| December roundup (2) : Up Pariscope : 'Two Lovers' and four films from the vaults... |
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 seen December 13th THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE (1954) [5/10] Generally regarded as the first proper English-language "novel", Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) - which relates 28 years spent, mostly in solitude, by a slave-trader who inadvertently becomes a desert-island castaway following a shipwreck - is an internal-monologue story that has always worked much better on the page than on the screen. And this 'Pathecolor' version is no exception, despite the fact that it was directed by one of the very greatest of filmmakers, Luis Buñuel. Some theological/philosophical undertones aside, he's an unlikely match for this material, especially given it was his English-language debut, his first big-budget production, his first time using colour - and (perhaps due to what was by all accounts a nightmarishly tough exteriors-heavy, scorpion-infested shoot) he seems only intermittently engaged by Crusoe's "adventures." It's disappointing that (and least in the English-language version under review; the Spanish-language version shot simultaneously with the same cast and crew is nearly an hour longer) he includes nothing of the shipwreck, nor does he try to visualise Crusoe's memories of his previous life. Rather unsurprisingly, the most inventive, intriguing and 'non-dated'-feeling interlude is an all-too-brief fever-nightmare in which a bristly hog is doused with water. Otherwise the tone is rather square and dutifully plodding, as indicated by a brief prologue in which a hand is seen turning the pages of a vast, opulent hardback copy of the book. O'Herlihy - selected ahead of the producers' original choice, Orson Welles - strives valiantly with a very difficult role (most of the time he only has a parrot, a dog or Mother Nature to play against) and received a Best Actor nomination for his pains, presumably partly because of the way he convincingly ages from young buck to grizzled hermit. No such garlands were ever remotely likely for Felipe de Alba, who arrives near the end as 'Captain Oberzo', and hams it up as though he's auditioning for Christmas panto. Anyone sufficiently impressed by such antics that they eagerly awaited De Alba's big-screen follow-up had a positively Crusoe-like wait ahead of them: 48 years elapsed before 2002's Real Women Have Curves, in which he plays the heroine's grandfather. The actor's other achievements also included marrying Zsa Zsa Gabor, a union which lasted for just a single day in 1983, surreally enough. IMPULSE (1954) [6/10] Perhaps a result of its bland title, Impulse is one of the lesser-known films by Cy Endfield - the blacklisted Pennsylvanian who worked in Britain from around 1952, and was later responsible for both Hell Drivers and Zulu. But this is an economic, efficient little noir-ish B-movie that doesn't deserve the obscurity to which it's sunk: anyone seeking a diversion on a rainy afternoon should give it a look if it pops up on their TV schedules. Arthur Kennedy stars as former US Marine Alan Curtis, who's settled in sleepy Surrey with Elizabeth (Joy Shelton) his English wife of eight years, and is becoming tired with the comfortable routines of his life as a small-town estate agent. Just as he's hungering for a little excitement to lift him out of his rut, a pair of shady underworld types - a slinky nightclub singer (Constance Smith) and her jittery "brother" (James Carney) - just so happen to turn up on his doorstep, and he's soon enmeshed in all manner of criminal intrigue. The picture is primarily of historical interest, as a dramatisation of the discontents which arrived with the relative affluence and stability of the mid-50s - especially among those with vivid memories of their hazardous but exciting wartime exploits. And it's also interesting that, perhaps as a sign that the "permissive" sixties weren't so far away, Alan doesn't suffer too badly for straying from the path of respectable fidelity (or perhaps this is evidence of the British establishment's lingering goodwill towards their American brothers-in-arms.) One doesn't have much time to dwell on such implications when proceedings are underway, however, as Impulse packs a surprising amount of incident and local colour (especially during sequences shot in seedy London exteriors) into its brisk 80 minutes. Comedy, too, with horsey Jean St Clair* a particular delight as Curtis's ever-so-English but utterly besotted (and amorously persistent) next-door neighbour - she'd surely have delighted both Agatha Christie and John Betjeman alike. seen December 14th TWO LOVERS [8/10*] When Two Lovers premiered in competition