TOM JONES - #910

Released in 1973, the film adaptation of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones is a ribald comedy of social standing. A decidedly British tale, it has a touch of farce, and a little post-modern cheek. Directed by Tony Richardson (A Taste of Honey [review]) from a script by John Osborne--who also wrote the Richardson-helmed Look Back In Anger--the film today appears to be an advance scout for cinema to come. Its raucous, profane humor tested boundaries of decorum, presenting sex as a fun activity indulged in by anyone but the notoriously dull.

Albert Finney stars as the titular Jones, a child abandoned to a rich landowner (George Devine) that raises the boy as his own. Social mores being what they were, most of the aristocrat’s noble neighbors looked down on the decision, believing a bastard child to be predestined for trouble.

And they weren’t half wrong. The grown-up Tom Jones is a rulebreaker and a scoundrel, but good-natured in his bad activity. He loves women, including the farm girl Molly (Diane Cilento, The Wicker Man [review]). Who Tom really has his heart set on, though, is Sophie (Susannah York, Tunes of Glory), beautiful daughter of the wealthy Squire Western (Hugh Griffith, The Canterbury Tales [review]). Despite enjoying Tom’s lively company himself, the Squire sees different things for his daughter, and when he is sucked into a scheme led by Tom’s dull adopted brother Bilfil (David Warner, Time Bandits), the old man manages to get Tom banished. At the same time, Sophie has run away, and the two would-be lovers make their way into the world separately at the same time.

Tom’s adventures, of course, lead him to trouble. He tussles with drunk soldiers, sleeps with lusty wives, and ultimately ends up in London, where he eventually meets his greatest match (Joan Greenwood, The Importance of Being Earnest [review]) and his greatest misfortune--that is, before things are set right again.

Tom Jones is frank and honest about the debauchery within its narrative, even as it informs the viewer that the camera is going to shy away from showing what a man and a woman might get up to, tweaking the nose of the censors, cutting the shot just as the getting is good. Of course, as with a horror movie that keeps its frights out of frame, such diversions only stoke the imagination--and makes the filmmakers more clever. Tom Jones’ most famous scene is between Finney and Joyce Redman (Olivier’s Othello) where the pair seduce each other by lustily devouring a multi-course dinner, the foley artists working overtime to record every crunch and slurp. In more a more lax era, they would have ruined it by jumping to the dirty deed itself, but here, it’s all about the unbroken gaze of the two ravenous lovers.

Richardson imbues Tom Jones with a playful visual style, including sped-up sequences that are pure British camp, a bit Benny Hill, a bit Carry On, dressed in trappings from the silent era. His quick cutting keeps pace with Finney’s full-steam-ahead performance, and both Finney and eventually Redman are allowed quick glances to the camera, a bit of a wink to make sure that the audience is in on the joke.

That said, Tom Jones also feels a little shaggy. Its farcical elements aren’t nearly as energized as one would hope, and its transgressions are no longer as naughty as they probably once seemed. It’s a fun affair, but also kind of unremarkable, carried mostly by Finney’s never wavering commitment.
For this new edition, Criterion is offering a marvelous restoration of the film, working from a 4K master. The movie comes on two discs, one featuring the original 1963 theatrical version, and the other housing Richardson’s 1989 director’s cut. Surprisingly, for once, the director’s cut is actually shorter than the original. Longtime fans might notice the nips and tucks here and there that removed about seven minutes from the running time, but the casual viewer would be hard-pressed to notice. I’d recommend first-timers following Richardson’s lead and watching his final version.

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

SEPARATE TABLES - FILMSTRUCK

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

I wasn't actually familiar with the meaning of "separate tables" before watching this movie. As it turns out, it refers to a perk of a live-in hotel, where the dining room boasts individual tables where guests can eat on their own rather than the big group tables that they might be forced to share at other resorts or boarding houses. It is at once a symbol of independence and isolation. In Delbert Mann's adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play, the space between can mean everything. It can be as wide as a canyon or just a small step, a simple "good morning" away.

