IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 29m, rated 5.8 by 113 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: Yankee.
Verdict: Goofy fun.
Tagline: Follow your dream (over the cliff).
A twenty-something computer whiz, a physics major, and an MBA team up to run a business: Global Unidentified Flying Object Research and Services in Flat Rock on the Mojave desert of the USA. They soon become a magnet for all manner of nut cases and comic relief for the townsfolk.
Japanese lanterns, balloons, mirror reflections, cloud, and vapour, all are dutifully examined, while the testimony of a string of people who have sighted aliens, swapped recipes with them, been abducted and rejected, parade before their video camera.
Misadventures follow as they try to deal with a vexatious landlord, romance some local girls, deal with smog-mouth (figure it out), puzzle over the string of code that appears on the computer attached to their satellite dish. Oh, and watch the sky day-and-night.
***
I found it diverting with likeable players, and some fine moments, e.g., when Bo talks about the telephone call that was never made.
A Gen-X version of OVNI(s) from France, reviewed elsewhere on this blog.
Executive Summary: ‘A niece and her uncle sit in a small room; he smokes a pipe, while she knits. An unwelcome boarder sits with them every night, but they never speak to him, though he talks of his love of music, admiration for French literature, and hope for a united Europe.’
Not exactly a sales pitch to win financial backing in 1946 France, now is it, but it sums up 90% of the film. The putative director, screenwriter, and producer had never made a feature film, nor had he served an apprenticeship in the movie industry and knew nothing of the technicalities of film-making. Yet he went ahead….
It is the fall of 1941 in rural France and the boarder is an artillery officer billeted with them. He is young, educated, polite, and German with perfect French. As he talks, the uncle and niece sit in silence without eye contact. Uncle puffs his pipe; niece sticks to her knitting.
There is a remarkable scene at the local Kommandatura in which nothing is said, and much is reflected in a mirror. Silence and more silence.
In this sea of silence the French pair learn that not all Germans are beasts, and the German learns — when he goes on leave to occupied Paris — that Germans are beasts. His erstwhile army friends, listening to sentimental love songs, talk of reprisals, executions, extermination, and more with enthusiasm. Now is the time to crush France and the French.
Surprise, shock, disgust, these are some of his reactions to his colleagues. And none is more adamant than a friend with whom he went to the music Conservatorium in his home town.
When he returns to the billet after two weeks he is a changed man: depressed, forlorn, disconsolate, bereft in a marvellous scene. He confesses his mistake to the silent jury of two and announces his departure for the Eastern Front. He has sentenced himself to death.
The niece has grown to love this earnest dreamer and as he takes his leave she says one word, her only word, to him: ‘Adieu.’ It is the only word she speaks in the film.
***
The niece is played by Nicole Stéphane (1924-2007) who was Jewish and survived the war in the Resistance before escaping to England where she joined the France Libre. She funded much of the film.
It makes a counterpoint to Le Corbeau (1942) discussed in a recent post.
There is a Belgian version shot in colour in 2004 that is not nearly as austere, and not as focussed. But it gets high praise on the IMDb.
Making of ….
It is characteristic of Jean-Pierre Melville, the director, to concentrate on images rather than dialogue. Little is said but much is conveyed as only film can convey it.
That a novel composed in Occupied France presented an innocent German army officer is a surprise. It was written and clandestinely published in 1942 by Jean Bruller under the nom de guerre Vercors. The book itself, by the way, is shown among others early in the film.
Melville both wrote the screenplay and directed, carried the film stock around and did not much of the heavy lifting himself. He had to apply his interest in judo to this project, that is, to make weakness a strength.
There was no money for a sound engineer so he resolved to use a spare voice over narration by the uncle. That increased the ‘silence’ the German experiences.
There was no money for more than an absolute minimum of location or outdoor shooting so he used stock footage and integrated the German in it with some clever cutting.
There was no money for first rate film stock, so he used old, cheap stock and let the black voids indicate the distances and uncertainties among the characters. The German in particular at the start is filmed in the manner of German expressionist films of the 1920s.
