Poetry of Place - Neige (1981)

 There's nothing in my heart but the fear of dying old

The denizens of Juliet Berto's Neige may not fear personal death, but their lives are tinged with anxiety over loss - loss of friends, loss of family, loss of liberty, and (for many) loss of the fix they need to transcend their immediate surroundings. Neige chronicles a few days among a loose conglomeration of musicians, dealers, drug users, sex workers, and an assortment of characters living and hustling on and around the streets of Pigalle. While ostensibly focused on a barista, Anita played by Berto, the looseness translates to the narrative of the film as well. The plot contains straightforward crime story landmarks but the film prefers to wander through the streets along with its characters. Conversations feel overheard, the music is purely diegetic and provided by peep shows, café bands, record shops, and from the headphones of Bobby - a young street dealer played by Ras Paul Nephtali. Anita feels some maternal responsibility towards Bobby, and she tries to caution him as the heat from the police intensifies in the neighborhood. Bobby's youthful confidence and perhaps a misunderstanding of the sermons from Jocko, a charismatic (if not particularly pious) pastor, lead him to believe he cannot be caught. When the cops do finally close in on Bobby, it ends in violence. Deprived of their main conduit for heroin (snow/neige), the neighborhood starts fraying at the edges. Anita encounters Betty, a trans cabaret performer and addict, coming down hard in the street. Betty's habit is severe and she begs Anita to find her a fix. Despite their relative inexperience with heroin and the drought conditions in the neighborhood; Anita, Jocko, and Anita's boyfriend Willy all set out to score so that they can keep their friend alive. Their pursuit forces them out of their familiar enclave and onto a collision course with the authorities. 

Neige was Berto's first directorial collaboration with Jean-Henri Roger. The two would go on to direct another atmospheric genre picture, Cap Canaille, two years later. Berto was primarily known then (as she is now) for her acting; particularly for her work with Godard and Rivette. Neige is an incredibly assured debut film and Berto's experience in cinematic story telling and exposure to non-traditional narratives is evident. There are sufficient story details to cling to but the principle concern of Neige is to create a portrait of Pigalle and its inhabitants. In some ways, it invokes other significant street-life films from the era(Variety, Angel, Smithereens) but the genre elements are even further abstracted in Neige and it's less focused on a single character. It does bear some connective tissue with Luc Besson's Subway in its presentation of an environment and the characters that populate it (as well as a shared  interest in music). Much like Besson's film, Berto and Roger show you people and places but offer very little in the way of context or biographical details. You learn about the characters through their interactions and reactions in present time. Unlike Subway's hyper-stylization, Neige has an immediate, almost documentary feel to it. This inherent vitality relies heavily on the stunning photography from veteran cinematographer, William Lubtchansky, who also worked with Godard, Rivette, Agnes Varda, Nadine Trintignant, and others. The filmmaking on display here is highly attuned to the rhythms of Pigalle - lingering in brasseries, hurtling through streets, and moving through crowds everywhere from burlesque performances to creole religious services. While their personal histories go unexplained, the interconnectedness of the characters is obvious. Anita claims to have helped raise Bobby, Jocko freely lends (gives?) money to Willy, Loulou the bartender hired all his musician friends to work at Mr. Chat's club, a writer friend is willing to part with a packet of speed to help Betty, and Anita and Co. don't hesitate to scour the city for drugs when Betty is ailing. In contrast, institutions of authority are viewed with a deep suspicion and pessimism. The narcotics police are agents of brutality looking to bust small time players in the dope trade while failing to examine the root of the issue.

 Neige is currently being offered as part of a set from Fun City Editions along with La Garce/The Bitch which I also reviewed. Ultimately, I think I slightly preferred Neige though I found it more difficult to write coherently about. The Bitch is taking genre conventions and doing something really subversive with them in the text while Neige is a more expressionistic take on noir stylings. To watch it is to become wholly immersed in the sights and sounds of the Pigalle of that era - a carnival of neon, reggae, cigarette smoke, and wounded souls. I couldn't get enough of it and I think it's perfectly matched to Fun City's gritty, urban catalogue. Many of my favorite first time watches over the last year or two have been French films from around this era and I'd love to see even more StudioCanal and Gaumont properties ported over to US releases of this quality. 

