The Spiraling Death Wish of Vertigo

By Steve Evans

Having seen Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) at least 20 times, it only occurred to me today, on perhaps my 21st viewing, that maybe the entire film is a dream, the final hallucination of a man about to die.

The film in 2012 was famously named best of all time in the well-respected Sight and Sound Poll sponsored every 10 years by the British Film Institute. At the time, the accolades set off another round of academic dissection about Hitchcock's most perfectly realized film, from its troubling thematic concerns about the impossibility of fully realized human relationships, to the visual cues that link everything each character says and does.

I won't recount the plot, confident in the belief that if you've arrived here you've seen Vertigo more than once. Nor does my interpretation of Vertigo's opening scene in any way distract from or disagree with the principal themes that follow -- that love and human relationships are, at best, illusions we create to deceive ourselves such that life becomes bearable. All of that plays out in the film no matter how you interpret the opening.

No, my renewed interest in this densely layered picture has to do with the idea that Jimmy Stewart's detective falls to his death in the first five minutes of the film, though we do not see this, and everything that follows is a swirl of thoughts in the seconds before he is killed. Recall at the opening that Stewart and a uniformed policeman give chase to a criminal across San Francisco rooftops, leaping from one building to the next. Stewart slips, slides from the sharply angled, tiled roof and barely manages to grab the rain gutter, which immediately bends and begins to collapse under his weight. He hangs helplessly from a great height over the streets below. The policeman abandons the chase and returns to help.

"Give me your hand!" the cop implores, his arm outstretched, as the wild-eyed Stewart dangles at least 100 feet above the street. The policeman loses his balance, screams in horror and plunges into the abyss, falling past Stewart and striking the pavement with a final, sickening thud.

Hitchcock's famous "Vertigo effect" -- zooming the camera lens forward while dollying backward, creates the nauseating sensation of space stretching into the infinite. We get one final close shot of Stewart, still clinging to the metal gutter, and the screen darkens. After a long blackout, the action picks up in the apartment of Stewart's friend and ex-fiance, Midge.

From this moment forward, I suggest the remainder of the film consists of Stewart's dying thoughts. Resolution comes only with his death at the final fade, when he stands on the edge of the mission bell tower, staring down at the dead body of a woman who he loved because he believed her to be another. In that moment it seems Stewart may well throw himself off the tower to join his imaginary beloved in death. I say, he already has.

The plot of Vertigo is preposterous. Stewart's old college friend exploits him in an elaborate scheme to murder his wife and use Stewart as a patsy to witness a phony suicide. No one would stage these events to get away with a murder. No modestly competent detective could be fooled by the ruse that unfolds. As it happens, most of the film is a portrait of a sick and deeply delusional man. That Vertigo is often considered Hitchcock's most confessional film speaks for itself.

My interest goes back to that opening scene. We never see Stewart get down from that building nor does there seem any way possible that he could. It's the middle of the night. One man has just fallen to his death. It's implausible to think emergency responders could assemble and stage a rescue of Stewart before it's too late. He hangs by his fingertips, presumably in agony from the weight of his body stretching downward with each creaking lurch of the rain gutter pulling away from the rooftop. Letting go will bring the release of certain death. Hanging on literally for life means prolonged and intolerable misery -- and even that can be sustained for only so long.

But Hitchcock gives no easy resolution. The screen goes black, leaving Stewart in that opening scene forever suspended between life and death. Since there appears to be no way he could have survived, we must approach the film as a man's ruminations in his fleeting moments before death. I can no longer accept anything after the opening scene as a literal depiction of events; the movie is just too infused with dream imagery for that. I believe we are seeing the convoluted thoughts of a man confounded by the elusive and illusory nature of love. And an instant later, he is dead.

This twist-ending narrative technique of telling tales from beyond the grave dates back to the short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. It is used most effectively in several key horror films films made after Vertigo, including Carnival of Souls, Jacob's Ladder, Venus in Furs and, perhaps most famously of all, The Sixth Sense. It's a way of yanking reality out from under an audience to get them pondering your actual agenda.

If we take Vertigo literally as a dying man's final thoughts, the implausibility of the plot becomes moot. Suddenly, we are left to consider Hitchcock's themes on love and obsession on their own terms. We may never know if Hitchcock was fully aware of what he was doing, of how much he was perhaps unconsciously revealing about himself. But if musing on the power struggle inherent in human relationships is the goal, then killing off your lead character in the opening scene creates plenty of freedom to play around with these existential follies we call love and devotion.

Dali Dreams

By Steve Evans

Today being Salvador Dali’s birthday, our film du jour might be Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog; 1929), which he co-directed with fellow Surrealist Luis Buñuel. And you should check out this silent short, widely available online. It's one of the more interesting cinematic experiments conceived by Dali, who died in 1989. But right now let’s look at Dali's contribution to Spellbound (1945), a lesser film from Alfred Hitchcock starring Gregory Peck as a mental patient who fears he’s committed a murder and Ingrid Bergman as the psychiatrist trying to help him.

The film quotes Shakespeare at the opening (The Fault... is Not in Our Stars, But in Ourselves...), setting the stage for an ambitious look at psychoanalysis. Instead, Spellbound soon dives into what I can only charitably describe as stagey melodrama. It’s mostly a dull film. Redemption comes in a stunning dream sequence designed by Dali, replete with his signature melting objects and hallucinatory imagery. Hitchcock always worked with the best talent money could buy, and here his work with Dali constitutes a real save, because without it Spellbound is of interest only to Hitchcock compleatists.

The famed dream sequence lasts a mere two minutes, but was rumored to have been 20 minutes long before producer David O. Selznick demanded major cuts. Selznick and Hitchcock clashed frequently throughout the production and they never worked together again, although five years earlier Hitch had delivered a Best Picture winner to Selznick with his first American film, Rebecca.

Decades later, Peck conceded in an interview that he and Bergman had enjoyed a brief, torrid affair during the filming of Spellbound. Bergman was relentlessly unfaithful to her doctor husband throughout her 13-year marriage, finally divorcing him in 1950 to take up with Italian director Roberto Rossellini, who she divorced in 1957. Peck’s marriage lasted another 10 years after his dalliance with Bergman and he married a French journalist the day after his divorce was final. I mention this merry-go-round of musical beds only to underscore how life often imitates art, as the plot of Spellbound reveals, and that in this particular case the goings-on behind the camera were more interesting than the story being filmed in front of it. Except for that Dali dream sequence.



