Artists and Models (1955)

Artists and Models

With ”Artists and Models”, the first movie of 1955, we have moved into the extreme silly end of the spectrum, which is quite a departure from last week’s movie (”Sansho the Bailiff”). This is a colorful, even cartoonish, satire on 1950’ies pop culture and it is about as light and harmless as rice crackers and just about as noisy.

Let me reveal right from the beginning that I was not sold by this comedy, far from, but it is not without it’s moments and there are enough of them to make it not a complete waste of time.

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were apparently an established couple in 1955 when they did this movie. “Artists and Models” was their fourteenth together, so I guess the audience knew what they were going to see when they went for one of their movies. A studio also only keep a duo alive this long if they sell tickets, so they must have been quite popular.

In this movie they are less than successful artists. Rick Todd (Martin) is a painter and Eugene Fullstack (Lewis) is an author of children’s books (or want to be). The reason for their lack of success seems to be Rick’s promiscuity and Eugene’s infatuation with comics, especially those featuring the Bat Lady. Add to that that Eugene act like an eight year old and Rick not ten years older and that may be the real reason.

Their luck turns when the real author (Dorothy Malone as Abigail) of the Bat Lady moves into their building together with the model that poses as Bat Lady (Shirley MacLaine as Bessie) who also happens to be the secretary of Abigail’s publisher. In a complex set of events Rick takes over Abigail’s job when she quits her job because her publisher wants more blood and gore in the cartoons while Rick and Abigail becomes an item on Rick’s insistence. Eugene meets his idol, the Bat Lady, while Bessie tries to win Eugene’s heart without revealing that she is actually the Bat Lady.

It gets really complicated and just to add to the mix the whole thing turns into a spy story when some Hungarian spies finds out that the cartoons seem to be revealing a secret formula and so set out to kidnap the authors.

Let me take the good things first.

It was a wonder to see Shirley MacLaine in one of her first roles. She is one of the few actors from this era who is still alive and active. IMDB has her registered for two movies in 2015 and another one in 2016. She is one of Hollywood’s great actresses and I love to see an actress spanning a lifelong career. That happens all too rarely. In “Artists and Models” she is definitely one of the highlights because she is genuinely funny.

Actually this movie is full of wonderful women. I guess the studio threw everything they could find in a dress into this movie and they do look great. From a male point of view they are a delight to watch, especially since they look like real women.

Then there are a number of jokes that actually work out. The massage room scene with at least five bodies entwined is a great one and the TV sequence where Eugene is presented as a retarded comic-aholic is inspired when the things he says suddenly turns so smart that they are above the host. There is a fun reference to James Steward in “Rear Window” and I bet there are a number of other reference thrown in as well.

On the negative is… almost everything else.

My problem here is that I do not care for Jim Carrey’s special kind of comedy and watching Jerry Lewis I know exactly where Carrey’s style comes from. This totally over the top exaggeration combined with total idiocy is clearly what is supposed to sell this movie and it just does not work for me. Instead of laughing I grind my teeth and that is never a good thing.  Because so much of the movie hangs on Lewis comedy that has a large impact on my general appreciation of “Artists and Models”. Martin is not that funny, but at least he is not annoying. Malone is not supposed to be funny as she is the anchor such a movie must have (and thank you for that), which leave MacLaine, who is the only one I find genuinely funny.

The plot is totally out there, on the silly side of ridiculous, and that is normally okay with me. I love the Airplane/Police Squad/Naked Gun series, but “Artists and Models” only rarely gets close. Maybe this is a matter of comedy simply having changed since the fifties, which does not bode well for other comedies of the age, or it is simply that I am too old. This is a very cartoonish movie and the director Frank Tashlin actually came from directing cartoons. Together with Lewis special kind of humor it aims at a very infantile audience. On the other hand the randiness of the movie with daring sexual references makes the target group much older, so I am a bit confused here.

Does it matter that the plot, the actors, the backstory, yeah, everything really, are completely inconsistent? Rick and Eugene, the two losers, suddenly getting top billed at the artists ball? Actors stepping out of the movie or showing skills inconsistent with the character? Or that uber-ridiculous spy story? Again had the comedy worked I would have laughed it off. Instead it annoys me.

What is left for me is the sexual innuendo, beautiful women and a few gags that actually work. Is that enough? I am not convinced.  

