Damsels in Distress (2012)

Damsels in Distress (2012), directed by Whit Stillman, 4 stars

Be prepared to leave reality behind when you enter the world of Seven Oaks College.  Like the fog-bound characters of “Brigadoon,” students enrolled there give off a familiar scent (and some also have an overdeveloped sense of smell to go with it), but there’s scarcely a whiff of reality about them.  They range from smarter than smart to dumber than dirt, especially the residents of DU, one of the many campus fraternities that use the Roman rather than the Greek alphabet to identify their organization.  They’re all as delightfully eccentric a collection of characters as has ever been assembled in an institution—at least one of higher learning.  Greta Gerwig as Violet together with her floral band (Heather, Rose and Lilly) are involved extracurricularly in saving fellow students from suicide or worse—leaping from the second story of an academic building and simply seriously hurting themselves.  They do this with a dash of psychoanalysis and a serving of donuts, and they are actually very good at what they do.  Their advice may not always be the best, but it comes from the best of intentions.  And, besides, nobody dies.  Greta is also interested in starting a dance craze, the Sambola, but in this she is not nearly so successful.  Nor does she do as well as she would like in her relationships with men, which are inspired by her desire to elevate the most inferior of the species to more exalted status.  As they stroll about the campus, which they only seem to do at dusk, the distressed damsels emit an angelic, golden glow.   During their magic hour meanderings, Violet and friends maintain their focus on the positive changes they are attempting to make.  The film is less of a narrative than a sequence of somewhat related vignettes that follow both their perils and progress.

I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler to reveal that the film’s denouement features a dance sequence to the lovely and much under-appreciated Gershwin tune, “Things Are Looking Up.”  I suppose IMDB might file this under trivia, but (I think) it’s worth pointing out that this song originated in a classic 1937 Fred Astaire film, the most singular “A Damsel in Distress.” Clearly writer/director Whit Stillman knows his RKO musicals, and he has created an equally contrived yet clever screenplay, at least in some small part as an homage to the original.  (On a related note, there’s also a particularly bad tap dancer who has adopted the name, Freak Astaire.)  And like "Brigadoon," another musical which I mentioned earlier, I can easily fantasize reentering this world 100 years in the future and be just as enchanted by it as I was this time.

Rango (2011)

Rango (2011), directed by Gore Verbinski, 4 stars

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

-- Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces

As complacent as any character at the start of a Hitchcock film, our protagonist, an excessively histrionic, windmill-tilting lizard undergoing a major identity crisis, realizes that what is lacking in his undeveloped life is conflict arising out of an unexpected turn of events.  Immediately, this missing piece presents itself.  An oncoming truck causes the car in which he is being conveyed to swerve suddenly, ejecting him and his idyllic aquarium from the vehicle.  To the melody of “Ave Maria” he rises In slow motion, only to fall with a crash and slide on a piece of glass until finally coming to a rest on the blacktop.  His umbrella bursts into flames and the water in the aquarium evaporates immediately under the scorching heat of the sun.  He is alone.  The adventure begins.

I was not expecting to like “Rango” nearly as much as I did.  I saw trailers for the film at the time of its theatrical release and, despite the presence of Johnny Depp, the whole thing looked pretty silly and self-indulgent to me. Well, I was wrong, at least in part.  The film is indeed silly, but it's also very smart. Johnny Depp’s acting has always been of the highest caliber, and he has once again put his heart and soul into the character of “Rango.”  Visual consultant, Roger Deakins, known best (at least to me) for his long association with the Coen Brothers, no doubt contributed to the film’s rich texture and lighting, as he did earlier on “How to Tame Your Dragon.”  The dialogue and accompanying soundtrack are witty and draw shamelessly and with true affection from earlier Westerns (“High Noon” the films of Sergio Leone spring immediately to mind) and other genres.  (There are inspired homages to such films as “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “Star Wars,” and “Apocalypse Now” just to name a few.)  A gloom and doom Greek chorus of mariachi performers composed of four owls attempt to but never quite accurately anticipate Rango’s fate.  However, a Sancho Panza-like armadillo gets it right.  We are nothing without enlightenment, he tells Rango, who is too angry at the time to pay heed to the armadillo’s aphorism.  It takes a while, but Rango eventually comes around.


