Nail-biting Laughter: My Blu-ray review of Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last!

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

Even Alfred Hitchcock never mastered that delicate balance between comedy and suspense as perfectly as silent comedian Harold Lloyd. Learning his craft carefully and consciously, he discovered that scaring the audience put them in an emotional pressure cooker, intensifying their reaction to a good gag. When the two effects were mixed expertly, by someone who understood the precise timing needed, the result was explosive, nail-biting laughter.

Many consider Safety Last Harold Lloyd’s masterpiece. It’s certainly his best-remembered work. And the sight of Lloyd, hanging from the minute hand of a clock far above a busy city street, is one of the strongest, most memorable images in the history of cinema.

image

Safety Last isn’t my favorite Lloyd. That would be Kid Brother, with The Freshman a close second. Safety Last comes in a comfortable third. The first two thirds of the feature make an excellent piece of comic work, with more than enough laughs for a comedy twice as long. It’s not Lloyd at his best, but still quite special. But the final third, where Harold climbs a skyscraper, stands amongst the greatest comic sequences in the history of film.

(Harold Lloyd did not direct any of his films, but most historians consider him the auteur. The producer as well as the star, his style is clearly visible no matter who was officially calling the shots.)

Here, Lloyd plays a small-town boy who goes to the big city to find his fortune. But all he can get is a low-pay, soul-crushing retail job in a huge department store. This is the sort of place where the slightest dress-code infraction sends you down to the General Manager’s office. On the second offence, you’re fired.

But Harold (his characters are always named "Harold") isn’t being entirely honest about his job. In letters to his girl back home, he brags about his high position and higher salary. He spends a good portion of his meager means sending her gifts with money that should be going to the rent.

That setup provides for a lot of imagegags. Harold hiding from the snobbish and tyrannical floor manager. Harold struggling with crazed women in a sale. Harold and his best friend and roommate hiding from the landlady. And, of course, when the girlfriend turns up, Harold pretending to be the General Manager who almost fired him a few minutes earlier.

But the movie’s called Safely Last, not The Big Store. In the final 25 minutes, the plot conspires to force Harold to climb a 12-story building. As you see him clinging for dear life, menaced by pigeons, a mouse, and a volleyball net, you cringe and laugh at the same time, with each reaction doubling the effect of the last one.

The complete lack of special effects makes this scene far more effective than it could be today. That’s really Lloyd hanging onto that clock, and that’s really a street far below him. Of course, it’s not really Lloyd in the long shots, and the camera angles were designed to exaggerate the danger and hide the safety platform. But he was still in danger, and you feel that as you watch.

Like a lot of films from this period, Safety Last contains some uncomfortably racist humor. More unusual for a Hollywood film of that time, it makes fun of Jews as well as blacks. You just have to grit your teeth and sit through it.

Released in 1923, Safety Last was a huge commercial success upon its release. It deserved it, and deserves to be seen again.

First Impression

imageCriterion does its usual great job on the Blu-ray. The slightly thicker-than-usual clear plastic box contains the single disc, plus a booklet dominated by an interesting essay by Ed Park. The disc itself goes right to the menus, without annoying advertising.

Also, as all Criterion Blu-rays, it has a timeline and bookmarking. The next time you insert the disc, you’ll be asked if you want to start where you left off.

How Does It Look?

The image quality is a bit disappointing for a Criterion release. It occasionally looks faded and soft, with some scratches and other wear and tear. Obviously, the problems lie in the source material, and not in transfer supervisor Maria Palazzola’s work.

But budgetary issues may have made it worse. The nitrate source print was scanned at only 2K. You really need a 4K scan to get the best out of 35mm film, even if it’s to be shown on a 2K medium like Blu-ray.

How Does It Sound?

Criterion provides two musical accompaniments, each by a master of the medium. And both in uncompressed PCM.

The full orchestra score was composed and conduced by Carl Davis in 1989, and presented in the original two-track stereo mix. I love Davis’ work (see Napoleon at the Paramount: An Incredible Day at the Movies), and this score lived up to my expectations. As befits the urban 1920s setting, the music is upbeat and jazzy, and always matches and enhances the onscreen scene.

When I was falling in love with silent films in LA in the early 1970s, Gaylord Carter was an important part of the scene. In fact, my first true silent movie experience was Kid Brother, with Carter at the organ. Carter, a friend of Lloyd’s who died in in 2000, improvised this score at a private screening "sometime around 1969." I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet. I’m saving it for the right time.

