Susan George Ooh LaLa's Herself Around the Giddily Exploitative Motifs of Pete Walker's Immensly Fun Die Screaming, Marianne

When a film, after already spending an almost ten minute long prologue fixated on the scantily-garbed protagonist, the titular screaming Marianne, running from the bed she shared with a hapless sailor who, like a post-coitus satisfied puppy, happily goes along with the masters-at-arms when he is arrested for going awol, to the speeding sports car of a stranger, has an opening credit sequence involving star Susan George, now dressed in nothing but an appropriately alluring string bikini, gogo dancing to Kathe Green's haunting song, Marianne, you know you have hit the veritable jackpot of any self-respecting expoitation/grindhouse junky, such as I.   In fact, it is the kind of film that, when you look at the newly released blu-ray case (wonderfully done by Kino Lorber's Redemption label, but more on that a bit later), you are surprised to not find the words "Quentin Tarantino Presents" scrawled across the top.

Okay, okay, maybe everyone isn't as into this style of filmmaking as QT and I are, but really, even those unfamiliar with such "low brow" art as this, would probably, at the very least, get a kick out of Die Screaming, Marianne.  Right?  Okay, probably not, but for those horror/thriller fans, those Pete Walker fans, those denizens of the dark cellars of underground cinema, this is truly a great joy to watch.  The needless running about of beautiful women, flauntin' what god gave 'em; the cheap language and, let's face it, pretty awful dialogue and acting; the giddy split-screening moments; the swelling music and genre-specific luridness.  All of it equates to, not art cinema, not mainstream cinema, but the trash of the film world.  But oh darlin', what fun and alluring trash it is.  And yes, as I am a shining example of, one can like the so-called higher art of cinema - you know, the canonical stuff that always makes those greatest films list (many of which adorn my own favourites list) - and still get the biggest kick out of what many would call trash cinema.  

Pauline Kael, a critic from whom a generation of acolytic Paulettes, myself included, have been born, said of such things, "Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them."  I don't know if I agree with such a statement, at least not fully, but it does have some merit indeed.  Kael also spoke of such trashy ideas, when she wrote, "When you clean them up, when you make movies respectable, you kill them. The wellspring of their art, their greatness, is in not being respectable."  Again, not something I would totally stand behind - I like Citizen Kane as much as the next film snob - but one sees where she is going with such talk.  The staid academic flavour of an Antonioni or a Tarkovsky, even if they are creating solid pieces of cinema, or the pedestrian manner of all those high-falutin' arthouse pics that try to be something they just are not, the kind of films that the enfants terribles of the Nouvelle Vague were rebelling against, or the achingly middle-of-the-road fodder that spews forth from Hollywood at a ratio of about 100 to 1 against that auspicious creature, that rare mainstream work of art.  All of these beasts can make way any day, for what Kael calls trash cinema.  Sure, it is great to play the cinematic intellectual - and god knows I can play the film snob with the best of 'em - but it is just as fun to wallow in the so-called trash of the film world, and even though visually, Die Screaming, Marianne is quite the work (can a film this obscure be this influential, or is it just that this film is influenced by  the obvious usual suspects), it surely is pure trash cinema - and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

But enough of this trash talk (see what I did there), let's move on to exactly what all this trash is about, shall we?  Die Screaming, Marianne was the third of what would eventually be fifteen films, by English writer/director Pete Walker.  Walker specialized in horror and exploitation films throughout his career, and even amongst that crowd, which included such directors as Mario Bava and Jess Franco, he was one of the lesser known quantities.   Never getting much respect at all, often derided by contemporary critics, Walker made movies for the sheer fun of it.   The filmmaker is credited as having said, "I was the uninvited guest to the British film industry. Nobody wanted to know me. I knew I wanted to make films, but I would see these serious-looking guys going around with scripts under their arm, spending three or four years trying to get their films made. I couldn't be like that - I had to make a living and I wanted to get behind a camera and shout "action". So I would go out and shoot something like School for Sex - God, that was a terrible film - and a few weeks later every cinema in the country would be showing it."  Walker would kind of denounce his own self-criticism later by saying, "But recently I had to record commentary for the DVD releases, so I saw the films for the first time since making them, and you know what? They're not as bad as I thought. But searching for hidden meaning . . . they were just films. All I wanted to do was create a bit of mischief."  Granted, Die Screaming, Marianne is the first, and so far only, Pete Walker film this critic has seen, but it is more than enough of a whistle-wetting, to make me search out the director's other works.

The basic gist of the film, is this: twenty year old Marianne is first seen running from the hoodlums sent after her by her sadistic ex-judge father.  We find out that upon Marianne's mothers disappearance/death, the young girl was given the number to a Swiss bank account that held several hundred thousand dollars, as well as papers that would put her father away for life.  And all this will be hers upon her twenty-first birthday.  Of course, her evil dad, and even more evil half sister, want that number, and will do anything to get it.  There is a lot more twisting and turning in the film, but this is the basic storyline.  Full of sex, violence, torture, and even a hint of incest thrown in for good measure, Die Screaming, Marianne, is a perfect example of the great trash that Kael spoke so fondly of.  Influenced, judging from the artistry of Walker's style here, by the Italian Giallo genre, it is far from a great film - one may be able to associate his love of cheap cinema with someone like Ed Wood, but his talent, at least judging from this one film, is far superior - it is however quite a lot of fun, and actually, as I just more than alluded to, quite artistic in its style, camerawork and overall mood, but the thing that makes the film go splash-and-a-half, is the aforementioned screaming mimi in a string bikini, Miss Susan George. 

The film was made and released in 1971, the very pinnacle of George's rather brief rise to the upper echelon of acting.  Out around the same time as Sam Peckinpah's subversive yet  influential Straw Dogs, George was the very epitome of raw sexual desire, and directors used that to their best advantage.  George would only make a handful of films of any note (Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and the oft-overlooked Mandingo among them), and would eventually semi-retire from the movies, doing the occasional British TV show, and raise Arabian horses on her stud farm, but that raw sexuality, even if it was inside someone who really was never the greatest of thespians, is more than enough to get the home town thugs of Straw Dogs all riled up, and it is most certainly enough also to get pretty much everyone, even a father, in a tizzy right here in Die Screaming, Marianne.  But truly, the film is a fun creature indeed, and its new release on blu-ray, via Kino Lorber's enigmatic Redemption label (see, I told you I was going to get back to this in a bit) is a godsend for any genre fans out there.  As clean and as crisp as one can expect from such a low budget, and let's face it, mostly ignored, and therefore probably not cared for like a classic film would and should be, the bluray transfer is quite good.  It really is a rather intriguing piece of work from Pete Walker, and I cannot wait to check out his other work.

