Joe Karlosi

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2006)

Yes, you usually agree with the critics, don't you?
Seriously - I didn't know you also gave BAD SANTA the same rating! Are you being serious? I was curious as to what your rating and opinion was of B.S. but as you know, you don't list your reviews at IMDB (where there's always a very quick and easy A-Z guide to find them all conveniently). So I figured "oh well".

Mario Gauci

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2006)

Haggai,

As much as I wanted to purchase the Region 4 “Special Edition” DVD of this one, I had to bypass it because the film, unfortunately, is slightly trimmed – one particular scene is DELIBERATELY repeated in full but, in some countries, the second instance is omitted, because it was thought to have been a mistake in the print…and, bafflingly, this was the version used for the DVD!! There’s also a Region 2 DVD out there, but the same thing applies to this edition; since the film was shown on TCM preceded by the Janus Logo (indicating that a Criterion DVD is possibly forthcoming), I wonder whether they had gotten hold of the correct version. For the record, I do own a PAL VHS of the film and the ‘extra’ scene is included.

With regards to the cuts in the R2/R4 DVDs of THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, we're only talking about a minute or less and, besides, it's a repeated sequence after all BUT since Repetition is, as you know, one of the main themes of the film, I'd say it is important that it should be included. The bottom line is that it's a funny incident and why should one be deprived of it because of the ignorance of some projectionists or what have you? Frankly, when my brother and I first watched the film, we too thought it was a "mistake" but, as the film progressed, it all made perfect sense! Eventually, Bunuel's intentions were confirmed to us through reading two books on him over the years.

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Mario Gauci

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2006)

Joe,


I think you're confusing Mike with me somehow...

Seriously, though: ever since I received word from you that the TCM service is finally available i.e. almost 40 days ago, I've been waiting with bated breath for you to bolster up your watched films list with some classy stuff but, so far, zilch...!

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Haggai

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2006)

Mario, I read something about a repeated scene in Exterminating Angel on IMDB, also with some details about how it was mistakenly cut out of some prints, but I don't know whether it was correctly included in the Janus print that they showed on TCM. I don't remember there being a repeated scene, but I don't even trust my own memory on that--I wasn't aware of this issue at all before I saw the movie--so I can't really add any information about it.

Films watched in 2007 | 2006 | 2005

Mario Gauci

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2006)

Whoa, Mike...now, that's a Kaplanesque statement if I ever read one! As far as I know you've watched just 3 of his films - LEAVES FROM SATAN'S BOOK (1919), THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928) and VAMPYR (1931) - so, even if you've got, at the very least, 2 more masterpieces of his to catch up with before dismissing him entirely if you so wish - DAY OF WRATH (1943) and ORDET (1955) - I'd hardly call the 3 you've watched as being unworthy of a second viewing! LEAVES may be overshadowed by Griffith's INTOLERANCE (1916), true, but PASSION is undoubtedly the definitive Joan of Arc film and one of the cinema's most spiritual films while VAMPYR is, among other things, one of the eeriest, densest and most individualistic horror films ever made.

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Mario Gauci

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2006)

Trust me, Haggai...if the scene had been in the TCM print, you'd have remembered it for sure. It just sticks out as a "what the fuck" moment so it's impossible to miss it...which, of course, does not bode at all well for an eventual R1 DVD of this surrealistic masterpiece! Thank God for my PAL VHS which cost me $30 in the early 1990s and which I've been treasuring ever since I've gotten wind of this unfortunate debacle.

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Haggai

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2006)

That could be, but seriously, I don't think I'm a reliable source on this from just one viewing, and I've already deleted it from my DVR. I wouldn't form any definite conclusions until getting some feedback from someone who's seen that print while knowing what to look for.

