The Archers and Their Masterpiece Theat...er, I mean Cinema

The good folks over at The Movie Waffler have posed a question to those of us who care enough to listen.  Which director (or directors in my case) has had the best/most productive run/streak of great films.  Now one could easily make an argument that certain directors have never made a bad film and therefore their entire careers would constitute this run.  But even those directors of whom such a claim could be reasonably made, those with a small enough oeuvre, but a powerful enough one as well, to make such a thing possible, if not probable (Kubrick, Welles, Visconti), have a lesser film or two snuggled away in there to stop any ideas of a perfect game.

Sure, Welles' The Stranger is a very good film, but it is certainly no masterpiece, and therefore would break up any streak that would lead Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons to The Lady From Shanghai and Macbeth.  Now Kubrick, with Lolita, Strangelove, 2001, Clockwork and Barry Lyndon would make a strong case for this theory, but Spartacus at one end and The Shining at the other may say otherwise.  Though, I might be tempted to keep it going through The Shining (unlike many, I quite enjoy that film) as well, but I am here to talk about a different streak, from a different time.  It was the 1940's and the directors were Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, known collectively as The Archers.

English born Michael Powell and Hungarian born Emeric Pressburger first came together during the war.  Already semi-established as a director and writer respectively, these two were brought together to work on propaganda films for the British war effort.  Some of these earlier films (Contraband, The 49th Parallel) were Hitchcockian thrillers, and quite good, but still nothing compared to what was about to come.  In my not-so-humble opinion, The Archers have created seven - and I do not throw such a term around willy-nilly - bonafide masterpieces.  Six of which were made successively between 1943 and 1948, and it is these six films, in these six years that we are here to talk about - so please allow me to praise great movies.

Starring Roger Livesey, Anton Walbrook and, in three roles, the lovely Deborah Kerr (at the time, Michael Powell's lover), and based, at least in name, on a newspaper comic strip, Colonel Blimp, the first of our run, takes place over a fifty year period in the life of a cocksure British officer and the woman/women (all Kerr) who he can never get out of his mind.  Splendid picture indeed.

A Canterbury Tale is probably the least seen and least known of our six film run.  This haunting, otherworldly film tells the story of a group of wayward pilgrims, played by Sheila Sim, Dennis Price and Sgt. John Sweet, an actual U.S. Army soldier in his one and only screen appearance, in the Kent countryside, which incidentally is beautifully filmed by the great cinematographer Erwin Hillier.

Another otherwordly-style film from The Archers, I Know Where I'm Going stars Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey (and a twelve year old Petula Clark long before she went "Downtown") as a pair of wouldbe lovers trapped by a storm in the highlands of Scotland.  The film's penultimate raging sea scenes and the inevitable finale, make an already great picture into a true blue masterpiece.

Renamed Stairway to Heaven for US release (something that goes against the whole idea of the film never mentioning Heaven or any specific afterlife) A Matter of Life and Death is the magical tale of an RAF pilot and the American woman he falls in love with - after he has supposedly died - is a beautiful film to watch (Earth-bound scenes in Technicolor, After-Life realm in crisp monochrome B&W).   

Black Narcissus, my second favourite Powell/Pressburger, is the haunting story of a group of nuns - headed by the always great Deborah Kerr - temporarily inhabiting a mountaintop nunnery (previously a princely whorehouse) and deals with the ideas of spirituality and the loss of faith.  Archer regular Kathleen Byron, as the bewildered Sister Ruth, is the sexy/creepy highlight of a film already filled to the brim with highlights.

The Red Shoes is not only my favourite Archer's film, but my favourite film of all-time - period.  Starring the beautiful flame-haired ballet star turned actress Moira Shearer as Victoria Page, who lives to dance, and Anton Walbrook and Marius Goring as the men who are splitting her emotions tragically in half.  Shot by Jack Cardiff, one of the finest cinematographers in film history, Martin Scorsese has called this the most beautiful colour film ever made - and who am I to disagree with that.

*************

There you go.  Six films, six years, six masterpieces.  Now one could make an argument that I could go on and add the duo's next film, 1949's The Small Back Room, to this list, but I am going to back off from such a thing since I do not think it quite reaches the heights of these aforementioned six works of art.  As for their next film, The Elusive Pimpernel, I cannot say, as it is a film that, having been in itself rather elusive, I have never seen (believe it or not, there is a Powell/Pressburger that has not been seen by yours truly).  After this, we could add another film to the list (if we were not going for that unbroken thing) in the form of 1950's Gone to Earth, with Jennifer Jones and David Farrar.  This film is that seventh bonafide masterpiece I spoke of in my opening salvo.  But alas, we are going for a streak here, so it will have to just sit and watch its six brethren take their day in the spotlight.  Well, that is it for now folks.  Have a good day.

