Video of the Day 2: Silent Star Wars
12/26/2006 5:00:00 PM
A total one-joke premise, but surprisingly well done.
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Forgotten Films: SHOCKPROOF (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1949)
12/26/2006 3:40:00 PM
The reputations of both Douglas Sirk and Samuel Fuller are secure among today’s more serious film buffs -- and even among some not-so-serious ones, thanks to high-profile homages from the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Todd Haynes. So it’s a bit of a surprise that 1949’s frazzled noir Shockproof, directed by Sirk from a screenplay co-written by Fuller, is so little known. Granted, it doesn’t qualify as the kind of colorful “woman’s picture” Sirk would later become known for (Imitation of Life, All That Heaven Allows), nor does it quite qualify as one of the zonked-out, surreal crime thrillers and war pictures (Shock Corridor, The Big Red One) Fuller would eventually ride to immortality.
No, compared to the florid, sublime expressiveness of Sirk and Fuller’s later work, Shockproof is a relatively subdued film. But it’s also an object of genuine wonder – in which Fuller’s characteristically uncompromising, extreme plotting is given shape and conviction by Sirk’s sophisticated mise-en-scene. The film begins with a pair of women’s legs, clad in ratty black stockings and shoes, walking amongst the clean, dapper shoes of a mid-day crowd on Hollywood Blvd. A brunette walks into a hair salon and gets her hair dyed blonde. We quickly learn that we’re watching Jenny Marsh (Patricia Knight), a beautiful, recent parolee who has just done time for murder. Her parole officer, the tough-as-nails Griff Marat (Cornel Wilde, embodying a typical Fuller character with a typical Fuller name), tells her, in a classic hard-boiled exchange, that she has to change her ways: ”You gotta change your brand of men.” “Who picks them for me, you?” “You won’t have any problem making friends. Just make sure they’re friends this time.”
Trouble is, Jenny still adores Harry Wesson (John Baragrey), a slick, suspicious gambler whose love was what got her in trouble in the first place. Griff warns both Jenny and Harry to stay away from one another. The lovebirds, however, will not be stopped; they begin to meet surreptitiously. Meanwhile, Griff tries desperately to reform Jenny, eventually getting her a job taking care of his own blind mother. Sure enough, the straight-arrow parole officer also begins to fall in love with Jenny, making advances the lovely ex-con doesn’t quite know how to accept. Teased into domesticity, Jenny feels the lure of the honest life, even as Harry plots with her to continue her unintended seduction of Griff.
 | | Samuel Fuller |
The complexity of the male-female dynamic in Griff and Jenny’s life is refreshingly unpredictable and pronounced. While Griff presents a tough exterior, as he falls more and more in love with Jenny he becomes a figure not of romance, but of compromised masculinity: In one bizarre scene, he shrieks and grabs her hand during a movie. Acting in bizarre, volatile ways, Griff is no Clark Gable; he’s an increasingly desperate, lovesick man. Jenny reduces him to a surprisingly raw, open state, even as her character remains harder for us to decipher.
While the narrative’s broad strokes feature all the moral certitude of 40’s American filmmaking, the film’s particulars can’t help but toy with our allegiances and emotions. Duplicity is rampant on both sides of the law here: To scare Jenny, Griff at one point sends her to a doctor, secretly a psychologist whose job is to judge whether she’s a habitual criminal or not. (Jenny sees through the ruse.) Likewise, even though Harry has all the oily charm of a classic noir snake, it turns out he actually does love Jenny; his office is dominated by a giant portrait of her. This blurring of boundaries reaches its zenith when Jenny’s gradual attraction to Griff and his upstanding life winds up reducing Griff to something of a criminal himself. The last act of the film finds Jenny and Griff on the run from the lawful society to which they had tried desperately to belong.
The byzantine web of manipulation featured in Shockproof sometimes feels like a test-run for the networks of desire Sirk would establish in later films like Written on the Wind and The Tarnished Angels, where one character’s love for another would often spur that object to covet another. The mise-en-scene here feels familiar, too: As Griff and Jenny’s story becomes more desperate, the compositions become increasingly unbalanced and unreal. One of the film’s later scenes is dominated by a giant oilrig, churning away in the background like some unthinking, all-powerful machine, ready to chew our heroes to pieces.
