as part of a Scorsese boxed set. The Band isn't really the sort of thing I listen to on the regular; I've never owned their music as a piece of physical media beyond that DVD and now this Blu-Ray. But I saw random 45 minute hunks of it so many Thanksgivings in a row, it feels like it's in my bloodstream, and I love it regardless of my personal fandom otherwise. Granted, the picture and sound here are both so sweet, it does feel like the first time regardless. Technology has a weird way of making the familiar seem revelatory.

 

2014 was the last year I was in Portland, though I did visit the city for the Thanksgiving weekend a couple of years back and made my way from my hotel to that old cafe to get my Mancakes and my dose of Levon, Rick, Garth, and the rest (including Robbie). Even if I am a guy not often prone to nostalgia, it still felt pretty good. No idea if they were playing the same copy of The Last Waltz that I had seen so many years prior or if they will now upgrade to a Criterion disc, maybe even 4K who knows--it doesn't really matter. The first time or the fifth time or the time that feels like a second first, it's all of a piece, it's ingrained now, the maple syrup always tastes good. 

 

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

 

TRANCES - #689

I watch a lot of concert films and music documentaries and found over the years, it doesn’t matter the band or genre, if the story is compelling and the filmmaking quality, I can get into it. 

This hypothesis holds true with the 1981 film Trances, a record of the Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane from director Ahmed El Maanouni. Nass El Ghiwane is a quartet that draws on a variety of influences, including Western instrumentation, but with their roots in local trance music. Their songs have more drone than melody, and their poetic lyrics and updated arrangements of classic Moroccan songs draw on homegrown legends and history, with a focus on the political and the spiritual. 

That’s a pretty wild bouillabaisse on paper, for sure, but it’s not so hard to grasp once you see and hear the band work--which is right from the jump. Trances does what the best music documentaries do and puts the band out front. At least half of Maanouni’s edit is performance, giving the unfamiliar a true sense of what Nass El Ghiwane are like while also showing how they affect audiences. True fans are also likely to be pleased, as the camera captures the group at their peak.

While the music itself is plenty easy to understand, Maanouni expands his lens to capture the conditions of their home country and also a bit of their day to day. Nass El Ghiwane have many of the same concerns as any subject of a VH-1 “Behind the Music,” including creative vision, audience reception, and money. They also have familiar personnel dynamics, particularly between two of its founding members, Larbi Batma and Omar Sayed. The former is earnest, passionate, and caught up in creative impulses, and the latter is always there to poke a sardonic hole in whatever he is saying. More than one scene shows Larbi storming off after Omar refuses to take him seriously, followed by Omar laughing and telling his bandmates a story that illustrates why he is giving Larbi a hard time. It’s like watching Jason Lee drive Billy Crudup off his rocker in Almost Famous.

At the same time, Larbi’s seriousness is given its due. Nass El Ghiwane’s lyrics cover themes of oppression and struggle, while the transcendent nature of the music gives the audience a form of release. In Western terms, it allows them to rock out, though in the actual context of the music, the trance the songs inspire are more akin to the kind of letting go one gets from electronic dance music or gospel. 

Regardless of how you interpret it, though, the experience will be familiar to anyone who has gone to a concert and just let go. Again, that is the beauty of Trances, it tells a relatable story via a universal language. 

This movie is also available as part of the first set from Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project.

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

RAGING BULL - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2011.

Last week, after seeing David O. Russell's marvelous new boxing movie The Fighter, I commented to a friend that it doesn't make any sense that I haven't gotten into watching boxing proper, because every time I see a boxing movie, I think I should. It's my favorite sports genre. In fact, I don't really consider boxing movies to be sports movies. They are separate from the rest, their own thing. I would never automatically want to go see a baseball movie, or one about football or basketball or hockey, but if it's about a boxer, okay, sign me up.

Of course, one of the greats of the genre is Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro's 1980 biography of Jake La Motta. You could easily claim that it's the heavyweight champion of all boxing movies, and I don't think I'd argue with you. It's a pugilistic masterpiece, a dangerously choreographed piece of work that explodes in great dervishes of fury and falls back with the heaviest of heartbreaks.

Jake La Motta was a middleweight fighter whose heyday was the 1940s. An Italian boy raised in the Bronx, La Motta was a force of nature. Throughout Raging Bull, he is regularly referred to as an animal, even if he's only called by his nickname once. For Jake, every moment of his life is a fight, whether he's dancing on the canvas or drinking in a nightclub or eating his dinner at home. Every person in his life is an opponent, and he is always working out the angles to make sure that no one gets the better of him. Every conversation is an opportunity for one of his foes to underestimate him, and every riposte a potential knockout punch.

