A Night to Remember (1942)

☆ ☆ ½

A Night to Remember (1942) – R. Wallace

Dopey film that is a hybrid of two genres from the thirties and early forties: the screwball comedy and the murder mystery. If this sounds a bit like The Thin Man (1934), then you are not far wrong – undoubtedly the team of William Powell and Myrna Loy were a model for this film’s Brian Aherne and Loretta Young. Aherne is a mystery writer himself (who also seems to like a drink, a la Powell) and Young is his wife who rents a Greenwich Village basement apartment to provide him with more ambience for his creative process.  When a dead body turns up in their garden, we are introduced to a number of suspects from the same apartment building, all of whom seem to be sharing a secret – and perhaps a guilty one!  When Sidney Toler (the second Charlie Chan) shows up as a police detective, you know we are in genre territory.  Unfortunately, despite engaging performances from Aherne and Young, the whole thing feels a bit flat.

  

Shirin (2008)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Shirin (2008) – A. Kiarostami

To commemorate the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s death this week, I watched this very conceptual art film that ironically features 112 of Iran’s top actresses along with Juliette Binoche.  What we see is only their faces, apparently watching a film version of the classic tale of Shirin and Khosrow. The film is about 90 minutes long, so we are compelled to listen carefully to the film’s soundtrack and to see how this registers on the actresses’ faces.  Do they know they are being filmed?  Are they over-doing it?  As is always the case with Kiarostami, there are some questions about fiction and reality here. However, things are not really what they appear (which is also typical of Kiarostami’s work).  Rather than film all of these actresses in a real cinema watching a real film, Kiarostami filmed each of them separately (or in small groups of two or three) in his own living room.  It may have been a bit like Warhol’s Screen Tests.  But what’s more, they weren’t reacting to a film at all but instead to Kiarostami’s spoken direction.  Even more bizarrely, Kiarostami selected the “film” to be watched after the actresses had already been recorded and created the version of Shirin and Khosrow himself with another set of actors and actresses.  The foley artists are really working overtime!  He then edited together the soundtrack and the clips of the actresses to create a seamless whole that relies on a sort of audio version of the Kuleshov effect to trick the viewer into believing in cause and effect.  A bloody battle in the story (replete with the usual sound effect of smashed watermelons) results in an almost comic moment when the stars shrink away from the screen (what did Kiarostami really tell them?).  Of course, the film is something of an endurance test and not for the casual viewer but it is impossible not to begin to have thoughts and to engage interactively with the film and this is clearly one of Kiarostami’s goals – he wants us to wonder what the hell is going on!  In addition, there is an additional subtext about the faces of women in an Islamic society when strict religious tenets might require them to be covered – here they are unveiled.  Is this empowering? Is it taboo-breaking?  Do these women feel even more self-conscious?  But then again they are already actresses.  With Kiarostami, the questions never cease.

  

Eureka Stockade (1949)

☆ ☆ ☆

Eureka Stockade (1949) – H. Watt

Another slab of Australian history from director Harry Watt.  This is the story of the organized and democratic resistance by Victoria’s goldminers (“diggers” of course) against the heavy-handed tax collectors of the Queen led by Governor Hotham.  Although there is initial danger of mob rule when the diggers react to the brutal killing of one of their own, Peter Lalor (played by Chips Rafferty) rises to the occasion to take over the leadership and quell the angry group.  They build a stockade at Ballarat, design their own flag (the Southern Cross, of course), and prepare to defend their rights against tyranny.  They want the right to vote and to represent themselves as part of the governing body of the colony (this is 1854, before Australian Federation (which did not happen until 1901).  Unfortunately, the Governor attempted to stomp out the uprising by massacring the lot of ‘em and very nearly wiped them out (including Lalor).  But this action turned the public sympathy to the diggers and when survivors were brought to trial for sedition, they were found innocent.  Lalor later became a member of parliament for Ballarat.  The film itself is brisk, well-edited, a bit rangy but earnest and engaging.  It might help you to pass the citizenship test!