Films watched in 2007 | 2006 | 2005

Mario Gauci

Re: Track the Films You Watch (2006)

11/18/06: THE DESERT OF THE TARTARS (Valerio Zurlini, 1976) ***1/2

This is the first Valerio Zurlini film I have watched and, ironically, it was his last (and arguably most ambitious) undertaking but which can hold its own alongside its contemporary among the classics of World Cinema; for the record, I also own THE GIRLS OF SAN FREDIANO (1954) and THE CAMP FOLLOWERS (1965) on VHS and had erased GIRL WITH A SUITCASE (1960) – without even watching it! – in anticipation of its 2-Disc Set release by No Shame (which incorporates Zurlini’s VIOLENT SUMMER [1959]).

Anyhow, THE DESERT OF THE TARTARS is practically an intellectual, existentialist version of “Beau Geste” in which very little actually happens during its 2½ hour running-time (and, thus, may seem boring to the uninitiated) but, for more adventurous film fans, however, it’s a mesmerizing and truly evocative experience with a strong anti-war statement to make. Unsurprisingly perhaps, it is hardly ever shown on Italian TV – with the most recent occasion being on the very last day of my 3-month stay in Hollywood late last year, which meant that I had to miss it (although I was already aware of No Shame’s 2-Disc Set, which was released around the same time).

The cast is made up of a once-in-a-lifetime roster of international film stars: Vittorio Gassman, Giuliano Gemma, Helmut Griem, Philippe Noiret (who died last week, alas), Jacques Perrin (who has the lead role and also did duty as one of the producers), Francisco Rabal, Fernando Rey, Laurent Terzieff, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Max von Sydow! Incredibly, it’s Gemma who stands out in a rare villainous turn as the sadistic Major – though Max von Sydow as the disgraced Captain and Vittorio Gassman as the ageing Commander of the Fort are quietly impressive in their own way. While the first half is deliberately-paced, eliciting its own particular ambience and etching all the various characters, by comparison, the latter stages are somewhat rushed – as the years fly by and the fort changes its command several times, so as to bring the story to its main theme – that of the remote company, seen constantly drilling in the hope of an attack by enemy forces which, when it finally arrives, they seem incapable of dealing with adequately!

The beautiful cinematography of the splendid Iranian desert location (with the interiors filmed in Rome) is by Luciano Tovoli and Ennio Morricone’s score, rendered in its entirety on the CD found in No Shame’s SE DVD, is suitably majestic and melancholic. The supplements, then, aren’t prolific but quite nicely done nevertheless – though only Tovoli’s 35-minute interview goes into any real detail about the making of the film (and even that includes copious references to his collaborations with other Italian masters such as Michelangelo Antonioni and Dario Argento).


11/20/06: THE HUNDRED HORSEMEN (Vittorio Cottafavi, 1964) ***1/2

I first heard of this film when I chanced upon a five-star review of it on an Italian TV listings magazine so I was very grateful to the organizers of the “Italian Kings of the Bs” retrospective at the 61st Venice Film Festival in September 2004 for including it; as it happened, despite tough competition from a couple of its contemporaries, when I finally watched the film on the big screen (with leading man Mark Damon in attendance), I loved it so much that I had no trouble naming it the best film (out of a total of 37) I had seen during that unforgettable fortnight.

Frustratingly, I subsequently found very little reading material on director Cottafavi and the film itself (which is unanimously considered his masterpiece) even in this day and age of the Internet and, in fact, the most substantial piece was an essay written by the late Tom Milne on Cottafavi and two of his contemporaries, Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava, and included in the New York Film Festival’s co-founder Richard Roud’s indispensable two-volume book, “Cinema: A Critical Dictionary – The Major Film-Makers”, which I purchased during my first trip to London in 1999; an even shorter piece is to be found in David Thomson’s controversial tome, “A Biographical Dictionary Of The Cinema”, in which he references a Cahiers Du Cinema critic naming Cottafavi one of the world’s four greatest directors along with Fritz Lang, Joseph Losey and Otto Preminger!! Luckily, the afore-mentioned 2004 screening of THE HUNDRED HORSEMEN, ensured that the film be released on R2 DVD in Italy later on and, despite the lack of supplements and online reviews, I eagerly awaited the disc to get discounted so that I would finally add it to my collection. Thankfully, the video quality is great (even if the sound is overly discreet) and the film itself is every bit the masterpiece I remembered it to be.