And the Extras?

Lots of them.

  • Commentary by Leonard Maltin and archivist Richard Correll. The two historians recorded this together–it’s not one of those spliced-together commentaries., It contains some good discussions about Lloyd and the filming, but it also has some of those useless "Now he’s walking down the street" explanations.
  • Suzzanne Lloyd introduction. 17 minutes. Lloyd’s granddaughter affectionately discusses his career, his family, and film preservation. She also tells us that Lloyd’s favorite of his films was The Kid Brother. Good taste.
  • Short films. Total of 43 minutes–86 with the commentaries. Three Lloyd shorts from before his leap into features: "Take a Chance," "Young Mr. Jazz," and "His Royal Slyness." All have brassy, uncredited musical accompaniment and optional commentary. All three are amusing, none of they are great.
  • Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius: 108 minutes. I saw and liked this 1989 Kevin Brownlow documentary when it was new. I haven’t yet had a chance to see it again on this disc, but am looking forward to doing so.
  • Locations and Effects: 21 minutes. This new documentary covers the film’s locations and how the dangerous stunts were shot. Those aren’t two separate subjects; the locations were part of the illusion.
  • Carl Davis: Scoring for Harold: 24 minutes. The maestro talks mostly about the decisions he made while scoring Safety Last. But he also covers other Lloyd movies he’s scored, and the differences between scoring a silent film and a new movie with a living director.

The Safety Last! Blu-ray comes out on Tuesday, June 18. However, Bay Area folks will have an even better way to enjoy it in July, when it closes the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

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SFIFF: The Festival Closes with Before Midnight

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

Thursday night, this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival ended at the Castro with the local premiere of Before Midnight, Richard Linklater’s threequel to Before Sunrise and Before Sunset.

(It wasn’t actually the festival’s end.  Six other films screened at various theaters after Before Midnight began. The last one, Il Futuro, started at the Pacific Film Archive at 8:50; Before Midnight was over by then.)

Although I came in skeptical about the whole idea of an art house threequel, Before Midnight won be over. I easily give it an A.

This time around, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) have been living together for nine years, and they might as well be married. They have twins, a life imagetogether, and bodies transitioning into middle age. Like the previous films, this one takes place in a single day, but they don’t spend it walking around a city. They’re on vacation in Greece, and they drive, share a talkative dinner with six other people, and spend considerable time in a hotel room. And they fight. Hard. They still love ach other, but you’re not sure if the relationship will last. The result is both sad and sexy.

The film was written by Delpy, Hawke, and director Richard Linklater. After the movie, Delpy and Linklater came onstage for Q&A (Hawke was unable to attend). Some highlights:

  • Linklater: The decision to do the second [move] was scary… Somewhere we realized that Jesse and Celine were still alive and we had to see what they’re doing. But this one was more difficult.
  • Linklater, on a big dinner scene where they interact with three other couples: We couldn’t do the same thing again. We had to see them in their lives. And that included other people.
  • Delpy: I come from a musical background. I remember all the training. Same thing with acting. The goal is to feel like you just stepped in and did it. But it takes tons of rehearsal.
  • Delpy, on exposing her breasts for the first time in this series: We knew we needed to go that far. You don’t have sex with a bra. [To Linklater] Maybe you do.
  • Linklater, talking about the choice to give them twins: I have identical twins. Those two kids [the child actors, not his own twins] in the back seat were wonderful in that 13-minute take.
  • Delpy, on the big argument scene: You get to write the arguments, and that’s great. It’s your dream argument. I wish I could have arguments like that.

After the Q&A, I made my way to the Closing Night Party at Ruby Skye, a downtown club I’d never before visited. It was large enough to be comfortable. The music was loud enough to enjoy, but not so loud as to block conversation. Food booths around the place, each run by a different caterer, offered a wide variety of tasty but mostly unhealthy fare.

It was a nice way to end the festival, and I regretted having to leave early.

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Cambodia, India, and the Cloud: SFIFF Documentary Sunday

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

I saw three films at the San Francisco International Film Festival on Sunday–all documentaries. That wasn’t planned. It just worked out that way.

B+ A River Changes Course
Kalyanee Mam’s ethnographic documentary follows three struggling families in imagemodern-day Cambodia. And while no river literally changes course, the modern world forces the film’s protagonists to severely alter their lifestyles. Corporations are chopping down the forests, fishermen are getting smaller catches, and young people leave for the city in a futile hope of raising their families out of poverty. Visually striking and deeply sad.

