#762: A Master Builder

(Jonathan Demme, 2014)

I have no business writing anything on this movie, so instead I'll talk about the boxset that was released at the same time, which lacks a spine number. Andre Gregory & Wallace Shawn: 3 Films includes three very different movies from three separate decades that come from a collaboration between two very talented actors focused primarily on the theater and ways in which its structure can inform life. Two of the films included in the collection were directed by Louis Malle, while Jonathan Demme directed this third installment, released to festivals in 2013, making it one of the more recent films in the Collection.

Of the three films, there is no question that My Dinner with Andre is the one that I like best. I'll quite easily admit that part of this is my general disinterest in theater, though there are some theater-focused films in the Collection that I like very much. Both Vanya and A Master Builder are older plays that have been tweaked or updated for their respective film adaptations, but Vanya takes a significantly more radical approach that at least let the film stand out from the average filmed play that many traditional stage-to-screen adaptations are.

My Dinner with Andre similarly flouts conventional filmmaking, but it does so in way that to me is highly cinematic - though I haven't seen it in years, it's one of my favorite Malle films. The conversation the two actors have is extremely engaging, and the way Malle shoots it underscores the simple drama of an enlightening human-scale interaction. It's a film like Waking Life or the documentary The Power of Myth that gets creative gears turning and makes you think about the potential of art and human creation. It's also just a fun experience, like sitting alone eavesdropping on people who are far more interesting than whoever didn't show up to have dinner with you.

This isn't a box for me - I don't like theater as I've made clear on this blog before - but for people who do like this sort of thing, A Master Builder is deserving of its place next to the other two films, even if it's clearly the weakest of the bunch. Shawn in particular is such an engaging and unpredictable actor that even I was occasionally entranced by his performance. With one straight classic, one extremely strong swan song from one of the most important directors in the Collection, and a final film from another major director to round out the journey, this is an admirable set, and one that could mean a lot to a certain kind of fan of acting and the process.

#721: Love Streams

(John Cassavetes, 1984)

One of the hardest things I had to get over in my initial burst of activity in this journey was making assumptions about a film based on prior films by directors I was less than enthusiastic about. Staring at 10 Ozu or Fassbinder films and assuming they would all be boring or distasteful (respectively) was not going to allow me to open my mind to an individual piece of art and experience it with a fresh perspective. This would inevitably take me down the path to viewing my watching habits as a chore to be completed. Avoiding this pitfall has paid dividends, particularly when looking at the two directors mentioned above - Ozu is now one of my most loved directors, and while I may have a more, ahem, complicated relationship with Fassbinder, a few of his films have been spectacular cinematic experiences I will treasure.

Still, this isn't always easy, and it gets progressively harder the deeper into a filmmaker's Criterion catalog you get. After having a fairly mixed response to the Cassavetes box, when Love Streams popped up as a Criterion release I couldn't help but think "dammit." This is especially true because of the nature of the film. As I mentioned in my post on Une chambre en ville, many Criterion films from the 80s are late-era works by the established masters of 50s and 60s cinema, and many of them are not particularly good when viewed outside the context of their respective director's oeuvre. So knowing that I didn't like Cassavetes too much and seeing that Love Streams was a lesser-known later work from the director made me quite wary. It immediately seemed like a token release only for the fans, a movie that wouldn't belong in the Collection without the name above the title. I sat down to endure it and file it away on the blog.

I was totally wrong. Not only do I think Love Streams is deserving of its place in the Collection, I think it's one of the best Cassavetes films, and it's the one that I loved the most. What's most interesting about my reaction is that this is most definitively A Cassavetes Film, with verite-style camera work, craft-heavy performances, and deliberate pacing. It's also got all the raw drama and broken characters of his more high-profile work from the 60s and 70s. Yet the movie never seems like an exercise in character craft the way even his strongest early films like Faces do. This is a fully formed world Cassavetes reveals, and the fact that the movie is based on a play would be difficult to pull out of what we see (apparently it was heavily rewritten by Cassavetes). Rowlands in particular, one of the great underrated actresses of her generation, inhabits her role so seemingly effortlessly that you hardly remember you are watching a performance. The way Cassavetes shoots her only underscores this impressive feat - look at the shot they used for the cover, the way he frames her in between the composed background and the harsh imposing foreground, squeezed into a folding chair. Her brother is reaching out to her but we can only see his hand - the camera doesn't move to reveal him, but instead lingers in this middle-ground emptiness for the length of the shot. Nothing about the way Cassavetes does this is overbearing or even necessarily prominent, yet it is deliberately present. This is filmmaking of the highest order.

Although it doesn't get to the core of what I loved about the film, the most striking thing about watching the first half hour of the movie was how much it reminded me of Boogie Nights. Despite the fact that this film wasn't available for large stretches of its afterlife, I have little doubt that PTA saw the movie and examined it for style and rhythm. The most obvious comparison is the custody scene, which PTA seems to have lifted almost directly from this movie, but Rowlands in general must have had an impact on Amber, Julianne Moore's character in Boogie Nights, and Cassavetes also seems like a direct influence on the Burt Reynolds character. Similarly, the way Cassavetes pities his characters while following them unflinchingly into their emotional depths and living with them there is the most impressive achievement of Boogie Nights (and PTA's early career in general). The characters that Cassavetes and Rowlands portray here are not good people, but they are people, real and breathing and fighting for life.