Cinema Uprising copyright © 2016 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Vertigo premieres 58 years ago today

By Steve Evans

Vertigo, our film du jour, premiered on this date in 1958. Not my favorite Hitchcock, though widely considered his masterpiece, Vertigo falls within a genre of my own invention, "subconscious autobiography." Here is a film in which Hitch, wittingly or not, displays all of his obsessional, sadistic and controlling habits in dealing with women who he could never obtain in his own life.

Vertigo is never about what it seems. The central mystery presented in Vertigo is its own MacGuffin -- a name given to something that sets the plot in motion but really has no significance. For example, "Rosebud" is the MacGuffin in Citizen Kane, for it kick starts the plot but has no relevance to the outcome of the story. In Vertigo, a San Francisco detective afraid of heights is tasked with following a beautiful woman who may be possessed by spirits. Halfway through the film, we learn this movie is about something else entirely. Something much more terrifying.

Beautiful performances from Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, one of the greatest ice blondes the cinema has given us. In terms of pure craft, the picture is exquisitely wrought, with a score by Bernard Herrmann for which the word "haunting" was invented.

Voters in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll named Vertigo the greatest film of all time. That's debatable. What is unquestionable is Vertigo's place in the canon as the most unsettling, provocative and heartbreaking picture of Hitchcock's career. Most of his oeuvre can be viewed as a lark. Suspenseful, yes, and replete with macabre humor, but mostly elegant and frivolous fun. Not Vertigo. Oh, no. Just once in a career spanning 60 years did Hitchcock cut loose and reveal some of his serious psychological baggage. People still say Hitchcock's Psycho is a scary movie and they're right, it is, in a funhouse sort of way. But Vertigo is the real deal. It plumbs the black hollows of a disturbed man's heart and shows us there is nothing at the edge of this abyss but madness and longing and despair.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2016 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

'Wages of Fear' played Cannes 60 years ago today

Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur) premiered 60 years ago today at Cannes and won the Palme d'Or seven days later.

It is one of the great thrillers, possibly the most intense film ever made, and one of the finest things to come out of France since Champagne, Renoir and Jeanne Moreau.

Watching The Wages of Fear is like having your heart clutched in a vise for 147 minutes. Essential viewing.

Synopsis: four desperate men trapped in a South American town agree to help an oil company extinguish a raging fire on a drilling rig some 200 miles over the mountains. Each will receive a cash payment of $2,000 (about $17,000 today). The catch: they must drive dump trucks loaded with volatile nitroglycerin -- the only explosive available for smothering the fire -- across treacherous jungle roads. 

The resulting white-knuckle ride will take your breath away. Films just don't get any better than this.

I am partial to the Criterion edition of this picture. The two-disc set contains an eye-popping transfer of this mesmerizing movie, as well as an analysis of the censorship it faced in the United States for alleged anti-American sentiments. In truth, the film is more about anti-multinational-corporation sentiments and the folly of avarice.

Check it out.



The success of this film gave Clouzot the clout to make the relentlessly terrifying Les Diaboliques, which in turn inspired Hitchcock to give the world Psycho.

Nothing like a little creative competition to bring out the best in artists of every discipline.

Cinema uprising copyright © 2013 by Stephen B. Evans. All rights reserved.

Zagat's got nuthin' on Steve's Top 20

By Steve Evans

Zagat is known for ranking restaurants, but recently got into the film-ranking bidness by releasing a top 20 list of rather predictable titles. The Godfather and its sequel, Part II, topped the Zagat list. Yawn.

These sorts of things are calculated to create buzz for Zagat out of nothing by sparking conversation and perhaps even controversy through the release of an arbitrary list built around a handful of opinions. Since theirs are no better than yours or mine, I'll let you in on a secret...pssst: wanna know the real top 20 films of all time? Ol’ Cinematic Cteve will tell you…

20. John Houston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Houston directed his dad Walter to an Oscar and gave Humphrey Bogart one of his best roles as the paranoid prospector Fred C. Dobbs, whose lust for gold elevates the plot beyond a mere western thriller with elements of noir. Greed, loyalty, madness and redemption are themes Houston explores in this dark window into the soul.

19. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Still an effective shocker half a century later, even when you realize what’s coming, as almost anyone past a certain age already knows. Pure filmmaking from a master. The ultimate in audience manipulation, as Hitch shifts our loyalties from one character to the next until we are spinning in a vortex toward the shocking reveal. Film critics fell over themselves studying this little tale of a boy and his mother.

18 Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient. Doomed love is still love – and better than no love at all in this film of contrasting stories set before and in the waning days of World War II. Exquisitely photographed with finely-detailed performances all around, this multiple Oscar-winning tale of love and regret features career-defining work from actors Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, who won an Oscar, with able support from Kristen Scott Thomas and Willem Dafoe. No matter how many times you see it, The English Patient will make you sob helplessly as the poor choices of these doomed characters lead inexorably to an inevitable conclusion.

17. Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim. If a Ménage à trios by definition must ultimately be doomed, the protagonists of Jules and Jim are damned as well. Luminous Jeanne Moreau serves as the troubled object of the title characters’ affections, although neither man ever really understands her appeal to their collective and everlasting regret. Jules and Jim is the archetype of the French nouvelle vague and one of the great classics of the second half of the 20th century.

16. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. A brilliant, chaotic, hallucinatory depiction of war and madness, each linked inextricably to the other. Coppola pushed his vision to the edge and almost fell over into the abyss as chronicled in the great documentary Hearts of Darkness, about the making of this film. This picture could serve as the textbook for a course on cinematography. Stunning set pieces, such as the unforgettable helicopter raid set to Wagner and Robert Duvall’s immortal speech about napalm.

15. Carol Reed’s The Third Man. “I remember old Vienna….” So begins this post-WW II noir as a low-rent writer of pulp Western novels arrives in Austria to meet a friend who, as it happens, is already dead. The novelist is always one step behind the weary cynics in devastated Vienna as he tries to solve the riddle of Harry Lime and his mysterious associates. Seldom have so many evil characters been portrayed with such disarming charm.

14. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. A finely-oiled machine built exclusively to terrorize, this film owes more to the Oscar-winning editing than anything a then-27-year-old Spielberg brought to the table in his sophomore directing effort.

13. Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. The Bolshevik Revolution altered the course of 20th century history. Potemkin changed the course of world cinema. While Team America spoofed the cliché of montage, Eisenstein showed how it was done and how this editing technique could be used for maximum effect.

12. Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game. The son of an Impressionist painter provoked outrage among the French bourgeois with the release of this fascinating look at class and society. Ambitious in scope, yet intimate in execution, this is a quietly devastating social commentary as relevant today as it was on release in 1939.

11. Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. The picture that introduced Americans to the notion of art-house cinema is practically redolent with symbolic imagery. Max von Sydow famously plays a game of chess with Death, but oh, there’s so much more.

10. Henri Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear. This sordid tale of four desperate men transporting nitroglycerin through the South American jungle may be the most suspenseful film ever made. It’s also one of the mostly sharply drawn portraits of the toll taken by American Imperialism on people who have no choice but to deal with the (lousy) hand of cards they are dealt.

9. Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man! This supremely surreal allegory follows the rise, fall and redemption of one Mick Travis, coffee salesman (Malcolm McDowell), as he wrestles with greed, avarice and ambition. With the radiant Helen Mirren and keyboardist Alan Price, whose songs serve as a sort of Greek Chorus, commenting on the strange meanderings of the plot in this fantastic film.

8. Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi. The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning “life out of balance.” The picture is a highly stylized exploration of beautiful landscapes juxtaposed against the horrors of an urban existence. This provocative, mind-expanding and deeply disturbing film is perhaps more relevant today than it was on its release in 1983. Features the ultimate use of music by minimalist composer Philip Glass.

7. Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter. Three friends go to Vietnam out of a sense of misplaced patriotic duty that lingers even after two of them return. Cimino paints a rich, vivid portrait of working-class life and simple American values, where no one questions government policy and the query of “why?” is always answered with “because.” Stunning. Heartbreaking. Unforgettable. The scene in the POW camp may deliver the 15 most unbearably tense minutes yet committed to film.

6. Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. A masterpiece of pantomime and poignancy, with a heart-rending final scene. The Little Tramp contemplates economic struggle and saves a blind girl. Dare you not to cry.

5. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. One of the greatest of all action films, all the more so because it is driven by character first and mayhem second. We care about what happens to these warriors and the villagers they are paid to protect. Get the Criterion edition.

4. Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. De Niro’s greatest performance. A mesmerizing and tragic character study of a life twisted inside-out and left hollow by sadomasochism. It’s also a boxing picture for people who hate movies about boxing.

3. Milos Foreman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Individuality and iconoclasm clash with bureaucratic authority in this deceptively simple morality play set inside an Oregon asylum for the insane. As the unyielding Nurse Ratched, Louise Fletcher creates one of the most vile and ultimately dangerous characters in cinema history.

2. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Greatest cinematic satire of all time. This film will tell you everything you need to know about political power, class struggles and the disingenuous maneuverings behind government policy, with a spot-on examination of the human condition. “I’m singin’ in the rain….”

And the greatest film of all?

Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. One of the most purely enjoyable pictures ever made, this is a movie constructed like magic on a foundation of nothing. The plot collapses under close scrutiny, but why would you bother? It’s all such glorious fun. Cary Grant plays Cary Grant. James Mason embodies suave villainy. Eva Marie Saint is the woman they both want. Classic set pieces include the crop-dusting biplane chase and the desperate climb acrosss the faces of Mt. Rushmore to a literal cliff-hanger climax. The picture contains everything a movie lover could ask of the cinema, with the greatest double-entendre closing shot in the entire Hitchcock oeuvre.

Cinema Uprising copyright (c) 2010 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Roger Corman Cops an Academy Award

By Steve Evans

One of the great entertainers in Hollywood finally gets his due.

B-movie maestro Roger Corman, 83, received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement during a special ceremony this month hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Corman bragged in his 1990 autobiography how he made “100 Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime.” Although the claim is as redolent with hyperbole as the overripe posters for his films, truth is, the man directed and produced scores of profitable pictures on wee budgets for exploitation studios like American International Pictures. The famed AIP logo at the start of a picture was a guarantee that low-budget drivel was about to unspool.

My own misspent youth included hours squandered in front of the television watching Corman movies with irresistible titles like Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) and The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, made the same year as Crab Monsters and, incredibly, the seven other films that Corman directed in ’57.

Think about that. How does a man direct nine movies in a year? By knocking them out in a matter of weeks, including writing the script, casting and pre-production, shooting principal photography, cutting, scoring the film with public-domain music from the local library, making prints and distributing the finished product.

Corman could go from an idea to a premiere in less than a month.

This is not to say the films he made were particularly good. Sure, there were a few notable films of exceptional quality. The Fall of the House of Usher comes to mind. Ray Milland in X: the Man with the X-Ray Eyes (right) is another. But most of Corman’s oeuvre consists of exploitation schlock. His movies are the cinematic equivalent of a microwavable burrito from a convenience store; not good for you, but filling and maybe even tasty ’round midnight when your mood is just right.

So why does a man with a mediocre movie resume get an Academy Award?

I suspect the honorary Oscar Corman received was more for his magnanimous nature than for any innate talent he ever demonstrated as a filmmaker. Corman gave everybody a shot at the movie bidness. The list of individuals who got their break working on a Corman film is positively staggering. What this legendary producer-director developed early in his career – aside from an uncanny knack for tapping into the public unconscious to determine what would lure teenagers to drive-in theaters – was his ability to identify undiscovered talent and hire it on the cheap. When you’re working with a budget that barely covers the film stock, you’ve gotta find good people who are hungry and willing to work for nothing. Corman excelled at finding those people.

Francis Ford Coppola was shooting naughty sex movies before he made one of his earliest films for Corman, a psycho-killer flick set in Ireland with the lurid title Dementia 13. This was a rip-off of William Castle’s Homicidal, which in turn was a blatant copy of Hitchcock’s Psycho, so you see how far Corman’s productions ranked along the food chain.

The story of Coppola's first "serious film" is apocryphal, but fascinating. His boss, Corman, was filming The Young Racers in Ireland. Corman's 24-year-old second-unit director, who simply called himself Francis back then, banged out a story on a typewriter one night and handed Corman a script the next morning about an axe-wielding maniac.

Coppola asked for feedback.

