PERFORMANCE - FILMSTRUCK

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2007.

Chas is a brutal enforcer who is really good at his job. Played with a bluntly arched eyebrow by James Fox (recently seen as Mr. Salt in Tim Burton's Charlie & the Chocolate Factory), he works for a homosexual East London crime boss named Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon). Chas is the guy Harry sends round when he wants to convince other people to his way of thinking, because Chas has a knack for getting his point across. When the thug goes against Harry's instructions and deals with a business matter in a personal way, though, he finds there are some situations he can't talk or shoot his way out of.

On the run, Chas overhears a conversation about a basement apartment that he can con his way into leasing. Things aren't as clear-cut once he is inside the house, however. It turns out that the landlord is a faded pop star named Turner, here played by Mick Jagger. Turner is a recluse, creating a pansexual hideaway with his drugged-up girlfriend Pherber (Anita Pallenberg, the real-life girlfriend to Mick's guitarist, Keith Richards) and a few other androgynous moppets. Before long, it's not clear who is running a con on whom, as Chas is suddenly on the same psychedelic trip as everyone else in the house, searching for Turner's "demon," the artistic muse that once drove him.

Performance was made in 1968 and held back for two years while Warner Bros. tried to figure out what to do with it. Co-directed by two first-time directors, Nicolas Roeg (Walkabout [review], also the D.P.) and writer Donald Cammell (The Argument), Performance is a classic of the trippy midnight movie genre. I'm not normally a fan of Roeg's, I find his weirdness to be meandering and pointless for the most part, but something about the collaboration with Cammell gave their artistic vision a laser-like precision. Performance is really the clash of several genres. Chas' gangster society has tints of kitchen sink drama while also playing with the conventions of classic British crime pictures. Cammell saw a kindred spirit between the swaggering street toughs of old films and the new outlaws of rock 'n' roll. Performance grows from the thesis that if you pushed these cultural rebels toward one another, you'd suddenly have mirror images in the center.

This is something that the directors make great visual use of. For a drug-fuelled movie of the late '60s (Pallenberg openly disperses chunks of magic mushrooms, and there is no mistaking those funny shaped cigarettes), they avoid the usual pictorial cliché of other hallucinogenic flicks. There are no lava lamps or fish-eye lenses. The surreal journey of Performance is an existential one, it's all about identity. The first act sets up a dicey world. Focusing entirely on Chas' brutal routine and flight from the same, it's edited in a choppy fashion, juxtaposing attacker and victim, and messing with time. This is said to be the uncredited work of editor Frank Mazzola, who would go on to make this his signature style and influence the entire video music genre in the process. In this outing, it keeps the action moving while putting the audience on shaky ground. The blood and the sex and the violence come like a rapid assault we are powerless to stop.

Yet, as Turner's introduction approaches in the story, the filmmakers are already inserting him in the mix, giving us quick tastes of what is to come, already breaking down any separation between gangster and idol. This melding begins in earnest once Chas is in Turner's home. Mirror images, double exposures, and other visual tricks are employed to start to suggest that Chas is Turner and Turner is Chas. They even engage in a bit of dress-up, most notably in the "Memo from Turner" music sequence where Chas' earlier drama with Harry is replayed with Jagger in the lead, instructing his underworld minions through song. Here Jagger moves from slinking panther to something more forceful, just as the events leading up to it show James Fox losing his edge and drifting in a narcotic haze.

Where both men end up is the subject of much debate and probably a matter of personal preference, but suffice to say there are curves on the path to complete fusion. Chas needs Turner's house to protect him from those that would do him harm, whereas Turner needs Chas' visceral lifestyle to break him out of the constipated mental funk that has arrested his creative process. Roeg and Cammell may end the movie by showing a lot of doors being closed, but from a plot standpoint, they leave many open to interpretation. Some of you out there may find the trickery maddening, but if you put yourself in Chas' shoes and let Performance slip you a mickey, you might find the experience...well, I wouldn't go so far as to say transformative, but how about inspiring?

BAD TIMING - #303

Nicolas Roeg with Theresa Russell shooting Bad Timing.

Director Nicolas Roeg passed away yesterday. The filmmaker responsible for such films as Don’t Look Now [review], Insignificance [review], The Man Who Fell to Earth [review], and Walkabout [review] was 90 years old.

As you’ll see reading my previous pieces, Roeg and I did not always get along.  Prior to today, I would have said the only movie of his I enjoyed outright was Performance [review]. Even so, his death seemed like a good time to watch the one film of his in the Criterion Collection I hadn’t yet given a spin, and I’m sure glad I did. Bad Timing surprised me with its vigor and its incisiveness, and it perfectly showcases Nicolas Roeg’s sharp editorial eye. The 1980 feature is maybe his most grounded, but its boundaries create an excellent vehicle for Roeg to fully realize his fascination with fractured narratives.

Bad Timing is essentially a love story between two people who are horribly wrong for each other, but the kind of wrong that puts them on a collision course with doomed romance. Theresa Russell plays Milena, the sort of female character that once upon a time would have been dubbed a “free spirit.” This means she acts on every impulse, refusing to be tied down or restrained, less “manic pixie girl” than she is a grown woman demanding her own agency--while potentially being manic. This makes her the perfect sexual fantasy for someone like Dr. Alex Linden (Art Garfunkel), an academic who is drawn to her wildness but wishes to possess it, as well. As I said, they are all wrong.