Raging Bull follows Jake over the decade as he swings his way toward an eventual title fight, the distant achievement that eludes him for the bulk of his career--most other boxers are scared to brawl with him--and once he's got it, it's only downhill after. The bouts are shown briefly, lingering longest on the more important matches, including his longtime rivalry with Sugar Ray Robinson (Johnny Barnes). Scorsese famously kept his camera inside the ring, keeping us close in the clinches, letting us feel each pummeling. This gives Raging Bull its lasting immediacy, while the decision to shoot in black-and-white ensures its timelessness. History is alive in the moment, yet there is the usual classic Hollywood vibe that only Scorsese can do without making it look like he's playing dress-up.

For as memorable as these skirmishes are, however, they are only a small part of Raging Bull. The movie is adapted from Jake La Motta's autobiography, with a script by Paul Schrader (Mishima [review]) and Mardik Martin (Mean Streets), and it shows the rise and fall, warts and all. The unsavory elements include a thrown fight and a later vice charge. They also show Jake's violent streak, and his abuse of those around him. The two most important relationships in Jake's life are his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) and his second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty). He meets Vickie when she is 15 and while he is still married. It's hard to say what she sees in him, but he clearly sees the beautiful young blonde as some golden prize. He's a jealous creature, though, and one used to getting his way. He browbeats both Vickie and Joey, both of whom only want the best for him, and when words aren't enough, he raises a hand to them, as well.

In 2009, James Toback's documentary Tyson earned a lot of praise for the way it probed the personality of Mike Tyson and the culture of violence that created him. Toback uses the fighter's own words to try to poke at the contradictions in his character. Is he the beast most believe him to be? Scorsese explores similar questions about La Motta, though Raging Bull is more effective because, unlike Toback, Scorsese doesn't seem desperate to exonerate his subject. He's just as fascinated by what the warrior lifestyle is doing to the man who takes the punches, but he also sees the tragedy such a figure inflicts on the world around him. Sure, the business and lifestyle of boxing might force a man into dark corners, but such a man is trained to fight back. La Motta turns the hurt around tenfold.

I could go on and on about the virtues of Raging Bull. Thelma Schoonmaker's invisible mis-en-scene deserves praise, as does Michael Evje and Gary S. Gerlich's tremendous sound design. They use distorted wildlife noises to soundtrack the fight scenes, and they pull the audio in and out, mimicking the elasticity of time Jake experiences in the ring. Michael Chapman's artful photography pulls similar moves. Dialing down the playback speed to a molasses crawl effects the reality of a complex action like a good punch combo. They say an expert in any field experiences the moment when they perform their most complicated tasks differently, something similar to how, when we're in a car crash, the scant few seconds leading to impact seem to go on forever. At the same time, Scorsese and Chapman orchestrate tremendous zooms and pans, capturing the speed and force of a La Motta jab.

Likewise, not enough can be said about the unbelievable cast. Pesci is a fireball, and he and De Niro have an unmatched rapport onscreen. As a duo, they have never been as fresh as they are in Raging Bull. You can believe they are brothers who have lived together all their lives. The rhythm of their back-and-forth lacks any self-consciousness, it just flows naturally. Cathy Moriarty is also remarkable as Vickie. It's easy to miss the range she shows here if you don't keep in mind that the actress, who was approaching her 20s, starts off the movie playing 15, several years younger than she actually was, and ends playing a few years older than her real age. The change isn't sweeping--not as obvious as, say, De Niro's weight gain as Jake--but keep your eye on her, see how her body language and presence changes from her first scenes with Jake, when she's got a slight touch of the awkward teen in the way she quietly slumps, and then compare it to the strong woman who eventually stands up to the bruiser.

The movie still belongs to De Niro, of course. He's in nearly every scene, and though it's one of his more mimicked roles, it's one of his least mannered. The De Niro tics disappear under La Motta's agility and, eventually, his girth. Though the actor is less recognizable under the prosthetic nose and curly hair, it's not really about the props, it's about how he carries himself. We've seen him rage in other movies, we've heard him pull out the New York accent, but Jake is a whole other person. He's not Travis Bickle or Jimmy Conway, he's not even really De Niro. It's easy to take swipes at the actor now for a perceived lessening of quality control in regards to choices he makes, but you know what, screw you. He made Raging Bull; your snark pales by any comparison.

