“PURITY OF ESSENCE”

By Raymond Benson

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is such an iconic motion picture that most readers of Cinema Retro, I would bet, already own a copy of this brilliant keepsake of the 1960s on DVD or Blu-ray. The film has been released several times before, but now it gets the Criterion treatment. Believe me—fans of the movie and of director Stanley Kubrick will still want to get this edition. It is definitely an upgrade in quality and the disk also comes with a plethora of fascinating supplements and some terrific goodies in the packaging.

Unless you’ve haven’t been paying attention to the lists of Great Movies You Should See Before You Die, you know that Dr. Strangelove is the story of how an air force general (Sterling Hayden) goes “a little funny in the head... you know, just a little... funny...” and orders one of his bombers to attack Russia in order to preserve our “purity of essence.” To save the day it’s up to an RAF exchange officer (Peter Sellers), the President of the United States (also Sellers), a Hawk-ish general in the Pentagon (George C. Scott), the good-ol’-boy pilot of the bomber itself (Slim Pickens), and a bizarre German nuclear physicist in a wheelchair (Sellers again). Maybe they rescue our planet, maybe they don’t.

Strangelove was Kubrick’s first time out as sole producer, along with serving as director and co-writer. Prior to making the film, he had been partners with James B. Harris, who produced The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), and Lolita (1962). Kubrick had also done a work-for-hire job for executive producer Kirk Douglas on Spartacus (1960), which he vowed never to do again, but that project afforded him the clout to carve out a subsequent career of total creative freedom. Now as the producer of his own pictures, Kubrick got what he sought. He secured his home base in England, set up a unique and highly personal routine of making films, and proceeded to give us some examples of extraordinary cinema. Strangelove was the first masterpiece out of the gate, and, fortunately, was a critical and box office hit.

It was controversial, too, as are all of Kubrick’s films made since he began producing them himself. At the time, some attacked Strangelove as being a “sick joke.” Nevertheless, it captured the mood of early 1964 and, as Martin Scorsese has said about it, “the word on the street was that it’s terrific.” It was the hip movie to see. It pushed the envelope. It got people talking. It established Kubrick as the hot filmmaker of his day.

In the early 1960s, the director had become obsessed with the arms race, experiencing himself some of the Cold War paranoia that was prevalent in those years, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The British novel Red Alert by Peter George came to Kubrick’s attention and he thought it would make a fine basis for a political thriller. He brought in George to co-write, and at first the pair worked with James Harris on the script. At some point during the process, they all started to find funny things about the story. From then on, the screenplay morphed into a comedy—a very black one. In fact, Dr. Strangelove is arguably the definitive black comedy.

Harris eventually left the partnership and went off on his own, leaving Kubrick to produce by himself. That’s about the time Kubrick brought in satirist Terry Southern to polish the work and add some needed dialogue tweaking. The result is one of the most ingenious and original adaptations of a novel in movie history.

The acting and the direction are as perfect as one can get. Production Designer Ken Adam’s ultra-modern sets, especially that of the spectacular War Room, firmly situates the movie in its time and place. Gilbert Taylor’s stark black and white cinematography in the interior settings gives the picture its nightmare qualities, while the hand-held camerawork in the exteriors is effective in creating a documentary/newsreel effect. The editing (by future director Anthony Harvey, but certainly with Kubrick overseeing the work) is razor tight. The director apparently deleted a lot of footage to achieve the comic tension, including a now infamous pie fight in the War Room at the film’s climax because it apparently didn’t fit with the tone of the rest of the movie.

It all comes across with class and panache in Criterion’s new Blu-ray edition. The restored 4K digital transfer is the best I’ve seen. There’s an uncompressed monaural soundtrack, but also an alternate 5.1 Surround Soundtrack presented in DTS-HD Master Audio. The movie has never sounded better.

And then there are the supplements. Criterion provides several new pieces, and some of the best features from previous releases have been ported over as well.