at Cannes in May, writer-director James Gray became only the second American this decade to compete for the Palme d'Or in consecutive years, his predecessor being the rather better-known Joel Coen (2000's O Brother, Where Art Thou? and 2001's The Man Who Wasn't There). More importantly, Gray thus proved that he wasn't one of those time-taking auteurs in the Malick/Stillman/Davies/Zonca mode, the type who leaves yawning gaps between releases - six years had elapsed between his debut, Little Odessa (1994) and The Yards (2000), and then even longer until the enthralling cop-thriller We Own the Night, one of 2007's most accomplished, and most inexplicably underappreciated, multiplex releases. Both Two Lovers and We Own the Night are set in bleak but atmospheric backwaters of New York City, and star Joaquin Phoenix (who has, by the way, reportedly announced that this is to be his final big-screen appearance**) as a character caught in a painful dilemma. In We Own the Night, the choice was between the excitement of a shady career as a nightclub manager and the dutiful path of following his dad and brother into the police-force. This time the problem is, as the title suggests, of a more romantic nature. But posters for the film showing Phoenix's Leonard Kraditor as some kind of struttingly debonair lothario, oscillating between the charms of a blonde beauty (Gwyneth Paltrow) and a brunette bombshell (Vinessa Shaw) give a very misleading impression of the film's actual tone and content. Taking its ambience from the Brighton Beach locations in which it was shot - home to the city's Russian and Ukrainian communities (including Gray's own family) - Two Lovers is a surprisingly downbeat, sombre, wintry affair. Struggling to cope with bipolar disorder, Leonard - a talented amateur photographer who works at his dad's dry-cleaning business - is uncomfortable in many social situations, and after various personal setbacks finds himself still living at home with his parents (Isabella Rossellini and We Own the Night's Moni Moshonov) even though he's clearly well into his thirties. It's evident that he's crazily besotted with his party-girl neighbour Michelle (Paltrow) - even though she has a (married) lover of her own (Elias Koteas) - to the extent that he barely notices that Sandra (Shaw), the easy-going daughter of his father's new business-partner, is head-over-heels in love with him. Leonard is much too solipsistic and inexperienced to realise that his amour fou for the volatile Michelle can only end in tears - but Gray defuses the situation's general predictability by adding a final-act development that rivals the similarly ironic, trenchant and troubling conclusion of We Own the Night. In addition, the film is such an effective and engaging character-study of its tormented, flawed - but, as it turns out, not entirely sympathetic - protagonist that we overlook the fact that the vast majority of men would be utterly delighted at having the "pick" of such prospective paramours. Two Lovers may not sound very much on paper, and - just as Phoenix's performance walks a narrow line between inspired verisimilitude and jittery mannerism - Gray runs constant the risk of turning an essentially small-scale story into something overwrought and histrionic. Instead, he crafts a classy, meticulous miniature - aided, as on We Own the Night, by John Axelrad's editing and Joaquin Baca-Asay's cinematography, plus Dana Sano's evocative score and an ensemble of rock-solid performances. Two Lovers isn't quite up to level of Gray's last effort but, taken together, they confirm him as an unusually talented, understatedly stylish presence on the margins of the current US mainstream. [NB : rating revised from 7/10 after second viewing, 25th January 2009] THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS (1972) [6/10] Probably best known nowadays for its extravagantly verbose title, The Effect of Gamma Rays... was the third film directed by Paul Newman (after Rachel, Rachel and Sometimes a Great Notion), and the last until Harry and Son more than a decade later. Truth be told, it doesn't much indicate he should ever have considered giving up the day job - this is a dutiful, stagey, overwrought (and now somewhat dated) adaptation (by Alvin Sargent) of what the opening titles rather grandly describe "the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Paul Zindel," about a mentally-unstable, blazingly dissatisfied fortyish woman (Joanne Woodward) rather haphazardly raising her two teenage daughters in big, scruffy house in a down-at-heel corner of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The girls are the classic chalk/cheese duo: the bright and introverted Matilda (Nell Potts, Newman and Woodward's own child), and the