Raging Bull regularly tops lists of the best films of the 1980s and rides high on any more expansive round-ups of cinema's best. As with most of the other usual suspects, be it Citizen Kane or It's a Wonderful Life [review] or Casablanca, the reverence exists for a reason. Raging Bull really is that good. Time passed and repeat viewings only stand to prove the level of craft that Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, et al., were operating at. Good storytelling and solid application of technique is the impenetrable armor of classic cinema: you can never pierce it or tear it down.

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN - #1020

“Of all the seven deadly sins, jealousy is the most deadly.”

It’s ironic, I suppose, that I became positively obsessed with Gene Tierney the first time I saw Leave Her To Heaven. I tracked down every film I could at the time, which meant following a lot of the Fox reissue series from the DVD era. It was a good mini label, often using A&E and AMC programming as extras, and they numbered the spines. Someone was paying attention to the Criterion obsessives.

Why I say it’s ironic is because Tierney’s character Ellen is obsession personified. Driven by jealousy, she fixates on her husband, determined to share him with no one else. Not his brother, nor her sister, nor eventually even their own child. Ellen is so alluring and so attentive, he’s blind to it far longer than he should be, ignoring all warnings. And, of course, as a film fan, I was glued to her every move.

Leave Her To Heaven is considered a hybrid of film noir and the “women’s picture,” as perhaps best personified by Douglas Sirk. Like many classic movies, I sought out Leave Her To Heaven  based on a Martin Scorsese recommendation. My purism rejected the notion of a Technicolor noir, but resistance was futile. I ultimately had to see it and sample this cinematic Reese’s peanut butter cup. You got my noir in your melodrama!

When it comes down to it, though, Leave Her To Heaven has few noir trappings. It’s set in a rural domain, it’s mostly in sunlight, and it’s far more romantic than fatalist. It’s actually more of an upending of the “bad husband gaslighting his wife” movies, like Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door [review], Max Ophuls’ Caught [review], or Sirk’s own Sleep, My Love [review]. Director John M. Stahl--working from a screenplay by Jo Swerling, adapting a novel by Ben Ames--instead has the wife slowly undermining her husband’s faith in himself, ironically chipping away at his love rather than securing her position as the only thing in his life. (Fun aside: Stahl directed versions of both Imitation of Life and Magnificent Obsession before Sirk’s more famous remakes [review of both versions of Magnificent Obsession].)

Cornel Wilde plays the husband, novelist Richard Harland. Criterion viewers will know him for The Naked Prey [review], his triumphant directorial/starring vehicle, but he doesn’t fare as well here. He’s a bit of a weak link, failing to be charming or seductive. Honesty, his rap is so bad, down to quoting his own book, I have cause to wonder if Ellen picks Richard because he’s a bit dim and thus easily manipulated. Likewise, most of the supporting cast is fairly mediocre, giving more room for Tierney to control the frame. Her only competition is from her Dragonwyck co-star Vincent Price, who here plays her jilted lover, but who really gets to shine as the district attorney in the courtroom scenes that occupy Leave Her to Heaven’s final act. Price manages to distinguish himself because his character is the only one as driven as Ellen. His passion in front of a jury is blazing.

But then, he also doesn’t have to compete directly with Tierney. It also helps that he’s hot in ways that she’s cool, creating a balance between them. Tierney’s take on Ellen is sculpted out of ice and steel. The key to her villainy--and, arguably, to her sexiness--is how together she is. It’s not just that Ellen would never have a hair out of place, but that she rarely has an emotion out of place. She might seethe when she sees some competition for Richard’s affection, but the wheels immediately start turning on how to get the advantage back. Her best moment is that iconic scene on the lake, the one that is highlighted on the Criterion Leave Her to Heaven cover. In that segment, we see her coldly seize an opportunity and then course correct in order to cover her tracks when it appears she might get caught.

Leave Her to Heaven was shot by Leon Shamroy, the cinematographer of Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra, but it’s worth noting that there is also a Technicolor director, Natalie Kalmus. The colors here are phenomenal. Tierney in particular stands out for her gorgeous clothes, like the baby blue swimsuit and nightgown that she wears for a couple of her worst deeds--a color that the internet tells me should resemble “trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven.” I doubt this is a choice that was made without consideration. All of Leave Her to Heaven has an almost unreal pastel look to it, arguably Stahl’s replacement for the shadowy confines of noir. In his world, evil is bright and pink and has shiny red lips.

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

THE PIANO - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2012.

