TheFerryman Reviews

Daughter of Deceit (1951)

Don Quintin in his own Infierno

[9 May 2011]

This is a minor entry in Bunuel's Mexican period. It's a farce of sorts, that starts as a melodrama and ends up like a screwball comedy. There are some little Bunuel touches here and there, especially in the first half of the picture, but all in all this can't account among Don Luis' most personal films. Technically it is as usual superb. There's one elegant 20 year transition that takes place in the dark between the closing and opening of a cupboard and a puzzling breaking of the fourth wall at the end, when Don Quintin approaches the camera and talks to the audience before going back to the happy ending. I liked the idea of a cabaret called El Infierno decorated with flames and big puppet devils hanging from the roof. Only a man like Bunuel could come with such stuff.

The Lawless Breed (1952)

standard western that could have been different with a less likable actor

[9 September 2009]

A standard western with something of a Greek Tragedy, "Lawless Breed" romanticizes the life and exploits of one of the most legendary gunmen of the far west.

The film has some fine moments, notably the scene where Rock Hudson shoots Lee Van Cleef down amid a wind storm.

The events are quite predictable and the film becomes eventually formulaic. Veteran Raoul Walsh shows his craftsmanship solving scenes with great economy and pace.

Hudson is less obscure than many of the heroes of his films, and that makes me think what kind of picture this could have been with a less likable actor.

High Sierra (1940)

Royalty

[4 June 2005]

A sublime film. Probably one of the most melancholic pictures ever made in the classic period. It is one of the earliest and strongest portraits of the tragic hero, so recurrent in Walsh's filmography. Bogart's character, a mournful, resigned old-timer who witnesses the gradual downfall of the world as he knows it, dresses in black all through the film, like the mute and only assistant to his own funeral. As other Walsh anti-heroes –notably White Heat's Cody- he must reach the heights before him dies. One wonders what would have been of the Bogart, Cagney, Flynn or Raft persona without their significant roles in the Raoul Walsh films. It's remake, Colorado Territory, is even better.

Today We Live (1933)

overall Hawksian

[4 June 2005]

This early Hawks' film has many of the themes that will frequently appear in all his filmography, like friendship between men or the professional skill as a mean of survival in dangerous situations. After a weak start the movie takes off during the plane and boat attacks, when Joan Crawford's character is somehow left aside. All in all, her character appears more like a nuisance than anything else. Her first appearance during the tea scene is promising but from there on she'll lack the mannish qualities of other Hawks' females. It is clear that the love interests all through the film are between Cooper, Tone and Young. Claude's blindness reminds other physical impediments of Hawksian heroes. This film, however, closes with a display of self sacrifice and heroism seldom seen in the director's universe. There's also some unusual appearance of religious elements. Although a film "d'epoque", Hawks cannot help turning the material into a modern piece. Some fine scenes, like the aviator instructing the neophyte gunman about the dangers of throwing up, or the wake of the dead cockroach are a true landmark of the director's imaginary, and a clear proof of his ability to turn any material into his own.

Playing at Love (1933)

capturing as classic music

[28 October 2004]

A wonderful picture that shows how early in his career Ophuls mastered melodrama. As melodrama indicates, it's drama with music, and from the start Ophuls sets in motion an operistic, artificial mood. Every performance is self-conscious, aware of being representing; all sets are shown thoroughly, characters leave the scene and the camera remains a few seconds in the empty decor; even the way the snows falls from the sky appears to be fake. Still the film has an admirable freshness and engages the audience in an almost hypnotic trip, to which Ophuls' floating camera and his modern, dramatic use of the score contribute big time. Max Ophuls can be paralleled with Douglas Sirk as a director that purposely breaks up with any trace of reality in order to convey a truth that is purely cinematic.

Los Muertos (2004)

...

[13 October 2004]

This is not a film for everyone. The slow pacing can easily get to the nerve of the toughest film watcher. The tale of a released convict and his voyage to reunite with his family is completely ascetic and deprived of embellishments of any kind. Still, the images are hypnotic and set the viewer in a trance-like experience. Vargas' dryness is much more interesting that the dullness of many other protagonists of the so-called 'new argentine cinema'. It is everything that he conceals us what makes us interested in him. The narrative evokes the literature of Horacio Quiroga, an Uruguayan writer who frequently used the Mesopotamian jungle as his main character. Every inch of that jungle breathes, and compared to it, every human being in the picture is the dead referred by the title. Alonso has created a fascinating piece of machinery that flow quiet and slowly like that ever-present river, despite some pointless 'contemplative' scenes that might have been included to fill screen-time. Alonso's virtue is his ability to tell a story visually –this is more silent than a Murnau film-, and his film-making makes full sense in the viewer's mind. He's miles away from the pretentiousness of the director that made 'Japón', a film with which it shares a number of elements. One admires his ability to walk over successfully that thin line that divides cinema from poetic arty trash.

Isabelita (1940)

marvelous!

[26 August 2004]

Possibly Romero's best film, 'Isabelita' is the perfection of Romero's narrative. As many other of his films, the basic drama is built around the crossing of multi-class archetypes that dislike each other but are forced to coexist in an urban setting that prophetically foresees the Argentina of the Peronism movement; with a number of songs masterfully integrated into the mise-en-scene of the film. Romero's beloved ensemble of characters, which reappear constantly in his extensive filmography, move comfortably between the grotesque inherited from the theatrical tradition of his country, and a natural freshness that seems almost documentary. The director's style, funded on an economy surrendered to action, has nothing to envy of the contemporary masters of the American screwball comedy (McCarey, Hawks, LaCava, Lubitsch). Romero had in addition a quality of populism deprived of propaganda, which allows to fully enjoy his films regardless if one agrees or not with the particular model of Argentina he supports. Coherent and personal, Romero has perfected one single film over and over again, where plots and fables are easily exchangeable. He's justly regarded as the first author and formal architect of the Argentine cinema.

Angel Face (1952)

fast your seat belts

[28 May 2004]

Otto Preminger takes the noir/ femme fatale genre a step beyond in his usual pessimism. This world of shady mansions, sad piano-playing and lonely boulevards perpetually driven, suits well Jean Simmons's calm insanity and Mitchum's stoic acceptance of his tragic destiny. Mitchum uses the same discontent tone to order a beer and to refuse to be part of a murder. He smokes, empty-minded, staring out of the window, too tired to get his way out of the schemes of his employers. He may take the most important decision of his life, but after the cigarette's over he'll be doing the total opposite. On the other hand one has the feeling that the film wouldn't worked as well with one more conventional noir leading lady, like Lana Turner. Simmons' charming and weak aspect makes her character irresistible. To top it all there's a masterful score by Dimitri Tiomkin and the most surprising of endings.

He Walked by Night (1948)

not another public enemy

[26 May 2004]

It's not the first attempt of a crime tale told in a documentary style. Howard Hawks did it some fifteen years before with `Criminal Code' and `Scarface', though he was more interested in the racket as a social phenomenon. `He walked by night' is a very crafted mixture of stylized noir and journalistic document, told both as a police procedural and from the viewpoint of the cold murderer on the run. It precedes a type of film explored later by Samuel Fuller (`Pick up on South Street'), Fritz Lang (`The big heat') and Joseph H. Lewis (`Gun crazy', `The big combo'). There's something stripped in the urban setting of this picture, a nakedness that is also conveyed by the acting of the performers. That's the best of the film. It's modern without being avant-gard (Nicholas Ray's pessimism was yet to come). The worst is the school-masterish intrusions upon the audience, especially during the first half. We feel the director at our elbow explaining, interpreting, interfering with our impressions. The mockery tone of the voice over that narrates eases this up a bit and at the end one wonders if the whole thing is nothing but a big joke, since our sympathy is with Basehart all the time, despite the cops' noble attempts.

Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)

Master and Commander

[24 May 2004]

It's unfair that Raoul Walsh's name is labeled by the books as a second-level filmmaker in relation with, say, a Ford or a Hawks. He was an extraordinary crafted and prolific director, capable of incorporating standard studio material into his own personal worldview. `Captain Horatio Hornblower' is full of little moments that exceed any genre limitation. These `sparkles of Truth' may be the tracking shot along the empty room while Peck reads the letter of his deceased wife, or when Virginia Mayo kisses the youngster the way his mother used to did. So the adventure film becomes something bigger than life, just as `White Heat' used of the conventions of the gangster film to turn into metaphysics, or `Colorado Territory' departed the western into the depths of existentialism. This film is enjoyable from beginning to end, and it's a clear predecessor of Peter Weir's `Master and Commander', with which it shares a few tone, character and plot elements.

The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

Will spying spoil Mermaid Hunter?

[21 May 2004]

This film has its moments of great screwball comedy, and Tashlin seems to keep alive the finesse and sophistication of a Hawks, McCarey or LaCava. The story built around the attraction between two opposite individuals never reach the sublime heights of `Bringing up Baby' –needles to say, Taylor and Day aren't Grant and Hepburn-, and it seems that this film greatest problem is not to dare going too far in its craze, as other Tashlin's films like `Rock Hunter' or `Artists and Models' did. Probably the cause is the plot dealing with the cold war, a subject pretty much on the focus at the time. Now and them you feel that the director is doing a sort of journalism through a territory that doesn't suit him as good as Hollywood and its superficiality, for example. But Tashlin always manages to insert his comments about the decadence of American life, a circumstance that not even the fanciest of technology can hide. In his anarchic fashion, Tashlin's films counterpart Douglas Sirk's melodramas. Both are about the same, but the path chosen to express its vision are opposite.

This film has a wonderful use of color, an admirable pacing and a freshness rarely seen in the studio comedies of the time (the singing scene in the boat looks totally improvised). But if Tashlin's background as a cartoonist often contributes to his creative ability to take situations beyond the edge, and to destroy a stiff established order, very seldom this very quality can work against him. And this is what happens with all the bad guys in this film. They are a mere caricature, and one can never feel them as a serious threat. The theme demanded something more serious, and these clumsy amateurs certainly fail.

Anyway, watch the film and sing the title's tune; it'll remain with you for ages.

Duck Soup (1933)

when comedy was Freedonia

[21 May 2004]

Duck Soup is the Marx Brothers best film because it's the only one in which they had the opportunity of working with a good director. And a craftsman like McCarey could easily take away any radio monologue or useless instrument playing for the sake of pure cinematic storytelling. Here they aren't the clowns helping a phony singing couple; they are the force (or Schopenhauerian Will) that moves Freedonia. Everything seems to be right in this film, from the memorable pompous musical numbers (`I think they think we'll go to war' and Firefly's assumption ceremony), to the slapstick moments at the peanut stand or the breaking in the house, a scene that concludes with the mirror scene that constitute one of the most abstract moments in film history. The Marx' were never as anarchic and creative as in this film (check out the change of costumes between shots during the war scene) and it's sad that in their later films they sacrificed a lot of their talent to comfort the studio's establishment. However, the idea of a leader as Firefly ruling a nation has been proved often ever since; another example of life imitating film.

Do Detectives Think? (1927)

L&H's most experimental

[25 March 2004]

Perhaps Laurel and Hardy's most visual experimental work. I know, the story is uninteresting, the gags are basic, the mood is dated, and the duo's personalities are far from fully development. Still "Do Detectives Think?" is worth remembering for its nocturnal, expressionistic scenes around the graveyard, where a goat's shadow suggest a scary demon; also for its moving camera, a rare James Finnlayson's close-up underwater, a keyhole's point of view, mirror reflections and some other few technical devices not very frequent at the time that provides this little film an unusual freshness and a sense of unlimited creative freedom.

Roger Dodger (2002)

The decadence of the hero

[26 February 2004]

There was a time where the hero in film was faced with problems of the ethic kind. The universe in which those fables took place (we can call it classic) had an elemental notion of good and bad and the hero's journey throughout the film into a certain level of enlightening was accomplished through the means of an initiation. Both the world and the film changed through the years. That classic hero eventually turned into somehow a more existential problematic, but the mechanics were more or less the same (succession of incidents gave way to psychological study of character). This progressively evolved into the newest hero, the one that cinema has been portraying for the last decade, the cynical hero inserted in the fallen world, with irony as his only weapon and little place to enlightening or redemption. Roger Dodger fits perfectly into this model. It is very rare to see translated both the filmmaker and the character's worldview into metaphorical actions: everything should be verbalized, openly exposed. Roger's first scene in the bar is an example of this. We know Roger through his endless exposition. Can we call this cinema? A film that wastes ten minutes in a long meaningless scene where Roger tips his nephew about how to chat with women. The worst of this is that we see the characters from the distance, their voices covered now and then by the passing traffic, as if the director didn't want to get too close to his object, doesn't get engaged with his hero. Another thing, typical of this new type of cinema: the annoying trembling camera. The idea is to keep the eyeball entertained, never mind if the brain never gets involved. One can only stay all the way to the end in this declamatory farce because of Campbell Scott, one of the best actors of his generation.

The Tall T (1957)

Boetticher's best

[25 February 2004]

There's a scene in the film where Randolph Scott tries to tame a dangerous bull carrying with him no other possession that a candy bar. This works as an accurate metaphor for the cinema of Bud Boetticher and this film in particular, undoubtedly his best one. In `The Tall T' the forms essayed and executed by Boetticher in his task of reinventing the Western genre reach perfection. Everything is a triumph, from the script to the acting and especially through the coexistence of two levels of narrative permanently in tension with each other – the lineal and the psychological one. Boetticher is more than a very intelligent craftsman; he's a director who can transform a basic chat between two cowboys into a philosophical discussion about ethics. If this picture stands out among the other westerns of the Ranown cycle is maybe because of the bad guy played by Richard Boone, one of the most celebrated heavies in the history of cinema.

After Hours (I) (1985)

is that all there is?

[23 February 2004]

This nocturnal tale is Scorsese's happy return to b-filmmaking. Paul Hackett's one night pilgrimage across the Soho takes devices articulated by Dante, Kafka, St. Paul and Borges – a build-up labyrinth of events that concludes in almost a perfect circle-, only to state what Scorsese's been saying from the beginning of his career: that Salvation is to be found out there in the streets.

Decision at Sundown (1957)

cowboys also have self-respect

[19 February 2004]

This one differs from the other Scott-Boetticher westerns as the action is transferred to an urban setting. In `Decision…', Scott's usual ambiguity is on the edge of plain craze and self destruction, his hero qualities lowered, the character's failures pretty much on the open. In this fable about the winning or recovery of Self Respect, he's the most spitted type of the film, in opposition to the bad guy, who remains unchanged despite his moral contradictions (at one point he admits to the prostitute that he's afraid, as Scott character does at one point or another in every other film of the saga). Boetticher is a master of understatement, a craftsman with an ascetic economy. Every shot is right; every cut contributes to the progress of narration. We perceive the performers' inner thoughts so they can talk about something else. The philosophic exchanges, a trademark of the director, take place not with a round of coffee by the fire but inside the saloon (that looks like a Temple, while the church is presented as a saloon), or in the restaurant, but Scott doesn't take part. He's the sort character that seems to carry unwarily a sort of magnetism, a quality which makes everybody deposit on him their own fears and expectations. A mundane redemptive figure seen on later films, like the motorcycle guy in `Rumble Fish'. All the characters are able to verbalize and unveil the hero's conscience, everybody but the hero himself, tragically crusaded on a meaningless task.

`Decision…' anticipates the enclosure of `Rio Bravo', and other later westerns where the hero must overcome a tormented past, purify himself in order to purify a corrupted environment. Randolph Scott's hard features convey the primitivism of the Boetticher hero perfectly; here we discover a certain apish side of his face, something that the director's camera recognizes and photographs to emphasize his storytelling. Even if not written by usual collaborator Burt Kennedy, one of the cowboys still say the polite `I'm obliged', and as in every other Boetticher western, Mexicans are played by real Mexicanos.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

over-dimensioned but

[4 February 2004]

Over dimensioned as it might be (there are a least half a dozen Warner detective films better than this), The Maltese Falcon is a film worth celebrating for a number of reasons. It introduces Bogart as a lead, and it is from Sam Spade than he will build his own screen myth; regardless of which side of the law he's standing, Bogey will always play Bogey. The film is from 1941, a very important landmark year in the American industry. It is through pictures like this one, Citizen Kane or High Sierra that American cinema started a new era where storytelling turns more novelesque, fragmentary and obscure. The setting is almost exclusively urban, the tone inevitably pessimistic. The characters' moral contradictions are expressed through multiple points of view, all deceiving and incomplete: it is in the spectator's mind that films will eventually make sense. The Maltese Falcon is also exemplary of the use of a fabulous McGuffin (the falcon itself) as a plot artifice, an excuse, a mean to order or justify a psychological character study otherwise loosen and disembodied. And last but not least this film introduces the wonderful Sidney Greenstreet & Peter Lorre association in crime, a sort of memorable Laurel and Hardy of the Olympus of Noir.

The Last Samurai (2003)

What do you want from me????!!!

[3 February 2004]

This pompous, one-dimensioned, uninteresting, long and phony picture tries really hard to portrait `the real Japan'. Needless to say one single frame from any Mizoguchi film (sixty, seventy years old as it may be) is ten times worth than this banal reproduction, poor ensemble of local color and cliché. From the lifeless, mummified characters that seem to bring together – and in a lighter dose- the charlatanry of Morpheus from The Matrix and Karate Kid's Pat Morita, to the cheap plot devices and filmmaking (we see the sword fight and right afterwards the videoclip of the fight, a nicely learned lesson from Tarantino's school), Cruise's attempt to build a legendary figure embodied with Custer's bravura and Samurai's honor is anything but believable, rather a wannabee metaphor of some new age dubious doctrine. Cruise character is tormented by memories of his past as a women and children's murder; this issue never nails on the audience as in the case of `Unforgiven', where the character's inner demons must be confronted and defeated by paying a hell of a prize. In fact it is precisely Eastwood's humanity what constitutes his heroism. On the other hand, Cruise's experience `on the other side' is more of a tourist kind compared with Harrison Ford's life with the Amish in `Witness' or Gene Kelly's magic discovery of `Brigadoon', two classic examples of imperfect individuals transcending themselves after coping with a world that is not their own. Bad as a film could be, there's always one or two scenes worth remembering. Not in this one. Let's give credit to the title and hope it'll be the last.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

not coincidental

[3 February 2004]

A film about the act of creation and the individual standing within the industry system. The genius that makes his work of art in the garage at the back, in a strictly family business, that adapts himself but never compromises or sells out, that tolerates the mutilation of his creation but never gives up the Blue Vals color that reminds him of her wife's dress on their first date, the uniqueness standing apart from mere reproduction. Any similarity with Coppola and his films is not coincidental.

The Conversation (1974)

sharpen the ear

[3 February 2004]

After the genial excesses of The Godfather, Coppola's minimal account of Harry Caul's falling from grace anticipates the Apocalypse to come (here's also a man commanded with a job that turns into a personal obsession). Like De Palma's Blow Out, this is essentially a film about filmmaking and film watching. The task of reconstructing a whole from disconnected fragments, the necessity of sharpening the eye (or the ear), the fatality of becoming both the voyeur and the object of his look; the themes are universal, Coppola's mastering of them is unique.

While the City Sleeps (1956)

Lang leaves NY

[3 February 2004]

In the last years of his career Lang's complexity turns into apparent simple, little b-films. His themes are darker than ever, his world-view surpasses pessimism; his regard of his characters is ascetic and non-compassionate. This is Lang's farewell to New York, a city that he foresaw in Metropolis and which has by this film became a nocturnal, foggy, oppressive, subterranean, filthy grave. The staff of the `Sentinel' (the `K' of the Kyne's building reminds of the Citizen Kane empire), all concerned in the haunt of a serial killer, are themselves more monstrous than the killer himself. Still there's something haunting seeing all those scrawny faces of the good old days (Lupino, Sanders, Andrews, Mitchell) hanging at the bar, like a wax museum of the past, a closing cycle.

Mildred Pierce (1945)

a solid standard WB melodrama

[3 February 2004]

An edgy, obscure melodrama manufactured by Warner. All the elements that constituted the trademark of the studio are here: the bigger-than-life star (Crawford), the crafted- if not anonymous- direction by veteran Curtiz, the Max Steiner score, and the story with noir elements twisted beyond craziness. The gallery of characters in this one is memorable, a staff that challenges the most inventive soup opera: the gigolo, the pimp, the materialistic daughter turning prostitute, the sick daughter, the asexual friend. The split ensemble against the unmovable Mildred. The good Warner Bros' films are portraits of the `American Nightmare' and this is one of them.

Evil (2003)

evil?

[2 February 2004]

A pointless, dated Swedish film that gets into territories way too explored by cinema, from `Rebel without a cause' (which is quoted by the leading Deanesque character) to `Dead poets society'. The whole film relies on naïve premises, like the kid's commitment to his mother to stick at school, or the final resolution through the means of a lawyer, a device less in the tradition of classic Frank Capra, rather the product of an unimaginative bestseller.

Auto Focus (2002)

a Schrader film is not a film wasted

[2 February 2004]

A film that starts as a Dick van Dyke comedy and turns dense and nightmarish, Autofocus is the story of two men obsessed with sex and the sick, vampiric bond established between them. Both possess a pathetic innocence and a desperate need of likability. They are in fact the double of each other, and Schrader suggests through his framing (reflections, inverted axes) that they're actually exchangeable. Here's something of the tone of `Hardcore' and `Light Sleeper', some of the oppression of `Affliction'. Though weak, the film is very Schrader. The best is the coexistence of two narratives, which the fall of Bob Crane widens away. The look of the film becomes eventually the same as those blurry, grainy home movies registered by Crane and Carpie. The worst, some scenes leading nowhere (like John Carpenter's color blindness), a wasted antagonist (the English from Hogan's Heroes), and the inexplicable voice off of a dead man.