The folks at Industrial Light and Magic together with seasoned director Gore Verbinski ("Pirates of the Carribean") have produced a real treat: lots of good clean (and, yes, very silly) fun for the kids and a refreshingly clever screenplay for adults.  Both a hit and a myth!

The False Magistrate (1914)

The False Magistrate (1914), directed by Louis Feuillade, 3 stars

 “The False Magistrate” is the fifth and final film in Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas series, but as [possible spoiler] the criminal mastermind makes his by now anticipated escape at the end, one may well wonder whether or not the filmmaker really intended this to be the elusive villain’s last screen appearance.

The film begins with a prologue during which a financial transaction goes terribly wrong.  The Marquis de Tergall’s current financial difficulties necessitate that he sell his wife’s jewelry.  The Marquis expects a cash transaction, but the buyer brings a check instead.  The buyer agrees to be locked inside a hotel room with the jewels while the Marquis leaves to cash the check.  When the Marquis returns, the buyer opens the bureau where the jewels should be, and, voila, they’re gone.  When the police arrive, they move the bureau and discover a hole in the wall leading to the adjoining room.

Meanwhile, Fantômas is serving a life sentence in a Belgian prison (which looks remarkably like the French prison where he and others did time in earlier films).  His arch rival, Inspector Juve, is not happy about this.  Not only is he chagrined by the fact that the Belgian police have done between films what he hasn’t been able to accomplish in the preceding four, he wants Fantômas executed, not merely imprisoned.  To address both his humiliation and his sense of justice, Juve devises an unusual plan to help Fantômas escape.  The plan works, but once set free, Fantômas quickly eludes the French police who are tailing him.  Soon after, he has a chance encounter with a man in a boxcar.  Fantômas kills him, rummages through his wallet, and learns that the man is a magistrate.  More mayhem and dastardly deeds follow as the master of disguise assumes the identity of the dead man (hence, the film’s title), with no one, including those who knew the man, any the wiser.

I include more narrative elements here than I typically do to emphasize once again the motifs that recur throughout Fantômas series.  The plots defy logic and stretch probability to the limit.  Who could have predicted that the buyer of the Marquis’ jewels would bring a check or store the jewels in the bureau, much less at the exact spot the hole had already been punched through?  What are the odds that Fantômas would encounter a magistrate in a boxcar and, stealing his identity, be able to pass for him even among those who knew the man?  In the world of Fantômas, these things just happen; the whys and wherefores are irrelevant.

Unlike the other films, this is the only one in the series that focuses almost exclusively on Fantômas.  I don't think this works very well.  Fantômas needs a nemesis.  Without Juve or Fandor or someone in hot pursuit, there is no sense of danger; no wondering whether what Fantômas has planned will come to pass.  With no one to pit his wits against, his actions are almost effortless.  No one challenges him.  Although he is quite capable of killing, most of what Fantômas is able to achieve occurs merely by the force of his personality.  Seasoned criminals bear their souls to him.  Aristocratic women tremble in his presence.

The most noteworthy aspect of this film is its bell-tower sequence, which struck me as so remarkable that I feel compelled to describe it shot by shot.  For a few minutes, it actually feels as if we’re watching footage produced by a completely different filmmaker for a completely different film.  The jewels stolen in the film’s prologue are hidden in a bell, a good 20 feet above the highest floor in a church steeple.  The platform extends only to about a third of the horizontal space.  Below the bell, there is no flooring. While Fantômas tilts the bell and holds it at an angle, his accomplice lifts a long ladder precariously onto a small crate.  The top of the ladder extends into the inner body of the bell.  At first, the two men appear in a medium long shot working together with rope and ladder.  Next, we see the full view in an extreme longshot.  The two sides of the screen are black, and in the middle third of the frame, the two men now appear almost as miniature figures at the bottom left.  High above them, we can now see the bell, which is canted toward them with the top of the ladder being maneuvered carefully until it rests within the inner lip of the bell.