The Piano begins like no other film. A tentative voice begins speaking, setting the scene and establishing the unique narrative point of view by introducing itself as the interior expression of the movie's main character, a woman who has not spoken aloud since she was six years old. It's not as she has ever been heard by others, but how she hears herself. Ada has recently been sold into an arranged marriage, and she and her young daughter are being sent far away to New Zealand to live with the new husband. Whatever suffering our heroine must endure, she can face it as long as she can bring her piano, which for her provides a precious means of expression. Though she knows sign language, her separateness has allowed her to ascertain that most people don't use their words for anything of significance. Music need not justify itself, it only need flow from the instrument.

Released in 1993, Jane Campion's romantic story of perseverance and self-actualization was rightfully greeted as cause for celebration. Critics and audiences both embraced The Piano, and it was a mainstay at all the year-end award shows. Holly Hunter won a Best Actress Oscar as the star of the film, playing silent Ada with incredible insight and physical acuity; her young co-star, an 11-year-old Anna Paquin (later on True Blood and recently in Scorsese's The Irishman), also took home a Supporting Actress statue. The pair were perfectly believable as mother and daughter, just one of the many carefully arranged elements that lent Campion's film an emotional honesty that has not dimmed in the decades since.

When Ada and little Flora end up at their remote destination, their new lives look bleak. Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill, Jurassic Park) is a nervous, socially awkward man who is more at ease bargaining for land than he is at exchanging pleasantries with his new wife. To be fair, Ada is not exactly as she was described to him, nor does she make things easy for the inexperienced groom. Her piano is a particularly burdensome piece of luggage, and it has to be left on the beach. Alisdair has not brought enough Maori workmen to carry it back up the mountain.

Eventually, Ada turns to a neighbor to help her with her predicament. George Baines (Harvey Keitel, Thelma and Louise [review]) is friendly with the locals and served as translator and guide on Ada's journey to her new residence. George apparently left a wife in England, but whatever drove him halfway around the world is not revealed. He has taken to his adopted home to such a degree, he has even tattooed his face in the Maori style. He buys the piano from Alisdair under the guise of wanting to learn to play music, but in reality, he wants to use it to bargain with Ada. If she will engage in increasingly intimate acts with him, he will return the musical instrument to her.

Though begun as a simple supply-and-demand transaction, the relationship between Ada and George grows increasingly complex. The Piano is a literary romance filled with potent symbols and expressive metaphors. Of all the players in this love triangle, Ada is the one who communicates most directly, and her methods draw George out of his shell while further alienating Alisdair. In turn, George's care inspires new feelings of trust in Ada, as well as bringing other sensations to her life. The basic plot of the film is a series of seductions, some selfish and some transcendent. George reveals hidden kindnesses, Alisdair unveils unforeseen cruelties, and all are watched by the eyes of a child, who serves as both provocateur and conscience. For Ada, she is the angel on her mother's shoulder insisting she make the moral choice, only then to flit off to her stepfather and whisper devilish gossip in his ears.

Anna Paquin delivers an unpretentious, unmannered performance as the little girl. Campion (whose other credits include Sweetie [review] and Bright Star [review]) has clearly connected with the young performer's sense of play, getting her to engage wholly with the space. She never appears as anything less than totally immersed in the scene, and her naturalism challenges the adults to match her instinctual gifts and also gives them the sense of "other" that they can play off. Flora doesn't understand everything that is going on with the grown-ups, and it lends even more intensity to their deception. As George, Harvey Keitel is both primitive and surprisingly modern, displaying a sensitivity that Ada can't help but respond to. For his part, Sam Neill appears as a man haunted by his desires. His wife's touch, reaching so close to forbidden areas, sets him atremble; yet, she refuses to let him touch her in return. Ada commands both of them, but Holly Hunter is careful not to let the character's stubbornness be so pronounced that we lose sight of her vulnerability. This is a woman whose life has been overtaken by something she can never put a name to, and so she can never be completely in control.

The Piano was shot on location in New Zealand, and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh (The Painted Veil [review], Taymor's The Tempest [review]) makes great use of the open, natural landscape to be found there. Shots of the seaside are breathtaking, with Ada and Flora placed between the mountainous terrain and the vast ocean, emphasizing their isolation from their former lives. This also means that "civilization" as they've defined it is a distant thing. They are now surrounded by untamed jungle, creating an environment where they are sufficiently hidden away to indulge in passions they'd not be allowed back home. (For her part, Flora becomes a bit of a wild child, left to her own devices, which ironically also forces her to be more of a grown-up.)