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Pulp Provocation - La Garce/The Bitch (1984)

Christine Pascal's twisty (and at times twisted) detective thriller, The Bitch, leads with its 1940s noir influences on its sleeve. A young woman is abruptly ejected from a car on a rainy night. She's picked up by a taciturn stranger who turns out to be a police detective. The night city is visible in the car windows via rear projection as jazz lilts through the score and they exchange halting information and probing glances. Finally they stop at the canal waterfront, invoking shades of Le Quai des brumes, and the suspense of what will happen next hangs heavy in the air. The nostalgic fantasy is violently torn asunder as the detective suddenly proceeds to rape the girl on the hood of his car. The encounter becomes cryptic as the girl eventually appears to welcome his embrace and the initial violation turns towards the erotic. The girl, Isabelle Huppert as Aline, is revealed to be only 17 and she and her adopted family press rape charges against the detective, Richard Barry as Lucien Sabatier. The prologue concludes with a brief sentencing sequence and Sabatier, disgraced, goes to prison for the next six years.

Pascal, known largely for her work in front of the camera in this country, wrote and directed a handful of films; never shying away from challenging subject matter. In The Bitch, Pascal adopts conventions of American film noir as well as French poetic realism while simultaneously interrogating them and pushing them nearly to the point of breaking. This feels in sharp contrast to the mode of film policier that was so prevalent in French popular culture in the late 70s and early 80s. The tone of the film takes a shift towards modernity following the opening, but The Bitch is still brimming with classic cinema references: private detectives, doppelgängers, double crosses, wayward daughters, family secrets, gangsters, and (most prominently) the femme fatale. While her use of these tropes was derided by critics at the time, it's hard not to see The Bitch presaging the wild narrative structure of the erotic thrillers that would rise in popularity shortly after its release. Rather than retread familiar plot devices, Pascal and her talented cast are able to lean into genre expectations, subvert them, and produce something both more ambiguous and provocative as a result.

Following his imprisonment, Lucien reluctantly takes a job with a detective agency run by former policemen he worked with before he assaulted Aline. While his old friends seem willing to bring him back into the fold, his family has left him and his wife has remarried. The P.I. work consists mostly of adultery cases until a potentially wealthy client representing a fashion designer asks specifically for Sabatier to investigate a rival. Sebatier ventures into the heart of Le Sentier - Paris' textile district at the time and historically a Jewish enclave - where he runs into his friend and former cellmate, Rony. Sebatier explains that he's looking for Édith Weber and Rony attempts to warn him away, explaining that Weber is some kind of untouchable in the Jewish community. Sebatier persists only to discover that Édith Weber is the adopted identity of Aline Kaminker, the girl he raped 6 years ago. This discovery drives Sebatier to uncover the mystery of what happened to Aline while he was imprisoned, the fate of her adopted family, and who set him on Aline's trail in the first place. Sebatier's path causes him to collide with Aline's former boyfriend; and underworld figure, Max Halimi (Vittorio Mezzogiorno); and the three comprise an uneasy and volatile love triangle.

The scaffolding holding The Bitch in place is that of a thriller, filled with intentional nods towards noir, but the execution is firmly in the French arthouse tradition. In American film noir, crime is always punished and desire is nearly always fatal. In classic French permutations of the genre, love and honor are legitimate even for crooks, but doom is pervasive and inescapable. In The Bitch, desire is certainly risky but it's also complicated and mercurial. Crime sometimes has consequences and other times it's a mere detail. There's an investigation that drives the plot forward but the real mystery is whatever's going on behind the inscrutable faces of its characters. The entire cast is able to maintain that mood but Pascal is especially fascinated with Aline. There are multiple close ups lingering on Huppert's face as her expression shifts just enough to reveal profound depths of intelligence, emotion, and enigmatic motivation. Huppert's performance in The Bitch is incredibly strong and of a similar caliber to her roles in The Piano Teacher or Elle. As the premise of the film is so provocative, it's crucial to have such a fascinating character at the heart of it. While I cannot begin to fully comprehend what motivates Aline, I (like Pascal) can't take my eyes off of her. 

