The Case is Closed, Forget It: Another Damiani downer

The Case is Closed, Forget It aka L´istruttoria e chiusa: dimentichi (1971), Dir. Damiano Damiani, 106 mins, Blu-Ray

Right, back to that (pause for breath) Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero in Three Mafia Tales By Damiano Damiani boxset from Radiance, and its second film, the 1971 prison drama The Case is Closed, Forget It. Having now watched this and The Day of the Owl a few nights ago, its already now clear what kind of film-maker Damiani was- a very accomplished director with a very Western leaning in his approach, with an intense social conscience and interest in the Everyman. Someone quite willing to end his films with a cautionary, even defeatist approach- as I noted before, sometimes the bad guys win.

Franco Nero stars as Vanzi , a wealthy architect who is thrown in jail for a misdemeanour traffic violation to which he protests his innocence, while awaiting his case to be seen by a judge. His social standing and life of privilege is stripped away as he faces the grim reality of life behind bars. In many ways there is little unusual about the film, we see the usual prison drama tropes – incarceration in solitary, prison riot breaking out –  with the plight of the inmates, disenfranchised, some mentally challenged, but here the mafia openly controls corrupt prison officials. Again, there’s that theme of corrupt authority seen in The Day of the Owl.  Realising how things ‘work’ in prison,  Vanzi learns how he can use some of his money from ‘outside’ to ease his life while behind bars, such as the corrupt doctor who provides a hooker from the adjacent women’s wing to entertain Vanzi, and access to better food, but Vanzi soon runs foul of the wrong people who really run the prison and such privilege’s are stripped away, his life as a prisoner taking a distinct turn for the worse.

What pushes this film to a higher level is the climax- there is a moment of violence, a murder that has been built up to, that is truly horrifying,  a slow-motion murder that feels like a gut-punch. Its a really gruesome event that is very powerful. Even on top of that, and perhaps even more troubling, is the following coda in which Vanzi ‘sells out’, becomes a part of the injustice and corruption. As Franco Nero points out in an on-disc interview, Vanzi is a coward. He takes the easy way out, that costs him nothing (apart from maybe his soul). Yes, its another Damiani downer.  At least in The Day of The Owl, our handsome hero had a moral backbone and stood up for what he believed in. One wonders if Vanzi really believes in anything, other than his life of luxury outside. Perhaps Damiani is voicing some opinion of the upper-class elite- its noticeable that Vanzi’s wife is quite fine with the revelation that he slept with a prostitute, actually opining that perhaps she should thank her.

This Radiance boxset is turning out to be a very strong one- it just goes to show that a set of films one has never heard of, by a director unknown, can be very worthwhile. Maybe not essential, but it’s clear that there are some excellent films out there that we should have better access to or knowledge of and I count these among them. I watched the film in its original Italian, but there is an English option which I may try next time around. There is another frank (sic) and open interview with Nero, this time focusing on this film, alongside an archival documentary featurette about the making of the film, and a visual essay on the career of Damiani Damiani by critic Rachael Nisbet. Picture quality for the film itself is excellent and the subtitles very clear- another solid release by Radiance that serves this film very well.  As usual I haven’t dug into the book yet as I tend to wait until I’ve seen all the films in order to avoid spoilers.

I just fear that I need cheering up a little with something a little rosier and lightweight before tackling the last film in this boxset…

Monolith: The answers (not) Out There

Monolith (2022), Dir. Matt Vesely, 94 mins, HD (stream)

I could well imagine this working as a radio drama maybe more effectively than it does as a film. A one-set, one-actor-onscreen film (other characters only in audio, over telephone calls), its a decidedly high-concept, low-budget horror film that works very well indeed, albeit, like many conspiracy mystery thrillers, it rather dissipates as it nears its conclusion and it has to decide whether to reveal some grand revelation/conclusion or instead leave things open for the audience to decipher. 

Lilly Sullivan plays an investigative journalist, recently disgraced when a project went horribly wrong, trying to find some new avenue to use her skills in the wake of her career being pretty much ended. Depressed and alone in her parents remote rural home, she hits upon the idea of podcasting about unsolved mysteries, asking listeners for subjects to investigate. She receives an anonymous email that gives a lead to a woman named Floramae who used to work as a maid and received a strange black brick of unknown origin; Floramae is vague but alludes to strange properties of this brick, and after the first episode of the podcast airs, other listeners contact the journalist with stories of other bricks, and as she investigates, uncovering tales of illness, danger and hushed-up Government inquiries and possible conspiracy, the journalist feels a growing anxiety regards what is going on. 

For most of its running time, the film is quite absorbing and tense, as the mystery deepens and links to her own past unfold. It does rather collapse towards the end but its still very effective as a whole. Its intriguing and fairly compelling when we think we’re going to be told what is really going on and how much might be in her own mind or not, or indeed if it is some kind of secret alien invasion, but instead it feels a bit of a cheat how things eventually transpire. Like a deal made at the start of the film is broken? On the whole though I did enjoy it- its like some unofficial Cloverfield or X-Files spin-off.

