Change Your Image
sr_wolfrider
Reviews
City Lights (1931)
Chaplin's masterpiece
Orson Welles once cited as his favorite movie Charlie Chaplin's tribute to the art of body language and pantomime, "City Lights." "I was determined to continue making silent films," Chaplin recalls in "My Life in Pictures" of his decision to make a silent four years into the talkie era, "for I believed there was room for all types of entertainment." "City Lights" features Chaplin's musical composition and various sound effects, but no dialogue. Chaplin opens the film with a lampoon of talkies: at the unveiling of a Greco-Roman stone statue, the dignitaries' speeches are heard only as unintelligible squawks.
Smitten by a flower-selling Blind Girl (Virginia Sherrill) who has mistaken him for a dapper gentleman, the Little Tramp takes on odd jobs (including a prizefight, shown in a masterfully choreographed sequence) to raise money for an operation to restore her vision. After the Tramp intervenes to prevent the suicide of an alcoholic tycoon, the tycoon befriends him; but it is an on and off friendship, as when sober the tycoon doesn't even recognize the Tramp. Despite a series of mishaps, the Tramp pays for the operation. But in the process he lands in prison. On the Tramp's elease, the Blind Girl learns the true identity of her benefactor in one of the most rarified scenes in cinema.
A Bill of Divorcement (1932)
Cukor at his best.
A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT (RKO, 1932), directed by George Cukor, from the play by Clemence Dane, is a dramatic story about a shell shock victim of the World War coping with the lost years of his life separated from his family, and his homecoming on Christmas Day. Starring the legendary John Barrymore, the film is notable for the motion picture debut of Broadway actress, Katharine Hepburn, whose career has become legendary, as well as the sound debut of comedienne Billie Burke, better known at the time as Mrs. Florenz Ziegfeld, in a rare dramatic performance.
The setting is England where the Fairchilds are hosting a Christmas Eve dinner party. Sydney (Katharine Hepburn) and Kit Humphreys (David Manners) are in love, plan to get married and live in Canada where they hope to become proud parents of lots of children. Her mother, Margaret (Billie Burke), is engaged to Gray Meredith (Paul Cavanaugh), a man of honor, whom she's going to marry on New Year's Day in spite of Aunt Hester's (Elizabeth Patterson) reminder that her brother, Hillary, a shell shock victim of the war having spent 15 years of his life institutionalized, is still very much her husband. The next morning, Christmas Day, Sydney is notified by telephone that her father has disappeared from the asylum and possibly on his way home. Upon his arrival, Hillary (John Barrymore) meets with a young girl whom he doesn't know (Hillary: "Who are you?" Sydney: "I believe I'm your daughter."), and soon discovers something even more startling, that his wife, "Meg," through arrangements with Gray, has secretly divorced him with intentions on remarrying. The truth about insanity in the family is brought forth by Doctor Aliot (Henry Stephenson) of the asylum, leaving Sydney with a harsh decision whether to marry as planned or give up the man she loves with the possibility that her children might be afflicted as her father and other members of the family. As for Meg, who fears her husband, even though he's cured, she's told that to take Hillary back would be more out of pity than love, and an extreme sacrifice if she intends on abandoning all hope and happiness with Gray.
Obviously a big success at the time, thanks to the fine direction by Cukor and his principle players, first time viewers might find A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT disappointing due to its age and "filmed stage play" premise. Naturally, with the exception of Hillary and/or Sydney playing the piano, there's no underscoring. Much of the story is set inside the Fairchild home with few instances where scene(s) shift out of doors. The cast is relatively small and dialog plentiful, but what's said is something to consider, especially when Doctor Alicot confronts Hillary by saying, "Face it man! One of you must suffer. Which is it to be? A healthy woman with her life before her or a man whose children ought never to have been born?" With mental illness as its subject matter, there's no harrowing scenes involving patients going berserk inside the institution. The film itself can be categorized as a "soap opera," but in reality it's a character study about family loyalty and sacrifice, and the bonding between two perfect strangers, the father and his daughter, both having a lot in common, each being musically inclined and outspoken individuals. To view it this way is to understand the circumstances involved and the outcome during its 69 minutes of screen time.
