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.  

 

Thunderball (1965)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Thunderball (1965) – T. Young

At a certain point during Thunderball (Sean Connery’s fourth outing as James Bond, immediately after Goldfinger, 1964), I started to realise that the film was not much different from a Hitchcockian chase film (such as The 39 Steps, Saboteur, or North by Northwest). It’s all about the editing and great credit goes to director Terence Young and his team – the plot is just a schematic frame to hang the action sequences on. So, Bond is after a MacGuffin -- some atomic warheads stolen by S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and its #2 man, Largo (Adolfo Celi, wearing an eyepatch) -- and he moves from setpiece to setpiece, action-sequence to action-sequence, with barely any character development or even deeper plot development, between them. By this fourth entry, the tropes of the series are already there – Bond suavely seduces all of the women (whether on the side of good or evil), he drops double entendres wherever he can (especially with M’s secretary Ms. Moneypenny), he is a lethal opponent in a fight (by fists, poker, speargun, whatever is available – including gadgets obtained from Q), and he swiftly draws conclusions about the location of the MacGuffin and carries out a plan to secure it.  This time, the action takes place in the Bahamas, so there are beautiful locales and a lot of underwater action (perhaps too much, as it is difficult to tell who is who in their scuba masks). It’s fun but basically hollow at its core.

 

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) – F. Francis

The first of the many omnibus horror films from Amicus Pictures, following the great tradition of Ealing Studio’s Dead of Night (1945 and highly recommended).  Amicus was clearly drawing from the EC Comics playbook (another of their films is called Tales from the Crypt) and the five tales told here are alternately silly and (trying to be) scary.  For example, one tale features a plant that has evolved to be smart enough to defend itself from humans who might want to prune it.  Another sees a disembodied hand determinedly pursuing and killing Christopher Lee, a rude art critic.  On the less silly side, we are treated to somewhat routine werewolf and vampire tales (well actually the vampire one is pretty silly too but it is notable for featuring a young Donald Sutherland).  Oh and in the fifth tale, a jazz musician tries to steal a tune from a voodoo ceremony and, of course, the voodoo gods catch up with him. The framing device for the stories is that the five men are in the same train compartment with Dr. Schreck (a.k.a. Dr. Terror, played by Peter Cushing) who then reads their fortunes using the tarot cards.  The cards reveal what will be happening to each of the men unless a fifth tarot card helps them to avoid that end – but for each of them the fifth card is Death (and then the train crashes).  Director Freddie Francis was cinematographer for some great films (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960; The Innocents, 1961; and later David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, 1980, and The Straight Story, 1999) but there is nothing really distinguished about the photography here.

  

A Study in Terror (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆

A Study in Terror (1965) – J. Hill

John Neville takes his turn as Sherlock Holmes (and Donald Houston is Watson) in this rather middling adventure.  It isn’t that the film is bad, it’s just that we’ve seen Holmes so many many times before (and since) and nothing much stands out from this new portrayal.  The case, however, is new (but not unfamiliar):  Holmes and Watson strive to identify and to capture Jack the Ripper.  The Victorian era and the Whitehall district of London are rendered suitably but unimaginatively – there is something dull about the mise-en-scene too, although it ticks the usual boxes (music hall/boisterous pub, prostitutes in allies, hansom cabs, period costumes). The script tosses up a few red herrings (and young Judi Dench!) but it isn’t too hard to figure out the culprit before he is apprehended by Holmes.  This is, by the standards of the day, a fine B-grade time-waster but I’ll take Rathbone and Bruce any day over these pale imitations! 

  

It Happened Here (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

It Happened Here (1965) – K. Brownlow & A. Mollo

Imagine Britain if Hitler and the Nazis had succeeded in their invasion plans.  How would the nation respond?  Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s low budget project (scripted when they were teenagers and shot in 16mm with film stock provided by Kubrick among others) presents a nation divided among the resistance (partisans) and the collaborators, a nation now at war with itself as well as with the Nazis.  As a case study, the narrative follows Pauline, a nurse who sees her friends killed by an attack by the resistance while she is being relocated to London by the Germans. As a reaction, she joins the black shirted collaborators who spruik law and order -- and the elimination of dissidents and those who cannot contribute to society.  A terrifying speech by an actual British National Socialist was removed by the censors back in the 1960s but has since been replaced, advocating euthanasia for the undesirables.  While following Pauline’s movements, the camera happens to pass a Jewish ghetto behind barbed wire (no stock footage was used, all events were restaged with amateur actors and authentic or makeshift props).  Later, after she fails to report former friends who have sheltered an injured partisan, Pauline is transferred to a sanitorium for TB patients that in reality is the last way station for those about to be executed by the state (i.e., Jews and others rejected by the Nazis).  Obviously, the resulting film is chilling and politically relevant today – how would our neighbours respond to a totalitarian takeover?  Would they give in? Would they resist? Would they actively support the new regime?  When they come for your neighbour what would you do?  Sobering stuff. 

