Brian De Palma’s ‘Passion’ fails to ignite critics

August 30, 2013 by

Neo-noir master Brian De Palma’s latest film, “Passion,” starring Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace, was released today. It’s a reworking of a French film called “Love Crime,” which I reviewed last summer and thought was rather good. (“Love Crime” was directed by Alain Corneau and starred Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier).

I haven’t seen “Passion” and am wondering if it behooves me to see it, having not been contacted re: screenings arranged by the film’s publicity team. It’s bloody hot out, it’s a holiday weekend and I do have to live up to my nickname, Lazy Legs.

The NYT’s A. O. Scott said the film was “often sleek and enjoyable, dispensing titillation, suspense and a few laughs without taking itself too seriously.”

Justin Chang of Variety puts it this way: “By the time it reaches its overwrought final act, the picture has generated neither the tension of its forebears nor the audacity that would allow it to transcend its silliness.”

And the New York Daily News’ Joe Neumaier pretty much hated it. “With no heat at all and a woefully disjointed cast, De Palma’s danse macabre never catches fire,” Neumaier writes.

Anyone out there seen it? Let me know what you think. I’m going to ponder, while sipping a cool & refreshing cocktail, whether I can get fired up over “Passion.”

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Wicked violence, wild beauty permeate classic ‘Badlands’

August 29, 2013 by

By Mike Wilmington

Badlands/1973/Warner Bros./94 min.

The late 1960s and early 1970s, in America, were marked by violence and loneliness, war and craziness, and wild beauty. We see a portrait of a lot of that trauma, in microcosm, in Terrence Malick’s shattering 1973 classic, “Badlands.” Set in the American West of the 1950s, it’s the story of two young people on the run: Kit, who works on a trash truck and tries to model himself after James Dean, and Holly, a high-school baton twirler with a strange blank stare, who thinks Kit is the handsomest boy she’s ever seen.

These two moonchildren run off together after Kit tries and fails to reconcile Holly’s mean, smiley-sign-painter father (Warren Oates) to their relationship. Then, plumb out of arguments, Kit shoots him dead and burns his house down. It’s probably Kit’s first murder; he’s such a weirdly polite guy that it’s hard to envision it otherwise. But soon he develops a taste for slaughter. And he and Holly embark on a savage cross-country trek by stolen cars, one that includes the massacre of many people, including Kit’s best (only) friend Cato (Ramon Bieri).

Kit appears to be killing not out of need or fear, but out of some perverse pleasure he gets from pulling the trigger and making a soul disappear from a body. “He was the most trigger-happy person I’d ever seen,” says Holly, in her flat, unemotional voice.

Kit and Holly are played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, the first lead roles for either of them.

Kit and Holly are played by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, the first lead roles for either of them. They are a couple of beautiful but amoral (at least in Kit’s case) American eccentrics who seem to have gotten most of their ideas about love and romance from the movies. Kit keeps constructing his own dream world, even as the real world is falling apart below their feet. They build tree houses, they dance at night by the lights of their stolen car to Nat King Cole’s achingly romantic ballad “A Blossom Fell.”

Kit and Holly were inspired, to a degree, by real people: serial killer Charles Starkweather and his 14-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate. The pair went on a murder spree in 1957-58 and wound up killing 11 people, some of them with a cruelty that surpasses anything we see in Malick’s movie.

Kit is a born killer and we’re probably more afraid of him than any of the jolly Barrow gang.

“Badlands” was also inspired by Arthur Penn’s 1967 masterpiece “Bonnie and Clyde,” another movie where unsavory real-life characters, the Clyde Barrow–Bonnie Parker gang, become likeable and sympathetic, even glamorous. Bonnie, Clyde, Kit and Holly are stunningly attractive, which is a cinematic short-cut to sympathy and something we see in other films like the 1950 film noir classic “Gun Crazy,” directed by Joseph H. Lewis. But Clyde is more of a businessman who’s chosen crime as a profession; Kit is a born killer and we’re probably more afraid of him than any of the jolly Barrow gang.

There’s something else that “Badlands” and “Bonnie and Clyde” share: a true, piercing sense of the rough-hewn beauty of the American landscapes and of the American physiognomy. And while Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway have A-list knockout looks (the kind of faces moviemakers use to draw us to the screen and what the movies themselves sell) Sheen and Spacek have a different kind of good looks: an outsider sexiness, a tender and beguiling charm.

