April 20: All About Eve (1950 -- Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

★★★★★

April 18: Sweet Smell of Success (1957 -- Alexander Mackendrick)

★★★★★

April 17: Night of the Hunter (1955 -- Charles Laughton)

★★★★★

Night of the Hunter is one of the most original, successful films I’ve seen in a long time. Where have I been all this time not to even know what’s up with it?

There are many things I like about this movie, but I’d have to say that its mood and psyche of German Expressionism appeals to me the most among them.  The BD notes say the film has a strong German Expressionist element, so I expected some low-angle lighting with big shadows.  And there are low angle lights like when Mitchum goes down the stairs to the cellar, the shadows making him even stranger and more deformed than his psychology already is.  There is a great scene that’s only done in silhouette, too.    However, Night of the Hunter uses a fuller range of expressionist vocabulary.  There are some sets that are over-the-top angled to look like a Caligari exterior, and there’s a weird psychology to the whole film that is elemental, as though all the characters had been dragged up from someone’s id.  Also, you see Expressionist body language, like when Mitchum twists his body to pick up the line of an interior and his twisted posture recalls a gesture in Murnau or the like.  There’s even an Expressionist plot line as the Reverend is caught and the angry townsfolk form a lynch mob to hang him.  At that point, Ben has a flashback to the persecution of his father and suddenly becomes a supporter of the man who would have killed him (and still would). In that scene, the angry mob is clearly out to kill a Frankenstein/Golem character like in a Wegener movie.  The stroke of inspiration here is that Charles Laughton has so fully adapted this anachronistic, foreign film vocabulary to a riverside America in the 30s; it’s a simply perfect fit.

And then there is the disturbing, dreamy quality of so many parts of the film.  The film opens with the head of Lillian Gish at the center of a circle of singing cherubs against the night sky; an image that’s both sweet but vaguely disturbing.  You get the same feeling in the river voyage of the children as they drift by a heavily foregrounded frog and some rabbits, animals that are just there, neither threatening nor helpful but neutrally watching the desperate children alone on the river.  And there’s the beautiful, lyrical disturbing scene of Willa, drowned in car at the bottom of the river with her hair flowing with the river plants.  Dreamy….and creepy.

And what great casting.  The hunky Robert Mitchum would seem to be the opposite of what you’d want in the role as the Reverend, but his good looks, deep voice and out-of-control public image are just perfect. His chemistry with the kids is apparent on screen, too.   And what better saving angel than Lillian Gish, not only Griffith’s regular icon-of-innocence but also identified so strongly with silent film.  Shelley Winters isn’t outstanding here, but she’s not bad, and I think this is one of the earliest roles I’ve seen her in.

Night of the Hunter is so over-the-top and out-of-the-box-- but  so well-done – that I’m planning to push it on everyone I can convince to give it a try.  There’s not a moment in the film to not be looking at the screen.

April 16: Suzhou River (2000 -- Lou Ye)

★★★★

Suzhou River has a couple of very strong points going for it.  For one, its plot seems straightforward at first but soon becomes complicated with stories within stories while one actress plays the female lead in all of them.  I enjoyed this story as it got more and more complicated and, instead of ending, took one more narrative turn.  After its somewhat slow beginning, Suzhou River quickly reeled me in.  I also liked the film’s setting along the Suzhou River in Shanghai.  This is a dirty, misty, industrial, rainy, humid environment – the environment good noir.  I don’t believe I’ll ever think of Shanghai in the same way after watching this film.  Like in African Queen, the setting here is as much a character as any of the people are.

There were some elements of the movie that I didn’t really care for, though.  For one, there’s a voiceover narration throughout the film, and I have a knee-jerk bias against that.  I wish the film could just tell the story with images, but I don’t know how Ye could have done that here.  However, he could have done it more, for sure.  I was slightly disappointed in the way the ending ties up all the ends in the plot and gives us a definitive interpretation of what has happened, too.  The film could have stopped a little earlier and left us with several interesting ways of thinking about what we’d seen, but it goes on to tell us what to think.  And along with the voiceover, a lot of Suzhou River uses a subjective point of view with a wobbly, hand held camera that grows a little old after awhile; and I got impatient with the voiceover and the takes of life along the river at the film’s opening.   I still don’t get how all that fits….

These reservations aside, there’s a lot to like in Suzhou River.  It’s worth the time as a unique vision of a unique place.

April 15: Source Code (2011 -- Duncan Jones)

★★★

This is a fun movie for a Friday night.  Carlos and I checked it out, and I was involved in it almost from the beginning.  I liked the acting (except Joe Wright, whose bad scientist was too over-the-top in the context), and I really enjoyed the story.  I just didn’t see most of the narrative turns coming.

I had some expections for the movie since Jones directed Moon, a sort of intellectual sci-fi movie from last summer which I appreciated.  And I could see the Jones imprint on Source Code, too: a series of shifting frames of reference which kept giving me new ways to interpret what was happening.  Like in Moon, where we keep learning new things about Sam Bell, we keep adjusting our understanding of Colter Stevens and his mission as this movie progresses.

Moon is about identity and what life means, and Source Code approaches the same issues.  But this film is mostly an action romance, great stuff for Fridays.

April 14: African Queen (1951 -- John Huston)

★★★★★

I think this one is the classic it’s considered.  African Queen is a romance and something of a comedy, so it doesn’t have the world view of, say, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, so rigorously foregrounded.  Yes, religious people are hypocrites, bad guys still kill people for no reason other than sheer meanness , and nature can be red in tooth and claw.  But there’s still love in the world, and scruffy Charlie finds it with prim Rose. 

I don’t completely understand how African Queen overcomes all the obstacles in its way and still ends up a fun, touching classic.  The script has one romantic cliché after another (alcoholic boat captain falls in love with missionary) and verbal comedy that’s only polite-smile worthy most of the time.  And yet, when Rose lets her hair reluctantly down and Charlie gives up his gin, it certainly touched me.  And I was happy for the two in their little dock with all the flowers.  And I was riveted as they cascaded down the rapids (perhaps a flashback to my own experience on the White Nile).  And  I sympathized as they dragged the Queen through the river grasses (perhaps a flashback to my own experience in the Okavango).  And I laughed at Charlie’s monkey faces and felt uncomfortable watching the crocs dive in the river.  In a word, I was engaged.  Even with the horrible, over-the-top melodrama and unlikely coincidences that conclude the film, I was following the two lovers closely all the way to Lake Victoria.

Part of the film’s success is certainly tight editing and a story that moves briskly, and the genuine chemistry and skill of the two stars is another component.  In addition, Africa itself is a real part of the film, and Africa here is clearly not a set.  African Queen has a verisimilitude that prevents you from being too complacent as you watch.

I’m tempted to see this movie as a thematic extension of Sierra Madre.  At the end of that film, the two men learn that the world is a hard, cruel place and go off to seek love as their only refuge in it.  In African Queen, the two main characters find love and cope with the world by loving each other.  Kate’s prayer pretty well sums up the philosophy of the film when she prays: “ Judge us not for our weakness but for our love.”

April 13: The Graduate (1967 -- Mike Nichols)

★★★★★