“The Night of the Hunter,” dir. Charles Laughton

You have to be careful with the kind of expectations you set up for this film. I’ve seen some people, critics included, who build this up as a scary horror flick, like Halloween, but it’s not like that at all. This isn’t the sort of edge-of-your-seat suspense movie that’s meant to terrify you, but something more twisted and strange. It reminds me of the cheap, flimsy children’s books I used to read in churches, only warped and deranged from a good dose of German expressionism. Imagine if Disney pursued a less commercial direction after his initial triumphs; he would’ve wound up here.

“Rashomon,” dir. Akira Kurosawa

Rashomon‘s influence is so pervasive, the story structure will be familiar to anyone, even if they’ve never heard of the picture. A crime is committed, and the only witnesses give very conflicting accounts. Revolutionary in its time, the gimmick has lost its novelty now that countless films and television shows have lifted it, but few if any of them retained the same philosophical implications. Most writers turn it into a simple lesson in subjectivity – characters lie to make themselves look better. The characters in Rashomon do the opposite. By the film’s end, the most important questions are not raised by the legalities of the case, it’s raised by how the characters perceive themselves – what they believe are their given roles in society and how that defines them, not just the way they live or what they do, but who they are.

“Raging Bull,” dir. Martin Scorsese

Just over a year ago, someone asked me what was the most violent film I had ever seen. The question came up while we were watching David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, right after a bank robber separated his head from his own body with a shotgun blast.

The first film that came to mind was actually Raging Bull, Scorsese’s portrait of middleweight champion Jake LaMotta. Violence runs through the entire picture, even when its central character is far from the ring, and often times it feels real, uncomfortable and almost too close to home.

Widely celebrated today, no one wanted to make the film except Robert DeNiro. LaMotta was a role he wanted to play, but Scorsese couldn’t relate to the material and turned down DeNiro’s offer to direct. Years later, when his personal life unraveled, Scorsese finally connected: he saw himself in LaMotta, and when DeNiro approached him again, he agreed to do the picture to save his own life.

It’s not unusual for Scorsese to claim his next film to be his last, but with Raging Bull, he certainly made it as if it was his last will and testament. Uncompromising and intensely personal, he virtually exhausted everything he had to say with that one film. He later described his approach as “kamikaze” filmmaking.

The film would eventually earn eight Oscar nominations (winning two), but despite this recognition, it wasn’t a commercial success. Reviews were also mixed with Pauline Kael dismissing DeNiro’s portrayal of Jake LaMotta as “a swollen puppet with only bits and pieces of character inside.” Obviously, I don’t agree with Kael, but I think I understand her perceptions – it probably has a lot to do with the character itself: a boxer consumed by his emotions but who can only articulate them through violence instead of words. Scorsese conveys this brilliantly in the fight scenes, which are a visceral tour de force of sound and cinematography.

The ring delivers more than LaMotta’s catharsis: when the violence bleeds into the crowd, it’s one of the few times LaMotta ever connects with those around him. The effect of these scenes is often brutal, but occasionally beautiful (as in that gorgeous opening shot, which nearly made a convert out of one Scorsese detractor I know). It’s even more striking when we see the passion (and later paranoia) driving these scenes taking shape outside of the ring, especially in the brief, fleeting moments that drag in time.

As graphic as the boxing scenes are, the most startling moments actually deal with domestic violence, especially when LaMotta grows more possessive of his second wife. Violence pretty much defines every aspect of his life: immense pain is felt and returned in kind, impulsively and honestly. Towards the end, when he supposedly finds grace, it doesn’t feel like complete redemption, but it’s enough.

(A new 35mm print of Raging Bull is now showing at Film Forum in New York City.)

Rough week…R.I.P. Tony Curtis

Arthur Penn 1922-2010

The director behind Little Big Man, Night Moves and, of course, this…

R.I.P., Sally Menke

Menke on her working relationship with Quentin Tarantino (published last December).

And the classic twist contest…

“Killer of Sheep,” dir. Charles Burnett

A stunning work of naturalism. Make no mistake, this IS a student film, with the rough mechanics and conceptual lapses synonymous with student work, but historically and aesthetically, it’s a remarkable achievement.

It looks and feels very real, but it’s approach also seems very alien compared to other films shot in places like Watts. It’s tempting to compare it to Italian neorealism, but its hazy lyricism, plotless structure and loose interactions place it somewhere between Terrence Malick and John Cassavetes. Some stretches of the film even progress like a dream, and the eclectic choices populating the soundtrack reinforce this sense of surrealism.

Again, the film’s not a seamless experience – parts of it stumble, and several scenes are too clearly acted and (presumably) scripted, betraying the inexperience of its cast. But their best moments are exquisite, like a slow dance to “Bitter Earth,” filmed nearly in silhouette, erupting in unrequited passion and ending in painful alienation.

It’s strange that Burnett can be such a beloved figure of African-American filmmaking, yet few African-American films since “Killer of Sheep” share his sensibility. Burnett himself hasn’t made many films since then, and for a while, most of them were unreleased or wallowing in obscurity. Fortunately, Milestone has brought a good portion of them back into circulation, and thanks to Steven Soderbergh’s generosity (he paid for the music clearances), “Killer of Sheep” is no longer confined to the underground.