Kit and Holly were inspired serial killer Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate.

Sheen and Spacek are alluring, and so is the film: a series of gorgeous landscapes, images that can fill us with delight and awe. (“Badlands” went through three camera artists: Tak Fujimoto, Brian Probyn and Stevan Larner.) In his next film, “Days of Heaven,” Malick would also get incredible beauty in exterior shots. But “Badlands”— shot on a minuscule budget in what Malick has called an outlaw production — has something madder, freer. It’s a darkening vision of two naïve kids in love and flight, but it’s also the head-shot of a killer, picking out his targets. He’s there, smiling, with a gun in his hand, almost before you know it.

The question “Badlands” poses, like “Bonnie and Clyde,” is the riddle of which is more deadly: society or its outlaws. We think we know the answer, but we don’t. Both movies, made in the Vietnam era, are about the struggle between the establishment and its outlaws. Both deliberately blur the boundaries between what we see as good and evil.

“Badlands” is about the America and the people we think we know but really don’t, the people we hear about from afar. It’s about that car racing along the road against the night-sky, those twisted childlike lovers, looking for freedom but finding darkness and death, and the soft, fleeting sound of Nat King Cole on the car radio.

Criterion’s DVD and Blu-ray releases of “Badlands” include a number of outstanding extras.

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‘Leave Her to Heaven’ flaunts an upper-crust femme fatale

August 26, 2013 by

Leave Her to Heaven/1945/ Twentieth Century Fox/110 min.

“Leave Her to Heaven” shows a glossy new strand of film noir: a domestic-based story shot in color. Of course, there were mixed-up families all along and melodrama was nothing new – Joan Crawford won the Best Actress Oscar for “Mildred Pierce,” also from 1945. But here we are immersed in the inner-workings of an upper- middle-class, superficially happy clan and witness the deadly consequences of Daddy complexes. (Yes, there is a family-size helping of obvious Freudian psychology.)

Gene Tierney tackles the role of Ellen Berent – ravishingly beautiful, rich as a princess, and smart as a tack. (Rita Hayworth reportedly turned the part down.) Shortly after the death of her father, she meets a handsome novelist named Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) who looks and acts like Dad. Ellen’s quickly heads over heels and in short order she dumps her fiancé, aspiring politician Russell Quinton (Vincent Price), and marries Richard.

Breaking the noir convention that a femme fatale typically has a tough childhood and few remaining family ties, Ellen comes from a wealthy and well respected East Coast family. Ellen’s mom (Mary Philips) says: “There’s nothing wrong with Ellen. It’s just that she loves too much. She loved her fahhhther too much.”

Richard (Cornel Wilde) and Ellen (Gene Tierney) meet on a train.

We also learn that Richard has a younger brother Danny (Darryl Hickman) who’s an invalid and, in Ellen’s view, really a bit of a third wheel. For you see, the lovely Ellen is turning out to be a green-eyed monster fond of sticking to her husband like glue.

To top it off, Richard has the irritating notion that he’s The Writer of the House and needs some time to himself To Write. Seriously, Richard?

As Ellen’s paranoia and possessiveness grow, her cousin Ruth (Jeanne Crain) appears strikingly sane by contrast and hence more competition for Richard’s attention. Ellen may be clinical, but she’s not stupid, so once she decides that Richard no longer wants her, she sets an If-I-can’t-have-him … trap. She also commits one of the most cold-blooded killings in the film-noir canon.

A big-budget production with a strong cast, “Leave Her to Heaven” is immensely entertaining. (Price and Tierney had worked together in 1944’s “Laura” as well.) For one thing, it’s drop-dead gorgeous. Shot in luscious Technicolor by cinematographer Leon Shamroy (he won an Oscar for this film) with frothy art direction by Maurice Ransford and Lyle Wheeler, “Leave Her to Heaven” is a feast for the eyes.

Ellen commits an atrocious crime. But at least she has chic eyewear.

Another highlight: John M. Stahl’s elegant direction. Known for women’s films such as “Back Street (1932), “Imitation of Life” (1934) and “Magnificent Obsession” (1935) as well as the MGM flop “Parnell” (1937), Stahl could make a stylish soap opera like nobody’s business. The executive producer was Darryl F. Zanuck (uncredited).

