Fellini Satyricon (1970)

I don’t know how exactly to describe Fellini Satyricon. It’s a visually stunning film that amazes a viewer with its unusual style, but it’s also very narratively confusing, given its episodic nature of storytelling. It’s enigmatic almost to the point at times of being impenetrable because of its very fragmentary structure that leaves out huge gaps of time and information between the vignettes that depict the journeys or adventures or what-you-will of two friends, who I assume are also former lovers. Encolpius is played by British actor Martin Potter; he’s the blond one. Ascyltus is played by Hiram Keller, an American actor with dark hair. I realize that’s a weak way to differentiate the performers and their roles, but it actually helped me sometimes. It’s quite the series of tales that we watch the two young men experience, and it’s also quite a gay-oriented story. Well, I guess the more appropriate word might be “queer.” There are so many almost-naked men and such short tunics in this movie and so much same-sex activity (implied and somewhat depicted) that it’s no wonder the great film critic and historical Parker Tyler called it “the most profoundly homosexual movie in all history.” The film starts with Encolpius and Ascyltus fighting over a young boy named Giton, who, frankly, isn’t appear to be worth all the fuss unless I’m missing something that wasn’t translated into subtitles. There’s some dispute as to whom he “belongs”; I couldn’t quite discern if the boy is a slave or just an object of lust, but Encolpius gets the boy back from an actor who farts a lot on stage. He and the boy spend some time together – I think you know what that means – but then the boy winds up leaving with Ascyltus anyway. Thus begins the wandering narrative of Encolpius. He meets a poet named Eumolpus, who takes him to a weird party with odd food and strange rituals and bad poetry. I was definitely not hungry after watching this sequence. Encolpius is later taken on a slave ship and married to a new master, who likes to wrestle his newly acquired slaves. The allegedly cute boy and Ascyltus are also on the ship, but how they got there is a mystery. Encolpius and Ascyltus next wind up at a house where a couple commits suicide after freeing all of their slaves. They have a three-way with a very beautiful woman, but here’s an example of where the skips in the narrative confound a viewer. We have no idea how they got to this house, nor they escape from it and get to the next place in the story, and the next place is very odd – which I realize is a matter of degrees when it comes to this film. Encolpius and Ascyltus help another man kidnap a demigod, Hermaphroditus, who heals people. Well, sometimes, they heal people. Most of the time they just seem sleepy and weak, which probably accounts for why the demigod dies from sun exposure so soon after being kidnapped. By the way, I didn’t realize that the word hermaphrodite came from the progeny of Hermes and Aphrodite until I watched this film, so I guess I did gain some cultural knowledge along the way. Up next for Encolpius is a battle with a minotaur. It’s some sort of joke the town plays on foreigners? I didn’t get the joke, nor did I understand why he’s forced to have sex with a woman who is rather condescending and nasty to him. He can’t perform with her – who could, really? – but then Eumolpus, whom I had assumed was dead already, shows up and takes him to the Garden of Delights to get his, um, equipment restored. If this sounds like a wild ride of a movie, you should understand that I’m skipping over a lot of moments that are just so bewildering that I am not even sure I understood what happened. I think a rich man basically challenges his heirs to cannibalize his corpse after he dies in order to inherit anything from him; apparently, the flesh was rather, shall we say, chewy? Not a pleasant image, to say the least. Contributing to the confusion is that only about maybe two-thirds of the film’s dialog had been translated into English subtitles in the print that I saw, and my Italian is, well, nonexistent. I think I’ll just remember the look of this film. The art direction, the makeup, the costumes – all are just extraordinary. I doubt the filmmakers were attempting realism of the time period of ancient Rome, so the outcome is just eye-popping. The visuals are just, well, visionary, like nothing you’ve ever seen on the screen before. No one’s movies look like those directed by Federico Fellini, and Fellini Satyricon is one of his most spectacular – in every sense of that word.

