Recurring Hitchcock – where do I begin?

Alfred Hitchcock, director at work

He’s been dead nearly thirty years now, but the man who practically invented the psychological thriller, conceived and delivered our very idea of filmic suspense, and took horror from 50’s b-grade kitsch into the realm of true terror continues to haunt the psyches of young directors hoping to emulate the master. It seems everyone from Gus van Sant (Psycho) to Anthony Perkins who played the psycho in the original and later directed Psycho III has had a go. I found a great article on /film covering the Hitchcock remake oeuvre – worth checking out.

His career spanned more than five decades, beginning in the silent era. (I wrote a piece on a couple of them last year.)

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman star in Notorious

Yet it wasn’t until the mid 1930′s that his career kicked off with “The Man Who Knew too Much” starring Peter Lorre, but his move to Hollywood in 1939 and the gothic melodrama Rebecca that saw him begin a 25-year reign, where virtually every one of his films was a critical and popular success. He is still voted #1 director of all time in most movie polls.

If you’re curious, but don’t know which of Hitchcock’s 60+ films to begin with, here’s a good start. All of them are easily available on DVD, most with exquisite restorations. Dig in!

1. 

   Hitchcock made a cameo appearance in almost all of his films. Here he rides the bus beside Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief

   Notorious (1946)

2. Suspicion (1941)
3. Dial M for Murder (1954)
4. To Catch a Thief (1955)
5. Rear Window (1954)
6. North by Northwest (1959)
7. Vertigo (1958)
8. The Birds (1963)
9. Psycho (1960)
10. Rope (1948)

Tippi Hedren leads her young charges to safety in The Birds

Once Upon a Time in Mexico – revisited

I have a secret love for action flicks – and there are those in my collection I can watch over and over and never ever get bored.

It hit me about half an hour into Once Upon a Time in Mexico that this might be the perfect date flick – as long as you’ve got the stomach for heaps of cartoon violence. For chicks, you’ve got Antonio Banderas, Johnny Depp, Enrique Iglesias, Ruben Blades and bad boys Mickey Rourke and Willem Dafoe. For the blokes there’s non-stop action, shootouts, hi-jinks and some very memorable cameos from the incomparable Salma Hayek. And, there’s also one hell of story.

This, the third film in his Mariachi trilogy, is clearly director Robert Rodriguez’ baby. The first, El Mariachi, came in 1992, made on a budget of US$7,000. The second, Desperado, followed three years later, also written, produced, directed, scored, and ‘chopped’ by the director of the Spy Kids series. Though it is the third of the trilogy, the film stands on its own: fans may want to go back and uncover the earlier story, it’s not necessary to understanding this film. Come to think of it, Hayak’s character dies in Desperado but she’s back and hotter than ever here. So seeing the first two is strictly optional. They are out on DVD as a 2-disc set – should you go looking.

Sands contemplating the perfect puerco pibil

A Hollywood outsider by choice, Rodriguez works from an elaborate home studio in Austin, Texas, putting his films together with more can-do creativity than professional glitz. He shot Once Upon a Time in Mexico himself, in Mexico with a high-definition video camera.

A meltingly handsome Antonio Banderas plays El Mariachi, a gunslinger-guitar hero: a living legend – part man, part spirit. Then there’s Johnny Depp as Sands, a casually corrupt CIA agent with a penchant for disguise and chef-murdering, who recruits El Mariachi to foil a coup planned by the fascist General Marquez (Gerardo Vigil) with the help of drug lord Barillo (Willem Dafoe at his most sinister.) Where Banderas is all smouldering passion, Depp is indifferent. It’s a shame we don’t get more of Salma Hayek, but what we do get is unforgettable – the hottest woman on the planet.

Antonio Banderas as El Mariachi

Rodriguez takes full advantage of the small video camera, diving into the middle of the action. Careening at a dizzying pace; he becomes the camera, looking everywhere at once. And when he gets his footage to the chopping block he ups the ante, so the film is a Tasmanian Devil of a dervish, and you have the distinct sense that anything can happen. Yes, it is violent, but odd as it may seem, there is a joyful playfulness to it – blood that looks like raspberry sauce and the odd sense that Yosemite Sam might turn up any second, six-guns blasting. There is so much humour and plain silliness in the script and in Depp’s character (who actually asks a recruit, “Are you a Mexi-can or a Mexi-can’t?”), Once Upon a Time in Mexico is a tasty piece of eye candy. Highly recommended.

Pan’s Labyrinth

It’s 1944, five years after the end of  Spanish Civil. The close of WWII in Europe is at hand.

Ten year old Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) and her heavily pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) travel to a remote fascist outpost in the Spanish forest, where they will join her new husband, Capitán Vidal (Sergi López). A ruthless man, he is charged with dispensing the last of the rebels. Despite the risks to her health, he has insisted she give birth to his son where he is.

Capitán despises stepdaughter Ofelia, not least for her love of fairy tales. But deep in the woods, Ofelia has met a wondrous faun, who has given her three tasks to complete to prove her character. If she passes, she will be returned as a princess to her true home deep in the earth. Can she do it? Or will Capitán and the horrors of the real world devour her first?

This is one of those rare movies that pulls you into its heart so you share the suffering of each the characters. It is savagely brutal in the way classic fairy tales usually are, though this is balanced by the beauty of the otherworld.  (Note – this flick is much too violent for young viewers to handle! Don’t be misled by the little girl on the cover.)

Guillermo Del Toro is a master of fantasy. In Blade II (2002) and Hellboy (2004) he brought comic book characters to life. Here he draws on his passionate love of classic fairy tales to create his own fantasy world, so delicately crafted the CGI special effects blend seamlessly and you are simply dazzled by all that unfolds.

The two-disc set is loaded with special features, including making of featurettes on set and costume design, cast and crew interviews, commentaries, storyboards and more. One of my favourite movies of all time.

I Served the King of England

This dazzler from the Czech Republic coyly weaves a subtle dash of magic realism into the life of an ordinary little man, a Prague waiter who dreams of becoming a millionaire. We meet Jan Díte (Ivan Barnev and Oldrich Kaiser) as he exits a Czech prison sometime in the 60s, grateful for the amnesty that has given him three months off his fifteen-year sentence. Relinquished to a collapsing old pub deep in the forest, he commences the DIY project of a lifetime and takes stock of his life.

His first job was selling sausages at the Prague train station, a lucrative enterprise, where he discovered that no matter how wealthy and distinguished people are, they’re always willing to get down on their hands and knees to pick up coins – a running gag, where he amuses himself by watching his betters crawl. From there it’s a pub and then a restaurant where he rises to headwaiter, deferring to the maitre d’ who has ‘served the king of England.’

When the 30′s bring the Nazis, Jan is torn between his love for the tiny German soldier, Líza (Julia Jentsch) and his country’s hatred for everything German. After having his sperm approved, he marries her and moves on to a posh hotel, which the Nazis have converted to a motherhood clinic, where Aryan blondes romp naked, waiting to be impregnated by German soldiers and he continues to serve.

Jan and Liza have a plan for after the war – stamps she has pilfered from the homes of deported Jews, which will make them rich. (When he asks where they were deported to, she merely shrugs, an alarmingly simple gesture of indifference that speaks volumes.) But his good luck always has an underside and things never turn out as expected.

There is a surreal sensibility that occasionally surfaces when Europe examines its recent history, a sense of helplessness and disbelief at the reality of what has happened, recently seen in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Oscar winning director Jirí Menzel (Closely Watched Trains, 1966) lures us into a slapstick comedy with profoundly deeper implications, you’ll be thinking about it for weeks.

Bardot in the beginning and the end

Two from Brigitte Bardot

While she never attained the status of Marilyn Monroe, French sex kitten, Brigitte Bardot, was adored by the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol and provided the inspiration for Amy Winehouse’s beehive. She retired as her star was falling and is now better known for her work in animal rights her reactionary politics which have gotten her in hot water several times in recent years.

Naughty Girl, from 1955 is a delight, the 21-year-old Bardot plays Brigitte Latour, a gangster’s daughter under the temporary care of nightclub singer, Jean Clery (Jean Bretonnière). The hapless Clery is ordered to rescue her from her private school before her father’s enemies kidnap her. He expects a chubby girl with braces on her teeth but instead, finds his hands full of an out of control Bardot, part woman, part child and all temptation who takes over his life. She ruins his engagement and burns down his flat. Astonishingly, in one of those ‘my how things have changed’ moments, Clery slaps her across the face when she misbehaves, which straightens her out and all is well.

Naughty Girl (1955)

Sexy and gifted, Bardot is simply incredible. The following year she made And God Created Woman, directed by her first husband, Roger Vadim, which launched her as an international star. Like so many of Hollywood’s blonde bombshells, she became more famous for her celebrity, love affairs, marriages and scandals than she was for her acting. In 1962 she made Vie Privée, directed by Louis Malle  and in 1963, she starred in Jean-Luc Godard’s critically acclaimed Contempt. But as her life spun out of control, the quality of her work became erratic.

