Peeping Tom: Through a camera lens, darkly…

Peeping Tom (1960), Dir. Michael Powell, 101 mins, 4K UHD

These days, whenever you see groups of people, especially at events like concerts or meetings, you are liable to see several people holding their phones up in the air, recording what is going on. I am endlessly bemused seeing people apparently unable to experience an event without doing so through the lens of their phone, as if their own eyes are not enough, or their own memory untrustworthy. Indeed, it seems that someone coming upon a crime or accident taking place is more likely to take out their phone and film it, rather than actively attempt to stop and help. Has the combination of lifetimes watching films and handy technology resulted in a world of voyeurs, recording and disseminating  experience rather than actually getting involved? Life has become a movie, sometimes to be shared online, edited to two-minute clips, as if something only happened if it had a camera witness.  We are incidental actors in real-life films we never see, subjects of CCTV lens we seldom even notice.

I’m certain that Michael Powell could never have imagined, in his wildest of nightmares, the world in which we live today. It is a world that eminently deserves a film like Peeping Tom.

Mark Lewis (Carl Böhm), works as a focus puller in a British film studio that makes light, mainstream comedies. He uses his technical expertise with cameras and photography for an illicit side-line job shooting pornographic stills of women, sold under the counter of a corner newspaper shop. Mark is an awkward character around people, something of a social outsider, lonely and repressed, watching from the Outside, looking in- he spies on his downstairs lodger through her front window, watches couples kissing,  He is also a serial killer, using his camera to film his victims (all women) just as they die- Mark is fascinated by fear, particularly that of those about to die and their faces in their final moments. To intensify their fear, he attaches a mirror to his camera so that as he kills the women they see their own faces as they die, witnessing their own death, Mark replaying the footage over and over in his loft-space studio, as if trying to discern some meaning in their contorted terror in dying . 

This, in a British studio film released in 1960?

Its an astonishing, deeply disturbing piece of cinema. Having only seen the film once, I cannot possibly suggest that I have got even the slightest grip on what this film fully means, or what its rich visual palette (every shot is some grisly work of art) subconsciously represents in each carefully composed frame. It is clear that this is a film that prefigures all the serial killer/slasher films that would follow (released a few months prior to Hitchcock’s Psycho, even),  a film that ridicules much of the mainstream studio establishment of the time, a film fascinated by the act of watching, of the male gaze, of the power of the image.  I have the feeling that I have only dipped my toes in this film’s pool of meaning. Its just too deep to take in one one viewing.

Director Michael Powell could have had no idea just how prescient his film Peeping Tom would become, decades later. Terribly reviled and vilified by critics at the time – so much so it largely ended Powell’s career- the film was pulled from release within its first week, as if in apology for the temerity of its horrors,  and only reappraised and lauded decades later. Maybe this film is increasingly coming of age in a world that has not just slowly caught up with it, but lately now perhaps living beyond it, a fresh deepening horror on our side of the screen. Powell could never have imagined the Internet, its instant access of millions, perhaps billions, of different screens, the subjects of countless cameras, staring darkly on porn, tragedy, war, atrocity. Mark would be fascinated by all of it, searching for the meaning in the fear in all of it.

A television round-up

I’ve been watching a few television shows over the past few months- we’ve been enjoying a particularly rich period for good television shows of late. People are talking about it as if its the last hurrah for quality television- people such as David Chase of The Sopranos fame, who has complained that its getting impossible to get highbrow/serious television dramas greenlit in the current economic climate. The days of the bottomless money-pot of streaming seems to be over with even the likes of Netflix tightening its belt and choosing to ‘dumb down’ (well, with Netflix one wonders how you’d notice, they did make Another Life after all). Chase has commented that the likes of The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men and Breaking Bad just wouldn’t get made now. Its interesting that the streamers, which we pay through subscriptions to watch, are also resorting to having commercials now, as if they are turning into the very networks/commercial broadcast channels that the streamers used to distinguish themselves from.

I believe Amazon Prime starts to run advertising/commercial breaks during its shows from next week. I wait to see how intrusive it proves to be, but at any rate I cannot understand why streamers think its acceptable to charge customers a subscription fee and at the same time as run commercial advertising; surely if programming budgets and costs are getting out of hand, they should address it with proper financial accountability (i.e. don’t blow $1 billion on nonsense like Rings of Power).

Anyway, I’m going off on a bit of a rant again and was intending to write about what shows I’ve been watching, so lets go-

For All Mankind Season Four, Ten episodes (Apple TV)

Wrenn Schmidt, who plays disgraced Nasa engineer Margo Madison, is possibly the most unjustly unheralded actress working today- she has always been brilliant across all four seasons of the decades-spanning series, but particularly so playing the aged Margo in season four. Its a frankly astonishing performance that makes the show worthwhile. For All Mankind started so well with its first season’s intriguing premise that the Russians beat the Americans to the moon, but I think as successive seasons have aired (each jumping forward several years) its been hurt a little as it becomes less alternate history/real science and turns more into science fiction/ magic technology. Its still enjoyable- riveting at its best but just a little bit too soap opera at its worst. As the series has progressed, Schmidt has been its shining light throughout the series for me and I fear for the future (sic) of the show if they are eventually forced to write her out when the show inevitably gets too far forward in its timeline.