Oscar Nomination: Best Director 

Rear Window (1954)

 

Rear Window is an intriguing movie about the ethics of voyeurism, and if there were ever any major film director who was fascinated by voyeurism, it’s this film’s director, the master himself, Alfred Hitchcock. He and his crew chose to place the central character, L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries, in a wheelchair confined to his apartment for six weeks. Jeff, played by Jimmy Stewart with his typical acerbic smile, works for Life magazine so he’s accustomed to looking at people. The camera equipment for seeing other people at various distances lies conveniently around the apartment. Jeff’s favorite tool during his recovery, though, is a telescopic lens he uses to watch his neighbors. He’s nicknamed some of them, such as Miss Lonelyhearts, a woman who can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to dating, and Miss Torso, a model who gets lots of male attention. He also watches – “spies on” doesn’t quite seem to capture exactly what he does – a couple of newlyweds, a composer, a couple who likes to sleep outside on the stoop, almost everyone in the complex. His greatest interest, though, is with a salesman named Thorwald (played by the physically imposing and often glowering Raymond Burr), especially after Thorwald’s wife disappears after he’s seen making three trips out of the apartment in a rainstorm, and then there’s the matter of the large trunk held together by a rope. Jeff calls a detective friend of his, Wendell Corey’s Tom Doyle, but Jeff’s theory/explanation/conspiracy as to what happens just doesn’t make sense to Doyle. He does check on a couple of “leads” that Jeff gives him, but really, he just thinks Jeff is bored and his imagination is getting the best of him. Voyeurism can do that to you, I suppose. Interestingly, Jeff’s girlfriend, a model named Lisa, initially refuses to believe Jeff but later develops a theory of her own. Lisa is played by Grace Kelly, the epitome of style and elegance in the 1950s. When she becomes so intrigued by what might have happened to Mrs. Thorwald, she even sneaks into his apartment to do some searching (snooping?). Jeff, ever the voyeur, has to watch as Thorwald returns home and threatens Lisa. What is a helpless man to do in a situation like this? What is a helpless audience in the same situation to do? When Jeff realizes that Thorwald knows he suspects the salesman is a murderer, he’s pretty much incapable of escaping. I mean, I wouldn’t want to know that Raymond Burr is coming to my house to seek revenge, would you? Rear Window features some great tension at moments like this. It’s certainly one of Hitchcock’s most accomplished thrillers from when he was perhaps at or near his peak of his talents as a filmmaker. Some of his usual filmic touches are on display. We watch as the camera moves through Jeff’s apartment and around the courtyard so that we become voyeurs too, looking at or spying on everyone Jeff watches. Sometimes we look at Jeff, and sometimes we see what he sees. Hitchcock could easily make us feel uncomfortable, particularly when we engage in behavior that we see the characters doing against their better judgment. He also makes his usual cameo, here as a clock repairman in the composer’s apartment. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the performance of Thelma Ritter as Stella, the nurse sent by the insurance company to give Jeff a massage and encourage his healing. She is blunt, direct, and funny; she even speculates about how and where Thorwald might have cut up his wife’s body. The morbid nature of her curiosity doesn’t detract from the moment of great comic relief that she provides. By the end of the film, she and Lisa have joined us in the audience as being implicated in what happens. It’s a clever turn in a clever film.

Oscar Nominations: Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock), Best Screenplay, Best Color Cinematography, and Best Sound Recording

A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1970)

 

