08/22/06:
THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos, 1965) ***
This is a well-acted but somewhat overrated serio-comic human drama with a WWII backdrop; typical of Eastern European cinema at the time, the film emerges as rather slight (the grim aspects of its plot are only really felt during the last half-hour or so, making it unnecessarily long at a little over 2 hours) and is full of simple, earthy and clearly downtrodden characters - the Fascist regime standing in for the contemporary Communist oppression - who still burst into song at the drop of a hat! Even if the two main characters aren't exactly endearing (especially the rather insufferable and possibly dim-witted old Jewish lady), the ironic tragic ending packs an undeniable punch.
Even though the film was taken for a poster-bearer for the nascent Czech New Wave - indeed, it went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film - it is intrinsically too old-fashioned to easily fit the bill. This was the directing team's seventh (and penultimate) collaboration, after which Kadar left for the United States to continue making films there - most notably THE ANGEL LEVINE (1970) - before his untimely death in 1979.
08/31/06:
FORBIDDEN TO KNOW (Nadine Marquand Trintignant, 1973) **1/2
This is a convoluted but interesting murder mystery with political overtones; the revelations (verging on an ironic banality) are presented intermittently via confessions made by a variety of characters which come as a series of flashbacks. It's aided a great deal by a splendid cast (featuring several veterans of the French New Wave): Jean-Louis Trintignant, Michel Bouquet, Charles Denner, Juliet Berto, Bernadette Lafont, Marie Trintignant and Claude Pieplu; the best performances, in my estimation, are those given by Berto and Denner, though the scenes involving the two Trintignants have an obvious intimacy about them as to make them quite special (this film was a real family affair, as it was directed by the wife of one and the mother of the other!). Composer Bruno Nicolai also adds a valuable contribution to the fray with his good score.
09/01/06:
THE SHARK HUNTER (Enzo G. Castellari, 1979) *1/2
In his review of this film in "Stracult", Italian film critic Marco Giusti claimed that Franco Nero's performance was undoubtedly the worst he ever gave. Ridiculously decked out as he is in a long blonde mane and hippy garb, he can't be too far wrong I guess...
Anyway, Nero plays a bitter loner who, having lost his wife and kid in a traffic accident, voluntarily enlists for dangerous missions for an unspecified organization but then, unceremoniously, quits his job and relocates to a Carribbean island whose seas harbor the carcass of a sunken plane with a fortune locked away in its safe. The problem is that the site is infested with sharks but, of course, Nero has a penchant for killing sharks with his bare hands a' la Johnny Weissmuller. Those sequences depicting Nero's particular skills reach an unheralded level of silliness when he sky dives into the water onto a moving shark and slits its torso open without batting an eyelid! And what about his dragging a shark onto his motor boat after having previously pursued it on foot?!
I don't really know why I should go on writing in detail about such trash (especially since most of you probably won't ever have the chance to see this for yourselves
but, then again, why not? Anyway, there's a love scene early on between our Franco and a native girl, a couple of fistfights with the local bully (featuring a running gag of Nero sticking a piece of chewing gum onto his opponent's forehead), an alliance with a buffoonish salvage expert, a member of the organization is hot on his heels, as is the ubiquitous Edoardo Fajardo who is obviously interested in claiming the fortune for himself and, in the climax, an all-out shark attack replete with fake floating limbs.
Director Casterallari (who frequently appears in his own films a' la Hitchcock...yeah, right!) has a fairly large part here as a killer
pursuing the man from the Organization! He was still fixated on sharks a couple of years later when he made THE LAST SHARK (1981), a film which was partly shot in Malta and featured such second-tier American actors as James Franciscus and Vic Morrow. For his pains, Castellari was even taken to court by Steven Spielberg and Universal Studios for plagiarising JAWS (1975)...although, if one is to believe Castellari's own statements at the 61st Venice Film Festival, Spielberg and Co. were merely envious that THE LAST SHARK had been more profitable (in the expenditure/profit ratio) than JAWS itself...
!!
09/02/06:
KEOMA (Enzo G. Castellari, 1976) ***
Director Castellari is nowadays perhaps best-known (if at all) by the younger generation of film buffs for one thing: making the original INGLORIOUS BASTARDS (1977), which Quentin Tarantino has been threatening to remake for years now. However, in my opinion, he should instead be remembered for making this impressive, belated Spaghetti Western gem.