Corman said, “Fine, Francis, you direct it.” Corman gave Coppola $30,000 and let him use the stars of The Young Racers. Coppola shot his horror movie around Corman’s production schedule, which meant filming mostly at night, and got his first legit directing credit. Critical success and Oscars would follow within a decade, beginning with The Godfather (1972) and continuing with the first sequel to the Corleone gangster saga. Look fast during the Senate committee hearings in The Godfather Part II (1974) to see Corman, in a cameo as a U.S. Senator, on the panel investigating Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) for criminal conspiracies. Coppola honored his mentor with a bit part in what is now routinely acknowledged as one of the greatest films ever made.

Coppola's Dementia 13 was originally to be titled simply Dementia, but an earlier picture already held that name. (No one seems to know what happened to Dementias 1 through 12, ho, ho.)

Director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) made his first film for Corman, a sniper thriller (with shades of Lee Harvey Oswald) called Targets, starring Boris Karloff in one of his last films.

Martin Scorsese’s freshman effort, Boxcar Bertha, was a Corman production. Corman even offered to finance and produce Scorsese's follow-up effort, Mean Streets (1973), provided that the young director jettison the Italian-American mafioso plot in favor of a blaxploitation picture featuring black gangsters. Corman was undoubtedly considering the success of recent hits like Shaft and Superfly. Scorsese declined.

James “Titanic” Cameron got his start making spaceship models for Star Wars rip-offs produced by Corman. Cameron’s directorial debut, Piranha Part 2: The Spawning, featured Corman’s name in the production credits. Little of the talent Cameron would later bring to The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies or Best Picture winner Titanic is on display in his first effort, but he got his Director’s Guild card and that was a start.

Oscar winner Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) made the sleazy women-in-prison flick Caged Heat for Corman.

Long before he won an Oscar for directing Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, Ron Howard directed his first movie, Grand Theft Auto, for Corman’s Concord Productions while Howard was still starring in the television sitcom Happy Days.

Before he made The Howling and Gremlins, the latter for Steven Spielberg, director Joe Dante was editing trailers for Roger Corman. Dante got his big break a few years before James Cameron by directing the first Piranha movie, which was a carbon copy of Spielberg’s Jaws, right down to the promotional poster.

Legendary screenwriter Robert Towne, who won an Oscar for writing Chinatown, launched his career as an actor and the scribe of Corman‘s The Last Woman on Earth.

Famed actors who jump-started their careers in Corman pictures include Charles Bronson, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Peter Fonda, Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone.

It is said that successful men stand on the shoulders of giants. Corman’s legacy proves that the opposite is true. Corman didn’t make great movies, but he supplied a successful training ground for those who would.

Copyright © 2009 by Cinematic Cteve // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

Woooooooo! A Spooky Film Marathon for Halloween

By Steve Evans

“I runne to death, and death meets me as fast, and all my pleasures are like yesterday.” ~ Holy Sonnet VII.

Psychological research into the appeal of the horror film suggests that scary movies supply a way to deal with the inevitability of death in a controlled situation. The mantra "it's only a movie" reminds us that the credits will eventually roll and the imaginary terrors will fade away with the brightening of the house lights. We flirt with oblivion in the safety of the cinema.

Stephen King a quarter-century ago published Danse Macabre, an excellent thesis on the appeal of horror, with two superb chapters on the horror film and intriguing analysis of prime movies in this genre. It is recommended reading for anyone who enjoys a good adrenaline jolt from celluloid terrors.

With Halloween just 10 days away, I would like to offer something similar, but without King's exhaustive analysis on the enduring appeal of horror films. Instead, here is the list of what I consider to be the 10 most outrageously terrifying movies made to date, all suitable for a Halloween marathon. Criteria for the selection includes influence. Each of these movies had a profound impact on the horror film genre.

Why no Exorcist? Because it is just a silly picture. Slick and effectively directed, sure. But it's not scary. Anyone frightened by The Exorcist (1973) took Sunday School far too seriously.

I've also compiled a list of 10 more fantastical flicks that evoke not so much fear, but an uncanny sense of unease and dread that will creep into your subconscious and lease permanent space in your mind.

Ready? Set? Boo!

10. Spoorloos (The Vanishing; 1988) directed by George Sluizer. This Dutch psychological thriller follows the mysterious disappearance of a young woman and her lover's obsessive three-year search for answers. Along the way, he meets a psychopath who holds the key. The ultimate revelation haunted me for days. Avoid the director's needless American remake with Jeff Bridges and Keifer Sutherland.

9. Night of the Living Dead (1968) Directed by George Romero. This hugely influential film launched Romero's career as king of the zombies. Seldom has low-budget, black & white filmmaking with documentary techniques been put to such effective use in scaring the hell out of an audience. When the dead become reanimated and attack the living, 7 people hole up in an abandoned farmhouse to make a last stand against armageddon. That nihilistic ending still has the capacity to shock.

8. Rosemary's Baby (1968) Directed by Roman Polanski. Waif-like Mia Farrow is the eponymous Rosemary, who wonders if her mind is unravelling or if she really was raped by the Devil.

7. The Mist (2007) Directed by Frank Darabont from a script adapted from a Stephen King novella. A ragtag group of individuals representing a microcosm of society board themselves up in a grocery store when an ominous mist descends over their quiet New England town. Savage creatures lurk inside The Mist, but as Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) demonstrates convincingly, there is nothing more deadly than zealots who envelop themselves in a shroud of religious belief as justification for their evil deeds. Here is another example of how the delicate threads holding together the fabric of society will unravel at the first sign of genuine crisis. That's more frightening than any beastie lurking in this movie.

6. Night of the Hunter (1955) Directed by Charles Laughton from a screenplay by James Agee. Robert Mitchum, in his greatest performance, plays a psychopathic preacher with a switchblade hunting two little children across the American heartland during the Depression. A classic parable of Good and Evil, with silent film star Lillian Gish representing the former human quality in one of her last screen appearances. "Did I ever tell you the little story of right hand, left hand? Of love and hate?"

5. The Shining (1980) Directed by Stanley Kubrick from a script adapted from Stephen King's novel. This eerie mood piece posits the provocative idea that nothing is more terrifying than one family quietly going insane together. My main problem with the film is Jack Nicholson flies off the rails so quickly that his descent into madness doesn't seem like much of a stretch. But Kubrick creates an aura of dread over the proceedings so profound that the elliptical ending can be forgiven. Let's just say Kubrick's point is to create a Moebius Loop of cyclical terror and leave it at that. Jack has always been the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. The result is existential horror that would make Camus proud.

4. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Directed by Jonathan Demme. Everybody remembers Anthony Hopkins' Oscar winning performance as the charming, malevolent Dr. Hannibal Lector. Few people are aware that he occupies the screen for less than 17 minutes during a nearly 2-hour run time. Now that's what I call making an impression. Silence of the Lambs presents a sympathetic and sturdy heroine in Jodie Foster, who also won an Academy Award, facing implaccable and utterly insane evil so bizarre and incomprehensible that her situation seems beyond hope. Dr. Lector steals the show. By comparison, Buffalo Bill is a girly-man, figuratively and literally.

3. Alien (1979) Directed by Ridley Scott. The most terrifying science fiction movie ever made, exploiting our fears of boogeymen creeping around in the dark and, yes, inside our own bodies. Word is, Scott is attached to direct a prequel to his 30-year-old blockbuster. Here's hoping he explores the origins of that weird space jockey (above, right) who our unfortunate friends from the Nostromo stumble across during their explorations of planetoid LV-426.

2. Jaws (1975) Directed by Steven Spielberg. It may be difficult to understand the phenomenon that was Jaws unless you saw the film during its original theatrical run nearly 35 years ago, in an auditorium packed with people who scarcely had a clue what they were in for. The best thing that ever happened to Spielberg's career was a giant, rubber mechancial shark that never really worked like it was supposed to, so he had to improvise by suggesting the presence of a monster while seldom giving us more than a glimpse. The result, as Hitchcock had long understood, forced the audience to use their imagination to visualize something dreadful below the calm ocean surface. And the imagination is always more vivid than any monster a special effects expert can display on-screen, whether it be made of rubber or gigabytes of computer generated imagery.

1. Psycho (1960) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Because nothing is more terrifying than the prospect of losing one's mind, unless you happen to be showering at a hotel managed by a quiet young man and his domineering mother. Hitch always said he intended Psycho as a comedy. It is indeed an amusing picture if you know where to look. "My mother, what is the expression...? Isn't quite herself today."

***

Here are 10 films in order of release year that are guaranteed to evoke a chilling mood 'round midnight (I like to think of these as tone poems):

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) is the granddaddy of films about madness and one of the most important pictures in German Expressionism during the Weimar Republic before Hitler seized power and unleashed real horror on the world. Dr. Caligari and Cesare, his zombie-like somnambulist in a box, roam the countryside as part of a travelling carnival. Wherever they go, the corpses pile up. More importantly, they inhabit a world of jagged angles and steep slopes, where rooms shaped like triangles open onto surrealistic landscapes dotted with buildings on which shadows are painted to the walls. The production design is both the key to the plot and the reason Caligari remains a classic of the cinema. Essential viewing.

Nosferatu (1922) directed by F.W. Murnau is another silent classic from the German Expressionist movement. The full title, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, translates as "A Symphony of Horror" and that is precisely what Murnau delivers in this blatant adpatation of the Dracula novel by Bram Stoker (Stoker's widow sued unsuccessfully to have all prints of Nosferatu destroyed). The titular vampire is a terrifying creation as embodied by the aptly named actor Max Schreck. Rat-like and riddled with disease, Nosferatu creeps from his casket to caress the pale, white throats of his lady victims. If some silent films can be described as dreamlike, this is a black & white nightmare.

M (1931) directed by Fritz Lange stars bug-eyed Peter Lorre as the psychotic child murderer of Dusseldorf. When the police are unable to apprehend the fiend, the Dusseldorf underworld engages in a manhunt for the killer because he's bad for business. Lang's masterstroke in this early taking picture is the use of sound to indicate the presence of the unseen madman. As Lorre approaches his young victims off screen, we hear him whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King," an incessant, intensifying melody from The Peer Gynt Suite by composer Edvard Grieg. An eerie evocation of madness.

Vampyr (1932) directed by Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer is a haunting, dreamlike ephemera so delicate the picture feels like it might evaporate before our eyes like a poltergeist. The intrigue of the plot is secondary to the hypnotic quality of the imagery. The Criterion Collection edition offers the most complete print available of this important film.

Freaks (1932) nearly ruined director Tod Browning's career. MGM challenged him to make a picture more disturbing than Dracula, which he helmed a year earlier at Universal. He succeeded beyond their wildest aspirations when the film was exhibited in '32 to an appalled public. Banned for decades in Europe and seldom seen on American television, Freaks acquired a cult following among 1960s hippies more than 35 years after its release. The Warner Bros. 2005 DVD release of this incredible film belongs on your shelf.

The Mummy (1932) directed by Karl Freund is essentially a remake of Dracula made a year earlier, for which Freund served as cinematographer. Same essential plot. Same supporting cast. Same peculiar use of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. With a mesmerizing performance by Boris Karloff, billed here as "Karloff the uncanny." The first 5 minutes will raise the hair on the back of your neck. The rest is merely excellent.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943) was directed by Jacques Tourneur for legendary producer Val Lewton at RKO. Lewton knew how to get mileage out of his production dollars; in this case, cribbing from Charlotte Brontë. Yes, I Walked with a Zombie is Jane Eyre on Voodoo Island. An unforgettable mood piece that will haunt you for days.

Venus in Furs (1968) also known as Proximus, is a psychedelic thriller with a pounding jazz score directed by Spaniard Jess Franco, the prolific maestro of b-movies. A jazz trumpeter wandering the beach finds the nude body of Wanda, who was the victim of a sadomasochistic cult, we learn in flashbacks. Later, the musician meets a woman who may be Wanda reincarnated. Soon, her killers begin to die one by one. Shot on location in exotic Rio and half a world away in Istanbul. Wildly inventive. Trippy as hell.

Phantasm (1979) directed by Don Coscarelli played the drive-in circuit on its original release, but don't be fooled by the low budget. This independent horror film about 2 brothers investigating weird goings-on in the local cemetery will scare the bajeezus out of you. Ghoulish Angus Scrimm plays The Tall Man, an inspired character in the pantheon of horror pictures. With a trip to another dimension, diminutive hommunculi armed with daggers, sex in a graveyard and an unforgettable flying steel ball with spikes for impaling victims in the forehead.

Jacob's Ladder (1990) directed by Adrain Lynne lifts the thoughts of German philosopher Martin Heidegger to tell the tale of Vietnam veteran Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) whose war flashbacks and horrifying visions threaten his sanity. Contains some of the most unsettling imagery ever committed to film. Makes a terrific double-feature with An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1962) when you're in the mood to ponder perception and the nature of our fleeting existence.

