The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951) – R. Siodmak

You really don’t see too many films that try to tackle the complexity of labor-management relations but this recently revived Robert Siodmak gem does so incisively. Lloyd Bridges plays Brad Adams, the head of Union Local 145 at Doubleday Plastics in (fictional) Eaton Falls, New Hampshire (shot in Portsmouth and neighbouring towns!).  When the kindly head of the company approaches him about serious budget problems and the cost-cutting necessary, he is willing to brainstorm ideas but resistant to job cuts required if the factory is going to upgrade its machinery.  Then, suddenly, the company president is killed in an accident and his widow (Dorothy Gish) names Adams as his replacement. This creates a conflict with his old mates when he inherits the same desperate budget situation. To make things worse, a rebel union member is really stirring everyone up AND the company’s old production manager (now at a competitor) is undermining Adams’ authority and encouraging rebellion.  Only a few familiar faces (Ernest Borgnine!) appear in the cast of mostly unknowns, lending authenticity in addition to the location shooting. Of course, the film’s Hollywood ending belies the real historical narrative about unions and their relationships with corporations in the US and globally, but it feels genuinely earned and also fittingly precarious.   

 

The Man in the White Suit (1951)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Man in the White Suit (1951) – A. Mackendrick

Farcical comedy from Ealing Studios that is also a stinging satire with a bitter aftertaste (if you let it sink in). Alec Guinness plays Sidney Stratton a young scientist who manages to invent (after purloining supplies and the corner of a bench from the research divisions of various textile mills) a fabric that never wears out and never gets dirty (something to do with super-long polymer chains). Initially, he is supported by mill owner Cecil Parker (who sees profits) and his daughter Joan Greenwood (who sees the altruistic possibilities) but as soon as the captains of the textile industry (featuring Ernest Thesiger in a wickedly cynical part) find out, they want to suppress it. After all, a fabric that never wears out would certainly put the mills out of business; for once, the workers’ union joins management in a joint attack against Stratton. Director Alexander Mackendrick keeps things humming along (like the funny chemistry experiment in the film’s first half) but essentially this is a one-joke film and the material does wear a little thin (pun intended) even at a running time of only 85 minutes. Still, it’s delightful (if bitter) and Guinness and the assorted character actors acquit themselves admirably.

The Innkeepers (2011)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Innkeepers (2011) – T. West

Billed as an old-school haunted house tale (eschewing gore and CGI, I guess), this is another one of those films where you end up thinking that you yourself could probably have done better. I mean you’ve got the location (an old inn that apparently is “really” haunted) and the genre with all its trappings – you just need a respectable plot and then direction/editing skills to make it work.  So, it seems that director/editor Ti West is lacking in that department. When they say “slow build”, I think it should mean the gradual introduction of suspense – but instead we just see a couple of bored hospitality workers (Sara Paxton and Pat Healy) making time pass with some idle chatter for 20+ minutes. It might be authentic but it sure is boring.  Kelly McGillis shows up as a retired actress, now new age psychic.  It’s a fine turn but she doesn’t really get much to do other than to say, “Don’t go into the basement!”  And, of course, they do.  Perhaps the scares are okay from that point on, but no one bothered to really fill in the holes in the plot. This is a common issue with horror films but here, where everything is bare bones, there isn’t much to counterbalance the absence, to make the film worth recommending. However, if you are scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for old-school ghost stories, then here is one.

 

Alphaville (1965)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Alphaville (1965) – J.-L. Godard

Even approaching Godard’s Alphaville knowing what it is, I find it a difficult film, even a hard slog at times.  There is a lot to unpack. Godard seems to put his films together by combining isolated parts almost haphazardly, counting on the seemingly random juxtaposition of words/ideas and images to create some new meaning in the viewer or to add extra angles to his favourite themes (e.g., horrors of capitalism). Although I always go into this film expecting that Godard’s use of the B-movie serial featuring Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine, an American ex-pat who played the role for real in French films of the ‘50s and later showed up in The Long Good Friday) is going to provide a structure around which Godard can improvise and embellish, I forget that his modus operandi is basically to deconstruct so that the structure soon disappears, represented only by discrete scenes that contain elements of what might have been. So, Lemmy Caution, masquerading under the name Ivan Johnson, enters the city/planet/zone of Alphaville from the Outer Lands driving his Ford Galaxy, looking for the scientist ruler von Braun and the agent who went before him Henri Dickson (Akim Tamiroff). It turns out that Alphaville is ruled by logic, and a dominating computer called Alpha 60, and all forms of creativity, imagination, and even love are forbidden.  Anna Karina, playing von Braun’s daughter, is assigned to look after Johnson/Caution but he quickly decides to turn her to his side, to free her. Of course, I’ve made the plot seem like a plot but it doesn’t play out that way, not really. Instead, Godard gives the characters dense poetic dialogue (apparently there is a long quote from Jorge Luis Borges here) that might take several viewings to decipher.  Even without careful analysis, the effect on the viewer is the same – Brechtian detachment. This time through, the meanings that pierced through my fog focused on poetry’s ability to bring light to darkness, signalling Godard’s interest in the complexity of language and the intellectual capacity of art to add value to existence. But I may have missed the point…or many points. If so, the film can still be enjoyed at the surface level by taking in Raoul Coutard’s splendid cinematography – using the camera to make present-day Paris seem otherworldly and strange in the darkness, highlighting the alienating effects of new architecture. But there are also gorgeous close-ups of each actor looking into the camera (which could be Warhol portraits yet-to-come) – they look and we are again removed from the action. In fact, alienation may be both content and process for Godard in this work – trying to grasp it/everything without being pushed too far away is the challenge.  