more earthy, confrontational Ruth (Roberta Wallach, daughter of Eli). Unsurprisingly, given its director and theatrical origins, the film is primarily an actors' showcase, and all three leads are impressive. Woodward won Best Actress at Cannes (but not, surprisingly, an Oscar nomination) for an intriguing performance which - especially in one unusually calm, rural dialogue scene with an old school-friend, now a traffic cop - finds sympathetic nuance in what's essentially a shrill, hectoring character. It's a definite shame, meanwhile, that Potts never made another movie, as she projects an engaging combination of fragility and spookily self-possessed determination as the gifted child of a somewhat benighted household. With end-of-tether characters and acutely-observed family-dynamics reminiscent of both Barbara Loden's Wanda and Brian DePalma's Carrie, Gamma Rays - interesting that, unlike those two other pictures, it's named not after any of the characters, but after Potts' science-project (which provides evidence of her brainy precocity and leads to Woodward's catastrophic public humiliation) - is a solid example of "kitchen sink" film-making, albeit one made under the "prestige" auspices of 20th Century Fox. And it does lay its themes and ideas (mutations and the nature of atoms, heredity, family dysfunctions) pretty barely and squarely in front of us - no surprise that Zindel was best known for children's books. Among the latter, his fondness for "catchy" (or rather, aggressively "zany") titles was evident in the likes of Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball! (1976); My Darling, My Hamburger (1969); Attack of the Killer Fishsticks (1993) and The Gourmet Zombie (2002) - none of which, regrettably, have yet made it to the big screen. seen December 15th NANOOK OF THE NORTH (1922) [6/10] Often described as the first ever feature-length documentary - and, like countless other examples of the genre in the intervening 86 years, the picture (which chronicles the tough lives of 'Eskimos' - a.k.a. Inuits - in a remote, snow-and-ice-dominated corner of northern Canada) has been enmeshed in much controversy about whether or not what we're seeing is "real" or "mediated." Leaving aside these issues, which will probably never be resolved to universal satisfaction, Nanook holds up pretty well as an historical artefact. There aren't many surprises or revelations here for modern eyes (we've had decades of anthropological films and TV programmes exploring similar geographical and thematic terrain, of course), though it's a bit disappointing that, despite the title, "Nanook" himself (who was actually called something totally different, 'Allakariallak,' and died two years after shooting) is really just one among a sprawling ensemble of family members and attendant animals. We don't exactly "get to know" this grinning paterfamilias, nor any of the other "characters." Instead, director Flaherty is chiefly concerned with matters of process: the arduous specifics of hunting, gathering, and constructing a protective igloo (roughly twice the normal size, such subterfuge allowing us to glimpse endearing scenes of cosy domesticity). Individual sequences are often enthralling - in particular a wrestling-match between persistent hunter and resistant prey, when a large seal is hauled, inch by frozen inch, up through a hole in the ice. Clearly an exceedingly tough "shoot" for all concerned, Nanook deserves its place in cinema history and, at less than an hour, certainly doesn't outstay its welcome. Indeed, another reel or two - explaining more fully the organisation and history of Inuit society, and their interactions with their "white-man" neighbours, would not have gone amiss. Neil Young 15th-27th December, 2008 THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE : [5/10] : aka Robinson Crusoe : Mexico 1954 : Luis BUNUEL : 90m approx (BBFC - English-language version) : Action Christine, 6e : €8 IMPULSE : [6/10] : UK 1954 : Cy ENDFIELD (credited as 'Charles de LaTour') : 80m approx (BBFC) : Cinémathèque Française, 12e : €6 THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS : [6/10] : USA 1972 : Paul NEWMAN : 101m (BBFC) : La filmothèque du Quartier Latin, 5e : €7 TWO LOVERS : [7/10] : USA 2008 : James GRAY : 110 approx (BBFC) : UGC Rotonde, 6e : €9.60 NANOOK OF THE NORTH : [6/10] : USA (US/Fr) 1922 : Robert FLAHERTY : 50m approx (BBFC) : Reflet Médicis, 5e : €5 merci a (1) l'invalable Pariscope et (2) La suite de flotation * It's impossible to be sure that this marvellous actress is named Jean St Clair, as there's little documentation on Impulse online. But she seems the safest bet from the information currently available. * Say it ain't soa, Joa!
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