All About Eve (1950) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (Film review)

All About Eve is an award-studded film, with an excellent script and superb performances, especially by Bette Davis and George Sanders, but it is also a wordy film with lots of snob-appeal where everyone talks in perfect lines. It is a film that celebrates the theater, but that ends up looking like a theatrical play itself, although it was based on an original script by its director, Mankiewicz (1909-1993), and is not the film version of a pre-existing play. Mankiewicz seems not to have been very interested in camera movement, composition or cutting - but he wrote such sparkling, memorable lines that you would like to frame them and hang them on the wall, and when these lines are spoken by a set of fine actors as here, the result is a great film, period. And the story, about the battle between the generations, that is always lost by the older one, possesses universal relevance.

It goes as follows. Out of admiration for actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis) a young woman (the "Eve" of the title, played by Anne Baxter)  every night watches the same play. Afterwards she hangs around in front of the theater. One night, she is accosted by Karen (Celeste Holm), the wife of the writer of the play in question and friend of Margo Channing, and taken to the star's dressing room. The admiring and self-effacing fan tells a sad life story. Nobody (except Birdie, played by Thelma Ritter, Margo's dour assistant) notices she is only acting the breathless fan, her eyes brimming with phony sincerity and fake humility. She is warmly welcomed into the circle of Margo Channing, which consists of her boyfriend Bill (Gary Merrill), playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), his wife Karen, and sarcastic theater critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders). She starts living with Margo and helps her as a secretary. But it soon becomes clear that this seemingly so innocent young woman is a sharp character: she copies everything Margo Channing does, eats or wears, and then slowly but surely insinuates her way into the theater as her understudy, and finally her rival...

She is helped on the way to success by Addison DeWitt, an extreme cynic who likes to play puppet-master behind the scenes, and whose authoritative newspaper reviews help Eve to fame when as understudy she has to step in for the absent Margo (kept away on purpose by Karen and Lloyd, to help the seemingly so helpless Eve). But when Eve wants to go further and further, even trying to steal Karen's playwright husband (after an earlier, unsuccessful attempt to steal Margo's fiancé, Bill), Addison steps in and makes it very clear to Eve that she is his creature.

From her side, being forty, Margo understands she is too old to continue playing starry-eyed young women who are half her age, and gracefully relinquishes such roles to Eve. The film ends with a joke: when Eve, now famous - we have seen her receive an important theater award -, returns to her hotel she finds a sweet girl in her room who admires her acting and would love to be her assistant... History repeats itself over and over again.

In real life, Bette Davis didn't need to worry about being replaced by Anne Baxter. Her Margo Manning is a real character, despite her sizable ego and sharp tongue (she can be deliciously bitchy) in love with her work. She is a professional, the real thing. Even her excesses are realistic, but she also has her softer moments when she can be quite touching. Anne Baxter only succeeds in playing a type, that of the outwardly docile, inwardly scheming ingenue. When her role changes to that of established actress, she is less convincing.

While all actors are fine, there is one more outstanding performance besides that of Bette Davis: George Sanders as the powerful critic Addison DeWitt, who is full of manipulative charm and sardonic humor. Together with Margo Channing's character, he has the best and sharpest lines. He also fulfills another useful function: at a party that Margo gives, he brings along a real beginning actress, whom he introduces humorously as "a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art:" Marilyn Monroe in one of her first small roles. Even for the brief periods she is on screen, she already attracts all eyes.

Neo-Noir Films (Movie reviews)

It was already difficult to define the noir style, so what about neo-noir?

Neo-noir - which is generally thought to start somewhere in the 1970s and continue all the way to today - of course shares the characteristics of noir crime films (the sexual motivation of the crime plus presence of a femme fatale, and the general atmosphere of doom), although the precise visual style of classical film noir is more difficult to emulate, as these newer films are in color, but the shadows are often replaced by garishness, such as neon lights and their sleazy colors.

The main difference is that where noir was a period style, in which craftsmen-like directors churned out one B-film after another (although there were of course also individualistic directors as Welles), neo noir is a conscious style selected by an authorist director. He often plays around with noir elements in a postmodern way and often pays homage to classical noir films. For example, Femme Fatale by De Palma starts with footage from Double Indemnity and then places the face of its protagonist, who is watching TV, over that of Barbara Stanwyck to identify them with each other.

Although there are also excellent neo-noirs in other genres than the crime genre - most of all science-fiction films as the very noir Blade Runner or Alien, but also historical costume dramas as From Hell - I limit my discussion to the crime film, as I did for the classical noir film.

Some of the best neo-noir crime films are:

• Basic Instinct (1992) by Paul Verhoeven and with Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas. A police detective investigating the brutal murder of a former rock star, becomes involved in a torrid and intense relationship with the beautiful and mysterious prime suspect. Sharon Stone is the perfect femme fatale, both in the mind games and in the sexual games she plays with her interrogators. There is also a strong sense of doom, for we see Michael Douglas mentally falling apart and slowly coming closer and closer to the flame of the dangerous seductress. One of the greatest films made in the 1990s, with an unbelievable low rating on IMDB. I give it (10).
• MulHolland Drive (2001) by David Lynch and with Naomi Watts and Laura Harring. A car wreck on the winding Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesic. She lifts a new name from a Gilda poster where Rita Hayworth is advertised and hides in a house where she meets a perky aspiring actress who has newly arrived in Los Angeles. Their quest for answers will take them beyond reality into the tricky world of dreams. A game with alternate realities, and, like Sunset Boulevard, about broken dreams in Hollywood. Laura Harring is a classic femme fatale, but here with a twist, for her charms work on another woman. Nightmarish, threatening atmosphere. (10)
• Femme Fatale (2002) by Brian de Palma and with Rebecca Romijn and Antonio Banderas. A woman thief takes part in a heist at the Cannes Film Festival to steal a golden snake encrusted with diamonds, an object worn by a model on her naked body. She double-crosses her partners, but is by sheer luck able to easily assume another identity and flee to the U.S. Seven years later she returns to France as the wife of the new American Ambassador, but then her past comes to haunt her. Again a film in which a dream plays an important role. De Palma is playing around with genre expectations in a most inventive way and Rebecca Romijn is the classical femme fatale who only looks after her own interests. This film is sheer fun. (9)
• Body Heat (1981) by Lawrence Kasdan and with Kathleen Turner and William Hurt. While a blistering heat wave rages in Florida, a somewhat sleazy lawyer begins an affair with the wife of a wealthy businessman that is soon blazing away even hotter than the weather. But the husband seems to stand in the way of perfect happiness so they hatch a plot to kill him. There is a nice twist at the end, showing you should never trust a femme fatale. Inspired by Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Started up the careers of both Turner and Hurt. (9)
• The Last Seduction (1994) by John Dahl and with Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg and Bill Pullman. A beautiful but amoral woman who is married to a doctor persuades him to sell medicinal cocaine to drugs dealers. Next she steals the money and goes undercover in a mid-American small town, where she meets a naive young guy who is blinded by her charms and brazen outspokenness. As her husband is still after her, she devises a diabolical plan to get rid of him and the boyfriend in one swoop and start enjoying her millions. Linda Fiorentino is a steely and deadly femme fatale, who turns the men around her into whimpering fools. Again a film which is sheer fun. (9)
• Klute (1971) by Alan J. Pakula and with Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. A square suburban cop comes to New York to find a missing man. The only clue is the connection with a cynical call girl. When the woman is uncooperative, the detective taps her phone intending to blackmail her into helping him. Then it appears that the call girl has a stalker after her, which finally brings them closer. The detective is not the only one listening to tapes. Fonda won an Oscar for her role in this tense erotic thriller and she fully deserves it. (9)
• Jackie Brown (1997) by Quentin Tarantino and with Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Forster. Again a film about a woman with nerves of steel who takes it all. A flight attendant who gets caught smuggling money for a weapons dealer makes a deal with the cops to help them arrest the wanted man. Her bail bondsman - a burnt-out man in his fifties - helps her, but gets into more than he wanted when she hatches a plot to play off the cops against the criminals and cash the money herself. Great acting by all: Pam Grier, who was mainly famous for sleazy blaxploitation films from the 1970s, Samuel Jackson as the brutal weapons dealer, Robert De Niro as a brainless hood just out of prison, Bridget Fonda as a big-mouthed chick and Robert Forster as the kind bondsman who falls in love with Jackie Brown but in the end lets her go as she is too strong for him. (9)
• Bound (1996) by Andy and Lana Wachowski, and with Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon and Joe Pantoliano. A young woman longs to escape from her mafioso boyfriend and enters into an affair with an alluring ex-con. The two women hatch a scheme to steal mafia money and put the blame on the former boyfriend. But that is easier said than done. A breezy and highly enjoyable film. (8.5)
• Blood Simple (1984) by Joel and Ethan Coen and with John Getz, Frances McDormand and Dan Hedaya. The Coen Brothers have made many fine films that deserve the designation "neo-noir." This was their first one and it has the most authentic noir style. A bar owner thinks his wife is deceiving him with one of his bar keepers and has her watched by a sleazy detective. This sets off a complicated round of violence with many funny but fatal misunderstandings. Only the strong survive.  (8.5)
• Memento (2000) by Christopher Nolan and with Guy Pierce, Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano. An ex-insurance investigator who can no longer build new memories attempts to find the murderer of his wife - the last thing he thinks he remembers. He helps his failing memory with Polaroid pictures, notes and tattoos. Ingenious storytelling with two story lines, one normally moving forward in time, the other moving backward in blocks, so that viewers are in the same position as the protagonist: they have no memories of what has happened and feel displaced. The ending is open and suggests that the memory-less avenger may be endlessly repeating himself. There is also a wry sort of humor in how he is repeatedly cheated by those around him. (8.5) 