The new supplements include: new interviews with Kubrick scholars Mick Broderick and Rodney Hill, archivist Richard Daniels, camera innovator Joe Dunton and camera operator Kelvin Pike, and Peter George’s son, David George. These all come with film footage and wonderful unseen stills. Previous extras include an excerpt from the tried and true 1966 audio interview with Kubrick by Jeremy Bernstein; four different documentaries about Kubrick, the making of the film, the sociopolitical climate of the period, and actor Sellers (two of which are co-produced by Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief Lee Pfeiffer). There are also 1963 interviews with Sellers and Scott, and an excerpt from a 1980 Gene Shalit interview with Sellers.

Two trailers are included as supplements—the quirky theatrical trailer, which we’ve all seen, and the “exhibitor’s trailer,” which we haven’t. The latter is a little over fifteen minutes long; demonstration reels of this kind were commonplace in those days in order to persuade theaters to book the picture. It’s pretty much a short capsulation of the movie’s story using unedited footage, but what makes it totally cool is that Kubrick himself narrates it. He even makes excuses for a couple of monologue sequences that do not yet include cut-aways to other characters. Fascinating stuff.

Another terrific bonus is the collection of “props” you get inside the packaging—everything comes in a “Plan R” folder like the one used in the film. Inside is a “Top Secret” Memorandum containing an essay by scholar David Bromwich, and a Playboy-style booklet called Strangelove. Tracy Reed, step-daughter of director Sir Carol Reed and the only female in the cast, is on the cover of the booklet and graces a centerfold. The latter is also seen in the movie in a fictional issue of Playboy itself. The booklet’s text is Terry Southern’s 1994 article on the film. Last but not least, you even get a “miniature combination Bible and Russian Phrase Book.”

“A fella could have a good time in Vegas” with this superb release from the Criterion Collection.

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“STONER MOVIE DELUXE”

By Raymond Benson

Ah, how many of us took advantage of those wonderful psychedelic cinematic discoveries of the late sixties and early seventies, the kind that beckoned many a youth to view them in an altered state of mind? You know the ones—Yellow Submarine, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Fantasia (1969 re-release), Woodstock, El Topo, Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, Allegro non troppo... and of course Fantastic Planet, a surprise European import that hit U.S. theaters in early 1974. It’s one of the stellar stoner movies that frequented the Midnight Movie houses around college campuses.

Directed by French animator René Laloux, with a production design by eccentric French illustrator Roland Topor, Fantastic Planet takes the audience to a very other-worldly place where humans are tiny vermin compared to the gigantic blue Draags (called Traags in previous translations), who are the superior race on the planet. In fact, Draag children often keep humans—known as “Oms”—as pets, teaching them tricks and keeping them imprisoned the way we might house a gerbil. Adult Draags, we learn, like to “meditate,” which is apparently a euphemism for participating in a cerebral, celestial orgy. While their bodies remain sedate, their consciousnesses are released inside floating colored bubbles that travel to a nearby “wild planet.” There, the bubbles attach to giant headless human-shaped statues, which then come to “life” and dance together. In other words, it’s how the Draags get off.

The story involves one human, Terr, who is captured in infancy by a young Draag and kept as a plaything. Terr grows up, escapes his master, and joins a band of feral humans to organize, rebel, and attempt to bring down the Draags.

It’s all very creepy and strange, but it’s also a brilliantly fascinating and entertaining film. The French-Czech co-production managed to win the Jury Prize at Cannes that year, the first time an animated feature had taken such an award. Certainly no other movie before or since looks like Fantastic Planet, for its eye candy exhibits a surrealism that echoes the work of Dalí, Ernst, or Magritte, but with a hallucinogenic science fiction sensibility. Add a mesmerizing electronic jazz score by Alain Gorageur, and you’ve got yourself one extremely trippy motion picture.

