a ghost of a chance with you ...

     The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation; produced by Fred Kohlmar; screenplay by Philip Dunne; directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz; director of photography, Charles Lang, Jr.; music, Bernard Herrmann. Burbank, Calif. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, [2013]. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1947. From the novel by R.A. Dick (pseud. Josephine Leslie).
    Performers: Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, George Sanders, Natalie Wood, Vanessa Brown, Edna Best, Anna Lee, Robert Coote. Special features: commentaries by Greg Kimble, Christopher Husted, Jeanine Bassinger and Kenneth Geist; biography: "Rex Harrison: the man who would be king"; theatrical trailer; still gallery. Summary: at the turn of the century a young widow and her daughter move into a cottage on the English coast. Soon she learns that the cottage is haunted by the ghost of its former owner, a sea captain. When he finds he can't scare her away, they soon fall into a most unlikely love affair.


    Dating as it does from an era rife with ghost movies (most of them silly comedies), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, along with The Uninvited, is my favorite [1]. That being said, I reluctantly admit that in my most recent viewing I was somewhat less taken with Mrs. Muir than I had been in the past. Still, the film is a triumph, an under the radar gem that has crept up in critical and popular esteem over the years. Update: a second viewing, this one with the superb commentary by Greg Kimble and Christopher Husted, has inspired me to warm to the film a little more and further appreciate its many felicities, albeit within its historical and stylistic context. By the way, I’m less enthusiastic about the second commentary track by Jeanine Bassinger and Kenneth Geist.

    But getting back to ghost movies: curious that so few reviewers and commentators note the obvious parallels to The Uninvited [2]. Both are gothicized tales set on the English sea coast, both have the requisite haunted house (and attendant film noirish look), both deal with issues of love beyond death, both are set in the early Twentieth Century [3], and, perhaps most important, both treat their subjects seriously (though Mrs. Muir has its share of lighter moments). Both films also reflect the unseen presence of Orson Welles, and both are obvious first cousins to the Val Lewton supernatural noir thrillers of the 1940s. But despite the similarities in content and even style, somehow the tone is different. Partly this is a result of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s emphasis on words and script, thus Mrs. Muir has a more writerly and dialogue-rich sheen, especially the snappy back and forth between Harrison and Tierney. As mentioned above, Mrs. Muir is almost a comedy, but, happily, not quite. It pulls off its comic elements with pitch perfect timing, never overstaying the welcome. In contrast, Uninvited’s attempts at humor seem heavy footed and out of place.
   

    In any case, the performances in Mrs. Muir are all right on the money. It took me a while to warm to Rex Harrison, but I think he got better as the film progressed and the character softened. However, it’s Gene Tierney’s movie and, for me, the performance of a career. Her Brit accent sounds authentic enough, and the subtleties she brings to the character are a wonder. I think her acting is even better as the elderly Lucy Muir, who gets more sympathetic as she ages while at the same time becomes crankier. And of course George Sanders is terrific in a very George Sanders type of role as the charming cad. That he could put across this kind of character in his sleep shouldn’t lessen our appreciation of his marvelous portrayal. Among the supporting cast especial mention must be made of Vanessa Brown as the adult version of Anna. Echt-English in appearance and accent, she’s just right, and I wish she’d had a bigger role. The short scene between her and Tierney is perhaps the most moving in the entire film. As Herrmann’s score wafts in the background, they talk about the ghost, life and love, and it’s hard to hold back the tears. Finally, amongst the supporting players, if you like, there’s the seemingly inevitable cute yorkie in a movie with this setting and era (there’s also a cute yorkie in Uninvited, by the way).

     Bernard Herrmann’s music for Mrs. Muir (reputedly his personal favorite among his film scores) has been praised to the skies, deservingly so. Alas, my DVD copy frequently minimized the music or in some cases rendered it inaudible, buried as it were beneath the dialogue. This is especially unfortunate since the obscured passages are among the most exquisite in the entire film. Anyhow the music’s low keyed eloquence suggests a longing for the infinite, a love beyond death that’s the raison dêtre for the entire story. Indeed it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say the music really carries the movie, more than any other element. There’s a feeling of melancholy that, if you’ll pardon the pun, haunts the entire film, and the music perfectly expresses and contributes to this sense of longing, regret and unrequitedness. In contrast, Victor Young’s lushly romantic score for Uninvited, perfect in its way, really can’t compare – in style or aesthetic merit.
    To summarize, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is a perfectly wonderful movie: it brings together all the elements to form a near flawless work of art. In doing so it represents what was best about moviemaking in the studio era.   

[1]  As readers of this blog must divine, I’m a big fan of the above-mentioned Val Lewton psychological horror films from the 1940s, and though it’s a subtle point, I consider them a different animal from both Mrs. Muir and Uninvited: for all their spooky, ghost like ambience, the Lewton films have no ghosts, in fact only a couple of them have overtly supernatural elements, and even these are depicted ambiguously enough to be arguable.     
[2]  Another explanation for the similarity of the films, at least in their look, is the presence of ace cameraman Charles Lang, who did the cinematography for both. Even so, Mrs. Muir has somewhat lighter, crisper visuals than Uninvited, the gloomier look of which is very much appropriate for the dark psychological undercurrents. A personal note: I admire and greatly enjoy both films, but at the moment lean towards Uninvited, but only by a whisker.
[3] Yes, it’s pushing it to say both date from more or less the same era, since Uninvited is set in 1937 and Mrs. Muir ca. 1900. And yet, much of the culture, architecture, and Victorian/Edwardian attitudes are cut from the same cloth.

"no hay banda": Mulholland Drive (2001)

    Mulholland Drive. David Lynch (director, screenwriter), Alain Sarde (producer), Pierre Edelman (producer), Mary Sweeney (producer, editor), Neal Edelstein (producer), Michael Polaire (producer), Tony Krantz (producer), Angelo Badalamenti (composer). Performers: Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, Dan Hedaya, Mark Pellegrino. DVD Video, English, 2015. [Director-approved two-DVD special edition]. The Criterion Collection, [New York, N.Y.], 2015. #779. Originally produced as a motion picture in 2001.
    Summary: Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.
    Special features: Disc 2: Interviews: David Lynch and Naomi Watts (27 min.); Laura Harring, Johanna Ray, Justin Theroux, and Naomi Watts (36 min.); Angelo Badalamenti (20 min.); Peter Deming and Jack Fisk (22 min.); deleted scene; on-set footage (25 min.); trailer. Includes a booklet featuring an interview with Lynch from filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley's 2005 edition of the book "Lynch on Lynch."
  

