Posted on by chasinvictoria

The Magnetic Monster (1953)

dirs. Curt Siodmak and Herbert L. Strock
⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 51

Despite some laughably bad science in much of it, no actual monster in the traditional sense of the term, and an effects-heavy climactic scene borrowed from another movie entirely, this Atomic Age film ends up being better (and surprisingly suspenseful) than you’d expect.

The investigation begins.

In 1953, America’s veterans had returned home, and the country had collectively forged a new direction: confident, industrious, lots of new inexpensive housing, the GI bill to get college-educated or trade-skilled, and basically hope for a bright future for nearly everyone. That said, there was the shadow of the coming nuclear arms race, and an understanding that scientific exploration isn’t always for the betterment of mankind.

There’s a lot of magnetism in this flick, but sadly none between Drs Stewart (center left) and Forbes (center right)

That’s the mindset needed to better understand this picture, the first of a trilogy (!) of adventures involving the Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI), a group of scientists who investigate possible irresponsible uses of … SCIENCE! (Cue Thomas Dolby music here). Richard Carlson, also seen in It Came From Outer Space and many other cult pictures, stars as Dr Jeff Stewart.

His partner in this one is Dr Dan Forbes (King Donovan, another fantasty-film actor), and the first half of this film is basically a more-scientific police procedural — there’s a business in town that suddenly has all kinds of weird things happening, specifically things getting magnetised (as we quickly find out). The effect appears to be coming from a flat above the magnetised store, but by the time they work this out, the “culprit” has fled the scene, taking whatever it was that was causing this with them.

Oh yeah, we should remember to wear these protective suits from time to time!

The sub-plot, such as it is, is that Stewart’s wife is pregnant but not showing (a constant source of conversation between them — “why aren’t you fat yet?” for example), and Stewart is inspired to buy a house for what he is sure will be a baby boy, but can barely afford it because apparently OSI officials are in it for the love of … SCIENCE! Bonus points for a now-hilarious breakdown of what it will take to buy a house in the early 50s on their basic budget.

“Why aren’t you fat yet?” patronizes Dr. Stewart.

Drawn-out story short, Stewart and Forbes track down an irresponsible scientist, Dr Howard Denker (Leonard Mudie) who was fooling around with making unstable elements and accidentally created a whopper — a radioactive isotope that, every 11 hours, uses magnetism to create energy from every available source in order to double its mass. While the problematic element is still small enough to fit in a briefcase, its exponential needs and growth means it will very quickly become a huge problem that threatens to destroy Earth, aka uncontained nuclear fusion.

Stewart and Forbes confront Dr Denker, who has brought this element on board a commercial plane (!) to try and get it to a university in California to make it their problem to solve, as he is dying from radiation poisoning. Literally in his dying breaths, Denker absolves himself from any responsibility for creating this world-eating thing, saying that he wasn’t responsible for the consequences of his experimentation.

Amoral dying scientist is also irresponsible at handling dangerous materials!

Thus, the second half of the movie is a race against time. Even though the element is still of a size that is portable, it will continue to cause havoc every 11 hours when it needs to be “fed” — and its appetite is also exponetionally growing. The OSI convinces the town to undergo a blackout so that all available electricity can be diverted to the next “feeding” of the element so as to minimize the consequences — but now they have 11 hours until this thing is going to need 600 million watts of power for its next “meal.”

Stewart consults with various other scientists (more doctors per square inch in this movie than any other I can think of!) and eventually comes up with a theory: if he “over feeds” the element, it should split up into two stable elements, ending the threat to earth. But where to get that kind of power?

Stewart and Forbes witness the element drawing energy out of thin air (above), creating micro-explosions and growth.

A US general blabs about a top-secret energy facility deep underground off the coast of Nova Scotia in Canada, and can provide the 600 million watts, but may not be able to be pushed much beyond that. Stewart and Forbes take the risk, fly as quickly as possible to the base, and make it just in time for the start of the magnetisation cycle that starts the “feeding” frenzy of energy collection.

The underground base and its magnetron/cycletron (not sure) are huge and impressive — and come from another movie, the 1934 silent German film Gold, very much in the mold of Metropolis’ special effects. Nearly-seamless editing puts Stewart at the controls of the machine as he pushes it well beyond its tolerances to “overfeed” the element, eventually causing the machine’s destruction — and a few tense moments of magnetisation where Stewart — who has barely escaped with his life — thinks he may have failed, and the world is doomed.

Happily, the magnetised things suddenly fall off the walls, and Earth is saved. The taxpayers of Canada are on the hook for replacing a now-dead power station, but let’s not talk about that! Quick, back to domestic bliss, patronising sexism, and house-buying!

Dr Stewart saves the world … but not this power station … by pushing it into the Danger Zone.

Despite the all-over-the-place levels of scientific credibility, The Magnetic Monster is actually a surprisingly gripping film that holds audience suspense, still. It’s that 1950s earnestness of “we can do anything” spirit that foreshadows the space program and other great accomplishments of the following decades, I think, but it still works.

The OSI’s own computer (seen here) is called “M.A.N.I.A.C,” and it’s dancing like it never danced before.
Posted on by chasinvictoria · 1 Comment

Scrooge (1951)

dir. Brian Desmond Hurst
(US title: A Christmas Carol)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 50

Naturally we have to do at least one Christmas movie in the 52-week challenge, and for me of course it would be this one. I watch this movie every year, and never get bored of it — always admiring something new, like the lighting of certain shots, the long shadows Scrooge casts, details of Bob Cratchit’s family and so on endlessly.

There are many decent-to-excellent film versions of “A Christmas Carol,” but this one is far and away my favourite, in large part because of its marvelous casting, superb performances (particularly from Alastair Sim as Scrooge), and striking B&W cinematography. Every single member of the cast is on point, camera angles are uniformally well-chosen, the musical score is quite striking (more about that later), the supporting characters are also very memorable, and in short this film is perfect in all the ways — even the additions to Dickens’ story are so well-done you’d hardly believe, for example, that there’s no Mr. Jorkin (Jack Warner) in the original novella.

Mr Jorkin (Jack Warner, middle) introduces Young Scrooge (George Cole, right) to his future partner, Jacob Marley (the film acting debut of Patrick McNee, left).

I sincerely believe that if Dickens could be brought forward in time to watch his story on film, this one would be the one most likely to meet with his approval. Certainly he’d like it better than either of the two best-known previous attempts, the comical short silent version from 1910 or the mediocre full-length version starring Reginald Owen from 1938.

Everyone thinks they know the story of “A Christmas Carol,” but relatively few have ever actually read the original work. Changes required to make the story more visual in the various film versions have added elements to the original story, and so does Scrooge, but it is a testament to the skill of screenplay writer Noel Langley that the joins are largely seamless to anyone this side of a Dickens scholar.

Scrooge wasn’t always a jerk: he was always kind and tender to his sister Fanny (Carol Marsh)

In particular, Dickens’ original social commentary is strongly intact in this version, and resonated deeply in postwar Britain of the early 1950s, when the country struggled with crushing debt from the war, and continuing rationing and austerity. Also preserved is traces of Dickens’ Christian faith, and while explicit in some moments it doesn’t overshadow the message of social justice and the responsibility of the the well-off to alleviate the suffering of the poor.

Marley’s ghost (Michael Hordern) tries to show Scrooge the suffering of the poor, but it’s not (yet) effective.

Aside from the radiant performance of Alastair Sim, who set a bar of believability in both pre- and post-reformation Scrooge that no other actor has equaled, special mention should be made of Mervyn Johns as Bob Cratchit, Hermione Baddeley as Mrs. Cratchit, Michael Hordern as Jacob Marley, the incredible Ernest Thesinger as the mortician, Miles Malleson as Old Joe, and of course Kathleen Harrison as Mrs. Dilber, another performance that will never be bettered. There are a wealth of character actors in this, all doing their British Character Actor thing to an absolutely flawless standard.

Special mention too must go to Richard Addinsell, who gave the film a very booming, menacing score that softens all the way to down to music box-like Victorian lullaby in places, and throws in a traditional ballad (“Barbara Allen”) for the film’s climax. Finally, the combination of Ralph W. Brinton (the art director) and C. M. Pennington-Richards (the cinematographer) produce a detailed but very dark style where the shadows are long, the lighting is sparse (until Scrooge’s reformation), and the harshness of life in Dickens’ fable is not shied away from — it is simply gorgeous to look at, and downright spectacular if you have a OLED high-definition television.

Glyn Dearman as Tiny Tim, enjoying a splendid display of Victorian toys.

In these current days of increasing western poverty and misery, with inflation making the working class ever poorer and more angry, the film again becomes more relevant to complement its timeless moral. To quote Bob Cratchit, “it is a perfect pudding!”

Posted on by chasinvictoria

Tank Girl (1995)

dir. Rachel Talalay
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 49

This review has to come with three disclaimers:

  1. I have never read the “Tank Girl” comic (though it looks like something I’d enjoy). I am reviewing the film strictly as a movie.
  2. I have met and chatted with the director, Rachael Talalay, about her career, US-Canadian immigration issues, and more recently I was present in Chicago for the debut of her latest bit of TV work (for Doctor Who, as it happens), but this doesn’t influence the review too much.
  3. I am aware that the film was, in parts, heavily re-edited by the studio.

With that out of the way, let’s dive in.

Hoo boy, has Tank Girl ever aged well. On its original release, it didn’t do well financially, though it later earned cult status on the strength of its strong “feminist futurism” and humour. It is almost, but not quite, a mirror-universe version of 1984’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the Eighth Dimension, only with far fewer goatees and more mutants, who eventually form an alliance to take down the mad big bad (Malcolm McDowell, in this case).

Like the earlier film, it has a definite aesthetic that reflects the decade in which it was made, is funny but not meant as a parody, and does some excellent world-building that pays homage to its influences. In the case of Tank Girl, the world of 2033 looks increasingly likely to come to pass — only instead of a comet directly hitting earth causing the climate to change, we just have man-made climate change. I can see this “future” from my house, so to speak.

A hasty voiceover from yet-to-be Tank Girl herself (Lori Petty) sets up the story: since the comet hit (presumably with enough force to push the earth closer to the sun), it hasn’t rained in 11 years, and the world has mostly turned to desert. The (male) elites have taken control of the enormous reservoirs of water underneath the sands in the only livable area left (the former Australia), thus controlling nearly all of the remaining population.

Director Talalay with star Lori Petty.

Some Mad-Maxian-type rebels live “free” in the outback in a commune, relying on finding and tapping into parts of the reservoir to survive. Although the head of the monopolistic Water & Power Corporation, Kesslee (McDowell), is trying to find and destroy these water pirates, the rebels fear another enemy much more: The Rippers, who are kind of armored super-soldiers operating from a secret base.

Buck is quickly established as a sarcastic rebel even before the commune is attacked.

The Rippers attack both W&P and occasionally the rebels under cover of darkness. Insert your own analogy to the aboriginal native populations of various countries (and of course capitalism) right here.

W&P discover the last well the commune has tapped, and attack the commune (which is decorated like every 90s teen’s dream) with corporation troops, killing many of the rebels. The body count includes Rebecca Buck’s (Petty) boyfriend Richard (Brian Wimmer) and, after a brave fight, capturing Buck and a young girl from the commune named Sam (Stacy Linn Ramsower).

Sam (L) and Rebecca

In a classic trope, Kesslee is fascinated by Buck’s spunk and sarcasm — and instead of just killing her, instead enslaves her. When she continues to rebel, he subjects her to various tortures.

Buck meets a fellow prisoner, who Buck nicknames Jet Girl (Naomi Watts) because she is being used as a jet mechanic by the cruel (read: rape-minded) troops. Jet Girl urges Buck not to fight back, but Buck is having none of it — and saves Jet Girl from a stalker trooper by pretending to be Jet Girl’s jealous girlfriend.

Kesslee decides to use the rebellious Buck to lure the Rippers out into the open, but the plan backfires, and Kesslee is gravely injured. Buck gets a tank (and is now Tank Girl), Jet Girl steals a jet, and they seek shelter and spend time modifying their weapons and plotting to break W&P’s control of the world’s water.

Their success prompts Kesslee to use the little girl Sam as both a hostage and bait, and puts the child in serious danger at one point — I don’t want to say more than that, but Iggy Pop is involved, and not in a good way. The Girls (Tank, Jet, and the little-seen Sub) get wind of this, and redouble their efforts.

Iggy Pop as a (thankfully unsuccessful) pedophile.

The ladies form an alliance with the Rippers, who we discover are mutated men (and the occasional dog that was first mutated into a man) who have been fused with kangaroo DNA (because Australia!) into a funny-looking mercenary force originally created by W&P before being largely wiped out for rebelling. Kesslee hopes their united force will attack so that his army can crush them all, but things don’t quite go according to plan.

That’s Ice-T on the left there, as T-Saint — one of the smarter and more poetic Rippers.

The film might possibly err a little too much on the comic side, but the look and set pieces are aesthetically pleasing throughout. As mentioned, looking at this almost 30 years after its initial release, it seems prescient and less unrealistic than it probably did in 1995. Indeed, “Kesslee” rhymes with “Nestle,” and if you don’t think that evil corporation isn’t trying to buy up as much of the fresh water supply as it can, you might want to read up on that topic.

In the meantime, the rise of women as role models, heroes, rebels, and the leads of non-drama films over the last three decades makes Tank Girl ever more relevant as the years go by. When it was first released, some critics and most audiences didn’t quite “get it,” but the tween/teen girls who got to see it took it into their hearts, and built a cult following around it.

The film turns out to have had enormous staying power as an influence, both outside and inside Hollywood. Although the film flopped in its theatrical run, it did okay with critics — and I think it has since garnered enough respect that a Blu-ray release beyond just the US would be justified.

The “Girls” together — (L-R) Jet, Tank, and Sub

If said Blu-ray could also include a ”restored” version that undid the watering-down cuts and edits the studio insisted on (among many other things, reducing Jet Girl and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-her Sub Girl’s roles, not to mention changing the ending), I think it could even be a hit on the revival circuit as well. As Ms. Talalay has gone on to a strong career in TV and film since then, I look forward to asking her about the “Kesslee” name, and the possibility of a “Director’s Cut,“ when next our paths cross.

Posted on by chasinvictoria

Lynch/Oz (2022, dir. Alexandre O. Philippe)


⭐️⭐️½
52-week film challenge, film 48

The short version: this film-school set of academic essays read aloud with visual accompaniment, which collectively try waaaaaay too hard to connect everything David Lynch has done to the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz is overlong and misguided.

That’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of references and visual cues in Lynch’s work that parallel TWoO; of course there are.

He’s obviously influenced by it, and there’s plenty of examples, either spoken in his films or visual/story metaphors. In answer to one essayist’s question at a Q&A somewhere, Lynch himself says that not a day goes by that he doesn’t think about that film.

Glinda the Good Witch literally makes an appearance in Wild at Heart, FFS.

The problem (one of several) with the central premise behind this is that most artists Lynch’s age or younger can easily be demonstrated to have been influenced by The Wizard of Oz: it was a unique film that embraced Technicolour in a new way, giving new life to L. Frank Baum’s first Oz book (he went on to write another 13 in the Oz series). The film version’s characters, dialogue, and songs have all entered the public consciousness in a huge and enduring way, thanks to the film’s yearly repeats on television and its extravagant, nearly-timeless tale of poverty, fantasy, and the power of friendship and imagination.

Even if you accept that Oz was a major influence on Lynch’s films — and there’s plenty of evidence that it was, in places — the documentary goes on to point out that it was also a significant influence in dozens and dozens of other films that have nothing to do with Lynch at all, thereby diluting Lynch/Oz’s central premise. This adds significant time to the already-thin but interesting premise, with the documentary running a very long-seeming hour and 49 minutes, when it could have been a really tight and more interesting hour.

Lynch/Oz is divided into six chapters, following what director Philippe probably thought was a Lynchian oddball introduction by odd-looking Jason Stoval (as Sid Pink) that falls very flat, as does the reprise at the end of the doc.

Another element that might have helped make this tribute less dull would have been to actually see the six essayists who read their written analyses of Oz’s influence on Lynch. Instead, we get clips from many other movies that also in some way reference The Wizard of Oz, seeming undermining the point of this particular doc — Oz is a very influential picture across all of the last 80 years, we get it.

Amy Nicholson has one of the weakest premises in her section, titled “Wind.” Yes, she talks about the use of strong winds to be transformative agents in both The Wizard of Oz and Lynch movies, of which there are but a handful of examples. Rodney Ascher’s “Membranes,” which posits the dividers between “reality” and the things beyond that (often illustrated with curtains in Lynch’s work, akin to Toto pulling back the curtain to reveal that the Wizard is not who he seems), is much more successful. It’s a very, very, obvious point, but well-explored.

Lynch’s films frequently deal with a character discovering a larger — and more sinister — world than the one they live in, which sparks a journey of discovery.

The third essay is the one that is the most completely worth watching: fellow filmmaker John Waters, who has a delightful personality and distinctive speaking voice that radiates joy, talks about how he and Lynch are of similar age, and so of course are in some ways influenced by the same films they saw as kids — not to mention that, like Lynch, he developed a fixation on the undersides of façades. Waters shares an anecdote of meeting Lynch, talks about their shared influences, and similar — but very distinct — desire to poke around underneath the fantasies we all try so hard to fit into our realities: it’s by far the best of the essays.

That’s not to say Karyn Kusama’s pondering on “Multitudes” in her exploration isn’t good also, but it marks a return to the more dry and academic style of analysis that has dominated this documentary until Waters brought some fun in with him. Thankfully, this is followed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s humourous ruminations on the frequent reference to a never-seen “Judy” in Lynch’s TV and film work, which brings in an excuse to explore the influence of Judy Garland’s own life on Lynch — a genuine and, once you see it, obvious musical influence that their essay makes clearer.

I did appreciate the documentary pointing out some examples of red heels (and even clicking them) in Lynch’s work.

This leaves David Lowery to bring up the rear with his essay on the theme of digging — a pretty weak link, and a curious choice for the finale of the documentary. He pokes around at the rather obvious point that Lynch’s characters often try to either bury things they don’t like, or have such things dug up (metaphorically or literally).

As a Lynch fan, I was hoping I’d get more out of this documentary than I did, though I do appreciate both some of the essays and examples they gave to support their point, and of course the archival footage of Lynch interviews, which are sprinkled throughout. Lynch doesn’t talk that much about his own work, so these nuggets are rare and Lynch’s obtuse way of answering questions about his work are mischievous and amusing.

If they’d drop the pretentious opening/closing, the seemingly-endless references to non-Lynch films that have obvious Oz references, and maybe the weakest of the essays (either “Wind” or “Dig”), you’d have a smart, shorter documentary with some real insight. It’s too bad director Philippe didn’t do that, because what he ended up with is a documentary that will have you squirming in your seat — for all the wrong reasons.

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Godzilla Minus One (ゴジラ-1.0) (2023)

directed by Takashi Yamazaki
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 47

This remake of the first Godzilla film from 1954 (my review of that one is here) is a really clever reimagining that turns the perspective around: the focus here is on the human beings affected by the monster, rather than the monster itself. It makes brilliant sense in that the original really showed off the effects, but the new one looks at this phenomenon from a completely different angle.

I certainly did not expect a Godzilla movie to be this emotional, nor did I expect it to be entirely in Japanese with English subtitles in North American cinemas (nice touch). I find it fascinating that 37 films in — with multiple “reboots” from both Toho and Legendary Pictures — they found something new to say about kaiju generally, and yet also reiterate the original’s analogy to nuclear war.

Furthermore, I was completely gobsmacked when I discovered that the budget for this shot-in-the-arm epic was a mere $15 million — there are some films that exist where the catering bill for the shoot was around that amount!

I have, of course, seen quite a number of Godzilla movies over the years, though I largely haven’t seen the post-2000 comeback films. Growing up, Godzilla movies were fun and cheesy, and you (or at least I) never paid a moment’s attention to who was in those (model) ships, tanks, and buildings the monster trashed like the cheap paper maché they were. I also watched TV shows inspired by those movies, including “Ultraman,” a particular favourite.

Godzilla looks so “smol” in the 1954 original. Inflation, I guess, whatcha gonna do?

The genius of writer, director, and visual effects chief Takashi Yamazaki is in putting the emotions and the people up front in this version, with the title character itself getting a fair amount of screen time, but only very rarely being the focus. He even explains both why Godzilla keeps coming back, and why he’s so gigantic and “Hulk-like” compared to his first appearance.

That said, the vast majority of the time spent here is on the humans, specifically telling the story of Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot near the end of World War II — when the outcome was no longer in doubt — who chickens out, and feigns engine trouble and lands on Odo Island. That night, Godzilla emerges and attacks the base. Shikishima gets into the plane, but cannot muster up the courage to shoot at the dinosaur-sized monster.

He survives to find only one other survivor, Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), who blames Shikishima for the deaths of the other men. A year later (1946), he returns home and learns that his parents were also killed by Allied bombers. He meets a woman named Noriko (Minami Hamabe) who is taking care of an orphaned baby named Akiko (Sae Nagatani) that she has rescued.

As he is suffering from survivor’s guilt, he takes care of Noriko and Akiko, forming a sort of family. Although all three clearly care for each other, it is not made explicitly clear if Shikishima and Noriko actually became romantic partners.

Meanwhile, Godzilla gains his gigantic size and atomic powers via the US military’s nuclear testing in Bikini Atoll. The enlarged and super-powered monster attacks the ships, and then heads towards Japan.

By mid-1947, Shikishima has had some success in a dangerous but well-paying job, aboard a ship clearing mines left by the US around Japan. Authorities, which have been tracking Godzilla’s slow approach to Japan, order the minesweeper try and delay Godzilla’s approach so that more powerful ships can get there.

Cleverly, the shipmates use a mine and manage to release one that explodes in Godzilla’s mouth — which does some actual damage — but the creature can seemingly regenerate from injuries. A heavy cruiser arrives just in time, but is destroyed when Godzilla shows off its new power of atomic breath.

Of course, Shikishima is re-traumatized by the return of Godzilla, now enomous and unstoppable. Godzilla eventually reaches Japan, and attacks the city of Ginza. After tanks engage Godzilla, it again employs its atomic breath, destroying the city and seemingly killing Noriko after she saves Shikishima. He is yet again re-traumatized by this loss.

Since neither the US nor Russia will help because of tensions between the two, the Japanese government essentially gives up and does nothing. One of the minesweeper’s crew, Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), assembles a team and comes up with a plan to destroy Godzilla, using a small group of former Navy veterans — including Shikishima — and some disused Navy carriers to carry out the plan.

Unbeknowst to the others, Shikishima has finally been pushed too far, and plots his own revenge on Godzilla, that will presumably cost him his life. He makes arrangements for the care of Akiko with neighbour Sumiko (Sakura Ando), and pretends to cooperate with Nodi’s plan.

And like a good neighbour, Sumiko is there …

That sets up Act 3, and I don’t want to go into the plot any further because the movie is still playing in cinemas as I write this, except to say that some good twists ensue as the group bravely takes on Godzilla and Shikishima seeks revenge and redemption.

I, at least, was surprised by the finale as well as the final scene. I was also utterly delighted by some surprise callbacks to the original film.

Noriko sees Godzilla for the first time, shortly before she is swept away.

I was downright shocked by how engaged I was with the emphasis on the people affected by these events, and how right this alternative approach felt, viewing it from my cinema seat in a world where Godzilla is a stuffed toy with a very long history (and, as mentioned, an ongoing successful franchise for Toho).

70 years on from the original film, the monster itself can still elicit nostalgia and appreciation, but going back to its roots from a very fresh angle has given Godzilla Minus One something new: emotional connections with its audience beyond a general fandom. I’m not sure if this approach would work repeatedly, but it has certainly injected some fresh blood (sorry) into a franchise that had become cliché.

Posted on by chasinvictoria

La Jetée (1962)

dir. Chris Marker
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 46

I believe I am correct in saying that La jetée, at only 28 minutes long, is the shortest film in “Sight & Sound” magazine’s listing of the greatest films in history (currently ranked at #67 in the critics’ poll, but #35 in the directors’ poll). Nonetheless, its impact on the medium of film, on storytelling, and on the notion of “science fiction” is significant.

Some wag once called it “a slide show with an IQ of 180,” and they’re … not wrong. Except for a small moment of moving images, the film is composed almost entirely of photographic still images, where the viewer must study what’s briefly on screen carefully to extract as much information as possible, combining the visual information with the audio cues and narration. Of course the medium of film is itself a series of photographed still images, but show quickly enough that the illusion of movement, of synchronised sound, of emotion and performance, is fluid.

Here, director Marker slows down the flow to create an irony, rendering it as a unique method from which we get our information; we infer, rather than see, the passage of time between each image — that interesting process in our minds where our vague memories and our dreams cross each others’ paths.

The “story,” such as it is, is stark and minimal: in a bleak post-nuclear dystopia sometime after World War III, a man is selected by a small group of scientists (German, it seems, given the whispering that occasionally appears behind Jean Négroni’s vital and nearly poetic narration), to engage in an experiment to save the present by calling on the past and the future to provide a solution — induced psychological “time travel”

The man has always held some strong mental images to keep his memories intact, and these scientists can see into people’s minds, so they have picked him. While being held captive, he is injected with something to prompt his (mental) return to the past, before the current situation, where he meets a woman not unlike “The Time Traveller’s Wife” — a figure not part of his memories, who accepts each new visit without question, calls him “her ghost” and builds a bond of trust and friendship with him.

Having successfully sent him into the past, the scientist then attempt to send him into the future, with far more obscure results. The man, seduced by the woman of his “dreams,” appears to “escape” his present and live permanently within his memories with this woman — combining the hazy glow of happy memories with this new dream-like woman, forging his own personal paradise.

Despite the vagueness that is part and parcel of this story, there is a definite ending I won’t spoil. The narration acts as a hypnotic element drawing the viewer in alongside the score — the visuals, the narration, the score, and the still-image juxtaposition of past, present, and future all interplay with each other to create a remarkable journey that is likely to stay with viewers as they reassess their own recollections, dreams, and reality.

Yes, the Terry Gilliam film 12 Monkeys is something of an expanded and re-envisioned remake of La jetée, but I’d encourage anyone who hasn’t seen that (or even if they have) to sit with La jetée and let it mess with your own head a little bit.

Even the title is a bit of a mind-slip: Literally, it refers to the jetway at Orly airport (which we repeatedly come back to), but it’s been pointed out to me that the could be seen as a play on là j’étais, which translates to “there I was.”

Posted on by chasinvictoria

Radio On (1979)

dir. Chris Petit
⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 45

I’ll admit it, the soundtrack of Radio On is what pulled me into watching it. The very late 70s, 1978-79 in particular, were the original “post-punk” years and pivotal to me finding my musical “tribe,” which covered punk, ska, and especially New Wave with its synthpop vibes, calling back to Kraftwerk and other synth pioneers.

On that front, the film ticks many of my musical boxes: early Devo, Kraftwerk, Robert Fripp, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, Lene Lovich, The Rumour, and David Bowie all appear in full or (mostly) bits, so the soundtrack would normally get five stars from me — except that you rarely hear the full songs. Still, the aesthetic is there, and it’s the best part of the movie.

As for the film itself, it has the loosest of possible plots: a man named Robert (David Beames) who works as a DJ for a chain of biscuit (cookie) factories — yes, playing music live to workers — has to leave his empty life in London to drive to Bristol, as his brother there has committed suicide for no discernible reason. Most of the movie is simply Robert driving to — and then back from — Bristol, making this technically a (rare) British road movie.

This is literally about 90 percent of the movie.

It’s shot in black and white by Martin Schäfer, best known for being Wim Wenders’ assistant cameraman — and indeed, Wenders is also involved in this. Along the journey to Bristol, he meets a few people (including Gordon Sumner, better known as Sting from The Police, who plays a homeless troubadour) and shares a few moments with various people, including a couple of girls, but nothing much actually happens.

This lack of clear story and the litany of drifting, directionless characters is undoubtedly meant to convey the post-punk generations’ alienation from “society” and general ennui and aimlessness in the aftermath of punk, heralding an ongoing emergence of a world where not much gets done, and nobody seems to care much, or commit to anything. The performances, particularly Beames’ Robert, offer moody minimalism and slacker angst, which has been the soundtrack to successive generations ever since.

As symbolism, that angst and purposlessness comes across in the film; 40+ years after Radio On was made, things haven’t changed that much, though some inconsequential music and fashion trends have periodically managed to march through in the meantime. So we get a lot of well-shot but visually-flat driving to “nowhere” and then back again.

Robert finally gets to Bristol, pokes around a bit, talks to his brother’s girlfriend/partner (who has little to say) for a few days, hangs out in Bristol a bit, then begins the journey home, none the wiser. As mentioned, he meets some people going to Bristol and on the way back, and while these encounters inject some interest and really minor amounts of insight, nothing much comes of them.

The “ending” of the film, where Robert finally must abandon his misbehaving car and take the train the rest of the way home is the most interesting point in the film, primarily in contrast to the monotony that came before it.

I don’t want to make it sound like I hated this film, I didn’t — a journey is a journey, and some scenes were filmed in specific neighbourhoods I know from my own travels, and did I mention the soundtrack? — but Radio On has little to offer beyond its great musical choices and some kind of vague statement on the desperation of living in the very late 70s as a member of the “lost” generation, which as far as I can tell are still mired in their own entropy.

If you knew this place in 1979, you were a pretty cool kid.
Posted on by chasinvictoria

Brighton Rock (1948)

Dir. John Boulting
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 44

Whilst away on a quick vacation, I had an opportunity to see Brighton Rock, a Graham Greene adaption starring Sir Richard Attenborough and, yes, William Hartnell. Although all of the Doctors are fine actors, the more I see of Hartnell the more I admire the variety he brings to his parts.

I’m beginning to believe that Hartnell did actually say that the only man in England who could replace him as The Doctor would be Patrick Troughton; they both mold themselves into the part instead of (as happens too often these days) the part being effectively written especially for the one character an actor plays especially well. Hartnell is only a featured player in this one, where the lead is Sir Richard Attenborough playing “Pinkie” Brown, a ruthless small-time gangster who leads a small-time gang of crooks, of which Hartnell’s Dallow is the most loyal but least adventurous … at least at first.

They spend their time shaking down some merchants of Brighton, a popular seaside tourist town on the southwest coast of England. Having been there, I can attest that things have only changed superficially there in the decades since this was made.

The story starts after the murder of a gang leader named Kite, that the police suspect was the result of gang wars in Brighton. They couldn’t be more correct: young Pinkie Brown has just taken over Kite’s old gang, and when Brown discovers that a man named Fred Hale is in town for the day doing a newspaper promotion, Brown blames Fred (who clearly had some unshown previous dealings with the gang) for Kite’s death.

The gang confront Fred in a pub, then chase him around the area until Pinkie manages to kill him on an amusement park ride. Before that, Fred meets local busybody and brassy entertainer Ida Arnold (Hermione Baddeley) who picks up on the fact that Fred’s scared. When he is in fact killed, the police think it was a heart attack, but Ida starts trying to reveal the truth.

Pinkie shows Fred the jig is up and leads him to his death in the Haunted House ride.

Following the murder, Pinkie moves to cover up when he died, by having his lieutenant Spicer distribute the remaining contest cards as though Fred was still doing it, but Spicer was seen putting one of the cards in the cafe where Fred was seen. Pinkie decides to put a card under the table at the cafe himself, and meets the same waitress that waited on Fred, a sweet doe-eyed thing named Rose (Carol Marsh). Pinkie alternates between “flirting” with her and trying to find out what she knows.

Ida comes into the cafe, and gets a suspicious vibe off Pinkie that Rose probably sees as dark and exciting and thus attractive. Pinkie asks Rose out, but he’s not truly interested in her; she’s smart and knows he’s somehow involved in the gangs. Pinkie has designs to marry Rose purely so she cannot give evidence against him (as was English law at the time).

This sets the main plot in motion, to see how these scenarios will resolve themselves, and the answer is “not quite as you’d expect,” thanks to a number of well-done additional elements, including Pinkie’s conflict with the older boss of a rival gang; that Pinkie has no loyalty even to his own gang; a phonograph record Pinkie makes in a booth that we eagerly await the result of, which includes a great twist. The various elements really add to the story.

As with other Graham Greene works, the screenplay wrestles with the differences between Catholic morality — which is heavy on themes of damnation and forgiveness — versus individual moralities of mainly non-religious or not strongly so individuals when those moralities conflict. The film was seen as having excessive violence and thus didn’t quite break even on release, but in the US (where it was retitled Young Scarface) the violence wasn’t seen as excessive, and thus didn’t do well there either.

Ida’s got a bad feeling about this …

Brighton Rock (the title actually refers to a popular candy of the time) consistently shows up quite high in lists of the best British films, and I suspect this is mostly due to Attenborough’s incredibly strong performance as the paranoid and borderline-psychotic Pinkie. It certainly does a good job of capturing the unseemly underbelly of a resort town, and is populated with a variety of colourful British characters.

The performances, from the unnerving Pinkie to the fiercely loyal Dallow to the semi-innocent Rose and the caricaturish Ida are all “rock”-solid, and the gang fight was seen as shocking at the time. There are enough unexpected plot turns to keep even those not fond of “gangster movies” interested, and the contrasting themes of dark motives and bright, happy tourists (not extras; the tourist scenes were shot serepticiously) is a wonderful backdrop that breaks up the frequent cruelty.

Not a single person in the crowd scenes knew they were being filmed for this movie.

If you like old movies with a lot of character action but aren’t fond of US-type gangster movies, Brighton Rock might be worth a try. The twist at the end is brilliant — but made Graham Greene angry, and that’s more than enough to go on for me.