Morocco (1930)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Morocco (1930) – J. von Sternberg

Was it Josef von Sternberg who claimed that he was “painting with light” in his pictures?  If so, Morocco (his second film with muse Marlene Dietrich) really fits the bill.  His Morocco is all dappled alleyways and shafts of light piercing latticework to create patterns on walls.  As in his earlier silent films and the ongoing work with Dietrich yet to come, style is paramount here.  The romance between cabaret singer Dietrich and French Legionnaire Gary Cooper is melodramatic, perhaps schematic, but everything is heightened by the sets, the mise-en-scene, the costumes and the lighting, that brings the fantasy to life (nothing on location here, nor does it need to be).  Dietrich is already her own woman, strong and compelling (particularly on stage, where, yes, this is the film in which she wears at tux and kisses a girl), but able to give herself up to Coop (only after he has made it clear that his womanizing is a front to protect himself from being hurt by her when she seems to be giving in to the amorous advances of rich Adolphe Menjou).  It is easy to drift through this film, taking in its splendours and exoticism (as seen from the vantage point of the 1930s), and not worry too much about whether Dietrich and Cooper will end up together (we know they will) and whether Menjou will nobly accept this (we know he does).  This may not be the pinnacle of the von Sternberg-Dietrich oeuvre but it shows them on the way up.

The Magnificent Butcher (1979)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Magnificent Butcher (1979) – W-P. Yuen

Old school Kung-Fu directed by Woo-Ping Yuen, who also directed Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978) and Drunken Master (1978) which were Jackie Chan’s breakthrough hits.  Here, Sammo Hung takes the “loser” role previously occupied by Jackie, although truth be told, Sammo was in the industry a lot longer and apparently assisted Jackie to get his first parts (earlier they had both been part of the same Peking Opera troupe as children).  Sammo plays “Butcher Wing” who finds himself in a mess of trouble when the evil son of a rival kung fu school kidnaps his long-lost brother’s wife. Fortunately, Sammo has a strong ally – the “Beggar King” (according to imDb) who was supposed to be played by Simon Yuen (the drunken master himself, the old man in both of Jackie’s earlier films, and the father of director Woo-Ping Yuen) but he died of a heart attack during this film.  Fortunately, his replacement, Mei Sheng Fan, is pretty great in the trickster role as well.  The film is filled with fantastic hand-to-hand combat, replete with amazing and strange falls/jumps/punches with animal names/farts in the face etc.  There are some epic battles between the heads of the schools and also their strongest pupils.  Sammo, who was always overweight, holds his own, comically but effectively (later he went on to be an established director and producer in Hong Kong and then a star of his own American action show, Martial Law).  So, the film is great fun and funny too – until it isn’t. There is a problematic scene where the bad guy kills one of the lead female characters in the midst of an attempted rape.  Of course, this establishes him as really bad and perhaps reminds us that all this kung fu fighting (with fake blood and all) is actually pretty violent and bad.  But playing rape and murder for laughs isn’t right and although the scene is just a couple of minutes in an otherwise enjoyable film, it rankles.  It makes you wonder about our culture (not just HK culture) then and now – certainly there were plenty of harsh horror films that contained similar material.  Was it acceptable?  Is it OK to look away and recognise that this is/was just play-acting?  Since the evil act was punished, is it okay to have been included?  These are deeper questions than the Magnificent Butcher is able to answer.  Perhaps it is better simply to watch Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow or Drunken Master instead.

Tales from the Crypt (1972)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Tales from the Crypt (1972) – F. Francis

With its title drawn from the EC Comics series of the 1950s and its five stories also taken from the pages of that comic or one of its siblings, this Amicus Productions portmanteau film is actually pretty good.  When touring an ancient burial crypt, five people get side-tracked into a secret cave where they are confronted by the Crypt Keeper (played by Sir Ralph Richardson) who then details to them their future deaths, based on his knowledge of their secret (evil) intentions.  So, we are treated to five episodes where the protagonists (including Joan Collins, Nigel Patrick, Ian Hendry, Robin Phillips, and Richard Greene) commit some evil act and then meet with a horrible doom.  Peter Cushing guest stars in a rather atypical role in one of the tales.  And, although some of the acting seems middling at times, the horror is actually pretty memorable and the scenarios stayed with me after the film ended (some of them are quite gruesome in fact).  I’ve seen a couple of other portmanteau films from Amicus that were not as good as this.  I won’t spoil them for you but each one is short and sweet, packs a punch, and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) – P. Greenaway

Director Peter Greenaway’s first big success takes place in 1694 in the time of William and Mary of Orange at a posh estate in Kent.  Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins) is commissioned to make 12 drawings of the estate in 12 days by the lady of the house (Janet Suzman) who wishes to use the drawings as gifts to secure a rapprochement with her husband, the lord of the manor, who has departed to Southampton for a fortnight.  In order to ensure that the light remains the same, Neville sits at the same time of the day for an hour or so in 12 different locations around the estate.  He claims to only paint “what he sees” and not “what he knows”, so he includes everything that happens to be found within the frame (despite warnings to the resident noblemen and women and their servants to vacate each successive location).  In way of payment for the drawings, the draughtsman’s contract requires £8 per drawing and a daily sexual tryst with the lady of the manor.  So, he is a rascal and he manages to endear himself to the women in the house (including the lady of the manor’s married daughter) but antagonise the men.  Aside from the draughtsman himself, all of the characters wear the most outlandish (and tall) wigs as well as pompous finery of the era.  Greenaway, a trained artist, supplied the drawings himself and also uses his painter’s eye to frame each (mostly static) shot of the film, save for a few slow travelling shots (that presage his later work in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, 1989, as I recall it).  There are some strange elements to the film (a living nude statue, for example), that may have been properly explained in the original 3 hour cut of the movie.  But more intriguingly, the film also poses a mystery of sorts for viewers to figure out – “extra” items that appear in the drawings suggest that the lord of the manor has been murdered (and soon his body does turn up).  I may not have been vigilant enough to figure this out or the British accents ultimately befuddled me, but there is a twist of sorts at the end that I won’t spoil here.  Suffice it to say that the film is a bemusing art object (with pulsating Michael Nyman score) rather than a gripping thriller and I suspect that Greenaway is not everyone’s cup of tea (but he is at his most mild here).   

