TONI - #1040

Toni is the 1935 drama from revered French director Jean Renoir. By his own admission (as seen in the intro included on this disc), Toni was Renoir’s attempt at Neorealism--though well before such a term existed. A story based in fact, shot in the town where the event happened, using people from the region--it’s not as raw as De Sica or Rossellini, but it is different from your classic Renoir. It’s sharper, less adorned, and more candidly honest about the lives it depicts. 

The titular Toni, as played by Charles Blavette, is an Italian who has come to a remote French community that is home to many migrant workers. Toni works in the quarry, has an affair with the woman running his boarding house (Marie, played by Jenny Hélia), and lusts after the sexy farm girl Josefa (Celia Montlaván). Toni has big romantic notions, but more along the lines of his own success than of the lovemaking kind. Sure, he imagines a future with Josefa, but it’s also part of his bigger plan to take over the quarry and improve his status. This takes on an even more macho cadence when his rival Albert (Max Dalban) also decides to pursue both tgose things. A scant few minutes separate Albert’s encounter with Josefa and Toni’s arrival, enough time for Albert to force his affections on her. Disheartened, Toni marries Marie, leaving Josefa to a less-than-ideal union with Albert. 

But, of course, it doesn’t end there. Josefa’s uncle ties Toni to his niece further by insisting he be the godfather to her child. The twists and tangles this causes marginalizes Marie, exposes Albert’s greed, and basically turns Toni into a weird white-knight stalker.

 

It’s interesting to consider this material and how Renoir might have approached Toni at a different time. This is really a melodrama in Neorealist clothing. Yet, instead of milking the script for the big emotion, Renoir’s mission aesthetic strips the story of its grandiosity and gets down to the nitty gritty of human desire and selfishness. Toni is no hero, and Josefa is no princess waiting to be rescued. If she has any real affection for either man, it’s never stated. And that kid that Toni is so concerned about protecting? You never really see it. 

Renoir seems fascinated by these sordid affairs. It’s like he’s wound up all these toys just to watch them go. And he inserts innocent bystanders like Toni’s older pal Fernand (Édouard Delmont) to play a little bit of devil’s advocate, to probe on behalf of the filmmaker and his audience, and be a voice of reason when Toni offers none; also, there is a Greek chorus of traveling minstrels reminding us of the macabre ballads that told these stories once upon a time. There is an even keel to the proceedings, the laser focus of Toni’s mission not really allowing for bigger swings, he’s all about what he can make his own. Even Marie’s bold decision in the final third is absent of any exaggeration. She is just as determined as the man who spurned her, and Toni’s heart rate only rises after he realizes the truth too late. (Though, really, it’s Fernand, who himself loves Marie, that pieces it together.) 

This seems by design. By going small, somehow things feel big. One love triangle crumbles, workers disappear, and a new train pulls into the station, unloading those that will come next, to either repeat this squalid history or make their own. The human tide beats on. 

 The new 4K restoration on Toni brings Renoir’s intentions to life, delivering a crisp black-and-white picture that gives sharp life to Claude Renoir’s photography. The location shooting looks amazing in this format, adding to the realism that the cameraman’s father was aiming for.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for the purposes of review.

LA TERRA TREMA - FILMSTRUCK

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2012.

"'Give me time and I will dig a hole for you,' said the worm to the stone."

Director Luchino Visconti's second full-length feature, La terra trema (The Earth Will Tremble), is a triumph of the Italian Neorealist movement. Made in 1948, it solidifies the aesthetic, marrying real life to fictional storytelling in an imperceptible, irresistible union.

Though based on a 19th-century novel, Visconti updates La terra trema to modern times and all the concerns that come with it. The film's narrative is set in a Sicilian fishing village. It follows the community as it struggles to get by. This is a place where life is hard and so is the work to sustain it. Like anyone else, the fishermen dream of a better existence. In some cases, this might be gotten through love, but for some of the young idealists, things could be better for everyone if working conditions were improved. The bosses take an unfair cut off the top, and the law cracks down on anyone who might say otherwise.

At the center of the film is the Valastro family. Their eldest daughter, Mara, is contrasted with another young woman, Nedda. Both work at home and perform the duties required there, which we clearly see are no less taxing than going out on the waves. Nedda is being courted by Ntoni Valastro, Mara's brother, the hothead who is encouraging the other workers to take their fates into their own hands. Mara has flirtations with the more down-to-earth laborer Nicola, who is forced to seek employment anywhere he can find it, including out of town. Their younger sister, Lucia, has also caught the eye of the town marshal, who is a genial personality but, ultimately, he represents the privilege and recklessness of authority, particularly in how he so cavalierly treats those in his charge.

These subplots add some conventional drama to La terra trema, but the essential backbone of the film is the day-to-day. Visconti and cinematographer G.R. Aldo (Umberto D. [review], Welles' Othello) shoot the men at work, and indeed, it's the real work they all do to get by when they aren't performing in front of a movie camera. La terra trema is infamous for having no professional actors. Everyone on screen is a citizen of the town where the movie was shot. They are, ostensibly, re-creating their own lives according to the director's script; he in turn is using these invented scenarios to show the actuality of a tough way of living to the rest of the world. Visconti himself narrates, creating a sort of political travelogue of the region.

