Here’s the second part in my series of thumbnail sketches of the films I’ve watched on the Criterion Channel streaming service. These 10 films were viewed over the 2nd half of September and early October.
Ganashatru/Enemy of the People (1989): Ganashatru, an adaptation of a 1882 Henrik Ibsen play, was one of only five films by Indian master Satyajit Ray that I had not yet watched, so I was naturally thrilled to find it on Criterion. It features two Bengali acting stalwarts, both of whom started their careers in Ray films – Soumitra Chatterjee made his debut in Apur Sansar (1959) and Dhritiman Chatterjee in Pratidwandi (1970). Soumitra C. plays a doctor in a small town who observes an increase in jaundice cases, gets the local drinking water tested and discovers it is contaminated, possibly from old sewage pipes. A popular temple is in the same locality and his discovery implies that the temple’s “holy water” is also contaminated. This brings the doctor into conflict with the temple trustees and his own brother, the municipality chairman (Dhritiman C.), who are concerned that his “theory” will scare away devotees who visit the town (Peter Benchley borrowed this Ibsen plot device for Jaws). These vested interests launch a slander and misinformation campaign, which results in the doctor being branded an “enemy of the people”. This film really resonated with me, as I found strong parallels with the way politicians and special interest groups use media to spread misinformation today, be it regarding Covid or climate change or elections.
The Steel Helmet (1951): I’ve read quite a lot about Samuel Fuller, the independent American filmmaker, but had never had access to his work. Luckily Criterion has half dozen of his films and I started off with The Steel Helmet. It was the first American film to tackle the Korean War (which had started a few months earlier) and was made on a shoe-string budget in under two weeks. The film showcases the underlying racism in the US military directed against its own African-American and ethnic Japanese soldiers, and also towards the Koreans that the Americans were defending. It’s a gritty film, not easy to watch and very much devoid of any heroic war scenes. In fact, the war setting is essentially a vehicle for the message and it remains one of Fuller’s most acclaimed films.
Vampyr (1932): Another director I’ve read about a lot, but never watched is Carl Theodore Dreyer, the Danish master whose work spanned nearly half a century. His horror film Vampyr was considered a low point of his career when released, but has gained appreciation over time. In the film, a young man named Allan Gray arrives at a village and decides to spend the night at the local inn. He soon gets caught up in some mysterious occurrences through the night, perpetrated by the local village doctor and an elderly woman who turns out to be undead. Ultimately, Gray kills the woman by driving an iron stake through her corpse and the doctor dies by suffocation when flour is emptied into the chamber of the flour mill he is hiding in…a truly gruesome scene. The film is also known for the famous dream sequence in which Allan Gray sees himself looking at his own dead body in a coffin. Dreyer placed a piece of gauze in front of the camera lens, which creates a fuzzy, “found footage” look to the entire film. Overall, I wouldn’t say it’s entertaining in the conventional sense, but is certainly required viewing for anyone interested in the history of cinema.
The Idiot (1951): I am a fervent devotee of Akira Kurosawa’s films, but there are a few like Dodes’ka-den and I Live in Fear that I haven’t been able to appreciate. Unfortunately, I have to add The Idiot to that list. Although based on Dostoevsky’s literary classic, and filled with the biggest names in Japanese cinema (Toshiro Mifune, Setsuko Hara, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Chieko Higashimaya), the storyline and in particular, the acting of Masayuki Mori as “the idiot” just irritated me no end. At nearly three hours in length, the film just kept going on and on, with its convoluted relationships and repetitive hand-wringing by many of the characters. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for an overdoes of existential angst, and in that sense, it has probably cured me of any desire to read the Russian classics.
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957): Yet another masterwork by John Huston, this film features the powerhouse pairing of Deborah Kerr AND Robert Mitchum, in what is essentially a two-hander that could even have become a stage play. The film is set in the South Pacific in 1944, with Mitchum playing a US Marine who escapes from a Japanese attack and is washed up on an island. He finds an abandoned settlement and just one resident, Sister Angela, a novitiate nun who arrived a few days earlier with another priest, who died soon after. The first part of the film plays out like a relationship drama, with the two very different types of individuals learning to work together to survive. The second half transforms into a thriller, with the arrival of Japanese troops on the island, forcing Corp. Allison and Sister Angela to go into hiding. There are many twists and turns, and I genuinely feared that there would be a tragic ending, but fortunately the US Marines save the day. The core of the film is the relationship between the brash but good-hearted corporal and the prim but feisty nun. Deborah Kerr received the fourth of her six Best Actress Oscar nominations for this picture, which was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Mustang (2015): One of the most powerful movies I have seen in recent years, this Turkish language film which was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar and dozens of other awards, tells the story of five orphan sisters trapped in a conservative, patriarchal society and their attempts to break free. The girls are virtual prisoners in the home of their uncle, while their grandmother attempts to marry them off one by one. The narrative is presented from the perspective of Lale, the youngest of the girls, played by Güneş Şensoy. I was strongly affected by the injustice and the hypocrisy portrayed in the film, as well as the realization that there are hundreds of these real-life stories taking place around the world every day. This was Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut film and one not to be missed.
