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Trader Horn (1931)
Great documentary, lame drama
Avoid this movie if you're the kind of person who likes to impose values of the 2020s on characters from history. It is politically incorrect in the extreme, slavishly expounding every cultural stereotype about Africa ands its aboriginal peoples. However, if you want to see great footage of what Africa, its native people and its wildlife were like in 1930, before civilization and its depredations were very far advanced, then this really is a time travel film. Charging rhinos, herds of elephants, untamed rivers - very cool. Of course, it also has a dumb plot with bad acting, but you already knew that - it's a Hollywood blockbuster (Academy Award "Best Picture" nominee, too).
The High Command (1937)
The virtues of bad movies
This new DVD was in a bargain bin for 50 cents, and is likely only available (in a poor transfer with bad sound) because it provides an vehicle for a very young James Mason. It has the feel of a movie that would have been given to promising young director, along with a trifling budget and an unrealistic shooting schedule. Props seem to have been borrowed from earlier films, much of it is shot on the back lot, and most was probably the first take. The script was a bit too bookish and wasn't revised as needed; consequently the plot turns heavily on some rather minor points that are not given the necessary emphasis, result being that it takes close attention to figure out that the plot actually does make sense and the story is, in principle, quite promising, although weak direction and acting beat it down, with the editor delivering the coup de grace. Yet in these many flaws lies the film's strength: you can see all of the ways in which this is an amateurish production, and in so doing, you can see what they should have done to get it right. In other words, this film tells you a lot about how to make pictures right by showing you how to make them wrong. It shows you a journeyman's picture out of the heyday of the studio era, and in that sense is historically interesting; and finally, if you see the struggles of cast and crew objectively, you can sympathize with them; they started off with a decent script and good intentions, but were defeated by inexperience, limited resources and too little time. Thus this film works, accidentally, as a movie about making movies.
The Unforgiven (1960)
A Tale of Accidental Antiheroes
In many respects "The Unforgiven" is a dreadfully stereotypical 1950's western. Forty Indians attack, hundreds are killed, and forty ride off (sadly, this would have represented most of the able-bodied warriors in the Kiowa tribe at the time this film is supposed to have occurred). Most seem to be played by Italians. Values are again stereotypical, but the film has aged in a rather unusual way: the lead characters, who were written and directed to be sympathetic and largely admirable people, are changed in the light of modern values into the role of antiheroes. Lillian Gish, here recast in her "Night of The Hunter" role of a shotgun-toting grandma, has hidden a dark secret, allowed innocents to die in her efforts to preserve it, and won't reveal it even to her daughter until impelled by her entire family. It is a lie that poisons her life and that of her family for years. She is cast as virtuous for keeping that secret, but clearly, she would have had a better hope of happiness if she had not kept the lie. Burt Lancaster here reprises Gregory Peck's role of a strong but obsessed cowhand in "Duel in the Sun" (a film that also starred Lillian Gish, with a role for Walter Huston), this time with his obsession focused on Audrey Hepburn but bottled up even tighter. His madness and his moral vacancy is revealed when he threatens to kill men for saying something that he knows may be both true and important, and still more when he kills an Indian under a flag of truce because he would rather die with Audrey than surrender her to her birth family. Audrey, finally, surrenders her nobility when she starts to kill her family, starting with attacking warriors and ending with her own brother, who has braved death several times just to meet her, and has never raised a hand against her. He, the only heroic character in the film, never speaks to her. I could go on to discuss the gaping character flaws in some other characters - played by Audie Murphy and Charles Bickford - or the sparks of nobility seen in the tortured villain Kelsey, played by the early television star Joseph Wiseman - but the pattern is clear; Huston, aided by the passage of time and the recasting of social values, has turned virtue and vice around in this film until the stars are all antiheroes.
Long Way Round (2004)
The strangest motorcycle movie
Imagine that you love riding motorcycles and are also fabulously rich. You decide to ride around the world by a sort-of northern route. How to approach the problem? Why, buy huge quantities of costly goodies, pile it onto two suffering behemoth bikes, and hire two SUVs full of camera gear to follow you all the way and take pictures. In other words, do it just the way a couple of wealthy but saucy young British men would have done it a couple hundred years ago, using the fruits of technology wrought since then. The result, after the proper investment in editing, is pure entertainment, and works beautifully when taken as such. Ewan and Charlie float across Eurasia in a haze of movie star glamour. Everywhere they stop, people gather to take pictures, seek autographs, host the best party. The ideal, the execution, and the telling of the story are all frankly surreal. The landscape fills it out with the infinite space of Genghis Khan's homeland. The abiding image... a motorcycle, mired to the seat in mud.