Released in 1958, Separate Tables features a phenomenal ensemble cast. Though David Niven (Pink Panther, Casino Royale [reviews]) won an Oscar for Actor in a Leading Role (and Wendy Hiller for Supporting Actress), one would be hard pressed to single out any one star here. In reality, the original play was split in two itself, and the stories of Major Pollack (Niven) and the drunken writer John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster, Brute Force [review]) were presented as two distinct but conjoined one acts, often with the same actors in both roles.

In this case, Rattigan (The Browning Version) and co-screenwriter John Gay (Sometimes a Great Notion) have intertwined the tales, crafting the Beauregard Hotel as a place where everyone is all up in each other's business. The tables may be separate, but the gossip is shared. The Major is a longtime resident who presents himself as a stoic war hero while harboring strange peccadilloes. He has a good friendship and possible romantic flirtation with the timid Sybil (Deborah Kerr, Black Narcissus [review]), who is at the hotel with her overbearing mother (Gladys Cooper, Now, Voyager). It's the busybody older lady who causes trouble for the Major when she discovers he has been convicted for lewd conduct on a train. The soldier's image crumbles under the scrutiny.

The only one to fully stand-up for the Major is John, who has had his own fair share of troubles, including jail time related to a domestic violence charge. His past comes back to haunt him in the form of his ex-wife, Ann (Rita Hayworth, Gilda [review]). Her motives for showing up out of the blue are suspect, but her presence immediately causes havoc in John's life. He has been hiding away at the seaside lodge where he is in a loving affair with the the woman who runs the place (Hiller, Pygmalion [review]). It's almost as if Ann can sense that things are going John's way and is there to purposely knock him off course--though, even she is more complicated than that, more than a mere siren or femme fatale. There are hints that she maybe is addicted to sleeping pills, and as the story wears on, her own loneliness becomes evident.

Action and subplots nicely flow together. Mann (That Touch of Mink [review]) shows a deft control of the elements, and the film runs cleanly despite some tinkering by Lancaster and the studio in the final cut. Though we never go far from the Beauregard, there is some nice differentiation between the interior and exterior setting. Mann uses shots from the outside looking in to remind us of the loneliness and the solitude that such displaced people suffer. They are as separate from society at large as they are from each other. Charles Lang (Wait Until Dark) photographs Separate Table stylishly, using the changing weather and the different times of day to evoke the required moods.

Niven and Lancaster duke it out for supremacy in terms of who the real star is. Both have excellent screen presence, though their characters have completely different demeanors. John can be boorish whereas the Major goes from overly mannered to despondent. His admission of his past failings to Kerr's Sibyl is heartbreaking. Kerr is also quite excellent as the neurotic spinster. Only Hayworth seems underused here. Her iconic image does more to give Ann the kind of seductive allure that would drive a man like John crazy than anything in the script. The part seems underwritten.

Unsurprisingly, the various narrative strands pull apart and then come together again, weaving a tale where people are compelled to make a choice, either to do the right thing or carry on in the wrong. Separate Tables has an excellent finale where all these things are tied up nicely but without it being too clean or cloying.

AN ACTOR'S REVENGE - #912

An Actor’s Revenge opens and closes in a theater, bookending its vengeance tale with performance and placing the audience in a comfortable place that reminds us that this is entertainment and thus meant to be enjoyed a certain way. What lies in between fits the bill perfectly: a bonkers drama with ludicrous twists and audacious visuals. It is artifice at its purest, yet drama at its most sincere.

Writer/director Kon Ichikawa (The Makioka Sisters [review], Fires on the Plain [review]) has set his 1963 film, based on a novel by Otokichi Mikami, in the 1830s, at a time when life in Japan was difficult. The common people lived under the shogunate, and the economy was bad. Rice shortages caused unrest, becoming grist for the mill here as one component of the manipulative scheme put forth by Yuki (Kazua Hasegawa, Gate of Hell), a popular kabuki actor considered by many to be the finest female lead in all of Japan. Yes, this was a time when women’s parts were played by men, and not only does Yuki play a woman on stage, but for all intents and purposes, he remains androgynous in real life--dresses, make-up, speaking at a higher pitch. As with Satyajit Ray’s The Hero [review], the actor has an image to uphold.