Sansho the Baliff (Sansho Dayu) (1954)

Sansho the Bailiff

I am back home after nine days in Italy. This was a wonderful vacation and I can absolutely recommend the region around Alba in Piemonte. Only do not stay too long, it is not good for your waistline. Or your liver.

With me in Italy I brought the movie “Shanso the Bailiff” or “Shanso Dayu” as it is called in Japanese. This is the last movie in the golden year of 1954. By the middle of the week I had finished the movie although I tried to dose it and so I could spend the second half of the week contemplating it. That did not really work, I still do not understand it.

“Shansho the Bailiff” is Kenji Mizoguchi’s attempt at the epic scale movie and half way in it works beautifully. We follow the wife, son and daughter of a regional governor who are forced to flee when the governor is banished by a local warlord. The governor is a virtuous man and he implores on his children to uphold this virtue, especially toward the poor.

Before long however the family falls prey to slave traders. The mother is sold to prostitution and the children to a local steward or bailiff, the eponymous Shanso, who is running a veritable concentration camp.

This is downfall and hardship, but magnificently told using big pictures and a tragic, fatalistic tone. There is no overacting here, if anything there is an acceptance in the fate of life and therefore it is extra poignant to watch the family being separated and cry out for each other. The children actors are good and the cinematography is sublime.

About midway however the movie changes for me to the negative and there are to primary reasons for this.

The children as adults is one reason. We jump ahead ten years in time to when the children have grown up. Anju, the girl, into a sensitive woman who has not forgotten their parents and Zushio the boy, who has accepted life in the camp and figures it is better to punish than being punished. Their life changes when a new girl bring the first news of their mother since they arrived and the Anju is keen on leaving. When the change come however she sacrifices herself so Zushio can get away. Zushio leave for Kyoto, the imperial capital back in the Heian period (a thousand years ago) to plead for his father and the release of his sister.

It is very possible that I simply do not understand the cultural background well enough, but these two characters confuse me. Anju seems all too willing to sacrifice herself in a situation where there is real hope she will be able to get away. As she has no idea where Zushio is going but the general direction of Kyoto she cannot reveal anything. Why is she then so keen to die?

Zushio, who assumed a certain brute dignity in the camp completely throws dignity aside in practically every scene afterward, none more so than when he prostrates himself before the Chief Advisor. It is all screaming and crying and I really want to grip him, slap him on the face and ask him to get a hold on himself. I always thought the Japanese idealized self-control and took pride in their stoicism, but this dude has not of that. Even as a governor, the title he is eventually elevated to, he is shrill and can barely (and usually not) keep his hysterics under control. I probably misunderstood the cultural context completely, but that guy really annoyed me and I had some difficulty taking him serious as the hero of the story.

My second problem is where this movie is leading to. Okay, so Zushio get powerful enough to get back at Sansho and free the slaves and he manages to find his wreck of a mother, but that does not seem to be the target of the movie. Mizoguchi is trying to say something here and it eludes me. Is it that although Zushio tries to be virtuous he still looses everything? Or that life is torture as his mother sings? Or that slavery and disrespect of people leads to human ruin? I just cannot point my finger at where this is leading. A movie open to interpretation is often a good thing, but here it annoys me because I feel am missing the key.

Still, this is a beautifully made movie, slower than Kurosawa and more brutal than Ozu, this is a different niche in Japanese movie.

Curiously I recently read another story also taking place in the Heian period, Tale of Genji, which I reviewed on the book blog. That one takes the viewing point from the top rather than the bottom, but of the same society. It is interesting how much the viewpoint defines what you see.

Salt of the Earth (1954)

Jordens Salt

”Salt of the Earth” is according to the Book the only larger film made by communists in America and is about a famous strike in a zinc mine in New Mexico. If you guessed that there is a certain propaganda element to the movie and that this caused negative attention and trouble then you are quite right.

Why is it that propaganda movies, especially left-wing propaganda movies feels so tiresome? There are some clichés and stereotypes that we have to get dragged through: The cold and mean masters, the heroic worker, the common good and the collective effort. Here in the aftermath of world communism these elements as they were presented in the heyday feels way too simplistic to really be taken seriously and they often have the opposite effect, to make the authors look manipulative and outside reality. To my mind such movies would be far more successful in their message by toning those elements down and be less one-dimensional. Alas, this is the 1950’ies and an environment where you are either for or against with no room for middle of the road approaches.