Roeg, shooting from a script by Yale Udoff (Eve of Destruction), opens the movie in Vienna, on the night Milena overdoses, placing us in her ambulance alongside a concerned but strangely cold Alex. But we don’t stay with this present state for long; nor do we stay anywhere for long. Roeg and editor Tony Lawson (Barry Lyndon, Straw Dogs [review]) create a chopped-up but never choppy timeline of Milena and Alex’s relationship, jumping back and forth between the here and now and various points along their dalliance. While the current story progresses in what resembles a linear fashion, the past does not, and as the police get involved in figuring out what happened to bring Milena to the brink of death, they start to invade the memories, entering the scene of the crime, reimagining some of what went down. Harvey Keitel rounds out the main cast as Inspector Netusil, someone whom we can surmise becomes nearly as obsessed with this toxic love affair as the couple living it. We don’t really doubt him as one of the narrators, his intrusion on things he could not know is too brief; rather, he is the catalyst to undo lies and denial.

The trope of the ethically compromised professor and the wild child that so intrigues him is not a new one. My suspicion is it largely sticks around as a way for egghead writers to assert that brainiacs can be interesting, too. It can often be a gross paradigm, particularly when it’s a teacher and student, but luckily Roeg and Yudoff avoid that dynamic here (Milena is not a student, in other words). Some of the clichés still persist--particularly Alex’s hesitancy to act, and how that opens him to Milena’s manipulations--but they also sidestep any of the obvious backstory. There is no trauma or abuse that makes Milena behave the way she does; on the contrary, she simply is who she is, and the more we get to know her, the more we realize that despite her self-destructiveness, she is living her most honest life.

And the more we get to know Alex, the less we believe he is either rational or well meaning. There is a genuine power shift going on over the course of Bad Timing. We go from Milena being the girl who won’t take no for an answer, to Alex being the creep that won’t take no for an answer--and Milena is stuck not knowing what exactly a “yes” would mean. While at the end of the movie it’s clear whose side we should take, for most of Bad Timing, it’s tough to say whose contribution is the most combustible. The lovers share responsibility for the fire, but there is good fuel and there is bad fuel. I’d say our allegiance particularly swings toward the girl on their trip to Casablanca when Alex’s jealousy starts to take on a racist overtone--but then, the filmmakers are also guilty in this scene of making men of color the dangerous “other.” The camera eye offers a different point of view than could strictly be Alex’s, and based on what is shown, how the men are portrayed, it’s clear that the audience is expected to feel a threat, as well.

Which is too bad for a film that otherwise manages to create a rather progressive portrayal of male/female dynamics. I don’t know if Udoff structured his script in the same fashion as made it to the screen, but the decision to turn Bad Timing into a kind of “greatest hits” highlight reel of the relationship’s race to rock bottom means that we don’t get stuck in a standard him/her tennis match. And as the police investigation picks up heat, it lends more urgency to the love affair’s disintegration. Roeg avoids any overly symbolic montage, using camera tricks sparingly to move us from one scene to the next, zooming in on an object and then cutting to another scene, but never relying on a strict one-to-one ratio (for instance, when Alex looks at a pipe leaking steam, we don’t go to a tea pot whistling or the like). The editing is the most suggestive in the more intimate scenes, creating a collage of the lovers’ bodies rather than any strict depiction of sex--except maybe when the looking is intended to make us uncomfortable. The most effective moment, though, is in Alex and Milena’s emotional standoff at the university. Director of photography Anthony Richmond (Legally Blonde) chooses to get tighter and tighter on their faces, while the backgrounds fall out of focus and turn into abstract patterns, reminiscent of the Klimt paintings shown in the opening credits. It’s a simple, yet effective, way to show how these two, when they are truly together, inhabit their own world.

Sad to say here is another spot where Roeg missteps, using a terrible piano instrumental to score the scene. It feels mawkish and out of place. Also, what is up with the on-the-nose employment of the Who’s “Who Are You”--not once, but twice--when Alex is trying to uncover someone’s identity? Is this where the CSI producers got the idea?

Luckily for Roeg, his cast is so talented that they can bring Bad Timing back to Earth from just about anything. Who knew Art Garfunkel, the quiet one in Simon and Garfunkel, could be so focused and not just intense, but menacing? In Carnal Knowledge, he is more a foil to Jack Nicholson than a full presence. Not so in Bad Timing. Garfunkel’s performance isn’t showy, but all the better for it. He needs to stand firm against his co-star’s energetic onslaught. Theresa Russell gives the performance of a lifetime, fully possessing Milena, embracing all her flaws while making sure she’s more than just a collection of foibles and male perceptions. She is alternately sexy, infuriating, inspiring, and sad. Just like we all are. Just like love can be. More importantly, though, is how present and alert she is. For as much as Alex, in his capacity as a “research psychoanalyst,” police witness, and man possessed, is always keeping his eye on her, Milena’s gaze is the one that is laser focused. It feels at times predatory or self-serving, but also protective. Too bad she can’t see what Alex will become...or is that part of the fun for her?