Sunset Blvd. meets the Twilight Zone …

     I’m still not sure whether I think Mulholland Drive is the best movie I’ve ever seen, or the worst, as I’ve reacted both ways at different times. No surprise, given the polarized opinions of fans, devotees and (anti)devotees. For the moment I’ll split the difference and opine that Mulholland Dr. is a tad overrated, but still pretty darn good. And even if repeated viewings bring me no closer to understanding the true meaning or correct interpretation, I do confess that I rather enjoy the film more each time I see it.
     Nonlinear story lines in movies have been around a long time [1], and perhaps the most successful, in my opinion, is Last Year at Marienbad. For me Marienbad had a kind of inner logic and consistency – admittedly elusive and difficult to articulate – that nonetheless place it among the truly great. The other movie Mulholland reminds me of, strangely enough, is the offbeat crypto-noir Dementia (aka Daughter of Horror), which also has a dreamscape tableaux, shifting reality/fantasy, off-kilter narrative, femme fatale in peril, nasty villains, and most of all, atmosphere to burn [2].
     But what is MD about? Whatever else it may be, MD for me is at heart a meditation on the dark side of Hollywood, served up full-on phantasmagoric. In a word, MD makes The Big Sleep look like a straightforward crime story and Sunset Blvd. a Hallmark Hall of Fame weepie (coincidentally, both Big Sleep and Sunset Blvd. explore the seamy underbelly of Los Angeles culture and the movie business, but using a different cinematic language).
     Getting back to MD, the first more or less two-thirds of the film seduces us into believing the story is a conventional mystery, albeit with quirky touches, but a mystery that will ultimately give us the payoff (read: solution) at the end. But it’s the last forty-five minutes where things really get weird and play with our expectations big-time. Was it just a dream after all? Parts of it a dream? Or the hallucinations of a mentally ill young woman? And what’s the significance of the cowboy? It’s as though the hall of mirrors scene in The Lady from Shanghai (a film not dissimilar to MD) has transmogrified into the most gloriously excessive cinematic roller coaster, with huge swaths of color and (mostly) beautiful faces set amidst a feverish LA/Hollywood backdrop.
     MD for me is best appreciated as pure style: the acting, camerawork, script, production design, and especially the look of the film are brilliantly done. Make no mistake, MD is beautiful to watch, not the least beauteous being our two leading ladies, who have never looked better, or performed better. And yes, the steamy lesbian scene, the one we wait nearly two hours to get to, is a doozy, guaranteed to get one, shall we say, hot under the collar. The acting throughout is good to excellent, and sometimes just plain eccentric. I’ve already sung the praises of Naomi Watts and Laura Harring. Justin Theroux is fine as a pompous auteur director who’s harassed by shady characters [3], and it’s a joy to see the great Ann Miller in her last film.
     It occurs to me that my comments above (and below) reference lots of movies and their similarities and dissimilarities to Mulholland Dr, and maybe that’s the point, and one way to interpret the film, not only as a pastiche of L.A. but of the movie business and just plain movies, especially old movies (is it any accident that the mystery woman takes the name of ‘Rita,’ after seeing a poster of film noir’s definitive femme fatale, Gilda?). For gosh sakes, Laura Harring even looks like Rita Hayworth [4].   
      Then there’s my own, rather novel take, in which the first two-thirds of the movie (Act 1, if you will) is the reality and the remaining third (Act 2) is the dream sequence (I’ve noticed that few commentators take this approach). There’s a certain logic here: Act 2 is presented more like a dream, or feverish hallucination, depending on your point of view. But this interpretation does have its complications: Act 1 ends abruptly, to say the least, with lots of loose ends left dangling. Case in point: if Act 1 is reality, then who is the dead woman in apartment 17, and why didn’t Betty and Rita do anything about it, like reporting it to the authorities? And there’s the butch tenant who lives in apartment 12. Who is she? Is she the murderer? And what's the significance of Club Silencio? Even with these inconsistencies, seeing Act 1 as the reality is more reassuring and satisfying, certainly emotionally so and also, if debatably, aesthetically. But then again, maybe this movie isn’t about satisfying and reassuring. So there it is.
     My alternate interpretation is that both Acts 1 and 2 are reality, and Act 2 simply updates the story by a year or two. Adam Kesher is at the top of his game and Rita and Betty have fallen out as a couple. Rita is now a rising star in the Hollywood constellation, and just happens to be Kesher's future wife, while Betty's early success in acting has vanished and she now lives a life of semi-poverty and gradual mental disintegration. Betty and Rita have new names - Diane and Camilla respectively - and Ann Miller appears inexplicably as Kesher's mother. Eventually Betty arranges for a contract killer to murder Rita and it's implied that this indeed happens. Perhaps grief stricken, Betty has a complete mental collapse and takes her own life. Then again I wonder, is MD ultimately about mental illness and the collective mental illness the film culture creates?
     Whatever the final verdit on the meaning of Mulholland Drive, I can’t resist seeing the film as ending on a positive note, as the ghost-like images of Rita and Betty are superimposed above the L.A. skyline, implying that our two, presumably deceased, heroines, are finally together, in a kind of Hollywood Heaven.   
     Highly recommended then, with the usual not-for-all-tastes caveat [5].

  1 Even Citizen Kane is nonlinear, if presented in an arguably more audience friendly way.   
   2 Most of these tropes also harken back to the Val Lewton thrillers of the 1940s: bumpy narrative, ambiguous characters, unresolved plot threads, Sapphic undercurrent, mysterious walks at night.* This makes me wonder: is MD really a horror film masquerading as a mystery?
      * Admittedly in the Lewton films the presentation and representation of these tropes is, by necessity (read: censor mandated), less extreme.
   3 Some commentators see a Fellini-like quality in the Theroux character, not altogether inappropriate, since on a superficial level, MD is a very Felliniesque movie. But for me Adam Kesher is more of an Orson Welles, right down to the scene where his project is taken away from him by the Big Money people.
   4 As the story progresses the Rita/Camilla character, both in her actions and looks, takes on a distinctly more sinister, femme fatale edge, almost to the point of predatory and vampiric.
   5 Considering its relatively youthful vintage – not yet a quarter century – Mulholland Dr. is one of the most written about movies of all time. Hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of posts, articles, reviews, think pieces and such have appeared over time. Ergo the film has been dissected, critiqued, sanctified, pilloried, explained and appreciated from myriad points of view: feminist, (anti)feminist, queer, Freudian, Jungian, socio-economic, racialist, misogynist, surrealist and purely cinematic interpretations have surged forth. The most convincing approach, for my money, is the L.A./Hollywood dark side backdrop,** served up full on neo-noir and told through the lives of the two (or is it four?) women played so well by Mses. Harring and Watts.
    ** By extension one might take the dark Hollywood critique as a metaphor for the basic dishonesty of the American Dream. The patriarchal, capitalistic, commodified, heteronormal model that’s American culture sells us an illusory bill of goods (advertising industry, anyone?), not that different from the Hollywood Dream sold by the forces that make the movies. 
     Interesting here the connection to film noir. The noir pedigree – doomed protagonists, duplicitous femmes fatales, decaying cities, corrupt rich, downbeat endings – that David Lynch draws upon in many of his films and especially Mulholland Dr. might well be seen as the original template for the cinematic critique of the American Dream.

remembrance of things past: Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

   L'année dernière a Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad). Cocinor présente; Pierre Courau et Raymond Froment présentent; scénario et dialogues, Alain Robbe-Grillet; réalisation, Alain Resnais. New York, NY: Kino Lorber, c[2019]. Widescreen. Originally released as a motion picture in 1961. Extras: audio commentary; trailers; booklet essay; interview with filmmaker and more. Director of photography, Sacha Vierny; editors, Henri Colpi, Jasmine Chasney; music, Francis Seyrig. Performers: Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pioëff.
     Summary: a man is convinced he met an enigmatic woman the previous year at the same location, and they perhaps had a flirtation. A second man, possibly the woman's lover or husband, or psychiatrist, repeatedly intimidates the first man. Their relations unfold through flashback shards that never quite fit into place, their lives a hall of mirrors that never reveal a true self.


      it seems that we have met before ...

      I stumbled upon Last Year at Marienbad purely by accident. Would that I could offer a more edifying account, but truth be told I was perusing one of my favorite tomes on film, DK’s excellent The Movie Book, and being on something of a French movies kick lately I turned to the New Wave section, and there it was, in a full two-page essay. I admit it was the familiar wide-angle photo of the gardens that hooked me and convinced me I had to see this movie. And I’m glad I did. By the way the Kino Lorber DVD looks absolutely smashing and confirms the film’s repute as one of the most beautiful black and white films of all time.
     Marienbad’s story, such as it is, is pitifully thin: in an indeterminate time (probably the early Twentieth Century), at a luxury chateau in central Europe, a man claims he met a woman there, or somewhere, the previous year, while other well-heeled guests lurk zombie-like in the background.
     In many respects Marienbad is a profoundly unsettling film – dreamlike, funny, romantic, absurdist, self-parodic, and frightening. It both challenges and plays tricks on us in the subterranean realms of our conscious and unconscious experience. In other words, it veritably dances with, through, and around, our memory. Now over six decades vintage, Marienbad has inspired hundreds of thousands, probably millions of words, ranging from the damning to the adulatory. And every possible interpretation of its enigmatic structure and content, provided by intellects far keener than mine, has been attempted: feminist, behaviorist, romanticist, Freudian, supernatural, socio-economic, political, literary, and of course purely cinematic takes have spewed forth over time. Thus those of us who have experienced its seductive powers more recently and feel the urge to write something about it are in the embarrassing position of simply belaboring the obvious or repeating what’s already been repeated before. Still, I offer my two cents.
     Beginning at the end, as it were: as I make my way through Kino’s incredibly generous helping of bonus features my favorite is Memories of Last Year at Marienbad [1]. With German narration and done in eminently behind-the-scenes style, this documentary gives us an informal look at the production history of Last Year at Marienbad. Comprised of raw footage from the shooting of the film that was captured on 8mm stock and at just under 50 minutes, Memories is practically a short feature film in itself and almost as compelling and enigmatic as the original. Ranking a close second among the extras is Resnais's short film (21 min.) All the Memory of the World (Toute la mémoire du monde), which looks like a warm-up for Marienbad with its smoothly gliding camera inside a cavernous edifice. After all, what could be a better metaphor for memory than the memories contained in their tangible, albeit fragile form, books? Indeed the Bibliothèque Nationale might well claim to have 'all the memory of the world,' but aren't all libraries really caches of memory?