In this case practically everybody involved in the movie were blacklisted and the movie feels like a reaction to that exclusion as if “to hell with it, we are blacklisted anyway, let’s make a real Commie movie”.

The movie is about a mining community that has to put up with the mine-owner’s penny pinching and unequal treatment of its employees. A large part of these are Hispanic and they are treated poorer than their “Anglo” counterparts. When there is an accident in the mine it triggers the strike that the community has been warming up to for a while and the rest of the movie is the resolution of that strike.

As long as the focus is on the miners and the strike the movie is tedious at best. As much as the miners have a good case the presentation of it makes it too easy to refuse it as propaganda. But then something clever happens that changes the focus of the movie. It becomes a movie about emancipation of women. Not just in the workplace as befits a socialist propaganda movie, but privately in the homes, culturally in Mexican versus Anglo families and as a part of the community. It made me sit up straight because this is a lot more interesting than a miners strike and something which reaches far beyond propaganda. In fact, because of this element I would rather call this a feminist movie than a socialist movie.

The key figures are Esperanza (Rosaura Revueltas) and Ramon (Juan Chacón) Quintero, a Hispanic couple with a pile of children. Ramon is a leading figure among the miners and Esperanza, the narrator of the movie, is his obedient and heavily pregnant wife. Theirs is a very traditional family with clearly defined roles and Ramon as undisputed leader of the household. Esperanza looks tired and apathetic, but over the course of the movie as events develop she finds her voice and her courage as she steps into action. The triggering event is when the miners are court ordered to abandon the picket line and the women step in and take over. Now it is them who fights the police and calls the shots and it awakens a confidence in them that changes their outlook on their roles in the community, but particularly at home and nowhere is that transformation clearer than for Esperanza.

Ramon and the other men do not like this. They feel challenged and it hurts their pride and feeling of macho that they are no longer the ones calling the shots. The two best scenes of the movie is Ramon and his neighbor hanging laundry while looking after the children and all them men lined up at the bar looking depressed while they stare at their beer. Such a bitter pill to swallow. Their reaction is to go hunting. Shoot some animals and get away from that new reality where they are no longer kings. Does that sound familiar? We men are a predictable lot.

The police who largely works for the mine owners (as they always do in left leaning propaganda, just look at Eisenstein) are at a loss how to fight the women. The men they can beat up, but can they be as brutal towards women? The collective strength of the women is a lot more than a socialist message but the first example I have seen on the List of feminism. Where the communist message feels backward already in 54 the feminist message is far ahead of its time. The classic 50’es values, even as referenced today are the old, static gender roles of the housewife and her husband, the bread-bringer. The message here is a revolt against those stereotypes.

“Salt of the Earth” may have been denounced as socialist propaganda, but the real subversive power is its feminist message. That is its value and significance and it is what makes it worthwhile to watch this movie even today.

Tomorrow I will be heading to Italy for some vacation with my family so I will be off the grid for a little while. When I am back it will be time to finish 1954. Chiao.

Carmen Jones (1954)

Carmen Jones

”Carmen Jones” is a film version of Georges Bizet’s opera ”Carmen” set in war time America with an all-black (to varying degree) cast. Really?? This sounds like an idea cooked up while smoking some serious weed.

Does it work then? Njaeh… to some extent I suppose. The score is great of course. “Carmen” is a world famous opera for a reason and this musical was best when I closed my eyes and focused on the music alone. The lyrics are adapted to fit the story in this rendering and as the story is set in the black sub-culture we get all sorts of slang and inflections. Had this been a complete reworking I would have found this pretty cool and definitely a fresh take on a classic score, but they insisted on making this an opera in the classic sense and so it becomes a clash. Just plain weird, really.

I did not like this movie. Not at all actually, and for several reasons. Not so much for the music though. It is odd but I can live with it.

My main complaint is the story itself, which may seem unfair considering that it is surprisingly true to the original story. I do not like it when people ruin their lives and even less when they ruin other people’s lives and that is the essence of this particular story. The agent of all this ruin is Carmen Jones (Dorothy Dandridge), who may be the most egoistic character in cinema history. Well, close at least. I fully understand that she is a powerful, liberated woman and all too often women have to follow the men and not the other way round, but Carmen is selfish by any standards and everything in her life is about getting what she want and to hell with the costs others may pay. She gets her comeuppance, but not before she has done her damage.

