Review of The Saragossa Manuscript

Stumbling upon Wojciech Has’s “The Saragossa Manuscript” (1965) this past weekend (much like the protagonist’s do) was one of those happy accidents that confirms ones faith in trying new things. There is nothing quite like this eclectic Polish art film and yet it fits neatly into the development of modern cinema. It takes its influence from “1001 Arabian Nights” and H. P. Lovecraft (the source novel, however, was written by Jan Potocki long before Lovecraft) and paved the way for the elliptical structures in films by Bunuel and Lynch (“Mulholland Drive” and “Inland Empire” both owe a great debt).

“The Saragossa Manuscript” takes place in Spain, where a soldier seeks refuge in an abandoned house. There he discovers the hefty manuscript from which the story takes its name. So enthralled is he with the illustrations (which include a lobster and lesbians on opposing pages) that he begins to read the book even as cannon fire shakes debris from the roof and the enemy surrounds his position. He is joined by another soldier who declares that one of the stories is about his grandfather. He starts to read it aloud.

We transition into the life of Alphonse van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski) a newly appointed captain in the Walloon Guard. He is riding with two gypsy servants through the Sierra Morena Mountains to accept the assignment. Warnings that evil spirits stalk the area fail to breach his brio and he decides to spend the night on haunted ground.

[Image: Alphonse being brave and thirsty.]

When his men run off and his food runs short, he takes shelter in a rundown inn. There he is invited to feast with a pair of beautiful Muslim sisters. They inform him that he belongs to their lineage on his mother’s side and that they desire to marry him to preserve the pure bloodline. Alphonse’s Catholic faith wanes quickly at the prospects of wealth and a threesome.

[Image: Zoom in to ogle the sisters’ enormous earings.]

When he wakes up, he is lying near the hanging corpses of two criminals in a field of skulls and destruction. Was it all a dream? As the events begin to repeat themselves in a new variation, Alphonse tries to maintain his courage. Later, when he tries to escape the area, he is captured by the Spanish Inquisition. Will he be ensnared forever within the curse of that benighted land?

From this minimal introduction, one can not grasp the scope and depth of “The Saragossa Manuscript.” Alphonse’s enigmatic dilemma (is he trapped within a nightmarish scheme by some twisted conspiracy, or within an actual nightmare, or within a dream of a nightmare?) is just the tip of the iceberg. The elliptical plot digresses down multiple paths, creating a dense network of vaguely interconnected stories that branch into other adventures.

By my count, there were two regular flashbacks, two double-nested flashbacks, three triple-nested flashbacks, two quadruple-nested flashbacks and even a quintuple-nested flashback. That’s not even including returns to previously interrupted flashbacks or ones that wind around and meet back into each other. One of the DVD editions comes with a structure diagram to keep track of the plots, something which I found myself recreating to organize my notes. Characters who appear to be the main protagonist fade into framing devices as they tell or listen to some new yarn. Director Has scales up and down the web, sometimes to help us out, or to expand on a theme or to stitch a loose end into the grand tapestry or sometimes just to make things more confusing.

Throughout the movie, the titular tome makes many appearances (despite the fact that the unfolding events are supposedly a part of its long-winded script) and it lurks in the mise-en-scene like a ghostly presence. Perhaps it is the very specter that haunts Alphonse. At one point, the Walloon guardsman almost spoils his own ending by reading its pages and in another instance he is allowed to write in it.

[Image: A scheming Cabalist reprimands his sister for nearly ruining the finale by leaving the book (in which he is currently a character) lying in the open.]

Further complicating the narrative game at play is the asymmetrical configuration. Character’s adventures first take over and dominate our attention solely, but gradually they lose control of their adventure and later appear only irregularly. Some tales conclude neatly while others are left hanging or kept ambiguous. In fact, the soldiers who originally open the book are as trapped as anyone else, since they are locked into reading the subsequent stories and never revisited. And what are we to think about the soldier’s introductory claim that “This story is about my grandfather, Alphonse” considering the way Alphonse’s story ends?

Complimenting this intricate design are visual compositions equally based around depth and layers. Has must have grown up with a strict father who often admonished him frequently, “Young Wojciech, even if you are filming a sprawling landscape, always keep something in the foreground to balance the shot.” The effect helps keep the film visually interesting, aided by Mieczyslaw Jahoda’s crisp B/W cinematography and a restless, wandering camera that seems to glide effortlessly through the interconnected tales.

At exactly three hours in length, this elaborate Polish experiment should be terribly boring, but it’s not. Each of the sub-stories is entertaining in its own right with enough meta material to merit tying them all together. Without seeming uneven or erratic, the film manages to encompass horrific, gothic, romantic, mystic, comic and erotic elements. There are even a couple buckles swashed. I think that given the motifs of death, conspiracy and the supernatural that the film could best be called fantasy-horror, but the genre boundaries are never very clear.

Ultimately “The Saragossa Manuscript” is one of those avant-garde puzzle box films that I’m extremely fond of, but also a bold, unabashed celebration of the storytelling art. Many people will give up within the first third of the film, but others will stick it all the way through, alternating between clapping their hands and scratching their skulls.