Largely unseen and unavailable for decades (in the US, at least), La Garce/The Bitch has been restored and released via Fun City Editions as part of a two film set - Fatal Femmes. Special features include an excellent essay from Alexandra Heller-Nicholas as well as an audio commentary from the always fantastic Samm Deighan. Fatal Femmes includes another French crime flick, Neige, directed by another female actor/director: Juliet Berto. I've been such a fan of FCE's output and French crime cinema will forever be celebrated here, so I couldn't grab a copy fast enough. I recommend you do the same. 

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Not No Place: Time Spent After Hours (1985)

 I wish I could tell you I'm cool. I've been a fan of Martin Scorsese ever since I knew you could be a fan of directors and I wish I could tell you that in addition to the crime epics I watched dozens if not hundreds of times as a teenager I loved the more idiosyncratic entries to Scorsese's filmography just as well. As a young movie fan I focused very squarely on the violent, operatic Scorsese and either failed to appreciate his other work or skipped it altogether. It wasn't until a few years ago that I finally caught up to After Hours and to be brutally honest: it didn't land cleanly for me. I could appreciate the strangeness of Paul Hackett's (Griffin Dunne) nightmare odyssey into the wee hours of Soho, but I think my overall expectations for the film didn't match the reality of it. I thought it would be more immediately hilarious, more madcap, and more propulsive. I also struggled to relate to the protagonist. I didn't much care for the meek yet entitled word processor and I felt somewhat indifferent towards his torment. I empathized more with Robert Plunket's character who after enduring a long and wild-eyed explanation of Paul's horrible night asks him rather succinctly, "Why don't you just go home?"

Still, something about After Hours wedged itself firmly in my imagination where it continued to ferment and I knew it would be something I'd one day revisit. My obsession with cinematic New York City meant that I was continually seeing references to After Hours in books and articles or hearing it mentioned in discussions that interested me. I'm also a tremendous fan of other movies produced by Dunne and Amy Robinson: Joan Micklin Silver's Chilly Scenes of Winter has been a longtime favorite of mine and more recently I caught up to Sydney Lumet's Running on Empty which I adored. I've also been at this movie-watching game long enough to know that a second look (or a third) is sometimes what you need to make sense of a film on its own terms instead of whatever expectations you're bringing to the experience. So when I heard that Criterion was releasing After Hours I committed to snagging a copy and returning to it. I'm so glad I did. 

I'm admittedly a fan of stylists and After Hours was never wanting in that department. It opens with frantic, ranging camera movements conveying a sense of restlessness in probably the most mundane location possible: an office floor packed with corporate drones. Upon my second watch, I couldn't help but note that the opening is one of the few scenes permitted to have sunlight in it. Scorsese was looking to keep his production schedule lean but in no way does that impede the mobility of his camera. After Hours would be the first of several Scorsese collaborations with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus who had a talent for shooting beautiful pictures efficiently - initially forged in Fassbinder's creative maelstrom and having previously lensed the luminous Heartbreakers. The color palette is generally muted; beige, gray, and blue; shrouded in darkness with only the occasional stab of streetlight or neon to penetrate it. Scorsese insisted that (nearly) the entire film, including the interior sequences, be shot at night. Nighttime permeates every frame and that wandering camera gives the impression of peering closer to get a better look. Paul himself is always examining his surroundings and After Hours is crammed with cryptic details that may or may not signify anything: a screaming sculpture, prescription labels, a skull keychain, a medical text, or graffiti of a shark eating a man's penis. The austere Soho location work gives After Hours a foundation of inscrutable alienness (at least as Paul sees it) but the production design and art direction make it visceral. Howard Shore's ethereal, metronomic score perfectly complements the vacant streetscape. I think of Scorsese as a soundtrack guy. He utilizes both classical and pop references with equal facility and to be certain some of that makes its way to After Hours. However, it's all bound together by this exquisitely desolate, haunting pulse from Cronenberg's go-to composer. 