    
the greatest movie(s) of all time?

     But now a digression for some editorial comment: in vain I looked for Marienbad to be listed, if not in the top ten, then certainly the top twenty, of the most recent (2022) incarnation of BFI’s/Sight and Sound’s much vaunted poll of the greatest movies of all time. I’ll try to avoid the throwaway lines that any compilation, be it made by an individual, or committee (however august) of ‘greatest movies’ is intensely subjective and more or less useless, but nonetheless always grist for lively controversy. Moreover, it’s fun and satisfying to see one’s pet favorites turn up among the listees. Anyhow as you might suspect I was intensely disappointed to discover that Marienbad didn’t even crack the top 100, and it’s cold comfort to see it listed as tied for 169th place in the critics' poll, which must qualify as a respectable honorable mention. Kudos to those seventeen critics and seven directors (from the 1,639 critics and 480 directors who participated) who voted for it [2]. Some further research yielded that Marienbad tied for 26th in the 1962 poll, which in this writer’s humble opinion is much closer to its actual artistic worth, though still underrated. By the way the films it was tied with in 1962 were: Tokyo Story, Intolerance, Pickpocket, Wild Strawberries, Night and Fog, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and Limelight. Some pretty fast company indeed [3]. That it could have slid so far in the intervening six decades is a bit of a mystery – great films are supposed to gain in stature over time. But the explanation may be that, in the intervening sixty years, thousands of feature films have been released and there’s simply more competition for the top spots, also that a larger mix of critics gives us different results. It must also be admitted that some prominent critical luminaries famously panned the film upon its initial release, and some still do, so best to simply place it all in the to-each-his-own-taste file – however questionable that taste may be.
     In any event, and getting back to the film itself: inasmuch as Marienbad’s influence has been discussed, at length, in the critical and scholarly literature, less attention has been paid to its antecedents, i.e. the films that anticipated its lush, dreamlike glory. The poetic aspects and surreal visuals recall Cocteau’s Orphée and La Belle et La Bête, and the visual poetry even brings to mind Bresson’s Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne. Marienbad also mirrors Dames’ comedy-of-manners tone in which the well-turned supporting characters float, trance-like, around the principals. Moreover, the relationship between the hero and heroine in Marienbad has parallels to the relationship between Paul Bernard and Élina Labourdette in Les Dames and that of Jean Marais and Josette Day in La Bête. The sumptuous, baroque design qualities have an obvious precedent in L'Herbier’s L'Inhumaine. And here and there we even see traces of, of all films, Metropolis. The symbolic game of cards and matchsticks recalls the chess duel in The Seventh Seal, and indeed it’s not so much of a reach to see Marienbad as a Bergmanesque film. Other precursors might include Kurosawa’s Rashomon and of course Citizen Kane [4], each film being, among other things, a meditation on the shifting perception of memory, recollection and indeed reality itself. And the references to Hitchcock's Vertigo (which appeared only a couple years prior) are almost too obvious that I don't have to mention them - but I will. Or does Marienbad's pedigree go back even further, much further? Some see Marienbad as a rerun of the Orphic legend from Greek mythology.

     The floating, somnambulist vibe of the characters (both major and minor), the relentlessly prowling camera, and the general disjointedness of the narrative recall the experimental fantasies of Maya Deren from the 1940s. Similarly, there’s a whiff of John Parker‘s noirish nightmare of a film, Dementia/Daughter of Horror, which likewise plays tricks with recall, repression and the nature of reality [5]. Echoes of Marienbad’s dreamlike, surreal ambience even find their way into American television shows of the era like One Step Beyond and The Twilight Zone (especially the 'After Hours' episode). But for me the two films that are conjured up when I watch Marienbad bookend it a year apart in either direction: La Dolce Vita and Carnival of Souls [6], the latter right down to the creepy organ music backdrop.
     But ultimately the film must be accepted on its own terms and stand on its own merits, which are considerable if far from universally accepted. Some complain that Last Year at Marienbad is all surface and no substance, and this opinion isn’t too far off the mark, and maybe that’s exactly the point: that the most pleasurable way to experience Marienbad is simply to marvel at the incredible visual (and aural) beauty of the film, the smoothly gliding camera work, Chanel’s scrumptious wardrobe for Delphine Seyrig, and the other innumerable, purely stylistic, felicities, and leave the cosmic insights to someone else.
     That the film is a masterpiece is excruciatingly, even dismayingly, self-evident. Nonetheless, it would be terribly elitist and condescending to say that those who dismiss, ridicule or outright hate the movie simply don’t understand it, so I won’t say it. But herein is the great irony: there’s not that much to understand about the film. Permanently frozen in a (probably) 1930s gestalt that’s at once modern, timely and timeless, Last Year at Marienbad is at heart a very simple movie.

   [1] In this rough-around-the-edges, gauzy, cloudy home movie version of Marienbad, putting the word ‘memories’ at the beginning of the title is supremely apt, because the film Last Year at Marienbad is about, more than anything else, memory and the elusive, unreliable nature of memories. Memories of Last Year at Marienbad’s fuzzy, flickering images are a perfect metaphor for Marienbad’s uncertain, always shifting center of gravity.
   [2] Interesting bit of trivia: in the 2012 poll a nearly exact same number (sixteen critics and seven directors) voted for Marienbad. Does this imply a solidifying of its (still undervalued) reputation by those in the know?
   [3] Fast company is right, well, maybe. It’s a mixed verdict of how these once-formidable movies have fared in critical esteem in the six subsequent decades. In the 2022 critics’ poll, the films cited from 1962 placed, respectively: Tokyo Story 4 (ranks #4 in the directors’ poll as well); Intolerance, tied 225; Pickpocket, tied 136; Wild Strawberries, tied 108; Night and Fog, not ranked [among the top 250]; The Passion of Joan of Arc, tied 21; Limelight, not ranked.
      Asie: there'a certain ironic justice in that Delphine Seyrig, who plays Last Year at Marienbad's mystery woman, is the lead in the (at least for the time being) officially anointed 'greatest movie of all time,' Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (2022 BFI/S&S critics' poll).
   [4] It’s probably not too much of an exaggeration to cite Orson Welles as the great unseen presence on so many black and white films (including French New Wave) from the classic era of roughly 1940-1965.
   [5] A novel, if not unique, interpretation of the film is that Marienbad is more or less a ghost story in which the characters are ghosts who wander about in a purgatorial netherworld, though whether they know they are ghosts or not, and exactly where they’re all headed is a bit , quite a bit actually, unclear. The ghost story meme is reinforced by the mortuarial organ music which the film shares with the above-referenced American horror cult classic Carnival of Souls, which appeared at almost the same time and similarly has a spectral incognizance subtext.
    My own rather idiosyncratic but probably not totally original take is that the film is basically visualized poetry: our narrator’s sing-song delivery and the vague, poetic nature of the words he speaks suggest this. In this regard we may see his narrative as poetry disguised as prose and the film itself as poetic imagery disguised as narrative film. Some might see it as a filmic representation of a dream, but aren’t all movies to some extent?
[6] Such seemingly unlikely choices are, on further reflection, eminently (if arguably) apropos in the context of comparison with a film that's itself about hazily recalled confluences and connections.

the best film noir femmes fatales

    I hate these kinds of lists, much of the time anyway. But since I’m on a bit of a list binge these days, insofar as compiling them, I thought I’d share a few thoughts and, more to the point, create my own, highly subjective, ergo highly arguable, list of the best femmes fatales in noir history.