The one thing that bothered me immensely though- and this is something that similarly infuriates me a lot of times in films- is how the setting, the location, just breaks any suspension of disbelief from the start. The journalist is in her parents home, her parents away (conveniently, but hey-ho), and its like some millionaire retreat. Huge open-space rooms, modern kitchen etc, panoramic glass doors that open remotely, idyllic countryside all around. All the journalists equipment is pretty hi-tech and extensive. She seems to have a very comfortable life, even possibly spoilt. Now, I appreciate that wealth does not preclude anyone from depression or anxiety, but I’d have found the film much more convincing and claustrophobic/tense if she were living in some low-rent flat with bailiffs occasionally knocking on her door. It just would have been more…. relatable, you know? Would have added an element of tension and a feeling that she was striving to succeed against the odds, and that maybe her own situation (ruined career etc) might have been part of some conspiracy in itself. But maybe I’ve watched too many X-Files….

Freeview doomed?

Progress so often depends upon one’s point of view. Go back to the mid-seventies here in the UK, television comprised of four channels which, barring the fact we had to buy an annual TV license (used to fund the BBC) and put up with the adverts on the commercial channels, were essentially ‘free’. There were more ‘new’ programs made back then, certainly they were more economically viable thanks to larger audience figures; there were  more dramas, less game shows, the major national sporting events available,  sitcoms were plentiful (and usually funny, unafraid of accidentally offending people back then), we’d get films aired frequently and the spectre of ‘Reality TV’ hadn’t arrived yet. I still remember closedowns around midnight.

With fewer channels there was more a sense of community, national identity shared; the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show on the BBC in 1977 had over twenty million viewers. Friends, family and neighbours would talk about it afterwards. I don’t intend to paint it as some halcyon age, but we’ve lost a lot since back then, for all that we’ve undoubtedly gained.  These days a neighbour might enthuse about watching a TV show last night to another neighbour who hasn’t even heard of it, never mind watched, or even if its a popular show, watching at a different time on streaming (“don’t tell me! I haven’t watched that far yet!”). Anybody who recalls the era of  ‘who shot J.R.?’ or ‘who killed Laura Palmer?’ will know how much things have changed. There’s less of a communal experience.

These days we have hundreds of channels available, across satellite and cable and Internet, but I’d argue little example of progress, as its spread everything so thin; less quality drama, too few quality sitcoms, far too many game shows and reality TV, and as far as viewing figures are concerned, hardly anyone seems to be watching anything- there’s just so many channels the audience is horribly fragmented.  And the repeats! The endless repeats! Even all those game shows dominating afternoon schedules seem to get endlessly repeated- how many times can they repeat Tenable, or Tipping Point, or The Chase? Who watches a games show they’ve already seen?

And of course, we’re still paying for that television licence, as well as paying more and more, for cable or satellite packages, broadband, various streaming channels etc. Progress? Television seems broken.

To add more woe to the mix, and the reason why I’m writing this post, last week the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom published a new report suggesting that Freeview, the UK’s free-to-air TV service (the last remnant of the old analogue television service of the 1970s I wrote of above), could be facing a major overhaul within the next ten years, or even disappear completely if it is proven no longer viable, the latter providing a real problem for the previously accepted mandate of maintaining universal access to television in this country. I’m thinking of all those pensioners (my mother among them) who live quite happily (albeit with increasing difficulty) without an Internet service.  And of the rural areas still with unreliable or non-available Internet.

Progress, eh? Seems to me we may have lost as much as we’ve gained, and while I’d no doubt myself be frustrated by having a meagre four channels as we did back then, and it clearly wouldn’t facilitate the big shows like those HBO etc have graced us with over the recent decades, at least it would concentrate programming to a smaller base and bigger audiences. As things stand, I wouldn’t cite all those hundreds of channels of junk as a shining example of superiority over the old analogue model, or the streaming model where content over quality seems to still be the business model (Netflix, I’m looking at you). As far as progress is concerned, its at least made providers/broadcasters richer charging for access to that content on the various platforms. Pay more, watch less?

Well, if they are indeed going to pull the plug on Freeview someday, disc players and personal film/TV libraries will prove priceless if one cannot afford, have access to or interest in all those various platforms/providers over the Internet, if IPTV is the only gateway. The future may be televised, but who will be watching it, and more importantly, how much will it cost?