Copyright © 2009 by Cinematic Cteve // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

A Salute to James Mason

By Steve Evans

James Mason would be 100 years old if he were alive today.

On the great English actor’s birthday, I’d like to highlight a quintet of his greatest performances, with the gentle suggestion that you seek them out for your own edification and enjoyment.

As an actor Mason was every bit the equal of Sir Laurence Olivier, but with half the ego and roughly twice the charisma.

Dig this cinema:

A Star is Born (1954)
The first remake of that hoary old chestnut about a rising ingénue, and the man who loves her and guides her career while bearing witness to his own fade from the limelight. The pain in Mason’s eyes is palpable as he sees his lover surpass him in public adoration. Co-stars Judy Garland.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
As Captain Nemo in this adaptation of the Jules Verne classic, Mason simmers with rage and madness as an intellectual bent on the destruction of a society he long ago abandoned. This is the best live-action adventure Walt Disney would ever make, with positively stunning production values and eye-popping Technicolor cinematography. Co-stars Kirk Douglas, Peter Lorre and an amazing giant squid built by Bob Mattey, the special effects genius who 20 years later would assemble an enormous rubber shark for Steven Spielberg.

North by Northwest (1959)
Mason plays the hissably evil (and apparently bisexual) Van Damme opposite hero Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic cold war comedy-thriller, still on the short list of greatest films ever made.

Lolita (1962)
As the eternally frustrated Prof. Humbert Humbert, Mason feels the torment of his unrequited lust for the titular prepubescent in this adaptation of Nabokov’s most famous novel. Peter Sellers damn-near steals the show in Stanley Kubrick’s daring (for the time) motion picture about sexual obsession. But it is Mason who brings an air of desperation and gravitas to this sordid tale, while achieving the impossible: we do not approve of his infatuation, but he makes us understand it.

Heaven Can Wait (1978)
Mason plays the benign angel opposite star Warren Beatty in this remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941). Beatty gets most of the screen time as a pro-footballer who’s killed before his time, but Mason makes the strongest impression as the put-upon angel who tries to explain things in the most patient and veddy British manner.

Copyright © 2009 by Cinematic Cteve // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

Raising Hell with the French New Wave

The 400 Blows: Criterion Collection
Criterion // 1959 // 99 Minutes // Not Rated

Reviewed by Steve Evans

“Angel faces hell-bent for violence.” From the Promotional Poster.

Opening Shot
The tagline above belies the sensitive quality of this first film by a director whose name is now synonymous with haunting, cinematic art. The 400 Blows also marks the birth of the French New Wave, as director François Truffaut (Jules and Jim) broke many of cinema’s rules and established a few new ones with this landmark, semi-autobiographical picture. The title, Les Quatre Cents Coups, comes from a French idiom meaning something along the lines of “to raise hell,” which is an apt description both of Truffaut’s childhood and the young protagonists of this film.

Criterion’s presentation and supplements are impeccable. This boutique film company specializing in arthouse cinema is the best in the business.

A Bit of Plot…
Young Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), sleeps in the kitchen of a small apartment in Paris with his uncaring mother and stepfather. His mom is having an affair; his stepfather pays little attention to the boy. Antoine’s teacher is a verbally abusive bully who courts favorites and punishes on a whim.

Seething with resentment, Antoine cuts classes to spend his days at the cinema. He steals food and drink, and commits other petty crimes, when he’s not tormenting pedestrians with a pea shooter. But mostly, he seems to crave acceptance in a world that has rejected him. Confronted with his truancy, the boy runs away from home. He begins living on the streets of Paris and eventually steals a typewriter to hawk for pocket money, but is caught and arrested. His parents relinquish their rights to the juvenile justice system, which sentences Antoine to incarceration on a work farm. There is a shot of Antoine being driven away at night as he gazes through the bars of the police wagon, a solitary tear streaking along his cheek. The moment could crack the hardest of hearts.

A lyrical climax consisting of one long, continuous tracking shot leads to a justly famous conclusion — powerful and appropriately ambiguous, like life itself, which is the film’s principle concern.

Historical Context and Significance
The 400 Blows captures the world of a troubled adolescent in a manner that was vibrant, fresh, and thrilling for audiences viewing this seminal film in 1959. For the contemporary viewer with a receptive mind, the picture still delivers these sensations. Many of the techniques employed in this picture — freeze frames, fluid tracking shots, unusual editing rhythms — have long since been co-opted and overused in everything from exploitation pictures to television commercials. So it’s worth realizing that these stylistic devices were a sensation in 1959, before every aspiring filmmaker began using them to achieve similar effects. Today these innovations are an ingrained part of our film vocabulary.

Truffaut’s cinematic surrogate, actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, was not yet 14 when he starred in the director’s premiere feature. Léaud would go on to appear as Antoine Doinel in four more films: as an adolescent in Truffaut’s Antoine et Colette (the director’s contribution to the anthology film L’Amour à Vingt Ans, aka Love at 20), later finding a girlfriend in Baisers Voles (Stolen Kisses) and subsequently marrying her in Domicile Conjugal (Bed & Board), with a sad denouement in L’Amour en Fuite (Love on the Run).

Look fast in The 400 Blows for a cameo by Truffaut, who lights a cigarette and walks off screen right to left as Antoine and his friend exit an arcade (at the 24:12 mark). He appears a few minutes earlier, as one of the people enjoying the amusement ride, but his face is not clearly visible until a moment later as he walks away from the arcade. Call it a little homage to Hitchcock, of whom Truffaut (at left) was a devoted student.

What’s on the Disc, Steve?
Quite a lot, I’m tellin’ ya. Commentary tracks (including one by Truffaut’s lifelong friend Robert Lachenay) and supplemental material on the disc provide many details of the director’s early life that give context to this deeply personal film. Many of the situations in The 400 Blows spring directly from Truffaut’s troubled childhood. He never knew his father. His mother married another man when Truffaut was an infant and, as he grew older, the couple barely acknowledged his existence. As a baby he lived for some time with a wet nurse; later, his grandmother would care for him. Truffaut would recall as an adult how he witnessed his mother kissing another man on the street one day — a trauma replicated in the film. The young Truffaut also skipped school to watch movies and commit crimes, mostly petty larcenies. The cinema eventually became his home. It may be no understatement to note that his spiritual father André Bazin, co-founder of Cahiers du Cinéma, saved Truffaut’s life and set him on a course leading to film — first as a critic and soon as a director. The 400 Blows is dedicated to Bazin.

