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…

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.

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.

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.

Time Out of Mind: Not a noir at all, alas

Time Out of Mind (1947), Dir. Robert Siodmak, 89 mins, Blu-ray

While the previous film in Indicator’s Universal Noir Vol.2 box, Lady on a Train, was borderline noir at best, I can’t imagine anyone really having any argument for Robert Siodmak’s Time Out of Mind qualifying as noir in any way at all. This is really just a historical romantic drama, adapted from a popular book of the time written by Rachel Field. Its general thesis is for women to stand by their man, trust their heart and that love conquers all in the end… sentiments that any proper film noir would kick in the trash with utter contempt. I can only imagine that Indicator thought its inclusion worthy if only because it was directed by Siodmak, who had great success in noir with films like The Killers, Phantom Lady, Cry of the City and Criss Cross. As such, I suppose this has some worth as a curio, and certainly its got some interesting moments and direction… characters separated by doorways or windows, for instance, to represent their relationship or social standing/separation. The film also features Ella Raines, so brilliant in Phantom Lady, but alas utterly wasted here.

The plot of Time Out of Mind is pretty dull- it’s 1899, and Christopher Fortune (Robert Hutton) the son of a wealthy shipping magnate in Maine angers his father by preferring a career in music rather than the family business, and is encouraged to follow his dreams rather than family duty by servant girl Kate (Phyliss Calvert) who loves him dearly, but of which Christopher is oblivious.  Kate helps Christopher find the finances to enable him to flee to Paris where he will enrol in a music school. Three years later, he finally returns home, but married, breaking Kate’s heart. The marriage is doomed, as Christopher’s bride is a beautiful, rich but thoroughly nasty, using her father’s wealth to further Christopher’s musical dreams and live vicariously through his success, but Christopher’s heart isn’t in it, he feels a fraud.  Can Kate’s endless love for him put him on the right path to success and happiness?

Hmm, take a guess how this film ends. Hardly your usual noir there. The whole thing is pure melodrama, feels artificial and staged, and you can see where its all going from the start.  It doesn’t work at all, and Siodmak himself dismissed it. There’s indications of where a noir would go with something like this- Christopher’s sister Rissa (Ella Raines) is so obsessed herself with Christopher that her attention is borderline incestuous – so I could imagine this becoming transformed into something genuinely subversive, with three women fighting over a man too self-obsessed to really notice or care, but this was released in 1947, after all, and far too early to expect something like Twin Peaks. Shame- a David Lynchian take on Time Out of Mind would be a film I’d like to see.

As it is, there’s little here to encourage repeat viewings. At least Lady on a Train, likewise hardly noir at all,  was snappily paced, with genuine twists and turns and a captivating leading lady. This film really labours for little reason at all.

Lady on a Train: an unlikely Christmas noir

Lady on a Train (1945), Dir. Charles David, 95 mins, Blu-ray

Wow, Deanna Durbin- who was this lady? Seems she was the child star that saved Universal Pictures, a beautiful, gifted singer and actress who eventually got away, refusing to be chewed up by the Hollywood machine- but that came several years after she featured in this film. Here she’s Nicki Collins, the titular lady of the title, although she isn’t on the train very long- the first of several misdirection’s this film lays on viewers, the chief one being its classification of ‘film noir’ that qualifies its inclusion in Indicator’s splendid Universal Noir Vol. 2 box.  Lady on a Train is more a Nancy Drew-type murder mystery, more screwball comedy of errors, than what might be considered genuine film noir. While film noir is a fairly vague catch-all term that can frustrate some when titles like this get bundled in a noir box, I’ve found it to be an enjoyable way of discovering films I’d never otherwise notice. After all, when was the last time Lady on a Train was aired on television? Would it ever be aired again, in the future?

And this film may be slight, but its very enjoyable. Its really very odd -as this disc’s commentary track notes- a decidedly curious mash-up of genre: is it a thriller, a drama, a comedy, a musical?  There are times when it looks very much like a noir, dark shadows and expressionistic lighting,  times when it looks (and sounds) like a glossy Hollywood musical, times when its a madcap comedy. That certainly keeps the viewer on ones metaphorical toes, so to speak – just keeping track of Durbin’s changing hairstyles can make one dizzy enough- rather  a delicious smorgasbord of 1940s Hollywood. Maybe Steven Spielberg is a fan; it rather feels as wildly exuberant (and confused) as his 1941 did.

The plot, such as it is, has Nicki on a train journey from San Francisco to New York on Christmas Eve, noticing a murder being committed in a trackside building’s window as her train pauses approaching her station. She tries to notify the police but they aren’t interested, so instead decides to investigate herself with the help of a popular mystery crime writer. Its as silly as it probably sounds but its clearly more comedy than gritty noir thriller, and is so fast-paced one hardly has time to consider just how daft it all is. Slight as it is, its nonetheless surprisingly a whole lot of fun.

