Nobody Knows Anything

No cinema visits this week. If we’re very lucky, I may make it to the cinema next week as a new Scorsese movie has arrived in the middle of the current drought, even if it is just a Rolling Stones concert movie.

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

In Cameron Crowe’s excellent series of interviews with Billy Wilder, Wilder remains completely indifferent on the subject of widescreen cinematography. He just didn’t care. It is extremely odd to see what is basically a filmed play contained within the most extreme of aspect ratios at 2.55:1, especially when there is only one person onscreen for great lengths of the running time. Marilyn Monroe appears essentially “playing herself” (whatever that was) as the archetypal embodiment of mainstream Hollywood 1950s femininity, blonde, overly made up, harmless (emotionally damaged, needy, desperate, addicted to booze and drugs). And in the 1950s, mainstream America had Marilyn, and Doris Day, and Jayne Mansfield, and at a stretch, Mamie Van Doren. And the rest of the country had…

The Notorious Bettie Page (2005)

One of those roles that any actress worth her salt would kill for, and Gretchen Mol, infamously hyped with a gratuitous Vanity Fair cover some years earlier, finally proved herself as a real talent with her wonderfully game performance in a film that both reveals the essential harmlessness of extreme fetish pornography (though not to the BBFC, who rather ridiculously gave the film an 18 certificate) as well as provides more evidence, if evidence were needed, of the ludicrous hypocrisy of American culture in the 1950s. Bettie Page regarded even the most absurd of bondage photoshoots as nothing more than innocent playacting, and Mol puts over the impossible to fake joie de vivre aura of Page’s photographic poses with an equal measure of shamelessness. Page prospered in the years just before Playboy changed all of the rules; she was a very American pioneer, striking out into new territory and claiming it as her own.

No cinema visits this week.

Avalon (2000)

This film may be too much of a secret. A lot of barriers have been placed in front of it to stop it appearing too commercial or mainstream. All of the dialogue is in Polish, all of the post-production was completed in Japan. It’s a beguiling mystery, a mannered reflection on the nature of games and reality, life as a game, the kind of film Andrei Tarkovsky might have made if he’d lived longer, lightened up a little, and bought a PlayStation. The director Mamoru Oshii is probably an unfamiliar name, but he’s the guy Jim Cameron and the Wachowski brothers look to for inspiration because they treasure his point of view.

Corpse Bride (2005)

The stop motion is almost too exquisite. The whole thing is a visual fest of design and innovation. Filmed alongside Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), this is as pure as Tim Burton gets, a dark sensibility smuggled into a children’s film.

Tarzan (1999)

Disney seemed to have got the whole animation thing completely worked out here. The heavy duty implementation of the Deep Canvas software had allowed their 2D painters to paint backgrounds in 3D, and animators have always been able to move their characters through 3D space. It has catchy songs from Phil Collins in Peter Gabriel mode, a fantastic vocal performance from Minnie Driver that alone is worth the price of admission, and a Tarzan who actually seems to have been raised by apes, rather than selected to play the role because he won a muscle building contest. Yet, in a few short years, Disney would be firing animators and switching to CGI, having dropped the ball completely and seen Pixar pick it up and run with it, scoring touchdown after touchdown. You know, there is a reason they call these films animated classics, and it isn’t just empty marketing hyperbole.

The Apartment (1960)

When was the last time a Hollywood actor played as weak and passive as Jack Lemmon does in this Billy Wilder film? As the story proceeds, you find yourself willing him to finally take a stand, admit his love for Miss Kubelik, and tell his boss to take his job and shove it. Billy Wilder, knowing this is what we want, knowing this is what Lubitsch would do, denies us this for as long as he can.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

The majority of Americans who’ve seen this film have not of course seen exactly what Stanley Kubrick wanted them to see, which is pretty ironic given the film’s title. During the party scene at the mansion, a number of CGI figures were superimposed over some of the more, shall we say, athletic performances. This, as Roger Ebert and others have pointed out, is a desecration of Stanley Kubrick’s work, memory, and reputation. The film runs two and a half hours and could probably have benefited from the removal of a good twenty minutes or so. The pace would then be not quite as glacial as it is. But Kubrick died and it was not to be. A lot of people concentrate on how good Nicole Kidman is in this film (and it’s damned difficult to take your eyes off her; back to the title again) but I think Tom Cruise actually delivers as well, it’s some of his best work on film. Arthur Schnitzler’s original novel Traumnovelle appeared in the 1920s alongside the work of his Viennese compatriot, Sigmund Freud, though their views on sexuality are quite different. In fact, this film has more in common with Fight Club (1999) than might first appear. It too is playing with fantasy and reality. After all, how much of what happens to Bill Harford on his night on the town is a male fantasy? How much has he been pushed into imagining/living these situations by his reaction to his wife’s female fantasy? The female fantasy that could have so easily ruined all of their lives if enacted in reality, just as the male fantasy threatens to do.

