Month: May 2006

Shenandoah (1965, Andrew V. McLaglen)

In addition to being the first film of Andrew V. McLaglen’s I’ve seen (which is quite an achievement, considering how much he directed), Shenendoah is the first film I’ve seen where James Stewart plays the patriarch. Unless Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation counts and I don’t think it does, not like Shenendoah. The film sets Stewart as the father of seven sons and one daughter, Virginian farmers sitting out the Civil War. In its approach, initially anyway, the film owes a lot to Friendly Persuasion. There’s a calm friendliness to the family and the first forty minutes is spent listening to Stewart’s fatherly monologues (half of them are excellent, half are mediocre; the one he gives future son-in-law Doug McClure is wonderful). The film establishes its primary characters in these forty minutes–besides Stewart, the youngest son and the married son (played by Patrick Wayne, who’s great) get the spotlight, as does the courting McClure and the daughter–but there’s little distinguishing about the five other sons. They have names, except only one of them even approaches being recognizable, and their purpose in the film is to support.

At the forty-minute mark, or around it, the film changes gears and becomes the most startling anti-war film I’ve seen about the Civil War. Unfortunately, the film’s politics are incredibly safe–these Virginians don’t own slaves because they don’t think its right not to do your own work (my frequent observation about people with lawn crews who have such pride in the foliage they picked from a catalog) and they wouldn’t help a friend fight for his slaves, which doesn’t really matter since the family seems not to have any friends–but there’s never any comment about slavery being wrong. Shenendoah is a Western and Western filmmakers knew their audiences. There’s a little bit of the friendship between the youngest son and a same-aged slave to distinguish it, but it’s hard to believe Stewart’s frequent monologues would never broach the subject. As an anti-war film, though effective, it’s as unbiased as Gone With the Wind. Shenendoah shows the South and the Confederate soldiers as passives, only being acted upon by the aggressive and, at times, evil North. George Kennedy–youngish–shows up for a minute as a kind-hearted Northern officer, but he’s the single humane portrayal of the North in the whole film.

Even more complicated is the film’s morality. Tragedy strikes Stewart’s family in some awful (and unexpected) ways. It’s a bit of a rough film–even though the score maintains the playfulness of the first forty minutes–and those minutes were spent making the audience care for the characters. Even if their names aren’t clear. It’s an intentional move, so the question arises whether the tragedy is Stewart’s just reward for sitting out the Civil War, for abandoning his duty to Virginia. As complicated as those questions could be, Shenendoah doesn’t invite much analysis. It’s entertains and makes the viewer care about what’s going on. The rest isn’t particularly important (its greatest crime is giving Wayne the small part).

As for director McLaglen… if I didn’t know his name from so many other Westerns, I’d never bother to look it up or to have noticed it. He’s fine but wholly unimpressive except for the battle scenes, which are some of the finest I can recall.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen; written by James Lee Barrett; director of photography, William H. Clothier; edited by Otho Lovering; music by Frank Skinner; produced by Robert Arthur; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring James Stewart (Charlie Anderson), Doug McClure (Lt. Sam), Glenn Corbett (Jacob Anderson), Patrick Wayne (James Anderson), Rosemary Forsyth (Jennie Anderson), Phillip Alford (Boy Anderson), Katharine Ross (Mrs. Ann Anderson), Charles Robinson (Nathan Anderson), Jim McMullan (John Anderson), Tim McIntire (Henry Anderson), Gene Jackson (Gabriel), Paul Fix (Dr. Tom Witherspoon), Denver Pyle (Pastor Bjoerling) and George Kennedy (Col. Fairchild).

RELATED

The Face of Another (1966, Teshigahara Hiroshi)

Novelists make interesting screenwriters (though maybe not as much any more). When they adapt their own work, however, it might not be the best idea. The adaptation allows them to package their interpretation of themselves, as opposed to actually adapting a work from one medium to the next. The Face of Another, adapted by Abe Kôbô from his own novel, is a good example of how not to adapt a novel into a film. Besides including some decidedly bad visuals–not everything can be visualized for film and work in the context of a film, after all–he also made some really bad pacing decisions. The first hour of the film, about a man whose face is horribly scarred in an accident, drags along. It opens well with a scene between the man and his wife and the marriage scenes do play well in the film and should have been it’s secondary focus. However, most of the first hour is spent with the man (who is in bandages for that first hour, until he gets a life-like mask in the second) and his psychiatrist. The psychiatrist somehow becomes the film’s focus, which doesn’t fit….