    Hitchcock once famously said that a thriller is only as good as its villain, and likewise it’s not too much of a stretch to say that a film noir is only as good as its femme fatale. Aside: I’ve noticed that the phenomenon of the femme fatale in the classic noir era [1] peaked in the late Forties and dropped off around 1950. Though indeed there are exceptions, I’m hard pressed to name a lot of classic femmes fatales that appeared after 1950. Even the greatest noirs of that era – Touch of Evil, Night and the City, Kiss Me Deadly, Sweet Smell of Success – to cite just some of the best known exemplars, lack a true femme fatale [2] (there’s at least one notable mid-1950s exception, see below).

    The fatal woman isn’t really new, much less a creation of mid Twentieth Century male fantasies (and fears). You could say she’s been around as long as human history and storytelling has been around [3]. The femme fatale runs rampant in opera, for example, but the best-known incarnation is surely Carmen. Indeed she more or less set the mold for the modern femme fatale, if we define ‘modern’ as beginning in the late Nineteenth Century. Be that as it may, for better or worse, in the popular imagination the image of the femme fatale is pretty much cemented definitively in mid- and late 1940s crime and thriller movies.
    The noir literature then is voluminous and there’s almost as much written on the femme fatale as that of film noir itself (aren’t the two really the same thing? Well, maybe, and maybe not). In any case, aside from purely cinematic takes, feminist, behaviorist, romanticist, Freudian, supernatural, socio-economic, political, and literary analyses have surged forth.

    Comment: in the films cited below, most of them anyway, it’s the role the actress is best remembered for. Seldom, if ever, did the respective actresses shine so well as they did in their essays on the dark woman. Stanwyck and Gardner are a couple of exceptions who had substantial careers and other roles just as memorable. Second comment: as opined in my post on ‘greatest movies’ elsewhere on this blog, at the top level – in the case of femmes fatales, the best twenty or so – the standings are pretty much interchangeable, and as such one shouldn’t make too much out of the specific rankings. Still, without further ado here then are my choices for the best femmes fatales in noir history [4].


“You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man”

    1) Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner). Body Heat. Turner's Matty Walker is ensconced in the noir pantheon as one of the deadliest of the deadly, and perhaps the most remorseless – and relentless – of them all. Turner’s wondrous performance can be appreciated for its many layers and subtle touches, all the more miraculous considering Body Heat was her first starring role in a major film.

    2) Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer). Out of the past. As Out of the Past’s reputation has grown over the years to where it vies with Double Indemnity as the consensus quintessential noir, so has Jane Greer’s essay as the incredibly manipulative Kathie, sometimes kept woman, sometimes wayward waif, always very sexy, and very dangerous. Miss Greer had a fairly solid career as an actress but never reached these heights again.

    3) Vera (Ann Savage). Detour. Vera isn’t evil so much as repellent, both physically and morally, and utterly opportunistic, so her lofty rank may be a little generous. Still, she’s a one-of-a-kind villain and a force to be reckoned with. That fingernails on the blackboard voice is cringeworthy just thinking about it, but her tubercular cough engenders at least some sympathy.

   4) Lulu (Louise Brooks). Pandora’s Box.  Brooks’ Lulu is a decade or so outside the classic noir era but she merits a place simply because she set the template for all the cinematic femmes fatales that were to follow, though Theda Bara’s ‘vamp’ of a decade earlier might merit a mention as a precursor.  
  
 5) Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck). Double Indemnity. For a long time Stanwyck’s proletarian schemer was the default choice for the best noir femme fatale, but changing tastes and greater visibility of other films have caused her to slip a rung or two, but she’s still pretty competitive for a spot in the top ten.

   6) Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor). The Killing. No compilation of noir fatale femmes would be complete without at least one Marie Windsor character, and this one’s a doozie. In the noirverse Marie Windsor is probably best known for her essays in Narrow Margin and The Killing, but for sheer mean-spiritedness and nastiness it’s no contest. She’s simply unforgettable as Elijah Cook Jr.’s trophy wife from Hell. Her duplicitousness, greed, and do-whatever-it-takes attitude causes all sorts of problems and leads directly to the film’s violent denouement.

   7) Paula Craig (Janis Carter). Framed.  It was pretty much a toss-up between Miss Carter’s deadly turns in Framed and Night Editor. She more or less plays the same character in both films but I went with Framed for Paula Craig’s utter ruthlessness and callousness: she’s willing to sacrifice two, maybe three, men to satisfy her lust for money. Janis Carter is one of the true unsung (anti)-heroines in the noir hall of infamy, and she remains to be rediscovered. Confined to B movie purgatory for most of her career, she disappeared from the movies entirely in the early 1950s. Look for her also as the temptress in The Woman on Pier 13. 
    See also Leslie Brooks' Claire Hanneman in Blonde Ice. Her murderous female is almost a carbon copy of the two Carter roles mentioned above. Both women specialized in B movies, and moreover, Leslie Brooks even bears a vague physical resemblance to Janis Carter, and likewise remains an under-the-radar noir vixen.

     8) Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie). Decoy. One of the most irredeemable bad girls in the canon is Margot Shelby. The near forgotten Jean Gillie does a brilliant job of projecting the woman’s malevolence, obscured by a veneer of affluence and civility. Once we’ve heard her maniacal laugh when she finds the loot, can we ever forget it?

     9) Katharine ‘Kitty’ March (Joan Bennett). Scarlet Street. A bit of a sleeper, this one. Like Claire Trevor, Joan Bennet is under-appreciated as a noir actress, and this is her definitive role. Kitty March is as manipulative as they come and Bennett’s interpretation almost makes her a sympathetic character.

     10) Helen Grayle (Claire Trevor). Murder, My Sweet.  Among noir’s dangerous women Claire Trevor has never really gotten her due as she tends to be overshadowed by other actresses of the era, of both a noir and other persuasion. Thus her femmes fatales don’t quite have the high profile of the likes of Kathie Moffat, Matty Walker, or Kitty Collins. But her noir credentials are right up there with the best, having appeared in such classics as Born to Kill, Raw Deal, Key Largo, Crack-Up and of course Murder My Sweet, as well as the quasi-noir Borderline. But it’s the Helen/Velma character that takes pride of place for spitefulness and evil. Hers is perhaps the greater evil simply because she’s more or less sane, or at least more sane than her counterpart in Born to Kill.
   Trivia: Trevor nabbed an Oscar for her turn as the alcoholic floozy in Key Largo. It’s one of the few instances in which a noir won an Academy Award in a major category.

     11) Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner) The Killers. Along with Rita Hayworth in Gilda *, Ava Gardner’s Kitty is my choice as the best visual incarnation of the femme fatale when she wears that slinky black dress. This was her first major role and she hits it out of the park. She even gets to sing a tune, using her own voice!

   * However, for conniving and evil I prefer Hayworth’s blondized Elsa Bannister in Lady From Shanghai.

     12) Jacqueline Gibson (Jean Brooks). The Seventh Victim. Jacqueline Gibson is a most unusual entry in this compilation in that her cinematic pedigree is supernatural horror and not the crime thriller. Some might even argue that Victim isn’t film noir at all. So be it. Then again, it has most of the noir tropes. But make no mistake, there’s a fatale quality about Jacqueline: several dead bodies along the way prove it. Then there’s her goth, vampire chic look: Cleopatra flapper wig, dark fur coat, somnambulist visage.**

   ** Brooks reprised the Jacqueline character, sort of, with her her black drenched garb, lugubrious persona, and ambiguous sexuality, in the (post)WW2 exploitation thriller Women in the Night (1948), in which she plays the exotic Maya. Women in the Night, by the way, was Brooks' last film.

