Five Against The House (Phil Karlson, 1955)

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Freshly traumatised Korean vets, bored at college and itching to get on with life, attempt a heist at the famous Harold’s Club Casino in Reno. Guy Madison, past the first bloom of youth but still gorgeous, stars. One of the most beautiful film stars in history, Gore Vidal’ favourite, he was also one of the stiffest, awkward and ill at ease. It amused me that the trailer advertises him as ‘Photoplay’s most promising actor of 1955’, over a decade after he made his first splash in SINCE YOU WENT AWAY (1944). It took him a long time to be promising and he never got good.

He comes particularly badly here as his antagonist is one of the most skilled and natural actors of this period, Brian Keith; and also in that his love interest is Kim Novak at her peak; beautiful, mysterious, weaving a spell of enchantment and hurt; her voluptuous body and beautiful face wrapped up moving as if through a cloud of sadness and melancholy. I can’t think of another movie star whose sex appeal is so intertwined with her sadness.  An undistinguished heist film but of interest for several reasons:

  1. The on-location shooting, now of historical interest.
  1. I was particularly fascinated by what must have seemed futuristic parking.
  1. Kim Novak’s star entrance, one of two lovely numbers she does in the film with a soft voice to a slow beat.
  1. A chance to see some of America’s best supporting actors at work, particularly Brian Keith and William Conrad.

I don’t want to make any great claims on its behalf, but I enjoyed it.

José Arroyo

 

Singapore (John Brahm, 1947)

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A bit of tosh set in Singapore during WWII. It’s got pearl smuggling, Japanese invasion, amnesia and uses voice-over narration and super noir lighting to tell its story:

It also makes great use of Nancio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed’s ‘Temptation’:

‘You came,
I was alone,
I should have known,
you were temptation!’

Fred MacMurray and Ava Gardner star and Ava, at the height of her beauty, gets a superb star intro:

The film is also notable for its queer coding. Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon set a certain pathway for gay male representation: mincing, duplicitous, smelling of gardenias, charming but deadly. In Singapore, George Lloyd follows in his footsteps, the coding is less explicit, as is the effect. But the message remains clear.

 

Part of the great Universal Noir #2 box set from Indicator.

 

José Arroyo

 

Tony Curtis in Six Bridges to Cross (Joseph Pevney, 1955)

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Anyone wanting to understand why Tony Curtis was such a big star might be interested in SIX BRIDGES TO CROSS, where he plays Jerry Florea, a handsome gangster who pulls off a 2.5 million heist, so breezy and charming that he keeps straight-laced cop George Nader on-side in spite of umpteenth convictions. Sal Mineo, in his first film appearance, plays the younger version of Jerry; and it’s hard to choose which actor is the more charismatic or charming. This is the brilliant moment in the film where one transitions into the other. The New York Times, whilst damming Curtis’ performance, ‘Mr. Curtis, of course, shoulders most of the picture.Far from depicting a formidable criminal master mind, the actor’s progressive, bubbling boyishness knocks the biggest hole in a film already full of them. Those who recall his best performance to date, that of the deaf-mute boxer in “Flesh and Fury,” also under Mr. Pevney’s direction, may wonder if he was encouraged or merely allowed,’ nonetheless conceded that, ‘At least Mr. Curtis’ strutting, million-dollar appearance, in a melodrama purporting to abhor crime, drew plenty of appreciative chuckles from yesterday morning’s customers’.’The film also features superb on-location shooting in Boston by the great William Daniels. From the excellent Arrow box-set which includes an illuminating video essay by Jon Towlson on Daniels’ lighting.