It’s all rather intoxicating. Bad Timing has a lot to sift through, but it never feels that the director is obfuscating for no reason. His feints and sleights of hand are there to intrigue...and to reveal. So, cheers to you, Mr. Roeg. I am glad we could part on such kind words, given our own contentious relationship as storyteller and armchair critic. May you rest in peace, wherever you’ve chosen to go.

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS - #335

There is something dazzling about how softly Louis Malle weaves together all the narratives in his 1957 debut, Elevator to the Gallows. What is seemingly random happenstance, a sorry turn of fate, eventually swirls its way back around to be important, to affect change and create an unavoidable outcome. Elevator to the Gallows is perfect French noir, taking the bleak criminal narratives of American film noir, injecting a touch of politics, and amping the existential irony to degrees that would impress even Sartre. Every well-motivated action will bring about bad results, every attempt to escape just tightens the noose.

The plot is supposed to be simple: army veteran Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet, The Fire Within [review]) is going to kill his boss (Jean Wall), a war profiteer, and make it look like suicide so he can run away with the man’s wife, Florence (Jeanne Moreau, The Lovers [review]). The plan is to do the deed in the boss’ office on Saturday, leaving him to be found when the workweek resumes. After a distraction causes Julien to miss a crucial detail, however, he has to head back to the scene of the crime--where he promptly becomes locked in the elevator when security shuts down the building for the weekend.

With Julien trapped, things begin to unravel. Feeling jilted when he misses their rendezvous, Florence wanders the street looking for him--even after she spots his car leaving town, the young girl from the flower shop (Yori Bertin) riding in the passenger seat. What she doesn’t see, though, is that Julien is not the driver. Rather, it’s the girl’s delinquent boyfriend (Georges Poujouly, Forbidden Games) taking the convertible for a joy ride. And from here we have as series of misadventures and misunderstandings, the night intensifying, becoming more desperate, the narratives growing simultaneously more disparate and more tangled.

Elevator to the Gallows works as a taut crime thriller, but it’s also a story of romantic longing. While on the elevator, Julien worries less about being caught and more about leaving Florence waiting. He tries everything he can to escape, Ronet turning in a quiet, determined performance, showing the soldier thinking through every potential angle. Malle works the tension of the moment via the claustrophobia, putting the camera in tight so as to almost insert the viewer into the scenario. I can’t imagine myself being even close to as resourceful as Julien were I in the same situation. There is also one moment of genuine peril that gets the heart racing in a movie that otherwise takes its time.

It’s really Jeanne Moreau who carries the film, however. A seemingly simple role, the part of Florence mostly involves walking the streets, peering in doorways, and conveying a sense of deep longing. Even without her voiceover to give us further insight into her feelings, Moreau’s performance is so compelling, her sadness so electric, one can’t take one’s eyes off her. Indeed, as she passes pedestrians, they all stare, proving how magnetic Jeanne Moreau truly is. It’s not the camera they peer into or that draws their attention, it’s her. And her true strength is how expertly she blocks them all out. Watch her in the one shot where she crosses the street, never looking at the cars, but yet passing perfectly through traffic. How did they choreograph that? It looks more dangerous than Julien’s elevator shaft stunt!

There is a contrast to be seen here between the two sets of lovers, between the dedicated and deeply felt adults, willing to take any chance to be together, to the more impulsive and superficial bond between Louis and the flower girl. The troubles that befall Julien and Florence are unforeseen consequences of considered decisions; the trouble Louis causes is a product of adolescent chaos, and Véronique’s solutions just the same. In most other stories, the inevitability of tragedy would be reserved for the younger star-crossed lovers. How much more tragic, then, that we never actually see Julien and Florence together, and almost never see Louis and Véronique apart? In noir, there is no young and old; all of us must receive our due comeuppance.

Malle’s approach is a mixture of New Wave realism and Dassin-esque artistry. The grainy exteriors mask the artifice of the plotting, while the naturalistic performances invigorate the carefully constructed story machinations. Moving through all of it is Miles Davis’ famous score, lending a bit of Americana to the very French proceedings, while also emphasizing Elevator to the Gallows’ aimless melancholy. The music seems particularly on point when it shares the screen with Moreau, as if she were the muse teasing every note from Davis’ trumpet.

Beyond the story, Elevator to the Gallows is the meeting of these three singular talents, a chemical formula that would have been impossible to predict, much less replicate. It couldn’t have worked if any of the participants had been swapped out, and yet it’s also so organically magical, it doesn’t feel like it could have been planned. It’s the perfect collision of performance, of visual and audio, resulting in a film that transcends its own genre trappings to be something entirely unforeseen.

THE PRINCESS BRIDE - #948

“Yes, you’re very smart. Now shut up.”

The above line is spoken once in The Princess Bride. It’s said by Peter Falk, who plays a grandfather reading the story of The Princess Bride to his sick grandson (Fred Savage). He says it when the boy thinks he has the plot figured out and insists on interrupting. But it could also be said many other times, by many different characters, as everyone in the story within the story is looking to outsmart someone else. Sometimes to comedic effect, sometimes with more sincere consequence.