To start with we meet Joe (Harry Belafonte) and Cindy Lou (Olga James), a sweet couple about to get married. Cindy Lou is seeking out Joe on the army base where he is stationed just before he is leaving for flight school to become a pilot. Everything looks great for the two of them.

Then Carmen Jones happens. Realizing Joe is the one guy in the army barracks not interested in her she sets full sail on her seduction of him. She manages to get arrested for causing a row with the other girls and Joe is picked to take her to a civilian prison in Masonville, far far away.  For a while he manages to fend her off and when he ties her up I had to smile for I think the only time in the entire movie. Had he slapped her I could also have forgiven him. She was a job to get done so he could get back and get married.  

Alas, in the end her seducing ways succeed and Joe is turned to the dark side. Ah, well, his problem. She thanks him by running away so has to do time in the stockade instead of going to flight school. When he comes out they seek each other out, him with the good news that he can go to flight school after all, but that is not good enough for her. She want him close. What good is a man you cannot be with? So she coerces him into a fight that forces him to go with her, now as a fugitive from the army. Having sucked him dry Carmen now moves on to a famous prize fighter and starts on him instead leaving behind a wreck of a man.

This is the kind of story that forces me not to invest too much in the characters. One is not worth my care and the other is a lost case. I just feel sorry for Cindy Lou.

I also have an issue with the setup. This feel quite a lot like exploitation. The all-black cast feels like a gimmick. Maybe to allow the characters to be more daring, which is degrading, or to add some black elements to the music, which would have been great, but is mostly lost because of the insistence on the opera. The exclusion of white people also reminds of segregation, which does not feel good either.

Then of course there is the classic musical problem where reality suddenly shifts into a stage, but here I see that mostly as a minor problem. I was too happy to get away from the story and into some music.

“Carmen Jones” felt like an ordeal, something I just had to get over with and that is just too bad because I wanted to like it. For blackploitation I much prefer “Shaft”. This one just left me with a bad taste.

In case anybody takes offense with my reference to blacks and white instead of more politically correct terms, I apologize. This is a movie that moves in that sphere. The actors are black not because it is cool, but because it facilitates some degrading clichés.   

The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai) (1954)

De Syv Samuraier

Here is a movie I have been looking forward to for a long time. “Seven Samurai” is legendary and one of the few movies from this period I have seen before, though so many years ago that, as I found out, I remembered very little from that first viewing. As it happened it also turned out to be a more difficult movie to get hold of than anticipated. The boxset of Kurosawa samurai classics I had ordered never showed up and I had to reorder it. Somewhere out there in the postal limbo a totally awesome boxset is floating around…

As I already mentioned the reputation of “Seven Samurai” is immense. It is frequently mentioned as one of the best movies ever and particularly one of the best westerns ever, which is curious considering this is a samurai film. It is a movie that has been referenced countless times and remade in numerous incarnations. This can only disappoint. No movie is that good.

Incorrect.

“Seven Samurai” is exactly as good as its reputation and probably even better. Whether or not it is the best of Kurosawa I leave unsaid till I have watched the rest of his entries in the Book, but it is better than both “Rashomon” and ”Ikiru” and they were both worthy movies.

The story in “Seven Samurai” is deceptively simple as all good stories actually are. A village of farmers is so fed up with bandit raids that they hire a band of samurai to protect them. The samurai are so successful at their job that they transform the village not only into a fortress, but also a cohesive unit so that when the bandits finally attack they are able to repel the attack. That is it.

It is everything in between that are complex and makes this such an excellent movie.

First of all there is the length of the movie. At little more than three hours “Seven Samurai” was longer than I remember and it may be that I got an uncut version. Normally that would mean a super complex story (eg. epic scale) or a lot of excess fat. In this case it allows Kurosawa to build characters and to explain the workings of Japanese life in the 16^th century, especially concerning the relations between farmers and samurai.

