Nobody Knows Anything

One cinema visit this week, marked with a *.

“A film that depicts depravity has to be a depraved film.”

– Tinto Brass

Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) *

So if Hero (2002) is a political film, and House of Flying Daggers (2004) is a love story, then the new film from Zhang Yimou is a family drama. In short, Hamlet with ninjas, and who could fail to love that, eh? In fact, it made me think that one of the real shortcomings of Shakespeare as a dramatist is his failure to deploy a gang of ninjas ascending from the ceiling on ropes at apposite moments in the play. Sounds like a job for the RSC to me.

Salon Kitty (1976)

My week of 70s style Euro depravity begins with this, somewhat alarmingly based on real events. It does seem wildly implausible that the Nazi regime would set up a brothel stocked with loyal party members employed as prostitutes to entice top ranking Nazi officers to verbal indiscretions which were relayed via microphones to a team of eavesdroppers in the basement. And yet they did. And does Tinto Brass take every opportunity to portray this lurid slice of real history in as bizarre and tasteless and exploitative a manner as possible? Oh yes. The sight of twenty naked women disrobing on a stage turns up pretty early, and once past that, you’re kind of prepared for anything, which is just as well. Because it’s simulated sex with midgets and amputees next.

The Damned (1969)

It would seem that the grandfather of the Nazi chic/exploitation vein which ran throughout the 70s is this film directed by Luchino Visconti. The film seems to take place over a longer timescale than it does, but actually it’s only a couple of years from the Reichstag fire in 1933 to the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. This is still plenty of time for a respectable family which owns a steel mill to plummet into chaos and disorder through their embrace of the Nazi regime. It’s Macbeth with swastikas, a moral bloodbath with nobody left standing uncorrupted or dead.

Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975)

Meanwhile, in Italy, Pasolini is demonstrating the evils of fascism through the extended metaphor of one of the most notorious books of the Marquis De Sade. Four establishment types round up, imprison, molest, abuse, torture and kill a group of young people made compliant through their own acceptance of the fascist regime that has decided to destroy them because it can. Pasolini uses every distancing device in the directorial book: the film mostly takes place in long shot, there is no characterisation for the victims, and the four establishment types communicate only in sentences of long-winded debate that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever read any of the Marquis’ work. It certainly hasn’t become any easier to watch, but nor would footage shot by a documentary team on location in Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib Prison.

la grande bouffe (1973)

A lot of these films are about what men do, and most of them were made alongside the rise of feminism. Although there are key female characters in the above three films (and the three below), this effort from Marco Ferreri is the only one to show some awareness of this, even if only slyly. Four men (I wonder if Pasolini saw this film before he made Salò) eat themselves to death over a weekend in a satire of the bourgeois. Although they employ three prostitutes to spice things up at first, it is another woman, Andréa Ferréol, who is the only one to see them all to their deaths. Whereas there is something clearly pathological about the male obsession with food here, Andréa’s character is able to eat without angst.

Immoral Tales (1974)

So either Walerian Borowczyk is a genius liberating cinema from narrative through an animator’s obsession with details and metaphors, or he’s an exploitative hack concerned only with photographing as many naked women as he can before he dies. After this film, I remained undecided. Perhaps the scene in which thirty (or is it forty) naked female teenagers tear a pearl encrusted dress off Picasso’s daughter, Paloma, inspired the mass disrobing in Salon Kitty. It’s kind of hard to tell. A lot of the naughtiness seems awfully tame today, and the lampooning of religious figures and religion in general has certainly lost whatever bite it once possessed.

La Bête (1975)

On the other hand, this is a work of some kind of genius. So I’m prepared to cut the old boy some slack. Walerian Borowczyk’s follow up to the above film was sufficiently shocking to the British censors that it remained uncertificated for 26 years. And yet the film isn’t so much shocking as very funny. It’s the Carry On film that was never quite made. The 200 year old flashback in which la Bête (a man in a big furry suit) has its way (shall we say) with a young woman (Sirpa Lane) was originally a short film that caused quite a stir when it was first shown as part of a work in progress version of Immoral Tales. Borowczyk went back to this short after completing Immoral Tales differently and constructed a modern day frame in which, in classic horror movie style, an unsuspecting bride (Lisbeth Hummel) arrives at a remote castle to be wed to something that isn’t quite human. Since this is 1975, the bride masturbates with a rose at a late point in the narrative, which I have to say would not be my flower of choice (all those thorns). As well as the groom, the castle is packed (in a low budget kind of way) with a team of eccentrics right out of the Carry On universe. My first favourite is Sirpa Lane’s pursuit through the woods in which the branches of the trees are mysteriously able to remove all of her 18th Century costume; I’m convinced this was a Benny Hill bit. My second favourite is the butler who’s never able to come when he’s called because he’s too busy having sex with the daughter of the father of the groom; when he gets up to get dressed, he leaves the unsatisfied daughter to finish herself off with a large knob on a bedstead; it’s that kind of film.

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

Where would the late night erotic thriller be without Last Tango? What would the unemployed saxophone players of Los Angeles do for work if there weren’t all those tastefully softcore sex scenes to embellish with their haunting solos? And in the end, it was the film that featured Marlon Brando’s last acting performance and turned Maria Schneider into a drug-addicted lesbian. Allegedly.

Conclusion

So what have I learned from a week of depravity, 70s style?

1. Pubic hair is very, very good, but if it’s shaved off a man, it makes his penis look longer (ref. Helmut Berger’s sauna scene in Salon Kitty).

2. No one ever took any exercise (and looked all the better for it), and no woman had any plastic or chemicals injected into any part of their bodies (and looked all the better for it).

3. The Nazis were bad, and fascism was evil. Duh.

4. It really, really helps to know that in a scene where the characters are either a) eating shit, or b) sat in a giant tub of shit, that the shit was made out of chocolate and orange marmalade.

5. That it probably isn’t a good idea to meet a stranger in a flat, have sex with them for a few days, and then attend a dance competition drunk out of your mind.

6. It won’t end well, mark my words.

I don’t watch TV. I’ve almost completely abandoned it as an entertainment medium. Instead, I’m all about the DVD. And the cinema. And surround sound. There will be DTS references, oh yes, there will. The only thing I’m going to do here is basically list every film I watch this calendar year and offer something like a things I’ve learned from watching them, probably in brief. Or other comments, which may or may not relate. I’m also going to do my level best not to edit my comments excessively, so this is pretty much straight from my head to cyberspace. Since I’ve already been too lazy to start this in January, I’m going to start with everything I watched in January.

Since the cinema visits will be rarer than the DVDs, I’ll put a * next to the cinema visits.
The Incredibles (2004)
Because I was in need of cheering up.

Ran (1985)
And having been cheered up, I needed to feel a little more miserable again. This was the Criterion Collection’s release of Ran, which has pretty much rendered all other releases redundant. I first saw Ran 20 years ago in a cinema, in all probability at the Aston Triangle, and remembered two things: it took a fair old time to get going, and that the villainness met with a fairly spectacular end. These things remained true, but what’s even more true is that the film ends by dumping you in a big black hole and saying, well there we all are, what do you think about that? Another thing: Chris Marker’s excellent making of documentary, AK, included on disc 2, underlines something very important: it was all done for real. Kurosawa had a giant castle set built on Mount Fuji, which he then attacked with real extras on real soldiers, and then burnt to the ground in real time, placing his leading man in real danger (since the poor guy has to stagger out of a burning castle down very steep steps covered in vision obscuring makeup all the time pretending that he’s completely insane).

The Doors (1991)
I love this film. I think people who don’t are people who don’t love cinema. A slightly older academic friend of mine once told me that this is what the sixties were really like; even though the film is wildly inaccurate about a whole bunch of things, it gets the tone of the period absolutely spot on.

Hannibal (2001)
Possibly because I’d just read Hannibal Rising. I think people are right: it was a lot better when we didn’t know why Hannibal Lecter had become the way he was. Anthony Hopkins is still too camp for me, but I have a lot of time for Julianne Moore, and she is great in this.

Apocalypto (2006) *
Is it just me or should this have been a widescreen movie? I could’ve sworn the trailer was widescreen. Anyway, this was a big step up from The Passion of the Christ; at least Mel Gibson’s used all those pieces of silver to do something interesting. The reason this film was shot on digital cameras is that in a jungle there’s not enough light at ground level to register an image on film without bringing in an enormous array of lighting equipment, which would negate the reason for filming in the jungle in the first place. The film may have a whole bunch of problems (its purported historical and ethnological accuracy among them) but it worked for me.

Lady and the Tramp (1955)
I needed a break from human sacrifice and brutality and this was perfect. The 2.55:1 frame seems a strange choice for a film that largely takes place in houses and alleyways but it leads to some fantastic compositions. And the animation is gorgeous: people who think that 3D CGI is the future of animation really need to check out the sequence in this film where the owners try and lock Lady in the dining room on her first night in the house. And the raindrops in Bambi; Bambi has lots of great character animation in it, but the animation of nature is breathtaking.