This 1987 film by Rob Reiner, directing William Goldman’s screenplay of his own novel, is essentially a storybook come to life. As the grandfather reads, the movie becomes the book (or vice versa?), and the characters of Princess Buttercup (Robin Wright), her true love Westley (Cary Elwes), and all the rest all take over from there. The tale is a basic one: thinking Westley dead, Buttercup is to marry the prince (Chris Sarandon) of the kingdom, but on her engagement day, she is kidnapped by a political saboteur (Wallace Shawn) and his henchmen (Mandy Patinkin, Andre the Giant). That’s when a mysterious figure in black shows up to save the day. Three guesses who that is.

It’s all pretty straightforward. The Princess Bride is a family fantasy movie with a slight metafictional bend. The success of the film is largely dependent on Reiner’s balance of genre and comedy. The Princess Bride doesn’t take itself so seriously that it can’t mock the fairy tale tropes that fuel its romantic fantasy, but just seriously enough that the story still works at being the exact thing it’s sort of making fun of. The Princess Bride is charming as hell, and beloved by many, but I  wish it were wittier, honestly. The jokes come easy, and they don’t linger. There’s nothing in this movie that I’ll chuckle to think about tomorrow. The humor lacks the sharpness that Reiner achieves in other cinematic efforts--including This is Spinal Tap, a collaboration with Christopher Guest, who shines in a villainous role here--but that might just be down to demographics. Again, this is a family picture, so The Princess Bride is meant to be a movie for all people, tame enough to please the kiddies, but with enough of a knowing wink to entrance adults.

And for the true smarty pantses amongst us--who need to probably shut up the most--Goldman is having fun with the whole tradition of storytelling. The framing device exists to compel audiences to take The Princess Bride in the manner intended, but also doubles as a commentary on the relationship between a viewer and art. Fred Savage’s character at first resists the story, demanding it be more to his tastes, but surprisingly, when it takes him over, he becomes no less demanding, insisting the narrative stick to the clichés The Princess Bride is otherwise set up to mock. Moviegoers often want their say in all things: entertain me in special ways that will delight me, but don’t disappoint me by denying me what I want.

Which is where The Princess Bride succeeds the most. The movie should satisfy every romantic desire, every adventurous impulse, that you’re looking for in a feel-good flick. Reiner keeps things moving fast, and he pulls excellent performances out of all his cast. Patinkin and Andre steal the show most of the time, but everyone here holds their own. Even a Billy Crystal cameo works, the actor getting in and out before he wears out his welcome or otherwise derails everything. Likewise the whole of The Princess Bride. Clocking in at just 98 minutes, it’ll wile away a lazy afternoon, leaving plenty of time for whatever else you’re after, but also going by quick enough you won’t find yourself checking your phone in the final act.

MORNING GLORY/WITHOUT LOVE/UNDERCURRENT/SYLVIA SCARLETT - FILMSTRUCK

Katharine Hepburn is the lead Star of the Week for Filmstruck's final month. In honor of that, I am adapting my review for a 2007 boxed set celebrating her 100th birthday to focus on film's currently featured on the streaming service.

Katharine Hepburn is one of those rare individuals who can truly be said to have come from a different time. Yes, many historical figures are reflections of the particular social mores of their era, but it's something else altogether to be one of those figures that is so unique, there is no way to repeat the confluence of factors that made them. Surely, Hollywood couldn't come up with a movie star like her today. The way we view our celebrities has changed too much. The Golden Age of American cinema produced icons whose images were a mixture of their own personal quirks and studio spin. One gets the sense that one knows stars like Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart from watching their films, but at the same time, the flickering lights of motion pictures allow them to maintain a sense of mystery. For as personal as our connection to them, they have a sense of "otherness" that can never be fully erased. They are one of us, and yet they are something more.

Of the classic female stars, no one may embody this as much as Katharine Hepburn. The accent, the laugh, the strident intelligence, the incredible strength and the equally incredible fragility it keeps in check. She had parts in over fifty movies from 1932 to 1994, establishing one of the greatest legacies in American movies. Though she had her fair share of trouble spots, she always managed to pull out of them, and her pairings with the aforementioned Mr. Grant and the love of her life, Spencer Tracy, resulted in some of the best films ever made. Out of twelve Oscar nominations as Best Actress, she won four. Not bad, eh?

Morning Glory (1933) was directed by Lowell Sherman (She Done Him Wrong) and adapted by Howard J. Green (I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang) from a play by Zoe Akins (The Greeks Had a Word For It, a.k.a. How to Marry a Millionaire). It features the young actress, appropriately enough, in the role of a young actress, the hopelessly naive but fiercely determined Eva Lovelace (a stage name, as she's quick to point out--do you like it?). Eva has come to New York City from her home in Vermont to try to make her way treading the boards. Walking into the office of Louis Easton (Adolphe Menjou), one of the most successful producers on Broadway, she talks a blue streak that makes her seem alternately crazy, endearing, or inspiring, depending on who you ask. The other actresses think she's pathetic, but the men around are caught in her spell, particularly the writer Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.).