The first third of the movie follows a band of farmers trying to hire samurai. This is an extremely daunting affair. Farmers are very low caste and the profile they present is of simple, stupid and cowardice characters. Samurai on the other hand is the warrior caste. They are strong, honorable and smart. Normally they would enter into the service of a nobleman or, at times of war, a warlord. For them to enter into service of a farming village, working for food, is unheard of. It is demeaning to this proud class who seems to value its honor so much. What kind of samurai would accept such a job? But the farmers do find a band of samurai willing to work for them. Samurai who define honor differently. What Kurosawa, who was of samurai stock himself, is saying is that it is not the farmers who exists for the samurai, but the samurai who exists for the farmers. That the army, bureaucracy and politicians are there for the people and not the other way around. A message eerily similar to that of “Ikiru”. For a post war Japan it is also a redefinition of the meaning of samurai, a reinterpretation of the Bushido code, away from senseless war heroics and toward dedicated and worthy servitude.

Each of the samurai have their own distinct character. Particularly noteworthy are Kambei (Takashi Shimura) the leader of the band, a man who is introduced as one who cares less about the symbols of honor (he shaves off his topknot) and more about behaving honorably. He is the father figure and the natural leader. Katsushirō (Isao Kimura) is a very young samurai, star struck by the more experienced samurai and eager to become an apprentice to Kambei. Because of his youth and relative innocence we observe much of the movie from his point of view. Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi) is the quiet master swordsman, the archetype of skill personified while Heihachi (Minoru Chiaki) is the exact opposite, jovial, high spirited, but better at cutting wood than enemies. And then there is Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune). He appears as a clown, a farmer posing as a samurai (something which would have been immensely dangerous at the time), wild, crazy, simple and unreliable. But as the movie wears on he becomes the connection point between the village and the samurai. He alone for all his craziness understands both world and despise them both.

That brings us to the second act, the preparation of the village. Beneath the planning, training and building of fortifications we get a unique view into both village and samurai life at the time. We realize how deep the gulf is between the two groups and how it is almost impossible to bridge that gulf. One example is Katsushiro’s doomed courting of a village girl and another is Kikuchiyo’s hopeless in-between character. If Katsushiro shows us the farmer/samurai schism through his innocence, Kikuchiyo shows it to us through bitterness. They are brought together, farmers and samurai, by common need, not love, and while they gain an insight into each other’s worlds the gap is too wide. In times of peace farmers just have no need of leeching samurai.

Then the bandits attack and for an hour we get some of the best and most iconic battle scenes ever filmed. Fighting with big knifes is a gruesome affair and watching a mob of farmers hunt down isolated bandits with picks, spears and farming tools is outright horrifying. There is something absolutely fascinating about watching fighting Japanese style. Everybody is running, there is a lot of shouting and death comes swift and without mercy. The battle unfolds much as planned by the samurai revealing their supreme skill and experience, but it is the small things that always go wrong in battle. Accidents, desperate shots, uncontrolled mobs or horses. You may wish for that epic duel, but reality is that even the best samurai is killed by a stray bullet.

As slow and observing the filming is in the two first acts as fast and energized it is in the last. Kurosawa keeps the tension going for the last hour through the undulations of the battle waves where even the troughs have that unrestful tension of waiting for death. This is just amazing.

Kurosawa created an exciting and very watchable movie that still holds up today, but he also commented on and redefined the samurai caste and the warrior culture that had led Japan into disaster in the first half of the twentieth century. What is real bushido and is there room for that in a modern country? Kurosawa the social commentator showed the way.

Silver Lode (1954)

Silver Lode

There seems to be an entire subset of movies from the fifties that refers to the McCarthy purges. “Silver Lode” is yet another one of those. I understand that this was a particularly traumatic period in Hollywood with everybody looking over their shoulder in case somebody would point a finger at them for being a dirty commie and get blacklisted and it is only natural that this should spill over into a number of the productions. Some of these got the reference quite good (Johnny Guitar, High Noon), while others seem to confuse the issue (On the Waterfront, despite being an excellent movie). Silver Lode falls into this last category. What the experience definitely gave Hollywood was an acute insight into mob mentality and how you may suddenly find yourself very much alone when the tide turns against you.

In “Silver Lode” this mob mentality image is set in the old West, which is a clever choice. Partly because there is a history of vigilance in those parts and partly because it provides a believable microcosm that the viewer would find very familiar. The best movie on mob-madness I still consider to be “The Ox-bow Incident”, but where that movie in some parts lost its pace there is no such deficiency in “Silver Lode”. This is intended to be an action drama with a dash of suspense and it works very well at that, though at the price of being rather heavy handed in hammering home the points.