Unfortunately, I had to leave before Mam’s post-screening Q&A.

A River Changes Course will not play the festival again. However, it is on the list of files that "have secured U.S. distribution or are in negotiations with a U.S distributor," so you may get a chance to see it.

B Salma
This is in no way a well-made documentary. It’s poorly shot, and often leaves you imageconfused about many details. But the basic story is so strong you can forgive it almost anything. Salma, a Muslim woman born in a small Indian village, was effectively under house arrest for 25 years–first by her parents and then by the husband she was forced to marry. Her crime? Being female and passed puberty. But while imprisoned, she became a famous poet, and then a successful politician, fighting (not surprisingly) for women’s rights. It was only after she was elected that her husband let her out of the house. I would love to see this story better told.

Salma won’t screen again this festival. I’m not sure if you’ll ever have a chance to see this film.

A Google and the World Brain
In this wonderfully entertaining documentary, Ben Lewis takes us through Google’s attempt to scan every book in every library, and the copyright lawsuits that at least for imagenow have derailed it. Along the way it covers privacy issues, other digital archives, and the magic of an old-fashioned, paper-based library. Among the people interviewed are Wired’s Kevin Kelly (who gave the Festival’s 2008 State of the Cinema Address), an executive from Google Spain (the American headquarters refused to cooperate), an angry Japanese author, and a French librarian who seems to personify every annoying stereotype of the snooty Gallic intellectual.

The film manages a light, snappy feel despite the serious undertones. Computer-generated cityscapes, a server farm built into what appears to be a medieval cathedral, and animated interview subjects keep it visually lively.

Lewis is clearly worried about Google’s growing power and willingness to violate your privacy. But Google and the World Brain is no simple piece of propaganda. Both sides in this issue are treated fairly.

Lewis was unable to attend the screening (he lives in England and he has a new baby), but he was interviewed afterwards via Skype. Some highlights:

"Three or four years ago, I became interested in a study of the Internet, around issues of monopoly, free market, and privacy. I was looking for a story."

He considered a story about music piracy, but "Nobody sympathizes with musicians. We assume they don’t make any money."

"Just as we’re entering this knowledge economy, the people who are making this knowledge are told that we’ll give it away for free."

"Google makes money from what we produce."

On Google’s response to the film: "They didn’t want to take part in it. After it came out, they said they were deeply disappointed by the tone of the film."

I saw the last festival screening of Google and the World Brain. It’s not on the likely-to-be-released list, which surprised me. With it’s lively and funny presentation, immediate subject matter, and reasonably happy editing, this is about as commercial as a documentary gets.

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SFIFF Saturday: Koreans in Japan, Geek Nostalgia, and a Surreal Documentary

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

Here’s what I saw Saturday at the San Francisco International Film Festival

B Our Homeland
For second-generation ethnic Koreans living in Japan, going "home" was once very important–even though "home" was the living nightmare of North Korea. In this calmly imageheart-breaking drama, a man in his early 40s who migrated to a Korea he’d never known 25 years earlier, returns to Japan and his family for a three-month medical leave. He’s withdrawn and frightened, perhaps because of the tumor eating his brain, but more likely because he’s spent most of his life in a place where there are choices and doubt are not allowed. He must adjust to his family–including his true-believer Communist father–and they must adjust to him.

Autobiographical, Our Homeland is told through the eyes of his much younger sister, Rie–a stand-in for writer/director Yang Yonghi.

But many of the film’s cultural and political aspects are opaque to those not already in the know. I wasn’t even sure what year–or decade–the film was set.

You’ve got one more chance to see Our Homeland at the festival: Monday, 1:00, at the New People Cinema. There are no plans for a regular American release.

B- Computer Chess
This reasonably funny mockumentary follows a computer chess tournament in 1980. imageAssorted geeks and nerds (including one "lady") show up at a hotel to test their hardware and software’s chess skills. The winning algorithm will then face an actual human chess master. To add color, a bizarre new-age group has its own gathering at the same hotel. The whole thing is shot in standard-def black-and-white; it looks awful but that’s the point. The jokes range from the clever to the obvious, and I have to admit that most of the audience laughed more than I did.

I saw Computer Chess’  last festival screening. However, it’s on the list of films that "have secured U.S. distribution or are in negotiations with a U.S distributor," so you may have your own chance to decide how funny it is.

A The Search for Emak Bakia
In 1920, surrealist artist Man Ray made a short film called  Emak Bakia. In the Basque language, that means something like "Go away!" or "Leave me along!" Far more recently, Oskar Alegria set out to discover the short’s history, inspirations, imageand locations. (As I write this, I have yet to see Man Ray’s original; I intend to fix that soon). The result, The Search for Emak Bakia, is an appropriately surreal documentary. In addition to conventional detective work–such as looking for a house with the right columns in the front–he follows a plastic glove blowing in the wind and turns his research to clowns on what could only be described as a irrelevant (but interesting) whim. Amongst the more conventional detective work, he finds an old woman who lived in the house as a young girl. The result is much more than informative; it’s magical.

After the film, Alegria stepped in front of the screen for Q&A. Some highlights:

"I loved the mystery [of the original film's creation]. If you see Man Ray films, you can’t see where they were made. I love mysteries, and mysteries have to be good if you want to make a long film."

"This is my first film and my last. I’m a journalist."

"When I was following the plastic glove, that’s not being a journalist. I had to put aside the journalist and be guided by chance."

About the woman: "We were trying to find the same house at the same time, using the same method, without knowing each other. And now we have become friends. She’s now 95 years old."

On its commercial prospects: "This is not a commercial film…I don’t want to make money with it."

"My mother taught me to have faith in magic."

You’ve got two more chances to see The Search for Emak Bakia this week. It plays the Kabuki Monday at 8:45, and the New People Cinema Thursday at 3:30. Since you’ll probably never get another chance to see this picture, I’d make it a top festival priority.

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SFIFF The Rest of Saturday. A French Bad Marriage and American Shakespeare

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

I caught two pictures yesterday after Steven Soderbergh’s State of the Cinema Address. Both were shown in the Kabuki‘s large main theater. I liked both.

B+ Thérèse
In the late 1920s, Thérèse (Audrey Tautou of Amélie) marries the rich and conservative Bernard, who cares mostly about money and family honor. It’s a good match economically, but she almost immediately regrets the loveless and stifling relationship. When Bernard blocks his younger sister (Anaïs imageDemoustier of Living on Love Alone) from marrying a Jew, Thérèse fails to be the heroine that she might have been. Both the character and the film are emotionally remote, yet that’s not really a flaw here. Claude Miller’s final film examines a woman who has been robbed of her character and her ethics, and forced to become an accessory to her husband’s world view, and finds a downright creepy way of extracting revenge. This is a dark, sober film with patches of dry humor and some surprising turns.

There’s some confusion in the title. The Festival is calling it  Thérèse, but IMBD and the press release I’ve been given call it Thérèse Desqueyroux.

Whatever the name is, the Festival will screen the film one more time. Monday, April 29, at 6:30, at the New People Cinema. The movie is on the festival’s list of pictures that "have secured U.S. distribution or are in negotiations with a U.S distributor." In other words, it may play in American theaters.

A Much Ado About Nothing
Most of us don’t associate Joss Whedon–best known for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and The Avengers–with Shakespeare. Yet his adaptation of one of the Bard’s most popular comedies proves to be far better entertainment than Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 imageversion. Set in modern Italy and shot (in black and white) in Whedon’s own LA mansion, it makes the Elizabethan language sound natural as the characters talk about love, marriage, and jealousy. Much Ado has always been a tricky play to stage. Screamingly funny in the first half, it glides near the edge of Othello-like tragedy in the second. Yet that second half also brings in one of Shakespeare’s funniest characters, Dogberry (brilliantly played here by Nathan Fillion). Whedon keeps all of these mood changes and assorted characters working together flawlessly, for an exceptional entertainment.

After the screening, the film’s stars, Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof, took the stage for some Q&A. They talked about Whedon inviting friends over for Shakespeare-reading parties, and what a good time they had shooting this movie.

The Festival will screen Much Ado one more time: Monday, April 29, at 3:30, at the New People Cinema. The film will enjoy a theatrical release in June.

One quick technical note: Surprisingly, the Festival screened both Thérèse and Much Ado in 35mm. That’s particularly odd, not only because this film festival is showing very little physical film this year, but also because both films were shot digitally.

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Steven Soderbergh’s State of the Cinema Address

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

Steven Soderbergh talks very fast. Trying to take notes, I found myself trying to remember what he said three sentences back. He talked primarily about how the industry works, and why it's getting harder and harder to make cinema, which he described as work with a real, unique point of view. This is as opposed to a movie, which is made by a committee.

A few comments:

He talked about a guy sitting in front of him on a plane. He had a laptop or a tablet, and he was watching action sequences from multiple movies, skipping all narrative. “Mayhem porn,” Soderhergh called it.

He talked about Present Shock (there's a book by that name). The problem is that information and entertainment is coming at us all at once. “If there's no linear time, how can we tell what's going on. This is effecting how movies are made.

He worries about the whole purpose of art. “If the works of William Shakespeare can't stop genocide, what is art for?” But he also realizes that that “art is simply a given. We need to tell stories. To pass along ideas and make sense of all this chaos.”

He didn't talk much about technology, but he did say he was glad that films are becoming cheaper to make. He quoted Orson Welles: “I don't want to wait on the tool. I want the tool to wait for me.”

The big problem, in his view, is that it costs $60 million to release a movie, even if it's a low-budget independent movie. That means that even artful cinema has to be really popular.

He doesn't think well of studio heads. “Cinema is on attack by the studios. You'e got a trajectory that is very difficult to stop. The meetings have gotten pretty weird. There are people running studios who don't watch movies.”

He didn't talk about his decision to stop directing, but his reasons were clearly between the lines.

He left suddenly after talking for 45 minutes. There was no Q&A.

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Friday Night Report: Rare Hitchcock and New Studio Ghibli

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

I caught two very different movies at two very different theaters, Friday night. Both films were very much worth catching.

The Wrong Man

The Pacific Film Archive has been running its Alfred Hitchcock series since January, but it took me until Friday to actually get to one of the screenings. I’m really glad I went.

Hitchcock made The Wrong Man at the height of his powers. His next three films would be Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho. Like Vertigo, The Wrong Man was a critical and commercial flop on it’s original release. Unlike Vertigo, it has remained obscure. Now that I’ve finally seen it, I know that it deserves a better reputation.

Although it uses one of Hitchcock’s favorite plots–the innocent citizen imagewrongly accused of a crime–it’s unlike anything he ever made. Based on a true story and apparently following it quite closely, it realistically shows you the reality of that situation. Manny, a professional musician with a steady, modest-paying gig (Henry Fonda), doesn’t escape from life-threatening adventures, track down evil spies, or meet and romance a glamorous blonde. He gets fingerprinted and put in jail. He gets out on bail, and hires a lawyer he probably can’t afford. His wife (Vera Miles–who is a gorgeous blonde) has a nervous breakdown.

Even Hitchcock’s cameo is different than any other. The film opens with him, in long shot and shadow, directly addressing the audience, and telling them this is unlike any of his other thrillers.

And yet, in many ways, this is very much an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Right from the start, as Manny leaves work in the wee hours of the morning, takes the subway home, and talks about money with his wife, Hitchcock’s sense of camera angles, editing, and sound provides an overwhelming sense of dread.

In many ways, this is one of his scariest movies. We know that we will never be mistaken for a spy, or discover that a favorite uncle is a serial killer, or be attacked by huge flocks of crows. But if we’re sufficiently unlucky, we might actually someday be arrested for someone else’s felony. And even if we’re eventually proven innocent, the experience could have lasting emotional and financial effects.

Warner Brothers provided the PFA with a seriously scratched print that has seen better days. Good thing this was a black and white movie; at least the print wasn’t faded.

From Up on Poppy Hill

From the PFA on the UC Berkeley campus, I walked west to downtown Berkeley’s California Theater, where I caught the latest animated feature from Japan’s fabled Studio Ghibli. It was a very special screening.

Like all Ghibli films, From Up on Poppy Hill has been dubbed into English for its wide American release. But for this week, the California and Embarcadero are showing the original Japanese version–with English subtitles–for the last screening of the day.

That’s well worth catching.

Set in the early 1960s, From Up on Poppy Hill can best be described as whimsical. A dramatic comedy about first love, it focuses on a teenage girl falling on love for the first time, against a backdrop of students trying to save an old, rundown clubhouse.

This is a warm, sweet, nostalgic, and mild movie without villains or real disasters. Frightening things have happened in the past, and the scars of war–although no longer on the buildings–are still in everyone’s hearts and family histories.

Of course first love never runs smooth. This young couple run into obstacles, one of them serious enough to derail a romance.

imageThis is the rare animated feature without talking animals, fantasy creatures, magic, or broadly caricatured human beings.

Which brings up an interesting question: Why bother with animation? Why not tell the story with live action?

Two reasons:

First, because hand-drawn, 2D animation is with Studio Ghibli does, and does better than anyone else these days.

And second, because they can do so much with it. With astonishingly simple brushstrokes, the Ghibli artists can evoke a place, a community, and a human face’s emotion. It’s a joy to watch.

Catch this picture–preferably in the subtitled version.

Unfortunately, the California is screening From Up on Poppy Hill on one of their upstairs theaters–once part of this aging palace’s balcony. The screen is small, and the sightlines off. Worse, when something loud happens in the big downstairs auditorium, you hear it upstairs.

Other than these problems–which existed when the theater screened film–I had no complaints about the digital projection.

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On the Road

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Lincoln Spector

B+ Drama

  • Written by Jose Rivera, from the novel by Jack Kerouac
  • Directed by Walter Salles

Note: I wrote this review last summer, after a screening prior to the Mill Valley Film Festival. When I was told that the film would open in the Bay Area on January 18, I set this review to go live two days before that date. Now that it’s already live, I’ve discovered that the local release won’t happen until March (maybe). I’ve decided to leave the review up, anyway.

Jose Rivera and Walter Salles came maddeningly close to making a great film out of Jack Kerouac’s highly-regarded novel (which I haven’t read). The sense of time and place are letter-perfect. The characters are rich, surprising, and believable.  On the Road captures the dizzy and seductive joys of a drug-soaked and sexually wild youth, as well as the less joyful results. But in trying to capture what I guess is the full arc of the novel, it bogs down at times, and the picture is marred by stunt casting in the smaller roles.

Full Disclosure: I have not actually seen the entire movie. There was a problem with the DCP used for the press screening I attended, and the movie froze at what I suspect was just before the final fade-out. (You film purists can stop snickering. I’ve seen many a physical print missing far more than this.)

The film concentrates on the friendship between Sal (Sam Riley) and Dean (Garrett OntheRoadHedlund), two exceptionally good-looking young men living a carefree, nomadic existence in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They drink, smoke pot (and tobacco), go to jazz clubs, and sleep with a lot of women. Dean also sleeps with men.

The story is told through Sal’s eyes, and Riley is in nearly every scene. As I understand it, Sal is a thinly-disguised Kerouac, while Dean is based on Neal Cassady. For much of the film, there’s a third friend, Carlo–a stand-in for Allen Ginsberg.

Kristen Stewart (of Twilight fame) plays Dean’s sometimes wife, Marylou. If that sentence sounds confusing, so is their relationship. They’re newlyweds when we first meet them, but she soon leaves Dean and gets a divorce. Then she joins them again and is soon shagging both Sal and Dean. And no, jealousy does not raise its ugly head. There’s a lot of R-rated sex in this movie, and it’s filled with joy, lust, and youthful excitement, but there’s no real romance aside from the love between Sal and Dean.

But the constant travelling and dangerous driving, along with the odd jobs and petty theft needed to finance their adventures, wears everyone down. So does Dean’s complete lack of responsibility. He’s the sort of friend you can depend on to always let you down. He gets married a second time, with far more disastrous results.

Okay, everything I’ve said so far makes you think this is a great film. Why isn’t it one?

First, Sallas couldn’t resist casting big name stars in minor roles. These types of cameos work fine in a broad farce (as in Moonlight Kingdom), but in a serious drama, they take you out of the story. Instead of reacting to a new character, you’re saying “That’s Amy Adams!” Or Viggo Mortensen. Or Steve Buscemi. Or even “Oh, that’s what’s-her-name from Mad Men” (Elisabeth Moss, actually).

Second, the film runs out of steam about half an hour before it ends. The problem about people wandering aimlessly is that they’re not going anywhere. After awhile, you feel that you’ve learned everything you need to learn about Sal and Dean, and all you want is a fade-out.

To be fair, however, I wouldn’t drop the last three scenes–which do reveal some interesting twists. Even after the picture becomes repetitious and predictable, it can still occasionally surprise and delight you.

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Blu-ray Review: Rashomon

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

As I watched Criterion’s beautiful new Blu-ray edition of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, I noticed how patterns of three ripple through this masterpiece. You have, of course, the love triangle (well, more like a lust and violence triangle) that centers the story. But you also have the three men under the Rashomon gate. And the three intertwined locations where the complex story is told.

I’ve written about Rashomon before, specifically in Kurosawa Diary, Part 7: Rashomon. There, I wrote about where it stood in relation to Kurosawa’s films before and after it. This time, I’ll concentrate on the film itself.

In medieval Japan, a notorious bandit waylays a high-born couple in the woods, ties up the husband, and rapes the wife. The husband is killed, but who killed him and how? This story is told in flashbacks, and in flashbacks within flashbacks. They contradict each other.

Kurosawa, a director known for long and expensive epics, made Rashomon as a chamber piece. It runs less than 90 minutes, contains only eight actors, and was shot entirely out of doors during daylight hours. Not a frame is wasted.

The entire story is told within three locations, cutting back and forth between them. When the film moves to a different location, it also moves to a different time. Or more precisely, to a flashback.

The framing story is set under the large Rashomon gate, already a crumbling ruin when the story is set. Three men take refuge there from a rainstorm. They talk about a police investigation. Two of them gave testimony as witnesses, and they’re shocked by the contradictory stories and the larger implications of such contradictions. The third man, a cynic, enjoys listening to their stories and mocks them for their concern.

The second setting, also a framing story, appears to be a police yard. All we see is the ground, a wall, and people talking to an unheard, off-screen presence–presumably an investigator. Even the dead man, speaking through a medium, tells his version of what happened in the forest.

That forest is the third setting, and shows the incidents that fuel what everyone says in the others. Once again, it concentrates on three people–the no-love triangle that fuels the story. The husband shows utter contempt for everyone, including his wife (especially after she’s been raped). The bandit, motivated by a lust he confuses with love, wants to marry the woman whose life he has just ruined. And the wife, with no possible choices within the framework of her strict society, manipulates both men for ends she’s not entirely sure of.

The film also contains what I believe are Kurosawa’s first two swordfights–or, more accurately, two very different versions of the same swordfight. From the winner’s point of view, the duel is as romantic and exciting as anything with Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone. But from the point of view of a third party, comic ineptitude reigns, at least until the fight becomes, in its own clumsy way, frighteningly deadly.

Here, finally in high-def, is one of the best films by the world’s greatest filmmaker. You can’t possibly expect me to be objective.

imageFirst impression

This single disc package comes in a slightly thicker-than-usual clear plastic case. The front cover sports a color illustration of star Toshiro Mifune by Eric Skillman.

In addition to the disc, the case includes a 44-page booklet, which includes the film’s cast and credits, two essays (by Stephen Prince and Kurosawa himself, excerpted from his autobiography), the two short stories that the screenplay was based on, and "About the Transfer." The book also contains additional Skillman illustrations.

How it looks

Rashomon is a movie of textures. Dappled light coming through the leaves. Bright sunlight and flickering shade. Torrential rain. Human skin, wet and beaded with sweat. Photographed by the great Kazuo Miyagawa, it’s one of the most beautifully photographed black and white films ever shot.

Unfortunately, time has not been good to Rashomon‘s original source material. The camera negative and the prints made from it are warped, torn, and in poor condition. Fortunately, the film was painstakingly restored in 2008, and while the restoration didn’t quite bring it up to the original sparkling quality, it got close.

This Blu-ray is one major beneficiary of that restoration. I can’t call it consistent, but much of it glistens with the light, shadow, and wetness of Kurosawa’s and Miyagawa’s images. And even at it’s weak points, the transfer is still passible.

Except for one odd error. About 25 minutes into the movie, something really strange happens in one of those Kurosawa-patented wipes. As the wipe moves from left to right, replacing one shot with another, an extra bit of new shot appears on the left. I’ve never seen this problem before, and it’s certainly not on the older DVD.

How It Sounds

As usual, Criterion provides us with the original mix as an uncompressed PCM soundtrack. The audio strains a bit in loud scenes, but that’s the limits of 1950 Japanese sound recording, not of the disc. This is certainly as good, and probably better, than what Kurosawa originally signed off on.

The disc also comes with a Dolby Digital, laughably-bad, dubbed English-language track. Here, the actors all speak English with fake Japanese accents.

And the Exras

By Criterion standards, the offerings aren’t extraordinary. Most of them came with Criterion’s original DVD release. All of the video extras look like standard definition.