What transpires is a slightly skewed take on the rags to riches rise of a Broadway star. While the title, Morning Glory, refers to the glow of overnight success, it might also refer to the post-coital glow, the dirty curve Easton throws Eva that could only be talked about in a roundabout fashion in the 1930s. Given Eva's precarious mental state, the situation takes on a decidedly dark pallor, and so it's strange when Easton's cruelty is fairly easily bypassed in the climax. In fact, the whole movie has a kind of strangeness about it. It suffers from a staginess that deadened a lot of pictures from the period, making it all the more discomfiting that Fairbanks performs in a loose, naturalistic style that feels out of place next to his colleagues' more demonstrative approach. There is also a jumbled sense of time in the narrative. Part of it is intentional, since at least one character makes a point of how Eva speaks of weeks as if they were years, but it's an incongruity that eventually affects the timeline of the entire script, making it difficult to gauge just how much time has passed by the end.

Really, without Katharine Hepburn, we'd probably not even still be viewing Morning Glory today. Her take on Eva suggests more than a passing knowledge of obsessive-compulsive psychoses. When Eva starts on one of her talking jags, Hepburn freight-trains through it, barely breathing but still hitting the right marks, shifting into the various tangents as if they were the most logical choices for where to go next. The speeches are revelatory, not just as pieces of great acting, but for the character, revealing her vulnerability, her intelligence, and the power of her singular belief. It's the most complicated kind of denial, as Eva believes her own rationalizations even as she betrays them by calling them false. Hepburn never rings a bum note. She's just splendid.

Jumpoing twelve years forward to 1945 and Harold S. Bucquet's Without Love, by this point the Katharine Hepburn persona was pretty well-established, and her romantic comedies were becoming a staple of cinemas. It was her third movie with Spencer Tracy, a most winning combination and perennial exception to the rule that off-screen chemistry is supposed to yield on-screen fizzles. In fact, a kind of repertory had gathered around Hepburn in the intervening years. The screenplay for Without Love was adapted by Donald Ogden Stewart, who had also written the scripts for Holiday [review] and The Philadelphia Story, and all three movies were taken from stage plays by Philip Barry.

The deliciously improbable plot casts Tracy as scientist Patrick Jamieson, a citizen contributing to the wartime effort by secretly working on a high-altitude oxygen mask for pilots in the U.S. army. A chance meeting leads him to the basement in the house of Jamie Rowan (Hepburn), a wealthy widow whose personal loss has made her never want to love again. Pat is of the same mind, but for the opposite reason. Rather than having experienced the greatest love of his life, he's experienced the greatest frustration--a French socialite who keeps him dangling by a heartstring. Another thing the pair has in common is that their late fathers were both scientists, and so they share a hunger for knowledge and discovery. Seeing the perfect opportunity for a coupling, they decide to get married. It will be a union of convenience, built on true friendship without any of that troublesome love stuff mucking up the works.

It wouldn't be a Tracy/Hepburn picture, of course, if this plan didn't go horribly awry. Two people so perfect for each other will perfectly fall in love. Not without their obstacles, of course. Jamie will have to get over hang-ups, and Pat will have to finally let go of his French pastry. Comedy ensues along the way, including gleefully silly montages of the two at work in Pat's lab. There is also some funny business involving Pat's sleepwalking and the little dog he's trained to stop him from wandering too far. Running parallel to the action is another comic couple, played by a young Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn (Royal Wedding). It's nearly a case of the supporting cast running away with the show. Though Ball is more restrained than we'd come to know from her, I've never seen Wynn be funnier. He's marvelous as the perpetually drunken Quentin, equal parts clown and cad.

As a Tracy/Hepburn fan new to Without Love (in fact, I hadn't seen any of the movies in the box before this viewing), the film fits right in with what I like about the acting duo's comedies. Hepburn's character is never any less than her partner's equal, which is not always the case in 1940s romantic comedies. She is always smart and active in her own power, and her specialness is never neutralized. Rather, both lovers usually have to move either up or down to find a common ground that will allow them to be together. For me, what sets Without Love apart from the rest of their team-ups is the final scene, where Jamie and Pat admit their love without ever admitting it out and out. They do a little verbal dance, saying what they feel in a roundabout way. It's both clever and smart, and the two actors come off as remarkably sincere while still keeping it light. (In reality, they weren't stepping too far outside themselves, as they had years of a very public private affair.) Their last embrace is surprisingly sensual. Hepburn looks particularly hungry, like she's just about to bite a chunk of flesh from Tracy's head. It's enough to inspire the vapors.

1946's Undercurrent is a tense thriller that stands out as a kind of oddity in Katharine Hepburn's career. Undercurrent was actually kind of a departure for several of the people involved. Director Vincente Minnelli was known for his frothy musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis, and co-star Robert Mitchum was usually the tough guy, not the more sensitive soul he is here.

Hepburn is cast as Anne, the daughter of a widower scientist (Edmund Gwenn). Her father is about to sell his greatest discovery to Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor), a famous industrialist who invented a revolutionary navigation system for airplanes. Though Anne is convinced she will live the life of a spinster, when she and Alan meet, it's love at first sight. They are quickly married, and Anne is removed from her safe, academic world and placed amongst Washington politicos. She takes well to high society, but always feels out of step. Part of the problem is that her husband seems to be hiding something. The circumstances of his mother's death and the disappearance of his brother Michael (Mitchum) are closely guarded, and Alan loses his temper at the mere thought of them. Too many coincidences and almost psychic feelings keep bringing Michael to the fore, however, and Anne is convinced she must find out the truth if she's ever to know her spouse.

