Man of the West (1958)

Manden fra vesten

There are a lot of westerns on the List. So many in fact that I have started to get a bit bored by them. Or at least the idea of them. By now a western needs to bring something new to the table or it will get a negative rating from me.

This was what I was thinking watching “Man of the West”. Why is this movie on the List? What does this movie do that I have not seen a million times before? It is okay, well-acted and beautifully shot, but it was only when I watched the bonus material on the DVD, a commentary by scholar Douglas Pye, that I discovered what made this movie special. With that in mind I am okay having this movie on the List, but please, please give me a break with the westerns.

Gary Cooper, the old western legend, is this time a country bumpkin going on what appears to be his voyage of a lifetime, from his homesteader hamlet to Fort Worth to hire a school teacher for the village. His ride is cut short when the train is held up by bandits. The raid fails, but Cooper’s Link Jones, a gambler named Sam Beasley (Arthur O’Connell) and Saloon singer (whatever that implies) Billie Ellis (Julie London) are cut off from the train and have to continue on foot.

Link finds an old shack they can stay in, but when he opens the door it turns out the place is occupied by the very bandits who raided the train. The movie now takes a turn when we find out that this is Link’s old gang, one he left years ago to start a new life with wife and children. The gang is led by Link’s old father figure, Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb), a man who practically raised Link, and he is mighty pleased that Link is back. The rest of the gang is a brutal and not too smart a bunch and they are less pleased at having Link back. He is challenged at every turn and in an early climax he has to protect Billie from being raped without being killed himself.

Dock wants to bring Link along for the raid of his life, a rich bank in the township of Lassoo, while the rest the gang is poised to kill Link. This balancing is made even odder when it turns out that Lassoo is a ghost town and Dock is raving mad.

While the apparent story here is that Link has to extricate himself from this pinch and hopefully save the girl in the process, a story involving gun smoke, horses and a lot of shouting (and a pair of breast almost falling out of a corsage), there is a far more interesting story beneath.

When Link opens that door to the shack we get a true David Lynch moment. The door is the door to Link’s past and the gang members are all ghosts from back then. What Link is fighting is his past guilt that he has to come to terms with. There is no bank in Lassoo and Dock Tobin is ultimately an impotent ghost, but Link has to fight off all those temptations to fall back into his old pattern if he is to deserve his new life. That somehow includes Billie, who must resemble some woman of his past.

So this is actually a movie about redemption, that at some point you have to face your skeletons in the closet. This is a plotline I have seen before, but dressed as a western this comes about new and refreshing and as all good movies it gives you something to think about. It took that commentary on the DVD to make me realize that this is the true story of the movie and that might explain why “Man of the West” originally panned at the box office. This is not a plotline that would be appreciated or even recognized by the average western fan who is probably almost as dense as I am.

Gary Cooper is surprisingly good as Link Jones. He may appear a bit old and stiff, but as the movie carries on he actually fit his role. He is never supposed to match Billie Ellis, but he probably would in his youth and that is the point. She is a flame of his youth and he is an old man remembering her. Elegant and delicate.

I did not recognize Lee J.Cobb at first. Man, they got him to look old! He usually played some sort of a bastard, but here he is a particularly old and dirty one. That was a man with some talent!

The conclusion is that I liked the movie much better on after thought than while I watched it. It is okay as a straight western, but exquisite as a dive into the subconscious. Oh, and Julie London is quite a dish.

 

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Magtens sødme

There is a sub-genre of film where the protagonist(s) are actually the bad guys and we, the audience, follow them to their ultimate fall. It is small sub-genre. You will inevitably come to root or at least care for the protagonist and it is never pleasant to care for a person doing villainous things and certainly not nice to watch a person we root for meet their doom. Somehow this is not a blockbuster recipe and the mighty dollar often ends up deciding that this sort of movies are not worth making.