There is actually little time for romance when your day-to-day is consumed with just keeping up and staying fed, but all the relationships I've mentioned will prove important as the Valastroes' story and situation changes. Ntoni mortgages the family home for money to buy a boat and set his people up to work on their own. Initially, he and his brother and grandfather do well, bringing in a large anchovy haul. Unfortunately, bad weather, bad business practices, and the general bad attitudes of the working class collaborate to destroy Ntoni's dreams and his family's stability. In Visconti's scenario, the biggest enemy of the people is the people themselves. As the song goes, we hate it when our friends become successful, and rather than encourage Ntoni to blaze a trail they could later follow themselves, others tear him down for being too big for his britches. Social mores being what they are, Nicola ends his courtship of Mara, citing that now she is above him in class, and he is shown to be the one decent guy in the village when the tables turn again. Most of the other townspeople revel in the family's suffering. The old bosses will only give Ntoni more work if he submits to their ridicule, and indeed, Ntoni has to hit rock bottom before seizing on his own destiny again, holding his head high in the face of humiliation.

The Neorealist aesthetic is beautifully crystallized in La terra trema. Using non-actors works particularly well for Visconti. While in similar hands such experiments can seem stiff and awkward, the director finds a comfortable space for his performers to work--both literally and figuratively. Using the real locations where these people live probably helped a lot. They get to be themselves in their own regular environment. The backdrop is appropriately ragged, yet it is photographed lovingly. Visconti chooses to shoot the locale wide, letting all the detail come through. Such is his dedication to capturing reality.

Despite its length of over two-and-a-half hours, La terra trema rarely drags, even at its most bleak. Structurally, Visconti works each element like it was a vignette. So, for instance, we see Ntoni's brother become dissatisfied and what drastic measures his restlessness causes him to take before moving on to the next stage of Ntoni's descent. The bad stuff compounds on the Valastro family, yet Visconti provides a hopeful out, using simple literary devices to put Ntoni back on his feet and back in a boat. This allows for an end that suggests that despite the drudgery of their everyday lives, if nothing else, the Valastroes and all good people like them will persevere.

CANOA: A SHAMEFUL MEMORY - #862

Released in 1976, Canoa: A Shameful Memory is considered a milestone of Mexican cinema, influencing future filmmakers (Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón both appear in supplements on this new release) and setting a standard for the local industry to follow. Felipe Casals’ innovative, probing docudrama is equal parts Costa-Gavras and Francesco Rosi. It's dramatic and real and maybe a little long in the tooth, but fascinating all the same. Also, relevant to our times--and like most older films that maintain their bite, I might add, sadly so.

Based on a real-life incident from the mid-1960s, Canoa is essentially a story of small-town hysteria and political bullying. Taking place in the rural village that gives the film its name, Canoa centers around one night, including the preamble and the aftermath, when a terrible crime occurs. The catalyst is the arrival of a handful of university workers visiting the region to hike in its hills. They get off the bus at the start a torrential rainstorm, the severity of which prevents them from traveling further before sunrise. Word of the strangers spreads quickly, especially when they are refused shelter by the town sheriff and the local priest (Enrique Lucero)--a miniature dictator who has been squeezing the town dry for years. His anti-communist rhetoric, combined with his acute paranoia, misleads his congregation into believing the group are activist students who have come to undermine the Catholic church. As tails of their intentions become exaggerated, a mob forms and does what a mob does, ending in several murders.

Casals crafts Canoa: A Shameful Memory like a faux documentary, complete with an off-screen narrator and an on-screen witness (Salvador Sánchez). The latter is the most compelling part of the film. A worker from Canoa, the witness gives us the inside dope on town politics, speaking directly to the camera, as much a tour guide as an interview subject. His self-aware, glib cynicism colors the whole of the picture. He speaks with both the benefit of hindsight and distance. Granted, no one asks where he was on the night in question, and we aren’t entirely sure of where he fits in all of this. Not that it matters. He is the outside observer, disgusted yet not surprised. Even in the film's denouement, he already sees the powers that be turning tragedy into opportunity.

This witness basically sets the tone for Canoa. The movie is both real and unreal, an accurate depiction of events and yet a fictional re-creation of the same. We have access to closed-room machinations with the priest and his flunkies, a narrative conceit unavailable in a true documentary, not to mention an artful POV shot that reminds us that the minister is the shadowy villain behind the whole thing, the noirish lighting shaking off the cinematic grit that otherwise marks the picture. When it comes down to it, most of Canoa’s visuals conform more to the standards of fictional drama than any verité aesthetics. We also see Cazals push the limits of his budget in some of the performances, particularly the university workers, whose expositional scenes in the city are amateurish and contrived. Canoa’s fundamental cinematic constraints are showing.

The one exception is the violence that comes in the final act, when the mob comes for the unsuspecting visitors, breaking down the door of the meager shelter they found. Here Casals pulls no punches, embracing the terrible events in all their lifelike horror. The attack is vicious and bloody, and the brutality of it is appropriately unsettling. By the time the townspeople come for the outsiders, the truth of their visit is no longer important. In fact, to their minds, the boys’ explanation for coming this way is exactly something lying communists would say to save their skins. The violence is drawn-out and cruel, and Canoa doesn't shy away from some of the harsher details. As shown here, the hive mind succumbs to its most primitive impulses, trading its humanity for self-preservation.

