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Le mystère de la tour Eiffel (1928)
Little chance you'll ever catch this film but, if you are so fortunate, make sure to bring the whole family!
This incredibly funny film, considered almost lost, was furnished with a wonderful new score by Fay Lovsky in April 2005 and shown once in the Filmmuseum in Amsterdamlocation of the sole remaining copy. Despite being virtually unknown, tickets sold-out that night.
Le Mystère de la Tour Eiffel deserves a world tour. Even better: a Duvivier retrospective (Sounds by Lovsky!). The action is truly of a rare-seen kind.
Considering the equipment that had to be carried in those days, it is quite a marvel how advanced this thing is shot. Any available story is rendered inferior to the slapstick-packed action which includes a downhill chase by plane, vertical fighting in the iron skeleton of the Eiffel towerapparently without safety gear involved, combined with brilliant characterslater eagerly copied; e.g. George Remi, author the Tintin books.
Achillis Saturnin, making a meagre living as one half of the "Siamese twins", a ridiculous circus act, inherits a dazzling sum of 159 million francs, only to have his double steal it behind his back. The impostor installs himself in the mansion of the deceased, adjusting smoothly to an overdone servant-keeping-class kind of lifestyle.
But more rivals lie in wait; a spooky sect under the name of Ku-Klux-Eiffel, known for jamming French broadcasts with coded messages transmitted from the Eiffel tower, comically terrorize the impostor down to his nightmares. Driven to panic, the man goes into hiding in Paris, where he discovers that Achillis, Silvanie and her younger brother, have lost their job at the circus and are dependent on alms.
Afraid to return to the mansion himself, he sends Achillis to fill in his place in promise of 500.000 francs. Achillis agrees. While living it up, throwing parties and such, he is kidnapped by the Knights of Ku-Klux-Eiffel who take him to their castle high up the mountains. Taking it for a prank at first, Achillis only manages to escape at the very last moment. Along the way he gets hold of the key to the Ku-Klux-Eiffel code and one of their receiving devices. Able, thus, to intercept their messages he gains in to exposing the entire sect.
It takes another kidnap and escape through a labyrinth, the unmasking of a human chameleon, getting passed the mysterious Li-Ho-Ha (a creepy, apparently Chinese-or so adviser of the sect's leader), and the notorious Eiffel-tower-climb to bring this marvelous film to a happy end.
Mandei (2000)
Fifteen minutes was all this film needed to convince me of its brilliance.
Without these "enlightening" fifteen minutes (at the very end) this movie may seem quite hopeless, though. It may seem too simple, too odd, too surreal... phony even. But make no mistake: MONDAY is plotted out much more clever than it appears.
It is about a guy waking up in a hotel room with bit of a cloudy memory. Things start to come back to him as he bumps into all kinds of leads he find in his pockets. I imagine that the main thought behind it was, what the human mind capable is of doing with the means it has, and how it could be shown in a film. I can say that the creators have come a long way in showing the answer to this.
As said, it will takes time to see there is more to it than it seems. Fortunate enough, the retrospective march of events that made the guy end up where is now, makes it perfectly clear that the unrolling celluloid is to be sure of revealing a well-thought-out plot. Second, the whole story raises enough questions about the sanity of the characters as well as the people who wrote the story, that one will sit it out no matter what, if only excited with hope for a plausible explaination for it all.
It is unlikely that MONDAY (by Hiroyuki Tanaka) will be a boring experience to anyone. To many, especially those unfamiliar with Japanese cinema, it will be something different than usual, perhaps less exciting, a bit clownish, here and there the surrealistic texture will be a bit hard to swallow, but it surely will keep one curious. And that is the only thing this film needs.
This is a movie, and, I think, Japanese directors, Tanaka in particular, have well understood what this means. It isn't real life and it doesn't have to appear this way. Even though some characters and their actions seem to be right from out of a comic book, this movie is as real as (a movie) can be.
I heard someone comparing aspects in this film with Tarantino. I'm not entirely sure about that. Frankly, I believe the approach Tarantino uses in his work isn't that unique to begin with. I think it was to be expected that directors would make films the way he does some day. As for Japanese movies like that of Tanaka, I think it has little to do with Tarantino. I actually think we should speak of it as the 'Japanese approach' than the 'Tarantino approach', anyway. Was "Reservoir Dogs" not a remake of an underrated Japanese gangster film??? I think is was.
Well. Tanaka is nowhere near Kurosawa yet. But surely no less than Miike, Kitano or Nakano. I therefore rate it 7.5!
Watch it and be patient, enjoy it and be astound ;)