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Reviews
Indiscreet (1958)
You Can Almost See the Proscenium Arch ....
Possibly a master-class in why it's not always a good idea to let a playwright adapt his own work for the screen, 'Indiscreet' has endless lengthy static declamations while everyone and everything remains rooted to the spot. The author (and to an extent the director) should have had the courage to cut a lot of the priceless speeches that may have worked on the stage and to have understood that the screen needs an amount of movement, whether of camera, people, change of shot, or all of the above.
Unfortunately too, the central conceit of the piece – that it is quite correct to have an affair with an openly married man but shamefully immoral to spend five minutes alone with a single one – wears a bit thin, and not for the first time, Cary Grant has to play a charmer who is in fact a rather unpleasant and selfish deceiver. There are however some good lines, with Cecil Parker in particular making the most of them.
My Favorite Wife (1940)
A Screwball Comedy with Dislikeable Leads?
I'm a great fan of black-and-white 1940's screwball comedy but "My Favorite Wife" is far from being one of my own favourites. The playing is fine and there's some decent dialogue; the problem for me is that not only don't I relate to the characters, I actually feel hostility towards the leads! Both Nick and Ellen are self-centred, selfish, and manipulative – how someone can come back from a desert island thankfully saved after seven years and immediately become so devious, almost malevolent, I can't imagine. My difficulties are compounded by the treatment of Bianca - were she drawn as some sort of gorgon then she would be getting her comedy comeuppance, but she is in fact characterised as an innocent party stuck between the other two's unpleasant manoeuvring so that the treatment she suffers doesn't raise the expected smile.
Decision at Sundown (1957)
Not an Old-Style Goodie-and-Baddie Western
As often with director Budd Boetticher, this late Randolph Scott vehicle doesn't deliver a traditional western's certainties about right and wrong. Scott's character Bart Allison arrives in town after a three year search determined to kill Tim Kimbrough in revenge for his wife's suicide, but it soon emerges that this may have had as much to do with his own failings as with Kimbroughs's philandering. It also becomes clear that Kimbrough is indeed a villain who with his sidekicks has taken over the town.
The only characters with anything like a clear moral purpose are the two women Kimbrough's fancy-girl and his fiancée - who play decisive parts in events. The townsfolk themselves deserve little sympathy, remaining casual observers until late in the day when Allison's actions finally act as a catalyst for action. But with so many shades of right and wrong, any final showdown at Sundown is not likely to offer a clear clash of good against bad.
Les parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)
A film with a unique style that grows on you
This film is not only a one-off in cinema terms, it is in terms of any art form. It is not in the style of a usual musical or even an opera. While all the dialogue is sung as recitative as in opera, it doesn't have the regular musical highlights that musicals and opera provide. There are a number of very distinctive musical themes - most of which have been recorded by other artistes with completely different words - but at no point do we get an intended show-stopper - and there's definitely no dancing! So a first viewing can be a complete culture shock. I almost didn't persevere past the first ten minutes, but, if nothing else, the presence of Catherine Deneuve (whom I would watch singing the Paris phone book) persuaded me to continue. I did start to get the measure of things, but had it not been for the dramatic, sad, and possibly ambiguous last few minutes I'm not sure I would have returned to the film again. I did however do so, again taking a while to adjust to the 'rules' but getting increasingly involved again as it moved to the the conclusion. It was only on a third viewing after a break of several years and being ready for it that I fully enjoyed the whole enterprise - the bright colours, the town of Cherbourg which I know from a long time ago, Catherine Deneuve (I may have mentioned her already), the music with its restrained orchestration, the plot, and that ending.
About Last Night... (1986)
Accurate Portrayal of a 1980s relationship - with interesting Best Friends!
In 1980's Chicago two attractive young people develop a very 1980's relationship. After falling into bed together on their first meeting they progress through a tentative relationship to moving in together, moving out again, and then possibly to some sort of reconciliation.
The film was made contemporaneously with the period it is set in and is one of those films that evoke their particular time with well-observed accuracy. Demi Moore and Rob Lowe deliver strong performances as the articulate, successful and confused - central characters, with Moore in particular able to reflect on the developing crises with astute asides.
The film possibly has two structural problems. First, it is too long. Boy endlessly prostrating himself in front of Girl he has sent packing gets tedious, and the tension regarding what may happen starts to dissipate.
Secondly, the more-or-less mandatory Best Friend characters are almost too strong. Lowe's buddy James Belushi is a chauvinist slob, but also a bit of a charmer - and with some of the best lines. Moore's confidante Elizabeth Perkins may be something of a shrew, but a damned attractive one. These two take an intense dislike to each other from the start, and as the main romance stalls their relationship becomes by far the more interesting one with its vague possibility that such a sparky loathing just might lead to something more positive - if pretty combustible!
Before Sunset (2004)
A quiet, thoughtful, spellbinding film.
Two people meet in Paris nine years after a brief liaison in Vienna chronicled in the film Before Sunrise(1995). At that time they arranged to meet again but it now turns out they never did. They look and act nine years older - as indeed the players as well as the characters are - as they walk through Paris streets and gardens you can almost touch. They talk of their earlier meeting and the missed rendezvous, of the changes in the world since, and bit by bit of their present lives. In terms of action, catching a Bateau-Mouche on the Seine is as dramatic as things get.
You feel sure you are watching a French film, drawing you in merely by place, time, and dialogue, and you need to keep reminding yourself that it is in fact a most unusual - and impressive - American film that you are watching.
The two characters were very much involved in writing their own dialogue, and this shows vividly in the thoughtful and intelligent conversations where the American man (Ethan Hawke) and the French girl (Julie Delpy) quietly reflect their personal and cultural differences without having them spelled out in capital letters.
This was never going to be a blockbuster, but thank goodness such films can still be made. Maybe it will start a trend in sequels that appear only every nine years.
Elephant (2003)
I don't often get up and leave, but ....
I rarely walk out of a cinema in the middle of a film but `Elephant' was an exception. Endless shots of schoolchildren walking down corridors then talking to - or not talking to - friends, followed by endless shots of the same schoolchildren walking down the same corridor from a different angle finally became too much. Who were these people? What importance did any of this have? Why was I expected to care?
Some months later I found at least a part of the answer. I like to see films without knowing too much about them - I definitely don't want to know what happens in the last third. With `Elephant' I achieved this perfectly. I saw it in France (in English) four months before it opened in Britain so knew absolutely nothing about what it was leading up to, and I realise this may explain in part my overwhelming sense of tedium. My problem was perhaps best summed up later by a UK critic writing to the effect 'As we watch we know what is going to happen to these people. We have always known'. Well, no, actually, I didn't have a clue.
As I say I like to come to a film not knowing the outcome, and to be absorbed from the start into the characters' lives, to share their problems, their surprises, their jokes. `Elephant' does not remotely work on this level.
This would seem to suggest one of two possibilities. Firstly, that it is a poorly made film. The characterisation and plot do not of themselves carry you along, make you identify with people or start to care about what happens to them. It is take-it-or-leave it - disjointed, uninvolving.
Or secondly, it belongs to a class of film where it is expected that the audience have studied up on it beforehand, have listened to the director explaining the meaning, so that they know the outcome, are looking for the nuances, and are able to put the early scenes into an overall context. I suspect that quite a lot of the more critically-cherished art house repertoire actually requires this, but for me this is not the pleasure of going to the pictures. If you need to approach seeing a film in this way, count me out.
In fact, let's be honest, with `Elephant' just count me out anyway.