Been Wondering What My Favourite Films Are? Thought So.

For all those oh so regular readers (and for all you irregulars too) that have taken the time to peruse the various tabs poised near the top of this, your favourite site in the whole web wide world, I am sure you have come across the one titled "My Favourite Films."  I am also quite sure that for near six months now, these inquisitive visitors have been stymied by a nearly blank page, with just two tiny words to unceremoniously greet them - coming soon.  Otherwise just a page full of nothing.  Nothing at all.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing at all.  Well guess what true believers?  If you will excuse the purposely poor grammar - it ain't nothing no more.  In fact, it is decidedly something.  Something.  Something.  Something.

What it is, is just what it says - or wysiwyg for those acronym minded among you.  It is now a bonafide page of my favourite films.  Twenty-five of them to be exact.  My 25 favourite films.  These are, according to yours truly here, the creme de la creme of the film world.  Twenty-five damn fine works of cinema indeed.  But why just twenty-five you may ask.  Good question.  Actually this is just a start.  I plan on periodically expanding this list throughout the rest of the year until I reach a top 1000.  Yeah, you read that right - a top thousand.  That of course will not come to fruition until I finish My Quest in November.  For right now, it is a top 25.  Eventually a top 100 - in preferential order.  After that, I will extend it to the aforementioned 1000 - this time in chronological order, though with the top 100 still being highlighted. 

Anyway, I suppose you probably want to know what is on this list, huh?  Of course you do.  Well for starters, yes Citizen Kane is on there, but guess what?  It is not number one as it is in so many other lists.  But it isn't all that far down the list either.  There are a few surprises on the list, but none really shocking - even if my lovely wife questioned my number three choice (I believe ridiculous was an adjective she used during this questioning).  The big surprise is what is not on the list.  At least it came as a surprise to me.  No Wilder.  No Griffith.  No Fellini.  No Truffaut.  No Rossellini.  No Minnelli.  No Lubitsch.  No Keaton.  And stranger than strange - no Howard Hawks!?  Really?  I guess not.  Though a certain Girl Friday may be coming as soon as the list is expanded into a top thirty.

Anyway, as they say, perhaps it is about time you check out the list yourself.  And remember to periodically check back (at the tab titled "My Favourite Films" of course) as the list will be growing throughout the year.  And of course please give any feedback you wish in the comments section of the page, because I am sure there will be many disgruntled naysayers out there - and we always love hearing from them. 

Apparently, I Am Too Racy to Discuss The Archers

As I was perusing the web one day, surfing if you will, I came across a notice for an upcoming movie blogathon.  For those of you who do not know what a blogathon may be, it is where a gaggle of blogospheric writers (aka, we cyberspace nerds) get together and discuss a certain subject, the certain subject of that particular blogathon.  Well the certain subject for this particular blogathon happened to be the certain cinema of a certain Mr. Michael Powell and and a certain Mr. Emeric Pressburger - collectively known amongst we cinephilia-bound folks in the so-called know, as The Archers.  Well hot damn, this was a thing I just had to get in on, so I quickly dashed off an e-mail to the appropriate parties, clamoring to say that I would love love love to write a piece for this exciting sounding blogathon event, and asking if the oft-forgotten masterpiece Gone to Earth was still available as a subject.  The aforementioned appropriate parties said yes to my rather exuberant pleas and everything looked like it was a definite go for lift-off.  Well, this is where everything fell apart and my mission was effectively scrubbed.

You see, a day after receiving an e-mail saying they were happy to have me aboard (my exuberance must have won them over immediately) I received a second e-mail saying, "After checking out your blog, I think it's a little too racy for the blogathon."  Racy?  Me?  Really?  Okay, perhaps I am not a G-rated site, but to say I am too racy to participate in a blogathon is kind of pushing it.  Saying that they are afraid if their regular crowd were to begin to peruse my site (which they did say later in the aforementioned e-mail) that they would take offense to what was written inside, is pretty ridiculous if you ask me.  Now granted, this may all be in the timing as when those appropriate parties from earlier "checked out my blog" the most recent post was that of one of my Retro Reviews.  It was a review of the 2007 film Teeth.  You know, the movie about a girl with vaginal dentata - the girl with the snapping hoo-hoo.  Well, needless to say, my perverse side may have come out a bit in that review (c'mon, how could it not!?) and this same said perversity would have been the first thing these appropriate parties partook of.  In other words - I was too racy for their kinda crowd.

