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Saturday, February 24
GABRIEL FIGUEROA
by
Lloydville
on Sat 24 Feb 2007 01:34 AM PST
There are some
cinematographers, like Greg Toland and Vitorio Storaro, who are
auteurs in their own right -- it's worth watching anything they shoot,
whether the film is good, bad or indifferent, for the superior art and
craft they bring to each assignment.
Gabriel Figueroa, the great Mexican cinematographer, is in their
class. He studied with Toland and his style is reminiscent of
Toland's -- with a concentration on stereometric lighting and deep
focus that gives his images a sculptural quality. (I'm speaking
here entirely about his black-and-white work -- I've never seen a
Figueroa film shot in color.)
Figueroa worked for the top directors in Mexico's fabled golden age of cinema, in the 1940s and 1950s. He shot Macario for Roberto Gavaldón, in 1959, which was the first Mexican movie ever nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar. Macario is a fascinating fable based on a novella by B. Traven (who wrote The Treasure Of the Sierra Madre.)
Set in colonial Mexico, the film is sort of an existential morality
play about a poor man who meets a supernatural figure in the forest
(the Devil . . . Death?) who gives him a jug of healing water. The
consequences of the gift are not quite what the poor man, or we the audience, quite
foresees. The
film is filled with ravishing images of daily life in old Mexico,
including some great footage of a Day Of the Dead celebration. A
lot of the footage is reminiscent of Tisse's photography on
Eisenstein's aborted epic ¡Que Viva Mexico!
Figueroa shot most of the important films directed by Emilio Fernandez,
the celebrated master of the Mexican golden age -- one of the most notable
being Victims Of Sin, a
noirish vision in a peculiar Mexican genre, the cabaret dancer
film. These films concentrated on the heroic efforts of
lower-class women to rise above the exploitation and misery of street
life, mainly by working in cabarets run by sleazy underworld
thugs. There is almost nothing like these films in American
cinema, though some of their themes are echoed in the films noirs
starring Joan Crawford in the 40s. They have a frankness about
sexuality and a brutality that still startle.
Even more
startling, perhaps, is the fact that many of the greatest Latin singers
and musicians of the time make appearances in the cabarets around which
the stories of these films revolve -- creating an almost surreal
contrast with the sleazy ambiance. The films are strange but
wildly entertaining.
Figueroa sometimes worked for American directors making films in Mexico -- John Ford on The Fugitive and John Huston on The Night Of the Iguana (below) for example.
It's hard to find films from the Mexican golden age on DVD in
this country, harder still to find ones that are subtitled -- but
they're well worth tracking down. (The two mentioned above, Macario and Victims Of Sin [Victimas del Pecado]
are available here in subtitled versions.) Any one of them shot
by Gabriel
Figueroa repays the closest attention.
Thursday, February 22
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
by
Lloydville
on Thu 22 Feb 2007 12:22 AM PST
One
of the best movies ever made about sexual love, about the intoxication
of falling in love and the toxicity of a break-up. It's beautifully
observed, beautifully written, beautifully played -- it features Jim
Carey's best performance ever on film, brilliant and pitch-perfect --
and it's directed with magical, lyrical, demented invention by Michel
Gondry. It's funny and romantic but it's not a romantic comedy -- it's
far too real and too devastating to enchant us the way that genre can.
In deconstructing one particular romance, Charlie Kauffman is also
deconstructing the kind of movies that feed our delusions about love --
and he's offering something to take their place, a profoundly felt
sympathy that is honest, humane and inspiring. The movie is a miracle,
plain and simple.
Tuesday, February 20
PALACE OF DREAMS
by
Lloydville
on Tue 20 Feb 2007 12:44 AM PST
This building, in the small town of Belhaven, North Carolina, used to
be a movie theater, a palace of dreams. It was a tiny palace, as
you can see. The set-back led to doors which opened directly into
the theater -- there was no lobby. Popcorn, the only snack sold,
was dispensed from a movable cart set up on the sidewalk just under
the marquee, which is now gone. I made a pilgrimage to the
building this past summer, because it was such an important part of my
life, once upon a time.
In 1956 and 1957 this theater was a few minutes walk from my home, and
I made that walk every Saturday, when the feature film always
changed. A kid's ticket cost 25 cents, half my allowance, and
popcorn cost 15 cents. A Five and Dime next door sold popcorn for
10 cents, but you had to sneak it into the theater, past the watchful
eyes of a teenage usher. I was five and six years-old in those
years, and I don't think I ever missed a show.
Here are the ones I remember most clearly:
MOBY DICK
The John Huston version with Gregory Peck. When I looked at the
poster and the lobby cards outside the theater before going in I
wondered if the film could possibly deliver the spectacle it
promised. It did -- beyond my wildest anticipation.
THE YEARLING
This movie affected me as deeply as any work of art ever has. It
was really the first work which showed me how powerfully art can move
the heart.
ON MOONLIGHT BAY
I don't remember this movie very well, though I remember the poster clearly. The song On Moonlight Bay always gets to me, though, and that must have something to do with having heard Doris Day sing it in this film.
THE TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON
I don't remember this one very well, either, and I haven't seen it
since, but I have the impression that some sort of miracle occurred at
the end of it which was delightful.
JAILHOUSE ROCK
This was the first film I was ever allowed to go see at night without
adult supervision. Our babysitter, a girl in her early teens,
escorted my sister and me and a few neighborhood pals to the
show. The crowd was different at night, older, better behaved,
even for this rock and roll classic. The evening screening seemed
like a window onto another world.
BUFFALO BILL
I only saw the first half of this film because I was suddenly
gripped by a profound sense of homesickness -- for a home that was
practically in sight of the theater I was in. When I got back
there I was unaccountably relieved to find my mom in the kitchen -- as
though she'd be anywhere else an hour or so before suppertime.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
This film did not screen on Saturday, but on a Wednesday afternoon,
when the theater was always dark. I assume this was because it
wasn't a big enough house to rate a print of the newly released epic,
which was something of a sensation at the time, on a weekend.
(Many of the films I saw in Belhaven were older releases -- whatever
prints the theater could get hold of when the new releases were tied up
in bigger towns.) This Wednesday
was a school day and I had to get special permission from my
second-grade teacher to skip afternoon classes to go see it.
Permission was granted, undoubtedly because of the uplifting nature of
the motion picture in question. No one else in the class wanted
to go see it but me,
and there was almost no one else in the theater when it played.
Consequently I felt even more overwhelmed by the spectacle than I might
have otherwise been. It was almost as though the drama was being
played only for me.
The movies I saw at this little palace of dreams have a kind of glow about them, in my memory, which time has
never dimmed. Even watching the films again and discovering that
they weren't quite as magical as they seemed back then doesn't really
alter my memory of them. I saw the films I saw, they were what
they were, and they set the standard of enchantment against which I
measure all other films.
Monday, February 19
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
by
Lloydville
on Mon 19 Feb 2007 12:16 AM PST
This trilogy is so well-made and possesses such magnificence of spirit
that it
seems truly churlish to wish that it was better -- but I do. It is,
nevertheless, faut de mieux, the great epic film of our time -- the
embodiment of the all-but-hopeless struggle just beginning against the
corporate control and perversion of all human life and an image of the
inevitable victory of humane culture in that struggle. Its faults are
primarily the faults of the book -- a very vague appreciation of female
power, a coziness that avoids the true terror and complexity of the
genuine epics that inspired it, an avalanche of dazzling invention that
only rarely rises to the level of authentic enchantment. (The second film
of the series, The Two Towers, is the best of the lot, if you only
have time for one of them.) But its heart is in the right place, its
moral sense steady and true. Mordor is on the march -- time to set the
beacon fires. I'll light one if you will.
Thursday, February 15
SAVED
by
Lloydville
on Thu 15 Feb 2007 12:16 AM PST
The
best thing about the movie Saved is the wondrous Jena Malone, who's
brilliant in just about everything she does but has never gotten a
break-out role. Saved is a gentle satire of young fundamentalist
Christian teens, with a sentimental but overly-familiar message at its
core -- real goodness isn't always found in the dogmatic pronouncements
of the self-appointed true believers. Since this was a big part of
Jesus's message, you could argue that this is really a Christian film
at heart, for all its barbs at the fundamentalist types. It's pretty
funny but gets a little too sloppy and preachy at the end.
Malone is probably best known for her role in Donnie Darko but check out her little cameo in Cold Mountain as well -- scary . . .
Wednesday, February 7
SUMMER MAGIC
by
Lloydville
on Wed 07 Feb 2007 08:22 AM PST
I
saw this film when it first came out, in July of 1963, when I was
thirteen. It was showing at a theater a couple of miles from my home in
Washington, D. C. I took a bus to the theater but afterwards I had an
urge to walk home, which I did, in a kind of dreamy state. The film is
not a great one but it has a kind of sweetness you don't find in
movies anymore, and a kind of modesty -- it wasn't meant to be an
event, just a pleasing way of passing the time on a summer's afternoon
or evening. If you were a kid in 1963 you'd go see any Disney film that
came out, knowing you'd like it, more or less.
I was
on the cusp of puberty then and Hayley Mills was a person of deep
fascination to me. I might not have identified my interest in her as
sexual, consciously, but she was a sexy girl -- not just cute but
self-possessed in an alluring way. Her good-natured charm allowed one
access to her female power, made it approachable.
A few
months after this film came out Kennedy would be assassinated and a
few months after that the Beatles exploded on the scene, and the
Sixties officially got going. It's tempting to think that the dream
state this film induced in me, and the long walk home I took in order
to prolong it, arose from a presentiment that this summer would be the
last innocent one of my life -- that sex and tragedy and cultural
derangement would soon transform me and transform America.
I was taking a deep breath, perhaps, knowing that the slow climb of the rollercoaster had reached its zenith and that the
delirious fall was about to begin.
Monday, February 5
CHERRY 2000
by
Lloydville
on Mon 05 Feb 2007 06:04 AM PST
Above
is a cool French poster for the film Cherry 2000. It's a vision from
the 1980s (cast in a sort of sci-fi version of Coppelia) of sexual
relations in the 21st Century -- and it wasn't far off. It tested
horribly with audiences back when it was made and was never released
theatrically in America, but it's now available on DVD. I don't know if
it's a cult classic yet but it will be, sooner or later. The direction
is not up to the level of the story and script but it's definitely worth
checking out. You can buy it here:
Cherry 2000
Saturday, February 3
THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR
by
Lloydville
on Sat 03 Feb 2007 08:58 AM PST
This
is an almost perfect movie, of the sort a Hollywood studio could
produce when all its departments were firing on all cylinders on a
given project. The director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who was great with
actors and with literary material but not a great visual artist, is
here taken into a new realm by the ravishing and atmospheric
cinematography of Charles Lang, himself liberated from the flatter
lighting style Paramount normally expected of him by the demands of
this particular show, which he did on loan-out to 20th Century Fox. Rex
Harrison is brilliantly cast as the virile ghost who haunts the widow
Muir's psyche, and Gene Tierney, not an actress of great range, grounds
the film in a kind of sweet commonplace yearning that skews its
comic/romantic tone towards the romantic. The script is sentimental but
leavened with wit, the design and costuming are first-rate and the
truly haunting score by the incomparable Bernard Herrmann is one of his
very finest. The result is a superb fantasy, charged with subtle
eroticism, mystery and emotion. It is a civilized entertainment for
grown-ups and wise children of all ages.
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