I also think some of the writing is too simplistic; the end of season four features a leap into the show’s ‘future’ of 2012  (that will presumably be the subject of season five) and an expanded colony on Mars with a huge asteroid mining operation. Its all very impressive (and the CGI effects in this show are largely excellent) but even I, the staunchest fan of the space program ever since I grew up with the tail end of Apollo, had to balk at the imagined expense of that colony expansion. Usually I’d cheer all that human progress stuff but I remember turning to Claire and commenting that “if they are spending all those trillions building all that, its money they aren’t spending on people back on Earth.” It was a telling moment for me. As a viewer I know I was expected to have a little cheer and see the close of the season as something triumphant, but instead… well,  I just think there should be more complexity in the show’s writing, with perhaps more analysis/criticism of NASA and all the massive investment in a Space Race – at least focus on issues on Earth (poverty, population, climate change etc) without turning anti-space program folks into terrorists.

Its still a good show and I look forward to an eventual season five (Ronald D Moore has apparently said there is a plan for seven seasons) but the shine is starting to fade somewhat now that the show is just becoming more , well, Star Trek and like other sci-fi shows. It had its own identity for awhile when it was more like The Right Stuff.

Fargo Season Five, Ten episodes (Amazon Prime)

Fargo gets back on track (I have to admit, I tried but just couldn’t finish season four) with a fantastic fifth season.  Jon Hamm is frankly amazing as master-misogynist Sheriff Roy Tillman, stealing the show completely with his sheer screen presence. I want a prequel spin-off immediately, if only to see more of this character and enjoy more of Hamm’s acting.  Of course, this being Fargo back at its very best, there is more to this fifth season than Hamm, but really… its hard to look beyond that magnificent bastard. Hamm must have had a such a ball making this show.

Jack Reacher Season Two, Eight episodes, Amazon Prime

This was great fun, but even its greatest fans have to admit, this second season has been pretty daft and a mixed-bag as far as writing goes. At its best, its been like one of those 1980s action flicks starring Stallone or Schwarzenegger, an enjoyable action romp, but at its worst its been unrelentingly stupid and lazy. There’s one scene in which a bad guy is about to shoot dead a target and he’s suddenly taken out by a speeding SUV driven by one of Reacher’s team. Sure, its a surprise etc but really, the guy would hear that SUV coming a mile away and not just stand there like some idiot. There’s a few moments like that, and badly choreographed fight scenes featuring man mountain Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) impossibly surprising bad guys inside a bus. He hides behind a partition railing? Give me a break, the bad guys must all be visually impaired (“should have gone to Specsavers!” turning into a running joke watching this show).

It is all daft fun but should have been much more. I preferred the first season, it felt much more grounded. But again, look forward to season three (which I think is filming already).

Anyway, that’ll do for now. I also watched the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds but will try write a seperate post about that one…

The Kitchen: Something Dystopian is cooking…

The Kitchen (2023), Dir. Daniel Kaluuya & Kibwe Tavares, 107 mins, Netflix

The trouble with this film is that, compared to, say, something like The Creator,  this film’s Dystopian vision is sadly  far more likely and believable, possibly its inevitable, at least for this United Kingdom. There’s a Truth here that seems undeniable. Its obviously been written based on what what’s been happening over the last several years and extrapolating where it will all possibly lead.  Set twenty years in the future, London is a utopian corporate paradise for the rich, but the poor have become increasingly marginalised, forced to live in the titular Kitchen, a community that is the last social housing area in the City. Unfortunately for those living there,  the corporations/whatever remains of the government want the area to be converted into more private luxury rental housing so ever-more frequent raids by police and riot squads hit the community, physically and violently removing the tenants for places unknown (prison? the grim North? who knows?). The Kitchen has to be cleared of its human trash so that it can be  demolished and replaced. Progress.

The film always convinces in its vision; visually the film is understated but convincing; reminding me of Gattaca‘s less-is-more approach. There’s a lot of neon (nods to Blade Runner there) and cubic, sterile tower blocks but nothing too remarkable or ambitious for a London just twenty years hence: horribly plausible, I’d call it.

Where the film runs into trouble is its central narrative, regards a single man, Izi (Kane Robinson) who has ambitions to leave the Kitchen and rent his own apartment, something that seems to seperate him from his neighbours who want to stay in their home and community. Izi works in a funeral home, in which environmentalists have insured that bodies are no longer buried or cremated, but rather turned into plant food to nurture greenhouses of plants in order to  replenish the (dying?) forests (shades of Soylent Green logic there). At the funeral home Izi comes across the funeral of a young woman he once knew, and meets her now-orphaned son, Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman) – it appears pretty certain that Izi is Benji’s father, Benji having been born after his mother and Izi split up.  The film is pretty much the story of their difficult relationship while the Kitchen collapses around them.