Now normally I am not as perverse or racy (loose terms indeed) as I was in the writing of my Teeth review, but then again I never really think in those kinds of terms.  I just write.  What others glean from my writing is up to them.  I do not bother to tone down my rhetoric for a G-Rated crowd, nor do I try to up such vulgarities as to pander to the NC-17 crowd.  I simply write, without worries of what is proper or what is not.  Looking back, I suppose I am probably best categorized as R-Rated, or even PG-13 in many places, but certainly not too racy for most.  I try to use words as art, for the touchy crowd or the real world crowd.  I never care if I am using what society deems as an ugly, taboo word or not.  I simply write.  I am certainly not overtly racy for fuck's sake!!  Yeah, that was pandering, but I had to throw that word in to prove that no one is going to become a bad person by reading and/or hearing that word.  Fuck, fuck fuckity fuck.  Okay, really, I am not normally like this.  When I was first dismissed, as it were, from the aforementioned blogathon, I replied with a whole "no hard feelings" attitude, but the more I thought about it, the more am getting pissed off.

Now do not get me wrong, I really have no hard feelings (the cocksure attitude here is merely for playful show) and am still an avid supporter of the site that is hosting the blogathon - and all those associated.  I suppose everyone needs their rules, and I suppose that some are inexplicably put off by something as simple as a four letter word, but still, kinda silly if ya ask me.   Extra silly when you consider that this blogathon that all the hullabaloo is about, is a blogathon on, for their time period, a pretty racy filmmaking team.  The lustful nunnery of Black Narcissus, the debauchery hidden away in Colonel Blimp, the seductive factors of The Red Shoes, the naughtiness of Oh...Rosalinda!!, the sexual concoctions of A Canterbury Tale, the giddy sexuality of Gone to Earth.  I will not even bother to go into Powell's solo pet project Peeping Tom.  Perhaps all this carnal knowledge goes over the heads of the kinds of readers who are offended by the word fuck, but nonetheless, it is all there in the fabulous films of Powell/Pressburger.  C'mon people, Kathleen Byron's lusting, desiring, feral, lasciviousness  Sister Ruth cannot be mistaken for anything but a sniffing animal with wanton instincts of a cat in heat.  Racy?  Nah.  Hell, The Red Shoes is one of the most sensual films to have ever been made.  The idea of willing rape in Gone to Earth, or the leering eyes of Mel Ferrer as the playboy ex-pat officer in Oh...Rosalinda!! are enough to make the term racy seem like suddenly not enough.  And I am too racy for them?  Bah!

My 25 (or so) Favourite Classic Films First Seen in 2011

Inspired by the always charming, always enjoyable and always cinematically knowledgeable (and always alliterative, nomenclaturally speaking) Self-Styled Siren, I send forth a list of my 25 favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011.  Classic, of course, being any movie made prior to 1960.  And in keeping with the Siren's choice of keeping the descriptions to a bare bones minimum (actually inspired in turn by Clara at Via Margutta 51) I will try to hold my typically long-winded ramblings to a relative bare bones minimum as well.  So without further ado, here are my favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011.

Oh wait!   I do have some further ado to put forth - and possibly some rambling (see, I have already begun breaking promises).  In order to keep this list to a nice and tidy twenty-five (yeah, right) I would like to preface said list with a pair of special mentions.  

Powell/Pressburger: It is a rather sad fact but before this past year I had only seen three films by this brilliant British filmmaking duo known collectively as the Archers (Black Narcissus, Tales of Hoffman & of course The Red Shoes - my all-time favourite film if one wishes to keep track of such things).    In 2011, I almost doubled my Powell/Pressburger film viewing prowess, by seeing five of their films for the very first time.   These five films (in order of preference) are The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, Gone to Earth, A Matter of Life and Death & Oh...Rosalinda!!.  Any one of these films could feasibly take the top spot on the below list, so since they are so many and so superior (at least mostly), I have decided to put them in a class all their own.   In actuality this is merely a ploy (a clever ruse if you will) to make more room on the list for even more films since I could not narrow my list down very easily.  The other special mention (just below) is another ploy to do the same damn thing.

Douglas Sirk:  Believe it or not, prior to 2011, I had never seen a film directed by Herr Sirk.  This sad fact was remedied last year by seeing five of his great melodramas (again, in order of preference) - Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind, All That Heaven Allows, Magnificent Obsession & A Time to Live and a Time to Die.  Again, I believe these to be the proverbial head and shoulders above most of the films I saw in 2011, so they too will get a class all their own.  And again, this is merely part of the aforementioned ploy.  But enough of this.  I promised not to ramble on, so now, (really) without further ado, I give you my 25 favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011.  I have tried to list these films in relative preferential order, but I think we all know how that ends up, so take the numbering order in any manner you see fit.  Now here they are.