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Doctor Zhivago (1965) – D. Lean

Falling back to the theme of “impossible love” that he examined in Brief Encounter (1945), director David Lean tries to situate his investigation within the epic drama that was the Russian Revolution.  But in doing so, he doesn’t quite manage to capture the political or philosophical dynamics at play in the context; instead, the communists are evil ideologues (or pragmatically partisan) and the deposed rich are sympathetic victims of the sweeping changes.  Omar Sharif’s Zhivago stakes out a detached middle ground, avoiding involvement – until he can’t.  He feels like the moral center of the film, using his medical skills to assist wherever he can, especially in contrast to the evil Komarovsky (played by Rod Steiger) who uses people whenever he can.  But then even Zhivago takes a wrong turn, falling for nurse volunteer Lara (Julie Christie) during a six month stay in an army hospital despite the fact that he is married (to Tonya played by Geraldine Chaplin) and has a young son.  Lara had been previously exploited by Komarovsky and then married to revolutionary Pasha (Tom Courtenay) who is reportedly killed in the war.  She also has a child.  After everyone is exiled to the Urals, the impossible love blooms again, for a short while. Zhivago writes poetry about it (which we never hear). All of this is told years later in flashback by Alec Guinness’s General Yevgraf (somehow the half-brother of Zhivago).  So, should the audience identify with Zhivago? Or with Lara? Is their love pure? I didn’t see it.  But the larger sweep of the staged historical events (many extras) and Freddie Young’s cinematography (gorgeous mountains) did capture my attention from time to time; I wanted badly for the style of the film to counteract the schematic nature of the script, but alas.  Yet, there is something about a 197 minute movie that demands respect and who can deny the film’s popularity at the time (boffo box office)? It struck a romantic chord as hearts broke when dashing Omar Sharif and winsome Julie Christie sacrificed their love (but to what end?).  

Tattooed Life (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆

Tattooed Life (1965) – S. Suzuki

Seijun Suzuki (who died earlier this year at 93) was famous for his wackily surreal yakuza flicks (Tokyo Drifter, 1966, and Branded to Kill, 1967), so it comes as some surprise that this earlier film is rather lacklustre.  That isn’t to say it doesn’t contain some inventive sequences, particularly the climactic battle at the end, but too often it plays like a 1950s drama splashed on the widescreen but with little edge to the proceedings.  Or perhaps I was just disappointed relative to my expectations– there is eccentricity here but not enough!  Hideki Takahashi plays Tetsu, a yakuza everyman on the run after he and his brother Kenji (Kotobuki Hananomoto) kill a rival gangster.  Tetsu has been raising (and sheltering) sensitive Kenji since their parents died but Kenji has ideas of his own once they settle down as small town construction workers (coveting the boss’s wife and causing problems as a result).  In the end, Tetsu reveals his yakuza past (previously hidden) and stands up against another rival gang threatening to take over the construction business (after Kenji meets foul play).  And thus we get the climactic battle, shown from all angles.  Start elsewhere with Suzuki (or perhaps start here and be pleasantly surprised by the other films).

Planet of the Vampires (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Planet of the Vampires (1965) – M. Bava

Apparently an inspiration for the plot of Alien and not unlike a long episode of Star Trek (which debuted the following year) BUT directed by Mario Bava the Italian horror maestro (see Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, Blood and Black Lace, etc.).  So, the colors are astonishing, the camera glides in an unusual way, the actors (though of soap opera calibre) have great costumes – really the art direction stands out.  At times this is like watching an experimental film, with all the interesting shapes and colors – but, again, the plot is rather slow moving and the acting is almost like a satire of stock sci-fi characters.  In short, after hearing a distress beacon, two space ships arrive on a mysterious planet where the crew members are compelled to kill each other (and then to come back as zombies – or hosts to the parasitic beings who live on the planet and must escape it because their sun is dying). The twist ending caught me off guard but I won’t spoil it for you.  A big cut above some of the usual sci-fi tripe of this era.