The Day of the Owl: Sometimes the bad guys win

The Day of the Owl aka Il Giorno Della Civetta/ Mafia (1968), Dir. Damiano Damiani, 109/103 mins, Blu-Ray

Here we go again- yes, another Radiance title, this time The Day of the Owl, from Radiance’s three-film boxset Cosa Nostra: Franco Nero In Three Mafia Tales By Damiano Damiani- bit of a mouthful of a title that. Its a set I’d had my eyes on for awhile but finally bit the bullet when it was reduced in price and declared 95% sold out (at time of writing this, its still available). It does seem clear that I’m branching out into world cinema a lot more this year, and Radiance single-handedly undoing my intent on reining in my disc buying. As usual with Radiance, its a very solid set- I hadn’t seen any of these three films before, but the extras are plentiful, and the box includes a 120-page book, so its certainly good value for money at the reduced price I bought it… well, if the films are enjoyable, anyway. Blind buys can be tricky, sometimes (can’t say I was really enthused by a spaghetti western Sartana boxset from Arrow that I bought early last year- I have yet to finish watching all the films in it)

It would appear though that Italian crime films were of a higher calibre (sic) than the Spaghetti western genre films. I certainly enjoyed Sergio Solima’s Revolver and Lenzi’s The Tough Ones last year. Well, it looks like this set is a winner, at least on the evidence of this first film- The Day of the Owl is absolutely brilliant. Franco Nero stars as Carabinieri  captain Bellodi, an honest cop in a distinctly corrupt Sicilian town whose attempts to bring Mafia boss Don Mariano (Lee J.Cobb) to justice are repeatedly thwarted by an at best indifferent, at worse outright criminal, populace and a political system that seems rotten to the core (indeed, in some ways I suppose this film could almost be considered neo-noir, it is so nihilistic).

This is an extremely well-crafted film. Shot on location in a provincial town baking under the hot Italian sun, it feels authentic, there’s absolutely a sense of a grittily real place. It is tense, with a twisting script offering a few surprises and very well acted with an excellent cast (screen icon Claudia Cardinale has a meaty role to get into, rather than just serve as eye-candy).  This is one of those films which is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much faultless. The sense of time and place, the idyllic beauty of the Italian town masking intrinsic corruption, is perfectly realised, peppered with interesting, and convincing characters on both sides of the law- indeed very often the cast look and sound like real people, not actors at all.

Its interesting that this film predates by Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather (published in 1969) and Francis Ford Coppola’s film of 1972, because it reminded me so much of Coppola’s film. Cobb is terrific as the Mafia Don, and physically his presence and intensity  isn’t too far from that of Brando, and the film’s music score by Giovanni Fusco is so close to the score of Coppola’s film…. well, lets just say if it was the other way around, and this film had followed Coppola’s film,  I would have likely considered it an obvious knock-off. Surely Coppola had watched this film before making his own Mafia opus?

I watched the (slightly longer) Italian cut of the film- the Radiance disc includes an English-language version which I sampled afterwards, which noticeably benefits from Cobbs own voice completing his performance (he’s dubbed by someone else in the Italian cut). I think I’ll watch this English version next time if only to get a fuller representation of Cobb’s performance- Cobb was such a great actor and he’s very good in this anyway, even dubbed by someone else, which shows what a physical presence he had. There are some very good video featurettes on the disc- including a frank and entertaining interview with Franco Nero that was done for this release, as well as an archive one, an archive interview with Claudia Cardinale from 2011 that has moments of surprise (albeit I’m not at all sure she’s being entirely honest sometimes) and a video essay about Italian crime cinema by Mike Molloy. There’s also a thirty-minute video essay about Lee J Cobb that I haven’t watched yet, and of course the book’s essays on the film that I haven’t read yet so as to avoid spoilers, so yes, its a brilliant package for a great film. As usual regards Radiance, I think it could have done with a commentary track, and if I were being really greedy, I’d have loved to have seen one of those ‘then and now’ featurettes where someone goes to the locations that the film was shot in and compares areas to how they look now-  the town was such a character in the film, I would have found something like that fascinating, I’m sure.

White Squall: Ridley’s forgotten movie

White Squall (1996), Dir. Ridley Scott, 129 mins, Freevee (HD)

28 years later… is not just an upcoming zombie movie; this weekend marks my 28th wedding anniversary, and as we looked back on things, we remembered going to the Showcase Cinema (now rubble, alas) on the eve of our wedding day for one last trip to the cinema (maybe defusing any pre-wedding jitters), watching Ridley Scott’s then-new film, White Squall. I remember quite enjoying the film, albeit back then I was always a little frustrated with him making ‘normal’ pictures when I thought he should be utilising his talents on genre films. It was sunny when we went in, but upon leaving the auditorium (in which the film culminated in a wild storm sequence) we stepped out of the cinema into a stormy carpark, rain crashing down in strong winds, the skies full of dark clouds. Portents?

I think we’ve maybe watched the film once, since, on a television showing, over the intervening 28 years, but certainly never bought the film on DVD or Blu-Ray (I’m assuming it came out on Blu-Ray) which clearly defines it as an outlier, as I have always made a point of collecting most of Ridley’s filmography on disc. The film is clearly a largely forgotten film of Ridley’s, certainly doesn’t get mentioned much in career retrospectives that bring up the usual suspects (Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator etc.) but its not alone in that- films like Matchstick Men and A Good Year also spring to mind on that front.