The main plot of A Boy Named Charlie Brown involves Charlie’s winning his school’s spelling bee and preparing for the national competition in New York. He only entered the school bee because he was goaded into it by Lucy and her fellow “mean girls” Violet and Patty, who thought it would be funny to see him fail. He wins, though, and sets out on a journey to learn a lot of spelling rules before his big moment in the national spotlight. However, a lot of the movie isn’t really about spelling. Instead, it presents aspects of the Peanuts comic strip with which we are likely very familiar: Lucy yanks a football away from Charlie Brown at the list minute, he fails in his attempt to get a kite to fly and not get “eaten” by a tree, Snoopy goes ice skating both as a hocky player and as a figure skater, Schroeder plays Beethoven on his toy piano, Charlie Brown seeks help at Lucy’s psychiatric booth, etc. A lot of it may be common images to fans of Peanuts and the many TV specials over the years, but the presentation of these moments can sometimes come in moments of pure animated fantasy. For example, Schroeder has an astonishing flight of fancy while playing Beethoven; it’s startling and beautiful and amazingly abstract. During a sequence involving the Star-Spangled Banner, the screen first becomes red and white, then blue and white, then back again. There’s a stained-glass effect during a basketball game, a split screen during a football game – it’s just visually dazzling. My favorite character in the strip, Linus, is his usual stalwart self, Charlie’s best friend and confidante. However, when Lucy gives Linus’s beloved blanket to Charlie Brown for good luck in New York, Linus begins suffering dizzy spells. The dance he performs with his blanket after their reunion is truly joyous. As for the national spelling bee itself, well, Charlie Brown keeps getting works right, primarily because they’re all words about failure and incompetence, concepts which he knows well. However, in the most Charlie Brown-ish of actions, he misspells the word “beagle.” Astonishing, really, that he can’t spell the word that describes his own dog, but he wouldn’t be the Charlie Brown we know if he didn’t fail, would he? There was no category for Animated Feature Film in 1970, so the Oscar nomination that the film received was for its music, including the title song written and “sung” by none other than Rod McKuen. In perhaps an unsurprising result, though, the score for A Boy Named Charlie Brown lost to Let It Be by the Beatles.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Song Score

Eskimo (1934)

It’s probably important to note that Eskimo is not a documentary. It’s based upon two novels by a Danish explorer familiar with the Arctic and, presumably, Alaska where the movie is set. The film does provide some anthropological interest in its depictions of aspects of life in a small village – activities like salmon fishing, duck hunting, walrus hunting. However, once you realize that, clearly, many of these scenes were shot using rear projection, and that the actors are nowhere actually near the walrus or the polar bear, the film becomes more of a rather tawdry tale of revenge. Mala (played by Native American actor Ray Mala) is the best hunter in his village, and many take advantage of his prowess to keep them alive in the harsh climate. It doesn’t take long, though, for the film to throw us a curve by showing that Eskimo husbands let close friends have sex with their wives. I mean, I guess they really have to be close friends and it’s only when the friend is lonely because they’ve been widowed or something, but still, that’s a strange custom, not one very supportive of women’s desires. It becomes even stranger when Mala goes with his wife Aba (the lovely Lulu Wong Wing) to a trading ship that’s been trapped in the ice. He meets a white captain (played in an intriguing bit of casting by Peter Freuchen, the author of the novels that were the source of the plot), who trades a rifle for furs and then rapes Aba after demanding that Mala let her stay on the ship for the night. Despite promises that he will not molest Aba again, the captain rapes her again while Mala is gone on a whale hunt with the sailors. When she leaves the ship, the ship’s mate accidentally shoots and kills her by mistake, thinking that she’s a seal lying on the frozen ground. Mala harpoons the captain – you knew that his skill at harpooning whales would come in handy later – and then returns home to his children and village. Mala remains haunted for a long time over Ada’s death and his killing of the captain, but he feels renewed when he gets a new name (Kripik), which no one seems to remember to call him, and a visiting friend gives him one of his wives so that Mala will no longer be alone. If that’s not enough of a melodramatic plot, the Mounties show up and start investigating old cases, particularly ones involving native people. They learn about Mala’s killing of the captain and try to question him, but he doesn’t quite understand their intentions. He manages to escape by injuring his hands pulling them through handcuffs. He tries to return home, but the weather is particularly brutal. He has to start eating his sled dogs in order to survive, and he's almost killed by a wolf when he’s near death. It’s a wild movie in terms of one character’s arc. The ending is a bit of a happy one even though it initially seems like Mala and his new wife Iva (Lotus Long) may be committing suicide by leaping onto an ice floe. Eskimo was filmed using the native language Inupiat with intertitles translating into English. The pronoun usage, though, is still tough to understand, at least initially. “One” means “I,” and “someone” means “you.” Reading the intertitles takes some effort because the grammatical structure is different, but given all that happens to Mala and his family, some pronoun confusion is the least of our concerns as viewers. On a final note, here’s a bit of Oscar trivia: Eskimo was the first film ever to win an Oscar for editing; the category was added to the list of honors for 1934 films.