I don't think either Sirk or Fuller initially thought much of this film; the director once referred to it as his "silly Columbia movie," and Fuller was reportedly unhappy with changes to his script. But to dismiss it is to sell it way, way short. Indeed, one could say that as Shockproof proceeds, the film’s two auteurs find their concerns coalescing perfectly: Sirk works his favorite theme of an individual collapsing under the stern eye and expectations of the society around them, while Fuller’s script follows an outlaw character trying anxiously to break free of the past (”That heater. It’s all corroded. Once corrosion starts with those things, eh, it’s finished.”)
 | | Douglas Sirk |
Shockproof is very hard to find these days – it’s certainly not available on DVD and rarely screens on TV or in retros -- but there’s some good news if you’re in New York. This Friday, December 29th, at 7 pm, the Pioneer Theater will be screening a beautiful, pristine print of the film. And in late January, the same theater will give Shockproof – which appears to have never gotten a proper release in New York – a full week-long run. It’s a chance to see this rare, fascinating beast under ideal conditions. Don’t miss it.
--Bilge Ebiri
Previous Forgotten Films Columns:
- December 11, 2006 -- THE DION BROTHERS (aka The Gravy Train) (dir. Jack Starrett, 1974)
- November 28, 2006 -- RACHEL, RACHEL (dir. Paul Newman, 1968)
- November 15, 2006 -- LEO THE LAST (dir. John Boorman, 1970)
- October 30, 2006 -- 7 WOMEN (dir. John Ford, 1966)
- October 16, 2006 -- REIGN OF TERROR (aka The Black Book) (dir. Anthony Mann, 1949)
- October 3, 2006 -- MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON (dir. Bob Rafelson, 1989)
- August 18, 2006 -- LUNA (dir. Bernardo Bertolucci, 1979)
- August 28, 2006 -- OUR MOTHER’S HOUSE (dir. Jack Clayton, 1967)
- August 14, 2006 -- THE CHOCOLATE WAR (dir. Keith Gordon, 1988)
- July 31, 2006 -- THE STRANGER (dir. Luchino Visconti, 1967)
- July 17, 2006 -- WALKER (dir. Alex Cox, 1987)
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When Bad News Happens To Good People: Van Sant, McGregor, Huffman
12/26/2006 3:00:00 PM
- Gus Van Sant was arrested for DUI. In drunken post-arrest rampage, he blamed the straights for starting all the wars in the world. And for once, everyone agreed the drunk, raving celebrity was right.
- Ewan McGregor keeps getting accosted by fans, often of the Star Wars persuasion, who tell him his movies are shit. And he doesn’t like it, not one bit.
- As if there weren’t more deserving targets out there, Felicity Huffman gets picked on by Gawker. That’s not to say she wasn’t sort of asking for it with this relationship-and-sex advice book, but still.
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Lists, Lists, Lists
12/26/2006 2:00:00 PM
Had enough of year-end lists? I’ll have my own Top Tens up later this week, but till then, here are some others to tide you over, from the obvious to the obscure:
- The New York Times critics weigh in with their Top Tens. Manohla and Tony both like Clint. Holden, on the other hand, goes for Babel. Also, older but still good: Dave Kehr rounds up the year in DVDs.
- Film Threat does the Best Unseen Films of 2006. (A couple of them actually got New York releases, so you might have seen them.)
- Sukhdev Sandhu of Britain’s Daily Telegraph wraps the year in film across the pond.
- CHUD.com picks the worst of 2006. Twice.
- Pretty much copying an earlier Hollywood Reporter article, the LA Times goes over The Year in Apologies.
- If you’re still Top Ten hungry, go to Movie City News, where they’ve got a running tally of critics’ year-end Top Tens. (Mine is on there, too, but the final version will be somewhat different.)