Anyway, I noticed the film by chance, on Prime’s Freevee service, where films and tv shows are available for streaming with the caveat they get occasional interruptions for ads. A pretty abhorrent practice as far as a film-lover is concerned, but it did offer an opportunity to watch the film again, in widescreen at least (I think that old TV showing we saw was probably still back in the pan and scan days). So 28 years later, what did I think?

It was… pretty solid; actually better than I’d remembered. Not great or anything, this is still lesser Ridley, but it was stronger than I recalled, albeit with expected weaknesses. Back in 1996, Ridley was still shaking off that ‘pretty pictures, vacuous drama’ rep,  films dominated by their visuals. Which is rather ironic, , considering this is ‘a Ridley Scott film’, as I was surprised how good it looked- it was really nicely photographed, by the late Hugh Johnson, who wasn’t a long-term collaborator with Ridley (he also shot the following year’s G.I. Jane, and was second-unit cinematographer on Ridley’s magnificent Kingdom of Heaven (2005)). There are some gorgeous shots (tricky in the bright sunshine, no doubt) and lovely use of both colour and texture. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ridley had tried to get Vangelis hired for the music score, because the one composed here by Jeff Rona is full of nods to Vangelis in its melodies and electronica, a sort of Vangelis-lite kind of score. With its emphasis on the ocean and sailing, it would have seemed a perfect fit for Vangelis, as he loved the sea (and had worked with Ridley on his previous film,  1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)).

The highlight of the film though is inevitably Jeff Bridges, the star of the film and bringing to it an assured, strong performance which really deserved a better film. He has a gravitas, a sense of believability in the role, which is typical of him, but nonetheless hugely impressive, and he was definitely in his prime here.  I think the weakness of the film is its fairly formulaic script, that just seems too familiar and unremarkable, following the usual coming-of-age tropes. Based on a true story, it is written as an ensemble piece but is spread too thin, and while it seems to aim for an emotional crescendo/catharsis akin to that of Dead Poets Society (1989) in its conclusion, it just falls utterly flat.  I think the screenplay needed another pass, if only to iron out some of the characterisations that were left one-dimensional or lacking focus.

The film is cast really pretty well though, with many of the actors doing a lot with very little- John Savage and Caroline Goodall, in particular, spring to mind. Goodall is fantastic, one of those unsung character actors who deserve more praise, I think, and features here in a particularly harrowing death sequence, just horrible! Scott Wolf, who at the time I thought was surely destined for superstardom just because he seemed to have an uncanny resemblance to Tom Cruise (he could have passed as his brother), plays the nominal lead, although inevitably overshadowed by Bridges. I note that Wolf was 27 years old, playing a 15 year old and completely getting away with it, incredible. Wolf has indeed had a very successful career, but it has been predominantly in television, not cinema, appearing in TV shows I never saw, or even heard of, mostly.

So anyway, 28 years later… White Squall. I doubt I’ll be around in another 28 years for another return to it…. but you never know…

Suzhou River: Watery reflections of Vertigo

Suzhou River aka Suzhou he (2000), Dir. Lou Ye, 83 mins, Blu-Ray

Yes, another Radiance release. Killing my wallet.

This is a strange one; the references I’d heard regards this film’s similarities to Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), one of my favourite films, is a little misleading. Sure, it shares Vertigo‘s central theme of male obsession and doomed love, but other than that it is, at least upon first viewing,  quite different. For one thing,  Hitchcock’s classic wasn’t overly obtuse,  certainly it made perfect sense after seeing the whole film. Suzhou River is absolutely obtuse, with what I would certainly describe as an unreliable narrator telling us the story- the film making really little sense especially when looking back on the whole and trying to decipher it, at least, as I say, first time around (maybe it’ll click better the second time I watch it?).

The narrator is an unseen, unnamed character in voiceover only- we ‘see’ his point of view, either from his own eyes or that of his video camera; we never see him in the third-person (the nearest to seeing him is his hands when they come into shot reacting to something). He’s a videographer for hire, filming his surroundings as if for some journal as he travels around, absently, or from gig to gig. The opening sequence, as he travels down the titular Suzhou river winding through commercial and industrial areas of Shanghai, buildings often derelict or in disrepair, seeing the various people who live and work on or around the river, is worth the price of this disc alone. I was quite mesmerised by it.

The narrator is hired by a Shanghai nightclub owner to film his main attraction- a huge tank in which a woman pretends to be a mermaid, smiling at its patrons. This woman is Meimei (Zhou Xun) with whom the narrator strikes up an affair. Meimei enigmatically questions him if, if she left one day and didn’t come back, would he look for her, like Mardar did?  She doesn’t explain what she is referring to, or who this Mardar was.