A Touch of Zen and the Art of the Wuxia Film

Wuxia.  In Chinese, the word Wu means Martial or Military.  Meanwhile the word Xia means Hero or Honour.  Put these words together and you get Wuxia, the traditional Chinese narrative genre of Martial Arts, or the Martial Hero if you will.  It is a genre, a style of storytelling that is highlighted by a chivalrous code not unlike that of the Japanese Samurai or the European Knights of legend and lore or the Western gunslinger in the proverbial white hat.  Though the term Wuxia may well be of more recent coinage, these tales have been in the Chinese tradition - in their books and plays and oral storytelling - for at least two thousand years.

This traditional style of adventure story of course translates perfectly into the more action-oriented, and more honourable-styled cinema of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.  From the Golden Age of the early 1930's and 40's Shaw Brothers films to the new age of Wuxia seen in the 1960's and 70's films of King Hu to the modern day Wire-Fu equivalents like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and House of Flying Daggers - even Kung Fu Panda if you insist - this tradition of martial arts, which includes super-stylized and super-acrobatic choreography as opposed to the more down-to-Earth, Fists of Fury stylings of Bruce Lee and his ilk, makes up the most spiritually and most artistically relevant element of the genre of martial arts cinema.  It is this tradition, this style, that is being celebrated in the inaugural edition of Foreign Chops, a new monthly feature that will recognize a different foreign film subject each time.  This monthly event is hosted by the fine folks over at the LAMB (Large Association of Movie Blogs for those not in the know).  So, without any more needless further ado, here is my contribution to the Wuxia party.

Originally released in 1970 and 71 in two parts before being unified into one great big creature (the whole bloody affair one might even say), the three plus hour Wuxia masterpiece A Touch of Zen by King Hu, may very well be one of the most underrated works of cinema in history - and this is not mere hyperbole, this is, sad to say, just sheer cinematic fact.  So many praise those more modern-day works that are so obviously influenced by Hu's now classic genre work (more on those in a bit) but so little do we hear about this Wuxia that arguably started it all.  From its opening shot to its epic finale, and encompassing its rapid-fire fight sequences that play like some sort of training manual for every martial arts film that came after it, and full of a melodic cinematography style that can only be described, no matter how cliché it may sound, as haunting, A Touch of Zen is a mesmerizing work of Wuxia that may very well be - and this too is not meant as mere hyperbole - the finest specimen of its species.  And I ain't just whistlin' The Girl from Dabancheng.

Taking a stronger spiritual bent than most Wuxia films, Hu gives us a hero that through inevitable and apparent death - he bleeds gold - becomes an enlightened soul, even alluding to the fact that he may even be Buddha himself.  Of course this spirituality does not mean we are left without the quite kick-ass, mythical battle scenes that come part and parcel with the quite enlightened genre.  Using the technique known as Qinggong, where fighters seem to have superhuman powers of agility and are able to leap bounds around everyone else, we are given these great and mythical battle scenes that would go on to inspire so many films of today's version of the Wuxia genre.   We can see more than mere nods to A Touch of Zen in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers (the central battle in the bamboo forest is pretty much extracted from here into the latter) but still, so many have forgotten Hu's original in the face of the more modern extravagances of the Wire-Fu films.  We can even see the influence in Star Wars, where Asian films aficionado George Lucas uses the fighting style of Qinggong for his breed of Jedi warriors - but still so few remember poor King Hu and his Taiwanese masterpiece A Touch of Zen.

Another obvious influenced modern day director is, of course, Quentin Tarantino.  Yeah yeah, I know, one would be quite hard-pressed to name a movie that was not an influence on QT, but still, Hu's film, along with other works of Wuxia, are a major influence on the director's work - especially his Kill Bill films.  Tarantino was actually a big part of bringing the genre back to the forefront of cinephiliac circles (though not to the general populace) and you can see this in his fight sequences and the suave chop-socky style of editing that the late great Sally Menke brought to his films.  This Tarantino connection actually could come as no surprise since the director's films are the modern day equivalent of the Spaghetti Western genre, and one can easily see how A Touch of Zen is the Chinese answer to something like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and/or Once Upon a Time in the West.  See how everything seems to come full circle.  But I digress, as we are here to praise A Touch of Zen and the Art of the Wuxia Film.  In sum I would just like to say that the future is dark indeed that does not have the knowledge of A Touch of Zen in it - so go out and watch the damn thing already.  It is easily available on home video, so there is no good excuse to not do such a thing.

Some Good Old-Fashioned Halloween Fun w/ Michael Myers, John Carpenter and the Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis

The following is my contribution to The LAMBs in the Director's Chair #21: John Carpenter.

Although both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Canadian film Black Christmas precede it by four years, much claim can be staked on the proposition that John Carpenter's 1978 now-classic horror film, Halloween, was the starting point of the slasher genre that would erupt in the 1980's.  Of course Carpenter himself admits to being greatly influenced by Hitchcock's Psycho, the true sui generis of the genre, when making Halloween, so who the hell knows from whence the genre truly came.  What one does know for sure is that Carpenter's seminal slasher flick was a great, if not the greatest, influence on horror moviemaking lo these past thirty some years.  For better and for worse, Halloween gave the genre, from the giddy, gory slasher films of the eighties to the torture porn obscenities of today, its tricks and tropes and foibles and flaws.  It gave the Scream series its rulebook and Rob Zombie a career resurgence.  And then there is that creepy ass music - but more on that later.

I actually sat down to watch the original Halloween for the first time just this past week (yeah yeah, I know) and though the low body count kind of surprised me (at least in comparison to the slew of hawkish, low budget disciples that followed, Carpenter's film is quite low on violence and gore) I must admit to at least a certain amount of creeped-out narrative tension - but such a thing is Carpenter's forte after all.  The director's ability to surprise you with both what is around the corner and what is not, has always been a mainstay of his cinema - especially in his three greatest works, Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing and here in Halloween.   More than the eventual pay-off, which is by no means a slouch, it is Carpenter's knack of making us wait in heart-pounding anticipation not just to the veritable breaking point, but beyond, until we think we are safe at least for the moment, and then - BANG!!