At the start of the film, Yuki’s troupe is beginning a guest run in Edo. While on stage, the actor sees several familiar faces in the crowd, ones that chill him to the core. Watching from expensive box seats are men who drove Yuki’s parents to suicide. As we learn through Yuki’s internal monologue--expressed while still performing, the show must ever go on--he has been waiting his whole life for the chance to take his revenge on them. And so Yuki puts into motion an elaborate plot to drive the three merchants to madness and ultimately death, using the lead man’s daughter, Namiji (Ayako Wakao, Street of Shame [review]), as the entry point into their lives and homes. Namiji is smitten with Yuki, and Namiji is a woman of great influence, so all doors open.

The intrigue along this track develops over private conversations, with Yuki meeting with his three targets in their individual residences, working his way into their personal business, while also developing a genuine connection with Namiji. Meanwhile, outside, a collection of local thieves not only competes for fame in their province, but they also continuously cross paths with Yuki. They are both comic relief and a plot complication. The lady thief Ohatsu (Fujiko Yamamoto) falls for Yuki after he physically stops her from robbing Namiji. Another, Yamitaro, keeps watch from afar, enjoying how Yuki’s life is its own performance, how everything he does has a specific choreography. Hasegawa plays Yamitaro as well as Yuki, a dual role you may not notice on first viewing. That’s how good the actor is. It’s not just make-up and costume, but he creates distinct personas for each. Given that this was his 300th film, he certainly had plenty of time to hone his craft.

It’s the juxtaposition of these two characters where the artifice and the reality truly come together in An Actor’s Revenge. Ichikawa is interested not just in the parts people play in their actual lives, but in how they present themselves to others--and likewise how he can present these things to the film-going audience. An Actor’s Revenge relies heavily on style and staging. Nighttime scenes are set against solid black, with no discernible backgrounds. When Namiji loses her way, she is found on a similarly empty plain, shrouded in fog. Yuki’s plot against his enemies is essentially a stage play helmed in a natural theater. You almost suspect that when Ichikawa returns everyone to the actual stage in the end, he’s going to reveal we never left, and the film actors will return to take a bow.

At the same time, Ichikawa’s approach is deadly serious. There is no irony, no winking at the audience. If art is a reflection of real life, then it must be approached with the same vigor. Our entertainment has consequences. It has lessons to teach. It’s the oldest storytelling trick in the book: lull the consumer into a certain happy state, only for the weight of what we are seeing to land heavily upon us. There is a price for revenge, and one not always paid by the person with the vendetta.

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

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.

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally written for the Portland Mercury: 

One of the more hotly debated films at the Portland International Film Festival in 2011, Apichatpong Weerase-thakul's Cannes favorite might be an exercise in patience—but for those willing to go with the chilled-out flow, it's a deeply rewarding, albeit puzzling, cinematic endeavor. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives tells the story of a dying man in Thailand who exists in a rarefied state where folk tales and ghost stories mingle with everyday life. As the ailing Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) nears his end, family members gather around, including some who have been long absent.

Weerasethakul evokes an oral tradition, letting the dinner guests share the tales of their journeys, and then leads us deep into caves full of spiritual history before disconnecting these lifelines and returning the survivors to the cold of modern urban living. Meditative and mysterious, full of long takes and dreamy ideas—including hairy ape men with glowing eyes and randy fish who take out their sexual frustration on human women—Uncle Boonmee is as unpredictable as it is enthralling. It works in part because Weerasethakul never pauses to question the reality of his fairy tale. To do so would be like explaining a magic trick. As in life, not knowing how it all comes off is part of the adventure.

THE LAW - FILMSTRUCK

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2010.

Jules Dassin's 1959 French-Italian co-production The Law (La Loi) is a flirty and fun tornado of small-town scandal. Set in the coastal village of Porto Manacore, looking out over the Adriatic Sea, the ex-pat director's adaptation of a Roger Vailland novel was apparently too hot for the censors upon its release, relegating it to obscurity amongst the filmmaker's resume. After spending two hours spinning in The Law's dizzying narrative, I can't understand how a revival took so long to come around.

The Law is a story of how social structures are governed, showing us how life in the town is dictated by two men--the Godfather-like Don Cesare (Pierre Brasseur), who has all the political and financial power, and the gangster Matteo Brigante (Yves Montand, Z [review]), the muscle on the streets. "The Law" is also a drinking game that was popular in Southern Italy, and its strange rules mimic the way everything else is run. One man is named the boss, and he appoints his deputy, and together they control the wine. They pour the drinks, choosing who gets a glass via posturing and humiliation, until the pitcher is empty. Then a new boss is chosen, and a new deputy. You keep going until the players can't stand it anymore.

Such is life. You keep going until you can't stand it anymore. The heroine of The Law is Marietta (legendary Italian beauty Gina Lollobrigida). Marietta and her mother and two sisters live with Don Cesare, and are essentially his harem. He currently sleeps with her older sister, but Marietta is next to be called into his bed when he grows bored with her sibling--just as it was with their mother and her eldest daughter before them. Marietta's brother-in-law, the Don's right-hand man Tonio (Paolo Stoppa), also lusts after Marietta, and Brigante is determined to make her his own. She has other ideas, however, and when a new fellow comes to town, Marietta sets her sights on him.

Enrico (Marcello Mastroianni, 8 1/2 [review]) is an agronomist sent to Porto Manacore to modernize it. He represents progress, and so naturally butts heads with Don Cesare. When you own all the land, you don't want to be told what to do with it, after all. Enrico is overwhelmed by the convoluted social structure, and when he tries to play "The Law," it's not to his liking. On the other hand, Marietta very much is to his liking, even if he can't figure out how to make it work. She's a practical gal and ready to marry the outsider, she just needs to find a dowry. When she sees a Swiss tourist with a fat wallet, she lifts it. Half-a-million lire should be enough for any wedding. By no coincidence, she also gets a neighborhood boy--part of a gang of thieves and pranksters that do her bidding--to steal Brigante's knife. It's his only weapon, and the sharp blade scares everyone else. You don't have to have Freud on retainer to get the symbolism of Marietta taking it from him.

If all of this sounds particularly tangled, well, hold up, I'm just getting started. The Law is packed front to back with subplots and narrative complications. For instance, Brigante's son Francesco (Raf Mattioli) is having an affair with the wife of the town judge (Teddy Bilis). The woman, Lucrezia (Melina Mercouri, Dassin's real-life spouse and star of his films Never on Sunday and Topkapi), enlists another lady, Giuseppina (Lidia Alfonsi), to help her pass notes to Francesco. Giuseppina knows what Lucrezia is going through, as she's the mistress of the chief of police (Vittorio Caprioli). Also, Lucrezia bribes her by buying her a dress that is supposed to lift her breasts so she appears to have a bust like Marilyn Monroe's. When we first meet Giuseppina, it's while the cop is telling his buxom wife that he dreamt that her flat-chested friend had a bosom herself--which should tell you something about how sexed-up The Law is. Gina Lollobrigida's cleavage is an element of real focus amongst her neighbors, and I'm starting to understand why my dad thought it was such a big deal when she guest-starred on Falcon Crest when I was 12 years old. Va-va-voom!

Jules Dassin's script for The Law is an extremely agile piece of writing. He never gets overburdened by all this story, nor does he ever shy away from the heat. Visually, he and cinematographer Otello Martelli (La strada [review]) make use of the tall buildings and winding streets of Porto Manacore to give the audience the feeling of traveling through a maze. Built on a hillside, the village has lots of stairs and many levels, and it's easy to get lost. Try to map out which way Marietta is going as you watch The Law and see if you can keep up. The way the town is built, and how it's put to use on film, is another representation of its class structure. One of the earliest scenes is an impressive tracking shot that takes us up to the top of the police building, peering into the apartments where the judge and the chief live, moving down the side of the building and across, past the jail cells. The camera is being dragged along by Marietta's siren song, and we find her across town, shining boots on a balcony and singing to the morning sky. The men of the movie are bewitched, and so are we.

The Law is a real narrative tour-de-force, full of rich characters and surprising script developments. The actors all attack their roles with relish, and Dassin was at the height of his powers when constructing his mis-en-scene. The Law is as fresh and bold as any modern bendy, curvy crime movie, while also not being a crime movie at all. What a fantastic discovery!

THE HARDER THEY FALL - CRITERION CHANNEL

Setting things right, and watching the intended companion in a double-feature with John Huston’s The Misfits [review here, and a part II piece here].