  

The Overlanders (1946)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Overlanders (1946) – H. Watt

It’s Election Day here in Australia.  So, to commemorate that fact, last night I watched this classic Australian film.  In order to escape the potential Japanese invasion of the Northern Territory during WWII, a drover (played with confident charm by Chips Rafferty) gathers together a team to lead a mob of cattle all the way across the continent to Brisbane, Queensland.  This film is the story of their journey through the outback.  Produced by Britain’s Ealing Studios but filmed on location in Australia and populated with Australians speaking Australian English (although as can be expected, the actors speak with a variety of accents), it’s a real treat to see a story based here in my adopted country. The cattle face numerous obstacles and there is a bit of a love story between cowgirl and cowboy but it’s mostly action, filmed documentary-style by Harry Watt, with hundreds of real cows, dozens of real horses, and a “you are there” feeling.

  

Lost Hearts/The Treasure of Abbot Thomas/The Ash Tree (1973/1974/1975)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Lost Hearts/The Treasure of Abbot Thomas/The Ash Tree (1973/1974/1975) – L. G. Clark

The BBC and director Lawrence Gordon Clark offered Ghost Stories for Christmas during the early 1970’s with a series of dramatizations of short stories by M. R. James.  These three tales all follow the typical formula (also seen in A Warning to the Curious and Whistle and I’ll Come to You) where a naïve outsider stumbles into malevolent horror, sometimes because they make some selfish choices and sometimes (as in Lost Hearts) for no good reason at all -- although the old man who comes to a bad end after dabbling in the occult might be seen to fit the mould, even as the child protagonist is our eyes and ears.  Of the three, I found “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas” to be the most satisfying, with a plot focused on solving a mystery with clues extracted from Latin text (um, a la Dan Brown?) to find the treasure – but with an ambiguous ending.  The Ash-Tree has a weird punchline but it is somewhat more inscrutable, perhaps because the narrative isn’t laid out clearly.  Nevertheless, all three offer some creepy moments and are worth a look.  Now, having partaken in a fair few of these TV versions, I am persuaded to read some of the original short stories – perhaps after I have finished my Lovecraft tome.  Now those would make for some real scares at Xmas or any other time!  

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Hitch-Hiker (1953) – I. Lupino

Two guys off for a fishing trip pick up a hitcher who is wanted for murder. He forces them at gunpoint to drive through Mexico to Santa Rosalia on the Gulf – a 500-mile journey.  It’s tense all the way but there is nary a chance for escape.  Even at night, the hitch-hiker seems awake because he’s got a partially paralyzed eye that never closes.  William Talman is brutal and harsh as this thug.  So, it’s a noir set-up and the film is framed as though, it coulda been you who picked him up.  But on closer inspection, the noir logic that dictates that one fatal mistake usually brings on a protagonist’s doom does seem to be operating.  Instead of heading straight to their fishing hole, Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy take a detour to Mexicali for a drink and possibly some fun away from their wives (O’Brien’s idea).  Nothing happens but if they hadn’t gone that way, they never would have met Talman.  But, hell, who knows what sorts of missteps lay before us, where the fickle finger of fate is always waiting to poke us in the eye? Ida Lupino, a noir veteran in front of the camera, directed this concise thriller.

  

Black Mass (2015)

☆ ☆ ½

Black Mass (2015) – S. Cooper

Haven’t we seen this movie before?  It comes across a bit like sub-par Scorsese with its gangsters and compromised FBI agents.  I was waiting for something to take this further but the faux-Boston accents and make-upped over Johnny Depp just couldn’t do it.  Director Scott Cooper plays this strictly by the numbers, aiming for a commercial hit, no doubt.  Depp is Whitey Bulger, a real-life crime kingpin who evaded the law until 2011 after running rampant in the ‘70s and ‘80s.  He forms an “alliance” with FBI agent John Connolly (Australian Joel Edgerton) with the latter being played for a sucker as he protects his “informant”.  Even Benedict Cumberbatch is here with his Boston accent turned up strong as Bulger’s politician brother.  So, it’s just a genre film, recycling a genre that started in the 1930s with Edward G. Robinson and Jimmy Cagney. Depp fails to bring the charisma needed for the part (though perhaps the real Whitey wasn’t a charmer either).