1) Leave Her to Heaven (John Stahl, 1945) - Beautiful and sinister as hell, and with the sexiest overbite in the history of Hollywood, this is Gene Tierney at her wicked best - and the glorious Technicolor (wonderfully and appropriately artificial) looks almost as good as she does.  If you do not believe me, just check out that look she is giving you right now.

2) Cairo Station (Youssef Chahine, 1958) - Very possibly the least known film on this list, this Egyptian film noir(ish) masterpiece (yeah!  I called it that!) is like having Hawks, Hitchcock, Welles, Curtiz and Antonioni all rolled into one.

3) Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955) - Taking its place as my new favourite crime caper movie (my new second favourite of the genre can be seen in the number eight spot below), this French heist film is , to borrow an attitude from Mae West, great when it is loud but even greater when it doesn't say a word.

4) Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952) - The best thing to come out of Lang's Hollywood years, and a campy deeelight full of Marlene mayhem (looking a bit older than what she wanted to) and Mel Ferrer and his toothy, snarky grin.  Fun stuff indeed.  My review can be read here.

5) The Last Flight (William Dieterle, 1931) - If the Siren can wax poetic about Edmund Goulding then I can turn critical cartwheels over William Dieterle.  What a great forgotten film (a loving piece in Film Comment made me seek it out), highlighting the equally forgotten (sad as that may be) Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, John Mack Brown and Helen Chandler.  My review can be read here.

6) Partie de campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936) - How could it not be gorgeous - it's Renoir - but even by Renoir standards this forty minute film, based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, and centered around the drop dead gorgeous Sylvia Bataille as an objet d'art, is a complete stunner.

7) Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagen, 1931) - Even taking the sexy lesbian schoolgirl factor out of the mix (I am a guy after all), this early German sound film is more than well worth a look - a long look indeed.  In fact one could (and should) call this film haunting - a term that could go all cliché if one is not careful, but that is not the case here.  Seriously though, this is a very powerful film indeed.  My review can be read here.

8) The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956) - Kubrick's rather demanding style has always appealed to me, and in this early work (his third) you can see that style hidden inside a more classic style.  A great crime caper movie (my second favourite of the genre - see number 3 above) and easy to see the influence on Tarantino later on.

9) The Shanghai Gesture (Josef von Sternberg, 1941) - Another Gene Tierney vehicle (I suppose I was going through a Tierney phase in 2011), this rather sleazy, giddily B-grade picture was a delight from beginning to end.  And not just Tierney (and that overbite) but also Victor Mature (I did say sleazy) and Ona Munson as Mother Gin Sling.  Great stuff indeed.

10) The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, 1921) - One of the creepiest and greatest silent films ever made.  Who knew the Swedes could pull of as much silent era intensity and visual bravura as the Germans.

11) 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957) - It is kind of shocking that I went through the first 43 years of my life (the first few understandably so) without ever seeing this film.  Intense and brilliant, this film is the perfect blend of writing, directing and acting.  And the scene where everyone, even the assholes in the group, turn their backs on the racist played by Ed Begley, is simply perfect.

12) The Cobweb (Vincente Minnelli, 1955) - One of the great Minnelli's lesser known works, and a film that is seen as too melodramatic by many, but I was blown away (as they say) by the damned thing.  Granted, I like pretty much anything with Richard Widmark in it, and Gloria Grahame is ooh la la great just about every time out, and I prefer the overly melodramatic, so it was probably a forgone conclusion that I would love this picture.  My review (actually more a list of my 10 favourite things about the film) can be read here.

13) Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz, 1935) - Swashbuckling at its very best.  I think I can call this the greatest pirate movie ever made and I would not get much argument.  Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (their first of an eventual eight films together) and Basil Rathbone as the villain.  What more need be said.  Ahoy mateys, ahoy.

14) Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox, 1956) - A cool and pretty keen fifties sci-fi classic (based on The Tempest of all things) that shows a young, pre-parody, Leslie Nielsen as the heroic but somewhat hapless captain of a spacecraft trapped on the titular planet and a very highlighted, and very leggy Anne Francis as the object of the Captain's (and everyone else's) affections.  Oh yeah, and Robby the Robot too.  My review can be read here.

15) The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953) - This is the movie that has Brando in leather, with a revving, hulking machine roaring between his legs.  No, not Last Tango in Paris.  THis is the one with the motorcycles (get your mind out of the gutter).  Cool as can be - and with Lee Marvin to boot.  My review can be read here.

