In what could be viewed as a sequel to Ken Russell's The Devils (1970), Jerzy Kawalerowicz's bleak but brilliant drama tells the infamous story of the so-called 'Loudon Possessions', in which a convent of nuns were said to have been possessed by a variety of demons, seducing men and indulging in sinful activities while the Church sent priests to exorcise them. It resulted in the death of French Catholic priest Urbain Grandier, who was burned at the stake after suggestions were made that he had succumbed to evil himself, forging a 'diabolical pact' that bound his soul to the Devil. It's an event that has caught the imagination of many artists, including the aforementioned Russell, as well as Aldous Huxley. but never has it been portrayed with such terrifying foreboding as in Mother Joan of the Angels.
Father Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) is sent to a Polish convent in the seventeenth century, where talk amongst the sparse townsfolk are of the wicked acts committed by the nuns of the convent that looms over the town like a ghost. At the head of this apparent possession is Mother Joan (Lucyna Winnicka), who tells Suryn of the fate of the previous priest, whose charred remains still lie at the burning post. Suryn is so horrified by what he sees as the purest of evils that he promises to rid Joan of her affliction, even if it is at the expense of his own soul, becoming a martyr in the fight against Satan's influence.
The picture is black and white and the cinematography is dark and empty, capturing the hopelessness of this small, insignificant and nameless town. It resembles the minimalistic work of Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodor Dreyer, and shares many of the conflicted representations of religion that frequented the auteur's back catalogue. The film occasionally branches out into horror, with close-ups and shadows used to powerful effect as Satan's influence creeps into Suryn's soul, leading him to reach out in desperation to a rabbi in what is one of the film's most powerful scenes. It's also a twisted love story between Joan and Suryn, transcending mere desire into something deeper and unspoken. Complex and courageous, Kawalerowicz's film will most likely always be overshadowed by Russell's more provocative work, but this is one of the finest works to come out of 60's Poland.
Coming second, after The Fall of the House Of Usher (1960), in Roger Corman's six-film series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations (all but one starring Vincent Price), The Pit and the Pendulum is possibly Corman's greatest film as a director. Shot with a lush, atmospheric mood, Pendulum faces the task of stretching a two-page short story into a credible, 90-minute movie. Working with I Am Legend author Richard Matheson, who helms the script, the film retains the psychological trip of Poe's original, while creating an interesting and ironic plot surrounding a very small group of characters that leads us to Poe's famous pendulum.
In 16th century Spain, Francis Barnard (John Kerr) arrives at his brother-in-law's mansion to investigate the unclear and mysterious death of his sister Elizabeth (Black Sunday's (1960) Barbara Steele). Seemingly overcome with grief, Elizabeth's widower Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) tells Francis that Elizabeth died of heart failure. Francis, however, seems unable to accept this and insists that he stay until he knows the truth. With the arrival of the family physician Doctor Leon (Antony Cabone), Francis slowly unravels the story of the 'heavy atmosphere' of the castle and the torture devices in the chamber, previously owned by Nicholas' father, a notorious torturer in the Spanish Inquisition.
Made for just $30,000, the film looks remarkable and the set design is a suitable mixture of the elegant and the grim. The movie noticeably lacks out-and-out scares, and opts for a more thoughtful, psychological approach. You could even go so far as to name the movie a period piece rather than a horror. Although his toes may creep over the ham line occasionally, the film is dominated by the presence of Vincent Price, who delivers a rather hypnotic performance, flicking between creepy, tormented and simply bat-shit crazy, with relative ease. The only real complaint about the film is the performance of John Kerr, who, although a promising leading man in the 50's, delivers a one-note, forgettable performance, but that is forgivable in a movie so rich in beauty. Corman should be truly proud.