But is it self-preservation? Is it even self-serving? They think so, but if we reconsider the info we got at the start of Canoa, these farmers make no real money, and what little they have is siphoned off by the clergy and funneled to its political cronies, sometimes as a trade-off for delivering such basic conveniences as electricity and telephones, other times for delivering nothing at all, the price of an empty promise. That the priest distracts from this thievery by inspiring a fear of the "other" should be all too familiar. Ignore my hand in your pocket, because that other guy is going to steal what I want before I do. And then pay me to "protect" you. Or show me how strong you are by protecting yourselves, you freeloaders!

So, despite showing its age in filmmaking, Canoa: A Shameful Memory remains as potent as ever. Swap its decades-old setting for a current one, wherever xenophobia and oppressive rhetoric holds sway, and you’ll find a cautionary tale for our era. One would have hoped that in these "enlightened" times we would be better, that Canoa would be considered fantasy rather than realism, and that such prejudices would have been rooted out--if not in the 1960s then at the end of the Cold War--but if the first few months of 2017 have shown us anything, we haven't really evolved much at all, and we’re getting busy creating a few new shameful memories of our own.

This disc proved by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS - #854

Criterion fans know the name Ermanno Olmi from his excellent Neorealist films, Il posto [review] and I fidanzati [review], small dramas set in then-modern times (1961 and 1962) that are elegant, personal, and focused. And if that, like me, is all you know, then his Palm d’Or-winning The Tree of Wooden Clogs may be a bit of a surprise. Released in 1978, this three-hour-plus drama is modestly epic in scope, more open in approach, and yet surprisingly just as engaged with the personal.

Set in Italy's Bergamo province at the tail of the 19th Century, The Tree of Wooden Clogs tells a season in the life of a farming village. At the time, peasants lived as sharecroppers on a wealthy landlord's estate, working his fields, keeping 1/3 of what they produced, giving the rest to him (see also Bertollucci’s 1900 [review] for a similar scenario). The farmers shared one community building, four or five families per, individual tribes within a larger conglomerate. As his narrative progresses, Olmi dips in and out of different families in one particular dwelling, mining their collective stories. There is the young man looking to woo his neighbor's daughter, or the old timer looking to beat the others to the tomato harvest, and the various wives and mothers keeping their children in clean clothes and nourishment. Each action is individual, but it also adds to the whole. No one family, no patch of land, is an island. Or, to change metaphors, The Tree of Wooden Clogs is a tapestry, and each singular weave somehow ties back to the center, and you don't see the full tableau until you step back and take it all in.

The closest thing we have to a central family is the clan whose challenges give The Tree of Wooden Clogs its name. This incident is a small story embedded in the whole. The family’s young son, Minek, is a bit of a prodigy, and the parish priest insists his father send him to school, even if it is a four-mile walk each way. On one such trek, the same day his baby brother is born, the child breaks one of his clogs. His kindly father doesn't scold him or make a fuss. Instead, he sneaks out into the night and cuts a chunk of wood from a tree alongside the road. It's unclear whether he takes to this task quietly so as not to disturb the boy's mother, still recuperating from the birthing, or because he's taking the wood without clearing it with the landlord. All we feel is there is something momentous and heavy in the act, especially as he begins his carving while the rest of his family says their evening prayers. Is this plea to the heavens to be his absolution?

This is how connected everything is--religion, birth, survival. Within the relatively short period--short in the context of an existence, at least, because make no mistake, this is a long movie--we see the full circle of life. Crops are grown, animals slaughtered, children born. We see only a small sliver of the other side, a brief peek into the landowner's life. We see how faith holds sway, even when impractical. We also catch a glimpse of political tides to come. But as large as the land and the sky and the whole of the world may appear, it's still the little things that matter. The simple pleasures.

Olmi applies the Neorealist method to great effect. Like Roberto Rossellini did with the Sicilian fishermen for Stromboli [review], or even Michael Powell and the Scotsmen on The Edge of the World, the director worked with the real people of the Bergamo region, even having them speak in their native Bergamasque. The landscape of The Tree of Wooden Clogs is not populated by actors, but the actual citizenry of the world Olmi is capturing. Yet, they still are actors, aren't they, since they live in the now while dressing up to play their ancestors in front of a camera. Such is the illusion, and so powerful the effect, you'll be forgiven for how often you'll forget you are not watching a documentary. The details are real, and often not for the squeamish (if you've never seen a goose or pig butchered...), and the script so absent of point-A/point-B plotting, the final cut has the feeling of real life, not a cinematic construction. Like life, it can be a bit of a haul to reach the end, but hopefully we’ll all find both tasks worth it. (Though I’m not holding out much hope for this living business...)