The restored high-definition image is stunning. The mono audio has been cleaned up dramatically, compared to the crackling print I remember from a film festival more than a decade ago. Criterion also delivers a mouth-watering selection of supplements. Two separate audio commentaries feature Lachenay and cinema professor Brian Stonehill (who offers a useful crash course in the French New Wave). There’s also rare audition footage of Léaud and other young actors in the film, plus newsreel footage of Léaud at Cannes, two television interviews with Truffaut, and a restored theatrical trailer. The keepcase contains a tri-fold with images from the film and an essay by Truffaut biographer Annette Insdorf. A nice package, this.

Jules and Jim remains the director’s masterpiece (there is some competition here). Truffaut in this first picture begins to play with the stylistic devices that he would deploy to perfection, in the service of an even more powerful story, in Jules and Jim, of which the Criterion two-disc edition comes with my highest recommendation. Comparing the two films reveals the rapid evolution of an artist whose gentle humanity finds perfect expression on film.

Coda
Half a century later, The 400 Blows remains a brilliant slice of life that will linger in the mind’s eye and spark conversation long after the fade on that indelible freeze frame. Essential viewing.

Copyright © 2009 by Steve Evans // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

Plan 9 From Outer Space: Revisiting a Classic

By Steve Evans
Like many of the bonafide classics in my collection, I find myself revisiting this odd little picture at least once a year.

Plan 9 (1959) is surrealism on a budget. It is also twisted, completely insane, goofy-ass weirdness; yes, and a helluva lot of fun. I've come to see this picture and other titles in director Ed Wood's awful oeuvre as the work of a consummate confidence man who managed to churn out entertaining work in spite of himself. Tim Burton’s 1994 biopic Ed Wood starring Johnny Depp is an interesting point of entry for the uninitiated. Brave hearts would do well to dive right in; rent Plan 9 from Outer Space and see for yourself what real guerilla filmmaking is all about.

Like Woods’ Bride of the Monster, Night of the Ghouls, Jail Bait, The Sinister Urge and his freshman effort, the semi-autobiographical Glen or Glenda?, Plan 9 is compulsively watchable, like rubber-necking a bad traffic accident. Wood’s dialog – he wrote all of his own scripts – spins around like a Moebius loop, saying nothing, going nowhere. Consider these choice Plan 9 samples:

“…and remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future.”

Jeff Trent (a civilian): “I’m muzzled by Army brass!”

Air Force Captain: “Visits? That would indicate visitors.”

Lieutenant John Harper: “But one thing’s for sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody's responsible.”

Criswell: “Perhaps, on your way home, someone will pass you in the dark, and you will never know it... for they will be from outer space.”

Yow. Has there ever been a broader spectrum of weirdos, wannabes and hangers-on than the people involved in this picture – in front of and behind the camera? Hell, morphine-addicted Béla Lugosi (at left) was billed as the star and he died after three days’ worth of shooting. Most directors would have scrapped production, but not Ed Wood. His novel solution? Wood hired his wife’s chiropractor and draped him in a vampire cape with instructions to keep his face covered. Nevermind that the chiropractor was a good 10 inches taller than poor Béla and looked nothing like him.

Examples of Wood’s ingenuity are the stuff of near-legend. Don’t have permission to shoot in a cemetery? No problem. Build one with cardboard tombstones that wobble when the actors walk by. Don’t have a budget for flying saucer special effects? Not to worry. Buy a couple of model kits, string them up on fishing line, and wave them in front of the camera. Stock footage is also helpful, both in saving precious production dollars and padding out the running time.

Sound harsh? Not at all. Let me be clear:

Plan 9 is not the worst picture ever made, as some critics have complained, and Wood is certainly not the worst director (imagine what he could have created with Michael Bay’s budgets). To condemn Wood for toiling in obscurity, with inadequate funding for his projects, is to miss the point. Wood endures (and endears) not because of his incompetence, but in spite of it. Those who would dismiss this great auteur are themselves mere jackals of bourgeois sensibility, snobs who cannot appreciate the not-inconsiderable achievements of a determined man with no talent and even less money who produced half a dozen pictures of such mesmerizing awfulness that all are fondly remembered more than 50 years later. Will anyone still watch Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor or Armageddon half a century hence?

Movie making is hard, damn work, with incredible financial risks. And like creating any work of art, releasing a film also requires thick skin. Critics are ready to pounce on a picture they are incapable of creating themselves.

For an alcoholic transvestite and hopeless dreamer, Ed Wood certainly had balls. He held grand ambitions in his heart. Wood was as dedicated to filmmaking as Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, and Alfred Hitchcock. He just wasn’t any good at it.

And so, I submit that the only sin a film can commit is to be boring. Plan 9 is anything but.

Personally, I'm holding out for a director’s cut with the Criterion treatment on a two-disc special edition.

Copyright © 2009 by Steve Evans // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

Seeing With Fresh Eyes

By Steve Evans
I recently encouraged a friend to see Truffaut’s Jules and Jim for the first time and she returned with a glowing, radiant smile, and offered a wildly enthusiastic response to this seminal film from the Nouvelle Vague.

While happy for her and pleased that she liked the recommendation, I felt a curious pang of jealousy that got me wondering: how many beloved films would I like to experience again, with fresh eyes, for the first time?

Surely, North by Northwest (still my favorite motion picture), Taxi Driver and O Lucky Man!




Also Chinatown, of course. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. M. City Lights. Steamboat Bill Jr. Psycho. The Wizard of Oz. The Quiet Man. It's a Wonderful Life. A Clockwork Orange and 2001 and Dr. Strangelove. Yes, and The Wild Bunch. Let's not forget The Godfather and its first sequel. Goodfellas.

King Kong (1933), although I would also wish to be eight years old again, as that is an optimal age for viewing this creaky old monster movie.

Most of the films noir from the classical period, especially Sunset Boulevard.

Jaws, though it frightened me senseless 34 years ago.

Even Die Hard – one of the few films I have seen that lived up to its tagline: “It will blow you through the back of the theater!”

Oh, this list could go on indefinitely.

Which films would you wish to experience again, unseen, with all their secrets and surprises waiting to unfold and make you smile or think or cry or enjoy wild, electrifying exhilaration?