Last Year at Marienbad has beguiled and bewildered audiences since its release, with its enigmatic, elliptical, dream-like narrative structure. It was director Alain Resnais' second fiction feature, and one that explored the same themes of the power and fragility of memory that were present in his debut fiction film, Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), along with the haunting documentary short, Night and Fog (1955). Opening in the baroque interior of an anonymous hotel in the countryside, the camera floats through the corridors, into a room of absent people, watching a piece of theatre. As the show ends, the audience split into social groups, the camera snaking through the groups catching fragments of conversation, chatter that constantly repeats itself, as if in perpetual loop. Throughout the film, the unnamed man (Giorgio Albertazzi) excessively attempts to convince an unnamed woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they had met there, perhaps last year. The woman is unconvinced of this claim, but is never thoroughly sure if the event happened. Another man who may or may not be her husband (Sacha Pitoeff) challenges the man to mathematical parlour games, which seem like an intellectually aggressive sexual power game.
Constantly referenced throughout the film is the sense that the very same group of people attend this hotel annually, repeating the same conventions and processes each year, as if nothing changes from year to year. It's an almost Surrealist or Dada reaction to bourgeois trappings, the constant repetition of pomp and ceremony. The fragments of conversation are largely mundane descriptions, or meaningless chip-chat between rich clientele. When the mysterious structure, set within the annually visited hotel, offers forms of entertainment, the bourgeois audience vapidly and vacantly stare into space, they are separated from both the other members, but also detached from the events on stage, and within the narrative. Attacking the vulgarity of "high" culture's spectators by suggesting that they simply fill their time with such activities, as opposed to immersing themselves within the beauty of the art, is an aspect of the film that seems influenced by the surrealist and dada films of Man Ray, Hans Richter or Jean Cocteau (although Resnais and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet were never a part of either of these movements).
Whilst these bourgeois attacks consistently formulate the background of the film, the main protagonists occupy the same space, but a space that is further fragmented by their own annual trappings. As the man insists to the woman that they met there the year before, and were planning on leaving together, their conversations are set in different temporal space. Through each sentence of speech the film cuts to the rest of the dialogue in a separate place to previously. So whilst the woman has no memory of this supposed meeting, the cutting up of each conversation places his own memories in another space to the one they occupied the year before (perhaps). The repetition of dialogue and space suggests also that this could be a narrative of the afterlife, a suspended purgatory, where class still matters, and the suspended characters simply repeat the same process until further acceptance into the afterlife. The man could simply be attempting to help a loved one remember after losing it at death.
Beautifully shot in black and white widescreen, with sumptuous cinematography, the technical aspects of the film are undeniably stunning. But, like Hiroshima, mon amour and Night and Fog, Last Year at Marienbad is a powerful, if slightly mystifying, film about memory and ultimately loss. In the central protagonists of these films, is a poetic glimpse into fragile, even damaged memories, and the issues caused to it by circumstance. In Hiroshima.. it was the devastation of history and the problems of memory from alternative perspectives, in Marienbad it is the pressures of conforming to the prevailing societal structures that cause problems with memory, perhaps clouding it with formulaic, normalising functions.
The term 'accattone' is an old Italian phrase intended to brand a character with an aura of absolute repulsiveness. Thieves and low-lives would usually coin the term when referring to a character that is so despicable, so without moral or social decency, that even the criminals would look down upon them. In Pier Paolo Pasolini's incredibly assured debut, 'Accattone' is Vittorio (Franco Citti), a low-life pimp who when he is not sitting around squeezing money out of people with wagers and tricks, is abusing his lone prostitute who cannot work after breaking her leg in a motorcycle accident. It's a tale of a despicable scumbag, set during a dark period in Rome, where men viewed working as slave labour, and enjoyed themselves by beating prostitutes to within an inch of their life.
It's an incredibly bleak tale, told without sentiment and moral preaching. Pasolini's doesn't seem to want to dictate a larger social message, or make Accattone a sympathetic character who is the victim of political or social oppression, but to simply tell a tale, a real tale, of a group of low-lives who are the way they are because they want to be. After all, the true soul of neo-realism is to portray life the way actual people experience it, not to romanticise or sentimentalise it with the kind of scripts Hollywood are responsible for. Of course, many neo-realist directors would almost betray the genres roots the kind of way only auteurs can manage, and Pasolini would go on to make more surrealistic and interpretive movies, but this is true neo-realism without any kind of magical reward for the audience, or a moment of redemptive enlightenment for its protagonist. It's a story of grit, one that is thrilling and fascinating in equal measures, and with the stamp of a great director.