An odd blend of violent action and heady mysticism apparantly concocted by one of the credited screenwriters Luigi Montefiori (better known to hardened Euro-Cult fans as an actor under the alias of George Eastman) but, as star Franco Nero and Castellari himself state in the Anchor Bay DVD supplements, the script took so long to get written that they decided to work without one and make the dialogue up as they went along! That the end result is so satisfying (and practically unique in the subgenre) is a remarkable achievement in itself.
Keoma is a half-breed returning home from the American Civil War to find his hometown ravaged by the plague and overtaken by the villainous Caldwell (Donal O' Brien); among his cohorts are Nero's three half-brothers who had made his childhood a living hell, with his surrogate father (William Berger) and colored mentor turned banjo-playing town-drunk (Woody Strode) unable to do much to counter Caldwell's oppression. A Bergmanesque, cadaverous old woman is frequently seen roaming the streets dragging a cart behind her...
What follows is the typical confrontation between Good and Evil but Castellari infuses the familiar mixture with several directorial flourishes: occasionally striking compositions (particularly a memorably Fordian opening shot), frequent use of slow-motion in true Peckinpah-style, flashbacks in which Keoma is a spectator to his own past experiences (inspired by Elia Kazan's THE ARRANGEMENT [1969]!), a touch of elliptical editing, Christian symbolism (Keoma is crucified at one point) and, most distressingly of all, a folksy soundtrack (inspired by Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, no less and warbled...er...sung by a shrill, high-pitched female singer and an out-of-tune deep-voiced male) which narrates in song the action we're seeing on the screen. I say distressingly because the Guido and Maurizo De Angelis compositions found here have forever been a thorn in the side of even the film's staunchest admirers!! Personally, I didn't mind the female singer so much after a while but when her (possibly drunk) male companion took over in the last half hour, I was in for some cringe-inducing moments for sure...
!
Despite these misgivings, the film is still one of the best Spaghetti Westerns out there (and certainly the last great example of the subgenre); its undoubted highlight is provided by a terrific, lovingly protracted action set-piece in which Nero, Berger and a reformed Strode (back to his former arrow-shooting glory - perhaps a nod to the role he played in Richard Brooks' splendid THE PROFESSIONALS [1966]) wipe out most of Caldwell's gang. Their triumph is short-lived, however, because both Berger and Strode lose their lives in the ongoing struggle (Berger poignantly so, while Strode's death scene is particularly great), with Nero almost bowing out himself under the strain of his siblings' torture - who have subsequently disposed of Caldwell and taken over the town themselves; the final confrontation, then, between Keoma and his three half-brothers is eerily set to the "strains" of Olga Karlatos' (playing a woman Keoma had earlier on saved from a plague-infested colony) wailing and screaming as she lies giving birth to a child amidst the carnage!
While at first I was disappointed that the Anchor Bay DVD only included the English dub, having watched it now it seems clear that the actors were all speaking their dialogue in English on the set - although, as connoisseurs will certainly know, this was all re-recorded back in the studios anyway (as was common practice in the Italian film industry). Still, if ever it gets shown again on Italian TV, I'll be sure to check it out just for completeness' sake. Thankfully, however, Castellari contributes a highly enthusiastic and informative Audio Commentary in which he discusses his major influences while making the film, among them Sidney J. Furie's THE APPALOOSA (1966), Altman's McCABE AND MRS. MILLER (1971) and Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973).
Ultimately, Franco Nero in the title role is almost as iconic a figure as Django and, hopefully, I should be getting to another fairly obscure but highly intriguing Spaghetti Westen of his - Luigi Bazzoni's MAN, PRIDE AND VENGEANCE (1968), an eccentric updating of Georges Bizet's opera "Carmen", co-starring Klaus Kinski and Tina Aumont - pretty soon...
09/02/06: 3:10 TO YUMA (Delmer Daves, 1957) ***1/2
Classic Western, one of the best of its kind but which doesn't seem to have been given its due: terse script (adapted from a story by Elmore Leonard), excellent handling by an expert in the genre (this is undoubtedly his finest offering), wonderful atmosphere and outstanding performances by leads Glenn Ford (atypically cast as the bad guy) and Van Heflin (basically amounting to an extension of his role in SHANE [1953]).