16) The Steel Helmet (Samuel Fuller, 1951) - Just Fuller's third film and already that growling Fullerian intensity is fully intact.  Thanx to Criterion's great Eclipse series for getting this one two me in such pristine form.  I think I would have to include this in any 10 Favourite war movies list I were to make.

17) The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956) - Seen during my summer kick of 1950's sci-fi/fantasy films, this is one of the creepiest movies I saw all year. It just goes and goes and never lets up - not even in the end.

18) Bienvenido Mr. Marshall (Luis Garcia Berlanga, 1953) - I must admit to never having heard of the director before coming across three of his films during My Quest, but I sure am glad I have finally found him.  A screwball kind of film, Berlanga can be called a Spanish Billy Wilder without much fuss.

19) Caged (John Cromwell, 1950) - Subversive and more than bordering on the exploitative, this is a harrowing film and Eleanor Parker hands in a frazzled, frenzied but oh so chilling performance as an innocent turned jaded caged bird.  My review can be read here.

20) The Ballad of Narayama (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1958) - Forget Ozu.  Forget Kurosawa.  Forget Mizoguchi and Naruse.  2011 was the year that turned Keisuke Kinoshita into my favourite classic Japanese director.  This film is just beautiful as Kinoshita does wonders with colour.

21) The Silver Chalice (Victor Saville, 1954) - Mockingly nicknamed Paul Newman and the Holy Grail, and hated by Newman himself (this debut film would be the scorn of the actor's career), I quite enjoyed this rather laughable movie just for the very fact that it is so laughable.  And at the top of this laughability - Jack Palance at his most campiest (no need to shut the closet on this performance).  My review can be read here.

22) The Hurricane (John Ford, 1937) - Aside from the fun I had watching this while an actual hurricane was raging outside (or at least the more inland version of such), this is a very fun film in and of itself.  Plus we get to see Dorothy Lamour tied to a palm tree.  My review (or at least some thoughts on the film) can be read here.

23) Fig Leaves (Howard Hawks, 1925) - Howard Hawks does The Flintstones.  This was a surprisingly fun film to watch.  Granted, it was Hawks and I am certainly what one would call a Hitchcocko-Hawksian, but I still did not expect as much out of this silent film as I got.  Seriously, did Hanna and Barbara see this film before creating The Flintstones?  And if you watch, you will see that Howard Hawks invented the snooze alarm.  My review can be read here.

24) The Outlaw (Howard Hughes, 1943) - I think the fact that Howard Hughes invented the underwire bra specifically for Jane Russell (in her film debut) to wear, makes this a very interesting behind-the-scenes tale.  The movie itself is rather simple (Hughes is not a great director), but Russell makes it her own with her very own pair of great assets.

25) My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin, 1940) - I think the most fun about watching this screwball comedy is watching how nervous the muscled, mostly naked body of Randolph Scott seems to make Cary Grant - especially considering the real life relationship between the two.  It doesn't hurt that Leo McCarey wrote the thing as well.

I could easily keep this list going with such first time fun as Designing Woman, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Blessed Event, Criminal Code, So Young So Bad, Detour, The Miracle Woman, Run For Cover, Untamed, Crossfire, The Egyptian, Ceiling Zero, Girls of the Road, The Hitch-Hiker, The Medium, East of Borneo, Land of the Pharaohs, Side Street, Stranger on the Third Floor and both versions of Dawn Patrol. 

Also, I suppose a special mention should be made for a great double feature I saw for the first time in 2011.  The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, both directed by Frank Tashlin and the first two starring roles for Jayne Mansfield, are a great pair of self-referential comedies - and I do love self-referential comedies.

One last thing before I shuffle off.  As I made mention to above, I spent a lot of film-watching hours this past summer in the genre of 1950's Sci-fi - most of which I had never seen.  Some of these were really good (The Man From Planet X, Invaders From Mars, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers) while some were pretty laughable (The Monolith Monsters, Robot Monster, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) but they were all pretty darn fun - even if in the cheesiest kind of way.  In fact I liked these films so much that I even did a 10 Best 1950's Sci-Fi list for them over at Anomalous Material.

Once again I would like to thank the Self-Styled Siren for her inspiration in making this list.  I hope to do it again next year, and that may include some of the films I have gleaned off of the Siren's list, and will watch for the first time in 2012.

My Quest to See the 1000 Greatest: A Canterbury Tale (1944)

A Canterbury Tale is #581 in  

My Quest to watch the 1000 Greatest Films

Screened 02/09/11 on Criterion DVD at Midtown Cinema

Ranked #381 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).