(Following in Stahl’s soap-opera tradition was the great Douglas Sirk, known for his lavish productions underpinned with stinging social criticism. He remade “Magnificent Obsession” in 1954 with Rock Hudson and “Imitation of Life” in 1959 with Lana Turner.)

The source for “Leave Her to Heaven” was Ben Ames Williams’ novel “Leave Her to Heaven” (a line from “Hamlet”). The book was a best seller that prompted a bidding war among studios wanting to make the movie. Jo Swerling wrote the screenplay.

In the DVD version, actor Hickman and film critic Richard Schickel provide commentary. Hickman tells us that Tierney didn’t give him the time of day and he couldn’t seem to please Stahl, then picks on Tierney’s acting. But then he did apparently get pneumonia from shooting the famous lake scene so that might sour one just a tad.

Schickel’s comments are far more interesting, especially his insightful observation about fashion. Despite her issues, Ellen is dressed to a T in every scene, looking icy cool, highly polished and timeless. And when you come down it, what’s more important than that? Neurotic, schmurotic.

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Good buzz over ‘The World’s End’ is well deserved

August 23, 2013 by

The World’s End/2013/Focus Features/109 min.

A comedy with an apocalyptic slant is required viewing here at FNB and, given that this one is made by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, “The World’s End” is a must-see for anyone who likes a good laugh and a glass of beer with a twist of Brit.

Following their hits “Shaun of the Dead” (2004) and “Hot Fuzz (2007), I had high hopes for their latest collaboration (Wright directed and co-wrote with Pegg). And, despite Pegg and Frost’s misfire with “Paul” (2011), the trio delivers nicely here.

It’s a simple premise: Five boyhood friends reluctantly reunite in their hometown for a pub crawl at the same spots they frequented 20 years before – the final stop is the aptly named The World’s End. Pegg plays Gary King, the cocky party-hardy dude, short on cash and long on looking back because his best days are behind him.

His friends, on the other hand, have moved on with their lives and assumed the usual responsibilities, i.e. jobs and families. Gary manages to get Steven (Paddy Considine), Oliver (Martin Freeman) and Peter (Eddie Marsan) on board with the binge quest fairly quickly. It’s more work to convince Andy (Frost), now a well dressed, teetotalling lawyer as serious as he is successful.

Pints are poured and tension between the estranged friends bubbles up, just as a creamy head tops a draft of Guinness. But bigger trouble appears when “the five musketeers” discover that their sleepy small town has been overrun by a breed of mutants, a la “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and that the future of humanity now rests on their soused shoulders.

As was the case with “Shaun of the Dead,” a smart script and strong characterizations allow the leads to deftly balance comedy and drama. And it’s a refreshing treat to see Frost playing a stuffy sourpuss to Pegg’s puerile doofus. Also spot on: Rosamund Pike as Samantha, Steven’s smart and sexy unrequited love.

“The World’s End” skillfully mixes broad, knockabout humor with sharp observation (playing with and puncturing British stereotypes) and quick wit. “I haven’t had a drink in 15 years,” says Andy, to which Gary replies, “You must be thirsty!”

“The World’s End” opens nationwide today.

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Neo-noir ‘Ain’t Them Bodies Saints’ is a pretty tone poem that skimps on story

August 23, 2013 by

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints/2013/IFC Films/105 min.

“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” by writer/director David Lowery, opens with a quarrel between a pair of young lovers, ambling along the hills of desolate central Texas. Ruth (Rooney Mara with a Plain Jane, ’70s vibe) frets that her restless boyfriend Bob (Casey Affleck) is going to take off on his own and leave her behind.

He reassures her but her fears are not unfounded – when a robbery goes wrong, Bob goes to jail and Ruth must fend for herself. But knowing that Ruth is pregnant, Bob determines to escape and return to his wife and child.

Lowery creates and sustains a languid mood tinged with loneliness, frustration, guilt and longing, underscored by steady dread, thanks particularly to cinematographer Bradford Young’s pretty camerawork and Daniel Hart’s plaintive music. The director also draws subtle performances from Mara as a teen transformed by motherhood and a tenderly expressive Ben Foster as the cop who forms the third side of the love triangle.

Lowery’s work essentially belongs to the lovers-on-the-run tradition that mixes film noir, poetic realism and grisly fairy tale – presumably attempting to join the ranks of movies like “Gun Crazy,” “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Badlands.”