Boogie Nights, of course, is packed with flashy cinematic flourishes and modern ideas about editing, music use, and dialog. Love Streams is a much quieter and more confident picture. Part of this contrast is that one film was made at the beginning of a career, the other at the end. But most of it is the way in which the two directors work. I am a big fan of PTA, and I think the last three movies he's made will eventually have a stronger reputation than any of the first four. But he's a director that is constantly crafting a movie. He wants you to know it's a movie, partially because he wants you to see all the things he's doing, but mostly because he really likes movies. Why not make your movie a movie?

Cassavetes doesn't particularly care for movies. He's a filmmaker almost incidentally, because it's the pen he uses to craft his work. Just as he carried on his acting career to support his filmmaking, his filmmaking is there to support his worlds. What's most important to him is his characters and their inner-journeys, and finally how this reflects back onto our own inner-lives. I think this is a big part of why I didn't immediately identify with his films (I'm a movies guy, fyi) but here with his craft so refined and spare it doesn't keep me at so much of a distance. There is plenty of heartbreak in Love Streams, but the way Cassavetes lets his characters breathe assures us that they will live to fight again.

There's always a lot of consternation on the internet about projects like mine. "Gosh darnit, movies shouldn't be a mission to complete!" etc. There's probably something to that, and it certainly isn't for everybody. But with an infinite number of films available (especially these days with streaming), picking a curated set of movies and forcing yourself to take in each and every one means you will inevitably watch a large number of movies you would never otherwise watch. Many of these movies will end up being ones you never should have watched after all (Salo and The Magic Flute come to mind in my own journey, for entirely separate reasons). But a handful will change the way you look at movies, and over the course of a journey it will change the way you look at watching movies. Love Streams reveals for me personally that even after nearly 800 of these films I still have things to discover and learn in the most unexpected places. I'm eternally grateful to Criterion for that, and whether you are doing what I'm doing or pick whatever you're in the mood for tonight, I hope you make an effort somewhere in your artistic consumption to force yourself out of your comfort zone.

#726: Macbeth

(Roman Polanski, 1971)

I usually know within about five minutes whether or not I'm going to like a Shakespeare adaptation. This might even be true of unconventional Shakespeare adaptations like Throne of Blood or 10 Things I Hate About You (incidentally, this is the only time those two movies have appeared in a sentence together) because you know if the choices the filmmakers made in order to tweak the story are working or not right away. But it's especially true of direct adaptations like Branagh's Hamlet or Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet (yes, it counts as a direct adaptation). Once you dive into a Shakespeare film, the tone, acting style, and directorial choices are almost immediately apparent, and because I know just about all the big Shakespeare plays reasonably well, you often see where it's going pretty quickly.

Polanski's Macbeth made a few impressions on me in the first stretch of the film that didn't change through the next two hours. First, it's remarkably filmed, with stark but oddly beautiful land stretching across the screen. It feels real and dirty in a way that the stage never can and that few film adaptations even attempt. Second, it's kind of just bloody in the way that Macbeth probably should be but that isn't as notable as it might have been in 1971. Third, and perhaps most important, the acting is naturalistic without standing out in any particular way. It didn't grab me the way Macbeth should (this is the only Shakespeare tragedy I really like), but maybe I just wasn't in the mood for Macbeth.

There was one thing I did really like about this film - the music is spectacular. I didn't know Third Ear Band (named after the legendary group Third Eye Blind) before watching the movie but love the progressive folk movement they were loosely affiliated with and plan on checking out more of their music.

#727: The Innocents

(Jack Clayton, 1961)

Much like its characters, The Innocents seems to exist between worlds; England and Hollywood; code cinema and modern authenticity; reserved mystery and psychological horror; proper literature and exploitative pulp; art film and studio product. It straddles these worlds in such a way that makes the film feel even more off-kilter and terrifying, underscoring the strengths of the story rather than weighing it down. It's certainly one of the most significant horror films in the Collection.

The movie is immediately surprising for a Fox film from 1961. It opens without any picture as a young girl sings a folk song without accompaniment. This continues even over the 20th Century Fox logo (rare enough for it to be striking) and leads into a brief shot of a woman praying before moving to the opening scene of the plot in which Kerr is hired as the governess. The opening sets the creepy, old-fashioned tone for the film but is largely forgotten until the song pops up again, and finally is explained as the end doubles back on the moment, leaving one to wonder how much of what's happened was a flashback, a dream, or a psychotic fictionalization of what happened.

The original story of Henry James's Turn of the Screw, on which the play was based that was then adapted into the film, is able to create a larger mystery because when the governess sees ghosts they are simply from her perspective. A film cannot show a ghost to a character without the viewer seeing it, unless the ghost is always offscreen, which even then would prove as suspicious as seeing the ghost is assuring. This means the mystery of whether of not the governess is a reliable narrator is deeper and the book is consequently more psychological. Still, there is something about Kerr here that feels off, and I don't think it's impossible to argue that her own actions are a bit unhinged, even if it is easier to take everything literally. In a way, the movie is more appealing if there are no ghosts, because the story of the evil couple that possessed the children is so puritanical and superstitious.

My favorite thing about the film was unquestionably the cinematography, and it's this aspect of the movie that makes the mystery richer. There's an explanation of why the film was shot with a blurred border in the Criterion set, but the end effect is satisfying on its own. The movie seems to exist in a beautiful fever dream, with the characters isolated from each other and reality. I thought of two Kubrick films while watching The Innocents. The first, The Shining, came up for obvious reasons - a woman stuck in an isolated giant building haunted by ghosts. But the film I was most reminded of was Barry Lyndon, another candlelit masterpiece with stunningly beautiful (albeit color) photography. Both films use their natural lighting to heighten reality and set the mood for the time period. The Innocents delivers candles that seem to create the photography on their own, resulting in the soft edges and mysterious glow of the film's nighttime scenes.