The pleasures of this film are many, but chiefly arise from the excellent cast featuring some of the best character actors working in Hollywood at the time.  Edward Everett Horton, Patricia Morison, Samuel S Hinds, Allen Jenkins, Ralph Bellamy, David Bruce, Dan Druyea, are all a joy, doing a lot with very little. They are perfectly cast, characters established simply with just how they look, how they deliver their lines; very often I just sat and admired the sheer efficiency of the film, the perfect timing, the looks and expressions, the visual interplay. They are all there to serve Durbin, as this is clearly a Durbin vehicle, Universal apparently trying to find something that sticks as regards finding her a line of films now that she was now an adult. Durbin is very good herself in what might seem a fairly thankless role; she has real screen charm, a natural beauty with one of those switch on/off smiles that Hollywood ladies used to be so good at As well as very good actress with a gift for comic timing, she was also an accomplished singer with an operatic voice, three numbers given to her in the most unlikeliest fashion just, well, because (one when she sings Silent Night in its entirety over the phone to her father. the other two when she poses as a cabaret singer in a nightclub). Durbin is the Real Deal and I was quite taken by her performance. I was surprised to discover later that she only made films for three more years, with just twenty-three films in her IMDB filmography, She retired to rural France and left all that Hollywood nonsense behind, something that few other child stars caught in the Hollywood system likely managed- here’s a noir with more than one happy ending.

True Lies 4K: The ugly truth

James Cameron’s True Lies finally comes to home video in a 4K presentation- but that may not be the truth, it may be a lie. Depends on what 4K means, really… true lies indeed.

There doesn’t seem to be much love out there for True Lies these days (and will probably be even less after this release). The film seems to be widely considered something of a misfire for Schwarzenegger  and Cameron, although I always enjoyed it. I remember watching it back in 1994 knowing nothing about it, and instead of it being the straight action flick that I expected, it turned out to be something of a hoot. To be fair, nuclear-wielding terrorists seem to be an odd subject for a comedy but that’s essentially the b-plot, the main story being one of a spy’s marital strife when his lies catch up with him. The film isn’t perfect- Schwarzenegger seems rather out of his depth (imagine Bill Paxton playing that part instead!) and Cameron’s heart doesn’t really seem to be in it (it was a project brought to him by Schwarzenegger rather than something he instigated himself), but there’s an awful lot of good in the film- especially Jamie Lee Curtis who steals the show from everyone.

But this is another of those Cameron films – like The Abyss, in particular- that has a troubled history on home video beyond the DVD era, in that it hasn’t had one. This is a film that was never released on Blu-ray and looked increasingly unlikely of ever getting a 4K release. Even now, the lack of enthusiasm for the film from the Studio and Cameron seems to have resulted in a lacklustre/disastrous transfer, subjected to all sorts of nefarious A.I. shenanigans by Park Road Post, a New Zealand-based outfit using HAL 9000 by the look of it. The same A.I. tinkering has been inflicted upon Aliens and The Abyss, but for some reason True Lies has fared the worst.

What I suspect -and I may be wide of the mark, its only a suspicion- is that for all the talk of a new 4K scan of the original negative, I think this 4K master is based on a 2K scan done years ago when a Blu-ray release was mooted (and presumably stalled by Cameron, as was The Abyss). My suspicions are based on the fact that The Abyss looks so much better than this, and does seem to have had a new recent 4K scan – if that were also true of True Lies, it would seem reasonable to presume that the result would look very similar if not even better (much of The Abyss being pretty dark, True Lies shot often in bright sunlight). Instead, True Lies looks suspiciously like Park Road Post has up-rezzed a 2K scan to 4K, adding artificial detail and digital artefacts like edges,  and scrubbing out most of any film grain. If they DIDN’T, then something went wrong somewhere. Sometimes the film looks fine, even frustratingly good, while at others it looks almost as ugly as a DVD would.

The Abyss on 4K, while clearly looking processed, nonetheless looks very good indeed – but there’s something wrong with True Lies. Its not an unwatchable disaster by any means but if this thing has indeed had a new 4K scan then there’s something very wrong with that camera negative. I often thought while watching the film that maybe some of the shots had focus problems (happens more often in films than you’d think) and that the A.I. algorithms that Park Road Post are using just couldn’t fathom out how to fix it.  There’s an early shot when the credits are onscreen -text being an optical addition that can cause degradation anyway in the pre-digital days- when a driver pulls up to the security gate and his face looks so out of focus his features drop into smeary DVD territory, its pretty amazing and not something I think I’ve seen on a 4K disc before.  What I would like to know is, why would Cameron put up with that, why would he find that acceptable when he’s been delaying HD releases of these films for years.

I guess we’ll never know. The irony is that some effort has clearly been made for this release- there is a great new 43-minute featurette looking back on True Lies with many of the participants who are still around (its an older film than we’d like to admit when looking in the mirror),  chipping in with interesting observations and anecdotes. There’s many new releases and studio catalogue titles that don’t get features like this anymore, and I really enjoyed it. Its not exactly worth the price of the 4K disc but is a certain consolation.

At least I can watch True Lies though- my old DVD was from the R1-import days, I hadn’t seen the film in maybe fifteen to twenty years, possibly longer, so I had a great time with the film itself. Its been great being able to watch this and The Abyss again; films just aren’t the same as they used to be, these days, albeit I appreciate pink-tinted glasses of nostalgia may have a hand here.

