Review of The Fall (2006)

Like most cinephiles, I fancy that I have a pretty good network for finding out about the best films. We all have our favorite sources, be they friends, reviewers, websites, blogs, books, movie channels, theaters, film festivals or whatever. With newly released films, its often just as important to learn how to avoid bad advice and obnoxious trailers. Yet sometimes our personal systems fail, something which happened to me recently when an internet popup ad was the unlikely informant for guiding me to the best recent film I’ve seen this year.

I say recent, because Tarsem Singh’s “The Fall” was actually finished in 2006, though it didn’t see a national theatrical release until 2008. Along with the poor distribution it was given, limping marketing and poor reviews have dogged it. I don’t usually write about films while they are still technically in theaters, but I must rise to the defense of “The Fall.” I feel strongly that it is a masterpiece.

Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) is the curious child of Hispanic orange-pickers in California (circa 1920), who has landed in a hospital after falling from a tree. There she meets Roy Walker (Lee Pace), a Hollywood stuntman who has recently paralyzed his legs in a fall of his own. Alexandria takes to the man after he enchants her with a whimsical epic that consumes her fertile imagination. Yet Walker’s fantastic tale is woven with his own agenda and to get past each cliffhanger Alexandria must help Walker steal enough morphine to seal his suicide.

While the frame story might seem dark and a little disturbing, it’s infused with warmth and wonder by Untaru, who gives a brilliant performance despite being nine years old and not speaking English (she learned as shooting progressed). What give the film its staggering beauty and – less often mentioned – its depth, is Walker’s tale. In it, six disparate adventures (a slave, a sapper, an Indian, a mystic, a masked bandit and Charles Darwin) seek revenge on the nefarious governor Odious. They must undergo a great deal of travel and tragedy before they can face him.

Tarsem Singh was already known as a visual virtuoso for his music video work and his flawed debut “The Cell” (2000), which may arguably deserve its fast fade into obscurity (I’m personally a bit fond of it), but, if nothing else, showed off a great deal of potential. With “The Fall,” Tarsem has made one of the most lush, sumptuous films ever made. It is even more impressive since it is purportedly made without CG, though post-production color work was clearly done. The film has the feel of a Guillermo del Toro fantasy graced with Sergei Parajanov’s talent for appropriating cultural details and Dario Argento panache for enriched colors and aggressive location scouting.

[Images: That’s Charles Darwin in his ridiculous red, white and red fur coat visible in the first three screenshots.]

The film makes no apologies for its ostentatious presentation; an audacious all-out bid for striking beauty that made many critics uncomfortable. It opens with a black-and-white credit sequence of exquisite slow-motion tracking shots whose meaning will not be clear until later in the film. The shots are in an elegant industrial tableau style not quite in keeping with the rest of the film, yet the dreamlike contrast only helps, making the difference between reality and fantasy into a matter of mood.

There’s another standout sequence later in the film in which a troubled dream is submerged in bizarre imagery combining real actors, stage backdrops and stop-motion surgery. Katie noted (and I second) that both the opening credits and dream sequence, if they were presented as standalone shorts, would be amongst her favorites.

Other mesmerizing moments include a sea journey via swimming elephant, a human map performed as a ritual and a chain of death sequences that combine fable, farce and tragedy. These sequences demonstrate a daring creativity and eclecticism that I can’t resists (Terry Gilliam and Jean-Pierre Juenet come to mind), and they work so well for the film that claims of pretentiousness or inconsistency would be petty.

The cumulative impact of the cinematography, camerawork, set dressing, location finding and costume design is so delirious it feels drunk with color and grandeur. Thus it is perhaps not too surprising that one of the main complaints is that story doesn’t live up to the presentation. I disagree, though with imagery this magnificent I’m not sure I’d care if it were true.

Still, I think the accusations that the film is merely shallow excuses for pretty pictures is little more than a snap reaction blinded by the overwhelming visuals. It’s not an uncommon response, motivated by the gut instinct that excellence in one area is necessarily balanced by a lack elsewhere. Does one often, for instance, see a gorgeous blonde and assume they have a PhD?

I happened to really like Tarsem’s storytelling. The nested tale featuring a child’s imagination where reality and fantasy blur and interchange has been done before in “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Princess Bride,” “The Neverending Story,” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” to name just a few. What Tarsem adds to the tradition is a sense that all stories have an agenda, and not necessarily one as noble as a moral. He reveals how they can manipulate and be manipulated to serve the purposes of the teller (how well modern audiences know the double-edged power of the cliffhanger as we sit through commercials!) and even the listener (at one point Alexandria slips into the story to save her beloved hero).

There’s a certain brazenness today in suggesting that it’s OK for stories to be flexible; that the facts can be changed and previous events edited without invalidating the emotional core and underlying truths. To me, this giddy irreverence for “The Epic” is what deflates any bulges of pretentions. It gives a little room for humor, as when Walker retroactively claims that the masked bandit had his fingers crossed behind his back when he swore a blood oath vendetta over his brother’s corpse.