The Proposition (2005)

It’s taken him twenty years but director John Hillcoat has finally made a good film, and it’s an Australian Western. Discovering a pretty much untapped resource is a film director’s dream, and here Hillcoat has brought to life a forgotten episode in Australia’s history. Of course, it had been deliberately forgotten. Although Nick Cave’s script is fiction, a lot of the darkest deeds contained in his screenplay are, as they say, based on true events. The Wild West in America was a fairly out there place, but the real Wild West in Australia was every bit as crazy as a Spaghetti Western like Django (1966) or the films of Sergio Corbucci.

Oh dear, three months in, and I’m already adjusting my DVD watching so as to make a nicer set of movies to write about. See next week, if things work out.

Trading Places (1983)

This is why I’ll never make a killing on the stock market; I flat out just don’t understand the commodity trading scenes in this film. It’s a reminder of a lot of things, of a time when John Landis could still direct, and Eddie Murphy could still be funny, and American film comedy could still have something to say.

Showgirls (1995)

By now, I’ve clearly gone insane. I spent all my time talking about Pandora’s Box last week talking about Showgirls, and this week I’m gonna spend all my time talking about Showgirls talking about Pandora’s Box (sort of). Taking my cue from the Pandora’s Box commentary track from academics Thomas Elsaesser and Mary Ann Doane, here are some very odd thoughts about Showgirls that link the film to Pandora’s Box more than they should. Consider the film as a fetishistic object. Consider the following as an allegory of cinema: the prostitute, the pimp and the client standing for the leading actress, the director and the spectator. These themes can be found in the films of Godard and Fassbinder, especially in films concerning the spectacle of women. And Showgirls is about nothing else than the spectacle of women. It all fits. Nomi Malone is clearly the prostitute figure at the heart of the film, who denies that she’s a prostitute at the same time as she exploits her body to get ahead; the late plot detail that she’s been arrested for soliciting earlier in her life is not much of a surprise. Nomi is surrounded by pimps, men who exploit her and encourage her to exploit herself: the guy in the pickup truck at the start, the boss of the Cheetah, the guy at the disco, all of the men at the Tangiers, and the rock star who rapes her friend. Nomi is also surrounded by clients who watch her and pay for her services, whether with money or employment; it starts on stage at the Cheetah, continues in the lap dancing back room, and finishes on the stage of the Tangiers. And somewhat inevitably, this plays into the subject of the film itself. A naive and inexperienced actress, Elizabeth Berkeley, has been persuaded into exposing more of herself than perhaps she should have done by a couple of pimps: Joe Eszterhas and Paul Verhoeven, all for the supposed delight of anyone who’s ever watched Showgirls. The exploitation of Nomi is the exploitation of Elizabeth, so how complicit is the viewer of the film in this exploitation?

All That Jazz (1979)

There was a fair amount of accusations of pretentiousness levelled at this film when it first appeared and did all those things that Hollywood would prefer American movies don’t do: win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, excoriate the whole business that is show, reveal that the man behind the curtain isn’t a wizard but a painfully flawed human being after all. And yet All That Jazz is one of those films that’s improved over the years like a fine wine. Bob Fosse only directed five films, but all of them are great, and I guess that isn’t so bad.

Chicago (2002)

Rob Marshall’s directed two, and nobody has anything good to say about Memoirs of a Geisha. It is odd that Chicago has the structure it has, in which the musical numbers all take the form of dreams or nightmares (except perhaps the last number). It’s almost as if Harvey Weinstein had a backup plan in case the film didn’t work for an audience: Chicago the musical without the songs.

Ed Wood (1994)

How fabulous is this film? Before the Academy recognised Johnny Depp, I already knew he was one of the best actors of his generation. As Joel Schumacher and Michael Bay continue to prove, all you need to make a bad film is a total lack of talent. Ed Wood’s films were terrible, of course, but at least they didn’t drain the resources of Hollywood and clog the multiplexes of the world to keep the studio limping on for another year.

Sunset Blvd. (1950)

So here is the flip to David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. (2001). Norma Desmond is really creepy and it’s great to see an actress really commit to playing completely unhinged on the big screen. This is a film about what happens when the studios don’t want you anymore because there’s always someone younger and hungrier waiting to push you down the stairs backstage and take your place in the show. This is a film about what the show does to you, and what’s left when there’s no one remaining to worship your image any longer.