Walrus Rating: 9.5

Iceberg Arena: Celestial Entranceways

Technically speaking, there is very little in common between the content of “Heaven’s Gate” (1980) and “Gates of Heaven” (1980). The first is a big-budget western epic with a now-famous cast and the latter is a low-budget documentary about the relocation of a pet cemetery. The fact that the two movies bear similar names and were released exactly a month apart (Nov. 19 and Oct. 19 respectively) must be regarded as pure coincidence, but it is upon this coincidence that I am basing today’s Iceberg Arena comparison.

If I put in my mental aerobics tapes and do some serious stretching, I suppose I can come up with some other commonalities. The films were both landmarks in important auteur careers and changed perceptions about the role of directors and the viability of their respective genres. Both movies performed unexpectedly at the box office, but came into their own on the small screen.

Gates of Heaven:

“Gates of Heaven” (1980) marked the feature debut of director Errol Morris, now widely regarded as one of the greatest working documentary makers after such brilliant works as “The Thin Blue Line” (1988) and “The Fog of War” (2003). As an amusing side-story, prior to completing this movie Errol Morris had made the acquaintance of Werner Herzog. The German director stated that if Morris ever finished a film, he’d eat his shoe. Les Blank’s documentary short “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe” shows Herzog true to his word (an authorized torrent is available here under "les blank").

The inspiration for this film was a headline Morris came across: “450 Dead Pets Going To Napa Valley.” Morris traveled to the city and began shooting footage about the current presence and the possible relocation of a California pet cemetery. Morris’s choice of topic and approach were groundbreaking at the time. He took a rather apolitical, unspectacular suburban story and delves into it through a process of interviewing that often strays, digresses and travels tangentially to the main “scoop.”

What fascinates Morris is clearly not the topic itself so much as the people involved. Their inoffensive quirks, personal reactions and often comical idiosyncrasies become the focus of a humanist odyssey into the relationships between mankind and their domestic animals. Extensive interviews introduce us to the owner of the pet cemetery, a competitor who “reprocesses” animal corpses, a developer who wants the property, vets, taxidermists and the many pet owners who share their loneliness and happiness; their obsessions, dreams and eccentricities.

At 85 minutes, the film runs fairly lean, with Morris able to pick and choose from a vast repository of interview footage. His approach isn’t always much to look at, but his honed editing, keen observation of human interest and natural humor and the somewhat stream-of-conscious all-over pursuit of whatever seemed interesting to follow up on, established Morris as documentary auteur. His film, without particularly compromising that bare minimum of integrity the subject warranted, threw out the detached elitism of classical documentaries and ushered in an era of adventuring free-wheeling directors who found exotic subcultures without needing to travel to Africa or South America. Michael Moore’s “Roger and Me” (1989) owed a clear debt, adapting the approach into the idea of the director as muck-raking star.

Heaven’s Gate:

Michael Cimino became a household name after the success of his Vietnam war/homecoming tale of friendship, love, suffering and disillusionment: “The Deer Hunter” (1978). The 1970’s had continued building on the indie success of films like “Easy Rider” (1969) and the concept of the auteur director with complete artistic control was reaching a peak. Cimino had long harbored a desire to shoot an ambition western based around the Johnson County War in Wyoming and United Artists agreed to fund the project for the newly “hot” director to the tune of $11.6 million. 40 million dollars and 220 hours of celluloid later, Cimino completed his epic (numbers according to wikipedia).

The nearly four hour original cut featured Kris Kristofferson as James Averill, a Harvard graduate who becomes the sheriff of a Wyoming county cracking along an economic divide. Dirt-poor immigrants fill the street and are forced to steal cattle for food from the rich land barons (led by a young Sam Waterston) who all but control the region. The Stock Growers Association (as they call themselves) hires out-of-town killers including Nathan Champion (Christopher Walken, also young) to kill some 125 immigrants that they deem to be criminals or anarchists. Hours pass before the movie gets to the real action, and Averill and Nathan pass the time by fighting for the love of a kindly whorehouse owner, Ella Watson (Isabella Huppert).

Vilmos Zsigmond helps carry the film with some fantastic cinematography. The rich, golden sunset hues give the film a rustic tone and the audience is literally swept through the enormous authentically-recreated city by the craning camera work and ever-swirling gusts of dust, dirt, steam and smoke. The art department nails the look and feel of the 1890’s burgeoning frontier town with a sense of population mass and attention to detail missing from run-of-the-mill western productions.

Despite the cohesive visual design and historical fidelity, much of the plot and character core fails to attract interest. The lead three (Kristofferson, Walken and Huppert) are quite passable, if not particularly charismatic or memorable, but the minor cast is packed with flat, uninteresting roles. Though they hardly lack for screen-time, Cimino’s script seems to treat the cast like minor chess pieces, to be moved about like props and disposed of in empty gambits at emotional reaction. Often they speak only their foreign language (with no subtitled translation) and they spend most of the film being loud and ignorant. It is hard to believe that we are expected to sympathize with the immigrants when we see them spending their time gambling on cock fights and engaging in illegal activity (granted they don’t deserve to be murdered but they shouldn’t be stealing either). In the worst of the three final battles, they are shown to be utterly incompetent and even suicidal, circling around the exposed enemy without actually firing back.