  13) The Princess (María Casares). Orphée. Much like the previously cited Seventh Victim, Orphée is not a true film noir but rather a supernatural fantasy with a few noirish touches, not least of them the character of The Princess, who is no less than the Angel of Death herself. The role is played to icy perfection by the great María Casares, and her all black look makes her a natural for the femme fatale hall of fame. Indeed the messenger of death is about as fatale a character as can be. See also Gloria Holden’s lesbian vampire in the creepy 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter. 

     14) Lily MacBeth (Ruth Roman). Joe MacBeth. Yes, I'm getting quite a bit over my usual top ten limit, but I just caught Joe MacBeth again and simply can't leave out Ruth Roman's brittle take as Lady MacBeth. In fact I can't imagine a better choice to play the overly ambitious femme in Twentieth Century packaging. The film just gets better upon repeated viewings, and Roman's performance is a treasure. She remains a much under-appreciated actress, and even considering she was in her share of noirs, this may well be her darkest, and most evil, character. 

[1] The consensus bookend years are 1941-1958, though I’m quite a bit more restrictive myself as I’d put the classic era as roughly 1944-1952.

[2] In the case of Kiss Me Deadly the psychotic Lily/Gabrielle might fit the mold, if we interpret the definition liberally. On the other hand, she’s not classic fatale material in that she lacks the uptown glamour and style we usually associate with the character. By the way, when I opine above that “ … I’m hard pressed to name a lot of classic femme fatales that appeared after 1950,” I’m talking in the context of the generally accepted classic era that ran until about 1959. This is not necessarily my classic era, see above. On the other hand, the films of neo-noir, or post-noir, or postmodern noir, take your pick, are considered for this exercise (perfectly clear?). Ergo the explanation for Matty Walker’s inclusion and lofty ranking.

[3] The first usage of the term in the English language is rather vague, but sources tend to go with the 1880s or 1890s, though some opt for the early Twentieth Century – in either case exact references are difficult to come by.
    Aside: The mid-Twentieth Century film version of the fatale femme can be seen as a more modern variant of the enchantress, sorceress or witch, characters which have been around it seems since time immemorial. Some of the better known examples from antiquity are Circe and Medea.
 
[4] But what about Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falson, you might ask? As brought to life in Mary Astor’s brilliant performance, Brigid fits most of the tropes, but as hinted above, my rather arbitrary definition of the noir chronology begins around 1944, and Falcon dates from 1941. And besides, though it has the requisite private detective, urban milieu, and much the look of noir, I don’t really consider Falcon to be film noir at all, but rather a tough, very well told detective story. 

Further reading: Mark Jancovich, “Female monsters: Horror, the ‘Femme Fatale’ and World War II,” European Journal of American Culture, v27 n2 (July 2008), pp133-149; Samantha Jane Lindop,  Femmes, filles, and hommes: postfeminism and the fatal(e) figure in contemporary American film noir. PhD Thesis, School of English, Media Studies and Art History, The University of Queensland, 2014.

high gloss trash, and a second ten

     Myra Breckinridge. Beverly Hills, California: Twentieth Century-Fox Home Entertainment, [2018]. DVD. Screenplay by Michael Sarne and David Giler; produced by Robert Fryer; director of photography, Richard Moore; film editor, Danford B. Greene; music, Lionel Newman. Directed by Michael Sarne; produced and released by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1970. Based on the novel by Gore Vidal.
    Summary: after going to Europe to have a sex change operation, Myron Breckinridge is transformed into Myra, who claims to be Myron's widow. Performers: Raquel Welch, Mae West, John Huston, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, Roger Herren, Calvin Lockhart, Jim Backus, John Carradine, William Hopper.

    I’m usually all in for bad movie classics, just out of pure curiosity. Besides, guilty pleasures or no, some provide considerable entertainment value. Anyhow it was a little out of character that I waited so long to catch Myra Breckinridge. But since there’s a DVD copy at my local library I decided, what the heck, I’ll give it a whirl and see what happens. I was happily surprised. Contrary to its reputation as one of the worst movies of all time, Myra Breckinridge is actually pretty good, in a Valley of the Dolls sort of way [1]. Say what you will about Myra Breckinridge, it’s seldom dull, and from a purely technical standpoint, rather skillfully put together. Approached in a certain frame of mind, MB can be immensely entertaining. And maybe there’s a certain ironic justice at work in that, for all its supposedly chaotic production disasters and the subsequent critical savaging it received, the creators of Myra may well have gotten in the last word after all. Today it’s considered a bona fide cult classic and has a devoted, if small, following, and as a result its reputation steadily increases with the passage of time.

    The film’s legendary haphazard production history actually gives us some, perhaps unintended, aesthetic benefits as the bumpy narrative plays with our expectations, then frustrates them. To wit, as Myra in most leisurely fashion gives our stud Rusty his physical exam, we suspect it will culminate in a more or less conventional sexual encounter, and thus her wild ride-the-bronc scene is all the more effective because it’s so unexpected (and, it must be admitted, shockingly over-the-top in its bad taste). Another element of unexpectedness is that the scene also reverses (is that the word?) the usual woman-on-top configuration. Other felicitous results are the Golden Age film clips interspersed, albeit somewhat jarringly, throughout. There’s also the Myra/Mary Ann quasi-lesbian encounter, which teases us with affectionate moments, but never goes all the way to the Sapphic heart of the matter (it seems that Mary Ann was just too reluctant, probably because she was straight). For all that the scene is sensitively and beautifully done, it’s a pale shadow of the Cynthia Myers/Erica Gavin steamy encounters in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which are far superior in their titillating depiction and resultant emotional impact.

"OK, boys. Get your resumes out"

   Which brings us to the movie I always associate with MB, and that’s the aforementioned Beyond the Valley of the Dolls [2], henceforth simply referred to as Dolls. Both were released in the same year, by the same studio. Both employ the same garish color palette, and both go gangbusters in satirizing the film industry, California counterculture, gender roles, superficiality of American materialism, and anything else they could think of. And both reap the benefits of, shall we say, hindsight. Yes, time has been kind to Myra and Dolls, especially Dolls. MB, for all its good qualities, somehow lacks Dolls’ warmth, optimism and innocence, even with the latter’s greater nudity and more overt sexual situations. Moreover, Dolls is straight up the far more polished product, in a word, just a better film, even if it lacks Mae West [3].

    Speaking of Mae West, I’ve never been much of a fan. To me there was always a one-note quality to her saucy persona. But here, as the man-eating agent Leticia Van Allen, she’s just right. She seems to be having a great time essaying what’s basically a parody of herself. What’s more she just looks great: actually I think she’s sexier in MB than in her glory days in the early Thirties.

    One unexpected pleasure was a cameo by the usually virtuous William Hopper of Perry Mason fame. In MB he’s cast against type as a far right (and eminently hypocritical, corrupted and corruptible) judge. Quite the send-up of the ultra-conservative political views of his mother, the infamous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Whatever the context, the joy of seeing Hopper is tinged with a certain sadness as he died in 1970 at the age of fifty-four, just a few months before MB’s release. It was his last film and as such a somewhat inglorious end to a solid if under-appreciated career.

    The real revelation of Myra Breckinridge is Raquel Welch. In the title role she delivers the performance of a career, and we get a glimpse of just how good an actress she was. It serves as a bittersweet reminder of the career that might have been had she been taken seriously as an actress and not always typecast as a sex bomb [4].