Copyright © 2009 by Steve Evans // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

La Bête Humaine: The Criterion Collection

By Steve Evans

The pitch:

A tale of a murderous ménage à trois, infused with rich symbolism and social commentary by the undisputed master of early French cinema.

Director Jean Renoir veers from his humanist work to deliver a blueprint for what would become known as film noir a decade later. A virtual template for the psychological thriller, Alfred Hitchcock almost certainly studied this intense 1938 film that was years ahead of its time. Contemporary directors should do likewise for lessons in pure craftsmanship and suspense. La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) was a one-off statement from the French director, who would never make another film as brutally powerful, yet so quietly devastating as this one. With Criterion's expert presentation, the picture remains a rich viewing experience 70 years later, as Renoir explores fatalism and innate human savagery, brought on by co-dependence, mental instability and the heartbreaking betrayal of infidelity. Though a lesser film in the Renoir canon (Rules of the Game remains the acknowledged masterpiece), this is merely by a matter of degrees. La Bête Humaine is based on an 1890 novel (cover art, upper right) by romanticist Émile Zola.

And now for a bit of plot…
Train engineer Jacques Lantier (Jean Gabin, Grand Illusion) drives his beloved locomotive Lison from Paris to La Havre, where he rests for a few days when an axle overheats and must be replaced. A brooding man, Lantier is plagued by occasional and violent seizures, which he blames on the excessive drinking of his forefathers “who poisoned my blood,” as he confides to a friend. Lantier only seems truly alive when driving his locomotive. Donning goggles, he sticks his head out from behind the engineer's seat through the open window where he inspects the tracks, reveling in the sensation of pure speed as the wind whips over his face. His relationship with Lison borders on sexual, and seemingly soothes his temperament.

The La Havre stationmaster, Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux, Les Misérables), and his pretty wife, Séverine (Simone Simon, The Devil and Daniel Webster) like to socialize with the tight railroad community, though Séverine is by far the more popular of the two. The lady is a tramp. The older Roubaud harbors vague suspicions of his young wife's various infidelities, although his pathological possessiveness may be the very reason she seeks comfort in the arms of other men.

When Lantier becomes witness to a murder, Séverine buys the engineer's silence with an invitation to her bed. But her husband always seems to be lurking nearby, skulking in the shadows of the railyard. Lantier fancies he's in love, but any normal man in possession of his faculties would turn from the sweetly poisonous Séverine and run. As the three points of this triangle begin to turn on one another, Séverine wonders if another murder may be the price of freedom.

Historical Significance & Context
Jean Renoir worked in almost every film genre and even invented a few, including the social satire (starting with Boudu Saved From Drowning). Here, he creates a classic noir years before French critics even came up with the label “films noir” — the dark, nihilistic, cynical cinema that American studios began churning out in the 1940s on thin budgets. Here, he assembled a superb cast of absolutely authentic-looking character actors. Renoir also reunited with Gabin on this picture after their collaboration a year earlier on Grand Illusion.

A superstar in his native France, Gabin was only 34 when he made La Bête Humaine. And yet, he appears much older—conveying the weariness of a man so confused and disappointed by life that he could be easily entranced by the seductive charms of a duplicitous woman.

Simone Simon, the quintessential French femme fatale, would later appear in the most famous of RKO Producer Val Lewton's effective low-budget chillers, Cat People and its sequel, Curse of the Cat People. She died of natural causes in Paris in 2005. Simon was 94. (Gabin, Simon, above.)

Renoir himself appears in an amusing cameo as an outspoken, train-riding hobo whose dialogue is thinly veiled commentary on the moral themes explored in the film. But this is mainly a picture dealing in dread and tragedy.

La Bête Humaine contains several scenes of such tightly-coiled suspense that it is not possible to watch without wondering how often Hitchcock held private screenings of the picture for his own education.

In addition to a lifelong fascination with human frailties, Renoir possessed a genetic talent for capturing stunning visuals (he is the son of French impressionist painter Auguste Renoir). Here the director deploys symbolism both subtle and overt to makes his points about fatalism and emotional entanglements. Subtle symbols include the frequent tracking shots from the engineer's perspective on the locomotive, as this inexorable forward movement of the train sweeps the protagonist along to his destiny. More obvious is the camera’s chaste panning away from a lovemaking scene during a thunderstorm to stop on the lingering shot of a waterspout gushing into a bucket until it slows to a trickle.

La Bête Humaine benefits especially from stark black and white cinematography by the director's nephew Claude Renoir, whose genius with cameras would never surpass his work on Jean Renoir’s first Technicolor film, The River. Modern audiences can revel in Claude Renoir's insistence on authenticity: When filming the many shots of rumbling locomotives, only one rear-projection image is used (at the climax, as an obvious necessity); every other train sequence was shot on the tracks at 60 mph. During a 45-year career, Claude Renoir would also frame John Frankenheimer's The French Connection II and the James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me, but the work for his uncle is unparalleled.

The image on this disc is occasionally soft, but this may be more a factor of the film's age than Criterion's restoration and digital-transfer efforts. The monaural sound is clean and dialogue-centric, dispersing audio to the front and center channels. It is unspectacular, but gets the job done.

Extra features include an introduction of the film prepared by Renoir in 1967 (which reveals significant plot points, so beware if watching this before the feature film). In his delightfully droll manner, Renoir notes that the project came to life simply because star Jean Gabin wanted to make a movie about trains. The disc also features a short interview with director Peter Bogdanovich (Targets, The Last Picture Show) who shares his insights and claims La Bête Humaine may be Renoir’s best picture. Archival interviews, a trailer, and gallery of production stills are augmented by a beautiful, 40-page booklet with writings on the film.

La Bête Humaine was remade poorly and unnecessarily in 1954 as Human Desire, starring Glenn Ford (Blackboard Jungle) and directed, incredibly, by the great German Expressionist Fritz Lang (M).

Coda
Although it's getting a bit redundant to note that Criterion always delivers the goods, the fact is, the talents behind this boutique collection of important films know precisely what they are doing. And we like it. For Renoir compleatists and collectors of noir this is a must-have disc.

Renoir directs this heart-breaking tragedy with consummate skill — for which he is justly famous. Criterion deserves high praise for presenting another quality package, especially for a lesser-known film from this artful director.

Copyright © 2009 by Steve Evans // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.