The film I felt it more akin to is Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados (1950), a film of equal disregard for cinematic wonder, and one that is also punctured by an impressive dream sequence. Whilst Bunuel's sequence came around the middle section, and was a burst of absolute surrealistic beauty amongst social depravity, Accattone's comes during its climax; a strange, moody set-piece in which Accattone witnesses his own funeral, amongst other things. At first I felt like it was almost betraying what came before, but then I realised it was Pasolini's way to try and get into its characters head, and the outcome is as confusing and as futile as Accattone himself. Though I haven't seen much of Pasolini's work, this is the best I've seen, beating even the distressing brilliance ofhis final film Salo (1975).Though he would move away from neo-realism, Pasolini achieves more with his debut than some of the greats of the genre would manage to achieve.
A perfect example of how film style can be influential across continents, and can project that influence back into a dying genre, Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo took its plot from Dashiell Hammett's crime novel 'Red Harvest' (which also influenced Miller's Crossing (1990)), retold as a samurai jidai-geki (Japanese period film), but fundamentally the film was a stylistic homage to the widescreen American westerns, of particularly John Ford. By the 1960's the western genre was diminished in the United States, but Italian director Sergio Leone borrowed the entire scenario of Yojimbo (this translates as The Bodyguard), cast then unknown Clint Eastwood, and made one of the greatest westerns, A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Kurosawa's influence can be seen in many post-1960's American directors in a wide range of styles and genres.
Set in the 1860's, where the shogunate, samurai tradition was suffering due to modernisation and changing attitudes. The lone samurai figure (known here by a false name, Sanjuro), played by Kurosawa's favourite actor, Toshiro Mifune, arrives in a feuding small town. Two rival gangs fight and bicker to gain total control over territory, and Mifune, a hired killer, brings his own bitter vengeance, and begins playing off the rival gangs off of one another. He changes sides at whim, and bargains for the greatest offering of money. His skills as a samurai are displayed when he first arrives in town, and his abilities are lauded, and the head of each gang vies for the samurai's attention, and for the chance to win the war.
Kurosawa's love of the widescreen format (tohoscope is used here - the branded system - like technoscope/vitascope et al. - for Japan's Toho studios that Kurosawa was working under), is obvious, and he uses it incredibly well. The incredible widescreen compositions are a beauty to behold, enhanced by black and white photography and the cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa. Kurosawa was also a master of atmosphere, from character tensions to the more ethereal: Capturing feudal hostilities in western genre iconographic imagery, the opposing groups standing at each end of the street, Kurosawa adds the consistent movement of the wind moving the autumnal leaves - this is the kind of detail that heightens the visual experience.
Kurosawa's influence is undisputed (George Lucas - living off his one idea as he does - was hugely influenced), his style and storytelling genius would be hard not to homage - or "borrow" from. His imagery alone stand as fundamentally beautiful, the compositions' mis-en-scene holding the story together, making it believable and in fact becomes the films foundation - you could easily watch the film with the sound off, and still become totally absorbed in the story. With a genuine sense of humour (very black humour consequently), the film shows its intentions as a funny story about the foolish nature of war, in a diminishing world of tradition and the coming of modernity, with all of its machinery.
On August 5th 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in bed. She died of an overdose, which is often viewed as suspicious. That was 50 years ago, and her complexity as a woman, and her image endures without any abate. It is the fact that she was such a complex and damaged person that her screen icon status still adorns the walls of many people, and her perplexed beauty still has the power to beguile en-masse. The Misfits was her last completed film, - she never completed the filming of George Cukor's remake of My Favourite Wife (1940), Something's Got to Give, which has been subsequently released as a short - and I feel that it captures much of what made Norma Jean Mortensen, Marilyn Monroe.