The camera remains there as Fantômas’ accomplice begins his climb.  It then cuts back to a long shot of the man climbing.  As he ascends, the camera ascends with him on an unseen elevator, rising until the man’s upper body disappears into the bell.  This is truly a marvelous shot, and it underscores the precariousness inherent in the climb. The camera then cuts back to the framed extreme long shot showing a very small Fantômas holding the rope and ladder at the lower left corner of the frame and his accomplice at the top of the frame standing on the ladder with only his lower body visible.  This stunt is for real.  The camera cuts once more to a long shot of the man in the bell, this time extracting the jewel case and dropping it on the platform.  

In the final shot, once again from an extreme distance, Fantômas picks up the jewel case and lets the ladder fall, leaving the man’s legs dangling from the bell and the man (we imagine) holding on for dear life to the clapper.  (A little later, we actually see him doing this in a medium, extreme low-angle shot in which he is very plainly wearing a safety harness.)  This is the best directed, best edited, and most exciting sequence in the entire series.


Unfortunately, several sequences in "The False Magistrate" are lost—at least at present.  The version I saw of the film is from “Fantômas, The Complete Saga,” a three-DVD set distributed by Kino, which does a reasonable job of making up for the gaps by using newly inserted intertitles to summarize the missing footage.


Now that I’ve seen all of the Fantômas films in the series, I’m actually a bit sad that I have no more to look forward to.  I guess I liked them better than I thought.  The good news is that there are two commentary tracks by David Kalat on the DVD set that I haven’t listened to yet.  I can still look forward to them.  Also, I just stumbled across the Fantômas Lives site as well as David Bordwell’s appreciation of the series.  And, of course, there are still 30 plus  Fantômas novels by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain to read.

The Last Laugh, 1924

The Last Laugh, 1924, directed by F. W. Murnau, 4.5 stars

Murnau’s “The Last Laugh” is considered by many to be the very model of a major silent film, perhaps, the greatest ever made. It is certainly a superb example of a completely silent film, by which I mean, there are absolutely no intertitle dialogue cards.  In fact, there is only one intertitle in the entire film, which, because it announces the final act (or, more accurately, perhaps, the epilogue), is particularly jarring--not only because of its apparently self-conscious insertion, but also because of the ensuing, unlikely events it purports to explain away.

Emil Jannings stars as an elderly and over-sized hotel doorman who, unbeknownst to him, is seen by a manager taking a momentary, unscheduled break away from his post.  When he arrives at work the next day, he is surprised to see a younger and fitter individual manning the door.  Conducted into a manager's office, he is handed a letter informing him that he has been transferred to the hotel washroom, and he is then ordered to remove and return his doorman's uniform.  Stunned and humiliated by this seemingly inexplicable turn of events, he is literally unable to move, and a fellow hotelier must doff the uniform for him.  Unable to face his friends and family, he steals his uniform before leaving the hotel, wearing it proudly one last time at an all-night gala wedding reception in honor of his niece.  Of course, the ruse cannot last.  The next day he is found out, at which point his unrelenting downward spiral begins in earnest.

Murnau and his gifted cinematographer, Karl Freund, are able to capture the full range of emotions experienced by the doorman through the use of unusual angles, point-of-view shots (including hand-held camerawork), filters, lighting, and claustrophobic set design.  The camera glides effortlessly through doors and windows, up and down stairs, and through city streets and hotel corridors.  Like the doorman, most things in his world appear larger than life.  Characters glare, glower, gasp, gape, or grin.  Their gestures are grand and absolutely unambiguous; seldom does anyone move their lips to speak.  The exaggerated aspects of the film are absolutely appropriate.  They reflect (sometimes in mirrors) the overblown self-image of the main character, so pompously self-absorbed when clad in his hotel finery, and so woefully self-obsessed as he steadily descends into total despair.  This film is cinema at its purest, and the high quality of the preserved print contributes to making it a pure pleasure to watch as well.