José Arroyo

The Delinquents/ Los delincuentes

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Yesterday I went to see The Delinquents/ Los delincuentes, a new and quite divisive film from Rodrigo Moreno: some people love it and find it an existential exploration of the concept of freedom, so salient in Argentina today; others find its almost three-hour length and meandering narrative an unsupportable bore. I liked it very much. An accountant in a bank (Daniel Elías) calculates that he can steal double the money he would make working until he retires and only have to do three and half years in prison. Is the jail-time worth his freedom? He’s only working so he can afford his rent, his work clothes the odd toy and a measly 15-day vacation. Can he steal back his life? It’s significant that his boss in the bank is played by the same actor who plays the capo, Germán de Silva. One gets him to submit through one set of norms, the other gets inmates to beat him up. In order for the heist to work, the robber has to implicate a colleague (Esteban Bigliardi) in order to hold the money for him until his release, at which point they’ll split the winnings. The film operates within a whole series of doublings (two distinct people have the signature, the protagonists are called Morán and Román, Román meets a Ramón, are they in love with Morna or Norma?); Bresson’s L’argent is quoted liberally. The film meanders to appreciate horses, landscapes, the look of flowers and the flowering of sage; poetry is read and blues is played; it’s romantic and sexy and uninterested in a propulsive narrative. Yet, one also feels that everything one sees is a result of consideration and choice. The characters are good, kind, and almost sweet. A very different kind of heist film. My first impulse when leaving the cinema was that I had enjoyed the experience but didn’t quite get it – there were so many references to the current situation in Argentina through graffiti and poetry; I often genuinely didn’t know where the narrative would take us next – but was eager to get home, read the reviews and find out more.

 

It’s on at the Mockingbird for the rest of the week and I recommend.

Hugo Fregonese’s Apenas un delincuente, very different in style is nonetheless a clear inspiration.

 

José Arroyo

FRENCH FILM NOIR box set from Kino Lober

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I find myself without the time needed to write, as I’d eventually like to, on the films in this magnificent box set from Kino Lober, so for now I’d just like to draw attention to it.

 

Three crime films from the late 50:

 

LE ROUGE EST MIS/ SPEAKING OF MURDER (Gilles Grangier, 1957) is about small-time hoods in Paris who use a garage as a front for their heists. Jean Gabin – every shrug, gesture, look, bit of business both a delight in itself and a component of characterisation – is the gang-leader. Lino Ventura is the muscle; Annie Girardot, the two-timing tramp. There’s an early and very sympathetic appearance of a gay man arrested for soliciting who appears to give Gabin a message from his brother and Gabin insists he accept a tip so he can buy himself a handbag (It’s a lot more sympathetic than it sounds). I loved the tone and the dialogue, and most of all the on-location shooting, now very evocative. Based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton (Rififi, Raffia sur la chnouf, Bob Le Flambeur, Le clan des Siciliens and many others)

LE DOS AU MUR/ BACK TO THE WALL(Édouard Molinaro, 1958)

 

A man (Gérard Oury) arrives at a crime scene, picks up a body, carries it out of the building, and covers it in cement in a factory wall. A tour de force 17-minute sequence done practically without dialogue. Once the coast is clear, the voice-over takes us into flashback to show us what led to it. Jeanne Moreau’s cheating on her husband with a young actor; the husband begins to write her anonymous blackmail letters. It doesn’t end well. Moreau is so expressive I was tempted to do endless gifs so as to contain the marvellous and minute changes in feeling expressed by her features as the camera dollies into her close-ups. (Based on a novel by Frédéric Dard)

WITNESS IN THE CITY/ UN TÉMOIN DANS LA VILLE (Édouard Molinaro,1959)

 

I only knew Èdouard Molinaro from his 70s comedies with Louis de Funès and The Cage aux folles films; and the two films in this box set are a revelation. WITNESS IN THE CITY is a truly great film. It begins with a man throwing a woman from a train. He’s taken to court but freed for lack of evidence. That’s not good enough for the husband (Lino Ventura) who finds him and kills him. But as he leaves the house, he bumps into a cab driver, a possible witness. The rest of the film is about Lino Ventura, with his wrestler’s body and impassive face, hunting down the cab driver. It’s mainly set at night. Much is filmed on location, so we see the bars, cafés, nightclubs, cab stands of Paris in the late 50s as well as the people who operate from there. It’s gorgeously filmed by the great Henri Decaë so that the shift in shadows across a face or a street become suspense on their own. A discovery that has made me keen to know more about Molinaro.

