Review #1,413: 'The Passion of Anna' (1969)

By the mid-1960's, Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman had already established himself as one of the true masters of cinema. He had unleashed the likes of Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, Through a Glass Darkly and - one of my personal favourites - the criminally underrated Sawdust and Tinsel, all sombre black-and-white masterpieces the director would be remembered for. 1966 saw Bergman kick off a series of films where he would experiment with cinematic form, while still exploring his favourite themes of memory, love and madness. This resulted in arguably his finest achievement, Persona, and he would go on to make the likes of Hour of the Wolf, Shame and The Passion of Anna. Bergman frequently commented on his own pictures, citing The Passion of Anna as one of his greatest failures. While it may not be on the same level as his best work, the raw emotion of Anna cannot be ignored or indeed forgotten, so I'll have to wholeheartedly disagree with the great man on this one.

The story concerns ex-convict and estranged husband Andreas Winkleman (Max von Sydow), who has isolated himself on a Swedish island (actually Bergman's own) and only occasionally socialising with the handful of locals spread across the land. One day he is approached by the beautiful but unhinged Anna (Liv Ullmann), a widow who now walks on a crutch following the car crash that took the lives of her husband and son. She wants to use Andreas' phone, and the hermit is happy to oblige. Only he can't resist eavesdropping on the conversation, which results in Anna hanging up the phone in anger and accidentally (or purposefully?) leaving her bag behind. This leads to a dinner involving married couple Eva (Bibi Andersson) and Elis Vergerus (Erland Josephson), who are both going through their own mental anguish. Eva is an insomniac who has been unfaithful in the past, and Elis is a pompous misanthrope who hoards photographs he takes of everyone he meets. Andreas and Anna start a passionless affair, but their shady pasts are destined to resurface. The island is also struck by a serial animal killer, who attempts to hang a dog before butchering cattle and setting a barn on fire. 

Bergman isn't known to be a 'fun' director, and The Passion of Anna is no different. There are sweeping monologues to camera and existential conversations over dinner. Much of this will be lost on most viewers, including myself, but there is something undeniably hypnotic watching Bergman's favourite actors spewing psychological observations or recollecting strange, nonsensical dreams. Bergman also opts to intercut the film with interviews of the actors talking about their characters, in what appears to be spontaneous behind-the-scenes footage. These sections were in fact scripted, and although the actors do well masking this fact, this experimental approach only interrupts the story. The director himself has also voiced his regret for leaving something in he knew wouldn't work. Still, merely solid Bergman would be the highlight of most director's back catalogues. Bergman explores people's tendency to fall back into previous cycles of behaviour, and how memory can be corrupted by both time and wishful-thinking. Anna frequently recalls her perfectly balanced marriage with a man she shared an unbreakable bond with, but we know from Elis that her husband embarked on an affair with Eva. The final shot leaves many questions unanswered, and we are left to ponder them for ourselves. Despite the confusing manner with which the story is told, we are left with a kind of unspoken understanding.


Directed by: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson, Erik Hell
Country: Sweden

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,235: 'Sleepless' (2001)

Sleepless, or to give the film its original Italian title, Non ho sonno, was a commercial success in its native country and marked the return of legendary director Dario Argento to the giallo sub-genre after a long hiatus. Essentially a slasher at heart, Sleepless does see the return of the director's popular trademarks, making this a formulaic and unsurprising serial killer movie elevated by some stylish camerawork and a thumping, energetic score. Taking place decades after Turin was left shaking following a series of killings known as 'The Dwarf Murders', it was assumed that the killer was dead after its main suspect disappeared and the crimes came to an abrupt halt. Yet when people (women) start to turn up dead in the same style as those committed back in 1983, it would seem that the one responsible is back and thirsty for more bloodshed.

A young boy, Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi), witnesses the horrific murder of his mother. The lead investigator, Moretti (Max von Sydow), promises the shell-shocked youth that he will catch the killer if it takes him the rest of his life. Fast-forward seventeen years later, and the case of The Dwarf Murders remains officially unsolved. Paying the bills by working as a waiter in restaurant, Giacomo, now living in Rome, is pulled back to Turin when his friend offers him a place to stay as the murders start to pile up. With the police clueless and familiar with the notorious murders years before, they turn to the now-retired Moretti for assistance, but his memory has deteriorated so much that he remembers little about the case. Reminded of his promise, Moretti hooks up with Giacomo in an attempt to solve the murders themselves. Is giallo novelist Vincenzo de Fabritiis, the dwarf who emerged as the prime suspect before seemingly passing away, actually alive and eager to finish the job?

With sightings of a little person made at almost every murder scene, it appears that the answer is yes. But like most of the greatest gialli, Argento's script (co-written by Franco Ferrini and Carlo Lucarelli) throws in more red-herrings than you can count and will leave you guessing until the very end. With a running time of just shy of 2 hours, Sleepless is overlong, and doesn't offer enough in the way of originality to justify the slog. It may just catch you off guard though, as Argento throws in a set-piece on an empty train with only a potential victim, a conductor and the unseen killer on board, which ranks as some of the greatest work he's ever done. With the return of Goblin on the soundtrack, the movie often feels like a return to form for the Italian filmmaker, but slasher tropes dominate while the giallo nods often feel like a side-note. This means that there is perhaps more than just a hint of misogyny, and the narrative is repetitive in nature. Still, it was the best work he had done since 1987's Opera, until he regressed again into a series of movies that varied between the mediocre to the downright terrible.


