The Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) – O. Assayas

It’s all talk, largely between Juliette Binoche, an aging actress confronted with age, and Kristen Stewart, as her personal assistant.  The talk can be fascinating (as when the film’s themes tend to break out into the open) or it can be banal (as when the leads deal with contracts, movie offers, and tabloid journalists).  Director Olivier Assayas tried this formula once before in Irma Vep (1996), where Maggie Cheung entered the world of French cinema and we saw the personal relationships in that world from behind the scenes but with an outsider’s viewpoint.  That film is better and takes more exciting risks but The Clouds of Sils Maria also shows Assayas’ planning and control, despite his willingness to dash from here to there often without tying things up with a nice bow.  The relationship between Binoche and Stewart is reflective of (or interwoven with) the script of a play that Binoche has been hired to star in, a play that was her first big break in which she earlier played the younger assertive role against an older vulnerable partner in a lesbian relationship.  Now she must play the older part.  So, we are lost with her in the realms of memory and identity but just as in real life, the film doesn’t really dwell on such things long enough for it to become painful. But the Alps look nice.

The Pink Panther (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Pink Panther (1963) – B. Edwards

It should come as no surprise that Peter Sellers steals this movie with his bumbling and ridiculous Inspector Clouseau. However, director Blake Edwards probably didn’t realize what a comic goldmine he had on his hands (yet) and he lets the movie drift into dullness in long scenes with David Niven and Claudia Cardinale (who play the jewel thief and the jewel owner, respectively).  Robert Wagner is along for the ride as Niven’s nephew, also aiming to be a jewel thief.  Somehow, the plot also involves Clouseau’s wife (played by French actress, Capuchine) as one of the thieves – which is confusing since to my recollection, she isn’t mentioned in any of the numerous sequels to this film, most of which feature Sellers in the lead role (some sadly released after his death made up of outtakes and found footage).  I suspect that there was originally no real plan to follow this up and the quirky Inspector was a small supporting character that Sellers took every license to expand. If only this movie were shorter and his presence more central – Clouseau doesn’t even catch the thief, even accidentally!  

Number 17 (1932)

☆ ☆ ½

Number 17 (1932) – A. Hitchcock

Through the murk of both picture and soundtrack, it is still possible to make out that this is an Alfred Hitchcock film.  Sort of.  The problem is that the Master seems unfocused.  He uses montage as well as he ever did – to create a spoof of “the old dark house” genre, for example – but then he leaves characters standing around in a group talking for what seems like eons.  This may be a result of the transition to sound that meant that actors needed to hover under or around hidden microphones – but Hitch had already demonstrated that he could be clever with sound (e.g., Blackmail, 1929).  Instead, the root cause of the problem is probably the underlying play based on misrepresentation and confusion of identities amongst criminals and detectives involved in the theft of a necklace.  I was confused too. Leon M. Lion is along for cockney comic relief but the major attraction is a finale which sees a bus and train rush pell-mell toward the Thames (I think) with cops on one and robbers on the other until they barrel into a ferry and the denouement begins.  Unfortunately, the whole thing is so clearly a set of models that suspension of disbelief is impossible.  But undoubtedly Hitch didn’t care; fortunately, his best pictures were still ahead of him.

Jezebel (1938)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Jezebel (1938) – W. Wyler

I guess it should come as no surprise that a film set in the Antebellum American South (1850’s) seems misogynistic, with the male (and older female) characters always trying to keep headstrong Bette Davis in her place.  But one wonders whether this also played into the stereotypes and preferences of some of the 1938 audience (and perhaps how it is received today).  Of course, Davis excelled at this sort of selfish petulant bad girl and another reading of the film is that she simply wasn’t fair to her fiancé, Henry Fonda, in trying to dominate him and the backlash against her is a personal (not sexist) matter.  Davis is gleefully awful until the melodramatic yellow-fever focused ending where her efforts to redeem herself (in the eyes of whom?) seem yet another attempt to be close and take control of Fonda, even though his heart belongs to someone else.  Wyler’s direction is perfect and the whole damn thing is lavish, even if today it reads as a prelude to Gone With The Wind (hello Southern clichés!).

These Are The Damned (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

These Are The Damned (1963) – J. Losey

Odd blend of social drama (in which an American ex-pat pursues a young British girl but gets harassed by her brother and his band of “teddy boys”) and science fiction (in which they stumble into an underground cave where a scientist has been raising children from birth contacting them only through a video screen). It doesn’t entirely coalesce but around halfway through things started to become interesting – of course, the earlier uncomfortable social dynamics are probably more consistent with director Joseph Losey’s other output (especially when he started working with Pinter).  However, I was there primarily for the sci-fi in Hammerscope this time and it doesn’t really disappoint – perhaps it feels even weirder (these cold-as-ice children and their predicament) because it’s crammed uneasily into another picture.  But such is/was the world where the nuclear threat was inserted surreally into everyone’s daily existence (see also Peter Watkins’ The War Game, filmed around the same time in Britain).  Worth a look.  

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

☆ ☆ ½

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) – C. Lamont

Speaking of cartoonish…!  The last of the comedy duo’s many movies for Universal finds them meeting yet another one of the studio’s classic monsters (although a cut-rate version here, for sure).  Not much has changed, as the two are still bumbling idiots; Lou more so than Bud, of course – but the latter still cooks up the plans that never work, mostly because the former creates trouble wherever he goes.  Marie Windsor (a film noir favourite) is on hand as a bad girl after Klaris the mummy’s medallion – which Lou has accidentally swallowed.  As you do.  The mummy has a cult and a cult leader and they also need the medallion.  Naturally, the mummy is also alive and on the prowl.  Things get rather silly, riffing on all things Egypt (rope trick, snake charming, hidden tombs, OK that’s it).  Some might say it’s all too stupid, but I was amused.  For the kind of guy who is only going to watch one Abbott and Costello movie a decade, this was perfectly acceptable.

Youth of the Beast (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Youth of the Beast (1963) – S. Suzuki

No doubt Seijun Suzuki intended this noirish drama to be confusing from the start, but this put me offside for a while.  You see, there is a double suicide (or is it a murder?) right at the start (in black and white) and then, unrelatedly, we start following (in colour) Joe Shishido, a ruthless gangster (emulating the classic masterless ronin samurai), who makes trouble for, and gets himself hired by, a family of yakuza.  Then Joe begins to play one gang of yakuza off another, playing both sides, if you will, and gradually, we discover (in an offhand way) more about his background.  The plot slowly falls together even as Joe resolves it for us (by solving the murder, of course).  Director Suzuki seems more interested in creating garishly coloured backdrops for unusually framed shots than the plot, really.  So, let’s just say things are off-kilter most of the time and also in-your-face with sex, drugs, and violence – but all of this is pretty cartoonish.  An odd fish (but typical of this director).