The span of The Tree of Wooden Clogs only grows macro in its third hour, when the young couple we’ve watched court one another gets married and goes off on their honeymoon. Traveling with them, we see nearby townships, and people beyond the landlord’s property line. These new elements almost seem cartoonish by comparison, so used have we come to the quiet life within the farm. The honeymoon itself passes without much fanfare--at least until the newlyweds return home and, immediately after, other narrative threads finally start to pay off--some good, and some bad. I suppose it’s up to each viewer to divine where Olmi is coming down in terms of the divine and its relation to what happens to the peasants, or what that also says about the nature of small community. A sad fate befalls Minek’s family, one that is swift and without recourse. As neighbor turns away from neighbor and relies on prayer rather than intervening, I found myself caught between my empathy for their resorting to their faith due to a need for some kind of explanation of why life is cruel and my more visceral reaction. I can’t help but think they are using religion to sidestep their responsibility toward their fellow man, and that this is perhaps why the cycle of the wealthy oppressing the poor continues. (“I’ve got mine, let God take care of the rest.) One could surmise this is why Olmi includes glimpse of the socialist revolution on the rise. Certainly nothing happens on screen in The Tree of Wooden Clogs by accident, given that the director, in the truest auteur fashion, is credited with script, photography, and editing. Just as the hands of the farmers draw riches from the land, Olmi’s hands draw out this mis-en-scene. Soil has never been so beautiful, and yet so daunting. Soft and brown when giving life, dark and muddy as the day grows hard.

Yet, for the filmmaker to add any editorial or exposition would be to betray his motivating conceit. The Tree of Wooden Clogs is meant to be an observation, not an explanation. It’s a morality play without a coda. The staging, the lighting, everything is as natural and real as is possible in the confines of a motion picture construct. The camera itself seems to disappear in the crowd. The light is never brighter than the hazy grays the sun provides. The visual story is limited to what the eye can see, the same way it would be were this a newsreel. Olmi doesn’t dress the set, he doesn’t call attention to the design of his shots, he doesn’t zoom emphatically. His approach is as straightforward and quaint as the daily life he is chronicling. It’s also as intimate, and therein he finds his truth. From the supplements accompanying the movie on this disc, especially the British television special from 1981, we hear how the film was inspired by stories the Olmi’s grandmother told him about her life, and so we can see that the director’s exacting methods are born of a personal pride. He is reaching back into his own history, digging for the roots that would eventually put him on his own two feet and lead him here.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

THE KID WITH A BIKE - #646

There’s a scene near the very end of The Kid With aBike where the titular kid, Cyril (Thomas Doret), is riding side by side with his unexpected guardian, Samantha (Cécile de France, Mesrine [review], The Young Pope), and he asks her what gear she is pedaling in. Samantha has no idea, and only can guess looking at the gauges and levers on the handlebars. Her ignorance amuses the boy.

It also reminds me of my own biking experiences. Near the end of junior high, a few years before I could drive, I was given a ten-speed bike. It was probably nine speeds too many. No one ever explained to me what the different gears meant, much less how to shift into them. I found a setting where I could pedal comfortably, and then never touched the gears again.

The anecdote itself is completely irrelevant to examining this 2011 film from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, and yet it is also everything. The pleasure of watching The Kid With a Bike [also on Filmstruck] and, in fact, all Dardenne films is the attention to personal details. Everything that happens matters to the person it happens to, and the specificity is exactly why audiences around the world, be they in the Dardenne Brothers’ native Belgium or here in the United States, identify with their stories. It’s the bigger things that separate us, and the day-to-day that proves we are all basically the same.

I don’t identify with the love of the bike that the kid has, but I identify with his willful ignorance, his refusal to let go of an idea. In this case, that his father, Guy (Dardennes-regular Jérémie Renier, Summer Hours [review]), will come back and take him out of the group home and put their lives back together. The bike becomes a symbol of that. Cyril’s father would have never gone away without giving him his beloved bike. When Samantha brings it to him and tells him she had bought it off someone who bought it from Cyril’s dad, the boy refuses to believe her.

We should all hope for angels in our life like Samantha. She only meets Cyril by chance, while going to an appointment in a medical clinic in the building where Cyril’s father was last known to live. The boy runs away from school and goes there looking for Guy, and when they try to drag him back, he literally grabs on to Samantha and won’t let go. What this sparks in her, we’ll never know. A Good Samaritan streak? A motherly instinct? Samantha agrees to take Cyril on the weekends, which proves tougher than expected when he falls in with a bad crowd. But then, Samantha is tougher than just about anybody. She stands up to the boy’s father and makes him relate his own bad news; she dumps her boyfriend when he delivers her an ultimatum about her new ward; she refuses to give up on the kid even after he’s stepped over a very dangerous line. Cécile de France is a remarkably versatile actor. In any role, be it the gangster’s moll or the public relations woman or the simple hairdresser looking for love, she is always present in the moment. She’s one of those performers that each time you see her, she seems transformed, sending you scrambling to IMDB to see why she looks familiar.

Watching The Kid With a Bike, you’ll want to knock some sense into Cyril more than once. Hell, not only because he refuses to listen, but after the second time his bike gets stolen because he didn’t lock it up, you just want to smack him upsdie the head. (I joked the movie could alternately be called The Persuasive Argument For My Vasectomy.) I don’t know where the Dardennes found Thomas Doret, but he’s excellent. The young actor has a laser-like focus and maintains his mission at all times. Cyril will not be dissuaded.

It’s nearly impossible to not think of Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves [review] when examining The Kid With a Bike. It’s not just the father/son story revolving around a two-wheeler, but also the fact that moral questions are raised over the need for the bike. Cyril faces a choice, and though less motivated by self-preservation than the desperate man of De Sica’s film, to a young mind it would be just as important. Wes (Egon Di Mateo), the Fagin of Samantha’s neighborhood, offers him the kind of masculine reinforcement that Cyril seeks, and so he makes doing bad look very good. And hell, if you can’t trust your father to come through the way he’s supposed to, common rules no longer seem valid.