Its not enough. The acting is fine with what they are given, but I rather suspect that the project suffered from its low budget; there is enough story here for, say, a Black Mirror episode but just not enough for what approaches a two-hour movie. Which is a shame. Its a good film, if one can suffer through its pacing issues and the interminable wait for the inevitable to happen and Izi and Benji to finally reconcile as father and son.

I liked the film, but then again, I always have a soft spot for these Dystopian films, as harrowing as they may seem when initially released (maybe I just get a kick of knowing I’m currently living somewhere better). Funnily enough, some of these dystopian visions eventually turn out to be quite utopian in hindsight- look at Blade Runner’s 2019, a positive utopia (Offworld colonies! Flying cars!) compared to the world we lived in during that year. I don’t think we’ll be saying that of The KItchen in twenty or thirty years time, at least, I certainly hope not- its dark vision is bad enough; I’d rather not be living in a future worse than the one than this film predicts,

Movie connections/Trivia/Small World dept.

I’m always curious about movie connections, those little threads that link movies, perhaps especially those you stumble upon by coincidence- watching one film and then thinking, ‘hang on, I know that face’ or ‘I’ve seen that place before…’. For instance, here’s one that struck me just the other night having watched Fill ‘er Up with Super, a 1976 French road movie/comedy that veers into experimental territory making it a bit of a frustrating experience. Its a film I had never heard of until a few months ago when I noticed it amongst Radiance’s catalogue of titles. But it has a link with a popular film I’ve been watching since 1982.

So anyway, I didn’t recognise her whilst watching the film, but the film Fill ‘er Up with Super featured French actress Valerie Quennessen in a short section as Marie, a beautiful young woman who is woken from sleep by a phone call from her ex, Daniel, and then spends a few minutes dismissing him as she lies naked in bed, When I was watching it I thought “how very French” as it seemed a little exploitative me, the film requiring the actress to be naked and then allowing the camera to linger so long at her. There’s nothing WRONG about it, and I’m sure the director figured it was perfectly natural for the character to sleep naked on a hot summer night but the way the shot is composed and held… well, something like that might be trickier these days.

I only realised when I saw the film’s credits and noticed the name Valerie Quennessen (and what a wonderful name it is!) as I recognised the name from 1982’s Conan The Barbarian, in which Quennessen played the Princess who Conan is tasked to rescue from James Earl Jones’ Thulsa Doom. The princess is a minor role, really, with a few extra shots in the conclusion of the International edit of the film. Bear in mind, I only recognised the name; there’s certainly little, ahem, physically to identify the naked woman in the 1976 film as the same actress in the sword and sorcery epic. Maybe her eyes, maybe… Quennessen certainly had quite extraordinary eyes. It would appear she wore a wig in Conan; probably patently obvious to most but that passed me by. Certainly didn’t wear anything in that French flick, ahem.

Valerie Quennessen died very young, in a car accident in 1989, aged just 31 years old. 1989; that’s 35 years ago now (or, as I write this, will be, come March). I remember being quite shocked when reading about her death many years ago, and on every subsequent viewing of Conan when she appears onscreen I remark upon the actress’ short life and sad fate. Its a morbid observation, yes, and one similar to whenever I watch Poltergeist and see Dominique Dunne who played the Freeling family’s eldest daughter Dana. Dominique was murdered just a few months after Poltergeist was released in 1982 (I remember reading about it in part of that notorious tabloid story regards ‘the Poltergeist curse’). Its horrible, really, to see someone having some career success in a major film and knowing what ill fate followed in real-life later.

Which is getting away from the point of this post somewhat, but certainly Quennessen’s untimely passing was chiefly why I remembered her name from her role in John MIlius’ film. The thing is, it just strikes me as a little odd, watching some fairly obscure French film in 2024 that was made as long ago as 1976, only to note the appearance of an actress familiar to me from Conan the Barbarian, which I saw in 1982. I don’t know why, but discovering these threads between films does sometimes fascinate me; I had never even perused Quennessen’s filmography before, but note now 15 credits as actress, with Fill ‘er Up With Super being her first role. After Conan she appeared in another American film, Summer Lovers (also released in 1982), after which Quennessen pretty much retired from acting in order to start a family. Summer Lovers is a film I likewise had never heard of; seems quite obscure itself these days, but it did star Daryl Hannah who of course featured in Blade Runner, another genre pic of 1982, so there’s another movie connection for trivia fans and further proof that Hollywood can be a small world sometimes.

Fill ‘Er Up with Super: A road to nowhere? Not quite.

Fill ‘er Up with Super (1976), Dir. Alain Cavalier, 97 mins, Blu-ray

Another week, another Blu-ray from Radiance (post-Christmas sale, this time). This film is something of a curio; a 1970s road movie from France, its a film in which largely nothing happens and in which none of the characters actually grow, develop or even manage what we’d remotely call a character arc: the characters largely end the film exactly as they begin it, having learned hardly anything about themselves at all.  I always thought road movies were narratives about self-discovery, of journeys as internal as external. To that end, I admit I expected Fill ‘er Up with Super to be a  Gallic Fandango.