Tarsem makes it clear that he is not exposing the magnificent heights and exploitative depths of just any brand of storytelling (the novel, for instance), but that he is thinking specifically about cinema. The main character’s former position as a stuntman is, itself, a job that distorts the border between truth and fiction. It addresses the lie we see (that a famous celebrity is performing a death defying feat) and the truth that is hidden (that an underpaid unknown actually executed the act). One can see why Tarsem would choose to minimize the greater lie: that no one did the stunt because computer effects faked it. “The Fall” suggests that the fiction and reality are dependent on each other for their magic.

The film has direct references to film at both the beginning and end, but one of my favorites takes place just as Roy Walker begins to tell his first tale. Alexandria stands against a wall as the morning sunlight enters in through a keyhole, projecting an image of a horse from outside onto the wall. At first, it appears that the shadow is shaping itself to Alexandria’s imagination until the cinema-like mechanisms of the projected light are revealed. Appropriately, Alexanderia inadvertently slips the horse into her visualization of the story, as she will do many times with her whims and misinterpretations. The Indian of the story, for instance, is clearly intended by Walker to be an American Indian (he marries a squaw and lives in a wigwam), but Alexandria always sees him as an East Asian.

Though it isn’t a captivating title for bringing in newcomers, I love the way “The Fall” works on so many levels for both the plot and themes. It is a pair of falls that unite the leads and a third that provides the climax. More interpretive is the idea of the Biblical fall (visually reflected by the idyllic Eden/Apple-esque motif of oranges) and loss of innocence. This is plays out as Alexandria comes to learn of Walker’s real agenda behind telling the story.

This is where I read something into the story which I can relate to deeply: the sudden lurch as one sees the private interests behind the curtain. The turning point of knowing you’ve been manipulated. Wonder and joy, thereafter, can no longer be experienced in their purest form. But “The Fall” offers a solution I truly love. [SPOILERS] In the film’s touching epilogue, Alexandria learns to find a new pleasure in searching out Roy in the cinema: in the falls (yet one final layer of its meaning), fights and climbs of the stunts whose unsung artistry she now understands and treasures. She falls in love with stories again, but this time for the truth of their hidden craft rather than merely the fiction of their outer appearances. [End of SPOILERS]

[Image: This shot is a little hint at an upcoming Film Walrus event.]

So how come critics dismiss this movie so easily? I think a lot of them missed the message I interpreted (hey, I could be reading it wrong), but I don’t think many were bothering to interpret at all. Most saw a film that was big, bold, surreal and shameless and they were unable to reduce it to the pocketbook realism and genre limitations they were used to. Having become so sated on bland mediocrity, this outpouring of flavor and spice turned their stomachs. They came face-to-face with creativity and beauty only to pinch their nose with one hand, turn their thumb down with the other and haughtily declare that they have no use for [sneer] “pretty pictures.”

And so I cast a pox upon them. Not a flesheating disease, but the mindeating one they crave: a plague of visually-stunted overdone mediocrity. I hope these reviewers suffer through endless lugubrious art films by bored auteurs immolating themselves with minimalism. I curse them with cute indie flicks about bridging gender, cultural and generational divides. I call down a hailstorm of clockwork thrillers, raunchy comedies and soulless rom-coms. And I will get my wish, because it is their wish, too; because the Market Forces are listening to the prayers of critics who preach cinematic banality to their flocks.

[Image: Alternatively, I would accept the exile of hateful critics to the labyrinth of despair.]

That said, credit is due to those who have stood against the critical tide. Roger Ebert, one of the few great critics who is powerful enough that he doesn’t feel the need to toe the line, gave the film it’s only major perfect score. Directors Spike Jonze and David Fincher have nobly supported the film. Then, too, audiences who have caught it so far have clearly loved it, if their IMDB support is any indication. Hopefully this niche audience will be justly rewarded, perhaps with no better prize the continued career of Tarsem and other directors who share his audacity and virtuosity.

Walrus Rating: 10.0

Let's Just Be Friends: Federico Fellini

Federico Fellini vs. Michelangelo Antonioni

Trying to give this series a little diversity, I knew that I wanted to write about a European art director, but that was by far the hardest category for me to find someone I didn’t adore. I was slow to click with French poetic realism and I almost choose Jean Renoir (with Marcel Carne as the preferred candidate), but I’ve gradually converted during the last few years as I see some of his lesser work. Even Fellini is a bit of a stretch, since I’ve only disliked one film by him (“Amarcord,” if you’re interested). Much like Ozu, my sense that we don’t connect comes from the discrepancy between my mild enthusiasm and the critical establishment’s thunderous praise.

Fellini has a lot going for him in my book. Whether in black and white or in color, he has preternatural sense for constructing powerful visual impressions. He’s a gifted surrealist, with a fantastic imagination full of rich minutiae and rapturous flights. Although sometimes overly given to ponderous symbolism for its own sake, his ability to drape layer after layer of meaning (personal, religious, political, psychological, sexual) onto his imagery turns his films into exhilarating intellectual carnivals.