There are two other battles at the end of the film that are significantly better. They serve as a belated reward for anyone still watching and awake. The siege of a meager log cabin by an army of gunslingers is particularly strong, with the editing set to a strict metronome. The jarring visual, aural and temporal disparities highlight the abruptness and madness of the chaotic violence. The technique is used again in the final showdown, diving in and out of the combat to convey the grit and trauma of the local “war.” These scenes function like a western-era “Apocalypse Now” complete with the alienation, disillusionment, political overtones and unglamorous portrayals of the participants.

Ultimately, the monochromatic yellow-brown of the film and the grandiose composure of the picture wears out its welcome and then some. Cimino’s lingers about his ho-hums scenes in a way that all too clearly reveals his self-indulgent pride for every frame. Twenty minutes hunks go by with nothing really happening and enough extraneous material is left in to create an entire film of its own (perhaps, “Heaven’s Gate: The Masochist’s Cut”). The producers sensed this and cut 70 minutes for the theatrical release. It’s really hard to blame them. Accusations that the film was a bloated disaster can only be refuted by taking refuge behind the camera techniques and soundtrack.

After dismal box office returns (breaking the current record for loss), United Artists was on the rocks and ended up being sold to MGM. Although many other factors were involved, blame is piled on the film for ending the age of auteur directors with unlimited creative control. Michael Cimino was unofficially blacklisted along with the entire genre of westerns, which were all but abandoned for the next decade (until Costner’s “Dances with Wolves” in 1990). In the mid 80’s Channel Z aired Cimino’s 226 minute version (coining the term and concept of the “Director’s Cut”) to critical acclaim (a complete turnaround).

I tend to consider everyone to be partially in the right. Cimino really did have a breathtaking vision and driving ambition. The producers correctly assessed the project as too expensive, long and unwieldy. The critics in 1980 were right to attack the opulent waste and excruciating tempo. The critics in 1985 were right to claim that it wasn’t as bad as the initial reaction implied. The truth at the heart of it all is that “Heaven’s Gate” is just an inflated, mediocre film whose essential dynamics and message are delivered better by any number of films (say, “The Great Silence” (1968)). The sad truth is that even if it isn’t a complete disaster, who has time to drop almost four hours on a mediocre movie?

Conclusion:

Although our competitors look a little like David and Goliath, the outcome is hardly in question. Errol Morris’s little pet project (heh) “The Gates of Heaven” is easily the superior film, with its witty and winning immersion in the minutia of suburban eccentricities. Meanwhile, Michael Cimino’s pet project is a thrashing yeti with matted fur and a weight problem. Maybe when it dies it can be buried in Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park.

Review of The Face of Another

[Images: Yes, those are casts of ears in the background.]

Sadly, Hiroshi Teshigahara, is not a household name in the US or even in his native Japan. It isn’t a name that particularly rolls off the tongue, but I’m going to try and say it aloud more often in the hopes that he’ll get more recognition. Teshigahara was a Japanese avant-garde director who plied his trade during the rising Japanese New Wave, alongside such better known names as Nagisa Oshima, Shohei Imamura and Seijun Suzuki. His career was not particularly long or productive, but it did result in several intellectual and artistic oddities well worth a look.

I first became aware of Teshigahara when a 35mm print of his masterpiece, “Woman in the Dunes” (1964) played in my hometown during high school. I didn’t go see it, but I remember thinking it sounded interesting. Years later, I checked out a tattered VHS copy from a library and was simply amazed. In the film, an urban everyman finds himself trapped in a hut at the bottom of a sand pit with a mysterious native woman. The story is simple, but profound and powerful both as a literal and metaphoric idea. It could be described as erotic existentialism, and it unquestionably the best film ever made about sand. Including the book by Kobo Abe, it ranks with the contributions by Sartre and Camus as one of Existentialism great masterworks. It is also one of my favorite films.

Finding this or any other film by Teshigahara was formerly quite difficult. A box set was released in Japan a few years back, but there has not been a US DVD released. That is, until now. Criterion’s new box set (part of a banner month in July) is a must own item for lovers of Japanese cinema. It includes three collaborations between Teshigahara and Abe from their early careers including “Woman in the Dunes.” I was a little nervous about seeing “The Face of Another” (1966), because my expectations were so high. Teshigahara, however, does not disappoint.

“The Face of Another” is science-fiction, although what makes it an eye-opening experience isn’t imaginative ideas or special effects. Rather, the film exists within a surreal, psychological dreamscape that feels both alienating and timelessly relevant. It takes place in its own present day (1966) and reveals a fear of the growing phenomenon that was ‘changing the face of the world’ at that time: cosmetic surgery.

Mr. Okuyama is an engineer who has lost his face in an accident that takes place before the film begins. In the opening scene, he delivers a monologue about his injury while behind an X-ray screen. A series of uncomfortable close-ups show us only his jaw bone moving up and down as he speaks.

