ted-129 Reviews

Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Color Time Travel - A film that must be experienced on the Big Screen

[10/10 · 26 April 2008]

No one can watch this without remembering Gene Tierney's searing blue eyes, Jeanne Crain's face of innocence, or Cornel Wilde (lightyears from The Naked Prey) here looking like a photo of Pierre & Gilles come to life. It's 110 minutes of color-time-travel basking in the surreally saturated Technicolor palette of the mid 40's.

For those who have been denied the experience of watching the recently restored version with a rapt audience on a big screen as happened April 26, 2008 at San Francisco's Castro Theatre, I can only hope you'll contact a film preservation-minded theater in your area.

Though I've watched this film on DVD, nothing prepared me for the impact of the big screen. The closeups alone will take your breath away.

Is it melodrama or is it noir?--leave that to Heaven!

Hostage (2005)

Engaging tribute

[8/10 · 18 May 2007]

Giannaris contributes one to the "hostage" film genre. I completely disagree with the other views expressed thus far, in that I found the film quite paced and engaging and his use of Stathis Papadopoulos as intuitively right. Describing him as "extremely buffed" is a bit hyperbolic. Stathis is no Arnold (thankfully) and can convey emotions missing from most action heroes/antiheroes--e.g., uncertainty, fear, and a childlike vulnerability next to the women who briefly mother him in the course of the film. Here's an inarticulate character who can't fully think things through, is in over his head, and yet desperate enough to make a last futile stand to be counted.

And like all hostage films, it's not just about the captor but the captives. Kudos to the rest of the cast for their very believable performances that dynamically reveal their personal stories in the course of the journey and their changes in perspective on their collective situation and its significance. As one character says to the morally ambiguous cop-negotiator trying to get some of them released, "It's all of us or none of us." Kudos also to the cinematography that conveyed the overheated claustrophobia of a long bus ride that spans day and night and builds to its visual payoff in the climactic final moments.

The Stranger (1967)

Visually hypnotic adaptation of Camus' L'etranger

[10/10 · 28 August 2006]

Visconti brings to life the Camus novel with the minimum of dialog and surreal visuals.

Algiers sweats. The sun's glare beats down and doesn't let up--right up to the courtroom scene where one watches a dazed Mastroianni in the foreground while the fans of the jury members move in constant motion in a soft-focus background. Much of the film has a dreamlike feel that fuses with the existential blankness felt by Mastroianni's character.

I recall this film playing frequently in San Francisco at the Times Theater back in the early stoner 70's. And with the 70's, this film has all but disappeared. One only hopes that all of Visconti's films will someday make it to DVD--but especially The Stranger!

The Glass Key (1942)

Sock-Me-Again Ladd and Big-Slob Bendix

[18 February 2004]

"Reform" party politicians making unholy alliances in the final days of an election, media manipulators itching to smear a candidate in the morning news, ingrate gambling richboys who screw up everything for everybody. A "dated" film?

If anyone's ahead of the game it's Ladd. Smart, tough--he'll take the blows but not the fall. A shark-eyed quiet little guy with a deep voice. A small mouth with barely an upper lip. A smile not quite a smile--head to head with doll-like Veronica Lake who smiles even more when she doesn't mean it. They are a stare-down match for each other. And that bemused look on their faces tells you they're not just game players.

Then there's scene-stealer William Bendix. When a redneck isn't gettin' any action, he might settle for a good knock-down. Getting good & drunk is foreplay. Bendix romances Ladd. How many times does he call Ladd sweetheart? Bendix can hardly wait to get on with the hard stuff. (Don't forget to check out the contemporary hair.) Watch and wince while Ladd plays co-dependent.

For toppers: Ladd's dinner-crashing moment (via skylight)--inspired. Maybe worth the whole film just to see.

Then there are lines like, "My first wife was a second cook in a third-rate joint on Fourth Street," Lake's jab at the Christian Science Monitor, or "If you're going to be a nitwit, don't go around with a megaphone." Also not to miss: Lillian Randolph at the piano of a hide-out bar singing to Bendix. Looking like he's about to cry---till Ladd walks in.

Densely detailed, paced one step ahead--not for the sleepy.

A Time for Drunken Horses (2000)

Icily beautiful, moving, and disturbing, neorealism is alive and well.

[9/10 · 1 November 2000]

Icily beautiful, moving, and disturbing.

You're plunged into urgent situations and are on your own to get your bearings. You're but a foreigner hanging onto subtitles that link you to a world not your own. How much is understood can only be partial. But the bigger picture comes across all the same.

The closeups of the children in this film move and shake, and longshots of the landscape they inhabit are powerful and unforgettable. Neorealism is alive and well.