It’s his early work that I think is least arresting. In “Nights of Cabiria” and “La Strada” he’s still too held back by neorealism and it clashes with his use of fatalism and expressionism. I think he also made a mistake in casting his wife, Giulietta Masina, in these and other films. Her acting is too theatrical, with exaggerated emotions painted broadly across her face. The way Fellini idealizes naivety, both in Masina’s characters and in the youths of “Amarcord,” strikes me as false.

I’m more a fan of Fellini’s later work, when he began to adopt a flamboyant style with hallucinatory dream imagery and striking coloration (thought to benefit from a disorder called synesthesia where words, concepts and sounds have involuntary color associations). Around the same time, his collaborations with Marcello Mastroianni took the acting to a higher level.

Still, there’s seemed to be a barrier between me and Fellini. I’d describe it as almost a personality difference. I just don’t share his fascinations, like his absorption with social spheres, sexual conquest and gaudy luxury. It always seems to me that even as he satirizes and unmasks the shallowness of the decadent rich with their idleness, gossip, pettiness, vanities, affairs and orgies, he was also inextricably drawn to it. Like how so many action and war films that try to expose the terribleness of violence ends up glorifying it. The stunning beauty with which Fellini renders the parties, banquets and orchestras drains the venom from his fangs.

Michelangelo Antonioni was Fellini’s contemporary, an Italian art film director who also focused on the wealthy elite. He also shared a fondness for casting Mastroianni. I think the big difference is that Antonioni’s films are more austere in their visuals and more ambiguous in their symbolism. He’s arguably harder to watch and to enjoy.

Fellini had a talent for bringing dreams, memories and fears to vivid life, while Antonioni keeps his characters introspective, repressed and demure. One finds clues into their emotional states in the texture, framing and architecture rather than in expressions and words. Fellini uses the instantaneous impact of images to get raw reactions from the audience (and I should note he does this very well) while Antonioni has a delicacy and precision that requires the viewer to investigate the image. This gives Antonioni’s work a more gradual buildup of meanings rather than an overwhelming glut. I love Fellini’s intensity, but I often find it more rewarding to mull over and rewatch Antonioni’s films.

There is also more potency in Antonioni’s criticism. His assaults on shallowness and decadence show less mercy. When Antonioni’s camera shows up at a party, it doesn’t enjoy itself. Every amusement is shown to be vacuous. Every smile is revealed to be serpentine. One can hardly blame his characters for fleeing in disgust. They’re left wandering lonely streets with doubts about their purpose; existential quandaries that lead to depression and apathy or journeys for truth down blind alleys.

I also enjoy Antonioni’s unusual sense of mystery. Not in the whodunit sense, but in an airy philosophical way. Not only are his characters inscrutable enigmas, but their crises often take the form of quests for some unarticulated inner grail. In films like “The Adventure” and “Blow-Up,” there is a semi-concrete mystery to be solved, but at the heart the real subject is always more abstract. The question, sometimes never even fully formed, usually involves the search for identity, meaning or fulfillment.

This is the closest competition in this series. I actually like both directors quite a bit and admire their talent. I’d actually say Fellini is nearer to the typical type of director I champion and he has more films left that I’m interested in watching. It may have influenced my preference for Antonioni that I took a class on his work, studying it closely and at length (I still find him frequently impenetrable). If I had to choose someone who may really outshine Fellini, it’d be Wojciech Has, but I’ve only seen a few of his films.

Review of Diamonds of the Night

[Image: “Diamonds of the Night” (1964), aka “Demanty Noci”]

Ask the average studio director working today how to film a simple emotion like sadness, anger, joy or fear and they’re sure to tell you it’s no problem. A close-up is all you need, with loud tears, red cheeks, broad smiles or chattering teeth to give the audience the necessary cue. Performance is, quite naturally, the single most common, quick and accessible way of communicating how a character feels.

Now ask the director how to communicate somewhat more complicated emotions like guilt, regret, doubt or resolve and the answer might not be so straightforward. Performance is still important, but will everyone in the audience be clear? (Remember that studio test screenings allow for zero ambiguity.) Usually the script comes to the rescue, with some device arranged so that the protagonist can simply announce emotions. This might take the form of a narration (perhaps looking back on the event from many years later) or a secondary character, maybe a close friend or observant villain, which correctly interprets for us.

Often a minor character will be created that has no bearing on the plot, but serves as a friendly listener so that the protagonist can lay things out for the audience. This might be a father figure or, in very literal cases, a psychoanalyst. In romantic comedies, it’s an oft-cited cliché for the female lead to have a gay friend and the male lead an overbearing sister. Note that both of these tropes are conveniently free from risk of romantic entanglement with the leads and thus unable to confuse the plot with complications or private agendas.