After this lengthy introduction, I’ll get to the film proper even if, frankly, its most notable aspects have so much to do with aesthetics and narrative form that writing about them is a rather thankless exercise – which perhaps explains the lack of critical writing I mentioned earlier – but I will try my best anyway: the still remarkably pertinent plot deals with the 11th Century Moorish invasion (led by a deliciously villainous Wolfgang Preiss) of a Spanish community during a supposed period of truce and the former’s subsequent retaliation under the joint leadership of an ex-warrior turned monk (Gastone Moschin) and an amiably loutish landowner (Arnoldo Foa`). The requisite youthful hero here is Foa`’s son and, as already mentioned, is played by Mark Damon (who considers the film his favorite among the many he shot in Italy); besides, he shares the romantic interest with the lovely Antonella Lualdi (whose father, the head of the Spanish community, is hanged by the Moors in retaliation along with most of the menfolk in the village).

The amusing trailer (the sole extra on the Italian DVD) has Foa` describing the film to its prospective audience as an “epicaresque” i.e. a picareqsque epic; as it happened, despite the film turning out to be stylistically ahead of its time – and, in hindsight, the zenith of that most disreputable of genres, the peplum – it was a commercial flop on release ensuring that Cottafavi spend the remainder of his career as a distinguished TV director helming such adaptations as Graham Greene’sTHIS GUN FOR HIRE (1970; which was shown on Italian TV last month) and Joseph Conrad’s UNDER WESTERN EYES (1979; ditto). Personally, I’ve only watched 4 other Cottafavi films so far – the melodramatic NEL GORGO DEL PECCATO (1954) and 3 consecutive peplums, the very silly GOLIATH AND THE DRAGONS (1960), the vastly underrated AMAZONS OF ROME (1961; which I caught up with earlier this year) and one of the most renowned examples of the genre, HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN (1961).

Anyway, to get back to the film itself and its picaresque elements: there is the dwarfish painter seen at the beginning who addresses the audience and acts as a narrator; there is Lualdi’s comical intended who turns cowardly, bumbling collaborationist but is subsequently reinstated into the Spanish community and made their head – the word “Fine” (Italian for “The End”) are written on his fingers as he cheekily waves at the audience in the very last shot of the film; there is a convoluted philosophical speech given (in a broadly theatrical fashion) by a long-fingered Spanish nobleman who dreams of conducting future wars between one super-soldier on each side but when he shows us his ‘candidate’, he is ridiculously decked out in a cumbersome, clunky armor which makes all movement impossible and, in fact, falls flat on his back when he tries to do so; and, best of all, Foa`s Quixotic soldier who tries to recapture his former dignity by leading the rebels but is quickly cut down to his real size by a dwarfish bandit leader who joins their ranks in a hilarious confrontation.

THE HUNDRED HORSEMEN, like so many international epics of its time (this being an Italo-Spanish-German co-production), had an alternate title, SON OF EL CID and, even if the similarities with the celebrated Anthony Mann/Charlton Heston epic are merely of a historical and geographical nature (apart from the duel by sword between Damon and Preiss’ son), I decided to reacquaint myself with that film after a long hiatus. Having said that, Cottafavi’s film can stand on its own two feet thanks to the dazzlingly fluid direction which, despite the relatively low budget, gives the film a visually arresting look, particularly when pitting the red-cloaked rebels against the blue-clad Moors with the enslaved white-robed monks in the middle. Furthermore, composer Antonio Perez Olea provides a low-key but equally effective music score which goes against the grain of the grandiose ones typical of the genre. After a very funny first half, Cottafavi reserves his most outstanding trick for the climactic battle as he gradually drains all the color from the image and shooting most of it in black-and-white (anticipating Quentin Tarantino’s KILL BILL VOL. 1 by 40 years!) thus rendering his depiction of the bleakness and tragedy of war all the more powerful.


11/24/06: THE LONG GOODBYE (Robert Altman, 1973) ***

Having only previously watched this controversial Raymond Chandler adaptation via a trimmed, Italian-dubbed print several years ago, I was keen to reacquaint myself with it through MGM’s SE DVD especially since it’s generally thought of as one of Altman’s major films; it’s a shame, though, that after having had it in my collection for a couple of months, I was finally prompted to give it a spin following the sad news of Altman’s death.