    As for my somewhat superfluous ‘best movies of all time’ second ten, what can be said? I seem to be on a best/most kick these days, and I thought another list wouldn’t hurt. It might have been out of a sense of frustration that, in compiling my original top ten, indeed I had to limit the list to ten titles. Ergo a second ten. Actually numbers eleven to twenty might be a more accurate description. Readers will note that I’ve fudged a bit and included ties this time around. So be it. Anyhow drumroll please, here they are, more or less in chronological order:

tie: Metropolis, M
Olympia
The Seventh Victim
Les Enfants du Paradis
Meshes of the Afternoon
The Red Shoes
tie: The Seventh Seal, L’Avventura
The Naked Kiss
tie: Death in Venice, Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Blade Runner


[1] The original Valley of the Dolls, that is, not the ‘Beyond’ version. More on that film in the post above. By the way both Valley of the Dolls and Beyond the Valley are discussed elsewhere in these pages.
[2] Indeed it seems I’m not alone in conflating the two camp/trash classics, as over the years it’s not been uncommon for theaters to screen Myra Breckinridge and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls as a double feature.
 [3] Part of the explanation may be that Dolls was helmed by Russ Meyer, who was probably just a better director than Michael Sarne. Another possibility is that Meyer may have been given a freer hand by the studio.
[4] In a case of MB paralleling Dolls again, Hollywood also missed the boat on Cynthia Myers, not as good an actress as Raquel Welch by a long shot but her equal in sex appeal and screen charisma. Another instance of a career that might have been.

a life well lived

    Florczak, Robert. Errol Flynn: the illustrated life chronology. Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, 2022. Summary: "Though there have been myriad books on Errol Flynn - scores of biographies, film studies, analyses, etc. - there has never been one that unfurls his dashing life day-by-day, predominantly through photos, letters, news clippings, and documents. This book does so: from Flynn's birth in Hobart, Australia in 1909 through to his death in Vancouver, Canada in 1959. Culled from over 11,000 images in the author's personal collection (many rarely or never before published), from the author's own travels around the world to photograph locations key to Flynn's life, and with text gathered from four years research in the Warner Bros. Archives, the USC Cinematic Arts Library, and the Margaret Herrick Library. Flynn's colorful life was lived out on the world stage and a better candidate for a book of this style would be hard to find." [provided by the publisher].


    With the possible exception of Marilyn Monroe, more books have been written about Errol Flynn than any other film actor. Alas, biographers have not always been generous or forgiving. Indeed, in the first four decades or so after his death most of the Flynn literature focused on the more sensationalist aspects of his life and career, tarring him with a broad brushstroke: lecher, alcoholic, deadbeat, drug addict, Nazi sympathizer, connoisseur of underage girls, and all around out-of-control hedonist. Few public figures have had such a checkered afterlife. Lost in all the lurid, and largely unsubstantiated, haze was anything meaningful about Flynn the actor, or the writer [1].
    But around the year 2000 things began to change, and it’s probably no coincidence that about this time new forms of technology, principally the DVD and the Internet, were just beginning to hit their stride. In the meantime a few pro-Flynn books appeared, including the first scholarly biography [2]. Another factor was the Flynn centenary of 2009, which helped keep the momentum going, and a few years later there was the generally sympathetic portrayal in the film The Last of Robin Hood. Today there are numerous blogs and fan pages, and perhaps more important, DVDs that have been issued which represent a huge swath of the Flynn oeuvre, all of which give us a more rounded portrait of the man and artist.
    Packed full of letters, telegrams, notes, diary entries, receipts, cables, memos, images and various other memorabilia, The Illustrated Life Chronology is more a huge scrapbook, lovingly collected and organized, than a coffee table book or conventional biography. Author Florczak is to be commended for yeoman service in what was obviously a labor of love. While the book is vaguely pro-Flynn, Florczak doesn’t play the role of apologist or vilifier, rather he lets the material speak for itself, and likewise lets the man literally speak for himself. Especially welcome are the images, which include posters of all the films. Also of note are the many informal photos of Flynn and friends, associates and family, which capture Flynn in more candid moments. The rich detail provides aspects of Flynn's life that aren't so well covered: to wit, it struck me how often he was ill and thus the work on a film had to be shut down while he recuperated. This is surprising in view of his athletic, energetic screen image.
    It would be misleading to say that with the present book the long overdue rehabilitation of Errol Flynn is complete. No such thing; he was a man of many shadings and complexities, and it's just too tempting for biographers and commentators to focus on the lurid and scandalous aspects of his life and career. Then again, all the huffing and puffing may be to some extent moot. As  author Florczak points out, for all the fame in his lifetime and the more recent comeback, if you will, he remains a marginal figure in comparison to his better known contemporaries. Perhaps the explanation is Flynn's (in his later years) dissolute public persona, or that he was never taken seriously as an actor, or that the heroic swashbuckler film has gone out of fashion (when a swashbuckler movie does get made these days, it tends to be parody). Whatever the case, the present volume is in its modest way a corrective, and as such allows us to better appreciate as a human being and artist the phenomenon that was Errol Flynn. In short Errol Flynn: the Illustrated Life Chronology is catnip for Flynn fans and will appeal to anyone interested in golden age Hollywood.

    1 An exception to this rather tawdry history was, ironically enough, Flynn’s own autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways, published only a few months after his death. Admittedly of dubious accuracy in many of the details, nonetheless the book has a spiritual truth and honesty as it captures the voice and panache of the man himself. And it isn’t totally self-serving: Flynn recalls with relish, sometimes a little too much relish, the more rascally side of his personality. Still, Wicked Ways remains the most exuberant and entertaining biography of a film actor to date, perhaps of any Hollywood personality.  
    2 Thomas McNulty, Errol Flynn: the Life and Career, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004.

guilty until proven innocent: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975)

    Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum [DVD] = The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum; Volker Schlöndorff, screenwriter, director; Margarethe von Trotta, co-director. Criterion collection, 177 [2003]. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1975. Based on: Die Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum, by Heinrich Böll. Performers: Willi Benninger, Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf, Heinz Bennent, Jürgen Prochnow, Karl Heinz Vosgerau.
   Summary: In the period of several days, Katharina's privacy and her honor are destroyed, first by the police who terrorize her, and then by the yellow press, which creates in her name the image of a politicized Mata Hari. Bonus features: interview with directors Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta; interview with Jost Vacano (cinematographer); excerpts from Ivo Barnabó Micheli's 1977 biographical film on Heinrich Böll (in German with English subtitles).

   Margarethe von Trotta’s and Volker Schlondorff’s 1975 classic is a cautionary tale of the human costs of sensationalist, irresponsible journalism working in concert with a fascist-minded, law-and-order state: a timid woman (her friends call her ‘the nun’) spends a romantic night with a man the authorities suspect of being a terrorist. As a result her private life is mercilessly infringed upon by both the police and the yellow press. Dating from the edgy 1970s in Germany, Katharina Blum’s half century vintage hasn’t dulled its message for our own, eerily similar, current climate. If anything the film is even more relevant today. In an interesting and ironic aside, in today’s world, concerns about domestic terrorists, at least in the U.S., focus on the radicalized right. A half century or so ago it was the extreme left that caused all the huffing and puffing, both in America and Europe.

    In any case the New German Cinema’s socially conscious gestalt is presented front and center in Katharina Blum, in which an otherwise blandly ordinary woman is made the target of vilification by a tabloid press. Among the tricks of the trade said press employs: distorting the woman’s own statements, publishing photographs that make her look guilty, and digging up supposed dirt on her through interviews (subsequently highly embroidered in print) with those close to her, including relatives, employers and an ex-husband [1].

    “is the state unable to protect you against this garbage?”

    Katherina Blum has been called ahead of its time in the trends it anticipated a half century prior. True, up to a point. But it certainly didn’t get there first: self-serving, sensation mongering media have been around, well, for a long time, perhaps most blisteringly depicted cinematically in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, in which an ambitious, ethically challenged (to put it generously) journalist, and not the victim, is the main character [2]. But the film that reminds me most of KB, because of the similar subject matter and era, dates from three decades and change later, and that’s The Baader Meinhof Complex, a brilliant film to be sure but somehow lacking the sharp edge of KB. This is perhaps because Katharina Blum is historically authentic – it actually dates from the era – while Baader Meinhof is retro, almost a nostalgic period piece, if you like. Moreover, Katharina Blum has a certain rough around the edges quality that contributes to its intensity and unease, as opposed to Baader Meinhof’s more polished product [3].  