Despite any initial impressions I had towards Griffin Dunne's character, the quality of After Hours' ensemble was undeniable from first viewing. Rosanna Arquette, Linda Fiorentino, Terri Garr, John Heard, Catherine O'Hara, Verna Bloom, Cheech & Chong, even Dick Miller. It's such a fantastic collection of talent that was active at the time and a testament to the interconnectedness of their previous projects. Whether they get an extended sequence like the pop explosion 60s time capsule of Garr's apartment or the brief nod Miller has when he recites the film's title line, you get the sense of a living, breathing late night denizen with a story to tell. I can't deny Dunne's performance and we stay with him in every scene from the muted to the brazen. His increasing level of mania is palpable to point where he cries out into the night asking the question familiar to all desperate people, "What have I done to deserve this?" The women own the film for me, though. They all, in some way, reflect film noir tropes by inviting Paul into situations that eventually turn sour on him. However, this quasi-seduction isn't any kind of reflection on their amorality. They're genuinely interesting people, mostly artists and loners looking for connections, and Paul's undoing is largely through his own desire to be with them without understanding their world. The crux of the narrative is that he traveled somewhere far from home, late at night, because he has a brief conversation with a beautiful girl. Some of the early audience feedback for After Hours was that it expressed a level of misogyny because the women of the film are "all crazy." However, part of the key (this movie is filled with keys and doors) for me to appreciate the film was that it's both being presented from Paul's point of view and that it isn't necessarily an endorsement of that perspective. The women in the film appear crazy to Paul because he misunderstands every situation and person he encounters that night.

 Scorsese claims that Paul's dilemma was something he was able to recognize in his own life. Before working on the film, Marty had moved to Tribeca and while he was a native New Yorker he soon realized that he was not part of the downtown art scene at all. It was an alien world to him. So while I don't think Scorsese is asking the audience to validate Paul's actions, he is asking us to empathize with him. As uncomfortable as it might be, I've lived through many times when I've been the outsider stumbling into a situation without understanding the context. Despite my best efforts I've been the idiot tourist who can't make sense of the local scene and I've certainly experienced the record-scratch anxiety of walking into the wrong bar at the wrong time. In Paul's eyes it's an endless Kafka-esque series of persecutions that he's done nothing to deserve, but it's his failure to cultivate an understanding of his surroundings that's truly hounding him. Once I was able to wrap my head around this, I was much more able to access the humor of After Hours and it is incredibly funny. I came into it thinking it would be funny in a zany "one crazy night" farce mode; a Coen brothers comedy of errors. After Hours eventually does reach that heightened pitch, but so many of the funny moments are delivered flatly with brief pause as both you and Paul try to process the last outlandish statement or event. It's also an incredibly dark picture. The satire bites but it's housed in the structure of a stressed out nightmare with a finale worthy of surrealist horror. The drug use in After Hours is minimal but it still has those tangibly sweaty paranoid coke vibes that Scorsese has always captured so well.

While I have come around on my ability to better understand Paul, find the comedy in his tragedy, and even relate pieces of my own life to his - I haven't totally come to terms with him. He's looking for adventure in the city but he isn't willing to pay his dues - whether that's his subway fare or getting a mohawk at Club Berlin. He relates to women in the film in a similar manner, either as objects of desire or sources of shelter, but he's not attempting to truly understand them. It's this sense of entitlement that rankled me on my first watch and it continues to do so. This has only been made more poignant as the once neglected, industrial Soho that was supposed to have an expressway run through the middle of it has become overrun with Pauls. Not artists looking to carve a space for themselves in the world, but word processors (or their modern day equivalents) looking to have a interesting life simply by virtue of being able to afford to live there. Comedian Nato Green described comparable recent arrivals in San Francisco as people who "want big city amenities but aren't willing to deal with big city problems." Maybe I'm more like Paul than I think when I first watched After Hours looking for a breezy good time.  So while I'm not cool, I'm glad to have made a return to Scorsese's fever dream Soho. I think I'll keep coming back, but I needed to make an effort to get to know the place. 

