Reviews

As a fan of many so-called classic films, I am nonetheless aware that there is some validity to the criticism that early movies (say, anything before Brando in Streetcar) as a rule have less vitality than their modern counterparts, are formulaic to a fault, and strain the limits of modern attention spans more than can be fully blamed on the viewer. Great Expectations treads miles clear of any of these criticisms, and so I recommend it in particular to anyone who has a general disdain for films that a) were released in the first half of the 20th century and/or b) were shot in black and white. Here is one that can change your mind.

Naturally, given the talents of the author, the plot itself leaves little to be desired. Further, David Lean, his cast, and his crew, have done a splendid job translating Dickens to the screen. This is indeed, as the Criterion Collection folks have classified it, one of the "Great Adaptations." I doubt that there is a better cinematic adaptation of any Dickens novel and am almost certain there is none in which the Dickensian English dialogue flows more pleasantly and naturally. The actors herein deliver Dickens as Olivier himself delivered Shakespeare. Nor is this an unimportant accomplishment; having to spend a couple of hours listening to actors who sound more like they are delivering a series of quotes (though admittedly they are) than that they are actually conversing can be positively unbearable. Indeed I think that's the main thing that people are hitting upon when, with broad brush-strokes, they paint older films as tedious. Great Expectations is the antidote to just this attitude.

If you are a lover of classic films, you have likely already seen this one or will do so regardless of my review, but if, on the other hand, you entertain the possibility of watching Great Expectations with a deep-seated skepticism I implore you to give it a chance. I have every confidence you'll be pleasantly surprised and find yourself drawn into what is, after all, a fascinating story.

There Will Be Blood is a strong movie in virtually every area, but what impressed me most of all was Jonny Greenwood's score. As in Jaws, and perhaps even more so in this case, the music creates an atmosphere of suspense that no combination of writing, acting, scenery, costume, makeup, etc. could come close to achieving in its absence. Greenwood's (usually) minimalist post-modern orchestral score sets such a tone from the opening seconds of the film, as we see the early struggles of our antihero, Daniel Day-Lewis's Daniel Plainview. We watch a man driven by an unquenchable greed and hear a swell of strings foreshadowing the decades of suffering that his greed will impose (on himself and on anyone in whom he sees an opportunity for advantage).

The character of Plainview is not a depiction of a pure psychopath, in the way that Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh was in No Country for Old Men. He is a bit more nuanced, but the glimpses we are given into the fact that Plainview does in fact possess a capability for regret, sadness, and empathy make him that much less likable for his repeatedly ignoring such feelings in the quest to fill his pockets. Here is a man not to be crossed, and one whose protean unpredictability leaves all but his essential business associates ever at risk of crossing him should they happen to encounter him on the wrong day.

The use of religion by the oil man and of the oil man by religion makes for one of the most interesting elements in the story line. Apparently the two were even stranger bedfellows in the days before Newt Gingrich's neocon revolution. One wonders what Upton Sinclair (socialist author of the source work) would have made of the current U.S. administration, or rather, one hardly needs to wonder. Naturally, at the time of its writing the source work (Oil) was a criticism of the big business syndicates of Sinclair's day, but you know, the less things change the more they stay the same; and if I were to attempt an exegesis on There Will Be Blood it would be to make a case that Paul Thomas Anderson intended explicitly (though not exclusively) for the film to remind us of some of the less honorable practices of the current administration. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but this is certainly the impression that I got.

Anyway, back to the manifest content of the film -- I awoke the day after having watched There Will Be Blood with a handful of very vivid images left over in my mind, scenes of destruction and ruin, not bothered by them so much as impressed with the movie's ability to occupy my thoughts in so vivid a manner. Anderson, Day-Lewis, and Greenwood each deserve a round of applause for what they've done here. By their efforts, they have given us a movie that will be well-remembered decades hence.

I figure to be among the lower raters of this film, but I really rather enjoyed it. On the whole, it has to be considered a success, but broken down into its major components -- a suspense thriller on the one hand, a romantic drama on the other -- a sizable distinction is revealed. As a thriller, it's right up there with Hitchcock's best films; as a romance it's one step up from mediocre (well, maybe a step and a half, but only because we're talking about Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant here). Also, the romance and thriller elements basically just run in parallel throughout the film, whereas I'd have preferred to see them woven together. My impression was that this never quite happened, though it comes close in a scene or two. (Compare Notorious in these respects to North by Northwest, which I found was superb from both the thriller and romance angles and involved more influence of each on the other.)

The film's greatest achievement lies in its presentation of the precarious balance created as characters begin uncovering each other's secrets. The espionage makes for a wonderfully complicated bit of game theory. There are certain facts known to all of the characters, others that are secrets held only by one or two characters, others that were secrets but have since been discovered by another character (unbeknownst to those who formerly held the secrets), and still other former secrets whose discovery has been discovered by those who originally held them (unbeknownst to the discoverer who now overestimates his or her advantage). If it seems a bit overdone, it's only because I couldn't think of a better way of concisely explaining it. The film is in fact remarkably elegant in fitting these pieces together.

Had the project been handed to a lesser director, I'm sure it all would have come across as stilted and forced; either that or a lot of the material would have just been cut to make the story more manageable. It's the sort of story one might read in a novel and think, "This would make such a great movie, but they really couldn't do it justice in under four hours. Oh well." This one weighs in at around 100 minutes I think. It's quite an accomplishment in that respect, and if the love story falls short of Casablanca, well I can forgive it for that.

Set at the unlikely intersection of academia and the cabaret, The Blue Angel takes the familiar tale of boy meets girl/falls in love into a strange and wonderful cinematic territory. It foreshadows both Fellini's La Strada and Kubrick's Lolita, but I feel it is a better movie than either. Sternberg's most important accomplishment with The Blue Angel may have been simply the discovery of the theretofore unknown Marlene Dietrich, who does (not surprisingly) a superb job in the role of the provocative entertainer Lola Lola. Indeed, her performances alone are worth the viewing of the film, but the director goes far beyond a reliance on a few titillating song and dance numbers from the young starlet and (along with the writers) rewards the viewer with what are truly some of the most richly poignant moments one is likely to encounter in viewing a lifetime's worth of films. At least they were for me.

It seems odd, viewing the film today, that Dietrich's performance on the stage begins so abruptly -- that is, with no fanfare or opening act to help launch the moment, but romance (in life, if rarely on celluloid) rises from such mundane beginnings. As the characters' feelings toward each other and toward their relationship evolve from this scene onward it seems, without exception, that the movie becomes better with each passing scene. Mind you, it's already pretty good by about 15 minutes in, but an hour later it's an absolute masterpiece. This can be attributed to two things -- first, the sublime use of allusions in later scenes to dialogue and imagery in earlier scenes and second (but no less importantly) the inspired performance of Emil Jannings as Professor Rath...and the man he becomes.

If there is any fault to note at all it is that the broad elements of the plot line border on implausible, but there is of course no rule requiring filmmakers to limit themselves to ordinary cases in telling tales of love. Moreover, the important content here is not to be found in the plot synopsis but in the characters' portrayal of basic emotions, and in that respect the film is an unmitigated success.

Reviews of this film typically include the word "Bergmanesque," and mine is now no exception. However, while the opening and closing scenes clearly are an homage to Bergman's style of staging, the remainder of the film is anything but derivative. The opening credits roll in silence, setting the tone for an extended opening (also silent) in which the editor takes us quickly through a vacant house; that it is vacant is indicative of the entire feel of the film. Diane Keaton presses her hand to the window glass and stares out at the open sea in dramatic, nay, melodramatic fashion in one stylized moment, but the movie is otherwise a genuine portrayal of real intrafamilial interactions. One can easily imagine the previous tiffs and blow-ups that form the backstory for the strained conversations we are shown. The character of the father's new love interest, the only one who is new to the family fray, is unabashedly simple in the midst of the sometimes forced intellectualism that characterizes the mother, her two oldest daughters, and their respective husbands. Not to say that she is unintelligent; it is not so much that she is missing something the others possess, but that she has something they do not, a willingness to appreciate simple or even low-brow pleasures. (Maureen Stapleton's performance is delightful. She provides us the funniest moments in the film, moments that are funny not by being ridiculous but by being so incisive a depiction of an archetype.) The father himself is intellectual only insofar as it would serve a white-collar professional; i.e., very little. The youngest daughter, a television actress (and a perfect metaphor at that) takes after her father in this respect. Yet it is clear that the two of them are perfectly intelligent people. The acting, without exception, is excellent and the dialogue, superb. Allen the director, for the first time in this vehicle, succeeds where his earlier films dared not tread; he shows restraint, nuance, and subtlety. We appreciate the sadness of these characters without once feeling whacked about the head by the legerdemain of a typical Hollywood tearjerker. Allen the writer is clearly an astute observer of human behavior and individual differences. He shows us hopelessness, and it is beautiful.

Minimalist film-making at its finest. A glimpse into the lives of ordinary people, Appalachian blue-collar factory workers, going about their lives – waking up, going to work, doing their jobs, chatting in the break room, having a sandwich, having a cigarette, getting back to work, going home at the end of the day and watching television. The set-up to the defining moment of the film is as realistic a portrayal of regular old boring life as I have ever seen on film, and the set-up is most of the movie. Going into this, I hadn't heard or read anything about the film, and so had no idea what to expect. "But this is from the director of Traffic," I thought. "It'll have to be pretty exciting." Well, exciting is hardly the word. Well-crafted is more like it. I spent the first half hour waiting for something to happen before it finally sunk in that the whole point was to show us what most people's lives, at least outside of the city, are really like. The dialogue could not be more perfect, and the casting director did a remarkable job finding talented but unknown actors. And this is important because, had the acting been awkward, it would have completely undermined the feeling that we are viewing a true story. It doesn't have the feel of a documentary exactly, more like surveillance camera footage shot with high quality movie cameras. It is very convincing. I also found it oddly relaxing. The key event that takes place in the second half of the film is not shown. We see its set-up and aftermath and are left to imagine the details for ourselves. There is an element of mystery, but the revelation, as with everything else in this movie, is subtle.

First of all, I apologize for the one line summary of my comments; it was just too obvious a line to pass up. Anyway,I used to catch this movie once or twice a year on USA Up All Night back in the early 90's, and I'm deeply appreciative to the folks at USA for showing this overlooked gem. It's very much in the style of the Zucker Bros., but doesn't have anywhere near the popular following of, say, The Naked Gun. I guess technically it doesn't qualify as a classic, since most people have never heard of it, but it ought to garner the attention that the Zucker Brothers' movies have deservedly received. It's loaded with brilliant one-liners, sight gags, and good old-fashioned silliness. I highly recommend it to anyone who liked Airplane!, The Naked Gun, Hot Shots, or Top Secret (and if you missed any of those, you should see them too). There are only a few comedies that I would give a 10 out of 10 (Airplane, This Is Spinal Tap, and Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run), but Off the Mark is definitely a solid 9.