Undercurrent has started to pick up a bit of a reputation as a film noir. I first heard of the film in 2006 when it played as part of a noir festival at the Northwest Film Center. I'm not really sure it qualifies, however, unless we can establish a subgenre of women's noir. The plot has more in common with Victorian melodramas like Wuthering Heights and the work of Daphne Du Maurier (and her frequent adapter Alfred Hitchcock) than it does the moody expressionism of Fritz Lang or Jules Dassin. Genre hair-splitting aside, however, I found Undercurrent to be absolutely riveting. Minnelli creates a palpable sense of foreboding that lingers over the picture, ratcheting up the suspense each time Anne finds something new to cause her to doubt her husband's story only to be placated by his wily explanations. You just know that eventually one of these things is going to be too large for him to erase, and then Anne is going to be in real trouble.

It's rare to see Katharine Hepburn portray a character that is as lost and confused as Anne. Normally, her characters are merely misguided, blinded by their own hubris or stubbornness. She's quite good in this sudsier role, enough to make me wish she had made more genre pictures. Minnelli also shows a great facility for the style, using what he learned about using his environment from shooting more pastoral pictures to give the couple's ranch a sinister bend.

I'd say my only complaint about Undercurrent is that Robert Mitchum is barely in it. Like Harry Lime in The Third Man [review], Michael Garroway is more of a pervading presence than he is an active participant. When he does show up, it has a much weightier impact. So, this isn't really a fault in the story. I just really like Robert Mitchum.

Katharine Hepburn made ten movies under the direction of George Cukor. He cast her in her first film, Bill of Divorcement, in 1932. They paired for the last time forty-seven years later, in 1979, for The Corn is Green [see original review], a television production of a play by Emlyn Williams. Hepburn was 72, Cukor was 80. The Corn is Green was not a bad showing for two mega talents late in their careers, but a little too safe to have a lasting impact when faced with the grandeur that had come before.

Such as 1935's Sylvia Scarlett. This film has a bit of a checkered reputation, having been a much derided flop on its initial release, leading to Hepburn being labeled "box office poison." Though Cary Grant would emerge from it having proven his skills as a romantic funnyman, it would take years for the movie itself to get a proper reassessment. (In the Cukor documentary on Warner Brothers' 2005 double-disc Philadelphia Story, the director comments that it had become a cult hit and a favorite whenever a retrospective of his career was put together.)

Having finally seen Sylvia Scarlett, I can kind of see why the original audience didn't know what to make of it. It's definitely off-kilter, and it may run a little long, particularly in its screwball turn in the final fifteen minutes. Other than that, though, I found it enchanting.

Hepburn is Sylvia, a dour French-English girl who has just lost her mother. Adding insult to injury, her father (Gwenn again) has gotten into trouble from gambling, and the only cash they have to fund an escape is intended for Sylvia's dowry. Believing she'll never be married anyway, Sylvia cooks up a plan for them to escape to England. Fearing the police will be looking for a father/daughter duo, Sylvia decides to dress as a boy to throw the cops off their scent. The newly dubbed Sylvester takes exceedingly well to his new gender, so much so that his moxy impresses a slick Cockney conman by the name of Jimmy Monkley (Grant). He forms a criminal trio with the Scarletts, igniting Sylvester's sense of adventure. His sense of right and wrong won't let him keep stealing, though, so the three then team up with a chambermaid (Dennie Moore) and become traveling clowns.

And that's just the first half. Cukor packs a lot of story into Sylvia Scarlett. It's more than just a simple cross-dressing-for-comedy picture, however. Sylvia becoming a boy is actually a clever device employed by the writers to show how naïve the character really is. Hepburn is credible as a boy, and so she manages a convincing, athletic performance of a girl pretending to be one. It's almost like some weird version of method acting.

The second half of the film is concerned with the romantic entanglements that come out of this arrangement. Papa Scarlett chases the maid, Monkley's affection toward Sylvia after she reveals the truth is never clear, and Sylvia falls for a rakish artist (Brian Aherne, The Best of Everything) who exposes just how unprepared for womanhood Sylvia really is. A female once more, she's has few defenses to protect herself from his cad-like behavior and the emotional games his girlfriend (Natalie Paley) likes to play. Being a boy was easier for her, because the disguise allowed Sylvester to keep the world at arm's length. The revelation of Sylvia's true sex uncorks everything. Tragedy strikes, and the film's cynical heart is exposed, as well. This is perhaps what makes the final scenes of Sylvia Scarlett a little unconvincing: Sylvia and Monkley have already told us not to believe it.

Even so, it's not enough to fell Sylvia Scarlett. The charms of the rest of the film hold strong. Cary Grant is smart and funny, and when you stop and think about it, Sylvia's predicament is really the Katharine Hepburn image taken to the extreme. A woman fights so hard for her liberation, she neglects the things about herself that are honest and warm, and the lesson she must learn is to somehow have both. It didn't matter how many times we watched Katharine Hepburn go through it, she held us in her thrall. It didn't matter if the material let her down, because she'd always pick the script right back up.

