#154: The Horse's Mouth

(Ronald Neame, 1958)

There are people who believe The Horse's Mouth is the funniest movie Alec Guinness ever made. Assuming these people have seen the divine Kind Hearts and Coronets, I'm left wondering how this could be possible. The Horse's Mouth is a moderate diversion held together by a spectacular performance. But Guinness rarely gave his films any less, which leaves the film as a minor work in his catalog.

Guinness plays Gulley Jimson, a well-established artiste and all-around lout, dedicated to only his craft and unconcerned with things like caring about other people or being a good person. It's so obvious the film could have been named for a different part of the horse's body that I'm probably far from the first person to make that joke. Watching Guinness be carelessly horrible as he flops his way towards simultaneous ignominy and artistic deification makes for an occasionally entertaining moment but an unpleasant overall experience.

I've talked often on this blog about the question of the sympathetic/likable narrator. Ultimately, I don't think you have to like the person at the center of a movie (or anyone in a movie, for that matter), but I do think if you cannot relate or sympathize, you must at least be interested, intrigued, illuminated, or even just confused by their nature or their arc. Jimson is entirely unlikeable, but worse he is simple and easily understood. His intrusions into other people's homes will put you on edge, but his subsequent actions are neither surprising nor entertaining. He is a good notch below Bodu (who was Saved from Drowning) when it comes to highlighting the humor inherent in class interaction, but we are made to believe he is just as interesting because he is uniquely talented. The work he does (made in real life by John Bratby) is indeed appealing in a wildly unhinged sort of way - something, by the way, kept in mind for the memorably striking cover art of this Criterion release. But it hardly makes the character any more appealing to watch.

Ultimately, I think I was let down by The Horse's Mouth because of the expectations I had going in. The film has the tone of a British comedy, but very few of the jokes. Jimson is a very sad character, obsessed with his work but totally unconvinced of its ability to impact anyone else the way it impacts him, which has left him bitter and drunk even when he's not drinking. A second viewing with this knowledge in mind might change my opinion of the film. For now, I'll continue to take Kind Hearts and Coronets out every time I need my Alec Guinness fix.

#313: Kill!

(Kihachi Okamoto, 1968)

While Kill! is based on the same novel that Kurosawa used as the source material for the Yojimbo sequel Sanjuro, the movie of which I was most reminded was Sword of the Beast. The plots of both films revolve around samurai who kill a higher-up as a result of prodding by another samurai, only to be betrayed by that samurai when the deed is done. Both films are, not coincidentally, included in Criterion's Rebel Samurai boxset (which has no spine number).

The difference, of course, is that the earlier film is deeply serious, while Kill! is very much a comedy. The film focuses on two men, one a samurai who gave us his position after becoming disenchanted with the life, the other a lowly farmer attempting to work his way up to the very same perch. They meet briefly, before soon finding themselves on opposite sides of an internal clan battle. Like the confusing Samurai Spy, there are plenty of double crosses and switched allegiances in the film to keep the viewer busy. But unlike that film, these elements are so clearly presented as absurd that they end up being played for laughs. There are brief moments when the material can be too slapstick (including one of the weirder implied sex scenes I've ever seen) but overall Kill! has a dryness to its winking that allows the film to have its cake and eat it, too, like Scream minus the 90s meta edge. It makes for a very entertaining film that can be enjoyed on several levels.

I enjoyed Samurai Rebellion, Sword of the Beast, and Kill! so much that it seems especially disappointing that Samurai Spy - the only other film in the set - failed to move me. But as I slice my way through the Collection and its vast samurai presence, it's becoming increasingly clear that the subgenre has a broad range of styles, tones, and thematic underpinnings to offer.

#327: 3 Films by Louis Malle

(Louis Malle, 1972, 1974, 1987)

Though Criterion (wisely) chose not to title this collection, their intentions are clear: Murmur of the Heart, Lacombe, Lucien, and Au Revoir les Enfants are all Malle films primarily focused on coming of age. The films are not married in style or artistic phase in the way Bergman's Trilogy was, and their stories do not connect in even the roundabout way Kieslowski's Blue, White, and Red do so wonderfully. Instead, they share a filmmaker and his increasing desire to look within himself for his art, specifically himself as a young boy.

There are other superficial connections here. Au Revoir les Enfants and Lacombe, Lucien both feature World War II as a backdrop, while the protagonists of Murmur of the Heart and Au Revoir les Enfants both have unhealthy relationships with their mothers (the former obviously to a larger degree than the latter). But it is the fundamental question of childhood and the transition into adulthood (manhood in these cases - and, let's face it, most cases in cinema) that is most engaging in all three films. Murmur of the Heart is largely a sexual awakening, while Lacombe, Lucien focuses on the banal simplicity of masculinity in all its ugliness. Au Revoir les Enfants is by far my favorite of the three because it feels most engaged with the nature of youth not as a present tense but as a past. The film is an exploration of the inevitable guilt of knowing more - better - than you used to and being unable to change the results. It's also a deeply personal confession that doesn't dwell on its protagonist's potential to become a savior, but instead revels in the brief moments of naïve bliss. All three films in this boxset are worth seeing, but Au Revoir Les Enfants is one for the ages.

