Que la bête meure (Claude Chabrol, 1969)

With a great deal of unwatched DVD’s on my shelf it becomes harder and harder to choose what I want to watch. It feels great to have so much opportunity right in front of me, while at the same time it gets harder every time to choose what to watch, almost to the point where I don’t watch anything at all. The Chabrol collection I have seems like a mountain impossible to climb, still after watching this I’ve got 10 more films by him. It’s exiting though, and a great treat to be able to be emerged so deep into a director’s canon.

Visual storytelling has so far been Chabrol’s greatest strength, but with Que la bête meure we see a different side of Chabrol. While he had an interesting take on the world and a bit morbid fascination with relationships. Here though he leans less on the visuals, and the centre of the film becomes the mind of the protagonist, who goes through some radical changes and can be questioned by his motives. A car accident kills a young boy, the owner of the car drives away and the father seeks his revenge. It’s a simple revenge premise where he searches for the man who killed his son. As the narrative develops, though, it gets more complicated. There is also a lot we could ask the protagonist, he constantly writes in his diary with a red pen about how he is going to find and kill the person responsible, but in a lot of ways he is quite hesitant to do anything. When he finally discovers the person who did it, he takes an awfully long time to do what he meant to do. One could say he is bidding his time, but I find it more interesting to think that he actually is not able to do it, despite all the hate he has conjured in his mind. I don’t want to go too deep into the story, but safe to say there is a lot to pick up, lots of ways to analyze the protagonist and his actions.

While the film starts off as a mystery, it soon fades into a psychological drama and romance. But that’s okay, I see now why Chabrol is compared to Hitchcock, he implements a lot of the same narrative ideas as Hitchcock. Chabrol is still unique though, he uses his own brand of directing and pacing, and at times the characters in his films are a bit more dark and morbid than those in Hitchcock films. Chabrol seems to be fascinated with the slightly offbeat characters or situations, and through this creates a marvellous tension within the film. While I do like Que la bête meure a lot, I feel that compared to the two previous films I’ve seen by Chabrol it doesn’t hold up as well. What made those two films so great for me was the visual depiction in the film. While there certainly is something of that in here, it’s not as strong or prominent, rather leaning on a fairly simple narrative structure and not strengthening the film with visuals like the two previous films. What the film does do very well though is create tension. Not just thriller tension, but also social tension, some scenes where a family is gathered is wonderful and observational. While the protagonist lets us pose many interesting questions, a couple of the other characters are not as interesting, and at times feel too one-dimensional. I do think though in the case of the antagonist, this was Chabrol’s intension, but I’m not sure exactly why.

Que la bête meure is vintage Chabrol, and although it is lesser of the last films I’ve seen by him, it still holds up as a unique and rich experience. It’s amazing to think of how many good films Chabrol made in such a short period of time, and I’m quite looking forward to digging deeper.

A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger, 1946)

It’s funny how when you delve into cinema there are some areas that you miss, and I’m not talking about some obscure Russian film from the 1930’s, but obvious classics and filmmakers that just go right above your head. The longer you go into the water, the deeper it gets and there is never enough time to see it all. I am sometimes ashamed at how few films I’ve actually seen and the lack of depth in my knowledge on cinema. The Powell and Pressburger duo is very famous and legendary, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that I for the first time heard of them, and decided to the get the Powell & Pressburger box set that contained 11 of their films. The first in line was A Matter of Life and Death, and when I saw the poster for it I immediately remembered it from the 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die book. I was anxious to see what sort of cinema this British duo might have to offer.

Technically speaking, this is one of the films I’ve been the most impressed with. Not in the way, oh say, Star Wars was impressive for its use of special effects, but how inventive and well implemented. The opening scene is fantastic, and the set-pieces are wonderfully created. It just shows you that truly creative and ambitious people are behind the process. But I’ve always stressed narrative over technical stuff, so lets just get down to it. A Matter of Life and Death is a fairly standard boy meets girl story, but has a compelling twist that makes the film truly original and imaginative. The protagonist played by David Niven has barely escaped a flight crash during WW2, and meets an American woman played by Kim Hunter. They fall in love at an instant, fairly classical way. However, shortly into the film it turns out that the protagonist was supposed to die, but because of the heavy fog that day the person from “up there” who was going to get him missed him. Now he has come to reclaim the protagonist, but he refuses, claiming that the time he was given made him fall in love, and now it is unreasonable to take him back. This opens for a very interesting and different story, which constantly raises questions in the audiences head, whether this messenger from “up there” is just a part of the protagonist’s imagination, or if he is real. There is no quite correct answer, and I believe many audiences will be split in two.