 

Rounders (1998)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Rounders (1998) – J. Dahl

You probably don’t need to know much about poker to understand John Dahl’s film, set in the secret world of backroom gambling. It’s pretty simple: you lose and you are in debt with gangsters on your back; you win and you are dreaming of the World Series of Poker.  Matt Damon plays Mike McD who does know a lot about poker – he’s practiced enough to be able to read other players’ tells and to know their hands without seeing them. He’s also studying to be a lawyer, dating Gretchen Mol, and, after a big loss, also trying to quit playing. Edward Norton is Worm, a bad-news friend recently released from prison who would rather cheat his way to a win instead of play straight. This doesn’t bode well for Damon who ends up vouching for him.  Things play out rather predictably, ending with a big showdown against Russian poker ace (and mobster), John Malkovich.  Yet, for all its predictability, it’s an easy watch (although it might be the first Nineties film that felt almost unbearably dated to me).  That said, Dahl plays it far too safe and it’s hard to feel that McD or Worm were ever truly risking anything.     

 

The People Against O’Hara (1951)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The People Against O’Hara (1951) – J. Sturges

Spencer Tracy plays Jim Curtayne, a former district attorney in private practice now doing strictly civil cases because, as we soon learn, the burden of defending criminal cases eventually led to alcoholism. Of course, the movie opens with Curtayne deciding to defend the son of old friends from the neighbourhood against a murder rap.  We know, but Curtayne doesn’t, that the boy has an alibi but he won’t reveal it because doing so would put a married woman into jeopardy. So, this is a case that Curtayne can’t win and the pressure leads him back to the bottle (no surprise) and ultimately to actions that could lead him to be disbarred (which feels a little phony, it must be said).  So, it’s a noir set-up – and Tracy does seem a flawed character (although still highly genial). John Alton’s cinematography showcases his typically striking use of light in darkness. But somehow the film falters. It is a watchable courtroom drama but the supporting actors may not be strong enough (except reliable Jay C. Flippen!), Tracy may not have been willing to really tarnish his image, and the plot turns the downbeat ending into something more like an exoneration.  

 

After the Rehearsal (1984)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

After the Rehearsal (1984) – I. Bergman

Bergman, like Fellini, often makes films seemingly about himself, his life circumstances, or, of course, his personal psychological and philosophical concerns. Here, in a small chamber play for television, he is either delivering an apologia for his years of affairs with his leading actresses or he is truly acknowledging the misfortune he has inflicted on the lives of others. Erland Josephson, a recurring Bergman stand-in, plays Vogler, an older playwright/director currently rehearsing Strindberg’s A Dream Play. Young Lena Olin (pre-Hollywood) plays the actress, Anna, he has cast in the lead (as Indra’s Daughter – who visits humanity and witnesses their misfortunes). After the day’s rehearsal, she makes her way on stage where the director is resting, caught up in his own thoughts (which we hear in voiceover). What follows seems both meticulously prepared and yet organic – the conversation follows normal logic, only slowly getting to the point.  But what is that point? The director has known the actress since she was born and indeed had a on-and-off affair with her mother, also an actress.  The mother (Ingrid Thulin) soon makes an appearance which seems to be only in the director’s mind (Olin sits motionless while Josephson and Thulin run their lines, but is sometimes replaced by a 12-year-old actress in the same clothes). We learn that Thulin’s character, Rakel, descended into alcoholism, perhaps as a result of her treatment by Vogler, and was eventually cast aside by him. She is desperate and distraught in the dream/fantasy/reminiscence. Returning to Anna, it becomes clearer that she is potentially angling for her own affair with the director (clearly 30 or 40 years her senior). This provides Bergman with the opportunity to reflect on his past behaviour, to offer a suggestion about how he might act now, and above all to reflect on the context of the theatre and how it helps to create a fantasy world for actors who subsequently cannot separate play-acting from the real thing.

 

Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) – T. Hark

For NYE, I pulled out this kung fu fantasy classic, directed by Tsui Hark, to amaze the boys with its craziness. (We watched the dubbed version for extra humour). Biao Yuen stars as the foot soldier caught up in Chinese civil wars in the 5^th century who stumbles into a secret cave and is immediately attacked by flying dark shapes with glowing blue eyes. He’s rescued by a hero with amazing martial arts skills (Adam Cheng) who enlists him to help fight against the evil forces led by the Blood Demon.  A monk and his protégé join them. They are really no match for the demon but a strange sorcerer with very long eyebrows (Sammo Hung) manages to secure the enemy (with said brows) for 49 days – the heroes must find magic twin swords in that time in order to defeat the demon before it escapes Longbrows’ hold. Unfortunately, the monk and then Adam Cheng’s character are both turned to evil and only a mysterious countess (Brigitte Lin) can remove the spell – but she may not have enough strength to heal them both.  Biao Yuen and the young monk join up with one of the countess’s guards (Moon Lee) and head off to find the twin swords.  But will they make it back to kill the demon in time?  Watch and find out.  This is one out-of-control movie, made before the era of digital effects but with so many truly special effects nevertheless.