Additionally, the Dardennes work in a similar style to De Sica. The young actor, the real locations, the simple plot, the lack of melodrama--this 2011 Belgian film is very much in line with the 1948 Italian film’s aesthetics. Collaborating as usual with cinematographer Alain Marcoen, the Dardennes make no move that calls attention to itself. There are no tricky shots, no daring overheads, they maintain a grounded vantage point, which ultimately proves to be more immersive than some glossier fictional efforts, in that The Kid With a Bike is far more persuasive as a believable narrative. It is being lived, not choreographed.

Once upon a time when I was editing the Kitchen Sink-style comics of British cartoonist Andi Watson, we received a review that contended “nothing happened” in an issue. Of course, this was not true, we could outline many emotional twists and turns in the comic book, many actual events that the characters had to contend with. It just was lacking in “action.” As Andi quipped, just because someone didn’t get punched, it doesn’t mean nothing happened. And while there is violence in The Kid With a Bike, it is story driven, not plot driven, which is a big difference. Some might say the core scenario is very little to hang an entire film on, but the Dardennes make something grand from it.

One last anecdote that came to mind while watching The Kid With a Bike: when I was in grade school I had a brown Huffy that I was pretty keen on. That is, until I got to school and was ridiculed because it had a banana seat and no crossbar on the handle. I was told this made it a girl’s bike.  A girl’s bike befitting a boy with a girl’s name, I guess. While I didn’t come to blows with any of the kids the way that Cyril did (at least not over the bike), it did still come to represent a kind of rebellion for me--I rode it regardless of others’ taunts--and provided my personal freedom. I could go all over town on it, much faster and with more ease than on two feet. In other words, it could get me away from those other boys whom I didn’t want to hang out with anyway. Looking back, I guess it did carry a comparable power to the bike in the movie. It maybe wasn’t about my father’s love, but then, ultimately that’s not what Cyril’s represents. It’s about having a vehicle to be who we are and get us to where we feel safe.

THE PLAYER - #812

My thing about movies that are about movies is that the good ones make me want to watch other movies. If I watch The Bad and the Beautiful, for instance, I’m going to want to chase it with Cat People. Who didn’t watch the opening of The Player back when it was released in 1992 and not immediately go view--or even re-view--Touch ofEvil? Or how about pairing it up with Bicycle Thieves [review]? Better yet, another movie about movies, based on a book about movies, Elia Kazan’s vastly underrated adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon. Monroe Stahr, the movie mogul in The Last Tycoon, was modeled after Irving Thalberg, whom surely director Robert Altman and writer Michael Tolkin had in mind when they created Griffin Mill, their motion picture wunderkind, as played by Tim Robbins.

And it’s not just that The Player is about movies, it’s utterly in love with them. You get that right from the virtuoso opening shot, which runs without cutting for 8 1/2 minutes (certainly no coincidence), referencing not just Touch of Evil, but The Sheltering Sky and Rope and a couple of other films that pulled off similar feats (this was pre-Tarantino, mind you). There are easter eggs throughout this thing, and not just the cameos by then au currant celebs, but jokes and winks and the careful placement of other films and filmmakers to cue the audience to what is coming next. Be it Griffin walking under a movie marquee as the lights go out on The Bicycle Thief to signal his own oncoming moral dilemma, or the fake-out of Lyle Lovett walking by a Hitchcock photo as an indicator of suspense and a deep visual pun about “the wrong man.” The murder victim declares, “See you in the next reel, pal,” ironic last words befitting the noir plot Griffin Mill will find himself in, as predicted by the posters in his office.

If you’re a cinephile, you’re going to eat this stuff up.

If you’re not, if you’re just a casual movie fan, then no worries, you’re going to dig The Player, too. It’s more than a collection of in jokes and elbowing Hollywood in the ribs. Altman and Tolkin bring an honest-to-goodness murder plot along with all the references. The Player is a movie that aims to be as good as all the other movies it emulates.

In terms of story, it’s simple. Griffin Mill is a hotshot Hollywood producer who appears to be going cold. In the midst of his concerns that his boss is bringing in his replacement (Peter Gallagher), he’s also getting harassing post cards from an anonymous writer that he never called back. When the threats turn scary, Griffin tries to figure out who it is, settling on one writer in particular, David Kahane (played by a young, nearly unrecognizable Vincent D’Onofrio). Griffin tracks Kahane to a revival screening of the Neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief (or Bicycle Thieves) and tries to reason with him. Only, Kahane isn’t the guy--even if he hates Griffin all the same. Accusations cause tempers to flare and a scuffle ensues, leading to the writer ending up dead and Griffin trying to make it look like a robbery.

And he’s successful for the most part. The only problem is, someone saw the two of them together, and the cops (Whoopi Goldberg and Lyle Lovett) think it’s suspicious that the movie exec was somehow randomly the last person to see a no-name scribe alive. This line of thinking is only heightened when Griffin starts dating the deceased’s girlfriend (Greta Scacchi). In any conventional script, Griffin would certainly look guilty.