Where the Truth Lies (2005)
I don’t know how convinced I was by this. I think the film needed a more intriguing premise than demonstrating just how cute Alison Lohman is.
Evil Aliens (2005)
This makes an interesting companion piece to The Descent (see below), which also directly references a whole bunch of scenes in other films, but is a far superior work because cast and crew take the central premise seriously, and they’re not afraid to scare. Unfortunately, Jake West takes nothing seriously, and his film and his cast suffer badly as a result. If you as a filmmaker don’t believe in your premise, neither will anyone else. This is just a diversion from real filmmaking. Fun but a shame. Just because you can rip people’s spines out doesn’t mean you should.

The Conformist (1970)
Wow. It’s been an awful long time since I watched this, and it’s only improved with time.

A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
And so this is Robert Altman’s last film. The imaginary death of an imaginary radio show with warm humour, country songs, and Lindsay Lohan. This film was shot digitally.

The Fifth Element (1997)
The best moment in this film: Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich have boarded a spaceship that will take them to a far off planet to retrieve magical stones they need to save the universe. But first, the spaceship must be refuelled. Cut to a location beneath the ship. Cue reggae music. Cue rastas and working stiffs who look like they’re smoking something. One guy bangs on a hatch, pulls out an empty fuel cell, picks up a full cell glowing bright green (it’s radioactive), and slams it home. They guys head off for lunch. End of scene. If this film had been made in Hollywood, this scene would never have made it past the first script development meeting because it does absolutely nothing to push the story forward, it doesn’t involve any of the leads, and it is in essence pointless. Except that the point is that it’s an integral part of the world of the film and the film would be poorer without it.

Novecento (1976)
I watched this five hour plus film in one day. Not something I would particularly recommend. I am now convinced that a communist revolution from the grass roots of peasant farmers is the only way to stop the ruling oligarchy of fascists and child murderers from destroying all that is great about our country. And that Dominique Sanda is one of the most beautiful women ever to have been photographed. See The Conformist above.
The Descent (2005)
See Evil Aliens above.

Babel (2006) *
I’m not sure how convinced I was by this movie. The connections between the four stories were, it has to be said, awfully slight and really more of a contrivance than such a film so convinced of its own importance really has any business getting involved in. The actors were all terrific though, as was the score. I just don’t know if the movie has anything to say. And it’s all rather put in perspective by Short Cuts (see below).

Contact (1997)
I love this film, and I’m not ashamed to admit it in a public forum. Hey, Contact haters, get with the programme.

Seven Samurai (1954)
The Criterion Collection hit another home run. The extras on this disc occupied me for another month. That Kurosawa, he was really good, you know.
Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003)
I remember this as fairly uneven when I saw it in the cinema, but it seemed much better in a home environment, particularly when you can pause and go back and check out the sheer weight of injokes and action going on even in the deep background.

Tommy (1975)
I love Ken Russell, and Tommy is Ken at the height of his powers. The surround sound is overwhelming, and it’s quite a surprise to discover that this film is one of the innovators in the technology that led to the 5.1 home cinema systems of today. Critics at the time complained that the film was too loud; they were unaware that this was one of the first films where the sound was just right.
Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Which has to be followed by:

Ocean’s Twelve (2004)
Roland Barthes wrote a book called Le plaisir du texte, and this is just an example of that.

The Usual Suspects (1995)
Still holds up. Still makes other crime thrillers look ordinary and underplotted by comparison.

The Color of Money (1986)
I think what I like more than the performances (and everyone here is at the top of their game) is Richard Price’s crackling dialogue which never fails to cut to the point of every single scene.

Mean Girls (2004)
I must be insane but this film gets better every time I see it. We pray for you, Lindsay, we pray for you.

Short Cuts (1993)
This film is embarrassingly good. Alejandro González Iñárritu should be locked in a room for a month with Robert Altman’s entire back catalogue, and not let out until he’s repented of his foolish ways and vowed to become a better filmmaker. The Criterion Collection really spoil us with this one: the film newly remixed in 5.1, Luck Trust & Ketchup a terrific 90 minute making of documentary, and all the Raymond Carver short stories and poems that inspired the film in a newly published version of an out of print book.

Gosford Park (2001)
A film that rewards you for paying attention. Dense and packed with backstory and incident, it’s a film that inherently criticises the society and world it’s depicting at the same time as it recreates it in all its forensic detail.

Zwartboek (2006) *
In an interesting development, this film was projected digitally, and looked absolutely fantastic. It retained the clarity, depth and grain of film projection, but will of course never be subject to scratches, flaws or fading.

Soldaat van Oranje (1977)
So I had to check out Paul Verhoeven’s earlier WWII epic again as well.

Starship Troopers (1997)
And I really love Starship Troopers: “Rico, you kill bugs good!”

Dreamgirls (2006) *
Every bit as good as promised. People who don’t like musicals are clinically dead. There’s just no hope for them.

Wild Things (1998)
Sex crimes. Oh yes.

De Vierde Man (1983)
Perhaps not the best film to watch in the afternoon.