Regularly updated blog charting the most important films of the last 104 years.
Monday, March 30, 2009
352. Rio Bravo (1959)
Directed By Howard Hawks
Synopsis
A Sheriff has two deputies and a dangerous man in jail. His family and accomplices want to spring him, hence Sheriff is in a tough situation.
Review
This Western by the great Howard Hawks represents one of the last of a dying breed. The old style, white hats vs. black hats Western. The moral ambiguity that would come along soon in the 60's is almost totally absent here. Fortunately it is a really good film nonetheless.
Hawks is not Ford or Mann, hence it isn't all about the little man in the big scenery, actually scenery is almost absent here. If there is one constant in Hawks' film it is it's focus on human relationships. The same happens here, and that is really the strong point of the film.
John Wayne plays the same character he always does, so that is no surprise. If you want some enjoyable acting you have to look to Dean Martin and Walter Brennan, the don of curmudgeonly frontier hicks. Still, it keeps your attention for the 2 hours and 15 minutes of it. It is, as all Howard Hawks films, pretty well written and entertaining.
Final Grade 8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The film was made as a response to High Noon, which is sometimes thought to be an allegory for blacklisting in Hollywood, as well as a critique of McCarthyism, according to Graham. Wayne teamed up with director Howard Hawks to tell the story his way. Hawks and Wayne were offended by High Noon; Johnson quotes Hawks as saying he didn't believe the marshal, played by Gary Cooper, would "go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help." Wayne was a conservative and a firm supporter of blacklisting. They were offended too that Kane was abandoned by almost everyone (except at the last minute his Quaker bride, played by Grace Kelly). In "Rio Bravo", Chance is surrounded by allies—a deputy recovering from alcoholism, a young gunfighter, an old man, a Mexican innkeeper, and an attractive young woman—and repeatedly turns down aid from anyone he doesn't think is capable of helping him, though in the final shootout they come to help him anyway.
Final shoot-out, with a theme which is an obvious influence on Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western themes:
A French woman is an actress shooting a film in Hiroshima, she starts an affair with a Japanese man through which her pass is explored and exorcised.
Review
Alain Resnais, when faced with making a documentary about Hiroshima was afraid of repeating himself. He had famously directed Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) about the holocaust, and again to make a film about Man's cruelty to Man peppered with images of corpses and disfigurements, death and rebirth would make him repeat himself almost inevitably.
He made, then, a film about memory, about the dangers of forgetting and the necessity of living with your horrors in order for life to continue. He puts this in the context of a relation initially based on lust, the most life affirming of Mankind's impulses, between East and West. In this context it is the Western element, the woman, who has some remembering to do and to share with the Japanese man. In the end the whole thing is about not forgetting but leaning to sublimate the memory.
The film works due to Alain's masterful direction and the superb editing in parts of the film. The acting is good but Marguerite Duras might have been too literary in the scriptwriting for its own good, many of those sentences would work great on a book where you can pause, read, re-read, go back, think etc. In a filmic context, however, the sentence exists now and ceases the next second, and when it is too complex the actor cannot but look silly. This unfortunately happens in several moments of the film, people just don't say those things in any occasion, unless they are pedants, which I am sure was not the intention. Oh well, the French.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
According to James Monaco, Resnais was originally commissioned to make a short documentary about the atomic bomb, but spent several months confused about how to proceed because he did not want to recreate his 1955 Holocaust documentary Night and Fog. He later went to his producer and joked that the film could not be done unless Marguerite Duras was involved in writing the screenplay.
Synopsis A guy gets his jollies from pickpocketing. He ends up going to jail, at least he gets the girl.
Review
When the average non-French person thinks of French cinema it is probably something similar to a Bresson film that comes to his mind. Deep philosophical thought, slightly boring, unnatural acting and revered by boffs for some inexplicable reason.
Well there are plenty of reasons to like or love Bresson, Un condamné à mort s'est échappé is a perfect example of why to love him. Journal d'un Curé de Campagne is a better example of why not to like him. This film sits somewhere in the middle. The acting is not stellar, and although some will argue that he used non-professional actors and that the turmoil happens within, some scenes are so stuntedly acted that they are distracting.
Good things about the film are also easy to find, stylistically it is beautiful. The pickpocketing scenes are choreographed like a ballet, exciting and beautiful to look at. But then it all falls apart due to a plot you don-t care about because the actors play parts you don't care about. The main character is annoying and amoral, although he does invent a really bad theory about geniuses being above the law. So watch it for it's visual qualities not really for plot or acting. Marika Green who plays the love interest is however a really beautiful lady, and the aunt of Eva Green, she gets her kit off and has lesbian sex in Emannuelle, just for reference.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The film is considered an example of "parametric narration" (in which the style "dominates the syuzhet [plot] or is seemingly equal in importance to it".
Roger Ebert sees echoes of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment in this film. "Bresson's Michel, like Dostoyevsky's hero Raskolnikov, needs money in order to realize his dreams, and sees no reason why some lackluster ordinary person should not be forced to supply it. The reasoning is immoral, but the characters claim special privileges above and beyond common morality. Michel, like the hero of Crime and Punishment, has a 'good woman' in his life, who trusts he will be able to redeem himself. ... She comes to Michel with the news that his mother is dying. Michel does not want to see his mother, but gives Jeanne money for her. Why does he avoid her? Bresson never supplies motives. We can only guess."
Well I know Roger! Because he had robbed her! It's pretty much said in the film, it is why Jeanne is summoned to the police and why the cops get on to him. Roger Ebert... have you even seen the film?
Synopsis Ben is in Judea minding his own business when Messala, his childhood friend, comes back from Rome. It all goes to shit. Ben is sent to the galleys, but comes back and defeats Messala. Oh Jesus Christ fits in there somehow as well.
Review
I know I promised that I would continue reviewing films while I was out getting a new house. Well this didn't happen because the only TV I had was hipster-tiny, meaning that Ben-Hur being the epic that it is and being cut at the top an bottom would look like coloured toilet paper unrolling on the wall. So I opted to wait and watch it in my considerably larger TV here to make it justice.
Ben-Hur is an epic's epic. It is a great film that keeps you riveted for two thirds of its very long running time. Frankly after Messala dies you lose interest in the story. The religious element is clearly tacked on, and I couldn't care less for his leprous mother and sister. So it goes on for too long, Hur needs to redeem himself, but all that makes you watch is the revenge story and the great, and very violent, galley and chariot race sequences.
Unlike the Ten Commandments, Hur is a successful epic. Its set pieces are superbly directed and set up. It is not, for the most part, boring, and you are really impressed by the work put into it. Heston is not a great actor, but the part is so larger than life that he doesn't need to be. So yeah a great epic which could be a 10 if not for the religious stuff tacked on with spit.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
In interviews for the 1986 book Celluloid Closet, and later the 1995 documentary of the same name, screenwriter Gore Vidal asserts that he persuaded director Wyler to allow a carefully veiled homoerotic subtext between Messala and Ben-Hur. Vidal says his aim was to explain Messala's extreme reaction to Ben-Hur's refusal to name his fellow Jews to a Roman officer. Vidal suggested that Messala and Ben-Hur had been homosexual lovers while growing up, but Ben-Hur was no longer interested, so it is the anger of a scorned lover which motivates Messala's vindictiveness. Since the Hollywood production code would not permit this to appear on screen explicitly, it would have to be implied by the actors. Vidal suggested to Wyler that he would direct Stephen Boyd to play the role that way, but not tell Heston. Vidal claims that Wyler took his advice, and that the results can be seen in the film. However, Vidal is the only person ever to make this claim, and Heston insisted that Vidal had little to do with the final film.