Remade in 1940 (retitled NEVER TO LOVE to avoid confusion whenever shown on television), and starring Maureen O'Hara, Adolphe Menjou, Fay Bainter and Patric Knowles in the Hepburn, Barrymore, Burke and Manners roles, it's not exactly a scene for scene replay, but the theme remains the same while not quite as powerful as the original. Menjou's big scene as he goes on his knees begging "Meg" to take him back, comes off more naturally than Barrymore with his theatrical method of overacting, but overall, an agreeable story.
Director George Cukor obviously loved Miss Hepburn, giving her the opening shot as she comes down the stairs to dance with her fiancé. David Manners, an underrated actor best remembered as the romantic hero in several Universal horror (DRACULA, THE MUMMY, THE BLACK CAT, etc.), gives a sensitive performance as the suitor fearing of possibly losing the one woman he loves (Hepburn), unless she reconsiders.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Awful mush
Ahhh, AI. 2 hours of Spielberg pissing on Kubrick's grave.
We've been told a lot of things about this film, mostly carefully timed lies so as to legitimize Spielberg's AI hegemony. Spielberg is having his cake and eating it now, at Kubrick's and responsible cinema's expense; and the mainstream media has lapped it all up. Business as usual.
Spielberg is a stunted anti-intellectual, semi-articulate sniggering adolescent, the very "artificial intelligence" of the film's title. Sara Maitland- the uncredited writer of the film- even rightfully detested the picture (oh and where is Kubrick's writing credit. Did Kubrick's 120 treatment never reach your office Stevie?) Well, her script-writing non-credit on Spielberg's AI is a total red herring here; the Hollywood uber-hack didn't even credit Kubrick. Just as well: Spielberg's reactionary sentimentalism and Oedipal infantilism made even Maitland blush in a paradox of embarrassment. She's recently gone on to point out the central, the most fundamental contradiction inherent in Spielberg's white-washing of Kubrick's treatment: having a human play robotic David fatally misdirects the entire emotional dynamics of the narrative, at least or especially for the audience, towards simply evaluating how convincing his robotic "performance" is; but David *is* a robot, not in need of convincing, and Kubrick's whole point, his unprecedented cinematic challenge, was in finally suggesting to the viewer the possibility of such an "artificial" entity unquestioningly demonstrating a legitimate, authentic, emotional post-human humanity. (For Spielberg, such a notion is utterly blasphemous to his unreconstructed, Judeo-Christian-internalised world view. Period. But of course all the Nietzschean death-of-god allegories are virtually removed or misunderstood by Spielberg who cant hope to even briefly capture the shear subversiveness of Kubrick).
You think that Spielberg, after a life devoted to production-line manipulative-movie merchandising, of making pandering, unadulterated kiddies' movies - originally for kids and later for emotionally-stunted "adults", has suddenly experienced some manner of life-shattering miraculous spiritual and philosophical transformation? Give me a break. This film is a dud, and it is important to say this, if only because of the avalanche of sub-cultural infantilism that will descend upon any topic dealing with "the Berg".
And before the Spielberg groupies takes up arms, please note, placing Spielberg in proper perspective is not an act of "snobbery", on the contrary, it is an exposition of its dynamics: Spielberg, like poor Dr Bill in Eyes Wide Shut, is desperate to become one, to prove his credentials, and, like all snobs, he ignorantly confuses a purchased social (and artistic) status with genuine social (and artistic) substance.
But to be fair, even the most extreme of contemporary hard-AI researchers would have great difficulty with Kubrick's radical "liberationist" vision of humanity's legacy being passed on to, and transcended by, cerebral, empathetic machines. Of technology ultimately serving as the liberating force for the contingency-trapped human spirit, rather than its predominantly current use as a brutal weapon to maintain elitist hegemony and ultimately - to precipitate irreversible mass human destruction and extinction. Sure, such a cinematic project presupposes the construction of a shatteringly seductive mythology ... one, indeed, that may have proved to have been beyond even Kubrick's penetrating grasp (which is not to suggest that his attempt would have failed in its poetic uber-bot transcendentalism).
Pickpocket (1959)
Pickpocket
One of the things that sets humans apart from other species, besides the thumb, is their ego and the way it makes an individual (usually a man) believe he can rise above all the others by blazing a path of his own. Robert Bresson's masterwork tells the story of such a man. Although it's a movie that's easy to watch but difficult to like, it certainly is memorable for the way it makes a seemingly indifferent person stick in the back of your head.
The film's main character is Michel, a regular looking guy who lives on his own in a small room full of books and dust. He's a loner, and his only close contact is his pal Jacques. He has a soft spot for his mother, but he avoids meeting with her face to face, leaving her care to the hands of her beautiful young neighbor, Jeanne. Michel wants to make something of himself but thinks he is too smart to follow the standard average procedures in life. He believes a man who is skilled enough to cheat without being caught should be rewarded by society.
Here is a man who desperately wants to prove something not to himself, his clean-cut buddy or even some smart cop, but to the women in his life: his mother, the one he's in debt to, and Jeanne, the one whose love he has to earn. He firmly believes in his right to skip the rules so he tries a type of crime through which he can outsmart them, picking pockets. His first time gets him caught, but it gives him pleasure, the way he approaches his victim and works his way into her purse. Michel's facial expression may be almost non-existent but between the act and the arrest he confesses feelings of superiority unknown to him before. After he's released due to inadequate proof, Michel is right back on the "wrong" track, trying to learn all the tricks of the trade and practicing with religious zeal to make his hands quick and agile.
A while later, a master pickpocket spots his talent and recruits him for his gang. In a tightly choreographed scene, Bresson shows his admiration for the art of emptying people's pockets as an ensemble. The gang of three almost rips off a whole train before stepping out while, in a rare humorous moment, Michel puts an empty wallet back to the pocket where he took it from a minute before. But he's not so special anymore, the other two being even more skillful than he is, so when they are caught on the act he quickly leaves Paris in his sole logical decision of the whole film. This is, probably, the moment when Michel loses that arrogance that kept him so focused all along. After two successful years as a crook abroad, he returns home. Almost accidentally, as he puts it, he falls in front of Jeanne's door. Earlier on, he asks Jeanne if she believes all people will be judged. She says yes, so he follows his question with another one: "Judged how? According to laws? What laws?" But now Michel craves to be judged. By the laws cause he has to, and by Jeanne cause he needs her acceptance.
Bresson's underlying theme of redemption through self-accusation and punishment, for even daring to think bigger than you're allowed to, is an obvious reference to Christianity since the director was known to be religious. But if you see it in a different light, it's simply universally human. A man is not only afraid of failure but, often enough, he gets horror-chills from the very thought of success and the loneliness that goes with it Michel couldn't care less about losing to the system as long as he knows there may be no real point in winning after all. After going along with his vices, the only thing that makes sense is coming back to another human being's warmth. That a smart cop sees through him early on, gives him a sense of security rather than fear. It's a way out of his microcosm, proof he still exists within the real world which he uses as an escape door when he decides to return there for Jeanne.
As for the popular assumption of the sexuality beneath Michel's interaction with his victims and his peers, it's an overplayed cliché, a case of wanting to see something so much it's bound to appear. The way I see it - every accomplishment or moment of tension potentially provides a substitute for sexual satisfaction. Michel watches a master pickpocket at work with admiration and discovers the other members of the caste he dreams about. It's got to be fulfilling at least, before it all blows back to his face.
Bresson's actors are non-professional. Plus, they're overworked, and it shows. Obviously the master wanted it that way, to let the story be told by movements rather than expressions. Whether we like it or not it works, minus a few moments of abnormal inertia. The dialogue is minimal and the first-person narration provides information about the central character without over-explaining. In the end, behind bars, a redeemed Michel wonders: "Jeanne, to reach you at last, what a strange path I had to take." There are times in life when it's not the trip, but the destination that counts most. Unfortunately, that trip is usually inevitable.