  
Whatever its many aesthetic merits and few shortcomings, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum is just plain painful to watch (while the thuggish police browbeat Katharina relentlessly, I kept wondering: where’s the damned lawyer!). However, the story has its humor, if that is the word, perhaps most pointedly driven home with Kafka-like absurdity in the scene in which a bizarrely costumed police force conduct a grotesquely excessive SWAT-team like raid on the poor girl’s apartment, culminating in an insultingly invasive interrogation, which includes a strip search, by the way all done with nary a search warrant in sight. Indeed the police antics, brutal and heavy-handed as they are, sometimes seem more Gilbert & Sullivan than Gestapo or Stasi.

    Indeed, most of the violence done to Katharina is not physical but rather psychological and emotional, and arguably not done by the police as much as the tabloid press. In an ironic twist it is Katharina who commits more physical violence than her tormenters ever inflict upon her. Somehow I couldn’t help thinking of the case of actress Jean Seberg. Hounded by her own government, along with an acquiescent press that helped spread innuendo, gossip and outright lies, Seberg, like Katharina, had few friends among the powerful she could call on. Alas, she eventually resorted to suicide. Mirroring Seberg, Katharina resorts to a kind of metaphorical suicide. 
 
    To tell their story Von Trotta and Schlondorff have opted for natural settings – drab workplaces, nondescript domestic interiors, unromanticized outdoor scenes. It all contributes to the you-are-there, slice of life feel reminiscent of the American independent films of the era. At the same time cameraman Jost Vacano favors harsh, flat lighting and spartan geometric forms that suggest an authoritarian vibe more akin to East Germany than West.

   Indeed, in the difficult-to-take, Orwellian epilogue, we could be forgiven for suspecting that the vulgar, self-congratulatory pean rendered by – and for – the socio-economic power elite is a scene stage managed in the evil GDR and not the virtuous, democratic-minded Federal Republic. Corporate controlled media, then and now, relies on the sanctity of 'freedom of the press,' however extreme its manifestations, to justify its dependence on a mass audience to sustain its large profits. (Although the analogy may not be perfect, the similarity to the sanctimonious cries of ‘free speech’ of more recent times can hardly be missed). 

    Still, the filmmakers are to be praised for injecting a certain ambiguity into a story operating from such a moral and emotional stacked deck. The extent of Katharina’s initial culpability is left unanswered, as is the criminal guilt of Ludwig, or for that matter, how he managed to escape from her apartment building. Likewise, their eventual fates are left open-ended.

    Ultimately Katharina Blum is a sober reminder that, even in ostensibly free societies, a citizen’s rights are not absolute or inalienable: rights that can arbitrarily be taken away by the state or infringed upon by an all-seeing media aren’t rights at all, but only temporary privileges.

   [1] In the film’s sleaziest scene, the tabloid paper’s star reporter sneaks into a hospital’s intensive care unit and tries to extract information from Katharina’s seriously ill mother. She tells him nothing but he later spuriously quotes her in print. She dies soon after. The shock of the reporter’s visit may well have tipped her over.
   [2]  There’s also La Dolce Vita, in which an ethically indifferent journalist and his cadre of photographers dig up scandal on Rome’s beautiful people. LDV shares with KB a certain postmodern cynicism amidst the backdrop of media corruption, but the context is different: the earlier work concerns itself with the culture of celebrity, the jaded rich, and Old World decadence, while Katharina Blum has much more of a political edge. Contemporary, quintessentially paranoic, even existential in its uncompromising, take-no-prisoners attitude, Katharina Blum is actually closer in tone and spirit to Ace in the Hole than Dolce Vita.  
   [3] When the DVD of KB came out two decades or so ago most of the comparisons were, understandably if rather facilely, to the 9/11 attacks and the resultant paranoia in the U.S. Heavy handed government intrusions on individual liberties were buttressed by a compliant media and its uncritical acceptance of the war-on-terror meme, the ultimate result being that all news outlets, the vast majority anyway, were little more than cheerleaders of official policy. Two decades later a similar paranoia set in with the Covid 19 virus and the resultant, some might say inevitable, politicization of the situation, especially in the highly polarized U.S., where recriminations and counter-recriminations flew fast and furious, and to some extent still do.

thoughts on 'greatest movies,' and a top ten

    As a matter of principle I’m against these lists, for many reasons, first among them being: it’s impossible to choose the greatest movies of all time, much less the single 'greatest movie' of all time. How do we define ‘great,’ and do we all agree on the definition? More on this below. Moreover, where does ‘greatest’ end and ‘favorites’ begin? And as much as I look askance at the BFI/S&S poll, I like their definition of greatness in a movie and indeed will apply their yardstick to my own very subjective choices. Their voters are asked to interpret ‘greatest’ as they chose: to reflect the film’s importance in cinematic history, its aesthetic achievement, or perhaps its personal impact in their own life and their view of cinema.

    Anyhow since BFI and Sight & Sound will never ask my opinion, and considering I’ve already made a precedent with posts on somewhat related topics (little known movies, greatest cinematic geniuses, and best art movies), here are my thoughts and my ‘Top 10’.

    The biggest frustration is choosing only ten titles. And yes, it pains me to leave out certain films, directors, too: you won’t find anything by Kurosawa, Godard, Fassbinder, Antonioni, or Bergman. So be it. A list of 10 is a list of 10 (even if I fudge the matter and have two ties, so this is, strictly speaking, a list of twelve). I demur from including an honorable mention section. On the other hand, some big names do make the cut, ergo there’s one title each by Hitchcock and Welles, though the choice of Touch of Evil instead of Kane or Ambersons may raise eyebrows [1]. But the truth is, at this level, individual films are pretty much interchangeable: to wit, why Kiss Me Deadly and not Out of the Past; why Carnival of Souls and not The Seventh Victim or Night of the Living Dead; why Dementia and not Meshes of the Afternoon? In any event, here goes, more or less in chronological order:

 

Trouble in Paradise

tie: Kiss Me Deadly

     Sunset Boulevard

Dementia /Daughter of Horror

Touch of Evil

Vertigo

Deux Hommes dans Manhattan

La Dolce Vita

Last Year at Marienbad

Carnival of Souls

tie: Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

     A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

 

     Comments: it’s pretty obvious that I favor black and white films released in, or around, the 1950s, also that I tend to go with B movies, quirky oddities, and genre films over big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. Guilty on all counts. Of course I could just as easily replace these ten with another ten, and another, and they would be just as representative of ‘greatness’, as well as honest choices in representing my opinion. Echoing what I’ve written above, at this level – the top 100 or so, give or take a few dozen – the ‘greatest’ movies are more or less interchangeable. Not to belabor the point, but for example, I could choose all color movies and all-Euro directors and be just as valid in my combination of the subjective with the canonically great. The films might be the likes of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Death in Venice, Juliet of the Spirits, Lola Montes, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Cries and Whispers, The Red Shoes, and, well, you get the idea.

 

[1] Perhaps my selecting Touch of Evil is my modest protest that the film was bumped from BFI’s Top 250 this time around, though Kane and Ambersons still made the grade, placing 3 and tied 169 respectively. Speaking of Orson Welles, it occurs to me that for the greatest movies of all time I could choose ten Orson Welles movies and not be that far off the mark. Oh well, plus ça change ...