While these options remain popular choices for directors everywhere, they are not always satisfying or interesting. Is there another way?

Back in 1918, Russian montage theorist Lev Kuleshov purportedly came up with an alternative way of creating meanings and showing emotions: editing. Juxtapose a neutral actor with food, a beautiful woman or a coffin and audiences automatically read hunger, lust or grief onto the performance. This option still sees some use today, though filmmakers rarely experiment beyond the relatively simple relations like those Kuleshov used.

What are some examples of how editing can reveal emotions? The most common cases are past-based emotions like nostalgia, regret, guilt or vengeance where one often finds directors using flashbacks to the original source. Interestingly, it is far less common for a director to use similar techniques for future-based emotions like worry, anticipation, hope or fear. It seems reasonable enough that mental speculation, pre-visualization and fantasizing are just as common as memory, but these devices represent only one of many possible outcomes that have not yet occurred. They stand the risk of misleading and confusing the audience if they do not occur or undermining the tension and surprise if they do. For this reason most mainstream examples are exaggerated fantasies used for comedic effect, where the audience doesn’t feel betrayed, or dream sequences in horror/thriller genres that intentionally play on disorientation and shock.

Now this discussion finally arrives at “Diamonds of the Night” (1964), a Czech movie by Jan Nemec (“A Report on the Party and the Guests”). Nemec tells the short (barely an hour) and simple story of two boys. They escape from a concentration camp-bound train in 1944 and run through a forest for several days before being recaptured. Nemec almost completely foregoes the dialogue and broad, expressive acting that we’ve been discussing as primary forms of character access. Nor does he have any convenient secondary characters to do the work for us. Instead, “Diamonds of the Night” takes advantage of the minimal intrinsic demands of its stripped-down one-act plot to experimenting with the underutilized possibilities of editing.

Before I get too much further I want to make sure I credit editors Miroslav Hájek and Jitka Šulcová. They’re work is absolutely integral, but I’ll be using my usual habit of referring to all artistic choices as though they were made solely by the director.

I’ve talked about some systematic uses of unconventional editing (and my love for it) before, as in my praise for the associational editing in “Petulia” (1968). “Diamonds of the Night” works in a different fashion, using editing to set the tone and to suggest the interior states of our nearly-silent heroes.

Here, as in general, the most frequent interruptions are flashbacks. These are not necessarily used in the classical sense: to catch the audience up on all the key events leading up to the main action. Rather, they are depicted as fragmented, discontinuous and occasionally repetitive memories. They can show us nothing the boys did not directly experience. Often the recollections are on quiet moments of beauty or happiness, more important to the boys than informative for the audience.

[Images: Many of the flashbacks are memories of mundane, unremarkable moments whose faints sounds and familiar sights are nonetheless comforting to the protagonists.]

These memories don’t explain the characters (certainly not in the Freudian sense of showing childhood traumas) or the plot (by showing key turning points like the Nazi invasion, the growing crackdown on Jews or the circumstances of their arrest); they simply show what the boys are thinking at that precise moment. For example, after trudging away for several miles we are shown flashbacks of one boy trading food for ill-fitting shoes while on the train. The sequence is wordless, but concisely draws our attention to the character’s feet. We understand that he is distracted by the pain of walking long before we see his grimacing face or bloody, blistery feet.

[Image: (Top) Difficulty journey over rocky patch. (Bottom) The food/shoe trade takes place in the rear right of this shot. Nemec uses movement rather than centering, close-ups or sound to focus our eyes on the important information.

These highly subjective flashbacks prepare us for the less conventional flashforwards. These also come from the character’s minds, as hallucinations, premonitions and plans. One boy imagines himself dead, his body covered with ants. After several days without food, they confront a farmer’s wife in her kitchen and the other boy instinctively rehearses, in his head, a plan to kill her if it should seem necessary. Perhaps the most famous example is the film’s dual ending where Nemec presents both an optimistic and tragic conclusion. One is the outcome the boys hope for the other is the future they fear. Which one actually happened and which one was only imagined is not made clear.

[Images: Blurring borders between reality and imagination.]

The editing techniques in “Diamonds of the Night” double as a means to set the tone, giving the experience a visceral immediacy. This is also achieved by the largely hand-held filming with the camera weaving through the trees with the boys, pushing through clawing branches and splashing across soggy marshes. The intense beauty of the landscape is noted incidentally and without comment, small comfort as they stumble through their hunger and pain.

Sometimes the attempts to manipulate audience reception through editing have an Eisensteinian feel. This is particularly true in the film’s second half, where a team of local hunters – only those too old to be off fighting – tracks down and captures the boys. Their unflattering close-ups, full of laughing gums and wrinkled drunkenness, have unmistakable political dimension, enhanced by its contrast with the boy’s youth and solemnity. It’s reminiscent of the 1920’s Soviet depiction of stereotyped capitalist fatcats, but adapted for the anti-Old-Guard sentiment of the growing youth movement.

