Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-wai, 1995)

Leon Lai and Karen Mok in Fallen Angels

Wong Chi-ming / Killer: Leon Lai
The Killer's Agent: Michelle Reis
Ho Chi-mo / He Zhiwu: Takeshi Kaneshiro
Charlie / Cherry: Charlie Yeung
Punkie / Blondie / Baby: Karen Mok
Ho Chi-mo's Father: Chan Man-lei

Director: Wong Kar-wai
Screenplay: Wong Kar-wai
Cinematography: Christopher Doyle
Production design: William Chang

Feverish, fascinating, and violently funny, Fallen Angels is a kind of companion piece to Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express (1994), sharing some of the same setting and, in a very different role, the actor Takeshi Kaneshiro. I'm not steeped enough in Asian pop culture to appreciate it as fully as some, but I found its frantic camera tricks and frequently over-the-top acting somewhere between tiring and tonic. I'm glad I saw it, but I'm more glad that Wong showed us that he could move on from the frenzied youth culture of these early films to the mature brilliance of In the Mood for Love (2000).

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Channel

The Man Who Wasn't There (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2001)

Katherine Borowitz in The Man Who Wasn't There

Ed Crane: Billy Bob Thornton
Doris Crane: Frances McDormand
Frank: Michael Badalucco
Big Dave Brewster: James Gandolfini
Ann Nirdlinger Brewster: Katherine Borowitz
Creighton Tolliver: Jon Polito
Freddy Riedenschneider: Tony Shalhoub
Birdy Abundas: Scarlett Johansson
Walter Abundas: Richard Jenkins

Directors: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Screenplay: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Production design: Dennis Gassner
Music: Carter Burwell

The Man Who Wasn't There is a bit like a Twilight Zone episode written by James M. Cain. A barber works in a shop owned by his wife's brother. She has been unfaithful to him with her boss, so when a get-rich scheme is proposed to him, the barber tries to blackmail his wife's lover. Nothing goes quite right, however, and after calamity succeeds calamity, the barber is presented with what appears to be a solution to his problems. It comes, however, from a UFO that hovers overhead, and he rejects it. Perhaps only Joel and Ethan Coen could have accomplished this fusion of film noir and sci-fi with quite the success they achieve, thanks largely to a superb cast, the extraordinary black-and-white cinematography of Roger Deakins, and a score by Carter Burwell that blends unobtrusively with some melancholy-meditative excerpts from Beethoven's piano sonatas.

Watched on Starz Encore 

The Woman Next Door (François Truffaut, 1981)

Gérard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant in The Woman Next Door

Bernard Coudray: Gérard Depardieu
Matilde Bauchard: Fanny Ardant
Philippe Bauchard: Henri Garcin
Arlette Coudray: Michèle Baumgartner
Odile Jouve: Véronique Silver

Director: François Truffaut
Screenplay: François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman, Jean Aurel
Cinematography: William Lubtchansky
Music: Georges Delerue

François Truffaut's penultimate film skims along the surface of romantic melodrama (not to say soap opera) without ever really picking up any of that genre's essential energy the way filmmakers like Douglas Sirk or his great European admirer Rainer Werner Fassbinder were able to do. It's a film full of Truffaut touches, such as having the story introduced by a secondary character, Mme. Jouve, an older woman who has her own history of distastrously blighted love. Mme. Jouve even orders the camera about as she sets up the narrative. There are also some intriguing details about the characters that seem to have symbolic potential. For example, both husbands, Bernard and Philippe, have managerial jobs that involve transportation: Philippe is an air traffic controller, and Bernard trains the captains of supertankers, working in a large outdoor scale model of a harbor for tankers -- a job that superficially resembles the one Antoine Doinel held in Truffaut's Bed and Board (1970), except that Bernard takes it much more seriously than Antoine did. Unfortunately, there's not much story here: Bernard and Matilde had been lovers, and after their separation each married someone else. Now Matilde and Philippe have moved in next door to Bernard and Arlette, and the old love affair resumes, with painful results. It's only the finesse in the direction and acting, and the attention to secondary details like the ones just cited, that give The Woman Next Door resonance and depth -- though perhaps not enough.