"this is my happening ..." : Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)

     Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Motion picture); a Russ Meyer production; screenplay by Roger Ebert; story by Roger Ebert and Russ Meyer; produced and directed by Russ Meyer; music, Stu Phillips; director of photography, Fred J. Koenekamp; art directors, Jack Martin Smith, Arthur Lonergan; editors, Dann Cahn, Dick Wormell. Produced and released by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. Two-DVD special edition; widescreen. New York, N.Y.: The Criterion Collection, 2016. Originally released as a motion picture in 1970.
    "The film ... is not a sequel to Valley of the Dolls. It does ... deal with the oft-times nightmare world of show business in a different time and place."  
    Performers: Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, John LaZar, Michael Blodgett, David Gurian, Edy Williams, Erica Gavin, Phyllis Davis, Henry Rowland, Harrison Page, Duncan McLeod, Jim Iglehart, Haji, Charles Napier, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock.
    Summary: "In 1970, Twentieth Century-Fox, impressed by the visual zing that 'King of the Nudies' Russ Meyer had been bringing to bargain-basement exploitation fare, handed the director a studio budget and the title to one of its biggest hits, Valley of the Dolls. With a satirical screenplay by Roger Ebert, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls follows three young female rockers going Hollywood, in hell-bent Sixties style, under the spell of a flamboyant producer, whose decadent bashes showcase Meyer's trademark libidinal exuberance. Transgressive and outrageous, this big-studio version of a debaucherous midnight movie is an addictively entertaining romp from one of the movies' great outsider artists" - Container.

 
    My first Russ Meyer movie: I remember it well. No, it wasn’t Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, but no worries, we’ll get to it. Anyhow, being a fresh-faced first semester freshman at our small-town university back in the day, some friends and I thought it would be fun – and definitely naughty – to go see such forbidden fruit as a nudie movie. The film was Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers [1], apparently not one of Meyer’s more memorable efforts but immensely entertaining, at least I thought so. The film played in a mainstream theater on the main street in town, as did the next film in the Meyer pantheon, the much more famous, and better, Vixen, starring Erica Gavin. Of course I also made it a point to check out Vixen. Aside: at about this time I also took in Gone with the Wind, maybe at the same theater (I hope so; the irony appeals to me). I’d never seen GWTW before and it was currently in the midst of revival screenings. Impressive it was, certainly for its era, but the Meyer flicks made more of an impression. Today, at the risk of being heretical, I’d say Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is straight up a better movie than Gone with the Wind. But I begin to digress. In any event, when I first heard that the title of Meyer’s then-newest, ultimate opus was going to be Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, I thought, you gotta’ be kidding me. Curiously, the specifics of my catching Dolls are much less precise in the memory (the release date was July 1970). The venue may have been a drive-in, maybe a theater. The explanation must be that so much had happened in the world and in my own life in the intervening couple of years that it just didn’t register as much. Even the content of the movie didn’t stand out in the memory, and thus I can only recall a few details from that initial viewing: Ronnie Z-Man’s big reveal, the beheading, Edy Williams, that’s about all. I’d even forgotten that it was (sort of) a musical.

     Now, a half century later, I just caught Dolls again, and call it nostalgia, sentiment, whatever, I absolutely loved it, so much so that I saw the film two times, four actually if you count the two commentary tracks. What they say about the film is true: it ages like fine wine. In a word, time has been kind to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Perhaps the explanation is its very obviousness and lack of guile. For all the nudity, colorful language, sexual situations, and occasional shocking violence, Dolls has an innocence, warmth and optimism, which, along with its high gloss look, is still appealing and endearing, thus allowing the film to transcend its, frequently sordid, subject matter. Meyer is to be further commended because he, like my own parents, was of the prior, WW2 generation that, to say the least, simply didn’t relate to the Summer of Love, anti-war protests, the drug scene, rock music, and everything else going on in the 1960s, and were more often than not mystified, even revolted, by it. Thus it's to Meyer’s credit, albeit with script writer Ebert’s vital contribution, that he got it right on so many of the cultural references of ca. 1969 [2], even granting it’s all done in the context of satire.

       As for Dolls itself, the principals give it their all, and they actually add, shall we say, authenticity to the mix in that most aren’t professional actors, but nonetheless quite good in their roles. Their exuberance, and a lot of the innocence, carries over onto the DVD commentary by five of the actors (Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Harrison Page, John LaZar, and Erica Gavin), who are having a great time reminiscing and adding their own little touches of history and trivia. By the way Roger Ebert’s more cerebral commentary track is equally engaging, providing much film industry detail and lots on director Meyer.

    Beyond the Valley of the Dolls will always, I suppose, polarize fans (and non-fans), a movie that people either love or hate, consider it a kind of masterpiece or a candidate for the worst movies of all time hall of fame. Well, for better or worse, I fall into the love category. I don’t know if I’d anoint it a masterpiece, though it may be Meyer’s masterpiece. But whatever one might think of the film’s desultory, Felliniesque content, from a purely technical point of view it’s absolutely first rate, and it just plain looks great (sounds great, too) in Criterion’s all-the-trimmings 2-DVD release [3]. The film then is sui generis; nothing quite like it has ever been put on the screen, before or since, and it’s been creeping up in critical esteem over the years [4].
   More important, the film is an eloquent valedictory coda to all that was right, and wrong, with the Sixties, as well as a meditation on the energetic recklessness of youth and the joy of living in that wild, wonderful, sometimes irresponsible time, gone forever it would seem. But not so fast, my friend: Dolls may be a half century and counting vintage but, in its wacky way, still modern, more than a little wise, and, perhaps most important, it says something to us about, life, love and the human condition that’s both timely and timeless.

style ****
substance ****


    [1] There’s one scene in Finders Keepers in which a guy is having a steamy phone conversation with the object of his desire as Chopin wafts in the background. Pretty heady stuff – a touch of class in a skin flick.

    [2] As one who lived during the counter-culture era of the late Sixties, in my opinion Dolls is not that exaggerated in the various tableaux and the use of hippy/youth slang. The film actually captures the zeitgeist pretty well, however flawed, or excessive, some of the details. But more important, it got the spirit right.

   [3] The Criterion version includes a bevy of special features, including the above-mentioned commentary tracks; the making-of short, "Above, Beneath and Beyond the Valley: The Making of a Musical-Horror-Sex-Comedy;" episode from 1988 of The 'Incredibly Strange Film Show' on director Russ Meyer, and others. But my favorites are the extended interview with John Waters in which he talks about his association with Meyer and offers a brief overview of Meyer's career; and the very sweet "Casey & Roxanne: The Love Scene", in which Cynthia Myers and Erica Gavin look back three and a half decades later at their lesbian scenes in the film.
     Aside: I always preferred that actors sing their own songs, and I labored under the illusion that the women in the rock group actually sang their own material. Alas, I later found out to the contrary, though the lip synching is pretty darn good. In any case apparently the women just didn’t have the voices to convincingly put over the tunes.

      [4] One measure of Dolls’ growing critical acceptance is that it received two votes in the 2012 BFI/Sight & Sound poll of the greatest movies of all time.* While two votes might qualify as a low-level honorable mention at best, it’s better than no acknowledgement at all. The film is also beginning to show up on directors’ and cineaste’s best films lists.
    Aside: it's curious that the fiftieth anniversary of Dolls in 2020 went largely unheralded. Searches online and elsewhere yielded a paucity of results as to think pieces or public events. Part of the explanation of the lack of Golden Anniversary gala events may have been due to bad timing: this was the first year of the Covid virus.  

   * Sight & Sound/BFI has a relatively simple and, at least in theory, equitable method of ranking the films. For the 2022 poll, each critic of the 1,639 total critics polled was asked to submit his/her own top ten choices. Each film that gets a vote gets a point, the points are tallied at the end and the films ranked by the number of points.
     By the way in case one wonders why I reference 2012 in fn4 above and not 2022, the explanation is that, as of the writing of this post, I’ve been unable to locate a comprehensive list of films that received at least one vote in the 2022 poll.
     [Update, 13 May 2024: While it took some digging, I was able to verify that in the 2022 poll Dolls received four votes, again a low level honorable mention of the four thousand-odd titles that received at least one vote. It should be mentioned that the information I found combined both the critics' and directors' polls, thus if we fudge the numbers four votes might be considered roughly analogous to the two votes it received last time around (2012). Also of interest is that two other Meyer productions, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (4 votes) and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens (1 vote) were listed, all of which is signaling a measure of respectability for Meyer as a director of substance.]