“The Golden Coach”/”Le Carrosse d’or,” dir. Jean Renoir

Typically described as a love letter to acting and the theater, this is one of Renoir’s finest, latter-day films. It’s a credit to Renoir’s humanism that his characters can be selfish, impetuous and jealous to an unflattering degree yet remain very sympathetic. It’s even more striking how this sensibility’s reflected in his compositions – they recall the inclusive, democratic nature of his father’s day-in-the-life paintings, where every person is an equally important element in the picture. Like The Rules of the Game, the long shots are often multi-layered compositions that constantly suggest a film divided into multiple worlds – not just in class, but even from stage to reality. The fake mirror gag, the way Camilla, the lead actress, is observed from off-stage, the way characters observe the opposite end of society in rooms or courtyards through partially obstructed windows and doorways…all of this builds to an ending that’s almost cruel in the way it separates the audience from the performers, or “the so-called real life” from the stage.

But up until then, Camilla and the others rarely recognize these divisions, and as they move back and forth between the two, their behavior smears the distinction between performance and reality. The way Camilla expresses her anger through a guitar, the king’s obligatory wig, the obvious refusals to mingle between classes…even backstage, when the actors dress, the dividing sheets are gorgeously designed like the backdrops seen in their shows. It’s a constant reminder of how these people act out their perceived roles in real life as well as on stage.

Actually, the more I think about it, the ending feels more sobering than cruel. If Renoir’s insisting on divisions between the stage and real life, maybe it’s because performance in life is doomed to dissatisfaction. At one point, the king laments that “no one dreams of anything else. Where gold commands, laughter vanishes.” He’s referring to the roles everyone’s mapped out for themselves at the expense of living.

Performance on stage is a different matter. Early in the film, Camilla’s bitter, tired and disillusioned with acting. However, her bitterness is based in professionalism. Even when their financial potential looks particularly grim after a successful performance, a fact that’s hardly lost on Camilla, she returns to the stage time and time again. Not surprisingly, Camilla’s most revealing moments often deal with conscious play-acting – whether it’s mocking societal manners over dinner with the king or, more significantly, when she’s on the other side of a performance, enjoying a bullfight.

Self-consicous stunts can be fairly hollow, as if being self-referential alone will somehow deliver so much more, but that’s never the case here.

“Citizen Kane,” dir. Orson Welles

The most common appraisal I hear from non-majors and casual filmgoers – “Yeah, I can SEE why it’s supposed to be great, but I wasn’t crazy about it.”

So why do I love it? First off, pervasive influence has a bad habit of dimming originality, but the layered virtuosity of how this picture was put together frame-for-frame is still astounding. But stylistic virtuosity means nothing without substance, and a few detractors say Kane is a bit hollow, not much more than a bag of tricks. I think this is partly due to the story, and many say the answer to Kane’s last words simply betray a lost childhood or innocence. I couldn’t disagree more, I think Kane’s life was always empty and shallow.

In the earliest flashback, as his future’s determined inside his parents’ home, he’s playing outside by himself, shouting political slogans he couldn’t possibly understand. When he gets older and powerful, he thinks he’s a crusader for the underprivileged, and he tries convincingly, but it’s not really what he is. As his first marriage grows cold, he tries to be the romantic again, but again, he overidealizes this affair – he even puts too much stock into Susan’s vocal talents.

Whether it’s something small, like trying to be the life of the party, or something grander like romance, professional ambition or reaching for something greater than his own personal interests, Kane never does anything that’s completely and naturally him, it’s always forced. His public stature grows, but he remains as a hollow as ever. Fittingly, his surroundings grow cavernous and empty, and as he slows with age, he drifts further and further from everyone around him, and the people that remain in his inner circle grow fewer as they do distant.

A composite of two shots - notice how the image goes soft around the archway even though it remains sharp deep in the background as well as the foreground.

When he mutters his last word, he’s really grasping at one more illusion. Maybe that explains everything, being denied a normal, loving home as a child…but you know it isn’t true. It sounds too easy, too simple, and I think Thompson himself would agree, even if he found that sled. So in one way, “Rosebud” doesn’t explain anything, because it’s just another lie Kane tells himself. But, as the last and perhaps most romantic fabrication he’s made of his life, maybe it does.

Andrew Sarris on Carl Dreyer’s “Gertrud”

It’s been ages since I’ve written anything here – too many distractions since early December.

Maybe I’ll find more time and motivation in the weeks to come…in the meantime, I thought I’d share something about Carl Theodor Dreyer’s last film, Gertrud. I saw it once, years ago – it was a film I could respect but it didn’t leave much of an impression.

Yesterday, I came across a brief review written by Andrew Sarris back in the day (1964 to be exact). His passionate defense makes it clear that Dreyer’s austere approach had become very polarizing…hardly a shock, given the emergence of the French New Wave and the way world cinema was evolving back then. More striking is Sarris’ observation in the opening paragraph:

“Gertrud is a sternly beautiful work of art with none of the fashionable flabbiness of second-chance sentimentality exemplified most vividly in Monica Vitti’s compassionate caress of Gabriele Ferzetti in the final, ultimate blank-wall composition of L’Avventura. Dreyer has lived long enough to know that you live only once and that all decisions are paid in full to eternity.”

The film focuses on a woman who abandons her marriage in hopes of idealized love (which Sarris describes as a “genuine idealism, however intolerant” rather than “foolish fantasizing”). Coming from Dreyer, it’s doubtful anyone could expect a great resolution to this story…

What the characters do find, according to Sarris, is that love is “the only consolation of memory,” a terrible realization to make when everything’s been lost and very little time is left…it’s enough to make one revisit Gertrud and see this for themselves.