What does fit the film is the rather novelistic juxtaposition between the man and a pretty young girl with a radiation burn (from Nagasaki) on her face. She appears in the second half and the film switches focus a few times. While he’s desperately trying to fix his psychical appearance amid people who really don’t care (except his wife), she’s kind and good and trying to help people even though child point and scream. In her scenes, there’s a real sense of the post-war condition. His scenes aren’t just missing that setting, they’re missing any subtext. The psychiatrist’s mad dreams of lost identity are a poor substitute for anything going on with the man below the surface. Even the relationship with the wife, which disappears for a good forty minutes only to come back with some promise, fizzles in the end. The end really fizzles as the film gets visually theatrical and Abe keeps novelistic elements film is incapable of presenting.

The acting is excellent, which makes the film’s faults all the more glaring. If this cast couldn’t iron them out, they must be bad. The scarred girl, Irie Miki, never appeared in any other films. The lead, Nakadai Tatsuya, has an impressive emotional range given the first the bandages, then the mask, which stays static, and the character is too shallow. As the film’s configured, the suffering wife (Kyō Machiko) should have been the protagonist, but obviously she isn’t. Only the psychiatrist, Hira Mikijiro, gives a less than stellar performance in one of the main roles, but since his character changes so much from scene to scene, it’s not really his fault.

When I started Face of Another, I was expecting something great, but as it drug on and on–and particularly when it failed to stay on the good course it found in the second hour–I really wondered whether or not a novelist should be adapting his own work. Especially Abe (though I’ve only read one of his novels), who seems to have a good setup then a poor resolution.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed and produced by Teshigahara Hiroshi; written by Abe Kôbô, based on his novel; director of photography, Segewa Hiroshi; edited by Shuzui Fusako; music by Takemitsu Toru; production designer, Awazu Kiyoshi; released by Toho Company Ltd.

Starring Nakadai Tatsuya (Okuyama), Hira Mikijiro (Doctor), Kishida Kyoko (Nurse), Kyo Machiko (Mrs. Okuyama), Okada Eiji (Director) and Irie Miki (Girl).

RELATED

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984, Michael Radford)

For well over an hour of Nineteen Eighty-Four, nothing much happens. John Hurt edits articles, writes in his journal, does his exercises, talks to people, meets a girl… I suppose the romance should have accelerated Nineteen Eighty-Four’s pace or gotten it moving, but it really didn’t. Instead, the film just continued on its gradual pace. More than any other film I’ve watched on video–not seen projected, but had stop and start control over–Nineteen Eighty-Four just played on, like I was powerless to stop it. While the film is mediocre, Radford’s got some great visuals, Roger Deakins shooting it, and incredible production design, but it never feels like a film. It never feels like a two dimensional experience. For that first hour and twenty minutes, the film is captivating.

Then, instead of being a story about an average guy, it becomes a story of an average guy in trouble. Obviously, this plot development is from the novel, so it’s not fair to gripe about Radford’s adherence to it, but he really didn’t have any excuse to make the first part so lullingly compelling and the conclusion so uninteresting. For the first part, I never thought of another film. In the second–Radford borrows its fades so what choice did I have but remember it–comparisons to THX 1138 started popping up in my mind. There’s a terrible–painful to watch–torture sequence and it actually re-orientates the film. Radford gets his pacing back, something he lost for ten or fifteen minutes. It might be the conclusion’s settings. They’re all inside. Nineteen Eighty-Four worked best when there was some daylight coming in.