There is a certain something about the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.  Of course they are visually stunning.  The look and feel of their films are beyond reproach.  Many filmmakers would give anything to make films like them.  But there is more than just this obvious visual and audible style.  The films this duo made together - especially during that perfect six-movie streak that ran for Colonel Blimp to The Red Shoes - have a certain, for lack of a better term, otherworldly charm about them.  It is as if these films are of a magical time and place all their own.  The windy snow-capped Shangri-la-like terrain of Black Narcissus; the tragic fantasy and that final dance of The Red Shoes; the dreamlike quality of the two lovers in A Matter of Life and Death.  And A Canterbury Tale, though sadly lesser known among the duo's oeuvre, is no different.

Seeming to be out of time and out of place (even though set then-contemporarily in the midst of WWII) A Canterbury Tale (loosely based, of course, upon Chaucer's epic poem) tells the story of three travelers on their way to the titular sacred place, whom all get tangled up in a strange mystery just one town over.   The three aforementioned travelers are Allison, a young "Land Girl" (part of the Women's Land Army - civilian girls who helped out with the war effort - for those non-Anglophiles out there) played by the lovely girl-next-door type Sheila Sim, British Sergeant Peter Gibbs, played by up-and-commer (and later down-and-outer) Dennis Price and American Sergeant Bob Johnson, played by real life Sergeant John Sweet.  These three get entangled in a strange affair wherein a mystery man is running about the village putting glue in young girl's hair.

This odd mystery (which isn't really a mystery since it is pretty obvious who the culprit is from the beginning) is really only a sidebar to the ideas of God and time and space and love and all those other deeply felt philosophical comings-and-goings in life.  It is in these ideas that Powell & Pressburger fashion a movie that is probably even more otherworldly than the afterlife parable A Matter of Life and Death.  As Powell's camera (courtesy of cinematographer Erwin Hillier, most notable for being DP on Fritz Lang's M) moves so effortlessly through the English countryside, we are transported to another world in both mood and feeling.  The Archers' films were (to coin a rather tired, but completely appropriate term) magical, and A Canterbury Tale, though perhaps not as vibrant as Colonel Blimp, nor as seductive as Black Narcissus, nor as downright succulent as The Red Shoes, shows these filmmakers in top magical form.  I personally was transfixed as I watched this film unfold on the big screen in front of me.

The film would go on to have a strange life of its own then.  Not a success at the box office (a first for the Archers) Powell was made to re-edit the film for post-war US release, shortening it by twenty minutes and tacking on bookends which featured Kim Hunter as Sgt. Johnson's girl back home (Hunter would incidentally get the female lead in the next Powell/Pressburger project, A Matter of Life and Death).  The film was eventually restored to its original and proper form (no offense to the lovely and talented Miss Hunter) by the British Film Institute, in the 1970's.  Still often overlooked when considering the entire Powell/Pressburger oeuvre, A Canterbury Tale is considered a classic today.  Personally it is my third favourite film of the Archers - following The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

My Quest To See the 1000 Greatest: A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

A Matter of Life and Death is #577 in  

My Quest to watch the 1000 Greatest Films

Screened 01/28/11 on DVD at Midtown Cinema

Ranked #137 on TSPDT

Inexplicably retitled Stairway to Heaven for US release (an arrogant irony considering Powell & Pressburger took great aims to never directly refer to the afterlife in the film as Heaven), A Matter of Life and Death is a stunning movie, in both character and form, and easily one of the Archers' greatest collaborative works - second only, in this critic's opinion, to that high watermark of grand cinema The Red Shoes).

It is the story of a World War II British pilot, played by the always congenial David Niven, who is shot down and supposedly killed (ever congenial and ever "English" to the bitter end) - another in a long long long line of casualties of war.  Only thing is, he doesn't die.  Washed ashore, presuming himself in the afterlife, Niven's pilot instead finds himself very much (and very miraculously perhaps?) still among the living - only to run into, and fall in love with, the American radio operator who was the last person he talked to before his untimely dea...er, near death experience.

Enter an envoy from that place that is not Heaven (except in the aforementioned US release version) enlisted to take Niven's pilot to where he belongs.  You see, here we find out it was merely a clerical error of sorts that has kept our intrepid hero amongst the living, and he is due in that "other world" immediately - if not sooner.  But our hero refuses to go.  You see, when he was on his dying plane, and was about to meet his maker, he was ready to go - a real proper gentleman about it, but now he has fallen in love and has a reason to go on living.  This brings us to the trial - a matter of life and death as it were - with the whole of human history at its beck and call.