Titanic (1997) by James Cameron

Yesterday, April 15, it was 100 years ago that the Titanic sank, killing 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers in the chilly waters of the North Atlantic - a disaster that has always figured large in the public consciousness because of its epic qualities - the largest and most luxurious ship ever built, with as passengers the creme-de-la-creme of society, goes down after hitting an iceberg on - of all things - its maiden voyage. It seems a very apt illustration of the saying "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

In the past I had seen the 1953 movie, and I remembered it as a rather depressing vehicle. That memory is probably the main reason why I never had watched the 1997 movie by David Cameron - with as additional obstacle that this new Titanic was advertised as a sort of spectacular disaster movie, a sort of blockbuster I always try to keep away from. Well, yesterday I had my private "Titanic commemoration" by watching the 1997 Titanic and must say that despite my initial misgivings I greatly enjoyed it. It is the best Titanic movie I know (also better than the British half-documentary A Night to Remember from 1958) and an excellent, flawlessly crafted movie in its own right.

I believe it is so good for the following reasons:

• There is an authentic, human story: the love affair between the penniless artist Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the 17-year old Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), who is forced by her mother (Frances Fisher) to marry a rich American - her snobbish fiancee Caledon Hockley (Billy Zane) is also on board which leads to interesting complications and even violence in the end. They are both a sort of prisoners - Jack of his financial circumstances, Rose of her family - and it is great to see them standing on the prow of the big ship looking towards the sea and sky inhaling the fresh air of freedom. 
• This human story takes the central place in the film. In contrast to the bulk of disaster films, where we have scores of characters who are all followed to their doom or redemption, here we have only Jack and Rose. This allows us to really get to know them, in other disaster films we only see a little bit of many (usually not very interesting characters) and therefore we immediately forget them.
• The story of Jack and Rose is deftly interlinked with the disaster, for example when Jack has been accused of theft by Rose's fiancee and chained to a pipe on one of the lower decks where, as the ship starts sinking, the water dangerously rises. Rose comes to the rescue!
• The special effects are wonderful: from the majestic ship itself when it sails out, to the disaster - for example the breaking of the ship in two halves where the lower part finally stands vertically in the water. At $200 million this apparently was the most expensive film ever made until 1997, but the money was well spent. Above all, the special effects are always in the service of the story, never a goal in themselves.
• And finally, there is an interesting contemporary framing story, of treasure hunters searching the wreck of the Titanic (there is some real footage of the submerged ship here) for a precious diamond which belonged to the Rose of the story - and she still is alive, now 101 years of age but still going strong (played by Gloria Stuart). She visits the treasure hunters to tell her story and that story, shown in flashback, is the major part of the film. This also proves that we are following at least one major character who survived, which makes the film much less suffocating than its predecessors.

"Little Buddha" (1993) by Bertolucci (film review)

Little Buddha, the 19th film by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, was neither a critical nor a box office success, but that doesn't say anything about the real qualities of the film, as we shall see. Like many films by this director, it was an international project, with a British producer and international cast, shot in Seattle and Bhutan. The impressive cinematography was by Vittorio Storaro and the music was written by Sakamoto Ryuichi. The title may unfortunately seem to refer to a Chinese restaurant, but that is not the case: this is the life story of the young Buddha, told to an American boy who may be the reincarnation of a Tibetan Lama master (and therefore another "little Buddha" himself).

Lama Norbu (Ying Ruocheng) travels to Seattle in search of the reincarnation of his teacher, Lama Dorje, and thinks he has found one candidate (later in northern India two more are found) in a Caucasian boy, Jesse Conrad (Alex Wiesendanger). This is not so strange as it seems as Lama Dorje had been engaged in missionary activities in North America. The parents, Lisa (Bridget Fonda) and Dean (Chris Isaak) are wary, but finally agree that Jesse and his father travel to Bhutan where Jesse - with the other two children - has to undergo a test to prove the true reincarnation.

Lama Norbu gives Jesse a storybook about the life of the Buddha and Bertolucci intercuts the story of Siddharta, who later became known as the Buddha, with the contemporary scenes. The story of Siddharta's search for enlightenment is shot in rich red-golden hues, the Seattle scenes in a cold blue. In the end, past and present are mixed as the three children find themselves actually in the scene with Buddha, watching him as he is overcomes the temptations of Mara while meditating under the Bodhi-tree. His mission fulfilled, at the end of the film Lama Norbu dies peacefully while meditating.

Central to the film are the characters of the kind Lama Norbu (very ably played by the Chinese actor Ying Ruocheng, who also shone in Bertolucci's The Last Emperor), Siddharta (played by Keanu Reeves with just the right balance) and the three children, who are all able actors. Negative reviews have harped on the weak acting of the father (Chris Isaak) or the fact that it is rather unnatural that American parents would agree to have their child engaged in this way with a foreign religious group. I believe that Bertolucci has done this on purpose, he wanted the focus of the film on the beauty of the timeless story of the Buddha and not on contemporary bickering. For the same reason, he made the parents consciously into rather vague non-entities - their presence is to a certain degree necessary, but they should not interfere with the main story. The focus is wholly on the introduction of Buddhism to a wider audience.