Much like contemporaries Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg, as well as more recent examples such as Richard Linklater, P.T. Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, Carpenter has always been a filmmaker greatly influenced by those who came before him.  So much so that Pauline Kael even (unfairly) criticized him for such in her scathing review of Halloween, saying "Carpenter doesn't seem to have had any life outside the movies: one can trace almost every idea on the screen to directors such as Hitchcock and Brian De Palma and to the Val Lewton productions".  It is in this homage making style that Carpenter has created his interesting, if not a bit uneven, oeuvre.  To go back to his great triumvirate of the director's early years - after Assault on Precinct 13, his urban-decay take on Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo but before his graphic, paranoiac retooling of the Howard Hawks produced The Thing, came Halloween, his most Hitchcockian film, and therefore his film with the biggest, and most classically inspired BANG.  

Not only does Carpenter name the master's Psycho as his biggest influence on Halloween (along with Night of the Living Dead, which incidentally was also an influence on the aforementioned Assault on Precinct 13) but he paid homage to that film in several other ways as well.   One of these ways was the naming of Dr. Sam Loomis, the obsessed psychiatrist played by Donald Pleasence.  Sam Loomis, as any fan of Psycho can tell you, is the name of Marian Crane's lover in the film.  The most obvious homage though is the casting of Jamie Lee Curtis as the movie's final girl, Laurie Strode.   Originally Carpenter had wanted to cast Anne Lockhart, daughter of June Lockhart, but due to scheduling conflicts she could not take the part.  This particular scheduling conflict was particularly fortuitous, for when Carpenter found out that another actress interested in the part was the daughter of Janet Leigh - Marion Crane herself - he had to have her for the part.  Starring in the short-lived TV version of Operation Petticoat at the time (the original film version coincidentally starred the actress's father Tony Curtis), the nineteen year old Curtis was the perfect pick for the film.  What better homage than casting the daughter of the master's Scream Queen as his own Scream Queen?

Playing the chaste babysitter who lives, while her promiscuous friends are slaughtered (a trope that would become a cliche of the genre, as well the joke behind Wes Craven's Scream) Curtis is the terrorized victim who in turn must be saved by Pleasence's Dr. Loomis (and yes, feminists have taken note) from the man in the mask.  Of course we all know that the man in the mask is actually Michael Myers, who at the age of six brutally murdered his teenage sister, and who has, fifteen years later,  escaped from the mental hospital to come home and terrorize those oh so slutty teens of Haddonfield Illinois.  On the subject of the virgin surviving while death comes to all those who have sex, Carpenter explains, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy."  Simple as that.

To make the terror all the more terrifying, Carpenter used P.O.V. shots when showing Michael stalking his prey.  The opening scene, where the six year old Michael is watching his sister and her boyfriend before stabbing his sister to death post-coitus (the guy of course gets up and leaves after sex, and is thus spared the violent end), is done completely in the point of view of the psychopathic child.  The ultimate stabbing is shown through the eyes of Michael's clown costume.  These P.O.V. shots continue upon Michael's return home.  We are put into the eyes of the killer and see what he sees (again, many are critical of this - stupidly claiming it breeds violence in children) and this makes it seem all that more terrifying.   Of course the thing that makes it the scariest, in my not-so-humble opinion, is that damn music.  Second in scariness only to The Exorcist's Tubular Bells, the film's music, composed by Carpenter himself, in rare 5/4 meter, is a simple yet haunting score.  It is enough to bring chills up and down the spine of, not just this critic, but pretty much everyone out there.

In the end it is Carpenter's prowess as a filmmaker that makes Halloween work as well as it does.  Beginning with his love of cinematic origins and history, and his ability to transform that love into his own work (this obvious Hitchcocko-Hawksian even sneaks in the original Thing From Another World as he has his characters watching said film on television) and continuing with the director's bravura stance on cinema (he brashly blows away a little pig-tailed girl in Assault on Precinct 13, so what is to stop him from doing pretty much anything to anyone in any movie), Carpenter created a genre masterpiece in his original Halloween.  The film would go on to spawn seven sequels, as well as a remake and even a sequel to the remake, none of which were directed by Carpenter, and become, for better and for worse again, one of the most influential films ever made.  Carpenter himself would continue with a later career that has yet to match his output of the seventies and early eighties (his most recent, 2011's classically-influenced The Ward, is definitely a step in the right direction though) but no matter what the future brings, his legacy will surely live on and on and on.

I have written about two other John Carpenter films recently.  The first is the director's second feature, Assault on Precinct 13, published elsewhere on this blog.  The second is a review of the director's latest work, his first picture in a decade, The Ward, published over at my review site, The Cinematheque.

Criterion Critiques w/ Alex DeLarge

What follows is part of a regular series of reviews on the always wonderful, and quite indispensable Criterion Collection, written by our special guest reviewer Alex DeLarge of the Korova Theatre.

3 WOMEN (Robert Altman, 1977)

Released on Criterion Blu-ray 9/13/2011; Spine #230

A dreamlike tale of two Mildreds, subsumed by one another’s identity while their life is delineated in violent murals created by Janice their pregnant landlord, each slowly drowning in liquid nightmare. Director/Writer Robert Altman again shuns typical narrative form and creates an atmosphere of emotional complexity between Millie and the naïve waif Pinky by focusing upon their idiosyncrasies, as they become quickly dependant upon one another.

Pinky immediately attaches herself to the talkatively social pariah Millie, an awkwardly lonely girl who hides her quiet desperation behind meaningless conversations and consuming need for attention. Shelly Duval is sadly beautiful as Millie, her gauche relationships creating an uncomfortable and genuinely depressed environment where we laugh while cringing in embarrassment at her nonplussed attitude: she is seemingly oblivious to the chatter and rude insults, but deep down, the loneliness is like a torrent of pain. Sissy Spacek as Pinky (a nickname: her real name is also Mildred) appears as a tiny girl not yet a women, a child who fixates upon Millie and begins to mimic her every move. They eventually become roommates and soon a tragedy leaves Pinky in a coma, and when she wakes she has become her alter ego Millie…though more socially adept.

Altman foreshadows Pinky’s intentions and we must decode these subtle clues and decide if she is truly suffering trauma or acting out a well formed plan of deception. Edgar Hart is the common tile in this confused mosaic, Janice’s husband who is cheating on her with both Mildreds. He vows never to get involved with a woman who shoots better than he does…but falls victim to his own vices and discards his cautionary moralizing.

3 WOMEN is about identity and it becomes a psychological study of its protagonists, where Altman’s camera is once again a detached observer probing every scene with slow pans and utilizing minimal edits. Gerald Busby’s score evokes a haunting theme of ghostly premonition, like a spirit who waits just beneath the surface tension of a dark lake to claim the next victim: though coming 3 years before THE SHINING, this evokes the same feeling of dread like Wendy Carlos’ fantastic soundtrack.