However there is definitely a fascination to watch crooks do their thing and meet their end and by making them the protagonists we get front seat to their escapades. That is a delicious perversion, but only if you are able to avoid rooting for them too much.

That sound awfully complicated and for me it is a balancing act. I never know exactly if I enjoy or despise this kind of movie and “Sweet Smell of Success” is exactly such a film.

Let me say right away that both Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster are awesome as crooks. Who would have known they had it in them. Curtis I know mostly from comedies such as “Some Like it Hot” and Burt Lancaster is usually cast as the boy-scout knight in white armor like in “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”. The transformation into insidious bastards is so complete that I believe these two actors just got reinvented.

Curtis’ Sidney Falco is a man of few moral inhibitions if it can further his success as a press agent. Lying, conniving and conning clients, opponents or friends is the order of the day for him, but his licking ass to the despicable J.J. Hunsecker, who writes the gossip column in the newspaper, leaves such a bad taste that even Falco can taste it. You can say he is a small time crook who has consciousness enough to eventually getting it challenged.

Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker on the other hand is way beyond that. He is downright scary. Hunsecker is a cold fish who has the power to make or break people through his writing and he enjoys wielding this power. He is a manipulator who plays people against each other because he knows he can do it and because he considers himself far superior to mortal men as kings and emperors of old. I am totally in awe that Lancaster could pull this one off. Hunsecker is cold, ruthless power.

J.J. Hunsecker’s only weakness is his sister, Susie (Susan Harrison), a girl of 19 years, whom Hunsecker feels almost incestuously protective about. He does not like her boyfriend, Steve Dallas (Martin Milner), and uses Falco as his agent to break them up.  

The essence of the film is that J.J. Hunsecker can get all he wants, he can manipulate everybody, but it will make nobody love him. That is okay, Hunsecker cares for no-one, but “nobody” includes his sister and that is hitting him where it hurts.

Falco is not much better off. His access to power and wealth costs him his last vestiges of self-respect and he learns how fickle and unreliable that power is. And without that power or self-respect there is not much left.

“Sweet Smell of Success” has a lot of noir vibe and a jazz score that combines to paint a perfectly dirty and lurid underbelly of the entertainment industry. It is corrupt through and through with everybody prostituting themselves for power and wealth or simply to get by in a tough world. The sunrise of the ending that lifts this pervasive darkness is very symbolic and I love this cinematography. However the reason to watch this movie remains the outstanding transformation of two of Hollywood’s boy-scouts. It is just mind-blowing.

The story itself I am more so-so about. I never really caught on to it and it is difficult to get really into a movie when you just wish the protagonists into the deepest hell. Disentangle yourself from that though and there is a lot to enjoy here.

The picture that remains in my head is that of Lancaster turning his head towards me and with his stare makes me feel like a very small person.

Paths of Glory (1957)

 

Ærens vej

These days it is 100 years since the battle at the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles of World War I, a war sadly renowned for its bloody battles and waste of human lives. It seems therefore fitting that my next movie is “Paths of Glory”, one of the best WWI movies ever made.

WWI was in many ways an idiotic war. Idiotic in its premise, idiotic in its execution and, not least, idiotic in its military arrogance. For this reason, I believe, all movies about this war must be about one or more of these items of stupidity. “Paths of “Glory” is about the third kind and in all its absurdity probably not far from the truth. It is in fact based on a true story.

In 1916 the Western Front has mired down into trench warfare, where heavily fortified positions remains largely immobile and the current mode of attack, foot soldiers storming across a death zone of barbed wire and machinegun fire, is completely ineffective and costly. In this impasse the French general staff has decided that they need to take a particularly difficult hill called Ant Hill and that General Mireau (George Macready) is the man to do it with his division. Mireau at first protests arguing that his division is decimated and that the chance of success is slim. However when sweet tongued General Broulard (Adolphe Mejou) waves a promotion in front of his nose he turns around and declares it fait accompli.

Mireau does not really have a plan for the attack. He, like most of the upper echelon at the time, is convinced that if the soldiers show the right fighting spirit that will do the job. In fact he is so disconnected from reality that his visit to the front to instruct his troops is almost comical. Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), in charge of the regiment to make the assault, is bullied into compliance and Mireau is completely impervious to common sense. When this ill-conceived attack goes belly up Mireau goes apoplectic and, convinced that failure must be due to cowardice, orders the artillery to fire on his own units. The artillery commander refuses the order unless he gets it in writing and as it is not forth coming this is where the attack ends.

Mireau, whose pride is badly hurt, swears revenge on his unworthy soldiers and wants to execute them for disobedience. Broulard manages to talk him down to killing just three soldiers as an example and that clears the case for the generals. The cause of the failure is settled and taken care of so they can go back to their luxurious life far behind the front.

However Dax, who was a criminal defense lawyer before the war, is infuriated at the randomness and unfairness of having three innocent men blamed and killed for something they had no hand in. The better part of the movie follows these three soldiers, Corporal Paris (Ralph Meeker), Private Ferol (Timothy Carey) and Private Arnaud (Joe Turkel), as they face the death penalty and Colonel Dax as he tries, ultimately in vain, to defend three innocent men against what his superiors is finding expedient.

The purpose of the story is to make us angry and it does. Well, me at least. The arrogance of these generals is infuriating. The way lives can be spent as a matter of expedience is outrageous and they learn nothing of the whole affair. But there is also a larger absurdity here because the real crime is not to condemn these three people to death, but to condemn the hundreds of thousands of people along the front to their deaths in useless attacks and counterattack. So why do we care for these three men? Kirk Douglass said it himself in one of his other movies, “Ace in the Whole”. If you kill millions in a war it is statistics, but one guy stuck in a hole, that gets people’s attention. In this way Stanley Kubrick uses this handle to tell us a story we otherwise could not comprehend because the numbers are just too big.

I generally like Stanley Kubrick and this is the first movie on the List. “Paths of Glory” I only knew from reputation and I was looking very much forward to watching it. Years ago I went to an excellent Stanley Kubrick exhibition in Berlin and I remember that this was the only movie on display I had never heard of, but that it was highly recommended. Fortunately my expectations were met, this movie has all the touches of Kubrick, precision, satirical bite, dark fatalism and amazing cinematography. Mireau is not a Dr. Strangelove, but he is cut with just enough absurdity to underline his arrogance. WWI is not “Clockwork Orange”, but the wanton and random violence is remarkably similar. I also like that Kirk Douglass, a mega star in 1957, is not Kirk Douglass, but Colonel Dax, that Kubrick managed to curb the star and let him be the role.

I am still wondering about the meaning of the ending. So far I get that it demonstrate the absurdity of the fighting, but I am convinced there is something more we need to get out of it, something maybe relating to the execution, but I need to think about this a little more.

“Paths of Glory” gets my warmest recommendations. It is a strong contender to the best picture of 1957 and in another year it might have been the best. Do not make my mistake and wait ten years to watch it, but go see it. It is 100 years since this madness took place and right now Europe is doing its best to forget it.

 

The Cranes are Flying (Letjat Zhuravli) (1957)

Tranerne flyver forbi

When I think of Soviet films the image I get is of technically adept films marred by a heavy dose of propaganda. Movies intended to bolster the moral of the local population with the grace of a bulldozer. With that in mind “Letyat zhuravli” or “ The Cranes are Flying” is a very positive surprise.

Yes, it is a technically adept film. In fact the best reason to watch this movie is to enjoy the very mobile camera and the interesting photography done here. This is not, as my late friend Chip would call it, shaky-cam, but filming with a presence as if we are really there. For 1957 this is very advanced, if not revolutionary. 