Shot with remarkable beauty (in a roundabout from The Wizard of Oz, the Archers portray the real world in colour - Technicolor at that) and the other world in crisp black and white) and given a sheen of overwhelming sentiment, while at the same time hitting deeper topics (both political and scientific, as well as the obvious religious quandaries) than what merely lie on the sublime surface.  This was Powell & Pressburger at the height of their joint career.  Right in the middle of their remarkable run that also included The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I Am Going, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.  Never has such a six-year run been equaled in the annals of world cinema.

The film also features Kim Hunter in the role of the radio operator, Richard Attenborough as a fellow pilot, Raymond Massey as the prosecuting attorney in the aforementioned trial (Massey, when asked if he would take the part, immediately cabled the response of "For the Archers anytime, this world or the next.") and two of the Powell/Pressburger stable of regulars, Kathleen Byron as an angel who takes an interest in the case and Marius Goring as Cunductor 71 (as a rather fey, and quite hilarious French revolutionary who is the blame for the error that has caused everything to unfold as it has), later seen as mad Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus and Julian Craster in The Red Shoes, respectively.

To toss out just a few adjectives to describe this film, we have astonishing, brilliant, magnificent, breathtaking, majestic, sensational, mind-blowing and utterly sublime.  Perhaps I am gushing like a lovesick schoolgirl, leaving my critical chops in the back pocket as it were, but one cannot help such hyperbole when discussing the works of Powell & Pressburger - especially at the epicenter of their already stunning oeuvre.

My Quest To See the 1000 Greatest: Black Narcissus (1947)

Black Narcissus is #576 in  

My Quest to watch the 1000 Greatest Films

Screened 09/10/10 on Blu-Ray at Midtown Cinema

Ranked #154 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).

Can one truly describe a Powell/Pressburger film as batshitcrazy?  Does one dare?  Are The Archers above such a low class term?  Does their cinema transcend the insane and instead take its place in a more Heavenly, spiritual place of honour?  Probably, but I am going to stick with the term anyway.  Whether someone has this auteuristic team named as their religion on Facebook (and yes I do), and therefore puts them in the highest regard or not, the terms stays.  Batshitcrazy it is.

Seriously though, Black Narcissus, the film The Archers did just after their first masterpiece, A Matter of Life and Death, and just before their second (and greatest) masterpiece The Red Shoes, is a psychologically brilliant (though not quite masterpiece, for one does not want to overuse such a term, but awfully close I must say) look at faith and lust and love and how all three intertwine, often to dangerous, and quite inevitably tragic outcomes.  Set in a remote Himalayan mountainside makeshift convent, where an Indian general has offered his ancestral palace to a group of nuns (in actuality, a former brothel, which of course adds to the skewed juxtaposition of faith and sexual desire), Black Narcissus, starring Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Sabu, a young Jean Simmons and Kathleen Byron as the tragic Sister Ruth, plays out as a socio-religious thriller.  And in the hands of The Archers, and their regular cinematographer-extraordinaire Jack Cardiff, it plays out as a gorgeously photographed work of art as well.

But back to the batshitcrazy comment from the beginning of this piece.  The term comes into play with the erotic nature of the film, set against the restrictive Catholicism of its main characters. It is this very clashing of cultures and ideals (East vs. West, sexual desire vs. spiritual faith) that gives Black Narcissus its intensity - its batshitcraziness.  

Marina Warner, introducing the film on BBC2, called it a masterpiece:

"The suggestions continually hover on the brink of hyperbole. The film achieves its extraordinary impact by daring so much against all bounds of decorum, far in excess of realism. The crimson lipstick Sr. Ruth applies turns her into a kind of werewolf, the kittenish wiles of Jean Simmonsalso convey, in a different mode, a fantasy of female sexual appetite. The crazed and sometimes cruel flapping of Angu Ayah adds yet another flourish to the portrait of female hysteria. In this convent, this house of women, all the women are mad."

And later:

"Again and again Powell submits Sr. Clodagh to visitants from the world of chaos and passion she has foresworn in order to touch her, shake her, break her down. First and foremost David Farrar's Mr. Dean, all bare, hairy legs, insolence and roguish eyes, erupts into her convent, the spirit of maleness embodied. The holy father in the grounds issues a mute challenge to her faith. Luxury, desire, pleasure, humiliation all thrust in upon her in the forms of the young General with his emeralds and perfumes, and of Kanchi, the young Jean Simmons in dark panstick with a jewel in her nose, and Katrhleen Byron's famous pent up, ravening portrayal of Sr. Ruth finally holds up a mirror of the abyss into which Sr. Clodagh too might fall, and indeed only just escapes in more ways than one. As in Clarissa, Samuel Richardson's classic novel about prolonged seduction and embattled virtue, Powell pits the chaste and steely Deborah Kerr against all these assailants and watches her thrash about with relish. While Lovelace had to rape Clarissa to achieve his end, Powell only has to show that Mr. Dean was right and Sr. Clodagh was mistaken. The ending of Black Narcissus vindicates the world against the cloister, libido against superego, male against female."
 