Although there were a handful of "creepy children" films before The Innocents, this is the oldest film I've seen that uses most of the elements of this subgenre in the modern way (children singing simple songs, music boxes, possessions, creepy dialogue that has multiple meanings, etc). This doesn't necessarily make it a better film (though all of these elements are executed better than in most subsequent films) but it does help its case as an important step in the evolution of horror.

If I was going to hesitate to canonize The Innocents (and I am), it would be because of the somewhat creaky plot machinations of Kerr's character. It's not entirely clear why her character seems to know with great certainty every step needed to free the children of her curse - though of course this makes the case for her insanity - and the way she goes about explaining it all to Mrs. Grose is the kind of exposition that hurts the film rather than helping the viewer. Kerr's performance is difficult to pick apart considering it was done in 1961, but she can occasionally come across as inauthentic and dated in today's eyes, something I've always thought about her and was hoping to avoid with this performance. That said, these are minor quibbles that do not overshadow the remarkable accomplishments of The Innocents, and it's worth underscoring just how vital the film feels to modern horror and supernatural filmmaking. I'd put it on the shortlist for any director interested in learning more about horror technique, and I look forward to watching it again to see how it's all put together.

One other interesting note about The Innocents: I decided to watch this now basically at random - it was the next film by spine that I don't own and isn't on Hulu - unaware that it was written by Truman Capote. Of course, In Cold Blood was just released in the past few months and covered by David Blakeslee over at Criterion Reflections, where I expressed mixed feelings about that much more famous and based-on-a-true-story thriller. Interestingly, Capote wrote the script for The Innocents while researching In Cold Blood, further tying the two to each other. Putting The Innocents in this context might make my positive response to a movie that ends (spoiler alert) with a dead child seem a bit hypocritical (despite the obvious excuse that the film is purely fictional). But I think it's important to put the entertainment value of horror in the context of the themes its intending to explore and expose for the viewer.

#644: Pina

(Wim Wenders, 2011)

One of my friends, who has a moderate appreciation for modern dance, said to me after watching Pina, "I feel like if you don't like the stuff in it, you can never like dance," by which he meant that these dancers are so impressive and remarkably skilled that they represent the pinnacle of the artform. With that gauntlet thrown down, I... kind of like dance. On the one hand, the dancers here are unquestionably accomplished and impressive, and there are moments that I became completely enraptured. On the other hand, unlike the Martha Graham collection, these are mostly clips from bigger pieces, interspliced with footage of Pina (she recently passed away unexpectedly) and interviews about her with the dancers in her company. This format can be extremely frustrating, as there are frequently moments where a performance is just getting good only to be interrupted by footage of the dancer talking or a cutaway to another performance.

Pina as a whole mirrors this uneven rhythm, which seems ironic for a work made about perfect rhythm. At one moment the film is extremely beautiful and speaks to the freedom and artistic sensibility of its subject. But just as quickly the moment ends and jerks toward another disjointed but similarly impressive moment. This means the film is mostly a pleasure to watch but only with a goldfish's sensibility - any reflection on what has come more than a few minutes before is going to be a reminder that the movie has yet to establish an overall trajectory.

Wenders often makes big messy movies. His two narrative films in the collection, Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire, are both masterpieces first of form and then of content, but they are packed with ideas about that form and their themes are too huge to be fully explored within one movie. On the other hand, Wenders's most well-known documentary, Buena Vista Social Club, veers towards PBS in structure (though it's been over a decade since I saw it). Pina is a lot closer to this latter movie, but it doesn't go deep enough into the film's subject to get at the essence of these artists the way Wenders did with the earlier film. Even accounting for the fact that I have an immeasurably larger interest in Cuban music than I do in modern dance, Pina lacks the human spark seen with BVSC, and instead remains simply a beautiful document of a group of insanely talented artists who nevertheless might have benefited from a more straightforward presentation of their skills.

#406: Martha Graham: Dance on Film

(Nathan Kroll, 1957-1961)

Watching Martha Graham's works filmed here, Appalachian Spring and Night Journey, before I watched the documentary made first, A Dancer's Life, might have made me dismiss them as something I wasn't very interested in. Even watching these TV shows in chronological order (though the plays themselves are actually from the 40s), I was most taken by the behind-the-scenes look. But having been introduced to the process these dancers went through, their performances were really something very special. Although - similar to my feelings about other stage work - I'm not much of a dance enthusiast, there is a hypnotic rhythm to watching a dancer perform that is unlike any other artform - even singing. It might be the freest form of expression there is - which makes watching someone perform it at times almost as exhilarating.

What most struck me about these films was the time period they came out of. This was the 1950s, the supposed land of conformism. These are our grandparents now, the ones who led an artist's life when being an artist wasn't just another form of commodification, but an active rebellion against the social norms. Sure, being a modern dancer today requires a certain level of sacrifice - mainly because of how many people want to do it and how difficult it is to succeed. But in the 1950s, there wasn't a stepping stone to mainstream acceptance for these dancers. Yes, Graham danced at the White House and the company toured all over the world. But this was a pioneering accomplishment, one that led to the eventual embracing of modern dance within the mainstream art world. I'm not saying that there aren't artists today that challenge our assumptions or work against the mainstream. Rather, I think the very nature of becoming an artist was once social rebellion, but no longer.

Graham's two pieces here are quite impressive. The movement and stark, minimal stage design is immediately modernist, but the pure emotion of both the performances and the music prevent it from feeling dated. Though modern dance has obviously moved even further away from ballet than what is seen here (something Criterion is making more apparent by releasing Pina), this work still feels hyper-relevant and revelatory. Of the two pieces, I definitely liked Appalachian Spring more, both because of Copeland's now-classic score and the lighter (relatively) touch of the story and dancing.

The disc in general is impeccably put-together. Along with the three collaborations Graham did with Kroll, there are a host of extras, most impressively a documentary on Martha Graham made for American Masters and modern-day interviews with many of the dancers who are featured in the films. These people have excellent insights and are a joy to listen to, but they are primarily a reminder of how happy you can be when you follow your bliss. Their demeanors and general nature make it totally apparent. I'm not the audience for this set, so if I can get wrapped up in what's happening, I feel pretty confident that anyone with a passing interest in dance would be enthralled by this underrated and forgotten spine number.

#515: The Fugitive Kind

(Sidney Lumet, 1960)

Sidney Lumet made a lot of great movies, including one of my favorite movies ever, written by another great American playwright, The Verdict. This movie, made four decades earlier and starring the greatest movie star actor of all time, isn't one of them. Unlike Lumet's debut, the classic 12 Angry Men (also now a Criterion film), this movie fails to transcend its theatrical roots - the dialog is over dramatized and the camera feels oddly static even when Lumet puts it somewhere interesting. The movie often feels like a teleplay rather than a film.

There is one reason to see The Fugitive Kind: Marlon Brando, who gives one of his many spectacular performances. Though it's not as great and obviously not as iconic as his performance in Tennessee Williams's better and better-known A Streetcar Named Desire, Brando's work here is subtle and stirring. It's another reminder of just how great he was, how easy it was for him to transcend his material without removing himself from it. As we move farther away from Brando's late-era physical collapse and poor film selection in the last two decades of his career (save The Freshman, which looks prescient now that DeNiro has turned himself into a parody), the actor's true place in history will be restored more and more. Quite simply, we wouldn't have film acting as we know it without Marlon Brando. Seeing him in a movie that is so obviously unable to avoid the pitfalls of theatrical adaptation makes the gap between him and everyone else even more clear.

#566: Insignificance

(Nicholas Roeg, 1985)

Roeg's only(?) adaptation of a play is most interesting for the things he does to move away from the original text to create a true cinematic experience. This is most obvious in the final moments - as Einstein's imagination turns his hotel room into a nuclear holocaust with Marilyn Monroe at the center of it - but Roeg does a lot to tweak the film's source material in interesting ways. Unfortunately, the movie remains stubbornly static in the majority of its running time, making it the least essential Roeg film in the Collection.

The play's premise is very intriguing: take four iconic figures from mid-century America and shake them all together in a fictional bottle and see what bubbles up. The best scenes, unsurprisingly, are the ones with Monroe and Einstein (they aren't actually identified as these figures, but instead the actress and the professor). But Teresa Russell's Monroe impersonation can be distracting (the role was played on stage by Judy Davis, which must have been pretty special), and Gary Busey as Joe DiMaggio generally just sulks around, I assume because he was so miscast.

Then there's the 80s problem, which makes this 1950s-set think piece feel almost surreal in its aesthetic. Roeg's films always feel out of history, but here the impression feels unintentional, making it more awkward. Insignificance is far from a bad movie - and the final sequence in particular is downright masterful - but the combination of all of these flaws makes the movie less interesting than its script might have been, and probably was in its original incarnation.

#599: Vanya on 42nd Street

(Louis Malle, 1994)

I don't like plays, mainly because I don't like theater acting. It's the larger-than-life emoting and unrealistic body language that does it for me. There's a reason "theatricality" is generally an insult in film. The transfer from stage to screen generally fails because the mediums are extremely different, as most actors who have done both will tell you (there's a great Susan Sontag essay about how books are much closer to films than plays are, btw). This makes it a little surprising how many film directors got their start in theater (and how many continued to work on the stage late into their careers, with probably the most notable being Ingmar Bergman), but direction in a lot of ways has a lot more to do with vision than any particular skill set.

Vanya on 42nd Street was created out of a series of performances Andre Gregory directed of the play Uncle Vanya in a run down theater in Times Square. Rather than put up full shows with costumes and sets, the actors simply performed rehearsals of the full play in their normal clothes. Malle's film adds another layer of dramatism, since the rehearsal itself is now the subject of the story rather than the play alone. It should also be noted that the play itself was written in Russia and the actors are performing David Mamet's adaptation of the literal English translation, making what ends up on the screen even further removed from the original context of the play What results is certainly one of the most interesting adaptations of a play ever filmed, at least conceptually. Malle uses the simple concept of the movie to deliver a compelling meditation on acting, theater, cinema, reality vs. drama, and finally New York, which is only seen in exterior in the brief opening sequence but remains an ever-present character thanks to its crumbling theater that houses the rehearsal and the way the lives and dedication of the actors speaks to the atmosphere of New York in the early 90s.

But just because you love the concept, it doesn't mean you don't still have to watch the thing, and that's where the film becomes more difficult for me. Sitting through any performance of Uncle Vanya, regardless of the format, means I'm probably going to be turned off a little bit. There were a bunch of little things that grated on me here that are typical of theater acting - the pointing at someone when you agree with what they are saying, the exaggerated hand motions, the awkward blocking. Despite this, by the time Julianne Moore and Brooke Smith begin to bond, I was wrapped up in the performances, which are uniformly excellent. Malle's direction is intently focused on these performances at the expense of anything else, which is really as it should be, as this is a concert film of sorts. I ended up finding Vanya more enjoyable than I first feared, but it was still somewhat of a disappointment as my final Malle film in the Collection.

#618: Gray's Anatomy

(Steven Soderbergh, 1997)

Gray's Anatomy is either going to drive you insane or delight you. This stems entirely from how appealing you find Spalding Gray - not surprising, considering the fact that the film is largely an adaptation of a one-man show. Gray's success as a performer and artist was primarily in this format, which consisted of a long monolog in the style of a story about his own life. Gray had already made two film adaptations of his work when he collaborated with Soderbergh here, but those two films (which I have yet to see) were apparently more straightforward filmed documents of his theatrical performances - essentially concert films, with an audience and no special effects.

Soderbergh chose to toss this out the window for his adaptation, keeping only the nearly iconic image of Gray sitting at his table with a microphone. Around him - both physically through the use of projections and rudimentary effects and cinematically through the use of editing - the director has placed interview subjects who had eye-related health issues (the subject of this monolog) and various embellishments like smoke, extreme lighting, and slow pans from one Gray finishing up a point to another already launching into the next segment. It's a playful and creative approach to Gray's work - one that's reminiscent of Errol Morris's documentary style, particularly in The Thin Blue Line - that doesn't abandon what works about the core material.

It's this material - both as text and in the manner in which it is delivered - that is going to be polarizing. Gray comes from a long theater background, and his performance style is often overdramatic and exaggerated - it's not a big jump to spoken-word. Similarly, his narratives are heavily neurotic and self-absorbed (although this is essentially unavoidable with a 90-minute monolog). Personally, once I had adjusted to the style, I found Gray to be absorbing and charming in the film. But it's not going to be for everyone.

As for the story itself, I don't think there are significant insights into the human condition to be found, but I did find it moving and entertaining. The process of moving from realizing he had a problem to seeking out help to coming to terms with his options and finally accepting the inevitable (risky surgery) was both interesting and somewhat enlightening, though again I'm not sure you can pull a whole lot out of it. Gray's Anatomy ended up being a fun way to spend an hour and a half.

#605: This Happy Breed

(David Lean, 1944)

This Happy Breed is a class act (puns!), and that's probably going to mean you'll either love it or find it a colossal bore. I kind of see both sides. I did become engaged with the story by the end, but there isn't much here you haven't seen a thousand times in other stories of an average family over a period of many years.

What really saves the movie is Lean's direction, which at times shows flashes of brilliance that compare to his later classics. The best example of this is when the father is being told that Reg has died. Rather than follow Vi into the garden where she will tell him, the camera stays in the kitchen and slowly pans across the room, keeping the open door in the same position on the screen as it moves. It's a subtle but perfectly executed shot, a classic example of the power of the camera in isolation.

Still, This Happy Breed is melodramatic boiler-plate chicken soup for the masses. There isn't anything here you can't find in a thousand other movies - it just happens to be executed exceptionally (though not spectacularly) well. It might give in to all the stereotypes about British people, but they happen to be pretty good at this sort of thing, and it's hard to think of two more-British artists from the last century than Noel Coward and David Lean. So Anglophiles, have at it, while everyone else would have their time better spent with Brief Encounter.

#606: Blithe Spirit

(David Lean, 1945)

Blithe Spirit is based on the play by Noël Coward and is only available in the recent boxset David Lean Directs Noël Coward, but it's also on Netflix streaming. It's also a complete joy from start to finish.

I'm a huge fan of both Lean and Coward, and Brief Encounter is one of my favorite movies in the Collection. But seeing Lean take on comedy is a bit of a surprise. What makes it work here is the fact that this film is so appealingly dry. The characters play their ridiculous scenario out with such unbelievingly straight-faced enthusiasm that the film is able to pull off such a ludicrous premise.

In this way, the film reminded me of one of my favorite cult classics from the 90s, Bob Balaban's My Boyfriend's Back. Though it's not close to touching Blithe Spirit's sly sophistication, that later film nevertheless walked the campy line with a smart take on the zombie/high school romance that treated a kid coming back from the dead as something perfectly normal. That's along the lines of what happens here, where a ghost appearing quickly turns into just another complication in a drawing room comedy. Blithe Spirit is also clearly reminiscent of the screwball comedies of the time, but I'm thankful Coward chose to keep this adaptation in England where its style of humor belongs, making it less like like the broad farce of Arsenic and Old Lace and closer in wit to another great Criterion title, Kind Hearts and Coronets. Blithe Spirit doesn't quite reach the highs of either of those classic comedies - the resolution is a bit of a letdown and while the final moment is clever, it lacks the true satisfaction that might have come from the play's more cynical ending. But this is still a total pleasure and highly recommended to anyone who loves screwball comedy.

#370: The Emperor Jones

(Dudley Murphy, 1933)

For the modern viewer, watching The Emperor Jones is a startling experience. Here is a film from the early years of talkies that not only stars a black man, but is almost entirely cast with black people. Robeson's Jones goes to nightclubs and casinos filled with them, he goes to a Black church and eventually takes over a predominantly Black country. Obviously, I was aware all of these things existed in 1933. But growing up on movies from the 30s and 40s accustomed me to seeing black actors as being perceived at the time as only fit for specific roles - servants, slaves, occasionally musicians. This was the time in which Al Jolson put on black face to usher in the sound era, while Orson Welles played Othello on Broadway. So seeing a predominantly black cast with a black star (albeit playing a corrupt and fatally flawed character) is both shocking and invigorating - a reminder of the scope of film history and the stretch of its depiction of society.