Of course, no review of The Piano would be complete without also making mention of Michael Nyman's score. His music is beautiful without being intrusive, his incidental compositions taking a backseat to Ada's emotional sessions at the keyboard. When she starts playing, the music pours out of her. As another character describes it, it's like when a mood takes you and refuses to let you go. It's another of Campion's perfectly considered metaphors. Only Ada allows herself to feel this way, the others find her music strange--though ultimately, it does soothe the savage beast. The piano's central position in Ada's life is both a great asset for her and a curse, and it's one she will have to contend with before she can ever truly live.

COLUMBIA NOIR: MURDER BY CONTRACT/HUMAN DESIRE/DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD/NIGHTFALL - CRITERION CHANNEL

I am continuing to work my way through the Criterion Channel’s “Columbia Noir” bundle, a collection of crime and melodrama spanning three decades of the Columbia studio. You can see my first group review here; it appears this collection will be off the Channel at the end of the month, so hurry if any of these sound like your thing.

Murder by Contract: This raw 1958 hitman picture from Irving Lerner is considered a B-movie classic, lauded by Martin Scorsese and others for its rough-hewn, independent style. It’s a bit like Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence [review] in that what it lacks in polish, it makes up for in earnestness.

Vince Edwards, who played Val in Kubrick’s The Killing but was probably best known as TV’s Dr. Ben Casey, stars as Claude, a self-motivated would-be contract killer looking to earn enough cash to buy a house on a lake far away from the grind. Claude’s m.o. is that he uses his brains rather than weapons, avoiding any pitfalls that might lead to the police tracking him down. After a few successful jobs, he is sent to Los Angeles to take out a nightclub performer (Billie Williams) about to testify against a colleague of Claude’s boss. With the trial a few days away, Claude decides to soak up Hollywood...only to find the time wasted when the girl proves harder to kill than he thought.

It’s funny to watch Murder by Contract now, as it’s hard not to think about the HBO show Barry, in which Bill Hader plays an assassin who tries to leave the life to become an actor. Too bad Murder by Contract has none of Barry’s wit, character, or even action. This is all pretty standard stuff, obviously done on the cheap, with little editing or rewriting applied to Ben Simcoe’s sloppy script. The narrative meanders, and Edwards appears committed to the role but incapable of delivering what that commitment requires.

Human Desire: Master director Fritz Lang had scored a noir hit with The Big Heat, also for Columbia, in 1953, and Human Desire sees him reuniting his principal cast a year later for another go. This time, Lang is adapting La bête humaine, the Emile Zola novel that also inspired Jean Renoir’s excellent 1938 drama of the same name [review]. Glenn Ford takes over the Jean Gabin role, playing Jeff, a fresh discharge from the Korean War returning to the small town where he grew up to pick up where he left off. Jeff is looking to resume his quiet life as a train conductor, renting a room in a house with his co-worker, the man’s wife, and the growing daughter who has eyes for the levelheaded boarder.

Enter temptation. On a random trip, Jeff crosses paths with Vicki Buckley (Gloria Grahame), who lays on the charm. Little does Jeff know that Vicki’s flirting is to distract Jeff from finding the body of the man her jealous husband, Carl (Broderick Crawford), just killed. As Jeff is drawn into Gloria’s web, he soon ends up covering for her misdeeds and heading toward the inevitable: he’ll have to kill the husband if he wants the wife all to himself.

Stylistically, Human Desire has more in common with Lang’s 1952 steamer Clash By Night than it does The Big Heat. The title says it all: this is a plot about base emotions and internal struggle. Grahame sizzles as the manipulative femme fatale, playing off nicely with Jeff’s more earthy paramour, the innocent who can see no wrong in the man she loves (a noir trope). Ford conjures some of that grinding anger that worked so well for him in Gilda [review], but the real star here is Broderick Crawford, who portrays Carl as scheming and black-hearted, but also nervous and insecure. He makes the violent creep almost sympathetic.

Drive a Crooked Road: Okay, now this is more like it. This 1954 crime piece from director Richard Quine (Sex and the Single Girl [review]) is sharply written and unflinching in its dark cynicism. Mickey Rooney plays Eddie Shannon, a natural wunderkind with a car engine who also likes to race from time to time, but always comes in second. Ribbed at work for being short, and self-conscious about the scar on his face, Eddie is a lonely guy just getting by.