“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” has impressed many critics, but I found it hard to connect with and the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. Lowery seems uncomfortable letting a simple tale unfold. Several narrative threads felt clunky and tacked on, without adding anything of substance. Some of the storytelling was hard to follow; other parts were boring (though, to be fair, action isn’t the aim here) and hollow.

Pretentious and plodding more than heartfelt and contemplative,“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” failed to move me.

“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” opens nationwide today.

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Film Noir File: ‘Mildred Pierce’ shows Crawford at her peak

August 15, 2013 by

By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and  pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard). 

PICK OF THE WEEK

“Mildred Pierce” (1945, Michael Curtiz). Friday, Aug. 16, 8 p.m. (5 p.m.). With Joan Crawford, Jack Carson and Ann Blyth.

I saw “Mildred Pierce” for the first time nearly 20 years ago on a Sunday afternoon in my small, studenty London flat – pale gray walls, Venetian blinds, a Victor Skrebneski print opposite the TV. Just before the opening scene unfolded – a shooting in a shadow-drenched California beach house with a sinister vibe – I remember popping a batch of popcorn in oil on the stovetop and making fresh lemonade. Such wholesome snacking for the decadence on the little screen.

Directed by Michael Curtiz, “Mildred Pierce” is based on James M. Cain’s 1941 novel, adapted by Ranald MacDougall with uncredited help from William Faulkner. Joan Crawford plays the title character, a wife and mother, who tries to buy the love of her spoiled and ungrateful teenage daughter Veda (Ann Blyth). Her younger daughter Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe) is easy to love, but Mildred is determined to win Veda over as well.

You can read FNB’s full review here.

Friday, Aug. 16

3 p.m. (12 p.m.): “Brute Force” (1947, Jules Dassin). One of the prototypical prison pictures, with Burt Lancaster as the indomitable convict and Hume Cronyn as the sadistic captain – plus a cast that includes Yvonne De Carlo, Charles Bickford, Ann Blyth and Howard Duff, and a taut script by Richard Brooks.

8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Mildred Pierce” (See Pick of the Week).

2 a.m. (11 p.m.): “The Helen Morgan Story”  (1957, Michael Curtiz). “Mildred Pierce” co-star Ann Blyth and director Curtiz reunite for this tangy, noirish bio-drama of the tragic popular songstress, with Paul Newman as Helen’s brash gangster lover.

Sunday, Aug. 18

1:45 p.m. (10:45 a.m.): “Rebel Without a Cause”  (1955, Nicholas Ray). With James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.

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Clumsy filmmaking causes ‘Lovelace’ to fall flat

August 14, 2013 by

Lovelace/2013/Millennium Films/93 min.

“Lovelace,” the story of the porn star’s rise and fall, presents a strange creative paradox: the film’s chief virtue is its strong acting, yet the characterizations are also uniformly one-note. In other words, the actors do their very best with what they have and deliver compelling work. But overall, “Lovelace” feels unsatisfying, superficial and obvious.

We first meet Linda Lovelace (Amanda Seyfried) as a jaded star, dragging on a cigarette as she lounges in a marble bathtub. She’s been used and abused. Via flashback, we see that before she became famous as the star of 1972’s “Deep Throat,” the first porn movie to play in mainstream theaters, Linda Boreman was a Bronx-born girl (relocated to Florida) who liked to lie out in the sun with her friend (Juno Temple) and dance at the local roller-skating rink.

When she meets sleazy Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) at the rink, her life changes forever. They flirt, fall in love and marry, and through Chuck’s contacts she lands the lead role in the groundbreaking “Deep Throat.” Not only a schmoozer, Chuck appears to have a talent for controlling and abusing Linda as well as borrowing money on her behalf. (According to the filmmakers, “Deep Throat” grossed $600 million; Lovelace received $1,250.)

Meanwhile, Linda aspires to become a mainstream actress but these dreams are never fulfilled and she leaves Chuck. Her parents (Sharon Stone nearly unrecognizable as Linda’s frumpy cold-hearted mother and Robert Patrick as her disapproving Milquetoast dad) don’t offer much sympathy or support. Several years later, Linda remarries, has a kid and writes a book about her experiences called “Ordeal.”