She plays Roslyn, a newly divorced woman, who meets up with a couple of older men, Guido (Eli Wallach) and Gay (Clark Gable - this was also his last film), and escapes with them to a country house. The men are besotted with this naive, sexy blonde who seem's to have a certain verve for life. They meet with Montgomery Clift's rodeo rider, Perce, as they venture out to the desert first for rodeo, then to catch some Mustang's (horses, not the car). When Roslyn discovers that the men plan to sell the horses for dog meat, her attitude towards the men, and their dying practises changes.
Set in Nevada, the film engenders the idea that the cowboy, the working man, is something of the past. Modernity is taking over the landscapes of America, and this ethereal blonde figure enters the three men's lives to emasculate them from the barbaric ways of the past. But she is not there only for the purpose of altering the outlook of these gruff men, or to push modernity into the plains. Like the real Marilyn, Roslyn craves the attention of men, - Norma Jean never knew who her real father was, and her mother was less than interested in her - and especially is needy for a father figure; a man she can fully trust and rely on.
This collusion of Marilyn's real-life and the character in The Misfits is no accident of course. The screenplay was written specifically for her by her then husband, playwright Arthur Miller, and he clearly knew her need for that elusive father figure, and her need to soak up attention, and wear her body (and image) as a mask to her internal pain, and tragic sense of abandonment.
Whilst certainly not her best film (director John Huston had stated that she was difficult, and the decision to shoot in black and white was due to her bloodshot eyes - caused by alcohol and prescription drugs), that surely would go to Some Like it Hot (1959), but this is absolutely her greatest, and most revealing role. The Misfits also tells of the damaging effects of modernisation, and the nostalgia of the past.
After 25 years away from Franco-dictated Spain, Luis Bunuel went back to make Viridiana. The film focuses on a nun called Viridiana, who is informed by her mother superior that her uncle, Don Jaime (Bunuel regular Fernando Rey), is dying and wishes for her to visit him. Whilst he has supported her for many years, she is suspicious of him, and had not seen him for many years. Don Jaime occupies a huge mansion with tracts of land, but has been lonely since his wife died on their wedding night. His only companion is his servant, Romona (Moargerita Lozano) and her daughter Rita (Teresa Rabal). On arrival, Don Jaime sees that Viridiana looks remarkably similar to his dead wife, and proclaims his love for her. When she refuses and leaves, Don Jaime commits suicide. Viridiana is left grief-stricken, and guilty emotions weigh her down. She decides to use the grounds to help 13 beggars.
Whilst not as intrinsically "surreal" as many of Bunuel's more well known films (Belle de Jour (1967) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)), but his black sense of humour is in tack, along with his own brand of irony. After Jaime's death, his son Jorge (Francisco Rabal) arrives at the house. In one scene, Jorge sees a peasant dragging a dog that is tied to his cart. Jorge offers to buy the dog in an effort to save it. Bunuel then appears to mock the entire process of selflessness. Once the transaction is complete (and unseen by Jorge), another dog is seen tied to a cart travelling in the opposite direction.
Whilst Bunuel was permitted to make a film in his native Spain, no sooner had it been released, than the Spanish government banned it on the grounds of blasphemy and obscenity. The Vatican also denounced the film and called for its suppression. It's difficult to see exactly why this was, although there are some themes and representations that may have been contentious. Towards the end of the film, the vagrants that Viridiana has put up, decide to infiltrate the main house whilst the owners are away. In this debauched scene, the 13 beggars, sit around the dinner table, recreating the famous Last Supper painting by Leonardo da Vinci - a blind beggar is in the place of Jesus.
With stunning black and white cinematography by Jose F. Aguayo, each shot is entrenched with beauty and meaning. Whilst not his best film, Bunuel creates a strange drama of basic human desires, and the difficulty in controlling the baser ones. This could also be another possible reason for it's condemnation by the church. For, even with faith, these characters have trouble in controlling themselves, and even Viridiana is implicitly brought into this "life of sin".