[Images: If the depiction of elderly collaborators seems a bit callous and cheap, keep in mind that convictions ran deep. Less than five years after the film Jan Palach would bring the Czech student movement international attention by lighting himself on fire in Wenceslas Square.]

The hunters’ pursuit alternates rapidly between shots of the old men firing guns and the boys fleeing from them. It has a frightful amount of tension, not least because Nemec never provides a master shot for us to see how far the prey is from the predators. Our expectation of and desire for a master shot works on our nerves even if we don’t notice the absence. The back-and-forth medium shots we get instead form a breathless question-answer pattern: [Gunshot] Did they get hit? [Cut] No, they are still running. Are they out of range yet? [Cut] No, the men are reloading. [Gunshot] Did they get hit? Repeat.

This sequence is cut very rhythmically and rapidly, a technique well-known and even overused for generating excitement. However, it’s important to note that Nemec’s skill at communicating through editing is as much a matter of knowing when not to cut. The opening shot of the boys escaping the train and fleeing into the woods runs 2 minutes and 10 seconds. Nemec realizes that for the audience to believe in a scene and empathize with the characters, to feel the sheer physical effort involved, you must sometimes let it unfold in a single unbroken take. Opposite to most action filmmakers, he often favors this technique for extended movements like a hard trek through a wet bog (46 s) or an attempt to jump aboard a moving truck (1m 12s).

[Images: Frames from a couple of long action shots including (Top) the famous opening.]

“Diamonds of the Night” has many other pleasures for those who wish to seek it out, but I wanted to concentrate primarily on editing for this review. The film is a bit hard to find, since even though it was a significant art house hit during its US theatrical run, it has never received a US or UK release on VHS or DVD. You can purchase a legit copy with English subtitles from the Czech Republic here on a double feature DVD that includes Milos Forman’s first film, “Talent Competition.” Both transfers are quite good and the price (even with international shipping) is reasonable. Some decipherable English instructions for using the site can be found here.

Walrus Rating: 9.0

[Image: One of many Luis Bunuel references.]

Iceberg Arena: British Sci-Fi of the 1950's (Now with Trivia!)

British Sci-Fi of the 1950's

The Man in the White Suit vs. The Four Sided Triangle vs. The Quatermass Xperiment

The explosion of films about alien invaders and interplanetary trips in the 1950’s was the first real heyday of the SF cinematic genre. Not only were bug-eyed monsters not coming in peace, but science consistently went wrong, gigantic versions of everyday things attacked and nuclear disasters regularly wiped 99.999% of human life from the face of the earth. Despite the heavy theater presence, however, SF failed to gain much respect due to the low budgets and poor scripts that became standard. Viewers could revel in the exciting ideas and fantastic implausibilities, but rarely could they expect accurate science, decent dialogue or proficient directing.

Still the 1950’s was a time of real innovation, where special effects and raw imagination raced to keep up with each other. It brought us some of the most iconic SF around like “The Thing from Another World,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Godzilla,” “Forbidden Planet,” “The Incredible Shrinking Man” and “This Island Earth.” There are so many American SF classics worth revisiting, unassuming B-movies languishing in obscurity and unearthed relics waiting to see projector light again that one might almost forget that the same renaissance had taken place in Britain as well.

Across the pond intrepid heroes also crossed the solar system, brilliant scientists (usually less mad and more dignified than their American counterparts) played god invention for invention and Buckingham Palace gave the White House a run for its money as the first-stop of choice for aliens visitors. (At least we both agreed they would contact English-speaking countries first.)

Britain put in some superb entries into the annals during that crucial decade, but there’s no question that they haven’t seen the wide-spread attention (either then or now) that they deserve. The Film Walrus is not likely to tip the balance, but when have I ever let that stop me?

That’s why this Iceberg Arena will venture back to the brave old world where astronauts in shining spacesuits fought space-age dragons with technical wizardry. (Actually, all three of today’s films star scientist characters, so don’t expect any ray guns.) And now to the contestants:

The Man in the White Suit

As the product of Ealing Studio, director Alexander MacKendrick and actor Alec Guiness (a combination that came to greater fame with “The Ladykillers”), it’s not surprising that “The Man in the White Suit” (1951) is a superb comedy. What is surprising is that the film is such good SF, too, focusing as it does on an apparently average working class Northern England textile town.

It’s Guinness’s Sidney Stratton, an idealistic genius with little care for cost or consequence, who turns the town upside down. Working on the sly in the research departments of various mills (who’d like to fire him except that no one can remember hiring him…) he invents an indestructable wonder fabric woven from a single ultra-long polymer strand. It never needs to be washed since it can’t pick up dirt, stains or even dyes and so it is consequently luminously (there’s some radiation involved) white. His boss is, at first, absolutely overjoyed until the industry giants and labor unions both realize that it threatens to put them out of business after a single batch.