When first released in the U.S., the dialogue was dubbed in English. The new Criterion Collection disk features this optional soundtrack, but one must really watch and listen to the movie in the original French (with newly translated English subtitles) for the full alien effect.

The new 2K digital restoration is absolutely gorgeous. The colors are bright and vivid, bringing out the details of the drawn, “paper doll” animation. The audio is an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Supplements include two short animated films made by Leloux and Topor—Les temps morts (1965) and Les escargots (1966)—and if you think the feature film is bizarre, wait until you see these! The disk also contains a 2009 documentary on Laloux, an episode of a French television program from 1974 about Topor and his work, a short interview with Topor from 1973, and the trailer.

After experiencing Fantastic Planet, you may feel as if you’ve jumped back to the 70s and want to say things like, “Far out, man,” or “roll another one.” Just be sure to Blu-ray responsibly. (“Whoa, he used Blu-ray as a verb!”)

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By Todd Garbarini

Kudos to the Criterion Collection for releasing Whit Stillman’s charming trio of young adult angst: Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), and The Last Days of Disco (1998). The bookend films have both been previously released by Criterion on DVD and Blu-ray, but now the company bows Barcelona to complete the trilogy. Available as both a stand-alone disc as well as part of a set of the three films, Barcelona features the luminous Mira Sorvino in an early role.

The trilogy of films that Mr. Stillman made as the beginning of his career and for which he is most well-known are interesting in that they depict groups of people who fall out of the scope of most of the general population and probably appeal to even less. That is actually a welcome relief. Metropolitan was shot in January and February in 1989 and released in August 1990 (a curious choice for a film set at Christmas time) and the upscale characters live in a Manhattan that is far less hectic than today’s, light years before their lives were infiltrated and forever altered by personal computers, cell phones, electronic tablets and violent video games. The absence of these devices is noticeable in every frame of this film wherein the characters talk to each other rather than text. Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols are two of the actors who appear in all three of these films, playing different characters by name but are instantly recognizable by their attitudes and method of speak. In Metropolitan, they play Upper Eastsiders. In Barcelona, they are cousins who bicker about sex and politics in a Europe far less violent than today’s. In The Last Days of Disco, they are an employee of a disco and a disco dancer, respectively.

Barcelona, referred to as “…the funniest film ever made about the violent hatred of Americans…” by Michael Weiss, begins with a terrorist explosion at the American Library, an unlikely start for a film purporting to be a comedy. This imagery has become all-too familiar and far more brutal in present-day 2016 with the insurgence of groups like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, but when this film was shot, presumably sometime after the first World Trade Center bombing in February 1993, the world appeared to be a less frightening place. In Barcelona, the time period that the film is set in is difficult to pin down just from watching the film. There is talk in the film that Spain is getting ready to join NATO, and that historical event took place in 1982. The film does not look like it is attempting to take place during that time, however.

We are introduced to Ted Boyton (Nichols), a salesman originally from Chicago who has just come out of a relationship and bemoans his inclination to fall for overly attractive women in relationships that are ephemeral. He resigns himself to pursuing (in his words) “plain or even rather homely girls.” We can assume that the failure of his latest LTR is a result of falling for the former and so he tries to be philosophical about his future pursuits. He confides this to his cousin Fred (Eigeman), a naval officer who shows up out of the blue and wants to stay with Ted for a while, although his sudden appearance irks Ted. Fred’s attitude mirrors that of Nick Smith, the character that Mr. Eigeman portrayed in Metropolitan, which is to say that he is a tad angry about things. Fred occasionally dons his naval accoutrements while out and about with Ted and the female counterparts they have met accidentally (Tushka Bergen and Mira Sorvino as Montserrat and Marta, respectively) which causes a rise in inflammatory anti-American sentiment towards the group. While it is directed at Fred it is never anything truly awful…until near the end of the film when Fred is shot point blank by an assailant just outside the car he is riding in. Ted is shocked and holds vigil by Fred’s bedside, reading to him and wondering if he is even being heard. The women they have met also chip in and take turns and Ted wonders if his cousin will ever be the same. Fortunately, Fred comes out of it, although his attitude about life seems to be no different despite losing an eye.