And honestly, I am ashamed of myself for waiting this long to watch Humphrey Bogart’s last picture. Released in 1956, The Harder They Fall features an aging Bogie at his most tenacious, a stand-up guy trying to get through by doing a little wrong. It’s both a tad too late to be classified as a sports-themed noir a la The Set-Up, and a little too early to stand as a symbol of old Hollywood trying to get its licks in with the new generation. Imagine this same movie in the mid-1960s, featuring Bogart tussling with a heavyweight from that era, someone like Jack Nicholson or Dustin Hoffman in the Rod Steiger gangster role, and it would be the classic studio man tearing into the avant garde. This role could have been as iconic for Bogart as a punctuation of a time as Orson Welles’ turn in Touch of Evil [review].

In The Harder They Fall, Bogie plays Eddie Willis, a sports writer who finds himself out of work following the folding of the newspaper where he wrote for nearly two decades. Realizing that the job kept him fed but never gave him enough to start a savings, he throws in with crooked fight promoter Nick Benko (Steiger, Jubal [review]), hoping to earn enough green to never be in this position again. Benko has a South American giant he wants to turn into a North American star, but El Toro (Mike Lane) can neither throw nor take a punch. Only Eddie knows how to work the press to turn this loser into a champion, getting his old pals on the circuit to look the other way when things are dodgy and ignore that the fix is in.

What follows is a long tour of sell-outs, compromises, and lies, as Eddie tries to keep the whole enterprise from going belly up by Toro either finding out the truth about the cheat or getting beaten to a pulp. The audience and some of Eddie’s friends--a television reporter he had a falling out with (Harold J. Stone, Spartacus) and Eddie’s wife (Jan Sterling, Ace in the Hole [review])--see Eddie’s willful ignorance for what it is, even as he doubles-down at every obvious cue to get out. He has to believe that somehow Toro will get his payday, or Eddie will never get his.

The Harder They Fall is directed by Mark Robson (Bedlam [review], The Valley of the Dolls [review]), working from a script by Philip Yordan (God’s Little Acre [review]), who in turn is adapting a novel by Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront). It’s a slick picture, its swift pace held together by a tightly constructed script. The dialogue is terse and the viewpoint resolute in its cynicism. You’re going to really hate the bad guys, more so when they appear so spineless next to Eddie. As a narrative, The Harder They Fall is scrappy studio system efficiency, pulling off ten rounds of drama without ever hitting the canvas. 



Robson treats all the boxing matches as important, be it a quick done-in-one where the chump goes down easy or the finale where Toro has to tussle for real with the champ. In that climactic bout, the camera deftly moves in and out of the ring, giving us both the fighter’s POV and that of the audience. The latter’s pained expressions makes the beating seem all the more harsh. The most brutal match, however, is an earlier exhibition where a particularly proud pugilist (Abel Fernandez, TV’s The Untouchables) has to be given a bloody out. Try not to cringe waiting for Toro to hit the right mark.



Eddie is on par with some of Bogart’s most famous roles--the last good man amongst a whole lot of bad ones. Like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, he has a moral code that he should not deviate from lest there be consequences. Unlike them, Eddie has thrown that code out, and his arc is all about getting it back. The older actor mines a weariness that serves him well, making it as if Eddie somehow knows he is the last of his kind. When he goes down, all else will follow. Eddie’s relationship with Toro is a bit like a citified Of Mice and Men, with the simple giant never quite grasping how things work. The tragedy here is that he is very nearly self-euthanizing, taking Eddie’s advice that the only way out is by taking it on the chin--again and again and again.

The Harder They Fall is a fitting finish for Bogart. While, sure, he could have done something more grand or obvious before the final bow, it makes more sense to see him go out as he started: playing the toughest guy in the room. Even the very last scene, when he sits down to write, a flipside to In a Lonely Place [review], there is a statement of intent: Bogie will never give in, he’ll always be Bogie. It would have been interesting to see him punch into the next decade. Imagine his collaborations with Godard, or playing an elderly heavy in a Coppola movie. The old hound dog would have certainly taught the young pups a thing or two about a thing or two.

Jean-Paul Belmondo looking at a The Harder They Fall poster in Breathless.