A Matter of Life and Death is a good example of how you take a trite old cliché and turn it around and make it wonderful and imaginative. The twist in the plot makes the film all the more memorable for the audience, and seals its place as a classic. But it’s not just the film being original, but the solid script and directing which makes the film very enjoyable to watch. There is quite a bit of hidden and non-hidden humour in there, one of my favourite characters was the French person ordered to bring the protagonist back “up there”. The film is shot in both colour and black & white; earth in colour and “up there” in black and white. This contrast is nice, and it opens up for a bit of interpretation. This is similar to Wim Wender’s Der Himmel Über Berlin (1987), where from the point of view of the angels the world is black and white, but when the angel comes to the world of the living it is in colour. What I felt was important about this was the certain coldness there was to “up there”, almost sterile. “Up there” is also only filmed on a set, so there is a purposeful hard architecture to the place, which makes earth seem all the livelier.

Seeing as I bought a box containing 11 films, I shouldn’t expect too much from the quality of the picture. However, I was a bit let down. For example, in one of the earliest scenes there are to images juxtaposed, one of David Niven and one of Kim Hunter. While the shot of Niven is fine and sharp, the shot of Hunter is quite blurry and unfocused, which I am sure was not the intention of the filmmakers. There is also a scene where the French person who is coming to get the protagonist is arriving on earth. He looks around him on the beautiful colours which are otherwise absent where he lives. This scene should have been beautiful, but the colours on the transfer are all horrible, there is a lot of wrong mixing of colours and the edges of the screen are very burnt out with some ugly orange colour. While the box set was cheap and I probably shouldn’t complain about such an extensive collection, I do feel a bit annoyed when great films don’t get the transfer they deserve. Graininess and not to sharp picture quality are not too bad, which is why black and white films usually get the best transfers, but in my book bad transfer of colour is unforgivable. Just look at the horrible quality of Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1975), the colours should have been so sharp and radiant, but instead they are blurred together and don’t spark that much. In contrast, a great transfer can make brilliant results, like the Cinema Reserve version of The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986), where the colours are absolutely beautiful and crystal clear.

If you are going to check this out, I would recommend you to get a better version than I did. Still, I only spent something above £10 and still have 10 films left to see, so it isn’t too bad. Lately I’ve seen a couple of marvellous films, and this goes right into that category. The narrative is wonderful and imaginative, the cinematography is good (although it could have been better in a better DVD release), and the acting is good, although some of the lesser characters steal the show. The sets and some of the special effects are amazing, not just in a technological sense, but in the artfulness and wonderful execution and implementation of them. Very memorable, one of the best British films I’ve seen.

Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)

I’ve got no great infatuation with zombie films, but I found this in a store for £3 and thought it might be a nice view for a good laugh, and my friend a couple of years ago recommended this to me. Although I had my doubts, parody has become a blighted genre of late, if you are any familiar with contemporary American cinema you will know what I am talking about. But considering this was British, I thought it might be different. And indeed it was.

One of the things that really get to me in parody movies is how way over the top they go. I known, it’s a parody, but it truly borders on the pointless. Shaun of the Dead, however, shows us how a good parody film should be made. It borrows from its inspiration, but at the same time is quite loving to its source. Most American parody films are vile and mock their source, which makes us question what the whole purpose is. It is clear that the filmmakers loved the old zombie films, and make a lot of reference to these films, but also manages to make fun of the clichés and plot holes without mocking them. One thing I found interesting was that this film was clearer shot and looked more professional than one of its sources, Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978). It is usually the other way around, but considering Romero’s original films were fairly low-budget it does make some sense. The effects are good, although quite scarce, at least compared to Dawn of the Dead. Shaun of the Dead is clever in putting a fairly normal romantic comedy plot into the zombie film. Not so cleverly though they used very similar fast paced editing techniques seen in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch (2000). First off, these techniques are superficial and redundant. They do not necessarily add to the narrative, and although they did in Snatch, don’t here. There is quite a bit of good directing though, one of my favourite parts is a long take where the camera pans with the protagonist as he goes to get something from the store. This is repeated twice, the second time after the zombies have started to take over, however the characters actions remain exactly the same.

