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The Third Man (1949)
A Touchstone for all 20th c. art: Random Notes
NOTES ON THE THIRD MAN
The Third Man -- it's Freud! it's Kafka! it's Hitchcock! It's Conrad! It's Fellini! It's Nietzche! It's Machiavelli! It's all the above and more: it's Orson Welles... and the Notes on the GREATNESS of THE THIRD MAN.
Two's company, three's a crowd. The title hints of a character who has surpassed the ordinary; who has defied conventional restraints; an outsider; a modern Kurtz [Heart of Darkness]. No coincidence that a sinister, cynical Kurtz actually exists in the film.
Of what is Lime guilty anyway? How guilty is he? What has he done? Does it even matter? For a long time, he is nowhere in sight. We don't know where he is, if he even exists, or if the terrible rumors about him are true. So why do we so desperately want to meet him and hear his side of the story? We begin to identify with this mystery man, we want to side with him.
Only one thing is certain as the story unrolls: Harry Lime has gone too far and he must pay the price.
Joseph Cotten plays an artistically-compromised American writer, who is too naive -- in his charming American way -- to realize it. Can he even begin to offer the insight and integrity needed to evaluate Lime's guilt or innocence, the evidence we long to disavow?
Then there is Harry's American girlfriend. She is depressed by Harry but is mentally loyal to his "memory."
TouchPoints
The transcendently evil character to whom a genuine, yet inexperienced character is inexplicably and irrevocably drawn through a long, convoluted journey toward absolute darkness. (Conrad)
Vienna, the city of intellect, intrigue, and ambition with its dark streets, gothic shadows and subterranean sewers providing the ultimate metaphor for the mind (Freud) Life as a dizzying carnival of dizzying perceptions of good and evil, sin and salvation, and the relentless need to make choices. (Fellini)
The investigation of murder, and the subsequent surprises, secrets and thrills that unveil character and motive. The use of creative sound, light and cinematography to embroil the viewer in the hunt. Tall buildings and dizzying heights. The propensity to fall from grace. (Hitchcock)
The presumption of guilt as a foundational assumption of modern life. The chaos, frustration, loneliness and deep fears occasioned by endless and inescapable and endless bureaucratic and architectural webs, mazes, and tangles. (Kafka)
This is certainly one of the top ten films of all time -- if not, in fact, number one. It's complexity continues to fascinate, amaze, entertain, awe. It is perfect.
The Fallen Idol (1948)
excellent adaptation
This is an excellent adaptation of the Graham Greene novella. Richardson's performance is incredible, and the relationship between Philippe and the butler is the centerpiece of the film.
I sometimes wonder if this film would have been more successful with a different title. IMHO "The Fallen Idol" suggests a Saturday matinee shlockfest or a pretentious drawing room comedy.
This is a good companion piece to another Graham Greene novella -- also directed by Reed -- the Third Man, which is just possibly the greatest film of all time...
Prince of Foxes (1949)
Welles astounds with his undeniable greatness
Once again, Welles astounds with his talent. Even though he is not listed in this film's credits as director or writer, the great Welles has left indefatigable stamp of genius on this film. His fascination and artistic absorption with great, unbridled power, moral resistance to that power and the response of the artist has once again propelled him to greatness.
His is a fascinating, swaggering, bemused, sly (as the title implies) impression of the all-powerful Borgia and his near success at corrupting the artist, Orsini. Shades of Citizen Kane and Harry Lyme..?
Naturally, there is a weaselly accomplice (Sloan), and he is terrific too. I found Tyrone Power's performance more than adequate -- for once. Production values were good, too.
But the keynote of the entire production is the masterful Welles. His portrayals are a joy to encounter, maybe because he finds the rich and powerful entertainingly evil, while the rest of us poor mortals find them too intimidating to even acknowledge.
Who cares about Welles' "troubles with Hollywood"? Skip the gossip, people, and THINK about his characters' motives and behavior. And their relevance.
(Talk is cheap. It is easy for the American Film Institute to call Citizen Kane the number one movie of all time, but which side were they on when Welles was being persecuted by his Hollywood peers? And where are they now, when talented independent filmmakers are trying to get their "dangerous" films shown -- or recognized)?
The fact is, with or without support or financing, Welles was in a class by himself. His brilliant mind, rampant creativity, sheer acting ability, courage, originality and artistic integrity have yet to be matched.
There will never never be another Welles...
Back to Prince of Foxes. This is an underrated film. See it for Welles' sake, see it for a Renaissance flash, or just see it for Everett Sloan's eyeballs...