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Espionage, Absurdity, and Apocalypse: The Unknown Man of Shandigor (1967)

Delightfully weird with a singular aesthetic — Jean-louis Roy’s pop art cold war farce has been largely forgotten following its 1967 debut. Fortunately it has been restored and released on blu-ray via Deaf Crocodile so that a new audience has the chance to rediscover this Swiss curiosity that exists somewhere alongside Dr. Strangelove and Godard’s Alphaville.

The central conceit of The Unknown Man of Shandigor is relatively simple and fails to convey the depths of strangeness that it delivers in just over 90 minutes. A renowned physicist — Herbert Von Krantz — develops a technology that can render nuclear weapons inert. Rather than share this discovery with the world — Von Krantz isolates himself in his secluded home/laboratory with his daughter and loyal assistant. As a result various factions of international spies descend on the Von Krantz home in an attempt to steal the formula for “The Canceler.” How this narrative plays out is actually quite abstract and is almost more of a series of vignettes further underscored by title cards that appear when new chapters begin. 

Herbert Von Krantz is played by Daniel Emilfork — best known to many for his similar role in Jean-Perre Jeunet’s The City of Lost Children. Though Von Krantz’ discovery is of a seemingly benevolent nature — he is a paranoid egomaniac in classic mad scientist mode. His daughter Sylvainne is played by Marie-France Boyer who dreams of her lover Manuel — the titular unknown man played by American Ben Carruthers — when she isn’t being verbally berated by her father. Marcel Imhoff plays Von Krantz’ long-suffering assistant Yvann who seems to attract abuse from everyone he encounters. The initial espionage factions introduced are the French, the Russians, and the Americans. The Russians are a team of trenchcoated spies led by the maniacal, monocled Shoskatovich — Jacques Dufilho. The head American is a former Nazi-turned-agent Bobby Gunn — the Americans are featured in several firearm heavy scenes — played by Howard Vernon who has connections to Alphaville, Jeunet, and several science-gone-mad narratives himself. The most instantly recognizable faction are the French — a troupe of black clad, totally bald agents called the “bald heads” or the “bald ones.” The leader of the bald heads is the distinctly not-bald singer, songwriter, artist, and pop culture icon Serge Gainsbourg. 

Though the plot is essentially a spy novel cliche — it is approached with a deeply absurdist, surrealist bent. Elements such as the Americans being headquartered in a bowling alley or Shoskatovich torturing his captives by blasting “capitalist rock music” at them are played in a deadpan manner but are possessed of a wonderfully odd humor. There are moments that even lend themselves to the fantastique — such as when Sylvainne is instructed to feed “the beast.” This beast is never shown in full but apparently some kind of sea monster lives in the churning swimming pool on the Von Krantz estate. In what is likely destined to be the most memorable scene of the film — the “bald heads” perform a candlelit embalming/funerary rite for one of their fallen comrades while Serge Gainsbourg performs a haunting lounge number “Bye Bye Mister Spy.” The final chapter introduces yet another faction and the disparate plot threads converge in ways both ridiculous and pessimistic — as is only appropriate for a narrative so steeped in Cold War paranoia. 

As Unknown Man moves from bizarre plot point to plot point — its immediate impact is rooted in its amazingly rendered visual world. The comic strip inspired science fiction/espionage story is set in a series of striking locations — some of which were clearly constructed sets but many are real locations with minimal art direction flourishes. The result gives Roger Bimpage’s expressionist black and white photography a somewhat Kubrick-ian feel but unlike Kubrick — Roy and Bimpage used their television experience to shoot quickly and at a fraction of the cost. The most notable of these location-as-character sequences is when Sylvainne escapes her father and travels to Shandigor — composed almost entirely of shots of Gaudi’s architecture in Barcelona. Roy also did a tremendous job of filling his ensemble with remarkable faces that help bring his heightened absurdist world to reality. Emilfork, Howard, Dfulho, and Gainsbourg all possess visages that reflect the weird universe that surrounds them. The largely anonymous “bald heads” were all truly bald non-actors cast for their look — though the most recognizable among them is played by Unknown Man screenwriter Gabriel Arout.

