#586: Island of Lost Souls

(Erle C. Kenton, 1932)

Island of Lost Souls is perhaps the best example of just how much sci-fi and horror have changed from their original talkie incarnation in the early 30s. While films like King Kong and The Most Dangerous Game are arguably better movies, Island of Lost Souls is more provocative, at least in its time. This makes it not just an old-fashioned adventure movie like those mentioned above, but a movie about taboo subjects that pushed the envelope for audiences upon its initial release. While a movie like King Kong is best compared to something like Avatar - a blockbuster adventure film with a relatively gentle social message - Island of Lost Souls was its era's House on a Haunted Hill, a chilling message about man's potential for evil.

What's funny about this characterization is that the film itself is incredibly tame. The creatures, ostensibly horrifying in 1932, border on parody, while Charles Laughton's Dr. Moreau (a character who would be mangled by Marlon Brando in the 90s adaptation) is more reminiscent of Sidney Greenstreet's character Ferrari in Casablanca than of any evil genius in later horror films. It's hard to think of any other film that was so controversial when it was released and so tame now. This separates the film's intellectual and historical appeal almost entirely from the experience of watching it, with a few exceptions. The most notable is the scene in which Parker kisses the Panther Woman before realizing she is an animal. His anger at himself, which he then directs towards Moreau, saying he could forgive him everything else but not this, makes for a chilling moment of man's ability to compartmentalize tragedy and injustice.

Mostly, though, Island of Lost Souls is a pretty good time at the movies. While I enjoyed watching it, I doubt I'll ever need to see it again, something that sets it apart from The Most Dangerous Game, a far superior early 30s horror/adventure film, and a Criterion release long overdue for an upgrade.

#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.

#636: Heaven's Gate

(Michael Cimino, 1980)

Heaven's Gate is arguably the most notorious Hollywood movie in history, a film that some argue singlehandedly ended the auteurist golden age of the late-60s and 70s. There have been other massive critical and commercial disasters before and since - think films that followed in its footsteps like Waterworld (which actually made money), Cutthroat Island, and Gigli. But a whole book was written about Heaven's Gate and the disaster of its (un)making. An entire career was essentially ruined, as the Oscar-winning director Michael Cimino never recovered, while its studio, United Artists, similarly unraveled. And this isn't even mentioning the New York Times review from Vincent Canby, possibly the most hate-filled, gleefully nasty review in the paper's history (to his credit, Roger Ebert's review isn't exactly the friendliest reception).

This makes the gradual reevaluation of the film that has taken place over the past thirty years (with a real escalation over the past decade) a pretty big surprise. This sort of thing just doesn't happen that often (it did on a smaller scale recently with the (imho) deservedly overlooked John Carter), but it especially doesn't happen with a disaster as massive and high-profile as this. Of course, as I pointed out, there's never really been a disaster as massive and high-profile as this.

So when Criterion announced they would be releasing this nearly four-hour monster, the first question that popped into my head was how much the context informed their selection. Obviously, viewed on its own merits, they deemed the film of a high enough quality to merit a release - Criterion isn't in the business of releasing films they consider failures, regardless of their historical significance. But is this the release of a masterpiece on par with the great films of its era? Or is it a mere call for a reappraisal of an unfairly maligned film, a chance for film lovers to see the movie divorced of its negative history?

After viewing the film, I respect the argument for the former, but I tend to lean towards the latter. I had been curious about the film ever since I read about it in numerous film history books (including the brilliantly trashy Easy Riders Raging Bulls) but had always been daunted by the blistering reviews and intimidating running time. Make no mistake: Heaven's Gate is long. Really long. And it's not fast-paced. Still, with the exception of the opening sequence, which seems somewhat superfluous and is destined to turn many people against the film before it even begins, I have a hard time pointing to any specific scenes I think shouldn't be included. Interestingly, Ebert points to narration about why Kristofferson goes west in his review that isn't there in the full-length version - because it doesn't need to be, as Kristofferson explains his actions in a scene that was apparently cut for the shorter version which received wide release.

This scene, in which Kristofferson speaks to a man at a train station, is also a great example of the sheer scope of Heaven's Gate. It's no wonder this movie became one of the most expensive ever made, as the number of extras alone just milling through the background at the train station in full period clothing (not to mention the massive sets that were built to function as a background for the station - onscreen for probably twenty seconds) is high enough that this scene probably could have financed a whole movie. Extras abound in Heaven's Gate. Either they recycled people for different scenes, or every person who was alive in 1980 is in this movie - in elaborately made costumes. The dance scene during the opening sequence of the film is wholly superfluous and extravagant - at least a hundred people in gowns and suits, dancing and twirling in unison, urged on by a full marching band, almost totally unrelated to the other 150 minutes of the film save for a few characters and a vague thematic connection to civilization's ruling elite.

But measuring this epic prologue next to what comes later helps the film find a balance between the huddled masses and their waiting oppressors. When the focus turns to the immigrants destined to be destroyed, their overblown emotions and indistinguishable faces and characters seem almost backwards. Yet this could quite easily be said about the crucial scene in which Sam Waterston initially lays out the case for killing the farmers, as rich men huddle together and mumble calls of "here here!" It's a reminder that Heaven's Gate is a film about a land teeming with people, ready to explode both geographically and economically. Life was cheap, just as wealth was pre-ordained. One of the film's flaws - its lack of fleshed out characters beyond the four or five key characters - becomes a powerful depiction of the massive vision and prerequisite conditions behind manifest destiny. Both the film's length and massive budget are essential to this significant accomplishment.

Still, Heaven's Gate remains unforgivably bloated. It's loosely edited, saddled with an affected mandolin score, and alternately over-serious and too slick for its own good. Cimino's dialog has too many Hollywood-style quotable exchanges to be realistic, but his characters lack the relatability that is often Hollywood's strength. Kristofferson's character is the film's center, making Heaven's Gate another in the long line of films that has chosen the perspective of a rebellious outcast of the evil oppressors, rather than a true member of the oppressed - this has most notably been taken up recently by the truly execrable The Help. This choice was perhaps inevitable, but it's ultimately the film's downfall. The movie wants to be ambitious and meaningful, but wants to do it within the confines of the system against which it is supposedly rebelling. It makes the journey at the core of the film totally insignificant, not just because our protagonist is already changed but because it guarantees that the film's politics will fall on deaf ears.

This failure is reminiscent of another massive and disappointing 19th-century epic, Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. That film's awkward love story seemed jammed into the story Scorsese really wanted to tell - about New York's coming of age and the draft riots during the Civil War - whereas Cimino had the power to make exactly the film he wanted to make (something that ironically cost Scorsese that same luxury two decades later). Still, what Scorsese gained with his limitations was the need for a tight narrative that kept his film focused and constantly churning. Heaven's Gate obviously comes from a different era when films had greater leeway to be lyrical and leisurely paced, but Cimino doesn't use this pace to his advantage as much as he simply takes all the narrative slack he can get.

This might be less of a problem if the film was a visual feast on par with Days of Heaven, but the movie is a bit of a dusty mess. As in Cimino's best film, The Deer Hunter, what's most impressive about the look of the film is what the director has put in front of the camera, rather than where he's put the camera or how he shoots it. I'd be surprised if Cimino intended the movie to be beautiful - everything is dirty, smoke-filled, dark, as if the country was emerging from sleep. This is a tough palette to maintain over four hours, and while it's an impressive accomplishment, I don't think the movie is necessarily better served by it.

I've been taking Heaven's Gate apart for a while here, but I wouldn't call it a bad film. It's just that the chance that its ambition would be fully realized was certainly slim, and what's made it onto the screen confirms how big a gamble this was. As pure entertainment, judging it as a film experience, I think Heaven's Gate is worthy of its Criterion release. But I think that's mainly for its scope and, ironically, its smaller moments that serve as the glue holding together the big weighty plot - the final sequence a few years in the future is a strong example of these well-executed moments. As we move further away from the context around the film's creation and initial reception, I think it will be these two things that keep it relevant and increasingly worthy of the reappraisal this release will afford it.

#404: Robinson Crusoe on Mars

(Byron Haskin, 1964)

It would be easy to compare Robinson Crusoe on Mars to similar dated sci-fi in the Collection like Equinox and the Monsters and Madmen boxset. And in many ways, this would be an apt comparison: there is low and high art in all of these films and the passion of their creators shines through very clearly. They all work on two levels, since they could just as easily appeal to an eight-year-old (at least one whose senses haven't been dulled by the modern bend towards bright flashing lights and non-stop inanity) and a thirty-year-old cinema nerd - though of course it's arguable if these are different people I've just described.

Yet Robinson Crusoe on Mars, despite its creaky name, is something different from those other films. In fact - although its plot is directly cribbed from a well-known and very straightforward story - its visuals and pacing are more reminiscent of a different kind of sci-fi film made just a few years later: 2001: A Space Odyssey. Although that film's technological predictions turned out to be wishful thinking, this film's visual palette has only been surpassed by the reality of what we've seen beamed back from light years away. Robinson Crusoe on Mars is a small movie in human emotion and scope - a tale of one man and his loneliness. But visually, this is one of the great epics of sci-fi, a stunning and cannily re-imagined portrait of space and the red planet for the technicolor era. There are moments here that took my breath away, in all that phrase's purple glory.

At this point, Robinson Crusoe on Mars is the final movie of this type that I have to watch in the Collection (though Island of Lost Souls hails from a related genre). The inclusion of such films makes the Criterion umbrella both broader in scope and more legitimate as an arguable "canon" of film. It is films like this that had  a direct influence on the filmmakers who transformed American cinema in the 80s and 90s (for better or worse), but they also stand on their own as works of art. Robinson Crusoe on Mars is the best example of this in the Collection. This is a must-watch for any lover of the visual spectacle of cinema.

#155: Tokyo Olympiad

(Kon Ichikawa, 1965)

Tokyo Olympiad has been out of print for five years and typically runs you about $200 for a used copy. Even worse, there has been no new release on DVD for western audiences, making this the new Salo (pre-re-release of course) in terms of being nearly impossible to see through any legal means in the US. This is a shame, as it's one of the best sports journalism documentaries I've ever seen.