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
a lovely gem of a film
For the last several visits to the video store, I've been drawn to this film, but it wasn't until a few days ago that I finally rented it. And I'm really glad I did.
This film glows with delicately-drawn character studies. It is a testament to the effectiveness of subtle storytelling. The story is good, and the characters are gentle but passionate. They are middle class folks who live in a pleasant neighborhood in LA. They have left the hardscrabble life of the South -- with all the attendant superstitions and fears -- behind. Or so they hope...
The responses that the characters have to the presence of evil in their midst are refreshing and true. Though the film is subtle, it never drags, gets sentimental, or sloshes into easy cliches.
Danny Glover is wonderful, but so are most of the other actors. Oh, it's about family, but in a way that attracts us. There are no tried and true gimmicks, no diseases du jour, no soapy interludes. Just people. Doing the best they can. They are sometimes funny, sometimes foolish, sometimes predictable. One thing we notice: they can seem excessively patient with out-of- town visitors...
Wuthering Heights (1992)
a devastating adaptation
The haunted moods & perverse emotions of the novel have never been more fully realized. The powerful incestuous relationships of many of the characters, the insights on gender, race and class, and the power of obsession are in full realization. Can love transcend death, can stymied love turn to hatred?
The score is haunting, and Ralph Fiennes is in top top form.
A soap opera, horror film, and gothic romance all in one. This film is sexy, creepy, sad, yearning, tragic, engrossing. You'll be a believer.
One of truest adaptations to the "spirits" of the original.
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
the unspeakable takes control
This is mesmerizing film with a cipher at its center. Less is more. I am amused at some of the comments. There seem to be two types: those which depict the movie as "beautiful, ethereal and subtle" and those which depict the film as "too symbolic, too slow, boring, too 70's."
The point is, there is no point. The central vision of the film is enigma, the void, mystery. This seems to make a lot of explainers uncomfortable, but the use of emptiness at the core of a work of art is nothing new. "The hand that erases writes the true thing" Faulkner's masterpiece "The Sound and the Fury" is about a character who is absent. The characters that surround her, and who actually people the novel? Not all there, lacking, disintegrating, unknown, unwanted, unloved.
If there must be a meaning, it is that nothingness is the biggest threat of all. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" We fear our disappearance. We'd like to believe that our little lives, our little comments, our little film lists will endure forever. But they won't. Nothing will.
what is existence? a random ever-changing collection of energized particles.
At any point, we can cross the line into nothingness. Nature will subsume us.
The film "A Passage to India" had the same theme. It was NOT essentially a movie about rape or sex scandal. It was about the yawning pitch-black eternal emptiness of the caves. It drove two women mad. Nature as an amoral uncaring unmoveable eternal reality.
Just as Picnic was NOT about repressed Victorian sexuality. These were pretexts, and were utilized because the fear of sex is the fear of letting go. The fear of sexuality leads irrestibly to our main fear: that darkness, emptiness, and the powers of nature will overwhelm us and erase us.
In Picnic, there was no villain, no enemy, no fall guy, no perpetrator, process or predicament that we could blame for the girls' disappearance. They simply disappeared. And that is the scariest nightmare of all.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
Excellent Version of Classic Tale
Let's start with the deficiencies: cheap makeup and special effects, marginal sets and costumes. And perhaps my bias against Spencer Tracy.
I've never liked Tracy as an actor, although I'll be the first to acknowledge his best work. He has always struck me as paternal, smug, self-righteous and ponderous -- although that may be because he was type cast.
IMHO this is his best film, because it shows not only his typical character (Dr. Jekyll) but that character's doppelganger (Mr. Hyde). ~I've always wanted to use that word in a review~ Tracy is not afraid of playing a very sinister, menacing character. (I wish more directors would have given him that chance). He plays Hyde as a jet-propelled, leering, vicious fiend -- and is convincing. When he is Hyde, he looks like a very horny James Whitmore -- on speed. He is very unsettling. Perhaps Tracy should have done more horror movies.
What makes the film is simply the powerful and touching performances of Tracy and Bergman. Bergman simply glows with life. Although the Freudian implications are not explored in depth here, this version is absorbing and sometimes mesmerizing.
Dark Passage (1947)
Hi-style Essential Film Noir
What an experience it was for me, a longtime Bogeyphile, discovering this movie. There are several moments that define the film-noir esthetic. But Dark Passage has even more. Perhaps a list is in order.
