(This was originally published on an older blog of mine in 2019)
Michael Cimino had some early success working on the screenplays for Silent Running and Magnum Force which was enough to land him in the director’s chair after selling his Thunderbolt and Lightfoot screenplay to Clint Eastwood’s production company. What followed was something combining a heist movie and a road picture featuring Jeff Bridges as the young drifter (Lightfoot) and Eastwood’s veteran thief (Thunderbolt).
There’s nothing necessarily slow about this film—the opening erupts with a shootout and a car theft—but there’s a definite hangout vibe that permeates the action. Cimino isn’t afraid to take his time and let us wander with Eastwood and Bridges across the open landscapes of Idaho and Montana as they move from one jam to the next. The men pursuing Thunderbolt—George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis—are former partners who believe they were on the receiving end of a doublecross after their last heist. After a brief physical confrontation with Red (Kennedy), Thunderbolt convinces the two to bury the hatchet and work together.
The four decide to attempt the same job again where they rob a Montana bank using an anti-tank gun to blow through the vault walls. To collect information and funds to pull the caper off, they all move in together and work odd jobs—including Lewis hilariously as an ice cream man. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot has a definite streak of eccentric comedy running through it. The funny bits sometimes come in big moments like when the pair is picked up by a crazed driver with caged racoon in his passenger seat and a trunk filled with rabbits. There are also lovely understated details like Lightfoot’s ice cream slowly melting in his hand while being made to freeze at gunpoint.
Despite the comedy the overall feel of the film is bittersweet. This melancholy lends Thunderbolt and Lightfoot more of a meditative quality and particularly colors the film’s finale . The main performances are excellent (Bridges earned an Academy Award nomination for his) and the supporting cast is filled with character actors and notable 70s screen presences—Catherine Bach, Gary Bussey, Jack Dodson, Burton Gilliam, and Dub Taylor—just to name a few. There are several Eastwood regulars in the cast and crew, including Dee Barton who contributes a fantastic score. Paul Williams’ original song for the picture—“Where Do I Go from Here”—conveys a wandering sadness that’s a perfect accompaniment to the film.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is not a perfect picture. It’s a little loose and some of the gags have not aged very well. However, the shagginess is part of the appeal and there’s a certain warmth and subtlety in the film’s best moments. I think heist fans will appreciate the film but it’s especially easy to recommend to New Hollywood fans and/or Eastwood fans.
There's nothing in my heart but the fear of dying old
The denizens of Juliet Berto's Neigemay 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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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 orElle. 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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Richard Brody's piece for The New Yorker, "What We Lose When Streaming Companies Choose What We Watch," has been making the rounds among film fans recently. It's for good reason too, while I'm personally immersed in a universe of similarly-minded disc purchasers and theater attendees, most of the film-viewing public seems to have elected streaming as their primary source of cinema. I don't always (or often) agree with Brody but I don't begrudge him a good take when he has one. Still, I can't help but think that his case for collecting is a tad overstated. Building a physical media collection can be rewarding and supports the industries (film, music, lit, etc.) behind the scenes, but I'm not sure how much of an act of "love" or "defiance" it really is. In all the collecting scenes I've taken part of, you regularly hear the same old jokes about buying way more shit than you could possibly take advantage of in your lifetime and the line between collecting and hoarding can get hazy. There's also the matter of access. There's probably a degree of greater general availability due to individuals buying films on disc. It's not uncommon to see a new physical release suddenly become accessible via streaming but it's hardly universal or even very predictable. On the other hand, collections at public libraries likely contribute in a far more meaningful way in providing access to great movies all for the low price of library card. I'm regularly surprised and delighted by what our local county system has available to check out.
The other thing that irks me about the film-related physical media world is that it doesn't often translate to physical spaces. Unlike the book shop or the record store or even your local cinema, places to buy boutique blu-rays seem vanishingly rare. I really do think this is meaningful as I still hold onto the idea that brick and mortar spaces are instrumental in building local scenes and help lead to the interaction between creative people and the necessary collision of ideas. I realize virtual spaces can also facilitate these things, but I generally find them far less potent. There's something vital to meeting up with other people who at the very least are willing to make a trip just to experience weird art. None of this is to say that I don't absolutely love this moment in film curation and the kind of energy and care the independent labels are pouring into movies, many of which were totally unavailable previously. I just don't believe personal shelves filled to bursting carry all the same benefits as a public library or even the humble video store.