Choosing Ichikawa to film your Olympics - ostensibly to glorify Japan and its hosting at long last of the grand world games - was certainly an odd choice. It's very nearly like America hiring David Lynch to film the '96 games. Unsurprisingly, the Olympic committee got what they really should have expected, and heavily edited this nearly 3 hour epic to give it a more conventional feel. Criterion's restoration of the original work reveals just what you might expect from Ichikawa: a film much more concerned with the process - the pushing of the human body and mind to excel and how will interacts with physicality - than the outcome of any one sport.

The closest any segments get to a conventional depiction of the competition are the suspenseful pole vault duel that lasts into the night and the much duller women's volleyball face-off in which Japan wins the gold. The latter almost feels like Ichikawa forced it into the film to placate the homers that were looking for a rah-rah moment. The film shines much brighter when zeroing in on a runner's body, shown from the waist up gliding through mid-air, or a rifleman indenting his cheek as he leans over his weapon. These moments attain a sort of elementary beauty that is devoid of the marketing, mythmaking, and over-importance of the typical sports document. Tokyo Olympiad becomes entirely separated from the event it is supposedly depicting - even as the world of 1964 looms large. This is an observation of the diversity of Earth, the breadth of skill and talent we have accumulated, and the remarkable adaptability of the human form. Of the four Ichikawa films in the Collection, I think it's undoubtedly the best, and it's worth seeking out in whatever form you can find it.

#415: The Naked Prey

(Cornel Wilde, 1966)

The Naked Prey is a wholly improbable, totally outdated bit of pulpy fun. This is assuming you can get over the absurdity of the basic premise, which assumes that our precious hero is not only such an outdoorsman that he is able to withstand the harsh African wilderness with nothing but a handful of items, he's also better at hand-to-hand combat than African warriors that have trained for their whole lives. This also assumes you aren't looking for much character development (or even names), and your need for story is limited to "man runs for life."

Then of course there are the racial politics, which are... interesting. The Naked Prey isn't an inherently racist film, though I do think some of the leaps of logic needed to fully engage with the film depend on an assumption of mental if not moral superiority (it doesn't help, either, that the film was financed by the South African government). It reminds me of the term "colored" - it's not necessary an offensive term, but it's anachronistic status forces a reminder of the less enlightened times from which it is native. The Naked Prey might not be overtly racist - in fact, Wilde goes out of his way to have his character save and befriend an African child, who then saves him in return. But the film would never be made today in its current form - a muddy indication that something isn't quite right here.

All of this sort of adds to the historical appeal of The Naked Prey. Because the film itself is so primal - both technically and textually - the idea that the cultural subtext might highlight something darker about the 1960s or about cinema's depiction of black people underscores its blunt immediacy. It makes for a fascinating viewing that helps fill the void between the many leaps of logic.

The Naked Prey was recently the recipient of a bit of heat thanks to an episode of Mad Men where Peggy went to see the film. It's no surprise that a show about male identity would reference this masculine manifesto, but I doubt too much should be read into it beyond the basic connection Weiner and crew (most of whom were kids when The Naked Prey ran on TV) have towards material of that era. That's the thing about the film - every time you think there's something more to it, it stays almost frustratingly - but admirably - simple. Bringing this film to the Collection was not just a case for more exposure (it had yet to be released on home video), it was almost certainly a play for the more idiosyncratic side of filmmaking, a world of cult followings and quirky one-offs that can never be duplicated.

#203: The BRD Trilogy

(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978-1982)

Of any boxset I've watched during this adventure, the widest gaps in viewing each film came with the BRD Trilogy. I first saw The Marriage of Maria Braun in college, then watched it a couple years later to see if I had under-appreciated it (I had, but not by too much). Veronika Voss was one of the first films I watched when beginning this blog, way back in January, 2010. For some reason, Criterion seems to have streaming rights for that film (I watched it on Netflix, but it's now also on their Hulu Plus page) but not for Lola, which is why it took me this long to get around to completing the series.

This broad timeline makes it a little more difficult to reflect on the overall series, but I think three things unquestionably unite the set: tragic female protagonists, a setting in post-WWII Germany, and a pure love for film of the era, particularly in the Sirk-style colors of Lola and the noir-drenched visuals of Veronika Voss. The essay accompanying the set makes a compelling case for the series as metaphoric steps towards a prosperous Germany unshackled from its past. This is certainly present in all of these films, especially in the ending of each. But I like to think of this trilogy as primarily cinematic in intention - not an empty stylistic experiment like Grindhouse, but a purposeful deconstruction of the era through film. Fassbinder has always seemed to me to be the pulpiest of any high-art filmmaker, and while I might have enjoyed World on a Wire more, this set is where his grandest ambitions are fully represented. I might not really love any of these films, but I don't think you can say you've completed a grand overview of cinematic history without watching them. In many ways, they define post-war German cinema.

Here are the links to individual reviews:
The Marriage of Maria Braun (no review)
Veronika Voss
Lola