Mr. Stillman’s dialogue most obviously mirrors that of Woody Allen who gave himself and his co-stars wildly funny and philosophical ruminations on male/female relationships, sex, politics, and the world at large. There are some truly funny moments, such as Ted’s dance to “Pennsylvania 6-5000” while he’s alone in the apartment, only to be interrupted by Fred and Marta who return unexpectedly. The film is a perfect slice of light entertainment in an atmosphere of films and television shows that is almost exclusively comprised of super heroes, scheming politicians, dysfunctional writers, and espionage.

The Blu-ray is a nice upgrade from the 2002 DVD. This edition features:

A new and restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director Whit Stillman and cinematographer John Thomas, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray

The 2002 audio commentary featuring Stillman and actors Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols

New video essay by film critic Farran Smith Nehme about the trilogy made up of Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco

The Making of “Barcelona,” a short documentary from 1994 featuring behind-the-scenes footage and on-set interviews with Stillman and cast members

Deleted scenes and alternate ending, with commentary by Stillman, Eigeman, and Nichols

A segment from a 1994 episode of the Today show featuring Stillman

An episode of The Dick Cavett Show from 1991 with Stillman

Trailer

An essay by film scholar Haden Guest

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“PARALLEL LIVES AND VANISHING CHARACTERS”

By Raymond Benson

I was happy to finally catch up with Clouds of Sils Maria since I missed its theatrical run; the picture received many accolades, especially for Kristen Stewart, who apparently was the first American to win the César award for Supporting Actress, as well as several critics’ awards for the same category.

The film is a commentary on the state of Hollywood filmmaking, an examination of the psychological dynamics between women, and a philosophical—sometimes playful—dramatization of parallel lives/characters. It’s as if an Ingmar Bergman movie was crossed with one by Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Juliette Binoche stars as Maria, a popular, internationally-known actress who appears in European and Hollywood films, and on the stage. Stewart indeed gives a remarkable performance—the best I’ve ever seen her do—as Valentine, Maria’s personal assistant. Twenty-something years earlier, Maria had starred in a stage play and subsequent film adaptation about a lesbian relationship between an older business woman and a younger subordinate. Maria had played the latter role and this launched her career. Now, a respected Dutch director wants to remount the play with Maria playing the older role and casting the younger one with a hot, tabloid-fodder Hollywood actress named Jo-Ann, magnificently portrayed by Chloë Grace Moretz. Maria has her doubts about playing the older role but accepts the part anyway.

Most of the picture involves the interplay between Maria and Valentine, who run lines from the play together, with Valentine doing Jo-Ann’s part. At times, though, we begin to wonder if the dialogue is really from the play or if it’s the real-life dramatic action between Maria the actress and Valentine the assistant. This is where director Assayas starts to have fun with the actors—and the audience. The characters fight, they make up, they joke around, and they dissect Hollywood and its stars. Real actors are mentioned, and current trends (aka superhero movies) are lampooned. Things get heated when Valentine is more receptive to current Hollywood fare than Maria. Assayas’ ageism message here is not subtle.

What is understated and enigmatic is when a key character of the story inexplicably vanishes—and the film goes on as if that person never existed. Did she? Is that an observation about the movie business, or is it an interpretation of the friendship/conflict relationships that women sometimes have?

It’s heady stuff.

The title refers to a natural phenomenon that really exists near the village of Sils Maria in Switzerland, in which a “snake” of clouds rolls through the Maloja Pass valley when the weather conditions are just right. Most of the film is shot there, and Yorick Le Saux’s gorgeous cinematography captures the event at the moment when the aforementioned vanishing occurs.