Though Unknown Man may prove too abstract or delivered too dryly for some audiences — I think the exceptionally strange imagery and world conveyed as well as the unique assembly of personalities is more than enough to recommend it. Fans of Jeunet, fans of Gilliam’s more dystopian visions, and certainly anyone interested in New Wave adjacent 60s cinema are going to find a lot to appreciate in Roy’s film. I will say that while I enjoyed my first viewing of Unknown Man — it has really opened up to me as a text through pursuing the extras with the blu-ray release. There’s an excellent essay from writer/punk rock legend Chris D. that I read before watching and the archival Swiss television special is such a great find — it includes interviews with Roy and several of the cast members giving their thoughts on the production and their approach to filmmaking and acting. Writer/film historian Samm Deighan’s solo commentary is terrific and best helped me contextualize the film — not only in giving some background on Jean-Louis Roy but connecting Unknown Man to a list of films that I’ve been both discovering for myself or revisiting after a long absence. Given the journey that I’ve gone on with this film — The Unknown Man of Shandigor will undoubtedly make my best new-to-me list for the year.

Blu-Ray Review - Rancho Deluxe (1975)

Fun City Editions is a relatively new blu-ray company and partner label with Vinegar Syndrome that has been busy impressing collectors with both the curation of their catalogue and the quality of their releases. My reaction to all of the Fun City releases so far has been - What on earth is that movie and when can I see it? or Oh man that's a movie I absolutely loved and I'm so thrilled to see it getting a blu-ray release. Rancho Deluxe falls into the latter category and I absolutely couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy. 

Released in 1975 and directed by one of the great, still somewhat unsung directors of the era - Frank Perry (The Swimmer, David and Lisa, Play It as It Lays) and written by novelist turned screenwriter/director Tom McGuane (92 in the Shade, The Missouri Breaks) Rancho Deluxe is an oddball, low stakes, quasi-crime hangout in the new American West. Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston play Jack and Cecil - two cattle rustlers who land on the bad side of a wealthy ranch owner on account of their small time schemes. The ranch owner hires not only his two hands Curt and Burt - Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Bright - but also a detective played by Slim Pickens to apprehend the cattle thieves. It's a weird little universe unto itself populated with Pong playing cowboys and hotel room destroying bulls where you can pay your rent with beef and the West isn't really the answer to anyone's problems. Rancho is a clever satire of American myth-making but it isn't a particularly savage one - the stacked cast is incredibly likeable and the idiosyncratic downbeat humor feels like a precursor to what the Coen Brothers would do in the following decades.

Fun City's disc is comprised of a new 2K restoration - my understanding is that all of FCE's releases are predicated on new scans - that looks excellent while retaining the warm grain of the original film. Special features include a commentary by film critic Nick Pinkerton who is largely familiar to me through his work with Kino Lorber. Pinkerton provides the kind of commentary that I like best - one that is dense with information about the production and the historical context as well as tying in other films in interesting ways. If you prefer something more conversational the zoom-style interview with Jeff Bridges is charming due to Bridges' affable nature and of the significance this film and Montana has to his personal biography. Tom McGuane gets an interesting, more traditional interview and then there's a terrific essay provided by film historian Gavin Smith.

I've so far been loving what Fun City Editions has been doing and Rancho Deluxe has been no exception. It's a movie I've truly fallen for on repeat viewings and it somehow, shockingly still has fewer than 1000 views on Letterboxd. I'm hoping this new edition can help remedy that and I'd encourage anyone interested to seek it out.

https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/fun-city-editions/products/rancho-deluxe-fun-city-editions