Instead its rather different, frustratingly so, to be honest, at least until I read the booklet that accompanies this disc, which offered an observation that opened the film in a new light for me. Fill ‘er Up with Super concerns a young car salesman, Klouk (Bernard Crombey), who is bullied by his boss to deliver a Chevrolet station wagon a thousand miles across France to its new owner.  In order to make the trip more enjoyable, he invites his friend Philippe (Xavier Saint-Macary) to accompany him, and at Phillipe’s suggestion shortly after beginning the journey they pick up two other men they come across on the road; Charles (Etienne Chico) and Daniel (Patrick Bouchitey).  The structure of the film is predictably episodic, depicting various events on the journey as Klouk and Phillip get to know Charles and Daniel.

But really, nothing happens. They jerk around, share depreciating observations of women and commentary about sex, deliver the car. The end. Well, that’s being somewhat unfair but essentially that’s it. The guys are dysfunctional, immature, and what they have to say has little value at all, either for each other or the audience.

The booklet, however, has an essay which suggests that this is exactly the point. These guys are indeed jerks, and its no mistake they are emasculated and seemingly unfulfilled. Klouk’s wife berates him at the beginning of the film, frustrated that he is unable to accompany her on a trip to see her family because he wouldn’t stand up to his boss. Near the start of the roadtrip, Phillipe’s ex turns up to confirm their own relationship is over and to say goodbye. At a loss, Daniel calls his ex on the phone, disturbing her sleep, to hear her confirm, weary of repeating it yet again, that their romance is over. Charles meets his estranged wife on the road, having trashed her room, and urinated on her bed. She has a new man in her life now, she has moved on., and is indifferent to him, dismissing his trashing of her room as perhaps just another example of why she left him. And indeed, this is the point of the film, it seems- the men are stuck in the past,  and the women in their lives have moved on, taken charge of their lives, left the men behind (Agathe literally going off to see her family, the other women moving on into other relationships) to spout empty machismo rhetoric as if to justify their lives and worth while wasting their time with foolish japes. The women have grown up – its the mid-1970s post-feminism era, and the men are left behind without their women.

To add further emphasis, the director Alain Cavalier lost his wife in a car crash in 1972, and  devastated by the loss did not make any more films until he embarked on Fill ‘er Up with Super, a film which concerns four men without women, who are bereft at what they have lost, unable to articulate it even to themselves.

So Fill ‘er Up with Super is certainly not the empty, pointless, aimless film I initially thought it to be. Its not brilliant, its rather too experimental and free-form than it should be for its own good, but I think in hindsight I understand it more now.

The Creator: Looks astonishing, but clumsily written

The Creator (2023), Dir. Gareth Edwards, 135 mins, 4K UHD

Lets be clear on one thing: Gareth Edward’s The Creator looks pretty damned spectacular for an $80 million movie; it puts to shame many $150 million, or even $250 million blockbusters kicked out by Hollywood. My jaw was on the floor for most of the film. This is one incredibly beautiful, astonishingly visualised sci-fi spectacle that often makes you mutter ” how DID they do THAT?”. 

Bear in mind, I’m forever Old School in my head- as this Blog’s name suggests, I was a kid of the 1970s/1980s, growing up on with Star Trek, UFO, Space: 1999, Star Wars and yes, Blade Runner – the era of miniatures, matte paintings on glass, bluescreens, optical printers.  Matte-lines, bluescreen bleed… those things haven’t been a thing in, like, decades. Films like we get nowadays, particularly something as fairly low-budget but high-concept as The Creator, still rock my world in ways which millennials today, accustomed to or even blasé regards CGI, will probably never understand. What film-makers can do now, with visual effects… its really some kind of damn sorcery to me sometimes.  They were able to shoot this film on the fly, so to speak, with handheld cameras, with ordinary actors in, say, crowds, and then choose to replace random individuals with robots/sims, add mechanical limbs, put in buildings and hardware, basically transform the filmed footage dramatically into something else entirely, all in post. I may be wrong, but as far as I can tell, make-up and prosthetics were minimal, if used at all. Its all in post. I’m still used to the days of locked-down cameras and rigid,  process photography- feels like I’m from the analogue Stone Age.

The irony of The Creator, though, is that while it replicates the visuals of ‘bigger’ blockbusters it bizarrely mimics their narrative shortcomings too, something a lower-budgeted project should have been able to avoid, I’d have thought. Take a few more risks, be a bit more daring, offer something new. So it turns out that the problem, such as it is,  with The Creator is not its production values, for all its comparatively limited budget- the imagination in its art direction and world building is mightily impressive . The scope and detail of the whole thing… Disney should get this Edwards guy to make a Star Wars movie… oh, wait….