MacKendrick’s down-to-earth SF film doesn’t venture very far from reality, focusing more on the soft science implications than showy catastrophes like mutations, abominations and disasters. Guinness is absolutely perfect as the imperturbable scientist and his peculiar equipment and inventions are a hoot to admire. Scenes of him working are often accompanied by the films distinctive (though overplayed) theme music consisting of bubbling, whirring and clanging.

[Image: Alec Guiness.]

Though “The Man in the White Suit” works as accessible SF, a man-on-the-run thriller and an endearing romantic comedy (helped by Joan Greenwood, who’d previously teamed with Guiness for the Ealing’s masterpiece “Kind Hearts and Coronets”), it really shines as a comedy. The titular white suit serves as an excuse for MacKendrick’s barbed satire, which hits on consumer culture, planned obsolescence, labor unions, corporate monopolies and resistance to progress. In an ironic inversion of narrative conventions, workers and factory owners are shown overcoming their disputes and uniting behind a common cause, but for evil, leaving Stratton with almost no where to turn.

It might not have much in the way of special effects, but “The Man in the White Suit” is a rare SF film that has both a warmer heart and sharper claws than your typical beast. MacKendrick’s direction is impressive for the low budget, taking advantage of location shooting to capture the local flavor and create some iconic action pieces, like a nighttime chase through the village streets where Stratton’s glowing outfit makes it impossible for him to hide. Guinness shoulders the central role with modesty and charm, creating one of the most likable scientist heroes in a genre too frequently saddled with generic dullards.

And now a quick interruption for The Film Walrus’s “Tusk Full of Trivia”:

The word Luddite, meaning anyone who opposes new technology, comes from Ned Ludd, a folk hero who inspired British workers to riot against the introduction of labor-reducing textile machinery in the 1810’s.

The Four Sided Triangle

Terence Fisher (“The Horror of Dracula,” “The Devil Rides Out”) may be the best director at Britain’s notorious Hammer Studio. To some, that’s about as prestigious as being the finest filmmaker in Nauru, but I think Fisher’s talent for horror is deserving of the retroactive praise it has received since his death in 1980. “The Four Sided Triangle” (1953) is one of Fisher’s earliest works and although it isn’t horror, it is science-fiction and shows off many of the trademarks that would distinguish his later series of Frankenstein features.

The film follows two best friends, Bill and Robin, who have competed for the affections of Lena, a local girl, since they were strapping young lads goofing off in a dilapidated country barn. Pursuing separate paths for many years, the three friends are eventually reunited in the very same barn, this time to work on an ambitious invention that can reproduce, down to the smallest detail, any object placed inside it. Bill is the brains of the project, with Robin providing pragmatic backup and Lena serving as cook, maid and eye candy.

Despite financial difficulty the project ultimately yield success, turning its skeptical backers into covetous entrepreneurs, much to the chagrin of the idealistic Bill. He’d prefer to see his invention used for multiplying rare medicines and expensive apparatuses, but agrees to keep the device a secret until the government can provide security.

Flushed with success, he prepares to propose to Lena, only to discover that she’s just become engaged to Robin, who she’s always preferred. Devastated, Bill’s formerly sterling ethics tarnish as he starts secretly conducting duplications on live animals and plots to create a copy of Lena for himself. Truly sympathetic towards Bill’s loneliness and pain, Lena agrees, but none of them take into account one important detail: the newly created Helen is exactly the same as Lena in every detail… including her love for Robin.

“The Four Sided Triangle” is a prime example of low-budget resourceful, playfully molding an excellent plot around a set design budget that allows for little more than a modest sitting room and an old barn. The scientific equipment is little more than the de rigueur oscilloscope, warning gage and activation lever, but somehow the barn comes to life due to Fisher’s skill at shaping suspense with careful staging and editing (for instance, deftly handling the Lena/Helen scenes without being able to put them in the same frame).

The acting in “The Four Sided Triangle” is the best type of bad, squarely determined to communicate the full gravity of the fateful tragedy despite meager talent. Bill (Stephen Murray) is bravely committed to his role, displaying a confidence and determination that helps mask his minimal range. James Hayter, who provides the narration as a local doctor who raises Bill, is inadvertently hilarious as the most passive voice of reason ever, completely unable to do anything but casually observe (and even assist!) the descent into disaster.

[Image: Barbara Payton.]

Then there’s Barbara Payton as Lena/Helen who steals the show less with her impossibly compassionate performance then with her Marilyn-Monroe-next-door looks. Sadly, Payton was at the end of a very short career (more notable for her high profile affairs with the likes of James Cagney, Gary Cooper and Bob Hope than for her acting roles) and would soon find herself sleeping on city benches and working as a prostitute for drug money (but she’s not ashamed). Though stabbed by one of her johns in 1962, she lived long enough to die of heart failure while trying to go cold turkey. Anyway…

Fisher’s film has the clean, quick efficiency that distinguishes entertaining genre escapism from plodding cinematic masochism. I almost think it should have filled out its running time more, spending more time with the emotional and psychological possibilities of the Bill/Robin rivalry and the Lena/Helen situation. The characters are far too unfazed by each new development, fumbling the huge potential for melodrama and absurdity. Nevertheless, I think this film is hugely underrated considering its effectiveness as a provocative precursor to cloning debates, a fresh take on the love triangle (speaking of which, what a great title!) and a campy, cult artifact.