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Channel

To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955)

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief

John Robie: Cary Grant
Frances Stevens: Grace Kelly
Jessie Stevens: Jessie Royce Landis
H.H. Hughson: John Williams
Danielle Foussard: Brigitte Auber
Bertani: Charles Vanel
Foussard: Jean Martinelli
Germaine: Georgette Anys

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: John Michael Hayes
Based on a novel by David Dodge
Cinematography: Robert Burks
Costume design: Edith Head

To Catch a Thief was the third film in a row for Alfred Hitchcock and Grace Kelly, and it reteamed the director with such valuable coworkers as screenwriter John Michael Hayes and cinematographer Robert Burks, not to mention Cary Grant, with whom Hitchcock hadn't worked since Notorious (1946). All the talent in the world seemed to be there. And yet is it just because it comes after such a masterwork as Rear Window (1954) that To Catch a Thief seems so lightweight and unmemorable? Preparing to watch it again for the umpteenth time, I found that I didn't remember much about the movie other than the spectacular Riviera scenery, the orgasmic fireworks scene, and Kelly in the gold lamé dress. The plot was something about a jewel thief, wasn't it, with Grant in one of the "wrong man" plights so prevalent in Hitchcock? So it was, and while it all works like a well-oiled machine, I sense a flagging of inspiration, especially in the scene in which Jessie snuffs out her cigarette in a fried egg, which is a gag Hitchcock used 15 years earlier in Rebecca.

Watched on Showtime

Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960)

Renato Salvatori and Alain Delon in Rocco and His Brothers

Rocco Parondi: Alain Delon
Simone Parondi: Renato Salvatori
Nadia: Annie Girardot
Rosaria Parondi: Katina Paxinou
Vincenzo Parondi: Spiros Focás
Ginetta: Claudia Cardinale
Ciro Parondi: Max Cartier
Luca Parondi: Rocco Vidolazzi
Morini: Roger Hanin

Director: Luchino Visconti
Story and screenplay: Luchino Visconti, Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Vasco Pratolini, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa, Enrico Medioli
Based on a novel by Giovanni Testori
Cinematography: Giuseppe Rotunno
Production design: Mario Garbuglia
Music: Nino Rota

When Rocco cries out, "Sangue! Sangue!" on finding Nadia's blood on his brother Simone's jacket, I almost expect to hear Puccini on the soundtrack instead of Nino Rota. It's one of those moments that cause Rocco and His Brothers (along with other films by Luchino Visconti) to be called "operatic." It's "realistic" but in a heightened way -- the word for it comes from the realm of opera: verismo. The moment is in the same key as the actual murder of Nadia, along with her earlier rape by Simone, and the numerous highly volatile scenes of the family life of the Parondis. It's what makes Rocco and His Brothers feel in many ways more contemporary than Michelangelo Antonioni's more cerebral L'Avventura, which was released in the same year. Movies have gone further in the direction of Rocco -- think of the films of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola -- than they have in the direction of Antonioni's oeuvre. I have room in my canon for both the raw, melodramatic, and perhaps somewhat overacted Rocco and the enigmatically artful work of Antonioni, however.

Watched on Filmstruck

Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)

Anna Magnani in Open City

Pina: Anna Magnani
Don Pietro: Aldo Fabrizi
Giorgio Manfredi: Marcello Pagliero
Marcello: Vito Annichiarico
Francesco: Francesco Grandjacquet
Laura: Carla Rovere
Marina: Maria Michi
Major Bergmann: Harry Feist
Ingrid: Giovanna Galletti

Director: Roberto Rossellini
Screenplay: Sergio Amidei, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Alberto Consiglio
Cinematography: Ubaldo Arata
Music: Renzo Rossellini

The considerable reputation of Roberto Rossellini's Open City lies in its place in film history, as a pioneering work of what came to be known as neorealism. But it often feels more conventional and traditional than subsequent films in that genre, like Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1949) or Rossellini's own Paisan (1946). Its most famous moment, Pina's run after the truck carrying away Francesco recalls Renée Adorée's pursuit of the truck that carries John Gilbert to the Front in The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925), and Open City depends very much on such melodramatic scenes, centered on established actors like Anna Magnani and Aldo Fabrizi instead of neorealism's dependence on nonprofessional performers. It also relies rather heavily on stereotypes, especially Harry Feist's sneering Übermensch of an SS officer and the predatory lesbian Ingrid, who is just one step away from the cliché She-Beast of the Third Reich. But none of this really detracts from the film's brilliance or its status as one of the greatest of films. It was made under the harshest of circumstances. That it was made at all is astonishing, but that it is so good and so moving is miraculous.