Links to individual reviews:

Murmur of the Heart
Lacombe, Lucien
Au Revoir les Enfants

#109: The Scarlet Empress

(Josef von Sternberg, 1934)

The Scarlet Empress is certainly one of the most dazzling films in history. Created towards the end of Josef von Sternberg's torrid cinematic love affair with Marlene Dietrich's face, the film is at once bizarrely funny and surprisingly intense. It's also dripping with sexuality - code-flaunting, exhilarating, hilarious sexuality, the kind you only hear about in movies. The film charts the course of Catherine the Great of Russia, from little girl to her first moments as Empress after taking the throne from her dimwitted husband. Dietrich plays two roles in the film: first she is the cherubic, wide-eyed young woman who comes to Moscow to be married and honor her husband until she abruptly and effortlessly transitions into the confident sexual predator, enjoying her life and  intent on keeping it that way. Both are infused with their own brand of sexuality, and both are endlessly fun to watch.

Made in the early years of talkies, the film has long stretches which could easily be silent. There are a great number of cards, and whole sequences, most notably the wedding scene, are accomplished without dialogue. But neither element feels out of balance, and visually the film manages to stay interesting regardless of the presence of words. Stylistically, Sternberg's film might best be compared to the beautiful and foreboding first part of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible. This earlier film is beautifully shot, with oversized sets and shadows thrown into the unlikeliest of corners. But aside from the royal Russian setting, everything else in the film couldn't be further from that straight-faced epic. Sternberg delivers a tone that seems to be a cross between Max Ophüls at his most flamboyant and the Marx Brothers at their most abstract. His camera has only one purpose - to present Dietrich at her most iconically beautiful - and it seems invented for this sole purpose, seemingly capturing moments without her in equally striking compositions only by chance. He sticks a crass, grumpy old mother out of a Lubitsch or Capra movie into the role of the elder Empress, Dietrich's mother-in-law, while her lover seems to be channeling Clark Gable (who the very same year made the perfect It Happened One Night).

Dietrich plays her part in this tribute to herself masterfully - really, some of the great moments in the first half century of cinema are here. How can you wrong with a line like "Entirely too many man love my hair," really? Dietrich's second half is so outrageous that many viewers will see The Scarlet Empress as camp. There's no denying it works on this level - everyone here is just having too much fun. But the spectacle of the thing, infused into everything from the sets and their towering gargoyles to the music and the sly cards that transition between scenes (let's just say the film has some mean things to say about Russia), is where the true pleasure of the film reveals itself. Obviously movies like this are simply not made anymore, but there isn't even a contemporary equivalent for the film. The Scarlet Empress is everything but the kitchen sink filmmaking at its most exciting and inventive.

#318: Forbidden Games

(René Clément, 1952)

One of the funny things about watching all of these Criterion films in random order - as opposed to other people who are taking a more user-friendly (read: intelligent) approach - is that sometimes without reason a clear connection between two films emerges. At first glance, Forbidden Games and Mafioso have little in common - one is the story of a middle class man being pulled back into the culture of his youth, while the other is the story of a childhood friendship against the backdrop of World War II. However, both films are able to effortlessly balance on the seemingly impenetrable line between humor and tragedy.

Of the two films, Forbidden Games is the more impressive, both because the two tones are so effortlessly blended in virtually every scene and because the film is able to balance its war setting with a universal message about childhood and the power of imagination. Forbidden Games is at once almost unbearably sad and oddly funny, and manages to incorporate a vast range of themes - focusing on everything from religion and childhood to rural culture and war - without descending into academic exercise.

Forbidden Games tells the story of Paulette, a young girl whose parents are randomly killed by a Nazi air attack as they fleed Paris through the countryside. The girl happens upon an older boy named Michel, a country kid who takes her into his family and promptly falls in love with her. What follows are two equally absurd games, one played by the kids, who construct a cemetery out of found animal corpses and stolen crosses, and one played by the adults, Michel's parents and their feuding neighbors, who have a Romeo and Juliet subplot boiling over, threatening to explode in their faces when the two games collide.

The film is essentially a fractured fairy tale - in fact, deleted bookends had Michel reading the story to Paulette, making the comparison closer to reality than metaphor. In the same way that actual fairy tales can be extremely dark and yet somehow have at their core a child-friendly appeal, Forbidden Games isn't so much about the war as it is about the ways in which children can fashion other worlds out of the simplest moments. Clément manages to depict this in such an unbiased way that it seems as if he is simultaneously satirizing his characters and worshipping at the altar of childlike innocence. The cold way in which the two children perform what to many people - particularly in the era and culture in which Forbidden Games was made - would be a horrible offense, to God, to the dead, to their families, ironically makes the film feel much more powerful. Clément seems to be searching for the guilt in all of us, finding innocence (or ignorance, depending upon your cynicism) instead.