If you haven't noticed from the cover, The Emperor Jones is part of the Paul Robeson boxset that Criterion issued a few years ago. It's the film that brought Robeson international fame, and it's based on the Eugene O'Neill play that Robeson also starred in - but only after the original actor was fired after he insisted on removing the frequent use of the word "nigger" from the play. What's so interesting about this origin story is how it lends complexity to Robeson's own journey, as depicted in the documentary of his life also included on this disc, Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist. Robeson was perhaps most famous for his rendition of "Ol' Man River," a casually racist song from the musical Show Boat, but as he got older and he became more socially and politically active he began to change the lyrics. A song primarily about passive and accepted struggle was turned into a defiant and unyielding call to arms.

For me, this story of Robeson's personal journey was much more interesting than the severely dated film attached to it. Apart from the obvious racism of the film, the acting and directing styles were extremely stagy, and while Robeson is a powerful presence onscreen, he isn't enough to make the film as a whole especially worthwhile. It's still a worthwhile watch, though, if only for the history lesson.

#405: The Threepenny Opera

(G. W. Pabst, 1931)

As I've mentioned before, musicals are not my thing, so it takes a lot for me to really connect with one. Unfortunately, despite its many charms and obviously impressive visual qualities, The Threepenny Opera did not reach this threshold.

I'm not really sure why this is the case. I enjoyed Pabst's other Criterion entry, Pandora's Box, much more than I expected to, while the German expressionistic style was put to great use in the early talkie years with films like M. Both Pabst's personal style and the larger aesthetic of German filmmaking are apparent here, in a film based on the hit opera that spawned the jazz standard "Mack the Knife." And there's great sly humor here from the corrupt mayor, the bitter father, and the various criminal underlings. But the film takes some time to get rolling, and the sets felt small and stagy. It's also weird to hear people talking in German about being English, but it's not like American films haven't sufficiently avenged this quirk. It's just not for me, I guess.

#126: Ordet

(Carl Th. Dreyer, 1955)

At some point during Ordet, around the time when a couple of old men with weird beards are sitting around a table smoking long pipes in a dreary house and discussing God and children, I remembered that The Avengers made $200 million dollars in three days and I laughed out loud. I haven't seen The Avengers and I plan on watching it at some point, so I'm not speaking to the quality of that film, or even really to the inaccessibility of this one - in fact, from a technical perspective, Ordet is actually not that difficult of a film (philosophically and emotionally, of course, it is intensely challenging). What seemed so absurd to me was just how big cinema is, that it can encompass both of these galaxies.

Like Day of Wrath before it, Ordet is a movie about faith. But Ordet is based on a play written by a preacher (who was later killed by the Nazis) so this isnt' going to be an indictment of Christianity - instead, it's a confirmation of God's existence (apparently made more literal in the film than in the play). What was so frustrating to me about the ending of Ordet was not the confirmed miracle, but the implication that it was this miracle which gave the husband faith in God. Faith is not the knowledge of something, but the belief in it despite its absence. When his wife is resurrected, the husband is no longer becoming faithful, but merely acknowledging the truth before his eyes. To me, this seems like the exact opposite of the intension of both the film and religion in general.

I certainly don't want to come off as rash or foolish, but Ordet is not a movie for me, as anyone who has read this blog has probably figured out. Still, it's a masterfully made film. Dreyer uses sweeping pans and subtle tracking with a dogged consistency that avoids becoming tiresome because it's so brilliantly incorporated into the tone of the film. The movie's swaying fields and sets that alternate between stage-like and realistically open (most notably in a couple of subtle but masterful 360˚ turns) call to mind another Scandinavian director who focused on faith, Ingmar Bergman, who was just hitting his stride around the time Ordet was released. (One funny similarity about Bergman and Dreyer: if you believe the DNA tests from last year regarding Bergman being switched at birth, both directors were not raised by their biological parents.) Bergman's films are more clearly accessible than Ordet for the atheist or agnostic because his characters are constantly questioning the absence (or at least as one movie was titled, The Silence) of God, but they also ring truer because they are not directly about faith or religion, but about people (the HUGE exception to this is probably The Seventh Seal, though a handful of other Bergman films might be debatable). Ordet didn't feel that way to me, so the film strikes me more as a cultural oddity than an emotionally memorable work.

#464: Danton

(Andrzej Wajda, 1983)

Danton is about democracy, communism, and other tools of oppression. The film belongs to a subgenre of the historical drama whose main thesis is that everything old is new again: Danton is not meant to highlight a past historical event, but to illuminate contemporary politics (technically, all historical works should strive for this goal, but Danton and its like are designed with a specific contemporary issue in mind, rather than generally delivering a timeless lesson). Wajda has apparently denied that the film was a metaphor for modern Poland, but the evidence seems beyond doubt. Along with the simple fact that Wajda chose to make the film at this time, there are other clues: he changed the sympathies of the original Communist-slanted version of the play from Robespierre to Danton, and - most importantly - he cast French actors as Danton and his people and Polish actors as Robespierre and his people. (By the way, this makes for some brutal dubbing, which you'll just have to pretend isn't happening by focusing intently on the subtitles.)