No, the problem with The Creator is that old chestnut; its the script, which veers from enthralling to mediocre almost on a whim. Its not just that the film is wildly generic, because while it obviously is- this film wears its influences/inspirations openly and makes it an easy target for some- because I don’t really mind that so much after so many decades of people mimicking Blade Runner etc.  The ‘special one’ is a tired gambit particularly over-used by Disney in pretty much everything it does, but its a standard plot device. The child in distress/ reluctant protector is also a well-worn premise now, in this case probably mostly reminding viewers of Children of Men (now THERE’s a film I’d like to see on 4K disc someday).  And of course, the philosophising regards  ‘what is human’ is very Blade Runner (the film even quotes “more human than human” in the opening prologue) and the A.I./ enslaved robots/rebellion thing is very much an echo of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica and many others. So sure, there’s plenty over-familiar about the plot, but surely that’s no deal-breaker; just look how derivative the Avatar films are, and that doesn’t seem to have hurt James Cameron’s film saga (although to be fair, maybe it HAS hurt them as far as being iconic pop-culture is concerned).

No, the real issue for The Creator is some very sloppy writing when tying those various ‘inspirations’ together , leaving some irritating plot holes just hanging there… or at the very least expecting audiences not to think too much about what’s going on  when some of the leaps of logic suddenly land. The thing is, I can rather accept (albeit grumble at) contrivances and coincidences in a big blockbuster more interested in entertaining than enlightening, but I’d like to expect more from what is a fairly low-budget film. Aha, I know- only in Hollywood could  $80 million be considered ‘low budget’ (actually, I did an inflation calculator query and funnily enough, Blade Runner‘s $25 million in 1982 equates to $79 million in 2023 so adjusted for inflation they drop about the same, which is interesting comparing the scale of the two).

There is also a problem regards pacing; the film is so hectic during its last third that one could be forgiven for thinking its a three-hour movie whose last third has been drastically cut down in order t get the film down to 135 minutes, with bridging scenes being so increasingly cut near the end that it feels like we’re missing transitions, leaving it feeling rather disjointed, almost veering into the nonsensical, damaging some of the finale’s impact.

But for all that,  I enjoyed the film very much. Clearly it isn’t as great as film as it should be, or it wants to be. There’s ambition there, certainly, so that should be applauded but the film may be chiefly remembered for its technical aspects: shooting something with relatively cheap digital cameras with a reduced crew and somehow replicating a big blockbuster so well you’d think Dr Tyrell was involved. I suppose all that A.I./technology philosophising in the muddled narrative regards threatening human extinction is right up my street considering I am such a huge fan of Blade Runner, the Battlestar Galactica reboot (one day people will be asking ‘which one?’ to that statement, alas) and of course tangential stuff like The Matrix. Am I saying its okay for a film to lift from other movies/television shows as long as its ones I love? Hmm, maybe I am.

One day, someone will make a film as visually astonishing as The Creator but it will also have a script as mysterious and challenging and bold as that of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It will enthral, confuse and entertain and will be like nothing anyone has ever seen or heard. I have to believe that one day that film will come, the alternative is too depressing a notion by far when James Cameron is making Avatar 3, 4 and 5 and Disney keeps throwing up Star Wars projects hoping something might stick. The fact that The Creator failed at the box-office possibly makes the wait a bit longer, but then again, it wasn’t really aiming that high, and at least its technical achievement/low budget offers a tantalising alternative to the sky-high budgets of something like those Avatars.

Mark of the Devil: The definitive exploitation movie?

Mark of the Devil (1970), Dir. Michael Armstrong, 97 mins, Amazon Prime Video

Well, back to horror films for a moment- and in this case a particularly nasty one.  Arrow released this on Blu-ray several years ago, and I was tempted to give it a try during a few of their sales over the years, but never did. That’s probably just as well, as Mark of the Devil is not a particularly good film and I can’t imagine it would reward any repeat viewings. In any case, I stumbled upon it on Amazon Prime – yes, again, it seems that Prime is like the streaming equivalent of some sleazy corner of a indie video rental store of old- and thought I’d give it a go, if only for curiosities sake after so many years.

Set in 18th century Austria, the film has a cautionary on-screen text (with ominous, ‘Criswell predicts’-kind of narration) reminding viewers that it was a dark time in Europe, with countless innocent men and women tried, tortured and murdered for the crime of witchcraft, and that this film was based upon three real, recorded events.  Its obviously some half-baked attempt to lend this film some kind of historical credence, to perhaps excuse some of its graphic excess later. To be sure,  much of the physical horror/torture sequences in this film may look rather tame some fifty years later, considering how graphic horror films have become in the years since, but there’s some argument to be had that this film’s limits, leaving the rest to audience imagination, possibly make it worse.