All this is still being told in the first-person eye of the narrator or that of his camera, with which he seems to record everything. We are told that Meimei sometimes leaves, and doesn’t return for days. There is then a sequence in which the narrator is looking out from his balcony, and he tells us he waits to see her coming back across the bridge to his apartment, and he watches (and records) the people walking, riding, driving by, ignorant of his attention and his camera. He sees a motorcycle rider, a courier, across the street, and -and here’s where I may have missed something- the narrator pretends that the rider is the mysterious Mardar referenced by Meimei. He then starts an (assumed) fictional narrative involving Mardar and his eventual obsession/doomed love for Moudan, who looks remarkably like Meimei (she’s also being played by Zhou Xun). Mardar is hired to shuttle Mourdan on his motorcycle to her Aunt occasionally, whenever her father is entertaining his mistress- but this eventually becomes a criminal enterprise, when Mardar’s associates turn it into a kidnapping, ransoming Mourdan for money. Feeling betrayed by Mardar, Mourdan throws herself into the Suzhou river, presumably drowning, but not before telling Mardar she’ll come back to him, as a mermaid. The kidnapping botched and one of his associates dead, Mardar is arrested and put into prison.

So now we have a clear allusion in Mourdan’s last words to Meimei (who looks identical to her), playing a mermaid in the bar, having an affair with our narrator. But here’s where maybe I’ve missed the point of what’s going on, because we then see Mardar leave prison three years later, and looking everywhere for Moudan, thinking she may have survived her fall into the river (we are pointedly reminded the police failed to find her body). Inevitably Mardar frequents the bar where Meimei is working and takes her for Moudan, and he even meets the narrator, and I’m thinking, fiction has somehow impinged upon our narrator’s reality, or he’s still telling us a story, diverting from his reality as he waits for Meimei to return? I’m feeling like some kind of idiot, I’ve missed something- or have I?

One of the video essays on this disc attests that the director, who likely had indeed seen Vertigo prior (how can any film maker NOT have?)  wasn’t consciously influenced by it when making this film, and I can believe that. Its absolutely not a homage to the extent to which De Palma’s Obsession (1976) was. Its possibly to the detriment of the film though that its producer, and particularly the film’s composer Jörg Lemberg, certainly did pick up on it, because the film’s score  doubles-down on referencing Bernard Herrmann’s’ evocative Vertigo score in a number of sequences. I think this may actually hurt the film, it should have been left to be more of its own thing and minus the lean towards Hitchcock’s film. Still, if you’re going to reference a past film, make it a good one…

Its not that this film doesn’t make any sense at all, although there is certainly an argument that it is a case of style over content The film really works best as a tone-poem, a mood piece, rather than conventional narrative storytelling.

Unless I completely missed something on first viewing; the way I took it, the narrator starts telling a story that he makes up following a comment from his girlfriend, and characters from that story -fictional, remember, albeit based on real people he sees from his window- suddenly impinging upon the narrators own ‘reality’ in the  final third of the film- as a viewer I was intrigued and wondering if some revelation or twist (similar to that Vertigo had, so there’s that music score distraction) would drop to suddenly make sense of it, but that doesn’t happen.

In any case, that style over content thing… what incredible style! For a film as deliberately grungy and fractured as this one is -shot on 16mm with jerky, unfocused shots, lots of grain, sudden camera movement, intense colours blooming-out imagery, jump cuts etc-  the whole shebang of visual distractions, its nonetheless a beautiful-looking film. It really is an enchanting, mesmerising piece of work that I feel I didn’t quite grasp properly first time around, but still thoroughly enjoyed. Reminded me rather of when I first watched David Lynch’s Mullholland Drive. In any case, its definitely another winner from Radiance and I look forward to rewatching it and seeing what I may have missed.

The Shape of Night: Beautiful Despair

The Shape of Night aka Yoru no henrin (1964), Dir. Noboru Nakamura, 108 mins, Blu-ray

Yoshie (Kuwano Miyuki) is a beautiful young woman working in a factory by day, and a bar in evenings, where she falls for one of the regular patrons, a handsome young man, Eiji (Hira Mikijiro). Yoshie doesn’t realise, until she’s already fallen in love with him, that Eiji is a low-level Yakuza (so ineffectual that the gang nickname him ‘princess’) who rapes her once gets her to his apartment, and then coerces her into prostitution to pay off the spiralling debts he owes his bosses. The doomed lovers are caught in a downward spiral of neon-drenched tragedy, self-destructive and inescapable.

When/if I get to the end of 2024 and look back on the best of the films that I saw for the first time this year, The Shape of Night will surely be among the very best of them. A delicately crafted, beautifully-shot study of an innocent woman’s downward spiral, its a disturbing, often harrowing film which, like most Radiance releases, I never knew even existed before this disc was announced.

Hmm, yes, here we go again- another glimpse of what world cinema has to offer, a further tantalising reminder of all the great films that I will never see, and indeed that most people here in the West will never see.  I doubt anyone I know has ever heard of this film either, or will ever see it (I’m not even sure how many own a disc player in their home anymore, which narrows it down significantly). Most of what we’d call ‘water-cooler chat’ in the office revolves around reality tv shows or police dramas… the truth is most people have no interest or feel any need to watch films like this,  even if they knew these films existed.  Hmmm, maybe I’m the peculiar one,  but then again, I love movies, whereas for many folks, they are just a diversion, disposable entertainment.