BTW, Jean-Pierre Melville was a pseudonym of the Alsatian Jew Jean-Pierre Grumbach (1917-1973) who took the code name Melville, after the American author, while in the French resistance. Earlier he had been evacuated from Dunkerque. Like 100,000+ other poilus within a fortnight he was repatriated to Bordeaux, as it turns out, just prior to the Capitulation. Rather than march into captivity with more than a million other French solders to be held hostage, he fled and later he and his brother tried to get to England to continue the fight. His brother was killed en route, but Melville made it and joined the Free French Army in the Italian campaign. The rest of his family perished after the Vél d’Hiver Roundup. (Look it up.) All of this left a very dark stain on him, and though he was exuberant in private life, his films are, to say the least, noir.
Finally…
Reading some of the disparaging reviews on the IMDb is a reminder that a hundred and fifty years of free public education is not enough.
L’Assassin habite au 21 (1942) The Murderer Lives at No. 21. IMDB meta-data is a runtime of 1 h 24 m rated 7.3 by 3,700 cinematizens.
La main du diable (1943) The Carnival of Sinners (The Hand of the Devil). IMDB meta-data is a runtime 1 h 20 m rated 7.3 by 1,800 cinematizens.
Le Corbeau (1943) The Crow. IMDB meta-data is a runtime 1 h 43 m, rated 7.8 by 11,000 cinematizens.
DNA: France occupée (1940-1944).
Genre: Noir.
These three films, among others, were made by Continental Studios during the German Occupation of France, each of the trio starred Pierre Fresney and were directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, credited or not. They were united in another way, too, after the Liberation, all of them, but especially Le Corbeau (The Crow) were banned. Why? Each showed France, French society and people in a bad light.
This social criticism of France by Studios managed (very loosely as it turned out) by Germans, got Clouzot and Fresnay ostracised (and briefly imprisoned) along with the co-star in two of the movies, Suzy Delair. However, cooler and wiser heads prevailed and the ban was lifted quickly.
This background reminds us that the producer and director did not have a free hand in these labours. Indeed, even at this distance it is impossible to watch these three individually or in seriatim without seeing a watermark of the Occupation, but as a covert critique rather than an overt affirmation. Read on.
In L’Assassin habite a boarding house’s inhabitants, men and women, are examined in the search for a serial killer. The vanities, foibles, pretexts, dissimulations, vices, incompetences of each is laid bare as the detective (posing as a roomer) moves among them. (Jules Maigret used this vantage point in Madame Quatre et ses enfants, the film version of which in 1991 is discussed elsewhere on the blog for clickers.) Suffice it to say there is more than one murderer at numero 21. It is an allegorical tale of what France has now become in 1942: Schemers, spies, thieves, cheats, and liars. Nothing is as it seems to be because it is worse.
La main du diable is even more explicit in its analogy to the Occupation: Make a deal with the devil for the time being and discover that time never ends, as long as you live. Fresnay who played the charming and jocular detective in L’Assassin here is a tortured soul who can find no relief from his Faustian bargain. He is France occupé both cursed and blessed: blessed to be out of the war and cursed to be occupied. The only way out is death. Grim.
These two might have been forgiven and forgotten but then came Le Corbeau and no one forgets its relentless condemnation of picturesque, bucolic, rural, and eternale France as a nest of vipers, stinging each other to death. The parallel to the Occupation is obvious to any viewer at the time yet the German censors let it go. The plot engine is a campaign of poison pen letters at a time when the Occupier encouraged French citizens to denounce each other in anonymous letters just like those portrayed in the film. While Fresnay carries the film, the elder doctor played by Pierre Larquey is mesmerising at times. Watch for the scene with the swinging light fixture to see what I mean. The final act condemned the film twice over when a nun commits a murder. A nun! Is nothing sacred. Non.
Continental had a repertoire cast and they appear and reappear in these three and its thirty other films.
***
By the way many will have seen, and surely remember, Fresney from Le Grand Illusion (1937) as the world weary aristocrat who sacrifices himself to pass the baton of moral leadership onto the energies of the working class Jean Gabin.