However the surprise lies in the story and the picture it paints of Soviet life during the war. Instead of heroic working class heroes fighting and winning over German vermin we watch the suffering of the individuals left behind at home. Note the use of “individuals” rather than the collective. They are families reluctant to send their sons to war, there is relocation to Siberia and corrupt apparatchiks using their influence to protect the privileged for money and favors. And the heroes in the war just dies totally random and not very heroic deaths, stray bullets in a swamp, trying to get away from the fighting. This is certainly not what I expected, but it is most definitely far closer to reality than most of what the Soviet public was fed with at the time.

I also found it curious that the family we follow is a doctor’s family belonging to the upper middle class. This most reviled class in the communist narrative is here pictured as essential and necessary and just as much a part of the suffering and ultimate victory in the war. Okay, they are not factory owners or hardcore capitalist, but they live a privileged life with a Steinway piano in a beautiful home and yet the Soviet audience will see them as a member of their reality.

All this is most interesting in its own right, but also from a modern perspective does this movie have something to offer us. The characters, in particularly Veronica (Tatiana Samoilova), the lead character, goes through an unusual story arc. From a largely irresponsible and dreamy character pre-war she has to go through a transition imposed by brutal reality. How that transition acts out is to give the movie away, but where a normal arc would make her grow up and become responsible she first dives into self-loathing, then grasps for feeble hope only to be dashed by reality. This is not a happy ending movie and you would not see this type of movie come out of Hollywood in the fifties and still there is an odd satisfaction in the way it turns out. Veronica does not grow tough, rather the opposite, but she carries the cross of those who lost in the war and that is beautiful.

“The Cranes are Flying” won Palme D’or in 1958 and I understand why. These are exactly the qualities that work in Cannes. It was also one of the rare movies to be widely circulated outside of the Soviet Union and that is an achievement in its own right considering the McCarthy era politics.

If I should point at a negative then I think it is a shame that the acting qualities aside from Ms. Samoilova are not up to the quality of the filming and the plot. That and a probably insufficient script means that the movie at time feels forced and acted, which is totally at odds with the very realism of the filming. But that is nit-picking on an otherwise excellent movie.

I am happy that Soviet film moved on from poor transition to talkies (I am looking at you, Eisenstein) and have hopes that future Russian entries on the List can live up to this standard.

Mother India (Bharat Mata) (1957)

Bharat Mata

Oh My God!

 

 

I have been of half a mind to leave it at that, but I suppose I should expand a bit.

Bollywood and I are just completely incompatible. Ray’s movies, reviewed earlier, are at least using the familiar neorealist style. This, “Mother India”, however is totally Bollywood. All the way through. Both the book and Wikipedia praise this movie for being one of the most loved movies to come out of India and that just leaves me flabbergasted. I knew I was far away from India, but I had no idea it was this far.

I have been trying hard to find something positive to say about this movie. It is always nice to say something positive and I think… I like the colors. Yeah, they are real pretty, but that is also about it.

The story played out here is at the same time very simple and yet totally confusing. A woman, Radha (Nagis) is getting married to a jolly man, Shamu (Raaj Kumar), but is also in debt to a moneylender named Sukhilala (Kanhaiyalal). The family is getting lots of children, but a series of disasters are ruining them, crippling the husband and killing off half the children. Jump in time and the remaining children are grown up. Birju (Sunil Dutt) is the bad boy teasing the girls and rebelling on the state of affairs and Ramu (Rajendra Kumar) is the good boy. Sukhilala is still terrorizing the familily, something about that he actually want to marry Radha, but she does not want him and so her family must pay, or something like that. Eventually Birju goes after Sukhilala and becomes a bandit.

Frankly I am interpolating, because at any given time I had no idea what was actually happening. Partly because the movie works in its own Indian universe and partly because the ongoing football championship is a lot more interesting and I am perhaps too easily distracted. Yet it seems to me there were some very odd jumps as if parts have been cut out from the movie.