Enter into his life Barbara Mathews (Dianne Foster, The Last Hurrah), a Beverly Hills swell with a car that needs his special touch. When Barbara takes Eddie outside the garage, however, it’s she who will be applying her own special touch. Barbara is a unique kind of femme fatale--she plays the part of the loving, open girlfriend so convincingly, there isn’t even a hint that Eddie is being played. Rather, it’s guys in Barbara’s social circle who eventually approach Eddie, looking for a driver who can navigate the winding California roads.

Quine makes great use of the landscape, from beach to mountain to the almost space-age confines of Eddie’s dealership. There’s a sparkle to it all that hypnotizes our protagonist, and though Eddie is an A-grade patsy, Rooney brings empathy to the role. You really feel sorry for the guy, and Foster is such a warm presence, so kind, it feels like a double betrayal when it goes wrong. These factors give special stakes to Drive a Crooked Road’s finale, affecting who we root for and why in a way that has more emotional truth than the standard noir payoff.

To see Mickey Rooney in a similar role, and also just to see another quality film noir, also seek out Quicksand from 1950.

Nightfall: Jacques Tourneur could bring style to any genre, be it horror like I Walked With a Zombie [review] or the quintessential noir Out of the Past. While his 1956 Los Angeles crime picture Nightfall does not necessarily rise to the level of that classic Robert Mitchum collaboration, it’s still a solid chase picture in its own right.

Aldo Ray (Miss Sadie Thompson [review]) plays Jim, a Navy vet built like a quarterback with a cool, gentle demeanor. Jim is hiding out in Los Angeles, where he is being watched by several pairs of eyes. Most notably, by two crooks, John (Brian Keith, The Parent Trap; The Pleasure Seekers [review]) and Red (Rudy Bond, On the Waterfront), bank robbers who ran across Jim in Wyoming while on the run. That tussle left one man dead and a bag of money went missing--money the pair of hoods believe Jim is hiding.

It just so happens the night they catch up with Jim is also the night he meets Marie (Anne Bancroft, The Graduate [review]), a lonely model who lucks out by meeting the one gentleman in Hollywood. Or so she thinks. Her chance encounter puts her in danger once Jim gives the bad guys the slip, and the two of them end up in a race to get out of town and find the cash.

Tourneur, working with a script by Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night [review]), strikes an interesting balance here. The hunt has all the great tension of an urban thriller, while flashbacks to Jim’s story, and really the man himself, have the easygoing calm of a farmland drama. The blonde patsy is not your typical noir hero. His voice is soft, his vocation is art, his origins are rural; he’s a light fish swimming in a dark pond. That means when we shift to Jim’s terrain for Nightfall’s snowbound climax, things get a little quieter than we are used to in a noir showdown, but Tourneur and Silliphant are letting the characters dictate the action, bringing the hunter and the hunted full circle to have an ending that perfectly suits who they are.

SMITHEREENS - #941

While 1970s American movies like Taxi Driver and Dog Day Afternoon gave us an indelible image of the grimy side of 1970s New York, it was the independent auteurs that followed that captured the more arty, anything-goes side of the city’s culture. Early Jarmusch, for instance, and even Martin Scorsese’s Big Apple follow-ups to Travis Bickle like The King of Comedy and After Hours.

Susan Seidelman is by far more in the Jarmusch camp. The New York of her 1982 feature debut Smithereens is the New York that gave us Basquiat and Madonna--with whom, of course, Seidelman would make Desperately Seeking Susan not too long after. Interesting people doing interesting things just for the sake of it, just because they thought New York was the place to be. New wave music and graffiti, striped skirts and checkered sunglasses, hustlers and poseurs--all of these are elements of Smithereens, and all make the film interesting, even if its story never quite finds the depth of its surroundings.

First-time film actress Susan Berman stars in Smithereens as Wren, a New Jersey ex-pat who is trying to blag her way into a rock-and-roll lifestyle. It’s never quite clear what Wren’s artistry encompasses, and likely she hasn’t figured it out yet either, but she plasters photocopies of her face around the city and pretty much barrels through anyone who gets in front of her. Forever the opportunist, she drags along fresh Montana-transplant Paul (Brad Rinn) to her night on the town when it’s clear he’ll pay the bills, but then drops him for Eric, a singer played by real life punk icon Richard Hell, as soon as he shows a passing interest and potentially something to gain. Wren spends the rest of Smithereens bouncing between the two, with only Paul being smart enough to know he’s being used, and the girl too blind to see that Eric will never take her to Los Angeles and let her manage his band.