I watched plenty of good and even some great movies in August. I do wish I had made it out to the theater more often but that's a common lament for me. Here's the best of what I watched followed by some notes on screenings with other people.
The Grey Fox(1980) - Maybe it's notable that my first pick here was a disc I snagged at my local library. Though the cover is instantly recognizable to me from vhs days, this was a first time viewing thanks to Elric over at the Pure Cinema Podcast. It's based on a true story of Bill Miner who went to prison for stagecoach robbery and was released 33 years later to a barely recognizable world in 1901. It's a lyrical, often melancholy story of finding your way through life and (to a lesser extent) banditry. A lot of the appeal hinges on the always remarkable Richard Farnsworth but The Grey Fox is also beautifully shot, has a solid supporting cast, and the music of The Chieftains works wonderfully as a backdrop to this turn of the century story. There is a deeply satisfying "characters watching a movie" sequence and if you like trains or The Great Train Robbery - you will dig this.
Jeremiah Johnson (1972) - This Robert Redford/Sydney Pollack classic was the second half to my unintentional mythologized historical frontiersman double feature. It's hard for me to get behind a protagonist that started out as a fur trapper (the real history of which is filled with all manner of greed and stupidity) and winds up a mortal enemy of the Crow Nation (the real "liver eating" Johnson was rumored to have slaughtered 300 men), but Pollack is able to conjure so many great moments and moods and things remain abstract enough that I was able to maintain my distance. Clearly, the key decision here was Redford's insistence that the film be shot entirely in Utah and not on some studio backlot. The scenery alone is beyond stunning and the actors are largely able to distinguish themselves amidst that backdrop. Screenwriter John Milius' influence is evident in both the violent sequences and the conversations between mountain men. You can almost see them as a dry run for the philosophical discussions between Conan and Subotai a decade later. I imagine Milius' take on Johnson would have been a much gorier affair and thankfully Pollack never subjects us to Redford with a bloody mouthful of liver.
Marlowe (1969) - Marlowe has neither the grit nor the glamour to match my favorite Chandler adaptations but it's still entertaining and definitely interesting. Others have noted that it feels like a television movie - cheap sets, bright lighting, and Garner's Marlowe feeling closer to Rockford than Bogart all contribute to that. Even though the film comes off as artificial looking, the filmmakers actually bothered to shoot some iconic locations - The Bradbury Building, Union Station, Club Largo, etc. The final shot of Marlowe driving out onto the strip at night looks remarkable, I only wish we could have had more of it. The material isn't always stellar, but if you're a fan of the period I think the cast is solid and compelling enough to hold your attention. Besides Garner, you get Rita Moreno, Carroll O'Conner, Sharon Farrell, and (somewhat inexplicably) Bruce Lee. Turns out Sterling Siliphant, who wrote Marlowe, In the Heat of the Night, The Poseidon Adventure, etc., was a friend and student of Bruce. Siliphant was also instrumental in getting Bruce's philosophical adventure epic Circle of Iron/The Silent Flute made after Lee died.
Libido(1965) - Just because a film is an early example of a genre doesn't necessarily mean it delivers as a good movie. Proto-giallo Libido seemingly has everything working against it - made on a dare by an untrained director (Ernesto Gastaldi), shot in 18 days on a shoestring budget, featuring some virtually unknown (at the time) actors in lead roles - and yet it's remarkably successful and clearly influential on what was to follow. Gastaldi may not have known much about directing but he absolutely understood narrative having penned some great Italian Gothics and he would go on to write many of the most famous gialli in addition to westerns, polizotteschi, and comedies for decades to come. Libido definitely benefits from the gothic/haunted mansion setting and fuses it with a Les Diaboliques inspired thriller. There's nothing explicit, but the pyscho-sexual undertones are palpable. I'd be remiss not to mention that Libido is Giancarlo Giannini's debut and he manages admirably to evoke the brand of psychological fragility required for the role. The rest of the small cast is terrific - especially Gastaldi's wife Mara Maryl who developed the original story for the film and even sewed her own costumes. I'm nearly certain it was the Unsung Horrorspodcast that nudged me towards this in the first place and I watched it via Severin's fantastic looking blu-ray release. Libido is certainly notable for being an early giallo, and genre fans will note familiar tropes being established, but it's absolutely worth seeking out on its own merits.