Also, Claude Sautet was the 1st AD on Back to the Wall and Jacques Deray on Witness in the City, so all kinds of genealogical interest as well.

There are no extras but for trailers but who needs them when the flms themselves are so great?

José Arroyo

El problema final by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

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Arturo Pérez-Reverte is one of Spain’s most successful authors, specialising in the historical novel, with his series on Captain Alatriste being amongst his most popular. I got into him from the film adaptations of his early works. EL MAESTRO DE ESGRIMA/ THE FENCING MASTER (Pedro Olea, 1992); UNCOVERED (Jim McBride, 1994; based on THE FLANDERS PANEL); THE NINTH GATE (Roman Polanski, 1999; based on THE CLUB DUMAS). His latest, EL PROBLEMA FINAL, is a mystery that works on at least three levels: an easy-to-read page-turner of a detective novel; a connoisseur’s playful interrogation of the genre’s main tropes; and an imaginative and variegated appreciation of classic Hollywood cinema.

The setting and structure are pure Agatha Christie. A group of people stuck in a little island off Corfu in 1960 are confronted with a murder: Edith Mander, recently jilted and now a paid companion to Vesper Dundas, a rich widow, is found dead in her room, which is locked from the inside. Did she hang herself or was she murdered? After, Karabin, the Doctor who examined her corpse is also found dead, there is no longer any question, But who did it and why? Was it Hans Klemmer, a former Nazi? Raquel Ausslander, the Auschwitz survivor? Spiros, the handsome Greek waiter, perhaps too irresistible to the guests? Pietro Malerba, the ruthless and rich movie producer? Or Nerjat Farjallah, the ageing opera diva quickly being dislodged from the top of her particular pyramid by Maria Callas? A storm has disrupted transport and the Greek Police will take several days to get there. Can the crime be solved? Will murders continue to accumulate? Is there someone to investigate?

Sadly neither Poirot nor Fu Manchu are amongst the guests. Indeed, there is no detective of any kind. However, there is a simulation of a detective that might be more real to the guests/suspects than any real detective.  Hopalong Basil, the famous Hollywood Star, his career now on the slide but living comfortably in Cap d’Antibes in the South of France, is still world famous for playing Sherlock Holmes in a long series of popular Hollywood films (for Hopalong Basil read Basil Rathbone in every particular). Moreover, in Paco Foxá, a writer of pulpy but popular thrillers written to order, he’s found his Watson. So the narrative proceeds on the words that Arthur Conan Doyle puts into Sherlock Holmes’ mouth in THE FINAL PROBLEM: ‘As you very well know Watson, nobody knows the world of crime better than I.’ And since no one knows the works of Conan Doyle or Sherlock’s methods than the actor who played him in so many films, the movie detective is accepted as a more than acceptable substitute for the real thing.

The conversations between Basil and Foxá allow Reverte to call up a history of the genre from Poe to Gaston Leroux, Thomas de Quincey, Ellery Queen, Philo Vance, Simenon, Christie, Graham Greene and many others. It also allows him to intertextually call up all Holmes stories including the Sidney Paget illustrations for Holmes in THE STRAND MAGAZINE; and more importantly in the debates between Basil and Foxá on ‘what would Sherlock Holmes do?’ or ‘what are the conventions of a closed-room murder’ or the like, Pérez-Reverte proves himself a scholar of the genre.

 

So he tells us: ‘When a novel is well-constructed according to the rules of its genre, it’s almost impossible that the reader discover the guilty one before the detective.

Except when the reader knows the rules and knows how to

interpret the tricks of the narrative before the narrator reveals the enigma.

 

‘In a classic detective novel, there’ always three classic mysteries, who is guilty, how they did it and why. The who and why tend to be less important as in the true novel-problem, what interests the author and the intelligent reader most is the how.

 

To solve the crime, ‘one has to construct a hypothesis in relation to the facts, as incoherent as they may appear, and to explain them. Afterwards, one has to find proof in all the possible combination of facts; and if it’s revealed to be incorrect, move on to another hypothesis .

 

That a crime appears impossible to clarify doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an explanation. Every situation has it because otherwise it wouldn’t exist.

 

‘The assassin is the creator of a work’

 

What then of the detective?

 

‘The detective is the critic’.

 

 

Reverte quotes SS Van Dine on what is unacceptable in a detective novel: a catalogue of twenty rules for crime writing, forbidding the use of invented poisons, butlers or chauffeurs as assassins, twins, and blaming the Chinese.

 

There are other questions: What happens when the assassin is so stupid as to befuddle the detective? What happens when the assassin IS the detective.

 

At one point Basil admits, ‘I’ve lacked the mixture of reality and imagination that constitutes the fundament of my art’

 

‘In a mystery story it’s not a case of illuminating the reader but of blinding him. To succeed in that they focus more on finding the how than the who. That is why the author must avoid that the reader detect the traps; and if after a while they find the traps or intuit them, they accumulate false corridors one after the other, signals that make them avoid going back to compare and reflect.

 

 

An author of detective novels introduces mysteries within mysteries. He knows how to plan a strategy so that the reader is fascinated and stimulated enough to keep on reading; and also knows how to blind whilst hearing and cast a spell over what they see.

 

The conflict in a detective novel is not between the assassin and the detective but between the writer and reader. An overly analytic reader is always a danger to a writer.

EL PROBLEMA FINAL is an interrogation of the genre, cognizant of the tropes but playing with them, that sets up a double contest, one between the detective and the murderer; and another between reader and writer.

 

For me a great deal of the enjoyment was to see Pérez-Reverte’s familiarity and love of cinema and actors; Basil’s world is that of Basil Rathbone, he brings up the West End of the mid-thirties, the Hollywood of Gary Cooper and David Niven and Errol Flynn; the films of Erich von Stroheim and Michael Curtiz; the Thin Man films; he knows what characters wear for dinner in a Gregory La Cava movie. So this novel is like a Sherlock Holmes story, with an Agatha Christie structure but an elegant detective — Philo Vance as played by Basil Rathbone – in a dream-like Photoplay world that sets up a series of particular challenges to the reader: how well does the reader knows the genre? Can the reader detect the lineage of the particular plot and its narration; are the twists in the narration admissible within genre conventions or are they false corridors and McGuffins? Pérez-Revert doesn’t cheat, but he does play; and it is a very enjoyable game indeed.

 

José Arroyo

 

 

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 423 – Dune: Part Two

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Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptation of Dune makes its first appearance on the podcast in the form of the second film in the series – we saw the first when it came out but never podcasted on it. With the lore in place, the scene set, and the characters established, Dune: Part Two is free to develop romance, engage in action, and tell the story of the construction of a messiah. It’s beautiful, exciting entertainment – as long as you can remember everyone’s names and what their magic powers are and what they’re up to and why.

José feels no such issues keeping track of Part Two‘s various story elements, but Mike hasn’t done the homework and finds that the film isn’t going out of its way to help him. But no matter! The imagery on offer is astonishingly pretty, reassuringly expensive, and tuned for maximum visual impact – though we wonder how poetic it is, and ask ourselves to what extent the imagery in Villeneuve’s other work lingers in the mind, despite its premium sheen. We also discuss the degree to which we feel Part Two really feels like it’s buying in to its more supernatural elements. It tells a story of prophecy, visions, and unlikely fates, but, Mike suggests, also offers mechanisms and plausible explanations for things we see, arguably favouring its scepticism to avoid putting off an audience unwilling to go along with the otherworldly.

Whether you care or not, whether you can follow the details or not, there’s no reason to not see Dune: Part Two on the biggest and best screen available. For the visual design and production alone, it’s value for money – that the rest is good is a lovely bonus.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 422 – Perfect Days

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Wim Wenders finds inspiration in Japanese public lavatories in Perfect Days, a slice of life drama about Hirayama, a janitor who finds quiet happiness in his routine of travelling from public convenience to public convenience cleaning, photographing trees in the park, being welcomed at restaurants by proprietors who fetch him his usuals, and reading books before bed. We discuss Wenders’ delicate touch and observational eye, Kōji Yakusho’s central performance, for which he was named Best Actor at Cannes, how small moments indicate whole avenues of a person’s life, and the film’s theme of connections between the individual worlds in which we live.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

José Arroyo in Conversation with Sean Burns on DOROTHY TOWERS and DEATH

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Sean Burns is a Birmingham-born, London-based artist; the author of DEATH, part of the LOOK AGAIN series of volumes interpreting the TATE’s collection through particular themes and published to coincide with TATE BRITAIN’S recent re-hang; and the director of DOROTHY TOWERS, a film in which I appear. In the accompanying podcast, we discuss these iconic Birmingham Tower blocks that are the subject of the film; how their design and location meant that generations of queers ended up living there and continue to do so; how these buildings have a patterned history but not just one story; there are different stories, different layers of stories, spectral and layered, plural. We discuss how ‘Queer’ in England is constantly re-written as something that only happens in London and how the film is often interpreted by audiences as a reclaiming and a validation of similar histories that have probably taken place in cities all over the country. It’s a film that also brings into play modernism, brutalism, drag, fashion, and urban design that prioritises cars over people. We discuss how the film was driven by a mandate to search but not necessarily to find; and how what is evoked is a layered history but one with the feeling that comes from a place in which death, mourning and sadness are spectral but not defining elements. A film aware of the perils of representation and thus conscientiously ethical in its approach. We talk also of Burn’s recent book on death, his obsession with Francis Bacon and George Dyer, how Ireland and Irishness are developing concerns, and whether death, mourning, and longing are themes common to all this work.

The podcast may be listened to below:

The podcast may  also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

José Arroyo

Thinking Aloud About Film: Out Of The Blue ((Chen Kun-Hou, Taiwan, 1983)

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We continue our discussion of the GOLDEN DECADES: CINEMATIC MASTERS OF THE GOLDEN HORSE AWARDS with a chat on OUT OF THE BLUE (Chen Kun-hou, Taiwan, 1983).

OUT OF THE BLUE is a  fascinating film to discuss in relation to all our previous podcasts on Taiwanese Cinema and Hou Hsiao-hsien; a film directed by Chen Kun-hou, the cinematographer on Hou Hsiao-hsien’s early films such as THE GREEN, GREEN GRASS OF HOME (1982) and THE BOYS FROM FENGKUEI (1983). Chen Kun-hou is also the cinematographer on HE NEVER GIVES UP (LEE HSING, 1978), and of course Hou Hsia-hsien was the co-writer on Chen Kun-hou’s GROWING UP (1983) and this one. These films also share writer, Chu T’ien-wen (the screenwriter) who went on to co-write most of Hou Hsia-hsien’s films, this one based on a novel by Chu T’ien-wen’s sister, Chu T’ien-hsin.

Collectively, work that evokes an outpouring of creativity but as part of a circle of collaborators. And this particular film seems a turning point from the ‘Healthy Realist’ cinema that was and the comedies and musicals that followed; to what would become known as New Taiwanese Cinema. A key film, released just after BOYS FROM FENGKUEI; A film that takes its time, the camera lingers, yet never feels long, a story gently told about young love in trouble, filial duty, ties to family, small transgressions. Aspects bring to mind BEFORE SUNRISE (Richard Linklater, 1995)

Arguably, one can’t understand New Taiwanese Cinema well without having a context; and this series is a shortcut to that context, the virtue is that it’s preselected, the films that that national industry thought the best; and within THAT, OUT OF THE BLUE is arguably the key film of that transition.

The podcast may be listened to below:

 

he podcast may  also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 421 – All of Us Strangers

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Writer-director Andrew Haigh’s romantic fantasy, All of Us Strangers, flows beautifully from scene to scene, inviting the audience to question the reality of what they’re shown but seldom requiring them to – it’s about the feeling it creates. It’s a film about isolation, building and rebuilding connections, how the past reverberates, and in particular, experiences of growing up gay in the homophobic society of the 1980s. Its themes are universal and easily understood, but people who share those experiences will identify with it more closely than most.

We discuss the complexity and natural feeling of the protagonist’s conversations with his parents, who carry with them, alongside love for their son, those homophobic attitudes; the way scenes flow into each other; how letting go of those questions of what and how things are real allows us to get the most out of the film; and we ask those questions anyway. We also take the opportunity to revisit the ending of The Zone of Interest, discuss audiences proudly displaying their dislikes, and have another think about The Holdovers with that in mind.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

In Conversation with Gary Needham on All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh, UK, 2023)

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Gary Needham wrote me a few days ago saying ‘Jose, have you seen ALL OF US STRANGERS yet? I saw it at the weekend and wasn’t expecting to be absolutely devastated by it. I cried throughout, when I got home, and still can’t shake off its affect and resonance days later’. I felt very similarly and have been wanting to talk to friends about the film ever since I saw it as part of the London Film Festival tour at the Midlands Arts Centre a few months ago.

Gary is a knowledgeable and celebrated queer scholar; the author of Brokeback Mountain (2010); co-author with Glyn Davis of Queer TV:  Theories, Histories, Politics (2008) and Warhol in Ten Takes (2013); co-editor of Asian Cinemas: A Reader and Guide (with Dimitris Eleftheriotis, 2006); United Artists (with Peter Krämer, Tino Balio, Yannis Tzioumakis), and many more. He is currently finishing Sex, Gays and Videotape: American Independent Cinema and the AIDS Crisis and another on Arthur Bressan’s Buddies (1985) for the QUEER FILM CLASSICS series. In other words, an ideal person to talk to about this film.

The conversation takes as a starting point the following:

a)a quote from director Andrew Haigh in The Guardian: ‘A generation of queer people are grieving the childhood they never had’.

b)Cüneit Çarkirlar’s observation at the end of his thoughtful piece on the film in The Conversation that, ‘I watched it with a friend who afterwards said something that really resonated with me: “It felt like one of the truest depictions of growing up gay in the 1980s and 1990s”.’

c) Gary’s own school report from 1987 (see below):

In the podcast we try to mix very personal responses with various historical contexts and speak of the film’s setting in relation to queer childhoods in that period, section 28, trauma, erasure; the film’s formal and stylistic achievements; Andrew Haigh’s career; how the film speaks to psychoanalytic pain, a generational pain, grief, AIDS. The personal grounded in historical contexts as a platform for politics. It’s all in there.

It may be listened to below:

The podcast may  also be listened to on: Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

We referenced the Section 28 Book which is this one: https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/outrageous; and the dates of the introduction are 1988 with a repeal in 2003, which is quite some time for such a homophobic legislation to be in place. The wikipedia page is actually very good on it with infographics too (like the Tories anti-labour billboards) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28

 

The Weekend/Theo and Hugo piece with Cüneyt for academic reference is this https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17400309.2020.1800329.

If you don’t have institutional access feel free to contact José here or Gary on gneedham@liverpool.ac.uk. He is also on instagram as gary.needham.

 

The queer British cinema survey is up online here: https://www.academia.edu/104194486/Queer_Relay_in_Post_Millennial_British_Cinema

 

José Arroyo.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 419 – American Fiction

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Writer-director Cord Jefferson’s debut feature, American Fiction, combines satire with family dynamics to fairly charming, if visually uninspiring, effect. Jeffrey Wright’s Thelonius is a novelist forced into a leave of absence from his teaching position, whereupon he returns to Boston and reconnects with his family, from whom he’s distant. He’s also furious that his latest manuscript has been rejected for not being black enough, and that what “black enough” means involves every negative stereotype of black people and culture imaginable. But when he sarcastically writes such a novel to shove society’s attitude in its face, it’s taken seriously by the white literary elite, who shower it with praise.

From the trailer, Mike was expecting more focus on the satire, and more energy à la Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You. It’s a surprise, then, that American Fiction spends so much time developing the family drama, but not an unpleasant one, and José finds that aspect the film’s most interesting. We consider the idea that the film uses the family story to practice what it preaches, offering a story about black people that doesn’t require them to be black in order to justify its existence – it’s a universal story about distanced siblings, a mother with failing health, and broken marriages. And we discuss the film’s ending, or lack thereof, in which the inescapability of the culture that demands stereotype is emphasised at the expense of a satisfying, earned conclusion to the story we’ve been told.

American Fiction doesn’t create a single artful image, and that ending is disappointing, but the film is also interesting, absorbing, and funny. Worth a look.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 418 – Maestro

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Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

We find Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s latest actor-director star vehicle, which dramatises the life of iconic conductor Leonard Bernstein, to be dishonest, illustrative, and superficial Oscar bait. We also find it cinematically ambitious at times, with great production values – not many films of this type are being made with $80 million budgets. A mixed bag.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 417 – The Holdovers

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Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

Alexander Payne evokes the Seventies in form and aesthetic in The Holdovers, a comedy-drama about the students and staff forced to stay at a New England boarding school over Christmas. It exudes charm and, over time, warmth, as the frosty relationship between student and teacher thaws, Payne handles the meandering tone beautifully, and it’s full of good jokes. For José, it doesn’t quite reach the level of the best in its genre; for Mike, it’s a good genre film elevated by some mysterious cinematic alchemy he doesn’t understand.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Thinking Aloud About Film: He Never Gives Up (Li Hsing, Taiwan, 1978)

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We continue our discussion of the GOLDEN DECADES: CINEMATIC MASTERS OF THE GOLDEN HORSE AWARDS with a chat on He Never Gives Up (LI Hsing, Taiwan, 1979). Li won the Golden Horse Award for Best Director for his films Beautiful Duckling (1965), Execution in Autumn (1972), and He Never Gives Up (1978) setting a record in Taiwan’s film history that remains unbroken, marking the pinnacle of Li Hsing’s directing career. It’s also part of a run — Good Morning Taipei (1979) and The Story of A Small Town (1980) – of very successful films.  This is our opportunity, a mixed blessing, to see a ‘Healthy Realist’ film, ‘uplifting’, and we now clearly see why the New Wave — so clearly a response to ‘Healthy Realism’ — made such an impact. The film is based on a real story,  published as A Raft in the Storm, that dealt with a child overcoming disability.

This is what we’ve been able to find out about A Raft in the Storm:

the first screenshot  above is from Diaspora Literature and Visual Culture: Asia in Flight by Sheng-mei Ma and also the link to the second screenshot is (https://www.kkday.com/en/tour/932)

In the podcast below, we discuss the film in relation to its script, healthy realism, ideology, hope, disability, and the film’s trade in platitudes. Richard is the voice of reason; I despised many aspects of it.

The podcast may  also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

José Arroyo

Thinking Aloud About Film: Four Moods (Taiwan, 1970)

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We continue our discussion of the GOLDEN DECADES: CINEMATIC MASTERS OF THE GOLDEN HORSE AWARDS, with a chat on Four Moods, a portmanteau film, originally conceived as a project to raise funds for Li Han-Hsiang’s then ailing Grand Motion Picture Company in Taiwan,

The four short films that together compose FOUR MOODS are:

-First, Joy, directed by Pai Ching-Jui, a bold beginning, shot as a silent film, with diegetic music but no dialogue

-The second is King Hu’s Anger, which no doubt King Hu’s fans will rejoice at.

-Sadness, the third, is directed by “godfather of Taiwanese cinema” Li Hsing, and possibly misnamed as it’s perhaps more about self-destructive anger and vengefulness than anything else.

-Happiness, the last, and our favourite, is directed by Li Han-hsiang himself

 

All involve ghosts, hauntings, and desires.

 

A historically and culturally significant film, featuring four of the most popular and accomplished directors of the time. Fabulistic and allegorical, … And yet, the length of the podcast testifies to the limits of our understanding. The frustration of watching these films is the bounds of one’s knowledge, and we would encourage listeners who want to know more to read these excellent articles by Andrew Heskins and Hayley Scallion.

The copy kindly made available for viewing is brown and a bit murky colour-wise and does not deserve to be publicised as a restoration. The sub-titling, particularly of text within the narrative, could be improved. That said, w’re very glad to have seen it and recommend it to others.

The podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may  also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

If listeners are keen to pursue these interests, we have podcasts on other films by these directors:

José Arroyo

 

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 416 – The Zone of Interest

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he Zone of Interest is a title that accurately reflects the film it adorns: it’s a term used by the Nazis to euphemistically address the 40 square kilometre area surrounding the Auschwitz concentration camp, conspicuously refusing to mention the factory of death it enclosed, conveying a culture of at best wilful ignorance of and at worst tacit complicity with the Holocaust. Similarly, Jonathan Glazer’s film is conspicuous in its refusal to show us the interior of the camp (with a notable exception, which we discuss), instead keeping its attention on the surrealistically normal country house with which it shares a wall, which is occupied by the camp’s commandant, Rudolf Höss, and his family. The film is not interested in imagery of suffering, torture, and death: its subject is the culture and mentality of those who administrate and benefit from it.

There’s a huge amount to discuss in this thought-provoking film, and we reflect on our own experiences visiting Auschwitz, now a museum and memorial, in so doing. Our key insight from visiting, something obvious on paper but not clear until we were there, was the industrial nature of the camp, in which it used its victims up for the labour they could extract, allowing them to starve to death as the energy content of their bodies diminished, and replacing them with a steady intake of others. The film conveys some of this in the businesslike manner in which Höss’s job is conducted – it’s all phone calls, meetings, conferences, folders, agendas. And we discuss Höss wife, Hedwig, and her complicity; the soundtrack, which beds the film in a constant hum of machinery and movement from the camp, and the ending, which offers a surprising and effective flourish that grounds everything we’ve seen in documentary reality.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

https://soundcloud.com/eavesdroppingatthemovies/416-the-zone-of-interest

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 414 – Poor Things

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Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest absurd comedy, Poor Things, creates a wonderful confluence of themes, all through the lens of Bella, a grown woman with a child’s brain, experiencing the world anew and detached from emotion. We discuss Bella’s attitude to the world she encounters, the men who try to control and cage her, Lanthimos’ idiosyncratic visual style and comedic sensibility, the examination of the nuances of sex, what Mike finds lacking in the brothel scenes, and more.

Listen on the players below, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 415 – The Beekeeper

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The Expendables films set Jason Statham up as the logical inheritor of the action hero crown formerly held by Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme and so on – and true to his status as such, Statham has many rubbish films under his belt. The Beekeeper is the latest, in which we learn of a programme of state-sponsored vigilantes – the Beekeepers – who act on their own terms, when something goes awry, to protect the hive that is the USA.

That the film is trash doesn’t mean it’s not fun, and Mike had a good time with the story’s daftness, the obviousness with which its cogs turn, and the action, which, while far from brilliant and heavily reliant on sound effects, is also intense and entertaining. José decries the film’s politics, dumbness, and use of British actors in so many of its American roles.

Listen on the players above, Apple Podcasts, Audible, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.