Watched on Turner Classic Movies

WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev, 1971)

Milena Dravic in WR: Mysteries of the Organism

Milena: Milena Dravic
Vladimir Ilyich: Ivica Vidovic
Jagoda: Jagoda Kaloper
Soldier: Tuli Kupferberg
Radmilovic: Zoran Radmilovic
With Jim Buckley, Jackie Curtis, Betty Dodson, Nancy Godfrey as themselves

Director: Dusan Makavejev
Screenplay: Dusan Makavejev
Cinematography: Aleksandar Petkovic, Predrag Popovic
Music: Bojana Marijan
Film editing: Ivanka Vukasovic

WR: Mysteries of the Organism is an evocative movie for anyone who lived through the strange and eventually futile revolutionary ferment of the late 1960s and early '70s. It seemed then as if everything about sex and politics -- and sexual politics -- was being overhauled. It didn't turn out that way in the long run, but Dusan Makavejev's film is more than just a nostalgia piece or an outdated propaganda film. It does indeed explore mysteries, even if it sees them through a warped lens.

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Channel

Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray, 1956)

James Mason and Christopher Olsen in Bigger Than Life

Ed Avery: James Mason
Lou Avery: Barbara Rush
Richie Avery: Christopher Olsen
Wally Gibbs: Walter Matthau
Dr. Norton: Robert F. Simon
Dr. Ruric: Roland Winters
Bob LaPorte: Rusty Lane

Director: Nicholas Ray
Screenplay: Cyril Hume, Richard Maibaum
Based on a magazine article by Berton Roueche
Cinematography: Joseph MacDonald
Music: David Raksin

Making a domestic drama like Bigger Than Life in CinemaScope is a bit like sending a love letter in a business envelope: The carrier feels wrong for the message. And yet, Nicholas Ray makes it work, partly by acknowledging the irony and playing with it. CinemaScope's outlandish dimensions were designed to put up a fight against the tiny TV screens of the day, which were rapidly becoming the venue for domestic dramas and situation comedies focusing on everyday family life. So Ray makes Bigger Than Life into a kind of companion piece for his Rebel Without a Cause (1955): Both films are antithetical to the portraits of 1950s families on shows like Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver.* Ray also uses CinemaScope for shock value. The wide screen was designed to provide almost more information than the viewer could process. It's hard to hide things from a viewer if the screen is testing the limits of peripheral vision, but Ray and cinematographer Joseph MacDonald manage it beautifully in the scene in which young Richie Avery frantically hunts through his father's things for the medicine that is causing his father's psychotic behavior. Finally he locates the pills, hidden behind the drawer underneath a mirror on top of a dresser, but as he shoves the drawer back in, the mirror changes angles to reveal his father's face behind him. Although the scene would have worked in a standard format, the wide screen heightens the surprise by almost lulling us into thinking that we could see everything in the room. Bigger Than Life was a flop in its day, despite its ripped-from-the-headlines premise -- Miracle Drug May Be Driving You Crazy -- and one of James Mason's best performances. It may have failed because audiences weren't ready for a portrait of the dark side of American family life that wasn't based, like Rebel Without a Cause, on "juvenile delinquency" or, like Peyton Place (Mark Robson, 1957), on sex. Bigger Than Life suggested that we shouldn't trust those we were most inclined to trust: doctors and pharmacology. The physicians in the film are cold, gray men with no bedside manner, stonewalling questions from the patient's wife and imperiously clinging to their expertise. The film also gives us a rather chilling portrayal of conventional attitudes toward mental illness, a stigma far worse than any physical disorder. Ed's wife, Lou, resists the idea that her husband might be psychotic simply because it might endanger his job. Barbara Rush gives a capable performance, most effectively when she snaps under the constant pressure and smashes a bathroom mirror, but the role really needed an actress of more consistent depth and range, someone like Jean Simmons for example, so that Lou doesn't just stand around prettily fretting so much. There are also some nice touches in the otherwise conventional pretty suburban decor of the Averys' house, such as the corroded old water heater in the kitchen, a persistent symbol of the precariousness of the family finances, and the rather dark travel posters of Rome and Bologna that hint at a desire to escape. The "hopeful" ending is also nicely ambiguous.  

*The Beaver himself, Jerry Mathers, has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it walk-on bit as one of the schoolkids in Bigger Than Life.

