This documentary is another one of those you might see at an IMAX cinema somewhere near you, possibly in 3D (as I did). I’ve always liked travel/archeological documentaries about places I’m not familiar with or haven’t visited, and Angkor Wat in Cambodia is definitely one of those places. The structures that remain behind from this abandoned city, and the recreations of what it would have looked like in its very, very long day (from the 9th through the 15th centuries) were eye-popping.
Angkor was filled with amazing and very original stone buildings of a stunningly elaborate design, and even all these centuries later, where the foliage has reclaimed so much of the space, the merger of the two is haunting and beautiful. As great as the ruins and recreations of the buildings are to look at, it reflects a remarkable emphasis on careful engineering, which isn’t just reflected in the buildings — the entire city had a maze of waterways and carefully-managed rice paddies that enabled the population to thrive, thus funding the stone temples and palaces.
The big mystery of Angkor, which the film does drag out more than a little, is why it was eventually abandoned for the later (and still current) capitol of Phnom Penh (pronounced Pen-OM Pen). The short answer is a remarkable example of climate change, which serves as a reminder that although we hear a lot about mankind’s current influence on climate change, it is a thing that happens with or without our actions; the Ice Age was another example of mankind-free climate change.
The rest of the film concerns itself with a mix of showing off some of the restoration of Angkor Wat (the multi-temple center designed to resemble the mythical home of the Devas, Mt. Meru) that has occurred in the past few decades, once the ruins were rediscovered. The center complex, known as Angkor Wat, was constructed in the 12th century to serve Khmer King Suryavarman II, and serve as his tomb. Originally designed as a Hindu temple complex, it evolved in the 13th century into a Buddhist complex, which it remains to this day.
The film spends a bit of time on some of the techniques used to spot other ruins and structures lost in the overgrowth of the jungle away from the central complex, using helicopters and LIDAR to search do ground-mapping that can distinguish remnants of buildings through the jungle. Much more remains to be discovered, but the central complex has been mostly restored and is a popular tourist and religious destination, just 3.5 miles away from Siem Reap.
Although tourist promotion is not really the point of the movie as much as highlighting the ancient and surprisingly sophisticated culture of Cambodia, it certainly makes me want to see the place with my own eyes. Historical drawings of what it must have been like when populated are astonishing, and even today the complex water-management system of old has been restored, showing off the superb control of their environment the Khmer people once had until a decades-long drought, followed by a decades-long flood, forced them to move far to the south.
Although the design is a world away from the Mayan ruins of Mexico that I have visited, both sets of ruins serve as a powerful reminder that the peoples of the past thought deeply about the centers of their cities, usually along religious lines, and that this inspired great labours in the same way that the great cathedrals we can visit today, whether from centuries past or more recent, are likely to be rediscovered in another millenium or so. Those things we think of as “permanent” are often looked back on as fleeting, given enough distance by the march of time.
Whether you are a fan of Dickens, or you’ve not read any of his work beyond A Christmas Carol, this is a fantastic film adaptation to offer insight into Dickens’ other work, full of strong visual language to put you in the authors’ mindset and life experiences. Great Expectations covers poverty, the working class, and injustice, but contrasts this with power, privilege and good old British eccentricity; themes Dickens constantly came back to in his other works.
As an adaptation of the book, Lean and his fellow screenwriters condense and cut some plot strands in order to make for a followable two-hour film, and made the deliberate choice to make the film in B&W rather than colour to further establish the film as being part of a bygone age. As a single film, no other version since has surpassed it.
Without trying to rehash the entire plot, an orphan named Philip Pirrup, whom absolutely everyone calls “Pip” as a single first and last name, is living with his older sister and her husband Joe, a kindly blacksmith. A chance encounter with the desperate escaped convict Abel Magwich in the graveyard of Pip’s parents and an act of kindness on Pip’s part sets in motion plot lines that will only show up much later.
In the meantime, Pip falls into the orbit of an eccentric patron, Miss Havisham, who has a macabre backstory and a young adopted daughter Estella, who is seemingly impervious to love and rather cold (and occasionally brusque), though of course young Pip falls in love with her anyway. As an adult, Estella does take on a beau but is, as Pip observes, simply using him. She explains matter-of-factly (again) to Pip that she has no heart and does this to all men — except Pip. It is a beautifully understated moment of foreshadowing where Pip finally “gets” her and what Miss Havisham has done to her.
As Pip turns 20, he discovers he has a mysterious benefactor (whom he assumes is Miss Havisham) who wants Pip trained in London to become a proper gentleman of society. Leaving his family, his patron, Estella and all he has known, he travels and meets up with a boyhood colleague, Herbert Pocket, who becomes his roommate and friend. A year later, matters come to a head as the benefactor reveals himself, setting in motion the means to resolve the various plot lines (and finally some action scenes!).
Pip (right) recognises schoolboy acquaintance Herbert Pocket, played by Alec Guinness.
A David Lean film is always beautifully shot and extremely well-directed, and this one is no exception. The B&W cinematography, apart from the opening sequence, was shot by Guy Green, who also worked with Lean on his other Dickens’ film, the even more memorable 1948 Oliver Twist. Both Alec Guinness and Martita Hunt had played their respective roles (Herbert Pocket and Miss Havisham) in a stage adapterion of the tale Guinness wrote, which prompted Lean to make the film in the first place (though he did not use Guinness’ stage script).
Lean definitely had a talent for picking and working with child actors, as both the young Pip (Anthony Wager) and the boy Herbert (John Forrest) are great in their parts, and a young Jean Simmons beautifully played the young Estella, with Valerie Hobson seamlessly taking on the adult Estella. Also of note is the ageless Frances L. Sullivan, who flawlessly played the lawyer Mr Jaggers in perfect Victorian style, but to be fair he had experience in the part — he had played the same role in a 1934 film version of Great Expectations as well!
There are only two serious errors in this film in my opinion, one of which was unavoidable: you can’t film the entire story, it would have likely doubled the running length of the film. Lean does his best to choose the best plot strands to follow, and resolves them all satisfactorily, but in truth Dickens’ lengthy storyline — it was originally written as a serial for a magazine, and the novel was originally published in three volumes — doesn’t lend itself to anything less than a mini-series.
The other flaw (and this was a big one) was casting a 38-year-old John Mills as the adult (21 year-old) Pip. I have no quibble with Mills’ excellent and emotional performance, but the age jump between the boy Pip and the (mature!) man Pip is just not credible on-screen. In a rare foot wrong, Lean should have cast a younger actor — at times, Mills looks more like 26-year-old Alec Guiness’ father than his contemporary.
A trip back to the mannered and class-centric world of Dickens’ time is probably not for everyone, even as beautifully realised as it is here, but as a picture of a bygone age (and Dickens’ clever way of pointing out the injustices and flaws of it), Great Expectations puts you right into the author’s imagination. The resolution of the film is a bit fast and tidy, but not before a series of memorable scenes in which Pip first (accidentally) destroys Miss Havisham and then forcibly prevents Estella from becoming Havisham’s prisoner — a powerful statement on the importance of finding your own way in the world, regardless of your circumstances or background.
