Un flic (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1972)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

The only sentiments that mankind has ever been able to inspire in the police are ambivalence and derision (Frančois-Eugéne Vidocq).

People prattle on with their smart alecky dismissal of authorship – defined in the most reductive way possible so as to allow for a straw argument —  but in the first five minutes of UN FLIC you’re already in another, deeper, richer, more complex and more beautiful realm than in any of the Giovannis, or even Derays, or other polars. It’s so palpable: the wind, the fog, the waves, the lights turning on simultaneously as if to announce a sadness — gorgeous. No wonder Delon dedicated POUR LA PEAU D’UN FLIC (1981)to Jean-Pierre Melville. He made polars lesser directors could only aspire to. Delon acknowledged that he himself could never dream of making a film like Melville or Visconti; only they could make them. Delon had to make something else. What remained unspoken was that it was also something lesser, at least as a director

The seaside bank-robbery at the beginning is followed by a sequence in which Commissaire Edouard Coleman (Alain Delon) is called to a different type of robbery. A young hustler, under 18, has tried to rob an elderly gay man of a valuable sculpture (see clip above). The con is that the boys pretend they’re 20, steal from the older gents, but blackmail them into not calling the police as they’re minors. ‘We’re targeted by real professionals.’ ‘You’re only charged if you are repeat offenders,’ says the inspector. ‘We all are,’ says the victim.

It’s a beautiful moment in the film, one which made me understand why queers of a previous generation looked to film noir for representations of homosexuality. In this era homosexuality was a crime and it signifies criminality in these films. A queer appears and already they connote an underworld, blackmail, seediness, sadness, uncontrollable desire, transgression , liminality and perversity, The figure of the homosexual is as much a liminal figure — between desire and crime — in noir as the boxer, the gangster or the gambler, usually not given as much screen time, thus condensed into a more potent signifier. It has its romance but must then also have had social consequences: all those sad young men looking at these images, often the only ones available. It now has a certain romance but one can understand why it then politicised critics like Vito Russo.

When I first saw UN FLIC, I took the representations of gay and trans figures in this film as homophobic. Having now seen the film again, I see it differently. There’s an understanding and a generosity in the figure of Coleman as played by Delon and as filmed by Melville. Note the sympathy in the blackmail scene to the elderly man. Note too that he could have arrested him but doesn’t. Lastly, see how the elderly victim also asks Coleman not to ‘kill the sinner,’ ie. not to be too rough on the young boy. They’re all in this world, one not of their own making, together, even if each has to play a designated role not chosen by them. The old man is sympathetic to the young boy, just as Coleman is to him.

The complexity of this representation is underlined in Inspector Coleman’s dealings with his trans informant. See the exchange of glances in the clip above, the softness with which she says ‘Merci Edouard’, but in voice-over on his face. The way they look at each other suggests a tenderness, a hint that there might have been something between them. Note how the camera stays on Delon’s face at the end, a hint of — a smile, something suggesting tenderness or sympathy — appears.

This is underlined in the subsequent scene, where inspector Coleman thinks she’s been misinforming him. He’s no longer Eduard but inspector Coleman, hits her, calls for the cops to ‘get this thing out of here’. She’s no longer a person but a thing, dehumanised. And yet when the cops ask her if he wants them to book her he says, ‘no, take her out’. He could have booked her, just as he could have jailed the elderly gay man previously, but doesn’t. Melville again films this so interestingly, note in the clip above how she looks at him longingly, bewildered. He turns his back on her, the camera zooms in on her face, still expressing a surprise but also longing. The camera then follows her in a fantastic shot filmed from outside as she makes her way through all the various police procedurals and onto the street, the camera getting closer as she leaves the shot. No quips, no wise-cracks, no defiance; a sense of being hurt, misunderstood betrayed, in a world between police headquarters and the street, both filmed as a kind of jail. Our sympathy is with her. Expressing that, and what she might feel, and how what she might feel is a commentary on the film’s world —  to not only re-humanise her but for that moment make her the locus of our perception and understanding — is the shot’s sole purpose. It’s beautiful.

It’s a structure of feeling the film shares with Aznavour’s ‘What Makes a Man’:

‘I ask myself what I have gotAnd what I am and what I’m notWhat have I givenBut an answers come from those who makeThe rules that some of us must breakJust to keep living

I know my life is not a crimeI’m just a victim of my timeI stand defencelessNobody has the right to beThe judge of what is right for meTell me if you canWhat make a man a man
The Aznavour version can be seen here

UN FLIC  is full of such extraordinary scenes. My favourite is that of Delon, cigarette dangling, stopping to play the piano. Deneuve steps out to look. He’s the object of her gaze but it’s her the camera lingers over. She catches his eye. He  smiles knowing that she’s been looking. A third person (Richard Crenna) enters and he’s called away. He blows her kisses. She does the same. But she’s already betrayed him. All this smokey perfection wafts through on a gentle jazz piano, sound and image masterfully conceptualised by Melville. It’s hard to think of who and what’s more perfect: he, she or the direction that’s orchestrating all of it.

The reason the scene above fascinates me is the gun in the bed, as potent a metaphor for noir as I’ve seen, here encouched in an ambivalence created by the doubling/reflection, distorted and partial of the mirror, the role play, the dialogue. She’s betraying him. Does he suspect at this point? Does he care?

Deneuve is a cold-blooded murderess. Delon lets her go, just as he let the gay man and the trans woman go. But here it’s not sympathy, or understanding so much as his feelings for her, which take precedence over her actions and the law. This film, all tinged in blue filters is all about that moral ambiguity.

 

I love the scene above where Paul Weber (Riccardo Cuciolla) the former bank manager turned bank robber is allowed to commit suicide. There are parallelisms and foreshadowings here. Paul’s wife (Simon Valère) is the third blonde in the film, the only law-abiding one. Melville does a wonderful thing  with lights when they are alone together in their flat, the wife turning on the light to try and find answers, the husband turning them off to block her; this is later reversed. In this scene Inspector Coleman allows Paul to commit suicide, just as he’ll do later with his friend (Simon) who he shares Cathy (Deneuve) with.

In the middle of the film, there’s a superb heist, where Richard Crenna steals a suitcases full of drugs and escapes via a helicopter. It’s a dazzling scene, a cinematic tour de force practically no dialogue, no music, very suspenseful, and it’s a clear influence on the helicopter scene in Mission Impossible, though the latter is in a different, more spectacular mode and a much louder tone, a different type of tour de force but a tour de force nonetheless.

It’s a truly great film, the above merely a hint of its pleasures an complexities. It was also Melville’s last.

 

Michail J. Glass and I discussed it previously on a podcast here:

221 – Un flic

José Arroyo

Marc Almond at Symphony Hall, September 16th 2024

Uncategorized, , , ,

Marc Almond arrived on stage last night at Symphony Hall looking like an aged Mercedes McCambridge; bobbed hair, face powdered, frail but febrile. There’s a chair nearby, should he need it, which he will. But no matter, in a matter of minutes he’s charmed the audience with his explanation of his choice of songs, almost all covers, how they express his feelings and are meant to evoke his life. So the set is mainly the kind of songs a queen d’un certain age, and more than a little culture would choose. He starts by saying how much he loves Imitation of Life and valiantly attempts Mahalia Jackson’s version of ‘Trouble in the World’. Then it’s on to Cher (‘A Woman’s Story’); Eartha Kitt (‘The Heel’), Billy Holliday (‘Gloomy Sunday’). Some teen favourites: Bobby Darin’s ‘Dream Lover’; Elvis Presley, ‘One Night of Sin’; ‘We all love David Cassidy, don’t we? His version of ‘How Can I Be Sure?’ is the one we all like best’; a selection of Charles Aznavour songs (‘What Makes a Man’); Jacques Brel (‘Ne me quitte pas’); Leonard Cohen (‘Dance Me to the End of Love’); Bowie (‘The London Boys’), Marc Bolan (‘Children of the Revolution’). Dana Gillespie – a link with Bowie — appears on stage to duet with Almond on a lovely version of ‘Stardom Road’. Almond seems to get younger and more energetic as the set progresses. He alienates part of the audience (‘This is a song about bisexuality though I always say bi now, gay later); tells off the band for not being on pitch or on the beat and makes them restart songs twice; and I can’t hand-in-heart say any of his covers are better than the originals; and still… He wins the audience over with his honesty and his charm, the expressivity of his gestures and the power of his voice, even though that doesn’t always seem fully in control. He has the audience in the palm of his hand way before the first strains of ‘Tainted Love’ makes the whole audience go loco. It’s the first time I’ve seen him onstage and hope it won’t be the last. He’s expressed a whole generation’s queer ‘structure of feeling’ and made the audience feel in tune with it.

José Arroyo

MELODIE EN SOUS SOL/ ANY NUMBER CAN WIN (Henri Verneuil, 1963)

Uncategorized

A caper film set in a casino, made after the original OCEAN’S 11 (Lewis Milestone, 1960) equally glamorous but much better. Jean Gabin plays an ex-con fresh out of jail and ready for a final heist. He’s too old to pull off the job by himself but he’s met a petty thief in the slammer who’ll do nicely – Alain Delon. Delon fought to get the part – originally intended for Jean-Louis Trintignant – took a pay cut and distribution rights in lieu of salary (Japan – the beginnings of his superstardom there, Russia and Argentina). Ostensibly, Delon felt he’d been in too many art films recently (for Antonioni and Visconti) and wanted a chance at a mainstream popular success. This turned out to be one of the biggest of his career. And he gets a superb ‘star entrance’ (see below):

In the past I’ve heard myself argue that whilst dialogue is almost everything in a play it is not in itself a screenplay and is not that important on film. Bad dialogue doesn’t necessarily ruin it. See for example any of James Cameron’s. If the direction is no good, if the actors can’t act, if the costumes make them look silly, if an editor can’t create rhythm or sense, good dialogue won’t save a movie. That said, it’s such a joy to hear Michel Audiard’s brilliant words from the mouths of these actors that it now makes me think how the lack of good dialogue in much of contemporary cinema has left audiences bereft.

Louis Paget is credited as cinematographer, André Dumaitre as cameraman. In French, the term for cameraman is ‘cadreur’, which has connotations of composition and/or framing, and whether the compositions are due to Verneuil, Paget or Dumaitre, alone or in combination, they’re smashing: superb use of mirrors, lines, screens, always at a slight diagonal making the world the actors move in sexy and dangerous.

This is a key film in Delon’s evolving star persona, first presented as delinquent jazz-listening jail-bird, then moving onto playing the upper-crust playboy necessary to pull off the heist, and moving easily from one to the other. It’s almost certainly influenced by TO CATCH A THIEF – the rooftop shots — and one also detects an influence on the whole concept of IT TAKES A THIEF, with Robert Wagner. The New York Times listed it in its top ten for the year.

Fans of La Bandera and Le Bel Equipe will delight in Vivian Romance’s reunion with Gabin here.

José Arroyo

Red Sun (Terence Young, 1970)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

The kind of movie Quentin Tarantino likes: lots of action, excitingly filmed, with characters that are all attitude and swagger, visual sweep, dead-pan tough-guy humour and not much substance. This one is sumptuously mounted and directed by Terence Young, fresh of his recent successes with Bond (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Thunderball) and others (Wait Until Dark), to take advantage of its sometimes snowy, mountainous Spanish locations. One of the ways you can tell it was filmed in Spain is that when the characters are eating you find the traditional bread, lemns and a big serrano ham on the table. The great Henri Alekan makes the most of the stars, the locations and the light: it looks gorgeous throughout. The director and cinematographer combine to incite real visual pleasure in the light, the mountains, the way the horses move in the landscape, a great shoot-out near the end filmed through reeds. Charles Bronson had not yet headlined and American production. But this is one of a series of films that would make him into an international box-office star without yet having made a dent at the US box office; something akin to what happened with Clint Eastwood a little bit earlier, and Bronson, approaching 50 was much older. This film is clearly indebted to Leone’s Westerns in various ways, particularly in Maurice Jarre’s attempt at personalising a Morricone style in the score. It’s great to see Alain Delon as a villain—a rare treat — all in black, with a silver tooth, much attitude and no scruples. Ursula Andress is the prostitute who loves him. Capucine is very charismatic as a Madam. Toshiro Mifune is one of the last of the Samurais who uneasily teams up with Bronson to return a sword intended as a gift from the Japanese emperor to the President of the United States in order to save the honour of Japan (and the Ambassador’s and the Samurai’s). Bronson only wants the money. There are many things to admire in this film: it moves beautifully, looks smashing, and is exciting to watch. It’s also one of those films in which every woman is either a prostitute or an innocent about to be raped; Mexicans are all victims; Comanches unknowable but for their violence and brutality. A blu-ray that looks terrific but with sound levels bouncing all over the place is still available; an indication that whatever its ultimate merits, the film has become a landmark or classic of some kind.

José Arroyo

Pour la peau d’un flic/ To Kill A Cop (Alain Delon, 1981)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

The more I view of Delon, the more impressive he becomes. In POUR LA PEAU D’UN FLIC, he directs as well as writes, produces and stars. He’s no Orson Welles. The film is but efficient fun. But he’s a lot savvier about driving a film to success than Welles ever was, and this was a big hit.

The film is a very cinephile one, with references to Cukor and his  HELLER IN PINK TIGHTS and LES GIRLS. We also see posters for DESERT FURY, THE BANDWAGON and many others. The most interesting aspect of the film is that it is already evidence of a certain playful postmodern turn.

George Cukor, connasse!

The film is a traditional polar based on a novel by Jean-Patrick Machette, just like TROIS HOMMES À ABBATRE, so there’s crime, and corruption, money laundering and drug deals. But here the darkness of TROIS HOMMES À ABBATRE is leavened by a comic tone. We see the kinds of quip-after-a-horror that we’d only see later in American cinema, with Schwarzenegger as the most famous practitioner.

It’s very self-referential of the genre and of Delon’s own star persona; Mireille Darc, his current girlfriend, makes a cameo and is insulted by a driver calling her by the name of oneJean of her films – LA GRANDE SAUTERELLE (above); Annie Parillaud, his future girlfriend, tells Delon how much more elegantly Belmondo reacts to pain (below).

The film also evidences the beginnings of a change in form that would be exacerbated through the eighties, not so much here by the way it intersperses the action (though that too, see below), but by the deployment of a soundtrack score (Crystal Gayle, Neil Diamond and many others, with Oscar Benton’s Bensonhurt Blues becoming a big hit), that requires a different kind of incorporation into the narrative and into the action. It’s a very enjoyable and interesting film.

The film is dedicated to Jean-Pierre Melville

José Arroyo

Trois hommes à abattre/ Three Men to Kill (Jacques Deray, 1980)

Uncategorized, , , , ,

Delon made 28 films in the 70s, also producing about half of them, including TROIS HOMMES À ABATTRE, one of his best, and one of his most successful in this period. In his seventh collaboration with director Jacques Deray, Delon plays a professional poker player who drives by what he thinks is a car accident, makes the mistake of playing good Samaritan, and takes the driver to the hospital. That car accident turns out to be a hit, one put out by a large and powerful conglomerate whose multi-million dollar arms sale depends on certain information not leaking. They think Delon knows something and they’re out to get him. It takes a while for him to realise what he’s experiencing is not a coincidence — someone’s really out to kill him — and starts fighting back. But how can one man win against so many powerful forces?

 

An excellent thriller, one Delon made in a conscious attempt to give  ‘his public’ what he thought they wanted; a shy, beautiful and lonely cat, content in his own business, but who can bare his claws and become dangerous when threatened. The film’s in colour but so bleak it ends in pitch black noir mode; with an ending so dark Delon’s distributor in Japan changed it for fear his fans wouldn’t find it acceptable; a surprise since, unike Belmondo,  dying in films was hardly new to Delon. In this period villains always seem to love cats and art as much as they disdain people — surely a nod to Blofield in Bond — and Pierre Dux makes the most of his role. I also loved seeing Dalila Di Lazzaro as Delon’s girlfriend, very beautiful, funny and sexy, completely relaxed and open to the camera. I’d never heard of her. A noir worth looking out for.

Delon seems to wear white socks throughout the film; a practice then in vogue but, as far as i can tell, never seen before or since with Delon.

José Arroyo

La mort d’un pourri/ Death of a Corrupt Man (Georges Lautner, 1977)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

‘Corruption disgusts me; virtue makes me shudder’. One of the film’s many great lines, written by Michel Audiard, with Claude Sautet doctoring the structure. In the film, corruption is everywhere: finance, the law, the police, the highest realms of government, all intermingling with the mafia, each out to make a franc. Alain Delon knows this, and he normally doesn’t much care. The only reason he gets involved is because his friend was murdered, no matter that the friend was killed for himself killing someone else. Friendship and loyalty are all. The film is a metaphor for Giscard D’Estaing’s government and a denunciation of the France of the day. Stan Getz on sax seems to blow every inflection of the blues —  waves of various kinds of sadness — over the film’s narrative. The film has a superb all-star cast: Klaus Kinski, Mireille Darc, Maurice Ronet, Stéphane Audran, a very beautiful and very young Ornella Mutti. The word pourri in the original French title signifies much more than ‘corrupt; it has connotations of decay,rot, infected, venal. An excellent noir; if it were more visually interesting, I’d call it great. As it is, it has a complex story, like an unfurling spider’s web, well told, a beautifully evoked mood, a consistently maintained tone, with some fine action. It was a considerable success at the box office, a relief for Delon, after a bit of a drought. Delon is so good he was nominated as Best Actor for the César that year

DEUX HOMMES DANS LA VILLE (José Giovanni, 1973).

Uncategorized, , , , , ,

A plea against capital punishment, something director Giovanni knew something about. Under the name of Joseph Damiani, he was sentenced to death for three pre-meditated murders in ‘48. He’d been previously denied all civil rights for having been a collaborationist and a member of the PPF Fascist Party in ‘46’; and later, in ’49, he was sentenced for ten years for blackmailing hidden Jews during the Occupation. Damiani was pardoned after serving 11 years and encouraged to write about his experiences. Under the name of José Giovanni, he wrote 24 novels, a staple of Serie Noir. Some were adapted to films —  LE TROU (Jacques Becker, 1960); CLASSE TOUS RISQUES (Claude Sautet, 1964); LE DEUXIÈME SOUFFLE adapted first by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1966 and later by Alain Corneau in 2007 – and they too became classics of a kind. I want to know more about Damiani/Giovanni.

I’ve not read any of Giovanni’s novels. But his films are coarse, pulpy, lacking in subtlety and depth and visually perfunctory. DEUX HOMMES EN VILLE is a good example. It’s a message film, a plea against capital punishment. Delon is a bank robber released thanks to the support of his social worker, Jean Gabin. Everything goes well until the policeman who sent him in ends up in the same provincial town and begins to make his life so impossible Delon ends up killing him in a rage and paying for it with his neck. It all culminates in a preachy court-room scene where Capital Punishment is decried as Delon is found guiltuy and followed by a crudely conceived guillotine scene – where all the film has led to, its singular point. Gabin gives the only un-interesting performance I’ve seen him give: sure, smug, patronising. It is nonetheless a pleasure to see him with Delon. Depardieu also appears in a small role, making of this film an opportunity to see three giants of French cinema together. The best performance in the film is Michel Bouquet as the Javert-like inspector who hounds Delon’s ex-con to the point of insanity and onto the guillotine.

DEUX HOMMES EN VILLE  was a big hit. It was remade in 2014 as TWO MEN IN TOWN by Rachid Bouchareb, with Harvey Keitel and Forest Whitaker in the Gabin and Delon roles respectively. I saw it in a restored version that looks crisp but. given what a trial it was to sit through, I didn’t much care. Delon produced.

José Arroyo

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JIMMY REARDON/ AREN’T YOU EVER GOING TO KISS ME GOODBYE (William Richert, 1986)

Uncategorized, , , , ,

Hollywood has no shortage of coming-of-age teen comedies structured around a young man’s hormones. But there was also a time where it was less afraid to cast the heartthrob of the moment (River Phoenix) as an aspiring poet with beatnik aspirations, easily seducing and eagerly seducible, but on a quest to win his one true love. This is a romance with a comic tone hovering between the broad and the delicate, one the film mostly achieves.

 

The film is set in the North Shore of Chicago in 1962., It’s based on a biographical novel by its screen-writer/director, who sees his past through somewhat rose-tinted lenses. Jimmy Reardon wants to go to university and study literature. His father wants him to study business at a local college, like he did. They had a deal to each pay half. But at the very beginning of the film Jimmy gets conned out of his college money (all $110 of it. Ostensibly annual tuition at the University of Chicago in 1962 was $220) when he hands over all his savings to a young woman who’s already conned three others on a phony abortion claim. Now he needs to come up with his half of the money or it’s goodbye to the No Exit café, with its art, poetry and espresso – no more brushing up to girls who read Kierkegaard — and hello to McInley Business College.  This is all made more difficult in that all his friends seem to be country-club rich. It’s a film with a pointed view of class but one so American and so of its period that it’s worth an analysis of its own. Middle-class America’s idea of ‘poor’ in 1962 must have seemed quite rich to foreigners then, or indeed much of America now.

 

William Richert, the director was convinced that this was a masterpiece the studio had screwed over. Twenty years after its first release, he called on critics to see and re-evaluate his cut, with the original Elmer Bernstein score restored, his choice of a beautiful Johnny Mathis ballad – I’m Not Afraid to Say Goodbye — to set the tone at the beginning, and a voice-over narration performed by Richert  himself added on. I  liked it very much, even seen on the terrible print Amazon prime makes available, but a masterpiece it’s not. It’s got lovely performances from Ann Magnuson as an older woman, Luke Perry in his first role as a rich kid  whose money could solve all of Jimmy’s problems, and most of all River Phoenix, in his first starrig role, daring and tender and true in all he does. But Richert’s voice-over is mannered and inexpressive. He would go on to perform Shakespeare in MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, but he would have done better to hire someone else here. Richert also has no visual sense, and it’s a film that seems entirely maintained by the rhythm’s of speech, situation and performance. But that’s enough; and on top of that, it shows a love for the odd, the weird, the outsider, the bohemian and gives weight to Robin Hood’s answer when Maid Marian asks him why he bothers to help the poor in the Curtiz/ Keighley film. It’s a lot to love.

José Arroyo

Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1942)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

Next to LE CERCLE ROUGE (Melville, 1970), MR. KLEIN is Delon’s greatest film of the 70s, the Canal + restoration so gorgeous that I’m still frustrated I couldn’t rip it to share some images with you. I suspect my external blu-ray drive doesn’t accept 4k and would welcome recommendations for a new one.
Robert Klein (Delon)is an antiques dealer profiting from the difficulties facing in Paris, 1942. We encounter him buying a Dutch master from someone who needs gold to escape in a hurry. He’s ever so apologetic, ‘I’m embarrassed to be buying at these prices’. ‘Then why do you?’ answers the man whom circumstances force to accept the deal. As he’s escorting the client out, the postman delivers a copy of ‘Informations Juives’, the Jewish community newspaper, addressed to him. Cognisant of the dangers this presents, he goes to the police to claim, as in so many Hitchcock narratives, that he’s the wrong man; and this sets a chain of events where as he begins searching for the other, Jewish, Robert Klein, and as the system increasingly begins to treat him as a Jew, he begins to question his own identity, increasingly admires the other Robert Klein, who seems to be loving, resisting, fighting back. By the end he becomes ‘The Other,’ but at great cost, as the film ends with the infamous Vel d’Hiv round up of Parisian Jews, where the French government itself delivered 13, 152 jews to the Germans, who promptly put them on trains to extermination camps. The extent of the French authorities’ collaboration was only beginning to come to light as MR. KLEIN was being released and might account for it not being a hit. It’s an extraordinary film. It took me most of yesterday to see because it’s a film about dread that evokes and makes you feel it, that dread increases and doesn’t let up until the final frame, so I used the pause button a lot, and I wish I hadn’t, a weakness, as one destroys all the filmmakers’ rhythms. I wish I’d seen it on a big screen.
There are many extraordinary scenes in this astonishing film. Reviewers often mention the opening, where a phrenologist measures and pokes a middle-aged woman to deduce whether she will be awarded the ‘not Jewish’ certificate on which her safety depends. I’ll merely highlight another,  a metonym for the film as a whole, a musical number based on the anti-semitic Jud Süs, where performers denigrate jews for the benefit of an audience including Nazi officials, but in which some of the performers are clearly men in drag, no doubt soon to follow the jews into the cattle cars provided by the Nazis. it’s a film full of such portentous moments.
Delon was one of the producers of this film and made it possible. I love the billing on the poster ‘Delon, Losey, Mr. Klein’ highlighting auteurism but putting the star system above all.
José Arroyo

LES SEINS DE GLACE/ ICY BREASTS/ SOMEONE IS BLEEDING (Georges Lautner, 1974)

Uncategorized, , , ,

When Delon died, the obituaries acknowledged his beauty and his stardom but were a bit sniffy about his acting. Watching his films from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, mainly in genre movies that he often produced himself, I’m amazed by his range: he plays working class blokes, aristocrats, haute bourgeois, gangsters, outsiders, villains; and he’s convincing as/in all. The only thing I haven’t seen him in is stylised comedy. I’ve also noted his generosity. He often turns over the films, in which he is always top-billed, to his female co-star (Annie Girardot in TRAITEMENT DE SHOCK or Mireille Darc in SEINS DE GLACE, often delaying his appearance until ¼ or a 1/3 of the way into the narrative). He’s completely self-assured, relaxed, and unafraid to surround himself with the very best actors (Signoret, Meurisse, Gabin, Girardot etc.,  all in this period). And for a man of such beauty, he lacks vanity. Note how he’s filmed in LE GITAN, stubbly, tired, puffy-eyed, from unflattering angles; and think how Warren Beatty in the same period would never have allowed himself to be thus filmed  (remember the hassle Beatty put the marketing department through to make sure his crotch was right in the posters for HEAVEN CAN WAIT).

In LES SEINS DE GLACE Claude Brasseur, cuddly and open-faced (he sleeps under a Snoopy blanket) falls in love with a mysterious woman walking on the beach. He asks her out and she eventually consents. She’s afraid. But of what? Is someone after her? Certainly corpses seem to multiply in her wake. But is it her, or is it Alain Delon, her lawyer, completely besotted with her but unfortunately married?

LES SEINS DE GLACE is clearly designed as a showcase for Mireille Darc, Delon’s then girlfriend, and she does have a fabulous body, fully on display, but has a simian lower jaw, which careless cinematography by Maurice Fellous here highlights, and a limited range of expression. That said, this is an efficient psychological thriller, with a surprisingly romantic if dark ending, heavy-handed in its symbolism, making too much use of the zooms so characteristic of the period but sufficiently entertaining. It was a considerable hit.

The film is based on Richard Matheson’s Someone is Bleeding (1953), his first novel

José Arroyo

 

Le Gitan/ The Gypsy (José Giovanni, 1975)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

A film full of attractions that don’t quite pay off. Alain Delon, Annie Girardot and Renato Salvatore re-unite after their great success a generation earlier in ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (Luchino Visconti, 1960) but Renato now round-faced and full girth is but one of many Delon sidekicks; and Girardot only appears 2/3rds into the film (why she took this role at the height of her box office is a mystery). Indeed, both are marginal to this narrative. The film is a dual story of two criminals chased by the police: A Gypsy (Delon), an ascetic who eschews even wine, freshly escaped from jail, who has no qualms about committing whatever crime is necessary to help his people; and Yan Kuq (Paul Meurisse), a high end jewel thief from a low-end background who steals as a form of class revenge and as a means to live the high-life. Their paths only accidentally cross when the police keep chasing after one and finding another.

It’s a crudely directed film, with Delon badly dressed at the beginning  (see above) with a ludicrous hat, a thick moustache and an earring. He becomes more effective as the film unfolds and common sense begins to assert itself on the costuming. The film does underline the oppression of Romani people but is mostly concerned with capers, shoot-outs and car chases

It has an amazing opening shot (see above) beginning in a beautiful bourgeois beach and ending on a run-down romani encampment; a fantastic star entrance for Delon (see below); a superb score played by Django Reinhardt; and very compelling performances from all the leads.

It’s a film where you can tell Delon is a gypsy because he wears an earring (see below)

 

 

José Arroyo

Diaboliquement vôtre/ Diabolically Yours (Julien Duvivier, 1967)

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

Duvivier’s last film, unfavourably reviewed upon release and a rare box-office failure for Delon in this period. Today, it is disadvantageously compared to Julio Medem’s The Red Squirrel, rightly so, but I rather liked it. It’s a psychological thriller with Gothic elements but with Delon as the damsel in distress.

Alain Delon has a terrible accident, loses his memory, but finds himself with a beautiful wife, master of a lovely chateau. But why is there only one servant (Peter Mosbacher, in yellowface)? Why does he have nightmares about the Algerian war when he’s meant to have been carousing in Hong Kong? Why does he keep hearing thoughts of suicide in his sleep? Why do chandeliers keep dropping on his head? Why is his own Doberman hungry for his throat? Why did he almost fall from the attic and into sharp objects? Is someone trying to kill him? Could it be his wife? The kinky Chinese servant? The Doctor/Best Friend? And why?

The plot of the first two thirds of the film bear comparison with a gender-reversed Gaslight with Delon in the Bergman role. The last third is too obvious, pat and unconvincing. It’s a high-budget film (Duvivier, Delon, Henri Decoin as dop) that nonetheless feels under-produced. It’s a four-hander in a huge house, where the frame often feels empty. The whole film could have been more atmospheric; and whilst Delon is terrific, everyone else, particularly Senta Berger as the wife, could have been better, or at least more animated. Still, a terrific premise, entertaining if not quite good.

José Arroyo

Traitement de choc (Alain Jessua, 1973)

Uncategorized, , , , ,

In the ‘50s there was a fashion for ageing celebrities such as Dietrich and Noel Coward to go to a clinic in Switzerland – since the basis of the famous La Prairie brand of beauty products — to receive Dr. Niehans cellular treatment, where it was rumoured they got injected with sheep foetuses to reverse ageing. Traitement de choc (Alain Jessua, 1973) takes this a step further and makes the practice a parable for capitalism. In the 1970s France was dependent on migrant workers from Spain and Portugal as cheap labour to fuel their economy. And the film is quite explicit about this, beginning and ending with the arrival of a different set of migrant workers. Here it is not just their labour that is exploited but also their very organs, which are the basis for the rejuvenation serum  the rich and powerful rely on. Annie Girardot — then French Cinema’s most popular actress, is a chic career woman who’s made a fortune in prêt-à- porter but is now looking to hold back time. When her gay best friend commits suicide under suspicious circumstances she begins to investigate. Alain Delon, in my favourite phase of his career – still beautiful but visibly ageing; cruel to most women to the point of misogyny but tender and vulnerable to at least one; an archetypally Gothic type of hero but for Delon being too selfish and ruthless to suffer; is the sexy but evil Doctor. Sleeping with all of the female clients seems to be part of the treatment. The film is no great shakes as cinema but is a very efficient thriller, a successful star vehicle for Girardot and Delon – both then at the height of their box-office – with modernist 70’s design and chic early 70s fashions, low-belted dress shirts that hug and show off a figure, light green plastic jackets. It also a quite powerful social critique. Oh, and in keeping with the fashion of the day, both stars appear naked. The film was released in the UK as DOCTORS IN THE NUDE to exploit Delon’s full-frontal nude scenes. There must have been something in the air that year because ASH WEDNESDAY (Larry Peerce, 1973) also draws on the clinic for inspiration, but to different ends. The film has a lovely Brazailian-influenced score by René Koering.

José Arroyo

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 427 – Alien: Romulus

Uncategorized, , , , , ,

A welcome new instalment in the Alien franchise, which has moved between genres and directors, remained popular for over four decades, and offered fascinating expansions of its internal mythos, Alien: Romulus moves with the times to give Generation Z the opportunity to die in space. It goes like the clappers, orchestrates loads of entertaining, tactile action, and is unbelievably good-looking. It’s also underwritten, arguably overstuffed with reference to previous films in the series, and features one of those entirely uncontroversial and ethically pure reanimations of a deceased actor through CGI and other technologies. Perhaps after seeing the muted responses to the ideas on offer in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, the series has decided to seek refuge in the cloying bosom of nostalgia – but we differ on how excessive it is, while enthusiastically agreeing that Romulus is great fun, and easy to recommend.

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

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

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 426 – Caligula: The Ultimate Cut

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One of cinema’s most infamous disasters, Caligula was conceived by producer Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse magazine, as an explicit, expensively-made adult film, about the rise and fall of the titular Roman emperor. In pursuing this, Guccione removed director Tinto Brass during post-production, so that he could have hardcore pornography shot and inserted into the film. On its release in 1979, Caligula was critically savaged on both moral and cinematic grounds, confiscated by police in some countries, banned in others, and the cause of lines that stretched around the block. It has remained an artifact of cult interest ever since, and the subject of occasional attempts to reconstruct it in a form that reflects something approaching its creators’ original visions – to whatever extent their visions agreed with each other.

Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is the most thorough of these reconstructions by far, benefitting from the rediscovery of 96 hours of original material, which had been rushed out of Italy and hidden during the film’s release. Opening intertitles claim that every frame of art historian Thomas Negovan’s cut is previously unseen. It’s long been wondered whether there’s a great film within Caligula; although we don’t think The Ultimate Cut demonstrates that there is, it’s entertaining and striking, and offers an idea of what might have been.

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

 

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

José Arroyo In Conversation with Alastair Phillips on Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)

Uncategorized, , , , , ,

I’ve been wanting to talk to Alastair Phillips about his ‘BFI Classic’ monograph on TOKYO STORY (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) since it was first published late last year. I found reading the book after watching the film truly illuminating, deepening and enriching the experience: a real achievement with a film already so familiar. It draws on Japanese sources not yet available in English, offering new information on the film’s production and reception and combines this with Alastair’s characteristically precise and informative textual analysis. It’s no surprise that the book is already on its second printing.

 

In the podcast we discuss the significance of TOKYO STORY being Ozu’s first film after the American occupation; Shochiku Studios, genre, and the star system of the period; the film’s reception in Japan and the lag between that and broader international release; Ozu’s characteristic aesthetic, including what Nöel Burch characterised as the ‘pillow shot’ ; the relation of space to place in the film; how the film is about the flow of time in its varied temporalities; the female-centric aspect of the film and what it has to say about ‘blood’ families; why and how it’s so moving; it’s relationship to MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (Leo McCarey, 1937); how Ozu is not just one of the great directors of the Twentieth Centuries but, considering his work as a potter, designer, painter, photographer, calligrapher etc, might just be one of its greatest artists; why it keeps getting ranked at the top of the critics’ polls decade after decade;  why isn’t it called THE ONOMICHI STORY …. And much more. A conversation that will hopefully incite listeners to read the book.

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

Eavesdropping at the Movies 425 – Deadpool & Wolverine

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Deadpool 2 put us in such a foul mood when it came out in 2018 that we threw away our podcast on it. It was too toxic to publish. Fortunately, Deadpool & Wolverine, the third in the series, didn’t have such an effect on us – even José found some things to compliment about it.

Perhaps it’s the relative diminishment of Marvel since its peak in 2018, when it was reaching the climax of the story it had been building for a decade, that makes Deadpool & Wolverine work as it otherwise might not – its jokes about the X-Men joining the MCU at a low point really landed, for example. It’s far from perfect – Ryan Reynolds’ schtick remains smug, and the film tries to have it both ways, delivering snarky commentary on the sorts of things films like this do, then discarding the snark when it wants to do them itself. But it’s pacey, energetic, full of intense action with a delightfully cartoony attitude, filled with so many attempts to make you laugh that some of them are bound to work, and featuring a pair of enjoyable, charismatic villains: Matthew Macfadyen’s Mr. Paradox is a marvellously hammy presence, while Emma Corrin’s Cassandra Nova’s slight physique and genteel demeanour make her telepathic abilities all the more threatening.

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

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

Eavesdropping at the Movies

Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

After a long time off, we return with M. Night Shyalaman’s new thriller, Trap, in which Josh Hartnett’s doting dad, Cooper, takes his daughter to see her favourite pop star at a massive arena gig, but finds himself surrounded and hunted by the FBI.

We discuss the ways in which Shyamalan gives Cooper opportunities for escape but closes them off; the unusually disappointing lack of imagination and expression in some of the visual design and shot selection (something we’re used to finding so interesting from Shyamalan); the attempt to sell a psychological background to Cooper, which is somehow neither intelligent nor daft enough; the production of the music and Saleka Night Shyamalan’s performance as Lady Raven; Mike’s fickleness in choosing whom to root for; and José’s joy at seeing Hayley Mills. But despite picking at flaw after flaw, as we always do, we had a great time in Trap, and recommend it.

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 Siavash Minoukadeh

Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

At Cinema Rediscovered I attended a panel on film programming and film curating chaired by Maddy Probst and found the collaborations between the festival and the young programmers impressive and inspiring. The strand I attended most assiduously was Siavash Minoukadeh’s Queer Cinema From the Eastern Bloc, co-curated with Fedor Tot. In the accompanying podcast I talk to Siavash about how he came to be a curator, how this particular programme came to be, what his collaborations with Fedor Tot and the Festival were like, what risks were involved, and what the feedback on the program has been like thus far. Is film programming putting bums on seats? Developing new audiences? Bringing hard to see material into view? Creating contexts for different ways of viewing and understanding? Making cultural interventions? All of the above?

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

Maddy Probst and the ‘Different Ways of Seeing’ panel.