Fresney soldiered in WWI and had his last screen credit in 1975.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime 1 hr and 25 m, rated 6.0 by 49,000 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy, sorta.
DNA: Brit Bruce Almighty.
Verdict: Absolute power bores absolutely.
Tagline: More dog!
Blessed and cursed with absolute power by an astro-genie, Hero takes a long time to realise what is going on, and then fumbles the ball. It is a frenetic race from one gag to another, and then to its undoing.
There are pleasures, but they are few. Loved the ice queen BBC book reviewer who hates books and never reads, but makes and breaks the careers of writers. All too easy to believe.
The talking dog was one joke that went on…far too long. But for being loquacious there is too little of the dog, though it finally does save the day (and the world), but not the film.
***
Rather think some of the players had stern words with the agents that committed them to this film.
In this fluff our hero does not make a deal with the devil, he has absolute power conferred on him as a lab-rat test. He sacrifices nothing for it, and gains little from it. Ergo, what’s the point?
IMDb meta-data is 41 episodes of app 48 m each, rated 8.1 by 70,000 cinemtizens.
Genre: Alt History.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: Right Stuff (1980) played by college boys.
Tagline: On and on it goes where is stops, does anyone care?
The Russkies got to the Moon first, and it’s time to catch up and escalate. N.B. I have watched only the first three episodes before getting bored.
As a period piece it is well done, though I would have liked a lot more 1960s music. Maybe that’s just me.
All the historical faces are there from Walter Cronkite to the astronauts and their entourage. So far the Soviets are The Other with a flag.
There is some very clever use of Nixon’s Whitehouse tapes. Likewise the portrayal of Werner von Braun is certainly more lifelike than the drooling madman in the Dial of Destiny. On von Braun one might see Robert Harris’s V (discussed elsewhere on this blog, click on).
I liked the hiatus from Armstrong and crew, but if there was an explanation that I heard, but, well, let’s say my attention was divided. But so far there is just too little about the scientific, technological, and engineering complexity of the problems each of which had never been done before. Instead the real problems seems to be with family, with women, with political priorities, with macho rivalries, and so on. I hasten to add the wives get their due in a way, but still the focus of the problems does not seem to be space flight, but each other. The human drama, I guess the marketing department would say, but we don’t need space or the Moon for that.
***
The acting is superb, though the writing and directing are uneven: some scenes are attenuated and others rushed and much is omitted in favour of alcohol and sex. There is too little on the everyday racism and sexism of the time, but perhaps that is coming in later episodes, though it seems unlikely to me that a black would have been inducted into the program at the time.
I do like the story arc with the Mexican girl, but it is a frail reed to hang so much upon.
***
I made the mistake of reading the semi-literate review on Roger ebert.com which included the following irritants with the quotation marks followed by my fulminations follow the – sign.
‘random Russian’ – This man was first in a highly selective program, hardly a walk-in off the street. Nor is he unknown for he is named. In short he was not just anyone.
‘the film wonders how that would feel’ – first I’ve heard that film has feeling. I’ll be more considerate around it from now on.
‘lofty ideas that are heavily considered’ – Heavily, man.
‘the highly renowned John Glenn’ – Doubt the author even knew who he was.
‘reoccuring’ – recurring is so much simpler. No doubt this writer also speaks of ‘myself,’ uses ‘orientate,’ and ….
‘the story seek(s) compassion’ – more reification (look it up) with the story at work.
‘spreads its charisma thin’ – ditto.
‘she has big reasons’ – little reasons never get any consideration. Is this sizeism? Woke up!
‘a striking reinforcement of the toxics masculinity’ – Huh? Plural?
It ranges from annoying to incomprehensible. Sounds like teenagers talking about it on the bus, which would perhaps please the author, but might insult the teenagers who are usually more cogent.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 38 minutes, rated 7.5 by 53,000 cinematizens.
DNA: Of the time.
Verdict: A Keeper.
Tagline: Shakespeare did it.