Baby, It's You (1983) - Having recently re-watched Chilly Scenes of Winter and After Hours thanks to the stellar new editions from Criterion, I decided to catch up to this lesser heralded Double Play production. Baby was the first John Sayles film to be backed by a major studio and it's a significant early(ish) movie for Roseanna Arquette and Vincent Spano. Set in the 1960s, Arquette and Spano play New Jersey high school kids from differing backgrounds who still find a romantic connection. Unlike many other films with similar scenarios, Baby continues the story past high school where both characters' expectations aren't necessarily fulfilled in college or working life respectively. I'm kind of sucker for melancholy coming of age stories in the first place, but I think Baby holds its own via the use of music (the anachronistic Springsteen tunes actually work here), Sayles' class consciousness, and the performances. I love this quote from Arquette reflecting on the role: "I went to high school for a while, but my experiences were shitty. Somebody asked me how I prepared for that role. I put on those knee socks and that skirt and - I don't know. I just felt her."
The Body of My Enemy(1976) - Looking at the cover and the plot synopsis of this Henri Verneuil/Jean-Paul Belmondo crime picture led me to believe I would be getting a mid-70s slice of cold, gallic neo-noir. Instead, I got a fairly unconventional social/class satire told non-linearly with a dose of dark comedy. It's much weirder than I expected with Belmondo eschewing the stunt heavy action man persona he would fully embrace by the 80s for a far more cerebral and manipulative vengeance seeker. There's definitely grit and criminal grime featured in Enemy, but the fire that fuels the film is class conflict with Belmondo's complete contempt of the wealthy townsfolk. Enemy may be an odd addition to Verneuil's filmography but I found it compelling and thought it had similar vibes to Alain Jessua's off-kilter social satires from the same era. I picked up the Kino disc for this and am looking forward to listening to the Berger/Thompson/Mitchell commentary as they do such a great job of putting these lesser known (in this country) French films into context.
Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime(1968) - Should this movie be known as the one where Alain Resnais decided to cut the shit and just make a movie explicitly about cycles of memory? Je T'Aime is ostensibly about a suicidal man who becomes a candidate for an experimental time travel program. Things go haywire during the experiment and he's trapped reliving sequences of his past in 60 second snippets. It sounds like a science fiction story, but in practice plays out as a profoundly literary and fairly avant-garde approach to love and loss with a dose of murder mystery. There are some sequences of an absurdly 60s time machine that looks like an alien pumpkin on the outside and Barbarella's lounge on the inside which give it an extra pyschotronic edge, but Je T'Aime still is largely grounded in human relationships. I'm not always an enthusiastic science fiction fan, nor do I tend to like time travel movies, but I adored this abstract, philosophical, extremely French take on the genre. It's certainly not the best Resnais film, but even his weirder efforts are worth seeking out.