Bertolucci tells the Buddha's story as if to children, for aren't we all ignorant about this subject? These scenes have disparagingly been called a "Buddhist Sunday school story," but isn't that the best way to present the Buddhist "gospel"? After all, Siddharta's life was very peaceful, there is no violence here as in Jesus' Passion story, so Gibson-like sadomasochistic antics are out of the question.

Siddharta has been brought up as an Indian prince in a very secluded environment and is shocked when he realizes the unforgiving truth of impermanence: every living being must ultimately perish. After a hundred years, none of us now living will be still around. Siddharta discovers the Middle Way between a worldly life and asceticism and teaches the Four Noble Truths: that all is suffering, that this is caused by our attachment to external things, that such suffering can however be stopped, and what the path is that leads to the end of suffering. The suffering of all living things also leads Siddharta to the development of a great compassion, and the wish to help others, for basically all life is one.

By the way, the film introduces Tibetan Buddhism which differs from other types of Buddhism by putting reincarnation central -as seen in the film through the search for a reincarnated master. But in fact, the Buddha never talked about reincarnation (which is a sort of pan-Indian / Tibetan folk belief rather than part of the Buddhist teachings) and most Buddhists today (as in Japan) also do not believe in reincarnation.

That is my only point of criticism about what is a very beautiful and warm film, a film that takes us right into the heart of the world's greatest religion by illustrating the impermanence of all life and stressing the value of compassion.

The Third Man film and book

The Third Man is a truly classical film made in 1949 by Carol Reed and based on a script by Graham Greene. As Greene felt film scenarios are too dry, he first wrote a novella for the film, which was later published as a book (together with the short story for The Fallen Idol). The novella is the film's embryo, so to speak, and several changes were made, in the names of the characters, but also more important ones. The novella is enjoyable, but the film is the greater artistic work, so I will limit my discussion to the film.

As is often the case with Graham Greene, the story is one of deceit and double-dealing - a method Greene uses to bring out the moral ambiguities in which our contemporary world is steeped.

Pulp novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) has been invited by his old school friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) to come to postwar Vienna (a bombed out city still occupied by the U.S., the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France, and split in four sectors), but he just manages to be in time for his friend's burial. He starts investigating the death of Harry Lime and discovers that there are various mysteries, such as the appearance of a strange "third man" at the site where Harry was run over by a truck. He talks to Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), the investigating officer and a powerful man who considers him as a nuisance. Calloway finally fills him in on Harry's criminal activities: selling diluted penicillin on the black market, which led to the deaths of many patients, including children.

Holly also meets with Harry's friends and acquaintances, such as Anna (Alifa Valli) who was Harry's lover. Holly himself falls in love with Anna, but she is still so full of Harry that he simply doesn't exist for her. She sees him as a rather weak and laughable figure (he manages to get bitten by a parrot, of all things). And then in nightly Vienna, Anna's cat leads Holly to a startling discovery... Harry Lime is alive, standing in a doorway, bathed in shadow.

The film was shot on location in Vienna and the city is in fact the real protagonist. Reed spent two months filming in Vienna, only a few extra scenes were shot in the studios in England. Reed's Vienna is a dark and lonely place, very different from the waltzing city of Strauss. Reed had the streets hosed down with water, so that the cobble stones would glitter on the screen. He also flew in four huge searchlights, which helped him cast enormous shadows on the walls of the nightly city. Unforgettable is also the finale in the extensive underground sewer system, or the central scene where Holly and Harry meet each other in the big Ferris wheel on the Prater. This stood in the Russian sector and had just been put back in operation.

This fairground scene also contains the moral of the film: in the war, millions of innocent people were killed by governments, as so many flies. What is he doing wrong when for money he kills a few of those "dots" himself, Harry says? Isn't this the way of the world, that the strong squash the weak? In other words, Lime serves as the embodiment of the banality of evil and forms a symbol for the moral breakdown after the Second World War.

To reinforce this story, Reed used expressionistic techniques as chiaroscuro lightning and canted camera angles - almost like Welles had done in Citizen Kane (giving birth to the legend that Welles had been involved in the direction of the film, which was not the case - he only barely showed up for the few scenes in which he figures). Reed also discovered the zither player Anton Karas and had him do all the music for the film. The film's signature tune catapulted Karas to fame and led to one of the first musical "hits" of the postwar period.

The Third Man became Reed's best film by far, and one of the best films ever made, the result of perfect team work of the director with author Graham Greene, cinematographer Robert Krasker, producer Alexander Korda, screen icon Orson Welles, and many others.

The novella The Third Man is available from Penguin Books; the film is available in the Criterion Collection. 

"The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" - book and film

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is a bestselling novel written in 1963 by John Le Carré (real name David Cornwell, *1931). It tells the tale of a burned-out spy in the years that the cold war was very real in Western Europe and many people feared it would turn hot. Soviets troops were massed at the East-German border, only a 7 or 8 hour drive from Amsterdam, Brussels or Paris. In 1961, the Berlin Wall was built. The action of the novel takes place before the advent of the swinging sixties, in a period that was a sort of extension of the dour fifties and that I can only see in monochrome. People wore thick, dark overcoats. They lived in tiny apartments with few belongings. Modern amenities were still out of the reach of ordinary people.

The "hero" of Le Carré's espionage novel is Alec Leamas, a disillusioned middle-aged man working for the British Secret Intelligence Service. Disgraced because of the poor performance of his Berlin Station, and afraid of being filed away in an administrative retirement job, he accepts a last dangerous mission: he has to pretend to defect to East Germany and with a false story topple the head of the East German Intelligence Service. Leamas' world consists of lies, but unfortunately for him, there are always bigger liars: his bosses in the Service cynically use him as a pawn in a larger game, which costs the life of the only person in the world he cares about.

The early sixties with their East-West dichotomy seem a very straightforward place, as in those other spy fictions, the two-dimensional James Bond fantasies by Ian Fleming. But in fact, the chillingly realistic world of John Le Carré is very different from those vulgar spy fictions. Above all, it is startlingly contemporary in its ambiguities: to Le Carré, morally there is no major difference between "us" and "them" as both East and West in the name of national security practice the same expedient amorality. In other words, our own governments are just as cynical and devoid of ethics as those of our opponents, with at most a difference in degree.

Le Carré paints a devastating picture of human frailty and duplicity, his message is unremittingly dark and nihilistic. This, together with the skill with which the book is written and composed, lifts The Spy out of genre fiction to the level of serious literature.

The film (by director Martin Ritt) has been properly shot in black-and-white to do justice to my monochrome memories. It is a vehicle for Richard Burton, who acts forcefully with just the right amount of world-weariness and disillusionment - a great characterization. The film follows the plot of the book without any major deviations. Again, a valuable counterweight to the James Bond fairy tales with their silly action sequences which were just then starting to attract film goers. It may be difficult to stomach, but The Spy shows how the world really was... and is.

The Thin Man - book and film

The Thin Man is both a novel and a film and the one is as enjoyable as the other.