Does anyone think we’ve missed the point of this release? That its some kind of grindhouse edition, approximating the look of my old fleapit ABC cinema in town during the 1980s? Don’t know why Cameron would aim for that, but… strange world.

Is it 2010 again?

The ghost of Christmas returns one more time. Just before Christmas I was in an HMV store -a rarity these days-  and I noticed a sale section with a twofer for Peter Hyams’ Outland (1981) and 2010 (1984) on Blu-ray. I had Outland on a DVD many years ago, never bought 2010. I’d been ruminating over these Blu-ray editions (HMV exclusives here in the UK) for years but finally decided to give them a shot. Maybe it was the Christmas songs playing instore and all that tinsel everywhere clouding my judgement. Watched Outland a few weeks back, finally caught up with 2010 last night.

Outland looked pretty respectable on Blu-Ray, seemed a genuine improvement over that old DVD. The film isn’t great -its basically a tired old rehash of the Western High Noon with lots of scientific inaccuracies thrown in while ripping-off Ridley Scott’s Alien production design (so much so you could almost be forgiven for thinking it an unofficial prequel), but for all that its an easy watch. There’s rather something cosy about that grungy  ‘look’ that Ridley Scott launched in sci-fi films. The film also has some nostalgia factor for me as the first time I watched it was in a re-release double bill with Blade Runner in 1983 (both films are Warner/The Ladd Company flicks).

2010 on Blu-ray unfortunately doesn’t look that hot at all (it looks too ‘hot’ if anything, very warm and hazy the way many films did back then), which is doubly surprising as it was both newer than Outland and benefitted from a bigger budget. You’d think that latter point might be reflected in the image quality, but it isn’t.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Blu-ray (itself over a decade old at this point) was even from a DVD-era master, but saying that I’m not entirely sure the film would benefit greatly from a new 2K or 4K restoration.  Many of the film’s opticals are messy (a prologue faux-computer text crawl on the screen, reprising what happened in 2001,is very unsteady) and the live-action photography is very hazy, filtered, indistinct. Its rather a shame as the visual effects from the last days of EEG (Doug Trumbull’s old outfit after he’d moved on, I believe)  are on the whole of very high-quality but done few favours by the optical printing, with optical masks clearly evident in many shots of miniatures superimposed over star fields and planetary backgrounds. One could (possibly should) expect them to clean-up much better than this given a restoration, as EEG shots were in 65mm to ensure less degradation (just look at the quality of Blade Runner’s effects, shot by EEG just a few years prior). Maybe I’ll have to dig out my old Cinefex, see what that 2010 article had to say.

All that being said,  would it even really deserve a 2K or 4K restoration? As always the biggest obstacle for 2010 to climb is the simple question, ‘why?” as it was a redundant film even back then, and only more redundant now. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey remains a genuine classic film, quite unique in many ways even all this time later, an example of art and craft in the analogue era that stands apart. Its perhaps a trite observation in some ways, but throughout 2010 video screens are 4:3 CRT televisions with piped video and they always look horrible (and inaccurate) compared to 2001‘s flat screens that were front-projected. The result of work and dedication that the makers of 2010 couldn’t be bothered to match, it seems. Moreover, the plot of 2010 seeks to explain everything that shouldn’t have been explained with regards 2001‘s many mysteries and does so in a depressingly mundane manner.  Watching 2001, you have to pretend that 2010 never happened (not too difficult- bit like watching Alien and pretending that Prometheus and its ten-foot bald guy in a Space Jockey suit never happened).

It just dawned upon me though, when 2010 finally ended, that the film is forty years old this year. Forty years! That’s the equivalent of young me in 1984 watching 2010 and comparing it to films released back in 1944, before even Destination Moon, The Day the Earth Stood Still etc., so its possibly not fair of me to complain or suggest that it looks dated. But 2001 still looks largely timeless, so maybe that’s the point. I suppose I would cut the film more slack if not for the Kubrick/2001 angle; Kubrick’s film is like genre hallowed ground.

Curious thing, I can vividly remember travelling on the bus back from town with my mate Andy having just seen 2010 in our old ABC Cinema, utterly appalled at what we’d struggled through . We really didn’t enjoy it and were in a bit of an embarrassed funk, as we’d had to choose between 2010 and David Lynch’s  Dune, unable to afford to watch both. We felt like we’d messed up. We’d catch up with Dune on VHS a few months later and realise that maybe we hadn’t, but anyway, I remember that nervous embarrassment on our ride home. The 2010 score music by David Shire, an electronic score that probably caught his attention being a Vangelis fan, struck a chord (sic) with Andy, as he bought the vinyl soundtrack album; that cover was a thing of beauty, always loved that movie poster- deserved a better movie.  It was a good time for movie posters, mind, as I recall also being quite smitten by the Dune posters back then, too (the poster of the moons over the desert, NOT the one of Kyle MacLachlan and Sean Young standing with an armada of spaceships behind them like some action flick).  But forty years ago. My God.