In many ways, it's reminiscent of HIGH NOON (1952): the time factor (heralding the impending arrival of a train), the hotel setting (which occupies about the entire second half), the hero being left alone - at the crucial moment - to face the heavies, not forgetting the evocative title track (sung here by Frankie Laine). While the film's tone is generally low-key and may appear too talky to some (in fact, there's little action
per se), it's wholly absorbing with the tension amongst the various characters as palpable as that in HIGH NOON itself. Also, as in that film, the two women involved with the protagonists are allowed to offer their own perspective on things (though their contribution is not as pronounced, especially when considering that Felicia Farr appears in just one scene early on - despite being third-billed!).
The surprising climax, then, is quite splendid - accentuated by the steam of the arriving train (which effectively hides the opponents from one another), followed by a miraculous downpour (the drought which had hit the area having been the catalyst for Heflin undertaking the dangerous mission of transporting criminal Ford to prison) and whose redemptive allusions are also reflected in the latter's character! Notable among the supporting cast are Richard Jaeckel as one of Ford's right-hand man and Robert Emhardt as a stagecoach boss.
Apparently, a remake of this is in the works - directed by James Mangold and starring Russell Crowe in Ford's role and Christian Bale replacing Heflin. Will they never learn...?
09/03/06:
TRANSPLANT (Steno, 1970) **1/2
Grotesque, crude but often quite funny knockabout farce which outstays its welcome and does not always fully realize its satirical aspirations. The film deals with an American billionaire, who having married a luscious young wife some 50 years his junior, often breaks into sobbing fits at the sight of her; it does not take long for us to learn that all is not well between them in the bedroom stakes and he decides (with the aid of a computer and a coterie of advisers) to have an organ transplant. No prizes in guessing which organ he is needful of...
!
After a series of false starts, they arrive to the three final prospective candidates, all of which are, coincidentally, Italian. One is an idiotic but clearly well-endowed brute who, having been "gang-raped" by a group of Swedish female sunbathers, wants nothing else except to go back for more
, another is an unassuming family man who happens to have 14 kids and is constantly being harassed by his avaricious relatives into accepting the "job" and, thirdly, a
nouveau pauvre Sicilian aristocrat who spends the time dodging his creditors by day and bedding their wives by night! They are put to several strenuous tests to prove their maximum virility during the course of which they naturally start having second thoughts about going through with the operation...
The film, co-written by popular Italian comic and latter-day TV personality Raimondo Vianello, stars Carlo Giuffre` as the impoverished Latin Lover and the diminutive Renato Rascel who, playing the mild-mannered but prodigious father, has much more screen time than his "Special Guest Star" billing would suggest. Director Steno (real name Stefano Vanzina) was an expert handler of comics having dealt with the likes of Toto`, Alberto Sordi, Nino Manfredi, Paolo Villaggio, Terence Hill, Bud Spencer, etc. - not to mention such Hollywood legends as Gloria Swanson, Orson Welles, Christopher Lee and Peter Ustinov! - throughout his long and distinguished film career.
09/04/06:
EXECUTION (Domenico Paolella, 1968) **
Altogether a mediocre offering, this dreary Spaghetti Western has a muddled if unusual storyline but little real feeling for the genre. John Richardson stars in a dual role as an outlaw who's been on the run for nearly 5 years - after which he can no longer be pursued by bounty hunters - and his look-alike younger brother. The latter's deliberately confusing introduction - a gunfight in a saloon in which both opponents are killed (they are traveling entertainers offering a novel form of spectacle) - comes off as unintentionally funny. Being mistaken for his grey-haired and bespectacled brother, he's tortured by a horde of Mexican bandits (who are after the gold hidden by the latter) by way of a studded ball-and-chain; in fact, an interesting aspect of the film is its inventive deployment of weaponry - others include a knife at the end of a billiard stick, and a number of guns and rifles strategically placed on the floor above the saloon - which the younger Richardson then uses to shoot the bad guys, through the cracks in the roof! When the two siblings finally meet, the kid persuades his elder brother to give himself up - leading to a rather weak climax in which he rages over the death of his performing partner (who he had to 'execute' himself for having turned traitor)!! At least, the music score is pleasant enough...