The dénouement of stillbirth is allegorical, the three women stuck in the scorching desert of Dissociative Fugues while alluding to the murder of the cheating husband. Altman’s final shot remains intentionally vague like a scintillating image, where the midden of discarded tires is reminiscent of a static life, a broken vehicle unable to travel beyond a perilous boundary.

Final Grade: (B+)

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About Alex: "To state things plainly is the function of journalism; Alex writes fugitive reviews, allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and allegory, and by leaving things out, he allows the reader the privilege of creating along with him." Alex can be found hidden deep within the dark confines of his home theatre watching films, organizing his blu-ray and dvd collection and updating his blogs. Please visit the Korova Theatre and Hammer & Thongs to see what’s on his mind.

David Cronenberg and His Rather Disgusting Cinematic Art and Psychosis of Bodily Mutilation and Transmogrification

The following is my contribution to The LAMBs in the Director's Chair #19: David Cronenberg.  And as a warning, there are probably some spoilers ahead, so if that is a concern of yours, ye have been warned.

He made people's heads explode in Scanners.  He turned James Woods into a living breathing VCR in Videodrome by putting the most vaginal of openings in his belly.  He shoved bio-mechanical USB cords into slimy, fleshy spinal holes of his gamers in eXistenZ.  He put parasitic venereal diseases into promiscuous young women in Shivers.  He gave erotic pleasure to mutilated auto accident victims in Crash.  He gave a woman an oozing phallic underarm stinger in Rabid.  He made emotional states dictate how your body would deform in The Brood.  He had a demented, drug-fueled Jeremy Irons go to town on women with the most medieval of gynecological contraptions in Dead Ringers.   He gave grotesque physical life to the warped creatures in William Burroughs' head in his adaptation of Naked Lunch.  He transformed Jeff Goldblum into a freakin' fly for crying out loud - a filthy, disgusting, pus-covered freakin' fly. 

Now I have a rather strong stomach and can take pretty much anything in stride, but let's face it, David Cronenberg isn't the kind of director you go see with lots of snacks in hand.   The images that are brought to mind from the above-mentioned cinematic moments are merely the tip of the proverbial (and quite repugnant) iceberg of what can be called Cronenbergian cinema.  What I am trying to say is that the career of Cronenberg, one-time master of the genre known as body horror (yes, every genre has a name), has been strewn with the most repulsive, oft-times horrific images of body mutilation ever put on film.  Other directors have tried their respective hands at the genre (Lynch with Eraserhead, Carpenter with his remake of The Thing, del Toro with Cronos) but it is Cronenberg who has made a lifetime commitment out of the whole grotesque affair.   It is Cronenberg that has come to nearly perfect a certain type of Grand Guignol filmmaking style that at once titillates and repulses.   Like his characters in Crash, an erotic turn-on in the midst of death and destruction and mangled human flesh.  Guns and flesh becoming one in revolting nightmarish style.  Pulsating, talking typewriters that resembles melting assholes.  Goldblum's transmogrifying insectoid vomiting up his own food.  Nauseating, offensive, turns-one's-stomach kind of stuff.

Now I am not saying any of this as a negative critical reaction to the filmmaker and his work - his films feature repugnant imagery and that is just what they are meant to do.  Cronenberg's oeuvre has ranged from the awful to the spectacular (leaning perhaps more toward the latter than the former) but it has always been the outrageous ick factor (for better and for worse) that has given the director his auteurial signature.   As of late though, this ick factor has gone by the wayside, to be replaced with a more strictly psychological bent.  Still a horror-based psychological bent when all is said and done (or at least a horror-based undercurrent) but still a more thinking than seeing kind of horror.  Granted, even Cronenberg's earlier, more pure horror (or more precisely, 'body horror') films were of course laced with a certain type of demented psychology, but as the man has grown as a director, his films too have grown - grown into multi-headed beasts - and Cronenberg has grown into a more mature, and more multi-faceted filmmaker.

This transformation came not abruptly, but over a matter of time and a matter of films.  Beginning with Dead Ringers in 1988 and working through Naked Lunch in 1991, Crash in 1996, and eXistenZ in 1999, his work would eventually lead to films like Spider in 2002, A History of Violence in 2005, Eastern Promises in 2007 and to his latest work, A Dangerous Method coming to US theaters later this year.  The director's more recent works look more at the mind than the body (although the body is still a large part of his oeuvre, and shows in these films) and delve into subjects of hallucinations, dreams and the ideas of sex and violence on humanity.  Still though, even as Cronenberg transforms his cinema from the outside to the inside, he still manages to creep his audience out - he has now just invented new ways to do so.  But then Cronenberg has always been inside our heads, just as his imagery has come out of his own - and sometimes his own life as well.  In his 1992 book Cronenberg on Cronenberg, the director revealed that The Brood was inspired by events that occurred during the unraveling of his first marriage, which caused both Cronenberg and his daughter Cassandra a great deal of turmoil. The character of Nola Carveth, mother of the brood, is based on Cassandra's mother. Cronenberg said that he found the shooting of the climactic scene, in which Nola was strangled by her husband, to be "very satisfying".  Now how's that for some inner turmoil bubbling to the surface?

Criterion Critiques w/ Alex DeLarge

What follows is part of a regular series of reviews on the always wonderful, and quite indispensable Criterion Collection, written by our special guest reviewer Alex DeLarge of the Korova Theatre.

SOLARIS (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
Released on Criterion Blu-ray 5/24/2011, spine #164

Kris Kelvin travels millions of miles to combat an alien consciousness…his own. Andrei Tarkovsky’s existential masterpiece is an introspective journey into a foreign world, where the cold sea can wash away sin or drown the victim in its sentient embrace.

Tarkovsky begins the story as Kris Kelvin wanders contemplatively around his father’s farmhouse, focusing upon the rippling waters and green spindly tendrils, the rich abundance of life and energy on Earth. He argues with his father and burns his past, its ashes drifting away into the ether…but regrets always write their indelible text upon our psyches. Tarkovsky’s narrative dichotomy to Earth imparts a sense of longing and loneliness for Kelvin: he is isolated and disheveled upon arriving at the neglected space station, its gray and foreboding interior a reflection of Kelvin’s dejection. The surviving scientists are caught in their own traps, their dire warnings too vague and obtuse for understanding. Sleep soon brings the deep-rooted fears and bitter anxieties to flesh, to once again be opposed, a divine torture gifted from the tumultuous seas below, a watery intelligence who grasps at their minds attempting to communicate. But the scientists want to destroy what they fail to understand.