Going Places (1974) - Holy shit what do you say about a movie like this? It's anarchic, it's maddening, it's offensive, I kind of loved it, and I don't feel terrific about that. Betrand Blier's film debut starring Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere as listless buffoons lacking any impulse control or thought for the future and they channel their limited creativity towards sexual terrorism. It also features Miou-Miou as a woman with little to no agency who sticks with the pair for reasons I still find incomprehensible. Though it's not nearly so heavy handed, Going Places sort of works on a similar level to A Clockwork Orangeor maybe Spetters where the charisma and humor of the actors keeps you engaged despite your recognition of how awful their behavior is. There's also a dreamlike quality to the film in sequences that maybe play out more like incredibly taboo fantasies (not that the reality of what's happening is ever seriously questioned by the film) - this is particularly noticeable in the middle sequence featuring a fascinating Jeanne Moreau or a truly disturbing scene involving a young mother on a train. It's also gorgeously shot which isn't any kind of excuse but has to be mentioned. I'm perhaps too easily won over by off-season footage of European resort towns (I blame Jean Rollin). There's a sentiment that the English language title is far too innocuous compared to the French title, Les Valseuses which literally translates to "The Waltzers" but is commonly slang for testicles. I'm not so sure. Blier very explicitly goes places and pushes boundaries in ways that genuinely surprised me. It's totally fair if you agree with Roger Ebert that the film is "the most misogynistic movie (Ebert) can remember" but I find myself sympathetic to Pauline Kael who felt that Going Places addressed sex and sex fantasies directly in an "assured style...with a dreamy sort of displacement." I picked up the Cohen Media Group release of this so maybe the audio commentary can help me make sense of it.
Pulp(1972) - Rather than being a library pick-up, Pulp was a full on library discovery. I usually just grab movies I've put on hold but sometimes I take a moment to browse whatever they have on hand that week. There's usually no shortage of Criterion or Warner Archive discs, but imagine my surprise to stumble over Arrow's release (now OOP) of Cain and Hodges' comedic follow up to Get Carter. I admit I'm surprised by how divisive Pulp seems to be. Aside from the unfortunate boar hunt footage (apparently this was staged, but I'm not sure I'm fully convinced that no boars were harmed) at the end of the film, I felt very much in sync with its hazy blend of slapstick, wry dialogue, and political/social satire. I imagine there's some degree of backlash from Get Carter fans expecting more of the same - Hodges & Caine don't even come close to delivering on that account - instead managing something that bridges the spy/detective farces of the 60s and the stoner inflected neo-noir of the 70s. The cast is incredibly fun and filled with nods to American noir films, the Maltese location footage is stunning, and apparently J.G. Ballard was a huge fan.
Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978) - Hoo boy. Another Blier picture featuring Depardieu and Deweare as two chauvinistic dolts with a complicated and intense friendship. They are not as explicitly sociopathic this time around but it doesn't make the film any easier to relate to. Carole Laure plays Depardieu's dispassionate wife, Solange, who he "offers" to a total stranger (Deweare) in an effort to cheer her up. While this effort fails, both men are clearly devoted to Solange and the unlikely trio take positions running a boys summer camp. Solange finally finds some solace in a brilliant boy who is savagely teased by his fellow campers. Solange's relationship with the boy starts innocently enough but eventually crosses boundaries that are just going to be too much for some viewers. Blier's absolute disregard and lack of understanding of female agency is only matched by his penetrating observations on male stupidity. His films keep shocking me and yet I can't help but laugh at the audaciousness of them. As much as Blier seems to deny interiority to his female characters, he has a terrific eye for actresses. Carole Laure (and Miou-Miou in Going Places) adds some much needed humanity to the work and even if I can't comprehend Solange's choices, I find her fascinating. Pair this one with Heartbreakers for a "Carole Laure navigates a weirdly intense relationship between two dudes" double feature.
Joy House (1964) - I went into René Clément's 1964 thriller almost completely blind. All I knew was that it was a 60s French crime flick starring Alain Delon and Jane Fonda which is everything I needed to know to snag a copy from Kino. Joy House is a simmering, twisty tale of a fugitive (Delon) who enters the employ of a rich widow (Lola Albright) and her ingenue niece (Fonda) while he's hiding out from American gangsters. Of course not everything is as it seems at the mansion as Delon uncovers the widow's intentions, the sexual tension between the three heightens, and the gangsters' pursuit circles ever closer. Seeing as Joy House was released four years after Clément's Purple Noon, it's natural to assume that it would be an equally if not more polished, coastal potboiler featuring beautiful people amongst postcard scenery. Instead, Henri Decaë's black & white photography gives Joy House a much rougher, propulsive look that feels like a throwback to low budget noirs of the previous decade. The lurid plot takes some wild swings which may challenge a viewer's credulity but they also presage the most outrageous 80s erotic thriller narratives. Of course, Joy House isn't very explicit and its eroticism is largely implied - which is for the best as sex scenes between Delon and Fonda would have likely immolated my disc player. If you're willing to exchange gallic cool for pulp thrills (aided in no small part by Lalo Schifrin's smoking score), Joy House totally delivers on that count.