This is one of the most interesting comedic points the film makes, how most people in the beginning of the film don’t notice the zombies. A scene where two of the main characters see a zombie in their garden, they respond with: “Oh my God. She’s so drunk!” The film makes a point in many ways how some of us are mindless zombies anyway, not to mention the ending, but it is a fairly original idea and is executed well, although a similar idea was done on The Simpsons a couple of years earlier. The most important thing to ask though is if the comedy works. I would say it does, the film is cast well and the comedy is very good. It’s not over the top, but slightly understated. There is a lot of in your face comedy, and quite a bit of subtle hidden comedy bits you won’t necessarily get on the first view. The film also plays well with its genre conventions, and mixing the two really works well. Another thing that separates this from most of the garbage that comes from America is that it’s quite dark for a comedy. There are several parts that aren’t that funny, but quite sad, and some moments make us actually care about the characters, while the American equivalent makes its characters out of tinfoil. I believe fans of zombie films will love this, because it makes gracious references to its sources and heighten the genre.

I was very surprised by this film, and in a good way. I just watched it to have something easy to watch, and while that was right; it turned out to have a lot more potential than I thought. The directing goes from being annoying to very good, but the comedy is rarely left out, and when it is, it’s for something more interesting. Recommended to film viewers in general.

A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)

I never knew what to expect from Cassavetes, all I knew was that he was an independent filmmaker who made several influential films in America, outside of Hollywood. But I had never gotten any pointer towards what sort of style he used as a director, what sort of themes or issues that interested him. All I knew was that he was well recommended, and I had wanted to see some of his films for some time. I loved the two films I had previously seen by him, and was looking forward to watch maybe his most critically praised film, A Woman Under the Influence.

John Cassavetes has a remarkable directing style, and I’ve seen it develop across three films, Shadows (1959), Faces (1968), and this. His style is frenetic, bringing us up-close to characters at intense and dramatic moments. I would use the word “intense” to describe Cassavetes films, because they are true mood-swingers and show us the characters in a wonderfully truthful way. The acting and the way the camera portrays it is raw, stark and direct, catching the actors on screen like you rarely see in cinema. The directing is not stylised, but simple and effective. The way Cassavetes uses the focus to change our attention is fantastic, and greatly adds to the drama on screen. The film in scenes with social gatherings builds up tension steadily, before bursting into audiovisual violence. It is basically a character drama, but perhaps one of the deepest and most complicated I’ve seen. Cassavetes is unafraid of bringing up taboo family issues and pose questions that most wouldn’t want to answer. A marriage is about to fall apart due to the wife’s mental state. She is awkward in social situations, something her temperamental cannot take.

With this pretence Cassavetes builds several scenes and scenarios that all contain fantastic dramatic quality, drawing from the talents of the cast. You will rarely see better acting than in this film; it is good all across the board, but it is supported best by the wife and husband, who are great at portraying their characters in an almost menacing way. The children are a bit stiff, but with this style of acting you could hardly expect anything else. The audience is brought to ask several critical questions of the married couple but also about the rest of the family and friends. We ask; is the wife mentally unstable, or is it the people around here who believe so because of their own prejudice and inadequacies? There are layers of relationships lying around the film, and it is up to the audience to pick them up. We can track down the reasons for characters traits through another character, their background are subtly built into the script and the story. But at the core is Cassavetes directing style, which I am really beginning to love. It is simple, but inclines several complicated layers of depth, and he creates within even the smallest scene a lot of depth. The handheld style lets us come up-close with the characters. Then sometimes, Cassavetes takes a step back and let us take a more critical and distanced view at what is going on.

It is easily said, A Woman Under the Influence is a masterpiece. Cassavetes has taken his directing to a high that impresses me greatly. The acting is superb, but it comes from the unique way Cassavetes directs his performers. The shots are sometimes beautiful, contemplative and violent. And when the film is over you are left with something truly unique.

Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955)

Crime fascinates us, because it operates with other parameters and rules compared to our normal boring everyday lives. There are wise talking men and beautiful women, intrigue and danger. Some of the great Hollywood legends, such as Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Paul Newman literally made their careers playing these types. The genre is interesting because when you put characters in such settings it allows developing themes about morality and friendship. Some of the best and most successful Hollywood classics were noirs, shot in stark black and white and covered with alcohol and cigarettes. I’ve always associated the noir genre with Hollywood, so it was interesting to take a look at this film, a noir made in France.

Rififi as a heist movie deals with fairly common themes and ideas in the genre, such as how the robbers risk anything for the heist, how their foolishness might lead to their demise. What makes Rififi unique from a lot of other similar films is its marvellous directing and characters. A lot of the narrative is somewhat foreseeable, experienced viewers will know when something important is going to happen or any plot twist. But it doesn’t matter, because Rififi is told in such a compelling manner that all these prejudices are left out. Even though a lot of American noirs were quite dark, this is one of the darkest noirs I’ve seen, dwelling deep into greed and evil in people. This is excellently juxtaposed with the more innocent lives of the main characters, like the young father who lives a perfectly normal life with his wife and child. The atmosphere created by the directing works well towards this goal, filming the characters at home slightly mundane, while using much more interesting and intense techniques in scenes that deal with their criminal lives. The process in which they go through to plan their heist is also very well executed, giving us a close look at them work, but it never gets boring or out of hand. The characters themselves are well built, but the best is probably the main character Tony, played by Jean Servais, is very layered; violent but at the same time gentle to his friends.

The best scene is the one that is most famous, and rightly so. The heist itself, executed over thirty minutes screen time with no dialogue or music, just the background sounds. This together with the excellent camera play creates an unyielding tension and atmosphere, I was quite nervous towards the end of the heist. There is more to the film than just the heist, though, and much of the film works out as a dramatic character play. The ending sequence is also riveting, and manages at the end to both question the audience and make a statement. In many ways the film plays out as any of the big noir films of the Hollywood golden era, but it does differ in several ways. While technically not on-par with some of the best Hollywood films, Rififi manages through its simplicity to achieve some truly poignant shots, such as the ending shot, or some of the shots later in the film. Rififi also plays a bit more with the innocent/dark themes than Hollywood films, who at the time tended to just lean towards the one or the other. And that’s what I think Rififi is so remembered for, not just its excellent directing, but its fearlessness.

I thoroughly enjoyed Rififi, its character plot is interesting and layered, the themes are well established and developed, and the directing is spotless, simple and to the point, but works extremely well. It is quite dark, but it suits the themes and the genre. I do love noirs though, and I will look out for more interesting foreign noirs if there are any worth seeing.

Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)

I haven’t seen a Tarkovsky film in quite a few years, but he was one of the first art house directors that I really learnt to love, by watching Zerkalo (1975) something like four years ago. I also in fairly quick succession watched Andrei Rublev (1966) and Stalker (1979). After that though I never got around to watch another Tarkovsky film, although I consider all these three masterpieces. It might also have something to do with people in general being less enthusiastic about his other films, although I rarely hear anything bad about his other films, just not as much hype as the three aforementioned.

Tarkovsky is probably the most interesting director I’ve encountered. His films strike a balance between entering the real and the lucid. They sway effortlessly between dream reality, and are driven by an intangible hypnotic pace. His films also contain some of the most astonishing cinematography in cinema; his colour films contain vibrant images, while his black and white images are dark and have a strange resonance in me. Solaris contain all these things, although perhaps a little less refined than in the other films. There are certainly beautiful moments, and the pace is fantastic. What makes this film interesting in a very different way than his other films though is its mystery. Sure, all his films are mysterious to some degree, but those times it is rather the mystery of something intangible. Here the mystery is specific, the ocean of the planet Solaris. Stalker also had its mystery of the Zone, but in Solaris the mystery is much more apparent, and in many ways more immediate. The atmosphere aboard the station is fantastic, and the mood of tension is there constantly. You feel the uncertain threat of the mysterious ocean; this uncertainty is one of the most important things in the film. The film in true Tarkovsky spirit dwells between the realms of dream and reality, although the lines are clearer cut here than in the other Tarkovsky films, but towards the end the film does allow itself to become somewhat more ambiguous.