Kris must confront a simulacrum of his ex-wife Hari, who killed herself because she could not live without him. This façade is plucked from his mind and she is created in his mental image, with all of her flaws and weaknesses…as remembered and imagined by Kris. I think this is an important distinction and why Kris ultimately fails: Hari is form to his own biased and anxious emotions, so when she committed suicide Kris believed it to be his fault. He spirals deeper and deeper into depression and remorse unable to reciprocate her unconditional love; time after time redemption trickles through his fingers like water. But this automaton is becoming human in its own way, and makes the one final selfless decision for love, revealing Kris’s egocentrism because he can’t believe she would make that sacrifice for him, proving that Kris didn’t understand the “real” Hari at all.

Tarkovsky’s beautiful cinematography varies between color and black and white to show Kris’s mental state, his gradual loss of sanity: the past, present, and delusion becoming one continuum. The detail to the set design is magnificent and adds an unused and hebephrenic disorder to the visuals and subtext that creates an absolutely realistic environment. Ironically, Kris willingly becomes a prisoner to the garden of Earthly delights, a Boschian purgatory given substance on Solaris. 

Final Grade: (A+)

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About Alex: "To state things plainly is the function of journalism; Alex writes fugitive reviews, allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and allegory, and by leaving things out, he allows the reader the privilege of creating along with him." Alex can be found hidden deep within the dark confines of his home theatre watching films, organizing his blu-ray and dvd collection and updating his blogs. Please visit the Korova Theatre and Hammer & Thongs to see what’s on his mind.

Why John Carpenter's Subversive & Brilliant Assault on Precinct 13 is One of the Best Pictures Ever Made

Warning dear readers and true believers: There are sure to be some spoilers ahead, so if you have not seen the film in question and you are one who worries about such things - ye have been warned.

There is a moment, about a third of the way through John Carpenter's 1976 sophomore effort, Assault on Precinct 13, where gang members are beating (and about to kill) an ice cream truck driver somewhere in one of the worst areas of L.A. and a little girl, about 8 or 9, blonde hair in appropriately precocious Cindy Brady pigtails, and holding a vanilla ice cream cone, her lost father frantically on a payphone down the street trying to get them out of this neighbourhood - and here we are, the viewer, thinking to ourselves, "does Carpenter actually have the balls to kill this little girl?"  Well apparently he does, and not only does he have such balls, they are big enough to not have this matter-of-fact killing play off-screen and then cut to the dead little girl lying on the ground.  No sirree - Carpenter shows us front and center and framed to perfection almost as if he were Stanley 'fucking' Kubrick.  Blam!  The bullet goes through ice cream cone and her dress is splattered in blood - and she drops down dead as anything.  Now those are some balls.

The MPAA threatened to give the film an X rating if this scene was not cut from the picture.  Carpenter relented, took the scene out and gave it to the censor board who in turn gave it an R rating.  Of course, with balls like Carpenter's, the director took the movie, re-inserted the scene back into the film and released it uncut with the R rating.  Whether Carpenter or his distributor (who incidentally urged the director to play this sleight-of-hand trick on the MPAA) ever got into trouble for this I do not know, but it is another story on just how big of balls John Carpenter has.  But enough about Carpenter and his enormous balls - it's getting kinda creepy coming back to this allusion again and again - let us discuss the film we came here to discuss - Assault on Precinct 13.

Playing at being a remake of sorts of Howard Hawks' classic Rio Bravo as well as an artistic homage to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Carpenter's unique talent as a filmmaker was just coming into view with Precinct 13.  An obvious cinephile, Carpenter has made a career out of being a latter day master of horror, but no matter what grotesquery he happens to put up there on the screen - be it a slimy, slithery alien spider formed out of a human head or a mask-wearing, machete-wielding maniac out for bloody revenge on All Hallows Eve - the director will always show his love of the western in the way he puts his films together.  With his first film, not only does he take the basic storyline of the aforementioned Hawks classic (one of Carpenter's all-time favourites and one of this critic's as well) but he does it with the archetype characters of the genre.  Of course he also brings in his love of horror with the seeming never-ending waves of gang members (much like the walking dead in Romero's flicks) and the ever-diminishing array of good guys.

The basic story (in case you are unaware) is about a standoff between that seemingly endless wave of gang members and the handful of trapped wouldbe survivors inside a now abandoned police station in one of the worst areas of Los Angeles.  This band of intrepid heroes consist of a black police lieutenant (his colour being a major casting choice in 1976), a pair of police secretaries (one of which, played by the alluring and mysterious former actress Laurie Zimmer, much like Angie Dickinson in the aforementioned Hawks' classic, more than holds her own against these unstoppable forces), a pair of convicts on their way to a maximum security prison and a catatonic man who has run in for help after seeing his daughter murdered beside an ice cream truck.  Since they are in a closed station and well away from any residents who might call for help, this band of forced renegades must fight these impossible odds without any hope for any proverbial cavalry swooshing in at the last minute and saving everyone.

Carpenter's brand of hopeless justice (as seen in most of his films) lends its hand to the type of storytelling the director has become famous for.  No survivors, few survivors, hopes dwindling as the odds take on the inevitable unfavourable turn it always does in Carpenter's films (who can stand against monsters like Michael Myers or the Thing when one has no hope of permanently destroying them!?) -- this is all part of the director's hopeless justice brand of moviemaking.  In Precinct 13, this hopelessness perverts everything in the film.  Daring to brutally and daringly murder children with ice cream cones just as easily as gang members with weapons.  His never-ending brutality to go with his undead-esque gang members (to show even deeper homage to Romero, none of Carpenter's gang members ever speak a word) beat beat beat down our heroes, and I suppose, our anti-heroes, until we are left with the explosive finale Carpenter gleefully gives us.  The final image of said battle, as the smoke clears, is the perfect ending (well, penultimate ending one might say) and the only way it could have ended - not to mention the best single shot in (that doesn't involve a human head being transformed into a slimy spider-like alien creature) the whole of Carpenter's multi-layered oeuvre.

The Weird Weird World of Nobuhiko Obayashi's Gleefully Demented and Brilliantly Batshitcrazy Hausu !!!!!?!

Hey you!  If you have ever taken the time to wonder (and who hasn't!?) if there were a film out there somewhere that is equal parts Dario Argento, the crazy psychedelic world of Sid & Marty Krofft, 1980's pop music video, the works of Guy Maddin and soft core Japanese schoolgirl porn, well look no further because your search has finally ended - and what strange strange fruit it has borne.  This film cannot, or make that should not be explained.  It may very well be the film for which the term batshitcrazy was invented to describe.