We next see Okuyama in his home, his face wrapped like a mummy’s in layers of bandage. Though he is almost always squarely in our sites, he doesn't squirm away from the role of a difficult and dislikable enigma. Despite his injury and traumatic experience, not to mention his physical loss and permanent stigma, he makes himself immediately unsympathetic. Though he is tormented on the inside, he can not overcome his self-loathing and cynicism and lashes out with emotional sadism. He wields his disfigurement like a weapon against his wife and boss and every stranger he meets in the street.

The aggressive, confrontational behavior of the protagonist is a wonderfully fresh and convincing performance. Actor Tatsuya Nakadai spits out every line of bitter poison through the side of his crooked lips and acts like he is anesthetizing his own physical and psychological wounds by inflicting pains upon others. In Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” (1952) Kanji Watanabe uses social awkwardness to make a positive difference in the world. Mr. Okuyama, by contrast, uses it for selfish cruelty.

Okuyama falls under the spell of his nameless psychiatrist, a man who has coincidently developed a method for creating a realistic face from a special form of plastic that looks like silly putty. The doctor suggests that Okuyama become his first patient and eventually Okuyama agrees. It is clear from the outset that the doctor is more interested in the psychological effects than the medical, and he delivers long, heady discussions about the freedom and power of disguise and anonymity.

[Images: Mr. Okuyama contemplates the reconstruction of his face.]

The two men select a down-and-out average-looking man and offer him a generous fee for permission to make a cast of his face. In the man’s nervous reaction to the idea and the doctor’s ominous reassurances, one can feel the danger in the air. Soon the surgery is completed without a hitch and Mr. Okuyama’s wears a “human mask” indistinguishable from the real thing.

[Images: Facial hair is applied as the final step to disrupt the artificial smoothness of the plastic and establish total realism.]

Just as the doctor predicts, Okuyama’s identity is quickly subsumed by the power of the mask. He buys a new apartment and begins to lead two lives. He's disturbed by a yo-yo obsessed mentally handicapped girl who can identify him by smell (she lacks the high cognitive functions for facial recognition), but otherwise he relishes the freedom.

In gradual increments, however, Okuyama begins to lose touch with reality. With the anchor of identity cut loose, he drifts into immorality and insanity. His sick mind begins to formulate a master plan: to seduce his own wife. When he succeeds, and far too easily, he goes on a rampage. Deprived of contentment, he wonders through the streets with his doctor/psychiatrist/mentor and experiences a terrible vision of a faceless, soulless world.

The idea behind “The Face of Another” is not particularly new or groundbreaking. The film was clearly influenced by “The Invisible Man” (1933) and Franju’s “Eyes without a Face” (1960) and the themes would later be watered down and used for comic effect in the Jim Carrey vehicle “The Mask” (1994). If anything should deaden the shock and gravitas of the film, it would be the fact that cosmetic and reconstructive facial surgery are now commonplace in our society.

However, Teshigahara’s film still remains effective and troubling today. The reason lies in how the director chooses to present his story and the depth to which he is willing to explore the topic. Like much of great science fiction, the interest lies less in the inventions themselves than in their consequences. Abe (as the screenwriter) questions whether the face is really just the skin and hair of physical appearance, and implies that our personality is far more fragile than we’d like to admit. The film starts our dark and dims the lights until the dystopic finale. One can feel Okuyama’s mind caving in on him like the encroaching darkness of a fading candle; the mask entombing and smothering his psyche even as it opens up a whole new world to him.

[Image: Two of the psychiatrist’s patients: (top) resting on a giant ear and (bottom) experiencing a hallucinatory vertigo.]

Audiences would be hard-pressed to miss the Faustian overtones of Okuyama’s relationship with his doctor. The crafty psychiatrist is always whispering in Okuyama’s ear (e.g. "Yield to the mask. Accept it!") and ultimately sells him a second life (of sorts) at the cost of his already-vulnerable soul. In the pessimistic final scene, Okuyama seems hypnotized by the overwhelming clash of infinite freedom and inescapable fate. He makes the only decision available to an existential character in the confrontation between ‘god’ (or in this case, the devil) and its creation.

Like the X-ray from the opening seen, every thematic nuance is exposed directly to the viewer. The film is so talkative that the screenplay would read like a philosophical treatise more than a pulp novel. Okuyama and his doctor spontaneously offer surprisingly poetic and dramatic comments on their situation: "I want to extinguish every light in the world and gouge out every eye," "Loneliness and friendship will bleed into each other," "I have so many selves [that] I can't contain them all," and so forth.

To some this will be unbearably pretentious and alienating. Even art house regulars may find that the lack of subtly goes hand in hand with a paucity of charm. The up side is that Abe gives us more than enough to contemplate, bringing complexity to a subject that might have seemed trite and mining fear and horror out of what could have been mundane.

The film would not be nearly as mesmerizing without Teshigahara’s virtuoso visual style. His rigorous formalism and ultra-modernist B/W aesthetic have few comparisons except, perhaps, Imamura’s brilliant “The Pornographers” from the same year. The film uses bold contrasts of harsh solid fields and intricate patterns, often within the same frames (see the first screenshot in this review for a good example). There is a conspicuous precision to which spaces are bare and which busy. The division of the screen is made even more pronounced by the frequent use of strong lines in often unusual configurations and occasional oblique angles.