The chemistry between Bogey and Bacall, exceptional B&W cinematography, Bogey (the actor) and/or Bogey's character analyzing his face/identity in a mirror, strangely isolated and awkward acts of violence, non-random random events, psychodrama, a distended sense of time, and a devastating performance by Agnes Moorehead. In a genre in which good acting is relatively rare, her final scene and its conclusion is a mindblower.
If film noir is your glass of milk, then Dark Passage (Freudian implications and all) is a film you'll crave.
Jane Eyre (1997)
A superb adaptation of the novel
This is a superb adaptation of the novel -- the leads couldn't be better cast, or better acted. Jane, who is intelligent, introspective and highly-principled, yet shy and insecure, and Mr. Rochester, who is emotionally-distant, secretive, and conflicted. Both are lonely, but they do serendipitously meet and fall in love.
Samantha Morton is the first Jane who looks, acts and speaks like the Jane I know from the novel. And Ciaran Hinds, with his awkward, gruff demeanor and off-putting behavior is perfect. The excellent production values enhance the emotion and direction of the plot. If you are as passionate about British literature as I am, this film will thrill you. Even as I write this, I am re-experiencing the very intense emotion of the scene when Jane is about to leave Rochester's estate. It is a very moving scene and I have never forgotten it.
This is the real thing.
Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945)
A Joyful & Tender Childhood Recollection
In the spirit of Booth Tarkington (The Magnificent Ambersons, Alice Adams) and Willa Cather (O Pioneers) comes this moving memoir of a young Wisconsin girl, her life on her parent's farm, and her love for her father. There are similarities to other children's novels, such as Heidi, but the fact is, here is a film that children may enjoy, but adults need to see even more.
Bother the writing and the acting here is superior... What could have been nothing but sentiment and triteness is transformed by the lucid, intelligent, quavering realness of Margaret O'Brien, the warmth, gentleness and subtlety of Edward G. Robinson, and to top it all off, the brusque affection and wariness of Agnes Moorehead. A dream cast. (Not who you'd expect, but, because of their great talent, they fit the roles like a glove).
The script is more subtle and meaningful than anyone could have dared to expect. The characters are real people who are living life the best they know how, and caring for each other. It is probably inevitable that someone will compare The Vines to one or another of Capra's greatest films.
That's just fine. There's always room for another quiet masterpiece. Especially one so full of compassion.
My Life So Far (1999)
A kind family & precocious child in a gentle setting
Many summaries have described this film's plot as a love triangle that occurs in turn-of-the-century Scotland. Nonsense. What is this tendency to pigeonhole films by the time and place
in which they occurred? Maybe its because of Hollow-wood's tendency to create shallow "costume dramas." If a film has any merit at all, it is because it TRANSCENDS its setting, and speaks to its audience, whoever and wherever they are.
"My Life So Far" is a story of the intellectual development of a very bright child. His piecing together and puzzling out of the complex emotions of the people around him, in addition to his own feelings and experiences, and the information he receives via overheard conversations, books, music and so forth are interesting and original and seem totally spontaneous. It is a joy to experience what he experiences.
The ensemble acting is effortless, especially the child actor, who is so spontaneous and self-absorbed, you feel you are a member of the family, not an onlooker. Production values are sterling. The shots of the huge Scottish castle and its beautiful lands are somehow comforting. (This is neither a child's film, nor an adult's film. "My Life So Far" doesn't really have a niche, and that may be why it has not been widely distributed).
It is a film to see to renew your memories of being a child and to cause you to meditate on what daily life can be like for a child who is alert, intelligent, and surrounded by love and a good home.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956)
A salient commentary on the American executive lifestyle
I was pleased to get a chance to see this movie -- at least half of it -- during a bout of insomnia. The title was a catchphrase for corporate America for many, many years, a kind of symbol for overachieving, aggressive, ambitious businessmen without principles -- in other words, the "suits."
Though I am generally wary of Gregory Peck's (and Jennifer Jones') tendency to niceness, I was impressed by their work here. Their relationship was both substantial and subtle. Jennifer Jones had much much more humanity and integrity than the average housewife portrayed in other films of the 50s and 60s. Peck's character respected her opinions and values.
But I was knocked out by Fredric March. His type A, workaholic executive was touching on many levels. His utter tiredness, alcoholic puffiness, and innate sadness was plastered over with a Willy Loman-like veneer of gung-ho, jolly-good-fellow false heartiness. How familiar that character was and is -- in real life. His ambition, greed and drive had become a habit, and like any junky, he was simply unable to quit. Despite the human losses. I will never forget the scene in his office, when his wife calls him up, and he slowly hangs up the phone.