I imagine the novel explains a bit more of the setting (from a glance at the Wikipedia article, I can tell it does), but it doesn’t matter in the film. Radford does an excellent job of making understanding what’s going on irrelevant to the film. He gets a lot of help from John Hurt, who’s perfect in the passive role. Hurt’s the reason the film’s so compelling while maintaining such a distance. As the love interest, Suzanna Hamilton is excellent too. Somehow, though, I knew she hadn’t gone on to anything. She was so good she’d either have to have disappeared or be recognizable. The film’s powerhouse performance (and yes, I did think about that adjective before using it) is Richard Burton as the torturer. Burton’s great.

In the end, my reaction to Nineteen Eighty-Four is entirely blasé and I’m sure that reaction isn’t the one I’m supposed to be having….

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Michael Radford; screenplay by Radford, based on the novel by George Orwell; director of photography, Roger Deakins; edited by Tom Priestley; music by Eurythmics and Dominic Muldowney; production designer, Allan Cameron; produced by Simon Perry; released by Atlantic Releasing Corporation.

Starring John Hurt (Winston Smith), Richard Burton (O’Brien), Suzanna Hamilton (Julia), Cyril Cusack (Charrington), Gregor Fisher (Parsons), James Walker (Syme), Andrew Wilde (Tillotson) and David Trevena (Tillotson’s Friend).

RELATED

The Foul King (2000, Kim Ji-woon)

The Foul King is supposed to be a comedy, but I only laughed once, about an hour in. It’s not about South Korea’s leading stand-up comedian (which I thought it was). It’s about a wrestler who cheats (and gets fouls for that cheating). The film’s structured not around a traditional sports movie, instead it’s about a bank teller who finds himself in the wrestling ring. Except we don’t really know he finds himself, because the film’s storytelling is so distant, it’s hard to care about him.

The first hour of the film is spent abusing the narrator–he’s got a boss who beats him, he gets beat up by thugs, his father can’t stand him, his only friend avoids him, he’s no good at his job–all the time building toward his wrestling success. The wrestling success may or may not get there in the end, it’s not clear. From what I can tell, the audience is supposed to be laughing, not particularly caring about the characters or the film’s content. Song Kang-ho is a big Korean star, but his performance is adequate at best. There are no good or bad performances in Foul King, actually. The film doesn’t care about having good or bad performances, it cares about surveying its “story.” If it weren’t for the measured film editing–shots last twenty seconds or so–Foul King would run about thirty-five minutes. There’s an entire subplot involving the boss trying to corrupt the friend, which may or may not be an attempt at juxtaposition, but it’s so poorly handled–it’s a strain to figure out what’s going on–it fails miserably.

I just realized I’ve never seen Song in a good film, in fact, he’s in about thirty percent of the bad Korean films I’ve seen. I wonder if there’s a connection. At least the final wrestling match moves, as the rest of the film doesn’t.

1/4★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Kim Ji-woon; director of photography, Hong Kyung-pyo; edited by Goh Im-pyo; music by UhUhBoo Project; produced by Oh Jung-wan and Lee Mi-yeon; released by bom Film.

Starring Song Kang-ho (Dae-ho), Jang Jin-young (Jang Min-young), Kim Su-ro (Yu Bee-ho) and Shin Goo (Dae-ho’s father).

RELATED

I Capture the Castle (2003, Tim Fywell)

Do the British have an unending supply of novels about wise-beyond-their-years young women (unjustly poor or ordinary, of course) who have slightly dim older sisters who can’t see love in front of their eyes while all the time these younger women suffer for their sisters’ happiness? It certainly seems so.

I Capture the Castle, the film, plays like a combination of Cold Comfort Farm and Pride & Prejudice. It’s an incredibly long film, filled with two and three minute scenes set days or weeks apart, and chock-full of bad performances. The lead, Romola Garai, is excellent–though her performance isn’t enough to recommend the film, as it’s saddled with terrible diary-writing narration (filling the diary seems to be the present action of the film, but it’s decided on later and the film never takes advantage of that reasonable structure). Bill Nighy, as Garai’s father, a troubled novelist, is great. Nighy’s often great in outlandish roles, but Castle is the best work from him I’ve seen, he’s fantastic. Also good–surprisingly, as I haven’t seen him in anything for ten years–is Henry Thomas. Well, I suppose I saw him more recently in some of Cloak & Dagger, before I turned it off.

The rest of the cast is not good. Oh, except the precocious little brother. I queued the film for Rose Byrne, who plays the dull older sister. Given the rest of the cast, she’s not so bad, but she’s not any good in Castle. Tara Fitzgerald is bad. Sinéad Cusack is bad. Marc Blucas–as Thomas’ brother–is so bad he’s laughable. Even if these actors–Byrne aside–weren’t so bad, Castle probably wouldn’t be any better. It’s so shallowly written. Ah, forgot another one–almost Superman Henry Cavill is bad too. Anyway, the writing (I assume from the source novel) gives the characters no depth and gives the audience little to identify with except the occasional humor and the dreadfulness of being a wise-beyond-her-years English young woman who’s sacrificing her happiness for her older sister’s. Her dim older sister’s.

The director lensed the film in 2.35:1, which tends to require a lot of talent when the subject matter is people. He hasn’t got the talent (from his filmography, it looks like he’s done mostly TV movies and Castle was his only chance for glorious Panavision), but the English country-side scenery is pretty. At best, Castle (along with Dirty Dancing 2) will be an odd citation in Garai’s someday excellent filmography. At worst, it’ll be Bill Nighy’s best performance.

The Search (1948, Fred Zinnemann)

The Search barely qualifies as a dramatic piece. For the first thirty minutes, an uncredited narrator explains everything to the audience, going so far as to ask the characters rhetorical questions (thankfully they don’t respond). It’s filmed on location in post-war Berlin and–exposes is too strong a word–informs the audience about the situation of displaced children. There’s something unsettling about watching a bunch of kids pretend to be starving kids–probably in the same locations where the real starving kids once were–all for an MGM picture. The Search is a propaganda piece to some degree and a “docudrama” the rest of the way. It’s also Montgomery Clift’s first film.

Clift is good in the film, really good, but he doesn’t really have a character in it. He has a character in the individual scenes, one who has to do things, one who tries to accomplish things, but the audience never gets a sense of him. He’s a blandly American good guy, just one played by Montgomery Clift. The kid, Ivan Jandl, is all right. Unfortunately, his involvement with the film–Zinnemann picked him from a Prague schoolroom and The Search won him a special Academy Award–ended him up in a rock quarry, as the Soviets didn’t like him as a figure of Czech pride. As a child actor, he’s fine but not exceptional. His story, however, makes The Search’s reality a little too real and way too irresponsible. While Clift and Jandl are good together, since Clift’s character is so poorly defined, it’s impossible to really feel anything. There should be some important character relationship–something changing in Clift because of his involvement–but there’s nothing. When The Search isn’t playing hard for the heartstrings, it doesn’t work (except the scenes do move rather well, since they tend to be one conversation are another). It also has a real problem with delineating the passage of time. A month passes in a fade out and the audience gets nothing to help them adjust.

The rest of the cast ranges in quality. As the child’s mother, Jarmila Novotna is good. Her character too should have had a character arc, but it was ignored so The Search could show more footage of post-war hardships. As an American aid worker, Aline MacMahon is so bad I thought they were using real people in the beginning scenes, not actors. At the time, the New York Times praised The Search for its naturalism. Maybe MacMahon, who had a long Hollywood career, got confused by the approach.

Since one could get the same experience (save Clift) from a decent history book as The Search, it’s hard to get particularly excited about it. Zinneman’s not a particularly showy director, but he usually has weighty approach. The Search is too real for that filmic weight, but too filmic to be “real.” And that voiceover removes any naturalism, leaving The Search a confused film. A good idea, a well-minded idea, just not a good story.

The Stars Fell on Henrietta (1995, James Keach)

I wonder if, in the early 1970s, anyone could tell Robert Duvall was going to end up playing the scruffy-looking, ne’er do-well with the heart of gold over and over again. He doesn’t particularly act in The Stars Fell on Henrietta. He just shows up and does his thing. His scruffy-looking thing. There’s some attempt at giving him a character–he really doesn’t have any depth–but for the most part, that attempt has to do with his never-spoken love for his cat. The cat’s cute, but it’s hardly enough. There’s some nice stuff with Wayne Dehart, who plays his co-worker in the beginning of the second act (the acts are clearly defined in Stars, usually with fade-outs). It’s 1935 Texas, so Dehart being black and Duvall white gives their relationship some inherent interest, but Dehart’s real good, putting a lot out there, so much Duvall doesn’t have to do much, which is good… because, like I said, Duvall doesn’t do much in Stars.

But Dehart leaves and Duvall ends up with Aidan Quinn and his family, where most of the story and most of the problems lie. Quinn starts the film grumbling and for the first act, it seems like the grumble is his interpretation of the character. Once the grumbling goes away, Quinn is good. Frances Fisher plays his wife and she’s good, but her character’s hardly in it after a point, which is too bad because her performance is probably the best and her character had the most potential for drama. The film’s narrated from the present day–in some ways, not that narration, but in lots of others, it reminds of a really depressing Field of Dreams, especially since the film starts out with the narrator telling the audience everything is going to be bad in the end. For the first eighty minutes, it does too. One bad thing after another happens, so much so I was suspicious of every scene.

The Stars Fell on Henrietta is a pretty picture. It’s a Malpaso production, Clint Eastwood producing it (and I kept wondering how it would have been if he’d taken Duvall’s role), and there’s the wonderful Joel Cox editing and the perfect Henry Bumstead production design (startling, in fact). The non-Eastwood regulars are good too–David Benoit’s music is nice and Bruce Surtees does a good job with the cinematography, though he’s obviously not Jack N. Green… Director James Keach uses the prettiness–especially the music–to make up for what the screenplay doesn’t provide: good character relationships, an ending, humanity. Everything is nice and tidy and the film constantly ignores potential for rich drama, or just fast-forwards through it.

It’s an empty experience. The end credits rolled and I appreciated the fine score and couldn’t think of one thing the film showed me.

Wizard of Oz (1925, Larry Semon)

Imagine–if you can–The Wizard of Oz reconfigured as a slapstick comedy with some elements of political intrigue. According to IMDb, director and actor Larry Semon’s career took a serious hit from Wizard of Oz, since he just didn’t get the material. Near as I can tell, however, all the vitriol against the movie is based on its differences from the 1939 and the original novel, not so much against the film. It’s a standard slapstick comedy and some of the scenes are very well choreographed.

Even some of the other elements–but not the political intrigue–work out well enough. Dorothy’s farm life–in Kansas, Dorothy is still a character, in Oz she is not–has a few nice bits, even though it’s obviously filmed in California. California has a different look from Kansas, especially when shooting on location instead of in a studio. The tornado, one of the few familiar elements (the Yellow Brick Road, the witches, and any recognizable version of the Wizard are gone), has some great special effects. It’s one of those miniature effects where the viewer only knows it’s a miniature because he or she stops to think about how it couldn’t possibly be anything else.

The Wizard of Oz, apparently, is not a material to be taken lightly. Semon even had Baum’s son working on the film and he couldn’t even cut it any slack. The film uses a strange framing device, a man reading his daughter the novel (even she’s bored with the political mumbo-jumbo, in one of the film’s funnier self-awarenesses). The device isn’t so strange, since it’s still used today–and in some inexplicably beloved films–but its set looks German Impressionist, with rounded corners. It adds an ominous air to the scenes, but like the rest of the film, never pays off. Still, there’s nothing wrong with the film, just so long as you aren’t expecting Keaton slapstick. Or The Wizard of Oz.

The Fugitive (1947, John Ford)

While filming Citizen Kane, Orson Welles screened John Ford’s Stagecoach every night. He said everything one could do in film was done in Stagecoach. Maybe Ford heard about it, because The Fugitive looks like an Orson Welles film… and it’s not just the foreign (Mexico) shooting location with American actors surrounded by non-English speaking extras. The Fugitive is Ford’s oddest sound picture. Large portions of it don’t even need sound, just ambient music and noises. There are long sequences without any necessary speech, there’s even moments where dialogue is muted, overpowered by street music. During the scenes filmed in the Mexican city… you’d think it was Touch of Evil.

However, Ford is not the same kind of director as Welles. What works for Welles does not work for Ford. The Fugitive is arranged as a series of vignettes, but Ford can’t get enough oomph going to distinguish one from the other. Sure, there’s the change in sound design, but the storytelling focus doesn’t change. It’s easily Ford’s most experimental work–it’s easily one of the most experimental works I’ve seen from a Hollywood director–but the script works against it, particularly in the end, when the film’s finally turning around.

The Fugitive is set in a newly Fascist South American country where Catholic priests are hunted and executed. Henry Fonda–playing a native alongside Mexican actors–is less than stellar in the lead. First, Fonda’s a straightforward actor and The Fugitive attempts to veer. Second, and more, the fugitive is the subject of The Fugitive, not the protagonist. It’s about a handful of characters who encounter this fugitive priest, not the story of a fugitive priest encountering and reencountering a bunch of people. As far as these people go, obviously, Ward Bond is the best. He’s the only American playing an American and he’s got some great moments as a fellow fugitive. Robert Armstrong, not playing an American, is good in a blink-and-you-miss it role–his part made me think most of Welles’ style of handling cameos. The worst–in the film–is easily J. Carrol Naish, who’s in full makeup as an Indian. He’s irritating beyond belief and silly on top of it. I think he was under contract at RKO at the time. Of the Mexican actors, Pedro Armendáriz is the best, but the script fails him time and again. More than anyone else, The Fugitive is about Armendáriz and someone missed it. The other lead, Dolores del Rio, is all right, but Ford gives her these loving shots and… I don’t know, it’s hard to take her seriously with all that soft light.

Even with all the problems–it’s boring on top of it all; Ford did not know how to carry long sequences without dialogue or action–it’s still worth a look. Oddly enough, a film professor once told me it was Ford’s favorite of his films.

Westward the Women (1951, William A. Wellman)

Robert Taylor leads over a hundred women from Missouri to California. It’s set in 1851, so California is the other side of world. I thought it was going to be cute from that description. Taylor’s films were often aware of being Robert Taylor films, but of those 100+ women, only one thinks Taylor’s good-looking, so Westward the Women isn’t one of those Taylor films. It’s a rough film. It has cute moments and funny moments, heart-warming moments too, I suppose–but it’s rough. It might even be mean. I’m not sure to what degree the filmmakers realized how mean the film was getting.

Some of Taylor’s work in the film is his best. At a certain point, the film runs out of things for him to do and concentrates on the romance, which is fine, but he ceases to be the focus. The rest of the performances are all right (except Taylor’s love interest, once the romance starts), but the script betrays the two best supporting ones. Hope Emerson is excellent in the role of a New Englander who talks exaggerated ship-speak for everything. There’s a poor Japanese guy–played by Henry Nakamura, who did little else–who’s got the worst stereotypical dialogue, but a rather important role in the film. Again, his character loses steam in the last part.

The romance shares the second half’s focus with the more interesting aspect of Westward the Women. At a certain point, the women are left alone with Taylor and have to toughen up for the journey. There’s a great scene–I can think of a good adjective for it–when a woman is in labor in a wagon and a wheel breaks off. A group of the other women hold up the wagon while she gives birth, which would not be an easy task, and then proceed to fawn over the newborn. There’s another great, similar scene at the end, but I can’t give that away.

When I said before the film was mean–it kills characters left and right. The only sympathetic character it doesn’t kill is the dog. In addition to showing the difficulty in crossing the country, it throws the audience off guard. You never know if a character is going to make it or not. Even with this tension, however, the film ambles a little too much. It’s got a long present action–at least four months, but it might be more like seven–and since only a handful of the women are realized, the film is mostly in summary. But it’s real pretty summary. Wellman’s direction of the desert landscape is wonderful. Not only is the scenery incorporated into the story (unlike the frequent Monument Valley backdrops) but his camera angles take full advantage of them.

However, the film doesn’t take place entirely in the desert, only thirty minutes of it does. So, you have those twenty or thirty minutes of great direction, an hour or so of a great Taylor performance, a half hour of the great relationship between Taylor and the Japanese guy, and Emerson only getting rid of the lame seafarer dialogue at the end. Still, it’s a good film–it might be the only widescreen academy ratio film I can think of.