[Images: (top) The doctor’s office/lab with it’s curiously blank wall. Note the way that the line between floor and wall is blurred so that other horizontals and verticals dominate the arrangement. As an interesting side note (loaded with foreshadowing), the door in the rear left is indeed opening up unto a close-up of a woman’s hair washing onto a beach. (middle) An isosceles triangle staircase? (bottom) Okuyama’s bandages hanging to dry on clothesline. They fragment the screen (and, symbolically, his wife) in a clever manner. A lesser director would have tried to accomplish the same effect with a clichéd “shattered mirror” reflection.]

The sets evince the internal desolation of the characters, and have a structured emptiness that encompasses both the depopulated exteriors and minimalist interiors. The artificial atmosphere is used for shameless artiness and it makes the viewer quite conscious of the filmmaker’s hand. Teshigahara uses a preponderance of extreme close-ups and extreme long shots (more the former than the latter), to make the focus of scenes undeniable while still depriving the viewer of sure footing.

[Images: Our protagonist, disguised as a stranger, pursues and seduces his wife in a scene as devoid of emotions and humanity as these shots imply.]

Part of Teshigahara and Abe’s brilliance is the way they bear out their themes with impeccable detail and coverage and yet somehow deny us access to the individual elements. We never see Mr. Okuyama’s original face. We don’t get to know for sure if his wife is faithful. The doctor’s personal life and long-term goals are unrevealed. The dialog at first seems to be an explicit entrance into understanding, but ultimately it is so academic in nature that the real motivations and emotions are hopelessly obscured. Though this strategy of presentation is often quite compelling, it also means that the film is more of a message, a warning, than a fully-fleshed narrative.

Teshigahara expands the range and implications of what would otherwise be a fairly simple and straightforward message by creating a parallel story to Okuyama’s own. It is given only a fraction as much screen time, but is almost equally as fascinating. The second story follows a beautiful young girl with a disfiguring burn (presumably the result of exposure to the atomic bomb) covering one half of her face. She goes about her daily life, suffering the indignities of men (including her mentally handicapped father) who are both attracted and repelled by her. She has a close and possibly incestuous relationship with her brother. [SPOILERS here to end of paragraph] At the end of her subplot she drowns herself in the sea. Her brother witnesses her demise and stabbed by a lance of light that transforms his anguished form into a flayed bull.

[Images: I’m not even going to try and explain this one.]

As further food for thought, one can spot plenty of strong hints at a political dimension. The facial reconstruction at the heart of the plot may be a metaphor for post-war reconstruction and degradation of personal identity may be a stand in for the loss of cultural identity in a rapidly modernizing Japan. I’ll leave those themes to be addressed by those who have read Abe’s book (I plan to eventually!).

“The Face of Another” is far from straight horror or sci-fi, but it has enough of both to qualify (it is both stimulating and chilling) and to be interesting to (extremely) open-minded genre enthusiasts. I’m certain it will have much more appeal to fans or art house experimentation, ultra-modernist composition and Japanese 1960’s weirdness.

Walrus Rating: 8

And if you liked "A Face of Another" there's no reason to stop there. By all means check out "Woman in the Dunes" or "Pitfall" as well. Both are, in my opinion, superior even to this fine work. I consider the DVD box set to be one of the best releases this year.

Guide Post

This guide post (yay, pun…) is nothing more than a series of links to help organize the Film Walrus. All of the content can be found by browsing through the archives, but this provides some context and structure.

About this Blog

First off, a quick introduction: I am your host, the Film Walrus. I’m a St. Louis computer science engineer with a background in, and obsession with, film studies. If you want to know a little bit more about me and this blog, here are some good places to start:

The First Post

How do I review?: Some insight into my opinions and predjudices. If you are interested in meta-criticism, check out Who Will Review the Reviewers.

Personal Life: Miscellaneous posts that (often loosely) relate to myself.

Czech Films: I wasn't actually born there and I don't speak the language, but the Czech Republic is the part of my cultural heritage that I savor most. Their largely-overlooked film tradition is absolutely amazing.

Content (Reviews!)

The heart of this site is the many reviews. You can use the labels on the left to search by country or genre.

All Reviews

Reviews with Screenshots: Hey, who doesn’t prefer skimming through the pictures?

Recommended Viewing: These are reviews of films that I rated an 8.5 out of 10 or higher. I also have a completely unmaintained top 100 favorites.

Rants and Ravings: These include free-form Shameless Rants and vehement, usually negative, reviews.

Essays: These are the denser reviews that get a little headier and often involve me whipping out 20 cent film terms and theoretical mumbo-jumbo. If you’d rather see only shorter reviews, try The Hall of Strangeness (more details in the next section).

Lists: Top 10 lists and top 100 lists (and all sorts of other less-round numbers) ranked by me with various criteria.

Humor: My most popular posts tend to be the ones I write when I get sick of either watching bad movies or writing serious essays or both.

Special Series

These are long or reoccurring series or sometimes just areas I’m especially interested in.

Film Atlas: An ongoing series in which I review a favorite film from well over 100 countries! Start with the introduction or use the index of countries here.

Italian Horror Series: This is primarily focused on gialli, a brand of Italian horror films to which I’ve dedicated this site. See the next section for more details.

The Hall of Strangeness: Short capsule reviews (usually a single paragraph) on bizarre or forgotten gems. These are posted in sets of five, in alphabetic order. They are rated from 1 to 5 in terms of fun, artistry and strangeness. See the first set here.

Japanese Directorial History: A brief overview of cinema in Japan with an auteur perspective.

Noir Marathon: This link will get you to all the film noir related material I’ve posted. As a special series I put out eight top 10 noir lists (with categories like best villain and best ending) and a top 100 list (always changing).

Iceberg Arena: These are longish comparison pieces between two or more films that I deem similar in some way. These include:

Olympics documentaries (Olympia Parts I and II vs Tokyo Olympiad)
The five adaptations of ‘Dangerous Liasons’ (Les Liaisons Dangereuses vs Dangerous Liaisons vs Valmont vs Untold Scandal vs Cruel Intentions)
Foreign rip-offs of “Star Wars” (Turkish Star Wars vs Star Crash)
Cheesy Rutger Hauer B-movies (Omega Doom vs Blind Fury)
Fake British documentaries about the apocalypse (War Game vs Threads)
Johnny To action films (Running Out of Time vs Breaking News)
Materialistic mid-90’s family fodder (Blank Check vs Richie Rich)
Similar sounding titles from the autumn of 1980 (Heaven's Gate vs Gates of Heaven)
Hollywood depictions of mutiny (Mutiny on the Bounty vs The Caine Mutiny)
Cult Soviet sci-fi (Aelita: The Queen of Mars vs Solaris vs Kin-Dza-Dza)
Gradiose WWI aerial adventures (Hell's Angels vs Wings)
Feminist vigilante vengeance (Ms 45 vs Bang vs The Brave One)
Death and destruction on wheels (The Cars That Ate Paris vs Death Race 2000)
British sci-fi of the 1950's (The Man in the White Suit vs The Four Sided Triangle vs The Quatermass Xperiment)
Czech sci-fi (Ikarie XB-1 vs The End of August at the Hotel Ozone vs Dinner for Adele)
Ant Attacks (Them! vs Phase IV vs Empire of the Ants)

Time-travelling Czech comedies (Journey to the Beginning of Time vs I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen vs Tomorrow I Will Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea)

Ridiculous Japanese monster movies (Dogora the Space Monster vs Frankenstein Conquers the World vs Godzilla versus Biollante)

Unofficial Pinocchio Sequels (Pinocchio in Outer Space vs Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night)

Animated films about cats (too many list!)

The worst sci-fi muscial? (Toomorrow vs Space Is the Place vs The Apple vs Electroma)

Vampire movies: Including a week-long countdown of my top 35 vampire movies leading up to the Halloween of 2007.

Poor Little Animated Shorts: A month-long series reviewing ~40 animated shorts covering as much ground as I could. Includes classical cartoons, non-narrative experiments, stop-motion, modern CG and more.

The St. Louis Film Scene (where I'm currently living) including coverage of SLIFF (The St. Louis International Film Festival).

Italian Horror

Italian horror movies are probably my favorite subgenre (along with the Czech New Wave). Watching them has turned into a passionate obsession and writing about them has evolved into a beloved hobby. Many of the links that you can find on the right are to other sites that share my love for Italian genre flicks.

For an introduction to Italian horror, particularly the giallo, start here.

Below are the individual giallo reviews I have written so far, listed alphabetically by their generally-accepted English titles. Last updated 01/16/10.

All the Colors of Darkness
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
The Black Belly of the Tarantula
A Blade in the Dark
The Bloodstained Shadow
The Card Player
The Case of the Bloody Iris
The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail
Death Walks at Midnight
Death Walks on High Heels
Demons
Fives Dolls for the August Moon
Footprints on the Moon
Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion

Four Flies on Grey Velvet
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
House by the Cemetery

House with the Yellow Carpet
Inferno
The Killer Must Kill Again
The Killer Nun
A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin
Perversion Story
The Pyjama Girl Case
The Red Queen Kills Seven Times
Seven Blood-Stained Orchids
Short Night of the Glass Dolls
Spasmo
Strip Nude for Your Killer

Hall of Strangeness Part XIX

Ms. 45 – (Abel Ferrara) After Thana, a shy, mute working girl in a bad part of New York City (this is Ferrera after all) gets raped, she becomes nearly catatonic with trauma. When she is raped a second times, she turns the tables. With a murder under her belt and a .45 under her skirt, she is transformed into an extroverted killer who hunts the slime of the street. Her gradual conversion leads to ever more questionable purges, until she dons a nun outfit and goes on a man-hating killing spree. Gritty exploitation collides with some sort of twisted feminist extremism in this deliciously high-casualty car crash.
Artistry: * Fun: ** Strangeness: ***