Fast forward to Shalako, a badly scripted spaghetti western based on a Louis L’Amour novel. It’s 1968 and though she is only 34, Bardot is puffy and her teeth need work. Too much hard living, booze, drugs and lack of sleep have taken their toll. She can still play the vixen, but her powers have waned.

The surprise is finding Sean Connery slumming in this dog. At the time he was at the height of his fame as 007. Bardot plays one of a group of European aristocrats on a hunting tour of the American wild west. They refuse to abide by treaty agreements and find themselves in a battle to the death with the natives.  He’s the guide who comes to their rescue, despatch a few hundred Injuns to save them from their arrogance and stupidity. Painful viewing all around.

Shalako (1968)

Bardot today.

Bardot survived Hollywood, unlike her peers Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. She appeared in a few more movies into the early 70′s and retired. Since then she has been a vociferous animal rights activist, but more often in the news for her right-wing politics. She’s easy to dislike – and yet, I can’t help admiring the survivor in her, surviving the public adoration and self destruction that too often accompanies that kind of celebrity. Having transcended ‘Bardot,’ she leaves us free to rediscover her early, unspoiled talent.

Sauna

High-brow Finnish horror washes all your sins away

Director: Antti-Jussi Annila

At first glance, this may seem like a standard horror flick, other than its setting – 16^th century Finland. The Swedes and Russians have just ended 25 years of war and each have sent a party to define the new borders. We meet brothers Eerik and Knut, represent the Swedes, en route to the official rendezvous.

Whilst they are glad for peace, the endless years of war, away from their family has taken its toll and Eerik has become increasingly violent. He declares he has killed 73 people, including a farmer we meet as the film opens, who he claimed wielded an axe. Knut fears for the farmer’s adolescent daughter and locks her in the fruit cellar to keep her safe. As they set out for their destination, he asks Eerik to let her out.

They are a day’s journey away when Eerik confesses he never let the girl out. Knut begins to see a young woman in the swamp who whispers for him to ‘come back!”

They meet up with the Russians and together they come upon a sauna, built in the middle of the swamp. Nearby is a village not on any of their maps. The people are accommodating, but rather strange – and extraordinarily clean, forever washing themselves and their clothing. There are 73 people in the village, but only one child. And the girl in the swamp is calling more desperately.

This film is a mere 85 minutes long – but the script is so complex and multi-layered and the suspense so thick, it was a relief when it ended. Afterwards, watching the making-of documentary was almost cathartic – seeing how it was made took some of the chill away. A director’s commentary helps answer some of the questions left dangling at the movie’s end, but still – it’s one you will ponder for a while. One of my top choices for 2009.

Eerik & Knut

Three from Luis Buñuel

Un Chien Andalou put both Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel on the map with its opening scene of a young woman passively submitting as her eyeball is sliced open with a razor. An eye-opener even today, in 1929 it was positively shocking – resulting in the movie running in theatres for nearly a year.

One can only imagine what audiences made of the ‘story’ that follows, a surrealistic dreamscape of murder, mishap, severed limbs and ants. Buñuel appears as the eyeball slicer and Dali as a priest dragged across the floor ahead of two pianos weighted with rotting, dead donkeys. Considering its popularity, one can only assume audiences were far more sophisticated than they are today. We demand logical story arcs that rise and fall, resulting in a satisfactory ending. This little flick makes me want to pick up a camera and make a film of my own and is a must-see for anyone with those aspirations.

Look for the two-disc DVD release. Also included on disc one – a 1986 British doco on the life and work of Salvador Dali, which serves as a fine introduction for those unfamiliar with the surrealist master – whose life mirrored his art – right until the end. We could however, have lived without the Alka Seltzer ads.

The second disc features Buñuel’s only documentary, Las Hurdes (1933) the story of a remote Spanish village where he first examines the corruption of the Catholic Church, a theme he continued to explore throughout his career.  Also included is a doco from 2000 spanning his tumultuous career.

Between his early years as a surrealist filmmaker and his triumphant late-life career that began with Viridiana in 1961, Luis Buñuel made a dozen or so small-budget movies that were largely ignored by critics and audiences alike. Some were dreadful – a 1953 version of Wuthering Heights, where the producer insisted he use a cast comprised mostly of stock car drivers who had been prepped for a comedy. However, The Young One is the best of the lot and might be considered an overlooked masterpiece. Released in 1960, the year before Viridiana, it sits on the cusp of greatness – but you have to get your head around Buñuel working with an American cast in the deep South.

Bernie Hamilton plays Traver, a northern Black man on the run after a white woman accused him of rape. He escapes on a small boat and ends up on a game preserve island, managed by Mr Miller (Zachary Scott). Miller is dealing with the death of his handyman – and wondering what to do with the deceased’s granddaughter, Evvie (Key Meersman.) At first he considers packing her off to the mainland – but suddenly notices she is not the child he had thought. Indeed, with her pouty lips, long legs and casually swaying hips she is very appealing.

Hugo Butler’s brilliant and subtle script slowly intertwines Miller and Traver’s paths – shifting the balance of power as it is revealed that Traver is in fact innocent of rape and Miller, despite soothing his conscience trying to convince himself the illiterate Evvie is little more than a savage – guilty. It would sit well alongside the brilliant Tennessee Williams movies of the 50s and 60s. No special features on the disc, but the package comes with a sixteen page booklet containing a brilliant analysis of the film.

As good as The Young One was, it gave no indication of what was to follow. Viridiana took the  Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1961 and was promptly banned by both the Spanish government (who had financed the film) and the Vatican for its devious exploration of evil and, well, more evil.

Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) is a beautiful young nun who hasn’t taken her final vows who visits her uncle and benefactor, the wealthy Don Jaime (Francisco Rabal). Struck by Viridiana’s resemblance to her late aunt, who died before consummating their marriage, Jaime becomes obsessed and ultimately drugs and rapes her.

Viridiana decides she can never return to the convent and opts to stay in the house with Jaime and save the world on her own, starting with the local beggars and homeless. She soon discovers that she cannot change what these people really are and is livid when they ultimately turn on her. Buñuel’s genius is in the exposition of Viridiana – she is not the pious young woman she at first appears, but an arrogant sycophant who ultimately has earned her downfall.

Luis Bunuel in Un Chien Andelou

Buñuel followed this with seven masterpieces, including That Obscure Object of Desire and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgiousie. I’m waiting for them to arrive as a box set sometime soon…

Silent Hitchcock… Shhh…

Undoubtedly one of the very finest 20^th century film directors, best known as the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock started his career in the early 1920’s. He made nine silent films, honing his directorial and story-telling skills. And while the man is worthy of a much longer thought, I recently acquired The Ring (1927) and The Manxman (1929), two beautifully restored melodramas that look like they were shot last week.

Danish actor Carl Brisson stars in both – his startling blue eyes, dimples and boxer’s physique  resulting in one of the more handsome stars of the silent era.  Though his film career fell victim to the talkie as his heavy accent made him an unlikely leading man, he went on to star in Broadway musicals and released a number of successful albums.  His co-star in The Ring suffered a more horrid fate – finding herself out of work, Lillian Hall-Davis gassed herself and slashed her own throat in 1933 at 35. Czech actress Anny Ondra, playing the love interest in The Manxman, continued to work in film, shifting to Germany in the mid-30′s. There she met and married heavyweight boxing champion, Max Schmeling.

In The Ring, Brisson plays ‘One-Round’ Jack Sander a side-show boxer taking on all comers, saving his money so he can marry his girl, Mabel (Hall-Davis). One night he steps into the ring to find he’s met his match with Bob Corby (Ian Hunter), who takes his winnings and blows it on a silver bracelet for Mabel – which she coyly accepts. It turns out Corby is a professional boxer who takes Sander on as a sparring partner, dallying with Mabel behind Jack’s back. But even the most naive of men will eventually cotton on.

If The Ring were made today, it’d probably star  Matthew McConaughey (who bears an amazing resemblence) and the starlet of the moment. However, the carny folk would undoubtedly receive far more politically correct treatment – and the flick is a reminder of just how much our culture has shifted in the last 80 years.

The Manxman is my favourite of the two, with Brisson playing Pete, a fisherman who goes off to make his fortune when he’s thrown out of the public house by his sweetheart’s father.  He entrusts his best friend Philip (Malcolm Keen) to look after the lovely and coquettish Kate (Anny Ondra) while he’s gone. Philip and Anny become the best of friends, both aware that if Pete were not in the picture they would fall in love, though Philip is hesitant as he is from an upper class family and wishes to pursue a career in law. His family assures him she will never do.

When they receive news that Pete has been killed in an accident, they give in to the long-pent passions. Hitchcock has some fun here, euphemistically grinding some millstones stones in one love scene and having a ship ‘slip’ into a harbour in another. But before they can make plans, it turns out that Pete is still alive – and he’s coming home.

Hitchcock keeps a reign on his actors, limiting the overdramatising so often associated with silents, which can render them unwatchable.  (However the use of lipstick and eyeliner on the male stars is a little bizarre.) He also stays away from quote panels, which disturb the pace of the film and remind me the film is silent, despite the score. Instead he relies on visual clues and expects you to do a little bit of lip reading. This was also a way to get around the censors, especially in the second film, dealing with adultery and fornication. I was on the edge of my seat here wondering how it would turn out.

These films are for Hitchcock fans, interested in his early works. He was still a young man learning his craft here, unlike Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Fritz Lang or F.W Murnau who were at the top of their game and produced stunning work. Indeed, Hitchcock appears to have begun his career more as a lightweight – focussing on love triangles. But he moved on…

Notorious, from 1946 with Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains is my favourite Hitch – what’s yours?

Mister Lonely

Somewhere in Paris there is a very lonely Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) who doesn’t speak the language well, looking for his big break.

His agent believes in him, but he learns to believe in his Michael Jackson self when he meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton). She lures him to Scotland where she lives with her husband Charlie Chaplin and daughter Shirley Temple in a commune with a dozen other impersonators.

They are building a performance centre in the hope that once it is built, audiences will come. We are treated to enchanting performances from Madonna, the Three Stooges, Buckwheat and Sammy Davis jun, not to mention the Queen, who capture both the essence of the original characters and the isolation and alienation of the people behind them.

Meanwhile, in a remote convent in Panama, Father Umbrillo (Werner Herzog) delivers emergency food rations to area villages, the nuns sitting in the back of his rickety old plane, tossing packages out the cargo bay.

When the plane jerks, a nun falls out, and with her habit flapping furiously, she prays for the Lord to save her. She lands in a field, dazed but unharmed.

The rest of the convent soon take up skydiving sans parachute – a genuine miracle, which Father Umbrillo is very proud of, though he declines to jump himself. He decides to visit the Vatican and show the Pope.

Though the two stories never connect, they run on an emotional parallel, as director Harmony Korine takes us on a curious journey through a forgotten corner of the human psyche, examining our identity, our ability to do the impossible and just what it will cost us in the end.

Mister Lonely is far more colourful and, if not life affirming, at least more life loving than Korine’s chaotic debut, the cult classic Gummo (1997). Unfortunately, there are no special features on the DVD.

Shine a Light

Forty-five years into their career, the Rolling Stones team up with Martin Scorsese, Jeff White, Christina Aguilera, Buddy Guy, 18 of the finest cameramen in the business and a couple thousand of the luckiest ticket-holders in the world for two nights in New York’s wonderfully intimate Beacon Theatre.

With President Clinton ‘opening’ the show, the result is pure magic.

Sure, it’s easy to poke fun at the ageing Glimmer Twins, Mick’s once baby-face and pouting lips are desiccated, and Keith’s crepe-paper arms sag like a 90-year-old woman’s. Get them up on stage with Ron Woods, Charlie Watts and the rest of their entourage and it’s clear time is still on their side as they crack into a “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” as electrifying as in 68, 78, 88, or 98.

Scorsese, bless his rocking little heart, understands audiences want to see and hear every song from start to finish, feeds us cynical little interview snippets from the past 40 years of reporters asking the band when their going to quit, in between songs.

The set-list is a mix of classics and more recent fare, including “Shattered,” “Faraway Eyes,” “Brown Sugar” and “Start Me Up.”

Christina Aguilera lends her pipes on “Live With Me,” and Jack White takes a turn at the mic on “Loving Cup, ” while Buddy Guy tests his chops on “Champagne & Reefer.”

The performances are perfect and the moves – yeah, I winced when Keith went down on his knees, but he got right back up and kept on grooving, and Mick’s the same rooster on acid he’s ever been.

Scout out the 3-disc special edition.

Disc 1 contains the flick and special features including four songs cut for running time, a behind the scenes featurette and an interactive version of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” I couldn’t quite get my head around.Disc 2 is a digital copy for your Ipod and Disc 3 the soundtrack CD. It’s all packed up in a flash box with a souvenir booklet. Simply brilliant.