This movie - needing to be seen to be believed - recently played in glorious 35mm at Midtown Cinema in Harrisburg Pa as part of the Artsfest Film Festival.  It was appropriately enough the special midnight showing that happens each year as cosponsered by the festival and the cinema (a tradition that has also been host to A Clockwork Orange, Hedwig & the Angry Inch, Pink Flamingos and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls).  Approximately 95 people, most of whom had never seen the movie before, watched Obayashi's mad mad mad mad masterpiece.  Applause filled the theater afterwards.

Being the story of seven schoolgirls with names such as Gorgeous, Fantasy, Sweet, Kung-Fu (my personal fave), Prof, Melody and Mac (all of course possessing a quality to match their monikers) visiting what of course ends up being a haunted house (story idea by Obayashi's preteen daughter) where the most gleefully enjoyable blood bath ensues and girls are eaten by killer pianos and light fixtures or are beheaded and come back to try to eat the others (not to mention the evil killer cat, the noodle-eating bear and the fat demented watermelon man!?) the film is not what one would typically call great cinema. But damned if it isn't great cinema anyway.

I remember (which is easy because it was just last year) buying the Criterion blu-ray sight unseen.  The poster image of a psychotically-drawn cat was more then enough to make me plunk down whatever amount it was and buy the damned thing.  Upon watching it (projected onto the big screen after hours at Midtown Cinema of course) I knew right away the right spur-of-the-moment decision had been made.  Purposely cheap looking and full of some of the most splendidly maniacal cheap thrills this cinephile has ever seen, Hausu (aka, House) is easily one of my newly minted favourite films.  Damn it, it will even get a place of honour in my personal 100 greatest films canon.

Stealing from one of my own recurring features, here briefly are my 10 Favourite Things About Hausu.

1) Most would probably say this is an annoying quality but for me it means something powerful (musically speaking) has happened.  Just like that whistle in Kill Bill, the recurring theme song of the movie - In the Evening Mist I believe it is called - stays in my head for weeks each and every time I watch the film.  In fact it is in there right now (he says as happily humming said tune as he types).

2) The names. Several have been changed when translated, but let us go with the ones from the English-language release (since that is the only one I have seen).  Gorgeous (called Angel in the original Japanese-language version) is always dressing herself up.  Fantasy is a dreamer.  Sweet will do anything to help. Melody is the musician.  Prof is the smart one - you can tell because she wears glasses.  Kung-Fu kicks ass.  Mac eats a lot (I am guessing this is some take on stomach and not the ubiquitous McDonald's reference).

3) Obayashi's use of such garishly cheesy sets and designs and special effects.  If this film had been done in any sort of traditional way it would not be nearly as enjoyable as it ends up being.  It is blatantly - and quite arrogantly - cheap and that is just the way it needs to be.

4) One character (Gorgeous's wouldbe step mother) goes nowhere without her off camera wind machine.  Constantly wind swept in every scene (even when no one else is) may be a not-so-subtle rag on the melodramatic ways of classical cinema.

5) Kung-Fu.  I told you she was my favourite.  Randomly kicking ass (stuck cabinet doors, mice, a telephone, that crazy-ass cat, ghosts and skeletons) and stripping down to her underwear (for no apparent reason other than to titillate the male audience members) she is the sexy go-to girl in this bunch.  This kitten is fast as lightning indeed.

6) That rerelease poster image (see below) that made me buy the disc sight unseen.  It now adorns t-shirts, hast and mouse pads.  What a great maniacal cat.  The image actually nicely combines two of my wife and mine's own cats.  It has the orange colour of our oldest cat Alex but the demented killer-on-the-loose look of our youngest Fanny.

7) "Do you like melons?"  "I hate them!"  "What do you like?"  "Bananas!"  - Once you see the movie this will suddenly become freakin' hilarious to you.

8) The seemingly out-of-place (but just as appropriately perfectly in place) presence of English language pop songs by Godiego.  I suppose if the movie is going to be batshitcrazy, the soundtrack might as well be as well.

9) Not to give anything away, but a piano eats a girl.  To put it as bluntly as I can, it fucking devours the bitch.  All the while that damned haunting melody is playing - ironically by the actual character Melody.

10) Everything else that I could not fit in the first nine spots.  From the Partridge Family-esque bus ride to the Fantasy's fantasies about her "manly" teacher to Gorgeous's aunt eating eyeballs to Obayashi's criticism of the atomic bomb (the director is from Hiroshima) to the closing credits that appear to be part of some seventies Japanese variety show to Mac's severed head taking a bite out of Fantasy's ass to pretty much everything else.

Anyway, that is it for now kiddies.  My only request is that you go out and watch Hausu.  If you have any sense of cinematic love, you will not regret your decision.  If you do, well it's only 88 minutes, and you probably don't have any friends anyway.  But before I go, please allow me one more shamelessly decadent image from this shamelessly batshitcrazy movie.  This movie that will bore into you freakin' soul and lay eggs that will later hatch and become a billion batshitcrazy babies ready to devour your mind with insane catchy pictures and tunes that will never leave your head.  A demented infinity for us all!!

My Quest To See the 1000 Greatest: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is #582 in  

My Quest to watch the 1000 Greatest Films

Screened 02/12/11 on DVD at Midtown Cinema

Ranked #576 on TSPDT

*this is one in a series of catch-up reviews in my aforementioned quest (which should explain the rather old screening date above).

Step 1: Hire Sam Peckinpah, the most notorious, the bloodiest (and most difficult to work with) filmmaker of his day (sorry Sam Fuller) and give him free reign with the equally notorious and equally bloody (and probably equally difficult to work with) legend of Billy the Kid.

Step 2: Design the entire mood of the movie around a soundtrack written specifically for the film by a certain musical creative genius (and possible prophet incarnate according to a good friend of mine) by the name of Bob Dylan, nee Robert Zimmerman - and give the singer/songwriter a part in the movie as a knife-wielding outlaw named Alias. 

Step 3: Release Hell.

Granted, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is not the balls-out blood-letting that The Wild Bunch is, nor is it as subversively wicked as Straw Dogs but it is still pure Peckinpah from start to finish - well, at least it was until MGM (in the manner of many a tragic studio story of yesteryear) recut the film without the director's knowledge (in other words, brutalized the filmmaker's vision!) and released this decidedly inferior version to inevitably derisive reviews.  The film would later be restored to its supposed original glory, but even the version known as the director's cut, due to it being restored after the director's death, may be lacking in what Peckinpah had wanted his movie to be.  Both versions are available on a double disc DVD set.