Mr. Vampire – (Ricky Lau) Considered the greatest of the “Hopping Vampire” Hong Kong sub-genre, that earns its name from the Chinese vampire myth that assumes even living corpses must deal with rigor mortis. The combination of martial arts, slapstick comedy and Asian horror conventions is bound to entertain just about everyone.
Artistry: ** Fun: ***** Strangeness: ***

Mulholland Dr – (David Lynch) A beautiful amnesiac escapes an assassination and takes up a room with a painfully naïve struggling actress in a Hollywood apartment. They become friends and attempt to piece together the fugitive’s identity while trying to land a role, but many mysterious events intervene. Tons of signature Lynch logic, elliptical twists and a compelling half-glamour/half-pulp atmosphere. Several critics consider this to be the best film of the 21st century so far.
Artistry: ***** Fun: **** Strangeness: *****

My Name is Nobody – (Tonino Valerii) Terence Hill is “Nobody,” in this comedic spaghetti western from a parallel reality of pure revisionist excess. Nobody is a roguish cowboy who hero-worships aging outlaw legend Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda), a man who once survived a duel outnumbered seven to one. Beauregard has long since grown tired of life in the limelight and has booked a reservation on a boat to Europe, but Nobody is obsessed with the idea of engraving his idol in the annals of history. His plan? To arrange a final battle in the desert wasteland with Beauregard facing down 150 gunslingers simultaneously! One of the most preposterous and entertaining westerns of all time with a brilliant final fifteen minutes and a semi-satiric score by Ennio Morricone.
Artistry: *** Fun: ***** Strangeness: ****

Myra Breckinridge – (Michael Sarne) With a transvestite protagonist played by Raquel Welch, a legendary production struggle and an unfair critical notoriety, it isn’t surprising to find that Myra Breckinridge has been consigned to cultdom, but it truly deserves a wider counter-culture appreciation. Insert shots from old 20th Century Fox 30’s and 40’s films liven up the already outrageous barrage of surreal sequences and riffs on sexual politics.
Artistry: *** Fun: **** Strangeness: *****

Review of Spasmo

A young couple goes frolicking in the woods late at night. The man leans into a nearby parked car and asks for light. We don’t see the driver, but a dark gloved hand extends a lighter from behind the camera and obliges the young lover. Ominous music plays as the couple heads to some secluded ruins and begins to make out. You don’t have to be a fan of gialli, to know what will happen next.

But “Spasmo” (1974), by prolific Italian director Umberto Lenzi (“Seven Blood Stained Orchids” and many others) has a quiver full of wrenches to throw into what should have been a very run of the mill film. For starters, the opening doesn’t go quite where you’d expect. As the couple starts kissing like it was going out of style, the audience notices a pair of feet dangling in midair behind them. Soon, the girl takes notice of the hanging corpse and cries out. When the man goes to investigate, he discovers that it is only a doll. As he stares in confusion, the car down by the road squeals off.

This unusual prologue is enough to get a horror fan intrigued, and I settled down for an experience that I suspected would be even more bizarre than the average giallo. Unfortunately, the next hour was a little flat. Lenzi turns the early curveball into a narrative philosophy, and spends the first two thirds of the movie making things ever more confusing.

Our protagonist is a handsome 70’s beefcake named Christian Bauman. When we meet him, he is showing his girlfriend an unremarkable beachside locale where he and his brother Fritz once found a dead dog when they were young. Christian explains that since the death of their father as children, they have been very close. We later find out that Christian is also quite rich, being the co-heir of a factory in the industry of “plastics” (delivers with the same vague reverence as in “The Graduate” (1967)).

His girlfriend spots the corpse of a woman on the beachside and the couple runs down for a closer look. Lenzi has the audience expecting another doll (he has just used this formula before the opening credits), but instead we discover that it is indeed a real girl. She isn’t even dead, but given her level of acting talent, she might as well have been. The woman is Barbara, a mysterious blonde who claims to have fainted and is shocked to find anyone would think she was dead. Christian mentions that it must have been the power of suggestion (he had just been talking about his dead dog), but I think it was the fact that she was sprawled face down and perfectly still in the middle of a stretch of barren sand.

[Image: Suzy Kendall as Barbara, whose terrible dub reminded me a bit like Helena Bonham Carter voicing Totty Tottington in “Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit.” The whole timid British-accent catastrophe is so embarrassing that I would have felt bad for Kendall, if her expressions and gestures didn’t reveal how completely she deserved it.]

Barbara quickly disappears, but leaves behind a clue that Christian uses to track her to a yacht party, already in full swing. The attempt to create a rich and ritzy atmosphere demonstrates a fault in the film that is already becoming obvious at this point: the sets and production values are totally underwhelming. Lenzi claims to have intentionally shot much of the film during the bright daylight to buck thriller conventions, but the result is, more often than not, monotonous flat lighting and a loss of potential atmosphere.

[Images: Quasi-idyllic imagery that looks a little like Travel Channel material and provides a misleading mood.]