Theatrical Screenings!
I've already written an entire piece devoted to August's screening of Tokyo Pop. Here are a couple of things I still managed to show up for.
The War is Over/La Guerre est Finie(1966) - Caught this at the always delightful Trylon Cinema thanks to a restoration via The Film Desk. Luminous, sensual, filled with overlapping memories and not-quite memories. I liked La Guerre quite a bit but there's no doubting the pace can feel very deliberate. Yves Montand was certainly the best possible choice to play a world-weary revolutionary and the rest of the cast is stellar. Ingrid Thulin and a very young Geneviève Bujold are particularly good as Montand's partner and an aspiring revolutionary, respectively. Sacha Vierny has shot some absolutely stunning films with some of the greatest directors of all time and La Guerre features some fantastic black & white photography. I never tire of Parisian location footage, particularly from the 60s, and La Guerre is bursting with scenes of period street life. The Film Desk is a company that seems to have very suddenly arrived on my radar over the past year, but they've actually been doing their thing since 2008. I'm hoping to snag some of their physical releases soon but definitely appreciate their excellent restoration work.
Hell in the Pacific (1968) - I was very fortunate to attend a special 16mm screening of Boorman's second collaboration with Lee Marvin courtesy of the Cult Film Collective. We watched this one outdoors and the summer sounds of a warm August night actually complimented Marvin and Toshirō Mifune's struggle to survive on an isolated jungle island rather well. I don't adore watching films outside (noise, bugs, light, etc.) but Hell was such a great choice: not a ton of dialogue, plenty of action, and two ridiculously magnetic screen presences battling it out. I've been dying to catch this since re-watching and writing about Point Blank so I couldn't have been happier once the secret was revealed. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you live in/near the Twin Cities, you need to sign up for the CFC. They do great work and they will let you borrow movies. It's the best.
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 luminousHeartbreakers. 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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Tonight at the venerable Trylon Cinema, I was able to make it out to a one-off screening of Tokyo Pop (1988) as part of the monthly Sound Unseen screenings. Directed and co-written by Fran Rubel Kuzui (known better in this corner of the world for directing Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Tokyo Pop is the story of a New York rocker, Wendy, who makes off with her bandmate boyfriend's rent money to seek her musical fortune in Japan when it's clear he'll never elevate her star past backup singer. While she flounders at first, Wendy is able to begin to find her footing - especially after meeting Hiro, a young Japanese musician, who is also seeking success while hoping to maintain his personal and artistic integrity along the way. While Tokyo Pop received critical praise upon release it had fallen into relative obscurity and was only recently restored and re-released thanks in part to contributions from Dolly Parton, The Jane Fonda Women Directors' Fund, and Carol Burnett (mother to Carrie Hamilton who played Wendy in the film).
I suppose the first thing to tackle is the music: there is lots of it and it wasn't always to my taste. Diamond Yukai (who plays Hiro) and Carrie Hamilton perform all of their songs themselves and while both are very capable singers, that doesn't save the somewhat saccharine covers of American pop and rock songs. However, pop music didn't prevent me from being swept up by the romantic energy of the film and in fairness to the characters - they both yearn to perform their own music and resist their newfound success as "not rock n' roll." Both Hamilton and Yukai are incredibly charming, have truly fantastic wardrobes, and I thought their chemistry together worked rather well despite any language barriers. Hamilton gives a standout performance and her physicality - tall with short-cropped peroxide blonde hair - cuts a striking figure against the Tokyo streetscape. Speaking of which, the 99 minute runtime is virtually all spectacular location footage of 80s Japan: arcades, marketplaces, train stations, shrines, love hotels, nightclubs, fishing docks, restaurants, and more are all immaculately captured (Rubel Kuzui was a Tokyo transplant herself and it shows). I have nothing to compare it to, but the restoration looked amazing to my eyes. There's also an element of cultural time-capsule to Tokyo Pop. Though they sadly do not perform - X Japan appears a couple of times in the film. The incident that initially sparks Wendy and Hiro's success takes place behind the scenes at an All Japan Women's wrestling event that features rising stars Bull Nakano and Aja Kong. I also have to make a special note of the appearance of Tetsurô Tamba as agent/record producer Mr. Dota. Though he doesn't have a huge part in the film, his onscreen charisma shines through. Clearly evidence of a massive career starring in everything from historical epics, to pinky violence, to You Only Live Twice(the Trylon will be screening Three Outlaw Samuraiwhich features Tamba early next week).