If there’s a lesson in this film, its possibly that 18th-Century Austria was a bad place to be for a pretty young woman; look the wrong way or refuse the wrong man’s advances and -bang- it seems you could be damned as a Witch or disciple of Satan in an instant. with no recourse to proper justice. Sadistic local witchfinder Albino (Reggie Nalder, whose real scarred face must have saved the make-up boys a fortune) is terrorising a village with rape, murder and torture, all justified by working for the church in expunging evil from the area. Albino lusts after busty barmaid Vanessa (Olivera Vuco) who refuses his lecherous overtures only to get denounced by him as a witch and dragged to the local castle torture chamber. But soon Albino has fresh competition – it is announced  by trainee Witchfinder Count Christian von Meruh (a shockingly-young Udo Kier) that wildly esteemed, and wisely feared, witch hunter Count Cumberland (Herbert Lom) is to arrive in town soon to investigate Albino’s antics and offer his own perspective on the Satanism apparently wildly prevalent in the area.

Any hope that Count Cumberland is any wiser or fairer than the sadist Albino is ill-founded, however;  his arrival is shot as moodily and menacingly as how Darth Vader arrived in Return of the Jedi‘s opening, and it transpires that Cumberland has accused a young Baron of Witchcraft in order to gift the Baron’s entire Estate to the Church, and Cumberland’s own impotency has ensured his hatred of women knows no limit. There is some subtext regards the hypocrisy and criminality of the Church, and how sexual inadequacy is externalised as violent misogyny, but its well hidden under the surface and not explored at all, really (mores the pity). The main thing this film seems interested in is finding cheap and frequents excuses to graphically torture poor individuals who fall under either Witchfinder’s ire (although it is darkly amusing seeing the two Witchfinders at odds with each other).

And it does find plenty of excuses for all the torture, and is it possible we are seeing real historical torture apparatus being used? It sometimes seems like it, only adding to nagging sense of a disturbing authority to it all.  We see an accused blonde witch (having already been stretched on the rack and her bare feet branded by an hot iron), have her tongue pulled out, some particularly nasty drawn-out burnings, torture by thumbscrews, some beatings, whippings, a Chinese water torture, use of a spiked chair, some clumsy beheadings, an eyeball impalement, and added to all that some rape scenes, in one of which Count Cumberland seems to find the only way to prove his manhood – all in service to the Church, obviously.

For all this, I  still rather feel I’m failing to make this film seem as repugnant as it really it is- it is thoroughly nasty, and its a shame seeing poor Herbert Lom in something so terribly beneath him (I’m reminded of how often Peter Cushing can be found slumming in some horrid horror b-pic). The curious thing is that while this film is obviously low-budget and having art direction etc much in common with Hammer’s offerings, it does benefit from some impressive location shooting in and around a real Austrian village and castle which affords it a higher production value than Hammer ever managed. All of this is to no avail, however, as the film lacks any of the charm, style or wit of even the average Hammer film. Although I believe the film was filmed in English, it seems entirely dubbed and its some of the worst -and unintentionally hilarious- dubbing this side of the most awful Italian spaghetti western, a major handicap, and although Lom is clearly dubbing himself I’m not sure any of the other actors are, only adding to the uncanny valley of the audio.

One to avoid for the mildly offended then, and really, one only for the most hardcore of horror fans. Its certainly an excessive exercise in exploitation- perhaps the 1970 equivalent of The Evil Dead, in that respect, and it certainly serves to put into focus just how good, and indeed reserved, Michael Reeve’s earlier Witchfinder General (1968) really was. Reeve’s film was obviously the ‘inspiration’ for this film, and I understand Reeves himself was originally intended to direct Mark of the Devil, before his untimely death. I suspect that, had Reeves lived to make it, it would have been a far different film, and better for it, but of course we’ll never know- just another of those movie what-ifs. There is absolutely no nuance at all to Mark of the Devil, no subtext, no real commentary: I suppose one could mention that the disfigured Albino is no more a monster than the more sophisticated, intelligent Count Cumberland or that the Church turns out to be as corrupt as Albino and his lackies. Unfortunately the film fudges any drama to this- its all just a  veritable cauldron of the very worst of man’s inhumanity to man and any real lesson seems lost.

So its ‘just’ a bad exploitation film, then- maybe the definitive one, even. There may be worse, but if so, I certainly don’t have any interest in seeing them.

Witness in the City (1959): A High-Octane French Noir

Witness in the City aka. Un Temoin Dans la Ville (1959), Dir.  Edouard Molinaro, 89 min, Blu-ray

A train races through the night; Pierre Verdier (Jacques Berthier) fights with his mistress Jeanne Ancelin (Francois Brion) and throws her off the train to fall to her death. Pierre is held by the police but finally released and cleared due to insufficient evidence, the judiciary unable to prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.  Betrayed by both his wife and the judiciary which has failed to punish her lover and murderer, Jeanne’s husband decides to take his own justice. Ancelin (Lino Ventura) plans and with calm precision executes a perfect murder, waiting in Pierre’s house and staging the murder as a suicide.

So far, a pretty grim but very effective crime drama. Witness in the City slides into noir when Ancelin departs from Pierre’s home and bumps into Lambert, a taxi driver waiting for Pierre outside his house.  Dumbstruck, Ancelin dashes away but realises that once the police find Pierre’s body and announce the death, Lambert can place Ancelin at the scene meaning the police will then deduce it was no suicide at all. The next day Ancelin checks out the taxi company and traces Lambert, following him through crowded streets to his home. Ancelin needs to kill Lambert, but is repeatedly thwarted.  Fate’s reckoning hangs over him with an ever tighter grip.