When Earth starts to experience strange changes in the weather and a rapidly increasing temperature,down-in-the-dumps Daily Express journalist Peter Stenning (Edward Judd) is given the investigation. Science correspondent Bill Maguire (Leo McKern) seems to think that simultaneous nuclear tests by the U.S. and the Soviet Union have knocked the Earth off it's axis, causing it to drift closer to the sun. Stenning is snooping around the Met Office looking for answers when he meets young telephone operator Jeannie (Janet Munro) who may have unwillingly stumbled upon the truth. Meanwhile, with the temperatures increasing at an unbearable rate, the government starts to ration supplies, including the nation's water.
I must admit that upon getting a copy of this, I was expecting a stiff-upper-lipped and cheesy British sci-fi full of dodgy effects and predictable plot devices. How wrong I was. If this film could be compared to any other, it would have to be All The President's Men (1976). It is very rare that a film manages to capture the sweat, stress and panic of the newsroom where the workers gather round for quick meetings and discussions before franticly typing up a new story and making those all-important phone calls. And the decision to tell the whole story from the viewpoint of the Daily Express workers is a refreshing and exciting one.
The hero is not a bland, square-jawed cheeseball that was common in the sci-fi films of the 50's and 60's, but a borderline alcoholic who is struggling with the separation from his wife and the fact that his boss gives him all the bottom-shelf stories. And he is played with utter conviction by Edward Judd. In fact, the acting is impressive all-round - Leo McKern is solid as the reliable workaholic who seems to be one step ahead of everybody else, and Janet Munro is sweet, interesting and sexy as the innocent girl who seems to be somehow caught up in everything. The film has a quite shocking level of flesh on display too, and if you're perverted or simply lonely enough, I'm sure you could even catch a nipple if you freeze-frame the DVD. (Not that I did it!)
As a Cold War sci-fi, the film could work as a double-bill alongside the truly perfect The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951). Although it differs in tone and subject matter, it still has the underlying feeling of paranoia that plagued sci-fi films of the time, and allowed for some of the greatest films of the genre to be produced. The threat of nuclear war was lingering in everybody's mind (I assume, I know it would if I was there) and the end of the world was all too believable and possible. This is a criminally underrated film - beautifully filmed (the sun-kissed sepia opening is simply gorgeous); a script that any Oscar-winner would be proud of; and has an ending so bleak and unresolved it deserves a place amongst the very best. Simply great sci-fi film-making.
Similar to Russ Meyer's debut feature The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959), this barely 60-minute film follows a geeky and awkward man as he gawks at all the large-breasted beauties on show. Our protagonist is, as the title suggests, a handyman, and moves from job to job where he is teased by women played by the same woman (Eve Meyer - the then-wife of Russ). He moves from coffee-shop to office block to arthouse where he just can't seem to escape those sexual temptations. All the while he is pursued by Eve (again, played by Eve Meyer), a woman who seems to be fascinated with him and his 'masculine' behaviour, making notes and seeing him as some kind of wild beast.
There are two kinds of Russ Meyer films. Firstly, there are those with a budget which allow Meyer to show off his genuinely massive talent and produce thoroughly enjoyable and incredibly stylish films such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), Vixen! (1968) and his best Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970). What are on the surface are softcore porn flicks, but are really inventive and laugh-out-loud funny, while often being just bizarre. His second range of films are made quickly and cheaply, and amplify his love for buxom women with huge breasts that would always make a huge profit. Eve And The Handyman is sadly one of these. Although we often get a glimpse of Meyer's sense of humour, the film is ultimately a bore. Clocking in at 65 minutes, it really did feel a hell of a lot longer. This was however only his second feature, and you have to admire a director who was the first person to bring an actual storyline to the soft-porn genre.
Father Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) is sent to a Polish convent in the seventeenth century, where talk amongst the sparse townsfolk are of the wicked acts committed by the nuns of the convent that looms over the town like a ghost. At the head of this apparent possession is Mother Joan (Lucyna Winnicka), who tells Suryn of the fate of the previous priest, whose charred remains still lie at the burning post. Suryn is so horrified by what he sees as the purest of evils that he promises to rid Joan of her affliction, even if it is at the expense of his own soul, becoming a martyr in the fight against Satan's influence.