Working with mostly an unprofessional cast*, Seidelman manages a kind of neorealism that is as much John Cassavetes as it is Jim Jarmusch--though I’d also compare this to Alison Anderson’s Border Radio [review]. This quality will  be a boon for viewers looking for an unvarnished time capsule, but might be a problem if you are seeking something with a bit more form. Seidelman is definitely working with the best of what she had available. Shot by Chirine El Khaden, who also worked a camera on the influential hip-hop movie Wild Style, Smithereens has the dirt and grime of a documentary--all of which comes through with a gritty clarity on the Criterion Blu-ray. We see such mythologized sights as the Peppermint Club, and most of the people hanging around are likely the real deal and not hired extras. Going from seedy movie theatres to Bohemian cafes, there is an undeniable authenticity to Smithereens. You could almost say you were there.

And you could also say you’ve spent a lifetime with its main character. Wren is a hard woman to like. Paul is entirely right: she is a self-serving loser with a bigger mouth than tangible qualities to offer. The only thing that makes her tolerable--as opposed to, say, Agnes Varda’s Vagabond protagonist, or countless loudmouth male sidekick characters like most anything Jason Lee played in the 1990s--is that Susan Berman understands the insecurity behind the bravado, and she can sell it when the façade drops. If only she was a tad more charismatic, I might have felt more inspired by the freeze-frame ending. Wren could have been more like Antoine Doinel on the beach at the end of The 400 Blows [review], suggesting a possible future; instead, she only appears startled by the irony of receiving unwanted attention after spending the whole movie trying to monopolize everyone’s time.

Much better is Seidelman’s initial film-school short And You Act Like One Too. Shot in 1976, this black-and-white tale of a housewife feeling neglected on her 30th birthday is a charming day-in-the-life. Marsha (Karen Butler) is abandoned by her husband and daughter on what is meant to be her special day, so instead of sitting around feeling sorry for herself, Marsha goes out and gets a new hairdo, runs some errands, and takes a chance giving a ride to a charming hitchhiker (Andras Maros). Unsurprisingly, this trip leads her to some unexpected places, and Seidelman delivers a comic twist at the end that is truly delightful. The film is simple in its intent, but broad in its character analysis.

Seidelman’s second student film is the color divorce drama Yours Truly, Andrea G. Stern. This short focuses its attention on young Andrea (Jilian Frank), the daughter of a newly separated couple. She lives with her mom (Joanne Gross), and starts to feel left out when a new man (Billy Wine) moves into the house. While the narrative thrust is that Andrea is trying to get Jonathan to move out, this isn’t a Disney Channel comedy where the schemes are wild and implausible; on the contrary, Seidelman’s deeply felt script imagines what realistic actions Andrea would take, what tools she’d have at her disposal.

Yours Truly, Andrea G. Stern is somewhat ambitious in style, framing itself as a documentary with the off-screen director colluding with the girl, but also putting us in the space of her imagination. The title refers to how Andrea signs off her diary entries, which also serve as narration for the film. The result is something more real and personal than if Seidelman had chosen not to take a child’s point of view so serious.

* Though keep an eye out, because apparently Chris Noth from Law & Order and Sex and the City plays a prostitute! I didn’t see him, but I didn’t know to look.

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

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH - #939

Man, I’ve been waiting a long time for A Matter of Life and Death to get the Criterion treatment. If there ever was a movie to deserve its own spine number, this is it.

Released in 1946, A Matter of Life and Death is a post-war fable made just after the war had ended, when the rebuilding had only just begun. The concoction of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, also known as The Archers, their movies sometimes described as Disney for adults, A Matter of Life and Death is their most original production, spawned fully from their own imaginations as writers, directors, and producers.

A Matter of Life and Death stars David Niven as Peter Carter, an RAF officer who, at the beginning of the film, is in the process of crashing his bomber following what must have been a pretty nasty firefight. His crew has all escaped, except for his communications officer, who lies dead in his lap. Carter does not have a parachute, and as he tells June (Kim Hunter, A Streetcar Named Desire, the American soldier on the other end of the radio, he’d rather jump to his death than burn in a crash. The two share a moment, knowing it’s meant to be his last.

Only it isn’t. Instead, Peter washes up on the English coast. Cut to Heaven with a capital H, where they are waiting for him to arrive. The aforementioned communications man, Bob (Robert Coote, Scaramouche), has even delayed procuring his own angels wings, knowing his pal is due any moment. When this particular soul fails to materialize, it’s an unprecedented glitch in the system. The French conductor (Marius Goring, The Red Shoes [review]) meant to ferry him through the pearly gates missed Peter in the English fog. Luckily, retrieving him should be easy. Peter Carter was just lucky enough to receive an extra day of life. No harm, no foul.