SELECTED SHORTS VI - CRITERION CHANNEL

With Filmstruck shutting down, I thought I’d squeeze in one last shorts column. If there is a way to resurrect it at a later date, naturally, I will, but without the Criterion Channel, the label doesn’t really have any other venue to showcase random short films--I guess unless I just watch ones that are bonus features on their discs, reviewing them separately from the main feature. I’m sad to see Filmstruck go. It was fun while it lasted. While I imagine that the Criterion Channel will get resurrected again, hopefully with the same level of curation, I doubt we will get another one-two punch of also having the added bonus of the Turner Classics library.

You can read the previous columns here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

My Josephine (2003; USA; 7 minutes): Moonlight-director Barry Jenkins creates a collage-like narrative about two Arab immigrants running a laundromat. The man is in love with the woman, whom he compares to Napoleon’s first wife, and he ponders the nature of devotion, longing, and assimilation. It all works on a symbolic level, expressing their joint--and disjointed--experience through suggestion and metaphor, and yet is also effective as simple drama.

Bath House (2014; Sweden 15 minutes): I’ve reviewed a couple of films by Niki Lindroth von Bahr in previous installments, but this is by far the one with the most coherent plot. Featuring the director’s usual stop-motion style, it portrays a public pool where several animal characters intersect: the horse who is working at the bath house, a gay feline couple who go their to swim, and a trio of bunnies looking to rob the place. Things go wrong for each outing, leaving all six critters stranded on the street, unable to swim, as the pool itself starts to disintegrate.

Less surreal and abstract than Tord and Tord or The Burden, Bath House manages a quiet humanity, finding intrigue in everyday life, suggesting individual conflict through tiny actions. It’s also charming to look at.

Incident By A Bank (2010; Sweden; 13 minutes): This short by Ruben Olstund, the director of Force Majeure and The Square, is an impressive piece of film choreography. Shot in one continuous take, it captures two inept bank robbers trying to pull a heist, but from the vantage of a non-participatory observer. Remaining outside the bank, the camera probes the street, looking for action and reaction, as bystanders comment on the events, jump into the fray, or even move through the scene oblivious to what is really going on. It’s all rather fascinating both in execution and in drama, putting us in the position to judge the voyeurs who do nothing--while literally doing nothing ourselves.

The Horse in Focus (1956; Sweden; 17 minutes): Staying in Sweden to dip into the Criterion 100 Years of Olympic Films collection, this colorful documentary is both quaint and erudite, kind of exactly the sort of thing you imagined a couple of years back when Mitt Romney was made fun of for participating in “dressage.”

The star here is the commentator rather than the performers, with his clear bias for his home country and flashes of dry wit, tossing zingers at riders when they make errors. There is little suspense in the proceedings, particularly as much is left on the cutting room floor and often the commentary jumps ahead to tell us what happens next. But what makes The Horse in Focus interesting is how it approaches the athletes, with neither the horse nor the rider really given any prime attention. Rather, they are a unit, rising and falling, quite literally, together.

An Act of Love (2018; Australia; 11 minutes): Writer/director Lucy Knox packs a lot into a very short time. A pair of identical twin black girls has their afternoon out at the mall swerve from light-hearted fun to a deep interpersonal drama, testing their sibling bond. When a capricious older boy decides to separate them by turning his flirtatious attention on one sister, leaving the other behind, it stirs up a variety of conflicting emotions in both girls, ultimately requiring a drastic measure of solidarity to repair the damage. In all of this lingers questions of identity and an outcry against the extensive damage of casual racism and misogyny. Knox’s narrative is minimal, but her meaning complex.

Night Mayor (2009; Canada; 14 minutes): The auteur Guy Maddin is up to his usual visual tricks in this black-and-white film evoking 1930s sci-fi and horror. A Croatian immigrant sets out to convert the aurora borealis into music, but his efforts succeed far beyond his imagination, going beyond simple melody and instead broadcasting evocative images across Canada’s phone lines. Though he believes he has tapped into something that shows his fellow Canadians glimpses of themselves and their own national character, there is an underlying menace to his invention, particularly in how he exploits his family.

Night Mayor is an evocative mood piece, with Jason Staczek’s avant-garde music doing a lot of heavy lifting to make the titular pun a cinematic reality. (Say it out loud a couple of times, you’ll get it.)

Home (2016; England; 20 minutes): Is there more going on here than I am seeing? From what I can surmise, Daniel Mulloy is executing a simple reversal technique, showing us the struggle of European refugees by making the focus a middle-class British family trying to get through a war zone. Or is it that they are getting into one, rather than escaping to safety? No matter, the approach is so straightforward, Home is wholly ineffective. It only succeeds in shining a light on the actuality of white privilege: if you need to recognize the skin and accent as similar to your own in order to empathize with such tragic situations, then you’re as shallow as this film.