And now for another installment of Tusk Full of Trivia! Nauru, a Pacific island nation with a population below 10,000, is one of only two republics (both Micronesian) who hold parliamentary elections using a modified Borda count voting method. This involves each citizen making a ranked list of their choices with each choice receiving 1/rank points. This election system is one of the fairest for ranked voting on a variable number of candidates and is currently used for such prestigious awards as the golden walruses.

The Quatermass Xperiment

“The Quatermass Xperiment” (1955) had already been filmed as a 1953 BBC television series when Hammer decided to adapt it for a theatrical run. They put director Val Guest in charge and cast American actor Brian Donlevy in the lead role and locked out original series conceiver Nigel Kneale. With better-than-average visuals and a built-in audience, the film became a major hit for Hammer and has since enjoyed an enduring reputation.

Prof. Quatermass is a hard-edged, authoritarian scientist who has arranged a privately developed rocket flight around the moon. When the ship crash lands back on Earth two of the three passengers are mysteriously absent (though their clothes remain) and the third, Victor Carroon, is comatose. Camera recordings of the flight provide no clues, but Dr. Briscoe thinks the deaths might be linked to a strange mutation on Carroon’s arm. When the patient wakes up, he tries to flee and stumbles, placing his mutated hand against a spiny bedside plant. Soon he’s rampaging through the streets with a cactus-arm, absorbing and adopting all forms of life that get in his way.

The rocket that returns with a deadly payload may not seem very original today, but Kneale’s original script packed a lot of wallop. The portrayal of Carroon, a kind man still conscious of his plight as his abominable body kills and consumes, became a memorable vehicle for both psychological horror and graphic effects (enough to get the now-quaint film an x-rating).

The tension hinges upon a desperate manhunt to exterminate the monster before it can spore and spread beyond any possible containment. As it assimilates more lifeforms into its bulk, including an entire zoo, it grows to hideous proportions. Ultimately, it’s trail of slime leads to an electrifying showdown inside Westminster Abbey.

Val Guest plays up the atmosphere, violence and suspense of the story, making a monster movie first and a sci-fi detective story second. The monster’s rampage lays claim to the film’s most exhilarating moments, while the talky roles of Prof. Bernard Quatermass and his Scotland Yard rival Inspector Lomax soon wear thin. Brian Donlevy, usually an actor I really enjoy, is particularly bad as the eponymous lead. He is wooden and tyrannical, displaying an obvious contempt for the script yet still managing a commanding performance.

[Image: Brian Donlevy.]

The interior sets are awkwardly bare, but outdoors the cinematography really takes over. A lot of fog, noir lighting and some moody music help draw the audience in whether we are looking at a crashed rocket or an unremarkable shrub. Particularly powerful is the monster’s final form and last-minute confrontation, capped off by a great closing crane shot that eloquently promised a sequel. Several were made.

And now for a final Tusk Full of Trivia! Sci-fi titles often seem to show a tendency, shared with pharmaceuticals, of favoring uncommon letters like K, Q, X and Z. But how much bias actually occurs? Below are the frequencies of those letters in regular English text followed by their frequencies in the 600+ SF titles tracked in my golden walruses database:
K: 0.3% 1.0%
Q: 0.3% 0.2%
X: 0.5% 0.3%
Z: 0.1% 0.3%

So it looks like “Quatermass Xperiment” is still a relative exception even amongst SF titles, despite help from the X-men trilogy and “X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes.” Turns out K and Z are the real winners, though three versions of “King Kong,” ten “Star Trek” films and “Zardoz” may have thrown off the numbers!


Conclusion

Each of these films is worthwhile for SF fans. I found them surprising me with better quality and more originality than I gave the 1950’s credit for. The acting, at its worst, is still better than most performances from AIP and the US studio double bills and the directing in all three films overcomes the low budgets.

The stories are all entertaining and thoughtful, with more than a little contemporary relevance. Much of the success comes from finding terrestrial tales that sidestep the pseudoscience silliness in many early SF films and focus, instead, on the social and personal implications of new discoveries. Yet the real reason to see more UK SF is that techno jargon sounds so much more convincing with a British accent.

So which one is my favorite? Well, “The Four Sided Triangle” is definitely the most underrated and “The Quatermass Xperiment” is certainly the most influential, but I would say “The Man in the White Suit” is the best all-around. It stands as one of the few truly great SF comedies and one of my favorite pictures from Ealing.

Winner: The Man in the White Suit

Let's Just Be Friends: Woody Allen

Woody Allen vs. Hal Hartley

Woody Allen is a bit of an unusual case for me. I’ve seen more films by him than any other director in this series (about 20) and I count at least five of his films amongst my favorites (“Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “Stardust Memories” and “Zelig”). Given that, it does feel a little odd for me to be saying I’ve never really liked him, but let’s just say I think he’s rather overrated.

Perhaps the most obvious place to start is with Woody Allen the actor. Like John Wayne, he is only capable of playing one role: himself. There are minor variations, but really it’s always the same sputtering, neurotic, egotistical intellectual. Always Jewish. Always a New York native. Always part of the arts and entertainment milieu. Always inexplicably and somewhat creepily partnered with gorgeous women. It just gets old after a while.

It hampers his scripts whenever he writes himself in. He becomes overly focused on himself, but with too much familiarity for introspection. It’s closer to stealing the spotlight: hoarding all the jokes, crying out for sympathy and fantasizing that everyone finds his shtick charming, witty and magnetic. In his ensemble films, this creates an imbalance that leaves the other roles serving as sounding boards for developing Allen’s character and setting up his retorts. At their worst, his films collapse into alternating autobiographies of self-congratulation and self-pity.

At their best, his films are insightful investigations of modern society that can be both humorous send-ups and searing indictments of romance, art and philosophy. I think this tends to work better when Allen confronts himself head-on (“Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “Stardust Memories”) or stays behind the camera completely (“Purple Rose of Cairo”). I’d place his parodies (“What’s Up, Tiger Lily?” “Love and Death,” “Sleeper”) and his ensemble tragicomic films (“Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Husbands and Wives”) somewhere in the middle. At the bottom would be his attempts at traditional drama (“The Curse of the Jade Scorpion,” “Mighty Aphrodite,” “Scoop”). Like most critics, I see his best period as taking place in his first two decades, with the most recent ones sliding into an abyss.

Woody Allen, along with Federico Fellini, tends to be one of the first highbrow auteurs that budding film nerds gravitate towards. It’s not hard to see why. His films are funny, dialogue-driven and full of clever references to literature and art. His immersion in the intellectual world can be as refreshing as that first year of college exposure, especially if you’ve been raised on mind-numbing blockbusters. Yet in terms of drama and comedy, style and form, he remains accessible.

My problems came after that early glow of discovery faded. I began to sense that the drama was contrived and superficial, as if all of the non-Allen characters were just pawns destined for mockery and tragedy. Then, too, I felt something ingratiating in the jokes and references, like a class clown who craves attention and laughter and doesn’t know when to stop. This is all very intuitive unsupportable stuff of the kind I usually avoid, like when critics complain that a director is insincere. I wish I could put it in more concrete terms. It’s a bit like admiring how clever and sarcastic an older kid is, and then one day realizing that they’re just a self-centered snob.

Given his popularity – especially amongst people quite similar to myself – I’m sure I’ve already pissed off a ton of readers, so I might as well go one step further. Here it goes: I don’t agree with Allen that Manhattan is the center of the universe or the sole owner of art, architecture, theater, fashion, liberalism, the immigrant experience, multiculturalism, trendiness, romance, crime, national tragedy, coincidences, taxis, cafes and the rest of culture in general. I get it: you love NYC. That’s awesome for you.

Hal Hartley is also a New York native and a director of highbrow indie comedies notable for their character interactions and clever dialogue. I was introduced to his work long after Allen, but immediately became a fan. When I asked Katie why we both like Hartley more than Allen, her answer was immediate: “He’s our generation.” Maybe that’s it in a nutshell. Allen was considered more hip in the 1970’s than Hartley ever rose to in the 90’s, but Allen’s star has largely set while Hartley may still have a couple comebacks left.

Hartley’s sense of humor is more understated and modest than Allen’s. Hartley is part of the wave of American deadpan comedians that includes Jim Jarmusch and Wes Anderson, all of whom were influenced by Woody Allen (especially with regard to the mixing of humor and heavy drama) while managing to find distinct voices. I think each of them exceeds Allen in creating distinct characters, often rejecting naturalism outright, as with Hartley’s absurd prose and stilted delivery. It probably helps that they don’t risk the conflict of interest that can emerge while acting and directing.

Hal Hartley’s also one of the rare directors who frequently works with suburban settings, which I probably unconsciously relate to better than Allen’s lively urban spaces. Hartley’s characters cover the spectrum of intelligence, but are always treated respectfully rather than condescendingly. We come to like characters who are eccentric poets, unsuccessful geniuses, earnest ditzes or quiet loners. When Hartley makes nods to older films he does so with visual echoes that possess their own beauty and atmosphere, rather than the shortcut of having cultured characters constantly dropping references.

So is it a generation gap or a difference in talent? The former, as I think Allen easily holds his own in cinematography, staging and (at his height) writing. Both Allen and Hartley have had triumphs and flops, but both have proven themselves in my eyes on several occasions. I’d say my greater love for Hartley and the other deadpanners is predominantly based on taste.