Nearly 30 years later, the politics of the film remain scarily relevant in post-9/11 America. With two successive presidents from different sides of the ideological spectrum embracing torture, supposedly "targeted" bombings, and civil liberties violations which verge on the unprecedented (including the legalization of assassinating American citizens) - not to mention the continued acceptance of the illegal machinations of Wall Street and the thoughtless support for corporations over individuals - the question of democracy vs. corrupt oligarchy is just as relevant in today's USA as it was to Wajda's Poland in the early 80s, even if the impact of the current philosophical crises are not felt as directly by the average American as they were by the average French person in the late 18th century or the average Eastern European person in the late 20th. (This is, of course, by design, as government has become more sophisticated in its ability to conduct itself in totalitarian ways without ruffling the feathers of the middle masses necessary for a true upheaval - a process that might be the true unsung genius of the political system in America.) All of this means the film plays as viscerally and razor-sharp as it did in the early 80s.

I loved all three films in Wajda's war trilogy, so I wasn't especially surprised that I loved this film. What was a pleasant surprise, however, was Gerard Depardieu's performance as Danton. The actor has given memorable performances before, though his American films have been almost universally horrible (except of course My Father the Hero). But his turn as the titular character is obviously essential to the film's success, and he pulls it off wonderfully, most notably perhaps in the key scene where he confronts Robespierre in person and offers him food and drink before cooly getting down to business. Depardieu manages to give Danton the heft and charisma to be a powerful presence, but he sticks him with the vanity and narcissism that makes his character much more complex and realistic. The script itself only hints at this complexity (Robespierre is the livelier figure on the page, which makes sense since he is the true protagonist of the film), but Depardieu's performance wrings it out of his best moments with natural ease.

Danton is a warning to the people. While its message cannot be misconstrued, the skill of Wajda's direction and the film's performances make it far more than a message film. It turns out after all to be one of those timeless explorations of the world's greatest challenge, a society answerable to the people that delivers safety and justice, freedom and protection from restriction, sacred ideals and broad tolerance, all in equal measures. Art isn't meant to give easy answers to this challenge, merely to illuminate the necessity of the pursuit of those answers, something Danton does beautifully.

#190: Throne of Blood

(Akira Kurosawa, 1957)

Throne of Blood is not Kurosawa's best movie - or even his best samurai movie - but it is a superb adaptation of one of Shakespeare's best-known plays, Macbeth. In fact, even with the vast number of times filmmakers have taken the Bard's plays and morphed them into different times and settings for the big screen it's hard to think of a better one.

So much of this comes from the core performances in the film that it's easy to overlook Kurosawa's craft. Toshiro Mifune verges on (and often achieves) iconic status in every role he played for Kurosawa, but his performance as Washizu aka Macbeth is an obvious stand out, both for its complexity and the fact that the film almost entirely revolves around him. But he is matched by Isuzu Yamada as his wife. Lady Macbeth is one of the juiciest roles in all of Shakespeare (and arguably all of English theater), and Yamada shows why here. Her machinations are so coldly logical and yet diabolical that it's hard to tell if she truly believes what she is saying or she is propelling her husband toward death through her own thirst for power. The combination of the conventional feudal Japanese female demeanor and the Lady Macbeth persona is an especially chilling one, bringing something intellectually unique to a role that has been endlessly explored as a representation of femininity (or at least the male perception of it).

Kurosawa's hand still manages to impress, though. He is at his flashiest when he needs to be, like in the moody scene in which Mifune encounters the spirit or the flat and striking compositions that enclose Mifune at his celebration as he begins to lose his mind. Throne of Blood was made at the height of Kurosawa's career, with Criterion entries Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Ikiru behind him and Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo and The Bad Sleep Well still to come. This confidence shows in the straightforward way he presents the material here, but he can also sometimes be too acquiescent to the source material. This is where the film fails to transcend its stage roots (something which would prove to be a crucial flaw in Kurosawa's next film, The Lower Depths). The final death scene, too, is so over the top (and vaguely reminded me of the absurdly long horse scene in his later masterpiece Kagemusha) that it nearly turns to parody - saved only by Mifune's complete disappearance into his role.

I think it says something remarkable about Kurosawa as a filmmaker that this movie ranks somewhere in the upper-middle of the pack for his films. Taken on its own, Throne of Blood is a superb film, better than 95% of the movies released this year (even that is probably a conservative estimate). Within Kurosawa's (and Mifune's) catalog it's just another classic, even if it's essential viewing as Shakespeare on film.

#225: Tunes of Glory

(Ronald Neame, 1960)

Tunes of Glory belongs to the long tradition of classy productions which has defined British cinema for many viewers in - depending on one's views - either a derogatory or exemplary fashion. I choose to place myself somewhere in the middle, recognizing these works for their superb technical achievements (which ironically mostly consist of hiding the technicality of filmmaking) but often bemoaning the starched thematic constructs and old-fashioned pacing.

Characteristically, then, Neame's Tunes of Glory is alternately quite moving and somewhat emotionally distant. The film contains some truly fine performances, including one from Alec Guinness at the center which may be his best I've ever seen. But the script can get bogged down in the development of the characters' motivations and interactions. This often leads to the film feeling oddly theatrical at times, despite its origins as a novel. Even the worst of these moments, however, are carried by Guinness and John Mills in particular and the cast in general, as films of this nature so often are. Neame's direction, in a similarly typical fashion, is invisible to the casual viewer, but manages to reinforce the separation Mills feels from his men and the arrogant camaraderie Guinness employs so naturally to his benefit.  It's a thankless task in a field too often judged only on auteurism - and it's why his work has largely fallen into the middle of the historical pack - but it makes Neame an admirable craftsman.

Judging a film like Tunes of Glory - or for that matter any film of a similar nature - by modern standards of drama can often be unfair. Today's audience is used to seeing protagonists of either common or particularly exceptional nature - the everyday middle-class professional or the famous musician/politician/artist. Very rarely are we exposed to emotionally distant men tasked to a higher calling who are struggling within their own humanity and social constraints, and when we are (as in work like Mad Men) it is often through the prism of modern rhythms and perspectives. So when a film like Tunes of Glory explores lower-c conservative life it is more difficult for the broader audience to see its message as a timeless one beyond the social construct it inhabits - one of those "forest for the trees" situations. In this case, it's a beautiful forest, it's just that some of the trees have lost their luster.

#461: Hobson's Choice

(David Lean, 1954)

I had one serious problem with Hobson's Choice. Maggie Hobson, in many ways the pivotal character in the film, is played by Brenda De Banzie, an actress who was clearly 45 at the time. Yet multiple times during the film they assure us that she is, in fact, 30. In many films this wouldn't be a serious problem - for example, the only slight difference in age between Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate is easily overlooked. But here, Maggie is supposed to be wise and mature beyond her years, making the character more sympathetic and giving her plan to branch out on her own more of a sense of risk. Instead, she just seems expectedly wise and mature, and it often feels like she has more experience than her father, played by the great Charles Laughton, who was only ten years her senior in real life. It hurts the film because this is undoubtedly the most important relationship in the story and the casting decision makes it weaker.

Apart from this one misstep, however, Hobson's Choice is a breezy comedy in the classic British tradition. Lean was hardly known for his light fare, but this film - adapted from a play of the same name - shares many of the traditionally British elements around which his other black and white films are centered. It's also a beautiful and whimsical movie, particularly in moments when Laughton is left alone to wander the streets and roam through his imagination. It's not up to par with early Lean works like his adaptation of Great Expectations or Brief Encounter (my favorite Lean film), but it's not the kind of film made with these ambitions in mind. Then again, I'd rather watch the superb and sharp-witted Kind Hearts and Coronets when I'm in the mood for a quintessential Ealing comedy.

#170: Trouble in Paradise

(Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)

There aren't many of them, but Trouble in Paradise is a perfect movie. The movie is centered around the love affair of two thieves and the woman (or money?) threatening to tear them apart. The plot itself is light and entertaining but - like most Lubitsch films - the main appeal lies in the dialog. Everyone gets great moments here, but especially Herbert Marshall as celebrity thief Gaston Monescu, "the man who walked into the Bank of Constantinople and walked out with the Bank of Constantinople." Lubitsch would go on to work with much more heralded actors, but Marshall holds his own with charm, wit, and cunning, all achieved mainly by speaking 10% too fast and being naturally debonair.

The writing itself is the real star, however. People often speak of the "Lubitsch touch," and while it's in its infancy in Trouble of Paradise, it's everywhere - beginning with the visual joke of a garbage gondola in Venice and running through to the last moment, when the valuable handbag reaches its final owner. The handbag itself is a stunning device, used by Lubitsch and his frequent co-screenwriter, Samson Raphaelson, to establish the heiress's character, prompt the relationship between the heiress and Monescu, and finally reunite the two lovers - all with a handbag! Beyond structure, the film's one-off jokes are some of the best in Lubitsch's catalog (saying a lot):

"Marriage is a beautiful mistake that two people make together... But with you, Francois, I'm afraid it would just be a mistake."

"If I were your father - which fortunately I am not - and you made any attempt to handle your own business affairs, I would give you a good spanking - in a business way of course."
"What would you do if you were my secretary?"
"The same thing."
"You're hired."

"Yes, that's the trouble with mothers. First you get to like them, and then they die."

The biggest problem with the film (other than that it ends - this is one of those 80 minute movies that is the perfect length but leaves you desperate for more) is that it is decidedly uninterested in judging its characters. This led to the film being banned once the Production Code kicked in a few years later - it wasn't shown in the US until the late 60s, and at one point a musical remake was rejected. It simply wasn't possible during the code era to make a film about two thieves who are more charming and cunning than the good guys and end up getting away with it in the end (the sexual innuendo didn't help either).

This may be the main reason the film was never released on VHS, making this disc imho one of the greatest things Criterion has ever done. I first saw Trouble in Paradise at the Silent Film Theater in LA (it was a special talkie night). Years before, I had read about the film and was shocked to learn it wasn't available on video. I knew some movies obviously hadn't made the transition, but this was a purported classic by one of the greatest and most influential directors of all time. Having never lived in a time before VHS - when all movie fans were at the whim of the local repertory theater or TV schedule - it was extremely frustrating to have to wait to see a movie I knew I would love.

When I finally saw the film it surpassed all of my expectations. I love His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night, and The Lady Eve, (and Lubitsch's own Heaven Can Wait is a personal favorite and one of my few successful requests to Criterion for release) but for my money Trouble in Paradise is the greatest romantic comedy ever made. I only got to see it one more time before it was mine - a lucky channel surf that landed me on TCM. The day Criterion released this film I was first in line - possibly crying - and I think I watched it ten or fifteen times in the next few months. I loved Criterion before Trouble in Paradise, but rescuing this film from obscurity made me a fan for life.