Why we are here- me writing this, you dear reader reading this, whoever wherever whenever you are.

(As an aside, I watched Barbie a few days after seeing The Shape of Night; maybe I should be rejoicing the wide variety of  what film as an art form has to offer, but it left me in a bit of a funk, as if creative art has regressed since 1964 into a cinematic black hole (no matter how pink it is, in Barbie‘s case). There’s no attempt for anything profound in Barbie (its ‘message’ such as it is, is as dumb as you’d find in a girls comic back in the 1970s), but then again, it isn’t trying to be complex or study the human condition, its just an attempt to ‘entertain’ and more importantly, make money, which it succeeded at immensely. Box Office success being what it is, I’m looking forward to the Action Man rebuttal from whoever gets the hopefully inevitable Palitoy/Hasbro deal. Oh boy, I’d love to see that Action Man movie, presuming it dared to champion a certain point of view, if only to see the meltdown reaction…).

But back to this film. Released in 1964, The Shape of Night dates back to  before I was even born, which seemed frankly impossible, when I was watching it. The film feels so bold, daring, controversial, that it felt very modern, and it certainly LOOKS ahead of its time – the film I kept thinking of while watching it was Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976); probably it was the saturated colours, the moody score, the sense of alienation and despair of characters caught in the underbelly of society. The cinematography is beautiful, all neon blues and reds lighting up its nightmare, midnight world and bathing its daytime scenes in lovely pastel hues.  The film actually opens with us seeing Yoshie (Kuwano Miyuki) working the streets, extreme close-ups of her beautiful, albeit coldly dispassionate, face bathed in blue and red neon. The titles immediately evoked thoughts of Taxi Driver, and also the films of Wong Kar-Wai- it looks quite ravishing, which belies the horrors to follow, but certainly those lingering, soft-focus shots immediately mad me think of Taxi Driver’s similarly dreamlike opening titles. 

Taxi Driver itself is something of an outlier, really- there’s not many American films as powerful as that one, and it could only have been made in the ‘seventies. Another film that sprang to mind was, naturally Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce (1964) because it dates from the same period as The Shape of Night and also concerned itself with the same subject matter (prostitution) but in typical Hollywood fashion somehow turned it into a romantic comedy (at least it dropped the songs). The Shape of Night is certainly no comedy, and neither is it an escapist fantasy like Pretty Woman (1990), another Hollywood film about the oldest profession.  I think The Shape of Night is undoubtedly the truer and most realistic of the films regarding what prostitution is and how it can destroy the lives of those women caught up in it.

Japanese cinema of that time clearly had issues with sexuality and post-War Westernisation, commercialisation, permissiveness,  the roles of the sexes, feminism etc. Only a few months ago I saw another Radiance Blu-Ray, I the Executioner (1968). in which women at a hen party stirred up by watching pornography gang-raped a young man who then killed himself in shame, and were later being hunted down and killed by a violent stranger obsessed with his idea of moral revenge. There is an anger, a tension in these films that is tangible.

Films had a short life-span back in the ‘sixties, especially those like The Shape of Night which would have extremely limited appeal or distribution outside its own country; they would be released in cinemas and then would disappear, maybe appearing once or twice on Japanese television someday. I suppose that’s the biggest positive regards physical media (and to a lesser extent, the hundreds of streamers/tv channels devouring content) – its brought back, in however limited a fashion,  films once destined to obscurity and oblivion and also widened their distribution into foreign markets probably undreamed of when they were made. Its a curious irony, when one considers just how much media is thrown at us these days, all the streaming channels, social media platforms etc and yet there is so much that remains impossible to experience- life is too short, and the world is bigger than the Internet fools us into thinking it is. With these physical media releases, we film fans are archaeologists like Indiana Jones searching for and discovering hidden treasures- thankfully boutique labels like Radiance are providing us with something akin to those treasure maps on old parchment that Indy scoured over.

I suppose what I’m getting at is, how many other films like The Shape of Night will always escape me? I already know of a film or two featuring the lead actress Miyuki Kuwano in similar nihilistic films/roles, like Cruel Story of Youth, released on disc several years ago here in the UK but sadly now OOP, or films like Gate of Flesh (1964) an apparently thoroughly nasty exploitation flick which appears at least to be available to rent on streaming.  Its curious reading through lists on IMDB of titles of films similarly themed to The Shape of Night. The internet leaves us a treasure map, its up to us to dig around following its leads. Treasure or junk? I guess that’s up to us (ha ha, not everybody loves Blade Runner as much as I do). 

A Woman’s Vengeance: Behave, boys, or else….

