Posted on by chasinvictoria

Great Expectations (1946, dir. David Lean)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 21

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.

Pip tries to love the cold, quixotic Estrella.
Posted on by chasinvictoria · 2 Comments

The Three Musketeers (1939, dir. Allan Dwan)

⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 19

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
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Metropolis (1927/2010, dir. Fritz Lang)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“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.

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Safety Last! (1923, dirs. Fred Newmeyer & Sam Taylor)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

52-week film challenge, film 14

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!

Posted on by chasinvictoria

The Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament d’Orphée)


1960, Dir. Jean Cocteau
⭐️⭐️⭐️½

52-week film challenge, film 13

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.”

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, Yul Brynner.
Posted on by chasinvictoria

Orpheus (Orphée), (1950, dir. Jean Cocteau)

52-week film challenge, film 12
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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.

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The Blood of a Poet (1930, dir. Jean Cocteau)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

2023 52-week film challenge, film 11

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.

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Princess Iron Fan 鐵扇公主 (1941, dirs. Wan Guchan, Wan Laiming)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

52-week film challenge 2023, week 10

This 1941 B&W fully-animated movie is considered the first Asian full-length animated film, and is certainly the first full-length Chinese animated film. While some western influence (particularly the early Looney Tunes of the 1930s and the early Disney movies like Snow White) can be seen, it is drawn from folk fables themselves inspired by a portion of a novel called Journey to the West, published in 1592.

The folk tales based on the book, we are told at the beginning of the movie, often focus on the supernatural creatures rather than the travelers and the moral of their journey — which is that life is full of trials and suffering. The filmmakers, however, wanted to emphasise the lesson of the story: that working together as a community, faith, and using everyone’s talents in harmony can overcome great obstacles, and make life better for all.

The tale is a fairly simple one: a monk trying to get to “the west” (meaning Central Asia and India) to obtain some Buddhist sacred texts (sutras), but is stopped by a mountain range full of fire. His three servants — a monkey prince, a pig-faced monk, and a stuttering but strong worker — each try to use their various magic powers to solve the problem. Specifically, they need to get a magic palm-leaf fan from an unhelpful princess in order to put out the fires, but their individual ruses and even brute force all fail.

Our three “heroes,” sort of.

The servants all regroup back at the town where the monk helps them brainstorm, suggesting that the three pool their abilities with the assistance of the townspeople to overcome the trickery of the princess and her husband. This they finally do, ultimately winning the day and clearly the mountains of the fire demon that tortures them, so that they and the monk can proceed on their journey of enlightenment.

Despite the handicap of no really good print of the film being available (it is desperately in need of a major restoration), the quality of the B&W animation shines through, with many impressive moments including extensive use of rotoscoping to make some scenes much more realistic, along with smoke effects and excellent character design. The various shape-shifting and disguising powers of the three servants are well done, and the quality of the existing film print picks up a bit in the last third.

The “evil” princess, who actually has a pretty small but pivotal part in the film.

This is primarily a film that would now mainly appeal to fans of early animation, film historians, and students of Chinese history, but it is a very impressive feat of filmmaking that is only marred by the lack of a pristine print. A special mention should go to the musical score, which starts off a bit overwrought in my opinion but soon settles down when needed to accompany the story. I enjoyed it enough that I would certainly revisit it if it were ever restored.

An example of the beautiful backgrounds in the film.
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Ugetsu (Monogatari) (雨月物語, lit. “Rain-moon Tales”) 1953, dir. Kenji Mizoguchi

2023 52-film challenge: week 2

The late 1940s and much of the 1950s was an interesting time for the film world, particularly in the West. In addition to filmmaking advances from other countries, interest in ”foreign” films and styles of filmmaking/storytelling grew at international competitions, increasing diversity and influencing North American and European filmmakers for decades afterwards.

The main characters (L-R): foolish Tōbei, prideful Genjūrō, Genjūrō’s wife Miyagi, their son Genichi, and Tōbei’s wife Ohana.

This movie, usually shortened to just Ugetsu, is an interesting film because it weaves some timeless story ideas together: a clever allegorical tale of the delusions of men — and the subsequent wartime suffering of their wives and children, shown in a almost-feminist sympathetic light — alongside a more traditional Japanese ghost story, offering up a meaningful anti-war theme based on the lives of the innocent victims of war.

The story is based on tales from a book written in 1776 (when another more famous war was going on), and is set during Japan’s prolonged civil war, which finally ended in 1600.

We focus on a small family: the potter Genjūrō, his wife Miyagi, and their young son Genichi. The other two main characters are Genjūrō’s brother-in-law Tōbei and his wife, Ohama. Both of the two men have big dreams: Genjūrō dreams of having money by selling his pottery in larger towns, while Tōbei is almost feverish with a desire to become a samurai.

Genjūrō’s more modest and achievable aims at least are rewarded; Tōbei’s goal is sort-of achieved in a rather comical way, but their visions of success both drive them to leave behind their families to seek their fortunes, causing mostly suffering compared to the poor-but-happy lives they already had.

Tōbei, as is his habit, stumbles into enough dumb luck to finally get rewarded as a samurai general, complete with armor, horse, and retinue.

Genjūrō, in town to spend all his money on gifts for his new wife, slowly discovers that she and the villa don’t actually exist any longer; he has been seduced by a ghost, and living in a dream world that makes him forget his real wife and son. A priest he bumps into gives him a reality check, and paints prayers upon his body to help dispel the ghost and the dream-world.

The backdrop of all this is the civil war. Miyagi and Genichi, left behind by Genjūrō in his quest for larger towns to sell to, are forced from their village, with Miyagi robbed and stabbed by soldiers. Ohama, who loses Tōbei in the crowd of the city, must fend for herself and is eventually turned into a prostitute.

Tōbei, who finally has a little money from selling Genjūrō’s pottery, blows it on armour and tries to get into a samurai camp, only to be rejected.

Meanwhile, Genjūrō has had an encounter with lady of royalty who seduces him back to her villa, and uses her sensual regalness to trick him into marriage.

The triumphant Tōbei wants to return to his village to show his wife his new hero status, but his men persuade him to stop by a brothel for the evening first — where he finds his wife Ohama as one of the working women there. He is shocked back to reality by the discovery, and promises to give up his status in order to buy back her honour.

Genjūrō returns to the now ruined village and finds Miyagi and his son in their former house, relieved that at least his kiln has survived the soldiers’ devastation. He takes some food from the joyful Miyagi, who refuses to let him confess his sins, and quickly falls asleep beside his son.

In the morning, he awakes to find only Genichi still with him. A village elder discovers them and tells Genjūrō that Miyagi died from her injuries some time back, and is buried outside. The elder has been taking care of Genichi since.

Genjūrō and Tōbei reunite in the village, and promise to work hard for the benefit of Genichi and Ohana, who has had her honor restored via Tōbei’s giving up on his false success.

The film is shot with interesting lighting, camera angles (extensive use of crane shots, allowing for a mythical look), and extensive use of both traditional western soundtrack and spotlighting ancient Japanese music.

Although Ugetsu is mostly of interest to film history students these days, the movie is nonetheless a still-compelling tale of morality woven with supernatural elements. The clues that Lady Wakasa is not who she seems start with her Noh-theatre style and hikimayu-style “eyebrows,” while Tōbei’s story is told in traditional Japanese comic-underdog style.

The skill in the filmmaking blends these oddly-compatible journeys together well, and (surprisingly for the time) does not shirk from showing how their families suffer because of the mens’ chasing of dreams.

As an introduction to director Mizoguchi, it makes me want to check out his other international hit, Sansho the Bailiff (1954). Because of its towering international achievements in awards and screenings outside Japan, the film has consistently placed in many “all time greatest films” lists — and is still on the revered Sight&Sound top-100 list, having resided there at different rankings since the first such list in 1962.