Which, of course, we know he is, but that’s immaterial. The question that lingers, what will he do to get out of it? That’s what any good suspense movie is about. Plus, we know that the real stalker is still out there, and he could strike at any minute. Somehow these things have to converge, right? That’s what the rules of screenwriting have taught us. Not to mention that the fake moviemakers in the movie we are watching keep harping on the need for a happy ending. Griffin Mill has to find his way out of it, or The Player will fail.

That might actually be The Player’s most ingenious bit, how Tolkin builds in all this conventional wisdom about what makes a successful movie--twists, turns, sex, surprising rescues, happy endings--and then delivers on each. It’s the artiest of blockbusters, The Player is. Like if the Kaufman Brothers in Adaptation cracked the code and managed to sincerely make it work. (Which, let’s be honest, it works in Adaptation; as soon as Donald takes over, the film becomes a crowdpleaser.)

Tim Robbins brings an interesting energy to his performance. He is both slimy and trustworthy, at times believably dim and yet otherwise extremely cagey. It’s excellent casting, how we feel about Griffin is probably how a lot of people feel about Robbins, who himself can be seen as a little pretentious and also a bit of a windbag due to his openness about his politics. Yet, he also always seems like a decent guy, he’d probably be pretty nice in person. We like him, but we want to hate him, too.

Fans of Hollywood lore will see other nods to history in The Player, perhaps most deftly in Fred Ward’s fixer character, which resembles MGM’s Eddie Mannix, immortalized in both the films Hollywoodland and more recently Hail, Caesar! There is also some amusing commentary about television actors wanting to be in movies, which seems only ironic and outdated given how so much and so many have shifted from the big screen to cable television for better opportunities in recent years. Tim Robbins himself was last seen on HBO in a bad Dr. Strangelove rip-off.

Television may be the current perceived assassin of big studio pictures, but moviemakers have had many threats before this one--including TV, which was originally supposed to be the death knell of the moviegoing experience back in the 1950s. Most would say the changing of the guard in the 1960s was the true end of Golden Age Hollywood--which is largely what Altman is paying tribute to here. His movie studio resembles the classic system as much as it does the bloated 1980s version he’s critiquing. The Player actually came at a time when independent films were having their heyday, and the Sundance crowd was moving in. I guess these things are cyclical. If the auteurs of the 1960s and 1970s gave birth to the blockbuster, then the indie scene of the 1990s gave us the mega blockbuster. Would there even be a Griffin Mill now, or would he just be a collection of stockholders?

I guess it doesn’t really matter. All we can say for sure is that he’d still be getting away with it. Now more than ever.

Tim Robbins, Sydney Pollack, and Robert Altman on set.

BITTER RICE - #792

NeoRealism meets noir in Giuseppe De Santis’ 1949 crime drama Bitter Rice.

The bulk of the story is set in the rice fields of Vercelli, a place nomadic workers travel to for 40 days at a time to harvest the current crop and plant the next one. It’s at the train yard the day the workers are supposed to ship off  where two thieves hope to mix in with the crowd and get away with stolen jewels. Except one of the pair, Walter (Vittorio Gassman, Big Deal on Madonna Street), has been made and the cops are on scene to nab him. He makes a run for it, leaving Francesca (Doris Dowling) with the loot. With the help of Silvana (Silvana Mangano, The Decameron [review]), Francesca gets a job with the rice crew--albeit an illegal one, since official contracts have all been handed out already. Silvana is experienced with the system, and is also experienced manipulating people. We are introduced to this spitfire when she is dancing in the train yard to a jazz tune playing on her portable record player. All attention turns to her. Like many a femme fatale before her, Silvana knows she is desired and takes the power that comes with it.

Only, the femme isn’t all that fatale. Or nearly as experienced as she thinks. Though she quickly susses out the truth about Francesca and why she is running away, Silvana is not prepared for the consequences of getting tangled up with dangerous people. When Walter comes looking for Francesca, he sets his eyes on the new girl. Silvana immediately forgets the cautionary tale that Francesca spun for her, about how Walter got his hooks in her and she can’t escape. He is a manipulator himself, and an abusive one at that. By the end of Bitter Rice, the women will have switched places. Francesca will learn the value of hard work, while Silvana will learn the downside of chasing a quick score.

There are many twists and reversals to be found as Bitter Rice progresses. The jewels change hands, Silvana tries to get Francesca kicked out of the camp, they make up and become friends--it’s both melodrama and pulpy crime. A handsome soldier, Marco (Raf Vallone), proves to be equal parts conscience and romantic distraction. And there is another heist yet to be planned.

Giuseppe De Santis creates a seductive amalgam of post-War Italian cinema and contemporary Hollywood Bs. His premise is rooted in reality, even if his plot is thoroughly hardboiled. Bitter Rice opens with a radio correspondent addressing the film-going audience and laying out all the details about Italy’s rice production and why the industry relies on women to do the picking (small, fast hands). The director could have easily made a film about the conditions of the migrant workers and the politics of the system, but rather than make a polemic, he uses the unique setting as his foundation. Rather than let the romantic quartet of criminals and their opposition be the sole focus, he lets the film breathe, moving away from their machinations to show us other characters. Bitter Rice has a large cast, and its narrative is brimming with life. We first see this early on, with the first of many beautiful tracking shots executed by De Santis and cinematographer Otello Martelli (a regular collaborator of Rossellini and Fellini, he shot both Paisan [review] and La dolce vita [review], among others). While seeking out the source of Francesca’s music, the camera pans across the train cars, and in every window, we catch glimpses of an individual existence. Each passenger is given action and purpose.