A very fine film, with many truths about our national character and obsessions....
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959)
Classic Comedic Elements
Dobie Gillis may not be groundbreaking, but it is a well-crafted comic gem of a TV series. Direction is crisp, acting is excellent and the comic characters are perfection: Maynard, the clueless but lovable loser (who has been widely copied but never surpassed), Thalia, the sexy, cute gold-digger, who is smarter than anyone expects, Milton, the insufferable preppie, Zelda, the nerd, etc. And here sits Dobie--ridiculously average, being tossed between them all like a beachball, and trying to make sense of it all. Character actors Wm. Schallert and Frank Faylen shine; Beatty gives an eerily prescient glimpse into his future roles; and Dobie is the personification of the likeable schlemiel.
Enchanting!
Another Country (1984)
Good Performances in Marginal Drama
I watched Another Country chiefly to see Rupert Everett and Colin Firth. And I was not disappointed: their performances were very good. The concept of the movie itself was marginal: a so-called expose of the genesis of spy Guy Bennett's desertion of Jolly Olde in favor of the Soviet Union. Problems: the cheesy makeup designed to make a 20 something Rupert Everett into an old man, the fact that the "scandal factor" of appropriating Communism and rejecting British convention is a pretty passe topic, and the lack of insight into the elderly Bennett's character. When you add in the corny TV-movie-of-the-week score, you may wonder how you can endure watching this film.
The redeeming feature of the film are the extremely intelligent performances of Everett and Firth, and the depiction of public school life in Britain. One interesting note: in the theatrical version of this film Colin Firth played Guy Bennett, and Rupert Everett played Tommy Judd.I am more impressed than ever with Everett's professional integrity and I wonder if Colin Firth was ever a child...
Holiday (1938)
A playful look at wealth and its obligations....
Wit, insight, deft characterization, family misery, and social commentary all play a part in Holiday. The acting and script are superb -- all the characters are sympathetically drawn and interact in the foreground, while wealth and its "privileges" form the background.
Is love a social obligation? Or does it spring from sheer affinity? Should the acquisition of wealth be the summum bonum of experience -- or happen accidently, as the result of hard and honest work? These are the questions that will tease you, as you enjoy the gleaming intelligence of Katherine Hepburn and the polished insouciance of Cary Grant. Both are in top form!!!
What stands out in my recollection of this film is the theme of play. The stars are playful; they get acquainted among the toys in a playroom. The plot revolves around a holiday -- a chance for adults to play. There are plays on words. The Play is the Thing. Holiday is ultimately about the importance of play, in all its connotations: flexibility, acting out, silly behavior, continuous learning, freedom to be.
It is okay for adults to play sometimes, or do adults need "permission" to play?
People Will Talk (1951)
A witty, compassionate and literate treasure
This is very unique film. Superlatively written, it offers amusing dialog, social insight and enlightened views of science, women's issues, social mores, the nature of success, materialism and the urge to destroy what we cannot understand.
It is not boring, yet its main characters are doctors/composers, and professors. Though its setting is an elite clinic and a university, it is concerned with real people and their needs.
Cary Grant is at his warm, compassionate and wryly witty best.
His sidekick, so to speak, is the rumpled and likeable Walter Slezak. Hume Cronyn is superb as the little weasel who sets out to "investigate" i.e. slander and destroy the Cary Grant character. Sound familiar?
"People Will Talk" may be considered a comedy of manners of the 1950's and a companion piece to another, similarly-titled Cary Grant film, the lesser-known Frank Capra masterpiece "Talk of the Town." Both are intelligent, thought-provoking, and thoroughly entertaining Hollywood gems.
Don't forgot to check out the "typical farm family..." You'll recognize the narrow-minded, cliche-ridden, hypocritical patriarch of the clan...
My Bodyguard (1980)
a low-budget charmer
This is a film I'd heard of for years and finally had a chance to view it. It is a low-key, low-budget and witty film about high school survival -- but it is far from being the usual teen film. It takes place in a decidedly urban and challenging setting, and its adult characters are as quirky as its teenaged ones.
The characters are well-drawn, the acting is good, and although the plot is insignificant, with a weak conclusion, this film manages to be realistic, present interesting characters (particularly Adam Baldwin's) and make you laugh. In other words, the quality of the writing makes it come to life.
It's one of the last of a series of excellent low-key, naturalistic films of the 70's, that specialize in fascinating characterizations.