Anyway, the character of Philip Marlowe is one of my favorites in all of literature and film so I’m always on the lookout for fresher perspectives on the private investigator. Still, Elliott Gould’s characterization could hardly be any more different to Chandler’s original vision or to Humphrey Bogart’s definitive film portrayal in Howard Hawks’ THE BIG SLEEP (1946) which, incidentally, is the greatest Film Noir ever in my book. Since a maverick like Altman was helming the film, one hardly expected him to stick to a conventional portrait but, understandably, having Marlowe inexplicably displaced to the liberalized 1970s era swarming with long-haired guys, pot-smoking chicks, slickly-dressed heels and vicious mobsters with body-builder thugs (one of them an uncredited Arnold Schwarzenegger!) was too much to take for 1940s Marlowe fans...which is all the more incredible when one realizes that the screenplay for this film was written by none other than THE BIG SLEEP’s co-writer, Leigh Brackett! Having said that, however, Gould is clearly in top form here and further confirms that very few directors made more inspired use of him in their films, witness the amusing opening sequence where he tries to pass off a different brand of cat food to his feline pet because he is all out of its favorite Courry brand! Altman even introduces a parking lot attendant adept at mimicry and his Barbara Stanwyck impersonation from, appropriately enough, Billy Wilder’s DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), is a hoot.

While the film has a few other notable qualities – Vilmos Zsigmond’s inventive camerawork, John Williams’ playful score and remarkable performances from Hollywood veteran Sterling Hayden (as an alcoholic writer on the skids) and film director Mark Rydell (as a mobster who thinks nothing of shattering a glass bottle on his girlfriend’s face to prove to Marlowe that he means business) – eventually the film is far less entertaining than previous Marlowe outings which might well be the result of a much weaker storyline, the relative lack of the trademark hard-boiled dialogue and the glacial presence of Nina Van Pallandt which oozes very little of the sensuality so vital in a supposed femme fatale.

Ultimately, the film is much more rewarding for Altman fans than the casual viewer especially when taking into account the director’s other ingenious genre revisits of the 1970s – IMAGES (1972; the Horror film), THIEVES LIKE US (1974; Gangster), BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS OR, SITTING BULL’S HISTORY LESSON (1976; Western) and QUINTET (1979; Sci-Fi) – which, despite all being worthwhile or interesting works at the very least, merely served to alienate him further from the Hollywood establishment for a prolonged period of time until that early 1990s renaissance came about.


11/26/06: BALLAD OF A SOLDIER (Grigori Chukhrai, 1959) ***

This simple, sensitively handled love story with a WWII background is often bundled together with Mikhail Kalatozov’s THE CRANES ARE FLYING (1957) – they were both issued simultaneously on R1 DVD by Criterion and will likewise be issued on R2 by Nouveaux Pictures next January – but actually they are poles apart in terms of stylistic approach. Director Chukhrai shows little of the overpoweringly visual virtuousity of Kalatozov’s film (except for the superb sequence near the beginning which earns the main character his heroic status) preferring to capture the reality of the scene rather than its emotional core.

Even so, BALLAD OF A SOLDIER is a beautifully made film with winning performances from its youthful leads: a 19-year old boy who wins a much-coveted 6-day leave from the front after blowing up two enemy tanks single-handedly and the suspicious waif he befriends (and subsequently falls in love with) on his clandestine train journey. Events beyond his control contrive to make his visit to his farm-laborer mother a pitifully short one after which, the unidentified narrator tells us, he is once again drafted off to the front to his eventual death (which we never actually see); his misadventures during that train journey and visit to his village take up the bulk of the film as he meets a one-legged soldier coming reluctantly back home to his wife, a greedy train guard who is constantly demanding food from the soldier as a bribe against his telling his superiors that they are stowaways, the duplicitous wife of a comrade of his and his bed-ridden, ever optimistic father, etc.

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