While my gut feeling is that Chuck Traynor was more than likely a lowlife, he also likely possessed some kind of skulking magnetism or sly charm. By the same token, Linda Lovelace, portrayed here as a victim with a capital V, was probably not as pure as driven snow. I think she must have had a dash of femme fatale.

But Seyfried, while engaging, beams naïve girl-next-door cuteness throughout (wonder what Mila Kunis would have brought to the role?) just as Sarsgaard’s unmitigated dirtball oozes menace from start to finish. Even the scene where Chuck aims to charm Linda’s parents fails to convince. As mentioned, Stone and Patrick are excellent in supporting roles, as are Chris Noth, Bobby Cannavale, Hank Azaria and James Franco (as Hugh Hefner).

Still, Lovelace’s thorny story has been disputed and none of that complexity comes through in this film. The filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and writer Andy Bellin would have done well to take a page from Alfred Hitchcock’s book, remembering the disturbing truth that even full-on psychos often have a charismatic side and that most sane people mask a little darkness when you scratch under the surface.

“Lovelace” opened in limited release Aug. 9.

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Noir writer/director Paul Schrader dishes on ‘The Canyons,’ guerilla filmmaking and Lindsay Lohan

August 9, 2013 by

Is the low-budget neo-noir thriller “The Canyons,” starring Lindsay Lohan and James Deen, a cold, dead movie? Director Paul Schrader certainly hopes so.

“Well what did you expect?” said Schrader at a screening and Q&A Monday night at UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood. “Brett [Easton Ellis] and I have track records. If we can’t make a cold, dead movie, who can?”

The film’s release (VOD and a smattering of theaters) has been preceded by bad publicity, stemming from the crazed production and the erratic Lohan. Schrader said the “cold, dead” epithet came from “the nincompoop that runs the South by Southwest Film Festival,” which rejected the film.

The Sundance festival also took a pass but “The Canyons” has been picked up out-of-competition at the Venice Film Festival. (According to several media sources, the S x SW quote was: “There’s an ugliness and a deadness” to “The Canyons.” Regardless of the exact wording, when a movie is rejected from a festival, staff typically refrain from making any public comment.)

That the film, which novelist Brett Easton Ellis wrote and Alexander Pope produced, was finished at all is a minor miracle. Schrader said the total budget was about $500,000 and was intended from the outset for VOD.

“I’ve always enjoyed pushing people’s buttons. The button I’m trying to push now is the on-demand button on your remote,” said Schrader in response to a comment during the Q&A from Robert Rosen, former dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and TV. Rosen lauded Schrader for “the pride we have in [Schrader] as a trouble-making filmmaker.”

Schrader calls his latest foray into “guerilla” filmmaking “an exhilarating experience.” As he put it: “It’s the mystery of could you do such a thing? Could I pull off such a thing?” Yes and yes. The film is already in profit, Schrader said, thanks to a distribution deal with IFC.

The movie came together through a combination of good luck and false starts, including online auditions via LetItCast, Ellis’ “promiscuous twitter finger” that lured porn star James Deen to the project, writer/novelist Kirsten Smith’s stunning Malibu Canyon home (aka the film’s third star) that fell into Schrader’s lap courtesy of Kickstarter, as well as his “high-maintenance” lead actress, who “lives in a cone of crisis.”

“If a crisis doesn’t exist, she makes one up,” Schrader said. “It’s exhausting. I told her, ‘It must be so exhausting to be you.’”

Schrader sums up the movie as “beautiful people doing bad things in nice rooms.”

A case in point: Schrader said Lohan recently made a last-minute call to Deen (even though they didn’t get along on the set) and asked him to drop what he was doing (in the Valley) to join her on the set while she co-hosted “Chelsea Lately” with Chelsea Handler on the E! channel (taped on the west side, at Olympic and Bundy).

Schrader said: “She has the ability to make you care. She suckered me and I’m a big fan. But there are people who live to hate this girl. There’s an extraordinary predisposition in the media to say something negative about this girl or to satisfy a [need for] media cruelty which we in our culture now thrive on.”

During “The Canyons” shoot, Schrader reportedly stripped off his clothes to coax her to do a nude scene. He didn’t mention this Monday night. Nevertheless, it was a bare-bones operation, made without insurance or permits. Actors worked for $100/day (with Lohan getting a bigger cut of profits later on) and provided their own makeup, hair and transportation.