A Woman’s Vengeance (1948), Dir. Zoltan Korda, 96 mins, Blu-ray

Staying with Indicator’s Universal Noir Vol.2 box, we arrive at more familiar noir territory with A Woman’s Vengeance, written by Aldous Huxley (of Brave New World fame) and based upon his own short story The Gioconda Smile– its a film of entertaining misdirections and perhaps even more so  (from a 2024 perspective) decidedly uncomfortable sexual politics. One has to excuse films for simply being of their time , but there’s more than a few moments during this film where viewers coming to it today will surely wince and grimace, but on the whole its such a good, well-told yarn that one can easily forgive such transgressions (this film is, after all, some 76 years old now).

The first of the film’s misdirections is the strained relationship between dashing Henry Maurier (Charles Boyer) and his sick wife Emily (Rachel Kempson), when it is quickly revealed that Henry is cheating on her with a beautiful and very, very young (teenage!) woman, Doris (Ann Blyth). Not only that, but Henry is also seen almost absently flirting with a neighbour’s pretty daughter, Janet (Jessica Tandy) who is at least closer to his own age (although he disparagingly notes that at thirty-five she “used to be quite beautiful… ten years ago”). The man is cad and a cheat, clearly, but is he entirely the villain that the film seems intent on making us think he is?

Inevitably (this is a noir, after all), Emily suddenly dies, and while its immediately assumed to be a result of her long chronic illness, it soon transpires that she was poisoned.  What we don’t know is, did Emily commit suicide as revenge for his adultery, knowing that Henry would be suspected of her death, was it indeed Henry intent on dumping the moody shrew for the younger and more pliant Doris, or… was it someone else? There’s enough suggestions of a number of characters benefiting from Emily’s death that one can suspect most everyone, although the prime suspect is clearly Henry, especially with all the evidence pointing in his direction.

Curiously, Henry is utterly bemused when he immediately marries Doris following Emily’s death, ignorant of how the ill timing could possibly implicate him as a suspect when its learned that Emily was poisoned. The truth is that Henry is a handsome idiot who has had it far too easy in life (and indeed, the family doctor observes with some sadness to Henry that “I feel extremely sorry for you sometimes. Being born with a lot of money – it’s no joke.”). Henry is the kind of fellow who sails through life without any stumbling blocks or anyone questioning or refusing him anything.

Functioning as a murder mystery loaded with bad sexual politics, I had a lot of fun with this one, primarily because of its great cast who all do fine work. but especially Jessica Tandy.  There is a wonderful scene in which she reveals her love for Henry while a huge storm rages behind her that is staged and executed so memorably I’ll remember it always, utterly arresting albeit distinctly melodramatic. Likewise a later scene in which she confronts Henry while he is on death row is filmed with such imaginative expressionist lighting and stagecraft, its quite wonderful, ‘classic’ Hollywood and more than the film possibly deserves, especially when it becomes derailed by a ‘happy’ ending in which the real culprit is revealed in a rather awkward fashion- echoes here of the ending of Singapore, as if these noir couldn’t really see things through to their deserved, authentically noir conclusion. While that’s a shame, there’s a lot of fun getting there.

But it does feel all kinds of ironic; the Studio was so hellbent on restoring audience faith in moral justice by ensuring a happy ending, while utterly ignorant of all the film’s examples of misogyny that seemed absolutely fine at the time but might be considered  the real ‘evils’ of the film decades later.

Scary Movie/s

I was reading an online article about Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon films, and the films co-writer (yes, shock, the films had a script and, yes, this guy’s owning up to his part in it) Kurt Johnstad reveals that the directors cuts of  “both movie one and movie two will be released on the same day and the same time. So…. you can sit down and for six hours have a non-interrupted experience of Zack Snyder.”

Two things: six hours of  Snyder sounds pretty scary… and also, isn’t it telling that his name has become a thing, an experience? You don’t hear anyone say anything along the lines of “six hours of ‘James Cameron’ or ‘Ridley Scott’ ”  as if that were a ‘thing’. Mind, the article also states that the new cuts, averaging three hours each, are rated R for… “brutal bloody violence and gore, sexual content, nudity and language” and I don’t remember much of that from the two films I’ve seen, they rather sound like completely different movies, and who knows, maybe they are (I’m waiting for some press release claiming they are the ‘real Rebel Moon‘ or that these are ‘the real Zack Snyder experience’.

I doubt buckets of blood, gore and nudity could ‘fix’ them for anyone but the rabid Snyder fanbase. It has rather made me wonder, as the films are obviously Star Wars knock-offs, or at least have been claimed originated as treatments for a Star Wars film,  the idea of the Star Wars films we know and love having alternate cuts… As if that would be a thing in some alternate universe. You know, the child-friendly 1977 film released in cinemas as we knew them, and then Lucas putting out a more violent, sexy, gory version on VHS. Mind, following that kind of logic, imagine Alien being released back in 1979 in some kiddie-friendly version with a sanitised chestburster scene (or maybe an alternate, ‘safer’ sequence when the alien pops out some other way -suggestions on a postcard please) and then releasing the proper more graphic version on VHS.  Thank goodness all this alternate cuts madness wasn’t a thing back in the day, but yeah, imagine a world in which those Star Wars Special Editions back in 1997 were less about CGI visual effects and more about making the films more… adult, more Zack Snyder. Scary. Just look at these Rebel Moon films….