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And I Am Telling You...I Am Pleading Ignorance
12/26/2006 12:49:29 PM
Have I linked to this before? I’m not sure. Probably not. With Dreamgirls in the news, I’ve been feeling real ignorant of late. See, I had never really known about this “And I Am Telling You” song that everyone’s talking about. And if this USA Today article is anything to go by, apparently those of us who are not able to sing this song from memory everytime it pops up in the elevator or the dentist’s office have been living under some effing rock for the last 25 years:
“Just about every Broadway musical worth its bugle beads has that one signature tune. The one that brings down the house. The one that eventually drones in doctors' offices. The one that you know the name of, or the words to, even if you don't know what show it came from. Then there is ‘And I Am Telling You (I'm Not Going)’ from ‘Dreamgirls.’”
In my defense, I am not gay (apparently it's big in gay bars), nor am I a theater person (apparently it's big among theater people), nor was I watching this pretty impressive and legendary 1982 Tony Awards performance of the song by Jennifer Holliday. Talk about belting out a tune.
Don't be alarmed by the fact that the video begins with Tony Randall lounging in a chair. The song begins at about the 3:20 mark. But apparently you and the rest of the world already knew that.
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Video of the Day 1: Black Caesar, Music by James Brown
12/26/2006 12:05:00 PM
Obviously, James Brown’s passing was the big entertainment news this Holiday season. Despite his songs appearing in practically every other movie, his connection with film wasn’t particularly pronounced (although there is apparently a documentary about him and his wife set to come out next year), but he did score what may well be my favorite blaxploitation flick, Black Caesar. Here’s a scene.
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Indiana High School Officials No Match For Combined Power of Evil Teddy Bear, ACLU
12/26/2006 11:00:00 AM
Two high school sophomores in Indianapolis spent nearly a year making a Puppetmaster-inspired movie called The Teddy Bear Master, in which the titular “master” ordered other stuffed animals “to kill a teacher who had embarrassed him,” only to be thwarted by students battling the stuffed creatures.
Pretty cute, huh? The school apparently didn’t think to. In November, it expelled the kids – saying that the film was “disruptive and that a teacher whose name was used in the movie found it threatening.” Then the ACLU sprung to the kids’ defense and sued the school, arguing that it violated their First Amendment rights.
And the kids won. A federal judge on Friday said the kids’ film “was ‘vulgar,’ ‘tasteless,’ ‘humiliating’ and ‘obscene,’ but ruled that school officials did not prove it disrupted school.” She did, however, say the kids should apologize. And then, presumably, go straight to Hollywood.
If you want to see some brief clips from the movie, go here and watch the news report.
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Morning Deal Report: DeNiro Does Linson, Gardner Doesn’t Do Premiere, Variety Does Flops
12/26/2006 9:59:05 AM
- Art Linson’s vivid, hilarious Hollywood producing memoir What Just Happened? is about to be turned into a film by Barry Levinson, with Robert De Niro playing “Ben, a Linson-like producer who is going through two weeks of hell as he tries to get a picture made, hanging on to the tattered threads of his career as he tries to maintain his dignity while surviving the mounting humiliations of Hollywood.” So, they took a real-life Hollywood memoir and are turning it into a fictional story? Jesus, this already sounds like it could be a new chapter in Linson’s book.
- Chris Gardner, the real-life subject of Will Smith’s The Pursuit of Happyness forewent the film’s star-studded premiere in Rome and instead did an inspirational speaking engagement at a company holiday party in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
- Variety surveys the flops of the year – or, more accurately, “the biggest losers of '06 as determined by an inhouse Variety poll” -- and tries to figure out what went wrong. Needless to say, M. Night takes it on the chin once again.
- Casino Royale has become the highest-grossing Bond movie ever worldwide, “thanks mostly to strong international performance over the Christmas holiday weekend.” Needless to say, it’s not done yet.
- Busy at work on his new Halloween flick, Rob Zombie has announced that Malcolm McDowell will play Dr. Loomis (the character played by Donald Pleasance in the original) in the new film. Can’t tell if this is more good news for Rob Zombie, or more bad news for Malcolm McDowell?
- In case you were wondering if the ending to Tony Scott’s Déjà vu made any sense…No, it didn’t. (Warning: Spoilers.)
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The Critic Polls That Really Matter
12/23/2006 10:43:57 AM
The word “wankfest” is getting tossed around among those discussing two of the more notable year-end polls that appeared this past week: Film Comment’s annual Top 20 list, and Indiewire’s Year-End Critics Poll, which is in fact the resurrection of the former Village Voice Year-End Critics Poll, which found itself without a home when that magazine decided to unceremoniously whack film editor Dennis Lim. Full disclosure: I participated in both of these polls, so I’m probably a bit biased. (However, this was only my first year voting in them, and I’d admired them for years beforehand – especially the Voice poll.)