  • Commentary by Donald Richie. His voice is a little dull, but what he says is usually interesting. He talks about composition, character, editing, and plenty more.
  • Robert Altman on Rashomon: 7 minutes. Not that interesting.
  • The World of Kazuo Miyagawa: 13 minutes . Excerpt from a Japanese TV documentary about the cinematographer. Really fascinating.
  • NEW: A Testimony as an Image: 68 minutes. Rashomon script supervisor Teruuyo Nogami interviews people she worked with while making the film. Badly shot and edited, but be patient and you’ll get to some good stories.
  • NEW: Interview with Takashi Shimura: 16 minutes. Audio, only. A 1961 radio interview with the actor by Gideon Bachmann, with Donald Richie translating.
  • Original trailer:

Beautiful, exciting, depressing, existential, and in its final moments inspiring, Rashomon belongs on any list of great motion pictures. At least, that’s how I remember it.

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Anti-Commie Friday Night at the Pacific Film Archive

Posted on October 13, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

I visited the Pacific Film Archive Friday night to catch two very different films, both from 1953,  and both part of the series An Army of Phantoms: American Cinema and the Cold War. The first, Invaders from Mars, was all sorts of fun in ways that the filmmakers never intended. The second, Pickup on South Street, instantly became one of my all-time favorite noirs.

My big question: Why show the films in that order? Certainly the taut and thoughtful thriller should screen before the unintentionally hilarious sci-fi absurdity.

Invaders from Mars

I first saw this film, in a 16mm print, at  Gary Warne’s fabled Circus of the Soul bookstore. That must have been around 1977. I believe it was part of a series that Gary called It Came From Beneath the Budget. It was laughably bad then, and still is now.

It was directed by the great production designer William Cameron Menzies (Thief of Bagdad, Gone with the Wind). He should have stuck with production design. The acting is bad, the script is worse, and everything looks appallingly cheap. It cries out for MST3K treatment.

Invaders from Mars is one of those movies where aliens take over people’s bodies for their evil plans. This sub-genre produced one really good movie: the first Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In that one,  the possessed characters continue to act as if nothing has changed. When a spouse or child insists that their loved one isn’t him- or herself, you can easily believe that no one else notices a difference. But in Invaders, you sit there wondering why everyone isn’t asking "How come he’s suddenly an asshole?"

By the way, the Martians aren’t really trying to invade. They’re attacking select people working on a top secret weapon that could one day attack Mars. In other words, they’re acting in self-defense, and much like the American and Israeli intelligent forces who (most people suspect) have been sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program and assassinating their scientists.

The film was not, as I had recalled, shot in three-strip Technicolor, but in a cheaper two-color system called Cinecolor. The PFA screened a horrible-looking, scratched and soft 35mm print.

Pickup on South Street

Wow! What a difference. From a mess to a masterpiece.

Written and directed by the great Samuel Fuller (whose autobiography I’m currently reading), this Cold War noir stars Richard Widmark as a pickpocket who lifts the wrong wallet on a crowded subway. The wallet, belonging to a beautiful young woman(Jean Peters) contains a piece of microfilm with important government secrets. She has no idea that the people to whom she was supposed to deliver the microfilm are Communist agents. The US government, of course, is also after this valuable piece of celluloid.

Before he came to Hollywood, Fuller spent many years as a reporter on the city crime beat. He knew the underworld. He successfully wrote crime fiction before turning to screenwriting and from there to direction. It’s no surprise that his dialog crackles with both wit and authenticity.

In Pickup, he handles violence as well as dialog. If you’re used to today’s heavily cut action scenes, the fights in this picture are a revelation. Shot in long takes that leave no doubt that the stars took some punishment, the scenes have an immediate impact that doesn’t exist today.

And then there’s the great Thelma Ritter (the nurse in Rear Window). I’ve seen her mostly in comic roles, but here she breaks your heart as a poverty-stricken spinster who sells ties on the streets and information to the cops. She’s saving money for the only thing left she can look forward to: a nice funeral.

Pickup is clearly an anti-Communist picture, but it wasn’t anti-Communist enough for many conservatives of its day. They objected to a protagonist (the word hero doesn’t seem applicable) who’s not at all patriotic, but simply looking out for himself.

By the way, none of the bad guys have foreign accents; they’re all clearly Americans. The film never explains if they’re truly Communists, or just in it for the money.

The whole picture is damn near perfect.

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