The novel was written by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) - it was the last of five thrillers he wrote, in 1934, and stands apart from the rest for not being hard-boiled but rather a drawing room comedy with dead bodies. The main characters are Nick Charles, a former detective who is seldom without a drink in his hand, and his clever young wife, Nora, a wealthy socialite. Nick has stopped working to take care of his wife's fortune and spends most of his time getting cheerfully drunk. The novel is set in the period the U.S. suffered under the Prohibition (1919-1933), but that doesn't seem to be a problem for Nick, for there is always enough alcohol, for example in swanky speakeasies.

Unless you like puzzles (which I don't) the plot is of little consequence - interesting are the witty dialogues between Nick and Nora and the bantering detective duo that is "playfully in love" eventually became a media archetype. The two characters are thought to have been based on Hammett and his longtime girlfriend Lillian Hellman. A reluctant Nick is dragged into solving a sensational murder involving the weird Wynant family and various gangsters, all the time cheered on by the thrill-loving Nora.

The fun of the book is even heighthened in the film made in 1934 by W.S. van Dyke, for there is real chemistry between Nick and Nora as played by William Powell (of My Man Godfrey fame) and Myrna Loy. They often seem to be improvising just for the fun of it.

Not surprisingly, the film became a wild success and was followed by five sequels, between 1936 and 1947, all in the same vein, although no longer based on a story by Dashiell Hammett. Powell and Loy played their screen marriage so naturally that people mistakenly thought they were a couple in real life as well. They revolutionized the portrayal of marriage in films, doing away with its virtuous and staid image and making marriage sexy. Of course, they have a dog (Asta) rather than kids, a dog which actually plays an integral - and humorous - part in solving the various mysteries.

P.S. the five sequels of the film are: After the Thin Man (1936), Another Thin Man (1939), Shadow of the Thin Man (1941), The Thin Man Goes Home (1945) and Song of the Thin Man (1947). They are all hugely enjoyable, but After the Thin Man is probably the best. 

"The Fallen Idol" (1948) by Carol Reed

The Fallen Idol (1948) is a film by British director Carol Reed, based on the short story "The Basement Room" (1935) by Graham Greene. As was the case with the other films they made, The Third Man (1949) and Our Man in Havana (1959), the author worked closely together with the director on the script. 

The iconic image of the film comes somewhere at the beginning and is repeated several times after that: a boy staring down from an upstairs landing, peering through the railings at the doings of the grown-ups in the hall, almost as a spy or double agent. Both worlds are connected by a huge staircase - perhaps the main actor in this film which is almost a film noir, thanks to the cinematography of Georges Périnal and Vincent Korda’s set designs. The interior of the Belgrave mansion takes on the same mythical proportions as the streets of Vienna in The Third Man.

The film is mostly seen through the naive eyes of the boy on the landing, who is further set apart for not being an actor and playing his role very awkwardly. But that fits the intention of the film marvelously, for in the story the grown-ups are all the time "acting" and scheming, while the young Phillippe indeed can't "act."

Phillipe (Bobby Henrey) is the son of a diplomat, neglected by his parents, who idolizes his father's butler, Baines (Ralph Richardson), the only human being he feels close to. In order to entertain the boy, Baines tells strong stories about his non-existing exploits in exotic Africa, such as single-handed putting down an uprising, or killing a man in self-defense. The sad reality is that the butler has never been out of England and is stuck in a loveless marriage with a veritable harpy. Mrs Baines (Sonia Dresdel) also works in the Embassy, where she rules with an iron fist as the top maid. She is a sour killjoy, even destroying a small snake the boy secretly keeps, and Phillippe and Baines are naturally bonding against her.

Phillippe catches Baines in a teashop with a young woman and Baines asks him to keep quiet about his "niece" - in fact she is Julie (Michele Morgan), a typist at the embassy with whom he is in love.

And then death invades - Mrs Baines has fallen down the massive staircase after a fierce argument about Julie with her husband. Police officers come to investigate. Phillippe naturally believes his "idol" Mr Baines has done the deed of killing the harridan, and desperately tries to protect him. But his lies are so awkward that they only serve to betray Baines and lead him into deeper trouble. Baines' tall stories also come to haunt him.

Next the police discover evidence that the fall was accidental and Baines is off the hook, but he has had to admit that his stories about Africa were all lies. He has lost his heroic status and so from his side also betrayed Phillippe. The boy, who has been ordered to tell the truth, now pathetically insists to the police that their new evidence is wrong (as he honestly but wrongly believes), but nobody listens to him anymore...

This is a subtle movie that rewards leisurely viewing.

"Our Man in Havana" by Graham Greene

Our Man in Havana (1958) is a perfect entertainment, a fine dark comedy with a serious undertone. The novel is a spoof on the murky world of spies and political paranoia, showing how silly the world of secret information is. For after all, when something is top secret, who can check whether it is true?

The British Secret Service in the person of the suave Mr Hawthorne are setting up a new network in the Caribbean and recruit meek expatriate Mr Wormold who lives in Havana, Cuba, and is the owner of a vacuum cleaner shop. The year is 1958, the tail end of the repressive Batista regime. Wormold has a 17-year old adolescent daughter with expensive tastes and needs the extra income, for his daughter is all he has in the world and he cannot deny her anything. But as he has no idea at all how to go about the spy business, he follows the advice of his German friend Dr Hasselbacher and manufactures the reports from his rich fantasy. He also sets up a fictional network of sub-agents, pocketing the money himself.

When he sends in some fanciful drawings of what seem to be rockets - in reality he has drawn the inside of a vacuum cleaner - his work is so much appreciated in a London in the throes of Cold War paranoia, that they reinforce his operations with a secretary (Beatrice Severn) and a radio man  (interestingly, Greene presaged the Cuban missile crisis, although Mr Wormold was making it all up!).

Now Wormold has to cheat with his bogus spy activities on two persons eager to get a piece of the action who are all the time sitting on his lip. Another problem is that daughter Milly is getting too close for comfort to Captain Segura, a representative of the dictatorial regime who boasts of his torturing capabilities and carries a cigarette case made out of human skin.

On top of that, Wormold has made one fatal mistake: instead of wholly relying on fantasy, he has used the names of real people (members of the club of expatriates) for his agent network. The shit hits the fan when these people start being killed - for real. Someone has been decoding Wormold's reports, but it remains unclear whether that is the Cuban government or a group of agents from another nation. Beatrice forces Wormold to visit the other "members" of his sub-agent network and warn them - but how do you warn somebody whose name you have borrowed but whose spy activities only exist in your head?

Gradually things slide hopelessly out of control and panic rises along with the body count, especially when Wormold hears that he himself will be poisoned at the Trade Association Luncheon where he has been invited as a speaker. As a result he is very careful with the food - handing the plate meant for him to a neighbor who also hands it on so that eventually it poisons a dog in the kitchen - but the one who gets killed is his friend Dr Hasselbacher, from revenge as he had warned Wormold.

Despite the seriousness of an event like this, the story remains a farce until the end when Wormold plays a game of checkers with Captain Segura to obtain a list of all secret agents in Havana - he has been taking the money from MI6 for the lies he manufactured but now wants to offer something "real" in return. They play with the mini-bottles of whiskey and bourbon Wormold collects and when a piece is taken, the winner has to drink it. Segura is the better player and therefore he gets so drunk that Wormold not only can steal the list, but also his pistol - to take revenge with on the murderer of his friend Dr Hasselbacher.

Repatriated to London with daughter and secretary, the fictionality of Wormold's reports is no longer a secret within MI6. But if they would punish him for it, their own jobs would be at stake - for who was so stupid to hire this guy and believe everything he reported? So Wormold gets a nice retirement position as lecturer and marries Beatrice. The final joke is on the public that assumes the government men in their grey suits render selfless service for the common weal - while they are only protecting their jobs.

The novel is perfect in its tight construction and remains seriously funny till the end. Graham himself briefly worked for MI6 in the war years and obviously writes from experience where the shifting sands of the truth in secret service work are concerned.

Our Man in Havana was filmed, in 1959, by Carol Reed, who had already given us another Graham Greene classic, The Third Man. There is a strong cast with Alec Guinness as Wormold and several scenes were filmed in Havana for that extra bit of realism. Perhaps because Graham Greene worked together with Reed on the script, the film is very faithful to the novel.

"You, The Living" (2007) by Roy Andersson

You, the Living (2007; Du Levande) is a Swedish movie by director Roy Andersson infused with dark, dark humor. It is a melancholic mosaic containing about 50 vignettes of life among ordinary people who suffer from the small iniquities of life. They are not so nice themselves, either, being exactly like our contemporaries in their selfishness, narcissism and lack of empathy with others.

The film is shot in washed-out pastel colors and drab interiors. The camera is static and we get only medium and long shots. I was reminded of the films of Tati, also by the quiet flow of the film. Some of the scenes are recurring, such as a brass band rehearsing and finally playing, and a drab bar where each time there is a call for last orders as it is going to close. The vignettes are linked together: a man goes to a barber for a quick trim as he has an important business meeting. He quarrels with the depressed barber who sadistically shaves a "punk" line down the middle of his head and then runs away. Later, the man appears in a meeting with other businessmen, now completely hairless. During the meeting, the chairman has a heart attack and dies. Next we have a funeral ceremony where a woman sings - and in another scene she sings the same song in her bubble bath at home.

Some other visions of despondence are:

An alcoholic biker woman sits on a park bench scolding her fat and meek buddy. She screams she will never see him again until she finds out he is cooking veal roast for dinner.

A naked Brunhilde wearing a Viking helmet sits riding on a fat man in a bed-scene (in fact, this is the sousaphone player from the brass band). The man's mind is far away, however, for he only keeps complaining that the bank has lost 34 percent of his retirement fund.

A carpet salesman manages to convince a customer to opt for a red instead of a green carpet (he has no green), but then he still loses the sale because a colleague has sold the end off that carpet so that it is too short now.

A psychiatrist comes to work in the morning and complains to the camera that he has spent 27 years of his life trying to help mean and selfish people be happy. He asks what the point is.

A man tries to do the trick of pulling a tablecloth from under the dishes on a long table and ends up breaking the 200-year old tableware. A surreal process with beer slugging judges follows and he is condemned by the audience to die on the electric chair. When he is being led to the chair, looking sad and despondent, he is advised to "think of something else." This all is a dream, told by a man stuck in a traffic jam.

The film starts with a man waking up and telling us he had a nasty dream about a flight of bombers approaching. The last shot of the film is of several planes hovering above a city with a glistening river - it looked beautiful, until I realized with a shock these  planes were the bombers from the dream at the beginning of the film...

As characters in the movie often say: "Tomorrow is another day" - yes, another day with loads of shit. Andersson's is a typical kind of negative humor that could only have been born under those dark, leaden Northern European skies.

"Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" (2008) by Bharat Nalluri

There are times that a full-bodied red wine is most suitable, but also moments that bubbles are best. In other words, sometimes it is good to enjoy a frothy, sparkling romantic comedy like Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, filmed in beautiful period style and magical colors by Bharat Nalluri. This film is in the first place an "actors film," it is the ensemble of Frances McDormand as the solid Miss Pettigrew and Amy Adams as her flamboyant and charming employer Delysia Lafosse - a quick-silvery personality who is subject to ever changing moods and whims - that carries the whole film. Amy Adams reminded me of Jean Arthur or Jean Harlow. Period detail is just as perfect as the casting in this film, including the satin gowns and the fabulous antique cars.

Miss Guinevere Pettigrew is a middle-aged, straight-laced governess, who keeps getting fired as she can't get along with her employers (she has a wonderful way of arching her eyebrows to put people off) - something rather serious in depression time 1939 London. The employment office refuses to help her any longer, but she overhears a name and address meant for a colleague and quickly heads there.

As soon as she arrives it is mayhem, for American singer/actress Delysia Lafosse storms around in her pink negligee, trying to balance relations with three different men: the noble Michael (Lee Pace), a penniless pianist; the tough Nick (Mark Strong), who owns the nightclub where Delysia performs and who also pays for her flat and upkeep; and pretty-boy Phil (Tom Payne), a young impresario from whom she seeks a leading role in a new play. With a sturdy hand, Miss Pettigrew shores up the fluttering Amy, sorting out her affairs, and actually enjoying herself like never before as partner in deception. She even has to pretend to smoke cigars to put Nick off the scent when he detects a stub in an ashtray. In recompense she now enters high society herself - getting a very necessary make-over in the process. One running joke in the film is that Miss Pettigrew never manages to eat - people bump into her so that she drops her plate, etc. - so when cucumber slices are applied to the skin of her face, she quickly consumes them.

At a fashion show she meets lingerie designer Joe Blomfield (Ciarán Hinds), who is involved in an on/off relationship with squeaky-voiced socialite Edythe Dubary (Shirley Henderson). Edythe asks Miss Pettigrew's help to sort things out for her as well, but it seems Miss Pettigrew and Mr. Blomfield feel some magic of their own...

The whole story takes place in just 24 hours and both leading women of course don't fail to achieve their romantic destines, albeit after a lot of giddy screwball-type confusion. They also draw close to each other, making Miss Pettigrew into a sort of female "buddy" movie. But the film also has its quiet moments - Europe is after all gearing up for the second destructive war in a quarter of a century - and as a whole it is delicate and gentle-spirited rather than a shouting match.

Great fun, long live the bubbles!

Zabriskie Point (1970) by Antonioni

Zabriskie Point, made by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1970 when he received a large budget and a lot of freedom to do as he wanted from one of the major Hollywood studios, is named after the eroded badlands in Death Valley, an old lake bottom and the lowest point in the U.S. (Zabriskie Point in its turn received its Polish sounding name from the manager of the borax company that mined the area in the early 20th c.)

The strangely eroded badlands and barren mountains of Death valley look great in Antonioni's film and that is saying it all: it has been superbly filmed, with striking color combinations, great "on location" landscapes and sweeping choreographic movements. It is pure eye candy, not to speak about the explosion at the end which is the most beautiful filming ever of such an event, with a blooming fire and a scattering of interior things into the stark blue sky.

For the rest, the film is an indictment of American consumption society, from the viewpoint of the student demonstrations taking place in 1968 all over the developed world. The film is full of colorful billboards advertising products nobody needs. There is a lot of jargon talk among the students, Marx was still seen as a viable road in those long ago days. One student, Mark (Mark Frechette), decides action is needed and buys a weapon. When the police break into the university campus where the students are squatting down, an officer is shot. It may have been a bullet from Mark's gun.

He steals a small plane and flees, flying into the desert. There his path crosses that of Daria (Daria Halprin), a young woman working for a real estate company and on her way to the desert home of her boss Lee (who may be her lover) for a conference about a new housing development. She drives a wonderful 1952 Buick. He teases her by flying low over her car, then lands. They travel on in Daria's car because Mark has to buy gasoline for the plane. When they reach Zabriskie Point, they get out excitedly for some sightseeing. Finally they make love in the desert, almost merging into the sand - you have trouble discerning whether a certain round shape is Daria's hip or a desert hill. And their love bears fruit for all of a sudden the whole desert is filled with embracing couples, an orgy of strange flowers.

Mark decides to return the stolen plane. When he lands, the police shoot him dead as a cop killer. Daria hears the news on her car radio and is shattered. In the meantime, she has reached the futuristic place in the desert where her boss lives and stands at a distance. That resort is also part of consumption society, sullying the clean desert. With disgust, Daria "wills" an explosion (I have no better word, but this can't be anything else than a fantasy in her head) and there the fire blossoms into the sky...

Antonioni films the same blast repeatedly in close-ups. We see refrigerators spilling their contents, clothes flying from closets and books fluttering in the breeze, this all against the background of a deep blue sky. Never has an explosion been filmed in such detail, as if it were a ballet, accompanied by music from Pink Floyd. Antonioni has created the most beautiful, extended explosion ever (and that says something as there are lots of blasts in Hollywood pictures). This finale alone is worth seeing the film...

This is an art film. It is beautiful, but don't look for a story. Also don't look for any acting capabilities in the Adam and Eve of the story - Antonioni had enough budget to get big stars, but he must have wanted unknowns with innocent faces as his protagonists. As director he keeps the reigns tight enough to make it work. It is the lights and shapes that count, and the shifting desert sands...

Classic Film: "La Strada" (1954) by Fellini

La Strada ("The Road;" 1954) was the film that established Federico Fellini as a top-notch Italian director. It is the heartbreaking story of a half-witted young woman, Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina, the director's wife), who is sold by her poverty-stricken mother for 10,000 lire and a few kilos of food. The buyer is Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a cruel traveling showman who drives his ramshackle caravan pulled by a motorcycle around Italy and performs in village squares and open spaces near towns. His act is as brutish as the man: by expanding his lungs, he breaks a chain that has been fastened around his chest. He lives from what the small crowd is willing to give for this dumb spectacle.

The carnival strongman decides to use Gelsomina as his assistant. He teaches her a drum roll and trumpet tune to announce his act, made up like a clown. Although he introduces her to others as his wife, in fact she is no more than his slave. The innocent and childlike woman does everything he asks, without resistance, but even the smallest mistake makes him violent and abusive. He lashes her with a tree branch, abandons her when he feels like it and forces her to steal from a convent where they spend the night during a storm. Yet, she never complains - she truly is  a pure and naive character without any malice.

They eventually join a small traveling circus where they meet Il Matto, "The Fool" (Richard Basehart), a high-wire artist whose tenderness towards Gelsomina enrages Zampano - especially when he is taunted for his jealousy. A fist fight between the two men leaves Zampano for a while in jail. Although Il Matto gives up Gelsomina, Zampano can't control his rage. In the end, tragedy arrives when Zampano attacks Il Matto on a lonely road and kills him.

This causes everything to fall apart. Gelsomina goes mad. As she is no use to him anymore, and only serves to remind him of his foul deed, Zampano simply abandons her on the road, in a cold and deserted landscape. In an apotheosis, we see how a few years later he comes across a young woman who is humming the song that Gelsomina used to sing. Gelsomina herself has died. Plagued by his conscience, Zampano finally breaks down in defeat. As Roger Ebert says: His tragedy was that he loved Gelsomina but never realized it.

The film is in fact a type of road movie that shows the byways and backwaters of Italy where we are taken by Zapano's small truck, from the lonely seashore to the snowy mountains. This is accompanied by a haunting musical score by Nino Rota which lifts the film out of its sordid surroundings.

The acting is excellent all around - Giulietta Masina is perfect - not to say uncanny - as Gelsomina. It is also the best role Anthony Quinn ever played.

The film won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival of 1954 as well as the Academy Award 1956 for Best Foreign Language Film.

The 400 Blows (Truffaut)

French New Wave director François Truffaut (1932-1984) has often sought his inspiration in his own autobiography, like literary authors do. His first feature-length film, The 400 Blows, released in 1959, was based on his own troubled childhood and adolescence.

In the 1950s, Truffaut had already established himself as a vitriolic critic for the magazine Les Cahiers du cinéma and with the young colleagues at that magazine (Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer) he would play a pivotal role in the French New Wave. Truffaut and his collaborators advocated that the director of a film should stand artistically speaking over and above any other person involved in the production - like the author of a novel. It was not a movement with a structured ideology, and in the 60s differences between the various proponents widened - for example between the politically engaged movies of Godard and Truffaut's autobiographical "comedies of manners." But there were also similarities, such as the lack of plot and use of non-professional actors and natural dialogues, not to speak of the low-budget productions.

Truffaut's most representative series of autobiographical films is the so-called Antoine Doinel series, that consists of four feature-length films and one short, and was made between 1959 and 1979. I will here discuss the first film The 400 Blows (made when there was no idea yet about a series).

First the title, because "400 blows" calls up a rather violent image, as of a British boarding school. Nothing could be farther from the truth, it is a wrong translation of the French title which is an idiom. "Faire les quatre cent coups," means "to live without respect for morals or conventions," "to lead a disorderly life." This refers ironically to the hero of the film, Antoine - it is how society wrongly sees him - , and a better title would have been something like "The Wild One," or "Wild Oats."

Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is a 13-year-old boy who lives with his parents in a small apartment in Paris. It is so small they are always in each other's way. His tight-sweater wearing mother (Claire Maurier) neglects him as she is too busy with her lover, his uncultured step-father (Albert Rémy) misunderstands the sensitive and artistic boy. Because his creativity is not acknowledged, Antoine starts to rebel against authority and gets into trouble at school, where the teachers are insensitive bores just droning up their lessons. Finally, Antoine runs away from home and goes into hiding at the place of his best friend, René.

The boys need money and steal a typewriter from the office where Antoine’s father works. But they can't sell the heavy machine (it is too obviously stolen and has a serial number) and not knowing what to do with this heap of iron, Antoine tries to smuggle it back into the office. There he is caught by the night watchman. The police is called, and the parents, anyway not very much interested in educating the boy, place him in an institution for delinquent teenagers. At the end of the film, Antoine manages to escape during a game of soccer, and runs and runs, until he comes near the sea, which he sees for the first time in his life, and which gives him a feeling of liberation.

Despite its serious theme, The 400 Blows is full of humor. The film was made on location in Paris, and fun is the shot where the class following the physical education teacher on a jog through the city gradually diminishes as more and more pupils peel off. Also the last long shot is fantastic: Truffaut's camera follows Antoine for several minutes without any cuts when he runs away, until he reaches the beach, does a few steps in the water and then comes running towards the camera. Only then follows a cut, after a zoom-in to freeze-frame of the boy, and this is the end of the film. This shot is famous for its ambiguity.

This charming film proved popular with both critics and the public at large. It won Truffaut Best Director Award at Cannes in 1959 and brought in enough money for Truffaut's own production company, Carosse d'Or (named after a Renoir film) to continue making films and even invest in films by other New Wave directors. It is dedicated to the man who became his spiritual father, André Bazin, who died just as the film was about to be shot. It was highly praised by filmmakers as Kurosawa, Buñuel, Satyajit Ray, Cocteau and Dreyer.

By the way, in 1962 Truffaut briefly continued the story about Antoine Doinel in Antoine and Colette, a short film that was part of a collection of four pieces by different directors called Love at Twenty. Antoine Doinel (again (Jean-Pierre Léaud, who acts as Truffaut's cinematic alter ego in the whole series) works in a factory which makes records. He has lost his wildness and loves music and books. At a classical concert, he sees a nice girl, Colette (Marie-France Pisier), and falls in love with her. But Colette sees him more as a "brother" with whom she can exchange books and records. Antoine in fact gets closer to her parents - surrogate for the real parents he never meets anymore after what happened in The 400 Blows - than to her and at the bittersweet end of the film she goes out with a real boyfriend while Antoine watches TV with her parents.

Feature length films about Antoine Doinel are: Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970) and Love on the Run (1979). 

Caught by Max Ophuls

Caught (1949) is one of the two noir films Max Ophuls made in the U.S. and it is a concise, tense and mean little film, a criticism of  capitalism run wild.

 

Leonora (Barbara Bel Geddes in her best performance), a poor model, dreams of romance, pouring over fashion magazines with mink coats and waiting for her Prince Charming. She even gets a feminine social education at charm school ("college and finishing school combined").

Then she happens to meet cynical control-freak millionaire Smith Ohlrig (Robert Ryan) - based on Howard Hughes, it is rumored - who marries her as a kind of joke, just to spite his psychoanalyst and to show her he controls her destiny. As a result, Leonora finds herself another piece of opulence stuffed in Ryan's Long Island mansion. On top of that, her husband has a psychotic streak and his manservant, Curt (Franzi Kartos) is almost menacing in his obsequiousness to his master.

To get away, Leonora trades richess for New York's East Side and lands a grind-house job as receptionist for struggling slum pediatrician Larry Quinada (James Mason). Although briefly returning to Ryan by his promises of change, Leonora is determined to stay in charge of her own destiny. During a dance in a chock-full cafe where they keep stepping on each other's toes, Larry proposes to her. But she is pregnant with Ohlrig's child and once more returns to her husband who proves more abusive than ever.

He wants his “possession” back, even calling her his "employee." Extreme capitalism cheapens human feelings. The very rich think their money buys everything, but although it goes far, Ophuls shows there is a limit to what money can do. Even pimp lackey Curt walks out in disgust. Leonora is saved from her Long Island prison by Larry, as she has a miscarriage brought on by Ohlig's violence. In the back of the ambulance they reaffirm their love.

The film's title "Caught" not only refers to the marriage trap Leonora walked into, but more broadly to the wrong ideas that entrapped her: the materialistic view that money would be the root of all happiness. Unfortunately, as the world is, too many people are "caught..."

Letter from an Unknown Woman by Max Ophuls

Max Ophuls was the director of romantic regret. His flowing, generous style of filming is like a Viennese waltz. His whole life on the move because of persecution (he was Jewish), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) was the second (and only major) film made by this German born, French citizen in Hollywood. The film already exudes the grace, beauty and sensitivity characteristic of the masterworks he would make in the 1950s in Europe.

The story is set in a nostalgic Vienna around 1900, and is loosely based on a story by Stefan Zweig. At night, a hurried man arrives at his apartment, telling his manservant that he will depart before the morning. This is Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan), a failed concert pianist, planning to leave Vienna to avoid a duel. His servant hands him a letter, from one of the many women in his life - dissipation was the main reason for his stranded career -, a woman he cannot remember and who is therefore the "unknown woman."

Brand sits down to read the letter and in a long flashback we see the love Lisa Berndle (Joan Fontaine) felt for him: "By the time you read this letter, I may be dead…. If this reaches you, you will know how I became yours when you didn’t know who I was or even that I existed." In other words, Lisa dies, because her existence has been unacknowledged. The film is her posthumous plea for recognition.

There are three major episodes: as a girl, she was Brand's  neighbor and dreamed secretly about the famous piano lion; as a young woman, she has a short affair with him and secretly bears his child; as a mature, married woman of high status she finally meets him again and abandons her husband Johann (Marcel Journet) for her youthful memories - only to discover that her philandering hero doesn't remember at all who she is. He has been completely blind to her lifelong love. She has written the letter in the hospital where she is dying of typhus. Brand spends the night reading her letter, instead of fleeing to save his life and in the morning, her husband who as a military man is an excellent marksman, arrives to get satisfaction in a duel.

This film is more straightforwardly melodramatic than Ophuls' later French films, and misses the irony of those works. That may have been due to the climate in the U.S. with its infamous Hays Code - the cynical La Ronde could never have been filmed in Hollywood. After this, Ophuls only made two minor noir films in Hollywood (Caught and The Reckless Moment) before returning to Europe.

That being said, even in Letter from an Unknown Woman Ophuls keeps enough distance from his characters to make a more critical reading of their actions possible, and laugh at the sardonic joke of Lisa taking revenge on Brand from the grave, as it were, for it is her long letter that keeps him from running away from a duel where he will surely be killed!

As Lisa herself says in the film: "The course of our lives can be changed by such little things. So many passing by, each intent on his own problems. So many faces that one might easily have been lost. I know now that nothing happens by chance. Every moment is measured; every step is counted."

Witness for the Prosecution (1957) by Wilder

In Witness for the Prosecution (1957) a man, Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power), a former RAF sergeant and now inventor of kitchen appliances down on his luck, is accused of murder. There is only circumstantial evidence and that all points in his direction (DNA tests were not possible yet in 1957, otherwise this case would have soon be settled). Vole is accused of murdering Miss French, a rich, older woman who had become fond of him, even making him the beneficiary of her will. So he needs a good lawyer to get him off the hook: he does an appeal on master barrister Sir Wilfred Robarts (Charles Laughton).

The massively obese Robarts takes on the case although he has just left hospital after recovering from a heart attack and is engaged in various battles with his bossy private nurse Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester), for the desire for cigars, cognac and the adrenaline offered by a criminal case prove stronger than prudence. I like that mountain of a man - he is massively human. In real life, Laughton and Lanchester were married, which gives her mothering and his grumpiness some marital reality.

Another intriguing element that pulls Robarts into the case is Vole's German wife Christine (Marlene Dietrich), a very cold and self-possessed woman who has a nice surprise up her sleeve - when the case is heared, she appears for the prosecution and busts the alibi she had originally provided for Vole! True to her character in previous movies, she is a former cabaret dancer picked up by Vole in a bombed out German city.

Well, Sir Robarts has something to put his teeth into! I won't go into details for this is really a film where the plot and its final twists (and surprise ending) are important. But I would like to draw your attention to the atmosphere and the characters, which are well drawn and superbly acted. Marlene Dietrich gives one of the best performances of her career, even entertaining us with a cockney accent. Charles Laughton is, well, himself. He anchors the whole movie, childlike in his transgressions (substituting brandy for cocoa in his thermos bottle), garrulous, mischievous but also utterly charming. The dialogues, too, are smart and witty, as is to be expected of Billy Wilder. The courtroom dueling is fun, as is the beautiful recreation of the Old Bailey. The original story, by the way, is a play by Agatha Christie.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940) by Lubitsch

The Shop Around the Corner (1940) rests on a wonderful premise, that has been borrowed by several other films and musicals (such as the inferior You've Got Mail): a man and a woman have come in contact via a newspaper ad and are exchanging letters which turn increasingly amorous, without having met yet; but when in real life they become co-workers, they are always quibbling and quarreling. Their personalities as letter writers seem totally different from their real life egos.