I love this movie to itty-bitty bits, I first saw it in the cinema when it came out, nearly (gulp) 30 years ago, and then again some years later — Heather thinks it must have been 2004, for the 10th anniversary, likely at The Enzian in Maitland, Florida. So it has been a while, but seeing again last night, once again in the cinema was just heavenly.
Rarely has there been a movie this utterly joyful about a subculture, and the fact that it was one of those rare LGBTQ+ films that breaks through to the mainstream makes it even more beautiful. Priscilla, which follows the exploits of three Australian big-city drag queens at different stages of their lives (one of them transgender, no less) who get a lucrative gig in a faraway town, is at its heart a buddy movie about celebrating your style and embracing your past — told with infectious glee and love.
That it features an early and very effective performance by Hugo Weaving, playing Anthony “Tick” Belrose (drag name: Mitzi Del Bra), and the magnificent Terrance Stamp as Bernadette Basenger (whose real first name is a plot point, so I won’t give it away here), well-matched by Guy Pearce as Adam Whitely (drag name: Felicia Jollygoodfellow), and all three are just perfect yet surprising casting. While Tick’s story is arguably the “main” one, both he and Bernadette are confronting (or escaping) their past in this trip, while Adam (being the youngest) opts in on the adventure to fulfill his dreams.
Our trio, out of drag (only as required, mind you).
For those unfamiliar with Australia, it’s the same size roughly as the entire US, except that all the main cities hug the coastlines, so the road trip to Alice Springs is mostly a trip through remote desert, as their destination is smack-dab in the middle of the country. Adam’s mother buys them a very used old bus, and of course they pack an absolutely ungodly amount of costumes, props, makeup, and wigs with them.
Much of the film is comedic, thanks to the outlandish public personas of the trio, and there are lots of laugh-out-loud moments that are not just caused by outrageous costuming. The comedy is beautifully balanced with much more serious moments, including major and minor homophobia, personal growth, Tick’s literal confrontation with his past, and the bus breaking down in the middle of nowhere. Happily, the outback also has some friendly folks and a boatload of quirky characters that look out for our boys (and girl) as they each complete their personal and literal journeys.
If you shriek with delight at these incredible costumes, you might just be in the community …
The humanity and relentless positivity of the main characters wins you over almost immediately, and really carries the film through its various plot points and messages. If you’re not familiar with LGBTQ+ culture, this is a great introduction even though it is ostensibly about drag performers (hint: it isn’t really — it’s about finding and celebrating your true self).
Celebrated British actor Terrance Stamp, who first made his mark in film in the 1962 classic Billy Budd, is the real revelation here. He manages to effortlessly combine dignity, wisdom, experience, patience, and humour into his nuanced and layered performance, which threatens to steal the show but never quite does until the end of the film. This film revived his status as a hell of a good actor, resulting in a wealth of new roles and renewed respect in the industry that continues to this day.
Award-winning serious actor Terrance Stamp, known for superb villain portrayals, on the right.
For a film made 30 years ago, the “wokeness” (lol) of it is pretty stunning. There is representation of good and bad heterosexual characters, open-minded adults and children, the native aboriginal population, the white colonial population, and even the desert wildlife. Years earlier, David Bowie had made a music video (“China Girl” from Let’s Dance), that similarly touches on the spirit of Australia, and I can’t help but think maybe it had a tiny influence on this movie.
You really get a feel for the dynamic of the country, since the film starts in Sydney and is also a road movie about the beauty of the desert as well. When Adam finally gets some depth (after playing “generic young queen” for most of the film) as he fulfills his dream, you feel a family has bonded and your heart would be made of stone if you didn’t celebrate their victories.
The stars do such a terrific job of capturing the theatricality and joy of drag.
On top of everything else, it’s flawlessly made and brilliantly paced. It is funny, witty, joyous and celebratory, and I will never for the life of me figure out how it did so well with the general population, becoming a hit movie in most major countries, despite it quintessential Ozzie-ness.
This film is a gift to us all. If you’ve never seen it, go see it (especially in a cinema or in high-def). If you have seen it, you’re probably overdue for a revisit. It’s a buddy movie, a road movie, a gay movie, and a universal movie all in one, and it’s simply delightful.
Warning: some “fucking Abba” finally finds its way into this film, despite a ban from Bernadette.
I had a vague memory of seeing a film version of The Three Musketeers from my youth, and went looking around to see if I could find it either in my library or on one of the streaming services. My memory was that the version I saw so long ago was in B&W, but I now think I just watched it on a B&W TV (yep, I’m old). I’m still not sure what version I was thinking of, but I came across one that ticked the boxes, so I watched it. This movie … was not the one I sort of half-remembered.
This 1939 version was a musical comedy version that, despite that terrible idea, actually sticks pretty close to the book for as far as it goes — which really surprised me. I have a lot of time for Don Ameche, the star of this version, and he is one of the best things in it, taking the role seriously while never wiping the smile from his face as he plays the headstrong but skilled D’Artagnon, who hopes to join the King’s Musketeers.
Yes, that’s Don Ameche. Handsome, isn’t he?
In this telling of the tale, D’Artagnon mostly misses the actual Three Musketeers, who appear only briefly. The trio gets passed-out drunk drinking toasts at an inn to the various King Louises, because there are so damn many of them, and the scullery cooks (played by the all-mugging, all-singing, all-pratfalling Ritz Brothers) try on the Muskateers’ outfits and then get mistaken by D’Artagnon for the real Musketeers, and of course from there mischief ensues from all parties.
The success of this film depends very, very, very, very heavily on your tolerance of The Ritz Brothers, who were a vaudeville act that transitioned pretty successfully to film on the strength of being a mix between The Three Stooges and three Chicos from The Marx Brothers. They’re not in any way witty, but they can mug and clown (and also comedically sing and dance) with the best of ‘em.
The Ritz Brothers as the faux Musketeers
Their schtick, in my opinion, hasn’t aged well — but I cannot argue with the fact that they enjoyed a successful career in various forms of show business (though the fact that they got forgotten pretty quickly afterwards may prove me right about them). The film also relies way too heavily on D’Artagnon somehow not seeing the Ritz Brothers’ utter incompetence as pretend Musketeers, which of course he doesn’t since they only end up in his view by accident throughout the film at points where they have been (accidentally-comedically) useful to him.
Ameche handles a sword well, sings in a pleasing tenor, and is handsome enough to pull off the romantic scenes. The Ritz “Musketeers” keep getting pulled in by D’Artagnon’s delusion that they are real Musketeers, but they do aid in his success in the complicated (yet truncated) plot of this brief 73-minute film.
Buckles were most certainly swashed!
If you don’t know the story, read the book, or watch one of the later, more dramatic film or TV versions. Suffice to say Cardinal Richelieu was a very bad man who manipulated royalty both in France and England, and was foiled (ha!) by the Musketeers. The plot works well in this film, it’s just the comedy and the musical bits that fall flat.
First of all, there are only four songs in this “musical,” none of them that good, and the two for Don Ameche sound pretty similar to these ears, though he turns his “on the road” song into a love song later on pretty well. The two Ritz Brothers songs (one of which extols the virtues of chicken soup) are meant to be comedic but seem quite laboured to me.
Near the end of the film, the brothers contribute their best bit: a pie-plate dance that’s actually well-done and quite clever, meant to cover any sound D’Artagnon makes while freeing Lady Constance from the dungeon below the aristocrats they are working against. I should mention that the chase scenes, while regrettably sped up as was the custom of the time, are really well-done and focus on the hardworking horses.
The whole film is well-shot but still somehow kind of cheap-looking (just like The Ritz Brothers, insert rimshot here). I did recognise Lionel Atwill as de Rochefort, but only realized the near-immortal John Carradine was in this (as Naveau) when the credits rolled. I’m giving this a star for the cinematography, a half-star for Don Ameche, and another half-star for the pie-plate dance, and still looking for whatever version I thought was great when I was like nine or so.
Some fantastic matte work in the film that shouldn’t go unmentioned
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Complete” version, 4K with restored scenes
52-week film challenge, film 18
Quite possibly the most visually compelling film ever made, even after nearly a century. Certainly the most beautiful silent movie ever made. I recently noticed that Criterion had a 4K copy of the 2010 “Complete” restoration, so I watched it to see what had been added since the 2001 version. It turns out that the answer is “about 24 minutes more story, and a new version of the original score,” but there’s more to it than that, of course.
Lest we get too far ahead of ourselves, and for those who’ve never watched the whole thing, Metropolis is an incredibly futuristic-looking silent movie that absolutely everyone on Earth should at some point see. The reason I say this is that it is truly one of the most incredible film productions ever made from a visual standpoint, and on top of that the storyline is (sadly) still very relevant today.
The effects may be primitive by comparison to today’s films, but Lang brought a style and credibility to them — complemented by the design and art direction of the non-FX scenes — that not only hasn’t dated it, but in fact plays a huge role in the film’s immortality. Parts of his vision are the sort of future we all hoped we’d grow up in, but the underside (literally and metaphorically) of this future projection are indeed the world most of us ended up in.
As the film opens, we gaze upon an incredibly modernism-influenced style cityscape dominated by an exceptionally tall, large, and distinctly Art Deco Tower of Babel, with trains and cars on elevated railways bustling along at various levels on and above the ground, with airplanes (well, biplanes — a rare example of a visual that didn’t age well) buzzing around. The top of the tower is where the Master of the City (a sort of architect/chief executive) Joh Frederson and his adult son, Freder, live and enjoy the hedonistic lifestyle of the city’s elites. Lang said the look was inspired by his first trip to New York City.
Although there is no direct reference in either Thea von Harbou’s original 1925 novel-as-film-treatment nor in Lang’s film as to the exact time period, a 60s reprint of the novel placed it firmly as set in the year 2026. Whichever editor came up with that pretty much nailed it, as we are currently living in world alarmingly similar to the one described in the source material.
(L-R) Joh Freder, Rotwang, the Man-Machine
Freder, as a member of the elite, spends his days in gardens and playing sport and other such idle leisure — hobnobbing with the business magnates and politically-powerful and blissfully ignorant of how it all works. Meanwhile, the working class who actually make the city what it is live and work underground in a very functionalist, expressionistic Worker’s City, and toil on keeping the machines that power the metropolis of the elites in scenes that “influenced” Charlie Chaplin for his 1936 film Modern Times.
One day, a a radical woman teacher dates to bring some of the workers’ children up to the gardens to see how their “brothers” live. Freder is struck by the woman, Maria, and follows her down into the Worker’s City, where Freder sees firsthand the impoverished working class and the soul-shattering labour required to provide the elites with their lifestyle.
Maria brings the workers’ children up to see what they will forever be shut out from …
… and Freder is “shook” by what he sees and determines to investigate what lies beneath the city.
Though it was meant to be a parable on the danger of power imbalances, regrettably the problems shown in Metropolis have reared their ugly heads once again in a number of countries that have recently seen class-based unrest and abuses of power by those in charge. Anywhere you find that the elites live a lifestyle completely removed from the majority (who are of course taken for granted as an endless cheap labour supply), you will find strong echoes of this film, which regrettably still feels relevant and relatable nearly 96 years after its release.
Freder catches up with Maria, who he discovers is a symbol of hope for the workers, and she predicts that a “mediator”-cum-saviour will someday appear to resolve the growing chasm between the workers and the elites. Having been traumatized by this disparity himself, Freder sees himself, as the son of the city’s Master, as someone who could fulfill that mediator role, and falls in love with Maria.
Trials and tribulations ensue, and in the secondary plot it is revealed that there is a “mad” scientist in the city, Rotwang, who seeks revenge on Joh Frederson because Rotwang’s love — a woman named Hel — left him to marry the rich/powerful Joh, giving Joh his son Freder before dying. Rotwang has built a mechanical “man” — an iconic and insanely Futurist (but unmistakably female) robot design that he has plans for.
Joh, upon learning of the robot, orders Rotwang to remodel the robot to look and act like Maria — the heroine of the workers — but to have it incite the workers into violence against him. Joh wants this so he can crack down and destroy this attempt at workers gaining negotiating power, but while pretending to follow the order, Rotwang schemes to use the Maria-bot to fulfill his own plans, which are to resurrect Hel and take his revenge upon Joh.
Rotwang kidnaps the real Maria to make a doppelganger. This scene undoubtedly inspired James Whale for 1931’s Frankenstein.
Skipping a lot of exposition, Rotwang’s plan works only too well — Maria-bot incites the workers into a rabid state and commands them to destroy the machines, which will in turn destroy the Metropolis and its elite class. This isn’t what Joh intended, and it has the side effect of destroying the Worker’s City through flooding. While the workers are revolting, the real Maria escapes and tries to save the workers’ children, left behind in the fever of revolt, before they all drown.
Freder finds Maria, and along with his close friend Josaphat manage (barely) to rescue the worker’s children, and eventually get word of this to the workers, who by now have thought they accidentally drowned their own children and were so wracked with grief that they capture the Maria-bot and burn her at the stake. Rotwang gets his comeuppance, Freder gets Maria, and Joh learns the error of his ways.
What’s great about this new version is that the extra footage — which sadly could not be fully restored and is quite distinct from the previously-upscaled footage — adds depth and nuance to the story. In particular, this “complete” version really fleshes out some of the seconddary plot and in particular the supporting characters, from Josaphat to the unnamed Thin Man to Georgy, a worker that Freder befriends and learns from, temporarily trading places with him so that Freder can experience the worker’s life, and Georgy gets to briefly be experience the elite life.
The wickedness of the Thin Man, Joh’s enforcer so he doesn’t have to get his hands dirty, is made much clearer in this version, as is the affectionate relationship of Josephat and Freder, though there is of course no hint of beyond a close friendship. It was nice to see that level of male bonding without sexual overtones for a change.
The film is now almost to the full running time Lang intended (two short scenes are still wholly missing, and captions are used to cover this), and while yes, its now even longer, it is still so fascinating that the 2.4 hour runtime just flies by. Barring some significant new discovery of a better print or those missing scenes, this is the most complete version we’re likely to ever get.
This movie is just goddam incredible.
One can only hope that that perhaps the current “AI” fad will enable further restoration on the damaged but intact extra 24 minutes, making the switch between those scenes and the rest of the film less jarring. I could easily see how, at a minimum, the backgrounds could be extended to give those scenes the same 16:9 ratio as the rest of the film, and that would definitely be worth doing.
As I mentioned earlier, this is one of the incredibly few films that really should be seen by pretty much everyone everywhere. It is more than just a visually-captivating classic with a timeless message about the evils of exploitation; it is a plea to the future not to remake the mistakes of the past, which sadly has been ignored time and time again.
It’s a concert movie, but it’s not a concert movie. There’s no audience, no applause, no between-song banter. It’s two hugely influential musicians who were once in a band together reuniting to pay tribute to the man who helped them launch their careers: Andy Warhol. It’s a requiem and remembrance, entirely in song.
Cale, whose music I have enjoyed enormously, had a complicated relationship with Warhol, while Reed’s feelings
after Warhol’s unexpected death seemed to turn to a softer, more sympathetic side. Reed and Cale themselves, as the songwriting half of the Velvet Underground, also had a complicated relationship, but decided to work together on a song-cycle about Warhol for an album project, which became Songs for Drella. Both men were apparently caught off-guard by Warhol’s sudden death in 1987, and met up at the funeral and spoke to each other for the first time in years. From the suggestion of a mutual friend, they decided to write songs about their memories and perspectives on Warhol.
Some of the songs are based on their own memories and perspectives on Warhol, some are based on direct quotes or recollections from Warhol (either witnessed or drawn from his diary), and some are third-person narratives. As someone who grew up during Warhol’s biggest period of influence and art-world exposure, each and every song provides some fascinating insight.
The film, directed by Edward Lachman, is stark: a simple stage, some visuals on the screen above them, their instruments and microphones. There’s no audience, and it’s mostly harsh cuts between songs.
Lou sits for the whole thing, while Cale stands. Cale stares at Lou nearly continuously when he isn’t himself singing — sometimes quite sinisterly, always very intently — while Lou mostly looks at Cale near the end of songs to signal when to stop. There were public performance prior to the filming, but only a handful.
Following the filmed performance, Cale and Reed worked on the material further, and eventually recorded the album, which came out the following year. Most of the material is by Reed, but Cale’s contributions are, with one exception, my favourites: wistful and delicate, featuring clever piano and synth (complemented nicely by Reed’s guitar), sung in Cale’s trademark artfully-detached style.
Likewise, Reed’s songs are seriously enhanced by Cale’s stalwart keyboard and viola sophistication. Which is not to say Reed’s songs are weaker; they are performed in his own spoken/sung New York street poet style, full of emotion and observation, and he varies up the guitar work and structure of the numbers very nicely.
“Work” is by far my favourite Reed song from the project, and tells the tale of how Warhol pushed Reed to work hard to become a musical success. While Warhol himself fostered a public perception of kind of floating through the “scenes” and “happenings” he fostered, he was in fact a remarkably productive filmmaker, painter, and talent Svengali. We would likely not know of Reed and Cale (and may others) without him.
It’s fascinating watching both men express their complex feelings about “Drella” (the nickname a contraction of Cinderella and Dracula, which should kind of say it all) through their songwriting and style. That said, I’ll admit that I still think the best song about Warhol is Bowie’s whimsical tribute on Hunky Dory, simply named after the man himself.
If you have any interest in Warhol, or how he affected and helped shape these two deeply important but very different musical artists, you should absolutely watch this filmed performance. These two guys were the leaders of one of the most influential bands in the history of rock, came back together to pay tribute to their mentor, after which they vowed never to work together again.
However, they did anyway. In a great metaphor for their own complicated relationship, they did a one-off live show with songs from the Drella album, and then encored with their old VU bandmates Moe Tucker and Sterling Holloway on the song “Heroin.” This lead to a brief VU reunion, after which Cale and Reed vowed never to work together again (again). So far, this time, they’ve stuck to that vow.
(2002, dir. Peter Jackson) 52-week film challenge, film 16
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
It’s difficult to believe that just over 20 years have passed since the release of this, the “middle bit” of Jackson’s epic LOTR trilogy of films. A local IMAX screen has been showing the trilogy recently, and I was intrigued by the “remastered for IMAX” tag they added, so I went along to visit this old friend of a movie.
(A brief side note on that particular screening: I should have stayed at home. It was not “remastered for IMAX,” it was just the Blu-ray theatrical version blown up (in proportion, thank heavens) to fit the wider IMAX screen. There were problems with resolution and frame-skipping in the action sequences as a result. Very disappointing.)
When these three films came out originally, I was pretty obsessed with them, since I was re-reading the tales for the first time since college — not to mention the impact the first film had had on fans and first-time viewers alike. It truly brought the story out of “cult” status, and captured the mainstream through a combination of clever screenwriting (to bring cinematic order to the sprawl of Tolkien’s world-building) and state-of-the-art effects work.
According to my first review (back in 2002 on this very blog), I watched The Two Towers at least 10 times while it was in cinemas, both as a student of filmmaking and a Tolkien fan. It was a wonderful feeling to see packed houses and appreciative audiences who would never in a million years have read the dense and nuanced source material.
It was great to see them enjoying a tale that, although laden with special effects, wasn’t a crap sci-fi misfire like Attack of the Clones or the forgettable fantasy Reign of Fire — the latter was about dragons, and nobody remembers it. No, The Two Towers was a “war” movie that focused on the foot soldiers, the power brokers, and the innocent victims who get swept along.
Ironically, the film is probably one of the best “epic battle” movies ever made, though I can think of a few others of that lofty ranking. Both as a book and as a movie, it benefits hugely from all the scene-setting and character-introducing work done in the first movie (The Fellowship of the Ring).
This means that there is little in the way of backstory — since if you were going to see this one, it means you saw the first one, and we get straight on into the action. We do start off with a brief (very brief) recap of the (film) climax of Fellowship, the fall of Gandalf the Grey (and a bit more of what happened in his battle with the Balrog).
Then there is a good-sized break in the action to update us on the progress of the other characters as we left them in the first film — Sam and Frodo trying to enter Mordor; Merry and Pippin held hostage by Orcs and Uruk Hai, and Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas in hot pursuit. Jackson wisely shifts around between the three disparate groupings, signaling the depth and vastness of the different paths the Fellowship is taking towards the same goal.
It is with Sam and Frodo that we quickly meet up with the real star of the second film; the stunningly-realised Gollum (Andy Serkis). Although the character is obviously a CGI-generated effect, he convinces us totally of his physical presence. This is entirely due to Gollum having a physical presence during the filming for the animators to work off of. Played (and voiced by) Serkis, Gollum is (pardon the pun) fleshed out and made convincingly whole as a result.
Not only do the other actors have someone real to interact with, but they hear the voice we hear (one of the more remarkable vocal performances in many a year) — this was the secret to making Gollum so credible, and it really holds up. I would have loved to have seen the faces of Elijah Wood and Sean Astin when they finally got to see how all but Serkis’ facial expressions and movements were replaced with the Gollum character.
Praise should not be spared to the animators as well; though they had a remarkable (and undersung) actor’s performance as a strong starting point, they beautifully embellished it, expanding on Serkis’ unseen physicality and captured facial expressions in an eerie yet beautiful way. Serkis and the animation team should have been awarded a shared Oscar, for Gollum was the most fluid of collaborations between computer animation and human performance that had yet been seen on screen.
What Elijah Wood and Sean Astin saw (right), versus what we saw (left).
The film jumps around between these three sets of main characters, as well as introducing us to new plotlines and the characters that go with them — the Rohirrim, King Theoden and his daughter Eomer, Grima Wormtongue, the Ents, and so on. We learn a lot more about the “manufacture” of the Uruk Hai and the raising of Saruman’s army (which is representative of several nation-states, not just Orcs and Uruk Hai), but of course this is all glossed over compared to the book, because we only have three hours!
We can feel the film’s elements coming together, slowly at first but quickening in pace alongside returning “minor” (in the film) characters like Elrond, Arwen, and Saruman, and the buildup to war is effectively communicated. The film’s climax is the first test of Sauron’s forces, the battle for Helm’s Deep and its aftermath, which makes sense from a film perspective but falls well short of where the actual second book in the trilogy ended.
Mind you, Tolkien never intended the story to end up as three books — that was a merciful publisher’s choice — so the divisions in the books are just as “artificial” as those in the films. Jackson is guilty of rearranging the storylines a bit, glossing over or underplaying some important foreshadowing, and I think it is fair to say that while Jackson and his fellow screenwriters had a genuine gift for boiling down the long and complicated sections of the books without dumbing them down, they are also guilty of lingering on their own invented/contrived segues a bit more than strictly necessary.
Once you accept that most of this was crucial in making a set of films that would perform well at the box office with mainstream audiences rather than just Tolkien wonks, the justification for Jackson’s alterations are much more understandable. Let’s not forget that this was a huge risk by the studio — shooting all three films simultaneously in New Zealand and relying on a relatively-obscure NZ effects house, with a total investment of over $280 million before they saw the first dollar back (but the films earned at least 10x the budgets, so the potential alienation of the Tolkienites paid off).
Almost to a fault, Jackson predictably compressed long sequences (such as the four-day hunt for the Uruk Hai by Aragon and company), lingered on visually beautiful but less-vital plot points (like Edoras and of course Helm’s Deep), and shorthanded drawn-out or not-strictly-vital scenes and characters. The Ents in particular got precious little, but very effective, screen time — and featured some well-done CGI-enhanced puppet work of the time, though it must be said some effects have aged less well than the film overall.
There are a few moments — rare, but notable — that are not as well done as one would have hoped. There are waaay too many shots of Saruman running about and fretting on his balcony as he sees the Ents destroying his Uruk Hai “factory” (but too late to stop the war), but for a wizard he just looks helpless and impotent — very unlike his presence to this point.
The battle for Helm’s Deep takes up the entire third hour of the film, and is wonderfully gritty and dark. How so many filthy, terrorised, unwashed people can be so damn good-looking is one of the main mysteries of the film — but another is how Jackson manages to squeeze in bits of humour even in the most tense of moments, as the soldiers of Edoras face off against an overwhelming army of nightmare creatures. The battle scenes are a bit drawn out, with lots of shaky-cam cutaways of chaos between the more choreographed set pieces, but it is effective and involving.
Jackson cleverly sets up the resolution of the battle much earlier, shortly after the “reborn” Gandalph reappears to (some of) our heroes after seemingly falling to his death — Balrogs apparently make hot but suitable cushions for a long fall — in such a way that when he fulfills the promise he made in Edoras an hour-and-a-half (screen time) ago, it is thrilling and wraps up a plot point that had seemingly been left hanging with the Riders of Rohan scene. I will mention again here that the Balrog scenes near the beginning of this film only touch — lightly, and inaccurately — on the actual reason Gandalph survived and defeated it.
If you’re one of the people who never saw the film because you never read the books, fear not: plot-wise, you will be able to follow this easily, and the lore/minutia you don’t know will roll off your back with ease (and this is the true genius of Jackson’s filmmaking on this project). The overall themes are the power of love and friendship, the underlying presence of evil as the root of all hatred and war, and of course emphasizing kick-ass action sequences over the generally more scholarly and pastoral tone of the source material.
As I said in my original, contemporaneous review, this is the kind of movie they weren’t often making: tales with enough magic to take a long time to tell; grand spectacle very well balanced with thoughtful interludes (the “peaceful” lands versus the terrorized war-torn lands is a particularly sharp allegory that I like to think Tolkien would have appreciated being preserved); characters both major and minor with real depth, even when we first meet them.
Theoden nearly stole the film — actor Bernard Hill was fabulous in the part and we would have liked to have seen more of his character.
Nitpickers gonna nitpick, and it should be noted that I haven’t seen so much as a single frame of Amazon’s pre-LOTR Tolkien series thus far, but in both my original opinion at the time and upon revisiting The Two Towers now, Jackson did a great job straddling commercial/studio concerns and creating the visual language of the world Tolkien created. That he really introduced the wonder of Tolkien’s epic to the larger world should not be under-appreciated.
Addendum: There was a successful animated film by Ralph Bakshi in 1978 entitled The Lord of the Rings that covered (very roughly) the first half of the LOTR story to roughly the same point where Jackson’s Fellowship and Two Towers gets to. I saw Bakshi’s film on its release, and it was the thing that finally got me to sit down and read the intimidatingly-long books at last.
Bakshi never got to do a sequel to finish what he started on his version, but it was very influential (even to Jackson) — and the rotoscoping techniques Bakshi used in selected moments was very memorable and innovative. Without it, we probably wouldn’t have gotten Jackson’s version, so a hat tip where it is due.
I’m undecided about whether I should finally finish watching the extended versions of Jackson’s films (I have them, on Blu-ray even, but the extended Fellowship sated my appetite at the time), or dig up a copy of Bakshi’s epic and give that a second viewing ahead of its … gulp … inevitable 50th anniversary re-release in a few years’ time. I hope they’ll put it back in cinemas, and I hope they have a senior discount on it by then!
I’ve been staying out of actual cinemas for a long time due to the pandemic, but with the end of the global emergency (and with the option to mask up if the auditorium gets too crowded), I opted to take in an IMAX movie, as I generally love them and my local IMAX theatre is a museum right by my residence. My choice was Ancient Caves, a film about (mostly) underwater caves and what they can tell us about the most recent Ice Ages … and how man-made climate change may affect the natural cycle of the Earth’s cooling and warming.
As is generally the case with IMAX, the cinematography is stunning, and for once a film shot in 3D utilised that to good effect without getting cheesy about it, a la SCTV’S Doctor Tongue. There’s no brandishing a stalagmite repeatedly straight to the camera here, and indeed I doubt the divers and geologists in the film were even told it was going to be in 3D — but boy does it add depth and presence to spaces such as caves.
And what caves they are! The film starts off with some above-ground and underground (but not underwater) caves and introduces us to Dr. Gina Moseley, who really really loves caves and lowering herself into them on ropes. She serves as the narrator of the journeys into the caves, while Bryan Cranston serves as the narrator of the film overall.
It is of course a documentary, and the real purpose of the film is to use the caves and their stalagmites to study the previous Ice Ages — which happens about every 100,000 years. We’re not due for another one for a good long while (probably), but what happens during an Ice Age is interesting, and the way to get that information involves diving waaaay down into underwater caves to get core samples.
The film dwells a bit on the diving sequences, but the payoff is fantastic — eye-popping vaults of mineral and crystal stalagtites and stalagmites (and in the some of the less-deep caves, skulls and pottery), undisturbed and indeed untouched until this film in some cases for tens of thousands and up to a million years. I felt grateful to be able to witness these astounding scenarios in 3D without having to endure the diving and genuine risks taken to access these locations.
In short, Ancient Caves is educational but very interesting, particularly to anyone with the slightest interest in geology, cave exploring (above or below water), and the information scientists can extract from mineral deposits and such. The film does take a little time to discuss the impact of climate change currently, as it may have an affect on our future environment, and there was a brief but very interesting bit about the impact of human activity on the carbon dioxide count compared to the pre-mankind earth.
The film isn’t, however, focused on this point — it’s more a pure celebration of discovery, and the 3D and the diversity of locations really adds to the impact of the film. It’s playing on the IMAX circuit, so if it comes to your town and you could use a nice little escape from your day-to-day life — or just keep a pre-teen interested for an hour or so — this one might be second only to a dinosaur movie for edu-tainment value, and will definitely add value to your next trip to any local caverns.
Anyone who’s paid any attention at all to the silent era of movies will have seen at least one of the most famous silent-movie stunts — Harold Lloyd, seemingly halfway up climbing the side of a building, hanging on for dear life as he grabs hold of a giant clock after putting a foot wrong. Suddenly, the clock face comes partially undone, leaving him hanging high over a busy street. This is of course from one of Lloyd’s full-length features, Safety Last!, and it is a gem — but only one of the amazing stunts in the film, which is also quite funny.
Lloyd is often thought of last when one tries to name the giants of silent-era comedy, behind Chaplin and Keaton, but for my money he’s actually the most versatile of the bunch. While Chaplin almost always played a tramp in his silents, and Keaton forever plays a stone-faced version of the unluckiest man alive, Lloyd is often the sunny embodiement of American Exceptionalism, resiliently cheerful and sure that everything is going to work out despite the craziest things happened to him, and indeed that blind faith carries him through.
In Safety Last!, Lloyd opens the film looking like he’s in potentially fatal trouble — in jail and perhaps saying his goodbyes to his loved ones, with a hangman’s noose in the foreground. The set changes slightly, and we see in fact that noose was on a mail peg designed to allow the train to deliver a bag of parcels without stopping, and Lloyd was just a small-town young man on his way to the big city to make his mark.
He was doing this to secure his relationship to his intended bride (played by real-life wife Mildred Davis), by ensuring he has a career that can support a household and eventual family. The earnestness just radiates off Lloyd’s can-do attitude and beaming, positive face, but in fact like any such fellow he has to start small — sharing a room with a friend, working hard, and not quite catching the American Dream somehow … this film was only a few years prior to the start of the Great Depression, but somehow foreshadowed that all was not well with the game of “work your way to success.”
In another tell-tale America-of-the-20s trait, he puffs up his level of success to impress his girl, which in turn means he ends up spending most of his meagre paycheque on gifts he sends to her … skipping meals, hiding from the landlady, and making other sacrifices. In one scene, he ponders the cost of another gift while also staring at an advert for a “businessman’s lunch” (which costs 50¢ … you should see this film just to marvel at the prices of things!), and as he pushes himself to sacrifice for his bride-to-be, his minds “disappears” each of the five plates that were included in that luncheon. You can feel Lloyd’s hunger pangs.
As you might expect, the girl gets the idea to come visit and surprise him, and on very short notice he has to come up with ways to convince her he is as successful as he has boasted, hiding his lowly “real life.” While to modern audiences this thin plot moves along fairly slowly, there are always impressive stunts and action sequences (just him getting to the office is a great section of pratfalls and dangerous gambles) to fill the time until the next plot point.
Lloyd pays off a colleague not to reveal that he’s not the manager and this isn’t his office.
Mostly, Lloyd’s character (who was known as the “glasses man” in his earlier work, but he finally identifies the character as being himself — Harold Lloyd — on a business card, suggesting some real-life incidents are incorporated into the tale) just combines his incredible physicality with on-screen great luck in avoiding being killed or decapitated as would happen to the rest of us if we tried these stunts. Yes, there were stuntmen used and some clever camera trickery for the finale, but Lloyd is visibly on-screen for a number of these feats and it adds richly to the action.
In a panic over being found out as not the success he portrayed to his girl, he overhears the owner of the store wishing for a big publicity stunt and, thinking of his friend “Limpy” (the incredible Bill Strother, both a supporting character and sometimes Lloyd’s double for steeplejack and stunt sequences) who loves climbing buildings, offers a sure-fire plan to draw a crowd: he’ll climb to the top of the very tall department store building!
In an earlier sequence that sets up the climax of the film, Lloyd recognises a policeman in town as being an old buddy from their youth, and goads Limpy into helping him play a knock-down gag on the copper. But he doesn’t see his friend go inside and be replaced with a different cop, so when the prank is successful the furious flatfoot swears revenge on Limpy (Lloyd having quickly escaped). This sets up the dilemma that sees Limpy unable to scale the building in Lloyd’s stead (he was going to just take Lloyd’s glasses, hat and coat to fool the bosses), and Lloyd having to be coached into doing the climbing himself as the cop continues to chase Limpy around the store.
The sub-plot that sets up the finale
Of course, Lloyd doesn’t think he can do it, but Limpy reassures him that he’ll ditch the mad cop and take his place if he just climbs up a couple of floors. Well, the cop doesn’t give up that easily, and Limpy swings by a window every floor to encourage Lloyd to climb just another floor or two … until finally Lloyd has barely survived climbing up the entire building, reaping the entire $1,000 reward* for himself into the bargain, thus securing his forthcoming marriage.
*Lloyd is shown to be netting $15 every two weeks — remember this is 1923 — so a grand is like three years of wages in a single day, and of course it is implied he’ll be promoted as well.
Before the big climb and during it, there are numerous funny moments and smaller-scale stunts to keep things moving along, but the film — as ingenious and humourous as it is — still feels like the kind of plot that would sustain a film only half its one hour 13 minute runtime, and just throws in a lot of sequences that feel like (clever) padding.
Lloyd’s Not-Of-London … his actual position at the store.
That said, it’s very worth seeing. The incredibly clever way they did the climatic climbing sequences really make it easy to believe he’s hanging by a thread incredibly high up, but it wasn’t quite like that (you’ll have to guess how they did it in the silent era without the modern safety constraints and optical techniques such things would have today, I’m not telling).
I will however say that there’s a short Criterion Channel documentary made much later that reveals the secrets of Safety Last called Safety Last: Location and Effects that will spill the beans if you can’t figure it out yourself.
Throw in some incredibly well-trained pigeons (yes, really), a truly hilarious one-line cameo by a little old lady, and Lloyd’s amazing physical comedy, and you end up splitting your time between chuckling and staring wide-eyed at how he’s going to get out of this new bit of trouble.
If you’ve only seen sequences or still images from the film, I’d encourage you to watch the whole thing. Of course it was a big hit with audiences in its day, but in some ways it still embodies some uniquely American ideas about work-life balance, exploitative capitalism, and risk-reward philosophies that stand up today. Despite these subtle but weighty themes, it’s a feel-good film that everyone in the family will enjoy. Still!
Now this here is perhaps the ultimate example of what most “normal” people think of when they think of “art-house cinema snob” highbrow movies: a B&W (mostly) film made by some furriner where you have to read subtitles, starring some old dude who says things that sound weighty but are incomprehensible to “normal” people; long, slow-paced shots of people walking around things in odd ways; very little action; obvious erotic overtones without any of “the good stuff”; obscure back-references to other films or Greek tragedies nobody saw; self-directed and pretentious, and of course no attempt at a linear, relatable plot. 🙂
Cocteau’s final film (and almost his final anything: he would die just three years later) seems — at least to me — like an attempt to fuse the ideas of The Blood of a Poet and Orpheus into one final statement, weighted by the additional weight of mortality that increases as we grow older. It is 100 percent guilty of everything I mentioned in the paragraph above, but as I watched it for the first time Cocteau still managed to work his ingenious magic on me: couldn’t take my eyes off the thing because I literally could not guess what was going to happen next.
Even though the film does indeed strike a self-assessing tone, there is playful humour sprinked throughout — some of Cocteau’s answers to questions or dialogue from his characters to him are quite witty. As usual, the film puts layers on layers, and slathers on the symbolism. This time around, though, Cocteau himself is the star, though viewers of his 1950 film Orpheus may be surprised and certainly delighted to see several cast members not that classic in key roles in this one — though Cocteau did not credit any of the players for fear of misleading his audience.
This is also your chance to see cameos from Pablo Picasso and Charles Aznevore, and a small but important role for Yul Brynner, who helped finance the film, among other notable names of the time. This one is also in black and white, which by 1960 was all but gone from cinema screens, but like Orpheus is utterly gorgeous.
Cocteau plays … well, at some points he is clearly playing himself (billed as The Poet), and at some points (particularly early on), he is playing a character … a mysterious poet and scientist dressed as a 17th-century dandy who appears like a ghost to a colleague (Henri Crémieux, the first of many from Orpheus to be in this, albeit in a slightly different role) to release him from the error of his time-travel experiment by shooting him, whereupon he “snaps back” to the present day and becomes “himself,” i.e. the “real” Cocteau — though he does occasionally catch a glimpse of doppelgängers of himself still moving through this faux-dreamscape, like reflections in a mirror.
I found it particularly interesting that these scenes (and others later) are obviously filmed in a small portion of a bare, empty film studio … no sets or any form of artifice to set the scene, just basic walls and plain tables and chairs, and no attempt to “fool” the viewer as to where they are, or even to create a “void” space. This is a film, we’re in a small studio with minimal resources, and you can see all of that. As the film progresses, it relies more heavily on location filming, which is (as always with Cocteau) mostly ruins or symbolic sets placed in the ruins, symbols for the messiness of life but also for those moments where something meaningful is achieved.
As for what it all means, Cocteau later wrote about this in the most art-y way possible: “The Testament of Orpheus is simply a machine for creating meanings. The film offers the viewer hieroglyphics that he can interpret as he pleases so as to quench his inquisitive thirst for Cartesianism.” There, that clears it up!
Cocteau plays extensively with the “mythology” he created for Orpheus, and in effect some of this is a — kind of? — sequel to that film, in that Cégeste (his real-life adopted son, Edouard Dermit) , The Princess of Death (María Casares), and Huertebise (François Périer) have substantive roles to show what happened to them. Cégeste, sometimes reminding Cocteau that that’s only his character name, is his guide to the underworld; and true to the ending of Orpheus, The Princess and Huertebise have indeed been “sentenced” to become judges of the newly-dead, and now they are subjecting their creator, Cocteau, to an inquisition.
Cocteau mounts a “defense” by defending his need to create, to review his life, and to put his inner discoveries into visual language on screen or in writing for others to hopefully gain some enlightenment. After an inconclusive end to the “court” case, Cocteau wanders through mysterious ruins, occasionally running into men dressed as horses, until finally a Greek warrior of some sort kills him again. His friends rally to resurrect him yet again — the sort of immortality Cocteau hoped for — and he resumes his wanderings.
And in case you are wondering, as a sort of joke, Jean Marais (who played Orpheus in that film) briefly appears here — as another classic Greek figure, Oedipus (post eye-gouging). Eurydice (although played by a different actor, Alice Heyliger) is also seen briefly. Some others from Orpheus are likely in there too, but those are the ones I spotted.
A lengthy section of the film, with the motif repeated a few times, is that of Cocteau destroying a flower and then rebuilding it. In the decade between Orpheus and this final film, the French New Wave of cinema has bloomed, in no small part thanks to Cocteau’s influence — just as surrealist filmmaking became a thing after his first film (and the first film in this “trilogy”), The Blood of a Poet (1930).
Cocteau made a number of other films between that first one and this last one, but he clearly intended this one to be his last statement to the general public. I have to borrow a bit from Ken Phipps’ review of Testament for the AV Club, since he has summed up the film’s meaning about as well as it can be: “In the end, Cocteau takes comfort in the immortality of art, and therefore his own immortality, a sentiment that would seem far less moving and far more egotistical if it weren’t true.”
As I watched Cocteau’s previous take on the idea of chaining the mythological tale of Orpheus to the struggle artists go through to create and realise their art, The Blood of a Poet, I kept getting flashbacks of some other film I had seen decades ago that featured some of the same inventive visual effect and angst-y performances, but I couldn’t quite place it. I’ve seen more than my fair share of arty and experimental films, so I imagined that it was simply some film that had been influenced by Cocteau, as many have been.
I turned out to be right — it was Orpheus, Cocteau’s own second attempt at some of the visual ideas and concepts he expressed in Blood of a Poet. I had seen the second part of this prolonged trilogy many years ago, and remembered more the story and contemporary setting than the effects and other bits he borrowed and polished up from his earlier film. My scholastic impression of Orpheus was that I liked the urgent, modern (at the time), beatnik tone of the first half, and was less impressed with the slower-paced second half.
Now that I’ve rewatched it after all these years, I’m even more impressed with it (though I still think the second half could have used better editing). Cocteau was a pioneer of shorthand storytelling, and of deliberately leaving a lot of elements unresolved — I’m still working out the full meaning of the character Cégeste (Édouard Dermit), though I think he may represent the image of a writer at his peak, and be sort of a representation of Orpheus’ (Jean Marais) image of himself.
Poor Cégeste spends nearly all of the movie either dead or as a zombie servant.
In the film, Orpheus is a famous poet, hanging out in a bar for poets, being kind of an ass until a Princess (a memorable performance by Maria Casares) and her boy toy Cégeste arrive. Orpheus is mesmerised by the Princess, while Cégeste starts a brawl, dropping some of his own poetry in the fracas. Cégeste starts to flee, but is run over by two mysterious motorcycle riders.
The Princess persuades the arriving police that she will take Cégeste to hospital, and drags a willing Orpheus along into her limo “as a witness.” Along the way, Orpheus discovers that Cégeste is actually dead, and the Princess is some otherworldly creature. His instincts make him fall in love with her as they ride to her ruined chateau, accompanied by the motorcylists who killed Cégeste. Abstract poetry begins to play on the radio (which is later revealed to be Cégeste’s own poetry, read by him: time is meaningless in the underworld).
Cégeste is resurrected by the Princess, and the riders exit the chateau through a mirror (a direct steal from The Blood of a Poet, and only one of several in this movie). Orpheus, who is isolated in another room, eventually wakes up the next morning far from home, with the Princess’ limo driver Heurtebise (François Périer) waiting for him to take him home. Orpheus offers Heurtebise room and board in his home and space in the garage to hide the limo, which everyone in the village would recognise and alert police.
Heurtebise (l) and Orpheus (r) receive a threat from the underworld.
Orpheus refuses to discuss his all-night disappearance or what happened to Cégeste with his wife Eurydice (Marie Déa), and really behaves in a self-centered, brutish manner — even as she tries to tell him she is pregnant. As Heurtebise starts to fall in love with Eurydice, all Orpheus wants to do is sit in the limo and transcribe some strange poetry mixed with meaningless other oration — that mysteriously only comes through on the limo’s car radio.
The Princess visits Orpheus while he is asleep, and influences his dreaming. She eventually has Eurydice killed in the same fashion as Cégeste, as she is in love with Orpheus. We learn that both the Princess and Heurtebise are themselves spirits, and servants of Death (who is not personified in the film).
The Princess in her Death uniform as she watches Orpheus sleep.
Orpheus is shocked out of his defensive state by the news, and Heurtebise reveals himself as an agent of Death, noting that the Princess accidentally left a pair of gloves behind. He offers to lead Orpheus into the underworld to retrieve the unjustly killed Eurydice. Orpheus confesses his secret to Heurtebise: he is in love with the Princess, but agrees to travel with Heurtebise to undo Eurydice’s murder.
Orpheus is able to enter the underworld through the mirror by donning the Princess’ gloves, and Heurtebise and Orpheus move through a ruined city until arriving at a barren room where other agents conduct an investigation of Eurydice’s murder, questioning the Princess, Cégeste, Orpheus, and Heurtebise before concluding that the Princess overstepped her authority.
They agree to return Orpheus and Eurydice to the land of the living, on one impossible condition: Orpheus may never look upon her again, or Eurydice will disappear from this world and return to being dead. Forced to agree, Heurtebise, Orpheus, and Eurydice return to the living world, but find the restriction very difficult to avoid. Ultimately, Orpheus errs, and Eurydice disappears.
At that moment, a gang from the poet’s cafe arrives, angry that Orpheus has refused to reveal what happened to Cégeste and his missing body. In a violent confrontation, Orpheus takes a pistol but is quickly disarmed and himself shot dead. This of course causes Orpheus to reappear in the underworld, where he finds the Princess and declares his undying love for her.
The Princess seems to know that this affair was her own doing, and regretfully decides to sacrifice herself to Death so that Orpheus might be returned to life and become “an immortal poet.” After another tribunal hearing, the decision is made to return Eurydice and Orpheus to life with no memory of previous events. With no recollection of his love for the Princess, Orpheus returns to his true nature and loves Eurydice again, excited for his forthcoming child.
The Princess and Heurtebise, having caused this mess, are sentenced to a fate worse than death: they must replace the tribunal members who judge the dead. The sadness in the Princess’ eyes at the end is a powerful image, and the audience is left wondering if the crowd at the poet’s cafe has also had their memories wiped of these events.
Taken as a whole, my initial impressions on first viewing were not wrong, but very incomplete: having known the story of Orpheus already — thank you, Edith Hamilton — I mostly ignored that part of the film (while enjoying the visuals, some of which return to the same locations as in The Blood of a Poet). Now, I see more of what Cocteau was going for — again comparing the difficulty of true artistic creation of going to hell and back and forcing one’s self to confront one’s angels and demons.
It’s true the second half is slower-paced, at times becoming a cosmic version of a police procedural — but the performances, the passionate flow of emotions, and the gorgeous filming — particularly of the ruins of the underworld — kept me more attentive to the mystical aspects of the story this time around.
Orpheus is not quite as good as Cocteau’s earlier Beauty and the Beast, but it is a classic and it is a stunning accomplishment that still feels fresh in many ways. The influence of the film in later works by others is now obvious, though somehow Cocteau’s films remain singular in style and vision.
There have been many variations on the Orpheus & Eurydice story, and I haven’t seen all of them, but I’m confident that this remains one of the most original and interesting versions. The conclusion of his “trilogy” around this tale — The Testament of Orpheus, in which the director himself is the star — is next on my list, and I encourage anyone with an interest in classic French cinema to investigate this incredible artistic achievement.
Jean Cocteau, renaissance man and “poet” of film, theatre, writing (including poetry), designing and more was a truly remarkable human being, a leader in the surrealist and art movements, and one of the most influential men in the arts of the 20th century. Among his numerous other achievements, he really helped advance the idea of film as an art form and not just a storytelling form.
Probably best known among cinephiles for his 1946 film of Beauty and the Beast, until recently I was unaware that his two later Orpheus films were intended as the middle and end of a three-film trilogy, beginning with his first film, The Blood of a Poet.
It is a very experimental and surrealist film that broke a lot of ground in its day for special effects; some have aged less well than others, but a lot of this remains impressive and frankly more effective than zillion-dollar CGI jobs you know aren’t at all real. The work involved in pulling off some of this at the time must have been painstaking.
The “story,” such as it is, is that of a handsome and perennially shirtless male artist who is invited by one of his statues to fall into the mirror and pass through to the other side, where a series of strange tableaus unfold. I suspect it is meant as a metaphor for the creative inspiration process, both the downside where the ideas aren’t coming or don’t work, alongside the chasing of inspiration and realisation.
It’s gorgeous to look at, if hard to quite grasp. It’s certainly a surrealist film, and the only one I’ve seen that has an occasional narrator. Cocteau explores several techniques and ideas himself over the course of this 51-minute film, making it rather disjointed and occasionally confusing — but it’s hard to take your eyes off it.
The Chasbah 