There is a lot of tragedy and hardship in this movie, but it is all acted out with such exaggeration that it was often more comical than actually tragic. The scene where Shamu loses his arms is a good example or watching Radha being the oxen to draw the plow is just so over the top melodramatic. Shukilala is supposed to be the big villain cheating and oppressing the entire village, but he is a laughable character and I wonder if his role was more as comical relief then as the bad guy. It is also rather mindboggling that in a so densely populated country this village can be so isolated that Shukilala can hold generations of villagers in an iron grip. It would take a mediocre lawyer about five minutes to unravel his entire business.

I would like to be engaged an moved by the fate of these people as I actually did in Ray’s movies, but the overacting and incredulous plot just leaves me cold and bored. 2 hours and 45 minutes is a very long time to be bored. Luckily the movie is seeded with 4-5 minutes of singing and dancing every 15 minutes or so. Not that I really cared about those, but I could put the volume low and watch some football or read some news for a few minutes until the song was over. I would not say that I hate this type of music and obviously some people really like it, I just find it mildly irritating and odd.

The conclusion of course is that this kind of movie is just not for me. I have watched Chinese, Japanese and weird eastern European movies and usually gotten something out of them (so far Brazilian movies have note really worked out, I am thinking of “Limité”), but I knew Bollywood is not my thing and, well, I just got it confirmed.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Broen over floden Kwai

I think the DVD box of “The Bridge on the River Kwai” has been standing on my shelf for about five years, waiting patiently for me to arrive at 1957. Uh, I have been looking at it often, wondering if I should watch it, just for old time’s sake, ahead of schedule, but I have resisted the temptation, knowing that the reward is so much sweeter.

And finally the day arrived when I could take off the plastic cover and savor the pleasure it is to watch this master piece. Oh, I have enjoyed every second!

This is not the first time I watch “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, not at all. I must have seen it about a handful of times over the years, but upon watching it again I realize that it must have been quite a long time ago. It actually surprised me how superior this movie is on almost every parameter. In that light this review could very easily be a checklist of all the reasons I love this movie and that is frankly a bit boring. Besides I think most readers will know this movie and agree with me of its qualities. Instead I would like to focus on some of the interesting themes it brings up.

At the core of “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is a discussion of war, honor and humanity. Not surprisingly, really. Those themes tend to pop up in this sort of movies. But rarely is the discussion as interesting as here. Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) is old school British army. Honor and self-respect is core to his thinking, both for himself and his outfit. When he and his unit is taken prisoners by the Japanese his objective is to remain a soldier and for his me to remain a military unit and not a prisoner or a slave. He refuses to cave in to Japanese pressure, not by refusing the forced labor they are imposing on his outfit, but by refusing to be considered a prisoner. The project, in this case a bridge, becomes a tool to keep his unit and himself above the swamp of human degradation. That he is actually helping the enemy is to Nicholson entirely beside the point.

Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), the commander of the prison camp is just as much a man of honor, but in many ways a very different kind of honor. To him (and his) being taken prisoner is the ultimate dishonor and therefore his prisoners should be ashamed and not proud. He is baffled by the British reaction and struggles to deal with it.  In fact his honor depends on his ability to assert his supremacy on his prisoners. His position is further compromised by the fact that he needs the prisoners. On paper he may have won a victory when the prisoners build him a magnificent bridge (I think it is no coincidence that it resembles the Forth Bridge in Scotland), but to Saito it is a personal humiliation that the bridge was built on his prisoner’s terms rather than his own. His humiliation is clearly demonstrated when he cuts off his samurai knot prior to the opening of the bridge.

While these two “fossils” are defining themselves through their honor we get two radically different points of view in commander Shears (William Holden) and the doctor Major Clipton (James Donald). In the eyes of Nicholson and Saito Shears has no honor. His objective is to keep himself alive and get out of the war with the secondary objective to get laid as often as possible. He does not care what people think of him and do not mind degrading himself. Yet on a personal level he has as much integrity as Nicholson, it is just not the military sort. He sees people, not soldiers and in this sense he represents the “modern” view as the old codes seem to take off in very bizarre directions. As a viewer we may far easier associate with Shears, yet it is difficult not to respect Nicholson and Saito.