But this post-production hanky-panky aside, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a Hell of a fun movie to watch.  The film stars James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson, respectively as the titular friends turned enemies.  The fact that the thirty-seven year old Kristofferson is playing a character that died at twenty-one and the forty-five year old Coburn is playing a man who in reality was just thirty when he killed the Kid, is really nothing more than a quaint anecdote once one turns on their suspension of disbelief and just lets the movie wash over them in the semi-mystical way it is meant to.  Kristofferson and Coburn are great in their roles (rumour has it James Taylor was originally set to play the part of Billy) and the film is filled to the veritable brim with great character actors of the then-present and the past.  In smaller roles, we get to see Jason Robards, Harry Dean Stanton, Dub Tayler, Chill Wills, Charlie Martin Smith, Jack Elam, Slim Pickens, Richard Jaeckel, Luke Askew and Elisha Cook Jr.  Singer Rita Coolidge, Kristofferson's wife at the time, also plays a small part.

Of course the most fun character to watch is that of Alias.  After hearing that Peckinpah wanted to get Roger Miller to do a title song for the movie, Kristofferson brought in Bob Dylan who immediately wowed the at first unconvinced Peckinpah.  The ensuing soundtrack was as unsuccessful as the studio recut film although it did have one song, Knockin' on Heaven's Door, that would become a big hit.  My personal favourite track though (in terms of just its musical style), is the title track - a sweetly melancholic ballad in the tradition of Dylan's more troubadour style of John Wesley Harding.  Yet, the scene in which Knockin' on Heaven's Door plays (where Slim Pickens' character is dying) is not only the finest scene in the film but one of the most emotionally jarring scenes I have ever watched on screen.  The scene is simply devastating.  It is in this manner that Dylan's music helps to make Peckinpah's revisionist western an even more powerful motion picture than even the director (could do.

The movie has the typically heightened sense of self-awareness that many American films had during this period of seventies cinema (think the films of Altman, Scorsese and Bogdanovich) which adds to the storytelling aspect of such a legendary (and oft historically inaccurate) tale.   In my opinion, not only does this film deserve to be included on such a list as is being counting down with these posts (and there are many on the list I feel do not deserve such an honour) but it is one of the best films of the time period.  With an almost counter-culture feel about it (The Vietnam War was still wallowing about and Watergate was a hot topic) Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a prime example of how movies were being made in Hollywood (a surprisingly much freer Hollywood at the time) from the late sixties to around 1981 or 1982.

My 10 Favourite Things About Don't Touch the White Woman

**spoilers ahead, for those who worry about such things**

1) Obviously when talking about Marco Ferreri's French/Italian hybrid Don't Touch the White Woman, something must be said about the that title.  Played as a recurring gag (or jag) throughout the film, General Custer's Indian scout Mitch is repeatedly told this (or scolded about this) by the white men around him.  When I told my friend Max that this was the movie we were going to watch on a certain night, he instinctively assumed that I was acting the fool, and making such a title up.  But lo and behold, it is indeed Don't Touch the White Woman - or Touche pas a la femme blanche in its native French (and I use the term native in several different manners of ironic twist).

2) Ferreri's absurdist take on the American Western.  Placing characters such as General George Armstrong Custer, Buffalo Bill Cody and Chief Sitting Bull smack dab in the then-current 1974 Paris - with Richard Nixon as the beloved president - and setting the climactic Battle of Little Big Horn in the recently demolished remains of the old Paris marketplace.  Mixing and matching time periods, Ferreri's film is a comic absurdist delight.

3) Marcello Mastroianni as General Custer, extremely vain and quite pompous (this may actually be a rather accurate portrayal) and kicking up his boots in a ridiculously comic salutation of sorts, is at his batshitcrazy best here.  His long dangling locks, desire to change uniforms for each battle and constant militaristic attitude - not to mention his arrogant style of wooing - is great comic fun.

4) The (far from subtle) allusions to both Vietnam and Algeria (Nixon is president here, spying down at everyone from his overly prevalent framed pictures) and an obvious (and quite legitimate if you ask this liberal critic) Leftist attitude toward the military, as well as a revisionist outlook on American/Indian affairs of the time (the Custer time that is).  The Algerians are even thought of as an Indian tribe, and thus are treated in the same cold, hateful manner by the white people in the film.

5) The Altman connection.  Or I should say, the Altman feel.  Predating Altman's own Buffalo Bill movie by two years, Ferreri's movie plays out in a very Altmanesque manner, with characters speaking over top of each other and musicians following around as balladeers and an overall constant sense of mayhem.

6) Ugo Tognazzi, long before he became the prancing star of La cage aux folles (a role played by an equally prancing Robin Williams in the remake), plays the aforementioned Mitch, the man to whom the warning of the title is told to.  Of course he is not really an American Indian (and doesn't even look like one, given a tanning session before filming began perhaps) but full-blooded, and full-bodied Italian.  His leading of a sweat shop manned by white women (with the ever-watching eyes of big brother Nixon peering down from the wall) and his defilement of one of them is one of the many highlights of this crazy ass movie.

7) The use of what appear to be real period hippies as the Indians of this so-called Little Big Horn.  I mean really, who needs the noble savage when you've got a city full of hippies who will walk around in the background for, well for pretty much anything you are wiling to give them.  We even get one who looks an awfully like that self-declared ant-hippie, Jim Morrison.  Perhaps he didn't die in that bathtub after all.  I mean he did live in Paris when he "died".

8) Michel Piccoli may very well be the most batshitcrazy Buffalo Bill in cinematic history.  Played by everyone from Roy Rogers to Joel McCrea to Clayton Moore to Chuck Heston to Paul Newman to Stephen Fucking Baldwin (even Buffalo Bill himself - as himself! - appeared in several early silent films) but I can't think of anyone who made the man look like a stark raving lunatic more than M. Piccoli.  From his white eyeliner to his big-boobied back-up dancer to his bizarro (almost) one man show to his eventual maniacal cowardice and grandiose hissy-fit, Piccoli is the premier batshitcrazy Buffalo Bill.

9) I cannot confirm this was on purpose, and it may very well be a "just me" kinda thing, but the talking heads who we first see at the beginning of the film, and who recur throughout as nosy, do-nothing politicos, remind this critic of a certain band of outsiders (if you will pardon the pun) known collectively as the Nouvelle Vague.  The two main ones even resemble the new wave's leaders (for lack of a more apt word) Godard and Truffaut.  Again, it is probably all in my imagination, but isn't imagination what cinema is all about?