The Criterion Collection’s 2K digital transfer, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, is superb. Supplements include a new interview with director Assayas; new interviews with both Binoche and Stewart; a short 1924 silent documentary, Cloud Phenomena of Maloja, parts of which also feature in the movie; and the trailer. The enclosed booklet contains an essay by critic Molly Haskell.

Clouds of Sils Maria might require a couple of viewings to fully appreciate, but its rewards are full, fluffy, and cumulus.

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“A HEAVENLY BEGINNING”

By Raymond Benson

They must have done something right. Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) has proven to be a timeless and universal movie that keeps on giving, and the welcome new release from the Criterion Collection attests to it.

The premise of the film has been around for a while. Most of our generation know the remake better—Heaven Can Wait (1978, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie)—which is a superb Oscar-nominated romantic comedy in its own right. Another remake in 2001, Down to Earth, starred Chris Rock.

But that’s not all. It wasn’t until I’d viewed the supplements on the new disk that I appreciated the fact that Mr. Jordan was indeed the first of several Hollywood pictures dealing with “heavenly” concepts—angels, the afterlife, and second chances. In a video discussion, critic Michael Sragow and filmmaker/distributor Michael Schlesinger reveal how the picture’s popularity actually began a trend of similar movies throughout the 1940s—A Guy Named Joe, Angel on My Shoulder, A Matter of Life and Death, It’s a Wonderful Life, and even Mr. Jordan’s direct sequel, Down to Earth (1947, not to be confused with the Chris Rock remake), which features both James Gleason and Edward Everett Horton again playing their roles from the first movie.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan was a major release and surprise hit from Columbia Pictures, a studio that always struggled to be one of the majors despite having director Frank Capra on their team in the ‘30s. Critically and popularly acclaimed, the picture successfully blends fantasy, romance, comedy, and intrigue, creating a delightful, and sometimes thought-provoking, piece of entertainment. It was nominated for Best Picture of 1941, Best Director (Alexander Hall), Best Actor (Robert Montgomery), Best Supporting Actor (James Gleason, and he steals the movie!), and Best B&W Cinematography. The film deservedly won the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story, for Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller.

The story concerns Joe Pendleton (enthusiastically played by Montgomery in a stretch from his usual sophisticated tuxedo-clad characters) as a prizefighter with a heavy New Jersey accent who crashes in his private plane. His soul is saved by the Messenger (Horton), an angel whose job is to escort to Heaven the departing souls from his “territory.” In the mist-filled outskirts of Heaven, Mr. Jordan (benevolently portrayed by Claude Rains), a sort of St. Peter in a three-piece suit, checks in the new souls as they board another plane to take them to their afterlife homes. But Joe’s soul was accidentally taken before his body actually died—and therefore Mr. Jordan grants Joe a second chance. However, his consciousness must be placed into a recently deceased person—so Joe winds up inside a rich, corrupt banker’s body. Joe, in his new persona, sets about turning the banker’s life around for good, and he also attempts to continue his prizefighting. For the latter, he calls in his former manager, Corkle (Gleason) to train him. First, though, he’s got to convince Corkle that he’s really Joe inside the new man’s form. To complicate things, Joe falls in love with the daughter (Evelyn Keyes) of a man the banker destroyed financially and sent to prison. Joe also doesn’t know it yet, but he will have to jump bodies one more time before the story plays out.

The comedy and romance work like a charm, and the fantasy elements of Mr. Jordan are surprisingly effective. The movie is intelligently written and treats its subject matter with respect; and yet it has fun with the mechanics of death and the philosophical discourse of what we think the afterlife really is. The audience is tricked, in a way, into pleasantly enjoying a movie about death. What happens to Joe Pendleton at the end isn’t the norm for a romantic comedy. Technically it’s not a happy ending—and yet, it is. It’s a feel-good movie with a bittersweet center. This is a testament to the quality of writing in Here Comes Mr. Jordan.