Watched on Turner Classic Movies 

La Marseillaise (Jean Renoir, 1938)

Louis XVI: Pierre Renoir
La Rochefoucauld: William Aguet
Marie Antoinette: Lise Delamare
Roederer: Louis Jouvet
Bomier: Edmond Ardisson
Arnaud: Andrex
Javel: Paul Dullac
Louison: Nadia Sibirskaïa

Director: Jean Renoir
Screenplay: Jean Renoir, Carl Koch, N. Martel-Dreyfus
Cinematography: Jean-Paul Alphen, Jean Bourgoin, Alain Douarinou, Jean Louis, Jean-Marie Maillols
Production design: Léon Barsacq, Georges Wakhévitch
Music: Joseph Kosma, Henry Sauveplane

Just the film for Bastille Day. If ever a movie deserved the oxymoronic label of "intimate epic," it would have to be Jean Renoir's La Marseillaise, a story of the French Revolution from the fall of the Bastille to the victory over the Prussians at Valmy. It's not the part of the revolution we're used to seeing, as it ends before the Reign of Terror, with its tumbrils and guillotines. Instead, it's a collection of vignettes high and low, from the king and queen blithely expecting the trouble to blow over to the foot soldiers who marched from Marseille to Paris to depose them. The director's brother, Pierre, is a wonderful Louis XVI, not quite the caricature that Robert Morley made him in Hollywood's Marie Antoinette (W.S. Van Dyke), which was made the same year, but nevertheless more than a little out of touch: As the Tuileries is being stormed, Pierre Renoir's Louis is perturbed that he can't finish his dinner and that his wig is slightly askew. Lise Delamare's Marie Antoinette is somewhat more clued in, but her frosty hauteur suggests that she is fully capable of uttering the apocryphal "Let them eat cake." Much of the film, however, focuses on the soldiers who, after capturing the forts at Marseille, march toward Paris, and especially on Bomier, a mason who joins the regiment after putting things in order for his mother (whose tears are a familiar cinematic clue to Bomier's fate). Bomier tells his companions Arnaud and Javel that the marching song that gives the film its title is no good and will soon be forgotten, but by the time they reach Paris, he is joining in the chorus. Renoir made La Marseillaise between two greater films, Grand Illusion (1937) and La Bête Humaine (1938), partly as a leftist political statement at a time when the forces of the right were triumphing on every side of France. He got his financial backing for the project from trade unions, but the film was a disaster at the box office and disappeared for a long time. It feels a little more formulaic in its characterization than Renoir's best films are and, given our knowledge of what's to come, the ending could never be quite as upbeat as Renoir seems to want it to be, but it's still the work of a master filmmaker.

Watched on Filmstruck Criterion Channel

A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, 2011)

Viggo Mortensen in A Dangerous Method

Carl Jung: Michael Fassbender
Sigmund Freud: Viggo Mortensen
Sabina Spielrein: Keira Knightley
Otto Gross: Vincent Cassel
Emma Jung: Sarah Gadon

Director: David Cronenberg
Screenplay: Christopher Hampton
Adapted from a play by Christopher Hampton based on a book by John Kerr
Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky
Production design: James McAteer
Music: Howard Shore

Sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes, as Viggo Mortensen, playing the man himself, demonstrates, a cigar is a prop that can help you win an acting contest. Because too often a costume drama based on a play becomes just that: a contest among actors to show who can come out on top, especially when the cast consists of actors like Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, and Vincent Cassel -- none of them exactly shy of showing what they can do before a camera. When I heard of it, I thought Mortensen was a decidedly off-beat choice to play the father of psychoanalysis, and he was in fact the second actor to be cast in the role, after Christoph Waltz, an almost inevitable choice, found he had a scheduling conflict. Mortensen had worked with director David Cronenberg twice before, but playing men of violent action in Eastern Promises (2007) and A History of Violence (2005), not a pre-World War I middle-European Jewish intellectual. And yet Mortensen gives a delicious performance as Freud: puckish, proud, intellectually combative. And the cigar helps, whether brandished elegantly or plugged defiantly in the middle of his face. By contrast, everyone else seems a little over the top. Fassbender (who was second choice after Christian Bale) is his usual handsome presence, but he frets a little too visibly and never quite establishes Jung as the challenger to Freud's authority that Freud seems to have thought him to be. Keira Knightley acts the electrons off the screen as Sabina, almost popping out an eye and dislocating her jaw in her mad scenes, but recovers nicely in her later moments in the film. And Vincent Cassel, as the mad Otto Gross, takes his role to the extreme as the man who carries Freud's theories about repression to their logical extreme: Don't repress anything. Ever. The film's battle of ideas gets a little bit lost in all the emoting, and as so often happens in filmed costume dramas, the scenery and the sets capture the eye when the words should be capturing the mind. But Howard Shore's evocation of the melancholy side of Wagner's music is perfect for the era in which the film is set, the transition from 19th-century Weltschmerz into 20th-century bloodshed, a time when, as Joyce punned, we were Jung and easily Freudened. Jung's prophetic dream of a bloody tide sweeping over Europe is cited in the film, as a warning that all of this intellectual (and sexual) ferment was about to be inundated by war.  

Watched on Starz Encore