Not surprisingly, Christian bumps into Barbara once again, and meets her possessive boyfriend, Alex, who happens to be hosting the party. Despite both of them being “involved,” they leave the party together intent on a passionate tryst. The only condition is that Christian has to shave his beard. This is where things start to get really weird.

While grinding down his chin, an odd looking fellow (who compulsively plays with magnetic metal balls in his left hand) jumps through the window with a silenced pistol. A tussle ensues, and Christian ends up shooting the intruder to death. He tells Barbara, (who didn’t hear the five minute long struggle from the next room presumably because of the radio) and without even looking at the body, she decides they have to run away. On the way out, they bump into Alex, whose participation in the attack is ambiguous, and he takes them to a diner where he threatens them both.

Christian returns to the scene of the crime for an incriminating necklace he left behind only to discover that the body and gun are gone. He coincidently runs into Barbara at a gas station minutes later and she suggests that they hide out in the castle of her Brazilian painter friend who is away for several months. She fails to mention until a frightening introductory montage, that her friend also collects birds of prey.

Within the first night alone, Christian observes a motorboat spying on him, gets stalked by the man he killed (now bearing bloody hedge clippers) and runs into the otherworldly temporary tenants during a power outage. The pair of renters are Malcolm (a reporter who covered the death of Christian’s father and the recent stabbing of yet another realistic doll at a nearby motel) and Clorinda, a beautiful redhead that Christian silently recognizes from his past and immediately seduces despite her refusal to answer any of his questions.

Oh, and also Christian gets tailed by the man in the boat while wandering around the harbor at night, only to discover that the man is only “on his way to the lighthouse to visit a friend.”

[Image: With lens flare like this, you can’t blame the man for wearing shades at 2 am.]

This somehow manages to be less disconcerting than Malcolm sniffing roses the next morning. Christian finds that Barbara isn’t in her room any longer and heads out to look for her. Meanwhile, the camera makes a slight digression to note the hand of a corpse jutting out of a nearby well.

At about this point (say, 50 minutes into the film) it became pretty obvious that there wasn’t any way that this would all make sense. I was about half right. The story is so strewn with unexplained events, unanswered questions, unnecessary complexities, impossible coincidences, irrelevant details and elaborate hairpin turns that I have to decry it as poor writing. Even with the climactic revelation that covers about 60-70% of the strangeness, the majority of the film is a narrative mess.

Except that… well… I live for this type of thing. While I acknowledge that the vast majority of audiences will find the first two thirds of the film impossibly convoluted and inaccessible, Lenzi sort of makes it work. The whole jumbled juggernaut plays like a derailed train that just keeps barreling onwards without apology or remorse. It helps that Lenzi has a killer final act up his sleeve that almost redeems the previous headache.

I won’t spoil the ending, because it’s just so good it has to be experienced the way Lenzi wanted it (he rewrote the script to include it). Suffice it to say that Christian must confront his unfortunate past, acknowledge a horrifying present and embrace a tragically depressing future. One begins to appreciate why the bulk of the film played so awkwardly, since Lenzi was operating under a private set of constraints (think “Sixth Sense,” “The Game,” or the “Eye of the Beholder” Twilight Zone episode, only handled with less precision and professional care).

Topping it all off is one of my all-time favorite codas. Lenzi pulls one last wrench from his wrench-quiver and chucks it into the train wreck. It adds yet another plot hole to the expanding chasm (involving a doctor’s note with the most incompetent “well, duh” oversight), but satisfyingly packaging up the film in a fittingly perverse and unsettling gift wrap.

Overall, the film showcases some of the worst acting and dubbing that the giallo genre has to offer with a cast of across-the-board duds. The writing doesn’t help and often seems needlessly opaque and unhelpful. The daylight shooting and “meh” sets keep the visuals below average, but here too Lenzi rallies in the final third. A stark rectilinear quarry and a metallic graveyard of a factory (looking like something out of the late Antonioni’s “The Red Desert” (1964)) have just the sort of existential vacuum to reflect the growing desperation and despair that Christian feels.

Lenzi has enough stylistic punch to prove he’s not asleep on the set and even to establish himself as a giallo trendsetter with a talent of his own. Unfortunately, he seems to bestow his craft and attention only sporadically, with enough dry stretches and dull shots to feel amateurish at times. The overuse of zoom shots and focus pulls (not between layers, but just to open or close scenes) feels hokey, even by Italian standards. Then, too, there is so much coming and going in scenes that won’t make sense until much later, that bland connective tissue and stagnant filler dominates the middle portion of the film.

On the positive side, Lenzi’s choice to have “murdered” dolls peppered throughout the background of the film is a stroke of creative brilliance. It inspires shock, revulsion and curiosity in a way that adds to the film’s confusion, but also to it thematic power and uneasy atmosphere. The choice of music (another great Ennio Morricone score) with repeating downbeat strains, also contributes by mourning the inevitable tragedy long before it has even occurred.

My rating reflects that “Spasmo” is a two-thirds poor-to-mediocre film and a one-third inspired thriller, but if you can tolerate (or perhaps even relish) cutting through an hour of Gordian knot, this giallo will reward heartily.

Walrus Rating: 6

[Image: You were wondering about the dolls?]