The Black Cat (1934): This was the first of several horror films produced by Universal Pictures to leverage the popularity of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, following their instant stardom in 1931 with Frankenstein and Dracula respectively. The film combines elements of revenge thriller, psychological horror and even some science fiction. For audiences who only associated Karloff with the brutal monster in Frankenstein, it’s quite a revelation to see him here as a suave and brilliant architect, the owner of a futuristic home in the mountains of Hungary. Bela Lugosi is a local doctor who returns to the area after 15 years in a prisoner-of-war camp, seeking vengeance on Karloff’s character for his betrayal during World War I. A young couple on a holiday become the unwitting pawns in the cat-and-mouse game of intrigue between the two enemies. The film ends in a grand climax, which includes a satanic cult and some pretty gruesome scenes.
Supermarket Woman (1996): This breezy comedy is the second last of the 10 collaborations between director Juzo Itami and his wife Nobuko Miyamoto, before his untimely and mysterious death (ruled a suicide, but suspected murder) in 1997. It’s very much in the vein of A Taxing Woman and its sequel, with Miyamoto-san’s character Hanako helping her friend, the owner of a struggling supermarket, to revitalize his business and take on an unethical rival around the block. There are plenty of heartwarming and inspirational scenes, as the gutsy, never-say-die Hanako inspires the different department heads of the supermarket to change their outdated practices and become more competitive and customer-friendly.
The Raven (1935): Another Karloff-Lugosi pairing from Universal Pictures, this one is named after an Edgar Allan Poe poem, and the plot has a macabre connection to the works of Poe. Bela Lugosi plays brilliant but megalomaniacal surgeon Dr. Vollin, who becomes romantically obsessed with a young woman after performing an emergency operation to save her life. When the woman’s father asks Dr. Vollin to keep out of his daughter’s life, the surgeon concocts a diabolical scheme to murder the father. To achieve his objective, he takes advantage of an escaped murderer Bateman (played by Karloff) who arrives at his door one night asking to have plastic surgery performed to alter his features. Frankly, it’s a contrived plot, with the purpose being to showcase some grotesque make-up on Karloff and to set up a climax in Dr. Vollin’s secret chamber filled with torture devices inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. Although not as graphic as contemporary horror films, the implied violence and twisted mentality are disturbing enough. With a running time of just one hour, it’s a watchable oddity from the Universal Pictures horror library.
The Valachi Papers (1972): Although an English language film, The Valachi Papers is actually a Dino De Laurentiis production with a predominantly European cast and crew, with the exception of American star Charles Bronson. And Bronson himself was a big name on the continent at that point, having appeared in a number of popular European films including Once Upon a Time in the West, Rider on the Rain and Red Sun. Bronson plays Joe Valachi, the real-life mafioso who became a government witness in 1963 and whose revelations about the American mafia form the basis of most of what is known about them by the general public. The film covers a 40-year period, from Valachi’s induction into the mafia ranks as a teenager to the events which led to him becoming an informant. Bronson of course, is known for his screen presence, but I was captivated by the performance of the supporting cast, including veteran actor Lino Ventura as mafia boss Vito Genovese, Guido Leontini as Genovese’s capo Tony Bender, Angelo Infanti as Genovese’s partner-in-crime Lucky Luciano and Joseph Wiseman as Salvatore Maranzano, the first of the American mafia “Godfathers” (Wiseman rose to fame playing the character of Dr. No ten years earlier). The film had a tough time upon its release as The Godfather had come out just a few months earlier and critics compared it unfavourably with Coppola’s instant classic. Nevertheless, it’s a solid film and well worth watching for fans of the genre.
For reference, here’s the link to #1-10.
Next up, #21-30, which will include films from Japan, Spain, Iran and the US.
Chronophlogiston 