Indiewire’s list was topped by Cristi Puiu’s harrowing three-hour Rumanian hospital epic The Death of Mr. Lazarescu with L'Enfant, The Departed, Inland Empire, Army of Shadows, Three Times, Old Joy, United 93, Children of Men and Half Nelson rounding out the list. David Poland at Movie City News somewhat snidely noted that many of these were films only critics saw. Jeff Wells called it a “thorough tally of what the ultra-studious, vaguely film-nerdish smartypants set feels was the year's best,” adding admiringly, “anyone who calls him/herself a serious film fan needs to mull it over.”
Film Comment’s list had Lazarescu at Number 2, with The Departed at top. The rest wasn’t too different from the Indiewire list: Army of Shadows, L’Enfant, The Queen, Borat, Half Nelson, United 93, Volver, and Inland Empire rounded it out.
Anyway, here are my thoughts, impressions, etc:
1.) Here’s what I kinda love about both of these lists: I can actively recommend almost all of these films. The only one I’m iffy on is Inland Empire, which I found to be a disappointment, but it’s still so ambitious and interesting that I would never discourage anyone from seeing it. Look at, for example, the National Board of Review’s Top Ten: Letters From Iwo Jima, Babel, Blood Diamond, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada, Flags Of Our Fathers, The History Boys, Little Miss Sunshine, Notes On A Scandal, The Painted Veil. There are at least four movies on that list that I would actively discourage people from seeing. And I’ve yet to see Notes on a Scandal.
2.) Much has been said about how the commentary on the Indiewire poll – which is edited from comments critics send in with their ballots – seems to focus primarily on the negative: ”Babel...is a crime against humanity.” “It is time to admit that Martin Scorsese is more interested in film preservation and history than in making personal studio movies.” Etc. One particularly insane comment posits a war between Pedro Costa’s Collosal Youth and Pedro Almodovar’s Volver, for reasons so silly that it’s clear the real one is that the writer likes the idea of facing two Pedros off one another (WTF???) But by necessity, a critics’ poll that defines itself as an alternative to other, more mundane year-end lists needs some contentiousness of this sort: After all, the films we like we put in our lists and nominate for awards. The comments give us a chance to riff on the films that are conspicuously absent from our lists.
3.) That said, had I had the time to send in my own comments, I’m pretty sure I would have focused much of it on a defense of Miami Vice (my vote for Best Director went to Michael Mann) and on speculation as to why I found myself so often defending films practically everyone else loathed -- Poseidon, Lady in the Water, Wicker Man, to name three. I think something also needs to be said about the Iraq docs. While it’s all well and good that people seem to lump these together (The Ground Truth, Iraq in Fragments, and The War Tapes often show up as just a group on various film critics’ lists), I think that there’s something harmful about that, too: Seeing them as just some cultural trend denies them their artistic uniqueness. (Iraq in Fragments is a film quite high on my list, for example.) Furthermore, it discourages people from seeing them, in a strange way, by giving them the impression that these films are just spinach. In a sense, I guess that’s why the Film Comment and Indiewire polls appearing at the same time is also a good thing: By replicating many of the same films – films which didn’t always get their due recognition from other year-end bodies – they provide a kind of consensus. To put it another way: Any serious film buff who doesn’t now make a serious attempt to at least try and see The Death of Mr. Lazarescu should probably consider handing in their Walter Reade membership.
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Video of the Day 2: Grindhouse, the Real Trailer
12/22/2006 1:30:00 PM
(Apologies in advance for the excess fanboyisms.)
There was something that screened at Comic Con some months ago, which we put up at the time as the trailer for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse. As brain-explodingly awesome as that was, it wasn’t really an official teaser trailer – for starters, it consisted primarily of (pants-crappingly awesome) footage from only Rodriguez’s segment of the two-part-film. This, on the other hand, is the real thing. And, we’re happy to report, it is still jizz-dissolvingly awesome.
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