10) Catherine Deneuve as a redhead!!  I am sure I need not say more, but I will anyway.  Looking spectacular as a blonde is Mlle. Deneuve's normal style, but here she goes fiery red for her role as Custer's love interest, Marie-Hélène de Boismonfrais.  Perhaps it is in keeping with the batshitcrazy aspect of the film itself - after all (and this will get some angry comments I am sure, but I sincerely mean it in the most complimentary fashion possible) most redheads I have known have been quite batshitcrazy themselves.  Perhaps it is just to make the already drop dead Deneuve look all that hotter.  One of the final moments of the film - after the slaughter at this makeshift Little Big Horn - shows a now dead Deneauve covered partly in an American flag.  Except for the whole dead part (unless you are into that) this is a pretty spectacular image on the screen (which unfortunately cannot truly be captured by the corresponding image below).

On Watching a 16mm Print of Truffaut's The Green Room

There I sat, on a Wednesday evening at a filmclub of sorts called Moviate, in Midtown Harrisburg, snugly nestled amongst the throngs of film lovers packing the screening of Truffaut's all-but unknown 1978 film adaptation of the Henry James novella "The Altar of the Dead".  Well, most of that opening sentence is correct at least.  The blatant lie shoved in there, like a glaring, flaming albatross (at least to me) is the whole flapdoodle about the throngs of film lovers.  In sad reality, there were only three of us (four if you include Moviate's head honcho and projectionist) at this Wednesday evening screening - but even more sadly is the fact that this is probably considered a good crowd for such an event here in the boondocks of central PA.

Anyway, soapboxing about the dearth of culture in America aside (and trust me, I can ramble on quite incessantly about that angering subject!), allow my short critique about this mid-week cinematic experience to get under way before everyone is completely bored out of their respective skulls at the aforementioned rambling.

The Green Room has got to be one of the least known (and least seen) of all of Francois Truffaut's oeuvre, so even on the scratchy, colour-saturated 16mm print that we throngs of three were privy to is a welcome kind of joy.  Based on the aforementioned James novella, Truffaut weaves a story of a disenfranchised man in the late 1920's, having been through the horror of the Great War only to return and lose his beautiful young bride mere months after their wedding.  This quite morose protagonist, played by Truffaut himself with an almost zombie-like stoicism (perhaps this is less a character driven thing and more an inability to act kind of thing in many ways), makes it his life's duty to honour "his" dead - those who have been part of his life (either in a major way or the most minor).

This self-imposed honourable duty begins in the titular green room of the man's provincial French house and eventually concludes in a newly-rebuilt chapel, with enough fluttering candles and Gothic atmosphere to make one expect a horror movie to pop out of the woodwork at any moment - it is after all, based on Henry James.  It is a strange movie indeed, never really going anywhere, but never really meaning to either.  Perhaps not up there with the so-called creme de la creme of Truffaut works, but with its deep set cinematic eyes and its overtly Gothic mannerisms and the director's strangely one-note performance, The Green Room is more than an interesting diversion on a Wednesday night in Midtown Harrisburg.

The thing that most satisfied me - and the film historian inside me (and the self-referential junky inside there) - was what would be the semi-climactic set piece of the renovated chapel and the "dead" laying to rest there.  Candles burning in every corner, Truffaut's character has hung pictures of all those he has lost, and it is in these pictures that we see a glimpse of the cinephile inside Truffaut (not that he has ever kept this persona very hidden from us).  Pictures of Oskar Werner, Jeanne Moreau, Oscar Wilde and even Henry James line these flame-lapped walls as an ode to Truffaut's own "dead" (or in some cases, his past friends and idols).

What more can one say?  Not much I suppose.  The Green Room, while interesting and even exhilarating at times, never imposes the feelings films such as The 400 Blows or Jules et Jim or The Wild Child or Shoot the Piano Player have and still do.  Still though, this little seen film (even on scratchy 16mm) is a fun look at the auteur of all auteurs at his Gothic giddiest - stoic as it may well seem, in what very well may be the director's least lively tale ever.  Perhaps it is my desire for the life in cinema as opposed to the death inside it, that makes me place this film lower on the proverbial totem pole than I probably should, for it is a well-crafted and well-manicured look at death and what it means to those still living.

My Quest To See the 1000 Greatest: The Last Picture Show (1971)

The Last Picture Show is #567 in  
My Quest to watch the 1000 Greatest Films 

Screened 11/25/09 at Midtown Cinema, on DVD from Netflix

Ranked #269 on TSPDT
 

Watching this film on the big screen for the first time (though unfortunately on a DVD and not the obviously preferable 35mm) was a delight I never expected.  Though enjoying his cinephiliac writings, I have never been a big fan of Bogdanovich as a filmmaker.  Only seeing his mid to later work, I was unaware of the stark beauty of this particular film.  Mask and Cat's Meow, though both having their good points do not a favourite director make.  So after years and years of pretty much ignoring The Last Picture Show, I finally sat down and watched it.  My reaction?  Wow!

Shot in black & white - Bogdanovich, afraid the studio would not let him film it this way, claims it was Orson Welles who made him talk the studio into filming as such - the film relays the era (1951-52) with a naturalness that makes you almost forget it wasn't actually made at that time.  This sharp black & white also adds to both the deep focus Bogdanovich wanted to work with as well as the starkness of this dead end Texas town that is the setting for Larry McMurtry's book and screenplay.

Filmed in the actual town McMurtry grew up in and wrote about, The Last Picture Show was made in the midst of the most raucous cinematic revolution ever, and at first glance, with its classic style and visual imagery, may seem quite out of place, yet it couldn't have been more revolutionary.  Styled as a sort of classicism that makes it seem out of time, more attuned to fifties Hollywood cinema, yet at the same time a frank (especially for 1970) look at sexual mores that give the film a shocking streak throughout.

This sexual frankness of course brings us to the heart of the film - or perhaps the g-spot - Cybill Shepherd as Jacy Farrow.  Making her film debut (after being found on the cover of a magazine by Bogdanovich's wife) Shepherd is a sizzling sexual beast, able to lure in and then destroy any young man she so wishes.  The most prominent being the director himself - an irony made even more ironic considering who discovered the young model-cum-starlet in the first place.

Perhaps Bogdanovich is one of those filmmaker's who spent their creative abilities early (I still must see Targets, What's Up, Doc? and Daisy Miller) and are left flailing in mediocrity later in their careers.  This idea seems to be magnified by the fact that the only theatrically released movie made by Bogdanovich in the past decade was the mildly well received Cat's Meow.  And speaking of later Bogdanovich, I have yet to see Texasville, the nineteen years in the making sequel to The Last Picture Show, but not much good has been heard about it.