The Penalty (1920)

The Penalty (1920), directed by Wallace Worsley, 3 stars

“Long before there was Jigsaw there was Dr. Ferris.”  Alright, though that might make a good tag line for “The Penalty,” better certainly than any of the ones listed on IMDB, it is a bit misleading.  Yes, Dr. Ferris, whose malpractical surgery sets “The Penalty” in motion, does precede the villain from “Saw” by 80 plus years.  And yes, limb removal plays a pivotal plot point.  But that’s really it.  Dr. Ferris, a freshly-minted sawbones, faces his first serious case; he must save the life of the young victim of a traffic accident.  He couldn’t possibly have known that his bias for action would “mangle the poor child for life” and lead to the legless lad growing up to become a king of the underworld—not to mention a megalomaniacal anarchist (shades of Fantômas).

Twenty seven years later, Lon Chaney as Blizzard reigns supreme in San Francisco’s notorious red light district dubbed the Barbary Coast.  His henchman are everywhere, and they keep him informed of everything of import, including the whereabouts of the now revered Dr. Ferris and his lovely daughter, Barbara, a budding artist.  Blizzard learns that she is advertising for someone to model for her sculpture of Satan.  To ensure that he is chosen, he orders his thugs to drive away all other contenders.  Having done this, he now has easy access to the most precious possession of the man on whom he has been seeking revenge for nearly 30 years.

Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces, came into his own in this film with his portrayal of Blizzard, a character crippled both in body and in mind.  Chaney's ability to effortlessly maneuver with his crutches and swing himself up a ladder and down a pole using only his arms is truly astonishing.  These feats are further enhanced through the ingenious and apparently very painful use of an apparatus Chaney designed and then wore to complete the picture.  He darts about on his knees, the lower part of his legs wrapped tightly behind him and hidden under a long coat.  The result is an absolutely convincing portrayal of a man with two missing lower limbs.

“The Penalty” also has a few moments that prefigure two of Chaney’s later and better known films: “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Phantom of the Opera.”  All three feature women who are sympathetic despite the deformity of Chaney's character ([mild spoiler alert] though only in “The Penalty” does the guy get the girl).  In addition, like the Phantom, Blizzard is at his best when he’s tickling the ivories, and like the Hunchback, he’s extremely energetic and agile—almost graceful—despite significant physical handicaps.

Even though I've only seen a handful of his films, I consider myself a big Lon Chaney fan, and I wholeheartedly recommend "The Penalty" to anyone who is unfamiliar with his work or has only seen his more popular films.  It's available on DVD from Kino and for free from the Internet Archive (though not the greatest print).

Rio Rita (1929)

Rio Rita (1929), directed by Luther Reed, 3 stars

A mysterious bank robber known as “The Kinkajou” has been robbing banks along the Mexican border.  Captain Jim Stewart of the Texas Rangers, masquerading in faux Mexican sartorial splendor, arrives in secret with orders to bring the criminal to justice.  Another recent arrival is Chick Bean, accompanied by his lawyer, who has come for a very different purpose:  to obtain a Mexican divorce.  Mayhem ensues with musical accompaniment and justice is finally served in the end.

If you’ve ever seen the 1929 version of “Rio Rita,” you’d probably never guess that it was a huge hit, RKO’s biggest according to Wikipedia until “King Kong” came along four years later.  Of course, it was also one of newcomer RKO’s very first and most expensive films, so it had very little competition.  By modern standards, the film would certainly strike most viewers as static and stilted, but not pre-depression audiences.  The recent addition of sound technology was irresistible, and the public flocked to movie houses to experience the novelty of actors talking and singing.  If films like this were for all practical purposes merely Broadway productions restaged for the camera, that alone was more than enough to attract audiences that would otherwise never set foot on the Great White Way.  Similarly, “Rio Rita” provides audiences of today a window into what Broadway musicals looked and sounded like in the 1920s.

This is fine for historians, social scientists, and aficionados, but why should the rest of us watch this film?  Well, like everything else, I guess that depends.  For me, another draw was the fact that it features the first screen pairing of two under-appreciated comic performers, Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, who made ultimately more than 20 films together for RKO between 1929 and 1937.  Often remembered incorrectly as a vaudeville team turned film duo, they were actually cast independently and performed for the first time together in the Ziegfeld-produced Broadway production of “Rio Rita” two years earlier.  Wheeler and Woolsey were the only members of the original cast brought to Hollywood to reproduce their roles on film.  Other members of the film's cast include John Boles (“Frankenstein”), Bebe Daniels (“42^nd Street), and Dorothy Lee, Wheeler’s love interest in this and nearly all of the pair’s subsequent films.

