November 30: The Lives of Others/Das Leben der Anderen (2006 – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

November 29: The Tourist (2010 – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

★★★

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s second film is a fun homage to a type of Hollywood that we no longer see much of.  Elise Clifton-Ward is a chic heroine who inhabits elegant locations in Paris and Venice, and von Donnersmarck’s direction dresses her elegantly, gives her witty dialog, lights her in a striking manner and moves her with a sexy swing.  She draws an innocent math teacher, Frank Tupelo, into the intrigue she inhabits, and an outlandish plot ensues as a relationship between the two develops.  It’s a film full of European exoticism, high style, romance, and maneuvering as the two negotiate the various parties interested in Elise and her criminal boyfriend.

The Tourist is simply fun.  Though it speaks more to cinema than to life, there’s pleasure to be had as it combines classic romance, suspense, humor and style from 60s American film.  While there could be more chemistry between Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, there’s no real reason for plausibility or authenticity here.  This film celebrates the pleasures of a type of movie that’s no longer made and shows us that such films can be fun even though they’re not deep.

November 27: Spectre (2015 – Sam Mendes)

★★★

In Spectre, the Bond franchise has again run out of steam after a strong reboot that began with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. The element that has made Craig’s Bond so compelling – a humanized 007 who is strong yet vulnerable – has given in to the inertia the always seems to overtake a new James Bond.  Sam Mendes lets Spectre settle into a stereotyped James Bond who lacks character complexity or conflict, and the film is filled with franchise convention rather than reinvigorated elements.  Spectre is a competent movie with some fun parts, but having felt Craig involve us in the risks that Bond takes in other films, we’re let down to be left here with watching what we've already experienced -- stunts, a bad guy, exotic locations, beautiful women....and an Aston Martin.

November 26: La revue des revues (1927 – Joe Francis)

★★

The title pretty much summarizes this peek into part of the nightlife in 1927 Paris.  La revue des revues is a survey of big dance numbers from some of the major night clubs.  It feels a little like That’s Entertainment, but here there are performance numbers rather than clips from MGM movies.

And the dance numbers are often impressive.  Revue offers a series of lavish performance pieces with elaborate costumes and a range of dance from cancan to ballet.  One of the early numbers, Orgies, recalls the silent interest in ancient pageantry, but it also tells viewers right away that this is a pre-Code film.  It has more than a little eroticism and even goes to limits that can make a modern viewer uncomfortable.  Shortly afterwards, we’re watching bare-breasted performers changing costumes.

The outstanding tinting of the film adds to the effect of the dances, highlighting some costumes with one color and other costumes in the same number with another color.  And vaudeville backgrounds some of the performances, too, with acrobats, juggling and Cossack dance.  An unexpected pleasure, seeing Josephine Baker’s limber, rhythmic jiggles in the context of so much stiff choreography, helps explain why she was such a sensation.

Revue also provides context for Busby Berkley's best-know work, which starts some six years later.  The camera here peeps up under lines of synchronized dancers’ legs and stares down from above at patterns of the dancers’ bodies.  Drapery and parasols create flows of motion, and the stage is packed with sequins and performers.  These are all elements that Berkley tightens into some of his best work.

But for all their historical interest and range of subjects, the shows in Revue ultimately make the movie seem long for a modern viewer.  While the dance numbers may range from Babylon to Spain to 17th century France, the limited choreographic vocabulary here eventually begins to seem monotonous.  And technical restrictions of the 1927 camera limit what a director can do, though cutting the dancers’ feet out of the frame would seem a preventable technical error.  The music of the Lange restoration that I watched is another problem with this film.  Taranta-Babu’s score operates in a narrow tonal range, and the performance never seems to dedicate itself totally to the music.  One could imagine that occasions of intense strings, horn or percussion might have livened up the original music.

The frame story of the film doesn’t contribute much interest to Revue either.  It’s a story with typical elements of a silent film, melodrama like Gaby’s spending her last money on a theater ticket and the sentimentality of a contrived happy ending.  But like the music, this story lacks the intensity it needs in order to engage us.  This story is similar to the dialogues in That’s Entertainment  that stitch together the routines but it don't add to the film.

Revue des revues gives us a good, documentary-like glimpse of period musical performances.  It’s not good cinema, but it’s interesting to see this aspect of performance art at the close of the silent era.

November 23: Suffragette (2015 – Sarah Gavron)

★★

Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette is a film that’s dedicated.  It dramatizes the latter stages of the struggle of British women for the right to vote, and it portrays not only events and people but also the context of the suffrage struggle.  In this film’s 1912, most British women seem opposed to the notion of women voting, and patriarchy is brutally conservative when challenged by women seeking equal rights.  And Suffragette shows why women needed the right to vote in that historical moment.

But just as the cinematography here is desaturated and monochromatic, so are the story and characters oddly bland.  Carey Mulligan, as Maud, hits all the right notes in the film’s leading role, just as the rest of the cast does, but Gavron ultimately delivers a film that keeps us from involvement in the characters and their actions.  Even in the climax toward the film’s end, we find ourselves distanced and observing rather than feeling what is happening, perhaps because this climax involves a character we hardly know.

For all Suffragette’s dedication to its cause and effort to evoke the context of the struggle for women’s right to vote, this film succeeds more in educating us about history than in inspiring us to its cause.  As education, it’s remarkably effective, but as cinema, it doesn’t inspire.

November 5: Steve Jobs (2015 – Danny Boyle)

★★★★

November 3: A Lady of Chance (1928 – Robert Z. Leonard)

★★★

This is a charming movie that moves along on the clichéd contrast between the hardened con artists of the city and the trusting, family-oriented folk of the countryside.  The open face of the wholesome-looking John Mack Brown contributes a lot to the sentimentality that engages us in  A Lady of Chance, but it’s Norma Shearer that we most enjoy watching.  Her face expresses emotion with an uncanny precision throughout, whether sizing up a rival or leading on a mark, but it’s her moments of conflicting emotion that showcase her skill.  After Steve proposes, Dolly is left to pantomime marriage alone  in her room, and Shearer’s quicksilver face runs back and forth on a spectrum between cold happiness at landing a quarry and the joy of being sincerely loved.  We see this same flicker of emotions in a scene outside the farmhouse later in the film.  These are moments of bravura silent acting.

A Lady of Chance has other allures.  In addition to the film’s harsh set of values, its pre-code aesthetic lets a few racy moments go by, like when Steve touches Dolly’s proffered upper thigh or when he tries to remove her stocking.  But it’s the acting that engages us here and has us pulling for the couple in the melodramatic ending.  It’s a fun movie.