This is one of those movies full of shades of grey,  that test our own morals and allegiance.  Of course I should be rooting for Lambert , the innocent witness and his pretty girlfriend Lilianne (Sandra Milo), but instead I was rooting for Ancelin throughout. Maybe I’m too much of a fan of the Dirty Harry movies to resist the appeal of summary justice when the judiciary seems broken. After all, Ancelin’s a victim himself,  betrayed by his wayward wife and the lover who killed her, and the judiciary who allowed that murderer to get away scot free. I kept thinking, what choice does he really have? Is he expected to step away and let things stand?

I suppose I’m missing the point- when Ancelin decides he has to kill Lambert, he becomes the villain. Ancelin is a man trapped and wronged by fate but once he takes justice into his own hands he can’t escape his own subsequent fall; Witness in the City is from an era when films ensured that crime does not pay, something that has thwarted many film noir viewings.  Indeed in this sense Ancelin is a typical film noir hero-cum-victim and yep, I was hoping against hope that somehow he’d get away with it. I maintained a slim hope that maybe he’d make his peace with Lambert who upon realising Ancelin’s predicament would promise to keep silent. SPOILER ALERT- nah, this ain’t that kind of movie, and no, Lambert doesn’t survive the film either, so neither is it THAT nice a film (I think this last plot point is to ensure Ancelin is considered unequivocally a villain in the eyes of a possibly sympathetic audience). But for Ancelin it is too late, its all for nothing, the police and Paris’ army of taxi drivers already are on his tail.

This is a great, fast-paced noir that is shot on location on Parisian streets, predominantly at night,  giving it a very realistic,  docu-drama feel, with effective stunt driving (some great cat-and-mouse car chases) and brilliant editing which keeps the tension building. The cinematography is excellent and a jazzy score ensures a mood of French cool throughout. There isn’t really anything to fault with it. The cast are great, the twists genuinely maintain tension and you’re never quite certain what’s about to happen. There is a sequence in the Underground when Ancelin is given a clear opportunity to push Lambert in front of an approaching train and until the very last moment it seems inevitable, until Ancelin loses his nerve (pity, he would have gotten away with it.- which raises the noir realisation that this reluctance to kill an innocent proves his ultimate undoing).

Witness in the City is another strong addition to Radiance’s first World Noir volume. We’ve got Pietro Germi’s The Facts of Murder to come next…

I Am Waiting: A great Japanese Noir

I Am Waiting (1957), Dir. Koreyoshi Kurahara, 91 mins, Blu-ray

First film in Radiance’s World Noir boxset (yep, another Christmas present) is the 1957 Japanese noir I Am Waiting.  I thought this was a genuinely great movie: it has a great cast, a sharp script and such an enchanting atmosphere, taking me to some other place I’ve never been before: a 1950s waterfront noir in Japan. I can’t overstate just how lovely this film looks and sounds; its foreign location and sumptuous black-and-white photography giving it a deeply otherworldly feel, evoking a time and place likely as alien to present-day Japanese viewers as it does to me here in the UK. Being a noir, it always nods a little towards Western sensibilities and style, which perhaps intensifies that otherworldly feel: not quite wholly Japanese, not quite wholly Western, but something new. Perhaps this is the prime selling-point for this World Noir series, as it makes even those of us so familiar with American Noir suddenly excited at seeing some new slant on what we know, breathing a freshness into something that might become jaded.

Yujiro Ishihara stars as Joji Shimaki, a washed-up ex-boxer now running a waterfront restaurant while waiting for news from his brother who left for Brazil a year ago. Late one night he walks the waterfront mulling on his lot (and wondering why he has yet to hear from his brother) when he comes across Saeko (Mie Kitahara), a desperate woman on the run who seems to be contemplating suicide. Saeko is a singer who has lost her voice and successful career, now reduced to being forced to sing in a downbeat cabaret bar owned by a mob boss. Kindred souls with former glories and unrealised dreams, they strike a rapport and live and work together in the restaurant, gradually falling in love until their seperate pasts begin to catch up with them, neither realising those pasts are surprisingly linked.

Maybe the plot is where this film falters- like many noir, its deliberately, overly complex, the characters finding it as difficult to get a grip of their troubles as  we do making sense of the many threads in the story. Wat we assume to be wholly seperate characters gradually become wrapped up in each other’s issues and problems, apparent coincidences unfold becoming more frequent until it all coalesces into dark revelations approaching the finale: coincidences that slowly wear on credibility.  I often think that in noir, characters aren’t being paranoid or their fate overly convoluted- in noir, the universe really IS a conspiracy out to get them. I think that’s one of the things I find most appealing about film noir and why they seem so timely, particularly now. We often live our lives feeling we lack control, that we are subject to the whims of fate in a world in which our leaders and people in authority don’t listen to us, or answer to other agendas. So accepting it on that level, as one must most every noir, its a very good film and very rewarding, beginning to end.

Yujiro Ishihara was a huge star in Japan- his first name was as iconic as that of Elvis in the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, in a similar vein to how Elvis was in film, I wouldn’t suggest that Yujiro was particularly talented as an actor -at least in early films such as this- but its clear that he had an immense screen charisma, a charm through the camera lens, that many more gifted actors could never attain for all their talent. Its just a sheer natural gift, a screen presence gifted by a camera that adored him. His co-star Mie Kitahara is clearly a better, more talented actor, but the main highlight is her screen chemistry with Yujiro which is so obvious (and they appeared in subsequent films together) that its little surprise that it bled out into real life and that the two got married.

Yujiro passed away at just 52 years of age in 1987; he was greatly mourned by fans at the time and his popularity doesn’t seem to have waned at all (they even opened a memorial museum to him).  I assumed that this was the first film I have seen him in, but he did in fact feature in a minor role in the popular 1965 comedy Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, likely a vain attempt to break into Western films. While his career in the West never took off, he was as iconic in his native Japan as many hugely popular Western stars are to us here in the West.  Think Elvis, James Dean. He was that big.

This Radiance disc looks as excellent as one might expect, and is the film’s first Blu-ray release in the world- something that surprises me, I would have thought it would have been more popular, yet another example of so many deserving films not released on disc. Well at least this one managed it, and on Region B at that. Typically for Radiance, the film has some very well-chosen extras; an informative audio commentary and a visual essay discussing the life of Yujiro, and a real curio- Yujiro’s Travel Diary, a 41-minute documentary about the star while location shooting in Europe during 1959, which serves as something of a time-capsule of images and sounds of European cities like Paris while revealing an affectionate, irreverent aspect to the actor. Its really quite fun and the street scenes etc are absolutely fascinating and beautifully shot. Its a great extra. The World Noir box set also has an 80-page book, with an essay that examines Japanese noir as well as other essays regarding world noir.

Noisy Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer (2023), Dir. Christopher Nolan, 180 mins, 4K UHD

I was bought the 4K of Oppenheimer for Christmas; I’d seen it at the cinema last year and enjoyed it, with reservations, so while it wasn’t a film I’d have probably bought on disc I welcomed the opportunity to revisit it, considering all the acclaim and box-office success since I saw it. There were even reports before Christmas of shortages of the film on disc and retailers awaiting stock; something largely unheard of regards physical media these days.

I have to say, I did enjoy the film more second time around… well, sort of. The disc release comes with a third disc devoted to extra features, some about the making of the film and others focussing on the historical and biographical facts portrayed in the film, and yes, the latter certainly left me better informed regards what happens in the film.  I gained a new perspective and was able to understand the film better, and why Nolan made some of the decisions he made.

But the sound design. What gives with Christopher Nolan movies? All the attention given to his love of film over digital, his use of high-quality film stock, IMAX etc… yes they do look very pretty but crikey, paradoxically they sound pretty damn awful. I’d found the film over-noisy at the cinema, but its just the same at home. I had to adjust the sub-woofer down so low I was practically switching it off, upping the general volume to try hear the dialogue, then rushing for the remote to lower it again whenever Ludwig Göransson decided to unleash the hounds of hell with the at times overpowering music score. It proved pretty much impossible to just relax and watch a movie, which as far as an entertainment experience goes, is a pretty big failing in my book.

Oppenheimer isn’t unique here- its a frequent criticism of Nolan’s films- Tenet, for example, is such a hot mess of bad audio I’ve had to watch it with the subtitles on in order to understand what characters are saying. Nolan has cited his hatred of ADR, and only using original onset audio in his films- apparently needing computer technology to filter out the noise of cameras etc (the Imax cameras are very loud indeed).  The irony that they go to all that trouble only to drown it all back out again with excessive sound design (Nolan’s films feature loud scores that often dominate, but the sound effects are oppressive too) is rather funny. Nolan evidently prefers his films this way but I thinks its wrong when its drowning out important dialogue and leaving viewers confused/dashing for the remote. I dare say Oppenheimer will be nominated for sound awards- they must be joking.

I dare say Nolan will blame listening equipment but should that even be an issue, really? Not everyone has high-end sound systems or neighbours that don’t mind the roof blowing off. Surely sound mixes should be designed for home set-ups as well as top of the range audiophile systems in cinemas: is a focus on Atmos mixes to blame, and relying on home audio processors to de-mix such tracks to 5.1 and 2.1 audio? Surely it wouldn’t take up too much disc space to include genuine 5.1 or 2.1 (or even plain old Stereo!) sound mixes designed for basic home media systems. I’m just surprised that, with health officials raising issues regards public hearing loss etc, that there isn’t more focus on this sort of thing, on the benefits of dynamic range and perhaps some negativity levelled at sound design such as Nolan apparently espouses. Or maybe it starts here, if anyone is, ahem, listening….