I was also drawn to the film because I knew that the final act was shot in two-strip Technicolor.  After seeing Wheeler and Woolsey in all of their other feature films exclusively in black and white, the prospect of seeing them perform in color was too enticing to pass up.

Finally, I’ve always wanted to screen the film because, up until recently, it was nearly impossible to see.  MGM remade "Rio Rita" in 1942 with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and when they did, they pulled the original print from circulation.  (They would do  the same thing a year later with "Girl Crazy" (1932), another RKO feature starring Wheeler and Woolsey.)  Things that are scarce are perceived to have value--in some cases more than they deserve.  "Rio Rita" may not be the lost treasure I hoped it would be, but despite its faults, I enjoyed it for what it is (or was).  And we should all be glad that contemporary audiences did as well.  If it weren't for the money they shelled out for tickets, the fledgling RKO studio may never have gone on to produce and distribute so many certified cinematic masterpieces (including "Citizen Kane").  Who would have thought we'd have Wheeler and Woolsey to thank for that?

The Shooting (1966)

The Shooting (1966), directed by Monte Hellman, 3 stars

I’ve most often heard the expression “they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore” applied to classic Hollywood films, by which I mean, studio pictures featuring the likes of John Wayne or Humphrey Bogart or Marilyn Monroe, etc.  Well, they don’t make films like  this one either.  The disaffection of the late 60s and early 70s took cinema in a different direction.  Things could go well for the hero right up until the end and then, wham, a bad thing happens, there's a brief pause or fade out, and the credits start to roll.  Characters are either propelled or proceed aimlessly from scene to scene with little if any motivation beyond a fatalistic submission to whatever comes next.  In “The Shooting,” what lies at the end of the trail seems less important than the journey itself.

Bounty hunter turned prospector, Willett Gashade (Warren Oates), leaves behind a trail of flour as he makes his way to the site of a mine where he expects to meet up with his brother.  When he gets there, he finds a recently dug grave, a young and very skittish, Coley Boyard (Will Hutchison), and no sign of his brother.  Apparently, the dead man was shot from a distance so Boyard didn’t see the killer.

Soon after, a disheveled young woman (Millie Perkins) wanders into camp and offers to pay Gashade to act as her guide and take her to a nearby town.  Although she never identifies herself or gives an explanation for being so far away from civilization on her own, Gashade agrees, and Boyard eagerly tags along. On the way, but close to camp, they discover that she has shot her horse, even though all signs point to it having been hale and healthy at the time.  As they proceed along the trail, she inexplicably shoots her pistol at random.  The sound turns out to be a signal to gunfighter, Billy Spear (Jack Nicholson), whom she apparently has also hired to accompany her on the journey and has been hanging back for reasons unknown.

This no-account narrative quality permeates the film, infecting all of the characters to some degree with a clear case of existential angst.  Young Coley, the film’s most sensitive character, displays the most pronounced symptoms:  nervous and jerky behavior combined with an incessant compulsion to blather.  But Coley is not the only one so afflicted.  The woman descends to near hysteria on several occasions when obstacles present themselves or the trail runs cold.  Gashade doggedly pushes himself on despite the heat, the deteriorating condition of the horses, and the group's lack of water.  And Billy Spear is obsessed with showing his facility with a gun, whether that means shooting a friend or a foe.  The film turns into a hunt for a mysterious character who is always several steps ahead of his pursuers, a very loosely fashioned action-oriented version of “Waiting for Godot,” except that instead of waiting, these characters are absolutely determined to track and hunt him down.

I don’t profess to understand the film, though I think it was designed more to be experienced than understood.  Like its dissonant, jazz-tinctured score, the film does not resolve, so if you like your Westerns served up more traditionally, this cut is not for you.  However, if you’re okay with the possibility of confusion at the conclusion, then there's a good chance you’ll find this film more to your tastes.