4 posts tagged “criterion”
To refer to Giulietta Masina's work in La Strada as a "performance" seems inadequate. After all, do we praise Charlie Chaplin's acting ability in City Lights? Is Gene Kelly a master thespian because of Singin' In The Rain? How about the 18-inch model of King Kong, is it a Meisner devotee or does it subscribe to Stanislavski's system?
In La Strada (The Road), Masina is Gelsomina, bought for 10,000 Lira by the brutal Zampanó (Anthony Quinn) and conscripted as his assistant in a touring sideshow. Gelsomina is just a child (though not literally; Masina was 33 when the film was made, and Fellini’s wife), and Zampanó fails to recognize the flashes of innocence and inspiration that she brings to his “act”. Instead, he criticizes her and takes her for granted, crushing the naïve spirit that could have been his salvation. Richard Basehart is “The Fool”, the obnoxious and self-destructive jester who competes with Zampanó for Gelsomina’s attention, only to find himself on the business end of the brute’s lethal fist.
Masina is complete joy. It’s not a silent performance, but it sure feels like one. Like the clown she’s enlisted to be, she uses a minimum of face to a maximum effect. In fact, I took to naming the different faces she used throughout. There’s “pouty-bones”, “pleased as punch”, and “bawling-because-Anthony-Quinn-is-crushing-my-soul”. Whether it is Masina herself or Fellini’s slightly restrained direction as it relates to her, Gelsomina is magnificent.
Anthony Quinn, for his part, humanizes the monstrous Zampanó effectively. It’s a good thing, too, because, as it turns out, that’s the whole point.
Fellini, not yet obsessed with his own fetishes, has made a real live film here. Sure, it’s easy to recognize him through the Nino Rota score, the fixation on stage and spectacle, the beastly women, but I much prefer his particular brand of crazy when it’s projected onto the outside world and not directed solely within.
I also love this film because, unlike later works, it perfectly integrates Fellini’s love of the theatrical into its narrative. Sure, there are the indulgent cinematic flourishes, but he’s still operating within a lot of the neorealist framework, and has yet to move completely out of that movement and into his own head. He stops the narrative so that we can watch a high-wire act, and it’s thrilling and fun to watch, and then we move right along with Gelsomina’s story. Starting with La Dolce Vita and descending precipitously after 8½, Fellini’s work becomes all setpiece, all without context.
I saw this in the same week that I saw Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, and I think that the juxtaposition was illuminating. Here are two films by men often caught in the trap of their own affectations or neuroses. Burton is often damned with the faint praise of being a "visual" director, which means that his films are technical exercises without soul. Fellini would go on to direct films that seemed to take place solely within his self-obsessed, sexually charged ego. 8½ is more than two hours of the greatest masturbation ever caught on film. But with La Strada and Sweeney Todd, both men are able to make effective films by letting someone else do most of the emotional heavy lifting (in the case of La Strada, it’s Masina and Quinn, and for Todd, it’s Sondheim’s music). Fellini was never considered an actor’s director, but here, the performances are so affecting and beautiful that he does well to stand back, to not get in the way, and to watch his wife do great work.
Why didn't anyone tell me that The Third Man was great?
What's that? You did? Everyone knows it's amazing? I'm late to the Carol Reed party? Oh poop.
From the cutting edge staccato editing to Orson Welles' lovable mug, The Third Man thoroughly rocked my socks. Naturalistic performances and locations oppose the film's stylized, off-balance visual style to create something utterly unique. Sure, it's noir, all the road signs are there, but Joseph Cotton's naive wining and the crumbling post-war mise-en-scene ensure that it's unlike any noir I've seen. Noir-neorealism? Noirorealism? I'm too lazy to develop that further than just the tossed off verbal conflation of two wildly disparate film movements.
I admit to being more amazed at the film's technical bravado than fully engaged in its world. There's so much that's novel in it that I felt I was too busy appreciating things (That climactic chase! The use of vertical lines in the cinematography! And that incredible final scene!) and not really watching the movie. Not much else to say, as there's hardly a dearth of material on The Third Man out there.
And Steven Soderbergh's The Good German (2006) makes a lot more sense now.
We were watching Channel 6's Action News tonight when Rob Jennings, his voice quavering with gravity, announced that there was terrifying breaking news to report. OK, I don't know if he used the word "terrifying", but he might as well have. There was urgent immediacy in his demeanor. Was there a tsunami heading towards Philadelphia (via New Jersey, I suppose)? Had a gaggle of death row inmates escaped from prison and promised to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting populace? Was it a meteor? Oh God, it's a meteor, isn't it? Break it to me gently, Rob Jennings...
As it turned out, the breaking news was that a moratorium had been declared on gun sales for the next five days. This was followed immediately by a live report on the $150 million Mega Millions jackpot (filed from a gas station). In short, the only thing that sucks more than the national TV news is the local TV news.
Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) also hates the local news, and when he finds himself working for the only paper that will hire him, an Albuquerque local, he longs for the big story that will put him back on top. In fact, he yearns for it so much that he's willing to help it along a bit when the opportunity presents itself in the form of a cave-in and the everyman trapped inside (Richard Benedict). As Tatum explains to his protegé, a plucky Jimmy Olsen type (Bob Arthur), one guy trapped in a cave is a much better story than eighty-four guys trapped in the same cave because of the "human interest" angle. Soon, Tatum has his national attention, and the man trapped in the cave becomes a literal roadside attraction while his wife (Jan Sterling) seizes the opportunity to cash in. Tatum even goes so far as to purposefully delay the man's rescue so as to elicit control over his narrative (and his finances), a decision whose tragic moral implications he soon finds himself grappling with.
Ace In The Hole is Billy Wilder's forceful treatise on the responsibilities of the reporter (or of any writer, really) to his or her subject, and it's directed with the confident precision that you'd expect from the man with Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Apartment (1960) on his resumé. From the upswing in cost of entry that's casually dropped into the mise-en-scene to dialogue that belongs in the Noir Hall Of Fame ("I've met some hard boiled eggs in my life, but you... you're twenty minutes."), Wilder is in top form. There is some beautiful location work here, and the New Mexico desert becomes as much a character as Norma Desmond's crumbling mansion was. And as yet another bonus, Kirk Douglas doesn't shy away from the cynical hubris that makes Chuck Tatum so goddamn unlikable. I mean, here's a guy who refuses Jan Sterling's advances only because he needs her to be the "grief-stricken wife" character for the public. He's blind ambition, a complete heel. When he finally cuckolds the poor fella, it's only to keep Sterling from talking to any other reporters.
I was conflicted for a while during the film, wondering if Douglas' biased madman is an archetype that we've moved beyond. After all, media manipulation is so much more subtle and nuanced now, right? No, the "human interest story" is a demon that we may think we're too sophisticated for these days, but Ace In The Hole is especially prescient when you compare its sensationalist media circus to the coverage of the recent Crandall Canyon Mine collapse. Until the second collapse killed three rescue workers, few questions were being asked about the safety violations that had been brought to the owner's attention in 2006. Instead, the focus was on the griefporn that the families' anticipation provided.
But one needn't look only to cave-in stories for corollaries. Tatum's camaraderie with the local sheriff, a friendship that allows him unfettered and exclusive access to the trapped man in exchange for glowing copy, reeks of the media cronyism that's given us an unending war and an administration that acts without fear of public reprisal. Tatum is the ringmaster of the circus, and when, in the final scene, he comes face to face with the maxim that should have informed his entire career, "Tell The Truth", he can no longer ignore the blood on his hands.
Maybe I should send a copy of Ace In The Hole to Rob Jennings, who is clearly the Kirk Douglas of the Channel 6 newsroom.
He spat in my Balzac!
Between Michel Simon, who proves here that he's the best thing that ever happened to anything ever, and the photography that's as smooth as a waterfall, Renoir's Boudu is just about perfect. Simon is Boudu, a vagrant who is rescued from suicide by a stuffed shirt bookseller. When Boudu comes to live with the bookseller, his snooty wife, and his maid (and mistress), hilarity ensues!
No... it really does. Renoir sets a lot of his scenes as if on stage, and yet somehow the photography feels as natural and organic as documentary.
The film loses a little of its naive timelessness in its denouement (two words: hilarious rape), but when coupled with some of the beautifully clunky technical aspects of the film, it almost becomes a part of the charm. I don't mean for that to sound condescending. But that's one thing that Boudu has in spades: charm. The film doesn't quite coalesce as cleanly to pack the humanitarian beauty and bite of Renoir's La Chienne, but Criterion just released it, and I recommend it if you're in the mood for sweet sweet cinematic candy.