Except, as fate would have it, in those intervening hours, Peter found June, and the pair fell in love. Peter insists it’s not fair for him to have to let that go, as he’d never have known such romance had the celestial world not screwed up. Peter demands his day in court, the chance to appeal his own death. Divine justice being what it is, Heaven agrees.

A Matter of Life and Death is split between two worlds: reality and...well, Powell and Pressburger don’t put too fine a point on it. I call it Heaven, but there is no mention of Christianity or Jesus, and the filmmakers take a rather cheeky, almost subversive approach to establishing their particular afterlife. This is a movie, after all, that opens with a view of the universe and an explanation of what each cosmic illumination represents delivered via an unseen narrator--one who implies he lives on Earth, too, and doesn’t claim to be a supreme being. His intro isn’t exactly a direct path to the mystical realm, unless we choose to accept science and religion as one. That said, A Matter of Life and Death pulls a reverse Wizard of Oz in that the Earth-based sequences are in color, and the afterlife sequences are black-and-white. If one rides the lengthy stairway to heaven, the film is monochrome; coming back down, even with heavenly bodies in tow, Technicolor!

This choice alone would suggest that the Archers consider the real world and its concerns to be the more important. In fact, they kind of lean away from the afterlife as being a fantastical environment, instead suggesting it is just one big administrative bureau. All of this is less a critique on religion, though, than it is a device to encourage us to question whether Peter Carter is hallucinating the whole thing. On Earth, he is prone to headaches and, of course, sounds a bit crazy when he tells June what he believes is going on. She enlists the help of Dr. Reeves (Roger Livesey, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp [review]), a neurologist. Reeves is a man of science, but one that also enjoys poetry, and the closest to a God-like figure we get in A Matter of Life and Death, in so much as he sees all from his attic, which is outfitted with a 360° viewer that lets him look across the entirety of their village, allowing him to diagnose the problems of his subjects from afar. Livesey gives a spirited performance, projecting a natural optimism, and showing the good doctor as capable of adapting to anything, eager as he is to figure the whole thing out. Reeves quickly diagnoses Peter, believing him to have a rare neurological condition that so disrupts the senses, it only stands to reason he thinks these visions of another world to be real. Every part of his body says so.

A Matter of Life and Death offers no absolute stance on what we should believe, it champions no one internal truth. Peter goes on trial and has his day in Heavenly court, but is that really happening, or is the eventual verdict a product of the surgical operation he is undergoing on the ground? Narratively, I’d argue that the only proof we need is that the story regularly leaves the main character, so unless his brain is even writing the chapters of the story he is not supposed to be privy to, the other side is really looking to take him as their own.

As with all Powell and Pressburger films, A Matter of Life and Death is a visual treat. The large stairway to Heaven has the cosmos as its backdrop and statues of famous figures from history as decoration. Heaven itself is a space-age design, all curves and clean surfaces, well ahead of the space age. Gorgeous matte paintings and elaborate models are used to give the wide view of paradise. Cinematographer Jack Cardiff (Pandora and the Flying Dutchman [review]; subject of Cameraman [review]) gives the black-and-white sequences a sort of internal glow, as if it is suffused with light; alternately, he makes the earthbound scenes bright and colorful, creating the exaggerated reality that is the Archers’ stock in trade.

For all its heavier questions--including a debate about the virtues of freedom, and how they manifest differently and sometimes the same in both Britain and America--A Matter of Life and Death is another of P&P’s fantabulous fairy tales, full of romances and comic touches. (The arrival of a crew of American pilots to check into the hereafter is a particularly funny aside; likewise, the dig at James Cagney in the Midsummer Night’s Dream rehearsal on the military base.) It’s an enchanting mystery, more movie magic than genuine mysticism, and perhaps one of the best examples of how cinema can transcend the everyday. I saw it for the first time some two decades ago, during a revival and restoration championed by Martin Scorsese, knowing very little going in. Needless to say, I was mesmerized. Back then, I was watching it on a big screen with an audience, and I have since seen it on the smaller screen with friends and now on my own, and the change in venues by no means diminishes how spectacular A Matter of Life and Death really is. In fact, this current high-def restoration may be the most magical its every appeared. It’s an essential purchase, and so good I wouldn’t have blamed Criterion if they had waited to release it so it could have been #1000 rather than #939...but I’m glad they didn’t.

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