Paul Schrader (Image from Indiewire)

The filmmakers also decided to skip asking the MPAA for a rating because they knew the film would play in a few theaters only. Said Schrader: “The MPAA is just another one of the dinosaurs wandering around La Brea. They’re all going to the swamps.”

Set in Los Angeles, “The Canyons” examines the, um, complicated love lives of Christian (Deen), a sneering twentysomething with a trust-fund, and his trophy girlfriend Tara (Lohan), a once-aspiring actress now looking for men to take care of her in high style. A dilettante moviemaker, Christian casts a sweet and caring corn-fed actor named Ryan (Nolan Funk) in his upcoming sleazy flick.

Ryan is also Tara’s ex-boyfriend and he’s still hot for her, even though he now lives with Gina (Amanda Brooks), who is Christian’s assistant. Christian and Ryan form another lust triangle with Cynthia (Tenille Houston), an actress-turned-yoga-instructor. But Tara is the object of Christian’s obsession. At his whim, he and Tara indulge in threesomes and foursomes with partners culled from apps such as Blendr and Grindr. Christian records these trysts on his phone; later he turns to violence for kicks.

Schrader, who was a film student at UCLA in the late 1960s/early 70s, sums up the movie as “beautiful people doing bad things in nice rooms. … This film is not about Hollywood or making movies, it’s about the hookup generation.”

Lindsay Lohan

To the extent that that generation is made up of grasping, one-note Angelenos, “The Canyons” feels chillingly, depressingly truthful. Your enjoyment of this movie will likely depend on your tolerance for seeing slick, superficial portraits of Hollywood pretty people who, for the most part, are soulless, self-serving and vacuous. “This is an art movie and doesn’t play the empathy card that strong,” Schrader says.

Fair enough. Yet it struck me as short on insight. Images of dilapidated theaters symbolize changes in the way we watch movies. Texting and apps and other tech-savvy ways of derailing human connection are second nature to the hookup generation. Right. And?

On the plus side, the performances are somewhat compelling because they are infused with so much stark reality. By the same token, the roles don’t exactly stretch the actors. Visually, to be sure, the movie delivers. Shot by John DeFazio, “The Canyons” looks pretty amazing, whether capturing Hollywood Boulevard by night or showing off the majestic Malibu hills bathed in white light. Overall, though, the film is at best uneven.

Would Schrader take another gamble on a low-budget project? “I made my money and I should probably leave the casino,” said Schrader. “But I probably won’t.”

“The Canyons” is available on VOD and is showing at select theaters.

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Film Noir File: Deneuve, Buñuel cast spell with ‘Belle de Jour’

August 8, 2013 by

By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK: Two by Luis Buñuel as part of Catherine Deneuve Day

“Tristana” (1970, Luis Buñuel). Monday, Aug. 12, 10 p.m., (7 p.m.).

“Belle de Jour” (1967, Luis Buñuel ). Monday, Aug. 12, 2:15 a.m. (11:15 p.m.).

Icy, ravishing Catherine Deneuve stars in “Belle de Jour.”

The most beautiful movie actress alive paired with the most brilliantly rebellious filmmaker.

That was the incendiary match-up of star Catherine Deneuve and director Luis Buñuel – who were most famous for their 1967 French erotic drama “Belle de Jour.” In that great film, Deneuve – so lovely and so classically, radiantly, sexily blonde that she took up residence in male dreams forever – played Severine, a Parisian wife, who becomes a prostitute during the day to escape her boring bourgeois life and her handsome but boring husband (Jean Sorel). Severine then falls into a world of crime, hypocrisy, dreamlike perversity and peril. It was the most popular, and the best-remembered, film of Buñuel’s entire career.

But they made another film that Buñuel preferred and is one of his most personal: “Tristana” (1970). Shot in Spain, based on a novella by famed author Benito Perez Galdos (adapted by Buñuel and Julio Alejandro), this not underrated but definitely underseen film starred Deneuve in a role just as alluring and frightening as the wayward Severine: Tristana, the young orphan seduced, exploited and virtually imprisoned by her guardian Don Lope (Fernando Rey). Don Lope, worldly and egocentric, is an aristocrat of radical political beliefs, whose desire for his ward undermines his ethics – even as Tristana, a seeming victim, turns exploiter herself and exacts a terrible revenge.