Singapore: its all about Ava

Singapore (1947), Dir. John Brahm, 80 mins, Blu-ray

The third film in Indicator’s Universal Noir Vol. 2 box and this one’s a doozy, certainly the most noir film of the set so far. I must say, I was very much surprised by how enjoyable this film was, considering my low expectations from the poster (Fred MacMurray as a sailor? Sorry, but give me a break!). I expected an escapist Hollywood romance/drama set in exotic, foreign climes – Affair in Trinidad springs to mind, but obviously there’s more than a few nods to the classic Casablanca, and while the latter is true, the film turned out be to much more than that. Mainly because of Ava. To suggest that for me she steals the film from everyone else is some kind of understatement. It’s not that she acts everyone else off the screen, more just a matter of sheer screen magnetism and presence.

Regards MacMurray, I’ve become resigned to the fact that whenever i see him in a film, I’m always predisposed to have a dislike/distrust of whatever character he is playing, simply because my first experience of watching him was in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, in which he played an adulterer, cheat and utter bastard with such consummate finesse it proved wholly definitive. I suppose in that sense, his casting here was rather perfect (actually it dates just three years after his similarly impressive turn in Wilder’s Double Indemnity) as he’s playing a character with some dubiety. He’s not a wholesome character here, rather a guy with a shady past who’s always trying to keep one step ahead of the authorities, but also someone who might be redeemed by the love a good woman.

As far as the plot is concerned, its fairly conventional, albeit enlivened by a few twists and turns that make it far more interesting than I had expected. Shortly after WW2, Matt Gordon (Fred MacMurray) returns to Singapore after having fled five years before when the Japanese invaded. He returns to the hotel he used to stay at, intending to retrieve a fortune in pearls he was smuggling out and had stashed in there when the war breaking out upset his plans. Seeing a table and chairs in the bar/restaurant he slips into a reverie and voiceover, the film fading to a flashback from five years before, when he was about to get married to Linda Grahame (Ava Gardner) after a whirlwind romance. Before they could get married, they became separated during the Japanese bombardment when  Gordon attempted (and failed) to retrieve the pearls, only returning to the church to see it burned to the ground and Linda presumably killed. Despondent, Gordon fled Singapore to join the war effort.

The complications of course are what makes this interesting- the film returning back to the ‘present’ of 1947, Gordon is being watched by both Deputy Commissioner Hewitt (Richard Haydn) who is well aware of Gordon’s criminal past and suspects he has returned to retrieve the pearls, and likewise mobster/fence Mauribus (Thomas Gomez) who wants the pearls himself, presumably from some deal the two had years ago.  So far, so routine-thriller as Gordon attempts to outwit both the law and the criminal fraternity, but then he suddenly sees Linda… alive. But now she’s Ann Van Leyden, devoted wife of plantation owner Michael Van Leyden (Roland Culver), with no knowledge of Gordon at all, or of a woman named Linda Grahame.  Is it Linda, or just some woman who uncannily looks like her? There’s a few more twists yet, but the real pleasure of the film is undoubtedly Ava.

Ava Gardner; one of the most beautiful actresses who ever appeared in film, she has this relationship with the camera that is like some kind of sorcery- the camera just loves some women, there is this spark… other examples include Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak.. but here its just… well, she steals every scene she’s in. The plot, the other actors in the scene, they all kind of fall away… Its not even how beautiful she is, its some kind of energy in that relationship between actress and camera that defines screen icons…

A featurette on the Indicator disc goes into some general detail regards Ava’s life and career. I found it fascinating, a little disturbing and rather enchanting. I was left to idly imagine her life, being as beautiful as she was, that whole 1940s/1950s Golden Age Hollywood era, fame, fortune.  I’ve not seen many films featuring Ava- the last one I saw her in was On the Beach, released in 1959, some twelve years after Singapore but seemingly many years more than that – too much living , maybe, taking its toll on her? Certainly she was on her third divorce by then. She was a strong woman who seemed to suffer men,  famously uninhibited for the time which seemed scandalous to many (she was blamed for ending Frank Sinatra’s marriage in a scandal that threatened both of their careers): frankly, its the stuff of a Hollywood movie all in itself, glamour, drinks, affairs, betrayal, divorce… She certainly lived.

I thoroughly enjoyed Singapore, but have to admit its mostly from being so bewitched by Ava’s presence in it. I suppose this might be surprising because she’s not playing a femme fatale, certainly its a very different character to the one she played in The Killers. I think that’s some reflection of how much of her impact here stems from her sheer presence, her relationship with the camera, rather than something doubled upon by the script or outrageous (for the time) clothing etc. Instead she’s beautiful and sensual while being largely restrained- maybe that’s why having seen both The Killers and On the Beach, its seeing her in this – undoubtedly a lesser film- which has me finally bowled over by her and looking to see her in more features.