In Search of the Bowhead Whale (1974)
Moving and insightful documentary on a rare arctic creature
The bowhead whale, along with the right and sperm whales, was one of three whales hunted by the old square-rigger whalers. They hunted them to economic extinction - one year they came home without finding a single whale, and that was it. A few survived, but in 1974, when this film was made, hundreds of whales (of many species) were still being killed every year by factory ships. This film contains archival footage of whale being killed by hand-thrown harpoons, by turret-mounted harpoon guns, and by modern native people. Such footage is rare in these sensitive days, but it is profoundly moving. This historical treatment takes up about a quarter of this 49.5 minute film. The remainder consists of documenting an expedition to the slowly melting spring pack ice in the Bering Sea, where a helicopter, a ground team, and a dive team collect remarkable films of these whales and their companions, the beluga whales, in their native surroundings. The film was shot by Bill Mason, legendary canoeist and one of Canada's great documentary film makers.
Grey Owl (1999)
Description of the film, with thoughts on the real Grey Owl.
This docu-drama is what you would expect from Richard Attenborough, the man who gave us "Gandhi": beautifully photographed, compellingly casted, well written in the measured, literate manner that Hollywood discarded in the 30's, and scrupulously accurate. It stands out as a genre film, excelling in its portrayal of native American (or, more appropriately for its Canadian setting, "First Nations") culture and standing with "Black Robe" as a wonderfully photographed piece of Canoe Country and its culture (here, circa 1934). This idyllic portrait derives drama from its subject: Archie "Grey Owl" Belaney, a Scot raised in Hastings (England) by maiden aunts who became so obsessed with the "red indian" tales of his childhood that he went to Canada, disappeared into the woods, and became a trapper and adopted son of an Ojibway band. He was a vain man with a habit of marrying and abandoning
Indian brides, none of whom seem to have thought less of him for it, for he was also an extraordinarily charming and picaresque character. One of his wives (one smarter than he, by most accounts) propelled him into fame as a writer and early advocate for protecting the wild country of the North, and this forms the focus of Attenborough's tale. The chemistry between Brosnan and Annie Galipeau (as Grey Owl's wife Pony) is engaging and, if not firey, is nonetheless quite touching. A good film when you need some time from the madding crowd.
The Battle of the Sexes (1928)
Review comments
This late (1928) silent from D.W. Griffith includes much of what we expect from the man: a highly moral tale, the action centered around a nuclear family, little humor but used effectively, careful plotting, and direction that elicits excellent acting with fine nuances of mood. It is actually considerably less preachy than Griffith's epic works (Intolerance, etc.), and despite the grandiose title, the story is simple: A golddigger and her beau set their sights on a rich man, happily married with two teenage children. The blonde vamp gets her prey, successfully enticing him from his family and driving his wife into a suicidal depression, but his canny daughter manages to rescue the situation. As with most fine movies, the story, though simple, is very well told. Some splendid insights into 1920s American mores and popular culture round out the package. Newly (2001) released on VHS by Kino.
Lady Macbeth von Mzensk (1992)
Brief description
This is an oddity of sorts. I believe that the performance, featuring Rostropovich directing the London Philharmonic, preceded the film. The film was then made in eastern Europe with a cast lip-synching the performance. The film is lightly pornographic, with male and female frontal nudity and several fairly athletic sex scenes. On its own this would be a titillating, mildly interesting drama about the wanton and rather stupid wife of a rich merchant. With the music and setting of Shostakovich's opera, it stands as a highly unusual opera film. The musical performances, by the way, are acceptable -- I hesitate to say "inspired," but there are not many examples of this opera in the catalog, and (at this writing) no others on DVD.
The House of Darkness (1913)
Brief description of content
Like many of Griffith's Biograph shorts, this one-reel drama addresses a social problem: mental illness. In an asylum, one patient is prone to fits of violence, and the tension heightens when he gets his hands on a pistol. However, he is soothed by piano music and indeed the music is so wonderfully effective that before long he is entirely cured of his madness. The notion was probably less simplistic in 1913 than it is today; Griffith's moral (all of the Biograph shorts seem to have a moral) is simply that mental illness should be treated, like any disease, with observation, testing, and compassionate treatment.
The Female of the Species (1912)
Short content description, significance in film history.
As with most of Griffith's Biograph one-reelers, this film is melodramatic and moralistic. It tells the story of three women and a man marooned in the desert, trying to walk out. The man dies; acrimony between his wife and one of the women ensues; they find an orphaned indian baby and are reconciled by their mutual devotion to the maternal virtues. This is standard Griffith fare. The film is exceptional, though, for the quality of photography and composition. The clearly-drawn characters, and the emotional intensity revealed by the use of close-ups, looks forward to Griffith's use of these techniques in "Birth of a Nation" three years later.