Criterion Sunday 606: Blithe Spirit (1945)

Unexpectedly — for a David Lean film — this story of spiritual mediums and the haunting presence of a dead ex-wife, is very silly. Still, it’s very much in writer Noël Coward’s line, I suppose, with a brittle comedy of manners amongst very middle-class people set at a pleasant home in the country, where Rex Harrison’s novelist Charles wants to research a crime plot involving a séance. This introduces us to Margaret Rutherford’s Madame Arcati, who very much steals the entire film with her flamboyant performance, and thus to the novelist’s recently-deceased ex Elvira (Kay Hammond) who trades barbs with him while Charles’s current wife Ruth (Constance Cummings) looks on, concerned for his mental health and upset that he seems to be rekindling his relationship with the glamorous dead woman. I’m not sure what deeper thing it says about the English, but it’s pleasant enough as a silly divertissement and has some lovely use of Technicolor.

CRITERION EXTRAS:

• The extras include a 1992 episode of the long-running arts show The South Bank Show dedicated to Noël Coward. It strings together archive footage of Coward himself talking about his life as a way of bringing together his upbringing and artistic career, as well as his later years in Jamaica and a bit about his public and private life as a gay man in 20th century England. There is some good footage they’ve unearthed of him as a young man, and as a stage actor, as well as little clips from the making of some of his works, and some interviews with collaborators like John Gielgud and John Mills. It may not dig really deep but it gives you a good overview of the man.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director David Lean; Writers Lean, Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allen (based on the play by Noël Coward); Cinematographer Ronald Neame; Starring Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond, Margaret Rutherford; Length 96 minutes.

Seen at home (Blu-ray), Wellington, Sunday 8 January 2023.

Criterion Sunday 485: The Last Days of Disco (1998)

This film was released just as I was starting to properly get into film so I imagine I may have turned my nose up at it. Apparently I did see it on a visit to London in 1998, the day before watching Velvet Goldmine, the memory of which has stuck with me far more vividly (perhaps because it embodies the qualities that this film seems designed to erase, but more on that later). I imagine at the time it just seemed a bit odd and stilted but with the benefit of hindsight, I think it’s lovely.

Of course, it has a specific point of view: that of a straight white man with an acerbic New York aloofness surveying the landscape of his youth and you could say it suffers for that, but I prefer to think of it as a self-critique. It’s a film set during the disco era, absolutely packed from start to finish with classic tunes, but it’s a film about the gentrification of a scene, of that slightly hollow sadness when looking around at what was once about parties and drugs and, most importantly, its acceptance of, if not predication on, queerness and diversity (the things that made so many people unironically want to express their hatred for disco music at the time).

It’s not called The Last Days of Disco for no reason: the club here is half populated by bankers in suits with the kind of floppy hair that says 90s to me more than 80s but perhaps that’s apt. There’s nothing transgressive, though even among the dad-dancing on the disco floor there is still a bit of joy, and it’s largely within the relationship between its two leads played by Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale, the latter of whom has some of the films best lines, shady comments delivered almost as asides to Sevigny. It’s a curious balance this movie achieves between fun, snarky and eminently quotable bitchiness and the hollow empty nostalgia of 20-something aimlessness.

CRITERION EXTRAS:

• Four deleted scenes are shown, in unfinished rough cuts, for those that want more of these characters hanging out in their slightly depressing railroad apartment.
• A behind-the-scenes featurette is very much in the mould of five-minute bonus features made by studios that have a sort of blandness to them (the blandness of advertising, which is apt given the broadsides at one such character in the film itself) but you do get to hear a few little soundbites from the actors at the time.
• The stills gallery includes plenty of contextualisation of what we see, making it something of a production diary or a reflection on the film by its director.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director/Writer Whit Stillman; Cinematographer John Thomas; Starring Chloë Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Chris Eigeman, Mackenzie Astin, Robert Sean Leonard; Length 113 minutes.

Seen at a cinema, London, Saturday 28 November 1998 (and most recently on Blu-ray at home, Wellington, Thursday 2 December 2021).

Criterion Sunday 349: Kicking and Screaming (1995)

There was a story recently in the New York Times that sparked off a lot of online discourse about the Criterion Collection, specifically about its blind spot for African-American filmmakers, and the next morning I found myself watching Noah Baumbach’s debut film, which seems to exemplify something of the collection’s fixation on white American filmmakers. To stick with the discourse for just a moment, I think the sensible response is not to valorise the Criterion Collection as the ultimate arbiter of tastemaking, but for whatever reason it has de facto become that — and as someone who is literally invested in the collection (as my watching of their films has also been accompanied by acquisition of the physical media), I can only hope that they do diversify their titles, while acknowledging that other labels have much better records on historically interesting releases by Black filmmakers (Milestone and Kino Lorber being two examples of distributors some of whose titles I own). Just looking at 90s indie films, there have been plenty of titles by Black directors that are easily the equal of this one, for example Love Jones, or indeed much of the output of that film’s stars during the decade (several of them were in Dead Presidents, which even had a Criterion laserdisc release, I believe).

I was younger than the characters are when I first saw Kicking and Screaming, and revisiting it again now in the light of everything I’ve seen since, 25 years after its first release, it has become aggravating to me. The actors are all fine; instead the weakness seems to be the script, which attempts a sort of witty insouciance that it just doesn’t perhaps have the experience to achieve (Baumbach would go on to make films which I’ve liked very much, so it’s not that I don’t like his work). The presence of Chris Eigeman only underlines this, given his role in Metropolitan five years earlier (and not very far back in the Criterion Collection), which did this stuff a lot better and with more genuine wit and humour. Of course, perhaps part of the problem is that “this stuff” as I’m calling it is the spiritual succession to Woody Allen and his neurotic stories of WASPy New York types — but that’s not even a genre that is necessarily bad, just quite well covered already. Certainly these mopey graduates trying to make their way in the world feels as limited as their social spheres. I do remember much of my post-film discussion in 1996 or so was about the flashback structure (because all these filmmaking tricks were still new to me then), and Olivia d’Abo’s character Jane is probably the most interesting of everyone, so it’s a pity she gets short shrift to the tedious Grover (Josh Hamilton). Let’s just say there were a lot of things that Baumbach would go on to refine in subsequent decades, but this still very much feels like juvenilia.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Noah Baumbach; Writers Baumbach and Oliver Berkman; Cinematographer Steven Bernstein; Starring Josh Hamilton, Chris Eigeman, Olivia d’Abo, Parker Posey, Eric Stoltz; Length 96 minutes.

Seen at Paramount, Wellington, early-1996 (and most recently on DVD at home, London, Friday 21 August 2020).

Criterion Sunday 326: Metropolitan (1990)

This film feels like the New Wave if that movement were about spawning the Noah Baumbachs and Wes Andersons who would come to define the genre of ‘brittle New York-set comedies of manners skewering the affectations of the urban haute bourgeoisie’ (well, that’s what they call themselves in Metropolitan, “uhbs” for short). Then again, I suppose this kind of confected class paradigm has always been part of the NYC milieu, but Whit Stillman is particularly good at capturing the absurdity without also making me hate the characters — although I did certainly dislike most of them. That self-important sense of a man who lectures a more educated woman about Jane Austen before at length revealing grandiosely that he doesn’t like to read novels, only literary criticism; or the exceedingly designer-clad woman who declares to all that she despises snobbery; or the earnest invocation of French socialists at a tuxedo-clad debutants party. Part of the film’s affectation is to present these quaint society throwbacks of the Upper East Side (apologies if I’m getting the geography a bit wrong, as I’m not from NYC) in a slightly arch framework, with the title cards and graphics all suggesting a world-preserved-in-aspic quality, a sort of faux Gilded Era of society wits with a youthful sense of their own mortality and impending worthlessness (only briefly punctured when they meet an older version of themselves who doesn’t quite align with their self-mythologising). The key is, though, it’s well-written, which carries the film’s at times amateurish feeling — though I do genuinely mean that in a generous way, in the sense of someone who really loves what they’re depicting but perhaps hasn’t quite yet acquired the polished skill that Whitman would come to possess.

CRITERION EXTRAS:

• There are a couple of short clips presenting multiple takes of alternative casting, including the actor who plays the hated Rick as the central character Nick, and Troma director Lloyd Kaufman as a music producer.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director/Writer Whit Stillman; Cinematographer John Thomas; Starring Edward Clements, Carolyn Farina, Chris Eigeman, Taylor Nichols; Length 98 minutes.

Seen at home (Blu-ray), London, Thursday 18 June 2020.

Criterion Sunday 305: Boudu sauvé des eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning, 1932)

I’ve watched this Renoir film a number of times in my life, and much though I appreciate a good Renoir film — and his best films are among the finest in the canon (Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game being just two of them which have already appeared in the Criterion Collection) — the particular charms of this one seem to pass me by. It’s about Michel Simon’s tramp, called Boudu, who (as the title may suggest) is saved from drowning, much to his great protestation, by a well-meaning local antiquarian bookshop owner, M. Lestingois (Charles Granval). The film has the feeling of a knockabout farce — Simon certainly essays plenty of physical japery in his role — though you get the feeling that Renoir’s particular ire is reserved for the tedious petit bourgeois morality that Lestingois represents (a man so obsessed by status and clothes and propriety in all its forms, despite philandering with the much younger housemaid). The problem is that his vehicle for this critique is the even more boorish Boudu, none of whose affrontery particularly affects Lestingois, and it’s left to his wife and maid to have to deal with the messes and, more particularly, his rough and impertinent sexual appetites (it’s pretty clear that he rapes the wife, much though she subsequently seems to be charmed by him). Perhaps it’s not meant to be charming, but plenty of critics and audiences seem to find it thus, so if those include you, then that’s excellent.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director/Writer Jean Renoir (based on the play by René Fauchois); Cinematographer Marcel Lucien; Starring Michel Simon, Charles Granval, Sévérine Lerczinska, Marcelle Hainia; Length 84 minutes.

Seen at the university film department, Wellington, Monday 16 March 1998 (as well as earlier on VHS at home, Wellington, December 1997, and most recently on DVD at home, London, Saturday 4 April 2020).

Criterion Sunday 292: Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

One of those classic Hollywood comedies where you’re not quite sure where the tone of the film is intended to be. It starts out filled with detail and incident, such that I had a hard time following what exactly was going on, before settling down to be a story of a jealous husband who must deal with his cheating wife. It swerves into a detective story and then there’s a stretch of screwball nonsense, but for me it’s held together by Rex Harrison as the husband, who somehow sells these wild mood swings. There’s a lovely repeated camera move zooming into his eye to introduce a number of fantasy sequences — which once again after the recent Criterion film Divorce Italian Style is about a husband imagining the death of his wife — all of which comes to fruition in the final bit of knockabout comedy. Preston Sturges was capable of great things, and this is a fine introduction to his style, though The Lady Eve remains my favourite of his works for being more distilled and compact somehow.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director/Writer Preston Sturges; Cinematographer Victor Milner; Starring Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallée; Length 105 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Friday 10 January 2020.

Criterion Sunday 216: La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game, 1939)

Ah, “the game”, it’s a terrible thing isn’t it? A lot of “all-time classics” can seem a little tired with age and endless plaudits, but La Règle du jeu, while it has elements that are very much of its era, still seems to hold up. It can be as furious as a slapstick at times, but underlying it all is this sense of the decadence of the bourgeois: switching partners, shooting animals, and beating each other up with no sense of consequences involved at all. Even when one of the servants, a gamekeeper, goes berserk with a shotgun, everyone treats it as just a bit of fun for a party. The magic is that Renoir, who stars as one of wealthy set, orchestrates this all without the sense of simplistic judgement or finger-wagging. It’s evident what’s going on, but there’s an indulgence to it that I think would be difficult to present today when observing the same kind of people. The staging, too, is fantastic, with some deep shots recalling Tati’s best work, and fluid sequence shots that track around all the cameras with lithe choreography. It still holds up.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Jean Renoir; Writers Renoir and Carl Koch; Cinematographer Jean Bachelet; Starring Nora Gregor, Marcel Dalio, Paulette Dubost, Roland Toutain, Jean Renoir; Length 110 minutes.

Seen at National Library, Wellington, Wednesday 25 August 1999 (and earlier on laserdisc at the university library, Wellington, September 1997, and most recently on DVD at a friend’s home, London, Monday 14 May 2018).

Criterion Sunday 85: Pygmalion (1938)

George Bernard Shaw’s satirical play about the fragility of the English class system gets a fine adaptation here, with Leslie Howard (also the film’s co-director) portraying the mercurial and largely detestable Henry Higgins, and Wendy Hiller as his flower-girl muse, her Cockney accent rather patchy in the early portions of the film. There’s a prickly intensity to the relationship between the two, and it’s not exactly clear who ends up with whom at the film’s close (without giving anything away, there’s a hint that’s what’s seen may be imagined, or so it seems to me), but in the meantime there’s a feisty comedy of manners, as Higgins seeks to teach Eliza the King’s English, well enough to pass as aristocracy in the right kind of setting. And so, without quite meaning to, he essentially destroys her — or effectively tries to — by replacing her self-respect with the indignities of middle-class morality. It moves along at a fair clip with some jaunty editing (by David Lean, in an early film role for him) and the two leads trade barbs in a watchable and comedic manner.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Directors Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard; Writers George Bernard Shaw, W. P. Lipscomb, Cecil Lewis and Ian Dalrymple (based on the play by Shaw); Cinematographer Harry Stradling Sr.; Starring Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller; Length 96 minutes.

Seen on a train to London (DVD), Sunday 22 May 2016.

Die Austernprinzessin (The Oyster Princess, 1919)

I wrote this review for the wonderful Silent London site to celebrate the rerelease of the Lubitsch in Berlin box set, and you should read it there, as it is accompanied by five better reviews of the other films in that box set. The set is from the ever-reliable Eureka on their Masters of Cinema imprint, and I can highly recommend it.

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One of the wonderful things about silent cinema is that film techniques and technologies we nowadays take for granted were still evolving. This occasionally means we get stagy affairs with huge melodramatic emotions matched to over-the-top gestural acting and a sense of decorum a hundred years removed from our own sensibilities. Sure, some may live up to this stereotype (like the 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde I recently reviewed), but for every ten of those there’s a film like Die Austernprinzessin: constantly inventive, filled with laughs, and with a satirical sense that doesn’t feel hugely out of step with anything being made today. The director is Ernst Lubitsch, who at this point was still making his name but would go on to become one of the world’s most famous directors upon moving to Hollywood in the 1930s. He even had a brand of sorts, the “Lubitsch Touch”, which is sufficiently vague a term to have prompted much subsequent speculation. Whatever it may be, he certainly does have a way with a film, no less in this early effort than in many of his ‘mature’ works.

At the heart of The Oyster Princess is a pretty full-blooded critique of capitalism; there’s certainly no pulling punches here. The “oyster king”, Mr Quaker (Victor Janson), lives in a vast mansion attended by numerous servants and has a spoilt daughter, Ossi (Ossi Oswalda). Until the very end, all that either seems to care about is this privileged life. Quaker’s catchphrase, delivered at the end of each of the movie’s four acts, is “that doesn’t impress me”. Ossi, meanwhile, who kicks off the plot with her demand to marry a prince, susbequently pays only scant attention to either the man or the relationship. Hers is an entitled world of passing whims, and she soon decides that this prince she’s been given isn’t one she likes very much after all.

But this is a comedy of manners, and part of the joke is that Prince Nucki (Harry Liedtke) has fallen on hard times, and so has sent his valet Josef (Julius Falkenstein) to check out Mr Quaker’s offer. This somewhat inevitably leads to his being confused with the prince, but given the frivolous way the Quakers live, perhaps that’s little surprise. The opening shot shows Mr Quaker smoking an unreasonably large cigar, attended by a phalanx of obsequious black servants, and whose every word is hung upon by an array of secretaries. This obscene overkill — Quaker doesn’t need so many women to transcribe his dictation, or so many handservants, as most of them have nothing to do — quickly becomes a running joke. There are serried ranks of servants to help Ossi into and out of her bath, and serving a meal is like a military drill. This is obscenely gluttonous excess for its own sake — and for our amusement.

Although the technical limitations of the period mean the camera is still largely fixed, there’s a lightness of touch in orchestrating the mise en scène, meaning these limitations are rarely noticed. Characters move around incessantly, for example. So vast is Quaker’s mansion that he, attended by his many servants, jogs from room to room. His daughter meanwhile is a whirligig of emotion, throwing everything around petulantly. At one point there’s even a dance sequence — “a foxtrot epidemic breaks out!” — allowing for various groupings around the mansion until eventually everyone, right down to the kitchen servants, is seen dancing.

It may not be surprising to devotees of Lubitsch’s work, but for one new to his cinema, what’s astonishing is that almost every moment in the film’s concise hour-long running time is filled with inventiveness and comic inspiration. Shots that prosaically bridge a gap between two scenes or just show characters listening are not for Lubitsch, and (as mentioned above) even moving between rooms is done with a humorous touch. The performances are also uniformly delightful, particularly Oswalda’s cheeky impishness and Janson’s amusingly affected stoicism.

Once again, this is another excellent Masters of Cinema release, with an exemplary transfer to DVD and a rather jaunty score perfectly matched to the action on screen. This isn’t just an excellent primer to Lubitsch’s cinema, or to silent screen comedy. It’s a marvel of a film and a joy to watch.

CREDITS
Director Ernst Lubitsch; Writers Hanns Kräly and Lubitsch; Cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl; Starring Ossi Oswalda, Julius Falkenstein, Victor Janson, Harry Liedtke; Length 60 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Saturday 1 February 2014.