Kino Lorber Repertory is handling distribution for this restoration of Tokyo Pop and I would highly recommend catching it theatrically if you can. I am also very hopeful that this will see a physical release and find its way to streaming. While this isn't necessarily the kind of film I usually obsess over, I would be genuinely interested in a physical copy - particularly with some robust special features. I found it to be very sweet and I think it serves as a remarkable cultural document. Maybe I could lure unsuspecting friends to a double feature with the somewhat more lurid Death Ride to Osaka or even Lost in Translation which also contains and Diamond Yukai appearance.
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My relationship to online life/social media (such as it is) has always been a bit fraught. I've enthusiastically spent hours posting and engaging with folks who share my interests and values and I've managed to develop some of those relationships into real friendships. At the same time I've found myself retreating from certain avenues of social media for my own sanity. Particularly during the peak of pandemic lockdown, I felt a longing for offline experiences and decided to disengage from some online spaces so I could refocus my priorities. The experience has mostly been a good one and the only reason I mention it here now is because I'm kind of back online in some places both old and new. I rejoined the smoking wreck that is twitter and somewhat more hopefully signed up on bluesky largely to promote this blog but also because that's where other film writers congregate. I feel like you shouldn't have to depend on social media to find and engage with current film criticism and analysis but I was truly missing some of the voices I appreciated when I was originally in the mix.
So I'm back in some respects but I hope with a more balanced perspective. It's good to make your work accessible to people but it's also important to understand that the work is the work, not the social media persona. If you write you need to write, if you make art you need to make art, if you design you put your efforts into designing. Also, while it may not have the same reach as social media I think it's ultimately more rewarding to invest in and participate in your local scene of whatever it is that moves you. My impression is that the people I know with healthier attitudes around social media are also fully plugged into their local communities. The very earliest iteration of what was to become these best new-to-me lists was essentially my attempt to encourage people to go out and experience the amazing slice of film culture we have in this corner of the world. I'm still trying to do that and I hope I am in some way successful.
Earlier this month I attended the Lumières Françaises and wrote a thing about it. I won't reiterate that here but I have broken out my other theatrical experiences below the at-home watches.
Best New-to-Me: July 2023
Heartbreakers(1984) - Kicking things off with yet another knockout release from Fun City Editions. There's a definite 70s European existentialism to this tale of male friendship and maturity but the delivery is pure 80s: Aerobics, Tangerine Dream, and not-exactly Patrick Nagel art abounds. Features some stunning LA location work shot by Michael Ballhaus right before he became Scorsese's go-to cinematographer. I've found myself increasingly fascinated by Peter Coyote, both as a performer and his unconventional road to acting. This is probably my favorite performance from Coyote that I've seen so far.
The Firm (1989) - I was relatively certain I'd seen The Firm before but either that's not the case or it was long enough ago that it felt fresh to me this time around. Furious examination and dissection of toxic masculinity from the always fascinating Alan Clarke by way of a scorching performance from Gary Oldman. Coming in at a lean 70 minutes in no way diminishes the impact which is like a wrench or a sledge to the temple. Absolutely astonishing that this was produced for broadcast television (which is something I think I say about every Clarke production).