And Clipton, he is the voice of reason and sanity and the one that reminds us that all these honor games get people killed, but then, as Nicholson keeps reminding him, he has lot to learn about the military.

The genius of “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is that it all makes sense. We understand and respects all these points of view and yet in the end all it does is getting everybody killed. So, the movie manages to be both a great war film and a great antiwar film, demonstrating both the sense and the senselessness of war.   

And in between we get beautifully shot pictures, sublime suspense, terrific action and some of the most memorable acting achievements of the era. I think nobody who has watched the movie will ever forget Alec Guinness’ Colonel Nicholson. No matter his roles before or after, and there are many, this will forever be his defining role. A younger generation may think that Colonel Nicholson sounds like Obi Wan Kenobi, but that is not the case. Obi Wan Kenobi sounds like Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson.

I still have a lot of extra material to get through, but that I will bring along for a long flight on Thursday. That will serve to extend the joy of this masterpiece. Maybe I will also do some whistling…

The Unvanquished (Aparajito) (1957)

 

Aparajito

I am back from my voyage to the other side of the world and that means it is again time to write some movie reviews. I brought with me the Indian movie “Aparajito” and except for some plane movies that was what I managed to watch. That is a good thing really because it meant I had a good and eventful trip.

It is no secret that I have a troubled relationship with India. I do not understand that country and I understand the people less. Something that makes watching Indian movies in general rather confusing. However when Satyajit Ray made the Apu trilogy of which “Aparajito” is the second he employed the European Neorealist style rather that the traditional Indian ones and thereby opened the movie for westerners like me. It certainly helps, but there is still a lot to baffle the viewer here.

“Aparajito” takes up the story where “Pather Panchali” left it. The little family, Apu and his parents, has moved to a big city and are getting along decently well when Apu’s father dies. As the breadwinner, Apu’s father was pretty important for the family who must now move back to the countryside again. In the village Apu discovers a school and with the help his mother he enrolls. Fast forward a few years and we see that Apu is doing extraordinarily well in school. He is granted a scholarship and moves to the big city to further his study. This is particularly hard on Apu’s mother who finds herself entirely alone. Daughter and husband has died and the son is studying in a faraway city so now she is rusting away in loneliness, something you apparently can die from eventually, which is exactly what happens to Apu’s mother.

So, yeah, a continuation of the misery from the first movie.

Technically “Aparajito” appears to be a big step up from the first movie. Scene composition, lighting, cutting and even the acting is sharper now. Where “Pather Panchali” would often feel incredibly slow “Aparajito” keeps a much better pace helping me to stay interested. Mind you it is still a slow movie where very little is played out for dramatic effect, just sort of a portrait of everyday events that add up to the personal tragedy these people are experiencing. In a sense that is both the best and worst of Italian neorealism and “Aparajito” crosses that line where I get personally invested in these people, for better and worse (Italian movies of this era can generally be grouped into two groups, the good ones where I do get invested and the poorer ones where I do not).

There is that sense of realism here that makes this a window into real lives and not the staged ones it is obviously portraying. I always find that interesting and thank heavens there are no divine intervention or group dancing here. The flipside however is that reality was and is in India dismal and in my eyes weird. On a personal level I do not get these people’s motivations and their actions are often strange. That is the cultural overlay and involve religious elements and traditions and are very far away from my reality. When the movie manages to get below that layer into basic human emotions it does a much better job at engaging me and there are parts there that are really good.

I doubt that a movie about a guy who loses his parents to sickness and poverty is a movie I would take out for easy entertainment. Maybe my motivation should be to get subdued and reminded why I do not want to go to India and I do not really need a movie for that. Having said that this is not a bad movie. A punch in the stomach, yes, but a well-crafted example of neo-realism.