“Silver Lode” is a color movie from the little studio “Republic” who specialized in Westerns. The List has already included quite a few of their movies, so they had a pretty good touch on the genre. In this case we find a wedding on a 4^th of July holiday invaded by a US Marshall (Dan Duryea) when he arrests the groom (John Payne) for murder and theft. The groom, Dan Ballard, has lived in Silver Lode for two years and is very well liked and respected so when the Marshal throws these accusations at him they are throwing up a wall around him.

Slowly however Marshall Fred McCarty manages to convince the villagers that Ballard is indeed a murderer and when the suspicion takes hold it spreads like a bush fire. In no time the entire town is ready to gun down Dan Ballard.

Sometimes a director likes to keep us uncertain if the accused is indeed guilty and I like it like that. Not this movie however. The uncertainty last only for a few minutes before we are convinced of Ballard’s innocence and that McCarty is not person he claims to be so no need for a spoiler tag here. It is very clear who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. What is a lot more interesting is how the surroundings react. In a very real sense they are actually the true bad guys.

The strength of this movie is in how effectively it gives us a character who is striving to prove his innocence, but in the eyes of his surroundings just looks more and more guilty. There is a direct line from this movie to “The Fugitive” and “The Hunt” in this respect, with the addition that “The Hunt” also has the mob element (I actually consider “The Hunt” a remake of “Silver Lode”). Ballard is thwarted every step of the way by McCarty, who builds up a progressively stronger case against him with a particularly low points when the town Sheriff is killed, apparently by Ballard.

As I mentioned the pace is good and the story effective so it is one of those movies where time just flies by and that is a quality all on its own.

Where the movie is less successful is in the ham fisted way the points are presented. McCarty is so repulsive a character that it ought to make somebody think twice about his identity and his charges. When the townsfolk learn that he has hunted Ballard for two years and that the murder victim was McCarty’s brother they must have realized that there was a personal element to this “arrest” that was decidedly unhealthy. In short, the townsfolk react just a trifle too stupidly to be completely believable. At the same time Ballard acts all the way through as the perfect gentleman, so innocent and clean that he makes a boy scout look like a ghetto gangster. You would think a guy in his shoes would lose it, but Ballard keeps cool. Even cornered up in the church tower you hardly sense any desperation. Dr. Kimble in “The Fugitive” was a master in keeping cool, but he always had a plan and thought two steps ahead. Ballard’s “plan” hinges on getting a message through on the wire to confirm that McCarty is no Marshall and meanwhile stay alive. Considering that the telegraph operator has no intention of wasting his time with such a message this is not really much of a plan and I think he ought to be quite desperate.

The references to the purge are also so in your face that you have to be an idiot to miss it. McCarty is of course Senator McCarthy, duh, and the personal vendetta disguised as official business is pretty clear as well. This is decidedly un-elegant.  

Despite all these clear references I think the movie confuses the point a bit. “Silver Lode” makes it a question between good and bad with the trick being to recognize which is which. The problem with the McCarthy purges was the process rather than the issue. Whether you were protecting your country or believing in reform was not a case of black and white, but the public defamation was and the policing of opinions. In “Silver Lode” one side is ultimately right and the other is ultimately wrong, but, yeah, the control of mob sentiment is right so it gets points for that.

As pure entertainment this movie is really alright and something I would not mind seeing again. I am just afraid that the ham-fistedness would get to annoy me so much that it would spoil the fun. Still Duryea makes a great villain and that is good enough for me.

The Wanton Countess (Senso) (1954)

Sansernes Rus

After ”La Strada” I continue with an Italian film ”Senso”, but that is also almost the only thing these two film have in common. I know the director Luchino Visconti only from the surprisingly good and convincing “Ossessione” from 1943 and I suppose I expected something in the vein of Italian neorealism, a style “Ossessione” was a precursor for. “Senso” however is in many ways a very different experience. And then again maybe not.

Let me start with the positives.

This is a divinely beautiful film. Italy in Technicolor is a gorgeous place and this movie uses locations to great effect. I have become so used to the bleak scenery of neorealism that I had almost forgotten how beautiful a place Italy is. Instead poor people in the slums we are watching the elite in the most romantic surroundings imaginable and the crazy thing is that it is not even a fake über-romantic studio set, but actual real life Venice, an Italian opera, a real manor in the countryside and the old town of Verona we see. This is what reality also looks like and it takes your breath away. Honestly everybody owe themselves one time their life to take their loved one to Venice. Touristed as it may be there is no more romantic place in the world. Trust me on that, I have been to a Leonard Cohen concert on Piazza San Marco with my wife and strolled arm in arm on deserted paths along the canals at night. You just cannot beat that.