The new 2K digital restoration looks fabulous. It has an uncompressed, monaural soundtrack. Along with the aforementioned video conversation about the film, the supplements include a long audio interview with Elizabeth Montgomery (daughter of Robert Montgomery, and, yes, the star of Bewitched) about her father and the movie; the Lux Radio Theatre radio adaptation starring Cary Grant (who was originally approached to star in the film—one can only imagine what it would have been like with Grant), Rains, Keyes, and Gleason; and a trailer. An essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme adorns the booklet.

A little gem from Hollywood released just prior to America’s entrance into World War II, Here Comes Mr. Jordan is a genuine classic, arguably superior to its many remakes and imitations. You will believe...

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“THE STREETWALKER AND THE SUCKER”

By Raymond Benson

Fans of Fritz Lang’s film noir of 1945, Scarlet Street, may do well to take a look at this little French gem from 1931. Lang’s film was a Hollywood remake of La Chienne, which was based on a novel by Georges de La Fouchardière (it was also adapted into a stage play by André Mouëzy-Éon). More significantly, La Chienne was the second—and first feature length—sound film by the great Jean Renoir.

Renoir had done well in the silent era, but the invention of talkies presented the filmmaker with a larger palette of tools with which to craft some of his greatest works. Beginning with La Chienne, Renoir became France’s premiere director, a position he held for a decade.

La Chienne translates as “The Bitch,” and viewers may question which woman in the picture the title is referring to—the lead, Lulu, a beautiful blonde “street woman” (a con artist and often a prostitute), who serves as the femme fatale of the story (and wonderfully played by Janie Marèze)... or the wife of our protagonist, such a shrew of a woman that there’s no wonder why we sympathize with the poor schmuck, Maurice (portrayed by the brilliant Michel Simon), a banker and part-time painter who does everything he can to get away from his marriage and set up Lulu as his mistress. Of course, Lulu is really being played by her lover and pimp, the nasty Andre (played by real-life Parisian gangster Georges Flamant, who was also an amateur actor). Maurice is merely the mark, the sucker who is seduced by lust and led to his ruin.

Unlike Scarlet Street, La Chienne is more melodrama than film noir. Renoir handles the material well without making it overwrought, and he succeeds in developing fine character studies of the three leads. Those familiar with the director’s later masterpieces such as Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) will find this early work fascinating. Renoir’s signature mise-en-scène is easily identifiable, even in its baby steps. Also impressive are the street scenes shot on location—this was the real Paris of 1931, displayed in glorious black and white.

Michel Simon, like Renoir, was one of France’s biggest film artists. Originally Swiss, Simon made French silent films and later had a long run as an actor in talkies. He has a distinctive Bassett Hound face, perfect for betraying first the joy and then the pain Lulu puts him through. According to Renoir scholar Christopher Faulkner, who talks about the movie in one of the disk’s supplements, apparently Simon fell in love with the actress playing Lulu off-screen. But, like in the film, Janie Marèze was seeing Flamant, and this relationship was encouraged by Renoir. Not long after production was completed, Marèze was killed in an automobile accident with Flamant at the wheel. At the funeral, Simon allegedly threatened Renoir with a gun, but he must have calmed down, for Simon starred in a subsequent Renoir feature, the excellent Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932; incidentally, this was remade in Hollywood in 1986 as Down and Out in Beverly Hills).

The Criterion Collection’s release features a new, restored 4K digital transfer that looks so pristine and sharp you might think the film was made last week. There’s an uncompressed monaural soundtrack and a new English subtitles translation. Supplements include an introduction to the film by Renoir himself, shot in 1961; the aforementioned interview with Faulkner on the movie; a sparkling new restoration of Renoir’s first sound film, the short On purge bébé (also 1931), a comic bauble based on a one-act play by Georges Feydeau and also starring Michel Simon; and a ninety-five minute 1967 French TV program featuring a conversation between Renoir and Simon. An essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau adorns the booklet.

A fine, notable release, and a must for lovers of European cinema.

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