Natural Enemies (1979) - I got the impression that Natural Enemies was one of the most enthusiastically received releases from FCE and it certainly garnered a lot of praise from various corners of the internet. Yet, it was actually because of the things people kept saying about it that I hesitated on checking it out. Luckily, my faith in what Jonathan Hertzberg is doing won me over and I finally snagged a copy. It's dark to be sure, and Hal Holbrook's Paul practically smolders with rage and despair, but there's a depth of humanity reflected back at him - not only from Louise Fletcher as his wife but from several of the other incidental characters he encounters on this fateful day. Paul's resistance to them and his resignation makes everything all the more tragic. The subject matter is likely the main hurdle to accessing Natural Enemies but anyone who is a fan of the period owes it to themselves to check this one out. It's a fascinating collection of talent (in front of and behind the camera) and features some tremendous location footage.
The Ernie Game (1968) - I can see how this could be an exasperating watch for some people. The character of Ernie (who does have some kind of undisclosed mental illness) is childish, self-absorbed, chaotic, and even abusive. The women in Ernie's life probably tolerate too much from him and I imagine some viewers will wonder how on earth they can continue to support or enable Ernie's meanderings. Still, I think both Donna and Gail are fascinating in their own right and they do draw boundaries for themselves unlike many of the compelling if frustrating female characterizations in films from the late 60s through the 70s. Character motivations aside, I was totally struck by the late 60s vibes, the sense of place (Montreal), and the focus on street life. I could watch these characters walk along snow covered streets or stumble upon informal Leonard Cohen performances all night. Canadian International Pictures has become one of my absolute favorite labels and the package for Ernie's Game is tremendous. It features several short films from Don Owen including a Leonard Cohen documentary from around this same time.
Another Woman (1988) - Perhaps the most restrained Woody Allen film I've seen to date and that's a tremendous asset when you have a performance as powerful and nuanced as Gena Rowland's is. There's such a depth and emotional complexity that Rowland is able to portray and Allen was mature enough to give her the space to do it. The supporting cast is excellent as well and you get some killer stuff from Blythe Danner, Martha Plimpton, Sandy Dennis, Gene Hackman, and Ian Holm.
Metropolitan (1990) - I can't quite recall what drove me into the arms of Whit Stillman, but I found myself watching all three of his 90s films in July. I actually started with The Last Days of Disco and my favorite while watching it was Barcelona but I feel as though Metropolitan left the most lasting impression of the three. This isn't news to anyone who was paying attention to his films (I definitely was not motivated to see them in the 90s) but there's a real alchemy in taking these chatty, mannered, affluent twits and making likeable if not altogether relatable characters out of them. Stillman takes on young, frequently oblivious subjects and gives them enough outlandish statements, pop culture obsession, and occasional insight that you actually want to spend more time with them. His articulate asshole schtick doesn't change much between the films but I totally want to hang out with Chris Eigeman now.
The Dogs(1979) - I picked up both this and Shock Treatment from Severin's most recent sale making for a total of three Alain Jessua films for me this year (I wrote about Armageddona few months back). Jessua's films are far from perfect but I've found them all really interesting in their own right. My understanding is that his films were popular so he had access to resources and high profile actors. In the case of The Dogs he was able to work with Gérard Depardieu in front of the camera and Étienne Becker behind it. Étienne Becker shot some fantastic looking movies and was the son of Jacques Becker - who besides being a favorite director of mine was one of Jessua's mentors when he was starting his film career. A French film critic mentioned on one of the special features that while Jessua didn't exactly work in science fiction he did work in a sort of adjacent reality to our own. That's such an apt description of The Dogs. There's nothing explicitly fantastic about it but it has such an alien feel to it - in part thanks to being shot in this quasi-brutalist looking Paris suburb. The community featured in the film is recognizable but operates at a heightened pitch of paranoia and there are some genuinely bizarre sequences like when the town meeting is disturbed by the arrival of more and more silent citizens with loudly barking dogs. Depardieu's Morel creates something akin to a cult or a secret society around the dogs which some of the characters become seduced by over the course of the film. I'm not sure the social satire fully coheres but it's still depressingly relevant today. Shock Treatment contains some similar themes exchanging clannish villagers trying to maintain a status quo for wealthy socialites trying to cling to their youth. Alain Delon plays the charismatic doctor who has masterminded the "treatments" he administers for outlandish sums of money. I think these actually make a solid double feature and would recommend all three of Jessua's 70s films if any of this intrigues you.
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) - Finally, finally caught up to this classic and it was every bit the brutal powerhouse I understood it to be. Sydney Pollack's direction palpably conveys the tense physicality of the dance marathon. The "derby" scenes are positively gut-wrenching. The ensemble is incredible. Fonda and York ably demonstrate that they won't be steamrolled or pigeonholed for the next decade. Still, it's Gig Young that absolutely knocked me out. He was recognized for the performance by the Academy but that doesn't convey how wonderfully dark and strange and occasionally touching it is.
God's Country (1985) - I have Brian Sauer of the Pure Cinema Podcast to thank for this last addition to the at-home list. He mentioned it on their recent 80s Missing Pieces episode. I have a seemingly endless appetite for public television documentaries from around this period but how have I missed one from Louis Malle featuring a small town only a couple hours away from where I am now? It's difficult for me not to compare Malle's film to Middletown which I watched earlier this year or possibly some of Les Blank's films. Malle actually appears on camera occasionally which is different from those but he still offers a similar look at daily life in an environment both familiar to me and one that doesn't necessarily exist in the same way any longer. I was totally absorbed by the stories from the people he met and loved hearing their observations on everything from gardening to economics. Highly recommended if you are a fellow Midwesterner or grew up around farming.
Theatrical Screenings!
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) - Caught this with the in-laws on Independence Day. It was entertaining enough though I can't help but feel like they should have used fewer animated effects and more real planes, trains, motorcycles, etc. Something about Indiana Jones cries out for the physical world.
Cría cuervos… (1976) - It's Geraldine Chaplin's birthday as I write this (7/31) and it was an absolute joy to watch her in one of her many collaborations with Carlos Saura in a theater on 35mm film, no less. This is only my third Saura film having seen his entry into the quinqui genre Deprisa Deprisa and an earlier film he directed with Chaplin: Peppermint Frappe. Many of the reviews I read regarding Cria make it out to be this unrelentingly brutal depiction of childhood trauma but that wasn't my experience with it. The texture of the film is much richer than that and what makes it such an exceptional picture is how it weaves melancholy and trauma with moments of levity and humanity. I don't mean to say it won't be deeply affecting but it didn't psychically assault me or anything. Chaplin is entirely magnetic per usually and the haunted visage of Ana Torrent - a wide eyed witness to all manner of adult behavior - leaves an indelible impression. Also worth mentioning that Saura seems to have a real relationship with pop music in his films and Porque te vas? by Jeanette has been in heavy rotation after seeing this.
Hard Ticket to Hawaii(1987) - Screened as part of the Genre Brain Melt series at Emagine Willow Creek. I dragged my poor buddy Stuart to this because that's the kind of pal I am. I'd seen it before but Andy Sidaris' epic of boobs, bazookas, and questionable snake puppets really needs to be seen with an audience for the complete experience. I had an absolute blast and Stuart hasn't yet blocked me on social media so I feel as though our relationship is intact.
The Conformist(1970) - I first saw pieces of The Conformist in the absolutely essential documentary Visions of Light twenty odd years ago and was totally entranced by it. Since then, I've managed to see it a few times in varying states of quality and it's a film the reveals itself in different ways with each viewing. Seeing the 2022 restoration at The Trylon was definitely the best version I've ever watched and it's every bit as engrossing now as it was the first time. An unflinching portrait of fascist collaboration and a masterclass in cinematic language. Do not miss a chance to see it if you get one.
Past Lives(2023) - The praise for Celine Song's debut feature has been practically universal so I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I finally sat down for it. I found myself almost instantly charmed. The filming appears relatively low-key (though I wonder how it will look upon revisiting it) but the performances are so beautifully delivered, so delicately evocative. I couldn't take my eyes off of Greta Lee's largely subtle and occasionally expansive facial expressions and I loved that Song was willing to be patient and let the camera dwell on her. Past Lives is a great addition to the canon of New York movies as well. I'm sure the argument could be made that you could wait for streaming to catch this, but I'd say go snag a viewing if you still can. Take someone you like, go talk about it afterwards, you can thank me later.