Add to that period settings in gorgeous colors, uniforms, dresses, paintings, flowers, you name it, and this is truly a feast for the eyes. Ah, and the glazing on the cake, the gorgeous Alida Valli as leading lady Countess Livia Serpieri. I know her from “The Third Man”, but that movie did not do her justice. Technicolor loves her and as was mentioned in the extra material, she was the sweetheart of every Italian man in that era. I can believe that. Oh, my…

Second thing I notice right from the beginning is that this is a movie where the characters speak the language they are supposed to speak. Italians speak Italian and Austrians speak German and I even sense a hint of Austrian inflection. This pleases me greatly and it immediately gives the movie 100 points in its favor right off the bat. Okay, Farley Granger is an American and it may feel odd to give him an Italian and German voice, but he is playing an Austrian officer in Italy and that is what matters. I wish a lot more producers would have the courage to be that consequent in such matters.

As you can already tell this movie has a lot going for it, but then we get to the plot.

Frankly, half way through the movie I was ready to denounce the movie for its plot and acting style. This was melodrama of the worst kind and no fancy wrapping could save it. But the movie takes a most spectacular turn with the last act and whether intended or not goes in a direction that seems to criticize the very elements I was having problems with.

The year is 1866. Countess Serpieri (Valli) is involved with the independence and unification movement in Venice that eventually led to the unified Italy under Garibaldi. Her cousin Roberto Ussoni is arrested during a happening at the opera in Venice and Serpieri is trying to prevent a duel between Ussoni and the Austrian officer (Granger as Lieutenant Mahler) he insulted. Serpieri is married to an old count, who disagrees with her political involvement, and I guess for the hot blooded Countess he is a bit of a bore. Certainly it takes no time for the Countess to fall in love with Lieutenant Mahler. Soon they have a fully-fledged affair going with a secret apartment at their disposal in Venice.

As war comes closer Serpieri leaves town and is entrusted with a gold treasure intended to finance the campaign against the Austrians, but when Mahler shows up at their manor she is so anxious to keep him out of harm’s way that she lets him talk her into giving him the gold treasure so he can bribe a doctor to declare him unfit for military service.

Up to this point the Countess is behaving and acting as belonging in a Max Ophuls period piece. She is so much in love, the officer is soooo handsome in his white uniform and she totally loses her head. One thing is that she is cheating on her husband and boring and old as he may be that is just the price of money and security. She does have an obligation there that she is letting down. Then again I suppose some flirting on the side made life bearable in those stuffy marriages. What is a lot worse is that she is throwing away her moral integrity, not by loving an enemy soldier, when it has to be I actually admire that, but by spending the money so many people depend on, on her love interest. It shows how much she is a victim of her emotions, but it also reveals her as a failure as a person and at this point I could not care less for her.

Then we get the twist and I better cry SPOILER ALERT! The whole thing backfires on Livia Serpieri when it turns out that Mahler is a spineless womanizer who sucked her dry of money and in terms of moral and human integrity is absolutely worthless. This is what Serpieri has thrown away everything for. We get the best scenes of the entire movie when she seeks him out in Verona and find him in decadent luxury with a young (much younger than the Countess) girl and only mockery for Serpieri. This is total humiliation and degradation. I cannot help but seeing this as the price she pays for her betrayal. Not of some religious penalty for debauchery, but for losing her senses and throwing her head and all integrity away. It is cheap, I know, but somehow I feel vindicated. Too many movies celebrate this “follow your dream and to hell with consequences” ideal, but here is a movie that lets the world come crashing down on a person who does exactly that. A handsome officer in a dashing uniform may generate romantic dreams, but is this reality?

This actually points directly back to “Ossesione”, which, when you think about it, tells exactly the same story.

The melodrama gets very thick, the acting is heavy handed in the silent tradition, but though it annoyed me at the time I see it now merely as tools to tell the story, a story of people who loses everything as victims of their emotions.

I liked this movie better than I expected and even if you do not care for the story see it for the pictures. It is a beautiful beautiful movie to look at. Or even better, visit Italy. I will be going there in less than a month.