“Tristana” earned the admiration of Alfred Hitchcock.

“Tristana” is a masterpiece, but it’s also a grimmer, sadder, more psychologically disturbing picture than “Belle de Jour.” Buñuel, notorious for his audacity, has directed some of the cruelest scenes in cinema, in films like “Un Chien Andalou,” “Los Olvidados” and “Viridiana.“ But he never filmed a more wounding scene than Tristana on the balcony: a sequence that delighted no less an epicure of sadism than Alfred Hitchcock. “Tristana! That leg! That leg!” Hitch exclaimed when the two directors met at a party. Buñuel probably only smiled.

Other Deneuve Day highlights include: “Repulsion” (1965, Roman Polanski), “Mississippi Mermaid” (1969, François Truffaut) and “Un Flic” (1972, Jean-Pierre Melville). See TCM for the full list. Films are in French (“Tristana” in Spanish) with English subtitles. [Read more…]

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Film Noir File: ‘Paths of Glory’ seduces you with its beauty, shatters you with its horror

July 26, 2013 by

By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

“Paths of Glory” (1957, Stanley Kubrick). Saturday, July 27: 1:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m.)

In 1957, Stanley Kubrick, still in his 20s – with “Dr. Strangelove,” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” still in his future – made one of the greatest of all anti-war movies: his grim, stylish and incredibly moving adaptation of Humphrey Cobb’s World War I novel, “Paths of Glory.”

Kubrick may not have known war first hand. But, in that film, he created an indelible image of war’s inhumanity and horror. “Paths of Glory” is a compelling, wrenching nightmare of a movie with a brilliant (and very noir) cast including Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, George Macready and (at his best, or worst) Timothy Carey.

Based on a real-life episode, the movie was made on location in Bavaria and is set in the French trenches, where the infantry soldiers eat and sleep in the cold, dirt, and mud – and from which they charge forth to fight and die. It’s also set in an elegant chateau, far from the battlefield, where rich, ambitious generals plot the sometimes-insane strategies that will get their men killed.

Michael Douglas plays Dax, the regiment’s idealistic commanding officer.

When one ill-advised attack against the Germans fails, Macready, as the vainglorious Gen. Mireau, flies into a murderous rage and demands that his own men be executed for cowardice. His superior, the wily Gen. Broulard (Adolphe Menjou), argues the number of the condemned down to three soldiers: Meeker, Carey and Joe Turkel. Defending them is Colonel Dax, the regiment’s courageous and idealistic commanding officer (played by Douglas, one of the leading Hollywood liberals of the ’50s and ’60s). Outraged by the mad injustice of the trumped-up court-martial , Dax – a famous criminal lawyer in civilian life – argues eloquently and fearlessly for the lives of those three guiltless men.

What a great movie this is! “Paths of Glory” is a film to see when you’re young and more innocent, like the three soldiers. And to see again when you’re stronger, more mature and full of fiery ideals, like Dax. And finally to watch yet again when you’re even older and have witnessed a lifetime of the awful compromises and vile injustices that “Paths of Glory” paints with such absolute lucidity, such deadly, inexorable narrative force.

Timothy Carey had worked with Kubrick in 1956’s “The Killing.”

By the time he directed and co-wrote “Paths of Glory,” Kubrick, 29, had three features already under his belt (including the classic 1956 film noir, “The Killing”). His partner on “The Killing,” James B. Harris, produced “Paths of Glory.” Douglas – then at the height of his Hollywood stardom and power – made it happen.

Two great American novelists collaborated with Kubrick on the screenplay: Oklahoma-born noir ace Jim Thompson (author of the crime classics “The Killer Inside Me,” “The Grifters” and “The Getaway”) and the acidly funny Southern novelist Calder Willingham (“End as a Man,” “Eternal Fire”) Probably thanks to those two, “Paths of Glory” has one of the darkest visions, some of the richest characters and some of the most pungent dialogue of any American movie of that era.

Kubrick’s masterpiece of war’s injustice seduces you with its beauty, shatters you with its horror. The battle scenes are shot with a black and white grit and shock reminiscent of Lewis Milestone’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” but also with the Max Ophuls-like grace and romanticism that Kubrick loved and that ironically permeates his film.

War is hell. It’s also noir.

“Paths of Glory” is available in DVD on Criterion. [Read more…]

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