Oscar Win: Best Film Editing

55 Days at Peking (1963)

 

Several decades ago now, I was teaching a five-night-a-week English as a Second Language class in Monterey Park. Most of the students were recent immigrants from China and Taiwan and other Asian countries although someone from Saudi Arabia or Mexico would occasionally sign up. On Friday nights, we were given permission to watch American movies and practice conversational skills in English with the students. One Friday, I showed 55 Days at Peking, a film set against the backdrop of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, to the class and they became so angry with me. They were adamant that the movie was completely inaccurate in its portrayal of what truly happened. Well, of course, it isn’t accurate. It’s a Hollywood movie that depicts an episode of Chinese history from the perspective of those who were trying to exert influence in China: England, the United States, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, etc. – in other words, the very people that the Boxers were rebelling against. The central character, of course, is an American, Marine Maj. Matt Lewis, played by Charlton Heston with his usual woodenness. He did always think he was more charming than he actually was, didn’t he? Sometimes I think the only reason to watch a Heston movie is for the inevitable shirtless scene. Ava Gardner plays a Russian baroness, a beautiful woman with a past, which means that all of the other women hate her because their husbands can’t help but admire the Baroness Natalie Ivanoff’s beauty. Well, who could resist Gardner? She was always a good actress, but she isn’t given much to do here except try to escape from China, fail, and then tend to a wounded soldier. Oh, she and Heston do get to share a hotel room because there’s no other place for him to stay, but sadly, not enough is made of that tantalizing possibility. David Niven plays the leader of the British contingent in China, Sir Arthur Robinson, which means he’s also the de facto leader of the foreign legation. He and his wife question why Great Britain (and everyone else) is in China, and there’s lot of talk of leaving, but do colonial powers ever truly leave an area? The most embarrassing bit of casting is having British actors in yellowface. Dame Flora Robson plays the Dowager Empress, who mostly just sits around and speaks in odd metaphors. She has two advisors, the prince (who openly supports the Boxers trying to rid China of Western influence) and a general. The prince is played by another British actor, Sir Robert Helpmann, and Leo Genn, yet another Brit, plays the general. Yes, such casting was common at the time, but it’s still grating to see it on the screen. The film features outstanding production design, marvelous costumes, lovely cinematography – all depicted on a rather grand scale. At the level of an epic, it works well enough, I suppose, but the film is a bit soulless since it’s clearly taken what might charitably be characterized as the wrong side of the battle to support. The battle sequences themselves are well staged, but your natural sympathies might be on the side of those who are being occupied. The film has to have Robinson’s son get shot in order to get some emotion going. By the time Heston’s Lewis has to tell an Asian girl that his American father has been killed, you start to wonder if the only way to make the viewer care for the Western side of the story is to harm a child. When Lewis has the brilliant idea to use the sewer system to get in and out of the palace grounds to destroy some ammunition – something none of the Chinese had apparently ever considered? – you have to acknowledge that maybe my students all those years ago were right to be angry with me. Come to 55 Days at Peking for the spectacle but avoid trying to learn any accurate historical information. Consider yourself warned.