#424: Mafioso

(Alberto Lattuada, 1962)

Mafioso is a supremely interesting movie, a comedy of manners mixed with a unique perspective on the mafia narrative. As a depiction of Sicily in the early 1960s, the film is a fascinating look at the relationship between north and south in Italy, and the social and political climate which allowed the mafia to flourish. It's also a sweetly funny family comedy of culture clash and a moving portrait of an average man caught up in his responsibilities.

The film begins with Nino making the rounds on the factory floor where he manages workers. Nino is middle management and loving it, the kind of guy for whom a beautiful wife, two kids, and a steady slot at a company has given him everything he has ever wanted in life. But when he takes a vacation to his hometown in Sicily, he must contend with his family clashing with his Northern wife and a much more sinister proposal from the local kingpin.

The scenes with Nino and his family are both funny and illuminating. In much the same way that most Americans group all Latinos together - ignoring the fact that international borders, skin color, and socioeconomic background make the political landscape in America south of the US far from unified - it is easy to forget that even a country as small as Italy has enormous cultural variations within its borders. The most significant of these is the division between the lighter, more European northerners and the darker, more Mediterranean southerners. This is especially true of Sicily, where many residents to this day consider themselves Sicilian far before they consider themselves Italian. Despite the fact that we never leave interiors in Nino's Milan, the contrast between his adult home and his childhood one is stark: the modern Nino and his family have been thrown into old Italy. Everyone knows everyone else in old Italy, and Nino's family stares at his wife when she lights up a cigarette - not because it bothers them, but because they have never seen a woman smoke before. As in every high/low cultural showdown, Nino's parents consider his wife a snob, while his wife considers them judgmental and mean. It's not a new dynamic, but seeing it come alive with such vivid characterizations and detail about a place as fascinating as mid-century Sicily makes it feel not just fresh, but wholly unique.

The mafia element of the film is just as interesting. Any depiction of the crime syndicate which originated in Italy has the spectre of The Godfather hanging over its head, so it's impossible to know what it was like to see Mafioso a decade before Marlon Brando stuck cotton balls in his mouth. But Mafioso reminded me less of that film and more of some of the most enjoyable subplots from The Sopranos. Many of the most interesting moments in the show came from characters who were outside of Tony's inner circle, the men and women who struggled to adjust to the inevitability of the mafia invading their lives. It is constantly clear in Mafioso that it would be impossible to avoid the don of Nino's town, that in fact everything that is done is informed by his presence. Despite the fact that (spoiler) we watch Nino kill someone in cold blood, we feel only sympathy for him because the possibility that he could have refused seems by this point of the movie to be almost absurd and completely out of the question.

Much like Gomorrah argued that the Comorra syndicate infiltrated every aspect of life in Naples, Mafioso is a heartfelt depiction of the far reach of the mafia into every element of Sicilian life to the point where their very identity is informed by it. The connection between the two stories - the seemingly antiquated day to day of small town Sicily and the global conspiracy of the island's criminal network - might seem tenuous if it wasn't for the way Lattuada uses humor and ultimately tragedy to inextricably link the two, just as he links the international reach of Nino's mafia past to his industrial present. For Sicilians, and perhaps for everyone, it is impossible to outrun your identity.

#174: Band of Outsiders

(Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)

Once again, as he had done in his debut classic, Godard gives us a girl and a gun in Band of Outsiders. Coming off perhaps the angriest work of his early period with Contempt, Godard turned back to many of the cinematic references of Breathless and the meta winks toward the audience of A Woman is a Woman. The final product is a borderline masterpiece that ranks just a notch below his best work for me.

The first time I watched Band of Outsiders was about a decade ago, when I was first falling in love with many of the films Godard nods to in the film. It hit me especially hard for two contradictory reasons: Godard was internalizing and then recontextualizing the same elements of cinema which had moved me, and yet he was doing so in a manner that seemed distinctly out of step with my contemporary reality. The director's work is tied to the 60s not only because he defined and shaped cinema in that era (is there anyone who doubts that this film and Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player had a significant impact on Bonnie and Clyde?), but because his ideas and aesthetic are constantly looking forward, pushing towards the outer reaches of cinema. There is nothing that dates a film like its perception of the future, and many of Godard's films lack the vibrancy they must have had for a contemporary audience. The fact that his films remain relevant is a testament to his skill, but unlike directors like Ozu and Kurosawa in the East and Bergman and Fellini in the West, Godard often shied away from universal timeless themes in order to tell his stories.

This isn't to say Godard's films are removed. There is loads of emotion in Band of Outsiders, especially romance and melancholy. But the moments I come away from the film with are of a decidedly technical - if totally playful - slant, like the moment of silence where the film follows along with the characters, or the race through the Louvre to beat the American-set record for fastest visit. These moments seem designed to remind you that you are watching a movie - a Godard movie at that! - and you shouldn't get too worked up about any little thing. Godard told stories that were just as relatable as the stories of the other directors mentioned above, but the way he told them was so distinctly of its time - both socially and artistically - that his work can't help but appeal more to the brain than to the heart.