Swallowed (2016; USA; 17 minutes): Lily Baldwin pulls triple duty here as writer, director, and star, creating for herself a trippy yet ultimately baffling horror film. Centering on a young mother who begins to have bizarre hallucinations while breastfeeding her child, this short quickly descends into a lot of surreal nonsense, a couple of special effects away from being body horror, but never quite settling into any clear realm of meaning. My guess was that this had something to do with food anxieties, particularly that of women, who are expected to not just give of their bodies, but in more traditional (read: outdated) scenarios, to also cook for everyone. In that, Swallowed finds little victory. Baldwin’s perception of reactions others have to her food--dancing, writhing, convulsing--look like parodies of cliché acting exercises. “Pick an animal and pretend to be that animal vomiting.” Swallowed is like someone saw the last reels of Darren Aronofsky’s mother! and failed to realize he spent a good 45 minutes setting everything up.

Reading the official description of the film, though, it appears that Swallowed is not about any of that, but more about the feelings its main character tamps down, Marge Simpson-style, in order to maintain a brave face. More telling than even that, however, is the fact that the screenplay was based on someone’s dream, proving once again that dreams are boring when they aren’t (a) either contrived to fit into some narrative and thus don’t reflect real dreams at all (see 99% of all movies with dream sequences) or (b) lacking the personal interest that allows one to either be fascinated by what they don’t understand or somehow decode it. Thinking about it, though, the only thing that might be worse than watching Swallowed would be listening to the dreamer/director try to explain it. Whatever the code, continue to keep it to yourself.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD - #909

What’s there to say about Night of the Living Dead that hasn’t been said a million times? The seminal horror indie has been one of the most influential genre pictures of movie history, dissected by critics for the last 50 years, explored from every angle, praised for its technique, innovation, and deeper political subtext. There have even been full-length documentaries made about the production, including 2015’s Birth of the Living Dead [review], which featured Romero himself. And, of course, scores of sequels, remakes, and imitators.

Give Night of the Living Dead a spin and it’s easy to see why the hullabaloo persists. Made on a shoestring budget in the late 1960s, it’s a clever pressure cooker of a zombie film. Most of its running time takes place in a single house, as would-be survivors of an undead apocalypse hole up in hopes of some kind of rescue. It starts with two, Ben (Duane Jones), an African American man, and Barbra (Judith O’Dea), a white woman gone nearly catatonic after seeing her brother attacked before barely escaping herself. They are soon joined by a young couple and a family of three who were hiding in the basement. While the night draws on, arguments ensue about how best to get out alive, as radio and television reports present an increasingly bleak picture of the spreading doom.

It’s not hard to see the political metaphors when you’re looking for them. The optics of a black man and a blonde woman facing an onslaught of mostly white men hell-bent on destroying them are sadly as relevant in 2018 as they were in 1968. It’s also hard to ignore how when the older white man (Karl Hardman, looking like an early demo of Rob Corddry) arrives on the scene, he immediately tries to take charge, barking orders without considering any alternative point of view. When his wife (Marilyn Eastman) points out how important it is for him “to be right, everyone else to be wrong,” you can feel the pent-up frustration, born of years of listening to him blather on. Tellingly, when it’s time to decide whether to stick with her husband or listen to Ben, the wife is paralyzed with doubt. It’s hard to break a pattern.

Romero is employing a classic technique here. Plenty of low-budget character studies used a confined space to (a) save on location costs and (b) trap their subjects together so they can’t escape one another. See, for instance, Hitchcock’s Lifeboat [review] or countless Twilight Zone episodes. The one I most think of is “The Shelter,” where one family with a bomb shelter has to fend off their neighbors, who scoffed at the notion of such a thing but are now desperate to get in when there is threat of a nuclear attack. When examining Night of the Living Dead, we can talk race or gender, or we can also just study the personalities as the drive for self-preservation overtakes any desire to help one’s fellow man. Is it that different when the living people inside the house start tearing each other apart verbally than when the zombies outside literally feast on the flesh of the fallen?

One has to give Romero credit for pushing the boundaries in that particular scene. The stone-faced actors chewing on a turkey leg or playing with fake entrails paint a pretty grisly picture of a society that has broken down. Though it comes only midway through Night of the Living Dead, it’s really the beginning of the end. It’s when the hordes taste victory and get the strength to carry on, and the last vestiges of civilization fall.

But Romero really saves the best for last. The most unsettling moments in Night of the Living Dead come at the very end, when we learn the fate of Ben. If there is any remaining resistance to the political reading of the movie, that should all vanish here. Romero chooses to show these last shots as a montage of grainy stills, resembling news footage, focusing as much on the uncaring, self-satisfied faces of Ben’s unwitting attackers--who think they are doing the right thing--as much as the sad outcome of their actions. Anyone seeing Night of the Living Dead on initial release would have, unfortunately, found images like these far too familiar, far too similar to what they had been seeing in newspapers throughout the Civil Rights Movement. And the power to provoke has not dulled. (Spike Lee made a similar move, pulling in current events to upend his own entertainment in this summer’s BlacKkKlansman.)

This is what good horror can do: create a commentary on the times, delivering uncomfortable truths in the guise of seemingly unthinkable, frightening events. There’s a reason that the genre thrives when the real world is going through tumultuous times. A good scary movie can make us reflect on the current situation in ways that are obvious (the analogues for the Reagans in Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs) or subtle (the triumphant #metoo parable of David Gordon Green’s recent Halloween sequel, the stifled voices of good people in John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place). For most of Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero goes for the subtle, saving up that sucker punch for when it really counts.