To end on a quote from the man responsible for the film itself, in Michael Powell's own view this was the most erotic film he ever made. "It is all done by suggestion, but eroticism is in every frame and image from beginning to end. It is a film full of wonderful performances and passion just below the surface, which finally, at the end of the film, erupts."

1948 in New York City (cinematically speaking that is)

Okay, it's actually 2009.  November 7, 2009 to be exact, but it felt as if I were transported back to 1948.  Why, you ask?  Well, I'll tell you.  The two films that - by large margin - hold the top spots in my list of the best films of 1948 were playing on the same day in the same city and this avid - or should I say rabid - cinephile (damn those who say the term is long out of vogue!) was able to see both films on the big screens of two Manhattan art houses.

The first was Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief, playing at Lincoln Plaza Cinema.  As the black and white print popped and hissed and stuttered a bit at times - as old 35mm prints are apt to do - the nearly sold out crowd laughed, gasped and awed at what is undoubtedly one of the greatest films ever made.  I had never seen the film on anything larger than a 40 some inch TV and it was an amazing feeling to do so.  To watch poor Antonio desperately searching for his stolen bicycle, and thus his very livelihood, was a strange melange of heartbreak and cinephiliac giddiness.  But we were just getting started.

As I boarded the D train bound for The Village and then proceeded to make my way down Sixth Ave toward Houston and in turn, Film Forum, my heart began racing a bit.  Then a bit more.  And then a bit more.  It may sound ridiculous and quite dramatic (I do have a penchant for the overdramatic at times) but I was shaking with some weird sort of uber-anticipation as I drew closer and closer to the cinema.  And there it was on the marquee - Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes.  

Lucky for me I had bought my ticket online the night before because as I entered the cinema the glaring, somewhat obnoxious sign read 7:00 show sold out.  Shortly after this the even more obnoxious sign went up reading 9:45 show sold out.  It was great to see so much interest in The Red Shoes (as damn well there should be!) but if I hadn't already had ticket in hand I would have probably dropped to my knees right there on Houston and wept like a child.  In fact the picture below of the lovely Moira Shearer would have been my reaction if I had not already procured my golden ticket.  I did tell you I had a penchant for the overdramatic.

So, to get back to my story of cinephiliac glory (overdramatic again), I entered the very crowded theatre - about eleven minutes prior to showtime - and took my seat in the front row.  Legs outstretched and head resting on my seatback, the lights went down and the projector motor whirred from the back of the theatre.  After a trailer for the soon-to-be-released 35mm restoration of M. Hulot's Holiday (opening at Film Forum on 11/20) The Red Shoes began and I (overdramatizing once again) was in Heaven.

Martin Scorsese called The Red Shoes, "The greatest technicolor film ever made." and I whole heartedly agree with the great filmmaker and fellow cinephile.  This was going to be the closest thing to a religious experience this semi-agnostic, ordained minister (yes, I really am) has ever had.  The vivid blues and reds and greens and yellows were mesmerizing as I stared in wonder at the glowing screen.  By the end, my legs and back (and yes, my buttocks) were aching but it mattered not for I was able to watch the effervescent, the gorgeous, the remarkable Moira Shearer dance her dance all the way to what is probably the greatest (and most tragic) finale a movie has ever had.

With cinephiliac orgasm in tow, I left Film Forum and made my way home - after a quick bite with my lovely wife Amy and her friend Molly - and dreamt of the greatest technicolor film ever made.  Fin.

The Red Shoes Coming to Film Forum

When future generations, or perhaps when alien lifeforms come to Earth, a hundred, a thousand, a million years from now and ask, "what is music?", we will play for them Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.  When they ask, "what is art?", we will show them Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.  When they ask, "what is poetry?", we will read to them from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese.  When these future travelers ask us, "what is cinema?", we will show them The Red Shoes.

Perhaps a bit on the overdramatic flair side of things, but one can not be expected to hold back when faced with the opportunity to see one of the greatest films ever made on the big screen - and in a restored 35mm print at that.  Scorsese called the Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger film the most beautiful technicolor film ever made - and he ain't kiddin' boy.  And now here it is, coming to Film Forum for a two week run November 6 - 19, so excuse the hyperbole.