Oscar Nominations: Best Original Song (“So Little Time”) and Best Substantially Original Score

Black Hawk Down (2001)

 

Black Hawk Down is pretty unsparing in its depiction of the brutalities of war. There’s a lot of death and a lot of gore and a lot of blood in this movie, which was based on a particularly terrible day in Mogadishu in 1993. The American military attempts to capture and/or kill a warlord who’s decided to call himself the president during the Somali Civil War, and one bad, horrible thing after another happens. A helicopter crashes after being damaged in battle, another is shot down by a rocket grenade, a new soldier falls from a helicopter – it’s just a series of disasters. Troops are sent to rescue the survivors from the helicopter crashes, but they face some very well-organized Somalis, who keep them from reaching the target locations. The film features lots of young actors, many of them quite talented, but no one gets much screen time. Perhaps it’s a reminder not to become too attached to someone in a war zone like this. Josh Hartnett is billed first as newly-in-command Staff Sergeant Matt Eversmann, but his is just one of many stories we witness, however briefly. Eric Bana is an enigmatic sniper, and he’s always intriguing when he pops up the screen. Blink, though, and you might miss performances by Hugh Dancy, Ioan Gruffudd, Tom Hardy, Orlando Bloom, Ty Burrell, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. The film, based on a true story, of course, seems to place the blame for the errors on bad leadership decisions. Sam Shepard plays Major General William F. Garrison, and he and the other leaders of the mission just don’t seem to want to listen to honest assessments of the situation; their decisions lead to a lot of dead and wounded in a single, disastrous day. There’s an old saying that all war films are anti-war films because if you truly and (somewhat) accurately portray what happens in wartime, viewers become more opposed to it. I’m not as familiar with the historical events surrounding the U.S. involvement in the Somali Civil War as I could or perhaps should be, and there has been some criticism of this film for its inaccuracies. (Why do people go to see fiction films expecting a history lesson?) Still, even if its accuracy is flawed, watching Black Hawk Down leaves the viewer wondering just how much the raid accomplished and if it was worth the cost in human lives. Director Ridley Scott and his crew deciding to place us in the midst of all of the death and destruction of wartime certainly seems to suggest that they think it wasn’t.

Oscar Wins: Best Film Editing and Best Sound

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Director (Ridley Scott) and Best Cinematography

The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1966)

 

In retrospect, it’s tough to imagine more unlikely director for The Gospel According to St. Matthew (originally known as Il vangelo secondo Matteo and originally released in 1964), a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the Book of Matthew, than Pier Paolo Pasolini. It’s not that he isn’t a great director – he is – but he was also a self-identified atheist. And, yet, he and his crew have created a beautiful film that hews closely to the original words of the Bible. Well, to be fair, the subtitles are almost verbatim from the King James Version of the Bible, and I can’t vouch for the Italian that the performers speak. The film follows the story of Christ from his birth to his resurrection. He’s played here by a beautiful young Spaniard, Enrique Irazoqui, who portrays Jesus as a sort of angry young man with an unfortunate unibrow. By the way, is it a requirement that actors who play Jesus be beautiful? I’ve tried to think of a single cinematic Jesus who was homely or even just average-looking, but to no avail. Give that Pasolini was also public about his being gay, the many close-ups of Irazoqui highlight the young man’s features as he addresses the disciples and speaks what will later be known as the Gospels. Jesus gets confronted and questioned a lot in this movie, and he’s always ready with an answer even if not everyone else, including his disciples, fully understands the meanings and implications of what he says. All of the performers in the movie are non-professionals, and they have some great faces, some lovely, some less so, some with lots of what used to be called “character.” They get close-ups too, so that we can see their reactions to Jesus’s words. The film has a very pared-down style; it doesn’t go for the hyperbole of many (Hollywood) Biblical dramas. Even Jesus’s walk on water is presented very matter-of-factly. The exceptions are the so-called Massacre of the Innocents on the orders of King Herod, who tried to ensure the death of Jesus as a baby, and the crucifixion of Christ. Both of those sequences are difficult to watch. The Gospel According to St. Matthew is gorgeously shot in black-and-white among ruins that evoke the period. It also features some very eclectic and not period-appropriate music, ranging from expected classical pieces to songs by Odetta and Blind Willie Johnson. One of the things that most impressed me about the film was its use of silence. Many times, we are treated to visuals without any dialogue, and they are stunning in their impact. As unexpected a choice for director as Pasolini might have been, he certainly understood the power of cinema to create the right mood for a film like this one.

Oscar Nominations: Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Black-and-White Costume Design, and Best Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment