100 posts ago: April 29, 2012 Pho Phor Phrench. My first post ever on Life is Not a Casserole, pairing foreign movies with foreign food (on a bit of a budget). Because I was sophisticated, broad-minded, and I liked foreign flicks, dammit!

I like to think this blog has improved since then. While my “vegetarian tendencies” have remained, I have fallen off the hipster bandwagon. Mostly because I don’t even know what makes a hipster anymore. It seems like every Bob, Joe, and Jill wears ironic glasses and skinny ties these days.

Simultaneously, I was training for my first (and only) marathon and spending endless hours on that study table by the UMM Bookstore churning out my senior seminar paper about Moorish identity in Spain while eating leftover Starburst jellybeans from Easter.

I was also wearing suspenders. (Because I was a hipster.)

Also on April 29, 2012

Eyeglasses were making a steady comeback. From “guys hardly ever hit on girls with glasses” to the hottest accessory, people were buying nonprescription glasses to revamp their wardrobes. Obviously, I was cool before cool was cool. (That means I was a hipster, right?)

A surplus of celebrities,  including Meg Ryan, were putting their multi-million dollar houses on the market. Oh, I wish…

The Hunger Games, Cabin in the Woods, and The Avengers were grossing millions in the box office.

A McDonalds employee spills the McBeans on Reddit, conjuring some icky McVisions.

Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” was the number one single on billboard charts.

That’s all for now!

Hasta la pasta!

I grabbed this banner from altscreen.com. They deserve credit, because it’s awesome.

My Top 10 Adapted Screenplays:

1. Greed  (1925)
2. The Phantom of the Opera  (1925)
3. The Hunchback of Notre Dame  (1923)
4. Faust  (1926)
5. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse  (1921)
6. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde  (1920)
7. Ingeborg Holm  (1913)
8. Oliver Twist  (1922)
9. The Birth of a Nation  (1915)
10. The Avenging Conscience  (1914)

Greed

The Film:

Greed is the best American film of the pre-Oscar era.  I have already written one review of it here.  If you have still never seen it, then you need to see it.  It’s not only a masterful film, not only a brilliant vision in cinema, but it might be the single best example, on film, of bringing a novel vividly to life, exactly as it was on the page.

The Source:

McTeague: A Story of San Francisco by Frank Norris  (1899)

One of the Top 100 Novels of all-time.  I have already written about it in depth here.  I had the good fortune to have it assigned to me as an undergraduate.  If you have not been so lucky, you really need to seek it out.

The Adaptation:

Director Erich von Stroheim knew exactly what he wanted to do with the novel.  Indeed, he not only did a script with extreme fidelity to the original novel, but he story-boarded the entire script as well.  The novel provided such an intricate detailed description of San Francisco that von Stroheim simply needed to follow the action and many of the shots would come on their own.  In fact, the parts of the book that don’t appear in the film aren’t because von Stroheim didn’t intend for them to be in the film.  The film was rather famously originally edited by von Stroheim as a 9 hour feature.  Then, after much whittling down, it was presented as a 4 hour film.  But MGM was unwilling to present the film at this length and the film was further cut down to 140 minutes.  Discussion over the fate of Greed have been the subjects or partial subjects of a considerable number of books, a whole list of which can be found at the end of this article.  Von Stroheim brought the novel to life and changed very little – he updated the time from 1899 to 1924, more because it was easier to use the present scenes in San Francisco (so much of the city is so well-described, that it was easy to figure out where everything takes place) and he moved the background scenes of McTeague’s early life to the front of the film, rather than having them come as flashbacks.  Great adaptations of great novels are rare (Lord of the Rings, A Passage to India, The Grapes of Wrath, A Clockwork Orange and The Maltese Falcon head the list – ones that end up on both Top 100 lists), but that this adaptation is so close to the original source material as well takes it to a different level.

Credits:

Directed by Erich von Stroheim.  Scenario credited to Erich von Stroheim and June Mathis with titles by Joseph Farnham, though Mathis didn’t actually write any of the script, instead simply making suggestions for the edited version.

The Phantom of the Opera

The Film:

I watched this film for the first time sometime around 1991 when I got to see the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical version of Phantom onstage in L.A..  Watching the musical was magnificent, but getting a chance to watch this film was a revelation.  Because the musical is a great spectacle and the book is enjoyable.  But the film is one of the best examples of one of the great eras in film – Universal Horror.  Though it technically began two years earlier with Hunchback and wouldn’t really begin in earnest until the release and success of Dracula in 1931, this is still the height of Universal’s works in horror films – the best film they made in that period and, except for King Kong, the best English-language Horror film made until Psycho.

The film begins with shadows on the wall, only the bare hint of what horror is to come.  Then, with people moving between the wonderful sets, in and out of shadows, we set the mood and the atmosphere for what is to come.  We hear hints of the Opera Ghost, who so many people seem to be afraid of.  There are accidents and strange things that happen.  And then when Christine has a successful night singing in the lead, her angel of music comes to her and leads her to his underground lair.  And she wonders who this man behind the mask could be, and so do we.  Unlike with the later musical version, we never get to hear the voice that might be entrancing her – we have to just watch the hypnotic movements of Lon Chaney, that master actor, pulling us all closer with his performance (in the very good documentary Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces, Michael Blake, who has written three books on Chaney, points out that you can always tell Chaney, no matter how much makeup he has on, just from the way he moves his hands).

And then comes that amazing reveal – the Phantom at the seat of his organ, Christine sneaking up behind him to see who this mystery man could be and why he would hide behind a mask.  And then we have it, a full reveal for the entire world to see of that horrific face.  Or, conversely, of yet another incredible Lon Chaney makeup job.  And even if we recoil in horror, just like Christine, we are also pulled closer by his magnetic performance.

But Chaney’s makeup job isn’t all there is to the film.  There is the first-rate direction, as everything flows together so well.  There is the expert cinematography, lighting exactly what we need to see and keeping everything else in the shadows.  And there are the technical achievements – look at the wonderful tinting on the masquerade scene.  This is a horror film, yes, but it is a first-rate film as well, one of the best of the Silent Era.

The Source:

Le Fantôme de l’Opéra by Gaston Leroux  (1910, tr. 1911)

Of all the classic novels that are now grouped together as horror novels, mainly because of their successful film adaptations at Universal, this may be the one with the lowest reputation.  Certainly Leroux never had the ability that Stoker, Stevenson, Shelley, Hugo or Wells had.  At times the novel was even out of print, especially in his native France, where it has never had the reputation it holds elsewhere.  Were it not for the first film, this great film, would this book have been consigned to the dust of eternity?  It is perhaps telling that my copy, the Signet Classic edition from the mid 80′s (probably printed to coincide with the success of Lloyd Weber’s musical) doesn’t even credit a translator – clearly this wasn’t a book that people cared about who translated it.  They just wanted the story.

The story is a marvelous one, the story of the Phantom that lives below the Opera House, of the singer that he falls in love with, of the vengeance that he seeks when he is rejected by her.  It has been the basis for many films over the years – 8 feature films and 6 for television – not the mention one of the most celebrated musicals to ever grace London and Broadway.  But there are things here that people forget – the Persian that knows about Erik’s past and has been following him – the sordid history behind Erik that we learn in the book but is only hinted at in most adaptations.  The book is well worth reading, even after all this time.  I first read it in 11th Grade – we were required to read a book originally written in a language other than English and were forbidden to read Les Mis (our teacher knew we would just listen to the musical, as the book is so long).  I have gone back to it from time to time because it draws me in and I re-read it again just last year.

There is also a new translation that was just released last year by Penguin Classics, which is what the link goes to.

The Adaptation:

This is the closest to Leroux’s original novel as any film has gotten and somehow I think it’s as close as any adaptation is going to get.  It does change certain things – it makes Erik an escapee from Devil’s Island, for example, and the titles make the Persian seem like a French policeman (in spite of the fez).  But it gives a fairly faithful rendition of the affair between Christine and Raoul.  It actually would have even had the original ending from the novel, with Erik dying of a broken heart, but it didn’t test well, so the version we know, of him being hunted down along the river, is what the audiences preferred.

The Credits:

Directed by Rupert Julian, with uncredited direction from Lon Chaney, Ernst Laemmle and Edward Sedgewick.  There were no writing credits other than “from the celebrated novel by Gaston Leroux”.  The treatment was by Bernard McConville and Jasper Spearing, the adaptation by Elliott J. Clawson and Raymond L. Schrock, with titles by Walter Anthony and Tom Reed and other work by Frank M. McCormack and Richard Wallace.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Film:

I already wrote a good long review of the film here.  But I want to mention again, the brilliant way in which Chaney is first revealed to the audience.  It is not a quick shock, like it would be two years later in Phantom, but a simultaneous slow and quick reveal, moving in closer, but giving us titles in between that give us a chance to brace for the shock.  And I also must mention the poetry of Chaney’s movements, the graceful way that he jumps down the building, leaping and climbing, pure poetry in motion.

The Source:

Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo  (1831)  (usually published as The Hunchback of Notre Dame)

Victor Hugo had great stories to tell, which makes his novels somewhat ironic.  There are great stories there, but he gets so into the extraneous details that he keeps losing sight of the story itself.  Granted, he isn’t as bad with this on Notre Dame as he is on Les Miserables, but you still get an entire book of the novel on the city of Paris.

In a lot of ways, this is probably Hugo’s best novel.  No, it doesn’t have the same kind of epic scope as Les Mis.  But, as a novel, it flows better, it is focused better, and you don’t feel the need to skip entire chapters which are simply digressions from the plot.  Here, with far fewer characters to keep track of (really, you only need to know four – Quasimodo, the hunchback who is also the bell-ringer in the famed cathedral, Frollo – the Archdeacon of Notre Dame, Esmeralda, the beautiful Gypsy, and Phoebus, the Captain of the King’s Archers – there is a fifth major character, Frollo’s brother, who rarely figures into film adaptations other than this one) you can keep more focused on the story.  And part of the story, of course, in a sense the whole focus of the story, is not the poor hunchback, but, as the actual French title indicates, the cathedral itself.

Something that many don’t remember about the book is the ultimately tragic ending.  Quasimodo, torn emotionally over the death of Esmeralda, decides instead to join her in death.  And so, in a final chapter, rather hauntingly titled “Quasimodo’s Marriage”, his skeleton is eventually found, with hers in its embrace: “The man to whom it had belonged had therefore come there of himself and died there.  When they tried to detach this skeleton from the one it embraced, it crumbled to dust.”

This is one of the best 19th Century French novels, a list that includes Stendahl, Hugo, Dumas, Zola and Balzac.  If you have never picked it up, it is time to do so.  This ended up on my list of the second top 100 novels.

The Adaptation:

This is a decently close version to the novel.  There are two major ways in which this version differs from the novel.  The first is in the use of the two Frollo brothers – in this film, rather than have a corrupted priest, it is only the brother who is so desperate for Esmeralda and who functions as the villain – Claude himself gets to be the pure bystander to his brother’s actions (though, that also means we don’t have to have Quasimodo kill him by pushing him off the ledge).  We also get a different ending – we get a rather silly happy ending for Esmeralda and Phoebus, and a poignant tragic ending for Quasimodo, who, instead of dying of a broken heart (two Chaney films with characters who essentially die of broken hearts and he got a more violent death scene instead in each, which is ironic, since Chaney, in films like He Who Gets Slapped is so good at showing his broken beart), gets stabbed by Frollo as he throws him off the cathedral and dies ringing his own funeral march on the bells.  Yet, at least we have Quasimodo die, which is far more faithful than many adaptations.

The Credits:

Directed by Wallace Worsley.  Scenario by Edward T. Lowe, Jr.  Adaptation by Perley Poore Sheehan.

Faust  (Faust – Eine deutsche Volkssage)

The Film:

I wrote once about Lon Chaney: “no death before Chaney had robbed cinema of so much”  Yet, just a few months later, we had one that did, and possibly more.  For, while Chaney was 47, F.W. Murnau was only 42.  He had directed 18 films, seven of which are now lost to us.  Yet, in spite of that, he still managed to make it to #41 on my Top 100 list of directors and #32 on my second version of the list.  And Faust is one of his best films, a visionary spectacle of the old German legend and the Goethe play, with things that astounded audiences and showed his range as a director (and by the time it played in theaters, he and his star, Emil Jannings were already in America, making their Oscar winning films The Way of All Flesh and Sunrise).

Look at the opening moments of the film (not hard to do – it’s available streaming on Netflix and can probably be easily found online).  Watch the metaphysical struggle between the archangel and Mephistopheles, complete with flames and wings and all of humanity hanging in the balance (and with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding through the air).  Watch the grand gestures of Emil Jannings and remember the actor that he was rather than the caricature he would become as a stooge for the Nazis (and bullet fodder for Tarantino), with grand sweeping gestures in his struggle, but also subtle machinations of Faust, and a sly smile on his face when he dies and reappears to kill his killer.

This is Faust in all its splendor, in a way it never could have been performed on stage.  Murnau, a master behind the camera, gives us not only German expressionism (look at the strange tilt to the buildings in the village where Faust pursues Gretchen), but epic effects, with Faust and the Devil soaring away through the window and over the towns.  Look at the great effect of the fire writing appearing on the bargain, the bargain that Faust gladly signs.  That this is the same director who had made the brilliant and disturbing Nosferatu is easy to believe.  That he’s the same director who directed the poignant and heart-wrenching The Last Laugh (and would plumb the depths of the human soul in Sunrise) makes you wonder what might have come if he had lived.

One more thing to remember – critics like to talk about how a film looks well-photographed as an insult, as if to have beautiful cinematography implies a flaw somewhere else.  But there are few directors who are as in touch with the camera as Murnau.  Faust, like Nosferatu and The Last Laugh, all brilliantly photographed, would be ineligible for the Oscars.  But of the four films that Murnau directed that were eligible, one would be nominated for Best Cinematography and two others would win the award.  That maybe says all it needs to about his talent.

The Source:

Faust Part One by Johann Wolfgang Goethe  (1808)

This is probably the most famous German play in history.  Goethe worked on it for most of the last 30 years of his life.  The first part was completed in 1806 and first published in 1808.  The second part wasn’t completed until 1831 and would not appear in print until after Goethe’s death the following year.  Most productions of the play (and the opera adapted from the play, which, ironically, is featured in the novel Phantom of the Opera) only make use of the first part and the film itself only uses the first part.

The play is a masterwork of drama.  Granted, much of the story was not new – even when Kit Marlowe wrote his Dr. Faustus in the 1590′s it was already a well known legend – but, like with Shakespeare, it is not the story that makes Goethe’s play such a masterwork.  It is possibly the most important work of German literature and it has a massive influence on the German language.  And it is beautiful to read, even in translation.

The Adaptation:

The film almost entirely comes from the first part of Faust, with just the very end of the second part coming into play at the conclusion of the film.  Since the start of the motion picture industry, they had been filming plays.  But this might be the first visionary opening up of a play – the first time that any limits from the stage were completely dropped by the wayside.  So, things that would have been tricky on stage (Faust going from old man to young man, flying through space and time) can be done on the screen without a problem.  With a lot of plays, when they become films, they simply feel like staged plays.  With others, you can feel them being deliberately opened up, with scenes moved around just to free things up.  This, like Ingeborg Holm (see below) doesn’t ever feel like a play.  But, even more than Ingeborg, it uses the medium of film to transport us into something that the stage’s limits keep out of reach.

The Credits:

Directed by F.W. Murnau.  Titles by Hans Kyser and Gerhart Hauptmann.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Film:

Most serious students or lovers of film can tell you the importance of this film – that it made an almost instant star of Rudolph Valentino, that the tango scene ignited audiences and that before long Valentino and the latin lover image he projects (certainly in the tango scene) would make him a matinee idol.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve actually seen the film, and that’s a shame.  Because this might just be the first great anti-war film.

There is a title card on The Birth of a Nation that talks about the ravages of the Civil War and how the filmmakers hope for peace; yet, the film itself, with the power of its cavalry charges and stirring scenes probably inspires more violence than it would help suppress.  There is none of that in Horsemen.

At heart, this is a story of a family, torn by loyalties at first, then torn by war.  The family lives in Argentina, on the ranch owned by the grandfather.  We meet the grandfather in an early scene, with his adored grandson, with them at a dive in Buenos Aires, where the grandson, played magnificently by Valentino (he would be an idol and loved for his other films, but his performance here is better than in all his other films put together) dances the famed tango, but then shows his love for his grandfather, tossing aside his dance partner when she laughs at the drunken old man.  When the grandfather dies, his two daughters, one married to a Frenchman (Valentino’s parents) and one married to a German, leave for their respective European homes of their husbands just as the Great War is breaking out on the horizon.

In Paris, in the prime of his youth, Valentino falls in love with Marguerite, who is married to a much older man.  She is about to become free to marry him when the war intervenes and she leaves to be a nurse and her husband to be a soldier (where he is later wounded).  When he sees his lover caring for her blinded husband, Valentino realizes the folly of his youth and joins the army.  But, much like Paul Bäumer would in a later novel, he finds the war to be a greater horror than he could conceive, and also like Paul, he dies on that battlefield, side by side with his German cousin in the desolation of no man’s land, fighting on opposite sides.

And that is where the power of the film really comes in – the torn apart families, the hopeful futures that will never come to fruition.  The final shot of this film is a masterpiece.  In those early days, before film reels became a form of journalism, what could have prepared crowds for that ending, with those rows of crosses, spreading outwards towards the horizon, almost reaching to those fabled Horsemen themselves.  That would have been the image that audiences walked out the theater with – that horrible cost of what had seemed like an endless, and fruitless war.

The Source:

Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1916)

This novel was one of the first to deal with the Great War, namely because it was written and published in the middle of the war.  Ibáñez managed to combine the naturalism of Zola with the world going to war to produce a novel that immediately became a big hit (according to Publishers Weekly, it was the biggest selling novel in the U.S. in 1919).  While there is a romance at the heart of the book, it is the cost of the war that is the key focus: “Tombs . . . tombs on all sides! The white locusts of death were swarming over the entire countryside. There was no corner free from their quivering wings. The recently plowed earth, the yellowing roads, the dark woodland, everything was pulsating in weariless undulation. The soil seemed to be clamoring, and its words were the vibrations of the restless little flags. And the thousands of cries, endlessly repeated across the days and nights, were intoning in rhythmic chant the terrible onslaught which this earth had witnessed and from which it still felt tragic shudderings.”

The book is still in print, but probably only because it has long passed out of copyright and any publishing house can print it.  It is not something that has been kept in print by literary imprints like Signet,Bantam or Penguin Classics.  Yet, while All Quiet on the Western Front has always remained in print and continues to be taught, this book has been left out to dry.  I would say that those who still read it are those who came to it because of the movie (which is actually how I came to read it, well over a decade ago), but how popular is the film anymore outside of film buffs?

If you want to simply read the book, you can find it here.

The Adaptation:

The famous tango scene in the film isn’t in the book, which is likely the one thing that you can find about the adaptation on any list of trivia about the film.  What people don’t tell you is that the book actually opens in France, after Julio’s grandfather has already died and with the love affair with Marguerite having already begun, then flashes back to the tell the story of the family.  The film does a good job of bringing the book to the screen, of envisioning this story of a family destroyed by the Great War.

The Credits:

Directed by Rex Ingram.  Written for the screen by June Mathis.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The Film:

This is a very good film, with a very strong performance from John Barrymore as the infamous doctor who ends up turning his experiments upon himself and freeing the evil within.  Doctor Jekyll is an idealist – a scientist and doctor who helps the poor and devotes himself to others.  But after a taunt from his future father-in-law (Sir George Carew) after dinner one night, he decides to see what is on the other side of life – he begins to experiment with the idea that the madness buried within can be released through chemicals.  To that end, he turns himself into Mr. Hyde.  Hyde is freed from all moral constraints – he takes a dance hall girl as a mistress and leaves a wanton life.  But the dual life begins to take its toll and it eventually ends up in the murder of Carew when Jekyll, harangued by Carew, turns to Hyde in front of him.  No longer able to control his transformations, things become overwhelming for Jekyll, and eventually, when changing in front of his fiancee, he kills himself rather than deal with the life anymore.

The film is very well done – well directed, well put together.  It has strong cinematography and good sets.  But the performance from John Barrymore is the key to the film (it might actually be his best performance available on film).  He manages (without makeup in the early scenes) to perfectly convey the transformation from the rather quiet Jekyll to the insidious Hyde.  Hyde gets more brutal and depraved with each appearance, as does his actual physical appearance.  The death scene of Carew is suitably depraved.  And there is a wonderful scene, late in the film, where Jekyll is asleep, and we see a ghostly spider, with the face of Hyde come crawling through his room and up onto his bed and then Jekyll awakes as Hyde.

The film itself is very easy to find, because it has passed into the public domain.

The Source:

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Luis Stevenson  (1886)  (usually published as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)

I remember in high school telling my friend Jake that I wanted to do a screenplay for Jekyll and Hyde.  He commented that a storyboard might better serve such a project, as the novel is so short and there is so little in the way of dialogue, that you don’t necessarily need to proceed from a typed script.  You need to have images in your head for what you want to have happen on the screen and you need to be able to convey those images to others.

It is indeed a short book.  My Bantam Classic copy runs 118 pages and the text itself ends on page 103.  But it does an incredible job of providing images and mood in that short time.  Look at a line like “It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture.”

What people forget about the novel is that Dr. Jekyll is such a background character to his own book.  We get the story of what has happened through the eyes of the lawyer, Mr. Utterson.  It isn’t until the final quarter of the book, when we finally hear the entire story of what has happened to poor Jekyll, this time from his own words, after he has already passed from the mortal vale.

Stevenson’s book is a true short classic.  It is often overlooked on lists of classic works of horror.  But it is as well-written as almost any horror novel ever written, and might be the finest piece of writing of a truly great writer who had too little time to pass on these grisly tales to us.  I included it on my list of the second top 100 novels.

The Adaptation:

The credits here are part of an early trend that becomes a problem when trying to discuss adaptations.  Though credited with being an adaptation of the novel by Stevenson, this film is really an adaptation of the 1887 stage production by Thomas Russell Sullivan and Richard Mansfield (though Sullivan is credited with the play, Mansfield was the impetus for its adaptation and worked feverishly on it).  So, this is why we have a love interest and motivations for the murder of Carew (in the book, there are no prominent female roles, as opposed to most film versions).  And we also have the dance hall girl – again, not something that was present in the original novel, though this would be a key addition that later films would use, and if not for this character, we wouldn’t have Miriam Hopkins in the 1932 version or Ingrid Bergman in the 1941 version.

So, the hard part had already been done long before this film was made.  The novel itself was never particularly suitable to the stage without considerable changes.  The story is mostly conveyed through Utterson until the end, when we get the two first-person narratives that fill in all the blanks.  It would provide a great challenge for staging, with the transformation (which would make it ideal for filming, however).  And to make the story more broad and fill out the time (remember – it is an extremely short book), they added the two female roles – essentially, a love interest for both versions of the main character.  So, when Hollywood would come calling, they didn’t need to worry about going back to the book – they could follow the stage version, which also meant they could get some females into the cast as well.

The Credits:

Directed by John S. Robertson.  Scenario by Clara Beranger.  Uncredited adaptation from the dramatized version by Thomas Russell Sullivan and Richard Mansfield (who was uncredited on the play).  The IMDb suggests it also contains elements from The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Ingeborg Holm

The Film:

The Birth of a Nation is often talked about as if it was the first feature film.  But, two years before Griffith’s film was released, Victor Sjostrom had already made Ingeborg Holm, a poignant, tragic drama, one that would point the way for Ingmar Bergman to start following 40 years later.

It it is the tale of a woman, Ingeborg Holm, and the tragedy she lives through.  She is doing well, with her husband and their store and their three children.  But when he dies, she can’t make ends meet anymore.  Public assistance isn’t enough and she loses the story, her house, and even her children.  In the end, she even loses her sanity, after a visit with her young son, who no longer recognizes her.  But, the finale of the film is the return of her son (played very well by the same actor who played her husband) and who manages to bring her back to reality, talking with her, showing her a photograph of herself when she was younger.

The film is well directed and well written, a great example of how good a director Sjostrom was, one of the best of the silent directors, who, sadly never had much of a career after sound came in (though Bergman would use him as the star of Wild Strawberries).  It contains a very good performance from Hilda Bergstrom in the title role.  And it has a final scene that works extremely well, so poignant and heart-wrenching, as the young man desperately tries to bring his mother back to reality and finally manages to break through the haze of fantasy she has built around herself and brings her back to himself and to reality.  A reality that has been too harsh for her in the past, but now she has her son back with her.  It’s not hard, really, to see why Bergman himself would have such praise for this film.

Going back to watch this film, I was also really stunned at how good it looked.  I’m not talking about the technical achievements.  I’m talking about the quality of the print.  Except for the last couple of minutes, which are in pretty bad shape (which is very unfortunate since they’re the most poignant), the print looks really good.  I don’t know if it’s because of the source, of how well KINO has transferred it to DVD or what, but it looks really good.  And that’s very rare for a film that’s so old.

The Source:

Ingeborg Holm by Nils Krok  (1905)

Ingeborg Holm is a Swedish play, which, as far as I can tell, hasn’t been translated.  Certainly it does not seem to be in print in any language at the moment.  Likely this is a play that would be completely forgotten today (and is mostly forgotten today) were it not the film.  And even the film itself lingers in quite a bit of obscurity.

The Adaptation:

If I didn’t know that this was adapted from a play, I wouldn’t believe it.  This never feels like it’s a play.  It’s not just that it’s opened up, in the way that good films are able to open a play up.  It’s that it never feels like a play – the scenes flow from on to another, inside and out, through different locations.  It feels like a genuine film (or, very believable as being adapted from a novel).  So that is to its credit.  Because I’ve never read the play, I can’t really know how much Sjostrom changed.  But whatever they have done, seems like it has been done for the better.

The Credits:

Directed by Victor Sjostrom.  Written by Victor Sjostrom.

Oliver Twist

The Film:

When I did my second Year in Film piece, covering the years from 1912-1926 (the whole era I am covering in this post), I originally began writing about Oliver Twist as my under-appreciated film.  But, here is what I ended up writing to start my piece on Hunchback: “I had actually planned to write about the 1922 version of Oliver Twist, also starring Lon Chaney.  I had begun with talking about how if you have only seen Chaney in horror films, then your film horizons need to be expanded, how Chaney was one of the greats of the Silent Era, how he was the first great film Fagin but in spite of his acclaim, today it is easier to find a still of Ben Kingsley or Alec Guinness (or even Timothy Spall) when you Google the words “Fagin” and “Chaney.”  But then going through all the lists I came to a realization. Hunchback is obscenely overlooked.”  So, in the end, I wrote about Hunchback rather than Oliver Twist.  But that doesn’t change any of the previous part.  This version of Oliver Twist is a very good film, a good realization of the novel.  It has mood and atmosphere.  It has a suitably menacing Fagin, in Lon Chaney (in fact, if there is a problem with the performance, it is that he seems more menacing than George Siegmann, who plays Bill Sykes, all the way up until the point when Bill brutally murders Nancy).  It also has a distinct advantage over the sound adaptations of the novel, most notably the wretched 1933 version and the Best Picture-winning Oliver! – because it is a silent film, we don’t really know how good of an actor Coogan is and it doesn’t matter.  He can’t possibly whine through his lines or make us cringe as he delivers them.  We can watch his eyes and either be taken in or not – but his voice and delivery can’t bring the film down like it does in other adaptations.  And we do have Chaney, the first of a long line of strong Fagins (do you remember who played Oliver in the various adaptations? – I certainly can’t – but it’s easy to remember Lon Chaney, Alec Guinness, Ron Moody or Ben Kingsley), with his makeup kit here at work, though not as hard as it would be in the next couple of years as the Phantom and the Hunchback.

The Source:

Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy’s Progress by Charles Dickens  (1839)

Here’s what I wrote about Oliver Twist three and a half years ago after my Year of Reading Dickens: “Well, there are two problems with the novel.  The first is Oliver himself, who can be quite clearly annoying, which is not exactly what you want from your title character.  But Oliver seems to be less the hero than simply the focal point.  There is the other problem of the coincidence that marks Oliver’s familial history, probably the most absurd plot point that Dickens ever came up with.  But in the end, they don’t actually matter that much because there are the characters, and they are brilliant from the beginning and stay that way until the end.  There isn’t just Fagin, a nasty depiction of a Jewish stereotype, yet a fascinating character nonetheless.  There is the Beedle, there is the deadly Bill Sykes and his faithful dog.  There is the tragic Nancy, who finally makes a decision to justify her life only to have it cost her that very life.  And there is, of course, the Artful Dodger.  While Dickens’ books are full of colorful characters, ones whose legacy will last for centuries, Oliver Twist is interesting in that it is all the morally devious characters that are the most worth reading about.  Nobility holds no sway in this novel.”

I did rank it 5th among the Dickens novels (although that was including A Christmas Carol).  It is an enjoyable read.  What’s odd is it is so often used to bring kids into reading Dickens when you consider some of the awful parts of the novel, especially the brutal murder of Nancy.  And just look at what is in store for poor Fagin at the end: “Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the centre of all – the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope , and all the hideous apparatus of death.”

The Adaptation:

Oliver Twist shows off one of the advantages that silent films had in adapting novels to the screen – the action didn’t have to be slowed down by the dialogue.  In this version, we get most of the action of the book, all of the major characters exactly as we know them and the story pretty much in its entirety.  And yet, it manages to do all of that in 74 minutes.  It does that because so much of the story can be shown by the action.  They don’t have to stop that often for an intertitle.  Of course, we get certain moments so we can be sure of what is happening, and key moments of dialogue, such as the revelation of Oliver’s parentage and of course, “Please sir, can I have some more?”  But this film, even at 74 minutes, is a very faithful adaptation of the novel, complete with Fagin in prison, likely awaiting execution.

Credits:

Directed by Frank Lloyd.  Adaptation by Lloyd and Harry Weill with intertitles by Walter Anthony.  This film was lost for decades and after it was found in the 1970′s without the intertitles, star Jackie Coogan and producer Sol Lesser helped to provide new intertitles.

The Birth of a Nation

The Film:

“To understand The Birth of a Nation we must first understand the difference between what we bring to the film, and what the film brings to us. All serious moviegoers must sooner or later arrive at a point where they see a film for what it is, and not simply for what they feel about it. The Birth of a Nation is not a bad film because it argues for evil. Like Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will, it is a great film that argues for evil. To understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil.”  That’s what Roger Ebert had to say about this film.  And the Mythical Monkey adds this: ”And there’s the rub: if you don’t bring an inate fear of blacks into the theater with you, if the thought of blacks voting, owning property, marrying whomever they want and even, gee whiz, running the country doesn’t inherently scare the pants off you, the last ninety minutes becomes unbearably tedious.”

And so, where do I come in on a film so important in the history of the medium and so repulsive in its beliefs?  Well, I wrote once about this film and essentially didn’t say much about it.  I wanted to do more than Roger Ebert had done, which was skip it in his initial Great Movies series and go with Broken Blossoms, and only go back to it later.  But I wasn’t quite certain what I wanted to say about it.  And I don’t know what more I can to what I have already said and what Ebert and the Monkey have said.

It comes down to this.  I admire the art that went into making this film.  It is very well put together, it has some very good acting (especially from Lilian Gish).  It has some inspired direction in it.  And the structure of the film itself works quite well, which is how it made it into the top 10 of my adapted scripts for the year while Broken Blossoms, which is also a great film, isn’t there.  But all of it is aimed towards a purpose that is totally foreign to me.  Racism is something that is taught – no one is born simply believing that one race is inherently inferior to another.  And it was never taught to me – not because I didn’t grow up in the South, but because I had parents who taught me otherwise.  And I would like to believe that I would have ended up believing that anyway – racism can be taught and clearly is taught, but we have the ability, as the human race, to move beyond what we are taught and think for ourselves.  This film teaches racism, in the way it distorts history.  And so I pull away from this film.  I admire its technique and despise its principle.

So, I will leave it at this.  The first half of this film is expertly made and has the same strong acting as the second half, but, because of the way the story proceeds, does not nearly have the same sense of vileness about it.  So, if you want to watch a piece of art, stop watching once the war ends.

The Source:

The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan by Thomas Dixon, Jr.  (1905), as well as the play of the same, also by Dixon and parts from The Leopard’s Spots, the first volume in the trilogy by Dixon

This should give you an idea of what to expect from this novel; the back cover of the copy I am looking at describes the KKK as such: “an organization formed with the intention of restoring the pride and prosperity of the South.”  On the other hand, the introduction hits the nail right on the head: “The first thing to be said in discussing Thomas Dixon, Jr.’s novel The Clansman is that no person of critical judgment thinks of it as having artistic conception or literary craftsmanship.”  Or, you can put it this way: this novel is a piece of vile, racist trash.

Why has he read it, you think to yourself.  Clearly he can’t have read every book just because of the film version?  Well, no.  But I actually read this for a class that dealt with race and literature (not a very good class) – we also read The Sound and the Fury (the reason I took the class), The Marrow of Tradition (a good book) and Passing (a very good book).  But I have long had the belief that just because a book can be taught, just because a book fits a particular subject, that doesn’t mean it merits inclusion.  The Clansman is poorly written – with plot and dialogue forcing the action forward clumsily, without much interest in its language.  It is a blunt hammer that Dixon intended to wield about his views on what he saw as an inferior race.  Other than those who are very interested in the film and want to see where it came from (don’t bother – the book is quite bad, while the film is quite well-made) or those who are forced to read it for a class, the only people I can possibly imagine this appealing to are vicious racists.  So, if that fits you, then by all means, go for it.

The Adaptation:

“The Clansman might have fallen by the wayside as another third-rate novel, even though it was for a while widely read, had it not been for its subsequent history.”  That also comes from the introduction to the novel.  And what the film does with the novel is quite amazing.  The novel is nothing but trash – it has no style, no quality, no art to it.  But what Griffith manages to do with the novel, at least in the first half of the film, takes what lies so dead on the page (after all, the war, for Dixon, is just something to get through in his story about the evil of blacks) and brings it vividly to life.  But in the second half of the film, he is hampered by the ridiculous story that Dixon has given to him – well, let’s just let the Monkey have his say again: “Not only is it racist and an unforgivable distortion of history—a point we’ll get to in a moment—it’s also essentially ludicrous, because as the film presents it, the fate of the entire post-war South, indeed, the nation, pivots on the rival ambitions of two men—the former Confederate officer and the black lieutenant governor—to get into Lillian Gish’s underpants.”  But, because Griffith, deep down, has the same kind of fears that Dixon had (if not, probably the same vicious hatred – that Griffith actually worked with blacks makes me at least think he’s a few levels above Dixon), he earnestly believes in this love story and that does keep the film down in the second half.  And that’s why the direction makes it into the top 5 for the era but the script can’t quite reach that point.  Because Griffith does such a good job with it in the first half, but in the second gets too bogged down trying to tell this ridiculous love story that the nation’s future is wound up in.

The Credits:

Production under the personal direction of D.W. Griffith.  Story arranged by D.W. Griffith and Frank E. Woods.  The credits only mention the novel The Clansman and not the play or any parts coming from The Leopard’s Spots.

The Avenging Conscience or ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’

The Film:

In the time between leaving Biograph Studios in 1913 and the release of The Birth of a Nation in 1915, D.W. Griffith continued to expand his films, making them longer and longer (indeed it was why he left Biograph – because they wanted to stay with shorts).  For this film, an adaptation of various works of Edgar Allan Poe, Griffith expanded to 84 minutes, the longest film he had yet made.  It is the story of a young man, raised by his uncle, who wants to marry, but his uncle won’t allow it.  Feeling closed in, with his options disappearing, he is inspired, watching a spider tackle its prey and a group of ants taking down a much larger bug to kill his uncle and free himself from his dilemma (the shots of the ants at work taking down the bug are especially impressive – a good early use of this kind of shot and looking better than miniatures would look, even decades later).  He kills his uncle, strangling him, then hiding the body away behind a bricked in wall of the fireplace.  But the guilt begins to overwhelm him – he begins to see his uncle’s ghost walking around, torturing him, accusing him (this is another good early use of visual effects – the ghost of the uncle is very effective; even more so when you consider how early this film was made).  He gives in to the madness while his love, tortured by her own knowledge of the affair, takes her life, leaping from a cliff.  Throughout the tale of their love and their eventual woe, we are treated to intertitles that quote directly from Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee”, with its beginning stanzas of pure romantic notions and its eventual tragic conclusions.  The film as a whole is very good (it also makes early use of what would eventually become commonplace – the whole thing is just a dream and the lovers end up being able to marry and the man is reconciled with his uncle), showing the talent that Griffith has as a writer and a director, especially when he wasn’t using either for racist purposes.

The Source:

“The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe  (1843, 1849)

There might not have been another short story writer who did with Poe did – grip us with terror and horror and intrigue, and always keep it short.  ”The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of his best stories (and best known), has been taught for decades in English classes and will probably continue to be taught.  In just a few short pages, hell in just a few short lines, Poe establishes our narrator as being completely and utterly insane, yet determined to inform us of exactly how sane he was (because he is methodical in the way that he kills the old man (“You fancy me mad.  Madmen know nothing.  But you should have seen me.”).  Of course, the beating of the man’s heart, echoing in our narrator’s brain, eventually forces him to give up the game.

Okay, do I really need to give the story of “The Tell Tale-Heart”?  Are there really people who have never read it?  And if so, why the hell not?  Go find it here.  It will just take a few minutes.  Then go find a good collection of Poe’s (see the link above) and delve into the terror and madness that he brings to every story.

As for “Annabel Lee”?  Well, it’s a magnificent poem, a haunting poem of the love of his wife, and yet the tragedy that would unfold upon them.  It works well as part of the film here, because of the air of tragedy surrounding every line, how we can go in just a few stanzas from “And this maiden she lived with no other thought / Than to love and be loved by me.” to “And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side / Of my darling – my darling – my life and my bride, / In the sepulchre there by the sea – / In her tomb by the sounding sea.”

The Adaptation:

This film is not a straight adaptation of either Poe’s story or his poem, of course.  What it does it takes an idea from the story (the murder of a person which leads to overwhelming guilt) and the haunting love story from the poem and finds a way to combine them together in a story that is, in its way, true to both of them.  With one major exception of course – in the end, all of the horrible events in the film – the murder, the guilt, the suicide – all turn out to be part of a horrible dream.  That is something that Poe, with his tragic life and dark sensibilities, never would have gone for.

Credits:

Written and directed by D.W. Griffith.  Based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.  Those are the official credits.  The poster itself mentions “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Poems of the Affections”.  The film clearly uses “Annabel Lee” as it actually quotes the text in the intertitles.  The IMDb specifically lists “The Pit and the Pendulum”, while the KINO DVD says it is “flavored with shades of ‘The Pit and the Pendulum,’ ‘The Black Cat,’ and ‘The Conqueror Worm.’”  Really, it uses “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Annabel Lee” and then simply is very Poe-esque.

Other Noteworthy Adaptations:

These are all films that are ***.5 (except Broken Blossoms, which is ****), mostly with pretty good scripts that I at least considered for my Nighthawk Awards.  Unlike the list at the bottom, only two of these have I read the source material (Zorro and Monte Cristo).

• Tillie’s Punctured Romance  (1914, dir. Mack Sennett)  -  the first feature length-comedy and the first feature-length film with Chaplin (as opposed to a Chaplin film – this, in fact, would be the last film Chaplin would ever be in that he would not direct himself) – a wonderful comedy from the stage play
• A Man There Was  (1917, dir. Victor Sjostrom)  -  another strong dramatic silent Sjostrom film, available on the same DVD as Ingeborg Holm, based on a verse poem from Henrik Ibsen that was written before his major plays
• Broken Blossoms  (1919, dir. D.W. Griffith)  -  a great film, with a great performance from Lilian Gish, adapted from “The Chink and the Child” a 1916 short story by Thomas Burke
• The Mark of Zorro  (1920, dir. Fred Niblo)  -  The first Zorro film, adapted from the story “The Curse of Capistrano” by Johnston McCulley, published the year before.  It encouraged McCulley to write a number of more Zorro stories and the character would return again and again over the years.  There would also be Don Q, Son of Zorro in 1926, which isn’t as good.
• The Penalty  (1920, dir. Wallace Worsley)  -  A pulp novel by Gouverneur Morris, this was turned into a very effective silent film for Lon Chaney.
• Way Down East  (1920, dir. D.W. Griffith)  -  adapted from the 19th century play and starring Gish again.
• Orphans of the Storm  (1921, dir. D.W. Griffith)  -  based on the play The Two Orphans, another strong outing from Griffith and Gish
• The Phantom Chariot  (1921, dir. Victor Sjostrom)  -  Another very good Sjostrom film, this one adapted from Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness, a 1912 novel by Selma Lagerlöf who had won the Nobel Prize (the first female to do so) in 1909.
• Monte Cristo  (1922, dir. Emmett J. Flynn)  -  The first, and probably the best adaptation of the Dumas novel.  Like many of the films on this list, it adapts the stage version rather than going back to the original novel.  It stars John Gilbert in one of his most effective roles.
• Phantom  (1922, dir. F.W. Murnau)  -  Another very good film, again adapted from a Nobel Prize winner, this time Gerhart Hauptmann, who had won the prize in 1912, and whose 1922 novel this is based on.
• Nibelungen: Siegfried  (1924, dir. Fritz Lang)  -  this, along with the second film (which isn’t as well-written), Nibelungen: Kriemheld’s Revenge, are adapted from the epic High German poem
• The Merry Widow  (1925, dir. Erich von Stroheim)  -  adapted from the musical comedy, of course, absent the music, and really, absent the comedy, but still good because of von Stroheim

Silent Shakespeare:

Silent Shakespeare is a tricky thing.  So much of what is key about Shakespeare is the language.  Do you really want to be denied that poetic beauty?  Well, if you do, here are three solid adaptations.  All of them truncate massive amounts of the plays, but since they’re not speaking the lines, that is a lot easier.

• Richard III  (1912, dir. James Keane)  -  The earliest surviving feature-length film.  Very good, with a strong performance from Frederick Warde as Richard.
• King Lear  (1916, dir. Ernest C. Warde)  -  A solid King Lear, again with Warde (whose son directed), who is even better this time around.
• Othello  (1922, dir. Dimitri Buchowetzki)  -  It has a strong performance from Emil Jannings as Othello, but otherwise is not that notable.

The Rest:

There are a number of decent adaptations of major books in this stretch as well (all from books I have read, which is the reason I watched most of them).  I don’t necessarily recommend or not recommend any of them.  I give most of them a medium ***.  They include:

• His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz  (1914, dir. J. Farrell MacDonald)  -  this, along with the Wizard of Oz listed below are available on the 3 DVD set of The Wizard of Oz
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea  (1916, dir. Stuart Paton)  -  noteworthy sets and visual effects for the time
• A Tale of Two Cities  (1917, dir. Frank Lloyd)
• Tarzan of the Apes  (1918, dir. Scott Sidney)  -  follows the book closer than probably any other version
• The Last of the Mohicans  (1920, dir. Clarence Brown)
• The Three Musketeers  (1921, dir. Fred Niblo)  -  fun, for Fairbanks enthusiasts, but not a great film
• Sherlock Holmes  (1922, dir. Albert Parker)  -  with John Barrymore as the famous sleuth
• Peter Pan  (1924, dir. Herbert Brenon)  -  one of the weakest pre-Oscar films I have seen – only gets **.5
• Ben-Hur  (1925, dir. Fred Niblo)  -  not great writing, but the film, like the later magnificent version, is a good spectacle – the best film on this part of the list
• Cyrano de Bergerac  (1925, dir. Augusto Genina)
• The Wizard of Oz  (1926, dir. Larry Semon)
• Nana  (1926, dir. Jean Renoir)

What We Don’t Have:

A number of silent films have been lost over the years (or are extremely hard to find).  There are a number of silent adaptations of Shakespeare and Dickens that we longer have available to see.  But there are also the following, all of which I wish I could find at least once:

• Life Without Soul  (1915, dir. Joseph W. Smiley)  -  The first feature-length version of Frankenstein.
• Les Miserables  (1917, dir. Frank Lloyd)  -  Made the same year, and with the same star and director as A Tale of Two Cities, I wonder if this would be any less lackluster.
• The Darling of Paris  (1917, dir. J. Gordon Edwards)  -  The first feature-length version of Hunchback, this starred Theda Bara in a version that focused on Esmeralda.
• Der Januskopf  (1920, dir. F.W. Murnau)  -  Murnau’s version of Jekyll and Hyde, now lost.  It has 59 votes on the IMDb even though no one younger than about 90 could have ever seen it.  Starred Conrad Veidt and damn I wish it were around.
• Main Street  (1923, dir. Harry Beaumont)
• Raskolnikow  (1923, dir. Robert Wiene)  -  I have found the second half online (and possibly could have found the rest if I looked harder) and it looks intriguing but flawed, with a very disturbing lead performance.  This is from the director of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
• Babbitt  (1924, dir. Harry Beaumont)  -  Sinclair Lewis was adapted a lot early on – his Arrowsmith was made into a Best Picture nominee in 1931, his Dodsworth the same in 1936  -  but since the 30′s, there’s really only been the BP nominated Elmer Gantry.  Beaumont, who would later direct The Broadway Melody (badly, I feel I should point out), the second film to win Best Picture, directed these two silent versions of two of Lewis’ best books that are now lost.
• The Great Gatsby  (1926, dir. Herbert Brenon)  -  The first version of Gatsby, starring that incomparable ham, Warner Baxter.  Now lost, and possibly for the best, given that it stars Baxter and that Brenon’s Peter Pan is one of the weakest silent films I’ve seen.

Based on the novel by  Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner explores redemption and healing and where we find our self-worth. The story follows Amir, his childhood in Afghanistan, his growing up in American, and his return to Afghanistan to rescue the son of his childhood friend Hassan. Redemption themes never get old, which is perhaps why this type of story loves to be retold and re-read many many times. In the novel, the words read like a this-could-be-me story. When watching the movie, you never want to take your eyes away.
Characters
Again, rich and very true to life. Amir as a child is sweet but selfish. Grown-up Amir is more humble and works very hard to overcome guilt and cowardice. You see yourself in his inner journey.
Hassan is the character you love. He avoids being the flat character for all the crap that happens to him.
Sohrab is the character that most breaks your heart. So young and so aware of the world and so many burdens. He’s the one you want to love, but won’t let you int.
Acting
Khalida Abdalla, Atossa Leoni, and the one and only Shaun Toub. I love that I’d never heard of any of the actors in this film(except Mr. Toub) because in that way, I feel I was able to see the characters more clearly. Performances were subtle and authentic.
Scenery.
Kabul, Afghanistan and Fremont, CA. All beautiful.
Music
I bought the soundtrack. Michael Nowak and the Hollywood Studio Symphony create an ambience that is, again, subtle and potent.
Memories
I watched the movie with my partner who said they couldn’t tell the movie was based on a book, so good it was. More of my memories are with the novel, which I loved and highly recommend.

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You know that magic moment when you’ve discovered a hidden gem of a movie?  That moment when you see something totally different and you cannot wait to introduce your friends, your family, and random strangers on the Internet to something totally unique and unknown?  And then the feeling following when you realize, you’re not the first to discover it, not the second or third, but the nine hundred, fifty seven thousandth.  That happened with me and VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS (1970).  It turns out this is a classic unbeknownst to me, a film that influenced many that came after it (including being the inspiration for 1983’s IN THE COMPANY OF WOLVES), is currently playing on Criterion’s Hulu channel, and is taught in many college courses from Women’s Studies to Eastern European History.  I feel like my eyes have been opened, much like Valerie’s (albeit, to a much less profound degree).

For those who haven’t experienced it yet, VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS is a fairy tale from Czechoslovakia.  Not one of your Disney fables, but as they were in the Grimm days.  Thirteen-year-old Valerie is awakened from an afternoon nap when a thief steals her beloved earrings, the lone gift left by her long lost mother.  No worries, as they are returned the next day.  Only, now she begins menstruating, and when she puts the earrings back on, she can see the world as it really is.  Her suitor is now an eagle, the travelling missionary is a weasel, and her small village is overrun with vampires, from the local priest to her friend’s new husband, to her own grandmother.  The priest wants to corrupt her innocence, her grandmother wants to steal her youth, the eagle is hiding a dangerous secret, and nothing but evil seems to come from the missionary.  Can Valerie survive with her body and soul intact, or will she become yet another ‘monster’ herself?

Yes, a lot of the imagery in VALERIE is heavy-handed.  Weasels, vampires, demons…these were hardly unique in the seventies, and are even less so now.  But that hardly matters in VALERIE’s world.  The imagery is so stunning that it more than makes up for the lack of originality in the symbols.  ‘Lyrical’ is the best word I can come up with to describe the pacing.  Valerie moves through the week with such a gentle ease, despite the madness surrounding her.  And it’s hard to believe that Jaroslava Schallerova, the actress who portrayed Valerie, was only 13 herself when she made this flick.  She carries the movie, being in nearly every shot, without faltering, with a performance more nuanced than what most performers three times her age are capable of.  The only downside has nothing to do with the movie itself, but rather the DVD.  The subtitles are seriously lacking in the region 1 release from Facets Video.  It’s not quite at the “All your base are belong to us” level, but there are moments when it gets closer than it should.  From what I understand, the region 2 disc from Redemption, is much better, and I can only assume that Criterion’s streaming version is tightened and some of the grammatical issues have been fixed.

Coming up with a drink for this one was a little tricky.  In the past year, the Czech Republic put major restrictions on hard alcohol.  However, beer is more popular than ever over there.  So what would be a good beer drink to honor Valerie’s transition from childhood innocence to adulthood?  I present to you the:

BEER FLOAT

Ingredients:
Fruit flavored ale
Chocolate ice cream

Directions: Feel free to adapt this to taste.  I used an apricot ale.  Strawberry ice cream was attempted, but the flavor was too light to stand up to the chocolate.

Kolaches, like VALERIE, are little bits of Eastern European deliciousness that I’ve only recently discovered. They can be made with sweet fillings or, as I used them here, with savory meat for a meal.  But they do need a vegetable side.  Boiled cabbage is a popular Czech side, but that’s not something I wanted to put people (or myself) through.  So I did the next best thing:

KOLACHES WITH BRUSSELS SPROUTS

Ingredients for the Kolaches:
1 roll refrigerated French bread dough
½ Polska Kielbasa, diced
8 mushrooms, diced
½ onion, diced

Directions: Preheat the oven to 375.  Sauté the sausage, mushrooms and onion until the veggies are cooked through.  Divide the bread dough into 8 equal parts.  Flatten each piece into a disc and put onto a greased cookie sheet.  Divide the filling evenly onto the center of the discs and press down with the palm of your hand.

Ingredients (for the Brussels sprouts):
1 pound Brussels sprouts, halved or quartered (depending on the size)
Other ½ of the onion, diced.
6 slices of bacon, cut into strips.

Directions: Toss the ingredients together and put on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake both of these, at the same time, for 25 minutes.

One of the most popular Czech desserts is a pastry called a Trdelnik.  It’s an elaborate bit of sugary goodness that takes multiple risings, and has to be baked over an open fire on a spit.  As delicious as they are, it’s too much work and too much of an expense, involving equipment that you’ll maybe use once or twice again.  Instead, I took the traditional flavors of the Trdelnik and put them into a bread pudding:

MOCK TRDELNIK

Ingredients:
1 small loaf cinnamon bread, cubed
4 eggs
¾ cup milk
¼ cup sugar
1 can tart cherries (NOT pie filling, but the kind that are packed in water), drained.

Directions: Beat the eggs, milk and sugar.  Fold in the bread and cherries.  Pour into buttered baking dish (this can be done ahead of time and stored in the refrigerator until ready to bake).  Bake in an oven preheated to 350 for 25 to 30 minutes, or until done.  Can be served hot, room temperature, or cold, but best served with whipped cream.

I’ve seen my share of Female Puberty Horrors in my day. From CARRIE to GINGER SNAPS to countless others in between, the transformation from girl to woman has been done so many times as lycanthropic transformation, the emergence of witchly powers, as a sign that the demons within her has emerged with her menstrual blood.  It’s a welcome change in VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS that, it’s not the girl who is evil, but the world around her.  The added bonus is that it’s a fantastic movie that, although muddled at times, is both fascinating and gorgeous to watch.  If you’re in the same boat I was and have never seen it, do so now, and hopefully you’ll enjoy the dinner as well.

© Copyright 2013 by Jenny Orosel

Well, this will make two video plugs within a month… But this one, I promise, was also a good one. It is possible I liked it more because I, A) learned some history about another part of the world, while B) being able to connect to the advertising side of myself, while C) trying to practice the Spanish I’ve been teaching myself (using an online program).

But hey, other people must have liked it too – it was at Sundance. And if that’s not enough, it has Gael Garcia Bernal (which is why my friend wanted to watch it).

P.S. If you happen to have a crush on Gael like my friend, The Science of Sleep is a fairly random French movie I watched him in. It has a stuffed horse that comes alive, and that’s all that really matters.

Synopsis:

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Il fantasma dell’opera 4.0

eyelights: Julian Sands. the nude baths sequence.

eyesores: Asia Argento. the ridiculous script. the campy tone.

‘Il fantasma dell’opera’ is Dario Argento’s take on the literary classic Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, by Gaston Leroux. Released in 1998, it’s one of the most recent adaptations, in a long line of big screen, television and stage renditions of all kinds.

This is possibly the least palatable of the bunch.

Although 1989’s ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, featuring Robert Englund as The Phantom, is often cited as the worst version out there, one could easily make a case for Argento’s unimaginative, dull and patently absurd twist on the tale.

To be perfectly honest, I can’t even be bothered to argue for or against it.

I was so thoroughly bored that my mind quickly decided to excrete this mnemonic refuse. I just don’t care. I was so ambivalent that once the credits rolled I couldn’t muster the effort needed to watch the special features – some of them astonishingly short.

Thus, the best I can do in this case is to provide a few salient points, in the hope that it will prove somewhat insightful:

-‘Il fantasma dell’opera’ is based on the original book, but it takes many liberties. For one, The Phantom has been raised by rats in the catacombs. Yes, raised by rats – much like The Penguin was raised by penguins in ‘Batman Returns’. However, nothing explains why The Phantom seems well-groomed (and unscarred!), can speak English and is telepathic. Apparently Mowgli and Tarzan missed out by being raised in the jungle.

-Asia Argento plays the lead, Christine, in an exceptionally execrable “performance” – likely the worst aspect of the film. Asia’s delivery was absolutely ghastly, but the worst of it were her operatic performances, which were so poorly lip-synched and delivered as to be risible. Now, I understand why she was getting the loving support of her father, but Dario truly should have done himself a favour and hired real actresses for his films. Heck, Hitchcock only hired his daughter a few times – and in minor roles at that.

-There’s this very intriguing bath sequence, which was meant to evoke a Roman orgy in some fashion – but done on the cheap. Anyway, I found this scene particularly interesting because it featured gay coupling and even obese people, all fully nude, and it made them all look pretty good, or at the very least dignified. I’d say that this is the biggest highlight of the film because it eschewed conventions and did it with a certain amount of class. Surprising, especially in a horror film, but a nice surprise.

-The opera house’s rat catcher has caught over a thousand rats, and he keep the tails as trophies. Seriously, when he boasted about how many rats he’d caught in so short a time, I couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t just burn the place down; what a disaster area. But, when I saw his Rat-kart, a motor vehicle he devised precisely for catching them, and the bizarrely cartoonish sequence it’s featured in, my disgust turned to the film – why didn’t anyone just burn the celluloid?

From the onset, one of the key issues for me was that I was unsure as to whether ‘Il fantasma dell’opera’ was intentionally camp or not. Was Dario making a bad film on purpose, or had he totally lost it? This shows none of the vaunted skill that the icon has built his career on. Once favourably compared to Hitchcock, with this film one can’t help but feel disappointment at seeing that he’s become nothing more than a mere straight-to-video hack.

Um… unless he meant to make a campy film, and skillfully succeeded, that is. Which would then beg the question: Why?

After all, ‘Il fantasma dell’opera’ is not a film one would want to add to one’s legacy. Dario Argento had a reputation for making intriguing, if imperfect, films that were compelling enough to garner him a significant fanbase. It made him into an icon of horror cinema. He has had much influence on the genre, so the mind reels at the thought that he would jeopardize it all on purpose.

Be that as it may be, what I remember most about this picture is a long haze of nothing, frequently punctuated by short moments of ineptitude of all kinds – mostly from the cast, the script and its once-legendary director. Honestly, the only reason I rate it as highly as I do is because I didn’t actually hate it; I was far too disconnected and ambivalent to care. This ‘Phantom’ could vanish, and I really wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

Post scriptum: Rifftrax have made a commentary track for this particular film. That should be a hoot, so there’s a chance I might actually watch this movie again – but for laughs this time. Thank you, Rifftrax!

Date of viewing: March 20, 2013

As Brady Corbet & his director Antonio Campos talk about the many and varied sex scenes in this chilling erotic thriller”Simon Killer”, guess what? The interview heats up, too!

Synopsis: Oh Dae-Su is kidnapped on the night of his daughter’s birthday. After being released from a 15-year imprisonment, Oh Dae-Su sets out to find his captor and take his vengeance.

Director: Chan-Wook Park

Screenwriter: Jo-Yun Hwang, Chun-Hyeong Lim, Chan-Wook Park

Main cast: Min-sik Choi, Ji-Tae Yu, Hye-Jeong Kang

You know how David Fincher films always have kick-ass opening title sequences that grab your attention without fail (think the Salander inkblot art with Karen-O singing Immigrant Song from Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)? Well, that’s how I felt for over two hours watching Chan-Wook Park’s Oldboy. The first 20 minutes alone is so powerful that I’m convinced it can stand strong as a short film and still win a prestigious award from Europe. I keep wondering why this wasn’t shown in our film classes back in college.

Our hero, Oh Dae-Su (Min-sik Choi), introduces himself to us as a drunk creating a ruckus inside a police station. The audience sees him through the eyes of the policemen, where in turn, Oh Dae-Su makes eye contact with the audience. This stretches on to the middle and end of the film, mostly during the imprisonment scenes, as a tool to invite people who are watching to fully engage themselves in his story. Even though every plot turn or dialogue is seen through a third person perspective, the audience feels attached and personally affected to everything happening to Oh Dae-Su because of it. Chan-Wook Park gave us enough time to absorb the unfortunate situation of 15 years with no human contact or reason for imprisonment. We are with him in his solitude, desperation, his hunger for vengeance, but most of all, his curiosity. It’s incredible how that final factor greatly contributes to the direction of the plot, the characters, and the audience’s tight grip on their chairs, aching for answers. Now that is great scriptwriting.

Chan-wook Park’s style of having the characters hold positions right before a climactic action really gives suspense a different feel. It is not slow motion nor is it a freeze frame, but five-second pauses that appear to go on for hours. What I liked most about the violence in this movie was that it was believable, none of the campy slashes of blood flying through the air or comic kung fu but pure fist fights and knife jabs. There was a perfect balance—mindless sadistic gore with just the right amount of blood and magnitude of screams. Below is my favorite sequence of the movie, an uncut shot of Oh Dae-Su single-handedly taking down around 15 or 20 thugs. Observe how it’s not at all effortless on his part, which would be the case for most films. Don’t worry, no spoilers here!

A movie where having a triumphant villain makes a better story is a rare find, but Oldboy has successfully become a gem amongst ordinary stories of the knight slaying the dragon through Jin-Woo (Ji-Tae Yu). He’s probably the most sick-minded and unforgiving character I’ve ever seen but I love him for it, making him a close second to Nurse Ratched in the ranks of antagonists that make their films. He is a puppeteer not only to Oh Dae-Su, but to the audience as well. There are many times when you and Oh Dae-Su are led to believe that he was outsmarted or stumped, but Jin Woo will always be a step ahead and maps out your actions long before you even thought about them. His mind works like the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008), only Jin-Woo channels his aggression to a specific source and not the entire world. Imagine having the Joker’s crazy, which is showered upon thousands out of anarchy, is directed unto you with the blackest hatred. Yes, be very afraid.

As for the last character, Mi-Do (Hye-Jeong Kang), there really isn’t much to say about her other than that she’s young and cute. Definitely part of the fan service for all the perverts out there who dream of having a virgin teenager cry for your sex despite your potato-sack-like, middle-aged state. What’s interesting about how Mi-Do’s character was written is her gradual significance in the movie. Every hero needs his damsel, but things happen and certain secrets are unearthed—let’s just say she’s more than just a girl to protect from the evil clutches of Jin-Woo.

If there was one part I didn’t like, or at least found to break my concentration for a bit, is the cliche research scene in the library. Granted, it is pretty appropriate due to the circumstances, I wish I didn’t associate libraries to gross horror-flicks with teenagers discovering how to kill a succubus from a Satanic book found in the Restricted Area. But that’s just me being shallow and in desperate search for a flaw in this movie.

I believe Oldboy deserves no less than a 11/10 stars ★★★★★★★★★★★!!! This is storytelling through pictures at its best, with every element falling into place at the right moment and at the right time. I’ve never felt so good about being toyed with by moving pictures. It is a part of The Revenge Trilogy, the rest of which will be watched over the weekend since I have desk work to attend to. Also, be warned! A Hollywood remake is going to be released this year, so spare yourselves a catastrophic adaption which will crush all interest in watching the original one. Instead, indulge in Chan-Wook Park’s cinematic masterpiece and kill any bit of curiosity for a glamorized revenge movie. Have some popcorn ready!

Cue The Crow!

Intrigued? I thought so! How can you possibly NOT want to spend time with Richard Burton – just to find out exactly WHY he spends SO MUCH TIME in the movie with a crow on his shoulder?

And Raquel Welch Was, Indeed, “The Nun!”

WHAT?!?!?!?! Yes, “Bluebeard” stars Raquel Welch playing the world’s sexiest Nun!

Behold “Bluebeard”!

Time to introduce you to “Bluebeard”, a 1972 thriller starring Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, Joey Heatherton and Sybil Danning. It was filmed in Budapest, Hungary and directed by Edward Dmytryk.

Hello “Euro-Sleaze”!

“Bluebeard” is a perfect example of the 70′s genre of film known as “euro-sleaze”, cheap films filmed in eastern Europe full of nudity, sex and violence. That’s why the film is stocked with young starlets like Joey Heatherton!

Richard Burton was clearly slumming in this film, but euro-sleaze fans are all the better for it! Take a look at the movie’s poster!

Bluebeard

In case you need this information, here is the plot: A World War I pilot, who everyone envies as a “ladykiller” actually is one – because after he beds and marries a beautiful woman, he murders them – and keeps them in a freezer!

Here is the trailer:

The film is based on the classic story of “Bluebeard” by Charles Perrault – the story of a wealthy aristocrat (Burton) who has murdered several previous wives. And yes, he seduces the sexy Nun Raquel Welch and kills her too!

His latest spouse is sexy Joey Heatherton, who discovers her dead predecessors in a freezer and tries to avoid their fate!

Yep, Superstar Raquel Welch AND young starlet Joey Heatherton co-starred with Burton in this classic slice of sleaze! I guess they paid well!

Burton is onscreen with a multitude of beautiful women, such as Sybil Danning, and everyone had to show nudity or at least wear provocative outfits…

Hey! Where’s Raquel?

Before you rush out for this Raquel Welch starring role, know this: even though she was top billed second after Richard Burton, Raquel Welch only has 8-minutes of screen time in this two hour long film!

Why I Love Raquel Welch!

“Bluebeard” is just one reason to love Raquel Welch – if you want to see more of her classic roles – including her hilarious appearance on “Seinfeld”, check this out:

http://johnrieber.com/2012/09/13/raquel-raquel-60s-sex-symbol-and-c-c-c-catfight-seinfeld-star-raquel-welch/

This Movie Is NUTS!

The pleasures of “Bluebeard” go way beyond Raquel – the film is a virtual non-stop celebration of sleaze…remember, it’s the story of a celebrated German pilot who has “a way” with women – because he does “away” with them!

Among the trivia about the movie: The various Nazi uniforms in the film are inaccurate – the colors are wrong and even the swastika was turned into a strangely shaped cross.

This may have been for legal reasons, because in Germany the use of Nazi emblems is strictly regulated.

But apparently freezing beautiful women isn’t a problem!

And in case European audiences didn’t understand just HOW sleazy this film was, they made sure to put a crazed Burton staring at a naked woman on the poster as well! Enjoy!

Synopsis:

Sure to drive you wild – here’s one of the funniest, most hysterically campy movies ever made: The Mighty Peking Man! A powerful earthquake awakens a giant, ape-like creature who descends from the mountains into the treacherous jungles of India. Later, an expedition of greedy showmen capture the fearsome beast, bringing him…and the scantily clad blond bombshell he protects…back to civilization! But payback comes when The Mighty Peking Man breaks loose and begins to run amok in the heart of the city! An outrageous adventure that never takes itself too seriously – treat yourself to a guilty pleasure that has entertained critics and late-night movie audiences everywhere!

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Xing xing wang 6.75

eyelights: Evelyne Kraft. its so-bad-it’s-good quality. its general ineptitude.
eyesores: you name it. its general ineptitude.

Is it King Kong? Is it Mighty Joe Young? Nah… it’s just Goliathon. Um, I mean, it’s Mighty Peking Man!

‘Xing xing wang’ is a 1976 movie that was championed by Quentin Tarantino in the ’90s, going so far as to actually re-releasing it in cinemas through his Rolling Thunder Pictures company and then on home video under the title of ‘The Mighty Peking Man’ (it was originally released in the US in 1980 as ‘Goliathon’).

I remember sitting down to watch it with a buddy of mine, but falling asleep early on and sleeping through the rest of it. Snicker, snicker… I guess I was really tired that evening. Honestly, I wasn’t especially impressed by what little I had seen, and never planned to see it again, even though my buddy had liked it.

I recently acquired a DVD copy of it for dirt cheap, knowing that I was going to watch a bunch of kaiju movies in coming months, including many Gojira and Gamera ones. I figured that it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to give this one another shot; I have learned to appreciate bad movies in the last decade, so why not? Plus which the Rolling Thunder’s re-release ‘Switchblade Sisters’ had its moments.

Anyway, there’s not much one can say about a cheap Hong Kong rip off of ‘King Kong’. It will feel vaguely familiar to anyone who’s seen it:

A few businessmen decide to track down a mythic creature in the Himalayas so that they can bring it back and make a fortune off of it. Hiring the best adventurer that they can find, a man with nothing to lose, they bring the big ape (and his human female companion) back to Hong Kong. Thing don’t go well. Destruction abounds. The big beast takes a swan dive off of a skyscraper after being shot by helicopters. The end.

What’s great about the picture is that it’s done in such a hilariously inept fashion that you can’t help but laugh at it the whole way through. Between the outrageously dumb script, filled with exaggerated behaviour and simple-minded drama, the horrible cast and the cheesy production, this has all the makings of a late-night classic (Oh, how I wish that Mystery Science Theatre 3000 had done this one! It would have been totally delish!).

So why watch this particular bad movie over another equally bad one? What makes this one stand out favourably? Two words: Evelyne Kraft.

In my estimation, Evelyne Kraft was pretty awesome in the part of Ann Darrow… uh… I mean, Ah Wei. Her acting wasn’t stellar, but it’s easy to believe that she had the capacity for toughness; she tried hard enough. Plus which she was disheveled, but yummy as can be; she was always made up and looked fresh, tanned, fit – just like a REAL jungle woman! And is there anything more endearing than a woman who can command and cuddle with leopards? I think not!

But, beyond this, the film doesn’t have many redeeming qualities (and Evelyne Kraft is probably pushing it for most people, I know…): the model-work looked like it was made in someone’s basement, the rear-projections were far too obvious, the special effects totally lacked subtlety, and the ending was extremely abrupt – not that we could ever expect fantastic storytelling from a ‘King Kong ‘rip-off, in the first place, right?.

‘Xing xing wang’ is no mighty cinematic achievement, but fans of bad movies will have a hoot watching this monster picture; it’s so ineptly put together that the right kind of people could have a total blast watching it, laughing at its expense. All others should steer clear, however: there’s not much to see here – even less so than Ai Wei’s two-piece. Not that that’s enough to get the average person to cling to this big dumb ape movie anyway.

Date of viewing: March 18, 2013

“Let It Be” – Call It “Let It Be Released!”

There is no argument: The Beatles are the most influential musical group of all time. In a space of six years, they helped change music for all time. Their music was at the forefront of social and political change in our country…culminating in the release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, without a doubt the most influential album ever released:

And In The End…

But within three years, it was all over. And the last Beatles album is the story of a band disintegrating – and the entire process was captured on camera!

“Let It Be” – The Documentary!

An inside look at the recording of the last Beatles album was filmed, released in theaters – and shortly on VHS – and now is in limbo…

The Beatles filmed a documentary that detailed the making of their final album…it was released in theaters in the early 70′s, and was also released briefly on VHS in the mid-80′s before being pulled…and now it sits unseen except by Beatles fanatics like me who own a copy…

Here is the original theatrical trailer:

“Let It Be” was the last Beatles album released, but “Abbey Road” was actually recorded AFTER it. All Beatles fans know that “Abbey Road” was the last album the foursome made together, but it was released first – as the master tapes for “Let It Be” sat on a shelf…

As you know, the “Let It Be” sessions did not go well at all – there are many books on the subject, but any Beatles fan knows that the group wanted “Let It Be” to capture a “live” feel to their new music, and they filmed the studio recording sessions for a documentary that was scheduled to be released simultaneously…

The film was originally planned as a television documentary which would accompany a concert broadcast. When plans for a broadcast were dropped, the project became a feature film. Here they are listening to the tracks…with Yoko a permanent part of the recording sessions…

Although the film does not dwell on the dissension within the group at the time, it provides some glimpses into the dynamics that would lead to The Beatles’ break-up. Yoko’s attendance is part of the unspoken friction, as well as Paul’s push to make the music better, alienating George as a result…

The documentary includes a tense exchange as Paul tries to help George play his part, and George does NOT appreciate it…

There are several moments in the film that capture the intensity of their artistic process, and that is what makes this documentary so valuable. The film “Let It Be” has not been officially available since the 1980s, although original and bootleg copies of home video releases still circulate.

Is There A Light At The End Of “Let It Be”‘s Tunnel?

The film’s director Michael Lindsay-Hogg has stated that the film may be released on DVD and Blu-ray sometime in 2013…but nothing more has surfaced. However, there ARE ways to see the movie, at least parts of it!

The Beatles Won Oscars!

Here is some great trivia: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr collectively won an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for the film. Yes, The Beatles were Oscar winners!

The Legendary Rooftop Concert!

While the documentary includes the recording sessions, it also includes the legendary “live” rooftop concert in London…when The Beatles played live version of “Don’t Let Me Down” and “Get Back”, among others…

Of course, John’s classic “I hope we passed the audition” line from the performance is iconic…some of this performance has been”officially” included in the massive Beatles documentary, and much of it bootlegged online.

Here is “Don’t Let Me Down”:

But fans really deserve a pristine copy of this film, which captures all aspects of the band!
With all of the ongoing reissues of material by and about The Beatles, it’s time for this gritty documentary to be released!

“Let It Be” Naked!

If you go to iTunes, they have added the “Let It Be Naked” project, which takes the original master tapes from the “Let It Be” sessions and returns them to their original rawness.

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were involved in removing all of Phil Spector’s lush orchestration, and the result is another interesting way to appreciate the work…but give us the uncut documentary as well!

All Beatles! All The Time!

Here are some additional posts about The Beatles you might enjoy as well:

This is a great book that looks at ALL of The Beatles solo work – re-imagined as Beatles Albums:

http://johnrieber.com/2013/03/03/exclusive-the-lost-beatles-album-the-fab-fours-solo-songs-remixed/

Ram On!

Need a mega Macca fix? Well, then without a doubt you have already bought the remastered expanded version of McCartney’s “RAM”…

Check out this post, which is an in-depth look at Macca’s brilliant “RAM”, his John Lennon feud and the money battles behind the breakup of the band:

http://johnrieber.com/2012/08/20/macca-ram-on-paul-mccartneys-masterpiece-john-lennons-fury-a-beatles-c-c-c-catfight/

And finally, a fascinating look at John Lennon’s tirade against Todd Rundgren…

Todd Is God! Oh, But John’s Pissed At Him!

Here is another fascinating, little remembered feud:

Check out this post, which discusses the feud between John Lennon and Todd Rundgren, and the tragic Mark David Chapman connection between them:

http://johnrieber.com/2013/01/21/todd-is-god-todd-rundgrens-brilliant-music-and-john-lennon-feud/

And above all, keep listening to the music!

Synopsis:

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Den brysomme mannen 8.0

eyelights: the concept. the lead. the slightly “off” quality of this alternate reality.
eyesores: the grey emotional palette.

For approximately a year now, I’ve been told by friends that I should absolutely see ‘ Den brysomme mannen’. I already had a copy, but for various reasons I hadn’t gotten around to it. It was on my radar, though: it seemed like exactly the kind of thing I would enjoy. Still, even with a little prodding from my peeps, it took me forever.

I was feeling really out of it a couple of weeks ago, kind of burnt out from all the work and incessant activities, so I decided to give it a whirl. I figured that if anything could snap me out of my stupor, it would be a quirky Norwegian film with a wry sense of humour. My favourites movies tend to be quirky (case-in-point: ‘Grosse Pointe Blank‘ or ‘Being There‘), so I figured that it would be a safe bet.

Unfortunately, my timing may have been off.

While the film is certainly quite unusual, in an amusingly offbeat fashion, and I got a lot of chuckles out of it, it has a depressive neutrality to it that I hadn’t anticipated – and which wasn’t exactly suitable for lifting my spirits. If anything, it dulled the enjoyment that I was deriving from it, surrounding each moment of delight with bleakness.

‘Den brysomme mannen’ is about a man who commits suicide and wakes up in an alternate reality, one where a whole existence is handed to him on a plate, with no efforts or concerns to be had. The problem is that nothing has any flavour there, whether it be emotionally or experientially – all the highs and lows of life are muted.

The problem is that our protagonist, Andreas, is left unsatisfied by this lack of stimuli. Unlike the others in this soulless “utopia”, who don’t want to be troubled and thus go through their daily motions without a care in the world, he longs for more. Although he was unable to handle the intensity of his former life, he doesn’t want everything dialled down.

So he pushes boundaries, discovering that everything is joyless, attempts to escape the city, and tries to commit suicide again. But there is no escape from the dreariness. Even his romantic and sexual encounters are zestless, given his partners’ general lack of passion. It’s only in overhearing an escaping melody -the only music in this world- that his hope is renewed.

The humour of ”Den brysomme mannen’ comes through in the subtly absurd moments, such as the way that people relate to one another, the value that they place on their everyday activities, the generical blandness of everything, Andreas’ mild bewilderment and the contrasting qualities of this reality versus the world that we live in. It’s not a laugh riot, but it’s certainly quite amusing.

But what makes the picture truly fascinating is its seemingly allegorical side. I say seemingly, because the film never actually explains where Andreas is from, nor where he ends up. Was he on Earth, in our reality? Or was he in another reality similar to our own? And why was he transported to yet another similar one, but every experience severely toned down?

My first speculation was that he had left our reality and was in a sort of afterlife, perhaps a Limbo of sorts, after having committed suicide. Why this afterlife was so bland escaped me, seeing as we often imagine the afterlife as a paradise on earth. But it’s conceivable that this is in fact Limbo, not Heaven, and that this is the afterlife he got, due to Divine Providence.

Another speculation could be that this is all just an alien scenario, unrelated to our own understanding of reality, and that it’s not really supposed to make sense. Sometimes it’s fun for storytellers to just play around with reality (case-in-point: ‘Nothing’) for the sake of offering something out of the ordinary. David Lynch’s oeuvre hinges on it.

Another theory, proposed by The Horrible Dr. B (see our MBV James Bond reviews), is that Norway and other Scandinavian and countries tend to be conformist societies, that there’s a lot of peer-pressure to fit in. It is possible that ‘Den brysomme mannen’ is meant to be a commentary -if not a satire even- of this culture, on the unhappiness that it can breed.

One thing for sure is that suicide is a central theme. From the moment that Andreas takes his own life, we are then confronted by a new reality where suicides are commonplace – enough so that people don’t really bat an eye when it happens, and that there is even a crew dedicated to clean-ups and who cruise around the city, tending to the victims (who, in this reality, never die).

It leads one to wonder if this is a city filled with suicide victims, people who are unable to deal with the intensity of life, with their own internal turmoil, and who prefer this low intensity, low impact existence that has been provided for them. Andreas, for one, started off experiencing life in a freakishly heightened fashion – as evidence by the comparable subway scenes at the beginning and then later in the film.

But what were the filmmakers’ intentions? Were they discussing a plague on modern society, particularly in their homeland? Were they being satirical of modern life, in which we have everything one could desire but still can’t seem to find happiness? Were they taking a more theological approach? I wish I knew the answer: this is a film that teases the mind without satisfying it. At least, at first glance.

Because, if there’s anything true about ‘Den brysomme mannen’, it’s that it deserves at least two viewings, if not more. Even if one understands it all the first time around, it’s worth seeing it anew with this perspective in mind. And it’s such a fascinating motion picture that it should be seen at least once in the company of others – it can be a grim film in some respects, but it compensates by fostering lively conversations.

The intellectually-minded should definitely bother to watch this “Bothersome Man”. It may be dystopic and it may be cryptic, but it’s nonetheless a stimulating journey that is worth undertaking.

Date of viewing: March 17, 2013

Starring: Emad Burnat, Soyraya Burnat, Mohammed Burnat

You may like this if you liked: In This World (Michael Winterbottom, 2002), Frontier Blues (Babak Jalali, 2009), Times and Winds (Reha Erdem, 2006)

5 Broken Cameras begins with Israeli authorities erecting a fence within Palestinian territory near village of Bil’in. Filming this is villager Emad Burnat on the home camera he has just given to film the birth of his youngest son. The film then chronicles over the next five years how Jewish settlers continue to build on what is the villager’s farmland. The villagers continue to peacefully protest against this despite the violent treatment from Israeli soldiers. Despite all the threats, constant injuries, and every camera he uses being broken; Emad vows to continue filming the developments that unfolded. This film is made up solely of real footage shot at the time.

I have read some reviews that seem to regard this film as one sided anti Israeli propaganda.  I understand this may appear one sided for blatantly obvious reasons as the footage is solely filmed by a Palestinian villager on his own cameras. I also know documentaries are always edited, but I never thought the sole message of this film is ‘Israel is evil’. This is especially the case as the co-director and editor, Guy Davidi is a Jewish Israeli. The main theme of this story is an account of the simple life these humble villagers lead and the simple pleasures they get out of life as they seek to peacefully get back what they believe to be rightfully theirs. It is the authenticity and sheer honesty that makes 5 Broken Cameras such an engrossing and genuinely involving experience that really puts things into perspective for the viewer. The film is told frequently in voice-over, and at no point does Emad have a bad thing to say about the Israeli soldiers or their superiors. He and the rest of the villagers are simply trying to comprehend what is happening around them and protect their heritage and indeed traditional way of life.

The raw, and sometimes harrowing footage shocks but never feels contrived or for the sake of propaganda. As Emad frequently reminds us, his passion is to film what is happening, even though it nearly costs him his life. Even at one point his camera takes a bullet that would have otherwise most likely killed him, emphasising the raw authenticity of this film. He has no political agenda, just wants to show us the truth of the turn of events through his eyes and his children. The developments of the five years also mirror the growing up of Emad’s youngest son Gibreel who was born when the protests started. Many moments are almost filmed as if they were through his eyes adding to narrative involvement. Even his first words are “cartridge” and “army”, and at one point he simply asks his dad “why don’t you just stab the soldiers with a knife?” This is a very sobering reminder that for many children in the world today conflict and death are a part of growing up. Other villagers are also key characters in the narrative, they are just honestly shown as whom they are, and this authenticity provides a far more involving experience than any fictional film can produce.

Despite the bleak and harrowing moments, there are many moments of optimism. Some of the developments may not seem big to us, but to our protagonists they represent hope and freedom. The moments between Emad and his family, and the moments when we get to know his extended family and villagers provide moments of genuine closeness and remind us of the sometimes shallow and consumerist lives we live in the west.

5 Broken Cameras is a deeply powerful and involving documentary made with honesty, passion and integrity. A raw depiction of a life many of us can only imagine that puts things into perspective.

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Starring: Gael García Bernal, Luis Tosar, Karra Elejalde

You may like this if you liked: Shooting Dogs (Michael Caton – Jones, 2005), Salvador (Oliver Stone, 1986), The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986)

A passionate director Sebastián (Bernal), his cynical producer Costa (Tosar) and the rest of their Spanish film crew travel to Cochabamba in Bolivia to make a revisionist epic about Christopher Colombus’ discovery of America. Sebastián’s vision is to show the Spaniard’s rough treatment of the natives as they attempted to ‘civilise’ them. Costa simply chose Bolivia because of the tax breaks and the fact that they can recruit local residents to be in their film for next to no money. The filming is suddenly under threat as there are local protests from the starving locals over the oppressive privatisation of the water supply. Sebastián and Costa find themselves involved as one of the pivotal native characters in the film is leading the protest and the oppression of the Bolivian locals mirrors the oppression of the Indians in their film.

I know this film is a little old, but after seeing excellent performances from Bernal and Tosar in No and Sleep Tight respectively, I then saw this and was very intrigued so added it to my Lovefilm list. Films within films are always a tricky one and can often become a little over indulgent and smug, such as Seven Psychopaths. Thankfully, Even the Rain does not fall into this trap, working on many levels and all told with heartfelt honesty and humanity.

The parallels between the film they are making and what is happening around them never feels contrived or clichéd, as it is dealt with in a subtle and cautionary way. However, Even the Rain is essentially a very human film. The situation is very real and all the characters, both Spanish and Bolivian are presented demonstrating all the compassion but also flaws that we all have. Bernal and Tosar are both excellent as the two contradictory characters, but they actually compliment each other very well. As their characters become involuntarily involved in what is happening around them the decisions they are forced to individually make are very human and believable decisions faced by many people all over the world.

The supporting cast of both the Spanish actors and oppressed Bolivian locals all give excellent and human performances that evoke genuine sympathy as we are forced to place ourselves in what is a very real and believable situation. As the drama develops and intensity increases it is very engrossing and involving. With a story like this there is always a risk to fall into the traps of cliché or over sentimentality, thankfully all plot developments feel very real and natural, leaving a conclusion that will not disappoint.

Even the Rain is a gripping, involving and very human drama that grips till the very end, avoiding all the predictable clichés of any similar Hollywood drama.

Synopsis:

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Metropolis 8.25

eyelights: the ginormous sets. the then-amazing special effects. the sociopolitical themes. the theatrical -but skilled- performances. the sweeping score.
eyesores: the theatricality of the performances. Hel’s “seductive” dance.

‘Metropolis’ is a 1927 German film, directed by Fritz Lang and penned in collaboration with his then-spouse, Thea von Harbou. At the time, it was one of -if not the- most expensive films ever made, costing an estimated 5 million Reichsmark (which, in today’s dollars, would apparently be in excess of 200 million dollars – although there are conflicting reports as to its adjusted cost). It’s also one of the first sci-fi films and it remains a highly influential one.

It wasn’t entirely appreciated upon release: although German audiences applauded it, some (North American) critics panned it, going so far as calling it silly. There is also some question as to how profitable the film was, with its wiki entry stating that it recouped a mere 75,000 Reichsmark in its initial release. It sounds insane that such a landmark film would flop to such a degree, but one thing that is certain is that it wasn’t successful enough to survive the passage of time.

‘Metropolis’ was co-financed by three studios, and they called the shots with respect to foreign distribution. Deciding that it was too long, at over two and half hours in length, they decided to re-edit it. Within a couple of months, for the American and UK releases, the film had been truncated to under two hours in length, severely altering the film’s plot and hobbling its coherence; ‘Metropolis’ no longer delivered Lang and von Harbou’s initial vision.

To make matters worse, like all good plastic surgery addicts, the distributors continued to edit the film down and, by 1936, the film had been tweaked to a mere length of 91 minutes!!! Thus, given the number of versions that were available, it’s quite conceivable -if not likely- that the worst reviews were of a seriously handicapped edit – after all, without few of its parts intact, ‘Metropolis’ would make very little sense.

In fact, the first time that I watched the film, it was the Giorgio Moroder’s 1984 cut of the film. Tinted, altered to include new special effects and featuring a brand new musical accompaniment of 1970s pop songs (performed by Moroder as well as Pat Benatar, Adam Ant, Loverboy, Freddie Mercury and many others), it was as kitschy as it was incongruous. And guess what? Moroder’s version was even shorter than the “official” ones that were floating around out there!

I don’t even know if I was able to get through it back then. I recall that it seemed incoherent to me. Being that I wasn’t nearly as patient then as I am now, having acquired more of a taste for cinema since, it’s possible that I didn’t make to the end. Still, a few years ago, having a better appreciation for its place in history, I wanted to give it a proper go of it, so I got what was then the most complete version available: Kino’s 2002 restoration, at 122 minutes in length (still approximately a half hour short!).

I was quite impressed. What helped is that Kino added detailed notes on their DVD to explain what was missing from the picture. Already, the film made more sense than the Moroder version, but, with explanatory notes, it was much clearer. I was quite pleased with having finally gotten around to seeing this classic. I was a fan – and that was before the 2008 discovery of most of the missing footage, found on a 16mm print in an Argentinian museum!

I was pretty excited, as were many cinephiles the world over. Even if I didn’t get a chance to see it on the big screen, I knew that this would eventually make its way onto DVD and BD at some point. I would get to see it. And, even though not all of the missing footage was salvageable, a good 25 minutes has been recovered – albeit in much poorer form than what existed currently. This meant that the film was almost whole again, some 80 years later.

Was it worth the wait?

It absolutely is! ‘Metropolis’ is an awe-inspiring cinematic masterpiece, and this version seals its reputation – finally, we can understand why its loss had been decried for so many years (something that was questionable when one only considered the truncated versions). It’s not just a marvel to behold from a technical standpoint, but it’s an epic tale with a sociopolitical message at its core: “There can be no understanding between the hands and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.”

So what is it about?

‘Metropolis’ takes place in the then-distant future of 2026, in a sprawling city.  In it, the élite live large well above ground and the common folk work and live underground. Our protagonist is Freder, the son of the city’s ruler, and he falls for Maria, one of the workers. In so doing, he becomes intrigued with the life that she and the others lead, deciding to switch places with a worker for a short time. Meanwhile, Joh, his father, schemes to stoke the fires of discontent in the lower levels so as to crush the dissenters once and for all. However, he hadn’t forseen the deceit in his midst…

While it may seem like a mundane plot, something we’ve seen time and time again in the decades since, it’s the way that it’s melded with various sociopolitical messages that makes it so delicious. At least, it is now ever relevant. At the time, however, it grew old on Fritz Lang himself, partly due to its popularity with some most unsavoury characters, such as Joseph Goebbels. Lang has since dismissed the film’s message of building bridges in society via “the heart” as naïve and unrealistic.

Still, beyond its sociopolitical aspect, what makes ‘Metropolis’ especially riveting is its scope, the way that it’s set-up, and just how successful it is in its delivery given its aspiration to grandeur – not just considering the time in which it was made, which makes it incredibly impressive, but even to this day. Here, Lang gives us a stylish, elaborate, multi-layered piece that flows exceptionally well throughout, that is absolutely brilliant in its construction.

It’s an ambitious film, but it never fails: the maquettes look very good, the sets are massive and designed with a unique flavour that is influential to this day, the camera work is creative and proficient, the cinematic wizardry is dated but still holds up, the staging of the choreographies and fight sequences is incredibly accurate, the soundtrack (which was then played live – it’s a silent film, after all) is phenomenal, and the screenplay manages to mix and match a handful of characters and plot points with skill.

Entire books have been written on the subject of Fritz Lang’s masterwork. It would be redundant for me to try to recapture all that has been said about it and do it justice. I simply would not do it with the appropriate eloquence. Let’s just leave it at this: To have a historical perspective of cinema, one must watch ‘Metropolis’. To get a sense of what terrific visual storytelling is, one must watch ‘Metropolis’. To truly understand the roots of modern science-fiction, one must watch ‘Metropolis’.

At least once in a lifetime, one should watch the full version of ‘Metropolis’. It’s a must-see.

Post scriptum: I think I’ll go get the Moroder version now. Even if it’s bad, it will be worth it.

Date of viewing: March 16, 2013

Synopsis:

Jiro Dreams Of Sushi is a thoughtful and elegant meditation on work, family, and the art of perfection, chronicling Jiro’s life as both an unparalleled success in the culinary world, and a loving yet complicated father.

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Jiro Dreams of Sushi 8.0

eyelights: Jiro’s phenomenal focus. the gorgeous-looking sushi.
eyesores: the limited scope of the documentary.

‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’ is a documentary on the singular focus of sushi chef Jiro Ono, and the impact that his consummate devotion to his craft has had on his family and colleagues.

It’s not a biography in the proper sense; it doesn’t delve into Jiro’s back history much, only providing a short glimpse at his childhood. For the most part, the film is set in the present, observing the 85-year old master’s life.

To get a variety of perspectives on the man and his work, ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’ interviews food critics, Jiro’s staff, his two sons, Takashi and Yoshikazu, as well as the man himself. We also get to watch Jiro at work, making sushi and serving his customers, watching them intently as they savour his creations.

One gets the sense that the man is a perfectionist to a degree rarely seen in North America: he has a clear routine that he’s kept for decades and only makes simple sushi – no side-dishes or anything of the sort. His ultimate goal, the incremental improvement of his art.

His is such precision that he even adapts his serving style to the diners’ handedness, takes only the long road instead of shortcuts in the preparation of his food, and limits the available space to only ten people at one time. There is a seriousness to his work that is awe-inspiring.

It’s highly demanding stuff. It takes ten years for any of the apprentices to move up slightly, and the work can be grueling. Jiro is said to have been so consumed with his work that his children once asked their mother who the stranger on the couch was, having seen him so rarely.

Takashi and Yoshikazu’s lives are affected in other ways too: raised with traditional Japanese values, the eldest is expected to take over his father’s business when he retires, whereas the other was obligated to learn the craft himself, and now owns his own sushi restaurant. At 50, Yoshikazu is still waiting for his father to retire.

The film is filled with breathtakingly beautiful shots of sushi. Director David Gelb originally planned to make a documentary on sushi, and his passion for the food leaps off the screen when it comes time to highlight Jiro’s work – every piece of sushi is gorgeously shot, rightly presented as art.

I know I might be biased in appreciating this portrait of what appears to be an unflinchingly OCD human being, having similar attributes (to a far lesser degree, thankfully), but I respect the way that Jiro has managed to stay so incredibly focused all these years, refining his touch to the point that he one of the world’s best.

Even though it doesn’t have much replay value, being spare on detail, I really enjoyed ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’ and would easily recommend it. Anyone who likes japanese culture and/or is impressed by watching masters at their craft will likely get a taste for it too.

Date of viewing: March 15, 2013

“Every so often a film is written that pulls at your heartstrings and brings both a smile and tears to your eyes as we watch the human condition unfold.”

Synopsis:  The Intouchables’ tells the true story of a wealthy, physically disabled risk taker, Phillipe, the picture of established French nobility, who lost his wife in an accident and whose world is turned upside down when he hires a young, good-humored, black Muslim ex-con, Driss as his caretaker. Their bond proves the power and omniscience that love and friendship can hold over all social and economic differences. The Intouchables depicts an unlikely camaraderie rooted in honesty and humor between two individuals who, on the surface, would seem to have nothing in common.

CAST

Francois Cluzet………………………………………Phillipe

Omar Sy……………………………………………………Driss

Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi…………………………..Elisa

Audrey Fleurot……………………………………..Magalie

Clotilde Mollet……………………………………….Marcelle

Cyril Mendy…………………………………………….Adama

Anna Le Ny……………………………………………..Yvonne

Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi……………………………..Elisa

Christian Ameri………………………………………… Albert

Grégoire Oestermann…………………………………Antoine

Marie-Laure Descoureaux……………………………Chantal

Absa Dialou Toure……………………………………….. Mina

Salimata Kamate………………………………………….Fatou

Review: Released in the U.K. as Untouchable, the film since its’ initial release has become one of the highest grossing films ever in France. Written and directed by, Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano the film tells the true story of  two people whose lives intertwine in an unlikely way.

The story  told entirely in flashback, starts At night in Paris, Driss is driving Philippe’s Maserati Quattroporte at high speed. They are soon chased by the police: when they are caught, Driss, unfazed, doubles his bet with Philippe, convinced they can get an escort. In order to get away with his speeding, Driss claims the quadriplegic Philippe must be urgently driven to the emergency room; Philippe pretends to have a stroke and the fooled police officers eventually escort them to the hospital. As the police leave them at the hospital, Philippe asks what will they do now, to which Driss answers: “Now let me take care of it.” as they drive off.

Through friendship, humor and respect the two, Phillipe a French millionaire, quadriplegic, who through tragic circumstances loses his wife. and Driss, black, Muslim,  ex-con, form a life-long bond. Phillipe, with the help of his assistant Magalie, looking for a  live-in caretaker, meets Driss, a candidate, has no ambitions to get hired. He is just there to get a signature showing he was interviewed and rejected in order to continue to receive his welfare benefits. He is extremely casual and shamelessly flirts with Magalie. He is told to come back the next morning to get his signed letter. Driss goes back to the tiny flat that he shares with his extended family in a bleak Parisian suburb. His aunt, exasperated from not hearing from him for six months, orders him to leave the flat. when Driss comes back to the next day Phillipe for his paper, he finds he has been hired on a trial basis.

He learns the extent of Philippe’s disability and then accompanies Philippe in every moment of his life, discovering with astonishment a completely different lifestyle. A friend of Philippe’s reveals Driss’s criminal record which includes six months in jail for robbery. Philippe states he does not care about Driss’s past because he is the only one that does not treat him with pity or compassion, but as an equal. He says he will not fire him as long as he does his current job properly.

Over time, Driss and Philippe become closer. Driss dutifully takes care of his boss, who frequently suffers from phantom pain. Philippe discloses to Driss that he became disabled following a paragliding accident and that his wife died without bearing children. Gradually, Philippe is led by Driss to put some order in his private life, including being more strict with his adopted daughter Elisa, who behaves like a spoiled child with the staff. Driss discovers art, opera, and even takes up painting. For Philippe’s birthday, a private concert of classical music is performed in his living room. At first very reluctant, Driss is led by Philippe to listen more carefully to the music and opens up to Philippe’s music. Driss then plays the music he likes to Philippe (Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind & Fire), which opens up everybody in the room to dance.

Driss discovers that Philippe has a purely letter writting relationship with a woman called Eléonore, who lives in Dunkirk. Driss encourages him to meet her but Philippe fears her reaction when she discovers his disability. Driss eventually convinces Philippe to talk to Eléonore on the phone. Philippe agrees with Driss to send a photo of him in a wheelchair to her, but he hesitates and asks his aide, Yvonne, to send a picture of him as he was before his accident. A date between Eléonore and Philippe is agreed. At the last minute Philippe is too scared to meet Eléonore and leaves with Yvonne before Eléonore arrives. Philippe then calls Driss and invites him to travel with him in his private jet for a paragliding weekend. Philippe gives Driss an envelope containing 11,000 euros, the amount he was able to get for Driss’s painting, which he sold to one of his friends by saying it was from an up-and-coming artist.

Adama, Driss’s younger cousin, who is in trouble with a gang, takes refuge in Philippe’s mansion. Driss opens up to Philippe about his family and his past in Senegal, where his then-childless aunt and uncle adopted him from his real parents, and brought him back to France. His adoptive parents later began having children of their own, his uncle died and his aunt bore still more children. Philippe recognizes Driss’s need to be supportive to his family and releases him from his job, suggesting he “may not want to push a wheelchair all his life”.

Driss returns to his suburbs, joining his friends, and manages to help his younger cousin. Due to his new professional experience, he lands a job in a transport company. In the meantime Philippe has hired caregivers to replace Driss, but he isn’t happy with any of them. His morale is very low and he stops taking care of himself. Yvonne becomes worried and contacts Driss, who arrives and decides to drive Philippe in the Maserati, which brings the story back to the first scene of the film, the police chase. After they have eluded the police, Driss takes Philippe straight to the seaside. Upon shaving and dressing elegantly, Philippe and Driss arrive at a Cabourg, restaurant with a great ocean view. Driss suddenly leaves the table and says good luck to Philippe for his lunch date. Philippe does not understand, but a few seconds later, Eléonore arrives. Emotionally touched, Philippe looks through the window and sees Driss outside, smiling at him. Driss bids Philippe farewell and walks away.

Every so often a film is written that pulls at your heartstrings and brings both a smile and tears to your eyes as we watch the human condition unfold. This is such a film. The performances by Francois Cluzet and Omar Sy register in their faces the love and respect they have for each other. Cluzet can only emote through his face due to his character’s condition, for any actor this is difficult enough, Cluzet is brilliant. Omar Sy gives us a sense of humanity through his humor and light touch, you become drawn to these two likeable characters and get taken along for the ride.

There are some who feel that there is in fact an American Buddy Movie formula going on here, I didn’t feel that as the film progressed. Some have compared the racial differences to Driving Miss Daisy , I find in both cases this is not the case. You can become too critical at times and not just enjoy the story which is based on real events. The film is uplifting and soars with human connection.  The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2012.

The film is available on DVD, at Netflix, Amazon and Red-Box.

Recommended: