September 29: (1943 -- Jean Grémillon)

July 14: Remorques/Stormy Waters (1941 -- Jean Grémillon)

★★★★★
In 1941 Occupied France, Jean Grémillon found a way to get this Poetic Realism-tinged melodrama released, but if Remorques is a Poetic Realist project, the emphasis is on “poetic.”  Andre Prévert’s script is theatrically artificial, and many of Grémillon’s directing decisions move Remorques in the direction of poetry rather than realism.  The slightly bourgeois Jean Gabin is a Poetic Realist, hard-working captain of a salvage tug, but the script, visuals and sound all push Remorques into a world of cinematic poetry rather than a gritty confrontation of the realities of the working class.

It’s Grémillon’s camera that creates most of the poetry here.  In an opening dance sequence, the camera follows Cpt. Laurent and his wife, Yvonne, as they enter the dance floor and progress through room.  Arriving at the end of the room, the camera follows a server back to the other side again and there picks up the newly-wed couple as they enter and cross.  It’s one of the elegant tracking shots that Grémillon is known for.  Shortly afterwards, we watch a variation on the tracking shot as the messenger from the boat enters the room from the right.  The camera is outside at this point, and it tracks the messenger as he makes his way along the outside of the dance floor, and the columns between us and the man create a graceful pattern.  And again later, we see a similar interest in texture as Yvonne is looking in a mirror after the reception.  With the camera peering over her shoulder as she puts her old bridal veil on, she moves the veil from in front of her to behind and the camera registers a series of filter effects that alternately reveal and cloud her image.  More than mere narrative camera, such work stands out in its effort to create on-screen beauty.

Perhaps the most artful sequence in the film is the one when Cpt. Laurent and his rescuee, Catherine, visit a
house that Laurent is considering renting.  It opens on a matte painting that imitates an impossibly high crane shot of two tiny shadow figures on a beach speckled with shadow.  There’s then a cut to the shadows of two people walking, and we realize it’s the couple who are strolling along the shadow-streaked beach. It’s a beautiful opening to the sequence.   After some repartee which shows Catherine’s interest in Laurent as the two enter the house, Catherine goes upstairs while Laurent lags behind to follow later.  When he goes up, he discovers a bedroom, and the two carry on a conversation on the balcony with gauze curtains billowing from the sea breeze and a loud soundtrack of wind blowing, cinematic correlatives to the emotions in the room.  As another touch, Grémillon has had   Michèle Morgan remove her coat before Laurent arrives, a suggestion of undress, and the only recognizable piece of furniture is the uncovered bed in the background.  This is one of the emotional high points of the film.  But Grémillon doesn’t end the sequence at this point.  Instead, we again the couple’s shadows from the familiar leg-level angle that we experienced in the sequence opening, there’s a cut to a starfish (an important symbol in the sequence) and we return to that original matte that shows the shadow-speckled beach scene.  None of these last three images is particularly important to the story, but they give a rhythmic lyricism to the sequence that provides an aesthetically pleasing closing.  Which is to say, they’re just included because they’re beautiful.

The soundtrack is another of Remorques' poetic elements.  In addition to the loud wind sounds in the bedroom which add to the drama of that moment, while the Cyclone is rescuing a freighter in a storm at sea, the soundtrack is filled with the boats’ horn sounds, which are more like long screams than horns.  This produces an on-edge feeling that reinforces the danger of the moment.  And at the end of the film, as Laurent leaves the bedside of his deceased wife and runs back to his tug, the eerie soundtrack is filled with the sound of a howling storm layered over with a loud reading of a requiem mass that has no mimetic place in the narrative at all but rather evokes the Laurent’s state of mind.  In all these cases, the soundtrack is following an aesthetic imperative rather than a realistic one, which helps make watching Remorques a deep cinematic experience.

Grémillon also uses rich, full symbols in Remorques that won’t readily be reduced to a metaphor.  As the tug
pulls out of the harbor after the initial wedding, the camera surprisingly doesn’t follow the boat and the action.  Instead, as the tug sails off to the right, the camera holds on the empty harbor stairs leading down to the boat and then rises to look at a rainy streetscape with no one on it and no lights.  This is perhaps the plight of those left behind or perhaps a suggestion of the danger the men are sailing into.  Or perhaps it just sums up a sailor’s life in an image.  In such deliberately highlighted symbolism, Grémillon realizes one aspect of the cinema as poetry by creating significance that only exists in the film.  The starfish that Catherine picks up on the beach is another such irreducible symbol.  When the couple pick it up out of a boat, the starfish seems to represent the moment, but the moment isn’t happy or sad as much as it is informed by a range of conflicting emotions and desires.  We refocus on the starfish when the couple consummate their passion, and we see it again when Catherine leaves and gives it to a mate to use in supporting Laurent later.  The starfish is the ambiguity of the nature of their relationship—a relationship that doesn’t have a good outcome for either of them—and there’s a bit of the crusty, abandoned Catherine in it, too.  Like the harbor steps, the starfish can’t be reduced to a simple metaphor.

Another part of the beauty here is Andre Prévert’s script.  The numerous parallels in the script have an aesthetically-pleasing effect as when Laurent upbraids a shipman for infidelity only to be unfaithful to his own wife.  Likewise, Laurent is late for the Cyclone’s departure just as the shipman has previously been.  There is also irony in the script like when Catherine, as her seduction of Laurent approaches fruition, expresses the same appreciation for a bedroom with a sea view and breezes that Laurent’s wife Yvonne had previously articulated.  There’s a bitter irony in Yvonne’s death scene, too, as her wish to have him there saying he loves her as she dies comes true; she dies thinking he was faithful while he actually hasn’t been.  All these elements are melodramatic but part of their effectiveness comes from the over-the-top melodramatic plotting.

Other elements of the script are sophisticated, too.  Catherine, for example, is not a standard seductress who is out to get her man and wreck his family.  She has our sympathy early on as she calls out the captain of the Mirva for the scum he is, and the script is especially literary as Catherine attaches a negative connotation of powerlessness to “Catherine” and asks Laurent to call her by “Aimee,” a name connoting the love she feels she never had.  While Yvonne is somewhat the stereotyped chaste wife, Catherine has a lot of richness and depth that gives complexity to all the relationships and to the tragedy that ends the film.

There’s even an indirect nod to Poetic Realism and Grémillon’s historical context.   After France collapsed so quickly under German attack, some Frenchman blamed the spiritual malaise of France that characterized the period of the Popular Front.  Poetic Realism was seen to contribute to this paralyzing philosophy of pessimism, and when one of the mates of the Cyclone seems to be an intellectual who ponders more than taking action, it’s not hard to see an allusion to that contemporary opinion.  And indeed, Remorques has its share of pessimism.

Remorques is an underappreciated occupation era jewel.  Its melodrama doesn’t play well with today’s audiences, but its frequent sparkles of genuine filmic beauty make it a worthwhile investment of 90 minutes.

July 12: The Great Gatsby (2013 -- Baz Luhrmann)

★★★★
Count this movie among those of the summer that don’t disappoint.  It’s another big, splashy, digital sfx-travaganza, but unlike the last couple of Baz Luhrmann outings, Gatsby works.

Few directors can outdo Luhrmann when it comes to over-the-top surface excess, and he sets his sights on the perfect target when he swoops, cuts, choreographs and digitizes his way through his fantasy of the Roaring 20s.  Emphatically anachronistic music pulses, people jitter, fireworks explode and the viewer is absorbed into the glorious artifice of a film setting with no limit in reality.  These parts of the film that celebrate cinema’s inauthenticity are among the most mesmerizing, and they’re a true delight in 3D.

Other parts of Great Gatsby are calmer but just as artificial and just as interesting.  There’s the over-the-top lyrical beauty of Gatsby’s mansion as he shows it to Daisy and the flower-stuffed cottage that Nick loans Gatsby to facilitate meeting Daisy.  Then there’s the bleak foreboding of the wasteland between Long Island and New York City whose visuals suggest a period etching.  In every setting of the film, Luhrmann wrings out realism in favor of cinematic construct that is both self-referential but also answers to the needs of the story and characters.

Such artifice in Luhrmann has been there since his earliest work, but it doesn't always carry his films to the Gatsby.  The 2008 Australia uses the same mannerist cinema style, but the film’s artificiality keeps the viewer out rather than bringing us into what is happening onscreen as we experience in Gatsby.  A major factor in the different responses to the two films is the way Luhrmann uses his actors.  In Australia, Luhrmann has Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman act as artificial as the sets and pixels they are surrounded by, with the result that the audience has nothing to relate to in the film and remains disengaged.  Gatsby is an altogether different experience because Luhrmann has Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton bring nuance and depth to their characters.  DiCaprio’s Gatsby is deeply, obsessively in love; Mulligan’s Daisy is indecisive and conflicted; and Edgerton’s Tom is presumptuous, arrogant and threatened.  We see these qualities in the actors’ faces and gestures, and it’s the combination of these plausible characters and dramatic situations with Luhrmann’s impossibly baroque settings that gives Gatsby it’s uniquely cinematic aspect.  This intersection of the real and the irreal is the pleasure point of this film.
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Some viewers will be put off by the over-the-top digital work, the music-video camera and the theatrical staging of The Great Gatsby.  But this film is a rare treat for those who can embrace the artifice of cinema and still respond to a human heart beating at its center.

July 11: Star Trek Into Darkness (2013 -- J.J. Abrams)

★★★
Here’s a fun summer movie that’s capable and engaging.  JJ Abrams likes and respects the things that have made Star Trek one of the most enduring franchises.  Into Darkness has the dependable characters acting out their dependable tags as they deal with situations before them.  And the film has the little moral messages we all like such as the endurance of friendship and the importance of the heart.  There’s even a trip down to a planet with a remarkably stagy look.  For us fans, what’s not to like?

And Into Darkness even brings a bit of innovation.  For one, the film uses the very timely element of
terrorism, and it does so without trivializing it.  The terrorist attack here is real and important and not some gratuitous plot element.  The story has a bit of originality, too, despite its neatness, which almost signals what is going to happen.  But with so much of what you expect, it’s the visuals which often carry the film.  In

screen-packing Imax 3D, the faces of Abrams’ actors fill up the frame during the many unexpected close-ups, and the complex CGI effects resonate with a special force.  This is a visual film that calls for 3D.

The many distinctive elements in Into Darkness also contribute to experience of the film.  There are Abrams’ own 80s-inspired blue lens flares to touch the nostalgia base while giving a sense of immediacy, and we have to wonder if all the alien creatures in the Federation are partly practice for future Star Wars features we’ll see from Abrams.  There’s even decent acting, especially on the part of Chris Pine, who sells Kirk.

So this is a fun movie that actually has a little more takeaway than much of the other summer fare.

May 29: Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 2 (2012 -- Various)

★★★

This set of Pixar offerings looks like a creative studio becoming more cautious and a little stale.  Among the most cautious and stale are Mater’s tall tale of being a pilot, Air Mater, and his adventure in Time Travel Mater.  From the Cars franchise, neither of these two shorts is interesting or original but instead rely on what are now stock characters doing little unexpected.  Likewise, Hawaiian Vacation and Small Fry have the familiar Toy Story characters acting the same way they do in the three feature-length films and in the other shorts.  There’s not much new or clever here either but rather a remix of elements that fans of the movies already know.

Presto is pretty much a Warner take-off, though it’s so fast and visually witty that it scores a few laughs as a rabbit tries to get a carrot from his magician master.  The funniest film in this collection is the Wall-E spin, Burn-E.  Like Presto, Burn-E isn’t surprisingly original, but it mines the same silent comedy practices as Wall-E, and the laughs can bring tears.

Most of the other offerings here come from previous Pixar work, too.  There’s an overlong animated “documentary,” Your Friend the Rat, that is hosted by Remy and Emile from Ratatouille, but it lacks the snap and clever engagement of the feature.  The two Up spin-offs also lack sparkle .  Dug’s Special Mission has the good natured Golden Retriever creating Roadrunner-like situations for his aggressive pack-mates, and George & A.J. has retirees resorting to fantastic attempts to avoid the nursing home.  This film has a clever premise, but the animators don’t get much beyond silly in their conception. Overall, this entire group of nine short films in the collection imply a stagnation in Pixar's work on animated shorts, a reliance on tried-and-true characters and situations with little of the excitement of innovation that Pixar has brought to the genre in the past.

In fact, only three of the shorts in this collection represent original efforts in new directions, and only two of those have much engaging originality.  In Partly Cloudy, a dark cloud creates the bad babies of the world that a bedraggled stork has to deliver, while bright clouds create the good babies for the happy storks.  This film doesn’t develop anything unexpected.  On the other hand, Day and Night has two transparent characters whose outlines reveal scenes during, respectively, day and night.  Not only is this concept highly original, but the film even develops a story involving the two.  This is a fascinating short film that is simultaneously self-reflexive and traditionally narrative.  It’s one of the most imaginative shorts in either of the two Pixar collections.

La Luna is similarly engaging, though for different reasons.  This coming of age short has a boy caught between his father and his grandfather as he tries to create his own identity.  The film has wonderful imagination, like the way the boat anchors itself to the moon and the task the men have of cleaning the stars from the moon's surface, and it has a simple story that feels like a fairy tale.  An Italian feeling in the work ranges from the characters' hand gestures and speech rhythms to the costumes and the music.  La Luna won the Academy Award for animated short this year, and it deserved it.

May 21: Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1 (2004 -- Various)

★★★★

This is a fun collection of films from early Pixar.  In the very first short, 1984’s Adventures of Andre and Wally B, there’s a silent film vibe that will become more obvious in later films like Wall-E.  Even more, shorts like For the Birds and Tin Toy rely on the expressive faces of silent film, especially the eyes, that is a Pixar animation trademark.

And many of these films anticipate Pixar projects, too.  Tin Toy and Knick Knack anticipate the Toy Story trilogy, not only with their interest in toys but even with some of the toy characterizations.  The terrible kid of Tin Toy might be a predecessor of the daycare kids of Toy Story 3, and the sleek figures of Knick Knack anticipate Barbie and Ken in tone.  There’s also an interest in an old man character in Geri’s Game that anticipates Up, a film that deals sympathetically with an old curmudgeon but skirts maudlin cliché for the most part. 

This collection also shows the beginning of Pixar producing short film tie-ins to some of its major releases.  is a hilarious slapstick riff on the Mike and Sulley characters from Monster’s, Inc, and Jack-Jack Attack uses classic Warner reality bending to posit what would happen to a babysitter as an Incredibles superbaby begins to use his powers.  Mater and the Ghostlight shows the danger of such an approach becoming stale, though, as this little short overdwells on Cars’ Mater character without using much inventiveness.  It’s to Pixar’s credit that the studio typically avoids such predictable, uninvolving projects.

Mike’s New Car

And this collection also finds Pixar reaching outside Pixar World and stretching its creativity in some unexpected directions.  In some cases, like that of Red’s Dream, this outreach fails.  This little short has a distinctly graphic novel tone that ultimately only feels derivative.  One Man Band is hardly more engaging with its link to European culture, and Boundin’ feels like vintage Disney in the Wild West.  Slightly more fun is the slapstick-in-space Lifted with a young alien fumbling a human abduction under the critical eye of a supervisor.

The best film of the collection, and the one of most importance to Pixar, is the very short Luxo Jr.  This 1986 film not only gives Pixar its desk lamp icon, but it gets at the element in Pixar films that makes them unique and that brings people back to theaters again and again: Pixar films’ focus on an emotional core that evokes a shared human experience.  Here, a child (lamp) breaks his toy and is consoled by the parent before the kid finds a new toy he likes just as enthusiastically.  The bemused parent looks directly at us as we share this human moment we all recognize.   In its two-minute run time, Luxo Jr reveals the crucial element in Pixar’s ongoing success in feature length computer animation.

May 20: and (2008 -- Richard Linklater)