Dogville (2003)

☆ ☆ ☆

Dogville (2003) – L. Von Trier

There’s a perennial question, about the artist whose choices in their personal life are so unspeakably bad that they contaminate appreciation of their art, that is increasingly relevant (or in the news) today.  However, I’m not sure a distinction can be made when it comes to Lars von Trier, whose choices in the artworks themselves are so questionable, even despicable, that the fact that he might also be a jerk personally seems beside the point.  His latest film at Cannes drove over 100 people out of the theatre because of its extreme violence toward women and children (and this, after he was only just allowed back to the festival when his banishment for appreciating Hitler ended).  His cultivated image is of “the provocateur” but he seems more of a poseur to me.  So, why did I give Dogville a chance?  Perhaps because of its reputation as an experimental film, with its sparse warehouse set, representing a small Colorado town with just a few pieces of lumber and some chalk outlines for houses on the floor (think Our Town).  That’s about all I knew.  As the film began and I found out that John Hurt narrates the entire film, alternating with some spoken dialogue from the characters, I found it sufficiently intriguing to keep watching.  Nicole Kidman plays a woman, fleeing from mobsters, who takes shelter in the town.  They have a community vote to decide whether to let her stay (after a two week trial where she works for each family to try to impress them).  Of course, she does get to stay but as the mobsters and the police close the dragnet, the “costs” of keeping her in the town and the price the townsfolk demand from Kidman increases.  Eventually, Kidman becomes the target of abuse, since she isn’t from there.  So, misogyny charges against von Trier are more or less fulfilled (again).  Kidman said she wouldn’t work with him again to boot.  And it isn’t quite clear where the experiment took us (the viewers) -- some read this as “anti-American” (since von Trier refuses to come to the US) and the use of David Bowie’s “Young Americans” over the ending credits seems to bear this out.  I saw it as a sadistic game of “chicken”, taunting the audience about just how far he was willing to go (to shock), and a sardonic repudiation of Dogme 95 trying to be as artificial as possible, as if to poke a finger in the eye of anyone who bothered to take him seriously back then (when he issued his philosophical filmmaker’s manifesto).  Although there is no denying that he has a certain degree of artistic know-how, let’s hope no one bothers to take von Trier seriously again.

Gimme Danger (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Gimme Danger (2016) – J. Jarmusch

A master filmmaker, such as Jim Jarmusch, can really take a well-worn genre, such as the music doco, and enhance it.  The result is even better when the focus, The Stooges, is so clearly loved by the director and so clearly deserving of attention (I have their three original albums:  The Stooges, 1969; Fun House, 1970; and Raw Power, 1973).  So, even though a big proportion of the running time is Iggy Pop’s talking head, he is charismatic enough to carry the weight (as one of rock’s elder statesmen, surprisingly). Jarmusch and his team work some magic in the editing room, ladling on ace concert footage, old photographs, unusual video or musical clips (virtual asides that spring from Iggy’s comments), and even animated sequences showing The Stooges and their adventures.  We do hear from Ron and Scott Asheton (guitar and drums) and Steve Mackay (sax) who died before the film was released and from James Williamson (guitar on Raw Power) who became a Silicon Valley exec in his second/actual career.  In an interesting choice, Jarmusch opens the film with the band’s downhill slide into oblivion in the mid-70s, pre-opening credits, and then returns to tell the tale from the beginning, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and onward to Detroit and then their major label recording contracts (both Elektra and MainMan/Columbia), their dissolution, and then “reunification” (as Pop calls it) in the mid-2000s to widespread acclaim with Minuteman Mike Watt on bass (their Live in Detroit DVD is pretty great). The rapport and friendship between Jarmusch and Iggy Pop (who featured in Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, 1993, and had a bit part in Dead Man, 1995) very likely created a climate which helped to boost this beyond your usual rockumentary.  Right on!   

Chandu the Magician (1932)

☆ ☆ ☆

Chandu the Magician (1932) – W. C. Menzies & M. Varnel

Previously a radio serial, the titular magician (who learned his trade from the yogis of the East) is called to Egypt to stop evil Roxor who has stolen the plans for a death ray and plans to use it! Bela Lugosi makes a great diabolical Roxor but Edmund Lowe is just serviceable as Chandu (though not for lack of trying).  The direction by art department stalwart William Cameron Menzies (Things to Come, 1936) and Marcel Varnel keeps things moving with some surprises (secret doors and the like) and only a few dull moments.  Special effects boost the scenes where Chandu uses his magic and the sets are better than average.  There is a love interest (Irene Ware) and also a teenage daughter (June Lang) who gets kidnapped and put up at a slave auction (remember this is “pre-code”).  There are a lot of white people playing Egyptians or Indians and, if there weren’t some on both the good side and the bad side, the racism might be a bit more overt.  But fortunately, everything is played with good humour and the main source of comic relief is a drunken British ex-soldier, now servant (played by character actor Herbert Mundin, also seen in The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1939).  All told, an okay adventure story with elements that elevate it beyond the standard for the usual b-pictures of the day.