A crew lands (a spaceship) where they are not welcome to save survivors (who do not wish to be rescued). They find the Tin man Robbie with the personalty of Ariel in the body of Caliban. Prospero is Mr Miniver, an icy but ever so polite host. Honey West as Miranda is such stuff as dreams are made of. (She had her last IMDb credit fifty years later.)
Frank ‘Antonio’ Drebin (his last posthumous credit in 2011) leads the merry crew including Bart Maverick, a cast of television regulars, and a painful comic relief who could and did better in other credits. They are all decked out in grey on gray garage mechanic boiler suits.
Then they encounter Id, and Id gets ugly. Very. Marvellous son et lumière show.
Though the Krell are the premise, we never see them. Yet they dominate everything.
***
What a high risk investment this film must have been at the time. No big name actors, a B-movie genre, an invisible enemy, a psychoanalytic explanation, and the voice of J. Michael Anthony from the Tin Man. Conspicuously lacking is any Cold War resonance, which was a staple for Sy Fy of the time. Surprisingly Prospero is a philologist not a physicist. Again inconsistent with the norms of 1950s Sy Fy, though the storyline was made to fit it. Nor was there a nuclear threat, rather the evil is within us…all!
The local Dendy, with its eight screens, devoted one Saturday to a Sy Fy revival – May the 4th be with us. About twenty films were cycled during the day from 10am onward and I chose this one, rather than the big ticket items in the larger theatres Blade Runner, Total Recall, and the Wraith of Khan. (I was tempted by the chance to see Ricardo Montalban’s pectorals again but passed.) One film was enough for me, and I chose this one.
Forbidden Planet screened in theatre 7 upstairs in the back around the corner, seating sixty, and it was completely sold out. And not all were geriatrics. Far too many of whom used their phone screens during the feature. Such is our time.
Here is a curiosity: on You Tube is this film backwards. Yep. It runs backward from the credits, both the audio and video. Yep. Why, one might ask? Good question to which there is no answer.
Judging by the crowds from the Nerd Kingdom about the Dendy on my entry and exit, the day must have been a commercial success. I can only imagine the work that went into corralling this collection of material.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1 hour and 25 minutes, rated 5.6 by 2012 cinemtizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: O’ Canada.
Verdict: Droll, irritating, amusing.
Tagline: Beware the yellow rubber duck.
Dark Star Quark, Inc has the contract to collect near-earth space debris with its scow, the Regina, and a crew of four: Hobbit, Lana Lane, Mr Sulu, Major Carter, and that other guy. I know that is five, but we never see but only hear Sulu because he is not a member of the crew.
Major Carter and Hobbit were an item, with no other alternatives, but now she wants someone taller. New Boy (Five) comes straight from the Corner Gas school of acting, and bumbles around. Lana keeps to herself, until….
Through their own inattention and incompetence they collect some trash that was…alive! Not good. Lana is the first to go, sort of.
There follows an hour of good natured confusion with a denouement. Though the destruction of earth, inter-dimensional travel, the murder of Lana, artificial humans, and more are surfaced, none of these themes is developed. But the duck has its day!
Moreover, no one seems to mind that the android killed Lana. Nor is there any explanation of the title.
On the other hand it is so unpretentious that it is easy to like. No priestly voiceover to lecture the audience on its climate sins, no heroic posturing by a wannabe who isn’t waving a plastic gun, no boy genius with designer fuzz to save the day by adding 2+2…. It was not made to the Hollywood formula aimed at prepubescent boys with arrested development by prepubescent boys with arrested development.
It is compounded of a mixture of Star Gate, Star Trek, Quark, Dark Star, and, let us not forget Corner Gas.
Subway (1985) with a runtime of 1h 44m, rated 6.5 by 16,000 cinematizens; Le doulos (1962): 1h 48n, rated 7.7 by 12,000; and Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1958): 1h 31m rated 7.9 by 29,000.
When prowling around streaming outlets I came across these, one after another, during our Cronulla staycation. I watched them in this order.
Subway has the frenetic energy and mordant wit that director Luc Besson’s films often have. It also has Isabelle Adjani melting the screen. A tuxedoed thief on the run finds refuge in a Paris Metro station (Châtelet?) where he discovers he is not alone. The plot, which makes no sense, is an excuse for the to’ings and fro’ings. This is another characteristic of Besson films. It is all on the surface, but it is fun while it lasts.
Le doulos is Jean-Pierre Melville, the director, out-noiring American film noir. In contrast to Subway this is all serpentine plot. All the threads come together in a downward spiral. Each member of this ensemble is doomed. The moodiness and the movements are compelling in this seedy world of criminals where no one escapes fate.
By some miracle of city planning there is always a parking place in Paris for the Yank Tanks these villains drive. The title is a slang word for an informer, someone who talks, tattles, through or behind his hat.
But the best for last is Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, made when the director, Louis Malle, was a boy of twenty-six. When most that age are making student films of 10 minutes, he directed this feature length masterpiece. Moreover, he did everything against expectations. The elegant, suave, and handsome Maurice Ronet is a reptilian villain, while up and comer Jeanne Moreau is a luminous fallen angel. The close-ups of each of them are unsparing. Sometimes against black backgrounds the characters seem like puppets, and perhaps that is what they are. Compelled by their own instincts, and unable to control themselves, each, in a different way, is driven to a bad end, along with a pair of innocent bystanders, who are not so innocent by the time the film ends.
The tension and drama are all the more remarkable because so much of the screen time is confined to an elevator car.
Moreover, there is a perfect soundtrack from Miles Davis that sets the mood in the middle.
Did Malle read Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage; it would seem so.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 34 minutes, rated 7.3 by 42 cinematizens.
DNA: Czechoslovak.
Genre: Sy Fy.
Tagline: Boom!
Verdict: Hard to find but well worth the effort.
A conscience stricken scientist lies in a coma as he recalls in nightmares his discovery of a powder with the explosive force of the volcano Krakatoa. The story was published by Karel Ćapek in 1938.
The cinematography is inventive and at one point our anti-hero watches on screen his own vain efforts to control his invention. There is a mystery woman who appears and disappears like a dream. Then there is an American agent (named Oppenheimer [just kidding]) who wants the formula. In between is a jealous and unscrupulous colleague whom we know is not to be trusted since he does not return library books when they are due. What a rat!
Relentlessly downbeat. Our scientist is doomed after an explosion of the Big K poisoned him and lies dying while the jumble of his thoughts retraces the steps (some real, others illusory) that brought him to his deathbed.
There are a number of remarkable scenes as his delirium is played out:
the wax works aristocrats in museum poses
the menacing D’Hémon with the satanic eyebrows
his mini-Krakatoa of sex
the melting face of the femme fatale
the police in German uniforms like ghosts
the assembly of beer hall hooligans in furs and diamonds.
the grasping of krakatit from a dead body
most of all is the anxiety and torment of the scientist who is eating himself up with guilt
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1 hour and 30 minutes, rated 5.7 by 1,500 cinematizens
DNA: Japan.
Verdict: Shoot ‘em up! We’re good at that. [Indeed.]
Tagline: The Munchkins are coming!
No sooner did the Mysterians leave in 1957 than the Munchkins arrived in 1959, setting up a military base on our Moon! While the Mysterians said they went to Pearl Harbor in peace, these Munchkins skip the soft soap and get right to the zap. Peace is for wimps. They came to conquer.
It takes one to know one and in response the world Co-Prosperity Sphere unites behind Japan to battle the Munchkins, repeatedly for at least two-thirds of the runtime. Where would we be without the peace-loving Japanese to blow things up?
In a favourite ploy of cheapskate invaders, the Munchkins exercise mind control over a couple of key individuals to save on make up. These zombies go around looking vacant when turning off valves that would save the world. Some plumbers they are!
The budget went on models to create effects, and these are very well done. Better even than Gerry Anderson’s toys. Albeit, the moon buggies looks too much like Oscar Meyer Weinermobiles to take seriously.
The story has parallels with The Earth versus Flying Saucers of 1956 but even less character development. There are also reflections of it in the space battles of Star Wars.