So, too, are the ladies that form the workforce at the rice fields. Several emerge as key players and return again and again. We see a lot of them in another elaborate, uncut take, as men come to the work site to catcall, and the ladies answer back, generally giving as good as they get (though, amusingly, Francesca is noticeably annoyed, as separate as ever). Again and again, De Santis will choreograph this kind of sequence to show us the full crowd, and to create a very real backdrop for the rest of his plot to play out.

Infused in all that are little nuggets about workers’ rights, fair treatment, class structure, and just general proper community behavior. Francesca initially takes to the work out of opportunity, but she bonds with the other women and comes to appreciate what it means to stick her hands in the soil and make something grow. Thus, when Walter starts to focus on the rice itself for his next crime, she can’t go along. She offers the age-old justification: when they stole from people who could afford it, it was okay, but stealing from people who toiled over something and leaving them nothing to show for it is despicable. (Never mind that several tons of rice doesn’t seem like the easiest thing to go fence. Walter doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who thinks things through.) While Mangano gets the showier performance--and with it, a different kind of attention from the camera--Dowling makes a more subtle transformation. With her perfect posture and dark eyes, she could be misconstrued as overly arch, but it fits Francesca, who begins the picture completely on guard, but ends it in a more empathetic place, yet without surrendering any of her strength.

The final half hour of Bitter Rice is an exceptional orchestration. As the workers plan to celebrate their last day with a wedding, Walter and his new gang put their scheme into motion. De Santis jumps around, taking in all the action, building tension, and then releasing all of his players to their fate. It’s quite riveting, and ultimately satisfying. Crime, as per usual, doesn’t pay, and virtue is rewarded, but that reward is hard earned. The final image of the film encapsulates all these things, with ultimate respect being paid to the more sustainable values, the things that Silvana once knew but has rebuked, and that Francesca has come to anew.

This disc provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.

THE APU TRILOGY - #782

While I would eventually like to review each film of the Apu Trilogy in full, in the meantime, I am reposting my short review from The Oregonian, originally published in May 2014, to mark the release of the Criterion boxed set. 

Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy is a milestone of international cinema. Released between 1955 and 1959, the cycle of films follows the life of one Indian boy as he becomes a man, starting at the turn of the century and spanning decades.

The wandering adult Apu of “Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)” is a long way from the lively child of “Pather Panchali.” Joyful early years give way to sorrow and loss. By the end of middle film “Aparajito,” Apu is fending for himself.

Ray was influenced by Italian neorealism, and, in turn, you can see some of Apu in Francois Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel movies. Yet the Apu Trilogy is without peer in the director’s depiction of his particular corner of the world.

LA DOLCE VITA - #733

There are many scenes in La dolce vita that get referenced over and over, including its bizarre ending and Anita Ekberg’s famous dance in the fountain. But there is none more indicative of the impact of Federico Fellini’s 1960 motion picture than its opening sequence: a helicopter flying a statue of Jesus high above Rome. Up in the whirlybird sits Marcello, as played by Marcello Mastroianni, a reporter who peddles gossip, a prince of the Italian nightlife. As bikini-clad women look up past the towering Christ, Marcello waves down at them and asks one for her phone number. Our hero has arrived.

Grappling with La dolce vita for analysis is a daunting task. Fellini’s film has a large reputation, but you’ll find that when watching La dolce vita, the reputation is inadequate. The movie itself is larger still. It encompasses so much, yet does so with such clear storytelling and verve, one barely knows where to begin. Slicing off a piece to investigate feels trivial; La dolce vita is an uncarvable whole. It embraces and critiques modernity, celebrity culture, the nouveau riche, religion, business, art, ambition, and ennui. It is more vital more than half a century later than most films released today and set in the here and now. In fact, watching it in 2014 and considering how much Fellini’s Rome resembles a more sophisticated version of our own culture of decadence and scandal, it’s hard not to feel like we are all a bunch of rubes. The Italians did it so much better, and so long ago, and wearing much better clothes.

The plot of La dolce vita follows Marcello over several days as he navigates endless parties, difficult romances, and even tries to get a little work done. As we’ll learn, Marcello is somewhat of a gossipmonger, at once proud of it and defensive of the work, while secretly mourning the abandonment of his own literary pretensions. Folks remember him as a serious young writer, he prefers not to remember much at all. When Marcello describes another character, he may as well be describing himself. “Maybe he was just afraid,” he says, before clarifying, “Maybe he was afraid of himself, of us all.”

That the man being discussed is the perpetrator of a murder/suicide where he killed two small children before turning the gun on himself should tell you how deep and dark this fear goes. As Marcello had said earlier of his city, it’s a “peaceful jungle,” but it’s a jungle all the same. Wild and fun...until it’s not.