Directed by: Dario Argento
Starring: Max von Sydow, Stefano Dionisi, Chiara Caselli, Gabriele Lavia
Country: Italy

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,012: 'Three Days of the Condor' (1975)

There was once a time that paranoid thrillers such as Sydney Pollack's magnificent Three Days of the Condor would have seemed like the mad ramblings of an extreme lefty. The government were not made up of powerful men with our best interests at heart, but a bunch of powerful men plotting, scheming and murdering their way to further themselves or whatever organisation-within-an-organisation they were working for. After the Watergate scandal, such cynicism didn't seem so out-there. It inspired a wave of great films, some of the finest in American history, with director Sydney Pollack and actor Robert Redford very much at the forefront.

Here Redford plays Joseph Turner, a CIA bookworm tasked with reading everything - books, newspapers, magazines - in the search for hidden codes and revolutionary ideas, operating from a small office with a close assortment of colleagues. After he pops out for lunch one day, he returns to find all of his co-workers murdered, and is plunged into a world of deep paranoia. When he seeks protection from the 'Company', he is almost murdered as he meets the man he thinks is bringing him in. With no-one to turn to, he kidnaps an artist named Kathy (Faye Dunaway) at gunpoint and shacks up with her, gradually bringing her to his side as his situation becomes utterly desperate.

Turner, now lumped with the knowledge that he can trust nobody, is forced to re-evaluate everything he knows about how his employees operate. The CIA are summed up in the film by two characters - the seemingly emotionless killer Joubert (Max von Sydow) and slick-talking suit Higgins (Cliff Robertson). It's a terrifying thought to think that someone may be listening to every phone call or reporting your whereabouts, and that every time there's a knock at the door it may be the delivery man with a machine-gun. It is Joubert's chilling monologue towards the end of the film that really speaks volumes about the men Turner is fleeing from. Pollack's direction is tight and clinical, effortlessly building suspense through Redford's increasingly rugged performance. An exciting, intelligent thriller from the greatest period in American cinema.


Directed by: Sydney Pollack
Starring: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max Von Sydow, John Houseman
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #354: 'Dune' (1984)

So, OK; It's another Messiah story! These films are so overly present in the history of science-fiction/fantasy films. Even in the last decade or so we have seen these films being constantly produced (see The Matrix (1999) or Avatar (2009) as just two recent examples). It's the narrative of a young man, who progresses through a story to become the legendary myth of a person embodied as the saviour for an entire race, universe, galaxy... However, if we move back to 1984, the Hollywood film industry was still trying to capture that cash-cow essence of Star Wars (1977) and it's celebrated special effects, and it's fantasy setting. Therefore, any project that had space-ships, monsters etc were being made regardless of their relationship to the "kids" film. Dune, based on the epic and elaborate novel by Frank Herbert, is a very complex piece of cinema, that baffled many audience's and critics alike (I personally can't see that it is confusing at all). But then, if we look at the majority of the genre films made at the time, we can see how it could be see as perplexing next to the generic, simplistic stories being told. Inevitably, the film was a major flop, and with the $40 million budget, practically bankrupted 20th Century Fox, and also (thankfully) convinced director David Lynch to never work on a big budget, Hollywood-funded film again, and due to his contract with Dino De Laurentis, he was able to make his masterpiece, Blue Velvet (1986).

Dune is a narrative of warring planets, and the machinations of the politics that rule the galaxy. Dune is a desert planet that has never seen water, and on this planet is a substance called spice melange, that is the most important essence in this world. Whoever controls the spice controls the universe. The spice enables a means of travel without moving; it has the ability to fold space, and also expands consciousness. The main warring "houses" are of the Atriedes and the evil Harkonnens. Paul Atriedes (Kyle MacLachlan) is the son of Duke Leto (Jurgen Prochnow), and his mother Lady Jessica (Francesca Annis) who is a member of the Bene Gesserit, a race of women who are able to read minds and control the minds of others. With his royal connections, Paul is held in high regard. But as the story progresses it is clear that there is more to this boy that was first expected. After a conspiracy to create a war between the Atriedes and Harkonnens, Paul and his mother are left stranded on the planet Arrakis (also known as Dune), where the prophecy of the saviour and the dreams that Paul had been haunted by, comes to pass.

Whilst the films narrative complexities are difficult to concisely lay down the full story, the essence is very simple. It is incredible that Lynch's screenplay managed to deal with Herbert's book, which is incredibly sprawling, but he managed admirably. The sets and costumes for the film are incredible, and even today (and after seeing the films several times) I am amazed at the look of the film. The costumes and props are incredibly eclectic - we have iconography from all over the place: Victorian austerity, 1930's telecommunications items, Nazi-style uniforms, and elaborate baroque back-drops. OK, so many of the special effects are incredibly dated, and others seem to have been cobbled together at the last moments on a shoe-string budget, but this does not hinder the experience of the film. Produced at a time when complex genre films were simply not being made, it is a film to watch several times, which reveals more each time. It was a project that was always going to be difficult to produce, with two other notable directors being previously attached to the film (Ridley Scott and Alejandro Jodorowsky - wish the latter happened with the proposed cast of Salvador Dali and Orson Welles, and music by Pink Floyd), it's amazing the film was made at all, and I salute Lynch for an admirable, often visually beautiful, and delightfully complex film, that I love more each time I see it.

The film also has an incredible supporting cast (Brad Douriff, Jose Ferrer, Patrick Stewert, Max Von Sydow, Dean Stockwell, to name a few), and there are very Lynchian elements that delight me every time. I mean, where else in Hollywood genre cinema would you see the main villain of the piece, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillen) having his face injected with diseases by his personal doctor?


Directed by: David Lynch
Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Everett McGill, Sting, Max Von Sydow, José Ferrer, Virginia Madsen, Patrick Stewart, Sean Young
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Marc Ivamy