The story, written by Hungarian playwright Miklos Laszlo, is set in interwar Budapest, and stresses the insecurity of people's lives because of the 1930s crisis - today, we can feel again their fear of unemployment. Almost the whole film takes place in and around the upscale leather goods shop of Matuschek and Co. Here work eight people among whom the most important are: the owner, Mr Matuschek (Frank Morgan); chief salesman Alfred Kralik (James Stewart); Pirovitch (Felix Bressart), a family man, who keeps as much as possible in the background but who is also the moral centre; Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut), an aging dandy (the original of Mr. Humphreys in Are You Being Served, a TV series that also borrowed from this film); an errand boy, Pepi (William Tracey); and the newest member, Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan), who when the film starts comes in begging for a job. She is Alfred Kralik's romantic pen pal.

This one of Ernst Lubitsch' best films (much better than Ninotchka), a combination of his famous wry humor and delicate sentiment. Himself from Germany and living since the 1920s in Hollywood, Lubitsch looks with nostalgia and idealism at the "Old Europe." The story is also very well written, with many important events (and even a whole person, the redoubtable Mrs Matuschek, whose infidelity is a major plot element) entirely kept off-screen.

The acting is faultless, and there is real chemistry between the two protagonists, Stewart and Sullavan. Yes, they get each other, but only after a bumpy ride during which Kralik is temporarily fired due to a festering disagreement about musical cigarette boxes, Matuschek has a detective spy on his wife and after receiving proof of her infidelity ("she doesn't want to grow old with me") tries to commit suicide, and Kralik and Novak continue verbally pestering each other. She tells him at one point: "I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr Kralik, because I know exactly what I'd find: instead of a heart, a handbag; instead of a soul, a suitcase; and instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter that doesn't work." They even set up a date as letter writers, but when she sees him, Novak never believes Kralik can be her romantic pen pal.

Classic Film: "And the Ship Sails On" (1983) by Fellini

Opera is the most unnatural and unrealistic of all art forms. It is also an art form from the past, and although operas are still being composed, its heyday has clearly gone by. How can you sing instead of talk, how can you sing your thoughts? How can a dying person - many opera's end in the decease of the hero or heroine - find the strength so sing?  Where - if this were a real world - does the music come from? When I burst out in sudden song in my bath, there is usually no orchestra available to accompany me. And I don't even want to talk about the hideous cardboard gods of Wagner, or the terrible acting...

Still, without being an outright fan, there are many opera's I love, for example those by Puccini and Mozart. In any case, I am enough of an opera lover to be able to enjoy Fellini's And the Ship Sails On (1983, Et la nave va) - I stress this, because I don't think opera haters will like the film. It is after all a film about opera, with opera, and using opera as a symbol for our society.

And the Ship Sails On is about a group of opera singers, their patrons and aristocratic admirers, and other hangers on such as a documentary journalist with film camera (played by Freddie Jones), who are making a trip in a luxury liner from Italy to Erimo island in order to scatter the ashes of deceased opera diva Edmea at her place of birth. The passengers and the vessel are also a symbol of bourgeois society, sailing in the ship of Western civilization. Just like opera, Western bourgeois society is past its prime and falling apart from decadence. It even stinks, but that is a joke by Fellini: it is the stench of a rhinoceros with stomach problems who is also on board.

There are many funny episodes playing out among the weird passengers on the liner. One opera fan has his cabin transformed into a shrine dedicated to the diva's memory. Rival singers try to fathom the secret of the diva's success and line up to compete for the now open position. A Russian basso tries to hypnotize a chicken in the ship's kitchen with only his voice. There is a concert on a glass harmonica. An actor is bent on seducing sailors, a voyeuristic English aristocrat spies on his nymphomaniac wife and an obese Prussian Grand Duke with a blind sister is engaged in various palace intrigues.

The ship's captain saves a group of Serbian refugees, who are like the hungry third world gazing through the windows of bourgeois society (they stand on the lower deck like a prisoner chorus in opera). Their presence on the ship gives rise to fierce discussions, but the captain is adamant. He even does not give up the refugees when an Austro-Hungarian warship appears and demands that the Serbians are handed over - it is 1914, and the First World War has just begun. With the help of the Prussian grand-duke, permission is obtained to first go to Erimo and scatter the ashes of the diva. But when that has been done in proper style, mayhem breaks out when a Serbian hurls a bomb at the Austrian warship. Its cannons burst out in fire and soon sink the defenseless "opera ship"... just like European society with its bourgeois values was sunk in the wars of the 20th century.

The unnatural character of opera is on purpose maintained in the film, which was made inside the studio. There are painted sunsets and seascapes, the Austrian warship is a clear (but rather impressive) mock-up, and at the end we even get to see the studio and its technicians with the deck of the ship mounted on hydraulic pipes to move it up and down.

1914 was also the period that film started - in Italy the great epic Cabiria was made around this time - the journalist, who guides us through the film, has a cameraman with him and often stands straight in front of the camera as if he was making a documentary and delivering his comments from the scene - is he breaking the fourth wall by speaking into Fellini's camera, or is he addressing his own camera inside the story? We also have to forget that sound didn't exist yet for another 13 years, but perhaps that is also part of the unnaturalness of opera that infuses the whole film.

The Godfather by Francis Coppola

With its golden-brown hues, Coppola's The Godfather (1972) is an autumnal movie. It describes the fall season in the life of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), a "benevolent" Mafia boss, for those who believe that such a contradiction can exist. In Chinese philosophy, autumn is the season of iron and steel, the matter from which the bullets and knives with which the gangsters kill, are made. Corleone is shot down by a rival gang, ironically because he refuses to assist them in the drugs business, which he detests. That allows the real hero of the film to step to the fore: Corleone's youngest son Michael (Al Pacino), who was meant for a career in society outside the "family," but who now returns to avenge his father.

In a pivotal scene, where we see his bright and youthful eyes turn cold and cruel, he assassinates the rival gang boss and his henchman, a corrupt police officer. Then he hides for a while in Sicily, on native ground so to speak, before returning to take over the gang. He grows as a strategist, but also becomes as cold as steel. The apex of his nihilism is reached when he shows off his ruthlessness by killing the bosses of five rival families, who were ganging up on him, while himself attending a church service. "Do to others all the evil they want to do to you, but do it faster," he must think with a criminal variant on a Christian maxim. The assassination scenes are intercut with the baptism ritual in the church. Michael professes his faith, while outside he is dealing in death.

The three hour film is based on a pulp novel, but raises the material to epic heights, although soap elements are not lacking either. The problem is, that it has no complexity, no ambiguity, and as "just an entertainment" ends up glorifying the gangsters and the anti-society culture of "the family." For a realistic treatment of the mafia as a social problem, read the crime novels by Italian authors as Sciascia or Camillieri, who show how admiration for gangsters (or silence about their misdeeds) can pull a whole society down into gangsterism and nepotism. It is therefore unbelievable to me that The Godfather is often called the “best film ever made” - it is stupid pulp, only good to waste a few hours - the best thing of the film is the music by Italian classical film composer Nino Rota which in fact is much too beautiful for this sordid tale.