The themes in this film are also a bit clearer than in Tarkovsky’s other films, although it is never close to bordering the obvious. It deals with themes such as love, existentialism, family and, perhaps most importantly, mans understanding of the universe and himself. These themes are developed throughout, and Tarkovsky’s usual symbolism makes an appearance, one of my favourite being his fascination with water and nature, which he always manages to convey and look beautiful. There are some scenes that will probably stick in my mind for quite some time, and these scenes are what make Solaris a really great film. However, unlike the other films I’ve seen by him; yes even Zerkalo, the film fell a bit short as a whole. There are some parts that are only mildly interesting, and there is a part which is a bit of a slump, the beginning is really good and sets up the rest of the film, and the ending as well is fantastic. It is hard to put my finger down somewhere specific, but the film lacked a clear-cut line going through the whole film. This was one of the brilliant elements about Zerkalo; while the narrative was disjointed the film felt as a whole due to overlapping themes and a specific idea running throughout the film. Solaris loses its focus somewhere, and is somewhat hurt by it.

This is the film by Tarkovsky that I liked the least, but that’s not saying a whole lot, because I really like this film, and it still stands on its own as a great piece of cinema. It is fascinating, emotionally and psychologically deep, as well as mystic and contemplative. It’s beautifully shot and evokes many feelings in the viewer, and ultimately this being a weaker film compared to the three other films I’ve seen by Tarkovsky shows me again what a great filmmaker Tarkovsky is.

El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)

So after a short spell with Hollywood classics, I decided I needed to get back into the dark and gritty corner of art-house films. You probably know the feeling when there is some cult-classic you’ve heard so much about, but haven’t seen. This was the case with me and El Topo, a “cult-classic” that apparently changed the world and cured two types of cancer. It was directed by a guy called Alejandro Jodorowsky, a guy I mistakenly though directed the highly questionable Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000). And it would have made sense if it was so, because El Topo is also highly questionable.

Ostensibly, the film is a mix of surrealism, western and gore. There is also quite a bit of religious allegory going on. A gun-wielding desperado goes on a hunt in the desert for four gun masters so he can impress his girlfriend, and in the progress of all this he is stricken with guilt about his actions, as he cheats his way through the duels. For lovers of gore this film should be right up your alley, as there is plenty of blood and decapitation. The effects are done well and look proper, but I always come to question a film when there is a huge amount of blood, what is it all for, if for anything. I’m also not sure exactly what the film is trying to say, there is a lot to read in it, but it all seems for naught because of the sometimes hazardous camera-angles and strange techniques. There is something almost juvenile about the directing, but at the same time there is something indefinable that is quite interesting. Is this a film that promotes silliness and gore just for the silliness and gore, or is there something deeper to this film? I know a lot of people do read into this, so I will not throw it off yet, but when watching it I never really felt impressed or in awe. This reminded me of Fellini’s Satyricon (1969), but felt that film was more interesting, although I was slightly baffled by it as well.

I guess the main theme I managed to excavate from this film was about redemption in religious terms. After the character has done his bad deeds, the film takes him to another place where he has to atone for his sins. He is through some events brought to a city isolated in the desert, and this is one of the more interesting parts of the film. The city is wonderfully satirical, ruled by a bunch of elderly ladies who pretend to be respectable but are anything but, and use their slaves for their own entertainment. There is also a wonderful scene in a church where the priest has put a bullet in a gun with six chambers, meaning if you shoot there is a 1/6 chance that you will shoot a bullet, and has the people pass it around and point at their own head and click, only to realize when they are not dead the “greatness” of God. Of course, this bullet is a blank, and wouldn’t have fired anyway, showing in a great way the negligent and superficial religion in the town. If I would say something about Jodorowsky as a filmmaker, I would say he is a very physical director. He is constantly interested in shapes, particularly of the human body, the cast and extras all have very strange and unusual bodies and faces. There is one interesting scene, where two men are tied together; one has no legs, the other has no arms. It is a very interesting image, and together with a lot of similar physicality’s remain some of the more interesting aspects of this film.

I did not care too much for this film, I have to say. There is a lot of interesting individual observations and a certain atmosphere throughout the film, but for me it became too childish at times. I know I mentioned I appreciated the silliness in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but I cannot say the same for this. Together with all the blood it does seems to take too much away from the film itself as a whole and I felt this undermined the themes and some of the other wonderful observations and scenes. Interesting, but not thoroughly noteworthy.