Which isn’t to say La dolce vita is a dour affair. Even when the drunken fatigue sets in, it’s still buoyant and flashy. And, of course, before that, we are along for the ride, partaking of the spectacle right along with the charming rogue who serves as our guide. The first half of the movie is almost entirely on an upswing. Marcello canoodles with the wealthy heiress Maddalena (Anouk Aimée, Lola [review]), he frolics with the Swedish actress who is turning everyone’s head (Ekberg), and he wends his way through nightclubs as if he owns the joints. Like Ray Liotta in GoodFellas , doors open for him. His only real trouble seems to be the tumultuous relationship with his fiancée Emma (Yvonne Furneaux, Repulsion [review]). Emma is a manipulative drunk, and Marcello’s philandering drives her to attempt suicide as a way of getting his attention. Yet, for as contemptible as that is, Emma is indicative of the sickness that is in the air. She is the consequence of this lifestyle of no commitment. Marcello envisions setting down as a kind of deathtrap, and so he keeps the woman he is to marry at arm’s length, in much the same way he holds off his own talent. The Roman partiers are like swifts, the birds whose legs are too weak for them to land and ever take flight again. They must stay up high or come down for good.

Fellini constructs La dolce vita almost like one would a musical. There are certain anecdotes he shares, and then he connects them with song-and-dance numbers. These all take place at the nightclub, and include clowns--one of the director’s passions (see his film I Clowns [review])--who offer a bit of commentary through their routines. Marcello sees himself reflected in the sad buffoon. He and his friends are like the comedic performer’s balloons, airy and insubstantial, following a pied piper to goodness knows where.

I mentioned above that we can see our current culture reflected in La dolce vita. This is true be it in the grisly violence (in addition to the murder/suicide, there are references to domestic abuse) or the press’ obsession with the same. The scenes with Paparazzo (Walter Santesso) are so familiar, the legions of photographers that hound celebrities and public figures have taken their name from the character. If there is any one character that we might be, however, whose shoes we might understand walking in, it’s Marcello’s father (Annibale Ninchi). He doesn’t live in Rome, and on a rare visit, he goes out with his son, partakes of his life, and finds it’s too much for him. Like us, he is the casual observer who can only become engorged on the experience rather than be a part of it.

The contrast between Marcello and his father ties in with other generational divides that Fellini shows us. Not long after, Marcello is at a party in a castle (which he goes to with future Velvet Underground-singer Nico, who is playing herself) that has historical significance far beyond the way the man who is set to inherit it treats the estate. His mother and his father both chastise him, unable to understand how the younger Italians can be throwing away history with such ease. It’s also the site of La dolce vita’s most tender and saddest scene, when Marcello confesses his true feelings to Maddalena, only to lose her in the moment even more than he realizes, an unseen cuckold ridiculing his raw emotion.

By that point, though, Marcello’s defenses are down, and his own nausea (as Sartre might call it) has begun to settle in. His father’s excess was contagious, and after tat particular outing, the fun slowly drains from Marcello’s life. Each successive soiree grows more somber, ending in the bad party to end all bad parties, Marcello engaging in a sad cabaret of his own to try to reignite the musical element and keep the festivities going.* It’s a lurid display, and mean-spirited, and mostly directed at his own disgust with himself. He can no longer deny the bitter irony of Maddalena’s words back when things between them were good: “It’s not so bad. So few of us unhappy people remain.” It’s the truth in opposite. It is that bad, and everyone is unhappy.

Which is why Marcello finds himself where he is at the end, staring at the bizarre sea creature that has been drug up on the beach, his friends unable to appreciate this monstrosity with the appropriate shock or grandeur. It’s a kind of call back to earlier, when the revelers were listening to a friend’s recordings of nature, and nonchalantly declaring, “Birds. That’s exactly how they sound.” They are so deep in their own false constructs, they no longer have any connection to the natural world except as something abstract that can be trapped and held in some way. As the movie closes, Marcello sits between the aquatic behemoth and a little girl who previously told him of her own modest ambition. He is caught between something unidentifiable and grotesque and something pure and hopeful, and Marcello can’t recognize either. So he just carries on with what he’s doing.

Ever the master illusionist, Fellini presents all this as if it were a spontaneous happening, without any structure, as unpredictable as the behavior would appear. This is false, of course, that’s part of the trick. The mirrors and the wires must remain invisible. As a piece of Italian cinema, it’s an expansion of possibilities, a fully widescreen endeavor. There is a joke in the movie when someone asks Anita Ekberg if Italian Neorealism is dead. Her translator doesn’t bother to translate the question, he just quickly tells her to say it’s alive. Fellini is, of course, being cheeky, because La dolce vita is moving beyond Neorealism into something more like hyperrealism, a style more appropriate to the changing times. Fitting, then, that Otello Martelli, who also shot such Neorealist classics as Paisan [review] and Stromboli [review], should be behind the camera for this one, allowing Fellini to keep one foot in tradition while remodeling cinema for the future.

If you’ve been waiting to visit La dolce vita again, or have yet to partake at all, there is no better time than now. After years of inadequate DVDs, Criterion brings us a full restoration, shown in splendid high-definition, struck from a 4K master. The picture is marvelous, with a pristine surface image and just the right amount of grain to maintain the cinematic feel. There are also a ton of extras celebrating La dolce vita, including a tour through one man’s collection of ephemera relating to the movie and interviews both new and old.

* Does anyone else think of the scene in Mad Men where they are riding the lawn tractor at the office party when Marcello mounts the drunk farm girl?

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review. The stills shown are taken from the standard-definition DVD release and not the Blu-ray under discussion.